The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Books

Volume 1

Being a Sampler of the Earlier Exploits of a Certain Gathering
of Incredible Individuals, to whit :

Miss Mina Harker, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Henry Jekyll
and Hawley Griffin, their unconscionable adversaries Professory Moriarty
and Dr. Fu-Manchu and their esteemed allies, C. Auguste Dupin, 
Mycroft Holmes, Selwyn Cavor, Randolph Carter, John Carter, Lady Ragnall 
and an unidentified Time Traveller.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_League_of_Extraordinary_Gentlemen


* * * * * * 


Miss Mina Harker encounters DRACULA

as told by BRAM STOKER


CHAPTER 1


Jonathan Harker's Journal

3 May. Bistritz.--Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at
Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was
an hour late.  Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse
which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through
the streets.  I feared to go very far from the station, as we had
arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.

The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the
East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is
here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish
rule.

We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh.
Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale.  I had for dinner,
or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which
was very good but thirsty.  (Mem. get recipe for Mina.) I asked the
waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was
a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the
Carpathians.

I found my smattering of German very useful here, indeed, I don't know
how I should be able to get on without it.

Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the
British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the
library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some
foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance
in dealing with a nobleman of that country.


I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the
country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia,
and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the
wildest and least known portions of Europe.

I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality
of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to
compare with our own Ordance Survey Maps; but I found that Bistritz,
the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place.  I
shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when
I talk over my travels with Mina.

In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct
nationalities:  Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs,
who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and
Szekelys in the East and North.  I am going among the latter, who
claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns.  This may be so, for
when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they
found the Huns settled in it.

I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the
horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of
imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting.  (Mem.,
I must ask the Count all about them.)

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had
all sorts of queer dreams.  There was a dog howling all night under my
window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have
been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe,
and was still thirsty.  Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the
continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping
soundly then.

I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize
flour which they said was "mamaliga", and egg-plant stuffed with
forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata". (Mem.,
get recipe for this also.)

I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight,
or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station
at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we
began to move.

It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are
the trains.  What ought they to be in China?

All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of
beauty of every kind.  Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the
top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by
rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each
side of them to be subject to great floods.  It takes a lot of water,
and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear.

At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in
all sorts of attire.  Some of them were just like the peasants at home
or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets,
and round hats, and home-made trousers; but others were very
picturesque.

The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were
very clumsy about the waist.  They had all full white sleeves of some
kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of
something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of
course there were petticoats under them.

The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian
than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white
trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly
a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails.  They wore high boots,
with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and
heavy black moustaches.  They are very picturesque, but do not look
prepossessing.  On the stage they would be set down at once as some
old Oriental band of brigands.  They are, however, I am told, very
harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion.

It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is
a very interesting old place.  Being practically on the frontier--for
the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina--it has had a very stormy
existence, and it certainly shows marks of it.  Fifty years ago a
series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five
separate occasions.  At the very beginning of the seventeenth century
it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the
casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease.

Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I
found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of
course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.

I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a
cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress--white
undergarment with a long double apron, front, and back, of coloured
stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty.  When I came close she
bowed and said, "The Herr Englishman?"

"Yes," I said, "Jonathan Harker."

She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white
shirtsleeves, who had followed her to the door.

He went, but immediately returned with a letter:

"My friend.--Welcome to the Carpathians.  I am anxiously expecting
you.  Sleep well tonight.  At three tomorrow the diligence will
start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you.  At the Borgo
Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me.  I trust
that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you
will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land.--Your friend, Dracula."


4 May--I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count,
directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on
making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and
pretended that he could not understand my German.

This could not be true, because up to then he had understood it
perfectly; at least, he answered my questions exactly as if he did.

He and his wife, the old lady who had received me, looked at each
other in a frightened sort of way.  He mumbled out that the money had
been sent in a letter, and that was all he knew.  When I asked him if
he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both
he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing
at all, simply refused to speak further.  It was so near the time of
starting that I had no time to ask anyone else, for it was all very
mysterious and not by any means comforting.

Just before I was leaving, the old lady came up to my room and said in
a hysterical way:  "Must you go?  Oh!  Young Herr, must you go?"  She
was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of
what German she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language
which I did not know at all.  I was just able to follow her by asking
many questions.  When I told her that I must go at once, and that I
was engaged on important business, she asked again:

"Do you know what day it is?"  I answered that it was the fourth of
May.  She shook her head as she said again:

"Oh, yes!  I know that!  I know that, but do you know what day it is?"

On my saying that I did not understand, she went on:

"It is the eve of St. George's Day.  Do you not know that tonight,
when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will
have full sway?  Do you know where you are going, and what you are
going to?"  She was in such evident distress that I tried to comfort
her, but without effect.  Finally, she went down on her knees and
implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting.

It was all very ridiculous but I did not feel comfortable.  However,
there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere
with it.

I tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I
thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go.

She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck
offered it to me.

I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I have been
taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it
seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such
a state of mind.

She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round
my neck and said, "For your mother's sake," and went out of the room.

I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the
coach, which is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my
neck.

Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of
this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not
feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual.

If this book should ever reach Mina before I do, let it bring my
goodbye.  Here comes the coach!


5 May.  The Castle.--The gray of the morning has passed, and the sun
is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with
trees or hills I know not, for it is so far off that big things and
little are mixed.

I am not sleepy, and, as I am not to be called till I awake, naturally
I write till sleep comes.

There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may
fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my
dinner exactly.

I dined on what they called "robber steak"--bits of bacon, onion, and
beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks, and roasted over
the fire, in simple style of the London cat's meat!

The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the
tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable.

I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else.

When I got on the coach, the driver had not taken his seat, and I saw
him talking to the landlady.

They were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked
at me, and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside
the door--came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them
pityingly.  I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words,
for there were many nationalities in the crowd, so I quietly got my
polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out.

I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were
"Ordog"--Satan, "Pokol"--hell, "stregoica"--witch, "vrolok" and
"vlkoslak"--both mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other
Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire.  (Mem., I
must ask the Count about these superstitions.)

When we started, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time
swelled to a considerable size, all made the sign of the cross and
pointed two fingers towards me.

With some difficulty, I got a fellow passenger to tell me what they
meant.  He would not answer at first, but on learning that I was
English, he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil
eye.

This was not very pleasant for me, just starting for an unknown place
to meet an unknown man.  But everyone seemed so kind-hearted, and so
sorrowful, and so sympathetic that I could not but be touched.

I shall never forget the last glimpse which I had of the inn yard and
its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing themselves, as they
stood round the wide archway, with its background of rich foliage of
oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the
yard.

Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of
the boxseat,--"gotza" they call them--cracked his big whip over his
four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey.

I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of
the scene as we drove along, although had I known the language, or
rather languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, I might
not have been able to throw them off so easily.  Before us lay a green
sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep
hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank
gable end to the road.  There was everywhere a bewildering mass of
fruit blossom--apple, plum, pear, cherry.  And as we drove by I could
see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals.
In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the
"Mittel Land" ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy
curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which
here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame.  The road
was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste.
I could not understand then what the haste meant, but the driver was
evidently bent on losing no time in reaching Borgo Prund.  I was told
that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not yet
been put in order after the winter snows.  In this respect it is
different from the general run of roads in the Carpathians, for it is
an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order.  Of
old the Hospadars would not repair them, lest the Turk should think
that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the
war which was always really at loading point.

Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes
of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves.  Right
and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon
them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful
range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and
brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of
jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the
distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly.  Here and there seemed
mighty rifts in the mountains, through which, as the sun began to
sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water.  One of
my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and
opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as
we wound on our serpentine way, to be right before us.

"Look!  Isten szek!"--"God's seat!"--and he crossed himself reverently.

As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower
behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us.  This
was emphasized by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the
sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink.  Here and
there we passed Cszeks and slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I
noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent.  By the roadside were
many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed
themselves.  Here and there was a peasant man or woman kneeling before
a shrine, who did not even turn round as we approached, but seemed in
the self-surrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the
outer world.  There were many things new to me.  For instance,
hay-ricks in the trees, and here and there very beautiful masses of
weeping birch, their white stems shining like silver through the
delicate green of the leaves.

Now and again we passed a leiter-wagon--the ordinary peasants's
cart--with its long, snakelike vertebra, calculated to suit the
inequalities of the road.  On this were sure to be seated quite a
group of homecoming peasants, the Cszeks with their white, and the
Slovaks with their coloured sheepskins, the latter carrying
lance-fashion their long staves, with axe at end.  As the evening fell
it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge
into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine,
though in the valleys which ran deep between the spurs of the hills,
as we ascended through the Pass, the dark firs stood out here and
there against the background of late-lying snow.  Sometimes, as the
road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be
closing down upon us, great masses of greyness which here and there
bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect,
which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in
the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief the
ghost-like clouds which amongst the Carpathians seem to wind
ceaselessly through the valleys.  Sometimes the hills were so steep
that, despite our driver's haste, the horses could only go slowly.  I
wished to get down and walk up them, as we do at home, but the driver
would not hear of it.  "No, no," he said.  "You must not walk here.
The dogs are too fierce."  And then he added, with what he evidently
meant for grim pleasantry--for he looked round to catch the approving
smile of the rest--"And you may have enough of such matters before you
go to sleep."  The only stop he would make was a moment's pause to
light his lamps.

When it grew dark there seemed to be some excitement amongst the
passengers, and they kept speaking to him, one after the other, as
though urging him to further speed.  He lashed the horses unmercifully
with his long whip, and with wild cries of encouragement urged them on
to further exertions.  Then through the darkness I could see a sort of
patch of grey light ahead of us, as though there were a cleft in the
hills.  The excitement of the passengers grew greater.  The crazy
coach rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat
tossed on a stormy sea.  I had to hold on.  The road grew more level,
and we appeared to fly along.  Then the mountains seemed to come
nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us.  We were entering
on the Borgo Pass.  One by one several of the passengers offered me
gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take
no denial.  These were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each
was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing,
and that same strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which I had
seen outside the hotel at Bistritz--the sign of the cross and the
guard against the evil eye.  Then, as we flew along, the driver leaned
forward, and on each side the passengers, craning over the edge of the
coach, peered eagerly into the darkness.  It was evident that
something very exciting was either happening or expected, but though I
asked each passenger, no one would give me the slightest explanation.
This state of excitement kept on for some little time.  And at last we
saw before us the Pass opening out on the eastern side.  There were
dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppressive
sense of thunder.  It seemed as though the mountain range had
separated two atmospheres, and that now we had got into the thunderous
one.  I was now myself looking out for the conveyance which was to
take me to the Count.  Each moment I expected to see the glare of
lamps through the blackness, but all was dark.  The only light was the
flickering rays of our own lamps, in which the steam from our
hard-driven horses rose in a white cloud.  We could see now the sandy
road lying white before us, but there was on it no sign of a vehicle.
The passengers drew back with a sigh of gladness, which seemed to mock
my own disappointment.  I was already thinking what I had best do,
when the driver, looking at his watch, said to the others something
which I could hardly hear, it was spoken so quietly and in so low a
tone, I thought it was "An hour less than the time."  Then turning to
me, he spoke in German worse than my own.

"There is no carriage here.  The Herr is not expected after all.  He
will now come on to Bukovina, and return tomorrow or the next day,
better the next day."  Whilst he was speaking the horses began to
neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so that the driver had to hold them
up.  Then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peasants and a
universal crossing of themselves, a caleche, with four horses, drove
up behind us, overtook us, and drew up beside the coach.  I could see
from the flash of our lamps as the rays fell on them, that the horses
were coal-black and splendid animals.  They were driven by a tall man,
with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide
his face from us.  I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright
eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to us.

He said to the driver, "You are early tonight, my friend."

The man stammered in reply, "The English Herr was in a hurry."

To which the stranger replied, "That is why, I suppose, you wished him
to go on to Bukovina.  You cannot deceive me, my friend.  I know too
much, and my horses are swift."

As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth,
with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory.  One of
my companions whispered to another the line from Burger's "Lenore".

"Denn die Todten reiten Schnell."  ("For the dead travel fast.")

The strange driver evidently heard the words, for he looked up with a
gleaming smile.  The passenger turned his face away, at the same time
putting out his two fingers and crossing himself.  "Give me the Herr's
luggage," said the driver, and with exceeding alacrity my bags were
handed out and put in the caleche.  Then I descended from the side of
the coach, as the caleche was close alongside, the driver helping me
with a hand which caught my arm in a grip of steel.  His strength must
have been prodigious.

Without a word he shook his reins, the horses turned, and we swept
into the darkness of the pass.  As I looked back I saw the steam from
the horses of the coach by the light of the lamps, and projected
against it the figures of my late companions crossing themselves.
Then the driver cracked his whip and called to his horses, and off
they swept on their way to Bukovina.  As they sank into the darkness I
felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling come over me.  But a cloak
was thrown over my shoulders, and a rug across my knees, and the
driver said in excellent German--"The night is chill, mein Herr, and
my master the Count bade me take all care of you.  There is a flask of
slivovitz (the plum brandy of the country) underneath the seat, if you
should require it."

I did not take any, but it was a comfort to know it was there all the
same.  I felt a little strangely, and not a little frightened.  I
think had there been any alternative I should have taken it, instead
of prosecuting that unknown night journey.  The carriage went at a
hard pace straight along, then we made a complete turn and went along
another straight road.  It seemed to me that we were simply going over
and over the same ground again, and so I took note of some salient
point, and found that this was so.  I would have liked to have asked
the driver what this all meant, but I really feared to do so, for I
thought that, placed as I was, any protest would have had no effect in
case there had been an intention to delay.

By-and-by, however, as I was curious to know how time was passing, I
struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch.  It was within a
few minutes of midnight.  This gave me a sort of shock, for I suppose
the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent
experiences.  I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a
long, agonized wailing, as if from fear.  The sound was taken up by
another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind
which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which
seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination
could grasp it through the gloom of the night.

At the first howl the horses began to strain and rear, but the driver
spoke to them soothingly, and they quieted down, but shivered and
sweated as though after a runaway from sudden fright.  Then, far off
in the distance, from the mountains on each side of us began a louder
and a sharper howling, that of wolves, which affected both the horses
and myself in the same way.  For I was minded to jump from the caleche
and run, whilst they reared again and plunged madly, so that the
driver had to use all his great strength to keep them from bolting.
In a few minutes, however, my own ears got accustomed to the sound,
and the horses so far became quiet that the driver was able to descend
and to stand before them.

He petted and soothed them, and whispered something in their ears, as
I have heard of horse-tamers doing, and with extraordinary effect, for
under his caresses they became quite manageable again, though they
still trembled.  The driver again took his seat, and shaking his
reins, started off at a great pace.  This time, after going to the far
side of the Pass, he suddenly turned down a narrow roadway which ran
sharply to the right.

Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over
the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel.  And again great
frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side.  Though we were in
shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled
through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as
we swept along.  It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery
snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered
with a white blanket.  The keen wind still carried the howling of the
dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way.  The baying of
the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing
round on us from every side.  I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses
shared my fear.  The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed.
He kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see
anything through the darkness.

Suddenly, away on our left I saw a faint flickering blue flame.  The
driver saw it at the same moment.  He at once checked the horses, and,
jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness.  I did not know
what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer.  But
while I wondered, the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a
word took his seat, and we resumed our journey.  I think I must have
fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be
repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful
nightmare.  Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the
darkness around us I could watch the driver's motions.  He went
rapidly to where the blue flame arose, it must have been very faint,
for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all, and
gathering a few stones, formed them into some device.

Once there appeared a strange optical effect.  When he stood between
me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly
flicker all the same.  This startled me, but as the effect was only
momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the
darkness.  Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped
onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us,
as though they were following in a moving circle.

At last there came a time when the driver went further afield than he
had yet gone, and during his absence, the horses began to tremble
worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright.  I could not see
any cause for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether.
But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared
behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its
light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling
red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair.  They were a
hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than
even when they howled.  For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of
fear.  It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such
horrors that he can understand their true import.

All at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had had
some peculiar effect on them.  The horses jumped about and reared, and
looked helplessly round with eyes that rolled in a way painful to
see.  But the living ring of terror encompassed them on every side,
and they had perforce to remain within it.  I called to the coachman
to come, for it seemed to me that our only chance was to try to break
out through the ring and to aid his approach, I shouted and beat the
side of the caleche, hoping by the noise to scare the wolves from the
side, so as to give him a chance of reaching the trap.  How he came
there, I know not, but I heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious
command, and looking towards the sound, saw him stand in the roadway.
As he swept his long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable
obstacle, the wolves fell back and back further still.  Just then a
heavy cloud passed across the face of the moon, so that we were again
in darkness.

When I could see again the driver was climbing into the caleche, and
the wolves disappeared.  This was all so strange and uncanny that a
dreadful fear came upon me, and I was afraid to speak or move.  The
time seemed interminable as we swept on our way, now in almost
complete darkness, for the rolling clouds obscured the moon.

We kept on ascending, with occasional periods of quick descent, but in
the main always ascending.  Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact
that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the
courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came
no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line
against the sky.




CHAPTER 2


Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued

5 May.--I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully
awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place.  In
the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several
dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed
bigger than it really is.  I have not yet been able to see it by
daylight.

When the caleche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his hand
to assist me to alight.  Again I could not but notice his prodigious
strength.  His hand actually seemed like a steel vice that could have
crushed mine if he had chosen.  Then he took my traps, and placed them
on the ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and
studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of
massive stone.  I could see even in the dim light that the stone was
massively carved, but that the carving had been much worn by time and
weather.  As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook
the reins.  The horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared
down one of the dark openings.

I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to do.  Of
bell or knocker there was no sign.  Through these frowning walls and
dark window openings it was not likely that my voice could penetrate.
The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding
upon me.  What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of
people?  What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked?
Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor's clerk sent
out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner?
Solicitor's clerk!  Mina would not like that.  Solicitor, for just
before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful,
and I am now a full-blown solicitor!  I began to rub my eyes and pinch
myself to see if I were awake.  It all seemed like a horrible
nightmare to me, and I expected that I should suddenly awake, and find
myself at home, with the dawn struggling in through the windows, as I
had now and again felt in the morning after a day of overwork.  But my
flesh answered the pinching test, and my eyes were not to be
deceived.  I was indeed awake and among the Carpathians.  All I could
do now was to be patient, and to wait the coming of morning.

Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching
behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a
coming light.  Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the
clanking of massive bolts drawn back.  A key was turned with the loud
grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white
moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck
of colour about him anywhere.  He held in his hand an antique silver
lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any
kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught
of the open door.  The old man motioned me in with his right hand with
a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange
intonation.

"Welcome to my house!  Enter freely and of your own free will!"  He
made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as
though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone.  The instant,
however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively
forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which
made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it
seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man.
Again he said,

"Welcome to my house!  Enter freely.  Go safely, and leave something
of the happiness you bring!"  The strength of the handshake was so
much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had
not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person
to whom I was speaking.  So to make sure, I said interrogatively,
"Count Dracula?"

He bowed in a courtly way as he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid you
welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house.  Come in, the night air is chill,
and you must need to eat and rest."  As he was speaking, he put the lamp
on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage.  He had
carried it in before I could forestall him.  I protested, but he
insisted.

"Nay, sir, you are my guest.  It is late, and my people are not
available.  Let me see to your comfort myself."  He insisted on carrying
my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and
along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang
heavily.  At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I
rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for
supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly
replenished, flamed and flared.

The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing
the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room
lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort.
Passing through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to
enter.  It was a welcome sight.  For here was a great bedroom well
lighted and warmed with another log fire, also added to but lately,
for the top logs were fresh, which sent a hollow roar up the wide
chimney.  The Count himself left my luggage inside and withdrew,
saying, before he closed the door.

"You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your
toilet.  I trust you will find all you wish.  When you are ready, come
into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared."

The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to have
dissipated all my doubts and fears.  Having then reached my normal
state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger.  So making a
hasty toilet, I went into the other room.

I found supper already laid out.  My host, who stood on one side of
the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful
wave of his hand to the table, and said,

"I pray you, be seated and sup how you please.  You will I trust,
excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do
not sup."

I handed to him the sealed letter which Mr. Hawkins had entrusted to
me.  He opened it and read it gravely.  Then, with a charming smile,
he handed it to me to read.  One passage of it, at least, gave me a
thrill of pleasure.

"I must regret that an attack of gout, from which malady I am a
constant sufferer, forbids absolutely any travelling on my part for
some time to come.  But I am happy to say I can send a sufficient
substitute, one in whom I have every possible confidence.  He is a
young man, full of energy and talent in his own way, and of a very
faithful disposition.  He is discreet and silent, and has grown into
manhood in my service.  He shall be ready to attend on you when you
will during his stay, and shall take your instructions in all
matters."

The count himself came forward and took off the cover of a dish, and I
fell to at once on an excellent roast chicken.  This, with some cheese
and a salad and a bottle of old tokay, of which I had two glasses, was
my supper.  During the time I was eating it the Count asked me many
questions as to my journey, and I told him by degrees all I had
experienced.

By this time I had finished my supper, and by my host's desire had
drawn up a chair by the fire and begun to smoke a cigar which he
offered me, at the same time excusing himself that he did not smoke.
I had now an opportunity of observing him, and found him of a very
marked physiognomy.

His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of
the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed
forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely
elsewhere.  His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the
nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion.
The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was
fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth.
These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed
astonishing vitality in a man of his years.  For the rest, his ears
were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed.  The chin was broad and
strong, and the cheeks firm though thin.  The general effect was one
of extraordinary pallor.

Hitherto I had noticed the backs of his hands as they lay on his knees
in the firelight, and they had seemed rather white and fine.  But
seeing them now close to me, I could not but notice that they were
rather coarse, broad, with squat fingers.  Strange to say, there were
hairs in the centre of the palm.  The nails were long and fine, and
cut to a sharp point.  As the Count leaned over me and his hands
touched me, I could not repress a shudder.  It may have been that his
breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which,
do what I would, I could not conceal.

The Count, evidently noticing it, drew back.  And with a grim sort of
smile, which showed more than he had yet done his protruberant teeth,
sat himself down again on his own side of the fireplace.  We were both
silent for a while, and as I looked towards the window I saw the first
dim streak of the coming dawn.  There seemed a strange stillness over
everything.  But as I listened, I heard as if from down below in the
valley the howling of many wolves.  The Count's eyes gleamed, and he
said.

"Listen to them, the children of the night.  What music they make!"
Seeing, I suppose, some expression in my face strange to him, he
added, "Ah, sir, you dwellers in the city cannot enter into the
feelings of the hunter."  Then he rose and said.

"But you must be tired.  Your bedroom is all ready, and tomorrow you
shall sleep as late as you will.  I have to be away till the
afternoon, so sleep well and dream well!"  With a courteous bow, he
opened for me himself the door to the octagonal room, and I entered my
bedroom.

I am all in a sea of wonders.  I doubt.  I fear.  I think strange
things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.  God keep me, if only
for the sake of those dear to me!


7 May.--It is again early morning, but I have rested and enjoyed the
last twenty-four hours.  I slept till late in the day, and awoke of my
own accord.  When I had dressed myself I went into the room where we
had supped, and found a cold breakfast laid out, with coffee kept hot
by the pot being placed on the hearth.  There was a card on the table,
on which was written--"I have to be absent for a while.  Do not wait
for me.  D."  I set to and enjoyed a hearty meal.  When I had done, I
looked for a bell, so that I might let the servants know I had
finished, but I could not find one.  There are certainly odd
deficiencies in the house, considering the extraordinary evidences of
wealth which are round me.  The table service is of gold, and so
beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value.  The curtains
and upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of my bed are
of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of
fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old, though
in excellent order.  I saw something like them in Hampton Court, but
they were worn and frayed and moth-eaten.  But still in none of the
rooms is there a mirror.  There is not even a toilet glass on my
table, and I had to get the little shaving glass from my bag before I
could either shave or brush my hair.  I have not yet seen a servant
anywhere, or heard a sound near the castle except the howling of
wolves.  Some time after I had finished my meal, I do not know whether
to call it breakfast or dinner, for it was between five and six
o'clock when I had it, I looked about for something to read, for I did
not like to go about the castle until I had asked the Count's
permission.  There was absolutely nothing in the room, book,
newspaper, or even writing materials, so I opened another door in the
room and found a sort of library.  The door opposite mine I tried, but
found locked.

In the library I found, to my great delight, a vast number of English
books, whole shelves full of them, and bound volumes of magazines and
newspapers.  A table in the centre was littered with English magazines
and newspapers, though none of them were of very recent date.  The
books were of the most varied kind, history, geography, politics,
political economy, botany, geology, law, all relating to England and
English life and customs and manners.  There were even such books of
reference as the London Directory, the "Red" and "Blue" books,
Whitaker's Almanac, the Army and Navy Lists, and it somehow gladdened
my heart to see it, the Law List.

Whilst I was looking at the books, the door opened, and the Count
entered.  He saluted me in a hearty way, and hoped that I had had a
good night's rest.  Then he went on.

"I am glad you found your way in here, for I am sure there is much
that will interest you.  These companions," and he laid his hand on
some of the books, "have been good friends to me, and for some years
past, ever since I had the idea of going to London, have given me
many, many hours of pleasure.  Through them I have come to know your
great England, and to know her is to love her.  I long to go through
the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the
whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death,
and all that makes it what it is.  But alas!  As yet I only know your
tongue through books.  To you, my friend, I look that I know it to
speak."

"But, Count," I said, "You know and speak English thoroughly!"  He
bowed gravely.

"I thank you, my friend, for your all too-flattering estimate, but yet
I fear that I am but a little way on the road I would travel.  True, I
know the grammar and the words, but yet I know not how to speak them."

"Indeed," I said, "You speak excellently."

"Not so," he answered.  "Well, I know that, did I move and speak in
your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger.  That
is not enough for me.  Here I am noble.  I am a Boyar.  The common
people know me, and I am master.  But a stranger in a strange land, he
is no one.  Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.  I
am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he sees me,
or pauses in his speaking if he hears my words, 'Ha, ha!  A stranger!'
I have been so long master that I would be master still, or at least
that none other should be master of me.  You come to me not alone as
agent of my friend Peter Hawkins, of Exeter, to tell me all about my
new estate in London.  You shall, I trust, rest here with me a while,
so that by our talking I may learn the English intonation.  And I
would that you tell me when I make error, even of the smallest, in my
speaking.  I am sorry that I had to be away so long today, but you
will, I know forgive one who has so many important affairs in hand."

Of course I said all I could about being willing, and asked if I might
come into that room when I chose.  He answered, "Yes, certainly," and
added.

"You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors
are locked, where of course you will not wish to go.  There is reason
that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know
with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand."  I said I was
sure of this, and then he went on.

"We are in Transylvania, and Transylvania is not England.  Our ways
are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things.  Nay,
from what you have told me of your experiences already, you know
something of what strange things there may be."

This led to much conversation, and as it was evident that he wanted to
talk, if only for talking's sake, I asked him many questions regarding
things that had already happened to me or come within my notice.
Sometimes he sheered off the subject, or turned the conversation by
pretending not to understand, but generally he answered all I asked
most frankly.  Then as time went on, and I had got somewhat bolder, I
asked him of some of the strange things of the preceding night, as for
instance, why the coachman went to the places where he had seen the
blue flames.  He then explained to me that it was commonly believed
that on a certain night of the year, last night, in fact, when all
evil spirits are supposed to have unchecked sway, a blue flame is seen
over any place where treasure has been concealed.

"That treasure has been hidden," he went on, "in the region through
which you came last night, there can be but little doubt.  For it was
the ground fought over for centuries by the Wallachian, the Saxon, and
the Turk.  Why, there is hardly a foot of soil in all this region that
has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots or invaders.  In
the old days there were stirring times, when the Austrian and the
Hungarian came up in hordes, and the patriots went out to meet them,
men and women, the aged and the children too, and waited their coming
on the rocks above the passes, that they might sweep destruction on
them with their artificial avalanches.  When the invader was
triumphant he found but little, for whatever there was had been
sheltered in the friendly soil."

"But how," said I, "can it have remained so long undiscovered, when
there is a sure index to it if men will but take the trouble to look?"
The Count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long,
sharp, canine teeth showed out strangely.  He answered:

"Because your peasant is at heart a coward and a fool!  Those flames
only appear on one night, and on that night no man of this land will,
if he can help it, stir without his doors.  And, dear sir, even if he
did he would not know what to do.  Why, even the peasant that you tell
me of who marked the place of the flame would not know where to look
in daylight even for his own work.  Even you would not, I dare be
sworn, be able to find these places again?"

"There you are right," I said.  "I know no more than the dead where
even to look for them."  Then we drifted into other matters.

"Come," he said at last, "tell me of London and of the house which you
have procured for me."  With an apology for my remissness, I went into
my own room to get the papers from my bag.  Whilst I was placing them
in order I heard a rattling of china and silver in the next room, and
as I passed through, noticed that the table had been cleared and the
lamp lit, for it was by this time deep into the dark.  The lamps were
also lit in the study or library, and I found the Count lying on the
sofa, reading, of all things in the world, an English Bradshaw's
Guide.  When I came in he cleared the books and papers from the table,
and with him I went into plans and deeds and figures of all sorts.  He
was interested in everything, and asked me a myriad questions about
the place and its surroundings.  He clearly had studied beforehand all
he could get on the subject of the neighbourhood, for he evidently at
the end knew very much more than I did.  When I remarked this, he
answered.

"Well, but, my friend, is it not needful that I should?  When I go
there I shall be all alone, and my friend Harker Jonathan, nay, pardon
me.  I fall into my country's habit of putting your patronymic first,
my friend Jonathan Harker will not be by my side to correct and aid
me.  He will be in Exeter, miles away, probably working at papers of
the law with my other friend, Peter Hawkins.  So!"

We went thoroughly into the business of the purchase of the estate at
Purfleet.  When I had told him the facts and got his signature to the
necessary papers, and had written a letter with them ready to post to
Mr. Hawkins, he began to ask me how I had come across so suitable a
place.  I read to him the notes which I had made at the time, and
which I inscribe here.

"At Purfleet, on a byroad, I came across just such a place as seemed
to be required, and where was displayed a dilapidated notice that the
place was for sale.  It was surrounded by a high wall, of ancient
structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a
large number of years.  The closed gates are of heavy old oak and
iron, all eaten with rust.

"The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre
Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of
the compass.  It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded
by the solid stone wall above mentioned.  There are many trees on it,
which make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond
or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear
and flows away in a fair-sized stream.  The house is very large and of
all periods back, I should say, to mediaeval times, for one part is of
stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily
barred with iron.  It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an
old chapel or church.  I could not enter it, as I had not the key of
the door leading to it from the house, but I have taken with my Kodak
views of it from various points.  The house had been added to, but in
a very straggling way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it
covers, which must be very great.  There are but few houses close at
hand, one being a very large house only recently added to and formed
into a private lunatic asylum.  It is not, however, visible from the
grounds."

When I had finished, he said, "I am glad that it is old and big.  I
myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me.

A house cannot be made habitable in a day, and after all, how few days
go to make up a century.  I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old
times.  We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may
lie amongst the common dead.  I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the
bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which
please the young and gay.  I am no longer young, and my heart, through
weary years of mourning over the dead, is not attuned to mirth.  Moreover,
the walls of my castle are broken.  The shadows are many, and the wind
breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements.  I love
the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I
may."  Somehow his words and his look did not seem to accord, or else
it was that his cast of face made his smile look malignant and
saturnine.

Presently, with an excuse, he left me, asking me to pull my papers
together.  He was some little time away, and I began to look at some
of the books around me.  One was an atlas, which I found opened
naturally to England, as if that map had been much used.  On looking
at it I found in certain places little rings marked, and on examining
these I noticed that one was near London on the east side, manifestly
where his new estate was situated.  The other two were Exeter, and
Whitby on the Yorkshire coast.

It was the better part of an hour when the Count returned.  "Aha!" he
said.  "Still at your books?  Good!  But you must not work always.
Come!  I am informed that your supper is ready."  He took my arm, and
we went into the next room, where I found an excellent supper ready on
the table.  The Count again excused himself, as he had dined out on
his being away from home.  But he sat as on the previous night, and
chatted whilst I ate.  After supper I smoked, as on the last evening,
and the Count stayed with me, chatting and asking questions on every
conceivable subject, hour after hour.  I felt that it was getting very
late indeed, but I did not say anything, for I felt under obligation
to meet my host's wishes in every way.  I was not sleepy, as the long
sleep yesterday had fortified me, but I could not help experiencing
that chill which comes over one at the coming of the dawn, which is
like, in its way, the turn of the tide.  They say that people who are
near death die generally at the change to dawn or at the turn of the
tide.  Anyone who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post,
experienced this change in the atmosphere can well believe it.  All at
once we heard the crow of the cock coming up with preternatural
shrillness through the clear morning air.

Count Dracula, jumping to his feet, said, "Why there is the morning
again!  How remiss I am to let you stay up so long.  You must make
your conversation regarding my dear new country of England less
interesting, so that I may not forget how time flies by us," and with
a courtly bow, he quickly left me.

I went into my room and drew the curtains, but there was little to
notice.  My window opened into the courtyard, all I could see was the
warm grey of quickening sky.  So I pulled the curtains again, and have
written of this day.


8 May.--I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too
diffuse.  But now I am glad that I went into detail from the first,
for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that
I cannot but feel uneasy.  I wish I were safe out of it, or that I had
never come.  It may be that this strange night existence is telling on
me, but would that that were all!  If there were any one to talk to I
could bear it, but there is no one.  I have only the Count to speak
with, and he--I fear I am myself the only living soul within the
place.  Let me be prosaic so far as facts can be.  It will help me to
bear up, and imagination must not run riot with me.  If it does I am
lost.  Let me say at once how I stand, or seem to.

I only slept a few hours when I went to bed, and feeling that I could
not sleep any more, got up.  I had hung my shaving glass by the
window, and was just beginning to shave.  Suddenly I felt a hand on my
shoulder, and heard the Count's voice saying to me, "Good morning."  I
started, for it amazed me that I had not seen him, since the
reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me.  In starting
I had cut myself slightly, but did not notice it at the moment.  Having
answered the Count's salutation, I turned to the glass again to see
how I had been mistaken.  This time there could be no error, for the
man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder.  But there
was no reflection of him in the mirror!  The whole room behind me was
displayed, but there was no sign of a man in it, except myself.

This was startling, and coming on the top of so many strange things,
was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness which I
always have when the Count is near.  But at the instant I saw that the
cut had bled a little, and the blood was trickling over my chin.  I
laid down the razor, turning as I did so half round to look for some
sticking plaster.  When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a
sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.  I
drew away and his hand touched the string of beads which held the
crucifix.  It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so
quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.

"Take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself.  It is more
dangerous that you think in this country."  Then seizing the shaving
glass, he went on, "And this is the wretched thing that has done the
mischief.  It is a foul bauble of man's vanity.  Away with it!"  And
opening the window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out
the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of
the courtyard far below.  Then he withdrew without a word.  It is very
annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case
or the bottom of the shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal.

When I went into the dining room, breakfast was prepared, but I could
not find the Count anywhere.  So I breakfasted alone.  It is strange
that as yet I have not seen the Count eat or drink.  He must be a very
peculiar man!  After breakfast I did a little exploring in the
castle.  I went out on the stairs, and found a room looking towards
the South.

The view was magnificent, and from where I stood there was every
opportunity of seeing it.  The castle is on the very edge of a
terrific precipice.  A stone falling from the window would fall a
thousand feet without touching anything!  As far as the eye can reach
is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there
is a chasm.  Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind
in deep gorges through the forests.

But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view
I explored further.  Doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked
and bolted.  In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is
there an available exit.  The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a
prisoner!




CHAPTER 3


Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued

When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over
me.  I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering
out of every window I could find, but after a little the conviction of
my helplessness overpowered all other feelings.  When I look back
after a few hours I think I must have been mad for the time, for I
behaved much as a rat does in a trap.  When, however, the conviction
had come to me that I was helpless I sat down quietly, as quietly as I
have ever done anything in my life, and began to think over what was
best to be done.  I am thinking still, and as yet have come to no
definite conclusion.  Of one thing only am I certain.  That it is no
use making my ideas known to the Count.  He knows well that I am
imprisoned, and as he has done it himself, and has doubtless his own
motives for it, he would only deceive me if I trusted him fully with
the facts.  So far as I can see, my only plan will be to keep my
knowledge and my fears to myself, and my eyes open.  I am, I know,
either being deceived, like a baby, by my own fears, or else I am in
desperate straits, and if the latter be so, I need, and shall need,
all my brains to get through.

I had hardly come to this conclusion when I heard the great door below
shut, and knew that the Count had returned.  He did not come at once
into the library, so I went cautiously to my own room and found him
making the bed.  This was odd, but only confirmed what I had all along
thought, that there are no servants in the house.  When later I saw
him through the chink of the hinges of the door laying the table in
the dining room, I was assured of it.  For if he does himself all
these menial offices, surely it is proof that there is no one else in
the castle, it must have been the Count himself who was the driver of
the coach that brought me here.  This is a terrible thought, for if
so, what does it mean that he could control the wolves, as he did, by
only holding up his hand for silence?  How was it that all the people
at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for me?  What
meant the giving of the crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of
the mountain ash?

Bless that good, good woman who hung the crucifix round my neck!  For
it is a comfort and a strength to me whenever I touch it.  It is odd
that a thing which I have been taught to regard with disfavour and as
idolatrous should in a time of loneliness and trouble be of help.  Is
it that there is something in the essence of the thing itself, or that
it is a medium, a tangible help, in conveying memories of sympathy and
comfort?  Some time, if it may be, I must examine this matter and try
to make up my mind about it.  In the meantime I must find out all I
can about Count Dracula, as it may help me to understand.  Tonight he
may talk of himself, if I turn the conversation that way.  I must be
very careful, however, not to awake his suspicion.


Midnight.--I have had a long talk with the Count.  I asked him a few
questions on Transylvania history, and he warmed up to the subject
wonderfully.  In his speaking of things and people, and especially of
battles, he spoke as if he had been present at them all.  This he
afterwards explained by saying that to a Boyar the pride of his house
and name is his own pride, that their glory is his glory, that their
fate is his fate.  Whenever he spoke of his house he always said "we",
and spoke almost in the plural, like a king speaking.  I wish I could
put down all he said exactly as he said it, for to me it was most
fascinating.  It seemed to have in it a whole history of the country.
He grew excited as he spoke, and walked about the room pulling his
great white moustache and grasping anything on which he laid his hands
as though he would crush it by main strength.  One thing he said which
I shall put down as nearly as I can, for it tells in its way the story
of his race.

"We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the
blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship.
Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down
from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which
their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of
Europe, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that
the werewolves themselves had come.  Here, too, when they came, they
found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living
flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood
of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the
devils in the desert.  Fools, fools!  What devil or what witch was
ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?"  He held up
his arms.  "Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race, that we
were proud, that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar,
or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back?
Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the
Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier,
that the Honfoglalas was completed there?  And when the Hungarian
flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the
victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding
of the frontier of Turkeyland.  Aye, and more than that, endless duty
of the frontier guard, for as the Turks say, 'water sleeps, and the
enemy is sleepless.'  Who more gladly than we throughout the Four
Nations received the 'bloody sword,' or at its warlike call flocked
quicker to the standard of the King?  When was redeemed that great
shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the
Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent?  Who was it but
one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk
on his own ground?  This was a Dracula indeed!  Woe was it that his
own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk
and brought the shame of slavery on them!  Was it not this Dracula,
indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again
and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkeyland,
who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to
come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being
slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph!
They said that he thought only of himself.  Bah!  What good are
peasants without a leader?  Where ends the war without a brain and
heart to conduct it?  Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we
threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst
their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free.
Ah, young sir, the Szekelys, and the Dracula as their heart's blood,
their brains, and their swords, can boast a record that mushroom
growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach.  The
warlike days are over.  Blood is too precious a thing in these days of
dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale
that is told."

It was by this time close on morning, and we went to bed.  (Mem., this
diary seems horribly like the beginning of the "Arabian Nights," for
everything has to break off at cockcrow, or like the ghost of Hamlet's
father.)


12 May.--Let me begin with facts, bare, meager facts, verified by
books and figures, and of which there can be no doubt.  I must not
confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own
observation, or my memory of them.  Last evening when the Count came
from his room he began by asking me questions on legal matters and on
the doing of certain kinds of business.  I had spent the day wearily
over books, and, simply to keep my mind occupied, went over some of
the matters I had been examined in at Lincoln's Inn.  There was a
certain method in the Count's inquiries, so I shall try to put them
down in sequence.  The knowledge may somehow or some time be useful to
me.

First, he asked if a man in England might have two solicitors or more.
I told him he might have a dozen if he wished, but that it would not
be wise to have more than one solicitor engaged in one transaction, as
only one could act at a time, and that to change would be certain to
militate against his interest.  He seemed thoroughly to understand,
and went on to ask if there would be any practical difficulty in having
one man to attend, say, to banking, and another to look after
shipping, in case local help were needed in a place far from the home
of the banking solicitor.  I asked to explain more fully, so that I
might not by any chance mislead him, so he said,

"I shall illustrate.  Your friend and mine, Mr. Peter Hawkins, from
under the shadow of your beautiful cathedral at Exeter, which is far
from London, buys for me through your good self my place at London.
Good!  Now here let me say frankly, lest you should think it strange
that I have sought the services of one so far off from London instead
of some one resident there, that my motive was that no local interest
might be served save my wish only, and as one of London residence
might, perhaps, have some purpose of himself or friend to serve, I
went thus afield to seek my agent, whose labours should be only to my
interest.  Now, suppose I, who have much of affairs, wish to ship
goods, say, to Newcastle, or Durham, or Harwich, or Dover, might it
not be that it could with more ease be done by consigning to one in
these ports?"

I answered that certainly it would be most easy, but that we
solicitors had a system of agency one for the other, so that local
work could be done locally on instruction from any solicitor, so that
the client, simply placing himself in the hands of one man, could have
his wishes carried out by him without further trouble.

"But," said he, "I could be at liberty to direct myself.  Is it not
so?"

"Of course," I replied, and "Such is often done by men of business,
who do not like the whole of their affairs to be known by any one
person."

"Good!" he said, and then went on to ask about the means of making
consignments and the forms to be gone through, and of all sorts of
difficulties which might arise, but by forethought could be guarded
against.  I explained all these things to him to the best of my
ability, and he certainly left me under the impression that he would
have made a wonderful solicitor, for there was nothing that he did not
think of or foresee.  For a man who was never in the country, and who
did not evidently do much in the way of business, his knowledge and
acumen were wonderful.  When he had satisfied himself on these points
of which he had spoken, and I had verified all as well as I could by
the books available, he suddenly stood up and said, "Have you written
since your first letter to our friend Mr. Peter Hawkins, or to any
other?"

It was with some bitterness in my heart that I answered that I had
not, that as yet I had not seen any opportunity of sending letters to
anybody.

"Then write now, my young friend," he said, laying a heavy hand on my
shoulder, "write to our friend and to any other, and say, if it will
please you, that you shall stay with me until a month from now."

"Do you wish me to stay so long?" I asked, for my heart grew cold at
the thought.

"I desire it much, nay I will take no refusal.  When your master,
employer, what you will, engaged that someone should come on his
behalf, it was understood that my needs only were to be consulted.  I
have not stinted.  Is it not so?"

What could I do but bow acceptance?  It was Mr. Hawkins' interest, not
mine, and I had to think of him, not myself, and besides, while Count
Dracula was speaking, there was that in his eyes and in his bearing
which made me remember that I was a prisoner, and that if I wished it
I could have no choice.  The Count saw his victory in my bow, and his
mastery in the trouble of my face, for he began at once to use them,
but in his own smooth, resistless way.

"I pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of
things other than business in your letters.  It will doubtless please
your friends to know that you are well, and that you look forward to
getting home to them.  Is it not so?"  As he spoke he handed me three
sheets of note paper and three envelopes.  They were all of the
thinnest foreign post, and looking at them, then at him, and noticing
his quiet smile, with the sharp, canine teeth lying over the red
underlip, I understood as well as if he had spoken that I should be
more careful what I wrote, for he would be able to read it.  So I
determined to write only formal notes now, but to write fully to Mr.
Hawkins in secret, and also to Mina, for to her I could write
shorthand, which would puzzle the Count, if he did see it.  When I had
written my two letters I sat quiet, reading a book whilst the Count
wrote several notes, referring as he wrote them to some books on his
table.  Then he took up my two and placed them with his own, and put
by his writing materials, after which, the instant the door had closed
behind him, I leaned over and looked at the letters, which were face
down on the table.  I felt no compunction in doing so for under the
circumstances I felt that I should protect myself in every way I
could.

One of the letters was directed to Samuel F. Billington, No. 7, The
Crescent, Whitby, another to Herr Leutner, Varna.  The third was to
Coutts & Co., London, and the fourth to Herren Klopstock & Billreuth,
bankers, Buda Pesth.  The second and fourth were unsealed.  I was just
about to look at them when I saw the door handle move.  I sank back in
my seat, having just had time to resume my book before the Count,
holding still another letter in his hand, entered the room.  He took
up the letters on the table and stamped them carefully, and then
turning to me, said,

"I trust you will forgive me, but I have much work to do in private
this evening.  You will, I hope, find all things as you wish."  At the
door he turned, and after a moment's pause said, "Let me advise you,
my dear young friend.  Nay, let me warn you with all seriousness, that
should you leave these rooms you will not by any chance go to sleep in
any other part of the castle.  It is old, and has many memories, and
there are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely.  Be warned!  Should
sleep now or ever overcome you, or be like to do, then haste to your
own chamber or to these rooms, for your rest will then be safe.  But
if you be not careful in this respect, then," He finished his speech
in a gruesome way, for he motioned with his hands as if he were washing
them.  I quite understood.  My only doubt was as to whether any dream
could be more terrible than the unnatural, horrible net of gloom and
mystery which seemed closing around me.


Later.--I endorse the last words written, but this time there is no
doubt in question.  I shall not fear to sleep in any place where he is
not.  I have placed the crucifix over the head of my bed, I imagine
that my rest is thus freer from dreams, and there it shall remain.

When he left me I went to my room.  After a little while, not hearing
any sound, I came out and went up the stone stair to where I could
look out towards the South.  There was some sense of freedom in the
vast expanse, inaccessible though it was to me, as compared with the
narrow darkness of the courtyard.  Looking out on this, I felt that I
was indeed in prison, and I seemed to want a breath of fresh air,
though it were of the night.  I am beginning to feel this nocturnal
existence tell on me.  It is destroying my nerve.  I start at my own
shadow, and am full of all sorts of horrible imaginings.  God knows
that there is ground for my terrible fear in this accursed place!  I
looked out over the beautiful expanse, bathed in soft yellow moonlight
till it was almost as light as day.  In the soft light the distant
hills became melted, and the shadows in the valleys and gorges of
velvety blackness.  The mere beauty seemed to cheer me.  There was
peace and comfort in every breath I drew.  As I leaned from the window
my eye was caught by something moving a storey below me, and somewhat
to my left, where I imagined, from the order of the rooms, that the
windows of the Count's own room would look out.  The window at which I
stood was tall and deep, stone-mullioned, and though weatherworn, was
still complete.  But it was evidently many a day since the case had
been there.  I drew back behind the stonework, and looked carefully
out.

What I saw was the Count's head coming out from the window.  I did not
see the face, but I knew the man by the neck and the movement of his
back and arms.  In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had
had some many opportunities of studying.  I was at first interested
and somewhat amused, for it is wonderful how small a matter will
interest and amuse a man when he is a prisoner.  But my very feelings
changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge
from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the
dreadful abyss, face down with his cloak spreading out around him like
great wings.  At first I could not believe my eyes.  I thought it was
some trick of the moonlight, some weird effect of shadow, but I kept
looking, and it could be no delusion.  I saw the fingers and toes
grasp the corners of the stones, worn clear of the mortar by the
stress of years, and by thus using every projection and inequality
move downwards with considerable speed, just as a lizard moves along a
wall.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature, is it in the
semblance of man?  I feel the dread of this horrible place
overpowering me.  I am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape
for me.  I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of.


15 May.--Once more I have seen the count go out in his lizard fashion.
He moved downwards in a sidelong way, some hundred feet down, and a
good deal to the left.  He vanished into some hole or window.  When
his head had disappeared, I leaned out to try and see more, but
without avail.  The distance was too great to allow a proper angle of
sight.  I knew he had left the castle now, and thought to use the
opportunity to explore more than I had dared to do as yet.  I went
back to the room, and taking a lamp, tried all the doors.  They were
all locked, as I had expected, and the locks were comparatively new.
But I went down the stone stairs to the hall where I had entered
originally.  I found I could pull back the bolts easily enough and
unhook the great chains.  But the door was locked, and the key was
gone!  That key must be in the Count's room.  I must watch should his
door be unlocked, so that I may get it and escape.  I went on to make
a thorough examination of the various stairs and passages, and to try
the doors that opened from them.  One or two small rooms near the hall
were open, but there was nothing to see in them except old furniture,
dusty with age and moth-eaten.  At last, however, I found one door at
the top of the stairway which, though it seemed locked, gave a little
under pressure.  I tried it harder, and found that it was not really
locked, but that the resistance came from the fact that the hinges had
fallen somewhat, and the heavy door rested on the floor.  Here was an
opportunity which I might not have again, so I exerted myself, and
with many efforts forced it back so that I could enter.  I was now in
a wing of the castle further to the right than the rooms I knew and a
storey lower down.  From the windows I could see that the suite of
rooms lay along to the south of the castle, the windows of the end
room looking out both west and south.  On the latter side, as well as
to the former, there was a great precipice.  The castle was built on
the corner of a great rock, so that on three sides it was quite
impregnable, and great windows were placed here where sling, or bow,
or culverin could not reach, and consequently light and comfort,
impossible to a position which had to be guarded, were secured.  To
the west was a great valley, and then, rising far away, great jagged
mountain fastnesses, rising peak on peak, the sheer rock studded with
mountain ash and thorn, whose roots clung in cracks and crevices and
crannies of the stone.  This was evidently the portion of the castle
occupied by the ladies in bygone days, for the furniture had more an
air of comfort than any I had seen.

The windows were curtainless, and the yellow moonlight, flooding in
through the diamond panes, enabled one to see even colours, whilst it
softened the wealth of dust which lay over all and disguised in some
measure the ravages of time and moth.  My lamp seemed to be of little
effect in the brilliant moonlight, but I was glad to have it with me,
for there was a dread loneliness in the place which chilled my heart
and made my nerves tremble.  Still, it was better than living alone in
the rooms which I had come to hate from the presence of the Count, and
after trying a little to school my nerves, I found a soft quietude
come over me.  Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old
times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many
blushes, her ill-spelt love letter, and writing in my diary in
shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last.  It is the
nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance.  And yet, unless my
senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their
own which mere "modernity" cannot kill.


Later:  The morning of 16 May.--God preserve my sanity, for to this I
am reduced.  Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the
past.  Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that
I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already.  If I be sane,
then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that
lurk in this hateful place the Count is the least dreadful to me, that
to him alone I can look for safety, even though this be only whilst I
can serve his purpose.  Great God!  Merciful God, let me be calm, for
out of that way lies madness indeed.  I begin to get new lights on
certain things which have puzzled me.  Up to now I never quite knew
what Shakespeare meant when he made Hamlet say, "My tablets!  Quick,
my tablets!  'tis meet that I put it down," etc., For now, feeling as
though my own brain were unhinged or as if the shock had come which
must end in its undoing, I turn to my diary for repose.  The habit of
entering accurately must help to soothe me.

The Count's mysterious warning frightened me at the time.  It frightens
me more not when I think of it, for in the future he has a fearful
hold upon me.  I shall fear to doubt what he may say!

When I had written in my diary and had fortunately replaced the book
and pen in my pocket I felt sleepy.  The Count's warning came into my
mind, but I took pleasure in disobeying it.  The sense of sleep was
upon me, and with it the obstinacy which sleep brings as outrider.  The
soft moonlight soothed, and the wide expanse without gave a sense of
freedom which refreshed me.  I determined not to return tonight to the
gloom-haunted rooms, but to sleep here, where, of old, ladies had sat
and sung and lived sweet lives whilst their gentle breasts were sad
for their menfolk away in the midst of remorseless wars.  I drew a
great couch out of its place near the corner, so that as I lay, I
could look at the lovely view to east and south, and unthinking of and
uncaring for the dust, composed myself for sleep.  I suppose I must
have fallen asleep.  I hope so, but I fear, for all that followed was
startlingly real, so real that now sitting here in the broad, full
sunlight of the morning, I cannot in the least believe that it was all
sleep.

I was not alone.  The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I
came into it.  I could see along the floor, in the brilliant
moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long
accumulation of dust.  In the moonlight opposite me were three young
women, ladies by their dress and manner.  I thought at the time that I
must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor.
They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then
whispered together.  Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like
the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red
when contrasted with the pale yellow moon.  The other was fair, as
fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale
sapphires.  I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in
connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the
moment how or where.  All three had brilliant white teeth that shone
like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips.  There was
something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same
time some deadly fear.  I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire
that they would kiss me with those red lips.  It is not good to note
this down, lest some day it should meet Mina's eyes and cause her
pain, but it is the truth.  They whispered together, and then they all
three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though
the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips.
It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when
played on by a cunning hand.  The fair girl shook her head
coquettishly, and the other two urged her on.

One said, "Go on!  You are first, and we shall follow.  Yours is the
right to begin."

The other added, "He is young and strong.  There are kisses for us
all."

I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of
delightful anticipation.  The fair girl advanced and bent over me till
I could feel the movement of her breath upon me.  Sweet it was in one
sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as
her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter
offensiveness, as one smells in blood.

I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly
under the lashes.  The girl went on her knees, and bent over me,
simply gloating.  There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both
thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually
licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the
moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it
lapped the white sharp teeth.  Lower and lower went her head as the
lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on
my throat.  Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of
her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot
breath on my neck.  Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as
one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer,
nearer.  I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the
super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp
teeth, just touching and pausing there.  I closed my eyes in
languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.

But at that instant, another sensation swept through me as quick as
lightning.  I was conscious of the presence of the Count, and of his
being as if lapped in a storm of fury.  As my eyes opened
involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair
woman and with giant's power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed
with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks
blazing red with passion.  But the Count!  Never did I imagine such
wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit.  His eyes were
positively blazing.  The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames
of hell fire blazed behind them.  His face was deathly pale, and the
lines of it were hard like drawn wires.  The thick eyebrows that met
over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal.  With
a fierce sweep of his arm, he hurled the woman from him, and then
motioned to the others, as though he were beating them back.  It was
the same imperious gesture that I had seen used to the wolves.  In a
voice which, though low and almost in a whisper seemed to cut through
the air and then ring in the room he said,

"How dare you touch him, any of you?  How dare you cast eyes on him
when I had forbidden it?  Back, I tell you all!  This man belongs to
me!  Beware how you meddle with him, or you'll have to deal with me."

The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him.
"You yourself never loved.  You never love!"  On this the other women
joined, and such a mirthless, hard, soulless laughter rang through the
room that it almost made me faint to hear.  It seemed like the
pleasure of fiends.

Then the Count turned, after looking at my face attentively, and said
in a soft whisper, "Yes, I too can love.  You yourselves can tell it
from the past.  Is it not so?  Well, now I promise you that when I am
done with him you shall kiss him at your will.  Now go!  Go!  I must
awaken him, for there is work to be done."

"Are we to have nothing tonight?" said one of them, with a low laugh,
as she pointed to the bag which he had thrown upon the floor, and
which moved as though there were some living thing within it.  For
answer he nodded his head.  One of the women jumped forward and opened
it.  If my ears did not deceive me there was a gasp and a low wail, as
of a half smothered child.  The women closed round, whilst I was
aghast with horror.  But as I looked, they disappeared, and with them
the dreadful bag.  There was no door near them, and they could not
have passed me without my noticing.  They simply seemed to fade into
the rays of the moonlight and pass out through the window, for I could
see outside the dim, shadowy forms for a moment before they entirely
faded away.

Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.




CHAPTER 4


Jonathan Harker's Journal Continued

I awoke in my own bed.  If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must
have carried me here.  I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but
could not arrive at any unquestionable result.  To be sure, there were
certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid
by in a manner which was not my habit.  My watch was still unwound,
and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going
to bed, and many such details.  But these things are no proof, for
they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, for
some cause or another, I had certainly been much upset.  I must watch
for proof.  Of one thing I am glad.  If it was that the Count carried
me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for
my pockets are intact.  I am sure this diary would have been a mystery
to him which he would not have brooked.  He would have taken or
destroyed it.  As I look round this room, although it has been to me
so full of fear, it is now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be
more dreadful than those awful women, who were, who are, waiting to
suck my blood.


18 May.--I have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for
I must know the truth.  When I got to the doorway at the top of the
stairs I found it closed.  It had been so forcibly driven against the
jamb that part of the woodwork was splintered.  I could see that the
bolt of the lock had not been shot, but the door is fastened from the
inside.  I fear it was no dream, and must act on this surmise.


19 May.--I am surely in the toils.  Last night the Count asked me in
the suavest tones to write three letters, one saying that my work here
was nearly done, and that I should start for home within a few days,
another that I was starting on the next morning from the time of the
letter, and the third that I had left the castle and arrived at
Bistritz.  I would fain have rebelled, but felt that in the present
state of things it would be madness to quarrel openly with the Count
whilst I am so absolutely in his power.  And to refuse would be to
excite his suspicion and to arouse his anger.  He knows that I know
too much, and that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him.  My
only chance is to prolong my opportunities.  Something may occur which
will give me a chance to escape.  I saw in his eyes something of that
gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from
him.  He explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that
my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends.  And he
assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the
later letters, which would be held over at Bistritz until due time in
case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him
would have been to create new suspicion.  I therefore pretended to
fall in with his views, and asked him what dates I should put on the
letters.

He calculated a minute, and then said, "The first should be June 12,
the second June 19, and the third June 29."

I know now the span of my life.  God help me!


28 May.--There is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to
send word home.  A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are
encamped in the courtyard.  These are gipsies.  I have notes of them
in my book.  They are peculiar to this part of the world, though
allied to the ordinary gipsies all the world over.  There are
thousands of them in Hungary and Transylvania, who are almost outside
all law.  They attach themselves as a rule to some great noble or
boyar, and call themselves by his name.  They are fearless and without
religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of
the Romany tongue.

I shall write some letters home, and shall try to get them to have
them posted.  I have already spoken to them through my window to begin
acquaintanceship.  They took their hats off and made obeisance and
many signs, which however, I could not understand any more than I
could their spoken language . . .

I have written the letters.  Mina's is in shorthand, and I simply ask
Mr. Hawkins to communicate with her.  To her I have explained my
situation, but without the horrors which I may only surmise.  It would
shock and frighten her to death were I to expose my heart to her.
Should the letters not carry, then the Count shall not yet know my
secret or the extent of my knowledge. . . .


I have given the letters.  I threw them through the bars of my window
with a gold piece, and made what signs I could to have them posted.
The man who took them pressed them to his heart and bowed, and then
put them in his cap.  I could do no more.  I stole back to the study,
and began to read.  As the Count did not come in, I have written
here . . .


The Count has come.  He sat down beside me, and said in his smoothest
voice as he opened two letters, "The Szgany has given me these, of
which, though I know not whence they come, I shall, of course, take
care.  See!"--He must have looked at it.--"One is from you, and to my
friend Peter Hawkins.  The other,"--here he caught sight of the
strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into
his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly,--"The other is a vile thing,
an outrage upon friendship and hospitality!  It is not signed.  Well!
So it cannot matter to us."  And he calmly held letter and envelope in
the flame of the lamp till they were consumed.

Then he went on, "The letter to Hawkins, that I shall, of course send
on, since it is yours.  Your letters are sacred to me.  Your pardon,
my friend, that unknowingly I did break the seal.  Will you not cover
it again?"  He held out the letter to me, and with a courteous bow
handed me a clean envelope.

I could only redirect it and hand it to him in silence.  When he went
out of the room I could hear the key turn softly.  A minute later I
went over and tried it, and the door was locked.

When, an hour or two after, the Count came quietly into the room, his
coming awakened me, for I had gone to sleep on the sofa.  He was very
courteous and very cheery in his manner, and seeing that I had been
sleeping, he said, "So, my friend, you are tired?  Get to bed.  There
is the surest rest.  I may not have the pleasure of talk tonight,
since there are many labours to me, but you will sleep, I pray."

I passed to my room and went to bed, and, strange to say, slept
without dreaming.  Despair has its own calms.

31 May.--This morning when I woke I thought I would provide myself
with some papers and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket,
so that I might write in case I should get an opportunity, but again a
surprise, again a shock!

Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda,
relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that
might be useful to me were I once outside the castle.  I sat and
pondered awhile, and then some thought occurred to me, and I made
search of my portmanteau and in the wardrobe where I had placed my
clothes.

The suit in which I had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and
rug.  I could find no trace of them anywhere.  This looked like some
new scheme of villainy . . .


17 June.--This morning, as I was sitting on the edge of my bed
cudgelling my brains, I heard without a crackling of whips and
pounding and scraping of horses' feet up the rocky path beyond the
courtyard.  With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the
yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and
at the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great
nail-studded belt, dirty sheepskin, and high boots.  They had also
their long staves in hand.  I ran to the door, intending to descend
and try and join them through the main hall, as I thought that way
might be opened for them.  Again a shock, my door was fastened on the
outside.

Then I ran to the window and cried to them.  They looked up at me
stupidly and pointed, but just then the "hetman" of the Szgany came
out, and seeing them pointing to my window, said something, at which
they laughed.

Henceforth no effort of mine, no piteous cry or agonized entreaty,
would make them even look at me.  They resolutely turned away.  The
leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick
rope.  These were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks
handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved.

When they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner
of the yard, the Slovaks were given some money by the Szgany, and
spitting on it for luck, lazily went each to his horse's head.
Shortly afterwards, I heard the crackling of their whips die away in
the distance.


24 June.--Last night the Count left me early, and locked himself into
his own room.  As soon as I dared I ran up the winding stair, and
looked out of the window, which opened South.  I thought I would watch
for the Count, for there is something going on.  The Szgany are
quartered somewhere in the castle and are doing work of some kind.  I
know it, for now and then, I hear a far-away muffled sound as of
mattock and spade, and, whatever it is, it must be the end of some
ruthless villainy.

I had been at the window somewhat less than half an hour, when I saw
something coming out of the Count's window.  I drew back and watched
carefully, and saw the whole man emerge.  It was a new shock to me to
find that he had on the suit of clothes which I had worn whilst
travelling here, and slung over his shoulder the terrible bag which I
had seen the women take away.  There could be no doubt as to his
quest, and in my garb, too!  This, then, is his new scheme of evil,
that he will allow others to see me, as they think, so that he may
both leave evidence that I have been seen in the towns or villages
posting my own letters, and that any wickedness which he may do shall
by the local people be attributed to me.

It makes me rage to think that this can go on, and whilst I am shut up
here, a veritable prisoner, but without that protection of the law
which is even a criminal's right and consolation.

I thought I would watch for the Count's return, and for a long time
sat doggedly at the window.  Then I began to notice that there were
some quaint little specks floating in the rays of the moonlight.  They
were like the tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled round and
gathered in clusters in a nebulous sort of way.  I watched them with a
sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me.  I leaned back in
the embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that I could enjoy
more fully the aerial gambolling.

Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere
far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight.  Louder it
seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating moats of dust to take new
shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight.  I felt myself
struggling to awake to some call of my instincts.  Nay, my very soul
was struggling, and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to
answer the call.  I was becoming hypnotised!

Quicker and quicker danced the dust.  The moonbeams seemed to quiver
as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond.  More and more they
gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes.  And then I
started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses, and ran
screaming from the place.

The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from
the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom I was doomed.

I fled, and felt somewhat safer in my own room, where there was no
moonlight, and where the lamp was burning brightly.

When a couple of hours had passed I heard something stirring in the
Count's room, something like a sharp wail quickly suppressed.  And
then there was silence, deep, awful silence, which chilled me.  With a
beating heart, I tried the door, but I was locked in my prison, and
could do nothing.  I sat down and simply cried.

As I sat I heard a sound in the courtyard without, the agonised cry of
a woman.  I rushed to the window, and throwing it up, peered between
the bars.

There, indeed, was a woman with dishevelled hair, holding her hands
over her heart as one distressed with running.  She was leaning
against the corner of the gateway.  When she saw my face at the window
she threw herself forward, and shouted in a voice laden with menace,
"Monster, give me my child!"

She threw herself on her knees, and raising up her hands, cried the
same words in tones which wrung my heart.  Then she tore her hair and
beat her breast, and abandoned herself to all the violences of
extravagant emotion.  Finally, she threw herself forward, and though I
could not see her, I could hear the beating of her naked hands against
the door.

Somewhere high overhead, probably on the tower, I heard the voice of
the Count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper.  His call seemed to

be answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves.  Before many
minutes had passed a pack of them poured, like a pent-up dam when
liberated, through the wide entrance into the courtyard.

There was no cry from the woman, and the howling of the wolves was but
short.  Before long they streamed away singly, licking their lips.

I could not pity her, for I knew now what had become of her child, and
she was better dead.

What shall I do?  What can I do?  How can I escape from this dreadful
thing of night, gloom, and fear?


25 June.--No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet
and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.  When the sun grew
so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway
opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if
the dove from the ark had lighted there.  My fear fell from me as if
it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth.

I must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon
me.  Last night one of my post-dated letters went to post, the first
of that fatal series which is to blot out the very traces of my
existence from the earth.

Let me not think of it.  Action!

It has always been at night-time that I have been molested or
threatened, or in some way in danger or in fear.  I have not yet seen
the Count in the daylight.  Can it be that he sleeps when others wake,
that he may be awake whilst they sleep?  If I could only get into his
room!  But there is no possible way.  The door is always locked, no
way for me.

Yes, there is a way, if one dares to take it.  Where his body has gone
why may not another body go?  I have seen him myself crawl from his
window.  Why should not I imitate him, and go in by his window?  The
chances are desperate, but my need is more desperate still.  I shall
risk it.  At the worst it can only be death, and a man's death is not
a calf's, and the dreaded Hereafter may still be open to me.  God help
me in my task!  Goodbye, Mina, if I fail.  Goodbye, my faithful friend
and second father.  Goodbye, all, and last of all Mina!


Same day, later.--I have made the effort, and God helping me, have
come safely back to this room.  I must put down every detail in order.
I went whilst my courage was fresh straight to the window on the south
side, and at once got outside on this side.  The stones are big and
roughly cut, and the mortar has by process of time been washed away
between them.  I took off my boots, and ventured out on the desperate
way.  I looked down once, so as to make sure that a sudden glimpse of
the awful depth would not overcome me, but after that kept my eyes
away from it.  I know pretty well the direction and distance of the
Count's window, and made for it as well as I could, having regard to
the opportunities available.  I did not feel dizzy, I suppose I was
too excited, and the time seemed ridiculously short till I found
myself standing on the window sill and trying to raise up the sash.  I
was filled with agitation, however, when I bent down and slid feet
foremost in through the window.  Then I looked around for the Count,
but with surprise and gladness, made a discovery.  The room was
empty!  It was barely furnished with odd things, which seemed to have
never been used.

The furniture was something the same style as that in the south rooms,
and was covered with dust.  I looked for the key, but it was not in
the lock, and I could not find it anywhere.  The only thing I found
was a great heap of gold in one corner, gold of all kinds, Roman, and
British, and Austrian, and Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money,
covered with a film of dust, as though it had lain long in the ground.
None of it that I noticed was less than three hundred years old.
There were also chains and ornaments, some jewelled, but all of them
old and stained.

At one corner of the room was a heavy door.  I tried it, for, since I
could not find the key of the room or the key of the outer door, which
was the main object of my search, I must make further examination, or
all my efforts would be in vain.  It was open, and led through a stone
passage to a circular stairway, which went steeply down.

I descended, minding carefully where I went for the stairs were dark,
being only lit by loopholes in the heavy masonry.  At the bottom there
was a dark, tunnel-like passage, through which came a deathly, sickly
odour, the odour of old earth newly turned.  As I went through the
passage the smell grew closer and heavier.  At last I pulled open a
heavy door which stood ajar, and found myself in an old ruined chapel,
which had evidently been used as a graveyard.  The roof was broken,
and in two places were steps leading to vaults, but the ground had
recently been dug over, and the earth placed in great wooden boxes,
manifestly those which had been brought by the Slovaks.

There was nobody about, and I made a search over every inch of the
ground, so as not to lose a chance.  I went down even into the vaults,
where the dim light struggled, although to do so was a dread to my
very soul.  Into two of these I went, but saw nothing except fragments
of old coffins and piles of dust.  In the third, however, I made a
discovery.

There, in one of the great boxes, of which there were fifty in all, on
a pile of newly dug earth, lay the Count!  He was either dead or
asleep.  I could not say which, for eyes were open and stony, but
without the glassiness of death, and the cheeks had the warmth of life
through all their pallor.  The lips were as red as ever.  But there
was no sign of movement, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart.

I bent over him, and tried to find any sign of life, but in vain.  He
could not have lain there long, for the earthy smell would have passed
away in a few hours.  By the side of the box was its cover, pierced
with holes here and there.  I thought he might have the keys on him,
but when I went to search I saw the dead eyes, and in them dead though
they were, such a look of hate, though unconscious of me or my
presence, that I fled from the place, and leaving the Count's room by
the window, crawled again up the castle wall.  Regaining my room, I
threw myself panting upon the bed and tried to think.


29 June.--Today is the date of my last letter, and the Count has taken
steps to prove that it was genuine, for again I saw him leave the
castle by the same window, and in my clothes.  As he went down the
wall, lizard fashion, I wished I had a gun or some lethal weapon, that
I might destroy him.  But I fear that no weapon wrought along by man's
hand would have any effect on him.  I dared not wait to see him
return, for I feared to see those weird sisters.  I came back to the
library, and read there till I fell asleep.

I was awakened by the Count, who looked at me as grimly as a man could
look as he said, "Tomorrow, my friend, we must part.  You return to
your beautiful England, I to some work which may have such an end that
we may never meet.  Your letter home has been despatched.  Tomorrow I
shall not be here, but all shall be ready for your journey.  In the
morning come the Szgany, who have some labours of their own here, and
also come some Slovaks.  When they have gone, my carriage shall come
for you, and shall bear you to the Borgo Pass to meet the diligence
from Bukovina to Bistritz.  But I am in hopes that I shall see more of
you at Castle Dracula."

I suspected him, and determined to test his sincerity.  Sincerity!  It
seems like a profanation of the word to write it in connection with
such a monster, so I asked him point-blank, "Why may I not go
tonight?"

"Because, dear sir, my coachman and horses are away on a mission."

"But I would walk with pleasure.  I want to get away at once."

He smiled, such a soft, smooth, diabolical smile that I knew there was
some trick behind his smoothness.  He said, "And your baggage?"

"I do not care about it.  I can send for it some other time."

The Count stood up, and said, with a sweet courtesy which made me rub
my eyes, it seemed so real, "You English have a saying which is close
to my heart, for its spirit is that which rules our boyars, 'Welcome
the coming, speed the parting guest.'  Come with me, my dear young
friend.  Not an hour shall you wait in my house against your will,
though sad am I at your going, and that you so suddenly desire it.
Come!"  With a stately gravity, he, with the lamp, preceded me down
the stairs and along the hall.  Suddenly he stopped.  "Hark!"

Close at hand came the howling of many wolves.  It was almost as if
the sound sprang up at the rising of his hand, just as the music of a
great orchestra seems to leap under the baton of the conductor.  After
a pause of a moment, he proceeded, in his stately way, to the door,
drew back the ponderous bolts, unhooked the heavy chains, and began to
draw it open.

To my intense astonishment I saw that it was unlocked.  Suspiciously,
I looked all round, but could see no key of any kind.

As the door began to open, the howling of the wolves without grew
louder and angrier.  Their red jaws, with champing teeth, and their
blunt-clawed feet as they leaped, came in through the opening door.  I
knew than that to struggle at the moment against the Count was
useless.  With such allies as these at his command, I could do
nothing.

But still the door continued slowly to open, and only the Count's body
stood in the gap.  Suddenly it struck me that this might be the moment
and means of my doom.  I was to be given to the wolves, and at my own
instigation.  There was a diabolical wickedness in the idea great
enough for the Count, and as the last chance I cried out, "Shut the
door!  I shall wait till morning."  And I covered my face with my
hands to hide my tears of bitter disappointment.

With one sweep of his powerful arm, the Count threw the door shut, and
the great bolts clanged and echoed through the hall as they shot back
into their places.

In silence we returned to the library, and after a minute or two I went
to my own room.  The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his
hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile
that Judas in hell might be proud of.

When I was in my room and about to lie down, I thought I heard a
whispering at my door.  I went to it softly and listened.  Unless my
ears deceived me, I heard the voice of the Count.

"Back!  Back to your own place!  Your time is not yet come.  Wait!
Have patience!  Tonight is mine.  Tomorrow night is yours!"

There was a low, sweet ripple of laughter, and in a rage I threw open
the door, and saw without the three terrible women licking their lips.
As I appeared, they all joined in a horrible laugh, and ran away.

I came back to my room and threw myself on my knees.  It is then so
near the end?  Tomorrow!  Tomorrow!  Lord, help me, and those to whom
I am dear!


30 June.--These may be the last words I ever write in this diary.  I
slept till just before the dawn, and when I woke threw myself on my
knees, for I determined that if Death came he should find me ready.

At last I felt that subtle change in the air, and knew that the
morning had come.  Then came the welcome cockcrow, and I felt that I
was safe.  With a glad heart, I opened the door and ran down the hall.
I had seen that the door was unlocked, and now escape was before me.
With hands that trembled with eagerness, I unhooked the chains and
threw back the massive bolts.

But the door would not move.  Despair seized me.  I pulled and pulled
at the door, and shook it till, massive as it was, it rattled in its
casement.  I could see the bolt shot.  It had been locked after I left
the Count.

Then a wild desire took me to obtain the key at any risk, and I
determined then and there to scale the wall again, and gain the
Count's room.  He might kill me, but death now seemed the happier
choice of evils.  Without a pause I rushed up to the east window, and
scrambled down the wall, as before, into the Count's room.  It was
empty, but that was as I expected.  I could not see a key anywhere,
but the heap of gold remained.  I went through the door in the corner
and down the winding stair and along the dark passage to the old
chapel.  I knew now well enough where to find the monster I sought.

The great box was in the same place, close against the wall, but the
lid was laid on it, not fastened down, but with the nails ready in
their places to be hammered home.

I knew I must reach the body for the key, so I raised the lid, and
laid it back against the wall.  And then I saw something which filled
my very soul with horror.  There lay the Count, but looking as if his
youth had been half restored.  For the white hair and moustache were
changed to dark iron-grey.  The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin
seemed ruby-red underneath.  The mouth was redder than ever, for on
the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of
the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck.  Even the deep, burning
eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches
underneath were bloated.  It seemed as if the whole awful creature
were simply gorged with blood.  He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted
with his repletion.

I shuddered as I bent over to touch him, and every sense in me
revolted at the contact, but I had to search, or I was lost.  The
coming night might see my own body a banquet in a similar war to those
horrid three.  I felt all over the body, but no sign could I find of
the key.  Then I stopped and looked at the Count.  There was a mocking
smile on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad.  This was the
being I was helping to transfer to London, where, perhaps, for
centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his
lust for blood, and create a new and ever-widening circle of
semi-demons to batten on the helpless.

The very thought drove me mad.  A terrible desire came upon me to rid
the world of such a monster.  There was no lethal weapon at hand, but
I seized a shovel which the workmen had been using to fill the cases,
and lifting it high, struck, with the edge downward, at the hateful
face.  But as I did so the head turned, and the eyes fell upon me,
with all their blaze of basilisk horror.  The sight seemed to paralyze
me, and the shovel turned in my hand and glanced from the face, merely
making a deep gash above the forehead.  The shovel fell from my hand
across the box, and as I pulled it away the flange of the blade caught
the edge of the lid which fell over again, and hid the horrid thing
from my sight.  The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face,
blood-stained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held
its own in the nethermost hell.

I thought and thought what should be my next move, but my brain seemed
on fire, and I waited with a despairing feeling growing over me.  As I
waited I heard in the distance a gipsy song sung by merry voices
coming closer, and through their song the rolling of heavy wheels and
the cracking of whips.  The Szgany and the Slovaks of whom the Count
had spoken were coming.  With a last look around and at the box which
contained the vile body, I ran from the place and gained the Count's
room, determined to rush out at the moment the door should be opened.
With strained ears, I listened, and heard downstairs the grinding of
the key in the great lock and the falling back of the heavy door.
There must have been some other means of entry, or some one had a key
for one of the locked doors.

Then there came the sound of many feet tramping and dying away in some
passage which sent up a clanging echo.  I turned to run down again
towards the vault, where I might find the new entrance, but at the
moment there seemed to come a violent puff of wind, and the door to
the winding stair blew to with a shock that set the dust from the
lintels flying.  When I ran to push it open, I found that it was
hopelessly fast.  I was again a prisoner, and the net of doom was
closing round me more closely.

As I write there is in the passage below a sound of many tramping feet
and the crash of weights being set down heavily, doubtless the boxes,
with their freight of earth.  There was a sound of hammering.  It is
the box being nailed down.  Now I can hear the heavy feet tramping
again along the hall, with with many other idle feet coming behind
them.

The door is shut, the chains rattle.  There is a grinding of the key
in the lock.  I can hear the key withdrawn, then another door opens
and shuts.  I hear the creaking of lock and bolt.

Hark!  In the courtyard and down the rocky way the roll of heavy
wheels, the crack of whips, and the chorus of the Szgany as they pass
into the distance.

I am alone in the castle with those horrible women.  Faugh!  Mina is a
woman, and there is nought in common.  They are devils of the Pit!

I shall not remain alone with them.  I shall try to scale the castle
wall farther than I have yet attempted.  I shall take some of the gold
with me, lest I want it later.  I may find a way from this dreadful
place.

And then away for home!  Away to the quickest and nearest train!  Away
from the cursed spot, from this cursed land, where the devil and his
children still walk with earthly feet!

At least God's mercy is better than that of those monsters, and the
precipice is steep and high.  At its foot a man may sleep, as a man.
Goodbye, all.  Mina!




CHAPTER 5


LETTER FROM MISS MINA MURRAY TO MISS LUCY WESTENRA

9 May.

My dearest Lucy,

Forgive my long delay in writing, but I have been simply overwhelmed
with work.  The life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes
trying.  I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can
talk together freely and build our castles in the air.  I have been
working very hard lately, because I want to keep up with Jonathan's
studies, and I have been practicing shorthand very assiduously.
When we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan, and if
I can stenograph well enough I can take down what he wants to say in
this way and write it out for him on the typewriter, at which also I
am practicing very hard.

He and I sometimes write letters in shorthand, and he is
keeping a stenographic journal of his travels abroad.  When
I am with you I shall keep a diary in the same way.  I don't
mean one of those two-pages-to-the-week-with-Sunday-squeezed-
in-a-corner diaries, but a sort of journal which I can write
in whenever I feel inclined.

I do not suppose there will be much of interest to other people, but
it is not intended for them.  I may show it to Jonathan some day if
there is in it anything worth sharing, but it is really an exercise
book.  I shall try to do what I see lady journalists do,
interviewing and writing descriptions and trying to remember
conversations.  I am told that, with a little practice, one can
remember all that goes on or that one hears said during a day.

However, we shall see.  I will tell you of my little plans when we
meet.  I have just had a few hurried lines from Jonathan from
Transylvania.  He is well, and will be returning in about a week.  I
am longing to hear all his news.  It must be nice to see strange
countries.  I wonder if we, I mean Jonathan and I, shall ever see
them together.  There is the ten o'clock bell ringing.  Goodbye.

Your loving

Mina


Tell me all the news when you write.  You have not told me
anything for a long time.  I hear rumours, and especially
of a tall, handsome, curly-haired man???



LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY


17, Chatham Street

Wednesday

My dearest Mina,


I must say you tax me very unfairly with being a bad correspondent.
I wrote you twice since we parted, and your last letter was only
your second.  Besides, I have nothing to tell you.  There is really
nothing to interest you.

Town is very pleasant just now, and we go a great deal to
picture-galleries and for walks and rides in the park.  As
to the tall, curly-haired man, I suppose it was the one who
was with me at the last Pop.  Someone has evidently been
telling tales.

That was Mr. Holmwood.  He often comes to see us, and he and
Mamma get on very well together, they have so many things
to talk about in common.

We met some time ago a man that would just do for you, if you were
not already engaged to Jonathan.  He is an excellent parti, being
handsome, well off, and of good birth.  He is a doctor and really
clever.  Just fancy!  He is only nine-and twenty, and he has an
immense lunatic asylum all under his own care.  Mr. Holmwood
introduced him to me, and he called here to see us, and often comes
now.  I think he is one of the most resolute men I ever saw, and yet
the most calm.  He seems absolutely imperturbable.  I can fancy what
a wonderful power he must have over his patients.  He has a curious
habit of looking one straight in the face, as if trying to read
one's thoughts.  He tries this on very much with me, but I flatter
myself he has got a tough nut to crack.  I know that from my glass.

Do you ever try to read your own face?  I do, and I can
tell you it is not a bad study, and gives you more trouble
than you can well fancy if you have never tried it.

He says that I afford him a curious psychological study, and
I humbly think I do.  I do not, as you know, take sufficient
interest in dress to be able to describe the new fashions.
Dress is a bore.  That is slang again, but never mind.  Arthur
says that every day.

There, it is all out, Mina, we have told all our secrets to
each other since we were children.  We have slept together
and eaten together, and laughed and cried together, and
now, though I have spoken, I would like to speak more.  Oh,
Mina, couldn't you guess?  I love him.  I am blushing as I
write, for although I think he loves me, he has not told me
so in words.  But, oh, Mina, I love him.  I love him!  There,
that does me good.

I wish I were with you, dear, sitting by the fire undressing, as we
used to sit, and I would try to tell you what I feel.  I do not know
how I am writing this even to you.  I am afraid to stop, or I should
tear up the letter, and I don't want to stop, for I do so want to
tell you all. Let me hear from you at once, and tell me all that you
think about it.  Mina, pray for my happiness.

Lucy


P.S.--I need not tell you this is a secret.
Goodnight again.  L.




LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA MURRAY

24 May

My dearest Mina,

Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again for your sweet letter.  It
was so nice to be able to tell you and to have your sympathy.

My dear, it never rains but it pours.  How true the old proverbs
are.  Here am I, who shall be twenty in September, and yet I never
had a proposal till today, not a real proposal, and today I had
three.  Just fancy!  Three proposals in one day!  Isn't it awful!  I
feel sorry, really and truly sorry, for two of the poor fellows.
Oh, Mina, I am so happy that I don't know what to do with myself.
And three proposals!  But, for goodness' sake, don't tell any of the
girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas, and
imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first day
at home they did not get six at least.  Some girls are so vain!  You
and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon
soberly into old married women, can despise vanity.  Well, I must
tell you about the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear, from
every one except, of course, Jonathan.  You will tell him, because I
would, if I were in your place, certainly tell Arthur.  A woman
ought to tell her husband everything.  Don't you think so, dear?  And
I must be fair.  Men like women, certainly their wives, to be quite
as fair as they are.  And women, I am afraid, are not always quite
as fair as they should be.

Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch.  I told you of
him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic asylum man, with the strong jaw
and the good forehead.  He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous
all the same.  He had evidently been schooling himself as to all
sorts of little things, and remembered them, but he almost managed
to sit down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they
are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing
with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream.  He spoke to me,
Mina, very straightforwardly.  He told me how dear I was to him,
though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me
to help and cheer him.  He was going to tell me how unhappy he would
be if I did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said he was
a brute and would not add to my present trouble.  Then he broke off
and asked if I could love him in time, and when I shook my head his
hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared
already for any one else.  He put it very nicely, saying that he did
not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because
if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope.  And then, Mina,
I felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one.  I only
told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong
and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped I
would be happy, and that If I ever wanted a friend I must count him
one of my best.

Oh, Mina dear, I can't help crying, and you must excuse this letter
being all blotted.  Being proposed to is all very nice and all that
sort of thing, but it isn't at all a happy thing when you have to
see a poor fellow, whom you know loves you honestly, going away and
looking all broken hearted, and to know that, no matter what he may
say at the moment, you are passing out of his life.  My dear, I must
stop here at present, I feel so miserable, though I am so happy.

Evening.

Arthur has just gone, and I feel in better spirits than when I
left off, so I can go on telling you about the day.

Well, my dear, number Two came after lunch.  He is such a nice
fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh
that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places
and has such adventures.  I sympathize with poor Desdemona when she
had such a stream poured in her ear, even by a black man.  I suppose
that we women are such cowards that we think a man will save us from
fears, and we marry him.  I know now what I would do if I were a man
and wanted to make a girl love me.  No, I don't, for there was Mr.
Morris telling us his stories, and Arthur never told any, and
yet . . .

My dear, I am somewhat previous.  Mr. Quincy P. Morris found me
alone.  It seems that a man always does find a girl alone.  No, he
doesn't, for Arthur tried twice to make a chance, and I helping him
all I could, I am not ashamed to say it now.  I must tell you
beforehand that Mr. Morris doesn't always speak slang, that is to
say, he never does so to strangers or before them, for he is really
well educated and has exquisite manners, but he found out that it
amused me to hear him talk American slang, and whenever I was
present, and there was no one to be shocked, he said such funny
things.  I am afraid, my dear, he has to invent it all, for it fits
exactly into whatever else he has to say.  But this is a way slang
has.  I do not know myself if I shall ever speak slang.  I do not
know if Arthur likes it, as I have never heard him use any as yet.

Well, Mr. Morris sat down beside me and looked as happy and jolly as
he could, but I could see all the same that he was very nervous.  He
took my hand in his, and said ever so sweetly . . .

"Miss Lucy, I know I ain't good enough to regulate the fixin's of
your little shoes, but I guess if you wait till you find a man that
is you will go join them seven young women with the lamps when you
quit.  Won't you just hitch up alongside of me and let us go down
the long road together, driving in double harness?"

Well, he did look so good humoured and so jolly that it didn't seem
half so hard to refuse him as it did poor Dr. Seward.  So I said, as
lightly as I could, that I did not know anything of hitching, and
that I wasn't broken to harness at all yet.  Then he said that he
had spoken in a light manner, and he hoped that if he had made a
mistake in doing so on so grave, so momentous, and occasion for him,
I would forgive him.  He really did look serious when he was saying
it, and I couldn't help feeling a sort of exultation that he was
number Two in one day.  And then, my dear, before I could say a word
he began pouring out a perfect torrent of love-making, laying his
very heart and soul at my feet.  He looked so earnest over it that I
shall never again think that a man must be playful always, and never
earnest, because he is merry at times.  I suppose he saw something
in my face which checked him, for he suddenly stopped, and said with
a sort of manly fervour that I could have loved him for if I had
been free . . .

"Lucy, you are an honest hearted girl, I know.  I should not be here
speaking to you as I am now if I did not believe you clean grit,
right through to the very depths of your soul.  Tell me, like one
good fellow to another, is there any one else that you care for?
And if there is I'll never trouble you a hair's breadth again, but
will be, if you will let me, a very faithful friend."

My dear Mina, why are men so noble when we women are so little
worthy of them?  Here was I almost making fun of this great hearted,
true gentleman.  I burst into tears, I am afraid, my dear, you will
think this a very sloppy letter in more ways than one, and I really
felt very badly.

Why can't they let a girl marry three men, or as many as
want her, and save all this trouble?  But this is heresy,
and I must not say it.  I am glad to say that, though I was
crying, I was able to look into Mr. Morris' brave eyes, and
I told him out straight . . .

"Yes, there is some one I love, though he has not told me
yet that he even loves me."  I was right to speak to him so
frankly, for quite a light came into his face, and he put
out both his hands and took mine, I think I put them into
his, and said in a hearty way . . .

"That's my brave girl.  It's better worth being late for a chance of
winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world.
Don't cry, my dear.  If it's for me, I'm a hard nut to crack, and I
take it standing up.  If that other fellow doesn't know his
happiness, well, he'd better look for it soon, or he'll have to deal
with me.  Little girl, your honesty and pluck have made me a friend,
and that's rarer than a lover, it's more selfish anyhow.  My dear,
I'm going to have a pretty lonely walk between this and Kingdom
Come.  Won't you give me one kiss?  It'll be something to keep off
the darkness now and then.  You can, you know, if you like, for that
other good fellow, or you could not love him, hasn't spoken yet."

That quite won me, Mina, for it was brave and sweet of him,
and noble too, to a rival, wasn't it?  And he so sad, so I
leant over and kissed him.

He stood up with my two hands in his, and as he looked down into my
face, I am afraid I was blushing very much, he said, "Little girl, I
hold your hand, and you've kissed me, and if these things don't make
us friends nothing ever will.  Thank you for your sweet honesty to
me, and goodbye."

He wrung my hand, and taking up his hat, went straight out of the
room without looking back, without a tear or a quiver or a pause,
and I am crying like a baby.

Oh, why must a man like that be made unhappy when there are lots of
girls about who would worship the very ground he trod on?  I know I
would if I were free, only I don't want to be free.  My dear, this
quite upset me, and I feel I cannot write of happiness just at once,
after telling you of it, and I don't wish to tell of the number
Three until it can be all happy.  Ever your loving . . .

Lucy


P.S.--Oh, about number Three, I needn't tell you of number
Three, need I?  Besides, it was all so confused.  It seemed
only a moment from his coming into the room till both his
arms were round me, and he was kissing me.  I am very, very
happy, and I don't know what I have done to deserve it.  I
must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful
to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a
lover, such a husband, and such a friend.

Goodbye.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY (Kept in phonograph)

25 May.--Ebb tide in appetite today.  Cannot eat, cannot rest, so
diary instead.  Since my rebuff of yesterday I have a sort of empty
feeling.  Nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be
worth the doing.  As I knew that the only cure for this sort of thing
was work, I went amongst the patients.  I picked out one who has
afforded me a study of much interest.  He is so quaint that I am
determined to understand him as well as I can.  Today I seemed to get
nearer than ever before to the heart of his mystery.

I questioned him more fully than I had ever done, with a view to
making myself master of the facts of his hallucination.  In my manner
of doing it there was, I now see, something of cruelty.  I seemed to
wish to keep him to the point of his madness, a thing which I avoid
with the patients as I would the mouth of hell.

(Mem., Under what circumstances would I not avoid the pit of hell?)
Omnia Romae venalia sunt.  Hell has its price!  If there be anything
behind this instinct it will be valuable to trace it afterwards
accurately, so I had better commence to do so, therefore . . .

R. M, Renfield, age 59.  Sanguine temperament, great physical
strength, morbidly excitable, periods of gloom, ending in some fixed
idea which I cannot make out.  I presume that the sanguine temperament
itself and the disturbing influence end in a mentally-accomplished
finish, a possibly dangerous man, probably dangerous if unselfish.  In
selfish men caution is as secure an armour for their foes as for
themselves.  What I think of on this point is, when self is the fixed
point the centripetal force is balanced with the centrifugal.  When
duty, a cause, etc., is the fixed point, the latter force is
paramount, and only accident or a series of accidents can balance it.



LETTER, QUINCEY P. MORRIS TO HON.  ARTHUR HOLMOOD

25 May.

My dear Art,

We've told yarns by the campfire in the prairies, and dressed one
another's wounds after trying a landing at the Marquesas, and drunk
healths on the shore of Titicaca.  There are more yarns to be told,
and other wounds to be healed, and another health to be drunk.
Won't you let this be at my campfire tomorrow night?  I have no
hesitation in asking you, as I know a certain lady is engaged to a
certain dinner party, and that you are free.  There will only be one
other, our old pal at the Korea, Jack Seward.  He's coming, too, and
we both want to mingle our weeps over the wine cup, and to drink a
health with all our hearts to the happiest man in all the wide
world, who has won the noblest heart that God has made and best
worth winning.  We promise you a hearty welcome, and a loving
greeting, and a health as true as your own right hand.  We shall
both swear to leave you at home if you drink too deep to a certain
pair of eyes.  Come!

Yours, as ever and always,

Quincey P. Morris





TELEGRAM FROM ARTHUR HOLMWOOD TO QUINCEY P. MORRIS

26 May


Count me in every time.  I bear messages which will make both
your ears tingle.

Art




CHAPTER 6


MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

24 July.  Whitby.--Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and
lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the Crescent in
which they have rooms.  This is a lovely place.  The little river, the
Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near
the harbour.  A great viaduct runs across, with high piers, through
which the view seems somehow further away than it really is.  The
valley is beautifully green, and it is so steep that when you are on
the high land on either side you look right across it, unless you are
near enough to see down.  The houses of the old town--the side away
from us, are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other
anyhow, like the pictures we see of Nuremberg.  Right over the town is
the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is
the scene of part of "Marmion," where the girl was built up in the
wall.  It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful
and romantic bits.  There is a legend that a white lady is seen in one
of the windows.  Between it and the town there is another church, the
parish one, round which is a big graveyard, all full of tombstones.
This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby, for it lies right over
the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay to
where the headland called Kettleness stretches out into the sea.  It
descends so steeply over the harbour that part of the bank has fallen
away, and some of the graves have been destroyed.

In one place part of the stonework of the graves stretches out over
the sandy pathway far below.  There are walks, with seats beside them,
through the churchyard, and people go and sit there all day long
looking at the beautiful view and enjoying the breeze.

I shall come and sit here often myself and work.  Indeed, I am writing
now, with my book on my knee, and listening to the talk of three old
men who are sitting beside me.  They seem to do nothing all day but
sit here and talk.

The harbour lies below me, with, on the far side, one long granite
wall stretching out into the sea, with a curve outwards at the end of
it, in the middle of which is a lighthouse.  A heavy seawall runs
along outside of it.  On the near side, the seawall makes an elbow
crooked inversely, and its end too has a lighthouse.  Between the two
piers there is a narrow opening into the harbour, which then suddenly
widens.

It is nice at high water, but when the tide is out it shoals away to
nothing, and there is merely the stream of the Esk, running between
banks of sand, with rocks here and there.  Outside the harbour on this
side there rises for about half a mile a great reef, the sharp of
which runs straight out from behind the south lighthouse.  At the end
of it is a buoy with a bell, which swings in bad weather, and sends in
a mournful sound on the wind.

They have a legend here that when a ship is lost bells are heard out at
sea.  I must ask the old man about this.  He is coming this way . . .

He is a funny old man.  He must be awfully old, for his face is
gnarled and twisted like the bark of a tree.  He tells me that he is
nearly a hundred, and that he was a sailor in the Greenland fishing
fleet when Waterloo was fought.  He is, I am afraid, a very sceptical
person, for when I asked him about the bells at sea and the White Lady
at the abbey he said very brusquely,

"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss.  Them things be all wore
out.  Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they
wasn't in my time.  They be all very well for comers and trippers, an'
the like, but not for a nice young lady like you.  Them feet-folks
from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's and drinkin'
tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught.  I wonder
masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them, even the newspapers,
which is full of fool-talk."

I thought he would be a good person to learn interesting things from,
so I asked him if he would mind telling me something about the whale
fishing in the old days.  He was just settling himself to begin when
the clock struck six, whereupon he laboured to get up, and said,

"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss.  My grand-daughter doesn't
like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to
crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em, and miss, I lack
belly-timber sairly by the clock."

He hobbled away, and I could see him hurrying, as well as he could,
down the steps.  The steps are a great feature on the place.  They
lead from the town to the church, there are hundreds of them, I do not
know how many, and they wind up in a delicate curve.  The slope is so
gentle that a horse could easily walk up and down them.

I think they must originally have had something to do with the abbey.
I shall go home too.  Lucy went out, visiting with her mother, and as
they were only duty calls, I did not go.


1 August.--I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most
interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come
and join him.  He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should
think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person.

He will not admit anything, and down faces everybody.  If he can't
out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for
agreement with his views.

Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock.  She has got
a beautiful colour since she has been here.

I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming and sitting
near her when we sat down.  She is so sweet with old people, I think
they all fell in love with her on the spot.  Even my old man succumbed
and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead.  I got
him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort
of sermon.  I must try to remember it and put it down.

"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel, that's what it be and
nowt else.  These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' bar-guests an'
bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women
a'belderin'.  They be nowt but air-blebs.  They, an' all grims an' signs
an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome berk-bodies an'
railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do
somethin' that they don't other incline to.  It makes me ireful to
think o' them.  Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on
paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them
on the tombstones.  Look here all around you in what airt ye will.  All
them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their
pride, is acant, simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies
wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on
all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at
all, an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about,
much less sacred.  Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or
another!  My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of
Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped
together an' trying' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how
good they was, some of them trimmlin' an' dithering, with their hands
that dozzened an' slippery from lyin' in the sea that they can't even
keep their gurp o' them."

I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in
which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was
"showing off," so I put in a word to keep him going.

"Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious.  Surely these tombstones are
not all wrong?"

"Yabblins!  There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they
make out the people too good, for there be folk that do think a
balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own.  The whole thing
be only lies.  Now look you here.  You come here a stranger, an' you
see this kirkgarth."

I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite
understand his dialect.  I knew it had something to do with the
church.

He went on, "And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that
be haped here, snod an' snog?"  I assented again.  "Then that be just
where the lie comes in.  Why, there be scores of these laybeds that be
toom as old Dun's 'baccabox on Friday night."

He nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed.  "And, my gog!
How could they be otherwise?  Look at that one, the aftest abaft the
bier-bank, read it!"

I went over and read, "Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by
pirates off the coast of Andres, April, 1854, age 30."  When I came
back Mr. Swales went on,

"Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here?  Murdered off the
coast of Andres!  An' you consated his body lay under!  Why, I could
name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above," he
pointed northwards, "or where the currants may have drifted them.
There be the steans around ye.  Ye can, with your young eyes, read the
small print of the lies from here.  This Braithwaite Lowery, I knew
his father, lost in the Lively off Greenland in '20, or Andrew
Woodhouse, drowned in the same seas in 1777, or John Paxton, drowned
off Cape Farewell a year later, or old John Rawlings, whose
grandfather sailed with me, drowned in the Gulf of Finland in '50.  Do
ye think that all these men will have to make a rush to Whitby when
the trumpet sounds?  I have me antherums aboot it!  I tell ye that
when they got here they'd be jommlin' and jostlin' one another that
way that it 'ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when
we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our
cuts by the aurora borealis."  This was evidently local pleasantry, for
the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in with gusto.

"But," I said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the
assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to
take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment.  Do you think
that will be really necessary?"

"Well, what else be they tombstones for?  Answer me that, miss!"

"To please their relatives, I suppose."

"To please their relatives, you suppose!"  This he said with intense
scorn.  "How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is
wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be
lies?"

He pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab,
on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff.  "Read
the lies on that thruff-stone," he said.

The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more
opposite to them, so she leant over and read, "Sacred to the memory of
George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on
July 29,1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness.  This tomb was
erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son.  'He was the
only son of his mother, and she was a widow.'  Really, Mr. Swales, I
don't see anything very funny in that!"  She spoke her comment very
gravely and somewhat severely.

"Ye don't see aught funny!  Ha-ha!  But that's because ye don't gawm
the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was
acrewk'd, a regular lamiter he was, an' he hated her so that he
committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put
on his life.  He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket
that they had for scarin' crows with.  'Twarn't for crows then, for it
brought the clegs and the dowps to him.  That's the way he fell off
the rocks.  And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I've often
heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was
so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to
addle where she was.  Now isn't that stean at any rate," he hammered
it with his stick as he spoke, "a pack of lies?  And won't it make
Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' ut the grees with the
tompstean balanced on his hump, and asks to be took as evidence!"

I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she
said, rising up, "Oh, why did you tell us of this?  It is my favourite
seat, and I cannot leave it, and now I find I must go on sitting over
the grave of a suicide."

"That won't harm ye, my pretty, an' it may make poor Geordie gladsome
to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap.  That won't hurt ye.  Why,
I've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an' it hasn't
done me no harm.  Don't ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that
doesn' lie there either!  It'll be time for ye to be getting scart
when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as
a stubble-field.  There's the clock, and I must gang.  My service to
ye, ladies!"  And off he hobbled.

Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we
took hands as we sat, and she told me all over again about Arthur and
their coming marriage.  That made me just a little heart-sick, for I
haven't heard from Jonathan for a whole month.


The same day.  I came up here alone, for I am very sad.  There was no
letter for me.  I hope there cannot be anything the matter with
Jonathan.  The clock has just struck nine.  I see the lights scattered
all over the town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and
sometimes singly.  They run right up the Esk and die away in the curve
of the valley.  To my left the view is cut off by a black line of roof
of the old house next to the abbey.  The sheep and lambs are bleating
in the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of donkeys' hoofs
up the paved road below.  The band on the pier is playing a harsh
waltz in good time, and further along the quay there is a Salvation
Army meeting in a back street.  Neither of the bands hears the other,
but up here I hear and see them both.  I wonder where Jonathan is and
if he is thinking of me!  I wish he were here.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

5 June.--The case of Renfield grows more interesting the more I get to
understand the man.  He has certain qualities very largely developed,
selfishness, secrecy, and purpose.

I wish I could get at what is the object of the latter.  He seems to
have some settled scheme of his own, but what it is I do not know.
His redeeming quality is a love of animals, though, indeed, he has
such curious turns in it that I sometimes imagine he is only
abnormally cruel.  His pets are of odd sorts.

Just now his hobby is catching flies.  He has at present such a
quantity that I have had myself to expostulate.  To my astonishment,
he did not break out into a fury, as I expected, but took the matter
in simple seriousness.  He thought for a moment, and then said, "May I
have three days?  I shall clear them away."  Of course, I said that
would do.  I must watch him.


18 June.--He has turned his mind now to spiders, and has got several
very big fellows in a box.  He keeps feeding them his flies, and the
number of the latter is becoming sensibly diminished, although he has
used half his food in attracting more flies from outside to his room.


1 July.--His spiders are now becoming as great a nuisance as his
flies, and today I told him that he must get rid of them.

He looked very sad at this, so I said that he must some of them, at
all events.  He cheerfully acquiesced in this, and I gave him the same
time as before for reduction.

He disgusted me much while with him, for when a horrid blowfly,
bloated with some carrion food, buzzed into the room, he caught it,
held it exultantly for a few moments between his finger and thumb, and
before I knew what he was going to do, put it in his mouth and ate it.

I scolded him for it, but he argued quietly that it was very good and
very wholesome, that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him.
This gave me an idea, or the rudiment of one.  I must watch how he
gets rid of his spiders.

He has evidently some deep problem in his mind, for he keeps a little
notebook in which he is always jotting down something.  Whole pages of
it are filled with masses of figures, generally single numbers added
up in batches, and then the totals added in batches again, as though
he were focussing some account, as the auditors put it.


8 July.--There is a method in his madness, and the rudimentary idea in
my mind is growing.  It will be a whole idea soon, and then, oh,
unconscious cerebration, you will have to give the wall to your
conscious brother.

I kept away from my friend for a few days, so that I might notice if
there were any change.  Things remain as they were except that he has
parted with some of his pets and got a new one.

He has managed to get a sparrow, and has already partially tamed it.
His means of taming is simple, for already the spiders have
diminished.  Those that do remain, however, are well fed, for he still
brings in the flies by tempting them with his food.

19 July--We are progressing.  My friend has now a whole colony of
sparrows, and his flies and spiders are almost obliterated.  When I
came in he ran to me and said he wanted to ask me a great favour, a
very, very great favour.  And as he spoke, he fawned on me like a dog.

I asked him what it was, and he said, with a sort of rapture in his
voice and bearing, "A kitten, a nice, little, sleek playful kitten,
that I can play with, and teach, and feed, and feed, and feed!"

I was not unprepared for this request, for I had noticed how his pets
went on increasing in size and vivacity, but I did not care that his
pretty family of tame sparrows should be wiped out in the same manner
as the flies and spiders.  So I said I would see about it, and asked
him if he would not rather have a cat than a kitten.

His eagerness betrayed him as he answered, "Oh, yes, I would like a
cat!  I only asked for a kitten lest you should refuse me a cat.  No
one would refuse me a kitten, would they?"

I shook my head, and said that at present I feared it would not be
possible, but that I would see about it.  His face fell, and I could
see a warning of danger in it, for there was a sudden fierce, sidelong
look which meant killing.  The man is an undeveloped homicidal
maniac.  I shall test him with his present craving and see how it will
work out, then I shall know more.


10 pm.--I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner
brooding.  When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and
implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon
it.

I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon
he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the
corner where I had found him.  I shall see him in the morning early.


20 July.--Visited Renfield very early, before attendant went his
rounds.  Found him up and humming a tune.  He was spreading out his
sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning
his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good
grace.

I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where
they were.  He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown
away.  There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a
drop of blood.  I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report
to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.


11 am.--The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has
been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers.  "My belief
is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just
took and ate them raw!"


11 pm.--I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even
him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it.  The thought
that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the
theory proved.

My homicidal maniac is of a peculiar kind.  I shall have to invent a
new classification for him, and call him a zoophagous (life-eating)
maniac.  What he desires is to absorb as many lives as he can, and he
has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way.  He gave many
flies to one spider and many spiders to one bird, and then wanted a
cat to eat the many birds.  What would have been his later steps?

It would almost be worth while to complete the experiment.  It might
be done if there were only a sufficient cause.  Men sneered at
vivisection, and yet look at its results today!  Why not advance
science in its most difficult and vital aspect, the knowledge of the
brain?

Had I even the secret of one such mind, did I hold the key to the
fancy of even one lunatic, I might advance my own branch of science to
a pitch compared with which Burdon-Sanderson's physiology or Ferrier's
brain knowledge would be as nothing.  If only there were a sufficient
cause!  I must not think too much of this, or I may be tempted.  A
good cause might turn the scale with me, for may not I too be of an
exceptional brain, congenitally?

How well the man reasoned.  Lunatics always do within their own scope.
I wonder at how many lives he values a man, or if at only one.  He has
closed the account most accurately, and today begun a new record.  How
many of us begin a new record with each day of our lives?

To me it seems only yesterday that my whole life ended with my new
hope, and that truly I began a new record.  So it shall be until the
Great Recorder sums me up and closes my ledger account with a balance
to profit or loss.

Oh, Lucy, Lucy, I cannot be angry with you, nor can I be angry with my
friend whose happiness is yours, but I must only wait on hopeless and
work.  Work!  Work!

If I could have as strong a cause as my poor mad friend there, a good,
unselfish cause to make me work, that would be indeed happiness.



MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

26 July.--I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here.  It
is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time.  And
there is also something about the shorthand symbols that makes it
different from writing.  I am unhappy about Lucy and about Jonathan.
I had not heard from Jonathan for some time, and was very concerned,
but yesterday dear Mr. Hawkins, who is always so kind, sent me a
letter from him.  I had written asking him if he had heard, and he
said the enclosed had just been received.  It is only a line dated
from Castle Dracula, and says that he is just starting for home.  That
is not like Jonathan.  I do not understand it, and it makes me uneasy.

Then, too, Lucy, although she is so well, has lately taken to her old
habit of walking in her sleep.  Her mother has spoken to me about it,
and we have decided that I am to lock the door of our room every
night.

Mrs. Westenra has got an idea that sleep-walkers always go out on
roofs of houses and along the edges of cliffs and then get suddenly
wakened and fall over with a despairing cry that echoes all over the
place.

Poor dear, she is naturally anxious about Lucy, and she tells me that
her husband, Lucy's father, had the same habit, that he would get up
in the night and dress himself and go out, if he were not stopped.

Lucy is to be married in the autumn, and she is already planning out
her dresses and how her house is to be arranged.  I sympathise with
her, for I do the same, only Jonathan and I will start in life in a
very simple way, and shall have to try to make both ends meet.

Mr. Holmwood, he is the Hon. Arthur Holmwood, only son of Lord
Godalming, is coming up here very shortly, as soon as he can leave
town, for his father is not very well, and I think dear Lucy is
counting the moments till he comes.

She wants to take him up in the seat on the churchyard cliff and show
him the beauty of Whitby.  I daresay it is the waiting which disturbs
her.  She will be all right when he arrives.


27 July.--No news from Jonathan.  I am getting quite uneasy about him,
though why I should I do not know, but I do wish that he would write,
if it were only a single line.

Lucy walks more than ever, and each night I am awakened by her moving
about the room.  Fortunately, the weather is so hot that she cannot
get cold.  But still, the anxiety and the perpetually being awakened
is beginning to tell on me, and I am getting nervous and wakeful
myself.  Thank God, Lucy's health keeps up.  Mr. Holmwood has been
suddenly called to Ring to see his father, who has been taken
seriously ill.  Lucy frets at the postponement of seeing him, but it
does not touch her looks.  She is a trifle stouter, and her cheeks are
a lovely rose-pink.  She has lost the anemic look which she had.  I
pray it will all last.


3 August.--Another week gone by, and no news from Jonathan, not even
to Mr. Hawkins, from whom I have heard.  Oh, I do hope he is not ill.
He surely would have written.  I look at that last letter of his, but
somehow it does not satisfy me.  It does not read like him, and yet it
is his writing.  There is no mistake of that.

Lucy has not walked much in her sleep the last week, but there is an
odd concentration about her which I do not understand, even in her
sleep she seems to be watching me.  She tries the door, and finding it
locked, goes about the room searching for the key.


6 August.--Another three days, and no news.  This suspense is getting
dreadful.  If I only knew where to write to or where to go to, I
should feel easier.  But no one has heard a word of Jonathan since
that last letter.  I must only pray to God for patience.

Lucy is more excitable than ever, but is otherwise well.  Last night
was very threatening, and the fishermen say that we are in for a
storm.  I must try to watch it and learn the weather signs.

Today is a gray day, and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds,
high over Kettleness.  Everything is gray except the green grass,
which seems like emerald amongst it, gray earthy rock, gray clouds,
tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the gray sea, into
which the sandpoints stretch like gray figures.  The sea is tumbling
in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the
sea-mists drifting inland.  The horizon is lost in a gray mist.  All
vastness, the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a
'brool' over the sea that sounds like some passage of doom.  Dark
figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in
the mist, and seem 'men like trees walking'.  The fishing boats are
racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep
into the harbour, bending to the scuppers.  Here comes old Mr. Swales.
He is making straight for me, and I can see, by the way he lifts his
hat, that he wants to talk.

I have been quite touched by the change in the poor old man.  When he
sat down beside me, he said in a very gentle way, "I want to say
something to you, miss."

I could see he was not at ease, so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in
mine and asked him to speak fully.

So he said, leaving his hand in mine, "I'm afraid, my deary, that I
must have shocked you by all the wicked things I've been sayin' about
the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn't mean them, and I
want ye to remember that when I'm gone.  We aud folks that be daffled,
and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think
of it, and we don't want to feel scart of it, and that's why I've took
to makin' light of it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit.  But,
Lord love ye, miss, I ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit, only I don't
want to die if I can help it.  My time must be nigh at hand now, for I
be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect.  And
I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man is already whettin' his scythe.  Ye
see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin' about it all at once.
The chafts will wag as they be used to.  Some day soon the Angel of
Death will sound his trumpet for me.  But don't ye dooal an' greet, my
deary!"--for he saw that I was crying--"if he should come this very
night I'd not refuse to answer his call.  For life be, after all, only
a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin', and death be all
that we can rightly depend on.  But I'm content, for it's comin' to
me, my deary, and comin' quick.  It may be comin' while we be lookin'
and wonderin'.  Maybe it's in that wind out over the sea that's
bringin' with it loss and wreck, and sore distress, and sad hearts.
Look!  Look!" he cried suddenly.  "There's something in that wind and
in the hoast beyont that sounds, and looks, and tastes, and smells
like death.  It's in the air.  I feel it comin'.  Lord, make me answer
cheerful, when my call comes!"  He held up his arms devoutly, and
raised his hat.  His mouth moved as though he were praying.  After a
few minutes' silence, he got up, shook hands with me, and blessed me,
and said goodbye, and hobbled off.  It all touched me, and upset me
very much.

I was glad when the coastguard came along, with his spyglass under his
arm.  He stopped to talk with me, as he always does, but all the time
kept looking at a strange ship.

"I can't make her out," he said.  "She's a Russian, by the look of
her.  But she's knocking about in the queerest way.  She doesn't know
her mind a bit.  She seems to see the storm coming, but can't decide
whether to run up north in the open, or to put in here.  Look there
again!  She is steered mighty strangely, for she doesn't mind the hand
on the wheel, changes about with every puff of wind.  We'll hear more
of her before this time tomorrow."




CHAPTER 7


CUTTING FROM "THE DAILYGRAPH", 8 AUGUST


(PASTED IN MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL)


From a correspondent.

Whitby.

One of the greatest and suddenest storms on record has just been
experienced here, with results both strange and unique.  The weather
had been somewhat sultry, but not to any degree uncommon in the
month of August.  Saturday evening was as fine as was ever known,
and the great body of holiday-makers laid out yesterday for visits
to Mulgrave Woods, Robin Hood's Bay, Rig Mill, Runswick, Staithes,
and the various trips in the neighborhood of Whitby.  The steamers
Emma and Scarborough made trips up and down the coast, and there was
an unusual amount of 'tripping' both to and from Whitby.  The day
was unusually fine till the afternoon, when some of the gossips who
frequent the East Cliff churchyard, and from the commanding eminence
watch the wide sweep of sea visible to the north and east, called
attention to a sudden show of 'mares tails' high in the sky to the
northwest.  The wind was then blowing from the south-west in the
mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked 'No. 2, light
breeze.'

The coastguard on duty at once made report, and one old fisherman,
who for more than half a century has kept watch on weather signs
from the East Cliff, foretold in an emphatic manner the coming of a
sudden storm.  The approach of sunset was so very beautiful, so
grand in its masses of splendidly coloured clouds, that there was
quite an assemblage on the walk along the cliff in the old
churchyard to enjoy the beauty.  Before the sun dipped below the
black mass of Kettleness, standing boldly athwart the western sky,
its downward way was marked by myriad clouds of every sunset colour,
flame, purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold, with
here and there masses not large, but of seemingly absolute
blackness, in all sorts of shapes, as well outlined as colossal
silhouettes.  The experience was not lost on the painters, and
doubtless some of the sketches of the 'Prelude to the Great Storm'
will grace the R. A and R. I. walls in May next.

More than one captain made up his mind then and there that his
'cobble' or his 'mule', as they term the different classes of boats,
would remain in the harbour till the storm had passed.  The wind
fell away entirely during the evening, and at midnight there was a
dead calm, a sultry heat, and that prevailing intensity which, on
the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature.

There were but few lights in sight at sea, for even the coasting
steamers, which usually hug the shore so closely, kept well to
seaward, and but few fishing boats were in sight.  The only sail
noticeable was a foreign schooner with all sails set, which was
seemingly going westwards. The foolhardiness or ignorance of her
officers was a prolific theme for comment whilst she remained in
sight, and efforts were made to signal her to reduce sail in the
face of her danger.  Before the night shut down she was seen with
sails idly flapping as she gently rolled on the undulating swell of
the sea.

"As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean."

Shortly before ten o'clock the stillness of the air grew quite
oppressive, and the silence was so marked that the bleating of a
sheep inland or the barking of a dog in the town was distinctly
heard, and the band on the pier, with its lively French air, was
like a dischord in the great harmony of nature's silence.  A little
after midnight came a strange sound from over the sea, and high
overhead the air began to carry a strange, faint, hollow booming.

Then without warning the tempest broke.  With a rapidity which, at
the time, seemed incredible, and even afterwards is impossible to
realize, the whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed.  The
waves rose in growing fury, each over-topping its fellow, till in a
very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and
devouring monster.  White-crested waves beat madly on the level
sands and rushed up the shelving cliffs.  Others broke over the
piers, and with their spume swept the lanthorns of the lighthouses
which rise from the end of either pier of Whitby Harbour.

The wind roared like thunder, and blew with such force that it was
with difficulty that even strong men kept their feet, or clung with
grim clasp to the iron stanchions.  It was found necessary to clear
the entire pier from the mass of onlookers, or else the fatalities
of the night would have increased manifold.  To add to the

difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came
drifting inland.  White, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly
fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort
of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were
touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and
many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by.

At times the mist cleared, and the sea for some distance could be
seen in the glare of the lightning, which came thick and fast,
followed by such peals of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed
trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm.

Some of the scenes thus revealed were of immeasurable grandeur and
of absorbing interest.  The sea, running mountains high, threw
skywards with each wave mighty masses of white foam, which the
tempest seemed to snatch at and whirl away into space.  Here and
there a fishing boat, with a rag of sail, running madly for shelter
before the blast, now and again the white wings of a storm-tossed
seabird.  On the summit of the East Cliff the new searchlight was
ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried.  The officers in
charge of it got it into working order, and in the pauses of
onrushing mist swept with it the surface of the sea.  Once or twice
its service was most effective, as when a fishing boat, with gunwale
under water, rushed into the harbour, able, by the guidance of the
sheltering light, to avoid the danger of dashing against the piers.
As each boat achieved the safety of the port there was a shout of
joy from the mass of people on the shore, a shout which for a moment
seemed to cleave the gale and was then swept away in its rush.

Before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner
with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been
noticed earlier in the evening.  The wind had by this time backed to
the east, and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the cliff
as they realized the terrible danger in which she now was.

Between her and the port lay the great flat reef on which so many
good ships have from time to time suffered, and, with the wind
blowing from its present quarter, it would be quite impossible that
she should fetch the entrance of the harbour.

It was now nearly the hour of high tide, but the waves were so great
that in their troughs the shallows of the shore were almost visible,
and the schooner, with all sails set, was rushing with such speed
that, in the words of one old salt, "she must fetch up somewhere, if
it was only in hell".  Then came another rush of sea-fog, greater
than any hitherto, a mass of dank mist, which seemed to close on all
things like a gray pall, and left available to men only the organ of
hearing, for the roar of the tempest, and the crash of the thunder,
and the booming of the mighty billows came through the damp oblivion
even louder than before.  The rays of the searchlight were kept fixed
on the harbour mouth across the East Pier, where the shock was
expected, and men waited breathless.

The wind suddenly shifted to the northeast, and the remnant of the
sea fog melted in the blast.  And then, mirabile dictu, between the
piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed,
swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and
gained the safety of the harbour.  The searchlight followed her, and
a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a
corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each
motion of the ship.  No other form could be seen on the deck at all.

A great awe came on all as they realised that the ship, as if by a
miracle, had found the harbour, unsteered save by the hand of a dead
man!  However, all took place more quickly than it takes to write
these words.  The schooner paused not, but rushing across the
harbour, pitched herself on that accumulation of sand and gravel
washed by many tides and many storms into the southeast corner of
the pier jutting under the East Cliff, known locally as Tate Hill
Pier.

There was of course a considerable concussion as the vessel drove up
on the sand heap.  Every spar, rope, and stay was strained, and some
of the 'top-hammer' came crashing down.  But, strangest of all, the
very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck
from below, as if shot up by the concussion, and running forward,
jumped from the bow on the sand.

Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over
the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat
tombstones, thruffsteans or through-stones, as they call them in
Whitby vernacular, actually project over where the sustaining cliff
has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness, which seemed
intensified just beyond the focus of the searchlight.

It so happened that there was no one at the moment on Tate Hill
Pier, as all those whose houses are in close proximity were either
in bed or were out on the heights above.  Thus the coastguard on
duty on the eastern side of the harbour, who at once ran down to the
little pier, was the first to climb aboard.  The men working the
searchlight, after scouring the entrance of the harbour without
seeing anything, then turned the light on the derelict and kept it
there.  The coastguard ran aft, and when he came beside the wheel,
bent over to examine it, and recoiled at once as though under some
sudden emotion.  This seemed to pique general curiosity, and quite a
number of people began to run.

It is a good way round from the West Cliff by the Draw-bridge to
Tate Hill Pier, but your correspondent is a fairly good runner, and
came well ahead of the crowd.  When I arrived, however, I found
already assembled on the pier a crowd, whom the coastguard and
police refused to allow to come on board.  By the courtesy of the
chief boatman, I was, as your correspondent, permitted to climb on
deck, and was one of a small group who saw the dead seaman whilst
actually lashed to the wheel.

It was no wonder that the coastguard was surprised, or even awed,
for not often can such a sight have been seen.  The man was simply
fastened by his hands, tied one over the other, to a spoke of the
wheel.  Between the inner hand and the wood was a crucifix, the set
of beads on which it was fastened being around both wrists and
wheel, and all kept fast by the binding cords.  The poor fellow may
have been seated at one time, but the flapping and buffeting of the
sails had worked through the rudder of the wheel and had dragged him
to and fro, so that the cords with which he was tied had cut the
flesh to the bone.

Accurate note was made of the state of things, and a doctor, Surgeon
J. M. Caffyn, of 33, East Elliot Place, who came immediately after
me, declared, after making examination, that the man must have been
dead for quite two days.

In his pocket was a bottle, carefully corked, empty save for
a little roll of paper, which proved to be the addendum to
the log.

The coastguard said the man must have tied up his own hands,
fastening the knots with his teeth.  The fact that a coastguard was
the first on board may save some complications later on, in the
Admiralty Court, for coastguards cannot claim the salvage which is
the right of the first civilian entering on a derelict.  Already,
however, the legal tongues are wagging, and one young law student is
loudly asserting that the rights of the owner are already completely
sacrificed, his property being held in contravention of the statues
of mortmain, since the tiller, as emblemship, if not proof, of
delegated possession, is held in a dead hand.

It is needless to say that the dead steersman has been reverently
removed from the place where he held his honourable watch and ward
till death, a steadfastness as noble as that of the young
Casabianca, and placed in the mortuary to await inquest.

Already the sudden storm is passing, and its fierceness is
abating.  Crowds are scattering backward, and the sky is
beginning to redden over the Yorkshire wolds.

I shall send, in time for your next issue, further details
of the derelict ship which found her way so miraculously
into harbour in the storm.


9 August.--The sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in the
storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself.  It
turns out that the schooner is Russian from Varna, and is called the
Demeter.  She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with
only a small amount of cargo, a number of great wooden boxes filled
with mould.

This cargo was consigned to a Whitby solicitor, Mr. S.F. Billington,
of 7, The Crescent, who this morning went aboard and took formal
possession of the goods consigned to him.

The Russian consul, too, acting for the charter-party, took formal
possession of the ship, and paid all harbour dues, etc.

Nothing is talked about here today except the strange coincidence.
The officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in
seeing that every compliance has been made with existing
regulations.  As the matter is to be a 'nine days wonder', they are
evidently determined that there shall be no cause of other
complaint.

A good deal of interest was abroad concerning the dog which landed
when the ship struck, and more than a few of the members of the
S.P.C.A., which is very strong in Whitby, have tried to befriend the
animal.  To the general disappointment, however, it was not to be
found.  It seems to have disappeared entirely from the town.  It may
be that it was frightened and made its way on to the moors, where it
is still hiding in terror.

There are some who look with dread on such a possibility, lest later
on it should in itself become a danger, for it is evidently a fierce
brute.  Early this morning a large dog, a half-bred mastiff
belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found dead
in the roadway opposite its master's yard.  It had been fighting,
and manifestly had had a savage opponent, for its throat was torn
away, and its belly was slit open as if with a savage claw.

Later.--By the kindness of the Board of Trade inspector, I have been
permitted to look over the log book of the Demeter, which was in
order up to within three days, but contained nothing of special
interest except as to facts of missing men.  The greatest interest,
however, is with regard to the paper found in the bottle, which was
today produced at the inquest.  And a more strange narrative than
the two between them unfold it has not been my lot to come across.

As there is no motive for concealment, I am permitted to use them,
and accordingly send you a transcript, simply omitting technical
details of seamanship and supercargo.  It almost seems as though the
captain had been seized with some kind of mania before he had got
well into blue water, and that this had developed persistently
throughout the voyage.  Of course my statement must be taken cum
grano, since I am writing from the dictation of a clerk of the
Russian consul, who kindly translated for me, time being short.



  LOG OF THE "DEMETER" Varna to Whitby


  Written 18 July, things so strange happening, that I shall
  keep accurate note henceforth till we land.


  On 6 July we finished taking in cargo, silver sand and boxes
  of earth.  At noon set sail.  East wind, fresh.  Crew, five
  hands . . . two mates, cook, and myself, (captain).


  On 11 July at dawn entered Bosphorus.  Boarded by Turkish
  Customs officers.  Backsheesh.  All correct.  Under way at
  4 p.m.


  On 12 July through Dardanelles.  More Customs officers and
  flagboat of guarding squadron.  Backsheesh again.  Work of
  officers thorough, but quick.  Want us off soon.  At dark
  passed into Archipelago.


  On 13 July passed Cape Matapan.  Crew dissatisfied about
  something.  Seemed scared, but would not speak out.


  On 14 July was somewhat anxious about crew.  Men all steady
  fellows, who sailed with me before.  Mate could not make out what
  was wrong.  They only told him there was SOMETHING, and crossed
  themselves.  Mate lost temper with one of them that day and struck
  him.  Expected fierce quarrel, but all was quiet.


  On 16 July mate reported in the morning that one of the
  crew, Petrofsky, was missing.  Could not account for it.
  Took larboard watch eight bells last night, was relieved by
  Amramoff, but did not go to bunk.  Men more downcast than
  ever.  All said they expected something of the kind, but
  would not say more than there was SOMETHING aboard.  Mate
  getting very impatient with them.  Feared some trouble
  ahead.


  On 17 July, yesterday, one of the men, Olgaren, came to my cabin,
  and in an awestruck way confided to me that he thought there was a
  strange man aboard the ship.  He said that in his watch he had
  been sheltering behind the deckhouse, as there was a rain storm,
  when he saw a tall, thin man, who was not like any of the crew,
  come up the companionway, and go along the deck forward and
  disappear.  He followed cautiously, but when he got to bows found
  no one, and the hatchways were all closed.  He was in a panic of
  superstitious fear, and I am afraid the panic may spread.  To
  allay it, I shall today search the entire ship carefully from stem
  to stern.


  Later in the day I got together the whole crew, and told them, as
  they evidently thought there was some one in the ship, we would
  search from stem to stern.  First mate angry, said it was folly,
  and to yield to such foolish ideas would demoralise the men, said
  he would engage to keep them out of trouble with the handspike.  I
  let him take the helm, while the rest began a thorough search, all
  keeping abreast, with lanterns.  We left no corner unsearched.  As
  there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd corners
  where a man could hide.  Men much relieved when search over, and
  went back to work cheerfully.  First mate scowled, but said
  nothing.


  22 July.--Rough weather last three days, and all hands busy
  with sails, no time to be frightened.  Men seem to have
  forgotten their dread.  Mate cheerful again, and all on
  good terms.  Praised men for work in bad weather.  Passed
  Gibraltar and out through Straits.  All well.


  24 July.--There seems some doom over this ship.  Already a hand
  short, and entering the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and
  yet last night another man lost, disappeared.  Like the first, he
  came off his watch and was not seen again.  Men all in a panic of
  fear, sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they
  fear to be alone.  Mate angry.  Fear there will be some trouble,
  as either he or the men will do some violence.


  28 July.--Four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of
  maelstrom, and the wind a tempest.  No sleep for any one.
  Men all worn out.  Hardly know how to set a watch, since no
  one fit to go on.  Second mate volunteered to steer and
  watch, and let men snatch a few hours sleep.  Wind abating,
  seas still terrific, but feel them less, as ship is
  steadier.


  29 July.--Another tragedy.  Had single watch tonight, as crew too
  tired to double.  When morning watch came on deck could find no
  one except steersman.  Raised outcry, and all came on deck.
  Thorough search, but no one found.  Are now without second mate,
  and crew in a panic.  Mate and I agreed to go armed henceforth and
  wait for any sign of cause.


  30 July.--Last night.  Rejoiced we are nearing England. Weather
  fine, all sails set.  Retired worn out, slept soundly, awakened by
  mate telling me that both man of watch and steersman missing.
  Only self and mate and two hands left to work ship.

  1 August.--Two days of fog, and not a sail sighted.  Had hoped
  when in the English Channel to be able to signal for help or get
  in somewhere.  Not having power to work sails, have to run before
  wind.  Dare not lower, as could not raise them again.  We seem to
  be drifting to some terrible doom.  Mate now more demoralised than
  either of men.  His stronger nature seems to have worked inwardly
  against himself.  Men are beyond fear, working stolidly and
  patiently, with minds made up to worst.  They are Russian, he
  Roumanian.

  2 August, midnight.--Woke up from few minutes sleep by hearing a
  cry, seemingly outside my port.  Could see nothing in fog.  Rushed
  on deck, and ran against mate. Tells me he heard cry and ran, but
  no sign of man on watch.  One more gone.  Lord, help us!  Mate
  says we must be past Straits of Dover, as in a moment of fog
  lifting he saw North Foreland, just as he heard the man cry out.
  If so we are now off in the North Sea, and only God can guide us
  in the fog, which seems to move with us, and God seems to have
  deserted us.


  3 August.--At midnight I went to relieve the man at the
  wheel and when I got to it found no one there.  The wind
  was steady, and as we ran before it there was no yawing.  I
  dared not leave it, so shouted for the mate.  After a few
  seconds, he rushed up on deck in his flannels.  He looked
  wild-eyed and haggard, and I greatly fear his reason has
  given way.  He came close to me and whispered hoarsely,
  with his mouth to my ear, as though fearing the very air
  might hear.  "It is here.  I know it now.  On the watch
  last night I saw It, like a man, tall and thin, and ghastly
  pale.  It was in the bows, and looking out.  I crept behind
  It, and gave it my knife, but the knife went through It,
  empty as the air."  And as he spoke he took the knife and
  drove it savagely into space.  Then he went on, "But It is
  here, and I'll find It.  It is in the hold, perhaps in one
  of those boxes.  I'll unscrew them one by one and see.  You
  work the helm."  And with a warning look and his finger on
  his lip, he went below.  There was springing up a choppy
  wind, and I could not leave the helm.  I saw him come out
  on deck again with a tool chest and lantern, and go down
  the forward hatchway.  He is mad, stark, raving mad, and
  it's no use my trying to stop him.  He can't hurt those big
  boxes, they are invoiced as clay, and to pull them about is
  as harmless a thing as he can do.  So here I stay and mind
  the helm, and write these notes.  I can only trust in God
  and wait till the fog clears.  Then, if I can't steer to
  any harbour with the wind that is, I shall cut down sails,
  and lie by, and signal for help . . .

  It is nearly all over now.  Just as I was beginning to hope
  that the mate would come out calmer, for I heard him
  knocking away at something in the hold, and work is good
  for him, there came up the hatchway a sudden, startled
  scream, which made my blood run cold, and up on the deck he
  came as if shot from a gun, a raging madman, with his eyes
  rolling and his face convulsed with fear.  "Save me!  Save
  me!" he cried, and then looked round on the blanket of fog.
  His horror turned to despair, and in a steady voice he
  said, "You had better come too, captain, before it is too
  late.  He is there!  I know the secret now.  The sea will
  save me from Him, and it is all that is left!"  Before I
  could say a word, or move forward to seize him, he sprang
  on the bulwark and deliberately threw himself into the sea.
  I suppose I know the secret too, now.  It was this madman
  who had got rid of the men one by one, and now he has
  followed them himself.  God help me!  How am I to account
  for all these horrors when I get to port?  When I get to
  port!  Will that ever be?


  4 August.--Still fog, which the sunrise cannot pierce, I
  know there is sunrise because I am a sailor, why else I
  know not.  I dared not go below, I dared not leave the
  helm, so here all night I stayed, and in the dimness of the
  night I saw it, Him!  God, forgive me, but the mate was
  right to jump overboard.  It was better to die like a man.
  To die like a sailor in blue water, no man can object.  But
  I am captain, and I must not leave my ship.  But I shall
  baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to
  the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with
  them I shall tie that which He, It, dare not touch.  And
  then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my
  honour as a captain.  I am growing weaker, and the night is
  coming on.  If He can look me in the face again, I may not
  have time to act. . .  If we are wrecked, mayhap this bottle
  may be found, and those who find it may understand.  If
  not . . . well, then all men shall know that I have been
  true to my trust.  God and the Blessed Virgin and the
  Saints help a poor ignorant soul trying to do his duty . . .


Of course the verdict was an open one.  There is no evidence
to adduce, and whether or not the man himself committed the
murders there is now none to say.  The folk here hold almost
universally that the captain is simply a hero, and he is to be
given a public funeral.  Already it is arranged that his body
is to be taken with a train of boats up the Esk for a piece
and then brought back to Tate Hill Pier and up the abbey steps,
for he is to be buried in the churchyard on the cliff.  The
owners of more than a hundred boats have already given in their
names as wishing to follow him to the grave.

No trace has ever been found of the great dog, at which there is
much mourning, for, with public opinion in its present state, he
would, I believe, be adopted by the town.  Tomorrow will see the
funeral, and so will end this one more 'mystery of the sea'.



MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

8 August.--Lucy was very restless all night, and I too, could not
sleep.  The storm was fearful, and as it boomed loudly among the
chimney pots, it made me shudder.  When a sharp puff came it seemed to
be like a distant gun.  Strangely enough, Lucy did not wake, but she
got up twice and dressed herself.  Fortunately, each time I awoke in
time and managed to undress her without waking her, and got her back to
bed.  It is a very strange thing, this sleep-walking, for as soon as
her will is thwarted in any physical way, her intention, if there be
any, disappears, and she yields herself almost exactly to the routine
of her life.

Early in the morning we both got up and went down to the harbour to see
if anything had happened in the night.  There were very few people
about, and though the sun was bright, and the air clear and fresh, the
big, grim-looking waves, that seemed dark themselves because the foam
that topped them was like snow, forced themselves in through the mouth
of the harbour, like a bullying man going through a crowd.  Somehow I
felt glad that Jonathan was not on the sea last night, but on land.
But, oh, is he on land or sea?  Where is he, and how?  I am getting
fearfully anxious about him.  If I only knew what to do, and could do
anything!


10 August.--The funeral of the poor sea captain today was most
touching.  Every boat in the harbour seemed to be there, and the coffin
was carried by captains all the way from Tate Hill Pier up to the
churchyard.  Lucy came with me, and we went early to our old seat,
whilst the cortege of boats went up the river to the Viaduct and came
down again.  We had a lovely view, and saw the procession nearly all
the way.  The poor fellow was laid to rest near our seat so that we
stood on it, when the time came and saw everything.

Poor Lucy seemed much upset.  She was restless and uneasy all the time,
and I cannot but think that her dreaming at night is telling on her.
She is quite odd in one thing.  She will not admit to me that there is
any cause for restlessness, or if there be, she does not understand it
herself.

There is an additional cause in that poor Mr. Swales was found dead
this morning on our seat, his neck being broken.  He had evidently, as
the doctor said, fallen back in the seat in some sort of fright, for
there was a look of fear and horror on his face that the men said made
them shudder.  Poor dear old man!

Lucy is so sweet and sensitive that she feels influences more acutely
than other people do.  Just now she was quite upset by a little thing
which I did not much heed, though I am myself very fond of animals.

One of the men who came up here often to look for the boats was
followed by his dog.  The dog is always with him.  They are both quiet
persons, and I never saw the man angry, nor heard the dog bark.  During
the service the dog would not come to its master, who was on the seat
with us, but kept a few yards off, barking and howling.  Its master
spoke to it gently, and then harshly, and then angrily.  But it would
neither come nor cease to make a noise.  It was in a fury, with its
eyes savage, and all its hair bristling out like a cat's tail when puss
is on the war path.

Finally the man too got angry, and jumped down and kicked the dog, and
then took it by the scruff of the neck and half dragged and half threw
it on the tombstone on which the seat is fixed.  The moment it touched
the stone the poor thing began to tremble.  It did not try to get away,
but crouched down, quivering and cowering, and was in such a pitiable
state of terror that I tried, though without effect, to comfort it.

Lucy was full of pity, too, but she did not attempt to touch the dog,
but looked at it in an agonised sort of way.  I greatly fear that she
is of too super sensitive a nature to go through the world without
trouble.  She will be dreaming of this tonight, I am sure.  The whole
agglomeration of things, the ship steered into port by a dead man, his
attitude, tied to the wheel with a crucifix and beads, the touching
funeral, the dog, now furious and now in terror, will all afford
material for her dreams.

I think it will be best for her to go to bed tired out physically, so I
shall take her for a long walk by the cliffs to Robin Hood's Bay and
back.  She ought not to have much inclination for sleep-walking then.




CHAPTER 8


MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL

Same day, 11 o'clock P.M.--Oh, but I am tired!  If it were not that I
had made my diary a duty I should not open it tonight.  We had a lovely
walk.  Lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some
dear cows who came nosing towards us in a field close to the
lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us.  I believe we forgot
everything, except of course, personal fear, and it seemed to wipe the
slate clean and give us a fresh start.  We had a capital 'severe tea'
at Robin Hood's Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow
window right over the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand.  I believe
we should have shocked the 'New Woman' with our appetites.  Men are
more tolerant, bless them!  Then we walked home with some, or rather
many, stoppages to rest, and with our hearts full of a constant dread
of wild bulls.

Lucy was really tired, and we intended to creep off to bed as soon as
we could.  The young curate came in, however, and Mrs. Westenra asked
him to stay for supper.  Lucy and I had both a fight for it with the
dusty miller.  I know it was a hard fight on my part, and I am quite
heroic.  I think that some day the bishops must get together and see
about breeding up a new class of curates, who don't take supper, no
matter how hard they may be pressed to, and who will know when girls
are tired.

Lucy is asleep and breathing softly.  She has more colour in her cheeks
than usual, and looks, oh so sweet.  If Mr. Holmwood fell in love with
her seeing her only in the drawing room, I wonder what he would say if
he saw her now.  Some of the 'New Women' writers will some day start an
idea that men and women should be allowed to see each other asleep
before proposing or accepting.  But I suppose the 'New Woman' won't
condescend in future to accept.  She will do the proposing herself.  And
a nice job she will make of it too!  There's some consolation in that.
I am so happy tonight, because dear Lucy seems better.  I really
believe she has turned the corner, and that we are over her troubles
with dreaming.  I should be quite happy if I only knew if Jonathan . . .
God bless and keep him.


11 August.--Diary again.  No sleep now, so I may as well write.  I am
too agitated to sleep.  We have had such an adventure, such an
agonizing experience.  I fell asleep as soon as I had closed my diary.
. . .  Suddenly I became broad awake, and sat up, with a horrible sense
of fear upon me, and of some feeling of emptiness around me.  The room
was dark, so I could not see Lucy's bed.  I stole across and felt for
her.  The bed was empty.  I lit a match and found that she was not in
the room.  The door was shut, but not locked, as I had left it.  I feared
to wake her mother, who has been more than usually ill lately, so threw
on some clothes and got ready to look for her.  As I was leaving the
room it struck me that the clothes she wore might give me some clue to
her dreaming intention.  Dressing-gown would mean house, dress outside.
Dressing-gown and dress were both in their places.  "Thank God," I said
to myself, "she cannot be far, as she is only in her nightdress."

I ran downstairs and looked in the sitting room.  Not there!  Then I
looked in all the other rooms of the house, with an ever-growing fear
chilling my heart.  Finally, I came to the hall door and found it open.
It was not wide open, but the catch of the lock had not caught.  The
people of the house are careful to lock the door every night, so I
feared that Lucy must have gone out as she was.  There was no time to
think of what might happen.  A vague over-mastering fear obscured all
details.

I took a big, heavy shawl and ran out.  The clock was striking one as I
was in the Crescent, and there was not a soul in sight.  I ran along
the North Terrace, but could see no sign of the white figure which I
expected.  At the edge of the West Cliff above the pier I looked across
the harbour to the East Cliff, in the hope or fear, I don't know which,
of seeing Lucy in our favourite seat.

There was a bright full moon, with heavy black, driving clouds, which
threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as
they sailed across.  For a moment or two I could see nothing, as the
shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church and all around it.  Then
as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the abbey coming into
view, and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut
moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible.
Whatever my expectation was, it was not disappointed, for there, on our
favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining
figure, snowy white.  The coming of the cloud was too quick for me to
see much, for shadow shut down on light almost immediately, but it
seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the
white figure shone, and bent over it.  What it was, whether man or
beast, I could not tell.

I did not wait to catch another glance, but flew down the steep steps
to the pier and along by the fish-market to the bridge, which was the
only way to reach the East Cliff.  The town seemed as dead, for not a
soul did I see.  I rejoiced that it was so, for I wanted no witness of
poor Lucy's condition.  The time and distance seemed endless, and my
knees trembled and my breath came laboured as I toiled up the endless
steps to the abbey.  I must have gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as
if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my
body were rusty.

When I got almost to the top I could see the seat and the white figure,
for I was now close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of
shadow.  There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over
the half-reclining white figure.  I called in fright, "Lucy!  Lucy!"
and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white
face and red, gleaming eyes.

Lucy did not answer, and I ran on to the entrance of the churchyard.
As I entered, the church was between me and the seat, and for a minute
or so I lost sight of her.  When I came in view again the cloud had
passed, and the moonlight struck so brilliantly that I could see Lucy
half reclining with her head lying over the back of the seat.  She was
quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living thing about.

When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep.  Her lips
were parted, and she was breathing, not softly as usual with her, but
in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every
breath.  As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled
the collar of her nightdress close around her, as though she felt the
cold.  I flung the warm shawl over her, and drew the edges tight around
her neck, for I dreaded lest she should get some deadly chill from the
night air, unclad as she was.  I feared to wake her all at once, so, in
order to have my hands free to help her, I fastened the shawl at her
throat with a big safety pin.  But I must have been clumsy in my
anxiety and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her
breathing became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and
moaned.  When I had her carefully wrapped up I put my shoes on her
feet, and then began very gently to wake her.

At first she did not respond, but gradually she became more and more
uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing occasionally.  At last, as
time was passing fast, and for many other reasons, I wished to get her
home at once, I shook her forcibly, till finally she opened her eyes
and awoke.  She did not seem surprised to see me, as, of course, she
did not realize all at once where she was.

Lucy always wakes prettily, and even at such a time, when her body must
have been chilled with cold, and her mind somewhat appalled at waking
unclad in a churchyard at night, she did not lose her grace.  She
trembled a little, and clung to me.  When I told her to come at once
with me home, she rose without a word, with the obedience of a child.
As we passed along, the gravel hurt my feet, and Lucy noticed me wince.
She stopped and wanted to insist upon my taking my shoes, but I would
not.  However, when we got to the pathway outside the chruchyard, where
there was a puddle of water, remaining from the storm, I daubed my feet
with mud, using each foot in turn on the other, so that as we went
home, no one, in case we should meet any one, should notice my bare
feet.

Fortune favoured us, and we got home without meeting a soul.  Once we
saw a man, who seemed not quite sober, passing along a street in front
of us.  But we hid in a door till he had disappeared up an opening such
as there are here, steep little closes, or 'wynds', as they call them
in Scotland.  My heart beat so loud all the time sometimes I thought I
should faint.  I was filled with anxiety about Lucy, not only for her
health, lest she should suffer from the exposure, but for her
reputation in case the story should get wind.  When we got in, and had
washed our feet, and had said a prayer of thankfulness together, I
tucked her into bed.  Before falling asleep she asked, even implored,
me not to say a word to any one, even her mother, about her
sleep-walking adventure.

I hesitated at first, to promise, but on thinking of the state of her
mother's health, and how the knowledge of such a thing would fret her,
and think too, of how such a story might become distorted, nay,
infallibly would, in case it should leak out, I thought it wiser to do
so.  I hope I did right.  I have locked the door, and the key is tied
to my wrist, so perhaps I shall not be again disturbed.  Lucy is
sleeping soundly.  The reflex of the dawn is high and far over the
sea . . .


Same day, noon.--All goes well.  Lucy slept till I woke her and seemed
not to have even changed her side.  The adventure of the night does not
seem to have harmed her, on the contrary, it has benefited her, for she
looks better this morning than she has done for weeks.  I was sorry to
notice that my clumsiness with the safety-pin hurt her.  Indeed, it
might have been serious, for the skin of her throat was pierced.  I
must have pinched up a piece of loose skin and have transfixed it, for
there are two little red points like pin-pricks, and on the band of her
nightdress was a drop of blood.  When I apologised and was concerned
about it, she laughed and petted me, and said she did not even feel it.
Fortunately it cannot leave a scar, as it is so tiny.


Same day, night.--We passed a happy day.  The air was clear, and the
sun bright, and there was a cool breeze.  We took our lunch to Mulgrave
Woods, Mrs. Westenra driving by the road and Lucy and I walking by the
cliff-path and joining her at the gate.  I felt a little sad myself,
for I could not but feel how absolutely happy it would have been had
Jonathan been with me.  But there!  I must only be patient.  In the
evening we strolled in the Casino Terrace, and heard some good music by
Spohr and Mackenzie, and went to bed early.  Lucy seems more restful
than she has been for some time, and fell asleep at once.  I shall lock
the door and secure the key the same as before, though I do not expect
any trouble tonight.


12 August.--My expectations were wrong, for twice during the night I
was wakened by Lucy trying to get out.  She seemed, even in her sleep,
to be a little impatient at finding the door shut, and went back to bed
under a sort of protest.  I woke with the dawn, and heard the birds
chirping outside of the window.  Lucy woke, too, and I was glad to see,
was even better than on the previous morning.  All her old gaiety of
manner seemed to have come back, and she came and snuggled in beside me
and told me all about Arthur.  I told her how anxious I was about
Jonathan, and then she tried to comfort me.  Well, she succeeded
somewhat, for, though sympathy can't alter facts, it can make them more
bearable.


13 August.--Another quiet day, and to bed with the key on my wrist as
before.  Again I awoke in the night, and found Lucy sitting up in bed,
still asleep, pointing to the window.  I got up quietly, and pulling
aside the blind, looked out.  It was brilliant moonlight, and the soft
effect of the light over the sea and sky, merged together in one great
silent mystery, was beautiful beyond words.  Between me and the
moonlight flitted a great bat, coming and going in great whirling
circles.  Once or twice it came quite close, but was, I suppose,
frightened at seeing me, and flitted away across the harbour towards
the abbey.  When I came back from the window Lucy had lain down again,
and was sleeping peacefully.  She did not stir again all night.


14 August.--On the East Cliff, reading and writing all day.  Lucy seems
to have become as much in love with the spot as I am, and it is hard to
get her away from it when it is time to come home for lunch or tea or
dinner.  This afternoon she made a funny remark.  We were coming home
for dinner, and had come to the top of the steps up from the West Pier
and stopped to look at the view, as we generally do.  The setting sun,
low down in the sky, was just dropping behind Kettleness.  The red
light was thrown over on the East Cliff and the old abbey, and seemed
to bathe everything in a beautiful rosy glow.  We were silent for a
while, and suddenly Lucy murmured as if to herself . . .

"His red eyes again!  They are just the same."  It was such an odd
expression, coming apropos of nothing, that it quite startled me.  I
slewed round a little, so as to see Lucy well without seeming to stare
at her, and saw that she was in a half dreamy state, with an odd look
on her face that I could not quite make out, so I said nothing, but
followed her eyes.  She appeared to be looking over at our own seat,
whereon was a dark figure seated alone.  I was quite a little startled
myself, for it seemed for an instant as if the stranger had great eyes
like burning flames, but a second look dispelled the illusion.  The red
sunlight was shining on the windows of St. Mary's Church behind our
seat, and as the sun dipped there was just sufficient change in the
refraction and reflection to make it appear as if the light moved.  I
called Lucy's attention to the peculiar effect, and she became herself
with a start, but she looked sad all the same.  It may have been that
she was thinking of that terrible night up there.  We never refer to
it, so I said nothing, and we went home to dinner.  Lucy had a headache
and went early to bed.  I saw her asleep, and went out for a little
stroll myself.

I walked along the cliffs to the westward, and was full of sweet
sadness, for I was thinking of Jonathan.  When coming home, it was then
bright moonlight, so bright that, though the front of our part of the
Crescent was in shadow, everything could be well seen, I threw a glance
up at our window, and saw Lucy's head leaning out.  I opened my
handkerchief and waved it.  She did not notice or make any movement
whatever.  Just then, the moonlight crept round an angle of the
building, and the light fell on the window.  There distinctly was Lucy
with her head lying up against the side of the window sill and her eyes
shut.  She was fast asleep, and by her, seated on the window sill, was
something that looked like a good-sized bird.  I was afraid she might
get a chill, so I ran upstairs, but as I came into the room she was
moving back to her bed, fast asleep, and breathing heavily.  She was
holding her hand to her throat, as though to protect if from the cold.

I did not wake her, but tucked her up warmly.  I have taken care that
the door is locked and the window securely fastened.

She looks so sweet as she sleeps, but she is paler than is her wont,
and there is a drawn, haggard look under her eyes which I do not like.
I fear she is fretting about something.  I wish I could find out what it
is.


15 August.--Rose later than usual.  Lucy was languid and tired, and
slept on after we had been called.  We had a happy surprise at
breakfast.  Arthur's father is better, and wants the marriage to come
off soon.  Lucy is full of quiet joy, and her mother is glad and sorry
at once.  Later on in the day she told me the cause.  She is grieved to
lose Lucy as her very own, but she is rejoiced that she is soon to have
some one to protect her.  Poor dear, sweet lady!  She confided to me
that she has got her death warrant.  She has not told Lucy, and made me
promise secrecy.  Her doctor told her that within a few months, at
most, she must die, for her heart is weakening.  At any time, even now,
a sudden shock would be almost sure to kill her.  Ah, we were wise to
keep from her the affair of the dreadful night of Lucy's sleep-walking.


17 August.--No diary for two whole days.  I have not had the heart to
write.  Some sort of shadowy pall seems to be coming over our
happiness.  No news from Jonathan, and Lucy seems to be growing weaker,
whilst her mother's hours are numbering to a close.  I do not
understand Lucy's fading away as she is doing.  She eats well and
sleeps well, and enjoys the fresh air, but all the time the roses in
her cheeks are fading, and she gets weaker and more languid day by day.
At night I hear her gasping as if for air.

I keep the key of our door always fastened to my wrist at night, but
she gets up and walks about the room, and sits at the open window.
Last night I found her leaning out when I woke up, and when I tried to
wake her I could not.

She was in a faint.  When I managed to restore her, she was weak as
water, and cried silently between long, painful struggles for breath.
When I asked her how she came to be at the window she shook her head
and turned away.

I trust her feeling ill may not be from that unlucky prick of the
safety-pin.  I looked at her throat just now as she lay asleep, and the
tiny wounds seem not to have healed.  They are still open, and, if
anything, larger than before, and the edges of them are faintly white.
They are like little white dots with red centres.  Unless they heal
within a day or two, I shall insist on the doctor seeing about them.



LETTER, SAMUEL F. BILLINGTON & SON, SOLICITORS WHITBY,
TO MESSRS. CARTER, PATERSON & CO., LONDON.

17 August

"Dear Sirs,--Herewith please receive invoice of goods sent by Great
Northern Railway.  Same are to be delivered at Carfax, near
Purfleet, immediately on receipt at goods station King's Cross.  The
house is at present empty, but enclosed please find keys, all of
which are labelled.

"You will please deposit the boxes, fifty in number, which form the
consignment, in the partially ruined building forming part of the
house and marked 'A' on rough diagrams enclosed.  Your agent will
easily recognize the locality, as it is the ancient chapel of the
mansion.  The goods leave by the train at 9:30 tonight, and will be
due at King's Cross at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon.  As our client
wishes the delivery made as soon as possible, we shall be obliged by
your having teams ready at King's Cross at the time named and
forthwith conveying the goods to destination.  In order to obviate
any delays possible through any routine requirements as to payment
in your departments, we enclose cheque herewith for ten pounds,
receipt of which please acknowledge.  Should the charge be less than
this amount, you can return balance, if greater, we shall at once
send cheque for difference on hearing from you.  You are to leave
the keys on coming away in the main hall of the house, where the
proprietor may get them on his entering the house by means of his
duplicate key.

"Pray do not take us as exceeding the bounds of business courtesy
in pressing you in all ways to use the utmost expedition.

"We are, dear Sirs,
Faithfully yours,
SAMUEL F. BILLINGTON & SON"



LETTER, MESSRS.  CARTER, PATERSON & CO., LONDON,
TO MESSRS. BILLINGTON & SON, WHITBY.

21 August.

"Dear Sirs,--We beg to acknowledge 10 pounds received and to return
cheque of 1 pound, 17s, 9d, amount of overplus, as shown in
receipted account herewith.  Goods are delivered in exact accordance
with instructions, and keys left in parcel in main hall, as
directed.

"We are, dear Sirs,
Yours respectfully,
Pro CARTER, PATERSON & CO."



MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL.

18 August.--I am happy today, and write sitting on the seat in the
churchyard.  Lucy is ever so much better.  Last night she slept well
all night, and did not disturb me once.

The roses seem coming back already to her cheeks, though she is still
sadly pale and wan-looking.  If she were in any way anemic I could
understand it, but she is not.  She is in gay spirits and full of life
and cheerfulness.  All the morbid reticence seems to have passed from
her, and she has just reminded me, as if I needed any reminding, of
that night, and that it was here, on this very seat, I found her
asleep.

As she told me she tapped playfully with the heel of her boot on the
stone slab and said,

"My poor little feet didn't make much noise then!  I daresay poor old
Mr. Swales would have told me that it was because I didn't want to wake
up Geordie."

As she was in such a communicative humour, I asked her if she had
dreamed at all that night.

Before she answered, that sweet, puckered look came into her forehead,
which Arthur, I call him Arthur from her habit, says he loves, and
indeed, I don't wonder that he does.  Then she went on in a
half-dreaming kind of way, as if trying to recall it to herself.

"I didn't quite dream, but it all seemed to be real.  I only wanted to
be here in this spot.  I don't know why, for I was afraid of something,
I don't know what.  I remember, though I suppose I was asleep, passing
through the streets and over the bridge.  A fish leaped as I went by,
and I leaned over to look at it, and I heard a lot of dogs howling.  The
whole town seemed as if it must be full of dogs all howling at once, as
I went up the steps.  Then I had a vague memory of something long and
dark with red eyes, just as we saw in the sunset, and something very
sweet and very bitter all around me at once.  And then I seemed sinking
into deep green water, and there was a singing in my ears, as I have
heard there is to drowning men, and then everything seemed passing away
from me.  My soul seemed to go out from my body and float about the
air.  I seem to remember that once the West Lighthouse was right under
me, and then there was a sort of agonizing feeling, as if I were in an
earthquake, and I came back and found you shaking my body.  I saw you
do it before I felt you."

Then she began to laugh.  It seemed a little uncanny to me, and I
listened to her breathlessly.  I did not quite like it, and thought it
better not to keep her mind on the subject, so we drifted on to another
subject, and Lucy was like her old self again.  When we got home the
fresh breeze had braced her up, and her pale cheeks were really more
rosy.  Her mother rejoiced when she saw her, and we all spent a very
happy evening together.


19 August.--Joy, joy, joy!  Although not all joy.  At last, news of
Jonathan.  The dear fellow has been ill, that is why he did not write.
I am not afraid to think it or to say it, now that I know.  Mr. Hawkins
sent me on the letter, and wrote himself, oh so kindly.  I am to leave
in the morning and go over to Jonathan, and to help to nurse him if
necessary, and to bring him home.  Mr. Hawkins says it would not be a
bad thing if we were to be married out there.  I have cried over the
good Sister's letter till I can feel it wet against my bosom, where it
lies.  It is of Jonathan, and must be near my heart, for he is in my
heart.  My journey is all mapped out, and my luggage ready.  I am only
taking one change of dress.  Lucy will bring my trunk to London and
keep it till I send for it, for it may be that . . .  I must write no
more.  I must keep it to say to Jonathan, my husband.  The letter that
he has seen and touched must comfort me till we meet.



LETTER, SISTER AGATHA, HOSPITAL OF ST. JOSEPH AND
STE. MARY BUDA-PESTH, TO MISS WILLHELMINA MURRAY

12 August,

"Dear Madam.

"I write by desire of Mr. Jonathan Harker, who is himself not strong
enough to write, though progressing well, thanks to God and St.
Joseph and Ste. Mary.  He has been under our care for nearly six
weeks, suffering from a violent brain fever.  He wishes me to convey
his love, and to say that by this post I write for him to Mr. Peter
Hawkins, Exeter, to say, with his dutiful respects, that he is sorry
for his delay, and that all of his work is completed.  He will
require some few weeks' rest in our sanatorium in the hills, but
will then return.  He wishes me to say that he has not sufficient
money with him, and that he would like to pay for his staying here,
so that others who need shall not be wanting for help.

"Believe me,

"Yours, with sympathy
and all blessings.
Sister Agatha

"P.S.--My patient being asleep, I open this to let you know
something more.  He has told me all about you, and that you are
shortly to be his wife.  All blessings to you both!  He has had some
fearful shock, so says our doctor, and in his delirium his ravings
have been dreadful, of wolves and poison and blood, of ghosts and
demons, and I fear to say of what.  Be careful of him always that
there may be nothing to excite him of this kind for a long time to
come.  The traces of such an illness as his do not lightly die away.
We should have written long ago, but we knew nothing of his friends,
and there was nothing on him, nothing that anyone could understand.
He came in the train from Klausenburg, and the guard was told by the
station master there that he rushed into the station shouting for a
ticket for home.  Seeing from his violent demeanour that he was
English, they gave him a ticket for the furthest station on the way
thither that the train reached.

"Be assured that he is well cared for.  He has won all hearts by his
sweetness and gentleness.  He is truly getting on well, and I have
no doubt will in a few weeks be all himself.  But be careful of him
for safety's sake.  There are, I pray God and St. Joseph and Ste.
Mary, many, many, happy years for you both."



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

19 August.--Strange and sudden change in Renfield last night.  About
eight o'clock he began to get excited and sniff about as a dog does
when setting.  The attendant was struck by his manner, and knowing my
interest in him, encouraged him to talk.  He is usually respectful to
the attendant and at times servile, but tonight, the man tells me, he
was quite haughty.  Would not condescend to talk with him at all.

All he would say was, "I don't want to talk to you.  You don't count
now.  The master is at hand."

The attendant thinks it is some sudden form of religious mania which
has seized him.  If so, we must look out for squalls, for a strong man
with homicidal and religious mania at once might be dangerous.  The
combination is a dreadful one.

At nine o'clock I visited him myself.  His attitude to me was the same
as that to the attendant.  In his sublime self-feeling the difference
between myself and the attendant seemed to him as nothing.  It looks
like religious mania, and he will soon think that he himself is God.

These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for
an Omnipotent Being.  How these madmen give themselves away!  The real
God taketh heed lest a sparrow fall.  But the God created from human
vanity sees no difference between an eagle and a sparrow.  Oh, if men
only knew!

For half an hour or more Renfield kept getting excited in greater and
greater degree.  I did not pretend to be watching him, but I kept
strict observation all the same.  All at once that shifty look came
into his eyes which we always see when a madman has seized an idea, and
with it the shifty movement of the head and back which asylum
attendants come to know so well.  He became quite quiet, and went and
sat on the edge of his bed resignedly, and looked into space with
lack-luster eyes.

I thought I would find out if his apathy were real or only assumed, and
tried to lead him to talk of his pets, a theme which had never failed
to excite his attention.

At first he made no reply, but at length said testily, "Bother them
all!  I don't care a pin about them."

"What?" I said.  "You don't mean to tell me you don't care about
spiders?"  (Spiders at present are his hobby and the notebook is filling
up with columns of small figures.)

To this he answered enigmatically, "The Bride maidens rejoice the eyes
that wait the coming of the bride.  But when the bride draweth nigh,
then the maidens shine not to the eyes that are filled."

He would not explain himself, but remained obstinately seated on his
bed all the time I remained with him.

I am weary tonight and low in spirits.  I cannot but think of Lucy, and
how different things might have been.  If I don't sleep at once,
chloral, the modern Morpheus!  I must be careful not to let it grow
into a habit.  No, I shall take none tonight!  I have thought of Lucy,
and I shall not dishonour her by mixing the two.  If need be, tonight
shall be sleepless.


Later.--Glad I made the resolution, gladder that I kept to it.  I had
lain tossing about, and had heard the clock strike only twice, when the
night watchman came to me, sent up from the ward, to say that Renfield
had escaped.  I threw on my clothes and ran down at once.  My patient
is too dangerous a person to be roaming about.  Those ideas of his
might work out dangerously with strangers.

The attendant was waiting for me.  He said he had seen him not ten
minutes before, seemingly asleep in his bed, when he had looked through
the observation trap in the door.  His attention was called by the
sound of the window being wrenched out.  He ran back and saw his feet
disappear through the window, and had at once sent up for me.  He was
only in his night gear, and cannot be far off.

The attendant thought it would be more useful to watch where he should
go than to follow him, as he might lose sight of him whilst getting out
of the building by the door.  He is a bulky man, and couldn't get
through the window.

I am thin, so, with his aid, I got out, but feet foremost, and as we
were only a few feet above ground landed unhurt.

The attendant told me the patient had gone to the left, and had taken a
straight line, so I ran as quickly as I could.  As I got through the
belt of trees I saw a white figure scale the high wall which separates
our grounds from those of the deserted house.

I ran back at once, told the watchman to get three or four men
immediately and follow me into the grounds of Carfax, in case our
friend might be dangerous.  I got a ladder myself, and crossing the
wall, dropped down on the other side.  I could see Renfield's figure
just disappearing behind the angle of the house, so I ran after him.  On
the far side of the house I found him pressed close against the old
iron-bound oak door of the chapel.

He was talking, apparently to some one, but I was afraid to go near
enough to hear what he was saying, lest I might frighten him, and he
should run off.

Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked
lunatic, when the fit of escaping is upon him!  After a few minutes,
however, I could see that he did not take note of anything around him,
and so ventured to draw nearer to him, the more so as my men had now
crossed the wall and were closing him in.  I heard him say . . .

"I am here to do your bidding, Master.  I am your slave, and you will
reward me, for I shall be faithful.  I have worshipped you long and afar
off.  Now that you are near, I await your commands, and you will not
pass me by, will you, dear Master, in your distribution of good
things?"

He is a selfish old beggar anyhow.  He thinks of the loaves and fishes
even when he believes his is in a real Presence.  His manias make a
startling combination.  When we closed in on him he fought like a
tiger.  He is immensely strong, for he was more like a wild beast than
a man.

I never saw a lunatic in such a paroxysm of rage before, and I hope I
shall not again.  It is a mercy that we have found out his strength and
his danger in good time.  With strength and determination like his, he
might have done wild work before he was caged.

He is safe now, at any rate.  Jack Sheppard himself couldn't get free
from the strait waistcoat that keeps him restrained, and he's chained
to the wall in the padded room.

His cries are at times awful, but the silences that follow are more
deadly still, for he means murder in every turn and movement.

Just now he spoke coherent words for the first time.  "I shall be
patient, Master.  It is coming, coming, coming!"

So I took the hint, and came too.  I was too excited to sleep, but this
diary has quieted me, and I feel I shall get some sleep tonight.




CHAPTER 9


LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA


Buda-Pesth, 24 August.

"My dearest Lucy,

"I know you will be anxious to hear all that has happened
since we parted at the railway station at Whitby.

"Well, my dear, I got to Hull all right, and caught the boat to
Hamburg, and then the train on here.  I feel that I can hardly
recall anything of the journey, except that I knew I was coming to
Jonathan, and that as I should have to do some nursing, I had better
get all the sleep I could.  I found my dear one, oh, so thin and
pale and weak-looking. All the resolution has gone out of his dear
eyes, and that quiet dignity which I told you was in his face has
vanished.  He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember
anything that has happened to him for a long time past.  At least,
he wants me to believe so, and I shall never ask.

"He has had some terrible shock, and I fear it might tax his poor
brain if he were to try to recall it.  Sister Agatha, who is a good
creature and a born nurse, tells me that he wanted her to tell me
what they were, but she would only cross herself, and say she would
never tell.  That the ravings of the sick were the secrets of God,
and that if a nurse through her vocation should hear them, she
should respect her trust.

"She is a sweet, good soul, and the next day, when she saw I was
troubled, she opened up the subject my poor dear raved about, added,
'I can tell you this much, my dear.  That it was not about anything
which he has done wrong himself, and you, as his wife to be, have no
cause to be concerned.  He has not forgotten you or what he owes to
you.  His fear was of great and terrible things, which no mortal can
treat of.'

"I do believe the dear soul thought I might be jealous lest my poor
dear should have fallen in love with any other girl.  The idea of my
being jealous about Jonathan!  And yet, my dear, let me whisper, I
felt a thrill of joy through me when I knew that no other woman was
a cause for trouble.  I am now sitting by his bedside, where I can
see his face while he sleeps.  He is waking!

"When he woke he asked me for his coat, as he wanted to get
something from the pocket.  I asked Sister Agatha, and she brought
all his things.  I saw amongst them was his notebook, and was was
going to ask him to let me look at it, for I knew that I might find
some clue to his trouble, but I suppose he must have seen my wish in
my eyes, for he sent me over to the window, saying he wanted to be
quite alone for a moment.

"Then he called me back, and he said to me very solemnly,
'Wilhelmina', I knew then that he was in deadly earnest, for he has
never called me by that name since he asked me to marry him, 'You
know, dear, my ideas of the trust between husband and wife.  There
should be no secret, no concealment.  I have had a great shock, and
when I try to think of what it is I feel my head spin round, and I
do not know if it was real of the dreaming of a madman.  You know I
had brain fever, and that is to be mad.  The secret is here, and I
do not want to know it.  I want to take up my life here, with our
marriage.'  For, my dear, we had decided to be married as soon as
the formalities are complete.  'Are you willing, Wilhelmina, to
share my ignorance?  Here is the book.  Take it and keep it, read it
if you will, but never let me know unless, indeed, some solemn duty
should come upon me to go back to the bitter hours, asleep or awake,
sane or mad, recorded here.'  He fell back exhausted, and I put the
book under his pillow, and kissed him.  I have asked Sister Agatha
to beg the Superior to let our wedding be this afternoon, and am
waiting her reply . . ."


"She has come and told me that the Chaplain of the English mission
church has been sent for.  We are to be married in an hour, or as
soon after as Jonathan awakes."

"Lucy, the time has come and gone.  I feel very solemn, but very,
very happy.  Jonathan woke a little after the hour, and all was
ready, and he sat up in bed, propped up with pillows.  He answered
his 'I will' firmly and strong.  I could hardly speak.  My heart was
so full that even those words seemed to choke me.

"The dear sisters were so kind.  Please, God, I shall never, never
forget them, nor the grave and sweet responsibilities I have taken
upon me.  I must tell you of my wedding present.  When the chaplain
and the sisters had left me alone with my husband--oh, Lucy, it is
the first time I have written the words 'my husband'--left me alone
with my husband, I took the book from under his pillow, and wrapped
it up in white paper, and tied it with a little bit of pale blue
ribbon which was round my neck, and sealed it over the knot with
sealing wax, and for my seal I used my wedding ring.  Then I kissed
it and showed it to my husband, and told him that I would keep it
so, and then it would be an outward and visible sign for us all our
lives that we trusted each other, that I would never open it unless
it were for his own dear sake or for the sake of some stern duty.
Then he took my hand in his, and oh, Lucy, it was the first time he
took his wife's hand, and said that it was the dearest thing in all
the wide world, and that he would go through all the past again to
win it, if need be.  The poor dear meant to have said a part of the
past, but he cannot think of time yet, and I shall not wonder if at
first he mixes up not only the month, but the year.

"Well, my dear, what could I say?  I could only tell him that I was
the happiest woman in all the wide world, and that I had nothing to
give him except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these
went my love and duty for all the days of my life.  And, my dear,
when he kissed me, and drew me to him with his poor weak hands, it
was like a solemn pledge between us.

"Lucy dear, do you know why I tell you all this?  It is not only
because it is all sweet to me, but because you have been, and are,
very dear to me.  It was my privilege to be your friend and guide
when you came from the schoolroom to prepare for the world of life.
I want you to see now, and with the eyes of a very happy wife,
whither duty has led me, so that in your own married life you too
may be all happy, as I am.  My dear, please Almighty God, your life
may be all it promises, a long day of sunshine, with no harsh wind,
no forgetting duty, no distrust.  I must not wish you no pain, for
that can never be, but I do hope you will be always as happy as I am
now.  Goodbye, my dear.  I shall post this at once, and perhaps,
write you very soon again.  I must stop, for Jonathan is waking.  I
must attend my husband!

"Your ever-loving
Mina Harker."



LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA HARKER.

Whitby, 30 August.

"My dearest Mina,

"Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your
own home with your husband.  I wish you were coming home soon enough
to stay with us here.  The strong air would soon restore Jonathan.
It has quite restored me.  I have an appetite like a cormorant, am
full of life, and sleep well.  You will be glad to know that I have
quite given up walking in my sleep.  I think I have not stirred out
of my bed for a week, that is when I once got into it at night.
Arthur says I am getting fat.  By the way, I forgot to tell you that
Arthur is here.  We have such walks and drives, and rides, and
rowing, and tennis, and fishing together, and I love him more than
ever.  He tells me that he loves me more, but I doubt that, for at
first he told me that he couldn't love me more than he did then.
But this is nonsense.  There he is, calling to me.  So no more just
at present from your loving,

"Lucy.

"P.S.--Mother sends her love.  She seems better, poor dear.

"P.P.S.--We are to be married on 28 September."



DR. SEWARDS DIARY

20 August.--The case of Renfield grows even more interesting.  He has
now so far quieted that there are spells of cessation from his
passion.  For the first week after his attack he was perpetually
violent.  Then one night, just as the moon rose, he grew quiet, and
kept murmuring to himself.  "Now I can wait.  Now I can wait."

The attendant came to tell me, so I ran down at once to have a look at
him.  He was still in the strait waistcoat and in the padded room, but
the suffused look had gone from his face, and his eyes had something
of their old pleading.  I might almost say, cringing, softness.  I was
satisfied with his present condition, and directed him to be relieved.
The attendants hesitated, but finally carried out my wishes without
protest.

It was a strange thing that the patient had humour enough to see their
distrust, for, coming close to me, he said in a whisper, all the while
looking furtively at them, "They think I could hurt you!  Fancy me
hurting you!  The fools!"

It was soothing, somehow, to the feelings to find myself disassociated
even in the mind of this poor madman from the others, but all the same
I do not follow his thought.  Am I to take it that I have anything in
common with him, so that we are, as it were, to stand together.  Or
has he to gain from me some good so stupendous that my well being is
needful to Him?  I must find out later on.  Tonight he will not speak.
Even the offer of a kitten or even a full-grown cat will not tempt
him.

He will only say, "I don't take any stock in cats.  I have more to
think of now, and I can wait.  I can wait."

After a while I left him.  The attendant tells me that he was quiet
until just before dawn, and that then he began to get uneasy, and at
length violent, until at last he fell into a paroxysm which exhausted
him so that he swooned into a sort of coma.


. . . Three nights has the same thing happened, violent all day then
quiet from moonrise to sunrise.  I wish I could get some clue to the
cause.  It would almost seem as if there was some influence which came
and went.  Happy thought!  We shall tonight play sane wits against mad
ones.  He escaped before without our help.  Tonight he shall escape
with it.  We shall give him a chance, and have the men ready to follow
in case they are required.


23 August.--"The expected always happens."  How well Disraeli knew
life.  Our bird when he found the cage open would not fly, so all our
subtle arrangements were for nought.  At any rate, we have proved one
thing, that the spells of quietness last a reasonable time.  We shall
in future be able to ease his bonds for a few hours each day.  I have
given orders to the night attendant merely to shut him in the padded
room, when once he is quiet, until the hour before sunrise.  The poor
soul's body will enjoy the relief even if his mind cannot appreciate
it.  Hark!  The unexpected again!  I am called.  The patient has once
more escaped.


Later.--Another night adventure.  Renfield artfully waited until the
attendant was entering the room to inspect.  Then he dashed out past
him and flew down the passage.  I sent word for the attendants to
follow.  Again he went into the grounds of the deserted house, and we
found him in the same place, pressed against the old chapel door.
When he saw me he became furious, and had not the attendants seized
him in time, he would have tried to kill me.  As we were holding him a
strange thing happened.  He suddenly redoubled his efforts, and then
as suddenly grew calm.  I looked round instinctively, but could see
nothing.  Then I caught the patient's eye and followed it, but could
trace nothing as it looked into the moonlight sky, except a big bat,
which was flapping its silent and ghostly way to the west.  Bats
usually wheel about, but this one seemed to go straight on, as if it
knew where it was bound for or had some intention of its own.

The patient grew calmer every instant, and presently said, "You
needn't tie me.  I shall go quietly!"  Without trouble, we came back
to the house.  I feel there is something ominous in his calm, and
shall not forget this night.



LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY

Hillingham, 24 August.--I must imitate Mina, and keep writing things
down.  Then we can have long talks when we do meet.  I wonder when it
will be.  I wish she were with me again, for I feel so unhappy.  Last
night I seemed to be dreaming again just as I was at Whitby.  Perhaps
it is the change of air, or getting home again.  It is all dark and
horrid to me, for I can remember nothing.  But I am full of vague
fear, and I feel so weak and worn out.  When Arthur came to lunch he
looked quite grieved when he saw me, and I hadn't the spirit to try to
be cheerful.  I wonder if I could sleep in mother's room tonight.  I
shall make an excuse to try.


25 August.--Another bad night.  Mother did not seem to take to my
proposal.  She seems not too well herself, and doubtless she fears to
worry me.  I tried to keep awake, and succeeded for a while, but when
the clock struck twelve it waked me from a doze, so I must have been
falling asleep.  There was a sort of scratching or flapping at the
window, but I did not mind it, and as I remember no more, I suppose I
must have fallen asleep.  More bad dreams.  I wish I could remember
them.  This morning I am horribly weak.  My face is ghastly pale, and
my throat pains me.  It must be something wrong with my lungs, for I
don't seem to be getting air enough.  I shall try to cheer up when
Arthur comes, or else I know he will be miserable to see me so.



LETTER, ARTHUR TO DR. SEWARD

"Albemarle Hotel, 31 August

"My dear Jack,

"I want you to do me a favour.  Lucy is ill, that is she has no
special disease, but she looks awful, and is getting worse every
day.  I have asked her if there is any cause, I not dare to ask her
mother, for to disturb the poor lady's mind about her daughter in
her present state of health would be fatal.  Mrs. Westenra has
confided to me that her doom is spoken, disease of the heart, though
poor Lucy does not know it yet.  I am sure that there is something
preying on my dear girl's mind.  I am almost distracted when I think
of her.  To look at her gives me a pang.  I told her I should ask
you to see her, and though she demurred at first, I know why, old
fellow, she finally consented.  It will be a painful task for you, I
know, old friend, but it is for her sake, and I must not hesitate to
ask, or you to act.  You are to come to lunch at Hillingham
tomorrow, two o'clock, so as not to arouse any suspicion in Mrs.
Westenra, and after lunch Lucy will take an opportunity of being
alone with you.  I am filled with anxiety, and want to consult with
you alone as soon as I can after you have seen her.  Do not fail!

"Arthur."



TELEGRAM, ARTHUR HOLMWOOD TO SEWARD

1 September

"Am summoned to see my father, who is worse.  Am writing.  Write
me fully by tonight's post to Ring.  Wire me if necessary."



LETTER FROM DR. SEWARD TO ARTHUR HOLMWOOD

2 September

"My dear old fellow,

"With regard to Miss Westenra's health I hasten to let you know at
once that in my opinion there is not any functional disturbance or
any malady that I know of.  At the same time, I am not by any means
satisfied with her appearance. She is woefully different from what
she was when I saw her last.  Of course you must bear in mind that I
did not have full opportunity of examination such as I should wish.
Our very friendship makes a little difficulty which not even medical
science or custom can bridge over.  I had better tell you exactly
what happened, leaving you to draw, in a measure, your own
conclusions.  I shall then say what I have done and propose doing.

"I found Miss Westenra in seemingly gay spirits.  Her mother was
present, and in a few seconds I made up my mind that she was trying
all she knew to mislead her mother and prevent her from being
anxious.  I have no doubt she guesses, if she does not know, what
need of caution there is.

"We lunched alone, and as we all exerted ourselves to be cheerful,
we got, as some kind of reward for our labours, some real
cheerfulness amongst us.  Then Mrs. Westenra went to lie down, and
Lucy was left with me.  We went into her boudoir, and till we got
there her gaiety remained, for the servants were coming and going.

"As soon as the door was closed, however, the mask fell from her
face, and she sank down into a chair with a great sigh, and hid her
eyes with her hand.  When I saw that her high spirits had failed, I
at once took advantage of her reaction to make a diagnosis.

"She said to me very sweetly, 'I cannot tell you how I loathe
talking about myself.'  I reminded her that a doctor's confidence
was sacred, but that you were grievously anxious about her.  She
caught on to my meaning at once, and settled that matter in a word.
'Tell Arthur everything you choose.  I do not care for myself, but
for him!'  So I am quite free.

"I could easily see that she was somewhat bloodless, but I could not
see the usual anemic signs, and by the chance, I was able to test
the actual quality of her blood, for in opening a window which was
stiff a cord gave way, and she cut her hand slightly with broken
glass.  It was a slight matter in itself, but it gave me an evident
chance, and I secured a few drops of the blood and have analysed
them.

"The qualitative analysis give a quite normal condition, and shows,
I should infer, in itself a vigorous state of health.  In other
physical matters I was quite satisfied that there is no need for
anxiety, but as there must be a cause somewhere, I have come to the
conclusion that it must be something mental.

"She complains of difficulty breathing satisfactorily at times, and
of heavy, lethargic sleep, with dreams that frighten her, but
regarding which she can remember nothing.  She says that as a child,
she used to walk in her sleep, and that when in Whitby the habit
came back, and that once she walked out in the night and went to
East Cliff, where Miss Murray found her.  But she assures me that of
late the habit has not returned.

"I am in doubt, and so have done the best thing I know of. I have
written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of
Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in
the world.  I have asked him to come over, and as you told me that
all things were to be at your charge, I have mentioned to him who
you are and your relations to Miss Westenra.  This, my dear fellow,
is in obedience to your wishes, for I am only too proud and happy to
do anything I can for her.

"Van Helsing would, I know, do anything for me for a personal
reason, so no matter on what ground he comes, we must accept his
wishes.  He is a seemingly arbitrary man, this is because he knows
what he is talking about better than any one else.  He is a
philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced
scientists of his day, and he has, I believe, an absolutely open
mind.  This, with an iron nerve, a temper of the ice-brook, and
indomitable resolution, self-command, and toleration exalted from
virtues to blessings, and the kindliest and truest heart that beats,
these form his equipment for the noble work that he is doing for
mankind, work both in theory and practice, for his views are as wide
as his all-embracing sympathy.  I tell you these facts that you may
know why I have such confidence in him.  I have asked him to come at
once.  I shall see Miss Westenra tomorrow again.  She is to meet me
at the Stores, so that I may not alarm her mother by too early a
repetition of my call.

"Yours always."

John Seward




LETTER, ABRAHAM VAN HELSING, MD, DPh, D. Lit, ETC, ETC, TO DR. SEWARD

2 September.

"My good Friend,

"When I received your letter I am already coming to you.  By good
fortune I can leave just at once, without wrong to any of those who
have trusted me.  Were fortune other, then it were bad for those who
have trusted, for I come to my friend when he call me to aid those
he holds dear.  Tell your friend that when that time you suck from
my wound so swiftly the poison of the gangrene from that knife that
our other friend, too nervous, let slip, you did more for him when
he wants my aids and you call for them than all his great fortune
could do.  But it is pleasure added to do for him, your friend, it
is to you that I come.  Have near at hand, and please it so arrange
that we may see the young lady not too late on tomorrow, for it is
likely that I may have to return here that night.  But if need be I
shall come again in three days, and stay longer if it must.  Till
then goodbye, my friend John.

"Van Helsing."



LETTER, DR. SEWARD TO HON. ARTHUR HOLMWOOD

3 September

"My dear Art,

"Van Helsing has come and gone.  He came on with me to Hillingham,
and found that, by Lucy's discretion, her mother was lunching out,
so that we were alone with her.

"Van Helsing made a very careful examination of the patient.  He is
to report to me, and I shall advise you, for of course I was not
present all the time.  He is, I fear, much concerned, but says he
must think.  When I told him of our friendship and how you trust to
me in the matter, he said, 'You must tell him all you think.  Tell
him him what I think, if you can guess it, if you will.  Nay, I am
not jesting.  This is no jest, but life and death, perhaps more.'  I
asked what he meant by that, for he was very serious.  This was when
we had come back to town, and he was having a cup of tea before
starting on his return to Amsterdam.  He would not give me any
further clue.  You must not be angry with me, Art, because his very
reticence means that all his brains are working for her good.  He
will speak plainly enough when the time comes, be sure.  So I told
him I would simply write an account of our visit, just as if I were
doing a descriptive special article for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH.  He
seemed not to notice, but remarked that the smuts of London were not
quite so bad as they used to be when he was a student here.  I am to
get his report tomorrow if he can possibly make it.  In any case I
am to have a letter.

"Well, as to the visit, Lucy was more cheerful than on the day I
first saw her, and certainly looked better.  She had lost something
of the ghastly look that so upset you, and her breathing was normal.
She was very sweet to the Professor (as she always is), and tried to
make him feel at ease, though I could see the poor girl was making a
hard struggle for it.

"I believe Van Helsing saw it, too, for I saw the quick look
under his bushy brows that I knew of old.  Then he began to
chat of all things except ourselves and diseases and with
such an infinite geniality that I could see poor Lucy's
pretense of animation merge into reality.  Then, without
any seeming change, he brought the conversation gently round
to his visit, and suavely said,

"'My dear young miss, I have the so great pleasure because you are
so much beloved.  That is much, my dear, even were there that which
I do not see.  They told me you were down in the spirit, and that
you were of a ghastly pale.  To them I say "Pouf!"'  And he snapped
his fingers at me and went on.  'But you and I shall show them how
wrong they are.  How can he,' and he pointed at me with the same
look and gesture as that with which he pointed me out in his class,
on, or rather after, a particular occasion which he never fails to
remind me of, 'know anything of a young ladies?  He has his madmen
to play with, and to bring them back to happiness, and to those that
love them.  It is much to do, and, oh, but there are rewards in that
we can bestow such happiness.  But the young ladies!  He has no wife
nor daughter, and the young do not tell themselves to the young, but
to the old, like me, who have known so many sorrows and the causes
of them.  So, my dear, we will send him away to smoke the cigarette
in the garden, whiles you and I have little talk all to ourselves.'
I took the hint, and strolled about, and presently the professor
came to the window and called me in.  He looked grave, but said, 'I
have made careful examination, but there is no functional cause.
With you I agree that there has been much blood lost, it has been
but is not.  But the conditions of her are in no way anemic.  I have
asked her to send me her maid, that I may ask just one or two
questions, that so I may not chance to miss nothing.  I know well
what she will say.  And yet there is cause.  There is always cause
for everything.  I must go back home and think.  You must send me
the telegram every day, and if there be cause I shall come again.
The disease, for not to be well is a disease, interest me, and the
sweet, young dear, she interest me too.  She charm me, and for her,
if not for you or disease, I come.'

"As I tell you, he would not say a word more, even when we were
alone.  And so now, Art, you know all I know.  I shall keep stern
watch.  I trust your poor father is rallying.  It must be a terrible
thing to you, my dear old fellow, to be placed in such a position
between two people who are both so dear to you.  I know your idea of
duty to your father, and you are right to stick to it.  But if need
be, I shall send you word to come at once to Lucy, so do not be
over-anxious unless you hear from me."



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

4 September.--Zoophagous patient still keeps up our interest in him.
He had only one outburst and that was yesterday at an unusual time.
Just before the stroke of noon he began to grow restless.  The
attendant knew the symptoms, and at once summoned aid.  Fortunately
the men came at a run, and were just in time, for at the stroke of
noon he became so violent that it took all their strength to hold him.
In about five minutes, however, he began to get more quiet, and
finally sank into a sort of melancholy, in which state he has remained
up to now.  The attendant tells me that his screams whilst in the
paroxysm were really appalling.  I found my hands full when I got in,
attending to some of the other patients who were frightened by him.
Indeed, I can quite understand the effect, for the sounds disturbed
even me, though I was some distance away.  It is now after the dinner
hour of the asylum, and as yet my patient sits in a corner brooding,
with a dull, sullen, woe-begone look in his face, which seems rather
to indicate than to show something directly.  I cannot quite
understand it.


Later.--Another change in my patient.  At five o'clock I looked in on
him, and found him seemingly as happy and contented as he used to be.
He was catching flies and eating them, and was keeping note of his
capture by making nailmarks on the edge of the door between the ridges
of padding.  When he saw me, he came over and apologized for his bad
conduct, and asked me in a very humble, cringing way to be led back to
his own room, and to have his notebook again.  I thought it well to
humour him, so he is back in his room with the window open.  He has
the sugar of his tea spread out on the window sill, and is reaping
quite a harvest of flies.  He is not now eating them, but putting them
into a box, as of old, and is already examining the corners of his
room to find a spider.  I tried to get him to talk about the past few
days, for any clue to his thoughts would be of immense help to me, but
he would not rise.  For a moment or two he looked very sad, and said
in a sort of far away voice, as though saying it rather to himself
than to me.

"All over!  All over!  He has deserted me.  No hope for me now unless
I do it myself!"  Then suddenly turning to me in a resolute way, he
said, "Doctor, won't you be very good to me and let me have a little
more sugar?  I think it would be very good for me."

"And the flies?" I said.

"Yes!  The flies like it, too, and I like the flies, therefore I like
it."  And there are people who know so little as to think that madmen do
not argue.  I procured him a double supply, and left him as happy a
man as, I suppose, any in the world.  I wish I could fathom his mind.


Midnight.--Another change in him.  I had been to see Miss Westenra,
whom I found much better, and had just returned, and was standing at
our own gate looking at the sunset, when once more I heard him
yelling.  As his room is on this side of the house, I could hear it
better than in the morning.  It was a shock to me to turn from the
wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights
and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds
even as on foul water, and to realize all the grim sternness of my own
cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own
desolate heart to endure it all.  I reached him just as the sun was
going down, and from his window saw the red disc sink.  As it sank he
became less and less frenzied, and just as it dipped he slid from the
hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor.  It is wonderful,
however, what intellectual recuperative power lunatics have, for
within a few minutes he stood up quite calmly and looked around him.  I
signalled to the attendants not to hold him, for I was anxious to see
what he would do.  He went straight over to the window and brushed out
the crumbs of sugar.  Then he took his fly box, and emptied it
outside, and threw away the box.  Then he shut the window, and
crossing over, sat down on his bed.  All this surprised me, so I asked
him, "Are you going to keep flies any more?"

"No," said he.  "I am sick of all that rubbish!"  He certainly is a
wonderfully interesting study.  I wish I could get some glimpse of his
mind or of the cause of his sudden passion.  Stop.  There may be a
clue after all, if we can find why today his paroxysms came on at high
noon and at sunset.  Can it be that there is a malign influence of the
sun at periods which affects certain natures, as at times the moon
does others?  We shall see.



TELEGRAM.  SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM

"4 September.--Patient still better today."



TELEGRAM, SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM

"5 September.--Patient greatly improved.  Good appetite, sleeps
naturally, good spirits, colour coming back."



TELEGRAM, SEWARD, LONDON, TO VAN HELSING, AMSTERDAM

"6 September.--Terrible change for the worse.  Come at once.
Do not lose an hour.  I hold over telegram to Holmwood till
have seen you."




CHAPTER 10


LETTER, DR. SEWARD TO HON.  ARTHUR HOLMWOOD


6 September

"My dear Art,

"My news today is not so good.  Lucy this morning had gone back a
bit.  There is, however, one good thing which has arisen from it.
Mrs. Westenra was naturally anxious concerning Lucy, and has
consulted me professionally about her.  I took advantage of the
opportunity, and told her that my old master, Van Helsing, the great
specialist, was coming to stay with me, and that I would put her in
his charge conjointly with myself.  So now we can come and go
without alarming her unduly, for a shock to her would mean sudden
death, and this, in Lucy's weak condition, might be disastrous to
her.  We are hedged in with difficulties, all of us, my poor fellow,
but, please God, we shall come through them all right.  If any need
I shall write, so that, if you do not hear from me, take it for
granted that I am simply waiting for news, In haste,

"Yours ever,"

John Seward



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

7 September.--The first thing Van Helsing said to me when we met at
Liverpool Street was, "Have you said anything to our young friend, to
lover of her?"

"No," I said.  "I waited till I had seen you, as I said in my
telegram.  I wrote him a letter simply telling him that you were
coming, as Miss Westenra was not so well, and that I should let him
know if need be."

"Right, my friend," he said.  "Quite right!  Better he not know as
yet.  Perhaps he will never know.  I pray so, but if it be needed,
then he shall know all.  And, my good friend John, let me caution you.
You deal with the madmen.  All men are mad in some way or the other,
and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with
God's madmen too, the rest of the world.  You tell not your madmen
what you do nor why you do it.  You tell them not what you think.  So
you shall keep knowledge in its place, where it may rest, where it may
gather its kind around it and breed.  You and I shall keep as yet what
we know here, and here."  He touched me on the heart and on the
forehead, and then touched himself the same way.  "I have for myself
thoughts at the present.  Later I shall unfold to you."

"Why not now?" I asked.  "It may do some good.  We may arrive at some
decision."  He looked at me and said, "My friend John, when the corn is
grown, even before it has ripened, while the milk of its mother earth
is in him, and the sunshine has not yet begun to paint him with his
gold, the husbandman he pull the ear and rub him between his rough
hands, and blow away the green chaff, and say to you, 'Look!  He's
good corn, he will make a good crop when the time comes.'"

I did not see the application and told him so.  For reply he reached
over and took my ear in his hand and pulled it playfully, as he used
long ago to do at lectures, and said, "The good husbandman tell you so
then because he knows, but not till then.  But you do not find the
good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow.  That is
for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it
as of the work of their life.  See you now, friend John?  I have sown
my corn, and Nature has her work to do in making it sprout, if he
sprout at all, there's some promise, and I wait till the ear begins to
swell."  He broke off, for he evidently saw that I understood.  Then he
went on gravely, "You were always a careful student, and your case
book was ever more full than the rest.  And I trust that good habit
have not fail.  Remember, my friend, that knowledge is stronger than
memory, and we should not trust the weaker.  Even if you have not kept
the good practice, let me tell you that this case of our dear miss is
one that may be, mind, I say may be, of such interest to us and others
that all the rest may not make him kick the beam, as your people say.
Take then good note of it.  Nothing is too small.  I counsel you, put
down in record even your doubts and surmises.  Hereafter it may be of
interest to you to see how true you guess.  We learn from failure, not
from success!"

When I described Lucy's symptoms, the same as before, but infinitely
more marked, he looked very grave, but said nothing.  He took with him
a bag in which were many instruments and drugs, "the ghastly
paraphernalia of our beneficial trade," as he once called, in one of
his lectures, the equipment of a professor of the healing craft.

When we were shown in, Mrs. Westenra met us.  She was alarmed, but not
nearly so much as I expected to find her.  Nature in one of her
beneficient moods has ordained that even death has some antidote to
its own terrors.  Here, in a case where any shock may prove fatal,
matters are so ordered that, from some cause or other, the things not
personal, even the terrible change in her daughter to whom she is so
attached, do not seem to reach her.  It is something like the way dame
Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive
tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm
by contact.  If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause
before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be
deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

I used my knowledge of this phase of spiritual pathology, and set down
a rule that she should not be present with Lucy, or think of her
illness more than was absolutely required.  She assented readily, so
readily that I saw again the hand of Nature fighting for life.  Van
Helsing and I were shown up to Lucy's room.  If I was shocked when I
saw her yesterday, I was horrified when I saw her today.

She was ghastly, chalkily pale.  The red seemed to have gone even from
her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently.
Her breathing was painful to see or hear.  Van Helsing's face grew set
as marble, and his eyebrows converged till they almost touched over his
nose.  Lucy lay motionless, and did not seem to have strength to
speak, so for a while we were all silent.  Then Van Helsing beckoned
to me, and we went gently out of the room.  The instant we had closed
the door he stepped quickly along the passage to the next door, which
was open.  Then he pulled me quickly in with him and closed the door.
"My god!" he said.  "This is dreadful.  There is not time to be lost.
She will die for sheer want of blood to keep the heart's action as it
should be.  There must be a transfusion of blood at once.  Is it you
or me?"

"I am younger and stronger, Professor.  It must be me."

"Then get ready at once.  I will bring up my bag.  I am prepared."

I went downstairs with him, and as we were going there was a knock at
the hall door.  When we reached the hall, the maid had just opened the
door, and Arthur was stepping quickly in.  He rushed up to me, saying
in an eager whisper,

"Jack, I was so anxious.  I read between the lines of your letter, and
have been in an agony.  The dad was better, so I ran down here to see
for myself.  Is not that gentleman Dr. Van Helsing?  I am so thankful
to you, sir, for coming."

When first the Professor's eye had lit upon him, he had been angry at
his interruption at such a time, but now, as he took in his stalwart
proportions and recognized the strong young manhood which seemed to
emanate from him, his eyes gleamed.  Without a pause he said to him as
he held out his hand,

"Sir, you have come in time.  You are the lover of our dear miss.  She
is bad, very, very bad.  Nay, my child, do not go like that."  For he
suddenly grew pale and sat down in a chair almost fainting.  "You are
to help her.  You can do more than any that live, and your courage is
your best help."

"What can I do?" asked Arthur hoarsely.  "Tell me, and I shall do it.
My life is hers, and I would give the last drop of blood in my body for
her."

The Professor has a strongly humorous side, and I could from old
knowledge detect a trace of its origin in his answer.

"My young sir, I do not ask so much as that, not the last!"

"What shall I do?"  There was fire in his eyes, and his open nostrils
quivered with intent.  Van Helsing slapped him on the shoulder.

"Come!" he said.  "You are a man, and it is a man we want.  You are
better than me, better than my friend John."  Arthur looked bewildered,
and the Professor went on by explaining in a kindly way.

"Young miss is bad, very bad.  She wants blood, and blood she must
have or die.  My friend John and I have consulted, and we are about to
perform what we call transfusion of blood, to transfer from full veins
of one to the empty veins which pine for him.  John was to give his
blood, as he is the more young and strong than me."--Here Arthur took
my hand and wrung it hard in silence.--"But now you are here, you are
more good than us, old or young, who toil much in the world of
thought.  Our nerves are not so calm and our blood so bright than
yours!"

Arthur turned to him and said, "If you only knew how gladly I would
die for her you would understand . . ."  He stopped with a sort of
choke in his voice.

"Good boy!" said Van Helsing.  "In the not-so-far-off you will be
happy that you have done all for her you love.  Come now and be
silent.  You shall kiss her once before it is done, but then you must
go, and you must leave at my sign.  Say no word to Madame.  You know
how it is with her.  There must be no shock, any knowledge of this
would be one.  Come!"

We all went up to Lucy's room.  Arthur by direction remained outside.
Lucy turned her head and looked at us, but said nothing.  She was not
asleep, but she was simply too weak to make the effort.  Her eyes
spoke to us, that was all.

Van Helsing took some things from his bag and laid them on a little
table out of sight.  Then he mixed a narcotic, and coming over to the
bed, said cheerily, "Now, little miss, here is your medicine.  Drink
it off, like a good child.  See, I lift you so that to swallow is
easy.  Yes."  She had made the effort with success.

It astonished me how long the drug took to act.  This, in fact, marked
the extent of her weakness.  The time seemed endless until sleep began
to flicker in her eyelids.  At last, however, the narcotic began to
manifest its potency, and she fell into a deep sleep.  When the
Professor was satisfied, he called Arthur into the room, and bade him
strip off his coat.  Then he added, "You may take that one little kiss
whiles I bring over the table.  Friend John, help to me!"  So neither
of us looked whilst he bent over her.

Van Helsing, turning to me, said, "He is so young and strong, and of
blood so pure that we need not defibrinate it."

Then with swiftness, but with absolute method, Van Helsing performed
the operation.  As the transfusion went on, something like life seemed
to come back to poor Lucy's cheeks, and through Arthur's growing
pallor the joy of his face seemed absolutely to shine.  After a bit I
began to grow anxious, for the loss of blood was telling on Arthur,
strong man as he was.  It gave me an idea of what a terrible strain
Lucy's system must have undergone that what weakened Arthur only
partially restored her.

But the Professor's face was set, and he stood watch in hand, and with
his eyes fixed now on the patient and now on Arthur.  I could hear my
own heart beat.  Presently, he said in a soft voice, "Do not stir an
instant.  It is enough.  You attend him.  I will look to her."

When all was over, I could see how much Arthur was weakened.  I
dressed the wound and took his arm to bring him away, when Van Helsing
spoke without turning round, the man seems to have eyes in the back of
his head, "The brave lover, I think, deserve another kiss, which he
shall have presently."  And as he had now finished his operation, he
adjusted the pillow to the patient's head.  As he did so the narrow
black velvet band which she seems always to wear round her throat,
buckled with an old diamond buckle which her lover had given her, was
dragged a little up, and showed a red mark on her throat.

Arthur did not notice it, but I could hear the deep hiss of indrawn
breath which is one of Van Helsing's ways of betraying emotion.  He
said nothing at the moment, but turned to me, saying, "Now take down
our brave young lover, give him of the port wine, and let him lie down
a while.  He must then go home and rest, sleep much and eat much, that
he may be recruited of what he has so given to his love.  He must not
stay here.  Hold a moment!  I may take it, sir, that you are anxious
of result.  Then bring it with you, that in all ways the operation is
successful.  You have saved her life this time, and you can go home
and rest easy in mind that all that can be is.  I shall tell her all
when she is well.  She shall love you none the less for what you have
done.  Goodbye."

When Arthur had gone I went back to the room.  Lucy was sleeping
gently, but her breathing was stronger.  I could see the counterpane
move as her breast heaved.  By the bedside sat Van Helsing, looking at
her intently.  The velvet band again covered the red mark.  I asked
the Professor in a whisper, "What do you make of that mark on her
throat?"

"What do you make of it?"

"I have not examined it yet," I answered, and then and there proceeded
to loose the band.  Just over the external jugular vein there were two
punctures, not large, but not wholesome looking.  There was no sign of
disease, but the edges were white and worn looking, as if by some
trituration.  It at once occurred to me that that this wound, or
whatever it was, might be the means of that manifest loss of blood.
But I abandoned the idea as soon as it formed, for such a thing could
not be.  The whole bed would have been drenched to a scarlet with the
blood which the girl must have lost to leave such a pallor as she had
before the transfusion.

"Well?" said Van Helsing.

"Well," said I.  "I can make nothing of it."

The Professor stood up.  "I must go back to Amsterdam tonight," he
said "There are books and things there which I want.  You must remain
here all night, and you must not let your sight pass from her."

"Shall I have a nurse?" I asked.

"We are the best nurses, you and I.  You keep watch all night.  See
that she is well fed, and that nothing disturbs her.  You must not
sleep all the night.  Later on we can sleep, you and I.  I shall be
back as soon as possible.  And then we may begin."

"May begin?" I said.  "What on earth do you mean?"

"We shall see!" he answered, as he hurried out.  He came back a moment
later and put his head inside the door and said with a warning finger
held up, "Remember, she is your charge.  If you leave her, and harm
befall, you shall not sleep easy hereafter!"



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY--CONTINUED

8 September.--I sat up all night with Lucy.  The opiate worked itself
off towards dusk, and she waked naturally.  She looked a different
being from what she had been before the operation.  Her spirits even
were good, and she was full of a happy vivacity, but I could see
evidences of the absolute prostration which she had undergone.  When I
told Mrs. Westenra that Dr. Van Helsing had directed that I should sit
up with her, she almost pooh-poohed the idea, pointing out her
daughter's renewed strength and excellent spirits.  I was firm,
however, and made preparations for my long vigil.  When her maid had
prepared her for the night I came in, having in the meantime had
supper, and took a seat by the bedside.

She did not in any way make objection, but looked at me gratefully
whenever I caught her eye.  After a long spell she seemed sinking off
to sleep, but with an effort seemed to pull herself together and shook
it off.  It was apparent that she did not want to sleep, so I tackled
the subject at once.

"You do not want to sleep?"

"No.  I am afraid."

"Afraid to go to sleep!  Why so?  It is the boon we all crave for."

"Ah, not if you were like me, if sleep was to you a presage of
horror!"

"A presage of horror!  What on earth do you mean?"

"I don't know.  Oh, I don't know.  And that is what is so terrible.
All this weakness comes to me in sleep, until I dread the very
thought."

"But, my dear girl, you may sleep tonight.  I am here watching you,
and I can promise that nothing will happen."

"Ah, I can trust you!" she said.

I seized the opportunity, and said, "I promise that if I see any
evidence of bad dreams I will wake you at once."

"You will?  Oh, will you really?  How good you are to me.  Then I will
sleep!"  And almost at the word she gave a deep sigh of relief, and
sank back, asleep.

All night long I watched by her.  She never stirred, but slept on and
on in a deep, tranquil, life-giving, health-giving sleep.  Her lips
were slightly parted, and her breast rose and fell with the regularity
of a pendulum.  There was a smile on her face, and it was evident that
no bad dreams had come to disturb her peace of mind.

In the early morning her maid came, and I left her in her care and took
myself back home, for I was anxious about many things.  I sent a short
wire to Van Helsing and to Arthur, telling them of the excellent
result of the operation.  My own work, with its manifold arrears, took
me all day to clear off.  It was dark when I was able to inquire about
my zoophagous patient.  The report was good.  He had been quite quiet
for the past day and night.  A telegram came from Van Helsing at
Amsterdam whilst I was at dinner, suggesting that I should be at
Hillingham tonight, as it might be well to be at hand, and stating
that he was leaving by the night mail and would join me early in the
morning.


9 September.--I was pretty tired and worn out when I got to
Hillingham.  For two nights I had hardly had a wink of sleep, and my
brain was beginning to feel that numbness which marks cerebral
exhaustion.  Lucy was up and in cheerful spirits.  When she shook
hands with me she looked sharply in my face and said,

"No sitting up tonight for you.  You are worn out.  I am quite well
again.  Indeed, I am, and if there is to be any sitting up, it is I
who will sit up with you."

I would not argue the point, but went and had my supper.  Lucy came
with me, and, enlivened by her charming presence, I made an excellent
meal, and had a couple of glasses of the more than excellent port.
Then Lucy took me upstairs, and showed me a room next her own, where a
cozy fire was burning.

"Now," she said.  "You must stay here.  I shall leave this door open
and my door too.  You can lie on the sofa for I know that nothing
would induce any of you doctors to go to bed whilst there is a patient
above the horizon.  If I want anything I shall call out, and you can
come to me at once."

I could not but acquiesce, for I was dog tired, and could not have sat
up had I tried.  So, on her renewing her promise to call me if she
should want anything, I lay on the sofa, and forgot all about
everything.



LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY

9 September.--I feel so happy tonight.  I have been so miserably weak,
that to be able to think and move about is like feeling sunshine after
a long spell of east wind out of a steel sky.  Somehow Arthur feels
very, very close to me.  I seem to feel his presence warm about me.  I
suppose it is that sickness and weakness are selfish things and turn
our inner eyes and sympathy on ourselves, whilst health and strength
give love rein, and in thought and feeling he can wander where he
wills.  I know where my thoughts are.  If only Arthur knew!  My dear,
my dear, your ears must tingle as you sleep, as mine do waking.  Oh,
the blissful rest of last night!  How I slept, with that dear, good
Dr. Seward watching me.  And tonight I shall not fear to sleep, since
he is close at hand and within call.  Thank everybody for being so
good to me.  Thank God!  Goodnight Arthur.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

10 September.--I was conscious of the Professor's hand on my head, and
started awake all in a second.  That is one of the things that we
learn in an asylum, at any rate.

"And how is our patient?"

"Well, when I left her, or rather when she left me," I answered.

"Come, let us see," he said.  And together we went into the room.

The blind was down, and I went over to raise it gently, whilst Van
Helsing stepped, with his soft, cat-like tread, over to the bed.

As I raised the blind, and the morning sunlight flooded the room, I
heard the Professor's low hiss of inspiration, and knowing its rarity,
a deadly fear shot through my heart.  As I passed over he moved back,
and his exclamation of horror, "Gott in Himmel!" needed no enforcement
from his agonized face.  He raised his hand and pointed to the bed,
and his iron face was drawn and ashen white.  I felt my knees begin to
tremble.

There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly
white and wan-looking than ever.  Even the lips were white, and the
gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see
in a corpse after a prolonged illness.

Van Helsing raised his foot to stamp in anger, but the instinct of his
life and all the long years of habit stood to him, and he put it down
again softly.

"Quick!" he said.  "Bring the brandy."

I flew to the dining room, and returned with the decanter.  He wetted
the poor white lips with it, and together we rubbed palm and wrist and
heart.  He felt her heart, and after a few moments of agonizing
suspense said,

"It is not too late.  It beats, though but feebly.  All our work is
undone.  We must begin again.  There is no young Arthur here now.  I
have to call on you yourself this time, friend John."  As he spoke, he
was dipping into his bag, and producing the instruments of
transfusion.  I had taken off my coat and rolled up my shirt sleeve.
There was no possibility of an opiate just at present, and no need of
one; and so, without a moment's delay, we began the operation.

After a time, it did not seem a short time either, for the draining
away of one's blood, no matter how willingly it be given, is a
terrible feeling, Van Helsing held up a warning finger.  "Do not
stir," he said.  "But I fear that with growing strength she may wake,
and that would make danger, oh, so much danger.  But I shall
precaution take.  I shall give hypodermic injection of morphia."  He
proceeded then, swiftly and deftly, to carry out his intent.

The effect on Lucy was not bad, for the faint seemed to merge subtly
into the narcotic sleep.  It was with a feeling of personal pride that
I could see a faint tinge of colour steal back into the pallid cheeks
and lips.  No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel
his own lifeblood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.

The Professor watched me critically.  "That will do," he said.
"Already?" I remonstrated.  "You took a great deal more from Art."  To
which he smiled a sad sort of smile as he replied,

"He is her lover, her fiance.  You have work, much work to do for her
and for others, and the present will suffice."

When we stopped the operation, he attended to Lucy, whilst I applied
digital pressure to my own incision.  I laid down, while I waited his
leisure to attend to me, for I felt faint and a little sick.  By and
by he bound up my wound, and sent me downstairs to get a glass of wine
for myself.  As I was leaving the room, he came after me, and half
whispered.

"Mind, nothing must be said of this.  If our young lover should turn
up unexpected, as before, no word to him.  It would at once frighten
him and enjealous him, too.  There must be none.  So!"

When I came back he looked at me carefully, and then said, "You are
not much the worse.  Go into the room, and lie on your sofa, and rest
awhile, then have much breakfast and come here to me."

I followed out his orders, for I knew how right and wise they were.  I
had done my part, and now my next duty was to keep up my strength.  I
felt very weak, and in the weakness lost something of the amazement at
what had occurred.  I fell asleep on the sofa, however, wondering over
and over again how Lucy had made such a retrograde movement, and how
she could have been drained of so much blood with no sign any where to
show for it.  I think I must have continued my wonder in my dreams,
for, sleeping and waking my thoughts always came back to the little
punctures in her throat and the ragged, exhausted appearance of their
edges, tiny though they were.

Lucy slept well into the day, and when she woke she was fairly well
and strong, though not nearly so much so as the day before.  When Van
Helsing had seen her, he went out for a walk, leaving me in charge,
with strict injunctions that I was not to leave her for a moment.  I
could hear his voice in the hall, asking the way to the nearest
telegraph office.

Lucy chatted with me freely, and seemed quite unconscious that
anything had happened.  I tried to keep her amused and interested.
When her mother came up to see her, she did not seem to notice any
change whatever, but said to me gratefully,

"We owe you so much, Dr. Seward, for all you have done, but you really
must now take care not to overwork yourself.  You are looking pale
yourself.  You want a wife to nurse and look after you a bit, that you
do!"  As she spoke, Lucy turned crimson, though it was only
momentarily, for her poor wasted veins could not stand for long an
unwonted drain to the head.  The reaction came in excessive pallor as
she turned imploring eyes on me.  I smiled and nodded, and laid my
finger on my lips.  With a sigh, she sank back amid her pillows.

Van Helsing returned in a couple of hours, and presently said to me:
"Now you go home, and eat much and drink enough.  Make yourself
strong.  I stay here tonight, and I shall sit up with little miss
myself.  You and I must watch the case, and we must have none other to
know.  I have grave reasons.  No, do not ask me.  Think what you will.
Do not fear to think even the most not-improbable.  Goodnight."

In the hall two of the maids came to me, and asked if they or either
of them might not sit up with Miss Lucy.  They implored me to let
them, and when I said it was Dr. Van Helsing's wish that either he or
I should sit up, they asked me quite piteously to intercede with
the 'foreign gentleman'.  I was much touched by their kindness.  Perhaps
it is because I am weak at present, and perhaps because it was on
Lucy's account, that their devotion was manifested.  For over and over
again have I seen similar instances of woman's kindness.  I got back
here in time for a late dinner, went my rounds, all well, and set this
down whilst waiting for sleep.  It is coming.


11 September.--This afternoon I went over to Hillingham.  Found Van
Helsing in excellent spirits, and Lucy much better.  Shortly after I
had arrived, a big parcel from abroad came for the Professor.  He
opened it with much impressment, assumed, of course, and showed a
great bundle of white flowers.

"These are for you, Miss Lucy," he said.

"For me?  Oh, Dr. Van Helsing!"

"Yes, my dear, but not for you to play with.  These are medicines."
Here Lucy made a wry face.  "Nay, but they are not to take in a
decoction or in nauseous form, so you need not snub that so charming
nose, or I shall point out to my friend Arthur what woes he may have
to endure in seeing so much beauty that he so loves so much distort.
Aha, my pretty miss, that bring the so nice nose all straight again.
This is medicinal, but you do not know how.  I put him in your window,
I make pretty wreath, and hang him round your neck, so you sleep well.
Oh, yes!  They, like the lotus flower, make your trouble forgotten.
It smell so like the waters of Lethe, and of that fountain of youth
that the Conquistadores sought for in the Floridas, and find him all
too late."

Whilst he was speaking, Lucy had been examining the flowers and
smelling them.  Now she threw them down saying, with half laughter,
and half disgust,

"Oh, Professor, I believe you are only putting up a joke on me.  Why,
these flowers are only common garlic."

To my surprise, Van Helsing rose up and said with all his sternness,
his iron jaw set and his bushy eyebrows meeting,

"No trifling with me!  I never jest!  There is grim purpose in what I
do, and I warn you that you do not thwart me.  Take care, for the sake
of others if not for your own."  Then seeing poor Lucy scared, as she
might well be, he went on more gently, "Oh, little miss, my dear, do
not fear me.  I only do for your good, but there is much virtue to you
in those so common flowers.  See, I place them myself in your room.  I
make myself the wreath that you are to wear.  But hush!  No telling to
others that make so inquisitive questions.  We must obey, and silence
is a part of obedience, and obedience is to bring you strong and well
into loving arms that wait for you.  Now sit still a while.  Come with
me, friend John, and you shall help me deck the room with my garlic,
which is all the way from Haarlem, where my friend Vanderpool raise
herb in his glass houses all the year.  I had to telegraph yesterday,
or they would not have been here."

We went into the room, taking the flowers with us.  The Professor's
actions were certainly odd and not to be found in any pharmacopeia
that I ever heard of.  First he fastened up the windows and latched
them securely.  Next, taking a handful of the flowers, he rubbed them
all over the sashes, as though to ensure that every whiff of air that
might get in would be laden with the garlic smell.  Then with the wisp
he rubbed all over the jamb of the door, above, below, and at each
side, and round the fireplace in the same way.  It all seemed
grotesque to me, and presently I said, "Well, Professor, I know you
always have a reason for what you do, but this certainly puzzles me.
It is well we have no sceptic here, or he would say that you were
working some spell to keep out an evil spirit."

"Perhaps I am!" he answered quietly as he began to make the wreath
which Lucy was to wear round her neck.

We then waited whilst Lucy made her toilet for the night, and when she
was in bed he came and himself fixed the wreath of garlic round her
neck.  The last words he said to her were,

"Take care you do not disturb it, and even if the room feel close, do
not tonight open the window or the door."

"I promise," said Lucy.  "And thank you both a thousand times for all
your kindness to me!  Oh, what have I done to be blessed with such
friends?"

As we left the house in my fly, which was waiting, Van Helsing said,
"Tonight I can sleep in peace, and sleep I want, two nights of travel,
much reading in the day between, and much anxiety on the day to
follow, and a night to sit up, without to wink.  Tomorrow in the
morning early you call for me, and we come together to see our pretty
miss, so much more strong for my 'spell' which I have work.  Ho, ho!"

He seemed so confident that I, remembering my own confidence two
nights before and with the baneful result, felt awe and vague terror.
It must have been my weakness that made me hesitate to tell it to my
friend, but I felt it all the more, like unshed tears.




CHAPTER 11


LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY

12 September.--How good they all are to me.  I quite love that dear
Dr. Van Helsing.  I wonder why he was so anxious about these flowers.
He positively frightened me, he was so fierce.  And yet he must have
been right, for I feel comfort from them already.  Somehow, I do not
dread being alone tonight, and I can go to sleep without fear.  I
shall not mind any flapping outside the window.  Oh, the terrible
struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late, the pain of
sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, and with such unknown
horrors as it has for me!  How blessed are some people, whose lives
have no fears, no dreads, to whom sleep is a blessing that comes
nightly, and brings nothing but sweet dreams.  Well, here I am
tonight, hoping for sleep, and lying like Ophelia in the play, with
'virgin crants and maiden strewments.'  I never liked garlic before,
but tonight it is delightful!  There is peace in its smell.  I feel
sleep coming already.  Goodnight, everybody.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

13 September.--Called at the Berkeley and found Van Helsing, as usual,
up to time.  The carriage ordered from the hotel was waiting.  The
Professor took his bag, which he always brings with him now.

Let all be put down exactly.  Van Helsing and I arrived at Hillingham
at eight o'clock.  It was a lovely morning.  The bright sunshine and
all the fresh feeling of early autumn seemed like the completion of
nature's annual work.  The leaves were turning to all kinds of
beautiful colours, but had not yet begun to drop from the trees.  When
we entered we met Mrs. Westenra coming out of the morning room.  She
is always an early riser.  She greeted us warmly and said,

"You will be glad to know that Lucy is better.  The dear child is
still asleep.  I looked into her room and saw her, but did not go in,
lest I should disturb her."  The Professor smiled, and looked quite
jubilant.  He rubbed his hands together, and said, "Aha!  I thought I
had diagnosed the case.  My treatment is working."

To which she replied, "You must not take all the credit to yourself,
doctor.  Lucy's state this morning is due in part to me."

"How do you mean, ma'am?" asked the Professor.

"Well, I was anxious about the dear child in the night, and went into
her room.  She was sleeping soundly, so soundly that even my coming
did not wake her.  But the room was awfully stuffy.  There were a lot
of those horrible, strong-smelling flowers about everywhere, and she
had actually a bunch of them round her neck.  I feared that the heavy
odour would be too much for the dear child in her weak state, so I took
them all away and opened a bit of the window to let in a little fresh
air.  You will be pleased with her, I am sure."

She moved off into her boudoir, where she usually breakfasted early.
As she had spoken, I watched the Professor's face, and saw it turn
ashen gray.  He had been able to retain his self-command whilst the
poor lady was present, for he knew her state and how mischievous a
shock would be.  He actually smiled on her as he held open the door
for her to pass into her room.  But the instant she had disappeared he
pulled me, suddenly and forcibly, into the dining room and closed the
door.

Then, for the first time in my life, I saw Van Helsing break down.  He
raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then
beat his palms together in a helpless way.  Finally he sat down on a
chair, and putting his hands before his face, began to sob, with loud,
dry sobs that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart.

Then he raised his arms again, as though appealing to the whole
universe.  "God!  God!  God!" he said.  "What have we done, what has
this poor thing done, that we are so sore beset?  Is there fate
amongst us still, send down from the pagan world of old, that such
things must be, and in such way?  This poor mother, all unknowing, and
all for the best as she think, does such thing as lose her daughter
body and soul, and we must not tell her, we must not even warn her, or
she die, then both die.  Oh, how we are beset!  How are all the powers
of the devils against us!"

Suddenly he jumped to his feet.  "Come," he said, "come, we must see and
act.  Devils or no devils, or all the devils at once, it matters not.
We must fight him all the same."  He went to the hall door for his
bag, and together we went up to Lucy's room.

Once again I drew up the blind, whilst Van Helsing went towards the
bed.  This time he did not start as he looked on the poor face with
the same awful, waxen pallor as before.  He wore a look of stern
sadness and infinite pity.

"As I expected," he murmured, with that hissing inspiration of his
which meant so much.  Without a word he went and locked the door, and
then began to set out on the little table the instruments for yet
another operation of transfusion of blood.  I had long ago recognized
the necessity, and begun to take off my coat, but he stopped me with a
warning hand.  "No!" he said.  "Today you must operate.  I shall
provide.  You are weakened already."  As he spoke he took off his coat
and rolled up his shirtsleeve.

Again the operation.  Again the narcotic.  Again some return of colour
to the ashy cheeks, and the regular breathing of healthy sleep.  This
time I watched whilst Van Helsing recruited himself and rested.

Presently he took an opportunity of telling Mrs. Westenra that she
must not remove anything from Lucy's room without consulting him.
That the flowers were of medicinal value, and that the breathing of
their odour was a part of the system of cure.  Then he took over the
care of the case himself, saying that he would watch this night and
the next, and would send me word when to come.

After another hour Lucy waked from her sleep, fresh and bright and
seemingly not much the worse for her terrible ordeal.

What does it all mean?  I am beginning to wonder if my long habit of
life amongst the insane is beginning to tell upon my own brain.



LUCY WESTENRA'S DIARY

17 September.--Four days and nights of peace.  I am getting so strong
again that I hardly know myself.  It is as if I had passed through
some long nightmare, and had just awakened to see the beautiful
sunshine and feel the fresh air of the morning around me.  I have a
dim half remembrance of long, anxious times of waiting and fearing,
darkness in which there was not even the pain of hope to make present
distress more poignant.  And then long spells of oblivion, and the
rising back to life as a diver coming up through a great press of
water.  Since, however, Dr. Van Helsing has been with me, all this bad
dreaming seems to have passed away.  The noises that used to frighten
me out of my wits, the flapping against the windows, the distant
voices which seemed so close to me, the harsh sounds that came from I
know not where and commanded me to do I know not what, have all
ceased.  I go to bed now without any fear of sleep.  I do not even try
to keep awake.  I have grown quite fond of the garlic, and a boxful
arrives for me every day from Haarlem.  Tonight Dr. Van Helsing is
going away, as he has to be for a day in Amsterdam.  But I need not be
watched.  I am well enough to be left alone.

Thank God for Mother's sake, and dear Arthur's, and for all our
friends who have been so kind!  I shall not even feel the change, for
last night Dr. Van Helsing slept in his chair a lot of the time.  I
found him asleep twice when I awoke.  But I did not fear to go to
sleep again, although the boughs or bats or something flapped almost
angrily against the window panes.




THE PALL MALL GAZETTE 18 September.

THE ESCAPED WOLF PERILOUS ADVENTURE OF OUR INTERVIEWER

INTERVIEW WITH THE KEEPER IN THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS

After many inquiries and almost as many refusals, and perpetually
using the words 'PALL MALL GAZETTE' as a sort of talisman, I managed
to find the keeper of the section of the Zoological Gardens in which
the wolf department is included.  Thomas Bilder lives in one of the
cottages in the enclosure behind the elephant house, and was just
sitting down to his tea when I found him.  Thomas and his wife are
hospitable folk, elderly, and without children, and if the specimen
I enjoyed of their hospitality be of the average kind, their lives
must be pretty comfortable.  The keeper would not enter on what he
called business until the supper was over, and we were all
satisfied.  Then when the table was cleared, and he had lit his
pipe, he said,

"Now, Sir, you can go on and arsk me what you want.  You'll excoose
me refoosin' to talk of perfeshunal subjucts afore meals.  I gives
the wolves and the jackals and the hyenas in all our section their
tea afore I begins to arsk them questions."

"How do you mean, ask them questions?" I queried, wishful to get him
into a talkative humor.

"'Ittin' of them over the 'ead with a pole is one way.  Scratchin' of
their ears in another, when gents as is flush wants a bit of a show-
orf to their gals.  I don't so much mind the fust, the 'ittin of the
pole part afore I chucks in their dinner, but I waits till they've
'ad their sherry and kawffee, so to speak, afore I tries on with the
ear scratchin'.  Mind you," he added philosophically, "there's a
deal of the same nature in us as in them theer animiles. Here's you
a-comin' and arskin' of me questions about my business, and I that
grump-like that only for your bloomin' 'arf-quid I'd 'a' seen you
blowed fust 'fore I'd answer.  Not even when you arsked me sarcastic
like if I'd like you to arsk the Superintendent if you might arsk me
questions.  Without offence did I tell yer to go to 'ell?"

"You did."

"An' when you said you'd report me for usin' obscene language that
was 'ittin' me over the 'ead.  But the 'arf-quid made that all
right.  I weren't a-goin' to fight, so I waited for the food, and
did with my 'owl as the wolves and lions and tigers does.  But, lor'
love yer 'art, now that the old 'ooman has stuck a chunk of her tea-
cake in me, an' rinsed me out with her bloomin' old teapot, and I've
lit hup, you may scratch my ears for all you're worth, and won't
even get a growl out of me.  Drive along with your questions.  I
know what yer a-comin' at, that 'ere escaped wolf."

"Exactly.  I want you to give me your view of it.  Just tell me how
it happened, and when I know the facts I'll get you to say what you
consider was the cause of it, and how you think the whole affair
will end."

"All right, guv'nor.  This 'ere is about the 'ole story.
That 'ere wolf what we called Bersicker was one of three gray
ones that came from Norway to Jamrach's, which we bought
off him four years ago.  He was a nice well-behaved wolf,
that never gave no trouble to talk of.  I'm more surprised
at 'im for wantin' to get out nor any other animile in the
place.  But, there, you can't trust wolves no more nor women."

"Don't you mind him, Sir!" broke in Mrs. Tom, with a cheery
laugh.  "'E's got mindin' the animiles so long that blest
if he ain't like a old wolf 'isself!  But there ain't no
'arm in 'im."

"Well, Sir, it was about two hours after feedin' yesterday when I
first hear my disturbance.  I was makin' up a litter in the monkey
house for a young puma which is ill.  But when I heard the yelpin'
and 'owlin' I kem away straight.  There was Bersicker a-tearin' like
a mad thing at the bars as if he wanted to get out.  There wasn't
much people about that day, and close at hand was only one man, a
tall, thin chap, with a 'ook nose and a pointed beard, with a few
white hairs runnin' through it.  He had a 'ard, cold look and red
eyes, and I took a sort of mislike to him, for it seemed as if it
was 'im as they was hirritated at.  He 'ad white kid gloves on 'is
'ands, and he pointed out the animiles to me and says, 'Keeper,
these wolves seem upset at something.'

"'Maybe it's you,' says I, for I did not like the airs as he
give 'isself.  He didn't get angry, as I 'oped he would, but
he smiled a kind of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white,
sharp teeth.  'Oh no, they wouldn't like me,' 'e says.

"'Ow yes, they would,' says I, a-imitatin' of him.  'They
always like a bone or two to clean their teeth on about tea
time, which you 'as a bagful.'

"Well, it was a odd thing, but when the animiles see us
a-talkin' they lay down, and when I went over to Bersicker
he let me stroke his ears same as ever.  That there man kem
over, and blessed but if he didn't put in his hand and stroke
the old wolf's ears too!

"'Tyke care,' says I. 'Bersicker is quick.'

"'Never mind,' he says.  I'm used to 'em!'

"'Are you in the business yourself?' I says, tyking off my
'at, for a man what trades in wolves, anceterer, is a good
friend to keepers.

"'Nom,' says he, 'not exactly in the business, but I 'ave made pets
of several.'  And with that he lifts his 'at as perlite as a lord,
and walks away.  Old Bersicker kep' a-lookin' arter 'im till 'e was
out of sight, and then went and lay down in a corner and wouldn't
come hout the 'ole hevening.  Well, larst night, so soon as the moon
was hup, the wolves here all began a-'owling.  There warn't nothing
for them to 'owl at.  There warn't no one near, except some one that
was evidently a-callin' a dog somewheres out back of the gardings in
the Park road.  Once or twice I went out to see that all was right,
and it was, and then the 'owling stopped.  Just before twelve
o'clock I just took a look round afore turnin' in, an', bust me, but
when I kem opposite to old Bersicker's cage I see the rails broken
and twisted about and the cage empty.  And that's all I know for
certing."

"Did any one else see anything?"

"One of our gard'ners was a-comin' 'ome about that time from a
'armony, when he sees a big gray dog comin' out through the garding
'edges.  At least, so he says, but I don't give much for it myself,
for if he did 'e never said a word about it to his missis when 'e
got 'ome, and it was only after the escape of the wolf was made
known, and we had been up all night a-huntin' of the Park for
Bersicker, that he remembered seein' anything.  My own belief was
that the 'armony 'ad got into his 'ead."

"Now, Mr. Bilder, can you account in any way for the escape
of the wolf?"

"Well, Sir," he said, with a suspicious sort of modesty, "I think I
can, but I don't know as 'ow you'd be satisfied with the theory."

"Certainly I shall.  If a man like you, who knows the animals from
experience, can't hazard a good guess at any rate, who is even to
try?"

"Well then, Sir, I accounts for it this way.  It seems to me that
'ere wolf escaped--simply because he wanted to get out."

From the hearty way that both Thomas and his wife laughed at the
joke I could see that it had done service before, and that the whole
explanation was simply an elaborate sell.  I couldn't cope in
badinage with the worthy Thomas, but I thought I knew a surer way to
his heart, so I said, "Now, Mr. Bilder, we'll consider that first
half-sovereign worked off, and this brother of his is waiting to be
claimed when you've told me what you think will happen."

"Right y'are, Sir," he said briskly.  "Ye'll excoose me, I
know, for a-chaffin' of ye, but the old woman here winked at
me, which was as much as telling me to go on."

"Well, I never!" said the old lady.

"My opinion is this: that 'ere wolf is a'idin' of, somewheres.  The
gard'ner wot didn't remember said he was a-gallopin' northward
faster than a horse could go, but I don't believe him, for, yer see,
Sir, wolves don't gallop no more nor dogs does, they not bein' built
that way.  Wolves is fine things in a storybook, and I dessay when
they gets in packs and does be chivyin' somethin' that's more
afeared than they is they can make a devil of a noise and chop it
up, whatever it is.  But, Lor' bless you, in real life a wolf is
only a low creature, not half so clever or bold as a good dog, and
not half a quarter so much fight in 'im.  This one ain't been used
to fightin' or even to providin' for hisself, and more like he's
somewhere round the Park a'hidin' an' a'shiverin' of, and if he
thinks at all, wonderin' where he is to get his breakfast from.  Or
maybe he's got down some area and is in a coal cellar.  My eye,
won't some cook get a rum start when she sees his green eyes
a-shinin' at her out of the dark!  If he can't get food he's bound to
look for it, and mayhap he may chance to light on a butcher's shop
in time.  If he doesn't, and some nursemaid goes out walkin' or orf
with a soldier, leavin' of the hinfant in the perambulator--well,
then I shouldn't be surprised if the census is one babby the less.
That's all."

I was handing him the half-sovereign, when something came bobbing up
against the window, and Mr. Bilder's face doubled its natural length
with surprise.

"God bless me!" he said.  "If there ain't old Bersicker come back by
'isself!"

He went to the door and opened it, a most unnecessary proceeding it
seemed to me.  I have always thought that a wild animal never looks
so well as when some obstacle of pronounced durability is between
us.  A personal experience has intensified rather than diminished
that idea.

After all, however, there is nothing like custom, for neither Bilder
nor his wife thought any more of the wolf than I should of a dog.
The animal itself was a peaceful and well-behaved as that father of
all picture-wolves, Red Riding Hood's quondam friend, whilst moving
her confidence in masquerade.

The whole scene was a unutterable mixture of comedy and
pathos.  The wicked wolf that for a half a day had
paralyzed London and set all the children in town shivering
in their shoes, was there in a sort of penitent mood, and
was received and petted like a sort of vulpine prodigal
son.  Old Bilder examined him all over with most tender
solicitude, and when he had finished with his penitent
said,

"There, I knew the poor old chap would get into some kind of
trouble.  Didn't I say it all along?  Here's his head all
cut and full of broken glass.  'E's been a-gettin' over
some bloomin' wall or other.  It's a shyme that people are
allowed to top their walls with broken bottles.  This 'ere's
what comes of it.  Come along, Bersicker."

He took the wolf and locked him up in a cage, with a piece
of meat that satisfied, in quantity at any rate, the elementary
conditions of the fatted calf, and went off to report.

I came off too, to report the only exclusive information
that is given today regarding the strange escapade at the
Zoo.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

17 September.--I was engaged after dinner in my study posting up my
books, which, through press of other work and the many visits to Lucy,
had fallen sadly into arrear.  Suddenly the door was burst open, and
in rushed my patient, with his face distorted with passion.  I was
thunderstruck, for such a thing as a patient getting of his own accord
into the Superintendent's study is almost unknown.

Without an instant's notice he made straight at me.  He had a dinner
knife in his hand, and as I saw he was dangerous, I tried to keep the
table between us.  He was too quick and too strong for me, however,
for before I could get my balance he had struck at me and cut my left
wrist rather severely.

Before he could strike again, however, I got in my right hand and he
was sprawling on his back on the floor.  My wrist bled freely, and
quite a little pool trickled on to the carpet.  I saw that my friend
was not intent on further effort, and occupied myself binding up my
wrist, keeping a wary eye on the prostrate figure all the time.  When
the attendants rushed in, and we turned our attention to him, his
employment positively sickened me.  He was lying on his belly on the
floor licking up, like a dog, the blood which had fallen from my
wounded wrist.  He was easily secured, and to my surprise, went with
the attendants quite placidly, simply repeating over and over again,
"The blood is the life!  The blood is the life!"

I cannot afford to lose blood just at present.  I have lost too much
of late for my physical good, and then the prolonged strain of Lucy's
illness and its horrible phases is telling on me.  I am over excited
and weary, and I need rest, rest, rest.  Happily Van Helsing has not
summoned me, so I need not forego my sleep.  Tonight I could not well
do without it.



TELEGRAM, VAN HELSING, ANTWERP, TO SEWARD, CARFAX

(Sent to Carfax, Sussex, as no county given, delivered late
by twenty-two hours.)

17 September.--Do not fail to be at Hilllingham tonight.
If not watching all the time, frequently visit and see that
flowers are as placed, very important, do not fail.  Shall
be with you as soon as possible after arrival.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

18 September.--Just off train to London.  The arrival of Van
Helsing's telegram filled me with dismay.  A whole night lost,
and I know by bitter experience what may happen in a night.
Of course it is possible that all may be well, but what may
have happened?  Surely there is some horrible doom hanging over us
that every possible accident should thwart us in all we try to do.
I shall take this cylinder with me, and then I can complete
my entry on Lucy's phonograph.




MEMORANDUM LEFT BY LUCY WESTENRA

17 September, Night.--I write this and leave it to be seen,
so that no one may by any chance get into trouble through
me.  This is an exact record of what took place tonight.  I
feel I am dying of weakness, and have barely strength to
write, but it must be done if I die in the doing.

I went to bed as usual, taking care that the flowers were
placed as Dr. Van Helsing directed, and soon fell asleep.

I was waked by the flapping at the window, which had begun after
that sleep-walking on the cliff at Whitby when Mina saved me, and
which now I know so well.  I was not afraid, but I did wish that
Dr. Seward was in the next room, as Dr. Van Helsing said he would
be, so that I might have called him.  I tried to sleep, but I
could not.  Then there came to me the old fear of sleep, and I
determined to keep awake.  Perversely sleep would try to come then
when I did not want it.  So, as I feared to be alone, I opened my
door and called out, "Is there anybody there?"  There was no
answer.  I was afraid to wake mother, and so closed my door
again.  Then outside in the shrubbery I heard a sort of howl like
a dog's, but more fierce and deeper.  I went to the window and
looked out, but could see nothing, except a big bat, which had
evidently been buffeting its wings against the window.  So I went
back to bed again, but determined not to go to sleep.  Presently
the door opened, and mother looked in.  Seeing by my moving that
I was not asleep, she came in and sat by me.  She said to me even
more sweetly and softly than her wont,

"I was uneasy about you, darling, and came in to see that
you were all right."

I feared she might catch cold sitting there, and asked her
to come in and sleep with me, so she came into bed, and lay
down beside me.  She did not take off her dressing gown,
for she said she would only stay a while and then go back
to her own bed.  As she lay there in my arms, and I in hers
the flapping and buffeting came to the window again.  She
was startled and a little frightened, and cried out, "What
is that?"

I tried to pacify her, and at last succeeded, and she lay
quiet.  But I could hear her poor dear heart still beating
terribly.  After a while there was the howl again out in
the shrubbery, and shortly after there was a crash at the
window, and a lot of broken glass was hurled on the floor.
The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in,
and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head
of a great, gaunt gray wolf.

Mother cried out in a fright, and struggled up into a
sitting posture, and clutched wildly at anything that would
help her.  Amongst other things, she clutched the wreath of
flowers that Dr. Van Helsing insisted on my wearing round
my neck, and tore it away from me.  For a second or two she
sat up, pointing at the wolf, and there was a strange and
horrible gurgling in her throat.  Then she fell over, as if
struck with lightning, and her head hit my forehead and
made me dizzy for a moment or two.

The room and all round seemed to spin round.  I kept my eyes
fixed on the window, but the wolf drew his head back, and a whole
myriad of little specks seems to come blowing in through the
broken window, and wheeling and circling round like the pillar of
dust that travellers describe when there is a simoon in the
desert.  I tried to stir, but there was some spell upon me, and
dear Mother's poor body, which seemed to grow cold already, for
her dear heart had ceased to beat, weighed me down, and I
remembered no more for a while.

The time did not seem long, but very, very awful, till I
recovered consciousness again.  Somewhere near, a passing
bell was tolling.  The dogs all round the neighbourhood were
howling, and in our shrubbery, seemingly just outside, a
nightingale was singing.  I was dazed and stupid with pain
and terror and weakness, but the sound of the nightingale
seemed like the voice of my dead mother come back to comfort me.
The sounds seemed to have awakened the maids, too, for I could
hear their bare feet pattering outside my door.  I called to
them, and they came in, and when they saw what had happened, and
what it was that lay over me on the bed, they screamed out.  The
wind rushed in through the broken window, and the door slammed
to.  They lifted off the body of my dear mother, and laid her,
covered up with a sheet, on the bed after I had got up.  They
were all so frightened and nervous that I directed them to go to
the dining room and each have a glass of wine.  The door flew
open for an instant and closed again.  The maids shrieked, and
then went in a body to the dining room, and I laid what flowers I
had on my dear mother's breast.  When they were there I
remembered what Dr. Van Helsing had told me, but I didn't like to
remove them, and besides, I would have some of the servants to
sit up with me now.  I was surprised that the maids did not come
back.  I called them, but got no answer, so I went to the dining
room to look for them.

My heart sank when I saw what had happened.  They all four
lay helpless on the floor, breathing heavily.  The decanter
of sherry was on the table half full, but there was a queer,
acrid smell about.  I was suspicious, and examined the decanter.
It smelt of laudanum, and looking on the sideboard, I found that
the bottle which Mother's doctor uses for her--oh! did use--was
empty.  What am I to do? What am I to do?  I am back in the room
with Mother.  I cannot leave her, and I am alone, save for the
sleeping servants, whom some one has drugged.  Alone with the
dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf
through the broken window.

The air seems full of specks, floating and circling in the
draught from the window, and the lights burn blue and dim.
What am I to do?  God shield me from harm this night!  I
shall hide this paper in my breast, where they shall find
it when they come to lay me out.  My dear mother gone!  It
is time that I go too.  Goodbye, dear Arthur, if I should
not survive this night.  God keep you, dear, and God help
me!




CHAPTER 12


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

18 September.--I drove at once to Hillingham and arrived early.
Keeping my cab at the gate, I went up the avenue alone.  I knocked
gently and rang as quietly as possible, for I feared to disturb Lucy
or her mother, and hoped to only bring a servant to the door.  After a
while, finding no response, I knocked and rang again, still no
answer.  I cursed the laziness of the servants that they should lie
abed at such an hour, for it was now ten o'clock, and so rang and
knocked again, but more impatiently, but still without response.
Hitherto I had blamed only the servants, but now a terrible fear began
to assail me.  Was this desolation but another link in the chain of
doom which seemed drawing tight round us?  Was it indeed a house of
death to which I had come, too late?  I know that minutes, even
seconds of delay, might mean hours of danger to Lucy, if she had had
again one of those frightful relapses, and I went round the house to
try if I could find by chance an entry anywhere.

I could find no means of ingress.  Every window and door was fastened
and locked, and I returned baffled to the porch.  As I did so, I heard
the rapid pit-pat of a swiftly driven horse's feet.  They stopped at
the gate, and a few seconds later I met Van Helsing running up the
avenue.  When he saw me, he gasped out, "Then it was you, and just
arrived.  How is she?  Are we too late?  Did you not get my telegram?"

I answered as quickly and coherently as I could that I had only got
his telegram early in the morning, and had not a minute in coming
here, and that I could not make any one in the house hear me.  He
paused and raised his hat as he said solemnly, "Then I fear we are too
late.  God's will be done!"

With his usual recuperative energy, he went on, "Come.  If there be no
way open to get in, we must make one.  Time is all in all to us now."

We went round to the back of the house, where there was a kitchen
window.  The Professor took a small surgical saw from his case, and
handing it to me, pointed to the iron bars which guarded the window.
I attacked them at once and had very soon cut through three of them.
Then with a long, thin knife we pushed back the fastening of the
sashes and opened the window.  I helped the Professor in, and followed
him.  There was no one in the kitchen or in the servants' rooms, which
were close at hand.  We tried all the rooms as we went along, and in
the dining room, dimly lit by rays of light through the shutters,
found four servant women lying on the floor.  There was no need to
think them dead, for their stertorous breathing and the acrid smell of
laudanum in the room left no doubt as to their condition.

Van Helsing and I looked at each other, and as we moved away he said,
"We can attend to them later."  Then we ascended to Lucy's room.  For an
instant or two we paused at the door to listen, but there was no sound
that we could hear.  With white faces and trembling hands, we opened
the door gently, and entered the room.

How shall I describe what we saw?  On the bed lay two women, Lucy and
her mother.  The latter lay farthest in, and she was covered with a
white sheet, the edge of which had been blown back by the drought
through the broken window, showing the drawn, white, face, with a look
of terror fixed upon it.  By her side lay Lucy, with face white and
still more drawn.  The flowers which had been round her neck we found
upon her mother's bosom, and her throat was bare, showing the two
little wounds which we had noticed before, but looking horribly white
and mangled.  Without a word the Professor bent over the bed, his head
almost touching poor Lucy's breast.  Then he gave a quick turn of his
head, as of one who listens, and leaping to his feet, he cried out to
me, "It is not yet too late!  Quick!  Quick!  Bring the brandy!"

I flew downstairs and returned with it, taking care to smell and taste
it, lest it, too, were drugged like the decanter of sherry which I
found on the table.  The maids were still breathing, but more
restlessly, and I fancied that the narcotic was wearing off.  I did
not stay to make sure, but returned to Van Helsing.  He rubbed the
brandy, as on another occasion, on her lips and gums and on her wrists
and the palms of her hands.  He said to me, "I can do this, all that
can be at the present.  You go wake those maids.  Flick them in the
face with a wet towel, and flick them hard.  Make them get heat and
fire and a warm bath.  This poor soul is nearly as cold as that beside
her.  She will need be heated before we can do anything more."

I went at once, and found little difficulty in waking three of the
women.  The fourth was only a young girl, and the drug had evidently
affected her more strongly so I lifted her on the sofa and let her
sleep.

The others were dazed at first, but as remembrance came back to them
they cried and sobbed in a hysterical manner.  I was stern with them,
however, and would not let them talk.  I told them that one life was
bad enough to lose, and if they delayed they would sacrifice Miss
Lucy.  So, sobbing and crying they went about their way, half clad as
they were, and prepared fire and water.  Fortunately, the kitchen and
boiler fires were still alive, and there was no lack of hot water.  We
got a bath and carried Lucy out as she was and placed her in it.
Whilst we were busy chafing her limbs there was a knock at the hall
door.  One of the maids ran off, hurried on some more clothes, and
opened it.  Then she returned and whispered to us that there was a
gentleman who had come with a message from Mr. Holmwood.  I bade her
simply tell him that he must wait, for we could see no one now.  She
went away with the message, and, engrossed with our work, I clean
forgot all about him.

I never saw in all my experience the Professor work in such deadly
earnest.  I knew, as he knew, that it was a stand-up fight with death,
and in a pause told him so.  He answered me in a way that I did not
understand, but with the sternest look that his face could wear.

"If that were all, I would stop here where we are now, and let her
fade away into peace, for I see no light in life over her horizon."  He
went on with his work with, if possible, renewed and more frenzied
vigour.

Presently we both began to be conscious that the heat was beginning to
be of some effect.  Lucy's heart beat a trifle more audibly to the
stethoscope, and her lungs had a perceptible movement.  Van Helsing's
face almost beamed, and as we lifted her from the bath and rolled her
in a hot sheet to dry her he said to me, "The first gain is ours!
Check to the King!"

We took Lucy into another room, which had by now been prepared, and
laid her in bed and forced a few drops of brandy down her throat.  I
noticed that Van Helsing tied a soft silk handkerchief round her
throat.  She was still unconscious, and was quite as bad as, if not
worse than, we had ever seen her.

Van Helsing called in one of the women, and told her to stay with her
and not to take her eyes off her till we returned, and then beckoned
me out of the room.

"We must consult as to what is to be done," he said as we descended
the stairs.  In the hall he opened the dining room door, and we passed
in, he closing the door carefully behind him.  The shutters had been
opened, but the blinds were already down, with that obedience to the
etiquette of death which the British woman of the lower classes always
rigidly observes.  The room was, therefore, dimly dark.  It was,
however, light enough for our purposes.  Van Helsing's sternness was
somewhat relieved by a look of perplexity.  He was evidently torturing
his mind about something, so I waited for an instant, and he spoke.

"What are we to do now?  Where are we to turn for help?  We must have
another transfusion of blood, and that soon, or that poor girl's life
won't be worth an hour's purchase.  You are exhausted already.  I am
exhausted too.  I fear to trust those women, even if they would have
courage to submit.  What are we to do for some one who will open his
veins for her?"

"What's the matter with me, anyhow?"

The voice came from the sofa across the room, and its tones brought
relief and joy to my heart, for they were those of Quincey Morris.

Van Helsing started angrily at the first sound, but his face softened
and a glad look came into his eyes as I cried out, "Quincey Morris!"
and rushed towards him with outstretched hands.

"What brought you here?" I cried as our hands met.

"I guess Art is the cause."

He handed me a telegram.--'Have not heard from Seward for three days,
and am terribly anxious.  Cannot leave.  Father still in same
condition.  Send me word how Lucy is.  Do not delay.--Holmwood.'

"I think I came just in the nick of time.  You know you have only to
tell me what to do."

Van Helsing strode forward, and took his hand, looking him straight in
the eyes as he said, "A brave man's blood is the best thing on this
earth when a woman is in trouble.  You're a man and no mistake.  Well,
the devil may work against us for all he's worth, but God sends us men
when we want them."

Once again we went through that ghastly operation.  I have not the
heart to go through with the details.  Lucy had got a terrible shock
and it told on her more than before, for though plenty of blood went
into her veins, her body did not respond to the treatment as well as
on the other occasions.  Her struggle back into life was something
frightful to see and hear.  However, the action of both heart and
lungs improved, and Van Helsing made a sub-cutaneous injection of
morphia, as before, and with good effect.  Her faint became a profound
slumber.  The Professor watched whilst I went downstairs with Quincey
Morris, and sent one of the maids to pay off one of the cabmen who
were waiting.

I left Quincey lying down after having a glass of wine, and told the
cook to get ready a good breakfast.  Then a thought struck me, and I
went back to the room where Lucy now was.  When I came softly in, I
found Van Helsing with a sheet or two of note paper in his hand.  He
had evidently read it, and was thinking it over as he sat with his
hand to his brow.  There was a look of grim satisfaction in his face,
as of one who has had a doubt solved.  He handed me the paper saying
only, "It dropped from Lucy's breast when we carried her to the bath."

When I had read it, I stood looking at the Professor, and after a
pause asked him, "In God's name, what does it all mean?  Was she, or
is she, mad, or what sort of horrible danger is it?"  I was so
bewildered that I did not know what to say more.  Van Helsing put out
his hand and took the paper, saying,

"Do not trouble about it now.  Forget it for the present.  You shall
know and understand it all in good time, but it will be later.  And
now what is it that you came to me to say?"  This brought me back to
fact, and I was all myself again.

"I came to speak about the certificate of death.  If we do not act
properly and wisely, there may be an inquest, and that paper would
have to be produced.  I am in hopes that we need have no inquest, for
if we had it would surely kill poor Lucy, if nothing else did.  I
know, and you know, and the other doctor who attended her knows, that
Mrs. Westenra had disease of the heart, and we can certify that she
died of it.  Let us fill up the certificate at once, and I shall take
it myself to the registrar and go on to the undertaker."

"Good, oh my friend John!  Well thought of!  Truly Miss Lucy, if she
be sad in the foes that beset her, is at least happy in the friends
that love her.  One, two, three, all open their veins for her, besides
one old man.  Ah, yes, I know, friend John.  I am not blind!  I love
you all the more for it!  Now go."

In the hall I met Quincey Morris, with a telegram for Arthur telling
him that Mrs. Westenra was dead, that Lucy also had been ill, but was
now going on better, and that Van Helsing and I were with her.  I told
him where I was going, and he hurried me out, but as I was going said,

"When you come back, Jack, may I have two words with you all to
ourselves?"  I nodded in reply and went out.  I found no difficulty
about the registration, and arranged with the local undertaker to come
up in the evening to measure for the coffin and to make arrangements.

When I got back Quincey was waiting for me.  I told him I would see
him as soon as I knew about Lucy, and went up to her room.  She was
still sleeping, and the Professor seemingly had not moved from his
seat at her side.  From his putting his finger to his lips, I gathered
that he expected her to wake before long and was afraid of
fore-stalling nature.  So I went down to Quincey and took him into the
breakfast room, where the blinds were not drawn down, and which was a
little more cheerful, or rather less cheerless, than the other rooms.

When we were alone, he said to me, "Jack Seward, I don't want to shove
myself in anywhere where I've no right to be, but this is no ordinary
case.  You know I loved that girl and wanted to marry her, but
although that's all past and gone, I can't help feeling anxious about
her all the same.  What is it that's wrong with her?  The Dutchman,
and a fine old fellow he is, I can see that, said that time you two
came into the room, that you must have another transfusion of blood,
and that both you and he were exhausted.  Now I know well that you
medical men speak in camera, and that a man must not expect to know
what they consult about in private.  But this is no common matter, and
whatever it is, I have done my part.  Is not that so?"

"That's so," I said, and he went on.

"I take it that both you and Van Helsing had done already what I did
today.  Is not that so?"

"That's so."

"And I guess Art was in it too.  When I saw him four days ago down at
his own place he looked queer.  I have not seen anything pulled down
so quick since I was on the Pampas and had a mare that I was fond of
go to grass all in a night.  One of those big bats that they call
vampires had got at her in the night, and what with his gorge and the
vein left open, there wasn't enough blood in her to let her stand up,
and I had to put a bullet through her as she lay.  Jack, if you may
tell me without betraying confidence, Arthur was the first, is not
that so?"

As he spoke the poor fellow looked terribly anxious.  He was in a
torture of suspense regarding the woman he loved, and his utter
ignorance of the terrible mystery which seemed to surround her
intensified his pain.  His very heart was bleeding, and it took all
the manhood of him, and there was a royal lot of it, too, to keep him
from breaking down.  I paused before answering, for I felt that I must
not betray anything which the Professor wished kept secret, but
already he knew so much, and guessed so much, that there could be no
reason for not answering, so I answered in the same phrase.

"That's so."

"And how long has this been going on?"

"About ten days."

"Ten days!  Then I guess, Jack Seward, that that poor pretty creature
that we all love has had put into her veins within that time the blood
of four strong men.  Man alive, her whole body wouldn't hold it."  Then
coming close to me, he spoke in a fierce half-whisper.  "What took it
out?"

I shook my head.  "That," I said, "is the crux.  Van Helsing is simply
frantic about it, and I am at my wits' end.  I can't even hazard a
guess.  There has been a series of little circumstances which have
thrown out all our calculations as to Lucy being properly watched.
But these shall not occur again.  Here we stay until all be well, or
ill."

Quincey held out his hand.  "Count me in," he said.  "You and the
Dutchman will tell me what to do, and I'll do it."

When she woke late in the afternoon, Lucy's first movement was to feel
in her breast, and to my surprise, produced the paper which Van
Helsing had given me to read.  The careful Professor had replaced it
where it had come from, lest on waking she should be alarmed.  Her
eyes then lit on Van Helsing and on me too, and gladdened.  Then she
looked round the room, and seeing where she was, shuddered.  She gave
a loud cry, and put her poor thin hands before her pale face.

We both understood what was meant, that she had realized to the full
her mother's death.  So we tried what we could to comfort her.
Doubtless sympathy eased her somewhat, but she was very low in thought
and spirit, and wept silently and weakly for a long time.  We told her
that either or both of us would now remain with her all the time, and
that seemed to comfort her.  Towards dusk she fell into a doze.  Here
a very odd thing occurred.  Whilst still asleep she took the paper
from her breast and tore it in two.  Van Helsing stepped over and took
the pieces from her.  All the same, however, she went on with the
action of tearing, as though the material were still in her hands.
Finally she lifted her hands and opened them as though scattering the
fragments.  Van Helsing seemed surprised, and his brows gathered as if
in thought, but he said nothing.


19 September.--All last night she slept fitfully, being always afraid
to sleep, and something weaker when she woke from it.  The Professor
and I took in turns to watch, and we never left her for a moment
unattended.  Quincey Morris said nothing about his intention, but I
knew that all night long he patrolled round and round the house.

When the day came, its searching light showed the ravages in poor
Lucy's strength.  She was hardly able to turn her head, and the little
nourishment which she could take seemed to do her no good.  At times
she slept, and both Van Helsing and I noticed the difference in her,
between sleeping and waking.  Whilst asleep she looked stronger,
although more haggard, and her breathing was softer.  Her open mouth
showed the pale gums drawn back from the teeth, which looked
positively longer and sharper than usual.  When she woke the softness
of her eyes evidently changed the expression, for she looked her own
self, although a dying one.  In the afternoon she asked for Arthur,
and we telegraphed for him.  Quincey went off to meet him at the
station.

When he arrived it was nearly six o'clock, and the sun was setting
full and warm, and the red light streamed in through the window and
gave more colour to the pale cheeks.  When he saw her, Arthur was
simply choking with emotion, and none of us could speak.  In the hours
that had passed, the fits of sleep, or the comatose condition that
passed for it, had grown more frequent, so that the pauses when
conversation was possible were shortened.  Arthur's presence, however,
seemed to act as a stimulant.  She rallied a little, and spoke to him
more brightly than she had done since we arrived.  He too pulled
himself together, and spoke as cheerily as he could, so that the best
was made of everything.

It is now nearly one o'clock, and he and Van Helsing are sitting with
her.  I am to relieve them in a quarter of an hour, and I am entering
this on Lucy's phonograph.  Until six o'clock they are to try to rest.
I fear that tomorrow will end our watching, for the shock has been too
great.  The poor child cannot rally.  God help us all.




LETTER MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA

(Unopened by her)

17 September

My dearest Lucy,

"It seems an age since I heard from you, or indeed since I
wrote.  You will pardon me, I know, for all my faults when
you have read all my budget of news.  Well, I got my husband back
all right.  When we arrived at Exeter there was a carriage
waiting for us, and in it, though he had an attack of gout, Mr.
Hawkins.  He took us to his house, where there were rooms for us
all nice and comfortable, and we dined together.  After dinner
Mr. Hawkins said,

"'My dears, I want to drink your health and prosperity, and
may every blessing attend you both.  I know you both from
children, and have, with love and pride, seen you grow up.
Now I want you to make your home here with me.  I have left
to me neither chick nor child.  All are gone, and in my
will I have left you everything.'  I cried, Lucy dear, as
Jonathan and the old man clasped hands.  Our evening was a
very, very happy one.

"So here we are, installed in this beautiful old house, and
from both my bedroom and the drawing room I can see the
great elms of the cathedral close, with their great black
stems standing out against the old yellow stone of the cathedral,
and I can hear the rooks overhead cawing and cawing and
chattering and chattering and gossiping all day, after the manner
of rooks--and humans.  I am busy, I need not tell you, arranging
things and housekeeping.  Jonathan and Mr. Hawkins are busy all
day, for now that Jonathan is a partner, Mr. Hawkins wants to
tell him all about the clients.

"How is your dear mother getting on?  I wish I could run up
to town for a day or two to see you, dear, but I dare not
go yet, with so much on my shoulders, and Jonathan wants
looking after still.  He is beginning to put some flesh on
his bones again, but he was terribly weakened by the long
illness.  Even now he sometimes starts out of his sleep in
a sudden way and awakes all trembling until I can coax him
back to his usual placidity.  However, thank God, these
occasions grow less frequent as the days go on, and they
will in time pass away altogether, I trust.  And now I have
told you my news, let me ask yours.  When are you to be
married, and where, and who is to perform the ceremony, and
what are you to wear, and is it to be a public or private
wedding?  Tell me all about it, dear, tell me all about
everything, for there is nothing which interests you which
will not be dear to me.  Jonathan asks me to send his 'respectful
duty', but I do not think that is good enough from the junior
partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker.  And so, as you
love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and
tenses of the verb, I send you simply his 'love' instead.
Goodbye, my dearest Lucy, and blessings on you.

"Yours,

"Mina Harker"



REPORT FROM PATRICK HENNESSEY, MD, MRCSLK, QCPI, ETC, ETC,
TO JOHN SEWARD, MD

20 September

My dear Sir:

"In accordance with your wishes, I enclose report of the
conditions of everything left in my charge.  With regard to
patient, Renfield, there is more to say.  He has had another
outbreak, which might have had a dreadful ending, but which, as
it fortunately happened, was unattended with any unhappy results.
This afternoon a carrier's cart with two men made a call at the
empty house whose grounds abut on ours, the house to which, you
will remember, the patient twice ran away.  The men stopped at
our gate to ask the porter their way, as they were strangers.

"I was myself looking out of the study window, having a
smoke after dinner, and saw one of them come up to the
house.  As he passed the window of Renfield's room, the
patient began to rate him from within, and called him all
the foul names he could lay his tongue to.  The man, who
seemed a decent fellow enough, contented himself by telling
him to 'shut up for a foul-mouthed beggar', whereon our man
accused him of robbing him and wanting to murder him and
said that he would hinder him if he were to swing for it.
I opened the window and signed to the man not to notice, so
he contented himself after looking the place over and making up
his mind as to what kind of place he had got to by saying, 'Lor'
bless yer, sir, I wouldn't mind what was said to me in a bloomin'
madhouse.  I pity ye and the guv'nor for havin' to live in the
house with a wild beast like that.'

"Then he asked his way civilly enough, and I told him where
the gate of the empty house was.  He went away followed by
threats and curses and revilings from our man.  I went down
to see if I could make out any cause for his anger, since
he is usually such a well-behaved man, and except his violent
fits nothing of the kind had ever occurred.  I found him, to my
astonishment, quite composed and most genial in his manner.  I
tried to get him to talk of the incident, but he blandly asked me
questions as to what I meant, and led me to believe that he was
completely oblivious of the affair.  It was, I am sorry to say,
however, only another instance of his cunning, for within half an
hour I heard of him again.  This time he had broken out through
the window of his room, and was running down the avenue.  I
called to the attendants to follow me, and ran after him, for I
feared he was intent on some mischief.  My fear was justified
when I saw the same cart which had passed before coming down the
road, having on it some great wooden boxes.  The men were wiping
their foreheads, and were flushed in the face, as if with violent
exercise.  Before I could get up to him, the patient rushed at
them, and pulling one of them off the cart, began to knock his
head against the ground.  If I had not seized him just at the
moment, I believe he would have killed the man there and then.
The other fellow jumped down and struck him over the head with
the butt end of his heavy whip.  It was a horrible blow, but he
did not seem to mind it, but seized him also, and struggled with
the three of us, pulling us to and fro as if we were kittens.
You know I am no lightweight, and the others were both burly men.
At first he was silent in his fighting, but as we began to master
him, and the attendants were putting a strait waistcoat on him,
he began to shout, 'I'll frustrate them! They shan't rob me!
They shan't murder me by inches!  I'll fight for my Lord and
Master!' and all sorts of similar incoherent ravings.  It was
with very considerable difficulty that they got him back to the
house and put him in the padded room.  One of the attendants,
Hardy, had a finger broken.  However, I set it all right, and he
is going on well.

"The two carriers were at first loud in their threats of
actions for damages, and promised to rain all the penalties
of the law on us.  Their threats were, however, mingled
with some sort of indirect apology for the defeat of the
two of them by a feeble madman.  They said that if it had
not been for the way their strength had been spent in carrying
and raising the heavy boxes to the cart they would have made
short work of him.  They gave as another reason for their defeat
the extraordinary state of drouth to which they had been reduced
by the dusty nature of their occupation and the reprehensible
distance from the scene of their labors of any place of public
entertainment.  I quite understood their drift, and after a stiff
glass of strong grog, or rather more of the same, and with each a
sovereign in hand, they made light of the attack, and swore that
they would encounter a worse madman any day for the pleasure of
meeting so 'bloomin' good a bloke' as your correspondent.  I took
their names and addresses, in case they might be needed.  They
are as follows:  Jack Smollet, of Dudding's Rents, King George's
Road, Great Walworth, and Thomas Snelling, Peter Farley's Row,
Guide Court, Bethnal Green. They are both in the employment of
Harris & Sons, Moving and Shipment Company, Orange Master's Yard,
Soho.

"I shall report to you any matter of interest occurring here, and
shall wire you at once if there is anything of importance.

"Believe me, dear Sir,

"Yours faithfully,

"Patrick Hennessey."



LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA (Unopened by her)

18 September

"My dearest Lucy,

"Such a sad blow has befallen us.  Mr. Hawkins has died very
suddenly.  Some may not think it so sad for us, but we had
both come to so love him that it really seems as though we
had lost a father.  I never knew either father or mother,
so that the dear old man's death is a real blow to me. Jonathan
is greatly distressed.  It is not only that he feels sorrow, deep
sorrow, for the dear, good man who has befriended him all his
life, and now at the end has treated him like his own son and
left him a fortune which to people of our modest bringing up is
wealth beyond the dream of avarice, but Jonathan feels it on
another account.  He says the amount of responsibility which it
puts upon him makes him nervous.  He begins to doubt himself.  I
try to cheer him up, and my belief in him helps him to have a
belief in himself.  But it is here that the grave shock that he
experienced tells upon him the most.  Oh, it is too hard that a
sweet, simple, noble, strong nature such as his, a nature which
enabled him by our dear, good friend's aid to rise from clerk to
master in a few years, should be so injured that the very essence
of its strength is gone.  Forgive me, dear, if I worry you with my
troubles in the midst of your own happiness, but Lucy dear, I
must tell someone, for the strain of keeping up a brave and
cheerful appearance to Jonathan tries me, and I have no one here
that I can confide in.  I dread coming up to London, as we must
do that day after tomorrow, for poor Mr. Hawkins left in his will
that he was to be buried in the grave with his father.  As there
are no relations at all, Jonathan will have to be chief mourner.
I shall try to run over to see you, dearest, if only for a few
minutes.  Forgive me for troubling you.  With all blessings,

"Your loving

"Mina Harker"



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

20 September.--Only resolution and habit can let me make an entry
tonight.  I am too miserable, too low spirited, too sick of the world
and all in it, including life itself, that I would not care if I heard
this moment the flapping of the wings of the angel of death.  And he
has been flapping those grim wings to some purpose of late, Lucy's
mother and Arthur's father, and now . . . Let me get on with my work.

I duly relieved Van Helsing in his watch over Lucy.  We wanted Arthur
to go to rest also, but he refused at first.  It was only when I told
him that we should want him to help us during the day, and that we
must not all break down for want of rest, lest Lucy should suffer,
that he agreed to go.

Van Helsing was very kind to him.  "Come, my child," he said.  "Come
with me.  You are sick and weak, and have had much sorrow and much
mental pain, as well as that tax on your strength that we know of.
You must not be alone, for to be alone is to be full of fears and
alarms.  Come to the drawing room, where there is a big fire, and
there are two sofas.  You shall lie on one, and I on the other, and
our sympathy will be comfort to each other, even though we do not
speak, and even if we sleep."

Arthur went off with him, casting back a longing look on Lucy's face,
which lay in her pillow, almost whiter than the lawn.  She lay quite
still, and I looked around the room to see that all was as it should
be.  I could see that the Professor had carried out in this room, as
in the other, his purpose of using the garlic.  The whole of the
window sashes reeked with it, and round Lucy's neck, over the silk
handkerchief which Van Helsing made her keep on, was a rough chaplet
of the same odorous flowers.

Lucy was breathing somewhat stertorously, and her face was at its
worst, for the open mouth showed the pale gums.  Her teeth, in the
dim, uncertain light, seemed longer and sharper than they had been in
the morning.  In particular, by some trick of the light, the canine
teeth looked longer and sharper than the rest.

I sat down beside her, and presently she moved uneasily.  At the same
moment there came a sort of dull flapping or buffeting at the window.
I went over to it softly, and peeped out by the corner of the blind.
There was a full moonlight, and I could see that the noise was made by
a great bat, which wheeled around, doubtless attracted by the light,
although so dim, and every now and again struck the window with its
wings.  When I came back to my seat, I found that Lucy had moved
slightly, and had torn away the garlic flowers from her throat.  I
replaced them as well as I could, and sat watching her.

Presently she woke, and I gave her food, as Van Helsing had
prescribed.  She took but a little, and that languidly.  There did not
seem to be with her now the unconscious struggle for life and strength
that had hitherto so marked her illness.  It struck me as curious that
the moment she became conscious she pressed the garlic flowers close
to her.  It was certainly odd that whenever she got into that
lethargic state, with the stertorous breathing, she put the flowers
from her, but that when she waked she clutched them close, There was
no possibility of making any mistake about this, for in the long hours
that followed, she had many spells of sleeping and waking and repeated
both actions many times.

At six o'clock Van Helsing came to relieve me.  Arthur had then fallen
into a doze, and he mercifully let him sleep on.  When he saw Lucy's
face I could hear the hissing indraw of breath, and he said to me in a
sharp whisper.  "Draw up the blind.  I want light!"  Then he bent down,
and, with his face almost touching Lucy's, examined her carefully.  He
removed the flowers and lifted the silk handkerchief from her throat.
As he did so he started back and I could hear his ejaculation, "Mein
Gott!" as it was smothered in his throat.  I bent over and looked,
too, and as I noticed some queer chill came over me.  The wounds on
the throat had absolutely disappeared.

For fully five minutes Van Helsing stood looking at her, with his face
at its sternest.  Then he turned to me and said calmly, "She is
dying.  It will not be long now.  It will be much difference, mark me,
whether she dies conscious or in her sleep.  Wake that poor boy, and
let him come and see the last.  He trusts us, and we have promised
him."

I went to the dining room and waked him.  He was dazed for a moment,
but when he saw the sunlight streaming in through the edges of the
shutters he thought he was late, and expressed his fear.  I assured
him that Lucy was still asleep, but told him as gently as I could that
both Van Helsing and I feared that the end was near.  He covered his
face with his hands, and slid down on his knees by the sofa, where he
remained, perhaps a minute, with his head buried, praying, whilst his
shoulders shook with grief.  I took him by the hand and raised him up.
"Come," I said, "my dear old fellow, summon all your fortitude.  It
will be best and easiest for her."

When we came into Lucy's room I could see that Van Helsing had, with
his usual forethought, been putting matters straight and making
everything look as pleasing as possible.  He had even brushed Lucy's
hair, so that it lay on the pillow in its usual sunny ripples.  When
we came into the room she opened her eyes, and seeing him, whispered
softly, "Arthur!  Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come!"

He was stooping to kiss her, when Van Helsing motioned him back.
"No," he whispered, "not yet!  Hold her hand, it will comfort her
more."

So Arthur took her hand and knelt beside her, and she looked her best,
with all the soft lines matching the angelic beauty of her eyes.  Then
gradually her eyes closed, and she sank to sleep.  For a little bit
her breast heaved softly, and her breath came and went like a tired
child's.

And then insensibly there came the strange change which I had noticed
in the night.  Her breathing grew stertorous, the mouth opened, and
the pale gums, drawn back, made the teeth look longer and sharper than
ever.  In a sort of sleep-waking, vague, unconscious way she opened
her eyes, which were now dull and hard at once, and said in a soft,
voluptuous voice, such as I had never heard from her lips, "Arthur!
Oh, my love, I am so glad you have come!  Kiss me!"

Arthur bent eagerly over to kiss her, but at that instant Van Helsing,
who, like me, had been startled by her voice, swooped upon him, and
catching him by the neck with both hands, dragged him back with a fury
of strength which I never thought he could have possessed, and
actually hurled him almost across the room.

"Not on your life!" he said, "not for your living soul and hers!"  And
he stood between them like a lion at bay.

Arthur was so taken aback that he did not for a moment know what to do
or say, and before any impulse of violence could seize him he realized
the place and the occasion, and stood silent, waiting.

I kept my eyes fixed on Lucy, as did Van Helsing, and we saw a spasm
as of rage flit like a shadow over her face.  The sharp teeth clamped
together.  Then her eyes closed, and she breathed heavily.

Very shortly after she opened her eyes in all their softness, and
putting out her poor, pale, thin hand, took Van Helsing's great brown
one, drawing it close to her, she kissed it.  "My true friend," she
said, in a faint voice, but with untellable pathos, "My true friend,
and his!  Oh, guard him, and give me peace!"

"I swear it!" he said solemnly, kneeling beside her and holding up his
hand, as one who registers an oath.  Then he turned to Arthur, and
said to him, "Come, my child, take her hand in yours, and kiss her on
the forehead, and only once."

Their eyes met instead of their lips, and so they parted.  Lucy's eyes
closed, and Van Helsing, who had been watching closely, took Arthur's
arm, and drew him away.

And then Lucy's breathing became stertorous again, and all at once it
ceased.

"It is all over," said Van Helsing.  "She is dead!"

I took Arthur by the arm, and led him away to the drawing room, where
he sat down, and covered his face with his hands, sobbing in a way
that nearly broke me down to see.

I went back to the room, and found Van Helsing looking at poor Lucy,
and his face was sterner than ever.  Some change had come over her
body.  Death had given back part of her beauty, for her brow and
cheeks had recovered some of their flowing lines.  Even the lips had
lost their deadly pallor.  It was as if the blood, no longer needed
for the working of the heart, had gone to make the harshness of death
as little rude as might be.

"We thought her dying whilst she slept, And sleeping when she died."


I stood beside Van Helsing, and said, "Ah well, poor girl, there is
peace for her at last.  It is the end!"

He turned to me, and said with grave solemnity, "Not so, alas!  Not
so.  It is only the beginning!"

When I asked him what he meant, he only shook his head and answered,
"We can do nothing as yet.  Wait and see."




CHAPTER 13


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY--cont.

The funeral was arranged for the next succeeding day, so that Lucy and
her mother might be buried together.  I attended to all the ghastly
formalities, and the urbane undertaker proved that his staff was
afflicted, or blessed, with something of his own obsequious suavity.
Even the woman who performed the last offices for the dead remarked to
me, in a confidential, brother-professional way, when she had come out
from the death chamber,

"She makes a very beautiful corpse, sir.  It's quite a privilege to
attend on her.  It's not too much to say that she will do credit to
our establishment!"

I noticed that Van Helsing never kept far away.  This was possible
from the disordered state of things in the household.  There were no
relatives at hand, and as Arthur had to be back the next day to attend
at his father's funeral, we were unable to notify any one who should
have been bidden.  Under the circumstances, Van Helsing and I took it
upon ourselves to examine papers, etc.  He insisted upon looking over
Lucy's papers himself.  I asked him why, for I feared that he, being a
foreigner, might not be quite aware of English legal requirements, and
so might in ignorance make some unnecessary trouble.

He answered me, "I know, I know.  You forget that I am a lawyer as
well as a doctor.  But this is not altogether for the law.  You knew
that, when you avoided the coroner.  I have more than him to avoid.
There may be papers more, such as this."

As he spoke he took from his pocket book the memorandum which had been
in Lucy's breast, and which she had torn in her sleep.

"When you find anything of the solicitor who is for the late Mrs.
Westenra, seal all her papers, and write him tonight.  For me, I watch
here in the room and in Miss Lucy's old room all night, and I myself
search for what may be.  It is not well that her very thoughts go into
the hands of strangers."

I went on with my part of the work, and in another half hour had found
the name and address of Mrs. Westenra's solicitor and had written to
him.  All the poor lady's papers were in order.  Explicit directions
regarding the place of burial were given.  I had hardly sealed the
letter, when, to my surprise, Van Helsing walked into the room,
saying,

"Can I help you friend John?  I am free, and if I may, my service is
to you."

"Have you got what you looked for?" I asked.

To which he replied, "I did not look for any specific thing.  I only
hoped to find, and find I have, all that there was, only some letters
and a few memoranda, and a diary new begun.  But I have them here, and
we shall for the present say nothing of them.  I shall see that poor
lad tomorrow evening, and, with his sanction, I shall use some."

When we had finished the work in hand, he said to me, "And now, friend
John, I think we may to bed.  We want sleep, both you and I, and rest
to recuperate.  Tomorrow we shall have much to do, but for the tonight
there is no need of us.  Alas!"

Before turning in we went to look at poor Lucy.  The undertaker had
certainly done his work well, for the room was turned into a small
chapelle ardente.  There was a wilderness of beautiful white flowers,
and death was made as little repulsive as might be.  The end of the
winding sheet was laid over the face.  When the Professor bent over
and turned it gently back, we both started at the beauty before us.
The tall wax candles showing a sufficient light to note it well.  All
Lucy's loveliness had come back to her in death, and the hours that
had passed, instead of leaving traces of 'decay's effacing fingers',
had but restored the beauty of life, till positively I could not
believe my eyes that I was looking at a corpse.

The Professor looked sternly grave.  He had not loved her as I had,
and there was no need for tears in his eyes.  He said to me, "Remain
till I return," and left the room.  He came back with a handful of
wild garlic from the box waiting in the hall, but which had not been
opened, and placed the flowers amongst the others on and around the
bed.  Then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold
crucifix, and placed it over the mouth.  He restored the sheet to its
place, and we came away.

I was undressing in my own room, when, with a premonitory tap at the
door, he entered, and at once began to speak.

"Tomorrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem
knives."

"Must we make an autopsy?" I asked.

"Yes and no.  I want to operate, but not what you think.  Let me tell
you now, but not a word to another.  I want to cut off her head and
take out her heart.  Ah!  You a surgeon, and so shocked!  You, whom I
have seen with no tremble of hand or heart, do operations of life and
death that make the rest shudder.  Oh, but I must not forget, my dear
friend John, that you loved her, and I have not forgotten it for is I
that shall operate, and you must not help.  I would like to do it
tonight, but for Arthur I must not.  He will be free after his
father's funeral tomorrow, and he will want to see her, to see it.
Then, when she is coffined ready for the next day, you and I shall
come when all sleep.  We shall unscrew the coffin lid, and shall do
our operation, and then replace all, so that none know, save we
alone."

"But why do it at all?  The girl is dead.  Why mutilate her poor body
without need?  And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and
nothing to gain by it, no good to her, to us, to science, to human
knowledge, why do it?  Without such it is monstrous."

For answer he put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with infinite
tenderness, "Friend John, I pity your poor bleeding heart, and I love
you the more because it does so bleed.  If I could, I would take on
myself the burden that you do bear.  But there are things that you
know not, but that you shall know, and bless me for knowing, though
they are not pleasant things.  John, my child, you have been my friend
now many years, and yet did you ever know me to do any without good
cause?  I may err, I am but man, but I believe in all I do.  Was it
not for these causes that you send for me when the great trouble
came?  Yes!  Were you not amazed, nay horrified, when I would not let
Arthur kiss his love, though she was dying, and snatched him away by
all my strength?  Yes!  And yet you saw how she thanked me, with her
so beautiful dying eyes, her voice, too, so weak, and she kiss my
rough old hand and bless me?  Yes!  And did you not hear me swear
promise to her, that so she closed her eyes grateful?  Yes!

"Well, I have good reason now for all I want to do.  You have for many
years trust me.  You have believe me weeks past, when there be things
so strange that you might have well doubt.  Believe me yet a little,
friend John.  If you trust me not, then I must tell what I think, and
that is not perhaps well.  And if I work, as work I shall, no matter
trust or no trust, without my friend trust in me, I work with heavy
heart and feel oh so lonely when I want all help and courage that may
be!"  He paused a moment and went on solemnly, "Friend John, there are
strange and terrible days before us.  Let us not be two, but one, that
so we work to a good end.  Will you not have faith in me?"

I took his hand, and promised him.  I held my door open as he went
away, and watched him go to his room and close the door.  As I stood
without moving, I saw one of the maids pass silently along the
passage, she had her back to me, so did not see me, and go into the
room where Lucy lay.  The sight touched me.  Devotion is so rare, and
we are so grateful to those who show it unasked to those we love.  Here
was a poor girl putting aside the terrors which she naturally had of
death to go watch alone by the bier of the mistress whom she loved, so
that the poor clay might not be lonely till laid to eternal rest.

I must have slept long and soundly, for it was broad daylight when Van
Helsing waked me by coming into my room.  He came over to my bedside
and said, "You need not trouble about the knives.  We shall not do
it."

"Why not?" I asked.  For his solemnity of the night before had
greatly impressed me.

"Because," he said sternly, "it is too late, or too early.  See!"
Here he held up the little golden crucifix.

"This was stolen in the night."

"How stolen," I asked in wonder, "since you have it now?"

"Because I get it back from the worthless wretch who stole it, from
the woman who robbed the dead and the living.  Her punishment will
surely come, but not through me.  She knew not altogether what she
did, and thus unknowing, she only stole.  Now we must wait."  He went
away on the word, leaving me with a new mystery to think of, a new
puzzle to grapple with.

The forenoon was a dreary time, but at noon the solicitor came, Mr.
Marquand, of Wholeman, Sons, Marquand & Lidderdale.  He was very
genial and very appreciative of what we had done, and took off our
hands all cares as to details.  During lunch he told us that Mrs.
Westenra had for some time expected sudden death from her heart, and
had put her affairs in absolute order.  He informed us that, with the
exception of a certain entailed property of Lucy's father which now,
in default of direct issue, went back to a distant branch of the
family, the whole estate, real and personal, was left absolutely to
Arthur Holmwood.  When he had told us so much he went on,

"Frankly we did our best to prevent such a testamentary disposition,
and pointed out certain contingencies that might leave her daughter
either penniless or not so free as she should be to act regarding a
matrimonial alliance.  Indeed, we pressed the matter so far that we
almost came into collision, for she asked us if we were or were not
prepared to carry out her wishes.  Of course, we had then no
alternative but to accept.  We were right in principle, and
ninety-nine times out of a hundred we should have proved, by the logic
of events, the accuracy of our judgment.

"Frankly, however, I must admit that in this case any other form of
disposition would have rendered impossible the carrying out of her
wishes.  For by her predeceasing her daughter the latter would have
come into possession of the property, and, even had she only survived
her mother by five minutes, her property would, in case there were no
will, and a will was a practical impossibility in such a case, have
been treated at her decease as under intestacy.  In which case Lord
Godalming, though so dear a friend, would have had no claim in the
world.  And the inheritors, being remote, would not be likely to
abandon their just rights, for sentimental reasons regarding an entire
stranger.  I assure you, my dear sirs, I am rejoiced at the result,
perfectly rejoiced."

He was a good fellow, but his rejoicing at the one little part, in
which he was officially interested, of so great a tragedy, was an
object-lesson in the limitations of sympathetic understanding.

He did not remain long, but said he would look in later in the day and
see Lord Godalming.  His coming, however, had been a certain comfort
to us, since it assured us that we should not have to dread hostile
criticism as to any of our acts.  Arthur was expected at five o'clock,
so a little before that time we visited the death chamber.  It was so
in very truth, for now both mother and daughter lay in it.  The
undertaker, true to his craft, had made the best display he could of
his goods, and there was a mortuary air about the place that lowered
our spirits at once.

Van Helsing ordered the former arrangement to be adhered to,
explaining that, as Lord Godalming was coming very soon, it would be
less harrowing to his feelings to see all that was left of his fiancee
quite alone.

The undertaker seemed shocked at his own stupidity and exerted himself
to restore things to the condition in which we left them the night
before, so that when Arthur came such shocks to his feelings as we
could avoid were saved.

Poor fellow!  He looked desperately sad and broken.  Even his stalwart
manhood seemed to have shrunk somewhat under the strain of his
much-tried emotions.  He had, I knew, been very genuinely and
devotedly attached to his father, and to lose him, and at such a time,
was a bitter blow to him.  With me he was warm as ever, and to Van
Helsing he was sweetly courteous.  But I could not help seeing that
there was some constraint with him.  The professor noticed it too, and
motioned me to bring him upstairs.  I did so, and left him at the door
of the room, as I felt he would like to be quite alone with her, but
he took my arm and led me in, saying huskily,

"You loved her too, old fellow.  She told me all about it, and there
was no friend had a closer place in her heart than you.  I don't know
how to thank you for all you have done for her.  I can't think
yet . . ."

Here he suddenly broke down, and threw his arms round my shoulders and
laid his head on my breast, crying, "Oh, Jack!  Jack!  What shall I
do?  The whole of life seems gone from me all at once, and there is
nothing in the wide world for me to live for."

I comforted him as well as I could.  In such cases men do not need
much expression.  A grip of the hand, the tightening of an arm over
the shoulder, a sob in unison, are expressions of sympathy dear to a
man's heart.  I stood still and silent till his sobs died away, and
then I said softly to him, "Come and look at her."

Together we moved over to the bed, and I lifted the lawn from her
face.  God!  How beautiful she was.  Every hour seemed to be enhancing
her loveliness.  It frightened and amazed me somewhat.  And as for
Arthur, he fell to trembling, and finally was shaken with doubt as
with an ague.  At last, after a long pause, he said to me in a faint
whisper, "Jack, is she really dead?"

I assured him sadly that it was so, and went on to suggest, for I felt
that such a horrible doubt should not have life for a moment longer
than I could help, that it often happened that after death faces
become softened and even resolved into their youthful beauty, that
this was especially so when death had been preceded by any acute or
prolonged suffering.  I seemed to quite do away with any doubt, and
after kneeling beside the couch for a while and looking at her
lovingly and long, he turned aside.  I told him that that must be
goodbye, as the coffin had to be prepared, so he went back and took
her dead hand in his and kissed it, and bent over and kissed her
forehead.  He came away, fondly looking back over his shoulder at her
as he came.

I left him in the drawing room, and told Van Helsing that he had said
goodbye, so the latter went to the kitchen to tell the undertaker's
men to proceed with the preparations and to screw up the coffin.  When
he came out of the room again I told him of Arthur's question, and he
replied, "I am not surprised.  Just now I doubted for a moment
myself!"

We all dined together, and I could see that poor Art was trying to
make the best of things.  Van Helsing had been silent all dinner time,
but when we had lit our cigars he said, "Lord . . ." but Arthur
interrupted him.

"No, no, not that, for God's sake!  Not yet at any rate.  Forgive me,
sir.  I did not mean to speak offensively.  It is only because my loss
is so recent."

The Professor answered very sweetly, "I only used that name because I
was in doubt.  I must not call you 'Mr.' and I have grown to love you,
yes, my dear boy, to love you, as Arthur."

Arthur held out his hand, and took the old man's warmly.  "Call me
what you will," he said.  "I hope I may always have the title of a
friend.  And let me say that I am at a loss for words to thank you for
your goodness to my poor dear."  He paused a moment, and went on, "I
know that she understood your goodness even better than I do.  And if
I was rude or in any way wanting at that time you acted so, you
remember"--the Professor nodded--"you must forgive me."

He answered with a grave kindness, "I know it was hard for you to
quite trust me then, for to trust such violence needs to understand,
and I take it that you do not, that you cannot, trust me now, for you
do not yet understand.  And there may be more times when I shall want
you to trust when you cannot, and may not, and must not yet
understand.  But the time will come when your trust shall be whole and
complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight
himself shone through.  Then you shall bless me from first to last for
your own sake, and for the sake of others, and for her dear sake to
whom I swore to protect."

"And indeed, indeed, sir," said Arthur warmly.  "I shall in all ways
trust you.  I know and believe you have a very noble heart, and you
are Jack's friend, and you were hers.  You shall do what you like."

The Professor cleared his throat a couple of times, as though about to
speak, and finally said, "May I ask you something now?"

"Certainly."

"You know that Mrs. Westenra left you all her property?"

"No, poor dear.  I never thought of it."

"And as it is all yours, you have a right to deal with it as you will.
I want you to give me permission to read all Miss Lucy's papers and
letters.  Believe me, it is no idle curiosity.  I have a motive of
which, be sure, she would have approved.  I have them all here.  I
took them before we knew that all was yours, so that no strange hand
might touch them, no strange eye look through words into her soul.  I
shall keep them, if I may.  Even you may not see them yet, but I shall
keep them safe.  No word shall be lost, and in the good time I shall
give them back to you.  It is a hard thing that I ask, but you will do
it, will you not, for Lucy's sake?"

Arthur spoke out heartily, like his old self, "Dr. Van Helsing, you
may do what you will.  I feel that in saying this I am doing what my
dear one would have approved.  I shall not trouble you with questions
till the time comes."

The old Professor stood up as he said solemnly, "And you are right.
There will be pain for us all, but it will not be all pain, nor will
this pain be the last.  We and you too, you most of all, dear boy,
will have to pass through the bitter water before we reach the sweet.
But we must be brave of heart and unselfish, and do our duty, and all
will be well!"

I slept on a sofa in Arthur's room that night.  Van Helsing did not go
to bed at all.  He went to and fro, as if patroling the house, and was
never out of sight of the room where Lucy lay in her coffin, strewn
with the wild garlic flowers, which sent through the odour of lily and
rose, a heavy, overpowering smell into the night.




MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

22 September.--In the train to Exeter.  Jonathan sleeping.  It seems
only yesterday that the last entry was made, and yet how much between
then, in Whitby and all the world before me, Jonathan away and no news
of him, and now, married to Jonathan, Jonathan a solicitor, a partner,
rich, master of his business, Mr. Hawkins dead and buried, and
Jonathan with another attack that may harm him.  Some day he may ask
me about it.  Down it all goes.  I am rusty in my shorthand, see what
unexpected prosperity does for us, so it may be as well to freshen it
up again with an exercise anyhow.

The service was very simple and very solemn.  There were only
ourselves and the servants there, one or two old friends of his from
Exeter, his London agent, and a gentleman representing Sir John
Paxton, the President of the Incorporated Law Society.  Jonathan and I
stood hand in hand, and we felt that our best and dearest friend was
gone from us.

We came back to town quietly, taking a bus to Hyde Park Corner.
Jonathan thought it would interest me to go into the Row for a while,
so we sat down.  But there were very few people there, and it was
sad-looking and desolate to see so many empty chairs.  It made us
think of the empty chair at home.  So we got up and walked down
Piccadilly.  Jonathan was holding me by the arm, the way he used to in
the old days before I went to school.  I felt it very improper, for
you can't go on for some years teaching etiquette and decorum to other
girls without the pedantry of it biting into yourself a bit.  But it
was Jonathan, and he was my husband, and we didn't know anybody who
saw us, and we didn't care if they did, so on we walked.  I was
looking at a very beautiful girl, in a big cart-wheel hat, sitting in
a victoria outside Guiliano's, when I felt Jonathan clutch my arm so
tight that he hurt me, and he said under his breath, "My God!"

I am always anxious about Jonathan, for I fear that some nervous fit
may upset him again.  So I turned to him quickly, and asked him what
it was that disturbed him.

He was very pale, and his eyes seemed bulging out as, half in terror
and half in amazement, he gazed at a tall, thin man, with a beaky nose
and black moustache and pointed beard, who was also observing the
pretty girl.  He was looking at her so hard that he did not see either
of us, and so I had a good view of him.  His face was not a good
face.  It was hard, and cruel, and sensual, and big white teeth, that
looked all the whiter because his lips were so red, were pointed like
an animal's.  Jonathan kept staring at him, till I was afraid he would
notice.  I feared he might take it ill, he looked so fierce and nasty.
I asked Jonathan why he was disturbed, and he answered, evidently
thinking that I knew as much about it as he did, "Do you see who it
is?"

"No, dear," I said.  "I don't know him, who is it?"  His answer seemed
to shock and thrill me, for it was said as if he did not know that it
was me, Mina, to whom he was speaking.  "It is the man himself!"

The poor dear was evidently terrified at something, very greatly
terrified.  I do believe that if he had not had me to lean on and to
support him he would have sunk down.  He kept staring.  A man came out
of the shop with a small parcel, and gave it to the lady, who then
drove off.  The dark man kept his eyes fixed on her, and when the
carriage moved up Piccadilly he followed in the same direction, and
hailed a hansom.  Jonathan kept looking after him, and said, as if to
himself,

"I believe it is the Count, but he has grown young.  My God, if this
be so!  Oh, my God!  My God!  If only I knew!  If only I knew!"  He was
distressing himself so much that I feared to keep his mind on the
subject by asking him any questions, so I remained silent.  I drew
away quietly, and he, holding my arm, came easily.  We walked a little
further, and then went in and sat for a while in the Green Park.  It
was a hot day for autumn, and there was a comfortable seat in a shady
place.  After a few minutes' staring at nothing, Jonathan's eyes
closed, and he went quickly into a sleep, with his head on my
shoulder.  I thought it was the best thing for him, so did not disturb
him.  In about twenty minutes he woke up, and said to me quite
cheerfully,

"Why, Mina, have I been asleep!  Oh, do forgive me for being so rude.
Come, and we'll have a cup of tea somewhere."

He had evidently forgotten all about the dark stranger, as in his
illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of.  I
don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness.  It may make or continue
some injury to the brain.  I must not ask him, for fear I shall do
more harm than good, but I must somehow learn the facts of his journey
abroad.  The time is come, I fear, when I must open the parcel, and
know what is written.  Oh, Jonathan, you will, I know, forgive me if I
do wrong, but it is for your own dear sake.


Later.--A sad homecoming in every way, the house empty of the dear
soul who was so good to us.  Jonathan still pale and dizzy under a
slight relapse of his malady, and now a telegram from Van Helsing,
whoever he may be.  "You will be grieved to hear that Mrs. Westenra
died five days ago, and that Lucy died the day before yesterday.  They
were both buried today."

Oh, what a wealth of sorrow in a few words!  Poor Mrs. Westenra!  Poor
Lucy!  Gone, gone, never to return to us!  And poor, poor Arthur, to
have lost such a sweetness out of his life!  God help us all to bear
our troubles.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-CONT.

22 September.--It is all over.  Arthur has gone back to Ring, and has
taken Quincey Morris with him.  What a fine fellow is Quincey!  I
believe in my heart of hearts that he suffered as much about Lucy's
death as any of us, but he bore himself through it like a moral
Viking.  If America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a
power in the world indeed.  Van Helsing is lying down, having a rest
preparatory to his journey.  He goes to Amsterdam tonight, but says he
returns tomorrow night, that he only wants to make some arrangements
which can only be made personally.  He is to stop with me then, if he
can.  He says he has work to do in London which may take him some
time.  Poor old fellow!  I fear that the strain of the past week has
broken down even his iron strength.  All the time of the burial he
was, I could see, putting some terrible restraint on himself.  When it
was all over, we were standing beside Arthur, who, poor fellow, was
speaking of his part in the operation where his blood had been
transfused to his Lucy's veins.  I could see Van Helsing's face grow
white and purple by turns.  Arthur was saying that he felt since then
as if they two had been really married, and that she was his wife in
the sight of God.  None of us said a word of the other operations, and
none of us ever shall.  Arthur and Quincey went away together to the
station, and Van Helsing and I came on here.  The moment we were alone
in the carriage he gave way to a regular fit of hysterics.  He has
denied to me since that it was hysterics, and insisted that it was
only his sense of humor asserting itself under very terrible
conditions.  He laughed till he cried, and I had to draw down the
blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge.  And then he cried,
till he laughed again, and laughed and cried together, just as a woman
does.  I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the
circumstances, but it had no effect.  Men and women are so different
in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness!  Then when his face
grew grave and stern again I asked him why his mirth, and why at such
a time.  His reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was
logical and forceful and mysterious.  He said,

"Ah, you don't comprehend, friend John.  Do not think that I am not
sad, though I laugh.  See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke
me.  But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh
he come just the same.  Keep it always with you that laughter who
knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not true laughter.
No!  He is a king, and he come when and how he like.  He ask no
person, he choose no time of suitability.  He say, 'I am here.'
Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young
girl.  I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn.  I give my
time, my skill, my sleep.  I let my other sufferers want that she may
have all.  And yet I can laugh at her very grave, laugh when the clay
from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say 'Thud,
thud!' to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek.  My
heart bleed for that poor boy, that dear boy, so of the age of mine
own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes
the same.

"There, you know now why I love him so.  And yet when he say things
that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart
yearn to him as to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are
more level in experiences than father and son, yet even at such a
moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, 'Here I
am!  Here I am!' till the blood come dance back and bring some of the
sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek.  Oh, friend John, it is a
strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and
troubles.  And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the
tune he play.  Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and
tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he
make with that smileless mouth of him.  And believe me, friend John,
that he is good to come, and kind.  Ah, we men and women are like
ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways.  Then tears
come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps
the strain become too great, and we break.  But King Laugh he come
like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go
on with our labor, what it may be."

I did not like to wound him by pretending not to see his idea, but as
I did not yet understand the cause of his laughter, I asked him.  As
he answered me his face grew stern, and he said in quite a different
tone,

"Oh, it was the grim irony of it all, this so lovely lady garlanded
with flowers, that looked so fair as life, till one by one we wondered
if she were truly dead, she laid in that so fine marble house in that
lonely churchyard, where rest so many of her kin, laid there with the
mother who loved her, and whom she loved, and that sacred bell going
'Toll!  Toll!  Toll!' so sad and slow, and those holy men, with the
white garments of the angel, pretending to read books, and yet all the
time their eyes never on the page, and all of us with the bowed head.
And all for what?  She is dead, so!  Is it not?"

"Well, for the life of me, Professor," I said, "I can't see anything
to laugh at in all that.  Why, your expression makes it a harder
puzzle than before.  But even if the burial service was comic, what
about poor Art and his trouble?  Why his heart was simply breaking."

"Just so.  Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins
had made her truly his bride?"

"Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him."

"Quite so.  But there was a difficulty, friend John.  If so that, then
what about the others?  Ho, ho!  Then this so sweet maid is a
polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by
Church's law, though no wits, all gone, even I, who am faithful
husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist."

"I don't see where the joke comes in there either!" I said, and I did
not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things.  He
laid his hand on my arm, and said,

"Friend John, forgive me if I pain.  I showed not my feeling to others
when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust.
If you could have looked into my heart then when I want to laugh, if
you could have done so when the laugh arrived, if you could do so now,
when King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him, for he
go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time, maybe you would
perhaps pity me the most of all."

I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.

"Because I know!"

And now we are all scattered, and for many a long day loneliness will
sit over our roofs with brooding wings.  Lucy lies in the tomb of her
kin, a lordly death house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming
London, where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill,
and where wild flowers grow of their own accord.

So I can finish this diary, and God only knows if I shall ever begin
another.  If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal
with different people and different themes, for here at the end, where
the romance of my life is told, ere I go back to take up the thread of
my life-work, I say sadly and without hope, "FINIS".




THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER A HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY

The neighborhood of Hampstead is just at present exercised
with a series of events which seem to run on lines parallel
to those of what was known to the writers of headlines as
"The Kensington Horror," or "The Stabbing Woman," or "The
Woman in Black."  During the past two or three days several
cases have occurred of young children straying from home or
neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath.  In
all these cases the children were too young to give any
properly intelligible account of themselves, but the
consensus of their excuses is that they had been with a
"bloofer lady."  It has always been late in the evening when
they have been missed, and on two occasions the children
have not been found until early in the following morning.
It is generally supposed in the neighborhood that, as the
first child missed gave as his reason for being away that a
"bloofer lady" had asked him to come for a walk, the others
had picked up the phrase and used it as occasion served.  This
is the more natural as the favourite game of the little ones
at present is luring each other away by wiles.  A correspondent
writes us that to see some of the tiny tots pretending to be the
"bloofer lady" is supremely funny.  Some of our caricaturists
might, he says, take a lesson in the irony of grotesque by
comparing the reality and the picture.  It is only in accordance
with general principles of human nature that the "bloofer lady"
should be the popular role at these al fresco performances.  Our
correspondent naively says that even Ellen Terry could not be so
winningly attractive as some of these grubby-faced little
children pretend, and even imagine themselves, to be.

There is, however, possibly a serious side to the question,
for some of the children, indeed all who have been missed
at night, have been slightly torn or wounded in the throat.
The wounds seem such as might be made by a rat or a small
dog, and although of not much importance individually, would tend
to show that whatever animal inflicts them has a system or method
of its own.  The police of the division have been instructed to
keep a sharp lookout for straying children, especially when very
young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog which
may be about.




THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE, 25 SEPTEMBER EXTRA SPECIAL

THE HAMPSTEAD HORROR


ANOTHER CHILD INJURED

THE "BLOOFER LADY"

We have just received intelligence that another child,
missed last night, was only discovered late in the morning
under a furze bush at the Shooter's Hill side of Hampstead
Heath, which is perhaps, less frequented than the other
parts.  It has the same tiny wound in the throat as has
been noticed in other cases.  It was terribly weak, and
looked quite emaciated.  It too, when partially restored,
had the common story to tell of being lured away by the
"bloofer lady".




CHAPTER 14


MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

23 September.--Jonathan is better after a bad night.  I am so glad
that he has plenty of work to do, for that keeps his mind off the
terrible things, and oh, I am rejoiced that he is not now weighed down
with the responsibility of his new position.  I knew he would be true
to himself, and now how proud I am to see my Jonathan rising to the
height of his advancement and keeping pace in all ways with the duties
that come upon him.  He will be away all day till late, for he said he
could not lunch at home.  My household work is done, so I shall take
his foreign journal, and lock myself up in my room and read it.


24 September.--I hadn't the heart to write last night, that terrible
record of Jonathan's upset me so.  Poor dear!  How he must have
suffered, whether it be true or only imagination.  I wonder if there
is any truth in it at all.  Did he get his brain fever, and then write
all those terrible things, or had he some cause for it all?  I suppose
I shall never know, for I dare not open the subject to him.  And yet
that man we saw yesterday!  He seemed quite certain of him, poor
fellow!  I suppose it was the funeral upset him and sent his mind back
on some train of thought.

He believes it all himself.  I remember how on our wedding day he said
"Unless some solemn duty come upon me to go back to the bitter hours,
asleep or awake, mad or sane . . ."  There seems to be through it all
some thread of continuity.  That fearful Count was coming to London.
If it should be, and he came to London, with its teeming millions . . .
There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from
it.  I shall be prepared.  I shall get my typewriter this very hour
and begin transcribing.  Then we shall be ready for other eyes if
required.  And if it be wanted, then, perhaps, if I am ready, poor
Jonathan may not be upset, for I can speak for him and never let him
be troubled or worried with it at all.  If ever Jonathan quite gets
over the nervousness he may want to tell me of it all, and I can ask
him questions and find out things, and see how I may comfort him.




LETTER, VAN HELSING TO MRS. HARKER

24 September

(Confidence)

"Dear Madam,

"I pray you to pardon my writing, in that I am so far
friend as that I sent to you sad news of Miss Lucy
Westenra's death.  By the kindness of Lord Godalming, I am
empowered to read her letters and papers, for I am deeply
concerned about certain matters vitally important.  In them
I find some letters from you, which show how great friends
you were and how you love her.  Oh, Madam Mina, by that
love, I implore you, help me.  It is for others' good that
I ask, to redress great wrong, and to lift much and terrible
troubles, that may be more great than you can know.  May it be
that I see you?  You can trust me.  I am friend of Dr. John
Seward and of Lord Godalming (that was Arthur of Miss Lucy).  I
must keep it private for the present from all.  I should come to
Exeter to see you at once if you tell me I am privilege to come,
and where and when.  I implore your pardon, Madam.  I have read
your letters to poor Lucy, and know how good you are and how your
husband suffer.  So I pray you, if it may be, enlighten him not,
least it may harm.  Again your pardon, and forgive me.

"VAN HELSING"




TELEGRAM, MRS. HARKER TO VAN HELSING

25 September.--Come today by quarter past ten train if you
can catch it.  Can see you any time you call.
"WILHELMINA HARKER"




MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

25 September.--I cannot help feeling terribly excited as the time
draws near for the visit of Dr. Van Helsing, for somehow I expect that
it will throw some light upon Jonathan's sad experience, and as he
attended poor dear Lucy in her last illness, he can tell me all about
her.  That is the reason of his coming.  It is concerning Lucy and her
sleep-walking, and not about Jonathan.  Then I shall never know the
real truth now!  How silly I am.  That awful journal gets hold of my
imagination and tinges everything with something of its own colour.  Of
course it is about Lucy.  That habit came back to the poor dear, and
that awful night on the cliff must have made her ill.  I had almost
forgotten in my own affairs how ill she was afterwards.  She must have
told him of her sleep-walking adventure on the cliff, and that I knew
all about it, and now he wants me to tell him what I know, so that he
may understand.  I hope I did right in not saying anything of it to
Mrs. Westenra.  I should never forgive myself if any act of mine, were
it even a negative one, brought harm on poor dear Lucy.  I hope too,
Dr. Van Helsing will not blame me.  I have had so much trouble and
anxiety of late that I feel I cannot bear more just at present.

I suppose a cry does us all good at times, clears the air as other
rain does.  Perhaps it was reading the journal yesterday that upset
me, and then Jonathan went away this morning to stay away from me a
whole day and night, the first time we have been parted since our
marriage.  I do hope the dear fellow will take care of himself, and
that nothing will occur to upset him.  It is two o'clock, and the
doctor will be here soon now.  I shall say nothing of Jonathan's
journal unless he asks me.  I am so glad I have typewritten out my own
journal, so that, in case he asks about Lucy, I can hand it to him.
It will save much questioning.

Later.--He has come and gone.  Oh, what a strange meeting, and how it
all makes my head whirl round.  I feel like one in a dream.  Can it be
all possible, or even a part of it?  If I had not read Jonathan's
journal first, I should never have accepted even a possibility.  Poor,
poor, dear Jonathan!  How he must have suffered.  Please the good God,
all this may not upset him again.  I shall try to save him from it.
But it may be even a consolation and a help to him, terrible though it
be and awful in its consequences, to know for certain that his eyes
and ears and brain did not deceive him, and that it is all true.  It
may be that it is the doubt which haunts him, that when the doubt is
removed, no matter which, waking or dreaming, may prove the truth, he
will be more satisfied and better able to bear the shock.  Dr. Van
Helsing must be a good man as well as a clever one if he is Arthur's
friend and Dr. Seward's, and if they brought him all the way from
Holland to look after Lucy.  I feel from having seen him that he is
good and kind and of a noble nature.  When he comes tomorrow I shall
ask him about Jonathan.  And then, please God, all this sorrow and
anxiety may lead to a good end.  I used to think I would like to
practice interviewing.  Jonathan's friend on "The Exeter News" told
him that memory is everything in such work, that you must be able to
put down exactly almost every word spoken, even if you had to refine
some of it afterwards.  Here was a rare interview.  I shall try to
record it verbatim.

It was half-past two o'clock when the knock came.  I took my courage a
deux mains and waited.  In a few minutes Mary opened the door, and
announced "Dr. Van Helsing".

I rose and bowed, and he came towards me, a man of medium weight,
strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest
and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck.  The
poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and
power.  The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the
ears.  The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large
resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with
quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows
come down and the mouth tightens.  The forehead is broad and fine,
rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps
or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot
possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides.
Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or
stern with the man's moods.  He said to me,

"Mrs. Harker, is it not?"  I bowed assent.

"That was Miss Mina Murray?"  Again I assented.

"It is Mina Murray that I came to see that was friend of that poor dear
child Lucy Westenra.  Madam Mina, it is on account of the dead that I
come."

"Sir," I said, "you could have no better claim on me than that you
were a friend and helper of Lucy Westenra."  And I held out my hand.
He took it and said tenderly,

"Oh, Madam Mina, I know that the friend of that poor little girl must
be good, but I had yet to learn . . ."  He finished his speech with a
courtly bow.  I asked him what it was that he wanted to see me about,
so he at once began.

"I have read your letters to Miss Lucy.  Forgive me, but I had to
begin to inquire somewhere, and there was none to ask.  I know that
you were with her at Whitby.  She sometimes kept a diary, you need not
look surprised, Madam Mina.  It was begun after you had left, and was
an imitation of you, and in that diary she traces by inference certain
things to a sleep-walking in which she puts down that you saved her.
In great perplexity then I come to you, and ask you out of your so
much kindness to tell me all of it that you can remember."

"I can tell you, I think, Dr. Van Helsing, all about it."

"Ah, then you have good memory for facts, for details?  It is not
always so with young ladies."

"No, doctor, but I wrote it all down at the time.  I can show it to
you if you like."

"Oh, Madam Mina, I well be grateful.  You will do me much favour."

I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit, I suppose
it is some taste of the original apple that remains still in our
mouths, so I handed him the shorthand diary.  He took it with a
grateful bow, and said, "May I read it?"

"If you wish," I answered as demurely as I could.  He opened it, and
for an instant his face fell.  Then he stood up and bowed.

"Oh, you so clever woman!" he said.  "I knew long that Mr. Jonathan
was a man of much thankfulness, but see, his wife have all the good
things.  And will you not so much honour me and so help me as to read
it for me?  Alas!  I know not the shorthand."

By this time my little joke was over, and I was almost ashamed.  So I
took the typewritten copy from my work basket and handed it to him.

"Forgive me," I said.  "I could not help it, but I had been thinking
that it was of dear Lucy that you wished to ask, and so that you might
not have time to wait, not on my account, but because I know your time
must be precious, I have written it out on the typewriter for you."

He took it and his eyes glistened.  "You are so good," he said.  "And
may I read it now?  I may want to ask you some things when I have
read."

"By all means," I said, "read it over whilst I order lunch, and then
you can ask me questions whilst we eat."

He bowed and settled himself in a chair with his back to the light,
and became so absorbed in the papers, whilst I went to see after lunch
chiefly in order that he might not be disturbed.  When I came back, I
found him walking hurriedly up and down the room, his face all ablaze
with excitement.  He rushed up to me and took me by both hands.

"Oh, Madam Mina," he said, "how can I say what I owe to you?  This
paper is as sunshine.  It opens the gate to me.  I am dazed, I am
dazzled, with so much light, and yet clouds roll in behind the light
every time.  But that you do not, cannot comprehend.  Oh, but I am
grateful to you, you so clever woman.  Madame," he said this very
solemnly, "if ever Abraham Van Helsing can do anything for you or
yours, I trust you will let me know.  It will be pleasure and delight
if I may serve you as a friend, as a friend, but all I have ever
learned, all I can ever do, shall be for you and those you love.  There
are darknesses in life, and there are lights.  You are one of the
lights.  You will have a happy life and a good life, and your husband
will be blessed in you."

"But, doctor, you praise me too much, and you do not know me."

"Not know you, I, who am old, and who have studied all my life men and
women, I who have made my specialty the brain and all that belongs to
him and all that follow from him!  And I have read your diary that you
have so goodly written for me, and which breathes out truth in every
line.  I, who have read your so sweet letter to poor Lucy of your
marriage and your trust, not know you!  Oh, Madam Mina, good women
tell all their lives, and by day and by hour and by minute, such
things that angels can read.  And we men who wish to know have in us
something of angels' eyes.  Your husband is noble nature, and you are
noble too, for you trust, and trust cannot be where there is mean
nature.  And your husband, tell me of him.  Is he quite well?  Is all
that fever gone, and is he strong and hearty?"

I saw here an opening to ask him about Jonathan, so I said, "He was
almost recovered, but he has been greatly upset by Mr. Hawkins death."

He interrupted, "Oh, yes.  I know.  I know.  I have read your last two
letters."

I went on, "I suppose this upset him, for when we were in town on
Thursday last he had a sort of shock."

"A shock, and after brain fever so soon!  That is not good.  What kind
of shock was it?"

"He thought he saw some one who recalled something terrible, something
which led to his brain fever."  And here the whole thing seemed to
overwhelm me in a rush.  The pity for Jonathan, the horror which he
experienced, the whole fearful mystery of his diary, and the fear that
has been brooding over me ever since, all came in a tumult.  I suppose
I was hysterical, for I threw myself on my knees and held up my hands
to him, and implored him to make my husband well again.  He took my
hands and raised me up, and made me sit on the sofa, and sat by me.  He
held my hand in his, and said to me with, oh, such infinite sweetness,

"My life is a barren and lonely one, and so full of work that I have
not had much time for friendships, but since I have been summoned to
here by my friend John Seward I have known so many good people and
seen such nobility that I feel more than ever, and it has grown with
my advancing years, the loneliness of my life.  Believe me, then, that
I come here full of respect for you, and you have given me hope, hope,
not in what I am seeking of, but that there are good women still left
to make life happy, good women, whose lives and whose truths may make
good lesson for the children that are to be.  I am glad, glad, that I
may here be of some use to you.  For if your husband suffer, he suffer
within the range of my study and experience.  I promise you that I
will gladly do all for him that I can, all to make his life strong and
manly, and your life a happy one.  Now you must eat.  You are
overwrought and perhaps over-anxious.  Husband Jonathan would not like
to see you so pale, and what he like not where he love, is not to his
good.  Therefore for his sake you must eat and smile.  You have told
me about Lucy, and so now we shall not speak of it, lest it distress.
I shall stay in Exeter tonight, for I want to think much over what you
have told me, and when I have thought I will ask you questions, if I
may.  And then too, you will tell me of husband Jonathan's trouble so
far as you can, but not yet.  You must eat now, afterwards you shall
tell me all."

After lunch, when we went back to the drawing room, he said to me,
"And now tell me all about him."

When it came to speaking to this great learned man, I began to fear
that he would think me a weak fool, and Jonathan a madman, that
journal is all so strange, and I hesitated to go on.  But he was so
sweet and kind, and he had promised to help, and I trusted him, so I
said,

"Dr. Van Helsing, what I have to tell you is so queer that you must
not laugh at me or at my husband.  I have been since yesterday in a
sort of fever of doubt.  You must be kind to me, and not think me
foolish that I have even half believed some very strange things."

He reassured me by his manner as well as his words when he said, "Oh,
my dear, if you only know how strange is the matter regarding which I
am here, it is you who would laugh.  I have learned not to think
little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be.  I have
tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life
that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things,
the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane."

"Thank you, thank you a thousand times!  You have taken a weight off my
mind.  If you will let me, I shall give you a paper to read.  It is
long, but I have typewritten it out.  It will tell you my trouble and
Jonathan's.  It is the copy of his journal when abroad, and all that
happened.  I dare not say anything of it.  You will read for yourself
and judge.  And then when I see you, perhaps, you will be very kind
and tell me what you think."

"I promise," he said as I gave him the papers.  "I shall in the
morning, as soon as I can, come to see you and your husband, if I
may."

"Jonathan will be here at half-past eleven, and you must come to lunch
with us and see him then.  You could catch the quick 3:34 train, which
will leave you at Paddington before eight."  He was surprised at my
knowledge of the trains offhand, but he does not know that I have made
up all the trains to and from Exeter, so that I may help Jonathan in
case he is in a hurry.

So he took the papers with him and went away, and I sit here thinking,
thinking I don't know what.




LETTER (by hand), VAN HELSING TO MRS. HARKER

25 September, 6 o'clock

"Dear Madam Mina,

"I have read your husband's so wonderful diary.  You may
sleep without doubt.  Strange and terrible as it is, it is
true!  I will pledge my life on it.  It may be worse for
others, but for him and you there is no dread.  He is a
noble fellow, and let me tell you from experience of men,
that one who would do as he did in going down that wall and
to that room, aye, and going a second time, is not one to
be injured in permanence by a shock.  His brain and his
heart are all right, this I swear, before I have even seen
him, so be at rest.  I shall have much to ask him of other
things.  I am blessed that today I come to see you, for I
have learn all at once so much that again I am dazzled,
dazzled more than ever, and I must think.

"Yours the most faithful,

"Abraham Van Helsing."


LETTER, MRS. HARKER TO VAN HELSING

25 September, 6:30 P.M.

"My dear Dr. Van Helsing,

"A thousand thanks for your kind letter, which has taken a
great weight off my mind.  And yet, if it be true, what
terrible things there are in the world, and what an awful
thing if that man, that monster, be really in London!  I
fear to think.  I have this moment, whilst writing, had a
wire from Jonathan, saying that he leaves by the 6:25 tonight
from Launceston and will be here at 10:18, so that I shall have
no fear tonight.  Will you, therefore, instead of lunching with
us, please come to breakfast at eight o'clock, if this be not too
early for you?  You can get away, if you are in a hurry, by the
10:30 train, which will bring you to Paddington by 2:35.  Do not
answer this, as I shall take it that, if I do not hear, you will
come to breakfast.

"Believe me,

"Your faithful and grateful friend,

"Mina Harker."





JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

26 September.--I thought never to write in this diary again, but the
time has come.  When I got home last night Mina had supper ready, and
when we had supped she told me of Van Helsing's visit, and of her
having given him the two diaries copied out, and of how anxious she
has been about me.  She showed me in the doctor's letter that all I
wrote down was true.  It seems to have made a new man of me.  It was
the doubt as to the reality of the whole thing that knocked me over.
I felt impotent, and in the dark, and distrustful.  But, now that I
know, I am not afraid, even of the Count.  He has succeeded after all,
then, in his design in getting to London, and it was he I saw.  He has
got younger, and how?  Van Helsing is the man to unmask him and hunt
him out, if he is anything like what Mina says.  We sat late, and
talked it over.  Mina is dressing, and I shall call at the hotel in a
few minutes and bring him over.


He was, I think, surprised to see me.  When I came into the room where
he was, and introduced myself, he took me by the shoulder, and turned
my face round to the light, and said, after a sharp scrutiny,

"But Madam Mina told me you were ill, that you had had a shock."

It was so funny to hear my wife called 'Madam Mina' by this kindly,
strong-faced old man.  I smiled, and said, "I was ill, I have had a
shock, but you have cured me already."

"And how?"

"By your letter to Mina last night.  I was in doubt, and then
everything took a hue of unreality, and I did not know what to trust,
even the evidence of my own senses.  Not knowing what to trust, I did
not know what to do, and so had only to keep on working in what had
hitherto been the groove of my life.  The groove ceased to avail me,
and I mistrusted myself.  Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt
everything, even yourself.  No, you don't, you couldn't with eyebrows
like yours."

He seemed pleased, and laughed as he said, "So!  You are a
physiognomist.  I learn more here with each hour.  I am with so much
pleasure coming to you to breakfast, and, oh, sir, you will pardon
praise from an old man, but you are blessed in your wife."

I would listen to him go on praising Mina for a day, so I simply
nodded and stood silent.

"She is one of God's women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men
and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that
its light can be here on earth.  So true, so sweet, so noble, so
little an egoist, and that, let me tell you, is much in this age, so
sceptical and selfish.  And you, sir . . . I have read all the letters
to poor Miss Lucy, and some of them speak of you, so I know you since
some days from the knowing of others, but I have seen your true self
since last night.  You will give me your hand, will you not?  And let
us be friends for all our lives."

We shook hands, and he was so earnest and so kind that it made me
quite choky.

"And now," he said, "may I ask you for some more help?  I have a great
task to do, and at the beginning it is to know.  You can help me
here.  Can you tell me what went before your going to Transylvania?
Later on I may ask more help, and of a different kind, but at first
this will do."

"Look here, Sir," I said, "does what you have to do concern the
Count?"

"It does," he said solemnly.

"Then I am with you heart and soul.  As you go by the 10:30 train, you
will not have time to read them, but I shall get the bundle of papers.
You can take them with you and read them in the train."

After breakfast I saw him to the station.  When we were parting he
said, "Perhaps you will come to town if I send for you, and take Madam
Mina too."

"We shall both come when you will," I said.

I had got him the morning papers and the London papers of the previous
night, and while we were talking at the carriage window, waiting for
the train to start, he was turning them over.  His eyes suddenly
seemed to catch something in one of them, "The Westminster Gazette", I
knew it by the colour, and he grew quite white.  He read something
intently, groaning to himself, "Mein Gott!  Mein Gott!  So soon!  So
soon!"  I do not think he remembered me at the moment.  Just then the
whistle blew, and the train moved off.  This recalled him to himself,
and he leaned out of the window and waved his hand, calling out, "Love
to Madam Mina.  I shall write so soon as ever I can."




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

26 September.--Truly there is no such thing as finality.  Not a week
since I said "Finis," and yet here I am starting fresh again, or
rather going on with the record.  Until this afternoon I had no cause
to think of what is done.  Renfield had become, to all intents, as
sane as he ever was.  He was already well ahead with his fly business,
and he had just started in the spider line also, so he had not been of
any trouble to me.  I had a letter from Arthur, written on Sunday, and
from it I gather that he is bearing up wonderfully well.  Quincey
Morris is with him, and that is much of a help, for he himself is a
bubbling well of good spirits.  Quincey wrote me a line too, and from
him I hear that Arthur is beginning to recover something of his old
buoyancy, so as to them all my mind is at rest.  As for myself, I was
settling down to my work with the enthusiasm which I used to have for
it, so that I might fairly have said that the wound which poor Lucy
left on me was becoming cicatrised.

Everything is, however, now reopened, and what is to be the end God
only knows.  I have an idea that Van Helsing thinks he knows, too, but
he will only let out enough at a time to whet curiosity.  He went to
Exeter yesterday, and stayed there all night.  Today he came back, and
almost bounded into the room at about half-past five o'clock, and
thrust last night's "Westminster Gazette" into my hand.

"What do you think of that?" he asked as he stood back and folded his
arms.

I looked over the paper, for I really did not know what he meant, but
he took it from me and pointed out a paragraph about children being
decoyed away at Hampstead.  It did not convey much to me, until I
reached a passage where it described small puncture wounds on their
throats.  An idea struck me, and I looked up.

"Well?" he said.

"It is like poor Lucy's."

"And what do you make of it?"

"Simply that there is some cause in common.  Whatever it was that
injured her has injured them."  I did not quite understand his answer.

"That is true indirectly, but not directly."

"How do you mean, Professor?" I asked.  I was a little inclined to
take his seriousness lightly, for, after all, four days of rest and
freedom from burning, harrowing, anxiety does help to restore one's
spirits, but when I saw his face, it sobered me.  Never, even in the
midst of our despair about poor Lucy, had he looked more stern.

"Tell me!" I said.  "I can hazard no opinion.  I do not know what to
think, and I have no data on which to found a conjecture."

"Do you mean to tell me, friend John, that you have no suspicion as to
what poor Lucy died of, not after all the hints given, not only by
events, but by me?"

"Of nervous prostration following a great loss or waste of blood."

"And how was the blood lost or wasted?"  I shook my head.

He stepped over and sat down beside me, and went on, "You are a clever
man, friend John.  You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are
too prejudiced.  You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and
that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you.  Do
you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and
yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot?  But
there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's
eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other
men have told them.  Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants
to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing
to explain.  But yet we see around us every day the growth of new
beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old,
which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera.  I
suppose now you do not believe in corporeal transference.  No?  Nor in
materialization.  No?  Nor in astral bodies.  No?  Nor in the reading
of thought.  No?  Nor in hypnotism . . ."

"Yes," I said.  "Charcot has proved that pretty well."

He smiled as he went on, "Then you are satisfied as to it.  Yes?  And
of course then you understand how it act, and can follow the mind of
the great Charcot, alas that he is no more, into the very soul of the
patient that he influence.  No?  Then, friend John, am I to take it
that you simply accept fact, and are satisfied to let from premise to
conclusion be a blank?  No?  Then tell me, for I am a student of the
brain, how you accept hypnotism and reject the thought reading.  Let
me tell you, my friend, that there are things done today in electrical
science which would have been deemed unholy by the very man who
discovered electricity, who would themselves not so long before been
burned as wizards.  There are always mysteries in life.  Why was it
that Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and 'Old Parr' one hundred
and sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men's blood in her
poor veins, could not live even one day?  For, had she live one more
day, we could save her.  Do you know all the mystery of life and
death?  Do you know the altogether of comparative anatomy and can say
wherefore the qualities of brutes are in some men, and not in others?
Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one
great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish
church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil
of all the church lamps?  Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and
elsewhere, there are bats that come out at night and open the veins of
cattle and horses and suck dry their veins, how in some islands of the
Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those
who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the
sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them
and then, and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even
Miss Lucy was?"

"Good God, Professor!" I said, starting up.  "Do you mean to tell me
that Lucy was bitten by such a bat, and that such a thing is here in
London in the nineteenth century?"

He waved his hand for silence, and went on, "Can you tell me why the
tortoise lives more long than generations of men, why the elephant
goes on and on till he have sees dynasties, and why the parrot never
die only of bite of cat of dog or other complaint?  Can you tell me
why men believe in all ages and places that there are men and women
who cannot die?  We all know, because science has vouched for the
fact, that there have been toads shut up in rocks for thousands of
years, shut in one so small hole that only hold him since the youth of
the world.  Can you tell me how the Indian fakir can make himself to
die and have been buried, and his grave sealed and corn sowed on it,
and the corn reaped and be cut and sown and reaped and cut again, and
then men come and take away the unbroken seal and that there lie the
Indian fakir, not dead, but that rise up and walk amongst them as
before?"

Here I interrupted him.  I was getting bewildered.  He so crowded on
my mind his list of nature's eccentricities and possible
impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired.  I had a dim
idea that he was teaching me some lesson, as long ago he used to do in
his study at Amsterdam.  But he used them to tell me the thing, so
that I could have the object of thought in mind all the time.  But now
I was without his help, yet I wanted to follow him, so I said,

"Professor, let me be your pet student again.  Tell me the thesis, so
that I may apply your knowledge as you go on.  At present I am going
in my mind from point to point as a madman, and not a sane one,
follows an idea.  I feel like a novice lumbering through a bog in a
midst, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to
move on without knowing where I am going."

"That is a good image," he said.  "Well, I shall tell you.  My thesis
is this, I want you to believe."

"To believe what?"

"To believe in things that you cannot.  Let me illustrate.  I heard
once of an American who so defined faith, 'that faculty which enables
us to believe things which we know to be untrue.'  For one, I follow
that man.  He meant that we shall have an open mind, and not let a
little bit of truth check the rush of the big truth, like a small rock
does a railway truck.  We get the small truth first.  Good!  We keep
him, and we value him, but all the same we must not let him think
himself all the truth in the universe."

"Then you want me not to let some previous conviction inure the
receptivity of my mind with regard to some strange matter.  Do I read
your lesson aright?"

"Ah, you are my favourite pupil still.  It is worth to teach you.  Now
that you are willing to understand, you have taken the first step to
understand.  You think then that those so small holes in the
children's throats were made by the same that made the holes in Miss
Lucy?"

"I suppose so."

He stood up and said solemnly, "Then you are wrong.  Oh, would it were
so!  But alas!  No.  It is worse, far, far worse."

"In God's name, Professor Van Helsing, what do you mean?" I cried.

He threw himself with a despairing gesture into a chair, and placed
his elbows on the table, covering his face with his hands as he spoke.

"They were made by Miss Lucy!"




CHAPTER 15


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.

For a while sheer anger mastered me.  It was as if he had during her
life struck Lucy on the face.  I smote the table hard and rose up as I
said to him, "Dr. Van Helsing, are you mad?"

He raised his head and looked at me, and somehow the tenderness of his
face calmed me at once.  "Would I were!" he said.  "Madness were easy
to bear compared with truth like this.  Oh, my friend, why, think
you, did I go so far round, why take so long to tell so simple a
thing?  Was it because I hate you and have hated you all my life?  Was
it because I wished to give you pain?  Was it that I wanted, now so
late, revenge for that time when you saved my life, and from a fearful
death?  Ah no!"

"Forgive me," said I.

He went on, "My friend, it was because I wished to be gentle in the
breaking to you, for I know you have loved that so sweet lady.  But
even yet I do not expect you to believe.  It is so hard to accept at
once any abstract truth, that we may doubt such to be possible when we
have always believed the 'no' of it.  It is more hard still to accept
so sad a concrete truth, and of such a one as Miss Lucy.  Tonight I go
to prove it.  Dare you come with me?"

This staggered me.  A man does not like to prove such a truth, Byron
excepted from the category, jealousy.

    "And prove the very truth he most abhorred."

He saw my hesitation, and spoke, "The logic is simple, no madman's
logic this time, jumping from tussock to tussock in a misty bog.  If
it not be true, then proof will be relief.  At worst it will not harm.
If it be true!  Ah, there is the dread.  Yet every dread should help my
cause, for in it is some need of belief.  Come, I tell you what I
propose.  First, that we go off now and see that child in the
hospital.  Dr. Vincent, of the North Hospital, where the papers say
the child is, is a friend of mine, and I think of yours since you were
in class at Amsterdam.  He will let two scientists see his case, if he
will not let two friends.  We shall tell him nothing, but only that we
wish to learn.  And then . . ."

"And then?"

He took a key from his pocket and held it up.  "And then we spend the
night, you and I, in the churchyard where Lucy lies.  This is the key
that lock the tomb.  I had it from the coffin man to give to Arthur."

My heart sank within me, for I felt that there was some fearful ordeal
before us.  I could do nothing, however, so I plucked up what heart I
could and said that we had better hasten, as the afternoon was
passing.

We found the child awake.  It had had a sleep and taken some food, and
altogether was going on well.  Dr. Vincent took the bandage from its
throat, and showed us the punctures.  There was no mistaking the
similarity to those which had been on Lucy's throat.  They were
smaller, and the edges looked fresher, that was all.  We asked Vincent
to what he attributed them, and he replied that it must have been a
bite of some animal, perhaps a rat, but for his own part, he was
inclined to think it was one of the bats which are so numerous on the
northern heights of London.  "Out of so many harmless ones," he said,
"there may be some wild specimen from the South of a more malignant
species.  Some sailor may have brought one home, and it managed to
escape, or even from the Zoological Gardens a young one may have got
loose, or one be bred there from a vampire.  These things do occur,
you, know.  Only ten days ago a wolf got out, and was, I believe,
traced up in this direction.  For a week after, the children were
playing nothing but Red Riding Hood on the Heath and in every alley in
the place until this 'bloofer lady' scare came along, since then it
has been quite a gala time with them.  Even this poor little mite,
when he woke up today, asked the nurse if he might go away.  When she
asked him why he wanted to go, he said he wanted to play with the
'bloofer lady'."

"I hope," said Van Helsing, "that when you are sending the child home
you will caution its parents to keep strict watch over it.  These
fancies to stray are most dangerous, and if the child were to remain
out another night, it would probably be fatal.  But in any case I
suppose you will not let it away for some days?"

"Certainly not, not for a week at least, longer if the wound is not
healed."

Our visit to the hospital took more time than we had reckoned on, and
the sun had dipped before we came out.  When Van Helsing saw how dark
it was, he said,

"There is not hurry.  It is more late than I thought.  Come, let us
seek somewhere that we may eat, and then we shall go on our way."

We dined at 'Jack Straw's Castle' along with a little crowd of
bicyclists and others who were genially noisy.  About ten o'clock we
started from the inn.  It was then very dark, and the scattered lamps
made the darkness greater when we were once outside their individual
radius.  The Professor had evidently noted the road we were to go, for
he went on unhesitatingly, but, as for me, I was in quite a mixup as
to locality.  As we went further, we met fewer and fewer people, till
at last we were somewhat surprised when we met even the patrol of
horse police going their usual suburban round.  At last we reached the
wall of the churchyard, which we climbed over.  With some little
difficulty, for it was very dark, and the whole place seemed so
strange to us, we found the Westenra tomb.  The Professor took the
key, opened the creaky door, and standing back, politely, but quite
unconsciously, motioned me to precede him.  There was a delicious
irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a
ghastly occasion.  My companion followed me quickly, and cautiously
drew the door to, after carefully ascertaining that the lock was a
falling, and not a spring one.  In the latter case we should have been
in a bad plight.  Then he fumbled in his bag, and taking out a
matchbox and a piece of candle, proceeded to make a light.  The tomb
in the daytime, and when wreathed with fresh flowers, had looked grim
and gruesome enough, but now, some days afterwards, when the flowers
hung lank and dead, their whites turning to rust and their greens to
browns, when the spider and the beetle had resumed their accustomed
dominance, when the time-discoloured stone, and dust-encrusted mortar,
and rusty, dank iron, and tarnished brass, and clouded silver-plating
gave back the feeble glimmer of a candle, the effect was more
miserable and sordid than could have been imagined.  It conveyed
irresistibly the idea that life, animal life, was not the only thing
which could pass away.

Van Helsing went about his work systematically.  Holding his candle so
that he could read the coffin plates, and so holding it that the sperm
dropped in white patches which congealed as they touched the metal, he
made assurance of Lucy's coffin.  Another search in his bag, and he
took out a turnscrew.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"To open the coffin.  You shall yet be convinced."

Straightway he began taking out the screws, and finally lifted off the
lid, showing the casing of lead beneath.  The sight was almost too
much for me.  It seemed to be as much an affront to the dead as it
would have been to have stripped off her clothing in her sleep whilst
living.  I actually took hold of his hand to stop him.

He only said, "You shall see," and again fumbling in his bag took out
a tiny fret saw.  Striking the turnscrew through the lead with a swift
downward stab, which made me wince, he made a small hole, which was,
however, big enough to admit the point of the saw.  I had expected a
rush of gas from the week-old corpse.  We doctors, who have had to
study our dangers, have to become accustomed to such things, and I
drew back towards the door.  But the Professor never stopped for a
moment.  He sawed down a couple of feet along one side of the lead
coffin, and then across, and down the other side.  Taking the edge of
the loose flange, he bent it back towards the foot of the coffin, and
holding up the candle into the aperture, motioned to me to look.

I drew near and looked.  The coffin was empty.  It was certainly a
surprise to me, and gave me a considerable shock, but Van Helsing was
unmoved.  He was now more sure than ever of his ground, and so
emboldened to proceed in his task.  "Are you satisfied now, friend
John?" he asked.

I felt all the dogged argumentativeness of my nature awake within me as
I answered him, "I am satisfied that Lucy's body is not in that
coffin, but that only proves one thing."

"And what is that, friend John?"

"That it is not there."

"That is good logic," he said, "so far as it goes.  But how do you,
how can you, account for it not being there?"

"Perhaps a body-snatcher," I suggested.  "Some of the undertaker's
people may have stolen it."  I felt that I was speaking folly, and yet
it was the only real cause which I could suggest.

The Professor sighed.  "Ah well!" he said, "we must have more proof.
Come with me."

He put on the coffin lid again, gathered up all his things and placed
them in the bag, blew out the light, and placed the candle also in the
bag.  We opened the door, and went out.  Behind us he closed the door
and locked it.  He handed me the key, saying, "Will you keep it?  You
had better be assured."

I laughed, it was not a very cheerful laugh, I am bound to say, as I
motioned him to keep it.  "A key is nothing," I said, "there are many
duplicates, and anyhow it is not difficult to pick a lock of this
kind."

He said nothing, but put the key in his pocket.  Then he told me to
watch at one side of the churchyard whilst he would watch at the
other.

I took up my place behind a yew tree, and I saw his dark figure move
until the intervening headstones and trees hid it from my sight.

It was a lonely vigil.  Just after I had taken my place I heard a
distant clock strike twelve, and in time came one and two.  I was
chilled and unnerved, and angry with the Professor for taking me on
such an errand and with myself for coming.  I was too cold and too
sleepy to be keenly observant, and not sleepy enough to betray my
trust, so altogether I had a dreary, miserable time.

Suddenly, as I turned round, I thought I saw something like a white
streak, moving between two dark yew trees at the side of the
churchyard farthest from the tomb.  At the same time a dark mass moved
from the Professor's side of the ground, and hurriedly went towards
it.  Then I too moved, but I had to go round headstones and railed-off
tombs, and I stumbled over graves.  The sky was overcast, and
somewhere far off an early cock crew.  A little ways off, beyond a
line of scattered juniper trees, which marked the pathway to the
church, a white dim figure flitted in the direction of the tomb.  The
tomb itself was hidden by trees, and I could not see where the figure
had disappeared.  I heard the rustle of actual movement where I had
first seen the white figure, and coming over, found the Professor
holding in his arms a tiny child.  When he saw me he held it out to
me, and said, "Are you satisfied now?"

"No," I said, in a way that I felt was aggressive.

"Do you not see the child?"

"Yes, it is a child, but who brought it here?  And is it wounded?"

"We shall see," said the Professor, and with one impulse we took our
way out of the churchyard, he carrying the sleeping child.

When we had got some little distance away, we went into a clump of
trees, and struck a match, and looked at the child's throat.  It was
without a scratch or scar of any kind.

"Was I right?" I asked triumphantly.

"We were just in time," said the Professor thankfully.

We had now to decide what we were to do with the child, and so
consulted about it.  If we were to take it to a police station we
should have to give some account of our movements during the night.
At least, we should have had to make some statement as to how we had
come to find the child.  So finally we decided that we would take it
to the Heath, and when we heard a policeman coming, would leave it
where he could not fail to find it.  We would then seek our way home
as quickly as we could.  All fell out well.  At the edge of Hampstead
Heath we heard a policeman's heavy tramp, and laying the child on the
pathway, we waited and watched until he saw it as he flashed his
lantern to and fro.  We heard his exclamation of astonishment, and
then we went away silently.  By good chance we got a cab near the
'Spainiards,' and drove to town.

I cannot sleep, so I make this entry.  But I must try to get a few
hours' sleep, as Van Helsing is to call for me at noon.  He insists
that I go with him on another expedition.


27 September.--It was two o'clock before we found a suitable
opportunity for our attempt.  The funeral held at noon was all
completed, and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken
themselves lazily away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of
alder trees, we saw the sexton lock the gate after him.  We knew that
we were safe till morning did we desire it, but the Professor told me
that we should not want more than an hour at most.  Again I felt that
horrid sense of the reality of things, in which any effort of
imagination seemed out of place, and I realized distinctly the perils
of the law which we were incurring in our unhallowed work.  Besides, I
felt it was all so useless.  Outrageous as it was to open a leaden
coffin, to see if a woman dead nearly a week were really dead, it now
seemed the height of folly to open the tomb again, when we knew, from
the evidence of our own eyesight, that the coffin was empty.  I
shrugged my shoulders, however, and rested silent, for Van Helsing had
a way of going on his own road, no matter who remonstrated.  He took
the key, opened the vault, and again courteously motioned me to
precede.  The place was not so gruesome as last night, but oh, how
unutterably mean looking when the sunshine streamed in.  Van Helsing
walked over to Lucy's coffin, and I followed.  He bent over and again
forced back the leaden flange, and a shock of surprise and dismay shot
through me.

There lay Lucy, seemingly just as we had seen her the night before her
funeral.  She was, if possible, more radiantly beautiful than ever,
and I could not believe that she was dead.  The lips were red, nay
redder than before, and on the cheeks was a delicate bloom.

"Is this a juggle?" I said to him.

"Are you convinced now?" said the Professor, in response, and as he
spoke he put over his hand, and in a way that made me shudder, pulled
back the dead lips and showed the white teeth.  "See," he went on,
"they are even sharper than before.  With this and this," and he
touched one of the canine teeth and that below it, "the little
children can be bitten.  Are you of belief now, friend John?"

Once more argumentative hostility woke within me.  I could not accept
such an overwhelming idea as he suggested.  So, with an attempt to
argue of which I was even at the moment ashamed, I said, "She may have
been placed here since last night."

"Indeed?  That is so, and by whom?"

"I do not know.  Someone has done it."

"And yet she has been dead one week.  Most peoples in that time would
not look so."

I had no answer for this, so was silent.  Van Helsing did not seem to
notice my silence.  At any rate, he showed neither chagrin nor
triumph.  He was looking intently at the face of the dead woman,
raising the eyelids and looking at the eyes, and once more opening the
lips and examining the teeth.  Then he turned to me and said,

"Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded.  Here
is some dual life that is not as the common.  She was bitten by the
vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking, oh, you start.  You
do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it later, and in
trance could he best come to take more blood.  In trance she dies, and
in trance she is UnDead, too.  So it is that she differ from all
other.  Usually when the UnDead sleep at home," as he spoke he made a
comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was
'home', "their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was
when she not UnDead she go back to the nothings of the common dead.
There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill
her in her sleep."

This turned my blood cold, and it began to dawn upon me that I was
accepting Van Helsing's theories.  But if she were really dead, what
was there of terror in the idea of killing her?

He looked up at me, and evidently saw the change in my face, for he
said almost joyously, "Ah, you believe now?"

I answered, "Do not press me too hard all at once.  I am willing to
accept.  How will you do this bloody work?"

"I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall
drive a stake through her body."

It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman
whom I had loved.  And yet the feeling was not so strong as I had
expected.  I was, in fact, beginning to shudder at the presence of
this being, this UnDead, as Van Helsing called it, and to loathe it.
Is it possible that love is all subjective, or all objective?

I waited a considerable time for Van Helsing to begin, but he stood as
if wrapped in thought.  Presently he closed the catch of his bag with
a snap, and said,

"I have been thinking, and have made up my mind as to what is best.
If I did simply follow my inclining I would do now, at this moment,
what is to be done.  But there are other things to follow, and things
that are thousand times more difficult in that them we do not know.
This is simple.  She have yet no life taken, though that is of time,
and to act now would be to take danger from her forever.  But then we
may have to want Arthur, and how shall we tell him of this?  If you,
who saw the wounds on Lucy's throat, and saw the wounds so similar on
the child's at the hospital, if you, who saw the coffin empty last
night and full today with a woman who have not change only to be more
rose and more beautiful in a whole week, after she die, if you know of
this and know of the white figure last night that brought the child to
the churchyard, and yet of your own senses you did not believe, how
then, can I expect Arthur, who know none of those things, to believe?

"He doubted me when I took him from her kiss when she was dying.  I
know he has forgiven me because in some mistaken idea I have done
things that prevent him say goodbye as he ought, and he may think that
in some more mistaken idea this woman was buried alive, and that in
most mistake of all we have killed her.  He will then argue back that
it is we, mistaken ones, that have killed her by our ideas, and so he
will be much unhappy always.  Yet he never can be sure, and that is
the worst of all.  And he will sometimes think that she he loved was
buried alive, and that will paint his dreams with horrors of what she
must have suffered, and again, he will think that we may be right, and
that his so beloved was, after all, an UnDead.  No!  I told him once,
and since then I learn much.  Now, since I know it is all true, a
hundred thousand times more do I know that he must pass through the
bitter waters to reach the sweet.  He, poor fellow, must have one hour
that will make the very face of heaven grow black to him, then we can
act for good all round and send him peace.  My mind is made up.  Let
us go.  You return home for tonight to your asylum, and see that all
be well.  As for me, I shall spend the night here in this churchyard
in my own way.  Tomorrow night you will come to me to the Berkeley
Hotel at ten of the clock.  I shall send for Arthur to come too, and
also that so fine young man of America that gave his blood.  Later we
shall all have work to do.  I come with you so far as Piccadilly and
there dine, for I must be back here before the sun set."

So we locked the tomb and came away, and got over the wall of the
churchyard, which was not much of a task, and drove back to
Piccadilly.




NOTE LEFT BY VAN HELSING IN HIS PORTMANTEAU, BERKELEY HOTEL DIRECTED TO
JOHN SEWARD, M. D. (Not Delivered)

27 September

"Friend John,

"I write this in case anything should happen.  I go alone to
watch in that churchyard.  It pleases me that the UnDead,
Miss Lucy, shall not leave tonight, that so on the morrow
night she may be more eager.  Therefore I shall fix some
things she like not, garlic and a crucifix, and so seal up
the door of the tomb.  She is young as UnDead, and will
heed.  Moreover, these are only to prevent her coming out.
They may not prevail on her wanting to get in, for then the
UnDead is desperate, and must find the line of least resistance,
whatsoever it may be.  I shall be at hand all the night from
sunset till after sunrise, and if there be aught that may be
learned I shall learn it.  For Miss Lucy or from her, I have no
fear, but that other to whom is there that she is UnDead, he have
not the power to seek her tomb and find shelter.  He is cunning,
as I know from Mr. Jonathan and from the way that all along he
have fooled us when he played with us for Miss Lucy's life, and
we lost, and in many ways the UnDead are strong.  He have always
the strength in his hand of twenty men, even we four who gave our
strength to Miss Lucy it also is all to him.  Besides, he can
summon his wolf and I know not what.  So if it be that he came
thither on this night he shall find me.  But none other shall,
until it be too late.  But it may be that he will not attempt the
place.  There is no reason why he should.  His hunting ground is
more full of game than the churchyard where the UnDead woman
sleeps, and the one old man watch.

"Therefore I write this in case . . . Take the papers that
are with this, the diaries of Harker and the rest, and read
them, and then find this great UnDead, and cut off his head
and burn his heart or drive a stake through it, so that the
world may rest from him.

"If it be so, farewell.

"VAN HELSING."




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

28 September.--It is wonderful what a good night's sleep will do for
one.  Yesterday I was almost willing to accept Van Helsing's monstrous
ideas, but now they seem to start out lurid before me as outrages on
common sense.  I have no doubt that he believes it all.  I wonder if
his mind can have become in any way unhinged.  Surely there must be
some rational explanation of all these mysterious things.  Is it
possible that the Professor can have done it himself?  He is so
abnormally clever that if he went off his head he would carry out his
intent with regard to some fixed idea in a wonderful way.  I am loathe
to think it, and indeed it would be almost as great a marvel as the
other to find that Van Helsing was mad, but anyhow I shall watch him
carefully.  I may get some light on the mystery.


29 September.--Last night, at a little before ten o'clock, Arthur and
Quincey came into Van Helsing's room.  He told us all what he wanted
us to do, but especially addressing himself to Arthur, as if all our
wills were centred in his.  He began by saying that he hoped we would
all come with him too, "for," he said, "there is a grave duty to be
done there.  You were doubtless surprised at my letter?"  This query
was directly addressed to Lord Godalming.

"I was.  It rather upset me for a bit.  There has been so much trouble
around my house of late that I could do without any more.  I have been
curious, too, as to what you mean.

"Quincey and I talked it over, but the more we talked, the more
puzzled we got, till now I can say for myself that I'm about up a tree
as to any meaning about anything."

"Me too," said Quincey Morris laconically.

"Oh," said the Professor, "then you are nearer the beginning, both of
you, than friend John here, who has to go a long way back before he
can even get so far as to begin."

It was evident that he recognized my return to my old doubting frame
of mind without my saying a word.  Then, turning to the other two, he
said with intense gravity,

"I want your permission to do what I think good this night.  It is, I
know, much to ask, and when you know what it is I propose to do you
will know, and only then how much.  Therefore may I ask that you
promise me in the dark, so that afterwards, though you may be angry
with me for a time, I must not disguise from myself the possibility
that such may be, you shall not blame yourselves for anything."

"That's frank anyhow," broke in Quincey.  "I'll answer for the
Professor.  I don't quite see his drift, but I swear he's honest, and
that's good enough for me."

"I thank you, Sir," said Van Helsing proudly.  "I have done myself the
honour of counting you one trusting friend, and such endorsement is
dear to me."  He held out a hand, which Quincey took.

Then Arthur spoke out, "Dr. Van Helsing, I don't quite like to 'buy a
pig in a poke', as they say in Scotland, and if it be anything in
which my honour as a gentleman or my faith as a Christian is
concerned, I cannot make such a promise.  If you can assure me that
what you intend does not violate either of these two, then I give my
consent at once, though for the life of me, I cannot understand what
you are driving at."

"I accept your limitation," said Van Helsing, "and all I ask of you is
that if you feel it necessary to condemn any act of mine, you will
first consider it well and be satisfied that it does not violate your
reservations."

"Agreed!" said Arthur.  "That is only fair.  And now that the
pourparlers are over, may I ask what it is we are to do?"

"I want you to come with me, and to come in secret, to the churchyard
at Kingstead."

Arthur's face fell as he said in an amazed sort of way,

"Where poor Lucy is buried?"

The Professor bowed.

Arthur went on, "And when there?"

"To enter the tomb!"

Arthur stood up.  "Professor, are you in earnest, or is it some
monstrous joke?  Pardon me, I see that you are in earnest."  He sat
down again, but I could see that he sat firmly and proudly, as one who
is on his dignity.  There was silence until he asked again, "And when
in the tomb?"

"To open the coffin."

"This is too much!" he said, angrily rising again.  "I am willing to
be patient in all things that are reasonable, but in this, this
desecration of the grave, of one who . . ."  He fairly choked with
indignation.

The Professor looked pityingly at him.  "If I could spare you one pang,
my poor friend," he said, "God knows I would.  But this night our feet
must tread in thorny paths, or later, and for ever, the feet you love
must walk in paths of flame!"

Arthur looked up with set white face and said, "Take care, sir, take
care!"

"Would it not be well to hear what I have to say?" said Van Helsing.
"And then you will at least know the limit of my purpose.  Shall I go
on?"

"That's fair enough," broke in Morris.

After a pause Van Helsing went on, evidently with an effort, "Miss
Lucy is dead, is it not so?  Yes!  Then there can be no wrong to her.
But if she be not dead . . ."

Arthur jumped to his feet, "Good God!" he cried.  "What do you mean?
Has there been any mistake, has she been buried alive?"  He groaned in
anguish that not even hope could soften.

"I did not say she was alive, my child.  I did not think it.  I go no
further than to say that she might be UnDead."

"UnDead!  Not alive!  What do you mean?  Is this all a nightmare, or
what is it?"

"There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age
they may solve only in part.  Believe me, we are now on the verge of
one.  But I have not done.  May I cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy?"

"Heavens and earth, no!" cried Arthur in a storm of passion.  "Not for
the wide world will I consent to any mutilation of her dead body.  Dr.
Van Helsing, you try me too far.  What have I done to you that you
should torture me so?  What did that poor, sweet girl do that you
should want to cast such dishonour on her grave?  Are you mad, that you
speak of such things, or am I mad to listen to them?  Don't dare think
more of such a desecration.  I shall not give my consent to anything
you do.  I have a duty to do in protecting her grave from outrage, and
by God, I shall do it!"

Van Helsing rose up from where he had all the time been seated, and
said, gravely and sternly, "My Lord Godalming, I too, have a duty to
do, a duty to others, a duty to you, a duty to the dead, and by God, I
shall do it!  All I ask you now is that you come with me, that you
look and listen, and if when later I make the same request you do not
be more eager for its fulfillment even than I am, then, I shall do my
duty, whatever it may seem to me.  And then, to follow your Lordship's
wishes I shall hold myself at your disposal to render an account to
you, when and where you will."  His voice broke a little, and he went
on with a voice full of pity.

"But I beseech you, do not go forth in anger with me.  In a long life
of acts which were often not pleasant to do, and which sometimes did
wring my heart, I have never had so heavy a task as now.  Believe me
that if the time comes for you to change your mind towards me, one
look from you will wipe away all this so sad hour, for I would do what
a man can to save you from sorrow.  Just think.  For why should I give
myself so much labor and so much of sorrow?  I have come here from my
own land to do what I can of good, at the first to please my friend
John, and then to help a sweet young lady, whom too, I come to love.
For her, I am ashamed to say so much, but I say it in kindness, I gave
what you gave, the blood of my veins.  I gave it, I who was not, like
you, her lover, but only her physician and her friend.  I gave her my
nights and days, before death, after death, and if my death can do her
good even now, when she is the dead UnDead, she shall have it freely."
He said this with a very grave, sweet pride, and Arthur was much
affected by it.

He took the old man's hand and said in a broken voice, "Oh, it is hard
to think of it, and I cannot understand, but at least I shall go with
you and wait."




CHAPTER 16


DR SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.

It was just a quarter before twelve o'clock when we got into the
churchyard over the low wall.  The night was dark with occasional
gleams of moonlight between the dents of the heavy clouds that scudded
across the sky.  We all kept somehow close together, with Van Helsing
slightly in front as he led the way.  When we had come close to the
tomb I looked well at Arthur, for I feared the proximity to a place
laden with so sorrowful a memory would upset him, but he bore himself
well.  I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some
way a counteractant to his grief.  The Professor unlocked the door,
and seeing a natural hesitation amongst us for various reasons, solved
the difficulty by entering first himself.  The rest of us followed,
and he closed the door.  He then lit a dark lantern and pointed to a
coffin.  Arthur stepped forward hesitatingly.  Van Helsing said to me,
"You were with me here yesterday.  Was the body of Miss Lucy in that
coffin?"

"It was."

The Professor turned to the rest saying, "You hear, and yet there is
no one who does not believe with me."

He took his screwdriver and again took off the lid of the coffin.
Arthur looked on, very pale but silent.  When the lid was removed he
stepped forward.  He evidently did not know that there was a leaden
coffin, or at any rate, had not thought of it.  When he saw the rent
in the lead, the blood rushed to his face for an instant, but as
quickly fell away again, so that he remained of a ghastly whiteness.
He was still silent.  Van Helsing forced back the leaden flange, and
we all looked in and recoiled.

The coffin was empty!

For several minutes no one spoke a word.  The silence was broken by
Quincey Morris, "Professor, I answered for you.  Your word is all I
want.  I wouldn't ask such a thing ordinarily, I wouldn't so dishonour
you as to imply a doubt, but this is a mystery that goes beyond any
honour or dishonour.  Is this your doing?"

"I swear to you by all that I hold sacred that I have not removed or
touched her.  What happened was this.  Two nights ago my friend Seward
and I came here, with good purpose, believe me.  I opened that coffin,
which was then sealed up, and we found it as now, empty.  We then
waited, and saw something white come through the trees.  The next day
we came here in daytime and she lay there.  Did she not, friend John?

"Yes."

"That night we were just in time.  One more so small child was
missing, and we find it, thank God, unharmed amongst the graves.
Yesterday I came here before sundown, for at sundown the UnDead can
move.  I waited here all night till the sun rose, but I saw nothing.
It was most probable that it was because I had laid over the clamps of
those doors garlic, which the UnDead cannot bear, and other things
which they shun.  Last night there was no exodus, so tonight before
the sundown I took away my garlic and other things.  And so it is we
find this coffin empty.  But bear with me.  So far there is much that
is strange.  Wait you with me outside, unseen and unheard, and things
much stranger are yet to be.  So," here he shut the dark slide of his
lantern, "now to the outside."  He opened the door, and we filed out,
he coming last and locking the door behind him.

Oh!  But it seemed fresh and pure in the night air after the terror of
that vault.  How sweet it was to see the clouds race by, and the
passing gleams of the moonlight between the scudding clouds crossing
and passing, like the gladness and sorrow of a man's life.  How sweet
it was to breathe the fresh air, that had no taint of death and decay.
How humanizing to see the red lighting of the sky beyond the hill, and
to hear far away the muffled roar that marks the life of a great
city.  Each in his own way was solemn and overcome.  Arthur was
silent, and was, I could see, striving to grasp the purpose and the
inner meaning of the mystery.  I was myself tolerably patient, and
half inclined again to throw aside doubt and to accept Van Helsing's
conclusions.  Quincey Morris was phlegmatic in the way of a man who
accepts all things, and accepts them in the spirit of cool bravery,
with hazard of all he has at stake.  Not being able to smoke, he cut
himself a good-sized plug of tobacco and began to chew.  As to Van
Helsing, he was employed in a definite way.  First he took from his
bag a mass of what looked like thin, wafer-like biscuit, which was
carefully rolled up in a white napkin.  Next he took out a double
handful of some whitish stuff, like dough or putty.  He crumbled the
wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands.  This he
then took, and rolling it into thin strips, began to lay them into the
crevices between the door and its setting in the tomb.  I was somewhat
puzzled at this, and being close, asked him what it was that he was
doing.  Arthur and Quincey drew near also, as they too were curious.

He answered, "I am closing the tomb so that the UnDead may not enter."

"And is that stuff you have there going to do it?"

"It is."

"What is that which you are using?"  This time the question was by
Arthur.  Van Helsing reverently lifted his hat as he answered.

"The Host.  I brought it from Amsterdam.  I have an Indulgence."

It was an answer that appalled the most sceptical of us, and we felt
individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the
Professor's, a purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred of
things, it was impossible to distrust.  In respectful silence we took
the places assigned to us close round the tomb, but hidden from the
sight of any one approaching.  I pitied the others, especially Arthur.
I had myself been apprenticed by my former visits to this watching
horror, and yet I, who had up to an hour ago repudiated the proofs,
felt my heart sink within me.  Never did tombs look so ghastly white.
Never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of
funeral gloom.  Never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously.
Never did bough creak so mysteriously, and never did the far-away
howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.

There was a long spell of silence, big, aching, void, and then from
the Professor a keen "S-s-s-s!"  He pointed, and far down the avenue of
yews we saw a white figure advance, a dim white figure, which held
something dark at its breast.  The figure stopped, and at the moment a
ray of moonlight fell upon the masses of driving clouds, and showed in
startling prominence a dark-haired woman, dressed in the cerements of
the grave.  We could not see the face, for it was bent down over what
we saw to be a fair-haired child.  There was a pause and a sharp
little cry, such as a child gives in sleep, or a dog as it lies before
the fire and dreams.  We were starting forward, but the Professor's
warning hand, seen by us as he stood behind a yew tree, kept us back.
And then as we looked the white figure moved forwards again.  It was
now near enough for us to see clearly, and the moonlight still held.
My own heart grew cold as ice, and I could hear the gasp of Arthur, as
we recognized the features of Lucy Westenra.  Lucy Westenra, but yet
how changed.  The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless
cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness.

Van Helsing stepped out, and obedient to his gesture, we all advanced
too.  The four of us ranged in a line before the door of the tomb.  Van
Helsing raised his lantern and drew the slide.  By the concentrated
light that fell on Lucy's face we could see that the lips were crimson
with fresh blood, and that the stream had trickled over her chin and
stained the purity of her lawn death-robe.

We shuddered with horror.  I could see by the tremulous light that
even Van Helsing's iron nerve had failed.  Arthur was next to me, and
if I had not seized his arm and held him up, he would have fallen.

When Lucy, I call the thing that was before us Lucy because it bore
her shape, saw us she drew back with an angry snarl, such as a cat
gives when taken unawares, then her eyes ranged over us.  Lucy's eyes
in form and colour, but Lucy's eyes unclean and full of hell fire,
instead of the pure, gentle orbs we knew.  At that moment the remnant
of my love passed into hate and loathing.  Had she then to be killed,
I could have done it with savage delight.  As she looked, her eyes
blazed with unholy light, and the face became wreathed with a
voluptuous smile.  Oh, God, how it made me shudder to see it!  With a
careless motion, she flung to the ground, callous as a devil, the
child that up to now she had clutched strenuously to her breast,
growling over it as a dog growls over a bone.  The child gave a sharp
cry, and lay there moaning.  There was a cold-bloodedness in the act
which wrung a groan from Arthur.  When she advanced to him with
outstretched arms and a wanton smile he fell back and hid his face in
his hands.

She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace,
said, "Come to me, Arthur.  Leave these others and come to me.  My
arms are hungry for you.  Come, and we can rest together.  Come, my
husband, come!"

There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the
tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of
us who heard the words addressed to another.

As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell, moving his hands from his
face, he opened wide his arms.  She was leaping for them, when Van
Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden
crucifix.  She recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face,
full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.

When within a foot or two of the door, however, she stopped, as if
arrested by some irresistible force.  Then she turned, and her face
was shown in the clear burst of moonlight and by the lamp, which had
now no quiver from Van Helsing's nerves.  Never did I see such baffled
malice on a face, and never, I trust, shall such ever be seen again by
mortal eyes.  The beautiful colour became livid, the eyes seemed to
throw out sparks of hell fire, the brows were wrinkled as though the
folds of flesh were the coils of Medusa's snakes, and the lovely,
blood-stained mouth grew to an open square, as in the passion masks of
the Greeks and Japanese.  If ever a face meant death, if looks could
kill, we saw it at that moment.

And so for full half a minute, which seemed an eternity, she remained
between the lifted crucifix and the sacred closing of her means of
entry.

Van Helsing broke the silence by asking Arthur, "Answer me, oh my
friend!  Am I to proceed in my work?"

"Do as you will, friend.  Do as you will.  There can be no horror like
this ever any more."  And he groaned in spirit.

Quincey and I simultaneously moved towards him, and took his arms.  We
could hear the click of the closing lantern as Van Helsing held it
down.  Coming close to the tomb, he began to remove from the chinks
some of the sacred emblem which he had placed there.  We all looked on
with horrified amazement as we saw, when he stood back, the woman,
with a corporeal body as real at that moment as our own, pass through
the interstice where scarce a knife blade could have gone.  We all
felt a glad sense of relief when we saw the Professor calmly restoring
the strings of putty to the edges of the door.

When this was done, he lifted the child and said, "Come now, my
friends.  We can do no more till tomorrow.  There is a funeral at
noon, so here we shall all come before long after that.  The friends
of the dead will all be gone by two, and when the sexton locks the
gate we shall remain.  Then there is more to do, but not like this of
tonight.  As for this little one, he is not much harmed, and by
tomorrow night he shall be well.  We shall leave him where the police
will find him, as on the other night, and then to home."

Coming close to Arthur, he said, "My friend Arthur, you have had a sore
trial, but after, when you look back, you will see how it was
necessary.  You are now in the bitter waters, my child.  By this time
tomorrow you will, please God, have passed them, and have drunk of the
sweet waters.  So do not mourn over-much.  Till then I shall not ask
you to forgive me."

Arthur and Quincey came home with me, and we tried to cheer each other
on the way.  We had left behind the child in safety, and were tired.
So we all slept with more or less reality of sleep.


29 September, night.--A little before twelve o'clock we three, Arthur,
Quincey Morris, and myself, called for the Professor.  It was odd to
notice that by common consent we had all put on black clothes.  Of
course, Arthur wore black, for he was in deep mourning, but the rest
of us wore it by instinct.  We got to the graveyard by half-past one,
and strolled about, keeping out of official observation, so that when
the gravediggers had completed their task and the sexton, under the
belief that every one had gone, had locked the gate, we had the place
all to ourselves.  Van Helsing, instead of his little black bag, had
with him a long leather one, something like a cricketing bag.  It was
manifestly of fair weight.

When we were alone and had heard the last of the footsteps die out up
the road, we silently, and as if by ordered intention, followed the
Professor to the tomb.  He unlocked the door, and we entered, closing
it behind us.  Then he took from his bag the lantern, which he lit,
and also two wax candles, which, when lighted, he stuck by melting
their own ends, on other coffins, so that they might give light
sufficient to work by.  When he again lifted the lid off Lucy's coffin
we all looked, Arthur trembling like an aspen, and saw that the corpse
lay there in all its death beauty.  But there was no love in my own
heart, nothing but loathing for the foul Thing which had taken Lucy's
shape without her soul.  I could see even Arthur's face grow hard as
he looked.  Presently he said to Van Helsing, "Is this really Lucy's
body, or only a demon in her shape?"

"It is her body, and yet not it.  But wait a while, and you shall see
her as she was, and is."

She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there, the pointed
teeth, the blood stained, voluptuous mouth, which made one shudder to
see, the whole carnal and unspirited appearance, seeming like a
devilish mockery of Lucy's sweet purity.  Van Helsing, with his usual
methodicalness, began taking the various contents from his bag and
placing them ready for use.  First he took out a soldering iron and
some plumbing solder, and then small oil lamp, which gave out, when
lit in a corner of the tomb, gas which burned at a fierce heat with a
blue flame, then his operating knives, which he placed to hand, and
last a round wooden stake, some two and a half or three inches thick
and about three feet long.  One end of it was hardened by charring in
the fire, and was sharpened to a fine point.  With this stake came a
heavy hammer, such as in households is used in the coal cellar for
breaking the lumps.  To me, a doctor's preparations for work of any
kind are stimulating and bracing, but the effect of these things on
both Arthur and Quincey was to cause them a sort of consternation.
They both, however, kept their courage, and remained silent and quiet.

When all was ready, Van Helsing said, "Before we do anything, let me
tell you this.  It is out of the lore and experience of the ancients
and of all those who have studied the powers of the UnDead.  When they
become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality.
They cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and
multiplying the evils of the world.  For all that die from the preying
of the Undead become themselves Undead, and prey on their kind.  And
so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone
thrown in the water.  Friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss which
you know of before poor Lucy die, or again, last night when you open
your arms to her, you would in time, when you had died, have become
nosferatu, as they call it in Eastern Europe, and would for all time
make more of those Un-Deads that so have filled us with horror.  The
career of this so unhappy dear lady is but just begun.  Those children
whose blood she sucked are not as yet so much the worse, but if she
lives on, UnDead, more and more they lose their blood and by her power
over them they come to her, and so she draw their blood with that so
wicked mouth.  But if she die in truth, then all cease.  The tiny
wounds of the throats disappear, and they go back to their play
unknowing ever of what has been.  But of the most blessed of all, when
this now UnDead be made to rest as true dead, then the soul of the
poor lady whom we love shall again be free.  Instead of working
wickedness by night and growing more debased in the assimilating of it
by day, she shall take her place with the other Angels.  So that, my
friend, it will be a blessed hand for her that shall strike the blow
that sets her free.  To this I am willing, but is there none amongst
us who has a better right?  Will it be no joy to think of hereafter in
the silence of the night when sleep is not, 'It was my hand that sent
her to the stars.  It was the hand of him that loved her best, the
hand that of all she would herself have chosen, had it been to her to
choose?'  Tell me if there be such a one amongst us?"

We all looked at Arthur.  He saw too, what we all did, the infinite
kindness which suggested that his should be the hand which would
restore Lucy to us as a holy, and not an unholy, memory.  He stepped
forward and said bravely, though his hand trembled, and his face was
as pale as snow, "My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I
thank you.  Tell me what I am to do, and I shall not falter!"

Van Helsing laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, "Brave lad!  A
moment's courage, and it is done.  This stake must be driven through
her.  It well be a fearful ordeal, be not deceived in that, but it
will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more than your
pain was great.  From this grim tomb you will emerge as though you
tread on air.  But you must not falter when once you have begun.  Only
think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that we pray for
you all the time."

"Go on," said Arthur hoarsely.  "Tell me what I am to do."

"Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place to the point over
the heart, and the hammer in your right.  Then when we begin our
prayer for the dead, I shall read him, I have here the book, and the
others shall follow, strike in God's name, that so all may be well
with the dead that we love and that the UnDead pass away."

Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set
on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered.  Van Helsing
opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as
well as we could.

Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its
dint in the white flesh.  Then he struck with all his might.

The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech
came from the opened red lips.  The body shook and quivered and
twisted in wild contortions.  The sharp white teeth champed together till
the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam.  But
Arthur never faltered.  He looked like a figure of Thor as his
untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the
mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled
and spurted up around it.  His face was set, and high duty seemed to
shine through it.  The sight of it gave us courage so that our voices
seemed to ring through the little vault.

And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the
teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver.  Finally it lay still.
The terrible task was over.

The hammer fell from Arthur's hand.  He reeled and would have fallen
had we not caught him.  The great drops of sweat sprang from his
forehead, and his breath came in broken gasps.  It had indeed been an
awful strain on him, and had he not been forced to his task by more
than human considerations he could never have gone through with it.
For a few minutes we were so taken up with him that we did not look
towards the coffin.  When we did, however, a murmur of startled
surprise ran from one to the other of us.  We gazed so eagerly that
Arthur rose, for he had been seated on the ground, and came and looked
too, and then a glad strange light broke over his face and dispelled
altogether the gloom of horror that lay upon it.

There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so
dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded
as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen
her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity.  True
that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care
and pain and waste.  But these were all dear to us, for they marked
her truth to what we knew.  One and all we felt that the holy calm
that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an
earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.

Van Helsing came and laid his hand on Arthur's shoulder, and said to
him, "And now, Arthur my friend, dear lad, am I not forgiven?"

The reaction of the terrible strain came as he took the old man's hand
in his, and raising it to his lips, pressed it, and said, "Forgiven!
God bless you that you have given my dear one her soul again, and me
peace."  He put his hands on the Professor's shoulder, and laying his
head on his breast, cried for a while silently, whilst we stood
unmoving.

When he raised his head Van Helsing said to him, "And now, my child,
you may kiss her.  Kiss her dead lips if you will, as she would have
you to, if for her to choose.  For she is not a grinning devil now,
not any more a foul Thing for all eternity.  No longer she is the
devil's UnDead.  She is God's true dead, whose soul is with Him!"

Arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out of the
tomb.  The Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the
point of it in the body.  Then we cut off the head and filled the
mouth with garlic.  We soldered up the leaden coffin, screwed on the
coffin lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away.  When the
Professor locked the door he gave the key to Arthur.

Outside the air was sweet, the sun shone, and the birds sang, and it
seemed as if all nature were tuned to a different pitch.  There was
gladness and mirth and peace everywhere, for we were at rest ourselves
on one account, and we were glad, though it was with a tempered joy.

Before we moved away Van Helsing said, "Now, my friends, one step of
our work is done, one the most harrowing to ourselves.  But there
remains a greater task: to find out the author of all this our sorrow
and to stamp him out.  I have clues which we can follow, but it is a
long task, and a difficult one, and there is danger in it, and pain.
Shall you not all help me?  We have learned to believe, all of us, is
it not so?  And since so, do we not see our duty?  Yes!  And do we not
promise to go on to the bitter end?"

Each in turn, we took his hand, and the promise was made.  Then said
the Professor as we moved off, "Two nights hence you shall meet with
me and dine together at seven of the clock with friend John.  I shall
entreat two others, two that you know not as yet, and I shall be ready
to all our work show and our plans unfold.  Friend John, you come with
me home, for I have much to consult you about, and you can help me.
Tonight I leave for Amsterdam, but shall return tomorrow night.  And
then begins our great quest.  But first I shall have much to say, so
that you may know what to do and to dread.  Then our promise shall be
made to each other anew.  For there is a terrible task before us, and
once our feet are on the ploughshare we must not draw back."




CHAPTER 17


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY-cont.

When we arrived at the Berkely Hotel, Van Helsing found a telegram
waiting for him.

"Am coming up by train.  Jonathan at Whitby.  Important news.  Mina
Harker."


The Professor was delighted.  "Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina," he
said, "pearl among women!  She arrive, but I cannot stay.  She must go
to your house, friend John.  You must meet her at the station.
Telegraph her en route so that she may be prepared."

When the wire was dispatched he had a cup of tea.  Over it he told me
of a diary kept by Jonathan Harker when abroad, and gave me a
typewritten copy of it, as also of Mrs. Harker's diary at Whitby.
"Take these," he said, "and study them well.  When I have returned you
will be master of all the facts, and we can then better enter on our
inquisition.  Keep them safe, for there is in them much of treasure.
You will need all your faith, even you who have had such an experience
as that of today.  What is here told," he laid his hand heavily and
gravely on the packet of papers as he spoke, "may be the beginning of
the end to you and me and many another, or it may sound the knell of
the UnDead who walk the earth.  Read all, I pray you, with the open
mind, and if you can add in any way to the story here told do so, for
it is all important.  You have kept a diary of all these so strange
things, is it not so?  Yes!  Then we shall go through all these
together when we meet."  He then made ready for his departure and
shortly drove off to Liverpool Street.  I took my way to Paddington,
where I arrived about fifteen minutes before the train came in.

The crowd melted away, after the bustling fashion common to arrival
platforms, and I was beginning to feel uneasy, lest I might miss my
guest, when a sweet-faced, dainty looking girl stepped up to me, and
after a quick glance said, "Dr. Seward, is it not?"

"And you are Mrs. Harker!" I answered at once, whereupon she held out
her hand.

"I knew you from the description of poor dear Lucy, but . . ."  She
stopped suddenly, and a quick blush overspread her face.

The blush that rose to my own cheeks somehow set us both at ease, for
it was a tacit answer to her own.  I got her luggage, which included a
typewriter, and we took the Underground to Fenchurch Street, after I
had sent a wire to my housekeeper to have a sitting room and a bedroom
prepared at once for Mrs. Harker.

In due time we arrived.  She knew, of course, that the place was a
lunatic asylum, but I could see that she was unable to repress a
shudder when we entered.

She told me that, if she might, she would come presently to my study,
as she had much to say.  So here I am finishing my entry in my
phonograph diary whilst I await her.  As yet I have not had the chance
of looking at the papers which Van Helsing left with me, though they
lie open before me.  I must get her interested in something, so that I
may have an opportunity of reading them.  She does not know how
precious time is, or what a task we have in hand.  I must be careful
not to frighten her.  Here she is!




MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

29 September.--After I had tidied myself, I went down to Dr. Seward's
study.  At the door I paused a moment, for I thought I heard him
talking with some one.  As, however, he had pressed me to be quick, I
knocked at the door, and on his calling out, "Come in," I entered.

To my intense surprise, there was no one with him.  He was quite
alone, and on the table opposite him was what I knew at once from the
description to be a phonograph.  I had never seen one, and was much
interested.

"I hope I did not keep you waiting," I said, "but I stayed at the door
as I heard you talking, and thought there was someone with you."

"Oh," he replied with a smile, "I was only entering my diary."

"Your diary?" I asked him in surprise.

"Yes," he answered.  "I keep it in this."  As he spoke he laid his
hand on the phonograph.  I felt quite excited over it, and blurted
out, "Why, this beats even shorthand!  May I hear it say something?"

"Certainly," he replied with alacrity, and stood up to put it in train
for speaking.  Then he paused, and a troubled look overspread his
face.

"The fact is," he began awkwardly, "I only keep my diary in it, and as
it is entirely, almost entirely, about my cases it may be awkward,
that is, I mean . . ."  He stopped, and I tried to help him out of his
embarrassment.

"You helped to attend dear Lucy at the end.  Let me hear how she died,
for all that I know of her, I shall be very grateful.  She was very,
very dear to me."

To my surprise, he answered, with a horrorstruck look in his face,
"Tell you of her death?  Not for the wide world!"

"Why not?" I asked, for some grave, terrible feeling was coming over me.

Again he paused, and I could see that he was trying to invent an
excuse.  At length, he stammered out, "You see, I do not know how to
pick out any particular part of the diary."

Even while he was speaking an idea dawned upon him, and he said with
unconscious simplicity, in a different voice, and with the naivete of
a child, "that's quite true, upon my honour.  Honest Indian!"

I could not but smile, at which he grimaced.  "I gave myself away that
time!" he said.  "But do you know that, although I have kept the diary
for months past, it never once struck me how I was going to find any
particular part of it in case I wanted to look it up?"

By this time my mind was made up that the diary of a doctor who
attended Lucy might have something to add to the sum of our knowledge
of that terrible Being, and I said boldly, "Then, Dr. Seward, you had
better let me copy it out for you on my typewriter."

He grew to a positively deathly pallor as he said, "No!  No!  No!  For
all the world.  I wouldn't let you know that terrible story!"

Then it was terrible.  My intuition was right!  For a moment, I
thought, and as my eyes ranged the room, unconsciously looking for
something or some opportunity to aid me, they lit on a great batch of
typewriting on the table.  His eyes caught the look in mine, and
without his thinking, followed their direction.  As they saw the
parcel he realized my meaning.

"You do not know me," I said.  "When you have read those papers, my
own diary and my husband's also, which I have typed, you will know me
better.  I have not faltered in giving every thought of my own heart
in this cause.  But, of course, you do not know me, yet, and I must
not expect you to trust me so far."

He is certainly a man of noble nature.  Poor dear Lucy was right about
him.  He stood up and opened a large drawer, in which were arranged in
order a number of hollow cylinders of metal covered with dark wax, and
said,

"You are quite right.  I did not trust you because I did not know
you.  But I know you now, and let me say that I should have known you
long ago.  I know that Lucy told you of me.  She told me of you too.
May I make the only atonement in my power?  Take the cylinders and
hear them.  The first half-dozen of them are personal to me, and they
will not horrify you.  Then you will know me better.  Dinner will by
then be ready.  In the meantime I shall read over some of these
documents, and shall be better able to understand certain things."

He carried the phonograph himself up to my sitting room and adjusted
it for me.  Now I shall learn something pleasant, I am sure.  For it
will tell me the other side of a true love episode of which I know one
side already.




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

29 September.--I was so absorbed in that wonderful diary of Jonathan
Harker and that other of his wife that I let the time run on without
thinking.  Mrs. Harker was not down when the maid came to announce
dinner, so I said, "She is possibly tired.  Let dinner wait an hour,"
and I went on with my work.  I had just finished Mrs. Harker's diary,
when she came in.  She looked sweetly pretty, but very sad, and her
eyes were flushed with crying.  This somehow moved me much.  Of late I
have had cause for tears, God knows!  But the relief of them was
denied me, and now the sight of those sweet eyes, brightened by recent
tears, went straight to my heart.  So I said as gently as I could, "I
greatly fear I have distressed you."

"Oh, no, not distressed me," she replied.  "But I have been more
touched than I can say by your grief.  That is a wonderful machine,
but it is cruelly true.  It told me, in its very tones, the anguish of
your heart.  It was like a soul crying out to Almighty God.  No one
must hear them spoken ever again!  See, I have tried to be useful.  I
have copied out the words on my typewriter, and none other need now
hear your heart beat, as I did."

"No one need ever know, shall ever know," I said in a low voice.  She
laid her hand on mine and said very gravely, "Ah, but they must!"

"Must!  But why?" I asked.

"Because it is a part of the terrible story, a part of poor Lucy's
death and all that led to it.  Because in the struggle which we have
before us to rid the earth of this terrible monster we must have all
the knowledge and all the help which we can get.  I think that the
cylinders which you gave me contained more than you intended me to
know.  But I can see that there are in your record many lights to this
dark mystery.  You will let me help, will you not?  I know all up to a
certain point, and I see already, though your diary only took me to 7
September, how poor Lucy was beset, and how her terrible doom was
being wrought out.  Jonathan and I have been working day and night
since Professor Van Helsing saw us.  He is gone to Whitby to get more
information, and he will be here tomorrow to help us.  We need have no
secrets amongst us.  Working together and with absolute trust, we can
surely be stronger than if some of us were in the dark."

She looked at me so appealingly, and at the same time manifested such
courage and resolution in her bearing, that I gave in at once to her
wishes.  "You shall," I said, "do as you like in the matter.  God
forgive me if I do wrong!  There are terrible things yet to learn of,
but if you have so far traveled on the road to poor Lucy's death, you
will not be content, I know, to remain in the dark.  Nay, the end, the
very end, may give you a gleam of peace.  Come, there is dinner.  We
must keep one another strong for what is before us.  We have a cruel
and dreadful task.  When you have eaten you shall learn the rest, and
I shall answer any questions you ask, if there be anything which you
do not understand, though it was apparent to us who were present."



MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

29 September.--After dinner I came with Dr. Seward to his study.  He
brought back the phonograph from my room, and I took a chair, and
arranged the phonograph so that I could touch it without getting up,
and showed me how to stop it in case I should want to pause.  Then he
very thoughtfully took a chair, with his back to me, so that I might
be as free as possible, and began to read.  I put the forked metal to
my ears and listened.

When the terrible story of Lucy's death, and all that followed, was
done, I lay back in my chair powerless.  Fortunately I am not of a
fainting disposition.  When Dr. Seward saw me he jumped up with a
horrified exclamation, and hurriedly taking a case bottle from the
cupboard, gave me some brandy, which in a few minutes somewhat
restored me.  My brain was all in a whirl, and only that there came
through all the multitude of horrors, the holy ray of light that my
dear Lucy was at last at peace, I do not think I could have borne it
without making a scene.  It is all so wild and mysterious, and strange
that if I had not known Jonathan's experience in Transylvania I could
not have believed.  As it was, I didn't know what to believe, and so
got out of my difficulty by attending to something else.  I took the
cover off my typewriter, and said to Dr. Seward,

"Let me write this all out now.  We must be ready for Dr. Van Helsing
when he comes.  I have sent a telegram to Jonathan to come on here
when he arrives in London from Whitby.  In this matter dates are
everything, and I think that if we get all of our material ready, and
have every item put in chronological order, we shall have done much.

"You tell me that Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris are coming too.  Let
us be able to tell them when they come."

He accordingly set the phonograph at a slow pace, and I began to
typewrite from the beginning of the seventeenth cylinder.  I used
manifold, and so took three copies of the diary, just as I had done
with the rest.  It was late when I got through, but Dr. Seward went
about his work of going his round of the patients.  When he had
finished he came back and sat near me, reading, so that I did not feel
too lonely whilst I worked.  How good and thoughtful he is.  The world
seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.

Before I left him I remembered what Jonathan put in his diary of the
Professor's perturbation at reading something in an evening paper at
the station at Exeter, so, seeing that Dr. Seward keeps his
newspapers, I borrowed the files of 'The Westminster Gazette' and 'The
Pall Mall Gazette' and took them to my room.  I remember how much the
'Dailygraph' and 'The Whitby Gazette', of which I had made cuttings,
had helped us to understand the terrible events at Whitby when Count
Dracula landed, so I shall look through the evening papers since then,
and perhaps I shall get some new light.  I am not sleepy, and the work
will help to keep me quiet.




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

30 September.--Mr. Harker arrived at nine o'clock.  He got his wife's
wire just before starting.  He is uncommonly clever, if one can judge
from his face, and full of energy.  If this journal be true, and
judging by one's own wonderful experiences, it must be, he is also a
man of great nerve.  That going down to the vault a second time was a
remarkable piece of daring.  After reading his account of it I was
prepared to meet a good specimen of manhood, but hardly the quiet,
businesslike gentleman who came here today.


LATER.--After lunch Harker and his wife went back to their own room,
and as I passed a while ago I heard the click of the typewriter.  They
are hard at it.  Mrs. Harker says that they are knitting together in
chronological order every scrap of evidence they have.  Harker has got
the letters between the consignee of the boxes at Whitby and the
carriers in London who took charge of them.  He is now reading his
wife's transcript of my diary.  I wonder what they make out of it.
Here it is . . .

Strange that it never struck me that the very next house might be the
Count's hiding place!  Goodness knows that we had enough clues from
the conduct of the patient Renfield!  The bundle of letters relating
to the purchase of the house were with the transcript.  Oh, if we had
only had them earlier we might have saved poor Lucy!  Stop!  That way
madness lies!  Harker has gone back, and is again collecting material.
He says that by dinner time they will be able to show a whole
connected narrative.  He thinks that in the meantime I should see
Renfield, as hitherto he has been a sort of index to the coming and
going of the Count.  I hardly see this yet, but when I get at the
dates I suppose I shall.  What a good thing that Mrs. Harker put my
cylinders into type!  We never could have found the dates otherwise.

I found Renfield sitting placidly in his room with his hands folded,
smiling benignly.  At the moment he seemed as sane as any one I ever
saw.  I sat down and talked with him on a lot of subjects, all of
which he treated naturally.  He then, of his own accord, spoke of
going home, a subject he has never mentioned to my knowledge during
his sojourn here.  In fact, he spoke quite confidently of getting his
discharge at once.  I believe that, had I not had the chat with Harker
and read the letters and the dates of his outbursts, I should have
been prepared to sign for him after a brief time of observation.  As
it is, I am darkly suspicious.  All those out-breaks were in some way
linked with the proximity of the Count.  What then does this absolute
content mean?  Can it be that his instinct is satisfied as to the
vampire's ultimate triumph?  Stay.  He is himself zoophagous, and in
his wild ravings outside the chapel door of the deserted house he
always spoke of 'master'.  This all seems confirmation of our idea.
However, after a while I came away.  My friend is just a little too
sane at present to make it safe to probe him too deep with questions.
He might begin to think, and then . . . So I came away.  I mistrust
these quiet moods of of his, so I have given the attendant a hint to
look closely after him, and to have a strait waistcoat ready in case
of need.





JOHNATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

29 September, in train to London.--When I received Mr. Billington's
courteous message that he would give me any information in his power I
thought it best to go down to Whitby and make, on the spot, such
inquiries as I wanted.  It was now my object to trace that horrid
cargo of the Count's to its place in London.  Later, we may be able to
deal with it.  Billington junior, a nice lad, met me at the station,
and brought me to his father's house, where they had decided that I
must spend the night.  They are hospitable, with true Yorkshire
hospitality, give a guest everything and leave him to do as he likes.
They all knew that I was busy, and that my stay was short, and Mr.
Billington had ready in his office all the papers concerning the
consignment of boxes.  It gave me almost a turn to see again one of
the letters which I had seen on the Count's table before I knew of his
diabolical plans.  Everything had been carefully thought out, and done
systematically and with precision.  He seemed to have been prepared
for every obstacle which might be placed by accident in the way of his
intentions being carried out.  To use an Americanism, he had 'taken no
chances', and the absolute accuracy with which his instructions were
fulfilled was simply the logical result of his care.  I saw the
invoice, and took note of it.  'Fifty cases of common earth, to be used
for experimental purposes'.  Also the copy of the letter to Carter
Paterson, and their reply.  Of both these I got copies.  This was all
the information Mr. Billington could give me, so I went down to the
port and saw the coastguards, the Customs Officers and the harbour
master, who kindly put me in communication with the men who had
actually received the boxes.  Their tally was exact with the list, and
they had nothing to add to the simple description 'fifty cases of
common earth', except that the boxes were 'main and mortal heavy', and
that shifting them was dry work.  One of them added that it was hard
lines that there wasn't any gentleman 'such like as like yourself,
squire', to show some sort of appreciation of their efforts in a
liquid form.  Another put in a rider that the thirst then generated
was such that even the time which had elapsed had not completely
allayed it.  Needless to add, I took care before leaving to lift,
forever and adequately, this source of reproach.

30 September.--The station master was good enough to give me a line to
his old companion the station master at King's Cross, so that when I
arrived there in the morning I was able to ask him about the arrival
of the boxes.  He, too put me at once in communication with the proper
officials, and I saw that their tally was correct with the original
invoice.  The opportunities of acquiring an abnormal thirst had been
here limited.  A noble use of them had, however, been made, and again
I was compelled to deal with the result in ex post facto manner.

From thence I went to Carter Paterson's central office, where I met
with the utmost courtesy.  They looked up the transaction in their day
book and letter book, and at once telephoned to their King's Cross
office for more details.  By good fortune, the men who did the teaming
were waiting for work, and the official at once sent them over,
sending also by one of them the way-bill and all the papers connected
with the delivery of the boxes at Carfax.  Here again I found the
tally agreeing exactly.  The carriers' men were able to supplement the
paucity of the written words with a few more details.  These were, I
shortly found, connected almost solely with the dusty nature of the
job, and the consequent thirst engendered in the operators.  On my
affording an opportunity, through the medium of the currency of the
realm, of the allaying, at a later period, this beneficial evil, one
of the men remarked,

"That 'ere 'ouse, guv'nor, is the rummiest I ever was in.  Blyme!  But
it ain't been touched sence a hundred years.  There was dust that
thick in the place that you might have slep' on it without 'urtin' of
yer bones.  An' the place was that neglected that yer might 'ave
smelled ole Jerusalem in it.  But the old chapel, that took the cike,
that did!  Me and my mate, we thort we wouldn't never git out quick
enough.  Lor', I wouldn't take less nor a quid a moment to stay there
arter dark."

Having been in the house, I could well believe him, but if he knew
what I know, he would, I think have raised his terms.

Of one thing I am now satisfied.  That all those boxes which arrived at
Whitby from Varna in the Demeter were safely deposited in the old
chapel at Carfax.  There should be fifty of them there, unless any
have since been removed, as from Dr. Seward's diary I fear.


Later.--Mina and I have worked all day, and we have put all the papers
into order.




MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

30 September.--I am so glad that I hardly know how to contain myself.
It is, I suppose, the reaction from the haunting fear which I have
had, that this terrible affair and the reopening of his old wound
might act detrimentally on Jonathan.  I saw him leave for Whitby with
as brave a face as could, but I was sick with apprehension.  The
effort has, however, done him good.  He was never so resolute, never
so strong, never so full of volcanic energy, as at present.  It is
just as that dear, good Professor Van Helsing said, he is true grit,
and he improves under strain that would kill a weaker nature.  He came
back full of life and hope and determination.  We have got everything
in order for tonight.  I feel myself quite wild with excitement.  I
suppose one ought to pity anything so hunted as the Count.  That is
just it.  This thing is not human, not even a beast.  To read Dr.
Seward's account of poor Lucy's death, and what followed, is enough to
dry up the springs of pity in one's heart.


Later.--Lord Godalming and Mr. Morris arrived earlier than we
expected.  Dr. Seward was out on business, and had taken Jonathan with
him, so I had to see them.  It was to me a painful meeting, for it
brought back all poor dear Lucy's hopes of only a few months ago.  Of
course they had heard Lucy speak of me, and it seemed that Dr. Van
Helsing, too, had been quite 'blowing my trumpet', as Mr. Morris
expressed it.  Poor fellows, neither of them is aware that I know all
about the proposals they made to Lucy.  They did not quite know what
to say or do, as they were ignorant of the amount of my knowledge.  So
they had to keep on neutral subjects.  However, I thought the matter
over, and came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do would
be to post them on affairs right up to date.  I knew from Dr. Seward's
diary that they had been at Lucy's death, her real death, and that I
need not fear to betray any secret before the time.  So I told them,
as well as I could, that I had read all the papers and diaries, and
that my husband and I, having typewritten them, had just finished
putting them in order.  I gave them each a copy to read in the
library.  When Lord Godalming got his and turned it over, it does make
a pretty good pile, he said, "Did you write all this, Mrs. Harker?"

I nodded, and he went on.

"I don't quite see the drift of it, but you people are all so good and
kind, and have been working so earnestly and so energetically, that
all I can do is to accept your ideas blindfold and try to help you.  I
have had one lesson already in accepting facts that should make a man
humble to the last hour of his life.  Besides, I know you loved my
Lucy . . ."

Here he turned away and covered his face with his hands.  I could hear
the tears in his voice.  Mr. Morris, with instinctive delicacy, just
laid a hand for a moment on his shoulder, and then walked quietly out
of the room.  I suppose there is something in a woman's nature that
makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on
the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his
manhood.  For when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat
down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly.  I sat down beside
him and took his hand.  I hope he didn't think it forward of me, and
that if he ever thinks of it afterwards he never will have such a
thought.  There I wrong him.  I know he never will.  He is too true a
gentleman.  I said to him, for I could see that his heart was
breaking, "I loved dear Lucy, and I know what she was to you, and what
you were to her.  She and I were like sisters, and now she is gone,
will you not let me be like a sister to you in your trouble?  I know
what sorrows you have had, though I cannot measure the depth of them.
If sympathy and pity can help in your affliction, won't you let me be
of some little service, for Lucy's sake?"

In an instant the poor dear fellow was overwhelmed with grief.  It
seemed to me that all that he had of late been suffering in silence
found a vent at once.  He grew quite hysterical, and raising his open
hands, beat his palms together in a perfect agony of grief.  He stood
up and then sat down again, and the tears rained down his cheeks.  I
felt an infinite pity for him, and opened my arms unthinkingly.  With
a sob he laid his head on my shoulder and cried like a wearied child,
whilst he shook with emotion.

We women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above
smaller matters when the mother spirit is invoked.  I felt this big
sorrowing man's head resting on me, as though it were that of a baby
that some day may lie on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he
were my own child.  I never thought at the time how strange it all
was.

After a little bit his sobs ceased, and he raised himself with an
apology, though he made no disguise of his emotion.  He told me that
for days and nights past, weary days and sleepless nights, he had been
unable to speak with any one, as a man must speak in his time of
sorrow.  There was no woman whose sympathy could be given to him, or
with whom, owing to the terrible circumstance with which his sorrow
was surrounded, he could speak freely.

"I know now how I suffered," he said, as he dried his eyes, "but I do
not know even yet, and none other can ever know, how much your sweet
sympathy has been to me today.  I shall know better in time, and
believe me that, though I am not ungrateful now, my gratitude will
grow with my understanding.  You will let me be like a brother, will
you not, for all our lives, for dear Lucy's sake?"

"For dear Lucy's sake," I said as we clasped hands.  "Ay, and for your
own sake," he added, "for if a man's esteem and gratitude are ever
worth the winning, you have won mine today.  If ever the future should
bring to you a time when you need a man's help, believe me, you will
not call in vain.  God grant that no such time may ever come to you to
break the sunshine of your life, but if it should ever come, promise
me that you will let me know."

He was so earnest, and his sorrow was so fresh, that I felt it would
comfort him, so I said, "I promise."

As I came along the corridor I saw Mr. Morris looking out of a window.
He turned as he heard my footsteps.  "How is Art?" he said.  Then
noticing my red eyes, he went on, "Ah, I see you have been comforting
him.  Poor old fellow!  He needs it.  No one but a woman can help a
man when he is in trouble of the heart, and he had no one to comfort
him."

He bore his own trouble so bravely that my heart bled for him.  I saw
the manuscript in his hand, and I knew that when he read it he would
realize how much I knew, so I said to him, "I wish I could comfort all
who suffer from the heart.  Will you let me be your friend, and will
you come to me for comfort if you need it?  You will know later why I
speak."

He saw that I was in earnest, and stooping, took my hand, and raising
it to his lips, kissed it.  It seemed but poor comfort to so brave and
unselfish a soul, and impulsively I bent over and kissed him.  The
tears rose in his eyes, and there was a momentary choking in his
throat.  He said quite calmly, "Little girl, you will never forget
that true hearted kindness, so long as ever you live!"  Then he went
into the study to his friend.

"Little girl!"  The very words he had used to Lucy, and, oh, but he
proved himself a friend.




CHAPTER 18


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

30 September.--I got home at five o'clock, and found that Godalming
and Morris had not only arrived, but had already studied the
transcript of the various diaries and letters which Harker had not yet
returned from his visit to the carriers' men, of whom Dr. Hennessey
had written to me.  Mrs. Harker gave us a cup of tea, and I can
honestly say that, for the first time since I have lived in it, this
old house seemed like home.  When we had finished, Mrs. Harker said,

"Dr. Seward, may I ask a favour?  I want to see your patient, Mr.
Renfield.  Do let me see him.  What you have said of him in your diary
interests me so much!"

She looked so appealing and so pretty that I could not refuse her, and
there was no possible reason why I should, so I took her with me.
When I went into the room, I told the man that a lady would like to see
him, to which he simply answered, "Why?"

"She is going through the house, and wants to see every one in it," I
answered.

"Oh, very well," he said, "let her come in, by all means, but just
wait a minute till I tidy up the place."

His method of tidying was peculiar, he simply swallowed all the flies
and spiders in the boxes before I could stop him.  It was quite
evident that he feared, or was jealous of, some interference.  When he
had got through his disgusting task, he said cheerfully, "Let the lady
come in," and sat down on the edge of his bed with his head down, but
with his eyelids raised so that he could see her as she entered.  For
a moment I thought that he might have some homicidal intent.  I
remembered how quiet he had been just before he attacked me in my own
study, and I took care to stand where I could seize him at once if he
attempted to make a spring at her.

She came into the room with an easy gracefulness which would at once
command the respect of any lunatic, for easiness is one of the
qualities mad people most respect.  She walked over to him, smiling
pleasantly, and held out her hand.

"Good evening, Mr. Renfield," said she.  "You see, I know you, for Dr.
Seward has told me of you."  He made no immediate reply, but eyed her
all over intently with a set frown on his face.  This look gave way to
one of wonder, which merged in doubt, then to my intense astonishment
he said, "You're not the girl the doctor wanted to marry, are you?  You
can't be, you know, for she's dead."

Mrs. Harker smiled sweetly as she replied, "Oh no!  I have a husband
of my own, to whom I was married before I ever saw Dr. Seward, or he
me.  I am Mrs. Harker."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"My husband and I are staying on a visit with Dr. Seward."

"Then don't stay."

"But why not?"

I thought that this style of conversation might not be pleasant to
Mrs. Harker, any more than it was to me, so I joined in, "How did you
know I wanted to marry anyone?"

His reply was simply contemptuous, given in a pause in which he turned
his eyes from Mrs. Harker to me, instantly turning them back again,
"What an asinine question!"

"I don't see that at all, Mr. Renfield," said Mrs. Harker, at once
championing me.

He replied to her with as much courtesy and respect as he had shown
contempt to me, "You will, of course, understand, Mrs. Harker, that
when a man is so loved and honoured as our host is, everything
regarding him is of interest in our little community.  Dr. Seward is
loved not only by his household and his friends, but even by his
patients, who, being some of them hardly in mental equilibrium, are
apt to distort causes and effects.  Since I myself have been an inmate
of a lunatic asylum, I cannot but notice that the sophistic tendencies
of some of its inmates lean towards the errors of non causa and
ignoratio elenche."

I positively opened my eyes at this new development.  Here was my own
pet lunatic, the most pronounced of his type that I had ever met with,
talking elemental philosophy, and with the manner of a polished
gentleman.  I wonder if it was Mrs. Harker's presence which had
touched some chord in his memory.  If this new phase was spontaneous,
or in any way due to her unconscious influence, she must have some
rare gift or power.

We continued to talk for some time, and seeing that he was seemingly
quite reasonable, she ventured, looking at me questioningly as she
began, to lead him to his favourite topic.  I was again astonished,
for he addressed himself to the question with the impartiality of
the completest sanity.  He even took himself as an example when he
mentioned certain things.

"Why, I myself am an instance of a man who had a strange belief.
Indeed, it was no wonder that my friends were alarmed, and insisted on
my being put under control.  I used to fancy that life was a positive
and perpetual entity, and that by consuming a multitude of live
things, no matter how low in the scale of creation, one might
indefinitely prolong life.  At times I held the belief so strongly
that I actually tried to take human life.  The doctor here will bear
me out that on one occasion I tried to kill him for the purpose of
strengthening my vital powers by the assimilation with my own body of
his life through the medium of his blood, relying of course, upon the
Scriptural phrase, 'For the blood is the life.'  Though, indeed, the
vendor of a certain nostrum has vulgarized the truism to the very
point of contempt.  Isn't that true, doctor?"

I nodded assent, for I was so amazed that I hardly knew what to either
think or say, it was hard to imagine that I had seen him eat up his
spiders and flies not five minutes before.  Looking at my watch, I saw
that I should go to the station to meet Van Helsing, so I told Mrs.
Harker that it was time to leave.

She came at once, after saying pleasantly to Mr. Renfield, "Goodbye,
and I hope I may see you often, under auspices pleasanter to
yourself."

To which, to my astonishment, he replied, "Goodbye, my dear.  I pray
God I may never see your sweet face again.  May He bless and keep
you!"

When I went to the station to meet Van Helsing I left the boys behind
me.  Poor Art seemed more cheerful than he has been since Lucy first
took ill, and Quincey is more like his own bright self than he has
been for many a long day.

Van Helsing stepped from the carriage with the eager nimbleness of a
boy.  He saw me at once, and rushed up to me, saying, "Ah, friend
John, how goes all?  Well?  So!  I have been busy, for I come here to
stay if need be.  All affairs are settled with me, and I have much to
tell.  Madam Mina is with you?  Yes.  And her so fine husband?  And
Arthur and my friend Quincey, they are with you, too?  Good!"

As I drove to the house I told him of what had passed, and of how my
own diary had come to be of some use through Mrs. Harker's suggestion,
at which the Professor interrupted me.

"Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina!  She has man's brain, a brain that a
man should have were he much gifted, and a woman's heart.  The good
God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good
combination.  Friend John, up to now fortune has made that woman of
help to us, after tonight she must not have to do with this so
terrible affair.  It is not good that she run a risk so great.  We men
are determined, nay, are we not pledged, to destroy this monster?  But
it is no part for a woman.  Even if she be not harmed, her heart may
fail her in so much and so many horrors and hereafter she may suffer,
both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.  And,
besides, she is young woman and not so long married, there may be
other things to think of some time, if not now.  You tell me she has
wrote all, then she must consult with us, but tomorrow she say goodbye
to this work, and we go alone."

I agreed heartily with him, and then I told him what we had found in
his absence, that the house which Dracula had bought was the very next
one to my own.  He was amazed, and a great concern seemed to come on
him.

"Oh that we had known it before!" he said, "for then we might have
reached him in time to save poor Lucy.  However, 'the milk that is
spilt cries not out afterwards,' as you say.  We shall not think of
that, but go on our way to the end."  Then he fell into a silence that
lasted till we entered my own gateway.  Before we went to prepare for
dinner he said to Mrs. Harker, "I am told, Madam Mina, by my friend
John that you and your husband have put up in exact order all things
that have been, up to this moment."

"Not up to this moment, Professor," she said impulsively, "but up to
this morning."

"But why not up to now?  We have seen hitherto how good light all the
little things have made.  We have told our secrets, and yet no one who
has told is the worse for it."

Mrs. Harker began to blush, and taking a paper from her pockets, she
said, "Dr. Van Helsing, will you read this, and tell me if it must go
in.  It is my record of today.  I too have seen the need of putting
down at present everything, however trivial, but there is little in
this except what is personal.  Must it go in?"

The Professor read it over gravely, and handed it back, saying, "It
need not go in if you do not wish it, but I pray that it may.  It can
but make your husband love you the more, and all us, your friends,
more honour you, as well as more esteem and love."  She took it back
with another blush and a bright smile.

And so now, up to this very hour, all the records we have are complete
and in order.  The Professor took away one copy to study after dinner,
and before our meeting, which is fixed for nine o'clock.  The rest of
us have already read everything, so when we meet in the study we shall
all be informed as to facts, and can arrange our plan of battle with
this terrible and mysterious enemy.





MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

30 September.--When we met in Dr. Seward's study two hours after
dinner, which had been at six o'clock, we unconsciously formed a sort
of board or committee.  Professor Van Helsing took the head of the
table, to which Dr. Seward motioned him as he came into the room.  He
made me sit next to him on his right, and asked me to act as
secretary.  Jonathan sat next to me.  Opposite us were Lord Godalming,
Dr. Seward, and Mr. Morris, Lord Godalming being next the Professor,
and Dr. Seward in the centre.

The Professor said, "I may, I suppose, take it that we are all
acquainted with the facts that are in these papers."  We all expressed
assent, and he went on, "Then it were, I think, good that I tell you
something of the kind of enemy with which we have to deal.  I shall
then make known to you something of the history of this man, which has
been ascertained for me.  So we then can discuss how we shall act, and
can take our measure according.

"There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they
exist.  Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the
teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane
peoples.  I admit that at the first I was sceptic.  Were it not that
through long years I have trained myself to keep an open mind, I could
not have believed until such time as that fact thunder on my ear.  'See!
See!  I prove, I prove.'  Alas!  Had I known at first what now I know,
nay, had I even guess at him, one so precious life had been spared to
many of us who did love her.  But that is gone, and we must so work,
that other poor souls perish not, whilst we can save.  The nosferatu
do not die like the bee when he sting once.  He is only stronger, and
being stronger, have yet more power to work evil.  This vampire which
is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is
of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he
have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply,
the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to
are for him at command; he is brute, and more than brute; he is devil
in callous, and the heart of him is not; he can, within his range,
direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder; he can command
all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth,
and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small; and he can at
times vanish and come unknown.  How then are we to begin our strike to
destroy him?  How shall we find his where, and having found it, how
can we destroy?  My friends, this is much, it is a terrible task that
we undertake, and there may be consequence to make the brave shudder.
For if we fail in this our fight he must surely win, and then where
end we?  Life is nothings, I heed him not.  But to fail here, is not
mere life or death.  It is that we become as him, that we henceforward
become foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience,
preying on the bodies and the souls of those we love best.  To us
forever are the gates of heaven shut, for who shall open them to us
again?  We go on for all time abhorred by all, a blot on the face of
God's sunshine, an arrow in the side of Him who died for man.  But we
are face to face with duty, and in such case must we shrink?  For me,
I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair
places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind.  You
others are young.  Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet
in store.  What say you?"

Whilst he was speaking, Jonathan had taken my hand.  I feared, oh so
much, that the appalling nature of our danger was overcoming him when
I saw his hand stretch out, but it was life to me to feel its touch,
so strong, so self reliant, so resolute.  A brave man's hand can speak
for itself, it does not even need a woman's love to hear its music.

When the Professor had done speaking my husband looked in my eyes, and
I in his, there was no need for speaking between us.

"I answer for Mina and myself," he said.

"Count me in, Professor," said Mr. Quincey Morris, laconically as
usual.

"I am with you," said Lord Godalming, "for Lucy's sake, if for no
other reason."

Dr. Seward simply nodded.

The Professor stood up and, after laying his golden crucifix on the
table, held out his hand on either side.  I took his right hand, and
Lord Godalming his left, Jonathan held my right with his left and
stretched across to Mr. Morris.  So as we all took hands our solemn
compact was made.  I felt my heart icy cold, but it did not even occur
to me to draw back.  We resumed our places, and Dr. Van Helsing went
on with a sort of cheerfulness which showed that the serious work had
begun.  It was to be taken as gravely, and in as businesslike a way,
as any other transaction of life.

"Well, you know what we have to contend against, but we too, are not
without strength.  We have on our side power of combination, a power
denied to the vampire kind, we have sources of science, we are free to
act and think, and the hours of the day and the night are ours
equally.  In fact, so far as our powers extend, they are unfettered,
and we are free to use them.  We have self devotion in a cause and an
end to achieve which is not a selfish one.  These things are much.

"Now let us see how far the general powers arrayed against us are
restrict, and how the individual cannot.  In fine, let us consider the
limitations of the vampire in general, and of this one in particular.

"All we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions.  These do
not at the first appear much, when the matter is one of life and
death, nay of more than either life or death.  Yet must we be
satisfied, in the first place because we have to be, no other means is
at our control, and secondly, because, after all these things,
tradition and superstition, are everything.  Does not the belief in
vampires rest for others, though not, alas! for us, on them?  A year
ago which of us would have received such a possibility, in the midst
of our scientific, sceptical, matter-of-fact nineteenth century?  We
even scouted a belief that we saw justified under our very eyes.  Take
it, then, that the vampire, and the belief in his limitations and his
cure, rest for the moment on the same base.  For, let me tell you, he
is known everywhere that men have been.  In old Greece, in old Rome,
he flourish in Germany all over, in France, in India, even in the
Chermosese, and in China, so far from us in all ways, there even is
he, and the peoples for him at this day.  He have follow the wake of
the berserker Icelander, the devil-begotten Hun, the Slav, the Saxon,
the Magyar.

"So far, then, we have all we may act upon, and let me tell you that
very much of the beliefs are justified by what we have seen in our own
so unhappy experience.  The vampire live on, and cannot die by mere
passing of the time, he can flourish when that he can fatten on the
blood of the living.  Even more, we have seen amongst us that he can
even grow younger, that his vital faculties grow strenuous, and seem
as though they refresh themselves when his special pabulum is plenty.

"But he cannot flourish without this diet, he eat not as others.  Even
friend Jonathan, who lived with him for weeks, did never see him eat,
never!  He throws no shadow, he make in the mirror no reflect, as
again Jonathan observe.  He has the strength of many of his hand,
witness again Jonathan when he shut the door against the wolves, and
when he help him from the diligence too.  He can transform himself to
wolf, as we gather from the ship arrival in Whitby, when he tear open
the dog, he can be as bat, as Madam Mina saw him on the window at
Whitby, and as friend John saw him fly from this so near house, and as
my friend Quincey saw him at the window of Miss Lucy.

"He can come in mist which he create, that noble ship's captain proved
him of this, but, from what we know, the distance he can make this
mist is limited, and it can only be round himself.

"He come on moonlight rays as elemental dust, as again Jonathan saw
those sisters in the castle of Dracula.  He become so small, we
ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a
hairbreadth space at the tomb door.  He can, when once he find his
way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it
be bound or even fused up with fire, solder you call it.  He can see
in the dark, no small power this, in a world which is one half shut
from the light.  Ah, but hear me through.

"He can do all these things, yet he is not free.  Nay, he is even more
prisoner than the slave of the galley, than the madman in his cell.
He cannot go where he lists, he who is not of nature has yet to obey
some of nature's laws, why we know not.  He may not enter anywhere at
the first, unless there be some one of the household who bid him to
come, though afterwards he can come as he please.  His power ceases,
as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day.

"Only at certain times can he have limited freedom.  If he be not at
the place whither he is bound, he can only change himself at noon or
at exact sunrise or sunset.  These things we are told, and in this
record of ours we have proof by inference.  Thus, whereas he can do as
he will within his limit, when he have his earth-home, his
coffin-home, his hell-home, the place unhallowed, as we saw when he
went to the grave of the suicide at Whitby, still at other time he can
only change when the time come.  It is said, too, that he can only
pass running water at the slack or the flood of the tide.  Then there
are things which so afflict him that he has no power, as the garlic
that we know of, and as for things sacred, as this symbol, my
crucifix, that was amongst us even now when we resolve, to them he is
nothing, but in their presence he take his place far off and silent
with respect.  There are others, too, which I shall tell you of, lest
in our seeking we may need them.

"The branch of wild rose on his coffin keep him that he move not from
it, a sacred bullet fired into the coffin kill him so that he be true
dead, and as for the stake through him, we know already of its peace,
or the cut off head that giveth rest.  We have seen it with our eyes.

"Thus when we find the habitation of this man-that-was, we can confine
him to his coffin and destroy him, if we obey what we know.  But he is
clever.  I have asked my friend Arminius, of Buda-Pesth University, to
make his record, and from all the means that are, he tell me of what
he has been.  He must, indeed, have been that Voivode Dracula who won
his name against the Turk, over the great river on the very frontier
of Turkeyland.  If it be so, then was he no common man, for in that
time, and for centuries after, he was spoken of as the cleverest and
the most cunning, as well as the bravest of the sons of the 'land
beyond the forest.'  That mighty brain and that iron resolution went
with him to his grave, and are even now arrayed against us.  The
Draculas were, says Arminius, a great and noble race, though now and
again were scions who were held by their coevals to have had dealings
with the Evil One.  They learned his secrets in the Scholomance,
amongst the mountains over Lake Hermanstadt, where the devil claims
the tenth scholar as his due.  In the records are such words as
'stregoica' witch, 'ordog' and 'pokol' Satan and hell, and in one
manuscript this very Dracula is spoken of as 'wampyr,' which we all
understand too well.  There have been from the loins of this very one
great men and good women, and their graves make sacred the earth where
alone this foulness can dwell.  For it is not the least of its terrors
that this evil thing is rooted deep in all good, in soil barren of
holy memories it cannot rest."

Whilst they were talking Mr. Morris was looking steadily at the
window, and he now got up quietly, and went out of the room.  There
was a little pause, and then the Professor went on.

"And now we must settle what we do.  We have here much data, and we
must proceed to lay out our campaign.  We know from the inquiry of
Jonathan that from the castle to Whitby came fifty boxes of earth, all
of which were delivered at Carfax, we also know that at least some of
these boxes have been removed.  It seems to me, that our first step
should be to ascertain whether all the rest remain in the house beyond
that wall where we look today, or whether any more have been removed.
If the latter, we must trace . . ."

Here we were interrupted in a very startling way.  Outside the house
came the sound of a pistol shot, the glass of the window was shattered
with a bullet, which ricochetting from the top of the embrasure,
struck the far wall of the room.  I am afraid I am at heart a coward,
for I shrieked out.  The men all jumped to their feet, Lord Godalming
flew over to the window and threw up the sash.  As he did so we heard
Mr. Morris' voice without, "Sorry!  I fear I have alarmed you.  I
shall come in and tell you about it."

A minute later he came in and said, "It was an idiotic thing of me to
do, and I ask your pardon, Mrs. Harker, most sincerely, I fear I must
have frightened you terribly.  But the fact is that whilst the
Professor was talking there came a big bat and sat on the window sill.
I have got such a horror of the damned brutes from recent events that
I cannot stand them, and I went out to have a shot, as I have been
doing of late of evenings, whenever I have seen one.  You used to
laugh at me for it then, Art."

"Did you hit it?" asked Dr. Van Helsing.

"I don't know, I fancy not, for it flew away into the wood."  Without
saying any more he took his seat, and the Professor began to resume
his statement.

"We must trace each of these boxes, and when we are ready, we must
either capture or kill this monster in his lair, or we must, so to
speak, sterilize the earth, so that no more he can seek safety in it.
Thus in the end we may find him in his form of man between the hours
of noon and sunset, and so engage with him when he is at his most
weak.

"And now for you, Madam Mina, this night is the end until all be well.
You are too precious to us to have such risk.  When we part tonight,
you no more must question.  We shall tell you all in good time.  We
are men and are able to bear, but you must be our star and our hope,
and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger,
such as we are."

All the men, even Jonathan, seemed relieved, but it did not seem to me
good that they should brave danger and, perhaps lessen their safety,
strength being the best safety, through care of me, but their minds
were made up, and though it was a bitter pill for me to swallow, I
could say nothing, save to accept their chivalrous care of me.

Mr. Morris resumed the discussion, "As there is no time to lose, I
vote we have a look at his house right now.  Time is everything with
him, and swift action on our part may save another victim."

I own that my heart began to fail me when the time for action came so
close, but I did not say anything, for I had a greater fear that if I
appeared as a drag or a hindrance to their work, they might even leave
me out of their counsels altogether.  They have now gone off to
Carfax, with means to get into the house.

Manlike, they had told me to go to bed and sleep, as if a woman can
sleep when those she loves are in danger!  I shall lie down, and
pretend to sleep, lest Jonathan have added anxiety about me when he
returns.




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

1 October, 4 A.M.--Just as we were about to leave the house, an urgent
message was brought to me from Renfield to know if I would see him at
once, as he had something of the utmost importance to say to me.  I
told the messenger to say that I would attend to his wishes in the
morning, I was busy just at the moment.

The attendant added, "He seems very importunate, sir.  I have never
seen him so eager.  I don't know but what, if you don't see him soon,
he will have one of his violent fits."  I knew the man would not have
said this without some cause, so I said, "All right, I'll go now," and
I asked the others to wait a few minutes for me, as I had to go and
see my patient.

"Take me with you, friend John," said the Professor.  "His case in your
diary interest me much, and it had bearing, too, now and again on our
case.  I should much like to see him, and especial when his mind is
disturbed."

"May I come also?" asked Lord Godalming.

"Me too?" said Quincey Morris.  "May I come?" said Harker.  I nodded,
and we all went down the passage together.

We found him in a state of considerable excitement, but far more
rational in his speech and manner than I had ever seen him.  There was
an unusual understanding of himself, which was unlike anything I had
ever met with in a lunatic, and he took it for granted that his
reasons would prevail with others entirely sane.  We all five went
into the room, but none of the others at first said anything.  His
request was that I would at once release him from the asylum and send
him home.  This he backed up with arguments regarding his complete
recovery, and adduced his own existing sanity.

"I appeal to your friends," he said, "they will, perhaps, not mind
sitting in judgement on my case.  By the way, you have not introduced
me."

I was so much astonished, that the oddness of introducing a madman in
an asylum did not strike me at the moment, and besides, there was a
certain dignity in the man's manner, so much of the habit of equality,
that I at once made the introduction, "Lord Godalming, Professor Van
Helsing, Mr. Quincey Morris, of Texas, Mr. Jonathan Harker, Mr.
Renfield."

He shook hands with each of them, saying in turn, "Lord Godalming, I
had the honour of seconding your father at the Windham; I grieve to
know, by your holding the title, that he is no more.  He was a man
loved and honoured by all who knew him, and in his youth was, I have
heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much patronized on Derby
night.  Mr. Morris, you should be proud of your great state.  Its
reception into the Union was a precedent which may have far-reaching
effects hereafter, when the Pole and the Tropics may hold alliance to
the Stars and Stripes.  The power of Treaty may yet prove a vast
engine of enlargement, when the Monroe doctrine takes its true place
as a political fable.  What shall any man say of his pleasure at
meeting Van Helsing?  Sir, I make no apology for dropping all forms of
conventional prefix.  When an individual has revolutionized
therapeutics by his discovery of the continuous evolution of brain
matter, conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to
limit him to one of a class.  You, gentlemen, who by nationality, by
heredity, or by the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold
your respective places in the moving world, I take to witness that I
am as sane as at least the majority of men who are in full possession
of their liberties.  And I am sure that you, Dr. Seward, humanitarian
and medico-jurist as well as scientist, will deem it a moral duty to
deal with me as one to be considered as under exceptional
circumstances."  He made this last appeal with a courtly air of
conviction which was not without its own charm.

I think we were all staggered.  For my own part, I was under the
conviction, despite my knowledge of the man's character and history,
that his reason had been restored, and I felt under a strong impulse
to tell him that I was satisfied as to his sanity, and would see about
the necessary formalities for his release in the morning.  I thought
it better to wait, however, before making so grave a statement, for of
old I knew the sudden changes to which this particular patient was
liable.  So I contented myself with making a general statement that he
appeared to be improving very rapidly, that I would have a longer chat
with him in the morning, and would then see what I could do in the
direction of meeting his wishes.

This did not at all satisfy him, for he said quickly, "But I fear, Dr.
Seward, that you hardly apprehend my wish.  I desire to go at once,
here, now, this very hour, this very moment, if I may.  Time presses,
and in our implied agreement with the old scytheman it is of the
essence of the contract.  I am sure it is only necessary to put before
so admirable a practitioner as Dr. Seward so simple, yet so momentous
a wish, to ensure its fulfilment."

He looked at me keenly, and seeing the negative in my face, turned to
the others, and scrutinized them closely.  Not meeting any sufficient
response, he went on, "Is it possible that I have erred in my
supposition?"

"You have," I said frankly, but at the same time, as I felt, brutally.

There was a considerable pause, and then he said slowly, "Then I
suppose I must only shift my ground of request.  Let me ask for this
concession, boon, privilege, what you will.  I am content to implore
in such a case, not on personal grounds, but for the sake of others.  I
am not at liberty to give you the whole of my reasons, but you may, I
assure you, take it from me that they are good ones, sound and
unselfish, and spring from the highest sense of duty.

"Could you look, sir, into my heart, you would approve to the full the
sentiments which animate me.  Nay, more, you would count me amongst
the best and truest of your friends."

Again he looked at us all keenly.  I had a growing conviction that
this sudden change of his entire intellectual method was but yet
another phase of his madness, and so determined to let him go on a
little longer, knowing from experience that he would, like all
lunatics, give himself away in the end.  Van Helsing was gazing at him
with a look of utmost intensity, his bushy eyebrows almost meeting
with the fixed concentration of his look.  He said to Renfield in a
tone which did not surprise me at the time, but only when I thought of
it afterwards, for it was as of one addressing an equal, "Can you not
tell frankly your real reason for wishing to be free tonight?  I will
undertake that if you will satisfy even me, a stranger, without
prejudice, and with the habit of keeping an open mind, Dr. Seward will
give you, at his own risk and on his own responsibility, the privilege
you seek."

He shook his head sadly, and with a look of poignant regret on his
face.  The Professor went on, "Come, sir, bethink yourself.  You claim
the privilege of reason in the highest degree, since you seek to
impress us with your complete reasonableness.  You do this, whose
sanity we have reason to doubt, since you are not yet released from
medical treatment for this very defect.  If you will not help us in
our effort to choose the wisest course, how can we perform the duty
which you yourself put upon us?  Be wise, and help us, and if we can
we shall aid you to achieve your wish."

He still shook his head as he said, "Dr. Van Helsing, I have nothing to
say.  Your argument is complete, and if I were free to speak I should
not hesitate a moment, but I am not my own master in the matter.  I

can only ask you to trust me.  If I am refused, the responsibility
does not rest with me."

I thought it was now time to end the scene, which was becoming too
comically grave, so I went towards the door, simply saying, "Come, my
friends, we have work to do.  Goodnight."

As, however, I got near the door, a new change came over the patient.
He moved towards me so quickly that for the moment I feared that he
was about to make another homicidal attack.  My fears, however, were
groundless, for he held up his two hands imploringly, and made his
petition in a moving manner.  As he saw that the very excess of his
emotion was militating against him, by restoring us more to our old
relations, he became still more demonstrative.  I glanced at Van
Helsing, and saw my conviction reflected in his eyes, so I became a
little more fixed in my manner, if not more stern, and motioned to him
that his efforts were unavailing.  I had previously seen something of
the same constantly growing excitement in him when he had to make some
request of which at the time he had thought much, such for instance,
as when he wanted a cat, and I was prepared to see the collapse into
the same sullen acquiescence on this occasion.

My expectation was not realized, for when he found that his appeal
would not be successful, he got into quite a frantic condition.  He
threw himself on his knees, and held up his hands, wringing them in
plaintive supplication, and poured forth a torrent of entreaty, with
the tears rolling down his cheeks, and his whole face and form
expressive of the deepest emotion.

"Let me entreat you, Dr. Seward, oh, let me implore you, to let me out
of this house at once.  Send me away how you will and where you will,
send keepers with me with whips and chains, let them take me in a
strait waistcoat, manacled and leg-ironed, even to gaol, but let me go
out of this.  You don't know what you do by keeping me here.  I am
speaking from the depths of my heart, of my very soul.  You don't know
whom you wrong, or how, and I may not tell.  Woe is me!  I may not
tell.  By all you hold sacred, by all you hold dear, by your love that
is lost, by your hope that lives, for the sake of the Almighty, take
me out of this and save my soul from guilt!  Can't you hear me, man?
Can't you understand?  Will you never learn?  Don't you know that I am
sane and earnest now, that I am no lunatic in a mad fit, but a sane
man fighting for his soul?  Oh, hear me!  Hear me!  Let me go, let me
go, let me go!"

I thought that the longer this went on the wilder he would get, and so
would bring on a fit, so I took him by the hand and raised him up.

"Come," I said sternly, "no more of this, we have had quite enough
already.  Get to your bed and try to behave more discreetly."

He suddenly stopped and looked at me intently for several moments.
Then, without a word, he rose and moving over, sat down on the side of
the bed.  The collapse had come, as on former occasions, just as I had
expected.

When I was leaving the room, last of our party, he said to me in a
quiet, well-bred voice, "You will, I trust, Dr. Seward, do me the
justice to bear in mind, later on, that I did what I could to convince
you tonight."




CHAPTER 19


JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

1 October, 5 A.M.--I went with the party to the search with an easy
mind, for I think I never saw Mina so absolutely strong and well.  I
am so glad that she consented to hold back and let us men do the work.
Somehow, it was a dread to me that she was in this fearful business at
all, but now that her work is done, and that it is due to her energy
and brains and foresight that the whole story is put together in such
a way that every point tells, she may well feel that her part is
finished, and that she can henceforth leave the rest to us.  We were,
I think, all a little upset by the scene with Mr. Renfield.  When we
came away from his room we were silent till we got back to the study.

Then Mr. Morris said to Dr. Seward, "Say, Jack, if that man wasn't
attempting a bluff, he is about the sanest lunatic I ever saw.  I'm
not sure, but I believe that he had some serious purpose, and if he
had, it was pretty rough on him not to get a chance."

Lord Godalming and I were silent, but Dr. Van Helsing added, "Friend
John, you know more lunatics than I do, and I'm glad of it, for I fear
that if it had been to me to decide I would before that last
hysterical outburst have given him free.  But we live and learn, and
in our present task we must take no chance, as my friend Quincey would
say.  All is best as they are."

Dr. Seward seemed to answer them both in a dreamy kind of way, "I
don't know but that I agree with you.  If that man had been an
ordinary lunatic I would have taken my chance of trusting him, but he
seems so mixed up with the Count in an indexy kind of way that I am
afraid of doing anything wrong by helping his fads.  I can't forget
how he prayed with almost equal fervor for a cat, and then tried to
tear my throat out with his teeth.  Besides, he called the Count 'lord
and master', and he may want to get out to help him in some diabolical
way.  That horrid thing has the wolves and the rats and his own kind
to help him, so I suppose he isn't above trying to use a respectable
lunatic.  He certainly did seem earnest, though.  I only hope we have
done what is best.  These things, in conjunction with the wild work we
have in hand, help to unnerve a man."

The Professor stepped over, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said
in his grave, kindly way, "Friend John, have no fear.  We are trying
to do our duty in a very sad and terrible case, we can only do as we
deem best.  What else have we to hope for, except the pity of the good
God?"

Lord Godalming had slipped away for a few minutes, but now he
returned.  He held up a little silver whistle as he remarked, "That
old place may be full of rats, and if so, I've got an antidote on
call."

Having passed the wall, we took our way to the house, taking care to
keep in the shadows of the trees on the lawn when the moonlight shone
out.  When we got to the porch the Professor opened his bag and took
out a lot of things, which he laid on the step, sorting them into four
little groups, evidently one for each.  Then he spoke.

"My friends, we are going into a terrible danger, and we need arms of
many kinds.  Our enemy is not merely spiritual.  Remember that he has
the strength of twenty men, and that, though our necks or our
windpipes are of the common kind, and therefore breakable or
crushable, his are not amenable to mere strength.  A stronger man, or
a body of men more strong in all than him, can at certain times hold
him, but they cannot hurt him as we can be hurt by him.  We must,
therefore, guard ourselves from his touch.  Keep this near your
heart."  As he spoke he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it
out to me, I being nearest to him, "put these flowers round your
neck," here he handed to me a wreath of withered garlic blossoms, "for
other enemies more mundane, this revolver and this knife, and for aid
in all, these so small electric lamps, which you can fasten to your
breast, and for all, and above all at the last, this, which we must
not desecrate needless."

This was a portion of Sacred Wafer, which he put in an envelope and
handed to me.  Each of the others was similarly equipped.

"Now," he said, "friend John, where are the skeleton keys?  If so that
we can open the door, we need not break house by the window, as before
at Miss Lucy's."

Dr. Seward tried one or two skeleton keys, his mechanical dexterity as
a surgeon standing him in good stead.  Presently he got one to suit,
after a little play back and forward the bolt yielded, and with a
rusty clang, shot back.  We pressed on the door, the rusty hinges
creaked, and it slowly opened.  It was startlingly like the image
conveyed to me in Dr. Seward's diary of the opening of Miss Westenra's
tomb, I fancy that the same idea seemed to strike the others, for with
one accord they shrank back.  The Professor was the first to move
forward, and stepped into the open door.

"In manus tuas, Domine!" he said, crossing himself as he passed over
the threshold.  We closed the door behind us, lest when we should have
lit our lamps we should possibly attract attention from the road.  The
Professor carefully tried the lock, lest we might not be able to open
it from within should we be in a hurry making our exit.  Then we all
lit our lamps and proceeded on our search.

The light from the tiny lamps fell in all sorts of odd forms, as the
rays crossed each other, or the opacity of our bodies threw great
shadows.  I could not for my life get away from the feeling that there
was someone else amongst us.  I suppose it was the recollection, so
powerfully brought home to me by the grim surroundings, of that
terrible experience in Transylvania.  I think the feeling was common
to us all, for I noticed that the others kept looking over their
shoulders at every sound and every new shadow, just as I felt myself
doing.

The whole place was thick with dust.  The floor was seemingly inches
deep, except where there were recent footsteps, in which on holding
down my lamp I could see marks of hobnails where the dust was cracked.
The walls were fluffy and heavy with dust, and in the corners were
masses of spider's webs, whereon the dust had gathered till they
looked like old tattered rags as the weight had torn them partly down.
On a table in the hall was a great bunch of keys, with a time-yellowed
label on each.  They had been used several times, for on the table
were several similar rents in the blanket of dust, similar to that
exposed when the Professor lifted them.

He turned to me and said, "You know this place, Jonathan.  You have
copied maps of it, and you know it at least more than we do.  Which is
the way to the chapel?"

I had an idea of its direction, though on my former visit I had not
been able to get admission to it, so I led the way, and after a few
wrong turnings found myself opposite a low, arched oaken door, ribbed
with iron bands.

"This is the spot," said the Professor as he turned his lamp on a
small map of the house, copied from the file of my original
correspondence regarding the purchase.  With a little trouble we found
the key on the bunch and opened the door.  We were prepared for some
unpleasantness, for as we were opening the door a faint, malodorous
air seemed to exhale through the gaps, but none of us ever expected
such an odour as we encountered.  None of the others had met the Count
at all at close quarters, and when I had seen him he was either in the
fasting stage of his existence in his rooms or, when he was bloated
with fresh blood, in a ruined building open to the air, but here the
place was small and close, and the long disuse had made the air
stagnant and foul.  There was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma,
which came through the fouler air.  But as to the odour itself, how
shall I describe it?  It was not alone that it was composed of all the
ills of mortality and with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it
seemed as though corruption had become itself corrupt.  Faugh!  It
sickens me to think of it.  Every breath exhaled by that monster
seemed to have clung to the place and intensified its loathsomeness.

Under ordinary circumstances such a stench would have brought our
enterprise to an end, but this was no ordinary case, and the high and
terrible purpose in which we were involved gave us a strength which
rose above merely physical considerations.  After the involuntary
shrinking consequent on the first nauseous whiff, we one and all set
about our work as though that loathsome place were a garden of roses.

We made an accurate examination of the place, the Professor saying as
we began, "The first thing is to see how many of the boxes are left,
we must then examine every hole and corner and cranny and see if we
cannot get some clue as to what has become of the rest."

A glance was sufficient to show how many remained, for the great earth
chests were bulky, and there was no mistaking them.

There were only twenty-nine left out of the fifty!  Once I got a
fright, for, seeing Lord Godalming suddenly turn and look out of the
vaulted door into the dark passage beyond, I looked too, and for an
instant my heart stood still.  Somewhere, looking out from the shadow,
I seemed to see the high lights of the Count's evil face, the ridge of
the nose, the red eyes, the red lips, the awful pallor.  It was only
for a moment, for, as Lord Godalming said, "I thought I saw a face,
but it was only the shadows," and resumed his inquiry, I turned my
lamp in the direction, and stepped into the passage.  There was no
sign of anyone, and as there were no corners, no doors, no aperture of
any kind, but only the solid walls of the passage, there could be no
hiding place even for him.  I took it that fear had helped
imagination, and said nothing.

A few minutes later I saw Morris step suddenly back from a corner,
which he was examining.  We all followed his movements with our eyes,
for undoubtedly some nervousness was growing on us, and we saw a whole
mass of phosphorescence, which twinkled like stars.  We all
instinctively drew back.  The whole place was becoming alive with
rats.

For a moment or two we stood appalled, all save Lord Godalming, who
was seemingly prepared for such an emergency.  Rushing over to the
great iron-bound oaken door, which Dr. Seward had described from the
outside, and which I had seen myself, he turned the key in the lock,
drew the huge bolts, and swung the door open.  Then, taking his little
silver whistle from his pocket, he blew a low, shrill call.  It was
answered from behind Dr. Seward's house by the yelping of dogs, and
after about a minute three terriers came dashing round the corner of
the house.  Unconsciously we had all moved towards the door, and as we
moved I noticed that the dust had been much disturbed.  The boxes
which had been taken out had been brought this way.  But even in the
minute that had elapsed the number of the rats had vastly increased.
They seemed to swarm over the place all at once, till the lamplight,
shining on their moving dark bodies and glittering, baleful eyes, made
the place look like a bank of earth set with fireflies.  The dogs
dashed on, but at the threshold suddenly stopped and snarled, and
then, simultaneously lifting their noses, began to howl in most
lugubrious fashion.  The rats were multiplying in thousands, and we
moved out.

Lord Godalming lifted one of the dogs, and carrying him in, placed him
on the floor.  The instant his feet touched the ground he seemed to
recover his courage, and rushed at his natural enemies.  They fled
before him so fast that before he had shaken the life out of a score,
the other dogs, who had by now been lifted in the same manner, had but
small prey ere the whole mass had vanished.

With their going it seemed as if some evil presence had departed, for
the dogs frisked about and barked merrily as they made sudden darts at
their prostrate foes, and turned them over and over and tossed them in
the air with vicious shakes.  We all seemed to find our spirits rise.
Whether it was the purifying of the deadly atmosphere by the opening
of the chapel door, or the relief which we experienced by finding
ourselves in the open I know not, but most certainly the shadow of
dread seemed to slip from us like a robe, and the occasion of our
coming lost something of its grim significance, though we did not
slacken a whit in our resolution.  We closed the outer door and barred
and locked it, and bringing the dogs with us, began our search of the
house.  We found nothing throughout except dust in extraordinary
proportions, and all untouched save for my own footsteps when I had
made my first visit.  Never once did the dogs exhibit any symptom of
uneasiness, and even when we returned to the chapel they frisked about
as though they had been rabbit hunting in a summer wood.

The morning was quickening in the east when we emerged from the front.
Dr. Van Helsing had taken the key of the hall door from the bunch, and
locked the door in orthodox fashion, putting the key into his pocket
when he had done.

"So far," he said, "our night has been eminently successful.  No harm
has come to us such as I feared might be and yet we have ascertained
how many boxes are missing.  More than all do I rejoice that this, our
first, and perhaps our most difficult and dangerous, step has been
accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam Mina
or troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds
and smells of horror which she might never forget.  One lesson, too,
we have learned, if it be allowable to argue a particulari, that the
brute beasts which are to the Count's command are yet themselves not
amenable to his spiritual power, for look, these rats that would come
to his call, just as from his castle top he summon the wolves to your
going and to that poor mother's cry, though they come to him, they run
pell-mell from the so little dogs of my friend Arthur.  We have other
matters before us, other dangers, other fears, and that monster . . .
He has not used his power over the brute world for the only or the
last time tonight.  So be it that he has gone elsewhere.  Good!  It
has given us opportunity to cry 'check' in some ways in this chess
game, which we play for the stake of human souls.  And now let us go
home.  The dawn is close at hand, and we have reason to be content
with our first night's work.  It may be ordained that we have many
nights and days to follow, if full of peril, but we must go on, and
from no danger shall we shrink."

The house was silent when we got back, save for some poor creature who
was screaming away in one of the distant wards, and a low, moaning
sound from Renfield's room.  The poor wretch was doubtless torturing
himself, after the manner of the insane, with needless thoughts of
pain.

I came tiptoe into our own room, and found Mina asleep, breathing so
softly that I had to put my ear down to hear it.  She looks paler than
usual.  I hope the meeting tonight has not upset her.  I am truly
thankful that she is to be left out of our future work, and even of
our deliberations.  It is too great a strain for a woman to bear.  I
did not think so at first, but I know better now.  Therefore I am glad
that it is settled.  There may be things which would frighten her to
hear, and yet to conceal them from her might be worse than to tell her
if once she suspected that there was any concealment.  Henceforth our
work is to be a sealed book to her, till at least such time as we can
tell her that all is finished, and the earth free from a monster of
the nether world.  I daresay it will be difficult to begin to keep
silence after such confidence as ours, but I must be resolute, and
tomorrow I shall keep dark over tonight's doings, and shall refuse to
speak of anything that has happened.  I rest on the sofa, so as not to
disturb her.


1 October, later.--I suppose it was natural that we should have all
overslept ourselves, for the day was a busy one, and the night had no
rest at all.  Even Mina must have felt its exhaustion, for though I
slept till the sun was high, I was awake before her, and had to call
two or three times before she awoke.  Indeed, she was so sound asleep
that for a few seconds she did not recognize me, but looked at me with
a sort of blank terror, as one looks who has been waked out of a bad
dream.  She complained a little of being tired, and I let her rest
till later in the day.  We now know of twenty-one boxes having been
removed, and if it be that several were taken in any of these removals
we may be able to trace them all.  Such will, of course, immensely
simplify our labor, and the sooner the matter is attended to the
better.  I shall look up Thomas Snelling today.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

1 October.--It was towards noon when I was awakened by the Professor
walking into my room.  He was more jolly and cheerful than usual, and
it is quite evident that last night's work has helped to take some of
the brooding weight off his mind.

After going over the adventure of the night he suddenly said, "Your
patient interests me much.  May it be that with you I visit him this
morning?  Or if that you are too occupy, I can go alone if it may be.
It is a new experience to me to find a lunatic who talk philosophy,
and reason so sound."

I had some work to do which pressed, so I told him that if he would go
alone I would be glad, as then I should not have to keep him waiting,
so I called an attendant and gave him the necessary instructions.
Before the Professor left the room I cautioned him against getting any
false impression from my patient.

"But," he answered, "I want him to talk of himself and of his delusion
as to consuming live things.  He said to Madam Mina, as I see in your
diary of yesterday, that he had once had such a belief.  Why do you
smile, friend John?"

"Excuse me," I said, "but the answer is here."  I laid my hand on the
typewritten matter.  "When our sane and learned lunatic made that very
statement of how he used to consume life, his mouth was actually
nauseous with the flies and spiders which he had eaten just before
Mrs. Harker entered the room."

Van Helsing smiled in turn.  "Good!" he said.  "Your memory is true,
friend John.  I should have remembered.  And yet it is this very
obliquity of thought and memory which makes mental disease such a
fascinating study.  Perhaps I may gain more knowledge out of the folly
of this madman than I shall from the teaching of the most wise.  Who
knows?"

I went on with my work, and before long was through that in hand.  It
seemed that the time had been very short indeed, but there was Van
Helsing back in the study.

"Do I interrupt?" he asked politely as he stood at the door.

"Not at all," I answered.  "Come in.  My work is finished, and I am
free.  I can go with you now, if you like."

"It is needless, I have seen him!"

"Well?"

"I fear that he does not appraise me at much.  Our interview was
short.  When I entered his room he was sitting on a stool in the
centre, with his elbows on his knees, and his face was the picture of
sullen discontent.  I spoke to him as cheerfully as I could, and with
such a measure of respect as I could assume.  He made no reply
whatever.  'Don't you know me?' I asked.  His answer was not
reassuring: 'I know you well enough; you are the old fool Van
Helsing.  I wish you would take yourself and your idiotic brain
theories somewhere else.  Damn all thick-headed Dutchmen!'  Not a word
more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent
to me as though I had not been in the room at all.  Thus departed for
this time my chance of much learning from this so clever lunatic, so I
shall go, if I may, and cheer myself with a few happy words with that
sweet soul Madam Mina.  Friend John, it does rejoice me unspeakable
that she is no more to be pained, no more to be worried with our
terrible things.  Though we shall much miss her help, it is better
so."

"I agree with you with all my heart," I answered earnestly, for I did
not want him to weaken in this matter.  "Mrs. Harker is better out of
it.  Things are quite bad enough for us, all men of the world, and who
have been in many tight places in our time, but it is no place for a
woman, and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in
time infallibly have wrecked her."

So Van Helsing has gone to confer with Mrs. Harker and Harker, Quincey
and Art are all out following up the clues as to the earth boxes.  I
shall finish my round of work and we shall meet tonight.





MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

1 October.--It is strange to me to be kept in the dark as I am today,
after Jonathan's full confidence for so many years, to see him
manifestly avoid certain matters, and those the most vital of all.
This morning I slept late after the fatigues of yesterday, and though
Jonathan was late too, he was the earlier.  He spoke to me before he
went out, never more sweetly or tenderly, but he never mentioned a
word of what had happened in the visit to the Count's house.  And yet
he must have known how terribly anxious I was.  Poor dear fellow!  I
suppose it must have distressed him even more than it did me.  They
all agreed that it was best that I should not be drawn further into
this awful work, and I acquiesced.  But to think that he keeps
anything from me!  And now I am crying like a silly fool, when I know
it comes from my husband's great love and from the good, good wishes
of those other strong men.

That has done me good.  Well, some day Jonathan will tell me all.  And
lest it should ever be that he should think for a moment that I kept
anything from him, I still keep my journal as usual.  Then if he has
feared of my trust I shall show it to him, with every thought of my
heart put down for his dear eyes to read.  I feel strangely sad and
low-spirited today.  I suppose it is the reaction from the terrible
excitement.

Last night I went to bed when the men had gone, simply because they
told me to.  I didn't feel sleepy, and I did feel full of devouring
anxiety.  I kept thinking over everything that has been ever since
Jonathan came to see me in London, and it all seems like a horrible
tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
Everything that one does seems, no matter how right it may be, to bring
on the very thing which is most to be deplored.  If I hadn't gone to
Whitby, perhaps poor dear Lucy would be with us now.  She hadn't taken
to visiting the churchyard till I came, and if she hadn't come there
in the day time with me she wouldn't have walked in her sleep.  And if
she hadn't gone there at night and asleep, that monster couldn't have
destroyed her as he did.  Oh, why did I ever go to Whitby?  There now,
crying again!  I wonder what has come over me today.  I must hide it
from Jonathan, for if he knew that I had been crying twice in one
morning . . . I, who never cried on my own account, and whom he has
never caused to shed a tear, the dear fellow would fret his heart out.
I shall put a bold face on, and if I do feel weepy, he shall never see
it.  I suppose it is just one of the lessons that we poor women have
to learn . . .

I can't quite remember how I fell asleep last night.  I remember
hearing the sudden barking of the dogs and a lot of queer sounds, like
praying on a very tumultuous scale, from Mr. Renfield's room, which is
somewhere under this.  And then there was silence over everything,
silence so profound that it startled me, and I got up and looked out
of the window.  All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by
the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own.  Not a
thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or
fate, so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost
imperceptible slowness across the grass towards the house, seemed to
have a sentience and a vitality of its own.  I think that the
digression of my thoughts must have done me good, for when I got back
to bed I found a lethargy creeping over me.  I lay a while, but could
not quite sleep, so I got out and looked out of the window again.  The
mist was spreading, and was now close up to the house, so that I could
see it lying thick against the wall, as though it were stealing up to
the windows.  The poor man was more loud than ever, and though I could
not distinguish a word he said, I could in some way recognize in his
tones some passionate entreaty on his part.  Then there was the sound
of a struggle, and I knew that the attendants were dealing with him.
I was so frightened that I crept into bed, and pulled the clothes over
my head, putting my fingers in my ears.  I was not then a bit sleepy,
at least so I thought, but I must have fallen asleep, for except
dreams, I do not remember anything until the morning, when Jonathan
woke me.  I think that it took me an effort and a little time to
realize where I was, and that it was Jonathan who was bending over me.
My dream was very peculiar, and was almost typical of the way that
waking thoughts become merged in, or continued in, dreams.

I thought that I was asleep, and waiting for Jonathan to come back.  I
was very anxious about him, and I was powerless to act, my feet, and
my hands, and my brain were weighted, so that nothing could proceed at
the usual pace.  And so I slept uneasily and thought.  Then it began
to dawn upon me that the air was heavy, and dank, and cold.  I put
back the clothes from my face, and found, to my surprise, that all was
dim around.  The gaslight which I had left lit for Jonathan, but
turned down, came only like a tiny red spark through the fog, which
had evidently grown thicker and poured into the room.  Then it
occurred to me that I had shut the window before I had come to bed.  I
would have got out to make certain on the point, but some leaden
lethargy seemed to chain my limbs and even my will.  I lay still and
endured, that was all.  I closed my eyes, but could still see through
my eyelids.  (It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how
conveniently we can imagine.)  The mist grew thicker and thicker and I
could see now how it came in, for I could see it like smoke, or with
the white energy of boiling water, pouring in, not through the window,
but through the joinings of the door.  It got thicker and thicker,
till it seemed as if it became concentrated into a sort of pillar of
cloud in the room, through the top of which I could see the light of
the gas shining like a red eye.  Things began to whirl through my
brain just as the cloudy column was now whirling in the room, and
through it all came the scriptural words "a pillar of cloud by day and
of fire by night."  Was it indeed such spiritual guidance that was
coming to me in my sleep?  But the pillar was composed of both the day
and the night guiding, for the fire was in the red eye, which at the
thought got a new fascination for me, till, as I looked, the fire
divided, and seemed to shine on me through the fog like two red eyes,
such as Lucy told me of in her momentary mental wandering when, on the
cliff, the dying sunlight struck the windows of St. Mary's Church.
Suddenly the horror burst upon me that it was thus that Jonathan had
seen those awful women growing into reality through the whirling mist
in the moonlight, and in my dream I must have fainted, for all became
black darkness.  The last conscious effort which imagination made was
to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist.

I must be careful of such dreams, for they would unseat one's reason if
there were too much of them.  I would get Dr. Van Helsing or Dr.
Seward to prescribe something for me which would make me sleep, only
that I fear to alarm them.  Such a dream at the present time would
become woven into their fears for me.  Tonight I shall strive hard to
sleep naturally.  If I do not, I shall tomorrow night get them to give
me a dose of chloral, that cannot hurt me for once, and it will give
me a good night's sleep.  Last night tired me more than if I had not
slept at all.


2 October 10 P.M.--Last night I slept, but did not dream.  I must have
slept soundly, for I was not waked by Jonathan coming to bed, but the
sleep has not refreshed me, for today I feel terribly weak and
spiritless.  I spent all yesterday trying to read, or lying down
dozing.  In the afternoon, Mr. Renfield asked if he might see me.  Poor
man, he was very gentle, and when I came away he kissed my hand and
bade God bless me.  Some way it affected me much.  I am crying when I
think of him.  This is a new weakness, of which I must be careful.
Jonathan would be miserable if he knew I had been crying.  He and the
others were out till dinner time, and they all came in tired.  I did
what I could to brighten them up, and I suppose that the effort did me
good, for I forgot how tired I was.  After dinner they sent me to bed,
and all went off to smoke together, as they said, but I knew that they
wanted to tell each other of what had occurred to each during the day.
I could see from Jonathan's manner that he had something important to
communicate.  I was not so sleepy as I should have been, so before
they went I asked Dr. Seward to give me a little opiate of some kind,
as I had not slept well the night before.  He very kindly made me up a
sleeping draught, which he gave to me, telling me that it would do me
no harm, as it was very mild . . . I have taken it, and am waiting for
sleep, which still keeps aloof.  I hope I have not done wrong, for as
sleep begins to flirt with me, a new fear comes: that I may have been
foolish in thus depriving myself of the power of waking.  I might want
it.  Here comes sleep.  Goodnight.




CHAPTER 20


JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

1 October, evening.--I found Thomas Snelling in his house at Bethnal
Green, but unhappily he was not in a condition to remember anything.
The very prospect of beer which my expected coming had opened to him
had proved too much, and he had begun too early on his expected
debauch.  I learned, however, from his wife, who seemed a decent, poor
soul, that he was only the assistant of Smollet, who of the two mates
was the responsible person.  So off I drove to Walworth, and found Mr.
Joseph Smollet at home and in his shirtsleeves, taking a late tea out
of a saucer.  He is a decent, intelligent fellow, distinctly a good,
reliable type of workman, and with a headpiece of his own.  He
remembered all about the incident of the boxes, and from a wonderful
dog-eared notebook, which he produced from some mysterious receptacle
about the seat of his trousers, and which had hieroglyphical entries
in thick, half-obliterated pencil, he gave me the destinations of the
boxes.  There were, he said, six in the cartload which he took from
Carfax and left at 197 Chicksand Street, Mile End New Town, and
another six which he deposited at Jamaica Lane, Bermondsey.  If then
the Count meant to scatter these ghastly refuges of his over London,
these places were chosen as the first of delivery, so that later he
might distribute more fully.  The systematic manner in which this was
done made me think that he could not mean to confine himself to two
sides of London.  He was now fixed on the far east on the northern
shore, on the east of the southern shore, and on the south.  The north
and west were surely never meant to be left out of his diabolical
scheme, let alone the City itself and the very heart of fashionable
London in the south-west and west.  I went back to Smollet, and asked
him if he could tell us if any other boxes had been taken from Carfax.

He replied, "Well guv'nor, you've treated me very 'an'some", I had
given him half a sovereign, "an I'll tell yer all I know.  I heard a
man by the name of Bloxam say four nights ago in the 'Are an' 'Ounds,
in Pincher's Alley, as 'ow he an' his mate 'ad 'ad a rare dusty job in
a old 'ouse at Purfleet.  There ain't a many such jobs as this 'ere,
an' I'm thinkin' that maybe Sam Bloxam could tell ye summut."

I asked if he could tell me where to find him.  I told him that if he
could get me the address it would be worth another half sovereign to
him.  So he gulped down the rest of his tea and stood up, saying that
he was going to begin the search then and there.

At the door he stopped, and said, "Look 'ere, guv'nor, there ain't no
sense in me a keepin' you 'ere.  I may find Sam soon, or I mayn't, but
anyhow he ain't like to be in a way to tell ye much tonight.  Sam is a
rare one when he starts on the booze.  If you can give me a envelope
with a stamp on it, and put yer address on it, I'll find out where Sam
is to be found and post it ye tonight.  But ye'd better be up arter
'im soon in the mornin', never mind the booze the night afore."

This was all practical, so one of the children went off with a penny
to buy an envelope and a sheet of paper, and to keep the change.  When
she came back, I addressed the envelope and stamped it, and when
Smollet had again faithfully promised to post the address when found,
I took my way to home.  We're on the track anyhow.  I am tired
tonight, and I want to sleep.  Mina is fast asleep, and looks a little
too pale.  Her eyes look as though she had been crying.  Poor dear,
I've no doubt it frets her to be kept in the dark, and it may make her
doubly anxious about me and the others.  But it is best as it is.  It
is better to be disappointed and worried in such a way now than to
have her nerve broken.  The doctors were quite right to insist on her
being kept out of this dreadful business.  I must be firm, for on me
this particular burden of silence must rest.  I shall not ever enter
on the subject with her under any circumstances.  Indeed, It may not
be a hard task, after all, for she herself has become reticent on the
subject, and has not spoken of the Count or his doings ever since we
told her of our decision.


2 October, evening--A long and trying and exciting day.  By the first
post I got my directed envelope with a dirty scrap of paper enclosed,
on which was written with a carpenter's pencil in a sprawling hand,
"Sam Bloxam, Korkrans, 4 Poters Cort, Bartel Street, Walworth.  Arsk
for the depite."

I got the letter in bed, and rose without waking Mina.  She looked
heavy and sleepy and pale, and far from well.  I determined not to
wake her, but that when I should return from this new search, I would
arrange for her going back to Exeter.  I think she would be happier in
our own home, with her daily tasks to interest her, than in being here
amongst us and in ignorance.  I only saw Dr. Seward for a moment, and
told him where I was off to, promising to come back and tell the rest
so soon as I should have found out anything.  I drove to Walworth and
found, with some difficulty, Potter's Court.  Mr. Smollet's spelling
misled me, as I asked for Poter's Court instead of Potter's Court.
However, when I had found the court, I had no difficulty in
discovering Corcoran's lodging house.

When I asked the man who came to the door for the "depite," he shook
his head, and said, "I dunno 'im.  There ain't no such a person 'ere.
I never 'eard of 'im in all my bloomin' days.  Don't believe there
ain't nobody of that kind livin' 'ere or anywheres."

I took out Smollet's letter, and as I read it it seemed to me that the
lesson of the spelling of the name of the court might guide me.  "What
are you?" I asked.

"I'm the depity," he answered.

I saw at once that I was on the right track.  Phonetic spelling had
again misled me.  A half crown tip put the deputy's knowledge at my
disposal, and I learned that Mr. Bloxam, who had slept off the remains
of his beer on the previous night at Corcoran's, had left for his work
at Poplar at five o'clock that morning.  He could not tell me where
the place of work was situated, but he had a vague idea that it was
some kind of a "new-fangled ware'us," and with this slender clue I had
to start for Poplar.  It was twelve o'clock before I got any
satisfactory hint of such a building, and this I got at a coffee shop,
where some workmen were having their dinner.  One of them suggested
that there was being erected at Cross Angel Street a new "cold
storage" building, and as this suited the condition of a "new-fangled
ware'us," I at once drove to it.  An interview with a surly gatekeeper
and a surlier foreman, both of whom were appeased with the coin of the
realm, put me on the track of Bloxam.  He was sent for on my
suggestion that I was willing to pay his days wages to his foreman for
the privilege of asking him a few questions on a private matter.  He
was a smart enough fellow, though rough of speech and bearing.  When I
had promised to pay for his information and given him an earnest, he
told me that he had made two journeys between Carfax and a house in
Piccadilly, and had taken from this house to the latter nine great
boxes, "main heavy ones," with a horse and cart hired by him for this
purpose.

I asked him if he could tell me the number of the house in Piccadilly,
to which he replied, "Well, guv'nor, I forgits the number, but it was
only a few door from a big white church, or somethink of the kind, not
long built.  It was a dusty old 'ouse, too, though nothin' to the
dustiness of the 'ouse we tooked the bloomin' boxes from."

"How did you get in if both houses were empty?"

"There was the old party what engaged me a waitin' in the 'ouse at
Purfleet.  He 'elped me to lift the boxes and put them in the dray.
Curse me, but he was the strongest chap I ever struck, an' him a old
feller, with a white moustache, one that thin you would think he
couldn't throw a shadder."

How this phrase thrilled through me!

"Why, 'e took up 'is end o' the boxes like they was pounds of tea, and
me a puffin' an' a blowin' afore I could upend mine anyhow, an' I'm no
chicken, neither."

"How did you get into the house in Piccadilly?" I asked.

"He was there too.  He must 'a started off and got there afore me, for
when I rung of the bell he kem an' opened the door 'isself an' 'elped
me carry the boxes into the 'all."

"The whole nine?" I asked.

"Yus, there was five in the first load an' four in the second.  It was
main dry work, an' I don't so well remember 'ow I got 'ome."

I interrupted him, "Were the boxes left in the hall?"

"Yus, it was a big 'all, an' there was nothin' else in it."

I made one more attempt to further matters.  "You didn't have any
key?"

"Never used no key nor nothink.  The old gent, he opened the door
'isself an' shut it again when I druv off.  I don't remember the last
time, but that was the beer."

"And you can't remember the number of the house?"

"No, sir.  But ye needn't have no difficulty about that.  It's a 'igh
'un with a stone front with a bow on it, an' 'igh steps up to the
door.  I know them steps, 'avin' 'ad to carry the boxes up with three
loafers what come round to earn a copper.  The old gent give them
shillin's, an' they seein' they got so much, they wanted more.  But 'e
took one of them by the shoulder and was like to throw 'im down the
steps, till the lot of them went away cussin'."

I thought that with this description I could find the house, so having
paid my friend for his information, I started off for Piccadilly.  I
had gained a new painful experience.  The Count could, it was evident,
handle the earth boxes himself.  If so, time was precious, for now
that he had achieved a certain amount of distribution, he could, by
choosing his own time, complete the task unobserved.  At Piccadilly
Circus I discharged my cab, and walked westward.  Beyond the Junior
Constitutional I came across the house described and was satisfied
that this was the next of the lairs arranged by Dracula.  The house
looked as though it had been long untenanted.  The windows were
encrusted with dust, and the shutters were up.  All the framework was
black with time, and from the iron the paint had mostly scaled away.
It was evident that up to lately there had been a large notice board
in front of the balcony.  It had, however, been roughly torn away, the
uprights which had supported it still remaining.  Behind the rails of
the balcony I saw there were some loose boards, whose raw edges looked
white.  I would have given a good deal to have been able to see the
notice board intact, as it would, perhaps, have given some clue to the
ownership of the house.  I remembered my experience of the investigation
and purchase of Carfax, and I could not but feel that if I could find
the former owner there might be some means discovered of gaining access
to the house.

There was at present nothing to be learned from the Piccadilly side,
and nothing could be done, so I went around to the back to see if
anything could be gathered from this quarter.  The mews were active,
the Piccadilly houses being mostly in occupation.  I asked one or two
of the grooms and helpers whom I saw around if they could tell me
anything about the empty house.  One of them said that he heard it had
lately been taken, but he couldn't say from whom.  He told me,
however, that up to very lately there had been a notice board of "For
Sale" up, and that perhaps Mitchell, Sons, & Candy the house agents
could tell me something, as he thought he remembered seeing the name
of that firm on the board.  I did not wish to seem too eager, or to
let my informant know or guess too much, so thanking him in the usual
manner, I strolled away.  It was now growing dusk, and the autumn
night was closing in, so I did not lose any time.  Having learned the
address of Mitchell, Sons, & Candy from a directory at the Berkeley, I
was soon at their office in Sackville Street.

The gentleman who saw me was particularly suave in manner, but
uncommunicative in equal proportion.  Having once told me that the
Piccadilly house, which throughout our interview he called a
"mansion," was sold, he considered my business as concluded.  When I
asked who had purchased it, he opened his eyes a thought wider, and
paused a few seconds before replying, "It is sold, sir."

"Pardon me," I said, with equal politeness, "but I have a special
reason for wishing to know who purchased it."

Again he paused longer, and raised his eyebrows still more.  "It is
sold, sir," was again his laconic reply.

"Surely," I said, "you do not mind letting me know so much."

"But I do mind," he answered.  "The affairs of their clients are
absolutely safe in the hands of Mitchell, Sons, & Candy."

This was manifestly a prig of the first water, and there was no use
arguing with him.  I thought I had best meet him on his own ground, so
I said, "Your clients, sir, are happy in having so resolute a guardian
of their confidence.  I am myself a professional man."

Here I handed him my card.  "In this instance I am not prompted by
curiosity, I act on the part of Lord Godalming, who wishes to know
something of the property which was, he understood, lately for sale."

These words put a different complexion on affairs.  He said, "I would
like to oblige you if I could, Mr. Harker, and especially would I like
to oblige his lordship.  We once carried out a small matter of renting
some chambers for him when he was the honourable Arthur Holmwood.  If
you will let me have his lordship's address I will consult the House
on the subject, and will, in any case, communicate with his lordship
by tonight's post.  It will be a pleasure if we can so far deviate
from our rules as to give the required information to his lordship."

I wanted to secure a friend, and not to make an enemy, so I thanked
him, gave the address at Dr. Seward's and came away.  It was now dark,
and I was tired and hungry.  I got a cup of tea at the Aerated Bread
Company and came down to Purfleet by the next train.

I found all the others at home.  Mina was looking tired and pale, but
she made a gallant effort to be bright and cheerful.  It wrung my
heart to think that I had had to keep anything from her and so caused
her inquietude.  Thank God, this will be the last night of her looking
on at our conferences, and feeling the sting of our not showing our
confidence.  It took all my courage to hold to the wise resolution of
keeping her out of our grim task.  She seems somehow more reconciled,
or else the very subject seems to have become repugnant to her, for
when any accidental allusion is made she actually shudders.  I am glad
we made our resolution in time, as with such a feeling as this, our
growing knowledge would be torture to her.

I could not tell the others of the day's discovery till we were alone,
so after dinner, followed by a little music to save appearances even
amongst ourselves, I took Mina to her room and left her to go to bed.
The dear girl was more affectionate with me than ever, and clung to me
as though she would detain me, but there was much to be talked of and
I came away.  Thank God, the ceasing of telling things has made no
difference between us.

When I came down again I found the others all gathered round the fire
in the study.  In the train I had written my diary so far, and simply
read it off to them as the best means of letting them get abreast of
my own information.

When I had finished Van Helsing said, "This has been a great day's
work, friend Jonathan.  Doubtless we are on the track of the missing
boxes.  If we find them all in that house, then our work is near the
end.  But if there be some missing, we must search until we find them.
Then shall we make our final coup, and hunt the wretch to his real
death."

We all sat silent awhile and all at once Mr. Morris spoke, "Say!  How
are we going to get into that house?"

"We got into the other," answered Lord Godalming quickly.

"But, Art, this is different.  We broke house at Carfax, but we had
night and a walled park to protect us.  It will be a mighty different
thing to commit burglary in Piccadilly, either by day or night.  I
confess I don't see how we are going to get in unless that agency duck
can find us a key of some sort."

Lord Godalming's brows contracted, and he stood up and walked about the
room.  By-and-by he stopped and said, turning from one to another of
us, "Quincey's head is level.  This burglary business is getting
serious.  We got off once all right, but we have now a rare job on
hand.  Unless we can find the Count's key basket."

As nothing could well be done before morning, and as it would be at
least advisable to wait till Lord Godalming should hear from
Mitchell's, we decided not to take any active step before breakfast
time.  For a good while we sat and smoked, discussing the matter in
its various lights and bearings.  I took the opportunity of bringing
this diary right up to the moment.  I am very sleepy and shall go to
bed . . .

Just a line.  Mina sleeps soundly and her breathing is regular.  Her
forehead is puckered up into little wrinkles, as though she thinks
even in her sleep.  She is still too pale, but does not look so
haggard as she did this morning.  Tomorrow will, I hope, mend all
this.  She will be herself at home in Exeter.  Oh, but I am sleepy!




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

1 October.--I am puzzled afresh about Renfield.  His moods change so
rapidly that I find it difficult to keep touch of them, and as they
always mean something more than his own well-being, they form a more
than interesting study.  This morning, when I went to see him after
his repulse of Van Helsing, his manner was that of a man commanding
destiny.  He was, in fact, commanding destiny, subjectively.  He did
not really care for any of the things of mere earth, he was in the
clouds and looked down on all the weaknesses and wants of us poor
mortals.

I thought I would improve the occasion and learn something, so I asked
him, "What about the flies these times?"

He smiled on me in quite a superior sort of way, such a smile as would
have become the face of Malvolio, as he answered me, "The fly, my dear
sir, has one striking feature.  It's wings are typical of the aerial
powers of the psychic faculties.  The ancients did well when they
typified the soul as a butterfly!"

I thought I would push his analogy to its utmost logically, so I said
quickly, "Oh, it is a soul you are after now, is it?"

His madness foiled his reason, and a puzzled look spread over his face
as, shaking his head with a decision which I had but seldom seen in
him.

He said, "Oh, no, oh no!  I want no souls.  Life is all I want."  Here
he brightened up.  "I am pretty indifferent about it at present.  Life
is all right.  I have all I want.  You must get a new patient, doctor,
if you wish to study zoophagy!"

This puzzled me a little, so I drew him on.  "Then you command life.
You are a god, I suppose?"

He smiled with an ineffably benign superiority.  "Oh no!  Far be it
from me to arrogate to myself the attributes of the Deity.  I am not
even concerned in His especially spiritual doings.  If I may state my
intellectual position I am, so far as concerns things purely
terrestrial, somewhat in the position which Enoch occupied
spiritually!"

This was a poser to me.  I could not at the moment recall Enoch's
appositeness, so I had to ask a simple question, though I felt that by
so doing I was lowering myself in the eyes of the lunatic.  "And why
with Enoch?"

"Because he walked with God."

I could not see the analogy, but did not like to admit it, so I harked
back to what he had denied.  "So you don't care about life and you
don't want souls.  Why not?"  I put my question quickly and somewhat
sternly, on purpose to disconcert him.

The effort succeeded, for an instant he unconsciously relapsed into
his old servile manner, bent low before me, and actually fawned upon
me as he replied.  "I don't want any souls, indeed, indeed!  I don't.
I couldn't use them if I had them.  They would be no manner of use to
me.  I couldn't eat them or . . ."

He suddenly stopped and the old cunning look spread over his face,
like a wind sweep on the surface of the water.

"And doctor, as to life, what is it after all?  When you've got all
you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all.  I
have friends, good friends, like you, Dr. Seward."  This was said with
a leer of inexpressible cunning.  "I know that I shall never lack the
means of life!"

I think that through the cloudiness of his insanity he saw some
antagonism in me, for he at once fell back on the last refuge of such
as he, a dogged silence.  After a short time I saw that for the
present it was useless to speak to him.  He was sulky, and so I came
away.

Later in the day he sent for me.  Ordinarily I would not have come
without special reason, but just at present I am so interested in him
that I would gladly make an effort.  Besides, I am glad to have
anything to help pass the time.  Harker is out, following up clues,
and so are Lord Godalming and Quincey.  Van Helsing sits in my study
poring over the record prepared by the Harkers.  He seems to think
that by accurate knowledge of all details he will light up on some
clue.  He does not wish to be disturbed in the work, without cause.  I
would have taken him with me to see the patient, only I thought that
after his last repulse he might not care to go again.  There was also
another reason.  Renfield might not speak so freely before a third
person as when he and I were alone.

I found him sitting in the middle of the floor on his stool, a pose
which is generally indicative of some mental energy on his part.  When
I came in, he said at once, as though the question had been waiting on
his lips.  "What about souls?"

It was evident then that my surmise had been correct.  Unconscious
cerebration was doing its work, even with the lunatic.  I determined
to have the matter out.

"What about them yourself?" I asked.

He did not reply for a moment but looked all around him, and up and
down, as though he expected to find some inspiration for an answer.

"I don't want any souls!" he said in a feeble, apologetic way.  The
matter seemed preying on his mind, and so I determined to use it, to
"be cruel only to be kind."  So I said, "You like life, and you want
life?"

"Oh yes!  But that is all right.  You needn't worry about that!"

"But," I asked, "how are we to get the life without getting the soul
also?"

This seemed to puzzle him, so I followed it up, "A nice time you'll
have some time when you're flying out here, with the souls of
thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing and
twittering and moaning all around you.  You've got their lives, you
know, and you must put up with their souls!"

Something seemed to affect his imagination, for he put his fingers to
his ears and shut his eyes, screwing them up tightly just as a small
boy does when his face is being soaped.  There was something pathetic
in it that touched me.  It also gave me a lesson, for it seemed that
before me was a child, only a child, though the features were worn,
and the stubble on the jaws was white.  It was evident that he was
undergoing some process of mental disturbance, and knowing how his
past moods had interpreted things seemingly foreign to himself, I
thought I would enter into his mind as well as I could and go with him.

The first step was to restore confidence, so I asked him, speaking
pretty loud so that he would hear me through his closed ears, "Would
you like some sugar to get your flies around again?"

He seemed to wake up all at once, and shook his head.  With a laugh he
replied, "Not much!  Flies are poor things, after all!"  After a pause
he added, "But I don't want their souls buzzing round me, all the
same."

"Or spiders?" I went on.

"Blow spiders!  What's the use of spiders?  There isn't anything in
them to eat or . . ."  He stopped suddenly as though reminded of a
forbidden topic.

"So, so!" I thought to myself, "this is the second time he has
suddenly stopped at the word 'drink'.  What does it mean?"

Renfield seemed himself aware of having made a lapse, for he hurried
on, as though to distract my attention from it, "I don't take any
stock at all in such matters.  'Rats and mice and such small deer,' as
Shakespeare has it, 'chicken feed of the larder' they might be called.
I'm past all that sort of nonsense.  You might as well ask a man to
eat molecules with a pair of chopsticks, as to try to interest me
about the less carnivora, when I know of what is before me."

"I see," I said.  "You want big things that you can make your teeth
meet in?  How would you like to breakfast on an elephant?"

"What ridiculous nonsense you are talking?"  He was getting too wide
awake, so I thought I would press him hard.

"I wonder," I said reflectively, "what an elephant's soul is like!"

The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his
high-horse and became a child again.

"I don't want an elephant's soul, or any soul at all!" he said.  For a
few moments he sat despondently.  Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with
his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement.
"To hell with you and your souls!" he shouted.  "Why do you plague me
about souls?  Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract me
already, without thinking of souls?"

He looked so hostile that I thought he was in for another homicidal
fit, so I blew my whistle.

The instant, however, that I did so he became calm, and said
apologetically, "Forgive me, Doctor.  I forgot myself.  You do not
need any help.  I am so worried in my mind that I am apt to be
irritable.  If you only knew the problem I have to face, and that I am
working out, you would pity, and tolerate, and pardon me.  Pray do not
put me in a strait waistcoat.  I want to think and I cannot think
freely when my body is confined.  I am sure you will understand!"

He had evidently self-control, so when the attendants came I told them
not to mind, and they withdrew.  Renfield watched them go.  When the
door was closed he said with considerable dignity and sweetness, "Dr.
Seward, you have been very considerate towards me.  Believe me that I
am very, very grateful to you!"

I thought it well to leave him in this mood, and so I came away.
There is certainly something to ponder over in this man's state.
Several points seem to make what the American interviewer calls "a
story," if one could only get them in proper order.  Here they are:

    Will not mention "drinking."

    Fears the thought of being burdened with the "soul" of anything.

    Has no dread of wanting "life" in the future.

    Despises the meaner forms of life altogether, though he dreads
    being haunted by their souls.

    Logically all these things point one way!  He has assurance of
    some kind that he will acquire some higher life.

    He dreads the consequence, the burden of a soul.  Then it is a
    human life he looks to!

    And the assurance . . .?

Merciful God!  The Count has been to him, and there is some new scheme
of terror afoot!


Later.--I went after my round to Van Helsing and told him my
suspicion.  He grew very grave, and after thinking the matter over for
a while asked me to take him to Renfield.  I did so.  As we came to
the door we heard the lunatic within singing gaily, as he used to do
in the time which now seems so long ago.

When we entered we saw with amazement that he had spread out his sugar
as of old.  The flies, lethargic with the autumn, were beginning to
buzz into the room.  We tried to make him talk of the subject of our
previous conversation, but he would not attend.  He went on with his
singing, just as though we had not been present.  He had got a scrap
of paper and was folding it into a notebook.  We had to come away as
ignorant as we went in.

His is a curious case indeed.  We must watch him tonight.





LETTER, MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY TO LORD GODALMING.

"1 October.

"My Lord,

"We are at all times only too happy to meet your wishes.  We beg,
with regard to the desire of your Lordship, expressed by Mr.
Harker on your behalf, to supply the following information
concerning the sale and purchase of No. 347, Piccadilly.  The
original vendors are the executors of the late Mr. Archibald
Winter-Suffield.  The purchaser is a foreign nobleman, Count de
Ville, who effected the purchase himself paying the purchase
money in notes 'over the counter,' if your Lordship will pardon
us using so vulgar an expression.  Beyond this we know nothing
whatever of him.

"We are, my Lord,

"Your Lordship's humble servants,

"MITCHELL, SONS & CANDY."




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

2 October.--I placed a man in the corridor last night, and told him to
make an accurate note of any sound he might hear from Renfield's room,
and gave him instructions that if there should be anything strange he
was to call me.  After dinner, when we had all gathered round the fire
in the study, Mrs. Harker having gone to bed, we discussed the
attempts and discoveries of the day.  Harker was the only one who had
any result, and we are in great hopes that his clue may be an
important one.

Before going to bed I went round to the patient's room and looked in
through the observation trap.  He was sleeping soundly, his heart rose
and fell with regular respiration.

This morning the man on duty reported to me that a little after
midnight he was restless and kept saying his prayers somewhat loudly.
I asked him if that was all.  He replied that it was all he heard.
There was something about his manner, so suspicious that I asked him
point blank if he had been asleep.  He denied sleep, but admitted to
having "dozed" for a while.  It is too bad that men cannot be trusted
unless they are watched.

Today Harker is out following up his clue, and Art and Quincey are
looking after horses.  Godalming thinks that it will be well to have
horses always in readiness, for when we get the information which we
seek there will be no time to lose.  We must sterilize all the
imported earth between sunrise and sunset.  We shall thus catch the
Count at his weakest, and without a refuge to fly to.  Van Helsing is
off to the British Museum looking up some authorities on ancient
medicine.  The old physicians took account of things which their
followers do not accept, and the Professor is searching for witch and
demon cures which may be useful to us later.

I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity
in strait waistcoats.

Later.--We have met again.  We seem at last to be on the track, and
our work of tomorrow may be the beginning of the end.  I wonder if
Renfield's quiet has anything to do with this.  His moods have so
followed the doings of the Count, that the coming destruction of the
monster may be carried to him some subtle way.  If we could only get
some hint as to what passed in his mind, between the time of my
argument with him today and his resumption of fly-catching, it might
afford us a valuable clue.  He is now seemingly quiet for a spell . . .
Is he?  That wild yell seemed to come from his room . . .

The attendant came bursting into my room and told me that Renfield had
somehow met with some accident.  He had heard him yell, and when he
went to him found him lying on his face on the floor, all covered with
blood.  I must go at once . . .




CHAPTER 21


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

3 October.--Let me put down with exactness all that happened, as well
as I can remember, since last I made an entry.  Not a detail that I
can recall must be forgotten.  In all calmness I must proceed.

When I came to Renfield's room I found him lying on the floor on his
left side in a glittering pool of blood.  When I went to move him, it
became at once apparent that he had received some terrible injuries.
There seemed none of the unity of purpose between the parts of the
body which marks even lethargic sanity.  As the face was exposed I
could see that it was horribly bruised, as though it had been beaten
against the floor.  Indeed it was from the face wounds that the pool
of blood originated.

The attendant who was kneeling beside the body said to me as we turned
him over, "I think, sir, his back is broken.  See, both his right arm
and leg and the whole side of his face are paralysed."  How such a
thing could have happened puzzled the attendant beyond measure.  He
seemed quite bewildered, and his brows were gathered in as he said, "I
can't understand the two things.  He could mark his face like that by
beating his own head on the floor.  I saw a young woman do it once at
the Eversfield Asylum before anyone could lay hands on her.  And I
suppose he might have broken his neck by falling out of bed, if he got
in an awkward kink.  But for the life of me I can't imagine how the
two things occurred.  If his back was broke, he couldn't beat his
head, and if his face was like that before the fall out of bed, there
would be marks of it."

I said to him, "Go to Dr. Van Helsing, and ask him to kindly come here
at once.  I want him without an instant's delay."

The man ran off, and within a few minutes the Professor, in his
dressing gown and slippers, appeared.  When he saw Renfield on the
ground, he looked keenly at him a moment, and then turned to me.  I
think he recognized my thought in my eyes, for he said very quietly,
manifestly for the ears of the attendant, "Ah, a sad accident!  He
will need very careful watching, and much attention.  I shall stay
with you myself, but I shall first dress myself.  If you will remain I
shall in a few minutes join you."

The patient was now breathing stertorously and it was easy to see that
he had suffered some terrible injury.

Van Helsing returned with extraordinary celerity, bearing with him a
surgical case.  He had evidently been thinking and had his mind made
up, for almost before he looked at the patient, he whispered to me,
"Send the attendant away.  We must be alone with him when he becomes
conscious, after the operation."

I said, "I think that will do now, Simmons.  We have done all that we
can at present.  You had better go your round, and Dr. Van Helsing
will operate.  Let me know instantly if there be anything unusual
anywhere."

The man withdrew, and we went into a strict examination of the
patient.  The wounds of the face were superficial.  The real injury
was a depressed fracture of the skull, extending right up through the
motor area.

The Professor thought a moment and said, "We must reduce the pressure
and get back to normal conditions, as far as can be.  The rapidity of
the suffusion shows the terrible nature of his injury.  The whole
motor area seems affected.  The suffusion of the brain will increase
quickly, so we must trephine at once or it may be too late."

As he was speaking there was a soft tapping at the door.  I went over
and opened it and found in the corridor without, Arthur and Quincey in
pajamas and slippers; the former spoke, "I heard your man call up Dr.
Van Helsing and tell him of an accident.  So I woke Quincey or rather
called for him as he was not asleep.  Things are moving too quickly
and too strangely for sound sleep for any of us these times.  I've
been thinking that tomorrow night will not see things as they have
been.  We'll have to look back, and forward a little more than we have
done.  May we come in?"

I nodded, and held the door open till they had entered, then I closed
it again.  When Quincey saw the attitude and state of the patient, and
noted the horrible pool on the floor, he said softly, "My God!  What
has happened to him?  Poor, poor devil!"

I told him briefly, and added that we expected he would recover
consciousness after the operation, for a short time, at all events.
He went at once and sat down on the edge of the bed, with Godalming
beside him.  We all watched in patience.

"We shall wait," said Van Helsing, "just long enough to fix the best
spot for trephining, so that we may most quickly and perfectly remove
the blood clot, for it is evident that the haemorrhage is increasing."

The minutes during which we waited passed with fearful slowness.  I
had a horrible sinking in my heart, and from Van Helsing's face I
gathered that he felt some fear or apprehension as to what was to
come.  I dreaded the words Renfield might speak.  I was positively
afraid to think.  But the conviction of what was coming was on me, as
I have read of men who have heard the death watch.  The poor man's
breathing came in uncertain gasps.  Each instant he seemed as though
he would open his eyes and speak, but then would follow a prolonged
stertorous breath, and he would relapse into a more fixed
insensibility.  Inured as I was to sick beds and death, this suspense
grew and grew upon me.  I could almost hear the beating of my own
heart, and the blood surging through my temples sounded like blows
from a hammer.  The silence finally became agonizing.  I looked at my
companions, one after another, and saw from their flushed faces and
damp brows that they were enduring equal torture.  There was a nervous
suspense over us all, as though overhead some dread bell would peal
out powerfully when we should least expect it.

At last there came a time when it was evident that the patient was
sinking fast.  He might die at any moment.  I looked up at the
Professor and caught his eyes fixed on mine.  His face was sternly set
as he spoke, "There is no time to lose.  His words may be worth many
lives.  I have been thinking so, as I stood here.  It may be there is
a soul at stake!  We shall operate just above the ear."

Without another word he made the operation.  For a few moments the
breathing continued to be stertorous.  Then there came a breath so
prolonged that it seemed as though it would tear open his chest.
Suddenly his eyes opened, and became fixed in a wild, helpless stare.
This was continued for a few moments, then it was softened into a glad
surprise, and from his lips came a sigh of relief.  He moved
convulsively, and as he did so, said, "I'll be quiet, Doctor.  Tell
them to take off the strait waistcoat.  I have had a terrible dream,
and it has left me so weak that I cannot move.  What's wrong with my
face?  It feels all swollen, and it smarts dreadfully."

He tried to turn his head, but even with the effort his eyes seemed to
grow glassy again so I gently put it back.  Then Van Helsing said in a
quiet grave tone, "Tell us your dream, Mr. Renfield."

As he heard the voice his face brightened, through its mutilation, and
he said, "That is Dr. Van Helsing.  How good it is of you to be here.
Give me some water, my lips are dry, and I shall try to tell you.  I
dreamed . . ."

He stopped and seemed fainting.  I called quietly to Quincey, "The
brandy, it is in my study, quick!"  He flew and returned with a glass,
the decanter of brandy and a carafe of water.  We moistened the
parched lips, and the patient quickly revived.

It seemed, however, that his poor injured brain had been working in
the interval, for when he was quite conscious, he looked at me
piercingly with an agonized confusion which I shall never forget, and
said, "I must not deceive myself.  It was no dream, but all a grim
reality."  Then his eyes roved round the room.  As they caught sight
of the two figures sitting patiently on the edge of the bed he went
on, "If I were not sure already, I would know from them."

For an instant his eyes closed, not with pain or sleep but
voluntarily, as though he were bringing all his faculties to bear.
When he opened them he said, hurriedly, and with more energy than he
had yet displayed, "Quick, Doctor, quick, I am dying!  I feel that I
have but a few minutes, and then I must go back to death, or worse!
Wet my lips with brandy again.  I have something that I must say
before I die.  Or before my poor crushed brain dies anyhow.  Thank
you!  It was that night after you left me, when I implored you to let
me go away.  I couldn't speak then, for I felt my tongue was tied.
But I was as sane then, except in that way, as I am now.  I was in an
agony of despair for a long time after you left me, it seemed hours.
Then there came a sudden peace to me.  My brain seemed to become cool
again, and I realized where I was.  I heard the dogs bark behind our
house, but not where He was!"

As he spoke, Van Helsing's eyes never blinked, but his hand came out
and met mine and gripped it hard.  He did not, however, betray
himself.  He nodded slightly and said, "Go on," in a low voice.

Renfield proceeded.  "He came up to the window in the mist, as I had
seen him often before, but he was solid then, not a ghost, and his
eyes were fierce like a man's when angry.  He was laughing with his
red mouth, the sharp white teeth glinted in the moonlight when he
turned to look back over the belt of trees, to where the dogs were
barking.  I wouldn't ask him to come in at first, though I knew he
wanted to, just as he had wanted all along.  Then he began promising
me things, not in words but by doing them."

He was interrupted by a word from the Professor, "How?"

"By making them happen.  Just as he used to send in the flies when the
sun was shining.  Great big fat ones with steel and sapphire on their
wings.  And big moths, in the night, with skull and cross-bones on
their backs."

Van Helsing nodded to him as he whispered to me unconsciously, "The
Acherontia Atropos of the Sphinges, what you call the 'Death's-head
Moth'?"

The patient went on without stopping, "Then he began to whisper.  'Rats,
rats, rats!  Hundreds, thousands, millions of them, and every one a
life.  And dogs to eat them, and cats too.  All lives!  All red blood,
with years of life in it, and not merely buzzing flies!'  I laughed at
him, for I wanted to see what he could do.  Then the dogs howled, away
beyond the dark trees in His house.  He beckoned me to the window.  I
got up and looked out, and He raised his hands, and seemed to call out
without using any words.  A dark mass spread over the grass, coming on
like the shape of a flame of fire.  And then He moved the mist to the
right and left, and I could see that there were thousands of rats with
their eyes blazing red, like His only smaller.  He held up his hand,
and they all stopped, and I thought he seemed to be saying, 'All these
lives will I give you, ay, and many more and greater, through
countless ages, if you will fall down and worship me!'  And then a red
cloud, like the colour of blood, seemed to close over my eyes, and
before I knew what I was doing, I found myself opening the sash and
saying to Him, 'Come in, Lord and Master!'  The rats were all gone, but
He slid into the room through the sash, though it was only open an
inch wide, just as the Moon herself has often come in through the
tiniest crack and has stood before me in all her size and splendour."

His voice was weaker, so I moistened his lips with the brandy again,
and he continued, but it seemed as though his memory had gone on
working in the interval for his story was further advanced.  I was
about to call him back to the point, but Van Helsing whispered to me,
"Let him go on.  Do not interrupt him.  He cannot go back, and maybe
could not proceed at all if once he lost the thread of his thought."

He proceeded, "All day I waited to hear from him, but he did not send
me anything, not even a blowfly, and when the moon got up I was pretty
angry with him.  When he did slide in through the window, though it
was shut, and did not even knock, I got mad with him.  He sneered at
me, and his white face looked out of the mist with his red eyes
gleaming, and he went on as though he owned the whole place, and I was
no one.  He didn't even smell the same as he went by me.  I couldn't
hold him.  I thought that, somehow, Mrs. Harker had come into the
room."

The two men sitting on the bed stood up and came over, standing behind
him so that he could not see them, but where they could hear better.
They were both silent, but the Professor started and quivered.  His
face, however, grew grimmer and sterner still.  Renfield went on
without noticing, "When Mrs. Harker came in to see me this afternoon
she wasn't the same.  It was like tea after the teapot has been
watered."  Here we all moved, but no one said a word.

He went on, "I didn't know that she was here till she spoke, and she
didn't look the same.  I don't care for the pale people.  I like them
with lots of blood in them, and hers all seemed to have run out.  I
didn't think of it at the time, but when she went away I began to
think, and it made me mad to know that He had been taking the life out
of her."  I could feel that the rest quivered, as I did; but we
remained otherwise still.  "So when He came tonight I was ready for
Him.  I saw the mist stealing in, and I grabbed it tight.  I had heard
that madmen have unnatural strength.  And as I knew I was a madman, at
times anyhow, I resolved to use my power.  Ay, and He felt it too, for
He had to come out of the mist to struggle with me.  I held tight, and
I thought I was going to win, for I didn't mean Him to take any more
of her life, till I saw His eyes.  They burned into me, and my
strength became like water.  He slipped through it, and when I tried
to cling to Him, He raised me up and flung me down.  There was a red
cloud before me, and a noise like thunder, and the mist seemed to
steal away under the door."

His voice was becoming fainter and his breath more stertorous.  Van
Helsing stood up instinctively.

"We know the worst now," he said.  "He is here, and we know his
purpose.  It may not be too late.  Let us be armed, the same as we
were the other night, but lose no time, there is not an instant to
spare."

There was no need to put our fear, nay our conviction, into words, we
shared them in common.  We all hurried and took from our rooms the
same things that we had when we entered the Count's house.  The
Professor had his ready, and as we met in the corridor he pointed to
them significantly as he said, "They never leave me, and they shall
not till this unhappy business is over.  Be wise also, my friends.  It
is no common enemy that we deal with Alas!  Alas!  That dear Madam
Mina should suffer!"  He stopped, his voice was breaking, and I do not
know if rage or terror predominated in my own heart.

Outside the Harkers' door we paused.  Art and Quincey held back, and
the latter said, "Should we disturb her?"

"We must," said Van Helsing grimly.  "If the door be locked, I shall
break it in."

"May it not frighten her terribly?  It is unusual to break into a
lady's room!"

Van Helsing said solemnly, "You are always right.  But this is life
and death.  All chambers are alike to the doctor.  And even were they
not they are all as one to me tonight.  Friend John, when I turn the
handle, if the door does not open, do you put your shoulder down and
shove; and you too, my friends.  Now!"

He turned the handle as he spoke, but the door did not yield.  We
threw ourselves against it.  With a crash it burst open, and we almost
fell headlong into the room.  The Professor did actually fall, and I
saw across him as he gathered himself up from hands and knees.  What I
saw appalled me.  I felt my hair rise like bristles on the back of my
neck, and my heart seemed to stand still.

The moonlight was so bright that through the thick yellow blind the
room was light enough to see.  On the bed beside the window lay
Jonathan Harker, his face flushed and breathing heavily as though in a
stupor.  Kneeling on the near edge of the bed facing outwards was the
white-clad figure of his wife.  By her side stood a tall, thin man,
clad in black.  His face was turned from us, but the instant we saw we
all recognized the Count, in every way, even to the scar on his
forehead.  With his left hand he held both Mrs. Harker's hands,
keeping them away with her arms at full tension.  His right hand
gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his
bosom.  Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream
trickled down the man's bare chest which was shown by his torn-open
dress.  The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child
forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.
As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face, and the hellish
look that I had heard described seemed to leap into it.  His eyes
flamed red with devilish passion.  The great nostrils of the white
aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the edge, and the white
sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood dripping mouth, clamped
together like those of a wild beast.  With a wrench, which threw his
victim back upon the bed as though hurled from a height, he turned and
sprang at us.  But by this time the Professor had gained his feet, and
was holding towards him the envelope which contained the Sacred Wafer.
The Count suddenly stopped, just as poor Lucy had done outside the
tomb, and cowered back.  Further and further back he cowered, as we,
lifting our crucifixes, advanced.  The moonlight suddenly failed, as a
great black cloud sailed across the sky.  And when the gaslight sprang
up under Quincey's match, we saw nothing but a faint vapour.  This, as
we looked, trailed under the door, which with the recoil from its
bursting open, had swung back to its old position.  Van Helsing, Art,
and I moved forward to Mrs. Harker, who by this time had drawn her
breath and with it had given a scream so wild, so ear-piercing, so
despairing that it seems to me now that it will ring in my ears till
my dying day.  For a few seconds she lay in her helpless attitude and
disarray.  Her face was ghastly, with a pallor which was accentuated
by the blood which smeared her lips and cheeks and chin.  From her
throat trickled a thin stream of blood.  Her eyes were mad with
terror.  Then she put before her face her poor crushed hands, which
bore on their whiteness the red mark of the Count's terrible grip, and
from behind them came a low desolate wail which made the terrible
scream seem only the quick expression of an endless grief.  Van
Helsing stepped forward and drew the coverlet gently over her body,
whilst Art, after looking at her face for an instant despairingly, ran
out of the room.

Van Helsing whispered to me, "Jonathan is in a stupor such as we know
the Vampire can produce.  We can do nothing with poor Madam Mina for a
few moments till she recovers herself.  I must wake him!"

He dipped the end of a towel in cold water and with it began to flick
him on the face, his wife all the while holding her face between her
hands and sobbing in a way that was heart breaking to hear.  I raised
the blind, and looked out of the window.  There was much moonshine,
and as I looked I could see Quincey Morris run across the lawn and
hide himself in the shadow of a great yew tree.  It puzzled me to
think why he was doing this.  But at the instant I heard Harker's
quick exclamation as he woke to partial consciousness, and turned to
the bed.  On his face, as there might well be, was a look of wild
amazement.  He seemed dazed for a few seconds, and then full
consciousness seemed to burst upon him all at once, and he started up.

His wife was aroused by the quick movement, and turned to him with her
arms stretched out, as though to embrace him.  Instantly, however, she
drew them in again, and putting her elbows together, held her hands
before her face, and shuddered till the bed beneath her shook.

"In God's name what does this mean?" Harker cried out.  "Dr. Seward,
Dr. Van Helsing, what is it?  What has happened?  What is wrong?  Mina,
dear what is it?  What does that blood mean?  My God, my God!  Has it
come to this!"  And, raising himself to his knees, he beat his hands
wildly together.  "Good God help us!  Help her!  Oh, help her!"

With a quick movement he jumped from bed, and began to pull on his
clothes, all the man in him awake at the need for instant exertion.
"What has happened?  Tell me all about it!" he cried without pausing.
"Dr. Van Helsing, you love Mina, I know.  Oh, do something to save her.
It cannot have gone too far yet.  Guard her while I look for him!"

His wife, through her terror and horror and distress, saw some sure
danger to him.  Instantly forgetting her own grief, she seized hold of
him and cried out.

"No!  No!  Jonathan, you must not leave me.  I have suffered enough
tonight, God knows, without the dread of his harming you.  You must
stay with me.  Stay with these friends who will watch over you!"  Her
expression became frantic as she spoke.  And, he yielding to her, she
pulled him down sitting on the bedside, and clung to him fiercely.

Van Helsing and I tried to calm them both.  The Professor held up his
golden crucifix, and said with wonderful calmness, "Do not fear, my
dear.  We are here, and whilst this is close to you no foul thing can
approach.  You are safe for tonight, and we must be calm and take
counsel together."

She shuddered and was silent, holding down her head on her husband's
breast.  When she raised it, his white nightrobe was stained with
blood where her lips had touched, and where the thin open wound in the
neck had sent forth drops.  The instant she saw it she drew back, with
a low wail, and whispered, amidst choking sobs.

"Unclean, unclean!  I must touch him or kiss him no more.  Oh, that it
should be that it is I who am now his worst enemy, and whom he may
have most cause to fear."

To this he spoke out resolutely, "Nonsense, Mina.  It is a shame to me
to hear such a word.  I would not hear it of you.  And I shall not
hear it from you.  May God judge me by my deserts, and punish me with
more bitter suffering than even this hour, if by any act or will of
mine anything ever come between us!"

He put out his arms and folded her to his breast.  And for a while she
lay there sobbing.  He looked at us over her bowed head, with eyes
that blinked damply above his quivering nostrils.  His mouth was set
as steel.

After a while her sobs became less frequent and more faint, and then
he said to me, speaking with a studied calmness which I felt tried his
nervous power to the utmost.

"And now, Dr. Seward, tell me all about it.  Too well I know the broad
fact.  Tell me all that has been."

I told him exactly what had happened and he listened with seeming
impassiveness, but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told
how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible
and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast.
It interested me, even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of
white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands
tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair.  Just as I had
finished, Quincey and Godalming knocked at the door.  They entered in
obedience to our summons.  Van Helsing looked at me questioningly.  I
understood him to mean if we were to take advantage of their coming to
divert if possible the thoughts of the unhappy husband and wife from
each other and from themselves.  So on nodding acquiescence to him he
asked them what they had seen or done.  To which Lord Godalming
answered.

"I could not see him anywhere in the passage, or in any of our rooms.
I looked in the study but, though he had been there, he had gone.  He
had, however . . ."  He stopped suddenly, looking at the poor drooping
figure on the bed.

Van Helsing said gravely, "Go on, friend Arthur.  We want here no more
concealments.  Our hope now is in knowing all.  Tell freely!"

So Art went on, "He had been there, and though it could only have been
for a few seconds, he made rare hay of the place.  All the manuscript
had been burned, and the blue flames were flickering amongst the white
ashes.  The cylinders of your phonograph too were thrown on the fire,
and the wax had helped the flames."

Here I interrupted.  "Thank God there is the other copy in the safe!"

His face lit for a moment, but fell again as he went on.  "I ran
downstairs then, but could see no sign of him.  I looked into
Renfield's room, but there was no trace there except . . ."  Again he
paused.

"Go on," said Harker hoarsely.  So he bowed his head and moistening his
lips with his tongue, added, "except that the poor fellow is dead."

Mrs. Harker raised her head, looking from one to the other of us she
said solemnly, "God's will be done!"

I could not but feel that Art was keeping back something.  But, as I
took it that it was with a purpose, I said nothing.

Van Helsing turned to Morris and asked, "And you, friend Quincey, have
you any to tell?"

"A little," he answered.  "It may be much eventually, but at present I
can't say.  I thought it well to know if possible where the Count
would go when he left the house.  I did not see him, but I saw a bat
rise from Renfield's window, and flap westward.  I expected to see him
in some shape go back to Carfax, but he evidently sought some other
lair.  He will not be back tonight, for the sky is reddening in the
east, and the dawn is close.  We must work tomorrow!"

He said the latter words through his shut teeth.  For a space of
perhaps a couple of minutes there was silence, and I could fancy that
I could hear the sound of our hearts beating.

Then Van Helsing said, placing his hand tenderly on Mrs. Harker's
head, "And now, Madam Mina, poor dear, dear, Madam Mina, tell us
exactly what happened.  God knows that I do not want that you be
pained, but it is need that we know all.  For now more than ever has
all work to be done quick and sharp, and in deadly earnest.  The day
is close to us that must end all, if it may be so, and now is the
chance that we may live and learn."

The poor dear lady shivered, and I could see the tension of her nerves
as she clasped her husband closer to her and bent her head lower and
lower still on his breast.  Then she raised her head proudly, and held
out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and after stooping and
kissing it reverently, held it fast.  The other hand was locked in
that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her
protectingly.  After a pause in which she was evidently ordering her
thoughts, she began.

"I took the sleeping draught which you had so kindly given me, but for
a long time it did not act.  I seemed to become more wakeful, and
myriads of horrible fancies began to crowd in upon my mind.  All of
them connected with death, and vampires, with blood, and pain, and
trouble."  Her husband involuntarily groaned as she turned to him and
said lovingly, "Do not fret, dear.  You must be brave and strong, and
help me through the horrible task.  If you only knew what an effort it
is to me to tell of this fearful thing at all, you would understand
how much I need your help.  Well, I saw I must try to help the
medicine to its work with my will, if it was to do me any good, so I
resolutely set myself to sleep.  Sure enough sleep must soon have come
to me, for I remember no more.  Jonathan coming in had not waked me,
for he lay by my side when next I remember.  There was in the room the
same thin white mist that I had before noticed.  But I forget now if
you know of this.  You will find it in my diary which I shall show you
later.  I felt the same vague terror which had come to me before and
the same sense of some presence.  I turned to wake Jonathan, but found
that he slept so soundly that it seemed as if it was he who had taken
the sleeping draught, and not I.  I tried, but I could not wake him.
This caused me a great fear, and I looked around terrified.  Then
indeed, my heart sank within me.  Beside the bed, as if he had stepped
out of the mist, or rather as if the mist had turned into his figure,
for it had entirely disappeared, stood a tall, thin man, all in
black.  I knew him at once from the description of the others.  The
waxen face, the high aquiline nose, on which the light fell in a thin
white line, the parted red lips, with the sharp white teeth showing
between, and the red eyes that I had seemed to see in the sunset on
the windows of St. Mary's Church at Whitby.  I knew, too, the red scar
on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him.  For an instant my
heart stood still, and I would have screamed out, only that I was
paralyzed.  In the pause he spoke in a sort of keen, cutting whisper,
pointing as he spoke to Jonathan.

"'Silence!  If you make a sound I shall take him and dash his brains
out before your very eyes.'  I was appalled and was too bewildered to
do or say anything.  With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my
shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying
as he did so, 'First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions.
You may as well be quiet.  It is not the first time, or the second,
that your veins have appeased my thirst!'  I was bewildered, and
strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him.  I suppose it is a
part of the horrible curse that such is, when his touch is on his
victim.  And oh, my God, my God, pity me!  He placed his reeking lips
upon my throat!"  Her husband groaned again.  She clasped his hand
harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one,
and went on.

"I felt my strength fading away, and I was in a half swoon.  How long
this horrible thing lasted I know not, but it seemed that a long time
must have passed before he took his foul, awful, sneering mouth away.
I saw it drip with the fresh blood!"  The remembrance seemed for a while
to overpower her, and she drooped and would have sunk down but for her
husband's sustaining arm.  With a great effort she recovered herself
and went on.

"Then he spoke to me mockingly, 'And so you, like the others, would
play your brains against mine.  You would help these men to hunt me
and frustrate me in my design!  You know now, and they know in part
already, and will know in full before long, what it is to cross my
path.  They should have kept their energies for use closer to home.
Whilst they played wits against me, against me who commanded nations,
and intrigued for them, and fought for them, hundreds of years before
they were born, I was countermining them.  And you, their best beloved
one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my
kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my
companion and my helper.  You shall be avenged in turn, for not one of
them but shall minister to your needs.  But as yet you are to be
punished for what you have done.  You have aided in thwarting me.  Now
you shall come to my call.  When my brain says "Come!" to you, you
shall cross land or sea to do my bidding.  And to that end this!'

"With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails
opened a vein in his breast.  When the blood began to spurt out, he
took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other
seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must
either suffocate or swallow some to the . . . Oh, my God!  My God!
What have I done?  What have I done to deserve such a fate, I who have
tried to walk in meekness and righteousness all my days.  God pity
me!  Look down on a poor soul in worse than mortal peril.  And in
mercy pity those to whom she is dear!"  Then she began to rub her lips
as though to cleanse them from pollution.

As she was telling her terrible story, the eastern sky began to
quicken, and everything became more and more clear.  Harker was still
and quiet; but over his face, as the awful narrative went on, came a
grey look which deepened and deepened in the morning light, till when
the first red streak of the coming dawn shot up, the flesh stood
darkly out against the whitening hair.

We have arranged that one of us is to stay within call of the unhappy
pair till we can meet together and arrange about taking action.

Of this I am sure.  The sun rises today on no more miserable house in
all the great round of its daily course.




CHAPTER 22


JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

3 October.--As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary.  It
is now six o'clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour
and take something to eat, for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are
agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best.  Our best will
be, God knows, required today.  I must keep writing at every chance,
for I dare not stop to think.  All, big and little, must go down.
Perhaps at the end the little things may teach us most.  The teaching,
big or little, could not have landed Mina or me anywhere worse than we
are today.  However, we must trust and hope.  Poor Mina told me just
now, with the tears running down her dear cheeks, that it is in
trouble and trial that our faith is tested.  That we must keep on
trusting, and that God will aid us up to the end.  The end!  Oh my
God!  What end? . . . To work!  To work!

When Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward had come back from seeing poor
Renfield, we went gravely into what was to be done.  First, Dr. Seward
told us that when he and Dr. Van Helsing had gone down to the room
below they had found Renfield lying on the floor, all in a heap.  His
face was all bruised and crushed in, and the bones of the neck were
broken.

Dr. Seward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if he
had heard anything.  He said that he had been sitting down, he
confessed to half dozing, when he heard loud voices in the room, and
then Renfield had called out loudly several times, "God!  God!  God!"
After that there was a sound of falling, and when he entered the room
he found him lying on the floor, face down, just as the doctors had
seen him.  Van Helsing asked if he had heard "voices" or "a voice,"
and he said he could not say.  That at first it had seemed to him as
if there were two, but as there was no one in the room it could have
been only one.  He could swear to it, if required, that the word "God"
was spoken by the patient.

Dr. Seward said to us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go
into the matter.  The question of an inquest had to be considered, and
it would never do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe
it.  As it was, he thought that on the attendant's evidence he could
give a certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bed.  In
case the coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest,
necessarily to the same result.

When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next
step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full
confidence.  That nothing of any sort, no matter how painful, should
be kept from her.  She herself agreed as to its wisdom, and it was
pitiful to see her so brave and yet so sorrowful, and in such a depth
of despair.

"There must be no concealment," she said.  "Alas!  We have had too
much already.  And besides there is nothing in all the world that can
give me more pain than I have already endured, than I suffer now!
Whatever may happen, it must be of new hope or of new courage to me!"

Van Helsing was looking at her fixedly as she spoke, and said,
suddenly but quietly, "But dear Madam Mina, are you not afraid.  Not
for yourself, but for others from yourself, after what has happened?"

Her face grew set in its lines, but her eyes shone with the devotion
of a martyr as she answered, "Ah no!  For my mind is made up!"

"To what?" he asked gently, whilst we were all very still, for each in
our own way we had a sort of vague idea of what she meant.

Her answer came with direct simplicity, as though she was simply
stating a fact, "Because if I find in myself, and I shall watch keenly
for it, a sign of harm to any that I love, I shall die!"

"You would not kill yourself?" he asked, hoarsely.

"I would.  If there were no friend who loved me, who would save me
such a pain, and so desperate an effort!"  She looked at him meaningly
as she spoke.

He was sitting down, but now he rose and came close to her and put his
hand on her head as he said solemnly.  "My child, there is such an one
if it were for your good.  For myself I could hold it in my account
with God to find such an euthanasia for you, even at this moment if it
were best.  Nay, were it safe!  But my child . . ."

For a moment he seemed choked, and a great sob rose in his throat.  He
gulped it down and went on, "There are here some who would stand
between you and death.  You must not die.  You must not die by any
hand, but least of all your own.  Until the other, who has fouled your
sweet life, is true dead you must not die.  For if he is still with
the quick Undead, your death would make you even as he is.  No, you
must live!  You must struggle and strive to live, though death would
seem a boon unspeakable.  You must fight Death himself, though he come
to you in pain or in joy.  By the day, or the night, in safety or in
peril!  On your living soul I charge you that you do not die.  Nay,
nor think of death, till this great evil be past."

The poor dear grew white as death, and shook and shivered, as I have
seen a quicksand shake and shiver at the incoming of the tide.  We
were all silent.  We could do nothing.  At length she grew more calm
and turning to him said sweetly, but oh so sorrowfully, as she held
out her hand, "I promise you, my dear friend, that if God will let me
live, I shall strive to do so.  Till, if it may be in His good time,
this horror may have passed away from me."

She was so good and brave that we all felt that our hearts were
strengthened to work and endure for her, and we began to discuss what
we were to do.  I told her that she was to have all the papers in the
safe, and all the papers or diaries and phonographs we might hereafter
use, and was to keep the record as she had done before.  She was
pleased with the prospect of anything to do, if "pleased" could be
used in connection with so grim an interest.

As usual Van Helsing had thought ahead of everyone else, and was
prepared with an exact ordering of our work.

"It is perhaps well," he said, "that at our meeting after our visit to
Carfax we decided not to do anything with the earth boxes that lay
there.  Had we done so, the Count must have guessed our purpose, and
would doubtless have taken measures in advance to frustrate such an
effort with regard to the others.  But now he does not know our
intentions.  Nay, more, in all probability, he does not know that such
a power exists to us as can sterilize his lairs, so that he cannot use
them as of old.

"We are now so much further advanced in our knowledge as to their
disposition that, when we have examined the house in Piccadilly, we may
track the very last of them.  Today then, is ours, and in it rests our
hope.  The sun that rose on our sorrow this morning guards us in its
course.  Until it sets tonight, that monster must retain whatever form
he now has.  He is confined within the limitations of his earthly
envelope.  He cannot melt into thin air nor disappear through cracks
or chinks or crannies.  If he go through a doorway, he must open the
door like a mortal.  And so we have this day to hunt out all his lairs
and sterilize them.  So we shall, if we have not yet catch him and
destroy him, drive him to bay in some place where the catching and the
destroying shall be, in time, sure."

Here I started up for I could not contain myself at the thought that
the minutes and seconds so preciously laden with Mina's life and
happiness were flying from us, since whilst we talked action was
impossible.  But Van Helsing held up his hand warningly.

"Nay, friend Jonathan," he said, "in this, the quickest way home is
the longest way, so your proverb say.  We shall all act and act with
desperate quick, when the time has come.  But think, in all probable
the key of the situation is in that house in Piccadilly.  The Count
may have many houses which he has bought.  Of them he will have deeds
of purchase, keys and other things.  He will have paper that he write
on.  He will have his book of cheques.  There are many belongings that
he must have somewhere.  Why not in this place so central, so quiet,
where he come and go by the front or the back at all hours, when in
the very vast of the traffic there is none to notice.  We shall go
there and search that house.  And when we learn what it holds, then we
do what our friend Arthur call, in his phrases of hunt 'stop the
earths' and so we run down our old fox, so?  Is it not?"

"Then let us come at once," I cried, "we are wasting the precious,
precious time!"

The Professor did not move, but simply said, "And how are we to get
into that house in Piccadilly?"

"Any way!" I cried.  "We shall break in if need be."

"And your police?  Where will they be, and what will they say?"

I was staggered, but I knew that if he wished to delay he had a good
reason for it.  So I said, as quietly as I could, "Don't wait more
than need be.  You know, I am sure, what torture I am in."

"Ah, my child, that I do.  And indeed there is no wish of me to add to
your anguish.  But just think, what can we do, until all the world be
at movement.  Then will come our time.  I have thought and thought,
and it seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all.  Now we
wish to get into the house, but we have no key.  Is it not so?"  I
nodded.

"Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and
could not still get in.  And think there was to you no conscience of
the housebreaker, what would you do?"

"I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the
lock for me."

"And your police, they would interfere, would they not?"

"Oh no!  Not if they knew the man was properly employed."

"Then," he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, "all that is in doubt
is the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as
to whether or not that employer has a good conscience or a bad one.
Your police must indeed be zealous men and clever, oh so clever, in
reading the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter.  No,
no, my friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty
houses in this your London, or of any city in the world, and if you do
it as such things are rightly done, and at the time such things are
rightly done, no one will interfere.  I have read of a gentleman who
owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer
to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar come and broke
window at back and got in.  Then he went and made open the shutters in
front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of
the police.  Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it,
and put up big notice.  And when the day come he sell off by a great
auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them.  Then he go
to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he
pull it down and take all away within a certain time.  And your police
and other authority help him all they can.  And when that owner come
back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where
his house had been.  This was all done en regle, and in our work we
shall be en regle too.  We shall not go so early that the policemen
who have then little to think of, shall deem it strange.  But we shall
go after ten o'clock, when there are many about, and such things would
be done were we indeed owners of the house."

I could not but see how right he was and the terrible despair of
Mina's face became relaxed in thought.  There was hope in such good
counsel.

Van Helsing went on, "When once within that house we may find more
clues.  At any rate some of us can remain there whilst the rest find
the other places where there be more earth boxes, at Bermondsey and
Mile End."

Lord Godalming stood up.  "I can be of some use here," he said.  "I
shall wire to my people to have horses and carriages where they will
be most convenient."

"Look here, old fellow," said Morris, "it is a capital idea to have
all ready in case we want to go horse backing, but don't you think
that one of your snappy carriages with its heraldic adornments in a
byway of Walworth or Mile End would attract too much attention for our
purpose?  It seems to me that we ought to take cabs when we go south
or east.  And even leave them somewhere near the neighbourhood we are
going to."

"Friend Quincey is right!" said the Professor.  "His head is what you
call in plane with the horizon.  It is a difficult thing that we go to
do, and we do not want no peoples to watch us if so it may."

Mina took a growing interest in everything and I was rejoiced to see
that the exigency of affairs was helping her to forget for a time the
terrible experience of the night.  She was very, very pale, almost
ghastly, and so thin that her lips were drawn away, showing her teeth
in somewhat of prominence.  I did not mention this last, lest it
should give her needless pain, but it made my blood run cold in my
veins to think of what had occurred with poor Lucy when the Count had
sucked her blood.  As yet there was no sign of the teeth growing
sharper, but the time as yet was short, and there was time for fear.

When we came to the discussion of the sequence of our efforts and of
the disposition of our forces, there were new sources of doubt.  It
was finally agreed that before starting for Piccadilly we should
destroy the Count's lair close at hand.  In case he should find it out
too soon, we should thus be still ahead of him in our work of
destruction.  And his presence in his purely material shape, and at
his weakest, might give us some new clue.

As to the disposal of forces, it was suggested by the Professor that,
after our visit to Carfax, we should all enter the house in
Piccadilly.  That the two doctors and I should remain there, whilst
Lord Godalming and Quincey found the lairs at Walworth and Mile End
and destroyed them.  It was possible, if not likely, the Professor
urged, that the Count might appear in Piccadilly during the day, and
that if so we might be able to cope with him then and there.  At any
rate, we might be able to follow him in force.  To this plan I
strenuously objected, and so far as my going was concerned, for I said
that I intended to stay and protect Mina.  I thought that my mind was
made up on the subject, but Mina would not listen to my objection.  She
said that there might be some law matter in which I could be useful.
That amongst the Count's papers might be some clue which I could
understand out of my experience in Transylvania.  And that, as it was,
all the strength we could muster was required to cope with the Count's
extraordinary power.  I had to give in, for Mina's resolution was
fixed.  She said that it was the last hope for her that we should all
work together.

"As for me," she said, "I have no fear.  Things have been as bad as
they can be.  And whatever may happen must have in it some element of
hope or comfort.  Go, my husband!  God can, if He wishes it, guard me
as well alone as with any one present."

So I started up crying out, "Then in God's name let us come at once,
for we are losing time.  The Count may come to Piccadilly earlier than
we think."

"Not so!" said Van Helsing, holding up his hand.

"But why?" I asked.

"Do you forget," he said, with actually a smile, "that last night he
banqueted heavily, and will sleep late?"

Did I forget!  Shall I ever . . . can I ever!  Can any of us ever
forget that terrible scene!  Mina struggled hard to keep her brave
countenance, but the pain overmastered her and she put her hands
before her face, and shuddered whilst she moaned.  Van Helsing had not
intended to recall her frightful experience.  He had simply lost sight
of her and her part in the affair in his intellectual effort.

When it struck him what he said, he was horrified at his
thoughtlessness and tried to comfort her.

"Oh, Madam Mina," he said, "dear, dear, Madam Mina, alas!  That I of
all who so reverence you should have said anything so forgetful.  These
stupid old lips of mine and this stupid old head do not deserve so,
but you will forget it, will you not?"  He bent low beside her as he
spoke.

She took his hand, and looking at him through her tears, said
hoarsely, "No, I shall not forget, for it is well that I remember.
And with it I have so much in memory of you that is sweet, that I take
it all together.  Now, you must all be going soon.  Breakfast is
ready, and we must all eat that we may be strong."

Breakfast was a strange meal to us all.  We tried to be cheerful and
encourage each other, and Mina was the brightest and most cheerful of
us.  When it was over, Van Helsing stood up and said, "Now, my dear
friends, we go forth to our terrible enterprise.  Are we all armed, as
we were on that night when first we visited our enemy's lair.  Armed
against ghostly as well as carnal attack?"

We all assured him.

"Then it is well.  Now, Madam Mina, you are in any case quite safe
here until the sunset.  And before then we shall return . . . if . . .
We shall return!  But before we go let me see you armed against personal
attack.  I have myself, since you came down, prepared your chamber by
the placing of things of which we know, so that He may not enter.  Now
let me guard yourself.  On your forehead I touch this piece of Sacred
Wafer in the name of the Father, the Son, and . . ."

There was a fearful scream which almost froze our hearts to hear.  As
he had placed the Wafer on Mina's forehead, it had seared it . . . had
burned into the flesh as though it had been a piece of white-hot metal.
My poor darling's brain had told her the significance of the fact as
quickly as her nerves received the pain of it, and the two so
overwhelmed her that her overwrought nature had its voice in that
dreadful scream.

But the words to her thought came quickly.  The echo of the scream had
not ceased to ring on the air when there came the reaction, and she
sank on her knees on the floor in an agony of abasement.  Pulling her
beautiful hair over her face, as the leper of old his mantle, she
wailed out.

"Unclean!  Unclean!  Even the Almighty shuns my polluted flesh!  I
must bear this mark of shame upon my forehead until the Judgement
Day."

They all paused.  I had thrown myself beside her in an agony of
helpless grief, and putting my arms around held her tight.  For a few
minutes our sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around
us turned away their eyes that ran tears silently.  Then Van Helsing
turned and said gravely.  So gravely that I could not help feeling
that he was in some way inspired, and was stating things outside
himself.

"It may be that you may have to bear that mark till God himself see
fit, as He most surely shall, on the Judgement Day, to redress all
wrongs of the earth and of His children that He has placed thereon.
And oh, Madam Mina, my dear, my dear, may we who love you be there to
see, when that red scar, the sign of God's knowledge of what has been,
shall pass away, and leave your forehead as pure as the heart we know.
For so surely as we live, that scar shall pass away when God sees
right to lift the burden that is hard upon us.  Till then we bear our
Cross, as His Son did in obedience to His Will.  It may be that we are
chosen instruments of His good pleasure, and that we ascend to His
bidding as that other through stripes and shame.  Through tears and
blood.  Through doubts and fear, and all that makes the difference
between God and man."

There was hope in his words, and comfort.  And they made for
resignation.  Mina and I both felt so, and simultaneously we each took
one of the old man's hands and bent over and kissed it.  Then without
a word we all knelt down together, and all holding hands, swore to be
true to each other.  We men pledged ourselves to raise the veil of
sorrow from the head of her whom, each in his own way, we loved.  And
we prayed for help and guidance in the terrible task which lay before
us.  It was then time to start.  So I said farewell to Mina, a parting
which neither of us shall forget to our dying day, and we set out.

To one thing I have made up my mind.  If we find out that Mina must be
a vampire in the end, then she shall not go into that unknown and
terrible land alone.  I suppose it is thus that in old times one
vampire meant many.  Just as their hideous bodies could only rest in
sacred earth, so the holiest love was the recruiting sergeant for
their ghastly ranks.

We entered Carfax without trouble and found all things the same as on
the first occasion.  It was hard to believe that amongst so prosaic
surroundings of neglect and dust and decay there was any ground for
such fear as already we knew.  Had not our minds been made up, and had
there not been terrible memories to spur us on, we could hardly have
proceeded with our task.  We found no papers, or any sign of use in
the house.  And in the old chapel the great boxes looked just as we
had seen them last.

Dr. Van Helsing said to us solemnly as we stood before him, "And now,
my friends, we have a duty here to do.  We must sterilize this earth,
so sacred of holy memories, that he has brought from a far distant
land for such fell use.  He has chosen this earth because it has been
holy.  Thus we defeat him with his own weapon, for we make it more
holy still.  It was sanctified to such use of man, now we sanctify it
to God."

As he spoke he took from his bag a screwdriver and a wrench, and very
soon the top of one of the cases was thrown open.  The earth smelled
musty and close, but we did not somehow seem to mind, for our
attention was concentrated on the Professor.  Taking from his box a
piece of the Sacred Wafer he laid it reverently on the earth, and then
shutting down the lid began to screw it home, we aiding him as he
worked.

One by one we treated in the same way each of the great boxes, and
left them as we had found them to all appearance.  But in each was a
portion of the Host.  When we closed the door behind us, the Professor
said solemnly, "So much is already done.  It may be that with all the
others we can be so successful, then the sunset of this evening may
shine of Madam Mina's forehead all white as ivory and with no stain!"

As we passed across the lawn on our way to the station to catch our
train we could see the front of the asylum.  I looked eagerly, and in
the window of my own room saw Mina.  I waved my hand to her, and
nodded to tell that our work there was successfully accomplished.  She
nodded in reply to show that she understood.  The last I saw, she was
waving her hand in farewell.  It was with a heavy heart that we sought
the station and just caught the train, which was steaming in as we
reached the platform.  I have written this in the train.


Piccadilly, 12:30 o'clock.--Just before we reached Fenchurch Street
Lord Godalming said to me, "Quincey and I will find a locksmith.  You
had better not come with us in case there should be any difficulty.
For under the circumstances it wouldn't seem so bad for us to break
into an empty house.  But you are a solicitor and the Incorporated Law
Society might tell you that you should have known better."

I demurred as to my not sharing any danger even of odium, but he went
on, "Besides, it will attract less attention if there are not too many
of us.  My title will make it all right with the locksmith, and with
any policeman that may come along.  You had better go with Jack and
the Professor and stay in the Green Park.  Somewhere in sight of the
house, and when you see the door opened and the smith has gone away,
do you all come across.  We shall be on the lookout for you, and shall
let you in."

"The advice is good!" said Van Helsing, so we said no more.  Godalming
and Morris hurried off in a cab, we following in another.  At the
corner of Arlington Street our contingent got out and strolled into
the Green Park.  My heart beat as I saw the house on which so much of
our hope was centred, looming up grim and silent in its deserted
condition amongst its more lively and spruce-looking neighbours.  We
sat down on a bench within good view, and began to smoke cigars so as
to attract as little attention as possible.  The minutes seemed to
pass with leaden feet as we waited for the coming of the others.

At length we saw a four-wheeler drive up.  Out of it, in leisurely
fashion, got Lord Godalming and Morris.  And down from the box
descended a thick-set working man with his rush-woven basket of tools.
Morris paid the cabman, who touched his hat and drove away.  Together
the two ascended the steps, and Lord Godalming pointed out what he
wanted done.  The workman took off his coat leisurely and hung it on
one of the spikes of the rail, saying something to a policeman who
just then sauntered along.  The policeman nodded acquiescence, and the
man kneeling down placed his bag beside him.  After searching through
it, he took out a selection of tools which he proceeded to lay beside
him in orderly fashion.  Then he stood up, looked in the keyhole, blew
into it, and turning to his employers, made some remark.  Lord
Godalming smiled, and the man lifted a good sized bunch of keys.
Selecting one of them, he began to probe the lock, as if feeling his
way with it.  After fumbling about for a bit he tried a second, and
then a third.  All at once the door opened under a slight push from
him, and he and the two others entered the hall.  We sat still.  My
own cigar burnt furiously, but Van Helsing's went cold altogether.  We
waited patiently as we saw the workman come out and bring his bag.
Then he held the door partly open, steadying it with his knees, whilst
he fitted a key to the lock.  This he finally handed to Lord
Godalming, who took out his purse and gave him something.  The man
touched his hat, took his bag, put on his coat and departed.  Not a
soul took the slightest notice of the whole transaction.

When the man had fairly gone, we three crossed the street and knocked
at the door.  It was immediately opened by Quincey Morris, beside whom
stood Lord Godalming lighting a cigar.

"The place smells so vilely," said the latter as we came in.  It did
indeed smell vilely.  Like the old chapel at Carfax.  And with our
previous experience it was plain to us that the Count had been using
the place pretty freely.  We moved to explore the house, all keeping
together in case of attack, for we knew we had a strong and wily enemy
to deal with, and as yet we did not know whether the Count might not
be in the house.

In the dining room, which lay at the back of the hall, we found eight
boxes of earth.  Eight boxes only out of the nine which we sought!
Our work was not over, and would never be until we should have found
the missing box.

First we opened the shutters of the window which looked out across a
narrow stone flagged yard at the blank face of a stable, pointed to
look like the front of a miniature house.  There were no windows in
it, so we were not afraid of being overlooked.  We did not lose any
time in examining the chests.  With the tools which we had brought
with us we opened them, one by one, and treated them as we had treated
those others in the old chapel.  It was evident to us that the Count
was not at present in the house, and we proceeded to search for any of
his effects.

After a cursory glance at the rest of the rooms, from basement to
attic, we came to the conclusion that the dining room contained any
effects which might belong to the Count.  And so we proceeded to
minutely examine them.  They lay in a sort of orderly disorder on the
great dining room table.

There were title deeds of the Piccadilly house in a great bundle,
deeds of the purchase of the houses at Mile End and Bermondsey,
notepaper, envelopes, and pens and ink.  All were covered up in thin
wrapping paper to keep them from the dust.  There were also a clothes
brush, a brush and comb, and a jug and basin.  The latter containing
dirty water which was reddened as if with blood.  Last of all was a
little heap of keys of all sorts and sizes, probably those belonging
to the other houses.

When we had examined this last find, Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris
taking accurate notes of the various addresses of the houses in the
East and the South, took with them the keys in a great bunch, and set
out to destroy the boxes in these places.  The rest of us are, with
what patience we can, waiting their return, or the coming of the
Count.




CHAPTER 23


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

3 October.--The time seemed terribly long whilst we were waiting for
the coming of Godalming and Quincey Morris.  The Professor tried to
keep our minds active by using them all the time.  I could see his
beneficent purpose, by the side glances which he threw from time to
time at Harker.  The poor fellow is overwhelmed in a misery that is
appalling to see.  Last night he was a frank, happy-looking man, with
strong, youthful face, full of energy, and with dark brown hair.
Today he is a drawn, haggard old man, whose white hair matches well
with the hollow burning eyes and grief-written lines of his face.  His
energy is still intact.  In fact, he is like a living flame.  This may
yet be his salvation, for if all go well, it will tide him over the
despairing period.  He will then, in a kind of way, wake again to the
realities of life.  Poor fellow, I thought my own trouble was bad
enough, but his . . . !

The Professor knows this well enough, and is doing his best to keep
his mind active.  What he has been saying was, under the
circumstances, of absorbing interest.  So well as I can remember, here
it is:

"I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands,
all the papers relating to this monster, and the more I have studied,
the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out.  All through
there are signs of his advance.  Not only of his power, but of his
knowledge of it.  As I learned from the researches of my friend
Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man.  Soldier,
statesman, and alchemist--which latter was the highest development of
the science knowledge of his time.  He had a mighty brain, a learning
beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse.  He
dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of
knowledge of his time that he did not essay.

"Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death.  Though it
would seem that memory was not all complete.  In some faculties of
mind he has been, and is, only a child.  But he is growing, and some
things that were childish at the first are now of man's stature.  He
is experimenting, and doing it well.  And if it had not been that we
have crossed his path he would be yet, he may be yet if we fail, the
father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead
through Death, not Life."

Harker groaned and said, "And this is all arrayed against my darling!
But how is he experimenting?  The knowledge may help us to defeat
him!"

"He has all along, since his coming, been trying his power, slowly but
surely.  That big child-brain of his is working.  Well for us, it is
as yet a child-brain.  For had he dared, at the first, to attempt
certain things he would long ago have been beyond our power.  However,
he means to succeed, and a man who has centuries before him can afford
to wait and to go slow.  Festina lente may well be his motto."

"I fail to understand," said Harker wearily.  "Oh, do be more plain to
me!  Perhaps grief and trouble are dulling my brain."

The Professor laid his hand tenderly on his shoulder as he spoke, "Ah,
my child, I will be plain.  Do you not see how, of late, this monster
has been creeping into knowledge experimentally.  How he has been
making use of the zoophagous patient to effect his entry into friend
John's home.  For your Vampire, though in all afterwards he can come
when and how he will, must at the first make entry only when asked
thereto by an inmate.  But these are not his most important
experiments.  Do we not see how at the first all these so great boxes
were moved by others.  He knew not then but that must be so.  But all
the time that so great child-brain of his was growing, and he began to
consider whether he might not himself move the box.  So he began to
help.  And then, when he found that this be all right, he try to move
them all alone.  And so he progress, and he scatter these graves of
him.  And none but he know where they are hidden.

"He may have intend to bury them deep in the ground.  So that only he
use them in the night, or at such time as he can change his form, they
do him equal well, and none may know these are his hiding place!  But,
my child, do not despair, this knowledge came to him just too late!
Already all of his lairs but one be sterilize as for him.  And before
the sunset this shall be so.  Then he have no place where he can move
and hide.  I delayed this morning that so we might be sure.  Is there
not more at stake for us than for him?  Then why not be more careful
than him?  By my clock it is one hour and already, if all be well,
friend Arthur and Quincey are on their way to us.  Today is our day,
and we must go sure, if slow, and lose no chance.  See!  There are
five of us when those absent ones return."

Whilst we were speaking we were startled by a knock at the hall door,
the double postman's knock of the telegraph boy.  We all moved out to
the hall with one impulse, and Van Helsing, holding up his hand to us
to keep silence, stepped to the door and opened it.  The boy handed in
a dispatch.  The Professor closed the door again, and after looking at
the direction, opened it and read aloud.

"Look out for D.  He has just now, 12:45, come from Carfax
hurriedly and hastened towards the South.  He seems to be
going the round and may want to see you:  Mina."

There was a pause, broken by Jonathan Harker's voice, "Now, God be
thanked, we shall soon meet!"

Van Helsing turned to him quickly and said, "God will act in His own
way and time.  Do not fear, and do not rejoice as yet.  For what we
wish for at the moment may be our own undoings."

"I care for nothing now," he answered hotly, "except to wipe out this
brute from the face of creation.  I would sell my soul to do it!"

"Oh, hush, hush, my child!" said Van Helsing.  "God does not purchase
souls in this wise, and the Devil, though he may purchase, does not
keep faith.  But God is merciful and just, and knows your pain and
your devotion to that dear Madam Mina.  Think you, how her pain would
be doubled, did she but hear your wild words.  Do not fear any of us,
we are all devoted to this cause, and today shall see the end.  The
time is coming for action.  Today this Vampire is limit to the powers
of man, and till sunset he may not change.  It will take him time to
arrive here, see it is twenty minutes past one, and there are yet some
times before he can hither come, be he never so quick.  What we must
hope for is that my Lord Arthur and Quincey arrive first."

About half an hour after we had received Mrs. Harker's telegram, there
came a quiet, resolute knock at the hall door.  It was just an
ordinary knock, such as is given hourly by thousands of gentlemen, but
it made the Professor's heart and mine beat loudly.  We looked at each
other, and together moved out into the hall.  We each held ready to
use our various armaments, the spiritual in the left hand, the mortal
in the right.  Van Helsing pulled back the latch, and holding the door
half open, stood back, having both hands ready for action.  The
gladness of our hearts must have shown upon our faces when on the
step, close to the door, we saw Lord Godalming and Quincey Morris.
They came quickly in and closed the door behind them, the former
saying, as they moved along the hall:

"It is all right.  We found both places.  Six boxes in each and we
destroyed them all."

"Destroyed?" asked the Professor.

"For him!"  We were silent for a minute, and then Quincey said,
"There's nothing to do but to wait here.  If, however, he doesn't turn
up by five o'clock, we must start off.  For it won't do to leave Mrs.
Harker alone after sunset."

"He will be here before long now," said Van Helsing, who had been
consulting his pocketbook.  "Nota bene, in Madam's telegram he went
south from Carfax.  That means he went to cross the river, and he
could only do so at slack of tide, which should be something before
one o'clock.  That he went south has a meaning for us.  He is as yet
only suspicious, and he went from Carfax first to the place where he
would suspect interference least.  You must have been at Bermondsey
only a short time before him.  That he is not here already shows that
he went to Mile End next.  This took him some time, for he would then
have to be carried over the river in some way.  Believe me, my
friends, we shall not have long to wait now.  We should have ready
some plan of attack, so that we may throw away no chance.  Hush, there
is no time now.  Have all your arms!  Be ready!"  He held up a warning
hand as he spoke, for we all could hear a key softly inserted in the
lock of the hall door.

I could not but admire, even at such a moment, the way in which a
dominant spirit asserted itself.  In all our hunting parties and
adventures in different parts of the world, Quincey Morris had always
been the one to arrange the plan of action, and Arthur and I had been
accustomed to obey him implicitly.  Now, the old habit seemed to be
renewed instinctively.  With a swift glance around the room, he at
once laid out our plan of attack, and without speaking a word, with a
gesture, placed us each in position.  Van Helsing, Harker, and I were
just behind the door, so that when it was opened the Professor could
guard it whilst we two stepped between the incomer and the door.
Godalming behind and Quincey in front stood just out of sight ready to
move in front of the window.  We waited in a suspense that made the
seconds pass with nightmare slowness.  The slow, careful steps came
along the hall.  The Count was evidently prepared for some surprise,
at least he feared it.

Suddenly with a single bound he leaped into the room.  Winning a way
past us before any of us could raise a hand to stay him.  There was
something so pantherlike in the movement, something so unhuman, that
it seemed to sober us all from the shock of his coming.  The first to
act was Harker, who with a quick movement, threw himself before the
door leading into the room in the front of the house.  As the Count
saw us, a horrible sort of snarl passed over his face, showing the
eyeteeth long and pointed.  But the evil smile as quickly passed into
a cold stare of lion-like disdain.  His expression again changed as,
with a single impulse, we all advanced upon him.  It was a pity that
we had not some better organized plan of attack, for even at the
moment I wondered what we were to do.  I did not myself know whether
our lethal weapons would avail us anything.

Harker evidently meant to try the matter, for he had ready his great
Kukri knife and made a fierce and sudden cut at him.  The blow was a
powerful one; only the diabolical quickness of the Count's leap back
saved him.  A second less and the trenchant blade had shorn through
his heart.  As it was, the point just cut the cloth of his coat,
making a wide gap whence a bundle of bank notes and a stream
of gold fell out.  The expression of the Count's face was so hellish,
that for a moment I feared for Harker, though I saw him throw the
terrible knife aloft again for another stroke.  Instinctively I moved
forward with a protective impulse, holding the Crucifix and Wafer in
my left hand.  I felt a mighty power fly along my arm, and it was
without surprise that I saw the monster cower back before a similar
movement made spontaneously by each one of us.  It would be impossible
to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity, of anger and
hellish rage, which came over the Count's face.  His waxen hue became
greenish-yellow by the contrast of his burning eyes, and the red scar
on the forehead showed on the pallid skin like a palpitating wound.
The next instant, with a sinuous dive he swept under Harker's arm, ere
his blow could fall, and grasping a handful of the money from the
floor, dashed across the room, threw himself at the window.  Amid the
crash and glitter of the falling glass, he tumbled into the flagged
area below.  Through the sound of the shivering glass I could hear the
"ting" of the gold, as some of the sovereigns fell on the flagging.

We ran over and saw him spring unhurt from the ground.  He, rushing up
the steps, crossed the flagged yard, and pushed open the stable door.
There he turned and spoke to us.

"You think to baffle me, you with your pale faces all in a row, like
sheep in a butcher's.  You shall be sorry yet, each one of you!  You
think you have left me without a place to rest, but I have more.  My
revenge is just begun!  I spread it over centuries, and time is on my
side.  Your girls that you all love are mine already.  And through
them you and others shall yet be mine, my creatures, to do my bidding
and to be my jackals when I want to feed.  Bah!"

With a contemptuous sneer, he passed quickly through the door, and we
heard the rusty bolt creak as he fastened it behind him.  A door
beyond opened and shut.  The first of us to speak was the Professor.
Realizing the difficulty of following him through the stable, we moved
toward the hall.

"We have learnt something . . . much!  Notwithstanding his brave words,
he fears us.  He fears time, he fears want!  For if not, why he hurry
so?  His very tone betray him, or my ears deceive.  Why take that
money?  You follow quick.  You are hunters of the wild beast, and
understand it so.  For me, I make sure that nothing here may be of use
to him, if so that he returns."

As he spoke he put the money remaining in his pocket, took the title
deeds in the bundle as Harker had left them, and swept the remaining
things into the open fireplace, where he set fire to them with a
match.

Godalming and Morris had rushed out into the yard, and Harker had
lowered himself from the window to follow the Count.  He had, however,
bolted the stable door, and by the time they had forced it open there
was no sign of him.  Van Helsing and I tried to make inquiry at the
back of the house.  But the mews was deserted and no one had seen him
depart.

It was now late in the afternoon, and sunset was not far off.  We had
to recognize that our game was up.  With heavy hearts we agreed with
the Professor when he said, "Let us go back to Madam Mina.  Poor, poor
dear Madam Mina.  All we can do just now is done, and we can there, at
least, protect her.  But we need not despair.  There is but one more
earth box, and we must try to find it.  When that is done all may yet
be well."

I could see that he spoke as bravely as he could to comfort Harker.
The poor fellow was quite broken down, now and again he gave a low
groan which he could not suppress.  He was thinking of his wife.

With sad hearts we came back to my house, where we found Mrs. Harker
waiting us, with an appearance of cheerfulness which did honour to her
bravery and unselfishness.  When she saw our faces, her own became as
pale as death.  For a second or two her eyes were closed as if she
were in secret prayer.

And then she said cheerfully, "I can never thank you all enough.  Oh,
my poor darling!"

As she spoke, she took her husband's grey head in her hands and kissed
it.

"Lay your poor head here and rest it.  All will yet be well, dear!  God
will protect us if He so will it in His good intent."  The poor fellow
groaned.  There was no place for words in his sublime misery.

We had a sort of perfunctory supper together, and I think it cheered
us all up somewhat.  It was, perhaps, the mere animal heat of food to
hungry people, for none of us had eaten anything since breakfast, or
the sense of companionship may have helped us, but anyhow we were all
less miserable, and saw the morrow as not altogether without hope.

True to our promise, we told Mrs. Harker everything which had passed.
And although she grew snowy white at times when danger had seemed to
threaten her husband, and red at others when his devotion to her was
manifested, she listened bravely and with calmness.  When we came to
the part where Harker had rushed at the Count so recklessly, she clung
to her husband's arm, and held it tight as though her clinging could
protect him from any harm that might come.  She said nothing, however,
till the narration was all done, and matters had been brought up to
the present time.

Then without letting go her husband's hand she stood up amongst us and
spoke.  Oh, that I could give any idea of the scene.  Of that sweet,
sweet, good, good woman in all the radiant beauty of her youth and
animation, with the red scar on her forehead, of which she was
conscious, and which we saw with grinding of our teeth, remembering
whence and how it came.  Her loving kindness against our grim hate.
Her tender faith against all our fears and doubting.  And we, knowing
that so far as symbols went, she with all her goodness and purity and
faith, was outcast from God.

"Jonathan," she said, and the word sounded like music on her lips it
was so full of love and tenderness, "Jonathan dear, and you all my
true, true friends, I want you to bear something in mind through all
this dreadful time.  I know that you must fight.  That you must
destroy even as you destroyed the false Lucy so that the true Lucy
might live hereafter.  But it is not a work of hate.  That poor soul
who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all.  Just
think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser
part that his better part may have spiritual immortality.  You must be
pitiful to him, too, though it may not hold your hands from his
destruction."

As she spoke I could see her husband's face darken and draw together,
as though the passion in him were shriveling his being to its core.
Instinctively the clasp on his wife's hand grew closer, till his
knuckles looked white.  She did not flinch from the pain which I knew
she must have suffered, but looked at him with eyes that were more
appealing than ever.

As she stopped speaking he leaped to his feet, almost tearing his hand
from hers as he spoke.

"May God give him into my hand just for long enough to destroy that
earthly life of him which we are aiming at.  If beyond it I could send
his soul forever and ever to burning hell I would do it!"

"Oh, hush!  Oh, hush in the name of the good God.  Don't say such
things, Jonathan, my husband, or you will crush me with fear and
horror.  Just think, my dear . . . I have been thinking all this long,
long day of it . . . that . . . perhaps . . . some day . . . I, too, may
need such pity, and that some other like you, and with equal cause for
anger, may deny it to me!  Oh, my husband!  My husband, indeed I would
have spared you such a thought had there been another way.  But I pray
that God may not have treasured your wild words, except as the
heart-broken wail of a very loving and sorely stricken man.  Oh, God,
let these poor white hairs go in evidence of what he has suffered, who
all his life has done no wrong, and on whom so many sorrows have
come."

We men were all in tears now.  There was no resisting them, and we
wept openly.  She wept, too, to see that her sweeter counsels had
prevailed.  Her husband flung himself on his knees beside her, and
putting his arms round her, hid his face in the folds of her dress.
Van Helsing beckoned to us and we stole out of the room, leaving the
two loving hearts alone with their God.

Before they retired the Professor fixed up the room against any coming
of the Vampire, and assured Mrs. Harker that she might rest in peace.
She tried to school herself to the belief, and manifestly for her
husband's sake, tried to seem content.  It was a brave struggle, and
was, I think and believe, not without its reward.  Van Helsing had
placed at hand a bell which either of them was to sound in case of any
emergency.  When they had retired, Quincey, Godalming, and I arranged
that we should sit up, dividing the night between us, and watch over
the safety of the poor stricken lady.  The first watch falls to
Quincey, so the rest of us shall be off to bed as soon as we can.

Godalming has already turned in, for his is the second watch.  Now
that my work is done I, too, shall go to bed.



JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

3-4 October, close to midnight.--I thought yesterday would never end.
There was over me a yearning for sleep, in some sort of blind belief
that to wake would be to find things changed, and that any change must
now be for the better.  Before we parted, we discussed what our next
step was to be, but we could arrive at no result.  All we knew was
that one earth box remained, and that the Count alone knew where it
was.  If he chooses to lie hidden, he may baffle us for years.  And in
the meantime, the thought is too horrible, I dare not think of it even
now.  This I know, that if ever there was a woman who was all
perfection, that one is my poor wronged darling.  I loved her a
thousand times more for her sweet pity of last night, a pity that made
my own hate of the monster seem despicable.  Surely God will not
permit the world to be the poorer by the loss of such a creature.  This
is hope to me.  We are all drifting reefwards now, and faith is our
only anchor.  Thank God!  Mina is sleeping, and sleeping without
dreams.  I fear what her dreams might be like, with such terrible
memories to ground them in.  She has not been so calm, within my
seeing, since the sunset.  Then, for a while, there came over her face
a repose which was like spring after the blasts of March.  I thought
at the time that it was the softness of the red sunset on her face,
but somehow now I think it has a deeper meaning.  I am not sleepy
myself, though I am weary . . . weary to death.  However, I must try
to sleep.  For there is tomorrow to think of, and there is no rest for
me until . . .


Later--I must have fallen asleep, for I was awakened by Mina, who was
sitting up in bed, with a startled look on her face.  I could see
easily, for we did not leave the room in darkness.  She had placed a
warning hand over my mouth, and now she whispered in my ear, "Hush!
There is someone in the corridor!"  I got up softly, and crossing the
room, gently opened the door.

Just outside, stretched on a mattress, lay Mr. Morris, wide awake.  He
raised a warning hand for silence as he whispered to me, "Hush!  Go
back to bed.  It is all right.  One of us will be here all night.  We
don't mean to take any chances!"

His look and gesture forbade discussion, so I came back and told Mina.
She sighed and positively a shadow of a smile stole over her poor,
pale face as she put her arms round me and said softly, "Oh, thank God
for good brave men!"  With a sigh she sank back again to sleep.  I
write this now as I am not sleepy, though I must try again.


4 October, morning.--Once again during the night I was wakened by
Mina.  This time we had all had a good sleep, for the grey of the
coming dawn was making the windows into sharp oblongs, and the gas
flame was like a speck rather than a disc of light.

She said to me hurriedly, "Go, call the Professor.  I want to see him
at once."

"Why?" I asked.

"I have an idea.  I suppose it must have come in the night, and
matured without my knowing it.  He must hypnotize me before the dawn,
and then I shall be able to speak.  Go quick, dearest, the time is
getting close."

I went to the door.  Dr. Seward was resting on the mattress, and
seeing me, he sprang to his feet.

"Is anything wrong?" he asked, in alarm.

"No," I replied.  "But Mina wants to see Dr. Van Helsing at once."

"I will go," he said, and hurried into the Professor's room.

Two or three minutes later Van Helsing was in the room in his dressing
gown, and Mr. Morris and Lord Godalming were with Dr. Seward at the
door asking questions.  When the Professor saw Mina a smile, a
positive smile ousted the anxiety of his face.

He rubbed his hands as he said, "Oh, my dear Madam Mina, this is
indeed a change.  See!  Friend Jonathan, we have got our dear Madam
Mina, as of old, back to us today!"  Then turning to her, he said
cheerfully, "And what am I to do for you?  For at this hour you do not
want me for nothing."

"I want you to hypnotize me!" she said.  "Do it before the dawn, for I
feel that then I can speak, and speak freely.  Be quick, for the time
is short!"  Without a word he motioned her to sit up in bed.

Looking fixedly at her, he commenced to make passes in front of her,
from over the top of her head downward, with each hand in turn.  Mina
gazed at him fixedly for a few minutes, during which my own heart beat
like a trip hammer, for I felt that some crisis was at hand.
Gradually her eyes closed, and she sat, stock still.  Only by the
gentle heaving of her bosom could one know that she was alive.  The
Professor made a few more passes and then stopped, and I could see
that his forehead was covered with great beads of perspiration.  Mina
opened her eyes, but she did not seem the same woman.  There was a
far-away look in her eyes, and her voice had a sad dreaminess which
was new to me.  Raising his hand to impose silence, the Professor
motioned to me to bring the others in.  They came on tiptoe, closing
the door behind them, and stood at the foot of the bed, looking on.
Mina appeared not to see them.  The stillness was broken by Van
Helsing's voice speaking in a low level tone which would not break the
current of her thoughts.

"Where are you?"  The answer came in a neutral way.

"I do not know.  Sleep has no place it can call its own."  For several
minutes there was silence.  Mina sat rigid, and the Professor stood
staring at her fixedly.

The rest of us hardly dared to breathe.  The room was growing lighter.
Without taking his eyes from Mina's face, Dr. Van Helsing motioned me
to pull up the blind.  I did so, and the day seemed just upon us.  A
red streak shot up, and a rosy light seemed to diffuse itself through
the room.  On the instant the Professor spoke again.

"Where are you now?"

The answer came dreamily, but with intention.  It were as though she
were interpreting something.  I have heard her use the same tone when
reading her shorthand notes.

"I do not know.  It is all strange to me!"

"What do you see?"

"I can see nothing.  It is all dark."

"What do you hear?"  I could detect the strain in the Professor's
patient voice.

"The lapping of water.  It is gurgling by, and little waves leap.  I
can hear them on the outside."

"Then you are on a ship?'"

We all looked at each other, trying to glean something each from the
other.  We were afraid to think.

The answer came quick, "Oh, yes!"

"What else do you hear?"

"The sound of men stamping overhead as they run about.  There is the
creaking of a chain, and the loud tinkle as the check of the capstan
falls into the ratchet."

"What are you doing?"

"I am still, oh so still.  It is like death!"  The voice faded away
into a deep breath as of one sleeping, and the open eyes closed again.

By this time the sun had risen, and we were all in the full light of
day.  Dr. Van Helsing placed his hands on Mina's shoulders, and laid
her head down softly on her pillow.  She lay like a sleeping child for
a few moments, and then, with a long sigh, awoke and stared in wonder
to see us all around her.

"Have I been talking in my sleep?" was all she said.  She seemed,
however, to know the situation without telling, though she was eager
to know what she had told.  The Professor repeated the conversation,
and she said, "Then there is not a moment to lose.  It may not be yet
too late!"

Mr. Morris and Lord Godalming started for the door but the Professor's
calm voice called them back.

"Stay, my friends.  That ship, wherever it was, was weighing anchor at
the moment in your so great Port of London.  Which of them is it that
you seek?  God be thanked that we have once again a clue, though
whither it may lead us we know not.  We have been blind somewhat.
Blind after the manner of men, since we can look back we see what we
might have seen looking forward if we had been able to see what we
might have seen!  Alas, but that sentence is a puddle, is it not?  We
can know now what was in the Count's mind, when he seize that money,
though Jonathan's so fierce knife put him in the danger that even he
dread.  He meant escape.  Hear me, ESCAPE!  He saw that with but one
earth box left, and a pack of men following like dogs after a fox,
this London was no place for him.  He have take his last earth box on
board a ship, and he leave the land.  He think to escape, but no!  We
follow him.  Tally Ho!  As friend Arthur would say when he put on his
red frock!  Our old fox is wily.  Oh!  So wily, and we must follow
with wile.  I, too, am wily and I think his mind in a little while.
In meantime we may rest and in peace, for there are between us which
he do not want to pass, and which he could not if he would.  Unless
the ship were to touch the land, and then only at full or slack tide.
See, and the sun is just rose, and all day to sunset is us.  Let us
take bath, and dress, and have breakfast which we all need, and which
we can eat comfortably since he be not in the same land with us."

Mina looked at him appealingly as she asked, "But why need we seek him
further, when he is gone away from us?"

He took her hand and patted it as he replied, "Ask me nothing as yet.
When we have breakfast, then I answer all questions."  He would say no
more, and we separated to dress.

After breakfast Mina repeated her question.  He looked at her gravely
for a minute and then said sorrowfully, "Because my dear, dear Madam
Mina, now more than ever must we find him even if we have to follow
him to the jaws of Hell!"

She grew paler as she asked faintly, "Why?"

"Because," he answered solemnly, "he can live for centuries, and you
are but mortal woman.  Time is now to be dreaded, since once he put
that mark upon your throat."

I was just in time to catch her as she fell forward in a faint.




CHAPTER 24


DR. SEWARD'S PHONOGRAPH DIARY

SPOKEN BY VAN HELSING

This to Jonathan Harker.

You are to stay with your dear Madam Mina.  We shall go to make our
search, if I can call it so, for it is not search but knowing, and we
seek confirmation only.  But do you stay and take care of her today.
This is your best and most holiest office.  This day nothing can find
him here.

Let me tell you that so you will know what we four know already, for I
have tell them.  He, our enemy, have gone away.  He have gone back to
his Castle in Transylvania.  I know it so well, as if a great hand of
fire wrote it on the wall.  He have prepare for this in some way, and
that last earth box was ready to ship somewheres.  For this he took
the money.  For this he hurry at the last, lest we catch him before
the sun go down.  It was his last hope, save that he might hide in the
tomb that he think poor Miss Lucy, being as he thought like him, keep
open to him.  But there was not of time.  When that fail he make
straight for his last resource, his last earth-work I might say did I
wish double entente.  He is clever, oh so clever!  He know that his
game here was finish.  And so he decide he go back home.  He find ship
going by the route he came, and he go in it.

We go off now to find what ship, and whither bound.  When we have
discover that, we come back and tell you all.  Then we will comfort
you and poor Madam Mina with new hope.  For it will be hope when you
think it over, that all is not lost.  This very creature that we
pursue, he take hundreds of years to get so far as London.  And yet in
one day, when we know of the disposal of him we drive him out.  He is
finite, though he is powerful to do much harm and suffers not as we
do.  But we are strong, each in our purpose, and we are all more
strong together.  Take heart afresh, dear husband of Madam Mina.  This
battle is but begun and in the end we shall win.  So sure as that God
sits on high to watch over His children.  Therefore be of much comfort
till we return.

VAN HELSING.





JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

4 October.--When I read to Mina, Van Helsing's message in the
phonograph, the poor girl brightened up considerably.  Already the
certainty that the Count is out of the country has given her comfort.
And comfort is strength to her.  For my own part, now that his
horrible danger is not face to face with us, it seems almost
impossible to believe in it.  Even my own terrible experiences in
Castle Dracula seem like a long forgotten dream.  Here in the crisp
autumn air in the bright sunlight.

Alas!  How can I disbelieve!  In the midst of my thought my eye fell
on the red scar on my poor darling's white forehead.  Whilst that
lasts, there can be no disbelief.  Mina and I fear to be idle, so we
have been over all the diaries again and again.  Somehow, although the
reality seem greater each time, the pain and the fear seem less.  There
is something of a guiding purpose manifest throughout, which is
comforting.  Mina says that perhaps we are the instruments of ultimate
good.  It may be!  I shall try to think as she does.  We have never
spoken to each other yet of the future.  It is better to wait till we
see the Professor and the others after their investigations.

The day is running by more quickly than I ever thought a day could run
for me again.  It is now three o'clock.





MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

5 October, 5 P.M.--Our meeting for report.  Present:  Professor Van
Helsing, Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, Mr. Quincey Morris, Jonathan
Harker, Mina Harker.

Dr. Van Helsing described what steps were taken during the day to
discover on what boat and whither bound Count Dracula made his escape.

"As I knew that he wanted to get back to Transylvania, I felt sure
that he must go by the Danube mouth, or by somewhere in the Black Sea,
since by that way he come.  It was a dreary blank that was before us.
Omme ignotum pro magnifico, and so with heavy hearts we start to find
what ships leave for the Black Sea last night.  He was in sailing
ship, since Madam Mina tell of sails being set.  These not so
important as to go in your list of the shipping in the Times, and so
we go, by suggestion of Lord Godalming, to your Lloyd's, where are
note of all ships that sail, however so small.  There we find that
only one Black Sea bound ship go out with the tide.  She is the
Czarina Catherine, and she sail from Doolittle's Wharf for Varna, and
thence to other ports and up the Danube.  'So!' said I, 'this is the
ship whereon is the Count.'  So off we go to Doolittle's Wharf, and
there we find a man in an office.  From him we inquire of the goings
of the Czarina Catherine.  He swear much, and he red face and loud of
voice, but he good fellow all the same.  And when Quincey give him
something from his pocket which crackle as he roll it up, and put it
in a so small bag which he have hid deep in his clothing, he still
better fellow and humble servant to us.  He come with us, and ask many
men who are rough and hot.  These be better fellows too when they have
been no more thirsty.  They say much of blood and bloom, and of others
which I comprehend not, though I guess what they mean.  But
nevertheless they tell us all things which we want to know.

"They make known to us among them, how last afternoon at about five
o'clock comes a man so hurry.  A tall man, thin and pale, with high
nose and teeth so white, and eyes that seem to be burning.  That he be
all in black, except that he have a hat of straw which suit not him or
the time.  That he scatter his money in making quick inquiry as to
what ship sails for the Black Sea and for where.  Some took him to the
office and then to the ship, where he will not go aboard but halt at
shore end of gangplank, and ask that the captain come to him.  The
captain come, when told that he will be pay well, and though he swear
much at the first he agree to term.  Then the thin man go and some one
tell him where horse and cart can be hired.  He go there and soon he
come again, himself driving cart on which a great box.  This he
himself lift down, though it take several to put it on truck for the
ship.  He give much talk to captain as to how and where his box is to
be place.  But the captain like it not and swear at him in many
tongues, and tell him that if he like he can come and see where it
shall be.  But he say 'no,' that he come not yet, for that he have
much to do.  Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be
quick, with blood, for that his ship will leave the place, of blood,
before the turn of the tide, with blood.  Then the thin man smile and
say that of course he must go when he think fit, but he will be
surprise if he go quite so soon.  The captain swear again, polyglot,
and the thin man make him bow, and thank him, and say that he will so
far intrude on his kindness as to come aboard before the sailing.
Final the captain, more red than ever, and in more tongues, tell him
that he doesn't want no Frenchmen, with bloom upon them and also with
blood, in his ship, with blood on her also.  And so, after asking
where he might purchase ship forms, he departed.

"No one knew where he went 'or bloomin' well cared' as they said, for
they had something else to think of, well with blood again.  For it
soon became apparent to all that the Czarina Catherine would not sail
as was expected.  A thin mist began to creep up from the river, and it
grew, and grew.  Till soon a dense fog enveloped the ship and all
around her.  The captain swore polyglot, very polyglot, polyglot with
bloom and blood, but he could do nothing.  The water rose and rose,
and he began to fear that he would lose the tide altogether.  He was
in no friendly mood, when just at full tide, the thin man came up the
gangplank again and asked to see where his box had been stowed.  Then
the captain replied that he wished that he and his box, old and with
much bloom and blood, were in hell.  But the thin man did not be
offend, and went down with the mate and saw where it was place, and
came up and stood awhile on deck in fog.  He must have come off by
himself, for none notice him.  Indeed they thought not of him, for
soon the fog begin to melt away, and all was clear again.  My friends
of the thirst and the language that was of bloom and blood laughed, as
they told how the captain's swears exceeded even his usual polyglot,
and was more than ever full of picturesque, when on questioning other
mariners who were on movement up and down the river that hour, he
found that few of them had seen any of fog at all, except where it lay
round the wharf.  However, the ship went out on the ebb tide, and was
doubtless by morning far down the river mouth.  She was then, when
they told us, well out to sea.

"And so, my dear Madam Mina, it is that we have to rest for a time,
for our enemy is on the sea, with the fog at his command, on his way
to the Danube mouth.  To sail a ship takes time, go she never so
quick.  And when we start to go on land more quick, and we meet him
there.  Our best hope is to come on him when in the box between
sunrise and sunset.  For then he can make no struggle, and we may deal
with him as we should.  There are days for us, in which we can make
ready our plan.  We know all about where he go.  For we have seen the
owner of the ship, who have shown us invoices and all papers that can
be.  The box we seek is to be landed in Varna, and to be given to an
agent, one Ristics who will there present his credentials.  And so our
merchant friend will have done his part.  When he ask if there be any
wrong, for that so, he can telegraph and have inquiry made at Varna,
we say 'no,' for what is to be done is not for police or of the
customs.  It must be done by us alone and in our own way."

When Dr. Van Helsing had done speaking, I asked him if he were certain
that the Count had remained on board the ship.  He replied, "We have
the best proof of that, your own evidence, when in the hypnotic trance
this morning."

I asked him again if it were really necessary that they should pursue
the Count, for oh!  I dread Jonathan leaving me, and I know that he
would surely go if the others went.  He answered in growing passion,
at first quietly.  As he went on, however, he grew more angry and more
forceful, till in the end we could not but see wherein was at least
some of that personal dominance which made him so long a master
amongst men.

"Yes, it is necessary, necessary, necessary!  For your sake in the
first, and then for the sake of humanity.  This monster has done much
harm already, in the narrow scope where he find himself, and in the
short time when as yet he was only as a body groping his so small
measure in darkness and not knowing.  All this have I told these
others.  You, my dear Madam Mina, will learn it in the phonograph of
my friend John, or in that of your husband.  I have told them how the
measure of leaving his own barren land, barren of peoples, and coming
to a new land where life of man teems till they are like the multitude
of standing corn, was the work of centuries.  Were another of the
Undead, like him, to try to do what he has done, perhaps not all the
centuries of the world that have been, or that will be, could aid him.
With this one, all the forces of nature that are occult and deep and
strong must have worked together in some wonderous way.  The very
place, where he have been alive, Undead for all these centuries, is
full of strangeness of the geologic and chemical world.  There are
deep caverns and fissures that reach none know whither.  There have
been volcanoes, some of whose openings still send out waters of
strange properties, and gases that kill or make to vivify.  Doubtless,
there is something magnetic or electric in some of these combinations
of occult forces which work for physical life in strange way, and in
himself were from the first some great qualities.  In a hard and
warlike time he was celebrate that he have more iron nerve, more
subtle brain, more braver heart, than any man.  In him some vital
principle have in strange way found their utmost.  And as his body
keep strong and grow and thrive, so his brain grow too.  All this
without that diabolic aid which is surely to him.  For it have to
yield to the powers that come from, and are, symbolic of good.  And
now this is what he is to us.  He have infect you, oh forgive me, my
dear, that I must say such, but it is for good of you that I speak.  He
infect you in such wise, that even if he do no more, you have only to
live, to live in your own old, sweet way, and so in time, death, which
is of man's common lot and with God's sanction, shall make you like to
him.  This must not be!  We have sworn together that it must not.
Thus are we ministers of God's own wish.  That the world, and men for
whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very
existence would defame Him.  He have allowed us to redeem one soul
already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem
more.  Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise.  And like them,
if we fall, we fall in good cause."

He paused and I said, "But will not the Count take his rebuff wisely?
Since he has been driven from England, will he not avoid it, as a
tiger does the village from which he has been hunted?"

"Aha!" he said, "your simile of the tiger good, for me, and I shall
adopt him.  Your maneater, as they of India call the tiger who has
once tasted blood of the human, care no more for the other prey, but
prowl unceasing till he get him.  This that we hunt from our village
is a tiger, too, a maneater, and he never cease to prowl.  Nay, in
himself he is not one to retire and stay afar.  In his life, his
living life, he go over the Turkey frontier and attack his enemy on
his own ground.  He be beaten back, but did he stay?  No!  He come
again, and again, and again.  Look at his persistence and endurance.
With the child-brain that was to him he have long since conceive the
idea of coming to a great city.  What does he do?  He find out the
place of all the world most of promise for him.  Then he deliberately
set himself down to prepare for the task.  He find in patience just
how is his strength, and what are his powers.  He study new tongues.
He learn new social life, new environment of old ways, the politics,
the law, the finance, the science, the habit of a new land and a new
people who have come to be since he was.  His glimpse that he have
had, whet his appetite only and enkeen his desire.  Nay, it help him
to grow as to his brain.  For it all prove to him how right he was at
the first in his surmises.  He have done this alone, all alone!  From
a ruin tomb in a forgotten land.  What more may he not do when the
greater world of thought is open to him.  He that can smile at death,
as we know him.  Who can flourish in the midst of diseases that kill
off whole peoples.  Oh!  If such an one was to come from God, and not
the Devil, what a force for good might he not be in this old world of
ours.  But we are pledged to set the world free.  Our toil must be in
silence, and our efforts all in secret.  For in this enlightened age,
when men believe not even what they see, the doubting of wise men
would be his greatest strength.  It would be at once his sheath and
his armor, and his weapons to destroy us, his enemies, who are willing
to peril even our own souls for the safety of one we love.  For the
good of mankind, and for the honour and glory of God."

After a general discussion it was determined that for tonight nothing
be definitely settled.  That we should all sleep on the facts, and try
to think out the proper conclusions.  Tomorrow, at breakfast, we are
to meet again, and after making our conclusions known to one another,
we shall decide on some definite cause of action . . .

I feel a wonderful peace and rest tonight.  It is as if some haunting
presence were removed from me.  Perhaps . . .

My surmise was not finished, could not be, for I caught sight in the
mirror of the red mark upon my forehead, and I knew that I was still
unclean.




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

5 October.--We all arose early, and I think that sleep did much for
each and all of us.  When we met at early breakfast there was more
general cheerfulness than any of us had ever expected to experience
again.

It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature.
Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even
by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment.
More than once as we sat around the table, my eyes opened in wonder
whether the whole of the past days had not been a dream.  It was only
when I caught sight of the red blotch on Mrs. Harker's forehead that I
was brought back to reality.  Even now, when I am gravely revolving
the matter, it is almost impossible to realize that the cause of all
our trouble is still existent.  Even Mrs. Harker seems to lose sight
of her trouble for whole spells.  It is only now and again, when
something recalls it to her mind, that she thinks of her terrible
scar.  We are to meet here in my study in half an hour and decide on
our course of action.  I see only one immediate difficulty, I know it
by instinct rather than reason.  We shall all have to speak frankly.
And yet I fear that in some mysterious way poor Mrs. Harker's tongue
is tied.  I know that she forms conclusions of her own, and from all
that has been I can guess how brilliant and how true they must be.
But she will not, or cannot, give them utterance.  I have mentioned
this to Van Helsing, and he and I are to talk it over when we are
alone.  I suppose it is some of that horrid poison which has got into
her veins beginning to work.  The Count had his own purposes when he
gave her what Van Helsing called "the Vampire's baptism of blood."
Well, there may be a poison that distills itself out of good things.
In an age when the existence of ptomaines is a mystery we should not
wonder at anything!  One thing I know, that if my instinct be true
regarding poor Mrs. Harker's silences, then there is a terrible
difficulty, an unknown danger, in the work before us.  The same power
that compels her silence may compel her speech.  I dare not think
further, for so I should in my thoughts dishonour a noble woman!


Later.--When the Professor came in, we talked over the state of
things.  I could see that he had something on his mind, which he
wanted to say, but felt some hesitancy about broaching the subject.
After beating about the bush a little, he said, "Friend John, there is
something that you and I must talk of alone, just at the first at any
rate.  Later, we may have to take the others into our confidence."

Then he stopped, so I waited.  He went on, "Madam Mina, our poor, dear
Madam Mina is changing."

A cold shiver ran through me to find my worst fears thus endorsed.
Van Helsing continued.

"With the sad experience of Miss Lucy, we must this time be warned
before things go too far.  Our task is now in reality more difficult
than ever, and this new trouble makes every hour of the direst
importance.  I can see the characteristics of the vampire coming in
her face.  It is now but very, very slight.  But it is to be seen if
we have eyes to notice without prejudge.  Her teeth are sharper, and
at times her eyes are more hard.  But these are not all, there is to
her the silence now often, as so it was with Miss Lucy.  She did not
speak, even when she wrote that which she wished to be known later.
Now my fear is this.  If it be that she can, by our hypnotic trance,
tell what the Count see and hear, is it not more true that he who have
hypnotize her first, and who have drink of her very blood and make her
drink of his, should if he will, compel her mind to disclose to him
that which she know?"

I nodded acquiescence.  He went on, "Then, what we must do is to
prevent this.  We must keep her ignorant of our intent, and so she
cannot tell what she know not.  This is a painful task!  Oh, so
painful that it heartbreak me to think of it, but it must be.  When
today we meet, I must tell her that for reason which we will not to
speak she must not more be of our council, but be simply guarded by
us."

He wiped his forehead, which had broken out in profuse perspiration at
the thought of the pain which he might have to inflict upon the poor
soul already so tortured.  I knew that it would be some sort of
comfort to him if I told him that I also had come to the same
conclusion.  For at any rate it would take away the pain of doubt.  I
told him, and the effect was as I expected.

It is now close to the time of our general gathering.  Van Helsing has
gone away to prepare for the meeting, and his painful part of it.  I
really believe his purpose is to be able to pray alone.


Later.--At the very outset of our meeting a great personal relief was
experienced by both Van Helsing and myself.  Mrs. Harker had sent a
message by her husband to say that she would not join us at present,
as she thought it better that we should be free to discuss our
movements without her presence to embarrass us.  The Professor and I
looked at each other for an instant, and somehow we both seemed
relieved.  For my own part, I thought that if Mrs. Harker realized the
danger herself, it was much pain as well as much danger averted.
Under the circumstances we agreed, by a questioning look and answer,
with finger on lip, to preserve silence in our suspicions, until we
should have been able to confer alone again.  We went at once into our
Plan of Campaign.

Van Helsing roughly put the facts before us first, "The Czarina
Catherine left the Thames yesterday morning.  It will take her at the
quickest speed she has ever made at least three weeks to reach Varna.
But we can travel overland to the same place in three days.  Now, if
we allow for two days less for the ship's voyage, owing to such
weather influences as we know that the Count can bring to bear, and if
we allow a whole day and night for any delays which may occur to us,
then we have a margin of nearly two weeks.

"Thus, in order to be quite safe, we must leave here on 17th at
latest.  Then we shall at any rate be in Varna a day before the ship
arrives, and able to make such preparations as may be necessary.  Of
course we shall all go armed, armed against evil things, spiritual as
well as physical."

Here Quincey Morris added, "I understand that the Count comes from a
wolf country, and it may be that he shall get there before us.  I
propose that we add Winchesters to our armament.  I have a kind of
belief in a Winchester when there is any trouble of that sort around.
Do you remember, Art, when we had the pack after us at Tobolsk?  What
wouldn't we have given then for a repeater apiece!"

"Good!" said Van Helsing, "Winchesters it shall be.  Quincey's head is
level at times, but most so when there is to hunt, metaphor be more
dishonour to science than wolves be of danger to man.  In the meantime
we can do nothing here.  And as I think that Varna is not familiar to
any of us, why not go there more soon?  It is as long to wait here as
there.  Tonight and tomorrow we can get ready, and then if all be
well, we four can set out on our journey."

"We four?" said Harker interrogatively, looking from one to another of
us.

"Of course!" answered the Professor quickly.  "You must remain to take
care of your so sweet wife!"

Harker was silent for awhile and then said in a hollow voice, "Let us
talk of that part of it in the morning.  I want to consult with Mina."

I thought that now was the time for Van Helsing to warn him not to
disclose our plan to her, but he took no notice.  I looked at him
significantly and coughed.  For answer he put his finger to his lips
and turned away.



JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

5 October, afternoon.--For some time after our meeting this morning I
could not think.  The new phases of things leave my mind in a state of
wonder which allows no room for active thought.  Mina's determination
not to take any part in the discussion set me thinking.  And as I
could not argue the matter with her, I could only guess.  I am as far
as ever from a solution now.  The way the others received it, too
puzzled me.  The last time we talked of the subject we agreed that
there was to be no more concealment of anything amongst us.  Mina is
sleeping now, calmly and sweetly like a little child.  Her lips are
curved and her face beams with happiness.  Thank God, there are such
moments still for her.


Later.--How strange it all is.  I sat watching Mina's happy sleep, and
I came as near to being happy myself as I suppose I shall ever be.  As
the evening drew on, and the earth took its shadows from the sun
sinking lower, the silence of the room grew more and more solemn to
me.

All at once Mina opened her eyes, and looking at me tenderly said,
"Jonathan, I want you to promise me something on your word of honour.
A promise made to me, but made holily in God's hearing, and not to be
broken though I should go down on my knees and implore you with bitter
tears.  Quick, you must make it to me at once."

"Mina," I said, "a promise like that, I cannot make at once.  I may
have no right to make it."

"But, dear one," she said, with such spiritual intensity that her eyes
were like pole stars, "it is I who wish it.  And it is not for myself.
You can ask Dr. Van Helsing if I am not right.  If he disagrees you
may do as you will.  Nay, more if you all agree, later you are
absolved from the promise."

"I promise!" I said, and for a moment she looked supremely happy.
Though to me all happiness for her was denied by the red scar on her
forehead.

She said, "Promise me that you will not tell me anything of the plans
formed for the campaign against the Count.  Not by word, or inference,
or implication, not at any time whilst this remains to me!"  And she
solemnly pointed to the scar.  I saw that she was in earnest, and said
solemnly, "I promise!" and as I said it I felt that from that instant
a door had been shut between us.


Later, midnight.--Mina has been bright and cheerful all the evening.
So much so that all the rest seemed to take courage, as if infected
somewhat with her gaiety.  As a result even I myself felt as if the
pall of gloom which weighs us down were somewhat lifted.  We all
retired early.  Mina is now sleeping like a little child.  It is
wonderful thing that her faculty of sleep remains to her in the midst
of her terrible trouble.  Thank God for it, for then at least she can
forget her care.  Perhaps her example may affect me as her gaiety did
tonight.  I shall try it.  Oh!  For a dreamless sleep.

6 October, morning.--Another surprise.  Mina woke me early, about the
same time as yesterday, and asked me to bring Dr. Van Helsing.  I
thought that it was another occasion for hypnotism, and without
question went for the Professor.  He had evidently expected some such
call, for I found him dressed in his room.  His door was ajar, so that
he could hear the opening of the door of our room.  He came at once.
As he passed into the room, he asked Mina if the others might come,
too.

"No," she said quite simply, "it will not be necessary.  You can tell
them just as well.  I must go with you on your journey."

Dr. Van Helsing was as startled as I was.  After a moment's pause he
asked, "But why?"

"You must take me with you.  I am safer with you, and you shall be
safer, too."

"But why, dear Madam Mina?  You know that your safety is our solemnest
duty.  We go into danger, to which you are, or may be, more liable
than any of us from . . . from circumstances . . . things that have
been."  He paused embarrassed.

As she replied, she raised her finger and pointed to her forehead.  "I
know.  That is why I must go.  I can tell you now, whilst the sun is
coming up.  I may not be able again.  I know that when the Count wills
me I must go.  I know that if he tells me to come in secret, I must by
wile.  By any device to hoodwink, even Jonathan."  God saw the look
that she turned on me as she spoke, and if there be indeed a Recording
Angel that look is noted to her ever-lasting honour.  I could only
clasp her hand.  I could not speak.  My emotion was too great for even
the relief of tears.

She went on.  "You men are brave and strong.  You are strong in your
numbers, for you can defy that which would break down the human
endurance of one who had to guard alone.  Besides, I may be of
service, since you can hypnotize me and so learn that which even I
myself do not know."

Dr. Van Helsing said gravely, "Madam Mina, you are, as always, most
wise.  You shall with us come.  And together we shall do that which we
go forth to achieve."

When he had spoken, Mina's long spell of silence made me look at her.
She had fallen back on her pillow asleep.  She did not even wake when
I had pulled up the blind and let in the sunlight which flooded the
room.  Van Helsing motioned to me to come with him quietly.  We went
to his room, and within a minute Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr.
Morris were with us also.

He told them what Mina had said, and went on.  "In the morning we
shall leave for Varna.  We have now to deal with a new factor, Madam
Mina.  Oh, but her soul is true.  It is to her an agony to tell us so
much as she has done.  But it is most right, and we are warned in
time.  There must be no chance lost, and in Varna we must be ready to
act the instant when that ship arrives."

"What shall we do exactly?" asked Mr. Morris laconically.

The Professor paused before replying, "We shall at the first board
that ship.  Then, when we have identified the box, we shall place a
branch of the wild rose on it.  This we shall fasten, for when it is
there none can emerge, so that at least says the superstition.  And to
superstition must we trust at the first.  It was man's faith in the
early, and it have its root in faith still.  Then, when we get the
opportunity that we seek, when none are near to see, we shall open the
box, and . . . and all will be well."

"I shall not wait for any opportunity," said Morris.  "When I see the
box I shall open it and destroy the monster, though there were a
thousand men looking on, and if I am to be wiped out for it the next
moment!"  I grasped his hand instinctively and found it as firm as a
piece of steel.  I think he understood my look.  I hope he did.

"Good boy," said Dr. Van Helsing.  "Brave boy.  Quincey is all man.
God bless him for it.  My child, believe me none of us shall lag
behind or pause from any fear.  I do but say what we may do . . . what
we must do.  But, indeed, indeed we cannot say what we may do.  There
are so many things which may happen, and their ways and their ends are
so various that until the moment we may not say.  We shall all be
armed, in all ways.  And when the time for the end has come, our
effort shall not be lack.  Now let us today put all our affairs in
order.  Let all things which touch on others dear to us, and who on us
depend, be complete.  For none of us can tell what, or when, or how,
the end may be.  As for me, my own affairs are regulate, and as I have
nothing else to do, I shall go make arrangements for the travel.  I
shall have all tickets and so forth for our journey."

There was nothing further to be said, and we parted.  I shall now
settle up all my affairs of earth, and be ready for whatever may come.


Later.--It is done.  My will is made, and all complete.  Mina if she
survive is my sole heir.  If it should not be so, then the others who
have been so good to us shall have remainder.

It is now drawing towards the sunset.  Mina's uneasiness calls my
attention to it.  I am sure that there is something on her mind which
the time of exact sunset will reveal.  These occasions are becoming
harrowing times for us all.  For each sunrise and sunset opens up some
new danger, some new pain, which however, may in God's will be means
to a good end.  I write all these things in the diary since my darling
must not hear them now.  But if it may be that she can see them again,
they shall be ready.  She is calling to me.




CHAPTER 25


DR SEWARD'S DIARY

11 October, Evening.--Jonathan Harker has asked me to note this, as he
says he is hardly equal to the task, and he wants an exact record
kept.

I think that none of us were surprised when we were asked to see Mrs.
Harker a little before the time of sunset.  We have of late come to
understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar
freedom.  When her old self can be manifest without any controlling
force subduing or restraining her, or inciting her to action.  This
mood or condition begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise
or sunset, and lasts till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds
are still aglow with the rays streaming above the horizon.  At first
there is a sort of negative condition, as if some tie were loosened,
and then the absolute freedom quickly follows.  When, however, the
freedom ceases the change back or relapse comes quickly, preceded
only by a spell of warning silence.

Tonight, when we met, she was somewhat constrained, and bore all the
signs of an internal struggle.  I put it down myself to her making a
violent effort at the earliest instant she could do so.

A very few minutes, however, gave her complete control of herself.
Then, motioning her husband to sit beside her on the sofa where she
was half reclining, she made the rest of us bring chairs up close.

Taking her husband's hand in hers, she began, "We are all here
together in freedom, for perhaps the last time!  I know that you will
always be with me to the end."  This was to her husband whose hand had,
as we could see, tightened upon her.  "In the morning we go out upon
our task, and God alone knows what may be in store for any of us.  You
are going to be so good to me to take me with you.  I know that all
that brave earnest men can do for a poor weak woman, whose soul
perhaps is lost, no, no, not yet, but is at any rate at stake, you
will do.  But you must remember that I am not as you are.  There is a
poison in my blood, in my soul, which may destroy me, which must
destroy me, unless some relief comes to us.  Oh, my friends, you know
as well as I do, that my soul is at stake.  And though I know there is
one way out for me, you must not and I must not take it!"  She looked
appealingly to us all in turn, beginning and ending with her husband.

"What is that way?" asked Van Helsing in a hoarse voice.  "What is
that way, which we must not, may not, take?"

"That I may die now, either by my own hand or that of another, before
the greater evil is entirely wrought.  I know, and you know, that were
I once dead you could and would set free my immortal spirit, even as
you did my poor Lucy's.  Were death, or the fear of death, the only
thing that stood in the way I would not shrink to die here now, amidst
the friends who love me.  But death is not all.  I cannot believe that
to die in such a case, when there is hope before us and a bitter task
to be done, is God's will.  Therefore, I on my part, give up here the
certainty of eternal rest, and go out into the dark where may be the
blackest things that the world or the nether world holds!"

We were all silent, for we knew instinctively that this was only a
prelude.  The faces of the others were set, and Harker's grew ashen
grey.  Perhaps, he guessed better than any of us what was coming.

She continued, "This is what I can give into the hotch-pot."  I could
not but note the quaint legal phrase which she used in such a place,
and with all seriousness.  "What will each of you give?  Your lives I
know," she went on quickly, "that is easy for brave men.  Your lives
are God's, and you can give them back to Him, but what will you give
to me?"  She looked again questioningly, but this time avoided her
husband's face.  Quincey seemed to understand, he nodded, and her face
lit up.  "Then I shall tell you plainly what I want, for there must be
no doubtful matter in this connection between us now.  You must
promise me, one and all, even you, my beloved husband, that should the
time come, you will kill me."

"What is that time?"  The voice was Quincey's, but it was low and
strained.

"When you shall be convinced that I am so changed that it is better
that I die that I may live.  When I am thus dead in the flesh, then
you will, without a moment's delay, drive a stake through me and cut
off my head, or do whatever else may be wanting to give me rest!"

Quincey was the first to rise after the pause.  He knelt down before
her and taking her hand in his said solemnly, "I'm only a rough
fellow, who hasn't, perhaps, lived as a man should to win such a
distinction, but I swear to you by all that I hold sacred and dear
that, should the time ever come, I shall not flinch from the duty that
you have set us.  And I promise you, too, that I shall make all
certain, for if I am only doubtful I shall take it that the time has
come!"

"My true friend!" was all she could say amid her fast-falling tears,
as bending over, she kissed his hand.

"I swear the same, my dear Madam Mina!" said Van Helsing.  "And I!"
said Lord Godalming, each of them in turn kneeling to her to take the
oath.  I followed, myself.

Then her husband turned to her wan-eyed and with a greenish pallor
which subdued the snowy whiteness of his hair, and asked, "And must I,
too, make such a promise, oh, my wife?"

"You too, my dearest," she said, with infinite yearning of pity in her
voice and eyes.  "You must not shrink.  You are nearest and dearest
and all the world to me.  Our souls are knit into one, for all life
and all time.  Think, dear, that there have been times when brave men
have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling
into the hands of the enemy.  Their hands did not falter any the more
because those that they loved implored them to slay them.  It is men's
duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial!  And
oh, my dear, if it is to be that I must meet death at any hand, let it
be at the hand of him that loves me best.  Dr. Van Helsing, I have not
forgotten your mercy in poor Lucy's case to him who loved."  She
stopped with a flying blush, and changed her phrase, "to him who had
best right to give her peace.  If that time shall come again, I look
to you to make it a happy memory of my husband's life that it was his
loving hand which set me free from the awful thrall upon me."

"Again I swear!" came the Professor's resonant voice.

Mrs. Harker smiled, positively smiled, as with a sigh of relief she
leaned back and said, "And now one word of warning, a warning which
you must never forget.  This time, if it ever come, may come quickly
and unexpectedly, and in such case you must lose no time in using your
opportunity.  At such a time I myself might be . . . nay!  If the time
ever come, shall be, leagued with your enemy against you.

"One more request," she became very solemn as she said this, "it is
not vital and necessary like the other, but I want you to do one thing
for me, if you will."

We all acquiesced, but no one spoke.  There was no need to speak.

"I want you to read the Burial Service."  She was interrupted by a
deep groan from her husband.  Taking his hand in hers, she held it
over her heart, and continued.  "You must read it over me some day.
Whatever may be the issue of all this fearful state of things, it will
be a sweet thought to all or some of us.  You, my dearest, will I hope
read it, for then it will be in your voice in my memory forever, come
what may!"

"But oh, my dear one," he pleaded, "death is afar off from you."

"Nay," she said, holding up a warning hand.  "I am deeper in death at
this moment than if the weight of an earthly grave lay heavy upon me!"

"Oh, my wife, must I read it?" he said, before he began.

"It would comfort me, my husband!" was all she said, and he began to
read when she had got the book ready.

How can I, how could anyone, tell of that strange scene, its
solemnity, its gloom, its sadness, its horror, and withal, its
sweetness.  Even a sceptic, who can see nothing but a travesty of
bitter truth in anything holy or emotional, would have been melted to
the heart had he seen that little group of loving and devoted friends
kneeling round that stricken and sorrowing lady; or heard the tender
passion of her husband's voice, as in tones so broken and emotional
that often he had to pause, he read the simple and beautiful service
from the Burial of the Dead.  I cannot go on . . . words . . . and
v-voices . . . f-fail m-me!

She was right in her instinct.  Strange as it was, bizarre as it may
hereafter seem even to us who felt its potent influence at the time,
it comforted us much.  And the silence, which showed Mrs. Harker's
coming relapse from her freedom of soul, did not seem so full of
despair to any of us as we had dreaded.





JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

15 October, Varna.--We left Charing Cross on the morning of the 12th,
got to Paris the same night, and took the places secured for us in the
Orient Express.  We traveled night and day, arriving here at about
five o'clock.  Lord Godalming went to the Consulate to see if any
telegram had arrived for him, whilst the rest of us came on to this
hotel, "the Odessus."  The journey may have had incidents.  I was,
however, too eager to get on, to care for them.  Until the Czarina
Catherine comes into port there will be no interest for me in anything
in the wide world.  Thank God!  Mina is well, and looks to be getting
stronger.  Her colour is coming back.  She sleeps a great deal.
Throughout the journey she slept nearly all the time.  Before sunrise
and sunset, however, she is very wakeful and alert.  And it has become
a habit for Van Helsing to hypnotize her at such times.  At first,
some effort was needed, and he had to make many passes.  But now, she
seems to yield at once, as if by habit, and scarcely any action is
needed.  He seems to have power at these particular moments to simply
will, and her thoughts obey him.  He always asks her what she can see
and hear.

She answers to the first, "Nothing, all is dark."

And to the second, "I can hear the waves lapping against the ship, and
the water rushing by.  Canvas and cordage strain and masts and yards
creak.  The wind is high . . . I can hear it in the shrouds, and the
bow throws back the foam."

It is evident that the Czarina Catherine is still at sea, hastening on
her way to Varna.  Lord Godalming has just returned.  He had four
telegrams, one each day since we started, and all to the same effect.
That the Czarina Catherine had not been reported to Lloyd's from
anywhere.  He had arranged before leaving London that his agent should
send him every day a telegram saying if the ship had been reported.
He was to have a message even if she were not reported, so that he
might be sure that there was a watch being kept at the other end of
the wire.

We had dinner and went to bed early.  Tomorrow we are to see the Vice
Consul, and to arrange, if we can, about getting on board the ship as
soon as she arrives.  Van Helsing says that our chance will be to get
on the boat between sunrise and sunset.  The Count, even if he takes
the form of a bat, cannot cross the running water of his own volition,
and so cannot leave the ship.  As he dare not change to man's form
without suspicion, which he evidently wishes to avoid, he must remain
in the box.  If, then, we can come on board after sunrise, he is at
our mercy, for we can open the box and make sure of him, as we did of
poor Lucy, before he wakes.  What mercy he shall get from us all will
not count for much.  We think that we shall not have much trouble with
officials or the seamen.  Thank God!  This is the country where
bribery can do anything, and we are well supplied with money.  We have
only to make sure that the ship cannot come into port between sunset
and sunrise without our being warned, and we shall be safe.  Judge
Moneybag will settle this case, I think!


16 October.--Mina's report still the same.  Lapping waves and rushing
water, darkness and favouring winds.  We are evidently in good time,
and when we hear of the Czarina Catherine we shall be ready.  As she
must pass the Dardanelles we are sure to have some report.


17 October.--Everything is pretty well fixed now, I think, to welcome
the Count on his return from his tour.  Godalming told the shippers
that he fancied that the box sent aboard might contain something
stolen from a friend of his, and got a half consent that he might open
it at his own risk.  The owner gave him a paper telling the Captain to
give him every facility in doing whatever he chose on board the ship,
and also a similar authorization to his agent at Varna.  We have seen
the agent, who was much impressed with Godalming's kindly manner to
him, and we are all satisfied that whatever he can do to aid our
wishes will be done.

We have already arranged what to do in case we get the box open.  If
the Count is there, Van Helsing and Seward will cut off his head at
once and drive a stake through his heart.  Morris and Godalming and I
shall prevent interference, even if we have to use the arms which we
shall have ready.  The Professor says that if we can so treat the
Count's body, it will soon after fall into dust.  In such case there
would be no evidence against us, in case any suspicion of murder were
aroused.  But even if it were not, we should stand or fall by our act,
and perhaps some day this very script may be evidence to come between
some of us and a rope.  For myself, I should take the chance only too
thankfully if it were to come.  We mean to leave no stone unturned to
carry out our intent.  We have arranged with certain officials that
the instant the Czarina Catherine is seen, we are to be informed by a
special messenger.


24 October.--A whole week of waiting.  Daily telegrams to Godalming,
but only the same story.  "Not yet reported."  Mina's morning and
evening hypnotic answer is unvaried.  Lapping waves, rushing water,
and creaking masts.




TELEGRAM, OCTOBER 24TH RUFUS SMITH, LLOYD'S, LONDON,
TO LORD GODALMING, CARE OF H. B. M. VICE CONSUL, VARNA

"Czarina Catherine reported this morning from Dardanelles."



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

25 October.--How I miss my phonograph!  To write a diary with a pen is
irksome to me!  But Van Helsing says I must.  We were all wild with
excitement yesterday when Godalming got his telegram from Lloyd's.  I
know now what men feel in battle when the call to action is heard.
Mrs. Harker, alone of our party, did not show any signs of emotion.
After all, it is not strange that she did not, for we took special
care not to let her know anything about it, and we all tried not to
show any excitement when we were in her presence.  In old days she
would, I am sure, have noticed, no matter how we might have tried to
conceal it.  But in this way she is greatly changed during the past
three weeks.  The lethargy grows upon her, and though she seems strong
and well, and is getting back some of her colour, Van Helsing and I are
not satisfied.  We talk of her often.  We have not, however, said a
word to the others.  It would break poor Harker's heart, certainly his
nerve, if he knew that we had even a suspicion on the subject.  Van
Helsing examines, he tells me, her teeth very carefully, whilst she is
in the hypnotic condition, for he says that so long as they do not
begin to sharpen there is no active danger of a change in her.  If
this change should come, it would be necessary to take steps!  We both
know what those steps would have to be, though we do not mention our
thoughts to each other.  We should neither of us shrink from the task,
awful though it be to contemplate.  "Euthanasia" is an excellent and a
comforting word!  I am grateful to whoever invented it.

It is only about 24 hours' sail from the Dardanelles to here, at the
rate the Czarina Catherine has come from London.  She should therefore
arrive some time in the morning, but as she cannot possibly get in
before noon, we are all about to retire early.  We shall get up at one
o'clock, so as to be ready.


25 October, Noon.--No news yet of the ship's arrival.  Mrs. Harker's
hypnotic report this morning was the same as usual, so it is possible
that we may get news at any moment.  We men are all in a fever of
excitement, except Harker, who is calm.  His hands are cold as ice,
and an hour ago I found him whetting the edge of the great Ghoorka
knife which he now always carries with him.  It will be a bad lookout
for the Count if the edge of that "Kukri" ever touches his throat,
driven by that stern, ice-cold hand!

Van Helsing and I were a little alarmed about Mrs. Harker today.
About noon she got into a sort of lethargy which we did not like.
Although we kept silence to the others, we were neither of us happy
about it.  She had been restless all the morning, so that we were at
first glad to know that she was sleeping.  When, however, her husband
mentioned casually that she was sleeping so soundly that he could not
wake her, we went to her room to see for ourselves.  She was breathing
naturally and looked so well and peaceful that we agreed that the
sleep was better for her than anything else.  Poor girl, she has so
much to forget that it is no wonder that sleep, if it brings oblivion
to her, does her good.


Later.--Our opinion was justified, for when after a refreshing sleep
of some hours she woke up, she seemed brighter and better than she had
been for days.  At sunset she made the usual hypnotic report.
Wherever he may be in the Black Sea, the Count is hurrying to his
destination.  To his doom, I trust!



26 October.--Another day and no tidings of the Czarina Catherine.  She
ought to be here by now.  That she is still journeying somewhere is
apparent, for Mrs. Harker's hypnotic report at sunrise was still the
same.  It is possible that the vessel may be lying by, at times, for
fog.  Some of the steamers which came in last evening reported patches
of fog both to north and south of the port.  We must continue our
watching, as the ship may now be signalled any moment.


27 October, Noon.--Most strange.  No news yet of the ship we wait for.
Mrs. Harker reported last night and this morning as usual.  "Lapping
waves and rushing water," though she added that "the waves were very
faint."  The telegrams from London have been the same, "no further
report."  Van Helsing is terribly anxious, and told me just now that he
fears the Count is escaping us.

He added significantly, "I did not like that lethargy of Madam Mina's.
Souls and memories can do strange things during trance."  I was about
to ask him more, but Harker just then came in, and he held up a
warning hand.  We must try tonight at sunset to make her speak more
fully when in her hypnotic state.


28 October.--Telegram.  Rufus Smith, London, to Lord Godalming, care
H. B. M. Vice Consul, Varna

"Czarina Catherine reported entering Galatz at one o'clock today."




DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

28 October.--When the telegram came announcing the arrival in Galatz I
do not think it was such a shock to any of us as might have been
expected.  True, we did not know whence, or how, or when, the bolt
would come.  But I think we all expected that something strange would
happen.  The day of arrival at Varna made us individually satisfied
that things would not be just as we had expected.  We only waited to
learn where the change would occur.  None the less, however, it was a
surprise.  I suppose that nature works on such a hopeful basis that we
believe against ourselves that things will be as they ought to be, not
as we should know that they will be.  Transcendentalism is a beacon to
the angels, even if it be a will-o'-the-wisp to man.  Van Helsing
raised his hand over his head for a moment, as though in remonstrance
with the Almighty.  But he said not a word, and in a few seconds stood
up with his face sternly set.

Lord Godalming grew very pale, and sat breathing heavily.  I was
myself half stunned and looked in wonder at one after another.
Quincey Morris tightened his belt with that quick movement which I
knew so well.  In our old wandering days it meant "action."  Mrs.
Harker grew ghastly white, so that the scar on her forehead seemed to
burn, but she folded her hands meekly and looked up in prayer.  Harker
smiled, actually smiled, the dark, bitter smile of one who is without
hope, but at the same time his action belied his words, for his hands
instinctively sought the hilt of the great Kukri knife and rested
there.

"When does the next train start for Galatz?" said Van Helsing to us
generally.

"At 6:30 tomorrow morning!"  We all started, for the answer came from
Mrs. Harker.

"How on earth do you know?" said Art.

"You forget, or perhaps you do not know, though Jonathan does and so
does Dr. Van Helsing, that I am the train fiend.  At home in Exeter I
always used to make up the time tables, so as to be helpful to my
husband.  I found it so useful sometimes, that I always make a study
of the time tables now.  I knew that if anything were to take us to
Castle Dracula we should go by Galatz, or at any rate through
Bucharest, so I learned the times very carefully.  Unhappily there are
not many to learn, as the only train tomorrow leaves as I say."

"Wonderful woman!" murmured the Professor.

"Can't we get a special?" asked Lord Godalming.

Van Helsing shook his head, "I fear not.  This land is very different
from yours or mine.  Even if we did have a special, it would probably
not arrive as soon as our regular train.  Moreover, we have something
to prepare.  We must think.  Now let us organize.  You, friend Arthur,
go to the train and get the tickets and arrange that all be ready for
us to go in the morning.  Do you, friend Jonathan, go to the agent of
the ship and get from him letters to the agent in Galatz, with
authority to make a search of the ship just as it was here.  Quincey
Morris, you see the Vice Consul, and get his aid with his fellow in
Galatz and all he can do to make our way smooth, so that no times be
lost when over the Danube.  John will stay with Madam Mina and me, and
we shall consult.  For so if time be long you may be delayed.  And it
will not matter when the sun set, since I am here with Madam to make
report."

"And I," said Mrs. Harker brightly, and more like her old self than
she had been for many a long day, "shall try to be of use in all ways,
and shall think and write for you as I used to do.  Something is
shifting from me in some strange way, and I feel freer than I have
been of late!"

The three younger men looked happier at the moment as they seemed to
realize the significance of her words.  But Van Helsing and I, turning
to each other, met each a grave and troubled glance.  We said nothing
at the time, however.

When the three men had gone out to their tasks Van Helsing asked Mrs.
Harker to look up the copy of the diaries and find him the part of
Harker's journal at the Castle.  She went away to get it.

When the door was shut upon her he said to me, "We mean the same!
Speak out!"

"Here is some change.  It is a hope that makes me sick, for it may
deceive us."

"Quite so.  Do you know why I asked her to get the manuscript?"

"No!" said I, "unless it was to get an opportunity of seeing me
alone."

"You are in part right, friend John, but only in part.  I want to tell
you something.  And oh, my friend, I am taking a great, a terrible,
risk.  But I believe it is right.  In the moment when Madam Mina said
those words that arrest both our understanding, an inspiration came to
me.  In the trance of three days ago the Count sent her his spirit to
read her mind.  Or more like he took her to see him in his earth box
in the ship with water rushing, just as it go free at rise and set of
sun.  He learn then that we are here, for she have more to tell in her
open life with eyes to see ears to hear than he, shut as he is, in his
coffin box.  Now he make his most effort to escape us.  At present he
want her not.

"He is sure with his so great knowledge that she will come at his
call.  But he cut her off, take her, as he can do, out of his own
power, that so she come not to him.  Ah!  There I have hope that our
man brains that have been of man so long and that have not lost the
grace of God, will come higher than his child-brain that lie in his
tomb for centuries, that grow not yet to our stature, and that do only
work selfish and therefore small.  Here comes Madam Mina.  Not a word
to her of her trance!  She knows it not, and it would overwhelm her
and make despair just when we want all her hope, all her courage, when
most we want all her great brain which is trained like man's brain,
but is of sweet woman and have a special power which the Count give
her, and which he may not take away altogether, though he think not
so.  Hush!  Let me speak, and you shall learn.  Oh, John, my friend,
we are in awful straits.  I fear, as I never feared before.  We can
only trust the good God.  Silence!  Here she comes!"

I thought that the Professor was going to break down and have
hysterics, just as he had when Lucy died, but with a great effort he
controlled himself and was at perfect nervous poise when Mrs. Harker
tripped into the room, bright and happy looking and, in the doing of
work, seemingly forgetful of her misery.  As she came in, she handed a
number of sheets of typewriting to Van Helsing.  He looked over them
gravely, his face brightening up as he read.

Then holding the pages between his finger and thumb he said, "Friend
John, to you with so much experience already, and you too, dear Madam
Mina, that are young, here is a lesson.  Do not fear ever to think.  A
half thought has been buzzing often in my brain, but I fear to let him
loose his wings.  Here now, with more knowledge, I go back to where
that half thought come from and I find that he be no half thought at
all.  That be a whole thought, though so young that he is not yet
strong to use his little wings.  Nay, like the 'Ugly Duck' of my
friend Hans Andersen, he be no duck thought at all, but a big swan
thought that sail nobly on big wings, when the time come for him to
try them.  See I read here what Jonathan have written.

"That other of his race who, in a later age, again and again, brought
his forces over The Great River into Turkey Land, who when he was
beaten back, came again, and again, and again, though he had to come
alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered,
since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph.

"What does this tell us?  Not much?  No!  The Count's child thought
see nothing, therefore he speak so free.  Your man thought see
nothing.  My man thought see nothing, till just now.  No!  But there
comes another word from some one who speak without thought because
she, too, know not what it mean, what it might mean.  Just as there
are elements which rest, yet when in nature's course they move on
their way and they touch, the pouf!  And there comes a flash of light,
heaven wide, that blind and kill and destroy some.  But that show up
all earth below for leagues and leagues.  Is it not so?  Well, I shall
explain.  To begin, have you ever study the philosophy of crime?
'Yes' and 'No.'  You, John, yes, for it is a study of insanity.  You,
no, Madam Mina, for crime touch you not, not but once.  Still, your
mind works true, and argues not a particulari ad universale.  There is
this peculiarity in criminals.  It is so constant, in all countries
and at all times, that even police, who know not much from philosophy,
come to know it empirically, that it is.  That is to be empiric.  The
criminal always work at one crime, that is the true criminal who seems
predestinate to crime, and who will of none other.  This criminal has
not full man brain.  He is clever and cunning and resourceful, but he
be not of man stature as to brain.  He be of child brain in much.  Now
this criminal of ours is predestinate to crime also.  He, too, have
child brain, and it is of the child to do what he have done.  The
little bird, the little fish, the little animal learn not by
principle, but empirically.  And when he learn to do, then there is to
him the ground to start from to do more.  'Dos pou sto,' said
Archimedes.  'Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world!'  To do
once, is the fulcrum whereby child brain become man brain.  And until
he have the purpose to do more, he continue to do the same again every
time, just as he have done before!  Oh, my dear, I see that your eyes
are opened, and that to you the lightning flash show all the leagues,"
for Mrs. Harker began to clap her hands and her eyes sparkled.

He went on, "Now you shall speak.  Tell us two dry men of science what
you see with those so bright eyes."  He took her hand and held it
whilst he spoke.  His finger and thumb closed on her pulse, as I
thought instinctively and unconsciously, as she spoke.

"The Count is a criminal and of criminal type.  Nordau and Lombroso
would so classify him, and qua criminal he is of an imperfectly formed
mind.  Thus, in a difficulty he has to seek resource in habit.  His
past is a clue, and the one page of it that we know, and that from his
own lips, tells that once before, when in what Mr. Morris would call
a 'tight place,' he went back to his own country from the land he had
tried to invade, and thence, without losing purpose, prepared himself
for a new effort.  He came again better equipped for his work, and
won.  So he came to London to invade a new land.  He was beaten, and
when all hope of success was lost, and his existence in danger, he
fled back over the sea to his home.  Just as formerly he had fled back
over the Danube from Turkey Land."

"Good, good!  Oh, you so clever lady!" said Van Helsing,
enthusiastically, as he stooped and kissed her hand.  A moment later
he said to me, as calmly as though we had been having a sick room
consultation, "Seventy-two only, and in all this excitement.  I have
hope."

Turning to her again, he said with keen expectation, "But go on.  Go
on!  There is more to tell if you will.  Be not afraid.  John and I
know.  I do in any case, and shall tell you if you are right.  Speak,
without fear!"

"I will try to.  But you will forgive me if I seem too egotistical."

"Nay!  Fear not, you must be egotist, for it is of you that we think."

"Then, as he is criminal he is selfish.  And as his intellect is small
and his action is based on selfishness, he confines himself to one
purpose.  That purpose is remorseless.  As he fled back over the
Danube, leaving his forces to be cut to pieces, so now he is intent on
being safe, careless of all.  So his own selfishness frees my soul
somewhat from the terrible power which he acquired over me on that
dreadful night.  I felt it!  Oh, I felt it!  Thank God, for His great
mercy!  My soul is freer than it has been since that awful hour.  And
all that haunts me is a fear lest in some trance or dream he may have
used my knowledge for his ends."

The Professor stood up, "He has so used your mind, and by it he has
left us here in Varna, whilst the ship that carried him rushed through
enveloping fog up to Galatz, where, doubtless, he had made preparation
for escaping from us.  But his child mind only saw so far.  And it may
be that as ever is in God's Providence, the very thing that the evil
doer most reckoned on for his selfish good, turns out to be his
chiefest harm.  The hunter is taken in his own snare, as the great
Psalmist says.  For now that he think he is free from every trace of
us all, and that he has escaped us with so many hours to him, then his
selfish child brain will whisper him to sleep.  He think, too, that as
he cut himself off from knowing your mind, there can be no knowledge
of him to you.  There is where he fail!  That terrible baptism of
blood which he give you makes you free to go to him in spirit, as you
have as yet done in your times of freedom, when the sun rise and set.
At such times you go by my volition and not by his.  And this power to
good of you and others, you have won from your suffering at his hands.
This is now all more precious that he know it not, and to guard
himself have even cut himself off from his knowledge of our where.
We, however, are not selfish, and we believe that God is with us
through all this blackness, and these many dark hours.  We shall
follow him, and we shall not flinch, even if we peril ourselves that
we become like him.  Friend John, this has been a great hour, and it
have done much to advance us on our way.  You must be scribe and write
him all down, so that when the others return from their work you can
give it to them, then they shall know as we do."

And so I have written it whilst we wait their return, and Mrs. Harker
has written with the typewriter all since she brought the MS to us.




CHAPTER 26


DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

29 October.--This is written in the train from Varna to Galatz.  Last
night we all assembled a little before the time of sunset.  Each of us
had done his work as well as he could, so far as thought, and
endeavour, and opportunity go, we are prepared for the whole of our
journey, and for our work when we get to Galatz.  When the usual time
came round Mrs. Harker prepared herself for her hypnotic effort, and
after a longer and more serious effort on the part of Van Helsing than
has been usually necessary, she sank into the trance.  Usually she
speaks on a hint, but this time the Professor had to ask her
questions, and to ask them pretty resolutely, before we could learn
anything.  At last her answer came.

"I can see nothing.  We are still.  There are no waves lapping, but
only a steady swirl of water softly running against the hawser.  I can
hear men's voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of
oars in the rowlocks.  A gun is fired somewhere, the echo of it seems
far away.  There is tramping of feet overhead, and ropes and chains
are dragged along.  What is this?  There is a gleam of light.  I can
feel the air blowing upon me."

Here she stopped.  She had risen, as if impulsively, from where she
lay on the sofa, and raised both her hands, palms upwards, as if
lifting a weight.  Van Helsing and I looked at each other with
understanding.  Quincey raised his eyebrows slightly and looked at her
intently, whilst Harker's hand instinctively closed round the hilt of
his Kukri.  There was a long pause.  We all knew that the time when
she could speak was passing, but we felt that it was useless to say
anything.

Suddenly she sat up, and as she opened her eyes said sweetly, "Would
none of you like a cup of tea?  You must all be so tired!"

We could only make her happy, and so acqueisced.  She bustled off to
get tea.  When she had gone Van Helsing said, "You see, my friends.  He
is close to land.  He has left his earth chest.  But he has yet to get
on shore.  In the night he may lie hidden somewhere, but if he be not
carried on shore, or if the ship do not touch it, he cannot achieve
the land.  In such case he can, if it be in the night, change his form
and jump or fly on shore, then, unless he be carried he cannot escape.
And if he be carried, then the customs men may discover what the box
contain.  Thus, in fine, if he escape not on shore tonight, or before
dawn, there will be the whole day lost to him.  We may then arrive in
time.  For if he escape not at night we shall come on him in daytime,
boxed up and at our mercy.  For he dare not be his true self, awake
and visible, lest he be discovered."

There was no more to be said, so we waited in patience until the dawn,
at which time we might learn more from Mrs. Harker.

Early this morning we listened, with breathless anxiety, for her
response in her trance.  The hypnotic stage was even longer in coming
than before, and when it came the time remaining until full sunrise
was so short that we began to despair.  Van Helsing seemed to throw
his whole soul into the effort.  At last, in obedience to his will she
made reply.

"All is dark.  I hear lapping water, level with me, and some creaking
as of wood on wood."  She paused, and the red sun shot up.  We must
wait till tonight.

And so it is that we are travelling towards Galatz in an agony of
expectation.  We are due to arrive between two and three in the
morning.  But already, at Bucharest, we are three hours late, so we
cannot possibly get in till well after sunup.  Thus we shall have two
more hypnotic messages from Mrs. Harker!  Either or both may possibly
throw more light on what is happening.


Later.--Sunset has come and gone.  Fortunately it came at a time when
there was no distraction.  For had it occurred whilst we were at a
station, we might not have secured the necessary calm and isolation.
Mrs. Harker yielded to the hypnotic influence even less readily than
this morning.  I am in fear that her power of reading the Count's
sensations may die away, just when we want it most.  It seems to me
that her imagination is beginning to work.  Whilst she has been in the
trance hitherto she has confined herself to the simplest of facts.  If
this goes on it may ultimately mislead us.  If I thought that the
Count's power over her would die away equally with her power of
knowledge it would be a happy thought.  But I am afraid that it may
not be so.

When she did speak, her words were enigmatical, "Something is going
out.  I can feel it pass me like a cold wind.  I can hear, far off,
confused sounds, as of men talking in strange tongues, fierce falling
water, and the howling of wolves."  She stopped and a shudder ran
through her, increasing in intensity for a few seconds, till at the
end, she shook as though in a palsy.  She said no more, even in answer
to the Professor's imperative questioning.  When she woke from the
trance, she was cold, and exhausted, and languid, but her mind was all
alert.  She could not remember anything, but asked what she had said.
When she was told, she pondered over it deeply for a long time and in
silence.


30 October, 7 A.M.--We are near Galatz now, and I may not have time to
write later.  Sunrise this morning was anxiously looked for by us all.
Knowing of the increasing difficulty of procuring the hypnotic trance,
Van Helsing began his passes earlier than usual.  They produced no
effect, however, until the regular time, when she yielded with a still
greater difficulty, only a minute before the sun rose.  The Professor
lost no time in his questioning.

Her answer came with equal quickness, "All is dark.  I hear water
swirling by, level with my ears, and the creaking of wood on wood.
Cattle low far off.  There is another sound, a queer one like . . ."
She stopped and grew white, and whiter still.

"Go on, go on!  Speak, I command you!" said Van Helsing in an agonized
voice.  At the same time there was despair in his eyes, for the risen
sun was reddening even Mrs. Harker's pale face.  She opened her eyes,
and we all started as she said, sweetly and seemingly with the utmost
unconcern.

"Oh, Professor, why ask me to do what you know I can't?  I don't
remember anything."  Then, seeing the look of amazement on our faces,
she said, turning from one to the other with a troubled look, "What
have I said?  What have I done?  I know nothing, only that I was lying
here, half asleep, and heard you say 'go on! speak, I command you!'  It
seemed so funny to hear you order me about, as if I were a bad child!"

"Oh, Madam Mina," he said, sadly, "it is proof, if proof be needed, of
how I love and honour you, when a word for your good, spoken more
earnest than ever, can seem so strange because it is to order her whom
I am proud to obey!"

The whistles are sounding.  We are nearing Galatz.  We are on fire
with anxiety and eagerness.



MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

30 October.--Mr. Morris took me to the hotel where our rooms had been
ordered by telegraph, he being the one who could best be spared, since
he does not speak any foreign language.  The forces were distributed
much as they had been at Varna, except that Lord Godalming went to the
Vice Consul, as his rank might serve as an immediate guarantee of some
sort to the official, we being in extreme hurry.  Jonathan and the two
doctors went to the shipping agent to learn particulars of the arrival
of the Czarina Catherine.


Later.--Lord Godalming has returned.  The Consul is away, and the Vice
Consul sick.  So the routine work has been attended to by a clerk.  He
was very obliging, and offered to do anything in his power.



JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

30 October.--At nine o'clock Dr. Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, and I called
on Messrs. Mackenzie & Steinkoff, the agents of the London firm of
Hapgood.  They had received a wire from London, in answer to Lord
Godalming's telegraphed request, asking them to show us any civility
in their power.  They were more than kind and courteous, and took us
at once on board the Czarina Catherine, which lay at anchor out in the
river harbor.  There we saw the Captain, Donelson by name, who told us
of his voyage.  He said that in all his life he had never had so
favourable a run.

"Man!" he said, "but it made us afeard, for we expect it that we
should have to pay for it wi' some rare piece o' ill luck, so as to
keep up the average.  It's no canny to run frae London to the Black
Sea wi' a wind ahint ye, as though the Deil himself were blawin' on
yer sail for his ain purpose.  An' a' the time we could no speer a
thing.  Gin we were nigh a ship, or a port, or a headland, a fog fell
on us and travelled wi' us, till when after it had lifted and we
looked out, the deil a thing could we see.  We ran by Gibraltar wi'
oot bein' able to signal.  An' til we came to the Dardanelles and had
to wait to get our permit to pass, we never were within hail o'
aught.  At first I inclined to slack off sail and beat about till the
fog was lifted.  But whiles, I thocht that if the Deil was minded to
get us into the Black Sea quick, he was like to do it whether we would
or no.  If we had a quick voyage it would be no to our miscredit
wi' the owners, or no hurt to our traffic, an' the Old Mon who had
served his ain purpose wad be decently grateful to us for no hinderin'
him."

This mixture of simplicity and cunning, of superstition and commercial
reasoning, aroused Van Helsing, who said, "Mine friend, that Devil is
more clever than he is thought by some, and he know when he meet his
match!"

The skipper was not displeased with the compliment, and went on, "When
we got past the Bosphorus the men began to grumble.  Some o' them, the
Roumanians, came and asked me to heave overboard a big box which had
been put on board by a queer lookin' old man just before we had
started frae London.  I had seen them speer at the fellow, and put out
their twa fingers when they saw him, to guard them against the evil
eye.  Man! but the supersteetion of foreigners is pairfectly
rideeculous!  I sent them aboot their business pretty quick, but as
just after a fog closed in on us I felt a wee bit as they did anent
something, though I wouldn't say it was again the big box.  Well, on
we went, and as the fog didn't let up for five days I joost let the
wind carry us, for if the Deil wanted to get somewheres, well, he
would fetch it up a'reet.  An' if he didn't, well, we'd keep a sharp
lookout anyhow.  Sure eneuch, we had a fair way and deep water all the
time.  And two days ago, when the mornin' sun came through the fog, we
found ourselves just in the river opposite Galatz.  The Roumanians
were wild, and wanted me right or wrong to take out the box and fling
it in the river.  I had to argy wi' them aboot it wi' a handspike.  An'
when the last o' them rose off the deck wi' his head in his hand, I
had convinced them that, evil eye or no evil eye, the property and the
trust of my owners were better in my hands than in the river Danube.
They had, mind ye, taken the box on the deck ready to fling in, and as
it was marked Galatz via Varna, I thocht I'd let it lie till we
discharged in the port an' get rid o't althegither.  We didn't do much
clearin' that day, an' had to remain the nicht at anchor.  But in the
mornin', braw an' airly, an hour before sunup, a man came aboard wi'
an order, written to him from England, to receive a box marked for one
Count Dracula.  Sure eneuch the matter was one ready to his hand.  He
had his papers a' reet, an' glad I was to be rid o' the dam' thing,
for I was beginnin' masel' to feel uneasy at it.  If the Deil did have
any luggage aboord the ship, I'm thinkin' it was nane ither than that
same!"

"What was the name of the man who took it?" asked Dr. Van Helsing with
restrained eagerness.

"I'll be tellin' ye quick!" he answered, and stepping down to his
cabin, produced a receipt signed "Immanuel Hildesheim."  Burgen-strasse
16 was the address.  We found out that this was all the Captain knew,
so with thanks we came away.

We found Hildesheim in his office, a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi
Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez.  His arguments were
pointed with specie, we doing the punctuation, and with a little
bargaining he told us what he knew.  This turned out to be simple but
important.  He had received a letter from Mr. de Ville of London,
telling him to receive, if possible before sunrise so as to avoid
customs, a box which would arrive at Galatz in the Czarina Catherine.
This he was to give in charge to a certain Petrof Skinsky, who dealt
with the Slovaks who traded down the river to the port.  He had been
paid for his work by an English bank note, which had been duly cashed
for gold at the Danube International Bank.  When Skinsky had come to
him, he had taken him to the ship and handed over the box, so as to
save porterage.  That was all he knew.

We then sought for Skinsky, but were unable to find him.  One of his
neighbors, who did not seem to bear him any affection, said that he
had gone away two days before, no one knew whither.  This was
corroborated by his landlord, who had received by messenger the key of
the house together with the rent due, in English money.  This had been
between ten and eleven o'clock last night.  We were at a standstill
again.

Whilst we were talking one came running and breathlessly gasped out
that the body of Skinsky had been found inside the wall of the
churchyard of St. Peter, and that the throat had been torn open as if
by some wild animal.  Those we had been speaking with ran off to see
the horror, the women crying out.  "This is the work of a Slovak!"  We
hurried away lest we should have been in some way drawn into the
affair, and so detained.

As we came home we could arrive at no definite conclusion.  We were
all convinced that the box was on its way, by water, to somewhere, but
where that might be we would have to discover.  With heavy hearts we
came home to the hotel to Mina.

When we met together, the first thing was to consult as to taking Mina
again into our confidence.  Things are getting desperate, and it is at
least a chance, though a hazardous one.  As a preliminary step, I was
released from my promise to her.





MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

30 October, evening.--They were so tired and worn out and dispirited
that there was nothing to be done till they had some rest, so I asked
them all to lie down for half an hour whilst I should enter everything
up to the moment.  I feel so grateful to the man who invented the
"Traveller's" typewriter, and to Mr. Morris for getting this one for
me.  I should have felt quite astray doing the work if I had to write
with a pen . . .

It is all done.  Poor dear, dear Jonathan, what he must have suffered,
what he must be suffering now.  He lies on the sofa hardly seeming to
breathe, and his whole body appears in collapse.  His brows are knit.
His face is drawn with pain.  Poor fellow, maybe he is thinking, and I
can see his face all wrinkled up with the concentration of his
thoughts.  Oh! if I could only help at all.  I shall do what I can.

I have asked Dr. Van Helsing, and he has got me all the papers that I
have not yet seen.  Whilst they are resting, I shall go over all
carefully, and perhaps I may arrive at some conclusion.  I shall try
to follow the Professor's example, and think without prejudice on the
facts before me . . .

I do believe that under God's providence I have made a discovery.  I
shall get the maps and look over them.

I am more than ever sure that I am right.  My new conclusion is ready,
so I shall get our party together and read it.  They can judge it.  It
is well to be accurate, and every minute is precious.



MINA HARKER'S MEMORANDUM

(ENTERED IN HER JOURNAL)


Ground of inquiry.--Count Dracula's problem is to get back
to his own place.

(a) He must be brought back by some one.  This is evident;
for had he power to move himself as he wished he could go
either as man, or wolf, or bat, or in some other way.  He
evidently fears discovery or interference, in the state of
helplessness in which he must be, confined as he is between
dawn and sunset in his wooden box.

(b) How is he to be taken?--Here a process of exclusions may
help us.  By road, by rail, by water?

1.  By Road.--There are endless difficulties, especially in
leaving the city.

(x) There are people.  And people are curious, and
investigate.  A hint, a surmise, a doubt as to what might
be in the box, would destroy him.

(y) There are, or there may be, customs and octroi officers
to pass.

(z) His pursuers might follow.  This is his highest fear.
And in order to prevent his being betrayed he has repelled,
so far as he can, even his victim, me!

2.  By Rail.--There is no one in charge of the box.  It
would have to take its chance of being delayed, and delay
would be fatal, with enemies on the track.  True, he might
escape at night.  But what would he be, if left in a strange
place with no refuge that he could fly to?  This is not what he
intends, and he does not mean to risk it.

3.  By Water.--Here is the safest way, in one respect, but
with most danger in another.  On the water he is powerless
except at night.  Even then he can only summon fog and storm and
snow and his wolves.  But were he wrecked, the living water would
engulf him, helpless, and he would indeed be lost.  He could have
the vessel drive to land, but if it were unfriendly land, wherein
he was not free to move, his position would still be desperate.

We know from the record that he was on the water, so what
we have to do is to ascertain what water.

The first thing is to realize exactly what he has done as
yet.  We may, then, get a light on what his task is to be.

Firstly.--We must differentiate between what he did in
London as part of his general plan of action, when he was
pressed for moments and had to arrange as best he could.

Secondly.--We must see, as well as we can surmise it from the
facts we know of, what he has done here.

As to the first, he evidently intended to arrive at Galatz,
and sent invoice to Varna to deceive us lest we should ascertain
his means of exit from England.  His immediate and sole purpose
then was to escape.  The proof of this, is the letter of
instructions sent to Immanuel Hildesheim to clear and take away
the box before sunrise.  There is also the instruction to Petrof
Skinsky.  These we must only guess at, but there must have been
some letter or message, since Skinsky came to Hildesheim.

That, so far, his plans were successful we know.  The Czarina
Catherine made a phenomenally quick journey.  So much so that
Captain Donelson's suspicions were aroused.  But his superstition
united with his canniness played the Count's game for him, and he
ran with his favouring wind through fogs and all till he brought
up blindfold at Galatz.  That the Count's arrangements were well
made, has been proved.  Hildesheim cleared the box, took it off,
and gave it to Skinsky.  Skinsky took it, and here we lose the
trail.  We only know that the box is somewhere on the water,
moving along.  The customs and the octroi, if there be any, have
been avoided.

Now we come to what the Count must have done after his
arrival, on land, at Galatz.

The box was given to Skinsky before sunrise.  At sunrise
the Count could appear in his own form.  Here, we ask why
Skinsky was chosen at all to aid in the work?  In my husband's
diary, Skinsky is mentioned as dealing with the Slovaks who trade
down the river to the port.  And the man's remark, that the
murder was the work of a Slovak, showed the general feeling
against his class.  The Count wanted isolation.

My surmise is this, that in London the Count decided to get
back to his castle by water, as the most safe and secret
way.  He was brought from the castle by Szgany, and probably they
delivered their cargo to Slovaks who took the boxes to Varna, for
there they were shipped to London.  Thus the Count had knowledge
of the persons who could arrange this service.  When the box was
on land, before sunrise or after sunset, he came out from his
box, met Skinsky and instructed him what to do as to arranging
the carriage of the box up some river.  When this was done, and
he knew that all was in train, he blotted out his traces, as he
thought, by murdering his agent.

I have examined the map and find that the river most
suitable for the Slovaks to have ascended is either the
Pruth or the Sereth.  I read in the typescript that in my
trance I heard cows low and water swirling level with my
ears and the creaking of wood.  The Count in his box, then,
was on a river in an open boat, propelled probably either
by oars or poles, for the banks are near and it is working
against stream.  There would be no such if floating down
stream.

Of course it may not be either the Sereth or the Pruth, but
we may possibly investigate further.  Now of these two, the
Pruth is the more easily navigated, but the Sereth is, at
Fundu, joined by the Bistritza which runs up round the Borgo
Pass.  The loop it makes is manifestly as close to Dracula's
castle as can be got by water.



MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL--CONTINUED

When I had done reading, Jonathan took me in his arms and kissed me.
The others kept shaking me by both hands, and Dr. Van Helsing said,
"Our dear Madam Mina is once more our teacher.  Her eyes have been
where we were blinded.  Now we are on the track once again, and this
time we may succeed.  Our enemy is at his most helpless.  And if we
can come on him by day, on the water, our task will be over.  He has a
start, but he is powerless to hasten, as he may not leave this box
lest those who carry him may suspect.  For them to suspect would be to
prompt them to throw him in the stream where he perish.  This he
knows, and will not.  Now men, to our Council of War, for here and
now, we must plan what each and all shall do."

"I shall get a steam launch and follow him," said Lord Godalming.

"And I, horses to follow on the bank lest by chance he land," said Mr.
Morris.

"Good!" said the Professor, "both good.  But neither must go alone.
There must be force to overcome force if need be.  The Slovak is
strong and rough, and he carries rude arms."  All the men smiled, for
amongst them they carried a small arsenal.

Said Mr. Morris, "I have brought some Winchesters.  They are pretty
handy in a crowd, and there may be wolves.  The Count, if you
remember, took some other precautions.  He made some requisitions on
others that Mrs. Harker could not quite hear or understand.  We must
be ready at all points."

Dr. Seward said, "I think I had better go with Quincey.  We have been
accustomed to hunt together, and we two, well armed, will be a match
for whatever may come along.  You must not be alone, Art.  It may be
necessary to fight the Slovaks, and a chance thrust, for I don't
suppose these fellows carry guns, would undo all our plans.  There
must be no chances, this time.  We shall not rest until the Count's
head and body have been separated, and we are sure that he cannot
reincarnate."

He looked at Jonathan as he spoke, and Jonathan looked at me.  I could
see that the poor dear was torn about in his mind.  Of course he
wanted to be with me.  But then the boat service would, most likely,
be the one which would destroy the . . . the . . . Vampire.  (Why did
I hesitate to write the word?)

He was silent awhile, and during his silence Dr. Van Helsing spoke,
"Friend Jonathan, this is to you for twice reasons.  First, because
you are young and brave and can fight, and all energies may be needed
at the last.  And again that it is your right to destroy him.  That,
which has wrought such woe to you and yours.  Be not afraid for Madam
Mina.  She will be my care, if I may.  I am old.  My legs are not so
quick to run as once.  And I am not used to ride so long or to pursue
as need be, or to fight with lethal weapons.  But I can be of other
service.  I can fight in other way.  And I can die, if need be, as
well as younger men.  Now let me say that what I would is this.  While
you, my Lord Godalming and friend Jonathan go in your so swift little
steamboat up the river, and whilst John and Quincey guard the bank
where perchance he might be landed, I will take Madam Mina right into
the heart of the enemy's country.  Whilst the old fox is tied in his
box, floating on the running stream whence he cannot escape to land,
where he dares not raise the lid of his coffin box lest his Slovak
carriers should in fear leave him to perish, we shall go in the track
where Jonathan went, from Bistritz over the Borgo, and find our way to
the Castle of Dracula.  Here, Madam Mina's hypnotic power will surely
help, and we shall find our way, all dark and unknown otherwise, after
the first sunrise when we are near that fateful place.  There is much
to be done, and other places to be made sanctify, so that that nest of
vipers be obliterated."

Here Jonathan interrupted him hotly, "Do you mean to say, Professor
Van Helsing, that you would bring Mina, in her sad case and tainted as
she is with that devil's illness, right into the jaws of his
deathtrap?  Not for the world!  Not for Heaven or Hell!"

He became almost speechless for a minute, and then went on, "Do you
know what the place is?  Have you seen that awful den of hellish
infamy, with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and every
speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo?
Have you felt the Vampire's lips upon your throat?"

Here he turned to me, and as his eyes lit on my forehead he threw up
his arms with a cry, "Oh, my God, what have we done to have this
terror upon us?" and he sank down on the sofa in a collapse of misery.

The Professor's voice, as he spoke in clear, sweet tones, which seemed
to vibrate in the air, calmed us all.

"Oh, my friend, it is because I would save Madam Mina from that awful
place that I would go.  God forbid that I should take her into that
place.  There is work, wild work, to be done before that place can be
purify.  Remember that we are in terrible straits.  If the Count
escape us this time, and he is strong and subtle and cunning, he may
choose to sleep him for a century, and then in time our dear one," he
took my hand, "would come to him to keep him company, and would be as
those others that you, Jonathan, saw.  You have told us of their
gloating lips.  You heard their ribald laugh as they clutched the
moving bag that the Count threw to them.  You shudder, and well may it
be.  Forgive me that I make you so much pain, but it is necessary.  My
friend, is it not a dire need for that which I am giving, possibly my
life?  If it were that any one went into that place to stay, it is I
who would have to go to keep them company."

"Do as you will," said Jonathan, with a sob that shook him all over,
"we are in the hands of God!"


Later.--Oh, it did me good to see the way that these brave men worked.
How can women help loving men when they are so earnest, and so true,
and so brave!  And, too, it made me think of the wonderful power of
money!  What can it not do when basely used.  I felt so thankful that
Lord Godalming is rich, and both he and Mr. Morris, who also has
plenty of money, are willing to spend it so freely.  For if they did
not, our little expedition could not start, either so promptly or so
well equipped, as it will within another hour.  It is not three hours
since it was arranged what part each of us was to do.  And now Lord
Godalming and Jonathan have a lovely steam launch, with steam up ready
to start at a moment's notice.  Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris have half a
dozen good horses, well appointed.  We have all the maps and
appliances of various kinds that can be had.  Professor Van Helsing
and I are to leave by the 11:40 train tonight for Veresti, where we
are to get a carriage to drive to the Borgo Pass.  We are bringing a
good deal of ready money, as we are to buy a carriage and horses.  We
shall drive ourselves, for we have no one whom we can trust in the
matter.  The Professor knows something of a great many languages, so
we shall get on all right.  We have all got arms, even for me a large
bore revolver.  Jonathan would not be happy unless I was armed like
the rest.  Alas!  I cannot carry one arm that the rest do, the scar on
my forehead forbids that.  Dear Dr. Van Helsing comforts me by telling
me that I am fully armed as there may be wolves.  The weather is
getting colder every hour, and there are snow flurries which come and
go as warnings.


Later.--It took all my courage to say goodbye to my darling.  We may
never meet again.  Courage, Mina!  The Professor is looking at you
keenly.  His look is a warning.  There must be no tears now, unless it
may be that God will let them fall in gladness.



JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

30 October, night.--I am writing this in the light from the furnace
door of the steam launch.  Lord Godalming is firing up.  He is an
experienced hand at the work, as he has had for years a launch of his
own on the Thames, and another on the Norfolk Broads.  Regarding our
plans, we finally decided that Mina's guess was correct, and that if
any waterway was chosen for the Count's escape back to his Castle, the
Sereth and then the Bistritza at its junction, would be the one.  We
took it, that somewhere about the 47th degree, north latitude, would
be the place chosen for crossing the country between the river and the
Carpathians.  We have no fear in running at good speed up the river at
night.  There is plenty of water, and the banks are wide enough apart
to make steaming, even in the dark, easy enough.  Lord Godalming tells
me to sleep for a while, as it is enough for the present for one to be
on watch.  But I cannot sleep, how can I with the terrible danger
hanging over my darling, and her going out into that awful place . . .

My only comfort is that we are in the hands of God.  Only for that
faith it would be easier to die than to live, and so be quit of all
the trouble.  Mr. Morris and Dr. Seward were off on their long ride
before we started.  They are to keep up the right bank, far enough off
to get on higher lands where they can see a good stretch of river and
avoid the following of its curves.  They have, for the first stages,
two men to ride and lead their spare horses, four in all, so as not to
excite curiosity.  When they dismiss the men, which shall be shortly,
they shall themselves look after the horses.  It may be necessary for
us to join forces.  If so they can mount our whole party.  One of the
saddles has a moveable horn, and can be easily adapted for Mina, if
required.

It is a wild adventure we are on.  Here, as we are rushing along
through the darkness, with the cold from the river seeming to rise up
and strike us, with all the mysterious voices of the night around us,
it all comes home.  We seem to be drifting into unknown places and
unknown ways.  Into a whole world of dark and dreadful things.
Godalming is shutting the furnace door . . .


31 October.--Still hurrying along.  The day has come, and Godalming is
sleeping.  I am on watch.  The morning is bitterly cold, the furnace
heat is grateful, though we have heavy fur coats.  As yet we have
passed only a few open boats, but none of them had on board any box or
package of anything like the size of the one we seek.  The men were
scared every time we turned our electric lamp on them, and fell on
their knees and prayed.


1 November, evening.--No news all day.  We have found nothing of the
kind we seek.  We have now passed into the Bistritza, and if we are
wrong in our surmise our chance is gone.  We have overhauled every
boat, big and little.  Early this morning, one crew took us for a
Government boat, and treated us accordingly.  We saw in this a way of
smoothing matters, so at Fundu, where the Bistritza runs into the
Sereth, we got a Roumanian flag which we now fly conspicuously.  With
every boat which we have overhauled since then this trick has
succeeded.  We have had every deference shown to us, and not once any
objection to whatever we chose to ask or do.  Some of the Slovaks tell
us that a big boat passed them, going at more than usual speed as she
had a double crew on board.  This was before they came to Fundu, so
they could not tell us whether the boat turned into the Bistritza or
continued on up the Sereth.  At Fundu we could not hear of any such
boat, so she must have passed there in the night.  I am feeling very
sleepy.  The cold is perhaps beginning to tell upon me, and nature
must have rest some time.  Godalming insists that he shall keep the
first watch.  God bless him for all his goodness to poor dear Mina and
me.


2 November, morning.--It is broad daylight.  That good fellow would
not wake me.  He says it would have been a sin to, for I slept
peacefully and was forgetting my trouble.  It seems brutally selfish
to me to have slept so long, and let him watch all night, but he was
quite right.  I am a new man this morning.  And, as I sit here and
watch him sleeping, I can do all that is necessary both as to minding
the engine, steering, and keeping watch.  I can feel that my strength
and energy are coming back to me.  I wonder where Mina is now, and Van
Helsing.  They should have got to Veresti about noon on Wednesday.  It
would take them some time to get the carriage and horses.  So if they
had started and travelled hard, they would be about now at the Borgo
Pass.  God guide and help them!  I am afraid to think what may
happen.  If we could only go faster.  But we cannot.  The engines are
throbbing and doing their utmost.  I wonder how Dr. Seward and Mr.
Morris are getting on.  There seem to be endless streams running down
the mountains into this river, but as none of them are very large, at
present, at all events, though they are doubtless terrible in winter
and when the snow melts, the horsemen may not have met much
obstruction.  I hope that before we get to Strasba we may see them.
For if by that time we have not overtaken the Count, it may be
necessary to take counsel together what to do next.





DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

2 November.--Three days on the road.  No news, and no time to write it
if there had been, for every moment is precious.  We have had only the
rest needful for the horses.  But we are both bearing it wonderfully.
Those adventurous days of ours are turning up useful.  We must push
on.  We shall never feel happy till we get the launch in sight again.


3 November.--We heard at Fundu that the launch had gone up the
Bistritza.  I wish it wasn't so cold.  There are signs of snow coming.
And if it falls heavy it will stop us.  In such case we must get a
sledge and go on, Russian fashion.

4 November.--Today we heard of the launch having been detained by an
accident when trying to force a way up the rapids.  The Slovak boats
get up all right, by aid of a rope and steering with knowledge.  Some
went up only a few hours before.  Godalming is an amateur fitter
himself, and evidently it was he who put the launch in trim again.

Finally, they got up the rapids all right, with local help, and are off
on the chase afresh.  I fear that the boat is not any better for the
accident, the peasantry tell us that after she got upon smooth water
again, she kept stopping every now and again so long as she was in
sight.  We must push on harder than ever.  Our help may be wanted
soon.





MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

31 October.--Arrived at Veresti at noon.  The Professor tells me that
this morning at dawn he could hardly hypnotize me at all, and that all
I could say was, "dark and quiet."  He is off now buying a carriage
and horses.  He says that he will later on try to buy additional
horses, so that we may be able to change them on the way.  We have
something more than 70 miles before us.  The country is lovely, and
most interesting.  If only we were under different conditions, how
delightful it would be to see it all.  If Jonathan and I were driving
through it alone what a pleasure it would be.  To stop and see people,
and learn something of their life, and to fill our minds and memories
with all the colour and picturesqueness of the whole wild, beautiful
country and the quaint people!  But, alas!


Later.--Dr. Van Helsing has returned.  He has got the carriage and
horses.  We are to have some dinner, and to start in an hour.  The
landlady is putting us up a huge basket of provisions.  It seems
enough for a company of soldiers.  The Professor encourages her, and
whispers to me that it may be a week before we can get any food again.
He has been shopping too, and has sent home such a wonderful lot of
fur coats and wraps, and all sorts of warm things.  There will not be
any chance of our being cold.

We shall soon be off.  I am afraid to think what may happen to us.  We
are truly in the hands of God.  He alone knows what may be, and I pray
Him, with all the strength of my sad and humble soul, that He will
watch over my beloved husband.  That whatever may happen, Jonathan may
know that I loved him and honoured him more than I can say, and that my
latest and truest thought will be always for him.




CHAPTER 27


MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

1 November.--All day long we have travelled, and at a good speed.  The
horses seem to know that they are being kindly treated, for they go
willingly their full stage at best speed.  We have now had so many
changes and find the same thing so constantly that we are encouraged
to think that the journey will be an easy one.  Dr. Van Helsing is
laconic, he tells the farmers that he is hurrying to Bistritz, and
pays them well to make the exchange of horses.  We get hot soup, or
coffee, or tea, and off we go.  It is a lovely country.  Full of
beauties of all imaginable kinds, and the people are brave, and
strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities.  They are very,
very superstitious.  In the first house where we stopped, when the
woman who served us saw the scar on my forehead, she crossed herself
and put out two fingers towards me, to keep off the evil eye.  I
believe they went to the trouble of putting an extra amount of garlic
into our food, and I can't abide garlic.  Ever since then I have taken
care not to take off my hat or veil, and so have escaped their
suspicions.  We are travelling fast, and as we have no driver with us
to carry tales, we go ahead of scandal.  But I daresay that fear of
the evil eye will follow hard behind us all the way.  The Professor
seems tireless.  All day he would not take any rest, though he made me
sleep for a long spell.  At sunset time he hypnotized me, and he says
I answered as usual, "darkness, lapping water and creaking wood."  So
our enemy is still on the river.  I am afraid to think of Jonathan,
but somehow I have now no fear for him, or for myself.  I write this
whilst we wait in a farmhouse for the horses to be ready.  Dr. Van
Helsing is sleeping.  Poor dear, he looks very tired and old and grey,
but his mouth is set as firmly as a conqueror's.  Even in his sleep he
is intense with resolution.  When we have well started I must make him
rest whilst I drive.  I shall tell him that we have days before us,
and he must not break down when most of all his strength will be
needed . . . All is ready.  We are off shortly.


2 November, morning.--I was successful, and we took turns driving all
night.  Now the day is on us, bright though cold.  There is a strange
heaviness in the air.  I say heaviness for want of a better word.  I
mean that it oppresses us both.  It is very cold, and only our warm
furs keep us comfortable.  At dawn Van Helsing hypnotized me.  He says
I answered "darkness, creaking wood and roaring water," so the river
is changing as they ascend.  I do hope that my darling will not run
any chance of danger, more than need be, but we are in God's hands.


2 November, night.--All day long driving.  The country gets wilder as
we go, and the great spurs of the Carpathians, which at Veresti seemed
so far from us and so low on the horizon, now seem to gather round us
and tower in front.  We both seem in good spirits.  I think we make an
effort each to cheer the other, in the doing so we cheer ourselves.
Dr. Van Helsing says that by morning we shall reach the Borgo Pass.
The houses are very few here now, and the Professor says that the last
horse we got will have to go on with us, as we may not be able to
change.  He got two in addition to the two we changed, so that now we
have a rude four-in-hand.  The dear horses are patient and good, and
they give us no trouble.  We are not worried with other travellers,
and so even I can drive.  We shall get to the Pass in daylight.  We do
not want to arrive before.  So we take it easy, and have each a long
rest in turn.  Oh, what will tomorrow bring to us?  We go to seek the
place where my poor darling suffered so much.  God grant that we may
be guided aright, and that He will deign to watch over my husband and
those dear to us both, and who are in such deadly peril.  As for me, I
am not worthy in His sight.  Alas!  I am unclean to His eyes, and
shall be until He may deign to let me stand forth in His sight as one
of those who have not incurred His wrath.





MEMORANDUM BY ABRAHAM VAN HELSING

4 November.--This to my old and true friend John Seward, M.D.,
of Purfleet, London, in case I may not see him.  It may
explain.  It is morning, and I write by a fire which all
the night I have kept alive, Madam Mina aiding me.  It is
cold, cold.  So cold that the grey heavy sky is full of
snow, which when it falls will settle for all winter as the
ground is hardening to receive it.  It seems to have affected
Madam Mina.  She has been so heavy of head all day that she was
not like herself.  She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps!  She who
is usual so alert, have done literally nothing all the day.  She
even have lost her appetite.  She make no entry into her little
diary, she who write so faithful at every pause.  Something
whisper to me that all is not well.  However, tonight she is more
/vif/.  Her long sleep all day have refresh and restore her, for
now she is all sweet and bright as ever.  At sunset I try to
hypnotize her, but alas! with no effect.  The power has grown
less and less with each day, and tonight it fail me altogether.
Well, God's will be done, whatever it may be, and whithersoever
it may lead!

Now to the historical, for as Madam Mina write not in her
stenography, I must, in my cumbrous old fashion, that so
each day of us may not go unrecorded.

We got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise yesterday
morning.  When I saw the signs of the dawn I got ready for
the hypnotism.  We stopped our carriage, and got down so
that there might be no disturbance.  I made a couch with
furs, and Madam Mina, lying down, yield herself as usual,
but more slow and more short time than ever, to the hypnotic
sleep.  As before, came the answer, "darkness and the swirling of
water."  Then she woke, bright and radiant and we go on our way
and soon reach the Pass.  At this time and place, she become all
on fire with zeal.  Some new guiding power be in her manifested,
for she point to a road and say, "This is the way."

"How know you it?" I ask.

"Of course I know it," she answer, and with a pause, add,
"Have not my Jonathan travelled it and wrote of his travel?"

At first I think somewhat strange, but soon I see that there be
only one such byroad.  It is used but little, and very different
from the coach road from the Bukovina to Bistritz, which is more
wide and hard, and more of use.

So we came down this road.  When we meet other ways, not
always were we sure that they were roads at all, for they
be neglect and light snow have fallen, the horses know and
they only.  I give rein to them, and they go on so patient.  By
and by we find all the things which Jonathan have note in that
wonderful diary of him.  Then we go on for long, long hours and
hours.  At the first, I tell Madam Mina to sleep.  She try, and
she succeed.  She sleep all the time, till at the last, I feel
myself to suspicious grow, and attempt to wake her.  But she
sleep on, and I may not wake her though I try.  I do not wish to
try too hard lest I harm her.  For I know that she have suffer
much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her.  I think I drowse
myself, for all of sudden I feel guilt, as though I have done
something.  I find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and
the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever.  I look down and
find Madam Mina still asleep.  It is now not far off sunset time,
and over the snow the light of the sun flow in big yellow flood,
so that we throw great long shadow on where the mountain rise so
steep.  For we are going up, and up, and all is oh so wild and
rocky, as though it were the end of the world.

Then I arouse Madam Mina.  This time she wake with not much
trouble, and then I try to put her to hypnotic sleep.  But
she sleep not, being as though I were not.  Still I try and
try, till all at once I find her and myself in dark, so I
look round, and find that the sun have gone down.  Madam
Mina laugh, and I turn and look at her.  She is now quite
awake, and look so well as I never saw her since that night
at Carfax when we first enter the Count's house.  I am amaze, and
not at ease then.  But she is so bright and tender and thoughtful
for me that I forget all fear.  I light a fire, for we have
brought supply of wood with us, and she prepare food while I undo
the horses and set them, tethered in shelter, to feed.  Then when
I return to the fire she have my supper ready.  I go to help her,
but she smile, and tell me that she have eat already.  That she
was so hungry that she would not wait.  I like it not, and I have
grave doubts.  But I fear to affright her, and so I am silent of
it.  She help me and I eat alone, and then we wrap in fur and lie
beside the fire, and I tell her to sleep while I watch.  But
presently I forget all of watching.  And when I sudden remember
that I watch, I find her lying quiet, but awake, and looking at
me with so bright eyes.  Once, twice more the same occur, and I
get much sleep till before morning.  When I wake I try to
hypnotize her, but alas! though she shut her eyes obedient, she
may not sleep.  The sun rise up, and up, and up, and then sleep
come to her too late, but so heavy that she will not wake.  I
have to lift her up, and place her sleeping in the carriage when
I have harnessed the horses and made all ready.  Madam still
sleep, and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder
than before.  And I like it not.  And I am afraid, afraid,
afraid!  I am afraid of all things, even to think but I must go
on my way.  The stake we play for is life and death, or more than
these, and we must not flinch.


5 November, morning.--Let me be accurate in everything, for
though you and I have seen some strange things together,
you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad.
That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has
at the last turn my brain.

All yesterday we travel, always getting closer to the
mountains, and moving into a more and more wild and desert
land.  There are great, frowning precipices and much falling
water, and Nature seem to have held sometime her carnival.  Madam
Mina still sleep and sleep.  And though I did have hunger and
appeased it, I could not waken her, even for food.  I began to
fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as
she is with that Vampire baptism.  "Well," said I to myself, "if
it be that she sleep all the day, it shall also be that I do not
sleep at night."  As we travel on the rough road, for a road of
an ancient and imperfect kind there was, I held down my head and
slept.

Again I waked with a sense of guilt and of time passed, and
found Madam Mina still sleeping, and the sun low down.  But
all was indeed changed.  The frowning mountains seemed further
away, and we were near the top of a steep rising hill, on summit
of which was such a castle as Jonathan tell of in his diary.  At
once I exulted and feared.  For now, for good or ill, the end was
near.

I woke Madam Mina, and again tried to hypnotize her, but
alas!  unavailing till too late.  Then, ere the great dark
came upon us, for even after down sun the heavens reflected
the gone sun on the snow, and all was for a time in a great
twilight.  I took out the horses and fed them in what shelter I
could.  Then I make a fire, and near it I make Madam Mina, now
awake and more charming than ever, sit comfortable amid her rugs.
I got ready food, but she would not eat, simply saying that she
had not hunger.  I did not press her, knowing her unavailingness.
But I myself eat, for I must needs now be strong for all.  Then,
with the fear on me of what might be, I drew a ring so big for
her comfort, round where Madam Mina sat.  And over the ring I
passed some of the wafer, and I broke it fine so that all was
well guarded.  She sat still all the time, so still as one dead.
And she grew whiter and even whiter till the snow was not more
pale, and no word she said.  But when I drew near, she clung to
me, and I could know that the poor soul shook her from head to
feet with a tremor that was pain to feel.

I said to her presently, when she had grown more quiet,
"Will you not come over to the fire?" for I wished to make
a test of what she could.  She rose obedient, but when she
have made a step she stopped, and stood as one stricken.

"Why not go on?" I asked.  She shook her head, and coming
back, sat down in her place.  Then, looking at me with open
eyes, as of one waked from sleep, she said simply, "I cannot!"
and remained silent.  I rejoiced, for I knew that what she could
not, none of those that we dreaded could.  Though there might be
danger to her body, yet her soul was safe!

Presently the horses began to scream, and tore at their
tethers till I came to them and quieted them.  When they
did feel my hands on them, they whinnied low as in joy, and
licked at my hands and were quiet for a time.  Many times
through the night did I come to them, till it arrive to the
cold hour when all nature is at lowest, and every time my
coming was with quiet of them.  In the cold hour the fire
began to die, and I was about stepping forth to replenish
it, for now the snow came in flying sweeps and with it a
chill mist.  Even in the dark there was a light of some
kind, as there ever is over snow, and it seemed as though
the snow flurries and the wreaths of mist took shape as of
women with trailing garments.  All was in dead, grim silence only
that the horses whinnied and cowered, as if in terror of the
worst.  I began to fear, horrible fears.  But then came to me the
sense of safety in that ring wherein I stood.  I began too, to
think that my imaginings were of the night, and the gloom, and
the unrest that I have gone through, and all the terrible
anxiety.  It was as though my memories of all Jonathan's horrid
experience were befooling me.  For the snow flakes and the mist
began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a
shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him.  And
then the horses cowered lower and lower, and moaned in terror as
men do in pain.  Even the madness of fright was not to them, so
that they could break away.  I feared for my dear Madam Mina when
these weird figures drew near and circled round.  I looked at her,
but she sat calm, and smiled at me.  When I would have stepped to
the fire to replenish it, she caught me and held me back, and
whispered, like a voice that one hears in a dream, so low it was.

"No!  No!  Do not go without.  Here you are safe!"

I turned to her, and looking in her eyes said, "But you?
It is for you that I fear!"

Whereat she laughed, a laugh low and unreal, and said, "Fear
for me!  Why fear for me?  None safer in all the world from
them than I am," and as I wondered at the meaning of her
words, a puff of wind made the flame leap up, and I see the
red scar on her forehead.  Then, alas!  I knew.  Did I not,
I would soon have learned, for the wheeling figures of mist
and snow came closer, but keeping ever without the Holy
circle.  Then they began to materialize till, if God have
not taken away my reason, for I saw it through my eyes.
There were before me in actual flesh the same three women
that Jonathan saw in the room, when they would have kissed
his throat.  I knew the swaying round forms, the bright
hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy colour, the voluptuous
lips.  They smiled ever at poor dear Madam Mina.  And as
their laugh came through the silence of the night, they
twined their arms and pointed to her, and said in those so
sweet tingling tones that Jonathan said were of the intolerable
sweetness of the water glasses, "Come, sister.  Come to us.
Come!"

In fear I turned to my poor Madam Mina, and my heart with
gladness leapt like flame.  For oh! the terror in her sweet
eyes, the repulsion, the horror, told a story to my heart
that was all of hope.  God be thanked she was not, yet, of
them.  I seized some of the firewood which was by me, and
holding out some of the Wafer, advanced on them towards the
fire.  They drew back before me, and laughed their low horrid
laugh.  I fed the fire, and feared them not.  For I knew that we
were safe within the ring, which she could not leave no more than
they could enter.  The horses had ceased to moan, and lay still
on the ground.  The snow fell on them softly, and they grew
whiter.  I knew that there was for the poor beasts no more of
terror.

And so we remained till the red of the dawn began to fall
through the snow gloom.  I was desolate and afraid, and
full of woe and terror.  But when that beautiful sun began
to climb the horizon life was to me again.  At the first
coming of the dawn the horrid figures melted in the whirling
mist and snow.  The wreaths of transparent gloom moved away
towards the castle, and were lost.

Instinctively, with the dawn coming, I turned to Madam Mina,
intending to hypnotize her.  But she lay in a deep and sudden
sleep, from which I could not wake her.  I tried to hypnotize
through her sleep, but she made no response, none at all, and the
day broke.  I fear yet to stir.  I have made my fire and have
seen the horses, they are all dead.  Today I have much to do here,
and I keep waiting till the sun is up high.  For there may be
places where I must go, where that sunlight, though snow and mist
obscure it, will be to me a safety.

I will strengthen me with breakfast, and then I will do my
terrible work.  Madam Mina still sleeps, and God be thanked!  She
is calm in her sleep . . .



JONATHAN HARKER'S JOURNAL

4 November, evening.--The accident to the launch has been a terrible
thing for us.  Only for it we should have overtaken the boat long ago,
and by now my dear Mina would have been free.  I fear to think of her,
off on the wolds near that horrid place.  We have got horses, and we
follow on the track.  I note this whilst Godalming is getting ready.
We have our arms.  The Szgany must look out if they mean to fight.  Oh,
if only Morris and Seward were with us.  We must only hope!  If I
write no more Goodby Mina!  God bless and keep you.



DR. SEWARD'S DIARY

5 November.--With the dawn we saw the body of Szgany before us dashing
away from the river with their leiter wagon.  They surrounded it in a
cluster, and hurried along as though beset.  The snow is falling
lightly and there is a strange excitement in the air.  It may be our
own feelings, but the depression is strange.  Far off I hear the
howling of wolves.  The snow brings them down from the mountains, and
there are dangers to all of us, and from all sides.  The horses are
nearly ready, and we are soon off.  We ride to death of some one.  God
alone knows who, or where, or what, or when, or how it may be . . .





DR. VAN HELSING'S MEMORANDUM

5 November, afternoon.--I am at least sane.  Thank God for
that mercy at all events, though the proving it has been
dreadful.  When I left Madam Mina sleeping within the Holy
circle, I took my way to the castle.  The blacksmith hammer
which I took in the carriage from Veresti was useful, though the
doors were all open I broke them off the rusty hinges, lest some
ill intent or ill chance should close them, so that being entered
I might not get out.  Jonathan's bitter experience served me
here.  By memory of his diary I found my way to the old chapel,
for I knew that here my work lay.  The air was oppressive.  It
seemed as if there was some sulphurous fume, which at times made
me dizzy.  Either there was a roaring in my ears or I heard afar
off the howl of wolves.  Then I bethought me of my dear Madam
Mina, and I was in terrible plight.  The dilemma had me between
his horns.

Her, I had not dare to take into this place, but left safe
from the Vampire in that Holy circle.  And yet even there
would be the wolf!  I resolve me that my work lay here, and
that as to the wolves we must submit, if it were God's will.  At
any rate it was only death and freedom beyond.  So did I choose
for her.  Had it but been for myself the choice had been easy,
the maw of the wolf were better to rest in than the grave of the
Vampire!  So I make my choice to go on with my work.

I knew that there were at least three graves to find, graves
that are inhabit.  So I search, and search, and I find one
of them.  She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and
voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to
do murder.  Ah, I doubt not that in the old time, when such
things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as
mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his
nerve.  So he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere
beauty and the fascination of the wanton Undead have hypnotize
him.  And he remain on and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire
sleep be over.  Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open
and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss, and
the man is weak.  And there remain one more victim in the
Vampire fold.  One more to swell the grim and grisly ranks
of the Undead! . . .

There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the
mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a
tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries,
though there be that horrid odour such as the lairs of the
Count have had.  Yes, I was moved.  I, Van Helsing, with
all my purpose and with my motive for hate.  I was moved to
a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyze my faculties
and to clog my very soul.  It may have been that the need
of natural sleep, and the strange oppression of the air
were beginning to overcome me.  Certain it was that I was
lapsing into sleep, the open eyed sleep of one who yields
to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled
air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me
like the sound of a clarion.  For it was the voice of my dear
Madam Mina that I heard.

Then I braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by
wrenching away tomb tops one other of the sisters, the other dark
one.  I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister,
lest once more I should begin to be enthrall.  But I go on
searching until, presently, I find in a high great tomb as if
made to one much beloved that other fair sister which, like
Jonathan I had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of the
mist.  She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so
exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me,
which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers,
made my head whirl with new emotion.  But God be thanked, that
soul wail of my dear Madam Mina had not died out of my ears.
And, before the spell could be wrought further upon me, I had
nerved myself to my wild work.  By this time I had searched all
the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell.  And as there
had been only three of these Undead phantoms around us in the
night, I took it that there were no more of active Undead
existent.  There was one great tomb more lordly than all the
rest.  Huge it was, and nobly proportioned.  On it was but one
word.


            DRACULA


This then was the Undead home of the King Vampire, to whom
so many more were due.  Its emptiness spoke eloquent to
make certain what I knew.  Before I began to restore these
women to their dead selves through my awful work, I laid in
Dracula's tomb some of the Wafer, and so banished him from
it, Undead, for ever.

Then began my terrible task, and I dreaded it.  Had it been
but one, it had been easy, comparative.  But three!  To
begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror.
For it was terrible with the sweet Miss Lucy, what would it
not be with these strange ones who had survived through
centuries, and who had been strengthened by the passing of
the years.  Who would, if they could, have fought for their
foul lives . . .

Oh, my friend John, but it was butcher work.  Had I not
been nerved by thoughts of other dead, and of the living
over whom hung such a pall of fear, I could not have gone
on.  I tremble and tremble even yet, though till all was
over, God be thanked, my nerve did stand.  Had I not seen
the repose in the first place, and the gladness that stole
over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realization
that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further
with my butchery.  I could not have endured the horrid screeching
as the stake drove home, the plunging of writhing form, and lips
of bloody foam.  I should have fled in terror and left my work
undone.  But it is over!  And the poor souls, I can pity them now
and weep, as I think of them placid each in her full sleep of
death for a short moment ere fading.  For, friend John, hardly
had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body
began to melt away and crumble into its native dust, as though
the death that should have come centuries ago had at last assert
himself and say at once and loud, "I am here!"

Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never
more can the Count enter there Undead.

When I stepped into the circle where Madam Mina slept, she
woke from her sleep and, seeing me, cried out in pain that
I had endured too much.

"Come!" she said, "come away from this awful place!  Let us
go to meet my husband who is, I know, coming towards us."
She was looking thin and pale and weak.  But her eyes were
pure and glowed with fervour.  I was glad to see her paleness and
her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror of that
ruddy vampire sleep.

And so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go
eastward to meet our friends, and him, whom Madam Mina tell
me that she know are coming to meet us.





MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

6 November.--It was late in the afternoon when the Professor and I
took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming.  We
did not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to
take heavy rugs and wraps with us.  We dared not face the possibility
of being left without warmth in the cold and the snow.  We had to take
some of our provisions too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and
so far as we could see through the snowfall, there was not even the
sign of habitation.  When we had gone about a mile, I was tired with
the heavy walking and sat down to rest.  Then we looked back and saw
where the clear line of Dracula's castle cut the sky.  For we were so
deep under the hill whereon it was set that the angle of perspective
of the Carpathian mountains was far below it.  We saw it in all its
grandeur, perched a thousand feet on the summit of a sheer precipice,
and with seemingly a great gap between it and the steep of the
adjacent mountain on any side.  There was something wild and uncanny
about the place.  We could hear the distant howling of wolves.  They
were far off, but the sound, even though coming muffled through the
deadening snowfall, was full of terror.  I knew from the way Dr. Van
Helsing was searching about that he was trying to seek some strategic
point, where we would be less exposed in case of attack.  The rough
roadway still led downwards.  We could trace it through the drifted
snow.

In a little while the Professor signalled to me, so I got up and
joined him.  He had found a wonderful spot, a sort of natural hollow
in a rock, with an entrance like a doorway between two boulders.  He
took me by the hand and drew me in.

"See!" he said, "here you will be in shelter.  And if the wolves do
come I can meet them one by one."

He brought in our furs, and made a snug nest for me, and got out some
provisions and forced them upon me.  But I could not eat, to even try
to do so was repulsive to me, and much as I would have liked to please
him, I could not bring myself to the attempt.  He looked very sad, but
did not reproach me.  Taking his field glasses from the case, he stood
on the top of the rock, and began to search the horizon.

Suddenly he called out, "Look!  Madam Mina, look!  Look!"

I sprang up and stood beside him on the rock.  He handed me his
glasses and pointed.  The snow was now falling more heavily, and
swirled about fiercely, for a high wind was beginning to blow.
However, there were times when there were pauses between the snow
flurries and I could see a long way round.  From the height where we
were it was possible to see a great distance.  And far off, beyond the
white waste of snow, I could see the river lying like a black ribbon
in kinks and curls as it wound its way.  Straight in front of us and
not far off, in fact so near that I wondered we had not noticed
before, came a group of mounted men hurrying along.  In the midst of
them was a cart, a long leiter wagon which swept from side to side,
like a dog's tail wagging, with each stern inequality of the road.
Outlined against the snow as they were, I could see from the men's
clothes that they were peasants or gypsies of some kind.

On the cart was a great square chest.  My heart leaped as I saw it, for
I felt that the end was coming.  The evening was now drawing close,
and well I knew that at sunset the Thing, which was till then
imprisoned there, would take new freedom and could in any of many
forms elude pursuit.  In fear I turned to the Professor.  To my
consternation, however, he was not there.  An instant later, I saw him
below me.  Round the rock he had drawn a circle, such as we had found
shelter in last night.

When he had completed it he stood beside me again saying, "At least
you shall be safe here from him!"  He took the glasses from me, and at
the next lull of the snow swept the whole space below us.  "See," he
said, "they come quickly.  They are flogging the horses, and galloping
as hard as they can."

He paused and went on in a hollow voice, "They are racing for the
sunset.  We may be too late.  God's will be done!"  Down came another
blinding rush of driving snow, and the whole landscape was blotted
out.  It soon passed, however, and once more his glasses were fixed on
the plain.

Then came a sudden cry, "Look!  Look!  Look!  See, two horsemen follow
fast, coming up from the south.  It must be Quincey and John.  Take
the glass.  Look before the snow blots it all out!"  I took it and
looked.  The two men might be Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris.  I knew at
all events that neither of them was Jonathan.  At the same time I knew
that Jonathan was not far off.  Looking around I saw on the north side
of the coming party two other men, riding at breakneck speed.  One of
them I knew was Jonathan, and the other I took, of course, to be Lord
Godalming.  They too, were pursuing the party with the cart.  When I
told the Professor he shouted in glee like a schoolboy, and after
looking intently till a snow fall made sight impossible, he laid his
Winchester rifle ready for use against the boulder at the opening of
our shelter.

"They are all converging," he said.  "When the time comes we shall have
gypsies on all sides."  I got out my revolver ready to hand, for
whilst we were speaking the howling of wolves came louder and closer.
When the snow storm abated a moment we looked again.  It was strange
to see the snow falling in such heavy flakes close to us, and beyond,
the sun shining more and more brightly as it sank down towards the far
mountain tops.  Sweeping the glass all around us I could see here and
there dots moving singly and in twos and threes and larger numbers.
The wolves were gathering for their prey.

Every instant seemed an age whilst we waited.  The wind came now in
fierce bursts, and the snow was driven with fury as it swept upon us
in circling eddies.  At times we could not see an arm's length before
us.  But at others, as the hollow sounding wind swept by us, it seemed
to clear the air space around us so that we could see afar off.  We
had of late been so accustomed to watch for sunrise and sunset, that
we knew with fair accuracy when it would be.  And we knew that before
long the sun would set.  It was hard to believe that by our watches it
was less than an hour that we waited in that rocky shelter before the
various bodies began to converge close upon us.  The wind came now
with fiercer and more bitter sweeps, and more steadily from the
north.  It seemingly had driven the snow clouds from us, for with only
occasional bursts, the snow fell.  We could distinguish clearly the
individuals of each party, the pursued and the pursuers.  Strangely
enough those pursued did not seem to realize, or at least to care,
that they were pursued.  They seemed, however, to hasten with
redoubled speed as the sun dropped lower and lower on the mountain
tops.

Closer and closer they drew.  The Professor and I crouched down behind
our rock, and held our weapons ready.  I could see that he was
determined that they should not pass.  One and all were quite unaware
of our presence.

All at once two voices shouted out to "Halt!"  One was my Jonathan's,
raised in a high key of passion.  The other Mr. Morris' strong
resolute tone of quiet command.  The gypsies may not have known the
language, but there was no mistaking the tone, in whatever tongue the
words were spoken.  Instinctively they reined in, and at the instant
Lord Godalming and Jonathan dashed up at one side and Dr. Seward and
Mr. Morris on the other.  The leader of the gypsies, a splendid
looking fellow who sat his horse like a centaur, waved them back, and
in a fierce voice gave to his companions some word to proceed.  They
lashed the horses which sprang forward.  But the four men raised their
Winchester rifles, and in an unmistakable way commanded them to stop.
At the same moment Dr. Van Helsing and I rose behind the rock and
pointed our weapons at them.  Seeing that they were surrounded the men
tightened their reins and drew up.  The leader turned to them and gave
a word at which every man of the gypsy party drew what weapon he
carried, knife or pistol, and held himself in readiness to attack.
Issue was joined in an instant.

The leader, with a quick movement of his rein, threw his horse out in
front, and pointed first to the sun, now close down on the hill tops,
and then to the castle, said something which I did not understand.
For answer, all four men of our party threw themselves from their
horses and dashed towards the cart.  I should have felt terrible fear
at seeing Jonathan in such danger, but that the ardor of battle must
have been upon me as well as the rest of them.  I felt no fear, but
only a wild, surging desire to do something.  Seeing the quick
movement of our parties, the leader of the gypsies gave a command.  His
men instantly formed round the cart in a sort of undisciplined
endeavour, each one shouldering and pushing the other in his eagerness
to carry out the order.

In the midst of this I could see that Jonathan on one side of the ring
of men, and Quincey on the other, were forcing a way to the cart.  It
was evident that they were bent on finishing their task before the sun
should set.  Nothing seemed to stop or even to hinder them.  Neither
the levelled weapons nor the flashing knives of the gypsies in front,
nor the howling of the wolves behind, appeared to even attract their
attention.  Jonathan's impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his
purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him.  Instinctively they
cowered aside and let him pass.  In an instant he had jumped upon the
cart, and with a strength which seemed incredible, raised the great
box, and flung it over the wheel to the ground.  In the meantime, Mr.
Morris had had to use force to pass through his side of the ring of
Szgany.  All the time I had been breathlessly watching Jonathan I had,
with the tail of my eye, seen him pressing desperately forward, and
had seen the knives of the gypsies flash as he won a way through them,
and they cut at him.  He had parried with his great bowie knife, and
at first I thought that he too had come through in safety.  But as he
sprang beside Jonathan, who had by now jumped from the cart, I could
see that with his left hand he was clutching at his side, and that the
blood was spurting through his fingers.  He did not delay
notwithstanding this, for as Jonathan, with desperate energy, attacked
one end of the chest, attempting to prize off the lid with his great
Kukri knife, he attacked the other frantically with his bowie.  Under
the efforts of both men the lid began to yield.  The nails drew with a
screeching sound, and the top of the box was thrown back.

By this time the gypsies, seeing themselves covered by the
Winchesters, and at the mercy of Lord Godalming and Dr. Seward, had
given in and made no further resistance.  The sun was almost down on
the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the
snow.  I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of
which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him.  He was
deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with
the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well.

As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in
them turned to triumph.

But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great
knife.  I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat.  Whilst at
the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart.

It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the
drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from
our sight.

I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final
dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never
could have imagined might have rested there.

The Castle of Dracula now stood out against the red sky, and every
stone of its broken battlements was articulated against the light of
the setting sun.

The gypsies, taking us as in some way the cause of the extraordinary
disappearance of the dead man, turned, without a word, and rode away
as if for their lives.  Those who were unmounted jumped upon the
leiter wagon and shouted to the horsemen not to desert them.  The
wolves, which had withdrawn to a safe distance, followed in their
wake, leaving us alone.

Mr. Morris, who had sunk to the ground, leaned on his elbow, holding
his hand pressed to his side.  The blood still gushed through his
fingers.  I flew to him, for the Holy circle did not now keep me back;
so did the two doctors.  Jonathan knelt behind him and the wounded man
laid back his head on his shoulder.  With a sigh he took, with a
feeble effort, my hand in that of his own which was unstained.

He must have seen the anguish of my heart in my face, for he smiled at
me and said, "I am only too happy to have been of service!  Oh, God!"
he cried suddenly, struggling to a sitting posture and pointing to me.
"It was worth for this to die!  Look!  Look!"

The sun was now right down upon the mountain top, and the red gleams
fell upon my face, so that it was bathed in rosy light.  With one
impulse the men sank on their knees and a deep and earnest "Amen"
broke from all as their eyes followed the pointing of his finger.

The dying man spoke, "Now God be thanked that all has not been in
vain!  See!  The snow is not more stainless than her forehead!  The
curse has passed away!"

And, to our bitter grief, with a smile and in silence, he died, a
gallant gentleman.


___________________________________________________________________


Allan Quatermain explores KING SOLOMON'S MINES

as told by H. RIDER HAGGARD


DEDICATION

This faithful but unpretending record
of a remarkable adventure
is hereby respectfully dedicated
by the narrator,

ALLAN QUATERMAIN,

to all the big and little boys
who read it.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

  The author ventures to take this opportunity to thank his readers
  for the kind reception they have accorded to the successive
  editions of this tale during the last twelve years. He hopes that
  in its present form it will fall into the hands of an even wider
  public, and that in years to come it may continue to afford
  amusement to those who are still young enough at heart to love a
  story of treasure, war, and wild adventure.

  Ditchingham,
  11 March, 1898.



POST SCRIPTUM

  Now, in 1907, on the occasion of the issue of this edition, I can
  only add how glad I am that my romance should continue to please
  so many readers. Imagination has been verified by fact; the King
  Solomon's Mines I dreamed of have been discovered, and are putting
  out their gold once more, and, according to the latest reports,
  their diamonds also; the Kukuanas or, rather, the Matabele, have
  been tamed by the white man's bullets, but still there seem to be
  many who find pleasure in these simple pages. That they may
  continue so to do, even to the third and fourth generation, or
  perhaps longer still, would, I am sure, be the hope of our old and
  departed friend, Allan Quatermain.

H. Rider Haggard.
Ditchingham, 1907.


INTRODUCTION

Now that this book is printed, and about to be given to the world, a
sense of its shortcomings both in style and contents, weighs very
heavily upon me. As regards the latter, I can only say that it does
not pretend to be a full account of everything we did and saw. There
are many things connected with our journey into Kukuanaland that I
should have liked to dwell upon at length, which, as it is, have been
scarcely alluded to. Amongst these are the curious legends which I
collected about the chain armour that saved us from destruction in the
great battle of Loo, and also about the "Silent Ones" or Colossi at
the mouth of the stalactite cave. Again, if I had given way to my own
impulses, I should have wished to go into the differences, some of
which are to my mind very suggestive, between the Zulu and Kukuana
dialects. Also a few pages might have been given up profitably to the
consideration of the indigenous flora and fauna of Kukuanaland.[*]
Then there remains the most interesting subject--that, as it is, has
only been touched on incidentally--of the magnificent system of
military organisation in force in that country, which, in my opinion,
is much superior to that inaugurated by Chaka in Zululand, inasmuch as
it permits of even more rapid mobilisation, and does not necessitate
the employment of the pernicious system of enforced celibacy. Lastly,
I have scarcely spoken of the domestic and family customs of the
Kukuanas, many of which are exceedingly quaint, or of their
proficiency in the art of smelting and welding metals. This science
they carry to considerable perfection, of which a good example is to
be seen in their "tollas," or heavy throwing knives, the backs of
these weapons being made of hammered iron, and the edges of beautiful
steel welded with great skill on to the iron frames. The fact of the
matter is, I thought, with Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, that the
best plan would be to tell my story in a plain, straightforward
manner, and to leave these matters to be dealt with subsequently in
whatever way ultimately may appear to be desirable. In the meanwhile I
shall, of course, be delighted to give all information in my power to
anybody interested in such things.

[*] I discovered eight varieties of antelope, with which I was
    previously totally unacquainted, and many new species of plants,
    for the most part of the bulbous tribe.--A.Q.

And now it only remains for me to offer apologies for my blunt way of
writing. I can but say in excuse of it that I am more accustomed to
handle a rifle than a pen, and cannot make any pretence to the grand
literary flights and flourishes which I see in novels--for sometimes I
like to read a novel. I suppose they--the flights and flourishes--are
desirable, and I regret not being able to supply them; but at the same
time I cannot help thinking that simple things are always the most
impressive, and that books are easier to understand when they are
written in plain language, though perhaps I have no right to set up an
opinion on such a matter. "A sharp spear," runs the Kukuana saying,
"needs no polish"; and on the same principle I venture to hope that a
true story, however strange it may be, does not require to be decked
out in fine words.

Allan Quatermain.





KING SOLOMON'S MINES



CHAPTER I

I MEET SIR HENRY CURTIS

It is a curious thing that at my age--fifty-five last birthday--I
should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder
what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I
come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my
life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so
young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning
my living as a trader in the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting,
fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago
that I made my pile. It is a big pile now that I have got it--I don't
yet know how big--but I do not think I would go through the last
fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I
should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid
man, and dislike violence; moreover, I am almost sick of adventure. I
wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am
not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also
to the "Ingoldsby Legends." Let me try to set down my reasons, just to
see if I have any.

First reason: Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good asked me.

Second reason: Because I am laid up here at Durban with the pain in my
left leg. Ever since that confounded lion got hold of me I have been
liable to this trouble, and being rather bad just now, it makes me
limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion's teeth,
otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out
again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your
mauling? It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or
more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should
chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the
thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and
don't like that. This is by the way.

Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the
hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to
amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital work
must sometimes pall and grow rather dull, for even of cutting up dead
bodies there may come satiety, and as this history will not be dull,
whatever else it may be, it will put a little life into things for a
day or two while Harry is reading of our adventures.

Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story
that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially
considering that there is no woman in it--except Foulata. Stop,
though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But
she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don't
count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a
/petticoat/ in the whole history.

Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel
as though I were bogged up to the axle. But, "/sutjes, sutjes/," as
the Boers say--I am sure I don't know how they spell it--softly does
it. A strong team will come through at last, that is, if they are not
too poor. You can never do anything with poor oxen. Now to make a
start.

I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman, make oath and say--
That's how I headed my deposition before the magistrate about poor
Khiva's and Ventvoegel's sad deaths; but somehow it doesn't seem quite
the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is
a gentleman? I don't quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers
--no, I will scratch out that word "niggers," for I do not like it.
I've known natives who /are/, and so you will say, Harry, my boy,
before you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with
lots of money and fresh out from home, too, who /are not/.

At any rate, I was born a gentleman, though I have been nothing but a
poor travelling trader and hunter all my life. Whether I have remained
so I known not, you must judge of that. Heaven knows I've tried. I
have killed many men in my time, yet I have never slain wantonly or
stained my hand in innocent blood, but only in self-defence. The
Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them,
at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be
brought up against me when my clock strikes. There, there, it is a
cruel and a wicked world, and for a timid man I have been mixed up in
a great deal of fighting. I cannot tell the rights of it, but at any
rate I have never stolen, though once I cheated a Kafir out of a herd
of cattle. But then he had done me a dirty turn, and it has troubled
me ever since into the bargain.



Well, it is eighteen months or so ago since first I met Sir Henry
Curtis and Captain Good. It was in this way. I had been up elephant
hunting beyond Bamangwato, and had met with bad luck. Everything went
wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as
I was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such
ivory as I had, together with my wagon and oxen, discharged my
hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in
Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having
seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens,
which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and
the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the
sort, I determined to go back to Natal by the /Dunkeld/, then lying at
the docks waiting for the /Edinburgh Castle/ due in from England. I
took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers
from the /Edinburgh Castle/ transhipped, and we weighed and put to
sea.

Among these passengers who came on board were two who excited my
curiosity. One, a gentleman of about thirty, was perhaps the biggest-
chested and longest-armed man I ever saw. He had yellow hair, a thick
yellow beard, clear-cut features, and large grey eyes set deep in his
head. I never saw a finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of
an ancient Dane. Not that I know much of ancient Danes, though I knew
a modern Dane who did me out of ten pounds; but I remember once seeing
a picture of some of those gentry, who, I take it, were a kind of
white Zulus. They were drinking out of big horns, and their long hair
hung down their backs. As I looked at my friend standing there by the
companion-ladder, I thought that if he only let his grow a little, put
one of those chain shirts on to his great shoulders, and took hold of
a battle-axe and a horn mug, he might have sat as a model for that
picture. And by the way it is a curious thing, and just shows how the
blood will out, I discovered afterwards that Sir Henry Curtis, for
that was the big man's name, is of Danish blood.[*] He also reminded
me strongly of somebody else, but at the time I could not remember who
it was.

[*] Mr. Quatermain's ideas about ancient Danes seem to be rather
    confused; we have always understood that they were dark-haired
    people. Probably he was thinking of Saxons.--Editor.

The other man, who stood talking to Sir Henry, was stout and dark, and
of quite a different cut. I suspected at once that he was a naval
officer; I don't know why, but it is difficult to mistake a navy man.
I have gone shooting trips with several of them in the course of my
life, and they have always proved themselves the best and bravest and
nicest fellows I ever met, though sadly given, some of them, to the
use of profane language. I asked a page or two back, what is a
gentleman? I'll answer the question now: A Royal Naval officer is, in
a general sort of way, though of course there may be a black sheep
among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide seas and the
breath of God's winds that wash their hearts and blow the bitterness
out of their minds and make them what men ought to be.

Well, to return, I proved right again; I ascertained that the dark man
/was/ a naval officer, a lieutenant of thirty-one, who, after
seventeen years' service, had been turned out of her Majesty's employ
with the barren honour of a commander's rank, because it was
impossible that he should be promoted. This is what people who serve
the Queen have to expect: to be shot out into the cold world to find a
living just when they are beginning really to understand their work,
and to reach the prime of life. I suppose they don't mind it, but for
my own part I had rather earn my bread as a hunter. One's halfpence
are as scarce perhaps, but you do not get so many kicks.

The officer's name I found out--by referring to the passengers' lists
--was Good--Captain John Good. He was broad, of medium height, dark,
stout, and rather a curious man to look at. He was so very neat and so
very clean-shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye.
It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it
out except to wipe it. At first I thought he used to sleep in it, but
afterwards I found that this was a mistake. He put it in his trousers
pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth, of which he
had two beautiful sets that, my own being none of the best, have often
caused me to break the tenth commandment. But I am anticipating.

Soon after we had got under way evening closed in, and brought with it
very dirty weather. A keen breeze sprung up off land, and a kind of
aggravated Scotch mist soon drove everybody from the deck. As for the
/Dunkeld/, she is a flat-bottomed punt, and going up light as she was,
she rolled very heavily. It almost seemed as though she would go right
over, but she never did. It was quite impossible to walk about, so I
stood near the engines where it was warm, and amused myself with
watching the pendulum, which was fixed opposite to me, swinging slowly
backwards and forwards as the vessel rolled, and marking the angle she
touched at each lurch.

"That pendulum's wrong; it is not properly weighted," suddenly said a
somewhat testy voice at my shoulder. Looking round I saw the naval
officer whom I had noticed when the passengers came aboard.

"Indeed, now what makes you think so?" I asked.

"Think so. I don't think at all. Why there"--as she righted herself
after a roll--"if the ship had really rolled to the degree that thing
pointed to, then she would never have rolled again, that's all. But it
is just like these merchant skippers, they are always so confoundedly
careless."

Just then the dinner-bell rang, and I was not sorry, for it is a
dreadful thing to have to listen to an officer of the Royal Navy when
he gets on to that subject. I only know one worse thing, and that is
to hear a merchant skipper express his candid opinion of officers of
the Royal Navy.

Captain Good and I went down to dinner together, and there we found
Sir Henry Curtis already seated. He and Captain Good were placed
together, and I sat opposite to them. The captain and I soon fell into
talk about shooting and what not; he asking me many questions, for he
is very inquisitive about all sorts of things, and I answering them as
well as I could. Presently he got on to elephants.

"Ah, sir," called out somebody who was sitting near me, "you've
reached the right man for that; Hunter Quatermain should be able to
tell you about elephants if anybody can."

Sir Henry, who had been sitting quite quiet listening to our talk,
started visibly.

"Excuse me, sir," he said, leaning forward across the table, and
speaking in a low deep voice, a very suitable voice, it seemed to me,
to come out of those great lungs. "Excuse me, sir, but is your name
Allan Quatermain?"

I said that it was.

The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter "fortunate"
into his beard.

Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir
Henry strolled up and asked me if I would come into his cabin to smoke
a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the /Dunkeld/ deck cabin,
and a very good cabin it is. It had been two cabins, but when Sir
Garnet Wolseley or one of those big swells went down the coast in the
/Dunkeld/, they knocked away the partition and have never put it up
again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of
it. Sir Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three
of us sat down and lit our pipes.

"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry Curtis, when the man had brought the
whisky and lit the lamp, "the year before last about this time, you
were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the
Transvaal."

"I was," I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so
well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was
aware, considered of general interest.

"You were trading there, were you not?" put in Captain Good, in his
quick way.

"I was. I took up a wagon-load of goods, made a camp outside the
settlement, and stopped till I had sold them."

Sir Henry was sitting opposite to me in a Madeira chair, his arms
leaning on the table. He now looked up, fixing his large grey eyes
full upon my face. There was a curious anxiety in them, I thought.

"Did you happen to meet a man called Neville there?"

"Oh, yes; he outspanned alongside of me for a fortnight to rest his
oxen before going on to the interior. I had a letter from a lawyer a
few months back, asking me if I knew what had become of him, which I
answered to the best of my ability at the time."

"Yes," said Sir Henry, "your letter was forwarded to me. You said in
it that the gentleman called Neville left Bamangwato at the beginning
of May in a wagon with a driver, a voorlooper, and a Kafir hunter
called Jim, announcing his intention of trekking if possible as far as
Inyati, the extreme trading post in the Matabele country, where he
would sell his wagon and proceed on foot. You also said that he did
sell his wagon, for six months afterwards you saw the wagon in the
possession of a Portuguese trader, who told you that he had bought it
at Inyati from a white man whose name he had forgotten, and that he
believed the white man with the native servant had started off for the
interior on a shooting trip."

"Yes."

Then came a pause.

"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry suddenly, "I suppose you know or can
guess nothing more of the reasons of my--of Mr. Neville's journey to
the northward, or as to what point that journey was directed?"

"I heard something," I answered, and stopped. The subject was one
which I did not care to discuss.

Sir Henry and Captain Good looked at each other, and Captain Good
nodded.

"Mr. Quatermain," went on the former, "I am going to tell you a story,
and ask your advice, and perhaps your assistance. The agent who
forwarded me your letter told me that I might rely on it implicitly,
as you were," he said, "well known and universally respected in Natal,
and especially noted for your discretion."

I bowed and drank some whisky and water to hide my confusion, for I am
a modest man--and Sir Henry went on.

"Mr. Neville was my brother."

"Oh," I said, starting, for now I knew of whom Sir Henry had reminded
me when first I saw him. His brother was a much smaller man and had a
dark beard, but now that I thought of it, he possessed eyes of the
same shade of grey and with the same keen look in them: the features
too were not unlike.

"He was," went on Sir Henry, "my only and younger brother, and till
five years ago I do not suppose that we were ever a month away from
each other. But just about five years ago a misfortune befell us, as
sometimes does happen in families. We quarrelled bitterly, and I
behaved unjustly to my brother in my anger."

Here Captain Good nodded his head vigorously to himself. The ship gave
a big roll just then, so that the looking-glass, which was fixed
opposite us to starboard, was for a moment nearly over our heads, and
as I was sitting with my hands in my pockets and staring upwards, I
could see him nodding like anything.

"As I daresay you know," went on Sir Henry, "if a man dies intestate,
and has no property but land, real property it is called in England,
it all descends to his eldest son. It so happened that just at the
time when we quarrelled our father died intestate. He had put off
making his will until it was too late. The result was that my brother,
who had not been brought up to any profession, was left without a
penny. Of course it would have been my duty to provide for him, but at
the time the quarrel between us was so bitter that I did not--to my
shame I say it (and he sighed deeply)--offer to do anything. It was
not that I grudged him justice, but I waited for him to make advances,
and he made none. I am sorry to trouble you with all this, Mr.
Quatermain, but I must to make things clear, eh, Good?"

"Quite so, quite so," said the captain. "Mr. Quatermain will, I am
sure, keep this history to himself."

"Of course," said I, for I rather pride myself on my discretion, for
which, as Sir Henry had heard, I have some repute.

"Well," went on Sir Henry, "my brother had a few hundred pounds to his
account at the time. Without saying anything to me he drew out this
paltry sum, and, having adopted the name of Neville, started off for
South Africa in the wild hope of making a fortune. This I learned
afterwards. Some three years passed, and I heard nothing of my
brother, though I wrote several times. Doubtless the letters never
reached him. But as time went on I grew more and more troubled about
him. I found out, Mr. Quatermain, that blood is thicker than water."

"That's true," said I, thinking of my boy Harry.

"I found out, Mr. Quatermain, that I would have given half my fortune
to know that my brother George, the only relation I possess, was safe
and well, and that I should see him again."

"But you never did, Curtis," jerked out Captain Good, glancing at the
big man's face.

"Well, Mr. Quatermain, as time went on I became more and more anxious
to find out if my brother was alive or dead, and if alive to get him
home again. I set enquiries on foot, and your letter was one of the
results. So far as it went it was satisfactory, for it showed that
till lately George was alive, but it did not go far enough. So, to cut
a long story short, I made up my mind to come out and look for him
myself, and Captain Good was so kind as to come with me."

"Yes," said the captain; "nothing else to do, you see. Turned out by
my Lords of the Admiralty to starve on half pay. And now perhaps, sir,
you will tell us what you know or have heard of the gentleman called
Neville."



CHAPTER II

THE LEGEND OF SOLOMON'S MINES

"What was it that you heard about my brother's journey at Bamangwato?"
asked Sir Henry, as I paused to fill my pipe before replying to
Captain Good.

"I heard this," I answered, "and I have never mentioned it to a soul
till to-day. I heard that he was starting for Solomon's Mines."

"Solomon's Mines?" ejaculated both my hearers at once. "Where are
they?"

"I don't know," I said; "I know where they are said to be. Once I saw
the peaks of the mountains that border them, but there were a hundred
and thirty miles of desert between me and them, and I am not aware
that any white man ever got across it save one. But perhaps the best
thing I can do is to tell you the legend of Solomon's Mines as I know
it, you passing your word not to reveal anything I tell you without my
permission. Do you agree to that? I have my reasons for asking."

Sir Henry nodded, and Captain Good replied, "Certainly, certainly."

"Well," I began, "as you may guess, generally speaking, elephant
hunters are a rough set of men, who do not trouble themselves with
much beyond the facts of life and the ways of Kafirs. But here and
there you meet a man who takes the trouble to collect traditions from
the natives, and tries to make out a little piece of the history of
this dark land. It was such a man as this who first told me the legend
of Solomon's Mines, now a matter of nearly thirty years ago. That was
when I was on my first elephant hunt in the Matalebe country. His name
was Evans, and he was killed the following year, poor fellow, by a
wounded buffalo, and lies buried near the Zambesi Falls. I was telling
Evans one night, I remember, of some wonderful workings I had found
whilst hunting koodoo and eland in what is now the Lydenburg district
of the Transvaal. I see they have come across these workings again
lately in prospecting for gold, but I knew of them years ago. There is
a great wide wagon road cut out of the solid rock, and leading to the
mouth of the working or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are
stacks of gold quartz piled up ready for roasting, which shows that
the workers, whoever they were, must have left in a hurry. Also, about
twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and a beautiful bit of
masonry it is."

"'Ay,' said Evans, 'but I will spin you a queerer yarn than that'; and
he went on to tell me how he had found in the far interior a ruined
city, which he believed to be the Ophir of the Bible, and, by the way,
other more learned men have said the same long since poor Evans's
time. I was, I remember, listening open-eared to all these wonders,
for I was young at the time, and this story of an ancient civilisation
and of the treasures which those old Jewish or Phoenician adventurers
used to extract from a country long since lapsed into the darkest
barbarism took a great hold upon my imagination, when suddenly he said
to me, 'Lad, did you ever hear of the Suliman Mountains up to the
north-west of the Mushakulumbwe country?' I told him I never had. 'Ah,
well,' he said, 'that is where Solomon really had his mines, his
diamond mines, I mean.'

"'How do you know that?' I asked.

"'Know it! why, what is "Suliman" but a corruption of Solomon?[*]
Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctoress up in the Manica country
told me all about it. She said that the people who lived across those
mountains were a "branch" of the Zulus, speaking a dialect of Zulu,
but finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them great
wizards, who had learnt their art from white men when "all the world
was dark," and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of "bright
stones."'

[*] Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.--Editor.

"Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though it interested me,
for the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor Evans went
off and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of
the matter. However, just twenty years afterwards--and that is a long
time, gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty
years at his business--I heard something more definite about Suliman's
Mountains and the country which lies beyond them. I was up beyond the
Manica country, at a place called Sitanda's Kraal, and a miserable
place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but
little game about. I had an attack of fever, and was in a bad way
generally, when one day a Portugee arrived with a single companion--a
half-breed. Now I know your low-class Delagoa Portugee well. There is
no greater devil unhung in a general way, battening as he does upon
human agony and flesh in the shape of slaves. But this was quite a
different type of man to the mean fellows whom I had been accustomed
to meet; indeed, in appearance he reminded me more of the polite doms
I have read about, for he was tall and thin, with large dark eyes and
curling grey mustachios. We talked together for a while, for he could
speak broken English, and I understood a little Portugee, and he told
me that his name was Jose Silvestre, and that he had a place near
Delagoa Bay. When he went on next day with his half-breed companion,
he said 'Good-bye,' taking off his hat quite in the old style.

"'Good-bye, senoer,' he said; 'if ever we meet again I shall be the
richest man in the world, and I will remember you.' I laughed a little
--I was too weak to laugh much--and watched him strike out for the
great desert to the west, wondering if he was mad, or what he thought
he was going to find there.

"A week passed, and I got the better of my fever. One evening I was
sitting on the ground in front of the little tent I had with me,
chewing the last leg of a miserable fowl I had bought from a native
for a bit of cloth worth twenty fowls, and staring at the hot red sun
sinking down over the desert, when suddenly I saw a figure, apparently
that of a European, for it wore a coat, on the slope of the rising
ground opposite to me, about three hundred yards away. The figure
crept along on its hands and knees, then it got up and staggered
forward a few yards on its legs, only to fall and crawl again. Seeing
that it must be somebody in distress, I sent one of my hunters to help
him, and presently he arrived, and who do you suppose it turned out to
be?"

"Jose Silvestre, of course," said Captain Good.

"Yes, Jose Silvestre, or rather his skeleton and a little skin. His
face was a bright yellow with bilious fever, and his large dark eyes
stood nearly out of his head, for all the flesh had gone. There was
nothing but yellow parchment-like skin, white hair, and the gaunt
bones sticking up beneath.

"'Water! for the sake of Christ, water!' he moaned and I saw that his
lips were cracked, and his tongue, which protruded between them, was
swollen and blackish.

"I gave him water with a little milk in it, and he drank it in great
gulps, two quarts or so, without stopping. I would not let him have
any more. Then the fever took him again, and he fell down and began to
rave about Suliman's Mountains, and the diamonds, and the desert. I
carried him into the tent and did what I could for him, which was
little enough; but I saw how it must end. About eleven o'clock he grew
quieter, and I lay down for a little rest and went to sleep. At dawn I
woke again, and in the half light saw Silvestre sitting up, a strange,
gaunt form, and gazing out towards the desert. Presently the first ray
of the sun shot right across the wide plain before us till it reached
the faraway crest of one of the tallest of the Suliman Mountains more
than a hundred miles away.

"'There it is!' cried the dying man in Portuguese, and pointing with
his long, thin arm, 'but I shall never reach it, never. No one will
ever reach it!'

"Suddenly, he paused, and seemed to take a resolution. 'Friend,' he
said, turning towards me, 'are you there? My eyes grow dark.'

"'Yes,' I said; 'yes, lie down now, and rest.'

"'Ay,' he answered, 'I shall rest soon, I have time to rest--all
eternity. Listen, I am dying! You have been good to me. I will give
you the writing. Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass
the desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.'

"Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer
tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable
antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a
rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me.
'Untie it,' he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow
linen on which something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag
was a paper.

"Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: 'The paper has all
that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a
political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who
landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those
mountains which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name
was Jose da Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His
slave, who waited for him on this side of the mountains, found him
dead, and brought the writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the
family ever since, but none have cared to read it, till at last I did.
And I have lost my life over it, but another may succeed, and become
the richest man in the world--the richest man in the world. Only give
it to no one, senoer; go yourself!'

"Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over.

"God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big
boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have
dug him up. And then I came away."

"Ay, but the document?" said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest.

"Yes, the document; what was in it?" added the captain.

"Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I have never showed it
to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader who
translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next
morning. The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor
Dom Jose's translation, but I have the English rendering in my pocket-
book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a map. Here it
is."

[MAP OMITTED]

  "I, Jose da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little
  cave here no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the
  southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba's Breasts,
  write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my
  raiment, my blood being the ink. If my slave should find it when
  he comes, and should bring it to Delagoa, let my friend (name
  illegible) bring the matter to the knowledge of the king, that he
  may send an army which, if they live through the desert and the
  mountains, and can overcome the brave Kukuanes and their devilish
  arts, to which end many priests should be brought, will make him
  the richest king since Solomon. With my own eyes I have seen the
  countless diamonds stored in Solomon's treasure chamber behind the
  white Death; but through the treachery of Gagool the witch-finder
  I might bring nought away, scarcely my life. Let him who comes
  follow the map, and climb the snow of Sheba's left breast till he
  reaches the nipple, on the north side of which is the great road
  Solomon made, from whence three days' journey to the King's
  Palace. Let him kill Gagool. Pray for my soul. Farewell.

Jose da Silvestra."[*]

[*] Eu Jose da Silvestra que estou morrendo de fome na pequena cova
    onde nao ha neve ao lado norte do bico mais ao sul das duas
    montanhas que chamei scio de Sheba; escrevo isto no anno 1590;
    escrevo isto com um pedaco d'osso n' um farrapo de minha roupa e
    com sangue meu por tinta; se o meu escravo der com isto quando
    venha ao levar para Lourenzo Marquez, que o meu amigo ---------
    leve a cousa ao conhecimento d' El Rei, para que possa mandar um
    exercito que, se desfiler pelo deserto e pelas montonhas e mesmo
    sobrepujar os bravos Kukuanes e suas artes diabolicas, pelo que se
    deviam trazer muitos padres Far o Rei mais rico depois de Salomao
    Com meus proprios olhos ve os di amantes sem conto guardados nas
    camaras do thesouro de Salomao a traz da morte branca, mas pela
    traicao de Gagoal a feiticeira achadora, nada poderia levar, e
    apenas a minha vida. Quem vier siga o mappa e trepe pela neve de
    Sheba peito a esquerda ate chegar ao bica, do lado norte do qual
    esta a grande estrada do Solomao por elle feita, donde ha tres
    dias de jornada ate ao Palacio do Rei. Mate Gagoal. Reze por minha
    alma. Adeos.                                Jose da Silvestra.

When I had finished reading the above, and shown the copy of the map,
drawn by the dying hand of the old Dom with his blood for ink, there
followed a silence of astonishment.

"Well," said Captain Good, "I have been round the world twice, and put
in at most ports, but may I be hung for a mutineer if ever I heard a
yarn like this out of a story book, or in it either, for the matter of
that."

"It's a queer tale, Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry. "I suppose you
are not hoaxing us? It is, I know, sometimes thought allowable to take
in a greenhorn."

"If you think that, Sir Henry," I said, much put out, and pocketing my
paper--for I do not like to be thought one of those silly fellows who
consider it witty to tell lies, and who are for ever boasting to
newcomers of extraordinary hunting adventures which never happened--
"if you think that, why, there is an end to the matter," and I rose to
go.

Sir Henry laid his large hand upon my shoulder. "Sit down, Mr.
Quatermain," he said, "I beg your pardon; I see very well you do not
wish to deceive us, but the story sounded so strange that I could
hardly believe it."

"You shall see the original map and writing when we reach Durban," I
answered, somewhat mollified, for really when I came to consider the
question it was scarcely wonderful that he should doubt my good faith.

"But," I went on, "I have not told you about your brother. I knew the
man Jim who was with him. He was a Bechuana by birth, a good hunter,
and for a native a very clever man. That morning on which Mr. Neville
was starting I saw Jim standing by my wagon and cutting up tobacco on
the disselboom.

"'Jim,' said I, 'where are you off to this trip? It is elephants?'

"'No, Baas,' he answered, 'we are after something worth much more than
ivory.'

"'And what might that be?' I said, for I was curious. 'Is it gold?'

"'No, Baas, something worth more than gold,' and he grinned.

"I asked no more questions, for I did not like to lower my dignity by
seeming inquisitive, but I was puzzled. Presently Jim finished cutting
his tobacco.

"'Baas,' said he.

"I took no notice.

"'Baas,' said he again.

"'Eh, boy, what is it?' I asked.

"'Baas, we are going after diamonds.'

"'Diamonds! why, then, you are steering in the wrong direction; you
should head for the Fields.'

"'Baas, have you ever heard of Suliman's Berg?'--that is, Solomon's
Mountains, Sir Henry.

"'Ay!'

"'Have you ever heard of the diamonds there?'

"'I have heard a foolish story, Jim.'

"'It is no story, Baas. Once I knew a woman who came from there, and
reached Natal with her child, she told me:--she is dead now.'

"'Your master will feed the assvoegels'--that is, vultures--'Jim, if he
tries to reach Suliman's country, and so will you if they can get any
pickings off your worthless old carcass,' said I.

"He grinned. 'Mayhap, Baas. Man must die; I'd rather like to try a new
country myself; the elephants are getting worked out about here.'

"'Ah! my boy,' I said, 'you wait till the "pale old man" gets a grip
of your yellow throat, and then we shall hear what sort of a tune you
sing.'

"Half an hour after that I saw Neville's wagon move off. Presently Jim
came back running. 'Good-bye, Baas,' he said. 'I didn't like to start
without bidding you good-bye, for I daresay you are right, and that we
shall never trek south again.'

"'Is your master really going to Suliman's Berg, Jim, or are you
lying?'

"'No,' he answered, 'he is going. He told me he was bound to make his
fortune somehow, or try to; so he might as well have a fling for the
diamonds.'

"'Oh!' I said; 'wait a bit, Jim; will you take a note to your master,
Jim, and promise not to give it to him till you reach Inyati?' which
was some hundred miles off.

"'Yes, Baas.'

"So I took a scrap of paper, and wrote on it, 'Let him who comes . . .
climb the snow of Sheba's left breast, till he reaches the nipple, on
the north side of which is Solomon's great road.'

"'Now, Jim,' I said, 'when you give this to your master, tell him he
had better follow the advice on it implicitly. You are not to give it
to him now, because I don't want him back asking me questions which I
won't answer. Now be off, you idle fellow, the wagon is nearly out of
sight.'

"Jim took the note and went, and that is all I know about your
brother, Sir Henry; but I am much afraid--"

"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "I am going to look for my brother;
I am going to trace him to Suliman's Mountains, and over them if
necessary, till I find him, or until I know that he is dead. Will you
come with me?"

I am, as I think I have said, a cautious man, indeed a timid one, and
this suggestion frightened me. It seemed to me that to undertake such
a journey would be to go to certain death, and putting other
considerations aside, as I had a son to support, I could not afford to
die just then.

"No, thank you, Sir Henry, I think I had rather not," I answered. "I
am too old for wild-goose chases of that sort, and we should only end
up like my poor friend Silvestre. I have a son dependent on me, so I
cannot afford to risk my life foolishly."

Both Sir Henry and Captain Good looked very disappointed.

"Mr. Quatermain," said the former, "I am well off, and I am bent upon
this business. You may put the remuneration for your services at
whatever figure you like in reason, and it shall be paid over to you
before we start. Moreover, I will arrange in the event of anything
untoward happening to us or to you, that your son shall be suitably
provided for. You will see from this offer how necessary I think your
presence. Also if by chance we should reach this place, and find
diamonds, they shall belong to you and Good equally. I do not want
them. But of course that promise is worth nothing at all, though the
same thing would apply to any ivory we might get. You may pretty well
make your own terms with me, Mr. Quatermain; and of course I shall pay
all expenses."

"Sir Henry," said I, "this is the most liberal proposal I ever had,
and one not to be sneezed at by a poor hunter and trader. But the job
is the biggest I have come across, and I must take time to think it
over. I will give you my answer before we get to Durban."

"Very good," answered Sir Henry.

Then I said good-night and turned in, and dreamt about poor long-dead
Silvestre and the diamonds.



CHAPTER III

UMBOPA ENTERS OUR SERVICE

It takes from four to five days, according to the speed of the vessel
and the state of the weather, to run up from the Cape to Durban.
Sometimes, if the landing is bad at East London, where they have not
yet made that wonderful harbour they talk so much of, and sink such a
mint of money in, a ship is delayed for twenty-four hours before the
cargo boats can get out to take off the goods. But on this occasion we
had not to wait at all, for there were no breakers on the Bar to speak
of, and the tugs came out at once with the long strings of ugly flat-
bottomed boats behind them, into which the packages were bundled with
a crash. It did not matter what they might be, over they went slap-
bang; whether they contained china or woollen goods they met with the
same treatment. I saw one case holding four dozen of champagne smashed
all to bits, and there was the champagne fizzing and boiling about in
the bottom of the dirty cargo boat. It was a wicked waste, and
evidently so the Kafirs in the boat thought, for they found a couple
of unbroken bottles, and knocking off the necks drank the contents.
But they had not allowed for the expansion caused by the fizz in the
wine, and, feeling themselves swelling, rolled about in the bottom of
the boat, calling out that the good liquor was "tagati"--that is,
bewitched. I spoke to them from the vessel, and told them it was the
white man's strongest medicine, and that they were as good as dead
men. Those Kafirs went to the shore in a very great fright, and I do
not think that they will touch champagne again.

Well, all the time that we were steaming up to Natal I was thinking
over Sir Henry Curtis's offer. We did not speak any more on the
subject for a day or two, though I told them many hunting yarns, all
true ones. There is no need to tell lies about hunting, for so many
curious things happen within the knowledge of a man whose business it
is to hunt; but this is by the way.

At last, one beautiful evening in January, which is our hottest month,
we steamed past the coast of Natal, expecting to make Durban Point by
sunset. It is a lovely coast all along from East London, with its red
sandhills and wide sweeps of vivid green, dotted here and there with
Kafir kraals, and bordered by a ribbon of white surf, which spouts up
in pillars of foam where it hits the rocks. But just before you come
to Durban there is a peculiar richness about the landscape. There are
the sheer kloofs cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries,
down which the rivers sparkle; there is the deepest green of the bush,
growing as God planted it, and the other greens of the mealie gardens
and the sugar patches, while now and again a white house, smiling out
at the placid sea, puts a finish and gives an air of homeliness to the
scene. For to my mind, however beautiful a view may be, it requires
the presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I
have lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of
civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game. The Garden of
Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it
must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.

To return, we had miscalculated a little, and the sun was well down
before we dropped anchor off the Point, and heard the gun which told
the good folks of Durban that the English Mail was in. It was too late
to think of getting over the Bar that night, so we went comfortably to
dinner, after seeing the Mails carried off in the life-boat.

When we came up again the moon was out, and shining so brightly over
sea and shore that she almost paled the quick, large flashes from the
lighthouse. From the shore floated sweet spicy odours that always
remind me of hymns and missionaries, and in the windows of the houses
on the Berea sparkled a hundred lights. From a large brig lying near
also came the music of the sailors as they worked at getting the
anchor up in order to be ready for the wind. Altogether it was a
perfect night, such a night as you sometimes get in Southern Africa,
and it threw a garment of peace over everybody as the moon threw a
garment of silver over everything. Even the great bulldog, belonging
to a sporting passenger, seemed to yield to its gentle influences, and
forgetting his yearning to come to close quarters with the baboon in a
cage on the foc'sle, snored happily at the door of the cabin, dreaming
no doubt that he had finished him, and happy in his dream.

We three--that is, Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, and myself--went
and sat by the wheel, and were quiet for a while.

"Well, Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry presently, "have you been
thinking about my proposals?"

"Ay," echoed Captain Good, "what do you think of them, Mr. Quatermain?
I hope that you are going to give us the pleasure of your company so
far as Solomon's Mines, or wherever the gentleman you knew as Neville
may have got to."

I rose and knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my
mind, and wanted an additional moment to decide. Before the burning
tobacco had fallen into the sea I had decided; just that little extra
second did the trick. It is often the way when you have been bothering
a long time over a thing.

"Yes, gentlemen," I said, sitting down again, "I will go, and by your
leave I will tell you why, and on what conditions. First for the terms
which I ask.

"1. You are to pay all expenses, and any ivory or other valuables we
may get is to be divided between Captain Good and myself.

"2. That you give me L500 for my services on the trip before we start,
I undertaking to serve you faithfully till you choose to abandon the
enterprise, or till we succeed, or disaster overtakes us.

"3. That before we trek you execute a deed agreeing, in the event of
my death or disablement, to pay my boy Harry, who is studying medicine
over there in London, at Guy's Hospital, a sum of L200 a year for five
years, by which time he ought to be able to earn a living for himself
if he is worth his salt. That is all, I think, and I daresay you will
say quite enough too."

"No," answered Sir Henry, "I accept them gladly. I am bent upon this
project, and would pay more than that for your help, considering the
peculiar and exclusive knowledge which you possess."

"Pity I did not ask it, then, but I won't go back on my word. And now
that I have got my terms I will tell you my reasons for making up my
mind to go. First of all, gentlemen, I have been observing you both
for the last few days, and if you will not think me impertinent I may
say that I like you, and believe that we shall come up well to the
yoke together. That is something, let me tell you, when one has a long
journey like this before one.

"And now as to the journey itself, I tell you flatly, Sir Henry and
Captain Good, that I do not think it probable we can come out of it
alive, that is, if we attempt to cross the Suliman Mountains. What was
the fate of the old Dom da Silvestra three hundred years ago? What was
the fate of his descendant twenty years ago? What has been your
brother's fate? I tell you frankly, gentlemen, that as their fates
were so I believe ours will be."

I paused to watch the effect of my words. Captain Good looked a little
uncomfortable, but Sir Henry's face did not change. "We must take our
chance," he said.

"You may perhaps wonder," I went on, "why, if I think this, I, who am,
as I told you, a timid man, should undertake such a journey. It is for
two reasons. First I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is
appointed to come quite without reference to my own movements and
will, and that if I am to go to Suliman's Mountains to be killed, I
shall go there and shall be killed. God Almighty, no doubt, knows His
mind about me, so I need not trouble on that point. Secondly, I am a
poor man. For nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have
never made more than a living. Well, gentlemen, I don't know if you
are aware that the average life of an elephant hunter from the time he
takes to the trade is between four and five years. So you see I have
lived through about seven generations of my class, and I should think
that my time cannot be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to
happen to me in the ordinary course of business, by the time my debts
are paid there would be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he
was getting in the way of earning a living, whereas now he will be set
up for five years. There is the whole affair in a nutshell."

"Mr. Quatermain," said Sir Henry, who had been giving me his most
serious attention, "your motives for undertaking an enterprise which
you believe can only end in disaster reflect a great deal of credit on
you. Whether or not you are right, of course time and the event alone
can show. But whether you are right or wrong, I may as well tell you
at once that I am going through with it to the end, sweet or bitter.
If we are to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is, that I hope
we get a little shooting first, eh, Good?"

"Yes, yes," put in the captain. "We have all three of us been
accustomed to face danger, and to hold our lives in our hands in
various ways, so it is no good turning back now. And now I vote we go
down to the saloon and take an observation just for luck, you know."
And we did--through the bottom of a tumbler.

Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at
the little shanty I have built on the Berea, and which I call my home.
There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed
of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden
with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young
mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical
gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine
named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in
Sikukunis country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter
about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a
Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and
peaceful arts are not in his line.

Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of
orange trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them
in the house, and what with the smell of the bloom, and the sight of
the green and golden fruit--in Durban you will see all three on the
tree together--I daresay it is a pleasant place enough, for we have
few mosquitos here on the Berea, unless there happens to come an
unusually heavy rain.

Well, to get on--for if I do not, Harry, you will be tired of my story
before ever we fetch up at Suliman's Mountains--having once made up my
mind to go I set about making the necessary preparations. First I
secured the deed from Sir Henry, providing for you, my boy, in case of
accidents. There was some difficulty about its legal execution, as Sir
Henry was a stranger here, and the property to be charged is over the
water; but it was ultimately got over with the help of a lawyer, who
charged L20 for the job--a price that I thought outrageous. Then I
pocketed my cheque for L500.

Having paid this tribute to my bump of caution, I purchased a wagon
and a span of oxen on Sir Henry's behalf, and beauties they were. It
was a twenty-two-foot wagon with iron axles, very strong, very light,
and built throughout of stink wood; not quite a new one, having been
to the Diamond Fields and back, but, in my opinion, all the better for
that, for I could see that the wood was well seasoned. If anything is
going to give in a wagon, or if there is green wood in it, it will
show out on the first trip. This particular vehicle was what we call a
"half-tented" wagon, that is to say, only covered in over the after
twelve feet, leaving all the front part free for the necessaries we
had to carry with us. In this after part were a hide "cartle," or bed,
on which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other
little conveniences. I gave L125 for it, and think that it was cheap
at the price.

Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept
my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a
team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle
are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander
oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will
live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can
make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to
become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly "salted," that
is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof,
comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently
destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange "veldt" or
grass country. As for "lung sick," which is a dreadful form of
pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been
inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of
an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which
has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the
disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule
about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks.
It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country
where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail
and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an
ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to
trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It
seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern
ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.

Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which
required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to
avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely
necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor,
having at some point in his previous career managed to pass through a
course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less
kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it
than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out
afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set
of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir's big toe
in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed
when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him
to put on another, saying that a "white one" would do at a pinch.

There remained, when these questions were satisfactorily settled, two
further important points for consideration, namely, that of arms and
that of servants. As to the arms I cannot do better than put down a
list of those which we finally decided on from among the ample store
that Sir Henry had brought with him from England, and those which I
owned. I copy it from my pocket-book, where I made the entry at the
time.

"Three heavy breech-loading double-eight elephant guns, weighing about
fifteen pounds each, to carry a charge of eleven drachms of black
powder." Two of these were by a well-known London firm, most excellent
makers, but I do not know by whom mine, which is not so highly
finished, was made. I have used it on several trips, and shot a good
many elephants with it, and it has always proved a most superior
weapon, thoroughly to be relied on.

"Three double-500 Expresses, constructed to stand a charge of six
drachms," sweet weapons, and admirable for medium-sized game, such as
eland or sable antelope, or for men, especially in an open country and
with the semi-hollow bullet.

"One double No. 12 central-fire Keeper's shot-gun, full choke both
barrels." This gun proved of the greatest service to us afterwards in
shooting game for the pot.

"Three Winchester repeating rifles (not carbines), spare guns.

"Three single-action Colt's revolvers, with the heavier, or American
pattern of cartridge."

This was our total armament, and doubtless the reader will observe
that the weapons of each class were of the same make and calibre, so
that the cartridges were interchangeable, a very important point. I
make no apology for detailing it at length, as every experienced
hunter will know how vital a proper supply of guns and ammunition is
to the success of an expedition.

Now as to the men who were to go with us. After much consultation we
decided that their number should be limited to five, namely, a driver,
a leader, and three servants.

The driver and leader I found without much difficulty, two Zulus,
named respectively Goza and Tom; but to get the servants proved a more
difficult matter. It was necessary that they should be thoroughly
trustworthy and brave men, as in a business of this sort our lives
might depend upon their conduct. At last I secured two, one a
Hottentot named Ventvoegel, or "windbird," and one a little Zulu named
Khiva, who had the merit of speaking English perfectly. Ventvoegel I
had known before; he was one of the most perfect "spoorers," that is,
game trackers, I ever had to do with, and tough as whipcord. He never
seemed to tire. But he had one failing, so common with his race,
drink. Put him within reach of a bottle of gin and you could not trust
him. However, as we were going beyond the region of grog-shops this
little weakness of his did not so much matter.

Having secured these two men I looked in vain for a third to suit my
purpose, so we determined to start without one, trusting to luck to
find a suitable man on our way up country. But, as it happened, on the
evening before the day we had fixed for our departure the Zulu Khiva
informed me that a Kafir was waiting to see me. Accordingly, when we
had done dinner, for we were at table at the time, I told Khiva to
bring him in. Presently a tall, handsome-looking man, somewhere about
thirty years of age, and very light-coloured for a Zulu, entered, and
lifting his knob-stick by way of salute, squatted himself down in the
corner on his haunches, and sat silent. I did not take any notice of
him for a while, for it is a great mistake to do so. If you rush into
conversation at once, a Zulu is apt to think you a person of little
dignity or consequence. I observed, however, that he was a "Keshla" or
ringed man; that is, he wore on his head the black ring, made of a
species of gum polished with fat and worked up in the hair, which is
usually assumed by Zulus on attaining a certain age or dignity. Also
it struck me that his face was familiar to me.

"Well," I said at last, "What is your name?"

"Umbopa," answered the man in a slow, deep voice.

"I have seen your face before."

"Yes; the Inkoosi, the chief, my father, saw my face at the place of
the Little Hand"--that is, Isandhlwana--"on the day before the
battle."

Then I remembered. I was one of Lord Chelmsford's guides in that
unlucky Zulu War, and had the good fortune to leave the camp in charge
of some wagons on the day before the battle. While I was waiting for
the cattle to be inspanned I fell into conversation with this man, who
held some small command among the native auxiliaries, and he had
expressed to me his doubts as to the safety of the camp. At the time I
told him to hold his tongue, and leave such matters to wiser heads;
but afterwards I thought of his words.

"I remember," I said; "what is it you want?"

"It is this, 'Macumazahn.'" That is my Kafir name, and means the man
who gets up in the middle of the night, or, in vulgar English, he who
keeps his eyes open. "I hear that you go on a great expedition far
into the North with the white chiefs from over the water. Is it a true
word?"

"It is."

"I hear that you go even to the Lukanga River, a moon's journey beyond
the Manica country. Is this so also, 'Macumazahn?'"

"Why do you ask whither we go? What is it to you?" I answered
suspiciously, for the objects of our journey had been kept a dead
secret.

"It is this, O white men, that if indeed you travel so far I would
travel with you."

There was a certain assumption of dignity in the man's mode of speech,
and especially in his use of the words "O white men," instead of "O
Inkosis," or chiefs, which struck me.

"You forget yourself a little," I said. "Your words run out unawares.
That is not the way to speak. What is your name, and where is your
kraal? Tell us, that we may know with whom we have to deal."

"My name is Umbopa. I am of the Zulu people, yet not of them. The
house of my tribe is in the far North; it was left behind when the
Zulus came down here a 'thousand years ago,' long before Chaka reigned
in Zululand. I have no kraal. I have wandered for many years. I came
from the North as a child to Zululand. I was Cetewayo's man in the
Nkomabakosi Regiment, serving there under the great Captain,
Umslopogaasi of the Axe,[*] who taught my hands to fight. Afterwards I
ran away from Zululand and came to Natal because I wanted to see the
white man's ways. Next I fought against Cetewayo in the war. Since
then I have been working in Natal. Now I am tired, and would go North
again. Here is not my place. I want no money, but I am a brave man,
and am worth my place and meat. I have spoken."

[*] For the history of Umslopogaasi and his Axe, the reader is
    referred to the books called "Allan Quatermain" and "Nada the
    Lily."--Editor.

I was rather puzzled by this man and his way of speech. It was evident
to me from his manner that in the main he was telling the truth, but
somehow he seemed different from the ordinary run of Zulus, and I
rather mistrusted his offer to come without pay. Being in a
difficulty, I translated his words to Sir Henry and Good, and asked
them their opinion.

Sir Henry told me to ask him to stand up. Umbopa did so, at the same
time slipping off the long military great coat which he wore, and
revealing himself naked except for the moocha round his centre and a
necklace of lions' claws. Certainly he was a magnificent-looking man;
I never saw a finer native. Standing about six foot three high he was
broad in proportion, and very shapely. In that light, too, his skin
looked scarcely more than dark, except here and there where deep black
scars marked old assegai wounds. Sir Henry walked up to him and looked
into his proud, handsome face.

"They make a good pair, don't they?" said Good; "one as big as the
other."

"I like your looks, Mr. Umbopa, and I will take you as my servant,"
said Sir Henry in English.

Umbopa evidently understood him, for he answered in Zulu, "It is
well"; and then added, with a glance at the white man's great stature
and breadth, "We are men, thou and I."



CHAPTER IV

AN ELEPHANT HUNT

Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of
our long travel up to Sitanda's Kraal, near the junction of the
Lukanga and Kalukwe Rivers. It was a journey of more than a thousand
miles from Durban, the last three hundred or so of which we had to
make on foot, owing to the frequent presence of the dreadful "tsetse"
fly, whose bite is fatal to all animals except donkeys and men.

We left Durban at the end of January, and it was in the second week of
May that we camped near Sitanda's Kraal. Our adventures on the way
were many and various, but as they are of the sort which befall every
African hunter--with one exception to be presently detailed--I shall
not set them down here, lest I should render this history too
wearisome.

At Inyati, the outlying trading station in the Matabele country, of
which Lobengula (a great and cruel scoundrel) is king, with many
regrets we parted from our comfortable wagon. Only twelve oxen
remained to us out of the beautiful span of twenty which I had bought
at Durban. One we lost from the bite of a cobra, three had perished
from "poverty" and the want of water, one strayed, and the other three
died from eating the poisonous herb called "tulip." Five more sickened
from this cause, but we managed to cure them with doses of an infusion
made by boiling down the tulip leaves. If administered in time this is
a very effective antidote.

The wagon and the oxen we left in the immediate charge of Goza and
Tom, our driver and leader, both trustworthy boys, requesting a worthy
Scotch missionary who lived in this distant place to keep an eye on
them. Then, accompanied by Umbopa, Khiva, Ventvoegel, and half a dozen
bearers whom we hired on the spot, we started off on foot upon our
wild quest. I remember we were all a little silent on the occasion of
this departure, and I think that each of us was wondering if we should
ever see our wagon again; for my part I never expected to do so. For a
while we tramped on in silence, till Umbopa, who was marching in
front, broke into a Zulu chant about how some brave men, tired of life
and the tameness of things, started off into a vast wilderness to find
new things or die, and how, lo and behold! when they had travelled far
into the wilderness they found that it was not a wilderness at all,
but a beautiful place full of young wives and fat cattle, of game to
hunt and enemies to kill.

Then we all laughed and took it for a good omen. Umbopa was a cheerful
savage, in a dignified sort of way, when he was not suffering from one
of his fits of brooding, and he had a wonderful knack of keeping up
our spirits. We all grew very fond of him.

And now for the one adventure to which I am going to treat myself, for
I do dearly love a hunting yarn.

About a fortnight's march from Inyati we came across a peculiarly
beautiful bit of well-watered woodland country. The kloofs in the
hills were covered with dense bush, "idoro" bush as the natives call
it, and in some places, with the "wacht-een-beche," or "wait-a-little
thorn," and there were great quantities of the lovely "machabell"
tree, laden with refreshing yellow fruit having enormous stones. This
tree is the elephant's favourite food, and there were not wanting
signs that the great brutes had been about, for not only was their
spoor frequent, but in many places the trees were broken down and even
uprooted. The elephant is a destructive feeder.

One evening, after a long day's march, we came to a spot of great
loveliness. At the foot of a bush-clad hill lay a dry river-bed, in
which, however, were to be found pools of crystal water all trodden
round with the hoof-prints of game. Facing this hill was a park-like
plain, where grew clumps of flat-topped mimosa, varied with occasional
glossy-leaved machabells, and all round stretched the sea of pathless,
silent bush.

As we emerged into this river-bed path suddenly we started a troop of
tall giraffes, who galloped, or rather sailed off, in their strange
gait, their tails screwed up over their backs, and their hoofs
rattling like castanets. They were about three hundred yards from us,
and therefore practically out of shot, but Good, who was walking
ahead, and who had an express loaded with solid ball in his hand,
could not resist temptation. Lifting his gun, he let drive at the
last, a young cow. By some extraordinary chance the ball struck it
full on the back of the neck, shattering the spinal column, and that
giraffe went rolling head over heels just like a rabbit. I never saw a
more curious thing.

"Curse it!" said Good--for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using
strong language when excited--contracted, no doubt, in the course of
his nautical career; "curse it! I've killed him."

"/Ou/, Bougwan," ejaculated the Kafirs; "/ou! ou!/"

They called Good "Bougwan," or Glass Eye, because of his eye-glass.

"Oh, 'Bougwan!'" re-echoed Sir Henry and I, and from that day Good's
reputation as a marvellous shot was established, at any rate among the
Kafirs. Really he was a bad one, but whenever he missed we overlooked
it for the sake of that giraffe.

Having set some of the "boys" to cut off the best of the giraffe's
meat, we went to work to build a "scherm" near one of the pools and
about a hundred yards to its right. This is done by cutting a quantity
of thorn bushes and piling them in the shape of a circular hedge. Then
the space enclosed is smoothed, and dry tambouki grass, if obtainable,
is made into a bed in the centre, and a fire or fires lighted.

By the time the "scherm" was finished the moon peeped up, and our
dinners of giraffe steaks and roasted marrow-bones were ready. How we
enjoyed those marrow-bones, though it was rather a job to crack them!
I know of no greater luxury than giraffe marrow, unless it is
elephant's heart, and we had that on the morrow. We ate our simple
meal by the light of the moon, pausing at times to thank Good for his
wonderful shot; then we began to smoke and yarn, and a curious picture
we must have made squatting there round the fire. I, with my short
grizzled hair sticking up straight, and Sir Henry with his yellow
locks, which were getting rather long, were rather a contrast,
especially as I am thin, and short, and dark, weighing only nine stone
and a half, and Sir Henry is tall, and broad, and fair, and weighs
fifteen. But perhaps the most curious-looking of the three, taking all
the circumstances of the case into consideration, was Captain John
Good, R.N. There he sat upon a leather bag, looking just as though he
had come in from a comfortable day's shooting in a civilised country,
absolutely clean, tidy, and well dressed. He wore a shooting suit of
brown tweed, with a hat to match, and neat gaiters. As usual, he was
beautifully shaved, his eye-glass and his false teeth appeared to be
in perfect order, and altogether he looked the neatest man I ever had
to do with in the wilderness. He even sported a collar, of which he
had a supply, made of white gutta-percha.

"You see, they weigh so little," he said to me innocently, when I
expressed my astonishment at the fact; "and I always like to turn out
like a gentleman." Ah! if he could have foreseen the future and the
raiment prepared for him.

Well, there we three sat yarning away in the beautiful moonlight, and
watching the Kafirs a few yards off sucking their intoxicating
"daccha" from a pipe of which the mouthpiece was made of the horn of
an eland, till one by one they rolled themselves up in their blankets
and went to sleep by the fire, that is, all except Umbopa, who was a
little apart, his chin resting on his hand, and thinking deeply. I
noticed that he never mixed much with the other Kafirs.

Presently, from the depths of the bush behind us, came a loud "/woof/,
/woof/!" "That's a lion," said I, and we all started up to listen.
Hardly had we done so, when from the pool, about a hundred yards off,
we heard the strident trumpeting of an elephant. "/Unkungunklovo/!
/Indlovu/!" "Elephant! Elephant!" whispered the Kafirs, and a few
minutes afterwards we saw a succession of vast shadowy forms moving
slowly from the direction of the water towards the bush.

Up jumped Good, burning for slaughter, and thinking, perhaps, that it
was as easy to kill elephant as he had found it to shoot giraffe, but
I caught him by the arm and pulled him down.

"It's no good," I whispered, "let them go."

"It seems that we are in a paradise of game. I vote we stop here a day
or two, and have a go at them," said Sir Henry, presently.

I was rather surprised, for hitherto Sir Henry had always been for
pushing forward as fast as possible, more especially since we
ascertained at Inyati that about two years ago an Englishman of the
name of Neville /had/ sold his wagon there, and gone on up country.
But I suppose his hunter instincts got the better of him for a while.

Good jumped at the idea, for he was longing to have a shot at those
elephants; and so, to speak the truth, did I, for it went against my
conscience to let such a herd as that escape without a pull at them.

"All right, my hearties," said I. "I think we want a little
recreation. And now let's turn in, for we ought to be off by dawn, and
then perhaps we may catch them feeding before they move on."

The others agreed, and we proceeded to make our preparations. Good
took off his clothes, shook them, put his eye-glass and his false
teeth into his trousers pocket, and folding each article neatly,
placed it out of the dew under a corner of his mackintosh sheet. Sir
Henry and I contented ourselves with rougher arrangements, and soon
were curled up in our blankets, and dropping off into the dreamless
sleep that rewards the traveller.

Going, going, go--What was that?

Suddenly, from the direction of the water came sounds of violent
scuffling, and next instant there broke upon our ears a succession of
the most awful roars. There was no mistaking their origin; only a lion
could make such a noise as that. We all jumped up and looked towards
the water, in the direction of which we saw a confused mass, yellow
and black in colour, staggering and struggling towards us. We seized
our rifles, and slipping on our veldtschoons, that is shoes made of
untanned hide, ran out of the scherm. By this time the mass had
fallen, and was rolling over and over on the ground, and when we
reached the spot it struggled no longer, but lay quite still.

Now we saw what it was. On the grass there lay a sable antelope bull--
the most beautiful of all the African antelopes--quite dead, and
transfixed by its great curved horns was a magnificent black-maned
lion, also dead. Evidently what had happened was this: The sable
antelope had come down to drink at the pool where the lion--no doubt
the same which we had heard--was lying in wait. While the antelope
drank, the lion had sprung upon him, only to be received upon the
sharp curved horns and transfixed. Once before I saw a similar thing
happen. Then the lion, unable to free himself, had torn and bitten at
the back and neck of the bull, which, maddened with fear and pain, had
rushed on until it dropped dead.

As soon as we had examined the beasts sufficiently we called the
Kafirs, and between us managed to drag their carcases up to the
scherm. After that we went in and lay down, to wake no more till dawn.

With the first light we were up and making ready for the fray. We took
with us the three eight-bore rifles, a good supply of ammunition, and
our large water-bottles, filled with weak cold tea, which I have
always found the best stuff to shoot on. After swallowing a little
breakfast we started, Umbopa, Khiva, and Ventvoegel accompanying us.
The other Kafirs we left with instructions to skin the lion and the
sable antelope, and to cut up the latter.

We had no difficulty in finding the broad elephant trail, which
Ventvoegel, after examination, pronounced to have been made by between
twenty and thirty elephants, most of them full-grown bulls. But the
herd had moved on some way during the night, and it was nine o'clock,
and already very hot, before, by the broken trees, bruised leaves and
bark, and smoking droppings, we knew that we could not be far from
them.

Presently we caught sight of the herd, which numbered, as Ventvoegel
had said, between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having
finished their morning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a
splendid sight, for they were only about two hundred yards from us.
Taking a handful of dry grass, I threw it into the air to see how the
wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before
we could get a shot. Finding that, if anything, it blew from the
elephants to us, we crept on stealthily, and thanks to the cover
managed to get within forty yards or so of the great brutes. Just in
front of us, and broadside on, stood three splendid bulls, one of them
with enormous tusks. I whispered to the others that I would take the
middle one; Sir Henry covering the elephant to the left, and Good the
bull with the big tusks.

"Now," I whispered.

Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir
Henry's elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart. Mine
fell on to its knees and I thought that he was going to die, but in
another moment he was up and off, tearing along straight past me. As
he went I gave him the second barrel in the ribs, and this brought him
down in good earnest. Hastily slipping in two fresh cartridges I ran
close up to him, and a ball through the brain put an end to the poor
brute's struggles. Then I turned to see how Good had fared with the
big bull, which I had heard screaming with rage and pain as I gave
mine its quietus. On reaching the captain I found him in a great state
of excitement. It appeared that on receiving the bullet the bull had
turned and come straight for his assailant, who had barely time to get
out of his way, and then charged on blindly past him, in the direction
of our encampment. Meanwhile the herd had crashed off in wild alarm in
the other direction.

For awhile we debated whether to go after the wounded bull or to
follow the herd, and finally deciding for the latter alternative,
departed, thinking that we had seen the last of those big tusks. I
have often wished since that we had. It was easy work to follow the
elephants, for they had left a trail like a carriage road behind them,
crushing down the thick bush in their furious flight as though it were
tambouki grass.

But to come up with them was another matter, and we had struggled on
under the broiling sun for over two hours before we found them. With
the exception of one bull, they were standing together, and I could
see, from their unquiet way and the manner in which they kept lifting
their trunks to test the air, that they were on the look-out for
mischief. The solitary bull stood fifty yards or so to this side of
the herd, over which he was evidently keeping sentry, and about sixty
yards from us. Thinking that he would see or wind us, and that it
would probably start them off again if we tried to get nearer,
especially as the ground was rather open, we all aimed at this bull,
and at my whispered word, we fired. The three shots took effect, and
down he went dead. Again the herd started, but unfortunately for them
about a hundred yards further on was a nullah, or dried-out water
track, with steep banks, a place very much resembling the one where
the Prince Imperial was killed in Zululand. Into this the elephants
plunged, and when we reached the edge we found them struggling in wild
confusion to get up the other bank, filling the air with their
screams, and trumpeting as they pushed one another aside in their
selfish panic, just like so many human beings. Now was our
opportunity, and firing away as quickly as we could load, we killed
five of the poor beasts, and no doubt should have bagged the whole
herd, had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank
and rushed headlong down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them,
and perhaps also a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a
pretty good bag for one day.

So after we were rested a little, and the Kafirs had cut out the
hearts of two of the dead elephants for supper, we started homewards,
very well pleased with our day's work, having made up our minds to
send the bearers on the morrow to chop away the tusks.

Shortly after we re-passed the spot where Good had wounded the
patriarchal bull we came across a herd of eland, but did not shoot at
them, as we had plenty of meat. They trotted past us, and then stopped
behind a little patch of bush about a hundred yards away, wheeling
round to look at us. As Good was anxious to get a near view of them,
never having seen an eland close, he handed his rifle to Umbopa, and,
followed by Khiva, strolled up to the patch of bush. We sat down and
waited for him, not sorry of the excuse for a little rest.

The sun was just going down in its reddest glory, and Sir Henry and I
were admiring the lovely scene, when suddenly we heard an elephant
scream, and saw its huge and rushing form with uplifted trunk and tail
silhouetted against the great fiery globe of the sun. Next second we
saw something else, and that was Good and Khiva tearing back towards
us with the wounded bull--for it was he--charging after them. For a
moment we did not dare to fire--though at that distance it would have
been of little use if we had done so--for fear of hitting one of them,
and the next a dreadful thing happened--Good fell a victim to his
passion for civilised dress. Had he consented to discard his trousers
and gaiters like the rest of us, and to hunt in a flannel shirt and a
pair of veldt-schoons, it would have been all right. But as it was,
his trousers cumbered him in that desperate race, and presently, when
he was about sixty yards from us, his boot, polished by the dry grass,
slipped, and down he went on his face right in front of the elephant.

We gave a gasp, for we knew that he must die, and ran as hard as we
could towards him. In three seconds it had ended, but not as we
thought. Khiva, the Zulu boy, saw his master fall, and brave lad as he
was, turned and flung his assegai straight into the elephant's face.
It stuck in his trunk.

With a scream of pain, the brute seized the poor Zulu, hurled him to
the earth, and placing one huge foot on to his body about the middle,
twined its trunk round his upper part and /tore him in two/.

We rushed up mad with horror, and fired again and again, till
presently the elephant fell upon the fragments of the Zulu.

As for Good, he rose and wrung his hands over the brave man who had
given his life to save him, and, though I am an old hand, I felt a
lump grow in my throat. Umbopa stood contemplating the huge dead
elephant and the mangled remains of poor Khiva.

"Ah, well," he said presently, "he is dead, but he died like a man!"



CHAPTER V

OUR MARCH INTO THE DESERT

We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the
tusks, and having brought them into camp, to bury them carefully in
the sand under a large tree, which made a conspicuous mark for miles
round. It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better,
averaging as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk. The tusks
of the great bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and
seventy pounds the pair, so nearly as we could judge.

As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear
hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey
to a better world. On the third day we marched again, hoping that we
might live to return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course,
after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not
space to detail, we reached Sitanda's Kraal, near the Lukanga River,
the real starting-point of our expedition. Very well do I recollect
our arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native
settlement with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands
down by the water, where these savages grew their scanty supply of
grain, and beyond it stretched great tracts of waving "veld" covered
with tall grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering.
To the left lay the vast desert. This spot appears to be the outpost
of the fertile country, and it would be difficult to say to what
natural causes such an abrupt change in the character of the soil is
due. But so it is.

Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side
of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I
had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach
Solomon's Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert,
covered with a species of karoo shrub.

It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great ball of the sun
was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many-coloured
light flying all over its vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend
the arrangement of our little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and
walking to the top of the slope opposite, we gazed across the desert.
The air was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the
faint blue outlines, here and there capped with white, of the Suliman
Berg.

"There," I said, "there is the wall round Solomon's Mines, but God
knows if we shall ever climb it."

"My brother should be there, and if he is, I shall reach him somehow,"
said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man.

"I hope so," I answered, and turned to go back to the camp, when I saw
that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly towards the
far-off mountains, stood the great Kafir Umbopa.

The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, addressing Sir
Henry, to whom he had attached himself.

"Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?" (a native word
meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by
the Kafirs), he said, pointing towards the mountain with his broad
assegai.

I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that
familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among
themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by
their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet
little laugh which angered me.

"How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi whom I
serve?" he said. "He is of a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in
his size and by his mien; so, mayhap, am I. At least, I am as great a
man. Be my mouth, O Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu,
my master, for I would speak to him and to thee."

I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in
that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was
curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my
opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his
swagger was outrageous.

"Yes, Umbopa," answered Sir Henry, "I would journey there."

"The desert is wide and there is no water in it, the mountains are
high and covered with snow, and man cannot say what lies beyond them
behind the place where the sun sets; how shalt thou come thither,
Incubu, and wherefore dost thou go?"

I translated again.

"Tell him," answered Sir Henry, "that I go because I believe that a
man of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I journey
to seek him."

"That is so, Incubu; a Hottentot I met on the road told me that a
white man went out into the desert two years ago towards those
mountains with one servant, a hunter. They never came back."

"How do you know it was my brother?" asked Sir Henry.

"Nay, I know not. But the Hottentot, when I asked what the white man
was like, said that he had thine eyes and a black beard. He said, too,
that the name of the hunter with him was Jim; that he was a Bechuana
hunter and wore clothes."

"There is no doubt about it," said I; "I knew Jim well."

Sir Henry nodded. "I was sure of it," he said. "If George set his mind
upon a thing he generally did it. It was always so from his boyhood.
If he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some
accident overtook him, and we must look for him on the other side."

Umbopa understood English, though he rarely spoke it.

"It is a far journey, Incubu," he put in, and I translated his remark.

"Yes," answered Sir Henry, "it is far. But there is no journey upon
this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There
is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may
not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a
desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he
holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it
or lose it as Heaven above may order."

I translated.

"Great words, my father," answered the Zulu--I always called him a
Zulu, though he was not really one--"great swelling words fit to fill
the mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is
life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and
thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes
carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it
may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to
try and journey one's road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At
the worst he can but die a little sooner. I will go with thee across
the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the
ground on the way, my father."

He paused awhile, and then went on with one of those strange bursts of
rhetorical eloquence that Zulus sometimes indulge in, which to my
mind, full though they are of vain repetitions, show that the race is
by no means devoid of poetic instinct and of intellectual power.

"What is life? Tell me, O white men, who are wise, who know the
secrets of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that
lies above and around the stars; who flash your words from afar
without a voice; tell me, white men, the secret of our life--whither
it goes and whence it comes!

"You cannot answer me; you know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the
dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night
we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the
light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life
is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death.
It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the
morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the
little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset."

"You are a strange man," said Sir Henry, when he had ceased.

Umbopa laughed. "It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu.
Perhaps /I/ seek a brother over the mountains."

I looked at him suspiciously. "What dost thou mean?" I asked; "what
dost thou know of those mountains?"

"A little; a very little. There is a strange land yonder, a land of
witchcraft and beautiful things; a land of brave people, and of trees,
and streams, and snowy peaks, and of a great white road. I have heard
of it. But what is the good of talking? It grows dark. Those who live
to see will see."

Again I looked at him doubtfully. The man knew too much.

"You need not fear me, Macumazahn," he said, interpreting my look. "I
dig no holes for you to fall in. I make no plots. If ever we cross
those mountains behind the sun I will tell what I know. But Death sits
upon them. Be wise and turn back. Go and hunt elephants, my masters. I
have spoken."

And without another word he lifted his spear in salutation, and
returned towards the camp, where shortly afterwards we found him
cleaning a gun like any other Kafir.

"That is an odd man," said Sir Henry.

"Yes," answered I, "too odd by half. I don't like his little ways. He
knows something, and will not speak out. But I suppose it is no use
quarrelling with him. We are in for a curious trip, and a mysterious
Zulu won't make much difference one way or another."

Next day we made our arrangements for starting. Of course it was
impossible to drag our heavy elephant rifles and other kit with us
across the desert, so, dismissing our bearers, we made an arrangement
with an old native who had a kraal close by to take care of them till
we returned. It went to my heart to leave such things as those sweet
tools to the tender mercies of an old thief of a savage whose greedy
eyes I could see gloating over them. But I took some precautions.

First of all I loaded all the rifles, placing them at full cock, and
informed him that if he touched them they would go off. He tried the
experiment instantly with my eight-bore, and it did go off, and blew a
hole right through one of his oxen, which were just then being driven
up to the kraal, to say nothing of knocking him head over heels with
the recoil. He got up considerably startled, and not at all pleased at
the loss of the ox, which he had the impudence to ask me to pay for,
and nothing would induce him to touch the guns again.

"Put the live devils out of the way up there in the thatch," he said,
"or they will murder us all."

Then I told him that, when we came back, if one of those things was
missing I would kill him and his people by witchcraft; and if we died
and he tried to steal the rifles I would come and haunt him and turn
his cattle mad and his milk sour till life was a weariness, and would
make the devils in the guns come out and talk to him in a way he did
not like, and generally gave him a good idea of judgment to come.
After that he promised to look after them as though they were his
father's spirit. He was a very superstitious old Kafir and a great
villain.

Having thus disposed of our superfluous gear we arranged the kit we
five--Sir Henry, Good, myself, Umbopa, and the Hottentot Ventvoegel--
were to take with us on our journey. It was small enough, but do what
we would we could not get its weight down under about forty pounds a
man. This is what it consisted of:--

The three express rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition.

The two Winchester repeating rifles (for Umbopa and Ventvoegel), with
two hundred rounds of cartridge.

Five Cochrane's water-bottles, each holding four pints.

Five blankets.

Twenty-five pounds' weight of biltong--i.e. sun-dried game flesh.

Ten pounds' weight of best mixed beads for gifts.

A selection of medicine, including an ounce of quinine, and one or two
small surgical instruments.

Our knives, a few sundries, such as a compass, matches, a pocket
filter, tobacco, a trowel, a bottle of brandy, and the clothes we
stood in.

This was our total equipment, a small one indeed for such a venture,
but we dared not attempt to carry more. Indeed, that load was a heavy
one per man with which to travel across the burning desert, for in
such places every additional ounce tells. But we could not see our way
to reducing the weight. There was nothing taken but what was
absolutely necessary.

With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good
hunting-knife each, I succeeded in persuading three wretched natives
from the village to come with us for the first stage, twenty miles,
and to carry a large gourd holding a gallon of water apiece. My object
was to enable us to refill our water-bottles after the first night's
march, for we determined to start in the cool of the evening. I gave
out to these natives that we were going to shoot ostriches, with which
the desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders,
saying that we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must say
seemed probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which
were almost unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having
probably reflected that, after all, our subsequent extinction would be
no affair of theirs.

All next day we rested and slept, and at sunset ate a hearty meal of
fresh beef washed down with tea, the last, as Good remarked sadly, we
were likely to drink for many a long day. Then, having made our final
preparations, we lay down and waited for the moon to rise. At last,
about nine o'clock, up she came in all her glory, flooding the wild
country with light, and throwing a silver sheen on the expanse of
rolling desert before us, which looked as solemn and quiet and as
alien to man as the star-studded firmament above. We rose up, and in a
few minutes were ready, and yet we hesitated a little, as human nature
is prone to hesitate on the threshold of an irrevocable step. We three
white men stood by ourselves. Umbopa, assegai in hand and a rifle
across his shoulders, looked out fixedly across the desert a few paces
ahead of us; while the hired natives, with the gourds of water, and
Ventvoegel, were gathered in a little knot behind.

"Gentlemen," said Sir Henry presently, in his deep voice, "we are
going on about as strange a journey as men can make in this world. It
is very doubtful if we can succeed in it. But we are three men who
will stand together for good or for evil to the last. Now before we
start let us for a moment pray to the Power who shapes the destinies
of men, and who ages since has marked out our paths, that it may
please Him to direct our steps in accordance with His will."

Taking off his hat, for the space of a minute or so, he covered his
face with his hands, and Good and I did likewise.

I do not say that I am a first-rate praying man, few hunters are, and
as for Sir Henry, I never heard him speak like that before, and only
once since, though deep down in his heart I believe that he is very
religious. Good too is pious, though apt to swear. Anyhow I do not
remember, excepting on one single occasion, ever putting up a better
prayer in my life than I did during that minute, and somehow I felt
the happier for it. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think
that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.

"And now," said Sir Henry, "/trek/!"

So we started.

We had nothing to guide ourselves by except the distant mountains and
old Jose da Silvestre's chart, which, considering that it was drawn by
a dying and half-distraught man on a fragment of linen three centuries
ago, was not a very satisfactory sort of thing with work with. Still,
our sole hope of success depended upon it, such as it was. If we
failed in finding that pool of bad water which the old Dom marked as
being situated in the middle of the desert, about sixty miles from our
starting-point, and as far from the mountains, in all probability we
must perish miserably of thirst. But to my mind the chances of our
finding it in that great sea of sand and karoo scrub seemed almost
infinitesimal. Even supposing that da Silvestra had marked the pool
correctly, what was there to prevent its having been dried up by the
sun generations ago, or trampled in by game, or filled with the
drifting sand?

On we tramped silently as shades through the night and in the heavy
sand. The karoo bushes caught our feet and retarded us, and the sand
worked into our veldtschoons and Good's shooting-boots, so that every
few miles we had to stop and empty them; but still the night kept
fairly cool, though the atmosphere was thick and heavy, giving a sort
of creamy feel to the air, and we made fair progress. It was very
silent and lonely there in the desert, oppressively so indeed. Good
felt this, and once began to whistle "The Girl I left behind me," but
the notes sounded lugubrious in that vast place, and he gave it up.

Shortly afterwards a little incident occurred which, though it
startled us at the time, gave rise to a laugh. Good was leading, as
the holder of the compass, which, being a sailor, of course he
understood thoroughly, and we were toiling along in single file behind
him, when suddenly we heard the sound of an exclamation, and he
vanished. Next second there arose all around us a most extraordinary
hubbub, snorts, groans, and wild sounds of rushing feet. In the faint
light, too, we could descry dim galloping forms half hidden by wreaths
of sand. The natives threw down their loads and prepared to bolt, but
remembering that there was nowhere to run to, they cast themselves
upon the ground and howled out that it was ghosts. As for Sir Henry
and myself, we stood amazed; nor was our amazement lessened when we
perceived the form of Good careering off in the direction of the
mountains, apparently mounted on the back of a horse and halloaing
wildly. In another second he threw up his arms, and we heard him come
to the earth with a thud.

Then I saw what had happened; we had stumbled upon a herd of sleeping
quagga, on to the back of one of which Good actually had fallen, and
the brute naturally enough got up and made off with him. Calling out
to the others that it was all right, I ran towards Good, much afraid
lest he should be hurt, but to my great relief I found him sitting in
the sand, his eye-glass still fixed firmly in his eye, rather shaken
and very much frightened, but not in any way injured.

After this we travelled on without any further misadventure till about
one o'clock, when we called a halt, and having drunk a little water,
not much, for water was precious, and rested for half an hour, we
started again.

On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of
a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed
presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the
desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they
vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out
against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man.
Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the
boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the
desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.

Still we did not halt, though by this time we should have been glad
enough to do so, for we knew that when once the sun was fully up it
would be almost impossible for us to travel. At length, about an hour
later, we spied a little pile of boulders rising out of the plain, and
to this we dragged ourselves. As luck would have it, here we found an
overhanging slab of rock carpeted beneath with smooth sand, which
afforded a most grateful shelter from the heat. Underneath this we
crept, and each of us having drunk some water and eaten a bit of
biltong, we lay down and soon were sound asleep.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon before we woke, to find our
bearers preparing to return. They had seen enough of the desert
already, and no number of knives would have tempted them to come a
step farther. So we took a hearty drink, and having emptied our water-
bottles, filled them up again from the gourds that they had brought
with them, and then watched them depart on their twenty miles' tramp
home.

At half-past four we also started. It was lonely and desolate work,
for with the exception of a few ostriches there was not a single
living creature to be seen on all the vast expanse of sandy plain.
Evidently it was too dry for game, and with the exception of a deadly-
looking cobra or two we saw no reptiles. One insect, however, we found
abundant, and that was the common or house fly. There they came, "not
as single spies, but in battalions," as I think the Old Testament[*]
says somewhere. He is an extraordinary insect is the house fly. Go
where you will you find him, and so it must have been always. I have
seen him enclosed in amber, which is, I was told, quite half a million
years old, looking exactly like his descendant of to-day, and I have
little doubt but that when the last man lies dying on the earth he
will be buzzing round--if this event happens to occur in summer--
watching for an opportunity to settle on his nose.

[*] Readers must beware of accepting Mr. Quatermain's references as
    accurate, as, it has been found, some are prone to do. Although
    his reading evidently was limited, the impression produced by it
    upon his mind was mixed. Thus to him the Old Testament and
    Shakespeare were interchangeable authorities.--Editor.

At sunset we halted, waiting for the moon to rise. At last she came
up, beautiful and serene as ever, and, with one halt about two o'clock
in the morning, we trudged on wearily through the night, till at last
the welcome sun put a period to our labours. We drank a little and
flung ourselves down on the sand, thoroughly tired out, and soon were
all asleep. There was no need to set a watch, for we had nothing to
fear from anybody or anything in that vast untenanted plain. Our only
enemies were heat, thirst, and flies, but far rather would I have
faced any danger from man or beast than that awful trinity. This time
we were not so lucky as to find a sheltering rock to guard us from the
glare of the sun, with the result that about seven o'clock we woke up
experiencing the exact sensations one would attribute to a beefsteak
on a gridiron. We were literally being baked through and through. The
burning sun seemed to be sucking our very blood out of us. We sat up
and gasped.

"Phew," said I, grabbing at the halo of flies which buzzed cheerfully
round my head. The heat did not affect /them/.

"My word!" said Sir Henry.

"It is hot!" echoed Good.

It was hot, indeed, and there was not a bit of shelter to be found.
Look where we would there was no rock or tree, nothing but an unending
glare, rendered dazzling by the heated air that danced over the
surface of the desert as it dances over a red-hot stove.

"What is to be done?" asked Sir Henry; "we can't stand this for long."

We looked at each other blankly.

"I have it," said Good, "we must dig a hole, get in it, and cover
ourselves with the karoo bushes."

It did not seem a very promising suggestion, but at least it was
better than nothing, so we set to work, and, with the trowel we had
brought with us and the help of our hands, in about an hour we
succeeded in delving out a patch of ground some ten feet long by
twelve wide to the depth of two feet. Then we cut a quantity of low
scrub with our hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it
over us all, with the exception of Ventvoegel, on whom, being a
Hottentot, the heat had no particular effect. This gave us some slight
shelter from the burning rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that
amateur grave can be better imagined than described. The Black Hole of
Calcutta must have been a fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not
know how we lived through the day. There we lay panting, and every now
and again moistening our lips from our scanty supply of water. Had we
followed our inclinations we should have finished all we possessed in
the first two hours, but we were forced to exercise the most rigid
care, for if our water failed us we knew that very soon we must perish
miserably.

But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and
somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three
o'clock in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no
longer. It would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by
heat and thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little
drink from our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about
the same temperature as a man's blood, we staggered forward.

We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will
refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra's map, he
will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across,
and the "pan bad water" is set down as being about in the middle of
it. Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we
ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if
any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely
doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested
again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to
get some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct
hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At
the distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to
sleep I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and
suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat. Nobody who has not
felt it can know what we went through. We walked no longer, we
staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to
call a halt every hour or so. We had scarcely energy left in us to
speak. Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry
fellow; but now he had not a joke in him.

At last, about two o'clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came
to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight
resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering
at the base nearly two acres of ground.

Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down
our last drops of water. We had but half a pint a head, and each of us
could have drunk a gallon.

Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa
remark to himself in Zulu--

"If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises
to-morrow."

I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect of such an awful death
is not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from
sleeping.



CHAPTER VI

WATER! WATER!

Two hours later, that is, about four o'clock, I woke up, for so soon
as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the
torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself. I could
sleep no more. I had been dreaming that I was bathing in a running
stream, with green banks and trees upon them, and I awoke to find
myself in this arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had said,
that if we did not find water this day we must perish miserably. No
human creature could live long without water in that heat. I sat up
and rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as my lips and
eyelids were stuck together, and it was only after some friction and
with an effort that I was able to open them. It was not far from dawn,
but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was
thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot describe. The others were
still sleeping.

Presently it began to grow light enough to read, so I drew out a
little pocket copy of the "Ingoldsby Legends" which I had brought with
me, and read "The Jackdaw of Rheims." When I got to where

 "A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
  Embossed, and filled with water as pure
  As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,"

literally I smacked my cracking lips, or rather tried to smack them.
The mere thought of that pure water made me mad. If the Cardinal had
been there with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in
and drunk his water up; yes, even if he had filled it already with the
suds of soap "worthy of washing the hands of the Pope," and I knew
that the whole consecrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall
upon me for so doing. I almost think that I must have been a little
light-headed with thirst, weariness and the want of food; for I fell
to thinking how astonished the Cardinal and his nice little boy and
the jackdaw would have looked to see a burnt up, brown-eyed, grizzly-
haired little elephant hunter suddenly bound between them, put his
dirty face into the basin, and swallow every drop of the precious
water. The idea amused me so much that I laughed or rather cackled
aloud, which woke the others, and they began to rub /their/ dirty
faces and drag /their/ gummed-up lips and eyelids apart.

As soon as we were all well awake we began to discuss the situation,
which was serious enough. Not a drop of water was left. We turned the
bottles upside down, and licked their tops, but it was a failure; they
were dry as a bone. Good, who had charge of the flask of brandy, got
it out and looked at it longingly; but Sir Henry promptly took it away
from him, for to drink raw spirit would only have been to precipitate
the end.

"If we do not find water we shall die," he said.

"If we can trust to the old Dom's map there should be some about," I
said; but nobody seemed to derive much satisfaction from this remark.
It was so evident that no great faith could be put in the map. Now it
was gradually growing light, and as we sat staring blankly at each
other, I observed the Hottentot Ventvoegel rise and begin to walk about
with his eyes on the ground. Presently he stopped short, and uttering
a guttural exclamation, pointed to the earth.

"What is it?" we exclaimed; and rising simultaneously we went to where
he was standing staring at the sand.

"Well," I said, "it is fresh Springbok spoor; what of it?"

"Springbucks do not go far from water," he answered in Dutch.

"No," I answered, "I forgot; and thank God for it."

This little discovery put new life into us; for it is wonderful, when
a man is in a desperate position, how he catches at the slightest
hope, and feels almost happy. On a dark night a single star is better
than nothing.

Meanwhile Ventvoegel was lifting his snub nose, and sniffing the hot
air for all the world like an old Impala ram who scents danger.
Presently he spoke again.

"I /smell/ water," he said.

Then we felt quite jubilant, for we knew what a wonderful instinct
these wild-bred men possess.

Just at that moment the sun came up gloriously, and revealed so grand
a sight to our astonished eyes that for a moment or two we even forgot
our thirst.

There, not more than forty or fifty miles from us, glittering like
silver in the early rays of the morning sun, soared Sheba's Breasts;
and stretching away for hundreds of miles on either side of them ran
the great Suliman Berg. Now that, sitting here, I attempt to describe
the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to
fail me. I am impotent even before its memory. Straight before us,
rose two enormous mountains, the like of which are not, I believe, to
be seen in Africa, if indeed there are any other such in the world,
measuring each of them at least fifteen thousand feet in height,
standing not more than a dozen miles apart, linked together by a
precipitous cliff of rock, and towering in awful white solemnity
straight into the sky. These mountains placed thus, like the pillars
of a gigantic gateway, are shaped after the fashion of a woman's
breasts, and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form
of a recumbent woman, veiled mysteriously in sleep. Their bases swell
gently from the plain, looking at that distance perfectly round and
smooth; and upon the top of each is a vast hillock covered with snow,
exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast. The stretch
of cliff that connects them appears to be some thousands of feet in
height, and perfectly precipitous, and on each flank of them, so far
as the eye can reach, extent similar lines of cliff, broken only here
and there by flat table-topped mountains, something like the world-
famed one at Cape Town; a formation, by the way, that is very common
in Africa.

To describe the comprehensive grandeur of that view is beyond my
powers. There was something so inexpressibly solemn and overpowering
about those huge volcanoes--for doubtless they are extinct volcanoes--
that it quite awed us. For a while the morning lights played upon the
snow and the brown and swelling masses beneath, and then, as though to
veil the majestic sight from our curious eyes, strange vapours and
clouds gathered and increased around the mountains, till presently we
could only trace their pure and gigantic outlines, showing ghostlike
through the fleecy envelope. Indeed, as we afterwards discovered,
usually they were wrapped in this gauze-like mist, which doubtless
accounted for our not having seen them more clearly before.

Sheba's Breasts had scarcely vanished into cloud-clad privacy, before
our thirst--literally a burning question--reasserted itself.

It was all very well for Ventvoegel to say that he smelt water, but we
could see no signs of it, look which way we would. So far as the eye
might reach there was nothing but arid sweltering sand and karoo
scrub. We walked round the hillock and gazed about anxiously on the
other side, but it was the same story, not a drop of water could be
found; there was no indication of a pan, a pool, or a spring.

"You are a fool," I said angrily to Ventvoegel; "there is no water."

But still he lifted his ugly snub nose sniffed.

"I smell it, Baas," he answered; "it is somewhere in the air."

"Yes," I said, "no doubt it is in the clouds, and about two months
hence it will fall and wash our bones."

Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is on the
top of the hill," he suggested.

"Rot," said Good; "whoever heard of water being found at the top of a
hill!"

"Let us go and look," I put in, and hopelessly enough we scrambled up
the sandy sides of the hillock, Umbopa leading. Presently he stopped
as though he was petrified.

"/Nanzia manzie/!" that is, "Here is water!" he cried with a loud
voice.

We rushed up to him, and there, sure enough, in a deep cut or
indentation on the very top of the sand koppie, was an undoubted pool
of water. How it came to be in such a strange place we did not stop to
inquire, nor did we hesitate at its black and unpleasant appearance.
It was water, or a good imitation of it, and that was enough for us.
We gave a bound and a rush, and in another second we were all down on
our stomachs sucking up the uninviting fluid as though it were nectar
fit for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then when we had done
drinking we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool, absorbing
the moisture through our parched skins. You, Harry, my boy, who have
only to turn on a couple of taps to summon "hot" and "cold" from an
unseen, vasty cistern, can have little idea of the luxury of that
muddy wallow in brackish tepid water.

After a while we rose from it, refreshed indeed, and fell to on our
"biltong," of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for
twenty-four hours, and ate our fill. Then we smoked a pipe, and lay
down by the side of that blessed pool, under the overhanging shadow of
its bank, and slept till noon.

All that day we rested there by the water, thanking our stars that we
had been lucky enough to find it, bad as it was, and not forgetting to
render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long-departed da
Silvestra, who had set its position down so accurately on the tail of
his shirt. The wonderful thing to us was that the pan should have
lasted so long, and the only way in which I can account for this is on
the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand.

Having filled both ourselves and our water-bottles as full as
possible, in far better spirits we started off again with the moon.
That night we covered nearly five-and-twenty miles; but, needless to
say, found no more water, though we were lucky enough the following
day to get a little shade behind some ant-heaps. When the sun rose,
and, for awhile, cleared away the mysterious mists, Suliman's Berg
with the two majestic Breasts, now only about twenty miles off, seemed
to be towering right above us, and looked grander than ever. At the
approach of evening we marched again, and, to cut a long story short,
by daylight next morning found ourselves upon the lowest slopes of
Sheba's left breast, for which we had been steadily steering. By this
time our water was exhausted once more, and we were suffering severely
from thirst, nor indeed could we see any chance of relieving it till
we reached the snow line far, far above us. After resting an hour or
two, driven to it by our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling
painfully in the burning heat up the lava slopes, for we found that
the huge base of the mountain was composed entirely of lava beds
belched from the bowels of the earth in some far past age.

By eleven o'clock we were utterly exhausted, and, generally speaking,
in a very bad state indeed. The lava clinker, over which we must drag
ourselves, though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of,
such as that on the Island of Ascension, for instance, was yet rough
enough to make our feet very sore, and this, together with our other
miseries, had pretty well finished us. A few hundred yards above us
were some large lumps of lava, and towards these we steered with the
intention of lying down beneath their shade. We reached them, and to
our surprise, so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us, on
a little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered
with a dense green growth. Evidently soil formed of decomposed lava
had rested there, and in due course had become the receptacle of seeds
deposited by birds. But we did not take much further interest in the
green growth, for one cannot live on grass like Nebuchadnezzar. That
requires a special dispensation of Providence and peculiar digestive
organs.

So we sat down under the rocks and groaned, and for one I wished
heartily that we had never started on this fool's errand. As we were
sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of
green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I
perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting
like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled
towards him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that
he had found water.

"What is it, Umbopa, son of a fool?" I shouted in Zulu.

"It is food and water, Macumazahn," and again he waved the green
thing.

Then I saw what he had found. It was a melon. We had hit upon a patch
of wild melons, thousands of them, and dead ripe.

"Melons!" I yelled to Good, who was next me; and in another minute his
false teeth were fixed in one of them.

I think we ate about six each before we had done, and poor fruit as
they were, I doubt if I ever thought anything nicer.

But melons are not very nutritious, and when we had satisfied our
thirst with their pulpy substance, and put a stock to cool by the
simple process of cutting them in two and setting them end on in the
hot sun to grow cold by evaporation, we began to feel exceedingly
hungry. We had still some biltong left, but our stomachs turned from
biltong, and besides, we were obliged to be very sparing of it, for we
could not say when we should find more food. Just at this moment a
lucky thing chanced. Looking across the desert I saw a flock of about
ten large birds flying straight towards us.

"/Skit, Baas, skit!/" "Shoot, master, shoot!" whispered the Hottentot,
throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.

Then I saw that the birds were a flock of /pauw/ or bustards, and that
they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the
repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and
then jumped to my feet. On seeing me the /pauw/ bunched up together,
as I expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the
thick of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine
fellow, that weighed about twenty pounds. In half an hour we had a
fire made of dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we
made such a feed as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that /pauw/;
nothing was left of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt
not a little the better afterwards.

That night we went on again with the moon, carrying as many melons as
we could with us. As we ascended we found the air grew cooler and
cooler, which was a great relief to us, and at dawn, so far as we
could judge, we were not more than about a dozen miles from the snow
line. Here we discovered more melons, and so had no longer any anxiety
about water, for we knew that we should soon get plenty of snow. But
the ascent had now become very precipitous, and we made but slow
progress, not more than a mile an hour. Also that night we ate our
last morsel of biltong. As yet, with the exception of the /pauw/, we
had seen no living thing on the mountain, nor had we come across a
single spring or stream of water, which struck us as very odd,
considering the expanse of snow above us, which must, we thought, melt
sometimes. But as we afterwards discovered, owing to a cause which it
is quite beyond my power to explain, all the streams flowed down upon
the north side of the mountains.

Now we began to grow very anxious about food. We had escaped death by
thirst, but it seemed probable that it was only to die of hunger. The
events of the next three miserable days are best described by copying
the entries made at the time in my note-book.

"21st May.--Started 11 a.m., finding the atmosphere quite cold enough
to travel by day, and carrying some water-melons with us. Struggled on
all day, but found no more melons, having evidently passed out of
their district. Saw no game of any sort. Halted for the night at
sundown, having had no food for many hours. Suffered much during the
night from cold.

"22nd.--Started at sunrise again, feeling very faint and weak. Only
made about five miles all day; found some patches of snow, of which we
ate, but nothing else. Camped at night under the edge of a great
plateau. Cold bitter. Drank a little brandy each, and huddled
ourselves together, each wrapped up in his blanket, to keep ourselves
alive. Are now suffering frightfully from starvation and weariness.
Thought that Ventvoegel would have died during the night.

"23rd.--Struggled forward once more as soon as the sun was well up,
and had thawed our limbs a little. We are now in a dreadful plight,
and I fear that unless we get food this will be our last day's
journey. But little brandy left. Good, Sir Henry, and Umbopa bear up
wonderfully, but Ventvoegel is in a very bad way. Like most Hottentots,
he cannot stand cold. Pangs of hunger not so bad, but have a sort of
numb feeling about the stomach. Others say the same. We are now on a
level with the precipitous chain, or wall of lava, linking the two
Breasts, and the view is glorious. Behind us the glowing desert rolls
away to the horizon, and before us lie mile upon mile of smooth hard
snow almost level, but swelling gently upwards, out of the centre of
which the nipple of the mountain, that appears to be some miles in
circumference, rises about four thousand feet into the sky. Not a
living thing is to be seen. God help us; I fear that our time has
come."

And now I will drop the journal, partly because it is not very
interesting reading; also what follows requires telling rather more
fully.

All that day--the 23rd May--we struggled slowly up the incline of
snow, lying down from time to time to rest. A strange gaunt crew we
must have looked, while, laden as we were, we dragged our weary feet
over the dazzling plain, glaring round us with hungry eyes. Not that
there was much use in glaring, for we could see nothing to eat. We did
not accomplish more than seven miles that day. Just before sunset we
found ourselves exactly under the nipple of Sheba's left Breast, which
towered thousands of feet into the air, a vast smooth hillock of
frozen snow. Weak as we were, we could not but appreciate the
wonderful scene, made even more splendid by the flying rays of light
from the setting sun, which here and there stained the snow blood-red,
and crowned the great dome above us with a diadem of glory.

"I say," gasped Good, presently, "we ought to be somewhere near that
cave the old gentleman wrote about."

"Yes," said I, "if there is a cave."

"Come, Quatermain," groaned Sir Henry, "don't talk like that; I have
every faith in the Dom; remember the water! We shall find the place
soon."

"If we don't find it before dark we are dead men, that is all about
it," was my consolatory reply.

For the next ten minutes we trudged in silence, when suddenly Umbopa,
who was marching along beside me, wrapped in his blanket, and with a
leather belt strapped so tightly round his stomach, to "make his
hunger small," as he said, that his waist looked like a girl's, caught
me by the arm.

"Look!" he said, pointing towards the springing slope of the nipple.

I followed his glance, and some two hundred yards from us perceived
what appeared to be a hole in the snow.

"It is the cave," said Umbopa.

We made the best of our way to the spot, and found sure enough that
the hole was the mouth of a cavern, no doubt the same as that of which
da Silvestra wrote. We were not too soon, for just as we reached
shelter the sun went down with startling rapidity, leaving the world
nearly dark, for in these latitudes there is but little twilight. So
we crept into the cave, which did not appear to be very big, and
huddling ourselves together for warmth, swallowed what remained of our
brandy--barely a mouthful each--and tried to forget our miseries in
sleep. But the cold was too intense to allow us to do so, for I am
convinced that at this great altitude the thermometer cannot have
marked less than fourteen or fifteen degrees below freezing point.
What such a temperature meant to us, enervated as we were by hardship,
want of food, and the great heat of the desert, the reader may imagine
better than I can describe. Suffice it to say that it was something as
near death from exposure as I have ever felt. There we sat hour after
hour through the still and bitter night, feeling the frost wander
round and nip us now in the finger, now in the foot, now in the face.
In vain did we huddle up closer and closer; there was no warmth in our
miserable starved carcases. Sometimes one of us would drop into an
uneasy slumber for a few minutes, but we could not sleep much, and
perhaps this was fortunate, for if we had I doubt if we should have
ever woke again. Indeed, I believe that it was only by force of will
that we kept ourselves alive at all.

Not very long before dawn I heard the Hottentot Ventvoegel, whose teeth
had been chattering all night like castanets, give a deep sigh. Then
his teeth stopped chattering. I did not think anything of it at the
time, concluding that he had gone to sleep. His back was resting
against mine, and it seemed to grow colder and colder, till at last it
felt like ice.

At length the air began to grow grey with light, then golden arrows
sped across the snow, and at last the glorious sun peeped above the
lava wall and looked in upon our half-frozen forms. Also it looked
upon Ventvoegel, sitting there amongst us, /stone dead/. No wonder his
back felt cold, poor fellow. He had died when I heard him sigh, and
was now frozen almost stiff. Shocked beyond measure, we dragged
ourselves from the corpse--how strange is that horror we mortals have
of the companionship of a dead body--and left it sitting there, its
arms clasped about its knees.

By this time the sunlight was pouring its cold rays, for here they
were cold, straight into the mouth of the cave. Suddenly I heard an
exclamation of fear from someone, and turned my head.

And this is what I saw: Sitting at the end of the cavern--it was not
more than twenty feet long--was another form, of which the head rested
on its chest and the long arms hung down. I stared at it, and saw that
this too was a /dead man/, and, what was more, a white man.

The others saw also, and the sight proved too much for our shattered
nerves. One and all we scrambled out of the cave as fast as our half-
frozen limbs would carry us.



CHAPTER VII

SOLOMON'S ROAD

Outside the cavern we halted, feeling rather foolish.

"I am going back," said Sir Henry.

"Why?" asked Good.

"Because it has struck me that--what we saw--may be my brother."

This was a new idea, and we re-entered the place to put it to the
proof. After the bright light outside, our eyes, weak as they were
with staring at the snow, could not pierce the gloom of the cave for a
while. Presently, however, they grew accustomed to the semi-darkness,
and we advanced towards the dead man.

Sir Henry knelt down and peered into his face.

"Thank God," he said, with a sigh of relief, "it is /not/ my brother."

Then I drew near and looked. The body was that of a tall man in middle
life with aquiline features, grizzled hair, and a long black
moustache. The skin was perfectly yellow, and stretched tightly over
the bones. Its clothing, with the exception of what seemed to be the
remains of a woollen pair of hose, had been removed, leaving the
skeleton-like frame naked. Round the neck of the corpse, which was
frozen perfectly stiff, hung a yellow ivory crucifix.

"Who on earth can it be?" said I.

"Can't you guess?" asked Good.

I shook my head.

"Why, the old Dom, Jose da Silvestra, of course--who else?"

"Impossible," I gasped; "he died three hundred years ago."

"And what is there to prevent him from lasting for three thousand
years in this atmosphere, I should like to know?" asked Good. "If only
the temperature is sufficiently low, flesh and blood will keep fresh
as New Zealand mutton for ever, and Heaven knows it is cold enough
here. The sun never gets in here; no animal comes here to tear or
destroy. No doubt his slave, of whom he speaks on the writing, took
off his clothes and left him. He could not have buried him alone.
Look!" he went on, stooping down to pick up a queerly-shaped bone
scraped at the end into a sharp point, "here is the 'cleft bone' that
Silvestra used to draw the map with."

We gazed for a moment astonished, forgetting our own miseries in this
extraordinary and, as it seemed to us, semi-miraculous sight.

"Ay," said Sir Henry, "and this is where he got his ink from," and he
pointed to a small wound on the Dom's left arm. "Did ever man see such
a thing before?"

There was no longer any doubt about the matter, which for my own part
I confess perfectly appalled me. There he sat, the dead man, whose
directions, written some ten generations ago, had led us to this spot.
Here in my own hand was the rude pen with which he had written them,
and about his neck hung the crucifix that his dying lips had kissed.
Gazing at him, my imagination could reconstruct the last scene of the
drama, the traveller dying of cold and starvation, yet striving to
convey to the world the great secret which he had discovered:--the
awful loneliness of his death, of which the evidence sat before us. It
even seemed to me that I could trace in his strongly-marked features a
likeness to those of my poor friend Silvestre his descendant, who had
died twenty years before in my arms, but perhaps that was fancy. At
any rate, there he sat, a sad memento of the fate that so often
overtakes those who would penetrate into the unknown; and there
doubtless he will still sit, crowned with the dread majesty of death,
for centuries yet unborn, to startle the eyes of wanderers like
ourselves, if ever any such should come again to invade his
loneliness. The thing overpowered us, already almost perished as we
were with cold and hunger.

"Let us go," said Sir Henry in a low voice; "stay, we will give him a
companion," and lifting up the dead body of the Hottentot Ventvoegel,
he placed it near to that of the old Dom. Then he stooped, and with a
jerk broke the rotten string of the crucifix which hung round da
Silvestra's neck, for his fingers were too cold to attempt to unfasten
it. I believe that he has it still. I took the bone pen, and it is
before me as I write--sometimes I use it to sign my name.

Then leaving these two, the proud white man of a past age, and the
poor Hottentot, to keep their eternal vigil in the midst of the
eternal snows, we crept out of the cave into the welcome sunshine and
resumed our path, wondering in our hearts how many hours it would be
before we were even as they are.

When we had walked about half a mile we came to the edge of the
plateau, for the nipple of the mountain does not rise out of its exact
centre, though from the desert side it had seemed to do so. What lay
below us we could not see, for the landscape was wreathed in billows
of morning fog. Presently, however, the higher layers of mist cleared
a little, and revealed, at the end of a long slope of snow, a patch of
green grass, some five hundred yards beneath us, through which a
stream was running. Nor was this all. By the stream, basking in the
bright sun, stood and lay a group of from ten to fifteen /large
antelopes/--at that distance we could not see of what species.

The sight filled us with an unreasoning joy. If only we could get it,
there was food in plenty. But the question was how to do so. The
beasts were fully six hundred yards off, a very long shot, and one not
to be depended on when our lives hung on the results.

Rapidly we discussed the advisability of trying to stalk the game, but
in the end dismissed it reluctantly. To begin with, the wind was not
favourable, and further, we must certainly be perceived, however
careful we were, against the blinding background of snow, which we
should be obliged to traverse.

"Well, we must have a try from where we are," said Sir Henry. "Which
shall it be, Quatermain, the repeating rifles or the expresses?"

Here again was a question. The Winchester repeaters--of which we had
two, Umbopa carrying poor Ventvoegel's as well as his own--were sighted
up to a thousand yards, whereas the expresses were only sighted to
three hundred and fifty, beyond which distance shooting with them was
more or less guess-work. On the other hand, if they did hit, the
express bullets, being "expanding," were much more likely to bring the
game down. It was a knotty point, but I made up my mind that we must
risk it and use the expresses.

"Let each of us take the buck opposite to him. Aim well at the point
of the shoulder and high up," said I; "and Umbopa, do you give the
word, so that we may all fire together."

Then came a pause, each of us aiming his level best, as indeed a man
is likely to do when he knows that life itself depends upon the shot.

"Fire," said Umbopa in Zulu, and at almost the same instant the three
rifles rang out loudly; three clouds of smoke hung for a moment before
us, and a hundred echoes went flying over the silent snow. Presently
the smoke cleared, and revealed--oh, joy!--a great buck lying on its
back and kicking furiously in its death agony. We gave a yell of
triumph--we were saved--we should not starve. Weak as we were, we
rushed down the intervening slope of snow, and in ten minutes from the
time of shooting, that animal's heart and liver were lying before us.
But now a new difficulty arose, we had no fuel, and therefore could
make no fire to cook them. We gazed at each other in dismay.

"Starving men should not be fanciful," said Good; "we must eat raw
meat."

There was no other way out of the dilemma, and our gnawing hunger made
the proposition less distasteful than it would otherwise have been. So
we took the heart and liver and buried them for a few minutes in a
patch of snow to cool them. Then we washed them in the ice-cold water
of the stream, and lastly ate them greedily. It sounds horrible
enough, but honestly, I never tasted anything so good as that raw
meat. In a quarter of an hour we were changed men. Our life and vigour
came back to us, our feeble pulses grew strong again, and the blood
went coursing through our veins. But mindful of the results of over-
feeding on starved stomachs, we were careful not to eat too much,
stopping whilst we were still hungry.

"Thank Heaven!" said Sir Henry; "that brute has saved our lives. What
is it, Quatermain?"

I rose and went to look at the antelope, for I was not certain. It was
about the size of a donkey, with large curved horns. I had never seen
one like it before; the species was new to me. It was brown in colour,
with faint red stripes, and grew a thick coat. I afterwards discovered
that the natives of that wonderful country call these bucks "/inco/."
They are very rare, and only found at a great altitude where no other
game will live. This animal was fairly hit high up in the shoulder,
though whose bullet brought it down we could not, of course, discover.
I believe that Good, mindful of his marvellous shot at the giraffe,
secretly set it down to his own prowess, and we did not contradict
him.

We had been so busy satisfying our hunger that hitherto we had not
found time to look about us. But now, having set Umbopa to cut off as
much of the best meat as we were likely to be able to carry, we began
to inspect our surroundings. The mist had cleared away, for it was
eight o'clock, and the sun had sucked it up, so we were able to take
in all the country before us at a glance. I know not how to describe
the glorious panorama which unfolded itself to our gaze. I have never
seen anything like it before, nor shall, I suppose, again.

Behind and over us towered Sheba's snowy Breasts, and below, some five
thousand feet beneath where we stood, lay league on league of the most
lovely champaign country. Here were dense patches of lofty forest,
there a great river wound its silvery way. To the left stretched a
vast expanse of rich, undulating veld or grass land, whereon we could
just make out countless herds of game or cattle, at that distance we
could not tell which. This expanse appeared to be ringed in by a wall
of distant mountains. To the right the country was more or less
mountainous; that is, solitary hills stood up from its level, with
stretches of cultivated land between, amongst which we could see
groups of dome-shaped huts. The landscape lay before us as a map,
wherein rivers flashed like silver snakes, and Alp-like peaks crowned
with wildly twisted snow wreaths rose in grandeur, whilst over all was
the glad sunlight and the breath of Nature's happy life.

Two curious things struck us as we gazed. First, that the country
before us must lie at least three thousand feet higher than the desert
we had crossed, and secondly, that all the rivers flowed from south to
north. As we had painful reason to know, there was no water upon the
southern side of the vast range on which we stood, but on the northern
face were many streams, most of which appeared to unite with the great
river we could see winding away farther than our eyes could follow.

We sat down for a while and gazed in silence at this wonderful view.
Presently Sir Henry spoke.

"Isn't there something on the map about Solomon's Great Road?" he
said.

I nodded, for I was still gazing out over the far country.

"Well, look; there it is!" and he pointed a little to our right.

Good and I looked accordingly, and there, winding away towards the
plain, was what appeared to be a wide turnpike road. We had not seen
it at first because, on reaching the plain, it turned behind some
broken country. We did not say anything, at least, not much; we were
beginning to lose the sense of wonder. Somehow it did not seem
particularly unnatural that we should find a sort of Roman road in
this strange land. We accepted the fact, that was all.

"Well," said Good, "it must be quite near us if we cut off to the
right. Hadn't we better be making a start?"

This was sound advice, and so soon as we had washed our faces and
hands in the stream we acted on it. For a mile or more we made our way
over boulders and across patches of snow, till suddenly, on reaching
the top of the little rise, we found the road at our feet. It was a
splendid road cut out of the solid rock, at least fifty feet wide, and
apparently well kept; though the odd thing was that it seemed to begin
there. We walked down and stood on it, but one single hundred paces
behind us, in the direction of Sheba's Breasts, it vanished, the
entire surface of the mountain being strewn with boulders interspersed
with patches of snow.

"What do you make of this, Quatermain?" asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head, I could make nothing of the thing.

"I have it!" said Good; "the road no doubt ran right over the range
and across the desert on the other side, but the sand there has
covered it up, and above us it has been obliterated by some volcanic
eruption of molten lava."

This seemed a good suggestion; at any rate, we accepted it, and
proceeded down the mountain. It proved a very different business
travelling along down hill on that magnificent pathway with full
stomachs from what it was travelling uphill over the snow quite
starved and almost frozen. Indeed, had it not been for melancholy
recollections of poor Ventvoegel's sad fate, and of that grim cave
where he kept company with the old Dom, we should have felt positively
cheerful, notwithstanding the sense of unknown dangers before us.
Every mile we walked the atmosphere grew softer and balmier, and the
country before us shone with a yet more luminous beauty. As for the
road itself, I never saw such an engineering work, though Sir Henry
said that the great road over the St. Gothard in Switzerland is very
similar. No difficulty had been too great for the Old World engineer
who laid it out. At one place we came to a ravine three hundred feet
broad and at least a hundred feet deep. This vast gulf was actually
filled in with huge blocks of dressed stone, having arches pierced
through them at the bottom for a waterway, over which the road went on
sublimely. At another place it was cut in zigzags out of the side of a
precipice five hundred feet deep, and in a third it tunnelled through
the base of an intervening ridge, a space of thirty yards or more.

Here we noticed that the sides of the tunnel were covered with quaint
sculptures, mostly of mailed figures driving in chariots. One, which
was exceedingly beautiful, represented a whole battle scene with a
convoy of captives being marched off in the distance.

"Well," said Sir Henry, after inspecting this ancient work of art, "it
is very well to call this Solomon's Road, but my humble opinion is
that the Egyptians had been here before Solomon's people ever set a
foot on it. If this isn't Egyptian or Phoenician handiwork, I must say
that it is very like it."

By midday we had advanced sufficiently down the mountain to search the
region where wood was to be met with. First we came to scattered
bushes which grew more and more frequent, till at last we found the
road winding through a vast grove of silver trees similar to those
which are to be seen on the slopes of Table Mountain at Cape Town. I
had never before met with them in all my wanderings, except at the
Cape, and their appearance here astonished me greatly.

"Ah!" said Good, surveying these shining-leaved trees with evident
enthusiasm, "here is lots of wood, let us stop and cook some dinner; I
have about digested that raw heart."

Nobody objected to this, so leaving the road we made our way to a
stream which was babbling away not far off, and soon had a goodly fire
of dry boughs blazing. Cutting off some substantial hunks from the
flesh of the /inco/ which we had brought with us, we proceeded to
toast them on the end of sharp sticks, as one sees the Kafirs do, and
ate them with relish. After filling ourselves, we lit our pipes and
gave ourselves up to enjoyment that, compared with the hardships we
had recently undergone, seemed almost heavenly.

The brook, of which the banks were clothed with dense masses of a
gigantic species of maidenhair fern interspersed with feathery tufts
of wild asparagus, sung merrily at our side, the soft air murmured
through the leaves of the silver trees, doves cooed around, and
bright-winged birds flashed like living gems from bough to bough. It
was a Paradise.

The magic of the place combined with an overwhelming sense of dangers
left behind, and of the promised land reached at last, seemed to charm
us into silence. Sir Henry and Umbopa sat conversing in a mixture of
broken English and Kitchen Zulu in a low voice, but earnestly enough,
and I lay, with my eyes half shut, upon that fragrant bed of fern and
watched them.

Presently I missed Good, and I looked to see what had become of him.
Soon I observed him sitting by the bank of the stream, in which he had
been bathing. He had nothing on but his flannel shirt, and his natural
habits of extreme neatness having reasserted themselves, he was
actively employed in making a most elaborate toilet. He had washed his
gutta-percha collar, had thoroughly shaken out his trousers, coat and
waistcoat, and was now folding them up neatly till he was ready to put
them on, shaking his head sadly as he scanned the numerous rents and
tears in them, which naturally had resulted from our frightful
journey. Then he took his boots, scrubbed them with a handful of fern,
and finally rubbed them over with a piece of fat, which he had
carefully saved from the /inco/ meat, till they looked, comparatively
speaking, respectable. Having inspected them judiciously through his
eye-glass, he put the boots on and began a fresh operation. From a
little bag that he carried he produced a pocket-comb in which was
fixed a tiny looking-glass, and in this he surveyed himself.
Apparently he was not satisfied, for he proceeded to do his hair with
great care. Then came a pause whilst he again contemplated the effect;
still it was not satisfactory. He felt his chin, on which the
accumulated scrub of a ten days' beard was flourishing.

"Surely," thought I, "he is not going to try to shave." But so it was.
Taking the piece of fat with which he had greased his boots, Good
washed it thoroughly in the stream. Then diving again into the bag he
brought out a little pocket razor with a guard to it, such as are
bought by people who are afraid of cutting themselves, or by those
about to undertake a sea voyage. Then he rubbed his face and chin
vigorously with the fat and began. Evidently it proved a painful
process, for he groaned very much over it, and I was convulsed with
inward laughter as I watched him struggling with that stubbly beard.
It seemed so very odd that a man should take the trouble to shave
himself with a piece of fat in such a place and in our circumstances.
At last he succeeded in getting the hair off the right side of his
face and chin, when suddenly I, who was watching, became conscious of
a flash of light that passed just by his head.

Good sprang up with a profane exclamation (if it had not been a safety
razor he would certainly have cut his throat), and so did I, without
the exclamation, and this was what I saw. Standing not more than
twenty paces from where I was, and ten from Good, were a group of men.
They were very tall and copper-coloured, and some of them wore great
plumes of black feathers and short cloaks of leopard skins; this was
all I noticed at the moment. In front of them stood a youth of about
seventeen, his hand still raised and his body bent forward in the
attitude of a Grecian statue of a spear-thrower. Evidently the flash
of light had been caused by a weapon which he had hurled.

As I looked an old soldier-like man stepped forward out of the group,
and catching the youth by the arm said something to him. Then they
advanced upon us.

Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa by this time had seized their rifles and
lifted them threateningly. The party of natives still came on. It
struck me that they could not know what rifles were, or they would not
have treated them with such contempt.

"Put down your guns!" I halloed to the others, seeing that our only
chance of safety lay in conciliation. They obeyed, and walking to the
front I addressed the elderly man who had checked the youth.

"Greeting," I said in Zulu, not knowing what language to use. To my
surprise I was understood.

"Greeting," answered the old man, not, indeed, in the same tongue, but
in a dialect so closely allied to it that neither Umbopa nor myself
had any difficulty in understanding him. Indeed, as we afterwards
found out, the language spoken by this people is an old-fashioned form
of the Zulu tongue, bearing about the same relationship to it that the
English of Chaucer does to the English of the nineteenth century.

"Whence come you?" he went on, "who are you? and why are the faces of
three of you white, and the face of the fourth as the face of our
mother's sons?" and he pointed to Umbopa. I looked at Umbopa as he
said it, and it flashed across me that he was right. The face of
Umbopa was like the faces of the men before me, and so was his great
form like their forms. But I had not time to reflect on this
coincidence.

"We are strangers, and come in peace," I answered, speaking very
slowly, so that he might understand me, "and this man is our servant."

"You lie," he answered; "no strangers can cross the mountains where
all things perish. But what do your lies matter?--if ye are strangers
then ye must die, for no strangers may live in the land of the
Kukuanas. It is the king's law. Prepare then to die, O strangers!"

I was slightly staggered at this, more especially as I saw the hands
of some of the men steal down to their sides, where hung on each what
looked to me like a large and heavy knife.

"What does that beggar say?" asked Good.

"He says we are going to be killed," I answered grimly.

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Good; and, as was his way when perplexed, he put
his hand to his false teeth, dragging the top set down and allowing
them to fly back to his jaw with a snap. It was a most fortunate move,
for next second the dignified crowd of Kukuanas uttered a simultaneous
yell of horror, and bolted back some yards.

"What's up?" said I.

"It's his teeth," whispered Sir Henry excitedly. "He moved them. Take
them out, Good, take them out!"

He obeyed, slipping the set into the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

In another second curiosity had overcome fear, and the men advanced
slowly. Apparently they had now forgotten their amiable intention of
killing us.

"How is it, O strangers," asked the old man solemnly, "that this fat
man (pointing to Good, who was clad in nothing but boots and a flannel
shirt, and had only half finished his shaving), whose body is clothed,
and whose legs are bare, who grows hair on one side of his sickly face
and not on the other, and who wears one shining and transparent eye--
how is it, I ask, that he has teeth which move of themselves, coming
away from the jaws and returning of their own will?"

"Open your mouth," I said to Good, who promptly curled up his lips and
grinned at the old gentleman like an angry dog, revealing to his
astonished gaze two thin red lines of gum as utterly innocent of
ivories as a new-born elephant. The audience gasped.

"Where are his teeth?" they shouted; "with our eyes we saw them."

Turning his head slowly and with a gesture of ineffable contempt, Good
swept his hand across his mouth. Then he grinned again, and lo, there
were two rows of lovely teeth.

Now the young man who had flung the knife threw himself down on the
grass and gave vent to a prolonged howl of terror; and as for the old
gentleman, his knees knocked together with fear.

"I see that ye are spirits," he said falteringly; "did ever man born
of woman have hair on one side of his face and not on the other, or a
round and transparent eye, or teeth which moved and melted away and
grew again? Pardon us, O my lords."

Here was luck indeed, and, needless to say, I jumped at the chance.

"It is granted," I said with an imperial smile. "Nay, ye shall know
the truth. We come from another world, though we are men such as ye;
we come," I went on, "from the biggest star that shines at night."

"Oh! oh!" groaned the chorus of astonished aborigines.

"Yes," I went on, "we do, indeed"; and again I smiled benignly, as I
uttered that amazing lie. "We come to stay with you a little while,
and to bless you by our sojourn. Ye will see, O friends, that I have
prepared myself for this visit by the learning of your language."

"It is so, it is so," said the chorus.

"Only, my lord," put in the old gentleman, "thou hast learnt it very
badly."

I cast an indignant glance at him, and he quailed.

"Now friends," I continued, "ye might think that after so long a
journey we should find it in our hearts to avenge such a reception,
mayhap to strike cold in death the imperious hand that--that, in short
--threw a knife at the head of him whose teeth come and go."

"Spare him, my lords," said the old man in supplication; "he is the
king's son, and I am his uncle. If anything befalls him his blood will
be required at my hands."

"Yes, that is certainly so," put in the young man with great emphasis.

"Ye may perhaps doubt our power to avenge," I went on, heedless of
this by-play. "Stay, I will show you. Here, thou dog and slave
(addressing Umbopa in a savage tone), give me the magic tube that
speaks"; and I tipped a wink towards my express rifle.

Umbopa rose to the occasion, and with something as nearly resembling a
grin as I have ever seen on his dignified face he handed me the gun.

"It is here, O Lord of Lords," he said with a deep obeisance.

Now just before I had asked for the rifle I had perceived a little
/klipspringer/ antelope standing on a mass of rock about seventy yards
away, and determined to risk the shot.

"Ye see that buck," I said, pointing the animal out to the party
before me. "Tell me, is it possible for man born of woman to kill it
from here with a noise?"

"It is not possible, my lord," answered the old man.

"Yet shall I kill it," I said quietly.

The old man smiled. "That my lord cannot do," he answered.

I raised the rifle and covered the buck. It was a small animal, and
one which a man might well be excused for missing, but I knew that it
would not do to miss.

I drew a deep breath, and slowly pressed on the trigger. The buck
stood still as a stone.

"Bang! thud!" The antelope sprang into the air and fell on the rock
dead as a door nail.

A groan of simultaneous terror burst from the group before us.

"If you want meat," I remarked coolly, "go fetch that buck."

The old man made a sign, and one of his followers departed, and
presently returned bearing the /klipspringer/. I noticed with
satisfaction that I had hit it fairly behind the shoulder. They
gathered round the poor creature's body, gazing at the bullet-hole in
consternation.

"Ye see," I said, "I do not speak empty words."

There was no answer.

"If ye yet doubt our power," I went on, "let one of you go stand upon
that rock that I may make him as this buck."

None of them seemed at all inclined to take the hint, till at last the
king's son spoke.

"It is well said. Do thou, my uncle, go stand upon the rock. It is but
a buck that the magic has killed. Surely it cannot kill a man."

The old gentleman did not take the suggestion in good part. Indeed, he
seemed hurt.

"No! no!" he ejaculated hastily, "my old eyes have seen enough. These
are wizards, indeed. Let us bring them to the king. Yet if any should
wish a further proof, let /him/ stand upon the rock, that the magic
tube may speak with him."

There was a most general and hasty expression of dissent.

"Let not good magic be wasted on our poor bodies," said one; "we are
satisfied. All the witchcraft of our people cannot show the like of
this."

"It is so," remarked the old gentleman, in a tone of intense relief;
"without any doubt it is so. Listen, children of the Stars, children
of the shining Eye and the movable Teeth, who roar out in thunder, and
slay from afar. I am Infadoos, son of Kafa, once king of the Kukuana
people. This youth is Scragga."

"He nearly scragged me," murmured Good.

"Scragga, son of Twala, the great king--Twala, husband of a thousand
wives, chief and lord paramount of the Kukuanas, keeper of the great
Road, terror of his enemies, student of the Black Arts, leader of a
hundred thousand warriors, Twala the One-eyed, the Black, the
Terrible."

"So," said I superciliously, "lead us then to Twala. We do not talk
with low people and underlings."

"It is well, my lords, we will lead you; but the way is long. We are
hunting three days' journey from the place of the king. But let my
lords have patience, and we will lead them."

"So be it," I said carelessly; "all time is before us, for we do not
die. We are ready, lead on. But Infadoos, and thou Scragga, beware!
Play us no monkey tricks, set for us no foxes' snares, for before your
brains of mud have thought of them we shall know and avenge. The light
of the transparent eye of him with the bare legs and the half-haired
face shall destroy you, and go through your land; his vanishing teeth
shall affix themselves fast in you and eat you up, you and your wives
and children; the magic tubes shall argue with you loudly, and make
you as sieves. Beware!"

This magnificent address did not fail of its effect; indeed, it might
almost have been spared, so deeply were our friends already impressed
with our powers.

The old man made a deep obeisance, and murmured the words, "/Koom
Koom/," which I afterwards discovered was their royal salute,
corresponding to the /Bayete/ of the Zulus, and turning, addressed his
followers. These at once proceeded to lay hold of all our goods and
chattels, in order to bear them for us, excepting only the guns, which
they would on no account touch. They even seized Good's clothes, that,
as the reader may remember, were neatly folded up beside him.

He saw and made a dive for them, and a loud altercation ensued.

"Let not my lord of the transparent Eye and the melting Teeth touch
them," said the old man. "Surely his slave shall carry the things."

"But I want to put 'em on!" roared Good, in nervous English.

Umbopa translated.

"Nay, my lord," answered Infadoos, "would my lord cover up his
beautiful white legs (although he is so dark Good has a singularly
white skin) from the eyes of his servants? Have we offended my lord
that he should do such a thing?"

Here I nearly exploded with laughing; and meanwhile one of the men
started on with the garments.

"Damn it!" roared Good, "that black villain has got my trousers."

"Look here, Good," said Sir Henry; "you have appeared in this country
in a certain character, and you must live up to it. It will never do
for you to put on trousers again. Henceforth you must exist in a
flannel shirt, a pair of boots, and an eye-glass."

"Yes," I said, "and with whiskers on one side of your face and not on
the other. If you change any of these things the people will think
that we are impostors. I am very sorry for you, but, seriously, you
must. If once they begin to suspect us our lives will not be worth a
brass farthing."

"Do you really think so?" said Good gloomily.

"I do, indeed. Your 'beautiful white legs' and your eye-glass are now
/the/ features of our party, and as Sir Henry says, you must live up
to them. Be thankful that you have got your boots on, and that the air
is warm."

Good sighed, and said no more, but it took him a fortnight to become
accustomed to his new and scant attire.



CHAPTER VIII

WE ENTER KUKUANALAND

All that afternoon we travelled along the magnificent roadway, which
trended steadily in a north-westerly direction. Infadoos and Scragga
walked with us, but their followers marched about one hundred paces
ahead.

"Infadoos," I said at length, "who made this road?"

"It was made, my lord, of old time, none know how or when, not even
the wise woman Gagool, who has lived for generations. We are not old
enough to remember its making. None can fashion such roads now, but
the king suffers no grass to grow upon it."

"And whose are the writings on the wall of the caves through which we
have passed on the road?" I asked, referring to the Egyptian-like
sculptures that we had seen.

"My lord, the hands that made the road wrote the wonderful writings.
We know not who wrote them."

"When did the Kukuana people come into this country?"

"My lord, the race came down here like the breath of a storm ten
thousand thousand moons ago, from the great lands which lie there
beyond," and he pointed to the north. "They could travel no further
because of the high mountains which ring in the land, so say the old
voices of our fathers that have descended to us the children, and so
says Gagool, the wise woman, the smeller out of witches," and again he
pointed to the snow-clad peaks. "The country, too, was good, so they
settled here and grew strong and powerful, and now our numbers are
like the sea sand, and when Twala the king calls up his regiments
their plumes cover the plain so far as the eye of man can reach."

"And if the land is walled in with mountains, who is there for the
regiments to fight with?"

"Nay, my lord, the country is open there towards the north, and now
and again warriors sweep down upon us in clouds from a land we know
not, and we slay them. It is the third part of the life of a man since
there was a war. Many thousands died in it, but we destroyed those who
came to eat us up. So since then there has been no war."

"Your warriors must grow weary of resting on their spears, Infadoos."

"My lord, there was one war, just after we destroyed the people that
came down upon us, but it was a civil war; dog ate dog."

"How was that?"

"My lord the king, my half-brother, had a brother born at the same
birth, and of the same woman. It is not our custom, my lord, to suffer
twins to live; the weaker must always die. But the mother of the king
hid away the feebler child, which was born the last, for her heart
yearned over it, and that child is Twala the king. I am his younger
brother, born of another wife."

"Well?"

"My lord, Kafa, our father, died when we came to manhood, and my
brother Imotu was made king in his place, and for a space reigned and
had a son by his favourite wife. When the babe was three years old,
just after the great war, during which no man could sow or reap, a
famine came upon the land, and the people murmured because of the
famine, and looked round like a starved lion for something to rend.
Then it was that Gagool, the wise and terrible woman, who does not
die, made a proclamation to the people, saying, 'The king Imotu is no
king.' And at the time Imotu was sick with a wound, and lay in his
kraal not able to move.

"Then Gagool went into a hut and led out Twala, my half-brother, and
twin brother to the king, whom she had hidden among the caves and
rocks since he was born, and stripping the '/moocha/' (waist-cloth)
off his loins, showed the people of the Kukuanas the mark of the
sacred snake coiled round his middle, wherewith the eldest son of the
king is marked at birth, and cried out loud, 'Behold your king whom I
have saved for you even to this day!'

"Now the people being mad with hunger, and altogether bereft of reason
and the knowledge of truth, cried out--'/The king! The king!/' but I
knew that it was not so, for Imotu my brother was the elder of the
twins, and our lawful king. Then just as the tumult was at its height
Imotu the king, though he was very sick, crawled from his hut holding
his wife by the hand, and followed by his little son Ignosi--that is,
by interpretation, the Lightning.

"'What is this noise?' he asked. 'Why cry ye /The king! The king!/'

"Then Twala, his twin brother, born of the same woman, and in the same
hour, ran to him, and taking him by the hair, stabbed him through the
heart with his knife. And the people being fickle, and ever ready to
worship the rising sun, clapped their hands and cried, '/Twala is
king!/ Now we know that Twala is king!'"

"And what became of Imotu's wife and her son Ignosi? Did Twala kill
them too?"

"Nay, my lord. When she saw that her lord was dead the queen seized
the child with a cry and ran away. Two days afterward she came to a
kraal very hungry, and none would give her milk or food, now that her
lord the king was dead, for all men hate the unfortunate. But at
nightfall a little child, a girl, crept out and brought her corn to
eat, and she blessed the child, and went on towards the mountains with
her boy before the sun rose again, and there she must have perished,
for none have seen her since, nor the child Ignosi."

"Then if this child Ignosi had lived he would be the true king of the
Kukuana people?"

"That is so, my lord; the sacred snake is round his middle. If he
lives he is king; but, alas! he is long dead."

"See, my lord," and Infadoos pointed to a vast collection of huts
surrounded by a fence, which was in its turn encircled by a great
ditch, that lay on the plain beneath us. "That is the kraal where the
wife of Imotu was last seen with the child Ignosi. It is there that we
shall sleep to-night, if, indeed," he added doubtfully, "my lords
sleep at all upon this earth."

"When we are among the Kukuanas, my good friend Infadoos, we do as the
Kukuanas do," I said majestically, and turned round quickly to address
Good, who was tramping along sullenly behind, his mind fully occupied
with unsatisfactory attempts to prevent his flannel shirt from
flapping in the evening breeze. To my astonishment I butted into
Umbopa, who was walking along immediately behind me, and very
evidently had been listening with the greatest interest to my
conversation with Infadoos. The expression on his face was most
curious, and gave me the idea of a man who was struggling with partial
success to bring something long ago forgotten back into his mind.

All this while we had been pressing on at a good rate towards the
undulating plain beneath us. The mountains we had crossed now loomed
high above our heads, and Sheba's Breasts were veiled modestly in
diaphanous wreaths of mist. As we went the country grew more and more
lovely. The vegetation was luxuriant, without being tropical; the sun
was bright and warm, but not burning; and a gracious breeze blew
softly along the odorous slopes of the mountains. Indeed, this new
land was little less than an earthly paradise; in beauty, in natural
wealth, and in climate I have never seen its like. The Transvaal is a
fine country, but it is nothing to Kukuanaland.

So soon as we started Infadoos had despatched a runner to warn the
people of the kraal, which, by the way, was in his military command,
of our arrival. This man had departed at an extraordinary speed, which
Infadoos informed me he would keep up all the way, as running was an
exercise much practised among his people.

The result of this message now became apparent. When we arrived within
two miles of the kraal we could see that company after company of men
were issuing from its gates and marching towards us.

Sir Henry laid his hand upon my arm, and remarked that it looked as
though we were going to meet with a warm reception. Something in his
tone attracted Infadoos' attention.

"Let not my lords be afraid," he said hastily, "for in my breast there
dwells no guile. This regiment is one under my command, and comes out
by my orders to greet you."

I nodded easily, though I was not quite easy in my mind.

About half a mile from the gates of this kraal is a long stretch of
rising ground sloping gently upwards from the road, and here the
companies formed. It was a splendid sight to see them, each company
about three hundred strong, charging swiftly up the rise, with
flashing spears and waving plumes, to take their appointed place. By
the time we reached the slope twelve such companies, or in all three
thousand six hundred men, had passed out and taken up their positions
along the road.

Presently we came to the first company, and were able to gaze in
astonishment on the most magnificent set of warriors that I have ever
seen. They were all men of mature age, mostly veterans of about forty,
and not one of them was under six feet in height, whilst many stood
six feet three or four. They wore upon their heads heavy black plumes
of Sakaboola feathers, like those which adorned our guides. About
their waists and beneath the right knees were bound circlets of white
ox tails, while in their left hands they carried round shields
measuring about twenty inches across. These shields are very curious.
The framework is made of an iron plate beaten out thin, over which is
stretched milk-white ox-hide.

The weapons that each man bore were simple, but most effective,
consisting of a short and very heavy two-edged spear with a wooden
shaft, the blade being about six inches across at the widest part.
These spears are not used for throwing but like the Zulu "/bangwan/,"
or stabbing assegai, are for close quarters only, when the wound
inflicted by them is terrible. In addition to his /bangwan/ every man
carried three large and heavy knives, each knife weighing about two
pounds. One knife was fixed in the ox-tail girdle, and the other two
at the back of the round shield. These knives, which are called
"/tollas/" by the Kukuanas, take the place of the throwing assegai of
the Zulus. The Kukuana warriors can cast them with great accuracy to a
distance of fifty yards, and it is their custom on charging to hurl a
volley of them at the enemy as they come to close quarters.

Each company remained still as a collection of bronze statues till we
were opposite to it, when at a signal given by its commanding officer,
who, distinguished by a leopard skin cloak, stood some paces in front,
every spear was raised into the air, and from three hundred throats
sprang forth with a sudden roar the royal salute of "/Koom/." Then, so
soon as we had passed, the company formed up behind us and followed us
towards the kraal, till at last the whole regiment of the "Greys"--so
called from their white shields--the crack corps of the Kukuana
people, was marching in our rear with a tread that shook the ground.

At length, branching off from Solomon's Great Road, we came to the
wide fosse surrounding the kraal, which is at least a mile round, and
fenced with a strong palisade of piles formed of the trunks of trees.
At the gateway this fosse is spanned by a primitive drawbridge, which
was let down by the guard to allow us to pass in. The kraal is
exceedingly well laid out. Through the centre runs a wide pathway
intersected at right angles by other pathways so arranged as to cut
the huts into square blocks, each block being the quarters of a
company. The huts are dome-shaped, and built, like those of the Zulus,
of a framework of wattle, beautifully thatched with grass; but, unlike
the Zulu huts, they have doorways through which men could walk. Also
they are much larger, and surrounded by a verandah about six feet
wide, beautifully paved with powdered lime trodden hard.

All along each side of this wide pathway that pierces the kraal were
ranged hundreds of women, brought out by curiosity to look at us.
These women, for a native race, are exceedingly handsome. They are
tall and graceful, and their figures are wonderfully fine. The hair,
though short, is rather curly than woolly, the features are frequently
aquiline, and the lips are not unpleasantly thick, as is the case
among most African races. But what struck us most was their
exceedingly quiet and dignified air. They were as well-bred in their
way as the /habituees/ of a fashionable drawing-room, and in this
respect they differ from Zulu women and their cousins the Masai who
inhabit the district beyond Zanzibar. Their curiosity had brought them
out to see us, but they allowed no rude expressions of astonishment or
savage criticism to pass their lips as we trudged wearily in front of
them. Not even when old Infadoos with a surreptitious motion of the
hand pointed out the crowning wonder of poor Good's "beautiful white
legs," did they suffer the feeling of intense admiration which
evidently mastered their minds to find expression. They fixed their
dark eyes upon this new and snowy loveliness, for, as I think I have
said, Good's skin is exceedingly white, and that was all. But it was
quite enough for Good, who is modest by nature.

When we reached the centre of the kraal, Infadoos halted at the door
of a large hut, which was surrounded at a distance by a circle of
smaller ones.

"Enter, Sons of the Stars," he said, in a magniloquent voice, "and
deign to rest awhile in our humble habitations. A little food shall be
brought to you, so that ye may have no need to draw your belts tight
from hunger; some honey and some milk, and an ox or two, and a few
sheep; not much, my lords, but still a little food."

"It is good," said I. "Infadoos; we are weary with travelling through
realms of air; now let us rest."

Accordingly we entered the hut, which we found amply prepared for our
comfort. Couches of tanned skins were spread for us to lie on, and
water was placed for us to wash in.

Presently we heard a shouting outside, and stepping to the door, saw a
line of damsels bearing milk and roasted mealies, and honey in a pot.
Behind these were some youths driving a fat young ox. We received the
gifts, and then one of the young men drew the knife from his girdle
and dexterously cut the ox's throat. In ten minutes it was dead,
skinned, and jointed. The best of the meat was then cut off for us,
and the rest, in the name of our party, I presented to the warriors
round us, who took it and distributed the "white lords' gift."

Umbopa set to work, with the assistance of an extremely prepossessing
young woman, to boil our portion in a large earthenware pot over a
fire which was built outside the hut, and when it was nearly ready we
sent a message to Infadoos, and asked him and Scragga, the king's son,
to join us.

Presently they came, and sitting down upon little stools, of which
there were several about the hut, for the Kukuanas do not in general
squat upon their haunches like the Zulus, they helped us to get
through our dinner. The old gentleman was most affable and polite, but
it struck me that the young one regarded us with doubt. Together with
the rest of the party, he had been overawed by our white appearance
and by our magic properties; but it seemed to me that, on discovering
that we ate, drank, and slept like other mortals, his awe was
beginning to wear off, and to be replaced by a sullen suspicion--which
made me feel rather uncomfortable.

In the course of our meal Sir Henry suggested to me that it might be
well to try to discover if our hosts knew anything of his brother's
fate, or if they had ever seen or heard of him; but, on the whole, I
thought that it would be wiser to say nothing of the matter at this
time. It was difficult to explain a relative lost from "the Stars."

After supper we produced our pipes and lit them; a proceeding which
filled Infadoos and Scragga with astonishment. The Kukuanas were
evidently unacquainted with the divine delights of tobacco-smoke. The
herb is grown among them extensively; but, like the Zulus, they use it
for snuff only, and quite failed to identify it in its new form.

Presently I asked Infadoos when we were to proceed on our journey, and
was delighted to learn that preparations had been made for us to leave
on the following morning, messengers having already departed to inform
Twala the king of our coming.

It appeared that Twala was at his principal place, known as Loo,
making ready for the great annual feast which was to be held in the
first week of June. At this gathering all the regiments, with the
exception of certain detachments left behind for garrison purposes,
are brought up and paraded before the king; and the great annual
witch-hunt, of which more by-and-by, is held.

We were to start at dawn; and Infadoos, who was to accompany us,
expected that we should reach Loo on the night of the second day,
unless we were detained by accident or by swollen rivers.

When they had given us this information our visitors bade us good-
night; and, having arranged to watch turn and turn about, three of us
flung ourselves down and slept the sweet sleep of the weary, whilst
the fourth sat up on the look-out for possible treachery.



CHAPTER IX

TWALA THE KING

It will not be necessary for me to detail at length the incidents of
our journey to Loo. It took two full days' travelling along Solomon's
Great Road, which pursued its even course right into the heart of
Kukuanaland. Suffice it to say that as we went the country seemed to
grow richer and richer, and the kraals, with their wide surrounding
belts of cultivation, more and more numerous. They were all built upon
the same principles as the first camp which we had reached, and were
guarded by ample garrisons of troops. Indeed, in Kukuanaland, as among
the Germans, the Zulus, and the Masai, every able-bodied man is a
soldier, so that the whole force of the nation is available for its
wars, offensive or defensive. As we travelled we were overtaken by
thousands of warriors hurrying up to Loo to be present at the great
annual review and festival, and more splendid troops I never saw.

At sunset on the second day, we stopped to rest awhile upon the summit
of some heights over which the road ran, and there on a beautiful and
fertile plain before us lay Loo itself. For a native town it is an
enormous place, quite five miles round, I should say, with outlying
kraals projecting from it, that serve on grand occasions as
cantonments for the regiments, and a curious horseshoe-shaped hill,
with which we were destined to become better acquainted, about two
miles to the north. It is beautifully situated, and through the centre
of the kraal, dividing it into two portions, runs a river, which
appeared to be bridged in several places, the same indeed that we had
seen from the slopes of Sheba's Breasts. Sixty or seventy miles away
three great snow-capped mountains, placed at the points of a triangle,
started out of the level plain. The conformation of these mountains is
unlike that of Sheba's Breasts, being sheer and precipitous, instead
of smooth and rounded.

Infadoos saw us looking at them, and volunteered a remark.

"The road ends there," he said, pointing to the mountains known among
the Kukuanas as the "Three Witches."

"Why does it end?" I asked.

"Who knows?" he answered with a shrug; "the mountains are full of
caves, and there is a great pit between them. It is there that the
wise men of old time used to go to get whatever it was they came for
to this country, and it is there now that our kings are buried in the
Place of Death."

"What was it they came for?" I asked eagerly.

"Nay, I know not. My lords who have dropped from the Stars should
know," he answered with a quick look. Evidently he knew more than he
chose to say.

"Yes," I went on, "you are right, in the Stars we learn many things. I
have heard, for instance, that the wise men of old came to these
mountains to find bright stones, pretty playthings, and yellow iron."

"My lord is wise," he answered coldly; "I am but a child and cannot
talk with my lord on such matters. My lord must speak with Gagool the
old, at the king's place, who is wise even as my lord," and he went
away.

So soon as he was gone I turned to the others, and pointed out the
mountains. "There are Solomon's diamond mines," I said.

Umbopa was standing with them, apparently plunged in one of the fits
of abstraction which were common to him, and caught my words.

"Yes, Macumazahn," he put in, in Zulu, "the diamonds are surely there,
and you shall have them, since you white men are so fond of toys and
money."

"How dost thou know that, Umbopa?" I asked sharply, for I did not like
his mysterious ways.

He laughed. "I dreamed it in the night, white men;" then he too turned
on his heel and went.

"Now what," said Sir Henry, "is our black friend driving at? He knows
more than he chooses to say, that is clear. By the way, Quatermain,
has he heard anything of--of my brother?"

"Nothing; he has asked everyone he has become friendly with, but they
all declare that no white man has ever been seen in the country
before."

"Do you suppose that he got here at all?" suggested Good; "we have
only reached the place by a miracle; is it likely he could have
reached it without the map?"

"I don't know," said Sir Henry gloomily, "but somehow I think that I
shall find him."

Slowly the sun sank, then suddenly darkness rushed down on the land
like a tangible thing. There was no breathing-space between the day
and night, no soft transformation scene, for in these latitudes
twilight does not exist. The change from day to night is as quick and
as absolute as the change from life to death. The sun sank and the
world was wreathed in shadows. But not for long, for see in the west
there is a glow, then come rays of silver light, and at last the full
and glorious moon lights up the plain and shoots its gleaming arrows
far and wide, filling the earth with a faint refulgence.

We stood and watched the lovely sight, whilst the stars grew pale
before this chastened majesty, and felt our hearts lifted up in the
presence of a beauty that I cannot describe. Mine has been a rough
life, but there are a few things I am thankful to have lived for, and
one of them is to have seen that moon shine over Kukuanaland.

Presently our meditations were broken in upon by our polite friend
Infadoos.

"If my lords are rested we will journey on to Loo, where a hut is made
ready for my lords to-night. The moon is now bright, so that we shall
not fall by the way."

We assented, and in an hour's time were at the outskirts of the town,
of which the extent, mapped out as it was by thousands of camp fires,
appeared absolutely endless. Indeed, Good, who is always fond of a bad
joke, christened it "Unlimited Loo." Soon we came to a moat with a
drawbridge, where we were met by the rattling of arms and the hoarse
challenge of a sentry. Infadoos gave some password that I could not
catch, which was met with a salute, and we passed on through the
central street of the great grass city. After nearly half an hour's
tramp, past endless lines of huts, Infadoos halted at last by the gate
of a little group of huts which surrounded a small courtyard of
powdered limestone, and informed us that these were to be our "poor"
quarters.

We entered, and found that a hut had been assigned to each of us.
These huts were superior to any that we had yet seen, and in each was
a most comfortable bed made of tanned skins, spread upon mattresses of
aromatic grass. Food too was ready for us, and so soon as we had
washed ourselves with water, which stood ready in earthenware jars,
some young women of handsome appearance brought us roasted meats, and
mealie cobs daintily served on wooden platters, and presented them to
us with deep obeisances.

We ate and drank, and then, the beds having been all moved into one
hut by our request, a precaution at which the amiable young ladies
smiled, we flung ourselves down to sleep, thoroughly wearied with our
long journey.

When we woke it was to find the sun high in the heavens, and the
female attendants, who did not seem to be troubled by any false shame,
already standing inside the hut, having been ordered to attend and
help us to "make ready."

"Make ready, indeed," growled Good; "when one has only a flannel shirt
and a pair of boots, that does not take long. I wish you would ask
them for my trousers, Quatermain."

I asked accordingly, but was informed that these sacred relics had
already been taken to the king, who would see us in the forenoon.

Somewhat to their astonishment and disappointment, having requested
the young ladies to step outside, we proceeded to make the best toilet
of which the circumstances admitted. Good even went the length of
again shaving the right side of his face; the left, on which now
appeared a very fair crop of whiskers, we impressed upon him he must
on no account touch. As for ourselves, we were contented with a good
wash and combing our hair. Sir Henry's yellow locks were now almost
upon his shoulders, and he looked more like an ancient Dane than ever,
while my grizzled scrub was fully an inch long, instead of half an
inch, which in a general way I considered my maximum length.

By the time that we had eaten our breakfast, and smoked a pipe, a
message was brought to us by no less a personage than Infadoos himself
that Twala the king was ready to see us, if we would be pleased to
come.

We remarked in reply that we should prefer to wait till the sun was a
little higher, we were yet weary with our journey, &c., &c. It is
always well, when dealing with uncivilised people, not to be in too
great a hurry. They are apt to mistake politeness for awe or
servility. So, although we were quite as anxious to see Twala as Twala
could be to see us, we sat down and waited for an hour, employing the
interval in preparing such presents as our slender stock of goods
permitted--namely, the Winchester rifle which had been used by poor
Ventvoegel, and some beads. The rifle and ammunition we determined to
present to his royal highness, and the beads were for his wives and
courtiers. We had already given a few to Infadoos and Scragga, and
found that they were delighted with them, never having seen such
things before. At length we declared that we were ready, and guided by
Infadoos, started off to the audience, Umbopa carrying the rifle and
beads.

After walking a few hundred yards we came to an enclosure, something
like that surrounding the huts which had been allotted to us, only
fifty times as big, for it could not have covered less than six or
seven acres of ground. All round the outside fence stood a row of
huts, which were the habitations of the king's wives. Exactly opposite
the gateway, on the further side of the open space, was a very large
hut, built by itself, in which his majesty resided. All the rest was
open ground; that is to say, it would have been open had it not been
filled by company after company of warriors, who were mustered there
to the number of seven or eight thousand. These men stood still as
statues as we advanced through them, and it would be impossible to
give an adequate idea of the grandeur of the spectacle which they
presented, with their waving plumes, their glancing spears, and iron-
backed ox-hide shields.

The space in front of the large hut was empty, but before it were
placed several stools. On three of these, at a sign from Infadoos, we
seated ourselves, Umbopa standing behind us. As for Infadoos, he took
up a position by the door of the hut. So we waited for ten minutes or
more in the midst of a dead silence, but conscious that we were the
object of the concentrated gaze of some eight thousand pairs of eyes.
It was a somewhat trying ordeal, but we carried it off as best we
could. At length the door of the hut opened, and a gigantic figure,
with a splendid tiger-skin karross flung over its shoulders, stepped
out, followed by the boy Scragga, and what appeared to us to be a
withered-up monkey, wrapped in a fur cloak. The figure seated itself
upon a stool, Scragga took his stand behind it, and the withered-up
monkey crept on all fours into the shade of the hut and squatted down.

Still there was silence.

Then the gigantic figure slipped off the karross and stood up before
us, a truly alarming spectacle. It was that of an enormous man with
the most entirely repulsive countenance we had ever beheld. This man's
lips were as thick as a Negro's, the nose was flat, he had but one
gleaming black eye, for the other was represented by a hollow in the
face, and his whole expression was cruel and sensual to a degree. From
the large head rose a magnificent plume of white ostrich feathers, his
body was clad in a shirt of shining chain armour, whilst round the
waist and right knee were the usual garnishes of white ox-tail. In his
right hand was a huge spear, about the neck a thick torque of gold,
and bound on the forehead shone dully a single and enormous uncut
diamond.

Still there was silence; but not for long. Presently the man, whom we
rightly guessed to be the king, raised the great javelin in his hand.
Instantly eight thousand spears were lifted in answer, and from eight
thousand throats rang out the royal salute of "/Koom/." Three times
this was repeated, and each time the earth shook with the noise, that
can only be compared to the deepest notes of thunder.

"Be humble, O people," piped out a thin voice which seemed to come
from the monkey in the shade, "it is the king."

"/It is the king/," boomed out the eight thousand throats in answer.
"/Be humble, O people, it is the king./"

Then there was silence again--dead silence. Presently, however, it was
broken. A soldier on our left dropped his shield, which fell with a
clatter on to the limestone flooring.

Twala turned his one cold eye in the direction of the noise.

"Come hither, thou," he said, in a cold voice.

A fine young man stepped out of the ranks, and stood before him.

"It was thy shield that fell, thou awkward dog. Wilt thou make me a
reproach in the eyes of these strangers from the Stars? What hast thou
to say for thyself?"

We saw the poor fellow turn pale under his dusky skin.

"It was by chance, O Calf of the Black Cow," he murmured.

"Then it is a chance for which thou must pay. Thou hast made me
foolish; prepare for death."

"I am the king's ox," was the low answer.

"Scragga," roared the king, "let me see how thou canst use thy spear.
Kill me this blundering fool."

Scragga stepped forward with an ill-favoured grin, and lifted his
spear. The poor victim covered his eyes with his hand and stood still.
As for us, we were petrified with horror.

"Once, twice," he waved the spear, and then struck, ah! right home--
the spear stood out a foot behind the soldier's back. He flung up his
hands and dropped dead. From the multitude about us rose something
like a murmur, it rolled round and round, and died away. The tragedy
was finished; there lay the corpse, and we had not yet realised that
it had been enacted. Sir Henry sprang up and swore a great oath, then,
overpowered by the sense of silence, sat down again.

"The thrust was a good one," said the king; "take him away."

Four men stepped out of the ranks, and lifting the body of the
murdered man, carried it thence.

"Cover up the blood-stains, cover them up," piped out the thin voice
that proceeded from the monkey-like figure; "the king's word is
spoken, the king's doom is done!"

Thereupon a girl came forward from behind the hut, bearing a jar
filled with powdered lime, which she scattered over the red mark,
blotting it from sight.

Sir Henry meanwhile was boiling with rage at what had happened;
indeed, it was with difficulty that we could keep him still.

"Sit down, for heaven's sake," I whispered; "our lives depend on it."

He yielded and remained quiet.

Twala sat silent until the traces of the tragedy had been removed,
then he addressed us.

"White people," he said, "who come hither, whence I know not, and why
I know not, greeting."

"Greeting, Twala, King of the Kukuanas," I answered.

"White people, whence come ye, and what seek ye?"

"We come from the Stars, ask us not how. We come to see this land."

"Ye journey from far to see a little thing. And that man with you,"
pointing to Umbopa, "does he also come from the Stars?"

"Even so; there are people of thy colour in the heavens above; but ask
not of matters too high for thee, Twala the king."

"Ye speak with a loud voice, people of the Stars," Twala answered in a
tone which I scarcely liked. "Remember that the Stars are far off, and
ye are here. How if I make you as him whom they bore away?"

I laughed out loud, though there was little laughter in my heart.

"O king," I said, "be careful, walk warily over hot stones, lest thou
shouldst burn thy feet; hold the spear by the handle, lest thou should
cut thy hands. Touch but one hair of our heads, and destruction shall
come upon thee. What, have not these"--pointing to Infadoos and
Scragga, who, young villain that he was, was employed in cleaning the
blood of the soldier off his spear--"told thee what manner of men we
are? Hast thou seen the like of us?" and I pointed to Good, feeling
quite sure that he had never seen anybody before who looked in the
least like /him/ as he then appeared.

"It is true, I have not," said the king, surveying Good with interest.

"Have they not told thee how we strike with death from afar?" I went
on.

"They have told me, but I believe them not. Let me see you kill. Kill
me a man among those who stand yonder"--and he pointed to the opposite
side of the kraal--"and I will believe."

"Nay," I answered; "we shed no blood of men except in just punishment;
but if thou wilt see, bid thy servants drive in an ox through the
kraal gates, and before he has run twenty paces I will strike him
dead."

"Nay," laughed the king, "kill me a man and I will believe."

"Good, O king, so be it," I answered coolly; "do thou walk across the
open space, and before thy feet reach the gate thou shalt be dead; or
if thou wilt not, send thy son Scragga" (whom at that moment it would
have given me much pleasure to shoot).

On hearing this suggestion Scragga uttered a sort of howl, and bolted
into the hut.

Twala frowned majestically; the suggestion did not please him.

"Let a young ox be driven in," he said.

Two men at once departed, running swiftly.

"Now, Sir Henry," said I, "do you shoot. I want to show this ruffian
that I am not the only magician of the party."

Sir Henry accordingly took his "express," and made ready.

"I hope I shall make a good shot," he groaned.

"You must," I answered. "If you miss with the first barrel, let him
have the second. Sight for 150 yards, and wait till the beast turns
broadside on."

Then came a pause, until presently we caught sight of an ox running
straight for the kraal gate. It came on through the gate, then,
catching sight of the vast concourse of people, stopped stupidly,
turned round, and bellowed.

"Now's your time," I whispered.

Up went the rifle.

Bang! /thud/! and the ox was kicking on his back, shot in the ribs.
The semi-hollow bullet had done its work well, and a sigh of
astonishment went up from the assembled thousands.

I turned round coolly--

"Have I lied, O king?"

"Nay, white man, it is the truth," was the somewhat awed answer.

"Listen, Twala," I went on. "Thou hast seen. Now know we come in
peace, not in war. See," and I held up the Winchester repeater; "here
is a hollow staff that shall enable thee to kill even as we kill, only
I lay this charm upon it, thou shalt kill no man with it. If thou
liftest it against a man, it shall kill thee. Stay, I will show thee.
Bid a soldier step forty paces and place the shaft of a spear in the
ground so that the flat blade looks towards us."

In a few seconds it was done.

"Now, see, I will break yonder spear."

Taking a careful sight I fired. The bullet struck the flat of the
spear, and shattered the blade into fragments.

Again the sigh of astonishment went up.

"Now, Twala, we give this magic tube to thee, and by-and-by I will
show thee how to use it; but beware how thou turnest the magic of the
Stars against a man of earth," and I handed him the rifle.

The king took it very gingerly, and laid it down at his feet. As he
did so I observed the wizened monkey-like figure creeping from the
shadow of the hut. It crept on all fours, but when it reached the
place where the king sat it rose upon its feet, and throwing the furry
covering from its face, revealed a most extraordinary and weird
countenance. Apparently it was that of a woman of great age so
shrunken that in size it seemed no larger than the face of a year-old
child, although made up of a number of deep and yellow wrinkles. Set
in these wrinkles was a sunken slit, that represented the mouth,
beneath which the chin curved outwards to a point. There was no nose
to speak of; indeed, the visage might have been taken for that of a
sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair of large black eyes, still
full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the
snow-white eyebrows, and the projecting parchment-coloured skull, like
jewels in a charnel-house. As for the head itself, it was perfectly
bare, and yellow in hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and contracted
like the hood of a cobra.

The figure to which this fearful countenance belonged, a countenance
so fearful indeed that it caused a shiver of fear to pass through us
as we gazed on it, stood still for a moment. Then suddenly it
projected a skinny claw armed with nails nearly an inch long, and
laying it on the shoulder of Twala the king, began to speak in a thin
and piercing voice--

"Listen, O king! Listen, O warriors! Listen, O mountains and plains
and rivers, home of the Kukuana race! Listen, O skies and sun, O rain
and storm and mist! Listen, O men and women, O youths and maidens, and
O ye babes unborn! Listen, all things that live and must die! Listen,
all dead things that shall live again--again to die! Listen, the
spirit of life is in me and I prophesy. I prophesy! I prophesy!"

The words died away in a faint wail, and dread seemed to seize upon
the hearts of all who heard them, including our own. This old woman
was very terrible.

"/Blood! blood! blood!/ rivers of blood; blood everywhere. I see it, I
smell it, I taste it--it is salt! it runs red upon the ground, it
rains down from the skies.

"/Footsteps! footsteps! footsteps!/ the tread of the white man coming
from afar. It shakes the earth; the earth trembles before her master.

"Blood is good, the red blood is bright; there is no smell like the
smell of new-shed blood. The lions shall lap it and roar, the vultures
shall wash their wings in it and shriek with joy.

"I am old! I am old! I have seen much blood; /ha, ha!/ but I shall see
more ere I die, and be merry. How old am I, think ye? Your fathers
knew me, and /their/ fathers knew me, and /their/ fathers' fathers'
fathers. I have seen the white man and know his desires. I am old, but
the mountains are older than I. Who made the great road, tell me? Who
wrote the pictures on the rocks, tell me? Who reared up the three
Silent Ones yonder, that gaze across the pit, tell me?" and she
pointed towards the three precipitous mountains which we had noticed
on the previous night.

"Ye know not, but I know. It was a white people who were before ye
are, who shall be when ye are not, who shall eat you up and destroy
you. /Yea! yea! yea!

"And what came they for, the White Ones, the Terrible Ones, the
skilled in magic and all learning, the strong, the unswerving? What is
that bright stone upon thy forehead, O king? Whose hands made the iron
garments upon thy breast, O king? Ye know not, but I know. I the Old
One, I the Wise One, I the /Isanusi/, the witch doctress!"

Then she turned her bald vulture-head towards us.

"What seek ye, white men of the Stars--ah, yes, of the Stars? Do ye
seek a lost one? Ye shall not find him here. He is not here. Never for
ages upon ages has a white foot pressed this land; never except once,
and I remember that he left it but to die. Ye come for bright stones;
I know it--I know it; ye shall find them when the blood is dry; but
shall ye return whence ye came, or shall ye stop with me? /Ha! ha!
ha!/

"And thou, thou with the dark skin and the proud bearing," and she
pointed her skinny finger at Umbopa, "who art /thou/, and what seekest
/thou/? Not stones that shine, not yellow metal that gleams, these
thou leavest to 'white men from the Stars.' Methinks I know thee;
methinks I can smell the smell of the blood in thy heart. Strip off
the girdle--"

Here the features of this extraordinary creature became convulsed, and
she fell to the ground foaming in an epileptic fit, and was carried
into the hut.

The king rose up trembling, and waved his hand. Instantly the
regiments began to file off, and in ten minutes, save for ourselves,
the king, and a few attendants, the great space was left empty.

"White people," he said, "it passes in my mind to kill you. Gagool has
spoken strange words. What say ye?"

I laughed. "Be careful, O king, we are not easy to slay. Thou hast
seen the fate of the ox; wouldst thou be as the ox is?"

The king frowned. "It is not well to threaten a king."

"We threaten not, we speak what is true. Try to kill us, O king, and
learn."

The great savage put his hand to his forehead and thought.

"Go in peace," he said at length. "To-night is the great dance. Ye
shall see it. Fear not that I shall set a snare for you. To-morrow I
will think."

"It is well, O king," I answered unconcernedly, and then, accompanied
by Infadoos, we rose and went back to our kraal.



CHAPTER X

THE WITCH-HUNT

On reaching our hut I motioned to Infadoos to enter with us.

"Now, Infadoos," I said, "we would speak with thee."

"Let my lords say on."

"It seems to us, Infadoos, that Twala the king is a cruel man."

"It is so, my lords. Alas! the land cries out because of his
cruelties. To-night ye shall see. It is the great witch-hunt, and many
will be smelt out as wizards and slain. No man's life is safe. If the
king covets a man's cattle, or a man's wife, or if he fears a man that
he should excite a rebellion against him, then Gagool, whom ye saw, or
some of the witch-finding women whom she has taught, will smell that
man out as a wizard, and he will be killed. Many must die before the
moon grows pale to-night. It is ever so. Perhaps I too shall be
killed. As yet I have been spared because I am skilled in war, and am
beloved by the soldiers; but I know not how long I have to live. The
land groans at the cruelties of Twala the king; it is wearied of him
and his red ways."

"Then why is it, Infadoos, that the people do not cast him down?"

"Nay, my lords, he is the king, and if he were killed Scragga would
reign in his place, and the heart of Scragga is blacker than the heart
of Twala his father. If Scragga were king his yoke upon our neck would
be heavier than the yoke of Twala. If Imotu had never been slain, or
if Ignosi his son had lived, it might have been otherwise; but they
are both dead."

"How knowest thou that Ignosi is dead?" said a voice behind us. We
looked round astonished to see who spoke. It was Umbopa.

"What meanest thou, boy?" asked Infadoos; "who told thee to speak?"

"Listen, Infadoos," was the answer, "and I will tell thee a story.
Years ago the king Imotu was killed in this country and his wife fled
with the boy Ignosi. Is it not so?"

"It is so."

"It was said that the woman and her son died upon the mountains. Is it
not so?"

"It is even so."

"Well, it came to pass that the mother and the boy Ignosi did not die.
They crossed the mountains and were led by a tribe of wandering desert
men across the sands beyond, till at last they came to water and grass
and trees again."

"How knowest thou this?"

"Listen. They travelled on and on, many months' journey, till they
reached a land where a people called the Amazulu, who also are of the
Kukuana stock, live by war, and with them they tarried many years,
till at length the mother died. Then the son Ignosi became a wanderer
again, and journeyed into a land of wonders, where white people live,
and for many more years he learned the wisdom of the white people."

"It is a pretty story," said Infadoos incredulously.

"For years he lived there working as a servant and a soldier, but
holding in his heart all that his mother had told him of his own
place, and casting about in his mind to find how he might journey
thither to see his people and his father's house before he died. For
long years he lived and waited, and at last the time came, as it ever
comes to him who can wait for it, and he met some white men who would
seek this unknown land, and joined himself to them. The white men
started and travelled on and on, seeking for one who is lost. They
crossed the burning desert, they crossed the snow-clad mountains, and
at last reached the land of the Kukuanas, and there they found /thee/,
O Infadoos."

"Surely thou art mad to talk thus," said the astonished old soldier.

"Thou thinkest so; see, I will show thee, O my uncle.

"/I am Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas!/"

Then with a single movement Umbopa slipped off his "moocha" or girdle,
and stood naked before us.

"Look," he said; "what is this?" and he pointed to the picture of a
great snake tattooed in blue round his middle, its tail disappearing
into its open mouth just above where the thighs are set into the body.

Infadoos looked, his eyes starting nearly out of his head. Then he
fell upon his knees.

"/Koom! Koom!/" he ejaculated; "it is my brother's son; it is the
king."

"Did I not tell thee so, my uncle? Rise; I am not yet the king, but
with thy help, and with the help of these brave white men, who are my
friends, I shall be. Yet the old witch Gagool was right, the land
shall run with blood first, and hers shall run with it, if she has any
and can die, for she killed my father with her words, and drove my
mother forth. And now, Infadoos, choose thou. Wilt thou put thy hands
between my hands and be my man? Wilt thou share the dangers that lie
before me, and help me to overthrow this tyrant and murderer, or wilt
thou not? Choose thou."

The old man put his hand to his head and thought. Then he rose, and
advancing to where Umbopa, or rather Ignosi, stood, he knelt before
him, and took his hand.

"Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas, I put my hand between thy
hands, and am thy man till death. When thou wast a babe I dandled thee
upon my knees, now shall my old arm strike for thee and freedom."

"It is well, Infadoos; if I conquer, thou shalt be the greatest man in
the kingdom after its king. If I fail, thou canst only die, and death
is not far off from thee. Rise, my uncle."

"And ye, white men, will ye help me? What have I to offer you! The
white stones! If I conquer and can find them, ye shall have as many as
ye can carry hence. Will that suffice you?"

I translated this remark.

"Tell him," answered Sir Henry, "that he mistakes an Englishman.
Wealth is good, and if it comes in our way we will take it; but a
gentleman does not sell himself for wealth. Still, speaking for
myself, I say this. I have always liked Umbopa, and so far as lies in
me I will stand by him in this business. It will be very pleasant to
me to try to square matters with that cruel devil Twala. What do you
say, Good, and you, Quatermain?"

"Well," said Good, "to adopt the language of hyperbole, in which all
these people seem to indulge, you can tell him that a row is surely
good, and warms the cockles of the heart, and that so far as I am
concerned I'm his boy. My only stipulation is that he allows me to
wear trousers."

I translated the substance of these answers.

"It is well, my friends," said Ignosi, late Umbopa; "and what sayest
thou, Macumazahn, art thou also with me, old hunter, cleverer than a
wounded buffalo?"

I thought awhile and scratched my head.

"Umbopa, or Ignosi," I said, "I don't like revolutions. I am a man of
peace and a bit of a coward"--here Umbopa smiled--"but, on the other
hand, I stick up for my friends, Ignosi. You have stuck to us and
played the part of a man, and I will stick by you. But mind you, I am
a trader, and have to make my living, so I accept your offer about
those diamonds in case we should ever be in a position to avail
ourselves of it. Another thing: we came, as you know, to look for
Incubu's (Sir Henry's) lost brother. You must help us to find him."

"That I will do," answered Ignosi. "Stay, Infadoos, by the sign of the
snake about my middle, tell me the truth. Has any white man to thy
knowledge set his foot within the land?"

"None, O Ignosi."

"If any white man had been seen or heard of, wouldst thou have known?"

"I should certainly have known."

"Thou hearest, Incubu," said Ignosi to Sir Henry; "he has not been
here."

"Well, well," said Sir Henry, with a sigh; "there it is; I suppose
that he never got so far. Poor fellow, poor fellow! So it has all been
for nothing. God's will be done."

"Now for business," I put in, anxious to escape from a painful
subject. "It is very well to be a king by right divine, Ignosi, but
how dost thou propose to become a king indeed?"

"Nay, I know not. Infadoos, hast thou a plan?"

"Ignosi, Son of the Lightning," answered his uncle, "to-night is the
great dance and witch-hunt. Many shall be smelt out and perish, and in
the hearts of many others there will be grief and anguish and fury
against the king Twala. When the dance is over, then I will speak to
some of the great chiefs, who in turn, if I can win them over, will
speak to their regiments. I shall speak to the chiefs softly at first,
and bring them to see that thou art indeed the king, and I think that
by to-morrow's light thou shalt have twenty thousand spears at thy
command. And now I must go and think, and hear, and make ready. After
the dance is done, if I am yet alive, and we are all alive, I will
meet thee here, and we can talk. At the best there must be war."

At this moment our conference was interrupted by the cry that
messengers had come from the king. Advancing to the door of the hut we
ordered that they should be admitted, and presently three men entered,
each bearing a shining shirt of chain armour, and a magnificent
battle-axe.

"The gifts of my lord the king to the white men from the Stars!" said
a herald who came with them.

"We thank the king," I answered; "withdraw."

The men went, and we examined the armour with great interest. It was
the most wonderful chain work that either of us had ever seen. A whole
coat fell together so closely that it formed a mass of links scarcely
too big to be covered with both hands.

"Do you make these things in this country, Infadoos?" I asked; "they
are very beautiful."

"Nay, my lord, they came down to us from our forefathers. We know not
who made them, and there are but few left.[*] None but those of royal
blood may be clad in them. They are magic coats through which no spear
can pass, and those who wear them are well-nigh safe in the battle.
The king is well pleased or much afraid, or he would not have sent
these garments of steel. Clothe yourselves in them to-night, my
lords."

[*] In the Soudan swords and coats of mail are still worn by Arabs,
    whose ancestors must have stripped them from the bodies of
    Crusaders.--Editor.

The remainder of that day we spent quietly, resting and talking over
the situation, which was sufficiently exciting. At last the sun went
down, the thousand watch fires glowed out, and through the darkness we
heard the tramp of many feet and the clashing of hundreds of spears,
as the regiments passed to their appointed places to be ready for the
great dance. Then the full moon shone out in splendour, and as we
stood watching her rays, Infadoos arrived, clad in his war dress, and
accompanied by a guard of twenty men to escort us to the dance. As he
recommended, we had already donned the shirts of chain armour which
the king had sent us, putting them on under our ordinary clothing, and
finding to our surprise that they were neither very heavy nor
uncomfortable. These steel shirts, which evidently had been made for
men of a very large stature, hung somewhat loosely upon Good and
myself, but Sir Henry's fitted his magnificent frame like a glove.
Then strapping our revolvers round our waists, and taking in our hands
the battle-axes which the king had sent with the armour, we started.

On arriving at the great kraal, where we had that morning been
received by the king, we found that it was closely packed with some
twenty thousand men arranged round it in regiments. These regiments
were in turn divided into companies, and between each company ran a
little path to allow space for the witch-finders to pass up and down.
Anything more imposing than the sight that was presented by this vast
and orderly concourse of armed men it is impossible to conceive. There
they stood perfectly silent, and the moon poured her light upon the
forest of their raised spears, upon their majestic forms, waving
plumes, and the harmonious shading of their various-coloured shields.
Wherever we looked were line upon line of dim faces surmounted by
range upon range of shimmering spears.

"Surely," I said to Infadoos, "the whole army is here?"

"Nay, Macumazahn," he answered, "but a third of it. One third is
present at this dance each year, another third is mustered outside in
case there should be trouble when the killing begins, ten thousand
more garrison the outposts round Loo, and the rest watch at the kraals
in the country. Thou seest it is a great people."

"They are very silent," said Good; and indeed the intense stillness
among such a vast concourse of living men was almost overpowering.

"What says Bougwan?" asked Infadoos.

I translated.

"Those over whom the shadow of Death is hovering are silent," he
answered grimly.

"Will many be killed?"

"Very many."

"It seems," I said to the others, "that we are going to assist at a
gladiatorial show arranged regardless of expense."

Sir Henry shivered, and Good said he wished that we could get out of
it.

"Tell me," I asked Infadoos, "are we in danger?"

"I know not, my lords, I trust not; but do not seem afraid. If ye live
through the night all may go well with you. The soldiers murmur
against the king."

All this while we had been advancing steadily towards the centre of
the open space, in the midst of which were placed some stools. As we
proceeded we perceived another small party coming from the direction
of the royal hut.

"It is the king Twala, Scragga his son, and Gagool the old; and see,
with them are those who slay," said Infadoos, pointing to a little
group of about a dozen gigantic and savage-looking men, armed with
spears in one hand and heavy kerries in the other.

The king seated himself upon the centre stool, Gagool crouched at his
feet, and the others stood behind him.

"Greeting, white lords," Twala cried, as we came up; "be seated, waste
not precious time--the night is all too short for the deeds that must
be done. Ye come in a good hour, and shall see a glorious show. Look
round, white lords; look round," and he rolled his one wicked eye from
regiment to regiment. "Can the Stars show you such a sight as this?
See how they shake in their wickedness, all those who have evil in
their hearts and fear the judgment of 'Heaven above.'"

"/Begin! begin!/" piped Gagool, in her thin piercing voice; "the
hyaenas are hungry, they howl for food. /Begin! begin!/"

Then for a moment there was intense stillness, made horrible by a
presage of what was to come.

The king lifted his spear, and suddenly twenty thousand feet were
raised, as though they belonged to one man, and brought down with a
stamp upon the earth. This was repeated three times, causing the solid
ground to shake and tremble. Then from a far point of the circle a
solitary voice began a wailing song, of which the refrain ran
something as follows:--

"/What is the lot of man born of woman?/"

Back came the answer rolling out from every throat in that vast
company--

"/Death!/"

Gradually, however, the song was taken up by company after company,
till the whole armed multitude were singing it, and I could no longer
follow the words, except in so far as they appeared to represent
various phases of human passions, fears, and joys. Now it seemed to be
a love song, now a majestic swelling war chant, and last of all a
death dirge ending suddenly in one heart-breaking wail that went
echoing and rolling away in a volume of blood-curdling sound.

Again silence fell upon the place, and again it was broken by the king
lifting his hand. Instantly we heard a pattering of feet, and from out
of the masses of warriors strange and awful figures appeared running
towards us. As they drew near we saw that these were women, most of
them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken
from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in
stripes of white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and
round their waists rattled circlets of human bones, while each held a
small forked wand in her shrivelled hand. In all there were ten of
them. When they arrived in front of us they halted, and one of them,
pointing with her wand towards the crouching figure of Gagool, cried
out--

"Mother, old mother, we are here."

"/Good! good! good!/" answered that aged Iniquity. "Are your eyes
keen, /Isanusis/ [witch doctresses], ye seers in dark places?"

"Mother, they are keen."

"/Good! good! good!/ Are your ears open, /Isanusis/, ye who hear words
that come not from the tongue?"

"Mother, they are open."

"/Good! good! good!/ Are your senses awake, /Isanusis/--can ye smell
blood, can ye purge the land of the wicked ones who compass evil
against the king and against their neighbours? Are ye ready to do the
justice of 'Heaven above,' ye whom I have taught, who have eaten of
the bread of my wisdom, and drunk of the water of my magic?"

"Mother, we can."

"Then go! Tarry not, ye vultures; see, the slayers"--pointing to the
ominous group of executioners behind--"make sharp their spears; the
white men from afar are hungry to see. /Go!/"

With a wild yell Gagool's horrid ministers broke away in every
direction, like fragments from a shell, the dry bones round their
waists rattling as they ran, and headed for various points of the
dense human circle. We could not watch them all, so we fixed our eyes
upon the /Isanusi/ nearest to us. When she came to within a few paces
of the warriors she halted and began to dance wildly, turning round
and round with an almost incredible rapidity, and shrieking out
sentences such as "I smell him, the evil-doer!" "He is near, he who
poisoned his mother!" "I hear the thoughts of him who thought evil of
the king!"

Quicker and quicker she danced, till she lashed herself into such a
frenzy of excitement that the foam flew in specks from her gnashing
jaws, till her eyes seemed to start from her head, and her flesh to
quiver visibly. Suddenly she stopped dead and stiffened all over, like
a pointer dog when he scents game, and then with outstretched wand she
began to creep stealthily towards the soldiers before her. It seemed
to us that as she came their stoicism gave way, and that they shrank
from her. As for ourselves, we followed her movements with a horrible
fascination. Presently, still creeping and crouching like a dog, the
/Isanusi/ was before them. Then she halted and pointed, and again
crept on a pace or two.

Suddenly the end came. With a shriek she sprang in and touched a tall
warrior with her forked wand. Instantly two of his comrades, those
standing immediately next to him, seized the doomed man, each by one
arm, and advanced with him towards the king.

He did not resist, but we saw that he dragged his limbs as though they
were paralysed, and that his fingers, from which the spear had fallen,
were limp like those of a man newly dead.

As he came, two of the villainous executioners stepped forward to meet
him. Presently they met, and the executioners turned round, looking
towards the king as though for orders.

"/Kill!/" said the king.

"/Kill!/" squeaked Gagool.

"/Kill!/" re-echoed Scragga, with a hollow chuckle.

Almost before the words were uttered the horrible dead was done. One
man had driven his spear into the victim's heart, and to make
assurance double sure, the other had dashed out his brains with a
great club.

"/One/," counted Twala the king, just like a black Madame Defarge, as
Good said, and the body was dragged a few paces away and stretched
out.

Hardly was the thing done before another poor wretch was brought up,
like an ox to the slaughter. This time we could see, from the leopard-
skin cloak which he wore, that the man was a person of rank. Again the
awful syllables were spoken, and the victim fell dead.

"/Two/," counted the king.

And so the deadly game went on, till about a hundred bodies were
stretched in rows behind us. I have heard of the gladiatorial shows of
the Caesars, and of the Spanish bull-fights, but I take the liberty of
doubting if either of them could be half so horrible as this Kukuana
witch-hunt. Gladiatorial shows and Spanish bull-fights at any rate
contributed to the public amusement, which certainly was not the case
here. The most confirmed sensation-monger would fight shy of sensation
if he knew that it was well on the cards that he would, in his own
proper person, be the subject of the next "event."

Once we rose and tried to remonstrate, but were sternly repressed by
Twala.

"Let the law take its course, white men. These dogs are magicians and
evil-doers; it is well that they should die," was the only answer
vouchsafed to us.

About half-past ten there was a pause. The witch-finders gathered
themselves together, apparently exhausted with their bloody work, and
we thought that the performance was done with. But it was not so, for
presently, to our surprise, the ancient woman, Gagool, rose from her
crouching position, and supporting herself with a stick, staggered off
into the open space. It was an extraordinary sight to see this
frightful vulture-headed old creature, bent nearly double with extreme
age, gather strength by degrees, until at last she rushed about almost
as actively as her ill-omened pupils. To and fro she ran, chanting to
herself, till suddenly she made a dash at a tall man standing in front
of one of the regiments, and touched him. As she did this a sort of
groan went up from the regiment which evidently he commanded. But two
of its officers seized him all the same, and brought him up for
execution. We learned afterwards that he was a man of great wealth and
importance, being indeed a cousin of the king.

He was slain, and Twala counted one hundred and three. Then Gagool
again sprang to and fro, gradually drawing nearer and nearer to
ourselves.

"Hang me if I don't believe she is going to try her games on us,"
ejaculated Good in horror.

"Nonsense!" said Sir Henry.

As for myself, when I saw that old fiend dancing nearer and nearer, my
heart positively sank into my boots. I glanced behind us at the long
rows of corpses, and shivered.

Nearer and nearer waltzed Gagool, looking for all the world like an
animated crooked stick or comma, her horrid eyes gleaming and glowing
with a most unholy lustre.

Nearer she came, and yet nearer, every creature in that vast
assemblage watching her movements with intense anxiety. At last she
stood still and pointed.

"Which is it to be?" asked Sir Henry to himself.

In a moment all doubts were at rest, for the old hag had rushed in and
touched Umbopa, alias Ignosi, on the shoulder.

"I smell him out," she shrieked. "Kill him, kill him, he is full of
evil; kill him, the stranger, before blood flows from him. Slay him, O
king."

There was a pause, of which I instantly took advantage.

"O king," I called out, rising from my seat, "this man is the servant
of thy guests, he is their dog; whosoever sheds the blood of our dog
sheds our blood. By the sacred law of hospitality I claim protection
for him."

"Gagool, mother of the witch-finders, has smelt him out; he must die,
white men," was the sullen answer.

"Nay, he shall not die," I replied; "he who tries to touch him shall
die indeed."

"Seize him!" roared Twala to the executioners; who stood round red to
the eyes with the blood of their victims.

They advanced towards us, and then hesitated. As for Ignosi, he
clutched his spear, and raised it as though determined to sell his
life dearly.

"Stand back, ye dogs!" I shouted, "if ye would see to-morrow's light.
Touch one hair of his head and your king dies," and I covered Twala
with my revolver. Sir Henry and Good also drew their pistols, Sir
Henry pointing his at the leading executioner, who was advancing to
carry out the sentence, and Good taking a deliberate aim at Gagool.

Twala winced perceptibly as my barrel came in a line with his broad
chest.

"Well," I said, "what is it to be, Twala?"

Then he spoke.

"Put away your magic tubes," he said; "ye have adjured me in the name
of hospitality, and for that reason, but not from fear of what ye can
do, I spare him. Go in peace."

"It is well," I answered unconcernedly; "we are weary of slaughter,
and would sleep. Is the dance ended?"

"It is ended," Twala answered sulkily. "Let these dead dogs," pointing
to the long rows of corpses, "be flung out to the hyaenas and the
vultures," and he lifted his spear.

Instantly the regiments began to defile through the kraal gateway in
perfect silence, a fatigue party only remaining behind to drag away
the corpses of those who had been sacrificed.

Then we rose also, and making our salaam to his majesty, which he
hardly deigned to acknowledge, we departed to our huts.

"Well," said Sir Henry, as we sat down, having first lit a lamp of the
sort used by the Kukuanas, of which the wick is made from the fibre of
a species of palm leaf, and the oil from clarified hippopotamus fat,
"well, I feel uncommonly inclined to be sick."

"If I had any doubts about helping Umbopa to rebel against that
infernal blackguard," put in Good, "they are gone now. It was as much
as I could do to sit still while that slaughter was going on. I tried
to keep my eyes shut, but they would open just at the wrong time. I
wonder where Infadoos is. Umbopa, my friend, you ought to be grateful
to us; your skin came near to having an air-hole made in it."

"I am grateful, Bougwan," was Umbopa's answer, when I had translated,
"and I shall not forget. As for Infadoos, he will be here by-and-by.
We must wait."

So we lit out pipes and waited.



CHAPTER XI

WE GIVE A SIGN

For a long while--two hours, I should think--we sat there in silence,
being too much overwhelmed by the recollection of the horrors we had
seen to talk. At last, just as we were thinking of turning in--for the
night drew nigh to dawn--we heard a sound of steps. Then came the
challenge of a sentry posted at the kraal gate, which apparently was
answered, though not in an audible tone, for the steps still advanced;
and in another second Infadoos had entered the hut, followed by some
half-dozen stately-looking chiefs.

"My lords," he said, "I have come according to my word. My lords and
Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas, I have brought with me these
men," pointing to the row of chiefs, "who are great men among us,
having each one of them the command of three thousand soldiers, that
live but to do their bidding, under the king's. I have told them of
what I have seen, and what my ears have heard. Now let them also
behold the sacred snake around thee, and hear thy story, Ignosi, that
they may say whether or no they will make cause with thee against
Twala the king."

By way of answer Ignosi again stripped off his girdle, and exhibited
the snake tattooed about him. Each chief in turn drew near and
examined the sign by the dim light of the lamp, and without saying a
word passed on to the other side.

Then Ignosi resumed his moocha, and addressing them, repeated the
history he had detailed in the morning.

"Now ye have heard, chiefs," said Infadoos, when he had done, "what
say ye: will ye stand by this man and help him to his father's throne,
or will ye not? The land cries out against Twala, and the blood of the
people flows like the waters in spring. Ye have seen to-night. Two
other chiefs there were with whom I had it in my mind to speak, and
where are they now? The hyaenas howl over their corpses. Soon shall ye
be as they are if ye strike not. Choose then, my brothers."

The eldest of the six men, a short, thick-set warrior, with white
hair, stepped forward a pace and answered--

"Thy words are true, Infadoos; the land cries out. My own brother is
among those who died to-night; but this is a great matter, and the
thing is hard to believe. How know we that if we lift our spears it
may not be for a thief and a liar? It is a great matter, I say, of
which none can see the end. For of this be sure, blood will flow in
rivers before the deed is done; many will still cleave to the king,
for men worship the sun that still shines bright in the heavens,
rather than that which has not risen. These white men from the Stars,
their magic is great, and Ignosi is under the cover of their wing. If
he be indeed the rightful king, let them give us a sign, and let the
people have a sign, that all may see. So shall men cleave to us,
knowing of a truth that the white man's magic is with them."

"Ye have the sign of the snake," I answered.

"My lord, it is not enough. The snake may have been placed there since
the man's childhood. Show us a sign, and it will suffice. But we will
not move without a sign."

The others gave a decided assent, and I turned in perplexity to Sir
Henry and Good, and explained the situation.

"I think that I have it," said Good exultingly; "ask them to give us a
moment to think."

I did so, and the chiefs withdrew. So soon as they had gone Good went
to the little box where he kept his medicines, unlocked it, and took
out a note-book, in the fly-leaves of which was an almanack. "Now look
here, you fellows, isn't to-morrow the 4th of June?" he said.

We had kept a careful note of the days, so were able to answer that it
was.

"Very good; then here we have it--'4 June, total eclipse of the moon
commences at 8.15 Greenwich time, visible in Teneriffe--/South
Africa/, &c.' There's a sign for you. Tell them we will darken the
moon to-morrow night."

The idea was a splendid one; indeed, the only weak spot about it was a
fear lest Good's almanack might be incorrect. If we made a false
prophecy on such a subject, our prestige would be gone for ever, and
so would Ignosi's chance of the throne of the Kukuanas.

"Suppose that the almanack is wrong," suggested Sir Henry to Good, who
was busily employed in working out something on a blank page of the
book.

"I see no reason to suppose anything of the sort," was his answer.
"Eclipses always come up to time; at least that is my experience of
them, and it especially states that this one will be visible in South
Africa. I have worked out the reckonings as well as I can, without
knowing our exact position; and I make out that the eclipse should
begin here about ten o'clock tomorrow night, and last till half-past
twelve. For an hour and a half or so there should be almost total
darkness."

"Well," said Sir Henry, "I suppose we had better risk it."

I acquiesced, though doubtfully, for eclipses are queer cattle to deal
with--it might be a cloudy night, for instance, or our dates might be
wrong--and sent Umbopa to summon the chiefs back. Presently they came,
and I addressed them thus--

"Great men of the Kukuanas, and thou, Infadoos, listen. We love not to
show our powers, for to do so is to interfere with the course of
nature, and to plunge the world into fear and confusion. But since
this matter is a great one, and as we are angered against the king
because of the slaughter we have seen, and because of the act of the
/Isanusi/ Gagool, who would have put our friend Ignosi to death, we
have determined to break a rule, and to give such a sign as all men
may see. Come hither"; and I led them to the door of the hut and
pointed to the red ball of the moon. "What see ye there?"

"We see the sinking moon," answered the spokesman of the party.

"It is so. Now tell me, can any mortal man put out that moon before
her hour of setting, and bring the curtain of black night down upon
the land?"

The chief laughed a little at the question. "No, my lord, that no man
can do. The moon is stronger than man who looks on her, nor can she
vary in her courses."

"Ye say so. Yet I tell you that to-morrow night, about two hours
before midnight, we will cause the moon to be eaten up for a space of
an hour and half an hour. Yes, deep darkness shall cover the earth,
and it shall be for a sign that Ignosi is indeed king of the Kukuanas.
If we do this thing, will ye be satisfied?"

"Yea, my lords," answered the old chief with a smile, which was
reflected on the faces of his companions; "/if/ ye do this thing, we
will be satisfied indeed."

"It shall be done; we three, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn, have
said it, and it shall be done. Dost thou hear, Infadoos?"

"I hear, my lord, but it is a wonderful thing that ye promise, to put
out the moon, the mother of the world, when she is at her full."

"Yet shall we do it, Infadoos."

"It is well, my lords. To-day, two hours after sunset, Twala will send
for my lords to witness the girls dance, and one hour after the dance
begins the girl whom Twala thinks the fairest shall be killed by
Scragga, the king's son, as a sacrifice to the Silent Ones, who sit
and keep watch by the mountains yonder," and he pointed towards the
three strange-looking peaks where Solomon's road was supposed to end.
"Then let my lords darken the moon, and save the maiden's life, and
the people will believe indeed."

"Ay," said the old chief, still smiling a little, "the people will
believe indeed."

"Two miles from Loo," went on Infadoos, "there is a hill curved like a
new moon, a stronghold, where my regiment, and three other regiments
which these chiefs command, are stationed. This morning we will make a
plan whereby two or three other regiments may be moved there also.
Then, if in truth my lords can darken the moon, in the darkness I will
take my lords by the hand and lead them out of Loo to this place,
where they shall be safe, and thence we can make war upon Twala the
king."

"It is good," said I. "Let leave us to sleep awhile and to make ready
our magic."

Infadoos rose, and, having saluted us, departed with the chiefs.

"My friends," said Ignosi, so soon as they were gone, "can ye do this
wonderful thing, or were ye speaking empty words to the captains?"

"We believe that we can do it, Umbopa--Ignosi, I mean."

"It is strange," he answered, "and had ye not been Englishmen I would
not have believed it; but I have learned that English 'gentlemen' tell
no lies. If we live through the matter, be sure that I will repay
you."

"Ignosi," said Sir Henry, "promise me one thing."

"I will promise, Incubu, my friend, even before I hear it," answered
the big man with a smile. "What is it?"

"This: that if ever you come to be king of this people you will do
away with the smelling out of wizards such as we saw last night; and
that the killing of men without trial shall no longer take place in
the land."

Ignosi thought for a moment after I had translated this request, and
then answered--

"The ways of black people are not as the ways of white men, Incubu,
nor do we value life so highly. Yet I will promise. If it be in my
power to hold them back, the witch-finders shall hunt no more, nor
shall any man die the death without trial or judgment."

"That's a bargain, then," said Sir Henry; "and now let us get a little
rest."

Thoroughly wearied out, we were soon sound asleep, and slept till
Ignosi woke us about eleven o'clock. Then we rose, washed, and ate a
hearty breakfast. After that we went outside the hut and walked about,
amusing ourselves with examining the structure of the Kukuana huts and
observing the customs of the women.

"I hope that eclipse will come off," said Sir Henry presently.

"If it does not it will soon be all up with us," I answered
mournfully; "for so sure as we are living men some of those chiefs
will tell the whole story to the king, and then there will be another
sort of eclipse, and one that we shall certainly not like."

Returning to the hut we ate some dinner, and passed the rest of the
day in receiving visits of ceremony and curiosity. At length the sun
set, and we enjoyed a couple of hours of such quiet as our melancholy
forebodings would allow to us. Finally, about half-past eight, a
messenger came from Twala to bid us to the great annual "dance of
girls" which was about to be celebrated.

Hastily we put on the chain shirts that the king had sent us, and
taking our rifles and ammunition with us, so as to have them handy in
case we had to fly, as suggested by Infadoos, we started boldly
enough, though with inward fear and trembling. The great space in
front of the king's kraal bore a very different appearance from that
which it had presented on the previous evening. In place of the grim
ranks of serried warriors were company after company of Kukuana girls,
not over-dressed, so far as clothing went, but each crowned with a
wreath of flowers, and holding a palm leaf in one hand and a white
arum lily in the other. In the centre of the open moonlit space sat
Twala the king, with old Gagool at his feet, attended by Infadoos, the
boy Scragga, and twelve guards. There were also present about a score
of chiefs, amongst whom I recognised most of our friends of the night
before.

Twala greeted us with much apparent cordiality, though I saw him fix
his one eye viciously on Umbopa.

"Welcome, white men from the Stars," he said; "this is another sight
from that which your eyes gazed on by the light of last night's moon,
but it is not so good a sight. Girls are pleasant, and were it not for
such as these," and he pointed round him, "we should none of us be
here this day; but men are better. Kisses and the tender words of
women are sweet, but the sound of the clashing of the spears of
warriors, and the smell of men's blood, are sweeter far! Would ye have
wives from among our people, white men? If so, choose the fairest
here, and ye shall have them, as many as ye will," and he paused for
an answer.

As the prospect did not seem to be without attractions for Good, who,
like most sailors, is of a susceptible nature,--being elderly and
wise, foreseeing the endless complications that anything of the sort
would involve, for women bring trouble so surely as the night follows
the day, I put in a hasty answer--

"Thanks to thee, O king, but we white men wed only with white women
like ourselves. Your maidens are fair, but they are not for us!"

The king laughed. "It is well. In our land there is a proverb which
runs, 'Women's eyes are always bright, whatever the colour,' and
another that says, 'Love her who is present, for be sure she who is
absent is false to thee;' but perhaps these things are not so in the
Stars. In a land where men are white all things are possible. So be
it, white men; the girls will not go begging! Welcome again; and
welcome, too, thou black one; if Gagool here had won her way, thou
wouldst have been stiff and cold by now. It is lucky for thee that
thou too camest from the Stars; ha! ha!"

"I can kill thee before thou killest me, O king," was Ignosi's calm
answer, "and thou shalt be stiff before my limbs cease to bend."

Twala started. "Thou speakest boldly, boy," he replied angrily;
"presume not too far."

"He may well be bold in whose lips are truth. The truth is a sharp
spear which flies home and misses not. It is a message from 'the
Stars,' O king."

Twala scowled, and his one eye gleamed fiercely, but he said nothing
more.

"Let the dance begin," he cried, and then the flower-crowned girls
sprang forward in companies, singing a sweet song and waving the
delicate palms and white lilies. On they danced, looking faint and
spiritual in the soft, sad light of the risen moon; now whirling round
and round, now meeting in mimic warfare, swaying, eddying here and
there, coming forward, falling back in an ordered confusion delightful
to witness. At last they paused, and a beautiful young woman sprang
out of the ranks and began to pirouette in front of us with a grace
and vigour which would have put most ballet girls to shame. At length
she retired exhausted, and another took her place, then another and
another, but none of them, either in grace, skill, or personal
attractions, came up to the first.

When the chosen girls had all danced, the king lifted his hand.

"Which deem ye the fairest, white men?" he asked.

"The first," said I unthinkingly. Next second I regretted it, for I
remembered that Infadoos had told us that the fairest woman must be
offered up as a sacrifice.

"Then is my mind as your minds, and my eyes as your eyes. She is the
fairest! and a sorry thing it is for her, for she must die!"

"/Ay, must die!/" piped out Gagool, casting a glance of her quick eyes
in the direction of the poor girl, who, as yet ignorant of the awful
fate in store for her, was standing some ten yards off in front of a
company of maidens, engaged in nervously picking a flower from her
wreath to pieces, petal by petal.

"Why, O king?" said I, restraining my indignation with difficulty;
"the girl has danced well, and pleased us; she is fair too; it would
be hard to reward her with death."

Twala laughed as he answered--

"It is our custom, and the figures who sit in stone yonder," and he
pointed towards the three distant peaks, "must have their due. Did I
fail to put the fairest girl to death to-day, misfortune would fall
upon me and my house. Thus runs the prophecy of my people: 'If the
king offer not a sacrifice of a fair girl, on the day of the dance of
maidens, to the Old Ones who sit and watch on the mountains, then
shall he fall, and his house.' Look ye, white men, my brother who
reigned before me offered not the sacrifice, because of the tears of
the woman, and he fell, and his house, and I reign in his stead. It is
finished; she must die!" Then turning to the guards--"Bring her
hither; Scragga, make sharp thy spear."

Two of the men stepped forward, and as they advanced, the girl, for
the first time realising her impending fate, screamed aloud and turned
to fly. But the strong hands caught her fast, and brought her,
struggling and weeping, before us.

"What is thy name, girl?" piped Gagool. "What! wilt thou not answer?
Shall the king's son do his work at once?"

At this hint, Scragga, looking more evil than ever, advanced a step
and lifted his great spear, and at that moment I saw Good's hand creep
to his revolver. The poor girl caught the faint glint of steel through
her tears, and it sobered her anguish. She ceased struggling, and
clasping her hands convulsively, stood shuddering from head to foot.

"See," cried Scragga in high glee, "she shrinks from the sight of my
little plaything even before she has tasted it," and he tapped the
broad blade of his spear.

"If ever I get the chance you shall pay for that, you young hound!" I
heard Good mutter beneath his breath.

"Now that thou art quiet, give us thy name, my dear. Come, speak out,
and fear not," said Gagool in mockery.

"Oh, mother," answered the girl, in trembling accents, "my name is
Foulata, of the house of Suko. Oh, mother, why must I die? I have done
no wrong!"

"Be comforted," went on the old woman in her hateful tone of mockery.
"Thou must die, indeed, as a sacrifice to the Old Ones who sit
yonder," and she pointed to the peaks; "but it is better to sleep in
the night than to toil in the daytime; it is better to die than to
live, and thou shalt die by the royal hand of the king's own son."

The girl Foulata wrung her hands in anguish, and cried out aloud, "Oh,
cruel! and I so young! What have I done that I should never again see
the sun rise out of the night, or the stars come following on his
track in the evening, that I may no more gather the flowers when the
dew is heavy, or listen to the laughing of the waters? Woe is me, that
I shall never see my father's hut again, nor feel my mother's kiss,
nor tend the lamb that is sick! Woe is me, that no lover shall put his
arm around me and look into my eyes, nor shall men children be born of
me! Oh, cruel, cruel!"

And again she wrung her hands and turned her tear-stained flower-
crowned face to Heaven, looking so lovely in her despair--for she was
indeed a beautiful woman--that assuredly the sight of her would have
melted the hearts of any less cruel than were the three fiends before
us. Prince Arthur's appeal to the ruffians who came to blind him was
not more touching than that of this savage girl.

But it did not move Gagool or Gagool's master, though I saw signs of
pity among the guards behind, and on the faces of the chiefs; and as
for Good, he gave a fierce snort of indignation, and made a motion as
though to go to her assistance. With all a woman's quickness, the
doomed girl interpreted what was passing in his mind, and by a sudden
movement flung herself before him, and clasped his "beautiful white
legs" with her hands.

"Oh, white father from the Stars!" she cried, "throw over me the
mantle of thy protection; let me creep into the shadow of thy
strength, that I may be saved. Oh, keep me from these cruel men and
from the mercies of Gagool!"

"All right, my hearty, I'll look after you," sang out Good in nervous
Saxon. "Come, get up, there's a good girl," and he stooped and caught
her hand.

Twala turned and motioned to his son, who advanced with his spear
lifted.

"Now's your time," whispered Sir Henry to me; "what are you waiting
for?"

"I am waiting for that eclipse," I answered; "I have had my eye on the
moon for the last half-hour, and I never saw it look healthier."

"Well, you must risk it now, or the girl will be killed. Twala is
losing patience."

Recognising the force of the argument, and having cast one more
despairing look at the bright face of the moon, for never did the most
ardent astronomer with a theory to prove await a celestial event with
such anxiety, I stepped with all the dignity that I could command
between the prostrate girl and the advancing spear of Scragga.

"King," I said, "it shall not be; we will not endure this thing; let
the girl go in safety."

Twala rose from his seat in wrath and astonishment, and from the
chiefs and serried ranks of maidens who had closed in slowly upon us
in anticipation of the tragedy came a murmur of amazement.

"/Shall not be!/ thou white dog, that yappest at the lion in his cave;
/shall not be!/ art thou mad? Be careful, lest this chicken's fate
overtake thee, and those with thee. How canst thou save her or
thyself? Who art thou that thou settest thyself between me and my
will? Back, I say. Scragga, kill her! Ho, guards! seize these men."

At his cry armed men ran swiftly from behind the hut, where they had
evidently been placed beforehand.

Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa ranged themselves alongside of me, and
lifted their rifles.

"Stop!" I shouted boldly, though at the moment my heart was in my
boots. "Stop! we, the white men from the Stars, say that it shall not
be. Come but one pace nearer, and we will put out the moon like a
wind-blown lamp, as we who dwell in her House can do, and plunge the
land in darkness. Dare to disobey, and ye shall taste of our magic."

My threat produced an effect; the men halted, and Scragga stood still
before us, his spear lifted.

"Hear him! hear him!" piped Gagool; "hear the liar who says that he
will put out the moon like a lamp. Let him do it, and the girl shall
be speared. Yes, let him do it, or die by the girl, he and those with
him."

I glanced up at the moon despairingly, and now to my intense joy and
relief saw that we--or rather the almanack--had made no mistake. On
the edge of the great orb lay a faint rim of shadow, while a smoky hue
grew and gathered upon its bright surface. Never shall I forget that
supreme, that superb moment of relief.

Then I lifted my hand solemnly towards the sky, an example which Sir
Henry and Good followed, and quoted a line or two from the "Ingoldsby
Legends" at it in the most impressive tones that I could command. Sir
Henry followed suit with a verse out of the Old Testament, and
something about Balbus building a wall, in Latin, whilst Good
addressed the Queen of Night in a volume of the most classical bad
language which he could think of.

Slowly the penumbra, the shadow of a shadow, crept on over the bright
surface, and as it crept I heard deep gasps of fear rising from the
multitude around.

"Look, O king!" I cried; "look, Gagool! Look, chiefs and people and
women, and see if the white men from the Stars keep their word, or if
they be but empty liars!

"The moon grows black before your eyes; soon there will be darkness--
ay, darkness in the hour of the full moon. Ye have asked for a sign;
it is given to you. Grow dark, O Moon! withdraw thy light, thou pure
and holy One; bring the proud heart of usurping murderers to the dust,
and eat up the world with shadows."

A groan of terror burst from the onlookers. Some stood petrified with
dread, others threw themselves upon their knees and cried aloud. As
for the king, he sat still and turned pale beneath his dusky skin.
Only Gagool kept her courage.

"It will pass," she cried; "I have often seen the like before; no man
can put out the moon; lose not heart; sit still--the shadow will
pass."

"Wait, and ye shall see," I replied, hopping with excitement. "O Moon!
Moon! Moon! wherefore art thou so cold and fickle?" This appropriate
quotation was from the pages of a popular romance that I chanced to
have read recently, though now I come to think of it, it was
ungrateful of me to abuse the Lady of the Heavens, who was showing
herself to be the truest of friends to us, however she may have
behaved to the impassioned lover in the novel. Then I added: "Keep it
up, Good, I can't remember any more poetry. Curse away, there's a good
fellow."

Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never
before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and
height of a naval officer's objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he
went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever
repeated himself.

Meanwhile the dark ring crept on, while all that great assembly fixed
their eyes upon the sky and stared and stared in fascinated silence.
Strange and unholy shadows encroached upon the moonlight, an ominous
quiet filled the place. Everything grew still as death. Slowly and in
the midst of this most solemn silence the minutes sped away, and while
they sped the full moon passed deeper and deeper into the shadow of
the earth, as the inky segment of its circle slid in awful majesty
across the lunar craters. The great pale orb seemed to draw near and
to grow in size. She turned a coppery hue, then that portion of her
surface which was unobscured as yet grew grey and ashen, and at
length, as totality approached, her mountains and her plains were to
be seen glowing luridly through a crimson gloom.

On, yet on, crept the ring of darkness; it was now more than half
across the blood-red orb. The air grew thick, and still more deeply
tinged with dusky crimson. On, yet on, till we could scarcely see the
fierce faces of the group before us. No sound rose now from the
spectators, and at last Good stopped swearing.

"The moon is dying--the white wizards have killed the moon," yelled
the prince Scragga at last. "We shall all perish in the dark," and
animated by fear or fury, or by both, he lifted his spear and drove it
with all his force at Sir Henry's breast. But he forgot the mail
shirts that the king had given us, and which we wore beneath our
clothing. The steel rebounded harmless, and before he could repeat the
blow Curtis had snatched the spear from his hand and sent it straight
through him.

Scragga dropped dead.

At the sight, and driven mad with fear of the gathering darkness, and
of the unholy shadow which, as they believed, was swallowing the moon,
the companies of girls broke up in wild confusion, and ran screeching
for the gateways. Nor did the panic stop there. The king himself,
followed by his guards, some of the chiefs, and Gagool, who hobbled
away after them with marvellous alacrity, fled for the huts, so that
in another minute we ourselves, the would-be victim Foulata, Infadoos,
and most of the chiefs who had interviewed us on the previous night,
were left alone upon the scene, together with the dead body of
Scragga, Twala's son.

"Chiefs," I said, "we have given you the sign. If ye are satisfied,
let us fly swiftly to the place of which ye spoke. The charm cannot
now be stopped. It will work for an hour and the half of an hour. Let
us cover ourselves in the darkness."

"Come," said Infadoos, turning to go, an example which was followed by
the awed captains, ourselves, and the girl Foulata, whom Good took by
the arm.

Before we reached the gate of the kraal the moon went out utterly, and
from every quarter of the firmament the stars rushed forth into the
inky sky.

Holding each other by the hand we stumbled on through the darkness.



CHAPTER XII

BEFORE THE BATTLE

Luckily for us, Infadoos and the chiefs knew all the paths of the
great town perfectly, so that we passed by side-ways unmolested, and
notwithstanding the gloom we made fair progress.

For an hour or more we journeyed on, till at length the eclipse began
to pass, and that edge of the moon which had disappeared the first
became again visible. Suddenly, as we watched, there burst from it a
silver streak of light, accompanied by a wondrous ruddy glow, which
hung upon the blackness of the sky like a celestial lamp, and a wild
and lovely sight it was. In another five minutes the stars began to
fade, and there was sufficient light to see our whereabouts. We then
discovered that we were clear of the town of Loo, and approaching a
large flat-topped hill, measuring some two miles in circumference.
This hill, which is of a formation common in South Africa, is not very
high; indeed, its greatest elevation is scarcely more than 200 feet,
but it is shaped like a horseshoe, and its sides are rather
precipitous and strewn with boulders. On the grass table-land at its
summit is ample camping-ground, which had been utilised as a military
cantonment of no mean strength. Its ordinary garrison was one regiment
of three thousand men, but as we toiled up the steep side of the
mountain in the returning moonlight we perceived that there were
several of such regiments encamped there.

Reaching the table-land at last, we found crowds of men roused from
their sleep, shivering with fear and huddled up together in the utmost
consternation at the natural phenomenon which they were witnessing.
Passing through these without a word, we gained a hut in the centre of
the ground, where we were astonished to find two men waiting, laden
with our few goods and chattels, which of course we had been obliged
to leave behind in our hasty flight.

"I sent for them," explained Infadoos; "and also for these," and he
lifted up Good's long-lost trousers.

With an exclamation of rapturous delight Good sprang at them, and
instantly proceeded to put them on.

"Surely my lord will not hide his beautiful white legs!" exclaimed
Infadoos regretfully.

But Good persisted, and once only did the Kukuana people get the
chance of seeing his beautiful legs again. Good is a very modest man.
Henceforward they had to satisfy their aesthetic longings with his one
whisker, his transparent eye, and his movable teeth.

Still gazing with fond remembrance at Good's trousers, Infadoos next
informed us that he had commanded the regiments to muster so soon as
the day broke, in order to explain to them fully the origin and
circumstances of the rebellion which was decided on by the chiefs, and
to introduce to them the rightful heir to the throne, Ignosi.

Accordingly, when the sun was up, the troops--in all some twenty
thousand men, and the flower of the Kukuana army--were mustered on a
large open space, to which we went. The men were drawn up in three
sides of a dense square, and presented a magnificent spectacle. We
took our station on the open side of the square, and were speedily
surrounded by all the principal chiefs and officers.

These, after silence had been proclaimed, Infadoos proceeded to
address. He narrated to them in vigorous and graceful language--for,
like most Kukuanas of high rank, he was a born orator--the history of
Ignosi's father, and of how he had been basely murdered by Twala the
king, and his wife and child driven out to starve. Then he pointed out
that the people suffered and groaned under Twala's cruel rule,
instancing the proceedings of the previous night, when, under pretence
of their being evil-doers, many of the noblest in the land had been
dragged forth and wickedly done to death. Next he went on to say that
the white lords from the Stars, looking down upon their country, had
perceived its trouble, and determined, at great personal
inconvenience, to alleviate its lot: That they had accordingly taken
the real king of the Kukuanas, Ignosi, who was languishing in exile,
by the hand, and led him over the mountains: That they had seen the
wickedness of Twala's doings, and for a sign to the wavering, and to
save the life of the girl Foulata, actually, by the exercise of their
high magic, had put out the moon and slain the young fiend Scragga;
and that they were prepared to stand by them, and assist them to
overthrow Twala, and set up the rightful king, Ignosi, in his place.

He finished his discourse amidst a murmur of approbation. Then Ignosi
stepped forward and began to speak. Having reiterated all that
Infadoos his uncle had said, he concluded a powerful speech in these
words:--

"O chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people, ye have heard my words. Now
must ye make choice between me and him who sits upon my throne, the
uncle who killed his brother, and hunted his brother's child forth to
die in the cold and the night. That I am indeed the king these"--
pointing to the chiefs--"can tell you, for they have seen the snake
about my middle. If I were not the king, would these white men be on
my side with all their magic? Tremble, chiefs, captains, soldiers, and
people! Is not the darkness they have brought upon the land to
confound Twala and cover our flight, darkness even in the hour of the
full moon, yet before your eyes?"

"It is," answered the soldiers.

"I am the king; I say to you, I am the king," went on Ignosi, drawing
up his great stature to its full, and lifting his broad-bladed battle-
axe above his head. "If there be any man among you who says that it is
not so, let him stand forth and I will fight him now, and his blood
shall be a red token that I tell you true. Let him stand forth, I
say;" and he shook the great axe till it flashed in the sunlight.

As nobody seemed inclined to respond to this heroic version of "Dilly,
Dilly, come and be killed," our late henchman proceeded with his
address.

"I am indeed the king, and should ye stand by my side in the battle,
if I win the day ye shall go with me to victory and honour. I will
give you oxen and wives, and ye shall take place of all the regiments;
and if ye fall, I will fall with you.

"And behold, I give you this promise, that when I sit upon the seat of
my fathers, bloodshed shall cease in the land. No longer shall ye cry
for justice to find slaughter, no longer shall the witch-finder hunt
you out so that ye may be slain without a cause. No man shall die save
he who offends against the laws. The 'eating up' of your kraals shall
cease; each one of you shall sleep secure in his own hut and fear
naught, and justice shall walk blindfold throughout the land. Have ye
chosen, chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people?"

"We have chosen, O king," came back the answer.

"It is well. Turn your heads and see how Twala's messengers go forth
from the great town, east and west, and north and south, to gather a
mighty army to slay me and you, and these my friends and protectors.
To-morrow, or perchance the next day, he will come against us with all
who are faithful to him. Then I shall see the man who is indeed my
man, the man who fears not to die for his cause; and I tell you that
he shall not be forgotten in the time of spoil. I have spoken, O
chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people. Now go to your huts and make
you ready for war."

There was a pause, till presently one of the chiefs lifted his hand,
and out rolled the royal salute, "/Koom./" It was a sign that the
soldiers accepted Ignosi as their king. Then they marched off in
battalions.

Half an hour afterwards we held a council of war, at which all the
commanders of regiments were present. It was evident to us that before
very long we should be attacked in overwhelming force. Indeed, from
our point of vantage on the hill we could see troops mustering, and
runners going forth from Loo in every direction, doubtless to summon
soldiers to the king's assistance. We had on our side about twenty
thousand men, composed of seven of the best regiments in the country.
Twala, so Infadoos and the chiefs calculated, had at least thirty to
thirty-five thousand on whom he could rely at present assembled in
Loo, and they thought that by midday on the morrow he would be able to
gather another five thousand or more to his aid. It was, of course,
possible that some of his troops would desert and come over to us, but
it was not a contingency which could be reckoned on. Meanwhile, it was
clear that active preparations were being made by Twala to subdue us.
Already strong bodies of armed men were patrolling round and round the
foot of the hill, and there were other signs also of coming assault.

Infadoos and the chiefs, however, were of opinion that no attack would
take place that day, which would be devoted to preparation and to the
removal of every available means of the moral effect produced upon the
minds of the soldiery by the supposed magical darkening of the moon.
The onslaught would be on the morrow, they said, and they proved to be
right.

Meanwhile, we set to work to strengthen the position in all ways
possible. Almost every man was turned out, and in the course of the
day, which seemed far too short, much was done. The paths up the hill
--that was rather a sanatorium than a fortress, being used generally
as the camping place of regiments suffering from recent service in
unhealthy portions of the country--were carefully blocked with masses
of stones, and every other approach was made as impregnable as time
would allow. Piles of boulders were collected at various spots to be
rolled down upon an advancing enemy, stations were appointed to the
different regiments, and all preparation was made which our joint
ingenuity could suggest.

Just before sundown, as we rested after our toil, we perceived a small
company of men advancing towards us from the direction of Loo, one of
whom bore a palm leaf in his hand for a sign that he came as a herald.

As he drew near, Ignosi, Infadoos, one or two chiefs and ourselves,
went down to the foot of the mountain to meet him. He was a gallant-
looking fellow, wearing the regulation leopard-skin cloak.

"Greeting!" he cried, as he came; "the king's greeting to those who
make unholy war against the king; the lion's greeting to the jackals
that snarl around his heels."

"Speak," I said.

"These are the king's words. Surrender to the king's mercy ere a worse
thing befall you. Already the shoulder has been torn from the black
bull, and the king drives him bleeding about the camp."[*]

[*] This cruel custom is not confined to the Kukuanas, but is by no
    means uncommon amongst African tribes on the occasion of the
    outbreak of war or any other important public event.--A.Q.

"What are Twala's terms?" I asked from curiosity.

"His terms are merciful, worthy of a great king. These are the words
of Twala, the one-eyed, the mighty, the husband of a thousand wives,
lord of the Kukuanas, keeper of the Great Road (Solomon's Road),
beloved of the Strange Ones who sit in silence at the mountains yonder
(the Three Witches), Calf of the Black Cow, Elephant whose tread
shakes the earth, Terror of the evil-doer, Ostrich whose feet devour
the desert, huge One, black One, wise One, king from generation to
generation! these are the words of Twala: 'I will have mercy and be
satisfied with a little blood. One in every ten shall die, the rest
shall go free; but the white man Incubu, who slew Scragga my son, and
the black man his servant, who pretends to my throne, and Infadoos my
brother, who brews rebellion against me, these shall die by torture as
an offering to the Silent Ones.' Such are the merciful words of
Twala."

After consulting with the others a little, I answered him in a loud
voice, so that the soldiers might hear, thus--

"Go back, thou dog, to Twala, who sent thee, and say that we, Ignosi,
veritable king of the Kukuanas, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn, the
wise ones from the Stars, who make dark the moon, Infadoos, of the
royal house, and the chiefs, captains, and people here gathered, make
answer and say, 'That we will not surrender; that before the sun has
gone down twice, Twala's corpse shall stiffen at Twala's gate, and
Ignosi, whose father Twala slew, shall reign in his stead.' Now go,
ere we whip thee away, and beware how thou dost lift a hand against
such as we are."

The herald laughed loudly. "Ye frighten not men with such swelling
words," he cried out. "Show yourselves as bold to-morrow, O ye who
darken the moon. Be bold, fight, and be merry, before the crows pick
your bones till they are whiter than your faces. Farewell; perhaps we
may meet in the fight; fly not to the Stars, but wait for me, I pray,
white men." With this shaft of sarcasm he retired, and almost
immediately the sun sank.

That night was a busy one, for weary as we were, so far as was
possible by the moonlight all preparations for the morrow's fight were
continued, and messengers were constantly coming and going from the
place where we sat in council. At last, about an hour after midnight,
everything that could be done was done, and the camp, save for the
occasional challenge of a sentry, sank into silence. Sir Henry and I,
accompanied by Ignosi and one of the chiefs, descended the hill and
made a round of the pickets. As we went, suddenly, from all sorts of
unexpected places, spears gleamed out in the moonlight, only to vanish
again when we uttered the password. It was clear to us that none were
sleeping at their posts. Then we returned, picking our way warily
through thousands of sleeping warriors, many of whom were taking their
last earthly rest.

The moonlight flickering along their spears, played upon their
features and made them ghastly; the chilly night wind tossed their
tall and hearse-like plumes. There they lay in wild confusion, with
arms outstretched and twisted limbs; their stern, stalwart forms
looking weird and unhuman in the moonlight.

"How many of these do you suppose will be alive at this time
to-morrow?" asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head and looked again at the sleeping men, and to my tired
and yet excited imagination it seemed as though Death had already
touched them. My mind's eye singled out those who were sealed to
slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the
mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and
sadness. To-night these thousand slept their healthy sleep, to-morrow
they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would
be stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children
fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever. Only the old
moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses,
and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did aeons before we
were, and will do aeons after we have been forgotten.

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his
monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he
breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the
words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain
gave birth to we have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of
life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends--the
end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres,
but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having
once been, can never /die/, though they blend and change, and change
again for ever.



All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind--for as
I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems
to be getting a hold of me--while I stood and stared at those grim yet
fantastic lines of warriors, sleeping, as their saying goes, "upon
their spears."

"Curtis," I said, "I am in a condition of pitiable fear."

Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard and laughed, as he answered--

"I have heard you make that sort of remark before, Quatermain."

"Well, I mean it now. Do you know, I very much doubt if one of us will
be alive to-morrow night. We shall be attacked in overwhelming force,
and it is quite a chance if we can hold this place."

"We'll give a good account of some of them, at any rate. Look here,
Quatermain, this business is nasty, and one with which, properly
speaking, we ought not to be mixed up, but we are in for it, so we
must make the best of our job. Speaking personally, I had rather be
killed fighting than any other way, and now that there seems little
chance of our finding my poor brother, it makes the idea easier to me.
But fortune favours the brave, and we may succeed. Anyway, the battle
will be awful, and having a reputation to keep up, we shall need to be
in the thick of the thing."

He made this last remark in a mournful voice, but there was a gleam in
his eye which belied its melancholy. I have an idea Sir Henry Curtis
actually likes fighting.

After this we went to sleep for a couple of hours or so.

Just about dawn we were awakened by Infadoos, who came to say that
great activity was to be observed in Loo, and that parties of the
king's skirmishers were driving in our outposts.

We rose and dressed ourselves for the fray, each putting on his chain
armour shirt, for which garments at the present juncture we felt
exceedingly thankful. Sir Henry went the whole length about the
matter, and dressed himself like a native warrior. "When you are in
Kukuanaland, do as the Kukuanas do," he remarked, as he drew the
shining steel over his broad breast, which it fitted like a glove. Nor
did he stop there. At his request Infadoos had provided him with a
complete set of native war uniform. Round his throat he fastened the
leopard-skin cloak of a commanding officer, on his brows he bound the
plume of black ostrich feathers worn only by generals of high rank,
and about his middle a magnificent moocha of white ox-tails. A pair of
sandals, a leglet of goat's hair, a heavy battle-axe with a
rhinoceros-horn handle, a round iron shield covered with white ox-
hide, and the regulation number of /tollas/, or throwing-knives, made
up his equipment, to which, however, he added his revolver. The dress
was, no doubt, a savage one, but I am bound to say that I seldom saw a
finer sight than Sir Henry Curtis presented in this guise. It showed
off his magnificent physique to the greatest advantage, and when
Ignosi arrived presently, arrayed in a similar costume, I thought to
myself that I had never before seen two such splendid men.

As for Good and myself, the armour did not suit us nearly so well. To
begin with, Good insisted upon keeping on his new-found trousers, and
a stout, short gentleman with an eye-glass, and one half of his face
shaved, arrayed in a mail shirt, carefully tucked into a very seedy
pair of corduroys, looks more remarkable than imposing. In my case,
the chain shirt being too big for me, I put it on over all my clothes,
which caused it to bulge in a somewhat ungainly fashion. I discarded
my trousers, however, retaining only my veldtschoons, having
determined to go into battle with bare legs, in order to be the
lighter for running, in case it became necessary to retire quickly.
The mail coat, a spear, a shield, that I did not know how to use, a
couple of /tollas/, a revolver, and a huge plume, which I pinned into
the top of my shooting hat, in order to give a bloodthirsty finish to
my appearance, completed my modest equipment. In addition to all these
articles, of course we had our rifles, but as ammunition was scarce,
and as they would be useless in case of a charge, we arranged that
they should be carried behind us by bearers.

When at length we had equipped ourselves, we swallowed some food
hastily, and then started out to see how things were going on. At one
point in the table-land of the mountain, there was a little koppie of
brown stone, which served the double purpose of head-quarters and of a
conning tower. Here we found Infadoos surrounded by his own regiment,
the Greys, which was undoubtedly the finest in the Kukuana army, and
the same that we had first seen at the outlying kraal. This regiment,
now three thousand five hundred strong, was being held in reserve, and
the men were lying down on the grass in companies, and watching the
king's forces creep out of Loo in long ant-like columns. There seemed
to be no end to the length of these columns--three in all, and each of
them numbering, as we judged, at least eleven or twelve thousand men.

As soon as they were clear of the town the regiments formed up. Then
one body marched off to the right, one to the left, and the third came
on slowly towards us.

"Ah," said Infadoos, "they are going to attack us on three sides at
once."

This seemed rather serious news, for our position on the top of the
mountain, which measured a mile and a half in circumference, being an
extended one, it was important to us to concentrate our comparatively
small defending force as much as possible. But since it was impossible
for us to dictate in what way we should be assailed, we had to make
the best of it, and accordingly sent orders to the various regiments
to prepare to receive the separate onslaughts.



CHAPTER XIII

THE ATTACK

Slowly, and without the slightest appearance of haste or excitement,
the three columns crept on. When within about five hundred yards of
us, the main or centre column halted at the root of a tongue of open
plain which ran up into the hill, to give time to the other divisions
to circumvent our position, which was shaped more or less in the form
of a horse-shoe, with its two points facing towards the town of Loo.
The object of this manoeuvre was that the threefold assault should be
delivered simultaneously.

"Oh, for a gatling!" groaned Good, as he contemplated the serried
phalanxes beneath us. "I would clear that plain in twenty minutes."

"We have not got one, so it is no use yearning for it; but suppose you
try a shot, Quatermain," said Sir Henry. "See how near you can go to
that tall fellow who appears to be in command. Two to one you miss
him, and an even sovereign, to be honestly paid if ever we get out of
this, that you don't drop the bullet within five yards."


This piqued me, so, loading the express with solid ball, I waited till
my friend walked some ten yards out from his force, in order to get a
better view of our position, accompanied only by an orderly; then,
lying down and resting the express on a rock, I covered him. The
rifle, like all expresses, was only sighted to three hundred and fifty
yards, so to allow for the drop in trajectory I took him half-way down
the neck, which ought, I calculated, to find him in the chest. He
stood quite still and gave me every opportunity, but whether it was
the excitement or the wind, or the fact of the man being a long shot,
I don't know, but this was what happened. Getting dead on, as I
thought, a fine sight, I pressed, and when the puff of smoke had
cleared away, to my disgust, I saw my man standing there unharmed,
whilst his orderly, who was at least three paces to the left, was
stretched upon the ground apparently dead. Turning swiftly, the
officer I had aimed at began to run towards his men in evident alarm.

"Bravo, Quatermain!" sang out Good; "you've frightened him."

This made me very angry, for, if possible to avoid it, I hate to miss
in public. When a man is master of only one art he likes to keep up
his reputation in that art. Moved quite out of myself at my failure, I
did a rash thing. Rapidly covering the general as he ran, I let drive
with the second barrel. Instantly the poor man threw up his arms, and
fell forward on to his face. This time I had made no mistake; and--I
say it as a proof of how little we think of others when our own
safety, pride, or reputation is in question--I was brute enough to
feel delighted at the sight.

The regiments who had seen the feat cheered wildly at this exhibition
of the white man's magic, which they took as an omen of success, while
the force the general had belonged to--which, indeed, as we
ascertained afterwards, he had commanded--fell back in confusion. Sir
Henry and Good now took up their rifles and began to fire, the latter
industriously "browning" the dense mass before him with another
Winchester repeater, and I also had another shot or two, with the
result, so far as we could judge, that we put some six or eight men
/hors de combat/ before they were out of range.

Just as we stopped firing there came an ominous roar from our far
right, then a similar roar rose on our left. The two other divisions
were engaging us.

At the sound, the mass of men before us opened out a little, and
advanced towards the hill and up the spit of bare grass land at a slow
trot, singing a deep-throated song as they ran. We kept up a steady
fire from our rifles as they came, Ignosi joining in occasionally, and
accounted for several men, but of course we produced no more effect
upon that mighty rush of armed humanity than he who throws pebbles
does on the breaking wave.

On they came, with a shout and the clashing of spears; now they were
driving in the pickets we had placed among the rocks at the foot of
the hill. After that the advance was a little slower, for though as
yet we had offered no serious opposition, the attacking forces must
climb up hill, and they came slowly to save their breath. Our first
line of defence was about half-way down the side of the slope, our
second fifty yards further back, while our third occupied the edge of
the plateau.

On they stormed, shouting their war-cry, "/Twala! Twala! Chiele!
Chiele!/" (Twala! Twala! Smite! Smite!) "/Ignosi! Ignosi! Chiele!
Chiele!/" answered our people. They were quite close now, and the
/tollas/, or throwing-knives, began to flash backwards and forwards,
and now with an awful yell the battle closed in.

To and fro swayed the mass of struggling warriors, men falling fast as
leaves in an autumn wind; but before long the superior weight of the
attacking force began to tell, and our first line of defence was
slowly pressed back till it merged into the second. Here the struggle
was very fierce, but again our people were driven back and up, till at
length, within twenty minutes of the commencement of the fight, our
third line came into action.

But by this time the assailants were much exhausted, and besides had
lost many men killed and wounded, and to break through that third
impenetrable hedge of spears proved beyond their powers. For a while
the seething lines of savages swung backwards and forwards, in the
fierce ebb and flow of battle, and the issue was doubtful. Sir Henry
watched the desperate struggle with a kindling eye, and then without a
word he rushed off, followed by Good, and flung himself into the
hottest of the fray. As for myself, I stopped where I was.

The soldiers caught sight of his tall form as he plunged into battle,
and there rose a cry of--

"/Nanzia Incubu! Nanzia Unkungunklovo!/" (Here is the Elephant!)
"/Chiele! Chiele!/"

From that moment the end was no longer in doubt. Inch by inch,
fighting with splendid gallantry, the attacking force was pressed back
down the hillside, till at last it retreated upon its reserves in
something like confusion. At that instant, too, a messenger arrived to
say that the left attack had been repulsed; and I was just beginning
to congratulate myself, believing that the affair was over for the
present, when, to our horror, we perceived our men who had been
engaged in the right defence being driven towards us across the plain,
followed by swarms of the enemy, who had evidently succeeded at this
point.

Ignosi, who was standing by me, took in the situation at a glance, and
issued a rapid order. Instantly the reserve regiment around us, the
Greys, extended itself.

Again Ignosi gave a word of command, which was taken up and repeated
by the captains, and in another second, to my intense disgust, I found
myself involved in a furious onslaught upon the advancing foe. Getting
as much as I could behind Ignosi's huge frame, I made the best of a
bad job, and toddled along to be killed as though I liked it. In a
minute or two--we were plunging through the flying groups of our men,
who at once began to re-form behind us, and then I am sure I do not
know what happened. All I can remember is a dreadful rolling noise of
the meeting of shields, and the sudden apparition of a huge ruffian,
whose eyes seemed literally to be starting out of his head, making
straight at me with a bloody spear. But--I say it with pride--I rose--
or rather sank--to the occasion. It was one before which most people
would have collapsed once and for all. Seeing that if I stood where I
was I must be killed, as the horrid apparition came I flung myself
down in front of him so cleverly that, being unable to stop himself,
he took a header right over my prostrate form. Before he could rise
again, /I/ had risen and settled the matter from behind with my
revolver.

Shortly after this somebody knocked me down, and I remember no more of
that charge.

When I came to I found myself back at the koppie, with Good bending
over me holding some water in a gourd.

"How do you feel, old fellow?" he asked anxiously.

I got up and shook myself before replying.

"Pretty well, thank you," I answered.

"Thank Heaven! When I saw them carry you in, I felt quite sick; I
thought you were done for."

"Not this time, my boy. I fancy I only got a rap on the head, which
knocked me stupid. How has it ended?"

"They are repulsed at every point for a while. The loss is dreadfully
heavy; we have quite two thousand killed and wounded, and they must
have lost three. Looks, there's a sight!" and he pointed to long lines
of men advancing by fours.

In the centre of every group of four, and being borne by it, was a
kind of hide tray, of which a Kukuana force always carries a quantity,
with a loop for a handle at each corner. On these trays--and their
number seemed endless--lay wounded men, who as they arrived were
hastily examined by the medicine men, of whom ten were attached to a
regiment. If the wound was not of a fatal character the sufferer was
taken away and attended to as carefully as circumstances would allow.
But if, on the other hand, the injured man's condition proved
hopeless, what followed was very dreadful, though doubtless it may
have been the truest mercy. One of the doctors, under pretence of
carrying out an examination, swiftly opened an artery with a sharp
knife, and in a minute or two the sufferer expired painlessly. There
were many cases that day in which this was done. In fact, it was done
in the majority of cases when the wound was in the body, for the gash
made by the entry of the enormously broad spears used by the Kukuanas
generally rendered recovery impossible. In most instances the poor
sufferers were already unconscious, and in others the fatal "nick" of
the artery was inflicted so swiftly and painlessly that they did not
seem to notice it. Still it was a ghastly sight, and one from which we
were glad to escape; indeed, I never remember anything of the kind
that affected me more than seeing those gallant soldiers thus put out
of pain by the red-handed medicine men, except, indeed, on one
occasion when, after an attack, I saw a force of Swazis burying their
hopelessly wounded /alive/.

Hurrying from this dreadful scene to the further side of the koppie,
we found Sir Henry, who still held a battle-axe in his hand, Ignosi,
Infadoos, and one or two of the chiefs in deep consultation.

"Thank Heaven, here you are, Quatermain! I can't quite make out what
Ignosi wants to do. It seems that though we have beaten off the
attack, Twala is now receiving large reinforcements, and is showing a
disposition to invest us, with the view of starving us out."

"That's awkward."

"Yes; especially as Infadoos says that the water supply has given
out."

"My lord, that is so," said Infadoos; "the spring cannot supply the
wants of so great a multitude, and it is failing rapidly. Before night
we shall all be thirsty. Listen, Macumazahn. Thou art wise, and hast
doubtless seen many wars in the lands from whence thou camest--that is
if indeed they make wars in the Stars. Now tell us, what shall we do?
Twala has brought up many fresh men to take the place of those who
have fallen. Yet Twala has learnt his lesson; the hawk did not think
to find the heron ready; but our beak has pierced his breast; he fears
to strike at us again. We too are wounded, and he will wait for us to
die; he will wind himself round us like a snake round a buck, and
fight the fight of 'sit down.'"

"I hear thee," I said.

"So, Macumazahn, thou seest we have no water here, and but a little
food, and we must choose between these three things--to languish like
a starving lion in his den, or to strive to break away towards the
north, or"--and here he rose and pointed towards the dense mass of our
foes--"to launch ourselves straight at Twala's throat. Incubu, the
great warrior--for to-day he fought like a buffalo in a net, and
Twala's soldiers went down before his axe like young corn before the
hail; with these eyes I saw it--Incubu says 'Charge'; but the Elephant
is ever prone to charge. Now what says Macumazahn, the wily old fox,
who has seen much, and loves to bite his enemy from behind? The last
word is in Ignosi the king, for it is a king's right to speak of war;
but let us hear thy voice, O Macumazahn, who watchest by night, and
the voice too of him of the transparent eye."

"What sayest thou, Ignosi," I asked.

"Nay, my father," answered our quondam servant, who now, clad as he
was in the full panoply of savage war, looked every inch a warrior
king, "do thou speak, and let me, who am but a child in wisdom beside
thee, hearken to thy words."

Thus adjured, after taking hasty counsel with Good and Sir Henry, I
delivered my opinion briefly to the effect that, being trapped, our
best chance, especially in view of the failure of our water supply,
was to initiate an attack upon Twala's forces. Then I recommended that
the attack should be delivered at once, "before our wounds grew
stiff," and also before the sight of Twala's overpowering force caused
the hearts of our soldiers "to wax small like fat before a fire."
Otherwise, I pointed out, some of the captains might change their
minds, and, making peace with Twala, desert to him, or even betray us
into his hands.

This expression of opinion seemed, on the whole, to be favourably
received; indeed, among the Kukuanas my utterances met with a respect
which has never been accorded to them before or since. But the real
decision as to our plans lay with Ignosi, who, since he had been
recognised as rightful king, could exercise the almost unbounded
rights of sovereignty, including, of course, the final decision on
matters of generalship, and it was to him that all eyes were now
turned.

At length, after a pause, during which he appeared to be thinking
deeply, he spoke.

"Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, brave white men, and my friends;
Infadoos, my uncle, and chiefs; my heart is fixed. I will strike at
Twala this day, and set my fortunes on the blow, ay, and my life--my
life and your lives also. Listen; thus will I strike. Ye see how the
hill curves round like the half-moon, and how the plain runs like a
green tongue towards us within the curve?"

"We see," I answered.

"Good; it is now mid-day, and the men eat and rest after the toil of
battle. When the sun has turned and travelled a little way towards the
darkness, let thy regiment, my uncle, advance with one other down to
the green tongue, and it shall be that when Twala sees it he will hurl
his force at it to crush it. But the spot is narrow, and the regiments
can come against thee one at a time only; so may they be destroyed one
by one, and the eyes of all Twala's army shall be fixed upon a
struggle the like of which has not been seen by living man. And with
thee, my uncle, shall go Incubu my friend, that when Twala sees his
battle-axe flashing in the first rank of the Greys his heart may grow
faint. And I will come with the second regiment, that which follows
thee, so that if ye are destroyed, as it might happen, there may yet
be a king left to fight for; and with me shall come Macumazahn the
wise."

"It is well, O king," said Infadoos, apparently contemplating the
certainty of the complete annihilation of his regiment with perfect
calmness. Truly, these Kukuanas are a wonderful people. Death has no
terrors for them when it is incurred in the course of duty.

"And whilst the eyes of the multitude of Twala's soldiers are thus
fixed upon the fight," went on Ignosi, "behold, one-third of the men
who are left alive to us (i.e. about 6,000) shall creep along the
right horn of the hill and fall upon the left flank of Twala's force,
and one-third shall creep along the left horn and fall upon Twala's
right flank. And when I see that the horns are ready to toss Twala,
then will I, with the men who remain to me, charge home in Twala's
face, and if fortune goes with us the day will be ours, and before
Night drives her black oxen from the mountains to the mountains we
shall sit in peace at Loo. And now let us eat and make ready; and,
Infadoos, do thou prepare, that the plan be carried out without fail;
and stay, let my white father Bougwan go with the right horn, that his
shining eye may give courage to the captains."

The arrangements for attack thus briefly indicated were set in motion
with a rapidity that spoke well for the perfection of the Kukuana
military system. Within little more than an hour rations had been
served out and devoured, the divisions were formed, the scheme of
onslaught was explained to the leaders, and the whole force, numbering
about 18,000 men, was ready to move, with the exception of a guard
left in charge of the wounded.

Presently Good came up to Sir Henry and myself.

"Good-bye, you fellows," he said; "I am off with the right wing
according to orders; and so I have come to shake hands, in case we
should not meet again, you know," he added significantly.

We shook hands in silence, and not without the exhibition of as much
emotion as Anglo-Saxons are wont to show.

"It is a queer business," said Sir Henry, his deep voice shaking a
little, "and I confess I never expect to see to-morrow's sun. So far
as I can make out, the Greys, with whom I am to go, are to fight until
they are wiped out in order to enable the wings to slip round unawares
and outflank Twala. Well, so be it; at any rate, it will be a man's
death. Good-bye, old fellow. God bless you! I hope you will pull
through and live to collar the diamonds; but if you do, take my advice
and don't have anything more to do with Pretenders!"

In another second Good had wrung us both by the hand and gone; and
then Infadoos came up and led off Sir Henry to his place in the
forefront of the Greys, whilst, with many misgivings, I departed with
Ignosi to my station in the second attacking regiment.



CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST STAND OF THE GREYS

In a few more minutes the regiments destined to carry out the flanking
movements had tramped off in silence, keeping carefully to the lee of
the rising ground in order to conceal their advance from the keen eyes
of Twala's scouts.

Half an hour or more was allowed to elapse between the setting out of
the horns or wings of the army before any stir was made by the Greys
and their supporting regiment, known as the Buffaloes, which formed
its chest, and were destined to bear the brunt of the battle.

Both of these regiments were almost perfectly fresh, and of full
strength, the Greys having been in reserve in the morning, and having
lost but a small number of men in sweeping back that part of the
attack which had proved successful in breaking the line of defence, on
the occasion when I charged with them and was stunned for my pains. As
for the Buffaloes, they had formed the third line of defence on the
left, and since the attacking force at that point had not succeeded in
breaking through the second, they had scarcely come into action at
all.

Infadoos, who was a wary old general, and knew the absolute importance
of keeping up the spirits of his men on the eve of such a desperate
encounter, employed the pause in addressing his own regiment, the
Greys, in poetical language: explaining to them the honour that they
were receiving in being put thus in the forefront of the battle, and
in having the great white warrior from the Stars to fight with them in
their ranks; and promising large rewards of cattle and promotion to
all who survived in the event of Ignosi's arms being successful.

I looked down the long lines of waving black plumes and stern faces
beneath them, and sighed to think that within one short hour most, if
not all, of those magnificent veteran warriors, not a man of whom was
under forty years of age, would be laid dead or dying in the dust. It
could not be otherwise; they were being condemned, with that wise
recklessness of human life which marks the great general, and often
saves his forces and attains his ends, to certain slaughter, in order
to give their cause and the remainder of the army a chance of success.
They were foredoomed to die, and they knew the truth. It was to be
their task to engage regiment after regiment of Twala's army on the
narrow strip of green beneath us, till they were exterminated or till
the wings found a favourable opportunity for their onslaught. And yet
they never hesitated, nor could I detect a sign of fear upon the face
of a single warrior. There they were--going to certain death, about to
quit the blessed light of day for ever, and yet able to contemplate
their doom without a tremor. Even at that moment I could not help
contrasting their state of mind with my own, which was far from
comfortable, and breathing a sigh of envy and admiration. Never before
had I seen such an absolute devotion to the idea of duty, and such a
complete indifference to its bitter fruits.

"Behold your king!" ended old Infadoos, pointing to Ignosi; "go fight
and fall for him, as is the duty of brave men, and cursed and shameful
for ever be the name of him who shrinks from death for his king, or
who turns his back to the foe. Behold your king, chiefs, captains, and
soldiers! Now do your homage to the sacred Snake, and then follow on,
that Incubu and I may show you a road to the heart of Twala's host."

There was a moment's pause, then suddenly a murmur arose from the
serried phalanxes before us, a sound like the distant whisper of the
sea, caused by the gentle tapping of the handles of six thousand
spears against their holders' shields. Slowly it swelled, till its
growing volume deepened and widened into a roar of rolling noise, that
echoed like thunder against the mountains, and filled the air with
heavy waves of sound. Then it decreased, and by faint degrees died
away into nothing, and suddenly out crashed the royal salute.

Ignosi, I thought to myself, might well be a proud man that day, for
no Roman emperor ever had such a salutation from gladiators "about to
die."

Ignosi acknowledged this magnificent act of homage by lifting his
battle-axe, and then the Greys filed off in a triple-line formation,
each line containing about one thousand fighting men, exclusive of
officers. When the last companies had advanced some five hundred
yards, Ignosi put himself at the head of the Buffaloes, which regiment
was drawn up in a similar three-fold formation, and gave the word to
march, and off we went, I, needless to say, uttering the most
heartfelt prayers that I might emerge from that entertainment with a
whole skin. Many a queer position have I found myself in, but never
before in one quite so unpleasant as the present, or one in which my
chance of coming off safe was smaller.

By the time that we reached the edge of the plateau the Greys were
already half-way down the slope ending in the tongue of grass land
that ran up into the bend of the mountain, something as the frog of a
horse's foot runs up into the shoe. The excitement in Twala's camp on
the plain beyond was very great, and regiment after regiment was
starting forward at a long swinging trot in order to reach the root of
the tongue of land before the attacking force could emerge into the
plain of Loo.

This tongue, which was some four hundred yards in depth, even at its
root or widest part was not more than six hundred and fifty paces
across, while at its tip it scarcely measured ninety. The Greys, who,
in passing down the side of the hill and on to the tip of the tongue,
had formed into a column, on reaching the spot where it broadened out
again, reassumed their triple-line formation, and halted dead.

Then we--that is, the Buffaloes--moved down the tip of the tongue and
took our stand in reserve, about one hundred yards behind the last
line of the Greys, and on slightly higher ground. Meanwhile we had
leisure to observe Twala's entire force, which evidently had been
reinforced since the morning attack, and could not now,
notwithstanding their losses, number less than forty thousand, moving
swiftly up towards us. But as they drew near the root of the tongue
they hesitated, having discovered that only one regiment could advance
into the gorge at a time, and that there, some seventy yards from the
mouth of it, unassailable except in front, on account of the high
walls of boulder-strewn ground on each side, stood the famous regiment
of Greys, the pride and glory of the Kukuana army, ready to hold the
way against their power as the three Romans once held the bridge
against thousands.

They hesitated, and finally stopped their advance; there was no
eagerness to cross spears with these three grim ranks of warriors who
stood so firm and ready. Presently, however, a tall general, wearing
the customary head-dress of nodding ostrich plumes, appeared, attended
by a group of chiefs and orderlies, being, I thought, none other than
Twala himself. He gave an order, and the first regiment, raising a
shout, charged up towards the Greys, who remained perfectly still and
silent till the attacking troops were within forty yards, and a volley
of /tollas/, or throwing-knives, came rattling among their ranks.

Then suddenly with a bound and a roar, they sprang forward with
uplifted spears, and the regiment met in deadly strife. Next second
the roll of the meeting shields came to our ears like the sound of
thunder, and the plain seemed to be alive with flashes of light
reflected from the shimmering spears. To and fro swung the surging
mass of struggling, stabbing humanity, but not for long. Suddenly the
attacking lines began to grow thinner, and then with a slow, long
heave the Greys passed over them, just as a great wave heaves up its
bulk and passes over a sunken ridge. It was done; that regiment was
completely destroyed, but the Greys had but two lines left now; a
third of their number were dead.

Closing up shoulder to shoulder, once more they halted in silence and
awaited attack; and I was rejoiced to catch sight of Sir Henry's
yellow beard as he moved to and fro arranging the ranks. So he was yet
alive!

Meanwhile we moved on to the ground of the encounter, which was
cumbered by about four thousand prostrate human beings, dead, dying,
and wounded, and literally stained red with blood. Ignosi issued an
order, which was rapidly passed down the ranks, to the effect that
none of the enemy's wounded were to be killed, and so far as we could
see this command was scrupulously carried out. It would have been a
shocking sight, if we had found time to think of such things.

But now a second regiment, distinguished by white plumes, kilts, and
shields, was moving to the attack of the two thousand remaining Greys,
who stood waiting in the same ominous silence as before, till the foe
was within forty yards or so, when they hurled themselves with
irresistible force upon them. Again there came the awful roll of the
meeting shields, and as we watched the tragedy repeated itself.

But this time the issue was left longer in doubt; indeed, it seemed
for awhile almost impossible that the Greys should again prevail. The
attacking regiment, which was formed of young men, fought with the
utmost fury, and at first seemed by sheer weight to be driving the
veterans back. The slaughter was truly awful, hundreds falling every
minute; and from among the shouts of the warriors and the groans of
the dying, set to the music of clashing spears, came a continuous
hissing undertone of "/S'gee, s'gee/," the note of triumph of each
victor as he passed his assegai through and through the body of his
fallen foe.

But perfect discipline and steady and unchanging valour can do
wonders, and one veteran soldier is worth two young ones, as soon
became apparent in the present case. For just when we thought that it
was all over with the Greys, and were preparing to take their place so
soon as they made room by being destroyed, I heard Sir Henry's deep
voice ringing out through the din, and caught a glimpse of his
circling battle-axe as he waved it high above his plumes. Then came a
change; the Greys ceased to give; they stood still as a rock, against
which the furious waves of spearmen broke again and again, only to
recoil. Presently they began to move once more--forward this time; as
they had no firearms there was no smoke, so we could see it all.
Another minute and the onslaught grew fainter.

"Ah, these are /men/, indeed; they will conquer again," called out
Ignosi, who was grinding his teeth with excitement at my side. "See,
it is done!"

Suddenly, like puffs of smoke from the mouth of a cannon, the
attacking regiment broke away in flying groups, their white head-
dresses streaming behind them in the wind, and left their opponents
victors, indeed, but, alas! no more a regiment. Of the gallant triple
line, which forty minutes before had gone into action three thousand
strong, there remained at most some six hundred blood-spattered men;
the rest were under foot. And yet they cheered and waved their spears
in triumph, and then, instead of falling back upon us as we expected,
they ran forward, for a hundred yards or so, after the flying groups
of foemen, took possession of a rising knoll of ground, and, resuming
their triple formation, formed a threefold ring around its base. And
there, thanks be to Heaven, standing on the top of the mound for a
minute, I saw Sir Henry, apparently unharmed, and with him our old
friend Infadoos. Then Twala's regiments rolled down upon the doomed
band, and once more the battle closed in.

As those who read this history will probably long ago have gathered, I
am, to be honest, a bit of a coward, and certainly in no way given to
fighting, though somehow it has often been my lot to get into
unpleasant positions, and to be obliged to shed man's blood. But I
have always hated it, and kept my own blood as undiminished in
quantity as possible, sometimes by a judicious use of my heels. At
this moment, however, for the first time in my life, I felt my bosom
burn with martial ardour. Warlike fragments from the "Ingoldsby
Legends," together with numbers of sanguinary verses in the Old
Testament, sprang up in my brain like mushrooms in the dark; my blood,
which hitherto had been half-frozen with horror, went beating through
my veins, and there came upon me a savage desire to kill and spare
not. I glanced round at the serried ranks of warriors behind us, and
somehow, all in an instant, I began to wonder if my face looked like
theirs. There they stood, the hands twitching, the lips apart, the
fierce features instinct with the hungry lust of battle, and in the
eyes a look like the glare of a bloodhound when after long pursuit he
sights his quarry.

Only Ignosi's heart, to judge from his comparative self-possession,
seemed, to all appearances, to beat as calmly as ever beneath his
leopard-skin cloak, though even /he/ still ground his teeth. I could
bear it no longer.

"Are we to stand here till we put out roots, Umbopa--Ignosi, I mean--
while Twala swallows our brothers yonder?" I asked.

"Nay, Macumazahn," was the answer; "see, now is the ripe moment: let
us pluck it."

As he spoke a fresh regiment rushed past the ring upon the little
mound, and wheeling round, attacked it from the hither side.

Then, lifting his battle-axe, Ignosi gave the signal to advance, and,
screaming the wild Kukuana war-cry, the Buffaloes charged home with a
rush like the rush of the sea.

What followed immediately on this it is out of my power to tell. All I
can remember is an irregular yet ordered advance, that seemed to shake
the ground; a sudden change of front and forming up on the part of the
regiment against which the charge was directed; then an awful shock, a
dull roar of voices, and a continuous flashing of spears, seen through
a red mist of blood.

When my mind cleared I found myself standing inside the remnant of the
Greys near the top of the mound, and just behind no less a person than
Sir Henry himself. How I got there I had at the moment no idea, but
Sir Henry afterwards told me that I was borne up by the first furious
charge of the Buffaloes almost to his feet, and then left, as they in
turn were pressed back. Thereon he dashed out of the circle and
dragged me into shelter.

As for the fight that followed, who can describe it? Again and again
the multitudes surged against our momentarily lessening circle, and
again and again we beat them back.

 "The stubborn spearmen still made good
  The dark impenetrable wood,
  Each stepping where his comrade stood
    The instant that he fell,"

as someone or other beautifully says.

It was a splendid thing to see those brave battalions come on time
after time over the barriers of their dead, sometimes lifting corpses
before them to receive our spear-thrusts, only to leave their own
corpses to swell the rising piles. It was a gallant sight to see that
old warrior, Infadoos, as cool as though he were on parade, shouting
out orders, taunts, and even jests, to keep up the spirit of his few
remaining men, and then, as each charge rolled on, stepping forward to
wherever the fighting was thickest, to bear his share in its repulse.
And yet more gallant was the vision of Sir Henry, whose ostrich plumes
had been shorn off by a spear thrust, so that his long yellow hair
streamed out in the breeze behind him. There he stood, the great Dane,
for he was nothing else, his hands, his axe, and his armour all red
with blood, and none could live before his stroke. Time after time I
saw it sweeping down, as some great warrior ventured to give him
battle, and as he struck he shouted "/O-hoy! O-hoy!/" like his
Berserkir forefathers, and the blow went crashing through shield and
spear, through head-dress, hair, and skull, till at last none would of
their own will come near the great white "/umtagati/," the wizard, who
killed and failed not.

But suddenly there rose a cry of "/Twala, y' Twala/," and out of the
press sprang forward none other than the gigantic one-eyed king
himself, also armed with battle-axe and shield, and clad in chain
armour.

"Where art thou, Incubu, thou white man, who slewest Scragga my son--
see if thou canst slay me!" he shouted, and at the same time hurled a
/tolla/ straight at Sir Henry, who fortunately saw it coming, and
caught it on his shield, which it transfixed, remaining wedged in the
iron plate behind the hide.

Then, with a cry, Twala sprang forward straight at him, and with his
battle-axe struck him such a blow upon the shield that the mere force
and shock of it brought Sir Henry, strong man as he is, down upon his
knees.

But at this time the matter went no further, for that instant there
rose from the regiments pressing round us something like a shout of
dismay, and on looking up I saw the cause.

To the right and to the left the plain was alive with the plumes of
charging warriors. The outflanking squadrons had come to our relief.
The time could not have been better chosen. All Twala's army, as
Ignosi predicted would be the case, had fixed their attention on the
bloody struggle which was raging round the remnant of the Greys and
that of the Buffaloes, who were now carrying on a battle of their own
at a little distance, which two regiments had formed the chest of our
army. It was not until our horns were about to close upon them that
they had dreamed of their approach, for they believed these forces to
be hidden in reserve upon the crest of the moon-shaped hill. And now,
before they could even assume a proper formation for defence, the
outflanking /Impis/ had leapt, like greyhounds, on their flanks.

In five minutes the fate of the battle was decided. Taken on both
flanks, and dismayed at the awful slaughter inflicted upon them by the
Greys and Buffaloes, Twala's regiments broke into flight, and soon the
whole plain between us and Loo was scattered with groups of running
soldiers making good their retreat. As for the hosts that had so
recently surrounded us and the Buffaloes, they melted away as though
by magic, and presently we were left standing there like a rock from
which the sea has retreated. But what a sight it was! Around us the
dead and dying lay in heaped-up masses, and of the gallant Greys there
remained but ninety-five men upon their feet. More than three thousand
four hundred had fallen in this one regiment, most of them never to
rise again.

"Men," said Infadoos calmly, as between the intervals of binding a
wound on his arm he surveyed what remained to him of his corps, "ye
have kept up the reputation of your regiment, and this day's fighting
will be well spoken of by your children's children." Then he turned
round and shook Sir Henry Curtis by the hand. "Thou art a great
captain, Incubu," he said simply; "I have lived a long life among
warriors, and have known many a brave one, yet have I never seen a man
like unto thee."

At this moment the Buffaloes began to march past our position on the
road to Loo, and as they went a message was brought to us from Ignosi
requesting Infadoos, Sir Henry, and myself to join them. Accordingly,
orders having been issued to the remaining ninety men of the Greys to
employ themselves in collecting the wounded, we joined Ignosi, who
informed us that he was pressing on to Loo to complete the victory by
capturing Twala, if that should be possible. Before we had gone far,
suddenly we discovered the figure of Good sitting on an ant-heap about
one hundred paces from us. Close beside him was the body of a Kukuana.

"He must be wounded," said Sir Henry anxiously. As he made the remark,
an untoward thing happened. The dead body of the Kukuana soldier, or
rather what had appeared to be his dead body, suddenly sprang up,
knocked Good head over heels off the ant-heap, and began to spear him.
We rushed forward in terror, and as we drew near we saw the brawny
warrior making dig after dig at the prostrate Good, who at each prod
jerked all his limbs into the air. Seeing us coming, the Kukuana gave
one final and most vicious dig, and with a shout of "Take that,
wizard!" bolted away. Good did not move, and we concluded that our
poor comrade was done for. Sadly we came towards him, and were
astonished to find him pale and faint indeed, but with a serene smile
upon his face, and his eyeglass still fixed in his eye.

"Capital armour this," he murmured, on catching sight of our faces
bending over him. "How sold that beggar must have been," and then he
fainted. On examination we discovered that he had been seriously
wounded in the leg by a /tolla/ in the course of the pursuit, but that
the chain armour had prevented his last assailant's spear from doing
anything more than bruise him badly. It was a merciful escape. As
nothing could be done for him at the moment, he was placed on one of
the wicker shields used for the wounded, and carried along with us.

On arriving before the nearest gate of Loo we found one of our
regiments watching it in obedience to orders received from Ignosi. The
other regiments were in the same way guarding the different exits to
the town. The officer in command of this regiment saluted Ignosi as
king, and informed him that Twala's army had taken refuge in the town,
whither Twala himself had also escaped, but he thought that they were
thoroughly demoralised, and would surrender. Thereupon Ignosi, after
taking counsel with us, sent forward heralds to each gate ordering the
defenders to open, and promising on his royal word life and
forgiveness to every soldier who laid down his arms, but saying that
if they did not do so before nightfall he would certainly burn the
town and all within its gates. This message was not without its
effect. Half an hour later, amid the shouts and cheers of the
Buffaloes, the bridge was dropped across the fosse, and the gates upon
the further side were flung open.

Taking due precautions against treachery, we marched on into the town.
All along the roadways stood thousands of dejected warriors, their
heads drooping, and their shields and spears at their feet, who,
headed by their officers, saluted Ignosi as king as he passed. On we
marched, straight to Twala's kraal. When we reached the great space,
where a day or two previously we had seen the review and the witch
hunt, we found it deserted. No, not quite deserted, for there, on the
further side, in front of his hut, sat Twala himself, with but one
attendant--Gagool.

It was a melancholy sight to see him seated, his battle-axe and shield
by his side, his chin upon his mailed breast, with but one old crone
for companion, and notwithstanding his crimes and misdeeds, a pang of
compassion shot through me as I looked upon Twala thus "fallen from
his high estate." Not a soldier of all his armies, not a courtier out
of the hundreds who had cringed round him, not even a solitary wife,
remained to share his fate or halve the bitterness of his fall. Poor
savage! he was learning the lesson which Fate teaches to most of us
who live long enough, that the eyes of mankind are blind to the
discredited, and that he who is defenceless and fallen finds few
friends and little mercy. Nor, indeed, in this case did he deserve
any.

Filing through the kraal gate, we marched across the open space to
where the ex-king sat. When within about fifty yards of him the
regiment was halted, and accompanied only by a small guard we advanced
towards him, Gagool reviling us bitterly as we came. As we drew near,
Twala, for the first time, lifted his plumed head, and fixed his one
eye, which seemed to flash with suppressed fury almost as brightly as
the great diamond bound round his forehead, upon his successful
rival--Ignosi.

"Hail, O king!" he said, with bitter mockery; "thou who hast eaten of
my bread, and now by the aid of the white man's magic hast seduced my
regiments and defeated mine army, hail! What fate hast thou in store
for me, O king?"

"The fate thou gavest to my father, whose throne thou hast sat on
these many years!" was the stern answer.

"It is good. I will show thee how to die, that thou mayest remember it
against thine own time. See, the sun sinks in blood," and he pointed
with his battle-axe towards the setting orb; "it is well that my sun
should go down in its company. And now, O king! I am ready to die, but
I crave the boon of the Kukuana royal House[*] to die fighting. Thou
canst refuse it, or even those cowards who fled to-day will hold thee
shamed."

[*] It is a law amongst the Kukuanas that no man of the direct royal
    blood can be put to death, unless by his own consent, which is,
    however, never refused. He is allowed to choose a succession of
    antagonists, to be approved by the king, with whom he fights, till
    one of them kills him.--A.Q.

"It is granted. Choose--with whom wilt thou fight? Myself I cannot
fight with thee, for the king fights not except in war."

Twala's sombre eye ran up and down our ranks, and I felt, as for a
moment it rested on myself, that the position had developed a new
horror. What if he chose to begin by fighting /me/? What chance should
I have against a desperate savage six feet five high, and broad in
proportion? I might as well commit suicide at once. Hastily I made up
my mind to decline the combat, even if I were hooted out of
Kukuanaland as a consequence. It is, I think, better to be hooted than
to be quartered with a battle-axe.

Presently Twala spoke.

"Incubu, what sayest thou, shall we end what we began to-day, or shall
I call thee coward, white--even to the liver?"

"Nay," interposed Ignosi hastily; "thou shalt not fight with Incubu."

"Not if he is afraid," said Twala.

Unfortunately Sir Henry understood this remark, and the blood flamed
up into his cheeks.

"I will fight him," he said; "he shall see if I am afraid."

"For Heaven's sake," I entreated, "don't risk your life against that
of a desperate man. Anybody who saw you to-day will know that you are
brave enough."

"I will fight him," was the sullen answer. "No living man shall call
me a coward. I am ready now!" and he stepped forward and lifted his
axe.

I wrung my hands over this absurd piece of Quixotism; but if he was
determined on this deed, of course I could not stop him.

"Fight not, my white brother," said Ignosi, laying his hand
affectionately on Sir Henry's arm; "thou hast fought enough, and if
aught befell thee at his hands it would cut my heart in twain."

"I will fight, Ignosi," was Sir Henry's answer.

"It is well, Incubu; thou art a brave man. It will be a good fray.
Behold, Twala, the Elephant is ready for thee."

The ex-king laughed savagely, and stepping forward faced Curtis. For a
moment they stood thus, and the light of the sinking sun caught their
stalwart frames and clothed them both in fire. They were a well-
matched pair.

Then they began to circle round each other, their battle-axes raised.

Suddenly Sir Henry sprang forward and struck a fearful blow at Twala,
who stepped to one side. So heavy was the stroke that the striker half
overbalanced himself, a circumstance of which his antagonist took a
prompt advantage. Circling his massive battle-axe round his head, he
brought it down with tremendous force. My heart jumped into my mouth;
I thought that the affair was already finished. But no; with a quick
upward movement of the left arm Sir Henry interposed his shield
between himself and the axe, with the result that its outer edge was
shorn away, the axe falling on his left shoulder, but not heavily
enough to do any serious damage. In another moment Sir Henry got in a
second blow, which was also received by Twala upon his shield.

Then followed blow upon blow, that were, in turn, either received upon
the shields or avoided. The excitement grew intense; the regiment
which was watching the encounter forgot its discipline, and, drawing
near, shouted and groaned at every stroke. Just at this time, too,
Good, who had been laid upon the ground by me, recovered from his
faint, and, sitting up, perceived what was going on. In an instant he
was up, and catching hold of my arm, hopped about from place to place
on one leg, dragging me after him, and yelling encouragements to Sir
Henry--

"Go it, old fellow!" he hallooed. "That was a good one! Give it him
amidships," and so on.

Presently Sir Henry, having caught a fresh stroke upon his shield, hit
out with all his force. The blow cut through Twala's shield and
through the tough chain armour behind it, gashing him in the shoulder.
With a yell of pain and fury Twala returned the blow with interest,
and, such was his strength, shore right through the rhinoceros' horn
handle of his antagonists battle-axe, strengthened as it was with
bands of steel, wounding Curtis in the face.

A cry of dismay rose from the Buffaloes as our hero's broad axe-head
fell to the ground; and Twala, again raising his weapon, flew at him
with a shout. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again it was to see
Sir Henry's shield lying on the ground, and Sir Henry himself with his
great arms twined round Twala's middle. To and fro they swung, hugging
each other like bears, straining with all their mighty muscles for
dear life, and dearer honour. With a supreme effort Twala swung the
Englishman clean off his feet, and down they came together, rolling
over and over on the lime paving, Twala striking out at Curtis' head
with the battle-axe, and Sir Henry trying to drive the /tolla/ he had
drawn from his belt through Twala's armour.

It was a mighty struggle, and an awful thing to see.

"Get his axe!" yelled Good; and perhaps our champion heard him.

At any rate, dropping the /tolla/, he snatched at the axe, which was
fastened to Twala's wrist by a strip of buffalo hide, and still
rolling over and over, they fought for it like wild cats, drawing
their breath in heavy gasps. Suddenly the hide string burst, and then,
with a great effort, Sir Henry freed himself, the weapon remaining in
his hand. Another second and he was upon his feet, the red blood
streaming from the wound in his face, and so was Twala. Drawing the
heavy /tolla/ from his belt, he reeled straight at Curtis and struck
him in the breast. The stab came home true and strong, but whoever it
was who made that chain armour, he understood his art, for it
withstood the steel. Again Twala struck out with a savage yell, and
again the sharp knife rebounded, and Sir Henry went staggering back.
Once more Twala came on, and as he came our great Englishman gathered
himself together, and swinging the big axe round his head with both
hands, hit at him with all his force.

There was a shriek of excitement from a thousand throats, and, behold!
Twala's head seemed to spring from his shoulders: then it fell and
came rolling and bounding along the ground towards Ignosi, stopping
just as his feet. For a second the corpse stood upright; then with a
dull crash it came to the earth, and the gold torque from its neck
rolled away across the pavement. As it did so Sir Henry, overpowered
by faintness and loss of blood, fell heavily across the body of the
dead king.

In a second he was lifted up, and eager hands were pouring water on
his face. Another minute, and the grey eyes opened wide.

He was not dead.

Then I, just as the sun sank, stepping to where Twala's head lay in
the dust, unloosed the diamond from the dead brows, and handed it to
Ignosi.

"Take it," I said, "lawful king of the Kukuanas--king by birth and
victory."

Ignosi bound the diadem upon his brows. Then advancing, he placed his
foot upon the broad chest of his headless foe and broke out into a
chant, or rather a paean of triumph, so beautiful, and yet so utterly
savage, that I despair of being able to give an adequate version of
his words. Once I heard a scholar with a fine voice read aloud from
the Greek poet Homer, and I remember that the sound of the rolling
lines seemed to make my blood stand still. Ignosi's chant, uttered as
it was in a language as beautiful and sonorous as the old Greek,
produced exactly the same effect on me, although I was exhausted with
toil and many emotions.

"Now," he began, "now our rebellion is swallowed up in victory, and
our evil-doing is justified by strength.

"In the morning the oppressors arose and stretched themselves; they
bound on their harness and made them ready to war.

"They rose up and tossed their spears: the soldiers called to the
captains, 'Come, lead us'--and the captains cried to the king, 'Direct
thou the battle.'

"They laughed in their pride, twenty thousand men, and yet a twenty
thousand.

"Their plumes covered the valleys as the plumes of a bird cover her
nest; they shook their shields and shouted, yea, they shook their
shields in the sunlight; they lusted for battle and were glad.

"They came up against me; their strong ones ran swiftly to slay me;
they cried, 'Ha! ha! he is as one already dead.'



"Then breathed I on them, and my breath was as the breath of a wind,
and lo! they were not.

"My lightnings pierced them; I licked up their strength with the
lightning of my spears; I shook them to the ground with the thunder of
my shoutings.

"They broke--they scattered--they were gone as the mists of the
morning.

"They are food for the kites and the foxes, and the place of battle is
fat with their blood.



"Where are the mighty ones who rose up in the morning?

"Where are the proud ones who tossed their spears and cried, 'He is as
a man already dead'?

"They bow their heads, but not in sleep; they are stretched out, but
not in sleep.

"They are forgotten; they have gone into the blackness; they dwell in
the dead moons; yea, others shall lead away their wives, and their
children shall remember them no more.



"And I--! the king--like an eagle I have found my eyrie.

"Behold! far have I flown in the night season, yet have I returned to
my young at the daybreak.

"Shelter ye under the shadow of my wings, O people, and I will comfort
you, and ye shall not be dismayed.

"Now is the good time, the time of spoil.

"Mine are the cattle on the mountains, mine are the virgins in the
kraals.

"The winter is overpast with storms, the summer is come with flowers.

"Now Evil shall cover up her face, now Mercy and Gladness shall dwell
in the land.

"Rejoice, rejoice, my people!

"Let all the stars rejoice in that this tyranny is trodden down, in
that I am the king."



Ignosi ceased his song, and out of the gathering gloom came back the
deep reply--

"/Thou art the king!/"



Thus was my prophecy to the herald fulfilled, and within the forty-
eight hours Twala's headless corpse was stiffening at Twala's gate.



CHAPTER XV

GOOD FALLS SICK

After the fight was ended, Sir Henry and Good were carried into
Twala's hut, where I joined them. They were both utterly exhausted by
exertion and loss of blood, and, indeed, my own condition was little
better. I am very wiry, and can stand more fatigue than most men,
probably on account of my light weight and long training; but that
night I was quite done up, and, as is always the case with me when
exhausted, that old wound which the lion gave me began to pain. Also
my head was aching violently from the blow I had received in the
morning, when I was knocked senseless. Altogether, a more miserable
trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to
discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were
exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being
stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were
that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning.

Somehow, with the assistance of the beautiful Foulata, who, since we
had been the means of saving her life, had constituted herself our
handmaiden, and especially Good's, we managed to get off the chain
shirts, which had certainly saved the lives of two of us that day. As
I expected, we found that the flesh underneath was terribly contused,
for though the steel links had kept the weapons from entering, they
had not prevented them from bruising. Both Sir Henry and Good were a
mass of contusions, and I was by no means free. As a remedy Foulata
brought us some pounded green leaves, with an aromatic odour, which,
when applied as a plaster, gave us considerable relief.

But though the bruises were painful, they did not give us such anxiety
as Sir Henry's and Good's wounds. Good had a hole right through the
fleshy part of his "beautiful white leg," from which he had lost a
great deal of blood; and Sir Henry, with other hurts, had a deep cut
over the jaw, inflicted by Twala's battle-axe. Luckily Good is a very
decent surgeon, and so soon as his small box of medicines was
forthcoming, having thoroughly cleansed the wounds, he managed to
stitch up first Sir Henry's and then his own pretty satisfactorily,
considering the imperfect light given by the primitive Kukuana lamp in
the hut. Afterwards he plentifully smeared the injured places with
some antiseptic ointment, of which there was a pot in the little box,
and we covered them with the remains of a pocket-handkerchief which we
possessed.

Meanwhile Foulata had prepared us some strong broth, for we were too
weary to eat. This we swallowed, and then threw ourselves down on the
piles of magnificent karrosses, or fur rugs, which were scattered
about the dead king's great hut. By a very strange instance of the
irony of fate, it was on Twala's own couch, and wrapped in Twala's own
particular karross, that Sir Henry, the man who had slain him, slept
that night.

I say slept; but after that day's work, sleep was indeed difficult. To
begin with, in very truth the air was full

 "Of farewells to the dying
  And mournings for the dead."

From every direction came the sound of the wailing of women whose
husbands, sons, and brothers had perished in the battle. No wonder
that they wailed, for over twelve thousand men, or nearly a fifth of
the Kukuana army, had been destroyed in that awful struggle. It was
heart-rending to lie and listen to their cries for those who never
would return; and it made me understand the full horror of the work
done that day to further man's ambition. Towards midnight, however,
the ceaseless crying of the women grew less frequent, till at length
the silence was only broken at intervals of a few minutes by a long
piercing howl that came from a hut in our immediate rear, which, as I
afterwards discovered, proceeded from Gagool "keening" over the dead
king Twala.

After that I got a little fitful sleep, only to wake from time to time
with a start, thinking that I was once more an actor in the terrible
events of the last twenty-four hours. Now I seemed to see that warrior
whom my hand had sent to his last account charging at me on the
mountain-top; now I was once more in that glorious ring of Greys,
which made its immortal stand against all Twala's regiments upon the
little mound; and now again I saw Twala's plumed and gory head roll
past my feet with gnashing teeth and glaring eye.

At last, somehow or other, the night passed away; but when dawn broke
I found that my companions had slept no better than myself. Good,
indeed, was in a high fever, and very soon afterwards began to grow
light-headed, and also, to my alarm, to spit blood, the result, no
doubt, of some internal injury, inflicted during the desperate efforts
made by the Kukuana warrior on the previous day to force his big spear
through the chain armour. Sir Henry, however, seemed pretty fresh,
notwithstanding his wound on the face, which made eating difficult and
laughter an impossibility, though he was so sore and stiff that he
could scarcely stir.

About eight o'clock we had a visit from Infadoos, who appeared but
little the worse--tough old warrior that he was--for his exertions in
the battle, although he informed us that he had been up all night. He
was delighted to see us, but much grieved at Good's condition, and
shook our hands cordially. I noticed, however, that he addressed Sir
Henry with a kind of reverence, as though he were something more than
man; and, indeed, as we afterwards found out, the great Englishman was
looked on throughout Kukuanaland as a supernatural being. No man, the
soldiers said, could have fought as he fought or, at the end of a day
of such toil and bloodshed, could have slain Twala, who, in addition
to being the king, was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the
country, in single combat, shearing through his bull-neck at a stroke.
Indeed, that stroke became proverbial in Kukuanaland, and any
extraordinary blow or feat of strength was henceforth known as
"Incubu's blow."

Infadoos told us also that all Twala's regiments had submitted to
Ignosi, and that like submissions were beginning to arrive from chiefs
in the outlying country. Twala's death at the hands of Sir Henry had
put an end to all further chance of disturbance; for Scragga had been
his only legitimate son, so there was no rival claimant to the throne
left alive.

I remarked that Ignosi had swum to power through blood. The old chief
shrugged his shoulders. "Yes," he answered; "but the Kukuana people
can only be kept cool by letting their blood flow sometimes. Many are
killed, indeed, but the women are left, and others must soon grow up
to take the places of the fallen. After this the land would be quiet
for a while."

Afterwards, in the course of the morning, we had a short visit from
Ignosi, on whose brows the royal diadem was now bound. As I
contemplated him advancing with kingly dignity, an obsequious guard
following his steps, I could not help recalling to my mind the tall
Zulu who had presented himself to us at Durban some few months back,
asking to be taken into our service, and reflecting on the strange
revolutions of the wheel of fortune.

"Hail, O king!" I said, rising.

"Yes, Macumazahn. King at last, by the might of your three right
hands," was the ready answer.

All was, he said, going well; and he hoped to arrange a great feast in
two weeks' time in order to show himself to the people.

I asked him what he had settled to do with Gagool.

"She is the evil genius of the land," he answered, "and I shall kill
her, and all the witch doctors with her! She has lived so long that
none can remember when she was not very old, and she it is who has
always trained the witch-hunters, and made the land wicked in the
sight of the heavens above."

"Yet she knows much," I replied; "it is easier to destroy knowledge,
Ignosi, than to gather it."

"That is so," he said thoughtfully. "She, and she only, knows the
secret of the 'Three Witches,' yonder, whither the great road runs,
where the kings are buried, and the Silent Ones sit."

"Yes, and the diamonds are. Forget not thy promise, Ignosi; thou must
lead us to the mines, even if thou hast to spare Gagool alive to show
the way."

"I will not forget, Macumazahn, and I will think on what thou sayest."

After Ignosi's visit I went to see Good, and found him quite
delirious. The fever set up by his wound seemed to have taken a firm
hold of his system, and to be complicated with an internal injury. For
four or five days his condition was most critical; indeed, I believe
firmly that had it not been for Foulata's indefatigable nursing he
must have died.

Women are women, all the world over, whatever their colour. Yet
somehow it seemed curious to watch this dusky beauty bending night and
day over the fevered man's couch, and performing all the merciful
errands of a sick-room swiftly, gently, and with as fine an instinct
as that of a trained hospital nurse. For the first night or two I
tried to help her, and so did Sir Henry as soon as his stiffness
allowed him to move, but Foulata bore our interference with
impatience, and finally insisted upon our leaving him to her, saying
that our movements made him restless, which I think was true. Day and
night she watched him and tended him, giving him his only medicine, a
native cooling drink made of milk, in which was infused juice from the
bulb of a species of tulip, and keeping the flies from settling on
him. I can see the whole picture now as it appeared night after night
by the light of our primitive lamp; Good tossing to and fro, his
features emaciated, his eyes shining large and luminous, and jabbering
nonsense by the yard; and seated on the ground by his side, her back
resting against the wall of the hut, the soft-eyed, shapely Kukuana
beauty, her face, weary as it was with her long vigil, animated by a
look of infinite compassion--or was it something more than compassion?

For two days we thought that he must die, and crept about with heavy
hearts.

Only Foulata would not believe it.

"He will live," she said.

For three hundred yards or more around Twala's chief hut, where the
sufferer lay, there was silence; for by the king's order all who lived
in the habitations behind it, except Sir Henry and myself, had been
removed, lest any noise should come to the sick man's ears. One night,
it was the fifth of Good's illness, as was my habit, I went across to
see how he was doing before turning in for a few hours.

I entered the hut carefully. The lamp placed upon the floor showed the
figure of Good tossing no more, but lying quite still.

So it had come at last! In the bitterness of my heart I gave something
like a sob.

"Hush--h--h!" came from the patch of dark shadow behind Good's head.

Then, creeping closer, I saw that he was not dead, but sleeping
soundly, with Foulata's taper fingers clasped tightly in his poor
white hand. The crisis had passed, and he would live. He slept like
that for eighteen hors; and I scarcely like to say it, for fear I
should not be believed, but during the entire period did this devoted
girl sit by him, fearing that if she moved and drew away her hand it
would wake him. What she must have suffered from cramp and weariness,
to say nothing of want of food, nobody will ever know; but it is the
fact that, when at last he woke, she had to be carried away--her limbs
were so stiff that she could not move them.


After the turn had once been taken, Good's recovery was rapid and
complete. It was not till he was nearly well that Sir Henry told him
of all he owed to Foulata; and when he came to the story of how she
sat by his side for eighteen hours, fearing lest by moving she should
wake him, the honest sailor's eyes filled with tears. He turned and
went straight to the hut where Foulata was preparing the mid-day meal,
for we were back in our old quarters now, taking me with him to
interpret in case he could not make his meaning clear to her, though I
am bound to say that she understood him marvellously as a rule,
considering how extremely limited was his foreign vocabulary.

"Tell her," said Good, "that I owe her my life, and that I will never
forget her kindness to my dying day."

I interpreted, and under her dark skin she actually seemed to blush.

Turning to him with one of those swift and graceful motions that in
her always reminded me of the flight of a wild bird, Foulata answered
softly, glancing at him with her large brown eyes--

"Nay, my lord; my lord forgets! Did he not save /my/ life, and am I
not my lord's handmaiden?"

It will be observed that the young lady appeared entirely to have
forgotten the share which Sir Henry and myself had taken in her
preservation from Twala's clutches. But that is the way of women! I
remember my dear wife was just the same. Well, I retired from that
little interview sad at heart. I did not like Miss Foulata's soft
glances, for I knew the fatal amorous propensities of sailors in
general, and of Good in particular.

There are two things in the world, as I have found out, which cannot
be prevented: you cannot keep a Zulu from fighting, or a sailor from
falling in love upon the slightest provocation!

It was a few days after this last occurrence that Ignosi held his
great "indaba," or council, and was formally recognised as king by the
"indunas," or head men, of Kukuanaland. The spectacle was a most
imposing one, including as it did a grand review of troops. On this
day the remaining fragments of the Greys were formally paraded, and in
the face of the army thanked for their splendid conduct in the battle.
To each man the king made a large present of cattle, promoting them
one and all to the rank of officers in the new corps of Greys which
was in process of formation. An order was also promulgated throughout
the length and breadth of Kukuanaland that, whilst we honoured the
country by our presence, we three were to be greeted with the royal
salute, and to be treated with the same ceremony and respect that was
by custom accorded to the king. Also the power of life and death was
publicly conferred upon us. Ignosi, too, in the presence of his
people, reaffirmed the promises which he had made, to the effect that
no man's blood should be shed without trial, and that witch-hunting
should cease in the land.

When the ceremony was over we waited upon Ignosi, and informed him
that we were now anxious to investigate the mystery of the mines to
which Solomon's Road ran, asking him if he had discovered anything
about them.

"My friends," he answered, "I have discovered this. It is there that
the three great figures sit, who here are called the 'Silent Ones,'
and to whom Twala would have offered the girl Foulata as a sacrifice.
It is there, too, in a great cave deep in the mountain, that the kings
of the land are buried; there ye shall find Twala's body, sitting with
those who went before him. There, also, is a deep pit, which, at some
time, long-dead men dug out, mayhap for the stones ye speak of, such
as I have heard men in Natal tell of at Kimberley. There, too, in the
Place of Death is a secret chamber, known to none but the king and
Gagool. But Twala, who knew it, is dead, and I know it not, nor know I
what is in it. Yet there is a legend in the land that once, many
generations gone, a white man crossed the mountains, and was led by a
woman to the secret chamber and shown the wealth hidden in it. But
before he could take it she betrayed him, and he was driven by the
king of that day back to the mountains, and since then no man has
entered the place."

"The story is surely true, Ignosi, for on the mountains we found the
white man," I said.

"Yes, we found him. And now I have promised you that if ye can come to
that chamber, and the stones are there--"

"The gem upon thy forehead proves that they are there," I put in,
pointing to the great diamond I had taken from Twala's dead brows.

"Mayhap; if they are there," he said, "ye shall have as many as ye can
take hence--if indeed ye would leave me, my brothers."

"First we must find the chamber," said I.

"There is but one who can show it to thee--Gagool."

"And if she will not?"

"Then she must die," said Ignosi sternly. "I have saved her alive but
for this. Stay, she shall choose," and calling to a messenger he
ordered Gagool to be brought before him.

In a few minutes she came, hurried along by two guards, whom she was
cursing as she walked.

"Leave her," said the king to the guards.

So soon as their support was withdrawn, the withered old bundle--for
she looked more like a bundle than anything else, out of which her two
bright and wicked eyes gleamed like those of a snake--sank in a heap
on to the floor.

"What will ye with me, Ignosi?" she piped. "Ye dare not touch me. If
ye touch me I will slay you as ye sit. Beware of my magic."

"Thy magic could not save Twala, old she-wolf, and it cannot hurt me,"
was the answer. "Listen; I will this of thee, that thou reveal to us
the chamber where are the shining stones."

"Ha! ha!" she piped, "none know its secret but I, and I will never
tell thee. The white devils shall go hence empty-handed."

"Thou shalt tell me. I will make thee tell me."

"How, O king? Thou art great, but can thy power wring the truth from a
woman?"

"It is difficult, yet will I do so."

"How, O king?"

"Nay, thus; if thou tellest not thou shalt slowly die."

"Die!" she shrieked in terror and fury; "ye dare not touch me--man, ye
know not who I am. How old think ye am I? I knew your fathers, and
your fathers' fathers' fathers. When the country was young I was here;
when the country grows old I shall still be here. I cannot die unless
I be killed by chance, for none dare slay me."

"Yet will I slay thee. See, Gagool, mother of evil, thou art so old
that thou canst no longer love thy life. What can life be to such a
hag as thou, who hast no shape, nor form, nor hair, nor teeth--hast
naught, save wickedness and evil eyes? It will be mercy to make an end
of thee, Gagool."

"Thou fool," shrieked the old fiend, "thou accursed fool, deemest thou
that life is sweet only to the young? It is not so, and naught thou
knowest of the heart of man to think it. To the young, indeed, death
is sometimes welcome, for the young can feel. They love and suffer,
and it wrings them to see their beloved pass to the land of shadows.
But the old feel not, they love not, and, /ha! ha!/ they laugh to see
another go out into the dark; /ha! ha!/ they laugh to see the evil
that is done under the stars. All they love is life, the warm, warm
sun, and the sweet, sweet air. They are afraid of the cold, afraid of
the cold and the dark, /ha! ha! ha!/" and the old hag writhed in
ghastly merriment on the ground.

"Cease thine evil talk and answer me," said Ignosi angrily. "Wilt thou
show the place where the stones are, or wilt thou not? If thou wilt
not thou diest, even now," and he seized a spear and held it over her.

"I will not show it; thou darest not kill me, darest not! He who slays
me will be accursed for ever."

Slowly Ignosi brought down the spear till it pricked the prostrate
heap of rags.

With a wild yell Gagool sprang to her feet, then fell again and rolled
upon the floor.

"Nay, I will show thee. Only let me live, let me sit in the sun and
have a bit of meat to suck, and I will show thee."

"It is well. I thought that I should find a way to reason with thee.
To-morrow shalt thou go with Infadoos and my white brothers to the
place, and beware how thou failest, for if thou showest it not, then
thou shalt slowly die. I have spoken."

"I will not fail, Ignosi. I always keep my word--/ha! ha! ha!/ Once
before a woman showed the chamber to a white man, and behold! evil
befell him," and here her wicked eyes glinted. "Her name was Gagool
also. Perchance I was that woman."

"Thou liest," I said, "that was ten generations gone."

"Mayhap, mayhap; when one lives long one forgets. Perhaps it was my
mother's mother who told me; surely her name was Gagool also. But
mark, ye will find in the place where the bright things are a bag of
hide full of stones. The man filled that bag, but he never took it
away. Evil befell him, I say, evil befell him! Perhaps it was my
mother's mother who told me. It will be a merry journey--we can see
the bodies of those who died in the battle as we go. Their eyes will
be gone by now, and their ribs will be hollow. /Ha! ha! ha!/"



CHAPTER XVI

THE PLACE OF DEATH

It was already dark on the third day after the scene described in the
previous chapter when we camped in some huts at the foot of the "Three
Witches," as the triangle of mountains is called to which Solomon's
Great Road runs. Our party consisted of our three selves and Foulata,
who waited on us--especially on Good--Infadoos, Gagool, who was borne
along in a litter, inside which she could be heard muttering and
cursing all day long, and a party of guards and attendants. The
mountains, or rather the three peaks of the mountain, for the mass was
evidently the result of a solitary upheaval, were, as I have said, in
the form of a triangle, of which the base was towards us, one peak
being on our right, one on our left, and one straight in front of us.
Never shall I forget the sight afforded by those three towering peaks
in the early sunlight of the following morning. High, high above us,
up into the blue air, soared their twisted snow-wreaths. Beneath the
snow-line the peaks were purple with heaths, and so were the wild
moors that ran up the slopes towards them. Straight before us the
white ribbon of Solomon's Great Road stretched away uphill to the foot
of the centre peak, about five miles from us, and there stopped. It
was its terminus.

I had better leave the feelings of intense excitement with which we
set out on our march that morning to the imagination of those who read
this history. At last we were drawing near to the wonderful mines that
had been the cause of the miserable death of the old Portuguese Dom
three centuries ago, of my poor friend, his ill-starred descendant,
and also, as we feared, of George Curtis, Sir Henry's brother. Were we
destined, after all that we had gone through, to fare any better? Evil
befell them, as that old fiend Gagool said; would it also befall us?
Somehow, as we were marching up that last stretch of beautiful road, I
could not help feeling a little superstitious about the matter, and so
I think did Good and Sir Henry.

For an hour and a half or more we tramped on up the heather-fringed
way, going so fast in our excitement that the bearers of Gagool's
hammock could scarcely keep pace with us, and its occupant piped out
to us to stop.

"Walk more slowly, white men," she said, projecting her hideous
shrivelled countenance between the grass curtains, and fixing her
gleaming eyes upon us; "why will ye run to meet the evil that shall
befall you, ye seekers after treasure?" and she laughed that horrible
laugh which always sent a cold shiver down my back, and for a while
quite took the enthusiasm out of us.

However, on we went, till we saw before us, and between ourselves and
the peak, a vast circular hole with sloping sides, three hundred feet
or more in depth, and quite half a mile round.

"Can't you guess what this is?" I said to Sir Henry and Good, who were
staring in astonishment at the awful pit before us.

They shook their heads.

"Then it is clear that you have never seen the diamond diggings at
Kimberley. You may depend on it that this is Solomon's Diamond Mine.
Look there," I said, pointing to the strata of stiff blue clay which
were yet to be seen among the grass and bushes that clothed the sides
of the pit, "the formation is the same. I'll be bound that if we went
down there we should find 'pipes' of soapy brecciated rock. Look,
too," and I pointed to a series of worn flat slabs of stone that were
placed on a gentle slope below the level of a watercourse which in
some past age had been cut out of the solid rock; "if those are not
tables once used to wash the 'stuff,' I'm a Dutchman."

At the edge of this vast hole, which was none other than the pit
marked on the old Dom's map, the Great Road branched into two and
circumvented it. In many places, by the way, this surrounding road was
built entirely out of blocks of stone, apparently with the object of
supporting the edges of the pit and preventing falls of reef. Along
this path we pressed, driven by curiosity to see what were the three
towering objects which we could discern from the hither side of the
great gulf. As we drew near we perceived that they were Colossi of
some sort or another, and rightly conjectured that before us sat the
three "Silent Ones" that are held in such awe by the Kukuana people.
But it was not until we were quite close to them that we recognised
the full majesty of these "Silent Ones."

There, upon huge pedestals of dark rock, sculptured with rude emblems
of the Phallic worship, separated from each other by a distance of
forty paces, and looking down the road which crossed some sixty miles
of plain to Loo, were three colossal seated forms--two male and one
female--each measuring about thirty feet from the crown of its head to
the pedestal.

The female form, which was nude, was of great though severe beauty,
but unfortunately the features had been injured by centuries of
exposure to the weather. Rising from either side of her head were the
points of a crescent. The two male Colossi, on the contrary, were
draped, and presented a terrifying cast of features, especially the
one to our right, which had the face of a devil. That to our left was
serene in countenance, but the calm upon it seemed dreadful. It was
the calm of that inhuman cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, which the
ancients attributed to beings potent for good, who could yet watch the
sufferings of humanity, if not without rejoicing, at least without
sorrow. These three statues form a most awe-inspiring trinity, as they
sit there in their solitude, and gaze out across the plain for ever.

Contemplating these "Silent Ones," as the Kukuanas call them, an
intense curiosity again seized us to know whose were the hands which
had shaped them, who it was that had dug the pit and made the road.
Whilst I was gazing and wondering, suddenly it occurred to me--being
familiar with the Old Testament--that Solomon went astray after
strange gods, the names of three of whom I remembered--"Ashtoreth, the
goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and
Milcom, the god of the children of Ammon"--and I suggested to my
companions that the figures before us might represent these false and
exploded divinities.

"Hum," said Sir Henry, who is a scholar, having taken a high degree in
classics at college, "there may be something in that; Ashtoreth of the
Hebrews was the Astarte of the Phoenicians, who were the great traders
of Solomon's time. Astarte, who afterwards became the Aphrodite of the
Greeks, was represented with horns like the half-moon, and there on
the brow of the female figure are distinct horns. Perhaps these
Colossi were designed by some Phoenician official who managed the
mines. Who can say?"[*]

[*] Compare Milton, "Paradise Lost," Book i.:--

                      "With these in troop
    Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called
    Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns;
    To whose bright image nightly by the moon
    Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs."

Before we had finished examining these extraordinary relics of remote
antiquity, Infadoos came up, and having saluted the "Silent Ones" by
lifting his spear, asked us if we intended entering the "Place of
Death" at once, or if we would wait till after we had taken food at
mid-day. If we were ready to go at once, Gagool had announced her
willingness to guide us. As it was not later than eleven o'clock--
driven to it by a burning curiosity--we announced our intention of
proceeding instantly, and I suggested that, in case we should be
detained in the cave, we should take some food with us. Accordingly
Gagool's litter was brought up, and that lady herself assisted out of
it. Meanwhile Foulata, at my request, stored some "biltong," or dried
game-flesh, together with a couple of gourds of water, in a reed
basket with a hinged cover. Straight in front of us, at a distance of
some fifty paces from the backs of the Colossi, rose a sheer wall of
rock, eighty feet or more in height, that gradually sloped upwards
till it formed the base of the lofty snow-wreathed peak, which soared
into the air three thousand feet above us. As soon as she was clear of
her hammock, Gagool cast one evil grin upon us, and then, leaning on a
stick, hobbled off towards the face of this wall. We followed her till
we came to a narrow portal solidly arched that looked like the opening
of a gallery of a mine.

Here Gagool was waiting for us, still with that evil grin upon her
horrid face.

"Now, white men from the Stars," she piped; "great warriors, Incubu,
Bougwan, and Macumazahn the wise, are ye ready? Behold, I am here to
do the bidding of my lord the king, and to show you the store of
bright stones. /Ha! ha! ha!/"

"We are ready," I said.

"Good, good! Make strong your hearts to bear what ye shall see. Comest
thou too, Infadoos, thou who didst betray thy master?"

Infadoos frowned as he answered--

"Nay, I come not; it is not for me to enter there. But thou, Gagool,
curb thy tongue, and beware how thou dealest with my lords. At thy
hands will I require them, and if a hair of them be hurt, Gagool,
be'st thou fifty times a witch, thou shalt die. Hearest thou?"

"I hear Infadoos; I know thee, thou didst ever love big words; when
thou wast a babe I remember thou didst threaten thine own mother. That
was but the other day. But, fear not, fear not, I live only to do the
bidding of the king. I have done the bidding of many kings, Infadoos,
till in the end they did mine. /Ha! ha!/ I go to look upon their faces
once more, and Twala's also! Come on, come on, here is the lamp," and
she drew a large gourd full of oil, and fitted with a rush wick, from
under her fur cloak.

"Art thou coming, Foulata?" asked Good in his villainous Kitchen
Kukuana, in which he had been improving himself under that young
lady's tuition.

"I fear, my lord," the girl answered timidly.

"Then give me the basket."

"Nay, my lord, whither thou goest there I go also."

"The deuce you will!" thought I to myself; "that may be rather awkward
if we ever get out of this."

Without further ado Gagool plunged into the passage, which was wide
enough to admit of two walking abreast, and quite dark. We followed
the sound of her voice as she piped to us to come on, in some fear and
trembling, which was not allayed by the flutter of a sudden rush of
wings.

"Hullo! what's that?" halloed Good; "somebody hit me in the face."

"Bats," said I; "on you go."

When, so far as we could judge, we had gone some fifty paces, we
perceived that the passage was growing faintly light. Another minute,
and we were in perhaps the most wonderful place that the eyes of
living man have beheld.

Let the reader picture to himself the hall of the vastest cathedral he
ever stood in, windowless indeed, but dimly lighted from above,
presumably by shafts connected with the outer air and driven in the
roof, which arched away a hundred feet above our heads, and he will
get some idea of the size of the enormous cave in which we found
ourselves, with the difference that this cathedral designed by nature
was loftier and wider than any built by man. But its stupendous size
was the least of the wonders of the place, for running in rows adown
its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in
reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea
of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white
spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the
base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the
distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock
floor there was in these cases what looked, Sir Henry said, exactly
like a broken column in an old Grecian temple, whilst high above,
depending from the roof, the point of a huge icicle could be dimly
seen.

Even as we gazed we could hear the process going on, for presently
with a tiny splash a drop of water would fall from the far-off icicle
on to the column below. On some columns the drops only fell once in
two or three minutes, and in these cases it would be an interesting
calculation to discover how long, at that rate of dripping, it would
take to form a pillar, say eighty feet by ten in diameter. That the
process, in at least one instance, was incalculably slow, the
following example will suffice to show. Cut on one of these pillars we
discovered the crude likeness of a mummy, by the head of which sat
what appeared to be the figure of an Egyptian god, doubtless the
handiwork of some old-world labourer in the mine. This work of art was
executed at the natural height at which an idle fellow, be he
Phoenician workman or British cad, is in the habit of trying to
immortalise himself at the expense of nature's masterpieces, namely,
about five feet from the ground. Yet at the time that we saw it, which
/must/ have been nearly three thousand years after the date of the
execution of the carving, the column was only eight feet high, and was
still in process of formation, which gives a rate of growth of a foot
to a thousand years, or an inch and a fraction to a century. This we
knew because, as we were standing by it, we heard a drop of water
fall.

Sometimes the stalagmites took strange forms, presumably where the
dropping of the water had not always been on the same spot. Thus, one
huge mass, which must have weighed a hundred tons or so, was in the
shape of a pulpit, beautifully fretted over outside with a design that
looked like lace. Others resembled strange beasts, and on the sides of
the cave were fanlike ivory tracings, such as the frost leaves upon a
pane.

Out of the vast main aisle there opened here and there smaller caves,
exactly, Sir Henry said, as chapels open out of great cathedrals. Some
were large, but one or two--and this is a wonderful instance of how
nature carries out her handiwork by the same unvarying laws, utterly
irrespective of size--were tiny. One little nook, for instance, was no
larger than an unusually big doll's house, and yet it might have been
a model for the whole place, for the water dropped, tiny icicles hung,
and spar columns were forming in just the same way.

We had not, however, enough time to examine this beautiful cavern so
thoroughly as we should have liked to do, since unfortunately, Gagool
seemed to be indifferent as to stalactites, and only anxious to get
her business over. This annoyed me the more, as I was particularly
anxious to discover, if possible, by what system the light was
admitted into the cave, and whether it was by the hand of man or by
that of nature that this was done; also if the place had been used in
any way in ancient times, as seemed probable. However, we consoled
ourselves with the idea that we would investigate it thoroughly on our
way back, and followed on at the heels of our uncanny guide.

On she led us, straight to the top of the vast and silent cave, where
we found another doorway, not arched as the first was, but square at
the top, something like the doorways of Egyptian temples.

"Are ye prepared to enter the Place of Death, white men?" asked
Gagool, evidently with a view to making us feel uncomfortable.

"Lead on, Macduff," said Good solemnly, trying to look as though he
was not at all alarmed, as indeed we all did except Foulata, who
caught Good by the arm for protection.

"This is getting rather ghastly," said Sir Henry, peeping into the
dark passageway. "Come on, Quatermain--/seniores priores/. We mustn't
keep the old lady waiting!" and he politely made way for me to lead
the van, for which inwardly I did not bless him.

/Tap, tap,/ went old Gagool's stick down the passage, as she trotted
along, chuckling hideously; and still overcome by some unaccountable
presentiment of evil, I hung back.

"Come, get on, old fellow," said Good, "or we shall lose our fair
guide."

Thus adjured, I started down the passage, and after about twenty paces
found myself in a gloomy apartment some forty feet long, by thirty
broad, and thirty high, which in some past age evidently had been
hollowed, by hand-labour, out of the mountain. This apartment was not
nearly so well lighted as the vast stalactite ante-cave, and at the
first glance all I could discern was a massive stone table running
down its length, with a colossal white figure at its head, and life-
sized white figures all round it. Next I discovered a brown thing,
seated on the table in the centre, and in another moment my eyes grew
accustomed to the light, and I saw what all these things were, and was
tailing out of the place as hard as my legs could carry me.

I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with
superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free
to own that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir
Henry caught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that
in another five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite
cave, and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not
have induced me to enter it again. But he held me tight, so I stopped
because I could not help myself. Next second, however, /his/ eyes
became accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mop
the perspiration off his forehead. As for Good, he swore feebly, while
Foulata threw her arms round his neck and shrieked.

Only Gagool chuckled loud and long.

It /was/ a ghastly sight. There at the end of the long stone table,
holding in his skeleton fingers a great white spear, sat /Death/
himself, shaped in the form of a colossal human skeleton, fifteen feet
or more in height. High above his head he held the spear, as though in
the act to strike; one bony hand rested on the stone table before him,
in the position a man assumes on rising from his seat, whilst his
frame was bent forward so that the vertebrae of the neck and the
grinning, gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow
eye-places upon us, the jaws a little open, as though it were about to
speak.

"Great heavens!" said I faintly, at last, "what can it be?"

"And what are /those things/?" asked Good, pointing to the white
company round the table.

"And what on earth is /that thing/?" said Sir Henry, pointing to the
brown creature seated on the table.

"/Hee! hee! hee!/" laughed Gagool. "To those who enter the Hall of the
Dead, evil comes. /Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!/"

"Come, Incubu, brave in battle, come and see him thou slewest;" and
the old creature caught Curtis' coat in her skinny fingers, and led
him away towards the table. We followed.

Presently she stopped and pointed at the brown object seated on the
table. Sir Henry looked, and started back with an exclamation; and no
wonder, for there, quite naked, the head which Curtis' battle-axe had
shorn from the body resting on its knees, was the gaunt corpse of
Twala, the last king of the Kukuanas. Yes, there, the head perched
upon the knees, it sat in all its ugliness, the vertebrae projecting a
full inch above the level of the shrunken flesh of the neck, for all
the world like a black double of Hamilton Tighe.[*] Over the surface
of the corpse there was gathered a thin glassy film, that made its
appearance yet more appalling, for which we were, at the moment, quite
unable to account, till presently we observed that from the roof of
the chamber the water fell steadily, /drip! drop! drip!/ on to the
neck of the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and
finally escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I
guessed what the film was--/Twala's body was being transformed into a
stalactite./

[*] "Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see
    How he sits there and glowers with his head on his knee."

A look at the white forms seated on the stone bench which ran round
that ghastly board confirmed this view. They were human bodies indeed,
or rather they had been human; now they were /stalactites/. This was
the way in which the Kukuana people had from time immemorial preserved
their royal dead. They petrified them. What the exact system might be,
if there was any, beyond the placing of them for a long period of
years under the drip, I never discovered, but there they sat, iced
over and preserved for ever by the siliceous fluid.

Anything more awe-inspiring than the spectacle of this long line of
departed royalties (there were twenty-seven of them, the last being
Ignosi's father), wrapped, each of them, in a shroud of ice-like spar,
through which the features could be dimly discovered, and seated round
that inhospitable board, with Death himself for a host, it is
impossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their
kings must have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which,
allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that every
king who reigned was placed here--an improbable thing, as some are
sure to have perished in battle far from home--would fix the date of
its commencement at four and a quarter centuries back.

But the colossal Death, who sits at the head of the board, is far
older than that, and, unless I am much mistaken, owes his origin to
the same artist who designed the three Colossi. He is hewn out of a
single stalactite, and, looked at as a work of art, is most admirably
conceived and executed. Good, who understands such things, declared
that, so far as he could see, the anatomical design of the skeleton is
perfect down to the smallest bones.

My own idea is, that this terrific object was a freak of fancy on the
part of some old-world sculptor, and that its presence had suggested
to the Kukuanas the idea of placing their royal dead under its awful
presidency. Or perhaps it was set there to frighten away any marauders
who might have designs upon the treasure chamber beyond. I cannot say.
All I can do is to describe it as it is, and the reader must form his
own conclusion.

Such, at any rate, was the White Death and such were the White Dead!



CHAPTER XVII

SOLOMON'S TREASURE CHAMBER

While we were engaged in recovering from our fright, and in examining
the grisly wonders of the Place of Death, Gagool had been differently
occupied. Somehow or other--for she was marvellously active when she
chose--she had scrambled on to the great table, and made her way to
where our departed friend Twala was placed, under the drip, to see,
suggested Good, how he was "pickling," or for some dark purpose of her
own. Then, after bending down to kiss his icy lips as though in
affectionate greeting, she hobbled back, stopping now and again to
address the remark, the tenor of which I could not catch, to one or
other of the shrouded forms, just as you or I might welcome an old
acquaintance. Having gone through this mysterious and horrible
ceremony, she squatted herself down on the table immediately under the
White Death, and began, so far as I could make out, to offer up
prayers. The spectacle of this wicked creature pouring out
supplications, evil ones no doubt, to the arch enemy of mankind, was
so uncanny that it caused us to hasten our inspection.

"Now, Gagool," said I, in a low voice--somehow one did not dare to
speak above a whisper in that place--"lead us to the chamber."

The old witch promptly scrambled down from the table.

"My lords are not afraid?" she said, leering up into my face.

"Lead on."

"Good, my lords;" and she hobbled round to the back of the great
Death. "Here is the chamber; let my lords light the lamp, and enter,"
and she placed the gourd full of oil upon the floor, and leaned
herself against the side of the cave. I took out a match, of which we
had still a few in a box, and lit a rush wick, and then looked for the
doorway, but there was nothing before us except the solid rock. Gagool
grinned. "The way is there, my lords. /Ha! ha! ha!/"

"Do not jest with us," I said sternly.

"I jest not, my lords. See!" and she pointed at the rock.

As she did so, on holding up the lamp we perceived that a mass of
stone was rising slowly from the floor and vanishing into the rock
above, where doubtless there is a cavity prepared to receive it. The
mass was of the width of a good-sized door, about ten feet high and
not less than five feet thick. It must have weighed at least twenty or
thirty tons, and was clearly moved upon some simple balance principle
of counter-weights, probably the same as that by which the opening and
shutting of an ordinary modern window is arranged. How the principle
was set in motion, of course none of us saw; Gagool was careful to
avoid this; but I have little doubt that there was some very simple
lever, which was moved ever so little by pressure at a secret spot,
thereby throwing additional weight on to the hidden counter-balances,
and causing the monolith to be lifted from the ground.

Very slowly and gently the great stone raised itself, till at last it
had vanished altogether, and a dark hole presented itself to us in the
place which the door had filled. 

Our excitement was so intense, as we saw the way to Solomon's treasure
chamber thrown open at last, that I for one began to tremble and
shake. Would it prove a hoax after all, I wondered, or was old Da
Silvestra right? Were there vast hoards of wealth hidden in that dark
place, hoards which would make us the richest men in the whole world?
We should know in a minute or two.

"Enter, white men from the Stars," said Gagool, advancing into the
doorway; "but first hear your servant, Gagool the old. The bright
stones that ye will see were dug out of the pit over which the Silent
Ones are set, and stored here, I know not by whom, for that was done
longer ago than even I remember. But once has this place been entered
since the time that those who hid the stones departed in haste,
leaving them behind. The report of the treasure went down indeed among
the people who lived in the country from age to age, but none knew
where the chamber was, nor the secret of the door. But it happened
that a white man reached this country from over the mountains--
perchance he too came 'from the Stars'--and was well received by the
king of that day. He it is who sits yonder," and she pointed to the
fifth king at the table of the Dead. "And it came to pass that he and
a woman of the country who was with him journeyed to this place, and
that by chance the woman learnt the secret of the door--a thousand
years might ye search, but ye should never find that secret. Then the
white man entered with the woman, and found the stones, and filled
with stones the skin of a small goat, which the woman had with her to
hold food. And as he was going from the chamber he took up one more
stone, a large one, and held it in his hand."

Here she paused.

"Well," I asked, breathless with interest as we all were, "what
happened to Da Silvestra?"

The old hag started at the mention of the name.

"How knowest thou the dead man's name?" she asked sharply; and then,
without waiting for an answer, went on--

"None can tell what happened; but it came about that the white man was
frightened, for he flung down the goat-skin, with the stones, and fled
out with only the one stone in his hand, and that the king took, and
it is the stone which thou, Macumazahn, didst take from Twala's brow."

"Have none entered here since?" I asked, peering again down the dark
passage.

"None, my lords. Only the secret of the door has been kept, and every
king has opened it, though he has not entered. There is a saying, that
those who enter there will die within a moon, even as the white man
died in the cave upon the mountain, where ye found him, Macumazahn,
and therefore the kings do not enter. /Ha! ha!/ mine are true words."

Our eyes met as she said it, and I turned sick and cold. How did the
old hag know all these things?

"Enter, my lords. If I speak truth, the goat-skin with the stones will
lie upon the floor; and if there is truth as to whether it is death to
enter here, that ye will learn afterwards. /Ha! ha! ha!/" and she
hobbled through the doorway, bearing the light with her; but I confess 
that once more I hesitated about following.

"Oh, confound it all!" said Good; "here goes. I am not going to be
frightened by that old devil;" and followed by Foulata, who, however,
evidently did not at all like the business, for she was shivering with
fear, he plunged into the passage after Gagool--an example which we
quickly followed.

A few yards down the passage, in the narrow way hewn out of the living
rock, Gagool had paused, and was waiting for us.

"See, my lords," she said, holding the light before her, "those who
stored the treasure here fled in haste, and bethought them to guard
against any who should find the secret of the door, but had not the
time," and she pointed to large square blocks of stone, which, to the
height of two courses (about two feet three), had been placed across
the passage with a view to walling it up. Along the side of the
passage were similar blocks ready for use, and, most curious of all, a
heap of mortar and a couple of trowels, which tools, so far as we had
time to examine them, appeared to be of a similar shape and make to
those used by workmen to this day.

Here Foulata, who had been in a state of great fear and agitation
throughout, said that she felt faint and could go no farther, but
would wait there. Accordingly we set her down on the unfinished wall,
placing the basket of provisions by her side, and left her to recover.

Following the passage for about fifteen paces farther, we came
suddenly to an elaborately painted wooden door. It was standing wide
open. Whoever was last there had either not found the time to shut it,
or had forgotten to do so.

/Across the threshold of this door lay a skin bag, formed of a goat-
skin, that appeared to be full of pebbles./

"/Hee! hee!/ white men," sniggered Gagool, as the light from the lamp
fell upon it. "What did I tell you, that the white man who came here
fled in haste, and dropped the woman's bag--behold it! Look within
also and ye will find a water-gourd amongst the stones."

Good stooped down and lifted it. It was heavy and jingled.

"By Jove! I believe it's full of diamonds," he said, in an awed
whisper; and, indeed, the idea of a small goat-skin full of diamonds
is enough to awe anybody.

"Go on," said Sir Henry impatiently. "Here, old lady, give me the
lamp," and taking it from Gagool's hand, he stepped through the
doorway and held it high above his head.

We pressed in after him, forgetful for the moment of the bag of
diamonds, and found ourselves in King Solomon's treasure chamber.

At first, all that the somewhat faint light given by the lamp revealed
was a room hewn out of the living rock, and apparently not more than
ten feet square. Next there came into sight, stored one on the other
to the arch of the roof, a splendid collection of elephant-tusks. How
many of them there were we did not know, for of course we could not
see to what depth they went back, but there could not have been less
than the ends of four or five hundred tusks of the first quality
visible to our eyes. There, alone, was enough ivory to make a man
wealthy for life. Perhaps, I thought, it was from this very store that
Solomon drew the raw material for his "great throne of ivory," of
which "there was not the like made in any kingdom."

On the opposite side of the chamber were about a score of wooden
boxes, something like Martini-Henry ammunition boxes, only rather
larger, and painted red.

"There are the diamonds," cried I; "bring the light."

Sir Henry did so, holding it close to the top box, of which the lid,
rendered rotten by time even in that dry place, appeared to have been
smashed in, probably by Da Silvestra himself. Pushing my hand through
the hole in the lid I drew it out full, not of diamonds, but of gold
pieces, of a shape that none of us had seen before, and with what
looked like Hebrew characters stamped upon them.

"Ah!" I said, replacing the coin, "we shan't go back empty-handed,
anyhow. There must be a couple of thousand pieces in each box, and
there are eighteen boxes. I suppose this was the money to pay the
workmen and merchants."

"Well," put in Good, "I think that is the lot; I don't see any
diamonds, unless the old Portuguese put them all into his bag."

"Let my lords look yonder where it is darkest, if they would find the
stones," said Gagool, interpreting our looks. "There my lords will
find a nook, and three stone chests in the nook, two sealed and one
open."

Before translating this to Sir Henry, who carried the light, I could
not resist asking how she knew these things, if no one had entered the
place since the white man, generations ago.

"Ah, Macumazahn, the watcher by night," was the mocking answer, "ye
who dwell in the stars, do ye not know that some live long, and that
some have eyes which can see through rock? /Ha! ha! ha!/"

"Look in that corner, Curtis," I said, indicating the spot Gagool had
pointed out.

"Hullo, you fellows," he cried, "here's a recess. Great heavens! see
here."

We hurried up to where he was standing in a nook, shaped something
like a small bow window. Against the wall of this recess were placed
three stone chests, each about two feet square. Two were fitted with
stone lids, the lid of the third rested against the side of the chest,
which was open.

"/See!/" he repeated hoarsely, holding the lamp over the open chest.
We looked, and for a moment could make nothing out, on account of a
silvery sheen which dazzled us. When our eyes grew used to it we saw
that the chest was three-parts full of uncut diamonds, most of them of
considerable size. Stooping, I picked some up. Yes, there was no doubt
of it, there was the unmistakable soapy feel about them.

I fairly gasped as I dropped them.

"We are the richest men in the whole world," I said. "Monte Christo
was a fool to us."

"We shall flood the market with diamonds," said Good.

"Got to get them there first," suggested Sir Henry.

We stood still with pale faces and stared at each other, the lantern
in the middle and the glimmering gems below, as though we were
conspirators about to commit a crime, instead of being, as we thought,
the most fortunate men on earth.

"/Hee! hee! hee!/" cackled old Gagool behind us, as she flitted about
like a vampire bat. "There are the bright stones ye love, white men,
as many as ye will; take them, run them through your fingers, /eat/ of
them, /hee! hee! drink/ of them, /ha! ha!/"

At that moment there was something so ridiculous to my mind at the
idea of eating and drinking diamonds, that I began to laugh
outrageously, an example which the others followed, without knowing
why. There we stood and shrieked with laughter over the gems that were
ours, which had been found for /us/ thousands of years ago by the
patient delvers in the great hole yonder, and stored for /us/ by
Solomon's long-dead overseer, whose name, perchance, was written in
the characters stamped on the faded wax that yet adhered to the lids
of the chest. Solomon never got them, nor David, or Da Silvestra, nor
anybody else. /We/ had got them: there before us were millions of
pounds' worth of diamonds, and thousands of pounds' worth of gold and
ivory only waiting to be taken away.

Suddenly the fit passed off, and we stopped laughing.

"Open the other chests, white men," croaked Gagool, "there are surely
more therein. Take your fill, white lords! /Ha! ha!/ take your fill."

Thus adjured, we set to work to pull up the stone lids on the other
two, first--not without a feeling of sacrilege--breaking the seals
that fastened them.

Hoorah! they were full too, full to the brim; at least, the second one
was; no wretched burglarious Da Silvestra had been filling goat-skins
out of that. As for the third chest, it was only about a fourth full,
but the stones were all picked ones; none less than twenty carats, and
some of them as large as pigeon-eggs. A good many of these bigger
ones, however, we could see by holding them up to the light, were a
little yellow, "off coloured," as they call it at Kimberley.

What we did /not/ see, however, was the look of fearful malevolence
that old Gagool favoured us with as she crept, crept like a snake, out
of the treasure chamber and down the passage towards the door of solid
rock.

*****

Hark! Cry upon cry comes ringing up the vaulted path. It is Foulata's
voice!

"/Oh, Bougwan! help! help! the stone falls!/"

"Leave go, girl! Then--"

"/Help! help! she has stabbed me!/"

By now we are running down the passage, and this is what the light
from the lamp shows us. The door of the rock is closing down slowly;
it is not three feet from the floor. Near it struggle Foulata and
Gagool. The red blood of the former runs to her knee, but still the
brave girl holds the old witch, who fights like a wild cat. Ah! she is
free! Foulata falls, and Gagool throws herself on the ground, to twist
like a snake through the crack of the closing stone. She is under--ah!
god! too late! too late! The stone nips her, and she yells in agony.
Down, down it comes, all the thirty tons of it, slowly pressing her
old body against the rock below. Shriek upon shriek, such as we have
never heard, then a long sickening /crunch/, and the door was shut
just as, rushing down the passage, we hurled ourselves against it.

It was all done in four seconds.

Then we turned to Foulata. The poor girl was stabbed in the body, and
I saw that she could not live long.

"Ah! Bougwan, I die!" gasped the beautiful creature. "She crept out--
Gagool; I did not see her, I was faint--and the door began to fall;
then she came back, and was looking up the path--I saw her come in
through the slowly falling door, and caught her and held her, and she
stabbed me, and /I die/, Bougwan!"

"Poor girl! poor girl!" Good cried in his distress; and then, as he
could do nothing else, he fell to kissing her.

"Bougwan," she said, after a pause, "is Macumazahn there? It grows so
dark, I cannot see."

"Here I am, Foulata."

"Macumazahn, be my tongue for a moment, I pray thee, for Bougwan
cannot understand me, and before I go into the darkness I would speak
to him a word."

"Say on, Foulata, I will render it."

"Say to my lord, Bougwan, that--I love him, and that I am glad to die
because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as I am, for
the sun may not mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black.

"Say that, since I saw him, at times I have felt as though there were
a bird in my bosom, which would one day fly hence and sing elsewhere.
Even now, though I cannot lift my hand, and my brain grows cold, I do
not feel as though my heart were dying; it is so full of love that it
could live ten thousand years, and yet be young. Say that if I live
again, mayhap I shall see him in the Stars, and that--I will search
them all, though perchance there I should still be black and he would
--still be white. Say--nay, Macumazahn, say no more, save that I love
--Oh, hold me closer, Bougwan, I cannot feel thine arms--/oh! oh!/"

"She is dead--she is dead!" muttered Good, rising in grief, the tears
running down his honest face.

"You need not let that trouble you, old fellow," said Sir Henry.

"Eh!" exclaimed Good; "what do you mean?"

"I mean that you will soon be in a position to join her. /Man, don't
you see that we are buried alive?/"

Until Sir Henry uttered these words I do not think that the full
horror of what had happened had come home to us, preoccupied as we
were with the sight of poor Foulata's end. But now we understood. The
ponderous mass of rock had closed, probably for ever, for the only
brain which knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath its weight.
This was a door that none could hope to force with anything short of
dynamite in large quantities. And we were on the wrong side!

For a few minutes we stood horrified, there over the corpse of
Foulata. All the manhood seemed to have gone out of us. The first
shock of this idea of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was
overpowering. We saw it all now; that fiend Gagool had planned this
snare for us from the first.

It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would have
rejoiced in, the idea of the three white men, whom, for some reason of
her own, she had always hated, slowly perishing of thirst and hunger
in the company of the treasure they had coveted. Now I saw the point
of that sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds. Probably
somebody had tried to serve the poor old Dom in the same way, when he
abandoned the skin full of jewels.

"This will never do," said Sir Henry hoarsely; "the lamp will soon go
out. Let us see if we can't find the spring that works the rock."

We sprang forward with desperate energy, and, standing in a bloody
ooze, began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the passage.
But no knob or spring could we discover.

"Depend on it," I said, "it does not work from the inside; if it did
Gagool would not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It
was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazards,
curse her."

"At all events," said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh,
"retribution was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is
likely to be. We can do nothing with the door; let us go back to the
treasure room."

We turned and went, and as we passed it I perceived by the unfinished
wall across the passage the basket of food which poor Foulata had
carried. I took it up, and brought it with me to the accursed treasure
chamber that was to be our grave. Then we returned and reverently bore
in Foulata's corpse, laying it on the floor by the boxes of coin.

Next we seated ourselves, leaning our backs against the three stone
chests which contained the priceless treasure.

"Let us divide the food," said Sir Henry, "so as to make it last as
long as possible." Accordingly we did so. It would, we reckoned, make
four infinitesimally small meals for each of us, enough, say, to
support life for a couple of days. Besides the "biltong," or dried
game-flesh, there were two gourds of water, each of which held not
more than a quart.

"Now," said Sir Henry grimly, "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die."

We each ate a small portion of the "biltong," and drank a sip of
water. Needless to say, we had but little appetite, though we were
sadly in need of food, and felt better after swallowing it. Then we
got up and made a systematic examination of the walls of our prison-
house, in the faint hope of finding some means of exit, sounding them
and the floor carefully.

There was none. It was not probable that there would be any to a
treasure chamber.

The lamp began to burn dim. The fat was nearly exhausted.

"Quatermain," said Sir Henry, "what is the time--your watch goes?"

I drew it out, and looked at it. It was six o'clock; we had entered
the cave at eleven.

"Infadoos will miss us," I suggested. "If we do not return to-night he
will search for us in the morning, Curtis."

"He may search in vain. He does not know the secret of the door, nor
even where it is. No living person knew it yesterday, except Gagool.
To-day no one knows it. Even if he found the door he could not break
it down. All the Kukuana army could not break through five feet of
living rock. My friends, I see nothing for it but to bow ourselves to
the will of the Almighty. The search for treasure has brought many to
a bad end; we shall go to swell their number."

The lamp grew dimmer yet.

Presently it flared up and showed the whole scene in strong relief,
the great mass of white tusks, the boxes of gold, the corpse of the
poor Foulata stretched before them, the goat-skin full of treasure,
the dim glimmer of the diamonds, and the wild, wan faces of us three
white men seated there awaiting death by starvation.



Then the flame sank and expired.



CHAPTER XVIII

WE ABANDON HOPE

I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which
followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for
even in such a position as ours wearied nature will sometimes assert
itself. But I, at any rate, found it impossible to sleep much. Putting
aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom--for the bravest
man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I
never made any pretensions to be brave--the /silence/ itself was too
great to allow of it. Reader, you may have lain awake at night and
thought the quiet oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can
have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect stillness. On the
surface of the earth there is always some sound or motion, and though
it may in itself be imperceptible, yet it deadens the sharp edge of
absolute silence. But here there was none. We were buried in the
bowels of a huge snow-clad peak. Thousands of feet above us the fresh
air rushed over the white snow, but no sound of it reached us. We were
separated by a long tunnel and five feet of rock even from the awful
chamber of the Dead; and the dead make no noise. Did we not know it
who lay by poor Foulata's side? The crashing of all the artillery of
earth and heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb.
We were cut off from every echo of the world--we were as men already
in the grave.

Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us
lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build
a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly
for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be
rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and,
after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our
sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is
a valueless thing at the last.

And so the night wore on.

"Good," said Sir Henry's voice at last, and it sounded awful in the
intense stillness, "how many matches have you in the box?"

"Eight, Curtis."

"Strike one and let us see the time."

He did so, and in contrast to the dense darkness the flame nearly
blinded us. It was five o'clock by my watch. The beautiful dawn was
now blushing on the snow-wreaths far over our heads, and the breeze
would be stirring the night mists in the hollows.

"We had better eat something and keep up our strength," I suggested.

"What is the good of eating?" answered Good; "the sooner we die and
get it over the better."

"While there is life there is hope," said Sir Henry.

Accordingly we ate and sipped some water, and another period of time
elapsed. Then Sir Henry suggested that it might be well to get as near
the door as possible and halloa, on the faint chance of somebody
catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at
sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and set
to work. I must say that he made a most diabolical noise. I never
heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all
the effect they produced.

After a while he gave it up and came back very thirsty, and had to
drink. Then we stopped yelling, as it encroached on the supply of
water.

So we sat down once more against the chests of useless diamonds in
that dreadful inaction which was one of the hardest circumstances of
our fate; and I am bound to say that, for my part, I gave way in
despair. Laying my head against Sir Henry's broad shoulder I burst
into tears; and I think that I heard Good gulping away on the other
side, and swearing hoarsely at himself for doing so.

Ah, how good and brave that great man was! Had we been two frightened
children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated us more
tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to
soothe our broken nerves, telling stories of men who had been in
somewhat similar circumstances, and miraculously escaped; and when
these failed to cheer us, pointing out how, after all, it was only
anticipating an end which must come to us all, that it would soon be
over, and that death from exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not
true). Then, in a diffident sort of way, as once before I had heard
him do, he suggested that we should throw ourselves on the mercy of a
higher Power, which for my part I did with great vigour.

His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong.

And so somehow the day went as the night had gone, if, indeed, one can
use these terms where all was densest night, and when I lit a match to
see the time it was seven o'clock.

Once more we ate and drank, and as we did so an idea occurred to me.

"How is it," said I, "that the air in this place keeps fresh? It is
thick and heavy, but it is perfectly fresh."

"Great heavens!" said Good, starting up, "I never thought of that. It
can't come through the stone door, for it's air-tight, if ever a door
was. It must come from somewhere. It there were no current of air in
the place we should have been stifled or poisoned when we first came
in. Let us have a look."

It was wonderful what a change this mere spark of hope wrought in us.
In a moment we were all three groping about on our hands and knees,
feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardour
received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was dead
Foulata's face.

For an hour or more we went on feeling about, till at last Sir Henry
and I gave it up in despair, having been considerably hurt by
constantly knocking our heads against tusks, chests, and the sides of
the chamber. But Good still persevered, saying, with an approach to
cheerfulness, that it was better than doing nothing.

"I say, you fellows," he said presently, in a constrained sort of
voice, "come here."

Needless to say we scrambled towards him quickly enough.

"Quatermain, put your hand here where mine is. Now, do you feel
anything?"

"I /think/ I feel air coming up."

"Now listen." He rose and stamped upon the place, and a flame of hope
shot up in our hearts. /It rang hollow./

With trembling hands I lit a match. I had only three left, and we saw
that we were in the angle of the far corner of the chamber, a fact
that accounted for our not having noticed the hollow sound of the
place during our former exhaustive examination. As the match burnt we
scrutinised the spot. There was a join in the solid rock floor, and,
great heavens! there, let in level with the rock, was a stone ring. We
said no word, we were too excited, and our hearts beat too wildly with
hope to allow us to speak. Good had a knife, at the back of which was
one of those hooks that are made to extract stones from horses' hoofs.
He opened it, and scratched round the ring with it. Finally he worked
it under, and levered away gently for fear of breaking the hook. The
ring began to move. Being of stone it had not rusted fast in all the
centuries it had lain there, as would have been the case had it been
of iron. Presently it was upright. Then he thrust his hands into it
and tugged with all his force, but nothing budged.

"Let me try," I said impatiently, for the situation of the stone,
right in the angle of the corner, was such that it was impossible for
two to pull at once. I took hold and strained away, but no results.

Then Sir Henry tried and failed.

Taking the hook again, Good scratched all round the crack where we
felt the air coming up.

"Now, Curtis," he said, "tackle on, and put your back into it; you are
as strong as two. Stop," and he took off a stout black silk
handkerchief, which, true to his habits of neatness, he still wore,
and ran it through the ring. "Quatermain, get Curtis round the middle
and pull for dear life when I give the word. /Now./"

Sir Henry put out all his enormous strength, and Good and I did the
same, with such power as nature had given us.

"Heave! heave! it's giving," gasped Sir Henry; and I heard the muscles
of his great back cracking. Suddenly there was a grating sound, then a
rush of air, and we were all on our backs on the floor with a heavy
flag-stone upon the top of us. Sir Henry's strength had done it, and
never did muscular power stand a man in better stead.

"Light a match, Quatermain," he said, so soon as we had picked
ourselves up and got our breath; "carefully, now."

I did so, and there before us, Heaven be praised! was the /first step
of a stone stair./

"Now what is to be done?" asked Good.

"Follow the stair, of course, and trust to Providence."

"Stop!" said Sir Henry; "Quatermain, get the bit of biltong and the
water that are left; we may want them."

I went, creeping back to our place by the chests for that purpose, and
as I was coming away an idea struck me. We had not thought much of the
diamonds for the last twenty-four hours or so; indeed, the very idea
of diamonds was nauseous, seeing what they had entailed upon us; but,
reflected I, I may as well pocket some in case we ever should get out
of this ghastly hole. So I just put my fist into the first chest and
filled all the available pockets of my old shooting-coat and trousers,
topping up--this was a happy thought--with a few handfuls of big ones
from the third chest. Also, by an afterthought, I stuffed Foulata's
basket, which, except for one water-gourd and a little biltong, was
empty now, with great quantities of the stones.

"I say, you fellows," I sang out, "won't you take some diamonds with
you? I've filled my pockets and the basket."

"Oh, come on, Quatermain! and hang the diamonds!" said Sir Henry. "I
hope that I may never see another."

As for Good, he made no answer. He was, I think, taking his last
farewell of all that was left of the poor girl who had loved him so
well. And curious as it may seem to you, my reader, sitting at home at
ease and reflecting on the vast, indeed the immeasurable, wealth which
we were thus abandoning, I can assure you that if you had passed some
twenty-eight hours with next to nothing to eat and drink in that
place, you would not have cared to cumber yourself with diamonds
whilst plunging down into the unknown bowels of the earth, in the wild
hope of escape from an agonising death. If from the habits of a
lifetime, it had not become a sort of second nature with me never to
leave anything worth having behind if there was the slightest chance
of my being able to carry it away, I am sure that I should not have
bothered to fill my pockets and that basket.

"Come on, Quatermain," repeated Sir Henry, who was already standing on
the first step of the stone stair. "Steady, I will go first."

"Mind where you put your feet, there may be some awful hole
underneath," I answered.

"Much more likely to be another room," said Sir Henry, while he
descended slowly, counting the steps as he went.

When he got to "fifteen" he stopped. "Here's the bottom," he said.
"Thank goodness! I think it's a passage. Follow me down."

Good went next, and I came last, carrying the basket, and on reaching
the bottom lit one of the two remaining matches. By its light we could
just see that we were standing in a narrow tunnel, which ran right and
left at right angles to the staircase we had descended. Before we
could make out any more, the match burnt my fingers and went out. Then
arose the delicate question of which way to go. Of course, it was
impossible to know what the tunnel was, or where it led to, and yet to
turn one way might lead us to safety, and the other to destruction. We
were utterly perplexed, till suddenly it struck Good that when I had
lit the match the draught of the passage blew the flame to the left.

"Let us go against the draught," he said; "air draws inwards, not
outwards."

We took this suggestion, and feeling along the wall with our hands,
whilst trying the ground before us at every step, we departed from
that accursed treasure chamber on our terrible quest for life. If ever
it should be entered again by living man, which I do not think
probable, he will find tokens of our visit in the open chests of
jewels, the empty lamp, and the white bones of poor Foulata.

When we had groped our way for about a quarter of an hour along the
passage, suddenly it took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by
another, which we followed, only in course of time to be led into a
third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone
labyrinth that led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course I
cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a
mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and
thither as the ore led them. This is the only way in which we could
account for such a multitude of galleries.

At length we halted, thoroughly worn out with fatigue and with that
hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and ate up our poor
remaining piece of biltong and drank our last sup of water, for our
throats were like lime-kilns. It seemed to us that we had escaped
Death in the darkness of the treasure chamber only to meet him in the
darkness of the tunnels.

As we stood, once more utterly depressed, I thought that I caught a
sound, to which I called the attention of the others. It was very
faint and very far off, but it /was/ a sound, a faint, murmuring
sound, for the others heard it too, and no words can describe the
blessedness of it after all those hours of utter, awful stillness.

"By heaven! it's running water," said Good. "Come on."

Off we started again in the direction from which the faint murmur
seemed to come, groping our way as before along the rocky walls. I
remember that I laid down the basket full of diamonds, wishing to be
rid of its weight, but on second thoughts took it up again. One might
as well die rich as poor, I reflected. As we went the sound became
more and more audible, till at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet.
On, yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of
rushing water. And yet how could there be running water in the bowels
of the earth? Now we were quite near it, and Good, who was leading,
swore that he could smell it.

"Go gently, Good," said Sir Henry, "we must be close." /Splash!/ and a
cry from Good.

He had fallen in.

"Good! Good! where are you?" we shouted, in terrified distress. To our
intense relief an answer came back in a choky voice.

"All right; I've got hold of a rock. Strike a light to show me where
you are."

Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to
us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How wide it was we could
not see, but there, some way out, was the dark form of our companion
hanging on to a projecting rock.

"Stand clear to catch me," sung out Good. "I must swim for it."

Then we heard a splash, and a great struggle. Another minute and he
had grabbed at and caught Sir Henry's outstretched hand, and we had
pulled him up high and dry into the tunnel.

"My word!" he said, between his gasps, "that was touch and go. If I
hadn't managed to catch that rock, and known how to swim, I should
have been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom."

We dared not follow the banks of the subterranean river for fear lest
we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested
a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and
fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we
could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to
retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in
front of us. At length we came to another gallery leading to our
right.

"We may as well take it," said Sir Henry wearily; "all roads are alike
here; we can only go on till we drop."

Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly exhausted, along
this new tunnel, Sir Henry now leading the way. Again I thought of
abandoning that basket, but did not.

Suddenly he stopped, and we bumped up against him.

"Look!" he whispered, "is my brain going, or is that light?"

We stared with all our eyes, and there, yes, there, far ahead of us,
was a faint, glimmering spot, no larger than a cottage window pane. It
was so faint that I doubt if any eyes, except those which, like ours,
had for days seen nothing but blackness, could have perceived it at
all. 

With a gasp of hope we pushed on. In five minutes there was no longer
any doubt; it /was/ a patch of faint light. A minute more and a breath
of real live air was fanning us. On we struggled. All at once the
tunnel narrowed. Sir Henry went on his knees. Smaller yet it grew,
till it was only the size of a large fox's earth--it was /earth/ now,
mind you; the rock had ceased.

A squeeze, a struggle, and Sir Henry was out, and so was Good, and so
was I, dragging Foulata's basket after me; and there above us were the
blessed stars, and in our nostrils was the sweet air. Then suddenly
something gave, and we were all rolling over and over and over through
grass and bushes and soft, wet soil.

The basket caught in something and I stopped. Sitting up I halloed
lustily. An answering shout came from below, where Sir Henry's wild
career had been checked by some level ground. I scrambled to him, and
found him unhurt, though breathless. Then we looked for Good. A little
way off we discovered him also, hammed in a forked root. He was a good
deal knocked about, but soon came to himself.

We sat down together, there on the grass, and the revulsion of feeling
was so great that really I think we cried with joy. We had escaped
from that awful dungeon, which was so near to becoming our grave.
Surely some merciful Power guided our footsteps to the jackal hole,
for that is what it must have been, at the termination of the tunnel.
And see, yonder on the mountains the dawn we had never thought to look
upon again was blushing rosy red.

Presently the grey light stole down the slopes, and we saw that we
were at the bottom, or rather, nearly at the bottom, of the vast pit
in front of the entrance to the cave. Now we could make out the dim
forms of the three Colossi who sat upon its verge. Doubtless those
awful passages, along which we had wandered the livelong night, had
been originally in some way connected with the great diamond mine. As
for the subterranean river in the bowels of the mountain, Heaven only
knows what it is, or whence it flows, or whither it goes. I, for one,
have no anxiety to trace its course.

Lighter it grew, and lighter yet. We could see each other now, and
such a spectacle as we presented I have never set eyes on before or
since. Gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust
and mud, bruised, bleeding, the long fear of imminent death yet
written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the
daylight. And yet it is a solemn fact that Good's eye-glass was still
fixed in Good's eye. I doubt whether he had ever taken it out at all.
Neither the darkness, nor the plunge in the subterranean river, nor
the roll down the slope, had been able to separate Good and his eye-
glass.

Presently we rose, fearing that our limbs would stiffen if we stopped
there longer, and commenced with slow and painful steps to struggle up
the sloping sides of the great pit. For an hour or more we toiled
steadfastly up the blue clay, dragging ourselves on by the help of the
roots and grasses with which it was clothed. But now I had no more
thought of leaving the basket; indeed, nothing but death should have
parted us.

At last it was done, and we stood by the great road, on that side of
the pit which is opposite to the Colossi.

At the side of the road, a hundred yards off, a fire was burning in
front of some huts, and round the fire were figures. We staggered
towards them, supporting one another, and halting every few paces.
Presently one of the figures rose, saw us and fell on to the ground,
crying out for fear.

"Infadoos, Infadoos! it is we, thy friends."

He rose; he ran to us, staring wildly, and still shaking with fear.

"Oh, my lords, my lords, it is indeed you come back from the dead!--
come back from the dead!"

And the old warrior flung himself down before us, and clasping Sir
Henry's knees, he wept aloud for joy.



CHAPTER XIX

IGNOSI'S FAREWELL

Ten days from that eventful morning found us once more in our old
quarters at Loo; and, strange to say, but little the worse for our
terrible experience, except that my stubbly hair came out of the
treasure cave about three shades greyer than it went in, and that Good
never was quite the same after Foulata's death, which seemed to move
him very greatly. I am bound to say, looking at the thing from the
point of view of an oldish man of the world, that I consider her
removal was a fortunate occurrence, since, otherwise, complications
would have been sure to ensue. The poor creature was no ordinary
native girl, but a person of great, I had almost said stately, beauty,
and of considerable refinement of mind. But no amount of beauty or
refinement could have made an entanglement between Good and herself a
desirable occurrence; for, as she herself put it, "Can the sun mate
with the darkness, or the white with the black?"

I need hardly state that we never again penetrated into Solomon's
treasure chamber. After we had recovered from our fatigues, a process
which took us forty-eight hours, we descended into the great pit in
the hope of finding the hole by which we had crept out of the
mountain, but with no success. To begin with, rain had fallen, and
obliterated our spoor; and what is more, the sides of the vast pit
were full of ant-bear and other holes. It was impossible to say to
which of these we owed our salvation. Also, on the day before we
started back to Loo, we made a further examination of the wonders of
the stalactite cave, and, drawn by a kind of restless feeling, even
penetrated once more into the Chamber of the Dead. Passing beneath the
spear of the White Death we gazed, with sensations which it would be
quite impossible for me to describe, at the mass of rock that had shut
us off from escape, thinking the while of priceless treasures beyond,
of the mysterious old hag whose flattened fragments lay crushed
beneath it, and of the fair girl of whose tomb it was the portal. I
say gazed at the "rock," for, examine as we could, we could find no
traces of the join of the sliding door; nor, indeed, could we hit upon
the secret, now utterly lost, that worked it, though we tried for an
hour or more. It is certainly a marvellous bit of mechanism,
characteristic, in its massive and yet inscrutable simplicity, of the
age which produced it; and I doubt if the world has such another to
show.

At last we gave it up in disgust; though, if the mass had suddenly
risen before our eyes, I doubt if we should have screwed up courage to
step over Gagool's mangled remains, and once more enter the treasure
chamber, even in the sure and certain hope of unlimited diamonds. And
yet I could have cried at the idea of leaving all that treasure, the
biggest treasure probably that in the world's history has ever been
accumulated in one spot. But there was no help for it. Only dynamite
could force its way through five feet of solid rock.

So we left it. Perhaps, in some remote unborn century, a more
fortunate explorer may hit upon the "Open Sesame," and flood the world
with gems. But, myself, I doubt it. Somehow, I seem to feel that the
tens of millions of pounds' worth of jewels which lie in the three
stone coffers will never shine round the neck of an earthly beauty.
They and Foulata's bones will keep cold company till the end of all
things.

With a sigh of disappointment we made our way back, and next day
started for Loo. And yet it was really very ungrateful of us to be
disappointed; for, as the reader will remember, by a lucky thought, I
had taken the precaution to fill the wide pockets of my old shooting
coat and trousers with gems before we left our prison-house, also
Foulata's basket, which held twice as many more, notwithstanding that
the water bottle had occupied some of its space. A good many of these
fell out in the course of our roll down the side of the pit, including
several of the big ones, which I had crammed in on the top in my coat
pockets. But, comparatively speaking, an enormous quantity still
remained, including ninety-three large stones ranging from over two
hundred to seventy carats in weight. My old shooting coat and the
basket still held sufficient treasure to make us all, if not
millionaires as the term is understood in America, at least
exceedingly wealthy men, and yet to keep enough stones each to make
the three finest sets of gems in Europe. So we had not done so badly.

On arriving at Loo we were most cordially received by Ignosi, whom we
found well, and busily engaged in consolidating his power, and
reorganising the regiments which had suffered most in the great
struggle with Twala.

He listened with intense interest to our wonderful story; but when we
told him of old Gagool's frightful end he grew thoughtful.

"Come hither," he called, to a very old Induna or councillor, who was
sitting with others in a circle round the king, but out of ear-shot.
The ancient man rose, approached, saluted, and seated himself.

"Thou art aged," said Ignosi.

"Ay, my lord the king! Thy father's father and I were born on the same
day."

"Tell me, when thou wast little, didst thou know Gagaoola the witch
doctress?"

"Ay, my lord the king!"

"How was she then--young, like thee?"

"Not so, my lord the king! She was even as she is now and as she was
in the days of my great grandfather before me; old and dried, very
ugly, and full of wickedness."

"She is no more; she is dead."

"So, O king! then is an ancient curse taken from the land."

"Go!"

"/Koom!/ I go, Black Puppy, who tore out the old dog's throat.
/Koom!/"

"Ye see, my brothers," said Ignosi, "this was a strange woman, and I
rejoice that she is dead. She would have let you die in the dark
place, and mayhap afterwards she had found a way to slay me, as she
found a way to slay my father, and set up Twala, whom her black heart
loved, in his place. Now go on with the tale; surely there never was
its like!"

After I had narrated all the story of our escape, as we had agreed
between ourselves that I should, I took the opportunity to address
Ignosi as to our departure from Kukuanaland.

"And now, Ignosi," I said, "the time has come for us to bid thee
farewell, and start to see our own land once more. Behold, Ignosi,
thou camest with us a servant, and now we leave thee a mighty king. If
thou art grateful to us, remember to do even as thou didst promise: to
rule justly, to respect the law, and to put none to death without a
cause. So shalt thou prosper. To-morrow, at break of day, Ignosi, thou
wilt give us an escort who shall lead us across the mountains. Is it
not so, O king?"

Ignosi covered his face with his hands for a while before answering.

"My heart is sore," he said at last; "your words split my heart in
twain. What have I done to you, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, that
ye should leave me desolate? Ye who stood by me in rebellion and in
battle, will ye leave me in the day of peace and victory? What will ye
--wives? Choose from among the maidens! A place to live in? Behold,
the land is yours as far as ye can see. The white man's houses? Ye
shall teach my people how to build them. Cattle for beef and milk?
Every married man shall bring you an ox or a cow. Wild game to hunt?
Does not the elephant walk through my forests, and the river-horse
sleep in the reeds? Would ye make war? My Impis wait your word. If
there is anything more which I can give, that will I give you."

"Nay, Ignosi, we want none of these things," I answered; "we would
seek our own place."

"Now do I learn," said Ignosi bitterly, and with flashing eyes, "that
ye love the bright stones more than me, your friend. Ye have the
stones; now ye would go to Natal and across the moving black water and
sell them, and be rich, as it is the desire of a white man's heart to
be. Cursed for your sake be the white stones, and cursed he who seeks
them. Death shall it be to him who sets foot in the place of Death to
find them. I have spoken. White men, ye can go."

I laid my hand upon his arm. "Ignosi," I said, "tell us, when thou
didst wander in Zululand, and among the white people of Natal, did not
thine heart turn to the land thy mother told thee of, thy native
place, where thou didst see the light, and play when thou wast little,
the land where thy place was?"

"It was even so, Macumazahn."

"In like manner, Ignosi, do our hearts turn to our land and to our own
place."

Then came a silence. When Ignosi broke it, it was in a different
voice.

"I do perceive that now as ever thy words are wise and full of
reason, Macumazahn; that which flies in the air loves not to run along
the ground; the white man loves not to live on the level of the black
or to house among his kraals. Well, ye must go, and leave my heart
sore, because ye will be as dead to me, since from where ye are no
tidings can come to me.

"But listen, and let all your brothers know my words. No other white
man shall cross the mountains, even if any man live to come so far. I
will see no traders with their guns and gin. My people shall fight
with the spear, and drink water, like their forefathers before them. I
will have no praying-men to put a fear of death into men's hearts, to
stir them up against the law of the king, and make a path for the
white folk who follow to run on. If a white man comes to my gates I
will send him back; if a hundred come I will push them back; if armies
come, I will make war on them with all my strength, and they shall not
prevail against me. None shall ever seek for the shining stones: no,
not an army, for if they come I will send a regiment and fill up the
pit, and break down the white columns in the caves and choke them with
rocks, so that none can reach even to that door of which ye speak, and
whereof the way to move it is lost. But for you three, Incubu,
Macumazahn, and Bougwan, the path is always open; for, behold, ye are
dearer to me than aught that breathes.

"And ye would go. Infadoos, my uncle, and my Induna, shall take you by
the hand and guide you with a regiment. There is, as I have learned,
another way across the mountains that he shall show you. Farewell, my
brothers, brave white men. See me no more, for I have no heart to bear
it. Behold! I make a decree, and it shall be published from the
mountains to the mountains; your names, Incubu, Macumazahn, and
Bougwan, shall be "/hlonipa/" even as the names of dead kings, and he
who speaks them shall die.[*] So shall your memory be preserved in the
land for ever.

[*] This extraordinary and negative way of showing intense respect is
    by no means unknown among African people, and the result is that
    if, as is usual, the name in question has a significance, the
    meaning must be expressed by an idiom or other word. In this way a
    memory is preserved for generations, or until the new word utterly
    supplants the old.

"Go now, ere my eyes rain tears like a woman's. At times as ye look
back down the path of life, or when ye are old and gather yourselves
together to crouch before the fire, because for you the sun has no
more heat, ye will think of how we stood shoulder to shoulder, in that
great battle which thy wise words planned, Macumazahn; of how thou
wast the point of the horn that galled Twala's flank, Bougwan; whilst
thou stood in the ring of the Greys, Incubu, and men went down before
thine axe like corn before a sickle; ay, and of how thou didst break
that wild bull Twala's strength, and bring his pride to dust. Fare ye
well for ever, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, my lords and my
friends."

Ignosi rose and looked earnestly at us for a few seconds. Then he
threw the corner of his karross over his head, so as to cover his face
from us.

We went in silence.



Next day at dawn we left Loo, escorted by our old friend Infadoos, who
was heart-broken at our departure, and by the regiment of Buffaloes.
Early as was the hour, all the main street of the town was lined with
multitudes of people, who gave us the royal salute as we passed at the
head of the regiment, while the women blessed us for having rid the
land of Twala, throwing flowers before us as we went. It was really
very affecting, and not the sort of thing one is accustomed to meet
with from natives.

One ludicrous incident occurred, however, which I rather welcomed, as
it gave us something to laugh at.

Just before we reached the confines of the town, a pretty young girl,
with some lovely lilies in her hand, ran forward and presented them to
Good--somehow they all seemed to like Good; I think his eye-glass and
solitary whisker gave him a fictitious value--and then said that she
had a boon to ask.

"Speak on," he answered.

"Let my lord show his servant his beautiful white legs, that his
servant may look upon them, and remember them all her days, and tell
of them to her children; his servant has travelled four days' journey
to see them, for the fame of them has gone throughout the land."

"I'll be hanged if I do!" exclaimed Good excitedly.

"Come, come, my dear fellow," said Sir Henry, "you can't refuse to
oblige a lady."

"I won't," replied Good obstinately; "it is positively indecent."

However, in the end he consented to draw up his trousers to the knee,
amidst notes of rapturous admiration from all the women present,
especially the gratified young lady, and in this guise he had to walk
till we got clear of the town.

Good's legs, I fear, will never be so greatly admired again. Of his
melting teeth, and even of his "transparent eye," the Kukuanas wearied
more or less, but of his legs never.

As we travelled, Infadoos told us that there was another pass over the
mountains to the north of the one followed by Solomon's Great Road, or
rather that there was a place where it was possible to climb down the
wall of cliff which separates Kukuanaland from the desert, and is
broken by the towering shapes of Sheba's Breasts. It appeared, also,
that rather more than two years previously a party of Kukuana hunters
had descended this path into the desert in search of ostriches, whose
plumes are much prized among them for war head-dresses, and that in
the course of their hunt they had been led far from the mountains and
were much troubled by thirst. Seeing trees on the horizon, however,
they walked towards them, and discovered a large and fertile oasis
some miles in extent, and plentifully watered. It was by way of this
oasis that Infadoos suggested we should return, and the idea seemed to
us a good one, for it appeared that we should thus escape the rigours
of the mountain pass. Also some of the hunters were in attendance to
guide us to the oasis, from which, they stated, they could perceive
other fertile spots far away in the desert.[*]

[*] It often puzzled all of us to understand how it was possible that
    Ignosi's mother, bearing the child with her, should have survived
    the dangers of her journey across the mountains and the desert,
    dangers which so nearly proved fatal to ourselves. It has since
    occurred to me, and I give the idea to the reader for what it is
    worth, that she must have taken this second route, and wandered
    out like Hagar into the wilderness. If she did so, there is no
    longer anything inexplicable about the story, since, as Ignosi
    himself related, she may well have been picked up by some ostrich
    hunters before she or the child was exhausted, was led by them to
    the oasis, and thence by stages to the fertile country, and so on
    by slow degrees southwards to Zululand.--A.Q.

Travelling easily, on the night of the fourth day's journey we found
ourselves once more on the crest of the mountains that separate
Kukuanaland from the desert, which rolled away in sandy billows at our
feet, and about twenty-five miles to the north of Sheba's Breasts.

At dawn on the following day, we were led to the edge of a very
precipitous chasm, by which we were to descend the precipice, and gain
the plain two thousand and more feet below.

Here we bade farewell to that true friend and sturdy old warrior,
Infadoos, who solemnly wished all good upon us, and nearly wept with
grief. "Never, my lords," he said, "shall mine old eyes see the like
of you again. Ah! the way that Incubu cut his men down in the battle!
Ah! for the sight of that stroke with which he swept off my brother
Twala's head! It was beautiful--beautiful! I may never hope to see
such another, except perchance in happy dreams."

We were very sorry to part from him; indeed, Good was so moved that he
gave him as a souvenir--what do you think?--an /eye-glass/; afterwards
we discovered that it was a spare one. Infadoos was delighted,
foreseeing that the possession of such an article would increase his
prestige enormously, and after several vain attempts he actually
succeeded in screwing it into his own eye. Anything more incongruous
than the old warrior looked with an eye-glass I never saw. Eye-glasses
do not go well with leopard-skin cloaks and black ostrich plumes.

Then, after seeing that our guides were well laden with water and
provisions, and having received a thundering farewell salute from the
Buffaloes, we wrung Infadoos by the hand, and began our downward
climb. A very arduous business it proved to be, but somehow that
evening we found ourselves at the bottom without accident.

"Do you know," said Sir Henry that night, as we sat by our fire and
gazed up at the beetling cliffs above us, "I think that there are
worse places than Kukuanaland in the world, and that I have known
unhappier times than the last month or two, though I have never spent
such queer ones. Eh! you fellows?"

"I almost wish I were back," said Good, with a sigh.

As for myself, I reflected that all's well that ends well; but in the
course of a long life of shaves, I never had such shaves as those
which I had recently experienced. The thought of that battle makes me
feel cold all over, and as for our experience in the treasure
chamber--!



Next morning we started on a toilsome trudge across the desert, having
with us a good supply of water carried by our five guides, and camped
that night in the open, marching again at dawn on the morrow.

By noon of the third day's journey we could see the trees of the oasis
of which the guides spoke, and within an hour of sundown we were
walking once more upon grass and listening to the sound of running
water.



CHAPTER XX

FOUND

And now I come to perhaps the strangest adventure that happened to us
in all this strange business, and one which shows how wonderfully
things are brought about.

I was walking along quietly, some way in front of the other two, down
the banks of the stream which runs from the oasis till it is swallowed
up in the hungry desert sands, when suddenly I stopped and rubbed my
eyes, as well I might. There, not twenty yards in front of me, placed
in a charming situation, under the shade of a species of fig-tree, and
facing to the stream, was a cosy hut, built more or less on the Kafir
principle with grass and withes, but having a full-length door instead
of a bee-hole.

"What the dickens," said I to myself, "can a hut be doing here?" Even
as I said it the door of the hut opened, and there limped out of it a
/white man/ clothed in skins, and with an enormous black beard. I
thought that I must have got a touch of the sun. It was impossible. No
hunter ever came to such a place as this. Certainly no hunter would
ever settle in it. I stared and stared, and so did the other man, and
just at that juncture Sir Henry and Good walked up.

"Look here, you fellows," I said, "is that a white man, or am I mad?"

Sir Henry looked, and Good looked, and then all of a sudden the lame
white man with a black beard uttered a great cry, and began hobbling
towards us. When he was close he fell down in a sort of faint.

With a spring Sir Henry was by his side.

"Great Powers!" he cried, "/it is my brother George!/"

At the sound of this disturbance, another figure, also clad in skins,
emerged from the hut, a gun in his hand, and ran towards us. On seeing
me he too gave a cry.

"Macumazahn," he halloed, "don't you know me, Baas? I'm Jim the
hunter. I lost the note you gave me to give to the Baas, and we have
been here nearly two years." And the fellow fell at my feet, and
rolled over and over, weeping for joy.

"You careless scoundrel!" I said; "you ought to be well /sjambocked/"
--that is, hided.

Meanwhile the man with the black beard had recovered and risen, and he
and Sir Henry were pump-handling away at each other, apparently
without a word to say. But whatever they had quarrelled about in the
past--I suspect it was a lady, though I never asked--it was evidently
forgotten now.

"My dear old fellow," burst out Sir Henry at last, "I thought you were
dead. I have been over Solomon's Mountains to find you. I had given up
all hope of ever seeing you again, and now I come across you perched
in the desert, like an old /assvoegel/."[*]

[*] Vulture.

"I tried to cross Solomon's Mountains nearly two years ago," was the
answer, spoken in the hesitating voice of a man who has had little
recent opportunity of using his tongue, "but when I reached here a
boulder fell on my leg and crushed it, and I have been able to go
neither forward nor back."

Then I came up. "How do you do, Mr. Neville?" I said; "do you remember
me?"

"Why," he said, "isn't it Hunter Quatermain, eh, and Good too? Hold on
a minute, you fellows, I am getting dizzy again. It is all so very
strange, and, when a man has ceased to hope, so very happy!"

That evening, over the camp fire, George Curtis told us his story,
which, in its way, was almost as eventful as our own, and, put
shortly, amounted to this. A little less than two years before, he had
started from Sitanda's Kraal, to try to reach Suliman's Berg. As for
the note I had sent him by Jim, that worthy lost it, and he had never
heard of it till to-day. But, acting upon information he had received
from the natives, he headed not for Sheba's Breasts, but for the
ladder-like descent of the mountains down which we had just come,
which is clearly a better route than that marked out in old Dom
Silvestra's plan. In the desert he and Jim had suffered great
hardships, but finally they reached this oasis, where a terrible
accident befell George Curtis. On the day of their arrival he was
sitting by the stream, and Jim was extracting the honey from the nest
of a stingless bee which is to be found in the desert, on the top of a
bank immediately above him. In so doing he loosened a great boulder of
rock, which fell upon George Curtis's right leg, crushing it
frightfully. From that day he had been so lame that he found it
impossible to go either forward or back, and had preferred to take the
chances of dying in the oasis to the certainty of perishing in the
desert.

As for food, however, they got on pretty well, for they had a good
supply of ammunition, and the oasis was frequented, especially at
night, by large quantities of game, which came thither for water.
These they shot, or trapped in pitfalls, using the flesh for food,
and, after their clothes wore out, the hides for clothing.

"And so," George Curtis ended, "we have lived for nearly two years,
like a second Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, hoping against hope
that some natives might come here to help us away, but none have come.
Only last night we settled that Jim should leave me, and try to reach
Sitanda's Kraal to get assistance. He was to go to-morrow, but I had
little hope of ever seeing him back again. And now /you/, of all
people in the world, /you/, who, as I fancied, had long ago forgotten
all about me, and were living comfortably in old England, turn up in a
promiscuous way and find me where you least expected. It is the most
wonderful thing that I have ever heard of, and the most merciful too."

Then Sir Henry set to work, and told him the main facts of our
adventures, sitting till late into the night to do it.

"By Jove!" said George Curtis, when I showed him some of the diamonds:
"well, at least you have got something for your pains, besides my
worthless self."

Sir Henry laughed. "They belong to Quatermain and Good. It was a part
of the bargain that they should divide any spoils there might be."

This remark set me thinking, and having spoken to Good, I told Sir
Henry that it was our joint wish that he should take a third portion
of the diamonds, or, if he would not, that his share should be handed
to his brother, who had suffered even more than ourselves on the
chance of getting them. Finally, we prevailed upon him to consent to
this arrangement, but George Curtis did not know of it until some time
afterwards.

*****

Here, at this point, I think that I shall end my history. Our journey
across the desert back to Sitanda's Kraal was most arduous, especially
as we had to support George Curtis, whose right leg was very weak
indeed, and continually threw out splinters of bone. But we did
accomplish it somehow, and to give its details would only be to
reproduce much of what happened to us on the former occasion.

Six months from the date of our re-arrival at Sitanda's, where we
found our guns and other goods quite safe, though the old rascal in
charge was much disgusted at our surviving to claim them, saw us all
once more safe and sound at my little place on the Berea, near Durban,
where I am now writing. Thence I bid farewell to all who have
accompanied me through the strangest trip I ever made in the course of
a long and varied experience.

P.S.--Just as I had written the last word, a Kafir came up my avenue
of orange trees, carrying a letter in a cleft stick, which he had
brought from the post. It turned out to be from Sir Henry, and as it
speaks for itself I give it in full.

October 1, 1884.
Brayley Hall, Yorkshire.

  My Dear Quatermain,

  I send you a line a few mails back to say that the three of us,
  George, Good, and myself, fetched up all right in England. We got
  off the boat at Southampton, and went up to town. You should have
  seen what a swell Good turned out the very next day, beautifully
  shaved, frock coat fitting like a glove, brand new eye-glass,
  etc., etc. I went and walked in the park with him, where I met
  some people I know, and at once told them the story of his
  "beautiful white legs."

  He is furious, especially as some ill-natured person has printed
  it in a Society paper.

  To come to business, Good and I took the diamonds to Streeter's to
  be valued, as we arranged, and really I am afraid to tell you what
  they put them at, it seems so enormous. They say that of course it
  is more or less guess-work, as such stones have never to their
  knowledge been put on the market in anything like such quantities.
  It appears that (with the exception of one or two of the largest)
  they are of the finest water, and equal in every way to the best
  Brazilian stones. I asked them if they would buy them, but they
  said that it was beyond their power to do so, and recommended us
  to sell by degrees, over a period of years indeed, for fear lest
  we should flood the market. They offer, however, a hundred and
  eighty thousand for a very small portion of them.

  You must come home, Quatermain, and see about these things,
  especially if you insist upon making the magnificent present of
  the third share, which does /not/ belong to me, to my brother
  George. As for Good, he is /no good/. His time is too much
  occupied in shaving, and other matters connected with the vain
  adorning of the body. But I think he is still down on his luck
  about Foulata. He told me that since he had been home he hadn't
  seen a woman to touch her, either as regards her figure or the
  sweetness of her expression.

  I want you to come home, my dear old comrade, and to buy a house
  near here. You have done your day's work, and have lots of money
  now, and there is a place for sale quite close which would suit
  you admirably. Do come; the sooner the better; you can finish
  writing the story of our adventures on board ship. We have refused
  to tell the tale till it is written by you, for fear lest we shall
  not be believed. If you start on receipt of this you will reach
  here by Christmas, and I book you to stay with me for that. Good
  is coming, and George; and so, by the way, is your boy Harry
  (there's a bribe for you). I have had him down for a week's
  shooting, and like him. He is a cool young hand; he shot me in the
  leg, cut out the pellets, and then remarked upon the advantages of
  having a medical student with every shooting party!

  Good-bye, old boy; I can't say any more, but I know that you will
  come, if it is only to oblige

Your sincere friend,
Henry Curtis.

  P.S.--The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva have now
  been put up in the hall here, over the pair of buffalo horns you
  gave me, and look magnificent; and the axe with which I chopped
  off Twala's head is fixed above my writing-table. I wish that we
  could have managed to bring away the coats of chain armour. Don't
  lose poor Foulata's basket in which you brought away the diamonds.
H.C.

To-day is Tuesday. There is a steamer going on Friday, and I really
think that I must take Curtis at his word, and sail by her for
England, if it is only to see you, Harry, my boy, and to look after
the printing of this history, which is a task that I do not like to
trust to anybody else.

ALLAN QUATERMAIN.

___________________________________________________________________


Captain Nemo ventures TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

as told by JULES VERNE





PART ONE



CHAPTER I

A SHIFTING REEF

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious
and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.
Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime population
and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents,
seafaring men were particularly excited.  Merchants, common sailors,
captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America,
naval officers of all countries, and the Governments of several States
on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter.

For some time past vessels had been met by "an enormous thing,"
a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent,
and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.

The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books)
agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question,
the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion,
and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed.  If it was a whale,
it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science.
Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times--
rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object
a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions
which set it down as a mile in width and three in length--we might fairly
conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions
admitted by the learned ones of the day, if it existed at all.
And that it DID exist was an undeniable fact; and, with that tendency
which disposes the human mind in favour of the marvellous, we can understand
the excitement produced in the entire world by this supernatural apparition.
As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question.

On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson,
of the Calcutta and Burnach Steam Navigation Company, had met
this moving mass five miles off the east coast of Australia.
Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an
unknown sandbank; he even prepared to determine its exact position
when two columns of water, projected by the mysterious object,
shot with a hissing noise a hundred and fifty feet up into the air.
Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent
eruption of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had to do neither
more nor less than with an aquatic mammal, unknown till then,
which threw up from its blow-holes columns of water mixed with
air and vapour.

Similar facts were observed on the 23rd of July in the same year,
in the Pacific Ocean, by the Columbus, of the West India
and Pacific Steam Navigation Company.  But this extraordinary
creature could transport itself from one place to another
with surprising velocity; as, in an interval of three days,
the Governor Higginson and the Columbus had observed it at
two different points of the chart, separated by a distance
of more than seven hundred nautical leagues.

Fifteen days later, two thousand miles farther off, the Helvetia,
of the Compagnie-Nationale, and the Shannon, of the Royal
Mail Steamship Company, sailing to windward in that portion
of the Atlantic lying between the United States and Europe,
respectively signalled the monster to each other in 42@ 15' N. lat.
and 60@ 35' W. long.  In these simultaneous observations they
thought themselves justified in estimating the minimum length
of the mammal at more than three hundred and fifty feet,
as the Shannon and Helvetia were of smaller dimensions than it,
though they measured three hundred feet over all.

Now the largest whales, those which frequent those parts of the sea round
the Aleutian, Kulammak, and Umgullich islands, have never exceeded the length
of sixty yards, if they attain that.

In every place of great resort the monster was the fashion.
They sang of it in the cafes, ridiculed it in the papers, and represented
it on the stage.  All kinds of stories were circulated regarding it.
There appeared in the papers caricatures of every gigantic and
imaginary creature, from the white whale, the terrible "Moby Dick"
of sub-arctic regions, to the immense kraken, whose tentacles could entangle
a ship of five hundred tons and hurry it into the abyss of the ocean.
The legends of ancient times were even revived.

Then burst forth the unending argument between the believers and the
unbelievers in the societies of the wise and the scientific journals.
"The question of the monster" inflamed all minds.  Editors of
scientific journals, quarrelling with believers in the supernatural,
spilled seas of ink during this memorable campaign, some even drawing blood;
for from the sea-serpent they came to direct personalities.

During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed buried,
never to revive, when new facts were brought before the public.
It was then no longer a scientific problem to be solved, but a real
danger seriously to be avoided.  The question took quite another shape.
The monster became a small island, a rock, a reef, but a reef of indefinite
and shifting proportions.

On the 5th of March, 1867, the Moravian, of the Montreal Ocean Company,
finding herself during the night in 27@ 30' lat.  and 72@ 15' long., struck
on her starboard quarter a rock, marked in no chart for that part of the sea.
Under the combined efforts of the wind and its four hundred horse power,
it was going at the rate of thirteen knots.  Had it not been for the superior
strength of the hull of the Moravian, she would have been broken by the shock
and gone down with the 237 passengers she was bringing home from Canada.

The accident happened about five o'clock in the morning, as the day
was breaking.  The officers of the quarter-deck hurried to the after-part
of the vessel.  They examined the sea with the most careful attention.
They saw nothing but a strong eddy about three cables' length distant,
as if the surface had been violently agitated.  The bearings of the place were
taken exactly, and the Moravian continued its route without apparent damage.
Had it struck on a submerged rock, or on an enormous wreck?  They could
not tell; but, on examination of the ship's bottom when undergoing repairs,
it was found that part of her keel was broken.

This fact, so grave in itself, might perhaps have been forgotten
like many others if, three weeks after, it had not been re-enacted
under similar circumstances.  But, thanks to the nationality of
the victim of the shock, thanks to the reputation of the company to
which the vessel belonged, the circumstance became extensively circulated.

The 13th of April, 1867, the sea being beautiful, the breeze favourable,
the Scotia, of the Cunard Company's line, found herself in 15@ 12' long.
and 45@ 37' lat.  She was going at the speed of thirteen knots and a half.

At seventeen minutes past four in the afternoon, whilst the passengers were
assembled at lunch in the great saloon, a slight shock was felt on the hull
of the Scotia, on her quarter, a little aft of the port-paddle.

The Scotia had not struck, but she had been struck, and seemingly
by something rather sharp and penetrating than blunt.
The shock had been so slight that no one had been alarmed,
had it not been for the shouts of the carpenter's watch,
who rushed on to the bridge, exclaiming, "We are sinking! we
are sinking!"  At first the passengers were much frightened,
but Captain Anderson hastened to reassure them.  The danger could
not be imminent.  The Scotia, divided into seven compartments
by strong partitions, could brave with impunity any leak.
Captain Anderson went down immediately into the hold.
He found that the sea was pouring into the fifth compartment;
and the rapidity of the influx proved that the force of the water
was considerable.  Fortunately this compartment did not hold
the boilers, or the fires would have been immediately extinguished.
Captain Anderson ordered the engines to be stopped at once,
and one of the men went down to ascertain the extent of the injury.
Some minutes afterwards they discovered the existence of a
large hole, two yards in diameter, in the ship's bottom.
Such a leak could not be stopped; and the Scotia, her paddles
half submerged, was obliged to continue her course.  She was then
three hundred miles from Cape Clear, and, after three days' delay,
which caused great uneasiness in Liverpool, she entered the basin
of the company.

The engineers visited the Scotia, which was put in dry dock.
They could scarcely believe it possible; at two yards and a half below
water-mark was a regular rent, in the form of an isosceles triangle.
The broken place in the iron plates was so perfectly defined
that it could not have been more neatly done by a punch.
It was clear, then, that the instrument producing the perforation
was not of a common stamp and, after having been driven with
prodigious strength, and piercing an iron plate 1 3/8 inches thick,
had withdrawn itself by a backward motion.

Such was the last fact, which resulted in exciting once more the torrent
of public opinion.  From this moment all unlucky casualties which could
not be otherwise accounted for were put down to the monster.

Upon this imaginary creature rested the responsibility of all
these shipwrecks, which unfortunately were considerable;
for of three thousand ships whose loss was annually recorded
at Lloyd's, the number of sailing and steam-ships supposed
to be totally lost, from the absence of all news, amounted to
not less than two hundred!

Now, it was the "monster" who, justly or unjustly, was accused
of their disappearance, and, thanks to it, communication between
the different continents became more and more dangerous.
The public demanded sharply that the seas should at any price be
relieved from this formidable cetacean.  [1]

[1] Member of the whale family.



CHAPTER II

PRO AND CON

At the period when these events took place, I had just returned
from a scientific research in the disagreeable territory
of Nebraska, in the United States.  In virtue of my office
as Assistant Professor in the Museum of Natural History in Paris,
the French Government had attached me to that expedition.
After six months in Nebraska, I arrived in New York towards
the end of March, laden with a precious collection.
My departure for France was fixed for the first days in May.
Meanwhile I was occupying myself in classifying my mineralogical,
botanical, and zoological riches, when the accident happened
to the Scotia.

I was perfectly up in the subject which was the question of the day.
How could I be otherwise?  I had read and reread all the American
and European papers without being any nearer a conclusion.
This mystery puzzled me.  Under the impossibility of forming
an opinion, I jumped from one extreme to the other.
That there really was something could not be doubted,
and the incredulous were invited to put their finger on the wound
of the Scotia.

On my arrival at New York the question was at its height.
The theory of the floating island, and the unapproachable sandbank,
supported by minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned.
And, indeed, unless this shoal had a machine in its stomach,
how could it change its position with such astonishing rapidity?

From the same cause, the idea of a floating hull of an enormous
wreck was given up.

There remained, then, only two possible solutions of the question,
which created two distinct parties:  on one side, those who were
for a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those who were
for a submarine vessel of enormous motive power.

But this last theory, plausible as it was, could not stand against
inquiries made in both worlds.  That a private gentleman should have
such a machine at his command was not likely.  Where, when, and how
was it built? and how could its construction have been kept secret?
Certainly a Government might possess such a destructive machine.
And in these disastrous times, when the ingenuity of man has
multiplied the power of weapons of war, it was possible that,
without the knowledge of others, a State might try to work such
a formidable engine.

But the idea of a war machine fell before the declaration of Governments.
As public interest was in question, and transatlantic communications
suffered, their veracity could not be doubted.  But how admit that
the construction of this submarine boat had escaped the public eye?
For a private gentleman to keep the secret under such circumstances would
be very difficult, and for a State whose every act is persistently watched
by powerful rivals, certainly impossible.

Upon my arrival in New York several persons did me
the honour of consulting me on the phenomenon in question.
I had published in France a work in quarto, in two volumes,
entitled Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds.  This book,
highly approved of in the learned world, gained for me a special
reputation in this rather obscure branch of Natural History.
My advice was asked.  As long as I could deny the reality
of the fact, I confined myself to a decided negative.
But soon, finding myself driven into a corner, I was
obliged to explain myself point by point.  I discussed
the question in all its forms, politically and scientifically;
and I give here an extract from a carefully-studied article
which I published in the number of the 30th of April.
It ran as follows:

"After examining one by one the different theories, rejecting all
other suggestions, it becomes necessary to admit the existence
of a marine animal of enormous power.

"The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us.
Soundings cannot reach them.  What passes in those remote depths--
what beings live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath
the surface of the waters--what is the organisation of these animals,
we can scarcely conjecture.  However, the solution of the problem
submitted to me may modify the form of the dilemma.  Either we do know
all the varieties of beings which people our planet, or we do not.
If we do NOT know them all--if Nature has still secrets in the deeps
for us, nothing is more conformable to reason than to admit the existence
of fishes, or cetaceans of other kinds, or even of new species,
of an organisation formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings,
and which an accident of some sort has brought at long intervals
to the upper level of the ocean.

"If, on the contrary, we DO know all living kinds, we must
necessarily seek for the animal in question amongst those marine
beings already classed; and, in that case, I should be disposed
to admit the existence of a gigantic narwhal.

"The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, often attains
a length of sixty feet.  Increase its size fivefold or tenfold,
give it strength proportionate to its size, lengthen its
destructive weapons, and you obtain the animal required.
It will have the proportions determined by the officers
of the Shannon, the instrument required by the perforation
of the Scotia, and the power necessary to pierce the hull
of the steamer.

"Indeed, the narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword,
a halberd, according to the expression of certain naturalists.
The principal tusk has the hardness of steel.  Some of these tusks
have been found buried in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn
always attacks with success.  Others have been drawn out,
not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they
had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a barrel.
The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one
of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length,
and fifteen inches in diameter at the base.

"Very well! suppose this weapon to be six times stronger and the animal
ten times more powerful; launch it at the rate of twenty miles an hour,
and you obtain a shock capable of producing the catastrophe required.
Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be
a sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd,
but with a real spur, as the armoured frigates, or the `rams' of war,
whose massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time.
Thus may this puzzling phenomenon be explained, unless there be something over
and above all that one has ever conjectured, seen, perceived, or experienced;
which is just within the bounds of possibility."

These last words were cowardly on my part; but, up to a certain point,
I wished to shelter my dignity as professor, and not give
too much cause for laughter to the Americans, who laugh well
when they do laugh.  I reserved for myself a way of escape.
In effect, however, I admitted the existence of the "monster."
My article was warmly discussed, which procured it a high reputation.
It rallied round it a certain number of partisans.  The solution
it proposed gave, at least, full liberty to the imagination.
The human mind delights in grand conceptions of supernatural beings.
And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium
through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals,
such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced
or developed.

The industrial and commercial papers treated the question chiefly from this
point of view.  The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyd's List,
the Packet-Boat, and the Maritime and Colonial Review, all papers devoted
to insurance companies which threatened to raise their rates of premium,
were unanimous on this point.  Public opinion had been pronounced.
The United States were the first in the field; and in New York they
made preparations for an expedition destined to pursue this narwhal.
A frigate of great speed, the Abraham Lincoln, was put in commission
as soon as possible.  The arsenals were opened to Commander Farragut,
who hastened the arming of his frigate; but, as it always happens,
the moment it was decided to pursue the monster, the monster did not appear.
For two months no one heard it spoken of.  No ship met with it.
It seemed as if this unicorn knew of the plots weaving around it.
It had been so much talked of, even through the Atlantic cable, that jesters
pretended that this slender fly had stopped a telegram on its passage and was
making the most of it.

So when the frigate had been armed for a long campaign, and provided with
formidable fishing apparatus, no one could tell what course to pursue.
Impatience grew apace, when, on the 2nd of July, they learned that a
steamer of the line of San Francisco, from California to Shanghai,
had seen the animal three weeks before in the North Pacific Ocean.
The excitement caused by this news was extreme.  The ship was revictualled
and well stocked with coal.

Three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left Brooklyn pier,
I received a letter worded as follows:

To M. ARONNAX, Professor in the Museum of Paris, Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York.

SIR,--If you will consent to join the Abraham Lincoln
in this expedition, the Government of the United States
will with pleasure see France represented in the enterprise.
Commander Farragut has a cabin at your disposal.

Very cordially yours, J.B. HOBSON, Secretary of Marine.



CHAPTER III

I FORM MY RESOLUTION

Three seconds before the arrival of J. B. Hobson's letter I no more thought
of pursuing the unicorn than of attempting the passage of the North Sea.
Three seconds after reading the letter of the honourable Secretary of Marine,
I felt that my true vocation, the sole end of my life, was to chase this
disturbing monster and purge it from the world.

But I had just returned from a fatiguing journey, weary and longing
for repose.  I aspired to nothing more than again seeing my country,
my friends, my little lodging by the Jardin des Plantes,
my dear and precious collections--but nothing could keep me back!
I forgot all--fatigue, friends and collections--and accepted without
hesitation the offer of the American Government.

"Besides," thought I, "all roads lead back to Europe; and the unicorn
may be amiable enough to hurry me towards the coast of France.
This worthy animal may allow itself to be caught in the seas of Europe
(for my particular benefit), and I will not bring back less than half
a yard of his ivory halberd to the Museum of Natural History."
But in the meanwhile I must seek this narwhal in the North
Pacific Ocean, which, to return to France, was taking the road
to the antipodes.

"Conseil," I called in an impatient voice.

Conseil was my servant, a true, devoted Flemish boy, who had accompanied
me in all my travels.  I liked him, and he returned the liking well.
He was quiet by nature, regular from principle, zealous from habit,
evincing little disturbance at the different surprises of life,
very quick with his hands, and apt at any service required of him;
and, despite his name, never giving advice--even when asked for it.

Conseil had followed me for the last ten years wherever science led.
Never once did he complain of the length or fatigue of a journey,
never make an objection to pack his portmanteau for whatever
country it might be, or however far away, whether China or Congo.
Besides all this, he had good health, which defied all sickness,
and solid muscles, but no nerves; good morals are understood.
This boy was thirty years old, and his age to that of his master
as fifteen to twenty.  May I be excused for saying that I was
forty years old?

But Conseil had one fault:  he was ceremonious to a degree,
and would never speak to me but in the third person,
which was sometimes provoking.

"Conseil," said I again, beginning with feverish hands to make
preparations for my departure.

Certainly I was sure of this devoted boy.  As a rule, I never asked
him if it were convenient for him or not to follow me in my travels;
but this time the expedition in question might be prolonged,
and the enterprise might be hazardous in pursuit of an animal capable
of sinking a frigate as easily as a nutshell.  Here there was matter
for reflection even to the most impassive man in the world.
What would Conseil say?

"Conseil," I called a third time.

Conseil appeared.

"Did you call, sir?" said he, entering.

"Yes, my boy; make preparations for me and yourself too.
We leave in two hours."

"As you please, sir," replied Conseil, quietly.

"Not an instant to lose; lock in my trunk all travelling utensils,
coats, shirts, and stockings--without counting, as many as you can,
and make haste."

"And your collections, sir?" observed Conseil.

"They will keep them at the hotel."

"We are not returning to Paris, then?" said Conseil.

"Oh! certainly," I answered, evasively, "by making a curve."

"Will the curve please you, sir?"

"Oh! it will be nothing; not quite so direct a road, that is all.
We take our passage in the Abraham, Lincoln."

"As you think proper, sir," coolly replied Conseil.

"You see, my friend, it has to do with the monster--
the famous narwhal.  We are going to purge it from the seas.
A glorious mission, but a dangerous one!  We cannot tell
where we may go; these animals can be very capricious.
But we will go whether or no; we have got a captain who
is pretty wide-awake."

Our luggage was transported to the deck of the frigate immediately.
I hastened on board and asked for Commander Farragut.
One of the sailors conducted me to the poop, where I found myself
in the presence of a good-looking officer, who held out his
hand to me.

"Monsieur Pierre Aronnax?" said he.

"Himself," replied I. "Commander Farragut?"

"You are welcome, Professor; your cabin is ready for you."

I bowed, and desired to be conducted to the cabin destined for me.

The Abraham Lincoln had been well chosen and equipped
for her new destination.  She was a frigate of great speed,
fitted with high-pressure engines which admitted a pressure
of seven atmospheres.  Under this the Abraham Lincoln attained
the mean speed of nearly eighteen knots and a third an hour--
a considerable speed, but, nevertheless, insufficient to grapple
with this gigantic cetacean.

The interior arrangements of the frigate corresponded to its
nautical qualities.  I was well satisfied with my cabin,
which was in the after part, opening upon the gunroom.

"We shall be well off here," said I to Conseil.

"As well, by your honour's leave, as a hermit-crab in the shell
of a whelk," said Conseil.

I left Conseil to stow our trunks conveniently away, and remounted
the poop in order to survey the preparations for departure.

At that moment Commander Farragut was ordering the last moorings
to be cast loose which held the Abraham Lincoln to the pier
of Brooklyn.  So in a quarter of an hour, perhaps less,
the frigate would have sailed without me.  I should have missed
this extraordinary, supernatural, and incredible expedition,
the recital of which may well meet with some suspicion.

But Commander Farragut would not lose a day nor an hour
in scouring the seas in which the animal had been sighted.
He sent for the engineer.

"Is the steam full on?" asked he.

"Yes, sir," replied the engineer.

"Go ahead," cried Commander Farragut.



CHAPTER IV

NED LAND

Captain Farragut was a good seaman, worthy of the frigate he commanded.
His vessel and he were one.  He was the soul of it.  On the question
of the monster there was no doubt in his mind, and he would not allow
the existence of the animal to be disputed on board.  He believed in it,
as certain good women believe in the leviathan--by faith, not by reason.
The monster did exist, and he had sworn to rid the seas of it.  Either Captain
Farragut would kill the narwhal, or the narwhal would kill the captain.
There was no third course.

The officers on board shared the opinion of their chief.
They were ever chatting, discussing, and calculating the various
chances of a meeting, watching narrowly the vast surface of the ocean.
More than one took up his quarters voluntarily in the cross-trees,
who would have cursed such a berth under any other circumstances.
As long as the sun described its daily course, the rigging was
crowded with sailors, whose feet were burnt to such an extent by
the heat of the deck as to render it unbearable; still the Abraham
Lincoln had not yet breasted the suspected waters of the Pacific.
As to the ship's company, they desired nothing better than to meet
the unicorn, to harpoon it, hoist it on board, and despatch it.
They watched the sea with eager attention.

Besides, Captain Farragut had spoken of a certain sum of two thousand dollars,
set apart for whoever should first sight the monster, were he cabin-boy,
common seaman, or officer.

I leave you to judge how eyes were used on board the Abraham Lincoln.

For my own part I was not behind the others, and, left to no one my share
of daily observations.  The frigate might have been called the Argus,
for a hundred reasons.  Only one amongst us, Conseil, seemed to protest
by his indifference against the question which so interested us all,
and seemed to be out of keeping with the general enthusiasm on board.

I have said that Captain Farragut had carefully provided his
ship with every apparatus for catching the gigantic cetacean.
No whaler had ever been better armed.  We possessed every
known engine, from the harpoon thrown by the hand to the barbed
arrows of the blunderbuss, and the explosive balls of the duck-gun.
On the forecastle lay the perfection of a breech-loading gun,
very thick at the breech, and very narrow in the bore,
the model of which had been in the Exhibition of 1867.
This precious weapon of American origin could throw with ease
a conical projectile of nine pounds to a mean distance
of ten miles.

Thus the Abraham Lincoln wanted for no means of destruction; and, what was
better still she had on board Ned Land, the prince of harpooners.

Ned Land was a Canadian, with an uncommon quickness of hand, and who knew
no equal in his dangerous occupation.  Skill, coolness, audacity, and cunning
he possessed in a superior degree, and it must be a cunning whale to escape
the stroke of his harpoon.

Ned Land was about forty years of age; he was a tall man
(more than six feet high), strongly built, grave and taciturn,
occasionally violent, and very passionate when contradicted.
His person attracted attention, but above all the boldness
of his look, which gave a singular expression to his face.

Who calls himself Canadian calls himself French; and, little communicative
as Ned Land was, I must admit that he took a certain liking for me.
My nationality drew him to me, no doubt.  It was an opportunity for him
to talk, and for me to hear, that old language of Rabelais, which is still
in use in some Canadian provinces.  The harpooner's family was originally
from Quebec, and was already a tribe of hardy fishermen when this town
belonged to France.

Little by little, Ned Land acquired a taste for chatting, and I
loved to hear the recital of his adventures in the polar seas.
He related his fishing, and his combats, with natural poetry
of expression; his recital took the form of an epic poem,
and I seemed to be listening to a Canadian Homer singing the Iliad
of the regions of the North.

I am portraying this hardy companion as I really knew him.
We are old friends now, united in that unchangeable friendship
which is born and cemented amidst extreme dangers.  Ah, brave Ned!
I ask no more than to live a hundred years longer, that I may have more
time to dwell the longer on your memory.

Now, what was Ned Land's opinion upon the question of the marine monster?
I must admit that he did not believe in the unicorn, and was
the only one on board who did not share that universal conviction.
He even avoided the subject, which I one day thought it my duty
to press upon him.  One magnificent evening, the 30th July (that is
to say, three weeks after our departure), the frigate was abreast
of Cape Blanc, thirty miles to leeward of the coast of Patagonia.
We had crossed the tropic of Capricorn, and the Straits of Magellan
opened less than seven hundred miles to the south.  Before eight
days were over the Abraham Lincoln would be ploughing the waters
of the Pacific.

Seated on the poop, Ned Land and I were chatting of one thing
and another as we looked at this mysterious sea, whose great
depths had up to this time been inaccessible to the eye of man.
I naturally led up the conversation to the giant unicorn, and examined
the various chances of success or failure of the expedition.
But, seeing that Ned Land let me speak without saying too much himself,
I pressed him more closely.

"Well, Ned," said I, "is it possible that you are not convinced
of the existence of this cetacean that we are following?
Have you any particular reason for being so incredulous?"

The harpooner looked at me fixedly for some moments
before answering, struck his broad forehead with his hand
(a habit of his), as if to collect himself, and said at last,
"Perhaps I have, Mr. Aronnax."

"But, Ned, you, a whaler by profession, familiarised with all
the great marine mammalia--YOU ought to be the last to doubt
under such circumstances!"

"That is just what deceives you, Professor," replied Ned.
"As a whaler I have followed many a cetacean, harpooned a great number,
and killed several; but, however strong or well-armed they may
have been, neither their tails nor their weapons would have been
able even to scratch the iron plates of a steamer."

"But, Ned, they tell of ships which the teeth of the narwhal
have pierced through and through."

"Wooden ships--that is possible," replied the Canadian,
"but I have never seen it done; and, until further proof,
I deny that whales, cetaceans, or sea-unicorns could ever produce
the effect you describe."

"Well, Ned, I repeat it with a conviction resting on the logic of facts.
I believe in the existence of a mammal power fully organised, belonging to
the branch of vertebrata, like the whales, the cachalots, or the dolphins,
and furnished with a horn of defence of great penetrating power."

"Hum!" said the harpooner, shaking his head with the air of a man
who would not be convinced.

"Notice one thing, my worthy Canadian," I resumed.
"If such an animal is in existence, if it inhabits the depths
of the ocean, if it frequents the strata lying miles below
the surface of the water, it must necessarily possess an
organisation the strength of which would defy all comparison."

"And why this powerful organisation?" demanded Ned.

"Because it requires incalculable strength to keep one's self
in these strata and resist their pressure.  Listen to me.
Let us admit that the pressure of the atmosphere is represented
by the weight of a column of water thirty-two feet high.
In reality the column of water would be shorter, as we are
speaking of sea water, the density of which is greater than
that of fresh water.  Very well, when you dive, Ned, as many
times 32 feet of water as there are above you, so many times
does your body bear a pressure equal to that of the atmosphere,
that is to say, 15 lb.  for each square inch of its surface.
It follows, then, that at 320 feet this pressure equals
that of 10 atmospheres, of 100 atmospheres at 3,200 feet,
and of 1,000 atmospheres at 32,000 feet, that is, about 6 miles;
which is equivalent to saying that if you could attain this
depth in the ocean, each square three-eighths of an inch
of the surface of your body would bear a pressure of 5,600 lb.
Ah! my brave Ned, do you know how many square inches you carry on
the surface of your body?"

"I have no idea, Mr. Aronnax."

"About 6,500; and as in reality the atmospheric pressure is about 15 lb.
to the square inch, your 6,500 square inches bear at this moment a pressure
of 97,500 lb."

"Without my perceiving it?"

"Without your perceiving it.  And if you are not crushed by
such a pressure, it is because the air penetrates the interior
of your body with equal pressure.  Hence perfect equilibrium
between the interior and exterior pressure, which thus neutralise
each other, and which allows you to bear it without inconvenience.
But in the water it is another thing."

"Yes, I understand," replied Ned, becoming more attentive;
"because the water surrounds me, but does not penetrate."

"Precisely, Ned:  so that at 32 feet beneath the surface of the sea you would
undergo a pressure of 97,500 lb.; at 320 feet, ten times that pressure;
at 3,200 feet, a hundred times that pressure; lastly, at 32,000 feet,
a thousand times that pressure would be 97,500,000 lb.--that is to say,
that you would be flattened as if you had been drawn from the plates of
a hydraulic machine!"

"The devil!" exclaimed Ned.

"Very well, my worthy harpooner, if some vertebrate, several hundred
yards long, and large in proportion, can maintain itself in such depths--
of those whose surface is represented by millions of square inches, that is
by tens of millions of pounds, we must estimate the pressure they undergo.
Consider, then, what must be the resistance of their bony structure,
and the strength of their organisation to withstand such pressure!"

"Why!" exclaimed Ned Land, "they must be made of iron plates
eight inches thick, like the armoured frigates."

"As you say, Ned.  And think what destruction such a mass would cause,
if hurled with the speed of an express train against the hull of a vessel."

"Yes--certainly--perhaps," replied the Canadian, shaken by these figures,
but not yet willing to give in.

"Well, have I convinced you?"

"You have convinced me of one thing, sir, which is that,
if such animals do exist at the bottom of the seas, they must
necessarily be as strong as you say."

"But if they do not exist, mine obstinate harpooner, how explain
the accident to the Scotia?"



CHAPTER V

AT A VENTURE

The voyage of the Abraham Lincoln was for a long time marked
by no special incident.  But one circumstance happened which showed
the wonderful dexterity of Ned Land, and proved what confidence
we might place in him.

The 30th of June, the frigate spoke some American whalers,
from whom we learned that they knew nothing about the narwhal.
But one of them, the captain of the Monroe, knowing that Ned Land had
shipped on board the Abraham Lincoln, begged for his help in chasing
a whale they had in sight.  Commander Farragut, desirous of seeing
Ned Land at work, gave him permission to go on board the Monroe.
And fate served our Canadian so well that, instead of one whale,
he harpooned two with a double blow, striking one straight to the heart,
and catching the other after some minutes' pursuit.

Decidedly, if the monster ever had to do with Ned Land's harpoon,
I would not bet in its favour.

The frigate skirted the south-east coast of America with great rapidity.
The 3rd of July we were at the opening of the Straits of Magellan, level with
Cape Vierges.  But Commander Farragut would not take a tortuous passage,
but doubled Cape Horn.

The ship's crew agreed with him.  And certainly it was possible
that they might meet the narwhal in this narrow pass.
Many of the sailors affirmed that the monster could not pass there,
"that he was too big for that!"

The 6th of July, about three o'clock in the afternoon, the Abraham Lincoln,
at fifteen miles to the south, doubled the solitary island,
this lost rock at the extremity of the American continent, to which
some Dutch sailors gave the name of their native town, Cape Horn.
The course was taken towards the north-west, and the next day the screw
of the frigate was at last beating the waters of the Pacific.

"Keep your eyes open!" called out the sailors.

And they were opened widely.  Both eyes and glasses, a little dazzled,
it is true, by the prospect of two thousand dollars, had not
an instant's repose.

I myself, for whom money had no charms, was not the least
attentive on board.  Giving but few minutes to my meals,
but a few hours to sleep, indifferent to either rain or sunshine,
I did not leave the poop of the vessel.  Now leaning on the netting
of the forecastle, now on the taffrail, I devoured with eagerness
the soft foam which whitened the sea as far as the eye could reach;
and how often have I shared the emotion of the majority of the crew,
when some capricious whale raised its black back above the waves!
The poop of the vessel was crowded on a moment.  The cabins
poured forth a torrent of sailors and officers, each with heaving
breast and troubled eye watching the course of the cetacean.
I looked and looked till I was nearly blind, whilst Conseil kept
repeating in a calm voice:

"If, sir, you would not squint so much, you would see better!"

But vain excitement!  The Abraham Lincoln checked its speed and made
for the animal signalled, a simple whale, or common cachalot,
which soon disappeared amidst a storm of abuse.

But the weather was good.  The voyage was being accomplished under
the most favourable auspices.  It was then the bad season in Australia,
the July of that zone corresponding to our January in Europe,
but the sea was beautiful and easily scanned round a vast circumference.

The 20th of July, the tropic of Capricorn was cut by 105d of longitude,
and the 27th of the same month we crossed the Equator on the 110th meridian.
This passed, the frigate took a more decided westerly direction,
and scoured the central waters of the Pacific.  Commander Farragut thought,
and with reason, that it was better to remain in deep water, and keep
clear of continents or islands, which the beast itself seemed to shun
(perhaps because there was not enough water for him! suggested
the greater part of the crew). The frigate passed at some distance from
the Marquesas and the Sandwich Islands, crossed the tropic of Cancer,
and made for the China Seas.  We were on the theatre of the last diversions
of the monster:  and, to say truth, we no longer LIVED on board.
The entire ship's crew were undergoing a nervous excitement, of which I
can give no idea:  they could not eat, they could not sleep--twenty times
a day, a misconception or an optical illusion of some sailor seated
on the taffrail, would cause dreadful perspirations, and these emotions,
twenty times repeated, kept us in a state of excitement so violent that a
reaction was unavoidable.

And truly, reaction soon showed itself.  For three months,
during which a day seemed an age, the Abraham Lincoln furrowed
all the waters of the Northern Pacific, running at whales,
making sharp deviations from her course, veering suddenly
from one tack to another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam,
and backing ever and anon at the risk of deranging her machinery,
and not one point of the Japanese or American coast
was left unexplored.

The warmest partisans of the enterprise now became its most
ardent detractors.  Reaction mounted from the crew to the captain himself,
and certainly, had it not been for the resolute determination on the part
of Captain Farragut, the frigate would have headed due southward.
This useless search could not last much longer.  The Abraham Lincoln
had nothing to reproach herself with, she had done her best to succeed.
Never had an American ship's crew shown more zeal or patience;
its failure could not be placed to their charge--there remained nothing
but to return.

This was represented to the commander.  The sailors could
not hide their discontent, and the service suffered.
I will not say there was a mutiny on board, but after a reasonable
period of obstinacy, Captain Farragut (as Columbus did)
asked for three days' patience.  If in three days the monster did
not appear, the man at the helm should give three turns of the wheel,
and the Abraham Lincoln would make for the European seas.

This promise was made on the 2nd of November.  It had the effect of
rallying the ship's crew.  The ocean was watched with renewed attention.
Each one wished for a last glance in which to sum up his remembrance.
Glasses were used with feverish activity.  It was a grand defiance
given to the giant narwhal, and he could scarcely fail to answer
the summons and "appear."

Two days passed, the steam was at half pressure; a thousand
schemes were tried to attract the attention and stimulate
the apathy of the animal in case it should be met in those parts.
Large quantities of bacon were trailed in the wake of the ship,
to the great satisfaction (I must say) of the sharks.
Small craft radiated in all directions round the Abraham Lincoln
as she lay to, and did not leave a spot of the sea unexplored.
But the night of the 4th of November arrived without the unveiling of
this submarine mystery.

The next day, the 5th of November, at twelve, the delay would
(morally speaking) expire; after that time, Commander Farragut,
faithful to his promise, was to turn the course to the south-east
and abandon for ever the northern regions of the Pacific.

The frigate was then in 31@ 15' N. lat.  and 136@ 42' E. long.
The coast of Japan still remained less than two hundred miles to leeward.
Night was approaching.  They had just struck eight bells;
large clouds veiled the face of the moon, then in its first quarter.
The sea undulated peaceably under the stern of the vessel.

At that moment I was leaning forward on the starboard netting.
Conseil, standing near me, was looking straight before him.
The crew, perched in the ratlines, examined the horizon which
contracted and darkened by degrees.  Officers with their night
glasses scoured the growing darkness:  sometimes the ocean sparkled
under the rays of the moon, which darted between two clouds,
then all trace of light was lost in the darkness.

In looking at Conseil, I could see he was undergoing a little
of the general influence.  At least I thought so.  Perhaps for
the first time his nerves vibrated to a sentiment of curiosity.

"Come, Conseil," said I, "this is the last chance of pocketing
the two thousand dollars."

"May I be permitted to say, sir," replied Conseil, "that I never reckoned
on getting the prize; and, had the government of the Union offered a hundred
thousand dollars, it would have been none the poorer."

"You are right, Conseil.  It is a foolish affair after all, and one upon
which we entered too lightly.  What time lost, what useless emotions!
We should have been back in France six months ago."

"In your little room, sir," replied Conseil, "and in your museum, sir; and I
should have already classed all your fossils, sir.  And the Babiroussa would
have been installed in its cage in the Jardin des Plantes, and have drawn
all the curious people of the capital!"

"As you say, Conseil.  I fancy we shall run a fair chance of being
laughed at for our pains."

"That's tolerably certain," replied Conseil, quietly; "I think
they will make fun of you, sir.  And, must I say it----?"

"Go on, my good friend."

"Well, sir, you will only get your deserts."

"Indeed!"

"When one has the honour of being a savant as you are, sir, one should
not expose one's self to----"

Conseil had not time to finish his compliment.
In the midst of general silence a voice had just been heard.
It was the voice of Ned Land shouting:

"Look out there!  The very thing we are looking for--
on our weather beam!"



CHAPTER VI

AT FULL STEAM

At this cry the whole ship's crew hurried towards the harpooner--
commander, officers, masters, sailors, cabin boys; even the engineers
left their engines, and the stokers their furnaces.

The order to stop her had been given, and the frigate now simply went
on by her own momentum.  The darkness was then profound, and, however good
the Canadian's eyes were, I asked myself how he had managed to see,
and what he had been able to see.  My heart beat as if it would break.
But Ned Land was not mistaken, and we all perceived the object
he pointed to.  At two cables' length from the Abraham Lincoln,
on the starboard quarter, the sea seemed to be illuminated all over.
It was not a mere phosphoric phenomenon.  The monster emerged some fathoms
from the water, and then threw out that very intense but mysterious
light mentioned in the report of several captains.  This magnificent
irradiation must have been produced by an agent of great SHINING power.
The luminous part traced on the sea an immense oval, much elongated,
the centre of which condensed a burning heat, whose overpowering brilliancy
died out by successive gradations.

"It is only a massing of phosphoric particles," cried one of the officers.

"No, sir, certainly not," I replied.  "That brightness is of an
essentially electrical nature.  Besides, see, see! it moves;
it is moving forwards, backwards; it is darting towards us!"

A general cry arose from the frigate.

"Silence!" said the captain.  "Up with the helm, reverse the engines."

The steam was shut off, and the Abraham Lincoln, beating to port,
described a semicircle.

"Right the helm, go ahead," cried the captain.

These orders were executed, and the frigate moved rapidly
from the burning light.

I was mistaken.  She tried to sheer off, but the supernatural
animal approached with a velocity double her own.

We gasped for breath.  Stupefaction more than fear made us dumb
and motionless.  The animal gained on us, sporting with the waves.
It made the round of the frigate, which was then making fourteen knots,
and enveloped it with its electric rings like luminous dust.

Then it moved away two or three miles, leaving a phosphorescent track,
like those volumes of steam that the express trains leave behind.
All at once from the dark line of the horizon whither it retired
to gain its momentum, the monster rushed suddenly towards the Abraham
Lincoln with alarming rapidity, stopped suddenly about twenty feet
from the hull, and died out--not diving under the water, for its
brilliancy did not abate--but suddenly, and as if the source of this
brilliant emanation was exhausted.  Then it reappeared on the other
side of the vessel, as if it had turned and slid under the hull.
Any moment a collision might have occurred which would have been fatal
to us.  However, I was astonished at the manoeuvres of the frigate.
She fled and did not attack.

On the captain's face, generally so impassive, was an expression
of unaccountable astonishment.

"Mr. Aronnax," he said, "I do not know with what formidable
being I have to deal, and I will not imprudently risk my
frigate in the midst of this darkness.  Besides, how attack
this unknown thing, how defend one's self from it?
Wait for daylight, and the scene will change."

"You have no further doubt, captain, of the nature of the animal?"

"No, sir; it is evidently a gigantic narwhal, and an electric one."

"Perhaps," added I, "one can only approach it with a torpedo."

"Undoubtedly," replied the captain, "if it possesses such
dreadful power, it is the most terrible animal that ever was created.
That is why, sir, I must be on my guard."

The crew were on their feet all night.  No one thought of sleep.
The Abraham Lincoln, not being able to struggle with such velocity,
had moderated its pace, and sailed at half speed.  For its part,
the narwhal, imitating the frigate, let the waves rock it at will,
and seemed decided not to leave the scene of the struggle.
Towards midnight, however, it disappeared, or, to use a more
appropriate term, it "died out" like a large glow-worm. Had it fled?
One could only fear, not hope it.  But at seven minutes to one o'clock
in the morning a deafening whistling was heard, like that produced
by a body of water rushing with great violence.

The captain, Ned Land, and I were then on the poop, eagerly peering
through the profound darkness.

"Ned Land," asked the commander, "you have often heard the roaring of whales?"

"Often, sir; but never such whales the sight of which brought me
in two thousand dollars.  If I can only approach within four harpoons'
length of it!"

"But to approach it," said the commander, "I ought to put a whaler
at your disposal?"

"Certainly, sir."

"That will be trifling with the lives of my men."

"And mine too," simply said the harpooner.

Towards two o'clock in the morning, the burning light reappeared,
not less intense, about five miles to windward of the Abraham Lincoln.
Notwithstanding the distance, and the noise of the wind and sea,
one heard distinctly the loud strokes of the animal's tail,
and even its panting breath.  It seemed that, at the moment
that the enormous narwhal had come to take breath at the surface
of the water, the air was engulfed in its lungs, like the steam
in the vast cylinders of a machine of two thousand horse-power.

"Hum!" thought I, "a whale with the strength of a cavalry regiment
would be a pretty whale!"

We were on the qui vive till daylight, and prepared for the combat.
The fishing implements were laid along the hammock nettings.
The second lieutenant loaded the blunder busses, which could throw harpoons
to the distance of a mile, and long duck-guns, with explosive bullets,
which inflicted mortal wounds even to the most terrible animals.
Ned Land contented himself with sharpening his harpoon--a terrible weapon
in his hands.

At six o'clock day began to break; and, with the first glimmer
of light, the electric light of the narwhal disappeared.
At seven o'clock the day was sufficiently advanced, but a very thick sea
fog obscured our view, and the best spy glasses could not pierce it.
That caused disappointment and anger.

I climbed the mizzen-mast. Some officers were already perched
on the mast-heads. At eight o'clock the fog lay heavily
on the waves, and its thick scrolls rose little by little.
The horizon grew wider and clearer at the same time.
Suddenly, just as on the day before, Ned Land's voice was heard:

"The thing itself on the port quarter!" cried the harpooner.

Every eye was turned towards the point indicated.  There, a mile and a half
from the frigate, a long blackish body emerged a yard above the waves.
Its tail, violently agitated, produced a considerable eddy.
Never did a tail beat the sea with such violence.  An immense track,
of dazzling whiteness, marked the passage of the animal, and described
a long curve.

The frigate approached the cetacean.  I examined it thoroughly.

The reports of the Shannon and of the Helvetia had rather
exaggerated its size, and I estimated its length at
only two hundred and fifty feet.  As to its dimensions,
I could only conjecture them to be admirably proportioned.
While I watched this phenomenon, two jets of steam and water
were ejected from its vents, and rose to the height of 120 feet;
thus I ascertained its way of breathing.  I concluded definitely
that it belonged to the vertebrate branch, class mammalia.

The crew waited impatiently for their chief's orders.  The latter,
after having observed the animal attentively, called the engineer.
The engineer ran to him.

"Sir," said the commander, "you have steam up?"

"Yes, sir," answered the engineer.

"Well, make up your fires and put on all steam."

Three hurrahs greeted this order.  The time for the struggle had arrived.
Some moments after, the two funnels of the frigate vomited torrents of
black smoke, and the bridge quaked under the trembling of the boilers.

The Abraham Lincoln, propelled by her wonderful screw,
went straight at the animal.  The latter allowed it to come
within half a cable's length; then, as if disdaining to dive,
it took a little turn, and stopped a short distance off.

This pursuit lasted nearly three-quarters of an hour,
without the frigate gaining two yards on the cetacean.
It was quite evident that at that rate we should never come
up with it.

"Well, Mr. Land," asked the captain, "do you advise me to put
the boats out to sea?"

"No, sir," replied Ned Land; "because we shall not take that beast easily."

"What shall we do then?"

"Put on more steam if you can, sir.  With your leave, I mean to post
myself under the bowsprit, and, if we get within harpooning distance,
I shall throw my harpoon."

"Go, Ned," said the captain.  "Engineer, put on more pressure."

Ned Land went to his post.  The fires were increased, the screw revolved
forty-three times a minute, and the steam poured out of the valves.
We heaved the log, and calculated that the Abraham Lincoln was going
at the rate of 18 1/2 miles an hour.

But the accursed animal swam at the same speed.

For a whole hour the frigate kept up this pace, without gaining six feet.
It was humiliating for one of the swiftest sailers in the American navy.
A stubborn anger seized the crew; the sailors abused the monster, who,
as before, disdained to answer them; the captain no longer contented himself
with twisting his beard--he gnawed it.

The engineer was called again.

"You have turned full steam on?"

"Yes, sir," replied the engineer.

The speed of the Abraham Lincoln increased.  Its masts trembled
down to their stepping holes, and the clouds of smoke could hardly
find way out of the narrow funnels.

They heaved the log a second time.

"Well?" asked the captain of the man at the wheel.

"Nineteen miles and three-tenths, sir."

"Clap on more steam."

The engineer obeyed.  The manometer showed ten degrees.
But the cetacean grew warm itself, no doubt; for without
straining itself, it made 19 3/10 miles.

What a pursuit!  No, I cannot describe the emotion that vibrated through me.
Ned Land kept his post, harpoon in hand.  Several times the animal let us
gain upon it.--"We shall catch it! we shall catch it!" cried the Canadian.
But just as he was going to strike, the cetacean stole away with a rapidity
that could not be estimated at less than thirty miles an hour, and even during
our maximum of speed, it bullied the frigate, going round and round it.
A cry of fury broke from everyone!

At noon we were no further advanced than at eight o'clock in the morning.

The captain then decided to take more direct means.

"Ah!" said he, "that animal goes quicker than the Abraham Lincoln.
Very well! we will see whether it will escape these conical bullets.
Send your men to the forecastle, sir."

The forecastle gun was immediately loaded and slewed round.
But the shot passed some feet above the cetacean, which was half
a mile off.

"Another, more to the right," cried the commander, "and five
dollars to whoever will hit that infernal beast."

An old gunner with a grey beard--that I can see now--with steady
eye and grave face, went up to the gun and took a long aim.
A loud report was heard, with which were mingled the cheers
of the crew.

The bullet did its work; it hit the animal, and, sliding off
the rounded surface, was lost in two miles depth of sea.

The chase began again, and the captain, leaning towards me, said:

"I will pursue that beast till my frigate bursts up."

"Yes," answered I; "and you will be quite right to do it."

I wished the beast would exhaust itself, and not be insensible
to fatigue like a steam engine.  But it was of no use.
Hours passed, without its showing any signs of exhaustion.

However, it must be said in praise of the Abraham Lincoln that she
struggled on indefatigably.  I cannot reckon the distance she made
under three hundred miles during this unlucky day, November the 6th.
But night came on, and overshadowed the rough ocean.

Now I thought our expedition was at an end, and that we should
never again see the extraordinary animal.  I was mistaken.
At ten minutes to eleven in the evening, the electric light
reappeared three miles to windward of the frigate, as pure,
as intense as during the preceding night.

The narwhal seemed motionless; perhaps, tired with its day's work,
it slept, letting itself float with the undulation of the waves.
Now was a chance of which the captain resolved to take advantage.

He gave his orders.  The Abraham Lincoln kept up half steam,
and advanced cautiously so as not to awake its adversary.
It is no rare thing to meet in the middle of the ocean whales
so sound asleep that they can be successfully attacked,
and Ned Land had harpooned more than one during its sleep.
The Canadian went to take his place again under the bowsprit.

The frigate approached noiselessly, stopped at two cables'
lengths from the animal, and following its track.
No one breathed; a deep silence reigned on the bridge.
We were not a hundred feet from the burning focus, the light of
which increased and dazzled our eyes.

At this moment, leaning on the forecastle bulwark, I saw below me Ned
Land grappling the martingale in one hand, brandishing his terrible
harpoon in the other, scarcely twenty feet from the motionless animal.
Suddenly his arm straightened, and the harpoon was thrown; I heard
the sonorous stroke of the weapon, which seemed to have struck a hard body.
The electric light went out suddenly, and two enormous waterspouts
broke over the bridge of the frigate, rushing like a torrent from stem
to stern, overthrowing men, and breaking the lashings of the spars.
A fearful shock followed, and, thrown over the rail without having
time to stop myself, I fell into the sea.



CHAPTER VII

AN UNKNOWN SPECIES OF WHALE

This unexpected fall so stunned me that I have no
clear recollection of my sensations at the time.
I was at first drawn down to a depth of about twenty feet.
I am a good swimmer (though without pretending to rival
Byron or Edgar Poe, who were masters of the art),
and in that plunge I did not lose my presence of mind.
Two vigorous strokes brought me to the surface of the water.
My first care was to look for the frigate.  Had the crew
seen me disappear?  Had the Abraham Lincoln veered round?
Would the captain put out a boat?  Might I hope to be saved?

The darkness was intense.  I caught a glimpse of a black mass disappearing in
the east, its beacon lights dying out in the distance.  It was the frigate!
I was lost.

"Help, help!"  I shouted, swimming towards the Abraham Lincoln in desperation.

My clothes encumbered me; they seemed glued to my body,
and paralysed my movements.

I was sinking!  I was suffocating!

"Help!"

This was my last cry.  My mouth filled with water;
I struggled against being drawn down the abyss.
Suddenly my clothes were seized by a strong hand, and I
felt myself quickly drawn up to the surface of the sea;
and I heard, yes, I heard these words pronounced in my ear:

"If master would be so good as to lean on my shoulder,
master would swim with much greater ease."

I seized with one hand my faithful Conseil's arm.

"Is it you?" said I, "you?"

"Myself," answered Conseil; "and waiting master's orders."

"That shock threw you as well as me into the sea?"

"No; but, being in my master's service, I followed him."

The worthy fellow thought that was but natural.

"And the frigate?"  I asked.

"The frigate?" replied Conseil, turning on his back;
"I think that master had better not count too much on her."

"You think so?"

"I say that, at the time I threw myself into the sea, I heard the men
at the wheel say, `The screw and the rudder are broken.'

"Broken?"

"Yes, broken by the monster's teeth.  It is the only injury
the Abraham Lincoln has sustained.  But it is a bad look-out for us--
she no longer answers her helm."

"Then we are lost!"

"Perhaps so," calmly answered Conseil.  "However, we have still several
hours before us, and one can do a good deal in some hours."

Conseil's imperturbable coolness set me up again.
I swam more vigorously; but, cramped by my clothes, which stuck
to me like a leaden weight, I felt great difficulty in bearing up.
Conseil saw this.

"Will master let me make a slit?" said he; and, slipping an open knife
under my clothes, he ripped them up from top to bottom very rapidly.
Then he cleverly slipped them off me, while I swam for both of us.

Then I did the same for Conseil, and we continued to swim near
to each other.

Nevertheless, our situation was no less terrible.
Perhaps our disappearance had not been noticed; and, if it
had been, the frigate could not tack, being without its helm.
Conseil argued on this supposition, and laid his plans accordingly.
This quiet boy was perfectly self-possessed. We then decided that,
as our only chance of safety was being picked up by the Abraham
Lincoln's boats, we ought to manage so as to wait for them
as long as possible.  I resolved then to husband our strength,
so that both should not be exhausted at the same time;
and this is how we managed:  while one of us lay on our back,
quite still, with arms crossed, and legs stretched out,
the other would swim and push the other on in front.
This towing business did not last more than ten minutes each;
and relieving each other thus, we could swim on for some hours,
perhaps till day-break. Poor chance! but hope is so firmly
rooted in the heart of man!  Moreover, there were two of us.
Indeed I declare (though it may seem improbable)
if I sought to destroy all hope--if I wished to despair,
I could not.

The collision of the frigate with the cetacean had
occurred about eleven o'clock in the evening before.
I reckoned then we should have eight hours to swim before sunrise,
an operation quite practicable if we relieved each other.
The sea, very calm, was in our favour.  Sometimes I tried
to pierce the intense darkness that was only dispelled
by the phosphorescence caused by our movements.
I watched the luminous waves that broke over my hand,
whose mirror-like surface was spotted with silvery rings.
One might have said that we were in a bath of quicksilver.

Near one o'clock in the morning, I was seized with dreadful fatigue.
My limbs stiffened under the strain of violent cramp.  Conseil was
obliged to keep me up, and our preservation devolved on him alone.
I heard the poor boy pant; his breathing became short and hurried.
I found that he could not keep up much longer.

"Leave me! leave me!"  I said to him.

"Leave my master?  Never!" replied he.  "I would drown first."

Just then the moon appeared through the fringes of a
thick cloud that the wind was driving to the east.
The surface of the sea glittered with its rays.
This kindly light reanimated us.  My head got better again.
I looked at all points of the horizon.  I saw the frigate!
She was five miles from us, and looked like a dark mass,
hardly discernible.  But no boats!

I would have cried out.  But what good would it have been at such a distance!
My swollen lips could utter no sounds.  Conseil could articulate some words,
and I heard him repeat at intervals, "Help! help!"

Our movements were suspended for an instant; we listened.
It might be only a singing in the ear, but it seemed to me
as if a cry answered the cry from Conseil.

"Did you hear?"  I murmured.

"Yes!  Yes!"

And Conseil gave one more despairing cry.

This time there was no mistake!  A human voice responded to ours!
Was it the voice of another unfortunate creature, abandoned in the middle
of the ocean, some other victim of the shock sustained by the vessel?
Or rather was it a boat from the frigate, that was hailing us in the darkness?

Conseil made a last effort, and, leaning on my shoulder, while I struck
out in a desperate effort, he raised himself half out of the water,
then fell back exhausted.

"What did you see?"

"I saw----" murmured he; "I saw--but do not talk--reserve all your strength!"

What had he seen?  Then, I know not why, the thought
of the monster came into my head for the first time!
But that voice!  The time is past for Jonahs to take refuge
in whales' bellies!  However, Conseil was towing me again.
He raised his head sometimes, looked before us, and uttered a cry
of recognition, which was responded to by a voice that came nearer
and nearer.  I scarcely heard it.  My strength was exhausted;
my fingers stiffened; my hand afforded me support no longer;
my mouth, convulsively opening, filled with salt water.
Cold crept over me.  I raised my head for the last time,
then I sank.

At this moment a hard body struck me.  I clung to it:
then I felt that I was being drawn up, that I was brought to
the surface of the water, that my chest collapsed--I fainted.

It is certain that I soon came to, thanks to the vigorous rubbings
that I received.  I half opened my eyes.

"Conseil!"  I murmured.

"Does master call me?" asked Conseil.

Just then, by the waning light of the moon which was sinking
down to the horizon, I saw a face which was not Conseil's
and which I immediately recognised.

"Ned!"  I cried.

"The same, sir, who is seeking his prize!" replied the Canadian.

"Were you thrown into the sea by the shock to the frigate?"

"Yes, Professor; but more fortunate than you, I was able to find
a footing almost directly upon a floating island."

"An island?"

"Or, more correctly speaking, on our gigantic narwhal."

"Explain yourself, Ned!"

"Only I soon found out why my harpoon had not entered its skin
and was blunted."

"Why, Ned, why?"

"Because, Professor, that beast is made of sheet iron."

The Canadian's last words produced a sudden revolution in my brain.
I wriggled myself quickly to the top of the being, or object,
half out of the water, which served us for a refuge.  I kicked it.
It was evidently a hard, impenetrable body, and not the soft substance
that forms the bodies of the great marine mammalia.  But this hard
body might be a bony covering, like that of the antediluvian animals;
and I should be free to class this monster among amphibious reptiles,
such as tortoises or alligators.

Well, no! the blackish back that supported me was smooth,
polished, without scales.  The blow produced a metallic sound;
and, incredible though it may be, it seemed, I might say,
as if it was made of riveted plates.

There was no doubt about it!  This monster, this natural
phenomenon that had puzzled the learned world, and over thrown
and misled the imagination of seamen of both hemispheres,
it must be owned was a still more astonishing phenomenon,
inasmuch as it was a simply human construction.

We had no time to lose, however.  We were lying upon the back of a
sort of submarine boat, which appeared (as far as I could judge)
like a huge fish of steel.  Ned Land's mind was made up on this point.
Conseil and I could only agree with him.

Just then a bubbling began at the back of this strange thing
(which was evidently propelled by a screw), and it began to move.
We had only just time to seize hold of the upper part,
which rose about seven feet out of the water, and happily its speed
was not great.

"As long as it sails horizontally," muttered Ned Land,
"I do not mind; but, if it takes a fancy to dive, I would
not give two straws for my life."

The Canadian might have said still less.  It became really necessary to
communicate with the beings, whatever they were, shut up inside the machine.
I searched all over the outside for an aperture, a panel, or a manhole,
to use a technical expression; but the lines of the iron rivets,
solidly driven into the joints of the iron plates, were clear and uniform.
Besides, the moon disappeared then, and left us in total darkness.

At last this long night passed.  My indistinct remembrance
prevents my describing all the impressions it made.
I can only recall one circumstance.  During some lulls of
the wind and sea, I fancied I heard several times vague sounds,
a sort of fugitive harmony produced by words of command.
What was, then, the mystery of this submarine craft,
of which the whole world vainly sought an explanation?
What kind of beings existed in this strange boat?
What mechanical agent caused its prodigious speed?

Daybreak appeared.  The morning mists surrounded us,
but they soon cleared off.  I was about to examine the hull,
which formed on deck a kind of horizontal platform, when I felt
it gradually sinking.

"Oh! confound it!" cried Ned Land, kicking the resounding plate.
"Open, you inhospitable rascals!"

Happily the sinking movement ceased.  Suddenly a noise, like iron
works violently pushed aside, came from the interior of the boat.
One iron plate was moved, a man appeared, uttered an odd cry,
and disappeared immediately.

Some moments after, eight strong men, with masked faces, appeared noiselessly,
and drew us down into their formidable machine.



CHAPTER VIII

MOBILIS IN MOBILI

This forcible abduction, so roughly carried out, was accomplished with
the rapidity of lightning.  I shivered all over.  Whom had we to deal with?
No doubt some new sort of pirates, who explored the sea in their own way.
Hardly had the narrow panel closed upon me, when I was enveloped in darkness.
My eyes, dazzled with the outer light, could distinguish nothing.
I felt my naked feet cling to the rungs of an iron ladder.  Ned Land
and Conseil, firmly seized, followed me.  At the bottom of the ladder,
a door opened, and shut after us immediately with a bang.

We were alone.  Where, I could not say, hardly imagine.
All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes,
my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.

Meanwhile, Ned Land, furious at these proceedings, gave free
vent to his indignation.

"Confound it!" cried he, "here are people who come up to the
Scotch for hospitality.  They only just miss being cannibals.
I should not be surprised at it, but I declare that they shall
not eat me without my protesting."

"Calm yourself, friend Ned, calm yourself," replied Conseil, quietly.
"Do not cry out before you are hurt.  We are not quite done for yet."

"Not quite," sharply replied the Canadian, "but pretty near,
at all events.  Things look black.  Happily, my bowie knife
I have still, and I can always see well enough to use it.
The first of these pirates who lays a hand on me----"

"Do not excite yourself, Ned," I said to the harpooner, "and do not compromise
us by useless violence.  Who knows that they will not listen to us?
Let us rather try to find out where we are."

I groped about.  In five steps I came to an iron wall,
made of plates bolted together.  Then turning back I struck
against a wooden table, near which were ranged several stools.
The boards of this prison were concealed under a thick mat,
which deadened the noise of the feet.  The bare walls
revealed no trace of window or door.  Conseil, going round
the reverse way, met me, and we went back to the middle
of the cabin, which measured about twenty feet by ten.
As to its height, Ned Land, in spite of his own great height,
could not measure it.

Half an hour had already passed without our situation being bettered,
when the dense darkness suddenly gave way to extreme light.
Our prison was suddenly lighted, that is to say, it became filled
with a luminous matter, so strong that I could not bear it at first.
In its whiteness and intensity I recognised that electric light which played
round the submarine boat like a magnificent phenomenon of phosphorescence.
After shutting my eyes involuntarily, I opened them, and saw that this
luminous agent came from a half globe, unpolished, placed in the roof
of the cabin.

"At last one can see," cried Ned Land, who, knife in hand,
stood on the defensive.

"Yes," said I; "but we are still in the dark about ourselves."

"Let master have patience," said the imperturbable Conseil.

The sudden lighting of the cabin enabled me to examine it minutely.
It only contained a table and five stools.  The invisible
door might be hermetically sealed.  No noise was heard.
All seemed dead in the interior of this boat.  Did it move, did it
float on the surface of the ocean, or did it dive into its depths?
I could not guess.

A noise of bolts was now heard, the door opened, and two men appeared.

One was short, very muscular, broad-shouldered, with robust limbs,
strong head, an abundance of black hair, thick moustache,
a quick penetrating look, and the vivacity which characterises
the population of Southern France.

The second stranger merits a more detailed description.  I made out
his prevailing qualities directly:  self-confidence--because his head
was well set on his shoulders, and his black eyes looked around with
cold assurance; calmness--for his skin, rather pale, showed his coolness
of blood; energy--evinced by the rapid contraction of his lofty brows;
and courage--because his deep breathing denoted great power of lungs.

Whether this person was thirty-five or fifty years of age,
I could not say.  He was tall, had a large forehead,
straight nose, a clearly cut mouth, beautiful teeth, with fine
taper hands, indicative of a highly nervous temperament.
This man was certainly the most admirable specimen I had ever met.
One particular feature was his eyes, rather far from each other,
and which could take in nearly a quarter of the horizon at once.

This faculty--(I verified it later)--gave him a range of vision far superior
to Ned Land's. When this stranger fixed upon an object, his eyebrows met,
his large eyelids closed around so as to contract the range of his vision,
and he looked as if he magnified the objects lessened by distance, as if
he pierced those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes, and as if he read
the very depths of the seas.

The two strangers, with caps made from the fur of the sea otter,
and shod with sea boots of seal's skin, were dressed in clothes
of a particular texture, which allowed free movement of the limbs.
The taller of the two, evidently the chief on board, examined us
with great attention, without saying a word; then, turning to
his companion, talked with him in an unknown tongue.
It was a sonorous, harmonious, and flexible dialect, the vowels
seeming to admit of very varied accentuation.

The other replied by a shake of the head, and added two or three perfectly
incomprehensible words.  Then he seemed to question me by a look.

I replied in good French that I did not know his language;
but he seemed not to understand me, and my situation
became more embarrassing.

"If master were to tell our story," said Conseil, "perhaps these gentlemen
may understand some words."

I began to tell our adventures, articulating each syllable clearly,
and without omitting one single detail.  I announced our names and rank,
introducing in person Professor Aronnax, his servant Conseil,
and master Ned Land, the harpooner.

The man with the soft calm eyes listened to me quietly,
even politely, and with extreme attention; but nothing in
his countenance indicated that he had understood my story.
When I finished, he said not a word.

There remained one resource, to speak English.
Perhaps they would know this almost universal language.
I knew it--as well as the German language--well enough to read
it fluently, but not to speak it correctly.  But, anyhow, we must
make ourselves understood.

"Go on in your turn," I said to the harpooner; "speak your best
Anglo-Saxon, and try to do better than I."

Ned did not beg off, and recommenced our story.

To his great disgust, the harpooner did not seem to have made
himself more intelligible than I had.  Our visitors did not stir.
They evidently understood neither the language of England
nor of France.

Very much embarrassed, after having vainly exhausted our speaking resources,
I knew not what part to take, when Conseil said:

"If master will permit me, I will relate it in German."

But in spite of the elegant terms and good accent
of the narrator, the German language had no success.
At last, nonplussed, I tried to remember my first lessons,
and to narrate our adventures in Latin, but with no better success.
This last attempt being of no avail, the two strangers exchanged
some words in their unknown language, and retired.

The door shut.

"It is an infamous shame," cried Ned Land, who broke out for the
twentieth time.  "We speak to those rogues in French, English, German,
and Latin, and not one of them has the politeness to answer!"

"Calm yourself," I said to the impetuous Ned; "anger will do no good."

"But do you see, Professor," replied our irascible companion,
"that we shall absolutely die of hunger in this iron cage?"

"Bah!" said Conseil, philosophically; "we can hold out some time yet."

"My friends," I said, "we must not despair.  We have been worse
off than this.  Do me the favour to wait a little before forming
an opinion upon the commander and crew of this boat."

"My opinion is formed," replied Ned Land, sharply.  "They are rascals."

"Good! and from what country?"

"From the land of rogues!"

"My brave Ned, that country is not clearly indicated on the map of the world;
but I admit that the nationality of the two strangers is hard to determine.
Neither English, French, nor German, that is quite certain.  However, I am
inclined to think that the commander and his companion were born in
low latitudes.  There is southern blood in them.  But I cannot decide by
their appearance whether they are Spaniards, Turks, Arabians, or Indians.
As to their language, it is quite incomprehensible."

"There is the disadvantage of not knowing all languages," said Conseil,
"or the disadvantage of not having one universal language."

As he said these words, the door opened.  A steward entered.
He brought us clothes, coats and trousers, made of a stuff I did not know.
I hastened to dress myself, and my companions followed my example.
During that time, the steward--dumb, perhaps deaf--had arranged the table,
and laid three plates.

"This is something like!" said Conseil.

"Bah!" said the angry harpooner, "what do you suppose they eat here?
Tortoise liver, filleted shark, and beef steaks from seadogs."

"We shall see," said Conseil.

The dishes, of bell metal, were placed on the table, and we took
our places.  Undoubtedly we had to do with civilised people,
and, had it not been for the electric light which flooded us,
I could have fancied I was in the dining-room of the Adelphi
Hotel at Liverpool, or at the Grand Hotel in Paris.
I must say, however, that there was neither bread nor wine.
The water was fresh and clear, but it was water and did not suit
Ned Land's taste.  Amongst the dishes which were brought to us,
I recognised several fish delicately dressed; but of some,
although excellent, I could give no opinion, neither could I tell
to what kingdom they belonged, whether animal or vegetable.
As to the dinner-service, it was elegant, and in perfect taste.
Each utensil--spoon, fork, knife, plate--had a letter engraved on it,
with a motto above it, of which this is an exact facsimile:


MOBILIS IN MOBILI N

The letter N was no doubt the initial of the name of the enigmatical
person who commanded at the bottom of the seas.

Ned and Conseil did not reflect much.  They devoured the food,
and I did likewise.  I was, besides, reassured as to our fate;
and it seemed evident that our hosts would not let us die of want.

However, everything has an end, everything passes away,
even the hunger of people who have not eaten for fifteen hours.
Our appetites satisfied, we felt overcome with sleep.

"Faith!  I shall sleep well," said Conseil.

"So shall I," replied Ned Land.

My two companions stretched themselves on the cabin carpet,
and were soon sound asleep.  For my own part, too many thoughts
crowded my brain, too many insoluble questions pressed upon me,
too many fancies kept my eyes half open.  Where were we?
What strange power carried us on?  I felt--or rather fancied I felt--
the machine sinking down to the lowest beds of the sea.
Dreadful nightmares beset me; I saw in these mysterious asylums
a world of unknown animals, amongst which this submarine boat seemed
to be of the same kind, living, moving, and formidable as they.
Then my brain grew calmer, my imagination wandered into
vague unconsciousness, and I soon fell into a deep sleep.



CHAPTER IX

NED LAND'S TEMPERS

How long we slept I do not know; but our sleep must have lasted long,
for it rested us completely from our fatigues.  I woke first.
My companions had not moved, and were still stretched in their corner.

Hardly roused from my somewhat hard couch, I felt my brain freed,
my mind clear.  I then began an attentive examination of our cell.
Nothing was changed inside.  The prison was still a prison--
the prisoners, prisoners.  However, the steward, during our sleep,
had cleared the table.  I breathed with difficulty.  The heavy air
seemed to oppress my lungs.  Although the cell was large, we had
evidently consumed a great part of the oxygen that it contained.
Indeed, each man consumes, in one hour, the oxygen contained in more
than 176 pints of air, and this air, charged (as then) with a nearly
equal quantity of carbonic acid, becomes unbreathable.

It became necessary to renew the atmosphere of our prison, and no doubt
the whole in the submarine boat.  That gave rise to a question in my mind.
How would the commander of this floating dwelling-place proceed?
Would he obtain air by chemical means, in getting by heat the oxygen contained
in chlorate of potash, and in absorbing carbonic acid by caustic potash?
Or--a more convenient, economical, and consequently more probable alternative--
would he be satisfied to rise and take breath at the surface of the water,
like a whale, and so renew for twenty-four hours the atmospheric provision?

In fact, I was already obliged to increase my respirations to eke
out of this cell the little oxygen it contained, when suddenly I was
refreshed by a current of pure air, and perfumed with saline emanations.
It was an invigorating sea breeze, charged with iodine.  I opened my
mouth wide, and my lungs saturated themselves with fresh particles.

At the same time I felt the boat rolling.  The iron-plated monster
had evidently just risen to the surface of the ocean to breathe,
after the fashion of whales.  I found out from that the mode
of ventilating the boat.

When I had inhaled this air freely, I sought the conduit pipe,
which conveyed to us the beneficial whiff, and I was not long in finding it.
Above the door was a ventilator, through which volumes of fresh air
renewed the impoverished atmosphere of the cell.

I was making my observations, when Ned and Conseil awoke almost
at the same time, under the influence of this reviving air.
They rubbed their eyes, stretched themselves, and were on their feet
in an instant.

"Did master sleep well?" asked Conseil, with his usual politeness.

"Very well, my brave boy.  And you, Mr. Land?"

"Soundly, Professor.  But, I don't know if I am right or not,
there seems to be a sea breeze!"

A seaman could not be mistaken, and I told the Canadian all that had passed
during his sleep.

"Good!" said he.  "That accounts for those roarings we heard,
when the supposed narwhal sighted the Abraham Lincoln."

"Quite so, Master Land; it was taking breath."

"Only, Mr. Aronnax, I have no idea what o'clock it is,
unless it is dinner-time."

"Dinner-time! my good fellow?  Say rather breakfast-time, for we
certainly have begun another day."

"So," said Conseil, "we have slept twenty-four hours?"

"That is my opinion."

"I will not contradict you," replied Ned Land.  "But, dinner or breakfast,
the steward will be welcome, whichever he brings."

"Master Land, we must conform to the rules on board, and I suppose
our appetites are in advance of the dinner hour."

"That is just like you, friend Conseil," said Ned, impatiently.
"You are never out of temper, always calm; you would return thanks
before grace, and die of hunger rather than complain!"

Time was getting on, and we were fearfully hungry; and this
time the steward did not appear.  It was rather too long
to leave us, if they really had good intentions towards us.
Ned Land, tormented by the cravings of hunger, got still
more angry; and, notwithstanding his promise, I dreaded an
explosion when he found himself with one of the crew.

For two hours more Ned Land's temper increased; he cried, he shouted,
but in vain.  The walls were deaf.  There was no sound to be heard
in the boat; all was still as death.  It did not move, for I should have
felt the trembling motion of the hull under the influence of the screw.
Plunged in the depths of the waters, it belonged no longer to earth:
this silence was dreadful.

I felt terrified, Conseil was calm, Ned Land roared.

Just then a noise was heard outside.  Steps sounded on the metal flags.
The locks were turned, the door opened, and the steward appeared.

Before I could rush forward to stop him, the Canadian had thrown him down,
and held him by the throat.  The steward was choking under the grip
of his powerful hand.

Conseil was already trying to unclasp the harpooner's hand from
his half-suffocated victim, and I was going to fly to the rescue,
when suddenly I was nailed to the spot by hearing these words in French:

"Be quiet, Master Land; and you, Professor, will you be so good
as to listen to me?"



CHAPTER X

THE MAN OF THE SEAS

It was the commander of the vessel who thus spoke.

At these words, Ned Land rose suddenly.  The steward,
nearly strangled, tottered out on a sign from his master.
But such was the power of the commander on board, that not
a gesture betrayed the resentment which this man must have felt
towards the Canadian.  Conseil interested in spite of himself,
I stupefied, awaited in silence the result of this scene.

The commander, leaning against the corner of a table with his arms folded,
scanned us with profound attention.  Did he hesitate to speak?
Did he regret the words which he had just spoken in French?
One might almost think so.

After some moments of silence, which not one of us dreamed
of breaking, "Gentlemen," said he, in a calm and penetrating voice,
"I speak French, English, German, and Latin equally well.
I could, therefore, have answered you at our first interview, but I
wished to know you first, then to reflect.  The story told by each one,
entirely agreeing in the main points, convinced me of your identity.
I know now that chance has brought before me M. Pierre Aronnax,
Professor of Natural History at the Museum of Paris, entrusted with
a scientific mission abroad, Conseil, his servant, and Ned Land,
of Canadian origin, harpooner on board the frigate Abraham Lincoln
of the navy of the United States of America."

I bowed assent.  It was not a question that the commander put to me.
Therefore there was no answer to be made.  This man expressed himself
with perfect ease, without any accent.  His sentences were well turned,
his words clear, and his fluency of speech remarkable.  Yet, I did not
recognise in him a fellow-countryman.

He continued the conversation in these terms:

"You have doubtless thought, sir, that I have delayed long in paying
you this second visit.  The reason is that, your identity recognised,
I wished to weigh maturely what part to act towards you.
I have hesitated much.  Most annoying circumstances have brought you
into the presence of a man who has broken all the ties of humanity.
You have come to trouble my existence."

"Unintentionally!" said I.

"Unintentionally?" replied the stranger, raising his voice a little.
"Was it unintentionally that the Abraham Lincoln pursued me all over
the seas?  Was it unintentionally that you took passage in this frigate?
Was it unintentionally that your cannon-balls rebounded off the plating
of my vessel?  Was it unintentionally that Mr. Ned Land struck me
with his harpoon?"

I detected a restrained irritation in these words.
But to these recriminations I had a very natural answer to make,
and I made it.

"Sir," said I, "no doubt you are ignorant of the discussions
which have taken place concerning you in America and Europe.
You do not know that divers accidents, caused by collisions with your
submarine machine, have excited public feeling in the two continents.
I omit the theories without number by which it was sought
to explain that of which you alone possess the secret.
But you must understand that, in pursuing you over the high
seas of the Pacific, the Abraham Lincoln believed itself to be
chasing some powerful sea-monster, of which it was necessary
to rid the ocean at any price."

A half-smile curled the lips of the commander:  then, in a calmer tone:

"M. Aronnax," he replied, "dare you affirm that your frigate
would not as soon have pursued and cannonaded a submarine boat
as a monster?"

This question embarrassed me, for certainly Captain Farragut might
not have hesitated.  He might have thought it his duty to destroy
a contrivance of this kind, as he would a gigantic narwhal.

"You understand then, sir," continued the stranger, "that I
have the right to treat you as enemies?"

I answered nothing, purposely.  For what good would it be to discuss
such a proposition, when force could destroy the best arguments?

"I have hesitated some time," continued the commander; "nothing obliged
me to show you hospitality.  If I chose to separate myself from you,
I should have no interest in seeing you again; I could place you
upon the deck of this vessel which has served you as a refuge,
I could sink beneath the waters, and forget that you had ever existed.
Would not that be my right?"

"It might be the right of a savage," I answered, "but not
that of a civilised man."

"Professor," replied the commander, quickly, "I am not what you
call a civilised man!  I have done with society entirely,
for reasons which I alone have the right of appreciating.
I do not, therefore, obey its laws, and I desire you never to allude
to them before me again!"

This was said plainly.  A flash of anger and disdain kindled in the eyes of
the Unknown, and I had a glimpse of a terrible past in the life of this man.
Not only had he put himself beyond the pale of human laws, but he had made
himself independent of them, free in the strictest acceptation of the word,
quite beyond their reach!  Who then would dare to pursue him at the bottom of
the sea, when, on its surface, he defied all attempts made against him?

What vessel could resist the shock of his submarine monitor?
What cuirass, however thick, could withstand the blows of his spur?
No man could demand from him an account of his actions;
God, if he believed in one--his conscience, if he had one--
were the sole judges to whom he was answerable.

These reflections crossed my mind rapidly, whilst the stranger
personage was silent, absorbed, and as if wrapped up in himself.
I regarded him with fear mingled with interest, as, doubtless,
OEdiphus regarded the Sphinx.

After rather a long silence, the commander resumed the conversation.

"I have hesitated," said he, "but I have thought that my interest might
be reconciled with that pity to which every human being has a right.
You will remain on board my vessel, since fate has cast you there.
You will be free; and, in exchange for this liberty, I shall only impose one
single condition.  Your word of honour to submit to it will suffice."

"Speak, sir," I answered.  "I suppose this condition is one which a man
of honour may accept?"

"Yes, sir; it is this:  It is possible that certain events,
unforeseen, may oblige me to consign you to your cabins for some hours
or some days, as the case may be.  As I desire never to use violence,
I expect from you, more than all the others, a passive obedience.
In thus acting, I take all the responsibility:  I acquit you entirely,
for I make it an impossibility for you to see what ought not to be seen.
Do you accept this condition?"

Then things took place on board which, to say the least,
were singular, and which ought not to be seen by people
who were not placed beyond the pale of social laws.
Amongst the surprises which the future was preparing for me,
this might not be the least.

"We accept," I answered; "only I will ask your permission, sir, to address
one question to you--one only."

"Speak, sir."

"You said that we should be free on board."

"Entirely."

"I ask you, then, what you mean by this liberty?"

"Just the liberty to go, to come, to see, to observe even all
that passes here save under rare circumstances--the liberty,
in short, which we enjoy ourselves, my companions and I."

It was evident that we did not understand one another.

"Pardon me, sir," I resumed, "but this liberty is only what every
prisoner has of pacing his prison.  It cannot suffice us."

"It must suffice you, however."

"What! we must renounce for ever seeing our country, our friends,
our relations again?"

"Yes, sir.  But to renounce that unendurable worldly yoke which men
believe to be liberty is not perhaps so painful as you think."

"Well," exclaimed Ned Land, "never will I give my word of honour
not to try to escape."

"I did not ask you for your word of honour, Master Land,"
answered the commander, coldly.

"Sir," I replied, beginning to get angry in spite of my self,
"you abuse your situation towards us; it is cruelty."

"No, sir, it is clemency.  You are my prisoners of war.  I keep you,
when I could, by a word, plunge you into the depths of the ocean.
You attacked me.  You came to surprise a secret which no man
in the world must penetrate--the secret of my whole existence.
And you think that I am going to send you back to that world which must
know me no more?  Never!  In retaining you, it is not you whom I guard--
it is myself."

These words indicated a resolution taken on the part of the commander,
against which no arguments would prevail.

"So, sir," I rejoined, "you give us simply the choice between life and death?"

"Simply."

"My friends," said I, "to a question thus put, there is nothing to answer.
But no word of honour binds us to the master of this vessel."

"None, sir," answered the Unknown.

Then, in a gentler tone, he continued:

"Now, permit me to finish what I have to say to you.  I know you,
M. Aronnax.  You and your companions will not, perhaps, have so much
to complain of in the chance which has bound you to my fate.
You will find amongst the books which are my favourite study the work
which you have published on `the depths of the sea.'  I have often read it.
You have carried out your work as far as terrestrial science permitted you.
But you do not know all--you have not seen all.  Let me tell you then,
Professor, that you will not regret the time passed on board my vessel.
You are going to visit the land of marvels."

These words of the commander had a great effect upon me.  I cannot deny it.
My weak point was touched; and I forgot, for a moment, that the contemplation
of these sublime subjects was not worth the loss of liberty.
Besides, I trusted to the future to decide this grave question.
So I contented myself with saying:

"By what name ought I to address you?"

"Sir," replied the commander, "I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo;
and you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers
of the Nautilus."

Captain Nemo called.  A steward appeared.  The captain gave him
his orders in that strange language which I did not understand.
Then, turning towards the Canadian and Conseil:

"A repast awaits you in your cabin," said he.  "Be so good
as to follow this man.

"And now, M. Aronnax, our breakfast is ready.  Permit me to lead the way."

"I am at your service, Captain."

I followed Captain Nemo; and as soon as I had passed through the door,
I found myself in a kind of passage lighted by electricity,
similar to the waist of a ship.  After we had proceeded a dozen yards,
a second door opened before me.

I then entered a dining-room, decorated and furnished
in severe taste.  High oaken sideboards, inlaid with ebony,
stood at the two extremities of the room, and upon their shelves
glittered china, porcelain, and glass of inestimable value.
The plate on the table sparkled in the rays which the luminous
ceiling shed around, while the light was tempered and softened
by exquisite paintings.

In the centre of the room was a table richly laid out.
Captain Nemo indicated the place I was to occupy.

The breakfast consisted of a certain number of dishes,
the contents of which were furnished by the sea alone;
and I was ignorant of the nature and mode of preparation
of some of them.  I acknowledged that they were good, but they
had a peculiar flavour, which I easily became accustomed to.
These different aliments appeared to me to be rich in phosphorus,
and I thought they must have a marine origin.

Captain Nemo looked at me.  I asked him no questions, but he guessed
my thoughts, and answered of his own accord the questions which I
was burning to address to him.

"The greater part of these dishes are unknown to you,"
he said to me.  "However, you may partake of them without fear.
They are wholesome and nourishing.  For a long time I have
renounced the food of the earth, and I am never ill now.
My crew, who are healthy, are fed on the same food."

"So," said I, "all these eatables are the produce of the sea?"

"Yes, Professor, the sea supplies all my wants.  Sometimes I cast
my nets in tow, and I draw them in ready to break.  Sometimes I
hunt in the midst of this element, which appears to be inaccessible
to man, and quarry the game which dwells in my submarine forests.
My flocks, like those of Neptune's old shepherds, graze fearlessly
in the immense prairies of the ocean.  I have a vast property there,
which I cultivate myself, and which is always sown by the hand
of the Creator of all things."

"I can understand perfectly, sir, that your nets furnish excellent fish
for your table; I can understand also that you hunt aquatic game in your
submarine forests; but I cannot understand at all how a particle of meat,
no matter how small, can figure in your bill of fare."

"This, which you believe to be meat, Professor, is nothing else than
fillet of turtle.  Here are also some dolphins' livers, which you
take to be ragout of pork.  My cook is a clever fellow,
who excels in dressing these various products of the ocean.
Taste all these dishes.  Here is a preserve of sea-cucumber,
which a Malay would declare to be unrivalled in the world;
here is a cream, of which the milk has been furnished by
the cetacea, and the sugar by the great fucus of the North Sea;
and, lastly, permit me to offer you some preserve of anemones,
which is equal to that of the most delicious fruits."

I tasted, more from curiosity than as a connoisseur, whilst Captain
Nemo enchanted me with his extraordinary stories.

"You like the sea, Captain?"

"Yes; I love it!  The sea is everything.  It covers seven tenths
of the terrestrial globe.  Its breath is pure and healthy.
It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely,
for he feels life stirring on all sides.  The sea is only
the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence.
It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the `Living Infinite,'
as one of your poets has said.  In fact, Professor, Nature manifests
herself in it by her three kingdoms--mineral, vegetable, and animal.
The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature.  The globe began with sea,
so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?
In it is supreme tranquillity.  The sea does not belong to despots.
Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one
another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors.
But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases,
their influence is quenched, and their power disappears.
Ah! sir, live--live in the bosom of the waters!
There only is independence!  There I recognise no masters!
There I am free!"

Captain Nemo suddenly became silent in the midst of
this enthusiasm, by which he was quite carried away.
For a few moments he paced up and down, much agitated.
Then he became more calm, regained his accustomed coldness
of expression, and turning towards me:

"Now, Professor," said he, "if you wish to go over the Nautilus,
I am at your service."

Captain Nemo rose.  I followed him.  A double door, contrived at the back
of the dining-room, opened, and I entered a room equal in dimensions
to that which I had just quitted.

It was a library.  High pieces of furniture, of black violet
ebony inlaid with brass, supported upon their wide shelves
a great number of books uniformly bound.  They followed the shape
of the room, terminating at the lower part in huge divans,
covered with brown leather, which were curved, to afford
the greatest comfort.  Light movable desks, made to slide in
and out at will, allowed one to rest one's book while reading.
In the centre stood an immense table, covered with pamphlets,
amongst which were some newspapers, already of old date.
The electric light flooded everything; it was shed from four
unpolished globes half sunk in the volutes of the ceiling.
I looked with real admiration at this room, so ingeniously fitted up,
and I could scarcely believe my eyes.

"Captain Nemo," said I to my host, who had just thrown himself
on one of the divans, "this is a library which would do honour
to more than one of the continental palaces, and I am absolutely
astounded when I consider that it can follow you to the bottom
of the seas."

"Where could one find greater solitude or silence, Professor?"
replied Captain Nemo.  "Did your study in the Museum afford you
such perfect quiet?"

"No, sir; and I must confess that it is a very poor one after yours.
You must have six or seven thousand volumes here."

"Twelve thousand, M. Aronnax.  These are the only ties which bind
me to the earth.  But I had done with the world on the day
when my Nautilus plunged for the first time beneath the waters.
That day I bought my last volumes, my last pamphlets, my last papers,
and from that time I wish to think that men no longer think or write.
These books, Professor, are at your service besides, and you can make use
of them freely."

I thanked Captain Nemo, and went up to the shelves of the library.
Works on science, morals, and literature abounded in every language;
but I did not see one single work on political economy; that subject
appeared to be strictly proscribed.  Strange to say, all these books
were irregularly arranged, in whatever language they were written;
and this medley proved that the Captain of the Nautilus must have read
indiscriminately the books which he took up by chance.

"Sir," said I to the Captain, "I thank you for having placed
this library at my disposal.  It contains treasures of science,
and I shall profit by them."

"This room is not only a library," said Captain Nemo,
"it is also a smoking-room."

"A smoking-room!" I cried.  "Then one may smoke on board?"

"Certainly."

"Then, sir, I am forced to believe that you have kept up
a communication with Havannah."

"Not any," answered the Captain.  "Accept this cigar,
M. Aronnax; and, though it does not come from Havannah,
you will be pleased with it, if you are a connoisseur."

I took the cigar which was offered me; its shape recalled
the London ones, but it seemed to be made of leaves of gold.
I lighted it at a little brazier, which was supported upon an
elegant bronze stem, and drew the first whiffs with the delight
of a lover of smoking who has not smoked for two days.

"It is excellent, but it is not tobacco."

"No!" answered the Captain, "this tobacco comes neither from Havannah
nor from the East.  It is a kind of sea-weed, rich in nicotine,
with which the sea provides me, but somewhat sparingly."

At that moment Captain Nemo opened a door which stood opposite
to that by which I had entered the library, and I passed into
an immense drawing-room splendidly lighted.

It was a vast, four-sided room, thirty feet long, eighteen wide,
and fifteen high.  A luminous ceiling, decorated with light arabesques,
shed a soft clear light over all the marvels accumulated in this museum.
For it was in fact a museum, in which an intelligent and prodigal hand
had gathered all the treasures of nature and art, with the artistic
confusion which distinguishes a painter's studio.

Thirty first-rate pictures, uniformly framed, separated by bright
drapery, ornamented the walls, which were hung with tapestry of severe
design. I saw works of great value, the greater part of which I had
admired in the special collections of Europe, and in the exhibitions of
paintings. The several schools of the old masters were represented by a
Madonna of Raphael, a Virgin of Leonardo da Vinci, a nymph of Corregio,
a woman of Titan, an Adoration of Veronese, an Assumption of Murillo, a
portrait of Holbein, a monk of Velasquez, a martyr of Ribera, a fair of
Rubens, two Flemish landscapes of Teniers, three little "genre" pictures
of Gerard Dow, Metsu, and Paul Potter, two specimens of Gericault and
Prudhon, and some sea-pieces of Backhuysen and Vernet. Amongst the
works of modern painters were pictures with the signatures of Delacroix,
Ingres, Decamps, Troyon, Meissonier, Daubigny, etc.; and some admirable
statues in marble and bronze, after the finest antique models, stood
upon pedestals in the corners of this magnificent museum. Amazement,
as the Captain of the Nautilus had predicted, had already begun to
take possession of me.

"Professor," said this strange man, "you must excuse the unceremonious
way in which I receive you, and the disorder of this room."

"Sir," I answered, "without seeking to know who you are,
I recognise in you an artist."

"An amateur, nothing more, sir.  Formerly I loved to collect
these beautiful works created by the hand of man.
I sought them greedily, and ferreted them out indefatigably,
and I have been able to bring together some objects of great value.
These are my last souvenirs of that world which is dead to me.
In my eyes, your modern artists are already old; they have two or
three thousand years of existence; I confound them in my own mind.
Masters have no age."

"And these musicians?" said I, pointing out some works of Weber,
Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Herold, Wagner, Auber,
Gounod, and a number of others, scattered over a large model piano-organ
which occupied one of the panels of the drawing-room.

"These musicians," replied Captain Nemo, "are the contemporaries of
Orpheus; for in the memory of the dead all chronological differences are
effaced; and I am dead, Professor; as much dead as those of your friends
who are sleeping six feet under the earth!"

Captain Nemo was silent, and seemed lost in a profound reverie. I
contemplated him with deep interest, analysing in silence the strange
expression of his countenance. Leaning on his elbow against an angle of
a costly mosaic table, he no longer saw me,--he had forgotten my
presence.

I did not disturb this reverie, and continued my observation of the
curiosities which enriched this drawing-room.

Under elegant glass cases, fixed by copper rivets, were classed
and labelled the most precious productions of the sea
which had ever been presented to the eye of a naturalist.
My delight as a professor may be conceived.

The division containing the zoophytes presented the most curious
specimens of the two groups of polypi and echinodermes. In the first
group, the tubipores, were gorgones arranged like a fan, soft sponges of
Syria, ises of the Moluccas, pennatules, an admirable virgularia of the
Norwegian seas, variegated unbellulairae, alcyonariae, a whole series
of madrepores, which my master Milne Edwards has so cleverly classified,
amongst which I remarked some wonderful flabellinae oculinae of the
Island of Bourbon, the "Neptune's car" of the Antilles, superb varieties
of corals--in short, every species of those curious polypi of which
entire islands are formed, which will one day become continents. Of the
echinodermes, remarkable for their coating of spines, asteri, sea-stars,
pantacrinae, comatules, asterophons, echini, holothuri, etc.,
represented individually a complete collection of this group.

A somewhat nervous conchyliologist would certainly have fainted before
other more numerous cases, in which were classified the specimens of
molluscs. It was a collection of inestimable value, which time fails me
to describe minutely. Amongst these specimens I will quote from memory
only the elegant royal hammer-fish of the Indian Ocean, whose regular
white spots stood out brightly on a red and brown ground, an imperial
spondyle, bright-coloured, bristling with spines, a rare specimen in the
European museums--(I estimated its value at not less than ?1000); a
common hammer-fish of the seas of New Holland, which is only procured
with difficulty; exotic buccardia of Senegal; fragile white bivalve
shells, which a breath might shatter like a soap-bubble; several
varieties of the aspirgillum of Java, a kind of calcareous tube, edged
with leafy folds, and much debated by amateurs; a whole series of
trochi, some a greenish-yellow, found in the American seas, others a
reddish-brown, natives of Australian waters; others from the Gulf of
Mexico, remarkable for their imbricated shell; stellari found in the
Southern Seas; and last, the rarest of all, the magnificent spur of New
Zealand; and every description of delicate and fragile shells to which
science has given appropriate names.

Apart, in separate compartments, were spread out chaplets of pearls of
the greatest beauty, which reflected the electric light in little sparks
of fire; pink pearls, torn from the pinna-marina of the Red Sea; green
pearls of the haliotyde iris; yellow, blue and black pearls, the curious
productions of the divers molluscs of every ocean, and certain mussels
of the water-courses of the North; lastly, several specimens of
inestimable value which had been gathered from the rarest pintadines.
Some of these pearls were larger than a pigeon's egg, and were worth as
much, and more than that which the traveller Tavernier sold to the Shah
of Persia for three millions, and surpassed the one in the possession of
the Imaum of Muscat, which I had believed to be unrivalled in the world.

Therefore, to estimate the value of this collection was simply impossible.
Captain Nemo must have expended millions in the acquirement of these
various specimens, and I was thinking what source he could have drawn from,
to have been able thus to gratify his fancy for collecting, when I was
interrupted by these words:

"You are examining my shells, Professor?  Unquestionably they must be
interesting to a naturalist; but for me they have a far greater charm,
for I have collected them all with my own hand, and there is not a sea
on the face of the globe which has escaped my researches."

"I can understand, Captain, the delight of wandering about in the midst
of such riches.  You are one of those who have collected their
treasures themselves.  No museum in Europe possesses such a collection
of the produce of the ocean.  But if I exhaust all my admiration
upon it, I shall have none left for the vessel which carries it.
I do not wish to pry into your secrets:  but I must confess
that this Nautilus, with the motive power which is confined in it,
the contrivances which enable it to be worked, the powerful agent
which propels it, all excite my curiosity to the highest pitch.
I see suspended on the walls of this room instruments of whose use
I am ignorant."

"You will find these same instruments in my own room, Professor,
where I shall have much pleasure in explaining their use to you.
But first come and inspect the cabin which is set apart for your own use.
You must see how you will be accommodated on board the Nautilus."

I followed Captain Nemo who, by one of the doors opening
from each panel of the drawing-room, regained the waist.
He conducted me towards the bow, and there I found, not a cabin,
but an elegant room, with a bed, dressing-table, and several other
pieces of excellent furniture.

I could only thank my host.

"Your room adjoins mine," said he, opening a door, "and mine
opens into the drawing-room that we have just quitted."

I entered the Captain's room:  it had a severe, almost a monkish aspect.
A small iron bedstead, a table, some articles for the toilet; the whole
lighted by a skylight.  No comforts, the strictest necessaries only.

Captain Nemo pointed to a seat.

"Be so good as to sit down," he said.  I seated myself,
and he began thus:



CHAPTER XI

ALL BY ELECTRICITY

"Sir," said Captain Nemo, showing me the instruments hanging on the walls
of his room, "here are the contrivances required for the navigation of
the Nautilus.  Here, as in the drawing-room, I have them always under my eyes,
and they indicate my position and exact direction in the middle of the ocean.
Some are known to you, such as the thermometer, which gives the internal
temperature of the Nautilus; the barometer, which indicates the weight
of the air and foretells the changes of the weather; the hygrometer,
which marks the dryness of the atmosphere; the storm-glass, the contents
of which, by decomposing, announce the approach of tempests; the compass,
which guides my course; the sextant, which shows the latitude by the altitude
of the sun; chronometers, by which I calculate the longitude; and glasses
for day and night, which I use to examine the points of the horizon,
when the Nautilus rises to the surface of the waves."

"These are the usual nautical instruments," I replied,
"and I know the use of them.  But these others, no doubt,
answer to the particular requirements of the Nautilus.
This dial with movable needle is a manometer, is it not?"

"It is actually a manometer.  But by communication with the water,
whose external pressure it indicates, it gives our depth at the same time."

"And these other instruments, the use of which I cannot guess?"

"Here, Professor, I ought to give you some explanations.
Will you be kind enough to listen to me?"

He was silent for a few moments, then he said:

"There is a powerful agent, obedient, rapid, easy, which conforms to
every use, and reigns supreme on board my vessel.  Everything is done by means
of it.  It lights, warms it, and is the soul of my mechanical apparatus.
This agent is electricity."

"Electricity?"  I cried in surprise.

"Yes, sir."

"Nevertheless, Captain, you possess an extreme rapidity of movement,
which does not agree well with the power of electricity.
Until now, its dynamic force has remained under restraint, and has
only been able to produce a small amount of power."

"Professor," said Captain Nemo, "my electricity is not everybody's.
You know what sea-water is composed of.  In a thousand grammes
are found 96 1/2 per cent. of water, and about 2 2/3 per cent.
of chloride of sodium; then, in a smaller quantity, chlorides of
magnesium and of potassium, bromide of magnesium, sulphate of magnesia,
sulphate and carbonate of lime.  You see, then, that chloride
of sodium forms a large part of it.  So it is this sodium that I
extract from the sea-water, and of which I compose my ingredients.
I owe all to the ocean; it produces electricity, and electricity
gives heat, light, motion, and, in a word, life to the Nautilus."

"But not the air you breathe?"

"Oh!  I could manufacture the air necessary for my consumption, but it
is useless, because I go up to the surface of the water when I please.
However, if electricity does not furnish me with air to breathe, it works
at least the powerful pumps that are stored in spacious reservoirs,
and which enable me to prolong at need, and as long as I will, my stay
in the depths of the sea.  It gives a uniform and unintermittent light,
which the sun does not.  Now look at this clock; it is electrical,
and goes with a regularity that defies the best chronometers.
I have divided it into twenty-four hours, like the Italian clocks,
because for me there is neither night nor day, sun nor moon, but only
that factitious light that I take with me to the bottom of the sea.
Look! just now, it is ten o'clock in the morning."

"Exactly."

"Another application of electricity.  This dial hanging in front of us
indicates the speed of the Nautilus.  An electric thread puts it in
communication with the screw, and the needle indicates the real speed.
Look! now we are spinning along with a uniform speed of fifteen
miles an hour."

"It is marvelous!  And I see, Captain, you were right to make use
of this agent that takes the place of wind, water, and steam."

"We have not finished, M. Aronnax," said Captain Nemo, rising.
"If you will allow me, we will examine the stern of the Nautilus."

Really, I knew already the anterior part of this submarine boat,
of which this is the exact division, starting from the ship's head:
the dining-room, five yards long, separated from the library
by a water-tight partition; the library, five yards long;
the large drawing-room, ten yards long, separated from the Captain's
room by a second water-tight partition; the said room, five yards
in length; mine, two and a half yards; and, lastly a reservoir
of air, seven and a half yards, that extended to the bows.
Total length thirty five yards, or one hundred and five feet.
The partitions had doors that were shut hermetically by means of
india-rubber instruments, and they ensured the safety of the Nautilus
in case of a leak.

I followed Captain Nemo through the waist, and arrived at the centre
of the boat.  There was a sort of well that opened between two partitions.
An iron ladder, fastened with an iron hook to the partition, led to
the upper end.  I asked the Captain what the ladder was used for.

"It leads to the small boat," he said.

"What! have you a boat?"  I exclaimed, in surprise.

"Of course; an excellent vessel, light and insubmersible,
that serves either as a fishing or as a pleasure boat."

"But then, when you wish to embark, you are obliged to come to the surface
of the water?"

"Not at all.  This boat is attached to the upper part of
the hull of the Nautilus, and occupies a cavity made for it.
It is decked, quite water-tight, and held together by solid bolts.
This ladder leads to a man-hole made in the hull of the Nautilus,
that corresponds with a similar hole made in the side of the boat.
By this double opening I get into the small vessel.  They shut the one
belonging to the Nautilus; I shut the other by means of screw pressure.
I undo the bolts, and the little boat goes up to the surface of the sea
with prodigious rapidity.  I then open the panel of the bridge,
carefully shut till then; I mast it, hoist my sail, take my oars,
and I'm off."

"But how do you get back on board?"

"I do not come back, M. Aronnax; the Nautilus comes to me."

"By your orders?"

"By my orders.  An electric thread connects us.  I telegraph to it,
and that is enough."

"Really," I said, astonished at these marvels, "nothing can
be more simple."

After having passed by the cage of the staircase that led to the platform,
I saw a cabin six feet long, in which Conseil and Ned Land,
enchanted with their repast, were devouring it with avidity.
Then a door opened into a kitchen nine feet long, situated between
the large store-rooms. There electricity, better than gas itself,
did all the cooking.  The streams under the furnaces gave out to the
sponges of platina a heat which was regularly kept up and distributed.
They also heated a distilling apparatus, which, by evaporation,
furnished excellent drinkable water.  Near this kitchen was a bathroom
comfortably furnished, with hot and cold water taps.

Next to the kitchen was the berth-room of the vessel, sixteen feet long.
But the door was shut, and I could not see the management of it,
which might have given me an idea of the number of men employed on
board the Nautilus.

At the bottom was a fourth partition that separated this
office from the engine-room. A door opened, and I found myself
in the compartment where Captain Nemo--certainly an engineer
of a very high order--had arranged his locomotive machinery.
This engine-room, clearly lighted, did not measure less than
sixty-five feet in length.  It was divided into two parts;
the first contained the materials for producing electricity,
and the second the machinery that connected it with the screw.
I examined it with great interest, in order to understand the
machinery of the Nautilus.

"You see," said the Captain, "I use Bunsen's contrivances,
not Ruhmkorff's. Those would not have been powerful enough.
Bunsen's are fewer in number, but strong and large, which experience
proves to be the best.  The electricity produced passes forward,
where it works, by electro-magnets of great size, on a system of levers
and cog-wheels that transmit the movement to the axle of the screw.
This one, the diameter of which is nineteen feet, and the thread
twenty-three feet, performs about 120 revolutions in a second."

"And you get then?"

"A speed of fifty miles an hour."

"I have seen the Nautilus manoeuvre before the Abraham Lincoln,
and I have my own ideas as to its speed.  But this is not enough.
We must see where we go.  We must be able to direct it to the right,
to the left, above, below.  How do you get to the great depths,
where you find an increasing resistance, which is rated by hundreds
of atmospheres?  How do you return to the surface of the ocean?
And how do you maintain yourselves in the requisite medium?
Am I asking too much?"

"Not at all, Professor," replied the Captain, with some hesitation;
"since you may never leave this submarine boat.  Come into the saloon,
it is our usual study, and there you will learn all you want to know
about the Nautilus."



CHAPTER XII

SOME FIGURES

A moment after we were seated on a divan in the saloon smoking.
The Captain showed me a sketch that gave the plan, section, and elevation
of the Nautilus.  Then he began his description in these words:

"Here, M. Aronnax, are the several dimensions of the boat
you are in.  It is an elongated cylinder with conical ends.
It is very like a cigar in shape, a shape already adopted
in London in several constructions of the same sort.
The length of this cylinder, from stem to stern, is exactly
232 feet, and its maximum breadth is twenty-six feet.
It is not built quite like your long-voyage steamers,
but its lines are sufficiently long, and its curves
prolonged enough, to allow the water to slide off easily,
and oppose no obstacle to its passage.  These two dimensions
enable you to obtain by a simple calculation the surface and
cubic contents of the Nautilus.  Its area measures 6,032 feet;
and its contents about 1,500 cubic yards; that is to say,
when completely immersed it displaces 50,000 feet of water,
or weighs 1,500 tons.

"When I made the plans for this submarine vessel, I meant that nine-tenths
should be submerged:  consequently it ought only to displace nine-tenths
of its bulk, that is to say, only to weigh that number of tons.
I ought not, therefore, to have exceeded that weight, constructing it on
the aforesaid dimensions.

"The Nautilus is composed of two hulls, one inside, the other outside,
joined by T-shaped irons, which render it very strong.  Indeed, owing to
this cellular arrangement it resists like a block, as if it were solid.
Its sides cannot yield; it coheres spontaneously, and not by the closeness
of its rivets; and its perfect union of the materials enables it to defy
the roughest seas.

"These two hulls are composed of steel plates, whose density is
from .7 to .8 that of water.  The first is not less than two inches
and a half thick and weighs 394 tons.  The second envelope, the keel,
twenty inches high and ten thick, weighs only sixty-two tons.
The engine, the ballast, the several accessories and apparatus
appendages, the partitions and bulkheads, weigh 961.62 tons.
Do you follow all this?"

"I do."

"Then, when the Nautilus is afloat under these circumstances,
one-tenth is out of the water.  Now, if I have made reservoirs
of a size equal to this tenth, or capable of holding 150 tons,
and if I fill them with water, the boat, weighing then 1,507 tons,
will be completely immersed.  That would happen, Professor.
These reservoirs are in the lower part of the Nautilus.
I turn on taps and they fill, and the vessel sinks that had just
been level with the surface."

"Well, Captain, but now we come to the real difficulty.
I can understand your rising to the surface; but, diving below
the surface, does not your submarine contrivance encounter a pressure,
and consequently undergo an upward thrust of one atmosphere
for every thirty feet of water, just about fifteen pounds
per square inch?"

"Just so, sir."

"Then, unless you quite fill the Nautilus, I do not see how you
can draw it down to those depths."

"Professor, you must not confound statics with dynamics or you will be
exposed to grave errors.  There is very little labour spent in attaining
the lower regions of the ocean, for all bodies have a tendency to sink.
When I wanted to find out the necessary increase of weight required
to sink the Nautilus, I had only to calculate the reduction of volume
that sea-water acquires according to the depth."

"That is evident."

"Now, if water is not absolutely incompressible, it is at least capable
of very slight compression.  Indeed, after the most recent calculations this
reduction is only .000436 of an atmosphere for each thirty feet of depth.
If we want to sink 3,000 feet, I should keep account of the reduction of bulk
under a pressure equal to that of a column of water of a thousand feet.
The calculation is easily verified.  Now, I have supplementary
reservoirs capable of holding a hundred tons.  Therefore I can sink
to a considerable depth.  When I wish to rise to the level of the sea,
I only let off the water, and empty all the reservoirs if I want the Nautilus
to emerge from the tenth part of her total capacity."

I had nothing to object to these reasonings.

"I admit your calculations, Captain," I replied; "I should be
wrong to dispute them since daily experience confirms them;
but I foresee a real difficulty in the way."

"What, sir?"

"When you are about 1,000 feet deep, the walls of the Nautilus
bear a pressure of 100 atmospheres.  If, then, just now you were
to empty the supplementary reservoirs, to lighten the vessel,
and to go up to the surface, the pumps must overcome the pressure
of 100 atmospheres, which is 1,500 lbs.  per square inch.
From that a power----"

"That electricity alone can give," said the Captain, hastily.
"I repeat, sir, that the dynamic power of my engines is almost infinite.
The pumps of the Nautilus have an enormous power, as you must have observed
when their jets of water burst like a torrent upon the Abraham Lincoln.
Besides, I use subsidiary reservoirs only to attain a mean depth of 750
to 1,000 fathoms, and that with a view of managing my machines.
Also, when I have a mind to visit the depths of the ocean five or six mlles
below the surface, I make use of slower but not less infallible means."

"What are they, Captain?"

"That involves my telling you how the Nautilus is worked."

"I am impatient to learn."

"To steer this boat to starboard or port, to turn, in a word,
following a horizontal plan, I use an ordinary rudder fixed on the back
of the stern-post, and with one wheel and some tackle to steer by.
But I can also make the Nautilus rise and sink, and sink and rise,
by a vertical movement by means of two inclined planes fastened to its sides,
opposite the centre of flotation, planes that move in every direction,
and that are worked by powerful levers from the interior.
If the planes are kept parallel with the boat, it moves horizontally.
If slanted, the Nautilus, according to this inclination, and under
the influence of the screw, either sinks diagonally or rises diagonally
as it suits me.  And even if I wish to rise more quickly to the surface,
I ship the screw, and the pressure of the water causes the Nautilus
to rise vertically like a balloon filled with hydrogen."

"Bravo, Captain!  But how can the steersman follow the route
in the middle of the waters?"

"The steersman is placed in a glazed box, that is raised about the hull
of the Nautilus, and furnished with lenses."

"Are these lenses capable of resisting such pressure?"

"Perfectly.  Glass, which breaks at a blow, is, nevertheless, capable of
offering considerable resistance.  During some experiments of fishing
by electric light in 1864 in the Northern Seas, we saw plates less
than a third of an inch thick resist a pressure of sixteen atmospheres.
Now, the glass that I use is not less than thirty times thicker."

"Granted.  But, after all, in order to see, the light must exceed
the darkness, and in the midst of the darkness in the water,
how can you see?"

"Behind the steersman's cage is placed a powerful electric reflector,
the rays from which light up the sea for half a mile in front."

"Ah! bravo, bravo, Captain!  Now I can account for this
phosphorescence in the supposed narwhal that puzzled us so.
I now ask you if the boarding of the Nautilus and of the Scotia,
that has made such a noise, has been the result of a chance rencontre?"

"Quite accidental, sir.  I was sailing only one fathom
below the surface of the water when the shock came.
It had no bad result."

"None, sir.  But now, about your rencontre with the Abraham Lincoln?"

"Professor, I am sorry for one of the best vessels in the American navy;
but they attacked me, and I was bound to defend myself.
I contented myself, however, with putting the frigate hors de combat;
she will not have any difficulty in getting repaired at the next port."

"Ah, Commander! your Nautilus is certainly a marvellous boat."

"Yes, Professor; and I love it as if it were part of myself.
If danger threatens one of your vessels on the ocean,
the first impression is the feeling of an abyss above and below.
On the Nautilus men's hearts never fail them.  No defects
to be afraid of, for the double shell is as firm as iron;
no rigging to attend to; no sails for the wind to carry away;
no boilers to burst; no fire to fear, for the vessel is made
of iron, not of wood; no coal to run short, for electricity
is the only mechanical agent; no collision to fear, for it
alone swims in deep water; no tempest to brave, for when it
dives below the water it reaches absolute tranquillity.
There, sir! that is the perfection of vessels!  And if it is true
that the engineer has more confidence in the vessel than the builder,
and the builder than the captain himself, you understand
the trust I repose in my Nautilus; for I am at once captain,
builder, and engineer."

"But how could you construct this wonderful Nautilus in secret?"

"Each separate portion, M. Aronnax, was brought from different
parts of the globe."

"But these parts had to be put together and arranged?"

"Professor, I had set up my workshops upon a desert island in the ocean.
There my workmen, that is to say, the brave men that I instructed
and educated, and myself have put together our Nautilus.  Then, when the work
was finished, fire destroyed all trace of our proceedings on this island,
that I could have jumped over if I had liked."

"Then the cost of this vessel is great?"

"M. Aronnax, an iron vessel costs L145 per ton.  Now the Nautilus weighed
1,500. It came therefore to L67,500, and L80,000 more for fitting it up,
and about L200,000, with the works of art and the collections it contains."

"One last question, Captain Nemo."

"Ask it, Professor."

"You are rich?"

"Immensely rich, sir; and I could, without missing it,
pay the national debt of France."

I stared at the singular person who spoke thus.  Was he playing
upon my credulity?  The future would decide that.



CHAPTER XIII

THE BLACK RIVER

The portion of the terrestrial globe which is covered by
water is estimated at upwards of eighty millions of acres.
This fluid mass comprises two billions two hundred and fifty
millions of cubic miles, forming a spherical body of a diameter
of sixty leagues, the weight of which would be three quintillions
of tons.  To comprehend the meaning of these figures,
it is necessary to observe that a quintillion is to a billion
as a billion is to unity; in other words, there are as many
billions in a quintillion as there are units in a billion.
This mass of fluid is equal to about the quantity of water
which would be discharged by all the rivers of the earth in
forty thousand years.

During the geological epochs the ocean originally prevailed everywhere.
Then by degrees, in the silurian period, the tops of the mountains began
to appear, the islands emerged, then disappeared in partial deluges,
reappeared, became settled, formed continents, till at length the earth
became geographically arranged, as we see in the present day.
The solid had wrested from the liquid thirty-seven million six hundred
and fifty-seven square miles, equal to twelve billions nine hundred
and sixty millions of acres.

The shape of continents allows us to divide the waters into five
great portions:  the Arctic or Frozen Ocean, the Antarctic,
or Frozen Ocean, the Indian, the Atlantic, and the Pacific Oceans.

The Pacific Ocean extends from north to south between the two
Polar Circles, and from east to west between Asia and America,
over an extent of 145 degrees of longitude.  It is the quietest of seas;
its currents are broad and slow, it has medium tides, and abundant rain.
Such was the ocean that my fate destined me first to travel over under
these strange conditions.

"Sir," said Captain Nemo, "we will, if you please,
take our bearings and fix the starting-point of this voyage.
It is a quarter to twelve; I will go up again to the surface."

The Captain pressed an electric clock three times.
The pumps began to drive the water from the tanks; the needle
of the manometer marked by a different pressure the ascent
of the Nautilus, then it stopped.

"We have arrived," said the Captain.

I went to the central staircase which opened on to the platform,
clambered up the iron steps, and found myself on the upper part
of the Nautilus.

The platform was only three feet out of water.  The front
and back of the Nautilus was of that spindle-shape which caused
it justly to be compared to a cigar.  I noticed that its
iron plates, slightly overlaying each other, resembled the shell
which clothes the bodies of our large terrestrial reptiles.
It explained to me how natural it was, in spite of all glasses,
that this boat should have been taken for a marine animal.

Toward the middle of the platform the longboat, half buried
in the hull of the vessel, formed a slight excrescence.
Fore and aft rose two cages of medium height with inclined sides,
and partly closed by thick lenticular glasses; one destined for
the steersman who directed the Nautilus, the other containing a
brilliant lantern to give light on the road.

The sea was beautiful, the sky pure.  Scarcely could
the long vehicle feel the broad undulations of the ocean.
A light breeze from the east rippled the surface of the waters.
The horizon, free from fog, made observation easy.
Nothing was in sight.  Not a quicksand, not an island.
A vast desert.

Captain Nemo, by the help of his sextant, took the altitude
of the sun, which ought also to give the latitude.
He waited for some moments till its disc touched the horizon.
Whilst taking observations not a muscle moved, the instrument
could not have been more motionless in a hand of marble.

"Twelve o'clock, sir," said he.  "When you like----"

I cast a last look upon the sea, slightly yellowed by the Japanese coast,
and descended to the saloon.

"And now, sir, I leave you to your studies," added the Captain;
"our course is E.N.E., our depth is twenty-six fathoms.
Here are maps on a large scale by which you may follow it.
The saloon is at your disposal, and, with your permission,
I will retire."  Captain Nemo bowed, and I remained alone,
lost in thoughts all bearing on the commander of the Nautilus.

For a whole hour was I deep in these reflections,
seeking to pierce this mystery so interesting to me.
Then my eyes fell upon the vast planisphere spread upon the table,
and I placed my finger on the very spot where the given latitude
and longitude crossed.

The sea has its large rivers like the continents.  They are
special currents known by their temperature and their colour.
The most remarkable of these is known by the name of the Gulf Stream.
Science has decided on the globe the direction of five principal currents:
one in the North Atlantic, a second in the South, a third in the North
Pacific, a fourth in the South, and a fifth in the Southern Indian Ocean.
It is even probable that a sixth current existed at one time or another
in the Northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral Seas formed but
one vast sheet of water.

At this point indicated on the planisphere one of these currents
was rolling, the Kuro-Scivo of the Japanese, the Black River, which,
leaving the Gulf of Bengal, where it is warmed by the perpendicular
rays of a tropical sun, crosses the Straits of Malacca along the coast
of Asia, turns into the North Pacific to the Aleutian Islands,
carrying with it trunks of camphor-trees and other indigenous productions,
and edging the waves of the ocean with the pure indigo of its warm water.
It was this current that the Nautilus was to follow.  I followed
it with my eye; saw it lose itself in the vastness of the Pacific,
and felt myself drawn with it, when Ned Land and Conseil appeared at
the door of the saloon.

My two brave companions remained petrified at the sight of the wonders
spread before them.

"Where are we, where are we?" exclaimed the Canadian.
"In the museum at Quebec?"

"My friends," I answered, making a sign for them to enter,
"you are not in Canada, but on board the Nautilus, fifty yards
below the level of the sea."

"But, M. Aronnax," said Ned Land, "can you tell me how many men
there are on board?  Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred?"

"I cannot answer you, Mr. Land; it is better to abandon for a
time all idea of seizing the Nautilus or escaping from it.
This ship is a masterpiece of modern industry, and I should be
sorry not to have seen it.  Many people would accept the situation
forced upon us, if only to move amongst such wonders.
So be quiet and let us try and see what passes around us."

"See!" exclaimed the harpooner, "but we can see nothing in this iron prison!
We are walking--we are sailing--blindly."

Ned Land had scarcely pronounced these words when all was suddenly darkness.
The luminous ceiling was gone, and so rapidly that my eyes received
a painful impression.

We remained mute, not stirring, and not knowing what surprise awaited us,
whether agreeable or disagreeable.  A sliding noise was heard:
one would have said that panels were working at the sides of the Nautilus.

"It is the end of the end!" said Ned Land.

Suddenly light broke at each side of the saloon, through two oblong openings.
The liquid mass appeared vividly lit up by the electric gleam.  Two crystal
plates separated us from the sea.  At first I trembled at the thought that
this frail partition might break, but strong bands of copper bound them,
giving an almost infinite power of resistance.

The sea was distinctly visible for a mile all round the Nautilus.
What a spectacle!  What pen can describe it?  Who could paint
the effects of the light through those transparent sheets of water,
and the softness of the successive gradations from the lower
to the superior strata of the ocean?

We know the transparency of the sea and that its clearness is far
beyond that of rock-water. The mineral and organic substances
which it holds in suspension heightens its transparency.
In certain parts of the ocean at the Antilles, under seventy-five
fathoms of water, can be seen with surprising clearness a bed
of sand.  The penetrating power of the solar rays does not
seem to cease for a depth of one hundred and fifty fathoms.
But in this middle fluid travelled over by the Nautilus,
the electric brightness was produced even in the bosom of the waves.
It was no longer luminous water, but liquid light.

On each side a window opened into this unexplored abyss.
The obscurity of the saloon showed to advantage the brightness outside,
and we looked out as if this pure crystal had been the glass of
an immense aquarium.

"You wished to see, friend Ned; well, you see now."

"Curious! curious!" muttered the Canadian, who, forgetting his
ill-temper, seemed to submit to some irresistible attraction;
"and one would come further than this to admire such a sight!"

"Ah!" thought I to myself, "I understand the life of this man;
he has made a world apart for himself, in which he treasures all
his greatest wonders."

For two whole hours an aquatic army escorted the Nautilus.
During their games, their bounds, while rivalling each other
in beauty, brightness, and velocity, I distinguished the green labre;
the banded mullet, marked by a double line of black; the round-tailed goby,
of a white colour, with violet spots on the back; the Japanese scombrus,
a beautiful mackerel of these seas, with a blue body and silvery head;
the brilliant azurors, whose name alone defies description;
some banded spares, with variegated fins of blue and yellow;
the woodcocks of the seas, some specimens of which attain a yard in length;
Japanese salamanders, spider lampreys, serpents six feet long,
with eyes small and lively, and a huge mouth bristling with teeth;
with many other species.

Our imagination was kept at its height, interjections followed quickly
on each other.  Ned named the fish, and Conseil classed them.
I was in ecstasies with the vivacity of their movements and the
beauty of their forms.  Never had it been given to me to surprise
these animals, alive and at liberty, in their natural element.
I will not mention all the varieties which passed before my dazzled eyes,
all the collection of the seas of China and Japan.  These fish,
more numerous than the birds of the air, came, attracted, no doubt,
by the brilliant focus of the electric light.

Suddenly there was daylight in the saloon, the iron panels closed again,
and the enchanting vision disappeared.  But for a long time I dreamt on,
till my eyes fell on the instruments hanging on the partition.
The compass still showed the course to be E.N.E., the manometer
indicated a pressure of five atmospheres, equivalent to a depth
of twenty five fathoms, and the electric log gave a speed of fifteen
miles an hour.  I expected Captain Nemo, but he did not appear.
The clock marked the hour of five.

Ned Land and Conseil returned to their cabin, and I retired to my chamber.
My dinner was ready.  It was composed of turtle soup made of the
most delicate hawks bills, of a surmullet served with puff paste
(the liver of which, prepared by itself, was most delicious), and fillets
of the emperor-holocanthus, the savour of which seemed to me superior
even to salmon.

I passed the evening reading, writing, and thinking.
Then sleep overpowered me, and I stretched myself on my couch
of zostera, and slept profoundly, whilst the Nautilus was gliding
rapidly through the current of the Black River.



CHAPTER XIV

A NOTE OF INVITATION

The next day was the 9th of November.  I awoke after a long
sleep of twelve hours.  Conseil came, according to custom,
to know "how I passed the night," and to offer his services.
He had left his friend the Canadian sleeping like a man who
had never done anything else all his life.  I let the worthy
fellow chatter as he pleased, without caring to answer him.
I was preoccupied by the absence of the Captain during our sitting
of the day before, and hoping to see him to-day.

As soon as I was dressed I went into the saloon.  It was deserted.
I plunged into the study of the shell treasures hidden behind the glasses.

The whole day passed without my being honoured by a visit from Captain Nemo.
The panels of the saloon did not open.  Perhaps they did not wish us to tire
of these beautiful things.

The course of the Nautilus was E.N.E., her speed twelve knots,
the depth below the surface between twenty-five and thirty fathoms.

The next day, 10th of November, the same desertion,
the same solitude.  I did not see one of the ship's crew:
Ned and Conseil spent the greater part of the day with me.
They were astonished at the puzzling absence of the Captain.
Was this singular man ill?--had he altered his intentions with
regard to us?

After all, as Conseil said, we enjoyed perfect liberty, we were delicately
and abundantly fed.  Our host kept to his terms of the treaty.
We could not complain, and, indeed, the singularity of our fate reserved
such wonderful compensation for us that we had no right to accuse
it as yet.

That day I commenced the journal of these adventures which has enabled
me to relate them with more scrupulous exactitude and minute detail.

11th November, early in the morning.  The fresh air spreading
over the interior of the Nautilus told me that we had come
to the surface of the ocean to renew our supply of oxygen.
I directed my steps to the central staircase, and mounted the platform.

It was six o'clock, the weather was cloudy, the sea grey, but calm.
Scarcely a billow.  Captain Nemo, whom I hoped to meet, would he be there?
I saw no one but the steersman imprisoned in his glass cage.
Seated upon the projection formed by the hull of the pinnace,
I inhaled the salt breeze with delight.

By degrees the fog disappeared under the action of the sun's rays,
the radiant orb rose from behind the eastern horizon.
The sea flamed under its glance like a train of gunpowder.
The clouds scattered in the heights were coloured with lively tints
of beautiful shades, and numerous "mare's tails," which betokened
wind for that day.  But what was wind to this Nautilus,
which tempests could not frighten!

I was admiring this joyous rising of the sun, so gay,
and so life-giving, when I heard steps approaching the platform.
I was prepared to salute Captain Nemo, but it was his second
(whom I had already seen on the Captain's first visit) who appeared.
He advanced on the platform, not seeming to see me.
With his powerful glass to his eye, he scanned every point
of the horizon with great attention.  This examination over,
he approached the panel and pronounced a sentence in exactly
these terms.  I have remembered it, for every morning
it was repeated under exactly the same conditions.
It was thus worded:

"Nautron respoc lorni virch."

What it meant I could not say.

These words pronounced, the second descended.  I thought that
the Nautilus was about to return to its submarine navigation.
I regained the panel and returned to my chamber.

Five days sped thus, without any change in our situation.  Every morning I
mounted the platform.  The same phrase was pronounced by the same individual.
But Captain Nemo did not appear.

I had made up my mind that I should never see him again,
when, on the 16th November, on returning to my room with Ned
and Conseil, I found upon my table a note addressed to me.
I opened it impatiently.  It was written in a bold, clear hand,
the characters rather pointed, recalling the German type.
The note was worded as follows:


TO PROFESSOR ARONNAX, On board the Nautilus.  16th of November, 1867.

Captain Nemo invites Professor Aronnax to a hunting-party, which will
take place to-morrow morning in the forests of the Island of Crespo.
He hopes that nothing will prevent the Professor from being present,
and he will with pleasure see him joined by his companions.

CAPTAIN NEMO, Commander of the Nautilus.


"A hunt!" exclaimed Ned.

"And in the forests of the Island of Crespo!" added Conseil.

"Oh! then the gentleman is going on terra firma?" replied Ned Land.

"That seems to me to be clearly indicated," said I,
reading the letter once more.

"Well, we must accept," said the Canadian.  "But once more on dry ground,
we shall know what to do.  Indeed, I shall not be sorry to eat a piece
of fresh venison."

Without seeking to reconcile what was contradictory between Captain
Nemo's manifest aversion to islands and continents, and his invitation
to hunt in a forest, I contented myself with replying:

"Let us first see where the Island of Crespo is."

I consulted the planisphere, and in 32@ 40' N. lat.
and 157@ 50' W. long., I found a small island, recognised in 1801
by Captain Crespo, and marked in the ancient Spanish maps
as Rocca de la Plata, the meaning of which is The Silver Rock.
We were then about eighteen hundred miles from our starting-point,
and the course of the Nautilus, a little changed, was bringing
it back towards the southeast.

I showed this little rock, lost in the midst of the North Pacific,
to my companions.

"If Captain Nemo does sometimes go on dry ground," said I,
"he at least chooses desert islands."

Ned Land shrugged his shoulders without speaking, and Conseil
and he left me.

After supper, which was served by the steward, mute and impassive,
I went to bed, not without some anxiety.

The next morning, the 17th of November, on awakening, I felt
that the Nautilus was perfectly still.  I dressed quickly
and entered the saloon.

Captain Nemo was there, waiting for me.  He rose, bowed,
and asked me if it was convenient for me to accompany him.
As he made no allusion to his absence during the last eight days,
I did not mention it, and simply answered that my companions and
myself were ready to follow him.

We entered the dining-room, where breakfast was served.

"M. Aronnax," said the Captain, "pray, share my breakfast without ceremony;
we will chat as we eat.  For, though I promised you a walk in the forest,
I did not undertake to find hotels there.  So breakfast as a man who will most
likely not have his dinner till very late."

I did honour to the repast.  It was composed of several kinds of fish,
and slices of sea-cucumber, and different sorts of seaweed.
Our drink consisted of pure water, to which the Captain added
some drops of a fermented liquor, extracted by the Kamschatcha
method from a seaweed known under the name of Rhodomenia palmata.
Captain Nemo ate at first without saying a word.  Then he began:

"Sir, when I proposed to you to hunt in my submarine forest of Crespo,
you evidently thought me mad.  Sir, you should never judge lightly
of any man."

"But Captain, believe me----"

"Be kind enough to listen, and you will then see whether you
have any cause to accuse me of folly and contradiction."

"I listen."

"You know as well as I do, Professor, that man can live under water,
providing he carries with him a sufficient supply of breathable air.
In submarine works, the workman, clad in an impervious dress,
with his head in a metal helmet, receives air from above by means
of forcing pumps and regulators."

"That is a diving apparatus," said I.

"Just so, but under these conditions the man is not at liberty;
he is attached to the pump which sends him air through an
india-rubber tube, and if we were obliged to be thus held
to the Nautilus, we could not go far."

"And the means of getting free?"  I asked.

"It is to use the Rouquayrol apparatus, invented by two of your
own countrymen, which I have brought to perfection for my own use,
and which will allow you to risk yourself under these new
physiological conditions without any organ whatever suffering.
It consists of a reservoir of thick iron plates, in which I store
the air under a pressure of fifty atmospheres.  This reservoir is
fixed on the back by means of braces, like a soldier's knapsack.
Its upper part forms a box in which the air is kept by means of
a bellows, and therefore cannot escape unless at its normal tension.
In the Rouquayrol apparatus such as we use, two india rubber pipes
leave this box and join a sort of tent which holds the nose and mouth;
one is to introduce fresh air, the other to let out the foul, and the tongue
closes one or the other according to the wants of the respirator.
But I, in encountering great pressures at the bottom of the sea,
was obliged to shut my head, like that of a diver in a ball of copper;
and it is to this ball of copper that the two pipes, the inspirator and
the expirator, open."

"Perfectly, Captain Nemo; but the air that you carry with you
must soon be used; when it only contains fifteen per cent.
of oxygen it is no longer fit to breathe."

"Right!  But I told you, M. Aronnax, that the pumps of the Nautilus allow
me to store the air under considerable pressure, and on those conditions
the reservoir of the apparatus can furnish breathable air for nine
or ten hours."

"I have no further objections to make," I answered.
"I will only ask you one thing, Captain--how can you light your
road at the bottom of the sea?"

"With the Ruhmkorff apparatus, M. Aronnax; one is carried on the back,
the other is fastened to the waist.  It is composed of a Bunsen pile,
which I do not work with bichromate of potash, but with sodium.
A wire is introduced which collects the electricity produced, and directs
it towards a particularly made lantern.  In this lantern is a spiral glass
which contains a small quantity of carbonic gas.  When the apparatus is at
work this gas becomes luminous, giving out a white and continuous light.
Thus provided, I can breathe and I can see."

"Captain Nemo, to all my objections you make such crushing answers that I
dare no longer doubt.  But, if I am forced to admit the Rouquayrol
and Ruhmkorff apparatus, I must be allowed some reservations with regard
to the gun I am to carry."

"But it is not a gun for powder," answered the Captain.

"Then it is an air-gun."

"Doubtless!  How would you have me manufacture gun powder on board,
without either saltpetre, sulphur, or charcoal?"

"Besides," I added, "to fire under water in a medium eight
hundred and fifty-five times denser than the air, we must
conquer very considerable resistance."

"That would be no difficulty.  There exist guns, according to Fulton,
perfected in England by Philip Coles and Burley, in France by Furcy,
and in Italy by Landi, which are furnished with a peculiar
system of closing, which can fire under these conditions.
But I repeat, having no powder, I use air under great pressure,
which the pumps of the Nautilus furnish abundantly."

"But this air must be rapidly used?"

"Well, have I not my Rouquayrol reservoir, which can furnish it at need?
A tap is all that is required.  Besides M. Aronnax, you must see
yourself that, during our submarine hunt, we can spend but little air
and but few balls."

"But it seems to me that in this twilight, and in the midst of this fluid,
which is very dense compared with the atmosphere, shots could not go far,
nor easily prove mortal."

"Sir, on the contrary, with this gun every blow is mortal;
and, however lightly the animal is touched, it falls as if struck
by a thunderbolt."

"Why?"

"Because the balls sent by this gun are not ordinary balls, but little
cases of glass.  These glass cases are covered with a case of steel,
and weighted with a pellet of lead; they are real Leyden bottles,
into which the electricity is forced to a very high tension.
With the slightest shock they are discharged, and the animal,
however strong it may be, falls dead.  I must tell you that these
cases are size number four, and that the charge for an ordinary gun
would be ten."

"I will argue no longer," I replied, rising from the table.
"I have nothing left me but to take my gun.  At all events,
I will go where you go."

Captain Nemo then led me aft; and in passing before Ned's and
Conseil's cabin, I called my two companions, who followed promptly.
We then came to a cell near the machinery-room, in which we put
on our walking-dress.



CHAPTER XV

A WALK ON THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

This cell was, to speak correctly, the arsenal and wardrobe of the Nautilus.
A dozen diving apparatuses hung from the partition waiting our use.

Ned Land, on seeing them, showed evident repugnance to dress
himself in one.

"But, my worthy Ned, the forests of the Island of Crespo are nothing
but submarine forests."

"Good!" said the disappointed harpooner, who saw his dreams
of fresh meat fade away.  "And you, M. Aronnax, are you going
to dress yourself in those clothes?"

"There is no alternative, Master Ned."

"As you please, sir," replied the harpooner, shrugging his shoulders;
"but, as for me, unless I am forced, I will never get into one."

"No one will force you, Master Ned," said Captain Nemo.

"Is Conseil going to risk it?" asked Ned.

"I follow my master wherever he goes," replied Conseil.

At the Captain's call two of the ship's crew came to help us dress
in these heavy and impervious clothes, made of india-rubber without seam,
and constructed expressly to resist considerable pressure.
One would have thought it a suit of armour, both supple and resisting.
This suit formed trousers and waistcoat.  The trousers were
finished off with thick boots, weighted with heavy leaden soles.
The texture of the waistcoat was held together by bands of copper,
which crossed the chest, protecting it from the great pressure
of the water, and leaving the lungs free to act; the sleeves ended
in gloves, which in no way restrained the movement of the hands.
There was a vast difference noticeable between these consummate
apparatuses and the old cork breastplates, jackets, and other
contrivances in vogue during the eighteenth century.

Captain Nemo and one of his companions (a sort of Hercules,
who must have possessed great strength), Conseil and myself
were soon enveloped in the dresses.  There remained nothing
more to be done but to enclose our heads in the metal box.
But, before proceeding to this operation, I asked the Captain's
permission to examine the guns.

One of the Nautilus men gave me a simple gun, the butt end
of which, made of steel, hollow in the centre, was rather large.
It served as a reservoir for compressed air, which a valve,
worked by a spring, allowed to escape into a metal tube.
A box of projectiles in a groove in the thickness of the butt
end contained about twenty of these electric balls, which,
by means of a spring, were forced into the barrel of the gun.
As soon as one shot was fired, another was ready.

"Captain Nemo," said I, "this arm is perfect, and easily handled:
I only ask to be allowed to try it.  But how shall we gain the bottom
of the sea?"

"At this moment, Professor, the Nautilus is stranded in five fathoms,
and we have nothing to do but to start."

"But how shall we get off?"

"You shall see."

Captain Nemo thrust his head into the helmet, Conseil and I did the same,
not without hearing an ironical "Good sport!" from the Canadian.
The upper part of our dress terminated in a copper collar upon which
was screwed the metal helmet.  Three holes, protected by thick glass,
allowed us to see in all directions, by simply turning our head
in the interior of the head-dress. As soon as it was in position,
the Rouquayrol apparatus on our backs began to act; and, for my part,
I could breathe with ease.

With the Ruhmkorff lamp hanging from my belt, and the gun in my hand,
I was ready to set out.  But to speak the truth, imprisoned in
these heavy garments, and glued to the deck by my leaden soles,
it was impossible for me to take a step.

But this state of things was provided for.  I felt myself being
pushed into a little room contiguous to the wardrobe room.
My companions followed, towed along in the same way.  I heard
a water-tight door, furnished with stopper plates, close upon us,
and we were wrapped in profound darkness.

After some minutes, a loud hissing was heard.  I felt the cold
mount from my feet to my chest.  Evidently from some part of the
vessel they had, by means of a tap, given entrance to the water,
which was invading us, and with which the room was soon filled.
A second door cut in the side of the Nautilus then opened.
We saw a faint light.  In another instant our feet trod the bottom
of the sea.

And now, how can I retrace the impression left upon me by that walk
under the waters?  Words are impotent to relate such wonders!
Captain Nemo walked in front, his companion followed some steps behind.
Conseil and I remained near each other, as if an exchange of words
had been possible through our metallic cases.  I no longer felt
the weight of my clothing, or of my shoes, of my reservoir of air,
or my thick helmet, in the midst of which my head rattled like an almond
in its shell.

The light, which lit the soil thirty feet below the surface of
the ocean, astonished me by its power.  The solar rays shone through
the watery mass easily, and dissipated all colour, and I clearly
distinguished objects at a distance of a hundred and fifty yards.
Beyond that the tints darkened into fine gradations of ultramarine,
and faded into vague obscurity.  Truly this water which surrounded
me was but another air denser than the terrestrial atmosphere,
but almost as transparent.  Above me was the calm surface of the sea.
We were walking on fine, even sand, not wrinkled, as on a flat shore,
which retains the impression of the billows.  This dazzling carpet,
really a reflector, repelled the rays of the sun with wonderful intensity,
which accounted for the vibration which penetrated every atom of liquid.
Shall I be believed when I say that, at the depth of thirty feet,
I could see as if I was in broad daylight?

For a quarter of an hour I trod on this sand, sown with the impalpable
dust of shells.  The hull of the Nautilus, resembling a long shoal,
disappeared by degrees; but its lantern, when darkness should overtake us
in the waters, would help to guide us on board by its distinct rays.

Soon forms of objects outlined in the distance were discernible.
I recognised magnificent rocks, hung with a tapestry of zoophytes
of the most beautiful kind, and I was at first struck by the peculiar
effect of this medium.

It was then ten in the morning; the rays of the sun struck the surface
of the waves at rather an oblique angle, and at the touch of their light,
decomposed by refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, shells,
and polypi were shaded at the edges by the seven solar colours.
It was marvellous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of coloured tints,
a perfect kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue;
in one word, the whole palette of an enthusiastic colourist!
Why could I not communicate to Conseil the lively sensations which were
mounting to my brain, and rival him in expressions of admiration?
For aught I knew, Captain Nemo and his companion might be able to exchange
thoughts by means of signs previously agreed upon.  So, for want of better,
I talked to myself; I declaimed in the copper box which covered my head,
thereby expending more air in vain words than was perhaps wise.

Various kinds of isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi,
and anemones formed a brilliant garden of flowers, decked with their
collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom.
It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant
specimens of molluscs which strewed the ground by thousands,
of hammerheads, donaciae (veritable bounding shells), of staircases,
and red helmet-shells, angel-wings, and many others produced by this
inexhaustible ocean.  But we were bound to walk, so we went on,
whilst above our heads waved medusae whose umbrellas of opal
or rose-pink, escalloped with a band of blue, sheltered us from
the rays of the sun and fiery pelagiae, which, in the darkness,
would have strewn our path with phosphorescent light.

All these wonders I saw in the space of a quarter of a mile,
scarcely stopping, and following Captain Nemo, who beckoned me on
by signs.  Soon the nature of the soil changed; to the sandy plain
succeeded an extent of slimy mud which the Americans call "ooze,"
composed of equal parts of silicious and calcareous shells.  We then
travelled over a plain of seaweed of wild and luxuriant vegetation.
This sward was of close texture, and soft to the feet,
and rivalled the softest carpet woven by the hand of man.
But whilst verdure was spread at our feet, it did not abandon our heads.
A light network of marine plants, of that inexhaustible family
of seaweeds of which more than two thousand kinds are known,
grew on the surface of the water.

I noticed that the green plants kept nearer the top of the sea,
whilst the red were at a greater depth, leaving to the black
or brown the care of forming gardens and parterres in the remote
beds of the ocean.

We had quitted the Nautilus about an hour and a half.
It was near noon; I knew by the perpendicularity of the sun's rays,
which were no longer refracted.  The magical colours disappeared
by degrees, and the shades of emerald and sapphire were effaced.
We walked with a regular step, which rang upon the ground with
astonishing intensity; the slightest noise was transmitted with a
quickness to which the ear is unaccustomed on the earth; indeed, water is
a better conductor of sound than air, in the ratio of four to one.
At this period the earth sloped downwards; the light took a uniform tint.
We were at a depth of a hundred and five yards and twenty inches,
undergoing a pressure of six atmospheres.

At this depth I could still see the rays of the sun, though feebly;
to their intense brilliancy had succeeded a reddish twilight, the lowest
state between day and night; but we could still see well enough;
it was not necessary to resort to the Ruhmkorff apparatus as yet.
At this moment Captain Nemo stopped; he waited till I joined him,
and then pointed to an obscure mass, looming in the shadow,
at a short distance.

"It is the forest of the Island of Crespo," thought I;
and I was not mistaken.



CHAPTER XVI

A SUBMARINE FOREST

We had at last arrived on the borders of this forest,
doubtless one of the finest of Captain Nemo's immense domains.
He looked upon it as his own, and considered he had the same right
over it that the first men had in the first days of the world.
And, indeed, who would have disputed with him the possession
of this submarine property?  What other hardier pioneer would come,
hatchet in hand, to cut down the dark copses?

This forest was composed of large tree-plants; and the moment we
penetrated under its vast arcades, I was struck by the singular
position of their branches--a position I had not yet observed.

Not an herb which carpeted the ground, not a branch which clothed
the trees, was either broken or bent, nor did they extend horizontally;
all stretched up to the surface of the ocean.  Not a filament, not a ribbon,
however thin they might be, but kept as straight as a rod of iron.
The fuci and llianas grew in rigid perpendicular lines, due to the density
of the element which had produced them.  Motionless yet, when bent
to one side by the hand, they directly resumed their former position.
Truly it was the region of perpendicularity!

I soon accustomed myself to this fantastic position,
as well as to the comparative darkness which surrounded us.
The soil of the forest seemed covered with sharp blocks,
difficult to avoid.  The submarine flora struck me as being
very perfect, and richer even than it would have been in the arctic
or tropical zones, where these productions are not so plentiful.
But for some minutes I involuntarily confounded the genera,
taking animals for plants; and who would not have been mistaken?
The fauna and the flora are too closely allied in this submarine world.

These plants are self-propagated, and the principle of their
existence is in the water, which upholds and nourishes them.
The greater number, instead of leaves, shoot forth blades
of capricious shapes, comprised within a scale of colours pink,
carmine, green, olive, fawn, and brown.

"Curious anomaly, fantastic element!" said an ingenious naturalist,
"in which the animal kingdom blossoms, and the vegetable does not!"

In about an hour Captain Nemo gave the signal to halt; I, for my part,
was not sorry, and we stretched ourselves under an arbour of alariae,
the long thin blades of which stood up like arrows.

This short rest seemed delicious to me; there was nothing
wanting but the charm of conversation; but, impossible to speak,
impossible to answer, I only put my great copper head to Conseil's.
I saw the worthy fellow's eyes glistening with delight, and, to show
his satisfaction, he shook himself in his breastplate of air,
in the most comical way in the world.

After four hours of this walking, I was surprised not to find
myself dreadfully hungry.  How to account for this state
of the stomach I could not tell.  But instead I felt an
insurmountable desire to sleep, which happens to all divers.
And my eyes soon closed behind the thick glasses, and I fell into
a heavy slumber, which the movement alone had prevented before.
Captain Nemo and his robust companion, stretched in the clear crystal,
set us the example.

How long I remained buried in this drowsiness I cannot judge,
but, when I woke, the sun seemed sinking towards the horizon.
Captain Nemo had already risen, and I was beginning to stretch
my limbs, when an unexpected apparition brought me briskly
to my feet.

A few steps off, a monstrous sea-spider, about thirty-eight inches
high, was watching me with squinting eyes, ready to spring upon me.
Though my diver's dress was thick enough to defend me from
the bite of this animal, I could not help shuddering with horror.
Conseil and the sailor of the Nautilus awoke at this moment.
Captain Nemo pointed out the hideous crustacean, which a blow
from the butt end of the gun knocked over, and I saw the horrible
claws of the monster writhe in terrible convulsions.
This incident reminded me that other animals more to be feared
might haunt these obscure depths, against whose attacks my
diving-dress would not protect me.  I had never thought of it before,
but I now resolved to be upon my guard.  Indeed, I thought
that this halt would mark the termination of our walk;
but I was mistaken, for, instead of returning to the Nautilus,
Captain Nemo continued his bold excursion.  The ground was still
on the incline, its declivity seemed to be getting greater,
and to be leading us to greater depths.  It must have been
about three o'clock when we reached a narrow valley, between high
perpendicular walls, situated about seventy-five fathoms deep.
Thanks to the perfection of our apparatus, we were forty-five
fathoms below the limit which nature seems to have imposed on man
as to his submarine excursions.

I say seventy-five fathoms, though I had no instrument by which to
judge the distance.  But I knew that even in the clearest waters
the solar rays could not penetrate further.  And accordingly
the darkness deepened.  At ten paces not an object was visible.
I was groping my way, when I suddenly saw a brilliant white light.
Captain Nemo had just put his electric apparatus into use;
his companion did the same, and Conseil and I followed their example.
By turning a screw I established a communication between the wire
and the spiral glass, and the sea, lit by our four lanterns,
was illuminated for a circle of thirty-six yards.

As we walked I thought the light of our Ruhmkorff apparatus
could not fail to draw some inhabitant from its dark couch.
But if they did approach us, they at least kept at
a respectful distance from the hunters.  Several times
I saw Captain Nemo stop, put his gun to his shoulder,
and after some moments drop it and walk on.  At last,
after about four hours, this marvellous excursion came to an end.
A wall of superb rocks, in an imposing mass, rose before us,
a heap of gigantic blocks, an enormous, steep granite shore,
forming dark grottos, but which presented no practicable slope;
it was the prop of the Island of Crespo.  It was the earth!
Captain Nemo stopped suddenly.  A gesture of his brought us all
to a halt; and, however desirous I might be to scale the wall,
I was obliged to stop.  Here ended Captain Nemo's domains.
And he would not go beyond them.  Further on was a portion of the
globe he might not trample upon.

The return began.  Captain Nemo had returned to the head of his little band,
directing their course without hesitation.  I thought we were not following
the same road to return to the Nautilus.  The new road was very steep,
and consequently very painful.  We approached the surface of the sea rapidly.
But this return to the upper strata was not so sudden as to cause relief
from the pressure too rapidly, which might have produced serious disorder
in our organisation, and brought on internal lesions, so fatal to divers.
Very soon light reappeared and grew, and, the sun being low on the horizon,
the refraction edged the different objects with a spectral ring.
At ten yards and a half deep, we walked amidst a shoal of little fishes
of all kinds, more numerous than the birds of the air, and also more agile;
but no aquatic game worthy of a shot had as yet met our gaze, when at
that moment I saw the Captain shoulder his gun quickly, and follow
a moving object into the shrubs.  He fired; I heard a slight hissing,
and a creature fell stunned at some distance from us.  It was a magnificent
sea-otter, an enhydrus, the only exclusively marine quadruped.
This otter was five feet long, and must have been very valuable.
Its skin, chestnut-brown above and silvery underneath, would have made one
of those beautiful furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets:
the fineness and the lustre of its coat would certainly fetch L80.
I admired this curious mammal, with its rounded head ornamented with
short ears, its round eyes, and white whiskers like those of a cat,
with webbed feet and nails, and tufted tail.  This precious animal,
hunted and tracked by fishermen, has now become very rare, and taken refuge
chiefly in the northern parts of the Pacific, or probably its race would
soon become extinct.

Captain Nemo's companion took the beast, threw it over his shoulder, and we
continued our journey.  For one hour a plain of sand lay stretched before us.
Sometimes it rose to within two yards and some inches of the surface of
the water.  I then saw our image clearly reflected, drawn inversely, and above
us appeared an identical group reflecting our movements and our actions;
in a word, like us in every point, except that they walked with their heads
downward and their feet in the air.

Another effect I noticed, which was the passage of thick clouds which formed
and vanished rapidly; but on reflection I understood that these seeming
clouds were due to the varying thickness of the reeds at the bottom,
and I could even see the fleecy foam which their broken tops multiplied
on the water, and the shadows of large birds passing above our heads,
whose rapid flight I could discern on the surface of the sea.

On this occasion I was witness to one of the finest gun
shots which ever made the nerves of a hunter thrill.
A large bird of great breadth of wing, clearly visible, approached,
hovering over us.  Captain Nemo's companion shouldered his gun
and fired, when it was only a few yards above the waves.
The creature fell stunned, and the force of its fall
brought it within the reach of dexterous hunter's grasp.
It was an albatross of the finest kind.

Our march had not been interrupted by this incident.
For two hours we followed these sandy plains, then fields of algae
very disagreeable to cross.  Candidly, I could do no more when I
saw a glimmer of light, which, for a half mile, broke the
darkness of the waters.  It was the lantern of the Nautilus.
Before twenty minutes were over we should be on board,
and I should be able to breathe with ease, for it seemed
that my reservoir supplied air very deficient in oxygen.
But I did not reckon on an accidental meeting which delayed our
arrival for some time.

I had remained some steps behind, when I presently saw Captain
Nemo coming hurriedly towards me.  With his strong hand he bent
me to the ground, his companion doing the same to Conseil.
At first I knew not what to think of this sudden attack, but I
was soon reassured by seeing the Captain lie down beside me,
and remain immovable.

I was stretched on the ground, just under the shelter of a bush
of algae, when, raising my head, I saw some enormous mass,
casting phosphorescent gleams, pass blusteringly by.

My blood froze in my veins as I recognised two formidable
sharks which threatened us.  It was a couple of tintoreas,
terrible creatures, with enormous tails and a dull glassy stare,
the phosphorescent matter ejected from holes pierced around the muzzle.
Monstrous brutes! which would crush a whole man in their iron jaws.
I did not know whether Conseil stopped to classify them; for my part,
I noticed their silver bellies, and their huge mouths bristling
with teeth, from a very unscientific point of view, and more as a
possible victim than as a naturalist.

Happily the voracious creatures do not see well.  They passed without
seeing us, brushing us with their brownish fins, and we escaped by a miracle
from a danger certainly greater than meeting a tiger full-face in the forest.
Half an hour after, guided by the electric light we reached the Nautilus.
The outside door had been left open, and Captain Nemo closed it
as soon as we had entered the first cell.  He then pressed a knob.
I heard the pumps working in the midst of the vessel, I felt the water
sinking from around me, and in a few moments the cell was entirely empty.
The inside door then opened, and we entered the vestry.

There our diving-dress was taken off, not without some trouble, and,
fairly worn out from want of food and sleep, I returned to my room,
in great wonder at this surprising excursion at the bottom of the sea.



CHAPTER XVII

FOUR THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE PACIFIC

The next morning, the 18th of November, I had quite recovered from
my fatigues of the day before, and I went up on to the platform,
just as the second lieutenant was uttering his daily phrase.

I was admiring the magnificent aspect of the ocean when Captain
Nemo appeared.  He did not seem to be aware of my presence,
and began a series of astronomical observations.
Then, when he had finished, he went and leant on the cage
of the watch-light, and gazed abstractedly on the ocean.
In the meantime, a number of the sailors of the Nautilus,
all strong and healthy men, had come up onto the platform.
They came to draw up the nets that had been laid all night.
These sailors were evidently of different nations,
although the European type was visible in all of them.
I recognised some unmistakable Irishmen, Frenchmen, some Sclaves,
and a Greek, or a Candiote.  They were civil, and only used that odd
language among themselves, the origin of which I could not guess,
neither could I question them.

The nets were hauled in.  They were a large kind of "chaluts," like those
on the Normandy coasts, great pockets that the waves and a chain fixed
in the smaller meshes kept open.  These pockets, drawn by iron poles,
swept through the water, and gathered in everything in their way.
That day they brought up curious specimens from those productive coasts.

I reckoned that the haul had brought in more than nine hundredweight of fish.
It was a fine haul, but not to be wondered at.  Indeed, the nets are let
down for several hours, and enclose in their meshes an infinite variety.
We had no lack of excellent food, and the rapidity of the Nautilus
and the attraction of the electric light could always renew our supply.
These several productions of the sea were immediately lowered through the
panel to the steward's room, some to be eaten fresh, and others pickled.

The fishing ended, the provision of air renewed, I thought
that the Nautilus was about to continue its submarine excursion,
and was preparing to return to my room, when, without further preamble,
the Captain turned to me, saying:

"Professor, is not this ocean gifted with real life?  It has its
tempers and its gentle moods.  Yesterday it slept as we did, and now it
has woke after a quiet night.  Look!" he continued, "it wakes under
the caresses of the sun.  It is going to renew its diurnal existence.
It is an interesting study to watch the play of its organisation.
It has a pulse, arteries, spasms; and I agree with the learned Maury,
who discovered in it a circulation as real as the circulation of
blood in animals.

"Yes, the ocean has indeed circulation, and to promote it, the Creator
has caused things to multiply in it--caloric, salt, and animalculae."

When Captain Nemo spoke thus, he seemed altogether changed,
and aroused an extraordinary emotion in me.

"Also," he added, "true existence is there; and I can imagine
the foundations of nautical towns, clusters of submarine houses,
which, like the Nautilus, would ascend every morning to breathe
at the surface of the water, free towns, independent cities.
Yet who knows whether some despot----"

Captain Nemo finished his sentence with a violent gesture.
Then, addressing me as if to chase away some sorrowful thought:

"M. Aronnax," he asked, "do you know the depth of the ocean?"

"I only know, Captain, what the principal soundings have taught us."

"Could you tell me them, so that I can suit them to my purpose?"

"These are some," I replied, "that I remember.  If I am not mistaken,
a depth of 8,000 yards has been found in the North Atlantic,
and 2,500 yards in the Mediterranean.  The most remarkable soundings
have been made in the South Atlantic, near the thirty-fifth parallel,
and they gave 12,000 yards, 14,000 yards, and 15,000 yards.
To sum up all, it is reckoned that if the bottom of the sea were levelled,
its mean depth would be about one and three-quarter leagues."

"Well, Professor," replied the Captain, "we shall show you better
than that I hope.  As to the mean depth of this part of the Pacific,
I tell you it is only 4,000 yards."

Having said this, Captain Nemo went towards the panel,
and disappeared down the ladder.  I followed him, and went into
the large drawing-room. The screw was immediately put in motion,
and the log gave twenty miles an hour.

During the days and weeks that passed, Captain Nemo
was very sparing of his visits.  I seldom saw him.
The lieutenant pricked the ship's course regularly on the chart,
so I could always tell exactly the route of the Nautilus.

Nearly every day, for some time, the panels of the drawing-room were opened,
and we were never tired of penetrating the mysteries of the submarine world.

The general direction of the Nautilus was south-east, and it kept between 100
and 150 yards of depth.  One day, however, I do not know why, being drawn
diagonally by means of the inclined planes, it touched the bed of the sea.
The thermometer indicated a temperature of 4.25 (cent.): a temperature that at
this depth seemed common to all latitudes.

At three o'clock in the morning of the 26th of November the Nautilus
crossed the tropic of Cancer at 172@ long.  On 27th instant it
sighted the Sandwich Islands, where Cook died, February 14, 1779.
We had then gone 4,860 leagues from our starting-point. In the morning,
when I went on the platform, I saw two miles to windward,
Hawaii, the largest of the seven islands that form the group.
I saw clearly the cultivated ranges, and the several mountain-chains
that run parallel with the side, and the volcanoes that overtop
Mouna-Rea, which rise 5,000 yards above the level of the sea.
Besides other things the nets brought up, were several flabellariae
and graceful polypi, that are peculiar to that part of the ocean.
The direction of the Nautilus was still to the south-east. It crossed
the equator December 1, in 142@ long.; and on the 4th of the same month,
after crossing rapidly and without anything in particular occurring,
we sighted the Marquesas group.  I saw, three miles off, Martin's peak
in Nouka-Hiva, the largest of the group that belongs to France.
I only saw the woody mountains against the horizon, because Captain Nemo
did not wish to bring the ship to the wind.  There the nets brought up
beautiful specimens of fish:  some with azure fins and tails like gold,
the flesh of which is unrivalled; some nearly destitute of scales,
but of exquisite flavour; others, with bony jaws, and yellow-tinged
gills, as good as bonitos; all fish that would be of use to us.
After leaving these charming islands protected by the French flag,
from the 4th to the 11th of December the Nautilus sailed over about
2,000 miles.

During the daytime of the 11th of December I was busy reading
in the large drawing-room. Ned Land and Conseil watched the luminous
water through the half-open panels.  The Nautilus was immovable.
While its reservoirs were filled, it kept at a depth of 1,000 yards,
a region rarely visited in the ocean, and in which large fish
were seldom seen.

I was then reading a charming book by Jean Mace, The Slaves of the Stomach,
and I was learning some valuable lessons from it, when Conseil interrupted me.

"Will master come here a moment?" he said, in a curious voice.

"What is the matter, Conseil?"

"I want master to look."

I rose, went, and leaned on my elbows before the panes and watched.

In a full electric light, an enormous black mass, quite immovable,
was suspended in the midst of the waters.  I watched it attentively,
seeking to find out the nature of this gigantic cetacean.
But a sudden thought crossed my mind.  "A vessel!"
I said, half aloud.

"Yes," replied the Canadian, "a disabled ship that has sunk perpendicularly."

Ned Land was right; we were close to a vessel of which the tattered
shrouds still hung from their chains.  The keel seemed to be
in good order, and it had been wrecked at most some few hours.
Three stumps of masts, broken off about two feet above the bridge,
showed that the vessel had had to sacrifice its masts.  But, lying on
its side, it had filled, and it was heeling over to port.
This skeleton of what it had once been was a sad spectacle as it lay
lost under the waves, but sadder still was the sight of the bridge,
where some corpses, bound with ropes, were still lying.
I counted five--four men, one of whom was standing at the helm,
and a woman standing by the poop, holding an infant in her arms.
She was quite young.  I could distinguish her features, which the water
had not decomposed, by the brilliant light from the Nautilus.
In one despairing effort, she had raised her infant above her head--
poor little thing!--whose arms encircled its mother's neck.
The attitude of the four sailors was frightful, distorted as they
were by their convulsive movements, whilst making a last effort
to free themselves from the cords that bound them to the vessel.
The steersman alone, calm, with a grave, clear face, his grey hair
glued to his forehead, and his hand clutching the wheel of the helm,
seemed even then to be guiding the three broken masts through the depths
of the ocean.

What a scene!  We were dumb; our hearts beat fast before this shipwreck,
taken as it were from life and photographed in its last moments.
And I saw already, coming towards it with hungry eyes, enormous sharks,
attracted by the human flesh.

However, the Nautilus, turning, went round the submerged vessel,
and in one instant I read on the stern--"The Florida, Sunderland."



CHAPTER XVIII

VANIKORO

This terrible spectacle was the forerunner of the series of maritime
catastrophes that the Nautilus was destined to meet with in its route.
As long as it went through more frequented waters, we often saw
the hulls of shipwrecked vessels that were rotting in the depths,
and deeper down cannons, bullets, anchors, chains, and a thousand
other iron materials eaten up by rust.  However, on the 11th of
December we sighted the Pomotou Islands, the old "dangerous group"
of Bougainville, that extend over a space of 500 leagues at
E.S.E. to W.N.W., from the Island Ducie to that of Lazareff.
This group covers an area of 370 square leagues, and it is formed
of sixty groups of islands, among which the Gambier group is remarkable,
over which France exercises sway.  These are coral islands,
slowly raised, but continuous, created by the daily work of polypi.
Then this new island will be joined later on to the neighboring groups,
and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia,
and from thence to the Marquesas.

One day, when I was suggesting this theory to Captain Nemo,
he replied coldly:

"The earth does not want new continents, but new men."

Chance had conducted the Nautilus towards the Island of
Clermont-Tonnere, one of the most curious of the group, that was
discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell of the Minerva. I could study now
the madreporal system, to which are due the islands in this ocean.

Madrepores (which must not be mistaken for corals) have a tissue
lined with a calcareous crust, and the modifications of its
structure have induced M. Milne Edwards, my worthy master, to class
them into five sections. The animalcule that the marine polypus
secretes live by millions at the bottom of their cells. Their
calcareous deposits become rocks, reefs, and large and small
islands. Here they form a ring, surrounding a little inland lake,
that communicates with the sea by means of gaps. There they make
barriers of reefs like those on the coasts of New Caledonia and the
various Pomoton islands. In other places, like those at Reunion and
at Maurice, they raise fringed reefs, high, straight walls, near
which the depth of the ocean is considerable.

Some cable-lengths off the shores of the Island of Clermont I
admired the gigantic work accomplished by these microscopical
workers. These walls are specially the work of those madrepores
known as milleporas, porites, madrepores, and astraeas. These polypi
are found particularly in the rough beds of the sea, near the
surface; and consequently it is from the upper part that they begin
their operations, in which they bury themselves by degrees with the
debris of the secretions that support them. Such is, at least,
Darwin's theory, who thus explains the formation of the _atolls_, a
superior theory (to my mind) to that given of the foundation of the
madreporical works, summits of mountains or volcanoes, that are
submerged some feet below the level of the sea.

I could observe closely these curious walls, for perpendicularly
they were more than 300 yards deep, and our electric sheets lighted
up this calcareous matter brilliantly. Replying to a question
Conseil asked me as to the time these colossal barriers took to be
raised, I astonished him much by telling him that learned men
reckoned it about the eighth of an inch in a hundred years.

Towards evening Clermont-Tonnerre was lost in the distance, and the
route of the Nautilus was sensibly changed. After having crossed the
tropic of Capricorn in 135 deg. longitude, it sailed W.N.W., making
again for the tropical zone. Although the summer sun was very
strong, we did not suffer from heat, for at fifteen or twenty
fathoms below the surface, the temperature did not rise above from
ten to twelve degrees.

On 15th of December, we left to the east the bewitching group
of the Societies and the graceful Tahiti, queen of the Pacific.
I saw in the morning, some miles to the windward, the elevated
summits of the island.  These waters furnished our table
with excellent fish, mackerel, bonitos, and some varieties
of a sea-serpent.

On the 25th of December the Nautilus sailed into the midst of the
New Hebrides, discovered by Quiros in 1606, and that Bougainville
explored in 1768, and to which Cook gave its present name in 1773.
This group is composed principally of nine large islands, that form
a band of 120 leagues N.N.S. to S.S.W., between 15@ and 2@ S. lat.,
and 164@ and 168@ long.  We passed tolerably near to the Island of Aurou,
that at noon looked like a mass of green woods, surmounted by a peak
of great height.

That day being Christmas Day, Ned Land seemed to regret sorely
the non-celebration of "Christmas," the family fete of which
Protestants are so fond.  I had not seen Captain Nemo for a week,
when, on the morning of the 27th, he came into the large drawing-room,
always seeming as if he had seen you five minutes before.
I was busily tracing the route of the Nautilus on the planisphere.
The Captain came up to me, put his finger on one spot on the chart,
and said this single word.

"Vanikoro."

The effect was magical!  It was the name of the islands on which La
Perouse had been lost!  I rose suddenly.

"The Nautilus has brought us to Vanikoro?"  I asked.

"Yes, Professor," said the Captain.

"And I can visit the celebrated islands where the Boussole
and the Astrolabe struck?"

"If you like, Professor."

"When shall we be there?"

"We are there now."

Followed by Captain Nemo, I went up on to the platform,
and greedily scanned the horizon.

To the N.E. two volcanic islands emerged of unequal size,
surrounded by a coral reef that measured forty miles in circumference.
We were close to Vanikoro, really the one to which Dumont d'Urville
gave the name of Isle de la Recherche, and exactly facing the little
harbour of Vanou, situated in 16@ 4' S. lat., and 164@ 32' E. long.
The earth seemed covered with verdure from the shore to the summits
in the interior, that were crowned by Mount Kapogo, 476 feet high.
The Nautilus, having passed the outer belt of rocks by a narrow strait,
found itself among breakers where the sea was from thirty to forty
fathoms deep.  Under the verdant shade of some mangroves I perceived
some savages, who appeared greatly surprised at our approach.
In the long black body, moving between wind and water, did they not see
some formidable cetacean that they regarded with suspicion?

Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the wreck of La Perouse.

"Only what everyone knows, Captain," I replied.

"And could you tell me what everyone knows about it?"
he inquired, ironically.

"Easily."

I related to him all that the last works of Dumont d'Urville had made known--
works from which the following is a brief account.

La Perouse, and his second, Captain de Langle, were sent
by Louis XVI, in 1785, on a voyage of circumnavigation.
They embarked in the corvettes Boussole and the Astrolabe,
neither of which were again heard of.  In 1791, the French
Government, justly uneasy as to the fate of these two sloops,
manned two large merchantmen, the Recherche and the Esperance,
which left Brest the 28th of September under the command
of Bruni d'Entrecasteaux.

Two months after, they learned from Bowen, commander of the Albemarle,
that the debris of shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coasts
of New Georgia.  But D'Entrecasteaux, ignoring this communication--
rather uncertain, besides--directed his course towards the Admiralty Islands,
mentioned in a report of Captain Hunter's as being the place where La
Perouse was wrecked.

They sought in vain.  The Esperance and the Recherche passed before Vanikoro
without stopping there, and, in fact, this voyage was most disastrous,
as it cost D'Entrecasteaux his life, and those of two of his lieutenants,
besides several of his crew.

Captain Dillon, a shrewd old Pacific sailor, was the first to find
unmistakable traces of the wrecks.  On the 15th of May, 1824, his vessel,
the St. Patrick, passed close to Tikopia, one of the New Hebrides.
There a Lascar came alongside in a canoe, sold him the handle of a sword
in silver that bore the print of characters engraved on the hilt.
The Lascar pretended that six years before, during a stay at Vanikoro,
he had seen two Europeans that belonged to some vessels that had run
aground on the reefs some years ago.

Dillon guessed that he meant La Perouse, whose disappearance had
troubled the whole world.  He tried to get on to Vanikoro, where,
according to the Lascar, he would find numerous debris of the wreck,
but winds and tides prevented him.

Dillon returned to Calcutta.  There he interested the Asiatic Society
and the Indian Company in his discovery.  A vessel, to which was given
the name of the Recherche, was put at his disposal, and he set out,
23rd January, 1827, accompanied by a French agent.

The Recherche, after touching at several points in the Pacific,
cast anchor before Vanikoro, 7th July, 1827, in that same harbour
of Vanou where the Nautilus was at this time.

There it collected numerous relics of the wreck--
iron utensils, anchors, pulley-strops, swivel-guns, an 18 lb.
shot, fragments of astronomical instruments, a piece of crown work,
and a bronze clock, bearing this inscription--"Bazin m'a fait,"
the mark of the foundry of the arsenal at Brest about 1785.
There could be no further doubt.

Dillon, having made all inquiries, stayed in the unlucky place till October.
Then he quitted Vanikoro, and directed his course towards New Zealand;
put into Calcutta, 7th April, 1828, and returned to France, where he was
warmly welcomed by Charles X.

But at the same time, without knowing Dillon's movements,
Dumont d'Urville had already set out to find the scene of the wreck.
And they had learned from a whaler that some medals and a cross of St. Louis
had been found in the hands of some savages of Louisiade and New Caledonia.
Dumont d'Urville, commander of the Astrolabe, had then sailed,
and two months after Dillon had left Vanikoro he put into Hobart Town.
There he learned the results of Dillon's inquiries, and found that a certain
James Hobbs, second lieutenant of the Union of Calcutta, after landing
on an island situated 8@ 18' S. lat., and 156@ 30' E. long., had seen
some iron bars and red stuffs used by the natives of these parts.
Dumont d'Urville, much perplexed, and not knowing how to credit the reports
of low-class journals, decided to follow Dillon's track.

On the 10th of February, 1828, the Astrolabe appeared off Tikopia,
and took as guide and interpreter a deserter found on the island;
made his way to Vanikoro, sighted it on the 12th inst., lay among
the reefs until the 14th, and not until the 20th did he cast anchor
within the barrier in the harbour of Vanou.

On the 23rd, several officers went round the island and brought
back some unimportant trifles.  The natives, adopting a system
of denials and evasions, refused to take them to the unlucky place.
This ambiguous conduct led them to believe that the natives had
ill-treated the castaways, and indeed they seemed to fear that Dumont
d'Urville had come to avenge La Perouse and his unfortunate crew.

However, on the 26th, appeased by some presents, and understanding that they
had no reprisals to fear, they led M. Jacquireot to the scene of the wreck.

There, in three or four fathoms of water, between the reefs
of Pacou and Vanou, lay anchors, cannons, pigs of lead and iron,
embedded in the limy concretions.  The large boat and the whaler
belonging to the Astrolabe were sent to this place, and, not without
some difficulty, their crews hauled up an anchor weighing 1,800
lbs., a brass gun, some pigs of iron, and two copper swivel-guns.

Dumont d'Urville, questioning the natives, learned too that La Perouse,
after losing both his vessels on the reefs of this island,
had constructed a smaller boat, only to be lost a second time.
Where, no one knew.

But the French Government, fearing that Dumont d'Urville was
not acquainted with Dillon's movements, had sent the sloop
Bayonnaise, commanded by Legoarant de Tromelin, to Vanikoro,
which had been stationed on the west coast of America.
The Bayonnaise cast her anchor before Vanikoro some months
after the departure of the Astrolabe, but found no new document;
but stated that the savages had respected the monument to La Perouse.
That is the substance of what I told Captain Nemo.

"So," he said, "no one knows now where the third vessel perished
that was constructed by the castaways on the island of Vanikoro?"

"No one knows."

Captain Nemo said nothing, but signed to me to follow him into
the large saloon.  The Nautilus sank several yards below the waves,
and the panels were opened.

I hastened to the aperture, and under the crustations of coral,
covered with fungi, syphonules, alcyons, madrepores, through myriads
of charming fish--girelles, glyphisidri, pompherides, diacopes, and
holocentres--I recognised certain debris that the drags had not been
able to tear up--iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, bullets, capstan
fittings, the stem of a ship, all objects clearly proving the wreck
of some vessel, and now carpeted with living flowers. While I was
looking on this desolate scene, Captain Nemo said, in a sad voice:

"Commander La Perouse set out 7th December, 1785, with his vessels
La Boussole and the Astrolabe.  He first cast anchor at Botany Bay,
visited the Friendly Isles, New Caledonia, then directed his course
towards Santa Cruz, and put into Namouka, one of the Hapai group.
Then his vessels struck on the unknown reefs of Vanikoro.
The Boussole, which went first, ran aground on the southerly coast.
The Astrolabe went to its help, and ran aground too.  The first vessel
was destroyed almost immediately.  The second, stranded under the wind,
resisted some days.  The natives made the castaways welcome.
They installed themselves in the island, and constructed a smaller boat
with the debris of the two large ones.  Some sailors stayed willingly
at Vanikoro; the others, weak and ill, set out with La Perouse.
They directed their course towards the Solomon Islands, and there perished,
with everything, on the westerly coast of the chief island of the group,
between Capes Deception and Satisfaction."

"How do you know that?"

"By this, that I found on the spot where was the last wreck."

Captain Nemo showed me a tin-plate box, stamped with the French arms,
and corroded by the salt water.  He opened it, and I saw a bundle of papers,
yellow but still readable.

They were the instructions of the naval minister to Commander La Perouse,
annotated in the margin in Louis XVI's handwriting.

"Ah! it is a fine death for a sailor!" said Captain Nemo, at last.
"A coral tomb makes a quiet grave; and I trust that I and my comrades
will find no other."



CHAPTER XIX

TORRES STRAITS

During the night of the 27th or 28th of December,
the Nautilus left the shores of Vanikoro with great speed.
Her course was south-westerly, and in three days she had gone
over the 750 leagues that separated it from La Perouse's group
and the south-east point of Papua.

Early on the 1st of January, 1863, Conseil joined me on the platform.

"Master, will you permit me to wish you a happy New Year?"

"What!  Conseil; exactly as if I was at Paris in my study
at the Jardin des Plantes?  Well, I accept your good wishes,
and thank you for them.  Only, I will ask you what you mean
by a `Happy New Year' under our circumstances?  Do you mean
the year that will bring us to the end of our imprisonment,
or the year that sees us continue this strange voyage?"

"Really, I do not know how to answer, master.  We are sure to see
curious things, and for the last two months we have not had time
for dullness.  The last marvel is always the most astonishing;
and, if we continue this progression, I do not know how it will end.
It is my opinion that we shall never again see the like.
I think then, with no offence to master, that a happy year would be
one in which we could see everything."

On 2nd January we had made 11,340 miles, or 5,250
French leagues, since our starting-point in the Japan Seas.
Before the ship's head stretched the dangerous shores
of the coral sea, on the north-east coast of Australia.
Our boat lay along some miles from the redoubtable bank
on which Cook's vessel was lost, 10th June, 1770.  The boat
in which Cook was struck on a rock, and, if it did not sink,
it was owing to a piece of coral that was broken by the shock,
and fixed itself in the broken keel.

I had wished to visit the reef, 360 leagues long, against which the sea,
always rough, broke with great violence, with a noise like thunder.
But just then the inclined planes drew the Nautilus down to a great depth,
and I could see nothing of the high coral walls.  I had to content
myself with the different specimens of fish brought up by the nets.
I remarked, among others, some germons, a species of mackerel as large
as a tunny, with bluish sides, and striped with transverse bands,
that disappear with the animal's life.  

These fish followed us in shoals, and furnished us with very delicate
food. We took also a large number of gilt-heads, about one and a half
inches long, tasting like dorys; and flying pyrapeds like submarine
swallows, which, in dark nights, light alternately the air and water
with their phosphorescent light. Among the molluscs and zoophytes, I
found in the meshes of the net several species of alcyonarians, echini,
hammers, spurs, dials, cerites, and hyalleae. The flora was represented
by beautiful floating seaweeds, laminariae, and macrocystes, impregnated
with the mucilage that transudes through their pores; and among which I
gathered an admirable Nemastoma Geliniarois, that was classed among the
natural curiosities of the museum.

Two days after crossing the coral sea, 4th January, we sighted
the Papuan coasts.  On this occasion, Captain Nemo informed me that his
intention was to get into the Indian Ocean by the Strait of Torres.
His communication ended there.

The Torres Straits are nearly thirty-four leagues wide; but they are
obstructed by an innumerable quantity of islands, islets, breakers,
and rocks, that make its navigation almost impracticable;
so that Captain Nemo took all needful precautions to cross them.
The Nautilus, floating betwixt wind and water, went at a moderate pace.
Her screw, like a cetacean's tail, beat the waves slowly.

Profiting by this, I and my two companions went up on to the
deserted platform.  Before us was the steersman's cage, and I expected
that Captain Nemo was there directing the course of the Nautilus.
I had before me the excellent charts of the Straits of Torres, and I
consulted them attentively.  Round the Nautilus the sea dashed furiously.
The course of the waves, that went from south-east to north-west at
the rate of two and a half miles, broke on the coral that showed itself
here and there.

"This is a bad sea!" remarked Ned Land.

"Detestable indeed, and one that does not suit a boat like the Nautilus."

"The Captain must be very sure of his route, for I see there pieces of coral
that would do for its keel if it only touched them slightly."

Indeed the situation was dangerous, but the Nautilus seemed to slide
like magic off these rocks.  It did not follow the routes of the
Astrolabe and the Zelee exactly, for they proved fatal to Dumont
d'Urville. It bore more northwards, coasted the Islands of Murray,
and came back to the south-west towards Cumberland Passage.
I thought it was going to pass it by, when, going back to north-west,
it went through a large quantity of islands and islets little known,
towards the Island Sound and Canal Mauvais.

I wondered if Captain Nemo, foolishly imprudent, would steer his
vessel into that pass where Dumont d'Urville's two corvettes touched;
when, swerving again, and cutting straight through to the west,
he steered for the Island of Gilboa.

It was then three in the afternoon.  The tide began to recede,
being quite full.  The Nautilus approached the island, that I
still saw, with its remarkable border of screw-pines. He stood off
it at about two miles distant.  Suddenly a shock overthrew me.
The Nautilus just touched a rock, and stayed immovable,
laying lightly to port side.

When I rose, I perceived Captain Nemo and his lieutenant on the platform.
They were examining the situation of the vessel, and exchanging words in
their incomprehensible dialect.

She was situated thus:  Two miles, on the starboard side,
appeared Gilboa, stretching from north to west like an immense arm.
Towards the south and east some coral showed itself, left by the ebb.
We had run aground, and in one of those seas where the tides
are middling--a sorry matter for the floating of the Nautilus.
However, the vessel had not suffered, for her keel was solidly joined.
But, if she could neither glide off nor move, she ran the risk
of being for ever fastened to these rocks, and then Captain Nemo's
submarine vessel would be done for.

I was reflecting thus, when the Captain, cool and calm,
always master of himself, approached me.

"An accident?"  I asked.

"No; an incident."

"But an incident that will oblige you perhaps to become an inhabitant
of this land from which you flee?"

Captain Nemo looked at me curiously, and made a negative gesture, as much
as to say that nothing would force him to set foot on terra firma again.
Then he said:

"Besides, M. Aronnax, the Nautilus is not lost; it will
carry you yet into the midst of the marvels of the ocean.
Our voyage is only begun, and I do not wish to be deprived so soon
of the honour of your company."

"However, Captain Nemo," I replied, without noticing the ironical
turn of his phrase, "the Nautilus ran aground in open sea.
Now the tides are not strong in the Pacific; and, if you cannot
lighten the Nautilus, I do not see how it will be reinflated."

"The tides are not strong in the Pacific:  you are right there,
Professor; but in Torres Straits one finds still a difference
of a yard and a half between the level of high and low seas.
To-day is 4th January, and in five days the moon will be full.
Now, I shall be very much astonished if that satellite does
not raise these masses of water sufficiently, and render me
a service that I should be indebted to her for."

Having said this, Captain Nemo, followed by his lieutenant,
redescended to the interior of the Nautilus.  As to the vessel,
it moved not, and was immovable, as if the coralline polypi had
already walled it up with their in destructible cement.

"Well, sir?" said Ned Land, who came up to me after the departure
of the Captain.

"Well, friend Ned, we will wait patiently for the tide on the 9th instant;
for it appears that the moon will have the goodness to put it off again."

"Really?"

"Really."

"And this Captain is not going to cast anchor at all since the tide
will suffice?" said Conseil, simply.

The Canadian looked at Conseil, then shrugged his shoulders.

"Sir, you may believe me when I tell you that this piece of iron will navigate
neither on nor under the sea again; it is only fit to be sold for its weight.
I think, therefore, that the time has come to part company with Captain Nemo."

"Friend Ned, I do not despair of this stout Nautilus, as you do;
and in four days we shall know what to hold to on the Pacific tides.
Besides, flight might be possible if we were in sight of the English
or Provencal coast; but on the Papuan shores, it is another thing;
and it will be time enough to come to that extremity if the Nautilus
does not recover itself again, which I look upon as a grave event."

"But do they know, at least, how to act circumspectly?  There is an island;
on that island there are trees; under those trees, terrestrial animals,
bearers of cutlets and roast beef, to which I would willingly give a trial."

"In this, friend Ned is right," said Conseil, "and I agree with him.
Could not master obtain permission from his friend Captain Nemo to put us
on land, if only so as not to lose the habit of treading on the solid parts
of our planet?"

"I can ask him, but he will refuse."

"Will master risk it?" asked Conseil, "and we shall know how to rely
upon the Captain's amiability."

To my great surprise, Captain Nemo gave me the permission I asked for,
and he gave it very agreeably, without even exacting from me a promise
to return to the vessel; but flight across New Guinea might be
very perilous, and I should not have counselled Ned Land to attempt it.
Better to be a prisoner on board the Nautilus than to fall into the hands
of the natives.

At eight o'clock, armed with guns and hatchets, we got off the Nautilus.
The sea was pretty calm; a slight breeze blew on land.
Conseil and I rowing, we sped along quickly, and Ned steered
in the straight passage that the breakers left between them.
The boat was well handled, and moved rapidly.

Ned Land could not restrain his joy.  He was like a prisoner that had escaped
from prison, and knew not that it was necessary to re-enter it.

"Meat!  We are going to eat some meat; and what meat!" he replied.
"Real game! no, bread, indeed."

"I do not say that fish is not good; we must not abuse it;
but a piece of fresh venison, grilled on live coals,
will agreeably vary our ordinary course."

"Glutton!" said Conseil, "he makes my mouth water."

"It remains to be seen," I said, "if these forests are full of game,
and if the game is not such as will hunt the hunter himself."

"Well said, M. Aronnax," replied the Canadian, whose teeth seemed
sharpened like the edge of a hatchet; "but I will eat tiger--
loin of tiger--if there is no other quadruped on this island."

"Friend Ned is uneasy about it," said Conseil.

"Whatever it may be," continued Ned Land, "every animal with four
paws without feathers, or with two paws without feathers,
will be saluted by my first shot."

"Very well!  Master Land's imprudences are beginning."

"Never fear, M. Aronnax," replied the Canadian; "I do not want
twenty-five minutes to offer you a dish, of my sort."

At half-past eight the Nautilus boat ran softly aground
on a heavy sand, after having happily passed the coral reef
that surrounds the Island of Gilboa.



CHAPTER XX

A FEW DAYS ON LAND

I was much impressed on touching land.  Ned Land tried
the soil with his feet, as if to take possession of it.
However, it was only two months before that we had become,
according to Captain Nemo, "passengers on board the Nautilus,"
but, in reality, prisoners of its commander.

In a few minutes we were within musket-shot of the coast.
The whole horizon was hidden behind a beautiful curtain of forests.
Enormous trees, the trunks of which attained a height of 200 feet,
were tied to each other by garlands of bindweed, real natural
hammocks, which a light breeze rocked.  They were mimosas,
figs, hibisci, and palm trees, mingled together in profusion;
and under the shelter of their verdant vault grew orchids,
leguminous plants, and ferns.

But, without noticing all these beautiful specimens of Papuan flora,
the Canadian abandoned the agreeable for the useful.
He discovered a coco-tree, beat down some of the fruit, broke them,
and we drunk the milk and ate the nut with a satisfaction that
protested against the ordinary food on the Nautilus.

"Excellent!" said Ned Land.

"Exquisite!" replied Conseil.

"And I do not think," said the Canadian, "that he would object
to our introducing a cargo of coco-nuts on board."

"I do not think he would, but he would not taste them."

"So much the worse for him," said Conseil.

"And so much the better for us," replied Ned Land.
"There will be more for us."

"One word only, Master Land," I said to the harpooner, who was
beginning to ravage another coco-nut tree.  "Coco-nuts are good things,
but before filling the canoe with them it would be wise to reconnoitre
and see if the island does not produce some substance not less useful.
Fresh vegetables would be welcome on board the Nautilus."

"Master is right," replied Conseil; "and I propose to reserve three places
in our vessel, one for fruits, the other for vegetables, and the third
for the venison, of which I have not yet seen the smallest specimen."

"Conseil, we must not despair," said the Canadian.

"Let us continue," I returned, "and lie in wait.  Although the island
seems uninhabited, it might still contain some individuals that would
be less hard than we on the nature of game."

"Ho! ho!" said Ned Land, moving his jaws significantly.

"Well, Ned!" said Conseil.

"My word!" returned the Canadian, "I begin to understand
the charms of anthropophagy."

"Ned!  Ned! what are you saying?  You, a man-eater? I should
not feel safe with you, especially as I share your cabin.
I might perhaps wake one day to find myself half devoured."

"Friend Conseil, I like you much, but not enough to eat you unnecessarily."

"I would not trust you," replied Conseil.  "But enough.
We must absolutely bring down some game to satisfy this cannibal,
or else one of these fine mornings, master will find only pieces
of his servant to serve him."

While we were talking thus, we were penetrating the sombre arches
of the forest, and for two hours we surveyed it in all directions.

Chance rewarded our search for eatable vegetables,
and one of the most useful products of the tropical zones
furnished us with precious food that we missed on board.
I would speak of the bread-fruit tree, very abundant in the island
of Gilboa; and I remarked chiefly the variety destitute of seeds,
which bears in Malaya the name of "rima."

Ned Land knew these fruits well.  He had already eaten many during his
numerous voyages, and he knew how to prepare the eatable substance.
Moreover, the sight of them excited him, and he could contain
himself no longer.

"Master," he said, "I shall die if I do not taste a little
of this bread-fruit pie."

"Taste it, friend Ned--taste it as you want.  We are here
to make experiments--make them."

"It won't take long," said the Canadian.

And, provided with a lentil, he lighted a fire of dead wood that
crackled joyously.  During this time, Conseil and I chose the best
fruits of the bread-fruit. Some had not then attained a sufficient
degree of maturity; and their thick skin covered a white but rather
fibrous pulp.  Others, the greater number yellow and gelatinous,
waited only to be picked.

These fruits enclosed no kernel.  Conseil brought a dozen to Ned Land,
who placed them on a coal fire, after having cut them in thick slices,
and while doing this repeating:

"You will see, master, how good this bread is.
More so when one has been deprived of it so long.
It is not even bread," added he, "but a delicate pastry.
You have eaten none, master?"

"No, Ned."

"Very well, prepare yourself for a juicy thing.  If you do not come for more,
I am no longer the king of harpooners."

After some minutes, the part of the fruits that was exposed to the fire
was completely roasted.  The interior looked like a white pasty,
a sort of soft crumb, the flavour of which was like that of an artichoke.

It must be confessed this bread was excellent, and I ate of it
with great relish.

"What time is it now?" asked the Canadian.

"Two o'clock at least," replied Conseil.

"How time flies on firm ground!" sighed Ned Land.

"Let us be off," replied Conseil.

We returned through the forest, and completed our collection by a raid
upon the cabbage-palms, that we gathered from the tops of the trees,
little beans that I recognised as the "abrou" of the Malays, and yams
of a superior quality.

We were loaded when we reached the boat.  But Ned Land did not
find his provisions sufficient.  Fate, however, favoured us.
Just as we were pushing off, he perceived several trees,
from twenty-five to thirty feet high, a species of palm-tree.

At last, at five o'clock in the evening, loaded with our riches,
we quitted the shore, and half an hour after we hailed the Nautilus.
No one appeared on our arrival.  The enormous iron-plated cylinder
seemed deserted.  The provisions embarked, I descended to my chamber,
and after supper slept soundly.

The next day, 6th January, nothing new on board.
Not a sound inside, not a sign of life.  The boat rested
along the edge, in the same place in which we had left it.
We resolved to return to the island.  Ned Land hoped to be
more fortunate than on the day before with regard to the hunt,
and wished to visit another part of the forest.

At dawn we set off.  The boat, carried on by the waves that flowed to shore,
reached the island in a few minutes.

We landed, and, thinking that it was better to give in to the Canadian,
we followed Ned Land, whose long limbs threatened to distance us.
He wound up the coast towards the west:  then, fording some torrents,
he gained the high plain that was bordered with admirable forests.
Some kingfishers were rambling along the water-courses, but they would
not let themselves be approached.  Their circumspection proved to me
that these birds knew what to expect from bipeds of our species, and I
concluded that, if the island was not inhabited, at least human beings
occasionally frequented it.

After crossing a rather large prairie, we arrived at the skirts of a little
wood that was enlivened by the songs and flight of a large number of birds.

"There are only birds," said Conseil.

"But they are eatable," replied the harpooner.

"I do not agree with you, friend Ned, for I see only parrots there."

"Friend Conseil," said Ned, gravely, "the parrot is like pheasant
to those who have nothing else."

"And," I added, "this bird, suitably prepared, is worth knife and fork."

Indeed, under the thick foliage of this wood, a world of parrots
were flying from branch to branch, only needing a careful
education to speak the human language.  For the moment, they were
chattering with parrots of all colours, and grave cockatoos,
who seemed to meditate upon some philosophical problem,
whilst brilliant red lories passed like a piece of bunting carried
away by the breeze, papuans, with the finest azure colours,
and in all a variety of winged things most charming to behold,
but few eatable.

However, a bird peculiar to these lands, and which has never passed
the limits of the Arrow and Papuan islands, was wanting in this collection.
But fortune reserved it for me before long.

After passing through a moderately thick copse, we found a plain
obstructed with bushes.  I saw then those magnificent birds,
the disposition of whose long feathers obliges them to fly against
the wind.  Their undulating flight, graceful aerial curves,
and the shading of their colours, attracted and charmed one's looks.
I had no trouble in recognising them.

"Birds of paradise!"  I exclaimed.

The Malays, who carry on a great trade in these birds with the Chinese,
have several means that we could not employ for taking them.
Sometimes they put snares on the top of high trees that the birds
of paradise prefer to frequent.  Sometimes they catch them with a
viscous birdlime that paralyses their movements.  They even go so far
as to poison the fountains that the birds generally drink from.
But we were obliged to fire at them during flight, which gave us few
chances to bring them down; and, indeed, we vainly exhausted one
half our ammunition.

About eleven o'clock in the morning, the first range of mountains that form
the centre of the island was traversed, and we had killed nothing.
Hunger drove us on.  The hunters had relied on the products of the chase,
and they were wrong.  Happily Conseil, to his great surprise,
made a double shot and secured breakfast.  He brought down a white pigeon
and a wood-pigeon, which, cleverly plucked and suspended from a skewer,
was roasted before a red fire of dead wood.  While these interesting
birds were cooking, Ned prepared the fruit of the bread-tree. Then
the wood-pigeons were devoured to the bones, and declared excellent.
The nutmeg, with which they are in the habit of stuffing their crops,
flavours their flesh and renders it delicious eating.

"Now, Ned, what do you miss now?"

"Some four-footed game, M. Aronnax.  All these pigeons are only
side-dishes and trifles; and until I have killed an animal
with cutlets I shall not be content."

"Nor I, Ned, if I do not catch a bird of paradise."

"Let us continue hunting," replied Conseil.  "Let us go towards the sea.
We have arrived at the first declivities of the mountains, and I think we had
better regain the region of forests."

That was sensible advice, and was followed out.
After walking for one hour we had attained a forest of
sago-trees. Some inoffensive serpents glided away from us.
The birds of paradise fled at our approach, and truly I despaired
of getting near one when Conseil, who was walking in front,
suddenly bent down, uttered a triumphal cry, and came back to me
bringing a magnificent specimen.

"Ah! bravo, Conseil!"

"Master is very good."

"No, my boy; you have made an excellent stroke.
Take one of these living birds, and carry it in your hand."

"If master will examine it, he will see that I have not deserved great merit."

"Why, Conseil?"

"Because this bird is as drunk as a quail."

"Drunk!"

"Yes, sir; drunk with the nutmegs that it devoured under
the nutmeg-tree, under which I found it.  See, friend Ned,
see the monstrous effects of intemperance!"

"By Jove!" exclaimed the Canadian, "because I have drunk gin for two months,
you must needs reproach me!"

However, I examined the curious bird.  Conseil was right.
The bird, drunk with the juice, was quite powerless.  It could
not fly; it could hardly walk.

This bird belonged to the most beautiful of the eight species
that are found in Papua and in the neighbouring islands.
It was the "large emerald bird, the most rare kind."
It measured three feet in length.  Its head was comparatively small,
its eyes placed near the opening of the beak, and also small.
But the shades of colour were beautiful, having a yellow beak,
brown feet and claws, nut-coloured wings with purple tips,
pale yellow at the back of the neck and head, and emerald
colour at the throat, chestnut on the breast and belly.
Two horned, downy nets rose from below the tail, that prolonged
the long light feathers of admirable fineness, and they
completed the whole of this marvellous bird, that the natives
have poetically named the "bird of the sun."

But if my wishes were satisfied by the possession of the bird
of paradise, the Canadian's were not yet.  Happily, about two
o'clock, Ned Land brought down a magnificent hog; from the brood
of those the natives call "bari-outang." The animal came in time
for us to procure real quadruped meat, and he was well received.
Ned Land was very proud of his shot.  The hog, hit by the electric ball,
fell stone dead.  The Canadian skinned and cleaned it properly,
after having taken half a dozen cutlets, destined to furnish us
with a grilled repast in the evening.  Then the hunt was resumed,
which was still more marked by Ned and Conseil's exploits.

Indeed, the two friends, beating the bushes, roused a herd
of kangaroos that fled and bounded along on their elastic paws.
But these animals did not take to flight so rapidly but what
the electric capsule could stop their course.

"Ah, Professor!" cried Ned Land, who was carried away by the
delights of the chase, "what excellent game, and stewed, too!
What a supply for the Nautilus!  Two! three! five down!
And to think that we shall eat that flesh, and that the idiots on
board shall not have a crumb!"

I think that, in the excess of his joy, the Canadian,
if he had not talked so much, would have killed them all.
But he contented himself with a single dozen of these
interesting marsupians.  These animals were small.
They were a species of those "kangaroo rabbits" that live
habitually in the hollows of trees, and whose speed is extreme;
but they are moderately fat, and furnish, at least, estimable food.
We were very satisfied with the results of the hunt.
Happy Ned proposed to return to this enchanting island the next day,
for he wished to depopulate it of all the eatable quadrupeds.
But he had reckoned without his host.

At six o'clock in the evening we had regained the shore;
our boat was moored to the usual place.  The Nautilus, like a
long rock, emerged from the waves two miles from the beach.
Ned Land, without waiting, occupied himself about the important
dinner business.  He understood all about cooking well.
The "bari-outang," grilled on the coals, soon scented the air with
a delicious odour.

Indeed, the dinner was excellent.  Two wood-pigeons
completed this extraordinary menu.  The sago pasty,
the artocarpus bread, some mangoes, half a dozen pineapples,
and the liquor fermented from some coco-nuts, overjoyed us.
I even think that my worthy companions' ideas had not all
the plainness desirable.

"Suppose we do not return to the Nautilus this evening?" said Conseil.

"Suppose we never return?" added Ned Land.

Just then a stone fell at our feet and cut short the harpooner's proposition.



CHAPTER XXI

CAPTAIN NEMO'S THUNDERBOLT

We looked at the edge of the forest without rising,
my hand stopping in the action of putting it to my mouth,
Ned Land's completing its office.

"Stones do not fall from the sky," remarked Conseil, "or they
would merit the name aerolites."

A second stone, carefully aimed, that made a savoury pigeon's leg
fall from Conseil's hand, gave still more weight to his observation.
We all three arose, shouldered our guns, and were ready to reply
to any attack.

"Are they apes?" cried Ned Land.

"Very nearly--they are savages."

"To the boat!"  I said, hurrying to the sea.

It was indeed necessary to beat a retreat, for about twenty natives
armed with bows and slings appeared on the skirts of a copse that masked
the horizon to the right, hardly a hundred steps from us.

Our boat was moored about sixty feet from us.  The savages
approached us, not running, but making hostile demonstrations.
Stones and arrows fell thickly.

Ned Land had not wished to leave his provisions; and, in spite of his
imminent danger, his pig on one side and kangaroos on the other,
he went tolerably fast.  In two minutes we were on the shore.
To load the boat with provisions and arms, to push it out
to sea, and ship the oars, was the work of an instant.
We had not gone two cable-lengths, when a hundred savages,
howling and gesticulating, entered the water up to their waists.
I watched to see if their apparition would attract some men from
the Nautilus on to the platform.  But no.  The enormous machine,
lying off, was absolutely deserted.

Twenty minutes later we were on board.  The panels were open.
After making the boat fast, we entered into the interior
of the Nautilus.

I descended to the drawing-room, from whence I heard some chords.
Captain Nemo was there, bending over his organ, and plunged in
a musical ecstasy.

"Captain!"

He did not hear me.

"Captain!"  I said, touching his hand.

He shuddered, and, turning round, said, "Ah! it is you, Professor?
Well, have you had a good hunt, have you botanised successfully?"

"Yes Captain; but we have unfortunately brought a troop of bipeds,
whose vicinity troubles me."

"What bipeds?"

"Savages."

"Savages!" he echoed, ironically.  "So you are astonished, Professor,
at having set foot on a strange land and finding savages?
Savages! where are there not any?  Besides, are they worse than others,
these whom you call savages?"

"But Captain----"

"How many have you counted?"

"A hundred at least."

"M. Aronnax," replied Captain Nemo, placing his fingers on the organ stops,
"when all the natives of Papua are assembled on this shore, the Nautilus
will have nothing to fear from their attacks."

The Captain's fingers were then running over the keys of
the instrument, and I remarked that he touched only the black keys,
which gave his melodies an essentially Scotch character.
Soon he had forgotten my presence, and had plunged into a reverie
that I did not disturb.  I went up again on to the platform:
night had already fallen; for, in this low latitude,
the sun sets rapidly and without twilight.  I could only see
the island indistinctly; but the numerous fires, lighted on
the beach, showed that the natives did not think of leaving it.
I was alone for several hours, sometimes thinking of the natives--
but without any dread of them, for the imperturbable
confidence of the Captain was catching--sometimes forgetting
them to admire the splendours of the night in the tropics.
My remembrances went to France in the train of those zodiacal
stars that would shine in some hours' time.  The moon shone in
the midst of the constellations of the zenith.

The night slipped away without any mischance, the islanders
frightened no doubt at the sight of a monster aground in the bay.
The panels were open, and would have offered an easy access
to the interior of the Nautilus.

At six o'clock in the morning of the 8th January I went up
on to the platform.  The dawn was breaking.  The island soon
showed itself through the dissipating fogs, first the shore,
then the summits.

The natives were there, more numerous than on the day before--
five or six hundred perhaps--some of them, profiting by the low water,
had come on to the coral, at less than two cable-lengths from the Nautilus.
I distinguished them easily; they were true Papuans, with athletic figures,
men of good race, large high foreheads, large, but not broad and flat,
and white teeth.  Their woolly hair, with a reddish tinge, showed off on their
black shining bodies like those of the Nubians.  From the lobes of their ears,
cut and distended, hung chaplets of bones.  Most of these savages were naked.
Amongst them, I remarked some women, dressed from the hips to knees
in quite a crinoline of herbs, that sustained a vegetable waistband.
Some chiefs had ornamented their necks with a crescent and collars
of glass beads, red and white; nearly all were armed with bows, arrows,
and shields and carried on their shoulders a sort of net containing
those round stones which they cast from their slings with great skill.
One of these chiefs, rather near to the Nautilus, examined it attentively.
He was, perhaps, a "mado" of high rank, for he was draped in a mat of
banana-leaves, notched round the edges, and set off with brilliant colours.

I could easily have knocked down this native, who was within a short length;
but I thought that it was better to wait for real hostile demonstrations.
Between Europeans and savages, it is proper for the Europeans to parry
sharply, not to attack.

During low water the natives roamed about near the Nautilus,
but were not troublesome; I heard them frequently repeat the word
"Assai," and by their gestures I understood that they invited me
to go on land, an invitation that I declined.

So that, on that day, the boat did not push off, to the great displeasure
of Master Land, who could not complete his provisions.

This adroit Canadian employed his time in preparing the viands
and meat that he had brought off the island.  As for the savages,
they returned to the shore about eleven o'clock in the morning,
as soon as the coral tops began to disappear under the rising tide;
but I saw their numbers had increased considerably on the shore.
Probably they came from the neighbouring islands, or very likely
from Papua.  However, I had not seen a single native canoe.
Having nothing better to do, I thought of dragging these beautiful
limpid waters, under which I saw a profusion of shells, zoophytes,
and marine plants.  Moreover, it was the last day that the Nautilus
would pass in these parts, if it float in open sea the next day,
according to Captain Nemo's promise.

I therefore called Conseil, who brought me a little light drag,
very like those for the oyster fishery.  Now to work!
For two hours we fished unceasingly, but without bringing up
any rarities.  The drag was filled with midas-ears, harps, melames,
and particularly the most beautiful hammers I have ever seen.
We also brought up some sea-slugs, pearl-oysters, and a dozen little
turtles that were reserved for the pantry on board.

But just when I expected it least, I put my hand on a wonder,
I might say a natural deformity, very rarely met with.
Conseil was just dragging, and his net came up filled with
divers ordinary shells, when, all at once, he saw me plunge
my arm quickly into the net, to draw out a shell, and heard me
utter a cry.

"What is the matter, sir?" he asked in surprise.
"Has master been bitten?"

"No, my boy; but I would willingly have given a finger for my discovery."

"What discovery?"

"This shell," I said, holding up the object of my triumph.

"It is simply an olive porphyry, genus olive, order of the 
pectinibranchidae, class of gasteropods, sub-class mollusca."

"Yes, Conseil; but, instead of being rolled from right to left,
this olive turns from left to right."

"Is it possible?"

"Yes, my boy; it is a left shell."

Shells are all right-handed, with rare exceptions; and, when by chance
their spiral is left, amateurs are ready to pay their weight in gold.

Conseil and I were absorbed in the contemplation of our treasure,
and I was promising myself to enrich the museum with it,
when a stone unfortunately thrown by a native struck against,
and broke, the precious object in Conseil's hand.
I uttered a cry of despair!  Conseil took up his gun, and aimed
at a savage who was poising his sling at ten yards from him.
I would have stopped him, but his blow took effect and broke
the bracelet of amulets which encircled the arm of the savage.

"Conseil!" cried I. "Conseil!"

"Well, sir! do you not see that the cannibal has commenced the attack?"

"A shell is not worth the life of a man," said I.

"Ah! the scoundrel!" cried Conseil; "I would rather he had
broken my shoulder!"

Conseil was in earnest, but I was not of his opinion.  However, the situation
had changed some minutes before, and we had not perceived.  A score of canoes
surrounded the Nautilus.  These canoes, scooped out of the trunk of a tree,
long, narrow, well adapted for speed, were balanced by means of a long
bamboo pole, which floated on the water.  They were managed by skilful,
half-naked paddlers, and I watched their advance with some uneasiness.
It was evident that these Papuans had already had dealings with the Europeans
and knew their ships.  But this long iron cylinder anchored in the bay,
without masts or chimneys, what could they think of it?  Nothing good, for at
first they kept at a respectful distance.  However, seeing it motionless,
by degrees they took courage, and sought to familiarise themselves with it.
Now this familiarity was precisely what it was necessary to avoid.
Our arms, which were noiseless, could only produce a moderate effect
on the savages, who have little respect for aught but blustering things.
The thunderbolt without the reverberations of thunder would frighten man
but little, though the danger lies in the lightning, not in the noise.

At this moment the canoes approached the Nautilus, and a shower
of arrows alighted on her.

I went down to the saloon, but found no one there.  I ventured
to knock at the door that opened into the Captain's room.
"Come in," was the answer.

I entered, and found Captain Nemo deep in algebraical calculations
of _x_ and other quantities.

"I am disturbing you," said I, for courtesy's sake.

"That is true, M. Aronnax," replied the Captain; "but I think
you have serious reasons for wishing to see me?"

"Very grave ones; the natives are surrounding us in their canoes,
and in a few minutes we shall certainly be attacked by many
hundreds of savages."

"Ah!" said Captain Nemo quietly, "they are come with their canoes?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, sir, we must close the hatches."

"Exactly, and I came to say to you----"

"Nothing can be more simple," said Captain Nemo.  And, pressing an
electric button, he transmitted an order to the ship's crew.

"It is all done, sir," said he, after some moments.
"The pinnace is ready, and the hatches are closed.
You do not fear, I imagine, that these gentlemen could stave in
walls on which the balls of your frigate have had no effect?"

"No, Captain; but a danger still exists."

"What is that, sir?"

"It is that to-morrow, at about this hour, we must open the hatches
to renew the air of the Nautilus.  Now, if, at this moment,
the Papuans should occupy the platform, I do not see how you
could prevent them from entering."

"Then, sir, you suppose that they will board us?"

"I am certain of it."

"Well, sir, let them come.  I see no reason for hindering them.
After all, these Papuans are poor creatures, and I am unwilling
that my visit to the island should cost the life of a single one
of these wretches."

Upon that I was going away; But Captain Nemo detained me,
and asked me to sit down by him.  He questioned me with interest
about our excursions on shore, and our hunting; and seemed not
to understand the craving for meat that possessed the Canadian.
Then the conversation turned on various subjects, and, without being
more communicative, Captain Nemo showed himself more amiable.

Amongst other things, we happened to speak of the situation
of the Nautilus, run aground in exactly the same spot
in this strait where Dumont d'Urville was nearly lost.
Apropos of this:

"This D'Urville was one of your great sailors," said the Captain
to me, "one of your most intelligent navigators.  He is the Captain
Cook of you Frenchmen.  Unfortunate man of science, after having
braved the icebergs of the South Pole, the coral reefs of Oceania,
the cannibals of the Pacific, to perish miserably in a railway train!
If this energetic man could have reflected during the last moments
of his life, what must have been uppermost in his last thoughts,
do you suppose?"

So speaking, Captain Nemo seemed moved, and his emotion
gave me a better opinion of him.  Then, chart in hand,
we reviewed the travels of the French navigator, his voyages
of circumnavigation, his double detention at the South Pole,
which led to the discovery of Adelaide and Louis Philippe,
and fixing the hydrographical bearings of the principal
islands of Oceania.

"That which your D'Urville has done on the surface of the seas," said Captain
Nemo, "that have I done under them, and more easily, more completely than he.
The Astrolabe and the Zelee, incessantly tossed about by the hurricane,
could not be worth the Nautilus, quiet repository of labour that she is,
truly motionless in the midst of the waters.

"To-morrow," added the Captain, rising, "to-morrow, at twenty
minutes to three p.m., the Nautilus shall float, and leave
the Strait of Torres uninjured."

Having curtly pronounced these words, Captain Nemo bowed slightly.
This was to dismiss me, and I went back to my room.

There I found Conseil, who wished to know the result of my interview
with the Captain.

"My boy," said I, "when I feigned to believe that his Nautilus
was threatened by the natives of Papua, the Captain answered
me very sarcastically.  I have but one thing to say to you:
Have confidence in him, and go to sleep in peace."

"Have you no need of my services, sir?"

"No, my friend.  What is Ned Land doing?"

"If you will excuse me, sir," answered Conseil, "friend Ned is busy
making a kangaroo-pie which will be a marvel."

I remained alone and went to bed, but slept indifferently.  I heard the noise
of the savages, who stamped on the platform, uttering deafening cries.
The night passed thus, without disturbing the ordinary repose of the crew.
The presence of these cannibals affected them no more than the soldiers of a
masked battery care for the ants that crawl over its front.

At six in the morning I rose.  The hatches had not been opened.
The inner air was not renewed, but the reservoirs, filled ready
for any emergency, were now resorted to, and discharged several
cubic feet of oxygen into the exhausted atmosphere of the Nautilus.

I worked in my room till noon, without having seen Captain Nemo,
even for an instant.  On board no preparations for departure were visible.

I waited still some time, then went into the large saloon.
The clock marked half-past two.  In ten minutes it would be
high-tide: and, if Captain Nemo had not made a rash promise,
the Nautilus would be immediately detached.  If not, many months
would pass ere she could leave her bed of coral.

However, some warning vibrations began to be felt in the vessel.
I heard the keel grating against the rough calcareous bottom of
the coral reef.

At five-and-twenty minutes to three, Captain Nemo appeared in the saloon.

"We are going to start," said he.

"Ah!" replied I.

"I have given the order to open the hatches."

"And the Papuans?"

"The Papuans?" answered Captain Nemo, slightly shrugging his shoulders.

"Will they not come inside the Nautilus?"

"How?"

"Only by leaping over the hatches you have opened."

"M. Aronnax," quietly answered Captain Nemo, "they will not enter
the hatches of the Nautilus in that way, even if they were open."

I looked at the Captain.

"You do not understand?" said he.

"Hardly."

"Well, come and you will see."

I directed my steps towards the central staircase.  There Ned
Land and Conseil were slyly watching some of the ship's crew,
who were opening the hatches, while cries of rage and fearful
vociferations resounded outside.

The port lids were pulled down outside.  Twenty horrible faces appeared.
But the first native who placed his hand on the stair-rail, struck from behind
by some invisible force, I know not what, fled, uttering the most fearful
cries and making the wildest contortions.

Ten of his companions followed him.  They met with the same fate.

Conseil was in ecstasy.  Ned Land, carried away by his violent instincts,
rushed on to the staircase.  But the moment he seized the rail with
both hands, he, in his turn, was overthrown.

"I am struck by a thunderbolt," cried he, with an oath.

This explained all.  It was no rail; but a metallic cable
charged with electricity from the deck communicating with
the platform.  Whoever touched it felt a powerful shock--
and this shock would have been mortal if Captain Nemo had
discharged into the conductor the whole force of the current.
It might truly be said that between his assailants and himself
he had stretched a network of electricity which none could
pass with impunity.

Meanwhile, the exasperated Papuans had beaten a retreat paralysed
with terror.  As for us, half laughing, we consoled and rubbed
the unfortunate Ned Land, who swore like one possessed.

But at this moment the Nautilus, raised by the last waves of the tide,
quitted her coral bed exactly at the fortieth minute fixed by
the Captain.  Her screw swept the waters slowly and majestically.
Her speed increased gradually, and, sailing on the surface of the ocean,
she quitted safe and sound the dangerous passes of the Straits of Torres.



CHAPTER XXII

"AEGRI SOMNIA"

The following day 10th January, the Nautilus continued her
course between two seas, but with such remarkable speed that I
could not estimate it at less than thirty-five miles an hour.
The rapidity of her screw was such that I could neither follow
nor count its revolutions.  When I reflected that this marvellous
electric agent, after having afforded motion, heat, and light
to the Nautilus, still protected her from outward attack,
and transformed her into an ark of safety which no profane
hand might touch without being thunderstricken, my admiration
was unbounded, and from the structure it extended to the engineer
who had called it into existence.

Our course was directed to the west, and on the 11th of January we doubled
Cape Wessel, situation in 135@ long. and 10@ S. lat., which forms
the east point of the Gulf of Carpentaria.  The reefs were still numerous,
but more equalised, and marked on the chart with extreme precision.
The Nautilus easily avoided the breakers of Money to port and the Victoria
reefs to starboard, placed at 130@ long.  and on the 10th parallel,
which we strictly followed.

On the 13th of January, Captain Nemo arrived in the Sea of Timor,
and recognised the island of that name in 122@ long.

From this point the direction of the Nautilus inclined towards
the south-west. Her head was set for the Indian Ocean.
Where would the fancy of Captain Nemo carry us next?
Would he return to the coast of Asia or would he approach
again the shores of Europe?  Improbable conjectures both,
to a man who fled from inhabited continents.  Then would
he descend to the south?  Was he going to double the Cape
of Good Hope, then Cape Horn, and finally go as far as the
Antarctic pole?  Would he come back at last to the Pacific,
where his Nautilus could sail free and independently?
Time would show.

After having skirted the sands of Cartier, of Hibernia, Seringapatam,
and Scott, last efforts of the solid against the liquid element,
on the 14th of January we lost sight of land altogether.
The speed of the Nautilus was considerably abated, and with
irregular course she sometimes swam in the bosom of the waters,
sometimes floated on their surface.

During this period of the voyage, Captain Nemo made some interesting
experiments on the varied temperature of the sea, in different beds.
Under ordinary conditions these observations are made by means of
rather complicated instruments, and with somewhat doubtful results,
by means of thermometrical sounding-leads, the glasses often breaking
under the pressure of the water, or an apparatus grounded on
the variations of the resistance of metals to the electric currents.
Results so obtained could not be correctly calculated.  On the contrary,
Captain Nemo went himself to test the temperature in the depths of the sea,
and his thermometer, placed in communication with the different sheets
of water, gave him the required degree immediately and accurately.

It was thus that, either by overloading her reservoirs or by descending
obliquely by means of her inclined planes, the Nautilus successively attained
the depth of three, four, five, seven, nine, and ten thousand yards,
and the definite result of this experience was that the sea preserved
an average temperature of four degrees and a half at a depth of five
thousand fathoms under all latitudes.

On the 16th of January, the Nautilus seemed becalmed
only a few yards beneath the surface of the waves.
Her electric apparatus remained inactive and her motionless
screw left her to drift at the mercy of the currents.
I supposed that the crew was occupied with interior repairs,
rendered necessary by the violence of the mechanical movements
of the machine.

My companions and I then witnessed a curious spectacle.
The hatches of the saloon were open, and, as the beacon light
of the Nautilus was not in action, a dim obscurity reigned
in the midst of the waters.  I observed the state of the sea,
under these conditions, and the largest fish appeared to me
no more than scarcely defined shadows, when the Nautilus
found herself suddenly transported into full light.
I thought at first that the beacon had been lighted,
and was casting its electric radiance into the liquid mass.
I was mistaken, and after a rapid survey perceived my error.

The Nautilus floated in the midst of a phosphorescent bed which,
in this obscurity, became quite dazzling.  It was produced
by myriads of luminous animalculae, whose brilliancy was
increased as they glided over the metallic hull of the vessel.
I was surprised by lightning in the midst of these luminous sheets,
as though they bad been rivulets of lead melted in an ardent
furnace or metallic masses brought to a white heat, so that,
by force of contrast, certain portions of light appeared to cast
a shade in the midst of the general ignition, from which all
shade seemed banished.  No; this was not the calm irradiation
of our ordinary lightning.  There was unusual life and vigour:
this was truly living light!

In reality, it was an infinite agglomeration of coloured infusoria,
of veritable globules of jelly, provided with a threadlike tentacle,
and of which as many as twenty-five thousand have been counted in less
than two cubic half-inches of water.

During several hours the Nautilus floated in these brilliant waves,
and our admiration increased as we watched the marine monsters
disporting themselves like salamanders.  I saw there in the midst
of this fire that burns not the swift and elegant porpoise
(the indefatigable clown of the ocean), and some swordfish
ten feet long, those prophetic heralds of the hurricane whose
formidable sword would now and then strike the glass of the saloon.
Then appeared the smaller fish, the balista, the leaping mackerel,
wolf-thorn-tails, and a hundred others which striped the luminous
atmosphere as they swam.  This dazzling spectacle was enchanting!
Perhaps some atmospheric condition increased the intensity of
this phenomenon.  Perhaps some storm agitated the surface of the waves.
But at this depth of some yards, the Nautilus was unmoved by its fury
and reposed peacefully in still water.

So we progressed, incessantly charmed by some new marvel.
The days passed rapidly away, and I took no account of them.
Ned, according to habit, tried to vary the diet on board.
Like snails, we were fixed to our shells, and I declare it is easy
to lead a snail's life.

Thus this life seemed easy and natural, and we thought no longer
of the life we led on land; but something happened to recall us
to the strangeness of our situation.

On the 18th of January, the Nautilus was in 105@ long.
and 15@ S. lat.  The weather was threatening, the sea rough
and rolling.  There was a strong east wind.  The barometer,
which had been going down for some days, foreboded a coming storm.
I went up on to the platform just as the second lieutenant
was taking the measure of the horary angles, and waited,
according to habit till the daily phrase was said.  But on this day
it was exchanged for another phrase not less incomprehensible.
Almost directly, I saw Captain Nemo appear with a glass, looking
towards the horizon.

For some minutes he was immovable, without taking his eye off
the point of observation.  Then he lowered his glass and exchanged
a few words with his lieutenant.  The latter seemed to be
a victim to some emotion that he tried in vain to repress.
Captain Nemo, having more command over himself, was cool.
He seemed, too, to be making some objections to which the lieutenant
replied by formal assurances.  At least I concluded so by the
difference of their tones and gestures.  For myself, I had looked
carefully in the direction indicated without seeing anything.
The sky and water were lost in the clear line of the horizon.

However, Captain Nemo walked from one end of the platform
to the other, without looking at me, perhaps without seeing me.
His step was firm, but less regular than usual.
He stopped sometimes, crossed his arms, and observed the sea.
What could he be looking for on that immense expanse?

The Nautilus was then some hundreds of miles from the nearest coast.

The lieutenant had taken up the glass and examined the horizon steadfastly,
going and coming, stamping his foot and showing more nervous agitation than
his superior officer.  Besides, this mystery must necessarily be solved,
and before long; for, upon an order from Captain Nemo, the engine,
increasing its propelling power, made the screw turn more rapidly.

Just then the lieutenant drew the Captain's attention again.
The latter stopped walking and directed his glass towards
the place indicated.  He looked long.  I felt very much puzzled,
and descended to the drawing-room, and took out an excellent
telescope that I generally used.  Then, leaning on the cage
of the watch-light that jutted out from the front of the platform,
set myself to look over all the line of the sky and sea.

But my eye was no sooner applied to the glass than it was quickly
snatched out of my hands.

I turned round.  Captain Nemo was before me, but I did not know him.
His face was transfigured.  His eyes flashed sullenly; his teeth were set;
his stiff body, clenched fists, and head shrunk between his shoulders,
betrayed the violent agitation that pervaded his whole frame.
He did not move.  My glass, fallen from his hands, had rolled at his feet.

Had I unwittingly provoked this fit of anger?  Did this incomprehensible
person imagine that I had discovered some forbidden secret?
No; I was not the object of this hatred, for he was not looking at me;
his eye was steadily fixed upon the impenetrable point of the horizon.
At last Captain Nemo recovered himself.  His agitation subsided.
He addressed some words in a foreign language to his lieutenant,
then turned to me.  "M. Aronnax," he said, in rather an imperious tone,
"I require you to keep one of the conditions that bind you to me."

"What is it, Captain?"

"You must be confined, with your companions, until I think fit
to release you."

"You are the master," I replied, looking steadily at him.
"But may I ask you one question?"

"None, sir."

There was no resisting this imperious command, it would have been useless.
I went down to the cabin occupied by Ned Land and Conseil, and told them
the Captain's determination.  You may judge how this communication was
received by the Canadian.

But there was not time for altercation.  Four of the crew waited
at the door, and conducted us to that cell where we had passed
our first night on board the Nautilus.

Ned Land would have remonstrated, but the door was shut upon him.

"Will master tell me what this means?" asked Conseil.

I told my companions what had passed.  They were as much astonished as I,
and equally at a loss how to account for it.

Meanwhile, I was absorbed in my own reflections, and could think
of nothing but the strange fear depicted in the Captain's countenance.
I was utterly at a loss to account for it, when my cogitations were
disturbed by these words from Ned Land:

"Hallo! breakfast is ready."

And indeed the table was laid.  Evidently Captain Nemo had given this order
at the same time that he had hastened the speed of the Nautilus.

"Will master permit me to make a recommendation?" asked Conseil.

"Yes, my boy."

"Well, it is that master breakfasts.  It is prudent, for we do not know
what may happen."

"You are right, Conseil."

"Unfortunately," said Ned Land, "they have only given us the ship's fare."

"Friend Ned," asked Conseil, "what would you have said if the breakfast
had been entirely forgotten?"

This argument cut short the harpooner's recriminations.

We sat down to table.  The meal was eaten in silence.

Just then the luminous globe that lighted the cell went out, and left us
in total darkness.  Ned Land was soon asleep, and what astonished me was
that Conseil went off into a heavy slumber.  I was thinking what could have
caused his irresistible drowsiness, when I felt my brain becoming stupefied.
In spite of my efforts to keep my eyes open, they would close.
A painful suspicion seized me.  Evidently soporific substances had been
mixed with the food we had just taken.  Imprisonment was not enough
to conceal Captain Nemo's projects from us, sleep was more necessary.
I then heard the panels shut.  The undulations of the sea, which caused
a slight rolling motion, ceased.  Had the Nautilus quitted the surface
of the ocean?  Had it gone back to the motionless bed of water?
I tried to resist sleep.  It was impossible.  My breathing grew weak.
I felt a mortal cold freeze my stiffened and half-paralysed limbs.
My eye lids, like leaden caps, fell over my eyes.  I could not raise them;
a morbid sleep, full of hallucinations, bereft me of my being.
Then the visions disappeared, and left me in complete insensibility.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE CORAL KINGDOM

The next day I woke with my head singularly clear.
To my great surprise, I was in my own room.  My companions,
no doubt, had been reinstated in their cabin, without having
perceived it any more than I. Of what had passed during the night
they were as ignorant as I was, and to penetrate this mystery I
only reckoned upon the chances of the future.

I then thought of quitting my room.  Was I free again or a prisoner?
Quite free.  I opened the door, went to the half-deck, went up
the central stairs.  The panels, shut the evening before, were open.
I went on to the platform.

Ned Land and Conseil waited there for me.  I questioned them;
they knew nothing.  Lost in a heavy sleep in which they had
been totally unconscious, they had been astonished at finding
themselves in their cabin.

As for the Nautilus, it seemed quiet and mysterious as ever.
It floated on the surface of the waves at a moderate pace.
Nothing seemed changed on board.

The second lieutenant then came on to the platform, and gave
the usual order below.

As for Captain Nemo, he did not appear.

Of the people on board, I only saw the impassive steward,
who served me with his usual dumb regularity.

About two o'clock, I was in the drawing-room, busied in arranging
my notes, when the Captain opened the door and appeared.  I bowed.
He made a slight inclination in return, without speaking.
I resumed my work, hoping that he would perhaps give me some
explanation of the events of the preceding night.  He made none.
I looked at him.  He seemed fatigued; his heavy eyes had not
been refreshed by sleep; his face looked very sorrowful.
He walked to and fro, sat down and got up again, took a
chance book, put it down, consulted his instruments without
taking his habitual notes, and seemed restless and uneasy.
At last, he came up to me, and said:

"Are you a doctor, M. Aronnax?"

I so little expected such a question that I stared some time
at him without answering.

"Are you a doctor?" he repeated.  "Several of your colleagues
have studied medicine."

"Well," said I, "I am a doctor and resident surgeon to the hospital.
I practised several years before entering the museum."

"Very well, sir."

My answer had evidently satisfied the Captain.  But, not knowing
what he would say next, I waited for other questions, reserving my
answers according to circumstances.

"M. Aronnax, will you consent to prescribe for one of my men?" he asked.

"Is he ill?"

"Yes."

"I am ready to follow you."

"Come, then."

I own my heart beat, I do not know why.  I saw certain connection
between the illness of one of the crew and the events of the day before;
and this mystery interested me at least as much as the sick man.

Captain Nemo conducted me to the poop of the Nautilus,
and took me into a cabin situated near the sailors' quarters.

There, on a bed, lay a man about forty years of age, with a resolute
expression of countenance, a true type of an Anglo-Saxon.

I leant over him.  He was not only ill, he was wounded.
His head, swathed in bandages covered with blood, lay on a pillow.
I undid the bandages, and the wounded man looked at me with his large
eyes and gave no sign of pain as I did it.  It was a horrible wound.
The skull, shattered by some deadly weapon, left the brain exposed,
which was much injured.  Clots of blood had formed in the bruised
and broken mass, in colour like the dregs of wine.

There was both contusion and suffusion of the brain.  His breathing
was slow, and some spasmodic movements of the muscles agitated his face.
I felt his pulse.  It was intermittent.  The extremities of the body
were growing cold already, and I saw death must inevitably ensue.
After dressing the unfortunate man's wounds, I readjusted the bandages
on his head, and turned to Captain Nemo.

"What caused this wound?"  I asked.

"What does it signify?" he replied, evasively.  "A shock has
broken one of the levers of the engine, which struck myself.
But your opinion as to his state?"

I hesitated before giving it.

"You may speak," said the Captain.  "This man does not understand French."

I gave a last look at the wounded man.

"He will be dead in two hours."

"Can nothing save him?"

"Nothing."

Captain Nemo's hand contracted, and some tears glistened in his eyes,
which I thought incapable of shedding any.

For some moments I still watched the dying man, whose life ebbed slowly.
His pallor increased under the electric light that was shed over
his death-bed. I looked at his intelligent forehead, furrowed with
premature wrinkles, produced probably by misfortune and sorrow.
I tried to learn the secret of his life from the last words that
escaped his lips.

"You can go now, M. Aronnax," said the Captain.

I left him in the dying man's cabin, and returned to my
room much affected by this scene.  During the whole day,
I was haunted by uncomfortable suspicions, and at night
I slept badly, and between my broken dreams I fancied I
heard distant sighs like the notes of a funeral psalm.
Were they the prayers of the dead, murmured in that language
that I could not understand?

The next morning I went on to the bridge.  Captain Nemo was there before me.
As soon as he perceived me he came to me.

"Professor, will it be convenient to you to make a submarine excursion to-day?"

"With my companions?"  I asked.

"If they like."

"We obey your orders, Captain."

"Will you be so good then as to put on your cork jackets?"

It was not a question of dead or dying.  I rejoined Ned Land
and Conseil, and told them of Captain Nemo's proposition.
Conseil hastened to accept it, and this time the Canadian seemed
quite willing to follow our example.

It was eight o'clock in the morning.  At half-past eight we were equipped
for this new excursion, and provided with two contrivances for light
and breathing.  The double door was open; and, accompanied by Captain Nemo,
who was followed by a dozen of the crew, we set foot, at a depth of about
thirty feet, on the solid bottom on which the Nautilus rested.

A slight declivity ended in an uneven bottom, at fifteen fathoms depth.
This bottom differed entirely from the one I had visited on my first excursion
under the waters of the Pacific Ocean.  Here, there was no fine sand,
no submarine prairies, no sea-forest. I immediately recognised that
marvellous region in which, on that day, the Captain did the honours to us.
It was the coral kingdom.

The light produced a thousand charming varieties, playing in
the midst of the branches that were so vividly coloured.
I seemed to see the membraneous and cylindrical tubes tremble
beneath the undulation of the waters.  I was tempted to gather
their fresh petals, ornamented with delicate tentacles,
some just blown, the others budding, while a small fish,
swimming swiftly, touched them slightly, like flights of birds.
But if my hand approached these living flowers, these animated,
sensitive plants, the whole colony took alarm.  The white petals
re-entered their red cases, the flowers faded as I looked,
and the bush changed into a block of stony knobs.

Chance had thrown me just by the most precious specimens of the zoophyte.
This coral was more valuable than that found in the Mediterranean,
on the coasts of France, Italy and Barbary.  Its tints justified
the poetical names of "Flower of Blood," and "Froth of Blood,"
that trade has given to its most beautiful productions.
Coral is sold for L20 per ounce; and in this place the watery beds would
make the fortunes of a company of coral-divers. This precious matter,
often confused with other polypi, formed then the inextricable plots
called "macciota," and on which I noticed several beautiful specimens
of pink coral.

But soon the bushes contract, and the arborisations increase. Real
petrified thickets, long joints of fantastic architecture, were
disclosed before us. Captain Nemo placed himself under a dark gallery,
where by a slight declivity we reached a depth of a hundred yards. The
light from our lamps produced sometimes magical effects, following the
rough outlines of the natural arches and pendants disposed like lustres,
that were tipped with points of fire.

At last, after walking two hours, we had attained a depth
of about three hundred yards, that is to say, the extreme limit
on which coral begins to form.  But there was no isolated bush,
nor modest brushwood, at the bottom of lofty trees.
It was an immense forest of large mineral vegetations,
enormous petrified trees, united by garlands of elegant
sea-bindweed, all adorned with clouds and reflections.
We passed freely under their high branches, lost in the shade
of the waves.

Captain Nemo had stopped.  I and my companions halted, and, turning round,
I saw his men were forming a semi-circle round their chief.
Watching attentively, I observed that four of them carried on their
shoulders an object of an oblong shape.

We occupied, in this place, the centre of a vast glade
surrounded by the lofty foliage of the submarine forest.
Our lamps threw over this place a sort of clear twilight
that singularly elongated the shadows on the ground.
At the end of the glade the darkness increased, and was only relieved
by little sparks reflected by the points of coral.

Ned Land and Conseil were near me.  We watched,
and I thought I was going to witness a strange scene.
On observing the ground, I saw that it was raised in certain
places by slight excrescences encrusted with limy deposits,
and disposed with a regularity that betrayed the hand of man.

In the midst of the glade, on a pedestal of rocks roughly
piled up, stood a cross of coral that extended its long arms
that one might have thought were made of petrified blood.
Upon a sign from Captain Nemo one of the men advanced;
and at some feet from the cross he began to dig a hole with
a pickaxe that he took from his belt.  I understood all!
This glade was a cemetery, this hole a tomb, this oblong
object the body of the man who had died in the night!
The Captain and his men had come to bury their companion in this
general resting-place, at the bottom of this inaccessible ocean!

The grave was being dug slowly; the fish fled on all sides while their
retreat was being thus disturbed; I heard the strokes of the pickaxe,
which sparkled when it hit upon some flint lost at the bottom of the waters.
The hole was soon large and deep enough to receive the body.
Then the bearers approached; the body, enveloped in a tissue of white linen,
was lowered into the damp grave.  Captain Nemo, with his arms crossed
on his breast, and all the friends of him who had loved them,
knelt in prayer.

The grave was then filled in with the rubbish taken from the ground,
which formed a slight mound.  When this was done, Captain Nemo
and his men rose; then, approaching the grave, they knelt again,
and all extended their hands in sign of a last adieu.
Then the funeral procession returned to the Nautilus,
passing under the arches of the forest, in the midst
of thickets, along the coral bushes, and still on the ascent.
At last the light of the ship appeared, and its luminous track
guided us to the Nautilus.  At one o'clock we had returned.

As soon as I had changed my clothes I went up on to the platform,
and, a prey to conflicting emotions, I sat down near the binnacle.
Captain Nemo joined me.  I rose and said to him:

"So, as I said he would, this man died in the night?"

"Yes, M. Aronnax."

"And he rests now, near his companions, in the coral cemetery?"

"Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us.  We dug the grave,
and the polypi undertake to seal our dead for eternity."
And, burying his face quickly in his hands, he tried in vain to
suppress a sob.  Then he added:  "Our peaceful cemetery is there,
some hundred feet below the surface of the waves."

"Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of the reach of sharks."

"Yes, sir, of sharks and men," gravely replied the Captain.



PART TWO



CHAPTER I

THE INDIAN OCEAN

We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea.
The first ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left
such a deep impression on my mind.  Thus, in the midst of this great sea,
Captain Nemo's life was passing, even to his grave, which he had
prepared in one of its deepest abysses.  There, not one of the ocean's
monsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the Nautilus,
of those friends riveted to each other in death as in life.
"Nor any man, either," had added the Captain.  Still the same fierce,
implacable defiance towards human society!

I could no longer content myself with the theory which satisfied Conseil.

That worthy fellow persisted in seeing in the Commander of
the Nautilus one of those unknown servants who return mankind
contempt for indifference.  For him, he was a misunderstood
genius who, tired of earth's deceptions, had taken refuge in this
inaccessible medium, where he might follow his instincts freely.
To my mind, this explains but one side of Captain Nemo's character.
Indeed, the mystery of that last night during which we had been
chained in prison, the sleep, and the precaution so violently
taken by the Captain of snatching from my eyes the glass I
had raised to sweep the horizon, the mortal wound of the man,
due to an unaccountable shock of the Nautilus, all put me on a
new track.  No; Captain Nemo was not satisfied with shunning man.
His formidable apparatus not only suited his instinct of freedom,
but perhaps also the design of some terrible retaliation.

At this moment nothing is clear to me; I catch but a glimpse
of light amidst all the darkness, and I must confine myself
to writing as events shall dictate.

That day, the 24th of January, 1868, at noon, the second officer came to take
the altitude of the sun.  I mounted the platform, lit a cigar, and watched
the operation.  It seemed to me that the man did not understand French;
for several times I made remarks in a loud voice, which must have drawn
from him some involuntary sign of attention, if he had understood them;
but he remained undisturbed and dumb.

As he was taking observations with the sextant, one of the
sailors of the Nautilus (the strong man who had accompanied
us on our first submarine excursion to the Island of Crespo)
came to clean the glasses of the lantern.  I examined the fittings
of the apparatus, the strength of which was increased a hundredfold
by lenticular rings, placed similar to those in a lighthouse,
and which projected their brilliance in a horizontal plane.
The electric lamp was combined in such a way as to give
its most powerful light.  Indeed, it was produced in vacuo,
which insured both its steadiness and its intensity.
This vacuum economised the graphite points between which
the luminous arc was developed--an important point of economy
for Captain Nemo, who could not easily have replaced them;
and under these conditions their waste was imperceptible.
When the Nautilus was ready to continue its submarine journey,
I went down to the saloon.  The panel was closed, and the course
marked direct west.

We were furrowing the waters of the Indian Ocean, a vast liquid plain,
with a surface of 1,200,000,000 of acres, and whose waters are so clear
and transparent that any one leaning over them would turn giddy.
The Nautilus usually floated between fifty and a hundred fathoms deep.
We went on so for some days.  To anyone but myself, who had a great
love for the sea, the hours would have seemed long and monotonous;
but the daily walks on the platform, when I steeped myself in the reviving
air of the ocean, the sight of the rich waters through the windows
of the saloon, the books in the library, the compiling of my memoirs,
took up all my time, and left me not a moment of ennui or weariness.

For some days we saw a great number of aquatic birds, sea-mews or gulls.
Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made very acceptable
water-game. Amongst large-winged birds, carried a long distance from all lands
and resting upon the waves from the fatigue of their flight, I saw some
magnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant cries like the braying of an ass,
and birds belonging to the family of the long-wings.

As to the fish, they always provoked our admiration when we surprised
the secrets of their aquatic life through the open panels.
I saw many kinds which I never before had a chance of observing.

I shall notice chiefly ostracions peculiar to the Red Sea, the Indian
Ocean, and that part which washes the coast of tropical America. These
fishes, like the tortoise, the armadillo, the sea-hedgehog, and the
Crustacea, are protected by a breastplate which is neither chalky nor
stony, but real bone. In some it takes the form of a solid triangle, in
others of a solid quadrangle. Amongst the triangular I saw some an inch
and a half in length, with wholesome flesh and a delicious flavour; they
are brown at the tail, and yellow at the fins, and I recommend their
introduction into fresh water, to which a certain number of sea-fish
easily accustom themselves. I would also mention quadrangular
ostracions, having on the back four large tubercles; some dotted over
with white spots on the lower part of the body, and which may be tamed
like birds; trigons provided with spikes formed by the lengthening of
their bony shell, and which, from their strange gruntings, are called
"seapigs"; also dromedaries with large humps in the shape of a cone,
whose flesh is very tough and leathery.

I now borrow from the daily notes of Master Conseil. "Certain fish of
the genus petrodon peculiar to those seas, with red backs and white
chests, which are distinguished by three rows of longitudinal filaments;
and some electrical, seven inches long, decked in the liveliest colours.
Then, as specimens of other kinds, some ovoides, resembling an egg of a
dark brown colour, marked with white bands, and without tails; diodons,
real sea-porcupines, furnished with spikes, and capable of swelling in
such a way as to look like cushions bristling with darts; hippocampi,
common to every ocean; some pegasi with lengthened snouts, which their
pectoral fins, being much elongated and formed in the shape of wings,
allow, if not to fly, at least to shoot into the air; pigeon spatulae,
with tails covered with many rings of shell; macrognathi with long
jaws, an excellent fish, nine inches long, and bright with most
agreeable colours; pale-coloured calliomores, with rugged heads; and
plenty of chaetpdons, with long and tubular muzzles, which kill insects
by shooting them, as from an air-gun, with a single drop of water. These
we may call the flycatchers of the seas.

"In the eighty-ninth genus of fishes, classed by Lacepede, belonging to
the second lower class of bony, characterised by opercules and
bronchial membranes, I remarked the scorpaena, the head of which is
furnished with spikes, and which has but one dorsal fin; these creatures
are covered, or not, with little shells, according to the sub-class to
which they belong. The second sub-class gives us specimens of
didactyles fourteen or fifteen inches in length, with yellow rays, and
heads of a most fantastic appearance. As to the first sub-class, it
gives several specimens of that singular looking fish appropriately
called a 'seafrog,' with large head, sometimes pierced with holes,
sometimes swollen with protuberances, bristling with spikes, and covered
with tubercles; it has irregular and hideous horns; its body and tail
are covered with callosities; its sting makes a dangerous wound; it is
both repugnant and horrible to look at."

From the 21st to the 23rd of January the Nautilus went at
the rate of two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours,
being five hundred and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour.
If we recognised so many different varieties of fish, it was because,
attracted by the electric light, they tried to follow us;
the greater part, however, were soon distanced by our speed,
though some kept their place in the waters of the Nautilus for a time.
The morning of the 24th, in 12@ 5' S. lat., and 94@ 33'
long., we observed Keeling Island, a coral formation,
planted with magnificent cocos, and which had been visited by
Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy.  The Nautilus skirted the shores
of this desert island for a little distance.  Its nets brought
up numerous specimens of polypi and curious shells of mollusca.
Some precious productions of the species of delphinulae enriched the
treasures of Captain Nemo, to which I added an astraea punctifera, a
kind of parasite polypus often found fixed to a shell.

Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was
directed to the north-west in the direction of the Indian Peninsula.

From Keeling Island our course was slower and more variable,
often taking us into great depths.  Several times they made use
of the inclined planes, which certain internal levers placed
obliquely to the waterline.  In that way we went about two miles,
but without ever obtaining the greatest depths of the Indian Sea,
which soundings of seven thousand fathoms have never reached.
As to the temperature of the lower strata, the thermometer invariably
indicated 4@ above zero.  I only observed that in the upper regions
the water was always colder in the high levels than at the surface
of the sea.

On the 25th of January the ocean was entirely deserted; the Nautilus
passed the day on the surface, beating the waves with its powerful
screw and making them rebound to a great height.  Who under such
circumstances would not have taken it for a gigantic cetacean?
Three parts of this day I spent on the platform.  I watched the sea.
Nothing on the horizon, till about four o'clock a steamer running
west on our counter.  Her masts were visible for an instant,
but she could not see the Nautilus, being too low in the water.
I fancied this steamboat belonged to the P.O. Company, which runs
from Ceylon to Sydney, touching at King George's Point and Melbourne.

At five o'clock in the evening, before that fleeting twilight
which binds night to day in tropical zones, Conseil and I
were astonished by a curious spectacle.

It was a shoal of argonauts travelling along on the surface of the ocean.
We could count several hundreds.  They belonged to the tubercle kind
which are peculiar to the Indian seas.

These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their
locomotive tube, through which they propelled the water already
drawn in.  Of their eight tentacles, six were elongated,
and stretched out floating on the water, whilst the other two,
rolled up flat, were spread to the wing like a light sail.
I saw their spiral-shaped and fluted shells, which Cuvier
justly compares to an elegant skiff.  A boat indeed!
It bears the creature which secretes it without its adhering to it.

For nearly an hour the Nautilus floated in the midst of this shoal
of molluscs.  Then I know not what sudden fright they took.
But as if at a signal every sail was furled, the arms folded,
the body drawn in, the shells turned over, changing their centre
of gravity, and the whole fleet disappeared under the waves.
Never did the ships of a squadron manoeuvre with more unity.

At that moment night fell suddenly, and the reeds, scarcely raised
by the breeze, lay peaceably under the sides of the Nautilus.

The next day, 26th of January, we cut the equator at the
eighty-second meridian and entered the northern hemisphere.
During the day a formidable troop of sharks accompanied us,
terrible creatures, which multiply in these seas and make them
very dangerous.  They were "cestracio philippi" sharks, with brown
backs and whitish bellies, armed with eleven rows of teeth--
eyed sharks--their throat being marked with a large black
spot surrounded with white like an eye.  There were also some
Isabella sharks, with rounded snouts marked with dark spots.
These powerful creatures often hurled themselves at the windows
of the saloon with such violence as to make us feel very insecure.
At such times Ned Land was no longer master of himself.
He wanted to go to the surface and harpoon the monsters,
particularly certain smooth-hound sharks, whose mouth is studded with
teeth like a mosaic; and large tiger-sharks nearly six yards long,
the last named of which seemed to excite him more particularly.
But the Nautilus, accelerating her speed, easily left the most rapid
of them behind.

The 27th of January, at the entrance of the vast Bay of Bengal,
we met repeatedly a forbidding spectacle, dead bodies floating on
the surface of the water.  They were the dead of the Indian villages,
carried by the Ganges to the level of the sea, and which the vultures,
the only undertakers of the country, had not been able to devour.
But the sharks did not fail to help them at their funeral work.

About seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus, half-immersed, was
sailing in a sea of milk.  At first sight the ocean seemed lactified.
Was it the effect of the lunar rays?  No; for the moon, scarcely two
days old, was still lying hidden under the horizon in the rays of the sun.
The whole sky, though lit by the sidereal rays, seemed black by contrast
with the whiteness of the waters.

Conseil could not believe his eyes, and questioned me as to the cause
of this strange phenomenon.  Happily I was able to answer him.

"It is called a milk sea," I explained.  "A large extent
of white wavelets often to be seen on the coasts of Amboyna,
and in these parts of the sea."

"But, sir," said Conseil, "can you tell me what causes such an effect?
for I suppose the water is not really turned into milk."

"No, my boy; and the whiteness which surprises you is caused only by
the presence of myriads of infusoria, a sort of luminous little worm,
gelatinous and without colour, of the thickness of a hair,
and whose length is not more than seven-thousandths of an inch.
These insects adhere to one another sometimes for several leagues."

"Several leagues!" exclaimed Conseil.

"Yes, my boy; and you need not try to compute the number of these infusoria.
You will not be able, for, if I am not mistaken, ships have floated on these
milk seas for more than forty miles."

Towards midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual colour;
but behind us, even to the limits of the horizon, the sky
reflected the whitened waves, and for a long time seemed
impregnated with the vague glimmerings of an aurora borealis.



CHAPTER II

A NOVEL PROPOSAL OF CAPTAIN NEMO'S

On the 28th of February, when at noon the Nautilus came to the surface
of the sea, in 9@ 4' N. lat., there was land in sight about eight
miles to westward.  The first thing I noticed was a range of mountains
about two thousand feet high, the shapes of which were most capricious.
On taking the bearings, I knew that we were nearing the island of Ceylon,
the pearl which hangs from the lobe of the Indian Peninsula.

Captain Nemo and his second appeared at this moment.
The Captain glanced at the map.  Then turning to me, said:

"The Island of Ceylon, noted for its pearl-fisheries. Would you
like to visit one of them, M. Aronnax?"

"Certainly, Captain."

"Well, the thing is easy.  Though, if we see the fisheries, we shall
not see the fishermen.  The annual exportation has not yet begun.
Never mind, I will give orders to make for the Gulf of Manaar,
where we shall arrive in the night."

The Captain said something to his second, who immediately went out.
Soon the Nautilus returned to her native element, and the manometer
showed that she was about thirty feet deep.

"Well, sir," said Captain Nemo, "you and your companions shall visit
the Bank of Manaar, and if by chance some fisherman should be there,
we shall see him at work."

"Agreed, Captain!"

"By the bye, M. Aronnax you are not afraid of sharks?"

"Sharks!" exclaimed I.

This question seemed a very hard one.

"Well?" continued Captain Nemo.

"I admit, Captain, that I am not yet very familiar with that kind of fish."

"We are accustomed to them," replied Captain Nemo,
"and in time you will be too.  However, we shall be armed,
and on the road we may be able to hunt some of the tribe.
It is interesting.  So, till to-morrow, sir, and early."

This said in a careless tone, Captain Nemo left the saloon.
Now, if you were invited to hunt the bear in the mountains
of Switzerland, what would you say?

"Very well! to-morrow we will go and hunt the bear."
If you were asked to hunt the lion in the plains of Atlas,
or the tiger in the Indian jungles, what would you say?

"Ha! ha! it seems we are going to hunt the tiger or the lion!"
But when you are invited to hunt the shark in its natural element,
you would perhaps reflect before accepting the invitation.
As for myself, I passed my hand over my forehead, on which stood large
drops of cold perspiration.  "Let us reflect," said I, "and take our time.
Hunting otters in submarine forests, as we did in the Island of Crespo,
will pass; but going up and down at the bottom of the sea,
where one is almost certain to meet sharks, is quite another thing!
I know well that in certain countries, particularly in the Andaman Islands,
the negroes never hesitate to attack them with a dagger in one hand
and a running noose in the other; but I also know that few who affront
those creatures ever return alive.  However, I am not a negro,
and if I were I think a little hesitation in this case would
not be ill-timed."

At this moment Conseil and the Canadian entered, quite composed,
and even joyous.  They knew not what awaited them.

"Faith, sir," said Ned Land, "your Captain Nemo--the devil take him!--
has just made us a very pleasant offer."

"Ah!" said I, "you know?"

"If agreeable to you, sir," interrupted Conseil, "the commander
of the Nautilus has invited us to visit the magnificent Ceylon
fisheries to-morrow, in your company; he did it kindly,
and behaved like a real gentleman."

"He said nothing more?"

"Nothing more, sir, except that he had already spoken to you
of this little walk."

"Sir," said Conseil, "would you give us some details of the pearl fishery?"

"As to the fishing itself," I asked, "or the incidents, which?"

"On the fishing," replied the Canadian; "before entering upon the ground,
it is as well to know something about it."

"Very well; sit down, my friends, and I will teach you."

Ned and Conseil seated themselves on an ottoman, and the first thing
the Canadian asked was:

"Sir, what is a pearl?"

"My worthy Ned," I answered, "to the poet, a pearl is a tear of the sea;
to the Orientals, it is a drop of dew solidified; to the ladies, it is
a jewel of an oblong shape, of a brilliancy of mother-of-pearl substance,
which they wear on their fingers, their necks, or their ears; for the chemist
it is a mixture of phosphate and carbonate of lime, with a little gelatine;
and lastly, for naturalists, it is simply a morbid secretion of the organ
that produces the mother-of-pearl amongst certain bivalves."

"Branch of molluscs," said Conseil.

"Precisely so, my learned Conseil; and, amongst these testacea
the earshell, the tridacnae, the turbots, in a word, all those
which secrete mother-of-pearl, that is, the blue, bluish, violet,
or white substance which lines the interior of their shells,
are capable of producing pearls."

"Mussels too?" asked the Canadian.

"Yes, mussels of certain waters in Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Saxony, Bohemia, and France."

"Good!  For the future I shall pay attention," replied the Canadian.

"But," I continued, "the particular mollusc which secretes the pearl
is the pearl-oyster, the meleagrina margaritiferct, that precious
pintadine. The pearl is nothing but a nacreous formation, deposited
in a globular form, either adhering to the oyster shell, or buried
in the folds of the creature. On the shell it is fast; in the flesh
it is loose; but always has for a kernel a small hard substance, may
be a barren egg, may be a grain of sand, around which the pearly
matter deposits itself year after year successively, and by thin
concentric layers."

"Are many pearls found in the same oyster?" asked Conseil.

"Yes, my boy.  Some are a perfect casket.  One oyster has been mentioned,
though I allow myself to doubt it, as having contained no less than a hundred
and fifty sharks."

"A hundred and fifty sharks!" exclaimed Ned Land.

"Did I say sharks?" said I hurriedly.  "I meant to say a hundred
and fifty pearls.  Sharks would not be sense."

"Certainly not," said Conseil; "but will you tell us now by what means
they extract these pearls?"

"They proceed in various ways.  When they adhere to the shell,
the fishermen often pull them off with pincers; but the most common
way is to lay the oysters on mats of the seaweed which covers
the banks.  Thus they die in the open air; and at the end
of ten days they are in a forward state of decomposition.
They are then plunged into large reservoirs of sea-water;
then they are opened and washed."

"The price of these pearls varies according to their size?" asked Conseil.

"Not only according to their size," I answered, "but also according
to their shape, their water (that is, their colour), and their lustre:
that is, that bright and diapered sparkle which makes them so charming
to the eye.  The most beautiful are called virgin pearls, or paragons.
They are formed alone in the tissue of the mollusc, are white,
often opaque, and sometimes have the transparency of an opal;
they are generally round or oval.  The round are made into bracelets,
the oval into pendants, and, being more precious, are sold singly.
Those adhering to the shell of the oyster are more irregular in shape,
and are sold by weight.  Lastly, in a lower order are classed those small
pearls known under the name of seed-pearls; they are sold by measure,
and are especially used in embroidery for church ornaments."

"But," said Conseil, "is this pearl-fishery dangerous?"

"No," I answered, quickly; "particularly if certain precautions are taken."

"What does one risk in such a calling?" said Ned Land,
"the swallowing of some mouthfuls of sea-water?"

"As you say, Ned.  By the bye," said I, trying to take Captain
Nemo's careless tone, "are you afraid of sharks, brave Ned?"

"I!" replied the Canadian; "a harpooner by profession?
It is my trade to make light of them."

"But," said I, "it is not a question of fishing for them
with an iron-swivel, hoisting them into the vessel, cutting off
their tails with a blow of a chopper, ripping them up,
and throwing their heart into the sea!"

"Then, it is a question of----"

"Precisely."

"In the water?"

"In the water."

"Faith, with a good harpoon!  You know, sir, these sharks are
ill-fashioned beasts.  They turn on their bellies to seize you,
and in that time----"

Ned Land had a way of saying "seize" which made my blood run cold.

"Well, and you, Conseil, what do you think of sharks?"

"Me!" said Conseil.  "I will be frank, sir."

"So much the better," thought I.

"If you, sir, mean to face the sharks, I do not see why your faithful
servant should not face them with you."



CHAPTER III

A PEARL OF TEN MILLIONS

The next morning at four o'clock I was awakened by
the steward whom Captain Nemo had placed at my service.
I rose hurriedly, dressed, and went into the saloon.

Captain Nemo was awaiting me.

"M. Aronnax," said he, "are you ready to start?"

"I am ready."

"Then please to follow me."

"And my companions, Captain?"

"They have been told and are waiting."

"Are we not to put on our diver's dresses?" asked I.

"Not yet.  I have not allowed the Nautilus to come too near this coast,
and we are some distance from the Manaar Bank; but the boat is ready, and will
take us to the exact point of disembarking, which will save us a long way.
It carries our diving apparatus, which we will put on when we begin
our submarine journey."

Captain Nemo conducted me to the central staircase,
which led on the platform.  Ned and Conseil were already there,
delighted at the idea of the "pleasure party" which was preparing.
Five sailors from the Nautilus, with their oars, waited in the boat,
which had been made fast against the side.

The night was still dark.  Layers of clouds covered the sky,
allowing but few stars to be seen.  I looked on the side
where the land lay, and saw nothing but a dark line enclosing
three parts of the horizon, from south-west to north west.
The Nautilus, having returned during the night up the western
coast of Ceylon, was now west of the bay, or rather gulf,
formed by the mainland and the Island of Manaar.
There, under the dark waters, stretched the pintadine bank,
an inexhaustible field of pearls, the length of which is more
than twenty miles.

Captain Nemo, Ned Land, Conseil, and I took our places
in the stern of the boat.  The master went to the tiller;
his four companions leaned on their oars, the painter was cast off,
and we sheered off.

The boat went towards the south; the oarsmen did not hurry.  I noticed
that their strokes, strong in the water, only followed each other every
ten seconds, according to the method generally adopted in the navy.
Whilst the craft was running by its own velocity, the liquid drops
struck the dark depths of the waves crisply like spats of melted lead.
A little billow, spreading wide, gave a slight roll to the boat, and some
samphire reeds flapped before it.

We were silent.  What was Captain Nemo thinking of?  Perhaps of
the land he was approaching, and which he found too near to him,
contrary to the Canadian's opinion, who thought it too far off.
As to Conseil, he was merely there from curiosity.

About half-past five the first tints on the horizon showed
the upper line of coast more distinctly.  Flat enough in the east,
it rose a little to the south.  Five miles still lay between us,
and it was indistinct owing to the mist on the water.
At six o'clock it became suddenly daylight, with that rapidity
peculiar to tropical regions, which know neither dawn nor twilight.
The solar rays pierced the curtain of clouds, piled up
on the eastern horizon, and the radiant orb rose rapidly.
I saw land distinctly, with a few trees scattered here and there.
The boat neared Manaar Island, which was rounded to the south.
Captain Nemo rose from his seat and watched the sea.

At a sign from him the anchor was dropped, but the chain scarcely ran,
for it was little more than a yard deep, and this spot was one of the highest
points of the bank of pintadines.

"Here we are, M. Aronnax," said Captain Nemo.
"You see that enclosed bay?  Here, in a month will be
assembled the numerous fishing boats of the exporters,
and these are the waters their divers will ransack so boldly.
Happily, this bay is well situated for that kind of fishing.
It is sheltered from the strongest winds; the sea is never very
rough here, which makes it favourable for the diver's work.
We will now put on our dresses, and begin our walk."

I did not answer, and, while watching the suspected waves,
began with the help of the sailors to put on my heavy
sea-dress. Captain Nemo and my companions were also dressing.
None of the Nautilus men were to accompany us on this new excursion.

Soon we were enveloped to the throat in india-rubber clothing;
the air apparatus fixed to our backs by braces.
As to the Ruhmkorff apparatus, there was no necessity for it.
Before putting my head into the copper cap, I had asked the question
of the Captain.

"They would be useless," he replied.  "We are going to no great depth,
and the solar rays will be enough to light our walk.  Besides, it would
not be prudent to carry the electric light in these waters;
its brilliancy might attract some of the dangerous inhabitants
of the coast most inopportunely."

As Captain Nemo pronounced these words, I turned to Conseil and Ned Land.
But my two friends had already encased their heads in the metal cap,
and they could neither hear nor answer.

One last question remained to ask of Captain Nemo.

"And our arms?" asked I; "our guns?"

"Guns!  What for?  Do not mountaineers attack the bear with
a dagger in their hand, and is not steel surer than lead?
Here is a strong blade; put it in your belt, and we start."

I looked at my companions; they were armed like us, and, more than that,
Ned Land was brandishing an enormous harpoon, which he had placed in the boat
before leaving the Nautilus.

Then, following the Captain's example, I allowed myself to be
dressed in the heavy copper helmet, and our reservoirs of air
were at once in activity.  An instant after we were landed,
one after the other, in about two yards of water upon an even sand.
Captain Nemo made a sign with his hand, and we followed him
by a gentle declivity till we disappeared under the waves.

Over our feet, like coveys of snipe in a bog, rose shoals of fish, of
the genus monoptera, which have no other fins but their tail. I
recognized the Javanese, a real serpent two and a half feet long, of a
livid colour underneath, and which might easily be mistaken for a conger
eel if it were not for the golden stripes on its side. In the genus
stromateus, whose bodies are very flat and oval, I saw some of the most
brilliant colours, carrying their dorsal fin like a scythe; an excellent
eating fish, which, dried and pickled, is known by the name of
Karawade; then some tranquebars, belonging to the genus apsiphoroides,
whose body is covered with a shell cuirass of eight longitudinal plates.

The heightening sun lit the mass of waters more and more. The soil
changed by degrees. To the fine sand succeeded a perfect causeway of
boulders, covered with a carpet of molluscs and zoophytes. Amongst the
specimens of these branches I noticed some placenae, with thin unequal
shells, a kind of ostracion peculiar to the Red Sea and the Indian
Ocean; some orange lucinae with rounded shells; rockfish three feet and
a half long, which raised themselves under the waves like hands ready
to seize one. There were also some panopyres, slightly luminous; and
lastly, some oculines, like magnificent fans, forming one of the richest
vegetations of these seas.

In the midst of these living plants, and under the arbours of the
hydrophytes, were layers of clumsy articulates, particularly some
raninae, whose carapace formed a slightly rounded triangle; and some
horrible looking parthenopes.

At about seven o'clock we found ourselves at last surveying the oyster-banks
on which the pearl-oysters are reproduced by millions.

Captain Nemo pointed with his hand to the enormous heap of oysters;
and I could well understand that this mine was inexhaustible, for
Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct of destruction.
Ned Land, faithful to his instinct, hastened to fill a net
which he carried by his side with some of the finest specimens.
But we could not stop.  We must follow the Captain,
who seemed to guide him self by paths known only to himself.
The ground was sensibly rising, and sometimes,
on holding up my arm, it was above the surface of the sea.
Then the level of the bank would sink capriciously.
Often we rounded high rocks scarped into pyramids.
In their dark fractures huge crustacea, perched upon their
high claws like some war-machine, watched us with fixed eyes,
and under our feet crawled various kinds of annelides.

At this moment there opened before us a large grotto dug in a picturesque
heap of rocks and carpeted with all the thick warp of the submarine flora.
At first it seemed very dark to me.  The solar rays seemed to be
extinguished by successive gradations, until its vague transparency became
nothing more than drowned light.  Captain Nemo entered; we followed.
My eyes soon accustomed themselves to this relative state of darkness.
I could distinguish the arches springing capriciously from natural pillars,
standing broad upon their granite base, like the heavy columns of
Tuscan architecture.  Why had our incomprehensible guide led us to the bottom
of this submarine crypt?  I was soon to know.  After descending a rather
sharp declivity, our feet trod the bottom of a kind of circular pit.
There Captain Nemo stopped, and with his hand indicated an object I
had not yet perceived.  It was an oyster of extraordinary dimensions,
a gigantic tridacne, a goblet which could have contained a whole lake of
holy-water, a basin the breadth of which was more than two yards and a half,
and consequently larger than that ornamenting the saloon of the Nautilus.
I approached this extraordinary mollusc.  It adhered by its filaments
to a table of granite, and there, isolated, it developed itself in the calm
waters of the grotto.  I estimated the weight of this tridacne at 600 lb.
Such an oyster would contain 30 lb.  of meat; and one must have the stomach of
a Gargantua to demolish some dozens of them.

Captain Nemo was evidently acquainted with the existence of this bivalve,
and seemed to have a particular motive in verifying the actual state
of this tridacne.  The shells were a little open; the Captain came near
and put his dagger between to prevent them from closing; then with his
hand he raised the membrane with its fringed edges, which formed a cloak
for the creature.  There, between the folded plaits, I saw a loose pearl,
whose size equalled that of a coco-nut. Its globular shape, perfect clearness,
and admirable lustre made it altogether a jewel of inestimable value.
Carried away by my curiosity, I stretched out my hand to seize it,
weigh it, and touch it; but the Captain stopped me, made a sign of refusal,
and quickly withdrew his dagger, and the two shells closed suddenly.
I then understood Captain Nemo's intention.  In leaving this pearl
hidden in the mantle of the tridacne he was allowing it to grow slowly.
Each year the secretions of the mollusc would add new concentric circles.
I estimated its value at L500,000 at least.

After ten minutes Captain Nemo stopped suddenly.
I thought he had halted previously to returning.  No; by a
gesture he bade us crouch beside him in a deep fracture
of the rock, his hand pointed to one part of the liquid mass,
which I watched attentively.

About five yards from me a shadow appeared, and sank to the ground.
The disquieting idea of sharks shot through my mind, but I was mistaken;
and once again it was not a monster of the ocean that we had anything
to do with.

It was a man, a living man, an Indian, a fisherman, a poor
devil who, I suppose, had come to glean before the harvest.
I could see the bottom of his canoe anchored some feet above his head.
He dived and went up successively.  A stone held between his feet,
cut in the shape of a sugar loaf, whilst a rope fastened him to his boat,
helped him to descend more rapidly.  This was all his apparatus.
Reaching the bottom, about five yards deep, he went on his knees
and filled his bag with oysters picked up at random.  Then he went up,
emptied it, pulled up his stone, and began the operation once more,
which lasted thirty seconds.

The diver did not see us.  The shadow of the rock hid us from sight.
And how should this poor Indian ever dream that men, beings like himself,
should be there under the water watching his movements and losing no detail
of the fishing?  Several times he went up in this way, and dived again.
He did not carry away more than ten at each plunge, for he was obliged to pull
them from the bank to which they adhered by means of their strong byssus.
And how many of those oysters for which he risked his life had no pearl
in them!  I watched him closely; his manoeuvres were regular; and for the
space of half an hour no danger appeared to threaten him.

I was beginning to accustom myself to the sight of this interesting fishing,
when suddenly, as the Indian was on the ground, I saw him make a gesture
of terror, rise, and make a spring to return to the surface of the sea.

I understood his dread.  A gigantic shadow appeared just above
the unfortunate diver.  It was a shark of enormous size
advancing diagonally, his eyes on fire, and his jaws open.
I was mute with horror and unable to move.

The voracious creature shot towards the Indian, who threw
himself on one side to avoid the shark's fins; but not its tail,
for it struck his chest and stretched him on the ground.

This scene lasted but a few seconds:  the shark returned, and,
turning on his back, prepared himself for cutting the Indian in two,
when I saw Captain Nemo rise suddenly, and then, dagger in hand,
walk straight to the monster, ready to fight face to face with him.
The very moment the shark was going to snap the unhappy fisherman
in two, he perceived his new adversary, and, turning over,
made straight towards him.

I can still see Captain Nemo's position.  Holding himself well together,
he waited for the shark with admirable coolness; and, when it rushed at him,
threw himself on one side with wonderful quickness, avoiding the shock,
and burying his dagger deep into its side.  But it was not all over.
A terrible combat ensued.

The shark had seemed to roar, if I might say so.  The blood
rushed in torrents from its wound.  The sea was dyed red,
and through the opaque liquid I could distinguish nothing more.
Nothing more until the moment when, like lightning, I saw
the undaunted Captain hanging on to one of the creature's fins,
struggling, as it were, hand to hand with the monster,
and dealing successive blows at his enemy, yet still unable to give
a decisive one.

The shark's struggles agitated the water with such fury that the rocking
threatened to upset me.

I wanted to go to the Captain's assistance, but, nailed to the spot
with horror, I could not stir.

I saw the haggard eye; I saw the different phases of the fight.
The Captain fell to the earth, upset by the enormous mass which leant
upon him.  The shark's jaws opened wide, like a pair of factory shears,
and it would have been all over with the Captain; but, quick as thought,
harpoon in hand, Ned Land rushed towards the shark and struck it with
its sharp point.

The waves were impregnated with a mass of blood.  They rocked under
the shark's movements, which beat them with indescribable fury.
Ned Land had not missed his aim.  It was the monster's death-rattle.
Struck to the heart, it struggled in dreadful convulsions, the shock
of which overthrew Conseil.

But Ned Land had disentangled the Captain, who, getting up without any wound,
went straight to the Indian, quickly cut the cord which held him
to his stone, took him in his arms, and, with a sharp blow of his heel,
mounted to the surface.

We all three followed in a few seconds, saved by a miracle,
and reached the fisherman's boat.

Captain Nemo's first care was to recall the unfortunate
man to life again.  I did not think he could succeed.
I hoped so, for the poor creature's immersion was not long;
but the blow from the shark's tail might have been his death-blow.

Happily, with the Captain's and Conseil's sharp friction,
I saw consciousness return by degrees.  He opened his eyes.
What was his surprise, his terror even, at seeing four great
copper heads leaning over him!  And, above all, what must
he have thought when Captain Nemo, drawing from the pocket
of his dress a bag of pearls, placed it in his hand!
This munificent charity from the man of the waters to the poor
Cingalese was accepted with a trembling hand.  His wondering eyes
showed that he knew not to what super-human beings he owed both
fortune and life.

At a sign from the Captain we regained the bank, and, following the road
already traversed, came in about half an hour to the anchor which held
the canoe of the Nautilus to the earth.

Once on board, we each, with the help of the sailors, got rid
of the heavy copper helmet.

Captain Nemo's first word was to the Canadian.

"Thank you, Master Land," said he.

"It was in revenge, Captain," replied Ned Land.
"I owed you that."

A ghastly smile passed across the Captain's lips, and that was all.

"To the Nautilus," said he.

The boat flew over the waves.  Some minutes after we met the shark's
dead body floating.  By the black marking of the extremity of its fins,
I recognised the terrible melanopteron of the Indian Seas, of the species
of shark so properly called.  It was more than twenty-five feet long;
its enormous mouth occupied one-third of its body.  It was an adult,
as was known by its six rows of teeth placed in an isosceles triangle in
the upper jaw.

Whilst I was contemplating this inert mass, a dozen of these voracious
beasts appeared round the boat; and, without noticing us, threw themselves
upon the dead body and fought with one another for the pieces.

At half-past eight we were again on board the Nautilus.
There I reflected on the incidents which had taken place in our
excursion to the Manaar Bank.

Two conclusions I must inevitably draw from it--one bearing
upon the unparalleled courage of Captain Nemo, the other upon
his devotion to a human being, a representative of that race
from which he fled beneath the sea.  Whatever he might say,
this strange man had not yet succeeded in entirely crushing his heart.

When I made this observation to him, he answered in a slightly moved tone:

"That Indian, sir, is an inhabitant of an oppressed country;
and I am still, and shall be, to my last breath, one of them!"



CHAPTER IV

THE RED SEA

In the course of the day of the 29th of January, the island
of Ceylon disappeared under the horizon, and the Nautilus,
at a speed of twenty miles an hour, slid into the labyrinth
of canals which separate the Maldives from the Laccadives.
It coasted even the Island of Kiltan, a land originally coraline,
discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499, and one of the nineteen
principal islands of the Laccadive Archipelago, situated between
10@ and 14@ 30' N. lat., and 69@ 50' 72" E. long.

We had made 16,220 miles, or 7,500 (French) leagues from our starting-point
in the Japanese Seas.

The next day (30th January), when the Nautilus went
to the surface of the ocean there was no land in sight.
Its course was N.N.E., in the direction of the Sea of Oman,
between Arabia and the Indian Peninsula, which serves as an
outlet to the Persian Gulf.  It was evidently a block without
any possible egress.  Where was Captain Nemo taking us to?
I could not say.  This, however, did not satisfy the Canadian,
who that day came to me asking where we were going.

"We are going where our Captain's fancy takes us, Master Ned."

"His fancy cannot take us far, then," said the Canadian.
"The Persian Gulf has no outlet:  and, if we do go in, it will
not be long before we are out again."

"Very well, then, we will come out again, Master Land; and if,
after the Persian Gulf, the Nautilus would like to visit the Red Sea,
the Straits of Bab-el-mandeb are there to give us entrance."

"I need not tell you, sir," said Ned Land, "that the Red Sea is as much closed
as the Gulf, as the Isthmus of Suez is not yet cut; and, if it was, a boat
as mysterious as ours would not risk itself in a canal cut with sluices.
And again, the Red Sea is not the road to take us back to Europe."

"But I never said we were going back to Europe."

"What do you suppose, then?"

"I suppose that, after visiting the curious coasts of Arabia
and Egypt, the Nautilus will go down the Indian Ocean again,
perhaps cross the Channel of Mozambique, perhaps off the Mascarenhas,
so as to gain the Cape of Good Hope."

"And once at the Cape of Good Hope?" asked the Canadian,
with peculiar emphasis.

"Well, we shall penetrate into that Atlantic which we do not yet know.
Ah! friend Ned, you are getting tired of this journey under the sea; you are
surfeited with the incessantly varying spectacle of submarine wonders.
For my part, I shall be sorry to see the end of a voyage which it is given to
so few men to make."

For four days, till the 3rd of February, the Nautilus scoured
the Sea of Oman, at various speeds and at various depths.
It seemed to go at random, as if hesitating as to which road it
should follow, but we never passed the Tropic of Cancer.

In quitting this sea we sighted Muscat for an instant,
one of the most important towns of the country of Oman.
I admired its strange aspect, surrounded by black rocks
upon which its white houses and forts stood in relief.
I saw the rounded domes of its mosques, the elegant points
of its minarets, its fresh and verdant terraces.  But it was only
a vision!  The Nautilus soon sank under the waves of that part
of the sea.

We passed along the Arabian coast of Mahrah and Hadramaut,
for a distance of six miles, its undulating line of mountains
being occasionally relieved by some ancient ruin.
The 5th of February we at last entered the Gulf of Aden,
a perfect funnel introduced into the neck of Bab-el-mandeb,
through which the Indian waters entered the Red Sea.

The 6th of February, the Nautilus floated in sight of Aden,
perched upon a promontory which a narrow isthmus joins to the mainland,
a kind of inaccessible Gibraltar, the fortifications of which
were rebuilt by the English after taking possession in 1839.
I caught a glimpse of the octagon minarets of this town, which was at
one time the richest commercial magazine on the coast.

I certainly thought that Captain Nemo, arrived at this point,
would back out again; but I was mistaken, for he did no such thing,
much to my surprise.

The next day, the 7th of February, we entered the Straits
of Bab-el-mandeb, the name of which, in the Arab tongue,
means The Gate of Tears.

To twenty miles in breadth, it is only thirty-two in length.
And for the Nautilus, starting at full speed, the crossing was scarcely
the work of an hour.  But I saw nothing, not even the Island of Perim,
with which the British Government has fortified the position of Aden.
There were too many English or French steamers of the line of Suez
to Bombay, Calcutta to Melbourne, and from Bourbon to the Mauritius,
furrowing this narrow passage, for the Nautilus to venture to show itself.
So it remained prudently below.  At last about noon, we were in the waters of
the Red Sea.

I would not even seek to understand the caprice which had decided Captain Nemo
upon entering the gulf.  But I quite approved of the Nautilus entering it.
Its speed was lessened:  sometimes it kept on the surface, sometimes it dived
to avoid a vessel, and thus I was able to observe the upper and lower parts
of this curious sea.

The 8th of February, from the first dawn of day, Mocha came
in sight, now a ruined town, whose walls would fall at a gunshot,
yet which shelters here and there some verdant date-trees;
once an important city, containing six public markets,
and twenty-six mosques, and whose walls, defended by fourteen forts,
formed a girdle of two miles in circumference.

The Nautilus then approached the African shore, where the depth of the sea
was greater.  There, between two waters clear as crystal, through the open
panels we were allowed to contemplate the beautiful bushes of brilliant
coral and large blocks of rock clothed with a splendid fur of green
variety of sites and landscapes along these sandbanks and algae and fuci.
What an indescribable spectacle, and what variety of sites and landscapes
along these sandbanks and volcanic islands which bound the Libyan coast!
But where these shrubs appeared in all their beauty was on the eastern coast,
which the Nautilus soon gained.  It was on the coast of Tehama, for there
not only did this display of zoophytes flourish beneath the level of the sea,
but they also formed picturesque interlacings which unfolded themselves about
sixty feet above the surface, more capricious but less highly coloured than
those whose freshness was kept up by the vital power of the waters.

What charming hours I passed thus at the window of the saloon!
What new specimens of submarine flora and fauna did I admire under
the brightness of our electric lantern!

The 9th of February the Nautilus floated in the broadest part of the Red Sea,
which is comprised between Souakin, on the west coast, and Komfidah,
on the east coast, with a diameter of ninety miles.

That day at noon, after the bearings were taken, Captain Nemo mounted
the platform, where I happened to be, and I was determined not to let him go
down again without at least pressing him regarding his ulterior projects.
As soon as he saw me he approached and graciously offered me a cigar.

"Well, sir, does this Red Sea please you?  Have you sufficiently
observed the wonders it covers, its fishes, its zoophytes,
its parterres of sponges, and its forests of coral?
Did you catch a glimpse of the towns on its borders?"

"Yes, Captain Nemo," I replied; "and the Nautilus is wonderfully
fitted for such a study.  Ah! it is an intelligent boat!"

"Yes, sir, intelligent and invulnerable.  It fears neither
the terrible tempests of the Red Sea, nor its currents,
nor its sandbanks."

"Certainly," said I, "this sea is quoted as one of the worst,
and in the time of the ancients, if I am not mistaken,
its reputation was detestable."

"Detestable, M. Aronnax.  The Greek and Latin historians
do not speak favourably of it, and Strabo says it is very
dangerous during the Etesian winds and in the rainy season.
The Arabian Edrisi portrays it under the name of the Gulf of Colzoum,
and relates that vessels perished there in great numbers on
the sandbanks and that no one would risk sailing in the night.
It is, he pretends, a sea subject to fearful hurricanes,
strewn with inhospitable islands, and `which offers nothing good
either on its surface or in its depths.'"

"One may see," I replied, "that these historians never sailed
on board the Nautilus."

"Just so," replied the Captain, smiling; "and in that respect
moderns are not more advanced than the ancients.  It required
many ages to find out the mechanical power of steam.  Who knows if,
in another hundred years, we may not see a second Nautilus?
Progress is slow, M. Aronnax."

"It is true," I answered; "your boat is at least a century before its time,
perhaps an era.  What a misfortune that the secret of such an invention
should die with its inventor!"

Captain Nemo did not reply.  After some minutes' silence he continued:

"You were speaking of the opinions of ancient historians upon
the dangerous navigation of the Red Sea."

"It is true," said I; "but were not their fears exaggerated?"

"Yes and no, M. Aronnax," replied Captain Nemo, who seemed to know the Red
Sea by heart.  "That which is no longer dangerous for a modern vessel,
well rigged, strongly built, and master of its own course, thanks to
obedient steam, offered all sorts of perils to the ships of the ancients.
Picture to yourself those first navigators venturing in ships made
of planks sewn with the cords of the palmtree, saturated with
the grease of the seadog, and covered with powdered resin!
They had not even instruments wherewith to take their bearings, and they
went by guess amongst currents of which they scarcely knew anything.
Under such conditions shipwrecks were, and must have been, numerous.
But in our time, steamers running between Suez and the South Seas have
nothing more to fear from the fury of this gulf, in spite of contrary
trade-winds. The captain and passengers do not prepare for their
departure by offering propitiatory sacrifices; and, on their return,
they no longer go ornamented with wreaths and gilt fillets to thank
the gods in the neighbouring temple."

"I agree with you," said I; "and steam seems to have killed all gratitude
in the hearts of sailors.  But, Captain, since you seem to have especially
studied this sea, can you tell me the origin of its name?"

"There exist several explanations on the subject, M. Aronnax.
Would you like to know the opinion of a chronicler of
the fourteenth century?"

"Willingly."

"This fanciful writer pretends that its name was given to it
after the passage of the Israelites, when Pharaoh perished
in the waves which closed at the voice of Moses."

"A poet's explanation, Captain Nemo," I replied; "but I cannot content
myself with that.  I ask you for your personal opinion."

"Here it is, M. Aronnax.  According to my idea, we must see
in this appellation of the Red Sea a translation of the Hebrew
word `Edom'; and if the ancients gave it that name, it was
on account of the particular colour of its waters."

"But up to this time I have seen nothing but transparent waves
and without any particular colour."

"Very likely; but as we advance to the bottom of the gulf, you will see
this singular appearance.  I remember seeing the Bay of Tor entirely red,
like a sea of blood."

"And you attribute this colour to the presence of a microscopic seaweed?"

"Yes."

"So, Captain Nemo, it is not the first time you have overrun
the Red Sea on board the Nautilus?"

"No, sir."

"As you spoke a while ago of the passage of the Israelites and of
the catastrophe to the Egyptians, I will ask whether you have met
with the traces under the water of this great historical fact?"

"No, sir; and for a good reason."

"What is it?"

"It is that the spot where Moses and his people passed is now so blocked
up with sand that the camels can barely bathe their legs there.
You can well understand that there would not be water enough
for my Nautilus."

"And the spot?"  I asked.

"The spot is situated a little above the Isthmus of Suez, in the arm
which formerly made a deep estuary, when the Red Sea extended to
the Salt Lakes.  Now, whether this passage were miraculous or not,
the Israelites, nevertheless, crossed there to reach the Promised Land,
and Pharaoh's army perished precisely on that spot; and I think
that excavations made in the middle of the sand would bring to light
a large number of arms and instruments of Egyptian origin."

"That is evident," I replied; "and for the sake of archaeologists let us
hope that these excavations will be made sooner or later, when new towns
are established on the isthmus, after the construction of the Suez Canal;
a canal, however, very useless to a vessel like the Nautilus."

"Very likely; but useful to the whole world," said Captain Nemo.
"The ancients well understood the utility of a communication between
the Red Sea and the Mediterranean for their commercial affairs:
but they did not think of digging a canal direct, and took the Nile
as an intermediate.  Very probably the canal which united the Nile
to the Red Sea was begun by Sesostris, if we may believe tradition.
One thing is certain, that in the year 615 before Jesus Christ,
Necos undertook the works of an alimentary canal to the waters
of the Nile across the plain of Egypt, looking towards Arabia.
It took four days to go up this canal, and it was so wide that
two triremes could go abreast.  It was carried on by Darius,
the son of Hystaspes, and probably finished by Ptolemy II.
Strabo saw it navigated:  but its decline from the point
of departure, near Bubastes, to the Red Sea was so slight
that it was only navigable for a few months in the year.
This canal answered all commercial purposes to the age
of Antonius, when it was abandoned and blocked up with sand.
Restored by order of the Caliph Omar, it was definitely destroyed
in 761 or 762 by Caliph Al-Mansor, who wished to prevent the arrival
of provisions to Mohammed-ben-Abdallah, who had revolted against him.
During the expedition into Egypt, your General Bonaparte discovered
traces of the works in the Desert of Suez; and, surprised by
the tide, he nearly perished before regaining Hadjaroth,
at the very place where Moses had encamped three thousand
years before him."

"Well, Captain, what the ancients dared not undertake, this junction
between the two seas, which will shorten the road from Cadiz to India,
M. Lesseps has succeeded in doing; and before long he will have changed
Africa into an immense island."

"Yes, M. Aronnax; you have the right to be proud of your countryman.
Such a man brings more honour to a nation than great captains.
He began, like so many others, with disgust and rebuffs;
but he has triumphed, for he has the genius of will.
And it is sad to think that a work like that, which ought to have
been an international work and which would have sufficed to make
a reign illustrious, should have succeeded by the energy of one man.
All honour to M. Lesseps!"

"Yes! honour to the great citizen," I replied, surprised by the manner
in which Captain Nemo had just spoken.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "I cannot take you through the Suez Canal;
but you will be able to see the long jetty of Port Said after to-morrow,
when we shall be in the Mediterranean."

"The Mediterranean!"  I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir; does that astonish you?"

"What astonishes me is to think that we shall be there
the day after to-morrow."

"Indeed?"

"Yes, Captain, although by this time I ought to have accustomed myself
to be surprised at nothing since I have been on board your boat."

"But the cause of this surprise?"

"Well! it is the fearful speed you will have to put on the Nautilus,
if the day after to-morrow she is to be in the Mediterranean,
having made the round of Africa, and doubled the Cape of Good Hope!"

"Who told you that she would make the round of Africa and double
the Cape of Good Hope, sir?"

"Well, unless the Nautilus sails on dry land, and passes above the isthmus----"

"Or beneath it, M. Aronnax."

"Beneath it?"

"Certainly," replied Captain Nemo quietly.  "A long time ago Nature made
under this tongue of land what man has this day made on its surface."

"What! such a passage exists?"

"Yes; a subterranean passage, which I have named the Arabian Tunnel.
It takes us beneath Suez and opens into the Gulf of Pelusium."

"But this isthmus is composed of nothing but quick sands?"

"To a certain depth.  But at fifty-five yards only there is a solid
layer of rock."

"Did you discover this passage by chance?"  I asked more and more surprised.

"Chance and reasoning, sir; and by reasoning even more than by chance.
Not only does this passage exist, but I have profited by it several times.
Without that I should not have ventured this day into the impassable Red Sea.
I noticed that in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean there existed a certain
number of fishes of a kind perfectly identical.  Certain of the fact, I asked
myself was it possible that there was no communication between the two seas?
If there was, the subterranean current must necessarily run from the Red
Sea to the Mediterranean, from the sole cause of difference of level.
I caught a large number of fishes in the neighbourhood of Suez.
I passed a copper ring through their tails, and threw them back into the sea.
Some months later, on the coast of Syria, I caught some of my fish ornamented
with the ring.  Thus the communication between the two was proved.
I then sought for it with my Nautilus; I discovered it, ventured into it,
and before long, sir, you too will have passed through my Arabian tunnel!"



CHAPTER V

THE ARABIAN TUNNEL

That same evening, in 21@ 30' N. lat., the Nautilus floated
on the surface of the sea, approaching the Arabian coast.
I saw Djeddah, the most important counting-house of Egypt,
Syria, Turkey, and India.  I distinguished clearly enough
its buildings, the vessels anchored at the quays, and those whose
draught of water obliged them to anchor in the roads.  The sun,
rather low on the horizon, struck full on the houses of the town,
bringing out their whiteness.  Outside, some wooden cabins,
and some made of reeds, showed the quarter inhabited by the Bedouins.
Soon Djeddah was shut out from view by the shadows of night,
and the Nautilus found herself under water slightly phosphorescent.

The next day, the 10th of February, we sighted several ships running
to windward.  The Nautilus returned to its submarine navigation;
but at noon, when her bearings were taken, the sea being deserted,
she rose again to her waterline.

Accompanied by Ned and Conseil, I seated myself on the platform.
The coast on the eastern side looked like a mass faintly printed upon
a damp fog.

We were leaning on the sides of the pinnace, talking of one thing and another,
when Ned Land, stretching out his hand towards a spot on the sea, said:

"Do you see anything there, sir?"

"No, Ned," I replied; "but I have not your eyes, you know."

"Look well," said Ned, "there, on the starboard beam, about the height
of the lantern!  Do you not see a mass which seems to move?"

"Certainly," said I, after close attention; "I see something
like a long black body on the top of the water."

And certainly before long the black object was not more than a mile
from us.  It looked like a great sandbank deposited in the open sea.
It was a gigantic dugong!

Ned Land looked eagerly.  His eyes shone with covetousness at
the sight of the animal.  His hand seemed ready to harpoon it.
One would have thought he was awaiting the moment to throw himself
into the sea and attack it in its element.

At this instant Captain Nemo appeared on the platform.
He saw the dugong, understood the Canadian's attitude, and,
addressing him, said:

"If you held a harpoon just now, Master Land, would it not burn your hand?"

"Just so, sir."

"And you would not be sorry to go back, for one day, to your trade
of a fisherman and to add this cetacean to the list of those you
have already killed?"

"I should not, sir."

"Well, you can try."

"Thank you, sir," said Ned Land, his eyes flaming.

"Only," continued the Captain, "I advise you for your own sake
not to miss the creature."

"Is the dugong dangerous to attack?"  I asked, in spite of the Canadian's
shrug of the shoulders.

"Yes," replied the Captain; "sometimes the animal
turns upon its assailants and overturns their boat.
But for Master Land this danger is not to be feared.
His eye is prompt, his arm sure."

At this moment seven men of the crew, mute and immovable as ever,
mounted the platform.  One carried a harpoon and a line similar
to those employed in catching whales.  The pinnace was lifted from
the bridge, pulled from its socket, and let down into the sea.
Six oarsmen took their seats, and the coxswain went to the tiller.
Ned, Conseil, and I went to the back of the boat.

"You are not coming, Captain?"  I asked.

"No, sir; but I wish you good sport."

The boat put off, and, lifted by the six rowers, drew rapidly towards
the dugong, which floated about two miles from the Nautilus.

Arrived some cables-length from the cetacean, the speed slackened,
and the oars dipped noiselessly into the quiet waters.
Ned Land, harpoon in hand, stood in the fore part of the boat.
The harpoon used for striking the whale is generally attached to a
very long cord which runs out rapidly as the wounded creature draws
it after him.  But here the cord was not more than ten fathoms long,
and the extremity was attached to a small barrel which, by floating,
was to show the course the dugong took under the water.

I stood and carefully watched the Canadian's adversary.
This dugong, which also bears the name of the halicore,
closely resembles the manatee; its oblong body terminated
in a lengthened tail, and its lateral fins in perfect fingers.
Its difference from the manatee consisted in its upper jaw,
which was armed with two long and pointed teeth which formed on each
side diverging tusks.

This dugong which Ned Land was preparing to attack was
of colossal dimensions; it was more than seven yards long.
It did not move, and seemed to be sleeping on the waves,
which circumstance made it easier to capture.

The boat approached within six yards of the animal.
The oars rested on the rowlocks.  I half rose.  Ned Land,
his body thrown a little back, brandished the harpoon in
his experienced hand.

Suddenly a hissing noise was heard, and the dugong disappeared.
The harpoon, although thrown with great force; had apparently only
struck the water.

"Curse it!" exclaimed the Canadian furiously; "I have missed it!"

"No," said I; "the creature is wounded--look at the blood;
but your weapon has not stuck in his body."

"My harpoon! my harpoon!" cried Ned Land.

The sailors rowed on, and the coxswain made for the floating barrel.
The harpoon regained, we followed in pursuit of the animal.

The latter came now and then to the surface to breathe.
Its wound had not weakened it, for it shot onwards with great rapidity.

The boat, rowed by strong arms, flew on its track.  Several times it
approached within some few yards, and the Canadian was ready to strike,
but the dugong made off with a sudden plunge, and it was impossible
to reach it.

Imagine the passion which excited impatient Ned Land!  He hurled at the
unfortunate creature the most energetic expletives in the English tongue.
For my part, I was only vexed to see the dugong escape all our attacks.

We pursued it without relaxation for an hour, and I began to think
it would prove difficult to capture, when the animal, possessed with
the perverse idea of vengeance of which he had cause to repent,
turned upon the pinnace and assailed us in its turn.

This manoeuvre did not escape the Canadian.

"Look out!" he cried.

The coxswain said some words in his outlandish tongue,
doubtless warning the men to keep on their guard.

The dugong came within twenty feet of the boat, stopped, sniffed the air
briskly with its large nostrils (not pierced at the extremity,
but in the upper part of its muzzle). Then, taking a spring,
he threw himself upon us.

The pinnace could not avoid the shock, and half upset, shipped at least
two tons of water, which had to be emptied; but, thanks to the coxswain,
we caught it sideways, not full front, so we were not quite overturned.
While Ned Land, clinging to the bows, belaboured the gigantic animal with
blows from his harpoon, the creature's teeth were buried in the gunwale,
and it lifted the whole thing out of the water, as a lion does a roebuck.
We were upset over one another, and I know not how the adventure would
have ended, if the Canadian, still enraged with the beast, had not struck it
to the heart.

I heard its teeth grind on the iron plate, and the dugong disappeared,
carrying the harpoon with him.  But the barrel soon returned to the surface,
and shortly after the body of the animal, turned on its back.
The boat came up with it, took it in tow, and made straight for the Nautilus.

It required tackle of enormous strength to hoist the dugong
on to the platform.  It weighed 10,000 lb.

The next day, 11th February, the larder of the Nautilus was enriched by some
more delicate game.  A flight of sea-swallows rested on the Nautilus.
It was a species of the Sterna nilotica, peculiar to Egypt; its beak is black,
head grey and pointed, the eye surrounded by white spots, the back, wings,
and tail of a greyish colour, the belly and throat white, and claws red.
They also took some dozen of Nile ducks, a wild bird of high flavour,
its throat and upper part of the head white with black spots.

About five o'clock in the evening we sighted to the north the Cape
of Ras-Mohammed. This cape forms the extremity of Arabia Petraea,
comprised between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Acabah.

The Nautilus penetrated into the Straits of Jubal, which leads
to the Gulf of Suez.  I distinctly saw a high mountain,
towering between the two gulfs of Ras-Mohammed. It was Mount Horeb,
that Sinai at the top of which Moses saw God face to face.

At six o'clock the Nautilus, sometimes floating, sometimes immersed,
passed some distance from Tor, situated at the end of the bay, the waters
of which seemed tinted with red, an observation already made by Captain Nemo.
Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence, sometimes broken by the cries
of the pelican and other night-birds, and the noise of the waves breaking upon
the shore, chafing against the rocks, or the panting of some far-off steamer
beating the waters of the Gulf with its noisy paddles.

From eight to nine o'clock the Nautilus remained some fathoms
under the water.  According to my calculation we must have
been very near Suez.  Through the panel of the saloon I saw
the bottom of the rocks brilliantly lit up by our electric lamp.
We seemed to be leaving the Straits behind us more and more.

At a quarter-past nine, the vessel having returned to the surface,
I mounted the platform.  Most impatient to pass through Captain
Nemo's tunnel, I could not stay in one place, so came to breathe
the fresh night air.

Soon in the shadow I saw a pale light, half discoloured by the fog,
shining about a mile from us.

"A floating lighthouse!" said someone near me.

I turned, and saw the Captain.

"It is the floating light of Suez," he continued.
"It will not be long before we gain the entrance of the tunnel."

"The entrance cannot be easy?"

"No, sir; for that reason I am accustomed to go into the steersman's cage
and myself direct our course.  And now, if you will go down, M. Aronnax,
the Nautilus is going under the waves, and will not return to the surface
until we have passed through the Arabian Tunnel."

Captain Nemo led me towards the central staircase; half way down he opened
a door, traversed the upper deck, and landed in the pilot's cage,
which it may be remembered rose at the extremity of the platform.
It was a cabin measuring six feet square, very much like that occupied
by the pilot on the steamboats of the Mississippi or Hudson.
In the midst worked a wheel, placed vertically, and caught
to the tiller-rope, which ran to the back of the Nautilus.
Four light-ports with lenticular glasses, let in a groove in
the partition of the cabin, allowed the man at the wheel to see
in all directions.

This cabin was dark; but soon my eyes accustomed themselves to the obscurity,
and I perceived the pilot, a strong man, with his hands resting on the spokes
of the wheel.  Outside, the sea appeared vividly lit up by the lantern,
which shed its rays from the back of the cabin to the other extremity
of the platform.

"Now," said Captain Nemo, "let us try to make our passage."

Electric wires connected the pilot's cage with the machinery room,
and from there the Captain could communicate simultaneously to his
Nautilus the direction and the speed.  He pressed a metal knob,
and at once the speed of the screw diminished.

I looked in silence at the high straight wall we were running
by at this moment, the immovable base of a massive sandy coast.
We followed it thus for an hour only some few yards off.

Captain Nemo did not take his eye from the knob, suspended by
its two concentric circles in the cabin.  At a simple gesture,
the pilot modified the course of the Nautilus every instant.

I had placed myself at the port-scuttle, and saw some magnificent
substructures of coral, zoophytes, seaweed, and fucus, agitating their
enormous claws, which stretched out from the fissures of the rock.

At a quarter-past ten, the Captain himself took the helm.
A large gallery, black and deep, opened before us.  The Nautilus
went boldly into it.  A strange roaring was heard round its sides.
It was the waters of the Red Sea, which the incline of
the tunnel precipitated violently towards the Mediterranean.
The Nautilus went with the torrent, rapid as an arrow, in spite
of the efforts of the machinery, which, in order to offer more
effective resistance, beat the waves with reversed screw.

On the walls of the narrow passage I could see nothing
but brilliant rays, straight lines, furrows of fire,
traced by the great speed, under the brilliant electric light.
My heart beat fast.

At thirty-five minutes past ten, Captain Nemo quitted the helm,
and, turning to me, said:

"The Mediterranean!"

In less than twenty minutes, the Nautilus, carried along by the torrent,
had passed through the Isthmus of Suez.



CHAPTER VI

THE GRECIAN ARCHIPELAGO

The next day, the 12th of February, at the dawn of day,
the Nautilus rose to the surface.  I hastened on to the platform.
Three miles to the south the dim outline of Pelusium was to be seen.
A torrent had carried us from one sea to another.
About seven o'clock Ned and Conseil joined me.

"Well, Sir Naturalist," said the Canadian, in a slightly jovial tone,
"and the Mediterranean?"

"We are floating on its surface, friend Ned."

"What!" said Conseil, "this very night."

"Yes, this very night; in a few minutes we have passed
this impassable isthmus."

"I do not believe it," replied the Canadian.

"Then you are wrong, Master Land," I continued; "this low
coast which rounds off to the south is the Egyptian coast.
And you who have such good eyes, Ned, you can see the jetty of Port
Said stretching into the sea."

The Canadian looked attentively.

"Certainly you are right, sir, and your Captain is a first-rate man.
We are in the Mediterranean.  Good!  Now, if you please, let us talk
of our own little affair, but so that no one hears us."

I saw what the Canadian wanted, and, in any case, I thought it better to let
him talk, as he wished it; so we all three went and sat down near the lantern,
where we were less exposed to the spray of the blades.

"Now, Ned, we listen; what have you to tell us?"

"What I have to tell you is very simple.  We are in Europe; and before
Captain Nemo's caprices drag us once more to the bottom of the Polar Seas,
or lead us into Oceania, I ask to leave the Nautilus."

I wished in no way to shackle the liberty of my companions,
but I certainly felt no desire to leave Captain Nemo.

Thanks to him, and thanks to his apparatus, I was each day
nearer the completion of my submarine studies; and I was
rewriting my book of submarine depths in its very element.
Should I ever again have such an opportunity of observing
the wonders of the ocean?  No, certainly not!  And I could
not bring myself to the idea of abandoning the Nautilus before
the cycle of investigation was accomplished.

"Friend Ned, answer me frankly, are you tired of being on board?
Are you sorry that destiny has thrown us into Captain Nemo's hands?"

The Canadian remained some moments without answering.
Then, crossing his arms, he said:

"Frankly, I do not regret this journey under the seas.  I shall be glad
to have made it; but, now that it is made, let us have done with it.
That is my idea."

"It will come to an end, Ned."

"Where and when?"

"Where I do not know--when I cannot say; or, rather, I suppose
it will end when these seas have nothing more to teach us."

"Then what do you hope for?" demanded the Canadian.

"That circumstances may occur as well six months hence as now by which we
may and ought to profit."

"Oh!" said Ned Land, "and where shall we be in six months,
if you please, Sir Naturalist?"

"Perhaps in China; you know the Nautilus is a rapid traveller.
It goes through water as swallows through the air, or as an express
on the land.  It does not fear frequented seas; who can say
that it may not beat the coasts of France, England, or America,
on which flight may be attempted as advantageously as here."

"M. Aronnax," replied the Canadian, "your arguments are rotten
at the foundation.  You speak in the future, `We shall be there!
we shall be here!'  I speak in the present, `We are here,
and we must profit by it.'"

Ned Land's logic pressed me hard, and I felt myself beaten on that ground.
I knew not what argument would now tell in my favour.

"Sir," continued Ned, "let us suppose an impossibility:
if Captain Nemo should this day offer you your liberty;
would you accept it?"

"I do not know," I answered.

"And if," he added, "the offer made you this day was never to be renewed,
would you accept it?"

"Friend Ned, this is my answer.  Your reasoning is against me.
We must not rely on Captain Nemo's good-will. Common prudence
forbids him to set us at liberty.  On the other side, prudence bids
us profit by the first opportunity to leave the Nautilus."

"Well, M. Aronnax, that is wisely said."

"Only one observation--just one.  The occasion must be serious,
and our first attempt must succeed; if it fails, we shall never
find another, and Captain Nemo will never forgive us."

"All that is true," replied the Canadian.  "But your observation
applies equally to all attempts at flight, whether in two years'
time, or in two days'. But the question is still this:
If a favourable opportunity presents itself, it must be seized."

"Agreed!  And now, Ned, will you tell me what you mean
by a favourable opportunity?"

"It will be that which, on a dark night, will bring the Nautilus
a short distance from some European coast."

"And you will try and save yourself by swimming?"

"Yes, if we were near enough to the bank, and if the vessel
was floating at the time.  Not if the bank was far away,
and the boat was under the water."

"And in that case?"

"In that case, I should seek to make myself master of the pinnace.
I know how it is worked.  We must get inside, and the bolts once drawn,
we shall come to the surface of the water, without even the pilot,
who is in the bows, perceiving our flight."

"Well, Ned, watch for the opportunity; but do not forget that a hitch
will ruin us."

"I will not forget, sir."

"And now, Ned, would you like to know what I think of your project?"

"Certainly, M. Aronnax."

"Well, I think--I do not say I hope--I think that this favourable
opportunity will never present itself."

"Why not?"

"Because Captain Nemo cannot hide from himself that we have not given up
all hope of regaining our liberty, and he will be on his guard, above all,
in the seas and in the sight of European coasts."

"We shall see," replied Ned Land, shaking his head determinedly.

"And now, Ned Land," I added, "let us stop here.
Not another word on the subject.  The day that you
are ready, come and let us know, and we will follow you.
I rely entirely upon you."

Thus ended a conversation which, at no very distant time,
led to such grave results.  I must say here that facts seemed
to confirm my foresight, to the Canadian's great despair.
Did Captain Nemo distrust us in these frequented seas? or did
he only wish to hide himself from the numerous vessels,
of all nations, which ploughed the Mediterranean?
I could not tell; but we were oftener between waters
and far from the coast.  Or, if the Nautilus did emerge,
nothing was to be seen but the pilot's cage; and sometimes it
went to great depths, for, between the Grecian Archipelago
and Asia Minor we could not touch the bottom by more than
a thousand fathoms.

Thus I only knew we were near the Island of Carpathos, one of the Sporades,
by Captain Nemo reciting these lines from Virgil:

    "Est Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates, 
     Caeruleus Proteus,"

as he pointed to a spot on the planisphere.

It was indeed the ancient abode of Proteus, the old shepherd of Neptune's
flocks, now the Island of Scarpanto, situated between Rhodes and Crete.
I saw nothing but the granite base through the glass panels of the saloon.

The next day, the 14th of February, I resolved to employ some hours in
studying the fishes of the Archipelago; but for some reason or other the
panels remained hermetically sealed.  Upon taking the course of the Nautilus,
I found that we were going towards Candia, the ancient Isle of Crete.
At the time I embarked on the Abraham Lincoln, the whole of this
island had risen in insurrection against the despotism of the Turks.
But how the insurgents had fared since that time I was absolutely ignorant,
and it was not Captain Nemo, deprived of all land communications,
who could tell me.

I made no allusion to this event when that night I found myself alone
with him in the saloon.  Besides, he seemed to be taciturn and preoccupied.
Then, contrary to his custom, he ordered both panels to be opened, and,
going from one to the other, observed the mass of waters attentively.
To what end I could not guess; so, on my side, I employed my time in studying
the fish passing before my eyes.

In the midst of the waters a man appeared, a diver, carrying at his
belt a leathern purse.  It was not a body abandoned to the waves;
it was a living man, swimming with a strong hand, disappearing occasionally
to take breath at the surface.

I turned towards Captain Nemo, and in an agitated voice exclaimed:

"A man shipwrecked!  He must be saved at any price!"

The Captain did not answer me, but came and leaned against the panel.

The man had approached, and, with his face flattened against the glass,
was looking at us.

To my great amazement, Captain Nemo signed to him.
The diver answered with his hand, mounted immediately to
the surface of the water, and did not appear again.

"Do not be uncomfortable," said Captain Nemo.  "It is Nicholas of
Cape Matapan, surnamed Pesca.  He is well known in all the Cyclades.
A bold diver! water is his element, and he lives more in it than on land,
going continually from one island to another, even as far as Crete."

"You know him, Captain?"

"Why not, M. Aronnax?"

Saying which, Captain Nemo went towards a piece of furniture standing
near the left panel of the saloon.  Near this piece of furniture,
I saw a chest bound with iron, on the cover of which was a copper plate,
bearing the cypher of the Nautilus with its device.

At that moment, the Captain, without noticing my presence,
opened the piece of furniture, a sort of strong box, which held
a great many ingots.

They were ingots of gold.  From whence came this precious metal,
which represented an enormous sum?  Where did the Captain gather
this gold from? and what was he going to do with it?

I did not say one word.  I looked.  Captain Nemo took the ingots one by one,
and arranged them methodically in the chest, which he filled entirely.
I estimated the contents at more than 4,000 lb.  weight of gold, that is
to say, nearly L200,000.

The chest was securely fastened, and the Captain wrote an address on the lid,
in characters which must have belonged to Modern Greece.

This done, Captain Nemo pressed a knob, the wire of which communicated with
the quarters of the crew.  Four men appeared, and, not without some trouble,
pushed the chest out of the saloon.  Then I heard them hoisting it up the iron
staircase by means of pulleys.

At that moment, Captain Nemo turned to me.

"And you were saying, sir?" said he.

"I was saying nothing, Captain."

"Then, sir, if you will allow me, I will wish you good night."

Whereupon he turned and left the saloon.

I returned to my room much troubled, as one may believe.
I vainly tried to sleep--I sought the connecting link between
the apparition of the diver and the chest filled with gold.
Soon, I felt by certain movements of pitching and tossing
that the Nautilus was leaving the depths and returning
to the surface.

Then I heard steps upon the platform; and I knew they were
unfastening the pinnace and launching it upon the waves.
For one instant it struck the side of the Nautilus,
then all noise ceased.

Two hours after, the same noise, the same going and coming was renewed;
the boat was hoisted on board, replaced in its socket, and the Nautilus
again plunged under the waves.

So these millions had been transported to their address.
To what point of the continent?  Who was Captain Nemo's correspondent?

The next day I related to Conseil and the Canadian the events
of the night, which had excited my curiosity to the highest degree.
My companions were not less surprised than myself.

"But where does he take his millions to?" asked Ned Land.

To that there was no possible answer.  I returned to the saloon
after having breakfast and set to work.  Till five o'clock
in the evening I employed myself in arranging my notes.
At that moment--(ought I to attribute it to some peculiar idiosyncrasy)--
I felt so great a heat that I was obliged to take off my coat.
It was strange, for we were under low latitudes; and even then the Nautilus,
submerged as it was, ought to experience no change of temperature.
I looked at the manometer; it showed a depth of sixty feet, to which
atmospheric heat could never attain.

I continued my work, but the temperature rose to such a pitch
as to be intolerable.

"Could there be fire on board?"  I asked myself.

I was leaving the saloon, when Captain Nemo entered; he approached
the thermometer, consulted it, and, turning to me, said:

"Forty-two degrees."

"I have noticed it, Captain," I replied; "and if it gets much
hotter we cannot bear it."

"Oh, sir, it will not get better if we do not wish it."

"You can reduce it as you please, then?"

"No; but I can go farther from the stove which produces it."

"It is outward, then!"

"Certainly; we are floating in a current of boiling water."

"Is it possible!"  I exclaimed.

"Look."

The panels opened, and I saw the sea entirely white all round.
A sulphurous smoke was curling amid the waves, which boiled like
water in a copper.  I placed my hand on one of the panes of glass,
but the heat was so great that I quickly took it off again.

"Where are we?"  I asked.

"Near the Island of Santorin, sir," replied the Captain.
"I wished to give you a sight of the curious spectacle of
a submarine eruption."

"I thought," said I, "that the formation of these new islands was ended."

"Nothing is ever ended in the volcanic parts of the sea,"
replied Captain Nemo; "and the globe is always being worked by
subterranean fires.  Already, in the nineteenth year of our era,
according to Cassiodorus and Pliny, a new island, Theia
(the divine), appeared in the very place where these islets
have recently been formed.  Then they sank under the waves,
to rise again in the year 69, when they again subsided.
Since that time to our days the Plutonian work has been suspended.
But on the 3rd of February, 1866, a new island, which they named
George Island, emerged from the midst of the sulphurous vapour
near Nea Kamenni, and settled again the 6th of the same month.
Seven days after, the 13th of February, the Island of Aphroessa
appeared, leaving between Nea Kamenni and itself a canal ten
yards broad.  I was in these seas when the phenomenon occurred,
and I was able therefore to observe all the different phases.
The Island of Aphroessa, of round form, measured 300 feet
in diameter, and 30 feet in height.  It was composed of
black and vitreous lava, mixed with fragments of felspar.
And lastly, on the 10th of March, a smaller island, called Reka,
showed itself near Nea Kamenni, and since then these three have
joined together, forming but one and the same island."

"And the canal in which we are at this moment?"  I asked.

"Here it is," replied Captain Nemo, showing me a map of the Archipelago.
"You see, I have marked the new islands."

I returned to the glass.  The Nautilus was no longer moving,
the heat was becoming unbearable.  The sea, which till now had
been white, was red, owing to the presence of salts of iron.
In spite of the ship's being hermetically sealed, an insupportable
smell of sulphur filled the saloon, and the brilliancy of the
electricity was entirely extinguished by bright scarlet flames.
I was in a bath, I was choking, I was broiled.

"We can remain no longer in this boiling water," said I to the Captain.

"It would not be prudent," replied the impassive Captain Nemo.

An order was given; the Nautilus tacked about and left
the furnace it could not brave with impunity.  A quarter
of an hour after we were breathing fresh air on the surface.
The thought then struck me that, if Ned Land had chosen this part
of the sea for our flight, we should never have come alive out
of this sea of fire.

The next day, the 16th of February, we left the basin which,
between Rhodes and Alexandria, is reckoned about 1,500 fathoms
in depth, and the Nautilus, passing some distance from Cerigo,
quitted the Grecian Archipelago after having doubled Cape Matapan.



CHAPTER VII

THE MEDITERRANEAN IN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS

The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, "the great sea"
of the Hebrews, "the sea" of the Greeks, the "mare nostrum"
of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines;
embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains,
saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked
by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto
still dispute the empire of the world!

It is upon these banks, and on these waters, says Michelet, that man
is renewed in one of the most powerful climates of the globe.
But, beautiful as it was, I could only take a rapid glance at
the basin whose superficial area is two million of square yards.
Even Captain Nemo's knowledge was lost to me, for this puzzling
person did not appear once during our passage at full speed.
I estimated the course which the Nautilus took under the waves
of the sea at about six hundred leagues, and it was accomplished
in forty-eight hours.  Starting on the morning of the 16th
of February from the shores of Greece, we had crossed the Straits
of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.

It was plain to me that this Mediterranean, enclosed in the midst of those
countries which he wished to avoid, was distasteful to Captain Nemo.
Those waves and those breezes brought back too many remembrances, if not
too many regrets.  Here he had no longer that independence and that liberty
of gait which he had when in the open seas, and his Nautilus felt itself
cramped between the close shores of Africa and Europe.

Our speed was now twenty-five miles an hour.  It may be well
understood that Ned Land, to his great disgust, was obliged
to renounce his intended flight.  He could not launch the pinnace,
going at the rate of twelve or thirteen yards every second.
To quit the Nautilus under such conditions would be as bad
as jumping from a train going at full speed--an imprudent thing,
to say the least of it.  Besides, our vessel only mounted
to the surface of the waves at night to renew its stock of air;
it was steered entirely by the compass and the log.

I saw no more of the interior of this Mediterranean than a traveller
by express train perceives of the landscape which flies before his eyes;
that is to say, the distant horizon, and not the nearer objects which pass
like a flash of lightning.

We were then passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunis.
In the narrow space between Cape Bon and the Straits
of Messina the bottom of the sea rose almost suddenly.
There was a perfect bank, on which there was not more than
nine fathoms of water, whilst on either side the depth
was ninety fathoms.

The Nautilus had to manoeuvre very carefully so as not to strike
against this submarine barrier.

I showed Conseil, on the map of the Mediterranean, the spot occupied
by this reef.

"But if you please, sir," observed Conseil, "it is like a real
isthmus joining Europe to Africa."

"Yes, my boy, it forms a perfect bar to the Straits of Lybia,
and the soundings of Smith have proved that in former times
the continents between Cape Boco and Cape Furina were joined."

"I can well believe it," said Conseil.

"I will add," I continued, "that a similar barrier exists between Gibraltar
and Ceuta, which in geological times formed the entire Mediterranean."

"What if some volcanic burst should one day raise these two barriers
above the waves?"

"It is not probable, Conseil."

"Well, but allow me to finish, please, sir; if this phenomenon
should take place, it will be troublesome for M. Lesseps,
who has taken so much pains to pierce the isthmus."

"I agree with you; but I repeat, Conseil, this phenomenon will
never happen.  The violence of subterranean force is ever diminishing.
Volcanoes, so plentiful in the first days of the world,
are being extinguished by degrees; the internal heat is weakened,
the temperature of the lower strata of the globe is lowered by a
perceptible quantity every century to the detriment of our globe,
for its heat is its life."

"But the sun?"

"The sun is not sufficient, Conseil.  Can it give heat to a dead body?"

"Not that I know of."

"Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse;
it will become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon,
which has long since lost all its vital heat."

"In how many centuries?"

"In some hundreds of thousands of years, my boy."

"Then," said Conseil, "we shall have time to finish our journey--
that is, if Ned Land does not interfere with it."

And Conseil, reassured, returned to the study of the bank,
which the Nautilus was skirting at a moderate speed.

During the night of the 16th and 17th February we had entered the second
Mediterranean basin, the greatest depth of which was 1,450 fathoms.
The Nautilus, by the action of its crew, slid down the inclined planes
and buried itself in the lowest depths of the sea.

On the 18th of February, about three o'clock in the morning, we were at
the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar.  There once existed two currents:
an upper one, long since recognised, which conveys the waters of the ocean
into the basin of the Mediterranean; and a lower counter-current,
which reasoning has now shown to exist.  Indeed, the volume of water
in the Mediterranean, incessantly added to by the waves of the Atlantic
and by rivers falling into it, would each year raise the level of this sea,
for its evaporation is not sufficient to restore the equilibrium.
As it is not so, we must necessarily admit the existence of an under-current,
which empties into the basin of the Atlantic through the Straits
of Gibraltar the surplus waters of the Mediterranean.  A fact indeed;
and it was this counter-current by which the Nautilus profited.
It advanced rapidly by the narrow pass.  For one instant I caught a glimpse
of the beautiful ruins of the temple of Hercules, buried in the ground,
according to Pliny, and with the low island which supports it; and a few
minutes later we were floating on the Atlantic.



CHAPTER VIII

VIGO BAY

The Atlantic! a vast sheet of water whose superficial area covers
twenty-five millions of square miles, the length of which is nine
thousand miles, with a mean breadth of two thousand seven hundred--
an ocean whose parallel winding shores embrace an immense circumference,
watered by the largest rivers of the world, the St. Lawrence,
the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Plata, the Orinoco, the Niger,
the Senegal, the Elbe, the Loire, and the Rhine, which carry water
from the most civilised, as well as from the most savage, countries!
Magnificent field of water, incessantly ploughed by vessels
of every nation, sheltered by the flags of every nation, and which
terminates in those two terrible points so dreaded by mariners,
Cape Horn and the Cape of Tempests.

The Nautilus was piercing the water with its sharp spur,
after having accomplished nearly ten thousand leagues in three months
and a half, a distance greater than the great circle of the earth.
Where were we going now, and what was reserved for the future?
The Nautilus, leaving the Straits of Gibraltar, had gone far out.
It returned to the surface of the waves, and our daily walks on the
platform were restored to us.

I mounted at once, accompanied by Ned Land and Conseil.
At a distance of about twelve miles, Cape St. Vincent
was dimly to be seen, forming the south-western point of
the Spanish peninsula.  A strong southerly gale was blowing.
The sea was swollen and billowy; it made the Nautilus rock violently.
It was almost impossible to keep one's foot on the platform,
which the heavy rolls of the sea beat over every instant.
So we descended after inhaling some mouthfuls of fresh air.

I returned to my room, Conseil to his cabin; but the Canadian,
with a preoccupied air, followed me.  Our rapid passage across
the Mediterranean had not allowed him to put his project
into execution, and he could not help showing his disappointment.
When the door of my room was shut, he sat down and looked
at me silently.

"Friend Ned," said I, "I understand you; but you cannot reproach yourself.
To have attempted to leave the Nautilus under the circumstances would
have been folly."

Ned Land did not answer; his compressed lips and frowning brow showed
with him the violent possession this fixed idea had taken of his mind.

"Let us see," I continued; "we need not despair yet.
We are going up the coast of Portugal again; France and
England are not far off, where we can easily find refuge.
Now if the Nautilus, on leaving the Straits of Gibraltar,
had gone to the south, if it had carried us towards regions
where there were no continents, I should share your uneasiness.
But we know now that Captain Nemo does not fly from civilised seas,
and in some days I think you can act with security."

Ned Land still looked at me fixedly; at length his fixed lips parted,
and he said, "It is for to-night."

I drew myself up suddenly.  I was, I admit, little prepared
for this communication.  I wanted to answer the Canadian,
but words would not come.

"We agreed to wait for an opportunity," continued Ned Land,
"and the opportunity has arrived.  This night we shall
be but a few miles from the Spanish coast.  It is cloudy.
The wind blows freely.  I have your word, M. Aronnax, and I
rely upon you."

As I was silent, the Canadian approached me.

"To-night, at nine o'clock," said he.  "I have warned Conseil.
At that moment Captain Nemo will be shut up in his room, probably in bed.
Neither the engineers nor the ship's crew can see us.
Conseil and I will gain the central staircase, and you, M. Aronnax,
will remain in the library, two steps from us, waiting my signal.
The oars, the mast, and the sail are in the canoe.  I have even succeeded
in getting some provisions.  I have procured an English wrench,
to unfasten the bolts which attach it to the shell of the Nautilus.
So all is ready, till to-night."

"The sea is bad."

"That I allow," replied the Canadian; "but we must risk that.
Liberty is worth paying for; besides, the boat is strong,
and a few miles with a fair wind to carry us is no great thing.
Who knows but by to-morrow we may be a hundred leagues away?
Let circumstances only favour us, and by ten or eleven o'clock we
shall have landed on some spot of terra firma, alive or dead.
But adieu now till to-night."

With these words the Canadian withdrew, leaving me almost dumb.
I had imagined that, the chance gone, I should have time to
reflect and discuss the matter.  My obstinate companion had given
me no time; and, after all, what could I have said to him?
Ned Land was perfectly right.  There was almost the opportunity
to profit by.  Could I retract my word, and take upon myself
the responsibility of compromising the future of my companions?
To-morrow Captain Nemo might take us far from all land.

At that moment a rather loud hissing noise told me that the reservoirs
were filling, and that the Nautilus was sinking under the waves
of the Atlantic.

A sad day I passed, between the desire of regaining my liberty
of action and of abandoning the wonderful Nautilus, and leaving
my submarine studies incomplete.

What dreadful hours I passed thus!  Sometimes seeing myself and
companions safely landed, sometimes wishing, in spite of my reason,
that some unforeseen circumstance, would prevent the realisation
of Ned Land's project.

Twice I went to the saloon.  I wished to consult the compass.
I wished to see if the direction the Nautilus was taking
was bringing us nearer or taking us farther from the coast.
But no; the Nautilus kept in Portuguese waters.

I must therefore take my part and prepare for flight.
My luggage was not heavy; my notes, nothing more.

As to Captain Nemo, I asked myself what he would think of our escape;
what trouble, what wrong it might cause him and what he might do in case
of its discovery or failure.  Certainly I had no cause to complain of him;
on the contrary, never was hospitality freer than his.  In leaving
him I could not be taxed with ingratitude.  No oath bound us to him.
It was on the strength of circumstances he relied, and not upon our word,
to fix us for ever.

I had not seen the Captain since our visit to the Island of Santorin.
Would chance bring me to his presence before our departure?
I wished it, and I feared it at the same time.  I listened if I could
hear him walking the room contiguous to mine.  No sound reached my ear.
I felt an unbearable uneasiness.  This day of waiting seemed eternal.
Hours struck too slowly to keep pace with my impatience.

My dinner was served in my room as usual.  I ate but little;
I was too preoccupied.  I left the table at seven o'clock. A
hundred and twenty minutes (I counted them) still separated
me from the moment in which I was to join Ned Land.
My agitation redoubled.  My pulse beat violently.
I could not remain quiet.  I went and came, hoping to calm
my troubled spirit by constant movement.  The idea of failure
in our bold enterprise was the least painful of my anxieties;
but the thought of seeing our project discovered before
leaving the Nautilus, of being brought before Captain Nemo,
irritated, or (what was worse) saddened, at my desertion,
made my heart beat.

I wanted to see the saloon for the last time.  I descended the stairs and
arrived in the museum, where I had passed so many useful and agreeable hours.
I looked at all its riches, all its treasures, like a man on the eve of an
eternal exile, who was leaving never to return.

These wonders of Nature, these masterpieces of art, amongst which for so many
days my life had been concentrated, I was going to abandon them for ever!
I should like to have taken a last look through the windows of the saloon into
the waters of the Atlantic:  but the panels were hermetically closed, and a
cloak of steel separated me from that ocean which I had not yet explored.

In passing through the saloon, I came near the door let
into the angle which opened into the Captain's room.
To my great surprise, this door was ajar.  I drew back involuntarily.
If Captain Nemo should be in his room, he could see me.
But, hearing no sound, I drew nearer.  The room was deserted.
I pushed open the door and took some steps forward.  Still the same
monklike severity of aspect.

Suddenly the clock struck eight.  The first beat of the hammer on the bell
awoke me from my dreams.  I trembled as if an invisible eye had plunged
into my most secret thoughts, and I hurried from the room.

There my eye fell upon the compass.  Our course was still north.
The log indicated moderate speed, the manometer a depth of about sixty feet.

I returned to my room, clothed myself warmly--sea boots,
an otterskin cap, a great coat of byssus, lined with sealskin;
I was ready, I was waiting.  The vibration of the screw
alone broke the deep silence which reigned on board.
I listened attentively.  Would no loud voice suddenly inform
me that Ned Land had been surprised in his projected flight.
A mortal dread hung over me, and I vainly tried to regain
my accustomed coolness.

At a few minutes to nine, I put my ear to the Captain's door.
No noise.  I left my room and returned to the saloon, which was half
in obscurity, but deserted.

I opened the door communicating with the library.
The same insufficient light, the same solitude.
I placed myself near the door leading to the central staircase,
and there waited for Ned Land's signal.

At that moment the trembling of the screw sensibly diminished,
then it stopped entirely.  The silence was now only disturbed
by the beatings of my own heart.  Suddenly a slight shock was felt;
and I knew that the Nautilus had stopped at the bottom of the ocean.
My uneasiness increased.  The Canadian's signal did not come.
I felt inclined to join Ned Land and beg of him to put off his attempt.
I felt that we were not sailing under our usual conditions.

At this moment the door of the large saloon opened, and Captain
Nemo appeared.  He saw me, and without further preamble began
in an amiable tone of voice:

"Ah, sir!  I have been looking for you.  Do you know the history of Spain?"

Now, one might know the history of one's own country by heart;
but in the condition I was at the time, with troubled mind
and head quite lost, I could not have said a word of it.

"Well," continued Captain Nemo, "you heard my question!
Do you know the history of Spain?"

"Very slightly," I answered.

"Well, here are learned men having to learn," said the Captain.
"Come, sit down, and I will tell you a curious episode in this history.
Sir, listen well," said he; "this history will interest you on one side,
for it will answer a question which doubtless you have not been
able to solve."

"I listen, Captain," said I, not knowing what my interlocutor was driving at,
and asking myself if this incident was bearing on our projected flight.

"Sir, if you have no objection, we will go back to 1702.  You cannot
be ignorant that your king, Louis XIV, thinking that the gesture
of a potentate was sufficient to bring the Pyrenees under his yoke,
had imposed the Duke of Anjou, his grandson, on the Spaniards.
This prince reigned more or less badly under the name of Philip V,
and had a strong party against him abroad.  Indeed, the preceding year,
the royal houses of Holland, Austria, and England had concluded
a treaty of alliance at the Hague, with the intention of plucking
the crown of Spain from the head of Philip V, and placing it
on that of an archduke to whom they prematurely gave the title
of Charles III.

"Spain must resist this coalition; but she was almost entirely unprovided
with either soldiers or sailors.  However, money would not fail them,
provided that their galleons, laden with gold and silver from America,
once entered their ports.  And about the end of 1702 they expected a rich
convoy which France was escorting with a fleet of twenty-three vessels,
commanded by Admiral Chateau-Renaud, for the ships of the coalition
were already beating the Atlantic.  This convoy was to go to Cadiz,
but the Admiral, hearing that an English fleet was cruising in those waters,
resolved to make for a French port.

"The Spanish commanders of the convoy objected to this decision.
They wanted to be taken to a Spanish port, and, if not to Cadiz,
into Vigo Bay, situated on the northwest coast of Spain,
and which was not blocked.

"Admiral Chateau-Renaud had the rashness to obey this injunction,
and the galleons entered Vigo Bay.

"Unfortunately, it formed an open road which could not be
defended in any way.  They must therefore hasten to unload
the galleons before the arrival of the combined fleet;
and time would not have failed them had not a miserable question
of rivalry suddenly arisen.

"You are following the chain of events?" asked Captain Nemo.

"Perfectly," said I, not knowing the end proposed by this historical lesson.

"I will continue.  This is what passed.  The merchants of Cadiz had
a privilege by which they had the right of receiving all merchandise
coming from the West Indies.  Now, to disembark these ingots at the port
of Vigo was depriving them of their rights.  They complained at Madrid,
and obtained the consent of the weak-minded Philip that the convoy,
without discharging its cargo, should remain sequestered in the roads
of Vigo until the enemy had disappeared.

"But whilst coming to this decision, on the 22nd of October,
1702, the English vessels arrived in Vigo Bay, when Admiral
Chateau-Renaud, in spite of inferior forces, fought bravely.
But, seeing that the treasure must fall into the enemy's hands,
he burnt and scuttled every galleon, which went to the bottom
with their immense riches."

Captain Nemo stopped.  I admit I could not see yet why this history
should interest me.

"Well?"  I asked.

"Well, M. Aronnax," replied Captain Nemo, "we are in that Vigo Bay;
and it rests with yourself whether you will penetrate its mysteries."

The Captain rose, telling me to follow him.  I had had time to recover.
I obeyed.  The saloon was dark, but through the transparent glass the waves
were sparkling.  I looked.

For half a mile around the Nautilus, the waters seemed bathed
in electric light.  The sandy bottom was clean and bright.
Some of the ship's crew in their diving-dresses were clearing away
half-rotten barrels and empty cases from the midst of the blackened wrecks.
From these cases and from these barrels escaped ingots of gold and silver,
cascades of piastres and jewels.  The sand was heaped up with them.
Laden with their precious booty, the men returned to the Nautilus,
disposed of their burden, and went back to this inexhaustible fishery of
gold and silver.

I understood now.  This was the scene of the battle of the 22nd
of October, 1702.  Here on this very spot the galleons laden for the Spanish
Government had sunk.  Here Captain Nemo came, according to his wants,
to pack up those millions with which he burdened the Nautilus.
It was for him and him alone America had given up her precious metals.
He was heir direct, without anyone to share, in those treasures torn
from the Incas and from the conquered of Ferdinand Cortez.

"Did you know, sir," he asked, smiling, "that the sea contained such riches?"

"I knew," I answered, "that they value money held in suspension
in these waters at two millions."

"Doubtless; but to extract this money the expense would be greater
than the profit.  Here, on the contrary, I have but to pick up what man
has lost--and not only in Vigo Bay, but in a thousand other ports where
shipwrecks have happened, and which are marked on my submarine map.
Can you understand now the source of the millions I am worth?"

"I understand, Captain.  But allow me to tell you that in exploring
Vigo Bay you have only been beforehand with a rival society."

"And which?"

"A society which has received from the Spanish Government
the privilege of seeking those buried galleons.
The shareholders are led on by the allurement of an enormous bounty,
for they value these rich shipwrecks at five hundred millions."

"Five hundred millions they were," answered Captain Nemo,
"but they are so no longer."

"Just so," said I; "and a warning to those shareholders would be
an act of charity.  But who knows if it would be well received?
What gamblers usually regret above all is less the loss
of their money than of their foolish hopes.  After all,
I pity them less than the thousands of unfortunates to whom
so much riches well-distributed would have been profitable,
whilst for them they will be for ever barren."

I had no sooner expressed this regret than I felt that it must
have wounded Captain Nemo.

"Barren!" he exclaimed, with animation.  "Do you think then,
sir, that these riches are lost because I gather them?
Is it for myself alone, according to your idea, that I take
the trouble to collect these treasures?  Who told you that I
did not make a good use of it?  Do you think I am ignorant
that there are suffering beings and oppressed races on
this earth, miserable creatures to console, victims to avenge?
Do you not understand?"

Captain Nemo stopped at these last words, regretting perhaps
that he had spoken so much.  But I had guessed that,
whatever the motive which had forced him to seek independence
under the sea, it had left him still a man, that his heart
still beat for the sufferings of humanity, and that his immense
charity was for oppressed races as well as individuals.
And I then understood for whom those millions were destined
which were forwarded by Captain Nemo when the Nautilus was cruising
in the waters of Crete.



CHAPTER IX

A VANISHED CONTINENT

The next morning, the 19th of February, I saw the Canadian enter my room.
I expected this visit.  He looked very disappointed.

"Well, sir?" said he.

"Well, Ned, fortune was against us yesterday."

"Yes; that Captain must needs stop exactly at the hour we intended
leaving his vessel."

"Yes, Ned, he had business at his bankers."

"His bankers!"

"Or rather his banking-house; by that I mean the ocean,
where his riches are safer than in the chests of the State."

I then related to the Canadian the incidents of the preceding night,
hoping to bring him back to the idea of not abandoning the Captain;
but my recital had no other result than an energetically expressed regret
from Ned that he had not been able to take a walk on the battlefield
of Vigo on his own account.

"However," said he, "all is not ended.  It is only a blow
of the harpoon lost.  Another time we must succeed;
and to-night, if necessary----"

"In what direction is the Nautilus going?"  I asked.

"I do not know," replied Ned.

"Well, at noon we shall see the point."

The Canadian returned to Conseil.  As soon as I was dressed,
I went into the saloon.  The compass was not reassuring.
The course of the Nautilus was S.S.W. We were turning our
backs on Europe.

I waited with some impatience till the ship's place was pricked
on the chart.  At about half-past eleven the reservoirs
were emptied, and our vessel rose to the surface of the ocean.
I rushed towards the platform.  Ned Land had preceded me.
No more land in sight.  Nothing but an immense sea.
Some sails on the horizon, doubtless those going to San Roque
in search of favourable winds for doubling the Cape of Good Hope.
The weather was cloudy.  A gale of wind was preparing.
Ned raved, and tried to pierce the cloudy horizon.
He still hoped that behind all that fog stretched the land he so
longed for.

At noon the sun showed itself for an instant.  The second profited by this
brightness to take its height.  Then, the sea becoming more billowy,
we descended, and the panel closed.

An hour after, upon consulting the chart, I saw the position
of the Nautilus was marked at 16@ 17' long., and 33@ 22'
lat., at 150 leagues from the nearest coast.  There was no means
of flight, and I leave you to imagine the rage of the Canadian
when I informed him of our situation.

For myself, I was not particularly sorry.  I felt lightened
of the load which had oppressed me, and was able to return
with some degree of calmness to my accustomed work.

That night, about eleven o'clock, I received a most unexpected
visit from Captain Nemo.  He asked me very graciously
if I felt fatigued from my watch of the preceding night.
I answered in the negative.

"Then, M. Aronnax, I propose a curious excursion."

"Propose, Captain?"

"You have hitherto only visited the submarine depths by daylight,
under the brightness of the sun.  Would it suit you to see them
in the darkness of the night?"

"Most willingly."

"I warn you, the way will be tiring.  We shall have far to walk,
and must climb a mountain.  The roads are not well kept."

"What you say, Captain, only heightens my curiosity;
I am ready to follow you."

"Come then, sir, we will put on our diving-dresses."

Arrived at the robing-room, I saw that neither of my companions
nor any of the ship's crew were to follow us on this excursion.
Captain Nemo had not even proposed my taking with me either
Ned or Conseil.

In a few moments we had put on our diving-dresses; they placed
on our backs the reservoirs, abundantly filled with air,
but no electric lamps were prepared.  I called the Captain's
attention to the fact.

"They will be useless," he replied.

I thought I had not heard aright, but I could not repeat my observation,
for the Captain's head had already disappeared in its metal case.
I finished harnessing myself.  I felt them put an iron-pointed stick
into my hand, and some minutes later, after going through the usual form,
we set foot on the bottom of the Atlantic at a depth of 150 fathoms.
Midnight was near.  The waters were profoundly dark, but Captain Nemo
pointed out in the distance a reddish spot, a sort of large light shining
brilliantly about two miles from the Nautilus.  What this fire might be,
what could feed it, why and how it lit up the liquid mass, I could not say.
In any case, it did light our way, vaguely, it is true, but I soon accustomed
myself to the peculiar darkness, and I understood, under such circumstances,
the uselessness of the Ruhmkorff apparatus.

As we advanced, I heard a kind of pattering above my head.
The noise redoubling, sometimes producing a continual shower,
I soon understood the cause.  It was rain falling violently,
and crisping the surface of the waves.  Instinctively the
thought flashed across my mind that I should be wet through!
By the water! in the midst of the water!  I could not help
laughing at the odd idea.  But, indeed, in the thick diving-dress,
the liquid element is no longer felt, and one only seems to be
in an atmosphere somewhat denser than the terrestrial atmosphere.
Nothing more.

After half an hour's walk the soil became stony.
Medusae, microscopic crustacea, and pennatules lit it slightly
with their phosphorescent gleam.  I caught a glimpse of pieces
of stone covered with millions of zoophytes and masses of sea weed.
My feet often slipped upon this sticky carpet of sea weed,
and without my iron-tipped stick I should have fallen more than once.
In turning round, I could still see the whitish lantern of the
Nautilus beginning to pale in the distance.

But the rosy light which guided us increased and lit up the horizon.
The presence of this fire under water puzzled me in the highest degree.
Was I going towards a natural phenomenon as yet unknown to the savants
of the earth?  Or even (for this thought crossed my brain) had the hand
of man aught to do with this conflagration?  Had he fanned this flame?
Was I to meet in these depths companions and friends of Captain Nemo whom
he was going to visit, and who, like him, led this strange existence?
Should I find down there a whole colony of exiles who, weary of the miseries
of this earth, had sought and found independence in the deep ocean?
All these foolish and unreasonable ideas pursued me.  And in this condition
of mind, over-excited by the succession of wonders continually passing before
my eyes, I should not have been surprised to meet at the bottom of the sea one
of those submarine towns of which Captain Nemo dreamed.

Our road grew lighter and lighter.  The white glimmer came in rays
from the summit of a mountain about 800 feet high.  But what I saw
was simply a reflection, developed by the clearness of the waters.
The source of this inexplicable light was a fire on the opposite side
of the mountain.

In the midst of this stony maze furrowing the bottom of the Atlantic,
Captain Nemo advanced without hesitation.  He knew this dreary road.
Doubtless he had often travelled over it, and could not lose himself.
I followed him with unshaken confidence.  He seemed to me like a genie of
the sea; and, as he walked before me, I could not help admiring his stature,
which was outlined in black on the luminous horizon.

It was one in the morning when we arrived at the first slopes of the mountain;
but to gain access to them we must venture through the difficult paths
of a vast copse.

Yes; a copse of dead trees, without leaves, without sap,
trees petrified by the action of the water and here and there
overtopped by gigantic pines.  It was like a coal-pit still standing,
holding by the roots to the broken soil, and whose branches, like fine
black paper cuttings, showed distinctly on the watery ceiling.
Picture to yourself a forest in the Hartz hanging on to the sides
of the mountain, but a forest swallowed up.  The paths were
encumbered with seaweed and fucus, between which grovelled
a whole world of crustacea.  I went along, climbing the rocks,
striding over extended trunks, breaking the sea bind-weed which hung
from one tree to the other; and frightening the fishes, which flew
from branch to branch.  Pressing onward, I felt no fatigue.
I followed my guide, who was never tired.  What a spectacle!
How can I express it? how paint the aspect of those woods and
rocks in this medium--their under parts dark and wild, the upper
coloured with red tints, by that light which the reflecting powers
of the waters doubled?  We climbed rocks which fell directly
after with gigantic bounds and the low growling of an avalanche.
To right and left ran long, dark galleries, where sight was lost.
Here opened vast glades which the hand of man seemed to have worked;
and I sometimes asked myself if some inhabitant of these submarine
regions would not suddenly appear to me.

But Captain Nemo was still mounting.  I could not stay behind.
I followed boldly.  My stick gave me good help.  A false step would
have been dangerous on the narrow passes sloping down to the sides
of the gulfs; but I walked with firm step, without feeling
any giddiness.  Now I jumped a crevice, the depth of which would
have made me hesitate had it been among the glaciers on the land;
now I ventured on the unsteady trunk of a tree thrown across
from one abyss to the other, without looking under my feet,
having only eyes to admire the wild sites of this region.

There, monumental rocks, leaning on their regularly-cut bases, seemed to defy
all laws of equilibrium.  From between their stony knees trees sprang,
like a jet under heavy pressure, and upheld others which upheld them.
Natural towers, large scarps, cut perpendicularly, like a "curtain," inclined
at an angle which the laws of gravitation could never have tolerated
in terrestrial regions.

Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees,
and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain,
which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope.
Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there.  Fishes got up
under our feet like birds in the long grass.  The massive rocks were
rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes,
at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving.
My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road,
or some frightful claw closing with a noise in the shadow of some cavity.
Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of the darkness.
They were the eyes of giant crustacea crouched in their holes;
giant lobsters setting themselves up like halberdiers, and moving
their claws with the clicking sound of pincers; titanic crabs,
pointed like a gun on its carriage; and frightful-looking poulps,
interweaving their tentacles like a living nest of serpents.

We had now arrived on the first platform, where other surprises awaited me.
Before us lay some picturesque ruins, which betrayed the hand of man
and not that of the Creator.  There were vast heaps of stone,
amongst which might be traced the vague and shadowy forms of castles
and temples, clothed with a world of blossoming zoophytes, and over which,
instead of ivy, sea-weed and fucus threw a thick vegetable mantle.  But what
was this portion of the globe which had been swallowed by cataclysms?
Who had placed those rocks and stones like cromlechs of prehistoric times?
Where was I?  Whither had Captain Nemo's fancy hurried me?

I would fain have asked him; not being able to, I stopped him--
I seized his arm.  But, shaking his head, and pointing to the highest
point of the mountain, he seemed to say:

"Come, come along; come higher!"

I followed, and in a few minutes I had climbed to the top,
which for a circle of ten yards commanded the whole mass of rock.

I looked down the side we had just climbed.  The mountain did
not rise more than seven or eight hundred feet above the level
of the plain; but on the opposite side it commanded from
twice that height the depths of this part of the Atlantic.
My eyes ranged far over a large space lit by a violent fulguration.
In fact, the mountain was a volcano.

At fifty feet above the peak, in the midst of a rain of stones
and scoriae, a large crater was vomiting forth torrents of lava
which fell in a cascade of fire into the bosom of the liquid mass.
Thus situated, this volcano lit the lower plain like an
immense torch, even to the extreme limits of the horizon.
I said that the submarine crater threw up lava, but no flames.
Flames require the oxygen of the air to feed upon and cannot be
developed under water; but streams of lava, having in themselves
the principles of their incandescence, can attain a white heat,
fight vigorously against the liquid element, and turn it to
vapour by contact.

Rapid currents bearing all these gases in diffusion and torrents
of lava slid to the bottom of the mountain like an eruption
of Vesuvius on another Terra del Greco.

There indeed under my eyes, ruined, destroyed, lay a town--
its roofs open to the sky, its temples fallen, its arches dislocated,
its columns lying on the ground, from which one would still
recognise the massive character of Tuscan architecture.
Further on, some remains of a gigantic aqueduct; here the high
base of an Acropolis, with the floating outline of a Parthenon;
there traces of a quay, as if an ancient port had formerly
abutted on the borders of the ocean, and disappeared with
its merchant vessels and its war-galleys. Farther on again,
long lines of sunken walls and broad, deserted streets--
a perfect Pompeii escaped beneath the waters.  Such was the sight
that Captain Nemo brought before my eyes!

Where was I?  Where was I?  I must know at any cost.
I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture,
and, picking up a piece of chalk-stone, advanced to a rock
of black basalt, and traced the one word:


ATLANTIS


What a light shot through my mind!  Atlantis! the Atlantis
of Plato, that continent denied by Origen and Humbolt,
who placed its disappearance amongst the legendary tales.
I had it there now before my eyes, bearing upon it
the unexceptionable testimony of its catastrophe.
The region thus engulfed was beyond Europe, Asia, and Lybia,
beyond the columns of Hercules, where those powerful people,
the Atlantides, lived, against whom the first wars of ancient
Greeks were waged.

Thus, led by the strangest destiny, I was treading under foot
the mountains of this continent, touching with my hand those ruins
a thousand generations old and contemporary with the geological epochs.
I was walking on the very spot where the contemporaries of the first
man had walked.

Whilst I was trying to fix in my mind every detail of this
grand landscape, Captain Nemo remained motionless,
as if petrified in mute ecstasy, leaning on a mossy stone.
Was he dreaming of those generations long since disappeared?
Was he asking them the secret of human destiny?  Was it here this
strange man came to steep himself in historical recollections,
and live again this ancient life--he who wanted no modern one?
What would I not have given to know his thoughts, to share them,
to understand them!  We remained for an hour at this place,
contemplating the vast plains under the brightness of the lava,
which was some times wonderfully intense.  Rapid tremblings ran
along the mountain caused by internal bubblings, deep noise,
distinctly transmitted through the liquid medium were echoed
with majestic grandeur.  At this moment the moon appeared through
the mass of waters and threw her pale rays on the buried continent.
It was but a gleam, but what an indescribable effect!
The Captain rose, cast one last look on the immense plain,
and then bade me follow him.

We descended the mountain rapidly, and, the mineral forest
once passed, I saw the lantern of the Nautilus shining like a star.
The Captain walked straight to it, and we got on board as the first
rays of light whitened the surface of the ocean.



CHAPTER X

THE SUBMARINE COAL-MINES

The next day, the 20th of February, I awoke very late:  the fatigues
of the previous night had prolonged my sleep until eleven o'clock. I
dressed quickly, and hastened to find the course the Nautilus was taking.
The instruments showed it to be still toward the south, with a speed of
twenty miles an hour and a depth of fifty fathoms.

The species of fishes here did not differ much from those already noticed.
There were rays of giant size, five yards long, and endowed with great
muscular strength, which enabled them to shoot above the waves;
sharks of many kinds; amongst others, one fifteen feet long,
with triangular sharp teeth, and whose transparency rendered it almost
invisible in the water.

Amongst bony fish Conseil noticed some about three yards long, armed at
the upper jaw with a piercing sword; other bright-coloured creatures,
known in the time of Aristotle by the name of the sea-dragon, which are
dangerous to capture on account of the spikes on their back.

About four o'clock, the soil, generally composed of a thick mud mixed with
petrified wood, changed by degrees, and it became more stony, and seemed
strewn with conglomerate and pieces of basalt, with a sprinkling of lava.
I thought that a mountainous region was succeeding the long plains;
and accordingly, after a few evolutions of the Nautilus, I saw the southerly
horizon blocked by a high wall which seemed to close all exit.
Its summit evidently passed the level of the ocean.  It must be a continent,
or at least an island--one of the Canaries, or of the Cape Verde Islands.
The bearings not being yet taken, perhaps designedly, I was ignorant
of our exact position.  In any case, such a wall seemed to me to mark
the limits of that Atlantis, of which we had in reality passed over only
the smallest part.

Much longer should I have remained at the window admiring
the beauties of sea and sky, but the panels closed.  At this moment
the Nautilus arrived at the side of this high, perpendicular wall.
What it would do, I could not guess.  I returned to my room;
it no longer moved.  I laid myself down with the full intention
of waking after a few hours' sleep; but it was eight o'clock
the next day when I entered the saloon.  I looked at the manometer.
It told me that the Nautilus was floating on the surface of the ocean.
Besides, I heard steps on the platform.  I went to the panel.
It was open; but, instead of broad daylight, as I expected,
I was surrounded by profound darkness.  Where were we?
Was I mistaken?  Was it still night?  No; not a star was shining
and night has not that utter darkness.

I knew not what to think, when a voice near me said:

"Is that you, Professor?"

"Ah!  Captain," I answered, "where are we?"

"Underground, sir."

"Underground!"  I exclaimed.  "And the Nautilus floating still?"

"It always floats."

"But I do not understand."

"Wait a few minutes, our lantern will be lit, and, if you like light places,
you will be satisfied."

I stood on the platform and waited.  The darkness was so complete
that I could not even see Captain Nemo; but, looking to the zenith,
exactly above my head, I seemed to catch an undecided gleam,
a kind of twilight filling a circular hole.  At this instant
the lantern was lit, and its vividness dispelled the faint light.
I closed my dazzled eyes for an instant, and then looked again.
The Nautilus was stationary, floating near a mountain which formed
a sort of quay.  The lake, then, supporting it was a lake
imprisoned by a circle of walls, measuring two miles in diameter
and six in circumference.  Its level (the manometer showed)
could only be the same as the outside level, for there must
necessarily be a communication between the lake and the sea.
The high partitions, leaning forward on their base, grew into
a vaulted roof bearing the shape of an immense funnel turned
upside down, the height being about five or six hundred yards.
At the summit was a circular orifice, by which I had caught the slight
gleam of light, evidently daylight.

"Where are we?"  I asked.

"In the very heart of an extinct volcano, the interior of which has
been invaded by the sea, after some great convulsion of the earth.
Whilst you were sleeping, Professor, the Nautilus penetrated
to this lagoon by a natural canal, which opens about ten yards
beneath the surface of the ocean.  This is its harbour of refuge,
a sure, commodious, and mysterious one, sheltered from all gales.
Show me, if you can, on the coasts of any of your continents or islands,
a road which can give such perfect refuge from all storms."

"Certainly," I replied, "you are in safety here, Captain Nemo.
Who could reach you in the heart of a volcano?  But did I not see
an opening at its summit?"

"Yes; its crater, formerly filled with lava, vapour, and flames,
and which now gives entrance to the life-giving air we breathe."

"But what is this volcanic mountain?"

"It belongs to one of the numerous islands with which this sea
is strewn--to vessels a simple sandbank--to us an immense cavern.
Chance led me to discover it, and chance served me well."

"But of what use is this refuge, Captain?  The Nautilus wants no port."

"No, sir; but it wants electricity to make it move, and the wherewithal
to make the electricity--sodium to feed the elements, coal from
which to get the sodium, and a coal-mine to supply the coal.
And exactly on this spot the sea covers entire forests embedded during
the geological periods, now mineralised and transformed into coal;
for me they are an inexhaustible mine."

"Your men follow the trade of miners here, then, Captain?"

"Exactly so.  These mines extend under the waves like the mines of Newcastle.
Here, in their diving-dresses, pick axe and shovel in hand, my men
extract the coal, which I do not even ask from the mines of the earth.
When I burn this combustible for the manufacture of sodium, the smoke,
escaping from the crater of the mountain, gives it the appearance of
a still-active volcano."

"And we shall see your companions at work?"

"No; not this time at least; for I am in a hurry to continue
our submarine tour of the earth.  So I shall content myself
with drawing from the reserve of sodium I already possess.
The time for loading is one day only, and we continue our voyage.
So, if you wish to go over the cavern and make the round of
the lagoon, you must take advantage of to-day, M. Aronnax."

I thanked the Captain and went to look for my companions, who had not yet
left their cabin.  I invited them to follow me without saying where we were.
They mounted the platform.  Conseil, who was astonished at nothing,
seemed to look upon it as quite natural that he should wake under
a mountain, after having fallen asleep under the waves.  But Ned Land
thought of nothing but finding whether the cavern had any exit.
After breakfast, about ten o'clock, we went down on to the mountain.

"Here we are, once more on land," said Conseil.

"I do not call this land," said the Canadian.  "And besides,
we are not on it, but beneath it."

Between the walls of the mountains and the waters of the lake lay a sandy
shore which, at its greatest breadth, measured five hundred feet.
On this soil one might easily make the tour of the lake.  But the base
of the high partitions was stony ground, with volcanic locks and enormous
pumice-stones lying in picturesque heaps.  All these detached masses,
covered with enamel, polished by the action of the subterraneous fires,
shone resplendent by the light of our electric lantern.  The mica dust
from the shore, rising under our feet, flew like a cloud of sparks.
The bottom now rose sensibly, and we soon arrived at long circuitous slopes,
or inclined planes, which took us higher by degrees; but we were obliged
to walk carefully among these conglomerates, bound by no cement, the feet
slipping on the glassy crystal, felspar, and quartz.

The volcanic nature of this enormous excavation was confirmed on all sides,
and I pointed it out to my companions.

"Picture to yourselves," said I, "what this crater must
have been when filled with boiling lava, and when the level
of the incandescent liquid rose to the orifice of the mountain,
as though melted on the top of a hot plate."

"I can picture it perfectly," said Conseil.  "But, sir,
will you tell me why the Great Architect has suspended operations,
and how it is that the furnace is replaced by the quiet waters
of the lake?"

"Most probably, Conseil, because some convulsion beneath the ocean produced
that very opening which has served as a passage for the Nautilus.
Then the waters of the Atlantic rushed into the interior of the mountain.
There must have been a terrible struggle between the two elements, a struggle
which ended in the victory of Neptune.  But many ages have run out since then,
and the submerged volcano is now a peaceable grotto."

"Very well," replied Ned Land; "I accept the explanation, sir; but, in our
own interests, I regret that the opening of which you speak was not made
above the level of the sea."

"But, friend Ned," said Conseil, "if the passage had not been under the sea,
the Nautilus could not have gone through it."

We continued ascending.  The steps became more and more perpendicular
and narrow.  Deep excavations, which we were obliged to cross,
cut them here and there; sloping masses had to be turned.
We slid upon our knees and crawled along.  But Conseil's
dexterity and the Canadian's strength surmounted all obstacles.
At a height of about 31 feet the nature of the ground changed
without becoming more practicable.  To the conglomerate and trachyte
succeeded black basalt, the first dispread in layers full of bubbles,
the latter forming regular prisms, placed like a colonnade
supporting the spring of the immense vault, an admirable specimen
of natural architecture.  Between the blocks of basalt wound long
streams of lava, long since grown cold, encrusted with bituminous rays;
and in some places there were spread large carpets of sulphur.
A more powerful light shone through the upper crater, shedding a
vague glimmer over these volcanic depressions for ever buried
in the bosom of this extinguished mountain.  But our upward march
was soon stopped at a height of about two hundred and fifty feet
by impassable obstacles.  There was a complete vaulted arch
overhanging us, and our ascent was changed to a circular walk.
At the last change vegetable life began to struggle with the mineral.
Some shrubs, and even some trees, grew from the fractures of the walls.
I recognised some euphorbias, with the caustic sugar coming
from them; heliotropes, quite incapable of justifying their name,
sadly drooped their clusters of flowers, both their colour
and perfume half gone.  Here and there some chrysanthemums grew
timidly at the foot of an aloe with long, sickly-looking leaves.
But between the streams of lava, I saw some little violets still
slightly perfumed, and I admit that I smelt them with delight.
Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.

We had arrived at the foot of some sturdy dragon-trees,
which had pushed aside the rocks with their strong roots,
when Ned Land exclaimed:

"Ah! sir, a hive! a hive!"

"A hive!"  I replied, with a gesture of incredulity.

"Yes, a hive," repeated the Canadian, "and bees humming round it."

I approached, and was bound to believe my own eyes.  There at a hole bored
in one of the dragon-trees were some thousands of these ingenious insects,
so common in all the Canaries, and whose produce is so much esteemed.
Naturally enough, the Canadian wished to gather the honey, and I could
not well oppose his wish.  A quantity of dry leaves, mixed with sulphur,
he lit with a spark from his flint, and he began to smoke out the bees.
The humming ceased by degrees, and the hive eventually yielded several pounds
of the sweetest honey, with which Ned Land filled his haversack.

"When I have mixed this honey with the paste of the bread-fruit,"
said he, "I shall be able to offer you a succulent cake."

[Transcriber's Note: 'bread-fruit' has been substituted for 
'artocarpus' in this ed.]

"'Pon my word," said Conseil, "it will be gingerbread."

"Never mind the gingerbread," said I; "let us continue our interesting 
walk."

At every turn of the path we were following, the lake appeared
in all its length and breadth.  The lantern lit up the whole
of its peaceable surface, which knew neither ripple nor wave.
The Nautilus remained perfectly immovable.  On the platform,
and on the mountain, the ship's crew were working like black
shadows clearly carved against the luminous atmosphere.
We were now going round the highest crest of the first layers of rock
which upheld the roof.  I then saw that bees were not the only
representatives of the animal kingdom in the interior of this volcano.
Birds of prey hovered here and there in the shadows, or fled from
their nests on the top of the rocks.  There were sparrow hawks,
with white breasts, and kestrels, and down the slopes scampered,
with their long legs, several fine fat bustards.  I leave anyone
to imagine the covetousness of the Canadian at the sight of this
savoury game, and whether he did not regret having no gun.
But he did his best to replace the lead by stones, and, after several
fruitless attempts, he succeeded in wounding a magnificent bird.
To say that he risked his life twenty times before reaching
it is but the truth; but he managed so well that the creature
joined the honey-cakes in his bag.  We were now obliged to
descend toward the shore, the crest becoming impracticable.
Above us the crater seemed to gape like the mouth of a well.
From this place the sky could be clearly seen, and clouds,
dissipated by the west wind, leaving behind them, even on the summit
of the mountain, their misty remnants--certain proof that they
were only moderately high, for the volcano did not rise more than
eight hundred feet above the level of the ocean.  Half an hour
after the Canadian's last exploit we had regained the inner shore.
Here the flora was represented by large carpets of marine crystal,
a little umbelliferous plant very good to pickle, which also bears the name
of pierce-stone and sea-fennel. Conseil gathered some bundles of it.
As to the fauna, it might be counted by thousands of crustacea
of all sorts, lobsters, crabs, spider-crabs, chameleon shrimps,
and a large number of shells, rockfish, and limpets.  Three-quarters of
an hour later we had finished our circuitous walk and were on board.
The crew had just finished loading the sodium, and the Nautilus
could have left that instant.  But Captain Nemo gave no order.
Did he wish to wait until night, and leave the submarine passage secretly?
Perhaps so.  Whatever it might be, the next day, the Nautilus,
having left its port, steered clear of all land at a few yards beneath
the waves of the Atlantic.



CHAPTER XI

THE SARGASSO SEA

That day the Nautilus crossed a singular part of the Atlantic Ocean.
No one can be ignorant of the existence of a current of warm
water known by the name of the Gulf Stream.  After leaving
the Gulf of Florida, we went in the direction of Spitzbergen.
But before entering the Gulf of Mexico, about 45@ of N. lat., this
current divides into two arms, the principal one going towards
the coast of Ireland and Norway, whilst the second bends to the south
about the height of the Azores; then, touching the African shore,
and describing a lengthened oval, returns to the Antilles.
This second arm--it is rather a collar than an arm--surrounds with its
circles of warm water that portion of the cold, quiet, immovable ocean
called the Sargasso Sea, a perfect lake in the open Atlantic:
it takes no less than three years for the great current to pass round it.
Such was the region the Nautilus was now visiting, a perfect meadow,
a close carpet of seaweed, fucus, and tropical berries, so thick and so
compact that the stem of a vessel could hardly tear its way through it.
And Captain Nemo, not wishing to entangle his screw in this herbaceous mass,
kept some yards beneath the surface of the waves.  The name Sargasso
comes from the Spanish word "sargazzo" which signifies kelp.
This kelp, or berry-plant, is the principal formation of this immense bank.
And this is the reason why these plants unite in the peaceful basin
of the Atlantic.  The only explanation which can be given, he says,
seems to me to result from the experience known to all the world.
Place in a vase some fragments of cork or other floating body,
and give to the water in the vase a circular movement,
the scattered fragments will unite in a group in the centre of
the liquid surface, that is to say, in the part least agitated.
In the phenomenon we are considering, the Atlantic is the vase,
the Gulf Stream the circular current, and the Sargasso Sea the central
point at which the floating bodies unite.

I share Maury's opinion, and I was able to study the phenomenon
in the very midst, where vessels rarely penetrate.  Above us floated
products of all kinds, heaped up among these brownish plants;
trunks of trees torn from the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, and floated
by the Amazon or the Mississippi; numerous wrecks, remains of keels,
or ships' bottoms, side-planks stove in, and so weighted with shells
and barnacles that they could not again rise to the surface.
And time will one day justify Maury's other opinion, that these
substances thus accumulated for ages will become petrified by
the action of the water and will then form inexhaustible coal-mines--
a precious reserve prepared by far-seeing Nature for the moment
when men shall have exhausted the mines of continents.

In the midst of this inextricable mass of plants and sea weed,
I noticed some charming pink halcyons and actiniae, with their long
tentacles trailing after them, and medusae, green, red, and blue.

All the day of the 22nd of February we passed in the Sargasso Sea,
where such fish as are partial to marine plants find abundant nourishment.
The next, the ocean had returned to its accustomed aspect.
From this time for nineteen days, from the 23rd of February to the 12th
of March, the Nautilus kept in the middle of the Atlantic, carrying us
at a constant speed of a hundred leagues in twenty-four hours.
Captain Nemo evidently intended accomplishing his submarine programme,
and I imagined that he intended, after doubling Cape Horn, to return
to the Australian seas of the Pacific.  Ned Land had cause for fear.
In these large seas, void of islands, we could not attempt to leave
the boat.  Nor had we any means of opposing Captain Nemo's will.
Our only course was to submit; but what we could neither gain by force
nor cunning, I liked to think might be obtained by persuasion.
This voyage ended, would he not consent to restore our liberty,
under an oath never to reveal his existence?--an oath of honour which we
should have religiously kept.  But we must consider that delicate
question with the Captain.  But was I free to claim this liberty?
Had he not himself said from the beginning, in the firmest manner,
that the secret of his life exacted from him our lasting imprisonment
on board the Nautilus?  And would not my four months' silence appear
to him a tacit acceptance of our situation?  And would not a return
to the subject result in raising suspicions which might be hurtful
to our projects, if at some future time a favourable opportunity offered
to return to them?

During the nineteen days mentioned above, no incident
of any kind happened to signalise our voyage.  I saw little
of the Captain; he was at work.  In the library I often found
his books left open, especially those on natural history.
My work on submarine depths, conned over by him, was covered
with marginal notes, often contradicting my theories and systems;
but the Captain contented himself with thus purging my work;
it was very rare for him to discuss it with me.
Sometimes I heard the melancholy tones of his organ;
but only at night, in the midst of the deepest obscurity,
when the Nautilus slept upon the deserted ocean.  During this part
of our voyage we sailed whole days on the surface of the waves.
The sea seemed abandoned.  A few sailing-vessels, on
the road to India, were making for the Cape of Good Hope.
One day we were followed by the boats of a whaler, who, no doubt,
took us for some enormous whale of great price; but Captain
Nemo did not wish the worthy fellows to lose their time
and trouble, so ended the chase by plunging under the water.
Our navigation continued until the 13th of March;
that day the Nautilus was employed in taking soundings,
which greatly interested me.  We had then made about 13,000
leagues since our departure from the high seas of the Pacific.
The bearings gave us 45@ 37' S. lat., and 37@ 53' W. long.
It was the same water in which Captain Denham of the Herald
sounded 7,000 fathoms without finding the bottom.
There, too, Lieutenant Parker, of the American frigate Congress,
could not touch the bottom with 15,140 fathoms.
Captain Nemo intended seeking the bottom of the ocean by a
diagonal sufficiently lengthened by means of lateral planes
placed at an angle of 45@ with the water-line of the Nautilus.
Then the screw set to work at its maximum speed, its four
blades beating the waves with in describable force.
Under this powerful pressure, the hull of the Nautilus quivered
like a sonorous chord and sank regularly under the water.

At 7,000 fathoms I saw some blackish tops rising from the midst of the waters;
but these summits might belong to high mountains like the Himalayas or
Mont Blanc, even higher; and the depth of the abyss remained incalculable.
The Nautilus descended still lower, in spite of the great pressure.
I felt the steel plates tremble at the fastenings of the bolts;
its bars bent, its partitions groaned; the windows of the saloon
seemed to curve under the pressure of the waters.  And this firm
structure would doubtless have yielded, if, as its Captain had said,
it had not been capable of resistance like a solid block.  We had attained
a depth of 16,000 yards (four leagues), and the sides of the Nautilus
then bore a pressure of 1,600 atmospheres, that is to say, 3,200 lb.
to each square two-fifths of an inch of its surface.

"What a situation to be in!"  I exclaimed.  "To overrun these deep regions
where man has never trod!  Look, Captain, look at these magnificent rocks,
these uninhabited grottoes, these lowest receptacles of the globe,
where life is no longer possible!  What unknown sights are here!
Why should we be unable to preserve a remembrance of them?"

"Would you like to carry away more than the remembrance?"
said Captain Nemo.

"What do you mean by those words?"

"I mean to say that nothing is easier than to make a photographic
view of this submarine region."

I had not time to express my surprise at this new proposition, when,
at Captain Nemo's call, an objective was brought into the saloon.
Through the widely-opened panel, the liquid mass was bright with electricity,
which was distributed with such uniformity that not a shadow, not a gradation,
was to be seen in our manufactured light.  The Nautilus remained motionless,
the force of its screw subdued by the inclination of its planes:
the instrument was propped on the bottom of the oceanic site, and in a few
seconds we had obtained a perfect negative.

But, the operation being over, Captain Nemo said, "Let us go up;
we must not abuse our position, nor expose the Nautilus too long
to such great pressure."

"Go up again!"  I exclaimed.

"Hold well on."

I had not time to understand why the Captain cautioned me thus, when I
was thrown forward on to the carpet.  At a signal from the Captain,
its screw was shipped, and its blades raised vertically; the Nautilus
shot into the air like a balloon, rising with stunning rapidity,
and cutting the mass of waters with a sonorous agitation.
Nothing was visible; and in four minutes it had shot through the four
leagues which separated it from the ocean, and, after emerging like a
flying-fish, fell, making the waves rebound to an enormous height.



CHAPTER XII

CACHALOTS AND WHALES

During the nights of the 13th and 14th of March, the Nautilus returned
to its southerly course.  I fancied that, when on a level with Cape Horn,
he would turn the helm westward, in order to beat the Pacific seas,
and so complete the tour of the world.  He did nothing of the kind,
but continued on his way to the southern regions.  Where was he going to?
To the pole?  It was madness!  I began to think that the Captain's
temerity justified Ned Land's fears.  For some time past the Canadian
had not spoken to me of his projects of flight; he was less communicative,
almost silent.  I could see that this lengthened imprisonment was
weighing upon him, and I felt that rage was burning within him.
When he met the Captain, his eyes lit up with suppressed anger;
and I feared that his natural violence would lead him into some extreme.
That day, the 14th of March, Conseil and he came to me in my room.
I inquired the cause of their visit.

"A simple question to ask you, sir," replied the Canadian.

"Speak, Ned."

"How many men are there on board the Nautilus, do you think?"

"I cannot tell, my friend."

"I should say that its working does not require a large crew."

"Certainly, under existing conditions, ten men, at the most,
ought to be enough."

"Well, why should there be any more?"

"Why?"  I replied, looking fixedly at Ned Land, whose meaning was easy
to guess.  "Because," I added, "if my surmises are correct, and if I have
well understood the Captain's existence, the Nautilus is not only a vessel:
it is also a place of refuge for those who, like its commander, have broken
every tie upon earth."

"Perhaps so," said Conseil; "but, in any case, the Nautilus can only contain
a certain number of men.  Could not you, sir, estimate their maximum?"

"How, Conseil?"

"By calculation; given the size of the vessel, which you know, sir,
and consequently the quantity of air it contains, knowing also how much
each man expends at a breath, and comparing these results with the fact
that the Nautilus is obliged to go to the surface every twenty-four hours."

Conseil had not finished the sentence before I saw what he was driving at.

"I understand," said I; "but that calculation, though simple enough,
can give but a very uncertain result."

"Never mind," said Ned Land urgently.

"Here it is, then," said I. "In one hour each man consumes the oxygen
contained in twenty gallons of air; and in twenty-four, that contained
in 480 gallons.  We must, therefore find how many times 480 gallons
of air the Nautilus contains."

"Just so," said Conseil.

"Or," I continued, "the size of the Nautilus being 1,500 tons;
and one ton holding 200 gallons, it contains 300,000 gallons
of air, which, divided by 480, gives a quotient of 625.
Which means to say, strictly speaking, that the air contained in
the Nautilus would suffice for 625 men for twenty-four hours."

"Six hundred and twenty-five!" repeated Ned.

"But remember that all of us, passengers, sailors, and officers included,
would not form a tenth part of that number."

"Still too many for three men," murmured Conseil.

The Canadian shook his head, passed his hand across his forehead,
and left the room without answering.

"Will you allow me to make one observation, sir?" said Conseil.
"Poor Ned is longing for everything that he can not have.  His past life
is always present to him; everything that we are forbidden he regrets.
His head is full of old recollections.  And we must understand him.
What has he to do here?  Nothing; he is not learned like you, sir;
and has not the same taste for the beauties of the sea that we have.
He would risk everything to be able to go once more into a tavern
in his own country."

Certainly the monotony on board must seem intolerable to the Canadian,
accustomed as he was to a life of liberty and activity.
Events were rare which could rouse him to any show of spirit; but that day
an event did happen which recalled the bright days of the harpooner.
About eleven in the morning, being on the surface of the ocean,
the Nautilus fell in with a troop of whales--an encounter which did
not astonish me, knowing that these creatures, hunted to death,
had taken refuge in high latitudes.

We were seated on the platform, with a quiet sea.  The month of October
in those latitudes gave us some lovely autumnal days.  It was the Canadian--
he could not be mistaken--who signalled a whale on the eastern horizon.
Looking attentively, one might see its black back rise and fall with the waves
five miles from the Nautilus.

"Ah!" exclaimed Ned Land, "if I was on board a whaler, now such
a meeting would give me pleasure.  It is one of large size.
See with what strength its blow-holes throw up columns of air an steam!
Confound it, why am I bound to these steel plates?"

"What, Ned," said I, "you have not forgotten your old ideas of fishing?"

"Can a whale-fisher ever forget his old trade, sir?  Can he ever
tire of the emotions caused by such a chase?"

"You have never fished in these seas, Ned?"

"Never, sir; in the northern only, and as much in Behring
as in Davis Straits."

"Then the southern whale is still unknown to you.  It is the Greenland
whale you have hunted up to this time, and that would not risk passing
through the warm waters of the equator.  Whales are localised,
according to their kinds, in certain seas which they never leave.
And if one of these creatures went from Behring to Davis Straits,
it must be simply because there is a passage from one sea to the other,
either on the American or the Asiatic side."

"In that case, as I have never fished in these seas, I do not know
the kind of whale frequenting them!"

"I have told you, Ned."

"A greater reason for making their acquaintance," said Conseil.

"Look! look!" exclaimed the Canadian, "they approach:
they aggravate me; they know that I cannot get at them!"

Ned stamped his feet.  His hand trembled, as he grasped an imaginary harpoon.

"Are these cetaceans as large as those of the northern seas?" asked he.

"Very nearly, Ned."

"Because I have seen large whales, sir, whales measuring a hundred feet.
I have even been told that those of Hullamoch and Umgallick,
of the Aleutian Islands, are sometimes a hundred and fifty feet long."

"That seems to me exaggeration. These creatures are only
balaeaopterons, provided with dorsal fins; and, like the cachalots,
are generally much smaller than the Greenland whale."

"Ah!" exclaimed the Canadian, whose eyes had never left the ocean,
"they are coming nearer; they are in the same water as the Nautilus."

Then, returning to the conversation, he said:

"You spoke of the cachalot as a small creature.
I have heard of gigantic ones.  They are intelligent cetacea.
It is said of some that they cover themselves with seaweed and fucus,
and then are taken for islands.  People encamp upon them,
and settle there; lights a fire----"

"And build houses," said Conseil.

"Yes, joker," said Ned Land.  "And one fine day the creature plunges,
carrying with it all the inhabitants to the bottom of the sea."

"Something like the travels of Sinbad the Sailor," I replied, laughing.

"Ah!" suddenly exclaimed Ned Land, "it is not one whale;
there are ten--there are twenty--it is a whole troop!
And I not able to do anything! hands and feet tied!"

"But, friend Ned," said Conseil, "why do you not ask Captain
Nemo's permission to chase them?"

Conseil had not finished his sentence when Ned Land had
lowered himself through the panel to seek the Captain.
A few minutes afterwards the two appeared together on the platform.

Captain Nemo watched the troop of cetacea playing on the waters
about a mile from the Nautilus.

"They are southern whales," said he; "there goes the fortune
of a whole fleet of whalers."

"Well, sir," asked the Canadian, "can I not chase them,
if only to remind me of my old trade of harpooner?"

"And to what purpose?" replied Captain Nemo; "only to destroy!
We have nothing to do with the whale-oil on board."

"But, sir," continued the Canadian, "in the Red Sea you allowed
us to follow the dugong."

"Then it was to procure fresh meat for my crew.  Here it would
be killing for killing's sake.  I know that is a privilege
reserved for man, but I do not approve of such murderous pastime.
In destroying the southern whale (like the Greenland whale,
an inoffensive creature), your traders do a culpable action,
Master Land.  They have already depopulated the whole of
Baffin's Bay, and are annihilating a class of useful animals.
Leave the unfortunate cetacea alone.  They have plenty
of natural enemies--cachalots, swordfish, and sawfish--
without you troubling them."

The Captain was right.  The barbarous and inconsiderate greed of these
fishermen will one day cause the disappearance of the last whale
in the ocean.  Ned Land whistled "Yankee-doodle" between his teeth,
thrust his hands into his pockets, and turned his back upon us.
But Captain Nemo watched the troop of cetacea, and, addressing me, said:

"I was right in saying that whales had natural enemies enough,
without counting man.  These will have plenty to do before long.
Do you see, M. Aronnax, about eight miles to leeward,
those blackish moving points?"

"Yes, Captain," I replied.

"Those are cachalots--terrible animals, which I have met in troops of two
or three hundred.  As to those, they are cruel, mischievous creatures;
they would be right in exterminating them."

The Canadian turned quickly at the last words.

"Well, Captain," said he, "it is still time, in the interest
of the whales."

"It is useless to expose one's self, Professor.  The Nautilus
will disperse them.  It is armed with a steel spur as good
as Master Land's harpoon, I imagine."

The Canadian did not put himself out enough to shrug his shoulders.
Attack cetacea with blows of a spur!  Who had ever heard of such a thing?

"Wait, M. Aronnax," said Captain Nemo.  "We will show you something you
have never yet seen.  We have no pity for these ferocious creatures.
They are nothing but mouth and teeth."

Mouth and teeth!  No one could better describe the macrocephalous
cachalot, which is sometimes more than seventy-five feet long.
Its enormous head occupies one-third of its entire body.
Better armed than the whale, whose upper jaw is furnished only
with whalebone, it is supplied with twenty-five large tusks,
about eight inches long, cylindrical and conical at the top,
each weighing two pounds.  It is in the upper part of this
enormous head, in great cavities divided by cartilages, that is
to be found from six to eight hundred pounds of that precious
oil called spermaceti.  The cachalot is a disagreeable creature,
more tadpole than fish, according to Fredol's description.
It is badly formed, the whole of its left side being
(if we may say it), a "failure," and being only able to see
with its right eye.  But the formidable troop was nearing us.
They had seen the whales and were preparing to attack them.
One could judge beforehand that the cachalots would be victorious,
not only because they were better built for attack than
their inoffensive adversaries, but also because they could
remain longer under water without coming to the surface.
There was only just time to go to the help of the whales.
The Nautilus went under water.  Conseil, Ned Land,
and I took our places before the window in the saloon,
and Captain Nemo joined the pilot in his cage to work
his apparatus as an engine of destruction.  Soon I felt
the beatings of the screw quicken, and our speed increased.
The battle between the cachalots and the whales had already begun
when the Nautilus arrived.  They did not at first show any fear
at the sight of this new monster joining in the conflict.
But they soon had to guard against its blows.  What a battle!
The Nautilus was nothing but a formidable harpoon,
brandished by the hand of its Captain.  It hurled itself against
the fleshy mass, passing through from one part to the other,
leaving behind it two quivering halves of the animal.
It could not feel the formidable blows from their tails upon
its sides, nor the shock which it produced itself, much more.
One cachalot killed, it ran at the next, tacked on the spot
that it might not miss its prey, going forwards and backwards,
answering to its helm, plunging when the cetacean dived into
the deep waters, coming up with it when it returned to the surface,
striking it front or sideways, cutting or tearing in all
directions and at any pace, piercing it with its terrible spur.
What carnage!  What a noise on the surface of the waves!
What sharp hissing, and what snorting peculiar to
these enraged animals!  In the midst of these waters,
generally so peaceful, their tails made perfect billows.
For one hour this wholesale massacre continued, from which the
cachalots could not escape.  Several times ten or twelve united
tried to crush the Nautilus by their weight.  From the window
we could see their enormous mouths, studded with tusks,
and their formidable eyes.  Ned Land could not contain himself;
he threatened and swore at them.  We could feel them clinging
to our vessel like dogs worrying a wild boar in a copse.
But the Nautilus, working its screw, carried them here and there,
or to the upper levels of the ocean, without caring for their
enormous weight, nor the powerful strain on the vessel.
At length the mass of cachalots broke up, the waves
became quiet, and I felt that we were rising to the surface.
The panel opened, and we hurried on to the platform.
The sea was covered with mutilated bodies.  A formidable explosion
could not have divided and torn this fleshy mass with more violence.
We were floating amid gigantic bodies, bluish on the back
and white underneath, covered with enormous protuberances.
Some terrified cachalots were flying towards the horizon.
The waves were dyed red for several miles, and the Nautilus
floated in a sea of blood:  Captain Nemo joined
us.

"Well, Master Land?" said he.

"Well, sir," replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had somewhat calmed;
"it is a terrible spectacle, certainly.  But I am not a butcher.
I am a hunter, and I call this a butchery."

"It is a massacre of mischievous creatures," replied the Captain;
"and the Nautilus is not a butcher's knife."

"I like my harpoon better," said the Canadian.

"Every one to his own," answered the Captain, looking fixedly
at Ned Land.

I feared he would commit some act of violence, which would end
in sad consequences.  But his anger was turned by the sight
of a whale which the Nautilus had just come up with.
The creature had not quite escaped from the cachalot's teeth.
I recognised the southern whale by its flat head,
which is entirely black.  Anatomically, it is distinguished
from the white whale and the North Cape whale by the seven
cervical vertebrae, and it has two more ribs than its congeners.
The unfortunate cetacean was lying on its side,
riddled with holes from the bites, and quite dead.
From its mutilated fin still hung a young whale which it could
not save from the massacre.  Its open mouth let the water flow
in and out, murmuring like the waves breaking on the shore.
Captain Nemo steered close to the corpse of the creature.
Two of his men mounted its side, and I saw, not without surprise,
that they were drawing from its breasts all the milk which
they contained, that is to say, about two or three tons.
The Captain offered me a cup of the milk, which was still warm.
I could not help showing my repugnance to the drink;
but he assured me that it was excellent, and not to be distinguished
from cow's milk.  I tasted it, and was of his opinion.
It was a useful reserve to us, for in the shape of salt butter
or cheese it would form an agreeable variety from our ordinary food.
From that day I noticed with uneasiness that Ned Land's ill-will
towards Captain Nemo increased, and I resolved to watch the
Canadian's gestures closely.



CHAPTER XIII

THE ICEBERG

The Nautilus was steadily pursuing its southerly course,
following the fiftieth meridian with considerable speed.
Did he wish to reach the pole?  I did not think so,
for every attempt to reach that point had hitherto failed.
Again, the season was far advanced, for in the Antarctic regions
the 13th of March corresponds with the 13th of September
of northern regions, which begin at the equinoctial season.
On the 14th of March I saw floating ice in latitude 55@,
merely pale bits of debris from twenty to twenty-five
feet long, forming banks over which the sea curled.
The Nautilus remained on the surface of the ocean.
Ned Land, who had fished in the Arctic Seas, was familiar with
its icebergs; but Conseil and I admired them for the first time.
In the atmosphere towards the southern horizon stretched
a white dazzling band.  English whalers have given it
the name of "ice blink."  However thick the clouds may be,
it is always visible, and announces the presence of an ice
pack or bank.  Accordingly, larger blocks soon appeared,
whose brilliancy changed with the caprices of the fog.
Some of these masses showed green veins, as if long undulating
lines had been traced with sulphate of copper; others resembled
enormous amethysts with the light shining through them.
Some reflected the light of day upon a thousand crystal facets.
Others shaded with vivid calcareous reflections resembled a perfect
town of marble.  The more we neared the south the more these floating
islands increased both in number and importance.

At 60@ lat.  every pass had disappeared.  But, seeking carefully,
Captain Nemo soon found a narrow opening, through which he boldly slipped,
knowing, however, that it would close behind him.  Thus, guided by this
clever hand, the Nautilus passed through all the ice with a precision
which quite charmed Conseil; icebergs or mountains, ice-fields or
smooth plains, seeming to have no limits, drift-ice or floating ice-packs,
plains broken up, called palchs when they are circular, and streams
when they are made up of long strips.  The temperature was very low;
the thermometer exposed to the air marked 2@ or 3@ below zero, but we
were warmly clad with fur, at the expense of the sea-bear and seal.
The interior of the Nautilus, warmed regularly by its electric apparatus,
defied the most intense cold.  Besides, it would only have been necessary
to go some yards beneath the waves to find a more bearable temperature.
Two months earlier we should have had perpetual daylight in these latitudes;
but already we had had three or four hours of night, and by and by there
would be six months of darkness in these circumpolar regions.  On the 15th
of March we were in the latitude of New Shetland and South Orkney.
The Captain told me that formerly numerous tribes of seals inhabited them;
but that English and American whalers, in their rage for destruction,
massacred both old and young; thus, where there was once life and animation,
they had left silence and death.

About eight o'clock on the morning of the 16th of March the Nautilus,
following the fifty-fifth meridian, cut the Antarctic polar circle.
Ice surrounded us on all sides, and closed the horizon.
But Captain Nemo went from one opening to another, still going higher.
I cannot express my astonishment at the beauties of these new regions.
The ice took most surprising forms.  Here the grouping formed an
oriental town, with innumerable mosques and minarets; there a fallen
city thrown to the earth, as it were, by some convulsion of nature.
The whole aspect was constantly changed by the oblique rays
of the sun, or lost in the greyish fog amidst hurricanes of snow.
Detonations and falls were heard on all sides, great overthrows of icebergs,
which altered the whole landscape like a diorama.  Often seeing no exit,
I thought we were definitely prisoners; but, instinct guiding him
at the slightest indication, Captain Nemo would discover a new pass.
He was never mistaken when he saw the thin threads of bluish water
trickling along the ice-fields; and I had no doubt that he had
already ventured into the midst of these Antarctic seas before.
On the 16th of March, however, the ice-fields absolutely blocked our road.
It was not the iceberg itself, as yet, but vast fields cemented
by the cold.  But this obstacle could not stop Captain Nemo:
he hurled himself against it with frightful violence.  The Nautilus entered
the brittle mass like a wedge, and split it with frightful crackings.
It was the battering ram of the ancients hurled by infinite strength.
The ice, thrown high in the air, fell like hail around us.
By its own power of impulsion our apparatus made a canal for itself;
some times carried away by its own impetus, it lodged on the ice-field,
crushing it with its weight, and sometimes buried beneath it,
dividing it by a simple pitching movement, producing large rents in it.
Violent gales assailed us at this time, accompanied by thick fogs,
through which, from one end of the platform to the other, we could
see nothing.  The wind blew sharply from all parts of the compass,
and the snow lay in such hard heaps that we had to break it with
blows of a pickaxe.  The temperature was always at 5@ below zero;
every outward part of the Nautilus was covered with ice.
A rigged vessel would have been entangled in the blocked up gorges.
A vessel without sails, with electricity for its motive power,
and wanting no coal, could alone brave such high latitudes.  At length,
on the 18th of March, after many useless assaults, the Nautilus was
positively blocked.  It was no longer either streams, packs, or ice-fields,
but an interminable and immovable barrier, formed by mountains soldered
together.

"An iceberg!" said the Canadian to me.

I knew that to Ned Land, as well as to all other navigators who had
preceded us, this was an inevitable obstacle.  The sun appearing for an
instant at noon, Captain Nemo took an observation as near as possible,
which gave our situation at 51@ 30' long.  and 67@ 39' of S. lat.
We had advanced one degree more in this Antarctic region.
Of the liquid surface of the sea there was no longer a glimpse.
Under the spur of the Nautilus lay stretched a vast plain,
entangled with confused blocks.  Here and there sharp points and slender
needles rising to a height of 200 feet; further on a steep shore,
hewn as it were with an axe and clothed with greyish tints;
huge mirrors, reflecting a few rays of sunshine, half drowned in the fog.
And over this desolate face of nature a stern silence reigned,
scarcely broken by the flapping of the wings of petrels and puffins.
Everything was frozen--even the noise.  The Nautilus was then
obliged to stop in its adventurous course amid these fields of ice.
In spite of our efforts, in spite of the powerful means
employed to break up the ice, the Nautilus remained immovable.
Generally, when we can proceed no further, we have return still
open to us; but here return was as impossible as advance,
for every pass had closed behind us; and for the few moments
when we were stationary, we were likely to be entirely blocked,
which did indeed happen about two o'clock in the afternoon,
the fresh ice forming around its sides with astonishing rapidity.
I was obliged to admit that Captain Nemo was more than imprudent.
I was on the platform at that moment.  The Captain had been observing
our situation for some time past, when he said to me:

"Well, sir, what do you think of this?"

"I think that we are caught, Captain."

"So, M. Aronnax, you really think that the Nautilus cannot disengage itself?"

"With difficulty, Captain; for the season is already too far
advanced for you to reckon on the breaking of the ice."

"Ah! sir," said Captain Nemo, in an ironical tone, "you will always
be the same.  You see nothing but difficulties and obstacles.
I affirm that not only can the Nautilus disengage itself,
but also that it can go further still."

"Further to the South?"  I asked, looking at the Captain.

"Yes, sir; it shall go to the pole."

"To the pole!"  I exclaimed, unable to repress a gesture of incredulity.

"Yes," replied the Captain, coldly, "to the Antarctic pole--
to that unknown point from whence springs every meridian of the globe.
You know whether I can do as I please with the Nautilus!"

Yes, I knew that.  I knew that this man was bold, even to rashness.
But to conquer those obstacles which bristled round the South Pole,
rendering it more inaccessible than the North, which had not yet
been reached by the boldest navigators--was it not a mad enterprise,
one which only a maniac would have conceived?  It then came into
my head to ask Captain Nemo if he had ever discovered that pole
which had never yet been trodden by a human creature?

"No, sir," he replied; "but we will discover it together.
Where others have failed, I will not fail.  I have never yet led
my Nautilus so far into southern seas; but, I repeat, it shall
go further yet."

"I can well believe you, Captain," said I, in a slightly ironical tone.
"I believe you!  Let us go ahead!  There are no obstacles for us!
Let us smash this iceberg!  Let us blow it up; and, if it resists,
let us give the Nautilus wings to fly over it!"

"Over it, sir!" said Captain Nemo, quietly; "no, not over it,
but under it!"

"Under it!"  I exclaimed, a sudden idea of the Captain's projects flashing
upon my mind.  I understood; the wonderful qualities of the Nautilus were
going to serve us in this superhuman enterprise.

"I see we are beginning to understand one another, sir," said the Captain,
half smiling.  "You begin to see the possibility--I should say the success--
of this attempt.  That which is impossible for an ordinary vessel is easy
to the Nautilus.  If a continent lies before the pole, it must stop before
the continent; but if, on the contrary, the pole is washed by open sea,
it will go even to the pole."

"Certainly," said I, carried away by the Captain's reasoning;
"if the surface of the sea is solidified by the ice,
the lower depths are free by the Providential law which has
placed the maximum of density of the waters of the ocean one
degree higher than freezing-point; and, if I am not mistaken,
the portion of this iceberg which is above the water is as one
to four to that which is below."

"Very nearly, sir; for one foot of iceberg above the sea there
are three below it.  If these ice mountains are not more than 300
feet above the surface, they are not more than 900 beneath.
And what are 900 feet to the Nautilus?"

"Nothing, sir."

"It could even seek at greater depths that uniform temperature
of sea-water, and there brave with impunity the thirty or forty
degrees of surface cold."

"Just so, sir--just so," I replied, getting animated.

"The only difficulty," continued Captain Nemo, "is that of remaining
several days without renewing our provision of air."

"Is that all?  The Nautilus has vast reservoirs; we can fill them,
and they will supply us with all the oxygen we want."

"Well thought of, M. Aronnax," replied the Captain, smiling.
"But, not wishing you to accuse me of rashness, I will first give
you all my objections."

"Have you any more to make?"

"Only one.  It is possible, if the sea exists at the South Pole,
that it may be covered; and, consequently, we shall be unable
to come to the surface."

"Good, sir! but do you forget that the Nautilus is armed with a powerful spur,
and could we not send it diagonally against these fields of ice, which would
open at the shocks."

"Ah! sir, you are full of ideas to-day."

"Besides, Captain," I added, enthusiastically, "why should we
not find the sea open at the South Pole as well as at the North?
The frozen poles of the earth do not coincide, either in the southern
or in the northern regions; and, until it is proved to the contrary,
we may suppose either a continent or an ocean free from ice at these two
points of the globe."

"I think so too, M. Aronnax," replied Captain Nemo.
"I only wish you to observe that, after having made so many
objections to my project, you are now crushing me with arguments
in its favour!"

The preparations for this audacious attempt now began.
The powerful pumps of the Nautilus were working air into the
reservoirs and storing it at high pressure.  About four o'clock,
Captain Nemo announced the closing of the panels on the platform.
I threw one last look at the massive iceberg which we were going
to cross.  The weather was clear, the atmosphere pure enough,
the cold very great, being 12@ below zero; but, the wind
having gone down, this temperature was not so unbearable.
About ten men mounted the sides of the Nautilus, armed with
pickaxes to break the ice around the vessel, which was soon free.
The operation was quickly performed, for the fresh ice was still
very thin.  We all went below.  The usual reservoirs were filled
with the newly-liberated water, and the Nautilus soon descended.
I had taken my place with Conseil in the saloon; through the open
window we could see the lower beds of the Southern Ocean.
The thermometer went up, the needle of the compass deviated
on the dial.  At about 900 feet, as Captain Nemo had foreseen,
we were floating beneath the undulating bottom of the iceberg.
But the Nautilus went lower still--it went to the depth of four
hundred fathoms.  The temperature of the water at the surface
showed twelve degrees, it was now only ten; we had gained two.
I need not say the temperature of the Nautilus was raised by its heating
apparatus to a much higher degree; every manoeuvre was accomplished
with wonderful precision.

"We shall pass it, if you please, sir," said Conseil.

"I believe we shall," I said, in a tone of firm conviction.

In this open sea, the Nautilus had taken its course direct
to the pole, without leaving the fifty-second meridian.
From 67@ 30' to 90@, twenty-two degrees and a half of latitude
remained to travel; that is, about five hundred leagues.
The Nautilus kept up a mean speed of twenty-six miles an hour--
the speed of an express train.  If that was kept up, in forty hours we
should reach the pole.

For a part of the night the novelty of the situation kept us
at the window.  The sea was lit with the electric lantern; but it
was deserted; fishes did not sojourn in these imprisoned waters;
they only found there a passage to take them from the
Antarctic Ocean to the open polar sea.  Our pace was rapid;
we could feel it by the quivering of the long steel body.
About two in the morning I took some hours' repose, and Conseil
did the same.  In crossing the waist I did not meet Captain Nemo:
I supposed him to be in the pilot's cage.  The next morning,
the 19th of March, I took my post once more in the saloon.
The electric log told me that the speed of the Nautilus
had been slackened.  It was then going towards the surface;
but prudently emptying its reservoirs very slowly.
My heart beat fast.  Were we going to emerge and regain the open
polar atmosphere?  No!  A shock told me that the Nautilus
had struck the bottom of the iceberg, still very thick,
judging from the deadened sound.  We had in deed "struck," to use
a sea expression, but in an inverse sense, and at a thousand
feet deep.  This would give three thousand feet of ice above us;
one thousand being above the water-mark. The iceberg was then
higher than at its borders--not a very reassuring fact.
Several times that day the Nautilus tried again, and every
time it struck the wall which lay like a ceiling above it.
Sometimes it met with but 900 yards, only 200 of which
rose above the surface.  It was twice the height it was
when the Nautilus had gone under the waves.  I carefully
noted the different depths, and thus obtained a submarine
profile of the chain as it was developed under the water.
That night no change had taken place in our situation.
Still ice between four and five hundred yards in depth!
It was evidently diminishing, but, still, what a thickness
between us and the surface of the ocean!  It was then eight.
According to the daily custom on board the Nautilus,
its air should have been renewed four hours ago;
but I did not suffer much, although Captain Nemo had not yet
made any demand upon his reserve of oxygen.  My sleep was
painful that night; hope and fear besieged me by turns:
I rose several times.  The groping of the Nautilus continued.
About three in the morning, I noticed that the lower surface
of the iceberg was only about fifty feet deep.  One hundred
and fifty feet now separated us from the surface of the waters.
The iceberg was by degrees becoming an ice-field, the mountain
a plain.  My eyes never left the manometer.  We were still rising
diagonally to the surface, which sparkled under the electric rays.
The iceberg was stretching both above and beneath into
lengthening slopes; mile after mile it was getting thinner.
At length, at six in the morning of that memorable day,
the 19th of March, the door of the saloon opened, and Captain Nemo
appeared.

"The sea is open!!" was all he said.



CHAPTER XIV

THE SOUTH POLE

I rushed on to the platform.  Yes! the open sea, with but a few
scattered pieces of ice and moving icebergs--a long stretch of sea;
a world of birds in the air, and myriads of fishes under those waters,
which varied from intense blue to olive green, according to the bottom.
The thermometer marked 3@ C. above zero.  It was comparatively spring,
shut up as we were behind this iceberg, whose lengthened mass was dimly
seen on our northern horizon.

"Are we at the pole?"  I asked the Captain, with a beating heart.

"I do not know," he replied.  "At noon I will take our bearings."

"But will the sun show himself through this fog?" said I,
looking at the leaden sky.

"However little it shows, it will be enough," replied the Captain.

About ten miles south a solitary island rose to a height
of one hundred and four yards.  We made for it, but carefully,
for the sea might be strewn with banks.  One hour afterwards we
had reached it, two hours later we had made the round of it.
It measured four or five miles in circumference.
A narrow canal separated it from a considerable stretch of land,
perhaps a continent, for we could not see its limits.
The existence of this land seemed to give some colour to Maury's theory.
The ingenious American has remarked that, between the South Pole
and the sixtieth parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice
of enormous size, which is never met with in the North Atlantic.
From this fact he has drawn the conclusion that the Antarctic
Circle encloses considerable continents, as icebergs cannot form
in open sea, but only on the coasts.  According to these calculations,
the mass of ice surrounding the southern pole forms a vast cap,
the circumference of which must be, at least, 2,500 miles.
But the Nautilus, for fear of running aground, had stopped
about three cable-lengths from a strand over which reared
a superb heap of rocks.  The boat was launched; the Captain,
two of his men, bearing instruments, Conseil, and myself were in it.
It was ten in the morning.  I had not seen Ned Land.
Doubtless the Canadian did not wish to admit the presence of
the South Pole.  A few strokes of the oar brought us to the sand,
where we ran ashore.  Conseil was going to jump on to the land,
when I held him back.

"Sir," said I to Captain Nemo, "to you belongs the honour of first setting
foot on this land."

"Yes, sir," said the Captain, "and if I do not hesitate
to tread this South Pole, it is because, up to this time,
no human being has left a trace there."

Saying this, he jumped lightly on to the sand.  His heart beat
with emotion.  He climbed a rock, sloping to a little promontory,
and there, with his arms crossed, mute and motionless, and with an
eager look, he seemed to take possession of these southern regions.
After five minutes passed in this ecstasy, he turned to us.

"When you like, sir."

I landed, followed by Conseil, leaving the two men in the boat.
For a long way the soil was composed of a reddish sandy stone,
something like crushed brick, scoriae, streams of lava,
and pumice-stones. One could not mistake its volcanic origin.
In some parts, slight curls of smoke emitted a sulphurous smell,
proving that the internal fires had lost nothing of their
expansive powers, though, having climbed a high acclivity,
I could see no volcano for a radius of several miles.
We know that in those Antarctic countries, James Ross found
two craters, the Erebus and Terror, in full activity,
on the 167th meridian, latitude 77@ 32'. The vegetation
of this desolate continent seemed to me much restricted.
Some lichens lay upon the black rocks; some microscopic plants,
rudimentary diatomas, a kind of cells placed between two quartz shells;
long purple and scarlet weed, supported on little swimming bladders,
which the breaking of the waves brought to the shore.
These constituted the meagre flora of this region.
The shore was strewn with molluscs, little mussels, and limpets.
I also saw myriads of northern clios, one-and-a-quarter inches long,
of which a whale would swallow a whole world at a mouthful;
and some perfect sea-butterflies, animating the waters on the skirts
of the shore.

There appeared on the high bottoms some coral shrubs,
of the kind which, according to James Ross, live in
the Antarctic seas to the depth of more than 1,000 yards.
Then there were little kingfishers and starfish studding the soil.
But where life abounded most was in the air.  There thousands
of birds fluttered and flew of all kinds, deafening us with
their cries; others crowded the rock, looking at us as we passed
by without fear, and pressing familiarly close by our feet.
There were penguins, so agile in the water, heavy and awkward
as they are on the ground; they were uttering harsh cries,
a large assembly, sober in gesture, but extravagant in clamour.
Albatrosses passed in the air, the expanse of their wings being
at least four yards and a half, and justly called the vultures
of the ocean; some gigantic petrels, and some damiers, a kind
of small duck, the underpart of whose body is black and white;
then there were a whole series of petrels, some whitish, with
brown-bordered wings, others blue, peculiar to the Antarctic seas,
and so oily, as I told Conseil, that the inhabitants of the Ferroe
Islands had nothing to do before lighting them but to put
a wick in.

"A little more," said Conseil, "and they would be perfect lamps!
After that, we cannot expect Nature to have previously furnished
them with wicks!"

About half a mile farther on the soil was riddled with ruffs'
nests, a sort of laying-ground, out of which many birds were issuing.
Captain Nemo had some hundreds hunted.  They uttered a cry like the braying
of an ass, were about the size of a goose, slate-colour on the body,
white beneath, with a yellow line round their throats; they allowed
themselves to be killed with a stone, never trying to escape.
But the fog did not lift, and at eleven the sun had not yet shown itself.
Its absence made me uneasy.  Without it no observations were possible.
How, then, could we decide whether we had reached the pole?  When I rejoined
Captain Nemo, I found him leaning on a piece of rock, silently watching
the sky.  He seemed impatient and vexed.  But what was to be done?
This rash and powerful man could not command the sun as he did the sea.
Noon arrived without the orb of day showing itself for an instant.
We could not even tell its position behind the curtain of fog; and soon
the fog turned to snow.

"Till to-morrow," said the Captain, quietly, and we returned
to the Nautilus amid these atmospheric disturbances.

The tempest of snow continued till the next day.
It was impossible to remain on the platform.  From the saloon,
where I was taking notes of incidents happening during this
excursion to the polar continent, I could hear the cries of petrels
and albatrosses sporting in the midst of this violent storm.
The Nautilus did not remain motionless, but skirted the coast,
advancing ten miles more to the south in the half-light
left by the sun as it skirted the edge of the horizon.
The next day, the 20th of March, the snow had ceased.
The cold was a little greater, the thermometer showing 2@
below zero.  The fog was rising, and I hoped that that day
our observations might be taken.  Captain Nemo not having
yet appeared, the boat took Conseil and myself to land.
The soil was still of the same volcanic nature;
everywhere were traces of lava, scoriae, and basalt;
but the crater which had vomited them I could not see.
Here, as lower down, this continent was alive with myriads
of birds.  But their rule was now divided with large troops
of sea-mammals, looking at us with their soft eyes.
There were several kinds of seals, some stretched on the earth,
some on flakes of ice, many going in and out of the sea.  They did
not flee at our approach, never having had anything to do with man;
and I reckoned that there were provisions there for hundreds
of vessels.

"Sir," said Conseil, "will you tell me the names of these creatures?"

"They are seals and morses."

It was now eight in the morning.  Four hours remained to us before
the sun could be observed with advantage.  I directed our steps
towards a vast bay cut in the steep granite shore.  There, I can aver
that earth and ice were lost to sight by the numbers of sea-mammals
covering them, and I involuntarily sought for old Proteus,
the mythological shepherd who watched these immense flocks of Neptune.
There were more seals than anything else, forming distinct groups,
male and female, the father watching over his family, the mother
suckling her little ones, some already strong enough to go a few steps.
When they wished to change their place, they took little jumps,
made by the contraction of their bodies, and helped awkwardly enough
by their imperfect fin, which, as with the lamantin, their cousins,
forms a perfect forearm.  I should say that, in the water,
which is their element--the spine of these creatures is flexible;
with smooth and close skin and webbed feet--they swim admirably.
In resting on the earth they take the most graceful attitudes.
Thus the ancients, observing their soft and expressive looks,
which cannot be surpassed by the most beautiful look a woman can give,
their clear voluptuous eyes, their charming positions, and the poetry
of their manners, metamorphosed them, the male into a triton and
the female into a mermaid.  I made Conseil notice the considerable
development of the lobes of the brain in these interesting cetaceans.
No mammal, except man, has such a quantity of brain matter;
they are also capable of receiving a certain amount of education,
are easily domesticated, and I think, with other naturalists,
that if properly taught they would be of great service as fishing-dogs.
The greater part of them slept on the rocks or on the sand.
Amongst these seals, properly so called, which have no external ears
(in which they differ from the otter, whose ears are prominent),
I noticed several varieties of seals about three yards long,
with a white coat, bulldog heads, armed with teeth in both jaws,
four incisors at the top and four at the bottom, and two large
canine teeth in the shape of a fleur-de-lis. Amongst them glided
sea-elephants, a kind of seal, with short, flexible trunks.
The giants of this species measured twenty feet round and ten yards
and a half in length; but they did not move as we approached.

"These creatures are not dangerous?" asked Conseil.

"No; not unless you attack them.  When they have to defend
their young their rage is terrible, and it is not uncommon
for them to break the fishing-boats to pieces."

"They are quite right," said Conseil.

"I do not say they are not."

Two miles farther on we were stopped by the promontory which shelters
the bay from the southerly winds.  Beyond it we heard loud bellowings
such as a troop of ruminants would produce.

"Good!" said Conseil; "a concert of bulls!"

"No; a concert of morses."

"They are fighting!"

"They are either fighting or playing."

We now began to climb the blackish rocks, amid unforeseen stumbles,
and over stones which the ice made slippery.  More than once I rolled
over at the expense of my loins.  Conseil, more prudent or more steady,
did not stumble, and helped me up, saying:

"If, sir, you would have the kindness to take wider steps,
you would preserve your equilibrium better."

Arrived at the upper ridge of the promontory, I saw a vast white
plain covered with morses.  They were playing amongst themselves,
and what we heard were bellowings of pleasure, not of anger.

As I passed these curious animals I could examine them leisurely,
for they did not move.  Their skins were thick and rugged,
of a yellowish tint, approaching to red; their hair was short
and scant.  Some of them were four yards and a quarter long.
Quieter and less timid than their cousins of the north, they did not,
like them, place sentinels round the outskirts of their encampment.
After examining this city of morses, I began to think of returning.
It was eleven o'clock, and, if Captain Nemo found the conditions
favourable for observations, I wished to be present at the operation.
We followed a narrow pathway running along the summit of the steep shore.
At half-past eleven we had reached the place where we landed.
The boat had run aground, bringing the Captain.  I saw him standing on a block
of basalt, his instruments near him, his eyes fixed on the northern horizon,
near which the sun was then describing a lengthened curve.  I took my place
beside him, and waited without speaking.  Noon arrived, and, as before,
the sun did not appear.  It was a fatality.  Observations were still wanting.
If not accomplished to-morrow, we must give up all idea of taking any.
We were indeed exactly at the 20th of March.  To-morrow, the 21st,
would be the equinox; the sun would disappear behind the horizon for
six months, and with its disappearance the long polar night would begin.
Since the September equinox it had emerged from the northern horizon,
rising by lengthened spirals up to the 21st of December.  At this period,
the summer solstice of the northern regions, it had begun to descend;
and to-morrow was to shed its last rays upon them.  I communicated my fears
and observations to Captain Nemo.

"You are right, M. Aronnax," said he; "if to-morrow I cannot take
the altitude of the sun, I shall not be able to do it for six months.
But precisely because chance has led me into these seas on the 21st
of March, my bearings will be easy to take, if at twelve we can
see the sun."

"Why, Captain?"

"Because then the orb of day described such lengthened curves that it
is difficult to measure exactly its height above the horizon,
and grave errors may be made with instruments."

"What will you do then?"

"I shall only use my chronometer," replied Captain Nemo.
"If to-morrow, the 21st of March, the disc of the sun,
allowing for refraction, is exactly cut by the northern horizon,
it will show that I am at the South Pole."

"Just so," said I. "But this statement is not mathematically correct,
because the equinox does not necessarily begin at noon."

"Very likely, sir; but the error will not be a hundred yards
and we do not want more.  Till to-morrow, then!"

Captain Nemo returned on board.  Conseil and I remained to survey
the shore, observing and studying until five o'clock. Then I
went to bed, not, however, without invoking, like the Indian,
the favour of the radiant orb.  The next day, the 21st
of March, at five in the morning, I mounted the platform.
I found Captain Nemo there.

"The weather is lightening a little," said he.  "I have some hope.
After breakfast we will go on shore and choose a post for observation."

That point settled, I sought Ned Land.  I wanted to take him with me.
But the obstinate Canadian refused, and I saw that his taciturnity and his
bad humour grew day by day.  After all, I was not sorry for his obstinacy
under the circumstances.  Indeed, there were too many seals on shore,
and we ought not to lay such temptation in this unreflecting fisherman's way.
Breakfast over, we went on shore.  The Nautilus had gone some miles
further up in the night.  It was a whole league from the coast,
above which reared a sharp peak about five hundred yards high.
The boat took with me Captain Nemo, two men of the crew, and the instruments,
which consisted of a chronometer, a telescope, and a barometer.
While crossing, I saw numerous whales belonging to the three kinds
peculiar to the southern seas; the whale, or the English "right whale,"
which has no dorsal fin; the "humpback," with reeved chest and large,
whitish fins, which, in spite of its name, do not form wings;
and the fin-back, of a yellowish brown, the liveliest of all the cetacea.
This powerful creature is heard a long way off when he throws to a great
height columns of air and vapour, which look like whirlwinds of smoke.
These different mammals were disporting themselves in troops in the
quiet waters; and I could see that this basin of the Antarctic Pole serves
as a place of refuge to the cetacea too closely tracked by the hunters.
I also noticed large medusae floating between the reeds.

At nine we landed; the sky was brightening, the clouds were flying to
the south, and the fog seemed to be leaving the cold surface of the waters.
Captain Nemo went towards the peak, which he doubtless meant
to be his observatory.  It was a painful ascent over the sharp lava
and the pumice-stones, in an atmosphere often impregnated with a
sulphurous smell from the smoking cracks.  For a man unaccustomed
to walk on land, the Captain climbed the steep slopes with an
agility I never saw equalled and which a hunter would have envied.
We were two hours getting to the summit of this peak, which was half
porphyry and half basalt.  From thence we looked upon a vast sea which,
towards the north, distinctly traced its boundary line upon the sky.
At our feet lay fields of dazzling whiteness.  Over our heads
a pale azure, free from fog.  To the north the disc of the sun seemed
like a ball of fire, already horned by the cutting of the horizon.
From the bosom of the water rose sheaves of liquid jets by hundreds.
In the distance lay the Nautilus like a cetacean asleep on the water.
Behind us, to the south and east, an immense country and a chaotic
heap of rocks and ice, the limits of which were not visible.
On arriving at the summit Captain Nemo carefully took the mean height
of the barometer, for he would have to consider that in taking
his observations.  At a quarter to twelve the sun, then seen only
by refraction, looked like a golden disc shedding its last rays upon
this deserted continent and seas which never man had yet ploughed.
Captain Nemo, furnished with a lenticular glass which, by means
of a mirror, corrected the refraction, watched the orb sinking
below the horizon by degrees, following a lengthened diagonal.
I held the chronometer.  My heart beat fast.  If the disappearance of
the half-disc of the sun coincided with twelve o'clock on the chronometer,
we were at the pole itself.

"Twelve!"  I exclaimed.

"The South Pole!" replied Captain Nemo, in a grave voice,
handing me the glass, which showed the orb cut in exactly equal
parts by the horizon.

I looked at the last rays crowning the peak, and the shadows
mounting by degrees up its slopes.  At that moment Captain Nemo,
resting with his hand on my shoulder, said:

"I, Captain Nemo, on this 21st day of March, 1868, have reached the South Pole
on the ninetieth degree; and I take possession of this part of the globe,
equal to one-sixth of the known continents."

"In whose name, Captain?"

"In my own, sir!"

Saying which, Captain Nemo unfurled a black banner, bearing an "N"
in gold quartered on its bunting.  Then, turning towards the orb of day,
whose last rays lapped the horizon of the sea, he exclaimed:

"Adieu, sun!  Disappear, thou radiant orb! rest beneath this open sea,
and let a night of six months spread its shadows over my new domains!"



CHAPTER XV

ACCIDENT OR INCIDENT?

The next day, the 22nd of March, at six in the morning,
preparations for departure were begun.  The last gleams
of twilight were melting into night.  The cold was great,
the constellations shone with wonderful intensity.
In the zenith glittered that wondrous Southern Cross--
the polar bear of Antarctic regions.  The thermometer showed 120
below zero, and when the wind freshened it was most biting.
Flakes of ice increased on the open water.  The sea seemed
everywhere alike.  Numerous blackish patches spread on the surface,
showing the formation of fresh ice.  Evidently the southern basin,
frozen during the six winter months, was absolutely inaccessible.
What became of the whales in that time?  Doubtless they
went beneath the icebergs, seeking more practicable seas.
As to the seals and morses, accustomed to live in a hard climate,
they remained on these icy shores.  These creatures have the
instinct to break holes in the ice-field and to keep them open.
To these holes they come for breath; when the birds,
driven away by the cold, have emigrated to the north,
these sea mammals remain sole masters of the polar continent.
But the reservoirs were filling with water, and the Nautilus
was slowly descending.  At 1,000 feet deep it stopped;
its screw beat the waves, and it advanced straight towards
the north at a speed of fifteen miles an hour.  Towards night
it was already floating under the immense body of the iceberg.
At three in the morning I was awakened by a violent shock.
I sat up in my bed and listened in the darkness,
when I was thrown into the middle of the room.
The Nautilus, after having struck, had rebounded violently.
I groped along the partition, and by the staircase to the saloon,
which was lit by the luminous ceiling.  The furniture was upset.
Fortunately the windows were firmly set, and had held fast.
The pictures on the starboard side, from being no longer vertical,
were clinging to the paper, whilst those of the port side
were hanging at least a foot from the wall.  The Nautilus
was lying on its starboard side perfectly motionless.
I heard footsteps, and a confusion of voices; but Captain Nemo did
not appear.  As I was leaving the saloon, Ned Land and Conseil
entered.

"What is the matter?" said I, at once.

"I came to ask you, sir," replied Conseil.

"Confound it!" exclaimed the Canadian, "I know well enough!
The Nautilus has struck; and, judging by the way she lies,
I do not think she will right herself as she did the first time
in Torres Straits."

"But," I asked, "has she at least come to the surface of the sea?"

"We do not know," said Conseil.

"It is easy to decide," I answered.  I consulted the manometer.
To my great surprise, it showed a depth of more than 180 fathoms.
"What does that mean?"  I exclaimed.

"We must ask Captain Nemo," said Conseil.

"But where shall we find him?" said Ned Land.

"Follow me," said I, to my companions.

We left the saloon.  There was no one in the library.
At the centre staircase, by the berths of the ship's crew, there was
no one.  I thought that Captain Nemo must be in the pilot's cage.
It was best to wait.  We all returned to the saloon.  For twenty
minutes we remained thus, trying to hear the slightest noise which
might be made on board the Nautilus, when Captain Nemo entered.
He seemed not to see us; his face, generally so impassive,
showed signs of uneasiness.  He watched the compass silently,
then the manometer; and, going to the planisphere,
placed his finger on a spot representing the southern seas.
I would not interrupt him; but, some minutes later, when he
turned towards me, I said, using one of his own expressions
in the Torres Straits:

"An incident, Captain?"

"No, sir; an accident this time."

"Serious?"

"Perhaps."

"Is the danger immediate?"

"No."

"The Nautilus has stranded?"

"Yes."

"And this has happened--how?"

"From a caprice of nature, not from the ignorance of man.
Not a mistake has been made in the working.  But we cannot prevent
equilibrium from producing its effects.  We may brave human laws,
but we cannot resist natural ones."

Captain Nemo had chosen a strange moment for uttering this
philosophical reflection.  On the whole, his answer helped me little.

"May I ask, sir, the cause of this accident?"

"An enormous block of ice, a whole mountain, has turned over," he replied.
"When icebergs are undermined at their base by warmer water or reiterated
shocks their centre of gravity rises, and the whole thing turns over.
This is what has happened; one of these blocks, as it fell,
struck the Nautilus, then, gliding under its hull, raised it with
irresistible force, bringing it into beds which are not so thick,
where it is lying on its side."

"But can we not get the Nautilus off by emptying its reservoirs,
that it might regain its equilibrium?"

"That, sir, is being done at this moment.  You can hear the pump working.
Look at the needle of the manometer; it shows that the Nautilus is rising,
but the block of ice is floating with it; and, until some obstacle stops its
ascending motion, our position cannot be altered."

Indeed, the Nautilus still held the same position to starboard;
doubtless it would right itself when the block stopped.
But at this moment who knows if we may not be frightfully
crushed between the two glassy surfaces?  I reflected on all
the consequences of our position.  Captain Nemo never took
his eyes off the manometer.  Since the fall of the iceberg,
the Nautilus had risen about a hundred and fifty feet,
but it still made the same angle with the perpendicular.
Suddenly a slight movement was felt in the hold.
Evidently it was righting a little.  Things hanging in
the saloon were sensibly returning to their normal position.
The partitions were nearing the upright.  No one spoke.
With beating hearts we watched and felt the straightening.
The boards became horizontal under our feet.
Ten minutes passed.

"At last we have righted!"  I exclaimed.

"Yes," said Captain Nemo, going to the door of the saloon.

"But are we floating?"  I asked.

"Certainly," he replied; "since the reservoirs are not empty; and, when empty,
the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea."

We were in open sea; but at a distance of about ten yards,
on either side of the Nautilus, rose a dazzling wall of ice.
Above and beneath the same wall.  Above, because the lower surface
of the iceberg stretched over us like an immense ceiling.
Beneath, because the overturned block, having slid by degrees, had found
a resting-place on the lateral walls, which kept it in that position.
The Nautilus was really imprisoned in a perfect tunnel of ice
more than twenty yards in breadth, filled with quiet water.
It was easy to get out of it by going either forward or backward,
and then make a free passage under the iceberg, some hundreds
of yards deeper.  The luminous ceiling had been extinguished,
but the saloon was still resplendent with intense light.
It was the powerful reflection from the glass partition sent violently
back to the sheets of the lantern.  I cannot describe the effect
of the voltaic rays upon the great blocks so capriciously cut;
upon every angle, every ridge, every facet was thrown a different light,
according to the nature of the veins running through the ice;
a dazzling mine of gems, particularly of sapphires, their blue rays
crossing with the green of the emerald.  Here and there were opal
shades of wonderful softness, running through bright spots like
diamonds of fire, the brilliancy of which the eye could not bear.
The power of the lantern seemed increased a hundredfold, like a lamp
through the lenticular plates of a first-class lighthouse.

"How beautiful! how beautiful!" cried Conseil.

"Yes," I said, "it is a wonderful sight.  Is it not, Ned?"

"Yes, confound it!  Yes," answered Ned Land, "it is superb!
I am mad at being obliged to admit it.  No one has ever seen anything
like it; but the sight may cost us dear.  And, if I must say all,
I think we are seeing here things which God never intended
man to see."

Ned was right, it was too beautiful.  Suddenly a cry from Conseil
made me turn.

"What is it?"  I asked.

"Shut your eyes, sir!  Do not look, sir!"  Saying which,
Conseil clapped his hands over his eyes.

"But what is the matter, my boy?"

"I am dazzled, blinded."

My eyes turned involuntarily towards the glass, but I could not stand
the fire which seemed to devour them.  I understood what had happened.
The Nautilus had put on full speed.  All the quiet lustre of the ice-walls
was at once changed into flashes of lightning.  The fire from these myriads
of diamonds was blinding.  It required some time to calm our troubled looks.
At last the hands were taken down.

"Faith, I should never have believed it," said Conseil.

It was then five in the morning; and at that moment a shock was
felt at the bows of the Nautilus.  I knew that its spur had struck
a block of ice.  It must have been a false manoeuvre, for this
submarine tunnel, obstructed by blocks, was not very easy navigation.
I thought that Captain Nemo, by changing his course, would either
turn these obstacles or else follow the windings of the tunnel.
In any case, the road before us could not be entirely blocked.
But, contrary to my expectations, the Nautilus took a decided
retrograde motion.

"We are going backwards?" said Conseil.

"Yes," I replied.  "This end of the tunnel can have no egress."

"And then?"

"Then," said I, "the working is easy.  We must go back again,
and go out at the southern opening.  That is all."

In speaking thus, I wished to appear more confident than I really was.
But the retrograde motion of the Nautilus was increasing; and, reversing
the screw, it carried us at great speed.

"It will be a hindrance," said Ned.

"What does it matter, some hours more or less, provided we get
out at last?"

"Yes," repeated Ned Land, "provided we do get out at last!"

For a short time I walked from the saloon to the library.
My companions were silent.  I soon threw myself on an ottoman,
and took a book, which my eyes overran mechanically.  A quarter
of an hour after, Conseil, approaching me, said, "Is what you are
reading very interesting, sir?"

"Very interesting!"  I replied.

"I should think so, sir.  It is your own book you are reading."

"My book?"

And indeed I was holding in my hand the work on the Great Submarine Depths.
I did not even dream of it.  I closed the book and returned to my walk.
Ned and Conseil rose to go.

"Stay here, my friends," said I, detaining them.
"Let us remain together until we are out of this block."

"As you please, sir," Conseil replied.

Some hours passed.  I often looked at the instruments hanging
from the partition.  The manometer showed that the Nautilus kept
at a constant depth of more than three hundred yards; the compass
still pointed to south; the log indicated a speed of twenty
miles an hour, which, in such a cramped space, was very great.
But Captain Nemo knew that he could not hasten too much,
and that minutes were worth ages to us.  At twenty-five minutes
past eight a second shock took place, this time from behind.
I turned pale.  My companions were close by my side.
I seized Conseil's hand.  Our looks expressed our feelings better
than words.  At this moment the Captain entered the saloon.
I went up to him.

"Our course is barred southward?"  I asked.

"Yes, sir.  The iceberg has shifted and closed every outlet."

"We are blocked up then?"

"Yes."



CHAPTER XVI

WANT OF AIR

Thus around the Nautilus, above and below, was an impenetrable wall
of ice.  We were prisoners to the iceberg.  I watched the Captain.
His countenance had resumed its habitual imperturbability.

"Gentlemen," he said calmly, "there are two ways of dying in
the circumstances in which we are placed."  (This puzzling person
had the air of a mathematical professor lecturing to his pupils.)
"The first is to be crushed; the second is to die of suffocation.
I do not speak of the possibility of dying of hunger, for the supply
of provisions in the Nautilus will certainly last longer than we shall.
Let us, then, calculate our chances."

"As to suffocation, Captain," I replied, "that is not to be feared,
because our reservoirs are full."

"Just so; but they will only yield two days' supply of air.
Now, for thirty-six hours we have been hidden under the water,
and already the heavy atmosphere of the Nautilus requires renewal.
In forty-eight hours our reserve will be exhausted."

"Well, Captain, can we be delivered before forty-eight hours?"

"We will attempt it, at least, by piercing the wall that surrounds us."

"On which side?"

"Sound will tell us.  I am going to run the Nautilus aground
on the lower bank, and my men will attack the iceberg on the side
that is least thick."

Captain Nemo went out.  Soon I discovered by a hissing noise
that the water was entering the reservoirs.  The Nautilus
sank slowly, and rested on the ice at a depth of 350 yards,
the depth at which the lower bank was immersed.

"My friends," I said, "our situation is serious, but I rely
on your courage and energy."

"Sir," replied the Canadian, "I am ready to do anything
for the general safety."

"Good!  Ned," and I held out my hand to the Canadian.

"I will add," he continued, "that, being as handy with the pickaxe
as with the harpoon, if I can be useful to the Captain, he can
command my services."

"He will not refuse your help.  Come, Ned!"

I led him to the room where the crew of the Nautilus
were putting on their cork-jackets. I told the Captain
of Ned's proposal, which he accepted.  The Canadian put on
his sea-costume, and was ready as soon as his companions.
When Ned was dressed, I re-entered the drawing-room, where
the panes of glass were open, and, posted near Conseil,
I examined the ambient beds that supported the Nautilus.
Some instants after, we saw a dozen of the crew set foot on the bank
of ice, and among them Ned Land, easily known by his stature.
Captain Nemo was with them.  Before proceeding to dig the walls,
he took the soundings, to be sure of working in the right direction.
Long sounding lines were sunk in the side walls, but after
fifteen yards they were again stopped by the thick wall.
It was useless to attack it on the ceiling-like surface,
since the iceberg itself measured more than 400 yards in height.
Captain Nemo then sounded the lower surface.  There ten yards
of wall separated us from the water, so great was the thickness
of the ice-field. It was necessary, therefore, to cut from it
a piece equal in extent to the waterline of the Nautilus.
There were about 6,000 cubic yards to detach, so as to dig
a hole by which we could descend to the ice-field. The work
had begun immediately and carried on with indefatigable energy.
Instead of digging round the Nautilus which would have involved
greater difficulty, Captain Nemo had an immense trench made at eight
yards from the port-quarter. Then the men set to work simultaneously
with their screws on several points of its circumference.
Presently the pickaxe attacked this compact matter vigorously,
and large blocks were detached from the mass.  By a curious
effect of specific gravity, these blocks, lighter than water,
fled, so to speak, to the vault of the tunnel, that increased
in thickness at the top in proportion as it diminished at the base.
But that mattered little, so long as the lower part grew thinner.
After two hours' hard work, Ned Land came in exhausted.  He and his
comrades were replaced by new workers, whom Conseil and I joined.
The second lieutenant of the Nautilus superintended us.
The water seemed singularly cold, but I soon got warm
handling the pickaxe.  My movements were free enough,
although they were made under a pressure of thirty atmospheres.
When I re-entered, after working two hours, to take some food
and rest, I found a perceptible difference between the pure
fluid with which the Rouquayrol engine supplied me and the
atmosphere of the Nautilus, already charged with carbonic acid.
The air had not been renewed for forty-eight hours, and its vivifying
qualities were considerably enfeebled.  However, after a lapse
of twelve hours, we had only raised a block of ice one yard thick,
on the marked surface, which was about 600 cubic yards!
Reckoning that it took twelve hours to accomplish this much it
would take five nights and four days to bring this enterprise
to a satisfactory conclusion.  Five nights and four days!
And we have only air enough for two days in the reservoirs!
"Without taking into account," said Ned, "that, even if we get out
of this infernal prison, we shall also be imprisoned under the iceberg,
shut out from all possible communication with the atmosphere."
True enough!  Who could then foresee the minimum of time
necessary for our deliverance?  We might be suffocated before
the Nautilus could regain the surface of the waves?  Was it
destined to perish in this ice-tomb, with all those it enclosed?
The situation was terrible.  But everyone had looked the danger
in the face, and each was determined to do his duty to the
last.

As I expected, during the night a new block a yard square
was carried away, and still further sank the immense hollow.
But in the morning when, dressed in my cork-jacket, I traversed
the slushy mass at a temperature of six or seven degrees below zero,
I remarked that the side walls were gradually closing in.
The beds of water farthest from the trench, that were not warmed
by the men's work, showed a tendency to solidification.  In presence
of this new and imminent danger, what would become of our chances
of safety, and how hinder the solidification of this liquid medium,
that would burst the partitions of the Nautilus like glass?

I did not tell my companions of this new danger.
What was the good of damping the energy they displayed in
the painful work of escape?  But when I went on board again,
I told Captain Nemo of this grave complication.

"I know it," he said, in that calm tone which could counteract
the most terrible apprehensions.  "It is one danger more;
but I see no way of escaping it; the only chance of safety is to go
quicker than solidification.  We must be beforehand with it,
that is all."

On this day for several hours I used my pickaxe vigorously.
The work kept me up.  Besides, to work was to quit the Nautilus,
and breathe directly the pure air drawn from the reservoirs,
and supplied by our apparatus, and to quit the impoverished and
vitiated atmosphere.  Towards evening the trench was dug one yard deeper.
When I returned on board, I was nearly suffocated by the carbonic
acid with which the air was filled--ah! if we had only the chemical
means to drive away this deleterious gas.  We had plenty of oxygen;
all this water contained a considerable quantity, and by dissolving
it with our powerful piles, it would restore the vivifying fluid.
I had thought well over it; but of what good was that,
since the carbonic acid produced by our respiration had invaded
every part of the vessel?  To absorb it, it was necessary to fill
some jars with caustic potash, and to shake them incessantly.
Now this substance was wanting on board, and nothing could replace it.
On that evening, Captain Nemo ought to open the taps of his reservoirs,
and let some pure air into the interior of the Nautilus; without this
precaution we could not get rid of the sense of suffocation.  The next day,
March 26th, I resumed my miner's work in beginning the fifth yard.
The side walls and the lower surface of the iceberg thickened visibly.
It was evident that they would meet before the Nautilus was
able to disengage itself.  Despair seized me for an instant;
my pickaxe nearly fell from my hands.  What was the good of digging
if I must be suffocated, crushed by the water that was turning
into stone?--a punishment that the ferocity of the savages even
would not have invented!  Just then Captain Nemo passed near me.
I touched his hand and showed him the walls of our prison.
The wall to port had advanced to at least four yards from the hull of
the Nautilus.  The Captain understood me, and signed me to follow him.
We went on board.  I took off my cork-jacket and accompanied him into the
drawing-room.

"M. Aronnax, we must attempt some desperate means, or we shall
be sealed up in this solidified water as in cement."

"Yes; but what is to be done?"

"Ah! if my Nautilus were strong enough to bear this pressure
without being crushed!"

"Well?"  I asked, not catching the Captain's idea.

"Do you not understand," he replied, "that this congelation of water
will help us?  Do you not see that by its solidification, it would
burst through this field of ice that imprisons us, as, when it freezes,
it bursts the hardest stones?  Do you not perceive that it would be
an agent of safety instead of destruction?"

"Yes, Captain, perhaps.  But, whatever resistance to crushing
the Nautilus possesses, it could not support this terrible pressure,
and would be flattened like an iron plate."

"I know it, sir.  Therefore we must not reckon on the aid of nature,
but on our own exertions.  We must stop this solidification.
Not only will the side walls be pressed together; but there
is not ten feet of water before or behind the Nautilus.
The congelation gains on us on all sides."

"How long will the air in the reservoirs last for us to breathe on board?"

The Captain looked in my face.  "After to-morrow they will be empty!"

A cold sweat came over me.  However, ought I to have been astonished
at the answer?  On March 22, the Nautilus was in the open polar seas.
We were at 26@. For five days we had lived on the reserve on board.
And what was left of the respirable air must be kept for the workers.
Even now, as I write, my recollection is still so vivid that an
involuntary terror seizes me and my lungs seem to be without air.
Meanwhile, Captain Nemo reflected silently, and evidently an idea
had struck him; but he seemed to reject it.  At last, these words
escaped his lips:

"Boiling water!" he muttered.

"Boiling water?"  I cried.

"Yes, sir.  We are enclosed in a space that is relatively confined.
Would not jets of boiling water, constantly injected by the pumps,
raise the temperature in this part and stay the congelation?"

"Let us try it," I said resolutely.

"Let us try it, Professor."

The thermometer then stood at 7@ outside.  Captain Nemo took
me to the galleys, where the vast distillatory machines
stood that furnished the drinkable water by evaporation.
They filled these with water, and all the electric heat from
the piles was thrown through the worms bathed in the liquid.
In a few minutes this water reached 100@. It was directed
towards the pumps, while fresh water replaced it in proportion.
The heat developed by the troughs was such that cold water,
drawn up from the sea after only having gone through the machines,
came boiling into the body of the pump.  The injection was begun,
and three hours after the thermometer marked 6@ below zero outside.
One degree was gained.  Two hours later the thermometer only marked
4@.

"We shall succeed," I said to the Captain, after having anxiously
watched the result of the operation.

"I think," he answered, "that we shall not be crushed.
We have no more suffocation to fear."

During the night the temperature of the water rose to 1@ below zero.
The injections could not carry it to a higher point.  But, as the congelation
of the sea-water produces at least 2@, I was at least reassured against
the dangers of solidification.

The next day, March 27th, six yards of ice had been cleared, twelve feet
only remaining to be cleared away.  There was yet forty-eight hours' work.
The air could not be renewed in the interior of the Nautilus.
And this day would make it worse.  An intolerable weight oppressed me.
Towards three o'clock in the evening this feeling rose to a violent degree.
Yawns dislocated my jaws.  My lungs panted as they inhaled this burning fluid,
which became rarefied more and more.  A moral torpor took hold of me.
I was powerless, almost unconscious.  My brave Conseil, though exhibiting
the same symptoms and suffering in the same manner, never left me.
He took my hand and encouraged me, and I heard him murmur, "Oh! if I could
only not breathe, so as to leave more air for my master!"

Tears came into my eyes on hearing him speak thus.  If our
situation to all was intolerable in the interior, with what haste
and gladness would we put on our cork-jackets to work in our turn!
Pickaxes sounded on the frozen ice-beds. Our arms ached,
the skin was torn off our hands.  But what were these fatigues,
what did the wounds matter?  Vital air came to the lungs!
We breathed! we breathed!

All this time no one prolonged his voluntary task beyond the prescribed time.
His task accomplished, each one handed in turn to his panting companions
the apparatus that supplied him with life.  Captain Nemo set the example,
and submitted first to this severe discipline.  When the time came,
he gave up his apparatus to another and returned to the vitiated air
on board, calm, unflinching, unmurmuring.

On that day the ordinary work was accomplished with unusual vigour.
Only two yards remained to be raised from the surface.
Two yards only separated us from the open sea.  But the reservoirs
were nearly emptied of air.  The little that remained ought
to be kept for the workers; not a particle for the Nautilus.
When I went back on board, I was half suffocated.  What a night!
I know not how to describe it.  The next day my breathing
was oppressed.  Dizziness accompanied the pain in my head and made
me like a drunken man.  My companions showed the same symptoms.
Some of the crew had rattling in the throat.

On that day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo,
finding the pickaxes work too slowly, resolved to crush
the ice-bed that still separated us from the liquid sheet.
This man's coolness and energy never forsook him.  He subdued his
physical pains by moral force.

By his orders the vessel was lightened, that is to say,
raised from the ice-bed by a change of specific gravity.
When it floated they towed it so as to bring it above
the immense trench made on the level of the water-line. Then,
filling his reservoirs of water, he descended and shut himself up
in the hole.

Just then all the crew came on board, and the double door of communication
was shut.  The Nautilus then rested on the bed of ice, which was not one
yard thick, and which the sounding leads had perforated in a thousand places.
The taps of the reservoirs were then opened, and a hundred cubic yards
of water was let in, increasing the weight of the Nautilus to 1,800 tons.
We waited, we listened, forgetting our sufferings in hope.  Our safety
depended on this last chance.  Notwithstanding the buzzing in my head,
I soon heard the humming sound under the hull of the Nautilus.  The ice
cracked with a singular noise, like tearing paper, and the Nautilus sank.

"We are off!" murmured Conseil in my ear.

I could not answer him.  I seized his hand, and pressed it convulsively.
All at once, carried away by its frightful overcharge, the Nautilus sank like
a bullet under the waters, that is to say, it fell as if it was in a vacuum.
Then all the electric force was put on the pumps, that soon began to let
the water out of the reservoirs.  After some minutes, our fall was stopped.
Soon, too, the manometer indicated an ascending movement.  The screw,
going at full speed, made the iron hull tremble to its very bolts and drew
us towards the north.  But if this floating under the iceberg is to last
another day before we reach the open sea, I shall be dead first.

Half stretched upon a divan in the library, I was suffocating.
My face was purple, my lips blue, my faculties suspended.
I neither saw nor heard.  All notion of time had gone from my mind.
My muscles could not contract.  I do not know how many hours
passed thus, but I was conscious of the agony that was coming over me.
I felt as if I was going to die.  Suddenly I came to.
Some breaths of air penetrated my lungs.  Had we risen to the surface
of the waves?  Were we free of the iceberg?  No!  Ned and Conseil,
my two brave friends, were sacrificing themselves to save me.
Some particles of air still remained at the bottom of one apparatus.
Instead of using it, they had kept it for me, and, while they
were being suffocated, they gave me life, drop by drop.
I wanted to push back the thing; they held my hands,
and for some moments I breathed freely.  I looked at the clock;
it was eleven in the morning.  It ought to be the 28th of March.
The Nautilus went at a frightful pace, forty miles an hour.  It literally
tore through the water.  Where was Captain Nemo?  Had he succumbed?
Were his companions dead with him?  At the moment the manometer
indicated that we were not more than twenty feet from the surface.
A mere plate of ice separated us from the atmosphere.  Could we not
break it?  Perhaps.  In any case the Nautilus was going to attempt it.
I felt that it was in an oblique position, lowering the stern,
and raising the bows.  The introduction of water had been the means
of disturbing its equilibrium.  Then, impelled by its powerful screw,
it attacked the ice-field from beneath like a formidable battering-ram.
It broke it by backing and then rushing forward against the field,
which gradually gave way; and at last, dashing suddenly against it,
shot forwards on the ice-field, that crushed beneath its weight.
The panel was opened--one might say torn off--and the pure air came in in
abundance to all parts of the Nautilus.



CHAPTER XVII

FROM CAPE HORN TO THE AMAZON

How I got on to the platform, I have no idea; perhaps the Canadian
had carried me there.  But I breathed, I inhaled the vivifying sea-air.
My two companions were getting drunk with the fresh particles.
The other unhappy men had been so long without food, that they
could not with impunity indulge in the simplest aliments that were
given them.  We, on the contrary, had no end to restrain ourselves;
we could draw this air freely into our lungs, and it was the breeze,
the breeze alone, that filled us with this keen enjoyment.

"Ah!" said Conseil, "how delightful this oxygen is!
Master need not fear to breathe it.  There is enough for everybody."

Ned Land did not speak, but he opened his jaws wide enough
to frighten a shark.  Our strength soon returned, and, when I
looked round me, I saw we were alone on the platform.
The foreign seamen in the Nautilus were contented with the air
that circulated in the interior; none of them had come to drink
in the open air.

The first words I spoke were words of gratitude and
thankfulness to my two companions.  Ned and Conseil had
prolonged my life during the last hours of this long agony.
All my gratitude could not repay such devotion.

"My friends," said I, "we are bound one to the other for ever,
and I am under infinite obligations to you."

"Which I shall take advantage of," exclaimed the Canadian.

"What do you mean?" said Conseil.

"I mean that I shall take you with me when I leave this infernal Nautilus."

"Well," said Conseil, "after all this, are we going right?"

"Yes," I replied, "for we are going the way of the sun,
and here the sun is in the north."

"No doubt," said Ned Land; "but it remains to be seen whether
he will bring the ship into the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean,
that is, into frequented or deserted seas."

I could not answer that question, and I feared that Captain Nemo
would rather take us to the vast ocean that touches the coasts
of Asia and America at the same time.  He would thus complete
the tour round the submarine world, and return to those waters
in which the Nautilus could sail freely.  We ought, before long,
to settle this important point.  The Nautilus went at a rapid pace.
The polar circle was soon passed, and the course shaped for Cape Horn.
We were off the American point, March 31st, at seven o'clock
in the evening.  Then all our past sufferings were forgotten.
The remembrance of that imprisonment in the ice was effaced
from our minds.  We only thought of the future.  Captain Nemo did
not appear again either in the drawing-room or on the platform.
The point shown each day on the planisphere, and, marked by
the lieutenant, showed me the exact direction of the Nautilus.
Now, on that evening, it was evident, to, my great satisfaction,
that we were going back to the North by the Atlantic.
The next day, April 1st, when the Nautilus ascended to the surface
some minutes before noon, we sighted land to the west.
It was Terra del Fuego, which the first navigators named thus from
seeing the quantity of smoke that rose from the natives' huts.
The coast seemed low to me, but in the distance rose high mountains.
I even thought I had a glimpse of Mount Sarmiento, that rises 2,070
yards above the level of the sea, with a very pointed summit, which,
according as it is misty or clear, is a sign of fine or of wet weather.
At this moment the peak was clearly defined against the sky.
The Nautilus, diving again under the water, approached the coast,
which was only some few miles off.  From the glass windows in
the drawing-room, I saw long seaweeds and gigantic fuci and varech,
of which the open polar sea contains so many specimens, with their
sharp polished filaments; they measured about 300 yards in length--
real cables, thicker than one's thumb; and, having great tenacity,
they are often used as ropes for vessels.  Another weed known as velp,
with leaves four feet long, buried in the coral concretions,
hung at the bottom.  It served as nest and food for myriads
of crustacea and molluscs, crabs, and cuttlefish.
There seals and otters had splendid repasts, eating the flesh
of fish with sea-vegetables, according to the English fashion.
Over this fertile and luxuriant ground the Nautilus passed with
great rapidity.  Towards evening it approached the Falkland group,
the rough summits of which I recognised the following day.
The depth of the sea was moderate.  On the shores our nets brought
in beautiful specimens of sea weed, and particularly a certain fucus,
the roots of which were filled with the best mussels in the world.
Geese and ducks fell by dozens on the platform, and soon took
their places in the pantry on board.

When the last heights of the Falklands had disappeared
from the horizon, the Nautilus sank to between twenty
and twenty-five yards, and followed the American coast.
Captain Nemo did not show himself.  Until the 3rd of April we
did not quit the shores of Patagonia, sometimes under the ocean,
sometimes at the surface.  The Nautilus passed beyond the large
estuary formed by the Uraguay.  Its direction was northwards,
and followed the long windings of the coast of South America.
We had then made 1,600 miles since our embarkation in the seas
of Japan.  About eleven o'clock in the morning the Tropic
of Capricorn was crossed on the thirty-seventh meridian,
and we passed Cape Frio standing out to sea.  Captain Nemo,
to Ned Land's great displeasure, did not like the neighbourhood
of the inhabited coasts of Brazil, for we went at a giddy speed.
Not a fish, not a bird of the swiftest kind could follow us,
and the natural curiosities of these seas escaped all observation.

This speed was kept up for several days, and in the evening
of the 9th of April we sighted the most westerly point of South
America that forms Cape San Roque.  But then the Nautilus
swerved again, and sought the lowest depth of a submarine valley
which is between this Cape and Sierra Leone on the African coast.
This valley bifurcates to the parallel of the Antilles,
and terminates at the mouth by the enormous depression of 9,000 yards.
In this place, the geological basin of the ocean forms,
as far as the Lesser Antilles, a cliff to three and a half
miles perpendicular in height, and, at the parallel of
the Cape Verde Islands, an other wall not less considerable,
that encloses thus all the sunk continent of the Atlantic.
The bottom of this immense valley is dotted with some mountains,
that give to these submarine places a picturesque aspect.
I speak, moreover, from the manuscript charts that were in the library
of the Nautilus--charts evidently due to Captain Nemo's hand,
and made after his personal observations.  For two days the desert
and deep waters were visited by means of the inclined planes.
The Nautilus was furnished with long diagonal broadsides which carried
it to all elevations.  But on the 11th of April it rose suddenly,
and land appeared at the mouth of the Amazon River, a vast estuary,
the embouchure of which is so considerable that it freshens
the sea-water for the distance of several leagues.  

The equator was crossed. Twenty miles to the west were the Guianas, a
French territory, on which we could have found an easy refuge; but a
stiff breeze was blowing, and the furious waves would not have allowed a
single boat to face them. Ned Land understood that, no doubt, for he
spoke not a word about it. For my part, I made no allusion to his
schemes of flight, for I would not urge him to make an attempt that must
inevitably fail. I made the time pass pleasantly by interesting studies.
During the days of April 11th and 12th, the Nautilus did not leave the
surface of the sea, and the net brought in a marvellous haul of
Zoophytes, fish and reptiles. Some zoophytes had been fished up by the
chain of the nets; they were for the most part beautiful phyctallines,
belonging to the actinidian family, and among other species the
phyctalis protexta, peculiar to that part of the ocean, with a little
cylindrical trunk, ornamented With vertical lines, speckled with red
dots, crowning a marvellous blossoming of tentacles. As to the molluscs,
they consisted of some I had already observed--turritellas, olive
porphyras, with regular lines intercrossed, with red spots standing out
plainly against the flesh; odd pteroceras, like petrified scorpions;
translucid hyaleas, argonauts, cuttle-fish (excellent eating), and
certain species of calmars that naturalists of antiquity have classed
amongst the flying-fish, and that serve principally for bait for
cod-fishing. I had now an opportunity of studying several species of
fish on these shores. Amongst the cartilaginous ones,
petromyzons-pricka, a sort of eel, fifteen inches long, with a greenish
head, violet fins, grey-blue back, brown belly, silvered and sown with
bright spots, the pupil of the eye encircled with gold--a curious
animal, that the current of the Amazon had drawn to the sea, for they
inhabit fresh waters--tuberculated streaks, with pointed snouts, and a
long loose tail, armed with a long jagged sting; little sharks, a yard
long, grey and whitish skin, and several rows of teeth, bent back, that
are generally known by the name of pantouffles; vespertilios, a kind of
red isosceles triangle, half a yard long, to which pectorals are
attached by fleshy prolongations that make them look like bats, but that
their horny appendage, situated near the nostrils, has given them the
name of sea-unicorns; lastly, some species of balistae, the curassavian,
whose spots were of a brilliant gold colour, and the capriscus of clear
violet, and with varying shades like a pigeon's throat.

I end here this catalogue, which is somewhat dry perhaps, but very
exact, with a series of bony fish that I observed in passing belonging
to the apteronotes, and whose snout is white as snow, the body of a
beautiful black, marked with a very long loose fleshy strip;
odontognathes, armed with spikes; sardines nine inches long, glittering
with a bright silver light; a species of mackerel provided with two anal
fins; centronotes of a blackish tint, that are fished for with torches,
long fish, two yards in length, with fat flesh, white and firm, which,
when they arc fresh, taste like eel, and when dry, like smoked salmon;
labres, half red, covered with scales only at the bottom of the dorsal
and anal fins; chrysoptera, on which gold and silver blend their
brightness with that of the ruby and topaz; golden-tailed spares, the
flesh of which is extremely delicate, and whose phosphorescent
properties betray them in the midst of the waters; orange-coloured
spares with long tongues; maigres, with gold caudal fins, dark
thorn-tails, anableps of Surinam, etc.

Notwithstanding this "et cetera," I must not omit to mention fish
that Conseil will long remember, and with good reason. One of our
nets had hauled up a sort of very flat ray fish, which, with the
tail cut off, formed a perfect disc, and weighed twenty ounces. It
was white underneath, red above, with large round spots of dark blue
encircled with black, very glossy skin, terminating in a bilobed
fin. Laid out on the platform, it struggled, tried to turn itself by
convulsive movements, and made so many efforts, that one last turn
had nearly sent it into the sea. But Conseil, not wishing to let the
fish go, rushed to it, and, before I could prevent him, had seized
it with both hands. In a moment he was overthrown, his legs in the
air, and half his body paralysed, crying--

"Oh! master, master! help me!"

It was the first time the poor boy had spoken to me so familiarly.
The Canadian and I took him up, and rubbed his contracted arms till he
became sensible. The unfortunate Conseil had attacked a cramp-fish
of the most dangerous kind, the cumana. This odd animal, in a medium
conductor like water, strikes fish at several yards' distance, so
great is the power of its electric organ, the two principal surfaces
of which do not measure less than twenty-seven square feet. The next
day, April 12th, the Nautilus approached the Dutch coast, near the mouth
of the Maroni. There several groups of sea-cows herded together; they
were manatees, that, like the dugong and the stellera, belong to the
skenian order. These beautiful animals, peaceable and inoffensive, from
eighteen to twenty-one feet in length, weigh at least sixteen
hundredweight. I told Ned Land and Conseil that provident nature had
assigned an important role to these mammalia. Indeed, they, like the
seals, are designed to graze on the submarine prairies, and thus destroy
the accumulation of weed that obstructs the tropical rivers.

"And do you know," I added, "what has been the result since men have
almost entirely annihilated this useful race? That the putrefied weeds
have poisoned the air, and the poisoned air causes the yellow fever,
that desolates these beautiful countries. Enormous vegetations are
multiplied under the torrid seas, and the evil is irresistibly developed
from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Florida. If we are to believe
Toussenel, this plague is nothing to what it would be if the seas were
cleaned of whales and seals. Then, infested with poulps, medusae, and
cuttle-fish, they would become immense centres of infection, since their
waves would not possess 'these vast stomachs that God had charged to
infest the surface of the seas.'"



CHAPTER XVIII

THE POULPS

For several days the Nautilus kept off from the American coast.
Evidently it did not wish to risk the tides of the Gulf of
Mexico or of the sea of the Antilles.  April 16th, we sighted
Martinique and Guadaloupe from a distance of about thirty miles.
I saw their tall peaks for an instant.  The Canadian,
who counted on carrying out his projects in the Gulf,
by either landing or hailing one of the numerous boats that
coast from one island to another, was quite disheartened.
Flight would have been quite practicable, if Ned Land had been able
to take possession of the boat without the Captain's knowledge.
But in the open sea it could not be thought of.  The Canadian,
Conseil, and I had a long conversation on this subject.
For six months we had been prisoners on board the Nautilus.
We had travelled 17,000 leagues; and, as Ned Land said, there was
no reason why it should come to an end.  We could hope nothing
from the Captain of the Nautilus, but only from ourselves.
Besides, for some time past he had become graver, more retired,
less sociable.  He seemed to shun me.  I met him rarely.
Formerly he was pleased to explain the submarine marvels to me;
now he left me to my studies, and came no more to the saloon.
What change had come over him?  For what cause?  For my part,
I did not wish to bury with me my curious and novel studies.
I had now the power to write the true book of the sea;
and this book, sooner or later, I wished to see daylight.
The land nearest us was the archipelago of the Bahamas.  There rose
high submarine cliffs covered with large weeds.  It was about eleven
o'clock when Ned Land drew my attention to a formidable pricking,
like the sting of an ant, which was produced by means of large
seaweeds.

"Well," I said, "these are proper caverns for poulps, and I
should not be astonished to see some of these monsters."

"What!" said Conseil; "cuttlefish, real cuttlefish of the cephalopod class?"

"No," I said, "poulps of huge dimensions."

"I will never believe that such animals exist," said Ned.

"Well," said Conseil, with the most serious air in the world,
"I remember perfectly to have seen a large vessel drawn under
the waves by an octopus's arm."

"You saw that?" said the Canadian.

"Yes, Ned."

"With your own eyes?"

"With my own eyes."

"Where, pray, might that be?"

"At St. Malo," answered Conseil.

"In the port?" said Ned, ironically.

"No; in a church," replied Conseil.

"In a church!" cried the Canadian.

"Yes; friend Ned.  In a picture representing the poulp in question."

"Good!" said Ned Land, bursting out laughing.

"He is quite right," I said.  "I have heard of this picture;
but the subject represented is taken from a legend, and you know
what to think of legends in the matter of natural history.
Besides, when it is a question of monsters, the imagination
is apt to run wild.  Not only is it supposed that these poulps
can draw down vessels, but a certain Olaus Magnus speaks of an
octopus a mile long that is more like an island than an animal.
It is also said that the Bishop of Nidros was building
an altar on an immense rock.  Mass finished, the rock began
to walk, and returned to the sea.  The rock was a poulp.
Another Bishop, Pontoppidan, speaks also of a poulp on which
a regiment of cavalry could manoeuvre.  Lastly, the ancient
naturalists speak of monsters whose mouths were like gulfs,
and which were too large to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar."

"But how much is true of these stories?" asked Conseil.

"Nothing, my friends; at least of that which passes the limit of truth
to get to fable or legend.  Nevertheless, there must be some ground
for the imagination of the story-tellers. One cannot deny that poulps and
cuttlefish exist of a large species, inferior, however, to the cetaceans.
Aristotle has stated the dimensions of a cuttlefish as five cubits,
or nine feet two inches.  Our fishermen frequently see some that are
more than four feet long.  Some skeletons of poulps are preserved in
the museums of Trieste and Montpelier, that measure two yards in length.
Besides, according to the calculations of some naturalists, one of these
animals only six feet long would have tentacles twenty-seven feet long.
That would suffice to make a formidable monster."

"Do they fish for them in these days?" asked Ned.

"If they do not fish for them, sailors see them at least.
One of my friends, Captain Paul Bos of Havre, has often affirmed
that he met one of these monsters of colossal dimensions in
the Indian seas.  But the most astonishing fact, and which does
not permit of the denial of the existence of these gigantic animals,
happened some years ago, in 1861."

"What is the fact?" asked Ned Land.

"This is it.  In 1861, to the north-east of Teneriffe, very nearly
in the same latitude we are in now, the crew of the despatch-boat
Alector perceived a monstrous cuttlefish swimming in the waters.
Captain Bouguer went near to the animal, and attacked it with
harpoon and guns, without much success, for balls and harpoons
glided over the soft flesh.  After several fruitless attempts
the crew tried to pass a slip-knot round the body of the mollusc.
The noose slipped as far as the tail fins and there stopped.
They tried then to haul it on board, but its weight was so
considerable that the tightness of the cord separated the tail
from the body, and, deprived of this ornament, he disappeared
under the water."

"Indeed! is that a fact?"

"An indisputable fact, my good Ned.  They proposed to name this
poulp `Bouguer's cuttlefish.'"

"What length was it?" asked the Canadian.

"Did it not measure about six yards?" said Conseil, who, posted at the window,
was examining again the irregular windings of the cliff.

"Precisely," I replied.

"Its head," rejoined Conseil, "was it not crowned with eight tentacles,
that beat the water like a nest of serpents?"

"Precisely."

"Had not its eyes, placed at the back of its head, considerable development?"

"Yes, Conseil."

"And was not its mouth like a parrot's beak?"

"Exactly, Conseil."

"Very well! no offence to master," he replied, quietly; "if this
is not Bouguer's cuttlefish, it is, at least, one of its brothers."

I looked at Conseil.  Ned Land hurried to the window.

"What a horrible beast!" he cried.

I looked in my turn, and could not repress a gesture of disgust.
Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy to figure in the legends
of the marvellous.  It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long.
It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed,
watching us with its enormous staring green eyes.  Its eight arms,
or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name
of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body,
and were twisted like the furies' hair.  One could see the 250 air
holes on the inner side of the tentacles.  The monster's mouth,
a horned beak like a parrot's, opened and shut vertically.
Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows
of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair
of shears.  What a freak of nature, a bird's beak on a mollusc!
Its spindle-like body formed a fleshy mass that might weigh 4,000
to 5,000 lb.; the, varying colour changing with great rapidity,
according to the irritation of the animal, passed successively
from livid grey to reddish brown.  What irritated this mollusc?
No doubt the presence of the Nautilus, more formidable than itself,
and on which its suckers or its jaws had no hold.  Yet, what monsters
these poulps are! what vitality the Creator has given them!
what vigour in their movements! and they possess three hearts!
Chance had brought us in presence of this cuttlefish, and I did not wish
to lose the opportunity of carefully studying this specimen of cephalopods.
I overcame the horror that inspired me, and, taking a pencil, began
to draw it.

"Perhaps this is the same which the Alector saw," said Conseil.

"No," replied the Canadian; "for this is whole, and the other
had lost its tail."

"That is no reason," I replied.  "The arms and tails of these animals
are re-formed by renewal; and in seven years the tail of Bouguer's
cuttlefish has no doubt had time to grow."

By this time other poulps appeared at the port light.  I counted seven.
They formed a procession after the Nautilus, and I heard their beaks
gnashing against the iron hull.  I continued my work.  These monsters
kept in the water with such precision that they seemed immovable.
Suddenly the Nautilus stopped.  A shock made it tremble in every plate.

"Have we struck anything?"  I asked.

"In any case," replied the Canadian, "we shall be free,
for we are floating."

The Nautilus was floating, no doubt, but it did not move.
A minute passed.  Captain Nemo, followed by his lieutenant,
entered the drawing-room. I had not seen him for some time.
He seemed dull.  Without noticing or speaking to us, he went
to the panel, looked at the poulps, and said something to
his lieutenant.  The latter went out.  Soon the panels were shut.
The ceiling was lighted.  I went towards the Captain.

"A curious collection of poulps?"  I said.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Naturalist," he replied; "and we are going to fight them,
man to beast."

I looked at him.  I thought I had not heard aright.

"Man to beast?"  I repeated.

"Yes, sir.  The screw is stopped.  I think that the horny
jaws of one of the cuttlefish is entangled in the blades.
That is what prevents our moving."

"What are you going to do?"

"Rise to the surface, and slaughter this vermin."

"A difficult enterprise."

"Yes, indeed.  The electric bullets are powerless against the
soft flesh, where they do not find resistance enough to go off.
But we shall attack them with the hatchet."

"And the harpoon, sir," said the Canadian, "if you do not refuse my help."

"I will accept it, Master Land."

"We will follow you," I said, and, following Captain Nemo,
we went towards the central staircase.

There, about ten men with boarding-hatchets were ready for the attack.
Conseil and I took two hatchets; Ned Land seized a harpoon.
The Nautilus had then risen to the surface.  One of the sailors,
posted on the top ladderstep, unscrewed the bolts of the panels.
But hardly were the screws loosed, when the panel rose with
great violence, evidently drawn by the suckers of a poulp's arm.
Immediately one of these arms slid like a serpent down the opening
and twenty others were above.  With one blow of the axe, Captain Nemo
cut this formidable tentacle, that slid wriggling down the ladder.
Just as we were pressing one on the other to reach the platform,
two other arms, lashing the air, came down on the seaman placed
before Captain Nemo, and lifted him up with irresistible power.
Captain Nemo uttered a cry, and rushed out.  We hurried after him.

What a scene!  The unhappy man, seized by the tentacle and fixed
to the suckers, was balanced in the air at the caprice of this
enormous trunk.  He rattled in his throat, he was stifled, he cried,
"Help! help!"  These words, spoken in French, startled me!
I had a fellow-countryman on board, perhaps several!
That heart-rending cry!  I shall hear it all my life.
The unfortunate man was lost.  Who could rescue him from that
powerful pressure?  However, Captain Nemo had rushed to the poulp,
and with one blow of the axe had cut through one arm.
His lieutenant struggled furiously against other monsters that crept
on the flanks of the Nautilus.  The crew fought with their axes.
The Canadian, Conseil, and I buried our weapons in the fleshy masses;
a strong smell of musk penetrated the atmosphere.
It was horrible!

For one instant, I thought the unhappy man, entangled with the poulp, would be
torn from its powerful suction.  Seven of the eight arms had been cut off.
One only wriggled in the air, brandishing the victim like a feather.  But just
as Captain Nemo and his lieutenant threw themselves on it, the animal ejected
a stream of black liquid.  We were blinded with it.  When the cloud dispersed,
the cuttlefish had disappeared, and my unfortunate countryman with it.
Ten or twelve poulps now invaded the platform and sides of the Nautilus.
We rolled pell-mell into the midst of this nest of serpents, that wriggled
on the platform in the waves of blood and ink.  It seemed as though these
slimy tentacles sprang up like the hydra's heads.  Ned Land's harpoon,
at each stroke, was plunged into the staring eyes of the cuttle fish.
But my bold companion was suddenly overturned by the tentacles of a monster
he had not been able to avoid.

Ah! how my heart beat with emotion and horror!
The formidable beak of a cuttlefish was open over Ned Land.
The unhappy man would be cut in two.  I rushed to his succour.
But Captain Nemo was before me; his axe disappeared between
the two enormous jaws, and, miraculously saved, the Canadian,
rising, plunged his harpoon deep into the triple heart
of the poulp.

"I owed myself this revenge!" said the Captain to the Canadian.

Ned bowed without replying.  The combat had lasted a quarter of an hour.
The monsters, vanquished and mutilated, left us at last, and disappeared
under the waves.  Captain Nemo, covered with blood, nearly exhausted,
gazed upon the sea that had swallowed up one of his companions, and great
tears gathered in his eyes.



CHAPTER XIX

THE GULF STREAM

This terrible scene of the 20th of April none of us can ever forget.
I have written it under the influence of violent emotion.  Since then I
have revised the recital; I have read it to Conseil and to the Canadian.
They found it exact as to facts, but insufficient as to effect.
To paint such pictures, one must have the pen of the most illustrious
of our poets, the author of The Toilers of the Deep.

I have said that Captain Nemo wept while watching the waves;
his grief was great.  It was the second companion he had
lost since our arrival on board, and what a death!
That friend, crushed, stifled, bruised by the dreadful
arms of a poulp, pounded by his iron jaws, would not
rest with his comrades in the peaceful coral cemetery!
In the midst of the struggle, it was the despairing cry
uttered by the unfortunate man that had torn my heart.
The poor Frenchman, forgetting his conventional language,
had taken to his own mother tongue, to utter a last appeal!
Amongst the crew of the Nautilus, associated with
the body and soul of the Captain, recoiling like him
from all contact with men, I had a fellow-countryman. Did
he alone represent France in this mysterious association,
evidently composed of individuals of divers nationalities?
It was one of these insoluble problems that rose up unceasingly
before my mind!

Captain Nemo entered his room, and I saw him no more for some time.
But that he was sad and irresolute I could see by the vessel,
of which he was the soul, and which received all his impressions.
The Nautilus did not keep on in its settled course; it floated
about like a corpse at the will of the waves.  It went at random.
He could not tear himself away from the scene of the last struggle,
from this sea that had devoured one of his men.  Ten days passed thus.
It was not till the 1st of May that the Nautilus resumed its northerly course,
after having sighted the Bahamas at the mouth of the Bahama Canal.
We were then following the current from the largest river to the sea,
that has its banks, its fish, and its proper temperatures.  I mean
the Gulf Stream.  It is really a river, that flows freely to the middle
of the Atlantic, and whose waters do not mix with the ocean waters.
It is a salt river, salter than the surrounding sea.  Its mean depth is
1,500 fathoms, its mean breadth ten miles.  In certain places the current
flows with the speed of two miles and a half an hour.  The body of its
waters is more considerable than that of all the rivers in the globe.
It was on this ocean river that the Nautilus then sailed.

I must add that, during the night, the phosphorescent waters
of the Gulf Stream rivalled the electric power of our watch-light,
especially in the stormy weather that threatened us so frequently.
May 8th, we were still crossing Cape Hatteras, at the height
of the North Caroline.  The width of the Gulf Stream there
is seventy-five miles, and its depth 210 yards.  The Nautilus
still went at random; all supervision seemed abandoned.
I thought that, under these circumstances, escape would be possible.
Indeed, the inhabited shores offered anywhere an easy refuge.
The sea was incessantly ploughed by the steamers that ply
between New York or Boston and the Gulf of Mexico, and overrun
day and night by the little schooners coasting about the several
parts of the American coast.  We could hope to be picked up.
It was a favourable opportunity, notwithstanding the thirty
miles that separated the Nautilus from the coasts of the Union.
One unfortunate circumstance thwarted the Canadian's plans.
The weather was very bad.  We were nearing those shores
where tempests are so frequent, that country of waterspouts and
cyclones actually engendered by the current of the Gulf Stream.
To tempt the sea in a frail boat was certain destruction.  Ned Land
owned this himself.  He fretted, seized with nostalgia that flight
only could cure.

"Master," he said that day to me, "this must come to an end.  I must make
a clean breast of it.  This Nemo is leaving land and going up to the north.
But I declare to you that I have had enough of the South Pole, and I will not
follow him to the North."

"What is to be done, Ned, since flight is impracticable just now?"

"We must speak to the Captain," said he; "you said nothing when we
were in your native seas.  I will speak, now we are in mine.
When I think that before long the Nautilus will be by Nova Scotia,
and that there near New foundland is a large bay, and into that bay
the St. Lawrence empties itself, and that the St. Lawrence is my river,
the river by Quebec, my native town--when I think of this,
I feel furious, it makes my hair stand on end.  Sir, I would
rather throw myself into the sea!  I will not stay here!
I am stifled!"

The Canadian was evidently losing all patience.
His vigorous nature could not stand this prolonged imprisonment.
His face altered daily; his temper became more surly.  I knew
what he must suffer, for I was seized with home-sickness myself.
Nearly seven months had passed without our having had any news
from land; Captain Nemo's isolation, his altered spirits,
especially since the fight with the poulps, his taciturnity, all made
me view things in a different light.

"Well, sir?" said Ned, seeing I did not reply.

"Well, Ned, do you wish me to ask Captain Nemo his intentions concerning us?"

"Yes, sir."

"Although he has already made them known?"

"Yes; I wish it settled finally.  Speak for me, in my name only,
if you like."

"But I so seldom meet him.  He avoids me."

"That is all the more reason for you to go to see him."

I went to my room.  From thence I meant to go to Captain Nemo's.
It would not do to let this opportunity of meeting him slip.
I knocked at the door.  No answer.  I knocked again, then turned
the handle.  The door opened, I went in.  The Captain was there.
Bending over his work-table, he had not heard me.
Resolved not to go without having spoken, I approached him.
He raised his head quickly, frowned, and said roughly, "You here!
What do you want?"

"To speak to you, Captain."

"But I am busy, sir; I am working.  I leave you at liberty to shut
yourself up; cannot I be allowed the same?"

This reception was not encouraging; but I was determined to hear
and answer everything.

"Sir," I said coldly, "I have to speak to you on a matter that admits
of no delay."

"What is that, sir?" he replied, ironically.  "Have you discovered something
that has escaped me, or has the sea delivered up any new secrets?"

We were at cross-purposes. But, before I could reply, he showed me
an open manuscript on his table, and said, in a more serious tone,
"Here, M. Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several languages.
It contains the sum of my studies of the sea; and, if it please God,
it shall not perish with me.  This manuscript, signed with my name,
complete with the history of my life, will be shut up in a little
floating case.  The last survivor of all of us on board the Nautilus
will throw this case into the sea, and it will go whither it is borne
by the waves."

This man's name! his history written by himself!
His mystery would then be revealed some day.

"Captain," I said, "I can but approve of the idea that makes you act thus.
The result of your studies must not be lost.  But the means you employ seem
to me to be primitive.  Who knows where the winds will carry this case,
and in whose hands it will fall?  Could you not use some other means?
Could not you, or one of yours----"

"Never, sir!" he said, hastily interrupting me.

"But I and my companions are ready to keep this manuscript
in store; and, if you will put us at liberty----"

"At liberty?" said the Captain, rising.

"Yes, sir; that is the subject on which I wish to question you.
For seven months we have been here on board, and I ask you to-day,
in the name of my companions and in my own, if your intention is
to keep us here always?"

"M. Aronnax, I will answer you to-day as I did seven months ago:
Whoever enters the Nautilus, must never quit it."

"You impose actual slavery upon us!"

"Give it what name you please."

"But everywhere the slave has the right to regain his liberty."

"Who denies you this right?  Have I ever tried to chain you with an oath?"

He looked at me with his arms crossed.

"Sir," I said, "to return a second time to this subject will be neither
to your nor to my taste; but, as we have entered upon it, let us go
through with it.  I repeat, it is not only myself whom it concerns.
Study is to me a relief, a diversion, a passion that could make
me forget everything.  Like you, I am willing to live obscure,
in the frail hope of bequeathing one day, to future time,
the result of my labours.  But it is otherwise with Ned Land.
Every man, worthy of the name, deserves some consideration.
Have you thought that love of liberty, hatred of slavery,
can give rise to schemes of revenge in a nature like the Canadian's;
that he could think, attempt, and try----"

I was silenced; Captain Nemo rose.

"Whatever Ned Land thinks of, attempts, or tries, what does it matter to me?
I did not seek him!  It is not for my pleasure that I keep him on board!
As for you, M. Aronnax, you are one of those who can understand everything,
even silence.  I have nothing more to say to you.  Let this first time you
have come to treat of this subject be the last, for a second time I will not
listen to you."

I retired.  Our situation was critical.  I related my conversation
to my two companions.

"We know now," said Ned, "that we can expect nothing from this man.
The Nautilus is nearing Long Island.  We will escape, whatever the
weather may be."

But the sky became more and more threatening.  Symptoms of a hurricane
became manifest.  The atmosphere was becoming white and misty.
On the horizon fine streaks of cirrhous clouds were succeeded
by masses of cumuli.  Other low clouds passed swiftly by.
The swollen sea rose in huge billows.  The birds disappeared
with the exception of the petrels, those friends of the storm.
The barometer fell sensibly, and indicated an extreme extension
of the vapours.  The mixture of the storm glass was decomposed
under the influence of the electricity that pervaded the atmosphere.
The tempest burst on the 18th of May, just as the Nautilus was
floating off Long Island, some miles from the port of New York.
I can describe this strife of the elements! for,
instead of fleeing to the depths of the sea, Captain Nemo,
by an unaccountable caprice, would brave it at the surface.
The wind blew from the south-west at first.  Captain Nemo,
during the squalls, had taken his place on the platform.
He had made himself fast, to prevent being washed overboard
by the monstrous waves.  I had hoisted myself up, and made myself
fast also, dividing my admiration between the tempest and this
extraordinary man who was coping with it.  The raging sea was swept
by huge cloud-drifts, which were actually saturated with the waves.
The Nautilus, sometimes lying on its side, sometimes standing up
like a mast, rolled and pitched terribly.  About five o'clock
a torrent of rain fell, that lulled neither sea nor wind.
The hurri cane blew nearly forty leagues an hour.  It is under
these conditions that it overturns houses, breaks iron gates,
displaces twenty-four pounders.  However, the Nautilus, in the midst
of the tempest, confirmed the words of a clever engineer,
"There is no well-constructed hull that cannot defy the sea."
This was not a resisting rock; it was a steel spindle,
obedient and movable, without rigging or masts, that braved its fury
with impunity.  However, I watched these raging waves attentively.
They measured fifteen feet in height, and 150 to 175 yards long,
and their speed of propagation was thirty feet per second.
Their bulk and power increased with the depth of the water.
Such waves as these, at the Hebrides, have displaced a mass
weighing 8,400 lb.  They are they which, in the tempest of
December 23rd, 1864, after destroying the town of Yeddo, in Japan,
broke the same day on the shores of America.  The intensity of
the tempest increased with the night.  The barometer, as in 1860
at Reunion during a cyclone, fell seven-tenths at the close of day.
I saw a large vessel pass the horizon struggling painfully.
She was trying to lie to under half steam, to keep up above the waves.
It was probably one of the steamers of the line from New York
to Liverpool, or Havre.  It soon disappeared in the gloom.
At ten o'clock in the evening the sky was on fire.
The atmosphere was streaked with vivid lightning.
I could not bear the brightness of it; while the captain,
looking at it, seemed to envy the spirit of the tempest.
A terrible noise filled the air, a complex noise, made up
of the howls of the crushed waves, the roaring of the wind,
and the claps of thunder.  The wind veered suddenly to all
points of the horizon; and the cyclone, rising in the east,
returned after passing by the north, west, and south, in the inverse
course pursued by the circular storm of the southern hemisphere.
Ah, that Gulf Stream!  It deserves its name of the King of Tempests.
It is that which causes those formidable cyclones, by the
difference of temperature between its air and its currents.
A shower of fire had succeeded the rain.  The drops of water were
changed to sharp spikes.  One would have thought that Captain Nemo
was courting a death worthy of himself, a death by lightning.
As the Nautilus, pitching dreadfully, raised its steel spur in the air,
it seemed to act as a conductor, and I saw long sparks burst from it.
Crushed and without strength I crawled to the panel, opened it,
and descended to the saloon.  The storm was then at its height.
It was impossible to stand upright in the interior of the Nautilus.
Captain Nemo came down about twelve.  I heard the reservoirs filling
by degrees, and the Nautilus sank slowly beneath the waves.
Through the open windows in the saloon I saw large fish terrified,
passing like phantoms in the water.  Some were struck before my eyes.
The Nautilus was still descending.  I thought that at about eight
fathoms deep we should find a calm.  But no! the upper beds
were too violently agitated for that.  We had to seek repose
at more than twenty-five fathoms in the bowels of the deep.
But there, what quiet, what silence, what peace!  Who could have told
that such a hurricane had been let loose on the surface of that
ocean?



CHAPTER XX

FROM LATITUDE 47@ 24' TO LONGITUDE 17@ 28'

In consequence of the storm, we had been thrown eastward once more.
All hope of escape on the shores of New York or St. Lawrence had faded away;
and poor Ned, in despair, had isolated himself like Captain Nemo.
Conseil and I, however, never left each other.  I said that the Nautilus
had gone aside to the east.  I should have said (to be more exact)
the north-east. For some days, it wandered first on the surface,
and then beneath it, amid those fogs so dreaded by sailors.
What accidents are due to these thick fogs!  What shocks upon
these reefs when the wind drowns the breaking of the waves!
What collisions between vessels, in spite of their warning lights,
whistles, and alarm bells!  And the bottoms of these seas look like
a field of battle, where still lie all the conquered of the ocean;
some old and already encrusted, others fresh and reflecting from their
iron bands and copper plates the brilliancy of our lantern.

On the 15th of May we were at the extreme south of the Bank of Newfoundland.
This bank consists of alluvia, or large heaps of organic matter,
brought either from the Equator by the Gulf Stream, or from the North Pole
by the counter-current of cold water which skirts the American coast.
There also are heaped up those erratic blocks which are carried along
by the broken ice; and close by, a vast charnel-house of molluscs,
which perish here by millions.  The depth of the sea is not great
at Newfoundland--not more than some hundreds of fathoms; but towards
the south is a depression of 1,500 fathoms.  There the Gulf Stream widens.
It loses some of its speed and some of its temperature, but it
becomes a sea.

It was on the 17th of May, about 500 miles from Heart's Content,
at a depth of more than 1,400 fathoms, that I saw the electric cable lying
on the bottom.  Conseil, to whom I had not mentioned it, thought at first
that it was a gigantic sea-serpent. But I undeceived the worthy fellow,
and by way of consolation related several particulars in the laying
of this cable.  The first one was laid in the years 1857 and 1858;
but, after transmitting about 400 telegrams, would not act any longer.
In 1863 the engineers constructed an other one, measuring 2,000 miles
in length, and weighing 4,500 tons, which was embarked on the Great Eastern.
This attempt also failed.

On the 25th of May the Nautilus, being at a depth of more
than 1,918 fathoms, was on the precise spot where the rupture
occurred which ruined the enterprise.  It was within 638 miles
of the coast of Ireland; and at half-past two in the afternoon
they discovered that communication with Europe had ceased.
The electricians on board resolved to cut the cable before
fishing it up, and at eleven o'clock at night they had recovered
the damaged part.  They made another point and spliced it,
and it was once more submerged.  But some days after it broke again,
and in the depths of the ocean could not be recaptured.
The Americans, however, were not discouraged.  Cyrus Field, the bold
promoter of the enterprise, as he had sunk all his own fortune,
set a new subscription on foot, which was at once answered,
and another cable was constructed on better principles.
The bundles of conducting wires were each enveloped in gutta-percha,
and protected by a wadding of hemp, contained in a metallic covering.
The Great Eastern sailed on the 13th of July, 1866.  The operation
worked well.  But one incident occurred.  Several times in
unrolling the cable they observed that nails had recently been
forced into it, evidently with the motive of destroying it.
Captain Anderson, the officers, and engineers consulted together,
and had it posted up that, if the offender was surprised on board,
he would be thrown without further trial into the sea.
From that time the criminal attempt was never repeated.

On the 23rd of July the Great Eastern was not more than 500 miles
from Newfoundland, when they telegraphed from Ireland the news
of the armistice concluded between Prussia and Austria after Sadowa.
On the 27th, in the midst of heavy fogs, they reached the port
of Heart's Content.  The enterprise was successfully terminated;
and for its first despatch, young America addressed old Europe in these
words of wisdom, so rarely understood:  "Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace, goodwill towards men."

I did not expect to find the electric cable in its
primitive state, such as it was on leaving the manufactory.
The long serpent, covered with the remains of shells,
bristling with foraminiferae, was encrusted with a strong coating
which served as a protection against all boring molluscs.
It lay quietly sheltered from the motions of the sea, and under
a favourable pressure for the transmission of the electric
spark which passes from Europe to America in .32 of a second.
Doubtless this cable will last for a great length of time,
for they find that the gutta-percha covering is improved
by the sea-water. Besides, on this level, so well chosen,
the cable is never so deeply submerged as to cause it to break.
The Nautilus followed it to the lowest depth, which was more than
2,212 fathoms, and there it lay without any anchorage; and then
we reached the spot where the accident had taken place in 1863.
The bottom of the ocean then formed a valley about 100
miles broad, in which Mont Blanc might have been placed without
its summit appearing above the waves.  This valley is closed
at the east by a perpendicular wall more than 2,000 yards high.
We arrived there on the 28th of May, and the Nautilus was then not
more than 120 miles from Ireland.

Was Captain Nemo going to land on the British Isles?
No. To my great surprise he made for the south, once more coming
back towards European seas.  In rounding the Emerald Isle,
for one instant I caught sight of Cape Clear, and the light which
guides the thousands of vessels leaving Glasgow or Liverpool.
An important question then arose in my mind.  Did the Nautilus
dare entangle itself in the Manche?  Ned Land, who had re-appeared
since we had been nearing land, did not cease to question me.
How could I answer?  Captain Nemo remained invisible.
After having shown the Canadian a glimpse of American shores,
was he going to show me the coast of France?

But the Nautilus was still going southward.  On the 30th of May,
it passed in sight of Land's End, between the extreme point
of England and the Scilly Isles, which were left to starboard.
If we wished to enter the Manche, he must go straight to the east.
He did not do so.

During the whole of the 31st of May, the Nautilus described
a series of circles on the water, which greatly interested me.
It seemed to be seeking a spot it had some trouble in finding.
At noon, Captain Nemo himself came to work the ship's log.
He spoke no word to me, but seemed gloomier than ever.  What could
sadden him thus?  Was it his proxim ity to European shores?
Had he some recollections of his abandoned country?
If not, what did he feel?  Remorse or regret?
For a long while this thought haunted my mind, and I had
a kind of presentiment that before long chance would betray
the captain's secrets.

The next day, the 1st of June, the Nautilus continued the same process.
It was evidently seeking some particular spot in the ocean.
Captain Nemo took the sun's altitude as he had done the day before.
The sea was beautiful, the sky clear.  About eight miles to the east,
a large steam vessel could be discerned on the horizon.
No flag fluttered from its mast, and I could not discover
its nationality.  Some minutes before the sun passed the meridian,
Captain Nemo took his sextant, and watched with great attention.
The perfect rest of the water greatly helped the operation.
The Nautilus was motionless; it neither rolled nor pitched.

I was on the platform when the altitude was taken, and the Captain
pronounced these words:  "It is here."

He turned and went below.  Had he seen the vessel which
was changing its course and seemed to be nearing us?
I could not tell.  I returned to the saloon.  The panels closed,
I heard the hissing of the water in the reservoirs.
The Nautilus began to sink, following a vertical line, for its
screw communicated no motion to it.  Some minutes later it stopped
at a depth of more than 420 fathoms, resting on the ground.
The luminous ceiling was darkened, then the panels were opened,
and through the glass I saw the sea brilliantly illuminated by
the rays of our lantern for at least half a mile round us.

I looked to the port side, and saw nothing but an immensity
of quiet waters.  But to starboard, on the bottom appeared
a large protuberance, which at once attracted my attention.
One would have thought it a ruin buried under a coating
of white shells, much resembling a covering of snow.
Upon examining the mass attentively, I could recognise
the ever-thickening form of a vessel bare of its masts,
which must have sunk.  It certainly belonged to past times.
This wreck, to be thus encrusted with the lime of the water,
must already be able to count many years passed at the bottom
of the ocean.

What was this vessel?  Why did the Nautilus visit its tomb?
Could it have been aught but a shipwreck which had drawn it under the water?
I knew not what to think, when near me in a slow voice I heard
Captain Nemo say:

"At one time this ship was called the Marseillais.  It carried
seventy-four guns, and was launched in 1762.  In 1778, the 13th of August,
commanded by La Poype-Ver trieux, it fought boldly against the Preston.
In 1779, on the 4th of July, it was at the taking of Grenada,
with the squadron of Admiral Estaing.  In 1781, on the 5th of September,
it took part in the battle of Comte de Grasse, in Chesapeake Bay.
In 1794, the French Republic changed its name.  On the 16th of April,
in the same year, it joined the squadron of Villaret Joyeuse, at Brest,
being entrusted with the escort of a cargo of corn coming from America,
under the command of Admiral Van Stebel.  On the 11th and 12th Prairal
of the second year, this squadron fell in with an English vessel.
Sir, to-day is the 13th Prairal, the first of June, 1868.  It is now
seventy-four years ago, day for day on this very spot, in latitude 47@
24', longitude 17@ 28', that this vessel, after fighting heroically,
losing its three masts, with the water in its hold, and the third of its
crew disabled, preferred sinking with its 356 sailors to surrendering;
and, nailing its colours to the poop, disappeared under the waves to
the cry of `Long live the Republic!'"

"The Avenger!"  I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir, the Avenger!  A good name!" muttered Captain Nemo,
crossing his arms.



CHAPTER XXI

A HECATOMB

The way of describing this unlooked-for scene, the history
of the patriot ship, told at first so coldly, and the emotion
with which this strange man pronounced the last words,
the name of the Avenger, the significance of which could
not escape me, all impressed itself deeply on my mind.
My eyes did not leave the Captain, who, with his hand stretched
out to sea, was watching with a glowing eye the glorious wreck.
Perhaps I was never to know who he was, from whence he came,
or where he was going to, but I saw the man move, and apart
from the savant.  It was no common misanthropy which had
shut Captain Nemo and his companions within the Nautilus,
but a hatred, either monstrous or sublime, which time could
never weaken.  Did this hatred still seek for vengeance?
The future would soon teach me that.  But the Nautilus
was rising slowly to the surface of the sea, and the form
of the Avenger disappeared by degrees from my sight.
Soon a slight rolling told me that we were in the open air.
At that moment a dull boom was heard.  I looked at the Captain.
He did not move.

"Captain?" said I.

He did not answer.  I left him and mounted the platform.
Conseil and the Canadian were already there.

"Where did that sound come from?"  I asked.

"It was a gunshot," replied Ned Land.

I looked in the direction of the vessel I had already seen.
It was nearing the Nautilus, and we could see that it was putting on steam.
It was within six miles of us.

"What is that ship, Ned?"

"By its rigging, and the height of its lower masts," said the Canadian,
"I bet she is a ship-of-war. May it reach us; and, if necessary,
sink this cursed Nautilus."

"Friend Ned," replied Conseil, "what harm can it do to the Nautilus?
Can it attack it beneath the waves?  Can its cannonade us at the bottom
of the sea?"

"Tell me, Ned," said I, "can you recognise what country she belongs to?"

The Canadian knitted his eyebrows, dropped his eyelids,
and screwed up the corners of his eyes, and for a few moments
fixed a piercing look upon the vessel.

"No, sir," he replied; "I cannot tell what nation she belongs to,
for she shows no colours.  But I can declare she is a man-of-war,
for a long pennant flutters from her main mast."

For a quarter of an hour we watched the ship which was steaming
towards us.  I could not, however, believe that she could
see the Nautilus from that distance; and still less that she
could know what this submarine engine was.  Soon the Canadian
informed me that she was a large, armoured, two-decker ram.
A thick black smoke was pouring from her two funnels.
Her closely-furled sails were stopped to her yards.
She hoisted no flag at her mizzen-peak. The distance
prevented us from distinguishing the colours of her pennant,
which floated like a thin ribbon.  She advanced rapidly.
If Captain Nemo allowed her to approach, there was a chance of
salvation for us.

"Sir," said Ned Land, "if that vessel passes within a mile of us I shall
throw myself into the sea, and I should advise you to do the same."

I did not reply to the Canadian's suggestion, but continued
watching the ship.  Whether English, French, American, or Russian,
she would be sure to take us in if we could only reach her.
Presently a white smoke burst from the fore part of the vessel;
some seconds after, the water, agitated by the fall of a heavy body,
splashed the stern of the Nautilus, and shortly afterwards a loud
explosion struck my ear.

"What! they are firing at us!"  I exclaimed.

"So please you, sir," said Ned, "they have recognised the unicorn,
and they are firing at us."

"But," I exclaimed, "surely they can see that there are men in the case?"

"It is, perhaps, because of that," replied Ned Land, looking at me.

A whole flood of light burst upon my mind.  Doubtless they knew
now how to believe the stories of the pretended monster.  No doubt,
on board the Abraham Lincoln, when the Canadian struck it with the harpoon,
Commander Farragut had recognised in the supposed narwhal a submarine vessel,
more dangerous than a supernatural cetacean.  Yes, it must have been so;
and on every sea they were now seeking this engine of destruction.
Terrible indeed! if, as we supposed, Captain Nemo employed the Nautilus
in works of vengeance.  On the night when we were imprisoned in that cell,
in the midst of the Indian Ocean, had he not attacked some vessel?
The man buried in the coral cemetery, had he not been a victim to
the shock caused by the Nautilus?  Yes, I repeat it, it must be so.
One part of the mysterious existence of Captain Nemo had been unveiled;
and, if his identity had not been recognised, at least, the nations
united against him were no longer hunting a chimerical creature,
but a man who had vowed a deadly hatred against them.
All the formidable past rose before me.  Instead of meeting friends
on board the approaching ship, we could only expect pitiless enemies.
But the shot rattled about us.  Some of them struck the sea
and ricochetted, losing themselves in the distance.  But none touched
the Nautilus.  The vessel was not more than three miles from us.
In spite of the serious cannonade, Captain Nemo did not appear
on the platform; but, if one of the conical projectiles had struck
the shell of the Nautilus, it would have been fatal.  The Canadian
then said, "Sir, we must do all we can to get out of this dilemma.
Let us signal them.  They will then, perhaps, understand that we
are honest folks."

Ned Land took his handkerchief to wave in the air; but he had
scarcely displayed it, when he was struck down by an iron hand,
and fell, in spite of his great strength, upon the deck.

"Fool!" exclaimed the Captain, "do you wish to be pierced by the spur
of the Nautilus before it is hurled at this vessel?"

Captain Nemo was terrible to hear; he was still more terrible to see.
His face was deadly pale, with a spasm at his heart.  For an instant
it must have ceased to beat.  His pupils were fearfully contracted.
He did not speak, he roared, as, with his body thrown forward,
he wrung the Canadian's shoulders.  Then, leaving him, and turning
to the ship of war, whose shot was still raining around him,
he exclaimed, with a powerful voice, "Ah, ship of an accursed nation,
you know who I am!  I do not want your colours to know you by!
Look! and I will show you mine!"

And on the fore part of the platform Captain Nemo unfurled
a black flag, similar to the one he had placed at the South Pole.
At that moment a shot struck the shell of the Nautilus obliquely,
without piercing it; and, rebounding near the Captain, was lost in the sea.
He shrugged his shoulders; and, addressing me, said shortly, "Go down,
you and your companions, go down!"

"Sir," I cried, "are you going to attack this vessel?"

"Sir, I am going to sink it."

"You will not do that?"

"I shall do it," he replied coldly.  "And I advise you not to
judge me, sir.  Fate has shown you what you ought not to have seen.
The attack has begun; go down."

"What is this vessel?"

"You do not know?  Very well! so much the better!
Its nationality to you, at least, will be a secret.  Go down!"

We could but obey.  About fifteen of the sailors surrounded the Captain,
looking with implacable hatred at the vessel nearing them.
One could feel that the same desire of vengeance animated every soul.
I went down at the moment another projectile struck the Nautilus, and I
heard the Captain exclaim:

"Strike, mad vessel!  Shower your useless shot!  And then, you will not
escape the spur of the Nautilus.  But it is not here that you shall perish!
I would not have your ruins mingle with those of the Avenger!"

I reached my room.  The Captain and his second had remained on the platform.
The screw was set in motion, and the Nautilus, moving with speed,
was soon beyond the reach of the ship's guns.  But the pursuit continued,
and Captain Nemo contented himself with keeping his distance.

About four in the afternoon, being no longer able to
contain my impatience, I went to the central staircase.
The panel was open, and I ventured on to the platform.
The Captain was still walking up and down with an agitated step.
He was looking at the ship, which was five or six miles to leeward.

He was going round it like a wild beast, and, drawing it eastward,
he allowed them to pursue.  But he did not attack.
Perhaps he still hesitated?  I wished to mediate once more.
But I had scarcely spoken, when Captain Nemo imposed silence, saying:

"I am the law, and I am the judge!  I am the oppressed, and there is
the oppressor!  Through him I have lost all that I loved, cherished,
and venerated--country, wife, children, father, and mother.
I saw all perish!  All that I hate is there!  Say no more!"

I cast a last look at the man-of-war, which was putting on steam,
and rejoined Ned and Conseil.

"We will fly!"  I exclaimed.

"Good!" said Ned.  "What is this vessel?"

"I do not know; but, whatever it is, it will be sunk before night.
In any case, it is better to perish with it, than be made accomplices
in a retaliation the justice of which we cannot judge."

"That is my opinion too," said Ned Land, coolly.  "Let us wait for night."

Night arrived.  Deep silence reigned on board.
The compass showed that the Nautilus had not altered its course.
It was on the surface, rolling slightly.  My companions and I
resolved to fly when the vessel should be near enough either
to hear us or to see us; for the moon, which would be full
in two or three days, shone brightly.  Once on board the ship,
if we could not prevent the blow which threatened it, we could,
at least we would, do all that circumstances would allow.
Several times I thought the Nautilus was preparing for attack;
but Captain Nemo contented himself with allowing his adversary
to approach, and then fled once more before it.

Part of the night passed without any incident.  We watched the
opportunity for action.  We spoke little, for we were too much moved.
Ned Land would have thrown himself into the sea, but I forced him to wait.
According to my idea, the Nautilus would attack the ship at her waterline,
and then it would not only be possible, but easy to fly.

At three in the morning, full of uneasiness, I mounted the platform.
Captain Nemo had not left it.  He was standing at the fore part near
his flag, which a slight breeze displayed above his head.  He did not take
his eyes from the vessel.  The intensity of his look seemed to attract,
and fascinate, and draw it onward more surely than if he had been towing it.
The moon was then passing the meridian.  Jupiter was rising in the east.
Amid this peaceful scene of nature, sky and ocean rivalled each other
in tranquillity, the sea offering to the orbs of night the finest mirror
they could ever have in which to reflect their image.  As I thought of
the deep calm of these elements, compared with all those passions brooding
imperceptibly within the Nautilus, I shuddered.

The vessel was within two miles of us.  It was ever nearing that
phosphorescent light which showed the presence of the Nautilus.
I could see its green and red lights, and its white lantern hanging
from the large foremast.  An indistinct vibration quivered through
its rigging, showing that the furnaces were heated to the uttermost.
Sheaves of sparks and red ashes flew from the funnels, shining in the
atmosphere like stars.

I remained thus until six in the morning, without Captain Nemo noticing me.
The ship stood about a mile and a half from us, and with the first dawn
of day the firing began afresh.  The moment could not be far off when,
the Nautilus attacking its adversary, my companions and myself should
for ever leave this man.  I was preparing to go down to remind them,
when the second mounted the platform, accompanied by several sailors.
Captain Nemo either did not or would not see them.  Some steps were taken
which might be called the signal for action.  They were very simple.
The iron balustrade around the platform was lowered, and the lantern and pilot
cages were pushed within the shell until they were flush with the deck.
The long surface of the steel cigar no longer offered a single point to check
its manoeuvres.  I returned to the saloon.  The Nautilus still floated;
some streaks of light were filtering through the liquid beds.
With the undulations of the waves the windows were brightened by
the red streaks of the rising sun, and this dreadful day of the 2nd of
June had dawned.

At five o'clock, the log showed that the speed of the Nautilus
was slackening, and I knew that it was allowing them to
draw nearer.  Besides, the reports were heard more distinctly,
and the projectiles, labouring through the ambient water,
were extinguished with a strange hissing noise.

"My friends," said I, "the moment is come.  One grasp of the hand,
and may God protect us!"

Ned Land was resolute, Conseil calm, myself so nervous
that I knew not how to contain myself.  We all passed into
the library; but the moment I pushed the door opening on to
the central staircase, I heard the upper panel close sharply.
The Canadian rushed on to the stairs, but I stopped him.
A well-known hissing noise told me that the water was running
into the reservoirs, and in a few minutes the Nautilus
was some yards beneath the surface of the waves.
I understood the manoeuvre.  It was too late to act.
The Nautilus did not wish to strike at the impenetrable cuirass,
but below the water-line, where the metallic covering no
longer protected it.

We were again imprisoned, unwilling witnesses of the dreadful
drama that was preparing.  We had scarcely time to reflect;
taking refuge in my room, we looked at each other without speaking.
A deep stupor had taken hold of my mind:  thought seemed to stand still.
I was in that painful state of expectation preceding a dreadful report.
I waited, I listened, every sense was merged in that of hearing!
The speed of the Nautilus was accelerated.  It was preparing to rush.
The whole ship trembled.  Suddenly I screamed.  I felt the shock,
but comparatively light.  I felt the penetrating power of the steel spur.
I heard rattlings and scrapings.  But the Nautilus, carried along
by its propelling power, passed through the mass of the vessel like a
needle through sailcloth!

I could stand it no longer.  Mad, out of my mind, I rushed
from my room into the saloon.  Captain Nemo was there,
mute, gloomy, implacable; he was looking through the port panel.
A large mass cast a shadow on the water; and, that it might
lose nothing of her agony, the Nautilus was going down into
the abyss with her.  Ten yards from me I saw the open shell,
through which the water was rushing with the noise of thunder,
then the double line of guns and the netting.  The bridge was
covered with black, agitated shadows.

The water was rising.  The poor creatures were crowding the ratlines,
clinging to the masts, struggling under the water.  It was a human ant-heap
overtaken by the sea.  Paralysed, stiffened with anguish, my hair standing
on end, with eyes wide open, panting, without breath, and without voice,
I too was watching!  An irresistible attraction glued me to the glass!
Suddenly an explosion took place.  The compressed air blew up her decks,
as if the magazines had caught fire.  Then the unfortunate vessel sank
more rapidly.  Her topmast, laden with victims, now appeared; then her spars,
bending under the weight of men; and, last of all, the top of her mainmast.
Then the dark mass disappeared, and with it the dead crew, drawn down by
the strong eddy.

I turned to Captain Nemo.  That terrible avenger, a perfect
archangel of hatred, was still looking.  When all was over,
he turned to his room, opened the door, and entered.
I followed him with my eyes.  On the end wall beneath his heroes,
I saw the portrait of a woman, still young, and two little children.
Captain Nemo looked at them for some moments, stretched his arms
towards them, and, kneeling down, burst into deep sobs.



CHAPTER XXII

THE LAST WORDS OF CAPTAIN NEMO

The panels had closed on this dreadful vision, but light had not returned
to the saloon:  all was silence and darkness within the Nautilus.
At wonderful speed, a hundred feet beneath the water, it was leaving
this desolate spot.  Whither was it going?  To the north or south?
Where was the man flying to after such dreadful retaliation?
I had returned to my room, where Ned and Conseil had remained silent enough.
I felt an insurmountable horror for Captain Nemo.  Whatever he had
suffered at the hands of these men, he had no right to punish thus.
He had made me, if not an accomplice, at least a witness of his vengeance.
At eleven the electric light reappeared.  I passed into the saloon.
It was deserted.  I consulted the different instruments.  The Nautilus was
flying northward at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, now on the surface,
and now thirty feet below it.  On taking the bearings by the chart,
I saw that we were passing the mouth of the Manche, and that our course
was hurrying us towards the northern seas at a frightful speed.  That night
we had crossed two hundred leagues of the Atlantic.  The shadows fell,
and the sea was covered with darkness until the rising of the moon.  I went
to my room, but could not sleep.  I was troubled with dreadful nightmare.
The horrible scene of destruction was continually before my eyes.
From that day, who could tell into what part of the North Atlantic
basin the Nautilus would take us?  Still with unaccountable speed.
Still in the midst of these northern fogs.  Would it touch at Spitzbergen,
or on the shores of Nova Zembla?  Should we explore those unknown seas,
the White Sea, the Sea of Kara, the Gulf of Obi, the Archipelago of Liarrov,
and the unknown coast of Asia?  I could not say.  I could no longer judge
of the time that was passing.  The clocks had been stopped on board.
It seemed, as in polar countries, that night and day no longer followed
their regular course.  I felt myself being drawn into that strange
region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will.
Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, at every moment I expected to see "that veiled
human figure, of larger proportions than those of any inhabitant of the earth,
thrown across the cataract which defends the approach to the pole."
I estimated (though, perhaps, I may be mistaken)--I estimated this
adventurous course of the Nautilus to have lasted fifteen or twenty days.
And I know not how much longer it might have lasted, had it not been
for the catastrophe which ended this voyage.  Of Captain Nemo I saw nothing
whatever now, nor of his second.  Not a man of the crew was visible for
an instant.  The Nautilus was almost incessantly under water.  When we came
to the surface to renew the air, the panels opened and shut mechanically.
There were no more marks on the planisphere.  I knew not where we were.
And the Canadian, too, his strength and patience at an end, appeared no more.
Conseil could not draw a word from him; and, fearing that, in a dreadful
fit of madness, he might kill himself, watched him with constant devotion.
One morning (what date it was I could not say) I had fallen into a heavy
sleep towards the early hours, a sleep both painful and unhealthy, when I
suddenly awoke.  Ned Land was leaning over me, saying, in a low voice,
"We are going to fly."  I sat up.

"When shall we go?"  I asked.

"To-night. All inspection on board the Nautilus seems to have ceased.
All appear to be stupefied.  You will be ready, sir?"

"Yes; where are we?"

"In sight of land.  I took the reckoning this morning in the fog--
twenty miles to the east."

"What country is it?"

"I do not know; but, whatever it is, we will take refuge there."

"Yes, Ned, yes.  We will fly to-night, even if the sea should swallow us up."

"The sea is bad, the wind violent, but twenty miles in that light
boat of the Nautilus does not frighten me.  Unknown to the crew,
I have been able to procure food and some bottles of water."

"I will follow you."

"But," continued the Canadian, "if I am surprised, I will defend myself;
I will force them to kill me."

"We will die together, friend Ned."

I had made up my mind to all.  The Canadian left me.
I reached the platform, on which I could with difficulty support
myself against the shock of the waves.  The sky was threatening;
but, as land was in those thick brown shadows, we must fly.
I returned to the saloon, fearing and yet hoping to see Captain Nemo,
wishing and yet not wishing to see him.  What could I have said to him?
Could I hide the involuntary horror with which he inspired me?
No. It was better that I should not meet him face to face;
better to forget him.  And yet---- How long seemed that day, the last
that I should pass in the Nautilus.  I remained alone.  Ned Land
and Conseil avoided speaking, for fear of betraying themselves.
At six I dined, but I was not hungry; I forced myself to eat in spite
of my disgust, that I might not weaken myself.  At half-past six
Ned Land came to my room, saying, "We shall not see each other
again before our departure.  At ten the moon will not be risen.
We will profit by the darkness.  Come to the boat; Conseil and I
will wait for you."

The Canadian went out without giving me time to answer.
Wishing to verify the course of the Nautilus, I went to the saloon.
We were running N.N.E. at frightful speed, and more than fifty yards deep.
I cast a last look on these wonders of nature, on the riches of art
heaped up in this museum, upon the unrivalled collection destined
to perish at the bottom of the sea, with him who had formed it.
I wished to fix an indelible impression of it in my mind.
I remained an hour thus, bathed in the light of that luminous ceiling,
and passing in review those treasures shining under their glasses.
Then I returned to my room.

I dressed myself in strong sea clothing.  I collected my notes,
placing them carefully about me.  My heart beat loudly.
I could not check its pulsations.  Certainly my trouble and agitation
would have betrayed me to Captain Nemo's eyes.  What was he doing
at this moment?  I listened at the door of his room.  I heard steps.
Captain Nemo was there.  He had not gone to rest.  At every moment
I expected to see him appear, and ask me why I wished to fly.
I was constantly on the alert.  My imagination magnified everything.
The impression became at last so poignant that I asked myself if it
would not be better to go to the Captain's room, see him face to face,
and brave him with look and gesture.

It was the inspiration of a madman; fortunately I resisted the desire,
and stretched myself on my bed to quiet my bodily agitation.
My nerves were somewhat calmer, but in my excited brain I saw
over again all my existence on board the Nautilus; every incident,
either happy or unfortunate, which had happened since my disappearance
from the Abraham Lincoln--the submarine hunt, the Torres Straits,
the savages of Papua, the running ashore, the coral cemetery,
the passage of Suez, the Island of Santorin, the Cretan diver,
Vigo Bay, Atlantis, the iceberg, the South Pole, the imprisonment
in the ice, the fight among the poulps, the storm in the Gulf Stream,
the Avenger, and the horrible scene of the vessel sunk with all her crew.
All these events passed before my eyes like scenes in a drama.
Then Captain Nemo seemed to grow enormously, his features to assume
superhuman proportions.  He was no longer my equal, but a man of the waters,
the genie of the sea.

It was then half-past nine.  I held my head between my hands to keep
it from bursting.  I closed my eyes; I would not think any longer.
There was another half-hour to wait, another half-hour of a nightmare,
which might drive me mad.

At that moment I heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an
undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds.
I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo,
in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit to the end of life.

Then a sudden thought terrified me.  Captain Nemo had left his room.
He was in the saloon, which I must cross to fly.  There I should
meet him for the last time.  He would see me, perhaps speak to me.
A gesture of his might destroy me, a single word chain me on board.

But ten was about to strike.  The moment had come for me to leave my room,
and join my companions.

I must not hesitate, even if Captain Nemo himself should rise before me.
I opened my door carefully; and even then, as it turned on its hinges,
it seemed to me to make a dreadful noise.  Perhaps it only existed in
my own imagination.

I crept along the dark stairs of the Nautilus, stopping at each step
to check the beating of my heart.  I reached the door of the saloon,
and opened it gently.  It was plunged in profound darkness.
The strains of the organ sounded faintly.  Captain Nemo was there.
He did not see me.  In the full light I do not think he would have
noticed me, so entirely was he absorbed in the ecstasy.

I crept along the carpet, avoiding the slightest sound which might
betray my presence.  I was at least five minutes reaching the door,
at the opposite side, opening into the library.

I was going to open it, when a sigh from Captain Nemo nailed me to the spot.
I knew that he was rising.  I could even see him, for the light from
the library came through to the saloon.  He came towards me silently,
with his arms crossed, gliding like a spectre rather than walking.
His breast was swelling with sobs; and I heard him murmur these words
(the last which ever struck my ear):

"Almighty God! enough! enough!"

Was it a confession of remorse which thus escaped from this man's conscience?

In desperation, I rushed through the library, mounted the central
staircase, and, following the upper flight, reached the boat.
I crept through the opening, which had already admitted
my two companions.

"Let us go! let us go!"  I exclaimed.

"Directly!" replied the Canadian.

The orifice in the plates of the Nautilus was first closed,
and fastened down by means of a false key, with which Ned Land
had provided himself; the opening in the boat was also closed.
The Canadian began to loosen the bolts which still held us to
the submarine boat.

Suddenly a noise was heard.  Voices were answering each other loudly.
What was the matter?  Had they discovered our flight?
I felt Ned Land slipping a dagger into my hand.

"Yes," I murmured, "we know how to die!"

The Canadian had stopped in his work.  But one word many times repeated,
a dreadful word, revealed the cause of the agitation spreading on board
the Nautilus.  It was not we the crew were looking after!

"The maelstrom! the maelstrom!"  Could a more dreadful word in a more
dreadful situation have sounded in our ears!  We were then upon
the dangerous coast of Norway.  Was the Nautilus being drawn into
this gulf at the moment our boat was going to leave its sides?
We knew that at the tide the pent-up waters between the islands
of Ferroe and Loffoden rush with irresistible violence,
forming a whirlpool from which no vessel ever escapes.
From every point of the horizon enormous waves were meeting,
forming a gulf justly called the "Navel of the Ocean,"
whose power of attraction extends to a distance of twelve miles.
There, not only vessels, but whales are sacrificed, as well as white
bears from the northern regions.

It is thither that the Nautilus, voluntarily or involuntarily,
had been run by the Captain.

It was describing a spiral, the circumference of which was lessening
by degrees, and the boat, which was still fastened to its side,
was carried along with giddy speed.  I felt that sickly giddiness
which arises from long-continued whirling round.

We were in dread.  Our horror was at its height, circulation had stopped,
all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered with cold sweat,
like a sweat of agony!  And what noise around our frail bark!
What roarings repeated by the echo miles away!  What an uproar was that
of the waters broken on the sharp rocks at the bottom, where the hardest
bodies are crushed, and trees worn away, "with all the fur rubbed off,"
according to the Norwegian phrase!

What a situation to be in!  We rocked frightfully.  The Nautilus
defended itself like a human being.  Its steel muscles cracked.
Sometimes it seemed to stand upright, and we with it!

"We must hold on," said Ned, "and look after the bolts.
We may still be saved if we stick to the Nautilus."

He had not finished the words, when we heard a crashing noise,
the bolts gave way, and the boat, torn from its groove, was hurled
like a stone from a sling into the midst of the whirlpool.

My head struck on a piece of iron, and with the violent shock
I lost all consciousness.



CHAPTER XXIII

CONCLUSION

Thus ends the voyage under the seas.  What passed during that night--
how the boat escaped from the eddies of the maelstrom--
how Ned Land, Conseil, and myself ever came out of the gulf,
I cannot tell.

But when I returned to consciousness, I was lying in a fisherman's hut,
on the Loffoden Isles.  My two companions, safe and sound, were near me
holding my hands.  We embraced each other heartily.

At that moment we could not think of returning to France.  The means
of communication between the north of Norway and the south are rare.
And I am therefore obliged to wait for the steamboat running monthly
from Cape North.

And, among the worthy people who have so kindly received us,
I revise my record of these adventures once more.
Not a fact has been omitted, not a detail exaggerated.
It is a faithful narrative of this incredible expedition in an
element inaccessible to man, but to which Progress will one day
open a road.

Shall I be believed?  I do not know.  And it matters little, after all.
What I now affirm is, that I have a right to speak of these seas, under which,
in less than ten months, I have crossed 20,000 leagues in that submarine tour
of the world, which has revealed so many wonders.

But what has become of the Nautilus?  Did it resist the pressure
of the maelstrom?  Does Captain Nemo still live?  And does
he still follow under the ocean those frightful retaliations?
Or, did he stop after the last hecatomb?

Will the waves one day carry to him this manuscript containing
the history of his life?  Shall I ever know the name of this man?
Will the missing vessel tell us by its nationality that of Captain Nemo?

I hope so.  And I also hope that his powerful vessel has conquered
the sea at its most terrible gulf, and that the Nautilus has survived
where so many other vessels have been lost!  If it be so--if Captain
Nemo still inhabits the ocean, his adopted country, may hatred be
appeased in that savage heart!  May the contemplation of so many wonders
extinguish for ever the spirit of vengeance!  May the judge disappear,
and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea!
If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime.  Have I not understood
it myself?  Have I not lived ten months of this unnatural life?
And to the question asked by Ecclesiastes three thousand years ago,
"That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?"
two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer----

CAPTAIN NEMO AND MYSELF.

____________________________________________________________________



Henry Jekyll is embroiled in THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

as told by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

                         Story of the Door



Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was
never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in
discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and
yet somehow lovable.  At friendly meetings, and when the wine was
to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye;
something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but
which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner
face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life.  He was
austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a
taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theater, had not
crossed the doors of one for twenty years.  But he had an approved
tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at
the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in
any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove.  "I incline
to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly:  "I let my brother go
to the devil in his own way."  In this character, it was
frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and
the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men.  And to
such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never
marked a shade of change in his demeanour.

    No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was
undemonstrative at the best, and even his friendship seemed to be
founded in a similar catholicity of good-nature.  It is the mark
of a modest man to accept his friendly circle ready-made from the
hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer's way.  His friends
were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the
longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they
implied no aptness in the object.  Hence, no doubt the bond that
united him to Mr. Richard Enfield, his distant kinsman, the
well-known man about town.  It was a nut to crack for many, what
these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find
in common.  It was reported by those who encountered them in their
Sunday walks, that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and
would hail with obvious relief the appearance of a friend.  For
all that, the two men put the greatest store by these excursions,
counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not only set aside
occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business,
that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.

    It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them
down a by-street in a busy quarter of London.  The street was
small and what is called quiet, but it drove a thriving trade on
the weekdays.  The inhabitants were all doing well, it seemed and
all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the
surplus of their grains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood
along that thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of
smiling saleswomen.  Even on Sunday, when it veiled its more
florid charms and lay comparatively empty of passage, the street
shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a fire in a
forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished
brasses, and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly
caught and pleased the eye of the passenger.

    Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the
line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a
certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the
street.  It was two storeys high; showed no window, nothing but a
door on the lower storey and a blind forehead of discoloured wall
on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of prolonged
and sordid negligence.  The door, which was equipped with neither
bell nor knocker, was blistered and distained.  Tramps slouched
into the recess and struck matches on the panels; children kept
shop upon the steps; the schoolboy had tried his knife on the
mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had appeared to
drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.

    Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the
by-street; but when they came abreast of the entry, the former
lifted up his cane and pointed.

    "Did you ever remark that door?" he asked; and when his
companion had replied in the affirmative.  "It is connected in my
mind," added he, "with a very odd story."

   "Indeed?" said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice,
"and what was that?"

    "Well, it was this way," returned Mr. Enfield:  "I was coming
home from some place at the end of the world, about three o'clock
of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town
where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps.  Street
after street and all the folks asleep--street after street, all
lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church--
till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and
listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman.  All at
once, I saw two figures:  one a little man who was stumping along
eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or
ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street.
Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the
corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man
trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on
the ground.  It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see.
It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut.  I gave
a few halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought
him back to where there was already quite a group about the
screaming child.  He was perfectly cool and made no resistance,
but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me
like running.  The people who had turned out were the girl's own
family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent
put in his appearance.  Well, the child was not much the worse,
more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there you might
have supposed would be an end to it.  But there was one curious
circumstance.  I had taken a loathing to my gentleman at first
sight.  So had the child's family, which was only natural.  But
the doctor's case was what struck me.  He was the usual cut and
dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong
Edinburgh accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe.  Well, sir,
he was like the rest of us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I
saw that Sawbones turn sick and white with desire to kill him.  I
knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and
killing being out of the question, we did the next best.  We told
the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as
should make his name stink from one end of London to the other.
If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should
lose them.  And all the time, as we were pitching it in red hot,
we were keeping the women off him as best we could for they were
as wild as harpies.  I never saw a circle of such hateful faces;
and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering
coolness--frightened too, I could see that--but carrying it
off, sir, really like Satan.  `If you choose to make capital out
of this accident,' said he, `I am naturally helpless.  No
gentleman but wishes to avoid a scene,' says he.  `Name your
figure.'  Well, we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the
child's family; he would have clearly liked to stick out; but
there was something about the lot of us that meant mischief, and
at last he struck.  The next thing was to get the money; and where
do you think he carried us but to that place with the
door?--whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with
the matter of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on
Coutts's, drawn payable to bearer and signed with a name that I
can't mention, though it's one of the points of my story, but it
was a name at least very well known and often printed.  The figure
was stiff; but the signature was good for more than that if it was
only genuine.  I took the liberty of pointing out to my gentleman
that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does
not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning
and come out with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred
pounds.  But he was quite easy and sneering.  `Set your mind at
rest,' says he, `I will stay with you till the banks open and cash
the cheque myself.'  So we all set off, the doctor, and the child's
father, and our friend and myself, and passed the rest of the
night in my chambers; and next day, when we had breakfasted, went
in a body to the bank.  I gave in the cheque myself, and said I
had every reason to believe it was a forgery.  Not a bit of it.
The cheque was genuine."

    "Tut-tut," said Mr. Utterson.

    "I see you feel as I do," said Mr. Enfield.  "Yes, it's a bad
story.  For my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with,
a really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the
very pink of the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it
worse) one of your fellows who do what they call good.  Black mail
I suppose; an honest man paying through the nose for some of the
capers of his youth.  Black Mail House is what I call the place
with the door, in consequence.  Though even that, you know, is far
from explaining all," he added, and with the words fell into a
vein of musing.

    From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather
suddenly:  "And you don't know if the drawer of the cheque lives
there?"

    "A likely place, isn't it?" returned Mr. Enfield.  "But I
happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or
other."

    "And you never asked about the--place with the door?" said
Mr. Utterson.

    "No, sir:  I had a delicacy," was the reply.  "I feel very
strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style
of the day of judgment.  You start a question, and it's like
starting a stone.  You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away
the stone goes, starting others; and presently some bland old bird
(the last you would have thought of) is knocked on the head in his
own back garden and the family have to change their name.  No sir,
I make it a rule of mine:  the more it looks like Queer Street, the
less I ask."

    "A very good rule, too," said the lawyer.

    "But I have studied the place for myself," continued Mr.
Enfield.  "It seems scarcely a house.  There is no other door, and
nobody goes in or out of that one but, once in a great while, the
gentleman of my adventure.  There are three windows looking on the
court on the first floor; none below; the windows are always shut
but they're clean.  And then there is a chimney which is generally
smoking; so somebody must live there.  And yet it's not so sure;
for the buildings are so packed together about the court, that
it's hard to say where one ends and another begins."

    The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then
"Enfield," said Mr. Utterson, "that's a good rule of yours."

    "Yes, I think it is," returned Enfield.

    "But for all that," continued the lawyer, "there's one point I
want to ask:  I want to ask the name of that man who walked over
the child."

    "Well," said Mr. Enfield, "I can't see what harm it would do.
It was a man of the name of Hyde."

    "Hm," said Mr. Utterson.  "What sort of a man is he to see?"

    "He is not easy to describe.  There is something wrong with his
appearance; something displeasing, something down-right
detestable.  I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce
know why.  He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a strong
feeling of deformity, although I couldn't specify the point.  He's
an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing
out of the way.  No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can't
describe him.  And it's not want of memory; for I declare I can
see him this moment."

    Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously
under a weight of consideration.  "You are sure he used a key?" he
inquired at last.

    "My dear sir ..." began Enfield, surprised out of himself.

    "Yes, I know," said Utterson; "I know it must seem strange.
The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it
is because I know it already.  You see, Richard, your tale has
gone home.  If you have been inexact in any point you had better
correct it."

    "I think you might have warned me," returned the other with a
touch of sullenness.  "But I have been pedantically exact, as you
call it.  The fellow had a key; and what's more, he has it still.
I saw him use it not a week ago."

    Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the
young man presently resumed.  "Here is another lesson to say
nothing," said he.  "I am ashamed of my long tongue.  Let us make
a bargain never to refer to this again."

    "With all my heart," said the lawyer.  "I shake hands on that,
Richard."




                        Search for Mr. Hyde



That evening Mr. Utterson came home to his bachelor house in
sombre spirits and sat down to dinner without relish.  It was his
custom of a Sunday, when this meal was over, to sit close by the
fire, a volume of some dry divinity on his reading desk, until the
clock of the neighbouring church rang out the hour of twelve, when
he would go soberly and gratefully to bed.  On this night however,
as soon as the cloth was taken away, he took up a candle and went
into his business room.  There he opened his safe, took from the
most private part of it a document endorsed on the envelope as Dr.
Jekyll's Will and sat down with a clouded brow to study its
contents.  The will was holograph, for Mr. Utterson though he took
charge of it now that it was made, had refused to lend the least
assistance in the making of it; it provided not only that, in case
of the decease of Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S.,
etc., all his possessions were to pass into the hands of his
"friend and benefactor Edward Hyde," but that in case of Dr.
Jekyll's "disappearance or unexplained absence for any period
exceeding three calendar months," the said Edward Hyde should step
into the said Henry Jekyll's shoes without further delay and free
from any burthen or obligation beyond the payment of a few small
sums to the members of the doctor's household.  This document had
long been the lawyer's eyesore.  It offended him both as a lawyer
and as a lover of the sane and customary sides of life, to whom
the fanciful was the immodest.  And hitherto it was his ignorance
of Mr. Hyde that had swelled his indignation; now, by a sudden
turn, it was his knowledge.  It was already bad enough when the
name was but a name of which he could learn no more.  It was worse
when it began to be clothed upon with detestable attributes; and
out of the shifting, insubstantial mists that had so long baffled
his eye, there leaped up the sudden, definite presentment of a
fiend.

    "I thought it was madness," he said, as he replaced the
obnoxious paper in the safe, "and now I begin to fear it is
disgrace."

    With that he blew out his candle, put on a greatcoat, and set
forth in the direction of Cavendish Square, that citadel of
medicine, where his friend, the great Dr. Lanyon, had his house
and received his crowding patients.  "If anyone knows, it will be
Lanyon," he had thought.

    The solemn butler knew and welcomed him; he was subjected to
no stage of delay, but ushered direct from the door to the
dining-room where Dr. Lanyon sat alone over his wine.  This was a
hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair
prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner.  At sight
of Mr. Utterson, he sprang up from his chair and welcomed him with
both hands.  The geniality, as was the way of the man, was
somewhat theatrical to the eye; but it reposed on genuine feeling.
For these two were old friends, old mates both at school and
college, both thorough respectors of themselves and of each other,
and what does not always follow, men who thoroughly enjoyed each
other's company.

    After a little rambling talk, the lawyer led up to the subject
which so disagreeably preoccupied his mind.

    "I suppose, Lanyon," said he, "you and I must be the two
oldest friends that Henry Jekyll has?"

    "I wish the friends were younger," chuckled Dr. Lanyon.  "But
I suppose we are.  And what of that?  I see little of him now."

    "Indeed?" said Utterson.  "I thought you had a bond of common
interest."

    "We had," was the reply.  "But it is more than ten years since
Henry Jekyll became too fanciful for me.  He began to go wrong,
wrong in mind; and though of course I continue to take an interest
in him for old sake's sake, as they say, I see and I have seen
devilish little of the man.  Such unscientific balderdash," added
the doctor, flushing suddenly purple, "would have estranged Damon
and Pythias."

    This little spirit of temper was somewhat of a relief to
Mr. Utterson.  "They have only differed on some point of science,"
he thought; and being a man of no scientific passions (except in
the matter of conveyancing), he even added:  "It is nothing worse
than that!"  He gave his friend a few seconds to recover his
composure, and then approached the question he had come to put.
"Did you ever come across a protege of his--one Hyde?" he asked.

    "Hyde?" repeated Lanyon.  "No.  Never heard of him.  Since my
time."

    That was the amount of information that the lawyer carried
back with him to the great, dark bed on which he tossed to and
fro, until the small hours of the morning began to grow large.  It
was a night of little ease to his toiling mind, toiling in mere
darkness and beseiged by questions.

    Six o'clock struck on the bells of the church that was so
conveniently near to Mr. Utterson's dwelling, and still he was
digging at the problem.  Hitherto it had touched him on the
intellectual side alone; but now his imagination also was engaged,
or rather enslaved; and as he lay and tossed in the gross darkness
of the night and the curtained room, Mr. Enfield's tale went by
before his mind in a scroll of lighted pictures.  He would be
aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city; then of the
figure of a man walking swiftly; then of a child running from the
doctor's; and then these met, and that human Juggernaut trod the
child down and passed on regardless of her screams.  Or else he
would see a room in a rich house, where his friend lay asleep,
dreaming and smiling at his dreams; and then the door of that room
would be opened, the curtains of the bed plucked apart, the
sleeper recalled, and lo! there would stand by his side a figure
to whom power was given, and even at that dead hour, he must rise
and do its bidding.  The figure in these two phases haunted the
lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to
see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the
more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness,
through wider labyrinths of lamplighted city, and at every street
corner crush a child and leave her screaming.  And still the
figure had no face by which he might know it; even in his dreams,
it had no face, or one that baffled him and melted before his
eyes; and thus it was that there sprang up and grew apace in the
lawyer's mind a singularly strong, almost an inordinate, curiosity
to behold the features of the real Mr. Hyde.  If he could but once
set eyes on him, he thought the mystery would lighten and perhaps
roll altogether away, as was the habit of mysterious things when
well examined.  He might see a reason for his friend's strange
preference or bondage (call it which you please) and even for the
startling clause of the will.  At least it would be a face worth
seeing:  the face of a man who was without bowels of mercy:  a face
which had but to show itself to raise up, in the mind of the
unimpressionable Enfield, a spirit of enduring hatred.

    From that time forward, Mr. Utterson began to haunt the door
in the by-street of shops.  In the morning before office hours, at
noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the
face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of
solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen
post.

    "If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek."

    And at last his patience was rewarded.  It was a fine dry
night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor;
the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of
light and shadow.  By ten o'clock, when the shops were closed the
by-street was very solitary and, in spite of the low growl of
London from all round, very silent.  Small sounds carried far;
domestic sounds out of the houses were clearly audible on either
side of the roadway; and the rumour of the approach of any
passenger preceded him by a long time.  Mr. Utterson had been some
minutes at his post, when he was aware of an odd light footstep
drawing near.  In the course of his nightly patrols, he had long
grown accustomed to the quaint effect with which the footfalls
of a single person, while he is still a great way off, suddenly
spring out distinct from the vast hum and clatter of the city.
Yet his attention had never before been so sharply and decisively
arrested; and it was with a strong, superstitious prevision of
success that he withdrew into the entry of the court.

    The steps drew swiftly nearer, and swelled out suddenly louder
as they turned the end of the street.  The lawyer, looking forth
from the entry, could soon see what manner of man he had to deal
with.  He was small and very plainly dressed and the look of him,
even at that distance, went somehow strongly against the watcher's
inclination.  But he made straight for the door, crossing the
roadway to save time; and as he came, he drew a key from his
pocket like one approaching home.

    Mr. Utterson stepped out and touched him on the shoulder as he
passed.  "Mr. Hyde, I think?"

    Mr. Hyde shrank back with a hissing intake of the breath.  But
his fear was only momentary; and though he did not look the lawyer
in the face, he answered coolly enough:  "That is my name.  What do
you want?"

    "I see you are going in," returned the lawyer.  "I am an old
friend of Dr. Jekyll's--Mr. Utterson of Gaunt Street--you must
have heard of my name; and meeting you so conveniently, I thought
you might admit me."

    "You will not find Dr. Jekyll; he is from home," replied Mr.
Hyde, blowing in the key.  And then suddenly, but still without
looking up, "How did you know me?" he asked.

    "On your side," said Mr. Utterson "will you do me a favour?"

    "With pleasure," replied the other.  "What shall it be?"

    "Will you let me see your face?" asked the lawyer.

    Mr. Hyde appeared to hesitate, and then, as if upon some
sudden reflection, fronted about with an air of defiance; and the
pair stared at each other pretty fixedly for a few seconds.  "Now
I shall know you again," said Mr. Utterson.  "It may be useful."

    "Yes," returned Mr. Hyde, "It is as well we have met; and
apropos, you should have my address."  And he gave a number of a
street in Soho.

    "Good God!" thought Mr. Utterson, "can he, too, have been
thinking of the will?"  But he kept his feelings to himself and
only grunted in acknowledgment of the address.

    "And now," said the other, "how did you know me?"

    "By description," was the reply.

    "Whose description?"

    "We have common friends," said Mr. Utterson.

    "Common friends," echoed Mr. Hyde, a little hoarsely.  "Who
are they?"

    "Jekyll, for instance," said the lawyer.

    "He never told you," cried Mr. Hyde, with a flush of anger.
"I did not think you would have lied."

    "Come," said Mr. Utterson, "that is not fitting language."

    The other snarled aloud into a savage laugh; and the next
moment, with extraordinary quickness, he had unlocked the door and
disappeared into the house.

    The lawyer stood awhile when Mr. Hyde had left him, the
picture of disquietude.  Then he began slowly to mount the street,
pausing every step or two and putting his hand to his brow like a
man in mental perplexity.  The problem he was thus debating as he
walked, was one of a class that is rarely solved.  Mr. Hyde was
pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any
nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne
himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity
and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat
broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of
these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust,
loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him.  "There
must be something else,"  said the perplexed gentleman.  "There
is something more, if I could find a name for it.  God bless me,
the man seems hardly human!  Something troglodytic, shall we say?
or can it be the old story of Dr. Fell? or is it the mere radiance
of a foul soul that thus transpires through, and transfigures, its
clay continent?  The last, I think; for, O my poor old Harry
Jekyll, if ever I read Satan's signature upon a face, it is on
that of your new friend."

    Round the corner from the by-street, there was a square of
ancient, handsome houses, now for the most part decayed from their
high estate and let in flats and chambers to all sorts and
conditions of men; map-engravers, architects, shady lawyers and
the agents of obscure enterprises.  One house, however, second
from the corner, was still occupied entire; and at the door of
this, which wore a great air of wealth and comfort, though it was
now plunged in darkness except for the fanlight, Mr. Utterson
stopped and knocked.  A well-dressed, elderly servant opened the
door.

    "Is Dr. Jekyll at home, Poole?" asked the lawyer.

    "I will see, Mr. Utterson," said Poole, admitting the visitor,
as he spoke, into a large, low-roofed, comfortable hall paved with
flags, warmed (after the fashion of a country house) by a bright,
open fire, and furnished with costly cabinets of oak.  "Will you
wait here by the fire, sir? or shall I give you a light in the
dining-room?"

    "Here, thank you," said the lawyer, and he drew near and
leaned on the tall fender.  This hall, in which he was now left
alone, was a pet fancy of his friend the doctor's; and Utterson
himself was wont to speak of it as the pleasantest room in London.
But tonight there was a shudder in his blood; the face of Hyde sat
heavy on his memory; he felt (what was rare with him) a nausea
and distaste of life; and in the gloom of his spirits, he seemed
to read a menace in the flickering of the firelight on the
polished cabinets and the uneasy starting of the shadow on the
roof.  He was ashamed of his relief, when Poole presently
returned to announce that Dr. Jekyll was gone out.

    "I saw Mr. Hyde go in by the old dissecting room, Poole," he
said.  "Is that right, when Dr. Jekyll is from home?"

    "Quite right, Mr. Utterson, sir," replied the servant.  "Mr.
Hyde has a key."

    "Your master seems to repose a great deal of trust in that
young man, Poole," resumed the other musingly.

    "Yes, sir, he does indeed," said Poole.  "We have all orders
to obey him."

    "I do not think I ever met Mr. Hyde?" asked Utterson.

    "O, dear no, sir.  He never dines here," replied the butler.
"Indeed we see very little of him on this side of the house; he
mostly comes and goes by the laboratory."

    "Well, good-night, Poole."

    "Good-night, Mr. Utterson."

    And the lawyer set out homeward with a very heavy heart.
"Poor Harry Jekyll," he thought, "my mind misgives me he is in
deep waters!  He was wild when he was young; a long while ago to
be sure; but in the law of God, there is no statute of
limitations.  Ay, it must be that; the ghost of some old sin, the
cancer of some concealed disgrace:  punishment coming, PEDE CLAUDO,
years after memory has forgotten and self-love condoned the
fault."  And the lawyer, scared by the thought, brooded awhile on
his own past, groping in all the corners of memory, least by
chance some Jack-in-the-Box of an old iniquity should leap to
light there.  His past was fairly blameless; few men could read
the rolls of their life with less apprehension; yet he was humbled
to the dust by the many ill things he had done, and raised up
again into a sober and fearful gratitude by the many he had come
so near to doing yet avoided.  And then by a return on his former
subject, he conceived a spark of hope.  "This Master Hyde, if he
were studied," thought he, "must have secrets of his own; black
secrets, by the look of him; secrets compared to which poor
Jekyll's worst would be like sunshine.  Things cannot continue as
they are.  It turns me cold to think of this creature stealing
like a thief to Harry's bedside; poor Harry, what a wakening!  And
the danger of it; for if this Hyde suspects the existence of the
will, he may grow impatient to inherit.  Ay, I must put my
shoulders to the wheel--if Jekyll will but let me," he added,
"if Jekyll will only let me."  For once more he saw before his
mind's eye, as clear as transparency, the strange clauses of the
will.





                   Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease



    A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave
one of his pleasant dinners to some five or six old cronies, all
intelligent, reputable men and all judges of good wine; and Mr.
Utterson so contrived that he remained behind after the others had
departed.  This was no new arrangement, but a thing that had
befallen many scores of times.  Where Utterson was liked, he was
liked well.  Hosts loved to detain the dry lawyer, when the
light-hearted and loose-tongued had already their foot on the
threshold; they liked to sit a while in his unobtrusive company,
practising for solitude, sobering their minds in the man's rich
silence after the expense and strain of gaiety.  To this rule, Dr.
Jekyll was no exception; and as he now sat on the opposite side of
the fire--a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with
something of a stylish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity
and kindness--you could see by his looks that he cherished for
Mr. Utterson a sincere and warm affection.

    "I have been wanting to speak to you, Jekyll," began the
latter.  "You know that will of yours?"

    A close observer might have gathered that the topic was
distasteful; but the doctor carried it off gaily.  "My poor
Utterson," said he, "you are unfortunate in such a client.  I
never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it
were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my
scientific heresies.  O, I know he's a good fellow--you needn't
frown--an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of
him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant
pedant.  I was never more disappointed in any man than Lanyon."

    "You know I never approved of it," pursued Utterson,
ruthlessly disregarding the fresh topic.

    "My will?  Yes, certainly, I know that," said the doctor, a
trifle sharply.  "You have told me so."

    "Well, I tell you so again," continued the lawyer.  "I have
been learning something of young Hyde."

    The large handsome face of Dr. Jekyll grew pale to the very
lips, and there came a blackness about his eyes.  "I do not care
to hear more," said he.  "This is a matter I thought we had agreed
to drop."

    "What I heard was abominable," said Utterson.

    "It can make no change.  You do not understand my position,"
returned the doctor, with a certain incoherency of manner.  "I am
painfully situated, Utterson; my position is a very strange--a
very strange one.  It is one of those affairs that cannot be
mended by talking."

    "Jekyll," said Utterson, "you know me:  I am a man to be
trusted.  Make a clean breast of this in confidence; and I make no
doubt I can get you out of it."

    "My good Utterson," said the doctor, "this is very good of
you, this is downright good of you, and I cannot find words to
thank you in.  I believe you fully; I would trust you before any
man alive, ay, before myself, if I could make the choice; but
indeed it isn't what you fancy; it is not as bad as that; and just
to put your good heart at rest, I will tell you one thing:  the
moment I choose, I can be rid of Mr. Hyde.  I give you my hand
upon that; and I thank you again and again; and I will just add
one little word, Utterson, that I'm sure you'll take in good part: 
this is a private matter, and I beg of you to let it sleep."

    Utterson reflected a little, looking in the fire.

    "I have no doubt you are perfectly right," he said at last,
getting to his feet.

    "Well, but since we have touched upon this business, and for
the last time I hope," continued the doctor, "there is one point I
should like you to understand.  I have really a very great
interest in poor Hyde.  I know you have seen him; he told me so;
and I fear he was rude.  But I do sincerely take a great, a very
great interest in that young man; and if I am taken away,
Utterson, I wish you to promise me that you will bear with him and
get his rights for him.  I think you would, if you knew all; and
it would be a weight off my mind if you would promise."

    "I can't pretend that I shall ever like him," said the lawyer.

    "I don't ask that," pleaded Jekyll, laying his hand upon the
other's arm; "I only ask for justice; I only ask you to help him
for my sake, when I am no longer here."

    Utterson heaved an irrepressible sigh.  "Well," said he,
"I promise."





                       The Carew Murder Case



    Nearly a year later, in the month of October, 18--, London was
startled by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more
notable by the high position of the victim.  The details were few
and startling.  A maid servant living alone in a house not far
from the river, had gone upstairs to bed about eleven.  Although a
fog rolled over the city in the small hours, the early part of the
night was cloudless, and the lane, which the maid's window
overlooked, was brilliantly lit by the full moon.  It seems she
was romantically given, for she sat down upon her box, which stood
immediately under the window, and fell into a dream of musing.
Never (she used to say, with streaming tears, when she narrated
that experience), never had she felt more at peace with all men
or thought more kindly of the world.  And as she so sat she became
aware of an aged beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near
along the lane; and advancing to meet him, another and very small
gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention.  When they
had come within speech (which was just under the maid's eyes) the
older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner
of politeness.  It did not seem as if the subject of his address
were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it some times
appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone
on his face as he spoke, and the girl was pleased to watch it, it
seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of
disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded
self-content.  Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she
was surprised to recognise in him a certain Mr. Hyde, who had once
visited her master and for whom she had conceived a dislike.  He
had in his hand a heavy cane, with which he was trifling; but he
answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained
impatience.  And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great
flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the cane, and
carrying on (as the maid described it) like a madman.  The old
gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much
surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all
bounds and clubbed him to the earth.  And next moment, with
ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing
down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly
shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway.  At the horror of
these sights and sounds, the maid fainted.

    It was two o'clock when she came to herself and called for the
police.  The murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim
in the middle of the lane, incredibly mangled.  The stick with
which the deed had been done, although it was of some rare and
very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the
stress of this insensate cruelty; and one splintered half had
rolled in the neighbouring gutter--the other, without doubt, had
been carried away by the murderer.  A purse and gold watch were
found upon the victim:  but no cards or papers, except a sealed and
stamped envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the post,
and which bore the name and address of Mr. Utterson.

    This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was
out of bed; and he had no sooner seen it and been told the
circumstances, than he shot out a solemn lip.  "I shall say
nothing till I have seen the body," said he; "this may be very
serious.  Have the kindness to wait while I dress."  And with the
same grave countenance he hurried through his breakfast and drove
to the police station, whither the body had been carried.  As soon
as he came into the cell, he nodded.

    "Yes," said he, "I recognise him.  I am sorry to say that this
is Sir Danvers Carew."

    "Good God, sir," exclaimed the officer, "is it possible?"  And
the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition.
"This will make a deal of noise," he said.  "And perhaps you can
help us to the man."  And he briefly narrated what the maid had
seen, and showed the broken stick.

    Mr. Utterson had already quailed at the name of Hyde; but when
the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken
and battered as it was, he recognized it for one that he had
himself presented many years before to Henry Jekyll.

    "Is this Mr. Hyde a person of small stature?"  he inquired.

    "Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what
the maid calls him," said the officer.

    Mr. Utterson reflected; and then, raising his head, "If you
will come with me in my cab," he said, "I think I can take you to
his house."

    It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first
fog of the season.  A great chocolate-coloured pall lowered over
heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these
embattled vapours; so that as the cab crawled from street to
street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues
of twilight; for here it would be dark like the back-end of
evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like
the light of some strange conflagration; and here, for a moment,
the fog would be quite broken up, and a haggard shaft of daylight
would glance in between the swirling wreaths.  The dismal quarter
of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways,
and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been
extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful
reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a
district of some city in a nightmare.  The thoughts of his mind,
besides, were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the
companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that
terror of the law and the law's officers, which may at times
assail the most honest.

    As the cab drew up before the address indicated, the fog
lifted a little and showed him a dingy street, a gin palace, a low
French eating house, a shop for the retail of penny numbers and
twopenny salads, many ragged children huddled in the doorways, and
many women of many different nationalities passing out, key in
hand, to have a morning glass; and the next moment the fog settled
down again upon that part, as brown as umber, and cut him off from
his blackguardly surroundings.  This was the home of Henry
Jekyll's favourite; of a man who was heir to a quarter of a
million sterling.

    An ivory-faced and silvery-haired old woman opened the door.
She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy:  but her manners were
excellent.  Yes, she said, this was Mr. Hyde's, but he was not at
home; he had been in that night very late, but he had gone away
again in less than an hour; there was nothing strange in that; his
habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; for instance,
it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday.

    "Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms," said the lawyer;
and when the woman began to declare it was impossible, "I had
better tell you who this person is," he added.  "This is Inspector
Newcomen of Scotland Yard."

    A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman's face.  "Ah!"
said she, "he is in trouble!  What has he done?"

    Mr. Utterson and the inspector exchanged glances.  "He don't
seem a very popular character," observed the latter.  "And now, my
good woman, just let me and this gentleman have a look about us."

    In the whole extent of the house, which but for the old woman
remained otherwise empty, Mr. Hyde had only used a couple of
rooms; but these were furnished with luxury and good taste.  A
closet was filled with wine; the plate was of silver, the napery
elegant; a good picture hung upon the walls, a gift (as Utterson
supposed) from Henry Jekyll, who was much of a connoisseur; and
the carpets were of many plies and agreeable in colour.  At this
moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently
and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their
pockets inside out; lock-fast drawers stood open; and on the
hearth there lay a pile of grey ashes, as though many papers had
been burned.  From these embers the inspector disinterred the butt
end of a green cheque book, which had resisted the action of the
fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and
as this clinched his suspicions, the officer declared himself
delighted.  A visit to the bank, where several thousand pounds
were found to be lying to the murderer's credit, completed his
gratification.

    "You may depend upon it, sir," he told Mr. Utterson:  "I have
him in my hand.  He must have lost his head, or he never would
have left the stick or, above all, burned the cheque book.  Why,
money's life to the man.  We have nothing to do but wait for him
at the bank, and get out the handbills."

    This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Mr.
Hyde had numbered few familiars--even the master of the servant
maid had only seen him twice; his family could nowhere be traced;
he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him
differed widely, as common observers will.  Only on one point were
they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed
deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders.





                      Incident of the Letter



It was late in the afternoon, when Mr. Utterson found his way to
Dr. Jekyll's door, where he was at once admitted by Poole, and
carried down by the kitchen offices and across a yard which had
once been a garden, to the building which was indifferently known
as the laboratory or dissecting rooms.  The doctor had bought the
house from the heirs of a celebrated surgeon; and his own tastes
being rather chemical than anatomical, had changed the destination
of the block at the bottom of the garden.  It was the first time
that the lawyer had been received in that part of his friend's
quarters; and he eyed the dingy, windowless structure with
curiosity, and gazed round with a distasteful sense of strangeness
as he crossed the theatre, once crowded with eager students and
now lying gaunt and silent, the tables laden with chemical
apparatus, the floor strewn with crates and littered with packing
straw, and the light falling dimly through the foggy cupola.  At
the further end, a flight of stairs mounted to a door covered with
red baize; and through this, Mr. Utterson was at last received
into the doctor's cabinet.  It was a large room fitted round with
glass presses, furnished, among other things, with a cheval-glass
and a business table, and looking out upon the court by three
dusty windows barred with iron.  The fire burned in the grate; a
lamp was set lighted on the chimney shelf, for even in the houses
the fog began to lie thickly; and there, close up to the warmth,
sat Dr. Jekyll, looking deathly sick.  He did not rise to meet his
visitor, but held out a cold hand and bade him welcome in a
changed voice.

    "And now," said Mr. Utterson, as soon as Poole had left them,
"you have heard the news?"

    The doctor shuddered.  "They were crying it in the square," he
said.  "I heard them in my dining-room."

    "One word," said the lawyer.  "Carew was my client, but so are
you, and I want to know what I am doing.  You have not been mad
enough to hide this fellow?"

    "Utterson, I swear to God," cried the doctor, "I swear to God
I will never set eyes on him again.  I bind my honour to you that
I am done with him in this world.  It is all at an end.  And
indeed he does not want my help; you do not know him as I do; he
is safe, he is quite safe; mark my words, he will never more be
heard of."

    The lawyer listened gloomily; he did not like his friend's
feverish manner.  "You seem pretty sure of him," said he; "and for
your sake, I hope you may be right.  If it came to a trial, your
name might appear."

    "I am quite sure of him," replied Jekyll; "I have grounds
for certainty that I cannot share with any one.  But there is one
thing on which you may advise me.  I have--I have received a
letter; and I am at a loss whether I should show it to the police.
I should like to leave it in your hands, Utterson; you would judge
wisely, I am sure; I have so great a trust in you."

    "You fear, I suppose, that it might lead to his detection?"
asked the lawyer.

    "No," said the other.  "I cannot say that I care what becomes
of Hyde; I am quite done with him.  I was thinking of my own
character, which this hateful business has rather exposed."

    Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend's
selfishness, and yet relieved by it.  "Well," said he, at last,
"let me see the letter."

    The letter was written in an odd, upright hand and signed
"Edward Hyde":  and it signified, briefly enough, that the writer's
benefactor, Dr. Jekyll, whom he had long so unworthily repaid for
a thousand generosities, need labour under no alarm for his
safety, as he had means of escape on which he placed a sure
dependence.  The lawyer liked this letter well enough; it put a
better colour on the intimacy than he had looked for; and he
blamed himself for some of his past suspicions.

    "Have you the envelope?" he asked.

    "I burned it," replied Jekyll, "before I thought what I was
about.  But it bore no postmark.  The note was handed in."

    "Shall I keep this and sleep upon it?" asked Utterson.

    "I wish you to judge for me entirely," was the reply.  "I have
lost confidence in myself."

    "Well, I shall consider," returned the lawyer.  "And now one
word more:  it was Hyde who dictated the terms in your will about
that disappearance?"

    The doctor seemed seized with a qualm of faintness; he shut
his mouth tight and nodded.

    "I knew it," said Utterson.  "He meant to murder you.  You had
a fine escape."

    "I have had what is far more to the purpose," returned the
doctor solemnly:  "I have had a lesson--O God, Utterson, what a
lesson I have had!"  And he covered his face for a moment with his
hands.

    On his way out, the lawyer stopped and had a word or two with
Poole.  "By the bye," said he, "there was a letter handed in
to-day:  what was the messenger like?"  But Poole was positive
nothing had come except by post; "and only circulars by that," he
added.

    This news sent off the visitor with his fears renewed.
Plainly the letter had come by the laboratory door; possibly,
indeed, it had been written in the cabinet; and if that were so,
it must be differently judged, and handled with the more caution.
The newsboys, as he went, were crying themselves hoarse along the
footways:  "Special edition.  Shocking murder of an M.P."  That was
the funeral oration of one friend and client; and he could not
help a certain apprehension lest the good name of another should
be sucked down in the eddy of the scandal.  It was, at least, a
ticklish decision that he had to make; and self-reliant as he was
by habit, he began to cherish a longing for advice.  It was not to
be had directly; but perhaps, he thought, it might be fished for.

    Presently after, he sat on one side of his own hearth, with
Mr. Guest, his head clerk, upon the other, and midway between, at
a nicely calculated distance from the fire, a bottle of a
particular old wine that had long dwelt unsunned in the
foundations of his house.  The fog still slept on the wing above
the drowned city, where the lamps glimmered like carbuncles; and
through the muffle and smother of these fallen clouds, the
procession of the town's life was still rolling in through the
great arteries with a sound as of a mighty wind.  But the room was
gay with firelight.  In the bottle the acids were long ago
resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour
grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn
afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to
disperse the fogs of London.  Insensibly the lawyer melted.  There
was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he
was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant.  Guest had
often been on business to the doctor's; he knew Poole; he could
scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde's familiarity about the
house; he might draw conclusions:  was it not as well, then, that
he should see a letter which put that mystery to right? and above
all since Guest, being a great student and critic of handwriting,
would consider the step natural and obliging?  The clerk, besides,
was a man of counsel; he could scarce read so strange a document
without dropping a remark; and by that remark Mr. Utterson might
shape his future course.

    "This is a sad business about Sir Danvers," he said.

    "Yes, sir, indeed.  It has elicited a great deal of public
feeling," returned Guest.  "The man, of course, was mad."

    "I should like to hear your views on that," replied Utterson.
"I have a document here in his handwriting; it is between
ourselves, for I scarce know what to do about it; it is an ugly
business at the best.  But there it is; quite in your way:  a
murderer's autograph."

    Guest's eyes brightened, and he sat down at once and studied
it with passion.  "No sir," he said:  "not mad; but it is an odd
hand."

    "And by all accounts a very odd writer," added the lawyer.

    Just then the servant entered with a note.

    "Is that from Dr. Jekyll, sir?" inquired the clerk.  "I
thought I knew the writing.  Anything private, Mr. Utterson?"

    "Only an invitation to dinner.  Why?  Do you want to see it?"

    "One moment.  I thank you, sir;" and the clerk laid the two
sheets of paper alongside and sedulously compared their contents.
"Thank you, sir," he said at last, returning both; "it's a very
interesting autograph."

    There was a pause, during which Mr. Utterson struggled with
himself.  "Why did you compare them, Guest?" he inquired suddenly.

    "Well, sir," returned the clerk, "there's a rather singular
resemblance; the two hands are in many points identical:  only
differently sloped."

    "Rather quaint," said Utterson.

    "It is, as you say, rather quaint," returned Guest.

    "I wouldn't speak of this note, you know," said the master.

    "No, sir," said the clerk.  "I understand."

    But no sooner was Mr. Utterson alone that night, than he
locked the note into his safe, where it reposed from that time
forward.  "What!" he thought.  "Henry Jekyll forge for a
murderer!"  And his blood ran cold in his veins.





                      Incident of Dr. Lanyon



Time ran on; thousands of pounds were offered in reward, for the
death of Sir Danvers was resented as a public injury; but Mr.
Hyde had disappeared out of the ken of the police as though he had
never existed.  Much of his past was unearthed, indeed, and all
disreputable:  tales came out of the man's cruelty, at once so
callous and violent; of his vile life, of his strange associates,
of the hatred that seemed to have surrounded his career; but of
his present whereabouts, not a whisper.  From the time he had left
the house in Soho on the morning of the murder, he was simply
blotted out; and gradually, as time drew on, Mr. Utterson began to
recover from the hotness of his alarm, and to grow more at quiet
with himself.  The death of Sir Danvers was, to his way of
thinking, more than paid for by the disappearance of Mr. Hyde.
Now that that evil influence had been withdrawn, a new life began
for Dr. Jekyll.  He came out of his seclusion, renewed relations
with his friends, became once more their familiar guest and
entertainer; and whilst he had always been known for charities, he
was now no less distinguished for religion.  He was busy, he was
much in the open air, he did good; his face seemed to open and
brighten, as if with an inward consciousness of service; and for
more than two months, the doctor was at peace.

    On the 8th of January Utterson had dined at the doctor's with
a small party; Lanyon had been there; and the face of the host had
looked from one to the other as in the old days when the trio were
inseparable friends.  On the 12th, and again on the 14th, the door
was shut against the lawyer.  "The doctor was confined to the
house," Poole said, "and saw no one."  On the 15th, he tried again,
and was again refused; and having now been used for the last two
months to see his friend almost daily, he found this return of
solitude to weigh upon his spirits.  The fifth night he had in
Guest to dine with him; and the sixth he betook himself to Dr.
Lanyon's.

    There at least he was not denied admittance; but when he came
in, he was shocked at the change which had taken place in the
doctor's appearance.  He had his death-warrant written legibly
upon his face.  The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen
away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much
these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's
notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to
testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind.  It was unlikely
that the doctor should fear death; and yet that was what Utterson
was tempted to suspect.  "Yes," he thought; "he is a doctor, he
must know his own state and that his days are counted; and the
knowledge is more than he can bear."  And yet when Utterson
remarked on his ill-looks, it was with an air of great firmness
that Lanyon declared himself a doomed man.

    "I have had a shock," he said, "and I shall never recover.  It
is a question of weeks.  Well, life has been pleasant; I liked it;
yes, sir, I used to like it.  I sometimes think if we knew all, we
should be more glad to get away."

    "Jekyll is ill, too," observed Utterson.  "Have you seen him?"

    But Lanyon's face changed, and he held up a trembling hand.
"I wish to see or hear no more of Dr. Jekyll," he said in a loud,
unsteady voice.  "I am quite done with that person; and I beg that
you will spare me any allusion to one whom I regard as dead."

    "Tut-tut," said Mr. Utterson; and then after a considerable
pause, "Can't I do anything?" he inquired.  "We are three very old
friends, Lanyon; we shall not live to make others."

    "Nothing can be done," returned Lanyon; "ask himself."

    "He will not see me," said the lawyer.

    "I am not surprised at that," was the reply.  "Some day,
Utterson, after I am dead, you may perhaps come to learn the right
and wrong of this.  I cannot tell you.  And in the meantime, if
you can sit and talk with me of other things, for God's sake, stay
and do so; but if you cannot keep clear of this accursed topic,
then in God's name, go, for I cannot bear it."

    As soon as he got home, Utterson sat down and wrote to Jekyll,
complaining of his exclusion from the house, and asking the cause
of this unhappy break with Lanyon; and the next day brought him a
long answer, often very pathetically worded, and sometimes darkly
mysterious in drift.  The quarrel with Lanyon was incurable.  "I
do not blame our old friend," Jekyll wrote, "but I share his view
that we must never meet.  I mean from henceforth to lead a life of
extreme seclusion; you must not be surprised, nor must you doubt
my friendship, if my door is often shut even to you.  You must
suffer me to go my own dark way.  I have brought on myself a
punishment and a danger that I cannot name.  If I am the chief of
sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also.  I could not think that
this earth contained a place for sufferings and terrors so
unmanning; and you can do but one thing, Utterson, to lighten this
destiny, and that is to respect my silence."  Utterson was amazed;
the dark influence of Hyde had been withdrawn, the doctor had
returned to his old tasks and amities; a week ago, the prospect
had smiled with every promise of a cheerful and an honoured age;
and now in a moment, friendship, and peace of mind, and the whole
tenor of his life were wrecked.  So great and unprepared a change
pointed to madness; but in view of Lanyon's manner and words,
there must lie for it some deeper ground.

    A week afterwards Dr. Lanyon took to his bed, and in something
less than a fortnight he was dead.  The night after the funeral,
at which he had been sadly affected, Utterson locked the door of
his business room, and sitting there by the light of a melancholy
candle, drew out and set before him an envelope addressed by the
hand and sealed with the seal of his dead friend.  "PRIVATE:  for
the hands of G. J. Utterson ALONE, and in case of his predecease
to be destroyed unread," so it was emphatically superscribed; and
the lawyer dreaded to behold the contents.  "I have buried one
friend to-day," he thought:  "what if this should cost me another?"
And then he condemned the fear as a disloyalty, and broke the
seal.  Within there was another enclosure, likewise sealed, and
marked upon the cover as "not to be opened till the death or
disappearance of Dr. Henry Jekyll."  Utterson could not trust his
eyes.  Yes, it was disappearance; here again, as in the mad will
which he had long ago restored to its author, here again were the
idea of a disappearance and the name of Henry Jekyll bracketted.
But in the will, that idea had sprung from the sinister suggestion
of the man Hyde; it was set there with a purpose all too plain and
horrible.  Written by the hand of Lanyon, what should it mean?  A
great curiosity came on the trustee, to disregard the prohibition
and dive at once to the bottom of these mysteries; but
professional honour and faith to his dead friend were stringent
obligations; and the packet slept in the inmost corner of his
private safe.

    It is one thing to mortify curiosity, another to conquer it;
and it may be doubted if, from that day forth, Utterson desired
the society of his surviving friend with the same eagerness.  He
thought of him kindly; but his thoughts were disquieted and
fearful.  He went to call indeed; but he was perhaps relieved to
be denied admittance; perhaps, in his heart, he preferred to speak
with Poole upon the doorstep and surrounded by the air and sounds
of the open city, rather than to be admitted into that house of
voluntary bondage, and to sit and speak with its inscrutable
recluse.  Poole had, indeed, no very pleasant news to communicate.
The doctor, it appeared, now more than ever confined himself to
the cabinet over the laboratory, where he would sometimes even
sleep; he was out of spirits, he had grown very silent, he did not
read; it seemed as if he had something on his mind.  Utterson
became so used to the unvarying character of these reports, that
he fell off little by little in the frequency of his visits.





                      Incident at the Window



It chanced on Sunday, when Mr. Utterson was on his usual walk with
Mr. Enfield, that their way lay once again through the by-street;
and that when they came in front of the door, both stopped to gaze
on it.

    "Well," said Enfield, "that story's at an end at least.  We
shall never see more of Mr. Hyde."

    "I hope not," said Utterson.  "Did I ever tell you that I once
saw him, and shared your feeling of repulsion?"

    "It was impossible to do the one without the other," returned
Enfield.  "And by the way, what an ass you must have thought me,
not to know that this was a back way to Dr. Jekyll's!  It was
partly your own fault that I found it out, even when I did."

    "So you found it out, did you?" said Utterson.  "But if that
be so, we may step into the court and take a look at the windows.
To tell you the truth, I am uneasy about poor Jekyll; and even
outside, I feel as if the presence of a friend might do him good."

    The court was very cool and a little damp, and full of
premature twilight, although the sky, high up overhead, was still
bright with sunset.  The middle one of the three windows was
half-way open; and sitting close beside it, taking the air with an
infinite sadness of mien, like some disconsolate prisoner,
Utterson saw Dr. Jekyll.

    "What!  Jekyll!" he cried.  "I trust you are better."

    "I am very low, Utterson," replied the doctor drearily, "very
low.  It will not last long, thank God."

    "You stay too much indoors," said the lawyer.  "You should be
out, whipping up the circulation like Mr. Enfield and me.  (This
is my cousin--Mr. Enfield--Dr. Jekyll.)  Come now; get your
hat and take a quick turn with us."

    "You are very good," sighed the other.  "I should like to very
much; but no, no, no, it is quite impossible; I dare not.  But
indeed, Utterson, I am very glad to see you; this is really a
great pleasure; I would ask you and Mr. Enfield up, but the place
is really not fit."

    "Why, then," said the lawyer, good-naturedly, "the best thing
we can do is to stay down here and speak with you from where we
are."

    "That is just what I was about to venture to propose,"
returned the doctor with a smile.  But the words were hardly
uttered, before the smile was struck out of his face and succeeded
by an expression of such abject terror and despair, as froze the
very blood of the two gentlemen below.  They saw it but for a
glimpse for the window was instantly thrust down; but that glimpse
had been sufficient, and they turned and left the court without a
word.  In silence, too, they traversed the by-street; and it was
not until they had come into a neighbouring thoroughfare, where
even upon a Sunday there were still some stirrings of life, that
Mr. Utterson at last turned and looked at his companion.  They
were both pale; and there was an answering horror in their eyes.

    "God forgive us, God forgive us," said Mr. Utterson.

    But Mr. Enfield only nodded his head very seriously, and
walked on once more in silence.





                          The Last Night



Mr. Utterson was sitting by his fireside one evening after dinner,
when he was surprised to receive a visit from Poole.

    "Bless me, Poole, what brings you here?" he cried; and then
taking a second look at him, "What ails you?" he added; "is the
doctor ill?"

    "Mr. Utterson," said the man, "there is something wrong."

    "Take a seat, and here is a glass of wine for you," said the
lawyer.  "Now, take your time, and tell me plainly what you want."

    "You know the doctor's ways, sir," replied Poole, "and how he
shuts himself up.  Well, he's shut up again in the cabinet; and I
don't like it, sir--I wish I may die if I like it.  Mr.
Utterson, sir, I'm afraid."

    "Now, my good man," said the lawyer, "be explicit.  What are
you afraid of?"

    "I've been afraid for about a week," returned Poole, doggedly
disregarding the question, "and I can bear it no more."

    The man's appearance amply bore out his words; his manner was
altered for the worse; and except for the moment when he had first
announced his terror, he had not once looked the lawyer in the
face.  Even now, he sat with the glass of wine untasted on his
knee, and his eyes directed to a corner of the floor.  "I can bear
it no more," he repeated.

    "Come," said the lawyer, "I see you have some good reason,
Poole; I see there is something seriously amiss.  Try to tell me
what it is."

    "I think there's been foul play," said Poole, hoarsely.

    "Foul play!" cried the lawyer, a good deal frightened and
rather inclined to be irritated in consequence.  "What foul play!
What does the man mean?"

    "I daren't say, sir," was the answer; "but will you come along
with me and see for yourself?"

    Mr. Utterson's only answer was to rise and get his hat and
greatcoat; but he observed with wonder the greatness of the relief
that appeared upon the butler's face, and perhaps with no less,
that the wine was still untasted when he set it down to follow.

    It was a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale
moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and
flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture.  The wind
made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face.  It
seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers,
besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of
London so deserted.  He could have wished it otherwise; never in
his life had he been conscious of so sharp a wish to see and touch
his fellow-creatures; for struggle as he might, there was borne in
upon his mind a crushing anticipation of calamity.  The square,
when they got there, was full of wind and dust, and the thin trees
in the garden were lashing themselves along the railing.  Poole,
who had kept all the way a pace or two ahead, now pulled up in the
middle of the pavement, and in spite of the biting weather, took
off his hat and mopped his brow with a red pocket-handkerchief.
But for all the hurry of his coming, these were not the dews of
exertion that he wiped away, but the moisture of some strangling
anguish; for his face was white and his voice, when he spoke,
harsh and broken.

    "Well, sir," he said, "here we are, and God grant there be
nothing wrong."

    "Amen, Poole," said the lawyer.

    Thereupon the servant knocked in a very guarded manner; the
door was opened on the chain; and a voice asked from within, "Is
that you, Poole?"

    "It's all right," said Poole.  "Open the door."

    The hall, when they entered it, was brightly lighted up; the
fire was built high; and about the hearth the whole of the
servants, men and women, stood huddled together like a flock of
sheep.  At the sight of Mr. Utterson, the housemaid broke into
hysterical whimpering; and the cook, crying out "Bless God! it's
Mr. Utterson," ran forward as if to take him in her arms.

    "What, what?  Are you all here?" said the lawyer peevishly.
"Very irregular, very unseemly; your master would be far from
pleased."

    "They're all afraid," said Poole.

    Blank silence followed, no one protesting; only the maid
lifted her voice and now wept loudly.

    "Hold your tongue!"  Poole said to her, with a ferocity of
accent that testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when
the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they
had all started and turned towards the inner door with faces of
dreadful expectation.  "And now," continued the butler, addressing
the knife-boy, "reach me a candle, and we'll get this through
hands at once."  And then he begged Mr. Utterson to follow him,
and led the way to the back garden.

    "Now, sir," said he, "you come as gently as you can.  I want
you to hear, and I don't want you to be heard.  And see here, sir,
if by any chance he was to ask you in, don't go."

    Mr. Utterson's nerves, at this unlooked-for termination, gave
a jerk that nearly threw him from his balance; but he recollected
his courage and followed the butler into the laboratory building
through the surgical theatre, with its lumber of crates and
bottles, to the foot of the stair.  Here Poole motioned him to
stand on one side and listen; while he himself, setting down the
candle and making a great and obvious call on his resolution,
mounted the steps and knocked with a somewhat uncertain hand on
the red baize of the cabinet door.

    "Mr. Utterson, sir, asking to see you," he called; and even as
he did so, once more violently signed to the lawyer to give ear.

    A voice answered from within:  "Tell him I cannot see anyone,"
it said complainingly.

    "Thank you, sir," said Poole, with a note of something like
triumph in his voice; and taking up his candle, he led Mr.
Utterson back across the yard and into the great kitchen, where
the fire was out and the beetles were leaping on the floor.

    "Sir," he said, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, "Was that my
master's voice?"

    "It seems much changed," replied the lawyer, very pale, but
giving look for look.

    "Changed?  Well, yes, I think so," said the butler.  "Have I
been twenty years in this man's house, to be deceived about his
voice?  No, sir; master's made away with; he was made away with
eight days ago, when we heard him cry out upon the name of God;
and who's in there instead of him, and why it stays there, is a
thing that cries to Heaven, Mr. Utterson!"

    "This is a very strange tale, Poole; this is rather a wild
tale my man," said Mr. Utterson, biting his finger.  "Suppose it
were as you suppose, supposing Dr. Jekyll to have been--well,
murdered what could induce the murderer to stay?  That won't hold
water; it doesn't commend itself to reason."

    "Well, Mr. Utterson, you are a hard man to satisfy, but I'll
do it yet," said Poole.  "All this last week (you must know) him,
or it, whatever it is that lives in that cabinet, has been crying
night and day for some sort of medicine and cannot get it to his
mind.  It was sometimes his way--the master's, that is--to
write his orders on a sheet of paper and throw it on the stair.
We've had nothing else this week back; nothing but papers, and a
closed door, and the very meals left there to be smuggled in when
nobody was looking.  Well, sir, every day, ay, and twice and
thrice in the same day, there have been orders and complaints, and
I have been sent flying to all the wholesale chemists in town.
Every time I brought the stuff back, there would be another paper
telling me to return it, because it was not pure, and another
order to a different firm.  This drug is wanted bitter bad, sir,
whatever for."

    "Have you any of these papers?" asked Mr. Utterson.

    Poole felt in his pocket and handed out a crumpled note, which
the lawyer, bending nearer to the candle, carefully examined.  Its
contents ran thus:  "Dr. Jekyll presents his compliments to Messrs.
Maw.  He assures them that their last sample is impure and quite
useless for his present purpose.  In the year 18--, Dr. J.
purchased a somewhat large quantity from Messrs. M.  He now begs
them to search with most sedulous care, and should any of the same
quality be left, forward it to him at once.  Expense is no
consideration.  The importance of this to Dr. J. can hardly be
exaggerated."  So far the letter had run composedly enough, but
here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer's emotion had
broken loose.  "For God's sake," he added, "find me some of the
old."

    "This is a strange note," said Mr. Utterson; and then sharply,
"How do you come to have it open?"

    "The man at Maw's was main angry, sir, and he threw it back to
me like so much dirt," returned Poole.

    "This is unquestionably the doctor's hand, do you know?"
resumed the lawyer.

    "I thought it looked like it," said the servant rather
sulkily; and then, with another voice, "But what matters hand of
write?" he said.  "I've seen him!"

    "Seen him?" repeated Mr. Utterson.  "Well?"

    "That's it!" said Poole.  "It was this way.  I came suddenly
into the theater from the garden.  It seems he had slipped out to
look for this drug or whatever it is; for the cabinet door was
open, and there he was at the far end of the room digging among
the crates.  He looked up when I came in, gave a kind of cry, and
whipped upstairs into the cabinet.  It was but for one minute that
I saw him, but the hair stood upon my head like quills.  Sir, if
that was my master, why had he a mask upon his face?  If it was my
master, why did he cry out like a rat, and run from me?  I have
served him long enough.  And then..."  The man paused and passed
his hand over his face.

    "These are all very strange circumstances," said Mr.
Utterson, "but I think I begin to see daylight.  Your master,
Poole, is plainly seized with one of those maladies that both
torture and deform the sufferer; hence, for aught I know, the
alteration of his voice; hence the mask and the avoidance of his
friends; hence his eagerness to find this drug, by means of which
the poor soul retains some hope of ultimate recovery--God grant
that he be not deceived!  There is my explanation; it is sad
enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain and
natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant
alarms."

    "Sir," said the butler, turning to a sort of mottled pallor,
"that thing was not my master, and there's the truth.  My
master"--here he looked round him and began to whisper--"is a
tall, fine build of a man, and this was more of a dwarf."
Utterson attempted to protest.  "O, sir," cried Poole, "do you
think I do not know my master after twenty years?  Do you think I
do not know where his head comes to in the cabinet door, where I
saw him every morning of my life?  No, sir, that thing in the mask
was never Dr. Jekyll--God knows what it was, but it was never
Dr. Jekyll; and it is the belief of my heart that there was murder
done."

    "Poole," replied the lawyer, "if you say that, it will become
my duty to make certain.  Much as I desire to spare your master's
feelings, much as I am puzzled by this note which seems to prove
him to be still alive, I shall consider it my duty to break in
that door."

    "Ah, Mr. Utterson, that's talking!" cried the butler.

    "And now comes the second question," resumed Utterson:  "Who
is going to do it?"

    "Why, you and me, sir," was the undaunted reply.

    "That's very well said," returned the lawyer; "and whatever
comes of it, I shall make it my business to see you are no loser."

    "There is an axe in the theatre," continued Poole; "and you
might take the kitchen poker for yourself."

    The lawyer took that rude but weighty instrument into his
hand, and balanced it.  "Do you know, Poole," he said, looking up,
"that you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of
some peril?"

    "You may say so, sir, indeed," returned the butler.

    "It is well, then that we should be frank," said the other.
"We both think more than we have said; let us make a clean breast.
This masked figure that you saw, did you recognise it?"

    "Well, sir, it went so quick, and the creature was so doubled
up, that I could hardly swear to that," was the answer.  "But if
you mean, was it Mr. Hyde?--why, yes, I think it was!  You see,
it was much of the same bigness; and it had the same quick, light
way with it; and then who else could have got in by the laboratory
door?  You have not forgot, sir, that at the time of the murder he
had still the key with him?  But that's not all.  I don't know,
Mr. Utterson, if you ever met this Mr. Hyde?"

    "Yes," said the lawyer, "I once spoke with him."

    "Then you must know as well as the rest of us that there was
something queer about that gentleman--something that gave a man
a turn--I don't know rightly how to say it, sir, beyond this: 
that you felt in your marrow kind of cold and thin."

    "I own I felt something of what you describe," said Mr.
Utterson.

    "Quite so, sir," returned Poole.  "Well, when that masked
thing like a monkey jumped from among the chemicals and whipped
into the cabinet, it went down my spine like ice.  O, I know it's
not evidence, Mr. Utterson; I'm book-learned enough for that; but
a man has his feelings, and I give you my bible-word it was Mr.
Hyde!"

    "Ay, ay," said the lawyer.  "My fears incline to the same
point.  Evil, I fear, founded--evil was sure to come--of that
connection.  Ay truly, I believe you; I believe poor Harry is
killed; and I believe his murderer (for what purpose, God alone
can tell) is still lurking in his victim's room.  Well, let our
name be vengeance.  Call Bradshaw."

    The footman came at the summons, very white and nervous.

    "Put yourself together, Bradshaw," said the lawyer.  "This
suspense, I know, is telling upon all of you; but it is now our
intention to make an end of it.  Poole, here, and I are going to
force our way into the cabinet.  If all is well, my shoulders are
broad enough to bear the blame.  Meanwhile, lest anything should
really be amiss, or any malefactor seek to escape by the back, you
and the boy must go round the corner with a pair of good sticks
and take your post at the laboratory door.  We give you ten
minutes, to get to your stations."

    As Bradshaw left, the lawyer looked at his watch.  "And now,
Poole, let us get to ours," he said; and taking the poker under
his arm, led the way into the yard.  The scud had banked over the
moon, and it was now quite dark.  The wind, which only broke in
puffs and draughts into that deep well of building, tossed the
light of the candle to and fro about their steps, until they came
into the shelter of the theatre, where they sat down silently to
wait.  London hummed solemnly all around; but nearer at hand, the
stillness was only broken by the sounds of a footfall moving to
and fro along the cabinet floor.

    "So it will walk all day, sir," whispered Poole; "ay, and the
better part of the night.  Only when a new sample comes from the
chemist, there's a bit of a break.  Ah, it's an ill conscience
that's such an enemy to rest!  Ah, sir, there's blood foully shed
in every step of it!  But hark again, a little closer--put your
heart in your ears, Mr. Utterson, and tell me, is that the
doctor's foot?"

    The steps fell lightly and oddly, with a certain swing, for
all they went so slowly; it was different indeed from the heavy
creaking tread of Henry Jekyll.  Utterson sighed.  "Is there never
anything else?" he asked.

    Poole nodded.  "Once," he said.  "Once I heard it weeping!"

    "Weeping? how that?" said the lawyer, conscious of a sudden
chill of horror.

    "Weeping like a woman or a lost soul," said the butler.  "I
came away with that upon my heart, that I could have wept too."

    But now the ten minutes drew to an end.  Poole disinterred the
axe from under a stack of packing straw; the candle was set upon
the nearest table to light them to the attack; and they drew near
with bated breath to where that patient foot was still going up
and down, up and down, in the quiet of the night.  "Jekyll," cried
Utterson, with a loud voice, "I demand to see you."  He paused a
moment, but there came no reply.  "I give you fair warning, our
suspicions are aroused, and I must and shall see you," he resumed;
"if not by fair means, then by foul--if not of your consent,
then by brute force!"

    "Utterson," said the voice, "for God's sake, have mercy!"

    "Ah, that's not Jekyll's voice--it's Hyde's!" cried
Utterson.  "Down with the door, Poole!"

    Poole swung the axe over his shoulder; the blow shook the
building, and the red baize door leaped against the lock and
hinges.  A dismal screech, as of mere animal terror, rang from the
cabinet.  Up went the axe again, and again the panels crashed and
the frame bounded; four times the blow fell; but the wood was
tough and the fittings were of excellent workmanship; and it was
not until the fifth, that the lock burst and the wreck of the door
fell inwards on the carpet.

    The besiegers, appalled by their own riot and the stillness
that had succeeded, stood back a little and peered in.  There lay
the cabinet before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire
glowing and chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin
strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth on the
business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea;
the quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed
presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that night in
London.

    Right in the middle there lay the body of a man sorely
contorted and still twitching.  They drew near on tiptoe, turned
it on its back and beheld the face of Edward Hyde.  He was dressed
in clothes far too large for him, clothes of the doctor's bigness;
the cords of his face still moved with a semblance of life, but
life was quite gone:  and by the crushed phial in the hand and the
strong smell of kernels that hung upon the air, Utterson knew that
he was looking on the body of a self-destroyer.

    "We have come too late," he said sternly, "whether to save or
punish.  Hyde is gone to his account; and it only remains for us
to find the body of your master."

    The far greater proportion of the building was occupied by
the theatre, which filled almost the whole ground storey and was
lighted from above, and by the cabinet, which formed an upper
story at one end and looked upon the court.  A corridor joined the
theatre to the door on the by-street; and with this the cabinet
communicated separately by a second flight of stairs.  There were
besides a few dark closets and a spacious cellar.  All these they
now thoroughly examined.  Each closet needed but a glance, for all
were empty, and all, by the dust that fell from their doors, had
stood long unopened.  The cellar, indeed, was filled with crazy
lumber, mostly dating from the times of the surgeon who was
Jekyll's predecessor; but even as they opened the door they were
advertised of the uselessness of further search, by the fall of a
perfect mat of cobweb which had for years sealed up the entrance.
No where was there any trace of Henry Jekyll dead or alive.

    Poole stamped on the flags of the corridor.  "He must be
buried here," he said, hearkening to the sound.

    "Or he may have fled," said Utterson, and he turned to examine
the door in the by-street.  It was locked; and lying near by on
the flags, they found the key, already stained with rust.

    "This does not look like use," observed the lawyer.

    "Use!" echoed Poole.  "Do you not see, sir, it is broken?
much as if a man had stamped on it."

    "Ay," continued Utterson, "and the fractures, too, are rusty."
The two men looked at each other with a scare.  "This is beyond
me, Poole," said the lawyer.  "Let us go back to the cabinet."

    They mounted the stair in silence, and still with an
occasional awestruck glance at the dead body, proceeded more
thoroughly to examine the contents of the cabinet.  At one table,
there were traces of chemical work, various measured heaps of some
white salt being laid on glass saucers, as though for an
experiment in which the unhappy man had been prevented.

    "That is the same drug that I was always bringing him," said
Poole; and even as he spoke, the kettle with a startling noise
boiled over.

    This brought them to the fireside, where the easy-chair was
drawn cosily up, and the tea things stood ready to the sitter's
elbow, the very sugar in the cup.  There were several books on a
shelf; one lay beside the tea things open, and Utterson was amazed
to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several
times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own hand with
startling blasphemies.

    Next, in the course of their review of the chamber, the
searchers came to the cheval-glass, into whose depths they looked
with an involuntary horror.  But it was so turned as to show them
nothing but the rosy glow playing on the roof, the fire sparkling
in a hundred repetitions along the glazed front of the presses,
and their own pale and fearful countenances stooping to look in.

    "This glass has seen some strange things, sir," whispered
Poole.

    "And surely none stranger than itself," echoed the lawyer in
the same tones.  "For what did Jekyll"--he caught himself up at
the word with a start, and then conquering the weakness--"what
could Jekyll want with it?" he said.

    "You may say that!" said Poole.

    Next they turned to the business table.  On the desk, among
the neat array of papers, a large envelope was uppermost, and
bore, in the doctor's hand, the name of Mr. Utterson.  The lawyer
unsealed it, and several enclosures fell to the floor.  The first
was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he
had returned six months before, to serve as a testament in case of
death and as a deed of gift in case of disappearance; but in place
of the name of Edward Hyde, the lawyer, with indescribable
amazement read the name of Gabriel John Utterson.  He looked at
Poole, and then back at the paper, and last of all at the dead
malefactor stretched upon the carpet.

    "My head goes round," he said.  "He has been all these days in
possession; he had no cause to like me; he must have raged to see
himself displaced; and he has not destroyed this document."

    He caught up the next paper; it was a brief note in the
doctor's hand and dated at the top.  "O Poole!" the lawyer cried,
"he was alive and here this day.  He cannot have been disposed of
in so short a space; he must be still alive, he must have fled!
And then, why fled? and how? and in that case, can we venture to
declare this suicide?  O, we must be careful.  I foresee that we
may yet involve your master in some dire catastrophe."

    "Why don't you read it, sir?" asked Poole.

    "Because I fear," replied the lawyer solemnly.  "God grant I
have no cause for it!"  And with that he brought the paper to his
eyes and read as follows: 

    "My dear Utterson,--When this shall fall into your hands, I
shall have disappeared, under what circumstances I have not the
penetration to foresee, but my instinct and all the circumstances
of my nameless situation tell me that the end is sure and must be
early.  Go then, and first read the narrative which Lanyon warned
me he was to place in your hands; and if you care to hear more,
turn to the confession of

    "Your unworthy and unhappy friend,

                              "HENRY JEKYLL."

    "There was a third enclosure?" asked Utterson.

    "Here, sir," said Poole, and gave into his hands a
considerable packet sealed in several places.

    The lawyer put it in his pocket.  "I would say nothing of this
paper.  If your master has fled or is dead, we may at least save
his credit.  It is now ten; I must go home and read these
documents in quiet; but I shall be back before midnight, when we
shall send for the police."

    They went out, locking the door of the theatre behind them;
and Utterson, once more leaving the servants gathered about the
fire in the hall, trudged back to his office to read the two
narratives in which this mystery was now to be explained.





                      Dr. Lanyon's Narrative



On the ninth of January, now four days ago, I received by the
evening delivery a registered envelope, addressed in the hand of
my colleague and old school companion, Henry Jekyll.  I was a good
deal surprised by this; for we were by no means in the habit of
correspondence; I had seen the man, dined with him, indeed, the
night before; and I could imagine nothing in our intercourse
that should justify formality of registration.  The contents
increased my wonder; for this is how the letter ran: 

                                      "10th December, 18--.

    "Dear Lanyon,--You are one of my oldest friends; and
although we may have differed at times on scientific questions, I
cannot remember, at least on my side, any break in our affection.
There was never a day when, if you had said to me, `Jekyll, my
life, my honour, my reason, depend upon you,'  I would not have
sacrificed my left hand to help you.  Lanyon my life, my honour,
my reason, are all at your mercy; if you fail me to-night, I am
lost.  You might suppose, after this preface, that I am going to
ask you for something dishonourable to grant.  Judge for yourself.

    "I want you to postpone all other engagements for to-night--
ay, even if you were summoned to the bedside of an emperor; to
take a cab, unless your carriage should be actually at the door;
and with this letter in your hand for consultation, to drive
straight to my house.  Poole, my butler, has his orders; you will
find him waiting your arrival with a locksmith.  The door of my
cabinet is then to be forced:  and you are to go in alone; to open
the glazed press (letter E) on the left hand, breaking the lock if
it be shut; and to draw out, with all its contents as they stand,
the fourth drawer from the top or (which is the same thing) the
third from the bottom.  In my extreme distress of mind, I have a
morbid fear of misdirecting you; but even if I am in error, you
may know the right drawer by its contents:  some powders, a phial
and a paper book.  This drawer I beg of you to carry back with you
to Cavendish Square exactly as it stands.

    "That is the first part of the service:  now for the second.
You should be back, if you set out at once on the receipt of this,
long before midnight; but I will leave you that amount of margin,
not only in the fear of one of those obstacles that can neither be
prevented nor foreseen, but because an hour when your servants are
in bed is to be preferred for what will then remain to do.  At
midnight, then, I have to ask you to be alone in your consulting
room, to admit with your own hand into the house a man who will
present himself in my name, and to place in his hands the drawer
that you will have brought with you from my cabinet.  Then you
will have played your part and earned my gratitude completely.
Five minutes afterwards, if you insist upon an explanation, you
will have understood that these arrangements are of capital
importance; and that by the neglect of one of them, fantastic as
they must appear, you might have charged your conscience with my
death or the shipwreck of my reason.

    "Confident as I am that you will not trifle with this appeal,
my heart sinks and my hand trembles at the bare thought of such a
possibility.  Think of me at this hour, in a strange place,
labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can
exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually
serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told.
Serve me, my dear Lanyon and save

                                 "Your friend,
                                              "H.J.

    "P.S.--I had already sealed this up when a fresh terror
struck upon my soul.  It is possible that the post-office may fail
me, and this letter not come into your hands until to-morrow
morning.  In that case, dear Lanyon, do my errand when it shall be
most convenient for you in the course of the day; and once more
expect my messenger at midnight.  It may then already be too late;
and if that night passes without event, you will know that you
have seen the last of Henry Jekyll."

    Upon the reading of this letter, I made sure my colleague was
insane; but till that was proved beyond the possibility of doubt,
I felt bound to do as he requested.  The less I understood of this
farrago, the less I was in a position to judge of its importance;
and an appeal so worded could not be set aside without a grave
responsibility.  I rose accordingly from table, got into a hansom,
and drove straight to Jekyll's house.  The butler was awaiting my
arrival; he had received by the same post as mine a registered
letter of instruction, and had sent at once for a locksmith and a
carpenter.  The tradesmen came while we were yet speaking; and we
moved in a body to old Dr. Denman's surgical theatre, from which
(as you are doubtless aware) Jekyll's private cabinet is most
conveniently entered.  The door was very strong, the lock
excellent; the carpenter avowed he would have great trouble and
have to do much damage, if force were to be used; and the
locksmith was near despair.  But this last was a handy fellow, and
after two hour's work, the door stood open.  The press marked E
was unlocked; and I took out the drawer, had it filled up with
straw and tied in a sheet, and returned with it to Cavendish
Square.

    Here I proceeded to examine its contents.  The powders were
neatly enough made up, but not with the nicety of the dispensing
chemist; so that it was plain they were of Jekyll's private
manufacture:  and when I opened one of the wrappers I found what
seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour.  The
phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about
half full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the
sense of smell and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some
volatile ether.  At the other ingredients I could make no guess.
The book was an ordinary version book and contained little but a
series of dates.  These covered a period of many years, but I
observed that the entries ceased nearly a year ago and quite
abruptly.  Here and there a brief remark was appended to a date,
usually no more than a single word:  "double" occurring perhaps six
times in a total of several hundred entries; and once very early
in the list and followed by several marks of exclamation, "total
failure!!!"  All this, though it whetted my curiosity, told me
little that was definite.  Here were a phial of some salt, and the
record of a series of experiments that had led (like too many of
Jekyll's investigations) to no end of practical usefulness.  How
could the presence of these articles in my house affect either the
honour, the sanity, or the life of my flighty colleague?  If his
messenger could go to one place, why could he not go to another?
And even granting some impediment, why was this gentleman to be
received by me in secret?  The more I reflected the more convinced
I grew that I was dealing with a case of cerebral disease; and
though I dismissed my servants to bed, I loaded an old revolver,
that I might be found in some posture of self-defence.

    Twelve o'clock had scarce rung out over London, ere the
knocker sounded very gently on the door.  I went myself at the
summons, and found a small man crouching against the pillars of
the portico.

    "Are you come from Dr. Jekyll?" I asked.

    He told me "yes" by a constrained gesture; and when I had
bidden him enter, he did not obey me without a searching backward
glance into the darkness of the square.  There was a policeman not
far off, advancing with his bull's eye open; and at the sight, I
thought my visitor started and made greater haste.

    These particulars struck me, I confess, disagreeably; and as I
followed him into the bright light of the consulting room, I kept
my hand ready on my weapon.  Here, at last, I had a chance of
clearly seeing him.  I had never set eyes on him before, so much
was certain.  He was small, as I have said; I was struck besides
with the shocking expression of his face, with his remarkable
combination of great muscular activity and great apparent debility
of constitution, and--last but not least--with the odd,
subjective disturbance caused by his neighbourhood.  This bore
some resemblance to incipient rigour, and was accompanied by a
marked sinking of the pulse.  At the time, I set it down to some
idiosyncratic, personal distaste, and merely wondered at the
acuteness of the symptoms; but I have since had reason to believe
the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man, and to turn on
some nobler hinge than the principle of hatred.

    This person (who had thus, from the first moment of his
entrance, struck in me what I can only, describe as a disgustful
curiosity) was dressed in a fashion that would have made an
ordinary person laughable; his clothes, that is to say, although
they were of rich and sober fabric, were enormously too large for
him in every measurement--the trousers hanging on his legs and
rolled up to keep them from the ground, the waist of the coat
below his haunches, and the collar sprawling wide upon his
shoulders.  Strange to relate, this ludicrous accoutrement was far
from moving me to laughter.  Rather, as there was something
abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that
now faced me--something seizing, surprising and revolting--
this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to reinforce
it; so that to my interest in the man's nature and character,
there was added a curiosity as to his origin, his life, his
fortune and status in the world.

    These observations, though they have taken so great a space to
be set down in, were yet the work of a few seconds.  My visitor
was, indeed, on fire with sombre excitement.

    "Have you got it?" he cried.  "Have you got it?"  And so
lively was his impatience that he even laid his hand upon my arm
and sought to shake me.

    I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang
along my blood.  "Come, sir," said I.  "You forget that I have not
yet the pleasure of your acquaintance.  Be seated, if you please."
And I showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary
seat and with as fair an imitation of my ordinary manner to a
patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my
preoccupations, and the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer
me to muster.

    "I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon," he replied civilly enough.
"What you say is very well founded; and my impatience has shown
its heels to my politeness.  I come here at the instance of your
colleague, Dr. Henry Jekyll, on a piece of business of some
moment; and I understood ..."  He paused and put his hand to his
throat, and I could see, in spite of his collected manner, that he
was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria--"I
understood, a drawer ..."

    But here I took pity on my visitor's suspense, and some
perhaps on my own growing curiosity.

    "There it is, sir," said I, pointing to the drawer, where it
lay on the floor behind a table and still covered with the sheet.

    He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his
heart:  I could hear his teeth grate with the convulsive action of
his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed
both for his life and reason.

    "Compose yourself," said I.

    He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision
of despair, plucked away the sheet.  At sight of the contents, he
uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified.
And the next moment, in a voice that was already fairly well under
control, "Have you a graduated glass?" he asked.

    I rose from my place with something of an effort and gave him
what he asked.

    He thanked me with a smiling nod, measured out a few minims of
the red tincture and added one of the powders.  The mixture, which
was at first of a reddish hue, began, in proportion as the
crystals melted, to brighten in colour, to effervesce audibly, and
to throw off small fumes of vapour.  Suddenly and at the same
moment, the ebullition ceased and the compound changed to a dark
purple, which faded again more slowly to a watery green.  My
visitor, who had watched these metamorphoses with a keen eye,
smiled, set down the glass upon the table, and then turned and
looked upon me with an air of scrutiny.

    "And now," said he, "to settle what remains.  Will you be
wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in
my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or
has the greed of curiosity too much command of you?  Think before
you answer, for it shall be done as you decide.  As you decide,
you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor
wiser, unless the sense of service rendered to a man in mortal
distress may be counted as a kind of riches of the soul.  Or, if
you shall so prefer to choose, a new province of knowledge and new
avenues to fame and power shall be laid open to you, here, in this
room, upon the instant; and your sight shall be blasted by a
prodigy to stagger the unbelief of Satan."

    "Sir," said I, affecting a coolness that I was far from truly
possessing, "you speak enigmas, and you will perhaps not wonder
that I hear you with no very strong impression of belief.  But I
have gone too far in the way of inexplicable services to pause
before I see the end."

    "It is well," replied my visitor.  "Lanyon, you remember your
vows:  what follows is under the seal of our profession.  And now,
you who have so long been bound to the most narrow and material
views, you who have denied the virtue of transcendental medicine,
you who have derided your superiors--behold!"

    He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp.  A cry
followed; he reeled, staggered, clutched at the table and held on,
staring with injected eyes, gasping with open mouth; and as I
looked there came, I thought, a change--he seemed to swell--
his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and
alter--and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped
back against the wall, my arms raised to shield me from that
prodigy, my mind submerged in terror.

    "O God!"  I screamed, and "O God!" again and again; for there
before my eyes--pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping
before him with his hands, like a man restored from death--there
stood Henry Jekyll!

    What he told me in the next hour, I cannot bring my mind to
set on paper.  I saw what I saw, I heard what I heard, and my soul
sickened at it; and yet now when that sight has faded from my
eyes, I ask myself if I believe it, and I cannot answer.  My life
is shaken to its roots; sleep has left me; the deadliest terror
sits by me at all hours of the day and night; and I feel that my
days are numbered, and that I must die; and yet I shall die
incredulous.  As for the moral turpitude that man unveiled to me,
even with tears of penitence, I can not, even in memory, dwell on
it without a start of horror.  I will say but one thing, Utterson,
and that (if you can bring your mind to credit it) will be more
than enough.  The creature who crept into my house that night was,
on Jekyll's own confession, known by the name of Hyde and hunted
for in every corner of the land as the murderer of Carew.

                                 HASTIE LANYON






             Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case



I was born in the year 18-- to a large fortune, endowed besides
with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the
respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as
might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable
and distinguished future.  And indeed the worst of my faults was a
certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the
happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with
my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than
commonly grave countenance before the public.  Hence it came about
that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of
reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my
progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a
profound duplicity of me.  Many a man would have even blazoned
such irregularities as I was guilty of; but from the high views
that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost
morbid sense of shame.  It was thus rather the exacting nature of
my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that
made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in the
majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill
which divide and compound man's dual nature.  In this case, I was
driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of
life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most
plentiful springs of distress.  Though so profound a
double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me
were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside
restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye
of day, at the futherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and
suffering.  And it chanced that the direction of my scientific
studies, which led wholly towards the mystic and the
transcendental, reacted and shed a strong light on this
consciousness of the perennial war among my members.  With every
day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the
intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose
partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: 
that man is not truly one, but truly two.  I say two, because the
state of my own knowledge does not pass beyond that point.  Others
will follow, others will outstrip me on the same lines; and I
hazard the guess that man will be ultimately known for a mere
polity of multifarious, incongruous and independent denizens.  I,
for my part, from the nature of my life, advanced infallibly in
one direction and in one direction only.  It was on the moral
side, and in my own person, that I learned to recognise the
thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two
natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I
could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was
radically both; and from an early date, even before the course of
my scientific discoveries had begun to suggest the most naked
possibility of such a miracle, I had learned to dwell with
pleasure, as a beloved daydream, on the thought of the separation
of these elements.  If each, I told myself, could be housed in
separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was
unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the
aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just
could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the
good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed
to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.
It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were
thus bound together--that in the agonised womb of consciousness,
these polar twins should be continuously struggling.  How, then
were they dissociated?

    I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side
light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table.
I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated,
the trembling immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this
seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired.  Certain agents
I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly
vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion.
For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific
branch of my confession.  First, because I have been made to learn
that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's
shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but
returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.
Second, because, as my narrative will make, alas! too evident, my
discoveries were incomplete.  Enough then, that I not only
recognised my natural body from the mere aura and effulgence of
certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to
compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from
their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted,
none the less natural to me because they were the expression, and
bore the stamp of lower elements in my soul.

    I hesitated long before I put this theory to the test of
practice.  I knew well that I risked death; for any drug that so
potently controlled and shook the very fortress of identity,
might, by the least scruple of an overdose or at the least
inopportunity in the moment of exhibition, utterly blot out that
immaterial tabernacle which I looked to it to change.  But the
temptation of a discovery so singular and profound at last
overcame the suggestions of alarm.  I had long since prepared my
tincture; I purchased at once, from a firm of wholesale chemists,
a large quantity of a particular salt which I knew, from my
experiments, to be the last ingredient required; and late one
accursed night, I compounded the elements, watched them boil and
smoke together in the glass, and when the ebullition had subsided,
with a strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.

    The most racking pangs succeeded:  a grinding in the bones,
deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded
at the hour of birth or death.  Then these agonies began swiftly
to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness.
There was something strange in my sensations, something
indescribably new and, from its very novelty, incredibly sweet.  I
felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of
a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images
running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of
obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul.  I
knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more
wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and
the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine.  I
stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these
sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost
in stature.

    There was no mirror, at that date, in my room; that which
stands beside me as I write, was brought there later on and for
the very purpose of these transformations.  The night however, was
far gone into the morning--the morning, black as it was, was
nearly ripe for the conception of the day--the inmates of my
house were locked in the most rigorous hours of slumber; and I
determined, flushed as I was with hope and triumph, to venture in
my new shape as far as to my bedroom.  I crossed the yard, wherein
the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with
wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping
vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the
corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I
saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.

    I must here speak by theory alone, saying not that which I
know, but that which I suppose to be most probable.  The evil side
of my nature, to which I had now transferred the stamping
efficacy, was less robust and less developed than the good which I
had just deposed.  Again, in the course of my life, which had
been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control,
it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted.  And
hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much
smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll.  Even as good
shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly
and plainly on the face of the other.  Evil besides (which I must
still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body
an imprint of deformity and decay.  And yet when I looked upon
that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance,
rather of a leap of welcome.  This, too, was myself.  It seemed
natural and human.  In my eyes it bore a livelier image of the
spirit, it seemed more express and single, than the imperfect and
divided countenance I had been hitherto accustomed to call mine.
And in so far I was doubtless right.  I have observed that when I
wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at
first without a visible misgiving of the flesh.  This, as I take
it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled
out of good and evil:  and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of
mankind, was pure evil.

    I lingered but a moment at the mirror:  the second and
conclusive experiment had yet to be attempted; it yet remained to
be seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee
before daylight from a house that was no longer mine; and hurrying
back to my cabinet, I once more prepared and drank the cup, once
more suffered the pangs of dissolution, and came to myself once
more with the character, the stature and the face of Henry Jekyll.

    That night I had come to the fatal cross-roads.  Had I
approached my discovery in a more noble spirit, had I risked the
experiment while under the empire of generous or pious
aspirations, all must have been otherwise, and from these agonies
of death and birth, I had come forth an angel instead of a fiend.
The drug had no discriminating action; it was neither diabolical
nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my
disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood
within ran forth.  At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept
awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and
the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde.  Hence, although I
had now two characters as well as two appearances, one was wholly
evil, and the other was still the old Henry Jekyll, that
incongruous compound of whose reformation and improvement I had
already learned to despair.  The movement was thus wholly toward
the worse.

    Even at that time, I had not conquered my aversions to the
dryness of a life of study.  I would still be merrily disposed at
times; and as my pleasures were (to say the least) undignified,
and I was not only well known and highly considered, but growing
towards the elderly man, this incoherency of my life was daily
growing more unwelcome.  It was on this side that my new power
tempted me until I fell in slavery.  I had but to drink the cup,
to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume,
like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde.  I smiled at the notion;
it seemed to me at the time to be humourous; and I made my
preparations with the most studious care.  I took and furnished
that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and
engaged as a housekeeper a creature whom I knew well to be silent
and unscrupulous.  On the other side, I announced to my servants
that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and
power about my house in the square; and to parry mishaps, I even
called and made myself a familiar object, in my second character.
I next drew up that will to which you so much objected; so that if
anything befell me in the person of Dr. Jekyll, I could enter on
that of Edward Hyde without pecuniary loss.  And thus fortified,
as I supposed, on every side, I began to profit by the strange
immunities of my position.

    Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while
their own person and reputation sat under shelter.  I was the
first that ever did so for his pleasures.  I was the first that
could plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability,
and in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and
spring headlong into the sea of liberty.  But for me, in my
impenetrable mantle, the safely was complete.  Think of it--I
did not even exist!  Let me but escape into my laboratory door,
give me but a second or two to mix and swallow the draught that I
had always standing ready; and whatever he had done, Edward Hyde
would pass away like the stain of breath upon a mirror; and there
in his stead, quietly at home, trimming the midnight lamp in his
study, a man who could afford to laugh at suspicion, would be
Henry Jekyll.

    The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were,
as I have said, undignified; I would scarce use a harder term.
But in the hands of Edward Hyde, they soon began to turn toward
the monstrous.  When I would come back from these excursions, I
was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity.
This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth
alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and
villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking
pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to
another; relentless like a man of stone.  Henry Jekyll stood at
times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation was
apart from ordinary laws, and insidiously relaxed the grasp of
conscience.  It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was
guilty.  Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities
seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was
possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde.  And thus his conscience
slumbered.

    Into the details of the infamy at which I thus connived (for
even now I can scarce grant that I committed it) I have no design
of entering; I mean but to point out the warnings and the
successive steps with which my chastisement approached.  I met
with one accident which, as it brought on no consequence, I shall
no more than mention.  An act of cruelty to a child aroused
against me the anger of a passer-by, whom I recognised the other
day in the person of your kinsman; the doctor and the child's
family joined him; there were moments when I feared for my life;
and at last, in order to pacify their too just resentment, Edward
Hyde had to bring them to the door, and pay them in a cheque drawn
in the name of Henry Jekyll.  But this danger was easily
eliminated from the future, by opening an account at another bank
in the name of Edward Hyde himself; and when, by sloping my own
hand backward, I had supplied my double with a signature, I
thought I sat beyond the reach of fate.

    Some two months before the murder of Sir Danvers, I had been
out for one of my adventures, had returned at a late hour, and
woke the next day in bed with somewhat odd sensations.  It was in
vain I looked about me; in vain I saw the decent furniture and
tall proportions of my room in the square; in vain that I
recognised the pattern of the bed curtains and the design of the
mahogany frame; something still kept insisting that I was not
where I was, that I had not wakened where I seemed to be, but in
the little room in Soho where I was accustomed to sleep in the
body of Edward Hyde.  I smiled to myself, and in my psychological
way, began lazily to inquire into the elements of this illusion,
occasionally, even as I did so, dropping back into a comfortable
morning doze.  I was still so engaged when, in one of my more
wakeful moments, my eyes fell upon my hand.  Now the hand of Henry
Jekyll (as you have often remarked) was professional in shape and
size:  it was large, firm, white and comely.  But the hand which I
now saw, clearly enough, in the yellow light of a mid-London
morning, lying half shut on the bedclothes, was lean, corder,
knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth
of hair.  It was the hand of Edward Hyde.

    I must have stared upon it for near half a minute, sunk as I
was in the mere stupidity of wonder, before terror woke up in my
breast as sudden and startling as the crash of cymbals; and
bounding from my bed I rushed to the mirror.  At the sight that
met my eyes, my blood was changed into something exquisitely thin
and icy.  Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened
Edward Hyde.  How was this to be explained?  I asked myself; and
then, with another bound of terror--how was it to be remedied?
It was well on in the morning; the servants were up; all my drugs
were in the cabinet--a long journey down two pairs of stairs,
through the back passage, across the open court and through the
anatomical theatre, from where I was then standing horror-struck.
It might indeed be possible to cover my face; but of what use was
that, when I was unable to conceal the alteration in my stature?
And then with an overpowering sweetness of relief, it came back
upon my mind that the servants were already used to the coming and
going of my second self.  I had soon dressed, as well as I was
able, in clothes of my own size:  had soon passed through the
house, where Bradshaw stared and drew back at seeing Mr. Hyde at
such an hour and in such a strange array; and ten minutes later,
Dr. Jekyll had returned to his own shape and was sitting down,
with a darkened brow, to make a feint of breakfasting.

    Small indeed was my appetite.  This inexplicable incident,
this reversal of my previous experience, seemed, like the
Babylonian finger on the wall, to be spelling out the letters of
my judgment; and I began to reflect more seriously than ever
before on the issues and possibilities of my double existence.
That part of me which I had the power of projecting, had lately
been much exercised and nourished; it had seemed to me of late as
though the body of Edward Hyde had grown in stature, as though
(when I wore that form) I were conscious of a more generous tide
of blood; and I began to spy a danger that, if this were much
prolonged, the balance of my nature might be permanently
overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the
character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine.  The power of
the drug had not been always equally displayed.  Once, very early
in my career, it had totally failed me; since then I had been
obliged on more than one occasion to double, and once, with
infinite risk of death, to treble the amount; and these rare
uncertainties had cast hitherto the sole shadow on my contentment.
Now, however, and in the light of that morning's accident, I was
led to remark that whereas, in the beginning, the difficulty had
been to throw off the body of Jekyll, it had of late gradually but
decidedly transferred itself to the other side.  All things
therefore seemed to point to this; that I was slowly losing hold
of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated
with my second and worse.

    Between these two, I now felt I had to choose.  My two natures
had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally
shared between them.  Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most
sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and
shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was
indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain
bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from
pursuit.  Jekyll had more than a father's interest; Hyde had more
than a son's indifference.  To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to
die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had
of late begun to pamper.  To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a
thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and
forever, despised and friendless.  The bargain might appear
unequal; but there was still another consideration in the scales;
for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of
abstinence, Hyde would be not even conscious of all that he had
lost.  Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate
are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and
alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it
fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my
fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the
strength to keep to it.

    Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor,
surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a
resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light
step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in
the disguise of Hyde.  I made this choice perhaps with some
unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho,
nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in
my cabinet.  For two months, however, I was true to my
determination; for two months, I led a life of such severity as I
had never before attained to, and enjoyed the compensations of an
approving conscience.  But time began at last to obliterate the
freshness of my alarm; the praises of conscience began to grow
into a thing of course; I began to be tortured with throes and
longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom; and at last, in an
hour of moral weakness, I once again compounded and swallowed the
transforming draught.

    I do not suppose that, when a drunkard reasons with himself
upon his vice, he is once out of five hundred times affected by
the dangers that he runs through his brutish, physical
insensibility; neither had I, long as I had considered my
position, made enough allowance for the complete moral
insensibility and insensate readiness to evil, which were the
leading characters of Edward Hyde.  Yet it was by these that I was
punished.  My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring.  I
was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled,
a more furious propensity to ill.  It must have been this, I
suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with
which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I
declare, at least, before God, no man morally sane could have been
guilty of that crime upon so pitiful a provocation; and that I
struck in no more reasonable spirit than that in which a sick
child may break a plaything.  But I had voluntarily stripped
myself of all those balancing instincts by which even the worst of
us continues to walk with some degree of steadiness among
temptations; and in my case, to be tempted, however slightly, was
to fall.

    Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged.  With a
 transport of glee, I mauled the unresisting body, tasting delight
 from every blow; and it was not till weariness had begun to
 succeed, that I was suddenly, in the top fit of my delirium,
 struck through the heart by a cold thrill of terror.  A mist
 dispersed; I saw my life to be forfeit; and fled from the scene
 of these excesses, at once glorying and trembling, my lust of
 evil gratified and stimulated, my love of life screwed to the
 topmost peg.  I ran to the house in Soho, and (to make assurance
 doubly sure) destroyed my papers; thence I set out through the
 lamplit streets, in the same divided ecstasy of mind, gloating on
 my crime, light-headedly devising others in the future, and yet
 still hastening and still hearkening in my wake for the steps of
 the avenger.  Hyde had a song upon his lips as he compounded the
 draught, and as he drank it, pledged the dead man.  The pangs of
 transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll,
 with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon
 his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God.  The veil of
 self-indulgence was rent from head to foot.  I saw my life as a
 whole:  I followed it up from the days of childhood, when I had
 walked with my father's hand, and through the self-denying toils
 of my professional life, to arrive again and again, with the same
 sense of unreality, at the damned horrors of the evening.  I
 could have screamed aloud; I sought with tears and prayers to
 smother down the crowd of hideous images and sounds with which my
 memory swarmed against me; and still, between the petitions, the
 ugly face of my iniquity stared into my soul.  As the acuteness
 of this remorse began to die away, it was succeeded by a sense of
 joy.  The problem of my conduct was solved.  Hyde was thenceforth
 impossible; whether I would or not, I was now confined to the
 better part of my existence; and O, how I rejoiced to think of
 it! with what willing humility I embraced anew the restrictions
 of natural life! with what sincere renunciation I locked the door
 by which I had so often gone and come, and ground the key under
 my heel!

    The next day, came the news that the murder had not been
overlooked, that the guilt of Hyde was patent to the world, and
that the victim was a man high in public estimation.  It was not
only a crime, it had been a tragic folly.  I think I was glad to
know it; I think I was glad to have my better impulses thus
buttressed and guarded by the terrors of the scaffold.  Jekyll was
now my city of refuge; let but Hyde peep out an instant, and the
hands of all men would be raised to take and slay him.

    I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past; and I can
say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful of some good.  You
know yourself how earnestly, in the last months of the last year,
I laboured to relieve suffering; you know that much was done for
others, and that the days passed quietly, almost happily for
myself.  Nor can I truly say that I wearied of this beneficent and
innocent life; I think instead that I daily enjoyed it more
completely; but I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and
as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me,
so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for
licence.  Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea
of that would startle me to frenzy:  no, it was in my own person
that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it
was as an ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the
assaults of temptation.

    There comes an end to all things; the most capacious measure
is filled at last; and this brief condescension to my evil finally
destroyed the balance of my soul.  And yet I was not alarmed; the
fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had
made my discovery.  It was a fine, clear, January day, wet under
foot where the frost had melted, but cloudless overhead; and the
Regent's Park was full of winter chirrupings and sweet with spring
odours.  I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking
the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed,
promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.  After
all, I reflected, I was like my neighbours; and then I smiled,
comparing myself with other men, comparing my active good-will
with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.  And at the very moment
of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid
nausea and the most deadly shuddering.  These passed away, and
left me faint; and then as in its turn faintness subsided, I began
to be aware of a change in the temper of my thoughts, a greater
boldness, a contempt of danger, a solution of the bonds of
obligation.  I looked down; my clothes hung formlessly on my
shrunken limbs; the hand that lay on my knee was corded and hairy.
I was once more Edward Hyde.  A moment before I had been safe of
all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in
the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of
mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the
gallows.

    My reason wavered, but it did not fail me utterly.  I have
more than once observed that in my second character, my faculties
seemed sharpened to a point and my spirits more tensely elastic;
thus it came about that, where Jekyll perhaps might have
succumbed, Hyde rose to the importance of the moment.  My drugs
were in one of the presses of my cabinet; how was I to reach them?
That was the problem that (crushing my temples in my hands) I set
myself to solve.  The laboratory door I had closed.  If I sought
to enter by the house, my own servants would consign me to the
gallows.  I saw I must employ another hand, and thought of Lanyon.
How was he to be reached? how persuaded?  Supposing that I escaped
capture in the streets, how was I to make my way into his
presence? and how should I, an unknown and displeasing visitor,
prevail on the famous physician to rifle the study of his
colleague, Dr. Jekyll?  Then I remembered that of my original
character, one part remained to me:  I could write my own hand; and
once I had conceived that kindling spark, the way that I must
follow became lighted up from end to end.

    Thereupon, I arranged my clothes as best I could, and
summoning a passing hansom, drove to an hotel in Portland Street,
the name of which I chanced to remember.  At my appearance (which
was indeed comical enough, however tragic a fate these garments
covered) the driver could not conceal his mirth.  I gnashed my
teeth upon him with a gust of devilish fury; and the smile
withered from his face--happily for him--yet more happily for
myself, for in another instant I had certainly dragged him from
his perch.  At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so
black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did
they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led
me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write.  Hyde
in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with
inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to
inflict pain.  Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with
a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters,
one to Lanyon and one to Poole; and that he might receive actual
evidence of their being posted, sent them out with directions that
they should be registered.  Thenceforward, he sat all day over the
fire in the private room, gnawing his nails; there he dined,
sitting alone with his fears, the waiter visibly quailing before
his eye; and thence, when the night was fully come, he set forth
in the corner of a closed cab, and was driven to and fro about the
streets of the city.  He, I say--I cannot say, I.  That child of
Hell had nothing human; nothing lived in him but fear and hatred.
And when at last, thinking the driver had begun to grow
suspicious, he discharged the cab and ventured on foot, attired in
his misfitting clothes, an object marked out for observation, into
the midst of the nocturnal passengers, these two base passions
raged within him like a tempest.  He walked fast, hunted by his
fears, chattering to himself, skulking through the less frequented
thoroughfares, counting the minutes that still divided him from
midnight.  Once a woman spoke to him, offering, I think, a box of
lights.  He smote her in the face, and she fled.

    When I came to myself at Lanyon's, the horror of my old friend
perhaps affected me somewhat:  I do not know; it was at least but a
drop in the sea to the abhorrence with which I looked back upon
these hours.  A change had come over me.  It was no longer the
fear of the gallows, it was the horror of being Hyde that racked
me.  I received Lanyon's condemnation partly in a dream; it was
partly in a dream that I came home to my own house and got into
bed.  I slept after the prostration of the day, with a stringent
and profound slumber which not even the nightmares that wrung me
could avail to break.  I awoke in the morning shaken, weakened,
but refreshed.  I still hated and feared the thought of the brute
that slept within me, and I had not of course forgotten the
appalling dangers of the day before; but I was once more at home,
in my own house and close to my drugs; and gratitude for my escape
shone so strong in my soul that it almost rivalled the brightness
of hope.

    I was stepping leisurely across the court after breakfast,
drinking the chill of the air with pleasure, when I was seized
again with those indescribable sensations that heralded the
change; and I had but the time to gain the shelter of my cabinet,
before I was once again raging and freezing with the passions of
Hyde.  It took on this occasion a double dose to recall me to
myself; and alas! six hours after, as I sat looking sadly in the
fire, the pangs returned, and the drug had to be re-administered.
In short, from that day forth it seemed only by a great effort as
of gymnastics, and only under the immediate stimulation of the
drug, that I was able to wear the countenance of Jekyll.  At all
hours of the day and night, I would be taken with the premonitory
shudder; above all, if I slept, or even dozed for a moment in my
chair, it was always as Hyde that I awakened.  Under the strain of
this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which
I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought
possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up
and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and
solely occupied by one thought:  the horror of my other self.  But
when I slept, or when the virtue of the medicine wore off, I would
leap almost without transition (for the pangs of transformation
grew daily less marked) into the possession of a fancy brimming
with images of terror, a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and
a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging
energies of life.  The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with
the sickliness of Jekyll.  And certainly the hate that now divided
them was equal on each side.  With Jekyll, it was a thing of vital
instinct.  He had now seen the full deformity of that creature
that shared with him some of the phenomena of consciousness, and
was co-heir with him to death:  and beyond these links of
community, which in themselves made the most poignant part of his
distress, he thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of
something not only hellish but inorganic.  This was the shocking
thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices;
that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was
dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life.  And
this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than
a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard
it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of
weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him,
and deposed him out of life.  The hatred of Hyde for Jekyll was of
a different order.  His terror of the gallows drove him
continually to commit temporary suicide, and return to his
subordinate station of a part instead of a person; but he loathed
the necessity, he loathed the despondency into which Jekyll was
now fallen, and he resented the dislike with which he was himself
regarded.  Hence the ape-like tricks that he would play me,
scrawling in my own hand blasphemies on the pages of my books,
burning the letters and destroying the portrait of my father; and
indeed, had it not been for his fear of death, he would long ago
have ruined himself in order to involve me in the ruin.  But his
love of me is wonderful; I go further:  I, who sicken and freeze at
the mere thought of him, when I recall the abjection and passion
of this attachment, and when I know how he fears my power to cut
him off by suicide, I find it in my heart to pity him.

    It is useless, and the time awfully fails me, to prolong this
description; no one has ever suffered such torments, let that
suffice; and yet even to these, habit brought--no, not
alleviation--but a certain callousness of soul, a certain
acquiescence of despair; and my punishment might have gone on for
years, but for the last calamity which has now fallen, and which
has finally severed me from my own face and nature.  My provision
of the salt, which had never been renewed since the date of the
first experiment, began to run low.  I sent out for a fresh supply
and mixed the draught; the ebullition followed, and the first
change of colour, not the second; I drank it and it was without
efficiency.  You will learn from Poole how I have had London
ransacked; it was in vain; and I am now persuaded that my first
supply was impure, and that it was that unknown impurity which
lent efficacy to the draught.

    About a week has passed, and I am now finishing this statement
under the influence of the last of the old powders.  This, then,
is the last time, short of a miracle, that Henry Jekyll can think
his own thoughts or see his own face (now how sadly altered!) in
the glass.  Nor must I delay too long to bring my writing to an
end; for if my narrative has hitherto escaped destruction, it has
been by a combination of great prudence and great good luck.
Should the throes of change take me in the act of writing it, Hyde
will tear it in pieces; but if some time shall have elapsed after
I have laid it by, his wonderful selfishness and circumscription
to the moment will probably save it once again from the action of
his ape-like spite.  And indeed the doom that is closing on us
both has already changed and crushed him.  Half an hour from now,
when I shall again and forever reindue that hated personality, I
know how I shall sit shuddering and weeping in my chair, or
continue, with the most strained and fearstruck ecstasy of
listening, to pace up and down this room (my last earthly refuge)
and give ear to every sound of menace.  Will Hyde die upon the
scaffold? or will he find courage to release himself at the last
moment?  God knows; I am careless; this is my true hour of death,
and what is to follow concerns another than myself.  Here then, as
I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring
the life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end.

***End***

__________________________________________________________________


Hawley Griffin becomes THE INVISIBLE MAN

as told by H. G. WELLS



CHAPTER I

THE STRANGE MAN'S ARRIVAL


The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a
biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over
the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a
little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. He was wrapped
up from head to foot, and the brim of his soft felt hat hid every
inch of his face but the shiny tip of his nose; the snow had piled
itself against his shoulders and chest, and added a white crest to
the burden he carried. He staggered into the "Coach and Horses" more
dead than alive, and flung his portmanteau down. "A fire," he cried,
"in the name of human charity! A room and a fire!" He stamped and
shook the snow from off himself in the bar, and followed Mrs. Hall
into her guest parlour to strike his bargain. And with that much
introduction, that and a couple of sovereigns flung upon the table,
he took up his quarters in the inn.

Mrs. Hall lit the fire and left him there while she went to prepare
him a meal with her own hands. A guest to stop at Iping in the
wintertime was an unheard-of piece of luck, let alone a guest who
was no "haggler," and she was resolved to show herself worthy of her
good fortune. As soon as the bacon was well under way, and Millie,
her lymphatic aid, had been brisked up a bit by a few deftly chosen
expressions of contempt, she carried the cloth, plates, and glasses
into the parlour and began to lay them with the utmost _eclat_.
Although the fire was burning up briskly, she was surprised to see
that her visitor still wore his hat and coat, standing with his back
to her and staring out of the window at the falling snow in the yard.
His gloved hands were clasped behind him, and he seemed to be lost
in thought. She noticed that the melting snow that still sprinkled
his shoulders dripped upon her carpet. "Can I take your hat and coat,
sir?" she said, "and give them a good dry in the kitchen?"

"No," he said without turning.

She was not sure she had heard him, and was about to repeat her
question.

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. "I prefer to
keep them on," he said with emphasis, and she noticed that he wore
big blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker
over his coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face.

"Very well, sir," she said. "_As_ you like. In a bit the room will
be warmer."

He made no answer, and had turned his face away from her again, and
Mrs. Hall, feeling that her conversational advances were ill-timed,
laid the rest of the table things in a quick staccato and whisked
out of the room. When she returned he was still standing there, like
a man of stone, his back hunched, his collar turned up, his dripping
hat-brim turned down, hiding his face and ears completely. She put
down the eggs and bacon with considerable emphasis, and called
rather than said to him, "Your lunch is served, sir."

"Thank you," he said at the same time, and did not stir until she
was closing the door. Then he swung round and approached the table
with a certain eager quickness.

As she went behind the bar to the kitchen she heard a sound repeated
at regular intervals. Chirk, chirk, chirk, it went, the sound of a
spoon being rapidly whisked round a basin. "That girl!" she said.
"There! I clean forgot it. It's her being so long!" And while she
herself finished mixing the mustard, she gave Millie a few verbal
stabs for her excessive slowness. She had cooked the ham and eggs,
laid the table, and done everything, while Millie (help indeed!) had
only succeeded in delaying the mustard. And him a new guest and
wanting to stay! Then she filled the mustard pot, and, putting it
with a certain stateliness upon a gold and black tea-tray, carried
it into the parlour.

She rapped and entered promptly. As she did so her visitor moved
quickly, so that she got but a glimpse of a white object disappearing
behind the table. It would seem he was picking something from the
floor. She rapped down the mustard pot on the table, and then she
noticed the overcoat and hat had been taken off and put over a chair
in front of the fire, and a pair of wet boots threatened rust to her
steel fender. She went to these things resolutely. "I suppose I may
have them to dry now," she said in a voice that brooked no denial.

"Leave the hat," said her visitor, in a muffled voice, and turning
she saw he had raised his head and was sitting and looking at her.

For a moment she stood gaping at him, too surprised to speak.

He held a white cloth--it was a serviette he had brought with
him--over the lower part of his face, so that his mouth and jaws
were completely hidden, and that was the reason of his muffled
voice. But it was not that which startled Mrs. Hall. It was the fact
that all his forehead above his blue glasses was covered by a white
bandage, and that another covered his ears, leaving not a scrap of
his face exposed excepting only his pink, peaked nose. It was bright,
pink, and shiny just as it had been at first. He wore a dark-brown
velvet jacket with a high, black, linen-lined collar turned up about
his neck. The thick black hair, escaping as it could below and
between the cross bandages, projected in curious tails and horns,
giving him the strangest appearance conceivable. This muffled and
bandaged head was so unlike what she had anticipated, that for a
moment she was rigid.

He did not remove the serviette, but remained holding it, as she
saw now, with a brown gloved hand, and regarding her with his
inscrutable blue glasses. "Leave the hat," he said, speaking very
distinctly through the white cloth.

Her nerves began to recover from the shock they had received. She
placed the hat on the chair again by the fire. "I didn't know, sir,"
she began, "that--" and she stopped embarrassed.

"Thank you," he said drily, glancing from her to the door and then
at her again.

"I'll have them nicely dried, sir, at once," she said, and carried
his clothes out of the room. She glanced at his white-swathed head
and blue goggles again as she was going out of the door; but his
napkin was still in front of his face. She shivered a little as she
closed the door behind her, and her face was eloquent of her surprise
and perplexity. "I _never_," she whispered. "There!" She went quite
softly to the kitchen, and was too preoccupied to ask Millie what
she was messing about with _now_, when she got there.

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced
inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and
resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the
window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette
in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to
the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This
left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier
air to the table and his meal.

"The poor soul's had an accident or an op'ration or somethin'," said
Mrs. Hall. "What a turn them bandages did give me, to be sure!"

She put on some more coal, unfolded the clothes-horse, and extended
the traveller's coat upon this. "And they goggles! Why, he looked
more like a divin' helmet than a human man!" She hung his muffler
on a corner of the horse. "And holding that handkerchief over his
mouth all the time. Talkin' through it! ... Perhaps his mouth was
hurt too--maybe."

She turned round, as one who suddenly remembers. "Bless my soul
alive!" she said, going off at a tangent; "ain't you done them
taters _yet_, Millie?"

When Mrs. Hall went to clear away the stranger's lunch, her idea
that his mouth must also have been cut or disfigured in the accident
she supposed him to have suffered, was confirmed, for he was smoking
a pipe, and all the time that she was in the room he never loosened
the silk muffler he had wrapped round the lower part of his face to
put the mouthpiece to his lips. Yet it was not forgetfulness, for
she saw he glanced at it as it smouldered out. He sat in the corner
with his back to the window-blind and spoke now, having eaten and
drunk and being comfortably warmed through, with less aggressive
brevity than before. The reflection of the fire lent a kind of red
animation to his big spectacles they had lacked hitherto.

"I have some luggage," he said, "at Bramblehurst station," and he
asked her how he could have it sent. He bowed his bandaged head
quite politely in acknowledgment of her explanation. "To-morrow?" he
said. "There is no speedier delivery?" and seemed quite disappointed
when she answered, "No." Was she quite sure? No man with a trap who
would go over?

Mrs. Hall, nothing loath, answered his questions and developed a
conversation. "It's a steep road by the down, sir," she said in
answer to the question about a trap; and then, snatching at an
opening, said, "It was there a carriage was upsettled, a year ago
and more. A gentleman killed, besides his coachman. Accidents, sir,
happen in a moment, don't they?"

But the visitor was not to be drawn so easily. "They do," he said
through his muffler, eyeing her quietly through his impenetrable
glasses.

"But they take long enough to get well, don't they? ... There was
my sister's son, Tom, jest cut his arm with a scythe, tumbled on it
in the 'ayfield, and, bless me! he was three months tied up sir.
You'd hardly believe it. It's regular given me a dread of a scythe,
sir."

"I can quite understand that," said the visitor.

"He was afraid, one time, that he'd have to have an op'ration--he
was that bad, sir."

The visitor laughed abruptly, a bark of a laugh that he seemed to
bite and kill in his mouth. "_Was_ he?" he said.

"He was, sir. And no laughing matter to them as had the doing for
him, as I had--my sister being took up with her little ones so
much. There was bandages to do, sir, and bandages to undo. So that
if I may make so bold as to say it, sir--"

"Will you get me some matches?" said the visitor, quite abruptly.
"My pipe is out."

Mrs. Hall was pulled up suddenly. It was certainly rude of him,
after telling him all she had done. She gasped at him for a moment,
and remembered the two sovereigns. She went for the matches.

"Thanks," he said concisely, as she put them down, and turned his
shoulder upon her and stared out of the window again. It was
altogether too discouraging. Evidently he was sensitive on the
topic of operations and bandages. She did not "make so bold as to
say," however, after all. But his snubbing way had irritated her,
and Millie had a hot time of it that afternoon.

The visitor remained in the parlour until four o'clock, without
giving the ghost of an excuse for an intrusion. For the most part
he was quite still during that time; it would seem he sat in the
growing darkness smoking in the firelight--perhaps dozing.

Once or twice a curious listener might have heard him at the coals,
and for the space of five minutes he was audible pacing the room.
He seemed to be talking to himself. Then the armchair creaked as
he sat down again.



CHAPTER II

MR. TEDDY HENFREY'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS


At four o'clock, when it was fairly dark and Mrs. Hall was screwing
up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would take some
tea, Teddy Henfrey, the clock-jobber, came into the bar. "My sakes!
Mrs. Hall," said he, "but this is terrible weather for thin boots!"
The snow outside was falling faster.

Mrs. Hall agreed, and then noticed he had his bag with him. "Now
you're here, Mr. Teddy," said she, "I'd be glad if you'd give th'
old clock in the parlour a bit of a look. 'Tis going, and it strikes
well and hearty; but the hour-hand won't do nuthin' but point at
six."

And leading the way, she went across to the parlour door and rapped
and entered.

Her visitor, she saw as she opened the door, was seated in the
armchair before the fire, dozing it would seem, with his bandaged
head drooping on one side. The only light in the room was the red
glow from the fire--which lit his eyes like adverse railway signals,
but left his downcast face in darkness--and the scanty vestiges of
the day that came in through the open door. Everything was ruddy,
shadowy, and indistinct to her, the more so since she had just been
lighting the bar lamp, and her eyes were dazzled. But for a second
it seemed to her that the man she looked at had an enormous mouth
wide open--a vast and incredible mouth that swallowed the whole of
the lower portion of his face. It was the sensation of a moment:
the white-bound head, the monstrous goggle eyes, and this huge yawn
below it. Then he stirred, started up in his chair, put up his hand.
She opened the door wide, so that the room was lighter, and she saw
him more clearly, with the muffler held up to his face just as she
had seen him hold the serviette before. The shadows, she fancied,
had tricked her.

"Would you mind, sir, this man a-coming to look at the clock, sir?"
she said, recovering from the momentary shock.

"Look at the clock?" he said, staring round in a drowsy manner,
and speaking over his hand, and then, getting more fully awake,
"certainly."

Mrs. Hall went away to get a lamp, and he rose and stretched
himself. Then came the light, and Mr. Teddy Henfrey, entering, was
confronted by this bandaged person. He was, he says, "taken aback."

"Good afternoon," said the stranger, regarding him--as Mr. Henfrey
says, with a vivid sense of the dark spectacles--"like a lobster."

"I hope," said Mr. Henfrey, "that it's no intrusion."

"None whatever," said the stranger. "Though, I understand," he said
turning to Mrs. Hall, "that this room is really to be mine for my
own private use."

"I thought, sir," said Mrs. Hall, "you'd prefer the clock--"

"Certainly," said the stranger, "certainly--but, as a rule, I
like to be alone and undisturbed.

"But I'm really glad to have the clock seen to," he said, seeing a
certain hesitation in Mr. Henfrey's manner. "Very glad." Mr. Henfrey
had intended to apologise and withdraw, but this anticipation
reassured him. The stranger turned round with his back to the
fireplace and put his hands behind his back. "And presently," he
said, "when the clock-mending is over, I think I should like to
have some tea. But not till the clock-mending is over."

Mrs. Hall was about to leave the room--she made no conversational
advances this time, because she did not want to be snubbed in front
of Mr. Henfrey--when her visitor asked her if she had made any
arrangements about his boxes at Bramblehurst. She told him she had
mentioned the matter to the postman, and that the carrier could
bring them over on the morrow. "You are certain that is the
earliest?" he said.

She was certain, with a marked coldness.

"I should explain," he added, "what I was really too cold and
fatigued to do before, that I am an experimental investigator."

"Indeed, sir," said Mrs. Hall, much impressed.

"And my baggage contains apparatus and appliances."

"Very useful things indeed they are, sir," said Mrs. Hall.

"And I'm very naturally anxious to get on with my inquiries."

"Of course, sir."

"My reason for coming to Iping," he proceeded, with a certain
deliberation of manner, "was ... a desire for solitude. I do not
wish to be disturbed in my work. In addition to my work, an
accident--"

"I thought as much," said Mrs. Hall to herself.

"--necessitates a certain retirement. My eyes--are sometimes so
weak and painful that I have to shut myself up in the dark for
hours together. Lock myself up. Sometimes--now and then. Not at
present, certainly. At such times the slightest disturbance, the
entry of a stranger into the room, is a source of excruciating
annoyance to me--it is well these things should be understood."

"Certainly, sir," said Mrs. Hall. "And if I might make so bold as
to ask--"

"That I think, is all," said the stranger, with that quietly
irresistible air of finality he could assume at will. Mrs. Hall
reserved her question and sympathy for a better occasion.

After Mrs. Hall had left the room, he remained standing in front of
the fire, glaring, so Mr. Henfrey puts it, at the clock-mending. Mr.
Henfrey not only took off the hands of the clock, and the face, but
extracted the works; and he tried to work in as slow and quiet and
unassuming a manner as possible. He worked with the lamp close to
him, and the green shade threw a brilliant light upon his hands,
and upon the frame and wheels, and left the rest of the room
shadowy. When he looked up, coloured patches swam in his eyes.
Being constitutionally of a curious nature, he had removed the
works--a quite unnecessary proceeding--with the idea of delaying his
departure and perhaps falling into conversation with the stranger.
But the stranger stood there, perfectly silent and still. So still,
it got on Henfrey's nerves. He felt alone in the room and looked up,
and there, grey and dim, was the bandaged head and huge blue lenses
staring fixedly, with a mist of green spots drifting in front of
them. It was so uncanny to Henfrey that for a minute they remained
staring blankly at one another. Then Henfrey looked down again. Very
uncomfortable position! One would like to say something. Should he
remark that the weather was very cold for the time of year?

He looked up as if to take aim with that introductory shot. "The
weather--" he began.

"Why don't you finish and go?" said the rigid figure, evidently in
a state of painfully suppressed rage. "All you've got to do is to
fix the hour-hand on its axle. You're simply humbugging--"

"Certainly, sir--one minute more. I overlooked--" and Mr. Henfrey
finished and went.

But he went feeling excessively annoyed. "Damn it!" said Mr. Henfrey
to himself, trudging down the village through the thawing snow; "a
man must do a clock at times, sure-ly."

And again "Can't a man look at you?--Ugly!"

And yet again, "Seemingly not. If the police was wanting you you
couldn't be more wropped and bandaged."

At Gleeson's corner he saw Hall, who had recently married the
stranger's hostess at the "Coach and Horses," and who now drove
the Iping conveyance, when occasional people required it, to
Sidderbridge Junction, coming towards him on his return from that
place. Hall had evidently been "stopping a bit" at Sidderbridge,
to judge by his driving. "'Ow do, Teddy?" he said, passing.

"You got a rum un up home!" said Teddy.

Hall very sociably pulled up. "What's that?" he asked.

"Rum-looking customer stopping at the 'Coach and Horses,'" said
Teddy. "My sakes!"

And he proceeded to give Hall a vivid description of his grotesque
guest. "Looks a bit like a disguise, don't it? I'd like to see a
man's face if I had him stopping in _my_ place," said Henfrey. "But
women are that trustful--where strangers are concerned. He's took
your rooms and he ain't even given a name, Hall."

"You don't say so!" said Hall, who was a man of sluggish apprehension.

"Yes," said Teddy. "By the week. Whatever he is, you can't get rid
of him under the week. And he's got a lot of luggage coming
to-morrow, so he says. Let's hope it won't be stones in boxes, Hall."

He told Hall how his aunt at Hastings had been swindled by a
stranger with empty portmanteaux. Altogether he left Hall vaguely
suspicious. "Get up, old girl," said Hall. "I s'pose I must see
'bout this."

Teddy trudged on his way with his mind considerably relieved.

Instead of "seeing 'bout it," however, Hall on his return was
severely rated by his wife on the length of time he had spent in
Sidderbridge, and his mild inquiries were answered snappishly and
in a manner not to the point. But the seed of suspicion Teddy
had sown germinated in the mind of Mr. Hall in spite of these
discouragements. "You wim' don't know everything," said Mr. Hall,
resolved to ascertain more about the personality of his guest at
the earliest possible opportunity. And after the stranger had gone
to bed, which he did about half-past nine, Mr. Hall went very
aggressively into the parlour and looked very hard at his wife's
furniture, just to show that the stranger wasn't master there,
and scrutinised closely and a little contemptuously a sheet of
mathematical computations the stranger had left. When retiring
for the night he instructed Mrs. Hall to look very closely at
the stranger's luggage when it came next day.

"You mind you own business, Hall," said Mrs. Hall, "and I'll mind
mine."

She was all the more inclined to snap at Hall because the stranger
was undoubtedly an unusually strange sort of stranger, and she was
by no means assured about him in her own mind. In the middle of the
night she woke up dreaming of huge white heads like turnips, that
came trailing after her, at the end of interminable necks, and with
vast black eyes. But being a sensible woman, she subdued her
terrors and turned over and went to sleep again.



CHAPTER III

THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES


So it was that on the twenty-ninth day of February, at the beginning
of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping
village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush--and very
remarkable luggage it was. There were a couple of trunks indeed,
such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were
a box of books--big, fat books, of which some were just in an
incomprehensible handwriting--and a dozen or more crates, boxes,
and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to
Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw--glass bottles.
The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out
impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word
or so of gossip preparatory to helping being them in. Out he came,
not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a _dilettante_
spirit at Hall's legs. "Come along with those boxes," he said.
"I've been waiting long enough."

And he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to
lay hands on the smaller crate.

No sooner had Fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than
it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down the
steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his
hand. "Whup!" cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with
dogs, and Fearenside howled, "Lie down!" and snatched his whip.

They saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the
dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger's leg, and
heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside's
whip reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay,
retreated under the wheels of the waggon. It was all the business of
a swift half-minute. No one spoke, everyone shouted. The stranger
glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he
would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed swiftly up the
steps into the inn. They heard him go headlong across the passage
and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom.

"You brute, you!" said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his
whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel.
"Come here," said Fearenside--"You'd better."

Hall had stood gaping. "He wuz bit," said Hall. "I'd better go and
see to en," and he trotted after the stranger. He met Mrs. Hall in
the passage. "Carrier's darg," he said "bit en."

He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he
pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a
naturally sympathetic turn of mind.

The blind was down and the room dim. He caught a glimpse of a most
singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and
a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the
face of a pale pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest,
hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked. It was so
rapid that it gave him no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable
shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood on the dark little
landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen.

A couple of minutes after, he rejoined the little group that had
formed outside the "Coach and Horses." There was Fearenside telling
about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall
saying his dog didn't have no business to bite her guests; there
was Huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative;
and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and
children, all of them saying fatuities: "Wouldn't let en bite
_me_, I knows"; "'Tasn't right _have_ such dargs"; "Whad _'e_ bite
'n for, than?" and so forth.

Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it
incredible that he had seen anything so very remarkable happen
upstairs. Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to
express his impressions.

"He don't want no help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's
inquiry. "We'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in."

"He ought to have it cauterised at once," said Mr. Huxter;
"especially if it's at all inflamed."

"I'd shoot en, that's what I'd do," said a lady in the group.

Suddenly the dog began growling again.

"Come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood
the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim
bent down. "The sooner you get those things in the better I'll be
pleased." It is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers
and gloves had been changed.

"Was you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside. "I'm rare sorry the darg--"

"Not a bit," said the stranger. "Never broke the skin. Hurry up
with those things."

He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts.

Directly the first crate was, in accordance with his directions,
carried into the parlour, the stranger flung himself upon it with
extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the
straw with an utter disregard of Mrs. Hall's carpet. And from it he
began to produce bottles--little fat bottles containing powders,
small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids,
fluted blue bottles labeled Poison, bottles with round bodies and
slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles,
bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine
corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles,
salad-oil bottles--putting them in rows on the chiffonnier, on the
mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the
bookshelf--everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not
boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded
bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the
only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were
a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance.

And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the
window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter
of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside,
nor for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs.

When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so
absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into
test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the
bulk of the straw and put the tray on the table, with some little
emphasis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. Then he
half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. But she
saw he had removed his glasses; they were beside him on the table,
and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily
hollow. He put on his spectacles again, and then turned and faced
her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he
anticipated her.

"I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone
of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him.

"I knocked, but seemingly--"

"Perhaps you did. But in my investigations--my really very urgent
and necessary investigations--the slightest disturbance, the jar
of a door--I must ask you--"

"Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that, you
know. Any time."

"A very good idea," said the stranger.

"This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to remark--"

"Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." And he
mumbled at her--words suspiciously like curses.

He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle
in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite
alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should
like to know, sir, what you consider--"

"A shilling--put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's enough?"

"So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the table-cloth and beginning
to spread it over the table. "If you're satisfied, of course--"

He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar toward her.

All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall
testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a
concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the
table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle flung violently down,
and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. Fearing "something was
the matter," she went to the door and listened, not caring to
knock.

"I can't go on," he was raving. "I _can't_ go on. Three hundred
thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All
my life it may take me! ... Patience! Patience indeed! ... Fool!
fool!"

There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs.
Hall had very reluctantly to leave the rest of his soliloquy.
When she returned the room was silent again, save for the faint
crepitation of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle.
It was all over; the stranger had resumed work.

When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the
room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been
carelessly wiped. She called attention to it.

"Put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor. "For God's sake
don't worry me. If there's damage done, put it down in the bill,"
and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book before him.

"I'll tell you something," said Fearenside, mysteriously. It was
late in the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of
Iping Hanger.

"Well?" said Teddy Henfrey.

"This chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Well--he's black.
Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his trousers
and the tear of his glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to
show, wouldn't you? Well--there wasn't none. Just blackness. I
tell you, he's as black as my hat."

"My sakes!" said Henfrey. "It's a rummy case altogether. Why, his
nose is as pink as paint!"

"That's true," said Fearenside. "I knows that. And I tell 'ee what
I'm thinking. That marn's a piebald, Teddy. Black here and white
there--in patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a kind of half-breed,
and the colour's come off patchy instead of mixing. I've heard of
such things before. And it's the common way with horses, as any one
can see."



CHAPTER IV

MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER


I have told the circumstances of the stranger's arrival in Iping
with a certain fulness of detail, in order that the curious
impression he created may be understood by the reader. But
excepting two odd incidents, the circumstances of his stay until
the extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very
cursorily. There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on
matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late April,
when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy
expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever
he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but
he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and
avoiding his visitor as much as possible. "Wait till the summer,"
said Mrs. Hall sagely, "when the artisks are beginning to come.
Then we'll see. He may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled
punctual is bills settled punctual, whatever you'd like to say."

The stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference
between Sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. He
worked, as Mrs. Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would
come down early and be continuously busy. On others he would rise
late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke,
sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world
beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very
uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering
under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were
snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence.
He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His
habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him,
but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make
neither head nor tail of what she heard.

He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out
muffled up invisibly, whether the weather were cold or not, and he
chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and
banks. His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the
penthouse of his hat, came with a disagreeable suddenness out of
the darkness upon one or two home-going labourers, and Teddy
Henfrey, tumbling out of the "Scarlet Coat" one night, at half-past
nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skull-like head (he
was walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light of the opened inn
door. Such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies, and
it seemed doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked
him, or the reverse; but there was certainly a vivid enough dislike
on either side.

It was inevitable that a person of so remarkable an appearance and
bearing should form a frequent topic in such a village as Iping.
Opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. Mrs. Hall was
sensitive on the point. When questioned, she explained very
carefully that he was an "experimental investigator," going
gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. When asked
what an experimental investigator was, she would say with a touch
of superiority that most educated people knew such things as that,
and would thus explain that he "discovered things." Her visitor had
had an accident, she said, which temporarily discoloured his face
and hands, and being of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to
any public notice of the fact.

Out of her hearing there was a view largely entertained that he was
a criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself up so
as to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. This
idea sprang from the brain of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any
magnitude dating from the middle or end of February was known to
have occurred. Elaborated in the imagination of Mr. Gould, the
probationary assistant in the National School, this theory took the
form that the stranger was an Anarchist in disguise, preparing
explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations
as his time permitted. These consisted for the most part in looking
very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking people
who had never seen the stranger, leading questions about him. But
he detected nothing.

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either
accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for
instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he choses
to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and
being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with
the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by
regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the
advantage of accounting for everything straight away.

Between these main groups there were waverers and compromisers.
Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the
events of early April that the thought of the supernatural was
first whispered in the village. Even then it was only credited
among the women folk.

But whatever they thought of him, people in Iping, on the whole,
agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have
been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing
to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they
surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that
swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning
of all tentative advances of curiosity, the taste for twilight
that led to the closing of doors, the pulling down of blinds,
the extinction of candles and lamps--who could agree with such
goings on? They drew aside as he passed down the village, and when
he had gone by, young humourists would up with coat-collars and
down with hat-brims, and go pacing nervously after him in imitation
of his occult bearing. There was a song popular at that time called
"The Bogey Man". Miss Statchell sang it at the schoolroom concert
(in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter whenever one or two of
the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared, a
bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in
the midst of them. Also belated little children would call "Bogey
Man!" after him, and make off tremulously elated.

Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. The
bandages excited his professional interest, the report of the
thousand and one bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through
April and May he coveted an opportunity of talking to the stranger,
and at last, towards Whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer, but
hit upon the subscription-list for a village nurse as an excuse. He
was surprised to find that Mr. Hall did not know his guest's name.
"He give a name," said Mrs. Hall--an assertion which was quite
unfounded--"but I didn't rightly hear it." She thought it seemed
so silly not to know the man's name.

Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly
audible imprecation from within. "Pardon my intrusion," said Cuss,
and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of
the conversation.

She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then
a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark
of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face
white, his eyes staring over his shoulder. He left the door open
behind him, and without looking at her strode across the hall and
went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the
road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood behind the door,
looking at the open door of the parlour. Then she heard the
stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps came across the
room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door
slammed, and the place was silent again.

Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. "Am I mad?"
Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. "Do I
look like an insane person?"

"What's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the
loose sheets of his forth-coming sermon.

"That chap at the inn--"

"Well?"

"Give me something to drink," said Cuss, and he sat down.

When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry--the
only drink the good vicar had available--he told him of the
interview he had just had. "Went in," he gasped, "and began to
demand a subscription for that Nurse Fund. He'd stuck his hands in
his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily in his chair.
Sniffed. I told him I'd heard he took an interest in scientific
things. He said yes. Sniffed again. Kept on sniffing all the time;
evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up
like that! I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my
eyes open. Bottles--chemicals--everywhere. Balance, test-tubes
in stands, and a smell of--evening primrose. Would he subscribe?
Said he'd consider it. Asked him, point-blank, was he researching.
Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. 'A damnable long
research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. 'Oh,' said
I. And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil, and my
question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most
valuable prescription--what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical?
'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified
sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it
down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper.
Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he
said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and
lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the
chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came
his arm."

"Well?"

"No hand--just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, _that's_ a
deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I
thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that
sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in
it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could
see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light
shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I said. Then he
stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then
at his sleeve."

"Well?"

"That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve
back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,' said he, 'that there
was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough.
'How the devil,' said I, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?'
'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.'

"'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He
stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three
very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I
didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and
those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly
up to you.

"'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said.
At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts
scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket
again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to
me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an
age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.'

"Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could
see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly,
slowly--just like that--until the cuff was six inches from my
face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that!
And then--"

"Well?"

"Something--exactly like a finger and thumb it felt--nipped my
nose."

Bunting began to laugh.

"There wasn't anything there!" said Cuss, his voice running up into
a shriek at the "there." "It's all very well for you to laugh, but
I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned
around, and cut out of the room--I left him--"

Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic.
He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the
excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "When I hit his cuff," said
Cuss, "I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there
wasn't an arm! There wasn't the ghost of an arm!"

Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. "It's
a most remarkable story," he said. He looked very wise and grave
indeed. "It's really," said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, "a
most remarkable story."



CHAPTER V

THE BURGLARY AT THE VICARAGE


The facts of the burglary at the vicarage came to us chiefly
through the medium of the vicar and his wife. It occurred in the
small hours of Whit Monday, the day devoted in Iping to the Club
festivities. Mrs. Bunting, it seems, woke up suddenly in the
stillness that comes before the dawn, with the strong impression
that the door of their bedroom had opened and closed. She did not
arouse her husband at first, but sat up in bed listening. She then
distinctly heard the pad, pad, pad of bare feet coming out of the
adjoining dressing-room and walking along the passage towards the
staircase. As soon as she felt assured of this, she aroused the
Rev. Mr. Bunting as quietly as possible. He did not strike a light,
but putting on his spectacles, her dressing-gown and his bath
slippers, he went out on the landing to listen. He heard quite
distinctly a fumbling going on at his study desk down-stairs, and
then a violent sneeze.

At that he returned to his bedroom, armed himself with the most
obvious weapon, the poker, and descended the staircase as
noiselessly as possible. Mrs. Bunting came out on the landing.

The hour was about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was
past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study
doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the
faint creaking of the stairs under Mr. Bunting's tread, and the
slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, the drawer
was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an
imprecation, and a match was struck and the study was flooded with
yellow light. Mr. Bunting was now in the hall, and through the
crack of the door he could see the desk and the open drawer and a
candle burning on the desk. But the robber he could not see. He
stood there in the hall undecided what to do, and Mrs. Bunting, her
face white and intent, crept slowly downstairs after him. One thing
kept Mr. Bunting's courage; the persuasion that this burglar was a
resident in the village.

They heard the chink of money, and realised that the robber had
found the housekeeping reserve of gold--two pounds ten in half
sovereigns altogether. At that sound Mr. Bunting was nerved to
abrupt action. Gripping the poker firmly, he rushed into the room,
closely followed by Mrs. Bunting. "Surrender!" cried Mr. Bunting,
fiercely, and then stooped amazed. Apparently the room was
perfectly empty.

Yet their conviction that they had, that very moment, heard somebody
moving in the room had amounted to a certainty. For half a minute,
perhaps, they stood gaping, then Mrs. Bunting went across the room
and looked behind the screen, while Mr. Bunting, by a kindred
impulse, peered under the desk. Then Mrs. Bunting turned back the
window-curtains, and Mr. Bunting looked up the chimney and probed it
with the poker. Then Mrs. Bunting scrutinised the waste-paper basket
and Mr. Bunting opened the lid of the coal-scuttle. Then they came
to a stop and stood with eyes interrogating each other.

"I could have sworn--" said Mr. Bunting.

"The candle!" said Mr. Bunting. "Who lit the candle?"

"The drawer!" said Mrs. Bunting. "And the money's gone!"

She went hastily to the doorway.

"Of all the strange occurrences--"

There was a violent sneeze in the passage. They rushed out, and as
they did so the kitchen door slammed. "Bring the candle," said Mr.
Bunting, and led the way. They both heard a sound of bolts being
hastily shot back.

As he opened the kitchen door he saw through the scullery that
the back door was just opening, and the faint light of early dawn
displayed the dark masses of the garden beyond. He is certain that
nothing went out of the door. It opened, stood open for a moment,
and then closed with a slam. As it did so, the candle Mrs. Bunting
was carrying from the study flickered and flared. It was a minute
or more before they entered the kitchen.

The place was empty. They refastened the back door, examined the
kitchen, pantry, and scullery thoroughly, and at last went down
into the cellar. There was not a soul to be found in the house,
search as they would.

Daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed little
couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the
unnecessary light of a guttering candle.



CHAPTER VI

THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD


Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit Monday, before
Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose
and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was
of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific
gravity of their beer. They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs.
Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsaparilla
from their joint-room. As she was the expert and principal operator
in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it.

On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger's door was
ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had
been directed.

But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the
front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on
the latch. And with a flash of inspiration he connected this with
the stranger's room upstairs and the suggestions of Mr. Teddy
Henfrey. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs.
Hall shot these bolts overnight. At the sight he stopped, gaping,
then with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs again. He
rapped at the stranger's door. There was no answer. He rapped
again; then pushed the door wide open and entered.

It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. And what
was stranger, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair
and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only
garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His
big slouch hat even was cocked jauntily over the bed-post.

As Hall stood there he heard his wife's voice coming out of the
depth of the cellar, with that rapid telescoping of the syllables
and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note,
by which the West Sussex villager is wont to indicate a brisk
impatience. "George! You gart whad a wand?"

At that he turned and hurried down to her. "Janny," he said, over
the rail of the cellar steps, "'tas the truth what Henfrey sez.
'E's not in uz room, 'e en't. And the front door's onbolted."

At first Mrs. Hall did not understand, and as soon as she did she
resolved to see the empty room for herself. Hall, still holding the
bottle, went first. "If 'e en't there," he said, "'is close are.
And what's 'e doin' 'ithout 'is close, then? 'Tas a most curious
business."

As they came up the cellar steps they both, it was afterwards
ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but
seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other
about it at the time. Mrs. Hall passed her husband in the passage
and ran on first upstairs. Someone sneezed on the staircase. Hall,
following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. She,
going on first, was under the impression that Hall was sneezing.
She flung open the door and stood regarding the room. "Of all the
curious!" she said.

She heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, and turning,
was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the topmost stair.
But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put
her hand on the pillow and then under the clothes.

"Cold," she said. "He's been up this hour or more."

As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened. The bed-clothes
gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak,
and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if
a hand had clutched them in the centre and flung them aside.
Immediately after, the stranger's hat hopped off the bed-post,
described a whirling flight in the air through the better part of
a circle, and then dashed straight at Mrs. Hall's face. Then as
swiftly came the sponge from the washstand; and then the chair,
flinging the stranger's coat and trousers carelessly aside, and
laughing drily in a voice singularly like the stranger's, turned
itself up with its four legs at Mrs. Hall, seemed to take aim at her
for a moment, and charged at her. She screamed and turned, and then
the chair legs came gently but firmly against her back and impelled
her and Hall out of the room. The door slammed violently and was
locked. The chair and bed seemed to be executing a dance of triumph
for a moment, and then abruptly everything was still.

Mrs. Hall was left almost in a fainting condition in Mr. Hall's
arms on the landing. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr.
Hall and Millie, who had been roused by her scream of alarm,
succeeded in getting her downstairs, and applying the restoratives
customary in such cases.

"'Tas sperits," said Mrs. Hall. "I know 'tas sperits. I've read in
papers of en. Tables and chairs leaping and dancing..."

"Take a drop more, Janny," said Hall. "'Twill steady ye."

"Lock him out," said Mrs. Hall. "Don't let him come in again.
I half guessed--I might ha' known. With them goggling eyes and
bandaged head, and never going to church of a Sunday. And all
they bottles--more'n it's right for any one to have. He's put the
sperits into the furniture.... My good old furniture! 'Twas in
that very chair my poor dear mother used to sit when I was a
little girl. To think it should rise up against me now!"

"Just a drop more, Janny," said Hall. "Your nerves is all upset."

They sent Millie across the street through the golden five o'clock
sunshine to rouse up Mr. Sandy Wadgers, the blacksmith. Mr.
Hall's compliments and the furniture upstairs was behaving most
extraordinary. Would Mr. Wadgers come round? He was a knowing man,
was Mr. Wadgers, and very resourceful. He took quite a grave view
of the case. "Arm darmed if thet ent witchcraft," was the view of
Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "You warnt horseshoes for such gentry as he."

He came round greatly concerned. They wanted him to lead the way
upstairs to the room, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry. He
preferred to talk in the passage. Over the way Huxter's apprentice
came out and began taking down the shutters of the tobacco window.
He was called over to join the discussion. Mr. Huxter naturally
followed over in the course of a few minutes. The Anglo-Saxon
genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a
great deal of talk and no decisive action. "Let's have the facts
first," insisted Mr. Sandy Wadgers. "Let's be sure we'd be acting
perfectly right in bustin' that there door open. A door onbust is
always open to bustin', but ye can't onbust a door once you've
busted en."

And suddenly and most wonderfully the door of the room upstairs
opened of its own accord, and as they looked up in amazement,
they saw descending the stairs the muffled figure of the stranger
staring more blackly and blankly than ever with those unreasonably
large blue glass eyes of his. He came down stiffly and slowly,
staring all the time; he walked across the passage staring, then
stopped.

"Look there!" he said, and their eyes followed the direction of his
gloved finger and saw a bottle of sarsaparilla hard by the cellar
door. Then he entered the parlour, and suddenly, swiftly,
viciously, slammed the door in their faces.

Not a word was spoken until the last echoes of the slam had died
away. They stared at one another. "Well, if that don't lick
everything!" said Mr. Wadgers, and left the alternative unsaid.

"I'd go in and ask'n 'bout it," said Wadgers, to Mr. Hall. "I'd
d'mand an explanation."

It took some time to bring the landlady's husband up to that pitch.
At last he rapped, opened the door, and got as far as, "Excuse me--"

"Go to the devil!" said the stranger in a tremendous voice, and
"Shut that door after you." So that brief interview terminated.



CHAPTER VII

THE UNVEILING OF THE STRANGER


The stranger went into the little parlour of the "Coach and Horses"
about half-past five in the morning, and there he remained until
near midday, the blinds down, the door shut, and none, after Hall's
repulse, venturing near him.

All that time he must have fasted. Thrice he rang his bell, the
third time furiously and continuously, but no one answered him.
"Him and his 'go to the devil' indeed!" said Mrs. Hall. Presently
came an imperfect rumour of the burglary at the vicarage, and two
and two were put together. Hall, assisted by Wadgers, went off to
find Mr. Shuckleforth, the magistrate, and take his advice. No one
ventured upstairs. How the stranger occupied himself is unknown.
Now and then he would stride violently up and down, and twice came
an outburst of curses, a tearing of paper, and a violent smashing
of bottles.

The little group of scared but curious people increased. Mrs. Huxter
came over; some gay young fellows resplendent in black ready-made
jackets and _pique_ paper ties--for it was Whit Monday--joined
the group with confused interrogations. Young Archie Harker
distinguished himself by going up the yard and trying to peep
under the window-blinds. He could see nothing, but gave reason
for supposing that he did, and others of the Iping youth
presently joined him.

It was the finest of all possible Whit Mondays, and down the
village street stood a row of nearly a dozen booths, a shooting
gallery, and on the grass by the forge were three yellow and
chocolate waggons and some picturesque strangers of both sexes
putting up a cocoanut shy. The gentlemen wore blue jerseys, the
ladies white aprons and quite fashionable hats with heavy plumes.
Wodger, of the "Purple Fawn," and Mr. Jaggers, the cobbler, who
also sold old second-hand ordinary bicycles, were stretching a
string of union-jacks and royal ensigns (which had originally
celebrated the first Victorian Jubilee) across the road.

And inside, in the artificial darkness of the parlour, into which
only one thin jet of sunlight penetrated, the stranger, hungry we
must suppose, and fearful, hidden in his uncomfortable hot wrappings,
pored through his dark glasses upon his paper or chinked his dirty
little bottles, and occasionally swore savagely at the boys, audible
if invisible, outside the windows. In the corner by the fireplace
lay the fragments of half a dozen smashed bottles, and a pungent
twang of chlorine tainted the air. So much we know from what was
heard at the time and from what was subsequently seen in the room.

About noon he suddenly opened his parlour door and stood glaring
fixedly at the three or four people in the bar. "Mrs. Hall," he
said. Somebody went sheepishly and called for Mrs. Hall.

Mrs. Hall appeared after an interval, a little short of breath, but
all the fiercer for that. Hall was still out. She had deliberated
over this scene, and she came holding a little tray with an
unsettled bill upon it. "Is it your bill you're wanting, sir?" she
said.

"Why wasn't my breakfast laid? Why haven't you prepared my meals
and answered my bell? Do you think I live without eating?"

"Why isn't my bill paid?" said Mrs. Hall. "That's what I want to
know."

"I told you three days ago I was awaiting a remittance--"

"I told you two days ago I wasn't going to await no remittances.
You can't grumble if your breakfast waits a bit, if my bill's been
waiting these five days, can you?"

The stranger swore briefly but vividly.

"Nar, nar!" from the bar.

"And I'd thank you kindly, sir, if you'd keep your swearing to
yourself, sir," said Mrs. Hall.

The stranger stood looking more like an angry diving-helmet than
ever. It was universally felt in the bar that Mrs. Hall had the
better of him. His next words showed as much.

"Look here, my good woman--" he began.

"Don't 'good woman' _me_," said Mrs. Hall.

"I've told you my remittance hasn't come."

"Remittance indeed!" said Mrs. Hall.

"Still, I daresay in my pocket--"

"You told me three days ago that you hadn't anything but a
sovereign's worth of silver upon you."

"Well, I've found some more--"

"'Ul-lo!" from the bar.

"I wonder where you found it," said Mrs. Hall.

That seemed to annoy the stranger very much. He stamped his foot.
"What do you mean?" he said.

"That I wonder where you found it," said Mrs. Hall. "And before I
take any bills or get any breakfasts, or do any such things
whatsoever, you got to tell me one or two things I don't understand,
and what nobody don't understand, and what everybody is very anxious
to understand. I want to know what you been doing t'my chair
upstairs, and I want to know how 'tis your room was empty, and how
you got in again. Them as stops in this house comes in by the
doors--that's the rule of the house, and that you _didn't_ do, and
what I want to know is how you _did_ come in. And I want to know--"

Suddenly the stranger raised his gloved hands clenched, stamped his
foot, and said, "Stop!" with such extraordinary violence that he
silenced her instantly.

"You don't understand," he said, "who I am or what I am. I'll show
you. By Heaven! I'll show you." Then he put his open palm over his
face and withdrew it. The centre of his face became a black cavity.
"Here," he said. He stepped forward and handed Mrs. Hall something
which she, staring at his metamorphosed face, accepted automatically.
Then, when she saw what it was, she screamed loudly, dropped it, and
staggered back. The nose--it was the stranger's nose! pink and
shining--rolled on the floor.

Then he removed his spectacles, and everyone in the bar gasped. He
took off his hat, and with a violent gesture tore at his whiskers
and bandages. For a moment they resisted him. A flash of horrible
anticipation passed through the bar. "Oh, my Gard!" said some one.
Then off they came.

It was worse than anything. Mrs. Hall, standing open-mouthed and
horror-struck, shrieked at what she saw, and made for the door of
the house. Everyone began to move. They were prepared for scars,
disfigurements, tangible horrors, but nothing! The bandages and
false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a
hobbledehoy jump to avoid them. Everyone tumbled on everyone else
down the steps. For the man who stood there shouting some incoherent
explanation, was a solid gesticulating figure up to the coat-collar
of him, and then--nothingness, no visible thing at all!

People down the village heard shouts and shrieks, and looking up
the street saw the "Coach and Horses" violently firing out its
humanity. They saw Mrs. Hall fall down and Mr. Teddy Henfrey jump
to avoid tumbling over her, and then they heard the frightful
screams of Millie, who, emerging suddenly from the kitchen at the
noise of the tumult, had come upon the headless stranger from
behind. These increased suddenly.

Forthwith everyone all down the street, the sweetstuff seller,
cocoanut shy proprietor and his assistant, the swing man, little
boys and girls, rustic dandies, smart wenches, smocked elders
and aproned gipsies--began running towards the inn, and in a
miraculously short space of time a crowd of perhaps forty people,
and rapidly increasing, swayed and hooted and inquired and
exclaimed and suggested, in front of Mrs. Hall's establishment.
Everyone seemed eager to talk at once, and the result was Babel. A
small group supported Mrs. Hall, who was picked up in a state of
collapse. There was a conference, and the incredible evidence of a
vociferous eye-witness. "O Bogey!" "What's he been doin', then?"
"Ain't hurt the girl, 'as 'e?" "Run at en with a knife, I believe."
"No 'ed, I tell ye. I don't mean no manner of speaking. I mean _marn
'ithout a 'ed_!" "Narnsense! 'tis some conjuring trick." "Fetched
off 'is wrapping, 'e did--"

In its struggles to see in through the open door, the crowd formed
itself into a straggling wedge, with the more adventurous apex
nearest the inn. "He stood for a moment, I heerd the gal scream,
and he turned. I saw her skirts whisk, and he went after her.
Didn't take ten seconds. Back he comes with a knife in uz hand and
a loaf; stood just as if he was staring. Not a moment ago. Went in
that there door. I tell 'e, 'e ain't gart no 'ed at all. You just
missed en--"

There was a disturbance behind, and the speaker stopped to step
aside for a little procession that was marching very resolutely
towards the house; first Mr. Hall, very red and determined, then
Mr. Bobby Jaffers, the village constable, and then the wary Mr.
Wadgers. They had come now armed with a warrant.

People shouted conflicting information of the recent circumstances.
"'Ed or no 'ed," said Jaffers, "I got to 'rest en, and 'rest en I
_will_."

Mr. Hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the
parlour and flung it open. "Constable," he said, "do your duty."

Jaffers marched in. Hall next, Wadgers last. They saw in the dim
light the headless figure facing them, with a gnawed crust of bread
in one gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other.

"That's him!" said Hall.

"What the devil's this?" came in a tone of angry expostulation from
above the collar of the figure.

"You're a damned rum customer, mister," said Mr. Jaffers. "But 'ed
or no 'ed, the warrant says 'body,' and duty's duty--"

"Keep off!" said the figure, starting back.

Abruptly he whipped down the bread and cheese, and Mr. Hall just
grasped the knife on the table in time to save it. Off came the
stranger's left glove and was slapped in Jaffers' face. In another
moment Jaffers, cutting short some statement concerning a warrant,
had gripped him by the handless wrist and caught his invisible
throat. He got a sounding kick on the shin that made him shout, but
he kept his grip. Hall sent the knife sliding along the table to
Wadgers, who acted as goal-keeper for the offensive, so to speak,
and then stepped forward as Jaffers and the stranger swayed and
staggered towards him, clutching and hitting in. A chair stood in
the way, and went aside with a crash as they came down together.

"Get the feet," said Jaffers between his teeth.

Mr. Hall, endeavouring to act on instructions, received a sounding
kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a moment, and Mr.
Wadgers, seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got
the upper side of Jaffers, retreated towards the door, knife in
hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the Sidderbridge carter
coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came
three or four bottles from the chiffonnier and shot a web of
pungency into the air of the room.

"I'll surrender," cried the stranger, though he had Jaffers down,
and in another moment he stood up panting, a strange figure,
headless and handless--for he had pulled off his right glove now
as well as his left. "It's no good," he said, as if sobbing for
breath.

It was the strangest thing in the world to hear that voice coming
as if out of empty space, but the Sussex peasants are perhaps the
most matter-of-fact people under the sun. Jaffers got up also and
produced a pair of handcuffs. Then he stared.

"I say!" said Jaffers, brought up short by a dim realization of the
incongruity of the whole business, "Darn it! Can't use 'em as I can
see."

The stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat, and as if by a miracle
the buttons to which his empty sleeve pointed became undone. Then
he said something about his shin, and stooped down. He seemed to be
fumbling with his shoes and socks.

"Why!" said Huxter, suddenly, "that's not a man at all. It's just
empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the linings of
his clothes. I could put my arm--"

He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something in mid-air, and
he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. "I wish you'd keep your
fingers out of my eye," said the aerial voice, in a tone of savage
expostulation. "The fact is, I'm all here--head, hands, legs, and
all the rest of it, but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded
nuisance, but I am. That's no reason why I should be poked to
pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?"

The suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon
its unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo.

Several other of the men folks had now entered the room, so that it
was closely crowded. "Invisible, eh?" said Huxter, ignoring the
stranger's abuse. "Who ever heard the likes of that?"

"It's strange, perhaps, but it's not a crime. Why am I assaulted by
a policeman in this fashion?"

"Ah! that's a different matter," said Jaffers. "No doubt you are a
bit difficult to see in this light, but I got a warrant and it's
all correct. What I'm after ain't no invisibility,--it's burglary.
There's a house been broke into and money took."

"Well?"

"And circumstances certainly point--"

"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Invisible Man.

"I hope so, sir; but I've got my instructions."

"Well," said the stranger, "I'll come. I'll _come_. But no
handcuffs."

"It's the regular thing," said Jaffers.

"No handcuffs," stipulated the stranger.

"Pardon me," said Jaffers.

Abruptly the figure sat down, and before any one could realise was
was being done, the slippers, socks, and trousers had been kicked
off under the table. Then he sprang up again and flung off his coat.

"Here, stop that," said Jaffers, suddenly realising what was
happening. He gripped at the waistcoat; it struggled, and the shirt
slipped out of it and left it limply and empty in his hand. "Hold
him!" said Jaffers, loudly. "Once he gets the things off--"

"Hold him!" cried everyone, and there was a rush at the fluttering
white shirt which was now all that was visible of the stranger.

The shirt-sleeve planted a shrewd blow in Hall's face that stopped
his open-armed advance, and sent him backward into old Toothsome
the sexton, and in another moment the garment was lifted up and
became convulsed and vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a
shirt that is being thrust over a man's head. Jaffers clutched at
it, and only helped to pull it off; he was struck in the mouth out
of the air, and incontinently threw his truncheon and smote Teddy
Henfrey savagely upon the crown of his head.

"Look out!" said everybody, fencing at random and hitting at
nothing. "Hold him! Shut the door! Don't let him loose! I got
something! Here he is!" A perfect Babel of noises they made.
Everybody, it seemed, was being hit all at once, and Sandy Wadgers,
knowing as ever and his wits sharpened by a frightful blow in the
nose, reopened the door and led the rout. The others, following
incontinently, were jammed for a moment in the corner by the
doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front
tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear.
Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at something
that intervened between him and Huxter in the melee, and prevented
their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in another
moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot out into the
crowded hall.

"I got him!" shouted Jaffers, choking and reeling through them all,
and wrestling with purple face and swelling veins against his
unseen enemy.

Men staggered right and left as the extraordinary conflict swayed
swiftly towards the house door, and went spinning down the
half-dozen steps of the inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled
voice--holding tight, nevertheless, and making play with his
knee--spun around, and fell heavily undermost with his head on
the gravel. Only then did his fingers relax.

There were excited cries of "Hold him!" "Invisible!" and so forth,
and a young fellow, a stranger in the place whose name did not come
to light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold,
and fell over the constable's prostrate body. Half-way across the
road a woman screamed as something pushed by her; a dog, kicked
apparently, yelped and ran howling into Huxter's yard, and with
that the transit of the Invisible Man was accomplished. For a space
people stood amazed and gesticulating, and then came panic, and
scattered them abroad through the village as a gust scatters dead
leaves.

But Jaffers lay quite still, face upward and knees bent, at the foot
of the steps of the inn.



CHAPTER VIII

IN TRANSIT


The eighth chapter is exceedingly brief, and relates that Gibbons,
the amateur naturalist of the district, while lying out on the
spacious open downs without a soul within a couple of miles of him,
as he thought, and almost dozing, heard close to him the sound as
of a man coughing, sneezing, and then swearing savagely to himself;
and looking, beheld nothing. Yet the voice was indisputable. It
continued to swear with that breadth and variety that distinguishes
the swearing of a cultivated man. It grew to a climax, diminished
again, and died away in the distance, going as it seemed to him in
the direction of Adderdean. It lifted to a spasmodic sneeze and
ended. Gibbons had heard nothing of the morning's occurrences, but
the phenomenon was so striking and disturbing that his philosophical
tranquillity vanished; he got up hastily, and hurried down the
steepness of the hill towards the village, as fast as he could go.



CHAPTER IX

MR. THOMAS MARVEL


You must picture Mr. Thomas Marvel as a person of copious, flexible
visage, a nose of cylindrical protrusion, a liquorish, ample,
fluctuating mouth, and a beard of bristling eccentricity. His figure
inclined to embonpoint; his short limbs accentuated this inclination.
He wore a furry silk hat, and the frequent substitution of twine and
shoe-laces for buttons, apparent at critical points of his costume,
marked a man essentially bachelor.

Mr. Thomas Marvel was sitting with his feet in a ditch by the
roadside over the down towards Adderdean, about a mile and a half
out of Iping. His feet, save for socks of irregular open-work, were
bare, his big toes were broad, and pricked like the ears of a
watchful dog. In a leisurely manner--he did everything in a
leisurely manner--he was contemplating trying on a pair of boots.
They were the soundest boots he had come across for a long time, but
too large for him; whereas the ones he had were, in dry weather, a
very comfortable fit, but too thin-soled for damp. Mr. Thomas Marvel
hated roomy shoes, but then he hated damp. He had never properly
thought out which he hated most, and it was a pleasant day, and
there was nothing better to do. So he put the four shoes in a
graceful group on the turf and looked at them. And seeing them there
among the grass and springing agrimony, it suddenly occurred to him
that both pairs were exceedingly ugly to see. He was not at all
startled by a voice behind him.

"They're boots, anyhow," said the Voice.

"They are--charity boots," said Mr. Thomas Marvel, with his head
on one side regarding them distastefully; "and which is the ugliest
pair in the whole blessed universe, I'm darned if I know!"

"H'm," said the Voice.

"I've worn worse--in fact, I've worn none. But none so owdacious
ugly--if you'll allow the expression. I've been cadging boots--in
particular--for days. Because I was sick of _them_. They're sound
enough, of course. But a gentleman on tramp sees such a thundering
lot of his boots. And if you'll believe me, I've raised nothing in
the whole blessed country, try as I would, but _them_. Look at 'em!
And a good country for boots, too, in a general way. But it's just
my promiscuous luck. I've got my boots in this country ten years or
more. And then they treat you like this."

"It's a beast of a country," said the Voice. "And pigs for people."

"Ain't it?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel. "Lord! But them boots! It beats
it."

He turned his head over his shoulder to the right, to look at the
boots of his interlocutor with a view to comparisons, and lo! where
the boots of his interlocutor should have been were neither legs
nor boots. He was irradiated by the dawn of a great amazement.
"Where _are_ yer?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel over his shoulder and
coming on all fours. He saw a stretch of empty downs with the wind
swaying the remote green-pointed furze bushes.

"Am I drunk?" said Mr. Marvel. "Have I had visions? Was I talking
to myself? What the--"

"Don't be alarmed," said a Voice.

"None of your ventriloquising _me_," said Mr. Thomas Marvel, rising
sharply to his feet. "Where _are_ yer? Alarmed, indeed!"

"Don't be alarmed," repeated the Voice.

"_You'll_ be alarmed in a minute, you silly fool," said Mr. Thomas
Marvel. "Where _are_ yer? Lemme get my mark on yer...

"Are yer _buried_?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel, after an interval.

There was no answer. Mr. Thomas Marvel stood bootless and amazed,
his jacket nearly thrown off.

"Peewit," said a peewit, very remote.

"Peewit, indeed!" said Mr. Thomas Marvel. "This ain't no time for
foolery." The down was desolate, east and west, north and south;
the road with its shallow ditches and white bordering stakes, ran
smooth and empty north and south, and, save for that peewit, the
blue sky was empty too. "So help me," said Mr. Thomas Marvel,
shuffling his coat on to his shoulders again. "It's the drink!
I might ha' known."

"It's not the drink," said the Voice. "You keep your nerves
steady."

"Ow!" said Mr. Marvel, and his face grew white amidst its patches.
"It's the drink!" his lips repeated noiselessly. He remained staring
about him, rotating slowly backwards. "I could have _swore_ I heard
a voice," he whispered.

"Of course you did."

"It's there again," said Mr. Marvel, closing his eyes and clasping
his hand on his brow with a tragic gesture. He was suddenly taken
by the collar and shaken violently, and left more dazed than ever.
"Don't be a fool," said the Voice.

"I'm--off--my--blooming--chump," said Mr. Marvel. "It's no good.
It's fretting about them blarsted boots. I'm off my blessed blooming
chump. Or it's spirits."

"Neither one thing nor the other," said the Voice. "Listen!"

"Chump," said Mr. Marvel.

"One minute," said the Voice, penetratingly, tremulous with
self-control.

"Well?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel, with a strange feeling of having
been dug in the chest by a finger.

"You think I'm just imagination? Just imagination?"

"What else _can_ you be?" said Mr. Thomas Marvel, rubbing the back of
his neck.

"Very well," said the Voice, in a tone of relief. "Then I'm going
to throw flints at you till you think differently."

"But where _are_ yer?"

The Voice made no answer. Whizz came a flint, apparently out of
the air, and missed Mr. Marvel's shoulder by a hair's-breadth.
Mr. Marvel, turning, saw a flint jerk up into the air, trace a
complicated path, hang for a moment, and then fling at his feet
with almost invisible rapidity. He was too amazed to dodge. Whizz
it came, and ricochetted from a bare toe into the ditch. Mr. Thomas
Marvel jumped a foot and howled aloud. Then he started to run,
tripped over an unseen obstacle, and came head over heels into a
sitting position.

"_Now_," said the Voice, as a third stone curved upward and hung in
the air above the tramp. "Am I imagination?"

Mr. Marvel by way of reply struggled to his feet, and was
immediately rolled over again. He lay quiet for a moment. "If you
struggle any more," said the Voice, "I shall throw the flint at
your head."

"It's a fair do," said Mr. Thomas Marvel, sitting up, taking his
wounded toe in hand and fixing his eye on the third missile. "I
don't understand it. Stones flinging themselves. Stones talking.
Put yourself down. Rot away. I'm done."

The third flint fell.

"It's very simple," said the Voice. "I'm an invisible man."

"Tell us something I don't know," said Mr. Marvel, gasping with
pain. "Where you've hid--how you do it--I _don't_ know. I'm beat."

"That's all," said the Voice. "I'm invisible. That's what I want
you to understand."

"Anyone could see that. There is no need for you to be so confounded
impatient, mister. _Now_ then. Give us a notion. How are you hid?"

"I'm invisible. That's the great point. And what I want you to
understand is this--"

"But whereabouts?" interrupted Mr. Marvel.

"Here! Six yards in front of you."

"Oh, _come_! I ain't blind. You'll be telling me next you're just
thin air. I'm not one of your ignorant tramps--"

"Yes, I am--thin air. You're looking through me."

"What! Ain't there any stuff to you. _Vox et_--what is it?--jabber.
Is it that?"

"I am just a human being--solid, needing food and drink, needing
covering too--But I'm invisible. You see? Invisible. Simple idea.
Invisible."

"What, real like?"

"Yes, real."

"Let's have a hand of you," said Marvel, "if you _are_ real. It won't
be so darn out-of-the-way like, then--_Lord_!" he said, "how you made
me jump!--gripping me like that!"

He felt the hand that had closed round his wrist with his disengaged
fingers, and his fingers went timorously up the arm, patted a
muscular chest, and explored a bearded face. Marvel's face was
astonishment.

"I'm dashed!" he said. "If this don't beat cock-fighting! Most
remarkable!--And there I can see a rabbit clean through you, 'arf
a mile away! Not a bit of you visible--except--"

He scrutinised the apparently empty space keenly. "You 'aven't been
eatin' bread and cheese?" he asked, holding the invisible arm.

"You're quite right, and it's not quite assimilated into the system."

"Ah!" said Mr. Marvel. "Sort of ghostly, though."

"Of course, all this isn't half so wonderful as you think."

"It's quite wonderful enough for _my_ modest wants," said Mr. Thomas
Marvel. "Howjer manage it! How the dooce is it done?"

"It's too long a story. And besides--"

"I tell you, the whole business fairly beats me," said Mr. Marvel.

"What I want to say at present is this: I need help. I have come to
that--I came upon you suddenly. I was wandering, mad with rage,
naked, impotent. I could have murdered. And I saw you--"

"_Lord_!" said Mr. Marvel.

"I came up behind you--hesitated--went on--"

Mr. Marvel's expression was eloquent.

"--then stopped. 'Here,' I said, 'is an outcast like myself. This is
the man for me.' So I turned back and came to you--you. And--"

"_Lord_!" said Mr. Marvel. "But I'm all in a tizzy. May I ask--How
is it? And what you may be requiring in the way of help?--Invisible!"

"I want you to help me get clothes--and shelter--and then, with
other things. I've left them long enough. If you won't--well! But
you _will--must_."

"Look here," said Mr. Marvel. "I'm too flabbergasted. Don't knock
me about any more. And leave me go. I must get steady a bit. And
you've pretty near broken my toe. It's all so unreasonable. Empty
downs, empty sky. Nothing visible for miles except the bosom of
Nature. And then comes a voice. A voice out of heaven! And stones!
And a fist--Lord!"

"Pull yourself together," said the Voice, "for you have to do the
job I've chosen for you."

Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks, and his eyes were round.

"I've chosen you," said the Voice. "You are the only man except
some of those fools down there, who knows there is such a thing as
an invisible man. You have to be my helper. Help me--and I will
do great things for you. An invisible man is a man of power." He
stopped for a moment to sneeze violently.

"But if you betray me," he said, "if you fail to do as I direct you--"
He paused and tapped Mr. Marvel's shoulder smartly. Mr. Marvel
gave a yelp of terror at the touch. "I don't want to betray you,"
said Mr. Marvel, edging away from the direction of the fingers.
"Don't you go a-thinking that, whatever you do. All I want to do is
to help you--just tell me what I got to do. (Lord!) Whatever you
want done, that I'm most willing to do."



CHAPTER X

MR. MARVEL'S VISIT TO IPING


After the first gusty panic had spent itself Iping became
argumentative. Scepticism suddenly reared its head--rather nervous
scepticism, not at all assured of its back, but scepticism
nevertheless. It is so much easier not to believe in an invisible
man; and those who had actually seen him dissolve into air, or felt
the strength of his arm, could be counted on the fingers of two
hands. And of these witnesses Mr. Wadgers was presently missing,
having retired impregnably behind the bolts and bars of his own
house, and Jaffers was lying stunned in the parlour of the "Coach
and Horses." Great and strange ideas transcending experience often
have less effect upon men and women than smaller, more tangible
considerations. Iping was gay with bunting, and everybody was in
gala dress. Whit Monday had been looked forward to for a month or
more. By the afternoon even those who believed in the Unseen were
beginning to resume their little amusements in a tentative fashion,
on the supposition that he had quite gone away, and with the
sceptics he was already a jest. But people, sceptics and believers
alike, were remarkably sociable all that day.

Haysman's meadow was gay with a tent, in which Mrs. Bunting and
other ladies were preparing tea, while, without, the Sunday-school
children ran races and played games under the noisy guidance of the
curate and the Misses Cuss and Sackbut. No doubt there was a slight
uneasiness in the air, but people for the most part had the sense
to conceal whatever imaginative qualms they experienced. On the
village green an inclined strong, down which, clinging the while
to a pulley-swung handle, one could be hurled violently against a
sack at the other end, came in for considerable favour among the
adolescent, as also did the swings and the cocoanut shies. There
was also promenading, and the steam organ attached to a small
roundabout filled the air with a pungent flavour of oil and with
equally pungent music. Members of the club, who had attended
church in the morning, were splendid in badges of pink and green,
and some of the gayer-minded had also adorned their bowler hats
with brilliant-coloured favours of ribbon. Old Fletcher, whose
conceptions of holiday-making were severe, was visible through the
jasmine about his window or through the open door (whichever way
you chose to look), poised delicately on a plank supported on two
chairs, and whitewashing the ceiling of his front room.

About four o'clock a stranger entered the village from the direction
of the downs. He was a short, stout person in an extraordinarily
shabby top hat, and he appeared to be very much out of breath. His
cheeks were alternately limp and tightly puffed. His mottled face
was apprehensive, and he moved with a sort of reluctant alacrity. He
turned the corner of the church, and directed his way to the "Coach
and Horses." Among others old Fletcher remembers seeing him, and
indeed the old gentleman was so struck by his peculiar agitation
that he inadvertently allowed a quantity of whitewash to run down
the brush into the sleeve of his coat while regarding him.

This stranger, to the perceptions of the proprietor of the cocoanut
shy, appeared to be talking to himself, and Mr. Huxter remarked the
same thing. He stopped at the foot of the "Coach and Horses" steps,
and, according to Mr. Huxter, appeared to undergo a severe internal
struggle before he could induce himself to enter the house. Finally
he marched up the steps, and was seen by Mr. Huxter to turn to the
left and open the door of the parlour. Mr. Huxter heard voices from
within the room and from the bar apprising the man of his error.
"That room's private!" said Hall, and the stranger shut the door
clumsily and went into the bar.

In the course of a few minutes he reappeared, wiping his lips with
the back of his hand with an air of quiet satisfaction that somehow
impressed Mr. Huxter as assumed. He stood looking about him for
some moments, and then Mr. Huxter saw him walk in an oddly furtive
manner towards the gates of the yard, upon which the parlour window
opened. The stranger, after some hesitation, leant against one of
the gate-posts, produced a short clay pipe, and prepared to fill
it. His fingers trembled while doing so. He lit it clumsily, and
folding his arms began to smoke in a languid attitude, an attitude
which his occasional glances up the yard altogether belied.

All this Mr. Huxter saw over the canisters of the tobacco window,
and the singularity of the man's behaviour prompted him to maintain
his observation.

Presently the stranger stood up abruptly and put his pipe in his
pocket. Then he vanished into the yard. Forthwith Mr. Huxter,
conceiving he was witness of some petty larceny, leapt round his
counter and ran out into the road to intercept the thief. As he did
so, Mr. Marvel reappeared, his hat askew, a big bundle in a blue
table-cloth in one hand, and three books tied together--as it proved
afterwards with the Vicar's braces--in the other. Directly he saw
Huxter he gave a sort of gasp, and turning sharply to the left,
began to run. "Stop, thief!" cried Huxter, and set off after him.
Mr. Huxter's sensations were vivid but brief. He saw the man just
before him and spurting briskly for the church corner and the hill
road. He saw the village flags and festivities beyond, and a face or
so turned towards him. He bawled, "Stop!" again. He had hardly gone
ten strides before his shin was caught in some mysterious fashion,
and he was no longer running, but flying with inconceivable rapidity
through the air. He saw the ground suddenly close to his face. The
world seemed to splash into a million whirling specks of light, and
subsequent proceedings interested him no more.



CHAPTER XI

IN THE "COACH AND HORSES"


Now in order clearly to understand what had happened in the inn, it
is necessary to go back to the moment when Mr. Marvel first came
into view of Mr. Huxter's window.

At that precise moment Mr. Cuss and Mr. Bunting were in the parlour.
They were seriously investigating the strange occurrences of the
morning, and were, with Mr. Hall's permission, making a thorough
examination of the Invisible Man's belongings. Jaffers had partially
recovered from his fall and had gone home in the charge of his
sympathetic friends. The stranger's scattered garments had been
removed by Mrs. Hall and the room tidied up. And on the table under
the window where the stranger had been wont to work, Cuss had hit
almost at once on three big books in manuscript labelled "Diary."

"Diary!" said Cuss, putting the three books on the table. "Now, at
any rate, we shall learn something." The Vicar stood with his hands
on the table.

"Diary," repeated Cuss, sitting down, putting two volumes to
support the third, and opening it. "H'm--no name on the fly-leaf.
Bother!--cypher. And figures."

The vicar came round to look over his shoulder.

Cuss turned the pages over with a face suddenly disappointed.
"I'm--dear me! It's all cypher, Bunting."

"There are no diagrams?" asked Mr. Bunting. "No illustrations
throwing light--"

"See for yourself," said Mr. Cuss. "Some of it's mathematical and
some of it's Russian or some such language (to judge by the
letters), and some of it's Greek. Now the Greek I thought _you_--"

"Of course," said Mr. Bunting, taking out and wiping his spectacles
and feeling suddenly very uncomfortable--for he had no Greek
left in his mind worth talking about; "yes--the Greek, of course,
may furnish a clue."

"I'll find you a place."

"I'd rather glance through the volumes first," said Mr. Bunting,
still wiping. "A general impression first, Cuss, and _then_, you
know, we can go looking for clues."

He coughed, put on his glasses, arranged them fastidiously, coughed
again, and wished something would happen to avert the seemingly
inevitable exposure. Then he took the volume Cuss handed him in a
leisurely manner. And then something did happen.

The door opened suddenly.

Both gentlemen started violently, looked round, and were relieved
to see a sporadically rosy face beneath a furry silk hat. "Tap?"
asked the face, and stood staring.

"No," said both gentlemen at once.

"Over the other side, my man," said Mr. Bunting. And "Please shut
that door," said Mr. Cuss, irritably.

"All right," said the intruder, as it seemed in a low voice
curiously different from the huskiness of its first inquiry. "Right
you are," said the intruder in the former voice. "Stand clear!" and
he vanished and closed the door.

"A sailor, I should judge," said Mr. Bunting. "Amusing fellows, they
are. Stand clear! indeed. A nautical term, referring to his getting
back out of the room, I suppose."

"I daresay so," said Cuss. "My nerves are all loose to-day. It quite
made me jump--the door opening like that."

Mr. Bunting smiled as if he had not jumped. "And now," he said with
a sigh, "these books."

Someone sniffed as he did so.

"One thing is indisputable," said Bunting, drawing up a chair next
to that of Cuss. "There certainly have been very strange things
happen in Iping during the last few days--very strange. I cannot
of course believe in this absurd invisibility story--"

"It's incredible," said Cuss--"incredible. But the fact remains
that I saw--I certainly saw right down his sleeve--"

"But did you--are you sure? Suppose a mirror, for instance--
hallucinations are so easily produced. I don't know if you
have ever seen a really good conjuror--"

"I won't argue again," said Cuss. "We've thrashed that out,
Bunting. And just now there's these books--Ah! here's some of
what I take to be Greek! Greek letters certainly."

He pointed to the middle of the page. Mr. Bunting flushed slightly
and brought his face nearer, apparently finding some difficulty
with his glasses. Suddenly he became aware of a strange feeling at
the nape of his neck. He tried to raise his head, and encountered
an immovable resistance. The feeling was a curious pressure, the
grip of a heavy, firm hand, and it bore his chin irresistibly to
the table. "Don't move, little men," whispered a voice, "or I'll
brain you both!" He looked into the face of Cuss, close to his own,
and each saw a horrified reflection of his own sickly astonishment.

"I'm sorry to handle you so roughly," said the Voice, "but it's
unavoidable."

"Since when did you learn to pry into an investigator's private
memoranda," said the Voice; and two chins struck the table
simultaneously, and two sets of teeth rattled.

"Since when did you learn to invade the private rooms of a man in
misfortune?" and the concussion was repeated.

"Where have they put my clothes?"

"Listen," said the Voice. "The windows are fastened and I've taken
the key out of the door. I am a fairly strong man, and I have the
poker handy--besides being invisible. There's not the slightest
doubt that I could kill you both and get away quite easily if I
wanted to--do you understand? Very well. If I let you go will you
promise not to try any nonsense and do what I tell you?"

The vicar and the doctor looked at one another, and the doctor
pulled a face. "Yes," said Mr. Bunting, and the doctor repeated it.
Then the pressure on the necks relaxed, and the doctor and the
vicar sat up, both very red in the face and wriggling their heads.

"Please keep sitting where you are," said the Invisible Man.
"Here's the poker, you see."

"When I came into this room," continued the Invisible Man, after
presenting the poker to the tip of the nose of each of his visitors,
"I did not expect to find it occupied, and I expected to find, in
addition to my books of memoranda, an outfit of clothing. Where is
it? No--don't rise. I can see it's gone. Now, just at present,
though the days are quite warm enough for an invisible man to run
about stark, the evenings are quite chilly. I want clothing--and
other accommodation; and I must also have those three books."



CHAPTER XII

THE INVISIBLE MAN LOSES HIS TEMPER


It is unavoidable that at this point the narrative should break off
again, for a certain very painful reason that will presently be
apparent. While these things were going on in the parlour, and
while Mr. Huxter was watching Mr. Marvel smoking his pipe against
the gate, not a dozen yards away were Mr. Hall and Teddy Henfrey
discussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement the one Iping topic.

Suddenly there came a violent thud against the door of the parlour,
a sharp cry, and then--silence.

"Hul-lo!" said Teddy Henfrey.

"Hul-lo!" from the Tap.

Mr. Hall took things in slowly but surely. "That ain't right," he
said, and came round from behind the bar towards the parlour door.

He and Teddy approached the door together, with intent faces. Their
eyes considered. "Summat wrong," said Hall, and Henfrey nodded
agreement. Whiffs of an unpleasant chemical odour met them, and
there was a muffled sound of conversation, very rapid and subdued.

"You all right thur?" asked Hall, rapping.

The muttered conversation ceased abruptly, for a moment silence,
then the conversation was resumed, in hissing whispers, then a
sharp cry of "No! no, you don't!" There came a sudden motion and
the oversetting of a chair, a brief struggle. Silence again.

"What the dooce?" exclaimed Henfrey, _sotto voce_.

"You--all--right thur?" asked Mr. Hall, sharply, again.

The Vicar's voice answered with a curious jerking intonation:
"Quite ri-right. Please don't--interrupt."

"Odd!" said Mr. Henfrey.

"Odd!" said Mr. Hall.

"Says, 'Don't interrupt,'" said Henfrey.

"I heerd'n," said Hall.

"And a sniff," said Henfrey.

They remained listening. The conversation was rapid and subdued.
"I _can't_," said Mr. Bunting, his voice rising; "I tell you, sir,
I _will_ not."

"What was that?" asked Henfrey.

"Says he wi' nart," said Hall. "Warn't speaking to us, wuz he?"

"Disgraceful!" said Mr. Bunting, within.

"'Disgraceful,'" said Mr. Henfrey. "I heard it--distinct."

"Who's that speaking now?" asked Henfrey.

"Mr. Cuss, I s'pose," said Hall. "Can you hear--anything?"

Silence. The sounds within indistinct and perplexing.

"Sounds like throwing the table-cloth about," said Hall.

Mrs. Hall appeared behind the bar. Hall made gestures of silence and
invitation. This aroused Mrs. Hall's wifely opposition. "What yer
listenin' there for, Hall?" she asked. "Ain't you nothin' better to
do--busy day like this?"

Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs.
Hall was obdurate. She raised her voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rather
crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to
her.

At first she refused to see anything in what they had heard at
all. Then she insisted on Hall keeping silence, while Henfrey told
her his story. She was inclined to think the whole business
nonsense--perhaps they were just moving the furniture about. "I
heerd'n say 'disgraceful'; _that_ I did," said Hall.

"_I_ heerd that, Mrs. Hall," said Henfrey.

"Like as not--" began Mrs. Hall.

"Hsh!" said Mr. Teddy Henfrey. "Didn't I hear the window?"

"What window?" asked Mrs. Hall.

"Parlour window," said Henfrey.

Everyone stood listening intently. Mrs. Hall's eyes, directed
straight before her, saw without seeing the brilliant oblong of the
inn door, the road white and vivid, and Huxter's shop-front
blistering in the June sun. Abruptly Huxter's door opened and Huxter
appeared, eyes staring with excitement, arms gesticulating. "Yap!"
cried Huxter. "Stop thief!" and he ran obliquely across the oblong
towards the yard gates, and vanished.

Simultaneously came a tumult from the parlour, and a sound of
windows being closed.

Hall, Henfrey, and the human contents of the tap rushed out at once
pell-mell into the street. They saw someone whisk round the corner
towards the road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in
the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people
were standing astonished or running towards them.

Mr. Huxter was stunned. Henfrey stopped to discover this, but Hall
and the two labourers from the Tap rushed at once to the corner,
shouting incoherent things, and saw Mr. Marvel vanishing by the
corner of the church wall. They appear to have jumped to the
impossible conclusion that this was the Invisible Man suddenly
become visible, and set off at once along the lane in pursuit. But
Hall had hardly run a dozen yards before he gave a loud shout of
astonishment and went flying headlong sideways, clutching one of
the labourers and bringing him to the ground. He had been charged
just as one charges a man at football. The second labourer came
round in a circle, stared, and conceiving that Hall had tumbled
over of his own accord, turned to resume the pursuit, only to be
tripped by the ankle just as Huxter had been. Then, as the first
labourer struggled to his feet, he was kicked sideways by a blow
that might have felled an ox.

As he went down, the rush from the direction of the village green
came round the corner. The first to appear was the proprietor of
the cocoanut shy, a burly man in a blue jersey. He was astonished
to see the lane empty save for three men sprawling absurdly on the
ground. And then something happened to his rear-most foot, and he
went headlong and rolled sideways just in time to graze the feet
of his brother and partner, following headlong. The two were then
kicked, knelt on, fallen over, and cursed by quite a number of
over-hasty people.

Now when Hall and Henfrey and the labourers ran out of the house,
Mrs. Hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience,
remained in the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour door
was opened, and Mr. Cuss appeared, and without glancing at her
rushed at once down the steps toward the corner. "Hold him!" he
cried. "Don't let him drop that parcel."

He knew nothing of the
existence of Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over the
books and bundle in the yard. The face of Mr. Cuss was angry and
resolute, but his costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt
that could only have passed muster in Greece. "Hold him!" he
bawled. "He's got my trousers! And every stitch of the Vicar's
clothes!"

"'Tend to him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the
prostrate Huxter, and, coming round the corner to join the tumult,
was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl.
Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled,
struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all
fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture,
but a rout. Everyone was running back to the village. He rose again
and was hit severely behind the ear. He staggered and set off back
to the "Coach and Horses" forthwith, leaping over the deserted
Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way.

Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a sudden
yell of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and a
sounding smack in someone's face. He recognised the voice as that
of the Invisible Man, and the note was that of a man suddenly
infuriated by a painful blow.

In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. "He's coming
back, Bunting!" he said, rushing in. "Save yourself!"

Mr. Bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt to
clothe himself in the hearth-rug and a _West Surrey Gazette_. "Who's
coming?" he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped
disintegration.

"Invisible Man," said Cuss, and rushed on to the window. "We'd
better clear out from here! He's fighting mad! Mad!"

In another moment he was out in the yard.

"Good heavens!" said Mr. Bunting, hesitating between two horrible
alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the
inn, and his decision was made. He clambered out of the window,
adjusted his costume hastily, and fled up the village as fast as
his fat little legs would carry him.

From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and Mr.
Bunting made his memorable flight up the village, it became
impossible to give a consecutive account of affairs in Iping.
Possibly the Invisible Man's original intention was simply to cover
Marvel's retreat with the clothes and books. But his temper, at no
time very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow,
and forthwith he set to smiting and overthrowing, for the mere
satisfaction of hurting.

You must figure the street full of running figures, of doors
slamming and fights for hiding-places. You must figure the tumult
suddenly striking on the unstable equilibrium of old Fletcher's
planks and two chairs--with cataclysmic results. You must figure
an appalled couple caught dismally in a swing. And then the whole
tumultuous rush has passed and the Iping street with its gauds and
flags is deserted save for the still raging unseen, and littered
with cocoanuts, overthrown canvas screens, and the scattered stock
in trade of a sweetstuff stall. Everywhere there is a sound of
closing shutters and shoving bolts, and the only visible humanity
is an occasional flitting eye under a raised eyebrow in the corner
of a window pane.

The Invisible Man amused himself for a little while by breaking all
the windows in the "Coach and Horses," and then he thrust a street
lamp through the parlour window of Mrs. Gribble. He it must have
been who cut the telegraph wire to Adderdean just beyond Higgins'
cottage on the Adderdean road. And after that, as his peculiar
qualities allowed, he passed out of human perceptions altogether,
and he was neither heard, seen, nor felt in Iping any more. He
vanished absolutely.

But it was the best part of two hours before any human being
ventured out again into the desolation of Iping street.



CHAPTER XIII

MR. MARVEL DISCUSSES HIS RESIGNATION


When the dusk was gathering and Iping was just beginning to peep
timorously forth again upon the shattered wreckage of its Bank
Holiday, a short, thick-set man in a shabby silk hat was marching
painfully through the twilight behind the beechwoods on the road to
Bramblehurst. He carried three books bound together by some sort
of ornamental elastic ligature, and a bundle wrapped in a blue
table-cloth. His rubicund face expressed consternation and fatigue;
he appeared to be in a spasmodic sort of hurry. He was accompanied
by a voice other than his own, and ever and again he winced under
the touch of unseen hands.

"If you give me the slip again," said the Voice, "if you attempt to
give me the slip again--"

"Lord!" said Mr. Marvel. "That shoulder's a mass of bruises as it
is."

"On my honour," said the Voice, "I will kill you."

"I didn't try to give you the slip," said Marvel, in a voice that
was not far remote from tears. "I swear I didn't. I didn't know the
blessed turning, that was all! How the devil was I to know the
blessed turning? As it is, I've been knocked about--"

"You'll get knocked about a great deal more if you don't mind,"
said the Voice, and Mr. Marvel abruptly became silent. He blew out
his cheeks, and his eyes were eloquent of despair.

"It's bad enough to let these floundering yokels explode my little
secret, without _your_ cutting off with my books. It's lucky for some
of them they cut and ran when they did! Here am I ... No one knew I
was invisible! And now what am I to do?"

"What am _I_ to do?" asked Marvel, _sotto voce_.

"It's all about. It will be in the papers! Everybody will be
looking for me; everyone on their guard--" The Voice broke off
into vivid curses and ceased.

The despair of Mr. Marvel's face deepened, and his pace slackened.

"Go on!" said the Voice.

Mr. Marvel's face assumed a greyish tint between the ruddier
patches.

"Don't drop those books, stupid," said the Voice, sharply--overtaking
him.

"The fact is," said the Voice, "I shall have to make use of you....
You're a poor tool, but I must."

"I'm a _miserable_ tool," said Marvel.

"You are," said the Voice.

"I'm the worst possible tool you could have," said Marvel.

"I'm not strong," he said after a discouraging silence.

"I'm not over strong," he repeated.

"No?"

"And my heart's weak. That little business--I pulled it through,
of course--but bless you! I could have dropped."

"Well?"

"I haven't the nerve and strength for the sort of thing you want."

"_I'll_ stimulate you."

"I wish you wouldn't. I wouldn't like to mess up your plans, you
know. But I might--out of sheer funk and misery."

"You'd better not," said the Voice, with quiet emphasis.

"I wish I was dead," said Marvel.

"It ain't justice," he said; "you must admit.... It seems to me I've
a perfect right--"

"_Get_ on!" said the Voice.

Mr. Marvel mended his pace, and for a time they went in silence
again.

"It's devilish hard," said Mr. Marvel.

This was quite ineffectual. He tried another tack.

"What do I make by it?" he began again in a tone of unendurable
wrong.

"Oh! _shut up_!" said the Voice, with sudden amazing vigour. "I'll
see to you all right. You do what you're told. You'll do it all
right. You're a fool and all that, but you'll do--"

"I tell you, sir, I'm not the man for it. Respectfully--but
it _is_ so--"

"If you don't shut up I shall twist your wrist again," said the
Invisible Man. "I want to think."

Presently two oblongs of yellow light appeared through the trees,
and the square tower of a church loomed through the gloaming. "I
shall keep my hand on your shoulder," said the Voice, "all through
the village. Go straight through and try no foolery. It will be the
worse for you if you do."

"I know that," sighed Mr. Marvel, "I know all that."

The unhappy-looking figure in the obsolete silk hat passed up the
street of the little village with his burdens, and vanished into
the gathering darkness beyond the lights of the windows.



CHAPTER XIV

AT PORT STOWE


Ten o'clock the next morning found Mr. Marvel, unshaven, dirty, and
travel-stained, sitting with the books beside him and his hands deep
in his pockets, looking very weary, nervous, and uncomfortable, and
inflating his cheeks at infrequent intervals, on the bench outside
a little inn on the outskirts of Port Stowe. Beside him were the
books, but now they were tied with string. The bundle had been
abandoned in the pine-woods beyond Bramblehurst, in accordance with
a change in the plans of the Invisible Man. Mr. Marvel sat on the
bench, and although no one took the slightest notice of him, his
agitation remained at fever heat. His hands would go ever and again
to his various pockets with a curious nervous fumbling.

When he had been sitting for the best part of an hour, however, an
elderly mariner, carrying a newspaper, came out of the inn and sat
down beside him. "Pleasant day," said the mariner.

Mr. Marvel glanced about him with something very like terror.
"Very," he said.

"Just seasonable weather for the time of year," said the mariner,
taking no denial.

"Quite," said Mr. Marvel.

The mariner produced a toothpick, and (saving his regard) was
engrossed thereby for some minutes. His eyes meanwhile were at
liberty to examine Mr. Marvel's dusty figure, and the books beside
him. As he had approached Mr. Marvel he had heard a sound like the
dropping of coins into a pocket. He was struck by the contrast of
Mr. Marvel's appearance with this suggestion of opulence. Thence
his mind wandered back again to a topic that had taken a curiously
firm hold of his imagination.

"Books?" he said suddenly, noisily finishing with the toothpick.

Mr. Marvel started and looked at them. "Oh, yes," he said. "Yes,
they're books."

"There's some extra-ordinary things in books," said the mariner.

"I believe you," said Mr. Marvel.

"And some extra-ordinary things out of 'em," said the mariner.

"True likewise," said Mr. Marvel. He eyed his interlocutor, and
then glanced about him.

"There's some extra-ordinary things in newspapers, for example,"
said the mariner.

"There are."

"In _this_ newspaper," said the mariner.

"Ah!" said Mr. Marvel.

"There's a story," said the mariner, fixing Mr. Marvel with an eye
that was firm and deliberate; "there's a story about an Invisible
Man, for instance."

Mr. Marvel pulled his mouth askew and scratched his cheek and felt
his ears glowing. "What will they be writing next?" he asked
faintly. "Ostria, or America?"

"Neither," said the mariner. "_Here_."

"Lord!" said Mr. Marvel, starting.

"When I say _here_," said the mariner, to Mr. Marvel's intense
relief, "I don't of course mean here in this place, I mean
hereabouts."

"An Invisible Man!" said Mr. Marvel. "And what's _he_ been up to?"

"Everything," said the mariner, controlling Marvel with his eye,
and then amplifying, "every--blessed--thing."

"I ain't seen a paper these four days," said Marvel.

"Iping's the place he started at," said the mariner.

"In-_deed_!" said Mr. Marvel.

"He started there. And where he came from, nobody don't seem to
know. Here it is: 'Pe-culiar Story from Iping.' And it says in this
paper that the evidence is extra-ordinary strong--extra-ordinary."

"Lord!" said Mr. Marvel.

"But then, it's an extra-ordinary story. There is a clergyman and a
medical gent witnesses--saw 'im all right and proper--or leastways
didn't see 'im. He was staying, it says, at the 'Coach an' Horses,'
and no one don't seem to have been aware of his misfortune, it says,
aware of his misfortune, until in an Altercation in the inn, it
says, his bandages on his head was torn off. It was then ob-served
that his head was invisible. Attempts were At Once made to secure
him, but casting off his garments, it says, he succeeded in
escaping, but not until after a desperate struggle, in which he
had inflicted serious injuries, it says, on our worthy and able
constable, Mr. J. A. Jaffers. Pretty straight story, eh? Names and
everything."

"Lord!" said Mr. Marvel, looking nervously about him, trying to
count the money in his pockets by his unaided sense of touch, and
full of a strange and novel idea. "It sounds most astonishing."

"Don't it? Extra-ordinary, _I_ call it. Never heard tell of Invisible
Men before, I haven't, but nowadays one hears such a lot of
extra-ordinary things--that--"

"That all he did?" asked Marvel, trying to seem at his ease.

"It's enough, ain't it?" said the mariner.

"Didn't go Back by any chance?" asked Marvel. "Just escaped and
that's all, eh?"

"All!" said the mariner. "Why!--ain't it enough?"

"Quite enough," said Marvel.

"I should think it was enough," said the mariner. "I should think
it was enough."

"He didn't have any pals--it don't say he had any pals, does it?"
asked Mr. Marvel, anxious.

"Ain't one of a sort enough for you?" asked the mariner. "No, thank
Heaven, as one might say, he didn't."

He nodded his head slowly. "It makes me regular uncomfortable,
the bare thought of that chap running about the country! He is at
present At Large, and from certain evidence it is supposed that he
has--taken--_took_, I suppose they mean--the road to Port Stowe. You
see we're right _in_ it! None of your American wonders, this time.
And just think of the things he might do! Where'd you be, if he took
a drop over and above, and had a fancy to go for you? Suppose he
wants to rob--who can prevent him? He can trespass, he can burgle,
he could walk through a cordon of policemen as easy as me or you
could give the slip to a blind man! Easier! For these here blind
chaps hear uncommon sharp, I'm told. And wherever there was liquor
he fancied--"

"He's got a tremenjous advantage, certainly," said Mr. Marvel.
"And--well..."

"You're right," said the mariner. "He _has_."

All this time Mr. Marvel had been glancing about him intently,
listening for faint footfalls, trying to detect imperceptible
movements. He seemed on the point of some great resolution. He
coughed behind his hand.

He looked about him again, listened, bent towards the mariner, and
lowered his voice: "The fact of it is--I happen--to know just a
thing or two about this Invisible Man. From private sources."

"Oh!" said the mariner, interested. "_You_?"

"Yes," said Mr. Marvel. "Me."

"Indeed!" said the mariner. "And may I ask--"

"You'll be astonished," said Mr. Marvel behind his hand. "It's
tremenjous."

"Indeed!" said the mariner.

"The fact is," began Mr. Marvel eagerly in a confidential undertone.
Suddenly his expression changed marvellously. "Ow!" he said. He rose
stiffly in his seat. His face was eloquent of physical suffering.
"Wow!" he said.

"What's up?" said the mariner, concerned.

"Toothache," said Mr. Marvel, and put his hand to his ear. He caught
hold of his books. "I must be getting on, I think," he said. He
edged in a curious way along the seat away from his interlocutor.
"But you was just a-going to tell me about this here Invisible Man!"
protested the mariner. Mr. Marvel seemed to consult with himself.
"Hoax," said a Voice. "It's a hoax," said Mr. Marvel.

"But it's in the paper," said the mariner.

"Hoax all the same," said Marvel. "I know the chap that started the
lie. There ain't no Invisible Man whatsoever--Blimey."

"But how 'bout this paper? D'you mean to say--?"

"Not a word of it," said Marvel, stoutly.

The mariner stared, paper in hand. Mr. Marvel jerkily faced about.
"Wait a bit," said the mariner, rising and speaking slowly, "D'you
mean to say--?"

"I do," said Mr. Marvel.

"Then why did you let me go on and tell you all this blarsted
stuff, then? What d'yer mean by letting a man make a fool of
himself like that for? Eh?"

Mr. Marvel blew out his cheeks. The mariner was suddenly very red
indeed; he clenched his hands. "I been talking here this ten
minutes," he said; "and you, you little pot-bellied, leathery-faced
son of an old boot, couldn't have the elementary manners--"

"Don't you come bandying words with _me_," said Mr. Marvel.

"Bandying words! I'm a jolly good mind--"

"Come up," said a Voice, and Mr. Marvel was suddenly whirled about
and started marching off in a curious spasmodic manner. "You'd
better move on," said the mariner. "Who's moving on?" said Mr.
Marvel. He was receding obliquely with a curious hurrying gait, with
occasional violent jerks forward. Some way along the road he began
a muttered monologue, protests and recriminations.

"Silly devil!" said the mariner, legs wide apart, elbows akimbo,
watching the receding figure. "I'll show you, you silly ass--hoaxing
_me_! It's here--on the paper!"

Mr. Marvel retorted incoherently and, receding, was hidden by a bend
in the road, but the mariner still stood magnificent in the midst
of the way, until the approach of a butcher's cart dislodged him.
Then he turned himself towards Port Stowe. "Full of extra-ordinary
asses," he said softly to himself. "Just to take me down a bit--that
was his silly game--It's on the paper!"

And there was another extraordinary thing he was presently to hear,
that had happened quite close to him. And that was a vision of a
"fist full of money" (no less) travelling without visible agency,
along by the wall at the corner of St. Michael's Lane. A brother
mariner had seen this wonderful sight that very morning. He had
snatched at the money forthwith and had been knocked headlong, and
when he had got to his feet the butterfly money had vanished. Our
mariner was in the mood to believe anything, he declared, but that
was a bit _too_ stiff. Afterwards, however, he began to think things
over.

The story of the flying money was true. And all about that
neighbourhood, even from the august London and Country Banking
Company, from the tills of shops and inns--doors standing that sunny
weather entirely open--money had been quietly and dexterously making
off that day in handfuls and rouleaux, floating quietly along by
walls and shady places, dodging quickly from the approaching eyes of
men. And it had, though no man had traced it, invariably ended its
mysterious flight in the pocket of that agitated gentleman in the
obsolete silk hat, sitting outside the little inn on the outskirts
of Port Stowe.

It was ten days after--and indeed only when the Burdock story was
already old--that the mariner collated these facts and began to
understand how near he had been to the wonderful Invisible Man.



CHAPTER XV

THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING


In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting in his study in the
belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little
room, with three windows--north, west, and south--and bookshelves
covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad
writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass
slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of
reagents. Dr. Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still
bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there
was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down.
Dr. Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a
moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he
hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think
of it.

And his eye, presently wandering from his work, caught the sunset
blazing at the back of the hill that is over against his own. For a
minute perhaps he sat, pen in mouth, admiring the rich golden
colour above the crest, and then his attention was attracted by the
little figure of a man, inky black, running over the hill-brow
towards him. He was a shortish little man, and he wore a high hat,
and he was running so fast that his legs verily twinkled.

"Another of those fools," said Dr. Kemp. "Like that ass who ran
into me this morning round a corner, with the ''Visible Man
a-coming, sir!' I can't imagine what possess people. One might
think we were in the thirteenth century."

He got up, went to the window, and stared at the dusky hillside, and
the dark little figure tearing down it. "He seems in a confounded
hurry," said Dr. Kemp, "but he doesn't seem to be getting on. If
his pockets were full of lead, he couldn't run heavier."

"Spurted, sir," said Dr. Kemp.

In another moment the higher of the villas that had clambered up the
hill from Burdock had occulted the running figure. He was visible
again for a moment, and again, and then again, three times between
the three detached houses that came next, and then the terrace hid
him.

"Asses!" said Dr. Kemp, swinging round on his heel and walking
back to his writing-table.

But those who saw the fugitive nearer, and perceived the abject
terror on his perspiring face, being themselves in the open roadway,
did not share in the doctor's contempt. By the man pounded, and as
he ran he chinked like a well-filled purse that is tossed to and
fro. He looked neither to the right nor the left, but his dilated
eyes stared straight downhill to where the lamps were being lit, and
the people were crowded in the street. And his ill-shaped mouth fell
apart, and a glairy foam lay on his lips, and his breath came hoarse
and noisy. All he passed stopped and began staring up the road and
down, and interrogating one another with an inkling of discomfort
for the reason of his haste.

And then presently, far up the hill, a dog playing in the road
yelped and ran under a gate, and as they still wondered
something--a wind--a pad, pad, pad,--a sound like a panting breathing,
rushed by.

People screamed. People sprang off the pavement: It passed in
shouts, it passed by instinct down the hill. They were shouting in
the street before Marvel was halfway there. They were bolting into
houses and slamming the doors behind them, with the news. He heard
it and made one last desperate spurt. Fear came striding by, rushed
ahead of him, and in a moment had seized the town.

"The Invisible Man is coming! The Invisible Man!"



CHAPTER XVI

IN THE "JOLLY CRICKETERS"


The "Jolly Cricketers" is just at the bottom of the hill, where the
tram-lines begin. The barman leant his fat red arms on the counter
and talked of horses with an anaemic cabman, while a black-bearded
man in grey snapped up biscuit and cheese, drank Burton, and
conversed in American with a policeman off duty.

"What's the shouting about!" said the anaemic cabman, going off at a
tangent, trying to see up the hill over the dirty yellow blind in
the low window of the inn. Somebody ran by outside. "Fire, perhaps,"
said the barman.

Footsteps approached, running heavily, the door was pushed open
violently, and Marvel, weeping and dishevelled, his hat gone, the
neck of his coat torn open, rushed in, made a convulsive turn, and
attempted to shut the door. It was held half open by a strap.

"Coming!" he bawled, his voice shrieking with terror. "He's coming.
The 'Visible Man! After me! For Gawd's sake! 'Elp! 'Elp! 'Elp!"

"Shut the doors," said the policeman. "Who's coming? What's the
row?" He went to the door, released the strap, and it slammed. The
American closed the other door.

"Lemme go inside," said Marvel, staggering and weeping, but still
clutching the books. "Lemme go inside. Lock me in--somewhere. I
tell you he's after me. I give him the slip. He said he'd kill me
and he will."

"_You're_ safe," said the man with the black beard. "The door's shut.
What's it all about?"

"Lemme go inside," said Marvel, and shrieked aloud as a blow
suddenly made the fastened door shiver and was followed by a hurried
rapping and a shouting outside. "Hullo," cried the policeman, "who's
there?" Mr. Marvel began to make frantic dives at panels that looked
like doors. "He'll kill me--he's got a knife or something. For
Gawd's sake--!"

"Here you are," said the barman. "Come in here." And he held up the
flap of the bar.

Mr. Marvel rushed behind the bar as the summons outside was
repeated. "Don't open the door," he screamed. "_Please_ don't open
the door. _Where_ shall I hide?"

"This, this Invisible Man, then?" asked the man with the black
beard, with one hand behind him. "I guess it's about time we saw
him."

The window of the inn was suddenly smashed in, and there was a
screaming and running to and fro in the street. The policeman had
been standing on the settee staring out, craning to see who was at
the door. He got down with raised eyebrows. "It's that," he said.
The barman stood in front of the bar-parlour door which was now
locked on Mr. Marvel, stared at the smashed window, and came round
to the two other men.

Everything was suddenly quiet. "I wish I had my truncheon," said
the policeman, going irresolutely to the door. "Once we open, in he
comes. There's no stopping him."

"Don't you be in too much hurry about that door," said the anaemic
cabman, anxiously.

"Draw the bolts," said the man with the black beard, "and if he
comes--" He showed a revolver in his hand.

"That won't do," said the policeman; "that's murder."

"I know what country I'm in," said the man with the beard. "I'm
going to let off at his legs. Draw the bolts."

"Not with that blinking thing going off behind me," said the
barman, craning over the blind.

"Very well," said the man with the black beard, and stooping down,
revolver ready, drew them himself. Barman, cabman, and policeman
faced about.

"Come in," said the bearded man in an undertone, standing back and
facing the unbolted doors with his pistol behind him. No one came
in, the door remained closed. Five minutes afterwards when a second
cabman pushed his head in cautiously, they were still waiting, and
an anxious face peered out of the bar-parlour and supplied
information. "Are all the doors of the house shut?" asked Marvel.
"He's going round--prowling round. He's as artful as the devil."

"Good Lord!" said the burly barman. "There's the back! Just watch
them doors! I say--!" He looked about him helplessly. The
bar-parlour door slammed and they heard the key turn. "There's
the yard door and the private door. The yard door--"

He rushed out of the bar.

In a minute he reappeared with a carving-knife in his hand. "The
yard door was open!" he said, and his fat underlip dropped. "He may
be in the house now!" said the first cabman.

"He's not in the kitchen," said the barman. "There's two women
there, and I've stabbed every inch of it with this little beef
slicer. And they don't think he's come in. They haven't noticed--"

"Have you fastened it?" asked the first cabman.

"I'm out of frocks," said the barman.

The man with the beard replaced his revolver. And even as he did so
the flap of the bar was shut down and the bolt clicked, and then
with a tremendous thud the catch of the door snapped and the
bar-parlour door burst open. They heard Marvel squeal like a caught
leveret, and forthwith they were clambering over the bar to his
rescue. The bearded man's revolver cracked and the looking-glass at
the back of the parlour starred and came smashing and tinkling down.

As the barman entered the room he saw Marvel, curiously crumpled up
and struggling against the door that led to the yard and kitchen.
The door flew open while the barman hesitated, and Marvel was
dragged into the kitchen. There was a scream and a clatter of pans.
Marvel, head down, and lugging back obstinately, was forced to the
kitchen door, and the bolts were drawn.

Then the policeman, who had been trying to pass the barman, rushed
in, followed by one of the cabmen, gripped the wrist of the
invisible hand that collared Marvel, was hit in the face and went
reeling back. The door opened, and Marvel made a frantic effort to
obtain a lodgment behind it. Then the cabman collared something.
"I got him," said the cabman. The barman's red hands came clawing
at the unseen. "Here he is!" said the barman.

Mr. Marvel, released, suddenly dropped to the ground and made an
attempt to crawl behind the legs of the fighting men. The struggle
blundered round the edge of the door. The voice of the Invisible
Man was heard for the first time, yelling out sharply, as the
policeman trod on his foot. Then he cried out passionately and
his fists flew round like flails. The cabman suddenly whooped
and doubled up, kicked under the diaphragm. The door into the
bar-parlour from the kitchen slammed and covered Mr. Marvel's
retreat. The men in the kitchen found themselves clutching at and
struggling with empty air.

"Where's he gone?" cried the man with the beard. "Out?"

"This way," said the policeman, stepping into the yard and
stopping.

A piece of tile whizzed by his head and smashed among the crockery
on the kitchen table.

"I'll show him," shouted the man with the black beard, and suddenly
a steel barrel shone over the policeman's shoulder, and five
bullets had followed one another into the twilight whence the
missile had come. As he fired, the man with the beard moved his
hand in a horizontal curve, so that his shots radiated out into the
narrow yard like spokes from a wheel.

A silence followed. "Five cartridges," said the man with the black
beard. "That's the best of all. Four aces and a joker. Get a
lantern, someone, and come and feel about for his body."



CHAPTER XVII

DR. KEMP'S VISITOR


Dr. Kemp had continued writing in his study until the shots
aroused him. Crack, crack, crack, they came one after the other.

"Hullo!" said Dr. Kemp, putting his pen into his mouth again and
listening. "Who's letting off revolvers in Burdock? What are the
asses at now?"

He went to the south window, threw it up, and leaning out stared
down on the network of windows, beaded gas-lamps and shops, with its
black interstices of roof and yard that made up the town at night.
"Looks like a crowd down the hill," he said, "by 'The Cricketers,'"
and remained watching. Thence his eyes wandered over the town to far
away where the ships' lights shone, and the pier glowed--a little
illuminated, facetted pavilion like a gem of yellow light. The moon
in its first quarter hung over the westward hill, and the stars were
clear and almost tropically bright.

After five minutes, during which his mind had travelled into a
remote speculation of social conditions of the future, and lost
itself at last over the time dimension, Dr. Kemp roused himself
with a sigh, pulled down the window again, and returned to his
writing desk.

It must have been about an hour after this that the front-door bell
rang. He had been writing slackly, and with intervals of
abstraction, since the shots. He sat listening. He heard the servant
answer the door, and waited for her feet on the staircase, but she
did not come. "Wonder what that was," said Dr. Kemp.

He tried to resume his work, failed, got up, went downstairs from
his study to the landing, rang, and called over the balustrade to
the housemaid as she appeared in the hall below. "Was that a
letter?" he asked.

"Only a runaway ring, sir," she answered.

"I'm restless to-night," he said to himself. He went back to his
study, and this time attacked his work resolutely. In a little
while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room
were the ticking of the clock and the subdued shrillness of his
quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle of light his
lampshade threw on his table.

It was two o'clock before Dr. Kemp had finished his work for the
night. He rose, yawned, and went downstairs to bed. He had already
removed his coat and vest, when he noticed that he was thirsty. He
took a candle and went down to the dining-room in search of a
syphon and whiskey.

Dr. Kemp's scientific pursuits have made him a very observant
man, and as he recrossed the hall, he noticed a dark spot on the
linoleum near the mat at the foot of the stairs. He went on
upstairs, and then it suddenly occurred to him to ask himself what
the spot on the linoleum might be. Apparently some subconscious
element was at work. At any rate, he turned with his burden, went
back to the hall, put down the syphon and whiskey, and bending
down, touched the spot. Without any great surprise he found it had
the stickiness and colour of drying blood.

He took up his burden again, and returned upstairs, looking about
him and trying to account for the blood-spot. On the landing he saw
something and stopped astonished. The door-handle of his own room
was blood-stained.

He looked at his own hand. It was quite clean, and then he
remembered that the door of his room had been open when he came down
from his study, and that consequently he had not touched the handle
at all. He went straight into his room, his face quite calm--perhaps
a trifle more resolute than usual. His glance, wandering
inquisitively, fell on the bed. On the counterpane was a mess of
blood, and the sheet had been torn. He had not noticed this before
because he had walked straight to the dressing-table. On the further
side the bedclothes were depressed as if someone had been recently
sitting there.

Then he had an odd impression that he had heard a low voice say,
"Good Heavens!--Kemp!" But Dr. Kemp was no believer in voices.

He stood staring at the tumbled sheets. Was that really a voice? He
looked about again, but noticed nothing further than the disordered
and blood-stained bed. Then he distinctly heard a movement across
the room, near the wash-hand stand. All men, however highly
educated, retain some superstitious inklings. The feeling that is
called "eerie" came upon him. He closed the door of the room, came
forward to the dressing-table, and put down his burdens. Suddenly,
with a start, he perceived a coiled and blood-stained bandage of
linen rag hanging in mid-air, between him and the wash-hand stand.

He stared at this in amazement. It was an empty bandage, a bandage
properly tied but quite empty. He would have advanced to grasp it,
but a touch arrested him, and a voice speaking quite close to him.

"Kemp!" said the Voice.

"Eh?" said Kemp, with his mouth open.

"Keep your nerve," said the Voice. "I'm an Invisible Man."

Kemp made no answer for a space, simply stared at the bandage.
"Invisible Man," he said.

"I am an Invisible Man," repeated the Voice.

The story he had been active to ridicule only that morning rushed
through Kemp's brain. He does not appear to have been either very
much frightened or very greatly surprised at the moment.
Realisation came later.

"I thought it was all a lie," he said. The thought uppermost in his
mind was the reiterated arguments of the morning. "Have you a
bandage on?" he asked.

"Yes," said the Invisible Man.

"Oh!" said Kemp, and then roused himself. "I say!" he said. "But
this is nonsense. It's some trick." He stepped forward suddenly,
and his hand, extended towards the bandage, met invisible fingers.

He recoiled at the touch and his colour changed.

"Keep steady, Kemp, for God's sake! I want help badly. Stop!"

The hand gripped his arm. He struck at it.

"Kemp!" cried the Voice. "Kemp! Keep steady!" and the grip
tightened.

A frantic desire to free himself took possession of Kemp. The hand
of the bandaged arm gripped his shoulder, and he was suddenly
tripped and flung backwards upon the bed. He opened his mouth to
shout, and the corner of the sheet was thrust between his teeth.
The Invisible Man had him down grimly, but his arms were free and
he struck and tried to kick savagely.

"Listen to reason, will you?" said the Invisible Man, sticking to
him in spite of a pounding in the ribs. "By Heaven! you'll madden
me in a minute!

"Lie still, you fool!" bawled the Invisible Man in Kemp's ear.

Kemp struggled for another moment and then lay still.

"If you shout, I'll smash your face," said the Invisible Man,
relieving his mouth.

"I'm an Invisible Man. It's no foolishness, and no magic. I really
am an Invisible Man. And I want your help. I don't want to hurt
you, but if you behave like a frantic rustic, I must. Don't you
remember me, Kemp? Griffin, of University College?"

"Let me get up," said Kemp. "I'll stop where I am. And let me sit
quiet for a minute."

He sat up and felt his neck.

"I am Griffin, of University College, and I have made myself
invisible. I am just an ordinary man--a man you have known--made
invisible."

"Griffin?" said Kemp.

"Griffin," answered the Voice. A younger student than you were,
almost an albino, six feet high, and broad, with a pink and white
face and red eyes, who won the medal for chemistry."

"I am confused," said Kemp. "My brain is rioting. What has this to
do with Griffin?"

"I _am_ Griffin."

Kemp thought. "It's horrible," he said. "But what devilry must
happen to make a man invisible?"

"It's no devilry. It's a process, sane and intelligible enough--"

"It's horrible!" said Kemp. "How on earth--?"

"It's horrible enough. But I'm wounded and in pain, and tired ...
Great God! Kemp, you are a man. Take it steady. Give me some food
and drink, and let me sit down here."

Kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across the room, then saw a
basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the bed.
It creaked, and the seat was depressed the quarter of an inch or so.
He rubbed his eyes and felt his neck again. "This beats ghosts," he
said, and laughed stupidly.

"That's better. Thank Heaven, you're getting sensible!"

"Or silly," said Kemp, and knuckled his eyes.

"Give me some whiskey. I'm near dead."

"It didn't feel so. Where are you? If I get up shall I run into you?
_There_! all right. Whiskey? Here. Where shall I give it to you?"

The chair creaked and Kemp felt the glass drawn away from him. He
let go by an effort; his instinct was all against it. It came to
rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the
chair. He stared at it in infinite perplexity. "This is--this
must be--hypnotism. You have suggested you are invisible."

"Nonsense," said the Voice.

"It's frantic."

"Listen to me."

"I demonstrated conclusively this morning," began Kemp, "that
invisibility--"

"Never mind what you've demonstrated!--I'm starving," said the
Voice, "and the night is chilly to a man without clothes."

"Food?" said Kemp.

The tumbler of whiskey tilted itself. "Yes," said the Invisible Man
rapping it down. "Have you a dressing-gown?"

Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone. He walked to a wardrobe
and produced a robe of dingy scarlet. "This do?" he asked. It was
taken from him. It hung limp for a moment in mid-air, fluttered
weirdly, stood full and decorous buttoning itself, and sat down in
his chair. "Drawers, socks, slippers would be a comfort," said the
Unseen, curtly. "And food."

"Anything. But this is the insanest thing I ever was in, in my
life!"

He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs
to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and
bread, pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest.
"Never mind knives," said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air,
with a sound of gnawing.

"Invisible!" said Kemp, and sat down on a bedroom chair.

"I always like to get something about me before I eat," said the
Invisible Man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. "Queer fancy!"

"I suppose that wrist is all right," said Kemp.

"Trust me," said the Invisible Man.

"Of all the strange and wonderful--"

"Exactly. But it's odd I should blunder into _your_ house to get my
bandaging. My first stroke of luck! Anyhow I meant to sleep in this
house to-night. You must stand that! It's a filthy nuisance, my
blood showing, isn't it? Quite a clot over there. Gets visible as
it coagulates, I see. It's only the living tissue I've changed, and
only for as long as I'm alive.... I've been in the house three hours."

"But how's it done?" began Kemp, in a tone of exasperation.
"Confound it! The whole business--it's unreasonable from
beginning to end."

"Quite reasonable," said the Invisible Man. "Perfectly reasonable."

He reached over and secured the whiskey bottle. Kemp stared at the
devouring dressing gown. A ray of candle-light penetrating a torn
patch in the right shoulder, made a triangle of light under the
left ribs. "What were the shots?" he asked. "How did the shooting
begin?"

"There was a real fool of a man--a sort of confederate of
mine--curse him!--who tried to steal my money. _Has_ done so."

"Is _he_ invisible too?"

"No."

"Well?"

"Can't I have some more to eat before I tell you all that? I'm
hungry--in pain. And you want me to tell stories!"

Kemp got up. "_You_ didn't do any shooting?" he asked.

"Not me," said his visitor. "Some fool I'd never seen fired at
random. A lot of them got scared. They all got scared at me. Curse
them!--I say--I want more to eat than this, Kemp."

"I'll see what there is to eat downstairs," said Kemp. "Not much,
I'm afraid."

After he had done eating, and he made a heavy meal, the Invisible
Man demanded a cigar. He bit the end savagely before Kemp could
find a knife, and cursed when the outer leaf loosened. It was
strange to see him smoking; his mouth, and throat, pharynx and
nares, became visible as a sort of whirling smoke cast.

"This blessed gift of smoking!" he said, and puffed vigorously.
"I'm lucky to have fallen upon you, Kemp. You must help me. Fancy
tumbling on you just now! I'm in a devilish scrape--I've been mad,
I think. The things I have been through! But we will do things yet.
Let me tell you--"

He helped himself to more whiskey and soda. Kemp got up, looked
about him, and fetched a glass from his spare room. "It's wild--but
I suppose I may drink."

"You haven't changed much, Kemp, these dozen years. You fair men
don't. Cool and methodical--after the first collapse. I must tell
you. We will work together!"

"But how was it all done?" said Kemp, "and how did you get like
this?"

"For God's sake, let me smoke in peace for a little while! And then
I will begin to tell you."

But the story was not told that night. The Invisible Man's wrist
was growing painful; he was feverish, exhausted, and his mind came
round to brood upon his chase down the hill and the struggle about
the inn. He spoke in fragments of Marvel, he smoked faster, his
voice grew angry. Kemp tried to gather what he could.

"He was afraid of me, I could see that he was afraid of me," said
the Invisible Man many times over. "He meant to give me the slip--he
was always casting about! What a fool I was!"

"The cur!

"I should have killed him!"

"Where did you get the money?" asked Kemp, abruptly.

The Invisible Man was silent for a space. "I can't tell you
to-night," he said.

He groaned suddenly and leant forward, supporting his invisible
head on invisible hands. "Kemp," he said, "I've had no sleep for
near three days, except a couple of dozes of an hour or so. I
must sleep soon."

"Well, have my room--have this room."

"But how can I sleep? If I sleep--he will get away. Ugh! What
does it matter?"

"What's the shot wound?" asked Kemp, abruptly.

"Nothing--scratch and blood. Oh, God! How I want sleep!"

"Why not?"

The Invisible Man appeared to be regarding Kemp. "Because I've a
particular objection to being caught by my fellow-men," he said
slowly.

Kemp started.

"Fool that I am!" said the Invisible Man, striking the table
smartly. "I've put the idea into your head."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE INVISIBLE MAN SLEEPS


Exhausted and wounded as the Invisible Man was, he refused to accept
Kemp's word that his freedom should be respected. He examined the
two windows of the bedroom, drew up the blinds and opened the
sashes, to confirm Kemp's statement that a retreat by them would be
possible. Outside the night was very quiet and still, and the new
moon was setting over the down. Then he examined the keys of the
bedroom and the two dressing-room doors, to satisfy himself that
these also could be made an assurance of freedom. Finally he
expressed himself satisfied. He stood on the hearth rug and Kemp
heard the sound of a yawn.

"I'm sorry," said the Invisible Man, "if I cannot tell you all that
I have done to-night. But I am worn out. It's grotesque, no doubt.
It's horrible! But believe me, Kemp, in spite of your arguments of
this morning, it is quite a possible thing. I have made a discovery.
I meant to keep it to myself. I can't. I must have a partner. And
you.... We can do such things ... But to-morrow. Now, Kemp, I feel
as though I must sleep or perish."

Kemp stood in the middle of the room staring at the headless garment.
"I suppose I must leave you," he said. "It's--incredible. Three
things happening like this, overturning all my preconceptions--would
make me insane. But it's real! Is there anything more that I can
get you?"

"Only bid me good-night," said Griffin.

"Good-night," said Kemp, and shook an invisible hand. He walked
sideways to the door. Suddenly the dressing-gown walked quickly
towards him. "Understand me!" said the dressing-gown. "No attempts
to hamper me, or capture me! Or--"

Kemp's face changed a little. "I thought I gave you my word," he
said.

Kemp closed the door softly behind him, and the key was turned upon
him forthwith. Then, as he stood with an expression of passive
amazement on his face, the rapid feet came to the door of the
dressing-room and that too was locked. Kemp slapped his brow with
his hand. "Am I dreaming? Has the world gone mad--or have I?"

He laughed, and put his hand to the locked door. "Barred out of my
own bedroom, by a flagrant absurdity!" he said.

He walked to the head of the staircase, turned, and stared at the
locked doors. "It's fact," he said. He put his fingers to his
slightly bruised neck. "Undeniable fact!

"But--"

He shook his head hopelessly, turned, and went downstairs.

He lit the dining-room lamp, got out a cigar, and began pacing the
room, ejaculating. Now and then he would argue with himself.

"Invisible!" he said.

"Is there such a thing as an invisible animal? ... In the sea, yes.
Thousands--millions. All the larvae, all the little nauplii and
tornarias, all the microscopic things, the jelly-fish. In the sea
there are more things invisible than visible! I never thought of
that before. And in the ponds too! All those little pond-life
things--specks of colourless translucent jelly! But in air? No!

"It can't be.

"But after all--why not?

"If a man was made of glass he would still be visible."

His meditation became profound. The bulk of three cigars had passed
into the invisible or diffused as a white ash over the carpet before
he spoke again. Then it was merely an exclamation. He turned aside,
walked out of the room, and went into his little consulting-room and
lit the gas there. It was a little room, because Dr. Kemp did not
live by practice, and in it were the day's newspapers. The morning's
paper lay carelessly opened and thrown aside. He caught it up,
turned it over, and read the account of a "Strange Story from Iping"
that the mariner at Port Stowe had spelt over so painfully to Mr.
Marvel. Kemp read it swiftly.

"Wrapped up!" said Kemp. "Disguised! Hiding it! 'No one seems to
have been aware of his misfortune.' What the devil _is_ his game?"

He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. "Ah!" he said, and
caught up the _St. James' Gazette_, lying folded up as it arrived.
"Now we shall get at the truth," said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper
open; a couple of columns confronted him. "An Entire Village in
Sussex goes Mad" was the heading.

"Good Heavens!" said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account
of the events in Iping, of the previous afternoon, that have
already been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning
paper had been reprinted.

He re-read it. "Ran through the streets striking right and left.
Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huxter in great pain--still unable to
describe what he saw. Painful humiliation--vicar. Woman ill with
terror! Windows smashed. This extraordinary story probably a
fabrication. Too good not to print--_cum grano_!"

He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. "Probably
a fabrication!"

He caught up the paper again, and re-read the whole business. "But
when does the Tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a tramp?"

He sat down abruptly on the surgical bench. "He's not only
invisible," he said, "but he's mad! Homicidal!"

When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar
smoke of the dining-room, Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying
to grasp the incredible.

He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending
sleepily, discovered him, and were inclined to think that
over-study had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary
but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the
belvedere study--and then to confine themselves to the basement
and ground-floor. Then he continued to pace the dining-room until
the morning's paper came. That had much to say and little to tell,
beyond the confirmation of the evening before, and a very badly
written account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdock. This
gave Kemp the essence of the happenings at the "Jolly Cricketers,"
and the name of Marvel. "He has made me keep with him twenty-four
hours," Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were added to the
Iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire.
But there was nothing to throw light on the connexion between
the Invisible Man and the Tramp; for Mr. Marvel had supplied no
information about the three books, or the money with which he was
lined. The incredulous tone had vanished and a shoal of reporters
and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter.

Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to
get everyone of the morning papers she could. These also he
devoured.

"He is invisible!" he said. "And it reads like rage growing to
mania! The things he may do! The things he may do! And he's
upstairs free as the air. What on earth ought I to do?"

"For instance, would it be a breach of faith if--? No."

He went to a little untidy desk in the corner, and began a note. He
tore this up half written, and wrote another. He read it over and
considered it. Then he took an envelope and addressed it to "Colonel
Adye, Port Burdock."

The Invisible Man awoke even as Kemp was doing this. He awoke in an
evil temper, and Kemp, alert for every sound, heard his pattering
feet rush suddenly across the bedroom overhead. Then a chair was
flung over and the wash-hand stand tumbler smashed. Kemp hurried
upstairs and rapped eagerly.



CHAPTER XIX

CERTAIN FIRST PRINCIPLES


"What's the matter?" asked Kemp, when the Invisible Man admitted him.

"Nothing," was the answer.

"But, confound it! The smash?"

"Fit of temper," said the Invisible Man. "Forgot this arm; and it's
sore."

"You're rather liable to that sort of thing."

"I am."

Kemp walked across the room and picked up the fragments of broken
glass. "All the facts are out about you," said Kemp, standing up
with the glass in his hand; "all that happened in Iping, and down
the hill. The world has become aware of its invisible citizen. But
no one knows you are here."

The Invisible Man swore.

"The secret's out. I gather it was a secret. I don't know what your
plans are, but of course I'm anxious to help you."

The Invisible Man sat down on the bed.

"There's breakfast upstairs," said Kemp, speaking as easily as
possible, and he was delighted to find his strange guest rose
willingly. Kemp led the way up the narrow staircase to the
belvedere.

"Before we can do anything else," said Kemp, "I must understand a
little more about this invisibility of yours." He had sat down,
after one nervous glance out of the window, with the air of a man
who has talking to do. His doubts of the sanity of the entire
business flashed and vanished again as he looked across to
where Griffin sat at the breakfast-table--a headless, handless
dressing-gown, wiping unseen lips on a miraculously held serviette.

"It's simple enough--and credible enough," said Griffin, putting
the serviette aside and leaning the invisible head on an invisible
hand.

"No doubt, to you, but--" Kemp laughed.

"Well, yes; to me it seemed wonderful at first, no doubt. But now,
great God! ... But we will do great things yet! I came on the stuff
first at Chesilstowe."

"Chesilstowe?"

"I went there after I left London. You know I dropped medicine and
took up physics? No; well, I did. _Light_ fascinated me."

"Ah!"

"Optical density! The whole subject is a network of riddles--a
network with solutions glimmering elusively through. And being but
two-and-twenty and full of enthusiasm, I said, 'I will devote my
life to this. This is worth while.' You know what fools we are at
two-and-twenty?"

"Fools then or fools now," said Kemp.

"As though knowing could be any satisfaction to a man!

"But I went to work--like a slave. And I had hardly worked and
thought about the matter six months before light came through one
of the meshes suddenly--blindingly! I found a general principle
of pigments and refraction--a formula, a geometrical expression
involving four dimensions. Fools, common men, even common
mathematicians, do not know anything of what some general expression
may mean to the student of molecular physics. In the books--the
books that tramp has hidden--there are marvels, miracles! But this
was not a method, it was an idea, that might lead to a method by
which it would be possible, without changing any other property of
matter--except, in some instances colours--to lower the refractive
index of a substance, solid or liquid, to that of air--so far as all
practical purposes are concerned."

"Phew!" said Kemp. "That's odd! But still I don't see quite ... I
can understand that thereby you could spoil a valuable stone, but
personal invisibility is a far cry."

"Precisely," said Griffin. "But consider, visibility depends on the
action of the visible bodies on light. Either a body absorbs light,
or it reflects or refracts it, or does all these things. If it
neither reflects nor refracts nor absorbs light, it cannot of
itself be visible. You see an opaque red box, for instance, because
the colour absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest, all the
red part of the light, to you. If it did not absorb any particular
part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining
white box. Silver! A diamond box would neither absorb much of the
light nor reflect much from the general surface, but just here
and there where the surfaces were favourable the light would
be reflected and refracted, so that you would get a brilliant
appearance of flashing reflections and translucencies--a sort of
skeleton of light. A glass box would not be so brilliant, not so
clearly visible, as a diamond box, because there would be less
refraction and reflection. See that? From certain points of view
you would see quite clearly through it. Some kinds of glass would
be more visible than others, a box of flint glass would be brighter
than a box of ordinary window glass. A box of very thin common
glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb
hardly any light and refract and reflect very little. And if you
put a sheet of common white glass in water, still more if you
put it in some denser liquid than water, it would vanish almost
altogether, because light passing from water to glass is only
slightly refracted or reflected or indeed affected in any way.
It is almost as invisible as a jet of coal gas or hydrogen is in
air. And for precisely the same reason!"

"Yes," said Kemp, "that is pretty plain sailing."

"And here is another fact you will know to be true. If a sheet of
glass is smashed, Kemp, and beaten into a powder, it becomes much
more visible while it is in the air; it becomes at last an opaque
white powder. This is because the powdering multiplies the surfaces
of the glass at which refraction and reflection occur. In the sheet
of glass there are only two surfaces; in the powder the light is
reflected or refracted by each grain it passes through, and very
little gets right through the powder. But if the white powdered
glass is put into water, it forthwith vanishes. The powdered glass
and water have much the same refractive index; that is, the light
undergoes very little refraction or reflection in passing from one
to the other.

"You make the glass invisible by putting it into a liquid of nearly
the same refractive index; a transparent thing becomes invisible if
it is put in any medium of almost the same refractive index. And if
you will consider only a second, you will see also that the powder
of glass might be made to vanish in air, if its refractive index
could be made the same as that of air; for then there would be no
refraction or reflection as the light passed from glass to air."

"Yes, yes," said Kemp. "But a man's not powdered glass!"

"No," said Griffin. "He's more transparent!"

"Nonsense!"

"That from a doctor! How one forgets! Have you already forgotten
your physics, in ten years? Just think of all the things that are
transparent and seem not to be so. Paper, for instance, is made up
of transparent fibres, and it is white and opaque only for the same
reason that a powder of glass is white and opaque. Oil white paper,
fill up the interstices between the particles with oil so that there
is no longer refraction or reflection except at the surfaces, and
it becomes as transparent as glass. And not only paper, but cotton
fibre, linen fibre, wool fibre, woody fibre, and _bone_, Kemp,
_flesh_, Kemp, _hair_, Kemp, _nails_ and _nerves_, Kemp, in fact
the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood and the black
pigment of hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless tissue.
So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the
most part the fibres of a living creature are no more opaque than
water."

"Great Heavens!" cried Kemp. "Of course, of course! I was thinking
only last night of the sea larvae and all jelly-fish!"

"_Now_ you have me! And all that I knew and had in mind a year after
I left London--six years ago. But I kept it to myself. I had to do
my work under frightful disadvantages. Oliver, my professor, was a
scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas--he
was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific
world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I
went on working; I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an
experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to
flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous
at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain
gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a
discovery in physiology."

"Yes?"

"You know the red colouring matter of blood; it can be made
white--colourless--and remain with all the functions it has now!"

Kemp gave a cry of incredulous amazement.

The Invisible Man rose and began pacing the little study. "You may
well exclaim. I remember that night. It was late at night--in the
daytime one was bothered with the gaping, silly students--and I
worked then sometimes till dawn. It came suddenly, splendid and
complete in my mind. I was alone; the laboratory was still, with the
tall lights burning brightly and silently. In all my great moments
I have been alone. 'One could make an animal--a tissue--transparent!
One could make it invisible! All except the pigments--I could be
invisible!' I said, suddenly realising what it meant to be an albino
with such knowledge. It was overwhelming. I left the filtering I was
doing, and went and stared out of the great window at the stars.
'I could be invisible!' I repeated.

"To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld,
unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility
might mean to a man--the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks
I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck,
hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college,
might suddenly become--this. I ask you, Kemp if _you_ ... Anyone, I
tell you, would have flung himself upon that research. And I worked
three years, and every mountain of difficulty I toiled over showed
another from its summit. The infinite details! And the exasperation!
A professor, a provincial professor, always prying. 'When are you
going to publish this work of yours?' was his everlasting question.
And the students, the cramped means! Three years I had of it--

"And after three years of secrecy and exasperation, I found that to
complete it was impossible--impossible."

"How?" asked Kemp.

"Money," said the Invisible Man, and went again to stare out of the
window.

He turned around abruptly. "I robbed the old man--robbed my
father.

"The money was not his, and he shot himself."



CHAPTER XX

AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND STREET


For a moment Kemp sat in silence, staring at the back of the
headless figure at the window. Then he started, struck by a thought,
rose, took the Invisible Man's arm, and turned him away from the
outlook.

"You are tired," he said, "and while I sit, you walk about. Have
my chair."

He placed himself between Griffin and the nearest window.

For a space Griffin sat silent, and then he resumed abruptly:

"I had left the Chesilstowe cottage already," he said, "when that
happened. It was last December. I had taken a room in London, a
large unfurnished room in a big ill-managed lodging-house in a slum
near Great Portland Street. The room was soon full of the appliances
I had bought with his money; the work was going on steadily,
successfully, drawing near an end. I was like a man emerging from a
thicket, and suddenly coming on some unmeaning tragedy. I went to
bury him. My mind was still on this research, and I did not lift
a finger to save his character. I remember the funeral, the cheap
hearse, the scant ceremony, the windy frost-bitten hillside, and the
old college friend of his who read the service over him--a shabby,
black, bent old man with a snivelling cold.

"I remember walking back to the empty house, through the place that
had once been a village and was now patched and tinkered by the
jerry builders into the ugly likeness of a town. Every way the
roads ran out at last into the desecrated fields and ended in
rubble heaps and rank wet weeds. I remember myself as a gaunt black
figure, going along the slippery, shiny pavement, and the strange
sense of detachment I felt from the squalid respectability, the
sordid commercialism of the place.

"I did not feel a bit sorry for my father. He seemed to me to be
the victim of his own foolish sentimentality. The current cant
required my attendance at his funeral, but it was really not my
affair.

"But going along the High Street, my old life came back to me
for a space, for I met the girl I had known ten years since.
Our eyes met.

"Something moved me to turn back and talk to her. She was a very
ordinary person.

"It was all like a dream, that visit to the old places. I did not
feel then that I was lonely, that I had come out from the world
into a desolate place. I appreciated my loss of sympathy, but I put
it down to the general inanity of things. Re-entering my room
seemed like the recovery of reality. There were the things I knew
and loved. There stood the apparatus, the experiments arranged and
waiting. And now there was scarcely a difficulty left, beyond the
planning of details.

"I will tell you, Kemp, sooner or later, all the complicated
processes. We need not go into that now. For the most part, saving
certain gaps I chose to remember, they are written in cypher in
those books that tramp has hidden. We must hunt him down. We must
get those books again. But the essential phase was to place the
transparent object whose refractive index was to be lowered between
two radiating centres of a sort of ethereal vibration, of which I
will tell you more fully later. No, not those Roentgen vibrations--I
don't know that these others of mine have been described. Yet
they are obvious enough. I needed two little dynamos, and these I
worked with a cheap gas engine. My first experiment was with a bit
of white wool fabric. It was the strangest thing in the world to
see it in the flicker of the flashes soft and white, and then to
watch it fade like a wreath of smoke and vanish.

"I could scarcely believe I had done it. I put my hand into the
emptiness, and there was the thing as solid as ever. I felt it
awkwardly, and threw it on the floor. I had a little trouble
finding it again.

"And then came a curious experience. I heard a miaow behind me, and
turning, saw a lean white cat, very dirty, on the cistern cover
outside the window. A thought came into my head. 'Everything ready
for you,' I said, and went to the window, opened it, and called
softly. She came in, purring--the poor beast was starving--and
I gave her some milk. All my food was in a cupboard in the
corner of the room. After that she went smelling round the room,
evidently with the idea of making herself at home. The invisible
rag upset her a bit; you should have seen her spit at it! But I
made her comfortable on the pillow of my truckle-bed. And I gave
her butter to get her to wash."

"And you processed her?"

"I processed her. But giving drugs to a cat is no joke, Kemp! And
the process failed."

"Failed!"

"In two particulars. These were the claws and the pigment stuff,
what is it?--at the back of the eye in a cat. You know?"

"_Tapetum_."

"Yes, the _tapetum_. It didn't go. After I'd given the stuff to
bleach the blood and done certain other things to her, I gave the
beast opium, and put her and the pillow she was sleeping on, on the
apparatus. And after all the rest had faded and vanished, there
remained two little ghosts of her eyes."

"Odd!"

"I can't explain it. She was bandaged and clamped, of course--so
I had her safe; but she woke while she was still misty, and miaowed
dismally, and someone came knocking. It was an old woman from
downstairs, who suspected me of vivisecting--a drink-sodden old
creature, with only a white cat to care for in all the world. I
whipped out some chloroform, applied it, and answered the door.
'Did I hear a cat?' she asked. 'My cat?' 'Not here,' said I, very
politely. She was a little doubtful and tried to peer past me into
the room; strange enough to her no doubt--bare walls, uncurtained
windows, truckle-bed, with the gas engine vibrating, and the
seethe of the radiant points, and that faint ghastly stinging of
chloroform in the air. She had to be satisfied at last and went
away again."

"How long did it take?" asked Kemp.

"Three or four hours--the cat. The bones and sinews and the fat
were the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. And, as I
say, the back part of the eye, tough, iridescent stuff it is,
wouldn't go at all.

"It was night outside long before the business was over, and nothing
was to be seen but the dim eyes and the claws. I stopped the gas
engine, felt for and stroked the beast, which was still insensible,
and then, being tired, left it sleeping on the invisible pillow and
went to bed. I found it hard to sleep. I lay awake thinking weak
aimless stuff, going over the experiment over and over again, or
dreaming feverishly of things growing misty and vanishing about me,
until everything, the ground I stood on, vanished, and so I came to
that sickly falling nightmare one gets. About two, the cat began
miaowing about the room. I tried to hush it by talking to it, and
then I decided to turn it out. I remember the shock I had when
striking a light--there were just the round eyes shining green--and
nothing round them. I would have given it milk, but I hadn't any. It
wouldn't be quiet, it just sat down and miaowed at the door. I tried
to catch it, with an idea of putting it out of the window, but it
wouldn't be caught, it vanished. Then it began miaowing in different
parts of the room. At last I opened the window and made a bustle. I
suppose it went out at last. I never saw any more of it.

"Then--Heaven knows why--I fell thinking of my father's funeral
again, and the dismal windy hillside, until the day had come. I
found sleeping was hopeless, and, locking my door after me,
wandered out into the morning streets."

"You don't mean to say there's an invisible cat at large!" said
Kemp.

"If it hasn't been killed," said the Invisible Man. "Why not?"

"Why not?" said Kemp. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's very probably been killed," said the Invisible Man. "It
was alive four days after, I know, and down a grating in Great
Titchfield Street; because I saw a crowd round the place, trying
to see whence the miaowing came."

He was silent for the best part of a minute. Then he resumed
abruptly:

"I remember that morning before the change very vividly. I must have
gone up Great Portland Street. I remember the barracks in Albany
Street, and the horse soldiers coming out, and at last I found the
summit of Primrose Hill. It was a sunny day in January--one of those
sunny, frosty days that came before the snow this year. My weary
brain tried to formulate the position, to plot out a plan of action.

"I was surprised to find, now that my prize was within my grasp, how
inconclusive its attainment seemed. As a matter of fact I was worked
out; the intense stress of nearly four years' continuous work left
me incapable of any strength of feeling. I was apathetic, and I
tried in vain to recover the enthusiasm of my first inquiries,
the passion of discovery that had enabled me to compass even the
downfall of my father's grey hairs. Nothing seemed to matter. I saw
pretty clearly this was a transient mood, due to overwork and want
of sleep, and that either by drugs or rest it would be possible to
recover my energies.

"All I could think clearly was that the thing had to be carried
through; the fixed idea still ruled me. And soon, for the money I
had was almost exhausted. I looked about me at the hillside, with
children playing and girls watching them, and tried to think of all
the fantastic advantages an invisible man would have in the world.
After a time I crawled home, took some food and a strong dose of
strychnine, and went to sleep in my clothes on my unmade bed.
Strychnine is a grand tonic, Kemp, to take the flabbiness out of
a man."

"It's the devil," said Kemp. "It's the palaeolithic in a bottle."

"I awoke vastly invigorated and rather irritable. You know?"

"I know the stuff."

"And there was someone rapping at the door. It was my landlord
with threats and inquiries, an old Polish Jew in a long grey coat
and greasy slippers. I had been tormenting a cat in the night, he
was sure--the old woman's tongue had been busy. He insisted on
knowing all about it. The laws in this country against vivisection
were very severe--he might be liable. I denied the cat. Then the
vibration of the little gas engine could be felt all over the
house, he said. That was true, certainly. He edged round me into
the room, peering about over his German-silver spectacles, and a
sudden dread came into my mind that he might carry away something
of my secret. I tried to keep between him and the concentrating
apparatus I had arranged, and that only made him more curious. What
was I doing? Why was I always alone and secretive? Was it legal?
Was it dangerous? I paid nothing but the usual rent. His had always
been a most respectable house--in a disreputable neighbourhood.
Suddenly my temper gave way. I told him to get out. He began to
protest, to jabber of his right of entry. In a moment I had him by
the collar; something ripped, and he went spinning out into his own
passage. I slammed and locked the door and sat down quivering.

"He made a fuss outside, which I disregarded, and after a time he
went away.

"But this brought matters to a crisis. I did not know what he
would do, nor even what he had the power to do. To move to fresh
apartments would have meant delay; altogether I had barely twenty
pounds left in the world, for the most part in a bank--and I
could not afford that. Vanish! It was irresistible. Then there
would be an inquiry, the sacking of my room.

"At the thought of the possibility of my work being exposed or
interrupted at its very climax, I became very angry and active. I
hurried out with my three books of notes, my cheque-book--the tramp
has them now--and directed them from the nearest Post Office to a
house of call for letters and parcels in Great Portland Street. I
tried to go out noiselessly. Coming in, I found my landlord going
quietly upstairs; he had heard the door close, I suppose. You would
have laughed to see him jump aside on the landing as came tearing
after him. He glared at me as I went by him, and I made the house
quiver with the slamming of my door. I heard him come shuffling up
to my floor, hesitate, and go down. I set to work upon my
preparations forthwith.

"It was all done that evening and night. While I was still sitting
under the sickly, drowsy influence of the drugs that decolourise
blood, there came a repeated knocking at the door. It ceased,
footsteps went away and returned, and the knocking was resumed.
There was an attempt to push something under the door--a blue
paper. Then in a fit of irritation I rose and went and flung the
door wide open. 'Now then?' said I.

"It was my landlord, with a notice of ejectment or something. He
held it out to me, saw something odd about my hands, I expect, and
lifted his eyes to my face.

"For a moment he gaped. Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry,
dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark
passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the
looking-glass. Then I understood his terror.... My face was
white--like white stone.

"But it was all horrible. I had not expected the suffering. A night
of racking anguish, sickness and fainting. I set my teeth, though my
skin was presently afire, all my body afire; but I lay there like
grim death. I understood now how it was the cat had howled until I
chloroformed it. Lucky it was I lived alone and untended in my room.
There were times when I sobbed and groaned and talked. But I stuck
to it.... I became insensible and woke languid in the darkness.

"The pain had passed. I thought I was killing myself and I did not
care. I shall never forget that dawn, and the strange horror of
seeing that my hands had become as clouded glass, and watching them
grow clearer and thinner as the day went by, until at last I could
see the sickly disorder of my room through them, though I closed my
transparent eyelids. My limbs became glassy, the bones and arteries
faded, vanished, and the little white nerves went last. I gritted
my teeth and stayed there to the end. At last only the dead tips of
the fingernails remained, pallid and white, and the brown stain of
some acid upon my fingers.

"I struggled up. At first I was as incapable as a swathed
infant--stepping with limbs I could not see. I was weak and very
hungry. I went and stared at nothing in my shaving-glass, at nothing
save where an attenuated pigment still remained behind the retina of
my eyes, fainter than mist. I had to hang on to the table and press
my forehead against the glass.

"It was only by a frantic effort of will that I dragged myself back
to the apparatus and completed the process.

"I slept during the forenoon, pulling the sheet over my eyes to shut
out the light, and about midday I was awakened again by a knocking.
My strength had returned. I sat up and listened and heard a
whispering. I sprang to my feet and as noiselessly as possible began
to detach the connections of my apparatus, and to distribute it
about the room, so as to destroy the suggestions of its arrangement.
Presently the knocking was renewed and voices called, first my
landlord's, and then two others. To gain time I answered them. The
invisible rag and pillow came to hand and I opened the window and
pitched them out on to the cistern cover. As the window opened, a
heavy crash came at the door. Someone had charged it with the idea
of smashing the lock. But the stout bolts I had screwed up some
days before stopped him. That startled me, made me angry. I began
to tremble and do things hurriedly.

"I tossed together some loose paper, straw, packing paper and so
forth, in the middle of the room, and turned on the gas. Heavy
blows began to rain upon the door. I could not find the matches. I
beat my hands on the wall with rage. I turned down the gas again,
stepped out of the window on the cistern cover, very softly lowered
the sash, and sat down, secure and invisible, but quivering with
anger, to watch events. They split a panel, I saw, and in another
moment they had broken away the staples of the bolts and stood in
the open doorway. It was the landlord and his two step-sons, sturdy
young men of three or four and twenty. Behind them fluttered the
old hag of a woman from downstairs.

"You may imagine their astonishment to find the room empty. One of
the younger men rushed to the window at once, flung it up and stared
out. His staring eyes and thick-lipped bearded face came a foot
from my face. I was half minded to hit his silly countenance, but I
arrested my doubled fist. He stared right through me. So did the
others as they joined him. The old man went and peered under the
bed, and then they all made a rush for the cupboard. They had to
argue about it at length in Yiddish and Cockney English. They
concluded I had not answered them, that their imagination had
deceived them. A feeling of extraordinary elation took the place
of my anger as I sat outside the window and watched these four
people--for the old lady came in, glancing suspiciously about her
like a cat, trying to understand the riddle of my behaviour.

"The old man, so far as I could understand his _patois_, agreed with
the old lady that I was a vivisectionist. The sons protested in
garbled English that I was an electrician, and appealed to the
dynamos and radiators. They were all nervous about my arrival,
although I found subsequently that they had bolted the front door.
The old lady peered into the cupboard and under the bed, and one of
the young men pushed up the register and stared up the chimney. One
of my fellow lodgers, a coster-monger who shared the opposite room
with a butcher, appeared on the landing, and he was called in and
told incoherent things.

"It occurred to me that the radiators, if they fell into the hands
of some acute well-educated person, would give me away too much,
and watching my opportunity, I came into the room and tilted one of
the little dynamos off its fellow on which it was standing, and
smashed both apparatus. Then, while they were trying to explain the
smash, I dodged out of the room and went softly downstairs.

"I went into one of the sitting-rooms and waited until they came
down, still speculating and argumentative, all a little disappointed
at finding no 'horrors,' and all a little puzzled how they stood
legally towards me. Then I slipped up again with a box of matches,
fired my heap of paper and rubbish, put the chairs and bedding
thereby, led the gas to the affair, by means of an india-rubber
tube, and waving a farewell to the room left it for the last time."

"You fired the house!" exclaimed Kemp.

"Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail--and no
doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly
and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just
beginning to realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility
gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and
wonderful things I had now impunity to do."



CHAPTER XXI

IN OXFORD STREET


"In going downstairs the first time I found an unexpected difficulty
because I could not see my feet; indeed I stumbled twice, and there
was an unaccustomed clumsiness in gripping the bolt. By not looking
down, however, I managed to walk on the level passably well.

"My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man
might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the
blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to
clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally
revel in my extraordinary advantage.

"But hardly had I emerged upon Great Portland Street, however (my
lodging was close to the big draper's shop there), when I heard a
clashing concussion and was hit violently behind, and turning saw
a man carrying a basket of soda-water syphons, and looking in
amazement at his burden. Although the blow had really hurt me, I
found something so irresistible in his astonishment that I laughed
aloud. 'The devil's in the basket,' I said, and suddenly twisted
it out of his hand. He let go incontinently, and I swung the whole
weight into the air.

"But a fool of a cabman, standing outside a public house, made a
sudden rush for this, and his extending fingers took me with
excruciating violence under the ear. I let the whole down with a
smash on the cabman, and then, with shouts and the clatter of feet
about me, people coming out of shops, vehicles pulling up, I
realised what I had done for myself, and cursing my folly, backed
against a shop window and prepared to dodge out of the confusion. In
a moment I should be wedged into a crowd and inevitably discovered.
I pushed by a butcher boy, who luckily did not turn to see the
nothingness that shoved him aside, and dodged behind the cab-man's
four-wheeler. I do not know how they settled the business, I hurried
straight across the road, which was happily clear, and hardly
heeding which way I went, in the fright of detection the incident
had given me, plunged into the afternoon throng of Oxford Street.

"I tried to get into the stream of people, but they were too thick
for me, and in a moment my heels were being trodden upon. I took to
the gutter, the roughness of which I found painful to my feet, and
forthwith the shaft of a crawling hansom dug me forcibly under the
shoulder blade, reminding me that I was already bruised severely. I
staggered out of the way of the cab, avoided a perambulator by a
convulsive movement, and found myself behind the hansom. A happy
thought saved me, and as this drove slowly along I followed in its
immediate wake, trembling and astonished at the turn of my
adventure. And not only trembling, but shivering. It was a bright
day in January and I was stark naked and the thin slime of mud that
covered the road was freezing. Foolish as it seems to me now, I had
not reckoned that, transparent or not, I was still amenable to the
weather and all its consequences.

"Then suddenly a bright idea came into my head. I ran round and got
into the cab. And so, shivering, scared, and sniffing with the first
intimations of a cold, and with the bruises in the small of my back
growing upon my attention, I drove slowly along Oxford Street and
past Tottenham Court Road. My mood was as different from that in
which I had sallied forth ten minutes ago as it is possible to
imagine. This invisibility indeed! The one thought that possessed
me was--how was I to get out of the scrape I was in.

"We crawled past Mudie's, and there a tall woman with five or six
yellow-labelled books hailed my cab, and I sprang out just in time
to escape her, shaving a railway van narrowly in my flight. I made
off up the roadway to Bloomsbury Square, intending to strike north
past the Museum and so get into the quiet district. I was now
cruelly chilled, and the strangeness of my situation so unnerved me
that I whimpered as I ran. At the northward corner of the Square a
little white dog ran out of the Pharmaceutical Society's offices,
and incontinently made for me, nose down.

"I had never realised it before, but the nose is to the mind of a
dog what the eye is to the mind of a seeing man. Dogs perceive the
scent of a man moving as men perceive his vision. This brute began
barking and leaping, showing, as it seemed to me, only too plainly
that he was aware of me. I crossed Great Russell Street, glancing
over my shoulder as I did so, and went some way along Montague
Street before I realised what I was running towards.

"Then I became aware of a blare of music, and looking along the
street saw a number of people advancing out of Russell Square, red
shirts, and the banner of the Salvation Army to the fore. Such a
crowd, chanting in the roadway and scoffing on the pavement, I
could not hope to penetrate, and dreading to go back and farther
from home again, and deciding on the spur of the moment, I ran up
the white steps of a house facing the museum railings, and stood
there until the crowd should have passed. Happily the dog stopped
at the noise of the band too, hesitated, and turned tail, running
back to Bloomsbury Square again.

"On came the band, bawling with unconscious irony some hymn about
'When shall we see His face?' and it seemed an interminable time
to me before the tide of the crowd washed along the pavement by me.
Thud, thud, thud, came the drum with a vibrating resonance, and for
the moment I did not notice two urchins stopping at the railings by
me. 'See 'em,' said one. 'See what?' said the other. 'Why--them
footmarks--bare. Like what you makes in mud.'

"I looked down and saw the youngsters had stopped and were gaping
at the muddy footmarks I had left behind me up the newly whitened
steps. The passing people elbowed and jostled them, but their
confounded intelligence was arrested. 'Thud, thud, thud, when,
thud, shall we see, thud, his face, thud, thud.' 'There's a
barefoot man gone up them steps, or I don't know nothing,' said
one. 'And he ain't never come down again. And his foot was
a-bleeding.'

"The thick of the crowd had already passed. 'Looky there, Ted,'
quoth the younger of the detectives, with the sharpness of surprise
in his voice, and pointed straight to my feet. I looked down and
saw at once the dim suggestion of their outline sketched in
splashes of mud. For a moment I was paralysed.

"'Why, that's rum,' said the elder. 'Dashed rum! It's just like
the ghost of a foot, ain't it?' He hesitated and advanced with
outstretched hand. A man pulled up short to see what he was
catching, and then a girl. In another moment he would have touched
me. Then I saw what to do. I made a step, the boy started back with
an exclamation, and with a rapid movement I swung myself over into
the portico of the next house. But the smaller boy was sharp-eyed
enough to follow the movement, and before I was well down the
steps and upon the pavement, he had recovered from his momentary
astonishment and was shouting out that the feet had gone over the
wall.

"They rushed round and saw my new footmarks flash into being on the
lower step and upon the pavement. 'What's up?' asked someone.
'Feet! Look! Feet running!'

"Everybody in the road, except my three pursuers, was pouring along
after the Salvation Army, and this blow not only impeded me but them.
There was an eddy of surprise and interrogation. At the cost of
bowling over one young fellow I got through, and in another moment
I was rushing headlong round the circuit of Russell Square, with
six or seven astonished people following my footmarks. There was
no time for explanation, or else the whole host would have been
after me.

"Twice I doubled round corners, thrice I crossed the road and came
back upon my tracks, and then, as my feet grew hot and dry, the
damp impressions began to fade. At last I had a breathing space
and rubbed my feet clean with my hands, and so got away altogether.
The last I saw of the chase was a little group of a dozen people
perhaps, studying with infinite perplexity a slowly drying
footprint that had resulted from a puddle in Tavistock Square, a
footprint as isolated and incomprehensible to them as Crusoe's
solitary discovery.

"This running warmed me to a certain extent, and I went on with a
better courage through the maze of less frequented roads that runs
hereabouts. My back had now become very stiff and sore, my tonsils
were painful from the cabman's fingers, and the skin of my neck
had been scratched by his nails; my feet hurt exceedingly and I
was lame from a little cut on one foot. I saw in time a blind
man approaching me, and fled limping, for I feared his subtle
intuitions. Once or twice accidental collisions occurred and I left
people amazed, with unaccountable curses ringing in their ears.
Then came something silent and quiet against my face, and across
the Square fell a thin veil of slowly falling flakes of snow. I had
caught a cold, and do as I would I could not avoid an occasional
sneeze. And every dog that came in sight, with its pointing nose
and curious sniffing, was a terror to me.

"Then came men and boys running, first one and then others, and
shouting as they ran. It was a fire. They ran in the direction of
my lodging, and looking back down a street I saw a mass of black
smoke streaming up above the roofs and telephone wires. It was my
lodging burning; my clothes, my apparatus, all my resources indeed,
except my cheque-book and the three volumes of memoranda that
awaited me in Great Portland Street, were there. Burning! I had
burnt my boats--if ever a man did! The place was blazing."

The Invisible Man paused and thought. Kemp glanced nervously out of
the window. "Yes?" he said. "Go on."



CHAPTER XXII

IN THE EMPORIUM


"So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air
about me--and if it settled on me it would betray me!--weary,
cold, painful, inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced
of my invisible quality, I began this new life to which I am
committed. I had no refuge, no appliances, no human being in the
world in whom I could confide. To have told my secret would have
given me away--made a mere show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I
was half-minded to accost some passer-by and throw myself upon his
mercy. But I knew too clearly the terror and brutal cruelty my
advances would evoke. I made no plans in the street. My sole object
was to get shelter from the snow, to get myself covered and warm;
then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an Invisible Man, the
rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and bolted
impregnably.

"Only one thing could I see clearly before me--the cold exposure
and misery of the snowstorm and the night.

"And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads
leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself
outside Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be
bought--you know the place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture,
clothing, oil paintings even--a huge meandering collection of shops
rather than a shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but
they were closed, and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage
stopped outside, and a man in uniform--you know the kind of
personage with 'Omnium' on his cap--flung open the door. I contrived
to enter, and walking down the shop--it was a department where they
were selling ribbons and gloves and stockings and that kind of
thing--came to a more spacious region devoted to picnic baskets and
wicker furniture.

"I did not feel safe there, however; people were going to and fro,
and I prowled restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in
an upper floor containing multitudes of bedsteads, and over these I
clambered, and found a resting-place at last among a huge pile of
folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up and agreeably
warm, and I decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious
eye on the two or three sets of shopmen and customers who were
meandering through the place, until closing time came. Then I
should be able, I thought, to rob the place for food and clothing,
and disguised, prowl through it and examine its resources, perhaps
sleep on some of the bedding. That seemed an acceptable plan.
My idea was to procure clothing to make myself a muffled but
acceptable figure, to get money, and then to recover my books
and parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging somewhere and
elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the advantages my
invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my fellow-men.

"Closing time arrived quickly enough. It could not have been more
than an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I
noticed the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being
marched doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with
remarkable alacrity to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I
left my lair as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously out
into the less desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to
observe how rapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods
displayed for sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the
hanging fabrics, the festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the
grocery section, the displays of this and that, were being whipped
down, folded up, slapped into tidy receptacles, and everything that
could not be taken down and put away had sheets of some coarse
stuff like sacking flung over them. Finally all the chairs were
turned up on to the counters, leaving the floor clear. Directly
each of these young people had done, he or she made promptly for
the door with such an expression of animation as I have rarely
observed in a shop assistant before. Then came a lot of youngsters
scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. I had to dodge
to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle got stung with the
sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened
departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good
hour or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of
locking doors. Silence came upon the place, and I found myself
wandering through the vast and intricate shops, galleries, show-rooms
of the place, alone. It was very still; in one place I remember
passing near one of the Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening
to the tapping of boot-heels of the passers-by.

"My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and
gloves for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after
matches, which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash
desk. Then I had to get a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and
ransack a number of boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to turn
out what I sought; the box label called them lambswool pants, and
lambswool vests. Then socks, a thick comforter, and then I went to
the clothing place and got trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat
and a slouch hat--a clerical sort of hat with the brim turned down.
I began to feel a human being again, and my next thought was food.

"Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat.
There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it
up again, and altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards, prowling
through the place in search of blankets--I had to put up at last
with a heap of down quilts--I came upon a grocery section with
a lot of chocolate and candied fruits, more than was good for me
indeed--and some white burgundy. And near that was a toy department,
and I had a brilliant idea. I found some artificial noses--dummy
noses, you know, and I thought of dark spectacles. But Omniums had
no optical department. My nose had been a difficulty indeed--I had
thought of paint. But the discovery set my mind running on wigs and
masks and the like. Finally I went to sleep in a heap of down
quilts, very warm and comfortable.

"My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had
since the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and that
was reflected in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip
out unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my
face with a white wrapper I had taken, purchase, with the money I
had taken, spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise. I
lapsed into disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had
happened during the last few days. I saw the ugly little Jew of a
landlord vociferating in his rooms; I saw his two sons marvelling,
and the wrinkled old woman's gnarled face as she asked for her cat.
I experienced again the strange sensation of seeing the cloth
disappear, and so I came round to the windy hillside and the
sniffing old clergyman mumbling 'Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,
dust to dust,' at my father's open grave.

"'You also,' said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards
the grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they
continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too,
never faltered droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realised
I was invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their
grip on me. I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the
coffin rang hollow as I fell upon it, and the gravel came flying
after me in spadefuls. Nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me. I
made convulsive struggles and awoke.

"The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey
light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds. I sat up,
and for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with
its counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heap of quilts and
cushions, its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came
back to me, I heard voices in conversation.

"Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department
which had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching. I
scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and
even as I did so the sound of my movement made them aware of me. I
suppose they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away.
'Who's that?' cried one, and 'Stop, there!' shouted the other. I
dashed around a corner and came full tilt--a faceless figure,
mind you!--on a lanky lad of fifteen. He yelled and I bowled him
over, rushed past him, turned another corner, and by a happy
inspiration threw myself behind a counter. In another moment feet
went running past and I heard voices shouting, 'All hands to the
doors!' asking what was 'up,' and giving one another advice how to
catch me.

"Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits. But--odd as
it may seem--it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my
clothes as I should have done. I had made up my mind, I suppose, to
get away in them, and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the
counters came a bawling of 'Here he is!'

"I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it
whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another
round a corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He
kept his footing, gave a view hallo, and came up the staircase hot
after me. Up the staircase were piled a multitude of those
bright-coloured pot things--what are they?"

"Art pots," suggested Kemp.

"That's it! Art pots. Well, I turned at the top step and swung
round, plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head
as he came at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard
shouting and footsteps running from all parts. I made a mad rush
for the refreshment place, and there was a man in white like a man
cook, who took up the chase. I made one last desperate turn and
found myself among lamps and ironmongery. I went behind the counter
of this, and waited for my cook, and as he bolted in at the head of
the chase, I doubled him up with a lamp. Down he went, and I
crouched down behind the counter and began whipping off my clothes
as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers, shoes were all right,
but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin. I heard more men
coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the counter,
stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another dash for
it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile.

"'This way, policeman!' I heard someone shouting. I found myself in
my bedstead storeroom again, and at the end of a wilderness of
wardrobes. I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after
infinite wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared,
as the policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner.
They made a rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers.
'He's dropping his plunder,' said one of the young men. 'He _must_
be somewhere here.'

"But they did not find me all the same.

"I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my
ill-luck in losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment-room,
drank a little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to
consider my position.

"In a little while two assistants came in and began to talk over
the business very excitedly and like the fools they were. I heard a
magnified account of my depredations, and other speculations as to
my whereabouts. Then I fell to scheming again. The insurmountable
difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get
any plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if
there was any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I
could not understand the system of checking. About eleven o'clock,
the snow having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a
little warmer than the previous one, I decided that the Emporium
was hopeless, and went out again, exasperated at my want of
success, with only the vaguest plans of action in my mind."



CHAPTER XXIII

IN DRURY LANE


"But you begin now to realise," said the Invisible Man, "the full
disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter--no covering--to
get clothing was to forego all my advantage, to make myself a
strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill
myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely
visible again."

"I never thought of that," said Kemp.

"Nor had I. And the snow had warned me of other dangers. I could not
go abroad in snow--it would settle on me and expose me. Rain, too,
would make me a watery outline, a glistening surface of a man--a
bubble. And fog--I should be like a fainter bubble in a fog,
a surface, a greasy glimmer of humanity. Moreover, as I went
abroad--in the London air--I gathered dirt about my ankles, floating
smuts and dust upon my skin. I did not know how long it would be
before I should become visible from that cause also. But I saw
clearly it could not be for long.

"Not in London at any rate.

"I went into the slums towards Great Portland Street, and found
myself at the end of the street in which I had lodged. I did not
go that way, because of the crowd halfway down it opposite to the
still smoking ruins of the house I had fired. My most immediate
problem was to get clothing. What to do with my face puzzled me.
Then I saw in one of those little miscellaneous shops--news,
sweets, toys, stationery, belated Christmas tomfoolery, and so
forth--an array of masks and noses. I realised that problem was
solved. In a flash I saw my course. I turned about, no longer
aimless, and went--circuitously in order to avoid the busy ways,
towards the back streets north of the Strand; for I remembered,
though not very distinctly where, that some theatrical costumiers
had shops in that district.

"The day was cold, with a nipping wind down the northward running
streets. I walked fast to avoid being overtaken. Every crossing was
a danger, every passenger a thing to watch alertly. One man as I
was about to pass him at the top of Bedford Street, turned upon
me abruptly and came into me, sending me into the road and almost
under the wheel of a passing hansom. The verdict of the cab-rank
was that he had had some sort of stroke. I was so unnerved by this
encounter that I went into Covent Garden Market and sat down for
some time in a quiet corner by a stall of violets, panting and
trembling. I found I had caught a fresh cold, and had to turn out
after a time lest my sneezes should attract attention.

"At last I reached the object of my quest, a dirty, fly-blown little
shop in a by-way near Drury Lane, with a window full of tinsel
robes, sham jewels, wigs, slippers, dominoes and theatrical
photographs. The shop was old-fashioned and low and dark, and the
house rose above it for four storeys, dark and dismal. I peered
through the window and, seeing no one within, entered. The opening
of the door set a clanking bell ringing. I left it open, and walked
round a bare costume stand, into a corner behind a cheval glass. For
a minute or so no one came. Then I heard heavy feet striding across
a room, and a man appeared down the shop.

"My plans were now perfectly definite. I proposed to make my way
into the house, secrete myself upstairs, watch my opportunity, and
when everything was quiet, rummage out a wig, mask, spectacles, and
costume, and go into the world, perhaps a grotesque but still a
credible figure. And incidentally of course I could rob the house
of any available money.

"The man who had just entered the shop was a short, slight,
hunched, beetle-browed man, with long arms and very short bandy
legs. Apparently I had interrupted a meal. He stared about the shop
with an expression of expectation. This gave way to surprise, and
then to anger, as he saw the shop empty. 'Damn the boys!' he said.
He went to stare up and down the street. He came in again in a
minute, kicked the door to with his foot spitefully, and went
muttering back to the house door.

"I came forward to follow him, and at the noise of my movement he
stopped dead. I did so too, startled by his quickness of ear. He
slammed the house door in my face.

"I stood hesitating. Suddenly I heard his quick footsteps returning,
and the door reopened. He stood looking about the shop like one who
was still not satisfied. Then, murmuring to himself, he examined the
back of the counter and peered behind some fixtures. Then he stood
doubtful. He had left the house door open and I slipped into the
inner room.

"It was a queer little room, poorly furnished and with a number of
big masks in the corner. On the table was his belated breakfast,
and it was a confoundedly exasperating thing for me, Kemp, to have
to sniff his coffee and stand watching while he came in and resumed
his meal. And his table manners were irritating. Three doors opened
into the little room, one going upstairs and one down, but they
were all shut. I could not get out of the room while he was there;
I could scarcely move because of his alertness, and there was a
draught down my back. Twice I strangled a sneeze just in time.

"The spectacular quality of my sensations was curious and novel, but
for all that I was heartily tired and angry long before he had done
his eating. But at last he made an end and putting his beggarly
crockery on the black tin tray upon which he had had his teapot, and
gathering all the crumbs up on the mustard stained cloth, he took
the whole lot of things after him. His burden prevented his shutting
the door behind him--as he would have done; I never saw such a man
for shutting doors--and I followed him into a very dirty underground
kitchen and scullery. I had the pleasure of seeing him begin to wash
up, and then, finding no good in keeping down there, and the brick
floor being cold on my feet, I returned upstairs and sat in his
chair by the fire. It was burning low, and scarcely thinking, I put
on a little coal. The noise of this brought him up at once, and
he stood aglare. He peered about the room and was within an ace
of touching me. Even after that examination, he scarcely seemed
satisfied. He stopped in the doorway and took a final inspection
before he went down.

"I waited in the little parlour for an age, and at last he came up
and opened the upstairs door. I just managed to get by him.

"On the staircase he stopped suddenly, so that I very nearly
blundered into him. He stood looking back right into my face and
listening. 'I could have sworn,' he said. His long hairy hand
pulled at his lower lip. His eye went up and down the staircase.
Then he grunted and went on up again.

"His hand was on the handle of a door, and then he stopped again
with the same puzzled anger on his face. He was becoming aware of
the faint sounds of my movements about him. The man must have had
diabolically acute hearing. He suddenly flashed into rage. 'If
there's anyone in this house--' he cried with an oath, and left the
threat unfinished. He put his hand in his pocket, failed to find
what he wanted, and rushing past me went blundering noisily and
pugnaciously downstairs. But I did not follow him. I sat on the
head of the staircase until his return.

"Presently he came up again, still muttering. He opened the door of
the room, and before I could enter, slammed it in my face.

"I resolved to explore the house, and spent some time in doing so
as noiselessly as possible. The house was very old and tumble-down,
damp so that the paper in the attics was peeling from the walls, and
rat infested. Some of the door handles were stiff and I was afraid
to turn them. Several rooms I did inspect were unfurnished, and
others were littered with theatrical lumber, bought second-hand, I
judged, from its appearance. In one room next to his I found a lot
of old clothes. I began routing among these, and in my eagerness
forgot again the evident sharpness of his ears. I heard a stealthy
footstep and, looking up just in time, saw him peering in at the
tumbled heap and holding an old-fashioned revolver in his hand.
I stood perfectly still while he stared about open-mouthed and
suspicious. 'It must have been her,' he said slowly. 'Damn her!'

"He shut the door quietly, and immediately I heard the key turn in
the lock. Then his footsteps retreated. I realised abruptly that I
was locked in. For a minute I did not know what to do. I walked
from door to window and back, and stood perplexed. A gust of anger
came upon me. But I decided to inspect the clothes before I did
anything further, and my first attempt brought down a pile from an
upper shelf. This brought him back, more sinister than ever. That
time he actually touched me, jumped back with amazement and stood
astonished in the middle of the room.

"Presently he calmed a little. 'Rats,' he said in an undertone,
fingers on lips. He was evidently a little scared. I edged quietly
out of the room, but a plank creaked. Then the infernal little brute
started going all over the house, revolver in hand and locking door
after door and pocketing the keys. When I realised what he was up to
I had a fit of rage--I could hardly control myself sufficiently to
watch my opportunity. By this time I knew he was alone in the house,
and so I made no more ado, but knocked him on the head."

"Knocked him on the head?" exclaimed Kemp.

"Yes--stunned him--as he was going downstairs. Hit him from
behind with a stool that stood on the landing. He went downstairs
like a bag of old boots."

"But--I say! The common conventions of humanity--"

"Are all very well for common people. But the point was, Kemp, that
I had to get out of that house in a disguise without his seeing me.
I couldn't think of any other way of doing it. And then I gagged
him with a Louis Quatorze vest and tied him up in a sheet."

"Tied him up in a sheet!"

"Made a sort of bag of it. It was rather a good idea to keep the
idiot scared and quiet, and a devilish hard thing to get out
of--head away from the string. My dear Kemp, it's no good your
sitting glaring as though I was a murderer. It had to be done. He
had his revolver. If once he saw me he would be able to describe
me--"

"But still," said Kemp, "in England--to-day. And the man was in
his own house, and you were--well, robbing."

"Robbing! Confound it! You'll call me a thief next! Surely, Kemp,
you're not fool enough to dance on the old strings. Can't you see
my position?"

"And his too," said Kemp.

The Invisible Man stood up sharply. "What do you mean to say?"

Kemp's face grew a trifle hard. He was about to speak and checked
himself. "I suppose, after all," he said with a sudden change of
manner, "the thing had to be done. You were in a fix. But still--"

"Of course I was in a fix--an infernal fix. And he made me wild
too--hunting me about the house, fooling about with his revolver,
locking and unlocking doors. He was simply exasperating. You don't
blame me, do you? You don't blame me?"

"I never blame anyone," said Kemp. "It's quite out of fashion. What
did you do next?"

"I was hungry. Downstairs I found a loaf and some rank cheese--more
than sufficient to satisfy my hunger. I took some brandy and
water, and then went up past my impromptu bag--he was lying quite
still--to the room containing the old clothes. This looked out
upon the street, two lace curtains brown with dirt guarding the
window. I went and peered out through their interstices. Outside
the day was bright--by contrast with the brown shadows of the
dismal house in which I found myself, dazzlingly bright. A brisk
traffic was going by, fruit carts, a hansom, a four-wheeler with a
pile of boxes, a fishmonger's cart. I turned with spots of colour
swimming before my eyes to the shadowy fixtures behind me. My
excitement was giving place to a clear apprehension of my position
again. The room was full of a faint scent of benzoline, used, I
suppose, in cleaning the garments.

"I began a systematic search of the place. I should judge the
hunchback had been alone in the house for some time. He was a
curious person. Everything that could possibly be of service to me
I collected in the clothes storeroom, and then I made a deliberate
selection. I found a handbag I thought a suitable possession, and
some powder, rouge, and sticking-plaster.

"I had thought of painting and powdering my face and all that
there was to show of me, in order to render myself visible, but
the disadvantage of this lay in the fact that I should require
turpentine and other appliances and a considerable amount of time
before I could vanish again. Finally I chose a mask of the better
type, slightly grotesque but not more so than many human beings,
dark glasses, greyish whiskers, and a wig. I could find no
underclothing, but that I could buy subsequently, and for the time I
swathed myself in calico dominoes and some white cashmere scarfs. I
could find no socks, but the hunchback's boots were rather a loose
fit and sufficed. In a desk in the shop were three sovereigns and
about thirty shillings' worth of silver, and in a locked cupboard I
burst in the inner room were eight pounds in gold. I could go forth
into the world again, equipped.

"Then came a curious hesitation. Was my appearance really
credible? I tried myself with a little bedroom looking-glass,
inspecting myself from every point of view to discover any
forgotten chink, but it all seemed sound. I was grotesque to the
theatrical pitch, a stage miser, but I was certainly not a physical
impossibility. Gathering confidence, I took my looking-glass down
into the shop, pulled down the shop blinds, and surveyed myself
from every point of view with the help of the cheval glass in the
corner.

"I spent some minutes screwing up my courage and then unlocked the
shop door and marched out into the street, leaving the little man
to get out of his sheet again when he liked. In five minutes a
dozen turnings intervened between me and the costumier's shop. No
one appeared to notice me very pointedly. My last difficulty seemed
overcome."

He stopped again.

"And you troubled no more about the hunchback?" said Kemp.

"No," said the Invisible Man. "Nor have I heard what became of him.
I suppose he untied himself or kicked himself out. The knots were
pretty tight."

He became silent and went to the window and stared out.

"What happened when you went out into the Strand?"

"Oh!--disillusionment again. I thought my troubles were over.
Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose,
everything--save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I
did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had
merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold
me. I could take my money where I found it. I decided to treat
myself to a sumptuous feast, and then put up at a good hotel, and
accumulate a new outfit of property. I felt amazingly confident;
it's not particularly pleasant recalling that I was an ass. I went
into a place and was already ordering lunch, when it occurred to me
that I could not eat unless I exposed my invisible face. I finished
ordering the lunch, told the man I should be back in ten minutes,
and went out exasperated. I don't know if you have ever been
disappointed in your appetite."

"Not quite so badly," said Kemp, "but I can imagine it."

"I could have smashed the silly devils. At last, faint with the
desire for tasteful food, I went into another place and demanded a
private room. 'I am disfigured,' I said. 'Badly.' They looked at
me curiously, but of course it was not their affair--and so at
last I got my lunch. It was not particularly well served, but it
sufficed; and when I had had it, I sat over a cigar, trying to plan
my line of action. And outside a snowstorm was beginning.

"The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realised what a
helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was--in a cold and dirty
climate and a crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad
experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon
it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things
a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible
to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they
are got. Ambition--what is the good of pride of place when you
cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when
her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste for politics, for
the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was
I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed
and bandaged caricature of a man!"

He paused, and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the
window.

"But how did you get to Iping?" said Kemp, anxious to keep his
guest busy talking.

"I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have
it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of getting back! Of
restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I
mean to do invisibly. And that is what I chiefly want to talk to
you about now."

"You went straight to Iping?"

"Yes. I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my
cheque-book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of
chemicals to work out this idea of mine--I will show you the
calculations as soon as I get my books--and then I started. Jove!
I remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother it was to
keep the snow from damping my pasteboard nose."

"At the end," said Kemp, "the day before yesterday, when they found
you out, you rather--to judge by the papers--"

"I did. Rather. Did I kill that fool of a constable?"

"No," said Kemp. "He's expected to recover."

"That's his luck, then. I clean lost my temper, the fools! Why
couldn't they leave me alone? And that grocer lout?"

"There are no deaths expected," said Kemp.

"I don't know about that tramp of mine," said the Invisible Man,
with an unpleasant laugh.

"By Heaven, Kemp, you don't know what rage _is_! ... To have worked
for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get some
fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! ... Every
conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has
been sent to cross me.

"If I have much more of it, I shall go wild--I shall start
mowing 'em.

"As it is, they've made things a thousand times more difficult."

"No doubt it's exasperating," said Kemp, drily.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE PLAN THAT FAILED


"But now," said Kemp, with a side glance out of the window, "what
are we to do?"

He moved nearer his guest as he spoke in such a manner as to
prevent the possibility of a sudden glimpse of the three men who
were advancing up the hill road--with an intolerable slowness, as
it seemed to Kemp.

"What were you planning to do when you were heading for Port
Burdock? _Had_ you any plan?"

"I was going to clear out of the country. But I have altered that
plan rather since seeing you. I thought it would be wise, now the
weather is hot and invisibility possible, to make for the South.
Especially as my secret was known, and everyone would be on the
lookout for a masked and muffled man. You have a line of steamers
from here to France. My idea was to get aboard one and run the
risks of the passage. Thence I could go by train into Spain, or else
get to Algiers. It would not be difficult. There a man might always
be invisible--and yet live. And do things. I was using that tramp
as a money box and luggage carrier, until I decided how to get my
books and things sent over to meet me."

"That's clear."

"And then the filthy brute must needs try and rob me! He _has_ hidden
my books, Kemp. Hidden my books! If I can lay my hands on him!"

"Best plan to get the books out of him first."

"But where is he? Do you know?"

"He's in the town police station, locked up, by his own request, in
the strongest cell in the place."

"Cur!" said the Invisible Man.

"But that hangs up your plans a little."

"We must get those books; those books are vital."

"Certainly," said Kemp, a little nervously, wondering if he heard
footsteps outside. "Certainly we must get those books. But that
won't be difficult, if he doesn't know they're for you."

"No," said the Invisible Man, and thought.

Kemp tried to think of something to keep the talk going, but the
Invisible Man resumed of his own accord.

"Blundering into your house, Kemp," he said, "changes all my plans.
For you are a man that can understand. In spite of all that has
happened, in spite of this publicity, of the loss of my books, of
what I have suffered, there still remain great possibilities, huge
possibilities--"

"You have told no one I am here?" he asked abruptly.

Kemp hesitated. "That was implied," he said.

"No one?" insisted Griffin.

"Not a soul."

"Ah! Now--" The Invisible Man stood up, and sticking his arms akimbo
began to pace the study.

"I made a mistake, Kemp, a huge mistake, in carrying this thing
through alone. I have wasted strength, time, opportunities. Alone--it
is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little,
to hurt a little, and there is the end.

"What I want, Kemp, is a goal-keeper, a helper, and a hiding-place,
an arrangement whereby I can sleep and eat and rest in peace, and
unsuspected. I must have a confederate. With a confederate, with
food and rest--a thousand things are possible.

"Hitherto I have gone on vague lines. We have to consider all that
invisibility means, all that it does not mean. It means little
advantage for eavesdropping and so forth--one makes sounds. It's
of little help--a little help perhaps--in housebreaking and so
forth. Once you've caught me you could easily imprison me. But on
the other hand I am hard to catch. This invisibility, in fact, is
only good in two cases: It's useful in getting away, it's useful in
approaching. It's particularly useful, therefore, in killing. I can
walk round a man, whatever weapon he has, choose my point, strike
as I like. Dodge as I like. Escape as I like."

Kemp's hand went to his moustache. Was that a movement
downstairs?

"And it is killing we must do, Kemp."

"It is killing we must do," repeated Kemp. "I'm listening to your
plan, Griffin, but I'm not agreeing, mind. _Why_ killing?"

"Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they
know there is an Invisible Man--as well as we know there is an
Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a
Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt it's startling. But I mean it. A
Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and
terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that
in a thousand ways--scraps of paper thrust under doors would
suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill
all who would defend them."

"Humph!" said Kemp, no longer listening to Griffin but to the sound
of his front door opening and closing.

"It seems to me, Griffin," he said, to cover his wandering
attention, "that your confederate would be in a difficult
position."

"No one would know he was a confederate," said the Invisible Man,
eagerly. And then suddenly, "Hush! What's that downstairs?"

"Nothing," said Kemp, and suddenly began to speak loud and fast.
"I don't agree to this, Griffin," he said. "Understand me, I don't
agree to this. Why dream of playing a game against the race? How
can you hope to gain happiness? Don't be a lone wolf. Publish
your results; take the world--take the nation at least--into your
confidence. Think what you might do with a million helpers--"

The Invisible Man interrupted--arm extended. "There are
footsteps coming upstairs," he said in a low voice.

"Nonsense," said Kemp.

"Let me see," said the Invisible Man, and advanced, arm extended,
to the door.

And then things happened very swiftly. Kemp hesitated for a second
and then moved to intercept him. The Invisible Man started and stood
still. "Traitor!" cried the Voice, and suddenly the dressing-gown
opened, and sitting down the Unseen began to disrobe. Kemp made
three swift steps to the door, and forthwith the Invisible Man--his
legs had vanished--sprang to his feet with a shout. Kemp flung the
door open.

As it opened, there came a sound of hurrying feet downstairs and
voices.

With a quick movement Kemp thrust the Invisible Man back, sprang
aside, and slammed the door. The key was outside and ready. In
another moment Griffin would have been alone in the belvedere
study, a prisoner. Save for one little thing. The key had been
slipped in hastily that morning. As Kemp slammed the door it fell
noisily upon the carpet.

Kemp's face became white. He tried to grip the door handle with
both hands. For a moment he stood lugging. Then the door gave six
inches. But he got it closed again. The second time it was jerked a
foot wide, and the dressing-gown came wedging itself into the
opening. His throat was gripped by invisible fingers, and he left
his hold on the handle to defend himself. He was forced back,
tripped and pitched heavily into the corner of the landing. The
empty dressing-gown was flung on the top of him.

Halfway up the staircase was Colonel Adye, the recipient of Kemp's
letter, the chief of the Burdock police. He was staring aghast at
the sudden appearance of Kemp, followed by the extraordinary sight
of clothing tossing empty in the air. He saw Kemp felled, and
struggling to his feet. He saw him rush forward, and go down again,
felled like an ox.

Then suddenly he was struck violently. By nothing! A vast weight,
it seemed, leapt upon him, and he was hurled headlong down the
staircase, with a grip on his throat and a knee in his groin. An
invisible foot trod on his back, a ghostly patter passed downstairs,
he heard the two police officers in the hall shout and run, and the
front door of the house slammed violently.

He rolled over and sat up staring. He saw, staggering down the
staircase, Kemp, dusty and disheveled, one side of his face white
from a blow, his lip bleeding, and a pink dressing-gown and some
underclothing held in his arms.

"My God!" cried Kemp, "the game's up! He's gone!"



CHAPTER XXV

THE HUNTING OF THE INVISIBLE MAN


For a space Kemp was too inarticulate to make Adye understand the
swift things that had just happened. They stood on the landing,
Kemp speaking swiftly, the grotesque swathings of Griffin still on
his arm. But presently Adye began to grasp something of the
situation.

"He is mad," said Kemp; "inhuman. He is pure selfishness. He thinks
of nothing but his own advantage, his own safety. I have listened
to such a story this morning of brutal self-seeking.... He has wounded
men. He will kill them unless we can prevent him. He will create a
panic. Nothing can stop him. He is going out now--furious!"

"He must be caught," said Adye. "That is certain."

"But how?" cried Kemp, and suddenly became full of ideas. "You must
begin at once. You must set every available man to work; you must
prevent his leaving this district. Once he gets away, he may go
through the countryside as he wills, killing and maiming. He dreams
of a reign of terror! A reign of terror, I tell you. You must set a
watch on trains and roads and shipping. The garrison must help. You
must wire for help. The only thing that may keep him here is the
thought of recovering some books of notes he counts of value. I will
tell you of that! There is a man in your police station--Marvel."

"I know," said Adye, "I know. Those books--yes. But the tramp...."

"Says he hasn't them. But he thinks the tramp has. And you must
prevent him from eating or sleeping; day and night the country must
be astir for him. Food must be locked up and secured, all food, so
that he will have to break his way to it. The houses everywhere must
be barred against him. Heaven send us cold nights and rain! The
whole country-side must begin hunting and keep hunting. I tell you,
Adye, he is a danger, a disaster; unless he is pinned and secured,
it is frightful to think of the things that may happen."

"What else can we do?" said Adye. "I must go down at once and begin
organising. But why not come? Yes--you come too! Come, and we
must hold a sort of council of war--get Hopps to help--and the
railway managers. By Jove! it's urgent. Come along--tell me as we
go. What else is there we can do? Put that stuff down."

In another moment Adye was leading the way downstairs. They found
the front door open and the policemen standing outside staring at
empty air. "He's got away, sir," said one.

"We must go to the central station at once," said Adye. "One of you
go on down and get a cab to come up and meet us--quickly. And
now, Kemp, what else?"

"Dogs," said Kemp. "Get dogs. They don't see him, but they wind
him. Get dogs."

"Good," said Adye. "It's not generally known, but the prison
officials over at Halstead know a man with bloodhounds. Dogs. What
else?"

"Bear in mind," said Kemp, "his food shows. After eating, his food
shows until it is assimilated. So that he has to hide after eating.
You must keep on beating. Every thicket, every quiet corner. And
put all weapons--all implements that might be weapons, away. He
can't carry such things for long. And what he can snatch up and
strike men with must be hidden away."

"Good again," said Adye. "We shall have him yet!"

"And on the roads," said Kemp, and hesitated.

"Yes?" said Adye.

"Powdered glass," said Kemp. "It's cruel, I know. But think of what
he may do!"

Adye drew the air in sharply between his teeth. "It's
unsportsmanlike. I don't know. But I'll have powdered glass got
ready. If he goes too far...."

"The man's become inhuman, I tell you," said Kemp. "I am as sure he
will establish a reign of terror--so soon as he has got over the
emotions of this escape--as I am sure I am talking to you. Our
only chance is to be ahead. He has cut himself off from his kind.
His blood be upon his own head."



CHAPTER XXVI

THE WICKSTEED MURDER


The Invisible Man seems to have rushed out of Kemp's house in a
state of blind fury. A little child playing near Kemp's gateway was
violently caught up and thrown aside, so that its ankle was broken,
and thereafter for some hours the Invisible Man passed out of human
perceptions. No one knows where he went nor what he did. But one
can imagine him hurrying through the hot June forenoon, up the
hill and on to the open downland behind Port Burdock, raging and
despairing at his intolerable fate, and sheltering at last, heated
and weary, amid the thickets of Hintondean, to piece together again
his shattered schemes against his species. That seems to most
probable refuge for him, for there it was he re-asserted himself in
a grimly tragical manner about two in the afternoon.

One wonders what his state of mind may have been during that time,
and what plans he devised. No doubt he was almost ecstatically
exasperated by Kemp's treachery, and though we may be able to
understand the motives that led to that deceit, we may still
imagine and even sympathise a little with the fury the attempted
surprise must have occasioned. Perhaps something of the stunned
astonishment of his Oxford Street experiences may have returned to
him, for he had evidently counted on Kemp's co-operation in his
brutal dream of a terrorised world. At any rate he vanished from
human ken about midday, and no living witness can tell what he did
until about half-past two. It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, for
humanity, but for him it was a fatal inaction.

During that time a growing multitude of men scattered over the
countryside were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a
legend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp's
drily worded proclamation, he was presented as a tangible
antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the
countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity.
By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of
the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became
impossible. Every passenger train along the lines on a great
parallelogram between Southampton, Manchester, Brighton and Horsham,
travelled with locked doors, and the goods traffic was almost
entirely suspended. And in a great circle of twenty miles round Port
Burdock, men armed with guns and bludgeons were presently setting
out in groups of three and four, with dogs, to beat the roads and
fields.

Mounted policemen rode along the country lanes, stopping at every
cottage and warning the people to lock up their houses, and keep
indoors unless they were armed, and all the elementary schools had
broken up by three o'clock, and the children, scared and keeping
together in groups, were hurrying home. Kemp's proclamation--signed
indeed by Adye--was posted over almost the whole district by four or
five o'clock in the afternoon. It gave briefly but clearly all the
conditions of the struggle, the necessity of keeping the Invisible
Man from food and sleep, the necessity for incessant watchfulness
and for a prompt attention to any evidence of his movements. And
so swift and decided was the action of the authorities, so prompt
and universal was the belief in this strange being, that before
nightfall an area of several hundred square miles was in a stringent
state of siege. And before nightfall, too, a thrill of horror
went through the whole watching nervous countryside. Going from
whispering mouth to mouth, swift and certain over the length and
breadth of the country, passed the story of the murder of Mr.
Wicksteed.

If our supposition that the Invisible Man's refuge was the
Hintondean thickets, then we must suppose that in the early
afternoon he sallied out again bent upon some project that involved
the use of a weapon. We cannot know what the project was, but the
evidence that he had the iron rod in hand before he met Wicksteed
is to me at least overwhelming.

Of course we can know nothing of the details of that encounter.
It occurred on the edge of a gravel pit, not two hundred yards
from Lord Burdock's lodge gate. Everything points to a desperate
struggle--the trampled ground, the numerous wounds Mr. Wicksteed
received, his splintered walking-stick; but why the attack was made,
save in a murderous frenzy, it is impossible to imagine. Indeed the
theory of madness is almost unavoidable. Mr. Wicksteed was a man of
forty-five or forty-six, steward to Lord Burdock, of inoffensive
habits and appearance, the very last person in the world to provoke
such a terrible antagonist. Against him it would seem the Invisible
Man used an iron rod dragged from a broken piece of fence. He
stopped this quiet man, going quietly home to his midday meal,
attacked him, beat down his feeble defences, broke his arm, felled
him, and smashed his head to a jelly.

Of course, he must have dragged this rod out of the fencing before
he met his victim--he must have been carrying it ready in his hand.
Only two details beyond what has already been stated seem to bear
on the matter. One is the circumstance that the gravel pit was not
in Mr. Wicksteed's direct path home, but nearly a couple of hundred
yards out of his way. The other is the assertion of a little girl
to the effect that, going to her afternoon school, she saw the
murdered man "trotting" in a peculiar manner across a field towards
the gravel pit. Her pantomime of his action suggests a man pursuing
something on the ground before him and striking at it ever and
again with his walking-stick. She was the last person to see him
alive. He passed out of her sight to his death, the struggle being
hidden from her only by a clump of beech trees and a slight
depression in the ground.

Now this, to the present writer's mind at least, lifts the murder
out of the realm of the absolutely wanton. We may imagine that
Griffin had taken the rod as a weapon indeed, but without any
deliberate intention of using it in murder. Wicksteed may then have
come by and noticed this rod inexplicably moving through the air.
Without any thought of the Invisible Man--for Port Burdock is ten
miles away--he may have pursued it. It is quite conceivable that
he may not even have heard of the Invisible Man. One can then
imagine the Invisible Man making off--quietly in order to avoid
discovering his presence in the neighbourhood, and Wicksteed,
excited and curious, pursuing this unaccountably locomotive
object--finally striking at it.

No doubt the Invisible Man could easily have distanced his
middle-aged pursuer under ordinary circumstances, but the position
in which Wicksteed's body was found suggests that he had the
ill luck to drive his quarry into a corner between a drift of
stinging nettles and the gravel pit. To those who appreciate the
extraordinary irascibility of the Invisible Man, the rest of the
encounter will be easy to imagine.

But this is pure hypothesis. The only undeniable facts--for stories
of children are often unreliable--are the discovery of Wicksteed's
body, done to death, and of the blood-stained iron rod flung among
the nettles. The abandonment of the rod by Griffin, suggests that
in the emotional excitement of the affair, the purpose for which
he took it--if he had a purpose--was abandoned. He was certainly
an intensely egotistical and unfeeling man, but the sight of his
victim, his first victim, bloody and pitiful at his feet, may have
released some long pent fountain of remorse which for a time may
have flooded whatever scheme of action he had contrived.

After the murder of Mr. Wicksteed, he would seem to have struck
across the country towards the downland. There is a story of a
voice heard about sunset by a couple of men in a field near Fern
Bottom. It was wailing and laughing, sobbing and groaning, and ever
and again it shouted. It must have been queer hearing. It drove up
across the middle of a clover field and died away towards the
hills.

That afternoon the Invisible Man must have learnt something of
the rapid use Kemp had made of his confidences. He must have
found houses locked and secured; he may have loitered about
railway stations and prowled about inns, and no doubt he read the
proclamations and realised something of the nature of the campaign
against him. And as the evening advanced, the fields became dotted
here and there with groups of three or four men, and noisy with the
yelping of dogs. These men-hunters had particular instructions in
the case of an encounter as to the way they should support one
another. But he avoided them all. We may understand something of
his exasperation, and it could have been none the less because
he himself had supplied the information that was being used so
remorselessly against him. For that day at least he lost heart; for
nearly twenty-four hours, save when he turned on Wicksteed, he was
a hunted man. In the night, he must have eaten and slept; for in
the morning he was himself again, active, powerful, angry, and
malignant, prepared for his last great struggle against the world.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE SIEGE OF KEMP'S HOUSE


Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of
paper.

"You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran,
"though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are
against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to
rob me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I
have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The
game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the
Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock
is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and
the rest of them; it is under me--the Terror! This is day one of
year one of the new epoch--the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am
Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The
first day there will be one execution for the sake of example--a
man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself
away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour
if he likes--Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take
precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the
pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes
along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my
people, lest Death fall upon you also. To-day Kemp is to die."

Kemp read this letter twice, "It's no hoax," he said. "That's
his voice! And he means it."

He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it
the postmark Hintondean, and the prosaic detail "2d. to pay."

He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished--the letter had
come by the one o'clock post--and went into his study. He rang
for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once,
examine all the fastenings of the windows, and close all the
shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself. From a
locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it
carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. He
wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel Adye, gave them to
his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of
leaving the house. "There is no danger," he said, and added a
mental reservation, "to you." He remained meditative for a space
after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch.

He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply.
"We will have him!" he said; "and I am the bait. He will come too
far."

He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after
him. "It's a game," he said, "an odd game--but the chances are
all for me, Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin
_contra mundum_ ... with a vengeance."

He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. "He must get
food every day--and I don't envy him. Did he really sleep last
night? Out in the open somewhere--secure from collisions. I wish
we could get some good cold wet weather instead of the heat.

"He may be watching me now."

He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the
brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently back.

"I'm getting nervous," said Kemp. But it was five minutes before he
went to the window again. "It must have been a sparrow," he said.

Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried
downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain,
put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself. A
familiar voice hailed him. It was Adye.

"Your servant's been assaulted, Kemp," he said round the door.

"What!" exclaimed Kemp.

"Had that note of yours taken away from her. He's close about here.
Let me in."

Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered through as narrow an
opening as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite
relief at Kemp refastening the door. "Note was snatched out of her
hand. Scared her horribly. She's down at the station. Hysterics.
He's close here. What was it about?"

Kemp swore.

"What a fool I was," said Kemp. "I might have known. It's not an
hour's walk from Hintondean. Already?"

"What's up?" said Adye.

"Look here!" said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed
Adye the Invisible Man's letter. Adye read it and whistled softly.
"And you--?" said Adye.

"Proposed a trap--like a fool," said Kemp, "and sent my proposal
out by a maid servant. To him."

Adye followed Kemp's profanity.

"He'll clear out," said Adye.

"Not he," said Kemp.

A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adye had a silvery
glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp's pocket. "It's a
window, upstairs!" said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a
second smash while they were still on the staircase. When they
reached the study they found two of the three windows smashed,
half the room littered with splintered glass, and one big flint
lying on the writing table. The two men stopped in the doorway,
contemplating the wreckage. Kemp swore again, and as he did so the
third window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a
moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room.

"What's this for?" said Adye.

"It's a beginning," said Kemp.

"There's no way of climbing up here?"

"Not for a cat," said Kemp.

"No shutters?"

"Not here. All the downstairs rooms--Hullo!"

Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs.
"Confound him!" said Kemp. "That must be--yes--it's one of the
bedrooms. He's going to do all the house. But he's a fool. The
shutters are up, and the glass will fall outside. He'll cut his
feet."

Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the
landing perplexed. "I have it!" said Adye. "Let me have a stick or
something, and I'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds
put on. That ought to settle him! They're hard by--not ten
minutes--"

Another window went the way of its fellows.

"You haven't a revolver?" asked Adye.

Kemp's hand went to his pocket. Then he hesitated. "I haven't
one--at least to spare."

"I'll bring it back," said Adye, "you'll be safe here."

Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from truthfulness, handed him
the weapon.

"Now for the door," said Adye.

As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the
first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door
and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a
little paler than usual. "You must step straight out," said Kemp. In
another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping
back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more
comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright
and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached the
gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something
moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead
and his hand tightened on the revolver.

"Well?" said Adye, white and grim, and every nerve tense.

"Oblige me by going back to the house," said the Voice, as tense
and grim as Adye's.

"Sorry," said Adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with
his tongue. The Voice was on his left front, he thought. Suppose he
were to take his luck with a shot?

"What are you going for?" said the Voice, and there was a quick
movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of
Adye's pocket.

Adye desisted and thought. "Where I go," he said slowly, "is my own
business." The words were still on his lips, when an arm came round
his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He
drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was
struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. He made
a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell
back. "Damn!" said Adye. The Voice laughed. "I'd kill you now if it
wasn't the waste of a bullet," it said. He saw the revolver in
mid-air, six feet off, covering him.

"Well?" said Adye, sitting up.

"Get up," said the Voice.

Adye stood up.

"Attention," said the Voice, and then fiercely, "Don't try any
games. Remember I can see your face if you can't see mine. You've
got to go back to the house."

"He won't let me in," said Adye.

"That's a pity," said the Invisible Man. "I've got no quarrel with
you."

Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of
the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the
midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and
the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very
sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging
between heaven and earth, six yards away. "What am I to do?" he
said sullenly.

"What am _I_ to do?" asked the Invisible Man. "You will get help. The
only thing is for you to go back."

"I will try. If he lets me in will you promise not to rush the
door?"

"I've got no quarrel with you," said the Voice.

Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching
among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the
study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen.
"Why doesn't he fire?" whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver
moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp's
eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the
blinding beam.

"Surely!" he said, "Adye has given up the revolver."

"Promise not to rush the door," Adye was saying. "Don't push a
winning game too far. Give a man a chance."

"You go back to the house. I tell you flatly I will not promise
anything."

Adye's decision seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house,
walking slowly with his hands behind him. Kemp watched him--puzzled.
The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again,
and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object
following Adye. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt
backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it,
threw up his hands and fell forward on his face, leaving a little
puff of blue in the air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot.
Adye writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell forward, and lay
still.

For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of
Adye's attitude. The afternoon was very hot and still, nothing
seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies
chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and the
road gate. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all
the villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green
summer-house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. Kemp
scrutinised the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the
revolver, but it had vanished. His eyes came back to Adye. The game
was opening well.

Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at
last tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp's instructions the servants
had locked themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a
silence. Kemp sat listening and then began peering cautiously out
of the three windows, one after another. He went to the staircase
head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his
bedroom poker, and went to examine the interior fastenings of the
ground-floor windows again. Everything was safe and quiet. He
returned to the belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the
gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by the villas
were the housemaid and two policemen.

Everything was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in
approaching. He wondered what his antagonist was doing.

He started. There was a smash from below. He hesitated and went
downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and
the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang
of the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and
opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split and
splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame,
save for one crossbar, was still intact, but only little teeth of
glass remained in the frame. The shutters had been driven in with
an axe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the
window frame and the iron bars defending it. Then suddenly it leapt
aside and vanished. He saw the revolver lying on the path outside,
and then the little weapon sprang into the air. He dodged back. The
revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the
closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door,
and as he stood outside he heard Griffin shouting and laughing.
Then the blows of the axe with its splitting and smashing
consequences, were resumed.

Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the
Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him
a moment, and then--

A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen.
He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made
the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people
blundered into the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door
again.

"The Invisible Man!" said Kemp. "He has a revolver, with two
shots--left. He's killed Adye. Shot him anyhow. Didn't you see him on
the lawn? He's lying there."

"Who?" said one of the policemen.

"Adye," said Kemp.

"We came in the back way," said the girl.

"What's that smashing?" asked one of the policemen.

"He's in the kitchen--or will be. He has found an axe--"

Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man's resounding
blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen,
shuddered, and retreated into the dining-room. Kemp tried to
explain in broken sentences. They heard the kitchen door give.

"This way," said Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the
policemen into the dining-room doorway.

"Poker," said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed the poker
he had carried to the policeman and the dining-room one to the
other. He suddenly flung himself backward.

"Whup!" said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker.
The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney
Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little
weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the
floor.

At the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment
by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters--possibly
with an idea of escaping by the shattered window.

The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two
feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing.
"Stand away, you two," he said. "I want that man Kemp."

"We want you," said the first policeman, making a quick step
forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man
must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand.

Then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had
aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled
like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the
head of the kitchen stairs. But the second policeman, aiming behind
the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. There was a
sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground. The
policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on
the axe, and struck again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening
intent for the slightest movement.

He heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet
within. His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood
running down between his eye and ear. "Where is he?" asked the man
on the floor.

"Don't know. I've hit him. He's standing somewhere in the hall.
Unless he's slipped past you. Doctor Kemp--sir."

Pause.

"Doctor Kemp," cried the policeman again.

The second policeman began struggling to his feet. He stood up.
Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be
heard. "Yap!" cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung
his poker. It smashed a little gas bracket.

He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he
thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room.

"Doctor Kemp--" he began, and stopped short.

"Doctor Kemp's a hero," he said, as his companion looked over his
shoulder.

The dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor
Kemp was to be seen.

The second policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HUNTER HUNTED


Mr. Heelas, Mr. Kemp's nearest neighbour among the villa holders,
was asleep in his summer house when the siege of Kemp's house
began. Mr. Heelas was one of the sturdy minority who refused to
believe "in all this nonsense" about an Invisible Man. His wife,
however, as he was subsequently to be reminded, did. He insisted
upon walking about his garden just as if nothing was the matter,
and he went to sleep in the afternoon in accordance with the custom
of years. He slept through the smashing of the windows, and then
woke up suddenly with a curious persuasion of something wrong. He
looked across at Kemp's house, rubbed his eyes and looked again.
Then he put his feet to the ground, and sat listening. He said he
was damned, but still the strange thing was visible. The house
looked as though it had been deserted for weeks--after a violent
riot. Every window was broken, and every window, save those of the
belvedere study, was blinded by the internal shutters.

"I could have sworn it was all right"--he looked at his watch--"twenty
minutes ago."

He became aware of a measured concussion and the clash of glass,
far away in the distance. And then, as he sat open-mouthed, came a
still more wonderful thing. The shutters of the drawing-room window
were flung open violently, and the housemaid in her outdoor hat and
garments, appeared struggling in a frantic manner to throw up the
sash. Suddenly a man appeared beside her, helping her--Dr. Kemp!
In another moment the window was open, and the housemaid was
struggling out; she pitched forward and vanished among the shrubs.
Mr. Heelas stood up, exclaiming vaguely and vehemently at all these
wonderful things. He saw Kemp stand on the sill, spring from the
window, and reappear almost instantaneously running along a path in
the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades
observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again
clambering over a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second
he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the
slope towards Mr. Heelas.

"Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that Invisible
Man brute! It's right, after all!"

With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook
watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting
towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. There was a
slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelas
bellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut
everything!--the Invisible Man is coming!" Instantly the house was
full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran himself
to shut the French windows that opened on the veranda; as he did so
Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the
garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through the
asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house.

"You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm very
sorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!"

Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and
then shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his
efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end,
and went to hammer at the side door. Then he ran round by the side
gate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr.
Heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcely
witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this
way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately
upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as
he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam.

Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward
direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very
race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere
study only four days ago. He ran it well, for a man out of
training, and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool
to the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of
rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints,
or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the
bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would.

For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill-road
was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the
town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had
there been a slower or more painful method of progression than
running. All the gaunt villas, sleeping in the afternoon sun,
looked locked and barred; no doubt they were locked and barred--by
his own orders. But at any rate they might have kept a lookout
for an eventuality like this! The town was rising up now, the sea
had dropped out of sight behind it, and people down below were
stirring. A tram was just arriving at the hill foot. Beyond that
was the police station. Was that footsteps he heard behind him?
Spurt.

The people below were staring at him, one or two were running, and
his breath was beginning to saw in his throat. The tram was quite
near now, and the "Jolly Cricketers" was noisily barring its doors.
Beyond the tram were posts and heaps of gravel--the drainage
works. He had a transitory idea of jumping into the tram and
slamming the doors, and then he resolved to go for the police
station. In another moment he had passed the door of the "Jolly
Cricketers," and was in the blistering fag end of the street, with
human beings about him. The tram driver and his helper--arrested
by the sight of his furious haste--stood staring with the tram
horses unhitched. Further on the astonished features of navvies
appeared above the mounds of gravel.

His pace broke a little, and then he heard the swift pad of his
pursuer, and leapt forward again. "The Invisible Man!" he cried to
the navvies, with a vague indicative gesture, and by an inspiration
leapt the excavation and placed a burly group between him and the
chase. Then abandoning the idea of the police station he turned
into a little side street, rushed by a greengrocer's cart,
hesitated for the tenth of a second at the door of a sweetstuff
shop, and then made for the mouth of an alley that ran back into
the main Hill Street again. Two or three little children were
playing here, and shrieked and scattered at his apparition, and
forthwith doors and windows opened and excited mothers revealed
their hearts. Out he shot into Hill Street again, three hundred
yards from the tram-line end, and immediately he became aware of a
tumultuous vociferation and running people.

He glanced up the street towards the hill. Hardly a dozen yards off
ran a huge navvy, cursing in fragments and slashing viciously with
a spade, and hard behind him came the tram conductor with his fists
clenched. Up the street others followed these two, striking and
shouting. Down towards the town, men and women were running, and he
noticed clearly one man coming out of a shop-door with a stick in
his hand. "Spread out! Spread out!" cried some one. Kemp suddenly
grasped the altered condition of the chase. He stopped, and looked
round, panting. "He's close here!" he cried. "Form a line across--"

He was hit hard under the ear, and went reeling, trying to face
round towards his unseen antagonist. He just managed to keep his
feet, and he struck a vain counter in the air. Then he was hit
again under the jaw, and sprawled headlong on the ground. In
another moment a knee compressed his diaphragm, and a couple of
eager hands gripped his throat, but the grip of one was weaker than
the other; he grasped the wrists, heard a cry of pain from his
assailant, and then the spade of the navvy came whirling through
the air above him, and struck something with a dull thud. He felt
a drop of moisture on his face. The grip at his throat suddenly
relaxed, and with a convulsive effort, Kemp loosed himself, grasped
a limp shoulder, and rolled uppermost. He gripped the unseen elbows
near the ground. "I've got him!" screamed Kemp. "Help! Help--hold!
He's down! Hold his feet!"

In another second there was a simultaneous rush upon the struggle,
and a stranger coming into the road suddenly might have thought an
exceptionally savage game of Rugby football was in progress. And
there was no shouting after Kemp's cry--only a sound of blows
and feet and heavy breathing.

Then came a mighty effort, and the Invisible Man threw off a couple
of his antagonists and rose to his knees. Kemp clung to him in
front like a hound to a stag, and a dozen hands gripped, clutched,
and tore at the Unseen. The tram conductor suddenly got the neck
and shoulders and lugged him back.

Down went the heap of struggling men again and rolled over. There
was, I am afraid, some savage kicking. Then suddenly a wild scream
of "Mercy! Mercy!" that died down swiftly to a sound like choking.

"Get back, you fools!" cried the muffled voice of Kemp, and there
was a vigorous shoving back of stalwart forms. "He's hurt, I tell
you. Stand back!"

There was a brief struggle to clear a space, and then the circle of
eager faces saw the doctor kneeling, as it seemed, fifteen inches
in the air, and holding invisible arms to the ground. Behind him a
constable gripped invisible ankles.

"Don't you leave go of en," cried the big navvy, holding a
blood-stained spade; "he's shamming."

"He's not shamming," said the doctor, cautiously raising his knee;
"and I'll hold him." His face was bruised and already going red; he
spoke thickly because of a bleeding lip. He released one hand and
seemed to be feeling at the face. "The mouth's all wet," he said.
And then, "Good God!"

He stood up abruptly and then knelt down on the ground by the side
of the thing unseen. There was a pushing and shuffling, a sound of
heavy feet as fresh people turned up to increase the pressure of
the crowd. People now were coming out of the houses. The doors of
the "Jolly Cricketers" stood suddenly wide open. Very little was said.

Kemp felt about, his hand seeming to pass through empty air. "He's
not breathing," he said, and then, "I can't feel his heart. His
side--ugh!"

Suddenly an old woman, peering under the arm of the big navvy,
screamed sharply. "Looky there!" she said, and thrust out a
wrinkled finger.

And looking where she pointed, everyone saw, faint and transparent
as though it was made of glass, so that veins and arteries and
bones and nerves could be distinguished, the outline of a hand, a
hand limp and prone. It grew clouded and opaque even as they stared.

"Hullo!" cried the constable. "Here's his feet a-showing!"

And so, slowly, beginning at his hands and feet and creeping along
his limbs to the vital centres of his body, that strange change
continued. It was like the slow spreading of a poison. First came
the little white nerves, a hazy grey sketch of a limb, then the
glassy bones and intricate arteries, then the flesh and skin, first
a faint fogginess, and then growing rapidly dense and opaque.
Presently they could see his crushed chest and his shoulders, and
the dim outline of his drawn and battered features.

When at last the crowd made way for Kemp to stand erect, there lay,
naked and pitiful on the ground, the bruised and broken body of a
young man about thirty. His hair and brow were white--not grey
with age, but white with the whiteness of albinism--and his eyes
were like garnets. His hands were clenched, his eyes wide open, and
his expression was one of anger and dismay.

"Cover his face!" said a man. "For Gawd's sake, cover that face!"
and three little children, pushing forward through the crowd, were
suddenly twisted round and sent packing off again.

Someone brought a sheet from the "Jolly Cricketers," and having
covered him, they carried him into that house. And there it was, on
a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd
of ignorant and excited people, broken and wounded, betrayed and
unpitied, that Griffin, the first of all men to make himself
invisible, Griffin, the most gifted physicist the world has ever
seen, ended in infinite disaster his strange and terrible career.



THE EPILOGUE


So ends the story of the strange and evil experiments of the
Invisible Man. And if you would learn more of him you must go to a
little inn near Port Stowe and talk to the landlord. The sign of
the inn is an empty board save for a hat and boots, and the name is
the title of this story. The landlord is a short and corpulent
little man with a nose of cylindrical proportions, wiry hair, and a
sporadic rosiness of visage. Drink generously, and he will tell you
generously of all the things that happened to him after that time,
and of how the lawyers tried to do him out of the treasure found
upon him.

"When they found they couldn't prove who's money was which, I'm
blessed," he says, "if they didn't try to make me out a blooming
treasure trove! Do I _look_ like a Treasure Trove? And then a
gentleman gave me a guinea a night to tell the story at the Empire
Music 'All--just to tell 'em in my own words--barring one."

And if you want to cut off the flow of his reminiscences abruptly,
you can always do so by asking if there weren't three manuscript
books in the story. He admits there were and proceeds to explain,
with asseverations that everybody thinks _he_ has 'em! But bless you!
he hasn't. "The Invisible Man it was took 'em off to hide 'em when
I cut and ran for Port Stowe. It's that Mr. Kemp put people on with
the idea of _my_ having 'em."

And then he subsides into a pensive state, watches you furtively,
bustles nervously with glasses, and presently leaves the bar.

He is a bachelor man--his tastes were ever bachelor, and there
are no women folk in the house. Outwardly he buttons--it is
expected of him--but in his more vital privacies, in the matter
of braces for example, he still turns to string. He conducts his
house without enterprise, but with eminent decorum. His movements
are slow, and he is a great thinker. But he has a reputation for
wisdom and for a respectable parsimony in the village, and his
knowledge of the roads of the South of England would beat Cobbett.

And on Sunday mornings, every Sunday morning, all the year round,
while he is closed to the outer world, and every night after ten,
he goes into his bar parlour, bearing a glass of gin faintly tinged
with water, and having placed this down, he locks the door and
examines the blinds, and even looks under the table. And then,
being satisfied of his solitude, he unlocks the cupboard and a box
in the cupboard and a drawer in that box, and produces three
volumes bound in brown leather, and places them solemnly in the
middle of the table. The covers are weather-worn and tinged with an
algal green--for once they sojourned in a ditch and some of the
pages have been washed blank by dirty water. The landlord sits down
in an armchair, fills a long clay pipe slowly--gloating over the
books the while. Then he pulls one towards him and opens it, and
begins to study it--turning over the leaves backwards and forwards.

His brows are knit and his lips move painfully. "Hex, little two up
in the air, cross and a fiddle-de-dee. Lord! what a one he was for
intellect!"

Presently he relaxes and leans back, and blinks through his smoke
across the room at things invisible to other eyes. "Full of
secrets," he says. "Wonderful secrets!"

"Once I get the haul of them--_Lord_!"

"I wouldn't do what _he_ did; I'd just--well!" He pulls at his
pipe.

So he lapses into a dream, the undying wonderful dream of his life.
And though Kemp has fished unceasingly, no human being save the
landlord knows those books are there, with the subtle secret of
invisibility and a dozen other strange secrets written therein.
And none other will know of them until he dies.

___________________________________________________________________


Professor Moriarty is foiled by Sherlock Holmes in THE VALLEY OF FEAR

as told by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE



PART 1
The Tragedy of Birlstone



Chapter 1
The Warning

"I am inclined to think -- " said I.

"I should do so," Sherlock Holmes remarked impatiently.

I believe that I am one of the most long-suffering of mortals;
but I'll admit that I was annoyed at the sardonic interruption.

"Really, Holmes," said I severely, "you are a little trying at times."

He was too much absorbed with his own thoughts to give any
immediate answer to my remonstrance. He leaned upon his
hand, with his untasted breakfast before him, and he stared at the
slip of paper which he had just drawn from its envelope. Then he
took the envelope itself, held it up to the light, and very carefully
studied both the exterior and the flap.

"It is Porlock's writing," said he thoughtfully. "I can hardly
doubt that it is Porlock's writing, though I have seen it only
twice before. The Greek e with the peculiar top flourish is
distinctive. But if it is Porlock, then it must be something of the
very first importance."

He was speaking to himself rather than to me; but my vexation
disappeared in the interest which the words awakened.

"Who then is Porlock?" I asked.

"Porlock, Watson, is a nom-de-plume, a mere identification
mark; but behind it lies a shifty and evasive personality. In a
former letter he frankly informed me that the name was not his
own, and defied me ever to trace him among the teeming millions
of this great city. Porlock is important, not for himself, but
for the great man with whom he is in touch. Picture to yourself
the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion -- anything
that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable:
not only formidable, Watson, but sinister -- in the highest degree
sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. You have
heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"

"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"

"My blushes, Watson!" Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.

"I was about to say, as he is unknown to the public."

"A touch! A distinct touch!" cried Holmes. "You are developing
a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against
which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a
criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law -- and
there lie the glory and the wonder of it! The greatest schemer
of all time, the organizer of every deviltry, the controlling
brain of the underworld, a brain which might have made or
marred the destiny of nations -- that's the man! But so aloof is he
from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable
in his management and self-effacement, that for those very words
that you have uttered he could hale you to a court and emerge
with your year's pension as a solatium for his wounded character.
Is he not the celebrated author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid,
a book which ascends to such rarefied heights of pure mathematics
that it is said that there was no man in the scientific
press capable of criticizing it? Is this a man to traduce? Foul-
mouthed doctor and slandered professor -- such would be your
respective roles! That's genius, Watson. But if I am spared by
lesser men, our day will surely come."

"May I be there to see!" I exclaimed devoutly. "But you
were speaking of this man Porlock."

"Ah, yes -- the so-called Porlock is a link in the chain some
little way from its great attachment. Porlock is not quite a sound
link -- between ourselves. He is the only flaw in that chain so far
as I have been able to test it."

"But no chain is stronger than its weakest link."

"Exactly, my dear Watson! Hence the extreme importance of Porlock.
Led on by some rudimentary aspirations towards right, and encouraged
by the judicious stimulation of an occasional ten-pound note sent to
him by devious methods, he has once or twice given me advance
information which has been of value -- that highest value which
anticipates and prevents rather than avenges crime. I cannot doubt
that, if we had the cipher, we should find that this communication
is of the nature that I indicate."

Again Holmes flattened out the paper upon his unused plate. I rose
and, leaning over him, stared down at the curious inscription,
which ran as follows:

         534 C2    13 127 36 31   4  17   21 41

           DOUGLAS 109 293  5  37   BIRLSTONE

             26   BIRLSTONE 9   47     171

"What do you make of it, Holmes?"

"It is obviously an attempt to convey secret information."

"But what is the use of a cipher message without the cipher?"

"In this instance, none at all."

"Why do you say 'in this instance'?"

"Because there are many ciphers which I would read as easily
as I do the apocrypha of the agony column: such crude devices
amuse the intelligence without fatiguing it. But this is different.
It is clearly a reference to the words in a page of some book.
Until I am told which page and which book I am powerless."

"But why 'Douglas' and 'Birlstone'?"

"Clearly because those are words which were not contained in
the page in question."

"Then why has he not indicated the book?"

"Your native shrewdness, my dear Watson, that innate cunning
which is the delight of your friends, would surely prevent
you from inclosing cipher and message in the same envelope.
Should it miscarry, you are undone. As it is, both have to go
wrong before any harm comes from it. Our second post is now
overdue, and I shall be surprised if it does not bring us either a
further letter of explanation, or, as is more probable, the very
volume to which these figures refer."

Holmes's calculation was fulfilled within a very few minutes
by the appearance of Billy, the page, with the very letter which
we were expecting.

"The same writing," remarked Holmes, as he opened the
envelope, "and actually signed," he added in an exultant voice
as he unfolded the epistle. "Come, we are getting on, Watson."
His brow clouded, however, as he glanced over the contents.

"Dear me, this is very disappointing! I fear, Watson, that all
our expectations come to nothing. I trust that the man Porlock
will come to no harm.

 "DEAR MR. HOLMES [he says]:

 "I will go no further in this matter. It is too dangerous -- he

 suspects me. I can see that he suspects me. He came to me

 quite unexpectedly after I had actually addressed this envelope

 with the intention of sending you the key to the cipher.

 I was able to cover it up. If he had seen it, it would have

 gone hard with me. But I read suspicion in his eyes. Please

 burn the cipher message, which can now be of no use to you.

                                              FRED PORLOCK."

Holmes sat for some little time twisting this letter between his
fingers, and frowning, as he stared into the fire.

"After all," he said at last, "there may be nothing in it. It
may be only his guilty conscience. Knowing himself to be a
traitor, he may have read the accusation in the other's eyes."

"The other being, I presume, Professor Moriarty."

"No less! When any of that party talk about 'He' you know whom
they mean. There is one predominant 'He' for all of them."

"But what can he do?"

"Hum! That's a large question. When you have one of the
first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of
darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities. Anyhow,
Friend Porlock is evidently scared out of his senses -- kindly
compare the writing in the note to that upon its envelope; which
was done, he tells us, before this ill-omened visit. The one is
clear and firm. The other hardly legible."

"Why did he write at all? Why did he not simply drop it?"

"Because he feared I would make some inquiry after him in
that case, and possibly bring trouble on him."

"No doubt," said I. "Of course." I had picked up the original
cipher message and was bending my brows over it. "It's pretty
maddening to think that an important secret may lie here on this
slip of paper, and that it is beyond human power to penetrate it."

Sherlock Holmes had pushed away his untasted breakfast and
lit the unsavoury pipe which was the companion of his deepest
meditations. "I wonder!" said he, leaning back and staring at
the ceiling. "Perhaps there are points which have escaped your
Machiavellian intellect. Let us consider the problem in the light
of pure reason. This man's reference is to a book. That is our
point of departure."

"A somewhat vague one."

"Let us see then if we can narrow it down. As I focus my
mind upon it, it seems rather less impenetrable. What indications
have we as to this book?"

"None."

"Well, well, it is surely not quite so bad as that. The cipher
message begins with a large 534, does it not? We may take it as
a working hypothesis that 534 is the particular page to which the
cipher refers. So our book has already become a large book
which is surely something gained. What other indications have
we as to the nature of this large book? The next sign is C2.
What do you make of that, Watson?"

"Chapter the second, no doubt."

"Hardly that, Watson. You will, I am sure, agree with me
that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial.
Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter,
the length of the first one must have been really intolerable."

"Column!" I cried.

"Brilliant, Watson. You are scintillating this morning. If it is
not column, then I am very much deceived. So now, you see, we
begin to visualize a large book printed in double columns
which are each of a considerable length, since one of the words
is numbered in the document as the two hundred and ninety-
third. Have we reached the limits of what reason can supply?"

"I fear that we have."

"Surely you do yourself an injustice. One more coruscation,
my dear Watson -- yet another brain-wave! Had the volume been
an unusual one, he would have sent it to me. Instead of that, he
had intended, before his plans were nipped, to send me the clue
in this envelope. He says so in his note. This would seem to
indicate that the book is one which he thought I would have no
difficulty in finding for myself. He had it -- and he imagined that
I would have it, too. In short, Watson, it is a very common book."

"What you say certainly sounds plausible."

"So we have contracted our field of search to a large book,
printed in double columns and in common use."

"The Bible!" I cried triumphantly.

"Good, Watson, good! But not, if I may say so, quite good enough!
Even if I accepted the compliment for myself I could hardly name
any volume which would be less likely to lie at the elbow of one
of Moriarty's associates. Besides, the editions of Holy Writ are
so numerous that he could hardly suppose that two copies would have
the same pagination. This is clearly a book which is standardized.
He knows for certain that his page 534 will exactly agree with my
page 534."

"But very few books would correspond with that."

"Exactly. Therein lies our salvation. Our search is narrowed down
to standardized books which anyone may be supposed to possess."

"Bradshaw!"

"There are difficulties, Watson. The vocabulary of Bradshaw is
nervous and terse, but limited. The selection of words would
hardly lend itself to the sending of general messages. We will
eliminate Bradshaw. The dictionary is, I fear, inadmissible for
the same reason. What then is left?"

"An almanac!"

"Excellent, Watson! I am very much mistaken if you have not
touched the spot. An almanac! Let us consider the claims of
Whitaker's Almanac. It is in common use. It has the requisite
number of pages. It is in double column. Though reserved in its
earlier vocabulary, it becomes, if I remember right, quite
garrulous towards the end." He picked the volume from his desk.
"Here is page 534, column two, a substantial block of print
dealing, I perceive, with the trade and resources of British India.
Jot down the words, Watson! Number thirteen is 'Mahratta.'
Not, I fear, a very auspicious beginning. Number one hundred
and twenty-seven is 'Government'; which at least makes sense,
though somewhat irrelevant to ourselves and Professor Moriarty.
Now let us try again. What does the Mahratta government do?
Alas! the next word is 'pig's-bristles.' We are undone, my good
Watson! It is finished!"

He had spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy
eyebrows bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless
and unhappy, staring into the fire. A long silence was broken by
a sudden exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, from
which he emerged with a second yellow-covered volume in his hand.

"We pay the price, Watson, for being too up-to-date!" he
cried. "We are before our time, and suffer the usual penalties.
Being the seventh of January, we have very properly laid in the
new almanac. It is more than likely that Porlock took his message
from the old one. No doubt he would have told us so had his
letter of explanation been written. Now let us see what page
534 has in store for us. Number thirteen is 'There,' which is
much more promising. Number one hundred and twenty-seven is
'is' -- 'There is'" -- Holmes's eyes were gleaming with excitement,
and his thin, nervous fingers twitched as he counted the
words -- "'danger.' Ha! Ha! Capital! Put that down, Watson.
'There is danger -- may -- come -- very -- soon -- one.' Then we have
the name 'Douglas' -- 'rich -- country -- now -- at -- Birlstone --
House -- Birlstone -- confidence -- is -- pressing.' There, Watson!
What do you think of pure reason and its fruit? If the greengrocer
had such a thing as a laurel wreath, I should send Billy round for
it."

I was staring at the strange message which I had scrawled,
as he deciphered it, upon a sheet of foolscap on my knee.

"What a queer, scrambling way of expressing his meaning!" said I.

"On the contrary, he has done quite remarkably well," said Holmes.
"When you search a single column for words with which to express
your meaning, you can hardly expect to get everything you want.
You are bound to leave something to the intelligence of your
correspondent. The purport is perfectly clear. Some deviltry is
intended against one Douglas, whoever he may be, residing as stated,
a rich country gentleman. He is sure -- 'confidence' was as near as
he could get to 'confident' -- that it is pressing. There is our
result -- and a very workmanlike little bit of analysis it was!"

Holmes had the impersonal joy of the true artist in his better
work, even as he mourned darkly when it fell below the high
level to which he aspired. He was still chuckling over his
success when Billy swung open the door and Inspector MacDonald
of Scotland Yard was ushered into the room.

Those were the early days at the end of the '80's, when Alec
MacDonald was far from having attained the national fame
which he has now achieved. He was a young but trusted member
of the detective force, who had distinguished himself in several
cases which had been entrusted to him. His tall, bony figure gave
promise of exceptional physical strength, while his great cranium
and deep-set, lustrous eyes spoke no less clearly of the keen
intelligence which twinkled out from behind his bushy eyebrows.
He was a silent, precise man with a dour nature and a hard
Aberdonian accent.

Twice already in his career had Holmes helped him to attain
success, his own sole reward being the intellectual joy of the
problem. For this reason the affection and respect of the
Scotchman for his amateur colleague were profound, and he showed
them by the frankness with which he consulted Holmes in every
difficulty. Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent
instantly recognizes genius, and MacDonald had talent enough
for his profession to enable him to perceive that there was no
humiliation in seeking the assistance of one who already stood
alone in Europe, both in his gifts and in his experience. Holmes
was not prone to friendship, but he was tolerant of the big
Scotchman, and smiled at the sight of him.

"You are an early bird, Mr. Mac," said he. "I wish you luck with
your worm. I fear this means that there is some mischief afoot."

"If you said 'hope' instead of 'fear,' it would be nearer the
truth, I'm thinking, Mr. Holmes," the inspector answered, with a
knowing grin. "Well, maybe a wee nip would keep out the raw
morning chill. No, I won't smoke, I thank you. I'll have to be
pushing on my way; for the early hours of a case are the precious
ones, as no man knows better than your own self. But -- but --"

The inspector had stopped suddenly, and was staring with a
look of absolute amazement at a paper upon the table. It was the
sheet upon which I had scrawled the enigmatic message.

"Douglas!" he stammered. "Birlstone! What's this, Mr. Holmes?
Man, it's witchcraft! Where in the name of all that is wonderful
did you get those names?"

"It is a cipher that Dr. Watson and I have had occasion to
solve. But why -- what's amiss with the names?"

The inspector looked from one to the other of us in dazed astonishment.
"Just this," said he, "that Mr. Douglas of Birlstone Manor House was
horribly murdered last night!"



Chapter 2
Sherlock Holmes Discourses

It was one of those dramatic moments for which my friend existed.
It would be an overstatement to say that he was shocked or even
excited by the amazing announcement. Without having a tinge of
cruelty in his singular composition, he was undoubtedly callous
from long over-stimulation. Yet, if his emotions were dulled,
his intellectual perceptions were exceedingly active. There was
no trace then of the horror which I had myself felt at this curt
declaration; but his face showed rather the quiet and interested
composure of the chemist who sees the crystals falling into position
from his oversaturated solution.

"Remarkable!" said he. "Remarkable!"

"You don't seem surprised."

"Interested, Mr. Mac, but hardly surprised. Why should I be
surprised? I receive an anonymous communication from a quarter
which I know to be important, warning me that danger threatens
a certain person. Within an hour I learn that this danger has
actually materialized and that the person is dead. I am interested;
but, as you observe, I am not surprised."

In a few short sentences he explained to the inspector the facts
about the letter and the cipher. MacDonald sat with his chin on
his hands and his great sandy eyebrows bunched into a yellow
tangle.

"I was going down to Birlstone this morning," said he. "I
had come to ask you if you cared to come with me -- you and
your friend here. But from what you say we might perhaps be
doing better work in London."

"I rather think not," said Holmes.

"Hang it all, Mr. Holmes!" cried the inspector. "The papers
will be full of the Birlstone mystery in a day or two; but where's
the mystery if there is a man in London who prophesied the
crime before ever it occurred? We have only to lay our hands on
that man, and the rest will follow."

"No doubt, Mr. Mac. But how do you propose to lay your
hands on the so-called Porlock?"

MacDonald turned over the letter which Holmes had handed
him. "Posted in Camberwell -- that doesn't help us much. Name,
you say, is assumed. Not much to go on, certainly. Didn't you
say that you have sent him money?"

"Twice."

"And how?"

"In notes to Camberwell post-office."

"Did you ever trouble to see who called for them?"

"No."

The inspector looked surprised and a little shocked. "Why not?"

"Because I always keep faith. I had promised when he first
wrote that I would not try to trace him."

"You think there is someone behind him?"

"I know there is."

"This professor that I've heard you mention?"

"Exactly!"

Inspector MacDonald smiled, and his eyelid quivered as he
glanced towards me. "I won't conceal from you, Mr. Holmes,
that we think in the C. I. D. that you have a wee bit of a bee in
your bonnet over this professor. I made some inquiries myself
about the matter. He seems to be a very respectable, learned, and
talented sort of man."

"I'm glad you've got so far as to recognize the talent."

"Man, you can't but recognize it! After I heard your view I
made it my business to see him. I had a chat with him on
eclipses. How the talk got that way I canna think; but he had out
a reflector lantern and a globe, and made it all clear in a minute.
He lent me a book; but I don't mind saying that it was a bit
above my head, though I had a good Aberdeen upbringing. He'd
have made a grand meenister with his thin face and gray hair and
solemn-like way of talking. When he put his hand on my shoulder
as we were parting, it was like a father's blessing before you
go out into the cold, cruel world."

Holmes chuckled and rubbed his hands. "Great!" he said.
"Great! Tell me, Friend MacDonald, this pleasing and touching
interview was, I suppose, in the professor's study?"

"That's so."

"A fine room, is it not?"

"Very fine -- very handsome indeed, Mr. Holmes."

"You sat in front of his writing desk?"

"Just so."

"Sun in your eyes and his face in the shadow?"

"Well, it was evening; but I mind that the lamp was turned on
my face."

"It would be. Did you happen to observe a picture over the
professor's head?"

"I don't miss much, Mr. Holmes. Maybe I learned that from
you. Yes, I saw the picture -- a young woman with her head on
her hands, peeping at you sideways."

"That painting was by Jean Baptiste Greuze."

The inspector endeavoured to look interested.

"Jean Baptiste Greuze," Holmes continued, joining his finger
tips and leaning well back in his chair, "was a French artist who
flourished between the years 1750 and 1800. I allude, of course
to his working career. Modern criticism has more than indorsed
the high opinion formed of him by his contemporaries."

The inspector's eyes grew abstracted. "Hadn't we better --"
he said.

"We are doing so," Holmes interrupted. "All that I am
saying has a very direct and vital bearing upon what you have
called the Birlstone Mystery. In fact, it may in a sense be called
the very centre of it."

MacDonald smiled feebly, and looked appealingly to me.
"Your thoughts move a bit too quick for me, Mr. Holmes. You
leave out a link or two, and I can't get over the gap. What in the
whole wide world can be the connection between this dead
painting man and the affair at Birlstone?"

"All knowledge comes useful to the detective," remarked
Holmes. "Even the trivial fact that in the year 1865 a picture by
Greuze entitled La Jeune Fille a l'Agneau fetched one million
two hundred thousand francs -- more than forty thousand pounds --
at the Portalis sale may start a train of reflection in your mind."

It was clear that it did. The inspector looked honestly interested.

"I may remind you," Holmes continued, "that the professor's
salary can be ascertained in several trustworthy books of reference.
It is seven hundred a year."

"Then how could he buy --"

"Quite so! How could he?"

"Ay, that's remarkable," said the inspector thoughtfully. "Talk
away, Mr. Holmes. I'm just loving it. It's fine!"

Holmes smiled. He was always warmed by genuine admiration --
the characteristic of the real artist. "What about Birlstone?" he
asked.

"We've time yet," said the inspector, glancing at his watch.
"I've a cab at the door, and it won't take us twenty minutes to
Victoria. But about this picture: I thought you told me once, Mr.
Holmes, that you had never met Professor Moriarty."

"No, I never have."

"Then how do you know about his rooms?"

"Ah, that's another matter. I have been three times in his
rooms, twice waiting for him under different pretexts and leaving
before he came. Once -- well, I can hardly tell about the once to
an official detective. It was on the last occasion that I took the
liberty of running over his papers -- with the most unexpected
results."

"You found something compromising?"

"Absolutely nothing. That was what amazed me. However,
you have now seen the point of the picture. It shows him to be a
very wealthy man. How did he acquire wealth? He is unmarried.
His younger brother is a station master in the west of England.
His chair is worth seven hundred a year. And he owns a Greuze."

"Well?"

"Surely the inference is plain."

"You mean that he has a great income and that he must earn it
in an illegal fashion?"

"Exactly. Of course I have other reasons for thinking so --
dozens of exiguous threads which lead vaguely up towards the
centre of the web where the poisonous, motionless creature is
lurking. I only mention the Greuze because it brings the matter
within the range of your own observation."

"Well, Mr. Holmes, I admit that what you say is interesting:
it's more than interesting -- it's just wonderful. But let us have it
a little clearer if you can. Is it forgery, coining, burglary -- where
does the money come from?"

"Have you ever read of Jonathan Wild?"

"Well, the name has a familiar sound. Someone in a novel,
was he not? I don't take much stock of detectives in novels --
chaps that do things and never let you see how they do them.
That's just inspiration: not business."

"Jonathan Wild wasn't a detective, and he wasn't in a novel.
He was a master criminal, and he lived last century -- 1750 or
thereabouts."

"Then he's no use to me. I'm a practical man."

"Mr. Mac, the most practical thing that you ever did in your
life would be to shut yourself up for three months and read
twelve hours a day at the annals of crime. Everything comes in
circles -- even Professor Moriarty. Jonathan Wild was the hidden
force of the London criminals, to whom he sold his brains and
his organization on a fifteen per cent commission. The old
wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It's all been done
before, and will be again. I'll tell you one or two things about
Moriarty which may interest you."

"You'll interest me, right enough."

"I happen to know who is the first link in his chain -- a chain
with this Napoleon-gone-wrong at one end, and a hundred broken
fighting men, pickpockets, blackmailers, and card sharpers at the
other, with every sort of crime in between. His chief of staff is
Colonel Sebastian Moran, as aloof and guarded and inaccessible
to the law as himself. What do you think he pays him?"

"I'd like to hear."

"Six thousand a year. That's paying for brains, you see -- the
American business principle. I learned that detail quite by chance.
It's more than the Prime Minister gets. That gives you an idea of
Moriarty's gains and of the scale on which he works. Another
point: I made it my business to hunt down some of Moriarty's
checks lately -- just common innocent checks that he pays his
household bills with. They were drawn on six different banks.
Does that make any impression on your mind?"

"Queer, certainly! But what do you gather from it?"

"That he wanted no gossip about his wealth. No single man
should know what he had. I have no doubt that he has twenty
banking accounts; the bulk of his fortune abroad in the Deutsche
Bank or the Credit Lyonnais as likely as not. Sometime when
you have a year or two to spare I commend to you the study of
Professor Moriarty."

Inspector MacDonald had grown steadily more impressed as
the conversation proceeded. He had lost himself in his interest.
Now his practical Scotch intelligence brought him back with a
snap to the matter in hand.

"He can keep, anyhow," said he. "You've got us side-tracked
with your interesting anecdotes, Mr. Holmes. What really counts
is your remark that there is some connection between the professor
and the crime. That you get from the warning received through the
man Porlock. Can we for our present practical needs get any further
than that?"

"We may form some conception as to the motives of the crime.
It is, as I gather from your original remarks, an inexplicable,
or at least an unexplained, murder. Now, presuming that the
source of the crime is as we suspect it to be, there might be two
different motives. In the first place, I may tell you that Moriarty
rules with a rod of iron over his people. His discipline is
tremendous. There is only one punishment in his code. It is
death. Now we might suppose that this murdered man -- this
Douglas whose approaching fate was known by one of the
arch-criminal's subordinates -- had in some way betrayed the chief.
His punishment followed, and would be known to all -- if only to
put the fear of death into them."

"Well, that is one suggestion, Mr. Holmes."

"The other is that it has been engineered by Moriarty in the
ordinary course of business. Was there any robbery?"

"I have not heard."

"If so, it would, of course, be against the first hypothesis and
in favour of the second. Moriarty may have been engaged to
engineer it on a promise of part spoils, or he may have been paid
so much down to manage it. Either is possible. But whichever it
may be, or if it is some third combination, it is down at Birlstone
that we must seek the solution. I know our man too well to
suppose that he has left anything up here which may lead us to
him."

"Then to Birlstone we must go!" cried MacDonald, jumping
from his chair. "My word! it's later than I thought. I can give
you, gentlemen, five minutes for preparation, and that is all."

"And ample for us both," said Holmes, as he sprang up and
hastened to change from his dressing gown to his coat. "While
we are on our way, Mr. Mac, I will ask you to be good enough
to tell me all about it."

"All about it" proved to be disappointingly little, and yet
there was enough to assure us that the case before us might well
be worthy of the expert's closest attention. He brightened and
rubbed his thin hands together as he listened to the meagre but
remarkable details. A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us,
and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable
powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their
owner when they are not in use. That razor brain blunted and
rusted with inaction.

Sherlock Holmes's eyes glistened, his pale cheeks took a
warmer hue, and his whole eager face shone with an inward light
when the call for work reached him. Leaning forward in the cab,
he listened intently to MacDonald's short sketch of the problem
which awaited us in Sussex. The inspector was himself dependent,
as he explained to us, upon a scribbled account forwarded to him
by the milk train in the early hours of the morning. White
Mason, the local officer, was a personal friend, and hence
MacDonald had been notified much more promptly than is usual
at Scotland Yard when provincials need their assistance. It is a
very cold scent upon which the Metropolitan expert is generally
asked to run.


"DEAR INSPECTOR MACDONALD [said the letter which he read to us]:

"Official requisition for your services is in separate

envelope. This is for your private eye. Wire me what train in

the morning you can get for Birlstone, and I will meet it --

or have it met if I am too occupied. This case is a snorter.

Don't waste a moment in getting started. If you can bring

Mr. Holmes, please do so; for he will find something after

his own heart. We would think the whole thing had been

fixed up for theatrical effect if there wasn't a dead man in

the middle of it. My word! it is a snorter."


"Your friend seems to be no fool," remarked Holmes.

"No, sir, White Mason is a very live man, if I am any judge."

"Well, have you anything more?"

"Only that he will give us every detail when we meet."

"Then how did you get at Mr. Douglas and the fact that he
had been horribly murdered?"

"That was in the enclosed official report. It didn't say
'horrible': that's not a recognized official term. It gave the name
John Douglas. It mentioned that his injuries had been in the head,
from the discharge of a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of
the alarm, which was close on to midnight last night. It added
that the case was undoubtedly one of murder, but that no arrest
had been made, and that the case was one which presented some
very perplexing and extraordinary features. That's absolutely all
we have at present, Mr. Holmes."

"Then, with your permission, we will leave it at that, Mr.
Mac. The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient
data is the bane of our profession. I can see only two things
for certain at present -- a great brain in London, and a dead man
in Sussex. It's the chain between that we are going to trace."



Chapter 3
The Tragedy of Birlstone

Now for a moment I will ask leave to remove my own insignificant
personality and to describe events which occurred before we
arrived upon the scene by the light of knowledge which came to
us afterwards. Only in this way can I make the reader appreciate
the people concerned and the strange setting in which their fate
was cast.

The village of Birlstone is a small and very ancient cluster of
half-timbered cottages on the northern border of the county of
Sussex. For centuries it had remained unchanged; but within the
last few years its picturesque appearance and situation have
attracted a number of well-to-do residents, whose villas peep out
from the woods around. These woods are locally supposed to be
the extreme fringe of the great Weald forest, which thins away
until it reaches the northern chalk downs. A number of small
shops have come into being to meet the wants of the increased
population; so there seems some prospect that Birlstone may
soon grow from an ancient village into a modern town. It is the
centre for a considerable area of country, since Tunbridge Wells,
the nearest place of importance, is ten or twelve miles to the
eastward, over the borders of Kent.

About half a mile from the town, standing in an old park
famous for its huge beech trees, is the ancient Manor House of
Birlstone. Part of this venerable building dates back to the time
of the first crusade, when Hugo de Capus built a fortalice in the
centre of the estate, which had been granted to him by the Red
King. This was destroyed by fire in 1543, and some of its
smoke-blackened corner stones were used when, in Jacobean
times, a brick country house rose upon the ruins of the feudal
castle.

The Manor House, with its many gables and its small diamond-
paned windows, was still much as the builder had left it in the
early seventeenth century. Of the double moats which had guarded
its more warlike predecessor, the outer had been allowed to dry
up, and served the humble function of a kitchen garden. The
inner one was still there, and lay forty feet in breadth, though
now only a few feet in depth, round the whole house. A small
stream fed it and continued beyond it, so that the sheet of water,
though turbid, was never ditch-like or unhealthy. The ground
floor windows were within a foot of the surface of the water.

The only approach to the house was over a drawbridge, the
chains and windlass of which had long been rusted and broken.
The latest tenants of the Manor House had, however, with
characteristic energy, set this right, and the drawbridge was not
only capable of being raised, but actually was raised every
evening and lowered every morning. By thus renewing the custom
of the old feudal days the Manor House was converted into
an island during the night -- a fact which had a very direct
bearing upon the mystery which was soon to engage the attention
of all England.

The house had been untenanted for some years and was
threatening to moulder into a picturesque decay when the
Douglases took possession of it. This family consisted of only
two individuals -- John Douglas and his wife. Douglas was a
remarkable man, both in character and in person. In age he may
have been about fifty, with a strong-jawed, rugged face, a
grizzling moustache, peculiarly keen gray eyes, and a wiry,
vigorous figure which had lost nothing of the strength and
activity of youth. He was cheery and genial to all, but somewhat
offhand in his manners, giving the impression that he had seen
life in social strata on some far lower horizon than the county
society of Sussex.

Yet, though looked at with some curiosity and reserve by his
more cultivated neighbours, he soon acquired a great popularity
among the villagers, subscribing handsomely to all local objects,
and attending their smoking concerts and other functions, where,
having a remarkably rich tenor voice, he was always ready to
oblige with an excellent song. He appeared to have plenty of
money, which was said to have been gained in the California
gold fields, and it was clear from his own talk and that of his
wife that he had spent a part of his life in America.

The good impression which had been produced by his generosity
and by his democratic manners was increased by a reputation
gained for utter indifference to danger. Though a wretched
rider, he turned out at every meet, and took the most amazing
falls in his determination to hold his own with the best. When
the vicarage caught fire he distinguished himself also by the
fearlessness with which he reentered the building to save property,
after the local fire brigade had given it up as impossible.
Thus it came about that John Douglas of the Manor House had
within five years won himself quite a reputation in Birlstone.

His wife, too, was popular with those who had made her
acquaintance; though, after the English fashion, the callers upon
a stranger who settled in the county without introductions were
few and far between. This mattered the less to her, as she was
retiring by disposition, and very much absorbed, to all appearance,
in her husband and her domestic duties. It was known that
she was an English lady who had met Mr. Douglas in London,
he being at that time a widower. She was a beautiful woman,
tall, dark, and slender, some twenty years younger than her
husband, a disparity which seemed in no wise to mar the
contentment of their family life.

It was remarked sometimes, however, by those who knew
them best, that the confidence between the two did not appear to
be complete, since the wife was either very reticent about her
husband's past life, or else, as seemed more likely, was imperfectly
informed about it. It had also been noted and commented upon by a
few observant people that there were signs sometimes of some
nerve-strain upon the part of Mrs. Douglas, and that she would
display acute uneasiness if her absent husband should ever be
particularly late in his return. On a quiet countryside, where
all gossip is welcome, this weakness of the lady of the Manor
House did not pass without remark, and it bulked larger upon
people's memory when the events arose which gave it a very
special significance.

There was yet another individual whose residence under that
roof was, it is true, only an intermittent one, but whose presence
at the time of the strange happenings which will now be narrated
brought his name prominently before the public. This was Cecil
James Barker, of Hales Lodge, Hampstead.

Cecil Barker's tall, loose-jointed figure was a familiar one in
the main street of Birlstone village; for he was a frequent and
welcome visitor at the Manor House. He was the more noticed as
being the only friend of the past unknown life of Mr. Douglas
who was ever seen in his new English surroundings. Barker was
himself an undoubted Englishman; but by his remarks it was
clear that he had first known Douglas in America and had there
lived on intimate terms with him. He appeared to be a man of
considerable wealth, and was reputed to be a bachelor.

In age he was rather younger than Douglas -- forty-five at the
most -- a tall, straight, broad-chested fellow with a clean-shaved,
prize-fighter face, thick, strong, black eyebrows, and a pair of
masterful black eyes which might, even without the aid of his
very capable hands, clear a way for him through a hostile crowd.
He neither rode nor shot, but spent his days in wandering round
the old village with his pipe in his mouth, or in driving with his
host, or in his absence with his hostess, over the beautiful
countryside. "An easy-going, free-handed gentleman," said Ames,
the butler. "But, my word! I had rather not be the man that
crossed him!" He was cordial and intimate with Douglas, and he
was no less friendly with his wife -- a friendship which more than
once seemed to cause some irritation to the husband, so that even
the servants were able to perceive his annoyance. Such was the
third person who was one of the family when the catastrophe
occurred.

As to the other denizens of the old building, it will suffice out
of a large household to mention the prim, respectable, and
capable Ames, and Mrs. Allen, a buxom and cheerful person,
who relieved the lady of some of her household cares. The other
six servants in the house bear no relation to the events of the
night of January 6th.

It was at eleven forty-five that the first alarm reached the small
local police station, in charge of Sergeant Wilson of the Sussex
Constabulary. Cecil Barker, much excited, had rushed up to the
door and pealed furiously upon the bell. A terrible tragedy had
occurred at the Manor House, and John Douglas had been murdered.
That was the breathless burden of his message. He had hurried back
to the house, followed within a few minutes by the police sergeant,
who arrived at the scene of the crime a little after twelve o'clock,
after taking prompt steps to warn the county authorities that
something serious was afoot.

On reaching the Manor House, the sergeant had found the
drawbridge down, the windows lighted up, and the whole household
in a state of wild confusion and alarm. The white-faced servants
were huddling together in the hall, with the frightened butler
wringing his hands in the doorway. Only Cecil Barker seemed to
be master of himself and his emotions; he had opened the door
which was nearest to the entrance and he had beckoned to the
sergeant to follow him. At that moment there arrived Dr. Wood,
a brisk and capable general practitioner from the village. The
three men entered the fatal room together, while the horror-
stricken butler followed at their heels, closing the door behind
him to shut out the terrible scene from the maid servants.

The dead man lay on his back, sprawling with outstretched
limbs in the centre of the room. He was clad only in a pink
dressing gown, which covered his night clothes. There were
carpet slippers on his bare feet. The doctor knelt beside him and
held down the hand lamp which had stood on the table. One
glance at the victim was enough to show the healer that his
presence could be dispensed with. The man had been horribly
injured. Lying across his chest was a curious weapon, a shotgun
with the barrel sawed off a foot in front of the triggers. It was
clear that this had been fired at close range and that he had
received the whole charge in the face, blowing his head almost
to pieces. The triggers had been wired together, so as to make
the simultaneous discharge more destructive.

The country policeman was unnerved and troubled by the
tremendous responsibility which had come so suddenly upon
him. "We will touch nothing until my superiors arrive," he said
in a hushed voice, staring in horror at the dreadful head.

"Nothing has been touched up to now," said Cecil Barker.
"I'll answer for that. You see it all exactly as I found it."

"When was that?" The sergeant had drawn out his notebook.

"It was just half-past eleven. I had not begun to undress, and I
was sitting by the fire in my bedroom when I heard the report. It
was not very loud -- it seemed to be muffled. I rushed down -- I
don't suppose it was thirty seconds before I was in the room."

"Was the door open?"

"Yes, it was open. Poor Douglas was lying as you see him.
His bedroom candle was burning on the table. It was I who lit
the lamp some minutes afterward."

"Did you see no one?"

"No. I heard Mrs. Douglas coming down the stair behind me,
and I rushed out to prevent her from seeing this dreadful sight.
Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, came and took her away. Ames
had arrived, and we ran back into the room once more."

"But surely I have heard that the drawbridge is kept up all
night."

"Yes, it was up until I lowered it."

"Then how could any murderer have got away? It is out of the
question! Mr. Douglas must have shot himself."

"That was our first idea. But see!" Barker drew aside the
curtain, and showed that the long, diamond-paned window was
open to its full extent. "And look at this!" He held the lamp
down and illuminated a smudge of blood like the mark of a
boot-sole upon the wooden sill. "Someone has stood there in
getting out."

"You mean that someone waded across the moat?"

"Exactly!"

"Then if you were in the room within half a minute of the
crime, he must have been in the water at that very moment."

"I have not a doubt of it. I wish to heaven that I had rushed to
the window! But the curtain screened it, as you can see, and so it
never occurred to me. Then I heard the step of Mrs. Douglas,
and I could not let her enter the room. It would have been too
horrible."

"Horrible enough!" said the doctor, looking at the shattered
head and the terrible marks which surrounded it. "I've never
seen such injuries since the Birlstone railway smash."

"But, I say," remarked the police sergeant, whose slow,
bucolic common sense was still pondering the open window.
"It's all very well your saying that a man escaped by wading this
moat, but what I ask you is, how did he ever get into the house
at all if the bridge was up?"

"Ah, that's the question," said Barker.

"At what o'clock was it raised?"

"It was nearly six o'clock," said Ames, the butler.

"I've heard," said the sergeant, "that it was usually raised at
sunset. That would be nearer half-past four than six at this time
of year."

"Mrs. Douglas had visitors to tea," said Ames. "I couldn't
raise it until they went. Then I wound it up myself."

"Then it comes to this," said the sergeant: "If anyone came
from outside -- if they did -- they must have got in across the
bridge before six and been in hiding ever since, until Mr.
Douglas came into the room after eleven."

"That is so! Mr. Douglas went round the house every night
the last thing before he turned in to see that the lights were right.
That brought him in here. The man was waiting and shot him.
Then he got away through the window and left his gun behind
him. That's how I read it; for nothing else will fit the facts."

The sergeant picked up a card which lay beside the dead man
on the floor. The initials V. V. and under them the number 341
were rudely scrawled in ink upon it.

"What's this?" he asked, holding it up.

Barker looked at it with curiosity. "I never noticed it before,"
he said. "The murderer must have left it behind him."

"V. V. -- 341. I can make no sense of that."

The sergeant kept turning it over in his big fingers. "What's
V. V.? Somebody's initials, maybe. What have you got there,
Dr. Wood?"

It was a good-sized hammer which had been lying on the rug
in front of the fireplace -- a substantial, workmanlike hammer.
Cecil Barker pointed to a box of brass-headed nails upon the
mantelpiece.

"Mr. Douglas was altering the pictures yesterday," he said.
"I saw him myself, standing upon that chair and fixing the big
picture above it. That accounts for the hammer."

"We'd best put it back on the rug where we found it," said
the sergeant, scratching his puzzled head in his perplexity. "It
will want the best brains in the force to get to the bottom of this
thing. It will be a London job before it is finished." He raised
the hand lamp and walked slowly round the room. "Hullo!" he
cried, excitedly, drawing the window curtain to one side. "What
o'clock were those curtains drawn?"

"When the lamps were lit," said the butler. "It would be
shortly after four."

"Someone had been hiding here, sure enough." He held down
the light, and the marks of muddy boots were very visible in the
corner. "I'm bound to say this bears out your theory, Mr.
Barker. It looks as if the man got into the house after four when
the curtains were drawn and before six when the bridge was
raised. He slipped into this room, because it was the first that he
saw. There was no other place where he could hide, so he
popped in behind this curtain. That all seems clear enough. It is
likely that his main idea was to burgle the house; but Mr.
Douglas chanced to come upon him, so he murdered him and
escaped."

"That's how I read it," said Barker. "But, I say, aren't we
wasting precious time? Couldn't we start out and scour the
country before the fellow gets away?"

The sergeant considered for a moment.

"There are no trains before six in the morning; so he can't get
away by rail. If he goes by road with his legs all dripping, it's
odds that someone will notice him. Anyhow, I can't leave here
myself until I am relieved. But I think none of you should go
until we see more clearly how we all stand."

The doctor had taken the lamp and was narrowly scrutinizing
the body. "What's this mark?" he asked. "Could this have any
connection with the crime?"

The dead man's right arm was thrust out from his dressing
gown, and exposed as high as the elbow. About halfway up the
forearm was a curious brown design, a triangle inside a circle,
standing out in vivid relief upon the lard-coloured skin.

"It's not tattooed," said the doctor, peering through his glasses.
"I never saw anything like it. The man has been branded at
some time as they brand cattle. What is the meaning of this?"

"I don't profess to know the meaning of it," said Cecil
Barker; "but I have seen the mark on Douglas many times this
last ten years."

"And so have I," said the butler. "Many a time when the
master has rolled up his sleeves I have noticed that very mark.
I've often wondered what it could be."

"Then it has nothing to do with the crime, anyhow," said the
sergeant. "But it's a rum thing all the same. Everything about
this case is rum. Well, what is it now?"

The butler had given an exclamation of astonishment and was
pointing at the dead man's outstretched hand.

"They've taken his wedding ring!" he gasped.

"What!"

"Yes, indeed. Master always wore his plain gold wedding ring
on the little finger of his left hand. That ring with the rough
nugget on it was above it, and the twisted snake ring on the third
finger. There's the nugget and there's the snake, but the wedding
ring is gone."

"He's right," said Barker.

"Do you tell me," said the sergeant, "that the wedding ring
was below the other?"

"Always!"

"Then the murderer, or whoever it was, first took off this ring
you call the nugget ring, then the wedding ring, and afterwards
put the nugget ring back again."

"That is so!"

The worthy country policeman shook his head. "Seems to me
the sooner we get London on to this case the better," said he.
"White Mason is a smart man. No local job has ever been too
much for White Mason. It won't be long now before he is here
to help us. But I expect we'll have to look to London before we
are through. Anyhow, I'm not ashamed to say that it is a deal too
thick for the likes of me."



Chapter 4
Darkness

At three in the morning the chief Sussex detective, obeying
the urgent call from Sergeant Wilson of Birlstone, arrived from
headquarters in a light dog-cart behind a breathless trotter. By
the five-forty train in the morning he had sent his message to
Scotland Yard, and he was at the Birlstone station at twelve
o'clock to welcome us. White Mason was a quiet, comfortable-
looking person in a loose tweed suit, with a clean-shaved, ruddy
face, a stoutish body, and powerful bandy legs adorned with
gaiters, looking like a small farmer, a retired gamekeeper, or
anything upon earth except a very favourable specimen of the
provincial criminal officer.

"A real downright snorter, Mr. MacDonald!" he kept repeating.
"We'll have the pressmen down like flies when they understand it.
I'm hoping we will get our work done before they get poking their
noses into it and messing up all the trails. There has been
nothing like this that I can remember. There are some bits
that will come home to you, Mr. Holmes, or I am mistaken. And
you also, Dr. Watson; for the medicos will have a word to say
before we finish. Your room is at the Westville Arms. There's
no other place; but I hear that it is clean and good. The man will
carry your bags. This way, gentlemen, if you please."

He was a very bustling and genial person, this Sussex detective.
In ten minutes we had all found our quarters. In ten more we were
seated in the parlour of the inn and being treated to a rapid
sketch of those events which have been outlined in the previous
chapter. MacDonald made an occasional note, while Holmes sat
absorbed, with the expression of surprised and reverent admiration
with which the botanist surveys the rare and precious bloom.

"Remarkable!" he said, when the story was unfolded, "most
remarkable! I can hardly recall any case where the features have
been more peculiar."

"I thought you would say so, Mr. Holmes," said White
Mason in great delight. "We're well up with the times in
Sussex. I've told you now how matters were, up to the time
when I took over from Sergeant Wilson between three and four
this morning. My word! I made the old mare go! But I need not
have been in such a hurry, as it turned out; for there was nothing
immediate that I could do. Sergeant Wilson had all the facts. I
checked them and considered them and maybe added a few of
my own."

"What were they?" asked Holmes eagerly.

"Well, I first had the hammer examined. There was Dr.
Wood there to help me. We found no signs of violence upon it. I
was hoping that if Mr. Douglas defended himself with the hammer,
he might have left his mark upon the murderer before he dropped
it on the mat. But there was no stain."

"That, of course, proves nothing at all," remarked Inspector
MacDonald. "There has been many a hammer murder and no
trace on the hammer."

"Quite so. It doesn't prove it wasn't used. But there might
have been stains, and that would have helped us. As a matter of
fact there were none. Then I examined the gun. They were
buckshot cartridges, and, as Sergeant Wilson pointed out, the
triggers were wired together so that, if you pulled on the hinder
one, both barrels were discharged. Whoever fixed that up had
made up his mind that he was going to take no chances of
missing his man. The sawed gun was not more than two foot
long -- one could carry it easily under one's coat. There was no
complete maker's name; but the printed letters P-E-N were on the
fluting between the barrels, and the rest of the name had been cut
off by the saw."

"A big P with a flourish above it, E and N smaller?" asked
Holmes.

"Exactly."

"Pennsylvania Small Arms Company -- well-known American
firm," said Holmes.

White Mason gazed at my friend as the little village
practitioner looks at the Harley Street specialist who by
a word can solve the difficulties that perplex him.

"That is very helpful, Mr. Holmes. No doubt you are right.
Wonderful! Wonderful! Do you carry the names of all the gun
makers in the world in your memory?"

Holmes dismissed the subject with a wave.

"No doubt it is an American shotgun," White Mason continued.
"I seem to have read that a sawed-off shotgun is a weapon
used in some parts of America. Apart from the name upon the
barrel, the idea had occurred to me. There is some evidence
then, that this man who entered the house and killed its master
was an American."

MacDonald shook his head. "Man, you are surely travelling
overfast," said he. "I have heard no evidence yet that any
stranger was ever in the house at all."

"The open window, the blood on the sill, the queer card, the
marks of boots in the corner, the gun!"

"Nothing there that could not have been arranged. Mr. Douglas
was an American, or had lived long in America. So had Mr.
Barker. You don't need to import an American from outside in
order to account for American doings."

"Ames, the butler --"

"What about him? Is he reliable?"

"Ten years with Sir Charles Chandos -- as solid as a rock. He
has been with Douglas ever since he took the Manor House five
years ago. He has never seen a gun of this sort in the house."

"The gun was made to conceal. That's why the barrels were
sawed. It would fit into any box. How could he swear there was
no such gun in the house?"

"Well, anyhow, he had never seen one."

MacDonald shook his obstinate Scotch head. "I'm not
convinced yet that there was ever anyone in the house," said he.
"I'm asking you to conseedar" (his accent became more
Aberdonian as he lost himself in his argument) "I'm asking you
to conseedar what it involves if you suppose that this gun was
ever brought into the house, and that all these strange things
were done by a person from outside. Oh, man, it's just
inconceivable! It's clean against common sense! I put it to you,
Mr. Holmes, judging it by what we have heard."

"Well, state your case, Mr. Mac," said Holmes in his most
judicial style.

"The man is not a burglar, supposing that he ever existed.
The ring business and the card point to premeditated murder for
some private reason. Very good. Here is a man who slips into a
house with the deliberate intention of committing murder. He
knows, if he knows anything, that he will have a deeficulty in
making his escape, as the house is surrounded with water. What
weapon would he choose? You would say the most silent in the
world. Then he could hope when the deed was done to slip
quickly from the window, to wade the moat, and to get away at
his leisure. That's understandable. But is it understandable that
he should go out of his way to bring with him the most noisy
weapon he could select, knowing well that it will fetch every
human being in the house to the spot as quick as they can run,
and that it is all odds that he will be seen before he can get
across the moat? Is that credible, Mr. Holmes?"

"Well, you put the case strongly," my friend replied
thoughtfully. "It certainly needs a good deal of justification.
May I ask, Mr. White Mason, whether you examined the farther side
of the moat at once to see if there were any signs of the man
having climbed out from the water?"

"There were no signs, Mr. Holmes. But it is a stone ledge,
and one could hardly expect them."

"No tracks or marks?"

"None."

"Ha! Would there be any objection, Mr. White Mason, to
our going down to the house at once? There may possibly be some
small point which might be suggestive."

"I was going to propose it, Mr. Holmes; but I thought it well
to put you in touch with all the facts before we go. I suppose if
anything should strike you --" White Mason looked doubtfully
at the amateur.

"I have worked with Mr. Holmes before," said Inspector
MacDonald. "He plays the game."

"My own idea of the game, at any rate," said Holmes, with a
smile. "I go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work
of the police. If I have ever separated myself from the official
force, it is because they have first separated themselves from me.
I have no wish ever to score at their expense. At the same time,
Mr. White Mason, I claim the right to work in my own way and
give my results at my own time -- complete rather than in stages."

"I am sure we are honoured by your presence and to show
you all we know," said White Mason cordially. "Come along,
Dr. Watson, and when the time comes we'll all hope for a place
in your book."

We walked down the quaint village street with a row of
pollarded elms on each side of it. Just beyond were two ancient
stone pillars, weather-stained and lichen-blotched bearing upon
their summits a shapeless something which had once been the
rampant lion of Capus of Birlstone. A short walk along the
winding drive with such sward and oaks around it as one only
sees in rural England, then a sudden turn, and the long, low
Jacobean house of dingy, liver-coloured brick lay before us, with
an old-fashioned garden of cut yews on each side of it. As we
approached it, there was the wooden drawbridge and the beautiful
broad moat as still and luminous as quicksilver in the cold,
winter sunshine.

Three centuries had flowed past the old Manor House, centuries
of births and of homecomings, of country dances and of the meetings
of fox hunters. Strange that now in its old age this dark business
should have cast its shadow upon the venerable walls! And yet
those strange, peaked roofs and quaint, overhung gables were a
fitting covering to grim and terrible intrigue. As I looked
at the deep-set windows and the long sweep of the dull-coloured,
water-lapped front, I felt that no more fitting scene could be set
for such a tragedy.

"That's the window," said White Mason, "that one on the
immediate right of the drawbridge. It's open just as it was found
last night."

"It looks rather narrow for a man to pass."

"Well, it wasn't a fat man, anyhow. We don't need your
deductions, Mr. Holmes, to tell us that. But you or I could
squeeze through all right."

Holmes walked to the edge of the moat and looked across.
Then he examined the stone ledge and the grass border beyond
it.

"I've had a good look, Mr. Holmes," said White Mason.
"There is nothing there, no sign that anyone has landed -- but
why should he leave any sign?"

"Exactly. Why should he? Is the water always turbid?"

"Generally about this colour. The stream brings down the
clay."

"How deep is it?"

"About two feet at each side and three in the middle."

"So we can put aside all idea of the man having been drowned
in crossing."

"No, a child could not be drowned in it."

We walked across the drawbridge, and were admitted by a
quaint, gnarled, dried-up person, who was the butler, Ames. The
poor old fellow was white and quivering from the shock. The
village sergeant, a tall, formal, melancholy man, still held his
vigil in the room of Fate. The doctor had departed.

"Anything fresh, Sergeant Wilson?" asked White Mason.

"No, sir."

"Then you can go home. You've had enough. We can send
for you if we want you. The butler had better wait outside. Tell
him to warn Mr. Cecil Barker, Mrs. Douglas, and the housekeeper
that we may want a word with them presently. Now, gentlemen,
perhaps you will allow me to give you the views I have formed
first, and then you will be able to arrive at your own."

He impressed me, this country specialist. He had a solid grip
of fact and a cool, clear, common-sense brain, which should take
him some way in his profession. Holmes listened to him intently,
with no sign of that impatience which the official exponent too
often produced.

"Is it suicide, or is it murder -- that's our first question,
gentlemen, is it not? If it were suicide, then we have to believe
that this man began by taking off his wedding ring and concealing
it; that he then came down here in his dressing gown, trampled mud
into a corner behind the curtain in order to give the idea someone
had waited for him, opened the window, put blood on the --"

"We can surely dismiss that," said MacDonald.

"So I think. Suicide is out of the question. Then a murder has
been done. What we have to determine is, whether it was done
by someone outside or inside the house."

"Well, let's hear the argument."

"There are considerable difficulties both ways, and yet one or
the other it must be. We will suppose first that some person or
persons inside the house did the crime. They got this man down
here at a time when everything was still and yet no one was
asleep. They then did the deed with the queerest and noisiest
weapon in the world so as to tell everyone what had happened -- a
weapon that was never seen in the house before. That does not
seem a very likely start, does it?"

"No, it does not."

"Well, then, everyone is agreed that after the alarm was given
only a minute at the most had passed before the whole household --
not Mr. Cecil Barker alone, though he claims to have been the
first, but Ames and all of them were on the spot. Do you tell me
that in that time the guilty person managed to make footmarks in
the corner, open the window, mark the sill with blood, take the
wedding ring off the dead man's finger, and all the rest of it? It's
impossible!"

"You put it very clearly," said Holmes. "I am inclined to
agree with you."

"Well, then, we are driven back to the theory that it was done
by someone from outside. We are still faced with some big
difficulties; but anyhow they have ceased to be impossibilities.
The man got into the house between four-thirty and six; that is to
say, between dusk and the time when the bridge was raised.
There had been some visitors, and the door was open; so there
was nothing to prevent him. He may have been a common
burglar, or he may have had some private grudge against Mr.
Douglas. Since Mr. Douglas has spent most of his life in America,
and this shotgun seems to be an American weapon, it would
seem that the private grudge is the more likely theory. He
slipped into this room because it was the first he came to, and he
hid behind the curtain. There he remained until past eleven at
night. At that time Mr. Douglas entered the room. It was a short
interview, if there were any interview at all; for Mrs. Douglas
declares that her husband had not left her more than a few
minutes when she heard the shot."

"The candle shows that," said Holmes.

"Exactly. The candle, which was a new one, is not burned
more than half an inch. He must have placed it on the table
before he was attacked; otherwise, of course, it would have
fallen when he fell. This shows that he was not attacked the
instant that he entered the room. When Mr. Barker arrived the
candle was lit and the lamp was out."

"That's all clear enough."

"Well, now, we can reconstruct things on those lines. Mr.
Douglas enters the room. He puts down the candle. A man
appears from behind the curtain. He is armed with this gun. He
demands the wedding ring -- Heaven only knows why, but so it
must have been. Mr. Douglas gave it up. Then either in cold
blood or in the course of a struggle -- Douglas may have gripped
the hammer that was found upon the mat -- he shot Douglas in
this horrible way. He dropped his gun and also it would seem
this queer card -- V. V. 341, whatever that may mean -- and he
made his escape through the window and across the moat at the
very moment when Cecil Barker was discovering the crime.
How's that, Mr. Holmes?"

"Very interesting, but just a little unconvincing."

"Man, it would be absolute nonsense if it wasn't that anything
else is even worse!" cried MacDonald. "Somebody killed the
man, and whoever it was I could clearly prove to you that he
should have done it some other way. What does he mean by
allowing his retreat to be cut off like that? What does he mean by
using a shotgun when silence was his one chance of escape?
Come, Mr. Holmes, it's up to you to give us a lead, since you
say Mr. White Mason's theory is unconvincing."

Holmes had sat intently observant during this long discussion,
missing no word that was said, with his keen eyes darting to
right and to left, and his forehead wrinkled with speculation.

"I should like a few more facts before I get so far as a theory,
Mr. Mac," said he, kneeling down beside the body. "Dear me!
these injuries are really appalling. Can we have the butler in for
a moment? . . . Ames, I understand that you have often seen this
very unusual mark -- a branded triangle inside a circle -- upon Mr.
Douglas's forearm?"

"Frequently, sir."

"You never heard any speculation as to what it meant?"

"No, sir."

"It must have caused great pain when it was inflicted. It is
undoubtedly a burn. Now, I observe, Ames, that there is a small
piece of plaster at the angle of Mr. Douglas's jaw. Did you
observe that in life?"

"Yes, sir, he cut himself in shaving yesterday morning."

"Did you ever know him to cut himself in shaving before?"

"Not for a very long time, sir."

"Suggestive!" said Holmes. "It may, of course, be a mere
coincidence, or it may point to some nervousness which would
indicate that he had reason to apprehend danger. Had you
noticed anything unusual in his conduct, yesterday, Ames?"

"It struck me that he was a little restless and excited, sir."

"Ha! The attack may not have been entirely unexpected. We
do seem to make a little progress, do we not? Perhaps you would
rather do the questioning, Mr. Mac?"

"No, Mr. Holmes, it's in better hands than mine."

"Well, then, we will pass to this card -- V. V. 341. It is rough
cardboard. Have you any of the sort in the house?"

"I don't think so."

Holmes walked across to the desk and dabbed a little ink from
each bottle on to the blotting paper. "It was not printed in this
room," he said; "this is black ink and the other purplish. It was
done by a thick pen, and these are fine. No, it was done
elsewhere, I should say. Can you make anything of the inscription,
Ames?"

"No, sir, nothing."

"What do you think, Mr. Mac?"

"It gives me the impression of a secret society of some sort;
the same with his badge upon the forearm."

"That's my idea, too," said White Mason.

"Well, we can adopt it as a working hypothesis and then see
how far our difficulties disappear. An agent from such a society
makes his way into the house, waits for Mr. Douglas, blows his
head nearly off with this weapon, and escapes by wading the
moat, after leaving a card beside the dead man, which will
when mentioned in the papers, tell other members of the society
that vengeance has been done. That all hangs together. But why
this gun, of all weapons?"

"Exactly."

"And why the missing ring?"

"Quite so."

"And why no arrest? It's past two now. I take it for granted
that since dawn every constable within forty miles has been
looking out for a wet stranger?"

"That is so, Mr. Holmes."

"Well, unless he has a burrow close by or a change of clothes
ready, they can hardly miss him. And yet they have missed him
up to now!" Holmes had gone to the window and was examining
with his lens the blood mark on the sill. "It is clearly the tread of
a shoe. It is remarkably broad; a splay-foot, one would say.
Curious, because, so far as one can trace any footmark in this
mud-stained corner, one would say it was a more shapely sole.
However, they are certainly very indistinct. What's this under
the side table?"

"Mr. Douglas's dumb-bells," said Ames.

"Dumb-bell -- there's only one. Where's the other?"

"I don't know, Mr. Holmes. There may have been only one. I
have not noticed them for months."

"One dumb-bell -- " Holmes said seriously; but his remarks
were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door.

A tall, sunburned, capable-looking, clean-shaved man looked
in at us. I had no difficulty in guessing that it was the Cecil
Barker of whom I had heard. His masterful eyes travelled quickly
with a questioning glance from face to face.

"Sorry to interrupt your consultation," said he, "but you
should hear the latest news."

"An arrest?"

"No such luck. But they've found his bicycle. The fellow left
his bicycle behind him. Come and have a look. It is within a
hundred yards of the hall door."

We found three or four grooms and idlers standing in the drive
inspecting a bicycle which had been drawn out from a clump of
evergreens in which it had been concealed. It was a well used
Rudge-Whitworth, splashed as from a considerable journey. There
was a saddlebag with spanner and oilcan, but no clue as to the
owner.

"It would be a grand help to the police," said the inspector,
"if these things were numbered and registered. But we must be
thankful for what we've got. If we can't find where he went to,
at least we are likely to get where he came from. But what in the
name of all that is wonderful made the fellow leave it behind?
And how in the world has he got away without it? We don't
seem to get a gleam of light in the case, Mr. Holmes."

"Don't we?" my friend answered thoughtfully. "I wonder!"



Chapter 5
The People Of the Drama

"Have you seen all you want of the study?" asked White Mason
as we reentered the house.

"For the time," said the inspector, and Holmes nodded.

"Then perhaps you would now like to hear the evidence of
some of the people in the house. We could use the dining-room,
Ames. Please come yourself first and tell us what you know."

The butler's account was a simple and a clear one, and he
gave a convincing impression of sincerity. He had been engaged
five years before, when Douglas first came to Birlstone. He
understood that Mr. Douglas was a rich gentleman who had
made his money in America. He had been a kind and considerate
employer -- not quite what Ames was used to, perhaps; but one
can't have everything. He never saw any signs of apprehension
in Mr. Douglas: on the contrary, he was the most fearless man
he had ever known. He ordered the drawbridge to be pulled up
every night because it was the ancient custom of the old house,
and he liked to keep the old ways up.

Mr. Douglas seldom went to London or left the village; but on
the day before the crime he had been shopping at Tunbridge
Wells. He (Ames) had observed some restlessness and excitement
on the part of Mr. Douglas that day; for he had seemed
impatient and irritable, which was unusual with him. He had not
gone to bed that night; but was in the pantry at the back of the
house, putting away the silver, when he heard the bell ring
violently. He heard no shot; but it was hardly possible he would,
as the pantry and kitchens were at the very back of the house and
there were several closed doors and a long passage between. The
housekeeper had come out of her room, attracted by the violent
ringing of the bell. They had gone to the front of the house
together.

As they reached the bottom of the stair he had seen Mrs.
Douglas coming down it. No, she was not hurrying; it did not
seem to him that she was particularly agitated. Just as she
reached the bottom of the stair Mr. Barker had rushed out of the
study. He had stopped Mrs. Douglas and begged her to go back.

"For God's sake, go back to your room!" he cried. "Poor
Jack is dead! You can do nothing. For God's sake, go back!"

After some persuasion upon the stairs Mrs. Douglas had gone
back. She did not scream. She made no outcry whatever. Mrs.
Allen, the housekeeper, had taken her upstairs and stayed with
her in the bedroom. Ames and Mr. Barker had then returned to
the study, where they had found everything exactly as the police
had seen it. The candle was not lit at that time; but the lamp was
burning. They had looked out of the window; but the night was
very dark and nothing could be seen or heard. They had then
rushed out into the hall, where Ames had turned the windlass
which lowered the drawbridge. Mr. Barker had then hurried off
to get the police.

Such, in its essentials, was the evidence of the butler.

The account of Mrs. Allen, the housekeeper, was, so far as it
went, a corroboration of that of her fellow servant. The
housekeeper's room was rather nearer to the front of the house
than the pantry in which Ames had been working. She was preparing
to go to bed when the loud ringing of the bell had attracted her
attention. She was a little hard of hearing. Perhaps that was why
she had not heard the shot; but in any case the study was a long
way off. She remembered hearing some sound which she imagined to
be the slamming of a door. That was a good deal earlier -- half
an hour at least before the ringing of the bell. When Mr. Ames
ran to the front she went with him. She saw Mr. Barker, very
pale and excited, come out of the study. He intercepted Mrs.
Douglas, who was coming down the stairs. He entreated her to go
back, and she answered him, but what she said could not be heard.

"Take her up! Stay with her!" he had said to Mrs. Allen.

She had therefore taken her to the bedroom, and endeavoured
to soothe her. She was greatly excited, trembling all over, but
made no other attempt to go downstairs. She just sat in her
dressing gown by her bedroom fire, with her head sunk in her
hands. Mrs. Allen stayed with her most of the night. As to the
other servants, they had all gone to bed, and the alarm did not
reach them until just before the police arrived. They slept at the
extreme back of the house, and could not possibly have heard
anything.

So far the housekeeper could add nothing on cross-examination
save lamentations and expressions of amazement.

Cecil Barker succeeded Mrs. Allen as a witness. As to the
occurrences of the night before, he had very little to add to what
he had already told the police. Personally, he was convinced that
the murderer had escaped by the window. The bloodstain was
conclusive, in his opinion, on that point. Besides, as the bridge
was up, there was no other possible way of escaping. He could
not explain what had become of the assassin or why he had not
taken his bicycle, if it were indeed his. He could not possibly
have been drowned in the moat, which was at no place more
than three feet deep.

In his own mind he had a very definite theory about the
murder. Douglas was a reticent man, and there were some
chapters in his life of which he never spoke. He had emigrated to
America when he was a very young man. He had prospered
well, and Barker had first met him in California, where they had
become partners in a successful mining claim at a place called
Benito Canyon. They had done very well; but Douglas had
suddenly sold out and started for England. He was a widower at
that time. Barker had afterwards realized his money and come to
live in London. Thus they had renewed their friendship.

Douglas had given him the impression that some danger was
hanging over his head, and he had always looked upon his
sudden departure from California, and also his renting a house in
so quiet a place in England, as being connected with this peril.
He imagined that some secret society, some implacable organization,
was on Douglas's track, which would never rest until it killed him.
Some remarks of his had given him this idea; though he had never
told him what the society was, nor how he had come to offend it.
He could only suppose that the legend upon the placard had some
reference to this secret society.

"How long were you with Douglas in California?" asked
Inspector MacDonald.

"Five years altogether."

"He was a bachelor, you say?"

"A widower."

"Have you ever heard where his first wife came from?"

"No, I remember his saying that she was of German extraction,
and I have seen her portrait. She was a very beautiful woman.
She died of typhoid the year before I met him."

"You don't associate his past with any particular part of
America?"

"I have heard him talk of Chicago. He knew that city well and
had worked there. I have heard him talk of the coal and iron
districts. He had travelled a good deal in his time."

"Was he a politician? Had this secret society to do with
politics?"

"No, he cared nothing about politics."

"You have no reason to think it was criminal?"

"On the contrary, I never met a straighter man in my life."

"Was there anything curious about his life in California?"

"He liked best to stay and to work at our claim in the
mountains. He would never go where other men were if he could
help it. That's why I first thought that someone was after him.
Then when he left so suddenly for Europe I made sure that it was
so. I believe that he had a warning of some sort. Within a week
of his leaving half a dozen men were inquiring for him."

"What sort of men?"

"Well, they were a mighty hard-looking crowd. They came
up to the claim and wanted to know where he was. I told them
that he was gone to Europe and that I did not know where to find
him. They meant him no good -- it was easy to see that."

"Were these men Americans -- Californians?"

"Well, I don't know about Californians. They were Americans,
all right. But they were not miners. I don't know what they
were, and was very glad to see their backs."

"That was six years ago?"

"Nearer seven."

"And then you were together five years in California, so that
this business dates back not less than eleven years at the least?"

"That is so."

"It must be a very serious feud that would be kept up with
such earnestness for as long as that. It would be no light thing
that would give rise to it."

"I think it shadowed his whole life. It was never quite out of
his mind."

"But if a man had a danger hanging over him, and knew what
it was, don't you think he would turn to the police for protection?"

"Maybe it was some danger that he could not be protected
against. There's one thing you should know. He always went
about armed. His revolver was never out of his pocket. But, by
bad luck, he was in his dressing gown and had left it in the
bedroom last night. Once the bridge was up, I guess he thought
he was safe."

"I should like these dates a little clearer," said MacDonald.
"It is quite six years since Douglas left California. You followed
him next year, did you not?"

"That is so."

"And he had been married five years. You must have returned
about the time of his marriage."

"About a month before. I was his best man."

"Did you know Mrs. Douglas before her marriage?"

"No, I did not. I had been away from England for ten years."

"But you have seen a good deal of her since."

Barker looked sternly at the detective. "I have seen a good
deal of him since," he answered. "If I have seen her, it is
because you cannot visit a man without knowing his wife. If you
imagine there is any connection --"

"I imagine nothing, Mr. Barker. I am bound to make every
inquiry which can bear upon the case. But I mean no offense."

"Some inquiries are offensive," Barker answered angrily.

"It's only the facts that we want. It is in your interest and
everyone's interest that they should be cleared up. Did Mr.
Douglas entirely approve your friendship with his wife?"

Barker grew paler, and his great, strong hands were clasped
convulsively together. "You have no right to ask such
questions!" he cried. "What has this to do with the matter you
are investigating?"

"I must repeat the question."

"Well, I refuse to answer."

"You can refuse to answer; but you must be aware that your
refusal is in itself an answer, for you would not refuse if you had
not something to conceal."

Barker stood for a moment with his face set grimly and his
strong black eyebrows drawn low in intense thought. Then he
looked up with a smile. "Well, I guess you gentlemen are only
doing your clear duty after all, and I have no right to stand in the
way of it. I'd only ask you not to worry Mrs. Douglas over this
matter; for she has enough upon her just now. I may tell you that
poor Douglas had just one fault in the world, and that was his
jealousy. He was fond of me -- no man could be fonder of a
friend. And he was devoted to his wife. He loved me to come
here, and was forever sending for me. And yet if his wife and I
talked together or there seemed any sympathy between us, a kind
of wave of jealousy would pass over him, and he would be off
the handle and saying the wildest things in a moment. More than
once I've sworn off coming for that reason, and then he would
write me such penitent, imploring letters that I just had to. But
you can take it from me, gentlemen, if it was my last word, that
no man ever had a more loving, faithful wife -- and I can say also
no friend could be more loyal than I!"

It was spoken with fervour and feeling, and yet Inspector
MacDonald could not dismiss the subject.

"You are aware," said he, "that the dead man's wedding ring
has been taken from his finger?"

"So it appears," said Barker.

"What do you mean by 'appears'? You know it as a fact."

The man seemed confused and undecided. "When I said
'appears' I meant that it was conceivable that he had himself
taken off the ring."

"The mere fact that the ring should be absent, whoever may
have removed it, would suggest to anyone's mind, would it not,
that the marriage and the tragedy were connected?"

Barker shrugged his broad shoulders. "I can't profess to say
what it means." he answered. "But if you mean to hint that it
could reflect in any way upon this lady's honour" -- his eyes
blazed for an instant, and then with an evident effort he got a
grip upon his own emotions -- "well, you are on the wrong track,
that's all."

"I don't know that I've anything else to ask you at present,"
said MacDonald, coldly.

"There was one small point," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
"When you entered the room there was only a candle lighted on
the table, was there not?"

"Yes, that was so."

"By its light you saw that some terrible incident had occurred?"

"Exactly."

"You at once rang for help?"

"Yes."

"And it arrived very speedily?"

"Within a minute or so."

"And yet when they arrived they found that the candle was
out and that the lamp had been lighted. That seems very
remarkable."

Again Barker showed some signs of indecision. "I don't see
that it was remarkable, Mr. Holmes," he answered after a pause.
"The candle threw a very bad light. My first thought was to get
a better one. The lamp was on the table; so I lit it."

"And blew out the candle?"

"Exactly."

Holmes asked no further question, and Barker, with a deliberate
look from one to the other of us, which had, as it seemed to me,
something of defiance in it, turned and left the room.

Inspector MacDonald had sent up a note to the effect that he
would wait upon Mrs. Douglas in her room; but she had replied
that she would meet us in the dining room. She entered now, a
tall and beautiful woman of thirty, reserved and self-possessed to
a remarkable degree, very different from the tragic and distracted
figure I had pictured. It is true that her face was pale and drawn,
like that of one who has endured a great shock; but her manner
was composed, and the finely moulded hand which she rested
upon the edge of the table was as steady as my own. Her sad,
appealing eyes travelled from one to the other of us with a
curiously inquisitive expression. That questioning gaze
transformed itself suddenly into abrupt speech.

"Have you found anything out yet?" she asked.

Was it my imagination that there was an undertone of fear
rather than of hope in the question?

"We have taken every possible step, Mrs. Douglas," said the
inspector. "You may rest assured that nothing will be neglected."

"Spare no money," she said in a dead, even tone. "It is my
desire that every possible effort should be made."

"Perhaps you can tell us something which may throw some
light upon the matter."

"I fear not; but all I know is at your service."

"We have heard from Mr. Cecil Barker that you did not
actually see -- that you were never in the room where the tragedy
occurred?"

"No, he turned me back upon the stairs. He begged me to
return to my room."

"Quite so. You had heard the shot, and you had at once come
down."

"I put on my dressing gown and then came down."

"How long was it after hearing the shot that you were stopped
on the stair by Mr. Barker?"

"It may have been a couple of minutes. It is so hard to reckon
time at such a moment. He implored me not to go on. He
assured me that I could do nothing. Then Mrs. Allen, the
housekeeper, led me upstairs again. It was all like some dreadful
dream."

"Can you give us any idea how long your husband had been
downstairs before you heard the shot?"

"No, I cannot say. He went from his dressing room, and I did
not hear him go. He did the round of the house every night, for
he was nervous of fire. It is the only thing that I have ever
known him nervous of."

"That is just the point which I want to come to, Mrs. Douglas.
You have known your husband only in England, have you not?"

"Yes, we have been married five years."

"Have you heard him speak of anything which occurred in
America and might bring some danger upon him?"

Mrs. Douglas thought earnestly before she answered. "Yes."
she said at last, "I have always felt that there was a danger
hanging over him. He refused to discuss it with me. It was not
from want of confidence in me -- there was the most complete
love and confidence between us -- but it was out of his desire to
keep all alarm away from me. He thought I should brood over it
if I knew all, and so he was silent."

"How did you know it, then?"

Mrs. Douglas's face lit with a quick smile. "Can a husband
ever carry about a secret all his life and a woman who loves him
have no suspicion of it? I knew it by his refusal to talk about
some episodes in his American life. I knew it by certain precautions
he took. I knew it by certain words he let fall. I knew it by the
way he looked at unexpected strangers. I was perfectly certain that
he had some powerful enemies, that he believed they were on his
track, and that he was always on his guard against them. I was so
sure of it that for years I have been terrified if ever he came
home later than was expected."

"Might I ask," asked Holmes, "what the words were which
attracted your attention?"

"The Valley of Fear," the lady answered. "That was an
expression he has used when I questioned him. 'I have been in
the Valley of Fear. I am not out of it yet.' -- 'Are we never to get
out of the Valley of Fear?' I have asked him when I have seen
him more serious than usual. 'Sometimes I think that we never
shall,' he has answered."

"Surely you asked him what he meant by the Valley of
Fear?"

"I did; but his face would become very grave and he would
shake his head. 'It is bad enough that one of us should have been
in its shadow,' he said. 'Please God it shall never fall upon you!'
It was some real valley in which he had lived and in which
something terrible had occurred to him, of that I am certain; but I
can tell you no more."

"And he never mentioned any names?"

"Yes, he was delirious with fever once when he had his
hunting accident three years ago. Then I remember that there
was a name that came continually to his lips. He spoke it with
anger and a sort of horror. McGinty was the name -- Bodymaster
McGinty. I asked him when he recovered who Bodymaster
McGinty was, and whose body he was master of. 'Never of
mine, thank God!' he answered with a laugh, and that was all I
could get from him. But there is a connection between Bodymaster
McGinty and the Valley of Fear."

"There is one other point," said Inspector MacDonald. "You
met Mr. Douglas in a boarding house in London, did you not,
and became engaged to him there? Was there any romance,
anything secret or mysterious, about the wedding?"

"There was romance. There is always romance. There was
nothing mysterious."

"He had no rival?"

"No, I was quite free."

"You have heard, no doubt, that his wedding ring has been
taken. Does that suggest anything to you? Suppose that some
enemy of his old life had tracked him down and committed this
crime, what possible reason could he have for taking his
wedding ring?"

For an instant I could have sworn that the faintest shadow of a
smile flickered over the woman's lips.

"I really cannot tell," she answered. "It is certainly a most
extraordinary thing."

"Well, we will not detain you any longer, and we are sorry to
have put you to this trouble at such a time," said the inspector.
"There are some other points, no doubt; but we can refer to you
as they arise."

She rose, and I was again conscious of that quick, questioning
glance with which she had just surveyed us. "What impression
has my evidence made upon you?" The question might as well
have been spoken. Then, with a bow, she swept from the room.

"She's a beautiful woman -- a very beautiful woman," said
MacDonald thoughtfully, after the door had closed behind her.
"This man Barker has certainly been down here a good deal. He
is a man who might be attractive to a woman. He admits that the
dead man was jealous, and maybe he knew best himself what
cause he had for jealousy. Then there's that wedding ring. You
can't get past that. The man who tears a wedding ring off a dead
man's -- What do you say to it, Mr. Holmes?"

My friend had sat with his head upon his hands, sunk in the
deepest thought. Now he rose and rang the bell. "Ames," he
said, when the butler entered, "where is Mr. Cecil Barker
now?"

"I'll see, sir."

He came back in a moment to say that Barker was in the
garden.

"Can you remember, Ames, what Mr. Barker had on his feet
last night when you joined him in the study?"

"Yes, Mr. Holmes. He had a pair of bedroom slippers. I
brought him his boots when he went for the police."

"Where are the slippers now?"

"They are still under the chair in the hall."

"Very good, Ames. It is, of course, important for us to know
which tracks may be Mr. Barker's and which from outside."

"Yes, sir. I may say that I noticed that the slippers were
stained with blood -- so indeed were my own."

"That is natural enough, considering the condition of the
room. Very good, Ames. We will ring if we want you."

A few minutes later we were in the study. Holmes had brought
with him the carpet slippers from the hall. As Ames had observed,
the soles of both were dark with blood.

"Strange!" murmured Holmes, as he stood in the light of the
window and examined them minutely. "Very strange indeed!"

Stooping with one of his quick feline pounces, he placed the
slipper upon the blood mark on the sill. It exactly corresponded.
He smiled in silence at his colleagues.

The inspector was transfigured with excitement. His native
accent rattled like a stick upon railings.

"Man," he cried, "there's not a doubt of it! Barker has just
marked the window himself. It's a good deal broader than any
bootmark. I mind that you said it was a splay-foot, and here's
the explanation. But what's the game, Mr. Holmes -- what's the
game?"

"Ay, what's the game?" my friend repeated thoughtfully.

White Mason chuckled and rubbed his fat hands together in
his professional satisfaction. "I said it was a snorter!" he cried.
"And a real snorter it is!"



Chapter 6
A Dawning Light

The three detectives had many matters of detail into which to
inquire; so I returned alone to our modest quarters at the village
inn. But before doing so I took a stroll in the curious old-world
garden which flanked the house. Rows of very ancient yew trees
cut into strange designs girded it round. Inside was a beautiful
stretch of lawn with an old sundial in the middle, the whole
effect so soothing and restful that it was welcome to my somewhat
jangled nerves.

In that deeply peaceful atmosphere one could forget, or remember
only as some fantastic nightmare, that darkened study with the
sprawling, bloodstained figure on the floor. And yet, as I strolled
round it and tried to steep my soul in its gentle balm, a strange
incident occurred, which brought me back to the tragedy and left a
sinister impression in my mind.

I have said that a decoration of yew trees circled the garden.
At the end farthest from the house they thickened into a continuous
hedge. On the other side of this hedge, concealed from the eyes of
anyone approaching from the direction of the house, there was a
stone seat. As I approached the spot I was aware of voices, some
remark in the deep tones of a man, answered by a little ripple of
feminine laughter.

An instant later I had come round the end of the hedge and my
eyes lit upon Mrs. Douglas and the man Barker before they were
aware of my presence. Her appearance gave me a shock. In the
dining-room she had been demure and discreet. Now all pretense
of grief had passed away from her. Her eyes shone with the joy
of living, and her face still quivered with amusement at some
remark of her companion. He sat forward, his hands clasped and
his forearms on his knees, with an answering smile upon his
bold, handsome face. In an instant -- but it was just one instant
too late -- they resumed their solemn masks as my figure came
into view. A hurried word or two passed between them, and then
Barker rose and came towards me.

"Excuse me, sir," said he, "but am I addressing Dr. Watson?"

I bowed with a coldness which showed, I dare say, very
plainly the impression which had been produced upon my mind.

"We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship with
Mr. Sherlock Holmes is so well known. Would you mind coming over
and speaking to Mrs. Douglas for one instant?"

I followed him with a dour face. Very clearly I could see in
my mind's eye that shattered figure on the floor. Here within a
few hours of the tragedy were his wife and his nearest friend
laughing together behind a bush in the garden which had been his.
I greeted the lady with reserve. I had grieved with her grief in
the dining-room. Now I met her appealing gaze with an unresponsive
eye.

"I fear that you think me callous and hard-hearted." said she.

I shrugged my shoulders. "It is no business of mine," said I.

"Perhaps some day you will do me justice. If you only
realized --"

"There is no need why Dr. Watson should realize," said
Barker quickly. "As he has himself said, it is no possible
business of his."

"Exactly," said I, "and so I will beg leave to resume my
walk."

"One moment, Dr. Watson," cried the woman in a pleading
voice. "There is one question which you can answer with more
authority than anyone else in the world, and it may make a very
great difference to me. You know Mr. Holmes and his relations
with the police better than anyone else can. Supposing that a
matter were brought confidentially to his knowledge, is it
absolutely necessary that he should pass it on to the detectives?"

"Yes, that's it," said Barker eagerly. "Is he on his own or is
he entirely in with them?"

"I really don't know that I should be justified in discussing
such a point."

"I beg -- I implore that you will, Dr. Watson! I assure you that
you will be helping us -- helping me greatly if you will guide us
on that point."

There was such a ring of sincerity in the woman's voice that
for the instant I forgot all about her levity and was moved only to
do her will.

"Mr. Holmes is an independent investigator," I said. "He is
his own master, and would act as his own judgment directed. At
the same time, he would naturally feel loyalty towards the
officials who were working on the same case, and he would not
conceal from them anything which would help them in bringing
a criminal to justice. Beyond this I can say nothing, and I would
refer you to Mr. Holmes himself if you wanted fuller information."

So saying I raised my hat and went upon my way, leaving
them still seated behind that concealing hedge. I looked back as I
rounded the far end of it, and saw that they were still talking
very earnestly together, and, as they were gazing after me, it was
clear that it was our interview that was the subject of their
debate.

"I wish none of their confidences," said Holmes, when I
reported to him what had occurred. He had spent the whole
afternoon at the Manor House in consultation with his two
colleagues, and returned about five with a ravenous appetite for a
high tea which I had ordered for him. "No confidences, Watson;
for they are mighty awkward if it comes to an arrest for
conspiracy and murder."

"You think it will come to that?"

He was in his most cheerful and debonair humour. "My dear
Watson, when I have exterminated that fourth egg I shall be
ready to put you in touch with the whole situation. I don't say
that we have fathomed it -- far from it -- but when we have traced
the missing dumb-bell --"

"The dumb-bell!"

"Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetrated
the fact that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell? Well,
well, you need not be downcast; for between ourselves I don't
think that either Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitioner
has grasped the overwhelming importance of this incident. One
dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell!
Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent
danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!"

He sat with his mouth full of toast and his eyes sparkling with
mischief, watching my intellectual entanglement. The mere sight
of his excellent appetite was an assurance of success, for I had
very clear recollections of days and nights without a thought of
food, when his baffled mind had chafed before some problem
while his thin, eager features became more attenuated with the
asceticism of complete mental concentration. Finally he lit his
pipe, and sitting in the inglenook of the old village inn he talked
slowly and at random about his case, rather as one who thinks
aloud than as one who makes a considered statement.

"A lie, Watson -- a great, big, thumping, obtrusive,
uncompromising lie -- that's what meets us on the threshold! There
is our starting point. The whole story told by Barker is a lie.
But Barker's story is corroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she
is lying also. They are both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we
have the clear problem. Why are they lying, and what is the truth
which they are trying so hard to conceal? Let us try, Watson,
you and I, if we can get behind the lie and reconstruct the truth.

"How do I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsy
fabrication which simply could not be true. Consider! According
to the story given to us, the assassin had less than a minute after
the murder had been committed to take that ring, which was under
another ring, from the dead man's finger, to replace the other
ring -- a thing which he would surely never have done -- and to
put that singular card beside his victim. I say that this was
obviously impossible.

"You may argue -- but I have too much respect for your
judgment, Watson, to think that you will do so -- that the ring
may have been taken before the man was killed. The fact that the
candle had been lit only a short time shows that there had been
no lengthy interview. Was Douglas, from what we hear of his
fearless character, a man who would be likely to give up his
wedding ring at such short notice, or could we conceive of his
giving it up at all? No, no, Watson, the assassin was alone with
the dead man for some time with the lamp lit. Of that I have no
doubt at all.

"But the gunshot was apparently the cause of death. Therefore
the shot must have been fired some time earlier than we are told.
But there could be no mistake about such a matter as that. We
are in the presence, therefore, of a deliberate conspiracy upon
the part of the two people who heard the gunshot -- of the man
Barker and of the woman Douglas. When on the top of this I am
able to show that the blood mark on the windowsill was deliberately
placed there by Barker, in order to give a false clue to the police,
you will admit that the case grows dark against him.

"Now we have to ask ourselves at what hour the murder
actually did occur. Up to half-past ten the servants were moving
about the house; so it was certainly not before that time. At a
quarter to eleven they had all gone to their rooms with the
exception of Ames, who was in the pantry. I have been trying
some experiments after you left us this afternoon, and I find that
no noise which MacDonald can make in the study can penetrate
to me in the pantry when the doors are all shut.

"It is otherwise, however, from the housekeeper's room. It is
not so far down the corridor, and from it I could vaguely hear a
voice when it was very loudly raised. The sound from a shotgun
is to some extent muffled when the discharge is at very close
range, as it undoubtedly was in this instance. It would not be
very loud, and yet in the silence of the night it should have easily
penetrated to Mrs. Allen's room. She is, as she has told us,
somewhat deaf; but none the less she mentioned in her evidence
that she did hear something like a door slamming half an hour
before the alarm was given. Half an hour before the alarm was
given would be a quarter to eleven. I have no doubt that what
she heard was the report of the gun, and that this was the real
instant of the murder.

"If this is so, we have now to determine what Barker and
Mrs. Douglas, presuming that they are not the actual murderers,
could have been doing from quarter to eleven, when the sound of
the shot brought them down, until quarter past eleven, when they
rang the bell and summoned the servants. What were they doing,
and why did they not instantly give the alarm? That is the
question which faces us, and when it has been answered we shall
surely have gone some way to solve our problem."

"I am convinced myself," said I, "that there is an understanding
between those two people. She must be a heartless creature to sit
laughing at some jest within a few hours of her husband's murder."

"Exactly. She does not shine as a wife even in her own
account of what occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of
womankind, as you are aware, Watson, but my experience of
life has taught me that there are few wives, having any regard for
their husbands, who would let any man's spoken word stand
between them and that husband's dead body. Should I ever
marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some
feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a
housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of
her. It was badly stage-managed; for even the rawest investigators
must be struck by the absence of the usual feminine ululation.
If there had been nothing else, this incident alone would have
suggested a prearranged conspiracy to my mind."

"You think then, definitely, that Barker and Mrs. Douglas are
guilty of the murder?"

"There is an appalling directness about your questions, Watson,"
said Holmes, shaking his pipe at me. "They come at me like bullets.
If you put it that Mrs. Douglas and Barker know the truth about
the murder, and are conspiring to conceal it, then I can give you
a whole-souled answer. I am sure they do. But your more deadly
proposition is not so clear. Let us for a moment consider the
difficulties which stand in the way.

"We will suppose that this couple are united by the bonds of a
guilty love, and that they have determined to get rid of the man
who stands between them. It is a large supposition; for discreet
inquiry among servants and others has failed to corroborate it in
any way. On the contrary, there is a good deal of evidence that
the Douglases were very attached to each other."

"That, I am sure, cannot be true." said I, thinking of the
beautiful smiling face in the garden.

"Well at least they gave that impression. However, we will
suppose that they are an extraordinarily astute couple, who
deceive everyone upon this point, and conspire to murder the
husband. He happens to be a man over whose head some danger
hangs --"

"We have only their word for that."

Holmes looked thoughtful. "I see, Watson. You are sketching
out a theory by which everything they say from the beginning is
false. According to your idea, there was never any hidden menace,
or secret society, or Valley of Fear, or Boss MacSomebody, or
anything else. Well, that is a good sweeping generalization.
Let us see what that brings us to. They invent this theory to
account for the crime. They then play up to the idea by leaving
this bicycle in the park as proof of the existence of some
outsider. The stain on the windowsill conveys the same idea. So
does the card on the body, which might have been prepared in
the house. That all fits into your hypothesis, Watson. But now
we come on the nasty, angular, uncompromising bits which
won't slip into their places. Why a cut-off shotgun of all weapons
-- and an American one at that? How could they be so sure that the
sound of it would not bring someone on to them? It's a mere chance
as it is that Mrs. Allen did not start out to inquire for the
slamming door. Why did your guilty couple do all this, Watson?"

"I confess that I can't explain it."

"Then again, if a woman and her lover conspire to murder a
husband, are they going to advertise their guilt by ostentatiously
removing his wedding ring after his death? Does that strike you
as very probable, Watson?"

"No, it does not."

"And once again, if the thought of leaving a bicycle concealed
outside had occurred to you, would it really have seemed worth
doing when the dullest detective would naturally say this is an
obvious blind, as the bicycle is the first thing which the fugitive
needed in order to make his escape."

"I can conceive of no explanation."

"And yet there should be no combination of events for which
the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation. Simply as a
mental exercise, without any assertion that it is true, let me
indicate a possible line of thought. It is, I admit, mere
imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?

"We will suppose that there was a guilty secret, a really
shameful secret in the life of this man Douglas. This leads to his
murder by someone who is, we will suppose, an avenger, someone from
outside. This avenger, for some reason which I confess I am still
at a loss to explain, took the dead man's wedding ring. The vendetta
might conceivably date back to the man's first marriage, and the
ring be taken for some such reason.

"Before this avenger got away, Barker and the wife had
reached the room. The assassin convinced them that any attempt
to arrest him would lead to the publication of some hideous
scandal. They were converted to this idea, and preferred to let
him go. For this purpose they probably lowered the bridge,
which can be done quite noiselessly, and then raised it again. He
made his escape, and for some reason thought that he could do
so more safely on foot than on the bicycle. He therefore left his
machine where it would not be discovered until he had got safely
away. So far we are within the bounds of possibility, are we
not?"

"Well, it is possible, no doubt," said I, with some reserve.

"We have to remember, Watson, that whatever occurred is
certainly something very extraordinary. Well, now, to continue
our supposititious case, the couple -- not necessarily a guilty
couple -- realize after the murderer is gone that they have placed
themselves in a position in which it may be difficult for them to
prove that they did not themselves either do the deed or connive
at it. They rapidly and rather clumsily met the situation. The
mark was put by Barker's bloodstained slipper upon the window-
sill to suggest how the fugitive got away. They obviously were
the two who must have heard the sound of the gun; so they gave
the alarm exactly as they would have done, but a good half hour
after the event."

"And how do you propose to prove all this?"

"Well, if there were an outsider, he may be traced and taken.
That would be the most effective of all proofs. But if not -- well,
the resources of science are far from being exhausted. I think
that an evening alone in that study would help me much."

"An evening alone!"

"I propose to go up there presently. I have arranged it with
the estimable Ames, who is by no means whole-hearted about
Barker. I shall sit in that room and see if its atmosphere brings
me inspiration. I'm a believer in the genius loci. You smile,
Friend Watson. Well, we shall see. By the way, you have that
big umbrella of yours, have you not?"

"It is here."

"Well, I'll borrow that if I may."

"Certainly -- but what a wretched weapon! If there is
danger --"

"Nothing serious, my dear Watson, or I should certainly ask
for your assistance. But I'll take the umbrella. At present I am
only awaiting the return of our colleagues from Tunbridge Wells,
where they are at present engaged in trying for a likely owner to
the bicycle."

It was nightfall before Inspector MacDonald and White Mason
came back from their expedition, and they arrived exultant,
reporting a great advance in our investigation.

"Man, I'll admeet that I had my doubts if there was ever an
outsider," said MacDonald, "but that's all past now. We've had
the bicycle identified, and we have a description of our man; so
that's a long step on our journey."

"It sounds to me like the beginning of the end," said Holmes.
"I'm sure I congratulate you both with all my heart."

"Well, I started from the fact that Mr. Douglas had seemed
disturbed since the day before, when he had been at Tunbridge
Wells. It was at Tunbridge Wells then that he had become
conscious of some danger. It was clear, therefore, that if a man
had come over with a bicycle it was from Tunbridge Wells that
he might be expected to have come. We took the bicycle over
with us and showed it at the hotels. It was identified at once by
the manager of the Eagle Commercial as belonging to a man
named Hargrave, who had taken a room there two days before.
This bicycle and a small valise were his whole belongings. He
had registered his name as coming from London, but had given
no address. The valise was London made, and the contents were
British; but the man himself was undoubtedly an American."

"Well, well," said Holmes gleefully, "you have indeed done
some solid work while I have been sitting spinning theories with
my friend! It's a lesson in being practical, Mr. Mac."

"Ay, it's just that, Mr. Holmes," said the inspector with
satisfaction.

"But this may all fit in with your theories," I remarked.

"That may or may not be. But let us hear the end, Mr. Mac.
Was there nothing to identify this man?"

"So little that it was evident that he had carefully guarded
himself against identification. There were no papers or letters,
and no marking upon the clothes. A cycle map of the county lay
on his bedroom table. He had left the hotel after breakfast
yesterday morning on his bicycle, and no more was heard of him
until our inquiries."

"That's what puzzles me, Mr. Holmes," said White Mason.
"If the fellow did not want the hue and cry raised over him, one
would imagine that he would have returned and remained at the
hotel as an inoffensive tourist. As it is, he must know that he
will be reported to the police by the hotel manager and that his
disappearance will be connected with the murder."

"So one would imagine. Still, he has been justified of his
wisdom up to date, at any rate, since he has not been taken. But
his description -- what of that?"

MacDonald referred to his notebook. "Here we have it so far
as they could give it. They don't seem to have taken any very
particular stock of him; but still the porter, the clerk, and the
chambermaid are all agreed that this about covers the points. He
was a man about five foot nine in height, fifty or so years of age,
his hair slightly grizzled, a grayish moustache, a curved nose,
and a face which all of them described as fierce and forbidding."

"Well, bar the expression, that might almost be a description
of Douglas himself," said Holmes. "He is just over fifty, with
grizzled hair and moustache, and about the same height. Did you
get anything else?"

"He was dressed in a heavy gray suit with a reefer jacket, and
he wore a short yellow overcoat and a soft cap."

"What about the shotgun?"

"It is less than two feet long. It could very well have fitted
into his valise. He could have carried it inside his overcoat
without difficulty."

"And how do you consider that all this bears upon the general
case?"

"Well, Mr. Holmes," said MacDonald, "when we have got
our man -- and you may be sure that I had his description on the
wires within five minutes of hearing it -- we shall be better able
to judge. But, even as it stands, we have surely gone a long way.
We know that an American calling himself Hargrave came to
Tunbridge Wells two days ago with bicycle and valise. In the
latter was a sawed-off shotgun; so he came with the deliberate
purpose of crime. Yesterday morning he set off for this place on
his bicycle, with his gun concealed in his overcoat. No one saw
him arrive, so far as we can learn; but he need not pass through
the village to reach the park gates, and there are many cyclists
upon the road. Presumably he at once concealed his cycle among
the laurels where it was found, and possibly lurked there himself,
with his eye on the house, waiting for Mr. Douglas to come out.
The shotgun is a strange weapon to use inside a house; but he had
intended to use it outside, and there it has very obvious advantages,
as it would be impossible to miss with it, and the sound of shots
is so common in an English sporting neighbourhood that no particular
notice would be taken."

"That is all very clear," said Holmes.

"Well, Mr. Douglas did not appear. What was he to do next?
He left his bicycle and approached the house in the twilight. He
found the bridge down and no one about. He took his chance,
intending, no doubt, to make some excuse if he met anyone. He
met no one. He slipped into the first room that he saw, and
concealed himself behind the curtain. Thence he could see the
drawbridge go up, and he knew that his only escape was through
the moat. He waited until quarter-past eleven, when Mr. Douglas
upon his usual nightly round came into the room. He shot him
and escaped, as arranged. He was aware that the bicycle would
be described by the hotel people and be a clue against him; so he
left it there and made his way by some other means to London or
to some safe hiding place which he had already arranged. How is
that, Mr. Holmes?"

"Well, Mr. Mac, it is very good and very clear so far as it
goes. That is your end of the story. My end is that the crime was
committed half an hour earlier than reported; that Mrs. Douglas
and Barker are both in a conspiracy to conceal something; that
they aided the murderer's escape -- or at least that they reached
the room before he escaped -- and that they fabricated evidence
of his escape through the window, whereas in all probability they
had themselves let him go by lowering the bridge. That's my
reading of the first half."

The two detectives shook their heads.

"Well, Mr. Holmes, if this is true, we only tumble out of one
mystery into another," said the London inspector.

"And in some ways a worse one," added White Mason. "The
lady has never been in America in all her life. What possible
connection could she have with an American assassin which
would cause her to shelter him?"

"I freely admit the difficulties," said Holmes. "I propose to
make a little investigation of my own to-night, and it is just
possible that it may contribute something to the common cause."

"Can we help you, Mr. Holmes?"

"No, no! Darkness and Dr. Watson's umbrella -- my wants are
simple. And Ames, the faithful Ames, no doubt he will stretch a
point for me. All my lines of thought lead me back invariably
to the one basic question -- why should an athletic man develop
his frame upon so unnatural an instrument as a single dumb-bell?"

It was late that night when Holmes returned from his solitary
excursion. We slept in a double-bedded room, which was the
best that the little country inn could do for us. I was already
asleep when I was partly awakened by his entrance.

"Well, Holmes," I murmured, "have you found anything
out?"

He stood beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then
the tall, lean figure inclined towards me. "I say, Watson," he
whispered, "would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with
a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind
has lost its grip?"

"Not in the least," I answered in astonishment.

"Ah, that's lucky," he said, and not another word would he
utter that night.



Chapter 7
The Solution

Next morning, after breakfast, we found Inspector MacDonald
and White Mason seated in close consultation in the small parlour
of the local police sergeant. On the table in front of them
were piled a number of letters and telegrams, which they were
carefully sorting and docketing. Three had been placed on one
side.

"Still on the track of the elusive bicyclist?" Holmes asked
cheerfully. "What is the latest news of the ruffian?"

MacDonald pointed ruefully to his heap of correspondence.

"He is at present reported from Leicester, Nottingham,
Southampton, Derby, East Ham, Richmond, and fourteen other places.
In three of them -- East Ham, Leicester, and Liverpool -- there is
a clear case against him, and he has actually been arrested. The
country seems to be full of the fugitives with yellow coats."

"Dear me!" said Holmes sympathetically. "Now, Mr. Mac
and you, Mr. White Mason, I wish to give you a very earnest
piece of advice. When I went into this case with you I bargained,
as you will no doubt remember, that I should not present you
with half-proved theories, but that I should retain and work out
my own ideas until I had satisfied myself that they were correct.
For this reason I am not at the present moment telling you all
that is in my mind. On the other hand, I said that I would play
the game fairly by you, and I do not think it is a fair game to
allow you for one unnecessary moment to waste your energies
upon a profitless task. Therefore I am here to advise you this
morning, and my advice to you is summed up in three words --
abandon the case."

MacDonald and White Mason stared in amazement at their
celebrated colleague.

"You consider it hopeless!" cried the inspector.

"I consider your case to be hopeless. I do not consider that it
is hopeless to arrive at the truth."

"But this cyclist. He is not an invention. We have his description,
his valise, his bicycle. The fellow must be somewhere. Why should we
not get him?"

"Yes, yes, no doubt he is somewhere, and no doubt we shall
get him; but I would not have you waste your energies in East
Ham or Liverpool. I am sure that we can find some shorter cut to
a result."

"You are holding something back. It's hardly fair of you, Mr.
Holmes." The inspector was annoyed.

"You know my methods of work, Mr. Mac. But I will hold it
back for the shortest time possible. I only wish to verify my
details in one way, which can very readily be done, and then I
make my bow and return to London, leaving my results entirely
at your service. I owe you too much to act otherwise; for in all
my experience I cannot recall any more singular and interesting
study."

"This is clean beyond me, Mr. Holmes. We saw you when
we returned from Tunbridge Wells last night, and you were in
general agreement with our results. What has happened since
then to give you a completely new idea of the case?"

"Well, since you ask me, I spent, as I told you that I would,
some hours last night at the Manor House."

"Well, what happened?"

"Ah, I can only give you a very general answer to that for the
moment. By the way, I have been reading a short but clear and
interesting account of the old building, purchasable at the modest
sum of one penny from the local tobacconist."

Here Holmes drew a small tract, embellished with a rude
engraving of the ancient Manor House, from his waistcoat pocket.

"It immensely adds to the zest of an investigation, my dear
Mr. Mac, when one is in conscious sympathy with the historical
atmosphere of one's surroundings. Don't look so impatient; for I
assure you that even so bald an account as this raises some sort
of picture of the past in one's mind. Permit me to give you a
sample. 'Erected in the fifth year of the reign of James I, and
standing upon the site of a much older building, the Manor
House of Birlstone presents one of the finest surviving examples
of the moated Jacobean residence --' "

"You are making fools of us, Mr. Holmes!"

"Tut, tut, Mr. Mac! -- the first sign of temper I have detected
in you. Well, I won't read it verbatim, since you feel so strongly
upon the subject. But when I tell you that there is some account
of the taking of the place by a parliamentary colonel in 1644, of
the concealment of Charles for several days in the course of the
Civil War, and finally of a visit there by the second George, you
will admit that there are various associations of interest connected
with this ancient house."

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Holmes; but that is no business of
ours."

"Is it not? Is it not? Breadth of view, my dear Mr. Mac, is
one of the essentials of our profession. The interplay of ideas and
the oblique uses of knowledge are often of extraordinary interest.
You will excuse these remarks from one who, though a mere
connoisseur of crime, is still rather older and perhaps more
experienced than yourself."

"I'm the first to admit that," said the detective heartily. "You
get to your point, I admit; but you have such a deuced round-the-
corner way of doing it."

"Well, well, I'll drop past history and get down to present-
day facts. I called last night, as I have already said, at the
Manor House. I did not see either Barker or Mrs. Douglas. I saw
no necessity to disturb them; but I was pleased to hear that the
lady was not visibly pining and that she had partaken of an
excellent dinner. My visit was specially made to the good Mr.
Ames, with whom I exchanged some amiabilities, which culminated
in his allowing me, without reference to anyone else, to sit
alone for a time in the study."

"What! With that?" I ejaculated.

"No, no, everything is now in order. You gave permission for
that, Mr. Mac, as I am informed. The room was in its normal
state, and in it I passed an instructive quarter of an hour."

"What were you doing?"

"Well, not to make a mystery of so simple a matter, I was
looking for the missing dumb-bell. It has always bulked rather
large in my estimate of the case. I ended by finding it."

"Where?"

"Ah, there we come to the edge of the unexplored. Let me go
a little further, a very little further, and I will promise that you
shall share everything that I know."

"Well, we're bound to take you on your own terms," said the
inspector; "but when it comes to telling us to abandon the
case -- why in the name of goodness should we abandon the
case?"

"For the simple reason, my dear Mr. Mac, that you have not
got the first idea what it is that you are investigating."

"We are investigating the murder of Mr. John Douglas of
Birlstone Manor."

"Yes, yes, so you are. But don't trouble to trace the mysterious
gentleman upon the bicycle. I assure you that it won't help you."

"Then what do you suggest that we do?"

"I will tell you exactly what to do, if you will do it."

"Well, I'm bound to say I've always found you had reason
behind all your queer ways. I'll do what you advise."

"And you, Mr. White Mason?"

The country detective looked helplessly from one to the other.
Holmes and his methods were new to him. "Well, if it is good
enough for the inspector, it is good enough for me," he said at
last.

"Capital!" said Holmes. "Well, then, I should recommend a
nice, cheery country walk for both of you. They tell me that the
views from Birlstone Ridge over the Weald are very remarkable.
No doubt lunch could be got at some suitable hostelry; though
my ignorance of the country prevents me from recommending
one. In the evening, tired but happy --"

"Man, this is getting past a joke!" cried MacDonald, rising
angrily from his chair.

"Well, well, spend the day as you like," said Holmes, patting
him cheerfully upon the shoulder. "Do what you like and go
where you will, but meet me here before dusk without fail --
without fail, Mr. Mac."

"That sounds more like sanity."

"All of it was excellent advice; but I don't insist, so long as
you are here when I need you. But now, before we part, I want
you to write a note to Mr. Barker."

"Well?"

"I'll dictate it, if you like. Ready?

      "Dear Sir:

        "It has struck me that it is our duty to drain the moat, in

      the hope that we may find some --"

"It's impossible," said the inspector. "I've made inquiry."

"Tut, tut! My dear sir, please do what I ask you."

"Well, go on."

      "-- in the hope that we may find something which may bear

      upon our investigation. I have made arrangements, and the

      workmen will be at work early to-morrow morning diverting

      the stream --"

"Impossible!"

      "-- diverting the stream; so I thought it best to explain
matters beforehand.

"Now sign that, and send it by hand about four o'clock. At that
hour we shall meet again in this room. Until then we may each
do what we like; for I can assure you that this inquiry has come
to a definite pause."

Evening was drawing in when we reassembled. Holmes was
very serious in his manner, myself curious, and the detectives
obviously critical and annoyed.

"Well, gentlemen," said my friend gravely, "I am asking
you now to put everything to the test with me, and you will
judge for yourselves whether the observations I have made justify
the conclusions to which I have come. It is a chill evening,
and I do not know how long our expedition may last; so I beg
that you will wear your warmest coats. It is of the first
importance that we should be in our places before it grows dark;
so with your permission we shall get started at once."

We passed along the outer bounds of the Manor House park
until we came to a place where there was a gap in the rails which
fenced it. Through this we slipped, and then in the gathering
gloom we followed Holmes until we had reached a shrubbery
which lies nearly opposite to the main door and the drawbridge.
The latter had not been raised. Holmes crouched down behind
the screen of laurels, and we all three followed his example.

"Well, what are we to do now?" asked MacDonald with
some gruffness.

"Possess our souls in patience and make as little noise as
possible," Holmes answered.

"What are we here for at all? I really think that you might
treat us with more frankness."

Holmes laughed. "Watson insists that I am the dramatist in
real life," said he. "Some touch of the artist wells up within me,
and calls insistently for a well-staged performance. Surely our
profession, Mr. Mac, would be a drab and sordid one if we did
not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results. The
blunt accusation, the brutal tap upon the shoulder -- what can one
make of such a denouement? But the quick inference, the subtle
trap, the clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication
of bold theories -- are these not the pride and the justification of
our life's work? At the present moment you thrill with the glamour of
the situation and the anticipation of the hunt. Where would be that
thrill if I had been as definite as a timetable? I only ask a little
patience, Mr. Mac, and all will be clear to you."

"Well, I hope the pride and justification and the rest of it will
come before we all get our death of cold," said the London
detective with comic resignation.

We all had good reason to join in the aspiration; for our vigil
was a long and bitter one. Slowly the shadows darkened over the
long, sombre face of the old house. A cold, damp reek from the
moat chilled us to the bones and set our teeth chattering. There
was a single lamp over the gateway and a steady globe of light in
the fatal study. Everything else was dark and still.

"How long is this to last?" asked the inspector finally. "And
what is it we are watching for?"

"I have no more notion than you how long it is to last,"
Holmes answered with some asperity. "If criminals would always
schedule their movements like railway trains, it would certainly
be more convenient for all of us. As to what it is we -- Well,
that's what we are watching for!"

As he spoke the bright, yellow light in the study was obscured
by somebody passing to and fro before it. The laurels among
which we lay were immediately opposite the window and not
more than a hundred feet from it. Presently it was thrown open
with a whining of hinges, and we could dimly see the dark
outline of a man's head and shoulders looking out into the
gloom. For some minutes he peered forth in furtive, stealthy
fashion, as one who wishes to be assured that he is unobserved.
Then he leaned forward, and in the intense silence we were
aware of the soft lapping of agitated water. He seemed to be
stirring up the moat with something which he held in his hand.
Then suddenly he hauled something in as a fisherman lands a
fish -- some large, round object which obscured the light as it
was dragged through the open casement.

"Now!" cried Holmes. "Now!"

We were all upon our feet, staggering after him with our
stiffened limbs, while he ran swiftly across the bridge and rang
violently at the bell. There was the rasping of bolts from the
other side, and the amazed Ames stood in the entrance. Holmes
brushed him aside without a word and, followed by all of us,
rushed into the room which had been occupied by the man whom
we had been watching.

The oil lamp on the table represented the glow which we had
seen from outside. It was now in the hand of Cecil Barker, who
held it towards us as we entered. Its light shone upon his strong,
resolute, clean-shaved face and his menacing eyes.

"What the devil is the meaning of all this?" he cried. "What
are you after, anyhow?"

Holmes took a swift glance round, and then pounced upon a
sodden bundle tied together with cord which lay where it had
been thrust under the writing table.

"This is what we are after, Mr. Barker -- this bundle, weighted
with a dumb-bell, which you have just raised from the bottom of
the moat."

Barker stared at Holmes with amazement in his face. "How in
thunder came you to know anything about it?" he asked.

"Simply that I put it there."

"You put it there! You!"

"Perhaps I should have said 'replaced it there,'" said Holmes.
"You will remember, Inspector MacDonald, that I was somewhat
struck by the absence of a dumb-bell. I drew your attention
to it; but with the pressure of other events you had hardly the
time to give it the consideration which would have enabled you
to draw deductions from it. When water is near and a weight is
missing it is not a very far-fetched supposition that something
has been sunk in the water. The idea was at least worth testing;
so with the help of Ames, who admitted me to the room, and the
crook of Dr. Watson's umbrella, I was able last night to fish up
and inspect this bundle.

"It was of the first importance, however, that we should be
able to prove who placed it there. This we accomplished by the
very obvious device of announcing that the moat would be dried
to-morrow, which had, of course, the effect that whoever had
hidden the bundle would most certainly withdraw it the moment
that darkness enabled him to do so. We have no less than four
witnesses as to who it was who took advantage of the opportunity,
and so, Mr. Barker, I think the word lies now with you."

Sherlock Holmes put the sopping bundle upon the table beside
the lamp and undid the cord which bound it. From within he
extracted a dumb-bell, which he tossed down to its fellow in the
corner. Next he drew forth a pair of boots. "American, as you
perceive," he remarked, pointing to the toes. Then he laid upon
the table a long, deadly, sheathed knife. Finally he unravelled a
bundle of clothing, comprising a complete set of underclothes,
socks, a gray tweed suit, and a short yellow overcoat.

"The clothes are commonplace," remarked Holmes, "save
only the overcoat, which is full of suggestive touches." He held
it tenderly towards the light. "Here, as you perceive, is the inner
pocket prolonged into the lining in such fashion as to give ample
space for the truncated fowling piece. The tailor's tab is on the
neck -- 'Neal, Outfitter, Vermissa, U. S. A.' I have spent an
instructive afternoon in the rector's library, and have enlarged
my knowledge by adding the fact that Vermissa is a flourishing
little town at the head of one of the best known coal and iron
valleys in the United States. I have some recollection, Mr.
Barker, that you associated the coal districts with Mr. Douglas's
first wife, and it would surely not be too far-fetched an inference
that the V. V. upon the card by the dead body might stand for
Vermissa Valley, or that this very valley which sends forth
emissaries of murder may be that Valley of Fear of which we
have heard. So much is fairly clear. And now, Mr. Barker, I
seem to be standing rather in the way of your explanation."

It was a sight to see Cecil Barker's expressive face during this
exposition of the great detective. Anger, amazement, consternation,
and indecision swept over it in turn. Finally he took refuge in a
somewhat acrid irony.

"You know such a lot, Mr. Holmes, perhaps you had better
tell us some more," he sneered.

"I have no doubt that I could tell you a great deal more, Mr.
Barker; but it would come with a better grace from you."

"Oh, you think so, do you? Well, all I can say is that if
there's any secret here it is not my secret, and I am not the man
to give it away."

"Well, if you take that line, Mr. Barker," said the inspector
quietly, "we must just keep you in sight until we have the
warrant and can hold you."

"You can do what you damn please about that," said Barker
defiantly.

The proceedings seemed to have come to a definite end so far
as he was concerned; for one had only to look at that granite face
to realize that no peine forte et dure would ever force him to
plead against his will. The deadlock was broken, however, by a
woman's voice. Mrs. Douglas had been standing listening at the
half opened door, and now she entered the room.

"You have done enough for now, Cecil," said she. "Whatever
comes of it in the future, you have done enough."

"Enough and more than enough," remarked Sherlock Holmes
gravely. "I have every sympathy with you, madam, and
should strongly urge you to have some confidence in the common
sense of our jurisdiction and to take the police voluntarily into
your complete confidence. It may be that I am myself at fault for
not following up the hint which you conveyed to me through my
friend, Dr. Watson; but, at that time I had every reason to
believe that you were directly concerned in the crime. Now I am
assured that this is not so. At the same time, there is much that is
unexplained, and I should strongly recommend that you ask Mr.
Douglas to tell us his own story."

Mrs. Douglas gave a cry of astonishment at Holmes's words.
The detectives and I must have echoed it, when we were aware
of a man who seemed to have emerged from the wall, who
advanced now from the gloom of the corner in which he had
appeared. Mrs. Douglas turned, and in an instant her arms were
round him. Barker had seized his outstretched hand.

"It's best this way, Jack," his wife repeated; "I am sure that
it is best."

"Indeed, yes, Mr. Douglas," said Sherlock Holmes, "I am
sure that you will find it best."

The man stood blinking at us with the dazed look of one who
comes from the dark into the light. It was a remarkable face,
bold gray eyes, a strong, short-clipped, grizzled moustache, a
square, projecting chin, and a humorous mouth. He took a good
look at us all, and then to my amazement he advanced to me and
handed me a bundle of paper.

"I've heard of you," said he in a voice which was not quite
English and not quite American, but was altogether mellow and
pleasing. "You are the historian of this bunch. Well, Dr. Watson,
you've never had such a story as that pass through your hands
before, and I'll lay my last dollar on that. Tell it your own
way; but there are the facts, and you can't miss the public so
long as you have those. I've been cooped up two days, and I've
spent the daylight hours -- as much daylight as I could get in that
rat trap -- in putting the thing into words. You're welcome to
them -- you and your public. There's the story of the Valley of
Fear."

"That's the past, Mr. Douglas," said Sherlock Holmes quietly.
"What we desire now is to hear your story of the present."

"You'll have it, sir," said Douglas. "May I smoke as I talk?
Well, thank you, Mr. Holmes. You're a smoker yourself, if I
remember right, and you'll guess what it is to be sitting for two
days with tobacco in your pocket and afraid that the smell will
give you away." He leaned against the mantelpiece and sucked
at the cigar which Holmes had handed him. "I've heard of you,
Mr. Holmes. I never guessed that I should meet you. But before
you are through with that," he nodded at my papers, "you will
say I've brought you something fresh."

Inspector MacDonald had been staring at the newcomer with
the greatest amazement. "Well, this fairly beats me!" he cried at
last. "If you are Mr. John Douglas of Birlstone Manor, then
whose death have we been investigating for these two days, and
where in the world have you sprung from now? You seemed to
me to come out of the floor like a jack-in-a-box."

"Ah, Mr. Mac," said Holmes, shaking a reproving forefinger,
"you would not read that excellent local compilation which
described the concealment of King Charles. People did not hide
in those days without excellent hiding places, and the hiding
place that has once been used may be again. I had persuaded
myself that we should find Mr. Douglas under this roof."

"And how long have you been playing this trick upon us, Mr.
Holmes?" said the inspector angrily. "How long have you
allowed us to waste ourselves upon a search that you knew to be
an absurd one?"

"Not one instant, my dear Mr. Mac. Only last night did I
form my views of the case. As they could not be put to the proof
until this evening, I invited you and your colleague to take a
holiday for the day. Pray what more could I do? When I found
the suit of clothes in the moat, it at once became apparent to me
that the body we had found could not have been the body of Mr.
John Douglas at all, but must be that of the bicyclist from
Tunbridge Wells. No other conclusion was possible. Therefore I
had to determine where Mr. John Douglas himself could be, and
the balance of probability was that with the connivance of his
wife and his friend he was concealed in a house which had such
conveniences for a fugitive, and awaiting quieter times when he
could make his final escape."

"Well, you figured it out about right," said Douglas approvingly.
"I thought I'd dodge your British law; for I was not sure how I
stood under it, and also I saw my chance to throw these hounds
once for all off my track. Mind you, from first to last I have
done nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that I would not do
again; but you'll judge that for yourselves when I tell you my
story. Never mind warning me, Inspector: I'm ready to stand pat
upon the truth.

"I'm not going to begin at the beginning. That's all there," he
indicated my bundle of papers, "and a mighty queer yarn you'll
find it. It all comes down to this: That there are some men that
have good cause to hate me and would give their last dollar to
know that they had got me. So long as I am alive and they are
alive, there is no safety in this world for me. They hunted me
from Chicago to California, then they chased me out of America;
but when I married and settled down in this quiet spot I thought
my last years were going to be peaceable.

"I never explained to my wife how things were. Why should I
pull her into it? She would never have a quiet moment again; but
would always be imagining trouble. I fancy she knew something,
for I may have dropped a word here or a word there; but until
yesterday, after you gentlemen had seen her, she never knew the
rights of the matter. She told you all she knew, and so did
Barker here; for on the night when this thing happened there was
mighty little time for explanations. She knows everything now,
and I would have been a wiser man if I had told her sooner. But
it was a hard question, dear," he took her hand for an instant in
his own, "and I acted for the best.

"Well, gentlemen, the day before these happenings I was over
in Tunbridge Wells, and I got a glimpse of a man in the street. It
was only a glimpse; but I have a quick eye for these things, and I
never doubted who it was. It was the worst enemy I had among
them all -- one who has been after me like a hungry wolf after a
caribou all these years. I knew there was trouble coming, and I
came home and made ready for it. I guessed I'd fight through it
all right on my own, my luck was a proverb in the States about
'76. I never doubted that it would be with me still.

"I was on my guard all that next day, and never went out into
the park. It's as well, or he'd have had the drop on me with that
buckshot gun of his before ever I could draw on him. After the
bridge was up -- my mind was always more restful when that
bridge was up in the evenings -- I put the thing clear out of my
head. I never dreamed of his getting into the house and waiting
for me. But when I made my round in my dressing gown, as was
my habit, I had no sooner entered the study than I scented
danger. I guess when a man has had dangers in his life -- and I've
had more than most in my time -- there is a kind of sixth sense
that waves the red flag. I saw the signal clear enough, and yet I
couldn't tell you why. Next instant I spotted a boot under the
window curtain, and then I saw why plain enough.

"I'd just the one candle that was in my hand; but there was a
good light from the hall lamp through the open door. I put down
the candle and jumped for a hammer that I'd left on the mantel.
At the same moment he sprang at me. I saw the glint of a knife,
and I lashed at him with the hammer. I got him somewhere; for
the knife tinkled down on the floor. He dodged round the table
as quick as an eel, and a moment later he'd got his gun from
under his coat. I heard him cock it; but I had got hold of it before
he could fire. I had it by the barrel, and we wrestled for it all
ends up for a minute or more. It was death to the man that lost
his grip.

"He never lost his grip; but he got it butt downward for a
moment too long. Maybe it was I that pulled the trigger. Maybe
we just jolted it off between us. Anyhow, he got both barrels in
the face, and there I was, staring down at all that was left of Ted
Baldwin. I'd recognized him in the township, and again when he
sprang for me; but his own mother wouldn't recognize him as I
saw him then. I'm used to rough work; but I fairly turned sick at
the sight of him.

"I was hanging on the side of the table when Barker came
hurrying down. I heard my wife coming, and I ran to the door
and stopped her. It was no sight for a woman. I promised I'd
come to her soon. I said a word or two to Barker -- he took it all
in at a glance -- and we waited for the rest to come along. But
there was no sign of them. Then we understood that they could
hear nothing, and that all that had happened was known only to
ourselves.

"It was at that instant that the idea came to me. I was fairly
dazzled by the brilliance of it. The man's sleeve had slipped up
and there was the branded mark of the lodge upon his forearm.
See here!"

The man whom we had known as Douglas turned up his own
coat and cuff to show a brown triangle within a circle exactly
like that which we had seen upon the dead man.

"It was the sight of that which started me on it. I seemed to
see it all clear at a glance. There were his height and hair and
figure, about the same as my own. No one could swear to his
face, poor devil! I brought down this suit of clothes, and in a
quarter of an hour Barker and I had put my dressing gown on
him and he lay as you found him. We tied all his things into a
bundle, and I weighted them with the only weight I could find
and put them through the window. The card he had meant to lay
upon my body was lying beside his own.

"My rings were put on his finger; but when it came to the
wedding ring," he held out his muscular hand, "you can see for
yourselves that I had struck the limit. I have not moved it since
the day I was married, and it would have taken a file to get it
off. I don't know, anyhow, that I should have cared to part with
it; but if I had wanted to I couldn't. So we just had to leave that
detail to take care of itself. On the other hand, I brought a bit of
plaster down and put it where I am wearing one myself at this
instant. You slipped up there, Mr. Holmes, clever as you are; for
if you had chanced to take off that plaster you would have found
no cut underneath it.

"Well, that was the situation. If I could lie low for a while
and then get away where I could be joined by my 'widow' we
should have a chance at last of living in peace for the rest of our
lives. These devils would give me no rest so long as I was above
ground; but if they saw in the papers that Baldwin had got his
man, there would be an end of all my troubles. I hadn't much
time to make it all clear to Barker and to my wife; but they
understood enough to be able to help me. I knew all about this
hiding place, so did Ames; but it never entered his head to
connect it with the matter. I retired into it, and it was up to
Barker to do the rest.

"I guess you can fill in for yourselves what he did. He opened
the window and made the mark on the sill to give an idea of how
the murderer escaped. It was a tall order, that; but as the bridge
was up there was no other way. Then, when everything was
fixed, he rang the bell for all he was worth. What happened
afterward you know. And so, gentlemen, you can do what you
please; but I've told you the truth and the whole truth, so help
me God! What I ask you now is how do I stand by the English
law?"

There was a silence which was broken by Sherlock Holmes.

"The English law is in the main a just law. You will get no
worse than your deserts from that, Mr. Douglas. But I would ask
you how did this man know that you lived here, or how to get
into your house, or where to hide to get you?"

"I know nothing of this."

Holmes's face was very white and grave. "The story is not
over yet, I fear," said he. "You may find worse dangers than
the English law, or even than your enemies from America. I see
trouble before you, Mr. Douglas. You'll take my advice and still
be on your guard."

And now, my long-suffering readers, I will ask you to come
away with me for a time, far from the Sussex Manor House of
Birlstone, and far also from the year of grace in which we made
our eventful journey which ended with the strange story of the
man who had been known as John Douglas. I wish you to
journey back some twenty years in time, and westward some
thousands of miles in space, that I may lay before you a singular
and terrible narrative -- so singular and so terrible that you may
find it hard to believe that even as I tell it, even so did it occur.

Do not think that I intrude one story before another is finished.
As you read on you will find that this is not so. And when I have
detailed those distant events and you have solved this mystery of
the past, we shall meet once more in those rooms on Baker
Street, where this, like so many other wonderful happenings,
will find its end.




PART 2
The Scowrers



Chapter 1
The Man

It was the fourth of February in the year 1875. It had been a
severe winter, and the snow lay deep in the gorges of the
Gilmerton Mountains. The steam ploughs had, however, kept the
railroad open, and the evening train which connects the long line
of coal-mining and iron-working settlements was slowly groaning
its way up the steep gradients which lead from Stagville on the
plain to Vermissa, the central township which lies at the head of
Vermissa Valley. From this point the track sweeps downward to
Bartons Crossing, Helmdale, and the purely agricultural county of
Merton. It was a single-track railroad; but at every siding --
and they were numerous -- long lines of trucks piled with coal
and iron ore told of the hidden wealth which had brought a rude
population and a bustling life to this most desolate corner of the
United States of America.

For desolate it was! Little could the first pioneer who had
traversed it have ever imagined that the fairest prairies and the
most lush water pastures were valueless compared to this gloomy
land of black crag and tangled forest. Above the dark and often
scarcely penetrable woods upon their flanks, the high, bare
crowns of the mountains, white snow, and jagged rock towered
upon each flank, leaving a long, winding, tortuous valley in the
centre. Up this the little train was slowly crawling.

The oil lamps had just been lit in the leading passenger car, a
long, bare carriage in which some twenty or thirty people were
seated. The greater number of these were workmen returning
from their day's toil in the lower part of the valley. At least a
dozen, by their grimed faces and the safety lanterns which they
carried, proclaimed themselves miners. These sat smoking in a
group and conversed in low voices, glancing occasionally at two
men on the opposite side of the car, whose uniforms and badges
showed them to be policemen.

Several women of the labouring class and one or two travellers
who might have been small local storekeepers made up the rest
of the company, with the exception of one young man in a
corner by himself. It is with this man that we are concerned.
Take a good look at him, for he is worth it.

He is a fresh-complexioned, middle-sized young man, not far,
one would guess, from his thirtieth year. He has large, shrewd,
humorous gray eyes which twinkle inquiringly from time to time
as he looks round through his spectacles at the people about him.
It is easy to see that he is of a sociable and possibly simple
disposition, anxious to be friendly to all men. Anyone could pick
him at once as gregarious in his habits and communicative in his
nature, with a quick wit and a ready smile. And yet the man who
studied him more closely might discern a certain firmness of jaw
and grim tightness about the lips which would warn him that
there were depths beyond, and that this pleasant, brown-haired
young Irishman might conceivably leave his mark for good or
evil upon any society to which he was introduced.

Having made one or two tentative remarks to the nearest
miner, and receiving only short, gruff replies, the traveller
resigned himself to uncongenial silence, staring moodily out
of the window at the fading landscape.

It was not a cheering prospect. Through the growing gloom
there pulsed the red glow of the furnaces on the sides of the hills.
Great heaps of slag and dumps of cinders loomed up on each
side, with the high shafts of the collieries towering above them.
Huddled groups of mean, wooden houses, the windows of which
were beginning to outline themselves in light, were scattered
here and there along the line, and the frequent halting places
were crowded with their swarthy inhabitants.

The iron and coal valleys of the Vermissa district were no
resorts for the leisured or the cultured. Everywhere there were
stern signs of the crudest battle of life, the rude work to be
done, and the rude, strong workers who did it.

The young traveller gazed out into this dismal country with a
face of mingled repulsion and interest, which showed that the
scene was new to him. At intervals he drew from his pocket a
bulky letter to which he referred, and on the margins of which
he scribbled some notes. Once from the back of his waist he
produced something which one would hardly have expected to
find in the possession of so mild-mannered a man. It was a navy
revolver of the largest size. As he turned it slantwise to the
light, the glint upon the rims of the copper shells within the
drum showed that it was fully loaded. He quickly restored it to
his secret pocket, but not before it had been observed by a
working man who had seated himself upon the adjoining bench.

"Hullo, mate!" said he. "You seem heeled and ready."

The young man smiled with an air of embarrassment.

"Yes," said he, "we need them sometimes in the place I
come from."

"And where may that be?"

"I'm last from Chicago."

"A stranger in these parts?"

"Yes."

"You may find you need it here," said the workman.

"Ah! is that so?" The young man seemed interested.

"Have you heard nothing of doings hereabouts?"

"Nothing out of the way."

"Why, I thought the country was full of it. You'll hear quick
enough. What made you come here?"

"I heard there was always work for a willing man."

"Are you a member of the union?"

"Sure."

"Then you'll get your job, I guess. Have you any friends?"

"Not yet; but I have the means of making them."

"How's that, then?"

"I am one of the Eminent Order of Freemen. There's no town
without a lodge, and where there is a lodge I'll find my friends."

The remark had a singular effect upon his companion. He
glanced round suspiciously at the others in the car. The miners
were still whispering among themselves. The two police officers
were dozing. He came across, seated himself close to the young
traveller, and held out his hand.

"Put it there," he said.

A hand-grip passed between the two.

"I see you speak the truth," said the workman. "But it's well
to make certain." He raised his right hand to his right eyebrow.
The traveller at once raised his left hand to his left eyebrow.

"Dark nights are unpleasant," said the workman.

"Yes, for strangers to travel," the other answered.

"That's good enough. I'm Brother Scanlan, Lodge 341,
Vermissa Valley. Glad to see you in these parts."

"Thank you. I'm Brother John McMurdo, Lodge 29, Chicago.
Bodymaster J. H. Scott. But I am in luck to meet a brother
so early."

"Well, there are plenty of us about. You won't find the order
more flourishing anywhere in the States than right here in Vermissa
Valley. But we could do with some lads like you. I can't
understand a spry man of the union finding no work to do in
Chicago."

"I found plenty of work to do," said McMurdo.

"Then why did you leave?"

McMurdo nodded towards the policemen and smiled. "I guess
those chaps would be glad to know," he said.

Scanlan groaned sympathetically. "In trouble?" he asked in a
whisper.

"Deep."

"A penitentiary job?"

"And the rest."

"Not a killing!"

"It's early days to talk of such things," said McMurdo with
the air of a man who had been surprised into saying more than he
intended. "I've my own good reasons for leaving Chicago, and
let that be enough for you. Who are you that you should take it
on yourself to ask such things?" His gray eyes gleamed with
sudden and dangerous anger from behind his glasses.

"All right, mate, no offense meant. The boys will think none
the worse of you, whatever you may have done. Where are you
bound for now?"

"Vermissa."

"That's the third halt down the line. Where are you staying?"

McMurdo took out an envelope and held it close to the murky
oil lamp. "Here is the address -- Jacob Shafter, Sheridan Street.
It's a boarding house that was recommended by a man I knew in
Chicago."

"Well, I don't know it; but Vermissa is out of my beat. I live
at Hobson's Patch, and that's here where we are drawing up.
But, say, there's one bit of advice I'll give you before we part: If
you're in trouble in Vermissa, go straight to the Union House
and see Boss McGinty. He is the Bodymaster of Vermissa
Lodge, and nothing can happen in these parts unless Black Jack
McGinty wants it. So long, mate! Maybe we'll meet in lodge
one of these evenings. But mind my words: If you are in trouble,
go to Boss McGinty."

Scanlan descended, and McMurdo was left once again to his
thoughts. Night had now fallen, and the flames of the frequent
furnaces were roaring and leaping in the darkness. Against their
lurid background dark figures were bending and straining, twisting
and turning, with the motion of winch or of windlass, to the
rhythm of an eternal clank and roar.

"I guess hell must look something like that," said a voice.

McMurdo turned and saw that one of the policemen had
shifted in his seat and was staring out into the fiery waste.

"For that matter," said the other policeman, "I allow that hell
must be something like that. If there are worse devils down
yonder than some we could name, it's more than I'd expect. I
guess you are new to this part, young man?"

"Well, what if I am?" McMurdo answered in a surly voice.

"Just this, mister, that I should advise you to be careful in
choosing your friends. I don't think I'd begin with Mike Scanlan
or his gang if I were you."

"What the hell is it to you who are my friends?" roared
McMurdo in a voice which brought every head in the carriage
round to witness the altercation. "Did I ask you for your advice,
or did you think me such a sucker that I couldn't move without
it? You speak when you are spoken to, and by the Lord you'd
have to wait a long time if it was me!" He thrust out his face and
grinned at the patrolmen like a snarling dog.

The two policemen, heavy, good-natured men, were taken
aback by the extraordinary vehemence with which their friendly
advances had been rejected.

"No offense, stranger," said one. "It was a warning for your
own good, seeing that you are, by your own showing, new to the
place."

"I'm new to the place; but I'm not new to you and your
kind!" cried McMurdo in cold fury. "I guess you're the same in
all places, shoving your advice in when nobody asks for it."

"Maybe we'll see more of you before very long," said one of
the patrolmen with a grin. "You're a real hand-picked one, if I
am a judge."

"I was thinking the same," remarked the other. "I guess we
may meet again."

"I'm not afraid of you, and don't you think it!" cried McMurdo.
"My name's Jack McMurdo -- see? If you want me, you'll find
me at Jacob Shafter's on Sheridan Street, Vermissa; so I'm not
hiding from you, am I? Day or night I dare to look the like of
you in the face -- don't make any mistake about that!"

There was a murmur of sympathy and admiration from the
miners at the dauntless demeanour of the newcomer, while the
two policemen shrugged their shoulders and renewed a
conversation between themselves.

A few minutes later the train ran into the ill-lit station, and
there was a general clearing; for Vermissa was by far the largest
town on the line. McMurdo picked up his leather gripsack and
was about to start off into the darkness, when one of the miners
accosted him.

"By Gar, mate! you know how to speak to the cops," he said
in a voice of awe. "It was grand to hear you. Let me carry your
grip and show you the road. I'm passing Shafter's on the way to
my own shack."

There was a chorus of friendly "Good-nights" from the other
miners as they passed from the platform. Before ever he had set
foot in it, McMurdo the turbulent had become a character in
Vermissa.

The country had been a place of terror; but the town was in its
way even more depressing. Down that long valley there was at
least a certain gloomy grandeur in the huge fires and the clouds
of drifting smoke, while the strength and industry of man found
fitting monuments in the hills which he had spilled by the side of
his monstrous excavations. But the town showed a dead level of
mean ugliness and squalor. The broad street was churned up by
the traffic into a horrible rutted paste of muddy snow. The
sidewalks were narrow and uneven. The numerous gas-lamps
served only to show more clearly a long line of wooden houses,
each with its veranda facing the street, unkempt and dirty.

As they approached the centre of the town the scene was
brightened by a row of well-lit stores, and even more by a cluster
of saloons and gaming houses, in which the miners spent their
hard-earned but generous wages.

"That's the Union House," said the guide, pointing to one
saloon which rose almost to the dignity of being a hotel. "Jack
McGinty is the boss there."

"What sort of a man is he?" McMurdo asked.

"What! have you never heard of the boss?"

"How could I have heard of him when you know that I am a
stranger in these parts?"

"Well, I thought his name was known clear across the country.
It's been in the papers often enough."

"What for?"

"Well," the miner lowered his voice -- "over the affairs."

"What affairs?"

"Good Lord, mister! you are queer, if I must say it without
offense. There's only one set of affairs that you'll hear of in
these parts, and that's the affairs of the Scowrers."

"Why, I seem to have read of the Scowrers in Chicago. A
gang of murderers, are they not?"

"Hush, on your life!" cried the miner, standing still in alarm,
and gazing in amazement at his companion. "Man, you won't
live long in these parts if you speak in the open street like that.
Many a man has had the life beaten out of him for less."

"Well, I know nothing about them. It's only what I have
read."

"And I'm not saying that you have not read the truth." The
man looked nervously round him as he spoke, peering into the
shadows as if he feared to see some lurking danger. "If killing is
murder, then God knows there is murder and to spare. But don't
you dare to breathe the name of Jack McGinty in connection
with it, stranger; for every whisper goes back to him, and he is
not one that is likely to let it pass. Now, that's the house you're
after, that one standing back from the street. You'll find old
Jacob Shafter that runs it as honest a man as lives in this
township."

"I thank you," said McMurdo, and shaking hands with his
new acquaintance he plodded, gripsack in hand, up the path
which led to the dwelling house, at the door of which he gave a
resounding knock.

It was opened at once by someone very different from what he
had expected. It was a woman, young and singularly beautiful.
She was of the German type, blonde and fair-haired, with the
piquant contrast of a pair of beautiful dark eyes with which she
surveyed the stranger with surprise and a pleasing embarrassment
which brought a wave of colour over her pale face. Framed in
the bright light of the open doorway, it seemed to McMurdo that
he had never seen a more beautiful picture; the more attractive
for its contrast with the sordid and gloomy surroundings. A
lovely violet growing upon one of those black slag-heaps of the
mines would not have seemed more surprising. So entranced was
he that he stood staring without a word, and it was she who
broke the silence.

"I thought it was father," said she with a pleasing little touch
of a German accent. "Did you come to see him? He is downtown.
I expect him back every minute."

McMurdo continued to gaze at her in open admiration until
her eyes dropped in confusion before this masterful visitor.

"No, miss," he said at last, "I'm in no hurry to see him. But
your house was recommended to me for board. I thought it might
suit me -- and now I know it will."

"You are quick to make up your mind," said she with a
smile.

"Anyone but a blind man could do as much," the other
answered.

She laughed at the compliment. "Come right in, sir," she
said. "I'm Miss Ettie Shafter, Mr. Shafter's daughter. My mother's
dead, and I run the house. You can sit down by the stove in the
front room until father comes along -- Ah, here he is! So you can
fix things with him right away."

A heavy, elderly man came plodding up the path. In a few
words McMurdo explained his business. A man of the name of
Murphy had given him the address in Chicago. He in turn had
had it from someone else. Old Shafter was quite ready. The
stranger made no bones about terms, agreed at once to every
condition, and was apparently fairly flush of money. For seven
dollars a week paid in advance he was to have board and
lodging.

So it was that McMurdo, the self-confessed fugitive from
justice, took up his abode under the roof of the Shafters, the first
step which was to lead to so long and dark a train of events,
ending in a far distant land.



Chapter 2
The Bodymaster

McMurdo was a man who made his mark quickly. Wherever he
was the folk around soon knew it. Within a week he had become
infinitely the most important person at Shafter's. There were ten
or a dozen boarders there; but they were honest foremen or
commonplace clerks from the stores, of a very different calibre
from the young Irishman. Of an evening when they gathered
together his joke was always the readiest, his conversation the
brightest, and his song the best. He was a born boon companion,
with a magnetism which drew good humour from all around
him.

And yet he showed again and again, as he had shown in the
railway carriage, a capacity for sudden, fierce anger, which
compelled the respect and even the fear of those who met him.
For the law, too, and all who were connected with it, he
exhibited a bitter contempt which delighted some and alarmed
others of his fellow boarders.

From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that
the daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that
he had set eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no
backward suitor. On the second day he told her that he loved
her, and from then onward he repeated the same story with an
absolute disregard of what she might say to discourage him.

"Someone else?" he would cry. "Well, the worse luck for
someone else! Let him look out for himself! Am I to lose my
life's chance and all my heart's desire for someone else? You
can keep on saying no, Ettie: the day will come when you will
say yes, and I'm young enough to wait."

He was a dangerous suitor, with his glib Irish tongue, and his
pretty, coaxing ways. There was about him also that glamour of
experience and of mystery which attracts a woman's interest, and
finally her love. He could talk of the sweet valleys of County
Monaghan from which he came, of the lovely, distant island, the
low hills and green meadows of which seemed the more beautiful
when imagination viewed them from this place of grime and snow.

Then he was versed in the life of the cities of the North, of
Detroit, and the lumber camps of Michigan, and finally of
Chicago, where he had worked in a planing mill. And afterwards
came the hint of romance, the feeling that strange things had
happened to him in that great city, so strange and so intimate that
they might not be spoken of. He spoke wistfully of a sudden
leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world,
ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes
gleaming with pity and with sympathy -- those two qualities which
may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love.

McMurdo had obtained a temporary job as bookkeeper; for he
was a well-educated man. This kept him out most of the day, and
he had not found occasion yet to report himself to the head of the
lodge of the Eminent Order of Freemen. He was reminded of his
omission, however, by a visit one evening from Mike Scanlan,
the fellow member whom he had met in the train. Scanlan, the
small, sharp-faced, nervous, black-eyed man, seemed glad to see
him once more. After a glass or two of whisky he broached the
object of his visit.

"Say, McMurdo," said he, "I remembered your address, so l
made bold to call. I'm surprised that you've not reported to the
Bodymaster. Why haven't you seen Boss McGinty yet?"

"Well, I had to find a job. I have been busy."

"You must find time for him if you have none for anything
else. Good Lord, man! you're a fool not to have been down to
the Union House and registered your name the first morning after
you came here! If you run against him -- well, you mustn't, that's
all!"

McMurdo showed mild surprise. "I've been a member of the
lodge for over two years, Scanlan, but I never heard that duties
were so pressing as all that."

"Maybe not in Chicago."

"Well, it's the same society here."

"Is it?"

Scanlan looked at him long and fixedly. There was something
sinister in his eyes.

"Isn't it?"

"You'll tell me that in a month's time. I hear you had a talk
with the patrolmen after I left the train."

"How did you know that?"

"Oh, it got about -- things do get about for good and for bad in
this district."

"Well, yes. I told the hounds what I thought of them."

"By the Lord, you'll be a man after McGinty's heart!"

"What, does he hate the police too?"

Scanlan burst out laughing. "You go and see him, my lad,"
said he as he took his leave. "It's not the police but you that
he'll hate if you don't! Now, take a friend's advice and go at
once!"

It chanced that on the same evening McMurdo had another
more pressing interview which urged him in the same direction.
It may have been that his attentions to Ettie had been more
evident than before, or that they had gradually obtruded
themselves into the slow mind of his good German host; but,
whatever the cause, the boarding-house keeper beckoned the young
man into his private room and started on the subject without any
circumlocution.

"It seems to me, mister," said he, "that you are gettin' set on
my Ettie. Ain't that so, or am I wrong?"

"Yes, that is so," the young man answered.

"Vell, I vant to tell you right now that it ain't no manner of
use. There's someone slipped in afore you."

"She told me so."

"Vell, you can lay that she told you truth. But did she tell you
who it vas?"

"No, I asked her; but she wouldn't tell."

"I dare say not, the leetle baggage! Perhaps she did not vish
to frighten you avay."

"Frighten!" McMurdo was on fire in a moment.

"Ah, yes, my friend! You need not be ashamed to be frightened
of him. It is Teddy Baldwin."

"And who the devil is he?"

"He is a boss of Scowrers."

"Scowrers! I've heard of them before. It's Scowrers here and
Scowrers there, and always in a whisper! What are you all afraid
of? Who are the Scowrers?"

The boarding-house keeper instinctively sank his voice, as
everyone did who talked about that terrible society. "The
Scowrers," said he, "are the Eminent Order of Freemen!"

The young man stared. "Why, I am a member of that order
myself."

"You! I vould never have had you in my house if I had known
it -- not if you vere to pay me a hundred dollar a week."

"What's wrong with the order? It's for charity and good
fellowship. The rules say so."

"Maybe in some places. Not here!"

"What is it here?"

"It's a murder society, that's vat it is."

McMurdo laughed incredulously. "How can you prove that?"
he asked.

"Prove it! Are there not fifty murders to prove it? Vat about
Milman and Van Shorst, and the Nicholson family, and old Mr.
Hyam, and little Billy James, and the others? Prove it! Is there a
man or a voman in this valley vat does not know it?"

"See here!" said McMurdo earnestly. "I want you to take
back what you've said, or else make it good. One or the other
you must do before I quit this room. Put yourself in my place.
Here am I, a stranger in the town. I belong to a society that I
know only as an innocent one. You'll find it through the length
and breadth of the States, but always as an innocent one. Now,
when I am counting upon joining it here, you tell me that it is the
same as a murder society called the Scowrers. I guess you owe
me either an apology or else an explanation, Mr. Shafter."

"I can but tell you vat the whole vorld knows, mister. The
bosses of the one are the bosses of the other. If you offend the
one, it is the other vat vill strike you. We have proved it too
often."

"That's just gossip -- I want proof!" said McMurdo.

"If you live here long you vill get your proof. But I forget that
you are yourself one of them. You vill soon be as bad as the rest.
But you vill find other lodgings, mister. I cannot have you here.
Is it not bad enough that one of these people come courting my
Ettie, and that I dare not turn him down, but that I should have
another for my boarder? Yes, indeed, you shall not sleep here
after to-night!"

McMurdo found himself under sentence of banishment both
from his comfortable quarters and from the girl whom he loved.
He found her alone in the sitting-room that same evening, and he
poured his troubles into her ear.

"Sure, your father is after giving me notice," he said. "It's
little I would care if it was just my room, but indeed, Ettie,
though it's only a week that I've known you, you are the very
breath of life to me, and I can't live without you!"

"Oh, hush, Mr. McMurdo, don't speak so!" said the girl. "I
have told you, have I not, that you are too late? There is another,
and if I have not promised to marry him at once, at least I can
promise no one else."

"Suppose I had been first, Ettie, would I have had a chance?"

The girl sank her face into her hands. "I wish to heaven that
you had been first!" she sobbed.

McMurdo was down on his knees before her in an instant.
"For God's sake, Ettie, let it stand at that!" he cried. "Will you
ruin your life and my own for the sake of this promise? Follow
your heart, acushla! 'Tis a safer guide than any promise before
you knew what it was that you were saying."

He had seized Ettie's white hand between his own strong
brown ones.

"Say that you will be mine, and we will face it out together!"

"Not here?"

"Yes, here."

"No, no, Jack!" His arms were round her now. "It could not
be here. Could you take me away?"

A struggle passed for a moment over McMurdo's face; but it
ended by setting like granite. "No, here," he said. "I'll hold
you against the world, Ettie, right here where we are!"

"Why should we not leave together?"

"No, Ettie, I can't leave here."

"But why?"

"I'd never hold my head up again if I felt that I had been
driven out. Besides, what is there to be afraid of? Are we not
free folks in a free country? If you love me, and I you, who will
dare to come between?"

"You don't know, Jack. You've been here too short a time.
You don't know this Baldwin. You don't know McGinty and his
Scowrers."

"No, I don't know them, and I don't fear them, and I don't
believe in them!" said McMurdo. "I've lived among rough
men, my darling, and instead of fearing them it has always
ended that they have feared me -- always, Ettie. It's mad on the
face of it! If these men, as your father says, have done crime
after crime in the valley, and if everyone knows them by name,
how comes it that none are brought to justice? You answer me
that, Ettie!"

"Because no witness dares to appear against them. He would
not live a month if he did. Also because they have always their
own men to swear that the accused one was far from the scene of
the crime. But surely, Jack, you must have read all this. I had
understood that every paper in the United States was writing
about it."

"Well, I have read something, it is true; but I had thought it
was a story. Maybe these men have some reason in what they
do. Maybe they are wronged and have no other way to help
themselves."

"Oh, Jack, don't let me hear you speak so! That is how he
speaks -- the other one!"

"Baldwin -- he speaks like that, does he?"

"And that is why I loathe him so. Oh, Jack, now I can tell
you the truth. I loathe him with all my heart; but I fear him also.
I fear him for myself; but above all I fear him for father. I know
that some great sorrow would come upon us if I dared to say
what I really felt. That is why I have put him off with half-
promises. It was in real truth our only hope. But if you would fly
with me, Jack, we could take father with us and live forever far
from the power of these wicked men."

Again there was the struggle upon McMurdo's face, and again
it set like granite. "No harm shall come to you, Ettie -- nor to
your father either. As to wicked men, I expect you may find that
I am as bad as the worst of them before we're through."

"No, no, Jack! I would trust you anywhere."

McMurdo laughed bitterly. "Good Lord! how little you know
of me! Your innocent soul, my darling, could not even guess
what is passing in mine. But, hullo, who's the visitor?"

The door had opened suddenly, and a young fellow came
swaggering in with the air of one who is the master. He was a
handsome, dashing young man of about the same age and build as
McMurdo himself. Under his broad-brimmed black felt hat,
which he had not troubled to remove, a handsome face with
fierce, domineering eyes and a curved hawk-bill of a nose looked
savagely at the pair who sat by the stove.

Ettie had jumped to her feet full of confusion and alarm. "I'm
glad to see you, Mr. Baldwin," said she. "You're earlier than I
had thought. Come and sit down."

Baldwin stood with his hands on his hips looking at McMurdo.
"Who is this?" he asked curtly.

"It's a friend of mine, Mr. Baldwin, a new boarder here. Mr.
McMurdo, may I introduce you to Mr. Baldwin?"

The young men nodded in surly fashion to each other.

"Maybe Miss Ettie has told you how it is with us?" said
Baldwin.

"I didn't understand that there was any relation between
you."

"Didn't you? Well, you can understand it now. You can take
it from me that this young lady is mine, and you'll find it a very
fine evening for a walk."

"Thank you, I am in no humour for a walk."

"Aren't you?" The man's savage eyes were blazing with
anger. "Maybe you are in a humour for a fight, Mr. Boarder!"

"That I am!" cried McMurdo, springing to his feet. "You
never said a more welcome word."

"For God's sake, Jack! Oh, for God's sake!" cried poor,
distracted Ettie. "Oh, Jack, Jack, he will hurt you!"

"Oh, it's Jack, is it?" said Baldwin with an oath. "You've
come to that already, have you?"

"Oh, Ted, be reasonable -- be kind! For my sake, Ted, if ever
you loved me, be big-hearted and forgiving!"

"I think, Ettie, that if you were to leave us alone we could get
this thing settled," said McMurdo quietly. "Or maybe, Mr.
Baldwin, you will take a turn down the street with me. It's a fine
evening, and there's some open ground beyond the next block."

"I'll get even with you without needing to dirty my hands,"
said his enemy. "You'll wish you had never set foot in this
house before I am through with you!"

"No time like the present," cried McMurdo.

"I'll choose my own time, mister. You can leave the time to
me. See here!" He suddenly rolled up his sleeve and showed
upon his forearm a peculiar sign which appeared to have been
branded there. It was a circle with a triangle within it. "D'you
know what that means?"

"I neither know nor care!"

"Well, you will know, I'll promise you that. You won't be
much older, either. Perhaps Miss Ettie can tell you something
about it. As to you, Ettie, you'll come back to me on your
knees -- d'ye hear, girl? -- on your knees -- and then I'll tell you
what your punishment may be. You've sowed -- and by the Lord,
I'll see that you reap!" He glanced at them both in fury. Then he
turned upon his heel, and an instant later the outer door had
banged behind him.

For a few moments McMurdo and the girl stood in silence.
Then she threw her arms around him.

"Oh, Jack, how brave you were! But it is no use, you must
fly! To-night -- Jack -- to-night! It's your only hope. He will have
your life. I read it in his horrible eyes. What chance have you
against a dozen of them, with Boss McGinty and all the power of
the lodge behind them?"

McMurdo disengaged her hands, kissed her, and gently pushed
her back into a chair. "There, acushla, there! Don't be disturbed
or fear for me. I'm a Freeman myself. I'm after telling your
father about it. Maybe I am no better than the others; so don't
make a saint of me. Perhaps you hate me too, now that I've told
you as much?"

"Hate you, Jack? While life lasts I could never do that! I've
heard that there is no harm in being a Freeman anywhere but
here; so why should I think the worse of you for that? But if you
are a Freeman, Jack, why should you not go down and make a
friend of Boss McGinty? Oh, hurry, Jack, hurry! Get your word
in first, or the hounds will be on your trail."

"I was thinking the same thing," said McMurdo. "I'll go
right now and fix it. You can tell your father that I'll sleep here
to-night and find some other quarters in the morning."

The bar of McGinty's saloon was crowded as usual, for it was
the favourite loafing place of all the rougher elements of the
town. The man was popular; for he had a rough, jovial disposition
which formed a mask, covering a great deal which lay behind it.
But apart from this popularity, the fear in which he was held
throughout the township, and indeed down the whole thirty miles
of the valley and past the mountains on each side of it, was
enough in itself to fill his bar; for none could afford to neglect
his good will.

Besides those secret powers which it was universally believed
that he exercised in so pitiless a fashion, he was a high public
official, a municipal councillor, and a commissioner of roads,
elected to the office through the votes of the ruffians who in turn
expected to receive favours at his hands. Assessments and taxes
were enormous; the public works were notoriously neglected, the
accounts were slurred over by bribed auditors, and the decent
citizen was terrorized into paying public blackmail, and holding
his tongue lest some worse thing befall him.

Thus it was that, year by year, Boss McGinty's diamond pins
became more obtrusive, his gold chains more weighty across a
more gorgeous vest, and his saloon stretched farther and farther,
until it threatened to absorb one whole side of the Market Square.

McMurdo pushed open the swinging door of the saloon and made his way
amid the crowd of men within, through an atmosphere blurred with
tobacco smoke and heavy with the smell of spirits. The place was
brilliantly lighted, and the huge, heavily gilt mirrors upon every
wall reflected and multiplied the garish illumination. There were
several bartenders in their shirt sleeves, hard at work mixing drinks
for the loungers who fringed the broad, brass-trimmed counter.

At the far end, with his body resting upon the bar and a cigar
stuck at an acute angle from the corner of his mouth, stood a tall,
strong, heavily built man who could be none other than the
famous McGinty himself. He was a black-maned giant, bearded
to the cheek-bones, and with a shock of raven hair which fell to
his collar. His complexion was as swarthy as that of an Italian,
and his eyes were of a strange dead black, which, combined with
a slight squint, gave them a particularly sinister appearance.

All else in the man -- his noble proportions, his fine features,
and his frank bearing -- fitted in with that jovial, man-to-man
manner which he affected. Here, one would say, is a bluff,
honest fellow, whose heart would be sound however rude his
outspoken words might seem. It was only when those dead, dark
eyes, deep and remorseless, were turned upon a man that he
shrank within himself, feeling that he was face to face with an
infinite possibility of latent evil, with a strength and courage and
cunning behind it which made it a thousand times more deadly.

Having had a good look at his man, McMurdo elbowed his way forward
with his usual careless audacity, and pushed himself through the
little group of courtiers who were fawning upon the powerful boss,
laughing uproariously at the smallest of his jokes. The young
stranger's bold gray eyes looked back fearlessly through their
glasses at the deadly black ones which turned sharply upon him.

"Well, young man, I can't call your face to mind."

"I'm new here, Mr. McGinty."

"You are not so new that you can't give a gentleman his
proper title."

"He's Councillor McGinty, young man," said a voice from
the group.

"I'm sorry, Councillor. I'm strange to the ways of the place.
But I was advised to see you."

"Well, you see me. This is all there is. What d'you think of
me?"

"Well, it's early days. If your heart is as big as your body, and
your soul as fine as your face, then I'd ask for nothing better,"
said McMurdo.

"By Gar! you've got an Irish tongue in your head anyhow,"
cried the saloon-keeper, not quite certain whether to humour this
audacious visitor or to stand upon his dignity.

"So you are good enough to pass my appearance?"

"Sure," said McMurdo.

"And you were told to see me?"

"I was."

"And who told you?"

"Brother Scanlan of Lodge 341, Vermissa. I drink your health
Councillor, and to our better acquaintance." He raised a glass
with which he had been served to his lips and elevated his little
finger as he drank it.

McGinty, who had been watching him narrowly, raised his
thick black eyebrows. "Oh, it's like that, is it?" said he. "I'll
have to look a bit closer into this, Mister --"

"McMurdo."

"A bit closer, Mr. McMurdo; for we don't take folk on trust
in these parts, nor believe all we're told neither. Come in here
for a moment, behind the bar."

There was a small room there, lined with barrels. McGinty
carefully closed the door, and then seated himself on one of
them, biting thoughtfully on his cigar and surveying his companion
with those disquieting eyes. For a couple of minutes he sat in
complete silence. McMurdo bore the inspection cheerfully, one
hand in his coat pocket, the other twisting his brown moustache.
Suddenly McGinty stooped and produced a wicked-looking revolver.

"See here, my joker," said he, "if I thought you were
playing any game on us, it would be short work for you."

"This is a strange welcome," McMurdo answered with some
dignity, "for the Bodymaster of a lodge of Freemen to give to a
stranger brother."

"Ay, but it's just that same that you have to prove," said
McGinty, "and God help you if you fail! Where were you
made?"

"Lodge 29, Chicago."

"When?"

"June 24, 1872."

"What Bodymaster?"

"James H. Scott."

"Who is your district ruler?"

"Bartholomew Wilson."

"Hum! You seem glib enough in your tests. What are you
doing here?"

"Working, the same as you -- but a poorer job."

"You have your back answer quick enough."

"Yes, I was always quick of speech."

"Are you quick of action?"

"I have had that name among those that knew me best."

"Well, we may try you sooner than you think. Have you
heard anything of the lodge in these parts?"

"I've heard that it takes a man to be a brother."

"True for you, Mr. McMurdo. Why did you leave Chicago?"

"I'm damned if I tell you that!"

McGinty opened his eyes. He was not used to being answered
in such fashion, and it amused him. "Why won't you tell me?"

"Because no brother may tell another a lie."

"Then the truth is too bad to tell?"

"You can put it that way if you like."

"See here, mister, you can't expect me, as Bodymaster, to
pass into the lodge a man for whose past he can't answer."

McMurdo looked puzzled. Then he took a worn newspaper
cutting from an inner pocket.

"You wouldn't squeal on a fellow?" said he.

"I'll wipe my hand across your face if you say such words to
me!" cried McGinty hotly.

"You are right, Councillor," said McMurdo meekly. "I should
apologize. I spoke without thought. Well, I know that I am safe
in your hands. Look at that clipping."

McGinty glanced his eyes over the account of the shooting of
one Jonas Pinto, in the Lake Saloon, Market Street, Chicago, in
the New Year week of 1874.

"Your work?" he asked, as he handed back the paper.

McMurdo nodded.

"Why did you shoot him?"

"I was helping Uncle Sam to make dollars. Maybe mine were
not as good gold as his, but they looked as well and were cheaper
to make. This man Pinto helped me to shove the queer --"

"To do what?"

"Well, it means to pass the dollars out into circulation. Then
he said he would split. Maybe he did split. I didn't wait to see. I
just killed him and lighted out for the coal country."

"Why the coal country?"

"'Cause I'd read in the papers that they weren't too particular
in those parts."

McGinty laughed. "You were first a coiner and then a murderer,
and you came to these parts because you thought you'd be welcome."

"That's about the size of it," McMurdo answered.

"Well, I guess you'll go far. Say, can you make those dollars
yet?"

McMurdo took half a dozen from his pocket. "Those never
passed the Philadelphia mint," said he.

"You don't say!" McGinty held them to the light in his
enormous hand, which was hairy as a gorilla's. "I can see no
difference. Gar! you'll be a mighty useful brother, I'm thinking!
We can do with a bad man or two among us, Friend McMurdo:
for there are times when we have to take our own part. We'd
soon be against the wall if we didn't shove back at those that
were pushing us."

"Well, I guess I'll do my share of shoving with the rest of the
boys."

"You seem to have a good nerve. You didn't squirm when I
shoved this gun at you."

"It was not me that was in danger."

"Who then?"

"It was you, Councillor." McMurdo drew a cocked pistol
from the side pocket of his peajacket. "I was covering you all
the time. I guess my shot would have been as quick as yours."

"By Gar!" McGinty flushed an angry red and then burst into
a roar of laughter. "Say, we've had no such holy terror come to
hand this many a year. I reckon the lodge will learn to be proud
of you.... Well, what the hell do you want? And can't I speak
alone with a gentleman for five minutes but you must butt in on
us?"

The bartender stood abashed. "I'm sorry, Councillor, but it's
Ted Baldwin. He says he must see you this very minute."

The message was unnecessary; for the set, cruel face of the
man himself was looking over the servant's shoulder. He pushed
the bartender out and closed the door on him.

"So," said he with a furious glance at McMurdo, "you got
here first, did you? I've a word to say to you, Councillor, about
this man."

"Then say it here and now before my face," cried McMurdo.

"I'll say it at my own time, in my own way."

"Tut! Tut!" said McGinty, getting off his barrel. "This will
never do. We have a new brother here, Baldwin, and it's not for
us to greet him in such fashion. Hold out your hand, man, and
make it up!"

"Never!" cried Baldwin in a fury.

"I've offered to fight him if he thinks I have wronged him,"
said McMurdo. "I'll fight him with fists, or, if that won't satisfy
him, I'll fight him any other way he chooses. Now, I'll leave it
to you, Councillor, to judge between us as a Bodymaster should."

"What is it, then?"

"A young lady. She's free to choose for herself."

"Is she?" cried Baldwin.

"As between two brothers of the lodge I should say that she
was," said the Boss.

"Oh, that's your ruling, is it?"

"Yes, it is, Ted Baldwin," said McGinty, with a wicked
stare. "Is it you that would dispute it?"

"You would throw over one that has stood by you this five
years in favour of a man that you never saw before in your life?
You're not Bodymaster for life, Jack McGinty, and by God!
when next it comes to a vote --"

The Councillor sprang at him like a tiger. His hand closed
round the other's neck, and he hurled him back across one of the
barrels. In his mad fury he would have squeezed the life out of
him if McMurdo had not interfered.

"Easy, Councillor! For heaven's sake, go easy!" he cried, as
he dragged him back.

McGinty released his hold, and Baldwin, cowed and shaken
gasping for breath, and shivering in every limb, as one who has
looked over the very edge of death, sat up on the barrel over
which he had been hurled.

"You've been asking for it this many a day, Ted Baldwin --
now you've got it!" cried McGinty, his huge chest rising and
falling. "Maybe you think if I was voted down from Bodymaster
you would find yourself in my shoes. It's for the lodge to say
that. But so long as I am the chief I'll have no man lift his voice
against me or my rulings."

"I have nothing against you," mumbled Baldwin, feeling his
throat.

"Well, then," cried the other, relapsing in a moment into a
bluff joviality, "we are all good friends again and there's an end
of the matter."

He took a bottle of champagne down from the shelf and
twisted out the cork.

"See now," he continued, as he filled three high glasses.
"Let us drink the quarrelling toast of the lodge. After that, as
you know, there can be no bad blood between us. Now, then
the left hand on the apple of my throat. I say to you, Ted
Baldwin, what is the offense, sir?"

"The clouds are heavy," answered Baldwin

"But they will forever brighten."

"And this I swear!"

The men drank their glasses, and the same ceremony was
performed between Baldwin and McMurdo

"There!" cried McGinty, rubbing his hands. "That's the end
of the black blood. You come under lodge discipline if it goes
further, and that's a heavy hand in these parts, as Brother
Baldwin knows -- and as you will damn soon find out, Brother
McMurdo, if you ask for trouble!"

"Faith, I'd be slow to do that," said McMurdo. He held out
his hand to Baldwin. "I'm quick to quarrel and quick to forgive.
It's my hot Irish blood, they tell me. But it's over for me, and I
bear no grudge."

Baldwin had to take the proffered hand, for the baleful eye of
the terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how
little the words of the other had moved him.

McGinty clapped them both on the shoulders. "Tut! These
girls! These girls!" he cried. "To think that the same petticoats
should come between two of my boys! It's the devil's own luck!
Well, it's the colleen inside of them that must settle the question
for it's outside the jurisdiction of a Bodymaster -- and the Lord
be praised for that! We have enough on us, without the women
as well. You'll have to be affiliated to Lodge 341, Brother
McMurdo. We have our own ways and methods, different from
Chicago. Saturday night is our meeting, and if you come then,
we'll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley."



Chapter 3
Lodge 341, Vermissa

On the day following the evening which had contained so many
exciting events, McMurdo moved his lodgings from old Jacob
Shafter's and took up his quarters at the Widow MacNamara's
on the extreme outskirts of the town. Scanlan, his original
acquaintance aboard the train, had occasion shortly afterwards to
move into Vermissa, and the two lodged together. There was no
other boarder, and the hostess was an easy-going old Irishwoman
who left them to themselves; so that they had a freedom for
speech and action welcome to men who had secrets in common.

Shafter had relented to the extent of letting McMurdo come to
his meals there when he liked; so that his intercourse with Ettie
was by no means broken. On the contrary, it drew closer and
more intimate as the weeks went by.

In his bedroom at his new abode McMurdo felt it safe to take
out the coining moulds, and under many a pledge of secrecy a
number of brothers from the lodge were allowed to come in and
see them, each carrying away in his pocket some examples of the
false money, so cunningly struck that there was never the slightest
difficulty or danger in passing it. Why, with such a wonderful art
at his command, McMurdo should condescend to work at all was a
perpetual mystery to his companions; though he made it clear to
anyone who asked him that if he lived without any visible means it
would very quickly bring the police upon his track.

One policeman was indeed after him already; but the incident,
as luck would have it, did the adventurer a great deal more good
than harm. After the first introduction there were few evenings
when he did not find his way to McGinty's saloon, there to make
closer acquaintance with "the boys," which was the jovial title
by which the dangerous gang who infested the place were known
to one another. His dashing manner and fearlessness of speech
made him a favourite with them all; while the rapid and scientific
way in which he polished off his antagonist in an "all in"
bar-room scrap earned the respect of that rough community.
Another incident, however, raised him even higher in their
estimation.

Just at the crowded hour one night, the door opened and a man
entered with the quiet blue uniform and peaked cap of the mine
police. This was a special body raised by the railways and
colliery owners to supplement the efforts of the ordinary civil
police, who were perfectly helpless in the face of the organized
ruffianism which terrorized the district. There was a hush as he
entered, and many a curious glance was cast at him; but the
relations between policemen and criminals are peculiar in some
parts of the States, and McGinty himself standing behind his
counter, showed no surprise when the policeman enrolled himself
among his customers.

"A straight whisky, for the night is bitter," said the police
officer. "I don't think we have met before, Councillor?"

"You'll be the new captain?" said McGinty.

"That's so. We're looking to you, Councillor, and to the other
leading citizens, to help us in upholding law and order in this
township. Captain Marvin is my name."

"We'd do better without you, Captain Marvin," said McGinty
coldly; "for we have our own police of the township, and no
need for any imported goods. What are you but the paid tool of
the capitalists, hired by them to club or shoot your poorer fellow
citizen?"

"Well, well, we won't argue about that," said the police
officer good-humouredly. "I expect we all do our duty same as
we see it; but we can't all see it the same." He had drunk off his
glass and had turned to go, when his eyes fell upon the face of
Jack McMurdo, who was scowling at his elbow. "Hullo! Hullo!"
he cried, looking him up and down. "Here's an old acquaintance!"

McMurdo shrank away from him. "I was never a friend to
you nor any other cursed copper in my life," said he.

"An acquaintance isn't always a friend," said the police
captain, grinning. "You're Jack McMurdo of Chicago, right
enough, and don't you deny it!"

McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "I'm not denying it," said
he. "D'ye think I'm ashamed of my own name?"

"You've got good cause to be, anyhow."

"What the devil d'you mean by that?" he roared with his fists
clenched.

"No, no, Jack, bluster won't do with me. I was an officer in
Chicago before ever I came to this darned coal bunker, and I
know a Chicago crook when I see one."

McMurdo's face fell. "Don't tell me that you're Marvin of the
Chicago Central!" he cried.

"Just the same old Teddy Marvin, at your service. We haven't
forgotten the shooting of Jonas Pinto up there."

"I never shot him."

"Did you not? That's good impartial evidence, ain't it? Well,
his death came in uncommon handy for you, or they would have
had you for shoving the queer. Well, we can let that be bygones;
for, between you and me -- and perhaps I'm going further than
my duty in saying it -- they could get no clear case against you,
and Chicago's open to you to-morrow."

"I'm very well where I am."

"Well, I've given you the pointer, and you're a sulky dog not
to thank me for it."

"Well, I suppose you mean well, and I do thank you," said
McMurdo in no very gracious manner.

"It's mum with me so long as I see you living on the
straight," said the captain. "But, by the Lord! if you get off
after this, it's another story! So good-night to you -- and
goodnight, Councillor."

He left the bar-room; but not before he had created a local
hero. McMurdo's deeds in far Chicago had been whispered
before. He had put off all questions with a smile, as one who did
not wish to have greatness thrust upon him. But now the thing
was officially confirmed. The bar loafers crowded round him and
shook him heartily by the hand. He was free of the community
from that time on. He could drink hard and show little trace of it;
but that evening, had his mate Scanlan not been at hand to lead
him home, the feted hero would surely have spent his night
under the bar.

On a Saturday night McMurdo was introduced to the lodge.
He had thought to pass in without ceremony as being an initiate
of Chicago; but there were particular rites in Vermissa of which
they were proud, and these had to be undergone by every
postulant. The assembly met in a large room reserved for such
purposes at the Union House. Some sixty members assembled at
Vermissa; but that by no means represented the full strength of
the organization, for there were several other lodges in the
valley, and others across the mountains on each side, who
exchanged members when any serious business was afoot, so that
a crime might be done by men who were strangers to the
locality. Altogether there were not less than five hundred
scattered over the coal district.

In the bare assembly room the men were gathered round a
long table. At the side was a second one laden with bottles and
glasses, on which some members of the company were already
turning their eyes. McGinty sat at the head with a flat black
velvet cap upon his shock of tangled black hair, and a coloured
purple stole round his neck, so that he seemed to be a priest
presiding over some diabolical ritual. To right and left of him
were the higher lodge officials, the cruel, handsome face of Ted
Baldwin among them. Each of these wore some scarf or medallion
as emblem of his office.

They were, for the most part, men of mature age; but the rest of
the company consisted of young fellows from eighteen to twenty-
five, the ready and capable agents who carried out the commands
of their seniors. Among the older men were many whose features
showed the tigerish, lawless souls within; but looking at the rank
and file it was difficult to believe that these eager and open-faced
young fellows were in very truth a dangerous gang of murderers,
whose minds had suffered such complete moral perversion that
they took a horrible pride in their proficiency at the business, and
looked with deepest respect at the man who had the reputation of
making what they called "a clean job."

To their contorted natures it had become a spirited and chivalrous
thing to volunteer for service against some man who had never
injured them, and whom in many cases they had never seen in their
lives. The crime committed, they quarrelled as to who had actually
struck the fatal blow, and amused one another and the company by
describing the cries and contortions of the murdered man.

At first they had shown some secrecy in their arrangements;
but at the time which this narrative describes their proceedings
were extraordinarily open, for the repeated failures of the law
had proved to them that, on the one hand, no one would dare to
witness against them, and on the other they had an unlimited
number of stanch witnesses upon whom they could call, and a
well-filled treasure chest from which they could draw the funds
to engage the best legal talent in the state. In ten long years of
outrage there had been no single conviction, and the only danger
that ever threatened the Scowrers lay in the victim himself --
who, however outnumbered and taken by surprise, might and
occasionally did leave his mark upon his assailants.

McMurdo had been warned that some ordeal lay before him;
but no one would tell him in what it consisted. He was led now
into an outer room by two solemn brothers. Through the plank
partition he could hear the murmur of many voices from the
assembly within. Once or twice he caught the sound of his own
name, and he knew that they were discussing his candidacy.
Then there entered an inner guard with a green and gold sash
across his chest.

"The Bodymaster orders that he shall be trussed, blinded, and
entered," said he.

The three of them removed his coat, turned up the sleeve of
his right arm, and finally passed a rope round above the elbows
and made it fast. They next placed a thick black cap right over
his head and the upper part of his face, so that he could see
nothing. He was then led into the assembly hall.

It was pitch dark and very oppressive under his hood. He
heard the rustle and murmur of the people round him, and then
the voice of McGinty sounded dull and distant through the
covering of his ears.

"John McMurdo," said the voice, "are you already a member
of the Ancient Order of Freemen?"

He bowed in assent.

"Is your lodge No. 29, Chicago?"

He bowed again.

"Dark nights are unpleasant," said the voice.

"Yes, for strangers to travel," he answered.

"The clouds are heavy."

"Yes, a storm is approaching."

"Are the brethren satisfied?" asked the Bodymaster.

There was a general murmur of assent.

"We know, Brother, by your sign and by your countersign
that you are indeed one of us," said McGinty. "We would have
you know, however, that in this county and in other counties of
these parts we have certain rites, and also certain duties of our
own which call for good men. Are you ready to be tested?"

"I am."

"Are you of stout heart?"

"I am."

"Take a stride forward to prove it."

As the words were said he felt two hard points in front of his
eyes, pressing upon them so that it appeared as if he could not
move forward without a danger of losing them. None the less, he
nerved himself to step resolutely out, and as he did so the
pressure melted away. There was a low murmur of applause.

"He is of stout heart," said the voice. "Can you bear pain?"

"As well as another," he answered.

"Test him!"

It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming out, for
an agonizing pain shot through his forearm. He nearly fainted at
the sudden shock of it; but he bit his lip and clenched his hands
to hide his agony.

"I can take more than that," said he.

This time there was loud applause. A finer first appearance
had never been made in the lodge. Hands clapped him on the
back, and the hood was plucked from his head. He stood blinking
and smiling amid the congratulations of the brothers.

"One last word, Brother McMurdo," said McGinty. "You
have already sworn the oath of secrecy and fidelity, and you are
aware that the punishment for any breach of it is instant and
inevitable death?"

"I am," said McMurdo.

"And you accept the rule of the Bodymaster for the time
being under all circumstances?"

"I do."

"Then in the name of Lodge 341, Vermissa, I welcome you to
its privileges and debates. You will put the liquor on the table,
Brother Scanlan, and we will drink to our worthy brother."

McMurdo's coat had been brought to him; but before putting it
on he examined his right arm, which still smarted heavily. There
on the flesh of the forearm was a circle with a triangle within it,
deep and red, as the branding iron had left it. One or two of his
neighbours pulled up their sleeves and showed their own lodge
marks.

"We've all had it," said one; "but not all as brave as you
over it."

"Tut! It was nothing," said he; but it burned and ached all the
same.

When the drinks which followed the ceremony of initiation
had all been disposed of, the business of the lodge proceeded.
McMurdo, accustomed only to the prosaic performances of Chicago,
listened with open ears and more surprise than he ventured to
show to what followed.

"The first business on the agenda paper," said McGinty, "is
to read the following letter from Division Master Windle of
Merton County Lodge 249. He says:

     "DEAR SIR:

       "There is a job to be done on Andrew Rae of Rae &

     Sturmash, coal owners near this place. You will remember

     that your lodge owes us a return, having had the service of

     two brethren in the matter of the patrolman last fall. You

     will send two good men, they will be taken charge of by

     Treasurer Higgins of this lodge, whose address you know.

     He will show them when to act and where. Yours in freedom,

                                   "J. W. WINDLE D. M. A. O. F.

"Windle has never refused us when we have had occasion to
ask for the loan of a man or two, and it is not for us to refuse
him." McGinty paused and looked round the room with his dull,
malevolent eyes. "Who will volunteer for the job?"

Several young fellows held up their hands. The Bodymaster
looked at them with an approving smile.

"You'll do, Tiger Cormac. If you handle it as well as you did
the last, you won't be wrong. And you, Wilson."

"I've no pistol," said the volunteer, a mere boy in his teens.

"It's your first, is it not? Well, you have to be blooded some
time. It will be a great start for you. As to the pistol, you'll find
it waiting for you, or I'm mistaken. If you report yourselves on
Monday, it will be time enough. You'll get a great welcome
when you return."

"Any reward this time?" asked Cormac, a thick-set, dark-
faced, brutal-looking young man, whose ferocity had earned him
the nickname of "Tiger."

"Never mind the reward. You just do it for the honour of the
thing. Maybe when it is done there will be a few odd dollars at
the bottom of the box."

"What has the man done?" asked young Wilson.

"Sure, it's not for the likes of you to ask what the man has
done. He has been judged over there. That's no business of ours.
All we have to do is to carry it out for them, same as they would
for us. Speaking of that, two brothers from the Merton lodge are
coming over to us next week to do some business in this quarter."

"Who are they?" asked someone.

"Faith, it is wiser not to ask. If you know nothing, you can
testify nothing, and no trouble can come of it. But they are men
who will make a clean job when they are about it."

"And time, too!" cried Ted Baldwin. "Folk are gettin' out of
hand in these parts. It was only last week that three of our men
were turned off by Foreman Blaker. It's been owing him a long
time, and he'll get it full and proper."

"Get what?" McMurdo whispered to his neighbour.

"The business end of a buckshot cartridge!" cried the man
with a loud laugh. "What think you of our ways, Brother?"

McMurdo's criminal soul seemed to have already absorbed the
spirit of the vile association of which he was now a member. "I
like it well," said he. "'Tis a proper place for a lad of mettle."

Several of those who sat around heard his words and applauded
them.

"What's that?" cried the black-maned Bodymaster from the
end of the table.

"'Tis our new brother, sir, who finds our ways to his taste."

McMurdo rose to his feet for an instant. "I would say,
Eminent Bodymaster, that if a man should be wanted I should
take it as an honour to be chosen to help the lodge."

There was great applause at this. It was felt that a new sun
was pushing its rim above the horizon. To some of the elders it
seemed that the progress was a little too rapid.

"I would move," said the secretary, Harraway, a vulture-
faced old graybeard who sat near the chairman, "that Brother
McMurdo should wait until it is the good pleasure of the lodge to
employ him."

"Sure, that was what I meant; I'm in your hands," said
McMurdo.

"Your time will come, Brother," said the chairman. "We
have marked you down as a willing man, and we believe that
you will do good work in these parts. There is a small matter
to-night in which you may take a hand if it so please you."

"I will wait for something that is worth while."

"You can come to-night, anyhow, and it will help you to know what
we stand for in this community. I will make the announcement later.
Meanwhile," he glanced at his agenda paper, "I have one or two more
points to bring before the meeting. First of all, I will ask the
treasurer as to our bank balance. There is the pension to Jim
Carnaway's widow. He was struck down doing the work of the lodge,
and it is for us to see that she is not the loser."

"Jim was shot last month when they tried to kill Chester
Wilcox of Marley Creek," McMurdo's neighbour informed him.

"The funds are good at the moment," said the treasurer, with
the bankbook in front of him. "The firms have been generous of
late. Max Linder & Co. paid five hundred to be left alone.
Walker Brothers sent in a hundred; but I took it on myself to
return it and ask for five. If I do not hear by Wednesday, their
winding gear may get out of order. We had to burn their breaker
last year before they became reasonable. Then the West Section
Coaling Company has paid its annual contribution. We have
enough on hand to meet any obligations."

"What about Archie Swindon?" asked a brother.

"He has sold out and left the district. The old devil left a note
for us to say that he had rather be a free crossing sweeper in New
York than a large mine owner under the power of a ring of blackmailers.
By Gar! it was as well that he made a break for it before the note
reached us! I guess he won't show his face in this valley again."

An elderly, clean-shaved man with a kindly face and a good
brow rose from the end of the table which faced the chairman.
"Mr. Treasurer," he asked, "may I ask who has bought the
property of this man that we have driven out of the district?"

"Yes, Brother Morris. It has been bought by the State & Merton
County Railroad Company."

"And who bought the mines of Todman and of Lee that came
into the market in the same way last year?"

"The same company, Brother Morris."

"And who bought the ironworks of Manson and of Shuman and of
Van Deher and of Atwood, which have all been given up of late?"

"They were all bought by the West Gilmerton General Mining Company."

"I don't see, Brother Morris," said the chairman, "that it matters to
us who buys them, since they can't carry them out of the district."

"With all respect to you, Eminent Bodymaster, I think it may
matter very much to us. This process has been going on now for
ten long years. We are gradually driving all the small men out of
trade. What is the result? We find in their places great companies
like the Railroad or the General Iron, who have their directors in
New York or Philadelphia, and care nothing for our threats. We
can take it out of their local bosses, but it only means that others
will be sent in their stead. And we are making it dangerous for
ourselves. The small men could not harm us. They had not the money
nor the power. So long as we did not squeeze them too dry, they
would stay on under our power. But if these big companies find
that we stand between them and their profits, they will spare
no pains and no expense to hunt us down and bring us to court."

There was a hush at these ominous words, and every face darkened
as gloomy looks were exchanged. So omnipotent and unchallenged
had they been that the very thought that there was possible
retribution in the background had been banished from their minds.
And yet the idea struck a chill to the most reckless of them.

"It is my advice," the speaker continued, "that we go easier
upon the small men. On the day that they have all been driven
out the power of this society will have been broken."

Unwelcome truths are not popular. There were angry cries as the
speaker resumed his seat. McGinty rose with gloom upon his brow.

"Brother Morris," said he, "you were always a croaker. So
long as the members of this lodge stand together there is no
power in the United States that can touch them. Sure, have we
not tried it often enough in the law courts? I expect the big
companies will find it easier to pay than to fight, same as the
little companies do. And now, Brethren," McGinty took off his
black velvet cap and his stole as he spoke, "this lodge has
finished its business for the evening, save for one small matter
which may be mentioned when we are parting. The time has now
come for fraternal refreshment and for harmony."

Strange indeed is human nature. Here were these men, to
whom murder was familiar, who again and again had struck
down the father of the family, some man against whom they had
no personal feeling, without one thought of compunction or of
compassion for his weeping wife or helpless children, and yet
the tender or pathetic in music could move them to tears. McMurdo
had a fine tenor voice, and if he had failed to gain the good
will of the lodge before, it could no longer have been withheld
after he had thrilled them with "I'm Sitting on the Stile, Mary,"
and "On the Banks of Allan Water."

In his very first night the new recruit had made himself one of
the most popular of the brethren, marked already for advancement
and high office. There were other qualities needed, however,
besides those of good fellowship, to make a worthy Freeman,
and of these he was given an example before the evening was
over. The whisky bottle had passed round many times, and the
men were flushed and ripe for mischief when their Bodymaster
rose once more to address them.

"Boys," said he, "there's one man in this town that wants
trimming up, and it's for you to see that he gets it. I'm speaking
of James Stanger of the Herald. You've seen how he's been
opening his mouth against us again?"

There was a murmur of assent, with many a muttered oath.
McGinty took a slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket.

                     "LAW AND ORDER!

That's how he heads it.

       "REIGN OF TERROR IN THE COAL AND IRON DISTRICT

     "Twelve years have now elapsed since the first assassinations

   which proved the existence of a criminal organization in our

   midst. From that day these outrages have never ceased, until

   now they have reached a pitch which makes us the opprobrium

   of the civilized world. Is it for such results as this that

   our great country welcomes to its bosom the alien who flies

   from the despotisms of Europe? Is it that they shall

   themselves become tyrants over the very men who have given

   them shelter, and that a state of terrorism and lawlessness

   should be established under the very shadow of the sacred

   folds of the starry Flag of Freedom which would raise horror

   in our minds if we read of it as existing under the most

   effete monarchy of the East? The men are known. The organization

   is patent and public. How long are we to endure it? Can we

   forever live --

Sure, I've read enough of the slush!" cried the chairman,
tossing the paper down upon the table. "That's what he says of us.
The question I'm asking you is what shall we say to him?"

"Kill him!" cried a dozen fierce voices.

"I protest against that," said Brother Morris, the man of the
good brow and shaved face. "I tell you, Brethren, that our hand
is too heavy in this valley, and that there will come a point
where in self-defense every man will unite to crush us out. James
Stanger is an old man. He is respected in the township and the
district. His paper stands for all that is solid in the valley.
If that man is struck down, there will be a stir through this
state that will only end with our destruction."

"And how would they bring about our destruction, Mr. Standback?"
cried McGinty. "Is it by the police? Sure, half of them are in our
pay and half of them afraid of us. Or is it by the law courts and
the judge? Haven't we tried that before now, and what ever came of it?"

"There is a Judge Lynch that might try the case," said Brother Morris.

A general shout of anger greeted the suggestion.

"I have but to raise my finger," cried McGinty, "and I could
put two hundred men into this town that would clear it out from
end to end." Then suddenly raising his voice and bending his
huge black brows into a terrible frown, "See here, Brother
Morris, I have my eye on you, and have had for some time!
You've no heart yourself, and you try to take the heart out of
others. It will be an ill day for you, Brother Morris, when your
own name comes on our agenda paper, and I'm thinking that it's
just there that I ought to place it."

Morris had turned deadly pale, and his knees seemed to give
way under him as he fell back into his chair. He raised his glass
in his trembling hand and drank before he could answer. "I
apologize, Eminent Bodymaster, to you and to every brother in
this lodge if I have said more than I should. I am a faithful
member -- you all know that -- and it is my fear lest evil come to
the lodge which makes me speak in anxious words. But I have
greater trust in your judgment than in my own, Eminent
Bodymaster, and I promise you that I will not offend again."

The Bodymaster's scowl relaxed as he listened to the humble words.
"Very good, Brother Morris. It's myself that would be sorry if it
were needful to give you a lesson. But so long as I am in this
chair we shall be a united lodge in word and in deed. And now, boys,"
he continued, looking round at the company, "I'll say this much, that
if Stanger got his full deserts there would be more trouble than we
need ask for. These editors hang together, and every journal in the
state would be crying out for police and troops. But I guess you can
give him a pretty severe warning. Will you fix it, Brother Baldwin?"

"Sure!" said the young man eagerly.

"How many will you take?"

"Half a dozen, and two to guard the door. You'll come, Gower,
and you, Mansel, and you, Scanlan, and the two Willabys."

"I promised the new brother he should go," said the chairman.

Ted Baldwin looked at McMurdo with eyes which showed that
he had not forgotten nor forgiven. "Well, he can come if he
wants," he said in a surly voice. "That's enough. The sooner
we get to work the better."

The company broke up with shouts and yells and snatches of
drunken song. The bar was still crowded with revellers, and
many of the brethren remained there. The little band who had
been told off for duty passed out into the street, proceeding in
twos and threes along the sidewalk so as not to provoke attention.
It was a bitterly cold night, with a half-moon shining brilliantly
in a frosty, star-spangled sky. The men stopped and gathered in a
yard which faced a high building. The words "Vermissa Herald" were
printed in gold lettering between the brightly lit windows. From
within came the clanking of the printing press.

"Here, you," said Baldwin to McMurdo, "you can stand
below at the door and see that the road is kept open for us.
Arthur Willaby can stay with you. You others come with me.
Have no fears, boys; for we have a dozen witnesses that we are
in the Union Bar at this very moment."

It was nearly midnight, and the street was deserted save for
one or two revellers upon their way home. The party crossed the
road, and, pushing open the door of the newspaper office,
Baldwin and his men rushed in and up the stair which faced
them. McMurdo and another remained below. From the room
above came a shout, a cry for help, and then the sound of
trampling feet and of falling chairs. An instant later a gray-haired
man rushed out on the landing.

He was seized before he could get farther, and his spectacles
came tinkling down to McMurdo's feet. There was a thud and a
groan. He was on his face, and half a dozen sticks were clattering
together as they fell upon him. He writhed, and his long, thin
limbs quivered under the blows. The others ceased at last; but
Baldwin, his cruel face set in an infernal smile, was hacking at
the man's head, which he vainly endeavoured to defend with his
arms. His white hair was dabbled with patches of blood. Baldwin
was still stooping over his victim, putting in a short, vicious
blow whenever he could see a part exposed, when McMurdo dashed
up the stair and pushed him back.

"You'll kill the man," said he. "Drop it!"

Baldwin looked at him in amazement. "Curse you!" he cried.
"Who are you to interfere -- you that are new to the lodge? Stand
back!" He raised his stick; but McMurdo had whipped his pistol
out of his hip pocket.

"Stand back yourself!" he cried. "I'll blow your face in if
you lay a hand on me. As to the lodge, wasn't it the order of the
Bodymaster that the man was not to be killed -- and what are you
doing but killing him?"

"It's truth he says," remarked one of the men.

"By Gar! you'd best hurry yourselves!" cried the man below.
"The windows are all lighting up, and you'll have the whole
town here inside of five minutes."

There was indeed the sound of shouting in the street, and a
little group of compositors and pressmen was forming in the hall
below and nerving itself to action. Leaving the limp and motionless
body of the editor at the head of the stair, the criminals rushed
down and made their way swiftly along the street. Having reached
the Union House, some of them mixed with the crowd in McGinty's
saloon, whispering across the bar to the Boss that the job had
been well carried through. Others, and among them McMurdo, broke
away into side streets, and so by devious paths to their own homes.



Chapter 4
The Valley of Fear

When McMurdo awoke next morning he had good reason to
remember his initiation into the lodge. His head ached with the
effect of the drink, and his arm, where he had been branded, was
hot and swollen. Having his own peculiar source of income, he
was irregular in his attendance at his work; so he had a late
breakfast, and remained at home for the morning writing a long
letter to a friend. Afterwards he read the Daily Herald. In a
special column put in at the last moment he read:

        OUTRAGE AT THE HERALD OFFICE -- EDITOR

                   SERIOUSLY INJURED.

It was a short account of the facts with which he was himself more
familiar than the writer could have been. It ended with the statement:

      The matter is now in the hands of the police; but it can

    hardly be hoped that their exertions will be attended by any

    better results than in the past. Some of the men were

    recognized, and there is hope that a conviction may be

    obtained. The source of the outrage was, it need hardly be

    said, that infamous society which has held this community

    in bondage for so long a period, and against which the

    Herald has taken so uncompromising a stand. Mr. Stanger's

    many friends will rejoice to hear that, though he has been

    cruelly and brutally beaten, and though he has sustained

    severe injuries about the head, there is no immediate danger

    to his life.

Below it stated that a guard of police, armed with Winchester
rifles, had been requisitioned for the defense of the office.

McMurdo had laid down the paper, and was lighting his pipe with
a hand which was shaky from the excesses of the previous evening,
when there was a knock outside, and his landlady brought to him
a note which had just been handed in by a lad. It was unsigned,
and ran thus:

    I should wish to speak to you, but would rather not do so

    in your house. You will find me beside the flagstaff upon

    Miller Hill. If you will come there now, I have something

    which it is important for you to hear and for me to say.

McMurdo read the note twice with the utmost surprise; for he
could not imagine what it meant or who was the author of it.
Had it been in a feminine hand, he might have imagined that it
was the beginning of one of those adventures which had been
familiar enough in his past life. But it was the writing of a man,
and of a well educated one, too. Finally, after some hesitation,
he determined to see the matter through.

Miller Hill is an ill-kept public park in the very centre of the
town. In summer it is a favourite resort of the people; but in
winter it is desolate enough. From the top of it one has a view
not only of the whole straggling, grimy town, but of the winding
valley beneath, with its scattered mines and factories blackening
the snow on each side of it, and of the wooded and white-capped
ranges flanking it.

McMurdo strolled up the winding path hedged in with evergreens
until he reached the deserted restaurant which forms the centre
of summer gaiety. Beside it was a bare flagstaff, and underneath
it a man, his hat drawn down and the collar of his overcoat
turned up. When he turned his face McMurdo saw that it was Brother
Morris, he who had incurred the anger of the Bodymaster the night
before. The lodge sign was given and exchanged as they met.

"I wanted to have a word with you, Mr. McMurdo," said the
older man, speaking with a hesitation which showed that he was
on delicate ground. "It was kind of you to come."

"Why did you not put your name to the note?"

"One has to be cautious, mister. One never knows in times
like these how a thing may come back to one. One never knows
either who to trust or who not to trust."

"Surely one may trust brothers of the lodge."

"No, no, not always," cried Morris with vehemence. "Whatever
we say, even what we think, seems to go back to that man McGinty."

"Look here!" said McMurdo sternly. "It was only last night,
as you know well, that I swore good faith to our Bodymaster.
Would you be asking me to break my oath?"

"If that is the view you take," said Morris sadly, "I can only
say that I am sorry I gave you the trouble to come and meet me.
Things have come to a bad pass when two free citizens cannot
speak their thoughts to each other."

McMurdo, who had been watching his companion very narrowly,
relaxed somewhat in his bearing. "Sure I spoke for myself
only," said he. "I am a newcomer, as you know, and I am
strange to it all. It is not for me to open my mouth, Mr.
Morris, and if you think well to say anything to me I am
here to hear it."

"And to take it back to Boss McGinty!" said Morris bitterly.

"Indeed, then, you do me injustice there," cried McMurdo.
"For myself I am loyal to the lodge, and so I tell you straight;
but I would be a poor creature if I were to repeat to any other
what you might say to me in confidence. It will go no further
than me; though I warn you that you may get neither help nor
sympathy."

"I have given up looking for either the one or the other," said
Morris. "I may be putting my very life in your hands by what I
say; but, bad as you are -- and it seemed to me last night that you
were shaping to be as bad as the worst -- still you are new to it,
and your conscience cannot yet be as hardened as theirs. That
was why I thought to speak with you."

"Well, what have you to say?"

"If you give me away, may a curse be on you!"

"Sure, I said I would not."

"I would ask you, then, when you joined the Freeman's society
in Chicago and swore vows of charity and fidelity, did ever it
cross your mind that you might find it would lead you to crime?"

"If you call it crime," McMurdo answered.

"Call it crime!" cried Morris, his voice vibrating with passion.
"You have seen little of it if you can call it anything else. Was
it crime last night when a man old enough to be your father was
beaten till the blood dripped from his white hairs? Was that crime --
or what else would you call it?"

"There are some would say it was war," said McMurdo, "a war of
two classes with all in, so that each struck as best it could."

"Well, did you think of such a thing when you joined the
Freeman's society at Chicago?"

"No, I'm bound to say I did not."

"Nor did I when I joined it at Philadelphia. It was just a
benefit club and a meeting place for one's fellows. Then I heard
of this place -- curse the hour that the name first fell upon my
ears! -- and I came to better myself! My God! to better myself!
My wife and three children came with me. I started a dry goods
store on Market Square, and I prospered well. The word had
gone round that I was a Freeman, and I was forced to join the
local lodge, same as you did last night. I've the badge of shame
on my forearm and something worse branded on my heart. I
found that I was under the orders of a black villain and caught in
a meshwork of crime. What could I do? Every word I said to
make things better was taken as treason, same as it was last
night. I can't get away; for all I have in the world is in my store.
If I leave the society, I know well that it means murder to me,
and God knows what to my wife and children. Oh, man, it is
awful -- awful!" He put his hands to his face, and his body shook
with convulsive sobs.

McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "You were too soft for the job,"
said he. "You are the wrong sort for such work."

"I had a conscience and a religion; but they made me a
criminal among them. I was chosen for a job. If I backed down
I knew well what would come to me. Maybe I'm a coward.
Maybe it's the thought of my poor little woman and the children
that makes me one. Anyhow I went. I guess it will haunt me forever.

"It was a lonely house, twenty miles from here, over the
range yonder. I was told off for the door, same as you were last
night. They could not trust me with the job. The others went in.
When they came out their hands were crimson to the wrists. As
we turned away a child was screaming out of the house behind
us. It was a boy of five who had seen his father murdered. I
nearly fainted with the horror of it, and yet I had to keep a bold
and smiling face; for well I knew that if I did not it would be out
of my house that they would come next with their bloody hands and it
would be my little Fred that would be screaming for his father.

"But I was a criminal then, part sharer in a murder, lost
forever in this world, and lost also in the next. I am a good
Catholic; but the priest would have no word with me when he
heard I was a Scowrer, and I am excommunicated from my faith.
That's how it stands with me. And I see you going down the same
road, and I ask you what the end is to be. Are you ready to be
a cold-blooded murderer also, or can we do anything to stop it?"

"What would you do?" asked McMurdo abruptly. "You would not inform?"

"God forbid!" cried Morris. "Sure, the very thought would
cost me my life."

"That's well," said McMurdo. "I'm thinking that you are a
weak man and that you make too much of the matter."

"Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley!
See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you
that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the
heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death.
The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn.
Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself."

"Well, I'll let you know what I think when I have seen more,"
said McMurdo carelessly. "What is very clear is that you are
not the man for the place, and that the sooner you sell out --
if you only get a dime a dollar for what the business is worth --
the better it will be for you. What you have said is safe with me;
but, by Gar! if I thought you were an informer --"

"No, no!" cried Morris piteously.

"Well, let it rest at that. I'll bear what you have said in mind,
and maybe some day I'll come back to it. I expect you meant
kindly by speaking to me like this. Now I'll be getting home."

"One word before you go," said Morris. "We may have been seen
together. They may want to know what we have spoken about."

"Ah! that's well thought of."

"I offer you a clerkship in my store."

"And I refuse it. That's our business. Well, so long, Brother Morris,
and may you find things go better with you in the future."

That same afternoon, as McMurdo sat smoking, lost in thought
beside the stove of his sitting-room, the door swung open and its
framework was filled with the huge figure of Boss McGinty. He
passed the sign, and then seating himself opposite to the young
man he looked at him steadily for some time, a look which was
as steadily returned.

"I'm not much of a visitor, Brother McMurdo," he said at last.
"I guess I am too busy over the folk that visit me. But I thought
I'd stretch a point and drop down to see you in your own house."

"I'm proud to see you here, Councillor," McMurdo answered heartily,
bringing his whisky bottle out of the cupboard. "It's an honour
that I had not expected."

"How's the arm?" asked the Boss.

McMurdo made a wry face. "Well, I'm not forgetting it," he said;
"but it's worth it."

"Yes, it's worth it," the other answered, "to those that are loyal
and go through with it and are a help to the lodge. What were you
speaking to Brother Morris about on Miller Hill this morning?"

The question came so suddenly that it was well that he had his
answer prepared. He burst into a hearty laugh. "Morris didn't
know I could earn a living here at home. He shan't know either;
for he has got too much conscience for the likes of me. But he's
a good-hearted old chap. It was his idea that I was at a loose
end, and that he would do me a good turn by offering me a
clerkship in a dry goods store."

"Oh, that was it?"

"Yes, that was it."

"And you refused it?"

"Sure. Couldn't I earn ten times as much in my own bedroom
with four hours' work?"

"That's so. But I wouldn't get about too much with Morris."

"Why not?"

"Well, I guess because I tell you not. That's enough for most
folk in these parts."

"It may be enough for most folk; but it ain't enough for me,
Councillor," said McMurdo boldly. "If you are a judge of men,
you'll know that."

The swarthy giant glared at him, and his hairy paw closed for an
instant round the glass as though he would hurl it at the head
of his companion. Then he laughed in his loud, boisterous,
insincere fashion.

"You're a queer card, for sure," said he. "Well, if you want reasons,
I'll give them. Did Morris say nothing to you against the lodge?"

"No."

"Nor against me?"

"No."

"Well, that's because he daren't trust you. But in his heart he
is not a loyal brother. We know that well. So we watch him and
we wait for the time to admonish him. I'm thinking that the time
is drawing near. There's no room for scabby sheep in our pen.
But if you keep company with a disloyal man, we might think
that you were disloyal, too. See?"

"There's no chance of my keeping company with him; for I
dislike the man," McMurdo answered. "As to being disloyal, if
it was any man but you he would not use the word to me twice."

"Well, that's enough," said McGinty, draining off his glass.
"I came down to give you a word in season, and you've had it."

"I'd like to know," said McMurdo, "how you ever came to
learn that I had spoken with Morris at all?"

McGinty laughed. "It's my business to know what goes on in
this township," said he. "I guess you'd best reckon on my
hearing all that passes. Well, time's up, and I'll just say --"

But his leavetaking was cut short in a very unexpected fashion.
With a sudden crash the door flew open, and three frowning,
intent faces glared in at them from under the peaks of police
caps. McMurdo sprang to his feet and half drew his revolver; but
his arm stopped midway as he became conscious that two
Winchester rifles were levelled at his head. A man in uniform
advanced into the room, a six-shooter in his hand. It was Captain
Marvin, once of Chicago, and now of the Mine Constabulary.
He shook his head with a half-smile at McMurdo.

"I thought you'd be getting into trouble, Mr. Crooked
McMurdo of Chicago," said he. "Can't keep out of it, can you?
Take your hat and come along with us."

"I guess you'll pay for this, Captain Marvin," said McGinty.
"Who are you, I'd like to know, to break into a house in this
fashion and molest honest, law-abiding men?"

"You're standing out in this deal, Councillor McGinty," said
the police captain. "We are not out after you, but after this man
McMurdo. It is for you to help, not to hinder us in our duty,"

"He is a friend of mine, and I'll answer for his conduct," said
the Boss.

"By all accounts, Mr. McGinty, you may have to answer for
your own conduct some of these days," the captain answered.
"This man McMurdo was a crook before ever he came here, and
he's a crook still. Cover him, Patrolman, while I disarm him."

"There's my pistol," said McMurdo coolly. "Maybe, Captain
Marvin, if you and I were alone and face to face you would not
take me so easily."

"Where's your warrant?" asked McGinty. "By Gar! a man
might as well live in Russia as in Vermissa while folk like you
are running the police. It's a capitalist outrage, and you'll hear
more of it, I reckon."

"You do what you think is your duty the best way you can,
Councillor. We'll look after ours."

"What am I accused of?" asked McMurdo.

"Of being concerned in the beating of old Editor Stanger at
the Herald office. It wasn't your fault that it isn't a murder
charge."

"Well, if that's all you have against him," cried McGinty
with a laugh, "you can save yourself a deal of trouble by
dropping it right now. This man was with me in my saloon
playing poker up to midnight, and I can bring a dozen to prove
it."

"That's your affair, and I guess you can settle it in court
to-morrow. Meanwhile, come on, McMurdo, and come quietly
if you don't want a gun across your head. You stand wide,
Mr. McGinty; for I warn you I will stand no resistance when
I am on duty!"

So determined was the appearance of the captain that both
McMurdo and his boss were forced to accept the situation. The
latter managed to have a few whispered words with the prisoner
before they parted.

"What about --" he jerked his thumb upward to signify the
coining plant.

"All right," whispered McMurdo, who had devised a safe
hiding place under the floor.

"I'll bid you good-bye," said the Boss, shaking hands. "I'll
see Reilly the lawyer and take the defense upon myself. Take my
word for it that they won't be able to hold you."

"I wouldn't bet on that. Guard the prisoner, you two, and shoot
him if he tries any games. I'll search the house before I leave."

He did so; but apparently found no trace of the concealed
plant. When he had descended he and his men escorted McMurdo
to headquarters. Darkness had fallen, and a keen blizzard
was blowing so that the streets were nearly deserted; but a few
loiterers followed the group, and emboldened by invisibility
shouted imprecations at the prisoner.

"Lynch the cursed Scowrer!" they cried. "Lynch him!" They
laughed and jeered as he was pushed into the police station.
After a short, formal examination from the inspector in charge he
was put into the common cell. Here he found Baldwin and three
other criminals of the night before, all arrested that afternoon and
waiting their trial next morning.

But even within this inner fortress of the law the long arm of
the Freemen was able to extend. Late at night there came a jailer
with a straw bundle for their bedding, out of which he extracted
two bottles of whisky, some glasses, and a pack of cards. They
spent a hilarious night, without an anxious thought as to the
ordeal of the morning.

Nor had they cause, as the result was to show. The magistrate
could not possibly, on the evidence, have held them for a higher
court. On the one hand the compositors and pressmen were forced
to admit that the light was uncertain, that they were themselves
much perturbed, and that it was difficult for them to swear to the
identity of the assailants; although they believed that the accused
were among them. Cross examined by the clever attorney who
had been engaged by McGinty, they were even more nebulous in
their evidence.

The injured man had already deposed that he was so taken by
surprise by the suddenness of the attack that he could state
nothing beyond the fact that the first man who struck him wore a
moustache. He added that he knew them to be Scowrers, since
no one else in the community could possibly have any enmity to
him, and he had long been threatened on account of his outspoken
editorials. On the other hand, it was clearly shown by the
united and unfaltering evidence of six citizens, including that
high municipal official, Councillor McGinty, that the men had
been at a card party at the Union House until an hour very much
later than the commission of the outrage.

Needless to say that they were discharged with something very
near to an apology from the bench for the inconvenience to
which they had been put, together with an implied censure of
Captain Marvin and the police for their officious zeal.

The verdict was greeted with loud applause by a court in
which McMurdo saw many familiar faces. Brothers of the lodge
smiled and waved. But there were others who sat with compressed
lips and brooding eyes as the men filed out of the dock. One of
them, a little, dark-bearded, resolute fellow, put the thoughts
of himself and comrades into words as the ex-prisoners passed him.

"You damned murderers!" he said. "We'll fix you yet!"



Chapter 5
The Darkest Hour

If anything had been needed to give an impetus to Jack McMurdo's
popularity among his fellows it would have been his arrest and
acquittal. That a man on the very night of joining the lodge should
have done something which brought him before the magistrate was a
new record in the annals of the society. Already he had earned
the reputation of a good boon companion, a cheery reveller, and
withal a man of high temper, who would not take an insult even
from the all-powerful Boss himself. But in addition to this he
impressed his comrades with the idea that among them all there
was not one whose brain was so ready to devise a bloodthirsty
scheme, or whose hand would be more capable of carrying it out.
"He'll be the boy for the clean job," said the oldsters to one
another, and waited their time until they could set him to his work.

McGinty had instruments enough already; but he recognized
that this was a supremely able one. He felt like a man holding a
fierce bloodhound in leash. There were curs to do the smaller
work; but some day he would slip this creature upon its prey. A
few members of the lodge, Ted Baldwin among them, resented
the rapid rise of the stranger and hated him for it; but they kept
clear of him, for he was as ready to fight as to laugh.

But if he gained favour with his fellows, there was another
quarter, one which had become even more vital to him, in which
he lost it. Ettie Shafter's father would have nothing more to do
with him, nor would he allow him to enter the house. Ettie
herself was too deeply in love to give him up altogether, and yet
her own good sense warned her of what would come from a
marriage with a man who was regarded as a criminal.

One morning after a sleepless night she determined to see him,
possibly for the last time, and make one strong endeavour to
draw him from those evil influences which were sucking him
down. She went to his house, as he had often begged her to do,
and made her way into the room which he used as his sitting-
room. He was seated at a table, with his back turned and a letter
in front of him. A sudden spirit of girlish mischief came over
her -- she was still only nineteen. He had not heard her when she
pushed open the door. Now she tiptoed forward and laid her
hand lightly upon his bended shoulders.

If she had expected to startle him, she certainly succeeded; but
only in turn to be startled herself. With a tiger spring he turned
on her, and his right hand was feeling for her throat. At the same
instant with the other hand he crumpled up the paper that lay before him.
For an instant he stood glaring. Then astonishment and joy took the
place of the ferocity which had convulsed his features -- a ferocity
which had sent her shrinking back in horror as from something which
had never before intruded into her gentle life.

"It's you!" said he, mopping his brow. "And to think that
you should come to me, heart of my heart, and I should find
nothing better to do than to want to strangle you! Come then,
darling," and he held out his arms, "let me make it up to you."

But she had not recovered from that sudden glimpse of guilty
fear which she had read in the man's face. All her woman's
instinct told her that it was not the mere fright of a man who is
startled. Guilt -- that was it -- guilt and fear!

"What's come over you, Jack?" she cried. "Why were you
so scared of me? Oh, Jack, if your conscience was at ease, you
would not have looked at me like that!"

"Sure, I was thinking of other things, and when you came
tripping so lightly on those fairy feet of yours --"

"No, no, it was more than that, Jack." Then a sudden
suspicion seized her. "Let me see that letter you were writing."

"Ah, Ettie, I couldn't do that."

Her suspicions became certainties. "It's to another woman,"
she cried. "I know it! Why else should you hold it from me?
Was it to your wife that you were writing? How am I to know
that you are not a married man -- you, a stranger, that nobody
knows?"

"I am not married, Ettie. See now, I swear it! You're the only
one woman on earth to me. By the cross of Christ I swear it!"

He was so white with passionate earnestness that she could not
but believe him.

"Well, then," she cried, "why will you not show me the letter?"

"I'll tell you, acushla," said he. "I'm under oath not to show
it, and just as I wouldn't break my word to you so I would keep
it to those who hold my promise. It's the business of the lodge,
and even to you it's secret. And if I was scared when a hand fell
on me, can't you understand it when it might have been the hand
of a detective?"

She felt that he was telling the truth. He gathered her into his
arms and kissed away her fears and doubts.

"Sit here by me, then. It's a queer throne for such a queen;
but it's the best your poor lover can find. He'll do better for you
some of these days, I'm thinking. Now your mind is easy once
again, is it not?"

"How can it ever be at ease, Jack, when I know that you are a
criminal among criminals, when I never know the day that I may
hear you are in court for murder? 'McMurdo the Scowrer,' that's
what one of our boarders called you yesterday. It went through
my heart like a knife."

"Sure, hard words break no bones."

"But they were true."

"Well, dear, it's not so bad as you think. We are but poor
men that are trying in our own way to get our rights."

Ettie threw her arms round her lover's neck. "Give it up, Jack!
For my sake, for God's sake, give it up! It was to ask you that
I came here to-day. Oh, Jack, see -- I beg it of you on my bended knees!
Kneeling here before you I implore you to give it up!"

He raised her and soothed her with her head against his breast.

"Sure, my darlin', you don't know what it is you are asking.
How could I give it up when it would be to break my oath and to
desert my comrades? If you could see how things stand with me
you could never ask it of me. Besides, if I wanted to, how could
I do it? You don't suppose that the lodge would let a man go free
with all its secrets?"

"I've thought of that, Jack. I've planned it all. Father has
saved some money. He is weary of this place where the fear of
these people darkens our lives. He is ready to go. We would fly
together to Philadelphia or New York, where we would be safe
from them."

McMurdo laughed. "The lodge has a long arm. Do you think
it could not stretch from here to Philadelphia or New York?"

"Well, then, to the West, or to England, or to Germany,
where father came from -- anywhere to get away from this
Valley of Fear!"

McMurdo thought of old Brother Morris. "Sure, it is the second
time I have heard the valley so named," said he. "The shadow
does indeed seem to lie heavy on some of you."

"It darkens every moment of our lives. Do you suppose that
Ted Baldwin has ever forgiven us? If it were not that he fears
you, what do you suppose our chances would be? If you saw the
look in those dark, hungry eyes of his when they fall on me!"

"By Gar! I'd teach him better manners if I caught him at it!
But see here, little girl. I can't leave here. I can't -- take that
from me once and for all. But if you will leave me to find my own
way, I will try to prepare a way of getting honourably out of it."

"There is no honour in such a matter."

"Well, well, it's just how you look at it. But if you'll give me
six months, I'll work it so that I can leave without being ashamed
to look others in the face."

The girl laughed with joy. "Six months!" she cried. "Is it a promise?"

"Well, it may be seven or eight. But within a year at the
furthest we will leave the valley behind us."

It was the most that Ettie could obtain, and yet it was something.
There was this distant light to illuminate the gloom of the
immediate future. She returned to her father's house more light-
hearted than she had ever been since Jack McMurdo had come
into her life.

It might be thought that as a member, all the doings of the
society would be told to him; but he was soon to discover that
the organization was wider and more complex than the simple
lodge. Even Boss McGinty was ignorant as to many things; for
there was an official named the County Delegate, living at
Hobson's Patch farther down the line, who had power over
several different lodges which he wielded in a sudden and
arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-
haired rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance
which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and
even the great Boss of Vermissa felt towards him something of
the repulsion and fear which the huge Danton may have felt for
the puny but dangerous Robespierre.

One day Scanlan, who was McMurdo's fellow boarder, received
a note from McGinty inclosing one from Evans Pott, which
informed him that he was sending over two good men, Lawler
and Andrews, who had instructions to act in the neighbourhood;
though it was best for the cause that no particulars as to
their objects should be given. Would the Bodymaster see to it
that suitable arrangements be made for their lodgings and
comfort until the time for action should arrive? McGinty added
that it was impossible for anyone to remain secret at the
Union House, and that, therefore, he would be obliged if
McMurdo and Scanlan would put the strangers up for a few days in
their boarding house.

The same evening the two men arrived, each carrying his
gripsack. Lawler was an elderly man, shrewd, silent, and self-
contained, clad in an old black frock coat, which with his soft
felt hat and ragged, grizzled beard gave him a general
resemblance to an itinerant preacher. His companion Andrews was
little more than a boy, frank-faced and cheerful, with the breezy
manner of one who is out for a holiday and means to enjoy every
minute of it. Both men were total abstainers, and behaved in all
ways as exemplary members of the society, with the one simple
exception that they were assassins who had often proved themselves
to be most capable instruments for this association of murder.
Lawler had already carried out fourteen commissions of the kind,
and Andrews three.

They were, as McMurdo found, quite ready to converse about
their deeds in the past, which they recounted with the half-
bashful pride of men who had done good and unselfish service
for the community. They were reticent, however, as to the
immediate job in hand.

"They chose us because neither I nor the boy here drink,"
Lawler explained. "They can count on us saying no more than
we should. You must not take it amiss, but it is the orders
of the County Delegate that we obey."

"Sure, we are all in it together," said Scanlan, McMurdo's
mate, as the four sat together at supper.

"That's true enough, and we'll talk till the cows come home
of the killing of Charlie Williams or of Simon Bird, or any other
job in the past. But till the work is done we say nothing."

"There are half a dozen about here that I have a word to say to,"
said McMurdo, with an oath. "I suppose it isn't Jack Knox of Ironhill
that you are after. I'd go some way to see him get his deserts."

"No, it's not him yet."

"Or Herman Strauss?"

"No, nor him either."

"Well, if you won't tell us we can't make you; but I'd be glad to know."

Lawler smiled and shook his head. He was not to be drawn.

In spite of the reticence of their guests, Scanlan and McMurdo
were quite determined to be present at what they called "the
fun." When, therefore, at an early hour one morning McMurdo
heard them creeping down the stairs he awakened Scanlan, and
the two hurried on their clothes. When they were dressed they
found that the others had stolen out, leaving the door open
behind them. It was not yet dawn, and by the light of the lamps
they could see the two men some distance down the street. They
followed them warily, treading noiselessly in the deep snow.

The boarding house was near the edge of the town, and soon
they were at the crossroads which is beyond its boundary. Here
three men were waiting, with whom Lawler and Andrews held a
short, eager conversation. Then they all moved on together. It
was clearly some notable job which needed numbers. At this
point there are several trails which lead to various mines. The
strangers took that which led to the Crow Hill, a huge business
which was in strong hands which had been able, thanks to their
energetic and fearless New England manager, Josiah H. Dunn,
to keep some order and discipline during the long reign of terror.

Day was breaking now, and a line of workmen were slowly making
their way, singly and in groups, along the blackened path.

McMurdo and Scanlan strolled on with the others, keeping in
sight of the men whom they followed. A thick mist lay over
them, and from the heart of it there came the sudden scream of a
steam whistle. It was the ten-minute signal before the cages
descended and the day's labour began.

When they reached the open space round the mine shaft there
were a hundred miners waiting, stamping their feet and blowing
on their fingers; for it was bitterly cold. The strangers stood in a
little group under the shadow of the engine house. Scanlan and
McMurdo climbed a heap of slag from which the whole scene
lay before them. They saw the mine engineer, a great bearded
Scotchman named Menzies, come out of the engine house and
blow his whistle for the cages to be lowered.

At the same instant a tall, loose-framed young man with a
clean-shaved, earnest face advanced eagerly towards the pit head.
As he came forward his eyes fell upon the group, silent and
motionless, under the engine house. The men had drawn down
their hats and turned up their collars to screen their faces. For a
moment the presentiment of Death laid its cold hand upon the
manager's heart. At the next he had shaken it off and saw only
his duty towards intrusive strangers.

"Who are you?" he asked as he advanced. "What are you
loitering there for?"

There was no answer; but the lad Andrews stepped forward and shot
him in the stomach. The hundred waiting miners stood as motionless
and helpless as if they were paralyzed. The manager clapped his
two hands to the wound and doubled himself up. Then he staggered
away; but another of the assassins fired, and he went down sidewise,
kicking and clawing among a heap of clinkers. Menzies, the Scotchman,
gave a roar of rage at the sight and rushed with an iron spanner at
the murderers; but was met by two balls in the face which dropped
him dead at their very feet.

There was a surge forward of some of the miners, and an inarticulate
cry of pity and of anger; but a couple of the strangers emptied their
six-shooters over the heads of the crowd, and they broke and scattered,
some of them rushing wildly back to their homes in Vermissa.

When a few of the bravest had rallied, and there was a return
to the mine, the murderous gang had vanished in the mists of
morning, without a single witness being able to swear to the
identity of these men who in front of a hundred spectators had
wrought this double crime.

Scanlan and McMurdo made their way back; Scanlan somewhat
subdued, for it was the first murder job that he had seen
with his own eyes, and it appeared less funny than he had been
led to believe. The horrible screams of the dead manager's
wife pursued them as they hurried to the town. McMurdo was
absorbed and silent; but he showed no sympathy for the
weakening of his companion.

"Sure, it is like a war," he repeated. "What is it but a war
between us and them, and we hit back where we best can."

There was high revel in the lodge room at the Union House
that night, not only over the killing of the manager and engineer
of the Crow Hill mine, which would bring this organization into
line with the other blackmailed and terror-stricken companies of
the district, but also over a distant triumph which had been
wrought by the hands of the lodge itself.

It would appear that when the County Delegate had sent over
five good men to strike a blow in Vermissa, he had demanded
that in return three Vermissa men should be secretly selected and
sent across to kill William Hales of Stake Royal, one of the best
known and most popular mine owners in the Gilmerton district, a
man who was believed not to have an enemy in the world; for he
was in all ways a model employer. He had insisted, however,
upon efficiency in the work, and had, therefore, paid off certain
drunken and idle employees who were members of the all-
powerful society. Coffin notices hung outside his door had not
weakened his resolution, and so in a free, civilized country he
found himself condemned to death.

The execution had now been duly carried out. Ted Baldwin, who
sprawled now in the seat of honour beside the Bodymaster, had
been chief of the party. His flushed face and glazed, blood-shot
eyes told of sleeplessness and drink. He and his two comrades
had spent the night before among the mountains. They were unkempt
and weather-stained. But no heroes, returning from a forlorn hope,
could have had a warmer welcome from their comrades.

The story was told and retold amid cries of delight and shouts
of laughter. They had waited for their man as he drove home at
nightfall, taking their station at the top of a steep hill, where his
horse must be at a walk. He was so furred to keep out the cold
that he could not lay his hand on his pistol. They had pulled him
out and shot him again and again. He had screamed for mercy.
The screams were repeated for the amusement of the lodge.

"Let's hear again how he squealed," they cried.

None of them knew the man; but there is eternal drama in a
killing, and they had shown the Scowrers of Gilmerton that the
Vermissa men were to be relied upon.

There had been one contretemps; for a man and his wife had
driven up while they were still emptying their revolvers into the
silent body. It had been suggested that they should shoot them
both; but they were harmless folk who were not connected with
the mines, so they were sternly bidden to drive on and keep
silent, lest a worse thing befall them. And so the blood-mottled
figure had been left as a warning to all such hard-hearted
employers, and the three noble avengers had hurried off into the
mountains where unbroken nature comes down to the very edge
of the furnaces and the slag heaps. Here they were, safe and
sound, their work well done, and the plaudits of their companions
in their ears.

It had been a great day for the Scowrers. The shadow had
fallen even darker over the valley. But as the wise general
chooses the moment of victory in which to redouble his efforts,
so that his foes may have no time to steady themselves after
disaster, so Boss McGinty, looking out upon the scene of his
operations with his brooding and malicious eyes, had devised a
new attack upon those who opposed him. That very night, as the
half-drunken company broke up, he touched McMurdo on the
arm and led him aside into that inner room where they had their
first interview.

"See here, my lad," said he, "I've got a job that's worthy of
you at last. You'll have the doing of it in your own hands."

"Proud I am to hear it," McMurdo answered.

"You can take two men with you -- Manders and Reilly. They
have been warned for service. We'll never be right in this district
until Chester Wilcox has been settled, and you'll have the thanks
of every lodge in the coal fields if you can down him."

"I'll do my best, anyhow. Who is he, and where shall I find him?"

McGinty took his eternal half-chewed, half-smoked cigar from
the corner of his mouth, and proceeded to draw a rough diagram
on a page torn from his notebook.

"He's the chief foreman of the Iron Dike Company. He's a
hard citizen, an old colour sergeant of the war, all scars and
grizzle. We've had two tries at him; but had no luck, and Jim
Carnaway lost his life over it. Now it's for you to take it over.
That's the house -- all alone at the Iron Dike crossroad, same as
you see here on the map -- without another within earshot. It's no
good by day. He's armed and shoots quick and straight, with no
questions asked. But at night -- well, there he is with his wife,
three children, and a hired help. You can't pick or choose. It's
all or none. If you could get a bag of blasting powder at the front
door with a slow match to it -- "

"What's the man done?"

"Didn't I tell you he shot Jim Carnaway?"

"Why did he shoot him?"

"What in thunder has that to do with you? Carnaway was
about his house at night, and he shot him. That's enough for me
and you. You've got to settle the thing right."

"There's these two women and the children. Do they go up too?"

"They have to -- else how can we get him?"

"It seems hard on them; for they've done nothing."

"What sort of fool's talk is this? Do you back out?"

"Easy, Councillor, easy! What have I ever said or done that you
should think I would be after standing back from an order of the
Bodymaster of my own lodge? If it's right or if it's wrong,
it's for you to decide."

"You'll do it, then?"

"Of course I will do it."

"When?"

"Well, you had best give me a night or two that I may see the
house and make my plans. Then --"

"Very good," said McGinty, shaking him by the hand. "I leave it with you.
It will be a great day when you bring us the news. It's just the last
stroke that will bring them all to their knees."

McMurdo thought long and deeply over the commission which
had been so suddenly placed in his hands. The isolated house in
which Chester Wilcox lived was about five miles off in an
adjacent valley. That very night he started off all alone to
prepare for the attempt. It was daylight before he returned from
his reconnaissance. Next day he interviewed his two subordinates,
Manders and Reilly, reckless youngsters who were as elated as if
it were a deer-hunt.

Two nights later they met outside the town, all three armed,
and one of them carrying a sack stuffed with the powder which
was used in the quarries. It was two in the morning before they
came to the lonely house. The night was a windy one, with
broken clouds drifting swiftly across the face of a three-quarter
moon. They had been warned to be on their guard against
bloodhounds; so they moved forward cautiously, with their pistols
cocked in their hands. But there was no sound save the howling of
the wind, and no movement but the swaying branches above them.

McMurdo listened at the door of the lonely house; but all was
still within. Then he leaned the powder bag against it, ripped a
hole in it with his knife, and attached the fuse. When it was well
alight he and his two companions took to their heels, and were
some distance off, safe and snug in a sheltering ditch, before the
shattering roar of the explosion, with the low, deep rumble of the
collapsing building, told them that their work was done. No
cleaner job had ever been carried out in the bloodstained annals
of the society.

But alas that work so well organized and boldly carried out
should all have gone for nothing! Warned by the fate of the
various victims, and knowing that he was marked down for
destruction, Chester Wilcox had moved himself and his family
only the day before to some safer and less known quarters,
where a guard of police should watch over them. It was an empty
house which had been torn down by the gunpowder, and the
grim old colour sergeant of the war was still teaching discipline
to the miners of Iron Dike.

"Leave him to me," said McMurdo. "He's my man, and I'll
get him sure if I have to wait a year for him."

A vote of thanks and confidence was passed in full lodge, and
so for the time the matter ended. When a few weeks later it was
reported in the papers that Wilcox had been shot at from an
ambuscade, it was an open secret that McMurdo was still at
work upon his unfinished job.

Such were the methods of the Society of Freemen, and such
were the deeds of the Scowrers by which they spread their rule
of fear over the great and rich district which was for so long a
period haunted by their terrible presence. Why should these
pages be stained by further crimes? Have I not said enough to
show the men and their methods?

These deeds are written in history, and there are records
wherein one may read the details of them. There one may learn
of the shooting of Policemen Hunt and Evans because they
had ventured to arrest two members of the society -- a double
outrage planned at the Vermissa lodge and carried out in cold
blood upon two helpless and disarmed men. There also one may
read of the shooting of Mrs. Larbey when she was nursing her
husband, who had been beaten almost to death by orders of
Boss McGinty. The killing of the elder Jenkins, shortly followed
by that of his brother, the mutilation of James Murdoch, the
blowing up of the Staphouse family, and the murder of the
Stendals all followed hard upon one another in the same terrible
winter.

Darkly the shadow lay upon the Valley of Fear. The spring
had come with running brooks and blossoming trees. There was
hope for all Nature bound so long in an iron grip; but nowhere
was there any hope for the men and women who lived under the
yoke of the terror. Never had the cloud above them been so dark
and hopeless as in the early summer of the year 1875.



Chapter 6
Danger

It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had
already been appointed Inner Deacon, with every prospect of
some day succeeding McGinty as Bodymaster, was now so
necessary to the councils of his comrades that nothing was done
without his help and advice. The more popular he became,
however, with the Freemen, the blacker were the scowls which
greeted him as he passed along the streets of Vermissa. In spite
of their terror the citizens were taking heart to band themselves
together against their oppressors. Rumours had reached the lodge
of secret gatherings in the Herald office and of distribution of
firearms among the law-abiding people. But McGinty and his
men were undisturbed by such reports. They were numerous,
resolute, and well armed. Their opponents were scattered and
powerless. It would all end, as it had done in the past, in
aimless talk and possibly in impotent arrests. So said McGinty,
McMurdo, and all the bolder spirits.

It was a Saturday evening in May. Saturday was always the
lodge night, and McMurdo was leaving his house to attend it
when Morris, the weaker brother of the order, came to see him.
His brow was creased with care, and his kindly face was drawn
and haggard.

"Can I speak with you freely, Mr. McMurdo?"

"Sure."

"I can't forget that I spoke my heart to you once, and that you
kept it to yourself, even though the Boss himself came to ask
you about it."

"What else could I do if you trusted me? It wasn't that I
agreed with what you said."

"I know that well. But you are the one that I can speak to and
be safe. I've a secret here," he put his hand to his breast, "and
it is just burning the life out of me. I wish it had come to any one
of you but me. If I tell it, it will mean murder, for sure. If I
don't, it may bring the end of us all. God help me, but I am near
out of my wits over it!"

McMurdo looked at the man earnestly. He was trembling in
every limb. He poured some whisky into a glass and handed it to
him. "That's the physic for the likes of you," said he. "Now let
me hear of it."

Morris drank, and his white face took a tinge of colour. "I can
tell it to you all in one sentence," said he. "There's a detective
on our trail."

McMurdo stared at him in astonishment. "Why, man, you're
crazy," he said. "Isn't the place full of police and detectives
and what harm did they ever do us?"

"No, no, it's no man of the district. As you say, we know
them, and it is little that they can do. But you've heard of
Pinkerton's?"

"I've read of some folk of that name."

"Well, you can take it from me you've no show when they
are on your trail. It's not a take-it-or-miss-it government
concern. It's a dead earnest business proposition that's out for
results and keeps out till by hook or crook it gets them. If a
Pinkerton man is deep in this business, we are all destroyed."

"We must kill him."

"Ah, it's the first thought that came to you! So it will be up at
the lodge. Didn't I say to you that it would end in murder?"

"Sure, what is murder? Isn't it common enough in these
parts?"

"It is, indeed; but it's not for me to point out the man that is
to be murdered. I'd never rest easy again. And yet it's our own
necks that may be at stake. In God's name what shall I do?" He
rocked to and fro in his agony of indecision.

But his words had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see
that he shared the other's opinion as to the danger, and the need
for meeting it. He gripped Morris's shoulder and shook him in
his earnestness.

"See here, man," he cried, and he almost screeched the
words in his excitement, "you won't gain anything by sitting
keening like an old wife at a wake. Let's have the facts. Who is
the fellow? Where is he? How did you hear of him? Why did
you come to me?"

"I came to you; for you are the one man that would advise me.
I told you that I had a store in the East before I came here. I left
good friends behind me, and one of them is in the telegraph
service. Here's a letter that I had from him yesterday. It's this
part from the top of the page. You can read it yourself."

This was what McMurdo read:

    How are the Scowrers getting on in your parts? We read

    plenty of them in the papers. Between you and me I expect

    to hear news from you before long. Five big corporations

    and the two railroads have taken the thing up in dead

    earnest. They mean it, and you can bet they'll get there!

    They are right deep down into it. Pinkerton has taken hold

    under their orders, and his best man, Birdy Edwards, is

    operating. The thing has got to be stopped right now.

"Now read the postscript."

      Of course, what I give you is what I learned in business;

    so it goes no further. It's a queer cipher that you handle by

    the yard every day and can get no meaning from.

McMurdo sat in silence for some time, with the letter in his
listless hands. The mist had lifted for a moment, and there was
the abyss before him.

"Does anyone else know of this?" he asked.

"I have told no one else."

"But this man -- your friend -- has he any other person that he
would be likely to write to?"

"Well, I dare say he knows one or two more."

"Of the lodge?"

"It's likely enough."

"I was asking because it is likely that he may have given
some description of this fellow Birdy Edwards -- then we could
get on his trail."

"Well, it's possible. But I should not think he knew him. He
is just telling me the news that came to him by way of business.
How would he know this Pinkerton man?"

McMurdo gave a violent start.

"By Gar!" he cried, "I've got him. What a fool I was not to
know it. Lord! but we're in luck! We will fix him before he can
do any harm. See here, Morris, will you leave this thing in my
hands?"

"Sure, if you will only take it off mine."

"I'll do that. You can stand right back and let me run it. Even
your name need not be mentioned. I'll take it all on myself, as if
it were to me that this letter has come. Will that content you?"

"It's just what I would ask."

"Then leave it at that and keep your head shut. Now I'll get
down to the lodge, and we'll soon make old man Pinkerton sorry
for himself."

"You wouldn't kill this man?"

"The less you know, Friend Morris, the easier your conscience
will be, and the better you will sleep. Ask no questions, and
let these things settle themselves. I have hold of it now."

Morris shook his head sadly as he left. "I feel that his blood is
on my hands," he groaned.

"Self-protection is no murder, anyhow," said McMurdo, smiling
grimly. "It's him or us. I guess this man would destroy us all
if we left him long in the valley. Why, Brother Morris, we'll
have to elect you Bodymaster yet; for you've surely saved the
lodge."

And yet it was clear from his actions that he thought more
seriously of this new intrusion than his words would show. It
may have been his guilty conscience, it may have been the
reputation of the Pinkerton organization, it may have been the
knowledge that great, rich corporations had set themselves the
task of clearing out the Scowrers; but, whatever his reason, his
actions were those of a man who is preparing for the worst.
Every paper which would incriminate him was destroyed before
he left the house. After that he gave a long sigh of satisfaction;
for it seemed to him that he was safe. And yet the danger must
still have pressed somewhat upon him; for on his way to the
lodge he stopped at old man Shafter's. The house was forbidden
him; but when he tapped at the window Ettie came out to him.
The dancing Irish deviltry had gone from her lover's eyes. She
read his danger in his earnest face.

"Something has happened!" she cried. "Oh, Jack, you are in
danger!"

"Sure, it is not very bad, my sweetheart. And yet it may be
wise that we make a move before it is worse."

"Make a move?"

"I promised you once that I would go some day. I think the
time is coming. I had news to-night, bad news, and I see trouble
coming."

"The police?"

"Well, a Pinkerton. But, sure, you wouldn't know what that
is, acushla, nor what it may mean to the likes of me. I'm too
deep in this thing, and I may have to get out of it quick. You
said you would come with me if I went."

"Oh, Jack, it would be the saving of you!"

"I'm an honest man in some things, Ettie. I wouldn't hurt a
hair of your bonny head for all that the world can give, nor ever
pull you down one inch from the golden throne above the clouds
where I always see you. Would you trust me?"

She put her hand in his without a word. "Well, then, listen to
what I say, and do as I order you, for indeed it's the only way
for us. Things are going to happen in this valley. I feel it in my
bones. There may be many of us that will have to look out for
ourselves. I'm one, anyhow. If I go, by day or night, it's you
that must come with me!"

"I'd come after you, Jack."

"No, no, you shall come with me. If this valley is closed to
me and I can never come back, how can I leave you behind, and
me perhaps in hiding from the police with never a chance of a
message? It's with me you must come. I know a good woman in
the place I come from, and it's there I'd leave you till we can get
married. Will you come?"

"Yes, Jack, I will come."

"God bless you for your trust in me! It's a fiend out of hell
that I should be if I abused it. Now, mark you, Ettie, it will be
just a word to you, and when it reaches you, you will drop
everything and come right down to the waiting room at the depot
and stay there till I come for you."

"Day or night, I'll come at the word, Jack."

Somewhat eased in mind, now that his own preparations for
escape had been begun, McMurdo went on to the lodge. It had
already assembled, and only by complicated signs and counter-
signs could he pass through the outer guard and inner guard who
close-tiled it. A buzz of pleasure and welcome greeted him as he
entered. The long room was crowded, and through the haze of
tobacco smoke he saw the tangled black mane of the Bodymaster,
the cruel, unfriendly features of Baldwin, the vulture face of
Harraway, the secretary, and a dozen more who were among the
leaders of the lodge. He rejoiced that they should all be there to
take counsel over his news.

"Indeed, it's glad we are to see you, Brother!" cried the
chairman. "There's business here that wants a Solomon in judgment
to set it right."

"It's Lander and Egan," explained his neighbour as he took
his seat. "They both claim the head money given by the lodge
for the shooting of old man Crabbe over at Stylestown, and
who's to say which fired the bullet?"

McMurdo rose in his place and raised his hand. The expression
of his face froze the attention of the audience. There was a
dead hush of expectation.

"Eminent Bodymaster," he said, in a solemn voice, "I claim
urgency!"

"Brother McMurdo claims urgency," said McGinty. "It's a
claim that by the rules of this lodge takes precedence. Now
Brother, we attend you."

McMurdo took the letter from his pocket.

"Eminent Bodymaster and Brethren," he said, "I am the
bearer of ill news this day; but it is better that it should be known
and discussed, than that a blow should fall upon us without
warning which would destroy us all. I have information that the
most powerful and richest organizations in this state have bound
themselves together for our destruction, and that at this very
moment there is a Pinkerton detective, one Birdy Edwards, at
work in the valley collecting the evidence which may put a rope
round the necks of many of us, and send every man in this room
into a felon's cell. That is the situation for the discussion of
which I have made a claim of urgency."

There was a dead silence in the room. It was broken by the
chairman.

"What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?" he
asked.

"It is in this letter which has come into my hands," said
McMurdo. Me read the passage aloud. "It is a matter of honour
with me that I can give no further particulars about the letter, nor
put it into your hands; but I assure you that there is nothing else
in it which can affect the interests of the lodge. I put the case
before you as it has reached me."

"Let me say, Mr. Chairman," said one of the older brethren,
"that I have heard of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name
of being the best man in the Pinkerton service."

"Does anyone know him by sight?" asked McGinty.

"Yes," said McMurdo, "I do."

There was a murmur of astonishment through the hall.

"I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands," he
continued with an exulting smile upon his face. "If we act
quickly and wisely, we can cut this thing short. If I have your
confidence and your help, it is little that we have to fear."

"What have we to fear, anyhow? What can he know of our
affairs?"

"You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor.
But this man has all the millions of the capitalists at his back. Do
you think there is no weaker brother among all our lodges that
could not be bought? He will get at our secrets -- maybe has got
them already. There's only one sure cure."

"That he never leaves the valley," said Baldwin.

McMurdo nodded. "Good for you, Brother Baldwin," he
said. "You and I have had our differences, but you have said the
true word to-night."

"Where is he, then? Where shall we know him?"

"Eminent Bodymaster," said McMurdo, earnestly, "I would
put it to you that this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open
lodge. God forbid that I should throw a doubt on anyone here;
but if so much as a word of gossip got to the ears of this man,
there would be an end of any chance of our getting him. I would
ask the lodge to choose a trusty committee, Mr. Chairman --
yourself, if I might suggest it, and Brother Baldwin here, and
five more. Then I can talk freely of what I know and of what I
advise should be done."

The proposition was at once adopted, and the committee
chosen. Besides the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-
faced secretary, Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young
assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers Willaby,
fearless and desperate men who would stick at nothing.

The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for
there was a cloud upon the men's spirits, and many there for the
first time began to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in
that serene sky under which they had dwelt so long. The horrors
they had dealt out to others had been so much a part of their
settled lives that the thought of retribution had become a remote
one, and so seemed the more startling now that it came so
closely upon them. They broke up early and left their leaders to
their council.

"Now, McMurdo!" said McGinty when they were alone. The
seven men sat frozen in their seats.

"I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards," McMurdo
explained. "I need not tell you that he is not here under that
name. He's a brave man, but not a crazy one. He passes under
the name of Steve Wilson, and he is lodging at Hobson's Patch."

"How do you know this?"

"Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the
time, nor would have given it a second thought but for this letter;
but now I'm sure it's the man. I met him on the cars when I went
down the line on Wednesday -- a hard case if ever there was one.
He said he was a reporter. I believed it for the moment. Wanted
to know all he could about the Scowrers and what he called 'the
outrages' for a New York paper. Asked me every kind of
question so as to get something. You bet I was giving nothing
away. 'I'd pay for it and pay well,' said he, 'if I could get some
stuff that would suit my editor.' I said what I thought would
please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill for my
information. 'There's ten times that for you,' said he, 'if you can
find me all that I want.'"

"What did you tell him, then?"

"Any stuff I could make up."

"How do you know he wasn't a newspaper man?"

"I'll tell you. He got out at Hobson's Patch, and so did I. I
chanced into the telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it.

"'See here,' said the operator after he'd gone out, 'I guess
we should charge double rates for this.' -- 'I guess you should,'
said I. He had filled the form with stuff that might have been
Chinese, for all we could make of it. 'He fires a sheet of this off
every day,' said the clerk. 'Yes,' said I; 'it's special news for his
paper, and he's scared that the others should tap it.' That was
what the operator thought and what I thought at the time; but I
think differently now."

"By Gar! I believe you are right," said McGinty. "But what
do you allow that we should do about it?"

"Why not go right down now and fix him?" someone suggested.

"Ay, the sooner the better."

"I'd start this next minute if I knew where we could find
him," said McMurdo. "He's in Hobson's Patch; but I don't
know the house. I've got a plan, though, if you'll only take my
advice."

"Well, what is it?"

"I'll go to the Patch to-morrow morning. I'll find him through
the operator. He can locate him, I guess. Well, then I'll tell him
that I'm a Freeman myself. I'll offer him all the secrets of the
lodge for a price. You bet he'll tumble to it. I'll tell him the
papers are at my house, and that it's as much as my life would
be worth to let him come while folk were about. He'll see that
that's horse sense. Let him come at ten o'clock at night, and he
shall see everything. That will fetch him sure."

"Well?"

"You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara's
is a lonely house. She's as true as steel and as deaf as a post.
There's only Scanlan and me in the house. If I get his promise --
and I'll let you know if I do -- I'd have the whole seven of you
come to me by nine o'clock. We'll get him in. If ever he gets out
alive -- well, he can talk of Birdy Edwards's luck for the rest of
his days!"

"There's going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton's or I'm mistaken.
Leave it at that, McMurdo. At nine to-morrow we'll be with you.
You once get the door shut behind him, and you can leave the rest
with us."



Chapter 7
The Trapping of Birdy Edwards

As McMurdo had said, the house in which he lived was a
lonely one and very well suited for such a crime as they had
planned. It was on the extreme fringe of the town and stood well
back from the road. In any other case the conspirators would
have simply called out their man, as they had many a time
before, and emptied their pistols into his body; but in this
instance it was very necessary to find out how much he knew,
how he knew it, and what had been passed on to his employers.

It was possible that they were already too late and that the
work had been done. If that was indeed so, they could at least
have their revenge upon the man who had done it. But they were
hopeful that nothing of great importance had yet come to the
detective's knowledge, as otherwise, they argued, he would not
have troubled to write down and forward such trivial information
as McMurdo claimed to have given him. However, all this they
would learn from his own lips. Once in their power, they would
find a way to make him speak. It was not the first time that they
had handled an unwilling witness.

McMurdo went to Hobson's Patch as agreed. The police
seemed to take particular interest in him that morning, and
Captain Marvin -- he who had claimed the old acquaintance with
him at Chicago -- actually addressed him as he waited at the
station. McMurdo turned away and refused to speak with him.
He was back from his mission in the afternoon, and saw McGinty
at the Union House.

"He is coming," he said.

"Good!" said McGinty. The giant was in his shirt sleeves,
with chains and seals gleaming athwart his ample waistcoat and a
diamond twinkling through the fringe of his bristling beard.
Drink and politics had made the Boss a very rich as well as
powerful man. The more terrible, therefore, seemed that glimpse
of the prison or the gallows which had risen before him the night
before.

"Do you reckon he knows much?" he asked anxiously.

McMurdo shook his head gloomily. "He's been here some
time -- six weeks at the least. I guess he didn't come into these
parts to look at the prospect. If he has been working among us
all that time with the railroad money at his back, I should expect
that he has got results, and that he has passed them on."

"There's not a weak man in the lodge," cried McGinty.
"True as steel, every man of them. And yet, by the Lord! there
is that skunk Morris. What about him? If any man gives us
away, it would be he. I've a mind to send a couple of the boys
round before evening to give him a beating up and see what they
can get from him."

"Well, there would be no harm in that," McMurdo answered.
"I won't deny that I have a liking for Morris and would be sorry
to see him come to harm. He has spoken to me once or twice
over lodge matters, and though he may not see them the same as
you or I, he never seemed the sort that squeals. But still it is not
for me to stand between him and you."

"I'll fix the old devil!" said McGinty with an oath. "I've had
my eye on him this year past."

"Well, you know best about that," McMurdo answered. "But
whatever you do must be to-morrow; for we must lie low until
the Pinkerton affair is settled up. We can't afford to set the
police buzzing, to-day of all days."

"True for you," said McGinty. "And we'll learn from Birdy
Edwards himself where he got his news if we have to cut his
heart out first. Did he seem to scent a trap?"

McMurdo laughed. "I guess I took him on his weak point,"
he said. "If he could get on a good trail of the Scowrers, he's
ready to follow it into hell. I took his money," McMurdo
grinned as he produced a wad of dollar notes, "and as much
more when he has seen all my papers."

"What papers?"

"Well, there are no papers. But I filled him up about
constitutions and books of rules and forms of membership.
He expects to get right down to the end of everything
before he leaves."

"Faith, he's right there," said McGinty grimly. "Didn't he
ask you why you didn't bring him the papers?"

"As if I would carry such things, and me a suspected man,
and Captain Marvin after speaking to me this very day at the
depot!"

"Ay, I heard of that," said McGinty. "I guess the heavy end
of this business is coming on to you. We could put him down an
old shaft when we've done with him; but however we work it we
can't get past the man living at Hobson's Patch and you being
there to-day."

McMurdo shrugged his shoulders. "If we handle it right, they
can never prove the killing," said he. "No one can see him
come to the house after dark, and I'll lay to it that no one will
see him go. Now see here, Councillor, I'll show you my plan
and I'll ask you to fit the others into it. You will all come in
good time. Very well. He comes at ten. He is to tap three times,
and me to open the door for him. Then I'll get behind him and
shut it. He's our man then."

"That's all easy and plain."

"Yes; but the next step wants considering. He's a hard
proposition. He's heavily armed. I've fooled him proper, and yet
he is likely to be on his guard. Suppose I show him right into a
room with seven men in it where he expected to find me alone.
There is going to be shooting, and somebody is going to be hurt."

"That's so."

"And the noise is going to bring every damned copper in the
township on top of it."

"I guess you are right."

"This is how I should work it. You will all be in the big
room -- same as you saw when you had a chat with me. I'll open
the door for him, show him into the parlour beside the door, and
leave him there while I get the papers. That will give me the
chance of telling you how things are shaping. Then I will go
back to him with some faked papers. As he is reading them I will
jump for him and get my grip on his pistol arm. You'll hear me
call and in you will rush. The quicker the better; for he is as
strong a man as I, and I may have more than I can manage. But I
allow that I can hold him till you come."

"It's a good plan," said McGinty. "The lodge will owe you a
debt for this. I guess when I move out of the chair I can put a
name to the man that's coming after me."

"Sure, Councillor, I am little more than a recruit," said
McMurdo; but his face showed what he thought of the great
man's compliment.

When he had returned home he made his own preparations for
the grim evening in front of him. First he cleaned, oiled, and
loaded his Smith & Wesson revolver. Then he surveyed the
room in which the detective was to be trapped. It was a large
apartment, with a long deal table in the centre, and the big stove
at one side. At each of the other sides were windows. There
were no shutters on these: only light curtains which drew across.
McMurdo examined these attentively. No doubt it must have
struck him that the apartment was very exposed for so secret a
meeting. Yet its distance from the road made it of less consequence.
Finally he discussed the matter with his fellow lodger. Scanlan,
though a Scowrer, was an inoffensive little man who was too weak
to stand against the opinion of his comrades, but was secretly
horrified by the deeds of blood at which he had sometimes been
forced to assist. McMurdo told him shortly what was intended.

"And if I were you, Mike Scanlan, I would take a night off
and keep clear of it. There will be bloody work here before
morning."

"Well, indeed then, Mac," Scanlan answered. "It's not the
will but the nerve that is wanting in me. When I saw Manager
Dunn go down at the colliery yonder it was just more than I
could stand. I'm not made for it, same as you or McGinty. If the
lodge will think none the worse of me, I'll just do as you advise
and leave you to yourselves for the evening."

The men came in good time as arranged. They were outwardly
respectable citizens, well clad and cleanly; but a judge of
faces would have read little hope for Birdy Edwards in those
hard mouths and remorseless eyes. There was not a man in the
room whose hands had not been reddened a dozen times before.
They were as hardened to human murder as a butcher to sheep.

Foremost, of course, both in appearance and in guilt, was the
formidable Boss. Harraway, the secretary, was a lean, bitter man
with a long, scraggy neck and nervous, jerky limbs, a man of
incorruptible fidelity where the finances of the order were
concerned, and with no notion of justice or honesty to anyone
beyond. The treasurer, Carter, was a middle-aged man, with an
impassive, rather sulky expression, and a yellow parchment skin.
He was a capable organizer, and the actual details of nearly
every outrage had sprung from his plotting brain. The two
Willabys were men of action, tall, lithe young fellows with
determined faces, while their companion, Tiger Cormac, a heavy,
dark youth, was feared even by his own comrades for the
ferocity of his disposition. These were the men who assembled
that night under the roof of McMurdo for the killing of the
Pinkerton detective.

Their host had placed whisky upon the table, and they had
hastened to prime themselves for the work before them. Baldwin
and Cormac were already half-drunk, and the liquor had brought
out all their ferocity. Cormac placed his hands on the stove for
an instant -- it had been lighted, for the nights were still cold.

"That will do," said he, with an oath.

"Ay," said Baldwin, catching his meaning. "If he is strapped
to that, we will have the truth out of him."

"We'll have the truth out of him, never fear," said McMurdo.
He had nerves of steel, this man; for though the whole weight of
the affair was on him his manner was as cool and unconcerned as
ever. The others marked it and applauded.

"You are the one to handle him," said the Boss approvingly.
"Not a warning will he get till your hand is on his throat. It's a
pity there are no shutters to your windows."

McMurdo went from one to the other and drew the curtains
tighter. "Sure no one can spy upon us now. It's close upon the
hour."

"Maybe he won't come. Maybe he'll get a sniff of danger,"
said the secretary.

"He'll come, never fear," McMurdo answered. "He is as
eager to come as you can be to see him. Hark to that!"

They all sat like wax figures, some with their glasses arrested
halfway to their lips. Three loud knocks had sounded at the door.

"Hush!" McMurdo raised his hand in caution. An exulting
glance went round the circle, and hands were laid upon hidden
weapons.

"Not a sound, for your lives!" McMurdo whispered, as he
went from the room, closing the door carefully behind him.

With strained ears the murderers waited. They counted the
steps of their comrade down the passage. Then they heard him
open the outer door. There were a few words as of greeting.
Then they were aware of a strange step inside and of an
unfamiliar voice. An instant later came the slam of the door
and the turning of the key in the lock. Their prey was safe
within the trap. Tiger Cormac laughed horribly, and Boss
McGinty clapped his great hand across his mouth.

"Be quiet, you fool!" he whispered. "You'll be the undoing
of us yet!"

There was a mutter of conversation from the next room. It
seemed interminable. Then the door opened, and McMurdo
appeared, his finger upon his lip.

He came to the end of the table and looked round at them. A
subtle change had come over him. His manner was as of one
who has great work to do. His face had set into granite firmness.
His eyes shone with a fierce excitement behind his spectacles.
He had become a visible leader of men. They stared at him with
eager interest; but he said nothing. Still with the same singular
gaze he looked from man to man.

"Well!" cried Boss McGinty at last. "Is he here? Is Birdy
Edwards here?"

"Yes," McMurdo answered slowly. "Birdy Edwards is here.
I am Birdy Edwards!"

There were ten seconds after that brief speech during which
the room might have been empty, so profound was the silence.
The hissing of a kettle upon the stove rose sharp and strident to
the ear. Seven white faces, all turned upward to this man who
dominated them, were set motionless with utter terror. Then,
with a sudden shivering of glass, a bristle of glistening rifle
barrels broke through each window, while the curtains were torn
from their hangings.

At the sight Boss McGinty gave the roar of a wounded bear
and plunged for the half-opened door. A levelled revolver met
him there with the stern blue eyes of Captain Marvin of the Mine
Police gleaming behind the sights. The Boss recoiled and fell
back into his chair.

"You're safer there, Councillor," said the man whom they
had known as McMurdo. "And you, Baldwin, if you don't take
your hand off your pistol, you'll cheat the hangman yet. Pull it
out, or by the Lord that made me -- There, that will do. There are
forty armed men round this house, and you can figure it out for
yourself what chance you have. Take their pistols, Marvin!"

There was no possible resistance under the menace of those
rifles. The men were disarmed. Sulky, sheepish, and amazed,
they still sat round the table.

"I'd like to say a word to you before we separate," said the
man who had trapped them. "I guess we may not meet again
until you see me on the stand in the courthouse. I'll give you
something to think over between now and then. You know me
now for what I am. At last I can put my cards on the table. I am
Birdy Edwards of Pinkerton's. I was chosen to break up your
gang. I had a hard and dangerous game to play. Not a soul, not
one soul, not my nearest and dearest, knew that I was playing it.
Only Captain Marvin here and my employers knew that. But it's
over to-night, thank God, and I am the winner!"

The seven pale, rigid faces looked up at him. There was
unappeasable hatred in their eyes. He read the relentless threat.

"Maybe you think that the game is not over yet. Well, I take
my chance of that. Anyhow, some of you will take no further
hand, and there are sixty more besides yourselves that will see a
jail this night. I'll tell you this, that when I was put upon this job
I never believed there was such a society as yours. I thought it
was paper talk, and that I would prove it so. They told me it was
to do with the Freemen; so I went to Chicago and was made one.
Then I was surer than ever that it was just paper talk; for I found
no harm in the society, but a deal of good.

"Still, I had to carry out my job, and I came to the coal
valleys. When I reached this place I learned that I was wrong
and that it wasn't a dime novel after all. So I stayed to look after
it. I never killed a man in Chicago. I never minted a dollar in my
life. Those I gave you were as good as any others; but I never
spent money better. But I knew the way into your good wishes
and so I pretended to you that the law was after me. It all worked
just as I thought.

"So I joined your infernal lodge, and I took my share in your
councils. Maybe they will say that I was as bad as you. They can
say what they like, so long as I get you. But what is the truth?
The night I joined you beat up old man Stanger. I could not warn
him, for there was no time; but I held your hand, Baldwin, when
you would have killed him. If ever I have suggested things, so as
to keep my place among you, they were things which I knew I
could prevent. I could not save Dunn and Menzies, for I did not
know enough; but I will see that their murderers are hanged. I
gave Chester Wilcox warning, so that when I blew his house in
he and his folk were in hiding. There was many a crime that I
could not stop; but if you look back and think how often your
man came home the other road, or was down in town when you
went for him, or stayed indoors when you thought he would
come out, you'll see my work."

"You blasted traitor!" hissed McGinty through his closed
teeth.

"Ay, John McGinty, you may call me that if it eases your
smart. You and your like have been the enemy of God and man
in these parts. It took a man to get between you and the poor
devils of men and women that you held under your grip. There
was just one way of doing it, and I did it. You call me a traitor;
but I guess there's many a thousand will call me a deliverer that
went down into hell to save them. I've had three months of it. I
wouldn't have three such months again if they let me loose in the
treasury at Washington for it. I had to stay till I had it all, every
man and every secret right here in this hand. I'd have waited a
little longer if it hadn't come to my knowledge that my secret
was coming out. A letter had come into the town that would
have set you wise to it all. Then I had to act and act quickly.

"I've nothing more to say to you, except that when my time
comes I'll die the easier when I think of the work I have done in
this valley. Now, Marvin, I'll keep you no more. Take them in
and get it over."

There is little more to tell. Scanlan had been given a sealed
note to be left at the address of Miss Ettie Shafter, a mission
which he had accepted with a wink and a knowing smile. In the
early hours of the morning a beautiful woman and a much
muffled man boarded a special train which had been sent by the
railroad company, and made a swift, unbroken journey out of the
land of danger. It was the last time that ever either Ettie or her
lover set foot in the Valley of Fear. Ten days later they were
married in Chicago, with old Jacob Shafter as witness of the
wedding.

The trial of the Scowrers was held far from the place where
their adherents might have terrified the guardians of the law.
In vain they struggled. In vain the money of the lodge -- money
squeezed by blackmail out of the whole countryside -- was spent
like water in the attempt to save them. That cold, clear,
unimpassioned statement from one who knew every detail of their
lives, their organization, and their crimes was unshaken by all
the wiles of their defenders. At last after so many years they
were broken and scattered. The cloud was lifted forever from the
valley.

McGinty met his fate upon the scaffold, cringing and whining
when the last hour came. Eight of his chief followers shared his
fate. Fifty-odd had various degrees of imprisonment. The work
of Birdy Edwards was complete.

And yet, as he had guessed, the game was not over yet. There
was another hand to be played, and yet another and another.
Ted Baldwin, for one, had escaped the scaffold; so had the Willabys;
so had several others of the fiercest spirits of the gang. For ten
years they were out of the world, and then came a day when they
were free once more -- a day which Edwards, who knew his men,
was very sure would be an end of his life of peace. They had
sworn an oath on all that they thought holy to have his blood as a
vengeance for their comrades. And well they strove to keep their
vow!

From Chicago he was chased, after two attempts so near
success that it was sure that the third would get him. From Chicago
he went under a changed name to California, and it was there
that the light went for a time out of his life when Ettie Edwards
died. Once again he was nearly killed, and once again under the
name of Douglas he worked in a lonely canyon, where with an
English partner named Barker he amassed a fortune. At last there
came a warning to him that the bloodhounds were on his track
once more, and he cleared -- only just in time -- for England. And
thence came the John Douglas who for a second time married a worthy
mate, and lived for five years as a Sussex county gentleman, a life
which ended with the strange happenings of which we have heard.


Epilogue



The police trial had passed, in which the case of John Douglas
was referred to a higher court. So had the Quarter Sessions, at
which he was acquitted as having acted in self-defense.

"Get him out of England at any cost," wrote Holmes to the
wife. "There are forces here which may be more dangerous than
those he has escaped. There is no safety for your husband in
England."

Two months had gone by, and the case had to some extent
passed from our minds. Then one morning there came an enigmatic
note slipped into our letter box. "Dear me, Mr. Holmes.
Dear me!" said this singular epistle. There was neither
superscription nor signature. I laughed at the quaint message;
but Holmes showed unwonted seriousness.

"Deviltry, Watson!" he remarked, and sat long with a clouded
brow.

Late last night Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, brought up a
message that a gentleman wished to see Holmes, and that the
matter was of the utmost importance. Close at the heels of his
messenger came Cecil Barker, our friend of the moated Manor
House. His face was drawn and haggard.

"I've had bad news -- terrible news, Mr. Holmes," said he.

"I feared as much," said Holmes.

"You have not had a cable, have you?"

"I have had a note from someone who has."

"It's poor Douglas. They tell me his name is Edwards; but he
will always be Jack Douglas of Benito Canyon to me. I told you
that they started together for South Africa in the Palmyra three
weeks ago."

"Exactly."

"The ship reached Cape Town last night. I received this cable from Mrs
Douglas this morning: --

"Jack has been lost overboard in gale off St Helena. No one knows how
accident occurred. -- Ivy Douglas."

"Ha! It came like that, did it?" said Holmes, thoughtfully. "Well, I've
no doubt it was well stage-managed."

"You mean that you think there was no accident?"

"None in the world."

"He was murdered?"

"Surely!"

"So I think also. These infernal Scowrers, this cursed vindictive nest of
criminals --"

"No, no, my good sir," said Holmes. "There is a master hand here. It is no
case of sawed-off shot-guns and clumsy six-shooters. You can tell an old
master by the sweep of his brush. I can tell a Moriarty when I see one.
This crime is from London, not from America."

"But for what motive?"

"Because it is done by a man who cannot afford to fail -- one whose whole
unique position depends upon the fact that all he does must succeed. A
great brain and a huge organization have been turned to the extinction of
one man. It is crushing the nut with the hammer -- an absurd extravagance
of energy -- but the nut is very effectually crushed all the same."

"How came this man to have anything to do with it?"

"I can only say that the first word that ever came to us of the business
was from one of his lieutenants. These Americans were well advised.
Having an English job to do, they took into partnership, as any foreign
criminal could do, this great consultant in crime. From that moment
their man was doomed. At first he would content himself by using his
machinery in order to find their victim. Then he would indicate how the
matter might be treated. Finally, when he read in the reports of the
failure of this agent, he would step in himself with a master touch. You
heard me warn this man at Birlstone Manor House that the coming danger
was greater than the past. Was I right?"

Barker beat his head with his clenched fist in his impotent anger.

"Do you tell me that we have to sit down under this? Do you say that
no one can ever get level with this king-devil?"

"No, I don't say that," said Holmes, and his eyes seemed to be looking far
into the future. "I don't say that he can't be beat. But you must give me
time -- you must give me time!"

We all sat in silence for some minutes, while those fateful eyes still
strained to pierce the veil.




Professory Moriarty becomes THE FINAL PROBLEM of the
younger Holmes brother, Sherlock, forcing his elder
Mycroft, to continue the pursuit.

as told by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE


It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to
write these the last words in which I shall ever
record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr.
Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.  In an incoherent
and, as I deeply feel, an entirely inadequate fashion,
I have endeavored to give some account of my strange
experiences in his company from the chance which first
brought us together at the period of the "Study in
Scarlet," up to the time of his interference in the
matter of the "Naval Treaty"--an interference which
had the unquestionable effect of preventing a serious
international complication.  It was my intention to
have stopped there, and to have said nothing of that
event which has created a void in my life which the
lapse of two years has done little to fill.  My hand
has been forced, however, by the recent letters in
which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his
brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts
before the public exactly as they occurred.  I alone
know the absolute truth of the matter, and I am
satisfied that the time has come when no good purpose
is to be served by its suppression.  As far as I know,
there have been only three accounts in the public
press:  that in the Journal de Geneve on May 6th,
1891, the Reuter's despatch in the English papers on
May 7th, and finally the recent letter to which I have
alluded.  Of these the first and second were extremely
condensed, while the last is, as I shall now show, an
absolute perversion of the facts.  It lies with me to
tell for the first time what really took place between
Professor Moriarty and Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

It may be remembered that after my marriage, and my
subsequent start in private practice, the very
intimate relations which had existed between Holmes
and myself became to some extent modified.  He still
came to me from time to time when he desired a
companion in his investigation, but these occasions
grew more and more seldom, until I find that in the
year 1890 there were only three cases of which I
retain any record.  During the winter of that year and
the early spring of 1891, I saw in the papers that he
had been engaged by the French government upon a
matter of supreme importance, and I received two notes
from Holmes, dated from Narbonne and from Nimes, from
which I gathered that his stay in France was likely to
be a long one.  It was with some surprise, therefore,
that I saw him walk into my consulting-room upon the
evening of April 24th.  It struck me that he was
looking even paler and thinner than usual.

"Yes, I have been using myself up rather too freely,"
he remarked, in answer to my look rather than to my
words; "I have been a little pressed of late.  Have
you any objection to my closing your shutters?"

The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the
table at which I had been reading.  Holmes edged his
way round the wall and flinging the shutters together,
he bolted them securely.

"You are afraid of something?" I asked.

"Well, I am."

"Of what?"

"Of air-guns."

"My dear Holmes, what do you mean?"

"I think that you know me well enough, Watson, to
understand that I am by no means a nervous man.  At
the same time, it is stupidity rather than courage to
refuse to recognize danger when it is close upon you. 
Might I trouble you for a match?"  He drew in the
smoke of his cigarette as if the soothing influence
was grateful to him.

"I must apologize for calling so late," said he, "and
I must further beg you to be so unconventional as to
allow me to leave your house presently by scrambling
over your back garden wall."

"But what does it all mean?" I asked.

He held out his hand, and I saw in the light of the
lamp that two of his knuckles were burst and bleeding.

"It is not an airy nothing, you see," said he,
smiling.  "On the contrary, it is solid enough for a
man to break his hand over.  Is Mrs. Watson in?"

"She is away upon a visit."

"Indeed!  You are alone?"

"Quite."

"Then it makes it the easier for me to propose that
you should come away with me for a week to the
Continent."

"Where?"

"Oh, anywhere.  It's all the same to me."

There was something very strange in all this.  It was
not Holmes's nature to take an aimless holiday, and
something about his pale, worn face told me that his
nerves were at their highest tension.  He saw the
question in my eyes, and, putting his finger-tips
together and his elbows upon his knees, he explained
the situation.

"You have probably never heard of Professor Moriarty?"
said he.

"Never."

"Aye, there's the genius and the wonder of the thing!"
he cried.  "The man pervades London, and no one has
heard of him.  That's what puts him on a pinnacle in
the records of crime.  I tell you, Watson, in all
seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could
free society of him, I should feel that my own career
had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to
turn to some more placid line in life.  Between
ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of
assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to
the French republic, have left me in such a position
that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion
which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my
attention upon my chemical researches.  But I could
not rest, Watson, I could not sit quiet in my chair,
if I thought that such a man as Professor Moriarty
were walking the streets of London unchallenged."

"What has he done, then?"

"His career has been an extraordinary one.  He is a
man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by
nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty.  At the
age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the
Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue.  On
the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at
one of our smaller universities, and had, to all
appearances, a most brilliant career before him.  But
the man had hereditary tendencies of the most
diabolical kind.  A criminal strain ran in his blood,
which, instead of being modified, was increased and
rendered infinitely more dangerous by his
extraordinary mental powers.  Dark rumors gathered
round him in the university town, and eventually he
was compelled to resign his chair and to come down to
London, where he set up as an army coach.  So much is
known to the world, but what I am telling you now is
what I have myself discovered.

"As you are aware, Watson, there is no one who knows
the higher criminal world of London so well as I do. 
For years past I have continually been conscious of
some power behind the malefactor, some deep organizing
power which forever stands in the way of the law, and
throws its shield over the wrong-doer.  Again and again
in cases of the most varying sorts--forgery cases,
robberies, murders--I have felt the presence of this
force, and I have deduced its action in many of those
undiscovered crimes in which I have not been
personally consulted.  For years I have endeavored to
break through the veil which shrouded it, and at last
the time came when I seized my thread and followed it,
until it led me, after a thousand cunning windings, to
ex-Professor Moriarty of mathematical celebrity.

"He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.  He is the
organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that
is undetected in this great city.  He is a genius, a
philosopher, an abstract thinker.  He has a brain of
the first order.  He sits motionless, like a spider in
the center of its web, but that web has a thousand
radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of
them.  He does little himself.  He only plans.  But
his agents are numerous and splendidly organized.  Is
there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we
will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be
removed--the word is passed to the Professor, the
matter is organized and carried out.  The agent may be
caught.  In that case money is found for his bail or
his defence.  But the central power which uses the
agent is never caught--never so much as suspected. 
This was the organization which I deduced, Watson, and
which I devoted my whole energy to exposing and
breaking up.

"But the Professor was fenced round with safeguards so
cunningly devised that, do what I would, it seemed
impossible to get evidence which would convict in a
court of law.  You know my powers, my dear Watson, and
yet at the end of three months I was forced to confess
that I had at last met an antagonist who was my
intellectual equal.  My horror at his crimes was lost
in my admiration at his skill.  But at last he made a
trip--only a little, little trip--but it was more than
he could afford when I was so close upon him.  I had
my chance, and, starting from that point, I have woven
my net round him until now it is all ready to close. 
In three days--that is to say, on Monday next--matters
will be ripe, and the Professor, with all the
principal members of his gang, will be in the hands of
the police.  Then will come the greatest criminal
trial of the century, the clearing up of over forty
mysteries, and the rope for all of them; but if we
move at all prematurely, you understand, they may slip
out of our hands even at the last moment.

"Now, if I could have done this without the knowledge
of Professor Moriarty, all would have been well.  But
he was too wily for that.  He saw every step which I
took to draw my toils round him.  Again and again he
strove to break away, but I as often headed him off. 
I tell you, my friend, that if a detailed account of
that silent contest could be written, it would take
its place as the most brilliant bit of
thrust-and-parry work in the history of detection. 
Never have I risen to such a height, and never have I
been so hard pressed by an opponent.  He cut deep, and
yet I just undercut him.  This morning the last steps
were taken, and three days only were wanted to
complete the business.  I was sitting in my room
thinking the matter over, when the door opened and
Professor Moriarty stood before me.

"My nerves are fairly proof, Watson, but I must
confess to a start when I saw the very man who had
been so much in my thoughts standing there on my
threshhold.  His appearance was quite familiar to me. 
He is extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out
in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken
in his head.  He is clean-shaven, pale, and
ascetic-looking, retaining something of the professor
in his features.  His shoulders are rounded from much
study, and his face protrudes forward, and is forever
slowly oscillating from side to side in a curiously
reptilian fashion.  He peered at me with great
curiosity in his puckered eyes.

"'You have less frontal development than I should have
expected,' said he, at last.  'It is a dangerous habit
to finger loaded firearms in the pocket of one's
dressing-gown.'

"The fact is that upon his entrance I had instantly
recognized the extreme personal danger in which I lay. 
The only conceivable escape for him lay in silencing
my tongue.  In an instant I had slipped the revolver
from the drawer into my pocket, and was covering him
through the cloth.  At his remark I drew the weapon
out and laid it cocked upon the table.  He still
smiled and blinked, but there was something about his
eyes which made me feel very glad that I had it there.

"'You evidently don't know me,' said he.

"'On the contrary,' I answered, 'I think it is fairly
evident that I do.  Pray take a chair.  I can spare
you five minutes if you have anything to say.'

"'All that I have to say has already crossed your
mind,' said he.

"'Then possibly my answer has crossed yours,' I
replied.

"'You stand fast?'

"'Absolutely.'

"He clapped his hand into his pocket, and I raised the
pistol from the table.  But he merely drew out a
memorandum-book in which he had scribbled some dates.

"'You crossed my path on the 4th of January,' said
he.  'On the 23d you incommoded me; by the middle of
February I was seriously inconvenienced by you; at the
end of March I was absolutely hampered in my plans;
and now, at the close of April, I find myself placed
in such a position through your continual persecution
that I am in positive danger of losing my liberty. 
The situation is becoming an impossible one.'

"'Have you any suggestion to make?' I asked.

"'You must drop it, Mr. Holmes,' said he, swaying his
face about.  'You really must, you know.'

"'After Monday,' said I.

"'Tut, tut,' said he.  'I am quite sure that a man of
your intelligence will see that there can be but one
outcome to this affair.  It is necessary that you
should withdraw.  You have worked things in such a
fashion that we have only one resource left.  It has been
an intellectual treat to me to see the way in which
you have grappled with this affair, and I say,
unaffectedly, that it would be a grief to me to be
forced to take any extreme measure.  You smile, sir,
but I assure you that it really would.'

"'Danger is part of my trade,' I remarked.

"'That is not danger,' said he.  'It is inevitable
destruction.  You stand in the way not merely of an
individual, but of a mighty organization, the full
extent of which you, with all your cleverness, have
been unable to realize.  You must stand clear, Mr.
Holmes, or be trodden under foot.'

"'I am afraid,' said I, rising, 'that in the pleasure
of this conversation I am neglecting business of
importance which awaits me elsewhere.'

"He rose also and looked at me in silence, shaking his
head sadly.

"'Well, well,' said he, at last.  'It seems a pity,
but I have done what I could.  I know every move of
your game.  You can do nothing before Monday.  It has
been a duel between you and me, Mr. Holmes.  You hope
to place me in the dock.  I tell you that I will never
stand in the dock.  You hope to beat me.  I tell you
that you will never beat me.  If you are clever enough
to bring destruction upon me, rest assured that I
shall do as much to you.'

"'You have paid me several compliments, Mr. Moriarty,'
said I.  'Let me pay you one in return when I say that
if I were assured of the former eventuality I would,
in the interests of the public, cheerfully accept the
latter.'

"'I can promise you the one, but not the other,' he
snarled, and so turned his rounded back upon me, and
went peering and blinking out of the room.

"That was my singular interview with Professor
Moriarty.  I confess that it left an unpleasant effect
upon my mind.  His soft, precise fashion of speech
leaves a conviction of sincerity which a mere bully
could not produce.  Of course, you will say:  'Why not
take police precautions against him?'  the reason is
that I am well convinced that it is from his agents
the blow will fall.  I have the best proofs that it
would be so."

"You have already been assaulted?"

"My dear Watson, Professor Moriarty is not a man who
lets the grass grow under his feet.  I went out about
mid-day to transact some business in Oxford Street. 
As I passed the corner which leads from Bentinck
Street on to the Welbeck Street crossing a two-horse
van furiously driven whizzed round and was on me like
a flash.  I sprang for the foot-path and saved myself
by the fraction of a second.  The van dashed round by
Marylebone Lane and was gone in an instant.  I kept to
the pavement after that, Watson, but as I walked down
Vere Street a brick came down from the roof of one of
the houses, and was shattered to fragments at my feet. 
I called the police and had the place examined.  There
were slates and bricks piled up on the roof
preparatory to some repairs, and they would have me
believe that the wind had toppled over one of these. 
Of course I knew better, but I could prove nothing.  I
took a cab after that and reached my brother's rooms
in Pall Mall, where I spent the day.  Now I have come
round to you, and on my way I was attacked by a rough
with a bludgeon.  I knocked him down, and the police
have him in custody; but I can tell you with the most
absolute confidence that no possible connection will
ever be traced between the gentleman upon whose front
teeth I have barked my knuckles and the retiring
mathematical coach, who is, I dare say, working out
problems upon a black-board ten miles away.  You will
not wonder, Watson, that my first act on entering your
rooms was to close your shutters, and that I have been
compelled to ask your permission to leave the house by
some less conspicuous exit than the front door."

I had often admired my friend's courage, but never
more than now, as he sat quietly checking off a series
of incidents which must have combined to make up a day
of horror.

"You will spend the night here?" I said.

"No, my friend, you might find me a dangerous guest. 
I have my plans laid, and all will be well.  Matters
have gone so far now that they can move without my
help as far as the arrest goes, though my presence is
necessary for a conviction.  It is obvious, therefore,
that I cannot do better than get away for the few days
which remain before the police are at liberty to act. 
It would be a great pleasure to me, therefore, if you
could come on to the Continent with me."

"The practice is quiet," said I, "and I have an
accommodating neighbor.  I should be glad to come."

"And to start to-morrow morning?"

"If necessary."

"Oh yes, it is most necessary.  Then these are your
instructions, and I beg, my dear Watson, that you will
obey them to the letter, for you are now playing a
double-handed game with me against the cleverest rogue
and the most powerful syndicate of criminals in
Europe.  Now listen!  You will dispatch whatever
luggage you intend to take by a trusty messenger
unaddressed to Victoria to-night.  In the morning you
will send for a hansom, desiring your man to take
neither the first nor the second which may present
itself.  Into this hansom you will jump, and you will
drive to the Strand end of the Lowther Arcade,
handing the address to the cabman upon a slip of
paper, with a request that he will not throw it away. 
Have your fare ready, and the instant that your cab
stops, dash through the Arcade, timing yourself to
reach the other side at a quarter-past nine.  You will
find a small brougham waiting close to the curb,
driven by a fellow with a heavy black cloak tipped at
the collar with red.  Into this you will step, and you
will reach Victoria in time for the Continental
express."

"Where shall I meet you?"

"At the station.  The second first-class carriage from
the front will be reserved for us."

"The carriage is our rendezvous, then?"

"Yes."

It was in vain that I asked Holmes to remain for the
evening.  It was evident to me that he thought he might
bring trouble to the roof he was under, and that that
was the motive which impelled him to go.  With a few
hurried words as to our plans for the morrow he rose
and came out with me into the garden, clambering over
the wall which leads into Mortimer Street, and
immediately whistling for a hansom, in which I heard
him drive away.

In the morning I obeyed Holmes's injunctions to the
letter.  A hansom was procured with such precaution as
would prevent its being one which was placed ready for
us, and I drove immediately after breakfast to the
Lowther Arcade, through which I hurried at the top of
my speed.  A brougham was waiting with a very massive
driver wrapped in a dark cloak, who, the instant that
I had stepped in, whipped up the horse and rattled off
to Victoria Station.  On my alighting there he turned
the carriage, and dashed away again without so much as
a look in my direction.

So far all had gone admirably.  My luggage was waiting
for me, and I had no difficulty in finding the
carriage which Holmes had indicated, the less so as it
was the only one in the train which was marked
"Engaged."  My only source of anxiety now was the
non-appearance of Holmes.  The station clock marked
only seven minutes from the time when we were due to
start.  In vain I searched among the groups of
travellers and leave-takers for the lithe figure of
my friend.  There was no sign of him.  I spent a few
minutes in assisting a venerable Italian priest, who
was endeavoring to make a porter understand, in his
broken English, that his luggage was to be booked
through to Paris.  Then, having taken another look
round, I returned to my carriage, where I found that
the porter, in spite of the ticket, had given me my
decrepit Italian friend as a traveling companion.  It
was useless for me to explain to him that his presence
was an intrusion, for my Italian was even more limited
than his English, so I shrugged my shoulders
resignedly, and continued to look out anxiously for my
friend.  A chill of fear had come over me, as I
thought that his absence might mean that some blow had
fallen during the night.  Already the doors had all
been shut and the whistle blown, when--

"My dear Watson," said a voice, "you have not even
condescended to say good-morning."

I turned in uncontrollable astonishment.  The aged
ecclesiastic had turned his face towards me.  For an
instant the wrinkles were smoothed away, the nose drew
away from the chin, the lower lip ceased to protrude
and the mouth to mumble, the dull eyes regained their
fire, the drooping figure expanded.  The next the
whole frame collapsed again, and Holmes had gone as
quickly as he had come.

"Good heavens!" I cried; "how you startled me!"

"Every precaution is still necessary," he whispered. 
"I have reason to think that they are hot upon our
trail.  Ah, there is Moriarty himself."

The train had already begun to move as Holmes spoke. 
Glancing back, I saw a tall man pushing his way
furiously through the crowd, and waving his hand as if
he desired to have the train stopped.  It was too
late, however, for we were rapidly gathering momentum,
and an instant later had shot clear of the station.

"With all our precautions, you see that we have cut it
rather fine," said Holmes, laughing.  He rose, and
throwing off the black cassock and hat which had
formed his disguise, he packed them away in a
hand-bag.

"Have you seen the morning paper, Watson?"

"No."

"You haven't' seen about Baker Street, then?"

"Baker Street?"

"They set fire to our rooms last night.  No great harm
was done."

"Good heavens, Holmes! this is intolerable."

"They must have lost my track completely after their
bludgeon-man was arrested.  Otherwise they could not
have imagined that I had returned to my rooms.  They
have evidently taken the precaution of watching you,
however, and that is what has brought Moriarty to
Victoria.  You could not have made any slip in
coming?"

"I did exactly what you advised."

"Did you find your brougham?"

"Yes, it was waiting."

"Did you recognize your coachman?"

"No."

"It was my brother Mycroft.  It is an advantage to get
about in such a case without taking a mercenary into
your confidence.  But we must plan what we are to do
about Moriarty now."

"As this is an express, and as the boat runs in
connection with it, I should think we have shaken him
off very effectively."

"My dear Watson, you evidently did not realize my
meaning when I said that this man may be taken as
being quite on the same intellectual plane as myself. 
You do not imagine that if I were the pursuer I should
allow myself to be baffled by so slight an obstacle. 
Why, then, should you think so meanly of him?"

"What will he do?"

"What I should do?"

"What would you do, then?"

"Engage a special."

"But it must be late."

"By no means.  This train stops at Canterbury; and
there is always at least a quarter of an hour's delay
at the boat.  He will catch us there."

"One would think that we were the criminals.  Let us
have him arrested on his arrival."

"It would be to ruin the work of three months.  We
should get the big fish, but the smaller would dart
right and left out of the net.  On Monday we should
have them all.  No, an arrest is inadmissible."

"What then?"

"We shall get out at Canterbury."

"And then?"

"Well, then we must make a cross-country journey to
Newhaven, and so over to Dieppe.  Moriarty will again
do what I should do.  He will get on to Paris, mark
down our luggage, and wait for two days at the depot. 
In the meantime we shall treat ourselves to a couple
of carpet-bags, encourage the manufactures of the
countries through which we travel, and make our way at
our leisure into Switzerland, via Luxembourg and
Basle."

At Canterbury, therefore, we alighted, only to find
that we should have to wait an hour before we could
get a train to Newhaven.

I was still looking rather ruefully after the rapidly
disappearing luggage-van which contained my wardrobe,
when Holmes pulled my sleeve and pointed up the line.

"Already, you see," said he.

Far away, from among the Kentish woods there rose a
thin spray of smoke.  A minute later a carriage and
engine could be seen flying along the open curve which
leads to the station.  We had hardly time to take our
place behind a pile of luggage when it passed with a
rattle and a roar, beating a blast of hot air into our
faces.

"There he goes," said Holmes, as we watched the
carriage swing and rock over the points. "There are
limits, you see, to our friend's intelligence.  It
would have been a coup-de-maitre had he deduced what
I would deduce and acted accordingly."

"And what would he have done had he overtaken us?"

"There cannot be the least doubt that he would have
made a murderous attack upon me.  It is, however, a
game at which two may play.  The question now is
whether we should take a premature lunch here, or run
our chance of starving before we reach the buffet at
Newhaven."


We made our way to Brussels that night and spent two
days there, moving on upon the third day as far as
Strasburg.  On the Monday morning Holmes had
telegraphed to the London police, and in the evening
we found a reply waiting for us at our hotel.  Holmes
tore it open, and then with a bitter curse hurled it
into the grate.

"I might have known it!" he groaned.  "He has
escaped!"

"Moriarty?"

"They have secured the whole gang with the exception
of him.  He has given them the slip.  Of course, when
I had left the country there was no one to cope with
him.  But I did think that I had put the game in their
hands.  I think that you had better return to England,
Watson."

"Why?"

"Because you will find me a dangerous companion now. 
This man's occupation is gone.  He is lost if he
returns to London.  If I read his character right he
will devote his whole energies to revenging himself
upon me.  He said as much in our short interview, and
I fancy that he meant it.  I should certainly
recommend you to return to your practice."

It was hardly an appeal to be successful with one who
was an old campaigner as well as an old friend.  We
sat in the Strasburg salle-?-manger arguing the
question for half an hour, but the same night we had
resumed our journey and were well on our way to
Geneva.

For a charming week we wandered up the Valley of the
Rhone, and then, branching off at Leuk, we made our
way over the Gemmi Pass, still deep in snow, and so,
by way of Interlaken, to Meiringen.  It was a lovely
trip, the dainty green of the spring below, the virgin
white of the winter above; but it was clear to me that
never for one instant did Holmes forget the shadow
which lay across him.  In the homely Alpine villages
or in the lonely mountain passes, I could tell by his
quick glancing eyes and his sharp scrutiny of every
face that passed us, that he was well convinced that,
walk where we would, we could not walk ourselves clear
of the danger which was dogging our footsteps.

Once, I remember, as we passed over the Gemmi, and
walked along the border of the melancholy Daubensee, a
large rock which had been dislodged from the ridge
upon our right clattered down and roared into the lake
behind us.  In an instant Holmes had raced up on to
the ridge, and, standing upon a lofty pinnacle, craned
his neck in every direction.  It was in vain that our
guide assured him that a fall of stones was a common
chance in the spring-time at that spot.  He said
nothing, but he smiled at me with the air of a man who
sees the fulfillment of that which he had expected.

And yet for all his watchfulness he was never
depressed.  On the contrary, I can never recollect
having seen him in such exuberant spirits.  Again and
again he recurred to the fact that if he could be
assured that society was freed from Professor Moriarty
he would cheerfully bring his own career to a
conclusion.

"I think that I may go so far as to say, Watson, that
I have not lived wholly in vain," he remarked.  "If my
record were closed to-night I could still survey it
with equanimity.  The air of London is the sweeter for
my presence.  In over a thousand cases I am not aware
that I have ever used my powers upon the wrong side. 
Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems
furnished by nature rather than those more superficial
ones for which our artificial state of society is
responsible.  Your memoirs will draw to an end,
Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the
capture or extinction of the most dangerous and
capable criminal in Europe."

I shall be brief, and yet exact, in the little which
remains for me to tell.  It is not a subject on which
I would willingly dwell, and yet I am conscious that a
duty devolves upon me to omit no detail.

It was on the 3d of May that we reached the little
village of Meiringen, where we put up at the
Englischer Hof, then kept by Peter Steiler the elder. 
Our landlord was an intelligent  man, and spoke
excellent English, having served for three years as
waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London.  At his
advice, on the afternoon of the 4th we set off
together, with the intention of crossing the hills and
spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui.  We had
strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the
falls of Reichenbach, which are about half-way up the
hill, without making a small detour to see them.

It is indeed, a fearful place.  The torrent, swollen
by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss,
from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a
burning house.  The shaft into which the river hurls
itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening
coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming,
boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over
and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip.  The
long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and
the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever
upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and
clamor.  We stood near the edge peering down at the
gleam of the breaking water far below us against the
black rocks, and listening to the half-human shout
which came booming up with the spray out of the abyss.

The path has been cut half-way round the fall to
afford a complete view, but it ends abruptly, and the
traveler has to return as he came.  We had turned to
do so, when we saw a Swiss lad come running along it
with a letter in his hand.  It bore the mark of the
hotel which we had just left, and was addressed to me
by the landlord.  It appeared that within a very few
minutes of our leaving, an English lady had arrived
who was in the last stage of consumption.  She had
wintered at Davos Platz, and was journeying now to
join her friends at Lucerne, when a sudden hemorrhage
had overtaken her.  It was thought that she could
hardly live a few hours, but it would be a great
consolation to her to see an English doctor, and, if I
would only return, etc.  The good Steiler assured me
in a postscript that he would himself look upon my
compliance as a very great favor, since the lady
absolutely refused to see a Swiss physician, and he
could not but feel that he was incurring a great
responsibility.

The appeal was one which could not be ignored.  It was
impossible to refuse the request of a
fellow-countrywoman dying in a strange land.  Yet I
had my scruples about leaving Holmes.  It was finally
agreed, however, that he should retain the young Swiss
messenger with him as guide and companion while I
returned to Meiringen.  My friend would stay some
little time at the fall, he said, and would then walk
slowly over the hill to Rosenlaui, where I was to
rejoin him in the evening.  As I turned away I saw
Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms
folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters.  It was
the last that I was ever destined to see of him in
this world.

When I was near the bottom of the descent I looked
back.  It was impossible, from that position, to see
the fall, but I could see the curving path which winds
over the shoulder of the hill and leads to it.  Along
this a man was, I remember, walking very rapidly.

I could see his black figure clearly outlined against
the green behind him.  I noted him, and the energy with
which he walked but he passed from my mind again as I
hurried on upon my errand.

It may have been a little over an hour before I
reached Meiringen.  Old Steiler was standing at the
porch of his hotel.

"Well," said I, as I came hurrying up, "I trust that
she is no worse?"

A look of surprise passed over his face, and at the
first quiver of his eyebrows my heart turned to lead
in my breast.

"You did not write this?" I said, pulling the letter
from my pocket.  "There is no sick Englishwoman in the
hotel?"

"Certainly not!" he cried.  "But it has the hotel mark
upon it!  Ha, it must have been written by that tall
Englishman who came in after you had gone.  He said--"

But I waited for none of the landlord's explanations. 
In a tingle of fear I was already running down the
village street, and making for the path which I had so
lately descended.  It had taken me an hour to come
down.  For all my efforts two more had passed before I
found myself at the fall of Reichenbach once more. 
There was Holmes's Alpine-stock still leaning against
the rock by which I had left him.  But there was no
sign of him, and it was in vain that I shouted.  My
only answer was my own voice reverberating in a
rolling echo from the cliffs around me.

It was the sight of that Alpine-stock which turned me
cold and sick.  He had not gone to Rosenlaui, then. 
He had remained on that three-foot path, with sheer
wall on one side and sheer drop on the other, until
his enemy had overtaken him.  The young Swiss had gone
too.  He had probably been in the pay of Moriarty, and
had left the two men together.  And then what had
happened?  Who was to tell us what had happened then?

I stood for a minute or two to collect myself, for I
was dazed with the horror of the thing.  Then I began
to think of Holmes's own methods and to try to
practise them in reading this tragedy.  It was, alas,
only too easy to do.  During our conversation we had
not gone to the end of the path, and the Alpine-stock
marked the place where we had stood.  The blackish
soil is kept forever soft by the incessant drift of
spray, and a bird would leave its tread upon it.  Two
lines of footmarks were clearly marked along the
farther end of the path, both leading away from me. 
There were none returning.  A few yards from the end
the soil was all ploughed up into a patch of mud, and
the branches and ferns which fringed the chasm were
torn and bedraggled.  I lay upon my face and peered
over with the spray spouting up all around me.  It had
darkened since I left, and now I could only see here
and there the glistening of moisture upon the black
walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the
gleam of the broken water.  I shouted; but only the
same half-human cry of the fall was borne back to my
ears.

But it was destined that I should after all have a
last word of greeting from my friend and comrade.  I
have said that his Alpine-stock had been left leaning
against a rock which jutted on to the path.  From the
top of this bowlder the gleam of something bright
caught my eye, and, raising my hand, I found that it
came from the silver cigarette-case which he used to
carry.  As I took it up a small square of paper upon
which it had lain fluttered down on to the ground. 
Unfolding it, I found that it consisted of three pages
torn from his note-book and addressed to me.  It was
characteristic of the man that the direction was a
precise, and the writing as firm and clear, as though
it had been written in his study.

My dear Watson [it said], I write these few lines
through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty, who awaits my
convenience for the final discussion of those
questions which lie between us.  He has been giving me
a sketch of the methods by which he avoided the
English police and kept himself informed of our
movements.  They certainly confirm the very high
opinion which I had formed of his abilities.  I am
pleased to think that I shall be able to free society
from any further effects of his presence, though I
fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my
friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you.  I
have already explained to you, however, that my career
had in any case reached its crisis, and that no
possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to
me than this.  Indeed, if I may make a full confession
to you, I was quite convinced that the letter from
Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed you to depart on
that errand under the persuasion that some development
of this sort would follow.  Tell Inspector Patterson
that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are
in pigeonhole M., done up in a blue envelope and
inscribed "Moriarty."  I made every disposition of my
property before leaving England, and handed it to my
brother Mycroft.  Pray give my greetings to Mrs.
Watson, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,

Very sincerely yours,

Sherlock Holmes


A few words may suffice to tell the little that
remains.  An examination by experts leaves little
doubt that a personal contest between the two men
ended, as it could hardly fail to end in such a
situation, in their reeling over, locked in each
other's arms.  Any attempt at recovering the bodies
was absolutely hopeless, and there, deep down in that
dreadful caldron of swirling water and seething foam,
will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and
the foremost champion of the law of their generation.
The Swiss youth was never found again, and there can
be no doubt that he was one of the numerous agents
whom Moriarty kept in this employ.  As to the gang, it
will be within the memory of the public how completely
the evidence which Holmes had accumulated exposed
their organization, and how heavily the hand of the
dead man weighed upon them.  Of their terrible chief
few details came out during the proceedings, and if I
have now been compelled to make a clear statement of
his career it is due to those injudicious champions
who have endeavored to clear his memory by attacks
upon him whom I shall ever regard as the best and the
wisest man whom I have ever known.


_____________________________________________________

The crimes of the INSIDIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU

as told by SAX ROHMER






CHAPTER I


"A GENTLEMAN to see you, Doctor."

From across the common a clock sounded the half-hour.

"Ten-thirty!" I said.  "A late visitor.  Show him up, if you please."

I pushed my writing aside and tilted the lamp-shade, as footsteps
sounded on the landing.  The next moment I had jumped to my feet,
for a tall, lean man, with his square-cut, clean-shaven face
sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered and extended both hands,
with a cry:

"Good old Petrie!  Didn't expect me, I'll swear!"

It was Nayland Smith--whom I had thought to be in Burma!

"Smith," I said, and gripped his hands hard, "this is a delightful surprise!
Whatever--however--"

"Excuse me, Petrie!" he broke in.  "Don't put it down to the sun!"
And he put out the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

I was too surprised to speak.

"No doubt you will think me mad," he continued, and, dimly,
I could see him at the window, peering out into the road,
"but before you are many hours older you will know that I
have good reason to be cautious.  Ah, nothing suspicious!
Perhaps I am first this time."  And, stepping back to the
writing-table he relighted the lamp.

"Mysterious enough for you?" he laughed, and glanced at my unfinished MS.
"A story, eh?  From which I gather that the district is beastly healthy--
what, Petrie?  Well, I can put some material in your way that, if sheer
uncanny mystery is a marketable commodity, ought to make you independent
of influenza and broken legs and shattered nerves and all the rest."

I surveyed him doubtfully, but there was nothing in his appearance
to justify me in supposing him to suffer from delusions.  His eyes
were too bright, certainly, and a hardness now had crept over his face.
I got out the whisky and siphon, saying:

"You have taken your leave early?"

"I am not on leave," he replied, and slowly filled his pipe.
"I am on duty."

"On duty!" I exclaimed.  "What, are you moved to London or something?"

"I have got a roving commission, Petrie, and it doesn't rest
with me where I am to-day nor where I shall be to-morrow."

There was something ominous in the words, and, putting down my glass,
its contents untasted, I faced round and looked him squarely in the eyes.
"Out with it!" I said.  "What is it all about?"

Smith suddenly stood up and stripped off his coat.
Rolling back his left shirt-sleeve he revealed a wicked-looking
wound in the fleshy part of the forearm.  It was quite healed,
but curiously striated for an inch or so around.

"Ever seen one like it?" he asked.

"Not exactly," I confessed.  "It appears to have been deeply cauterized."

"Right!  Very deeply!" he rapped.  "A barb steeped in the venom
of a hamadryad went in there!"

A shudder I could not repress ran coldly through me at mention
of that most deadly of all the reptiles of the East.

"There's only one treatment," he continued, rolling his sleeve down again,
"and that's with a sharp knife, a match, and a broken cartridge.
I lay on my back, raving, for three days afterwards, in a forest that stank
with malaria, but I should have been lying there now if I had hesitated.
Here's the point.  It was not an accident!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it was a deliberate attempt on my life, and I am hard upon
the tracks of the man who extracted that venom--patiently, drop by drop--
from the poison-glands of the snake, who prepared that arrow, and who caused
it to be shot at me."

"What fiend is this?"

"A fiend who, unless my calculations are at fault is now in London,
and who regularly wars with pleasant weapons of that kind.  Petrie, I have
traveled from Burma not in the interests of the British Government merely,
but in the interests of the entire white race, and I honestly believe--
though I pray I may be wrong--that its survival depends largely upon
the success of my mission."

To say that I was perplexed conveys no idea of the mental chaos
created by these extraordinary statements, for into my humdrum
suburban life Nayland Smith had brought fantasy of the wildest.
I did not know what to think, what to believe.

"I am wasting precious time!" he rapped decisively, and, draining his glass,
he stood up.  "I came straight to you, because you are the only man I dare
to trust.  Except the big chief at headquarters, you are the only person
in England, I hope, who knows that Nayland Smith has quitted Burma.
I must have someone with me, Petrie, all the time--it's imperative!
Can you put me up here, and spare a few days to the strangest business,
I promise you, that ever was recorded in fact or fiction?"

I agreed readily enough, for, unfortunately, my professional
duties were not onerous.

"Good man!" he cried, wringing my hand in his impetuous way.
"We start now."

"What, to-night?"

"To-night!  I had thought of turning in, I must admit.  I have not dared
to sleep for forty-eight hours, except in fifteen-minute stretches.
But there is one move that must be made to-night and immediately.
I must warn Sir Crichton Davey."

"Sir Crichton Davey--of the India--"

"Petrie, he is a doomed man!  Unless he follows my instructions
without question, without hesitation--before Heaven, nothing can
save him!  I do not know when the blow will fall, how it will fall,
nor from whence, but I know that my first duty is to warn him.
Let us walk down to the corner of the common and get a taxi."

How strangely does the adventurous intrude upon the humdrum;
for, when it intrudes at all, more often than not its intrusion
is sudden and unlooked for.  To-day, we may seek for romance
and fail to find it:  unsought, it lies in wait for us at most
prosaic corners of life's highway.

The drive that night, though it divided the drably commonplace
from the wildly bizarre--though it was the bridge between the
ordinary and the outre--has left no impression upon my mind.
Into the heart of a weird mystery the cab bore me; and in reviewing
my memories of those days I wonder that the busy thoroughfares
through which we passed did not display before my eyes signs
and portents--warnings.

It was not so.  I recall nothing of the route and little of import
that passed between us (we both were strangely silent, I think)
until we were come to our journey's end.  Then:

"What's this?" muttered my friend hoarsely.

Constables were moving on a little crowd of curious idlers who pressed
about the steps of Sir Crichton Davey's house and sought to peer in at
the open door.  Without waiting for the cab to draw up to the curb,
Nayland Smith recklessly leaped out and I followed close at his heels.

"What has happened?" he demanded breathlessly of a constable.

The latter glanced at him doubtfully, but something in his voice
and bearing commanded respect.

"Sir Crichton Davey has been killed, sir."

Smith lurched back as though he had received a physical blow, and clutched
my shoulder convulsively.  Beneath the heavy tan his face had blanched,
and his eyes were set in a stare of horror.

"My God!" he whispered.  "I am too late!"

With clenched fists he turned and, pressing through the group
of loungers, bounded up the steps.  In the hall a man who unmistakably
was a Scotland Yard official stood talking to a footman.
Other members of the household were moving about, more or
less aimlessly, and the chilly hand of King Fear had touched
one and all, for, as they came and went, they glanced ever over
their shoulders, as if each shadow cloaked a menace, and listened,
as it seemed, for some sound which they dreaded to hear.
Smith strode up to the detective and showed him a card,
upon glancing at which the Scotland Yard man said something
in a low voice, and, nodding, touched his hat to Smith
in a respectful manner.

A few brief questions and answers, and, in gloomy silence,
we followed the detective up the heavily carpeted stair,
along a corridor lined with pictures and busts, and into a
large library.  A group of people were in this room, and one,
in whom I recognized Chalmers Cleeve, of Harley Street,
was bending over a motionless form stretched upon a couch.
Another door communicated with a small study, and through
the opening I could see a man on all fours examining the carpet.
The uncomfortable sense of hush, the group about the physician,
the bizarre figure crawling, beetle-like, across the inner room,
and the grim hub, around which all this ominous activity turned,
made up a scene that etched itself indelibly on my mind.

As we entered Dr. Cleeve straightened himself, frowning thoughtfully.

"Frankly, I do not care to venture any opinion at present regarding
the immediate cause of death," he said.  "Sir Crichton was addicted
to cocaine, but there are indications which are not in accordance
with cocaine-poisoning. I fear that only a post-mortem can
establish the facts--if," he added, "we ever arrive at them.
A most mysterious case!"

Smith stepping forward and engaging the famous pathologist in conversation,
I seized the opportunity to examine Sir Crichton's body.

The dead man was in evening dress, but wore an old
smoking-jacket. He had been of spare but hardy build,
with thin, aquiline features, which now were oddly puffy,
as were his clenched hands.  I pushed back his sleeve,
and saw the marks of the hypodermic syringe upon his left arm.
Quite mechanically I turned my attention to the right arm.
It was unscarred, but on the back of the hand was a faint
red mark, not unlike the imprint of painted lips.
I examined it closely, and even tried to rub it off, but it
evidently was caused by some morbid process of local inflammation,
if it were not a birthmark.

Turning to a pale young man whom I had understood to be Sir
Crichton's private secretary, I drew his attention to this mark,
and inquired if it were constitutional.  "It is not, sir,"
answered Dr. Cleeve, overhearing my question.  "I have already
made that inquiry.  Does it suggest anything to your mind?
I must confess that it affords me no assistance."

"Nothing," I replied.  "It is most curious."

"Excuse me, Mr. Burboyne," said Smith, now turning to the secretary,
"but Inspector Weymouth will tell you that I act with authority.
I understand that Sir Crichton was--seized with illness in his study?"

"Yes--at half-past ten.  I was working here in the library, and he inside,
as was our custom."

"The communicating door was kept closed?"

"Yes, always.  It was open for a minute or less about
ten-twenty-five, when a message came for Sir Crichton.
I took it in to him, and he then seemed in his usual health."

"What was the message?"

"I could not say.  It was brought by a district messenger, and he 
placed it beside him on the table.  It is there now, no doubt."

"And at half-past ten?"

"Sir Crichton suddenly burst open the door and threw himself,
with a scream, into the library.  I ran to him but he waved
me back.  His eyes were glaring horribly.  I had just
reached his side when he fell, writhing, upon the floor.
He seemed past speech, but as I raised him and laid him upon
the couch, he gasped something that sounded like `The red hand!'
Before I could get to bell or telephone he was dead!"

Mr. Burboyne's voice shook as he spoke the words, and Smith seemed
to find this evidence confusing.

"You do not think he referred to the mark on his own hand?"

"I think not.  From the direction of his last glance, I feel
sure he referred to something in the study."

"What did you do?"  

"Having summoned the servants, I ran into the study. But there was
absolutely nothing unusual to be seen.  The windows were closed
and fastened.  He worked with closed windows in the hottest weather.
There is no other door, for the study occupies the end of a narrow wing,
so that no one could possibly have gained access to it, whilst I was
in the library, unseen by me.  Had someone concealed himself in the study
earlier in the evening--and I am convinced that it offers no hiding-place--
he could only have come out again by passing through here."

Nayland Smith tugged at the lobe of his left ear, as was his
habit when meditating.

"You had been at work here in this way for some time?"

"Yes.  Sir Crichton was preparing an important book."

"Had anything unusual occurred prior to this evening?"

"Yes," said Mr. Burboyne, with evident perplexity; "though I attached
no importance to it at the time.  Three nights ago Sir Crichton
came out to me, and appeared very nervous; but at times his nerves--
you know?  Well, on this occasion he asked me to search the study.
He had an idea that something was concealed there."

"Some THING or someone?"

"`Something' was the word he used.  I searched, but fruitlessly,
and he seemed quite satisfied, and returned to his work."

"Thank you, Mr. Burboyne.  My friend and I would like a few minutes'
private investigation in the study."



CHAPTER II


SIR CRICHTON DAVEY'S study was a small one, and a glance sufficed to
show that, as the secretary had said, it offered no hiding-place. It was
heavily carpeted, and over-full of Burmese and Chinese ornaments and curios,
and upon the mantelpiece stood several framed photographs which showed
this to be the sanctum of a wealthy bachelor who was no misogynist.
A map of the Indian Empire occupied the larger part of one wall.
The grate was empty, for the weather was extremely warm, and a
green-shaded lamp on the littered writing-table afforded the only light.
The air was stale, for both windows were closed and fastened.

Smith immediately pounced upon a large, square envelope that lay beside
the blotting-pad. Sir Crichton had not even troubled to open it,
but my friend did so.  It contained a blank sheet of paper!

"Smell!" he directed, handing the letter to me.  I raised it to my nostrils.
It was scented with some pungent perfume.

"What is it?"  I asked.

"It is a rather rare essential oil," was the reply,
"which I have met with before, though never in Europe.
I begin to understand, Petrie."

He tilted the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps
of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth.
I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously,
when he turned, a strange expression upon his face.

"Put that back, old man," he said quietly.

Much surprised, I did as he directed.

"Don't touch anything in the room.  It may be dangerous."

Something in the tone of his voice chilled me, and I hastily
replaced the vase, and stood by the door of the study,
watching him search, methodically, every inch of the room--
behind the books, in all the ornaments, in table drawers,
in cupboards, on shelves.

"That will do," he said at last.  "There is nothing here and I
have no time to search farther."

We returned to the library.

"Inspector Weymouth," said my friend, "I have a particular
reason for asking that Sir Crichton's body be removed from
this room at once and the library locked.  Let no one be
admitted on any pretense whatever until you hear from me."
It spoke volumes for the mysterious credentials borne by my
friend that the man from Scotland Yard accepted his orders
without demur, and, after a brief chat with Mr. Burboyne,
Smith passed briskly downstairs.  In the hall a man who looked
like a groom out of livery was waiting.

"Are you Wills?" asked Smith.

"Yes, sir."

"It was you who heard a cry of some kind at the rear of the house
about the time of Sir Crichton's death?"

"Yes, sir.  I was locking the garage door, and, happening to look up
at the window of Sir Crichton's study, I saw him jump out of his chair.
Where he used to sit at his writing, sir, you could see his shadow
on the blind.  Next minute I heard a call out in the lane."

"What kind of call?"

The man, whom the uncanny happening clearly had frightened,
seemed puzzled for a suitable description.

"A sort of wail, sir," he said at last.  "I never heard anything
like it before, and don't want to again."

"Like this?" inquired Smith, and he uttered a low, wailing cry,
impossible to describe.  Wills perceptibly shuddered; and, indeed,
it was an eerie sound.

"The same, sir, I think," he said, "but much louder."

"That will do," said Smith, and I thought I detected a note of triumph
in his voice.  "But stay!  Take us through to the back of the house."

The man bowed and led the way, so that shortly we found ourselves
in a small, paved courtyard.  It was a perfect summer's night,
and the deep blue vault above was jeweled with myriads of starry points.
How impossible it seemed to reconcile that vast, eternal calm
with the hideous passions and fiendish agencies which that night
had loosed a soul upon the infinite.

"Up yonder are the study windows, sir.  Over that wall on your left
is the back lane from which the cry came, and beyond is Regent's Park."

"Are the study windows visible from there?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"Who occupies the adjoining house?"

"Major-General Platt-Houston, sir; but the family is out of town."

"Those iron stairs are a means of communication between the domestic
offices and the servants' quarters, I take it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then send someone to make my business known to the Major-General's
housekeeper; I want to examine those stairs."

Singular though my friend's proceedings appeared to me, I had ceased
to wonder at anything.  Since Nayland Smith's arrival at my rooms I
seemed to have been moving through the fitful phases of a nightmare.
My friend's account of how he came by the wound in his arm;
the scene on our arrival at the house of Sir Crichton Davey;
the secretary's story of the dying man's cry, "The red hand!";
the hidden perils of the study; the wail in the lane--
all were fitter incidents of delirium than of sane reality.
So, when a white-faced butler made us known to a nervous old lady
who proved to be the housekeeper of the next-door residence,
I was not surprised at Smith's saying:

"Lounge up and down outside, Petrie.  Everyone has cleared off now.
It is getting late.  Keep your eyes open and be on your guard.
I thought I had the start, but he is here before me, and, what is worse,
he probably knows by now that I am here, too."

With which he entered the house and left me out in the square,
with leisure to think, to try to understand.

The crowd which usually haunts the scene of a sensational crime
had been cleared away, and it had been circulated that Sir Crichton
had died from natural causes.  The intense heat having driven most
of the residents out of town, practically I had the square to myself,
and I gave myself up to a brief consideration of the mystery in which I
so suddenly had found myself involved.

By what agency had Sir Crichton met his death?
Did Nayland Smith know?  I rather suspected that he did.
What was the hidden significance of the perfumed envelope?
Who was that mysterious personage whom Smith so evidently dreaded,
who had attempted his life, who, presumably, had murdered
Sir Crichton?  Sir Crichton Davey, during the time that he had held
office in India, and during his long term of service at home,
had earned the good will of all, British and native alike.
Who was his secret enemy?

Something touched me lightly on the shoulder.

I turned, with my heart fluttering like a child's. This night's
work had imposed a severe strain even upon my callous nerves.

A girl wrapped in a hooded opera-cloak stood at my elbow,
and, as she glanced up at me, I thought that I never had seen
a face so seductively lovely nor of so unusual a type.
With the skin of a perfect blonde, she had eyes and lashes
as black as a Creole's, which, together with her full red lips,
told me that this beautiful stranger, whose touch had so startled me,
was not a child of our northern shores.

"Forgive me," she said, speaking with an odd, pretty accent,
and laying a slim hand, with jeweled fingers, confidingly upon
my arm, "if I startled you.  But--is it true that Sir Crichton
Davey has been--murdered?"

I looked into her big, questioning eyes, a harsh suspicion laboring
in my mind, but could read nothing in their mysterious depths--
only I wondered anew at my questioner's beauty.  The grotesque
idea momentarily possessed me that, were the bloom of her red
lips due to art and not to nature, their kiss would leave--
though not indelibly--just such a mark as I had seen upon the dead
man's hand.  But I dismissed the fantastic notion as bred
of the night's horrors, and worthy only of a mediaeval legend.
No doubt she was some friend or acquaintance of Sir Crichton
who lived close by.

"I cannot say that he has been murdered," I replied, acting upon the latter
supposition, and seeking to tell her what she asked as gently as possible.

"But he is--Dead?"

I nodded.

She closed her eyes and uttered a low, moaning sound, swaying dizzily.
Thinking she was about to swoon, I threw my arm round her shoulder
to support her, but she smiled sadly, and pushed me gently away.

"I am quite well, thank you," she said.

"You are certain?  Let me walk with you until you feel quite
sure of yourself."

She shook her head, flashed a rapid glance at me with her beautiful eyes,
and looked away in a sort of sorrowful embarrassment, for which I was entirely
at a loss to account.  Suddenly she resumed:

"I cannot let my name be mentioned in this dreadful matter, but--I think
I have some information--for the police.  Will you give this to--
whomever you think proper?"

She handed me a sealed envelope, again met my eyes
with one of her dazzling glances, and hurried away.
She had gone no more than ten or twelve yards, and I still was
standing bewildered, watching her graceful, retreating figure,
when she turned abruptly and came back.

Without looking directly at me, but alternately glancing towards a distant
corner of the square and towards the house of Major-General Platt-Houston,
she made the following extraordinary request:

"If you would do me a very great service, for which I always would
be grateful,"--she glanced at me with passionate intentness--"when you
have given my message to the proper person, leave him and do not go
near him any more to-night!"

Before I could find words to reply she gathered up her cloak and ran.
Before I could determine whether or not to follow her (for her words
had aroused anew all my worst suspicions) she had disappeared!
I heard the whir of a restarted motor at no great distance, and,
in the instant that Nayland Smith came running down the steps,
I knew that I had nodded at my post.

"Smith!"  I cried as he joined me, "tell me what we must do!"
And rapidly I acquainted him with the incident.

My friend looked very grave; then a grim smile crept round his lips.

"She was a big card to play," he said; "but he did not know that I
held one to beat it."

"What!  You know this girl!  Who is she?"

"She is one of the finest weapons in the enemy's armory, Petrie.
But a woman is a two-edged sword, and treacherous.
To our great good fortune, she has formed a sudden predilection,
characteristically Oriental, for yourself.  Oh, you may scoff, but it
is evident.  She was employed to get this letter placed in my hands.
Give it to me."

I did so.

"She has succeeded.  Smell."

He held the envelope under my nose, and, with a sudden sense of nausea,
I recognized the strange perfume.

"You know what this presaged in Sir Crichton's case?
Can you doubt any longer?  She did not want you to share
my fate, Petrie."

"Smith," I said unsteadily, "I have followed your lead blindly
in this horrible business and have not pressed for an explanation,
but I must insist before I go one step farther upon knowing
what it all means."

"Just a few steps farther," he rejoined; "as far as a cab.
We are hardly safe here.  Oh, you need not fear shots or knives.
The man whose servants are watching us now scorns to employ
such clumsy, tell-tale weapons."

Only three cabs were on the rank, and, as we entered the first,
something hissed past my ear, missed both Smith and me
by a miracle, and, passing over the roof of the taxi,
presumably fell in the enclosed garden occupying the center
of the square.

"What was that?" I cried.

"Get in--quickly!"  Smith rapped back.  "It was attempt number one!
More than that I cannot say.  Don't let the man hear.
He has noticed nothing.  Pull up the window on your side,
Petrie, and look out behind.  Good!  We've started."

The cab moved off with a metallic jerk, and I turned and looked
back through the little window in the rear.

"Someone has got into another cab.  It is following ours, I think."

Nayland Smith lay back and laughed unmirthfully.

"Petrie," he said, "if I escape alive from this business I shall
know that I bear a charmed life."

I made no reply, as he pulled out the dilapidated pouch and filled his pipe.

"You have asked me to explain matters," he continued, "and I
will do so to the best of my ability.  You no doubt wonder why
a servant of the British Government, lately stationed in Burma,
suddenly appears in London, in the character of a detective.
I am here, Petrie--and I bear credentials from the very
highest sources--because, quite by accident, I came upon a clew.
Following it up, in the ordinary course of routine, I obtained
evidence of the existence and malignant activity of a certain man.
At the present stage of the case I should not be justified
in terming him the emissary of an Eastern Power, but I may say
that representations are shortly to be made to that Power's
ambassador in London."

He paused and glanced back towards the pursuing cab.

"There is little to fear until we arrive home," he said calmly.
"Afterwards there is much.  To continue:  This man, whether a fanatic
or a duly appointed agent, is, unquestionably, the most malign
and formidable personality existing in the known world today.
He is a linguist who speaks with almost equal facility in any
of the civilized languages, and in most of the barbaric.
He is an adept in all the arts and sciences which a great
university could teach him.  He also is an adept in certain obscure
arts and sciences which no university of to-day can teach.
He has the brains of any three men of genius.  Petrie, he is
a mental giant."

"You amaze me!" I said.

"As to his mission among men.  Why did M. Jules Furneaux fall
dead in a Paris opera house?  Because of heart failure?
No!  Because his last speech had shown that he held the key
to the secret of Tongking.  What became of the Grand
Duke Stanislaus?  Elopement?  Suicide?  Nothing of the kind.
He alone was fully alive to Russia's growing peril.
He alone knew the truth about Mongolia.  Why was Sir Crichton
Davey murdered?  Because, had the work he was engaged upon ever
seen the light it would have shown him to be the only living
Englishman who understood the importance of the Tibetan frontiers.
I say to you solemnly, Petrie, that these are but a few.
Is there a man who would arouse the West to a sense of
the awakening of the East, who would teach the deaf to hear,
the blind to see, that the millions only await their leader?
He will die.  And this is only one phase of the devilish campaign.
The others I can merely surmise."

"But, Smith, this is almost incredible!  What perverted genius
controls this awful secret movement?"

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a
brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull,
and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all
the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one
giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present,
with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government--
which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.
Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
the yellow peril incarnate in one man."



CHAPTER III


I SANK into an arm-chair in my rooms and gulped down a strong
peg of brandy.

"We have been followed here," I said.  "Why did you make no attempt
to throw the pursuers off the track, to have them intercepted?"

Smith laughed.

"Useless, in the first place.  Wherever we went, HE
would find us.  And of what use to arrest his creatures?
We could prove nothing against them.  Further, it is evident
that an attempt is to be made upon my life to-night--
and by the same means that proved so successful in the case
of poor Sir Crichton."

His square jaw grew truculently prominent, and he leapt stormily to his feet,
shaking his clenched fists towards the window.

"The villain!" he cried.  "The fiendishly clever villain!
I suspected that Sir Crichton was next, and I was right.
But I came too late, Petrie!  That hits me hard, old man.
To think that I knew and yet failed to save him!"

He resumed his seat, smoking hard.

"Fu-Manchu has made the blunder common to all men of unusual genius,"
he said.  "He has underrated his adversary.  He has not given
me credit for perceiving the meaning of the scented messages.
He has thrown away one powerful weapon--to get such a message
into my hands--and he thinks that once safe within doors,
I shall sleep, unsuspecting, and die as Sir Crichton died.
But without the indiscretion of your charming friend, I should
have known what to expect when I receive her `information'--
which by the way, consists of a blank sheet of paper."

"Smith," I broke in, "who is she?"

"She is either Fu-Manchu's daughter, his wife, or his slave.
I am inclined to believe the last, for she has no will but
his will, except"--with a quizzical glance--"in a certain instance."

"How can you jest with some awful thing--Heaven knows what--
hanging over your head?  What is the meaning of these perfumed envelopes?
How did Sir Crichton die?"

"He died of the Zayat Kiss.  Ask me what that is and I reply
`I do not know.'  The zayats are the Burmese caravanserais,
or rest-houses. Along a certain route--upon which I set eyes,
for the first and only time, upon Dr. Fu-Manchu--travelers who use
them sometimes die as Sir Crichton died, with nothing to show
the cause of death but a little mark upon the neck, face, or limb,
which has earned, in those parts, the title of the `Zayat Kiss.'
The rest-houses along that route are shunned now.
I have my theory and I hope to prove it to-night, if I live.
It will be one more broken weapon in his fiendish armory,
and it is thus, and thus only, that I can hope to crush him.
This was my principal reason for not enlightening Dr. Cleeve.
Even walls have ears where Fu-Manchu is concerned, so I feigned
ignorance of the meaning of the mark, knowing that he would be
almost certain to employ the same methods upon some other victim.
I wanted an opportunity to study the Zayat Kiss in operation,
and I shall have one."

"But the scented envelopes?"

"In the swampy forests of the district I have referred to a rare
species of orchid, almost green, and with a peculiar scent,
is sometimes met with.  I recognized the heavy perfume at once.
I take it that the thing which kills the traveler is attracted
by this orchid.  You will notice that the perfume clings to whatever
it touches.  I doubt if it can be washed off in the ordinary way.
After at least one unsuccessful attempt to kill Sir Crichton--
you recall that he thought there was something concealed in his study
on a previous occasion?--Fu-Manchu hit upon the perfumed envelopes.
He may have a supply of these green orchids in his possession--
possibly to feed the creature."

"What creature?  How could any kind of creature have got into Sir
Crichton's room tonight?"

"You no doubt observed that I examined the grate of the study.
I found a fair quantity of fallen soot.  I at once assumed, since it
appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been
dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was,
must still be concealed either in the study or in the library.
But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived
that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal.
I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table
were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied
the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.
What did the signal mean?  That Sir Crichton had leaped up from
his chair, and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing
which someone on the roof had lowered down the straight chimney.
It was the signal to withdraw that deadly thing.  By means of
the iron stairway at the rear of Major-General Platt-Houston's, I
quite easily, gained access to the roof above Sir Crichton's study--
and I found this."

Out from his pocket Nayland Smith drew a tangled piece of silk,
mixed up with which were a brass ring and a number of unusually
large-sized split-shot, nipped on in the manner usual on a fishing-line.

"My theory proven," he resumed.  "Not anticipating a search on the roof,
they had been careless.  This was to weight the line and to prevent
the creature clinging to the walls of the chimney.  Directly it had dropped
in the grate, however, by means of this ring I assume that the weighted
line was withdrawn, and the thing was only held by one slender thread,
which sufficed, though, to draw it back again when it had done its work.
It might have got tangled, of course, but they reckoned on its making
straight up the carved leg of the writing-table for the prepared envelope.
From there to the hand of Sir Crichton--which, from having touched
the envelope, would also be scented with the perfume--was a certain move."

"My God!  How horrible!" I exclaimed, and glanced apprehensively into
the dusky shadows of the room.  "What is your theory respecting this creature--
what shape, what color--?"

"It is something that moves rapidly and silently.  I will
venture no more at present, but I think it works in the dark.
The study was dark, remember, save for the bright patch beneath
the reading-lamp. I have observed that the rear of this
house is ivy-covered right up to and above your bedroom.
Let us make ostentatious preparations to retire, and I think
we may rely upon Fu-Manchu's servants to attempt my removal,
at any rate--if not yours."

"But, my dear fellow, it is a climb of thirty-five feet at the very least."

"You remember the cry in the back lane?  It suggested something to me,
and I tested my idea--successfully.  It was the cry of a dacoit.
Oh, dacoity, though quiescent, is by no means extinct.  Fu-Manchu has
dacoits in his train, and probably it is one who operates the Zayat Kiss,
since it was a dacoit who watched the window of the study this evening.
To such a man an ivy-covered wall is a grand staircase."

The horrible events that followed are punctuated, in my mind,
by the striking of a distant clock.  It is singular how
trivialities thus assert themselves in moments of high tension.
I will proceed, then, by these punctuations, to the coming
of the horror that it was written we should encounter.

The clock across the common struck two.

Having removed all traces of the scent of the orchid from our hands with
a solution of ammonia Smith and I had followed the programme laid down.
It was an easy matter to reach the rear of the house, by simply climbing
a fence, and we did not doubt that seeing the light go out in the front,
our unseen watcher would proceed to the back.

The room was a large one, and we had made up my camp-bed at one end,
stuffing odds and ends under the clothes to lend the appearance of a sleeper,
which device we also had adopted in the case of the larger bed.
The perfumed envelope lay upon a little coffee table in the center
of the floor, and Smith, with an electric pocket lamp, a revolver,
and a brassey beside him, sat on cushions in the shadow of the wardrobe.
I occupied a post between the windows.

No unusual sound, so far, had disturbed the stillness of the night.
Save for the muffled throb of the rare all-night cars passing
the front of the house, our vigil had been a silent one.
The full moon had painted about the floor weird shadows of
the clustering ivy, spreading the design gradually from the door,
across the room, past the little table where the envelope lay,
and finally to the foot of the bed.

The distant clock struck a quarter-past two.

A slight breeze stirred the ivy, and a new shadow added itself
to the extreme edge of the moon's design.

Something rose, inch by inch, above the sill of the westerly window.
I could see only its shadow, but a sharp, sibilant breath from Smith
told me that he, from his post, could see the cause of the shadow.

Every nerve in my body seemed to be strung tensely.
I was icy cold, expectant, and prepared for whatever horror
was upon us.

The shadow became stationary.  The dacoit was studying the interior
of the room.

Then it suddenly lengthened, and, craning my head to the left,
I saw a lithe, black-clad form, surmounted by a Yellow face,
sketchy in the moonlight, pressed against the window-panes!

One thin, brown hand appeared over the edge of the lowered sash,
which it grasped--and then another.  The man made absolutely
no sound whatever.  The second hand disappeared--and reappeared.
It held a small, square box.  There was a very faint CLICK.

The dacoit swung himself below the window with the agility
of an ape, as, with a dull, muffled thud, SOMETHING dropped
upon the carpet!

"Stand still, for your life!" came Smith's voice, high-pitched.

A beam of white leaped out across the room and played full upon
the coffee-table in the center.

Prepared as I was for something horrible, I know that I paled at sight
of the thing that was running round the edge of the envelope.

It was an insect, full six inches long, and of a vivid, venomous, red color!
It had something of the appearance of a great ant, with its long, quivering
antennae and its febrile, horrible vitality; but it was proportionately
longer of body and smaller of head, and had numberless rapidly moving legs.
In short, it was a giant centipede, apparently of the scolopendra group,
but of a form quite new to me.

These things I realized in one breathless instant; in the next--
Smith had dashed the thing's poisonous life out with one straight,
true blow of the golf club!

I leaped to the window and threw it widely open, feeling a silk
thread brush my hand as I did so.  A black shape was dropping,
with incredible agility from branch to branch of the ivy,
and, without once offering a mark for a revolver-shot, it
merged into the shadows beneath the trees of the garden.
As I turned and switched on the light Nayland Smith dropped
limply into a chair, leaning his head upon his hands.
Even that grim courage had been tried sorely.

"Never mind the dacoit, Petrie," he said.  "Nemesis will know where
to find him.  We know now what causes the mark of the Zayat Kiss.
Therefore science is richer for our first brush with the enemy,
and the enemy is poorer--unless he has any more unclassified centipedes.
I understand now something that has been puzzling me since I heard of it--
Sir Crichton's stifled cry.  When we remember that he was almost past speech,
it is reasonable to suppose that his cry was not `The red hand!'
but `The red ANT!'  Petrie, to think that I failed, by less than an hour,
to save him from such an end!"



CHAPTER IV


"THE body of a lascar, dressed in the manner usual on the P. & O. boats,
was recovered from the Thames off Tilbury by the river police at six
A.M. this morning.  It is supposed that the man met with an accident
in leaving his ship."

Nayland Smith passed me the evening paper and pointed to the above paragraph.

"For `lascar' read `dacoit,'" he said.  "Our visitor, who came by way
of the ivy, fortunately for us, failed to follow his instructions.
Also, he lost the centipede and left a clew behind him.
Dr. Fu-Manchu does not overlook such lapses."

It was a sidelight upon the character of the awful being with whom we
had to deal.  My very soul recoiled from bare consideration of the fate
that would be ours if ever we fell into his hands.

The telephone bell rang.  I went out and found that Inspector
Weymouth of New Scotland Yard had called us up.

"Will Mr. Nayland Smith please come to the Wapping River Police
Station at once," was the message.

Peaceful interludes were few enough throughout that wild pursuit.

"It is certainly something important," said my friend; "and, if
Fu-Manchu is at the bottom of it--as we must presume him to be--
probably something ghastly."

A brief survey of the time-tables showed us that there were no trains
to serve our haste.  We accordingly chartered a cab and proceeded east.

Smith, throughout the journey, talked entertainingly about his work in Burma.
Of intent, I think, he avoided any reference to the circumstances which first
had brought him in contact with the sinister genius of the Yellow Movement.
His talk was rather of the sunshine of the East than of its shadows.

But the drive concluded--and all too soon.  In a silence which neither
of us seemed disposed to break, we entered the police depot, and followed
an officer who received us into the room where Weymouth waited.

The inspector greeted us briefly, nodding toward the table.

"Poor Cadby, the most promising lad at the Yard," he said;
and his usually gruff voice had softened strangely.

Smith struck his right fist into the palm of his left hand and swore
under his breath, striding up and down the neat little room.
No one spoke for a moment, and in the silence I could hear the whispering
of the Thames outside--of the Thames which had so many strange secrets
to tell, and now was burdened with another.

The body lay prone upon the deal table--this latest of the river's dead--
dressed in rough sailor garb, and, to all outward seeming, a seaman of
nondescript nationality--such as is no stranger in Wapping and Shadwell.
His dark, curly hair clung clammily about the brown forehead;
his skin was stained, they told me.  He wore a gold ring in one ear,
and three fingers of the left hand were missing.

"It was almost the same with Mason."  The river police inspector
was speaking.  "A week ago, on a Wednesday, he went off in his own
time on some funny business down St. George's way--and Thursday
night the ten-o'clock boat got the grapnel on him off Hanover Hole.
His first two fingers on the right hand were clean gone, and his left
hand was mutilated frightfully."

He paused and glanced at Smith.

"That lascar, too," he continued, "that you came down to see, sir;
you remember his hands?"

Smith nodded.

"He was not a lascar," he said shortly.  "He was a dacoit."

Silence fell again.

I turned to the array of objects lying on the table--those which
had been found in Cadby's clothing.  None of them were noteworthy,
except that which had been found thrust into the loose neck of his shirt.
This last it was which had led the police to send for Nayland Smith,
for it constituted the first clew which had come to light pointing
to the authors of these mysterious tragedies.

It was a Chinese pigtail.  That alone was sufficiently remarkable;
but it was rendered more so by the fact that the plaited queue
was a false one being attached to a most ingenious bald wig.

"You're sure it wasn't part of a Chinese make-up?" questioned Weymouth,
his eye on the strange relic.  "Cadby was clever at disguise."

Smith snatched the wig from my hands with a certain irritation,
and tried to fit it on the dead detective.

"Too small by inches!" he jerked.  "And look how it's padded in the crown.
This thing was made for a most abnormal head."

He threw it down, and fell to pacing the room again.

"Where did you find him--exactly?" he asked.

"Limehouse Reach--under Commercial Dock Pier--exactly an hour ago."

"And you last saw him at eight o'clock last night?"--to Weymouth.

"Eight to a quarter past."

"You think he has been dead nearly twenty-four hours, Petrie?"

"Roughly, twenty-four hours," I replied.

"Then, we know that he was on the track of the Fu-Manchu group,
that he followed up some clew which led him to the neighborhood
of old Ratcliff Highway, and that he died the same night.
You are sure that is where he was going?"

"Yes," said Weymouth; "He was jealous of giving anything away,
poor chap; it meant a big lift for him if he pulled the case off.
But he gave me to understand that he expected to spend last night
in that district.  He left the Yard about eight, as I've said,
to go to his rooms, and dress for the job."

"Did he keep any record of his cases?"

"Of course!  He was most particular.  Cadby was a man
with ambitions, sir!  You'll want to see his book.
Wait while I get his address; it's somewhere in Brixton."

He went to the telephone, and Inspector Ryman covered up the dead man's face.

Nayland Smith was palpably excited.

"He almost succeeded where we have failed, Petrie," he said.
"There is no doubt in my mind that he was hot on the track
of Fu-Manchu!  Poor Mason had probably blundered on the scent,
too, and he met with a similar fate.  Without other evidence,
the fact that they both died in the same way as the dacoit would
be conclusive, for we know that Fu-Manchu killed the dacoit!"

"What is the meaning of the mutilated hands, Smith?"

"God knows!  Cadby's death was from drowning, you say?"

"There are no other marks of violence."

"But he was a very strong swimmer, Doctor," interrupted Inspector Ryman.
"Why, he pulled off the quarter-mile championship at the Crystal Palace
last year!  Cadby wasn't a man easy to drown.  And as for Mason,
he was an R.N.R., and like a fish in the water!"

Smith shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"Let us hope that one day we shall know how they died,"
he said simply.

Weymouth returned from the telephone.

"The address is No.--Cold Harbor Lane," he reported.
"I shall not be able to come along, but you can't
miss it; it's close by the Brixton Police Station.
There's no family, fortunately; he was quite alone in the world.
His case-book isn't in the American desk, which you'll find in
his sitting-room; it's in the cupboard in the corner--top shelf.
Here are his keys, all intact.  I think this is the cupboard key."

Smith nodded.

"Come on, Petrie," he said.  "We haven't a second to waste."

Our cab was waiting, and in a few seconds we were speeding along Wapping
High Street.  We had gone no more than a few hundred yards, I think,
when Smith suddenly slapped his open hand down on his knee.

"That pigtail!" he cried.  "I have left it behind!
We must have it, Petrie!  Stop!  Stop!"

The cab was pulled up, and Smith alighted.

"Don't wait for me," he directed hurriedly.  "Here, take Weymouth's card.
Remember where he said the book was?  It's all we want.  Come straight
on to Scotland Yard and meet me there."

"But Smith," I protested, "a few minutes can make no difference!"

"Can't it!" he snapped.  "Do you suppose Fu-Manchu is going to leave
evidence like that lying about?  It's a thousand to one he has it already,
but there is just a bare chance."

It was a new aspect of the situation and one that afforded
no room for comment; and so lost in thought did I become
that the cab was outside the house for which I was bound ere
I realized that we had quitted the purlieus of Wapping.
Yet I had had leisure to review the whole troop of events which had
crowded my life since the return of Nayland Smith from Burma.
Mentally, I had looked again upon the dead Sir Crichton Davey,
and with Smith had waited in the dark for the dreadful thing
that had killed him.  Now, with those remorseless memories
jostling in my mind, I was entering the house of Fu-Manchu's
last victim, and the shadow of that giant evil seemed to be
upon it like a palpable cloud.

Cadby's old landlady greeted me with a queer mixture of fear
and embarrassment in her manner.

"I am Dr. Petrie," I said, "and I regret that I bring bad news
respecting Mr. Cadby."

"Oh, sir!" she cried.  "Don't tell me that anything has happened to him!"
And divining something of the mission on which I was come,
for such sad duty often falls to the lot of the medical man:
"Oh, the poor, brave lad!"

Indeed, I respected the dead man's memory more than ever from that hour,
since the sorrow of the worthy old soul was quite pathetic, and spoke
eloquently for the unhappy cause of it.

"There was a terrible wailing at the back of the house last night,
Doctor, and I heard it again to-night, a second before you knocked.
Poor lad!  It was the same when his mother died."

At the moment I paid little attention to her words, for such
beliefs are common, unfortunately; but when she was sufficiently
composed I went on to explain what I thought necessary.
And now the old lady's embarrassment took precedence of her sorrow,
and presently the truth came out:

"There's a--young lady--in his rooms, sir."

I started.  This might mean little or might mean much.

"She came and waited for him last night, Doctor--from ten until half-past--
and this morning again.  She came the third time about an hour ago,
and has been upstairs since."

"Do you know her, Mrs. Dolan?"

Mrs. Dolan grew embarrassed again.

"Well, Doctor," she said, wiping her eyes the while, "I DO.
And God knows he was a good lad, and I like a mother to him;
but she is not the girl I should have liked a son of mine
to take up with."

At any other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious.
Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps
it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit followers was watching the house,
to give warning of any stranger's approach!  Warning to whom?  It was unlikely
that I should forget the dark eyes of another of Fu-Manchu's servants.
Was that lure of men even now in the house, completing her evil work?

"I should never have allowed her in his rooms--" began Mrs. Dolan again.
Then there was an interruption.

A soft rustling reached my ears--intimately feminine.
The girl was stealing down!

I leaped out into the hall, and she turned and fled blindly before me--
back up the stairs!  Taking three steps at a time, I followed her,
bounded into the room above almost at her heels, and stood with my back
to the door.

She cowered against the desk by the window, a slim figure in a
clinging silk gown, which alone explained Mrs. Dolan's distrust.
The gaslight was turned very low, and her hat shadowed her face,
but could not hide its startling beauty, could not mar the brilliancy
of the skin, nor dim the wonderful eyes of this modern Delilah.
For it was she!

"So I came in time," I said grimly, and turned the key in the lock.

"Oh!" she panted at that, and stood facing me, leaning back
with her jewel-laden hands clutching the desk edge.

"Give me whatever you have removed from here," I said sternly,
"and then prepare to accompany me."

She took a step forward, her eyes wide with fear, her lips parted.

"I have taken nothing," she said.  Her breast was heaving tumultuously.
"Oh, let me go!  Please, let me go!"  And impulsively she threw
herself forward, pressing clasped hands against my shoulder and looking
up into my face with passionate, pleading eyes.

It is with some shame that I confess how her charm enveloped me like a
magic cloud.  Unfamiliar with the complex Oriental temperament, I had
laughed at Nayland Smith when he had spoken of this girl's infatuation.
"Love in the East," he had said, "is like the conjurer's mango-tree;
it is born, grows and flowers at the touch of a hand."
Now, in those pleading eyes I read confirmation of his words.
Her clothes or her hair exhaled a faint perfume.  Like all
Fu-Manchu's servants, she was perfectly chosen for her peculiar duties.
Her beauty was wholly intoxicating.

But I thrust her away.

"You have no claim to mercy," I said.  "Do not count upon any.
What have you taken from here?"

She grasped the lapels of my coat.

"I will tell you all I can--all I dare," she panted eagerly, fearfully.
"I should know how to deal with your friend, but with you I am lost!
If you could only understand you would not be so cruel."  Her slight accent
added charm to the musical voice.  "I am not free, as your English women are.
What I do I must do, for it is the will of my master, and I am only
a slave.  Ah, you are not a man if you can give me to the police.
You have no heart if you can forget that I tried to save you once."

I had feared that plea, for, in her own Oriental fashion, she certainly
had tried to save me from a deadly peril once--at the expense of my friend.
But I had feared the plea, for I did not know how to meet it.
How could I give her up, perhaps to stand her trial for murder?
And now I fell silent, and she saw why I was silent.

"I may deserve no mercy; I may be even as bad as you think;
but what have YOU to do with the police?
It is not your work to hound a woman to death.  Could you
ever look another woman in the eyes--one that you loved,
and know that she trusted you--if you had done such a thing?
Ah, I have no friend in all the world, or I should not be here.
Do not be my enemy, my judge, and make me worse than I am;
be my friend, and save me--from HIM." The tremulous
lips were close to mine, her breath fanned my cheek.
"Have mercy on me."

At that moment I honestly would have given half of my worldly
possessions to have been spared the decision which I knew I must
come to.  After all, what proof had I that she was a willing
accomplice of Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Furthermore, she was an Oriental,
and her code must necessarily be different from mine.
Irreconcilable as the thing may be with Western ideas, Nayland Smith
had really told me that he believed the girl to be a slave.
Then there remained that other reason why I loathed the idea
of becoming her captor.  It was almost tantamount to betrayal!
Must I soil my hands with such work?

Thus--I suppose--her seductive beauty argued against my sense of right.
The jeweled fingers grasped my shoulders nervously, and her slim body
quivered against mine as she watched me, with all her soul in her eyes,
in an abandonment of pleading despair.  Then I remembered the fate
of the man in whose room we stood.

"You lured Cadby to his death," I said, and shook her off.

"No, no!" she cried wildly, clutching at me.  "No, I swear by the holy name
I did not!  I did not!  I watched him, spied upon him--yes!  But, listen:
it was because he would not be warned that he met his death.
I could not save him!  Ah, I am not so bad as that.  I will tell you.
I have taken his notebook and torn out the last pages and burnt them.
Look!  in the grate.  The book was too big to steal away.
I came twice and could not find it.  There, will you let me go?"

"If you will tell me where and how to seize Dr. Fu-Manchu--yes."

Her hands dropped and she took a backward step.
A new terror was to be read in her face.

"I dare not!  I dare not!"

"Then you would--if you dared?"

She was watching me intently.

"Not if YOU would go to find him," she said.

And, with all that I thought her to be, the stern servant
of justice that I would have had myself, I felt the hot
blood leap to my cheek at all which the words implied.
She grasped my arm.

"Could you hide me from him if I came to you, and told you all I know?"

"The authorities--"

"Ah!"  Her expression changed.  "They can put me on the rack if they choose,
but never one word would I speak--never one little word."

She threw up her head scornfully.  Then the proud glance softened again.

"But I will speak for you."

Closer she came, and closer, until she could whisper in my ear.

"Hide me from your police, from HIM, from everybody,
and I will no longer be his slave."

My heart was beating with painful rapidity.  I had not counted on this
warring with a woman; moreover, it was harder than I could have dreamt of.
For some time I had been aware that by the charm of her personality
and the art of her pleading she had brought me down from my judgment seat--
had made it all but impossible for me to give her up to justice.
Now, I was disarmed--but in a quandary.  What should I do?
What COULD I do?  I turned away from her and walked to the hearth,
in which some paper ash lay and yet emitted a faint smell.

Not more than ten seconds elapsed, I am confident, from the time
that I stepped across the room until I glanced back.
But she had gone!

As I leapt to the door the key turned gently from the outside.

"Ma 'alesh!" came her soft whisper; "but I am afraid to
trust you--yet.  Be comforted, for there is one near who would
have killed you had I wished it.  Remember, I will come to you
whenever you will take me and hide me."

Light footsteps pattered down the stairs.  I heard a stifled
cry from Mrs. Dolan as the mysterious visitor ran past her.
The front door opened and closed.



CHAPTER V


"Shen-Yan's is a dope-shop in one of the burrows off the old Ratcliff Highway,"
said Inspector Weymouth.

"`Singapore Charlie's,' they call it.  It's a center for some of
the Chinese societies, I believe, but all sorts of opium-smokers
use it.  There have never been any complaints that I know of.
I don't understand this."

We stood in his room at New Scotland Yard, bending over a sheet
of foolscap upon which were arranged some burned fragments
from poor Cadby's grate, for so hurriedly had the girl done
her work that combustion had not been complete.

"What do we make of this?" said Smith.  "`. . .Hunchback. . .lascar
went up . . . unlike others . . . not return . . . till Shen-Yan'
(there is no doubt about the name, I think) `turned me out . . .
booming sound . . . lascar in . . . mortuary I could ident . . .
not for days, or suspici . . . Tuesday night in a different make
. . . snatch . . . pigtail . . .'"

"The pigtail again!" rapped Weymouth.

"She evidently burned the torn-out pages all together,"
continued Smith.  "They lay flat, and this was in the middle.
I see the hand of retributive justice in that, Inspector.  Now we
have a reference to a hunchback, and what follows amounts to this:
A lascar (amongst several other persons) went up somewhere--
presumably upstairs--at Shen-Yan's, and did not come down again.
Cadby, who was there disguised, noted a booming sound.
Later, he identified the lascar in some mortuary.
We have no means of fixing the date of this visit to Shen-Yan's,
but I feel inclined to put down the `lascar' as the dacoit
who was murdered by Fu-Manchu!  It is sheer supposition, however.
But that Cadby meant to pay another visit to the place in a
different `make-up' or disguise, is evident, and that the Tuesday
night proposed was last night is a reasonable deduction.
The reference to a pigtail is principally interesting because
of what was found on Cadby's body."

Inspector Weymouth nodded affirmatively, and Smith glanced at his watch.

"Exactly ten-twenty-three," he said.  "I will trouble you, Inspector,
for the freedom of your fancy wardrobe.  There is time to spend an hour
in the company of Shen-Yan's opium friends."

Weymouth raised his eyebrows.

"It might be risky.  What about an official visit?"

Nayland Smith laughed.

"Worse than useless!  By your own showing, the place is open to inspection.
No; guile against guile!  We are dealing with a Chinaman, with the incarnate
essence of Eastern subtlety, with the most stupendous genius that the modern
Orient has produced."

"I don't believe in disguises," said Weymouth, with a certain truculence.
"It's mostly played out, that game, and generally leads to failure.
Still, if you're determined, sir, there's an end of it.  Foster will make
your face up.  What disguise do you propose to adopt?"

"A sort of Dago seaman, I think; something like poor Cadby.
I can rely on my knowledge of the brutes, if I am sure
of my disguise."

"You are forgetting me, Smith," I said.

He turned to me quickly.

"Petrie," he replied, "it is MY business, unfortunately, but it
is no sort of hobby."

"You mean that you can no longer rely upon me?"
I said angrily.

Smith grasped my hand, and met my rather frigid stare with a look
of real concern on his gaunt, bronzed face.

"My dear old chap," he answered, "that was really unkind.
You know that I meant something totally different."

"It's all right, Smith;" I said, immediately ashamed of my choler, and wrung
his hand heartily.  "I can pretend to smoke opium as well as another.
I shall be going, too, Inspector."

As a result of this little passage of words, some twenty minutes
later two dangerous-looking seafaring ruffians entered a waiting cab,
accompanied by Inspector Weymouth, and were driven off into
the wilderness of London's night.  In this theatrical business
there was, to my mind, something ridiculous--almost childish--
and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim
tragedy lurked so near to farce.

The mere recollection that somewhere at our journey's end Fu-Manchu
awaited us was sufficient to sober my reflections--Fu-Manchu, who,
with all the powers represented by Nayland Smith pitted against him,
pursued his dark schemes triumphantly, and lurked in hiding within
this very area which was so sedulously patrolled--Fu-Manchu, whom
I had never seen, but whose name stood for horrors indefinable!
Perhaps I was destined to meet the terrible Chinese doctor to-night.

I ceased to pursue a train of thought which promised to lead to morbid depths,
and directed my attention to what Smith was saying.

"We will drop down from Wapping and reconnoiter, as you say the place
is close to the riverside.  Then you can put us ashore somewhere below.
Ryman can keep the launch close to the back of the premises, and your fellows
will be hanging about near the front, near enough to hear the whistle."

"Yes," assented Weymouth; "I've arranged for that.
If you are suspected, you shall give the alarm?"

"I don't know," said Smith thoughtfully.  "Even in that event
I might wait awhile."

"Don't wait too long," advised the Inspector.  "We shouldn't be
much wiser if your next appearance was on the end of a grapnel,
somewhere down Greenwich Reach, with half your fingers missing."

The cab pulled up outside the river police depot, and Smith and I
entered without delay, four shabby-looking fellows who had been
seated in the office springing up to salute the Inspector,
who followed us in.

"Guthrie and Lisle," he said briskly, "get along and find a dark corner
which commands the door of Singapore Charlie's off the old Highway.
You look the dirtiest of the troupe, Guthrie; you might drop asleep
on the pavement, and Lisle can argue with you about getting home.
Don't move till you hear the whistle inside or have my orders,
and note everybody that goes in and comes out.  You other two belong
to this division?"

The C.I.D. men having departed, the remaining pair saluted again.

"Well, you're on special duty to-night. You've been prompt,
but don't stick your chests out so much.  Do you know of a back
way to Shen-Yan's?"

The men looked at one another, and both shook their heads.

"There's an empty shop nearly opposite, sir," replied one of them.
"I know a broken window at the back where we could climb in.
Then we could get through to the front and watch from there."

"Good!" cried the Inspector.  "See you are not spotted, though; and if you
hear the whistle, don't mind doing a bit of damage, but be inside Shen-Yan's
like lightning.  Otherwise, wait for orders."

Inspector Ryman came in, glancing at the clock.

"Launch is waiting," he said.

"Right," replied Smith thoughtfully.  "I am half afraid, though, that the
recent alarms may have scared our quarry--your man, Mason, and then Cadby.
Against which we have that, so far as he is likely to know, there has
been no clew pointing to this opium den.  Remember, he thinks Cadby's
notes are destroyed."

"The whole business is an utter mystery to me," confessed Ryman.
"I'm told that there's some dangerous Chinese devil hiding
somewhere in London, and that you expect to find him at
Shen-Yan's. Supposing he uses that place, which is possible,
how do you know he's there to-night?"

"I don't," said Smith; "but it is the first clew we have had
pointing to one of his haunts, and time means precious lives
where Dr. Fu-Manchu is concerned."

"Who is he, sir, exactly, this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"

"I have only the vaguest idea, Inspector; but he is no ordinary criminal.
He is the greatest genius which the powers of evil have put on earth
for centuries.  He has the backing of a political group whose wealth is
enormous, and his mission in Europe is to PAVE THE WAY!  Do you follow me?
He is the advance-agent of a movement so epoch-making that not one Britisher,
and not one American, in fifty thousand has ever dreamed of it."

Ryman stared, but made no reply, and we went out,
passing down to the breakwater and boarding the waiting launch.
With her crew of three, the party numbered seven that swung
out into the Pool, and, clearing the pier, drew in again
and hugged the murky shore.

The night had been clear enough hitherto, but now came scudding rainbanks
to curtain the crescent moon, and anon to unveil her again and show
the muddy swirls about us.  The view was not extensive from the launch.
Sometimes a deepening of the near shadows would tell of a moored barge,
or lights high above our heads mark the deck of a large vessel.
In the floods of moonlight gaunt shapes towered above; in the ensuing
darkness only the oily glitter of the tide occupied the foreground
of the night-piece.

The Surrey shore was a broken wall of blackness, patched with
lights about which moved hazy suggestions of human activity.
The bank we were following offered a prospect even more gloomy--
a dense, dark mass, amid which, sometimes, mysterious half-tones
told of a dock gate, or sudden high lights leapt flaring
to the eye.

Then, out of the mystery ahead, a green light grew and crept down upon us.
A giant shape loomed up, and frowned crushingly upon the little craft.
A blaze of light, the jangle of a bell, and it was past.  We were dancing
in the wash of one of the Scotch steamers, and the murk had fallen again.

Discords of remote activity rose above the more intimate
throbbing of our screw, and we seemed a pigmy company
floating past the workshops of Brobdingnagian toilers.
The chill of the near water communicated itself to me, and I
felt the protection of my shabby garments inadequate against it.

Far over on the Surrey shore a blue light--vaporous, mysterious--
flicked translucent tongues against the night's curtain.
It was a weird, elusive flame, leaping, wavering, magically changing
from blue to a yellowed violet, rising, falling.

"Only a gasworks," came Smith's voice, and I knew that he, too, had been
watching those elfin fires.  "But it always reminds me of a Mexican
teocalli, and the altar of sacrifice."

The simile was apt, but gruesome.  I thought of Dr. Fu-Manchu
and the severed fingers, and could not repress a shudder.

"On your left, past the wooden pier!  Not where the lamp is--
beyond that; next to the dark, square building--Shen-Yan's."

It was Inspector Ryman speaking.

"Drop us somewhere handy, then," replied Smith, "and lie close in,
with your ears wide open.  We may have to run for it, so don't
go far away."

From the tone of his voice I knew that the night mystery of the Thames
had claimed at least one other victim.

"Dead slow," came Ryman's order.  "We'll put in to the Stone Stairs."



CHAPTER VI


A SEEMINGLY drunken voice was droning from a neighboring alleyway as Smith
lurched in hulking fashion to the door of a little shop above which,
crudely painted, were the words:


"SHEN-YAN, Barber."


I shuffled along behind him, and had time to note the box of studs,
German shaving tackle and rolls of twist which lay untidily in the window
ere Smith kicked the door open, clattered down three wooden steps,
and pulled himself up with a jerk, seizing my arm for support.

We stood in a bare and very dirty room, which could only
claim kinship with a civilized shaving-saloon by virtue of
the grimy towel thrown across the back of the solitary chair.
A Yiddish theatrical bill of some kind, illustrated, adorned one
of the walls, and another bill, in what may have been Chinese,
completed the decorations.  From behind a curtain heavily brocaded
with filth a little Chinaman appeared, dressed in a loose smock,
black trousers and thick-soled slippers, and, advancing,
shook his head vigorously.

"No shavee--no shavee," he chattered, simian fashion,
squinting from one to the other of us with his twinkling eyes.
"Too late!  Shuttee shop!"

"Don't you come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing
gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose.
"Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes.  Smokee pipe,
you yellow scum--savvy?"

My friend bent forward and glared into the other's eyes with a vindictiveness
that amazed me, unfamiliar as I was with this form of gentle persuasion.

"Kop 'old o' that," he said, and thrust a coin into the Chinaman's
yellow paw.  "Keep me waitin' an' I'll pull the dam' shop down, Charlie.
You can lay to it."

"No hab got pipee--" began the other.

Smith raised his fist, and Yan capitulated.

"Allee lightee," he said.  "Full up--no loom.  You come see."

He dived behind the dirty curtain, Smith and I following, and ran up
a dark stair.  The next moment I found myself in an atmosphere which
was literally poisonous.  It was all but unbreathable, being loaded
with opium fumes.  Never before had I experienced anything like it.
Every breath was an effort.  A tin oil-lamp on a box in the middle
of the floor dimly illuminated the horrible place, about the walls
of which ten or twelve bunks were ranged and all of them occupied.
Most of the occupants were lying motionless, but one or two were
squatting in their bunks noisily sucking at the little metal pipes.
These had not yet attained to the opium-smoker's Nirvana.

"No loom--samee tella you," said Shen-Yan, complacently testing
Smith's shilling with his yellow, decayed teeth.

Smith walked to a corner and dropped cross-legged, on the floor,
pulling me down with him.

"Two pipe quick," he said.  "Plenty room.  Two piecee pipe--
or plenty heap trouble."

A dreary voice from one of the bunks came:

"Give 'im a pipe, Charlie, curse yer!  an' stop 'is palaver."

Yan performed a curious little shrug, rather of the back than of
the shoulders, and shuffled to the box which bore the smoky lamp.
Holding a needle in the flame, he dipped it, when red-hot, into an old
cocoa tin, and withdrew it with a bead of opium adhering to the end.
Slowly roasting this over the lamp, he dropped it into the bowl
of the metal pipe which he held ready, where it burned with a
spirituous blue flame.

"Pass it over," said Smith huskily, and rose on his knees with the assumed
eagerness of a slave to the drug.

Yan handed him the pipe, which he promptly put to his lips,
and prepared another for me.

"Whatever you do, don't inhale any," came Smith's whispered injunction.

It was with a sense of nausea greater even than that occasioned by the
disgusting atmosphere of the den that I took the pipe and pretended to smoke.
Taking my cue from my friend, I allowed my head gradually to sink lower
and lower, until, within a few minutes, I sprawled sideways on the floor,
Smith lying close beside me.

"The ship's sinkin'," droned a voice from one of the bunks.
"Look at the rats."

Yan had noiselessly withdrawn, and I experienced a curious sense
of isolation from my fellows--from the whole of the Western world.
My throat was parched with the fumes, my head ached.
The vicious atmosphere seemed contaminating.  I was as one dropped--

Somewhere East of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
And there ain't no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst.

Smith began to whisper softly.

"We have carried it through successfully so far," he said.
"I don't know if you have observed it, but there is a stair
just behind you, half concealed by a ragged curtain.
We are near that, and well in the dark.  I have seen nothing
suspicious so far--or nothing much.  But if there was anything
going forward it would no doubt be delayed until we new arrivals
were well doped.  S-SH!"

He pressed my arm to emphasize the warning.  Through my half-closed eyes
I perceived a shadowy form near the curtain to which he had referred.
I lay like a log, but my muscles were tensed nervously.

The shadow materialized as the figure moved forward into the room
with a curiously lithe movement.

The smoky lamp in the middle of the place afforded
scant illumination, serving only to indicate sprawling shapes--
here an extended hand, brown or yellow, there a sketchy,
corpse-like face; whilst from all about rose obscene sighings
and murmurings in far-away voices--an uncanny, animal chorus.
It was like a glimpse of the Inferno seen by some Chinese Dante.
But so close to us stood the newcomer that I was able to make out a
ghastly parchment face, with small, oblique eyes, and a misshapen head
crowned with a coiled pigtail, surmounting a slight, hunched body.
There was something unnatural, inhuman, about that masklike face,
and something repulsive in the bent shape and the long,
yellow hands clasped one upon the other.

Fu-Manchu, from Smith's account, in no way resembled this crouching
apparition with the death's-head countenance and lithe movements;
but an instinct of some kind told me that we were on the right scent--
that this was one of the doctor's servants.  How I came to that conclusion,
I cannot explain; but with no doubt in my mind that this was a member
of the formidable murder group, I saw the yellow man creep nearer,
nearer, silently, bent and peering.

He was watching us.

Of another circumstance I became aware, and a disquieting circumstance.
There were fewer murmurings and sighings from the surrounding bunks.
The presence of the crouching figure had created a sudden semi-silence
in the den, which could only mean that some of the supposed opium-smokers
had merely feigned coma and the approach of coma.

Nayland Smith lay like a dead man, and trusting to the darkness,
I, too, lay prone and still, but watched the evil face bending
lower and lower, until it came within a few inches of my own.
I completely closed my eyes.

Delicate fingers touched my right eyelid.  Divining what was coming,
I rolled my eyes up, as the lid was adroitly lifted and lowered again.
The man moved away.

I had saved the situation!  And noting anew the hush about me--
a hush in which I fancied many pairs of ears listened--I was glad.
For just a moment I realized fully how, with the place watched back
and front, we yet were cut off, were in the hands of Far Easterns,
to some extent in the power of members of that most inscrutably
mysterious race, the Chinese.

"Good," whispered Smith at my side.  "I don't think I could have done it.
He took me on trust after that.  My God!  what an awful face.
Petrie, it's the hunchback of Cadby's notes.  Ah, I thought so.
Do you see that?"

I turned my eyes round as far as was possible.  A man had scrambled down
from one of the bunks and was following the bent figure across the room.

They passed around us quietly, the little yellow man leading, with his
curious, lithe gait, and the other, an impassive Chinaman, following.
The curtain was raised, and I heard footsteps receding on the stairs.

"Don't stir," whispered Smith.

An intense excitement was clearly upon him, and he communicated it to me.
Who was the occupant of the room above?

Footsteps on the stair, and the Chinaman reappeared, recrossed the floor,
and went out.  The little, bent man went over to another bunk, this time
leading up the stair one who looked like a lascar.

"Did you see his right hand?" whispered Smith.  "A dacoit!
They come here to report and to take orders.  Petrie, Dr. Fu-Manchu
is up there."

"What shall we do?"--softly.

"Wait.  Then we must try to rush the stairs.  It would be futile
to bring in the police first.  He is sure to have some other exit.
I will give the word while the little yellow devil is down here.
You are nearer and will have to go first, but if the hunchback follows,
I can then deal with him."

Our whispered colloquy was interrupted by the return of the dacoit,
who recrossed the room as the Chinaman had done, and immediately
took his departure.  A third man, whom Smith identified as a Malay,
ascended the mysterious stairs, descended, and went out; and a fourth,
whose nationality it was impossible to determine, followed.
Then, as the softly moving usher crossed to a bunk on the right
of the outer door--

"Up you go, Petrie," cried Smith, for further delay was dangerous
and further dissimulation useless.

I leaped to my feet.  Snatching my revolver from the pocket
of the rough jacket I wore, I bounded to the stair and went
blundering up in complete darkness.  A chorus of brutish cries
clamored from behind, with a muffled scream rising above them all.
But Nayland Smith was close behind as I raced along a covered gangway,
in a purer air, and at my heels when I crashed open a door at
the end and almost fell into the room beyond.

What I saw were merely a dirty table, with some odds and ends upon
it of which I was too excited to take note, an oil-lamp swung
by a brass chain above, and a man sitting behind the table.
But from the moment that my gaze rested upon the one who sat there,
I think if the place had been an Aladdin's palace I should have
had no eyes for any of its wonders.

He wore a plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that
of his smooth, hairless countenance.  His hands were large,
long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his
pointed chin upon their thinness.  He had a great, high brow,
crowned with sparse, neutral-colored hair.

Of his face, as it looked out at me over the dirty table,
I despair of writing convincingly.  It was that of an archangel
of evil, and it was wholly dominated by the most uncanny
eyes that ever reflected a human soul, for they were narrow
and long, very slightly oblique, and of a brilliant green.
But their unique horror lay in a certain filminess
(it made me think of the membrana nictitans in a bird)
which, obscuring them as I threw wide the door, seemed to lift
as I actually passed the threshold, revealing the eyes in all
their brilliant iridescence.

I know that I stopped dead, one foot within the room, for the
malignant force of the man was something surpassing my experience.
He was surprised by this sudden intrusion--yes, but no trace of fear
showed upon that wonderful face, only a sort of pitying contempt.
And, as I paused, he rose slowly to his feet, never removing his
gaze from mine.

"IT'S FU-MANCHU!" cried Smith over my shoulder, in a voice
that was almost a scream.  "IT'S FU-MANCHU!  Cover him!
Shoot him dead if--"

The conclusion of that sentence I never heard.

Dr. Fu-Manchu reached down beside the table, and the floor slipped
from under me.

One last glimpse I had of the fixed green eyes, and with a scream I was
unable to repress I dropped, dropped, dropped, and plunged into icy water,
which closed over my head.

Vaguely I had seen a spurt of flame, had heard another cry following
my own, a booming sound (the trap), the flat note of a police whistle.
But when I rose to the surface impenetrable darkness enveloped me;
I was spitting filthy, oily liquid from my mouth, and fighting down
the black terror that had me by the throat--terror of the darkness
about me, of the unknown depths beneath me, of the pit into which I
was cast amid stifling stenches and the lapping of tidal water.

"Smith!" I cried. . . . "Help!  Help!"

My voice seemed to beat back upon me, yet I was about
to cry out again, when, mustering all my presence of mind
and all my failing courage, I recognized that I had better
employment of my energies, and began to swim straight ahead,
desperately determined to face all the horrors of this place--
to die hard if die I must.

A drop of liquid fire fell through the darkness and hissed
into the water beside me!

I felt that, despite my resolution, I was going mad.

Another fiery drop--and another!

I touched a rotting wooden post and slimy timbers.
I had reached one bound of my watery prison.  More fire fell
from above, and the scream of hysteria quivered, unuttered,
in my throat.

Keeping myself afloat with increasing difficulty in my heavy garments,
I threw my head back and raised my eyes.

No more drops fell, and no more drops would fall; but it
was merely a question of time for the floor to collapse.
For it was beginning to emit a dull, red glow.

The room above me was in flames!

It was drops of burning oil from the lamp, finding passage through
the cracks in the crazy flooring, which had fallen about me--
for the death trap had reclosed, I suppose, mechanically.

My saturated garments were dragging me down, and now I could hear
the flames hungrily eating into the ancient rottenness overhead.
Shortly that cauldron would be loosed upon my head.  The glow of the
flames grew brighter . . . and showed me the half-rotten piles upholding
the building, showed me the tidal mark upon the slime-coated walls--
showed me that there was no escape!

By some subterranean duct the foul place was fed from the Thames.
By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass,
in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many another victim!

Rusty iron rungs were affixed to one of the walls communicating with a trap--
but the bottom three were missing!

Brighter and brighter grew the awesome light the light of what
should be my funeral pyre--reddening the oily water and adding
a new dread to the whispering, clammy horror of the pit.
But something it showed me . . . a projecting beam a few feet
above the water . . . and directly below the iron ladder!

"Merciful Heaven!" I breathed.  "Have I the strength?"

A desire for laughter claimed me with sudden, all but irresistible force.
I knew what it portended and fought it down--grimly, sternly.

My garments weighed upon me like a suit of mail; with my chest
aching dully, my veins throbbing to bursting, I forced tired
muscles to work, and, every stroke an agony, approached the beam.
Nearer I swam . . . nearer.  Its shadow fell black upon
the water, which now had all the seeming of a pool of blood.
Confused sounds--a remote uproar--came to my ears.
I was nearly spent. . .I was in the shadow of the beam!
If I could throw up one arm. . .

A shrill scream sounded far above me!

"Petrie!  Petrie!"  (That voice must be Smith's!)  "Don't touch the beam!
For God's sake DON'T TOUCH THE BEAM!  Keep afloat another few seconds
and I can get to you!"

Another few seconds!  Was that possible?

I managed to turn, to raise my throbbing head; and I saw the strangest
sight which that night yet had offered.

Nayland Smith stood upon the lowest iron rung . . . supported by the
hideous, crook-backed Chinaman, who stood upon the rung above!

"I can't reach him!"

It was as Smith hissed the words despairingly that I looked up--
and saw the Chinaman snatch at his coiled pigtail and pull it off!
With it came the wig to which it was attached; and the ghastly yellow mask,
deprived of its fastenings, fell from position!  "Here!  Here!  Be quick!
Oh!  be quick!  You can lower this to him!  Be quick!  Be quick!"

A cloud of hair came falling about the slim shoulders
as the speaker bent to pass this strange lifeline to Smith;
and I think it was my wonder at knowing her for the girl whom
that day I had surprised in Cadby's rooms which saved my life.

For I not only kept afloat, but kept my gaze upturned to that beautiful,
flushed face, and my eyes fixed upon hers--which were wild with fear
. . .for me!

Smith, by some contortion, got the false queue into my grasp,
and I, with the strength of desperation, by that means seized
hold upon the lowest rung.  With my friend's arm round me I
realized that exhaustion was even nearer than I had supposed.
My last distinct memory is of the bursting of the floor above
and the big burning joist hissing into the pool beneath us.
Its fiery passage, striated with light, disclosed two
sword blades, riveted, edges up along the top of the beam
which I had striven to reach.

"The severed fingers--" I said; and swooned.

How Smith got me through the trap I do not know--nor how we made our way
through the smoke and flames of the narrow passage it opened upon.
My next recollection is of sitting up, with my friend's arm supporting
me and Inspector Ryman holding a glass to my lips.

A bright glare dazzled my eyes.  A crowd surged about us,
and a clangor and shouting drew momentarily nearer.

"It's the engines coming," explained Smith, seeing my bewilderment.
"Shen-Yan's is in flames.  It was your shot, as you fell through the trap,
broke the oil-lamp."

"Is everybody out?"

"So far as we know."

"Fu-Manchu?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

"No one has seen him.  There was some door at the back--"

"Do you think he may--"

"No," he said tensely.  "Not until I see him lying dead before me
shall I believe it."

Then memory resumed its sway.  I struggled to my feet.

"Smith, where is she?" I cried.  "Where is she?"

"I don't know," he answered.

"She's given us the slip, Doctor," said Inspector Weymouth,
as a fire-engine came swinging round the corner of the narrow lane.
"So has Mr. Singapore Charlie--and, I'm afraid, somebody else.
We've got six or eight all-sorts, some awake and some asleep,
but I suppose we shall have to let 'em go again.
Mr. Smith tells me that the girl was disguised as a Chinaman.
I expect that's why she managed to slip away."

I recalled how I had been dragged from the pit by the false queue,
how the strange discovery which had brought death to poor Cadby
had brought life to me, and I seemed to remember, too, that Smith
had dropped it as he threw his arm about me on the ladder.
Her mask the girl might have retained, but her wig, I felt certain,
had been dropped into the water.

It was later that night, when the brigade still were playing
upon the blackened shell of what had been Shen-Yan's opium-shop,
and Smith and I were speeding away in a cab from the scene of God
knows how many crimes, that I had an idea.

"Smith," I said, "did you bring the pigtail with you that was
found on Cadby?"

"Yes.  I had hoped to meet the owner."

"Have you got it now?"

"No. I met the owner."

I thrust my hands deep into the pockets of the big pea-jacket
lent to me by Inspector Ryman, leaning back in my corner.

"We shall never really excel at this business," continued Nayland Smith.
"We are far too sentimental.  I knew what it meant to us, Petrie, what it
meant to the world, but I hadn't the heart.  I owed her your life--
I had to square the account."



CHAPTER VII


NIGHT fell on Redmoat.  I glanced from the window at
the nocturne in silver and green which lay beneath me.
To the west of the shrubbery, with its broken canopy of elms
and beyond the copper beech which marked the center of its mazes,
a gap offered a glimpse of the Waverney where it swept into a broad.
Faint bird-calls floated over the water.  These, with the whisper
of leaves, alone claimed the ear.

Ideal rural peace, and the music of an English summer evening;
but to my eyes, every shadow holding fantastic terrors;
to my ears, every sound a signal of dread.  For the deathful
hand of Fu-Manchu was stretched over Redmoat, at any hour
to loose strange, Oriental horrors upon its inmates.

"Well," said Nayland Smith, joining me at the window, "we had dared
to hope him dead, but we know now that he lives!"

The Rev. J. D. Eltham coughed nervously, and I turned, leaning my elbow
upon the table, and studied the play of expression upon the refined,
sensitive face of the clergyman.

"You think I acted rightly in sending for you, Mr. Smith?"

Nayland Smith smoked furiously.

"Mr. Eltham," he replied, "you see in me a man groping in the dark.
I am to-day no nearer to the conclusion of my mission than
upon the day when I left Mandalay.  You offer me a clew;
I am here.  Your affair, I believe, stands thus:
A series of attempted burglaries, or something of the kind,
has alarmed your household.  Yesterday, returning from London
with your daughter, you were both drugged in some way and,
occupying a compartment to yourselves, you both slept.
Your daughter awoke, and saw someone else in the carriage--
a yellow-faced man who held a case of instruments in his hands."

"Yes; I was, of course, unable to enter into particulars over the telephone.
The man was standing by one of the windows.  Directly he observed that my
daughter was awake, he stepped towards her."

"What did he do with the case in his hands?"

"She did not notice--or did not mention having noticed.
In fact, as was natural, she was so frightened that she recalls
nothing more, beyond the fact that she strove to arouse me,
without succeeding, felt hands grasp her shoulders--and swooned."

"But someone used the emergency cord, and stopped the train."

"Greba has no recollection of having done so."

"Hm!  Of course, no yellow-faced man was on the train.
When did you awake?"

"I was aroused by the guard, but only when he had repeatedly shaken me."

"Upon reaching Great Yarmouth you immediately called up Scotland Yard?
You acted very wisely, sir.  How long were you in China?"

Mr. Eltham's start of surprise was almost comical.

"It is perhaps not strange that you should be aware of my residence in China,
Mr. Smith," he said; "but my not having mentioned it may seem so.
The fact is"--his sensitive face flushed in palpable embarrassment--
"I left China under what I may term an episcopal cloud.
I have lived in retirement ever since.  Unwittingly--I solemnly
declare to you, Mr. Smith, unwittingly--I stirred up certain
deep-seated prejudices in my endeavors to do my duty--my duty.
I think you asked me how long I was in China?  I was there from 1896
until 1900--four years."

"I recall the circumstances, Mr. Eltham," said Smith, with an odd
note in his voice.  "I have been endeavoring to think where I
had come across the name, and a moment ago I remembered.
I am happy to have met you, sir."

The clergyman blushed again like a girl, and slightly inclined his head,
with its scanty fair hair.

"Has Redmoat, as its name implies, a moat round it?  I was unable to see
in the dusk."  

"It remains.  Redmoat--a corruption of Round Moat--was formerly a
priory, disestablished by the eighth Henry in 1536." His pedantic
manner was quaint at times. "But the moat is no longer flooded. In
fact, we grow cabbages in part of it. If you refer to the strategic
strength of the place"--he smiled, but his manner was embarrassed
again--"it is considerable. I have barbed wire fencing, and--other
arrangements. You see, it is a lonely spot," he added apologetically.
"And now, if you will excuse me, we will resume these gruesome
inquiries after the more pleasant affairs of dinner."

He left us.

"Who is our host?" I asked, as the door closed.

Smith smiled.

"You are wondering what caused the `episcopal cloud?'" he suggested.
"Well, the deep-seated prejudices which our reverend friend stirred up
culminated in the Boxer Risings."

"Good heavens, Smith!" I said; for I could not reconcile the diffident
personality of the clergyman with the memories which those words awakened.

"He evidently should be on our danger list," my friend continued quickly;
"but he has so completely effaced himself of recent years that I think it
probable that someone else has only just recalled his existence to mind.
The Rev. J. D. Eltham, my dear Petrie, though he may be a poor hand
at saving souls, at any rate, has saved a score of Christian women
from death--and worse."

"J. D. Eltham--" I began.

"Is `Parson Dan'!" rapped Smith, "the `Fighting Missionary,'
the man who with a garrison of a dozen cripples and a German
doctor held the hospital at Nan-Yang against two hundred Boxers.
That's who the Rev. J. D. Eltham is!  But what is he up to,
now, I have yet to find out.  He is keeping something back--
something which has made him an object of interest to Young China!"

During dinner the matters responsible for our presence there did not
hold priority in the conversation.  In fact, this, for the most part,
consisted in light talk of books and theaters.

Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
from the subject uppermost in our minds.

These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of
the circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown
issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.

So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party
at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful,
so almost grotesquely calm.  For I, within my very bones, felt it
to be the calm before the storm.  When, later, we men passed
to the library, we seemed to leave that atmosphere behind us.

"Redmoat," said the Rev. J. D. Eltham, "has latterly become the theater
of strange doings."

He stood on the hearth-rug. A shaded lamp upon the big table
and candles in ancient sconces upon the mantelpiece afforded
dim illumination.  Mr. Eltham's nephew, Vernon Denby,
lolled smoking on the window-seat, and I sat near to him.
Nayland Smith paced restlessly up and down the room.

"Some months ago, almost a year," continued the clergyman,
"a burglarious attempt was made upon the house.  There was an arrest,
and the man confessed that he had been tempted by my collection."
He waved his hand vaguely towards the several cabinets about
the shadowed room.

"It was shortly afterwards that I allowed my hobby for--
playing at forts to run away with me."  He smiled an apology.
"I virtually fortified Redmoat--against trespassers of any kind, I mean.
You have seen that the house stands upon a kind of large mound.
This is artificial, being the buried ruins of a Roman outwork;
a portion of the ancient castrum." Again he waved indicatively,
this time toward the window.

"When it was a priory it was completely isolated and defended
by its environing moat.  Today it is completely surrounded by
barbed-wire fencing.  Below this fence, on the east, is a narrow stream,
a tributary of the Waverney; on the north and west, the high road,
but nearly twenty feet below, the banks being perpendicular.
On the south is the remaining part of the moat--now my kitchen garden;
but from there up to the level of the house is nearly twenty feet again,
and the barbed wire must also be counted with.

"The entrance, as you know, is by the way of a kind of cutting.
There is a gate at the foot of the steps (they are some of the original
steps of the priory, Dr. Petrie), and another gate at the head."

He paused, and smiled around upon us boyishly.

"My secret defenses remain to be mentioned," he resumed;
and, opening a cupboard, he pointed to a row of batteries,
with a number of electric bells upon the wall behind.
"The more vulnerable spots are connected at night with these bells,"
he said triumphantly.  "Any attempt to scale the barbed wire
or to force either gate would set two or more of these ringing.
A stray cow raised one false alarm," he added, "and a careless
rook threw us into a perfect panic on another occasion."

He was so boyish--so nervously brisk and acutely sensitive--
that it was difficult to see in him the hero of the Nan-Yang hospital.
I could only suppose that he had treated the Boxers' raid in the same spirit
wherein he met would-be trespassers within the precincts of Redmoat.
It had been an escapade, of which he was afterwards ashamed, as, faintly,
he was ashamed of his "fortifications."  "But," rapped Smith, "it was not
the visit of the burglar which prompted these elaborate precautions."

Mr. Eltham coughed nervously.

"I am aware," he said, "that having invoked official aid, I must be
perfectly frank with you, Mr. Smith.  It was the burglar who was responsible
for my continuing the wire fence all round the grounds, but the electrical
contrivance followed, later, as a result of several disturbed nights.
My servants grew uneasy about someone who came, they said, after dusk.
No one could describe this nocturnal visitor, but certainly we found traces.
I must admit that.

"Then--I received what I may term a warning.  My position is a peculiar one--
a peculiar one.  My daughter, too, saw this prowling person,
over by the Roman castrum, and described him as a yellow man.
It was the incident in the train following closely upon this other, which led
me to speak to the police, little as I desired to--er--court publicity."

Nayland Smith walked to a window, and looked out across
the sloping lawn to where the shadows of the shrubbery lay.
A dog was howling dismally somewhere.

"Your defenses are not impregnable, after all, then?" he jerked.
"On our way up this evening Mr. Denby was telling us about the death
of his collie a few nights ago."

The clergyman's face clouded.

"That, certainly, was alarming," he confessed.

"I had been in London for a few days, and during my absence Vernon
came down, bringing the dog with him.  On the night of his arrival
it ran, barking, into the shrubbery yonder, and did not come out.
He went to look for it with a lantern, and found it lying among
the bushes, quite dead.  The poor creature had been dreadfully
beaten about the head."

"The gates were locked," Denby interrupted, "and no one could
have got out of the grounds without a ladder and someone
to assist him.  But there was so sign of a living thing about.
Edwards and I searched every corner."

"How long has that other dog taken to howling?" inquired Smith.

"Only since Rex's death," said Denby quickly.

"It is my mastiff," explained the clergyman, "and he is confined in the yard.
He is never allowed on this side of the house."

Nayland Smith wandered aimlessly about the library.

"I am sorry to have to press you, Mr. Eltham," he said,
"but what was the nature of the warning to which you referred,
and from whom did it come?"

Mr. Eltham hesitated for a long time.

"I have been so unfortunate," he said at last, "in my previous efforts,
that I feel assured of your hostile criticism when I tell you that I am
contemplating an immediate return to Ho-Nan!"

Smith jumped round upon him as though moved by a spring.

"Then you are going back to Nan-Yang?" he cried.
"Now I understand!  Why have you not told me before?
That is the key for which I have vainly been seeking.
Your troubles date from the time of your decision to return?"

"Yes, I must admit it," confessed the clergyman diffidently.

"And your warning came from China?"

"It did."

"From a Chinaman?"

"From the Mandarin, Yen-Sun-Yat."

"Yen-Sun-Yat!  My good sir!  He warned you to abandon your visit?
And you reject his advice?  Listen to me."  Smith was intensely
excited now, his eyes bright, his lean figure curiously strung up, alert.
"The Mandarin Yen-Sun-Yat is one of the seven!"

"I do not follow you, Mr. Smith."

"No, sir.  China to-day is not the China of '98.  It is a huge secret machine,
and Ho-Nan one of its most important wheels!  But if, as I understand,
this official is a friend of yours, believe me, he has saved your life!
You would be a dead man now if it were not for your friend in China!
My dear sir, you must accept his counsel."

Then, for the first time since I had made his acquaintance, "Parson Dan"
showed through the surface of the Rev. J. D. Eltham.

"No, sir!" replied the clergyman--and the change in his voice was startling.
"I am called to Nan-Yang. Only One may deter my going."

The admixture of deep spiritual reverence with intense truculence
in his voice was dissimilar from anything I ever had heard.

"Then only One can protect you," cried Smith, "for, by Heaven,
no MAN will be able to do so!  Your presence in Ho-Nan
can do no possible good at present.  It must do harm.
Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory."

"Hard words, Mr. Smith."

"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious
to international peace.  At the present moment, Ho-Nan is
a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.
I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses
to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit
to the interior of China!"

"You insist, Mr. Smith?"

"As your guest, I regret the necessity
for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it."

Denby fidgeted uneasily.  The tone of the conversation was growing harsh
and the atmosphere of the library portentous with brewing storms.

There was a short, silent interval.

"This is what I had feared and expected," said the clergyman.
"This was my reason for not seeking official protection."

"The phantom Yellow Peril," said Nayland Smith, "to-day materializes
under the very eyes of the Western world."

"The `Yellow Peril'!"

"You scoff, sir, and so do others.  We take the proffered right
hand of friendship nor inquire if the hidden left holds a knife!
The peace of the world is at stake, Mr. Eltham.  Unknowingly, you tamper
with tremendous issues."

Mr. Eltham drew a deep breath, thrusting both hands in his pockets.

"You are painfully frank, Mr. Smith," he said; "but I like you for it.
I will reconsider my position and talk this matter over again
with you to-morrow."

Thus, then, the storm blew over.  Yet I had never
experienced such an overwhelming sense of imminent peril--
of a sinister presence--as oppressed me at that moment.
The very atmosphere of Redmoat was impregnated with
Eastern devilry; it loaded the air like some evil perfume.
And then, through the silence, cut a throbbing scream--
the scream of a woman in direst fear.

"My God, it's Greba!" whispered Mr. Eltham.



CHAPTER VIII


IN what order we dashed down to the drawing-room I cannot recall.
But none was before me when I leaped over the threshold and saw Miss
Eltham prone by the French windows.

These were closed and bolted, and she lay with hands
outstretched in the alcove which they formed.  I bent over her.
Nayland Smith was at my elbow.

"Get my bag" I said.  "She has swooned.  It is nothing serious."

Her father, pale and wide-eyed, hovered about me, muttering incoherently;
but I managed to reassure him; and his gratitude when, I having administered
a simple restorative, the girl sighed shudderingly and opened her eyes,
was quite pathetic.

I would permit no questioning at that time, and on her father's
arm she retired to her own rooms.

It was some fifteen minutes later that her message was brought to me.
I followed the maid to a quaint little octagonal apartment, and Greba
Eltham stood before me, the candlelight caressing the soft curves
of her face and gleaming in the meshes of her rich brown hair.

When she had answered my first question she hesitated in pretty confusion.

"We are anxious to know what alarmed you, Miss Eltham."

She bit her lip and glanced with apprehension towards the window.

"I am almost afraid to tell father," she began rapidly.
"He will think me imaginative, but you have been so kind.
It was two green eyes!  Oh!  Dr. Petrie, they looked up at me
from the steps leading to the lawn.  And they shone like the eyes
of a cat."

The words thrilled me strangely.

"Are you sure it was not a cat, Miss Eltham?"

"The eyes were too large, Dr. Petrie.  There was
something dreadful, most dreadful, in their appearance.
I feel foolish and silly for having fainted, twice in two days!
But the suspense is telling upon me, I suppose.
Father thinks"--she was becoming charmingly confidential,
as a woman often will with a tactful physician--"that
shut up here we are safe from--whatever threatens us."
I noted, with concern, a repetition of the nervous shudder.
"But since our return someone else has been in Redmoat!"

"Whatever do you mean, Miss Eltham?"

"Oh!  I don't quite know what I do mean, Dr. Petrie.
What does it ALL mean?  Vernon has been explaining to me
that some awful Chinaman is seeking the life of Mr. Nayland Smith.
But if the same man wants to kill my father, why has
he not done so?"

"I am afraid you puzzle me."

"Of course, I must do so.  But--the man in the train.
He could have killed us both quite easily!  And--last night
someone was in father's room."

"In his room!"

"I could not sleep, and I heard something moving.
My room is the next one.  I knocked on the wall and woke father.
There was nothing; so I said it was the howling of the dog
that had frightened me."

"How could anyone get into his room?"

"I cannot imagine.  But I am not sure it was a man."

"Miss Eltham, you alarm me.  What do you suspect?"

"You must think me hysterical and silly, but whilst father and I have been
away from Redmoat perhaps the usual precautions have been neglected.
Is there any creature, any large creature, which could climb up the wall
to the window?  Do you know of anything with a long, thin body?"

For a moment I offered no reply, studying the girl's pretty face,
her eager, blue-gray eyes widely opened and fixed upon mine.
She was not of the neurotic type, with her clear complexion
and sun-kissed neck; her arms, healthily toned by exposure
to the country airs, were rounded and firm, and she had the agile
shape of a young Diana with none of the anaemic languor which breeds
morbid dreams.  She was frightened; yes, who would not have been?
But the mere idea of this thing which she believed to be in Redmoat,
without the apparition of the green eyes, must have prostrated
a victim of "nerves."

"Have you seen such a creature, Miss Eltham?"

She hesitated again, glancing down and pressing her finger-tips together.

"As father awoke and called out to know why I knocked,
I glanced from my window.  The moonlight threw half the lawn
into shadow, and just disappearing in this shadow was something--
something of a brown color, marked with sections!"

"What size and shape?"

"It moved so quickly I could form no idea of its shape;
but I saw quite six feet of it flash across the grass!"

"Did you hear anything?"

"A swishing sound in the shrubbery, then nothing more."

She met my eyes expectantly.  Her confidence in my powers of understanding
and sympathy was gratifying, though I knew that I but occupied the position
of a father-confessor.

"Have you any idea," I said, "how it came about that you awoke
in the train yesterday whilst your father did not?"

"We had coffee at a refreshment-room; it must have been drugged in some way.
I scarcely tasted mine, the flavor was so awful; but father is an old traveler
and drank the whole of his cupful!"

Mr. Eltham's voice called from below.

"Dr. Petrie," said the girl quickly, "what do you think they
want to do to him?"

"Ah!" I replied, "I wish I knew that."

"Will you think over what I have told you?  For I do assure you there
is something here in Redmoat--something that comes and goes in spite
of father's `fortifications'?  Caesar knows there is.  Listen to him.
He drags at his chain so that I wonder he does not break it."

As we passed downstairs the howling of the mastiff sounded eerily
through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain
as he threw the weight of his big body upon it.

I sat in Smith's room that night for some time, he pacing the floor
smoking and talking.

"Eltham has influential Chinese friends," he said;
"but they dare not have him in Nan-Yang at present.
He knows the country as he knows Norfolk; he would see things!

"His precautions here have baffled the enemy, I think.
The attempt in the train points to an anxiety to waste no opportunity.
But whilst Eltham was absent (he was getting his outfit in London,
by the way) they have been fixing some second string to their fiddle here.
In case no opportunity offered before he returned, they provided
for getting at him here!"

"But how, Smith?"

"That's the mystery.  But the dead dog in the shrubbery is significant."

"Do you think some emissary of Fu-Manchu is actually inside the moat?"

"It's impossible, Petrie.  You are thinking of secret passages,
and so forth.  There are none.  Eltham has measured up every
foot of the place.  There isn't a rathole left unaccounted for;
and as for a tunnel under the moat, the house stands on a solid
mass of Roman masonry, a former camp of Hadrian's time.
I have seen a very old plan of the Round Moat Priory as it
was called.  There is no entrance and no exit save by the steps.
So how was the dog killed?"

I knocked out my pipe on a bar of the grate.

"We are in the thick of it here," I said.

"We are always in the thick of it," replied Smith.  "Our danger is
no greater in Norfolk than in London.  But what do they want to do?
That man in the train with the case of instruments--WHAT instruments?
Then the apparition of the green eyes to-night. Can they have been
the eyes of Fu-Manchu?  Is some peculiarly unique outrage contemplated--
something calling for the presence of the master?"

"He may have to prevent Eltham's leaving England without killing him."

"Quite so.  He probably has instructions to be merciful.
But God help the victim of Chinese mercy!"

I went to my own room then.  But I did not even undress,
refilling my pipe and seating myself at the open window.
Having looked upon the awful Chinese doctor, the memory of
his face, with its filmed green eyes, could never leave me.
The idea that he might be near at that moment was a poor narcotic.

The howling and baying of the mastiff was almost continuous.

When all else in Redmoat was still the dog's mournful note yet rose on
the night with something menacing in it.  I sat looking out across the sloping
turf to where the shrubbery showed as a black island in a green sea.
The moon swam in a cloudless sky, and the air was warm and fragrant
with country scents.

It was in the shrubbery that Denby's collie had met his mysterious death--
that the thing seen by Miss Eltham had disappeared.  What uncanny secret
did it hold?

Caesar became silent.

As the stopping of a clock will sometimes awaken a sleeper, the abrupt
cessation of that distant howling, to which I had grown accustomed,
now recalled me from a world of gloomy imaginings.

I glanced at my watch in the moonlight.  It was twelve minutes past midnight.

As I replaced it the dog suddenly burst out afresh, but now in a tone
of sheer anger.  He was alternately howling and snarling in a way
that sounded new to me.  The crashes, as he leapt to the end
of his chain, shook the building in which he was confined.
It was as I stood up to lean from the window and commanded a view
of the corner of the house that he broke loose.

With a hoarse bay he took that decisive leap, and I
heard his heavy body fall against the wooden wall.
There followed a strange, guttural cry. . .and the growling
of the dog died away at the rear of the house.  He was out!
But that guttural note had not come from the throat of a dog.
Of what was he in pursuit?

At which point his mysterious quarry entered the shrubbery I do not know.
I only know that I saw absolutely nothing, until Caesar's lithe shape
was streaked across the lawn, and the great creature went crashing
into the undergrowth.

Then a faint sound above and to my right told me that I was not the only
spectator of the scene.  I leaned farther from the window.

"Is that you, Miss Eltham?" I asked.

"Oh, Dr. Petrie!" she said.  "I am so glad you are awake.
Can we do nothing to help?  Caesar will be killed."

"Did you see what he went after?"

"No," she called back, and drew her breath sharply.

For a strange figure went racing across the grass.
It was that of a man in a blue dressing-gown, who held
a lantern high before him, and a revolver in his right hand.
Coincident with my recognition of Mr. Eltham he leaped,
plunging into the shrubbery in the wake of the dog.

But the night held yet another surprise; for Nayland Smith's voice came:

"Come back!  Come back, Eltham!"

I ran out into the passage and downstairs.  The front door was open.
A terrible conflict waged in the shrubbery, between the mastiff and
something else.  Passing round to the lawn, I met Smith fully dressed.
He just had dropped from a first-floor window.

"The man is mad!" he snapped.  "Heaven knows what lurks there!
He should not have gone alone!"

Together we ran towards the dancing light of Eltham's lantern.
The sounds of conflict ceased suddenly.  Stumbling over
stumps and lashed by low-sweeping branches, we struggled
forward to where the clergyman knelt amongst the bushes.
He glanced up with tears in his eyes, as was revealed by
the dim light.

"Look!" he cried.

The body of the dog lay at his feet.

It was pitiable to think that the fearless brute should have met
his death in such a fashion, and when I bent and examined him I
was glad to find traces of life.

"Drag him out.  He is not dead," I said.

"And hurry," rapped Smith, peering about him right and left.

So we three hurried from that haunted place, dragging the dog with us.
We were not molested.  No sound disturbed the now perfect stillness.

By the lawn edge we came upon Denby, half dressed;
and almost immediately Edwards the gardener also appeared.
The white faces of the house servants showed at one window,
and Miss Eltham called to me from her room:

"Is he dead?"

"No," I replied; "only stunned."

We carried the dog round to the yard, and I examined his head.
It had been struck by some heavy blunt instrument, but the skull
was not broken.  It is hard to kill a mastiff.

"Will you attend to him, Doctor?" asked Eltham.
"We must see that the villain does not escape."

His face was grim and set.  This was a different man from the diffident
clergyman we knew:  this was "Parson Dan" again.

I accepted the care of the canine patient, and Eltham with
the others went off for more lights to search the shrubbery.
As I was washing a bad wound between the mastiff's ears,
Miss Eltham joined me.  It was the sound of her voice,
I think, rather than my more scientific ministration,
which recalled Caesar to life.  For, as she entered, his tail
wagged feebly, and a moment later he struggled to his feet--
one of which was injured.

Having provided for his immediate needs, I left him in
charge of his young mistress and joined the search party.
They had entered the shrubbery from four points and drawn blank.

"There is absolutely nothing there, and no one can possibly have left
the grounds," said Eltham amazedly.

We stood on the lawn looking at one another, Nayland Smith,
angry but thoughtful, tugging at the lobe of his left ear,
as was his habit in moments of perplexity.



CHAPTER IX


WITH the first coming of light, Eltham, Smith and I tested the electrical
contrivances from every point.  They were in perfect order.
It became more and more incomprehensible how anyone could have entered
and quitted Redmoat during the night.  The barbed-wire fencing was intact,
and bore no signs of having been tampered with.

Smith and I undertook an exhaustive examination of the shrubbery.

At the spot where we had found the dog, some five paces to the west
of the copper beech, the grass and weeds were trampled and the
surrounding laurels and rhododendrons bore evidence of a struggle,
but no human footprint could be found.

"The ground is dry," said Smith.  "We cannot expect much."

"In my opinion," I said, "someone tried to get at Caesar;
his presence is dangerous.  And in his rage he broke loose."

"I think so, too," agreed Smith.  "But why did this person make
for here?  And how, having mastered the dog, get out of Redmoat?
I am open to admit the possibility of someone's getting in during
the day whilst the gates are open, and hiding until dusk.
But how in the name of all that's wonderful does he GET OUT?
He must possess the attributes of a bird."

I thought of Greba Eltham's statements, reminding my friend
of her description of the thing which she had seen passing
into this strangely haunted shrubbery.

"That line of speculation soon takes us out of our depth, Petrie," he said.
"Let us stick to what we can understand, and that may help us
to a clearer idea of what, at present, is incomprehensible.
My view of the case to date stands thus:

"(1) Eltham, having rashly decided to return to the interior of China,
is warned by an official whose friendship he has won in some way
to stay in England.

"(2) I know this official for one of the Yellow group represented
in England by Dr. Fu-Manchu.

"(3) Several attempts, of which we know but little, to get at
Eltham are frustrated, presumably by his curious `defenses.'
An attempt in a train fails owing to Miss Eltham's distaste
for refreshment-room coffee.  An attempt here fails owing
to her insomnia.

"(4) During Eltham's absence from Redmoat certain preparations
are made for his return.  These lead to:

"(a) The death of Denby's collie;

"(b) The things heard and seen by Miss Eltham;

"(c) The things heard and seen by us all last night.

"So that the clearing up of my fourth point--id est, the discovery
of the nature of these preparations--becomes our immediate concern.
The prime object of these preparations, Petrie, was to enable someone
to gain access to Eltham's room.  The other events are incidental.
The dogs HAD to be got rid of, for instance; and there is no doubt
that Miss Eltham's wakefulness saved her father a second time."

"But from what?  For Heaven's sake, from what?"

Smith glanced about into the light-patched shadows.

"From a visit by someone--perhaps by Fu-Manchu himself," he said in a
hushed voice.  "The object of that visit I hope we may never learn;
for that would mean that it had been achieved."

"Smith," I said, "I do not altogether understand you; but do you
think he has some incredible creature hidden here somewhere?
It would be like him."

"I begin to suspect the most formidable creature in the known world
to be hidden here.  I believe Fu-Manchu is somewhere inside Redmoat!"

Our conversation was interrupted at this point by Denby,
who came to report that he had examined the moat, the roadside,
and the bank of the stream, but found no footprints or clew
of any kind.

"No one left the grounds of Redmoat last night, I think," he said.
And his voice had awe in it.

That day dragged slowly on.  A party of us scoured the neighborhood
for traces of strangers, examining every foot of the Roman ruin
hard by; but vainly.

"May not your presence here induce Fu-Manchu to abandon his plans?"
I asked Smith.

"I think not," he replied.  "You see, unless we can prevail upon him,
Eltham sails in a fortnight.  So the Doctor has no time to waste.
Furthermore, I have an idea that his arrangements are of such a character
that they MUST go forward.  He might turn aside, of course,
to assassinate me, if opportunity arose!  But we know, from experience,
that he permits nothing to interfere with his schemes."

There are few states, I suppose, which exact so severe a toll from one's
nervous system as the ANTICIPATION of calamity.

All anticipation is keener, be it of joy or pain, than the reality
whereof it is a mental forecast; but that inactive waiting at Redmoat,
for the blow which we knew full well to be pending exceeded in its
nerve taxation, anything I hitherto had experienced.

I felt as one bound upon an Aztec altar, with the priest's obsidian
knife raised above my breast!

Secret and malign forces throbbed about us; forces against which
we had no armor.  Dreadful as it was, I count it a mercy that
the climax was reached so quickly.  And it came suddenly enough;
for there in that quiet Norfolk home we found ourselves at hand
grips with one of the mysterious horrors which characterized
the operations of Dr. Fu-Manchu. It was upon us before we realized it.
There is no incidental music to the dramas of real life.

As we sat on the little terrace in the creeping twilight,
I remember thinking how the peace of the scene gave the lie
to my fears that we bordered upon tragic things.  Then Caesar,
who had been a docile patient all day, began howling again;
and I saw Greba Eltham shudder.

I caught Smith's eye, and was about to propose our retirement indoors,
when the party was broken up in more turbulent fashion.  I suppose it
was the presence of the girl which prompted Denby to the rash act,
a desire personally to distinguish himself.  But, as I recalled afterwards,
his gaze had rarely left the shrubbery since dusk, save to seek her face,
and now he leaped wildly to his feet, overturning his chair, and dashed
across the grass to the trees.

"Did you see it?" he yelled.  "Did you see it?"

He evidently carried a revolver.  For from the edge of the shrubbery
a shot sounded, and in the flash we saw Denby with the weapon raised.

"Greba, go in and fasten the windows," cried Eltham.
"Mr. Smith, will you enter the bushes from the west.
Dr. Petrie, east.  Edwards, Edwards--" And he was off across
the lawn with the nervous activity of a cat.

As I made off in an opposite direction I heard the gardener's
voice from the lower gate, and I saw Eltham's plan.
It was to surround the shrubbery.

Two more shots and two flashes from the dense heart of greenwood.
Then a loud cry--I thought, from Denby--and a second, muffled one.

Following--silence, only broken by the howling of the mastiff.

I sprinted through the rose garden, leaped heedlessly over a bed of geranium
and heliotrope, and plunged in among the bushes and under the elms.
Away on the left I heard Edwards shouting, and Eltham's answering voice.

"Denby!" I cried, and yet louder:  "Denby!"

But the silence fell again.

Dusk was upon Redmoat now, but from sitting in the twilight my eyes had
grown accustomed to gloom, and I could see fairly well what lay before me.
Not daring to think what might lurk above, below, around me, I pressed
on into the midst of the thicket.

"Vernon!" came Eltham's voice from one side.

"Bear more to the right, Edwards," I heard Nayland Smith cry
directly ahead of me.

With an eerie and indescribable sensation of impending disaster upon me,
I thrust my way through to a gray patch which marked a break in the
elmen roof.  At the foot of the copper beech I almost fell over Eltham.
Then Smith plunged into view.  Lastly, Edwards the gardener rounded a big
rhododendron and completed the party.

We stood quite still for a moment.

A faint breeze whispered through the beech leaves.

"Where is he?"

I cannot remember who put it into words; I was too dazed with amazement
to notice.  Then Eltham began shouting:

"Vernon!  Vernon!  VERNON!"

His voice pitched higher upon each repetition.  There was something
horrible about that vain calling, under the whispering beech,
with shrubs banked about us cloaking God alone could know what.

From the back of the house came Caesar's faint reply.

"Quick!  Lights!" rapped Smith.  "Every lamp you have!"

Off we went, dodging laurels and privets, and poured out on to the lawn,
a disordered company.  Eltham's face was deathly pale, and his jaw set hard.
He met my eye.

"God forgive me!" he said.  "I could do murder to-night!"

He was a man composed of strange perplexities.

It seemed an age before the lights were found.  But at last we returned
to the bushes, really after a very brief delay; and ten minutes
sufficed us to explore the entire shrubbery, for it was not extensive.
We found his revolver, but there was no one there--nothing.

When we all stood again on the lawn, I thought that I had never seen
Smith so haggard.

"What in Heaven's name can we do?" he muttered.
"What does it mean?"

He expected no answer; for there was none to offer one.

"Search!  Everywhere," said Eltham hoarsely.

He ran off into the rose garden, and began beating about among
the flowers like a madman, muttering:  "Vernon!  Vernon!"  For close
upon an hour we all searched.  We searched every square yard, I think,
within the wire fencing, and found no trace.  Miss Eltham slipped out
in the confusion, and joined with the rest of us in that frantic hunt.
Some of the servants assisted too.

It was a group terrified and awestricken which came together
again on the terrace.  One and then another would give up,
until only Eltham and Smith were missing.  Then they came back
together from examining the steps to the lower gate.

Eltham dropped on to a rustic seat, and sank his head in his hands.

Nayland Smith paced up and down like a newly caged animal,
snapping his teeth together and tugging at his ear.

Possessed by some sudden idea, or pressed to action by his
tumultuous thoughts, he snatched up a lantern and strode silently off
across the grass and to the shrubbery once more.  I followed him.
I think his idea was that he might surprise anyone who lurked there.
He surprised himself, and all of us.

For right at the margin he tripped and fell flat.
I ran to him.

He had fallen over the body of Denby, which lay there!

Denby had not been there a few moments before, and how he came
to be there now we dared not conjecture.  Mr. Eltham joined us,
uttered one short, dry sob, and dropped upon his knees.
Then we were carrying Denby back to the house, with the mastiff
howling a marche funebre.

We laid him on the grass where it sloped down from the terrace.
Nayland Smith's haggard face was terrible.  But the stark horror of
the thing inspired him to that, which conceived earlier, had saved Denby.
Twisting suddenly to Eltham, he roared in a voice audible beyond the river:

"Heavens!  we are fools!  LOOSE THE DOG!"

"But the dog--" I began.

Smith clapped his hand over my mouth.

"I know he's crippled," he whispered.  "But if anything human lurks there,
the dog will lead us to it.  If a MAN is there, he will fly!  Why did
we not think of it before.  Fools, fools!"  He raised his voice again.
"Keep him on leash, Edwards.  He will lead us."

The scheme succeeded.

Edwards barely had started on his errand when bells began ringing
inside the house.

"Wait!" snapped Eltham, and rushed indoors.

A moment later he was out again, his eyes gleaming madly.
"Above the moat," he panted.  And we were off en masse
round the edge of the trees.

It was dark above the moat; but not so dark as to prevent our
seeing a narrow ladder of thin bamboo joints and silken cord
hanging by two hooks from the top of the twelve-foot wire fence.
There was no sound.

"He's out!" screamed Eltham.  "Down the steps!"

We all ran our best and swiftest.  But Eltham outran us.  Like a fury
he tore at bolts and bars, and like a fury sprang out into the road.
Straight and white it showed to the acclivity by the Roman ruin.
But no living thing moved upon it.  The distant baying of the dog
was borne to our ears.

"Curse it!  he's crippled," hissed Smith.  "Without him,
as well pursue a shadow!"


A few hours later the shrubbery yielded up its secret, a simple one enough:
A big cask sunk in a pit, with a laurel shrub cunningly affixed
to its movable lid, which was further disguised with tufts of grass.
A slender bamboo-jointed rod lay near the fence.  It had a hook on the top,
and was evidently used for attaching the ladder.

"It was the end of this ladder which Miss Eltham saw," said Smith,
"as he trailed it behind him into the shrubbery when she interrupted
him in her fathers room.  He and whomever he had with him doubtless
slipped in during the daytime--whilst Eltham was absent in London--
bringing the prepared cask and all necessary implements with them.
They concealed themselves somewhere--probably in the shrubbery--
and during the night made the cache.  The excavated earth would be
disposed of on the flower-beds; the dummy bush they probably had ready.
You see, the problem of getting IN was never a big one.
But owing to the `defenses' it was impossible (whilst Eltham
was in residence at any rate) to get OUT after dark.
For Fu-Manchu's purposes, then, a working-base INSIDE
Redmoat was essential.  His servant--for he needed assistance--
must have been in hiding somewhere outside; Heaven knows where!
During the day they could come or go by the gates, as we
have already noted."

"You think it was the Doctor himself?"

"It seems possible.  Who else has eyes like the eyes Miss Eltham
saw from the window last night?"

Then remains to tell the nature of the outrage whereby Fu-Manchu had planned
to prevent Eltham's leaving England for China.  This we learned from Denby.
For Denby was not dead.

It was easy to divine that he had stumbled upon the fiendish
visitor at the very entrance to his burrow; had been stunned
(judging from the evidence, with a sand-bag), and dragged down into
the cache--to which he must have lain in such dangerous proximity
as to render detection of the dummy bush possible in removing him.
The quickest expedient, then, had been to draw him beneath.
When the search of the shrubbery was concluded, his body had been
borne to the edge of the bushes and laid where we found it.

Why his life had been spared, I cannot conjecture, but provision
had been made against his recovering consciousness and revealing
the secret of the shrubbery.  The ruse of releasing the mastiff alone
had terminated the visit of the unbidden guest within Redmoat.

Denby made a very slow recovery; and, even when convalescent,
consciously added not one fact to those we already had collated;
his memory had completely deserted him!

This, in my opinion, as in those of the several specialists consulted,
was due, not to the blow on the head, but to the presence,
slightly below and to the right of the first cervical curve of the spine,
of a minute puncture--undoubtedly caused by a hypodermic syringe.
Then, unconsciously, poor Denby furnished the last link in the chain;
for undoubtedly, by means of this operation, Fu-Manchu had designed
to efface from Eltham's mind his plans of return to Ho-Nan.

The nature of the fluid which could produce such mental symptoms
was a mystery--a mystery which defied Western science:
one of the many strange secrets of Dr. Fu-Manchu.



CHAPTER X


SINCE Nayland Smith's return from Burma I had rarely taken up a paper
without coming upon evidences of that seething which had cast up
Dr. Fu-Manchu. Whether, hitherto, such items had escaped my attention
or had seemed to demand no particular notice, or whether they now became
increasingly numerous, I was unable to determine.

One evening, some little time after our sojourn in Norfolk,
in glancing through a number of papers which I had brought in with me,
I chanced upon no fewer than four items of news bearing more or less
directly upon the grim business which engaged my friend and I.

No white man, I honestly believe, appreciates the unemotional cruelty
of the Chinese.  Throughout the time that Dr. Fu-Manchu remained in England,
the press preserved a uniform silence upon the subject of his existence.
This was due to Nayland Smith.  But, as a result, I feel assured
that my account of the Chinaman's deeds will, in many quarters,
meet with an incredulous reception.

I had been at work, earlier in the evening, upon the opening
chapters of this chronicle, and I had realized how difficult
it would be for my reader, amid secure and cozy surroundings,
to credit any human being with a callous villainy great enough
to conceive and to put into execution such a death pest
as that directed against Sir Crichton Davey.

One would expect God's worst man to shrink from employing--
against however vile an enemy--such an instrument as the Zayat Kiss.
So thinking, my eye was caught by the following:--


EXPRESS CORRESPONDENT

NEW YORK.

"Secret service men of the United States Government are searching
the South Sea Islands for a certain Hawaiian from the island
of Maui, who, it is believed, has been selling poisonous scorpions
to Chinese in Honolulu anxious to get rid of their children.

"Infanticide, by scorpion and otherwise, among the Chinese,
has increased so terribly that the authorities have started
a searching inquiry, which has led to the hunt for the scorpion
dealer of Maui.

"Practically all the babies that die mysteriously are unwanted girls,
and in nearly every case the parents promptly ascribe the death to the bite
of a scorpion, and are ready to produce some more or less poisonous insect
in support of the statement.

"The authorities have no doubt that infanticide by scorpion
bite is a growing practice, and orders have been given to hunt
down the scorpion dealer at any cost."


Is it any matter for wonder that such a people had produced a
Fu-Manchu?  I pasted the cutting into a scrap-book, determined that,
if I lived to publish my account of those days, I would quote it
therein as casting a sidelight upon Chinese character.

A Reuter message to The Globe and a paragraph in The
Star also furnished work for my scissors.  Here were evidences
of the deep-seated unrest, the secret turmoil, which manifested
itself so far from its center as peaceful England in the person
of the sinister Doctor.


"HONG KONG, Friday.

"Li Hon Hung, the Chinaman who fired at the Governor yesterday,
was charged before the magistrate with shooting at him with
intent to kill, which is equivalent to attempted murder.
The prisoner, who was not defended, pleaded guilty.
The Assistant Crown Solicitor, who prosecuted, asked for a remand
until Monday, which was granted.

"Snapshots taken by the spectators of the outrage yesterday disclosed
the presence of an accomplice, also armed with a revolver.
It is reported that this man, who was arrested last night,
was in possession of incriminating documentary evidence."


Later.

"Examination of the documents found on Li Hon Hung's accomplice
has disclosed the fact that both men were well financed by
the Canton Triad Society, the directors of which had enjoined
the assassination of Sir F. M. or Mr. C. S., the Colonial Secretary.
In a report prepared by the accomplice for dispatch to Canton,
also found on his person, he expressed regret that the attempt
had failed."--Reuter.

"It is officially reported in St. Petersburg that a force of Chinese soldiers
and villagers surrounded the house of a Russian subject named Said Effendi,
near Khotan, in Chinese Turkestan.

"They fired at the house and set it in flames.  There were in the house
about 100 Russians, many of whom were killed.

"The Russian Government has instructed its Minister at Peking to make
the most vigorous representations on the subject."--Reuter.


Finally, in a Personal Column, I found the following:--

"HO-NAN. Have abandoned visit.--ELTHAM."


I had just pasted it into my book when Nayland Smith came in and
threw himself into an arm-chair, facing me across the table.
I showed him the cutting.

"I am glad, for Eltham's sake--and for the girl's," was his comment.
"But it marks another victory for Fu-Manchu!  Just Heaven!  Why is
retribution delayed!"

Smith's darkly tanned face had grown leaner than ever since he had
begun his fight with the most uncanny opponent, I suppose, against
whom a man ever had pitted himself. He stood up and began restlessly
to pace the room, furiously stuffing tobacco into his briar.

"I have seen Sir Lionel Barton," he said abruptly; "and, to put the whole
thing in a nutshell, he has laughed at me!  During the months that I
have been wondering where he had gone to he has been somewhere in Egypt.
He certainly bears a charmed life, for on the evidence of his letter
to The Times he has seen things in Tibet which Fu-Manchu would
have the West blind to; in fact, I think he has found a new keyhole
to the gate of the Indian Empire!"

Long ago we had placed the name of Sir Lionel Barton upon the list of
those whose lives stood between Fu-Manchu and the attainment of his end.
Orientalist and explorer, the fearless traveler who first had penetrated
to Lhassa, who thrice, as a pilgrim, had entered forbidden Mecca,
he now had turned his attention again to Tibet--thereby signing
his own death-warrant.

"That he has reached England alive is a hopeful sign?" I suggested.

Smith shook his head, and lighted the blackened briar.

"England at present is the web," he replied.  "The spider will be waiting.
Petrie, I sometimes despair.  Sir Lionel is an impossible man to shepherd.
You ought to see his house at Finchley.  A low, squat place completely
hemmed in by trees.  Damp as a swamp; smells like a jungle.
Everything topsy-turvy. He only arrived to-day, and he is working and eating
(and sleeping I expect), in a study that looks like an earthquake at Sotheby's
auction-rooms. The rest of the house is half a menagerie and half a circus.
He has a Bedouin groom, a Chinese body-servant, and Heaven only knows
what other strange people!"

"Chinese!"

"Yes, I saw him; a squinting Cantonese he calls Kwee.  I don't like him.
Also, there is a secretary known as Strozza, who has an unpleasant face.
He is a fine linguist, I understand, and is engaged upon the Spanish
notes for Barton's forthcoming book on the Mayapan temples.
By the way, all Sir Lionel's baggage disappeared from the landing-stage--
including his Tibetan notes."

"Significant!"

"Of course.  But he argues that he has crossed Tibet from the Kuen-Lun
to the Himalayas without being assassinated, and therefore
that it is unlikely he will meet with that fate in London.
I left him dictating the book from memory, at the rate of about
two hundred words a minute."

"He is wasting no time."

"Wasting time!  In addition to the Yucatan book and the work on Tibet,
he has to read a paper at the Institute next week about some tomb he has
unearthed in Egypt.  As I came away, a van drove up from the docks
and a couple of fellows delivered a sarcophagus as big as a boat.
It is unique, according to Sir Lionel, and will go to the British Museum
after he has examined it.  The man crams six months' work into six weeks;
then he is off again."

"What do you propose to do?"

"What CAN I do?  I know that Fu-Manchu will make an attempt upon him.
I cannot doubt it.  Ugh!  that house gave me the shudders.
No sunlight, I'll swear, Petrie, can ever penetrate to the rooms,
and when I arrived this afternoon clouds of gnats floated like motes
wherever a stray beam filtered through the trees of the avenue.
There's a steamy smell about the place that is almost malarious,
and the whole of the west front is covered with a sort of
monkey-creeper, which he has imported at some time or other.
It has a close, exotic perfume that is quite in the picture.
I tell you, the place was made for murder."

"Have you taken any precautions?"

"I called at Scotland Yard and sent a man down to watch the house, but--"

He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"What is Sir Lionel like?"

"A madman, Petrie.  A tall, massive man, wearing a dirty
dressing-gown of neutral color; a man with untidy gray hair
and a bristling mustache, keen blue eyes, and a brown skin;
who wears a short beard or rarely shaves--I don't know which.
I left him striding about among the thousand and one curiosities
of that incredible room, picking his way through his antique
furniture, works of reference, manuscripts, mummies, spears,
pottery and what not--sometimes kicking a book from his course,
or stumbling over a stuffed crocodile or a Mexican mask--
alternately dictating and conversing.  Phew!"

For some time we were silent.

"Smith" I said, "we are making no headway in this business.
With all the forces arrayed against him, Fu-Manchu still eludes us,
still pursues his devilish, inscrutable way."

Nayland Smith nodded.

"And we don't know all," he said.  "We mark such and such a man
as one alive to the Yellow Peril, and we warn him--if we have time.
Perhaps he escapes; perhaps he does not.  But what do we know, Petrie,
of those others who may die every week by his murderous agency?
We cannot know EVERYONE who has read the riddle of China.
I never see a report of someone found drowned, of an apparent suicide,
of a sudden, though seemingly natural death, without wondering.
I tell you, Fu-Manchu is omnipresent; his tentacles embrace everything.
I said that Sir Lionel must bear a charmed life.  The fact that
WE are alive is a miracle."

He glanced at his watch.

"Nearly eleven," he said.  "But sleep seems a waste of time--
apart from its dangers."

We heard a bell ring.  A few moments later followed a knock
at the room door.

"Come in!" I cried.

A girl entered with a telegram addressed to Smith.
His jaw looked very square in the lamplight, and his eyes shone
like steel as he took it from her and opened the envelope.
He glanced at the form, stood up and passed it to me,
reaching for his hat, which lay upon my writing-table.

"God help us, Petrie!" he said.

This was the message:


"Sir Lionel Barton murdered.  Meet me at his house
at once.--WEYMOUTH, INSPECTOR."



CHAPTER XI


ALTHOUGH we avoided all unnecessary delay, it was close upon
midnight when our cab swung round into a darkly shadowed avenue,
at the farther end of which, as seen through a tunnel,
the moonlight glittered upon the windows of Rowan House,
Sir Lionel Barton's home.

Stepping out before the porch of the long, squat building, I saw
that it was banked in, as Smith had said, by trees and shrubs.
The facade showed mantled in the strange exotic creeper
which he had mentioned, and the air was pungent with an odor
of decaying vegetation, with which mingled the heavy perfume
of the little nocturnal red flowers which bloomed luxuriantly
upon the creeper.

The place looked a veritable wilderness, and when we were admitted
to the hall by Inspector Weymouth I saw that the interior was in keeping
with the exterior, for the hall was constructed from the model of some
apartment in an Assyrian temple, and the squat columns, the low seats,
the hangings, all were eloquent of neglect, being thickly dust-coated.
The musty smell, too, was almost as pronounced here as outside,
beneath the trees.

To a library, whose contents overflowed in many literary torrents
upon the floor, the detective conducted us.

"Good heavens!" I cried, "what's that?"

Something leaped from the top of the bookcase, ambled silently
across the littered carpet, and passed from the library like a
golden streak.  I stood looking after it with startled eyes.
Inspector Weymouth laughed dryly.

"It's a young puma, or a civet-cat, or something, Doctor," he said.
"This house is full of surprises--and mysteries."

His voice was not quite steady, I thought, and he carefully closed
the door ere proceeding further.

"Where is he?" asked Nayland Smith harshly.  "How was it done?"

Weymouth sat down and lighted a cigar which I offered him.

"I thought you would like to hear what led up to it--so far as we know--
before seeing him?"

Smith nodded.

"Well," continued the Inspector, "the man you arranged to send
down from the Yard got here all right and took up a post in the
road outside, where he could command a good view of the gates.
He saw and heard nothing, until going on for half-past ten,
when a young lady turned up and went in."

"A young lady?"

"Miss Edmonds, Sir Lionel's shorthand typist.  She had found,
after getting home, that her bag, with her purse in,
was missing, and she came back to see if she had left it here.
She gave the alarm.  My man heard the row from the road and came in.
Then he ran out and rang us up.  I immediately wired for you."

"He heard the row, you say.  What row?"

"Miss Edmonds went into violent hysterics!"

Smith was pacing the room now in tense excitement.

"Describe what he saw when he came in."

"He saw a negro footman--there isn't an Englishman in the house--
trying to pacify the girl out in the hall yonder, and a Malay
and another colored man beating their foreheads and howling.
There was no sense to be got out of any of them, so he started
to investigate for himself.  He had taken the bearings of the place
earlier in the evening, and from the light in a window on the ground
floor had located the study; so he set out to look for the door.
When he found it, it was locked from the inside."

"Well?"

"He went out and round to the window.  There's no blind, and from
the shrubbery you can see into the lumber-room known as the study.
He looked in, as apparently Miss Edmonds had done before him.
What he saw accounted for her hysterics."

Both Smith and I were hanging upon his words.

"All amongst the rubbish on the floor a big Egyptian mummy case was
lying on its side, and face downwards, with his arms thrown across it,
lay Sir Lionel Barton."

"My God!  Yes.  Go on."

"There was only a shaded reading-lamp alight, and it stood on a chair,
shining right down on him; it made a patch of light on the floor,
you understand."  The Inspector indicated its extent with his hands.
"Well, as the man smashed the glass and got the window open,
and was just climbing in, he saw something else, so he says."

He paused.

"What did he see?" demanded Smith shortly.

"A sort of GREEN MIST, sir.  He says it seemed to be alive.
It moved over the floor, about a foot from the ground, going away
from him and towards a curtain at the other end of the study."

Nayland Smith fixed his eyes upon the speaker.

"Where did he first see this green mist?"

"He says, Mr. Smith, that he thinks it came from the mummy case."

"Yes; go on."

"It is to his credit that he climbed into the room after
seeing a thing like that.  He did.  He turned the body over,
and Sir Lionel looked horrible.  He was quite dead.
Then Croxted--that's the man's name--went over to this curtain.
There was a glass door--shut.  He opened it, and it gave on
a conservatory--a place stacked from the tiled floor to the glass
roof with more rubbish.  It was dark inside, but enough light
came from the study--it's really a drawing-room, by the way--
as he'd turned all the lamps on, to give him another glimpse
of this green, crawling mist.  There are three steps to go down.
On the steps lay a dead Chinaman."

"A dead Chinaman!"

"A dead CHINAMAN."

"Doctor seen them?" rapped Smith.

"Yes; a local man.  He was out of his depth, I could see.
Contradicted himself three times.  But there's no need for
another opinion--until we get the coroner's."

"And Croxted?"

"Croxted was taken ill, Mr. Smith, and had to be sent home in a cab."

"What ails him?"

Detective-Inspector Weymouth raised his eyebrows and carefully
knocked the ash from his cigar.

"He held out until I came, gave me the story, and then fainted right away.
He said that something in the conservatory seemed to get him by the throat."

"Did he mean that literally?"

"I couldn't say.  We had to send the girl home, too, of course."

Nayland Smith was pulling thoughtfully at the lobe of his left ear.

"Got any theory?" he jerked.

Weymouth shrugged his shoulders.

"Not one that includes the green mist," he said.
"Shall we go in now?"

We crossed the Assyrian hall, where the members of that strange
household were gathered in a panic-stricken group.  They numbered four.
Two of them were negroes, and two Easterns of some kind.  I missed
the Chinaman, Kwee, of whom Smith had spoken, and the Italian secretary;
and from the way in which my friend peered about the shadows
of the hall I divined that he, too, wondered at their absence.
We entered Sir Lionel's study--an apartment which I despair of describing.

Nayland Smith's words, "an earthquake at Sotheby's auction-rooms,"
leaped to my mind at once; for the place was simply stacked
with curious litter--loot of Africa, Mexico and Persia.
In a clearing by the hearth a gas stove stood upon a packing-case,
and about it lay a number of utensils for camp cookery.
The odor of rotting vegetation, mingled with the insistent
perfume of the strange night-blooming flowers, was borne
in through the open window.

In the center of the floor, beside an overturned sarcophagus,
lay a figure in a neutral-colored dressing-gown, face downwards,
and arms thrust forward and over the side of the ancient
Egyptian mummy case.

My friend advanced and knelt beside the dead man.

"Good God!"

Smith sprang upright and turned with an extraordinary expression
to Inspector Weymouth.

"You do not know Sir Lionel Barton by sight?" he rapped.

"No," began Weymouth, "but--"

"This is not Sir Lionel.  This is Strozza, the secretary."

"What!" shouted Weymouth.

"Where is the other--the Chinaman--quick!" cried Smith.

"I have had him left where he was found--on the conservatory steps,"
said the Inspector.

Smith ran across the room to where, beyond the open door,
a glimpse might be obtained of stacked-up curiosities.
Holding back the curtain to allow more light to penetrate,
he bent forward over a crumpled-up figure which lay upon
the steps below.

"It is!" he cried aloud.  "It is Sir Lionel's servant, Kwee."

Weymouth and I looked at one another across the body of the Italian;
then our eyes turned together to where my friend, grim-faced, stood
over the dead Chinaman.  A breeze whispered through the leaves;
a great wave of exotic perfume swept from the open window towards
the curtained doorway.

It was a breath of the East--that stretched out a yellow hand to the West.
It was symbolic of the subtle, intangible power manifested in Dr. Fu-Manchu,
as Nayland Smith--lean, agile, bronzed with the suns of Burma, was symbolic
of the clean British efficiency which sought to combat the insidious enemy.

"One thing is evident," said Smith:  "no one in the house, Strozza excepted,
knew that Sir Lionel was absent."

"How do you arrive at that?" asked Weymouth.

"The servants, in the hall, are bewailing him as dead.
If they had seen him go out they would know that it must
be someone else who lies here."

"What about the Chinaman?"

"Since there is no other means of entrance to the conservatory save
through the study, Kwee must have hidden himself there at some time
when his master was absent from the room."

"Croxted found the communicating door closed.  What killed the Chinaman?"

"Both Miss Edmonds and Croxted found the study door locked from the inside.
What killed Strozza?" retorted Smith.

"You will have noted," continued the Inspector, "that the secretary is
wearing Sir Lionel's dressing-gown. It was seeing him in that, as she looked
in at the window, which led Miss Edmonds to mistake him for her employer--
and consequently to put us on the wrong scent."

"He wore it in order that anybody looking in at the window would
be sure to make that mistake," rapped Smith.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he came here for a felonious purpose.  See."  Smith stooped
and took up several tools from the litter on the floor.
"There lies the lid.  He came to open the sarcophagus.
It contained the mummy of some notable person who flourished
under Meneptah II; and Sir Lionel told me that a number of valuable
ornaments and jewels probably were secreted amongst the wrappings.
He proposed to open the thing and to submit the entire contents
to examination to-night. He evidently changed his mind--
fortunately for himself."

I ran my fingers through my hair in perplexity.

"Then what has become of the mummy?"

Nayland Smith laughed dryly.

"It has vanished in the form of a green vapor apparently," he said.
"Look at Strozza's face."

He turned the body over, and, used as I was to such spectacles,
the contorted features of the Italian filled me with horror, so--
suggestive were they of a death more than ordinarily violent.  I pulled aside
the dressing-gown and searched the body for marks, but failed to find any.
Nayland Smith crossed the room, and, assisted by the detective,
carried Kwee, the Chinaman, into the study and laid him fully in the light.
His puckered yellow face presented a sight even more awful than the other,
and his blue lips were drawn back, exposing both upper and lower teeth.
There were no marks of violence, but his limbs, like Strozza's, had been
tortured during his mortal struggles into unnatural postures.

The breeze was growing higher, and pungent odor-waves from
the damp shrubbery, bearing, too, the oppressive sweetness of
the creeping plant, swept constantly through the open window.
Inspector Weymouth carefully relighted his cigar.

"I'm with you this far, Mr. Smith," he said.  "Strozza, knowing Sir
Lionel to be absent, locked himself in here to rifle the mummy case,
for Croxted, entering by way of the window, found the key on the inside.
Strozza didn't know that the Chinaman was hidden in the conservatory--"

"And Kwee did not dare to show himself, because he too was there
for some mysterious reason of his own," interrupted Smith.

"Having got the lid off, something,--somebody--"

"Suppose we say the mummy?"

Weymouth laughed uneasily.

"Well, sir, something that vanished from a locked room without
opening the door or the window killed Strozza."

"And something which, having killed Strozza, next killed the Chinaman,
apparently without troubling to open the door behind which he lay concealed,"
Smith continued.  "For once in a way, Inspector, Dr. Fu-Manchu has employed
an ally which even his giant will was incapable entirely to subjugate.
What blind force--what terrific agent of death--had he confined
in that sarcophagus!"

"You think this is the work of Fu-Manchu?" I said.
"If you are correct, his power indeed is more than human."

Something in my voice, I suppose, brought Smith right about.
He surveyed me curiously.

"Can you doubt it?  The presence of a concealed Chinaman surely
is sufficient.  Kwee, I feel assured, was one of the murder group,
though probably he had only recently entered that mysterious service.
He is unarmed, or I should feel disposed to think that his part
was to assassinate Sir Lionel whilst, unsuspecting the presence of a
hidden enemy, he was at work here.  Strozza's opening the sarcophagus
clearly spoiled the scheme."

"And led to the death--"

"Of a servant of Fu-Manchu. Yes.  I am at a loss to account for that."

"Do you think that the sarcophagus entered into the scheme, Smith?"

My friend looked at me in evident perplexity.

"You mean that its arrival at the time when a creature of the Doctor--
Kwee--was concealed here, may have been a coincidence?"

I nodded; and Smith bent over the sarcophagus, curiously examining
the garish paintings with which it was decorated inside and out.
It lay sideways upon the floor, and seizing it by its edge,
he turned it over.

"Heavy," he muttered; "but Strozza must have capsized it as he fell.
He would not have laid it on its side to remove the lid.  Hallo!"

He bent farther forward, catching at a piece of twine,
and out of the mummy case pulled a rubber stopper or "cork."

"This was stuck in a hole level with the floor of the thing," he said.
"Ugh!  it has a disgusting smell."

I took it from his hands, and was about to examine it, when a loud
voice sounded outside in the hall.  The door was thrown open,
and a big man, who, despite the warmth of the weather,
wore a fur-lined overcoat, rushed impetuously into the room.

"Sir Lionel!" cried Smith eagerly.  "I warned you!
And see, you have had a very narrow escape."

Sir Lionel Barton glanced at what lay upon the floor,
then from Smith to myself, and from me to Inspector Weymouth.
He dropped into one of the few chairs unstacked with books.

"Mr. Smith," he said, with emotion, "what does this mean?
Tell me--quickly."

In brief terms Smith detailed the happenings of the night--
or so much as he knew of them.  Sir Lionel Barton listened,
sitting quite still the while--an unusual repose in a man
of such evidently tremendous nervous activity.

"He came for the jewels," he said slowly, when Smith was finished;
and his eyes turned to the body of the dead Italian.
"I was wrong to submit him to the temptation.  God knows what
Kwee was doing in hiding.  Perhaps he had come to murder me,
as you surmise, Mr. Smith, though I find it hard to believe.
But--I don't think this is the handiwork of your Chinese doctor."
He fixed his gaze upon the sarcophagus.

Smith stared at him in surprise.  "What do you mean, Sir Lionel?"

The famous traveler continued to look towards the sarcophagus
with something in his blue eyes that might have been dread.

"I received a wire from Professor Rembold to-night," he continued.
"You were correct in supposing that no one but Strozza knew
of my absence.  I dressed hurriedly and met the professor at
the Traveler's. He knew that I was to read a paper next week upon"--
again he looked toward the mummy case--"the tomb of Mekara;
and he knew that the sarcophagus had been brought, untouched, to England.
He begged me not to open it."

Nayland Smith was studying the speaker's face.

"What reason did he give for so extraordinary a request?" he asked.

Sir Lionel Barton hesitated.

"One," he replied at last, "which amused me--at the time.  I must inform
you that Mekara--whose tomb my agent had discovered during my absence
in Tibet, and to enter which I broke my return journey to Alexandria--
was a high priest and first prophet of Amen--under the Pharaoh of the Exodus;
in short, one of the magicians who contested in magic arts with Moses.
I thought the discovery unique, until Professor Rembold furnished me
with some curious particulars respecting the death of M. Page le Roi,
the French Egyptologist--particulars new to me."

We listened in growing surprise, scarcely knowing to what this tended.

"M. le Roi," continued Barton, "discovered, but kept secret,
the tomb of Amenti--another of this particular brotherhood.
It appears that he opened the mummy case on the spot--
these priests were of royal line, and are buried in the valley
of Biban-le-Moluk. His Fellah and Arab servants deserted him
for some reason--on seeing the mummy case--and he was found dead,
apparently strangled, beside it.  The matter was hushed up
by the Egyptian Government.  Rembold could not explain why.
But he begged of me not to open the sarcophagus of Mekara."

A silence fell.

The strange facts regarding the sudden death of Page le Roi,
which I now heard for the first time, had impressed me unpleasantly,
coming from a man of Sir Lionel Barton's experience and reputation.

"How long had it lain in the docks?" jerked Smith.

"For two days, I believe.  I am not a superstitious man, Mr. Smith,
but neither is Professor Rembold, and now that I know the facts
respecting Page le Roi, I can find it in my heart to thank God
that I did not see . . . whatever came out of that sarcophagus."

Nayland Smith stared him hard in the face.  "I am glad you
did not, Sir Lionel," he said; "for whatever the priest Mekara
has to do with the matter, by means of his sarcophagus,
Dr. Fu-Manchu has made his first attempt upon your life.
He has failed, but I hope you will accompany me from here to a hotel.
He will not fail twice."



CHAPTER XII


IT was the night following that of the double tragedy at Rowan House.
Nayland Smith, with Inspector Weymouth, was engaged in some mysterious inquiry
at the docks, and I had remained at home to resume my strange chronicle.
And--why should I not confess it?--my memories had frightened me.

I was arranging my notes respecting the case of Sir Lionel Barton.
They were hopelessly incomplete.  For instance, I had jotted down
the following queries:--(1) Did any true parallel exist between the death
of M. Page le Roi and the death of Kwee, the Chinaman, and of Strozza?
(2) What had become of the mummy of Mekara?  (3) How had the murderer
escaped from a locked room?  (4) What was the purpose of the rubber stopper?
(5) Why was Kwee hiding in the conservatory?  (6) Was the green mist
a mere subjective hallucination--a figment of Croxted's imagination--
or had he actually seen it?

Until these questions were satisfactorily answered, further progress
was impossible.  Nayland Smith frankly admitted that he was out of his depth.
"It looks, on the face of it, more like a case for the Psychical
Research people than for a plain Civil Servant, lately of Mandalay,"
he had said only that morning.

"Sir Lionel Barton really believes that supernatural agencies were
brought into operation by the opening of the high priest's coffin.
For my part, even if I believed the same, I should still maintain
that Dr. Fu-Manchu controlled those manifestations.  But reason
it out for yourself and see if we arrive at any common center.
Don't work so much upon the datum of the green mist, but keep
to the FACTS which are established."

I commenced to knock out my pipe in the ash-tray; then paused,
pipe in hand.  The house was quite still, for my landlady
and all the small household were out.

Above the noise of the passing tramcar I thought I had heard the hall
door open.  In the ensuing silence I sat and listened.

Not a sound.  Stay!  I slipped my hand into the table drawer,
took out my revolver, and stood up.

There WAS a sound.  Someone or something was creeping upstairs
in the dark!

Familiar with the ghastly media employed by the Chinaman, I was seized
with an impulse to leap to the door, shut and lock it.  But the rustling
sound proceeded, now, from immediately outside my partially opened door.
I had not the time to close it; knowing somewhat of the horrors
at the command of Fu-Manchu, I had not the courage to open it.
My heart leaping wildly, and my eyes upon that bar of darkness with its
gruesome potentialities, I waited--waited for whatever was to come.
Perhaps twelve seconds passed in silence.

"Who's there?" I cried.  "Answer, or I fire!"

"Ah!  no," came a soft voice, thrillingly musical.  "Put it down--
that pistol.  Quick!  I must speak to you."

The door was pushed open, and there entered a slim figure wrapped
in a hooded cloak.  My hand fell, and I stood, stricken to silence,
looking into the beautiful dark eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu's messenger--
if her own statement could be credited, slave.  On two occasions
this girl, whose association with the Doctor was one of the most
profound mysteries of the case, had risked--I cannot say what;
unnameable punishment, perhaps--to save me from death; in both cases
from a terrible death.  For what was she come now?

Her lips slightly parted, she stood, holding her cloak about her,
and watching me with great passionate eyes.

"How--" I began.

But she shook her head impatiently.

"HE has a duplicate key of the house door," was her amazing statement.
"I have never betrayed a secret of my master before, but you must arrange
to replace the lock."

She came forward and rested her slim hands confidingly upon my shoulders.
"I have come again to ask you to take me away from him," she said simply.

And she lifted her face to me.

Her words struck a chord in my heart which sang with strange music,
with music so barbaric that, frankly, I blushed to find it harmony.
Have I said that she was beautiful?  It can convey no faint
conception of her.  With her pure, fair skin, eyes like the velvet
darkness of the East, and red lips so tremulously near to mine,
she was the most seductively lovely creature I ever had looked upon.
In that electric moment my heart went out in sympathy to every man
who had bartered honor, country, all for a woman's kiss.

"I will see that you are placed under proper protection,"
I said firmly, but my voice was not quite my own.
"It is quite absurd to talk of slavery here in England.
You are a free agent, or you could not be here now.
Dr. Fu-Manchu cannot control your actions."

"Ah!" she cried, casting back her head scornfully, and releasing a cloud
of hair, through whose softness gleamed a jeweled head-dress. "No?
He cannot?  Do you know what it means to have been a slave?
Here, in your free England, do you know what it means--the razzia,
the desert journey, the whips of the drivers, the house of the dealer,
the shame.  Bah!"

How beautiful she was in her indignation!

"Slavery is put down, you imagine, perhaps?  You do not believe that
to-day--TO-DAY--twenty-five English sovereigns will buy a Galla girl,
who is brown, and"--whisper--"two hundred and fifty a Circassian,
who is white.  No, there is no slavery!  So!  Then what am I?"

She threw open her cloak, and it is a literal fact that I rubbed my eyes,
half believing that I dreamed.  For beneath, she was arrayed in gossamer
silk which more than indicated the perfect lines of her slim shape;
wore a jeweled girdle and barbaric ornaments; was a figure fit for the walled
gardens of Stamboul--a figure amazing, incomprehensible, in the prosaic
setting of my rooms.

"To-night I had no time to make myself an English miss,"
she said, wrapping her cloak quickly about her.
"You see me as I am."  Her garments exhaled a faint perfume,
and it reminded me of another meeting I had had with her.
I looked into the challenging eyes.

"Your request is but a pretense," I said.  "Why do you keep the secrets
of that man, when they mean death to so many?"

"Death!  I have seen my own sister die of fever in the desert--
seen her thrown like carrion into a hole in the sand.
I have seen men flogged until they prayed for death as a boon.
I have known the lash myself.  Death!  What does it matter?"

She shocked me inexpressibly.  Enveloped in her cloak again,
and with only her slight accent to betray her, it was dreadful
to hear such words from a girl who, save for her singular type
of beauty, might have been a cultured European.

"Prove, then, that you really wish to leave this man's service.
Tell me what killed Strozza and the Chinaman," I said.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I do not know that.  But if you will carry me off"--she clutched me
nervously--"so that I am helpless, lock me up so that I cannot escape,
beat me, if you like, I will tell you all I do know.  While he is
my master I will never betray him.  Tear me from him--by force,
do you understand, BY FORCE, and my lips will be sealed no longer.
Ah!  but you do not understand, with your `proper authorities'--
your police.  Police!  Ah, I have said enough."

A clock across the common began to strike.  The girl
started and laid her hands upon my shoulders again.
There were tears glittering among the curved black lashes.

"You do not understand," she whispered.  "Oh, will you
never understand and release me from him!  I must go.
Already I have remained too long.  Listen.  Go out without delay.
Remain out--at a hotel, where you will, but do not stay here."

"And Nayland Smith?"

"What is he to me, this Nayland Smith?  Ah, why will you not unseal my lips?
You are in danger--you hear me, in danger!  Go away from here to-night."

She dropped her hands and ran from the room.  In the open doorway she turned,
stamping her foot passionately.

"You have hands and arms," she cried, "and yet you let me go.
Be warned, then; fly from here--" She broke off with something
that sounded like a sob.

I made no move to stay her--this beautiful accomplice of the arch-murderer,
Fu-Manchu. I heard her light footsteps pattering down the stairs, I heard
her open and close the door--the door of which Dr. Fu-Manchu held the key.
Still I stood where she had parted from me, and was so standing when a key
grated in the lock and Nayland Smith came running up.

"Did you see her?" I began.

But his face showed that he had not done so, and rapidly I told
him of my strange visitor, of her words, of her warning.

"How can she have passed through London in that costume?"
I cried in bewilderment.  "Where can she have come from?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders and began to stuff broad-cut mixture
into the familiar cracked briar.

"She might have traveled in a car or in a cab," he said;
"and undoubtedly she came direct from the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
You should have detained her, Petrie.  It is the third time we
have had that woman in our power, the third time we have let
her go free."

"Smith," I replied, "I couldn't. She came of her own free will to give
me a warning.  She disarms me."

"Because you can see she is in love with you?" he suggested, and burst
into one of his rare laughs when the angry flush rose to my cheek.
"She is, Petrie why pretend to be blind to it?  You don't know
the Oriental mind as I do; but I quite understand the girl's position.
She fears the English authorities, but would submit to capture by you!
If you would only seize her by the hair, drag her to some cellar,
hurl her down and stand over her with a whip, she would tell you
everything she knows, and salve her strange Eastern conscience with
the reflection that speech was forced from her.  I am not joking;
it is so, I assure you.  And she would adore you for your savagery,
deeming you forceful and strong!"

"Smith," I said, "be serious.  You know what her warning meant before."

"I can guess what it means now," he rapped.  "Hallo!"

Someone was furiously ringing the bell.

"No one at home?" said my friend.  "I will go.  I think I know
what it is."

A few minutes later he returned, carrying a large square package.

"From Weymouth," he explained, "by district messenger.
I left him behind at the docks, and he arranged to forward any
evidence which subsequently he found.  This will be fragments
of the mummy."

"What!  You think the mummy was abstracted?"

"Yes, at the docks.  I am sure of it; and somebody else
was in the sarcophagus when it reached Rowan House.
A sarcophagus, I find, is practically airtight, so that the use
of the rubber stopper becomes evident--ventilation.  How this
person killed Strozza I have yet to learn."

"Also, how he escaped from a locked room.  And what about the green mist?"

Nayland Smith spread his hands in a characteristic gesture.

"The green mist, Petrie, can be explained in several ways.
Remember, we have only one man's word that it existed.
It is at best a confusing datum to which we must not attach
a factitious importance."

He threw the wrappings on the floor and tugged at a twine loop
in the lid of the square box, which now stood upon the table.
Suddenly the lid came away, bringing with it a lead lining,
such as is usual in tea-chests. This lining was partially attached
to one side of the box, so that the action of removing the lid
at once raised and tilted it.

Then happened a singular thing.

Out over the table billowed a sort of yellowish-green cloud--
an oily vapor--and an inspiration, it was nothing less,
born of a memory and of some words of my beautiful visitor,
came to me.

"RUN, SMITH!" I screamed.  "The door!  the door, for your life!
Fu-Manchu sent that box!"  I threw my arms round him.
As he bent forward the moving vapor rose almost to his nostrils.
I dragged him back and all but pitched him out on to the landing.
We entered my bedroom, and there, as I turned on the light,
I saw that Smith's tanned face was unusually drawn,
and touched with pallor.

"It is a poisonous gas!" I said hoarsely; "in many respects
identical with chlorine, but having unique properties which prove
it to be something else--God and Fu-Manchu, alone know what!
It is the fumes of chlorine that kill the men in the bleaching
powder works.  We have been blind--I particularly.  Don't you see?
There was no one in the sarcophagus, Smith, but there was enough
of that fearful stuff to have suffocated a regiment!"

Smith clenched his fists convulsively.

"My God!" he said, "how can I hope to deal with the author of such a scheme?
I see the whole plan.  He did not reckon on the mummy case being overturned,
and Kwee's part was to remove the plug with the aid of the string--after Sir
Lionel had been suffocated.  The gas, I take it, is heavier than air."

"Chlorine gas has a specific gravity of 2.470," I said;
"two and a half times heavier than air.  You can pour it from
jar to jar like a liquid--if you are wearing a chemist's mask.
In these respects this stuff appears to be similar; the points
of difference would not interest you.  The sarcophagus would
have emptied through the vent, and the gas have dispersed,
with no clew remaining--except the smell."

"I did smell it, Petrie, on the stopper, but, of course,
was unfamiliar with it.  You may remember that you were
prevented from doing so by the arrival of Sir Lionel?
The scent of those infernal flowers must partially have
drowned it, too.  Poor, misguided Strozza inhaled the stuff,
capsized the case in his fall, and all the gas--"

"Went pouring under the conservatory door, and down the steps, where Kwee
was crouching.  Croxted's breaking the window created sufficient draught
to disperse what little remained.  It will have settled on the floor now.
I will go and open both windows."

Nayland raised his haggard face.

"He evidently made more than was necessary to dispatch Sir Lionel Barton,"
he said; "and contemptuously--you note the attitude, Petrie?--
contemptuously devoted the surplus to me.  His contempt is justified.
I am a child striving to cope with a mental giant.  It is by no wit
of mine that Dr. Fu-Manchu scores a double failure."



CHAPTER XIII


I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger
things to which I awakened.  Since, out of a blank--a void--this vision
burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate it, without preamble.
It was thus:

I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable.
My veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness
was about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising
from my burning body.

This, I thought, was death.

Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin
and tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within.
Panting, but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.

Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold.
I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me
rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable.
I wondered why I could not see the windows.  The horrible idea
flashed to my mind that I was become blind!

Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily.
I became aware of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some
kind of incense.

Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away.
It grew steadily in brilliance.  It spread like a bluish-red stain--
like a liquid.  It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.

But this was not my room!  Nor was it any room known to me.

It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
kind of awe such as I never had known:  the awe of walled vastness.
Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound.  Its hugeness had
a distinct NOTE.

Tapestries covered the four walls.  There was no door visible.
These tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons;
and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the
increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its
glittering coils more closely with those of another.
The carpet was of such richness that I stood knee-deep in its pile.
And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they
seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design--stealthily.

At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table
with dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet.
It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms,
and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined,
with instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
litter quite indescribable, which overflowed on to the floor,
forming an amazing oasis in a dragon-haunted desert of carpet.
A lamp hung above this table, suspended by golden chains from
the ceiling--which was so lofty that, following the chains upward,
my gaze lost itself in the purple shadows above.

In a chair piled high with dragon-covered cushions a man sat
behind this table.  The light from the swinging lamp fell fully
upon one side of his face, as he leaned forward amid the jumble
of weird objects, and left the other side in purplish shadow.
From a plain brass bowl upon the corner of the huge table smoke
writhed aloft and at times partially obscured that dreadful face.

From the instant that my eyes were drawn to the table and to the man
who sat there, neither the incredible extent of the room, nor the nightmare
fashion of its mural decorations, could reclaim my attention.
I had eyes only for him.

For it was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

Something of the delirium which had seemed to fill my veins
with fire, to people the walls with dragons, and to plunge me
knee-deep in the carpet, left me.  Those dreadful, filmed green
eyes acted somewhat like a cold douche.  I knew, without removing
my gaze from the still face, that the walls no longer lived,
but were merely draped in exquisite Chinese dragon tapestry.
The rich carpet beneath my feet ceased to be as a jungle and became
a normal carpet--extraordinarily rich, but merely a carpet.
But the sense of vastness nevertheless remained, with the uncomfortable
knowledge that the things upon the table and overflowing about it
were all, or nearly all, of a fashion strange to me.

Then, and almost instantaneously, the comparative sanity which I had
temporarily experienced began to slip from me again; for the smoke
faintly penciled through the air--from the burning perfume on the table--
grew in volume, thickened, and wafted towards me in a cloud of gray horror.
It enveloped me, clammily.  Dimly, through its oily wreaths, I saw
the immobile yellow face of Fu-Manchu. And my stupefied brain acclaimed him
a sorcerer, against whom unwittingly we had pitted our poor human wits.
The green eyes showed filmy through the fog.  An intense pain shot
through my lower limbs, and, catching my breath, I looked down.
As I did so, the points of the red slippers which I dreamed that I wore
increased in length, curled sinuously upward, twined about my throat
and choked the breath from my body!

Came an interval, and then a dawning like consciousness;
but it was a false consciousness, since it brought with it the idea
that my head lay softly pillowed and that a woman's hand caressed
my throbbing forehead.  Confusedly, as though in the remote past,
I recalled a kiss--and the recollection thrilled me strangely.
Dreamily content I lay, and a voice stole to my ears:

"They are killing him!  they are killing him!  Oh!  do you not understand?"
In my dazed condition, I thought that it was I who had died, and that this
musical girl-voice was communicating to me the fact of my own dissolution.

But I was conscious of no interest in the matter.

For hours and hours, I thought, that soothing hand caressed me.
I never once raised my heavy lids, until there came a resounding
crash that seemed to set my very bones vibrating--a metallic,
jangling crash, as the fall of heavy chains.  I thought that, then,
I half opened my eyes, and that in the dimness I had a fleeting
glimpse of a figure clad in gossamer silk, with arms covered
with barbaric bangles and slim ankles surrounded by gold bands.
The girl was gone, even as I told myself that she was an houri,
and that I, though a Christian, had been consigned by some error
to the paradise of Mohammed.

Then--a complete blank.


My head throbbed madly; my brain seemed to be clogged--inert; and though
my first, feeble movement was followed by the rattle of a chain, some moments
more elapsed ere I realized that the chain was fastened to a steel collar--
that the steel collar was clasped about my neck.

I moaned weakly.

"Smith!" I muttered, "Where are you?  Smith!"

On to my knees I struggled, and the pain on the top of my skull grew
all but insupportable.  It was coming back to me now; how Nayland Smith
and I had started for the hotel to warn Graham Guthrie; how, as we
passed up the steps from the Embankment and into Essex Street,
we saw the big motor standing before the door of one of the offices.
I could recall coming up level with the car--a modern limousine;
but my mind retained no impression of our having passed it--
only a vague memory of a rush of footsteps--a blow.  Then, my vision
of the hall of dragons, and now this real awakening to a worse reality.

Groping in the darkness, my hands touched a body that lay close beside me.
My fingers sought and found the throat, sought and found the steel
collar about it.

"Smith," I groaned; and I shook the still form.  "Smith, old man--
speak to me!  Smith!"

Could he be dead?  Was this the end of his gallant fight with Dr. Fu-Manchu
and the murder group?  If so, what did the future hold for me--
what had I to face?

He stirred beneath my trembling hands.

"Thank God!"  I muttered, and I cannot deny that my joy was tainted
with selfishness.  For, waking in that impenetrable darkness, and yet obsessed
with the dream I had dreamed, I had known what fear meant, at the realization
that alone, chained, I must face the dreadful Chinese doctor in the flesh.
Smith began incoherent mutterings.

"Sand-bagged! . . . Look out, Petrie! . . . He has us at last! . . . 
Oh, Heavens!" . . .He struggled on to his knees, clutching at my hand.

"All right, old man," I said.  "We are both alive!
So let's be thankful."

A moment's silence, a groan, then:

"Petrie, I have dragged you into this.  God forgive me--"

"Dry up, Smith," I said slowly.  "I'm not a child.
There is no question of being dragged into the matter.
I'm here; and if I can be of any use, I'm glad I am here!"

He grasped my hand.

"There were two Chinese, in European clothes--lord, how my head throbs!--
in that office door.  They sand-bagged us, Petrie--think of it!--
in broad daylight, within hail of the Strand!  We were rushed
into the car--and it was all over, before--" His voice grew faint.
"God!  they gave me an awful knock!"

"Why have we been spared, Smith?  Do you think he is saving us for--"

"Don't, Petrie!  If you had been in China, if you had seen
what I have seen--"

Footsteps sounded on the flagged passage.  A blade of light crept
across the floor towards us.  My brain was growing clearer.
The place had a damp, earthen smell.  It was slimy--some noisome cellar.
A door was thrown open and a man entered, carrying a lantern.
Its light showed my surmise to be accurate, showed the
slime-coated walls of a dungeon some fifteen feet square--
shone upon the long yellow robe of the man who stood watching us,
upon the malignant, intellectual countenance.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu.

At last they were face to face--the head of the great Yellow Movement,
and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white race.
How can I paint the individual who now stood before us--
perhaps the greatest genius of modern times?

Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face
like Satan.  Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence.
Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent.  Together, chained to the wall,
two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security,
we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.

He came forward with an indescribable gait, cat-like yet awkward,
carrying his high shoulders almost hunched.  He placed the lantern
in a niche in the wall, never turning away the reptilian gaze
of those eyes which must haunt my dreams forever.  They possessed
a viridescence which hitherto I had supposed possible only in the eye
of the cat--and the film intermittently clouded their brightness--
but I can speak of them no more.

I had never supposed, prior to meeting Dr. Fu-Manchu, that so intense
a force of malignancy could radiate--from any human being.  He spoke.
His English was perfect, though at times his words were oddly chosen;
his delivery alternately was guttural and sibilant.

"Mr. Smith and Dr. Petrie, your interference with my plans has gone too far.
I have seriously turned my attention to you."

He displayed his teeth, small and evenly separated,
but discolored in a way that was familiar to me.
I studied his eyes with a new professional interest,
which even the extremity of our danger could not wholly banish.
Their greenness seemed to be of the iris; the pupil was
oddly contracted--a pin-point.

Smith leaned his back against the wall with assumed indifference.

"You have presumed," continued Fu-Manchu, "to meddle with a
world-change. Poor spiders--caught in the wheels of the inevitable!
You have linked my name with the futility of the Young China Movement--
the name of Fu-Manchu!  Mr. Smith, you are an incompetent meddler--
I despise you!  Dr. Petrie, you are a fool--I am sorry for you!"

He rested one bony hand on his hip, narrowing the long
eyes as he looked down on us.  The purposeful cruelty
of the man was inherent; it was entirely untheatrical.
Still Smith remained silent.

"So I am determined to remove you from the scene of your blunders!"
added Fu-Manchu.

"Opium will very shortly do the same for you!" I rapped at him savagely.

Without emotion he turned the narrowed eyes upon me.

"That is a matter of opinion, Doctor," he said.  "You may have lacked
the opportunities which have been mine for studying that subject--
and in any event I shall not be privileged to enjoy your advice
in the future."

"You will not long outlive me," I replied.  "And our deaths will not
profit you, incidentally; because--" Smith's foot touched mine.

"Because?" inquired Fu-Manchu softly.

"Ah!  Mr. Smith is so prudent!  He is thinking that I have FILES!"
He pronounced the word in a way that made me shudder.  "Mr. Smith
has seen a WIRE JACKET!  Have you ever seen a wire jacket?
As a surgeon its functions would interest you!"

I stifled a cry that rose to my lips; for, with a shrill whistling sound,
a small shape came bounding into the dimly lit vault, then shot upward.
A marmoset landed on the shoulder of Dr. Fu-Manchu and peered grotesquely
into the dreadful yellow face.  The Doctor raised his bony hand and fondled
the little creature, crooning to it.

"One of my pets, Mr. Smith," he said, suddenly opening
his eyes fully so that they blazed like green lamps.
"I have others, equally useful.  My scorpions--have you
met my scorpions?  No?  My pythons and hamadryads?
Then there are my fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli.
I have a collection in my laboratory quite unique.  Have you ever
visited Molokai, the leper island, Doctor?  No?  But Mr. Nayland
Smith will be familiar with the asylum at Rangoon!
And we must not forget my black spiders, with their diamond eyes--
my spiders, that sit in the dark and watch--then leap!"

He raised his lean hands, so that the sleeve of the robe fell back
to the elbow, and the ape dropped, chattering, to the floor and ran
from the cellar.

"O God of Cathay!" he cried, "by what death shall these die--
these miserable ones who would bind thine Empire, which is boundless!"

Like some priest of Tezcat he stood, his eyes upraised to the roof,
his lean body quivering--a sight to shock the most unimpressionable mind.

"He is mad!" I whispered to Smith.  "God help us, the man
is a dangerous homicidal maniac!"

Nayland Smith's tanned face was very drawn, but he shook his head grimly.

"Dangerous, yes, I agree," he muttered; "his existence is a danger
to the entire white race which, now, we are powerless to avert."

Dr. Fu-Manchu recovered himself, took up the lantern and,
turning abruptly, walked to the door, with his awkward, yet feline gait.
At the threshold be looked back.

"You would have warned Mr. Graham Guthrie?" he said, in a soft voice.
"To-night, at half-past twelve, Mr. Graham Guthrie dies!"

Smith sat silent and motionless, his eyes fixed upon the speaker.

"You were in Rangoon in 1908?" continued Dr. Fu-Manchu--
"you remember the Call?"

From somewhere above us--I could not determine the exact direction--
came a low, wailing cry, an uncanny thing of falling cadences, which, in that
dismal vault, with the sinister yellow-robed figure at the door, seemed to
pour ice into my veins.  Its effect upon Smith was truly extraordinary.
His face showed grayly in the faint light, and I heard him draw a hissing
breath through clenched teeth.

"It calls for you!" said Fu-Manchu. "At half-past twelve it calls
for Graham Guthrie!"

The door closed and darkness mantled us again.

"Smith," I said, "what was that?"  The horrors about us were playing
havoc with my nerves.

"It was the Call of Siva!" replied Smith hoarsely.

"What is it?  Who uttered it?  What does it mean?"

"I don't know what it is, Petrie, nor who utters it.
But it means death!"



CHAPTER XIV


THERE may be some who could have lain, chained to that noisome cell,
and felt no fear--no dread of what the blackness might hold.
I confess that I am not one of these.  I knew that Nayland
Smith and I stood in the path of the most stupendous genius
who in the world's history had devoted his intellect to crime.
I knew that the enormous wealth of the political group backing
Dr. Fu-Manchu rendered him a menace to Europe and to America
greater than that of the plague.  He was a scientist trained
at a great university--an explorer of nature's secrets, who had
gone farther into the unknown, I suppose, than any living man.
His mission was to remove all obstacles--human obstacles--
from the path of that secret movement which was progressing
in the Far East.  Smith and I were two such obstacles;
and of all the horrible devices at his command, I wondered,
and my tortured brain refused to leave the subject, by which
of them were we doomed to be dispatched?

Even at that very moment some venomous centipede might
be wriggling towards me over the slime of the stones,
some poisonous spider be preparing to drop from the roof!
Fu-Manchu might have released a serpent in the cellar,
or the air be alive with microbes of a loathsome disease!

"Smith," I said, scarcely recognizing my own voice, "I can't bear
this suspense.  He intends to kill us, that is certain, but--"

"Don't worry," came the reply; "he intends to learn our plans first."

"You mean--?"

"You heard him speak of his files and of his wire jacket?"

"Oh, my God!" I groaned; "can this be England?"

Smith laughed dryly, and I heard him fumbling with the steel
collar about his neck.

"I have one great hope," he said, "since you share
my captivity, but we must neglect no minor chance.
Try with your pocket-knife if you can force the lock.
I am trying to break this one."

Truth to tell, the idea had not entered my half-dazed mind, but I
immediately acted upon my friend's suggestion, setting to work with
the small blade of my knife.  I was so engaged, and, having snapped
one blade, was about to open another, when a sound arrested me.
It came from beneath my feet.

"Smith," I whispered, "listen!"

The scraping and clicking which told of Smith's efforts ceased.
Motionless, we sat in that humid darkness and listened.

Something was moving beneath the stones of the cellar.
I held my breath; every nerve in my body was strung up.

A line of light showed a few feet from where we lay.
It widened--became an oblong.  A trap was lifted,
and within a yard of me, there rose a dimly seen head.
Horror I had expected--and death, or worse.  Instead, I saw
a lovely face, crowned with a disordered mass of curling hair;
I saw a white arm upholding the stone slab, a shapely arm
clasped about the elbow by a broad gold bangle.

The girl climbed into the cellar and placed the lantern on the stone floor.
In the dim light she was unreal--a figure from an opium vision, with her
clinging silk draperies and garish jewelry, with her feet encased in little
red slippers.  In short, this was the houri of my vision, materialized.
It was difficult to believe that we were in modern, up-to-date England;
easy to dream that we were the captives of a caliph, in a dungeon
in old Bagdad.

"My prayers are answered," said Smith softly.  "She has come
to save YOU."

"S-sh!" warned the girl, and her wonderful eyes opened widely, fearfully.
"A sound and he will kill us all."

She bent over me; a key jarred in the lock which had broken my penknife--
and the collar was off.  As I rose to my feet the girl turned and
released Smith.  She raised the lantern above the trap, and signed
to us to descend the wooden steps which its light revealed.

"Your knife," she whispered to me.  "Leave it on the floor.
He will think you forced the locks.  Down!  Quickly!"

Nayland Smith, stepping gingerly, disappeared into the darkness.
I rapidly followed.  Last of all came our mysterious friend, a gold band about
one of her ankles gleaming in the rays of the lantern which she carried.
We stood in a low-arched passage.

"Tie your handkerchiefs over your eyes and do exactly as I
tell you," she ordered.

Neither of us hesitated to obey her.  Blind-folded, I allowed
her to lead me, and Smith rested his hand upon my shoulder.
In that order we proceeded, and came to stone steps,
which we ascended.

"Keep to the wall on the left," came a whisper.
"There is danger on the right."

With my free hand I felt for and found the wall, and we pressed forward.
The atmosphere of the place through which we were passing was steamy,
and loaded with an odor like that of exotic plant life.  But a faint animal
scent crept to my nostrils, too, and there was a subdued stir about me,
infinitely suggestive--mysterious.

Now my feet sank in a soft carpet, and a curtain brushed my shoulder.
A gong sounded.  We stopped.

The din of distant drumming came to my ears.

"Where in Heaven's name are we?" hissed Smith in my ear;
"that is a tom-tom!"

"S-sh!  S-sh!"

The little hand grasping mine quivered nervously.  We were near a door
or a window, for a breath of perfume was wafted through the air;
and it reminded me of my other meetings with the beautiful woman
who was now leading us from the house of Fu-Manchu; who, with her
own lips, had told me that she was his slave.  Through the horrible
phantasmagoria she flitted--a seductive vision, her piquant loveliness
standing out richly in its black setting of murder and devilry.
Not once, but a thousand times, I had tried to reason out the nature
of the tie which bound her to the sinister Doctor.

Silence fell.

"Quick!  This way!"

Down a thickly carpeted stair we went.  Our guide opened a door, and led us
along a passage.  Another door was opened; and we were in the open air.
But the girl never tarried, pulling me along a graveled path, with a fresh
breeze blowing in my face, and along until, unmistakably, I stood upon
the river bank.  Now, planking creaked to our tread; and looking downward
beneath the handkerchief, I saw the gleam of water beneath my feet.

"Be careful!"  I was warned, and found myself stepping into
a narrow boat--a punt.

Nayland Smith followed, and the girl pushed the punt off and poled
out into the stream.

"Don't speak!" she directed.

My brain was fevered; I scarce knew if I dreamed and was waking,
or if the reality ended with my imprisonment in the clammy cellar
and this silent escape, blindfolded, upon the river with a girl for our
guide who might have stepped out of the pages of "The Arabian Nights"
were fantasy--the mockery of sleep.

Indeed, I began seriously to doubt if this stream whereon we floated,
whose waters plashed and tinkled about us, were the Thames, the Tigris,
or the Styx.

The punt touched a bank.

"You will hear a clock strike in a few minutes,"
said the girl, with her soft, charming accent, "but I rely
upon your honor not to remove the handkerchiefs until then.
You owe me this."

"We do!" said Smith fervently.

I heard him scrambling to the bank, and a moment later a soft hand
was placed in mine, and I, too, was guided on to terra firma.
Arrived on the bank, I still held the girl's hand, drawing her towards me.

"You must not go back," I whispered.  "We will take care of you.
You must not return to that place."

"Let me go!" she said.  "When, once, I asked you to take me from him,
you spoke of police protection; that was your answer, police protection!
You would let them lock me up--imprison me--and make me betray him!
For what?  For what?"  She wrenched herself free.  "How little
you understand me.  Never mind.  Perhaps one day you will know!
Until the clock strikes!"

She was gone.  I heard the creak of the punt, the drip of the water
from the pole.  Fainter it grew, and fainter.

"What is her secret?" muttered Smith, beside me.
"Why does she cling to that monster?"

The distant sound died away entirely.  A clock began to strike;
it struck the half-hour. In an instant my handkerchief was off,
and so was Smith's. We stood upon a towing-path. Away to the left
the moon shone upon the towers and battlements of an ancient fortress.

It was Windsor Castle.

"Half-past ten," cried Smith.  "Two hours to save Graham Guthrie!"

We had exactly fourteen minutes in which to catch the last
train to Waterloo; and we caught it.  But I sank into a corner
of the compartment in a state bordering upon collapse.
Neither of us, I think, could have managed another twenty yards.
With a lesser stake than a human life at issue, I doubt if we
should have attempted that dash to Windsor station.

"Due at Waterloo at eleven-fifty-one," panted Smith.
"That gives us thirty-nine minutes to get to the other side
of the river and reach his hotel."

"Where in Heaven's name is that house situated?
Did we come up or down stream?"

"I couldn't determine.  But at any rate, it stands close to the riverside.
It should be merely a question of time to identify it.  I shall set
Scotland Yard to work immediately; but I am hoping for nothing.
Our escape will warn him."

I said no more for a time, sitting wiping the perspiration
from my forehead and watching my friend load his cracked briar
with the broadcut Latakia mixture.

"Smith," I said at last, "what was that horrible wailing we heard,
and what did Fu-Manchu mean when he referred to Rangoon?
I noticed how it affected you."

My friend nodded and lighted his pipe.

"There was a ghastly business there in 1908 or early in 1909,"
he replied:  "an utterly mysterious epidemic.  And this beastly
wailing was associated with it."

"In what way?  And what do you mean by an epidemic?"

"It began, I believe, at the Palace Mansions Hotel, in the cantonments.
A young American, whose name I cannot recall, was staying there on business
connected with some new iron buildings.  One night he went to his room,
locked the door, and jumped out of the window into the courtyard.
Broke his neck, of course."

"Suicide?"

"Apparently.  But there were singular features in the case.
For instance, his revolver lay beside him, fully loaded!"

"In the courtyard?"

"In the courtyard!"

"Was it murder by any chance?"

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

"His door was found locked from the inside; had to be broken in."

"But the wailing business?"

"That began later, or was only noticed later.  A French doctor,
named Lafitte, died in exactly the same way."

"At the same place?"

"At the same hotel; but he occupied a different room.
Here is the extraordinary part of the affair:  a friend shared
the room with him, and actually saw him go!"

"Saw him leap from the window?"

"Yes.  The friend--an Englishman--was aroused by the uncanny wailing.
I was in Rangoon at the time, so that I know more of the case of Lafitte
than of that of the American.  I spoke to the man about it personally.
He was an electrical engineer, Edward Martin, and he told me that the cry
seemed to come from above him."

"It seemed to come from above when we heard it at Fu-Manchu's house."

"Martin sat up in bed, it was a clear moonlight night--
the sort of moonlight you get in Burma.  Lafitte, for some reason,
had just gone to the window.  His friend saw him look out.
The next moment with a dreadful scream, he threw himself forward--
and crashed down into the courtyard!"

"What then?"

"Martin ran to the window and looked down.
Lafitte's scream had aroused the place, of course.
But there was absolutely nothing to account for the occurrence.
There was no balcony, no ledge, by means of which anyone could
reach the window."

"But how did you come to recognize the cry?"

"I stopped at the Palace Mansions for some time;
and one night this uncanny howling aroused me.
I heard it quite distinctly, and am never likely to forget it.
It was followed by a hoarse yell.  The man in the next room,
an orchid hunter, had gone the same way as the others!"

"Did you change your quarters?"

"No. Fortunately for the reputation of the hotel--a first-class establishment--
several similar cases occurred elsewhere, both in Rangoon, in Prome
and in Moulmein.  A story got about the native quarter, and was fostered
by some mad fakir, that the god Siva was reborn and that the cry was his call
for victims; a ghastly story, which led to an outbreak of dacoity and gave
the District Superintendent no end of trouble."

"Was there anything unusual about the bodies?"

"They all developed marks after death, as though they had been strangled!
The marks were said all to possess a peculiar form, though it was not
appreciable to my eye; and this, again, was declared to be the five
heads of Siva."

"Were the deaths confined to Europeans?"

"Oh, no.  Several Burmans and others died in the same way.
At first there was a theory that the victims had contracted leprosy and
committed suicide as a result; but the medical evidence disproved that.
The Call of Siva became a perfect nightmare throughout Burma."

"Did you ever hear it again, before this evening?"

"Yes.  I heard it on the Upper Irrawaddy one clear,
moonlight night, and a Colassie--a deck-hand--leaped from
the top deck of the steamer aboard which I was traveling!
My God!  to think that the fiend Fu-Manchu has brought
That to England!"

"But brought what, Smith?" I cried, in perplexity.
"What has he brought?  An evil spirit?  A mental disease?
What is it?  What CAN it be?"

"A new agent of death, Petrie!  Something born in a plague-spot of Burma--
the home of much that is unclean and much that is inexplicable.
Heaven grant that we be in time, and are able to save Guthrie."



CHAPTER XV


THE train was late, and as our cab turned out of Waterloo Station
and began to ascend to the bridge, from a hundred steeples rang
out the gongs of midnight, the bell of St. Paul's raised above
them all to vie with the deep voice of Big Ben.

I looked out from the cab window across the river to where, towering above
the Embankment, that place of a thousand tragedies, the light of some
of London's greatest caravanserais formed a sort of minor constellation.
From the subdued blaze that showed the public supper-rooms I looked
up to the hundreds of starry points marking the private apartments
of those giant inns.

I thought how each twinkling window denoted the presence of some
bird of passage, some wanderer temporarily abiding in our midst.
There, floor piled upon floor above the chattering throngs,
were these less gregarious units, each something of a mystery
to his fellow-guests, each in his separate cell; and each as remote
from real human companionship as if that cell were fashioned,
not in the bricks of London, but in the rocks of Hindustan!

In one of those rooms Graham Guthrie might at that moment be sleeping,
all unaware that he would awake to the Call of Siva, to the summons of death.
As we neared the Strand, Smith stopped the cab, discharging the man
outside Sotheby's auction-rooms.

"One of the doctor's watch-dogs may be in the foyer," he said thoughtfully,
"and it might spoil everything if we were seen to go to Guthrie's rooms.
There must be a back entrance to the kitchens, and so on?"

"There is," I replied quickly.  "I have seen the vans delivering there.
But have we time?"

"Yes.  Lead on."

We walked up the Strand and hurried westward.  Into that narrow court,
with its iron posts and descending steps, upon which opens a well-known
wine-cellar, we turned.  Then, going parallel with the Strand,
but on the Embankment level, we ran round the back of the great hotel,
and came to double doors which were open.  An arc lamp illuminated
the interior and a number of men were at work among the casks,
crates and packages stacked about the place.  We entered.

"Hallo!" cried a man in a white overall, "where d'you think you're going?"

Smith grasped him by the arm.

"I want to get to the public part of the hotel without being seen
from the entrance hall," he said.  "Will you please lead the way?"

"Here--" began the other, staring.

"Don't waste time!" snapped my friend, in that tone of authority
which he knew so well how to assume.  "It's a matter of life and death.
Lead the way, I say!"

"Police, sir?" asked the man civilly.

"Yes," said Smith; "hurry!"

Off went our guide without further demur.  Skirting sculleries, kitchens,
laundries and engine-rooms, he led us through those mysterious labyrinths
which have no existence for the guest above, but which contain the machinery
that renders these modern khans the Aladdin's palaces they are.
On a second-floor landing we met a man in a tweed suit, to whom our
cicerone presented us.

"Glad I met you, sir.  Two gentlemen from the police."

The man regarded us haughtily with a suspicious smile.

"Who are you?" he asked.  "You're not from Scotland Yard,
at any rate!"

Smith pulled out a card and thrust it into the speaker's hand.

"If you are the hotel detective," he said, "take us without delay
to Mr. Graham Guthrie."

A marked change took place in the other's demeanor on glancing
at the card in his hand.

"Excuse me, sir," he said deferentially, "but, of course,
I didn't know who I was speaking to.  We all have instructions
to give you every assistance."

"Is Mr. Guthrie in his room?"

"He's been in his room for some time, sir.  You will want to get there
without being seen?  This way.  We can join the lift on the third floor."

Off we went again, with our new guide.  In the lift:

"Have you noticed anything suspicious about the place to-night?" asked Smith.

"I have!" was the startling reply.  "That accounts for your
finding me where you did.  My usual post is in the lobby.
But about eleven o'clock, when the theater people began to come
in I had a hazy sort of impression that someone or something
slipped past in the crowd--something that had no business
in the hotel."

We got out of the lift.

"I don't quite follow you," said Smith.  "If you thought you saw
something entering, you must have formed a more or less definite
impression regarding it."

"That's the funny part of the business," answered the man doggedly.
"I didn't!  But as I stood at the top of the stairs I could
have sworn that there was something crawling up behind a party--
two ladies and two gentlemen."

"A dog, for instance?"

"It didn't strike me as being a dog, sir.  Anyway, when the party passed me,
there was nothing there.  Mind you, whatever it was, it hadn't come
in by the front.  I have made inquiries everywhere, but without result."
He stopped abruptly.  "No. 189--Mr. Guthrie's door, sir."

Smith knocked.

"Hallo!" came a muffled voice; "what do you want?"

"Open the door!  Don't delay; it is important."

He turned to the hotel detective.

"Stay right there where you can watch the stairs and the lift,"
he instructed; "and note everyone and everything that passes this door.
But whatever you see or hear, do nothing without my orders."

The man moved off, and the door was opened.  Smith whispered
in my ear:

"Some creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu is in the hotel!"

Mr. Graham Guthrie, British resident in North Bhutan, was a big,
thick-set man--gray-haired and florid, with widely opened eyes of the true
fighting blue, a bristling mustache and prominent shaggy brows.
Nayland Smith introduced himself tersely, proffering his card
and an open letter.

"Those are my credentials, Mr. Guthrie," he said; "so no doubt
you will realize that the business which brings me and my friend,
Dr. Petrie, here at such an hour is of the first importance."

He switched off the light.

"There is no time for ceremony," he explained.  "It is now twenty-five minutes
past twelve.  At half-past an attempt will be made upon your life!"

"Mr. Smith," said the other, who, arrayed in his pajamas,
was seated on the edge of the bed, "you alarm me very greatly.
I may mention that I was advised of your presence in
England this morning."

"Do you know anything respecting the person called Fu-Manchu--Dr. Fu-Manchu?"

"Only what I was told to-day--that he is the agent of an
advanced political group."

"It is opposed to his interests that you should return to Bhutan.
A more gullible agent would be preferable.  Therefore, unless you
implicitly obey my instructions, you will never leave England!"

Graham Guthrie breathed quickly.  I was growing more used to the gloom,
and I could dimly discern him, his face turned towards Nayland Smith,
whilst with his hand he clutched the bed-rail. Such a visit as ours,
I think, must have shaken the nerve of any man.

"But, Mr. Smith," he said, "surely I am safe enough here!
The place is full of American visitors at present,
and I have had to be content with a room right at the top;
so that the only danger I apprehend is that of fire."

"There is another danger," replied Smith.  "The fact that
you are at the top of the building enhances that danger.
Do you recall anything of the mysterious epidemic which broke
out in Rangoon in 1908--the deaths due to the Call of Siva?"

"I read of it in the Indian papers," said Guthrie uneasily.
"Suicides, were they not?"  

"No!" snapped Smith.  "Murders!"

There was a brief silence.

"From what I recall of the cases," said Guthrie, "that seems impossible.
In several instances the victims threw themselves from the windows
of locked rooms--and the windows were quite inaccessible."

"Exactly," replied Smith; and in the dim light his revolver
gleamed dully, as he placed it on the small table beside the bed.
"Except that your door is unlocked, the conditions to-night
are identical.  Silence, please, I hear a clock striking."

It was Big Ben.  It struck the half-hour, leaving the stillness complete.
In that room, high above the activity which yet prevailed below,
high above the supping crowds in the hotel, high above the starving
crowds on the Embankment, a curious chill of isolation swept about me.
Again I realized how, in the very heart of the great metropolis, a man
may be as far from aid as in the heart of a desert.  I was glad that I
was not alone in that room--marked with the death-mark of Fu-Manchu;
and I am certain that Graham Guthrie welcomed his unexpected company.

I may have mentioned the fact before, but on this occasion it became
so peculiarly evident to me that I am constrained to record it here--
I refer to the sense of impending danger which invariably preceded a
visit from Fu-Manchu. Even had I not known that an attempt was to be
made that night, I should have realized it, as, strung to high tension,
I waited in the darkness.  Some invisible herald went ahead of the
dreadful Chinaman, proclaiming his coming to every nerve in one's body.
It was like a breath of astral incense, announcing the presence
of the priests of death.

A wail, low but singularly penetrating, falling in minor cadences
to a new silence, came from somewhere close at hand.

"My God!" hissed Guthrie, "what was that?"

"The Call of Siva," whispered Smith.

"Don't stir, for your life!"

Guthrie was breathing hard.

I knew that we were three; that the hotel detective was within hail;
that there was a telephone in the room; that the traffic of
the Embankment moved almost beneath us; but I knew, and am not
ashamed to confess, that King Fear had icy fingers about my heart.
It was awful--that tense waiting--for--what?

Three taps sounded--very distinctly upon the window.

Graham Guthrie started so as to shake the bed.

"It's supernatural!" he muttered--all that was Celtic in his blood
recoiling from the omen.  "Nothing human can reach that window!"
"S-sh!" from Smith.  "Don't stir."

The tapping was repeated.

Smith softly crossed the room.  My heart was beating painfully.
He threw open the window.  Further inaction was impossible.
I joined him; and we looked out into the empty air.

"Don't come too near, Petrie!" he warned over his shoulder.

One on either side of the open window, we stood and looked down
at the moving Embankment lights, at the glitter of the Thames,
at the silhouetted buildings on the farther bank, with the Shot
Tower starting above them all.

Three taps sounded on the panes above us.

In all my dealings with Dr. Fu-Manchu I had had to face nothing so uncanny
as this.  What Burmese ghoul had he loosed?  Was it outside, in the air?
Was it actually in the room?

"Don't let me go, Petrie!" whispered Smith suddenly.
"Get a tight hold on me!"

That was the last straw; for I thought that some dreadful
fascination was impelling my friend to hurl himself out!
Wildly I threw my arms about him, and Guthrie leaped
forward to help.

Smith leaned from the window and looked up.

One choking cry he gave--smothered, inarticulate--and I found him slipping
from my grip--being drawn out of the window--drawn to his death!

"Hold him, Guthrie!" I gasped hoarsely.  "My God, he's going!
Hold him!"

My friend writhed in our grasp, and I saw him stretch his arm upward.
The crack of his revolver came, and he collapsed on to the floor,
carrying me with him.

But as I fell I heard a scream above.  Smith's revolver went
hurtling through the air, and, hard upon it, went a black shape--
flashing past the open window into the gulf of the night.

"The light!  The light!"  I cried.

Guthrie ran and turned on the light.  Nayland Smith, his eyes
starting from his head, his face swollen, lay plucking at a silken
cord which showed tight about his throat.

"It was a Thug!" screamed Guthrie.  "Get the rope off!  He's choking!"

My hands a-twitch, I seized the strangling-cord.

"A knife!  Quick!"  I cried.  "I have lost mine!"

Guthrie ran to the dressing-table and passed me an open penknife.
I somehow forced the blade between the rope and Smith's swollen neck,
and severed the deadly silken thing.

Smith made a choking noise, and fell back, swooning in my arms.


When, later, we stood looking down upon the mutilated thing which had
been brought in from where it fell, Smith showed me a mark on the brow--
close beside the wound where his bullet had entered.

"The mark of Kali," he said.  "The man was a phansigar--
a religious strangler.  Since Fu-Manchu has dacoits in his
service I might have expected that he would have Thugs.
A group of these fiends would seem to have fled into Burma;
so that the mysterious epidemic in Rangoon was really an outbreak
of thuggee--on slightly improved lines!  I had suspected something
of the kind but, naturally, I had not looked for Thugs near Rangoon.
My unexpected resistance led the strangler to bungle the rope.
You have seen how it was fastened about my throat?
That was unscientific.  The true method, as practiced
by the group operating in Burma, was to throw the line
about the victim's neck and jerk him from the window.
A man leaning from an open window is very nicely poised:
it requires only a slight jerk to pitch him forward.
No loop was used, but a running line, which, as the victim fell,
remained in the hand of the murderer.  No clew!  Therefore we
see at once what commended the system to Fu-Manchu."

Graham Guthrie, very pale, stood looking down at the dead strangler.

"I owe you my life, Mr. Smith," he said.  "If you had come
five minutes later--"

He grasped Smith's hand.

"You see," Guthrie continued, "no one thought of looking for a Thug in Burma!
And no one thought of the ROOF!  These fellows are as active as monkeys,
and where an ordinary man would infallibly break his neck, they are entirely
at home.  I might have chosen my room especially for the business!"

"He slipped in late this evening," said Smith.  "The hotel detective saw him,
but these stranglers are as elusive as shadows, otherwise, despite their
having changed the scene of their operations, not one could have survived."

"Didn't you mention a case of this kind on the Irrawaddy?" I asked.

"Yes," was the reply; "and I know of what you are thinking.
The steamers of the Irrawaddy flotilla have a corrugated-iron
roof over the top deck.  The Thug must have been lying up there
as the Colassie passed on the deck below."

"But, Smith, what is the motive of the Call?" I continued.

"Partly religious," he explained, "and partly to wake the victims!
You are perhaps going to ask me how Dr. Fu-Manchu has obtained power over
such people as phansigars?  I can only reply that Dr. Fu-Manchu has secret
knowledge of which, so far, we know absolutely nothing; but, despite all,
at last I begin to score."

"You do," I agreed; "but your victory took you near to death."

"I owe my life to you, Petrie," he said.  "Once to your strength of arm,
and once to--"

"Don't speak of her, Smith," I interrupted.
"Dr. Fu-Manchu may have discovered the part she played!
In which event--"

"God help her!"



CHAPTER XVI


UPON the following day we were afoot again, and shortly at handgrips with
the enemy.  In retrospect, that restless time offers a chaotic prospect,
with no peaceful spot amid its turmoils.

All that was reposeful in nature seemed to have become
an irony and a mockery to us--who knew how an evil demigod
had his sacrificial altars amid our sweetest groves.
This idea ruled strongly in my mind upon that soft autumnal day.

"The net is closing in," said Nayland Smith.

"Let us hope upon a big catch," I replied, with a laugh.

Beyond where the Thames tided slumberously seaward showed the roofs
of Royal Windsor, the castle towers showing through the autumn haze.
The peace of beautiful Thames-side was about us.

This was one of the few tangible clews upon which thus
far we had chanced; but at last it seemed indeed that we
were narrowing the resources of that enemy of the white race
who was writing his name over England in characters of blood.
To capture Dr. Fu-Manchu we did not hope; but at least there
was every promise of destroying one of the enemy's strongholds.

We had circled upon the map a tract of country cut by the Thames,
with Windsor for its center.  Within that circle was the house from
which miraculously we had escaped--a house used by the most highly
organized group in the history of criminology.  So much we knew.
Even if we found the house, and this was likely enough, to find it
vacated by Fu-Manchu and his mysterious servants we were prepared.
But it would be a base destroyed.

We were working upon a methodical plan, and although our cooperators
were invisible, these numbered no fewer than twelve--all of them
experienced men.  Thus far we had drawn blank, but the place for which
Smith and I were making now came clearly into view:  an old mansion
situated in extensive walled grounds.  Leaving the river behind us,
we turned sharply to the right along a lane flanked by a high wall.
On an open patch of ground, as we passed, I noted a gypsy caravan.
An old woman was seated on the steps, her wrinkled face bent,
her chin resting in the palm of her hand.

I scarcely glanced at her, but pressed on, nor did I notice that my friend
no longer was beside me.  I was all anxiety to come to some point from
whence I might obtain a view of the house; all anxiety to know if this
was the abode of our mysterious enemy--the place where he worked amid
his weird company, where he bred his deadly scorpions and his bacilli,
reared his poisonous fungi, from whence he dispatched his murder ministers.
Above all, perhaps, I wondered if this would prove to be the hiding-place of
the beautiful slave girl who was such a potent factor in the Doctor's plans,
but a two-edged sword which yet we hoped to turn upon Fu-Manchu. Even
in the hands of a master, a woman's beauty is a dangerous weapon.

A cry rang out behind me.  I turned quickly.  And a singular
sight met my gaze.

Nayland Smith was engaged in a furious struggle with the old gypsy woman!
His long arms clasped about her, he was roughly dragging her out into
the roadway, she fighting like a wild thing--silently, fiercely.

Smith often surprised me, but at that sight, frankly, I thought that
he was become bereft of reason.  I ran back; and I had almost reached
the scene of this incredible contest, and Smith now was evidently hard put
to it to hold his own when a man, swarthy, with big rings in his ears,
leaped from the caravan.

One quick glance he threw in our direction, and made off towards the river.

Smith twisted round upon me, never releasing his hold of the woman.

"After him, Petrie!" he cried.  "After him.  Don't let him escape.
It's a dacoit!"

My brain in a confused whirl; my mind yet disposed to a belief that my friend
had lost his senses, the word "dacoit" was sufficient.

I started down the road after the fleetly running man.
Never once did he glance behind him, so that he evidently had occasion
to fear pursuit.  The dusty road rang beneath my flying footsteps.
That sense of fantasy, which claimed me often enough in those days
of our struggle with the titanic genius whose victory meant the victory
of the yellow races over the white, now had me fast in its grip again.
I was an actor in one of those dream-scenes of the grim Fu-Manchu drama.

Out over the grass and down to the river's brink ran the gypsy
who was no gypsy, but one of that far more sinister brotherhood,
the dacoits.  I was close upon his heels.  But I was not
prepared for him to leap in among the rushes at the margin
of the stream; and seeing him do this I pulled up quickly.
Straight into the water he plunged; and I saw that he held some
object in his hand.  He waded out; he dived; and as I gained
the bank and looked to right and left he had vanished completely.
Only ever-widening rings showed where he had been. I had him.

For directly he rose to the surface he would be visible from
either bank, and with the police whistle which I carried I could,
if necessary, summon one of the men in hiding across the stream.
I waited.  A wild-fowl floated serenely past, untroubled by this
strange invasion of his precincts.  A full minute I waited.
From the lane behind me came Smith's voice:

"Don't let him escape, Petrie!"

Never lifting my eyes from the water, I waved my hand reassuringly.
But still the dacoit did not rise.  I searched the surface in all
directions as far as my eyes could reach; but no swimmer showed
above it.  Then it was that I concluded he had dived too deeply,
become entangled in the weeds and was drowned.  With a final glance
to right and left and some feeling of awe at this sudden tragedy--
this grim going out of a life at glorious noonday--I turned away.
Smith had the woman securely; but I had not taken five steps towards
him when a faint splash behind warned me.  Instinctively I ducked.
From whence that saving instinct arose I cannot surmise,
but to it I owed my life.  For as I rapidly lowered my head,
something hummed past me, something that flew out over the grass bank,
and fell with a jangle upon the dusty roadside.  A knife!

I turned and bounded back to the river's brink.  I heard a faint
cry behind me, which could only have come from the gypsy woman.
Nothing disturbed the calm surface of the water.  The reach was lonely
of rowers.  Out by the farther bank a girl was poling a punt along,
and her white-clad figure was the only living thing that moved upon
the river within the range of the most expert knife-thrower.

To say that I was nonplused is to say less than the truth; I was amazed.
That it was the dacoit who had shown me this murderous attention
I could not doubt.  But where in Heaven's name WAS he?
He could not humanly have remained below water for so long;
yet he certainly was not above, was not upon the surface,
concealed amongst the reeds, nor hidden upon the bank.

There, in the bright sunshine, a consciousness of the eerie possessed me.
It was with an uncomfortable feeling that my phantom foe might be aiming
a second knife at my back that I turned away and hastened towards Smith.
My fearful expectations were not realized, and I picked up the little weapon
which had so narrowly missed me, and with it in my hand rejoined my friend.

He was standing with one arm closely clasped about the apparently
exhausted woman, and her dark eyes were fixed upon him with
an extraordinary expression.

"What does it mean, Smith?" I began.

But he interrupted me.

"Where is the dacoit?" he demanded rapidly.

"Since he seemingly possesses the attributes of a fish,"
I replied, "I cannot pretend to say."

The gypsy woman lifted her eyes to mine and laughed.
Her laughter was musical, not that of such an old hag as Smith
held captive; it was familiar, too.

I started and looked closely into the wizened face.

"He's tricked you," said Smith, an angry note in his voice.
"What is that you have in your hand?"

I showed him the knife, and told him how it had come into my possession.

"I know," he rapped.  "I saw it.  He was in the water not
three yards from where you stood.  You must have seen him.
Was there nothing visible?"

"Nothing."

The woman laughed again, and again I wondered.

"A wild-fowl," I added; "nothing else."

"A wild-fowl," snapped Smith.  "If you will consult your
recollections of the habits of wild-fowl you will see
that this particular specimen was a RARA AVIS. It's an
old trick, Petrie, but a good one, for it is used in decoying.
A dacoit's head was concealed in that wild-fowl!  It's useless.
He has certainly made good his escape by now."

"Smith," I said, somewhat crestfallen, "why are you detaining
this gypsy woman?"

"Gypsy woman!" he laughed, hugging her tightly as she made
an impatient movement.  "Use your eyes, old man."

He jerked the frowsy wig from her head, and beneath was a cloud
of disordered hair that shimmered in the sunlight.

"A wet sponge will do the rest," he said.

Into my eyes, widely opened in wonder, looked the dark eyes
of the captive; and beneath the disguise I picked out the charming
features of the slave girl.  There were tears on the whitened lashes,
and she was submissive now.

"This time," said my friend hardly, "we have fairly captured her--
and we will hold her."

From somewhere up-stream came a faint call.

"The dacoit!"

Nayland Smith's lean body straightened; he stood alert, strung up.

Another call answered, and a third responded.
Then followed the flatly shrill note of a police whistle,
and I noted a column of black vapor rising beyond the wall,
mounting straight to heaven as the smoke of a welcome offering.

The surrounded mansion was in flames!

"Curse it!" rapped Smith.  "So this time we were right.  But, of course,
he has had ample opportunity to remove his effects.  I knew that.
The man's daring is incredible.  He has given himself till the very
last moment--and we blundered upon two of the outposts."

"I lost one."

"No matter.  We have the other.  I expect no further arrests,
and the house will have been so well fired by the Doctor's
servants that nothing can save it.  I fear its ashes will afford
us no clew, Petrie; but we have secured a lever which should
serve to disturb Fu-Manchu's world."

He glanced at the queer figure which hung submissively in his arms.
She looked up proudly.

"You need not hold me so tight," she said, in her soft voice.
"I will come with you."

That I moved amid singular happenings, you, who have borne with me
thus far, have learned, and that I witnessed many curious scenes;
but of the many such scenes in that race-drama wherein Nayland
Smith and Dr. Fu-Manchu played the leading parts, I remember none
more bizarre than the one at my rooms that afternoon.

Without delay, and without taking the Scotland Yard men into
our confidence, we had hurried our prisoner back to London,
for my friend's authority was supreme.  A strange trio we were,
and one which excited no little comment; but the journey came
to an end at last.  Now we were in my unpretentious sitting-room--
the room wherein Smith first had unfolded to me the story
of Dr. Fu-Manchu and of the great secret society which sought
to upset the balance of the world--to place Europe and America
beneath the scepter of Cathay.

I sat with my elbows upon the writing-table, my chin in my hands;
Smith restlessly paced the floor, relighting his blackened
briar a dozen times in as many minutes.  In the big arm-chair
the pseudogypsy was curled up.  A brief toilet had converted
the wizened old woman's face into that of a fascinatingly pretty girl.
Wildly picturesque she looked in her ragged Romany garb.
She held a cigarette in her fingers and watched us
through lowered lashes.

Seemingly, with true Oriental fatalism, she was quite reconciled to her fate,
and ever and anon she would bestow upon me a glance from her beautiful
eyes which few men, I say with confidence, could have sustained unmoved.
Though I could not be blind to the emotions of that passionate Eastern soul,
yet I strove not to think of them.  Accomplice of an arch-murderer she
might be; but she was dangerously lovely.

"That man who was with you," said Smith, suddenly turning
upon her, "was in Burma up till quite recently.  He murdered
a fisherman thirty miles above Prome only a mouth before I left.
The D.S.P. had placed a thousand rupees on his head.
Am I right?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

"Suppose--What then?" she asked.

"Suppose I handed you over to the police?" suggested Smith.
But he spoke without conviction, for in the recent past we
both had owed our lives to this girl.

"As you please," she replied.  "The police would learn nothing."

"You do not belong to the Far East," my friend said abruptly.
"You may have Eastern blood in your veins, but you are no
kin of Fu-Manchu."

"That is true," she admitted, and knocked the ash from her cigarette.

"Will you tell me where to find Fu-Manchu?"

She shrugged her shoulders again, glancing eloquently in my direction.

Smith walked to the door.

"I must make out my report, Petrie," he said.  "Look after the prisoner."

And as the door closed softly behind him I knew what was
expected of me; but, honestly, I shirked my responsibility.
What attitude should I adopt?  How should I go about my delicate task?
In a quandary, I stood watching the girl whom singular circumstances
saw captive in my rooms.

"You do not think we would harm you?" I began awkwardly.
"No harm shall come to you.  Why will you not trust us?"

She raised her brilliant eyes.

"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others,"
she said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"

Alas!  it had been of none, and I knew it well.  I thought I grasped
the drift of her words.

"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"

"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully.  "Do I seem one
to fear for myself?"

"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.

She looked at me oddly.

"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly,
"my sister was taken, too, and my brother--a child."
She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent
rendered it the more soft.  "My sister died in the desert.
My brother lived.  Better, far better, that he had died, too."

Her words impressed me intensely.

"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned.  "You speak of
slave-raids, of the desert.  Where did these things take place?
Of what country are you?"

"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn.  "Of what country am I?
A slave has no country, no name."

"No name!" I cried.

"You may call me Karamaneh," she said.  "As Karamaneh I was
sold to Dr. Fu-Manchu, and my brother also he purchased.
We were cheap at the price he paid."  She laughed shortly, wildly.

"But he has spent a lot of money to educate me.  My brother is all
that is left to me in the world to love, and he is in the power
of Dr. Fu-Manchu. You understand?  It is upon him the blow will fall.
You ask me to fight against Fu-Manchu. You talk of protection.
Did your protection save Sir Crichton Davey?"

I shook my head sadly.

"You understand now why I cannot disobey my master's orders--why, if I would,
I dare not betray him."

I walked to the window and looked out.  How could I answer her arguments?
What could I say?  I heard the rustle of her ragged skirts, and she who called
herself Karamaneh stood beside me.  She laid her hand upon my arm.

"Let me go," she pleaded.  "He will kill him!  He will kill him!"

Her voice shook with emotion.

"He cannot revenge himself upon your brother when you are in no way to blame,"
I said angrily.  "We arrested you; you are not here of your own free will."

She drew her breath sharply, clutching at my arm, and in her eyes I
could read that she was forcing her mind to some arduous decision.

"Listen."  She was speaking rapidly, nervously.  "If I help you
to take Dr. Fu-Manchu--tell you where he is to be found ALONE--
will you promise me, solemnly promise me, that you will immediately
go to the place where I shall guide you and release my brother;
that you will let us both go free?"

"I will," I said, without hesitation.  "You may rest assured of it."

"But there is a condition," she added.

"What is it?"

"When I have told you where to capture him you must release me."

I hesitated.  Smith often had accused me of weakness
where this girl was concerned.  What now was my plain duty?
That she would utterly decline to speak under any circumstances
unless it suited her to do so I felt assured.  If she spoke
the truth, in her proposed bargain there was no personal element;
her conduct I now viewed in a new light.  Humanity, I thought,
dictated that I accept her proposal; policy also.

"I agree," I said, and looked into her eyes, which were aflame
now with emotion, an excitement perhaps of anticipation,
perhaps of fear.

She laid her hands upon my shoulders.

"You will be careful?" she said pleadingly.

"For your sake," I replied, "I shall."

"Not for my sake."

"Then for your brother's."

"No." Her voice had sunk to a whisper.  "For your own."



CHAPTER XVII


A COOL breeze met us, blowing from the lower reaches of the Thames.
Far behind us twinkled the dim lights of Low's Cottages,
the last regular habitations abutting upon the marshes.
Between us and the cottages stretched half-a-mile of lush land
through which at this season there were, however, numerous dry paths.
Before us the flats again, a dull, monotonous expanse beneath the moon,
with the promise of the cool breeze that the river flowed round
the bend ahead.  It was very quiet.  Only the sound of our footsteps,
as Nayland Smith and I tramped steadily towards our goal,
broke the stillness of that lonely place.

Not once but many times, within the last twenty minutes,
I had thought that we were ill-advised to adventure
alone upon the capture of the formidable Chinese doctor;
but we were following out our compact with Karamaneh;
and one of her stipulations had been that the police must
not be acquainted with her share in the matter.

A light came into view far ahead of us.

"That's the light, Petrie," said Smith.  "If we keep that straight before us,
according to our information we shall strike the hulk."

I grasped the revolver in my pocket, and the presence
of the little weapon was curiously reassuring.
I have endeavored, perhaps in extenuation of my own fears,
to explain how about Dr. Fu-Manchu there rested an atmosphere
of horror, peculiar, unique.  He was not as other men.
The dread that he inspired in all with whom he came in contact,
the terrors which he controlled and hurled at whomsoever
cumbered his path, rendered him an object supremely sinister.
I despair of conveying to those who may read this account
any but the coldest conception of the man's evil power.

Smith stopped suddenly and grasped my arm.
We stood listening.  "What?" I asked.

"You heard nothing?"

I shook my head.

Smith was peering back over the marshes in his oddly alert way.
He turned to me, and his tanned face wore a peculiar expression.

"You don't think it's a trap?" he jerked.  "We are trusting her blindly."

Strange it may seem, but something within me rose in arms
against the innuendo.

"I don't," I said shortly.

He nodded.  We pressed on.

Ten minutes' steady tramping brought us within sight of the Thames.
Smith and I both had noticed how Fu-Manchu's activities centered
always about the London river.  Undoubtedly it was his highway,
his line of communication, along which he moved his mysterious forces.
The opium den off Shadwell Highway, the mansion upstream,
at that hour a smoldering shell; now the hulk lying off the marshes.
Always he made his headquarters upon the river.  It was significant;
and even if to-night's expedition should fail, this was a clew
for our future guidance.

"Bear to the right," directed Smith.  "We must reconnoiter
before making our attack."

We took a path that led directly to the river bank.
Before us lay the gray expanse of water, and out upon it
moved the busy shipping of the great mercantile city.
But this life of the river seemed widely removed from us.
The lonely spot where we stood had no kinship with human activity.
Its dreariness illuminated by the brilliant moon, it looked
indeed a fit setting for an act in such a drama as that wherein
we played our parts.  When I had lain in the East End opium den,
when upon such another night as this I had looked out upon
a peaceful Norfolk countryside, the same knowledge of aloofness,
of utter detachment from the world of living men, had come to me.

Silently Smith stared out at the distant moving lights.

"Karamaneh merely means a slave," he said irrelevantly.

I made no comment.

"There's the hulk," he added.

The bank upon which we stood dipped in mud slopes to the level
of the running tide.  Seaward it rose higher, and by a narrow inlet--
for we perceived that we were upon a kind of promontory--
a rough pier showed.  Beneath it was a shadowy shape in the patch
of gloom which the moon threw far out upon the softly eddying water.
Only one dim light was visible amid this darkness.

"That will be the cabin," said Smith.

Acting upon our prearranged plan, we turned and walked up on
to the staging above the hulk.  A wooden ladder led out and down
to the deck below, and was loosely lashed to a ring on the pier.
With every motion of the tidal waters the ladder rose and fell,
its rings creaking harshly, against the crazy railing.

"How are we going to get down without being detected?" whispered Smith.

"We've got to risk it," I said grimly.

Without further words my friend climbed around on to the ladder
and commenced to descend.  I waited until his head disappeared
below the level, and, clumsily enough, prepared to follow him.

The hulk at that moment giving an unusually heavy heave,
I stumbled, and for one breathless moment looked down upon
the glittering surface streaking the darkness beneath me.
My foot had slipped, and but that I had a firm grip upon the top rung,
that instant, most probably, had marked the end of my share
in the fight with Fu-Manchu. As it was I had a narrow escape.
I felt something slip from my hip pocket, but the weird
creaking of the ladder, the groans of the laboring hulk,
and the lapping of the waves about the staging drowned the sound
of the splash as my revolver dropped into the river.

Rather white-faced, I think, I joined Smith on the deck.
He had witnessed my accident, but--

"We must risk it," he whispered in my ear.  "We dare not turn back now."

He plunged into the semi-darkness, making for the cabin,
I perforce following.

At the bottom of the ladder we came fully into the light streaming out
from the singular apartments at the entrance to which we found ourselves.
It was fitted up as a laboratory.  A glimpse I had of shelves loaded
with jars and bottles, of a table strewn with scientific paraphernalia,
with retorts, with tubes of extraordinary shapes, holding living organisms,
and with instruments--some of them of a form unknown to my experience.
I saw too that books, papers and rolls of parchment littered the bare
wooden floor.  Then Smith's voice rose above the confused sounds
about me, incisive, commanding:

"I have you covered, Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

For Fu-Manchu sat at the table.

The picture that he presented at that moment is one which persistently
clings in my memory.  In his long, yellow robe, his masklike,
intellectual face bent forward amongst the riot of singular objects upon
the table, his great, high brow gleaming in the light of the shaded
lamp above him, and with the abnormal eyes, filmed and green,
raised to us, he seemed a figure from the realms of delirium.
But, most amazing circumstance of all, he and his surroundings tallied,
almost identically, with the dream-picture which had come to me as I
lay chained in the cell!

Some of the large jars about the place held anatomy specimens.
A faint smell of opium hung in the air, and playing with the tassel
of one of the cushions upon which, as upon a divan, Fu-Manchu was seated,
leaped and chattered a little marmoset.

That was an electric moment.  I was prepared for anything--
for anything except for what really happened.

The doctor's wonderful, evil face betrayed no hint of emotion.
The lids flickered over the filmed eyes, and their greenness grew
momentarily brighter, and filmed over again.

"Put up your hands!" rapped Smith, "and attempt no tricks."
His voice quivered with excitement.  "The game's up,
Fu-Manchu. Find something to tie him up with, Petrie."

I moved forward to Smith's side, and was about to pass him
in the narrow doorway.  The hulk moved beneath our feet
like a living thing groaning, creaking--and the water lapped
about the rotten woodwork with a sound infinitely dreary.

"Put up your hands!" ordered Smith imperatively.

Fu-Manchu slowly raised his hands, and a smile dawned upon
the impassive features--a smile that had no mirth in it,
only menace, revealing as it did his even, discolored teeth,
but leaving the filmed eyes inanimate, dull, inhuman.

He spoke softly, sibilantly.

"I would advise Dr. Petrie to glance behind him before he moves."

Smith's keen gray eyes never for a moment quitted the speaker.
The gleaming barrel moved not a hair's-breadth. But I glanced
quickly over my shoulder--and stifled a cry of pure horror.

A wicked, pock-marked face, with wolfish fangs bared, and jaundiced
eyes squinting obliquely into mine, was within two inches of me.
A lean, brown hand and arm, the great thews standing up like cords,
held a crescent-shaped knife a fraction of an inch above my jugular vein.
A slight movement must have dispatched me; a sweep of the fearful weapon,
I doubt not, would have severed my head from my body.

"Smith!" I whispered hoarsely, "don't look around.
For God's sake keep him covered.  But a dacoit has his knife
at my throat!"

Then, for the first time, Smith's hand trembled.  But his glance never wavered
from the malignant, emotionless countenance of Dr. Fu-Manchu. He clenched
his teeth hard, so that the muscles stood out prominently upon his jaw.

I suppose that silence which followed my awful discovery prevailed
but a few seconds.  To me those seconds were each a lingering death.

There, below, in that groaning hulk, I knew more of icy terror
than any of our meetings with the murder-group had brought
to me before; and through my brain throbbed a thought:
the girl had betrayed us!

"You supposed that I was alone?" suggested Fu-Manchu. "So I was."

Yet no trace of fear had broken through the impassive yellow
mask when we had entered.

"But my faithful servant followed you," he added.  "I thank him.
The honors, Mr. Smith, are mine, I think?"

Smith made no reply.  I divined that he was thinking furiously.
Fu-Manchu moved his hand to caress the marmoset, which had leaped
playfully upon his shoulder, and crouched there gibing at us
in a whistling voice.

"Don't stir!" said Smith savagely.  "I warn you!"

Fu-Manchu kept his hand raised.

"May I ask you how you discovered my retreat?" he asked.

"This hulk has been watched since dawn," lied Smith brazenly.

"So?"  The Doctor's filmed eyes cleared for a moment.
"And to-day you compelled me to burn a house, and you
have captured one of my people, too.  I congratulate you.
She would not betray me though lashed with scorpions."

The great gleaming knife was so near to my neck that a sheet of notepaper
could scarcely have been slipped between blade and vein, I think;
but my heart throbbed even more wildly when I heard those words.

"An impasse," said Fu-Manchu. "I have a proposal to make.
I assume that you would not accept my word for anything?"

"I would not," replied Smith promptly.

"Therefore," pursued the Chinaman, and the occasional guttural
alone marred his perfect English, "I must accept yours.
Of your resources outside this cabin I know nothing.
You, I take it, know as little of mine.  My Burmese friend and
Doctor Petrie will lead the way, then; you and I will follow.
We will strike out across the marsh for, say, three hundred yards.
You will then place your pistol on the ground, pledging me your
word to leave it there.  I shall further require your assurance
that you will make no attempt upon me until I have retraced
my steps.  I and my good servant will withdraw, leaving you,
at the expiration of the specified period, to act as you see fit.
Is it agreed?"

Smith hesitated.  Then:

"The dacoit must leave his knife also," he stipulated.
Fu-Manchu smiled his evil smile again.

"Agreed.  Shall I lead the way?"

"No!" rapped Smith.  "Petrie and the dacoit first; then you; I last."

A guttural word of command from Fu-Manchu, and we left the cabin,
with its evil odors, its mortuary specimens, and its strange instruments,
and in the order arranged mounted to the deck.

"It will be awkward on the ladder," said Fu-Manchu. "Dr. Petrie,
I will accept your word to adhere to the terms."

"I promise," I said, the words almost choking me.

We mounted the rising and dipping ladder, all reached the pier,
and strode out across the flats, the Chinaman always under close
cover of Smith's revolver.  Round about our feet, now leaping ahead,
now gamboling back, came and went the marmoset.  The dacoit,
dressed solely in a dark loin-cloth, walked beside me, carrying his
huge knife, and sometimes glancing at me with his blood-lustful eyes.
Never before, I venture to say, had an autumn moon lighted such
a scene in that place.

"Here we part," said Fu-Manchu, and spoke another word to his follower.

The man threw his knife upon the ground.

"Search him, Petrie," directed Smith.  "He may have a second concealed."

The Doctor consented; and I passed my hands over the man's scanty garments.

"Now search Fu-Manchu."

This also I did.  And never have I experienced a similar sense
of revulsion from any human being.  I shuddered, as though I
had touched a venomous reptile.

Smith threw down his revolver.

"I curse myself for an honorable fool," he said.  "No one could
dispute my right to shoot you dead where you stand."

Knowing him as I did, I could tell from the suppressed passion
in Smith's voice that only by his unhesitating acceptance
of my friend's word, and implicit faith in his keeping it,
had Dr. Fu-Manchu escaped just retribution at that moment.
Fiend though he was, I admired his courage; for all this he,
too, must have known.

The Doctor turned, and with the dacoit walked back.
Nayland Smith's next move filled me with surprise.
For just as, silently, I was thanking God for my escape,
my friend began shedding his coat, collar, and waistcoat.

"Pocket your valuables, and do the same," he muttered hoarsely.
"We have a poor chance but we are both fairly fit.
To-night, Petrie, we literally have to run for our lives."

We live in a peaceful age, wherein it falls to the lot of few
men to owe their survival to their fleetness of foot.
At Smith's words I realized in a flash that such was to be
our fate to-night.

I have said that the hulk lay off a sort of promontory.
East and west, then, we had nothing to hope for.  To the south
was Fu-Manchu; and even as, stripped of our heavier garments,
we started to run northward, the weird signal of a dacoit rose
on the night and was answered--was answered again.

"Three, at least," hissed Smith; "three armed dacoits.  Hopeless."

"Take the revolver," I cried.  "Smith, it's--"

"No," he rapped, through clenched teeth.  "A servant of the Crown
in the East makes his motto:  `Keep your word, though it break
your neck!'  I don't think we need fear it being used against us.
Fu-Manchu avoids noisy methods."

So back we ran, over the course by which, earlier, we had come.
It was, roughly, a mile to the first building--a deserted cottage--
and another quarter of a mile to any that was occupied.

Our chance of meeting a living soul, other than Fu-Manchu's dacoits,
was practically nil.

At first we ran easily, for it was the second half-mile that would
decide our fate.  The professional murderers who pursued us ran
like panthers, I knew; and I dare not allow my mind to dwell
upon those yellow figures with the curved, gleaming knives.
For a long time neither of us looked back.

On we ran, and on--silently, doggedly.

Then a hissing breath from Smith warned me what to expect.

Should I, too, look back?  Yes.  It was impossible to resist
the horrid fascination.

I threw a quick glance over my shoulder.

And never while I live shall I forget what I saw.
Two of the pursuing dacoits had outdistanced their fellow
(or fellows), and were actually within three hundred yards of us.

More like dreadful animals they looked than human beings,
running bent forward, with their faces curiously uptilted.
The brilliant moonlight gleamed upon bared teeth, as I could see,
even at that distance, even in that quick, agonized glance,
and it gleamed upon the crescent-shaped knives.

"As hard as you can go now," panted Smith.  "We must make an attempt
to break into the empty cottage.  Only chance."

I had never in my younger days been a notable runner; for Smith I
cannot speak.  But I am confident that the next half-mile was done
in time that would not have disgraced a crack man.  Not once again did
either of us look back.  Yard upon yard we raced forward together.
My heart seemed to be bursting.  My leg muscles throbbed with pain.
At last, with the empty cottage in sight, it came to that pass with me
when another three yards looks as unattainable as three miles.
Once I stumbled.

"My God!" came from Smith weakly.

But I recovered myself.  Bare feet pattered close upon our heels,
and panting breaths told how even Fu-Manchu's bloodhounds were hard
put to it by the killing pace we had made.

"Smith," I whispered, "look in front.  Someone!"

As through a red mist I had seen a dark shape detach itself
from the shadows of the cottage, and merge into them again.
It could only be another dacoit; but Smith, not heeding,
or not hearing, my faintly whispered words, crashed open
the gate and hurled himself blindly at the door.

It burst open before him with a resounding boom, and he pitched forward
into the interior darkness.  Flat upon the floor he lay, for as,
with a last effort, I gained the threshold and dragged myself within,
I almost fell over his recumbent body.

Madly I snatched at the door.  His foot held it open.
I kicked the foot away, and banged the door to.  As I turned,
the leading dacoit, his eyes starting from their sockets,
his face the face of a demon leaped wildly through the gateway.

That Smith had burst the latch I felt assured, but by some divine
accident my weak hands found the bolt.  With the last ounce
of strength spared to me I thrust it home in the rusty socket--
as a full six inches of shining steel split the middle panel
and protruded above my head.

I dropped, sprawling, beside my friend.

A terrific blow shattered every pane of glass in the solitary window,
and one of the grinning animal faces looked in.

"Sorry, old man," whispered Smith, and his voice was barely audible.
Weakly he grasped my hand.  "My fault.  I shouldn't have let you come."

From the corner of the room where the black shadows lay flicked
a long tongue of flame.  Muffled, staccato, came the report.
And the yellow face at the window was blotted out.

One wild cry, ending in a rattling gasp, told of a dacoit gone
to his account.

A gray figure glided past me and was silhouetted against the broken window.

Again the pistol sent its message into the night, and again came
the reply to tell how well and truly that message had been delivered.
In the stillness, intense by sharp contrast, the sound
of bare soles pattering upon the path outside stole to me.
Two runners, I thought there were, so that four dacoits must
have been upon our trail.  The room was full of pungent smoke.
I staggered to my feet as the gray figure with the revolver
turned towards me.  Something familiar there was in that long,
gray garment, and now I perceived why I had thought so.

It was my gray rain-coat.

"Karamaneh," I whispered.

And Smith, with difficulty, supporting himself upright, and holding
fast to the ledge beside the door, muttered something hoarsely,
which sounded like "God bless her!"

The girl, trembling now, placed her hands upon my shoulders with that quaint,
pathetic gesture peculiarly her own.

"I followed you," she said.  "Did you not know I should follow you?
But I had to hide because of another who was following also.
I had but just reached this place when I saw you running towards me."

She broke off and turned to Smith.

"This is your pistol," she said naively.  "I found it in your bag.
Will you please take it!"

He took it without a word.  Perhaps he could not trust himself to speak.

"Now go.  Hurry!" she said.  "You are not safe yet."

"But you?" I asked.

"You have failed," she replied.  "I must go back to him.
There is no other way."

Strangely sick at heart for a man who has just had a miraculous
escape from death, I opened the door.  Coatless, disheveled figures,
my friend and I stepped out into the moonlight.

Hideous under the pale rays lay the two dead men,
their glazed eyes upcast to the peace of the blue heavens.
Karamaneh had shot to kill, for both had bullets in their brains.
If God ever planned a more complex nature than hers--a nature more
tumultuous with conflicting passions, I cannot conceive of it.
Yet her beauty was of the sweetest; and in some respects she
had the heart of a child--this girl who could shoot so straight.

"We must send the police to-night," said Smith.
"Or the papers--"

"Hurry," came the girl's voice commandingly from the darkness
of the cottage.

It was a singular situation.  My very soul rebelled against it.
But what could we do?

"Tell us where we can communicate," began Smith.

"Hurry.  I shall be suspected.  Do you want him to kill me!"

We moved away.  All was very still now, and the lights glimmered
faintly ahead.  Not a wisp of cloud brushed the moon's disk.

"Good-night, Karamaneh," I whispered softly.



CHAPTER XVIII


TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task
at once useless and thankless.  In its actual and in its dramatic
significance it concluded with our parting from Karamaneh.
And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant
by "Sweet Sorrow."

There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood,
a world whose very existence hitherto had been unsuspected.
Not the least of the mysteries which peeped from the darkness was
the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh.  I sought to forget her.
I sought to remember her.  Indeed, in the latter task I found
one more congenial, yet, in the direction and extent of the ideas
which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.

East and West may not intermingle.  As a student of
world-policies, as a physician, I admitted, could not deny,
that truth.  Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited,
she had come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands
of the raiders; had crossed the desert with the slave-drivers;
had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be?
With the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such
things to have passed.

But if it were so?

At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal
power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes
in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up.

Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story.
Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems
persistently haunted my mind.  But, always, my heart had an answer.
And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a family practice!--
who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past
the hot follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life
wherein the daily problems of the medical profession hold absolute
sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red lips find--
no place--are excluded!

But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to
enlist sympathy for the recorder.  The topic upon which, here,
I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me;
I cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other.
Let us return to that which it is my duty to narrate and let
us forget my brief digression.

It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London.
Under the guidance of my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned,
since his return from Burma, how there are haunts in the very heart
of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the few;
places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.

Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from
the pulsing life of Leicester Square, Smith led the way.
Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts
he paused and turned to me.

"Whatever you see or hear," he cautioned, "express no surprise."

A cab had dropped us at the corner.  We both wore dark suits and fez
caps with black silk tassels.  My complexion had been artificially
reduced to a shade resembling the deep tan of my friend's. He rang
the bell beside the door.

Almost immediately it was opened by a negro woman--gross, hideously ugly.

Smith uttered something in voluble Arabic.  As a linguist his
attainments were a constant source of surprise.  The jargons
of the East, Far and Near, he spoke as his mother tongue.
The woman immediately displayed the utmost servility, ushering us
into an ill-lighted passage, with every evidence of profound respect.
Following this passage, and passing an inner door,
from beyond whence proceeded bursts of discordant music,
we entered a little room bare of furniture, with coarse matting
for mural decorations, and a patternless red carpet on the floor.
In a niche burned a common metal lamp.

The negress left us, and close upon her departure entered a very aged man
with a long patriarchal beard, who greeted my friend with dignified courtesy.
Following a brief conversation, the aged Arab--for such he appeared to be--
drew aside a strip of matting, revealing a dark recess.  Placing his finger
upon his lips, he silently invited us to enter.

We did so, and the mat was dropped behind us.  The sounds of crude
music were now much plainer, and as Smith slipped a little shutter
aside I gave a start of surprise.

Beyond lay a fairly large apartment, having divans or low seats around
three of its walls.  These divans were occupied by a motley company
of Turks, Egyptians, Greeks, and others; and I noted two Chinese.
Most of them smoked cigarettes, and some were drinking.
A girl was performing a sinuous dance upon the square carpet occupying
the center of the floor, accompanied by a young negro woman upon
a guitar and by several members of the assembly who clapped their
hands to the music or hummed a low, monotonous melody.

Shortly after our entrance into the passage the dance terminated,
and the dancer fled through a curtained door at the farther end of the room.
A buzz of conversation arose.

"It is a sort of combined Wekaleh and place of entertainment for a certain
class of Oriental residents in, or visiting, London," Smith whispered.
"The old gentleman who has just left us is the proprietor or host.
I have been here before on several occasions, but have always drawn blank."

He was peering out eagerly into the strange clubroom.

"Whom do you expect to find here?" I asked.

"It is a recognized meeting-place," said Smith in my ear.
"It is almost a certainty that some of the Fu-Manchu group
use it at times."

Curiously I surveyed all these faces which were visible from the spy-hole.
My eyes rested particularly upon the two Chinamen.

"Do you recognize anyone?" I whispered.

"S-sh!"

Smith was craning his neck so as to command a sight of the doorway.
He obstructed my view, and only by his tense attitude and some
subtle wave of excitement which he communicated to me did I know
that a new arrival was entering.  The hum of conversation died away,
and in the ensuing silence I heard the rustle of draperies.
The newcomer was a woman, then.  Fearful of making any noise I yet
managed to get my eyes to the level of the shutter.

A woman in an elegant, flame-colored opera cloak was crossing the floor
and coming in the direction of the spot where we were concealed.
She wore a soft silk scarf about her head, a fold partly draped across
her face.  A momentary view I had of her--and wildly incongruous
she looked in that place--and she had disappeared from sight,
having approached someone invisible who sat upon the divan immediately
beneath our point of vantage.

From the way in which the company gazed towards her, I divined that she
was no habitue of the place, but that her presence there was as greatly
surprising to those in the room as it was to me.

Whom could she be, this elegant lady who visited such a haunt--
who, it would seem, was so anxious to disguise her identity,
but who was dressed for a society function rather than for a
midnight expedition of so unusual a character?

I began a whispered question, but Smith tugged at my arm to silence me.
His excitement was intense.  Had his keener powers enabled him
to recognize the unknown?

A faint but most peculiar perfume stole to my nostrils, a perfume
which seemed to contain the very soul of Eastern mystery.
Only one woman known to me used that perfume--Karamaneh.

Then it was she!

At last my friend's vigilance had been rewarded.  Eagerly I bent forward.
Smith literally quivered in anticipation of a discovery.  Again the strange
perfume was wafted to our hiding-place; and, glancing neither to right
nor left, I saw Karamaneh--for that it was she I no longer doubted--
recross the room and disappear.

"The man she spoke to," hissed Smith.  "We must see him!
We must have him!"

He pulled the mat aside and stepped out into the anteroom.
It was empty.  Down the passage he led, and we were almost come
to the door of the big room when it was thrown open and a man came
rapidly out, opened the street door before Smith could reach him,
and was gone, slamming it fast.

I can swear that we were not four seconds behind him, but when we gained
the street it was empty.  Our quarry had disappeared as if by magic.
A big car was just turning the corner towards Leicester Square.

"That is the girl," rapped Smith; "but where in Heaven's
name is the man to whom she brought the message?
I would give a hundred pounds to know what business is afoot.
To think that we have had such an opportunity and have
thrown it away!"

Angry and nonplused he stood at the corner, looking in the direction
of the crowded thoroughfare into which the car had been driven, tugging at
the lobe of his ear, as was his habit in such moments of perplexity,
and sharply clicking his teeth together.  I, too, was very thoughtful.
Clews were few enough in those days of our war with that giant antagonist.
The mere thought that our trifling error of judgment tonight in tarrying
a moment too long might mean the victory of Fu-Manchu, might mean the turning
of the balance which a wise providence had adjusted between the white
and yellow races, was appalling.

To Smith and me, who knew something of the secret influences
at work to overthrow the Indian Empire, to place, it might be,
the whole of Europe and America beneath an Eastern rule,
it seemed that a great yellow hand was stretched out over London.
Doctor Fu-Manchu was a menace to the civilized world.
Yet his very existence remained unsuspected by the millions
whose fate he sought to command.

"Into what dark scheme have we had a glimpse?" said Smith.
"What State secret is to be filched?  What faithful servant
of the British Raj to be spirited away?  Upon whom now has
Fu-Manchu set his death seal?"

"Karamaneh on this occasion may not have been acting as an emissary
of the Doctor's."

"I feel assured that she was, Petrie.  Of the many whom this yellow
cloud may at any moment envelop, to which one did her message refer?
The man's instructions were urgent.  Witness his hasty departure.
Curse it!"  He dashed his right clenched fist into the palm of his
left hand.  "I never had a glimpse of his face, first to last.
To think of the hours I have spent in that place, in anticipation
of just such a meeting--only to bungle the opportunity when it arose!"
Scarce heeding what course we followed, we had come now to Piccadilly
Circus, and had walked out into the heart of the night's traffic.
I just dragged Smith aside in time to save him from the off-front
wheel of a big Mercedes.  Then the traffic was blocked, and we found
ourselves dangerously penned in amidst the press of vehicles.

Somehow we extricated ourselves, jeered at by taxi-drivers,
who naturally took us for two simple Oriental visitors,
and just before that impassable barrier the arm of a London
policeman was lowered and the stream moved on a faint breath
of perfume became perceptible to me.

The cabs and cars about us were actually beginning to move again,
and there was nothing for it but a hasty retreat to the curb.
I could not pause to glance behind, but instinctively I knew
that someone--someone who used that rare, fragrant essence--
was leaning from the window of the car.

"ANDAMAN--SECOND!" floated a soft whisper.

We gained the pavement as the pent-up traffic roared upon its way.

Smith had not noticed the perfume worn by the unseen
occupant of the car, had not detected the whispered words.
But I had no reason to doubt my senses, and I knew beyond
question that Fu-Manchu's lovely slave, Karamaneh, had been
within a yard of us, had recognized us, and had uttered
those words for our guidance.

On regaining my rooms, we devoted a whole hour to considering
what "ANDAMAN--SECOND" could possibly mean.

"Hang it all!" cried Smith, "it might mean anything--
the result of a race, for instance."

He burst into one of his rare laughs, and began to stuff broadcut mixture
into his briar.  I could see that he had no intention of turning in.

"I can think of no one--no one of note--in London at present
upon whom it is likely that Fu-Manchu would make an attempt,"
he said, "except ourselves."

We began methodically to go through the long list of names
which we had compiled and to review our elaborate notes.
When, at last, I turned in, the night had given place to a new day.
But sleep evaded me, and "ANDAMAN--SECOND" danced like a
mocking phantom through my brain.

Then I heard the telephone bell.  I heard Smith speaking.

A minute afterwards he was in my room, his face very grim.

"I knew as well as if I'd seen it with my own eyes that some
black business was afoot last night," he said.  "And it was.
Within pistol-shot of us!  Someone has got at Frank Norris West.
Inspector Weymouth has just been on the 'phone."

"Norris West!" I cried, "the American aviator--and inventor--"
"Of the West aero-torpedo--yes.  He's been offering it to the English
War Office, and they have delayed too long."

I got out of bed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the potentialities have attracted the attention
of Dr. Fu-Manchu!"

Those words operated electrically.  I do not know how long I was in dressing,
how long a time elapsed ere the cab for which Smith had 'phoned arrived,
how many precious minutes were lost upon the journey; but, in a nervous whirl,
these things slipped into the past, like the telegraph poles seen from
the window of an express, and, still in that tense state, we came upon
the scene of this newest outrage.

Mr. Norris West, whose lean, stoic face had latterly figured so often
in the daily press, lay upon the floor in the little entrance hall
of his chambers, flat upon his back, with the telephone receiver
in his hand.

The outer door had been forced by the police.  They had
had to remove a piece of the paneling to get at the bolt.
A medical man was leaning over the recumbent figure in the striped
pajama suit, and Detective-Inspector Weymouth stood watching
him as Smith and I entered.

"He has been heavily drugged," said the Doctor, sniffing at
West's lips, "but I cannot say what drug has been used.
It isn't chloroform or anything of that nature.
He can safely be left to sleep it off, I think."

I agreed, after a brief examination.

"It's most extraordinary," said Weymouth.  "He rang up the Yard
about an hour ago and said his chambers had been invaded by Chinamen.
Then the man at the 'phone plainly heard him fall.  When we got here his
front door was bolted, as you've seen, and the windows are three floors up.
Nothing is disturbed."

"The plans of the aero-torpedo?" rapped Smith.

"I take it they are in the safe in his bedroom,"
replied the detective, "and that is locked all right.  I think
he must have taken an overdose of something and had illusions.
But in case there was anything in what he mumbled (you could
hardly understand him) I thought it as well to send for you."

"Quite right," said Smith rapidly.  His eyes shone like steel.
"Lay him on the bed, Inspector."

It was done, and my friend walked into the bedroom.

Save that the bed was disordered, showing that West had been
sleeping in it, there were no evidences of the extraordinary
invasion mentioned by the drugged man.  It was a small room--
the chambers were of that kind which are let furnished--and very neat.
A safe with a combination lock stood in a corner.  The window was open
about a foot at the top.  Smith tried the safe and found it fast.
He stood for a moment clicking his teeth together, by which I knew
him to be perplexed.  He walked over to the window and threw it up.
We both looked out.

"You see," came Weymouth's voice, "it is altogether too far from
the court below for our cunning Chinese friends to have fixed a ladder
with one of their bamboo rod arrangements.  And, even if they could
get up there, it's too far down from the roof--two more stories--
for them to have fixed it from there."

Smith nodded thoughtfully, at the same time trying the strength of an iron
bar which ran from side to side of the window-sill. Suddenly he stooped,
with a sharp exclamation.  Bending over his shoulder I saw what it was
that had attracted his attention.

Clearly imprinted upon the dust-coated gray stone of the sill was a confused
series of marks--tracks call them what you will.

Smith straightened himself and turned a wondering look upon me.

"What is it, Petrie?" he said amazedly.  "Some kind of bird has been here,
and recently."  Inspector Weymouth in turn examined the marks.

"I never saw bird tracks like these, Mr. Smith," he muttered.

Smith was tugging at the lobe of his ear.

"No," he returned reflectively; "come to think of it, neither did I."

He twisted around, looking at the man on the bed.

"Do you think it was all an illusion?" asked the detective.

"What about those marks on the window-sill?" jerked Smith.

He began restlessly pacing about the room, sometimes stopping
before the locked safe and frequently glancing at Norris West.

Suddenly he walked out and briefly examined the other apartments,
only to return again to the bedroom.

"Petrie," he said, "we are losing valuable time.
West must be aroused."

Inspector Weymouth stared.

Smith turned to me impatiently.  The doctor summoned by the police had gone.
"Is there no means of arousing him, Petrie?" he said.

"Doubtless," I replied, "he could be revived if one but knew
what drug he had taken."

My friend began his restless pacing again, and suddenly pounced upon
a little phial of tabloids which had been hidden behind some books
on a shelf near the bed.  He uttered a triumphant exclamation.

"See what we have here, Petrie!" he directed, handing the phial to me.
"It bears no label."

I crushed one of the tabloids in my palm and applied my tongue
to the powder.

"Some preparation of chloral hydrate," I pronounced.

"A sleeping draught?" suggested Smith eagerly.

"We might try," I said, and scribbled a formula upon a leaf of my notebook.
I asked Weymouth to send the man who accompanied him to call up the nearest
chemist and procure the antidote.

During the man's absence Smith stood contemplating the unconscious inventor,
a peculiar expression upon his bronzed face.

"ANDAMAN--SECOND," he muttered.  "Shall we find the key
to the riddle here, I wonder?"

Inspector Weymouth, who had concluded, I think, that the mysterious
telephone call was due to mental aberration on the part of Norris West,
was gnawing at his mustache impatiently when his assistant returned.
I administered the powerful restorative, and although,
as later transpired, chloral was not responsible for West's condition,
the antidote operated successfully.

Norris West struggled into a sitting position, and looked about him
with haggard eyes.

"The Chinamen!  The Chinamen!" he muttered.

He sprang to his feet, glaring wildly at Smith and me, reeled,
and almost fell.

"It is all right," I said, supporting him.  "I'm a doctor.
You have been unwell."

"Have the police come?" he burst out.  "The safe--try the safe!"

"It's all right," said Inspector Weymouth.  "The safe is locked--
unless someone else knows the combination, there's nothing
to worry about."

"No one else knows it," said West, and staggered unsteadily to the safe.
Clearly his mind was in a dazed condition, but, setting his jaw with
a curious expression of grim determination, he collected his thoughts
and opened the safe.

He bent down, looking in.

In some way the knowledge came to me that the curtain was about to rise
on a new and surprising act in the Fu-Manchu drama.

"God!" he whispered--we could scarcely hear him--"the plans are gone!"


CHAPTER XIX


I HAVE never seen a man quite so surprised as Inspector Weymouth.

"This is absolutely incredible!" he said.  "There's only one door
to your chambers.  We found it bolted from the inside."

"Yes," groaned West, pressing his hand to his forehead.
"I bolted it myself at eleven o'clock, when I came in."

"No human being could climb up or down to your windows.
The plans of the aero-torpedo were inside a safe."

"I put them there myself," said West, "on returning from the War Office,
and I had occasion to consult them after I had come in and bolted the door.
I returned them to the safe and locked it.  That it was still locked you
saw for yourselves, and no one else in the world knows the combination."

"But the plans have gone," said Weymouth.  "It's magic!  How was it done?
What happened last night, sir?  What did you mean when you rang us up?"

Smith during this colloquy was pacing rapidly up and down the room.
He turned abruptly to the aviator.

"Every fact you can remember, Mr. West, please," he said tersely;
"and be as brief as you possibly can."

"I came in, as I said," explained West, "about eleven o'clock and having
made some notes relating to an interview arranged for this morning,
I locked the plans in the safe and turned in."

"There was no one hidden anywhere in your chambers?" snapped Smith.

"There was not," replied West.  "I looked.  I invariably do.
Almost immediately, I went to sleep."

"How many chloral tabloids did you take?" I interrupted.

Norris West turned to me with a slow smile.

"You're cute, Doctor," he said.  "I took two.  It's a bad habit,
but I can't sleep without.  They are specially made up for me
by a firm in Philadelphia."

"How long sleep lasted, when it became filled with uncanny dreams,
and when those dreams merged into reality, I do not know--
shall never know, I suppose.  But out of the dreamless void
a face came to me--closer--closer--and peered into mine.

"I was in that curious condition wherein one knows
that one is dreaming and seeks to awaken--to escape.
But a nightmare-like oppression held me.  So I must lie
and gaze into the seared yellow face that hung over me,
for it would drop so close that I could trace the cicatrized
scar running from the left ear to the corner of the mouth,
and drawing up the lip like the lip of a snarling cur.
I could look into the malignant, jaundiced eyes;
I could hear the dim whispering of the distorted mouth--
whispering that seemed to counsel something--something evil.
That whispering intimacy was indescribably repulsive.
Then the wicked yellow face would be withdrawn, and would recede
until it became as a pin's head in the darkness far above me--
almost like a glutinous, liquid thing.

"Somehow I got upon my feet, or dreamed I did--God knows where dreaming ended
and reality began.  Gentlemen maybe you'll conclude I went mad last night,
but as I stood holding on to the bedrail I heard the blood throbbing through
my arteries with a noise like a screw-propeller. I started laughing.
The laughter issued from my lips with a shrill whistling sound that pierced
me with physical pain and seemed to wake the echoes of the whole block.
I thought myself I was going mad, and I tried to command my will--
to break the power of the chloral--for I concluded that I had accidentally
taken an overdose.

"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I
stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a
doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square!
That window yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it,
but I could just detect a Chinaman--the owner of the evil
yellow face--creeping through it.  He was followed by another,
who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they came towards me
(and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour to cross
this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman
seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.

"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face.
Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget
that face I saw last night--or did I see it?  God knows!
The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the eyes--
heavens above, the huge green eyes!"

He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly.
Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled
expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.

"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be
bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting.
One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head,
and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them,
sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up
like the roof of a cathedral.

"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'

"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls,
and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.

"`You are dreaming--yes.'  It was the Chinaman with the green
eyes who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered
appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance.
'But at will I can render the subjective objective.'
I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen.

"And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes.
I made no attempt to move.  They seemed to be draining me
of something vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power.
The whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being
absorbed into its greenness.

"I can see what you think.  And even in my delirium--
if it was delirium--I thought the same.  Now comes the climax
of my experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it.
I SAW some WORDS issuing from my own mouth!"

Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly.  Smith whisked round upon him.

"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said,
"but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least.
I know to what the experience was due."

Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth
was come to me, too.

"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain;
I simply tell you I saw it.  Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself--
given something away."

"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.

"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.

But West went on hoarsely:

"Just before the blank came a name flashed before my eyes.
It was `Bayard Taylor.'"

At that I interrupted West.

"I understand!" I cried.  "I understand!  Another name has just occurred
to me, Mr. West--that of the Frenchman, Moreau."

"You have solved the mystery," said Smith.  "It was natural
Mr. West should have thought of the American traveler,
Bayard Taylor, though.  Moreau's book is purely scientific.
He has probably never read it."

"I fought with the stupor that was overcoming me," continued West,
"striving to associate that vaguely familiar name with the fantastic things
through which I moved.  It seemed to me that the room was empty again.
I made for the hall, for the telephone.  I could scarcely drag my feet along.
It seemed to take me half-an-hour to get there.  I remember calling up
Scotland Yard, and I remember no more."

There was a short, tense interval.

In some respects I was nonplused; but, frankly, I think Inspector Weymouth
considered West insane.  Smith, his hands locked behind his back,
stared out of the window.

"ANDAMAN--SECOND" he said suddenly.  "Weymouth, when is the first
train to Tilbury?"

"Five twenty-two from Fenchurch Street," replied the Scotland
Yard man promptly.

"Too late!" rapped my friend.  "Jump in a taxi and pick up
two good men to leave for China at once!  Then go and charter
a special to Tilbury to leave in twenty-five minutes.
Order another cab to wait outside for me."

Weymouth was palpably amazed, but Smith's tone was imperative.
The Inspector departed hastily.

I stared at Smith, not comprehending what prompted this singular course.

"Now that you can think clearly, Mr. West," he said, "of what
does your experience remind you?  The errors of perception
regarding time; the idea of SEEING A SOUND; the illusion
that the room alternately increased and diminished in size;
your fit of laughter, and the recollection of the name Bayard Taylor.
Since evidently you are familiar with that author's work--
`The Land of the Saracen,' is it not?--these symptoms of the attack
should be familiar, I think."

Norris West pressed his hands to his evidently aching head.

"Bayard Taylor's book," he said dully.  "Yes! . . . I know of what my
brain sought to remind me--Taylor's account of his experience under
hashish. Mr. Smith, someone doped me with hashish!"

Smith nodded grimly.

"Cannabis indica," I said--"Indian hemp.  That is what you were drugged
with.  I have no doubt that now you experience a feeling of nausea and
intense thirst, with aching in the muscles, particularly the deltoid.
I think you must have taken at least fifteen grains."

Smith stopped his perambulations immediately in front of West,
looking into his dulled eyes.

"Someone visited your chambers last night," he said slowly,
"and for your chloral tabloids substituted some containing hashish,
or perhaps not pure hashish.  Fu-Manchu is a profound chemist."

Norris West started.

"Someone substituted--" he began.

"Exactly," said Smith, looking at him keenly; "someone who was
here yesterday.  Have you any idea whom it could have been?"

West hesitated.  "I had a visitor in the afternoon," he said,
seemingly speaking the words unwillingly, "but--"

"A lady?" jerked Smith.  "I suggest that it was a lady."

West nodded.

"You're quite right," he admitted.  "I don't know how you arrived
at the conclusion, but a lady whose acquaintance I made recently--
a foreign lady."

"Karamaneh!" snapped Smith.

"I don't know what you mean in the least, but she came here--
knowing this to be my present address--to ask me to protect her from
a mysterious man who had followed her right from Charing Cross.
She said he was down in the lobby, and naturally, I asked her to wait
here whilst I went and sent him about his business."

He laughed shortly.

"I am over-old," he said, "to be guyed by a woman.
You spoke just now of someone called Fu-Manchu. Is
that the crook I'm indebted to for the loss of my plans?
I've had attempts made by agents of two European governments,
but a Chinaman is a novelty."

"This Chinaman," Smith assured him, "is the greatest novelty of his age.
You recognize your symptoms now from Bayard Taylor's account?"

"Mr. West's statement," I said, "ran closely parallel
with portions of Moreau's book on `Hashish Hallucinations.'
Only Fu-Manchu, I think, would have thought of employing Indian hemp.
I doubt, though, if it was pure Cannabis indica. At any rate,
it acted as an opiate--"

"And drugged Mr. West," interrupted Smith, "sufficiently to enable
Fu-Manchu to enter unobserved."

"Whilst it produced symptoms which rendered him an easy subject
for the Doctor's influence.  It is difficult in this case to separate
hallucination from reality, but I think, Mr. West, that Fu-Manchu
must have exercised an hypnotic influence upon your drugged brain.
We have evidence that he dragged from you the secret of the combination."

"God knows we have!" said West.  "But who is this Fu-Manchu, and how--
how in the name of wonder did he get into my chambers?"

Smith pulled out his watch.  "That," he said rapidly, "I cannot
delay to explain if I'm to intercept the man who has the plans.
Come along, Petrie; we must be at Tilbury within the hour.
There is just a bare chance."



CHAPTER XX


IT was with my mind in a condition of unique perplexity that I hurried
with Nayland Smith into the cab which waited and dashed off through
the streets in which the busy life of London just stirred into being.
I suppose I need not say that I could penetrate no farther into this,
Fu-Manchu's latest plot, than the drugging of Norris West with hashish?
Of his having been so drugged with Indian hemp--that is,
converted temporarily into a maniac--would have been evident to any
medical man who had heard his statement and noted the distressing
after-effects which conclusively pointed to Indian hemp poisoning.
Knowing something of the Chinese doctor's powers, I could understand that
he might have extracted from West the secret of the combination by sheer
force of will whilst the American was under the influence of the drug.
But I could not understand how Fu-Manchu had gained access to locked
chambers on the third story of a building.

"Smith," I said, "those bird tracks on the window-sill--
they furnish the key to a mystery which is puzzling me."

"They do," said Smith, glancing impatiently at his watch.
"Consult your memories of Dr. Fu-Manchu's habits--especially your
memories of his pets."

I reviewed in my mind the creatures gruesome and terrible which
surrounded the Chinaman--the scorpions, the bacteria, the noxious
things which were the weapons wherewith he visited death upon
whomsoever opposed the establishment of a potential Yellow Empire.
But no one of them could account for the imprints upon the dust
of West's window-sill.

"You puzzle me, Smith," I confessed.  "There is much in this extraordinary
case that puzzles me.  I can think of nothing to account for the marks."

"Have you thought of Fu-Manchu's marmoset?" asked Smith.

"The monkey!" I cried.

"They were the footprints of a small ape," my friend continued.
"For a moment I was deceived as you were, and believed them
to be the tracks of a large bird; but I have seen the footprints
of apes before now, and a marmoset, though an American variety,
I believe, is not unlike some of the apes of Burma."

"I am still in the dark," I said.

"It is pure hypothesis," continued Smith, "but here is the theory--
in lieu of a better one it covers the facts.  The marmoset--
and it is contrary from the character of Fu-Manchu to keep any
creature for mere amusement--is trained to perform certain duties.

"You observed the waterspout running up beside the window; you observed
the iron bar intended to prevent a window-cleaner from falling out?
For an ape the climb from the court below to the sill above was
a simple one.  He carried a cord, probably attached to his body.
He climbed on to the sill, over the bar, and climbed down again.
By means of this cord a rope was pulled up over the bar,
by means of the rope one of those ladders of silk and bamboo.
One of the Doctor's servants ascended--probably to
ascertain if the hashish had acted successfully.
That was the yellow dream-face which West saw bending over him.
Then followed the Doctor, and to his giant will the drugged brain
of West was a pliant instrument which he bent to his own ends.
The court would be deserted at that hour of the night, and,
in any event, directly after the ascent the ladder probably
was pulled up, only to be lowered again when West had revealed
the secret of his own safe and Fu-Manchu had secured the plans.
The reclosing of the safe and the removing of the hashish tabloids,
leaving no clew beyond the delirious ravings of a drug slave--
for so anyone unacquainted with the East must have construed
West's story--is particularly characteristic.  His own tabloids
were returned, of course.  The sparing of his life alone is
a refinement of art which points to a past master."

"Karamaneh was the decoy again?" I said shortly.

"Certainly.  Hers was the task to ascertain West's habits and to
substitute the tabloids.  She it was who waited in the luxurious car--
infinitely less likely to attract attention at that hour in
that place than a modest taxi--and received the stolen plans.
She did her work well.

"Poor Karamaneh; she had no alternative!  I said I would have given a hundred
pounds for a sight of the messenger's face--the man to whom she handed them.
I would give a thousand now!"

"ANDAMAN--SECOND," I said.  "What did she mean?"

"Then it has not dawned upon you?" cried Smith excitedly, as the cab
turned into the station.  "The ANDAMAN, of the Oriental Navigation
Company's line, leaves Tilbury with the next tide for China ports.
Our man is a second-class passenger.  I am wiring to delay her departure,
and the special should get us to the docks inside of forty minutes."


Very vividly I can reconstruct in my mind that dash to the docks
through the early autumn morning.  My friend being invested
with extraordinary powers from the highest authorities,
by Inspector Weymouth's instructions the line had been cleared
all the way.

Something of the tremendous importance of Nayland Smith's mission came home
to me as we hurried on to the platform, escorted by the station-master,
and the five of us--for Weymouth had two other C.I.D. men with him--
took our seats in the special.

Off we went on top speed, roaring through stations,
where a glimpse might be had of wondering officials upon
the platforms, for a special train was a novelty on the line.
All ordinary traffic arrangements were held up until we had
passed through, and we reached Tilbury in time which I doubt
not constituted a record.

There at the docks was the great liner, delayed in her passage
to the Far East by the will of my royally empowered companion.
It was novel, and infinitely exciting.

"Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith?" said the captain interrogatively,
when we were shown into his room, and looked from one to another and back
to the telegraph form which he held in his hand.

"The same, Captain," said my friend briskly.  "I shall not detain
you a moment.  I am instructing the authorities at all ports
east of Suez to apprehend one of your second-class passengers,
should he leave the ship.  He is in possession of plans
which practically belong to the British Government!"

"Why not arrest him now?" asked the seaman bluntly.

"Because I don't know him.  All second-class passengers'
baggage will be searched as they land.  I am hoping something from that,
if all else fails.  But I want you privately to instruct your stewards
to watch any passenger of Oriental nationality, and to cooperate
with the two Scotland Yard men who are joining you for the voyage.
I look to you to recover these plans, Captain."

"I will do my best," the captain assured him.

Then, from amid the heterogeneous group on the dockside, we were watching
the liner depart, and Nayland Smith's expression was a very singular one.
Inspector Weymouth stood with us, a badly puzzled man.  Then occurred
the extraordinary incident which to this day remains inexplicable, for,
clearly heard by all three of us, a guttural voice said:

"Another victory for China, Mr. Nayland Smith!"

I turned as though I had been stung.  Smith turned also.
My eyes passed from face to face of the group about us.
None was familiar.  No one apparently had moved away.

But the voice was the voice of DOCTOR FU-MANCHU.

As I write of it, now, I can appreciate the difference
between that happening, as it appealed to us, and as it must
appeal to you who merely read of it.  It is beyond my powers
to convey the sense of the uncanny which the episode created.
Yet, even as I think of it, I feel again, though in lesser degree,
the chill which seemed to creep through my veins that day.

From my brief history of the wonderful and evil man who once walked,
by the way unsuspected, in the midst of the people of England--
near whom you, personally, may at some time unwittingly, have been--
I am aware that much must be omitted.  I have no space for lengthy
examinations of the many points but ill illuminated with which it is dotted.
This incident at the docks is but one such point.

Another is the singular vision which appeared to me whilst I lay in
the cellar of the house near Windsor.  It has since struck me that it
possessed peculiarities akin to those of a hashish hallucination.
Can it be that we were drugged on that occasion with Indian hemp?  Cannabis
indica is a treacherous narcotic, as every medical man knows full well;
but Fu-Manchu's knowledge of the drug was far in advance of our slow science.
West's experience proved so much.

I may have neglected opportunities--later, you shall judge if I did so--
opportunities to glean for the West some of the strange knowledge of
the secret East.  Perhaps, at a future time, I may rectify my errors.
Perhaps that wisdom--the wisdom stored up by Fu-Manchu--is lost forever.
There is, however, at least a bare possibility of its survival, in part;
and I do not wholly despair of one day publishing a scientific sequel
to this record of our dealings with the Chinese doctor.


CHAPTER XXI


TIME wore on and seemingly brought us no nearer, or very little nearer,
to our goal.  So carefully had my friend Nayland Smith excluded
the matter from the press that, whilst public interest was much engaged
with some of the events in the skein of mystery which he had come from
Burma to unravel, outside the Secret Service and the special department
of Scotland Yard few people recognized that the several murders,
robberies and disappearances formed each a link in a chain; fewer still
were aware that a baneful presence was in our midst, that a past
master of the evil arts lay concealed somewhere in the metropolis;
searched for by the keenest wits which the authorities could direct
to the task, but eluding all--triumphant, contemptuous.

One link in that chain Smith himself for long failed to recognize.
Yet it was a big and important link.

"Petrie," he said to me one morning, "listen to this:

"`. . .In sight of Shanghai--a clear, dark night.  On board the deck of a junk
passing close to seaward of the Andaman a blue flare started up.
A minute later there was a cry of "Man overboard!"

"`Mr. Lewin, the chief officer, who was in charge, stopped the engines.
A boat was put out.  But no one was recovered.  There are sharks
in these waters.  A fairly heavy sea was running.

"`Inquiry showed the missing man to be a James Edwards,
second class, booked to Shanghai.  I think the name was assumed.
The man was some sort of Oriental, and we had had him
under close observation. . . .'"

"That's the end of their report," exclaimed Smith.

He referred to the two C.I.D. men who had joined the Andaman
at the moment of her departure from Tilbury.

He carefully lighted his pipe.

"IS it a victory for China, Petrie?" he said softly.

"Until the great war reveals her secret resources--and I pray that the day
be not in my time--we shall never know," I replied.

Smith began striding up and down the room.

"Whose name," he jerked abruptly, "stands now at the head
of our danger list?"

He referred to a list which we had compiled of the notable men intervening
between the evil genius who secretly had invaded London and the triumph
of his cause--the triumph of the yellow races.

I glanced at our notes.  "Lord Southery," I replied.

Smith tossed the morning paper across to me.

"Look," he said shortly.  "He's dead."

I read the account of the peer's death, and glanced at
the long obituary notice; but no more than glanced at it.
He had but recently returned from the East, and now, after a
short illness, had died from some affection of the heart.
There had been no intimation that his illness was of a
serious nature, and even Smith, who watched over his flock--
the flock threatened by the wolf, Fu-Manchu--with jealous zeal,
had not suspected that the end was so near.

"Do you think he died a natural death, Smith?" I asked.

My friend reached across the table and rested the tip of a long
finger upon one of the sub-headings to the account:


"SIR FRANK NARCOMBE SUMMONED TOO LATE."


"You see," said Smith, "Southery died during the night,
but Sir Frank Narcombe, arriving a few minutes later,
unhesitatingly pronounced death to be due to syncope,
and seems to have noticed nothing suspicious."

I looked at him thoughtfully.

"Sir Frank is a great physician," I said slowly; "but we must
remember he would be looking for nothing suspicious."

"We must remember," rapped Smith, "that, if Dr. Fu-Manchu
is responsible for Southery's death, except to the eye
of an expert there would be nothing suspicious to see.
Fu-Manchu leaves no clews."

"Are you going around?" I asked.

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

"I think not," he replied.  "Either a greater One than Fu-Manchu
has taken Lord Southery, or the yellow doctor has done his work
so well that no trace remains of his presence in the matter."

Leaving his breakfast untasted, he wandered aimlessly about the room,
littering the hearth with matches as he constantly relighted his pipe,
which went out every few minutes.

"It's no good, Petrie," he burst out suddenly; "it cannot be a coincidence.
We must go around and see him."

An hour later we stood in the silent room, with its drawn blinds and
its deathful atmosphere, looking down at the pale, intellectual face
of Henry Stradwick, Lord Southery, the greatest engineer of his day.
The mind that lay behind that splendid brow had planned the construction
of the railway for which Russia had paid so great a price, had conceived
the scheme for the canal which, in the near future, was to bring
two great continents, a full week's journey nearer one to the other.
But now it would plan no more.

"He had latterly developed symptoms of angina pectoris,"
explained the family physician; "but I had not anticipated a fatal
termination so soon.  I was called about two o'clock this morning,
and found Lord Southery in a dangerously exhausted condition.
I did all that was possible, and Sir Frank Narcombe was sent for.
But shortly before his arrival the patient expired."

"I understand, Doctor, that you had been treating Lord Southery
for angina pectoris?" I said.

"Yes," was the reply, "for some months."

"You regard the circumstances of his end as entirely consistent
with a death from that cause?"

"Certainly.  Do you observe anything unusual yourself?
Sir Frank Narcombe quite agrees with me.  There is surely
no room for doubt?"

"No," said Smith, tugging reflectively at the lobe of his left ear.
"We do not question the accuracy of your diagnosis in any way, sir."

The physician seemed puzzled.

"But am I not right in supposing that you are connected with the police?"
asked the physician.

"Neither Dr. Petrie nor myself are in any way connected with the police,"
answered Smith.  "But, nevertheless, I look to you to regard our recent
questions as confidential."

As we were leaving the house, hushed awesomely in deference to the unseen
visitor who had touched Lord Southery with gray, cold fingers, Smith paused,
detaining a black-coated man who passed us on the stairs.

"You were Lord Southery's valet?"

The man bowed.

"Were you in the room at the moment of his fatal seizure?"

"I was, sir."

"Did you see or hear anything unusual--anything unaccountable?"

"Nothing, sir."

"No strange sounds outside the house, for instance?"

The man shook his head, and Smith, taking my arm, passed out into the street.

"Perhaps this business is making me imaginative," he said;
"but there seems to be something tainting the air in yonder--
something peculiar to houses whose doors bear the invisible
death-mark of Fu-Manchu."

"You are right, Smith!" I cried.  "I hesitated to mention the matter, but I,
too, have developed some other sense which warns me of the Doctor's presence.
Although there is not a scrap of confirmatory evidence, I am as sure that he
has brought about Lord Southery's death as if I had seen him strike the blow."

It was in that torturing frame of mind--chained, helpless,
in our ignorance, or by reason of the Chinaman's
supernormal genius--that we lived throughout the ensuing days.
My friend began to look like a man consumed by a burning fever.
Yet, we could not act.

In the growing dark of an evening shortly following I
stood idly turning over some of the works exposed for sale
outside a second-hand bookseller's in New Oxford Street.
One dealing with the secret societies of China struck me
as being likely to prove instructive, and I was about to call
the shopman when I was startled to feel a hand clutch my arm.

I turned around rapidly--and was looking into the darkly beautiful
eyes of Karamaneh!  She--whom I had seen in so many guises--
was dressed in a perfectly fitting walking habit, and had much
of her wonderful hair concealed beneath a fashionable hat.

She glanced about her apprehensively.

"Quick!  Come round the corner.  I must speak to you," she said,
her musical voice thrilling with excitement.

I never was quite master of myself in her presence.
He must have been a man of ice who could have been,
I think, for her beauty had all the bouquet of rarity;
she was a mystery--and mystery adds charm to a woman.
Probably she should have been under arrest, but I know I would
have risked much to save her from it.

As we turned into a quiet thoroughfare she stopped and said:

"I am in distress.  You have often asked me to enable you to capture
Dr. Fu-Manchu. I am prepared to do so."

I could scarcely believe that I heard right.

"Your brother--" I began.

She seized my arm entreatingly, looking into my eyes.

"You are a doctor," she said.  "I want you to come and see him now."

"What!  Is he in London?"

"He is at the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu."

"And you would have me--"

"Accompany me there, yes."

Nayland Smith, I doubted not, would have counseled me against
trusting my life in the hands of this girl with the pleading eyes.
Yet I did so, and with little hesitation; shortly we were traveling
eastward in a closed cab.  Karamaneh was very silent, but always when I
turned to her I found her big eyes fixed upon me with an expression
in which there was pleading, in which there was sorrow, in which there
was something else--something indefinable, yet strangely disturbing.
The cabman she had directed to drive to the lower end of the Commercial Road,
the neighborhood of the new docks, and the scene of one of our early
adventures with Dr. Fu-Manchu. The mantle of dusk had closed about
the squalid activity of the East End streets as we neared our destination.
Aliens of every shade of color were about us now, emerging from
burrow-like alleys into the glare of the lamps upon the main road.
In the short space of the drive we had passed from the bright world
of the West into the dubious underworld of the East.

I do not know that Karamaneh moved; but in sympathy, as we neared
the abode of the sinister Chinaman, she crept nearer to me,
and when the cab was discharged, and together we walked down
a narrow turning leading riverward, she clung to me fearfully,
hesitated, and even seemed upon the point of turning back.
But, overcoming her fear or repugnance, she led on, through a maze
of alleyways and courts, wherein I hopelessly lost my bearings,
so that it came home to me how wholly I was in the hands of this
girl whose history was so full of shadows, whose real character
was so inscrutable, whose beauty, whose charm truly might mask
the cunning of a serpent.

I spoke to her.

"S-SH!" She laid her hand upon my arm, enjoining me to silence.

The high, drab brick wall of what looked like some part of a dock
building loomed above us in the darkness, and the indescribable
stenches of the lower Thames were borne to my nostrils through
a gloomy, tunnel-like opening, beyond which whispered the river.
The muffled clangor of waterside activity was about us.
I heard a key grate in a lock, and Karamaneh drew me into the shadow
of an open door, entered, and closed it behind her.

For the first time I perceived, in contrast to the odors
of the court without, the fragrance of the peculiar perfume
which now I had come to associate with her.  Absolute darkness
was about us, and by this perfume alone I knew that she
was near to me, until her hand touched mine, and I was led
along an uncarpeted passage and up an uncarpeted stair.
A second door was unlocked, and I found myself in an exquisitely
furnished room, illuminated by the soft light of a shaded lamp
which stood upon a low, inlaid table amidst a perfect ocean
of silken cushions, strewn upon a Persian carpet, whose yellow
richness was lost in the shadows beyond the circle of light.

Karamaneh raised a curtain draped before a doorway, and stood
listening intently for a moment.

The silence was unbroken.

Then something stirred amid the wilderness of cushions, and two
tiny bright eyes looked up at me.  Peering closely, I succeeded
in distinguishing, crouched in that soft luxuriance, a little ape.
It was Dr. Fu-Manchu's marmoset.  "This way," whispered Karamaneh.

Never, I thought, was a staid medical man committed to a more
unwise enterprise, but so far I had gone, and no consideration
of prudence could now be of avail.

The corridor beyond was thickly carpeted.  Following the direction
of a faint light which gleamed ahead, it proved to extend
as a balcony across one end of a spacious apartment.
Together we stood high up there in the shadows, and looked
down upon such a scene as I never could have imagined to exist
within many a mile of that district.

The place below was even more richly appointed than the room into
which first we had come.  Here, as there, piles of cushions formed
splashes of gaudy color about the floor.  Three lamps hung by chains
from the ceiling, their light softened by rich silk shades.
One wall was almost entirely occupied by glass cases containing
chemical apparatus, tubes, retorts and other less orthodox indications
of Dr. Fu-Manchu's pursuits, whilst close against another lay
the most extraordinary object of a sufficiently extraordinary room--
a low couch, upon which was extended the motionless form of a boy.
In the light of a lamp which hung directly above him, his olive
face showed an almost startling resemblance to that of Karamaneh--
save that the girl's coloring was more delicate.  He had black,
curly hair, which stood out prominently against the white covering
upon which he lay, his hands crossed upon his breast.

Transfixed with astonishment, I stood looking down upon him.
The wonders of the "Arabian Nights" were wonders no longer,
for here, in East-End London, was a true magician's palace,
lacking not its beautiful slave, lacking not its enchanted prince!

"It is Aziz, my brother," said Karamaneh.

We passed down a stairway on to the floor of the apartment.
Karamaneh knelt and bent over the boy, stroking his hair
and whispering to him lovingly.  I, too, bent over him;
and I shall never forget the anxiety in the girl's eyes as she
watched me eagerly whilst I made a brief examination.

Brief, indeed, for even ere I had touched him I knew that the comely
shell held no spark of life.  But Karamaneh fondled the cold hands,
and spoke softly in that Arabic tongue which long before I had divined
must be her native language.

Then, as I remained silent, she turned and looked at me,
read the truth in my eyes, and rose from her knees,
stood rigidly upright, and clutched me tremblingly.

"He is not dead--he is NOT dead!" she whispered, and shook me
as a child might, seeking to arouse me to a proper understanding.
"Oh, tell me he is not--"

"I cannot," I replied gently, "for indeed he is."

"No!" she said, wild-eyed, and raising her hands to her face as though
half distraught.  "You do not understand--yet you are a doctor.
You do not understand--"

She stopped, moaning to herself and looking from the handsome
face of the boy to me.  It was pitiful; it was uncanny.
But sorrow for the girl predominated in my mind.

Then from somewhere I heard a sound which I had heard before in houses
occupied by Dr. Fu-Manchu--that of a muffled gong.

"Quick!"  Karamaneh had me by the arm.  "Up!  He has returned!"

She fled up the stairs to the balcony, I close at her heels.
The shadows veiled us, the thick carpet deadened the sound
of our tread, or certainly we must have been detected by the man
who entered the room we had just quitted.

It was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

Yellow-robed, immobile, the inhuman green eyes glittering catlike even,
it seemed, before the light struck them, he threaded his way through
the archipelago of cushions and bent over the couch of Aziz.

Karamaneh dragged me down on to my knees.

"Watch!" she whispered.  "Watch!"

Dr. Fu-Manchu felt for the pulse of the boy whom a moment since I
had pronounced dead, and, stepping to the tall glass case,
took out a long-necked flask of chased gold, and from it,
into a graduated glass, he poured some drops of an amber liquid
wholly unfamiliar to me.  I watched him with all my eyes,
and noted how high the liquid rose in the measure.
He charged a needle-syringe, and, bending again over Aziz,
made an injection.

Then all the wonders I had heard of this man became possible,
and with an awe which any other physician who had examined
Aziz must have felt, I admitted him a miracle-worker. For
as I watched, all but breathless, the dead came to life!
The glow of health crept upon the olive cheek--the boy moved--
he raised his hands above his head--he sat up, supported by
the Chinese doctor!

Fu-Manchu touched some hidden bell.  A hideous yellow man with a scarred
face entered, carrying a tray upon which were a bowl containing
some steaming fluid, apparently soup, what looked like oaten cakes,
and a flask of red wine.

As the boy, exhibiting no more unusual symptoms than if he had just
awakened from a normal sleep, commenced his repast, Karamaneh drew me
gently along the passage into the room which we had first entered.
My heart leaped wildly as the marmoset bounded past us to drop hand
over hand to the lower apartment in search of its master.

"You see," said Karamaneh, her voice quivering, "he is not dead!
But without Fu-Manchu he is dead to me.  How can I leave him
when he holds the life of Aziz in his hand?"

"You must get me that flask, or some of its contents," I directed.
"But tell me, how does he produce the appearance of death?"

"I cannot tell you," she replied.  "I do not know.  It is something
in the wine.  In another hour Aziz will be again as you saw him.
But see."  And, opening a little ebony box, she produced a phial
half filled with the amber liquid.

"Good!" I said, and slipped it into my pocket.  "When will be the best
time to seize Fu-Manchu and to restore your brother?"

"I will let you know," she whispered, and, opening the door, pushed me
hurriedly from the room.  "He is going away to-night to the north;
but you must not come to-night. Quick!  Quick!  Along the passage.
He may call me at any moment."

So, with the phial in my pocket containing a potent preparation unknown
to Western science, and with a last long look into the eyes of Karamaneh,
I passed out into the narrow alley, out from the fragrant perfumes
of that mystery house into the place of Thames-side stenches.



CHAPTER XXII


"WE must arrange for the house to be raided without delay," said Smith.
"This time we are sure of our ally--"

"But we must keep our promise to her," I interrupted.

"You can look after that, Petrie," my friend said.
"I will devote the whole of my attention to Dr. Fu-Manchu!"
he added grimly.

Up and down the room he paced, gripping the blackened briar between
his teeth, so that the muscles stood out squarely upon his lean jaws.
The bronze which spoke of the Burmese sun enhanced the brightness
of his gray eyes.

"What have I all along maintained?" he jerked, looking back at me across
his shoulder--"that, although Karamaneh was one of the strongest weapons in
the Doctor's armory, she was one which some day would be turned against him.
That day has dawned."

"We must await word from her."

"Quite so."

He knocked out his pipe on the grate.  Then:

"Have you any idea of the nature of the fluid in the phial?"

"Not the slightest.  And I have none to spare for analytical purposes."

Nayland Smith began stuffing mixture into the hot pipe-bowl,
and dropping an almost equal quantity on the floor.

"I cannot rest, Petrie," he said.  "I am itching to get to work.
Yet, a false move, and--" He lighted his pipe, and stood staring
from the window.

"I shall, of course, take a needle-syringe with me," I explained.

Smith made no reply.

"If I but knew the composition of the drug which produced the semblance
of death," I continued, "my fame would long survive my ashes."

My friend did not turn.  But:

"She said it was something he put in the wine?" he jerked.

"In the wine, yes."

Silence fell.  My thoughts reverted to Karamaneh, whom Dr. Fu-Manchu held
in bonds stronger than any slave-chains. For, with Aziz, her brother,
suspended between life and death, what could she do save obey
the mandates of the cunning Chinaman?  What perverted genius was his!
If that treasury of obscure wisdom which he, perhaps alone of living men,
had rifled, could but be thrown open to the sick and suffering, the name
of Dr. Fu-Manchu would rank with the golden ones in the history of healing.

Nayland Smith suddenly turned, and the expression upon his face amazed me.

"Look up the next train to L--!" he rapped.  

"To L--?  What--?"

"There's the Bradshaw.  We haven't a minute to waste."

In his voice was the imperative note I knew so well; in his
eyes was the light which told of an urgent need for action--
a portentous truth suddenly grasped.

"One in half-an-hour--the last."

"We must catch it."

No further word of explanation he vouchsafed, but darted off to dress;
for he had spent the afternoon pacing the room in his dressing-gown
and smoking without intermission.

Out and to the corner we hurried, and leaped into the first taxi
upon the rank.  Smith enjoined the man to hasten, and we were off--
all in that whirl of feverish activity which characterized my friend's
movements in times of important action.

He sat glancing impatiently from the window and twitching at the lobe
of his ear.

"I know you will forgive me, old man," he said, "but there
is a little problem which I am trying to work out in my mind.
Did you bring the things I mentioned?"

"Yes."

Conversation lapsed, until, just as the cab turned into the station,
Smith said:  "Should you consider Lord Southery to have been the first
constructive engineer of his time, Petrie?"

"Undoubtedly," I replied.

"Greater than Von Homber, of Berlin?"

"Possibly not.  But Von Homber has been dead for three years."

"Three years, is it?"

"Roughly."

"Ah!"


We reached the station in time to secure a non-corridor
compartment to ourselves, and to allow Smith leisure carefully
to inspect the occupants of all the others, from the engine
to the guard's van.  He was muffled up to the eyes, and he warned
me to keep out of sight in the corner of the compartment.
In fact, his behavior had me bursting with curiosity.
The train having started:

"Don't imagine, Petrie," said Smith "that I am trying to lead you
blindfolded in order later to dazzle you with my perspicacity.
I am simply afraid that this may be a wild-goose chase.
The idea upon which I am acting does not seem to have struck you.
I wish it had.  The fact would argue in favor of its being sound."

"At present I am hopelessly mystified."

"Well, then, I will not bias you towards my view.
But just study the situation, and see if you can arrive at
the reason for this sudden journey.  I shall be distinctly
encouraged if you succeed."

But I did not succeed, and since Smith obviously was
unwilling to enlighten me, I pressed him no more.
The train stopped at Rugby, where he was engaged with
the stationmaster in making some mysterious arrangements.
At L--, however, their object became plain, for a high-power car
was awaiting us, and into this we hurried and ere the greater
number of passengers had reached the platform were being driven
off at headlong speed along the moon-bathed roads.

Twenty minutes' rapid traveling, and a white mansion leaped into the line
of sight, standing out vividly against its woody backing.

"Stradwick Hall," said Smith.  "The home of Lord Southery.
We are first--but Dr. Fu-Manchu was on the train."

Then the truth dawned upon the gloom of my perplexity.



CHAPTER XXIII


"YOUR extraordinary proposal fills me with horror, Mr. Smith!"

The sleek little man in the dress suit, who looked like a head waiter
(but was the trusted legal adviser of the house of Southery)
puffed at his cigar indignantly.  Nayland Smith, whose restless
pacing had led him to the far end of the library, turned, a remote
but virile figure, and looked back to where I stood by the open
hearth with the solicitor.

"I am in your hands, Mr. Henderson," he said, and advanced
upon the latter, his gray eyes ablaze.  "Save for the heir,
who is abroad on foreign service, you say there is no kin
of Lord Southery to consider.  The word rests with you.
If I am wrong, and you agree to my proposal, there is none
whose susceptibilities will suffer--"

"My own, sir!"

"If I am right, and you prevent me from acting, you become
a murderer, Mr. Henderson."

The lawyer started, staring nervously up at Smith, who now towered
over him menacingly.

"Lord Southery was a lonely man," continued my friend.
"If I could have placed my proposition before one of his blood,
I do not doubt what my answer had been.  Why do you hesitate?
Why do you experience this feeling of horror?"

Mr. Henderson stared down into the fire.  His constitutionally
ruddy face was pale.

"It is entirely irregular, Mr. Smith.  We have not the necessary powers--"

Smith snapped his teeth together impatiently, snatching his watch
from his pocket and glancing at it.

"I am vested with the necessary powers.  I will give you
a written order, sir."

"The proceeding savors of paganism.  Such a course might be admissible
in China, in Burma--"

"Do you weigh a life against such quibbles?  Do you suppose that,
granting MY irresponsibility, Dr. Petrie would countenance
such a thing if he doubted the necessity?"

Mr. Henderson looked at me with pathetic hesitance.

"There are guests in the house--mourners who attended
the ceremony to-day. They--"

"Will never know, if we are in error," interrupted Smith.
"Good God!  why do you delay?"

"You wish it to be kept secret?"

"You and I, Mr. Henderson, and Dr. Petrie will go now.
We require no other witnesses.  We are answerable only
to our consciences."

The lawyer passed his hand across his damp brow.

"I have never in my life been called upon to come to so
momentous a decision in so short a time," he confessed.
But, aided by Smith's indomitable will, he made his decision.
As its result, we three, looking and feeling like conspirators,
hurried across the park beneath a moon whose placidity was a rebuke
to the turbulent passions which reared their strangle-growth in
the garden of England.  Not a breath of wind stirred amid the leaves.
The calm of perfect night soothed everything to slumber.
Yet, if Smith were right (and I did not doubt him),
the green eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu had looked upon the scene;
and I found myself marveling that its beauty had not wilted up.
Even now the dread Chinaman must be near to us.

As Mr. Henderson unlocked the ancient iron gates he turned to Nayland Smith.
His face twitched oddly.

"Witness that I do this unwillingly," he said--"most unwillingly."

"Mine be the responsibility," was the reply.

Smith's voice quivered, responsive to the nervous vitality pent
up within that lean frame.  He stood motionless, listening--and I
knew for whom he listened.  He peered about him to right and left--
and I knew whom he expected but dreaded to see.

Above us now the trees looked down with a solemnity different from
the aspect of the monarchs of the park, and the nearer we came to our
journey's end the more somber and lowering bent the verdant arch--
or so it seemed.

By that path, patched now with pools of moonlight, Lord Southery
had passed upon his bier, with the sun to light his going;
by that path several generations of Stradwicks had gone
to their last resting-place.

To the doors of the vault the moon rays found free access.
No branch, no leaf, intervened.  Mr. Henderson's face looked ghastly.
The keys which he carried rattled in his hand.

"Light the lantern," he said unsteadily.

Nayland Smith, who again had been peering suspiciously about into
the shadows, struck a match and lighted the lantern which he carried.
He turned to the solicitor.

"Be calm, Mr. Henderson," he said sternly.  "It is your plain
duty to your client."

"God be my witness that I doubt it," replied Henderson,
and opened the door.

We descended the steps.  The air beneath was damp and chill.
It touched us as with clammy fingers; and the sensation was
not wholly physical.

Before the narrow mansion which now sufficed Lord Southery, the great engineer
whom kings had honored, Henderson reeled and clutched at me for support.
Smith and I had looked to him for no aid in our uncanny task, and rightly.

With averted eyes he stood over by the steps of the tomb, whilst my friend
and myself set to work.  In the pursuit of my profession I had undertaken
labors as unpleasant, but never amid an environment such as this.
It seemed that generations of Stradwicks listened to each turn of every screw.

At last it was done, and the pallid face of Lord Southery questioned
the intruding light.  Nayland Smith's hand was as steady as a rigid bar
when he raised the lantern.  Later, I knew, there would be a sudden
releasing of the tension of will--a reaction physical and mental--
but not until his work was finished.

That my own hand was steady I ascribed to one thing solely--
professional zeal.  For, under conditions which, in the event
of failure and exposure, must have led to an unpleasant
inquiry by the British Medical Association, I was about
to attempt an experiment never before essayed by a physician
of the white races.

Though I failed, though I succeeded, that it ever came before the B.M.A., or
any other council, was improbable; in the former event, all but impossible.
But the knowledge that I was about to practice charlatanry, or what any one
of my fellow-practitioners must have designated as such, was with me.  Yet so
profound had my belief become in the extraordinary being whose existence was
a danger to the world that I reveled in my immunity from official censure.
I was glad that it had fallen to my lot to take at least one step--
though blindly--into the FUTURE of medical science.

So far as my skill bore me, Lord Southery was dead.  Unhesitatingly, I
would have given a death certificate, save for two considerations.
The first, although his latest scheme ran contrary from the interests
of Dr. Fu-Manchu, his genius, diverted into other channels,
would serve the yellow group better than his death.  The second,
I had seen the boy Aziz raised from a state as like death as this.

From the phial of amber-hued liquid which I had with me,
I charged the needle syringe.  I made the injection, and waited.

"If he is really dead!" whispered Smith.  "It seems incredible
that he can have survived for three days without food.
Yet I have known a fakir to go for a week."

Mr. Henderson groaned.

Watch in hand, I stood observing the gray face.

A second passed; another; a third.  In the fourth the miracle began.
Over the seemingly cold clay crept the hue of pulsing life.
It came in waves--in waves which corresponded with the throbbing
of the awakened heart; which swept fuller and stronger;
which filled and quickened the chilled body.

As we rapidly freed the living man from the trappings of
the dead one, Southery, uttering a stifled scream, sat up,
looked about him with half-glazed eyes, and fell back.
"My God!" cried Smith.

"It is all right," I said, and had time to note how my voice
had assumed a professional tone.  "A little brandy from my flask
is all that is necessary now."

"You have two patients, Doctor," rapped my friend.

Mr. Henderson had fallen in a swoon to the floor of the vault.

"Quiet," whispered Smith; "HE is here."

He extinguished the light.

I supported Lord Southery.  "What has happened?" he kept moaning.
"Where am I?  Oh, God!  what has happened?"

I strove to reassure him in a whisper, and placed my traveling
coat about him.  The door at the top of the mausoleum steps we
had reclosed but not relocked.  Now, as I upheld the man whom
literally we had rescued from the grave, I heard the door reopen.
To aid Henderson I could make no move.  Smith was breathing hard beside me.
I dared not think what was about to happen, nor what its effects
might be upon Lord Southery in his exhausted condition.

Through the Memphian dark of the tomb cut a spear of light,
touching the last stone of the stairway.

A guttural voice spoke some words rapidly, and I knew that Dr. Fu-Manchu
stood at the head of the stairs.  Although I could not see my friend,
I became aware that Nayland Smith had his revolver in his hand,
and I reached into my pocket for mine.

At last the cunning Chinaman was about to fall into a trap.
It would require all his genius, I thought, to save him to-night.
Unless his suspicions were aroused by the unlocked door,
his capture was imminent.

Someone was descending the steps.

In my right hand I held my revolver, and with my left arm about Lord Southery,
I waited through ten such seconds of suspense as I have rarely known.

The spear of light plunged into the well of darkness again.

Lord Southery, Smith and myself were hidden by the angle of the wall;
but full upon the purplish face of Mr. Henderson the beam shone.
In some way it penetrated to the murk in his mind; and he awakened
from his swoon with a hoarse cry, struggled to his feet, and stood
looking up the stair in a sort of frozen horror.

Smith was past him at a bound.  Something flashed towards him as the light
was extinguished.  I saw him duck, and heard the knife ring upon the floor.

I managed to move sufficiently to see at the top, as I fired up
the stairs, the yellow face of Dr. Fu-Manchu, to see the gleaming,
chatoyant eyes, greenly terrible, as they sought to pierce the gloom.
A flying figure was racing up, three steps at a time (that of a brown man
scantily clad). He stumbled and fell, by which I knew that he was hit;
but went on again, Smith hard on his heels.

"Mr. Henderson!" I cried, "relight the lantern and take
charge of Lord Southery.  Here is my flask on the floor.
I rely upon you."

Smith's revolver spoke again as I went bounding up the stair.
Black against the square of moonlight I saw him stagger, I saw him fall.
As he fell, for the third time, I heard the crack of his revolver.

Instantly I was at his side.  Somewhere along the black aisle
beneath the trees receding footsteps pattered.

"Are you hurt, Smith?" I cried anxiously.

He got upon his feet.

"He has a dacoit with him," he replied, and showed me the long curved
knife which he held in his hand, a full inch of the blade bloodstained.
"A near thing for me, Petrie."

I heard the whir of a restarted motor.

"We have lost him," said Smith.

"But we have saved Lord Southery," I said.  "Fu-Manchu will credit
us with a skill as great as his own."

"We must get to the car," Smith muttered, "and try to overtake them.
Ugh!  my left arm is useless."

"It would be mere waste of time to attempt to overtake them," I argued,
"for we have no idea in which direction they will proceed."

"I have a very good idea," snapped Smith.  "Stradwick Hall is less
than ten miles from the coast.  There is only one practicable means
of conveying an unconscious man secretly from here to London."

"You think he meant to take him from here to London?"

"Prior to shipping him to China; I think so.  His clearing-house
is probably on the Thames."

"A boat?"

"A yacht, presumably, is lying off the coast in readiness.
Fu-Manchu may even have designed to ship him direct to China."

Lord Southery, a bizarre figure, my traveling coat wrapped about him,
and supported by his solicitor, who was almost as pale as himself,
emerged from the vault into the moonlight.

"This is a triumph for you, Smith," I said.

The throb of Fu-Manchu's car died into faintness and was lost
in the night's silence.

"Only half a triumph," he replied.  "But we still have another chance--
the raid on his house.  When will the word come from Karamaneh?"

Southery spoke in a weak voice.

"Gentlemen," he said, "it seems I am raised from the dead."

It was the weirdest moment of the night wherein we heard that newly
buried man speak from the mold of his tomb.

"Yes," replied Smith slowly, "and spared from the fate of Heaven
alone knows how many men of genius.  The yellow society lacks
a Southery, but that Dr. Fu-Manchu was in Germany three years
ago I have reason to believe; so that, even without visiting
the grave of your great Teutonic rival, who suddenly died at about
that time, I venture to predict that they have a Von Homber.
And the futurist group in China knows how to MAKE men work!"



CHAPTER XXIV


FROM the rescue of Lord Southery my story bears me mercilessly
on to other things.  I may not tarry, as more leisurely penmen,
to round my incidents; they were not of my choosing.
I may not pause to make you better acquainted with the figure
of my drama; its scheme is none of mine.  Often enough,
in those days, I found a fitness in the lines of Omar:


    We are no other than a moving show
    Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
    Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
    In Midnight by the Master of the Show.


But "the Master of the Show," in this case, was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

I have been asked many times since the days with which these records deal:
Who WAS Dr. Fu-Manchu?  Let me confess here that my final answer must
be postponed.  I can only indicate, at this place, the trend of my reasoning,
and leave my reader to form whatever conclusion he pleases.

What group can we isolate and label as responsible for the overthrow
of the Manchus?  The casual student of modern Chinese history will reply:
"Young China."  This is unsatisfactory.  What do we mean by Young China?
In my own hearing Fu-Manchu had disclaimed, with scorn, association with the
whole of that movement; and assuming that the name were not an assumed one,
he clearly can have been no anti-Manchu, no Republican.

The Chinese Republican is of the mandarin class, but of a new
generation which veneers its Confucianism with Western polish.
These youthful and unbalanced reformers, in conjunction
with older but no less ill-balanced provincial politicians,
may be said to represent Young China.  Amid such turmoils as this
we invariably look for, and invariably find, a Third Party.
In my opinion, Dr. Fu-Manchu was one of the leaders of such a party.

Another question often put to me was:  Where did the Doctor
hide during the time that he pursued his operations in London?
This is more susceptible of explanation.  For a time Nayland
Smith supposed, as I did myself, that the opium den adjacent
to the old Ratcliff Highway was the Chinaman's base of operations;
later we came to believe that the mansion near Windsor was his
hiding-place, and later still, the hulk lying off the downstream flats.
But I think I can state with confidence that the spot which he had
chosen for his home was neither of these, but the East End riverside
building which I was the first to enter.  Of this I am all but sure;
for the reason that it not only was the home of Fu-Manchu, of Karamaneh,
and of her brother, Aziz, but the home of something else--
of something which I shall speak of later.

The dreadful tragedy (or series of tragedies) which attended the raid upon the
place will always mark in my memory the supreme horror of a horrible case.
Let me endeavor to explain what occurred.

By the aid of Karamaneh, you have seen how we had located
the whilom warehouse, which, from the exterior, was so drab
and dreary, but which within was a place of wondrous luxury.
At the moment selected by our beautiful accomplice,
Inspector Weymouth and a body of detectives entirely surrounded it;
a river police launch lay off the wharf which opened from it
on the river-side; and this upon a singularly black night,
than which a better could not have been chosen.

"You will fulfill your promise to me?" said Karamaneh,
and looked up into my face.

She was enveloped in a big, loose cloak, and from the shadow
of the hood her wonderful eyes gleamed out like stars.

"What do you wish us to do?" asked Nayland Smith.

"You--and Dr. Petrie," she replied swiftly, "must enter first,
and bring out Aziz.  Until he is safe--until he is out of that place--
you are to make no attempt upon--"

"Upon Dr. Fu-Manchu?" interrupted Weymouth; for Karamaneh
hesitated to pronounce the dreaded name, as she always did.
"But how can we be sure that there is no trap laid for us?"

The Scotland Yard man did not entirely share my confidence in the integrity
of this Eastern girl whom he knew to have been a creature of the Chinaman's.

"Aziz lies in the private room," she explained eagerly, her old accent more
noticeable than usual.  "There is only one of the Burmese men in the house,
and he--he dare not enter without orders!"

"But Fu-Manchu?"

"We have nothing to fear from him.  He will be your prisoner
within ten minutes from now!  I have no time for words--
you must believe!"  She stamped her foot impatiently.
"And the dacoit?" snapped Smith.

"He also."

"I think perhaps I'd better come in, too," said Weymouth slowly.

Karamaneh shrugged her shoulders with quick impatience,
and unlocked the door in the high brick wall which divided
the gloomy, evil-smelling court from the luxurious apartments
of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

"Make no noise," she warned.  And Smith and myself followed her along
the uncarpeted passage beyond.

Inspector Weymouth, with a final word of instruction to his
second in command, brought up the rear.  The door was reclosed;
a few paces farther on a second was unlocked.  Passing through
a small room, unfurnished, a farther passage led us to a balcony.
The transition was startling.

Darkness was about us now, and silence:  a perfumed, slumberous darkness--
a silence full of mystery.  For, beyond the walls of the apartment whereon
we looked down waged the unceasing battle of sounds that is the hymn
of the great industrial river.  About the scented confines which bounded
us now floated the smoke-laden vapors of the Lower Thames.

From the metallic but infinitely human clangor of dock-side life,
from the unpleasant but homely odors which prevail where ships swallow
in and belch out the concrete evidences of commercial prosperity,
we had come into this incensed stillness, where one shaded lamp
painted dim enlargements of its Chinese silk upon the nearer walls,
and left the greater part of the room the darker for its contrast.

Nothing of the Thames-side activity--of the riveting and scraping--
the bumping of bales--the bawling of orders--the hiss of steam--
penetrated to this perfumed place.  In the pool of tinted light
lay the deathlike figure of a dark-haired boy, Karamaneh's muffled
form bending over him.

"At last I stand in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu!" whispered Smith.

Despite the girl's assurance, we knew that proximity
to the sinister Chinaman must be fraught with danger.
We stood, not in the lion's den, but in the serpent's lair.

From the time when Nayland Smith had come from Burma in pursuit
of this advance-guard of a cogent Yellow Peril, the face of
Dr. Fu-Manchu rarely had been absent from my dreams day or night.
The millions might sleep in peace--the millions in whose
cause we labored!--but we who knew the reality of the danger
knew that a veritable octopus had fastened upon England--
a yellow octopus whose head was that of Dr. Fu-Manchu,
whose tentacles were dacoity, thuggee, modes of death,
secret and swift, which in the darkness plucked men from life
and left no clew behind.

"Karamaneh!" I called softly.

The muffled form beneath the lamp turned so that the soft
light fell upon the lovely face of the slave girl.
She who had been a pliant instrument in the hands of Fu-Manchu
now was to be the means whereby society should be rid of him.

She raised her finger warningly; then beckoned me to approach.

My feet sinking in the rich pile of the carpet, I came through
the gloom of the great apartment in to the patch of light,
and, Karamaneh beside me, stood looking down upon the boy.
It was Aziz, her brother; dead so far as Western lore had power
to judge, but kept alive in that deathlike trance by the uncanny
power of the Chinese doctor.

"Be quick," she said; "be quick!  Awaken him!  I am afraid."

From the case which I carried I took out a needle-syringe
and a phial containing a small quantity of amber-hued liquid.
It was a drug not to be found in the British Pharmacopoeia.
Of its constitution I knew nothing.  Although I had had
the phial in my possession for some days I had not dared
to devote any of its precious contents to analytical purposes.
The amber drops spelled life for the boy Aziz, spelled success
for the mission of Nayland Smith, spelled ruin for
the fiendish Chinaman.

I raised the white coverlet.  The boy, fully dressed,
lay with his arms crossed upon his breast.  I discerned the mark
of previous injections as, charging the syringe from the phial,
I made what I hoped would be the last of such experiments upon him.
I would have given half of my small worldly possessions to have
known the real nature of the drug which was now coursing through
the veins of Aziz--which was tinting the grayed face with the olive
tone of life; which, so far as my medical training bore me,
was restoring the dead to life.

But such was not the purpose of my visit.  I was come to remove from
the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu the living chain which bound Karamaneh to him.
The boy alive and free, the Doctor's hold upon the slave girl would be broken.

My lovely companion, her hands convulsively clasped, knelt and devoured
with her eyes the face of the boy who was passing through the most
amazing physiological change in the history of therapeutics.
The peculiar perfume which she wore--which seemed to be a part of her--
which always I associated with her--was faintly perceptible.
Karamaneh was breathing rapidly.

"You have nothing to fear," I whispered; "see, he is reviving.
In a few moments all will be well with him."

The hanging lamp with its garishly colored shade swung gently above us,
wafted, it seemed, by some draught which passed through the apartment.
The boy's heavy lids began to quiver, and Karamaneh nervously clutched
my arm, and held me so whilst we watched for the long-lashed eyes to open.
The stillness of the place was positively unnatural; it seemed inconceivable
that all about us was the discordant activity of the commercial East End.
Indeed, this eerie silence was becoming oppressive; it began positively
to appall me.

Inspector Weymouth's wondering face peeped over my shoulder.

"Where is Dr. Fu-Manchu?" I whispered, as Nayland Smith in turn appeared
beside me.  "I cannot understand the silence of the house--"

"Look about," replied Karamaneh, never taking her eyes from the face of Aziz.

I peered around the shadowy walls.  Tall glass cases there were,
shelves and niches:  where once, from the gallery above, I had seen the tubes
and retorts, the jars of unfamiliar organisms, the books of unfamiliar lore,
the impedimenta of the occult student and man of science--the visible
evidences of Fu-Manchu's presence.  Shelves--cases--niches--were bare.
Of the complicated appliances unknown to civilized laboratories,
wherewith he pursued his strange experiments, of the tubes wherein
he isolated the bacilli of unclassified diseases, of the yellow-bound
volumes for a glimpse at which (had they known of their contents)
the great men of Harley Street would have given a fortune--no trace remained.
The silken cushions; the inlaid tables; all were gone.

The room was stripped, dismantled.  Had Fu-Manchu fled?
The silence assumed a new significance.  His dacoits and kindred
ministers of death all must have fled, too.

"You have let him escape us!" I said rapidly.
"You promised to aid us to capture him--to send us a message--
and you have delayed until--"

"No," she said; "no!" and clutched at my arm again.
"Oh!  is he not reviving slowly?  Are you sure you have
made no mistake?"

Her thoughts were all for the boy; and her solicitude touched me.
I again examined Aziz, the most remarkable patient of my
busy professional career.

As I counted the strengthening pulse, he opened his dark eyes--
which were so like the eyes of Karamaneh--and, with the girl's
eager arms tightly about him, sat up, looking wonderingly around.

Karamaneh pressed her cheek to his, whispering loving words in that softly
spoken Arabic which had first betrayed her nationality to Nayland Smith.
I handed her my flask, which I had filled with wine.

"My promise is fulfilled!" I said.  "You are free!
Now for Fu-Manchu!  But first let us admit the police to this house;
there is something uncanny in its stillness."

"No," she replied.  "First let my brother be taken out and placed in safety.
Will you carry him?"

She raised her face to that of Inspector Weymouth, upon which was written
awe and wonder.

The burly detective lifted the boy as tenderly as a woman, passed through
the shadows to the stairway, ascended, and was swallowed up in the gloom.
Nayland Smith's eyes gleamed feverishly.  He turned to Karamaneh.

"You are not playing with us?" he said harshly.  "We have done our part;
it remains for you to do yours."

"Do not speak so loudly," the girl begged.  "HE is near us--
and, oh, God, I fear him so!"

"Where is he?" persisted my friend.

Karamaneh's eyes were glassy with fear now.

"You must not touch him until the police are here," she said--
but from the direction of her quick, agitated glances I knew that,
her brother safe now, she feared for me, and for me alone.
Those glances sent my blood dancing; for Karamaneh was
an Eastern jewel which any man of flesh and blood must
have coveted had he known it to lie within his reach.
Her eyes were twin lakes of mystery which, more than once,
I had known the desire to explore.

"Look--beyond that curtain"--her voice was barely audible--"but do not enter.
Even as he is, I fear him."

Her voice, her palpable agitation, prepared us for something extraordinary.
Tragedy and Fu-Manchu were never far apart.  Though we were two, and help
was so near, we were in the abode of the most cunning murderer who ever came
out of the East.

It was with strangely mingled emotions that I crossed the thick carpet,
Nayland Smith beside me, and drew aside the draperies concealing a door,
to which Karamaneh had pointed.  Then, upon looking into the dim place beyond,
all else save what it held was forgotten.

We looked upon a small, square room, the walls draped with fantastic
Chinese tapestry, the floor strewn with cushions; and reclining
in a corner, where the faint, blue light from a lamp, placed upon
a low table, painted grotesque shadows about the cavernous face--
was Dr. Fu-Manchu!

At sight of him my heart leaped--and seemed to suspend its functions,
so intense was the horror which this man's presence inspired in me.
My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him.  The lids
veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.
Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.
A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation
of the hushed silence, and the ease with which we had thus far
executed our plan, came to me.  The cunning mind was torpid--
lost in a brutish world of dreams.

Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!

The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered
the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.
At last we had triumphed.

I could not determine the depth of his obscene trance; and mastering
some of my repugnance, and forgetful of Karamaneh's warning, I was about
to step forward into the room, loaded with its nauseating opium fumes,
when a soft breath fanned my cheek.

"Do not go in!" came Karamaneh's warning voice--hushed--trembling.

Her little hand grasped my arm.  She drew Smith and myself back
from the door.

"There is danger there!" she whispered.

"Do not enter that room!  The police must reach him in some way--
and drag him out!  Do not enter that room!"

The girl's voice quivered hysterically; her eyes blazed into savage flame.
The fierce resentment born of dreadful wrongs was consuming her now;
but fear of Fu-Manchu held her yet.  Inspector Weymouth came down the stairs
and joined us.

"I have sent the boy to Ryman's room at the station," he said.
"The divisional surgeon will look after him until you arrive,
Dr. Petrie.  All is ready now.  The launch is just off
the wharf and every side of the place under observation.
Where's our man?"

He drew a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and raised
his eyebrows interrogatively.  The absence of sound--
of any demonstration from the uncanny Chinaman whom he was there
to arrest--puzzled him.

Nayland Smith jerked his thumb toward the curtain.

At that, and before we could utter a word, Weymouth stepped
to the draped door.  He was a man who drove straight at
his goal and saved reflections for subsequent leisure.
I think, moreover, that the atmosphere of the place
(stripped as it was it retained its heavy, voluptuous perfume)
had begun to get a hold upon him.  He was anxious to shake it off;
to be up and doing.

He pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the room.
Smith and I perforce followed him.  Just within the door
the three of us stood looking across at the limp thing which
had spread terror throughout the Eastern and Western world.
Helpless as Fu-Manchu was, he inspired terror now, though the giant
intellect was inert--stupefied.

In the dimly lit apartment we had quitted I heard Karamaneh utter
a stifled scream.  But it came too late.

As though cast up by a volcano, the silken cushions,
the inlaid table with its blue-shaded lamp, the garish walls,
the sprawling figure with the ghastly light playing upon
its features--quivered, and shot upward!

So it seemed to me; though, in the ensuing instant I remembered,
too late, a previous experience of the floors of Fu-Manchu's
private apartments; I knew what had indeed befallen us.
A trap had been released beneath our feet.

I recall falling--but have no recollection of the end of my fall--
of the shock marking the drop.  I only remember fighting for my
life against a stifling something which had me by the throat.
I knew that I was being suffocated, but my hands met only
the deathly emptiness.

Into a poisonous well of darkness I sank.  I could not cry out.
I was helpless.  Of the fate of my companions I knew nothing--
could surmise nothing.  Then. . .all consciousness ended.



CHAPTER XXV


I WAS being carried along a dimly lighted, tunnel-like place, slung, sackwise,
across the shoulder of a Burman.  He was not a big man, but he supported
my considerable weight with apparent ease.  A deadly nausea held me,
but the rough handling had served to restore me to consciousness.
My hands and feet were closely lashed.  I hung limply as a wet towel:
I felt that this spark of tortured life which had flickered up in me must
ere long finally become extinguished.

A fancy possessed me, in these the first moments of my restoration
to the world of realities, that I had been smuggled into China;
and as I swung head downward I told myself that the huge,
puffy things which strewed the path were a species of giant toadstool,
unfamiliar to me and possibly peculiar to whatever district of China
I now was in.

The air was hot, steamy, and loaded with a smell as of rotting vegetation.
I wondered why my bearer so scrupulously avoided touching any of the
unwholesome-looking growths in passing through what seemed a succession
of cellars, but steered a tortuous course among the bloated, unnatural shapes,
lifting his bare brown feet with a catlike delicacy.

He passed under a low arch, dropped me roughly to the ground and ran back.
Half stunned, I lay watching the agile brown body melt into
the distances of the cellars.  Their walls and roof seemed to emit
a faint, phosphorescent light.

"Petrie!" came a weak voice from somewhere ahead. . . .
"Is that you, Petrie?"

It was Nayland Smith!

"Smith!" I said, and strove to sit up.  But the intense nausea overcame me,
so that I all but swooned.

I heard his voice again, but could attach no meaning to the words
which he uttered.  A sound of terrific blows reached my ears, too.
The Burman reappeared, bending under the heavy load which he bore.
For, as he picked his way through the bloated things which grew
upon the floors of the cellars, I realized that he was carrying
the inert body of Inspector Weymouth.  And I found time to compare
the strength of the little brown man with that of a Nile beetle,
which can raise many times its own weight.  Then, behind him,
appeared a second figure, which immediately claimed the whole
of my errant attention.

"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.

It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we
had thought to be helpless.  The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--
the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.

He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well
as to dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--
whose experience of the noxious habit probably was greater than
my own.  And, with the gallows dangling before him, he had waited--
played the part of a lure--whilst a body of police actually
surrounded the place!

I have since thought that the room probably was one which he actually used
for opium debauches, and the device of the trap was intended to protect him
during the comatose period.

Now, holding a lantern above his head, the deviser of the trap
whereinto we, mouselike, had blindly entered, came through
the cellars, following the brown man who carried Weymouth.
The faint rays of the lantern (it apparently contained a candle)
revealed a veritable forest of the gigantic fungi--poisonously colored--
hideously swollen--climbing from the floor up the slimy walls--
climbing like horrid parasites to such part of the arched roof
as was visible to me.

Fu-Manchu picked his way through the fungi ranks as daintily
as though the distorted, tumid things had been viper-headed.

The resounding blows which I had noted before, and which had never ceased,
culminated in a splintering crash.  Dr. Fu-Manchu and his servant,
who carried the apparently insensible detective, passed in under
the arch, Fu-Manchu glancing back once along the passages.
The lantern he extinguished, or concealed; and whilst I waited,
my mind dully surveying memories of all the threats which this
uncanny being had uttered, a distant clamor came to my ears.

Then, abruptly, it ceased.  Dr. Fu-Manchu had closed a heavy door;
and to my surprise I perceived that the greater part of it was of glass.
The will-o'-the-wisp glow which played around the fungi rendered the vista
of the cellars faintly luminous, and visible to me from where I lay.
Fu-Manchu spoke softly.  His voice, its guttural note alternating
with a sibilance on certain words, betrayed no traces of agitation.
The man's unbroken calm had in it something inhuman.  For he had just
perpetrated an act of daring unparalleled in my experience, and,
in the clamor now shut out by the glass door I tardily recognized
the entrance of the police into some barricaded part of the house--
the coming of those who would save us--who would hold the Chinese
doctor for the hangman!

"I have decided," he said deliberately, "that you are more worthy
of my attention than I had formerly supposed.  A man who can solve
the secret of the Golden Elixir (I had not solved it; I had merely
stolen some) should be a valuable acquisition to my Council.
The extent of the plans of Mr. Commissioner Nayland Smith and
of the English Scotland Yard it is incumbent upon me to learn.
Therefore, gentlemen, you live--for the present!"

"And you'll swing," came Weymouth's hoarse voice, "in the near future!
You and all your yellow gang!"

"I trust not," was the placid reply.  "Most of my people are safe:
some are shipped as lascars upon the liners; others have departed
by different means.  Ah!"

That last word was the only one indicative of excitement
which had yet escaped him.  A disk of light danced among
the brilliant poison hues of the passages--but no sound reached us;
by which I knew that the glass door must fit almost hermetically.
It was much cooler here than in the place through which we had passed,
and the nausea began to leave me, my brain to grow more clear.
Had I known what was to follow I should have cursed the lucidity
of mind which now came to me; I should have prayed for oblivion--
to be spared the sight of that which ensued.

"It's Logan!" cried Inspector Weymouth; and I could tell
that he was struggling to free himself of his bonds.
From his voice it was evident that he, too, was recovering
from the effects of the narcotic which had been administered
to us all.

"Logan!" he cried.  "Logan!  This way--HELP!"

But the cry beat back upon us in that enclosed space and seemed
to carry no farther than the invisible walls of our prison.

"The door fits well," came Fu-Manchu's mocking voice.
"It is fortunate for us all that it is so.  This is my
observation window, Dr. Petrie, and you are about to enjoy
an unique opportunity of studying fungology.  I have already
drawn your attention to the anaesthetic properties of the
lycoperdon, or common puff-ball. You may have recognized the fumes?
The chamber into which you rashly precipitated yourselves
was charged with them.  By a process of my own I have greatly
enhanced the value of the puff-ball in this respect.
Your friend, Mr. Weymouth, proved the most obstinate subject;
but he succumbed in fifteen seconds."

"Logan!  Help!  HELP!  This way, man!"

Something very like fear sounded in Weymouth's voice now.
Indeed, the situation was so uncanny that it almost seemed unreal.
A group of men had entered the farthermost cellars, led by one who bore
an electric pocket-lamp. The hard, white ray danced from bloated gray
fungi to others of nightmare shape, of dazzling, venomous brilliance.
The mocking, lecture-room voice continued:

"Note the snowy growth upon the roof, Doctor.  Do not be deceived by
its size.  It is a giant variety of my own culture and is of the order
empusa. You, in England, are familiar with the death of the common house-fly--
which is found attached to the window-pane by a coating of white mold.
I have developed the spores of this mold and have produced a giant species.
Observe the interesting effect of the strong light upon my orange and blue
amanita fungus!"

Hard beside me I heard Nayland Smith groan, Weymouth had become
suddenly silent.  For my own part, I could have shrieked in pure horror.
FOR I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING. I realized in one agonized instant
the significance of the dim lantern, of the careful progress
through the subterranean fungi grove, of the care with which
Fu-Manchu and his servant had avoided touching any of the growths.
I knew, now, that Dr. Fu-Manchu was the greatest fungologist
the world had ever known; was a poisoner to whom the Borgias were
as children--and I knew that the detectives blindly were walking
into a valley of death.

Then it began--the unnatural scene--the saturnalia of murder.

Like so many bombs the brilliantly colored caps of the huge toadstool-like
things alluded to by the Chinaman exploded, as the white ray sought
them out in the darkness which alone preserved their existence.
A brownish cloud--I could not determine whether liquid or powdery--
arose in the cellar.

I tried to close my eyes--or to turn them away from the reeling forms
of the men who were trapped in that poison-hole. It was useless:

I must look.

The bearer of the lamp had dropped it, but the dim,
eerily illuminated gloom endured scarce a second.
A bright light sprang up--doubtless at the touch of the fiendish
being who now resumed speech:

"Observe the symptoms of delirium, Doctor!"  Out there,
beyond the glass door, the unhappy victims were laughing--
tearing their garments from their bodies--leaping--waving their arms--
were become MANIACS!

"We will now release the ripe spores of giant entpusa,"
continued the wicked voice.  "The air of the second cellar
being super-charged with oxygen, they immediately germinate.
Ah!  it is a triumph!  That process is the scientific triumph
of my life!"

Like powdered snow the white spores fell from the roof,
frosting the writhing shapes of the already poisoned men.
Before my horrified gaze, THE FUNGUS GREW; it spread
from the head to the feet of those it touched; it enveloped
them as in glittering shrouds. . . .

"They die like flies!" screamed Fu-Manchu, with a sudden febrile excitement;
and I felt assured of something I had long suspected:  that that magnificent,
perverted brain was the brain of a homicidal maniac--though Smith would
never accept the theory.

"It is my fly-trap!" shrieked the Chinaman.  "And I am
the god of destruction!"



CHAPTER XXVI


THE clammy touch of the mist revived me.  The culmination of the scene
in the poison cellars, together with the effects of the fumes
which I had inhaled again, had deprived me of consciousness.
Now I knew that I was afloat on the river.  I still was bound:
furthermore, a cloth was wrapped tightly about my mouth,
and I was secured to a ring in the deck.

By moving my aching head to the left I could look down into the oily water;
by moving it to the right I could catch a glimpse of the empurpled
face of Inspector Weymouth, who, similarly bound and gagged,
lay beside me, but only of the feet and legs of Nayland Smith.
For I could not turn my head sufficiently far to see more.

We were aboard an electric launch.  I heard the hated guttural
voice of Fu-Manchu, subdued now to its habitual calm,
and my heart leaped to hear the voice that answered him.
It was that of Karamaneh.  His triumph was complete.
Clearly his plans for departure were complete; his slaughter
of the police in the underground passages had been a final
reckless demonstration of which the Chinaman's subtle cunning
would have been incapable had he not known his escape from
the country to be assured.

What fate was in store for us?  How would he avenge himself upon the girl
who had betrayed him to his enemies?  What portion awaited those enemies?
He seemed to have formed the singular determination to smuggle me into China--
but what did he purpose in the case of Weymouth, and in the case
of Nayland Smith?

All but silently we were feeling our way through the mist.
Astern died the clangor of dock and wharf into a remote discord.
Ahead hung the foggy curtain veiling the traffic of the great waterway;
but through it broke the calling of sirens, the tinkling of bells.

The gentle movement of the screw ceased altogether.
The launch lay heaving slightly upon the swells.

A distant throbbing grew louder--and something advanced upon
us through the haze.

A bell rang and muffled by the fog a voice proclaimed itself--
a voice which I knew.  I felt Weymouth writhing impotently
beside me; heard him mumbling incoherently; and I knew
that he, too, had recognized the voice.

It was that of Inspector Ryman of the river police and their launch
was within biscuit-throw of that upon which we lay!

"'Hoy!  'Hoy!"

I trembled.  A feverish excitement claimed me.  They were hailing us.
We carried no lights; but now--and ignoring the pain which shot from
my spine to my skull I craned my neck to the left--the port light
of the police launch glowed angrily through the mist.

I was unable to utter any save mumbling sounds, and my
companions were equally helpless.  It was a desperate position.
Had the police seen us or had they hailed at random?
The light drew nearer.

"Launch, 'hoy!"

They had seen us!  Fu-Manchu's guttural voice spoke shortly--
and our screw began to revolve again; we leaped ahead into the bank
of darkness.  Faint grew the light of the police launch--and was gone.
But I heard Ryman's voice shouting.

"Full speed!" came faintly through the darkness.  "Port!  Port!"

Then the murk closed down, and with our friends far astern of us
we were racing deeper into the fog banks--speeding seaward;
though of this I was unable to judge at the time.

On we raced, and on, sweeping over growing swells.
Once, a black, towering shape dropped down upon us.
Far above, lights blazed, bells rang, vague cries pierced the fog.
The launch pitched and rolled perilously, but weathered the wash
of the liner which so nearly had concluded this episode.
It was such a journey as I had taken once before,
early in our pursuit of the genius of the Yellow Peril;
but this was infinitely more terrible; for now we were utterly
in Fu-Manchu's power.

A voice mumbled in my ear.  I turned my bound-up face;
and Inspector Weymouth raised his hands in the dimness and partly
slipped the bandage from his mouth.

"I've been working at the cords since we left those filthy cellars,"
he whispered.  "My wrists are all cut, but when I've got out a knife
and freed my ankles--"

Smith had kicked him with his bound feet.  The detective slipped
the bandage back to position and placed his hands behind him again.
Dr. Fu-Manchu, wearing a heavy overcoat but no hat, came aft.
He was dragging Karamaneh by the wrists.  He seated himself
on the cushions near to us, pulling the girl down beside him.
Now, I could see her face--and the expression in her beautiful
eyes made me writhe.

Fu-Manchu was watching us, his discolored teeth faintly visible
in the dim light, to which my eyes were becoming accustomed.

"Dr. Petrie," he said, "you shall be my honored guest at my home in China.
You shall assist me to revolutionize chemistry.  Mr. Smith, I fear
you know more of my plans than I had deemed it possible for you
to have learned, and I am anxious to know if you have a confidant.
Where your memory fails you, and my files and wire jackets prove ineffectual,
Inspector Weymouth's recollections may prove more accurate."

He turned to the cowering girl--who shrank away from him
in pitiful, abject terror.

"In my hands, Doctor," he continued, "I hold a needle charged
with a rare culture.  It is the link between the bacilli
and the fungi.  You have seemed to display an undue interest
in the peach and pearl which render my Karamaneh so delightful,
In the supple grace of her movements and the sparkle of her eyes.
You can never devote your whole mind to those studies which I
have planned for you whilst such distractions exist.
A touch of this keen point, and the laughing Karamaneh becomes
the shrieking hag--the maniacal, mowing--"

Then, with an ox-like rush, Weymouth was upon him!

Karamaneh, wrought upon past endurance, with a sobbing cry, sank to the deck--
and lay still.  I managed to writhe into a half-sitting posture, and Smith
rolled aside as the detective and the Chinaman crashed down together.

Weymouth had one big hand at the Doctor's yellow throat;
with his left he grasped the Chinaman's right.
It held the needle.

Now, I could look along the length of the little craft, and, so far
as it was possible to make out in the fog, only one other was aboard--
the half-clad brown man who navigated her--and who had carried us through
the cellars.  The murk had grown denser and now shut us in like a box.
The throb of the motor--the hissing breath of the two who fought--
with so much at issue--these sounds and the wash of the water alone
broke the eerie stillness.

By slow degrees, and with a reptilian agility horrible to watch,
Fu-Manchu was neutralizing the advantage gained by Weymouth.
His clawish fingers were fast in the big man's throat; the right hand
with its deadly needle was forcing down the left of his opponent.
He had been underneath, but now he was gaining the upper place.
His powers of physical endurance must have been truly marvelous.
His breath was whistling through his nostrils significantly,
but Weymouth was palpably tiring.

The latter suddenly changed his tactics.  By a supreme effort,
to which he was spurred, I think, by the growing proximity
of the needle, he raised Fu-Manchu--by the throat and arm--
and pitched him sideways.

The Chinaman's grip did not relax, and the two wrestlers dropped,
a writhing mass, upon the port cushions.  The launch heeled over,
and my cry of horror was crushed back into my throat by the bandage.
For, as Fu-Manchu sought to extricate himself, he overbalanced--
fell back--and, bearing Weymouth with him--slid into the river!

The mist swallowed them up.

There are moments of which no man can recall his mental impressions,
moments so acutely horrible that, mercifully, our memory retains
nothing of the emotions they occasioned.  This was one of them.
A chaos ruled in my mind.  I had a vague belief that the Burman,
forward, glanced back.  Then the course of the launch was changed.
How long intervened between the tragic end of that Gargantuan struggle
and the time when a black wall leaped suddenly up before us I cannot
pretend to state.

With a sickening jerk we ran aground.  A loud explosion ensued,
and I clearly remember seeing the brown man leap out into the fog--
which was the last I saw of him.

Water began to wash aboard.

Fully alive to our imminent peril, I fought with the cords
that bound me; but I lacked poor Weymouth's strength of wrist,
and I began to accept as a horrible and imminent possibility,
a death from drowning, within six feet of the bank.

Beside me, Nayland Smith was straining and twisting.  I think
his object was to touch Karamaneh, in the hope of arousing her.
Where he failed in his project, the inflowing water succeeded.
A silent prayer of thankfulness came from my very soul when I
saw her stir--when I saw her raise her hands to her head--
and saw the big, horror-bright eyes gleam through the mist veil.



CHAPTER XXVII


WE quitted the wrecked launch but a few seconds before her
stern settled down into the river.  Where the mud-bank upon
which we found ourselves was situated we had no idea.
But at least it was terra firma and we were free from Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Smith stood looking out towards the river.

"My God!" he groaned.  "My God!"

He was thinking, as I was, of Weymouth.

And when, an hour later, the police boat located us (on the mud-flats
below Greenwich) and we heard that the toll of the poison cellars
was eight men, we also heard news of our brave companion.

"Back there in the fog, sir," reported Inspector Ryman, who was in charge,
and his voice was under poor command, "there was an uncanny howling,
and peals of laughter that I'm going to dream about for weeks--"

Karamaneh, who nestled beside me like a frightened child, shivered; and I
knew that the needle had done its work, despite Weymouth's giant strength.

Smith swallowed noisily.

"Pray God the river has that yellow Satan," he said.
"I would sacrifice a year of my life to see his rat's body
on the end of a grappling-iron!"

We were a sad party that steamed through the fog homeward that night.
It seemed almost like deserting a staunch comrade to leave the spot--so nearly
as we could locate it--where Weymouth had put up that last gallant fight.
Our helplessness was pathetic, and although, had the night been clear
as crystal, I doubt if we could have acted otherwise, it came to me that this
stinking murk was a new enemy which drove us back in coward retreat.

But so many were the calls upon our activity, and so numerous
the stimulants to our initiative in those times, that soon we
had matter to relieve our minds from this stress of sorrow.

There was Karamaneh to be considered--Karamaneh and her brother.
A brief counsel was held, whereat it was decided that for the present
they should be lodged at a hotel.

"I shall arrange," Smith whispered to me, for the girl was watching us,
"to have the place patrolled night and day."

"You cannot suppose--"

"Petrie!  I cannot and dare not suppose Fu-Manchu dead until with my own
eyes I have seen him so!"

Accordingly we conveyed the beautiful Oriental girl and her
brother away from that luxurious abode in its sordid setting.
I will not dwell upon the final scene in the poison cellars
lest I be accused of accumulating horror for horror's sake.
Members of the fire brigade, helmed against contagion, brought out
the bodies of the victims wrapped in their living shrouds. . . .

From Karamaneh we learned much of Fu-Manchu, little of herself.

"What am I?  Does my poor history matter--to anyone?"
was her answer to questions respecting herself.

And she would droop her lashes over her dark eyes.

The dacoits whom the Chinaman had brought to England originally
numbered seven, we learned.  As you, having followed me thus far,
will be aware, we had thinned the ranks of the Burmans.
Probably only one now remained in England.  They had
lived in a camp in the grounds of the house near Windsor
(which, as we had learned at the time of its destruction,
the Doctor had bought outright). The Thames had been his highway.

Other members of the group had occupied quarters in various parts
of the East End, where sailormen of all nationalities congregate.
Shen-Yan's had been the East End headquarters.  He had employed the hulk
from the time of his arrival, as a laboratory for a certain class
of experiments undesirable in proximity to a place of residence.

Nayland Smith asked the girl on one occasion if the Chinaman had had
a private sea-going vessel, and she replied in the affirmative.
She had never been on board, however, had never even set eyes upon it,
and could give us no information respecting its character.
It had sailed for China.

"You are sure," asked Smith keenly, "that it has actually left?"

"I understood so, and that we were to follow by another route."

"It would have been difficult for Fu-Manchu to travel by a passenger boat?"

"I cannot say what were his plans."

In a state of singular uncertainty, then, readily to be understood,
we passed the days following the tragedy which had deprived us
of our fellow-worker.

Vividly I recall the scene at poor Weymouth's home, on the day that we
visited it.  I then made the acquaintance of the Inspector's brother.
Nayland Smith gave him a detailed account of the last scene.

"Out there in the mist," he concluded wearily, "it all seemed very unreal."

"I wish to God it had been!"

"Amen to that, Mr. Weymouth.  But your brother made a gallant finish.
If ridding the world of Fu-Manchu were the only good deed to his credit,
his life had been well spent."

James Weymouth smoked awhile in thoughtful silence.
Though but four and a half miles S.S.E. of St. Paul's the quaint
little cottage, with its rustic garden, shadowed by the tall trees
which had so lined the village street before motor 'buses were,
was a spot as peaceful and secluded as any in broad England.
But another shadow lay upon it to-day--chilling, fearful.
An incarnate evil had come out of the dim East and in its dying
malevolence had touched this home.

"There are two things I don't understand about it, sir," continued Weymouth.
"What was the meaning of the horrible laughter which the river police heard
in the fog?  And where are the bodies?"

Karamaneh, seated beside me, shuddered at the words.
Smith, whose restless spirit granted him little repose,
paused in his aimless wanderings about the room and looked at her.

In these latter days of his Augean labors to purge England
of the unclean thing which had fastened upon her, my friend
was more lean and nervous-looking than I had ever known him.
His long residence in Burma had rendered him spare
and had burned his naturally dark skin to a coppery hue;
but now his gray eyes had grown feverishly bright and his
face so lean as at times to appear positively emaciated.
But I knew that he was as fit as ever.

"This lady may be able to answer your first question," he said.
"She and her brother were for some time in the household of
Dr. Fu-Manchu. In fact, Mr. Weymouth, Karamaneh, as her name implies,
was a slave."

Weymouth glanced at the beautiful, troubled face with scarcely
veiled distrust.  "You don't look as though you had come
from China, miss," he said, with a sort of unwilling admiration.

"I do not come from China," replied Karamaneh.  "My father
was a pure Bedawee.  But my history does not matter."
(At times there was something imperious in her manner; and to this
her musical accent added force.) "When your brave brother,
Inspector Weymouth, and Dr. Fu-Manchu, were swallowed up
by the river, Fu-Manchu held a poisoned needle in his hand.
The laughter meant that the needle had done its work.
Your brother had become mad!"

Weymouth turned aside to hide his emotion.  "What was on the needle?"
he asked huskily.

"It was something which he prepared from the venom of a kind of swamp adder,"
she answered.  "It produces madness, but not always death."

"He would have had a poor chance," said Smith, "even had he been in complete
possession of his senses.  At the time of the encounter we must have been
some considerable distance from shore, and the fog was impenetrable."

"But how do you account for the fact that neither of the bodies
have been recovered?"

"Ryman of the river police tells me that persons lost at that point
are not always recovered--or not until a considerable time later."

There was a faint sound from the room above.  The news of that
tragic happening out in the mist upon the Thames had prostrated
poor Mrs. Weymouth.

"She hasn't been told half the truth," said her brother-in-law. "She doesn't
know about--the poisoned needle.  What kind of fiend was this Dr. Fu-Manchu?"
He burst out into a sudden blaze of furious resentment.  "John never told
me much, and you have let mighty little leak into the papers.  What was he?
Who was he?"

Half he addressed the words to Smith, half to Karamaneh.

"Dr. Fu-Manchu," replied the former, "was the ultimate expression of
Chinese cunning; a phenomenon such as occurs but once in many generations.
He was a superman of incredible genius, who, had he willed,
could have revolutionized science.  There is a superstition in some
parts of China according to which, under certain peculiar conditions
(one of which is proximity to a deserted burial-ground) an evil spirit
of incredible age may enter unto the body of a new-born infant.
All my efforts thus far have not availed me to trace the genealogy
of the man called Dr. Fu-Manchu. Even Karamaneh cannot help me in this.
But I have sometimes thought that he was a member of a certain very old
Kiangsu family--and that the peculiar conditions I have mentioned
prevailed at his birth!"

Smith, observing our looks of amazement, laughed shortly,
and quite mirthlessly.

"Poor old Weymouth!" he jerked.  "I suppose my labors are finished;
but I am far from triumphant.  Is there any improvement in
Mrs. Weymouth's condition?"

"Very little," was the reply; "she has lain in a semi-conscious
state since the news came.  No one had any idea she would
take it so.  At one time we were afraid her brain was going.
She seemed to have delusions."

Smith spun round upon Weymouth.

"Of what nature?" he asked rapidly.

The other pulled nervously at his mustache.

"My wife has been staying with her," he explained, "since--it happened;
and for the last three nights poor John's widow has cried out at
the same time--half-past two--that someone was knocking on the door."

"What door?"

"That door yonder--the street door."

All our eyes turned in the direction indicated.

"John often came home at half-past two from the Yard," continued Weymouth;
"so we naturally thought poor Mary was wandering in her mind.
But last night--and it's not to be wondered at--my wife couldn't sleep,
and she was wide awake at half-past two."

"Well?"

Nayland Smith was standing before him, alert, bright-eyed.

"She heard it, too!"

The sun was streaming into the cozy little sitting-room;
but I will confess that Weymouth's words chilled me uncannily.
Karamaneh laid her hand upon mine, in a quaint, childish fashion
peculiarly her own.  Her hand was cold, but its touch thrilled me.
For Karamaneh was not a child, but a rarely beautiful girl--
a pearl of the East such as many a monarch has fought for.

"What then?" asked Smith.

"She was afraid to move--afraid to look from the window!"

My friend turned and stared hard at me.

"A subjective hallucination, Petrie?"

"In all probability," I replied.  "You should arrange that
your wife be relieved in her trying duties, Mr. Weymouth.
It is too great a strain for an inexperienced nurse."



CHAPTER XXVIII


OF all that we had hoped for in our pursuit of Fu-Manchu how
little had we accomplished.  Excepting Karamaneh and her brother
(who were victims and not creatures of the Chinese doctor's)
not one of the formidable group had fallen alive into our hands.
Dreadful crimes had marked Fu-Manchu's passage through the land.
Not one-half of the truth (and nothing of the later developments)
had been made public.  Nayland Smith's authority was sufficient
to control the press.

In the absence of such a veto a veritable panic must have seized upon
the entire country; for a monster--a thing more than humanly evil--
existed in our midst.

Always Fu-Manchu's secret activities had centered about the great waterway.
There was much of poetic justice in his end; for the Thames had claimed him,
who so long had used the stream as a highway for the passage to and fro for
his secret forces.  Gone now were the yellow men who had been the instruments
of his evil will; gone was the giant intellect which had controlled
the complex murder machine.  Karamaneh, whose beauty he had used as a lure,
at last was free, and no more with her smile would tempt men to death--
that her brother might live.

Many there are, I doubt not, who will regard the Eastern girl with horror.
I ask their forgiveness in that I regarded her quite differently.
No man having seen her could have condemned her unheard.  Many, having looked
into her lovely eyes, had they found there what I found, must have forgiven
her almost any crime.

That she valued human life but little was no matter for wonder.
Her nationality--her history--furnished adequate excuse for an attitude
not condonable in a European equally cultured.

But indeed let me confess that hers was a nature incomprehensible to me
in some respects.  The soul of Karamaneh was a closed book to my short-sighted
Western eyes.  But the body of Karamaneh was exquisite; her beauty of a kind
that was a key to the most extravagant rhapsodies of Eastern poets.
Her eyes held a challenge wholly Oriental in its appeal; her lips,
even in repose, were a taunt.  And, herein, East is West and West is East.

Finally, despite her lurid history, despite the scornful self-possession
of which I knew her capable, she was an unprotected girl--
in years, I believe, a mere child--whom Fate had cast in my way.
At her request, we had booked passages for her brother and herself
to Egypt.  The boat sailed in three days.  But Karamaneh's beautiful
eyes were sad; often I detected tears on the black lashes.
Shall I endeavor to describe my own tumultuous, conflicting emotions?
It would be useless, since I know it to be impossible.
For in those dark eyes burned a fire I might not see; those silken
lashes veiled a message I dared not read.

Nayland Smith was not blind to the facts of the complicated situation.
I can truthfully assert that he was the only man of my acquaintance who,
having come in contact with Karamaneh, had kept his head.

We endeavored to divert her mind from the recent tragedies by a round
of amusements, though with poor Weymouth's body still at the mercy
of unknown waters Smith and I made but a poor show of gayety;
and I took a gloomy pride in the admiration which our lovely
companion everywhere excited.  I learned, in those days, how rare
a thing in nature is a really beautiful woman.

One afternoon we found ourselves at an exhibition of water
colors in Bond Street.  Karamaneh was intensely interested
in the subjects of the drawings--which were entirely Egyptian.
As usual, she furnished matter for comment amongst the other visitors,
as did the boy, Aziz, her brother, anew upon the world from his
living grave in the house of Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Suddenly Aziz clutched at his sister's arm, whispering rapidly in Arabic.
I saw her peachlike color fade; saw her become pale and wild-eyed--
the haunted Karamaneh of the old days.

She turned to me.

"Dr. Petrie--he says that Fu-Manchu is here!"

"Where?"

Nayland Smith rapped out the question violently, turning in a flash
from the picture which he was examining.

"In this room!" she whispered glancing furtively, affrightedly about her.
"Something tells Aziz when HE is near--and I, too, feel strangely afraid.
Oh, can it be that he is not dead!"

She held my arm tightly.  Her brother was searching the room with big,
velvet black eyes.  I studied the faces of the several visitors;
and Smith was staring about him with the old alert look, and tugging
nervously at the lobe of his ear.  The name of the giant foe of the white
race instantaneously had strung him up to a pitch of supreme intensity.

Our united scrutinies discovered no figure which could have been
that of the Chinese doctor.  Who could mistake that long, gaunt shape,
with the high, mummy-like shoulders, and the indescribable gait,
which I can only liken to that of an awkward cat?

Then, over the heads of a group of people who stood by the doorway, I saw
Smith peering at someone--at someone who passed across the outer room.
Stepping aside, I, too, obtained a glimpse of this person.

As I saw him, he was a tall, old man, wearing a black Inverness
coat and a rather shabby silk hat.  He had long white hair
and a patriarchal beard, wore smoked glasses and walked slowly,
leaning upon a stick.

Smith's gaunt face paled.  With a rapid glance at Karamaneh,
he made off across the room.

Could it be Dr. Fu-Manchu?

Many days had passed since, already half-choked by Inspector Weymouth's iron
grip, Fu-Manchu, before our own eyes, had been swallowed up by the Thames.
Even now men were seeking his body, and that of his last victim.
Nor had we left any stone unturned.  Acting upon information furnished
by Karamaneh, the police had searched every known haunt of the murder group.
But everything pointed to the fact that the group was disbanded and dispersed;
that the lord of strange deaths who had ruled it was no more.

Yet Smith was not satisfied.  Neither, let me confess,
was I. Every port was watched; and in suspected districts
a kind of house-to-house patrol had been instituted.
Unknown to the great public, in those days a secret war waged--
a war in which all the available forces of the authorities
took the field against one man!  But that one man was the evil
of the East incarnate.

When we rejoined him, Nayland Smith was talking to the commissionaire
at the door.  He turned to me.

"That is Professor Jenner Monde," he said.  "The sergeant, here,
knows him well."

The name of the celebrated Orientalist of course was familiar to me,
although I had never before set eyes upon him.

"The Professor was out East the last time I was there, sir,"
stated the commissionaire.  "I often used to see him.  But he's
an eccentric old gentleman.  Seems to live in a world of his own.
He's recently back from China, I think."

Nayland Smith stood clicking his teeth together in irritable hesitation.
I heard Karamaneh sigh, and, looking at her, I saw that her cheeks were
regaining their natural color.

She smiled in pathetic apology.

"If he was here he is gone," she said.  "I am not afraid now."

Smith thanked the commissionaire for his information and we
quitted the gallery.

"Professor Jenner Monde," muttered my friend, "has lived so long
in China as almost to be a Chinaman.  I have never met him--
never seen him, before; but I wonder--"

"You wonder what, Smith?"

"I wonder if he could possibly be an ally, of the Doctor's!"

I stared at him in amazement.

"If we are to attach any importance to the incident at all,"
I said, "we must remember that the boy's impression--and Karamaneh's--
was that Fu-Manchu was present in person."

"I DO attach importance to the incident, Petrie; they are naturally
sensitive to such impressions.  But I doubt if even the abnormal
organization of Aziz could distinguish between the hidden presence
of a creature of the Doctor's and that of the Doctor himself.
I shall make a point of calling upon Professor Jenner Monde."

But Fate had ordained that much should happen ere Smith made
his proposed call upon the Professor.

Karamaneh and her brother safely lodged in their hotel
(which was watched night and day by four men under Smith's
orders), we returned to my quiet suburban rooms.

"First," said Smith, "let us see what we can find out
respecting Professor Monde."

He went to the telephone and called up New Scotland Yard.
There followed some little delay before the requisite information
was obtained.  Finally, however, we learned that the Professor
was something of a recluse, having few acquaintances,
and fewer friends.

He lived alone in chambers in New Inn Court, Carey Street.
A charwoman did such cleaning as was considered necessary
by the Professor, who employed no regular domestic.
When he was in London he might be seen fairly frequently
at the British Museum, where his shabby figure was familiar
to the officials.  When he was not in London--that is,
during the greater part of each year--no one knew where he went.
He never left any address to which letters might be forwarded.

"How long has he been in London now?" asked Smith.

So far as could be ascertained from New Inn Court (replied Scotland Yard)
roughly a week.

My friend left the telephone and began restlessly to pace the room.
The charred briar was produced and stuffed with that broad cut Latakia
mixture of which Nayland Smith consumed close upon a pound a week.
He was one of those untidy smokers who leave tangled tufts
hanging from the pipe-bowl and when they light up strew the floor
with smoldering fragments.

A ringing came, and shortly afterwards a girl entered.

"Mr. James Weymouth to see you, sir."

"Hullo!" rapped Smith.  "What's this?"

Weymouth entered, big and florid, and in some respects
singularly like his brother, in others as singularly unlike.
Now, in his black suit, he was a somber figure; and in the blue
eyes I read a fear suppressed.

"Mr. Smith," he began, "there's something uncanny going on at Maple Cottage."

Smith wheeled the big arm-chair forward.

"Sit down, Mr. Weymouth," he said.  "I am not entirely surprised.
But you have my attention.  What has occurred?"

Weymouth took a cigarette from the box which I proffered and poured
out a peg of whisky.  His hand was not quite steady.

"That knocking," he explained.  "It came again the night
after you were there, and Mrs. Weymouth--my wife, I mean--
felt that she couldn't spend another night there, alone." 

"Did she look out of the window?" I asked.

"No, Doctor; she was afraid.  But I spent last night downstairs
in the sitting-room--and _I_ looked out!"

He took a gulp from his glass.  Nayland Smith, seated on
the edge of the table, his extinguished pipe in his hand,
was watching him keenly.

"I'll admit I didn't look out at once," Weymouth resumed.
"There was something so uncanny, gentlemen, in that knocking--
knocking--in the dead of the night.  I thought"--his voice
shook--"of poor Jack, lying somewhere amongst the slime
of the river--and, oh, my God!  it came to me that it was Jack
who was knocking--and I dare not think what he--what it--
would look like!"

He leaned forward, his chin in his hand.  For a few moments we
were all silent.

"I know I funked," he continued huskily.  "But when the wife came
to the head of the stairs and whispered to me:  `There it is again.
What in heaven's name can it be'--I started to unbolt the door.
The knocking had stopped.  Everything was very still.
I heard Mary--HIS widow--sobbing, upstairs; that was all.
I opened the door, a little bit at a time."

Pausing again, he cleared his throat, and went on:

"It was a bright night, and there was no one there--not a soul.
But somewhere down the lane, as I looked out into the porch, I heard
most awful groans!  They got fainter and fainter.  Then--I could
have sworn I heard SOMEONE LAUGHING!  My nerves cracked up at that;
and I shut the door again."

The narration of his weird experience revived something of the natural
fear which it had occasioned.  He raised his glass, with unsteady hand,
and drained it.

Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe.  He began to pace
the room again.  His eyes were literally on fire.

"Would it be possible to get Mrs. Weymouth out of the house
before to-night?  Remove her to your place, for instance?"
he asked abruptly.

Weymouth looked up in surprise.

"She seems to be in a very low state," he replied.  He glanced at me.
"Perhaps Dr. Petrie would give us an opinion?"

"I will come and see her," I said.  "But what is your idea, Smith?"

"I want to hear that knocking!" he rapped.  "But in what I may see fit
to do I must not be handicapped by the presence of a sick woman."

"Her condition at any rate will admit of our administering an opiate,"
I suggested.  "That would meet the situation?"

"Good!" cried Smith.  He was intensely excited now.
"I rely upon you to arrange something, Petrie.  Mr. Weymouth"--
he turned to our visitor--"I shall be with you this evening
not later than twelve o'clock."

Weymouth appeared to be greatly relieved.  I asked him
to wait whilst I prepared a draught for the patient.
When he was gone:

"What do you think this knocking means, Smith?" I asked.

He tapped out his pipe on the side of the grate and began with nervous
energy to refill it again from the dilapidated pouch.

"I dare not tell you what I hope, Petrie," he replied--
"nor what I fear."



CHAPTER XXIX


DUSK was falling when we made our way in the direction of Maple Cottage.
Nayland Smith appeared to be keenly interested in the character
of the district.  A high and ancient wall bordered the road along
which we walked for a considerable distance.  Later it gave place
to a rickety fence.

My friend peered through a gap in the latter.

"There is quite an extensive estate here," he said, "not yet
cut up by the builder.  It is well wooded on one side,
and there appears to be a pool lower down."

The road was a quiet one, and we plainly heard the tread--
quite unmistakable--of an approaching policeman.
Smith continued to peer through the hole in the fence,
until the officer drew up level with us.  Then:

"Does this piece of ground extend down to the village,
constable?" he inquired.

Quite willing for a chat, the man stopped, and stood with his thumbs
thrust in his belt.

"Yes, sir.  They tell me three new roads will be made through it
between here and the hill."

"It must be a happy hunting ground for tramps?"

"I've seen some suspicious-looking coves about at times.
But after dusk an army might be inside there and nobody would
ever be the wiser."

"Burglaries frequent in the houses backing on to it?"

"Oh, no.  A favorite game in these parts is snatching
loaves and bottles of milk from the doors, first thing,
as they're delivered.  There's been an extra lot of it lately.
My mate who relieves me has got special instructions
to keep his eye open in the mornings!"  The man grinned.
"It wouldn't be a very big case even if he caught anybody!"
"No," said Smith absently; "perhaps not.  Your business must
be a dry one this warm weather.  Good-night."

"Good-night, sir," replied the constable, richer by
half-a-crown--"and thank you."

Smith stared after him for a moment, tugging reflectively at the lobe
of his ear.

"I don't know that it wouldn't be a big case, after all," he murmured.
"Come on, Petrie."

Not another word did he speak, until we stood at the gate of Maple Cottage.
There a plain-clothes man was standing, evidently awaiting Smith.
He touched his hat.

"Have you found a suitable hiding-place?" asked my companion rapidly.

"Yes, sir," was the reply.  "Kent--my mate--is there now.
You'll notice that he can't be seen from here."

"No," agreed Smith, peering all about him.  "He can't. Where is he?"

"Behind the broken wall," explained the man, pointing.
"Through that ivy there's a clear view of the cottage door."

"Good.  Keep your eyes open.  If a messenger comes for me, he is to
be intercepted, you understand.  No one must be allowed to disturb us.
You will recognize the messenger.  He will be one of your fellows.
Should he come--hoot three times, as much like an owl as you can."

We walked up to the porch of the cottage.  In response to Smith's ringing
came James Weymouth, who seemed greatly relieved by our arrival.

"First," said my friend briskly, "you had better run up and see the patient."

Accordingly, I followed Weymouth upstairs and was admitted by his
wife to a neat little bedroom where the grief-stricken woman lay,
a wanly pathetic sight.

"Did you administer the draught, as directed?" I asked.

Mrs. James Weymouth nodded.  She was a kindly looking woman,
with the same dread haunting her hazel eyes as that which lurked
in her husband's blue ones.

The patient was sleeping soundly.  Some whispered instructions I gave to
the faithful nurse and descended to the sitting-room. It was a warm night,
and Weymouth sat by the open window, smoking.  The dim light from the lamp
on the table lent him an almost startling likeness to his brother; and for
a moment I stood at the foot of the stairs scarce able to trust my reason.
Then he turned his face fully towards me, and the illusion was lost.

"Do you think she is likely to wake, Doctor?" he asked.

"I think not," I replied.

Nayland Smith stood upon the rug before the hearth, swinging from one
foot to the other, in his nervously restless way.  The room was foggy
with the fumes of tobacco, for he, too, was smoking.

At intervals of some five to ten minutes, his blackened briar
(which I never knew him to clean or scrape) would go out.
I think Smith used more matches than any other smoker I have
ever met, and he invariably carried three boxes in various
pockets of his garments.

The tobacco habit is infectious, and, seating myself in an arm-chair,
I lighted a cigarette.  For this dreary vigil I had come prepared
with a bunch of rough notes, a writing-block, and a fountain pen.
I settled down to work upon my record of the Fu-Manchu case.

Silence fell upon Maple Cottage.  Save for the shuddering sigh
which whispered through the over-hanging cedars and Smith's eternal
match-striking, nothing was there to disturb me in my task.
Yet I could make little progress.  Between my mind and the chapter upon
which I was at work a certain sentence persistently intruded itself.
It was as though an unseen hand held the written page closely before my eyes.
This was the sentence:

"Imagine a person, tall, lean, and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long,
magnetic eyes of the true cat-green: invest him with all the cruel cunning
of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect. . ."

Dr. Fu-Manchu!  Fu-Manchu as Smith had described him to me on that night
which now seemed so remotely distant--the night upon which I had learned
of the existence of the wonderful and evil being born of that secret
quickening which stirred in the womb of the yellow races.

As Smith, for the ninth or tenth time, knocked out his pipe on a bar
of the grate, the cuckoo clock in the kitchen proclaimed the hour.

"Two," said James Weymouth.

I abandoned my task, replacing notes and writing-block in the bag that I
had with me.  Weymouth adjusted the lamp which had begun to smoke.

I tiptoed to the stairs and, stepping softly, ascended to the sick room.
All was quiet, and Mrs. Weymouth whispered to me that the patient still
slept soundly.  I returned to find Nayland Smith pacing about the room
in that state of suppressed excitement habitual with him in the approach
of any crisis.  At a quarter past two the breeze dropped entirely,
and such a stillness reigned all about us as I could not have supposed
possible so near to the ever-throbbing heart of the great metropolis.
Plainly I could hear Weymouth's heavy breathing.  He sat at the window
and looked out into the black shadows under the cedars.  Smith ceased
his pacing and stood again on the rug very still.  He was listening!
I doubt not we were all listening.

Some faint sound broke the impressive stillness, coming from the direction
of the village street.  It was a vague, indefinite disturbance,
brief, and upon it ensued a silence more marked than ever.
Some minutes before, Smith had extinguished the lamp.
In the darkness I heard his teeth snap sharply together.

The call of an owl sounded very clearly three times.

I knew that to mean that a messenger had come; but from whence or bearing
what tidings I knew not.  My friend's plans were incomprehensible to me,
nor had I pressed him for any explanation of their nature, knowing him
to be in that high-strung and somewhat irritable mood which claimed him
at times of uncertainty--when he doubted the wisdom of his actions,
the accuracy of his surmises.  He gave no sign.

Very faintly I heard a clock strike the half-hour. A soft breeze
stole again through the branches above.  The wind I thought must
be in a new quarter since I had not heard the clock before.
In so lonely a spot it was difficult to believe that the bell
was that of St. Paul's. Yet such was the fact.

And hard upon the ringing followed another sound--a sound we all had expected,
had waited for; but at whose coming no one of us, I think, retained complete
mastery of himself.

Breaking up the silence in a manner that set my heart wildly leaping it came--
an imperative knocking on the door!

"My God!" groaned Weymouth--but he did not move from his position
at the window.

"Stand by, Petrie!" said Smith.

He strode to the door--and threw it widely open.

I know I was very pale.  I think I cried out as I fell back--
retreated with clenched hands from before THAT which stood
on the threshold.

It was a wild, unkempt figure, with straggling beard, hideously staring eyes.
With its hands it clutched at its hair--at its chin; plucked at its mouth.
No moonlight touched the features of this unearthly visitant,
but scanty as was the illumination we could see the gleaming teeth--
and the wildly glaring eyes.

It began to laugh--peal after peal--hideous and shrill.

Nothing so terrifying had ever smote upon my ears.
I was palsied by the horror of the sound.

Then Nayland Smith pressed the button of an electric torch which he carried.
He directed the disk of white light fully upon the face in the doorway.

"Oh, God!" cried Weymouth.  "It's John!"--and again and again:
"Oh, God!  Oh, God!"

Perhaps for the first time in my life I really believed (nay, I
could not doubt) that a thing of another world stood before me.
I am ashamed to confess the extent of the horror that came upon me.
James Weymouth raised his hands, as if to thrust away from him
that awful thing in the door.  He was babbling--prayers, I think,
but wholly incoherent.

"Hold him, Petrie!"

Smith's voice was low.  (When we were past thought or intelligent action,
he, dominant and cool, with that forced calm for which, a crisis over,
he always paid so dearly, was thinking of the woman who slept above.)

He leaped forward; and in the instant that he grappled with
the one who had knocked I knew the visitant for a man of flesh
and blood--a man who shrieked and fought like a savage animal,
foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth in horrid frenzy;
knew him for a madman--knew him for the victim of Fu-Manchu--
not dead, but living--for Inspector Weymouth--a maniac!

In a flash I realized all this and sprang to Smith's assistance.
There was a sound of racing footsteps and the men who had been
watching outside came running into the porch.  A third was with them;
and the five of us (for Weymouth's brother had not yet grasped
the fact that a man and not a spirit shrieked and howled in our midst)
clung to the infuriated madman, yet barely held our own with him.

"The syringe, Petrie!" gasped Smith.  "Quick!  You must manage
to make an injection!"

I extricated myself and raced into the cottage for my bag.
A hypodermic syringe ready charged I had brought with me
at Smith's request.  Even in that thrilling moment I could
find time to admire the wonderful foresight of my friend,
who had divined what would befall--isolated the strange,
pitiful truth from the chaotic circumstances which saw us
at Maple Cottage that night.

Let me not enlarge upon the end of the awful struggle.
At one time I despaired (we all despaired) of quieting the poor,
demented creature.  But at last it was done; and the gaunt,
blood-stained savage whom we had known as Detective-Inspector
Weymouth lay passive upon the couch in his own sitting-room. A
great wonder possessed my mind for the genius of the uncanny
being who with the scratch of a needle had made a brave
and kindly man into this unclean, brutish thing.

Nayland Smith, gaunt and wild-eyed, and trembling yet with his
tremendous exertions, turned to the man whom I knew to be
the messenger from Scotland Yard.

"Well?" he rapped.

"He is arrested, sir," the detective reported.  "They have kept
him at his chambers as you ordered."

"Has she slept through it?" said Smith to me.
(I had just returned from a visit to the room above.) I nodded.

"Is HE safe for an hour or two?"--indicating the figure on the couch.
"For eight or ten," I replied grimly.

"Come, then.  Our night's labors are not nearly complete."



CHAPTER XXX


LATER was forthcoming evidence to show that poor Weymouth had lived
a wild life, in hiding among the thick bushes of the tract of land
which lay between the village and the suburb on the neighboring hill.
Literally, he had returned to primitive savagery and some of his food
had been that of the lower animals, though he had not scrupled to steal,
as we learned when his lair was discovered.

He had hidden himself cunningly; but witnesses appeared who had seen him,
in the dusk, and fled from him.  They never learned that the object
of their fear was Inspector John Weymouth.  How, having escaped death
in the Thames, he had crossed London unobserved, we never knew;
but his trick of knocking upon his own door at half-past two each morning
(a sort of dawning of sanity mysteriously linked with old custom)
will be a familiar class of symptom to all students of alienation.

I revert to the night when Smith solved the mystery of the knocking.

In a car which he had in waiting at the end of the village we sped
through the deserted streets to New Inn Court.  I, who had followed
Nayland Smith through the failures and successes of his mission,
knew that to-night he had surpassed himself; had justified the confidence
placed in him by the highest authorities.

We were admitted to an untidy room--that of a student,
a traveler and a crank--by a plain-clothes officer.
Amid picturesque and disordered fragments of a hundred ages,
in a great carven chair placed before a towering statue
of the Buddha, sat a hand-cuffed man.  His white hair
and beard were patriarchal; his pose had great dignity.
But his expression was entirely masked by the smoked glasses
which he wore.

Two other detectives were guarding the prisoner.

"We arrested Professor Jenner Monde as he came in, sir,"
reported the man who had opened the door.  "He has made no statement.
I hope there isn't a mistake."

"I hope not," rapped Smith.

He strode across the room.  He was consumed by a fever of excitement.
Almost savagely, he tore away the beard, tore off the snowy wig dashed
the smoked glasses upon the floor.

A great, high brow was revealed, and green, malignant eyes, which fixed
themselves upon him with an expression I never can forget.

IT WAS DR. FU-MANCHU!

One intense moment of silence ensued--of silence which seemed
to throb.  Then:

"What have you done with Professor Monde?" demanded Smith.

Dr. Fu-Manchu showed his even, yellow teeth in the singularly evil
smile which I knew so well.  A manacled prisoner he sat as unruffled
as a judge upon the bench.  In truth and in justice I am compelled
to say that Fu-Manchu was absolutely fearless.

"He has been detained in China," he replied, in smooth,
sibilant tones--"by affairs of great urgency.  His well-known
personality and ungregarious habits have served me well, here!"

Smith, I could see, was undetermined how to act; he stood tugging at his ear
and glancing from the impassive Chinaman to the wondering detectives.

"What are we to do, sir?" one of them asked.

"Leave Dr. Petrie and myself alone with the prisoner, until I call you."

The three withdrew.  I divined now what was coming.

"Can you restore Weymouth's sanity?" rapped Smith abruptly.
"I cannot save you from the hangman, nor"--his fists clenched
convulsively--"would I if I could; but--"

Fu-Manchu fixed his brilliant eyes upon him.

"Say no more, Mr. Smith," he interrupted; "you misunderstand me.
I do not quarrel with that, but what I have done from conviction
and what I have done of necessity are separated--are seas apart.
The brave Inspector Weymouth I wounded with a poisoned needle,
in self-defense; but I regret his condition as greatly as you do.
I respect such a man.  There is an antidote to the poison
of the needle."

"Name it," said Smith.

Fu-Manchu smiled again.

"Useless," he replied.  "I alone can prepare it.  My secrets
shall die with me.  I will make a sane man of Inspector Weymouth,
but no one else shall be in the house but he and I."

"It will be surrounded by police," interrupted Smith grimly.

"As you please," said Fu-Manchu. "Make your arrangements.
In that ebony case upon the table are the instruments for the cure.
Arrange for me to visit him where and when you will--"

"I distrust you utterly.  It is some trick," jerked Smith.

Dr. Fu-Manchu rose slowly and drew himself up to his great height.
His manacled hands could not rob him of the uncanny dignity which was his.
He raised them above his head with a tragic gesture and fixed his piercing
gaze upon Nayland Smith.

"The God of Cathay hear me," he said, with a deep, guttural note
in his voice--"I swear--"


The most awful visitor who ever threatened the peace of England, the end
of the visit of Fu-Manchu was characteristic--terrible--inexplicable.

Strange to relate, I did not doubt that this weird
being had conceived some kind of admiration or respect
for the man to whom he had wrought so terrible an injury.
He was capable of such sentiments, for he entertained some
similar one in regard to myself.

A cottage farther down the village street than Weymouth's was vacant, and in
the early dawn of that morning became the scene of outre happenings.
Poor Weymouth, still in a comatose condition, we removed there (Smith having
secured the key from the astonished agent). I suppose so strange a specialist
never visited a patient before--certainly not under such conditions.

For into the cottage, which had been entirely surrounded by a ring
of police, Dr. Fu-Manchu was admitted from the closed car in which,
his work of healing complete, he was to be borne to prison--to death!

Law and justice were suspended by my royally empowered friend that the enemy
of the white race might heal one of those who had hunted him down!

No curious audience was present, for sunrise was not yet come;
no concourse of excited students followed the hand of the Master;
but within that surrounded cottage was performed one of those
miracles of science which in other circumstances had made the fame
of Dr. Fu-Manchu to live forever.

Inspector Weymouth, dazed, disheveled, clutching his head
as a man who has passed through the Valley of the Shadow--
but sane--sane!--walked out into the porch!

He looked towards us--his eyes wild, but not with the fearsome
wildness of insanity.

"Mr. Smith!" he cried--and staggered down the path--"Dr. Petrie!  What--"

There came a deafening explosion.  From EVERY visible window
of the deserted cottage flames burst forth!

"QUICK!" Smith's voice rose almost to a scream--"into the house!"

He raced up the path, past Inspector Weymouth, who stood
swaying there like a drunken man.  I was close upon his heels.
Behind me came the police.

The door was impassable!  Already, it vomited a deathly heat,
borne upon stifling fumes like those of the mouth of the Pit.
We burst a window.  The room within was a furnace!

"My God!" cried someone.  "This is supernatural!"

"Listen!" cried another.  "Listen!"

The crowd which a fire can conjure up at any hour of day
or night, out of the void of nowhere, was gathering already.
But upon all descended a pall of silence.

From the heat of the holocaust a voice proclaimed itself--a voice raised,
not in anguish but in TRIUMPH!  It chanted barbarically--and was still.

The abnormal flames rose higher--leaping forth from every window.

"The alarm!" said Smith hoarsely.  "Call up the brigade!"


I come to the close of my chronicle, and feel that I betray a trust--
the trust of my reader.  For having limned in the colors at my
command the fiendish Chinese doctor, I am unable to conclude my task
as I should desire, unable, with any consciousness of finality,
to write Finis to the end of my narrative.

It seems to me sometimes that my pen is but temporarily idle--that I
have but dealt with a single phase of a movement having a hundred phases.
One sequel I hope for, and against all the promptings of logic and
Western bias.  If my hope shall be realized I cannot, at this time,
pretend to state.

The future, 'mid its many secrets, holds this precious one from me.

I ask you then, to absolve me from the charge of ill completing my work;
for any curiosity with which this narrative may leave the reader burdened
is shared by the writer.

With intent, I have rushed you from the chambers of Professor
Jenner Monde to that closing episode at the deserted cottage;
I have made the pace hot in order to impart to these last
pages of my account something of the breathless scurry which
characterized those happenings.

My canvas may seem sketchy:  it is my impression of the reality.
No hard details remain in my mind of the dealings of that night.
Fu-Manchu arrested--Fu-Manchu, manacled, entering the cottage on his
mission of healing; Weymouth, miraculously rendered sane, coming forth;
the place in flames.

And then?

To a shell the cottage burned, with an incredible rapidity
which pointed to some hidden agency; to a shell about ashes
which held NO TRACE OF HUMAN BONES!

It has been asked of me:  Was there no possibility of
Fu-Manchu's having eluded us in the ensuing confusion?
Was there no loophole of escape?

I reply, that so far as I was able to judge, a rat could scarce
have quitted the building undetected.  Yet that Fu-Manchu had,
in some incomprehensible manner and by some mysterious agency,
produced those abnormal flames, I cannot doubt.
Did he voluntarily ignite his own funeral pyre?

As I write, there lies before me a soiled and creased sheet of vellum.
It bears some lines traced in a cramped, peculiar, and all but
illegible hand.  This fragment was found by Inspector Weymouth
(to this day a man mentally sound) in a pocket of his ragged garments.

When it was written I leave you to judge.  How it came to be where Weymouth
found it calls for no explanation:


"To Mr. Commissioner NAYLAND SMITH and Dr. PETRIE--

"Greeting!  I am recalled home by One who may not be denied.
In much that I came to do I have failed.  Much that I
have done I would undo; some little I have undone.
Out of fire I came--the smoldering fire of a thing one day
to be a consuming flame; in fire I go.  Seek not my ashes.
I am the lord of the fires!  Farewell.

"FU-MANCHU."


Who has been with me in my several meetings with the man
who penned that message I leave to adjudge if it be the letter
of a madman bent upon self-destruction by strange means,
or the gibe of a preternaturally clever scientist and the most
elusive being ever born of the land of mystery--China.

For the present, I can aid you no more in the forming of your verdict.
A day may come though I pray it do not--when I shall be able to throw
new light upon much that is dark in this matter.  That day, so far as I
can judge, could only dawn in the event of the Chinaman's survival;
therefore I pray that the veil be never lifted.

But, as I have said, there is another sequel to this story
which I can contemplate with a different countenance.
How, then, shall I conclude this very unsatisfactory account?

Shall I tell you, finally, of my parting with lovely, dark-eyed Karamaneh,
on board the liner which was to bear her to Egypt?

No, let me, instead, conclude with the words of Nayland Smith:

"_I_ sail for Burma in a fortnight, Petrie.  I have leave to break my
journey at the Ditch.  How would a run up the Nile fit your programme?
Bit early for the season, but you might find something to amuse you!"



_____________________________________________________

C. August Dupin investigates THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE

as told by EDGAR ALLAN POE


What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid
himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond
_all_ conjecture.

                      --_Sir Thomas Browne._


The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in
themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them
only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they
are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source
of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical
ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into
action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which
_disentangles._ He derives pleasure from even the most trivial
occupations bringing his talent into play. He is fond of enigmas, of
conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a
degree of _acumen_ which appears to the ordinary apprehension
pr?ternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and
essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.

The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by
mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it
which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations,
has been called, as if _par excellence_, analysis. Yet to calculate
is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the
one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess,
in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am
not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar
narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore,
take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective
intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the
unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of
chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and _bizarre_
motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is
mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The _attention_
is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an
oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible
moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such
oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the
more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In
draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are _unique_ and have but
little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished,
and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what
advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior
_acumen_. To be less abstract - Let us suppose a game of draughts
where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no
oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can
be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some _recherch?_
movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect.
Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the
spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not
unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime
indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or
hurry into miscalculation.

Whist has long been noted for its influence upon what is termed the
calculating power; and men of the highest order of intellect have
been known to take an apparently unaccountable delight in it, while
eschewing chess as frivolous. Beyond doubt there is nothing of a
similar nature so greatly tasking the faculty of analysis. The best
chess-player in Christendom _may_ be little more than the best player
of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in
all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
When I say proficiency, I mean that perfection in the game which
includes a comprehension of _all_ the sources whence legitimate
advantage may be derived. These are not only manifold but multiform,
and lie frequently among recesses of thought altogether inaccessible
to the ordinary understanding. To observe attentively is to remember
distinctly; and, so far, the concentrative chess-player will do very
well at whist; while the rules of Hoyle (themselves based upon the
mere mechanism of the game) are sufficiently and generally
comprehensible. Thus to have a retentive memory, and to proceed by
"the book," are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good
playing. But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the
skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of
observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the
difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so
much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the
observation. The necessary knowledge is that of _what_ to observe.
Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the
object, does he reject deductions from things external to the game.
He examines the countenance of his partner, comparing it carefully
with that of each of his opponents. He considers the mode of
assorting the cards in each hand; often counting trump by trump, and
honor by honor, through the glances bestowed by their holders upon
each. He notes every variation of face as the play progresses,
gathering a fund of thought from the differences in the expression of
certainty, of surprise, of triumph, or of chagrin. From the manner of
gathering up a trick he judges whether the person taking it can make
another in the suit. He recognises what is played through feint, by
the air with which it is thrown upon the table. A casual or
inadvertent word; the accidental dropping or turning of a card, with
the accompanying anxiety or carelessness in regard to its
concealment; the counting of the tricks, with the order of their
arrangement; embarrassment, hesitation, eagerness or trepidation -
all afford, to his apparently intuitive perception, indications of
the true state of affairs. The first two or three rounds having been
played, he is in full possession of the contents of each hand, and
thenceforward puts down his cards with as absolute a precision of
purpose as if the rest of the party had turned outward the faces of
their own.

The analytical power should not be confounded with ample ingenuity;
for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is
often remarkably incapable of analysis. The constructive or combining
power, by which ingenuity is usually manifested, and to which the
phrenologists (I believe erroneously) have assigned a separate organ,
supposing it a primitive faculty, has been so frequently seen in
those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as to have
attracted general observation among writers on morals. Between
ingenuity and the analytic ability there exists a difference far
greater, indeed, than that between the fancy and the imagination, but
of a character very strictly analogous. It will be found, in fact,
that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the _truly_ imaginative
never otherwise than analytic.

The narrative which follows will appear to the reader somewhat in the
light of a commentary upon the propositions just advanced.

Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18--, I
there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young
gentleman was of an excellent - indeed of an illustrious family, but,
by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty
that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased
to bestir himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his
fortunes. By courtesy of his creditors, there still remained in his
possession a small remnant of his patrimony; and, upon the income
arising from this, he managed, by means of a rigorous economy, to
procure the necessaries of life, without troubling himself about its
superfluities. Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries, and in Paris
these are easily obtained.

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre,
where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare
and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion. We saw
each other again and again. I was deeply interested in the little
family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a
Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is his theme. I was astonished,
too, at the vast extent of his reading; and, above all, I felt my
soul enkindled within me by the wild fervor, and the vivid freshness
of his imagination. Seeking in Paris the objects I then sought, I
felt that the societyof such a man would be to me a treasure beyond
price; and this feeling I frankly confided to him. It was at length
arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city; and
as my worldly circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his
own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing
in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common
temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through
superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its
fall in a retired and desolate portion of the Faubourg St. Germain.

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we
should have been regarded as madmen - although, perhaps, as madmen of
a harmless nature. Our seclusion was perfect. We admitted no
visitors. Indeed the locality of our retirement had been carefully
kept a secret from my own former associates; and it had been many
years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris. We existed
within ourselves alone.

It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?)
to be enamored of the Night for her own sake; and into this
_bizarrerie_, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself
up to his wild whims with a perfect _abandon_. The sable divinity
would not herself dwell with us always; but we could counterfeit her
presence. At the first dawn of the morning we closed all the messy
shutters of our old building; lighting a couple of tapers which,
strongly perfumed, threw out only the ghastliest and feeblest of
rays. By the aid of these we then busied our souls in dreams -
reading, writing, or conversing, until warned by the clock of the
advent of the true Darkness. Then we sallied forth into the streets
arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide
until a late hour, seeking, amid the wild lights and shadows of the
populous city, that infinity of mental excitement which quiet
observation can afford.

At such times I could not help remarking and admiring (although from
his rich ideality I had been prepared to expect it) a peculiar
analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight
in its exercise - if not exactly in its display - and did not
hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived. He boastedto me, with
a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore
windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by
direct and very startling proofs of his intimate knowledge of my own.
His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract; his eyes were
vacant in expression; while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose
into a treble which would have sounded petulantly but for the
deliberateness and entire distinctness of the enunciation. Observing
him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old
philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a
double Dupin - the creative and the resolvent.

Let it not be supposed, from what I have just said, that I am
detailing any mystery, or penning any romance. What I have described
in the Frenchman, was merely the result of an excited, or perhaps of
a diseased intelligence. But of the character of his remarks at the
periods in question an example will best convey the idea.

We were strolling one night down a long dirty street in the vicinity
of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought,
neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All
at once Dupin broke forth with these words:

"He is a very little fellow, that's true, and would do better for the
_Th??tre des Vari?t?s_."

"There can be no doubt of that," I replied unwittingly, and not at
first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the
extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my
meditations. In an instant afterward I recollected myself, and my
astonishment was profound.

"Dupin," said I, gravely, "this is beyond my comprehension. I do not
hesitate to say that I am amazed, and can scarcely credit my senses.
How was it possible you should know I was thinking of ----- ?" Here I
paused, to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I
thought.

-- "of Chantilly," said he, "why do you pause? You were remarking to
yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for tragedy."

This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections.
Chantilly was a _quondam_ cobbler of the Rue St. Denis, who, becoming
stage-mad, had attempted the _r?le_ of Xerxes, in Cr?billon's tragedy
so called, and been notoriously Pasquinaded for his pains.

"Tell me, for Heaven's sake," I exclaimed, "the method - if method
there is - by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this
matter." In fact I was even more startled than I would have been
willing to express.

"It was the fruiterer," replied my friend, "who brought you to the
conclusion that the mender of soles was not of sufficient height for
Xerxes _et id genus omne_."

"The fruiterer! - you astonish me - I know no fruiterer whomsoever."

"The man who ran up against you as we entered the street - it may
have been fifteen minutes ago."

I now remembered that, in fact, a fruiterer, carrying upon his head a
large basket of apples, had nearly thrown me down, by accident, as we
passed from the Rue C ---- into the thoroughfare where we stood; but
what this had to do with Chantilly I could not possibly understand.

There was not a particle of _charl?tanerie_ about Dupin. "I will
explain," he said, "and that you may comprehend all clearly, we will
first retrace the course of your meditations, from the moment in
which I spoke to you until that of the _rencontre_ with the fruiterer
in question. The larger links of the chain run thus - Chantilly,
Orion, Dr. Nichols, Epicurus, Stereotomy, the street stones, the
fruiterer."

There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives,
amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular
conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is
often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is
astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence
between the starting-point and the goal. What, then, must have been
my amazement when I heard the Frenchman speak what he had just
spoken, and when I could not help acknowledging that he had spoken
the truth. He continued:

"We had been talking of horses, if I remember aright, just before
leaving the Rue C ---- . This was the last subject we discussed. As
we crossed into this street, a fruiterer, with a large basket upon
his head, brushing quickly past us, thrust you upon a pile of paving
stones collected at a spot where the causeway is undergoing repair.
You stepped upon one of the loose fragments, slipped, slightly
strained your ankle, appeared vexed or sulky, muttered a few words,
turned to look at the pile, and then proceeded in silence. I was not
particularly attentive to what you did; but observation has become
with me, of late, a species of necessity.

"You kept your eyes upon the ground - glancing, with a petulant
expression, at the holes and ruts in the pavement, (so that I saw you
were still thinking of the stones,) until we reached the little alley
called Lamartine, which has been paved, by way of experiment, with
the overlapping and riveted blocks. Here your countenance brightened
up, and, perceiving your lips move, I could not doubt that you
murmured the word 'stereotomy,' a term very affectedly applied to
this species of pavement. I knew that you could not say to yourself
'stereotomy' without being brought to think of atomies, and thus of
the theories of Epicurus; and since, when we discussed this subject
not very long ago, I mentioned to you how singularly, yet with how
little notice, the vague guesses of that noble Greek had met with
confirmation in the late nebular cosmogony, I felt that you could not
avoid casting your eyes upward to the great _nebula_ in Orion, and I
certainly expected that you would do so. You did look up; and I was
now assured that I had correctly followed your steps. But in that
bitter _tirade_ upon Chantilly, which appeared in yesterday's
'_Mus?e_,' the satirist, making some disgraceful allusions to the
cobbler s change of name upon assuming the buskin, quoted a Latin
line about which we have often conversed. I mean the line

Perdidit antiquum litera sonum.

I had told you that this was in reference to Orion, formerly written
Urion; and, from certain pungencies connected with this explanation,
I was aware that you could not have forgotten it. It was clear,
therefore, that you would not fail to combine the two ideas of Orion
and Chantilly. That you did combine them I saw by the character of
the smile which passed over your lips. You thought of the poor
cobbler's immolation. So far, you had been stooping in your gait; but
now I saw you draw yourself up to your full height. I was then sure
that you reflected upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly. At this
point I interrupted your meditations to remark that as, in fact, he
was a very little fellow - that Chantilly - he would do better at the
_Th??tre des Vari?t?s_."

Not long after this, we were looking over an evening edition of the
"Gazette des Tribunaux," when the following paragraphs arrested our
attention.

"EXTRAORDINARY MURDERS. - This morning, about three o'clock, the
inhabitants of the Quartier St. Roch were aroused from sleep by a
succession of terrific shrieks, issuing, apparently, from the fourth
story of a house in the Rue Morgue, known to be in the sole occupancy
of one Madame L'Espanaye, and her daughter Mademoiselle Camille
L'Espanaye. After some delay, occasioned by a fruitless attempt to
procure admission in the usual manner, the gateway was broken in with
a crowbar, and eight or ten of the neighbors entered accompanied by
two _gendarmes_. By this time the cries had ceased; but, as the party
rushed up the first flight of stairs, two or more rough voices in
angry contention were distinguished and seemed to proceed from the
upper part of the house. As the second landing was reached, these
sounds, also, had ceased and everything remained perfectly quiet. The
party spread themselves and hurried from room to room. Upon arriving
at a large back chamber in the fourth story, (the door of which,
being found locked, with the key inside, was forced open,) a
spectacle presented itself which struck every one present not less
with horror than with astonishment.

"The apartment was in the wildest disorder - the furniture broken and
thrown about in all directions. There was only one bedstead; and from
this the bed had been removed, and thrown into the middle of the
floor. On a chair lay a razor, besmeared with blood. On the hearth
were two or three long and thick tresses of grey human hair, also
dabbled in blood, and seeming to have been pulled out by the roots.
Upon the floor were found four Napoleons, an ear-ring of topaz, three
large silver spoons, three smaller of_ m?tal d'Alger_, and two bags,
containing nearly four thousand francs in gold. The drawers of a
_bureau_, which stood in one corner were open, and had been,
apparently, rifled, although many articles still remained in them. A
small iron safe was discovered under the _bed_ (not under the
bedstead). It was open, with the key still in the door. It had no
contents beyond a few old letters, and other papers of little
consequence.

"Of Madame L'Espanaye no traces were here seen; but an unusual
quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a search was made
in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the
daughter, head downward, was dragged therefrom; it having been thus
forced up the narrow aperture for a considerable distance. The body
was quite warm. Upon examining it, many excoriations were perceived,
no doubt occasioned by the violence with which it had been thrust up
and disengaged. Upon the face were many severe scratches, and, upon
the throat, dark bruises, and deep indentations of finger nails, as
if the deceased had been throttled to death.

"After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house,
without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved
yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old
lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise
her, the head fell off. The body, as well as the head, was fearfully
mutilated - the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance
of humanity.

"To this horrible mystery there is not as yet, we believe, the
slightest clew."

The next day's paper had these additional particulars.

"_The Tragedy in the Rue Morgue._ Many individuals have been examined
in relation to this most extraordinary and frightful affair. [The
word 'affaire' has not yet, in France, that levity of import which it
conveys with us,] "but nothing whatever has transpired to throw light
upon it. We give below all the material testimony elicited.

"_Pauline Dubourg_, laundress, deposes that she has known both the
deceased for three years, having washed for them during that period.
The old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms - very
affectionate towards each other. They were excellent pay. Could not
speak in regard to their mode or means of living. Believed that
Madame L. told fortunes for a living. Was reputed to have money put
by. Never met any persons in the house when she called for the
clothes or took them home. Was sure that they had no servant in
employ. There appeared to be no furniture in any part of the building
except in the fourth story.

"_Pierre Moreau_, tobacconist, deposes that he has been in the habit
of selling small quantities of tobacco and snuff to Madame L'Espanaye
for nearly four years. Was born in the neighborhood, and has always
resided there. The deceased and her daughter had occupied the house
in which the corpses were found, for more than six years. It was
formerly occupied by a jeweller, who under-let the upper rooms to
various persons. The house was the property of Madame L. She became
dissatisfied with the abuse of the premises by her tenant, and moved
into them herself, refusing to let any portion. The old lady was
childish. Witness had seen the daughter some five or six times during
the six years. The two lived an exceedingly retired life - were
reputed to have money. Had heard it said among the neighbors that
Madame L. told fortunes - did not believe it. Had never seen any
person enter the door except the old lady and her daughter, a porter
once or twice, and a physician some eight or ten times.

"Many other persons, neighbors, gave evidence to the same effect. No
one was spoken of as frequenting the house. It was not known whether
there were any living connexions of Madame L. and her daughter. The
shutters of the front windows were seldom opened. Those in the rear
were always closed, with the exception of the large back room, fourth
story. The house was a good house - not very old.

"_Isidore Muset_, _gendarme_, deposes that he was called to the house
about three o'clock in the morning, and found some twenty or thirty
persons at the gateway, endeavoring to gain admittance. Forced it
open, at length, with a bayonet - not with a crowbar. Had but little
difficulty in getting it open, on account of its being a double or
folding gate, and bolted neither at bottom not top. The shrieks were
continued until the gate was forced - and then suddenly ceased. They
seemed to be screams of some person (or persons) in great agony -
were loud and drawn out, not short and quick. Witness led the way up
stairs. Upon reaching the first landing, heard two voices in loud and
angry contention - the one a gruff voice, the other much shriller - a
very strange voice. Could distinguish some words of the former, which
was that of a Frenchman. Was positive that it was not a woman's
voice. Could distinguish the words '_sacr?_' and '_diable._' The
shrill voice was that of a foreigner. Could not be sure whether it
was the voice of a man or of a woman. Could not make out what was
said, but believed the language to be Spanish. The state of the room
and of the bodies was described by this witness as we described them
yesterday.

"_Henri Duval_, a neighbor, and by trade a silver-smith, deposes that
he was one of the party who first entered the house. Corroborates the
testimony of Mus?t in general. As soon as they forced an entrance,
they reclosed the door, to keep out the crowd, which collected very
fast, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour. The shrill voice,
this witness thinks, was that of an Italian. Was certain it was not
French. Could not be sure that it was a man's voice. It might have
been a woman's. Was not acquainted with the Italian language. Could
not distinguish the words, but was convinced by the intonation that
the speaker was an Italian. Knew Madame L. and her daughter. Had
conversed with both frequently. Was sure that the shrill voice was
not that of either of the deceased.

"-- _Odenheimer, restaurateur._ This witness volunteered his
testimony. Not speaking French, was examined through an interpreter.
Is a native of Amsterdam. Was passing the house at the time of the
shrieks. They lasted for several minutes - probably ten. They were
long and loud - very awful and distressing. Was one of those who
entered the building. Corroborated the previous evidence in every
respect but one. Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man -
of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish the words uttered. They were
loud and quick - unequal - spoken apparently in fear as well as in
anger. The voice was harsh - not so much shrill as harsh. Could not
call it a shrill voice. The gruff voice said repeatedly '_sacr?_,'
'_diable_,' and once '_mon Dieu._'

"_Jules Mignaud_, banker, of the firm of Mignaud et Fils, Rue
Deloraine. Is the elder Mignaud. Madame L'Espanaye had some property.
Had opened an account with his banking house in the spring of the
year - (eight years previously). Made frequent deposits in small
sums. Had checked for nothing until the third day before her death,
when she took out in person the sum of 4000 francs. This sum was paid
in gold, and a clerk went home with the money.

"_Adolphe Le Bon_, clerk to Mignaud et Fils, deposes that on the day
in question, about noon, he accompanied Madame L'Espanaye to her
residence with the 4000 francs, put up in two bags. Upon the door
being opened, Mademoiselle L. appeared and took from his hands one of
the bags, while the old lady relieved him of the other. He then bowed
and departed. Did not see any person in the street at the time. It is
a bye-street - very lonely.

"_William Bird_, tailor deposes that he was one of the party who
entered the house. Is an Englishman. Has lived in Paris two years.
Was one of the first to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in
contention. The gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could make out
several words, but cannot now remember all. Heard distinctly
'_sacr?_' and '_mon Dieu._' There was a sound at the moment as if of
several persons struggling - a scraping and scuffling sound. The
shrill voice was very loud - louder than the gruff one. Is sure that
it was not the voice of an Englishman. Appeared to be that of a
German. Might have been a woman's voice. Does not understand German.

"Four of the above-named witnesses, being recalled, deposed that the
door of the chamber in which was found the body of Mademoiselle L.
was locked on the inside when the party reached it. Every thing was
perfectly silent - no groans or noises of any kind. Upon forcing the
door no person was seen. The windows, both of the back and front
room, were down and firmly fastened from within. A door between the
two rooms was closed, but not locked. The door leading from the front
room into the passage was locked, with the key on the inside. A small
room in the front of the house, on the fourth story, at the head of
the passage was open, the door being ajar. This room was crowded with
old beds, boxes, and so forth. These were carefully removed and
searched. There was not an inch of any portion of the house which was
not carefully searched. Sweeps were sent up and down the chimneys.
The house was a four story one, with garrets (_mansardes._) A
trap-door on the roof was nailed down very securely - did not appear
to have been opened for years. The time elapsing between the hearing
of the voices in contention and the breaking open of the room door,
was variously stated by the witnesses. Some made it as short as three
minutes - some as long as five. The door was opened with difficulty.

"_Alfonzo Garcio_, undertaker, deposes that he resides in the Rue
Morgue. Is a native of Spain. Was one of the party who entered the
house. Did not proceed up stairs. Is nervous, and was apprehensive of
the consequences of agitation. Heard the voices in contention. The
gruff voice was that of a Frenchman. Could not distinguish what was
said. The shrill voice was that of an Englishman - is sure of this.
Does not understand the English language, but judges by the
intonation.

"_Alberto Montani_, confectioner, deposes that he was among the first
to ascend the stairs. Heard the voices in question. The gruff voice
was that of a Frenchman. Distinguished several words. The speaker
appeared to be expostulating. Could not make out the words of the
shrill voice. Spoke quick and unevenly. Thinks it the voice of a
Russian. Corroborates the general testimony. Is an Italian. Never
conversed with a native of Russia.

"Several witnesses, recalled, here testified that the chimneys of all
the rooms on the fourth story were too narrow to admit the passage of
a human being. By 'sweeps' were meant cylindrical sweeping brushes,
such as are employed by those who clean chimneys. These brushes were
passed up and down every flue in the house. There is no back passage
by which any one could have descended while the party proceeded up
stairs. The body of Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was so firmly wedged in
the chimney that it could not be got down until four or five of the
party united their strength.

"_Paul Dumas_, physician, deposes that he was called to view the
bodies about day-break. They were both then lying on the sacking of
the bedstead in the chamber where Mademoiselle L. was found. The
corpse of the young lady was much bruised and excoriated. The fact
that it had been thrust up the chimney would sufficiently account for
these appearances. The throat was greatly chafed. There were several
deep scratches just below the chin, together with a series of livid
spots which were evidently the impression of fingers. The face was
fearfully discolored, and the eye-balls protruded. The tongue had
been partially bitten through. A large bruise was discovered upon the
pit of the stomach, produced, apparently, by the pressure of a knee.
In the opinion of M. Dumas, Mademoiselle L'Espanaye had been
throttled to death by some person or persons unknown. The corpse of
the mother was horribly mutilated. All the bones of the right leg and
arm were more or less shattered. The left _tibia_ much splintered, as
well as all the ribs of the left side. Whole body dreadfully bruised
and discolored. It was not possible to say how the injuries had been
inflicted. A heavy club of wood, or a broad bar of iron - a chair -
any large, heavy, and obtuse weapon would have produced such results,
if wielded by the hands of a very powerful man. No woman could have
inflicted the blows with any weapon. The head of the deceased, when
seen by witness, was entirely separated from the body, and was also
greatly shattered. The throat had evidently been cut with some very
sharp instrument - probably with a razor.

"_Alexandre Etienne_, surgeon, was called with M. Dumas to view the
bodies. Corroborated the testimony, and the opinions of M. Dumas.

"Nothing farther of importance was elicited, although several other
persons were examined. A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in
all its particulars, was never before committed in Paris - if indeed
a murder has been committed at all. The police are entirely at fault
- an unusual occurrence in affairs of this nature. There is not,
however, the shadow of a clew apparent."

The evening edition of the paper stated that the greatest excitement
still continued in the Quartier St. Roch - that the premises in
question had been carefully re-searched, and fresh examinations of
witnesses instituted, but all to no purpose. A postscript, however,
mentioned that Adolphe Le Bon had been arrested and imprisoned -
although nothing appeared to criminate him, beyond the facts already
detailed.

Dupin seemed singularly interested in the progress of this affair --
at least so I judged from his manner, for he made no comments. It was
only after the announcement that Le Bon had been imprisoned, that he
asked me my opinion respecting the murders.

I could merely agree with all Paris in considering them an insoluble
mystery. I saw no means by which it would be possible to trace the
murderer.

"We must not judge of the means," said Dupin, "by this shell of an
examination. The Parisian police, so much extolled for _acumen_, are
cunning, but no more. There is no method in their proceedings, beyond
the method of the moment. They make a vast parade of measures; but,
not unfrequently, these are so ill adapted to the objects proposed,
as to put us in mind of Monsieur Jourdain's calling for his
_robe-de-chambre - pour mieux entendre la musique._ The results
attained by them are not unfrequently surprising, but, for the most
part, are brought about by simple diligence and activity. When these
qualities are unavailing, their schemes fail. Vidocq, for example,
was a good guesser and a persevering man. But, without educated
thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his
investigations. He impaired his vision by holding the object too
close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual
clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter
as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth
is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important
knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth
lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops
where she is found. The modes and sources of this kind of error are
well typified in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies. To look at
a star by glances - to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward
it the exterior portions of the _retina_ (more susceptible of feeble
impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star
distinctly - is to have the best appreciation of its lustre - a
lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision
_fully_ upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye
in the latter case, but, in the former, there is the more refined
capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex and
enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself
vanish from the firmanent by a scrutiny too sustained, too
concentrated, or too direct.

"As for these murders, let us enter into some examinations for
ourselves, before we make up an opinion respecting them. An inquiry
will afford us amusement," [I thought this an odd term, so applied,
but said nothing] "and, besides, Le Bon once rendered me a service
for which I am not ungrateful. We will go and see the premises with
our own eyes. I know G----, the Prefect of Police, and shall have no
difficulty in obtaining the necessary permission."

The permission was obtained, and we proceeded at once to the Rue
Morgue. This is one of those miserable thoroughfares which intervene
between the Rue Richelieu and the Rue St. Roch. It was late in the
afternoon when we reached it; as this quarter is at a great distance
from that in which we resided. The house was readily found; for there
were still many persons gazing up at the closed shutters, with an
objectless curiosity, from the opposite side of the way. It was an
ordinary Parisian house, with a gateway, on one side of which was a
glazed watch-box, with a sliding panel in the window, indicating a
_loge de concierge._ Before going in we walked up the street, turned
down an alley, and then, again turning, passed in the rear of the
building - Dupin, meanwhile examining the whole neighborhood, as well
as the house, with a minuteness of attention for which I could see no
possible object.

Retracing our steps, we came again to the front of the dwelling,
rang, and, having shown our credentials, were admitted by the agents
in charge. We went up stairs - into the chamber where the body of
Mademoiselle L'Espanaye had been found, and where both the deceased
still lay. The disorders of the room had, as usual, been suffered to
exist. I saw nothing beyond what had been stated in the "Gazette des
Tribunaux." Dupin scrutinized every thing - not excepting the bodies
of the victims. We then went into the other rooms, and into the yard;
a _gendarme_ accompanying us throughout. The examination occupied us
until dark, when we took our departure. On our way home my companion
stepped in for a moment at the office of one of the daily papers.

I have said that the whims of my friend were manifold, and that _Je
les m?nagais_: - for this phrase there is no English equivalent. It
was his humor, now, to decline all conversation on the subject of the
murder, until about noon the next day. He then asked me, suddenly, if
I had observed any thing _peculiar_ at the scene of the atrocity.

There was something in his manner of emphasizing the word "peculiar,"
which caused me to shudder, without knowing why.

"No, nothing _peculiar_," I said; "nothing more, at least, than we
both saw stated in the paper."

"The 'Gazette,' " he replied, "has not entered, I fear, into the
unusual horror of the thing. But dismiss the idle opinions of this
print. It appears to me that this mystery is considered insoluble,
for the very reason which should cause it to be regarded as easy of
solution - I mean for the _outr?_ character of its features. The
police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive - not for the
murder itself - but for the atrocity of the murder. They are puzzled,
too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling the voices heard in
contention, with the facts that no one was discovered up stairs but
the assassinated Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and that there were no
means of egress without the notice of the party ascending. The wild
disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up
the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady;
these considerations, with those just mentioned, and others which I
need not mention, have sufficed to paralyze the powers, by putting
completely at fault the boasted _acumen_, of the government agents.
They have fallen into the gross but common error of confounding the
unusual with the abstruse. But it is by these deviations from the
plane of the ordinary, that reason feels its way, if at all, in its
search for the true. In investigations such as we are now pursuing,
it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has
occurred that has never occurred before.' In fact, the facility with
which I shall arrive, or have arrived, at the solution of this
mystery, is in the direct ratio of its apparent insolubility in the
eyes of the police."

I stared at the speaker in mute astonishment.

"I am now awaiting," continued he, looking toward the door of our
apartment - "I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the
perpetrator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure
implicated in their perpetration. Of the worst portion of the crimes
committed, it is probable that he is innocent. I hope that I am right
in this supposition; for upon it I build my expectation of reading
the entire riddle. I look for the man here - in this room - every
moment. It is true that he may not arrive; but the probability is
that he will. Should he come, it will be necessary to detain him.
Here are pistols; and we both know how to use them when occasion
demands their use."

I took the pistols, scarcely knowing what I did, or believing what I
heard, while Dupin went on, very much as if in a soliloquy. I have
already spoken of his abstract manner at such times. His discourse
was addressed to myself; but his voice, although by no means loud,
had that intonation which is commonly employed in speaking to some
one at a great distance. His eyes, vacant in expression, regarded
only the wall.

"That the voices heard in contention," he said, "by the party upon
the stairs, were not the voices of the women themselves, was fully
proved by the evidence. This relieves us of all doubt upon the
question whether the old lady could have first destroyed the daughter
and afterward have committed suicide. I speak of this point chiefly
for the sake of method; for the strength of Madame L'Espanaye would
have been utterly unequal to the task of thrusting her daughter's
corpse up the chimney as it was found; and the nature of the wounds
upon her own person entirely preclude the idea of self-destruction.
Murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and the voices
of this third party were those heard in contention. Let me now advert
- not to the whole testimony respecting these voices - but to what
was _peculiar_ in that testimony. Did you observe any thing peculiar
about it?"

I remarked that, while all the witnesses agreed in supposing the
gruff voice to be that of a Frenchman, there was much disagreement in
regard to the shrill, or, as one individual termed it, the harsh
voice.

"That was the evidence itself," said Dupin, "but it was not the
peculiarity of the evidence. You have observed nothing distinctive.
Yet there _was_ something to be observed. The witnesses, as you
remark, agreed about the gruff voice; they were here unanimous. But
in regard to the shrill voice, the peculiarity is - not that they
disagreed - but that, while an Italian, an Englishman, a Spaniard, a
Hollander, and a Frenchman attempted to describe it, each one spoke
of it as that _of a foreigner_. Each is sure that it was not the
voice of one of his own countrymen. Each likens it - not to the voice
of an individual of any nation with whose language he is conversant -
but the converse. The Frenchman supposes it the voice of a Spaniard,
and 'might have distinguished some words _had he been acquainted with
the Spanish._' The Dutchman maintains it to have been that of a
Frenchman; but we find it stated that '_not understanding French this
witness was examined through an interpreter._' The Englishman thinks
it the voice of a German, and '_does not understand German._' The
Spaniard 'is sure' that it was that of an Englishman, but 'judges by
the intonation' altogether, '_as he has no knowledge of the
English._' The Italian believes it the voice of a Russian, but '_has
never conversed with a native of Russia._' A second Frenchman
differs, moreover, with the first, and is positive that the voice was
that of an Italian; but, _not being cognizant of that tongue_, is,
like the Spaniard, 'convinced by the intonation.' Now, how strangely
unusual must that voice have really been, about which such testimony
as this _could_ have been elicited! - in whose _tones_, even,
denizens of the five great divisions of Europe could recognise
nothing familiar! You will say that it might have been the voice of
an Asiatic - of an African. Neither Asiatics nor Africans abound in
Paris; but, without denying the inference, I will now merely call
your attention to three points. The voice is termed by one witness
'harsh rather than shrill.' It is represented by two others to have
been 'quick and _unequal._' No words - no sounds resembling words -
were by any witness mentioned as distinguishable.

"I know not," continued Dupin, "what impression I may have made, so
far, upon your own understanding; but I do not hesitate to say that
legitimate deductions even from this portion of the testimony - the
portion respecting the gruff and shrill voices - are in themselves
sufficient to engender a suspicion which should give direction to all
farther progress in the investigation of the mystery. I said
'legitimate deductions;' but my meaning is not thus fully expressed.
I designed to imply that the deductions are the _sole_ proper ones,
and that the suspicion arises _inevitably_ from them as the single
result. What the suspicion is, however, I will not say just yet. I
merely wish you to bear in mind that, with myself, it was
sufficiently forcible to give a definite form - a certain tendency -
to my inquiries in the chamber.

"Let us now transport ourselves, in fancy, to this chamber. What
shall we first seek here? The means of egress employed by the
murderers. It is not too much to say that neither of us believe in
pr?ternatural events. Madame and Mademoiselle L'Espanaye were not
destroyed by spirits. The doers of the deed were material, and
escaped materially. Then how? Fortunately, there is but one mode of
reasoning upon the point, and that mode _must_ lead us to a definite
decision. - Let us examine, each by each, the possible means of
egress. It is clear that the assassins were in the room where
Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was found, or at least in the room adjoining,
when the party ascended the stairs. It is then only from these two
apartments that we have to seek issues. The police have laid bare the
floors, the ceilings, and the masonry of the walls, in every
direction. No _secret_ issues could have escaped their vigilance.
But, not trusting to _their_ eyes, I examined with my own. There
were, then, no secret issues. Both doors leading from the rooms into
the passage were securely locked, with the keys inside. Let us turn
to the chimneys. These, although of ordinary width for some eight or
ten feet above the hearths, will not admit, throughout their extent,
the body of a large cat. The impossibility of egress, by means
already stated, being thus absolute, we are reduced to the windows.
Through those of the front room no one could have escaped without
notice from the crowd in the street. The murderers _must_ have
passed, then, through those of the back room. Now, brought to this
conclusion in so unequivocal a manner as we are, it is not our part,
as reasoners, to reject it on account of apparent impossibilities. It
is only left for us to prove that these apparent 'impossibilities'
are, in reality, not such.

"There are two windows in the chamber. One of them is unobstructed by
furniture, and is wholly visible. The lower portion of the other is
hidden from view by the head of the unwieldy bedstead which is thrust
close up against it. The former was found securely fastened from
within. It resisted the utmost force of those who endeavored to raise
it. A large gimlet-hole had been pierced in its frame to the left,
and a very stout nail was found fitted therein, nearly to the head.
Upon examining the other window, a similar nail was seen similarly
fitted in it; and a vigorous attempt to raise this sash, failed also.
The police were now entirely satisfied that egress had not been in
these directions. And, _therefore_, it was thought a matter of
supererogation to withdraw the nails and open the windows.

"My own examination was somewhat more particular, and was so for the
reason I have just given - because here it was, I knew, that all
apparent impossibilities _must_ be proved to be not such in reality.

"I proceeded to think thus - _? posteriori_. The murderers did escape
from one of these windows. This being so, they could not have
refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened; -
the consideration which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the
scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet the sashes _were_
fastened. They _must_, then, have the power of fastening themselves.
There was no escape from this conclusion. I stepped to the
unobstructed casement, withdrew the nail with some difficulty and
attempted to raise the sash. It resisted all my efforts, as I had
anticipated. A concealed spring must, I now know, exist; and this
corroboration of my idea convinced me that my premises at least, were
correct, however mysterious still appeared the circumstances
attending the nails. A careful search soon brought to light the
hidden spring. I pressed it, and, satisfied with the discovery,
forbore to upraise the sash.

"I now replaced the nail and regarded it attentively. A person
passing out through this window might have reclosed it, and the
spring would have caught - but the nail could not have been replaced.
The conclusion was plain, and again narrowed in the field of my
investigations. The assassins _must_ have escaped through the other
window. Supposing, then, the springs upon each sash to be the same,
as was probable, there _must_ be found a difference between the
nails, or at least between the modes of their fixture. Getting upon
the sacking of the bedstead, I looked over the head-board minutely at
the second casement. Passing my hand down behind the board, I readily
discovered and pressed the spring, which was, as I had supposed,
identical in character with its neighbor. I now looked at the nail.
It was as stout as the other, and apparently fitted in the same
manner - driven in nearly up to the head.

"You will say that I was puzzled; but, if you think so, you must have
misunderstood the nature of the inductions. To use a sporting phrase,
I had not been once 'at fault.' The scent had never for an instant
been lost. There was no flaw in any link of the chain. I had traced
the secret to its ultimate result, - and that result was _the nail._
It had, I say, in every respect, the appearance of its fellow in the
other window; but this fact was an absolute nullity (conclusive us it
might seem to be) when compared with the consideration that here, at
this point, terminated the clew. 'There _must_ be something wrong,' I
said, 'about the nail.' I touched it; and the head, with about a
quarter of an inch of the shank, came off in my fingers. The rest of
the shank was in the gimlet-hole where it had been broken off. The
fracture was an old one (for its edges were incrusted with rust), and
had apparently been accomplished by the blow of a hammer, which had
partially imbedded, in the top of the bottom sash, the head portion
of the nail. I now carefully replaced this head portion in the
indentation whence I had taken it, and the resemblance to a perfect
nail was complete - the fissure was invisible. Pressing the spring, I
gently raised the sash for a few inches; the head went up with it,
remaining firm in its bed. I closed the window, and the semblance of
the whole nail was again perfect.

"The riddle, so far, was now unriddled. The assassin had escaped
through the window which looked upon the bed. Dropping of its own
accord upon his exit (or perhaps purposely closed), it had become
fastened by the spring; and it was the retention of this spring which
had been mistaken by the police for that of the nail, - farther
inquiry being thus considered unnecessary.

"The next question is that of the mode of descent. Upon this point I
had been satisfied in my walk with you around the building. About
five feet and a half from the casement in question there runs a
lightning-rod. From this rod it would have been impossible for any
one to reach the window itself, to say nothing of entering it. I
observed, however, that the shutters of the fourth story were of the
peculiar kind called by Parisian carpenters _ferrades_ - a kind
rarely employed at the present day, but frequently seen upon very old
mansions at Lyons and Bourdeaux. They are in the form of an ordinary
door, (a single, not a folding door) except that the lower half is
latticed or worked in open trellis - thus affording an excellent hold
for the hands. In the present instance these shutters are fully three
feet and a half broad. When we saw them from the rear of the house,
they were both about half open - that is to say, they stood off at
right angles from the wall. It is probable that the police, as well
as myself, examined the back of the tenement; but, if so, in looking
at these _ferrades_ in the line of their breadth (as they must have
done), they did not perceive this great breadth itself, or, at all
events, failed to take it into due consideration. In fact, having
once satisfied themselves that no egress could have been made in this
quarter, they would naturally bestow here a very cursory examination.
It was clear to me, however, that the shutter belonging to the window
at the head of the bed, would, if swung fully back to the wall, reach
to within two feet of the lightning-rod. It was also evident that, by
exertion of a very unusual degree of activity and courage, an
entrance into the window, from the rod, might have been thus
effected. - By reaching to the distance of two feet and a half (we
now suppose the shutter open to its whole extent) a robber might have
taken a firm grasp upon the trellis-work. Letting go, then, his hold
upon the rod, placing his feet securely against the wall, and
springing boldly from it, he might have swung the shutter so as to
close it, and, if we imagine the window open at the time, might even
have swung himself into the room.

"I wish you to bear especially in mind that I have spoken of a _very_
unusual degree of activity as requisite to success in so hazardous
and so difficult a feat. It is my design to show you, first, that the
thing might possibly have been accomplished: - but, secondly and
_chiefly_, I wish to impress upon your understanding the _very
extraordinary_ - the almost pr?ternatural character of that agility
which could have accomplished it.

"You will say, no doubt, using the language of the law, that 'to make
out my case,' I should rather undervalue, than insist upon a full
estimation of the activity required in this matter. This may be the
practice in law, but it is not the usage of reason. My ultimate
object is only the truth. My immediate purpose is to lead you to
place in juxta-position, that _very unusual_ activity of which I have
just spoken with that _very peculiar_ shrill (or harsh) and _unequal_
voice, about whose nationality no two persons could be found to
agree, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected."

At these words a vague and half-formed conception of the meaning of
Dupin flitted over my mind. I seemed to be upon the verge of
comprehension without power to comprehend - men, at times, find
themselves upon the brink of remembrance without being able, in the
end, to remember. My friend went on with his discourse.

"You will see," he said, "that I have shifted the question from the
mode of egress to that of ingress. It was my design to convey the
idea that both were effected in the same manner, at the same point.
Let us now revert to the interior of the room. Let us survey the
appearances here. The drawers of the bureau, it is said, had been
rifled, although many articles of apparel still remained within them.
The conclusion here is absurd. It is a mere guess - a very silly one
- and no more. How are we to know that the articles found in the
drawers were not all these drawers had originally contained? Madame
L'Espanaye and her daughter lived an exceedingly retired life - saw
no company - seldom went out - had little use for numerous changes of
habiliment. Those found were at least of as good quality as any
likely to be possessed by these ladies. If a thief had taken any, why
did he not take the best - why did he not take all? In a word, why
did he abandon four thousand francs in gold to encumber himself with
a bundle of linen? The gold _was _abandoned. Nearly the whole sum
mentioned by Monsieur Mignaud, the banker, was discovered, in bags,
upon the floor. I wish you, therefore, to discard from your thoughts
the blundering idea of _motive_, engendered in the brains of the
police by that portion of the evidence which speaks of money
delivered at the door of the house. Coincidences ten times as
remarkable as this (the delivery of the money, and murder committed
within three days upon the party receiving it), happen to all of us
every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice.
Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of
that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the
theory of probabilities - that theory to which the most glorious
objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of
illustration. In the present instance, had the gold been gone, the
fact of its delivery three days before would have formed something
more than a coincidence. It would have been corroborative of this
idea of motive. But, under the real circumstances of the case, if we
are to suppose gold the motive of this outrage, we must also imagine
the perpetrator so vacillating an idiot as to have abandoned his gold
and his motive together.

"Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your
attention - that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that
startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as
this - let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman
strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head
downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this.
Least of all, do they thus dispose of the murdered. In the manner of
thrusting the corpse up the chimney, you will admit that there was
something _excessively outr?_ - something altogether irreconcilable
with our common notions of human action, even when we suppose the
actors the most depraved of men. Think, too, how great must have been
that strength which could have thrust the body _up_ such an aperture
so forcibly that the united vigor of several persons was found barely
sufficient to drag it _down!_

"Turn, now, to other indications of the employment of a vigor most
marvellous. On the hearth were thick tresses - very thick tresses -
of grey human hair. These had been torn out by the roots. You are
aware of the great force necessary in tearing thus from the head even
twenty or thirty hairs together. You saw the locks in question as
well as myself. Their roots (a hideous sight!) were clotted with
fragments of the flesh of the scalp - sure token of the prodigious
power which had been exerted in uprooting perhaps half a million of
hairs at a time. The throat of the old lady was not merely cut, but
the head absolutely severed from the body: the instrument was a mere
razor. I wish you also to look at the _brutal_ ferocity of these
deeds. Of the bruises upon the body of Madame L'Espanaye I do not
speak. Monsieur Dumas, and his worthy coadjutor Monsieur Etienne,
have pronounced that they were inflicted by some obtuse instrument;
and so far these gentlemen are very correct. The obtuse instrument
was clearly the stone pavement in the yard, upon which the victim had
fallen from the window which looked in upon the bed. This idea,
however simple it may now seem, escaped the police for the same
reason that the breadth of the shutters escaped them - because, by
the affair of the nails, their perceptions had been hermetically
sealed against the possibility of the windows having ever been opened
at all.

"If now, in addition to all these things, you have properly reflected
upon the odd disorder of the chamber, we have gone so far as to
combine the ideas of an agility astounding, a strength superhuman, a
ferocity brutal, a butchery without motive, a _grotesquerie_ in
horror absolutely alien from humanity, and a voice foreign in tone to
the ears of men of many nations, and devoid of all distinct or
intelligible syllabification. What result, then, has ensued? What
impression have I made upon your fancy?"

I felt a creeping of the flesh as Dupin asked me the question. "A
madman," I said, "has done this deed - some raving maniac, escaped
from a neighboring _Maison de Sant?._"

"In some respects," he replied, "your idea is not irrelevant. But the
voices of madmen, even in their wildest paroxysms, are never found to
tally with that peculiar voice heard upon the stairs. Madmen are of
some nation, and their language, however incoherent in its words, has
always the coherence of syllabification. Besides, the hair of a
madman is not such as I now hold in my hand. I disentangled this
little tuft from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame L'Espanaye.
Tell me what you can make of it."

"Dupin!" I said, completely unnerved; "this hair is most unusual -
this is no _human_ hair."

"I have not asserted that it is," said he; "but, before we decide
this point, I wish you to glance at the little sketch I have here
traced upon this paper. It is a _fac-simile_ drawing of what has been
described in one portion of the testimony as 'dark bruises, and deep
indentations of finger nails,' upon the throat of Mademoiselle
L'Espanaye, and in another, (by Messrs. Dumas and Etienne,) as a
'series of livid spots, evidently the impression of fingers.'

"You will perceive," continued my friend, spreading out the paper
upon the table before us, "that this drawing gives the idea of a firm
and fixed hold. There is no _slipping_ apparent. Each finger has
retained - possibly until the death of the victim - the fearful grasp
by which it originally imbedded itself. Attempt, now, to place all
your fingers, at the same time, in the respective impressions as you
see them."

I made the attempt in vain.

"We are possibly not giving this matter a fair trial," he said. "The
paper is spread out upon a plane surface; but the human throat is
cylindrical. Here is a billet of wood, the circumference of which is
about that of the throat. Wrap the drawing around it, and try the
experiment again."

I did so; but the difficulty was even more obvious than before.
"This," I said, "is the mark of no human hand."

"Read now," replied Dupin, "this passage from Cuvier."

It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the
large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic
stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and
the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well
known to all. I understood the full horrors of the murder at once.

"The description of the digits," said I, as I made an end of reading,
"is in exact accordance with this drawing. I see that no animal but
an Ourang-Outang, of the species here mentioned, could have impressed
the indentations as you have traced them. This tuft of tawny hair,
too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier. But
I cannot possibly comprehend the particulars of this frightful
mystery. Besides, there were _two_ voices heard in contention, and
one of them was unquestionably the voice of a Frenchman."

"True; and you will remember an expression attributed almost
unanimously, by the evidence, to this voice, - the expression, '_mon
Dieu!_' This, under the circumstances, has been justly characterized
by one of the witnesses (Montani, the confectioner,) as an expression
of remonstrance or expostulation. Upon these two words, therefore, I
have mainly built my hopes of a full solution of the riddle. A
Frenchman was cognizant of the murder. It is possible - indeed it is
far more than probable - that he was innocent of all participation in
the bloody transactions which took place. The Ourang-Outang may have
escaped from him. He may have traced it to the chamber; but, under
the agitating circumstances which ensued, he could never have
re-captured it. It is still at large. I will not pursue these guesses
- for I have no right to call them more - since the shades of
reflection upon which they are based are scarcely of sufficient depth
to be appreciable by my own intellect, and since I could not pretend
to make them intelligible to the understanding of another. We will
call them guesses then, and speak of them as such. If the Frenchman
in question is indeed, as I suppose, innocent of this atrocity, this
advertisement which I left last night, upon our return home, at the
office of 'Le Monde,' (a paper devoted to the shipping interest, and
much sought by sailors,) will bring him to our residence."

He handed me a paper, and I read thus:

CAUGHT - _In the Bois de Boulogne, early in the morning of the -
inst.,_ (the morning of the murder,) _a very large, tawny
Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species. The owner, (who is ascertained
to be a sailor, belonging to a Maltese vessel,) may have the animal
again, upon identifying it satisfactorily, and paying a few charges
arising from its capture and keeping. Call at No. ---- , Rue ----,
Faubourg St. Germain - au troisi?me._

"How was it possible," I asked, "that you should know the man to be a
sailor, and belonging to a Maltese vessel?"

"I do _not_ know it," said Dupin. "I am not _sure_ of it. Here,
however, is a small piece of ribbon, which from its form, and from
its greasy appearance, has evidently been used in tying the hair in
one of those long _queues_ of which sailors are so fond. Moreover,
this knot is one which few besides sailors can tie, and is peculiar
to the Maltese. I picked the ribbon up at the foot of the
lightning-rod. It could not have belonged to either of the deceased.
Now if, after all, I am wrong in my induction from this ribbon, that
the Frenchman was a sailor belonging to a Maltese vessel, still I can
have done no harm in saying what I did in the advertisement. If I am
in error, he will merely suppose that I have been misled by some
circumstance into which he will not take the trouble to inquire. But
if I am right, a great point is gained. Cognizant although innocent
of the murder, the Frenchman will naturally hesitate about replying
to the advertisement - about demanding the Ourang-Outang. He will
reason thus: - 'I am innocent; I am poor; my Ourang-Outang is of
great value - to one in my circumstances a fortune of itself - why
should I lose it through idle apprehensions of danger? Here it is,
within my grasp. It was found in the Bois de Boulogne - at a vast
distance from the scene of that butchery. How can it ever be
suspected that a brute beast should have done the deed? The police
are at fault - they have failed to procure the slightest clew. Should
they even trace the animal, it would be impossible to prove me
cognizant of the murder, or to implicate me in guilt on account of
that cognizance. Above all, _I am known._ The advertiser designates
me as the possessor of the beast. I am not sure to what limit his
knowledge may extend. Should I avoid claiming a property of so great
value, which it is known that I possess, I will render the animal at
least, liable to suspicion. It is not my policy to attract attention
either to myself or to the beast. I will answer the advertisement,
get the Ourang-Outang, and keep it close until this matter has blown
over.' "

At this moment we heard a step upon the stairs.

"Be ready," said Dupin, "with your pistols, but neither use them nor
show them until at a signal from myself."

The front door of the house had been left open, and the visiter had
entered, without ringing, and advanced several steps upon the
staircase. Now, however, he seemed to hesitate. Presently we heard
him descending. Dupin was moving quickly to the door, when we again
heard him coming up. He did not turn back a second time, but stepped
up with decision, and rapped at the door of our chamber.

"Come in," said Dupin, in a cheerful and hearty tone.

A man entered. He was a sailor, evidently, - a tall, stout, and
muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of
countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly
sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and _mustachio._ He
had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise
unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French
accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still
sufficiently indicative of a Parisian origin.

"Sit down, my freind," said Dupin. "I suppose you have called about
the Ourang-Outang. Upon my word, I almost envy you the possession of
him; a remarkably fine, and no doubt a very valuable animal. How old
do you suppose him to be?"

The sailor drew a long breath, with the air of a man relieved of some
intolerable burden, and then replied, in an assured tone:

"I have no way of telling - but he can't be more than four or five
years old. Have you got him here?"

"Oh no, we had no conveniences for keeping him here. He is at a
livery stable in the Rue Dubourg, just by. You can get him in the
morning. Of course you are prepared to identify the property?"

"To be sure I am, sir."

"I shall be sorry to part with him," said Dupin.

"I don't mean that you should be at all this trouble for nothing,
sir," said the man. "Couldn't expect it. Am very willing to pay a
reward for the finding of the animal - that is to say, any thing in
reason."

"Well," replied my friend, "that is all very fair, to be sure. Let me
think! - what should I have? Oh! I will tell you. My reward shall be
this. You shall give me all the information in your power about these
murders in the Rue Morgue."

Dupin said the last words in a very low tone, and very quietly. Just
as quietly, too, he walked toward the door, locked it and put the key
in his pocket. He then drew a pistol from his bosom and placed it,
without the least flurry, upon the table.

The sailor's face flushed up as if he were struggling with
suffocation. He started to his feet and grasped his cudgel, but the
next moment he fell back into his seat, trembling violently, and with
the countenance of death itself. He spoke not a word. I pitied him
from the bottom of my heart.

"My friend," said Dupin, in a kind tone, "you are alarming yourself
unnecessarily - you are indeed. We mean you no harm whatever. I
pledge you the honor of a gentleman, and of a Frenchman, that we
intend you no injury. I perfectly well know that you are innocent of
the atrocities in the Rue Morgue. It will not do, however, to deny
that you are in some measure implicated in them. From what I have
already said, you must know that I have had means of information
about this matter - means of which you could never have dreamed. Now
the thing stands thus. You have done nothing which you could have
avoided - nothing, certainly, which renders you culpable. You were
not even guilty of robbery, when you might have robbed with impunity.
You have nothing to conceal. You have no reason for concealment. On
the other hand, you are bound by every principle of honor to confess
all you know. An innocent man is now imprisoned, charged with that
crime of which you can point out the perpetrator."

The sailor had recovered his presence of mind, in a great measure,
while Dupin uttered these words; but his original boldness of bearing
was all gone.

"So help me God," said he, after a brief pause, "I will tell you all
I know about this affair; - but I do not expect you to believe one
half I say - I would be a fool indeed if I did. Still, I am innocent,
and I will make a clean breast if I die for it."

What he stated was, in substance, this. He had lately made a voyage
to the Indian Archipelago. A party, of which he formed one, landed at
Borneo, and passed into the interior on an excursion of pleasure.
Himself and a companion had captured the Ourang- Outang. This
companion dying, the animal fell into his own exclusive possession.
After great trouble, occasioned by the intractable ferocity of his
captive during the home voyage, he at length succeeded in lodging it
safely at his own residence in Paris, where, not to attract toward
himself the unpleasant curiosity of his neighbors, he kept it
carefully secluded, until such time as it should recover from a wound
in the foot, received from a splinter on board ship. His ultimate
design was to sell it.

Returning home from some sailors' frolic the night, or rather in the
morning of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bed-room,
into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been,
as was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand, and fully lathered,
it was sitting before a looking-glass, attempting the operation of
shaving, in which it had no doubt previously watched its master
through the key-hole of the closet. Terrified at the sight of so
dangerous a weapon in the possession of an animal so ferocious, and
so well able to use it, the man, for some moments, was at a loss what
to do. He had been accustomed, however, to quiet the creature, even
in its fiercest moods, by the use of a whip, and to this he now
resorted. Upon sight of it, the Ourang-Outang sprang at once through
the door of the chamber, down the stairs, and thence, through a
window, unfortunately open, into the street.

The Frenchman followed in despair; the ape, razor still in hand,
occasionally stopping to look back and gesticulate at its pursuer,
until the latter had nearly come up with it. It then again made off.
In this manner the chase continued for a long time. The streets were
profoundly quiet, as it was nearly three o'clock in the morning. In
passing down an alley in the rear of the Rue Morgue, the fugitive's
attention was arrested by a light gleaming from the open window of
Madame L'Espanaye's chamber, in the fourth story of her house.
Rushing to the building, it perceived the lightning rod, clambered up
with inconceivable agility, grasped the shutter, which was thrown
fully back against the wall, and, by its means, swung itself directly
upon the headboard of the bed. The whole feat did not occupy a
minute. The shutter was kicked open again by the Ourang-Outang as it
entered the room.

The sailor, in the meantime, was both rejoiced and perplexed. He had
strong hopes of now recapturing the brute, as it could scarcely
escape from the trap into which it had ventured, except by the rod,
where it might be intercepted as it came down. On the other hand,
there was much cause for anxiety as to what it might do in the house.
This latter reflection urged the man still to follow the fugitive. A
lightning rod is ascended without difficulty, especially by a sailor;
but, when he had arrived as high as the window, which lay far to his
left, his career was stopped; the most that he could accomplish was
to reach over so as to obtain a glimpse of the interior of the room.
At this glimpse he nearly fell from his hold through excess of
horror. Now it was that those hideous shrieks arose upon the night,
which had startled from slumber the inmates of the Rue Morgue. Madame
L'Espanaye and her daughter, habited in their night clothes, had
apparently been occupied in arranging some papers in the iron chest
already mentioned, which had been wheeled into the middle of the
room. It was open, and its contents lay beside it on the floor. The
victims must have been sitting with their backs toward the window;
and, from the time elapsing between the ingress of the beast and the
screams, it seems probable that it was not immediately perceived. The
flapping-to of the shutter would naturally have been attributed to
the wind.

As the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized Madame
L'Espanaye by the hair, (which was loose, as she had been combing
it,) and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of
the motions of a barber. The daughter lay prostrate and motionless;
she had swooned. The screams and struggles of the old lady (during
which the hair was torn from her head) had the effect of changing the
probably pacific purposes of the Ourang-Outang into those of wrath.
With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her
head from her body. The sight of blood inflamed its anger into
phrenzy. Gnashing its teeth, and flashing fire from its eyes, it flew
upon the body of the girl, and imbedded its fearful talons in her
throat, retaining its grasp until she expired. Its wandering and wild
glances fell at this moment upon the head of the bed, over which the
face of its master, rigid with horror, was just discernible. The fury
of the beast, who no doubt bore still in mind the dreaded whip, was
instantly converted into fear. Conscious of having deserved
punishment, it seemed desirous of concealing its bloody deeds, and
skipped about the chamber in an agony of nervous agitation; throwing
down and breaking the furniture as it moved, and dragging the bed
from the bedstead. In conclusion, it seized first the corpse of the
daughter, and thrust it up the chimney, as it was found; then that of
the old lady, which it immediately hurled through the window
headlong.

As the ape approached the casement with its mutilated burden, the
sailor shrank aghast to the rod, and, rather gliding than clambering
down it, hurried at once home - dreading the consequences of the
butchery, and gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about
the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party upon the
staircase were the Frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright,
commingled with the fiendish jabberings of the brute.

I have scarcely anything to add. The Ourang-Outang must have escaped
from the chamber, by the rod, just before the break of the door. It
must have closed the window as it passed through it. It was
subsequently caught by the owner himself, who obtained for it a very
large sum at the _Jardin des Plantes._ Le Don was instantly released,
upon our narration of the circumstances (with some comments from
Dupin) at the bureau of the Prefect of Police. This functionary,
however well disposed to my friend, could not altogether conceal his
chagrin at the turn which affairs had taken, and was fain to indulge
in a sarcasm or two, about the propriety of every person minding his
own business.

"Let him talk," said Dupin, who had not thought it necessary to
reply. "Let him discourse; it will ease his conscience, I am
satisfied with having defeated him in his own castle. Nevertheless,
that he failed in the solution of this mystery, is by no means that
matter for wonder which he supposes it; for, in truth, our friend the
Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no
_stamen._ It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the
Goddess Laverna, -- or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a
codfish. But he is a good creature after all. I like him especially
for one master stroke of cant, by which he has attained his
reputation for ingenuity. I mean the way he has '_de nier ce qui est,
et d'expliquer ce qui n'est pas._' " *

* Rousseau - Nouvelle Heloise.

_____________________________________________________________________


Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes collaborate during
THE GREEK INTERPRETER

as told by ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE


During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr.
Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his
relations, and hardly ever to his own early life. 
This reticence upon his part had increased the
somewhat inhuman effect which he produced upon me,
until sometimes I found myself regarding him as an
isolated phenomenon, a brain without a heart, as
deficient in human sympathy as he was pre-eminent in
intelligence.  His aversion to women and his
disinclination to form new friendships were both
typical of his unemotional character, but not more so
than his complete suppression of every reference to
his own people.  I had come to believe that he was an
orphan with no relatives living, but one day, to my
very great surprise, he began to talk to me about his
brother.

It was after tea on a summer evening, and the
conversation, which had roamed in a desultory,
spasmodic fashion from golf clubs to the causes of the
change in the obliquity of the ecliptic, came round at
last to the question of atavism and hereditary
aptitudes.  The point under discussion was, how far
any singular gift in an individual was due to his
ancestry and how far to his own early training.

"In your own case," said I, "from all that you have
told me, it seems obvious that your faculty of
observation and your peculiar facility for deduction
are due to your own systematic training."

"To some extent," he answered, thoughtfully.  "My
ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led
much the same life as is natural to their class.  But,
none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and
may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister
of Vernet, the French artist.  Art in the blood is
liable to take the strangest forms."

"But how do you know that it is hereditary?"

"Because my brother Mycroft possesses it in a larger
degree than I do."

This was news to me indeed.  If there were another man
with such singular powers in England, how was it that
neither police nor public had heard of him?  I put the
question, with a hint that it was my companion's
modesty which made him acknowledge his brother as his
superior.  Holmes laughed at my suggestion.

"My dear Watson," said he, "I cannot agree with those
who rank modesty among the virtues.  To the logician
all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to
underestimate one's self is as much a departure from
truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.  When I say,
therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of
observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking
the exact and literal truth."

"Is he your junior?"

"Seven years my senior."

"How comes it that he is unknown?"

"Oh, he is very well known in his own circle."

"Where, then?"

"Well, in the Diogenes Club, for example."

I had never heard of the institution, and my face must
have proclaimed as much, for Sherlock Holmes pulled
out his watch.

"The Diogenes Club is the queerest club in London, and
Mycroft one of the queerest men.  He's always there
from quarter to five to twenty to eight.  It's six
now, so if you care for a stroll this beautiful
evening I shall be very happy to introduce you to two
curiosities."

Five minutes later we were in the street, walking
towards Regent's Circus.

"You wonder," said my companion, "why it is that
Mycroft does not use his powers for detective work. 
He is incapable of it."

"But I thought you said--"

"I said that he was my superior in observation and
deduction.  If the art of the detective began and
ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would
be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived.  But
he has no ambition and no energy.  He will not even go
out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would
rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to
prove himself right.  Again and again I have taken a
problem to him, and have received an explanation which
has afterwards proved to be the correct one.  And yet
he was absolutely incapable of working out the
practical points which must be gone into before a case
could be laid before a judge or jury."

"It is not his profession, then?"

"By no means.  What is to me a means of livelihood is
to him the merest hobby of a dilettante.  He has an
extraordinary faculty for figures, and audits the
books in some of the government departments.  Mycroft
lodges in Pall Mall, and he walks round the corner
into Whitehall every morning and back every evening. 
From year's end to year's end he takes no other
exercise, and is seen nowhere else, except only in the
Diogenes Club, which is just opposite his rooms."

"I cannot recall the name."

"Very likely not.  There are many men in London, you
know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy,
have no wish for the company of their fellows.  Yet
they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the
latest periodicals.  It is for the convenience of
these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now
contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in
town.  No member is permitted to take the least notice
of any other one.  Save in the Stranger's Room, no
talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and
three offences, if brought to the notice of the
committee, render the talker liable to expulsion.  My
brother was one of the founders, and I have myself
found it a very soothing atmosphere."

We had reached Pall Mall as we talked, and were
walking down it from the St. James's end.  Sherlock
Holmes stopped at a door some little distance from the
Carlton, and, cautioning me not to speak, he led the
way into the hall.  Through the glass paneling I
caught a glimpse of a large and luxurious room, in
which a considerable number of men were sitting about
and reading papers, each in his own little nook. 
Holmes showed me into a small chamber which looked out
into Pall Mall, and then, leaving me for a minute, he
came back with a companion whom I knew could only be
his brother.

Mycroft Holmes was a much larger and stouter man than
Sherlock.  His body was absolutely corpulent, but his
face, though massive, had preserved something of the
sharpness of expression which was so remarkable in
that of his brother.  His eyes, which were of a
peculiarly light, watery gray, seemed to always retain
that far-away, introspective look which I had only
observed in Sherlock's when he was exerting his full
powers.

"I am glad to meet you, sir," said he, putting out a
broad, fat hand like the flipper of a seal.  "I hear
of Sherlock everywhere since you became his
chronicler.  By the way, Sherlock, I expected to see
you round last week, to consult me over that Manor
House case.  I thought you might be a little out of
your depth."

"No, I solved it," said my friend, smiling.

"It was Adams, of course."

"Yes, it was Adams."

"I was sure of it from the first."  The two sat down
together in the bow-window of the club.  "To any one
who wishes to study mankind this is the spot," said
Mycroft.  "Look at the magnificent types!  Look at
these two men who are coming towards us, for example."

"The billiard-marker and the other?"

"Precisely.  What do you make of the other?"

The two men had stopped opposite the window.  Some
chalk marks over the waistcoat pocket were the only
signs of billiards which I could see in one of them. 
The other was a very small, dark fellow, with his hat
pushed back and several packages under his arm.

"An old soldier, I perceive," said Sherlock.

"And very recently discharged," remarked the brother.

"Served in India, I see."

"And a non-commissioned officer."

"Royal Artillery, I fancy," said Sherlock.

"And a widower."

"But with a child."

"Children, my dear boy, children."

"Come," said I, laughing, "this is a little too much."

"Surely," answered Holmes, "it is not hard to say that
a man with that bearing, expression of authority, and
sunbaked skin, is a soldier, is more than a private,
and is not long from India."

"That he has not left the service long is shown by his
still wearing his ammunition boots, as they are
called," observed Mycroft.

"He had not the cavalry stride, yet he wore his hat on
one side, as is shown by the lighter skin of that side
of his brow.  His weight is against his being a
sapper.  He is in the artillery."

"Then, of course, his complete mourning shows that he
has lost some one very dear.  The fact that he is
doing his own shopping looks as though it were his
wife.  He has been buying things for children, you
perceive.  There is a rattle, which shows that one of
them is very young.  The wife probably died in
childbed.  The fact that he has a picture-book under
his arm shows that there is another child to be
thought of."

I began to understand what my friend meant when he
said that his brother possessed even keener faculties
that he did himself.  He glanced across at me and
smiled.  Mycroft took snuff from a tortoise-shell box,
and brushed away the wandering grains from his coat
front with a large, red silk handkerchief.

"By the way, Sherlock," said he, "I have had something
quite after your own heart--a most singular
problem--submitted to my judgment.  I really had not
the energy to follow it up save in a very incomplete
fashion, but it gave me a basis for some pleasing
speculation.  If you would care to hear the facts--"

"My dear Mycroft, I should be delighted."

The brother scribbled a note upon a leaf of his
pocket-book, and, ringing the bell, he handed it to
the waiter.

"I have asked Mr. Melas to step across," said he.  "He
lodges on the floor above me, and I have some slight
acquaintance with him, which led him to come to me in
his perplexity.  Mr. Melas is a Greek by extraction,
as I understand, and he is a remarkable linguist.  He
earns his living partly as interpreter in the law
courts and partly by acting as guide to any wealthy
Orientals who may visit the Northumberland Avenue
hotels.  I think I will leave him to tell his very
remarkable experience in his own fashion."

A few minutes later we were joined by a short, stout
man whose olive face and coal-black hair proclaimed
his Southern origin, though his speech was that of an
educated Englishman.  He shook hands eagerly with
Sherlock Holmes, and his dark eyes sparkled with
pleasure when he understood that the specialist was
anxious to hear his story.

"I do not believe that the police credit me--on my
word, I do not," said he in a wailing voice.  "Just
because they have never heard of it before, they think
that such a thing cannot be.  But I know that I shall
never be easy in my mind until I know what has become
of my poor man with the sticking-plaster upon his
face."

"I am all attention," said Sherlock Holmes.

"This is Wednesday evening," said Mr. Melas.  "Well
then, it was Monday night--only two days ago, you
understand--that all this happened.  I am an
interpreter, as perhaps my neighbor there has told
you.  I interpret all languages--or nearly all--but as
I am a Greek by birth and with a Grecian name, it is
with that particular tongue that I am principally
associated.  For many years I have been the chief
Greek interpreter in London, and my name is very well
known in the hotels.

"It happens not unfrequently that I am sent for at
strange hours by foreigners who get into difficulties,
or by travelers who arrive late and wish my services. 
I was not surprised, therefore, on Monday night when a
Mr. Latimer, a very fashionably dressed young man,
came up to my rooms and asked me to accompany him in a
cab which was waiting at the door.  A Greek friend had
come to see him upon business, he said, and as he
could speak nothing but his own tongue, the services
of an interpreter were indispensable.  He gave me to
understand that his house was some little distance
off, in Kensington, and he seemed to be in a great
hurry, bustling me rapidly into the cab when we had
descended to the street.

"I say into the cab, but I soon became doubtful as to
whether it was not a carriage in which I found myself. 
It was certainly more roomy than the ordinary
four-wheeled disgrace to London, and the fittings,
though frayed, were of rich quality.  Mr. Latimer
seated himself opposite to me and we started off
through Charing Cross and up the Shaftesbury Avenue.
We had come out upon Oxford Street and I had ventured
some remark as to this being a roundabout way to
Kensington, when my words were arrested by the
extraordinary conduct of my companion.

"He began by drawing a most formidable-looking
bludgeon loaded with lead from his pocket, and
switching it backward and forward several times, as if
to test its weight and strength.  Then he placed it
without a word upon the seat beside him.  Having done
this, he drew up the windows on each side, and I found
to my astonishment that they were covered with paper
so as to prevent my seeing through them.

"'I am sorry to cut off your view, Mr. Melas,' said
he.  'The fact is that I have no intention that you
should see what the place is to which we are driving. 
It might possibly be inconvenient to me if you could
find your way there again.'

"As you can imagine, I was utterly taken aback by such
an address.  My companion was a powerful,
broad-shouldered young fellow, and, apart from the
weapon, I should not have had the slightest chance in
a struggle with him.

"'This is very extraordinary conduct, Mr. Latimer,' I
stammered.  'You must be aware that what you are doing
is quite illegal.'

"'It is somewhat of a liberty, no doubt,' said he,
'but we'll make it up to you.  I must warn you,
however, Mr. Melas, that if at any time to-night you
attempt to raise an alarm or do anything which is
against my interests, you will find it a very serious
thing.  I beg you to remember that no one knows where
you are, and that, whether you are in this carriage or
in my house, you are equally in my power.'

"His words were quiet, but he had a rasping way of
saying them which was very menacing.  I sat in silence
wondering what on earth could be his reason for
kidnapping me in this extraordinary fashion.  Whatever
it might be, it was perfectly clear that there was no
possible use in my resisting, and that I could only
wait to see what might befall.

"For nearly two hours we drove without my having the
least clue as to where we were going.  Sometimes the
rattle of the stones told of a paved causeway, and at
others our smooth, silent course suggested asphalt;
but, save by this variation in sound, there was
nothing at all which could in the remotest way help me
to form a guess as to where we were.  The paper over
each window was impenetrable to light, and a blue
curtain was drawn across the glass work in front.  It
was a quarter-past seven when we left Pall Mall, and
my watch showed me that it was ten minutes to nine
when we at last came to a standstill.  My companion
let down the window, and I caught a glimpse of a low,
arched doorway with a lamp burning above it.  As I was
hurried from the carriage it swung open, and I found
myself inside the house, with a vague impression of a
lawn and trees on each side of me as I entered. 
Whether these were private grounds, however, or
bona-fide country was more than I could possibly
venture to say.

"There was a colored gas-lamp inside which was turned
so low that I could see little save that the hall was
of some size and hung with pictures.  In the dim light
I could make out that the person who had opened the
door was a small, mean-looking, middle-aged man with
rounded shoulders.  As he turned towards us the glint
of the light showed me that he was wearing glasses.

"'Is this Mr. Melas, Harold?' said he.

"'Yes.'

"'Well done, well done!  No ill-will, Mr. Melas, I
hope, but we could not get on without you.  If you
deal fair with us you'll not regret it, but if you try
any tricks, God help you!'  He spoke in a nervous,
jerky fashion, and with little giggling laughs in
between, but somehow he impressed me with fear more
than the other.

"'What do you want with me?' I asked.

"'Only to ask a few questions of a Greek gentleman who
is visiting us, and to let us have the answers.  But
say no more than you are told to say, or--' here came
the nervous giggle again--'you had better never have
been born.'

"As he spoke he opened a door and showed the way into
a room which appeared to be very richly furnished, but
again the only light was afforded by a single lamp
half-turned down.  The chamber was certainly large,
and the way in which my feet sank into the carpet as I
stepped across it told me of its richness.  I caught
glimpses of velvet chairs, a high white marble
mantel-piece, and what seemed to be a suit of Japanese
armor at one side of it.  There was a chair just under
the lamp, and the elderly man motioned that I should
sit in it.  The younger had left us, but he suddenly
returned through another door, leading with him a
gentleman clad in some sort of loose dressing-gown who
moved slowly towards us.  As he came into the circle
of dim light which enables me to see him more clearly
I was thrilled with horror at his appearance.  He was
deadly pale and terribly emaciated, with the
protruding, brilliant eyes of a man whose spirit was
greater than his strength.  But what shocked me more
than any signs of physical weakness was that his face
was grotesquely criss-crossed with sticking-plaster,
and that one large pad of it was fastened over his
mouth.

"'Have you the slate, Harold?' cried the older man, as
this strange being fell rather than sat down into a
chair.  'Are his hands loose?  Now, then, give him the
pencil.  You are to ask the questions, Mr. Melas, and
he will write the answers.  Ask him first of all
whether he is prepared to sign the papers?'

"The man's eyes flashed fire.

"'Never!' he wrote in Greek upon the slate.

"'On no condition?' I asked, at the bidding of our
tyrant.

"'Only if I see her married in my presence by a Greek
priest whom I know.'

"The man giggled in his venomous way.

"'You know what awaits you, then?'

"'I care nothing for myself.'

"These are samples of the questions and answers which
made up our strange half-spoken, half-written
conversation.  Again and again I had to ask him
whether he would give in and sign the documents. 
Again and again I had the same indignant reply.  But
soon a happy thought came to me.  I took to adding on
little sentences of my own to each question, innocent
ones at first, to test whether either of our
companions knew anything of the matter, and then, as I
found that they showed no signs I played a more
dangerous game.  Our conversation ran something like
this:

"'You can do no good by this obstinacy.  Who are you?'

"'I care not.  I am a stranger in London.'

"'Your fate will be upon your own head.  How long have
you been here?'

"'Let it be so.  Three weeks.'

"'The property can never be yours.  What ails you?'

"'It shall not go to villains.  They are starving me.'

"'You shall go free if you sign.  What house is this?'

"'I will never sign.  I do not know.'

"'You are not doing her any service.  What is your
name?'

"'Let me hear her say so.  Kratides.'

"'You shall see her if you sign.  Where are you from?'

"'Then I shall never see her.  Athens.'

"Another five minutes, Mr. Holmes, and I should have
wormed out the whole story under their very noses.  My
very next question might have cleared the matter up,
but at that instant the door opened and a woman
stepped into the room.  I could not see her clearly
enough to know more than that she was tall and
graceful, with black hair, and clad in some sort of
loose white gown.

"'Harold,' said she, speaking English with a broken
accent.  'I could not stay away longer.  It is so
lonely up there with only--Oh, my God, it is Paul!'

"These last words were in Greek, and at the same
instant the man with a convulsive effort tore the
plaster from his lips, and screaming out 'Sophy! 
Sophy!' rushed into the woman's arms.  Their embrace
was but for an instant, however, for the younger man
seized the woman and pushed her out of the room, while
the elder easily overpowered his emaciated victim, and
dragged him away through the other door.  For a moment
I was left alone in the room, and I sprang to my feet
with some vague idea that I might in some way get a
clue to what this house was in which I found myself.
Fortunately, however, I took no steps, for looking up
I saw that the older man was standing in the door-way
with his eyes fixed upon me.

"'That will do, Mr. Melas,' said he.  'You perceive
that we have taken you into our confidence over some
very private business.  We should not have troubled
you, only that our friend who speaks Greek and who
began these negotiations has been forced to return to
the East.  It was quite necessary for us to find some
one to take his place, and we were fortunate in
hearing of your powers.'

"I bowed.

"'There are five sovereigns here,' said he, walking up
to me, 'which will, I hope, be a sufficient fee.  But
remember,' he added, tapping me lightly on the chest
and giggling, 'if you speak to a human soul about
this--one human soul, mind--well, may God have mercy
upon your soul!"

"I cannot tell you the loathing and horror with which
this insignificant-looking man inspired me.  I could
see him better now as the lamp-light shone upon him. 
His features were peaky and sallow, and his little
pointed beard was thready and ill-nourished.  He
pushed his face forward as he spoke and his lips and
eyelids were continually twitching like a man with St.
Vitus's dance.  I could not help thinking that his
strange, catchy little laugh was also a symptom of
some nervous malady.  The terror of his face lay in
his eyes, however, steel gray, and glistening coldly
with a malignant, inexorable cruelty in their depths.

"'We shall know if you speak of this,' said he.  'We
have our own means of information.  Now you will find
the carriage waiting, and my friend will see you on
your way.'

"I was hurried through the hall and into the vehicle,
again obtaining that momentary glimpse of trees and a
garden.  Mr. Latimer followed closely at my heels, and
took his place opposite to me without a word.  In
silence we again drove for an interminable distance
with the windows raised, until at last, just after
midnight, the carriage pulled up.

"'You will get down here, Mr. Melas,' said my
companion.  'I am sorry to leave you so far from your
house, but there is no alternative.  Any attempt upon
your part to follow the carriage can only end in
injury to yourself.'

"He opened the door as he spoke, and I had hardly time
to spring out when the coachman lashed the horse and
the carriage rattled away.  I looked around me in
astonishment.  I was on some sort of a heathy common
mottled over with dark clumps of furze-bushes.  Far
away stretched a line of houses, with a light here and
there in the upper windows.  On the other side I saw
the red signal-lamps of a railway.

"The carriage which had brought me was already out of
sight.  I stood gazing round and wondering where on
earth I might be, when I saw some one coming towards
me in the darkness.  As he came up to me I made out
that he was a railway porter.

"'Can you tell me what place this is?' I asked.

"'Wandsworth Common,' said he.

"'Can I get a train into town?'

"'If you walk on a mile or so to Clapham Junction,'
said he, 'you'll just be in time for the last to
Victoria.'

"So that was the end of my adventure, Mr. Holmes.  I
do not know where I was, nor whom I spoke with, nor
anything save what I have told you.  But I know that
there is foul play going on, and I want to help that
unhappy man if I can.  I told the whole story to Mr.
Mycroft Holmes next morning, and subsequently to the
police."

We all sat in silence for some little time after
listening to this extraordinary narrative.  Then
Sherlock looked across at his brother.

"Any steps?" he asked.

Mycroft picked up the Daily News, which was lying on
the side-table.

"'Anybody supplying any information to the whereabouts
of a Greek gentleman named Paul Kratides, from Athens,
who is unable to speak English, will be rewarded.  A
similar reward paid to any one giving information
about a Greek lady whose first name is Sophy.  X
2473.'  That was in all the dailies.  No answer."

"How about the Greek Legation?"

"I have inquired.  They know nothing."

"A wire to the head of the Athens police, then?"

"Sherlock has all the energy of the family," said
Mycroft, turning to me.  "Well, you take the case up
by all means, and let me know if you do any good."

"Certainly," answered my friend, rising from his
chair.  "I'll let you know, and Mr. Melas also.  In
the meantime, Mr. Melas, I should certainly be on my
guard, if I were you, for of course they must know
through these advertisements that you have betrayed
them."

As we walked home together, Holmes stopped at a
telegraph office and sent off several wires.

"You see, Watson," he remarked, "our evening has been
by no means wasted.  Some of my most interesting cases
have come to me in this way through Mycroft.  The
problem which we have just listened to, although it
can admit of but one explanation, has still some
distinguishing features."

"You have hopes of solving it?"

"Well, knowing as much as we do, it will be singular
indeed if we fail to discover the rest.  You must
yourself have formed some theory which will explain
the facts to which we have listened."

"In a vague way, yes."

"What was your idea, then?"

"It seemed to me to be obvious that this Greek girl
had been carried off by the young Englishman named
Harold Latimer."

"Carried off from where?"

"Athens, perhaps."

Sherlock Holmes shook his head.  "This young man could
not talk a word of Greek.  The lady could talk English
fairly well.  Inference--that she had been in England
some little time, but he had not been in Greece."

"Well, then, we will presume that she had come on a
visit to England, and that this Harold had persuaded
her to fly with him."

"That is more probable."

"Then the brother--for that, I fancy, must be the
relationship--comes over from Greece to interfere.  He
imprudently puts himself into the power of the young
man and his older associate.  They seize him and use
violence towards him in order to make him sign some
papers to make over the girl's fortune--of which he
may be trustee--to them.  This he refuses to do.  In
order to negotiate with him they have to get an
interpreter, and they pitch upon this Mr. Melas,
having used some other one before.  The girl is not
told of the arrival of her brother, and finds it out
by the merest accident."

"Excellent, Watson!" cried Holmes.  "I really fancy
that you are not far from the truth.  You see that we
hold all the cards, and we have only to fear some
sudden act of violence on their part.  If they give us
time we must have them."

"But how can we find where this house lies?"

"Well, if our conjecture is correct and the girl's
name is or was Sophy Kratides, we should have no
difficulty in tracing her.  That must be our main
hope, for the brother is, of course, a complete
stranger.  It is clear that some time has elapsed
since this Harold established these relations with the
girl--some weeks, at any rate--since the brother in
Greece has had time to hear of it and come across.  If
they have been living in the same place during this
time, it is probable that we shall have some answer to
Mycroft's advertisement."

We had reached our house in Baker Street while we had
been talking.  Holmes ascended the stair first, and as
he opened the door of our room he gave a start of
surprise.  Looking over his shoulder, I was equally
astonished.  His brother Mycroft was sitting smoking
in the arm-chair.

"Come in, Sherlock!  Come in, sir," said he blandly,
smiling at our surprised faces.  "You don't expect
such energy from me, do you, Sherlock?  But somehow
this case attracts me."

"How did you get here?"

"I passed you in a hansom."

"There has been some new development?"

"I had an answer to my advertisement."

"Ah!"

"Yes, it came within a few minutes of your leaving."

"And to what effect?"

Mycroft Holmes took out a sheet of paper.

"Here it is," said he, "written with a J pen on royal
cream paper by a middle-aged man with a weak
constitution.  'Sir,' he says, 'in answer to your
advertisement of to-day's date, I beg to inform you
that I know the young lady in question very well.  If
you should care to call upon me I could give you some
particulars as to her painful history.  She is living
at present at The Myrtles, Beckenham.  Yours
faithfully, J. Davenport.'

"He writes from Lower Brixton," said Mycroft Holmes. 
"Do you not think that we might drive to him now,
Sherlock, and learn these particulars?"

"My dear Mycroft, the brother's life is more valuable
than the sister's story.  I think we should call at
Scotland Yard for Inspector Gregson, and go straight
out to Beckenham.  We know that a man is being done to
death, and every hour may be vital."

"Better pick up Mr. Melas on our way," I suggested. 
"We may need an interpreter."

"Excellent," said Sherlock Holmes.  "Send the boy for
a four-wheeler, and we shall be off at once."  He
opened the table-drawer as he spoke, and I noticed
that he slipped his revolver into his pocket.  "Yes,"
said he, in answer to my glance; "I should say from
what we have heard, that we are dealing with a
particularly dangerous gang."

It was almost dark before we found ourselves in Pall
Mall, at the rooms of Mr. Melas.  A gentleman had just
called for him, and he was gone.

"Can you tell me where?" asked Mycroft Holmes.

"I don't know, sir," answered the woman who had opened
the door; "I only know that he drove away with the
gentleman in a carriage."

"Did the gentleman give a name?"

"No, sir."

"He wasn't a tall, handsome, dark young man?"

"Oh, no, sir.  He was a little gentleman, with
glasses, thin in the face, but very pleasant in his
ways, for he was laughing all the time that he was
talking."

"Come along!" cried Sherlock Holmes, abruptly.  "This
grows serious," he observed, as we drove to Scotland
Yard.  "These men have got hold of Melas again.  He is
a man of no physical courage, as they are well aware
from their experience the other night.  This villain
was able to terrorize him the instant that he got into
his presence.  No doubt they want his professional
services, but, having used him, they may be inclined
to punish him for what they will regard as his
treachery."

Our hope was that, by taking train, we might get to
Beckenham as soon or sooner than the carriage.  On
reaching Scotland Yard, however, it was more than an
hour before we could get Inspector Gregson and comply
with the legal formalities which would enable us to
enter the house.  It was a quarter to ten before we
reached London Bridge, and half past before the four
of us alighted on the Beckenham platform.  A drive of
half a mile brought us to The Myrtles--a large, dark
house standing back from the road in its own grounds. 
Here we dismissed our cab, and made our way up the
drive together.

"The windows are all dark," remarked the inspector. 
"The house seems deserted."

"Our birds are flown and the nest empty," said Holmes.

"Why do you say so?"

"A carriage heavily loaded with luggage has passed out
during the last hour."

The inspector laughed.  "I saw the wheel-tracks in the
light of the gate-lamp, but where does the luggage
come in?"

"You may have observed the same wheel-tracks going the
other way.  But the outward-bound ones were very much
deeper--so much so that we can say for a certainty
that there was a very considerable weight on the
carriage."

"You get a trifle beyond me there," said the
inspector, shrugging his shoulder.  "It will not be an
easy door to force, but we will try if we cannot make
some one hear us."

He hammered loudly at the knocker and pulled at the
bell, but without any success.  Holmes had slipped
away, but he came back in a few minutes.

"I have a window open," said he.

"It is a mercy that you are on the side of the force,
and not against it, Mr. Holmes," remarked the
inspector, as he noted the clever way in which my
friend had forced back the catch.  "Well, I think that
under the circumstances we may enter without an
invitation."

One after the other we made our way into a large
apartment, which was evidently that in which Mr. Melas
had found himself.  The inspector had lit his lantern,
and by its light we could see the two doors, the
curtain, the lamp, and the suit of Japanese mail as he
had described them.  On the table lay two glasses, and
empty brandy-bottle, and the remains of a meal.

"What is that?" asked Holmes, suddenly.

We all stood still and listened.  A low moaning sound
was coming from somewhere over our heads.  Holmes
rushed to the door and out into the hall.  The dismal
noise came from upstairs.  He dashed up, the inspector
and I at his heels, while his brother Mycroft followed
as quickly as his great bulk would permit.

Three doors faced up upon the second floor, and it was
from the central of these that the sinister sounds
were issuing, sinking sometimes into a dull mumble and
rising again into a shrill whine.  It was locked, but
the key had been left on the outside.  Holmes flung
open the door and rushed in, but he was out again in
an instant, with his hand to his throat."

"It's charcoal," he cried.  "Give it time.  It will
clear."

Peering in, we could see that the only light in the
room came from a dull blue flame which flickered from
a small brass tripod in the centre.  It threw a livid,
unnatural circle upon the floor, while in the shadows
beyond we saw the vague loom of two figures which
crouched against the wall.  From the open door there
reeked a horrible poisonous exhalation which set us
gasping and coughing.  Holmes rushed to the top of the
stairs to draw in the fresh air, and then, dashing
into the room, he threw up the window and hurled the
brazen tripod out into the garden.

"We can enter in a minute," he gasped, darting out
again.  "Where is a candle?  I doubt if we could
strike a match in that atmosphere.  Hold the light at
the door and we shall get them out, Mycroft, now!"

With a rush we got to the poisoned men and dragged
them out into the well-lit hall.  Both of them were
blue-lipped and insensible, with swollen, congested
faces and protruding eyes.  Indeed, so distorted were
their features that, save for his black beard and
stout figure, we might have failed to recognize in one
of them the Greek interpreter who had parted from us
only a few hours before at the Diogenes Club.  His
hands and feet were securely strapped together, and he
bore over one eye the marks of a violent blow.  The
other, who was secured in a similar fashion, was a
tall man in the last stage of emaciation, with several
strips of sticking-plaster arranged in a grotesque
pattern over his face.  He had ceased to moan as we
laid him down, and a glance showed me that for him at
least our aid had come too late.  Mr. Melas, however,
still lived, and in less than an hour, with the aid of
ammonia and brandy I had the satisfaction of seeing
him open his eyes, and of knowing that my hand had
drawn him back from that dark valley in which all
paths meet.

It was a simple story which he had to tell, and one
which did but confirm our own deductions.  His
visitor, on entering his rooms, had drawn a
life-preserver from his sleeve, and had so impressed
him with the fear of instant and inevitable death that
he had kidnapped him for the second time.  Indeed, it
was almost mesmeric, the effect which this giggling
ruffian had produced upon the unfortunate linguist,
for he could not speak of him save with trembling
hands and a blanched cheek.  He had been taken swiftly
to Beckenham, and had acted as interpreter in a second
interview, even more dramatic than the first, in which
the two Englishmen had menaced their prisoner with
instant death if he did not comply with their demands. 
Finally, finding him proof against every threat, they
had hurled him back into his prison, and after
reproaching Melas with his treachery, which appeared
from the newspaper advertisement, they had stunned him
with a blow from a stick, and he remembered nothing
more until he found us bending over him.

And this was the singular case of the Grecian
Interpreter, the explanation of which is still
involved in some mystery.  We were able to find out,
by communicating with the gentleman who had answered
the advertisement, that the unfortunate young lady
came of a wealthy Grecian family, and that she had
been on a visit to some friends in England.  While
there she had met a young man named Harold Latimer,
who had acquired an ascendancy over he and had
eventually persuaded her to fly with him.  Her
friends, shocked at the event, had contented
themselves with informing her brother at Athens, and
had then washed their hands of the matter.  The
brother, on his arrival in England, had imprudently
placed himself in the power of Latimer and of his
associate, whose name was Wilson Kemp--a man of the
foulest antecedents. These two, finding that through
his ignorance of the language he was helpless in their
hands, had kept him a prisoner, and had endeavored by
cruelty and starvation to make him sign away his own
and his sister's property.  They had kept him in the
house without the girl's knowledge, and the plaster
over the face had been for the purpose of making
recognition difficult in case she should ever catch a
glimpse of him.  Her feminine perception, however, had
instantly seen through the disguise when, on the
occasion of the interpreter's visit, she had seen him
for the first time.  The poor girl, however, was
herself a prisoner, for there was no one about the
house except the man who acted as coachman, and his
wife, both of whom were tools of the conspirators. 
Finding that their secret was out, and that their
prisoner was not to be coerced, the two villains with
the girl had fled away at a few hours' notice from the
furnished house which they had hired, having first, as
they thought, taken vengeance both upon the man who
had defied and the one who had betrayed them.

Months afterwards a curious newspaper cutting reached
us from Buda-Pesth.  It told how two Englishmen who
had been traveling with a woman had met with a tragic
end.  They had each been stabbed, it seems, and the
Hungarian police were of opinion that they had
quarreled and had inflicted mortal injuries upon each
other.  Holmes, however, is, I fancy, of a different
way of thinking, and holds to this day that, if one
could find the Grecian girl, one might learn how the
wrongs of herself and her brother came to be avenged.


_____________________________________________________


Professor Cavor is one of THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON

as told by H.G. WELLS




Chapter 1




Mr. Bedford Meets Mr. Cavor at Lympne

As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the
blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of
astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr.
Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have
been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself
removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had
gone to Lympne because I had imagined it the most uneventful place in the
world. "Here, at any rate," said I, "I shall find peace and a chance to
work!"

And this book is the sequel. So utterly at variance is destiny with all
the little plans of men. I may perhaps mention here that very recently I
had come an ugly cropper in certain business enterprises. Sitting now
surrounded by all the circumstances of wealth, there is a luxury in
admitting my extremity. I can admit, even, that to a certain extent my
disasters were conceivably of my own making. It may be there are
directions in which I have some capacity, but the conduct of business
operations is not among these. But in those days I was young, and my youth
among other objectionable forms took that of a pride in my capacity for
affairs. I am young still in years, but the things that have happened to
me have rubbed something of the youth from my mind. Whether they have
brought any wisdom to light below it is a more doubtful matter.

It is scarcely necessary to go into the details of the speculations that
landed me at Lympne, in Kent. Nowadays even about business transactions
there is a strong spice of adventure. I took risks. In these things
there is invariably a certain amount of give and take, and it fell to me
finally to do the giving reluctantly enough. Even when I had got out of
everything, one cantankerous creditor saw fit to be malignant. Perhaps you
have met that flaming sense of outraged virtue, or perhaps you have only
felt it. He ran me hard. It seemed to me, at last, that there was nothing
for it but to write a play, unless I wanted to drudge for my living as a
clerk. I have a certain imagination, and luxurious tastes, and I meant to
make a vigorous fight for it before that fate overtook me. In addition to
my belief in my powers as a business man, I had always in those days had
an idea that I was equal to writing a very good play. It is not, I
believe, a very uncommon persuasion. I knew there is nothing a man can do
outside legitimate business transactions that has such opulent
possibilities, and very probably that biased my opinion. I had, indeed,
got into the habit of regarding this unwritten drama as a convenient
little reserve put by for a rainy day. That rainy day had come, and I set
to work.

I soon discovered that writing a play was a longer business than I had
supposed; at first I had reckoned ten days for it, and it was to have a
pied-a-terre while it was in hand that I came to Lympne. I reckoned myself
lucky in getting that little bungalow. I got it on a three years'
agreement. I put in a few sticks of furniture, and while the play was in
hand I did my own cooking. My cooking would have shocked Mrs. Bond. And
yet, you know, it had flavour. I had a coffee-pot, a sauce-pan for eggs,
and one for potatoes, and a frying-pan for sausages and bacon--such was
the simple apparatus of my comfort. One cannot always be magnificent, but
simplicity is always a possible alternative. For the rest I laid in an
eighteen-gallon cask of beer on credit, and a trustful baker came each
day. It was not, perhaps, in the style of Sybaris, but I have had worse
times. I was a little sorry for the baker, who was a very decent man
indeed, but even for him I hoped.

Certainly if any one wants solitude, the place is Lympne. It is in the
clay part of Kent, and my bungalow stood on the edge of an old sea cliff
and stared across the flats of Romney Marsh at the sea. In very wet
weather the place is almost inaccessible, and I have heard that at times
the postman used to traverse the more succulent portions of his route with
boards upon his feet. I never saw him doing so, but I can quite imagine
it. Outside the doors of the few cottages and houses that make up the
present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the
clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if
the place would be there at all, if it were not a fading memory of things
gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus
Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are
boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street,
still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand
on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and
officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the
swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now
just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two--and I.
And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round
in a broad curve to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree
clumps and the church towers of old medical towns that are following
Lemanis now towards extinction.

That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have ever
seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on
the sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under the setting
sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and
low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And
all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and
canals.

The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it
was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was
struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer hard work
of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention.

The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and
against that he came out black--the oddest little figure.

He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality
in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a
cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he
did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It
was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He
gesticulated with his hands and arms, and jerked his head about and
buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard such buzzing.
And ever and again he cleared his throat with a most extraordinary noise.

There had been rain, and that spasmodic walk of his was enhanced by the
extreme slipperiness of the footpath. Exactly as he came against the sun
he stopped, pulled out a watch, hesitated. Then with a sort of convulsive
gesture he turned and retreated with every manifestation of haste, no
longer gesticulating, but going with ample strides that showed the
relatively large size of his feet--they were, I remember, grotesquely
exaggerated in size by adhesive clay--to the best possible advantage.

This occurred on the first day of my sojourn, when my play-writing energy
was at its height and I regarded the incident simply as an annoying
distraction--the waste of five minutes. I returned to my scenario. But
when next evening the apparition was repeated with remarkable precision,
and again the next evening, and indeed every evening when rain was not
falling, concentration upon the scenario became a considerable effort.
"Confound the man," I said, "one would think he was learning to be a
marionette!" and for several evenings I cursed him pretty heartily. Then
my annoyance gave way to amazement and curiosity. Why on earth should a
man do this thing? On the fourteenth evening I could stand it no longer,
and so soon as he appeared I opened the french window, crossed the
verandah, and directed myself to the point where he invariably stopped.

He had his watch out as I came up to him. He had a chubby, rubicund face
with reddish brown eyes--previously I had seen him only against the
light. "One moment, sir," said I as he turned. He stared. "One moment,"
he said, "certainly. Or if you wish to speak to me for longer, and it is
not asking too much--your moment is up--would it trouble you to
accompany me?"

"Not in the least," said I, placing myself beside him.

"My habits are regular. My time for intercourse--limited."

"This, I presume, is your time for exercise?"

"It is. I come here to enjoy the sunset."

"You don't."

"Sir?"

"You never look at it."

"Never look at it?"

"No. I've watched you thirteen nights, and not once have you looked at the
sunset--not once."

He knitted his brows like one who encounters a problem.

"Well, I enjoy the sunlight--the atmosphere--I go along this path,
through that gate"--he jerked his head over his shoulder--"and round--"

"You don't. You never have been. It's all nonsense. There isn't a way.
To-night for instance--"

"Oh! to-night! Let me see. Ah! I just glanced at my watch, saw that I had
already been out just three minutes over the precise half-hour, decided
there was not time to go round, turned--"

"You always do."

He looked at me--reflected. "Perhaps I do, now I come to think of it. But
what was it you wanted to speak to me about?"

"Why, this!"

"This?"

"Yes. Why do you do it? Every night you come making a noise--"

"Making a noise?"

"Like this." I imitated his buzzing noise. He looked at me, and it was
evident the buzzing awakened distaste. "Do I do that?" he asked.

"Every blessed evening."

"I had no idea."

He stopped dead. He regarded me gravely. "Can it be," he said, "that I
have formed a Habit?"

"Well, it looks like it. Doesn't it?"

He pulled down his lower lip between finger and thumb. He regarded a
puddle at his feet.

"My mind is much occupied," he said. "And you want to know why! Well, sir,
I can assure you that not only do I not know why I do these things, but I
did not even know I did them. Come to think, it is just as you say;
I never _have_ been beyond that field.... And these things annoy you?"

For some reason I was beginning to relent towards him. "Not annoy,"
I said. "But--imagine yourself writing a play!"

"I couldn't."

"Well, anything that needs concentration."

"Ah!" he said, "of course," and meditated. His expression became so
eloquent of distress, that I relented still more. After all, there is a
touch of aggression in demanding of a man you don't know why he hums on
a public footpath.

"You see," he said weakly, "it's a habit."

"Oh, I recognise that."

"I must stop it."

"But not if it puts you out. After all, I had no business--it's something
of a liberty."

"Not at all, sir," he said, "not at all. I am greatly indebted to you. I
should guard myself against these things. In future I will. Could I
trouble you--once again? That noise?"

"Something like this," I said. "Zuzzoo, zuzzoo. But really, you know--"

"I am greatly obliged to you. In fact, I know I am getting absurdly
absent-minded. You are quite justified, sir--perfectly justified. Indeed,
I am indebted to you. The thing shall end. And now, sir, I have already
brought you farther than I should have done."

"I do hope my impertinence--"

"Not at all, sir, not at all."

We regarded each other for a moment. I raised my hat and wished him a good
evening. He responded convulsively, and so we went our ways.

At the stile I looked back at his receding figure. His bearing had changed
remarkably, he seemed limp, shrunken. The contrast with his former
gesticulating, zuzzoing self took me in some absurd way as pathetic. I
watched him out of sight. Then wishing very heartily I had kept to my own
business, I returned to my bungalow and my play.

The next evening I saw nothing of him, nor the next. But he was very much
in my mind, and it had occurred to me that as a sentimental comic
character he might serve a useful purpose in the development of my plot.
The third day he called upon me.

For a time I was puzzled to think what had brought him. He made
indifferent conversation in the most formal way, then abruptly he came to
business. He wanted to buy me out of my bungalow.

"You see," he said, "I don't blame you in the least, but you've
destroyed a habit, and it disorganises my day. I've walked past here for
years--years. No doubt I've hummed.... You've made all that impossible!"

I suggested he might try some other direction.

"No. There is no other direction. This is the only one. I've inquired.
And now--every afternoon at four--I come to a dead wall."

"But, my dear sir, if the thing is so important to you--"

"It's vital. You see, I'm--I'm an investigator--I am engaged in a
scientific research. I live--" he paused and seemed to think. "Just over
there," he said, and pointed suddenly dangerously near my eye. "The house
with white chimneys you see just over the trees. And my circumstances are
abnormal--abnormal. I am on the point of completing one of the most
important--demonstrations--I can assure you one of the most important
demonstrations that have ever been made. It requires constant thought,
constant mental ease and activity. And the afternoon was my brightest
time!--effervescing with new ideas--new points of view."

"But why not come by still?"

"It would be all different. I should be self-conscious. I should think of
you at your play--watching me irritated--instead of thinking of my work.
No! I must have the bungalow."

I meditated. Naturally, I wanted to think the matter over thoroughly
before anything decisive was said. I was generally ready enough for
business in those days, and selling always attracted me; but in the first
place it was not my bungalow, and even if I sold it to him at a good price
I might get inconvenienced in the delivery of goods if the current owner
got wind of the transaction, and in the second I was, well--undischarged.
It was clearly a business that required delicate handling. Moreover,
the possibility of his being in pursuit of some valuable invention also
interested me. It occurred to me that I would like to know more of this
research, not with any dishonest intention, but simply with an idea
that to know what it was would be a relief from play-writing. I threw
out feelers.

He was quite willing to supply information. Indeed, once he was fairly
under way the conversation became a monologue. He talked like a man long
pent up, who has had it over with himself again and again. He talked for
nearly an hour, and I must confess I found it a pretty stiff bit of
listening. But through it all there was the undertone of satisfaction one
feels when one is neglecting work one has set oneself. During that first
interview I gathered very little of the drift of his work. Half his words
were technicalities entirely strange to me, and he illustrated one or two
points with what he was pleased to call elementary mathematics, computing
on an envelope with a copying-ink pencil, in a manner that made it hard
even to seem to understand. "Yes," I said, "yes. Go on!" Nevertheless I
made out enough to convince me that he was no mere crank playing at
discoveries. In spite of his crank-like appearance there was a force about
him that made that impossible. Whatever it was, it was a thing with
mechanical possibilities. He told me of a work-shed he had, and of three
assistants--originally jobbing carpenters--whom he had trained. Now,
from the work-shed to the patent office is clearly only one step. He
invited me to see those things. I accepted readily, and took care, by a
remark or so, to underline that. The proposed transfer of the bungalow
remained very conveniently in suspense.

At last he rose to depart, with an apology for the length of his call.
Talking over his work was, he said, a pleasure enjoyed only too rarely. It
was not often he found such an intelligent listener as myself, he mingled
very little with professional scientific men.

"So much pettiness," he explained; "so much intrigue! And really, when one
has an idea--a novel, fertilising idea--I don't want to be uncharitable,
but--"

I am a man who believes in impulses. I made what was perhaps a rash
proposition. But you must remember, that I had been alone, play-writing in
Lympne, for fourteen days, and my compunction for his ruined walk still
hung about me. "Why not," said I, "make this your new habit? In the place
of the one I spoilt? At least, until we can settle about the bungalow.
What you want is to turn over your work in your mind. That you have always
done during your afternoon walk. Unfortunately that's over--you can't get
things back as they were. But why not come and talk about your work to me;
use me as a sort of wall against which you may throw your thoughts and
catch them again? It's certain I don't know enough to steal your ideas
myself--and I know no scientific men--"

I stopped. He was considering. Evidently the thing, attracted him. "But
I'm afraid I should bore you," he said.

"You think I'm too dull?"

"Oh, no; but technicalities--"

"Anyhow, you've interested me immensely this afternoon."

"Of course it would be a great help to me. Nothing clears up one's ideas
so much as explaining them. Hitherto--"

"My dear sir, say no more."

"But really can you spare the time?"

"There is no rest like change of occupation," I said, with profound
conviction.

The affair was over. On my verandah steps he turned. "I am already greatly
indebted to you," he said.

I made an interrogative noise.

"You have completely cured me of that ridiculous habit of humming," he
explained.

I think I said I was glad to be of any service to him, and he turned away.

Immediately the train of thought that our conversation had suggested must
have resumed its sway. His arms began to wave in their former fashion.
The faint echo of "zuzzoo" came back to me on the breeze....

Well, after all, that was not my affair....

He came the next day, and again the next day after that, and delivered
two lectures on physics to our mutual satisfaction. He talked with an
air of being extremely lucid about the "ether" and "tubes of force," and
"gravitational potential," and things like that, and I sat in my other
folding-chair and said, "Yes," "Go on," "I follow you," to keep him
going. It was tremendously difficult stuff, but I do not think he ever
suspected how much I did not understand him. There were moments when I
doubted whether I was well employed, but at any rate I was resting from
that confounded play. Now and then things gleamed on me clearly for a
space, only to vanish just when I thought I had hold of them. Sometimes my
attention failed altogether, and I would give it up and sit and stare at
him, wondering whether, after all, it would not be better to use him as a
central figure in a good farce and let all this other stuff slide. And
then, perhaps, I would catch on again for a bit.

At the earliest opportunity I went to see his house. It was large and
carelessly furnished; there were no servants other than his three
assistants, and his dietary and private life were characterised by a
philosophical simplicity. He was a water-drinker, a vegetarian, and all
those logical disciplinary things. But the sight of his equipment settled
many doubts. It looked like business from cellar to attic--an amazing
little place to find in an out-of-the-way village. The ground-floor rooms
contained benches and apparatus, the bakehouse and scullery boiler had
developed into respectable furnaces, dynamos occupied the cellar, and
there was a gasometer in the garden. He showed it to me with all the
confiding zest of a man who has been living too much alone. His seclusion
was overflowing now in an excess of confidence, and I had the good luck to
be the recipient.

The three assistants were creditable specimens of the class of "handy-men"
from which they came. Conscientious if unintelligent, strong, civil, and
willing. One, Spargus, who did the cooking and all the metal work, had
been a sailor; a second, Gibbs, was a joiner; and the third was an
ex-jobbing gardener, and now general assistant. They were the merest
labourers. All the intelligent work was done by Cavor. Theirs was the
darkest ignorance compared even with my muddled impression.

And now, as to the nature of these inquiries. Here, unhappily, comes a
grave difficulty. I am no scientific expert, and if I were to attempt to
set forth in the highly scientific language of Mr. Cavor the aim to which
his experiments tended, I am afraid I should confuse not only the reader
but myself, and almost certainly I should make some blunder that would
bring upon me the mockery of every up-to-date student of mathematical
physics in the country. The best thing I can do therefore is, I think to
give my impressions in my own inexact language, without any attempt to
wear a garment of knowledge to which I have no claim.

The object of Mr. Cavor's search was a substance that should be
"opaque"--he used some other word I have forgotten, but "opaque" conveys
the idea--to "all forms of radiant energy." "Radiant energy," he made me
understand, was anything like light or heat, or those Rontgen Rays there
was so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi,
or gravitation. All these things, he said, _radiate_ out from centres, and
act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term "radiant energy." Now
almost all substances are opaque to some form or other of radiant energy.
Glass, for example, is transparent to light, but much less so to heat, so
that it is useful as a fire-screen; and alum is transparent to light, but
blocks heat completely. A solution of iodine in carbon bisulphide, on the
other hand, completely blocks light, but is quite transparent to heat. It
will hide a fire from you, but permit all its warmth to reach you. Metals
are not only opaque to light and heat, but also to electrical energy,
which passes through both iodine solution and glass almost as though they
were not interposed. And so on.

Now all known substances are "transparent" to gravitation. You can use
screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical
influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can
screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will cut
off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational
attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say.
Cavor did not see why such a substance should not exist, and certainly I
could not tell him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. He
showed me by calculations on paper, which Lord Kelvin, no doubt, or
Professor Lodge, or Professor Karl Pearson, or any of those great
scientific people might have understood, but which simply reduced me to a
hopeless muddle, that not only was such a substance possible, but that it
must satisfy certain conditions. It was an amazing piece of reasoning.
Much as it amazed and exercised me at the time, it would be impossible to
reproduce it here. "Yes," I said to it all, "yes; go on!" Suffice it for
this story that he believed he might be able to manufacture this possible
substance opaque to gravitation out of a complicated alloy of metals and
something new--a new element, I fancy--called, I believe, _helium_, which
was sent to him from London in sealed stone jars. Doubt has been thrown
upon this detail, but I am almost certain it was _helium_ he had sent him
in sealed stone jars. It was certainly something very gaseous and thin.
If only I had taken notes...

But then, how was I to foresee the necessity of taking notes?

Any one with the merest germ of an imagination will understand the
extraordinary possibilities of such a substance, and will sympathise a
little with the emotion I felt as this understanding emerged from the haze
of abstruse phrases in which Cavor expressed himself. Comic relief in a
play indeed! It was some time before I would believe that I had
interpreted him aright, and I was very careful not to ask questions that
would have enabled him to gauge the profundity of misunderstanding into
which he dropped his daily exposition. But no one reading the story of it
here will sympathise fully, because from my barren narrative it will be
impossible to gather the strength of my conviction that this astonishing
substance was positively going to be made.

I do not recall that I gave my play an hour's consecutive work at any time
after my visit to his house. My imagination had other things to do. There
seemed no limit to the possibilities of the stuff; whichever way I tried I
came on miracles and revolutions. For example, if one wanted to lift a
weight, however enormous, one had only to get a sheet of this substance
beneath it, and one might lift it with a straw. My first natural impulse
was to apply this principle to guns and ironclads, and all the material
and methods of war, and from that to shipping, locomotion, building, every
conceivable form of human industry. The chance that had brought me into
the very birth-chamber of this new time--it was an epoch, no less--was
one of those chances that come once in a thousand years. The thing
unrolled, it expanded and expanded. Among other things I saw in it my
redemption as a business man. I saw a parent company, and daughter
companies, applications to right of us, applications to left, rings and
trusts, privileges, and concessions spreading and spreading, until one
vast, stupendous Cavorite company ran and ruled the world.

And I was in it!

I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I
jumped there and then.

"We're on absolutely the biggest thing that has ever been invented," I
said, and put the accent on "we." "If you want to keep me out of this,
you'll have to do it with a gun. I'm coming down to be your fourth
labourer to-morrow."

He seemed surprised at my enthusiasm, but not a bit suspicious or hostile.
Rather, he was self-depreciatory. He looked at me doubtfully. "But do you
really think--?" he said. "And your play! How about that play?"

"It's vanished!" I cried. "My dear sir, don't you see what you've got?
Don't you see what you're going to do?"

That was merely a rhetorical turn, but positively, he didn't. At first I
could not believe it. He had not had the beginning of the inkling of an
idea. This astonishing little man had been working on purely theoretical
grounds the whole time! When he said it was "the most important" research
the world had ever seen, he simply meant it squared up so many theories,
settled so much that was in doubt; he had troubled no more about the
application of the stuff he was going to turn out than if he had been a
machine that makes guns. This was a possible substance, and he was going
to make it! V'la tout, as the Frenchman says.

Beyond that, he was childish! If he made it, it would go down to posterity
as Cavorite or Cavorine, and he would be made an F.R.S., and his portrait
given away as a scientific worthy with Nature, and things like that. And
that was all he saw! He would have dropped this bombshell into the world
as though he had discovered a new species of gnat, if it had not happened
that I had come along. And there it would have lain and fizzled, like one
or two other little things these scientific people have lit and dropped
about us.

When I realised this, it was I did the talking, and Cavor who said, "Go
on!" I jumped up. I paced the room, gesticulating like a boy of twenty.
I tried to make him understand his duties and responsibilities in the
matter--_our_ duties and responsibilities in the matter. I assured him we
might make wealth enough to work any sort of social revolution we fancied,
we might own and order the whole world. I told him of companies and
patents, and the case for secret processes. All these things seemed to
take him much as his mathematics had taken me. A look of perplexity came
into his ruddy little face. He stammered something about indifference to
wealth, but I brushed all that aside. He had got to be rich, and it was no
good his stammering. I gave him to understand the sort of man I was, and
that I had had very considerable business experience. I did not tell him
I was an undischarged bankrupt at the time, because that was temporary,
but I think I reconciled my evident poverty with my financial claims. And
quite insensibly, in the way such projects grow, the understanding of a
Cavorite monopoly grew up between us. He was to make the stuff, and I was
to make the boom.

I stuck like a leech to the "we"--"you" and "I" didn't exist for me.

His idea was that the profits I spoke of might go to endow research, but
that, of course, was a matter we had to settle later. "That's all right,"
I shouted, "that's all right." The great point, as I insisted, was to get
the thing done.

"Here is a substance," I cried, "no home, no factory, no fortress, no ship
can dare to be without--more universally applicable even than a patent
medicine. There isn't a solitary aspect of it, not one of its ten thousand
possible uses that will not make us rich, Cavor, beyond the dreams of
avarice!"

"No!" he said. "I begin to see. It's extraordinary how one gets new points
of view by talking over things!"

"And as it happens you have just talked to the right man!"

"I suppose no one," he said, "is absolutely _averse_ to enormous wealth.
Of course there is one thing--"

He paused. I stood still.

"It is just possible, you know, that we may not be able to make it after
all! It may be one of those things that are a theoretical possibility, but
a practical absurdity. Or when we make it, there may be some little
hitch!"

"We'll tackle the hitch when it comes." said I.





Chapter 2




The First Making of Cavorite

But Cavor's fears were groundless, so far as the actual making was
concerned. On the 14th of October, 1899, this incredible substance was
made!

Oddly enough, it was made at last by accident, when Mr. Cavor least
expected it. He had fused together a number of metals and certain other
things--I wish I knew the particulars now!--and he intended to leave
the mixture a week and then allow it to cool slowly. Unless he had
miscalculated, the last stage in the combination would occur when the
stuff sank to a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it chanced
that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace tending.
Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted to shift
it to the man who had been a gardener, on the score that coal was soil,
being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the province of
a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, however, that
coal was a metallic or ore-like substance, let alone that he was cook.
But Spargus insisted on Gibbs doing the coaling, seeing that he was a
joiner and that coal is notoriously fossil wood. Consequently Gibbs
ceased to replenish the furnace, and no one else did so, and Cavor was
too much immersed in certain interesting problems concerning a Cavorite
flying machine (neglecting the resistance of the air and one or two
other points) to perceive that anything was wrong. And the premature
birth of his invention took place just as he was coming across the field
to my bungalow for our afternoon talk and tea.

I remember the occasion with extreme vividness. The water was boiling, and
everything was prepared, and the sound of his "zuzzoo" had brought me out
upon the verandah. His active little figure was black against the autumnal
sunset, and to the right the chimneys of his house just rose above a
gloriously tinted group of trees. Remoter rose the Wealden Hills, faint
and blue, while to the left the hazy marsh spread out spacious and serene.
And then--

The chimneys jerked heavenward, smashing into a string of bricks as they
rose, and the roof and a miscellany of furniture followed. Then overtaking
them came a huge white flame. The trees about the building swayed and
whirled and tore themselves to pieces, that sprang towards the flare. My
ears were smitten with a clap of thunder that left me deaf on one side for
life, and all about me windows smashed, unheeded.

I took three steps from the verandah towards Cavor's house, and even as I
did so came the wind.

Instantly my coat tails were over my head, and I was progressing in great
leaps and bounds, and quite against my will, towards him. In the same
moment the discoverer was seized, whirled about, and flew through the
screaming air. I saw one of my chimney pots hit the ground within six
yards of me, leap a score of feet, and so hurry in great strides towards
the focus of the disturbance. Cavor, kicking and flapping, came down
again, rolled over and over on the ground for a space, struggled up and
was lifted and borne forward at an enormous velocity, vanishing at last
among the labouring, lashing trees that writhed about his house.

A mass of smoke and ashes, and a square of bluish shining substance rushed
up towards the zenith. A large fragment of fencing came sailing past me,
dropped edgeways, hit the ground and fell flat, and then the worst was
over. The aerial commotion fell swiftly until it was a mere strong gale,
and I became once more aware that I had breath and feet. By leaning back
against the wind I managed to stop, and could collect such wits as still
remained to me.

In that instant the whole face of the world had changed. The tranquil
sunset had vanished, the sky was dark with scurrying clouds, everything
was flattened and swaying with the gale. I glanced back to see if my
bungalow was still in a general way standing, then staggered forwards
towards the trees amongst which Cavor had vanished, and through whose tall
and leaf-denuded branches shone the flames of his burning house.

I entered the copse, dashing from one tree to another and clinging to
them, and for a space I sought him in vain. Then amidst a heap of smashed
branches and fencing that had banked itself against a portion of his
garden wall I perceived something stir. I made a run for this, but before
I reached it a brown object separated itself, rose on two muddy legs, and
protruded two drooping, bleeding hands. Some tattered ends of garment
fluttered out from its middle portion and streamed before the wind.

For a moment I did not recognise this earthy lump, and then I saw that it
was Cavor, caked in the mud in which he had rolled. He leant forward
against the wind, rubbing the dirt from his eyes and mouth.

He extended a muddy lump of hand, and staggered a pace towards me. His
face worked with emotion, little lumps of mud kept falling from it. He
looked as damaged and pitiful as any living creature I have ever seen, and
his remark therefore amazed me exceedingly.

"Gratulate me," he gasped; "gratulate me!"

"Congratulate you!" said I. "Good heavens! What for?"

"I've done it."

"You _have_. What on earth caused that explosion?"

A gust of wind blew his words away. I understood him to say that it wasn't
an explosion at all. The wind hurled me into collision with him, and we
stood clinging to one another.

"Try and get back--to my bungalow," I bawled in his ear. He did not hear
me, and shouted something about "three martyrs--science," and also
something about "not much good." At the time he laboured under the
impression that his three attendants had perished in the whirlwind.
Happily this was incorrect. Directly he had left for my bungalow they had
gone off to the public-house in Lympne to discuss the question of the
furnaces over some trivial refreshment.

I repeated my suggestion of getting back to my bungalow, and this time he
understood. We clung arm-in-arm and started, and managed at last to reach
the shelter of as much roof as was left to me. For a space we sat in
arm-chairs and panted. All the windows were broken, and the lighter
articles of furniture were in great disorder, but no irrevocable damage
was done. Happily the kitchen door had stood the pressure upon it, so that
all my crockery and cooking materials had survived. The oil stove was
still burning, and I put on the water to boil again for tea. And that
prepared, I could turn on Cavor for his explanation.

"Quite correct," he insisted; "quite correct. I've done it, and it's all
right."

"But," I protested. "All right! Why, there can't be a rick standing, or a
fence or a thatched roof undamaged for twenty miles round...."

"It's all right--_really_. I didn't, of course, foresee this little upset.
My mind was preoccupied with another problem, and I'm apt to disregard
these practical side issues. But it's all right--"

"My dear sir," I cried, "don't you see you've done thousands of pounds'
worth of damage?"

"There, I throw myself on your discretion. I'm not a practical man, of
course, but don't you think they will regard it as a cyclone?"

"But the explosion--"

"It was not an explosion. It's perfectly simple. Only, as I say, I'm apt
to overlook these little things. Its that zuzzoo business on a larger
scale. Inadvertently I made this substance of mine, this Cavorite, in a
thin, wide sheet...."

He paused. "You are quite clear that the stuff is opaque to gravitation,
that it cuts off things from gravitating towards each other?"

"Yes," said I. "Yes."

"Well, so soon as it reached a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit,
and the process of its manufacture was complete, the air above it, the
portions of roof and ceiling and floor above it ceased to have weight.
I suppose you know--everybody knows nowadays--that, as a usual thing,
the air _has_ weight, that it presses on everything at the surface of the
earth, presses in all directions, with a pressure of fourteen and a half
pounds to the square inch?"

"I know that," said I. "Go on."

"I know that too," he remarked. "Only this shows you how useless
knowledge is unless you apply it. You see, over our Cavorite this ceased
to be the case, the air there ceased to exert any pressure, and the air
round it and not over the Cavorite was exerting a pressure of fourteen
pounds and a half to the square in upon this suddenly weightless air. Ah!
you begin to see! The air all about the Cavorite crushed in upon the air
above it with irresistible force. The air above the Cavorite was forced
upward violently, the air that rushed in to replace it immediately lost
weight, ceased to exert any pressure, followed suit, blew the ceiling
through and the roof off....

"You perceive," he said, "it formed a sort of atmospheric fountain, a kind
of chimney in the atmosphere. And if the Cavorite itself hadn't been loose
and so got sucked up the chimney, does it occur to you what would have
happened?"

I thought. "I suppose," I said, "the air would be rushing up and up over
that infernal piece of stuff now."

"Precisely," he said. "A huge fountain--"

"Spouting into space! Good heavens! Why, it would have squirted all the
atmosphere of the earth away! It would have robbed the world of air! It
would have been the death of all mankind! That little lump of stuff!"

"Not exactly into space," said Cavor, "but as bad--practically. It would
have whipped the air off the world as one peels a banana, and flung it
thousands of miles. It would have dropped back again, of course--but on
an asphyxiated world! From our point of view very little better than if it
never came back!"

I stared. As yet I was too amazed to realise how all my expectations had
been upset. "What do you mean to do now?" I asked.

"In the first place if I may borrow a garden trowel I will remove some of
this earth with which I am encased, and then if I may avail myself of your
domestic conveniences I will have a bath. This done, we will converse more
at leisure. It will be wise, I think"--he laid a muddy hand on my arm--"if
nothing were said of this affair beyond ourselves. I know I have caused
great damage--probably even dwelling-houses may be ruined here and there
upon the country-side. But on the other hand, I cannot possibly pay for
the damage I have done, and if the real cause of this is published, it
will lead only to heartburning and the obstruction of my work. One cannot
foresee everything, you know, and I cannot consent for one moment to
add the burthen of practical considerations to my theorising. Later
on, when you have come in with your practical mind, and Cavorite is
floated--floated is the word, isn't it?--and it has realised all you
anticipate for it, we may set matters right with these persons. But not
now--not now. If no other explanation is offered, people, in the present
unsatisfactory state of meteorological science, will ascribe all this to a
cyclone; there might be a public subscription, and as my house has
collapsed and been burnt, I should in that case receive a considerable
share in the compensation, which would be extremely helpful to the
prosecution of our researches. But if it is known that _I_ caused this,
there will be no public subscription, and everybody will be put out.
Practically I should never get a chance of working in peace again. My
three assistants may or may not have perished. That is a detail. If they
have, it is no great loss; they were more zealous than able, and this
premature event must be largely due to their joint neglect of the furnace.
If they have not perished, I doubt if they have the intelligence to
explain the affair. They will accept the cyclone story. And if during the
temporary unfitness of my house for occupation, I may lodge in one of the
untenanted rooms of this bungalow of yours--"

He paused and regarded me.

A man of such possibilities, I reflected, is no ordinary guest to
entertain.

"Perhaps," said I, rising to my feet, "we had better begin by looking for
a trowel," and I led the way to the scattered vestiges of the greenhouse.

And while he was having his bath I considered the entire question alone.
It was clear there were drawbacks to Mr. Cavor's society I had not
foreseen. The absentmindedness that had just escaped depopulating the
terrestrial globe, might at any moment result in some other grave
inconvenience. On the other hand I was young, my affairs were in a mess,
and I was in just the mood for reckless adventure--with a chance of
something good at the end of it. I had quite settled in my mind that I was
to have half at least in that aspect of the affair. Fortunately I held my
bungalow, as I have already explained, on a three-year agreement, without
being responsible for repairs; and my furniture, such as there was of it,
had been hastily purchased, was unpaid for, insured, and altogether devoid
of associations. In the end I decided to keep on with him, and see the
business through.

Certainly the aspect of things had changed very greatly. I no longer
doubted at all the enormous possibilities of the substance, but I began to
have doubts about the gun-carriage and the patent boots. We set to work at
once to reconstruct his laboratory and proceed with our experiments. Cavor
talked more on my level than he had ever done before, when it came to the
question of how we should make the stuff next.

"Of course we must make it again," he said, with a sort of glee I had not
expected in him, "of course we must make it again. We have caught a
Tartar, perhaps, but we have left the theoretical behind us for good and
all. If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, we
will. But--there must be risks! There must be. In experimental work there
always are. And here, as a practical man, _you_ must come in. For my own
part it seems to me we might make it edgeways, perhaps, and very thin. Yet
I don't know. I have a certain dim perception of another method. I can
hardly explain it yet. But curiously enough it came into my mind, while I
was rolling over and over in the mud before the wind, and very doubtful
how the whole adventure was to end, as being absolutely the thing I
ought to have done."

Even with my aid we found some little difficulty, and meanwhile we kept at
work restoring the laboratory. There was plenty to do before it became
absolutely necessary to decide upon the precise form and method of our
second attempt. Our only hitch was the strike of the three labourers, who
objected to my activity as a foreman. But that matter we compromised after
two days' delay.





Chapter 3




The Building of the sphere

I remember the occasion very distinctly when Cavor told me of his idea of
the sphere. He had had intimations of it before, but at the time it seemed
to come to him in a rush. We were returning to the bungalow for tea, and
on the way he fell humming. Suddenly he shouted, "That's it! That
finishes it! A sort of roller blind!"

"Finishes what?" I asked.

"Space--anywhere! The moon."

"What do you mean?"

"Mean? Why--it must be a sphere! That's what I mean!"

I saw I was out of it, and for a time I let him talk in his own fashion. I
hadn't the ghost of an idea then of his drift. But after he had taken tea
he made it clear to me.

"It's like this," he said. "Last time I ran this stuff that cuts things
off from gravitation into a flat tank with an overlap that held it down.
And directly it had cooled and the manufacture was completed all that
uproar happened, nothing above it weighed anything, the air went squirting
up, the house squirted up, and if the stuff itself hadn't squirted up too,
I don't know what would have happened! But suppose the substance is loose,
and quite free to go up?"

"It will go up at once!"

"Exactly. With no more disturbance than firing a big gun."

"But what good will that do?"

"I'm going up with it!"

I put down my teacup and stared at him.

"Imagine a sphere," he explained, "large enough to hold two people and
their luggage. It will be made of steel lined with thick glass; it will
contain a proper store of solidified air, concentrated food, water
distilling apparatus, and so forth. And enamelled, as it were, on the
outer steel--"

"Cavorite?"

"Yes."

"But how will you get inside?"

"There was a similar problem about a dumpling."

"Yes, I know. But how?"

"That's perfectly easy. An air-tight manhole is all that is needed. That,
of course, will have to be a little complicated; there will have to be a
valve, so that things may be thrown out, if necessary, without much loss
of air."

"Like Jules Verne's thing in _A Trip to the Moon_."

But Cavor was not a reader of fiction.

"I begin to see," I said slowly. "And you could get in and screw yourself
up while the Cavorite was warm, and as soon as it cooled it would become
impervious to gravitation, and off you would fly--"

"At a tangent."

"You would go off in a straight line--" I stopped abruptly. "What is to
prevent the thing travelling in a straight line into space for ever?" I
asked. "You're not safe to get anywhere, and if you do--how will you get
back?"

"I've just thought of that," said Cavor. "That's what I meant when I said
the thing is finished. The inner glass sphere can be air-tight, and,
except for the manhole, continuous, and the steel sphere can be made in
sections, each section capable of rolling up after the fashion of a roller
blind. These can easily be worked by springs, and released and checked by
electricity conveyed by platinum wires fused through the glass. All that
is merely a question of detail. So you see, that except for the thickness
of the blind rollers, the Cavorite exterior of the sphere will consist of
windows or blinds, whichever you like to call them. Well, when all these
windows or blinds are shut, no light, no heat, no gravitation, no radiant
energy of any sort will get at the inside of the sphere, it will fly on
through space in a straight line, as you say. But open a window, imagine
one of the windows open. Then at once any heavy body that chances to be in
that direction will attract us--"

I sat taking it in.

"You see?" he said.

"Oh, I _see_."

"Practically we shall be able to tack about in space just as we wish. Get
attracted by this and that."

"Oh, yes. That's clear enough. Only--"

"Well?"

"I don't quite see what we shall do it for! It's really only jumping off
the world and back again."

"Surely! For example, one might go to the moon."

"And when one got there? What would you find?"

"We should see--Oh! consider the new knowledge."

"Is there air there?"

"There may be."

"It's a fine idea," I said, "but it strikes me as a large order all the
same. The moon! I'd much rather try some smaller things first."

"They're out of the question, because of the air difficulty."

"Why not apply that idea of spring blinds--Cavorite blinds in strong
steel cases--to lifting weights?"

"It wouldn't work," he insisted. "After all, to go into outer space is not
so much worse, if at all, than a polar expedition. Men go on polar
expeditions."

"Not business men. And besides, they get paid for polar expeditions. And
if anything goes wrong there are relief parties. But this--it's just
firing ourselves off the world for nothing."

"Call it prospecting."

"You'll have to call it that.... One might make a book of it perhaps," I
said.

"I have no doubt there will be minerals," said Cavor.

"For example?"

"Oh! sulphur, ores, gold perhaps, possibly new elements."

"Cost of carriage," I said. "You know you're not a practical man. The
moon's a quarter of a million miles away."

"It seems to me it wouldn't cost much to cart any weight anywhere if you
packed it in a Cavorite case."

I had not thought of that. "Delivered free on head of purchaser, eh?"

"It isn't as though we were confined to the moon."

"You mean?"

"There's Mars--clear atmosphere, novel surroundings, exhilarating sense
of lightness. It might be pleasant to go there."

"Is there air on Mars?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Seems as though you might run it as a sanatorium. By the way, how
far is Mars?"

"Two hundred million miles at present," said Cavor airily; "and you go
close by the sun."

My imagination was picking itself up again. "After all," I said,
"there's something in these things. There's travel--"

An extraordinary possibility came rushing into my mind. Suddenly I saw,
as in a vision, the whole solar system threaded with Cavorite liners
and spheres deluxe. "Rights of pre-emption," came floating into my
head--planetary rights of pre-emption. I recalled the old Spanish
monopoly in American gold. It wasn't as though it was just this planet
or that--it was all of them. I stared at Cavor's rubicund face, and
suddenly my imagination was leaping and dancing. I stood up, I walked
up and down; my tongue was unloosened.

"I'm beginning to take it in," I said; "I'm beginning to take it in." The
transition from doubt to enthusiasm seemed to take scarcely any time at
all. "But this is tremendous!" I cried. "This is Imperial! I haven't
been dreaming of this sort of thing."

Once the chill of my opposition was removed, his own pent-up excitement
had play. He too got up and paced. He too gesticulated and shouted. We
behaved like men inspired. We _were_ men inspired.

"We'll settle all that!" he said in answer to some incidental difficulty
that had pulled me up. "We'll soon settle that! We'll start the drawings
for mouldings this very night."

"We'll start them now," I responded, and we hurried off to the laboratory
to begin upon this work forthwith.

I was like a child in Wonderland all that night. The dawn found us both
still at work--we kept our electric light going heedless of the day. I
remember now exactly how these drawings looked. I shaded and tinted while
Cavor drew--smudged and haste-marked they were in every line, but
wonderfully correct. We got out the orders for the steel blinds and frames
we needed from that night's work, and the glass sphere was designed within
a week. We gave up our afternoon conversations and our old routine
altogether. We worked, and we slept and ate when we could work no longer
for hunger and fatigue. Our enthusiasm infected even our three men, though
they had no idea what the sphere was for. Through those days the man Gibbs
gave up walking, and went everywhere, even across the room, at a sort of
fussy run.

And it grew--the sphere. December passed, January--I spent a day
with a broom sweeping a path through the snow from bungalow to
laboratory--February, March. By the end of March the completion was in
sight. In January had come a team of horses, a huge packing-case; we
had our thick glass sphere now ready, and in position under the crane
we had rigged to sling it into the steel shell. All the bars and blinds
of the steel shell--it was not really a spherical shell, but polyhedral,
with a roller blind to each facet--had arrived by February, and the
lower half was bolted together. The Cavorite was half made by March, the
metallic paste had gone through two of the stages in its manufacture,
and we had plastered quite half of it on to the steel bars and blinds.
It was astonishing how closely we kept to the lines of Cavor's first
inspiration in working out the scheme. When the bolting together of
the sphere was finished, he proposed to remove the rough roof of the
temporary laboratory in which the work was done, and build a furnace
about it. So the last stage of Cavorite making, in which the paste is
heated to a dull red glow in a stream of helium, would be accomplished
when it was already on the sphere.

And then we had to discuss and decide what provisions we were to
take--compressed foods, concentrated essences, steel cylinders containing
reserve oxygen, an arrangement for removing carbonic acid and waste from
the air and restoring oxygen by means of sodium peroxide, water
condensers, and so forth. I remember the little heap they made in the
corner--tins, and rolls, and boxes--convincingly matter-of-fact.

It was a strenuous time, with little chance of thinking. But one day,
when we were drawing near the end, an odd mood came over me. I had been
bricking up the furnace all the morning, and I sat down by these
possessions dead beat. Everything seemed dull and incredible.

"But look here, Cavor," I said. "After all! What's it all for?"

He smiled. "The thing now is to go."

"The moon," I reflected. "But what do you expect? I thought the moon was
a dead world."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We're going to see."

"Are we?" I said, and stared before me.

"You are tired," he remarked. "You'd better take a walk this afternoon."

"No," I said obstinately; "I'm going to finish this brickwork."

And I did, and insured myself a night of insomnia. I don't think I have
ever had such a night. I had some bad times before my business collapse,
but the very worst of those was sweet slumber compared to this infinity of
aching wakefulness. I was suddenly in the most enormous funk at the thing
we were going to do.

I do not remember before that night thinking at all of the risks we were
running. Now they came like that array of spectres that once beleaguered
Prague, and camped around me. The strangeness of what we were about to do,
the unearthliness of it, overwhelmed me. I was like a man awakened out of
pleasant dreams to the most horrible surroundings. I lay, eyes wide open,
and the sphere seemed to get more flimsy and feeble, and Cavor more unreal
and fantastic, and the whole enterprise madder and madder every moment.

I got out of bed and wandered about. I sat at the window and stared at
the immensity of space. Between the stars was the void, the unfathomable
darkness! I tried to recall the fragmentary knowledge of astronomy I had
gained in my irregular reading, but it was all too vague to furnish any
idea of the things we might expect. At last I got back to bed and snatched
some moments of sleep--moments of nightmare rather--in which I fell and
fell and fell for evermore into the abyss of the sky.

I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him shortly, "I'm not coming with
you in the sphere."

I met all his protests with a sullen persistence. "The thing's too mad,"
I said, "and I won't come. The thing's too mad."

I would not go with him to the laboratory. I fretted bout my bungalow for
a time, and then took hat and stick and set out alone, I knew not whither.
It chanced to be a glorious morning: a warm wind and deep blue sky, the
first green of spring abroad, and multitudes of birds singing. I lunched
on beef and beer in a little public-house near Elham, and startled the
landlord by remarking apropos of the weather, "A man who leaves the world
when days of this sort are about is a fool!"

"That's what I says when I heerd on it!" said the landlord, and I found
that for one poor soul at least this world had proved excessive, and there
had been a throat-cutting. I went on with a new twist to my thoughts.

In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on my
way refreshed. I came to a comfortable-looking inn near Canterbury. It
was bright with creepers, and the landlady was a clean old woman and took
my eye. I found I had just enough money to pay for my lodging with her. I
decided to stop the night there. She was a talkative body, and among many
other particulars learnt she had never been to London. "Canterbury's as
far as ever I been," she said. "I'm not one of your gad-about sort."

"How would you like a trip to the moon?" I cried.

"I never did hold with them ballooneys," she said evidently under the
impression that this was a common excursion enough. "I wouldn't go up in
one--not for ever so."

This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by the
door of the inn and gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, and
motor cars, and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint new
crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun.

The next day I returned to Cavor. "I am coming," I said. "I've been a
little out of order, that's all."

That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves
purely! After that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge for
an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the furnace, our
labours were at an end.





Chapter 4




Inside the Sphere

"Go on," said Cavor, as I sat across the edge of the manhole, and looked
down into the black interior of the sphere. We two were alone. It was
evening, the sun had set, and the stillness of the twilight was upon
everything.

I drew my other leg inside and slid down the smooth glass to the bottom of
the sphere, then turned to take the cans of food and other impedimenta
from Cavor. The interior was warm, the thermometer stood at eighty, and as
we should lose little or none of this by radiation, we were dressed in
shoes and thin flannels. We had, however, a bundle of thick woollen
clothing and several thick blankets to guard against mischance.

By Cavor's direction I placed the packages, the cylinders of oxygen, and
so forth, loosely about my feet, and soon we had everything in. He walked
about the roofless shed for a time seeking anything we had overlooked, and
then crawled in after me. I noted something in his hand.

"What have you got there?" I asked.

"Haven't you brought anything to read?"

"Good Lord! No."

"I forgot to tell you. There are uncertainties-- The voyage may last--
We may be weeks!"

"But--"

"We shall be floating in this sphere with absolutely no occupation."

"I wish I'd known--"

He peered out of the manhole. "Look!" he said. "There's something
there!"

"Is there time?"

"We shall be an hour."

I looked out. It was an old number of _Tit-Bits_ that one of the men must
have brought. Farther away in the corner I saw a torn _Lloyd's News_. I
scrambled back into the sphere with these things. "What have you got?" I
said.

I took the book from his hand and read, "The Works of William
Shakespeare".

He coloured slightly. "My education has been so purely scientific--"
he said apologetically.

"Never read him?"

"Never."

"He knew a little, you know--in an irregular sort of way."

"Precisely what I am told," said Cavor.

I assisted him to screw in the glass cover of the manhole, and then he
pressed a stud to close the corresponding blind in the outer case. The
little oblong of twilight vanished. We were in darkness. For a time
neither of us spoke. Although our case would not be impervious to sound,
everything was very still. I perceived there was nothing to grip when the
shock of our start should come, and I realised that I should be
uncomfortable for want of a chair.

"Why have we no chairs?" I asked.

"I've settled all that," said Cavor. "We won't need them."

"Why not?"

"You will see," he said, in the tone of a man who refuses to talk.

I became silent. Suddenly it had come to me clear and vivid that I was a
fool to be inside that sphere. Even now, I asked myself, is to too late to
withdraw? The world outside the sphere, I knew, would be cold and
inhospitable enough for me--for weeks I had been living on subsidies from
Cavor--but after all, would it be as cold as the infinite zero, as
inhospitable as empty space? If it had not been for the appearance of
cowardice, I believe that even then I should have made him let me out. But
I hesitated on that score, and hesitated, and grew fretful and angry, and
the time passed.

There came a little jerk, a noise like champagne being uncorked in another
room, and a faint whistling sound. For just one instant I had a sense of
enormous tension, a transient conviction that my feet were pressing
downward with a force of countless tons. It lasted for an infinitesimal
time.

But it stirred me to action. "Cavor!" I said into the darkness, "my
nerve's in rags. I don't think--"

I stopped. He made no answer.

"Confound it!" I cried; "I'm a fool! What business have I here? I'm not
coming, Cavor. The thing's too risky. I'm getting out."

"You can't," he said.

"Can't! We'll soon see about that!"

He made no answer for ten seconds. "It's too late for us to quarrel now,
Bedford," he said. "That little jerk was the start. Already we are flying
as swiftly as a bullet up into the gulf of space."

"I--" I said, and then it didn't seem to matter what happened. For a time
I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just as if I had
never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I perceived an
unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of
lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the
head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the
ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at last I
got so used to them that I experienced no inconvenience.

I heard a click, and a little glow lamp came into being.

I saw Cavor's face, as white as I felt my own to be. We regarded one
another in silence. The transparent blackness of the glass behind him made
him seem as though he floated in a void.

"Well, we're committed," I said at last.

"Yes," he said, "we're committed."

"Don't move," he exclaimed, at some suggestion of a gesture. "Let your
muscles keep quite lax--as if you were in bed. We are in a little
universe of our own. Look at those things!"

He pointed to the loose cases and bundles that had been lying on the
blankets in the bottom of the sphere. I was astonished to see that they
were floating now nearly a foot from the spherical wall. Then I saw from
his shadow that Cavor was no longer leaning against the glass. I thrust
out my hand behind me, and found that I too was suspended in space, clear
of the glass.

I did not cry out nor gesticulate, but fear came upon me. It was like
being held and lifted by something--you know not what. The mere touch of
my hand against the glass moved me rapidly. I understood what had
happened, but that did not prevent my being afraid. We were cut off from
all exterior gravitation, only the attraction of objects within our sphere
had effect. Consequently everything that was not fixed to the glass was
falling--slowly because of the slightness of our masses--towards the
centre of gravity of our little world, which seemed to be somewhere about
the middle of the sphere, but rather nearer to myself than Cavor, on
account of my greater weight.

"We must turn round," said Cavor, "and float back to back, with the things
between us."

It was the strangest sensation conceivable, floating thus loosely in
space, at first indeed horribly strange, and when the horror passed, not
disagreeable at all, exceeding restful; indeed, the nearest thing in
earthly experience to it that I know is lying on a very thick, soft
feather bed. But the quality of utter detachment and independence! I had
not reckoned on things like this. I had expected a violent jerk at
starting, a giddy sense of speed. Instead I felt--as if I were
disembodied. It was not like the beginning of a journey; it was like the
beginning of a dream.





Chapter 5




The Journey to the Moon

Presently Cavor extinguished the light. He said we had not overmuch
energy stored, and that what we had we must economise for reading. For a
time, whether it was long or short I do not know, there was nothing but
blank darkness.

A question floated up out of the void. "How are we pointing?" I said.
"What is our direction?"

"We are flying away from the earth at a tangent, and as the moon is
near her third quarter we are going somewhere towards her. I will open
a blind--"

Came a click, and then a window in the outer case yawned open. The sky
outside was as black as the darkness within the sphere, but the shape of
the open window was marked by an infinite number of stars.

Those who have only seen the starry sky from the earth cannot imagine its
appearance when the vague, half luminous veil of our air has been
withdrawn. The stars we see on earth are the mere scattered survivors that
penetrate our misty atmosphere. But now at last I could realise the
meaning of the hosts of heaven!

Stranger things we were presently to see, but that airless, star-dusted
sky! Of all things, I think that will be one of the last I shall forget.

The little window vanished with a click, another beside it snapped open
and instantly closed, and then a third, and for a moment I had to close my
eyes because of the blinding splendour of the waning moon.

For a space I had to stare at Cavor and the white-lit things about me to
season my eyes to light again, before I could turn them towards that
pallid glare.

Four windows were open in order that the gravitation of the moon might act
upon all the substances in our sphere. I found I was no longer floating
freely in space, but that my feet were resting on the glass in the
direction of the moon. The blankets and cases of provisions were also
creeping slowly down the glass, and presently came to rest so as to block
out a portion of the view. It seemed to me, of course, that I looked
"down" when I looked at the moon. On earth "down" means earthward, the way
things fall, and "up" the reverse direction. Now the pull of gravitation
was towards the moon, and for all I knew to the contrary our earth was
overhead. And, of course, when all the Cavorite blinds were closed, "down"
was towards the centre of our sphere, and "up" towards its outer wall.

It was curiously unlike earthly experience, too, to have the light coming
up to one. On earth light falls from above, or comes slanting down
sideways, but here it came from beneath our feet, and to see our shadows
we had to look up.

At first it gave me a sort of vertigo to stand only on thick glass and
look down upon the moon through hundreds of thousands of miles of vacant
space; but this sickness passed very speedily. And then--the splendour of
the sight!

The reader may imagine it best if he will lie on the ground some warm
summer's night and look between his upraised feet at the moon, but for
some reason, probably because the absence of air made it so much more
luminous, the moon seemed already considerably larger than it does from
earth. The minutest details of its surface were acutely clear. And since
we did not see it through air, its outline was bright and sharp, there was
no glow or halo about it, and the star-dust that covered the sky came
right to its very margin, and marked the outline of its unilluminated
part. And as I stood and stared at the moon between my feet, that
perception of the impossible that had been with me off and on ever since
our start, returned again with tenfold conviction.

"Cavor," I said, "this takes me queerly. Those companies we were going to
run, and all that about minerals?"

"Well?"

"I don't see 'em here."

"No," said Cavor; "but you'll get over all that."

"I suppose I'm made to turn right side up again. Still, _this_--
For a moment I could half believe there never was a world."

"That copy of _Lloyd's News_ might help you."

I stared at the paper for a moment, then held it above the level of my
face, and found I could read it quite easily. I struck a column of mean
little advertisements. "A gentleman of private means is willing to lend
money," I read. I knew that gentleman. Then somebody eccentric wanted to
sell a Cutaway bicycle, "quite new and cost 15 pounds," for five pounds;
and a lady in distress wished to dispose of some fish knives and forks, "a
wedding present," at a great sacrifice. No doubt some simple soul was
sagely examining these knives and forks, and another triumphantly riding
off on that bicycle, and a third trustfully consulting that benevolent
gentleman of means even as I read. I laughed, and let the paper drift from
my hand.

"Are we visible from the earth?" I asked.

"Why?"

"I knew some one who was rather interested in astronomy. It occurred to me
that it would be rather odd if--my friend--chanced to be looking through
come telescope."

"It would need the most powerful telescope on earth even now to see us as
the minutest speck."

For a time I stared in silence at the moon.

"It's a world," I said; "one feels that infinitely more than one ever did
on earth. People perhaps--"

"People!" he exclaimed. "No! Banish all that! Think yourself a sort of
ultra-arctic voyager exploring the desolate places of space. Look at it!"

He waved his hand at the shining whiteness below. "It's dead--dead! Vast
extinct volcanoes, lava wildernesses, tumbled wastes of snow, or frozen
carbonic acid, or frozen air, and everywhere landslip seams and cracks and
gulfs. Nothing happens. Men have watched this planet systematically with
telescopes for over two hundred years. How much change do you think they
have seen?"

"None."

"They have traced two indisputable landslips, a doubtful crack, and one
slight periodic change of colour, and that's all."

"I didn't know they'd traced even that."

"Oh, yes. But as for people--!"

"By the way," I asked, "how small a thing will the biggest telescopes show
upon the moon?"

"One could see a fair-sized church. One could certainly see any towns or
buildings, or anything like the handiwork of men. There might perhaps be
insects, something in the way of ants, for example, so that they could
hide in deep burrows from the lunar light, or some new sort of creatures
having no earthly parallel. That is the most probable thing, if we are to
find life there at all. Think of the difference in conditions! Life must
fit itself to a day as long as fourteen earthly days, a cloudless
sun-blaze of fourteen days, and then a night of equal length, growing
ever colder and colder under these, cold, sharp stars. In that night
there must be cold, the ultimate cold, absolute zero, 273 degrees
Centigrade, below the earthly freezing point. Whatever life there is
must hibernate through that, and rise again each day."

He mused. "One can imagine something worm-like," he said, "taking its
air solid as an earth-worm swallows earth, or thick-skinned monsters--"

"By the bye," I said, "why didn't we bring a gun?"

He did not answer that question. "No," he concluded, "we just have to go.
We shall see when we get there."

I remembered something. "Of course, there's my minerals, anyhow," I said;
"whatever the conditions may be."

Presently he told me he wished to alter our course a little by letting the
earth tug at us for a moment. He was going to open one earthward blind
for thirty seconds. He warned me that it would make my head swim, and
advised me to extend my hands against the glass to break my fall. I did as
he directed, and thrust my feet against the bales of food cases and air
cylinders to prevent their falling upon me. Then with a click the window
flew open. I fell clumsily upon hands and face, and saw for a moment
between my black extended fingers our mother earth--a planet in a
downward sky.

We were still very near--Cavor told me the distance was perhaps eight
hundred miles and the huge terrestrial disc filled all heaven. But already
it was plain to see that the world was a globe. The land below us was in
twilight and vague, but westward the vast gray stretches of the Atlantic
shone like molten silver under the receding day. I think I recognised the
cloud-dimmed coast-lines of France and Spain and the south of England, and
then, with a click, the shutter closed again, and I found myself in a
state of extraordinary confusion sliding slowly over the smooth glass.

When at last things settled themselves in my mind again, it seemed quite
beyond question that the moon was "down" and under my feet, and that the
earth was somewhere away on the level of the horizon--the earth that had
been "down" to me and my kindred since the beginning of things.

So slight were the exertions required of us, so easy did the practical
annihilation of our weight make all we had to do, that the necessity for
taking refreshment did not occur to us for nearly six hours (by Cavor's
chronometer) after our start. I was amazed at that lapse of time. Even
then I was satisfied with very little. Cavor examined the apparatus for
absorbing carbonic acid and water, and pronounced it to be in satisfactory
order, our consumption of oxygen having been extraordinarily slight. And
our talk being exhausted for the time, and there being nothing further
for us to do, we gave way to a curious drowsiness that had come upon us,
and spreading our blankets on the bottom of the sphere in such a manner as
to shut out most of the moonlight, wished each other good-night, and
almost immediately fell asleep.

And so, sleeping, and sometimes talking and reading a little, and at times
eating, although without any keenness of appetite,[*] but for the most part
in a sort of quiescence that was neither waking nor slumber, we fell
through a space of time that had neither night nor day in it, silently,
softly, and swiftly down towards the moon.

[* Footnote: It is a curious thing, that while we were in the sphere we
felt not the slightest desire for food, nor did we feel the want of it when
we abstained. At first we forced our appetites, but afterwards we fasted
completely. Altogether we did not consume one-hundredth part of the
compressed provisions we had brought with us. The amount of carbonic acid
we breathed was also unnaturally low, but why this was, I am quite unable
to explain.]





Chapter 6




The Landing on the Moon

I remember how one day Cavor suddenly opened six of our shutters and
blinded me so that I cried aloud at him. The whole area was moon, a
stupendous scimitar of white dawn with its edge hacked out by notches of
darkness, the crescent shore of an ebbing tide of darkness, out of which
peaks and pinnacles came glittering into the blaze of the sun. I take it
the reader has seen pictures or photographs of the moon and that I need
not describe the broader features of that landscape, those spacious
ring-like ranges vaster than any terrestrial mountains, their summits
shining in the day, their shadows harsh and deep, the gray disordered
plains, the ridges, hills, and craterlets, all passing at last from a
blazing illumination into a common mystery of black. Athwart this world
we were flying scarcely a hundred miles above its crests and pinnacles.
And now we could see, what no eye on earth will ever see, that under the
blaze of the day the harsh outlines of the rocks and ravines of the
plains and crater floor grew gray and indistinct under a thickening
haze, that the white of their lit surfaces broke into lumps and patches,
and broke again and shrank and vanished, and that here and there strange
tints of brown and olive grew and spread.

But little time we had for watching then. For now we had come to the real
danger of our journey. We had to drop ever closer to the moon as we spun
about it, to slacken our pace and watch our chance, until at last we could
dare to drop upon its surface.

For Cavor that was a time of intense exertion; for me it was an anxious
inactivity. I seemed perpetually to be getting out of his way. He leapt
about the sphere from point to point with an agility that would have been
impossible on earth. He was perpetually opening and closing the Cavorite
windows, making calculations, consulting his chronometer by means of the
glow lamp during those last eventful hours. For a long time we had all our
windows closed and hung silently in darkness hurling through space.

Then he was feeling for the shutter studs, and suddenly four windows were
open. I staggered and covered my eyes, drenched and scorched and blinded
by the unaccustomed splendour of the sun beneath my feet. Then again the
shutters snapped, leaving my brain spinning in a darkness that pressed
against the eyes. And after that I floated in another vast, black silence.

Then Cavor switched on the electric light, and told me he proposed to bind
all our luggage together with the blankets about it, against the
concussion of our descent. We did this with our windows closed, because in
that way our goods arranged themselves naturally at the centre of the
sphere. That too was a strange business; we two men floating loose in that
spherical space, and packing and pulling ropes. Imagine it if you can! No
up nor down, and every effort resulting in unexpected movements. Now I
would be pressed against the glass with the full force of Cavor's thrust,
now I would be kicking helplessly in a void. Now the star of the electric
light would be overhead, now under foot. Now Cavor's feet would float up
before my eyes, and now we would be crossways to each other. But at last
our goods were safely bound together in a big soft bale, all except two
blankets with head holes that we were to wrap about ourselves.

Then for a flash Cavor opened a window moonward, and we saw that we were
dropping towards a huge central crater with a number of minor craters
grouped in a sort of cross about it. And then again Cavor flung our little
sphere open to the scorching, blinding sun. I think he was using the
sun's attraction as a brake. "Cover yourself with a blanket," he cried,
thrusting himself from me, and for a moment I did not understand.

Then I hauled the blanket from beneath my feet and got it about me and
over my head and eyes. Abruptly he closed the shutters again, snapped one
open again and closed it, then suddenly began snapping them all open, each
safely into its steel roller. There came a jar, and then we were rolling
over and over, bumping against the glass and against the big bale of our
luggage, and clutching at each other, and outside some white substance
splashed as if we were rolling down a slope of snow....

Over, clutch, bump, clutch, bump, over....

Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions, and
for a space everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffing and
grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I made an effort,
thrust back our blanket-wrapped luggage, and emerged from beneath it. Our
open windows were just visible as a deeper black set with stars.

We were still alive, and we were lying in the darkness of the shadow of
the wall of the great crater into which we had fallen.

We sat getting our breath again, and feeling the bruises on our limbs. I
don't think either of us had had a very clear expectation of such rough
handling as we had received. I struggled painfully to my feet. "And now,"
said I, "to look at the landscape of the moon! But--! It's tremendously
dark, Cavor!"

The glass was dewy, and as I spoke I wiped at it with my blanket. "We're
half an hour or so beyond the day," he said. "We must wait."

It was impossible to distinguish anything. We might have been in a sphere
of steel for all that we could see. My rubbing with the blanket simply
smeared the glass, and as fast as I wiped it, it became opaque again with
freshly condensed moisture mixed with an increasing quantity of blanket
hairs. Of course I ought not to have used the blanket. In my efforts to
clear the glass I slipped upon the damp surface, and hurt my shin against
one of the oxygen cylinders that protruded from our bale.

The thing was exasperating--it was absurd. Here we were just arrived upon
the moon, amidst we knew not what wonders, and all we could see was the
gray and streaming wall of the bubble in which we had come.

"Confound it!" I said, "but at this rate we might have stopped at home;"
and I squatted on the bale and shivered, and drew my blanket closer about
me.

Abruptly the moisture turned to spangles and fronds of frost. "Can you
reach the electric heater," said Cavor. "Yes--that black knob. Or we
shall freeze."

I did not wait to be told twice. "And now," said I, "what are we to do?"

"Wait," he said.

"Wait?"

"Of course. We shall have to wait until our air gets warm again, and then
this glass will clear. We can't do anything till then. It's night here
yet; we must wait for the day to overtake us. Meanwhile, don't you feel
hungry?"

For a space I did not answer him, but sat fretting. I turned reluctantly
from the smeared puzzle of the glass and stared at his face. "Yes,"
I said, "I am hungry. I feel somehow enormously disappointed. I had
expected--I don't know what I had expected, but not this."

I summoned my philosophy, and rearranging my blanket about me sat down on
the bale again and began my first meal on the moon. I don't think I
finished it--I forget. Presently, first in patches, then running rapidly
together into wider spaces, came the clearing of the glass, came the
drawing of the misty veil that hid the moon world from our eyes.

We peered out upon the landscape of the moon.





Chapter 7




Sunrise on the Moon

As we saw it first it was the wildest and most desolate of scenes. We were
in an enormous amphitheatre, a vast circular plain, the floor of the giant
crater. Its cliff-like walls closed us in on every side. From the westward
the light of the unseen sun fell upon them, reaching to the very foot of
the cliff, and showed a disordered escarpment of drab and grayish rock,
lined here and there with banks and crevices of snow. This was perhaps a
dozen miles away, but at first no intervening atmosphere diminished in the
slightest the minutely detailed brilliancy with which these things glared
at us. They stood out clear and dazzling against a background of starry
blackness that seemed to our earthly eyes rather a gloriously spangled
velvet curtain than the spaciousness of the sky.

The eastward cliff was at first merely a starless selvedge to the starry
dome. No rosy flush, no creeping pallor, announced the commencing day.
Only the Corona, the Zodiacal light, a huge cone-shaped, luminous haze,
pointing up towards the splendour of the morning star, warned us of the
imminent nearness of the sun.

Whatever light was about us was reflected by the westward cliffs. It
showed a huge undulating plain, cold and gray, a gray that deepened
eastward into the absolute raven darkness of the cliff shadow. Innumerable
rounded gray summits, ghostly hummocks, billows of snowy substance,
stretching crest beyond crest into the remote obscurity, gave us our first
inkling of the distance of the crater wall. These hummocks looked like
snow. At the time I thought they were snow. But they were not--they were
mounds and masses of frozen air.

So it was at first; and then, sudden, swift, and amazing, came the lunar
day.

The sunlight had crept down the cliff, it touched the drifted masses at
its base and incontinently came striding with seven-leagued boots towards
us. The distant cliff seemed to shift and quiver, and at the touch of the
dawn a reek of gray vapour poured upward from the crater floor, whirls and
puffs and drifting wraiths of gray, thicker and broader and denser, until
at last the whole westward plain was steaming like a wet handkerchief held
before the fire, and the westward cliffs were no more than refracted glare
beyond.

"It is air," said Cavor. "It must be air--or it would not rise like
this--at the mere touch of a sun-beam. And at this pace...."

He peered upwards. "Look!" he said.

"What?" I asked.

"In the sky. Already. On the blackness--a little touch of blue. See! The
stars seem larger. And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities we
saw in empty space--they are hidden!"

Swiftly, steadily, the day approached us. Gray summit after gray summit
was overtaken by the blaze, and turned to a smoking white intensity. At
last there was nothing to the west of us but a bank of surging fog, the
tumultuous advance and ascent of cloudy haze. The distant cliff had
receded farther and farther, had loomed and changed through the whirl,
and foundered and vanished at last in its confusion.

Nearer came that steaming advance, nearer and nearer, coming as fast as
the shadow of a cloud before the south-west wind. About us rose a thin
anticipatory haze.

Cavor gripped my arm. "What?" I said.

"Look! The sunrise! The sun!"

He turned me about and pointed to the brow of the eastward cliff, looming
above the haze about us, scarce lighter than the darkness of the sky. But
now its line was marked by strange reddish shapes, tongues of vermilion
flame that writhed and danced. I fancied it must be spirals of vapour that
had caught the light and made this crest of fiery tongues against the sky,
but indeed it was the solar prominences I saw, a crown of fire about the
sun that is forever hidden from earthly eyes by our atmospheric veil.

And then--the sun!

Steadily, inevitably came a brilliant line, came a thin edge of
intolerable effulgence that took a circular shape, became a bow, became a
blazing sceptre, and hurled a shaft of heat at us as though it was a
spear.

It seemed verily to stab my eyes! I cried aloud and turned about blinded,
groping for my blanket beneath the bale.

And with that incandescence came a sound, the first sound that had reached
us from without since we left the earth, a hissing and rustling, the
stormy trailing of the aerial garment of the advancing day. And with the
coming of the sound and the light the sphere lurched, and blinded and
dazzled we staggered helplessly against each other. It lurched again, and
the hissing grew louder. I had shut my eyes perforce, I was making clumsy
efforts to cover my head with my blanket, and this second lurch sent me
helplessly off my feet. I fell against the bale, and opening my eyes had a
momentary glimpse of the air just outside our glass. It was running--it
was boiling--like snow into which a white-hot rod is thrust. What had
been solid air had suddenly at the touch of the sun become a paste, a
mud, a slushy liquefaction, that hissed and bubbled into gas.

There came a still more violent whirl of the sphere and we had clutched
one another. In another moment we were spun about again. Round we went and
over, and then I was on all fours. The lunar dawn had hold of us. It meant
to show us little men what the moon could do with us.

I caught a second glimpse of things without, puffs of vapour, half liquid
slush, excavated, sliding, falling, sliding. We dropped into darkness. I
went down with Cavor's knees in my chest. Then he seemed to fly away from
me, and for a moment I lay with all the breath out of my body staring
upward. A toppling crag of the melting stuff had splashed over us, buried
us, and now it thinned and boiled off us. I saw the bubbles dancing on the
glass above. I heard Cavor exclaiming feebly.

Then some huge landslip in the thawing air had caught us, and spluttering
expostulation, we began to roll down a slope, rolling faster and faster,
leaping crevasses and rebounding from banks, faster and faster, westward
into the white-hot boiling tumult of the lunar day.

Clutching at one another we spun about, pitched this way and that, our
bale of packages leaping at us, pounding at us. We collided, we gripped,
we were torn asunder--our heads met, and the whole universe burst into
fiery darts and stars! On the earth we should have smashed one another a
dozen times, but on the moon, luckily for us, our weight was only
one-sixth of what it is terrestrially, and we fell very mercifully. I
recall a sensation of utter sickness, a feeling as if my brain were upside
down within my skull, and then--

Something was at work upon my face, some thin feelers worried my ears.
Then I discovered the brilliance of the landscape around was mitigated by
blue spectacles. Cavor bent over me, and I saw his face upside down, his
eyes also protected by tinted goggles. His breath came irregularly, and
his lip was bleeding from a bruise. "Better?" he said, wiping the blood
with the back of his hand.

Everything seemed swaying for a space, but that was simply my giddiness. I
perceived that he had closed some of the shutters in the outer sphere to
save me--from the direct blaze of the sun. I was aware that everything
about us was very brilliant.

"Lord!" I gasped. "But this--"

I craned my neck to see. I perceived there was a blinding glare outside,
an utter change from the gloomy darkness of our first impressions. "Have I
been insensible long?" I asked.

"I don't know--the chronometer is broken. Some little time.... My dear
chap! I have been afraid..."

I lay for a space taking this in. I saw his face still bore evidences of
emotion. For a while I said nothing. I passed an inquisitive hand over my
contusions, and surveyed his face for similar damages. The back of my
right hand had suffered most, and was skinless and raw. My forehead was
bruised and had bled. He handed me a little measure with some of the
restorative--I forget the name of it--he had brought with us. After a
time I felt a little better. I began to stretch my limbs carefully. Soon
I could talk.

"It wouldn't have done," I said, as though there had been no interval.

"No! it _wouldn't_."

He thought, his hands hanging over his knees. He peered through the glass
and then stared at me.

"Good Lord!" he said. "No!"

"What has happened?" I asked after a pause. "Have we jumped to the
tropics?"

"It was as I expected. This air has evaporated--if it is air. At any
rate, it has evaporated, and the surface of the moon is showing. We are
lying on a bank of earthy rock. Here and there bare soil is exposed. A
queer sort of soil!"

It occurred to him that it was unnecessary to explain. He assisted me into
a sitting position, and I could see with my own eyes.





Chapter 8




A Lunar Morning

The harsh emphasis, the pitiless black and white of scenery had altogether
disappeared. The glare of the sun had taken upon itself a faint tinge of
amber; the shadows upon the cliff of the crater wall were deeply purple.
To the eastward a dark bank of fog still crouched and sheltered from the
sunrise, but to the westward the sky was blue and clear. I began to
realise the length of my insensibility.

We were no longer in a void. An atmosphere had arisen about us. The
outline of things had gained in character, had grown acute and varied;
save for a shadowed space of white substance here and there, white
substance that was no longer air but snow, the arctic appearance had gone
altogether. Everywhere broad rusty brown spaces of bare and tumbled earth
spread to the blaze of the sun. Here and there at the edge of the
snowdrifts were transient little pools and eddies of water, the only
things stirring in that expanse of barrenness. The sunlight inundated the
upper two blinds of our sphere and turned our climate to high summer, but
our feet were still in shadow, and the sphere was lying upon a drift of
snow.

And scattered here and there upon the slope, and emphasised by little
white threads of unthawed snow upon their shady sides, were shapes like
sticks, dry twisted sticks of the same rusty hue as the rock upon which
they lay. That caught one's thoughts sharply. Sticks! On a lifeless
world? Then as my eye grew more accustomed to the texture of their
substance, I perceived that almost all this surface had a fibrous texture,
like the carpet of brown needles one finds beneath the shade of pine
trees.

"Cavor!" I said.

"Yes."

"It may be a dead world now--but once--"

Something arrested my attention. I had discovered among these needles a
number of little round objects. And it seemed to me that one of these had
moved. "Cavor," I whispered.

"What?"

But I did not answer at once. I stared incredulous. For an instant I
could not believe my eyes. I gave an inarticulate cry. I gripped his arm.
I pointed. "Look!" I cried, finding my tongue. "There! Yes! And there!"

His eyes followed my pointing finger. "Eh?" he said.

How can I describe the thing I saw? It is so petty a thing to state, and
yet it seemed so wonderful, so pregnant with emotion. I have said that
amidst the stick-like litter were these rounded bodies, these little oval
bodies that might have passed as very small pebbles. And now first one and
then another had stirred, had rolled over and cracked, and down the crack
of each of them showed a minute line of yellowish green, thrusting outward
to meet the hot encouragement of the newly-risen sun. For a moment that
was all, and then there stirred, and burst a third!

"It is a seed," said Cavor. And then I heard him whisper very softly,
"Life!"

"Life!" And immediately it poured upon us that our vast journey had not
been made in vain, that we had come to no arid waste of minerals, but to a
world that lived and moved! We watched intensely. I remember I kept
rubbing the glass before me with my sleeve, jealous of the faintest
suspicion of mist.

The picture was clear and vivid only in the middle of the field. All about
that centre the dead fibres and seeds were magnified and distorted by the
curvature of the glass. But we could see enough! One after another all
down the sunlit slope these miraculous little brown bodies burst and gaped
apart, like seed-pods, like the husks of fruits; opened eager mouths.
that drank in the heat and light pouring in a cascade from the newly-risen
sun.

Every moment more of these seed coats ruptured, and even as they did so
the swelling pioneers overflowed their rent-distended seed-cases, and
passed into the second stage of growth. With a steady assurance, a swift
deliberation, these amazing seeds thrust a rootlet downward to the earth
and a queer little bundle-like bud into the air. In a little while the
whole slope was dotted with minute plantlets standing at attention in the
blaze of the sun.

They did not stand for long. The bundle-like buds swelled and strained and
opened with a jerk, thrusting out a coronet of little sharp tips,
spreading a whorl of tiny, spiky, brownish leaves, that lengthened
rapidly, lengthened visibly even as we watched. The movement was slower
than any animal's, swifter than any plant's I have ever seen before. How
can I suggest it to you--the way that growth went on? The leaf tips grew
so that they moved onward even while we looked at them. The brown
seed-case shrivelled and was absorbed with an equal rapidity. Have you
ever on a cold day taken a thermometer into your warm hand and watched the
little thread of mercury creep up the tube? These moon plants grew like
that.

In a few minutes, as it seemed, the buds of the more forward of these
plants had lengthened into a stem and were even putting forth a second
whorl of leaves, and all the slope that had seemed so recently a lifeless
stretch of litter was now dark with the stunted olive-green herbage of
bristling spikes that swayed with the vigour of their growing.

I turned about, and behold! along the upper edge of a rock to the eastward
a similar fringe in a scarcely less forward condition swayed and bent,
dark against the blinding glare of the sun. And beyond this fringe was the
silhouette of a plant mass, branching clumsily like a cactus, and swelling
visibly, swelling like a bladder that fills with air.

Then to the westward also I discovered that another such distended form
was rising over the scrub. But here the light fell upon its sleek sides,
and I could see that its colour was a vivid orange hue. It rose as one
watched it; if one looked away from it for a minute and then back, its
outline had changed; it thrust out blunt congested branches until in a
little time it rose a coralline shape of many feet in height. Compared
with such a growth the terrestrial puff-ball, which will sometimes swell a
foot in diameter in a single night, would be a hopeless laggard. But then
the puff-ball grows against a gravitational pull six times that of the
moon. Beyond, out of gullies and flats that had been hidden from us, but
not from the quickening sun, over reefs and banks of shining rock, a
bristling beard of spiky and fleshy vegetation was straining into view,
hurrying tumultuously to take advantage of the brief day in which it must
flower and fruit and seed again and die. It was like a miracle, that
growth. So, one must imagine, the trees and plants arose at the Creation
and covered the desolation of the new-made earth.

Imagine it! Imagine that dawn! The resurrection of the frozen air, the
stirring and quickening of the soil, and then this silent uprising of
vegetation, this unearthly ascent of fleshiness and spikes. Conceive it
all lit by a blaze that would make the intensest sunlight of earth seem
watery and weak. And still around this stirring jungle, wherever there was
shadow, lingered banks of bluish snow. And to have the picture of our
impression complete, you must bear in mind that we saw it all through a
thick bent glass, distorting it as things are distorted by a lens, acute
only in the centre of the picture, and very bright there, and towards the
edges magnified and unreal.





Chapter 9




Prospecting Begins

We ceased to gaze. We turned to each other, the same thought, the same
question in our eyes. For these plants to grow, there must be some air,
however attenuated, air that we also should be able to breathe.

"The manhole?" I said.

"Yes!" said Cavor, "if it is air we see!"

"In a little while," I said, "these plants will be as high as we are.
Suppose--suppose after all-- Is it certain? How do you know that stuff
_is_ air? It may be nitrogen--it may be carbonic acid even!"

"That's easy," he said, and set about proving it. He produced a big piece
of crumpled paper from the bale, lit it, and thrust it hastily through the
man-hole valve. I bent forward and peered down through the thick glass for
its appearance outside, that little flame on whose evidence depended so
much!

I saw the paper drop out and lie lightly upon the snow. The pink flame of
its burning vanished. For an instant it seemed to be extinguished. And
then I saw a little blue tongue upon the edge of it that trembled, and
crept, and spread!

Quietly the whole sheet, save where it lay in immediate contact with the
snow, charred and shrivelled and sent up a quivering thread of smoke.
There was no doubt left to me; the atmosphere of the moon was either pure
oxygen or air, and capable therefore--unless its tenuity was excessive--of
supporting our alien life. We might emerge--and live!

I sat down with my legs on either side of the manhole and prepared to
unscrew it, but Cavor stopped me. "There is first a little precaution,"
he said. He pointed out that although it was certainly an oxygenated
atmosphere outside, it might still be so rarefied as to cause us grave
injury. He reminded me of mountain sickness, and of the bleeding that
often afflicts aeronauts who have ascended too swiftly, and he spent some
time in the preparation of a sickly-tasting drink which he insisted on my
sharing. It made me feel a little numb, but otherwise had no effect on me.
Then he permitted me to begin unscrewing.

Presently the glass stopper of the manhole was so far undone that the
denser air within our sphere began to escape along the thread of the
screw, singing as a kettle sings before it boils. Thereupon he made me
desist. It speedily became evident that the pressure outside was very much
less than it was within. How much less it was we had no means of telling.

I sat grasping the stopper with both hands, ready to close it again if, in
spite of our intense hope, the lunar atmosphere should after all prove too
rarefied for us, and Cavor sat with a cylinder of compressed oxygen at
hand to restore our pressure. We looked at one another in silence, and
then at the fantastic vegetation that swayed and grew visibly and
noiselessly without. And ever that shrill piping continued.

My blood-vessels began to throb in my ears, and the sound of Cavor's
movements diminished. I noted how still everything had become, because of
the thinning of the air.

As our air sizzled out from the screw the moisture of it condensed in
little puffs.

Presently I experienced a peculiar shortness of breath that lasted indeed
during the whole of the time of our exposure to the moon's exterior
atmosphere, and a rather unpleasant sensation about the ears and
finger-nails and the back of the throat grew upon my attention, and
presently passed off again.

But then came vertigo and nausea that abruptly changed the quality of my
courage. I gave the lid of the manhole half a turn and made a hasty
explanation to Cavor; but now he was the more sanguine. He answered me in
a voice that seemed extraordinarily small and remote, because of the
thinness of the air that carried the sound. He recommended a nip of
brandy, and set me the example, and presently I felt better. I turned the
manhole stopper back again. The throbbing in my ears grew louder, and then
I remarked that the piping note of the outrush had ceased. For a time I
could not be sure that it had ceased.

"Well?" said Cavor, in the ghost of a voice.

"Well?" said I.

"Shall we go on?"

I thought. "Is this all?"

"If you can stand it."

By way of answer I went on unscrewing. I lifted the circular operculum
from its place and laid it carefully on the bale. A flake or so of snow
whirled and vanished as that thin and unfamiliar air took possession of
our sphere. I knelt, and then seated myself at the edge of the manhole,
peering over it. Beneath, within a yard of my face, lay the untrodden snow
of the moon.

There came a little pause. Our eyes met.

"It doesn't distress your lungs too much?" said Cavor.

"No," I said. "I can stand this."

He stretched out his hand for his blanket, thrust his head through its
central hole, and wrapped it about him. He sat down on the edge of the
manhole, he let his feet drop until they were within six inches of the
lunar ground. He hesitated for a moment, then thrust himself forward,
dropped these intervening inches, and stood upon the untrodden soil of the
moon.

As he stepped forward he was refracted grotesquely by the edge of the
glass. He stood for a moment looking this way and that. Then he drew
himself together and leapt.

The glass distorted everything, but it seemed to me even then to be an
extremely big leap. He had at one bound become remote. He seemed twenty or
thirty feet off. He was standing high upon a rocky mass and gesticulating
back to me. Perhaps he was shouting--but the sound did not reach me. But
how the deuce had he done this? I felt like a man who has just seen a new
conjuring trick.

In a puzzled state of mind I too dropped through the manhole. I stood up.
Just in front of me the snowdrift had fallen away and made a sort of
ditch. I made a step and jumped.

I found myself flying through the air, saw the rock on which he stood
coming to meet me, clutched it and clung in a state of infinite amazement.

I gasped a painful laugh. I was tremendously confused. Cavor bent down
and shouted in piping tones for me to be careful.

I had forgotten that on the moon, with only an eighth part of the earth's
mass and a quarter of its diameter, my weight was barely a sixth what it
was on earth. But now that fact insisted on being remembered.

"We are out of Mother Earth's leading-strings now," he said.

With a guarded effort I raised myself to the top, and moving as cautiously
as a rheumatic patient, stood up beside him under the blaze of the sun.
The sphere lay behind us on its dwindling snowdrift thirty feet away.

As far as the eye could see over the enormous disorder of rocks that
formed the crater floor, the same bristling scrub that surrounded us was
starting into life, diversified here and there by bulging masses of a
cactus form, and scarlet and purple lichens that grew so fast they seemed
to crawl over the rocks. The whole area of the crater seemed to me then to
be one similar wilderness up to the very foot of the surrounding cliff.

This cliff was apparently bare of vegetation save at its base, and with
buttresses and terraces and platforms that did not very greatly attract
our attention at the time. It was many miles away from us in every
direction; we seemed to be almost at the centre of the crater, and we saw
it through a certain haziness that drove before the wind. For there was
even a wind now in the thin air, a swift yet weak wind that chilled
exceedingly but exerted little pressure. It was blowing round the
crater, as it seemed, to the hot illuminated side from the foggy darkness
under the sunward wall. It was difficult to look into this eastward fog;
we had to peer with half-closed eyes beneath the shade of our hands,
because of the fierce intensity of the motionless sun.

"It seems to be deserted," said Cavor, "absolutely desolate."

I looked about me again. I retained even then a clinging hope of some
quasi-human evidence, some pinnacle of building, some house or engine, but
everywhere one looked spread the tumbled rocks in peaks and crests, and
the darting scrub and those bulging cacti that swelled and swelled, a flat
negation as it seemed of all such hope.

"It looks as though these plants had it to themselves," I said. "I see no
trace of any other creature."

"No insects--no birds, no! Not a trace, not a scrap nor particle of
animal life. If there was--what would they do in the night? ... No;
there's just these plants alone."

I shaded my eyes with my hand. "It's like the landscape of a dream. These
things are less like earthly land plants than the things one imagines
among the rocks at the bottom of the sea. Look at that yonder! One might
imagine it a lizard changed into a plant. And the glare!"

"This is only the fresh morning," said Cavor.

He sighed and looked about him. "This is no world for men," he said. "And
yet in a way--it appeals."

He became silent for a time, then commenced his meditative humming.

I started at a gentle touch, and found a thin sheet of livid lichen
lapping over my shoe. I kicked at it and it fell to powder, and each speck
began to grow.

I heard Cavor exclaim sharply, and perceived that one of the fixed
bayonets of the scrub had pricked him. He hesitated, his eyes sought
among the rocks about us. A sudden blaze of pink had crept up a ragged
pillar of crag. It was a most extraordinary pink, a livid magenta.

"Look!" said I, turning, and behold Cavor had vanished.

For an instant I stood transfixed. Then I made a hasty step to look over
the verge of the rock. But in my surprise at his disappearance I forgot
once more that we were on the moon. The thrust of my foot that I made in
striding would have carried me a yard on earth; on the moon it carried me
six--a good five yards over the edge. For the moment the thing had
something of the effect of those nightmares when one falls and falls. For
while one falls sixteen feet in the first second of a fall on earth, on
the moon one falls two, and with only a sixth of one's weight. I fell, or
rather I jumped down, about ten yards I suppose. It seemed to take quite a
long time, five or six seconds, I should think. I floated through the air
and fell like a feather, knee-deep in a snow-drift in the bottom of a
gully of blue-gray, white-veined rock.

I looked about me. "Cavor!" I cried; but no Cavor was visible.

"Cavor!" I cried louder, and the rocks echoed me.

I turned fiercely to the rocks and clambered to the summit of them.
"Cavor!" I cried. My voice sounded like the voice of a lost lamb.

The sphere, too, was not in sight, and for a moment a horrible feeling of
desolation pinched my heart.

Then I saw him. He was laughing and gesticulating to attract my attention.
He was on a bare patch of rock twenty or thirty yards away. I could not
hear his voice, but "jump" said his gestures. I hesitated, the distance
seemed enormous. Yet I reflected that surely I must be able to clear a
greater distance than Cavor.

I made a step back, gathered myself together, and leapt with all my might.
I seemed to shoot right up in the air as though I should never come down.

It was horrible and delightful, and as wild as a nightmare, to go flying
off in this fashion. I realised my leap had been altogether too violent.
I flew clean over Cavor's head and beheld a spiky confusion in a gully
spreading to meet my fall. I gave a yelp of alarm. I put out my hands and
straightened my legs.

I hit a huge fungoid bulk that burst all about me, scattering a mass of
orange spores in every direction, and covering me with orange powder. I
rolled over spluttering, and came to rest convulsed with breathless
laughter.

I became aware of Cavor's little round face peering over a bristling
hedge. He shouted some faded inquiry. "Eh?" I tried to shout, but could
not do so for want of breath. He made his way towards me, coming gingerly
among the bushes.

"We've got to be careful," he said. "This moon has no discipline. She'll
let us smash ourselves."

He helped me to my feet. "You exerted yourself too much," he said, dabbing
at the yellow stuff with his hand to remove it from my garments.

I stood passive and panting, allowing him to beat off the jelly from my
knees and elbows and lecture me upon my misfortunes. "We don't quite
allow for the gravitation. Our muscles are scarcely educated yet. We must
practise a little, when you have got your breath."

I pulled two or three little thorns out of my hand, and sat for a time on
a boulder of rock. My muscles were quivering, and I had that feeling of
personal disillusionment that comes at the first fall to the learner of
cycling on earth.

It suddenly occurred to Cavor that the cold air in the gully, after the
brightness of the sun, might give me a fever. So we clambered back into
the sunlight. We found that beyond a few abrasions I had received no
serious injuries from my tumble, and at Cavor's suggestion we were
presently looking round for some safe and easy landing-place for my next
leap. We chose a rocky slab some ten yards off, separated from us by a
little thicket of olive-green spikes.

"Imagine it there!" said Cavor, who was assuming the airs of a trainer,
and he pointed to a spot about four feet from my toes. This leap I managed
without difficulty, and I must confess I found a certain satisfaction in
Cavor's falling short by a foot or so and tasting the spikes of the scrub.
"One has to be careful you see," he said, pulling out his thorns, and with
that he ceased to be my mentor and became my fellow-learner in the art of
lunar locomotion.

We chose a still easier jump and did it without difficulty, and then leapt
back again, and to and fro several times, accustoming our muscles to the
new standard. I could never have believed had I not experienced it, how
rapid that adaptation would be. In a very little time indeed, certainly
after fewer than thirty leaps, we could judge the effort necessary for a
distance with almost terrestrial assurance.

And all this time the lunar plants were growing around us, higher and
denser and more entangled, every moment thicker and taller, spiked plants,
green cactus masses, fungi, fleshy and lichenous things, strangest radiate
and sinuous shapes. But we were so intent upon our leaping, that for a
time we gave no heed to their unfaltering expansion.

An extraordinary elation had taken possession of us. Partly, I think, it
was our sense of release from the confinement of the sphere. Mainly,
however, the thin sweetness of the air, which I am certain contained a
much larger proportion of oxygen than our terrestrial atmosphere. In spite
of the strange quality of all about us, I felt as adventurous and
experimental as a cockney would do placed for the first time among
mountains and I do not think it occurred to either of us, face to face
though we were with the unknown, to be very greatly afraid.

We were bitten by a spirit of enterprise. We selected a lichenous kopje
perhaps fifteen yards away, and landed neatly on its summit one after the
other. "Good!" we cried to each other; "good!" and Cavor made three steps
and went off to a tempting slope of snow a good twenty yards and more
beyond. I stood for a moment struck by the grotesque effect of his
soaring figure--his dirty cricket cap, and spiky hair, his little round
body, his arms and his knicker-bockered legs tucked up tightly--against
the weird spaciousness of the lunar scene. A gust of laughter seized me,
and then I stepped off to follow. Plump! I dropped beside him.

We made a few gargantuan strides, leapt three or four times more, and sat
down at last in a lichenous hollow. Our lungs were painful. We sat holding
our sides and recovering our breath, looking appreciation to one another.
Cavor panted something about "amazing sensations." And then came a thought
into my head. For the moment it did not seem a particularly appalling
thought, simply a natural question arising out of the situation.

"By the way," I said, "where exactly is the sphere?"

Cavor looked at me. "Eh?"

The full meaning of what we were saying struck me sharply.

"Cavor!" I cried, laying a hand on his arm, "where is the sphere?"





Chapter 10




Lost Men in the Moon

His face caught something of my dismay. He stood up and stared about him
at the scrub that fenced us in and rose about us, straining upward in a
passion of growth. He put a dubious hand to his lips. He spoke with a
sudden lack of assurance. "I think," he said slowly, "we left it ...
somewhere ... about _there_."

He pointed a hesitating finger that wavered in an arc.

"I'm not sure." His look of consternation deepened. "Anyhow," he said,
with his eyes on me, "it can't be far."

We had both stood up. We made unmeaning ejaculations, our eyes sought in
the twining, thickening jungle round about us.

All about us on the sunlit slopes frothed and swayed the darting shrubs,
the swelling cactus, the creeping lichens, and wherever the shade remained
the snow-drifts lingered. North, south, east, and west spread an identical
monotony of unfamiliar forms. And somewhere, buried already among this
tangled confusion, was our sphere, our home, our only provision, our only
hope of escape from this fantastic wilderness of ephemeral growths into
which we had come.

"I think after all," he said, pointing suddenly, "it might be over there."

"No," I said. "We have turned in a curve. See! here is the mark of my
heels. It's clear the thing must be more to the eastward, much more.
No--the sphere must be over there."

"I _think_," said Cavor, "I kept the sun upon my right all the time."

"Every leap, it seems to me," I said, "my shadow flew before me."

We stared into one another's eyes. The area of the crater had become
enormously vast to our imaginations, the growing thickets already
impenetrably dense.

"Good heavens! What fools we have been!"

"It's evident that we must find it again," said Cavor, "and that soon.
The sun grows stronger. We should be fainting with the heat already if
it wasn't so dry. And ... I'm hungry."

I stared at him. I had not suspected this aspect of the matter before. But
it came to me at once--a positive craving. "Yes," I said with emphasis.
"I am hungry too."

He stood up with a look of active resolution. "Certainly we must find the
sphere."

As calmly as possible we surveyed the interminable reefs and thickets that
formed the floor of the crater, each of us weighing in silence the chances
of our finding the sphere before we were overtaken by heat and hunger.

"It can't be fifty yards from here," said Cavor, with indecisive gestures.
"The only thing is to beat round about until we come upon it."

"That is all we can do," I said, without any alacrity to begin our hunt.
"I wish this confounded spike bush did not grow so fast!"

"That's just it," said Cavor. "But it was lying on a bank of snow."

I stared about me in the vain hope of recognising some knoll or shrub that
had been near the sphere. But everywhere was a confusing sameness,
everywhere the aspiring bushes, the distending fungi, the dwindling snow
banks, steadily and inevitably changed. The sun scorched and stung, the
faintness of an unaccountable hunger mingled with our infinite perplexity.
And even as we stood there, confused and lost amidst unprecedented things,
we became aware for the first time of a sound upon the moon other than the
air of the growing plants, the faint sighing of the wind, or those that we
ourselves had made.

Boom.... Boom.... Boom.

It came from beneath our feet, a sound in the earth. We seemed to hear it
with our feet as much as with our ears. Its dull resonance was muffled by
distance, thick with the quality of intervening substance. No sound that I
can imagine could have astonished us more, or have changed more completely
the quality of things about us. For this sound, rich, slow, and
deliberate, seemed to us as though it could be nothing but the striking of
some gigantic buried clock.

Boom.... Boom.... Boom.

Sound suggestive of still cloisters, of sleepless nights in crowded
cities, of vigils and the awaited hour, of all that is orderly and
methodical in life, booming out pregnant and mysterious in this fantastic
desert! To the eye everything was unchanged: the desolation of bushes and
cacti waving silently in the wind, stretched unbroken to the distant
cliffs, the still dark sky was empty overhead, and the hot sun hung and
burned. And through it all, a warning, a threat, throbbed this enigma of
sound.

Boom.... Boom.... Boom....

We questioned one another in faint and faded voices.

"A clock?"

"Like a clock!"

"What is it?"

"What can it be?"

"Count," was Cavor's belated suggestion, and at that word the striking
ceased.

The silence, the rhythmic disappointment of the silence, came as a fresh
shock. For a moment one could doubt whether one had ever heard a sound. Or
whether it might not still be going on. Had I indeed heard a sound?

I felt the pressure of Cavor's hand upon my arm. He spoke in an
undertone, as though he feared to wake some sleeping thing. "Let us keep
together," he whispered, "and look for the sphere. We must get back to the
sphere. This is beyond our understanding."

"Which way shall we go?"

He hesitated. An intense persuasion of presences, of unseen things about
us and near us, dominated our minds. What could they be? Where could they
be? Was this arid desolation, alternately frozen and scorched, only the
outer rind and mask of some subterranean world? And if so, what sort of
world? What sort of inhabitants might it not presently disgorge upon us?

And then, stabbing the aching stillness as vivid and sudden as an
unexpected thunderclap, came a clang and rattle as though great gates of
metal had suddenly been flung apart.

It arrested our steps. We stood gaping helplessly. Then Cavor stole
towards me.

"I do not understand!" he whispered close to my face. He waved his hand
vaguely skyward, the vague suggestion of still vaguer thoughts.

"A hiding-place! If anything came..."

I looked about us. I nodded my head in assent to him.

We started off, moving stealthily with the most exaggerated precautions
against noise. We went towards a thicket of scrub. A clangour like hammers
flung about a boiler hastened our steps. "We must crawl," whispered Cavor.

The lower leaves of the bayonet plants, already overshadowed by the newer
ones above, were beginning to wilt and shrivel so that we could thrust our
way in among the thickening stems without serious injury. A stab in the
face or arm we did not heed. At the heart of the thicket I stopped, and
stared panting into Cavor's face.

"Subterranean," he whispered. "Below."

"They may come out."

"We must find the sphere!"

"Yes," I said; "but how?"

"Crawl till we come to it."

"But if we don't?"

"Keep hidden. See what they are like."

"We will keep together," said I.

He thought. "Which way shall we go?"

"We must take our chance."

We peered this way and that. Then very circumspectly, we began to crawl
through the lower jungle, making, so far as we could judge, a circuit,
halting now at every waving fungus, at every sound, intent only on the
sphere from which we had so foolishly emerged. Ever and again from out of
the earth beneath us came concussions, beatings, strange, inexplicable,
mechanical sounds; and once, and then again, we thought we heard
something, a faint rattle and tumult, borne to us through the air. But
fearful as we were we dared essay no vantage-point to survey the crater.
For long we saw nothing of the beings whose sounds were so abundant and
insistent. But for the faintness of our hunger and the drying of our
throats that crawling would have had the quality of a very vivid dream. It
was so absolutely unreal. The only element with any touch of reality was
these sounds.

Picture it to yourself! About us the dream-like jungle, with the silent
bayonet leaves darting overhead, and the silent, vivid, sun-splashed
lichens under our hands and knees, waving with the vigour of their growth
as a carpet waves when the wind gets beneath it. Ever and again one of the
bladder fungi, bulging and distending under the sun, loomed upon us. Ever
and again some novel shape in vivid colour obtruded. The very cells that
built up these plants were as large as my thumb, like beads of coloured
glass. And all these things were saturated in the unmitigated glare of the
sun, were seen against a sky that was bluish black and spangled still, in
spite of the sunlight, with a few surviving stars. Strange! the very forms
and texture of the stones were strange. It was all strange, the feeling of
one's body was unprecedented, every other movement ended in a surprise.
The breath sucked thin in one's throat, the blood flowed through one's
ears in a throbbing tide--thud, thud, thud, thud....

And ever and again came gusts of turmoil, hammering, the clanging and
throb of machinery, and presently--the bellowing of great beasts!





Chapter 11




The Mooncalf Pastures

So we two poor terrestrial castaways, lost in that wild-growing moon
jungle, crawled in terror before the sounds that had come upon us. We
crawled, as it seemed, a long time before we saw either Selenite or
mooncalf, though we heard the bellowing and gruntulous noises of these
latter continually drawing nearer to us. We crawled through stony ravines,
over snow slopes, amidst fungi that ripped like thin bladders at our
thrust, emitting a watery humour, over a perfect pavement of things like
puff-balls, and beneath interminable thickets of scrub. And ever more
helplessly our eyes sought for our abandoned sphere. The noise of the
mooncalves would at times be a vast flat calf-like sound, at times it rose
to an amazed and wrathy bellowing, and again it would become a clogged
bestial sound, as though these unseen creatures had sought to eat and
bellow at the same time.

Our first view was but an inadequate transitory glimpse, yet none the less
disturbing because it was incomplete. Cavor was crawling in front at the
time, and he first was aware of their proximity. He stopped dead,
arresting me with a single gesture.

A crackling and smashing of the scrub appeared to be advancing directly
upon us, and then, as we squatted close and endeavoured to judge of the
nearness and direction of this noise, there came a terrific bellow behind
us, so close and vehement that the tops of the bayonet scrub bent before
it, and one felt the breath of it hot and moist. And, turning about, we
saw indistinctly through a crowd of swaying stems the mooncalf's shining
sides, and the long line of its back loomed out against the sky.

Of course it is hard for me now to say how much I saw at that time,
because my impressions were corrected by subsequent observation. First of
all impressions was its enormous size; the girth of its body was some
fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred. Its sides rose and fell
with its laboured breathing. I perceived that its gigantic, flabby body
lay along the ground, and that its skin was of a corrugated white,
dappling into blackness along the backbone. But of its feet we saw
nothing. I think also that we saw then the profile at least of the almost
brainless head, with its fat-encumbered neck, its slobbering omnivorous
mouth, its little nostrils, and tight shut eyes. (For the mooncalf
invariably shuts its eyes in the presence of the sun.) We had a glimpse of
a vast red pit as it opened its mouth to bleat and bellow again; we had a
breath from the pit, and then the monster heeled over like a ship, dragged
forward along the ground, creasing all its leathery skin, rolled again,
and so wallowed past us, smashing a path amidst the scrub, and was
speedily hidden from our eyes by the dense interlacings beyond. Another
appeared more distantly, and then another, and then, as though he was
guiding these animated lumps of provender to their pasture, a Selenite
came momentarily into ken. My grip upon Cavor's foot became convulsive at
the sight of him, and we remained motionless and peering long after he had
passed out of our range.

By contrast with the mooncalves he seemed a trivial being, a mere ant,
scarcely five feet high. He was wearing garments of some leathery
substance, so that no portion of his actual body appeared, but of this, of
course, we were entirely ignorant. He presented himself, therefore, as a
compact, bristling creature, having much of the quality of a complicated
insect, with whip-like tentacles and a clanging arm projecting from his
shining cylindrical body case. The form of his head was hidden by his
enormous many-spiked helmet--we discovered afterwards that he used the
spikes for prodding refractory mooncalves--and a pair of goggles of
darkened glass, set very much at the side, gave a bird-like quality to the
metallic apparatus that covered his face. His arms did not project beyond
his body case, and he carried himself upon short legs that, wrapped though
they were in warm coverings, seemed to our terrestrial eyes inordinately
flimsy. They had very short thighs, very long shanks, and little feet.

In spite of his heavy-looking clothing, he was progressing with what would
be, from the terrestrial point of view, very considerable strides, and his
clanging arm was busy. The quality of his motion during the instant of his
passing suggested haste and a certain anger, and soon after we had lost
sight of him we heard the bellow of a mooncalf change abruptly into a
short, sharp squeal followed by the scuffle of its acceleration. And
gradually that bellowing receded, and then came to an end, as if the
pastures sought had been attained.

We listened. For a space the moon world was still. But it was some time
before we resumed our crawling search for the vanished sphere.

When next we saw mooncalves they were some little distance away from us in
a place of tumbled rocks. The less vertical surfaces of the rocks were
thick with a speckled green plant growing in dense mossy clumps, upon
which these creatures were browsing. We stopped at the edge of the reeds
amidst which we were crawling at the sight of them, peering out at then
and looking round for a second glimpse of a Selenite. They lay against
their food like stupendous slugs, huge, greasy hulls, eating greedily and
noisily, with a sort of sobbing avidity. They seemed monsters of mere
fatness, clumsy and overwhelmed to a degree that would make a Smithfield
ox seem a model of agility. Their busy, writhing, chewing mouths, and eyes
closed, together with the appetising sound of their munching, made up an
effect of animal enjoyment that was singularly stimulating to our empty
frames.

"Hogs!" said Cavor, with unusual passion. "Disgusting hogs!" and after
one glare of angry envy crawled off through the bushes to our right. I
stayed long enough to see that the speckled plant was quite hopeless for
human nourishment, then crawled after him, nibbling a quill of it between
my teeth.

Presently we were arrested again by the proximity of a Selenite, and this
time we were able to observe him more exactly. Now we could see that the
Selenite covering was indeed clothing, and not a sort of crustacean
integument. He was quite similar in his costume to the former one we had
glimpsed, except that ends of something like wadding were protruding from
his neck, and he stood on a promontory of rock and moved his head this way
and that, as though he was surveying the crater. We lay quite still,
fearing to attract his attention if we moved, and after a time he turned
about and disappeared.

We came upon another drove of mooncalves bellowing up a ravine, and then
we passed over a place of sounds, sounds of beating machinery as if some
huge hall of industry came near the surface there. And while these sounds
were still about us we came to the edge of a great open space, perhaps two
hundred yards in diameter, and perfectly level. Save for a few lichens
that advanced from its margin this space was bare, and presented a powdery
surface of a dusty yellow colour. We were afraid to strike out across
this space, but as it presented less obstruction to our crawling than the
scrub, we went down upon it and began very circumspectly to skirt its
edge.

For a little while the noises from below ceased and everything, save for
the faint stir of the growing vegetation, was very still. Then abruptly
there began an uproar, louder, more vehement, and nearer than any we had
so far heard. Of a certainty it came from below. Instinctively we crouched
as flat as we could, ready for a prompt plunge into the thicket beside us.
Each knock and throb seemed to vibrate through our bodies. Louder grew
this throbbing and beating, and that irregular vibration increased until
the whole moon world seemed to be jerking and pulsing.

"Cover," whispered Cavor, and I turned towards the bushes.

At that instant came a thud like the thud of a gun, and then a thing
happened--it still haunts me in my dreams. I had turned my head to look
at Cavor's face, and thrust out my hand in front of me as I did so.
And my hand met nothing! I plunged suddenly into a bottomless hole!

My chest hit something hard, and I found myself with my chin on the edge
of an unfathomable abyss that had suddenly opened beneath me, my hand
extended stiffly into the void. The whole of that flat circular area was
no more than a gigantic lid, that was now sliding sideways from off the
pit it had covered into a slot prepared for it.

Had it not been for Cavor I think I should have remained rigid, hanging
over this margin and staring into the enormous gulf below, until at last
the edges of the slot scraped me off and hurled me into its depths. But
Cavor had not received the shock that had paralysed me. He had been a
little distance from the edge when the lid had first opened, and
perceiving the peril that held me helpless, gripped my legs and pulled me
backward. I came into a sitting position, crawled away from the edge for a
space on all fours, then staggered up and ran after him across the
thundering, quivering sheet of metal. It seemed to be swinging open with a
steadily accelerated velocity, and the bushes in front of me shifted
sideways as I ran.

I was none too soon. Cavor's back vanished amidst the bristling thicket,
and as I scrambled up after him, the monstrous valve came into its
position with a clang. For a long time we lay panting, not daring to
approach the pit.

But at last very cautiously and bit by bit we crept into a position from
which we could peer down. The bushes about us creaked and waved with the
force of a breeze that was blowing down the shaft. We could see nothing at
first except smooth vertical walls descending at last into an impenetrable
black. And then very gradually we became aware of a number of very faint
and little lights going to and fro.

For a time that stupendous gulf of mystery held us so that we forgot even
our sphere. In time, as we grew more accustomed to the darkness, we could
make out very small, dim, elusive shapes moving about among those
needle-point illuminations. We peered amazed and incredulous,
understanding so little that we could find no words to say. We could
distinguish nothing that would give us a clue to the meaning of the faint
shapes we saw.

"What can it be?" I asked; "what can it be?"

"The engineering!... They must live in these caverns during the night, and
come out during the day."

"Cavor!" I said. "Can they be--that--it was something like--men?"

"_That_ was not a man."

"We dare risk nothing!"

"We dare do nothing until we find the sphere!"

"We _can_ do nothing until we find the sphere."

He assented with a groan and stirred himself to move. He stared about him
for a space, sighed, and indicated a direction. We struck out through the
jungle. For a time we crawled resolutely, then with diminishing vigour.
Presently among great shapes of flabby purple there came a noise of
trampling and cries about us. We lay close, and for a long time the sounds
went to and fro and very near. But this time we saw nothing. I tried to
whisper to Cavor that I could hardly go without food much longer, but my
mouth had become too dry for whispering.

"Cavor," I said, "I must have food."

He turned a face full of dismay towards me. "It's a case for holding out,"
he said.

"But I _must_," I said, "and look at my lips!"

"I've been thirsty some time."

"If only some of that snow had remained!"

"It's clean gone! We're driving from arctic to tropical at the rate of a
degree a minute...."

I gnawed my hand.

"The sphere!" he said. "There is nothing for it but the sphere."

We roused ourselves to another spurt of crawling. My mind ran entirely on
edible things, on the hissing profundity of summer drinks, more
particularly I craved for beer. I was haunted by the memory of a sixteen
gallon cask that had swaggered in my Lympne cellar. I thought of the
adjacent larder, and especially of steak and kidney pie--tender steak and
plenty of kidney, and rich, thick gravy between. Ever and again I was
seized with fits of hungry yawning. We came to flat places overgrown with
fleshy red things, monstrous coralline growths; as we pushed against them
they snapped and broke. I noted the quality of the broken surfaces. The
confounded stuff certainly looked of a biteable texture. Then it seemed to
me that it smelt rather well.

I picked up a fragment and sniffed at it.

"Cavor," I said in a hoarse undertone.

He glanced at me with his face screwed up. "Don't," he said. I put down
the fragment, and we crawled on through this tempting fleshiness for
a space.

"Cavor," I asked, "why not?"

"Poison," I heard him say, but he did not look round.

We crawled some way before I decided.

"I'll chance it," said I.

He made a belated gesture to prevent me. I stuffed my mouth full. He
crouched watching my face, his own twisted into the oddest expression.
"It's good," I said.

"O Lord!" he cried.

He watched me munch, his face wrinkled between desire and disapproval,
then suddenly succumbed to appetite and began to tear off huge mouthfuls.
For a time we did nothing but eat.

The stuff was not unlike a terrestrial mushroom, only it was much laxer in
texture, and, as one swallowed it, it warmed the throat. At first we
experienced a mere mechanical satisfaction in eating; then our blood began
to run warmer, and we tingled at the lips and fingers, and then new and
slightly irrelevant ideas came bubbling up in our minds.

"Its good," said I. "Infernally good! What a home for our surplus
population! Our poor surplus population," and I broke off another large
portion. It filled me with a curiously benevolent satisfaction that there
was such good food in the moon. The depression of my hunger gave way to an
irrational exhilaration. The dread and discomfort in which I had been
living vanished entirely. I perceived the moon no longer as a planet from
which I most earnestly desired the means of escape, but as a possible
refuge from human destitution. I think I forgot the Selenites, the
mooncalves, the lid, and the noises completely so soon as I had eaten that
fungus.

Cavor replied to my third repetition of my "surplus population" remark
with similar words of approval. I felt that my head swam, but I put this
down to the stimulating effect of food after a long fast. "Ess'lent
discov'ry yours, Cavor," said I. "Se'nd on'y to the 'tato."

"Whajer mean?" asked Cavor. "'Scovery of the moon--se'nd on'y to the
'tato?"

I looked at him, shocked at his suddenly hoarse voice, and by the badness
of his articulation. It occurred to me in a flash that he was intoxicated,
possibly by the fungus. It also occurred to me that he erred in imagining
that he had discovered the moon; he had not discovered it, he had only
reached it. I tried to lay my hand on his arm and explain this to him, but
the issue was too subtle for his brain. It was also unexpectedly difficult
to express. After a momentary attempt to understand me--I remember
wondering if the fungus had made my eyes as fishy as his--he set off upon
some observations on his own account.

"We are," he announced with a solemn hiccup, "the creashurs o' what we
eat and drink."

He repeated this, and as I was now in one of my subtle moods, I determined
to dispute it. Possibly I wandered a little from the point. But Cavor
certainly did not attend at all properly. He stood up as well as he could,
putting a hand on my head to steady I himself, which was disrespectful,
and stood staring about him, quite devoid now of any fear of the moon
beings.

I tried to point out that this was dangerous for some reason that was not
perfectly clear to me, but the word "dangerous" had somehow got mixed with
"indiscreet," and came out rather more like "injurious" than either; and
after an attempt to disentangle them, I resumed my argument, addressing
myself principally to the unfamiliar but attentive coralline growths on
either side. I felt that it was necessary to clear up this confusion
between the moon and a potato at once--I wandered into a long parenthesis
on the importance of precision of definition in argument. I did my best to
ignore the fact that my bodily sensations were no longer agreeable.

In some way that I have now forgotten, my mind was led back to projects
of colonisation. "We must annex this moon," I said. "There must be
no shilly-shally. This is part of the White Man's Burthen. Cavor--we
are--hic--Satap--mean Satraps! Nempire Caesar never dreamt. B'in all
the newspapers. Cavorecia. Bedfordecia. Bedfordecia--hic--Limited.
Mean--unlimited! Practically."

Certainly I was intoxicated.

I embarked upon an argument to show the infinite benefits our arrival
would confer on the moon. I involved myself in a rather difficult proof
that the arrival of Columbus was, on the whole, beneficial to America. I
found I had forgotten the line of argument I had intended to pursue, and
continued to repeat "sim'lar to C'lumbus," to fill up time.

From that point my memory of the action of that abominable fungus becomes
confused. I remember vaguely that we declared our intention of standing no
nonsense from any confounded insects, that we decided it ill became men to
hide shamefully upon a mere satellite, that we equipped ourselves with
huge armfuls of the fungus--whether for missile purposes or not I do not
know--and, heedless of the stabs of the bayonet scrub, we started forth
into the sunshine.

Almost immediately we must have come upon the Selenites. There were six of
them, and they were marching in single file over a rocky place, making the
most remarkable piping and whining sounds. They all seemed to become aware
of us at once, all instantly became silent and motionless, like animals,
with their faces turned towards us.

For a moment I was sobered.

"Insects," murmured Cavor, "insects! And they think I'm going to crawl
about on my stomach--on my vertebrated stomach!

"Stomach," he repeated slowly, as though he chewed the indignity.

Then suddenly, with a sort of fury, he made three vast strides and leapt
towards them. He leapt badly; he made a series of somersaults in the air,
whirled right over them, and vanished with an enormous splash amidst the
cactus bladders. What the Selenites made of this amazing, and to my mind
undignified irruption from another planet, I have no means of guessing. I
seem to remember the sight of their backs as they ran in all directions,
but I am not sure. All these last incidents before oblivion came are vague
and faint in my mind. I know I made a step to follow Cavor, and tripped
and fell headlong among the rocks. I was, I am certain, suddenly and
vehemently ill. I seem to remember, a violent struggle and being gripped
by metallic clasps....

My next clear recollection is that we were prisoners at we knew not what
depths beneath the moon's surface; we were in darkness amidst strange
distracting noises; our bodies were covered with scratches and bruises,
and our heads racked with pain.





Chapter 12




The Selenite's Face

I found myself sitting crouched together in a tumultuous darkness. For a
long time I could not understand where I was, nor how I had come to this
perplexity. I thought of the cupboard into which I had been thrust at
times when I was a child, and then of a very dark and noisy bedroom in
which I had slept during an illness. But these sounds about me were not
the noises I had known, and there was a thin flavour in the air like the
wind of a stable. Then I supposed we must still be at work upon the
sphere, and that somehow I had got into the cellar of Cavor's house. I
remembered we had finished the sphere, and fancied I must still be in it
and travelling through space.

"Cavor," I said, "cannot we have some light?"

There came no answer.

"Cavor!" I insisted.

I was answered by a groan. "My head!" I heard him say; "my head!"

I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered they
were tied together. This startled me very much. I brought them up to my
mouth and felt the cold smoothness of metal. They were chained together. I
tried to separate my legs and made out they were similarly fastened, and
also that I was fastened to the ground by a much thicker chain about the
middle of my body.

I was more frightened than I had yet been by anything in all our strange
experiences. For a time I tugged silently at my bonds. "Cavor!" I cried
out sharply. "Why am I tied? Why have you tied me hand and foot?"

"I haven't tied you," he answered. "It's the Selenites."

The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came
back to me: the snowy desolation, the thawing of the air, the growth of
the plants, our strange hopping and crawling among the rocks and
vegetation of the crater. All the distress of our frantic search for the
sphere returned to me.... Finally the opening of the great lid that
covered the pit!

Then as I strained to trace our later movements down to our present
plight, the pain in my head became intolerable. I came to an
insurmountable barrier, an obstinate blank.

"Cavor!"

"Yes?"

"Where are we?"

"How should I know?"

"Are we dead?"

"What nonsense!"

"They've got us, then!"

He made no answer but a grunt. The lingering traces of the poison seemed
to make him oddly irritable.

"What do you mean to do?"

"How should I know what to do?"

"Oh, very well!" said I, and became silent. Presently, I was roused from
a stupor. "O Lord!" I cried; "I wish you'd stop that buzzing!"

We lapsed into silence again, listening to the dull confusion of noises
like the muffled sounds of a street or factory that filled our ears. I
could make nothing of it, my mind pursued first one rhythm and then
another, and questioned it in vain. But after a long time I became aware
of a new and sharper element, not mingling with the rest but standing out,
as it were, against that cloudy background of sound. It was a series of
relatively very little definite sounds, tappings and rubbings, like a
loose spray of ivy against a window or a bird moving about upon a box. We
listened and peered about us, but the darkness was a velvet pall. There
followed a noise like the subtle movement of the wards of a well-oiled
lock. And then there appeared before me, hanging as it seemed in an
immensity of black, a thin bright line.

"Look!" whispered Cavor very softly.

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

We stared.

The thin bright line became a band, and broader and paler. It took upon
itself the quality of a bluish light falling upon a white-washed wall. It
ceased to be parallel-sided; it developed a deep indentation on one side.
I turned to remark this to Cavor, and was amazed to see his ear in a
brilliant illumination--all the rest of him in shadow. I twisted my head
round as well as my bonds would permit. "Cavor," I said, "it's behind!"

His ear vanished--gave place to an eye!

Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, and
revealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a sapphire
vista, and in the doorway stood a grotesque outline silhouetted against
the glare.

We both made convulsive efforts to turn, and failing, sat staring over our
shoulders at this. My first impression was of some clumsy quadruped with
lowered head. Then I perceived it was the slender pinched body and short
and extremely attenuated bandy legs of a Selenite, with his head depressed
between his shoulders. He was without the helmet and body covering they
wear upon the exterior.

He was a blank, black figure to us, but instinctively our imaginations
supplied features to his very human outline. I, at least, took it
instantly that he was somewhat hunchbacked, with a high forehead and long
features.

He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemed
absolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He walked like a bird,
his feet fell one in front of the other. He stepped out of the ray of
light that came through the doorway, and it seemed as though he vanished
altogether in the shadow.

For a moment my eyes sought him in the wrong place, and then I perceived
him standing facing us both in the full light. Only the human features I
had attributed to him were not there at all!

Of course I ought to have expected that, only I didn't. It came to me as
an absolute, for a moment an overwhelming shock. It seemed as though it
wasn't a face, as though it must needs be a mask, a horror, a deformity,
that would presently be disavowed or explained. There was no nose, and the
thing had dull bulging eyes at the side--in the silhouette I had supposed
they were ears. There were no ears.... I have tried to draw one of these
heads, but I cannot. There was a mouth, downwardly curved, like a human
mouth in a face that stares ferociously....

The neck on which the head was poised was jointed in three places, almost
like the short joints in the leg of a crab. The joints of the limbs I
could not see, because of the puttee-like straps in which they were
swathed, and which formed the only clothing the being wore.

There the thing was, looking at us!

At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the creature.
I suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, for amazement
than we. Only, confound him! he did not show it. We did at least know what
had brought about this meeting of incompatible creatures. But conceive how
it would seem to decent Londoners, for example, to come upon a couple of
living things, as big as men and absolutely unlike any other earthly
animals, careering about among the sheep in Hyde Park! It must have taken
him like that.

Figure us! We were bound hand and foot, fagged and filthy; our beards two
inches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine in his
knickerbockers (torn in several places by the bayonet scrub) his Jaegar
shirt and old cricket cap, his wiry hair wildly disordered, a tail to
every quarter of the heavens. In that blue light his face did not look red
but very dark, his lips and the drying blood upon my hands seemed black.
If possible I was in a worse plight than he, on account of the yellow
fungus into which I had jumped. Our jackets were unbuttoned, and our shoes
had been taken off and lay at our feet. And we were sitting with our backs
to this queer bluish light, peering at such a monster as Durer might have
invented.

Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his
throat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf were in
trouble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still again.

Presently the Selenite turned about, flickered into the shadow, stood for
a moment retrospective at the door, and then closed it on us; and once
more we were in that murmurous mystery of darkness into which we had
awakened.





Chapter 13




Mr. Cavor Makes Some Suggestions

For a time neither of us spoke. To focus together all the things we had
brought upon ourselves seemed beyond my mental powers.

"They've got us," I said at last.

"It was that fungus."

"Well--if I hadn't taken it we should have fainted and starved."

"We might have found the sphere."

I lost my temper at his persistence, and swore to myself. For a time we
hated one another in silence. I drummed with my fingers on the floor
between my knees, and gritted the links of my fetters together. Presently
I was forced to talk again.

"What do you make of it, anyhow?" I asked humbly.

"They are reasonable creatures--they can make things and do things.
Those lights we saw..."

He stopped. It was clear he could make nothing of it.

When he spoke again it was to confess, "After all, they are more human
than we had a right to expect. I suppose--"

He stopped irritatingly.

"Yes?"

"I suppose, anyhow--on any planet where there is an intelligent animal--it
will carry its brain case upward, and have hands, and walk erect."

Presently he broke away in another direction.

"We are some way in," he said. "I mean--perhaps a couple of thousand feet
or more."

"Why?"

"It's cooler. And our voices are so much louder. That faded quality--it
has altogether gone. And the feeling in one's ears and throat."

I had not noted that, but I did now.

"The air is denser. We must be some depths--a mile even, we may
be--inside the moon."

"We never thought of a world inside the moon."

"No."

"How could we?"

"We might have done. Only one gets into habits of mind."

He thought for a time.

"Now," he said, "it seems such an obvious thing."

"Of course! The moon must be enormously cavernous, with an atmosphere
within, and at the centre of its caverns a sea.

"One knew that the moon had a lower specific gravity than the earth, one
knew that it had little air or water outside, one knew, too, that it was
sister planet to the earth, and that it was unaccountable that it should
be different in composition. The inference that it was hollowed out was as
clear as day. And yet one never saw it as a fact. Kepler, of course--"

His voice had the interest now of a man who has discerned a pretty
sequence of reasoning.

"Yes," he said, "Kepler with his sub-volvani was right after all."

"I wish you had taken the trouble to find that out before we came,"
I said.

He answered nothing, buzzing to himself softly, as he pursued his
thoughts. My temper was going.

"What do you think has become of the sphere, anyhow?" I asked.

"Lost," he said, like a man who answers an uninteresting question.

"Among those plants?"

"Unless they find it."

"And then?"

"How can I tell?"

"Cavor," I said, with a sort of hysterical bitterness, "things look bright
for my Company..."

He made no answer.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "Just think of all the trouble we took to get
into this pickle! What did we come for? What are we after? What was the
moon to us or we to the moon? We wanted too much, we tried too much. We
ought to have started the little things first. It was you proposed the
moon! Those Cavorite spring blinds! I am certain we could have worked them
for terrestrial purposes. Certain! Did you really understand what I
proposed? A steel cylinder--"

"Rubbish!" said Cavor.

We ceased to converse.

For a time Cavor kept up a broken monologue without much help from me.

"If they find it," he began, "if they find it ... what will they do with
it? Well, that's a question. It may be that's _the_ question. They won't
understand it, anyhow. If they understood that sort of thing they would
have come long since to the earth. Would they? Why shouldn't they? But
they would have sent something--they couldn't keep their hands off such a
possibility. No! But they will examine it. Clearly they are intelligent
and inquisitive. They will examine it--get inside it--trifle with the
studs. Off! ... That would mean the moon for us for all the rest of our
lives. Strange creatures, strange knowledge...."

"As for strange knowledge--" said I, and language failed me.

"Look here, Bedford," said Cavor, "you came on this expedition of your own
free will."

"You said to me, 'Call it prospecting'."

"There's always risks in prospecting."

"Especially when you do it unarmed and without thinking out every
possibility."

"I was so taken up with the sphere. The thing rushed on us, and carried us
away."

"Rushed on _me_, you mean."

"Rushed on me just as much. How was I to know when I set to work on
molecular physics that the business would bring me here--of all places?"

"It's this accursed science," I cried. "It's the very Devil. The medieval
priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You
tamper with it--and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it
knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new
weapons--now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas,
now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!"

"Anyhow, it's no use your quarrelling with me now. These creatures--these
Selenites, or whatever we choose to call them--have got us tied
hand and foot. Whatever temper you choose to go through with it in, you
will have to go through with it.... We have experiences before us that
will need all our coolness."

He paused as if he required my assent. But I sat sulking. "Confound your
science!" I said.

"The problem is communication. Gestures, I fear, will be different.
Pointing, for example. No creatures but men and monkeys point."

That was too obviously wrong for me. "Pretty nearly every animal," I
cried, "points with its eyes or nose."

Cavor meditated over that. "Yes," he said at last, "and we don't. There's
such differences--such differences!"

"One might.... But how can I tell? There is speech. The sounds they make,
a sort of fluting and piping. I don't see how we are to imitate that. Is
it their speech, that sort of thing? They may have different senses,
different means of communication. Of course they are minds and we are
minds; there must be something in common. Who knows how far we may not get
to an understanding?"

"The things are outside us," I said. "They're more different from us than
the strangest animals on earth. They are a different clay. What is the
good of talking like this?"

Cavor thought. "I don't see that. Where there are minds they will have
something similar--even though they have been evolved on different
planets. Of course if it was a question of instincts, if we or they are
no more than animals--"

"Well, are they? They're much more like ants on their hind legs than human
beings, and who ever got to any sort of understanding with ants?"

"But these machines and clothing! No, I don't hold with you, Bedford. The
difference is wide--"

"It's insurmountable."

"The resemblance must bridge it. I remember reading once a paper by the
late Professor Galton on the possibility of communication between the
planets. Unhappily, at that time it did not seem probable that that would
be of any material benefit to me, and I fear I did not give it the
attention I should have done--in view of this state of affairs. Yet....
Now, let me see!

"His idea was to begin with those broad truths that must underlie all
conceivable mental existences and establish a basis on those. The great
principles of geometry, to begin with. He proposed to take some leading
proposition of Euclid's, and show by construction that its truth was known
to us, to demonstrate, for example, that the angles at the base of an
isosceles triangle are equal, and that if the equal sides be produced the
angles on the other side of the base are equal also, or that the square on
the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the
squares on the two other sides. By demonstrating our knowledge of these
things we should demonstrate our possession of a reasonable
intelligence.... Now, suppose I ... I might draw the geometrical figure
with a wet finger, or even trace it in the air...."

He fell silent. I sat meditating his words. For a time his wild hope of
communication, of interpretation, with these weird beings held me. Then
that angry despair that was a part of my exhaustion and physical misery
resumed its sway. I perceived with a sudden novel vividness the
extraordinary folly of everything I had ever done. "Ass!" I said; "oh,
ass, unutterable ass.... I seem to exist only to go about doing
preposterous things. Why did we ever leave the thing? ... Hopping about
looking for patents and concessions in the craters of the moon!... If only
we had had the sense to fasten a handkerchief to a stick to show where we
had left the sphere!"

I subsided, fuming.

"It is clear," meditated Cavor, "they are intelligent. One can
hypothecate certain things. As they have not killed us at once, they
must have ideas of mercy. Mercy! at any rate of restraint. Possibly of
intercourse. They may meet us. And this apartment and the glimpses we had
of its guardian. These fetters! A high degree of intelligence..."

"I wish to heaven," cried I, "I'd thought even twice! Plunge after plunge.
First one fluky start and then another. It was my confidence in you! Why
didn't I stick to my play? That was what I was equal to. That was my
world and the life I was made for. I could have finished that play. I'm
certain ... it was a good play. I had the scenario as good as done.
Then.... Conceive it! leaping to the moon! Practically--I've thrown my
life away! That old woman in the inn near Canterbury had better sense."

I looked up, and stopped in mid-sentence. The darkness had given place to
that bluish light again. The door was opening, and several noiseless
Selenites were coming into the chamber. I became quite still, staring at
their grotesque faces.

Then suddenly my sense of disagreeable strangeness changed to interest. I
perceived that the foremost and second carried bowls. One elemental need
at least our minds could understand in common. They were bowls of some
metal that, like our fetters, looked dark in that bluish light; and each
contained a number of whitish fragments. All the cloudy pain and misery
that oppressed me rushed together and took the shape of hunger. I eyed
these bowls wolfishly, and, though it returned to me in dreams, at that
time it seemed a small matter that at the end of the arms that lowered one
towards me were not hands, but a sort of flap and thumb, like the end of
an elephant's trunk. The stuff in the bowl was loose in texture, and
whitish brown in colour--rather like lumps of some cold souffle, and it
smelt faintly like mushrooms. From a partially divided carcass of a
mooncalf that we presently saw, I am inclined to believe it must have been
mooncalf flesh.

My hands were so tightly chained that I could barely contrive to reach the
bowl; but when they saw the effort I made, two of them dexterously
released one of the turns about my wrist. Their tentacle hands were soft
and cold to my skin. I immediately seized a mouthful of the food. It had
the same laxness in texture that all organic structures seem to have upon
the moon; it tasted rather like a gauffre or a damp meringue, but in no
way was it disagreeable. I took two other mouthfuls. "I wanted--foo'!"
said I, tearing off a still larger piece....

For a time we ate with an utter absence of self-consciousness. We ate and
presently drank like tramps in a soup kitchen. Never before nor since have
I been hungry to the ravenous pitch, and save that I have had this very
experience I could never have believed that, a quarter of a million of
miles out of our proper world, in utter perplexity of soul, surrounded,
watched, touched by beings more grotesque and inhuman than the worst
creations of a nightmare, it would be possible for me to eat in utter
forgetfulness of all these things. They stood about us watching us, and
ever and again making a slight elusive twittering that stood the suppose,
in the stead of speech. I did not even shiver at their touch. And when the
first zeal of my feeding was over, I could note that Cavor, too, had been
eating with the same shameless abandon.





Chapter 14




Experiments in intercourse

When at last we had made an end of eating, the Selenites linked our hands
closely together again, and then untwisted the chains about our feet and
rebound them, so as to give us a limited freedom of movement. Then they
unfastened the chains about our waists. To do all this they had to handle
us freely, and ever and again one of their queer heads came down close to
my face, or a soft tentacle-hand touched my head or neck. I don't remember
that I was afraid then or repelled by their proximity. I think that our
incurable anthropomorphism made us imagine there were human heads inside
their masks. The skin, like everything else, looked bluish, but that was
on account of the light; and it was hard and shiny, quite in the
beetle-wing fashion, not soft, or moist, or hairy, as a vertebrated
animal's would be. Along the crest of the head was a low ridge of whitish
spines running from back to front, and a much larger ridge curved on
either side over the eyes. The Selenite who untied me used his mouth to
help his hands.

"They seem to be releasing us," said Cavor. "Remember we are on the moon!
Make no sudden movements!"

"Are you going to try that geometry?"

"If I get a chance. But, of course, they may make an advance first."

We remained passive, and the Selenites, having finished their
arrangements, stood back from us, and seemed to be looking at us. I say
seemed to be, because as their eyes were at the side and not in front, one
had the same difficulty in determining the direction in which they were
looking as one has in the case of a hen or a fish. They conversed with one
another in their reedy tones, that seemed to me impossible to imitate or
define. The door behind us opened wider, and, glancing over my shoulder, I
saw a vague large space beyond, in which quite a little crowd of Selenites
were standing. They seemed a curiously miscellaneous rabble.

"Do they want us to imitate those sounds?" I asked Cavor.

"I don't think so," he said.

"It seems to me that they are trying to make us understand something."

"I can't make anything of their gestures. Do you notice this one, who is
worrying with his head like a man with an uncomfortable collar?"

"Let us shake our heads at him."

We did that, and finding it ineffectual, attempted an imitation of the
Selenites' movements. That seemed to interest them. At any rate they all
set up the same movement. But as that seemed to lead to nothing, we
desisted at last and so did they, and fell into a piping argument among
themselves. Then one of them, shorter and very much thicker than the
others, and with a particularly wide mouth, squatted down suddenly beside
Cavor, and put his hands and feet in the same posture as Cavor's were
bound, and then by a dexterous movement stood up.

"Cavor," I shouted, "they want us to get up!"

He stared open-mouthed. "That's it!" he said.

And with much heaving and grunting, because our hands were tied together,
we contrived to struggle to our feet. The Selenites made way for our
elephantine heavings, and seemed to twitter more volubly. As soon as we
were on our feet the thick-set Selenite came and patted each of our faces
with his tentacles, and walked towards the open doorway. That also was
plain enough, and we followed him. We saw that four of the Selenites
standing in the doorway were much taller than the others, and clothed in
the same manner as those we had seen in the crater, namely, with spiked
round helmets and cylindrical body-cases, and that each of the four
carried a goad with spike and guard made of that same dull-looking metal
as the bowls. These four closed about us, one on either side of each of
us, as we emerged from our chamber into the cavern from which the light
had come.

We did not get our impression of that cavern all at once. Our attention
was taken up by the movements and attitudes of the Selenites immediately
about us, and by the necessity of controlling our motion, lest we should
startle and alarm them and ourselves by some excessive stride. In front of
us was the short, thick-set being who had solved the problem of asking us
to get up, moving with gestures that seemed, almost all of them,
intelligible to us, inviting us to follow him. His spout-like face turned
from one of us to the other with a quickness that was clearly
interrogative. For a time, I say, we were taken up with these things.

But at last the great place that formed a background to our movements
asserted itself. It became apparent that the source of much, at least, of
the tumult of sounds which had filled our ears ever since we had recovered
from the stupefaction of the fungus was a vast mass of machinery in active
movement, whose flying and whirling parts were visible indistinctly over
the heads and between the bodies of the Selenites who walked about us. And
not only did the web of sounds that filled the air proceed from this
mechanism, but also the peculiar blue light that irradiated the whole
place. We had taken it as a natural thing that a subterranean cavern
should be artificially lit, and even now, though the fact was patent to my
eyes, I did not really grasp its import until presently the darkness came.
The meaning and structure of this huge apparatus we saw I cannot explain,
because we neither of us learnt what it was for or how it worked. One
after another, big shafts of metal flung out and up from its centre, their
heads travelling in what seemed to me to be a parabolic path; each dropped
a sort of dangling arm as it rose towards the apex of its flight and
plunged down into a vertical cylinder, forcing this down before it. About
it moved the shapes of tenders, little figures that seemed vaguely
different from the beings about us. As each of the three dangling arms of
the machine plunged down, there was a clank and then a roaring, and out of
the top of the vertical cylinder came pouring this incandescent substance
that lit the place, and ran over as milk runs over a boiling pot, and
dripped luminously into a tank of light below. It was a cold blue light, a
sort of phosphorescent glow but infinitely brighter, and from the tanks
into which it fell it ran in conduits athwart the cavern.

Thud, thud, thud, thud, came the sweeping arms of this unintelligible
apparatus, and the light substance hissed and poured. At first the thing
seemed only reasonably large and near to us, and then I saw how
exceedingly little the Selenites upon it seemed, and I realised the full
immensity of cavern and machine. I looked from this tremendous affair to
the faces of the Selenites with a new respect. I stopped, and Cavor
stopped, and stared at this thunderous engine.

"But this is stupendous!" I said. "What can it be for?"

Cavor's blue-lit face was full of an intelligent respect. "I can't dream!
Surely these beings-- Men could not make a thing like that! Look at those
arms, are they on connecting rods?"

The thick-set Selenite had gone some paces unheeded. He came back and
stood between us and the great machine. I avoided seeing him, because I
guessed somehow that his idea was to beckon us onward. He walked away in
the direction he wished us to go, and turned and came back, and flicked
our faces to attract our attention.

Cavor and I looked at one another.

"Cannot we show him we are interested in the machine?" I said.

"Yes," said Cavor. "We'll try that." He turned to our guide and smiled,
and pointed to the machine, and pointed again, and then to his head, and
then to the machine. By some defect of reasoning he seemed to imagine that
broken English might help these gestures. "Me look 'im," he said, "me
think 'im very much. Yes."

His behaviour seemed to check the Selenites in their desire for our
progress for a moment. They faced one another, their queer heads moved,
the twittering voices came quick and liquid. Then one of them, a lean,
tall creature, with a sort of mantle added to the puttee in which the
others were dressed, twisted his elephant trunk of a hand about Cavor's
waist, and pulled him gently to follow our guide, who again went on ahead.
Cavor resisted. "We may just as well begin explaining ourselves now. They
may think we are new animals, a new sort of mooncalf perhaps! It is most
important that we should show an intelligent interest from the outset."

He began to shake his head violently. "No, no," he said, "me not come on
one minute. Me look at 'im."

"Isn't there some geometrical point you might bring in apropos of that
affair?" I suggested, as the Selenites conferred again.

"Possibly a parabolic--" he began.

He yelled loudly, and leaped six feet or more!

One of the four armed moon-men had pricked him with a goad!

I turned on the goad-bearer behind me with a swift threatening gesture,
and he started back. This and Cavor's sudden shout and leap clearly
astonished all the Selenites. They receded hastily, facing us. For one of
those moments that seem to last for ever, we stood in angry protest, with
a scattered semicircle of these inhuman beings about us.

"He pricked me!" said Cavor, with a catching of the voice.

"I saw him," I answered.

"Confound it!" I said to the Selenites; "we're not going to stand that!
What on earth do you take us for?"

I glanced quickly right and left. Far away across the blue wilderness of
cavern I saw a number of other Selenites running towards us; broad and
slender they were, and one with a larger head than the others. The cavern
spread wide and low, and receded in every direction into darkness. Its
roof, I remember, seemed to bulge down as if with the weight of the vast
thickness of rocks that prisoned us. There was no way out of it--no way
out of it. Above, below, in every direction, was the unknown, and these
inhuman creatures, with goads and gestures, confronting us, and we two
unsupported men!





Chapter 15




The Giddy Bridge

Just for a moment that hostile pause endured. I suppose that both we and
the Selenites did some very rapid thinking. My clearest impression was
that there was nothing to put my back against, and that we were bound to
be surrounded and killed. The overwhelming folly of our presence there
loomed over me in black, enormous reproach. Why had I ever launched
myself on this mad, inhuman expedition?

Cavor came to my side and laid his hand on my arm. His pale and terrified
face was ghastly in the blue light.

"We can't do anything," he said. "It's a mistake. They don't understand.
We must go. As they want us to go."

I looked down at him, and then at the fresh Selenites who were coming to
help their fellows. "If I had my hands free--"

"It's no use," he panted.

"No."

"We'll go."

And he turned about and led the way in the direction that had been
indicated for us.

I followed, trying to look as subdued as possible, and feeling at the
chains about my wrists. My blood was boiling. I noted nothing more of that
cavern, though it seemed to take a long time before we had marched across
it, or if I noted anything I forgot it as I saw it. My thoughts were
concentrated, I think, upon my chains and the Selenites, and particularly
upon the helmeted ones with the goads. At first they marched parallel with
us, and at a respectful distance, but presently they were overtaken by
three others, and then they drew nearer, until they were within arms
length again. I winced like a beaten horse as they came near to us. The
shorter, thicker Selenite marched at first on our right flank, but
presently came in front of us again.

How well the picture of that grouping has bitten into my brain; the back
of Cavor's downcast head just in front of me, and the dejected droop of
his shoulders, and our guide's gaping visage, perpetually jerking about
him, and the goad-bearers on either side, watchful, yet open-mouthed--a
blue monochrome. And after all, I do remember one other thing besides the
purely personal affair, which is, that a sort of gutter came presently
across the floor of the cavern, and then ran along by the side of the path
of rock we followed. And it was full of that same bright blue luminous
stuff that flowed out of the great machine. I walked close beside it, and
I can testify it radiated not a particle of heat. It was brightly shining,
and yet it was neither warmer nor colder than anything else in the cavern.

Clang, clang, clang, we passed right under the thumping levers of another
vast machine, and so came at last to a wide tunnel, in which we could even
hear the pad, pad, of our shoeless feet, and which, save for the trickling
thread of blue to the right of us, was quite unlit. The shadows made
gigantic travesties of our shapes and those of the Selenites on the
irregular wall and roof of the tunnel. Ever and again crystals in the
walls of the tunnel scintillated like gems, ever and again the tunnel
expanded into a stalactitic cavern, or gave off branches that vanished
into darkness.

We seemed to be marching down that tunnel for a long time. "Trickle,
trickle," went the flowing light very softly, and our footfalls and their
echoes made an irregular paddle, paddle. My mind settled down to the
question of my chains. If I were to slip off one turn _so_, and then to
twist it _so_ ...

If I tried to do it very gradually, would they see I was slipping my wrist
out of the looser turn? If they did, what would they do?

"Bedford," said Cavor, "it goes down. It keeps on going down."

His remark roused me from my sullen pre-occupation.

"If they wanted to kill us," he said, dropping back to come level with me,
"there is no reason why they should not have done it."

"No," I admitted, "that's true."

"They don't understand us," he said, "they think we are merely strange
animals, some wild sort of mooncalf birth, perhaps. It will be only
when they have observed us better that they will begin to think we
have minds--"

"When you trace those geometrical problems," said I.

"It may be that."

We tramped on for a space.

"You see," said Cavor, "these may be Selenites of a lower class."

"The infernal fools!" said I viciously, glancing at their exasperating
faces.

"If we endure what they do to us--"

"We've got to endure it," said I.

"There may be others less stupid. This is the mere outer fringe of their
world. It must go down and down, cavern, passage, tunnel, down at last to
the sea--hundreds of miles below."

His words made me think of the mile or so of rock and tunnel that might be
over our heads already. It was like a weight dropping, on my shoulders.
"Away from the sun and air," I said. "Even a mine half a mile deep is
stuffy." remarked.

"This is not, anyhow. It's probable--Ventilation! The air would blow
from the dark side of the moon to the sunlit, and all the carbonic acid
would well out there and feed those plants. Up this tunnel, for example,
there is quite a breeze. And what a world it must be. The earnest we have
in that shaft, and those machines--"

"And the goad," I said. "Don't forget the goad!"

He walked a little in front of me for a time.

"Even that goad--" he said.

"Well?"

"I was angry at the time. But--it was perhaps necessary we should get on.
They have different skins, and probably different nerves. They may not
understand our objection--just as a being from Mars might not like our
earthly habit of nudging."

"They'd better be careful how they nudge me."

"And about that geometry. After all, their way is a way of understanding,
too. They begin with the elements of life and not of thought. Food.
Compulsion. Pain. They strike at fundamentals."

"There's no doubt about that," I said.

He went on to talk of the enormous and wonderful world into which we were
being taken. I realised slowly from his tone, that even now he was not
absolutely in despair at the prospect of going ever deeper into this
inhuman planet-burrow. His mind ran on machines and invention, to the
exclusion of a thousand dark things that beset me. It wasn't that he
intended to make any use of these things, he simply wanted to know them.

"After all," he said, "this is a tremendous occasion. It is the meeting
of two worlds! What are we going to see? Think of what is below us here."

"We shan't see much if the light isn't better," I remarked.

"This is only the outer crust. Down below-- On this scale-- There will
be everything. Do you notice how different they seem one from another?
The story we shall take back!"

"Some rare sort of animal," I said, "might comfort himself in that way
while they were bringing him to the Zoo.... It doesn't follow that we are
going to be shown all these things."

"When they find we have reasonable minds," said Cavor, "they will want to
learn about the earth. Even if they have no generous emotions, they will
teach in order to learn.... And the things they must know! The
unanticipated things!"

He went on to speculate on the possibility of their knowing things he had
never hoped to learn on earth, speculating in that way, with a raw wound
from that goad already in his skin! Much that he said I forget, for my
attention was drawn to the fact that the tunnel along which we had been
marching was opening out wider and wider. We seemed, from the feeling of
the air, to be going out into a huge space. But how big the space might
really be we could not tell, because it was unlit. Our little stream of
light ran in a dwindling thread and vanished far ahead. Presently the
rocky walls had vanished altogether on either hand. There was nothing to
be seen but the path in front of us and the trickling hurrying rivulet of
blue phosphorescence. The figures of Cavor and the guiding Selenite
marched before me, the sides of their legs and heads that were towards the
rivulet were clear and bright blue, their darkened sides, now that the
reflection of the tunnel wall no longer lit them, merged indistinguishably
in the darkness beyond.

And soon I perceived that we were approaching a declivity of some sort,
because the little blue stream dipped suddenly out of sight.

In another moment, as it seemed, we had reached the edge. The shining
stream gave one meander of hesitation and then rushed over. It fell to a
depth at which the sound of its descent was absolutely lost to us. Far
below was a bluish glow, a sort of blue mist--at an infinite distance
below. And the darkness the stream dropped out of became utterly void and
black, save that a thing like a plank projected from the edge of the cliff
and stretched out and faded and vanished altogether. There was a warm air
blowing up out of the gulf.

For a moment I and Cavor stood as near the edge as we dared, peering into
a blue-tinged profundity. And then our guide was pulling at my arm.

Then he left me, and walked to the end of that plank and stepped upon it,
looking back. Then when he perceived we watched him, he turned about and
went on along it, walking as surely as though he was on firm earth. For a
moment his form was distinct, then he became a blue blur, and then
vanished into the obscurity. I became aware of some vague shape looming
darkly out of the black.

There was a pause. "Surely!--" said Cavor.

One of the other Selenites walked a few paces out upon the plank, and
turned and looked back at us unconcernedly. The others stood ready to
follow after us. Our guide's expectant figure reappeared. He was returning
to see why we had not advanced.

"What is that beyond there?" I asked.

"I can't see."

"We can't cross this at any price," said I.

"I could not go three steps on it," said Cavor, "even with my hands free."

We looked at each other's drawn faces in blank consternation.

"They can't know what it is to be giddy!" said Cavor.

"It's quite impossible for us to walk that plank."

"I don't believe they see as we do. I've been watching them. I wonder if
they know this is simply blackness for us. How can we make them
understand?"

"Anyhow, we must make them understand."

I think we said these things with a vague half hope the Selenites might
somehow understand. I knew quite clearly that all that was needed was an
explanation. Then as I saw their faces, I realised that an explanation was
impossible. Just here it was that our resemblances were not going to
bridge our differences. Well, I wasn't going to walk the plank, anyhow. I
slipped my wrist very quickly out of the coil of chain that was loose, and
then began to twist my wrists in opposite directions. I was standing
nearest to the bridge, and as I did this two of the Selenites laid hold of
me, and pulled me gently towards it.

I shook my head violently. "No go," I said, "no use. You don't
understand."

Another Selenite added his compulsion. I was forced to step forward.

"I've got an idea," said Cavor; but I knew his ideas.

"Look here!" I exclaimed to the Selenites. "Steady on! It's all very well
for you--"

I sprang round upon my heel. I burst out into curses. For one of the armed
Selenites had stabbed me behind with his goad.

I wrenched my wrists free from the little tentacles that held them. I
turned on the goad-bearer. "Confound you!" I cried. "I've warned you of
that. What on earth do you think I'm made of, to stick that into me? If
you touch me again--"

By way of answer he pricked me forthwith.

I heard Cavor's voice in alarm and entreaty. Even then I think he wanted
to compromise with these creatures. "I say, Bedford," he cried, "I know a
way!" But the sting of that second stab seemed to set free some pent-up
reserve of energy in my being. Instantly the link of the wrist-chain
snapped, and with it snapped all considerations that had held us
unresisting in the hands of these moon creatures. For that second, at
least, I was mad with fear and anger. I took no thought of consequences.
I hit straight out at the face of the thing with the goad. The chain was
twisted round my fist.

There came another of these beastly surprises of which the moon world is
full.

My mailed hand seemed to go clean through him. He smashed like--like
some softish sort of sweet with liquid in it! He broke right in! He
squelched and splashed. It was like hitting a damp toadstool. The flimsy
body went spinning a dozen yards, and fell with a flabby impact. I was
astonished. I was incredulous that any living thing could be so flimsy.
For an instant I could have believed the whole thing a dream.

Then it had become real and imminent again. Neither Cavor nor the other
Selenites seemed to have done anything from the time when I had turned
about to the time when the dead Selenite hit the ground. Every one stood
back from us two, every one alert. That arrest seemed to last at least a
second after the Selenite was down. Every one must have been taking the
thing in. I seem to remember myself standing with my arm half retracted,
trying also to take it in. "What next?" clamoured my brain; "what next?"
Then in a moment every one was moving!

I perceived we must get our chains loose, and that before we could do this
these Selenites had to be beaten off. I faced towards the group of the
three goad-bearers. Instantly one threw his goad at me. It swished over
my head, and I suppose went flying into the abyss behind.

I leaped right at him with all my might as the goad flew over me. He
turned to run as I jumped, and I bore him to the ground, came down right
upon him, and slipped upon his smashed body and fell. He seemed to wriggle
under my foot.

I came into a sitting position, and on every hand the blue backs of the
Selenites were receding into the darkness. I bent a link by main force and
untwisted the chain that had hampered me about the ankles, and sprang to
my feet, with the chain in my hand. Another goad, flung javelin-wise,
whistled by me, and I made a rush towards the darkness out of which it had
come. Then I turned back towards Cavor, who was still standing in the
light of the rivulet near the gulf convulsively busy with his wrists, and
at the same time jabbering nonsense about his idea.

"Come on!" I cried.

"My hands!" he answered.

Then, realising that I dared not run back to him, because my
ill-calculated steps might carry me over the edge, he came shuffling
towards me, with his hands held out before him.

I gripped his chains at once to unfasten them.

"Where are they?" he panted.

"Run away. They'll come back. They're throwing things! Which way shall we
go?"

"By the light. To that tunnel. Eh?"

"Yes," said I, and his hands were free.

I dropped on my knees and fell to work on his ankle bonds. Whack came
something--I know not what--and splashed the livid streamlet into drops
about us. Far away on our right a piping and whistling began.

I whipped the chain off his feet, and put it in his hand. "Hit with that!"
I said, and without waiting for an answer, set off in big bounds along
the path by which we had come. I had a nasty sort of feeling that these
things could jump out of the darkness on to my back. I heard the impact of
his leaps come following after me.

We ran in vast strides. But that running, you must understand, was an
altogether different thing from any running on earth. On earth one leaps
and almost instantly hits the ground again, but on the moon, because of
its weaker pull, one shot through the air for several seconds before one
came to earth. In spite of our violent hurry this gave an effect of long
pauses, pauses in which one might have counted seven or eight. "Step,"
and one soared off! All sorts of questions ran through my mind: "Where are
the Selenites? What will they do? Shall we ever get to that tunnel? Is
Cavor far behind? Are they likely to cut him off?" Then whack, stride, and
off again for another step.

I saw a Selenite running in front of me, his legs going exactly as a man's
would go on earth, saw him glance over his shoulder, and heard him shriek
as he ran aside out of my way into the darkness. He was, I think, our
guide, but I am not sure. Then in another vast stride the walls of rock
had come into view on either hand, and in two more strides I was in the
tunnel, and tempering my pace to its low roof. I went on to a bend, then
stopped and turned back, and plug, plug, plug, Cavor came into view,
splashing into the stream of blue light at every stride, and grew larger
and blundered into me. We stood clutching each other. For a moment, at
least, we had shaken off our captors and were alone.

We were both very much out of breath. We spoke in panting, broken
sentences.

"You've spoilt it all!" panted Cavor. "Nonsense," I cried. "It was that
or death!"

"What are we to do?"

"Hide."

"How can we?"

"It's dark enough."

"But where?"

"Up one of these side caverns."

"And then?"

"Think."

"Right--come on."

We strode on, and presently came to a radiating dark cavern. Cavor was in
front. He hesitated, and chose a black mouth that seemed to promise good
hiding. He went towards it and turned.

"It's dark," he said.

"Your legs and feet will light us. You're wet with that luminous stuff."

"But--"

A tumult of sounds, and in particular a sound like a clanging gong,
advancing up the main tunnel, became audible. It was horribly suggestive
of a tumultuous pursuit. We made a bolt for the unlit side cavern
forthwith. As we ran along it our way was lit by the irradiation of
Cavor's legs. "It's lucky," I panted, "they took off our boots, or we
should fill this place with clatter." On we rushed, taking as small steps
as we could to avoid striking the roof of the cavern. After a time we
seemed to be gaining on the uproar. It became muffled, it dwindled, it
died away.

I stopped and looked back, and I heard the pad, pad of Cavor's feet
receding. Then he stopped also. "Bedford," he whispered; "there's a sort
of light in front of us."

I looked, and at first could see nothing. Then I perceived his head and
shoulders dimly outlined against a fainter darkness. I saw, also, that
this mitigation of the darkness was not blue, as all the other light
within the moon had been, but a pallid gray, a very vague, faint white,
the daylight colour. Cavor noted this difference as soon, or sooner, than
I did, and I think, too, that it filled him with much the same wild hope.

"Bedford," he whispered, and his voice trembled. "That light--it is
possible--"

He did not dare to say the thing he hoped. Then came a pause. Suddenly I
knew by the sound of his feet that he was striding towards that pallor. I
followed him with a beating heart.





Chapter 16




Points of View

The light grew stronger as we advanced. In a little time it was nearly as
strong as the phosphorescence on Cavor's legs. Our tunnel was expanding
into a cavern, and this new light was at the farther end of it. I
perceived something that set my hopes leaping and bounding.

"Cavor," I said, "it comes from above! I am certain it comes from above!"

He made no answer, but hurried on.

Indisputably it was a gray light, a silvery light.

In another moment we were beneath it. It filtered down through a chink in
the walls of the cavern, and as I stared up, drip, came a drop of water
upon my face. I started and stood aside--drip, fell another drop quite
audibly on the rocky floor.

"Cavor," I said, "if one of us lifts the other, he can reach that crack!"

"I'll lift you," he said, and incontinently hoisted me as though I was a
baby.

I thrust an arm into the crack, and just at my finger tips found a little
ledge by which I could hold. I could see the white light was very much
brighter now. I pulled myself up by two fingers with scarcely an effort,
though on earth I weigh twelve stone, reached to a still higher corner of
rock, and so got my feet on the narrow ledge. I stood up and searched up
the rocks with my fingers; the cleft broadened out upwardly. "It's
climbable," I said to Cavor. "Can you jump up to my hand if I hold it down
to you?"

I wedged myself between the sides of the cleft, rested knee and foot on
the ledge, and extended a hand. I could not see Cavor, but I could hear
the rustle of his movements as he crouched to spring. Then whack and he
was hanging to my arm--and no heavier than a kitten! I lugged him up
until he had a hand on my ledge, and could release me.

"Confound it!" I said, "any one could be a mountaineer on the moon;" and
so set myself in earnest to the climbing. For a few minutes I clambered
steadily, and then I looked up again. The cleft opened out steadily, and
the light was brighter. Only--

It was not daylight after all.

In another moment I could see what it was, and at the sight I could have
beaten my head against the rocks with disappointment. For I beheld simply
an irregularly sloping open space, and all over its slanting floor stood a
forest of little club-shaped fungi, each shining gloriously with that
pinkish silvery light. For a moment I stared at their soft radiance, then
sprang forward and upward among them. I plucked up half a dozen and flung
them against the rocks, and then sat down, laughing bitterly, as Cavor's
ruddy face came into view.

"It's phosphorescence again!" I said. "No need to hurry. Sit down and make
yourself at home." And as he spluttered over our disappointment, I began
to lob more of these growths into the cleft.

"I thought it was daylight," he said.

"Daylight!" cried I. "Daybreak, sunset, clouds, and windy skies! Shall we
ever see such things again?"

As I spoke, a little picture of our world seemed to rise before me, bright
and little and clear, like the background of some old Italian picture.
"The sky that changes, and the sea that changes, and the hills and the
green trees and the towns and cities shining in the sun. Think of a wet
roof at sunset, Cavor! Think of the windows of a westward house!" He made
no answer.

"Here we are burrowing in this beastly world that isn't a world, with its
inky ocean hidden in some abominable blackness below, and outside that
torrid day and that death stillness of night. And all these things that
are chasing us now, beastly men of leather--insect men, that come out of
a nightmare! After all, they're right! What business have we here smashing
them and disturbing their world! For all we know the whole planet is up
and after us already. In a minute we may hear them whimpering, and their
gongs going. What are we to do? Where are we to go? Here we are as
comfortable as snakes from Jamrach's loose in a Surbiton villa!"

"It was your fault," said Cavor.

"My fault!" I shouted. "Good Lord!"

"I had an idea!"

"Curse your ideas!"

"If we had refused to budge--"

"Under those goads?"

"Yes. They would have carried us!"

"Over that bridge?"

"Yes. They must have carried us from outside."

"I'd rather be carried by a fly across a ceiling."

"Good Heavens!"

I resumed my destruction of the fungi. Then suddenly I saw something that
struck me even then. "Cavor," I said, "these chains are of gold!"

He was thinking intently, with his hands gripping his cheeks. He turned
his head slowly and stared at me, and when I had repeated my words, at the
twisted chain about his right hand. "So they are," he said, "so they
are." His face lost its transitory interest even as he looked. He
hesitated for a moment, then went on with his interrupted meditation. I
sat for a space puzzling over the fact that I had only just observed this,
until I considered the blue light in which we had been, and which had
taken all the colour out of the metal. And from that discovery I also
started upon a train of thought that carried me wide and far. I forgot
that I had just been asking what business we had in the moon. Gold....

It was Cavor who spoke first. "It seems to me that there are two courses
open to us."

"Well?"

"Either we can attempt to make our way--fight our way if necessary--out
to the exterior again, and then hunt for our sphere until we find it, or
the cold of the night comes to kill us, or else--"

He paused. "Yes?" I said, though I knew what was coming.

"We might attempt once more to establish some sort of understanding with
the minds of the people in the moon."

"So far as I'm concerned--it's the first."

"I doubt."

"I don't."

"You see," said Cavor, "I do not think we can judge the Selenites by what
we have seen of them. Their central world, their civilised world will be
far below in the profounder caverns about their sea. This region of the
crust in which we are is an outlying district, a pastoral region. At any
rate, that is my interpretation. These Selenites we have seen may be only
the equivalent of cowboys and engine-tenders. Their use of goads--in all
probability mooncalf goads--the lack of imagination they show in expecting
us to be able to do just what they can do, their indisputable brutality,
all seem to point to something of that sort. But if we endured--"

"Neither of us could endure a six-inch plank across the bottomless pit for
very long."

"No," said Cavor; "but then--"

"I _won't_," I said.

He discovered a new line of possibilities. "Well, suppose we got ourselves
into some corner, where we could defend ourselves against these hinds and
labourers. If, for example, we could hold out for a week or so, it is
probable that the news of our appearance would filter down to the more
intelligent and populous parts--"

"If they exist."

"They must exist, or whence came those tremendous machines?"

"That's possible, but it's the worst of the two chances."

"We might write up inscriptions on walls--"

"How do we know their eyes would see the sort of marks we made?"

"If we cut them--"

"That's possible, of course."

I took up a new thread of thought. "After all," I said, "I suppose you
don't think these Selenites so infinitely wiser than men."

"They must know a lot more--or at least a lot of different things."

"Yes, but--" I hesitated.

"I think you'll quite admit, Cavor, that you're rather an exceptional
man."

"How?"

"Well, you--you're a rather lonely man--have been, that is. You haven't
married."

"Never wanted to. But why--"

"And you never grew richer than you happened to be?"

"Never wanted that either."

"You've just rooted after knowledge?"

"Well, a certain curiosity is natural--"

"You think so. That's just it. You think every other mind wants to know. I
remember once, when I asked you why you conducted all these researches,
you said you wanted your F.R.S., and to have the stuff called Cavorite,
and things like that. You know perfectly well you didn't do it for that;
but at the time my question took you by surprise, and you felt you ought
to have something to look like a motive. Really you conducted researches
because you had to. It's your twist."

"Perhaps it is--"

"It isn't one man in a million has that twist. Most men want--well,
various things, but very few want knowledge for its own sake. I don't, I
know perfectly well. Now, these Selenites seem to be a driving, busy sort
of being, but how do you know that even the most intelligent will take an
interest in us or our world? I don't believe they'll even know we have a
world. They never come out at night--they'd freeze if they did. They've
probably never seen any heavenly body at all except the blazing sun. How
are they to know there is another world? What does it matter to them if
they do? Well, even if they have had a glimpse of a few stars, or even of
the earth crescent, what of that? Why should people living inside a
planet trouble to observe that sort of thing? Men wouldn't have done it
except for the seasons and sailing; why should the moon people?...

"Well, suppose there are a few philosophers like yourself. They are just
the very Selenites who'll never have heard of our existence. Suppose a
Selenite had dropped on the earth when you were at Lympne, you'd have
been the last man in the world to hear he had come. You never read a
newspaper! You see the chances against you. Well, it's for these chances
we're sitting here doing nothing while precious time is flying. I tell you
we've got into a fix. We've come unarmed, we've lost our sphere, we've got
no food, we've shown ourselves to the Selenites, and made them think we're
strange, strong, dangerous animals; and unless these Selenites are perfect
fools, they'll set about now and hunt us till they find us, and when they
find us they'll try to take us if they can, and kill us if they can't, and
that's the end of the matter. If they take us, they'll probably kill us,
through some misunderstanding. After we're done for, they may discuss us
perhaps, but we shan't get much fun out of that."

"Go on."

"On the other hand, here's gold knocking about like cast iron at home. If
only we can get some of it back, if only we can find our sphere again
before they do, and get back, then--"

"Yes?"

"We might put the thing on a sounder footing. Come back in a bigger
sphere with guns."

"Good Lord!" cried Cavor, as though that was horrible.

I shied another luminous fungus down the cleft.

"Look here, Cavor," I said, "I've half the voting power anyhow in this
affair, and this is a case for a practical man. I'm a practical man, and
you are not. I'm not going to trust to Selenites and geometrical diagrams
if I can help it. That's all. Get back. Drop all this secrecy--or most
of it. And come again."

He reflected. "When I came to the moon," he said, "I ought to have come
alone."

"The question before the meeting," I said, "is how to get back to the
sphere."

For a time we nursed our knees in silence. Then he seemed to decide for my
reasons.

"I think," he said, "one can get data. It is clear that while the sun is
on this side of the moon the air will be blowing through this planet
sponge from the dark side hither. On this side, at any rate, the air will
be expanding and flowing out of the moon caverns into the craters....
Very well, there's a draught here."

"So there is."

"And that means that this is not a dead end; somewhere behind us this
cleft goes on and up. The draught is blowing up, and that is the way we
have to go. If we try to get up any sort of chimney or gully there is, we
shall not only get out of these passages where they are hunting for us--"

"But suppose the gully is too narrow?"

"We'll come down again."

"Ssh!" I said suddenly; "what's that?"

We listened. At first it was an indistinct murmur, and then one picked out
the clang of a gong. "They must think we are mooncalves," said I, "to be
frightened at that."

"They're coming along that passage," said Cavor.

"They must be."

"They'll not think of the cleft. They'll go past."

I listened again for a space. "This time," I whispered, "they're likely to
have some sort of weapon."

Then suddenly I sprang to my feet. "Good heavens, Cavor!" I cried. "But
they will! They'll see the fungi I have been pitching down. They'll--"

I didn't finish my sentence. I turned about and made a leap over the
fungus tops towards the upper end of the cavity. I saw that the space
turned upward and became a draughty cleft again, ascending to impenetrable
darkness. I was about to clamber up into this, and then with a happy
inspiration turned back.

"What are you doing?" asked Cavor.

"Go on!" said I, and went back and got two of the shining fungi, and
putting one into the breast pocket of my flannel jacket, so that it stuck
out to light our climbing, went back with the other for Cavor. The noise
of the Selenites was now so loud that it seemed they must be already
beneath the cleft. But it might be they would have difficulty in
clambering in to it, or might hesitate to ascend it against our possible
resistance. At any rate, we had now the comforting knowledge of the
enormous muscular superiority our birth in another planet gave us. In
other minute I was clambering with gigantic vigour after Cavor's blue-lit
heels.





Chapter 17




The Fight in the Cave of the Moon Butchers

I do not know how far we clambered before we came to the grating. It may
be we ascended only a few hundred feet, but at the time it seemed to me we
might have hauled and jammed and hopped and wedged ourselves through a
mile or more of vertical ascent. Whenever I recall that time, there comes
into my head the heavy clank of our golden chains that followed every
movement. Very soon my knuckles and knees were raw, and I had a bruise on
one cheek. After a time the first violence of our efforts diminished, and
our movements became more deliberate and less painful. The noise of the
pursuing Selenites had died away altogether. It seemed almost as though
they had not traced us up the crack after all, in spite of the tell-tale
heap of broken fungi that must have lain beneath it. At times the cleft
narrowed so much that we could scarce squeeze up it; at others it expanded
into great drusy cavities, studded with prickly crystals or thickly beset
with dull, shining fungoid pimples. Sometimes it twisted spirally, and at
other times slanted down nearly to the horizontal direction. Ever and
again there was the intermittent drip and trickle of water by us. Once or
twice it seemed to us that small living things had rustled out of our
reach, but what they were we never saw. They may have been venomous beasts
for all I know, but they did us no harm, and we were now tuned to a pitch
when a weird creeping thing more or less mattered little. And at last, far
above, came the familiar bluish light again, and then we saw that it
filtered through a grating that barred our way.

We whispered as we pointed this out to one another, and became more and
more cautious in our ascent. Presently we were close under the grating,
and by pressing my face against its bars I could see a limited portion of
the cavern beyond. It was clearly a large space, and lit no doubt by some
rivulet of the same blue light that we had seen flow from the beating
machinery. An intermittent trickle of water dropped ever and again between
the bars near my face.

My first endeavour was naturally to see what might be upon the floor of
the cavern, but our grating lay in a depression whose rim hid all this
from our eyes. Our foiled attention then fell back upon the suggestion of
the various sounds we heard, and presently my eye caught a number of faint
shadows that played across the dim roof far overhead.

Indisputably there were several Selenites, perhaps a considerable number,
in this space, for we could hear the noises of their intercourse, and
faint sounds that I identified as their footfalls. There was also a
succession of regularly repeated sounds--chid, chid, chid--which began
and ceased, suggestive of a knife or spade hacking at some soft substance.
Then came a clank as if of chains, a whistle and a rumble as of a truck
running over a hollowed place, and then again that chid, chid, chid
resumed. The shadows told of shapes that moved quickly and rhythmically,
in agreement with that regular sound, and rested when it ceased.

We put our heads close together, and began to discuss these things in
noiseless whispers.

"They are occupied," I said, "they are occupied in some way."

"Yes."

"They're not seeking us, or thinking of us."

"Perhaps they have not heard of us."

"Those others are hunting about below. If suddenly we appeared here--"

We looked at one another.

"There might be a chance to parley," said Cavor.

"No," I said. "Not as we are."

For a space we remained, each occupied by his own thoughts.

Chid, chid, chid went the chipping, and the shadows moved to and fro.

I looked at the grating. "It's flimsy," I said. "We might bend two of the
bars and crawl through."

We wasted a little time in vague discussion. Then I took one of the bars
in both hands, and got my feet up against the rock until they were almost
on a level with my head, and so thrust against the bar. It bent so
suddenly that I almost slipped. I clambered about and bent the adjacent
bar in the opposite direction, and then took the luminous fungus from my
pocket and dropped it down the fissure.

"Don't do anything hastily," whispered Cavor, as I twisted myself up
through the opening I had enlarged. I had a glimpse of busy figures as I
came through the grating, and immediately bent down, so that the rim of
the depression in which the grating lay hid me from their eyes, and so lay
flat, signalling advice to Cavor as he also prepared to come through.
Presently we were side by side in the depression, peering over the edge at
the cavern and its occupants.

It was a much larger cavern than we had supposed from our first glimpse of
it, and we looked up from the lowest portion of its sloping floor. It
widened out as it receded from us, and its roof came down and hid the
remoter portion altogether. And lying in a line along its length,
vanishing at last far away in that tremendous perspective, were a number
of huge shapes, huge pallid hulls, upon which the Selenites were busy. At
first they seemed big white cylinders of vague import. Then I noted the
heads upon them lying towards us, eyeless and skinless like the heads of
sheep at a butcher's, and perceived they were the carcasses of mooncalves
being cut up, much as the crew of a whaler might cut up a moored whale.
They were cutting off the flesh in strips, and on some of the farther
trunks the white ribs were showing. It was the sound of their hatchets
that made that chid, chid, chid. Some way away a thing like a trolley
cable, drawn and loaded with chunks of lax meat, was running up the slope
of the cavern floor. This enormous long avenue of hulls that were destined
to be food gave us a sense of the vast populousness of the moon world
second only to the effect of our first glimpse down the shaft.

It seemed to me at first that the Selenites must be standing on
trestle-supported planks,[*] and then I saw that the planks and supports
and the hatchets were really of the same leaden hue as my fetters had
seemed before white light came to bear on them. A number of very
thick-looking crowbars lay about the floor, and had apparently assisted
to turn the dead mooncalf over on its side. They were perhaps six feet
long, with shaped handles, very tempting-looking weapons. The whole
place was lit by three transverse streams of the blue fluid.

[* Footnote: I do not remember seeing any wooden things on the moon; doors
tables, everything corresponding to our terrestrial joinery was made of
metal, and I believe for the most part of gold, which as a metal would,
of course, naturally recommend itself--other things being equal--on
account of the ease in working it, and its toughness and durability.]

We lay for a long time noting all these things in silence. "Well?" said
Cavor at last.

I crouched over and turned to him. I had come upon a brilliant idea.
"Unless they lowered those bodies by a crane," I said, "we must be nearer
the surface than I thought."

"Why?"

"The mooncalf doesn't hop, and it hasn't got wings."

He peered over the edge of the hollow again. "I wonder now--" he began.
"After all, we have never gone far from the surface--"

I stopped him by a grip on his arm. I had heard a noise from the cleft
below us!

We twisted ourselves about, and lay as still as death, with every sense
alert. In a little while I did not doubt that something was quietly
ascending the cleft. Very slowly and quite noiselessly I assured myself
of a good grip on my chain, and waited for that something to appear.

"Just look at those chaps with the hatchets again," I said.

"They're all right," said Cavor.

I took a sort of provisional aim at the gap in the grating. I could hear
now quite distinctly the soft twittering of the ascending Selenites, the
dab of their hands against the rock, and the falling of dust from their
grips as they clambered.

Then I could see that there was something moving dimly in the blackness
below the grating, but what it might be I could not distinguish. The whole
thing seemed to hang fire just for a moment--then smash! I had sprung
to my feet, struck savagely at something that had flashed out at me. It
was the keen point of a spear. I have thought since that its length in the
narrowness of the cleft must have prevented its being sloped to reach me.
Anyhow, it shot out from the grating like the tongue of a snake, and
missed and flew back and flashed again. But the second time I snatched and
caught it, and wrenched it away, but not before another had darted
ineffectually at me.

I shouted with triumph as I felt the hold of the Selenite resist my pull
for a moment and give, and then I was jabbing down through the bars,
amidst squeals from the darkness, and Cavor had snapped off the other
spear, and was leaping and flourishing it beside me, and making
inefficient jabs. Clang, clang, came up through the grating, and then an
axe hurtled through the air and whacked against the rocks beyond, to
remind me of the fleshers at the carcasses up the cavern.

I turned, and they were all coming towards us in open order waving their
axes. They were short, thick, little beggars, with long arms, strikingly
different from the ones we had seen before. If they had not heard of us
before, they must have realised the situation with incredible swiftness. I
stared at them for a moment, spear in hand. "Guard that grating, Cavor," I
cried, howled to intimidate them, and rushed to meet them. Two of them
missed with their hatchets, and the rest fled incontinently. Then the two
also were sprinting away up the cavern, with hands clenched and heads
down. I never saw men run like them!

I knew the spear I had was no good for me. It was thin and flimsy, only
effectual for a thrust, and too long for a quick recover. So I only chased
the Selenites as far as the first carcass, and stopped there and picked up
one of the crowbars that were lying about. It felt comfortingly heavy, and
equal to smashing any number of Selenites. I threw away my spear, and
picked up a second crowbar for the other hand. I felt five times better
than I had with the spear. I shook the two threateningly at the Selenites,
who had come to a halt in a little crowd far away up the cavern, and then
turned about to look at Cavor.

He was leaping from side to side of the grating, making threatening jabs
with his broken spear. That was all right. It would keep the Selenites
down--for a time at any rate. I looked up the cavern again. What on earth
were we going to do now?

We were cornered in a sort of way already. But these butchers up the
cavern had been surprised, they were probably scared, and they had no
special weapons, only those little hatchets of theirs. And that way lay
escape. Their sturdy little forms--ever so much shorter and thicker than
the mooncalf herds--were scattered up the slope in a way that was
eloquent of indecision. I had the moral advantage of a mad bull in a
street. But for all that, there seemed a tremendous crowd of them. Very
probably there was. Those Selenites down the cleft had certainly some
infernally long spears. It might be they had other surprises for us....
But, confound it! if we charged up the cave we should let them up behind
us, and if we didn't those little brutes up the cave would probably get
reinforced. Heaven alone knew what tremendous engines of warfare--guns,
bombs, terrestrial torpedoes--this unknown world below our feet, this
vaster world of which we had only pricked the outer cuticle, might not
presently send up to our destruction. It became clear the only thing to do
was to charge! It became clearer as the legs of a number of fresh
Selenites appeared running down the cavern towards us.

"Bedford!" cried Cavor, and behold! he was halfway between me and the
grating.

"Go back!" I cried. "What are you doing--"

"They've got--it's like a gun!"

And struggling in the grating between those defensive spears appeared the
head and shoulders of a singularly lean and angular Selenite, bearing some
complicated apparatus.

I realised Cavor's utter incapacity for the fight we had in hand. For a
moment I hesitated. Then I rushed past him whirling my crowbars, and
shouting to confound the aim of the Selenite. He was aiming in the
queerest way with the thing against his stomach. "Chuzz!" The thing
wasn't a gun; it went off like cross-bow more, and dropped me in the
middle of a leap.

I didn't fall down, I simply came down a little shorter than I should have
done if I hadn't been hit, and from the feel of my shoulder the thing
might have tapped me and glanced off. Then my left hand hit again the
shaft, and I perceived there was a sort of spear sticking half through my
shoulder. The moment after I got home with the crowbar in my right hand,
and hit the Selenite fair and square. He collapsed--he crushed and
crumpled--his head smashed like an egg.

I dropped a crowbar, pulled the spear out of my shoulder, and began to jab
it down the grating into the darkness. At each jab came a shriek and
twitter. Finally I hurled the spear down upon them with all my strength,
leapt up, picked up the crowbar again, and started for the multitude up
the cavern.

"Bedford!" cried Cavor. "Bedford!" as I flew past him.

I seem to remember his footsteps coming on behind me.

Step, leap ... whack, step, leap.... Each leap seemed to last ages. With
each, the cave opened out and the number of Selenites visible increased.
At first they seemed all running about like ants in a disturbed ant-hill,
one or two waving hatchets and coming to meet me, more running away, some
bolting sideways into the avenue of carcasses, then presently others came
in sight carrying spears, and then others. I saw a most extraordinary
thing, all hands and feet, bolting for cover. The cavern grew darker
farther up.

Flick! something flew over my head. Flick! As I soared in mid-stride I saw
a spear hit and quiver in one of the carcasses to my left. Then, as I came
down, one hit the ground before me, and I heard the remote chuzz! with
which their things were fired. Flick, flick! for a moment it was a
shower. They were volleying!

I stopped dead.

I don't think I thought clearly then. I seem to remember a kind of
stereotyped phrase running through my mind: "Zone of fire, seek cover!" I
know I made a dash for the space between two of the carcasses, and stood
there panting and feeling very wicked.

I looked round for Cavor, and for a moment it seemed as if he had vanished
from the world. Then he came out of the darkness between the row of the
carcasses and the rocky wall of the cavern. I saw his little face, dark
and blue, and shining with perspiration and emotion.

He was saying something, but what it was I did not heed. I had realised
that we might work from mooncalf to mooncalf up the cave until we were
near enough to charge home. It was charge or nothing. "Come on!" I said,
and led the way.

"Bedford!" he cried unavailingly.

My mind was busy as we went up that narrow alley between the dead bodies
and the wall of the cavern. The rocks curved about--they could not
enfilade us. Though in that narrow space we could not leap, yet with our
earth-born strength we were still able to go very much faster than the
Selenites. I reckoned we should presently come right among them. Once
we were on them, they would be nearly as formidable as black beetles.
Only there would first of all be a volley. I thought of a stratagem.
I whipped off my flannel jacket as I ran.

"Bedford!" panted Cavor behind me.

I glanced back. "What?" said I.

He was pointing upward over the carcasses. "White light!" he said. "White
light again!"

I looked, and it was even so; a faint white ghost of light in the remoter
cavern roof. That seemed to give me double strength.

"Keep close," I said. A flat, long Selenite dashed out of the darkness,
and squealed and fled. I halted, and stopped Cavor with my hand. I hung my
jacket over my crowbar, ducked round the next carcass, dropped jacket and
crowbar, showed myself, and darted back.

"Chuzz-flick," just one arrow came. We were close on the Selenites, and
they were standing in a crowd, broad, short, and tall together, with a
little battery of their shooting implements pointing down the cave. Three
or four other arrows followed the first, then their fire ceased.

I stuck out my head, and escaped by a hair's-breadth. This time I drew a
dozen shots or more, and heard the Selenites shouting and twittering as if
with excitement as they shot. I picked up jacket and crowbar again.

"Now!" said I, and thrust out the jacket.

"Chuzz-zz-zz-zz! Chuzz!" In an instant my jacket had grown a thick beard
of arrows, and they were quivering all over the carcass behind us.
Instantly I slipped the crowbar out of the jacket, dropped the jacket--for
all I know to the contrary it is lying up there in the moon now--and
rushed out upon them.

For a minute perhaps it was massacre. I was too fierce to discriminate,
and the Selenites were probably too scared to fight. At any rate they made
no sort of fight against me. I saw scarlet, as the saying is. I remember I
seemed to be wading among those leathery, thin things as a man wades
through tall grass, mowing and hitting, first right, then left; smash.
Little drops of moisture flew about. I trod on things that crushed and
piped and went slippery. The crowd seemed to open and close and flow like
water. They seemed to have no combined plan whatever. There were spears
flew about me, I was grazed over the ear by one. I was stabbed once in the
arm and once in the cheek, but I only found that out afterwards, when the
blood had had time to run and cool and feel wet.

What Cavor did I do not know. For a space it seemed that this fighting had
lasted for an age, and must needs go on for ever. Then suddenly it was all
over, and there was nothing to be seen but the backs of heads bobbing up
and down as their owners ran in all directions.... I seemed altogether
unhurt. I ran forward some paces, shouting, then turned about. I was
amazed.

I had come right through them in vast flying strides, they were all behind
me, and running hither and thither to hide.

I felt an enormous astonishment at the evaporation of the great fight into
which I had hurled myself, and not a little exultation. It did not seem to
me that I had discovered the Selenites were unexpectedly flimsy, but that
I was unexpectedly strong. I laughed stupidly. This fantastic moon!

I glanced for a moment at the smashed and writhing bodies that were
scattered over the cavern floor, with a vague idea of further violence,
then hurried on after Cavor.





Chapter 18




In the Sunlight

Presently we saw that the cavern before us opened upon a hazy void. In
another moment we had emerged upon a sort of slanting gallery, that
projected into a vast circular space, a huge cylindrical pit running
vertically up and down. Round this pit the slanting gallery ran without
any parapet or protection for a turn and a half, and then plunged high
above into the rock again. Somehow it reminded me then one of those spiral
turns of the railway through the Saint Gothard. It was all tremendously
huge. I can scarcely hope to convey to you the Titanic proportion of all
that place, the Titanic effect of it. Our eyes followed up the vast
declivity of the pit wall, and overhead and far above we beheld a round
opening set with faint stars, and half of the lip about it well nigh
blinding with the white light of the sun. At that we cried aloud
simultaneously.

"Come on!" I said, leading the way.

"But there?" said Cavor, and very carefully stepped nearer the edge of the
gallery. I followed his example, and craned forward and looked down, but I
was dazzled by that gleam of light above, and I could see only a
bottomless darkness with spectral patches of crimson and purple floating
therein. Yet if I could not see, I could hear. Out of this darkness came a
sound, a sound like the angry hum one can hear if one puts one's ear
outside a hive of bees, a sound out of that enormous hollow, it may be,
four miles beneath our feet...

For a moment I listened, then tightened my grip on my crowbar, and led the
way up the gallery.

"This must be the shaft we looked down upon," said Cavor. "Under that
lid."

"And below there, is where we saw the lights."

"The lights!" said he. "Yes--the lights of the world that now we shall
never see."

"We'll come back," I said, for now we had escaped so much I was rashly
sanguine that we should recover the sphere.

His answer I did not catch.

"Eh?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter," he answered, and we hurried on in silence.

I suppose that slanting lateral way was four or five miles long, allowing
for its curvature, and it ascended at a slope that would have made it
almost impossibly steep on earth, but which one strode up easily under
lunar conditions. We saw only two Selenites during all that portion of our
flight, and directly they became aware of us they ran headlong. It was
clear that the knowledge of our strength and violence had reached them.
Our way to the exterior was unexpectedly plain. The spiral gallery
straightened into a steeply ascendent tunnel, its floor bearing abundant
traces of the mooncalves, and so straight and short in proportion to its
vast arch, that no part of it was absolutely dark. Almost immediately it
began to lighten, and then far off and high up, and quite blindingly
brilliant, appeared its opening on the exterior, a slope of Alpine
steepness surmounted by a crest of bayonet shrub, tall and broken down
now, and dry and dead, in spiky silhouette against the sun.

And it is strange that we men, to whom this very vegetation had seemed so
weird and horrible a little time ago, should now behold it with the
emotion a home-coming exile might feel at sight of his native land. We
welcomed even the rareness of the air that made us pant as we ran, and
which rendered speaking no longer the easy thing that it had been, but an
effort to make oneself heard. Larger grew the sunlit circle above us, and
larger, and all the nearer tunnel sank into a rim of indistinguishable
black. We saw the dead bayonet shrub no longer with any touch of green in
it, but brown and dry and thick, and the shadow of its upper branches
high out of sight made a densely interlaced pattern upon the tumbled
rocks. And at the immediate mouth of the tunnel was a wide trampled space
where the mooncalves had come and gone.

We came out upon this space at last into a light and heat that hit and
pressed upon us. We traversed the exposed area painfully, and clambered up
a slope among the scrub stems, and sat down at last panting in a high
place beneath the shadow of a mass of twisted lava. Even in the shade the
rock felt hot.

The air was intensely hot, and we were in great physical discomfort, but
for all that we were no longer in a nightmare. We seemed to have come to
our own province again, beneath the stars. All the fear and stress of our
flight through the dim passages and fissures below had fallen from us.
That last fight had filled us with an enormous confidence in ourselves so
far as the Selenites were concerned. We looked back almost incredulously
at the black opening from which we had just emerged. Down there it was, in
a blue glow that now in our memories seemed the next thing to absolute
darkness, we had met with things like mad mockeries of men, helmet-headed
creatures, and had walked in fear before them, and had submitted to them
until we could submit no longer. And behold, they had smashed like wax and
scattered like chaff, and fled and vanished like the creatures of a dream!

I rubbed my eyes, doubting whether we had not slept and dreamt these
things by reason of the fungus we had eaten, and suddenly discovered the
blood upon my face, and then that my shirt was sticking painfully to my
shoulder and arm.

"Confound it!" I said, gauging my injuries with an investigatory hand, and
suddenly that distant tunnel mouth became, as it were, a watching eye.

"Cavor!" I said; "what are they going to do now? And what are we going to
do?"

He shook his head, with his eyes fixed upon the tunnel. "How can one tell
what they will do?"

"It depends on what they think of us, and I don't see how we can begin to
guess that. And it depends upon what they have in reserve. It's as you
say, Cavor, we have touched the merest outside of this world. They may
have all sorts of things inside here. Even with those shooting things they
might make it bad for us....

"Yet after all," I said, "even if we don't find the sphere at once, there
is a chance for us. We might hold out. Even through the night. We might go
down there again and make a fight for it."

I stared about me with speculative eyes. The character of the scenery had
altered altogether by reason of the enormous growth and subsequent drying
of the scrub. The crest on which we sat was high, and commanded a wide
prospect of the crater landscape, and we saw it now all sere and dry in
the late autumn of the lunar afternoon. Rising one behind the other were
long slopes and fields of trampled brown where the mooncalves had
pastured, and far away in the full blaze of the sun a drove of them basked
slumberously, scattered shapes, each with a blot of shadow against it like
sheep on the side of a down. But never a sign of a Selenite was to be
seen. Whether they had fled on our emergence from the interior passages,
or whether they were accustomed to retire after driving out the
mooncalves, I cannot guess. At the time I believed the former was the
case.

"If we were to set fire to all this stuff," I said, "we might find the
sphere among the ashes."

Cavor did not seem to hear me. He was peering under his hand at the stars,
that still, in spite of the intense sunlight, were abundantly visible in
the sky. "How long do you think we've have been here?" he asked at last.

"Been where?"

"On the moon."

"Two earthly days, perhaps."

"More nearly ten. Do you know, the sun is past its zenith, and sinking in
the west. In four days' time or less it will be night."

"But--we've only eaten once!"

"I know that. And-- But there are the stars!"

"But why should time seem different because we are on a smaller planet?"

"I don't know. There it is!"

"How does one tell time?"

"Hunger--fatigue--all those things are different. Everything is
different--everything. To me it seems that since first we came out of the
sphere has been only a question of hours--long hours--at most."

"Ten days," I said; "that leaves--" I looked up at the sun for a moment,
and then saw that it was halfway from the zenith to the western edge of
things. "Four days! ... Cavor, we mustn't sit here and dream. How do you
think we may begin?"

I stood up. "We must get a fixed point we can recognise--we might hoist a
flag, or a handkerchief, or something--and quarter the ground, and work
round that."

He stood up beside me.

"Yes," he said, "there is nothing for it but to hunt the sphere. Nothing.
We may find it--certainly we may find it. And if not--"

"We must keep on looking."

He look this way and that, glanced up at the sky and down at the tunnel,
and astonished me by a sudden gesture of impatience. "Oh! but we have
done foolishly! To have come to this pass! Think how it might have been,
and the things we might have done!"

"We might do something yet."

"Never the thing we might have done. Here below out feet is a world.
Think of what that world must be! Think of that machine we saw, and the
lid and the shaft! They were just remote outlying things, and those
creatures we have seen and fought with no more than ignorant peasants,
dwellers in the outskirts, yokels and labourers half akin to brutes. Down
below! Caverns beneath caverns, tunnels, structures, ways... It must
open out, and be greater and wider and more populous as one descends.
Assuredly. Right down at the last the central sea that washes round the
core of the moon. Think of its inky waters under the spare lights--if,
indeed, their eyes need lights! Think of the cascading tributaries
pouring down their channels to feed it! Think of the tides upon its
surface, and the rush and swirl of its ebb and flow! perhaps they have
ships that go upon it, perhaps down there are mighty cities and swarming
ways, and wisdom and order passing the wit of man. And we may die here
upon it, and never see the masters who must be--ruling over these things!
We may freeze and die here, and the air will freeze and thaw upon us, and
then--! Then they will come upon us, come on our stiff and silent
bodies, and find the sphere we cannot find, and they will understand at
last too late all the thought and effort that ended here in vain!"

His voice for all that speech sounded like the voice of someone heard
in a telephone, weak and far away.

"But the darkness," I said.

"One might get over that."

"How?"

"I don't know. How am I to know? One might carry a torch, one might have
a lamp-- The others--might understand."

He stood for a moment with his hands held down and a rueful face, staring
out over the waste that defied him. Then with a gesture of renunciation
he turned towards me with proposals for the systematic hunting of the
sphere.

"We can return," I said.

He looked about him. "First of all we shall have to get to earth."

"We could bring back lamps to carry and climbing irons, and a hundred
necessary things."

"Yes," he said.

"We can take back an earnest of success in this gold."

He looked at my golden crowbars, and said nothing for a space. He stood
with his hands clasped behind his back, staring across the crater. At
last he signed and spoke. "It was I found the way here, but to find a way
isn't always to be master of a way. If I take my secret back to earth,
what will happen? I do not see how I can keep my secret for a year, for
even a part of a year. Sooner or later it must come out, even if other
men rediscover it. And then ... Governments and powers will struggle to
get hither, they will fight against one another, and against these moon
people; it will only spread warfare and multiply the occasions of war. In
a little while, in a very little while, if I tell my secret, this planet
to its deepest galleries will be strewn with human dead. Other things are
doubtful, but that is certain. It is not as though man had any use for the
moon. What good would the moon be to men? Even of their own planet what
have they made but a battle-ground and theatre of infinite folly? Small
as his world is, and short as his time, he has still in his little life
down there far more than he can do. No! Science has toiled too long
forging weapons for fools to use. It is time she held her hand. Let him
find it out for himself again--in a thousand years' time."

"There are methods of secrecy," I said.

He looked up at me and smiled. "After all," he said, "why should one
worry? There is little chance of our finding the sphere, and down below
things are brewing. It's simply the human habit of hoping till we die that
makes us think of return. Our troubles are only beginning. We have shown
these moon folk violence, we have given them a taste of our quality, and
our chances are about as good as a tiger's that has got loose and killed a
man in Hyde Park. The news of us must be running down from gallery to
gallery, down towards the central parts.... No sane beings will ever let
us take that sphere back to earth after so much as they have seen of us."

"We aren't improving our chances," said I, "by sitting here."

We stood up side by side.

"After all," he said, "we must separate. We must stick up a handkerchief on
these tall spikes here and fasten it firmly, and from this as a centre we
must work over the crater. You must go westward, moving out in semicircles
to and fro towards the setting sun. You must move first with your shadow
on your right until it is at right angles with the direction of your
handkerchief, and then with your shadow on your left. And I will do the
same to the east. We will look into every gully, examine every skerry of
rocks; we will do all we can to find my sphere. If we see the Selenites we
will hide from them as well as we can. For drink we must take snow, and if
we feel the need of food, we must kill a mooncalf if we can, and eat such
flesh as it has--raw--and so each will go his own way."

"And if one of us comes upon the sphere?"

"He must come back to the white handkerchief, and stand by it and signal
to the other."

"And if neither?"

Cavor glanced up at the sun. "We go on seeking until the night and cold
overtake us."

"Suppose the Selenites have found the sphere and hidden it?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Or if presently they come hunting us?"

He made no answer.

"You had better take a club," I said.

He shook his head, and stared away from me across the waste.

But for a moment he did not start. He looked round at me shyly, hesitated.
"Au revoir," he said.

I felt an odd stab of emotion. A sense of how we had galled each other,
and particularly how I must have galled him, came to me. "Confound it,"
thought I, "we might have done better!" I was on the point of asking him
to shake hands--for that, somehow, was how I felt just then--when he put
his feet together and leapt away from me towards the north. He seemed to
drift through the air as a dead leaf would do, fell lightly, and leapt
again. I stood for a moment watching him, then faced westward reluctantly,
pulled myself together, and with something of the feeling of a man who
leaps into icy water, selected a leaping point, and plunged forward to
explore my solitary half of the moon world. I dropped rather clumsily
among rocks, stood up and looked about me, clambered on to a rocky slab,
and leapt again....

When presently I looked for Cavor he was hidden from my eyes, but the
handkerchief showed out bravely on its headland, white in the blaze of the
sun.

I determined not to lose sight of that handkerchief whatever might betide.





Chapter 19




Mr. Bedford Alone

In a little while it seemed to me as though I had always been alone on the
moon. I hunted for a time with a certain intentness, but the heat was
still very great, and the thinness of the air felt like a hoop about one's
chest. I came presently into a hollow basin bristling with tall, brown,
dry fronds about its edge, and I sat down under these to rest and cool. I
intended to rest for only a little while. I put down my clubs beside me,
and sat resting my chin on my hands. I saw with a sort of colourless
interest that the rocks of the basin, where here and there the crackling
dry lichens had shrunk away to show them, were all veined and splattered
with gold, that here and there bosses of rounded and wrinkled gold
projected from among the litter. What did that matter now? A sort of
languor had possession of my limbs and mind, I did not believe for a moment
that we should ever find the sphere in that vast desiccated wilderness. I
seemed to lack a motive for effort until the Selenites should come. Then
I supposed I should exert myself, obeying that unreasonable imperative
that urges a man before all things to preserve and defend his life, albeit
he may preserve it only to die more painfully in a little while.

Why had we come to the moon?

The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this
spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and
security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk even a reasonable
certainty of death? It dawned upon me up there in the moon as a thing I
ought always to have known, that man is not made simply to go about being
safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. Almost any man, if you put
the thing to him, not in words, but in the shape of opportunities, will
show that he knob as much. Against his interest, against his happiness, he
is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not
himself impels him, and go he must. But why? Why? Sitting there in the
midst of that useless moon gold, amidst the things of another world, I
took count of all my life. Assuming I was to die a castaway upon the moon,
I failed altogether to see what purpose I had served. I got no light on
that point, but at any rate it was clearer to me than it had ever been in
my life before that I was not serving my own purpose, that all my life I
had in truth never served the purposes of my private life. Whose purposes,
what purposes, was I serving? ... I ceased to speculate on why we had come
to the moon, and took a wider sweep. Why had I come to the earth? Why had
I a private life at all? ... I lost myself at last in bottomless
speculations....

My thoughts became vague and cloudy, no longer leading in definite
directions. I had not felt heavy or weary--I cannot imagine one doing so
upon the moon--but I suppose I was greatly fatigued. At any rate I slept.

Slumbering there rested me greatly, I think, and the sun was setting and
the violence of the heat abating, through all the time I slumbered. When
at last I was roused from my slumbers by a remote clamour, I felt active
and capable again. I rubbed my eyes and stretched my arms. I rose to my
feet--I was a little stiff--and at once prepared to resume my search. I
shouldered my golden clubs, one on each shoulder, and went on out of the
ravine of the gold-veined rocks.

The sun was certainly lower, much lower than it had been; the air was very
much cooler. I perceived I must have slept some time. It seemed to me that
a faint touch of misty blueness hung about the western cliff I leapt to a
little boss of rock and surveyed the crater. I could see no signs of
mooncalves or Selenites, nor could I see Cavor, but I could see my
handkerchief far off, spread out on its thicket of thorns. I looked bout
me, and then leapt forward to the next convenient view-point.

I beat my round in a semicircle, and back again in a still remoter
crescent. It was very fatiguing and hopeless. The air was really very much
cooler, and it seemed to me that the shadow under the westward cliff was
growing broad. Ever and again I stopped and reconnoitred, but there was no
sign of Cavor, no sign of Selenites; and it seemed to me the mooncalves
must have been driven into the interior again--I could see none of them.
I became more and more desirous of seeing Cavor. The winged outline of the
sun had sunk now, until it was scarcely the distance of its diameter from
the rim of the sky. I was oppressed by the idea that the Selenites would
presently close their lids and valves, and shut us out under the
inexorable onrush of the lunar night. It seemed to me high time that he
abandoned his search, and that we took counsel together. I felt how urgent
it was that we should decide soon upon our course. We had failed to find
the sphere, we no longer had time to seek it, and once these valves were
closed with us outside, we were lost men. The great night of space would
descend upon us--that blackness of the void which is the only absolute
death. All my being shrank from that approach. We must get into the moon
again, though we were slain in doing it. I was haunted by a vision of our
freezing to death, of our hammering with our last strength on the valve of
the great pit.

I took no thought any more of the sphere. I thought only of finding Cavor
again. I was half inclined to go back into the moon without him, rather
than seek him until it was too late. I was already half-way back towards
our handkerchief, when suddenly--

I saw the sphere!

I did not find it so much as it found me. It was lying much farther to the
westward than I had gone, and the sloping rays of the sinking sun
reflected from its glass had suddenly proclaimed its presence in a
dazzling beam. For an instant I thought this was some new device of the
Selenites against us, and then I understood.

I threw up my arms, shouted a ghostly shout, and set off in vast leaps
towards it. I missed one of my leaps and dropped into a deep ravine and
twisted my ankle, and after that I stumbled at almost every leap. I was
in a state of hysterical agitation, trembling violently, and quite
breathless long before I got to it. Three times at least I had to stop
with my hands resting on my side and in spite of the thin dryness of the
air, the perspiration was wet upon my face.

I thought of nothing but the sphere until I reached it, I forgot even my
trouble of Cavor's whereabouts. My last leap flung me with my hands hard
against its glass; then I lay against it panting, and trying vainly to
shout, "Cavor! here is the sphere!" When I had recovered a little I peered
through the thick glass, and the things inside seemed tumbled. I stooped
to peer closer. Then I attempted to get in. I had to hoist it over a
little to get my head through the manhole. The screw stopper was inside,
and I could see now that nothing had been touched, nothing had suffered.
It lay there as we had left it when we had dropped out amidst the snow.
For a time I was wholly occupied in making and remaking this inventory. I
found I was trembling violently. It was good to see that familiar dark
interior again! I cannot tell you how good. Presently I crept inside and
sat down among the things. I looked through the glass at the moon world
and shivered. I placed my gold clubs upon the table, and sought out and
took a little food; not so much because I wanted it, but because it was
there. Then it occurred to me that it was time to go out and signal for
Cavor. But I did not go out and signal for Cavor forthwith. Something
held me to the sphere.

After all, everything was coming right. There would be still time for us
to get more of the magic stone that gives one mastery over men. Away
there, close handy, was gold for the picking up; and the sphere would
travel as well half full of gold as though it were empty. We could go
back now, masters of ourselves and our world, and then--

I roused myself at last, and with an effort got myself out of the sphere.
I shivered as I emerged, for the evening air was growing very cold. I
stood in the hollow staring about me. I scrutinised the bushes round me
very carefully before I leapt to the rocky shelf hard by, and took once
more what had been my first leap in the moon. But now I made it with no
effort whatever.

The growth and decay of the vegetation had gone on apace, and the whole
aspect of the rocks had changed, but still it was possible to make out the
slope on which the seeds had germinated, and the rocky mass from which we
had taken our first view of the crater. But the spiky shrub on the slope
stood brown and sere now, and thirty feet high, and cast long shadows that
stretched out of sight, and the little seeds that clustered in its upper
branches were brown and ripe. Its work was done, and it was brittle and
ready to fall and crumple under the freezing air, so soon as the nightfall
came. And the huge cacti, that had swollen as we watched them, had long
since burst and scattered their spores to the four quarters of the moon.
Amazing little corner in the universe--the landing place of men!

Some day, thought I, I will have an inscription standing there right in
the midst of the hollow. It came to me, if only this teeming world within
knew of the full import of the moment, how furious its tumult would
become!

But as yet it could scarcely be dreaming of the significance of our
coming. For if it did, the crater would surely be an uproar of pursuit,
instead of as still as death! I looked about for some place from which I
might signal Cavor, and saw that same patch of rock to which he had leapt
from my present standpoint, still bare and barren in the sun. For a moment
I hesitated at going so far from the sphere. Then with a pang of shame at
that hesitation, I leapt....

From this vantage point I surveyed the crater again. Far away at the top
of the enormous shadow I cast was the little white handkerchief fluttering
on the bushes. It was very little and very far, and Cavor was not in
sight. It seemed to me that by this time he ought to be looking for me.
That was the agreement. But he was nowhere to be seen.

I stood waiting and watching, hands shading my eyes, expecting every
moment to distinguish him. Very probably I stood there for quite a long
time. I tried to shout, and was reminded of the thinness of the air. I
made an undecided step back towards the sphere. But a lurking dread of
the Selenites made me hesitate to signal my whereabouts by hoisting one of
our sleeping-blankets on to the adjacent scrub. I searched the crater
again.

It had an effect of emptiness that chilled me. And it was still. Any
sound from the Selenites in the world beneath had died away. It was as
still as death. Save for the faint stir of the shrub about me in the
little breeze that was rising, there was no sound nor shadow of a sound.
And the breeze blew chill.

Confound Cavor!

I took a deep breath. I put my hands to the sides of my mouth. "Cavor!" I
bawled, and the sound was like some manikin shouting far away.

I looked at the handkerchief, I looked behind me at the broadening shadow
of the westward cliff I looked under my hand at the sun. It seemed to me
that almost visibly it was creeping down the sky. I felt I must act
instantly if I was to save Cavor. I whipped off my vest and flung it as a
mark on the sere bayonets of the shrubs behind me, and then set off in a
straight line towards the handkerchief. Perhaps it was a couple of miles
away--a matter of a few hundred leaps and strides. I have already told
how one seemed to hang through those lunar leaps. In each suspense I
sought Cavor, and marvelled why he should be hidden. In each leap I could
feel the sun setting behind me. Each time I touched the ground I was
tempted to go back.

A last leap and I was in the depression below our handkerchief, a stride,
and I stood on our former vantage point within arms' reach of it. I stood
up straight and scanned the world about me, between its lengthening bars
of shadow. Far away, down a long declivity, was the opening of the tunnel
up which we had fled, and my shadow reached towards it, stretched towards
it, and touched it, like a finger of the night.

Not a sign of Cavor, not a sound in all the stillness, only the stir and
waving of the scrub and of the shadows increased. And suddenly and
violently I shivered. "Cav--" I began, and realised once more the
uselessness of the human voice in that thin air. Silence. The silence of
death.

Then it was my eye caught something--a little thing lying, perhaps fifty
yards away down the slope, amidst a litter of bent and broken branches.
What was it? I knew, and yet for some reason I would not know. I went
nearer to it. It was the little cricket-cap Cavor had worn. I did not
touch it, I stood looking at it.

I saw then that the scattered branches about it had been forcibly smashed
and trampled. I hesitated, stepped forward, and picked it up.

I stood with Cavor's cap in my hand, staring at the trampled reeds and
thorns about me. On some, of them were little smears of something dark,
something that I dared not touch. A dozen yards away, perhaps, the rising
breeze dragged something into view, something small and vividly white.

It was a little piece of paper crumpled tightly, as though it had been
clutched tightly. I picked it up, and on it were smears of red. My eye
caught faint pencil marks. I smoothed it out, and saw uneven and broken
writing ending at last in a crooked streak up on the paper.

I set myself to decipher this.

"I have been injured about the knee, I think my kneecap is hurt, and I
cannot run or crawl," it began--pretty distinctly written.

Then less legibly: "They have been chasing me for some time, and it is
only a question of"--the word "time" seemed to have been written here and
erased in favour of something illegible--"before they get me. They are
beating all about me."

Then the writing became convulsive. "I can hear them," I guessed the
tracing meant, and then it was quite unreadable for a space. Then came a
little string of words that were quite distinct: "a different sort of
Selenite altogether, who appears to be directing the--" The writing
became a mere hasty confusion again.

"They have larger brain cases--much larger, and slenderer bodies, and
very short legs. They make gentle noises, and move with organized
deliberation...

"And though I am wounded and helpless here, their appearance still gives
me hope." That was like Cavor. "They have not shot at me or attempted...
injury. I intend--"

Then came the sudden streak of the pencil across the paper, and on the
back and edges--blood!

And as I stood there stupid, and perplexed, with this dumbfounding relic
in my hand, something very soft and light and chill touched my hand for a
moment and ceased to be, and then a thing, a little white speck, drifted
athwart a shadow. It was a tiny snowflake, the first snowflake, the herald
of the night.

I looked up with a start, and the sky had darkened almost to blackness,
and was thick with a gathering multitude of coldly watchful stars. I
looked eastward, and the light of that shrivelled world was touched with
sombre bronze; westward, and the sun robbed now by a thickening white mist
of half its heat and splendour, was touching the crater rim, was sinking
out of sight, and all the shrubs and jagged and tumbled rocks stood out
against it in a bristling disorder of black shapes. Into the great lake
of darkness westward, a vast wreath of mist was sinking. A cold wind set
all the crater shivering. Suddenly, for a moment, I was in a puff of
falling snow, and all the world about me gray and dim.

And then it was I heard, not loud and penetrating as at first, but faint
and dim like a dying voice, that tolling, that same tolling that had
welcomed the coming of the day: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!...

It echoed about the crater, it seemed to throb with the throbbing of the
greater stars, the blood-red crescent of the sun's disc sank as it tolled
out: Boom!... Boom!... Boom!...

What had happened to Cavor? All through that tolling I stood there
stupidly, and at last the tolling ceased.

And suddenly the open mouth of the tunnel down below there, shut like an
eye and vanished out of sight.

Then indeed was I alone.

Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the
Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over
the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but
the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the
stillness, the silence--the infinite and final Night of space.

The sense of solitude and desolation became the sense of an overwhelming
presence that stooped towards me, that almost touched me.

"No," I cried. "No! Not yet! not yet! Wait! Wait! Oh, wait!" My voice
went up to a shriek. I flung the crumpled paper from me, scrambled back
to the crest to take my bearings, and then, with all the will that was in
me, leapt out towards the mark I had left, dim and distant now in the very
margin of the shadow.

Leap, leap, leap, and each leap was seven ages.

Before me the pale serpent-girdled section of the sun sank and sank, and
the advancing shadow swept to seize the sphere before I could reach it. I
was two miles away, a hundred leaps or more, and the air about me was
thinning out as it thins under an air-pump, and the cold was gripping at
my joints. But had I died, I should have died leaping. Once, and then
again my foot slipped on the gathering snow as I leapt and shortened my
leap; once I fell short into bushes that crashed and smashed into dusty
chips and nothingness, and once I stumbled as I dropped and rolled head
over heels into a gully, and rose bruised and bleeding and confused as to
my direction.

But such incidents were as nothing to the intervals, those awful pauses
when one drifted through the air towards that pouring tide of night. My
breathing made a piping noise, and it was as though knives were whirling
in my lungs. My heart seemed to beat against the top of my brain. "Shall I
reach it? O Heaven! Shall I reach it?"

My whole being became anguish.

"Lie down!" screamed my pain and despair; "lie down!"

The nearer I struggled, the more awfully remote it seemed. I was numb,
I stumbled, I bruised and cut myself and did not bleed.

It was in sight.

I fell on all fours, and my lungs whooped.

I crawled. The frost gathered on my lips, icicles hung from my moustache,
I was white with the freezing atmosphere.

I was a dozen yards from it. My eyes had become dim. "Lie down!" screamed
despair; "lie down!"

I touched it, and halted. "Too late!" screamed despair; "lie down!"

I fought stiffly with it. I was on the manhole lip, a stupefied, half-dead
being. The snow was all about me. I pulled myself in. There lurked within
a little warmer air.

The snowflakes--the airflakes--danced in about me, as I tried with
chilling hands to thrust the valve in and spun it tight and hard. I
sobbed. "I will," I chattered in my teeth. And then, with fingers that
quivered and felt brittle, I turned to the shutter studs.

As I fumbled with the switches--for I had never controlled them before--I
could see dimly through the steaming glass the blazing red streamers of
the sinking sun, dancing and flickering through the snowstorm, and the
black forms of the scrub thickening and bending and breaking beneath the
accumulating snow. Thicker whirled the snow and thicker, black against
the light. What if even now the switches overcame me? Then something
clicked under my hands, and in an instant that last vision of the moon
world was hidden from my eyes. I was in the silence and darkness the
inter-planetary sphere.





Chapter 20




Mr. Bedford in Infinite Space

It was almost as though I had been killed. Indeed, I could imagine a man
suddenly and violently killed would feel very much as I did. One moment, a
passion of agonising existence and fear; the next darkness and stillness,
neither light nor life nor sun, moon nor stars, the blank infinite.
Although the thing was done by my own act, although I had already tasted
this very of effect in Cavor's company, I felt astonished, dumbfounded,
and overwhelmed. I seemed to be borne upward into an enormous darkness. My
fingers floated off the studs, I hung as if I were annihilated, and at
last very softly and gently I came against the bale and the golden chain,
and the crowbars that had drifted to the middle of the sphere.

I do not know how long that drifting took. In the sphere of course, even
more than on the moon, one's earthly time sense was ineffectual. At the
touch of the bale it was as if I had awakened from a dreamless sleep. I
immediately perceived that if I wanted to keep awake and alive I must get
a light or open a window, so as to get a grip of something with my eyes.
And besides, I was cold. I kicked off from the bale, therefore, clawed on
to the thin cords within the glass, crawled along until I got to the
manhole rim, and so got my bearings for the light and blind studs, took a
shove off, and flying once round the bale, and getting a scare from
something big and flimsy that was drifting loose, I got my hand on the
cord quite close to the studs, and reached them. I lit the little lamp
first of all to see what it was I had collided with, and discovered that
old copy of _Lloyd's News_ had slipped its moorings, and was adrift in
the void. That brought me out of the infinite to my own proper dimensions
again. It made me laugh and pant for a time, and suggested the idea of a
little oxygen from one of the cylinders. After that I lit the heater until
I felt warm, and then I took food. Then I set to work in a very gingerly
fashion on the Cavorite blinds, to see if I could guess by any means how
the sphere was travelling.

The first blind I opened I shut at once, and hung for a time flattened and
blinded by the sunlight that had hit me. After thinking a little I started
upon the windows at right angles to this one, and got the huge crescent
moon and the little crescent earth behind it, the second time. I was
amazed to find how far I was from the moon. I had reckoned that not only
should I have little or none of the "kick-off" that the earth's atmosphere
had given us at our start, but that the tangential "fly off" of the moon's
spin would be at least twenty-eight times less than the earth's. I had
expected to discover myself hanging over our crater, and on the edge of
the night, but all that was now only a part of the outline of the white
crescent that filled the sky. And Cavor--?

He was already infinitesimal.

I tried to imagine what could have happened to him. But at that time I
could think of nothing but death. I seemed to see him, bent and smashed
at the foot of some interminably high cascade of blue. And all about him
the stupid insects stared...

Under the inspiring touch of the drifting newspaper I became practical
again for a while. It was quite clear to me that what I had to do was to
get back to earth, but as far as I could see I was drifting away from it.
Whatever had happened to Cavor, even if he was still alive, which seemed
to me incredible after that blood-stained scrap, I was powerless to help
him. There he was, living or dead behind the mantle of that rayless night,
and there he must remain at least until I could summon our fellow men to
his assistance. Should I do that? Something of the sort I had in my mind;
to come back to earth if it were possible, and then as maturer
consideration might determine, either to show and explain the sphere to a
few discreet persons, and act with them, or else to keep my secret, sell
my gold, obtain weapons, provisions, and an assistant, and return with
these advantages to deal on equal terms with the flimsy people of the
moon, to rescue Cavor, if that were still possible, and at any rate to
procure a sufficient supply of gold to place my subsequent proceedings on
a firmer basis. But that was hoping far; I had first to get back.

I set myself to decide just exactly how the return to earth could be
contrived. As I struggled with that problem I ceased to worry about what I
should do when I got there. At last my only care was to get back.

I puzzled out at last that my best chance would be to drop back towards
the moon as near as I dared in order to gather velocity, then to shut my
windows, and fly behind it, and when I was past to open my earthward
windows, and so get off at a good pace homeward. But whether I should ever
reach the earth by that device, or whether I might not simply find myself
spinning about it in some hyperbolic or parabolic curve or other, I could
not tell. Later I had a happy inspiration, and by opening certain windows
to the moon, which had appeared in the sky in front of the earth, I turned
my course aside so as to head off the earth, which it had become evident
to me I must pass behind without some such expedient. I did a very great
deal of complicated thinking over these problems--for I am no
mathematician--and in the end I am certain it was much more my good luck
than my reasoning that enabled me to hit the earth. Had I known then, as I
know now, the mathematical chances there were against me, I doubt if I
should have troubled even to touch the studs to make any attempt. And
having puzzled out what I considered to be the thing to do, I opened all
my moonward windows, and squatted down--the effort lifted me for a time
some feet or so into the air, and I hung there in the oddest way--and
waited for the crescent to get bigger and bigger until I felt I was near
enough for safety. Then I would shut the windows, fly past the moon with
the velocity I had got from it--if I did not smash upon it--and so go on
towards the earth.

And that is what I did.

At last I felt my moonward start was sufficient. I shut out the sight of
the moon from my eyes, and in a state of mind that was, I now recall,
incredibly free from anxiety or any distressful quality, I sat down to
begin a vigil in that little speck of matter in infinite space that would
last until I should strike the earth. The heater had made the sphere
tolerably warm, the air had been refreshed by the oxygen, and except for
that faint congestion of the head that was always with me while I was away
from earth, I felt entire physical comfort. I had extinguished the light
again, lest it should fail me in the end; I was in darkness, save for the
earthshine and the glitter of the stars below me. Everything was so
absolutely silent and still that I might indeed have been the only being
in the universe, and yet, strangely enough, I had no more feeling of
loneliness or fear than if I had been lying in bed on earth. Now, this
seems all the stranger to me, since during my last hours in that crater of
the moon, the sense of my utter loneliness had been an agony....

Incredible as it will seem, this interval of time that I spent in space
has no sort of proportion to any other interval of time in my life.
Sometimes it seemed as though I sat through immeasurable eternities like
some god upon a lotus leaf, and again as though there was a momentary
pause as I leapt from moon to earth. In truth, it was altogether some
weeks of earthly time. But I had done with care and anxiety, hunger or
fear, for that space. I floated, thinking with a strange breadth and
freedom of all that we had undergone, and of all my life and motives, and
the secret issues of my being. I seemed to myself to have grown greater
and greater, to have lost all sense of movement; to be floating amidst the
stars, and always the sense of earth's littleness and the infinite
littleness of my life upon it, was implicit in my thoughts.

I can't profess to explain the things that happened in my mind. No doubt
they could all be traced directly or indirectly to the curious physical
conditions under which I was living. I set them down here just for what
they are worth, and without any comment. The most prominent quality of it
was a pervading doubt of my own identity. I became, if I may so express
it, dissociate from Bedford; I looked down on Bedford as a trivial,
incidental thing with which I chanced to be connected. I saw Bedford in
many relations--as an ass or as a poor beast, where I had hitherto been
inclined to regard him with a quiet pride as a very spirited or rather
forcible person. I saw him not only as an ass, but as the son of many
generations of asses. I reviewed his school-days and his early manhood,
and his first encounter with love, very much as one might review the
proceedings of an ant in the sand. Something of that period of lucidity I
regret still hangs about me, and I doubt if I shall ever recover the
full-bodied self satisfaction of my early days. But at the time the thing
was not in the least painful, because I had that extraordinary persuasion
that, as a matter of fact, I was no more Bedford than I was any one else,
but only a mind floating in the still serenity of space. Why should I be
disturbed about this Bedford's shortcomings? I was not responsible for him
or them.

For a time I struggled against this really very grotesque delusion. I
tried to summon the memory of vivid moments, of tender or intense emotions
to my assistance; I felt that if I could recall one genuine twinge of
feeling the growing severance would be stopped. But I could not do it. I
saw Bedford rushing down Chancery Lane, hat on the back of his head, coat
tails flying out, en route for his public examination. I saw him dodging
and bumping against, and even saluting, other similar little creatures in
that swarming gutter of people. Me? I saw Bedford that same evening in the
sitting-room of a certain lady, and his hat was on the table beside him,
and it wanted brushing badly, and he was in tears. Me? I saw him with
that lady in various attitudes and emotions--I never felt so detached
before.... I saw him hurrying off to Lympne to write a play, and accosting
Cavor, and in his shirt sleeves working at the sphere, and walking out to
Canterbury because he was afraid to come! Me? I did not believe it.

I still reasoned that all this was hallucination due to my solitude, and
the fact that I had lost all weight and sense of resistance. I endeavoured
to recover that sense by banging myself about the sphere, by pinching my
hands and clasping them together. Among other things, I lit the light,
captured that torn copy of _Lloyd's_, and read those convincingly realistic
advertisements about the Cutaway bicycle, and the gentleman of private
means, and the lady in distress who was selling those "forks and spoons."
There was no doubt _they_ existed surely enough, and, said I, "This is
your world, and you are Bedford, and you are going back to live among
things like that for all the rest of your life." But the doubts within
me could still argue: "It is not you that is reading, it is Bedford, but
you are not Bedford, you know. That's just where the mistake comes in."

"Confound it!" I cried; "and if I am not Bedford, what am I?"

But in that direction no light was forthcoming, though the strangest
fancies came drifting into my brain, queer remote suspicions, like shadows
seen from away. Do you know, I had a sort of idea that really I was
something quite outside not only the world, but all worlds, and out of
space and time, and that this poor Bedford was just a peephole through
which I looked at life? ...

Bedford! However I disavowed him, there I was most certainly bound up with
him, and I knew that wherever or whatever I might be, I must needs feel
the stress of his desires, and sympathise with all his joys and sorrows
until his life should end. And with the dying of Bedford--what then? ...

Enough of this remarkable phase of my experiences! I tell it here simply
to show how one's isolation and departure from this planet touched not
only the functions and feeling of every organ of the body, but indeed also
the very fabric of the mind, with strange and unanticipated disturbances.
All through the major portion of that vast space journey I hung thinking
of such immaterial things as these, hung dissociated and apathetic, a
cloudy megalomaniac, as it were, amidst the stars and planets in the void
of space; and not only the world to which I was returning, but the
blue-lit caverns of the Selenites, their helmet faces, their gigantic and
wonderful machines, and the fate of Cavor, dragged helpless into that
world, seemed infinitely minute and altogether trivial things to me.

Until at last I began to feel the pull of the earth upon my being, drawing
me back again to the life that is real for men. And then, indeed, it grew
clearer and clearer to me that I was quite certainly Bedford after all,
and returning after amazing adventures to this world of ours, and with a
life that I was very likely to lose in this return. I set myself to puzzle
out the conditions under which I must fall to earth.





Chapter 21




Mr. Bedford at Littlestone

My line of flight was about parallel with the surface as I came into the
upper air. The temperature of sphere began to rise forthwith. I knew it
behoved me to drop at once. Far below me, in a darkling twilight, stretched
a great expanse of sea. I opened every window I could, and fell--out
of sunshine into evening, and out of evening into night. Vaster grew
the earth and vaster, swallowing up the stars, and the silvery translucent
starlit veil of cloud it wore spread out to catch me. At last the world
seemed no longer a sphere but flat, and then concave. It was no longer a
planet in the sky, but the world of Man. I shut all but an inch or so of
earthward window, and dropped with a slackening velocity. The broadening
water, now so near that I could see the dark glitter of the waves, rushed
up to meet me. The sphere became very hot. I snapped the last strip of
window, and sat scowling and biting my knuckles, waiting for the impact....

The sphere hit the water with a huge splash: it must have sent it fathoms
high. At the splash I flung the Cavorite shutters open. Down I went, but
slower and slower, and then I felt the sphere pressing against my feet,
and so drove up again as a bubble drives. And at the last I was floating
and rocking upon the surface of the sea, and my journey in space was at an
end.

The night was dark and overcast. Two yellow pinpoints far away showed the
passing of a ship, and nearer was a red glare that came and went. Had not
the electricity of my glow-lamp exhausted itself, I could have got picked
up that night. In spite of the inordinate fatigue I was beginning to feel,
I was excited now, and for a time hopeful, in a feverish, impatient way,
that so my travelling might end.

But at last I ceased to move about, and sat, wrists on knees, staring at a
distant red light. It swayed up and down, rocking, rocking. My excitement
passed. I realised I had yet to spend another night at least in the
sphere. I perceived myself infinitely heavy and fatigued. And so I fell
asleep.

A change in my rhythmic motion awakened me. I peered through the
refracting glass, and saw that I had come aground upon a huge shallow of
sand. Far away I seemed to see houses and trees, and seaward a curve,
vague distortion of a ship hung between sea and sky.

I stood up and staggered. My one desire was to emerge. The manhole was
upward, and I wrestled with the screw. Slowly I opened the manhole. At
last the air was singing in again as once it had sung out. But this time
I did not wait until the pressure was adjusted. In another moment I had
the weight of the window on my hands, and I was open, wide open, to the
old familiar sky of earth.

The air hit me on the chest so that I gasped. I dropped the glass screw. I
cried out, put my hands to my chest, and sat down. For a time I was in
pain. Then I took deep breaths. At last I could rise and move about
again.

I tried to thrust my head through the manhole, and the sphere rolled over.
It was as though something had lugged my head down directly it emerged. I
ducked back sharply, or I should have been pinned face under water. After
some wriggling and shoving I managed to crawl out upon sand, over which
the retreating waves still came and went.

I did not attempt to stand up. It seemed to me that my body must be
suddenly changed to lead. Mother Earth had her grip on me now--no
Cavorite intervening. I sat down heedless of the water that came over my
feet.

It was dawn, a gray dawn, rather overcast but showing here and there a
long patch of greenish gray. Some way out a ship was lying at anchor, a
pale silhouette of a ship with one yellow light. The water came rippling
in in long shallow waves. Away to the right curved the land, a shingle
bank with little hovels, and at last a lighthouse, a sailing mark and a
point. Inland stretched a space of level sand, broken here and there by
pools of water, and ending a mile away perhaps in a low shore of scrub. To
the north-east some isolated watering-place was visible, a row of gaunt
lodging-houses, the tallest things that I could see on earth, dull dabs
against the brightening sky. What strange men can have reared these
vertical piles in such an amplitude of space I do not know. There they
are, like pieces of Brighton lost in the waste.

For a long time I sat there, yawning and rubbing my face. At last I
struggled to rise. It made me feel that I was lifting a weight. I stood
up.

I stared at the distant houses. For the first time since our starvation in
the crater I thought of earthly food. "Bacon," I whispered, "eggs. Good
toast and good coffee.... And how the devil am I going to all this stuff
to Lympne?" I wondered where I was. It was an east shore anyhow, and I
had seen Europe before I dropped.

I heard footsteps crunching in the sand, and a little round-faced,
friendly-looking man in flannels, with a bathing towel wrapped about his
shoulders, and his bathing dress over his arm, appeared up the beach. I
knew instantly that I must be in England. He was staring most intently at
the sphere and me. He advanced staring. I dare say I looked a ferocious
savage enough--dirty, unkempt, to an indescribable degree; but it did not
occur to me at the time. He stopped at a distance of twenty yards.
"Hul-lo, my man!" he said doubtfully.

"Hullo yourself!" said I.

He advanced, reassured by that. "What on earth is that thing?" he asked.

"Can you tell me where I am?" I asked.

"That's Littlestone," he said, pointing to the houses; "and that's
Dungeness! Have you just landed? What's that thing you've got? Some sort
of machine?"

"Yes."

"Have you floated ashore? Have you been wrecked or something? What is it?"

I meditated swiftly. I made an estimate of the little man's appearance as
he drew nearer. "By Jove!" he said, "you've had a time of it! I thought
you-- Well-- Where were you cast away? Is that thing a sort of floating
thing for saving life?"

I decided to take that line for the present. I made a few vague
affirmatives. "I want help," I said hoarsely. "I want to get some stuff
up the beach--stuff I can't very well leave about." I became aware of
three other pleasant-looking young men with towels, blazers, and straw
hats, coming down the sands towards me. Evidently the early bathing
section of this Littlestone.

"Help!" said the young man: "rather!" He became vaguely active. "What
particularly do you want done?" He turned round and gesticulated. The
three young men accelerated their pace. In a minute they there about me,
plying me with questions I was indisposed to answer. "I'll tell all that
later," I said. "I'm dead beat. I'm a rag."

"Come up to the hotel," said the foremost little man. "We'll look after
that thing there."

I hesitated. "I can't," I said. "In that sphere there's two big bars of
gold."

They looked incredulously at one another, then at me with a new inquiry.
I went to the sphere, stooped, crept in, and presently they had the
Selenites' crowbars and the broken chain before them. If I had not been so
horribly fagged I could have laughed at them. It was like kittens round a
beetle. They didn't know what to do with the stuff. The fat little man
stooped and lifted the end of one of the bars, and then dropped it with a
grunt. Then they all did.

"It's lead, or gold!" said one.

"Oh, it's gold!" said another.

"Gold, right enough," said the third.

Then they all stared at me, and then they all stared at the ship lying at
anchor.

"I say!" cried the little man. "But where did you get that?"

I was too tired to keep up a lie. "I got it in the moon."

I saw them stare at one another.

"Look here!" said I, "I'm not going to argue now. Help me carry these
lumps of gold up to the hotel--I guess, with rests, two of you can manage
one, and I'll trail this chain thing--and I'll tell you more when I've
had some food."

"And how about that thing?"

"It won't hurt there," I said. "Anyhow--confound it!--it must stop there
now. If the tide comes up, it will float all right."

And in a state of enormous wonderment, these young men most obediently
hoisted my treasures on their shoulders, and with limbs that felt like
lead I headed a sort of procession towards that distant fragment of
"sea-front." Half-way there we were reinforced by two awe-stricken little
girls with spades, and later a lean little boy, with a penetrating sniff,
appeared. He was, I remember, wheeling a bicycle, and he accompanied us at
a distance of about a hundred yards on our right flank, and then I
suppose, gave us up as uninteresting, mounted his bicycle and rode off
over the level sands in the direction of the sphere.

I glanced back after him.

"He won't touch it," said the stout young man reassuringly, and I was only
too willing to be reassured.

At first something of the gray of the morning was in my mind, but
presently the sun disengaged itself from the level clouds of the horizon
and lit the world, and turned the leaden sea to glittering waters. My
spirits rose. A sense of the vast importance of the things I had done and
had yet to do came with the sunlight into my mind. I laughed aloud as the
foremost man staggered under my gold. When indeed I took my place in the
world, how amazed the world would be!

If it had not been for my inordinate fatigue, the landlord of the
Littlestone hotel would have been amusing, as he hesitated between my gold
and my respectable company on the one and my filthy appearance on the
other. But at last I found myself in a terrestrial bathroom once more with
warm water to wash myself with, and a change of raiment, preposterously
small indeed, but anyhow clean, that the genial little man had lent me. He
lent me a razor too, but I could not screw up my resolution to attack even
the outposts of the bristling beard that covered my face.

I sat down to an English breakfast and ate with a sort of languid
appetite--an appetite many weeks old and very decrepit--and stirred myself
to answer the questions of the four young men. And I told them the truth.

"Well," said I, "as you press me--I got it in the moon."

"The moon?"

"Yes, the moon in the sky."

"But how do you mean?"

"What I say, confound it!"

"Then you have just come from the moon?"

"Exactly! through space--in that ball." And I took a delicious mouthful
of egg. I made a private note that when I went back to the moon I would
take a box of eggs.

I could see clearly that they did not believe one word what I told them,
but evidently they considered me the most respectable liar they had ever
met. They glanced at one another, and then concentrated the fire of their
eyes on me. I fancy they expected a clue to me in the way I helped myself
to salt. They seemed to find something significant in my peppering my egg.
These strangely shaped masses of gold they had staggered under held their
minds. There the lumps lay in front of me, each worth thousands of pounds,
and as impossible for any one to steal as a house or a piece of land. As I
looked at their curious faces over my coffee-cup, I realised something of
the enormous wilderness of explanations into which I should have to wander
to render myself comprehensible again.

"You don't really mean--" began the youngest young man, in the tone of one
who speaks to an obstinate child.

"Just pass me that toast-rack," I said, and shut him up completely.

"But look here, I say," began one of the others. "We're not going to
believe that, you know."

"Ah, well," said I, and shrugged my shoulders.

"He doesn't want to tell us," said the youngest young man in a stage
aside; and then, with an appearance of great sang-froid, "You don't mind
if I take a cigarette?"

I waved him a cordial assent, and proceeded with my breakfast. Two of the
others went and looked out of the farther window and talked inaudibly. I
was struck by a thought. "The tide," I said, "is running out?"

There was a pause, a doubt who should answer me.

"It's near the ebb," said the fat little man.

"Well, anyhow," I said, "it won't float far."

I decapitated my third egg, and began a little speech. "Look here," I
said. "Please don't imagine I'm surly or telling you uncivil lies, or
anything of that sort. I'm forced almost, to be a little short and
mysterious. I can quite understand this is as queer as it can be, and
that your imaginations must be going it. I can assure you, you're in at a
memorable time. But I can't make it clear to you now--it's impossible. I
give you my word of honour I've come from the moon, and that's all I can
tell you.... All the same, I'm tremendously obliged to you, you know,
tremendously. I hope that my manner hasn't in any way given you offence."

"Oh, not in the least!" said the youngest young man affably. "We can quite
understand," and staring hard at me all the time, he heeled his chair back
until it very nearly upset, and recovered with some exertion. "Not a bit
of it," said the fat young man.

"Don't you imagine that!" and they all got up and dispersed, and walked
about and lit cigarettes, and generally tried to show they were perfectly
amiable and disengaged, and entirely free from the slightest curiosity
about me and the sphere. "I'm going to keep an eye on that ship out there
all the same," I heard one of them remarking in an undertone. If only they
could have forced themselves to it, they would, I believe, even have gone
out and left me. I went on with my third egg.

"The weather," the fat little man remarked presently, "has been immense,
has it not? I don't know when we have had such a summer."

Phoo-whizz! Like a tremendous rocket!

And somewhere a window was broken....

"What's that?" said I.

"It isn't--?" cried the little man, and rushed to the corner window.

All the others rushed to the window likewise. I sat staring at them.

Suddenly I leapt up, knocked over my third egg, rushed for the window
also. I had just thought of something. "Nothing to be seen there," cried
the little man, rushing for the door.

"It's that boy!" I cried, bawling in hoarse fury; "it's that accursed
boy!" and turning about I pushed the waiter aside--he was just bring me
some more toast--and rushed violently out of the room and down and out
upon the queer little esplanade in front of the hotel.

The sea, which had been smooth, was rough now with hurrying cat's-paws,
and all about where the sphere had been was tumbled water like the wake of
a ship. Above, a little puff of cloud whirled like dispersing smoke, and
the three or four people on the beach were bring up with interrogative
faces towards the point of that unexpected report. And that was all! Boots
and waiter and the four young men in blazers came rushing out behind me.
Shouts came from windows and doors, and all sorts of worrying people came
into sight--agape.

For a time I stood there, too overwhelmed by this new development to think
of the people.

At first I was too stunned to see the thing as any definite disaster--I
was just stunned, as a man is by some accidental violent blow. It is only
afterwards he begins to appreciate his specific injury.

"Good Lord!"

I felt as though somebody was pouring funk out of a can down the back of
my neck. My legs became feeble. I had got the first intimation of what the
disaster meant for me. There was that confounded boy--sky high! I was
utterly left. There was the gold in the coffee-room--my only possession
on earth. How would it all work out? The general effect was of a gigantic
unmanageable confusion.

"I say," said the voice of the little man behind. "I say, you know."

I wheeled about, and there were twenty or thirty people, a sort of
irregular investment of people, all bombarding me with dumb interrogation,
with infinite doubt and suspicion. I felt the compulsion of their eyes
intolerably. I groaned aloud.

"I _can't_," I shouted. "I tell you I can't! I'm not equal to it! You must
puzzle and--and be damned to you!"

I gesticulated convulsively. He receded a step as though I had threatened
him. I made a bolt through them into the hotel. I charged back into the
coffee-room, rang the bell furiously. I gripped the waiter as he entered.
"D'ye hear?" I shouted. "Get help and carry these bars up to my room right
away."

He failed to understand me, and I shouted and raved at him. A
scared-looking little old man in a green apron appeared, and further two
of the young men in flannels. I made a dash at them and commandeered their
services. As soon as the gold was in my room I felt free to quarrel. "Now
get out," I shouted; "all of you get out if you don't want to see a man go
mad before your eyes!" And I helped the waiter by the shoulder as he
hesitated in the doorway. And then, as soon as I had the door locked on
them all, I tore off the little man's clothes again, shied them right and
left, and got into bed forthwith. And there I lay swearing and panting and
cooling for a very long time.

At last I was calm enough to get out of bed and ring up the round-eyed
waiter for a flannel nightshirt, a soda and whisky, and some good cigars.
And these things being procured me, after an exasperating delay that drove
me several times to the bell, I locked the door again and proceeded very
deliberately to look entire situation in the face.

The net result of the great experiment presented itself as an absolute
failure. It was a rout, and I was the sole survivor. It was an absolute
collapse, and this was the final disaster. There was nothing for it but to
save myself, and as much as I could in the way of prospects from our
debacle. At one fatal crowning blow all my vague resolutions of return and
recovery had vanished. My intention of going back to the moon, of getting
a sphereful of gold, and afterwards of having a fragment of Cavorite
analysed and so recovering the great secret--perhaps, finally, even of
recovering Cavor's body--all these ideas vanished altogether.

I was the sole survivor, and that was all.

I think that going to bed was one of the luckiest ideas I have ever had in
an emergency. I really believe I should either have got loose-headed or
done some indiscreet thing. But there, locked in and secure from all
interruptions, I could think out the position in all its bearings and make
my arrangements at leisure.

Of course, it was quite clear to me what had happened to the boy. He had
crawled into the sphere, meddled with the studs, shut the Cavorite
windows, and gone up. It was highly improbable he had screwed the manhole
stopper, and, even if he had, the chances were a thousand to one against
his getting back. It was fairly evident that he would gravitate with my
bales to somewhere near the middle of the sphere and remain there, and so
cease to be a legitimate terrestrial interest, however remarkable he might
seem to the inhabitants of some remote quarter of space. I very speedily
convinced myself on that point. And as for any responsibility I might have
in the matter, the more I reflected upon that, the clearer it became that
if only I kept quiet about things, I need not trouble myself about that.
If I was faced by sorrowing parents demanding their lost boy, I had merely
to demand my lost sphere--or ask them what they meant. At first I had had
a vision of weeping parents and guardians, and all sorts of complications;
but now I saw that I simply had to keep my mouth shut, and nothing in that
way could arise. And, indeed, the more I lay and smoked and thought, the
more evident became the wisdom of impenetrability.

It is within the right of every British citizen, provided he does not
commit damage nor indecorum, to appear suddenly wherever he pleases, and
as ragged and filthy as he pleases, and with whatever amount of virgin
gold he sees fit to encumber himself, and no one has any right at all to
hinder and detain him in this procedure. I formulated that at last to
myself, and repeated it over as a sort of private Magna Charta of my
liberty.

Once I had put that issue on one side, I could take up and consider in an
equable manner certain considerations I had scarcely dared to think of
before, namely, those arising out of the circumstances of my bankruptcy.
But now, looking at this matter calmly and at leisure, I could see that if
only I suppressed my identity by a temporary assumption of some less
well-known name, and if I retained the two months' beard that had grown
upon me, the risks of any annoyance from the spiteful creditor to whom I
have already alluded became very small indeed. From that to a definite
course of rational worldly action was plain sailing. It was all amazingly
petty, no doubt, but what was there remaining for me to do?

Whatever I did I was resolved that I would keep myself level and right
side up.

I ordered up writing materials, and addressed a letter to the New Romney
Bank--the nearest, the waiter informed me--telling the manager I wished
to open an account with him, and requesting him to send two trustworthy
persons properly authenticated in a cab with a good horse to fetch some
hundredweight of gold with which I happened to be encumbered. I signed the
letter "Blake," which seemed to me to be a thoroughly respectable sort of
name. This done, I got a Folkstone Blue Book, picked out an outfitter, and
asked him to send a cutter to measure me for a dark tweed suit, ordering
at the same time a valise, dressing bag, brown boots, shirts, hat (to
fit), and so forth; and from a watchmaker I also ordered a watch. And
these letters being despatched, I had up as good a lunch as the hotel
could give, and then lay smoking a cigar, as calm and ordinary as
possible, until in accordance with my instructions two duly authenticated
clerks came from the bank and weighed and took away my gold. After which I
pulled the clothes over my ears in order to drown any knocking, and went
very comfortably to sleep.

I went to sleep. No doubt it was a prosaic thing for the first man back
from the moon to do, and I can imagine that the young and imaginative
reader will find my behaviour disappointing. But I was horribly fatigued
and bothered, and, confound it! what else was there to do? There certainly
was not the remotest chance of my being believed, if I had told my story
then, and it would certainly have subjected me to intolerable annoyances.
I went to sleep. When at last I woke up again I was ready to face the
world as I have always been accustomed to face it since I came to years of
discretion. And so I got away to Italy, and there it is I am writing this
story. If the world will not have it as fact, then the world may take it
as fiction. It is no concern of mine.

And now that the account is finished, I am amazed to think how completely
this adventure is gone and done with. Everybody believes that Cavor was a
not very brilliant scientific experimenter who blew up his house and
himself at Lympne, and they explain the bang that followed my arrival at
Littlestone by a reference to the experiments with explosives that are
going on continually at the government establishment of Lydd, two miles
away. I must confess that hitherto I have not acknowledged my share in the
disappearance of Master Tommy Simmons, which was that little boy's name.
That, perhaps, may prove a difficult item of corroboration to explain
away. They account for my appearance in rags with two bars of indisputable
gold upon the Littlestone beach in various ingenious ways--it doesn't
worry me what they think of me. They say I have strung all these things
together to avoid being questioned too closely as to the source of my
wealth. I would like to see the man who could invent a story that would
hold together like this one. Well, they must take it as fiction--there it
is.

I have told my story--and now, I suppose, I have to take up the worries
of this terrestrial life again. Even if one has been to the moon, one has
still to earn a living. So I am working here at Amalfi, on the scenario of
that play I sketched before Cavor came walking into my world, and I am
trying to piece my life together as it was before ever I saw him. I must
confess that I find it hard to keep my mind on the play when the moonshine
comes into my room. It is full moon here, and last night I was out on the
pergola for hours, staring away at the shining blankness that hides so
much. Imagine it! tables and chairs, and trestles and bars of gold!
Confound it!--if only one could hit on that Cavorite again! But a thing
like that doesn't come twice in a life. Here I am, a little better off
than I was at Lympne, and that is all. And Cavor has committed suicide in
a more elaborate way than any human being ever did before. So the story
closes as finally and completely as a dream. It fits in so little with
all the other things of life, so much of it is so utterly remote from all
human experience, the leaping, the eating, the breathing, and these
weightless times, that indeed there are moments when, in spite of my
moon gold, I do more than half believe myself that the whole thing was
a dream....





Chapter 22




The Astonishing Communication of Mr. Julius Wendigee

When I had finished my account of my return to the earth at Littlestone, I
wrote, "The End," made a flourish, and threw my pen aside, fully believing
that the whole story of the First Men in the Moon was done. Not only had I
done this, but I had placed my manuscript in the hands of a literary
agent, had permitted it to be sold, had seen the greater portion of it
appear in the _Strand Magazine_, and was setting to work again upon the
scenario of the play I had commenced at Lympne before I realised that the
end was not yet. And then, following me from Amalfi to Algiers, there
reached me (it is now about six months ago) one of the most astounding
communications I have ever been fated to receive. Briefly, it informed me
that Mr. Julius Wendigee, a Dutch electrician, who has been experimenting
with certain apparatus akin to the apparatus used by Mr. Tesla in America,
in the hope of discovering some method of communication with Mars, was
receiving day by day a curiously fragmentary message in English, which was
indisputably emanating from Mr. Cavor in the moon.

At first I thought the thing was an elaborate practical joke by some one
who had seen the manuscript of my narrative. I answered Mr. Wendigee
jestingly, but he replied in a manner that put such suspicion altogether
aside, and in a state of inconceivable excitement I hurried from Algiers
to the little observatory upon the Monte Rosa in which he was working. In
the presence of his record and his appliances--and above all of the
messages from Cavor that were coming to hand--my lingering doubts
vanished. I decided at once to accept a proposal he made to me to remain
with him, assisting him to take down the record from day to day, and
endeavouring with him to send a message back to the moon. Cavor, we
learnt, was not only alive, but free, in the midst of an almost
inconceivable community of these ant-like beings, these ant-men, in the
blue darkness of the lunar caves. He was lamed, it seemed, but otherwise
in quite good health--in better health, he distinctly said, than he
usually enjoyed on earth. He had had a fever, but it had left no bad
effects. But curiously enough he seemed to be labouring under a conviction
that I was either dead in the moon crater or lost in the deep of space.

His message began to be received by Mr. Wendigee when that gentleman was
engaged in quite a different investigation. The reader will no doubt
recall the little excitement that began the century, arising out an
announcement by Mr. Nikola Tesla, the American electrical celebrity, that
he had received a message from Mars. His announcement renewed attention to
fact that had long been familiar to scientific people, namely: that from
some unknown source in space, waves of electromagnetic disturbance,
entirely similar those used by Signor Marconi for his wireless telegraphy,
are constantly reaching the earth. Besides Tesla quite a number of other
observers have been engaged in perfecting apparatus for receiving and
recording these vibrations, though few would go so far to consider them
actual messages from some extraterrestrial sender. Among that few,
however, we must certainly count Mr. Wendigee. Ever since 1898 he had
devoted himself almost entirely to this subject, and being a man of ample
means he had erected an observatory on the flanks of Monte Rosa, in a
position singularly adapted in every way for such observations.

My scientific attainments, I must admit, are not great, but so far as they
enable me to judge, Mr. Wendigee's contrivances for detecting and
recording any disturbances in the electromagnetic conditions of space are
singularly original and ingenious. And by a happy combination of
circumstances they were set up and in operation about two months before
Cavor made his first attempt to call up the earth. Consequently we have
fragments of his communication even from the beginning. Unhappily, they
are only fragments, and the most momentous of all the things that he had
to tell humanity--the instructions, that is, for the making of Cavorite,
if, indeed, he ever transmitted them--have throbbed themselves away
unrecorded into space. We never succeeded in getting a response back to
Cavor. He was unable to tell, therefore, what we had received or what we
had missed; nor, indeed, did he certainly know that any one on earth was
really aware of his efforts to reach us. And the persistence he displayed
in sending eighteen long descriptions of lunar affairs--as they would be
if we had them complete--shows how much his mind must have turned back
towards his native planet since he left it two years ago.

You can imagine how amazed Mr. Wendigee must have been when he discovered
his record of electromagnetic disturbances interlaced by Cavor's
straightforward English. Mr. Wendigee knew nothing of our wild journey
moonward, and suddenly--this English out of the void!

It is well the reader should understand the conditions under which it
would seem these messages were sent. Somewhere within the moon Cavor
certainly had access for a time to a considerable amount of electrical
apparatus, and it would seem he rigged up--perhaps furtively--a
transmitting arrangement of the Marconi type. This he was able to operate
at irregular intervals: sometimes for only half an hour or so, sometimes
for three or four hours at a stretch. At these times he transmitted his
earthward message, regardless of the fact that the relative position of
the moon and points upon the earth's surface is constantly altering. As a
consequence of this and of the necessary imperfections of our recording
instruments his communication comes and goes in our records in an
extremely fitful manner; it becomes blurred; it "fades out" in a
mysterious and altogether exasperating way. And added to this is the fact
that he was not an expert operator; he had partly forgotten, or never
completely mastered, the code in general use, and as he became fatigued he
dropped words and misspelt in a curious manner.

Altogether we have probably lost quite half of the communications he made,
and much we have is damaged, broken, and partly effaced. In the abstract
that follows the reader must be prepared therefore for a considerable
amount of break, hiatus, and change of topic. Mr. Wendigee and I are
collaborating in a complete and annotated edition of the Cavor record,
which we hope to publish, together with a detailed account of the
instruments employed, beginning with the first volume in January next.
That will be the full and scientific report, of which this is only the
popular transcript. But here we give at least sufficient to complete the
story I have told, and to give the broad outlines of the state of that
other world so near, so akin, and yet so dissimilar to our own.





Chapter 23




An Abstract of the Six Messages First Received from Mr. Cavor

The two earlier messages of Mr. Cavor may very well be reserved for that
larger volume. They simply tell, with greater brevity and with a
difference in several details that is interesting, but not of any vital
importance, the bare facts of the making of the sphere and our departure
from the world. Throughout, Cavor speaks of me as a man who is dead, but
with a curious change of temper as he approaches our landing on the moon.
"Poor Bedford," he says of me, and "this poor young man," and he blames
himself for inducing a young man, "by no means well equipped for such
adventures," to leave a planet "on which he was indisputably fitted to
succeed" on so precarious a mission. I think he underrates the part my
energy and practical capacity played in bringing about the realisation of
his theoretical sphere. "We arrived," he says, with no more account of our
passage through space than if we had made a journey of common occurrence
in a railway train.

And then he becomes increasingly unfair to me. Unfair, indeed, to an
extent I should not have expected in a man trained in the search for
truth. Looking back over my previously written account of these things, I
must insist that I have been altogether juster to Cavor than he has been
to me. I have extenuated little and suppressed nothing. But his account
is:--

"It speedily became apparent that the entire strangeness of our
circumstances and surroundings--great loss of weight, attenuated but
highly oxygenated air, consequent exaggeration of the results of muscular
effort, rapid development of weird plants from obscure spores, lurid
sky--was exciting my companion unduly. On the moon his character seemed to
deteriorate. He became impulsive, rash, and quarrelsome. In a little while
his folly in devouring some gigantic vesicles and his consequent
intoxication led to our capture by the Selenites--before we had had the
slightest opportunity of properly observing their ways...."

(He says, you observe, nothing of his own concession to these same
"vesicles.")

And he goes on from that point to say that "We came to a difficult passage
with them, and Bedford mistaking certain gestures of theirs"--pretty
gestures they were!--"gave way to a panic violence. He ran amuck, killed
three, and perforce I had to flee with him after the outrage. Subsequently
we fought with a number who endeavoured to bar our way, and slew seven or
eight more. It says much for the tolerance of these beings that on my
recapture I was not instantly slain. We made our way to the exterior and
separated in the crater of our arrival, to increase our chances of
recovering our sphere. But presently I came upon a body of Selenites, led
by two who were curiously different, even in form, from any of these we
had seen hitherto, with larger heads and smaller bodies, and much more
elaborately wrapped about. And after evading them for some time I fell
into a crevasse, cut my head rather badly, and displaced my patella, and,
finding crawling very painful, decided to surrender--if they would still
permit me to do so. This they did, and, perceiving my helpless condition,
carried me with them again into the moon. And of Bedford I have heard or
seen nothing more, nor, so far as I can gather, any Selenite. Either the
night overtook him in the crater, or else, which is more probable, he
found the sphere, and, desiring to steal a march upon me, made off with
it--only, I fear, to find it uncontrollable, and to meet a more lingering
fate in outer space."

And with that Cavor dismisses me and goes on to more interesting topics. I
dislike the idea of seeming to use my position as his editor to deflect
his story in my own interest, but I am obliged to protest here against the
turn he gives these occurrences. He said nothing about that gasping
message on the blood-stained paper in which he told, or attempted to tell,
a very different story. The dignified self-surrender is an altogether new
view of the affair that has come to him, I must insist, since he began to
feel secure among the lunar people; and as for the "stealing a march"
conception, I am quite willing to let the reader decide between us on what
he has before him. I know I am not a model man--I have made no pretence
to be. But am I that?

However, that is the sum of my wrongs. From this point I can edit Cavor
with an untroubled mind, for he mentions me no more.

It would seem the Selenites who had come upon him carried him to some
point in the interior down "a great shaft" by means of what he describes
as "a sort of balloon." We gather from the rather confused passage in
which he describes this, and from a number of chance allusions and hints
in other and subsequent messages, that this "great shaft" is one of an
enormous system of artificial shafts that run, each from what is called a
lunar "crater," downwards for very nearly a hundred miles towards the
central portion of our satellite. These shafts communicate by transverse
tunnels, they throw out abysmal caverns and expand into great globular
places; the whole of the moon's substance for a hundred miles inward,
indeed, is a mere sponge of rock. "Partly," says Cavor, "this sponginess
is natural, but very largely it is due to the enormous industry of the
Selenites in the past. The enormous circular mounds of the excavated rock
and earth it is that form these great circles about the tunnels known to
earthly astronomers (misled by a false analogy) as volcanoes."

It was down this shaft they took him, in this "sort of balloon" he speaks
of, at first into an inky blackness and then into a region of continually
increasing phosphorescence. Cavor's despatches show him to be curiously
regardless of detail for a scientific man, but we gather that this light
was due to the streams and cascades of water--"no doubt containing some
phosphorescent organism"--that flowed ever more abundantly downward
towards the Central Sea. And as he descended, he says, "The Selenites also
became luminous." And at last far below him he saw, as it were, a lake of
heatless fire, the waters of the Central Sea, glowing and eddying in
strange perturbation, "like luminous blue milk that is just on the boil."

"This Lunar Sea," says Cavor, in a later passage "is not a stagnant ocean;
a solar tide sends it in a perpetual flow around the lunar axis, and
strange storms and boilings and rushings of its waters occur, and at times
cold winds and thunderings that ascend out of it into the busy ways of the
great ant-hill above. It is only when the water is in motion that it
gives out light; in its rare seasons of calm it is black. Commonly, when
one sees it, its waters rise and fall in an oily swell, and flakes and big
rafts of shining, bubbly foam drift with the sluggish, faintly glowing
current. The Selenites navigate its cavernous straits and lagoons in
little shallow boats of a canoe-like shape; and even before my journey to
the galleries about the Grand Lunar, who is Master of the Moon, I was
permitted to make a brief excursion on its waters.

"The caverns and passages are naturally very tortuous. A large proportion
of these ways are known only to expert pilots among the fishermen, and not
infrequently Selenites are lost for ever in their labyrinths. In their
remoter recesses, I am told, strange creatures lurk, some of them terrible
and dangerous creatures that all the science of the moon has been unable
to exterminate. There is particularly the Rapha, an inextricable mass of
clutching tentacles that one hacks to pieces only to multiply; and the
Tzee, a darting creature that is never seen, so subtly and suddenly does
it slay..."

He gives us a gleam of description.

"I was reminded on this excursion of what I have read of the Mammoth
Caves; if only I had had a yellow flambeau instead of the pervading blue
light, and a solid-looking boatman with an oar instead of a scuttle-faced
Selenite working an engine at the back of the canoe, I could have imagined
I had suddenly got back to earth. The rocks about us were very various,
sometimes black, sometimes pale blue and veined, and once they flashed and
glittered as though we had come into a mine of sapphires. And below one
saw the ghostly phosphorescent fishes flash and vanish in the hardly less
phosphorescent deep. Then, presently, a long ultra-marine vista down the
turgid stream of one of the channels of traffic, and a landing stage, and
then, perhaps, a glimpse up the enormous crowded shaft of one of the
vertical ways.

"In one great place heavy with glistening stalactites a number of boats
were fishing. We went alongside one of these and watched the long-armed
Selenites winding in a net. They were little, hunchbacked insects, with
very strong arms, short, bandy legs, and crinkled face-masks. As they
pulled at it that net seemed the heaviest thing I had come upon in the
moon; it was loaded with weights--no doubt of gold--and it took a long
time to draw, for in those waters the larger and more edible fish lurk
deep. The fish in the net came up like a blue moonrise--a blaze of
darting, tossing blue.

"Among their catch was a many-tentaculate, evil-eyed black thing,
ferociously active, whose appearance they greeted with shrieks and
twitters, and which with quick, nervous movements they hacked to pieces by
means of little hatchets. All its dissevered limbs continued to lash and
writhe in a vicious manner. Afterwards, when fever had hold of me, I
dreamt again and again of that bitter, furious creature rising so vigorous
and active out of the unknown sea. It was the most active and malignant
thing of all the living creatures I have yet seen in this world inside the
moon....

"The surface of this sea must be very nearly two hundred miles (if not
more) below the level of the moon's exterior; all the cities of the moon
lie, I learnt, immediately above this Central Sea, in such cavernous
spaces and artificial galleries as I have described, and they communicate
with the exterior by enormous vertical shafts which open invariably in
what are called by earthly astronomers the 'craters' of the moon. The lid
covering one such aperture I had already seen during the wanderings that
had preceded my capture.

"Upon the condition of the less central portion of the moon I have not yet
arrived at very precise knowledge. There is an enormous system of caverns
in which the mooncalves shelter during the night; and there are abattoirs
and the like--in one of these it was that I and Bedford fought with the
Selenite butchers--and I have since seen balloons laden with meat
descending out of the upper dark. I have as yet scarcely learnt as much of
these things as a Zulu in London would learn about the British corn
supplies in the same time. It is clear, however, that these vertical
shafts and the vegetation of the surface must play an essential role in
ventilating and keeping fresh the atmosphere of the moon. At one time, and
particularly on my first emergence from my prison, there was certainly a
cold wind blowing _down_ the shaft, and later there was a kind of sirocco
upward that corresponded with my fever. For at the end of about three
weeks I fell ill of an indefinable sort of fever, and in spite of sleep
and the quinine tabloids that very fortunately I had brought in my pocket,
I remained ill and fretting miserably, almost to the time when I was taken
into the presence of the Grand Lunar, who is Master of the Moon.

"I will not dilate on the wretchedness of my condition," he remarks,
"during those days of ill-health." And he goes on with great amplitude with
details I omit here. "My temperature," he concludes, "kept abnormally high
for a long time, and I lost all desire for food. I had stagnant waking
intervals, and sleep tormented by dreams, and at one phase I was, I
remember, so weak as to be earth-sick and almost hysterical. I longed
almost intolerably for colour to break the everlasting blue..."

He reverts again presently to the topic of this sponge-caught lunar
atmosphere. I am told by astronomers and physicists that all he tells is
in absolute accordance with what was already known of the moon's
condition. Had earthly astronomers had the courage and imagination to
push home a bold induction, says Mr. Wendigee, they might have foretold
almost everything that Cavor has to say of the general structure of the
moon. They know now pretty certainly that moon and earth are not so much
satellite and primary as smaller and greater sisters, made out of one
mass, and consequently made of the same material. And since the density of
the moon is only three-fifths that of the earth, there can be nothing for
it but that she is hollowed out by a great system of caverns. There was no
necessity, said Sir Jabez Flap, F.R.S., that most entertaining exponent of
the facetious side of the stars, that we should ever have gone to the moon
to find out such easy inferences, and points the pun with an allusion to
Gruyere, but he certainly might have announced his knowledge of the
hollowness of the moon before. And if the moon is hollow, then the
apparent absence of air and water is, of course, quite easily explained.
The sea lies within at the bottom of the caverns, and the air travels
through the great sponge of galleries, in accordance with simple physical
laws. The caverns of the moon, on the whole, are very windy places. As the
sunlight comes round the moon the air in the outer galleries on that side
is heated, its pressure increases, some flows out on the exterior and
mingles with the evaporating air of the craters (where the plants remove
its carbonic acid), while the greater portion flows round through the
galleries to replace the shrinking air of the cooling side that the
sunlight has left. There is, therefore, a constant eastward breeze in the
air of the outer galleries, and an upflow during the lunar day up the
shafts, complicated, of course, very greatly by the varying shape of the
galleries, and the ingenious contrivances of the Selenite mind....





Chapter 24




The Natural History of the Selenites

The messages of Cavor from the sixth up to the sixteenth are for the most
part so much broken, and they abound so in repetitions, that they scarcely
form a consecutive narrative. They will be given in full, of course, in
the scientific report, but here it will be far more convenient to continue
simply to abstract and quote as in the former chapter. We have subjected
every word to a keen critical scrutiny, and my own brief memories and
impressions of lunar things have been of inestimable help in interpreting
what would otherwise have been impenetrably dark. And, naturally, as
living beings, our interest centres far more upon the strange community of
lunar insects in which he was living, it would seem, as an honoured guest
than upon the mere physical condition of their world.

I have already made it clear, I think, that the Selenites I saw resembled
man in maintaining the erect attitude, and in having four limbs, and I
have compared the general appearance of their heads and the jointing of
their limbs to that of insects. I have mentioned, too, the peculiar
consequence of the smaller gravitation of the moon on their fragile
slightness. Cavor confirms me upon all these points. He calls them
"animals," though of course they fall under no division of the
classification of earthly creatures, and he points out "the insect type of
anatomy had, fortunately for men, never exceeded a relatively very small
size on earth." The largest terrestrial insects, living or extinct, do
not, as a matter of fact, measure six inches in length; "but here, against
the lesser gravitation of the moon, a creature certainly as much an insect
as vertebrate seems to have been able to attain to human and ultra-human
dimensions."

He does not mention the ant, but throughout his allusions the ant is
continually being brought before my mind, in its sleepless activity, in
its intelligence and social organisation, in its structure, and more
particularly in the fact that it displays, in addition to the two forms,
the male and the female form, that almost all other animals possess, a
number of other sexless creatures, workers, soldiers, and the like,
differing from one another in structure, character, power, and use, and
yet all members of the same species. For these Selenites, also, have a
great variety of forms. Of course, they are not only colossally greater in
size than ants, but also, in Cavor's opinion at least, in intelligence,
morality, and social wisdom are they colossally greater than men. And
instead of the four or five different forms of ant that are found, there
are almost innumerably different forms of Selenite. I had endeavoured to
indicate the very considerable difference observable in such Selenites of
the outer crust as I happened to encounter; the differences in size and
proportions were certainly as wide as the differences between the most
widely separated races of men. But such differences as I saw fade
absolutely to nothing in comparison with the huge distinctions of which
Cavor tells. It would seem the exterior Selenites I saw were, indeed,
mostly engaged in kindred occupations--mooncalf herds, butchers,
fleshers, and the like. But within the moon, practically unsuspected by
me, there are, it seems, a number of other sorts of Selenite, differing in
size, differing in the relative size of part to part, differing in power
and appearance, and yet not different species of creatures, but only
different forms of one species, and retaining through all their variations
a certain common likeness that marks their specific unity. The moon is,
indeed, a sort of vast ant-hill, only, instead of there being only four or
five sorts of ant, there are many hundred different sorts of Selenite, and
almost every gradation between one sort and another.

It would seem the discovery came upon Cavor very speedily. I infer rather
than learn from his narrative that he was captured by the mooncalf herds
under the direction of these other Selenites who "have larger brain cases
(heads?) and very much shorter legs." Finding he would not walk even under
the goad, they carried him into darkness, crossed a narrow, plank-like
bridge that may have been the identical bridge I had refused, and put him
down in something that must have seemed at first to be some sort of lift.
This was the balloon--it had certainly been absolutely invisible to us in
the darkness--and what had seemed to me a mere plank-walking into the
void was really, no doubt, the passage of the gangway. In this he
descended towards constantly more luminous caverns of the moon. At first
they descended in silence--save for the twitterings of the Selenites--and
then into a stir of windy movement. In a little while the profound
blackness had made his eyes so sensitive that he began to see more and
more of the things about him, and at last the vague took shape.

"Conceive an enormous cylindrical space," says Cavor, in his seventh
message, "a quarter of a mile across, perhaps; very dimly lit at first
and then brighter, with big platforms twisting down its sides in a spiral
that vanishes at last below in a blue profundity; and lit even more
brightly--one could not tell how or why. Think of the well of the very
largest spiral staircase or lift-shaft that you have ever looked down, and
magnify that by a hundred. Imagine it at twilight seen through blue glass.
Imagine yourself looking down that; only imagine also that you feel
extraordinarily light, and have got rid of any giddy feeling you might
have on earth, and you will have the first conditions of my impression.
Round this enormous shaft imagine a broad gallery running in a much
steeper spiral than would be credible on earth, and forming a steep road
protected from the gulf only by a little parapet that vanishes at last in
perspective a couple of miles below.

"Looking up, I saw the very fellow of the downward vision; it had, of
course, the effect of looking into a very steep cone. A wind was blowing
down the shaft, and far above I fancy I heard, growing fainter and
fainter, the bellowing of the mooncalves that were being driven down again
from their evening pasturage on the exterior. And up and down the spiral
galleries were scattered numerous moon people, pallid, faintly luminous
beings, regarding our appearance or busied on unknown errands.

"Either I fancied it or a flake of snow came drifting down on the icy
breeze. And then, falling like a snowflake, a little figure, a little
man-insect, clinging to a parachute, drove down very swiftly towards the
central places of the moon.

"The big-headed Selenite sitting beside me, seeing me move my head with
the gesture of one who saw, pointed with his trunk-like 'hand' and
indicated a sort of jetty coming into sight very far below: a little
landing-stage, as it were, hanging into the void. As it swept up towards
us our pace diminished very rapidly, and in a few moments, as it seemed,
we were abreast of it, and at rest. A mooring-rope was flung and grasped,
and I found myself pulled down to a level with a great crowd of Selenites,
who jostled to see me.

"It was an incredible crowd. Suddenly and violently there was forced upon
my attention the vast amount of difference there is amongst these beings
of the moon.

"Indeed, there seemed not two alike in all that jostling multitude. They
differed in shape, they differed in size, they rang all the horrible
changes on the theme of Selenite form! Some bulged and overhung, some ran
about among the feet of their fellows. All of them had a grotesque and
disquieting suggestion of an insect that has somehow contrived to mock
humanity; but all seemed to present an incredible exaggeration of some
particular feature: one had a vast right fore-limb, an enormous antennal
arm, as it were; one seemed all leg, poised, as it were, on stilts;
another protruded the edge of his face mask into a nose-like organ that
made him startlingly human until one saw his expressionless gaping mouth.
The strange and (except for the want of mandibles and palps) most
insect-like head of the mooncalf-minders underwent, indeed, the most
incredible transformations: here it was broad and low, here high and
narrow; here its leathery brow was drawn out into horns and strange
features; here it was whiskered and divided, and there with a grotesquely
human profile. One distortion was particularly conspicuous. There were
several brain cases distended like bladders to a huge size, with the face
mask reduced to quite small proportions. There were several amazing forms,
with heads reduced to microscopic proportions and blobby bodies; and
fantastic, flimsy things that existed, it would seem, only as a basis for
vast, trumpet-like protrusions of the lower part of the mask. And oddest
of all, as it seemed to me for the moment, two or three of these weird
inhabitants of a subterranean world, a world sheltered by innumerable
miles of rock from sun or rain, _carried umbrellas_ in their tentaculate
hands--real terrestrial looking umbrellas! And then I thought of the
parachutist I had watched descend.

"These moon people behaved exactly as a human crowd might have done in
similar circumstances: they jostled and thrust one another, they shoved
one another aside, they even clambered upon one another to get a glimpse
of me. Every moment they increased in numbers, and pressed more urgently
upon the discs of my ushers"--Cavor does not explain what he means by
this--"every moment fresh shapes emerged from the shadows and forced
themselves upon my astounded attention. And presently I was signed and
helped into a sort of litter, and lifted up on the shoulders of
strong-armed bearers, and so borne through the twilight over this seething
multitude towards the apartments that were provided for me in the moon.
All about me were eyes, faces, masks, a leathery noise like the rustling
of beetle wings, and a great bleating and cricket-like twittering of
Selenite voices."

We gather he was taken to a "hexagonal apartment," and there for a space
he was confined. Afterwards he was given a much more considerable liberty;
indeed, almost as much freedom as one has in a civilised town on earth.
And it would appear that the mysterious being who is the ruler and master
of the moon appointed two Selenites "with large heads" to guard and study
him, and to establish whatever mental communications were possible with
him. And, amazing and incredible as it may seem, these two creatures,
these fantastic men insects, these beings of other world, were presently
communicating with Cavor by means of terrestrial speech.

Cavor speaks of them as Phi-oo and Tsi-puff. Phi-oo, he says, was about 5
feet high; he had small slender legs about 18 inches long, and slight feet
of the common lunar pattern. On these balanced a little body, throbbing
with the pulsations of his heart. He had long, soft, many-jointed arms
ending in a tentacled grip, and his neck was many-jointed in the usual
way, but exceptionally short and thick. His head, says Cavor--apparently
alluding to some previous description that has gone astray in space--"is
of the common lunar type, but strangely modified. The mouth has the usual
expressionless gape, but it is unusually small and pointing downward, and
the mask is reduced to the size of a large flat nose-flap. On either side
are the little eyes.

"The rest of the head is distended into a huge globe and the chitinous
leathery cuticle of the mooncalf herds thins out to a mere membrane,
through which the pulsating brain movements are distinctly visible. He
is a creature, indeed, with a tremendously hypertrophied brain, and with
the rest of his organism both relatively and absolutely dwarfed."

In another passage Cavor compares the back view of him to Atlas supporting
the world. Tsi-puff it seems was a very similar insect, but his "face" was
drawn out to a considerable length, and the brain hypertrophy being in
different regions, his head was not round but pear-shaped, with the stalk
downward. There were also litter-carriers, lopsided beings, with enormous
shoulders, very spidery ushers, and a squat foot attendant in Cavor's
retinue.

The manner in which Phi-oo and Tsi-puff attacked the problem of speech was
fairly obvious. They came into this "hexagonal cell" in which Cavor was
confined, and began imitating every sound he made, beginning with a cough.
He seems to have grasped their intention with great quickness, and to have
begun repeating words to them and pointing to indicate the application.
The procedure was probably always the same. Phi-oo would attend to Cavor
for a space, then point also and say the word he had heard.

The first word he mastered was "man," and the second "Mooney"--which
Cavor on the spur of the moment seems to have used instead of "Selenite"
for the moon race. As soon as Phi-oo was assured of the meaning of a word
he repeated it to Tsi-puff, who remembered it infallibly. They mastered
over one hundred English nouns at their first session.

Subsequently it seems they brought an artist with them to assist the work
of explanation with sketches and diagrams--Cavor's drawings being rather
crude. "He was," says Cavor, "a being with an active arm and an arresting
eye," and he seemed to draw with incredible swiftness.

The eleventh message is undoubtedly only a fragment of a longer
communication. After some broken sentences, the record of which is
unintelligible, it goes on:--

"But it will interest only linguists, and delay me too long, to give the
details of the series of intent parleys of which these were the beginning,
and, indeed, I very much doubt if I could give in anything like the proper
order all the twistings and turnings that we made in our pursuit of mutual
comprehension. Verbs were soon plain sailing--at least, such active verbs
as I could express by drawings; some adjectives were easy, but when it
came to abstract nouns, to prepositions, and the sort of hackneyed figures
of speech, by means of which so much is expressed on earth, it was like
diving in cork-jackets. Indeed, these difficulties were insurmountable
until to the sixth lesson came a fourth assistant, a being with a huge
football-shaped head, whose forte was clearly the pursuit of intricate
analogy. He entered in a preoccupied manner, stumbling against a stool,
and the difficulties that arose had to be presented to him with a certain
amount of clamour and hitting and pricking before they reached his
apprehension. But once he was involved his penetration was amazing.
Whenever there came a need of thinking beyond Phi-oo's by no means limited
scope, this prolate-headed person was in request, but he invariably told
the conclusion to Tsi-puff, in order that it might be remembered; Tsi-puff
was ever the arsenal for facts. And so we advanced again.

"It seemed long and yet brief--a matter of days--before I was positively
talking with these insects of the moon. Of course, at first it was an
intercourse infinitely tedious and exasperating, but imperceptibly it has
grown to comprehension. And my patience has grown to meet its limitations,
Phi-oo it is who does all the talking. He does it with a vast amount of
meditative provisional 'M'm--M'm' and has caught up one or two phrases,
'If I may say,' 'If you understand,' and beads all his speech with them.

"Thus he would discourse. Imagine him explaining his artist.

"'M'm--M'm--he--if I may say--draw. Eat little--drink little--draw.
Love draw. No other thing. Hate all who not draw like him. Angry. Hate all
who draw like him better. Hate most people. Hate all who not think all
world for to draw. Angry. M'm. All things mean nothing to him--only draw.
He like you ... if you understand.... New thing to draw. Ugly--striking.
Eh?

"'He'--turning to Tsi-puff--'love remember words. Remember wonderful
more than any. Think no, draw no--remember. Say'--here he referred to
his gifted assistant for a word--'histories--all things. He hear
once--say ever.'

"It is more wonderful to me than I dreamt that anything ever could be
again, to hear, in this perpetual obscurity, these extraordinary
creatures--for even familiarity fails to weaken the inhuman effect of
their appearance--continually piping a nearer approach to coherent earthly
speech--asking questions, giving answers. I feel that I am casting back
to the fable-hearing period of childhood again, when the ant and the
grasshopper talked together and the bee judged between them..."

And while these linguistic exercises were going on Cavor seems to have
experienced a considerable relaxation of his confinement. "The first dread
and distrust our unfortunate conflict aroused is being," he said,
"continually effaced by the deliberate rationality of all I do.... I am
now able to come and go as I please, or I am restricted only for my own
good. So it is I have been able to get at this apparatus, and, assisted
by a happy find among the material that is littered in this enormous
store-cave, I have contrived to despatch these messages. So far not the
slightest attempt has been made to interfere with me in this, though I
have made it quite clear to Phi-oo that I am signalling to the earth.

"'You talk to other?' he asked, watching me.

"'Others,' said I.

"'Others,' he said. 'Oh yes, Men?'

"And I went on transmitting."

Cavor was continually making corrections in his previous accounts of the
Selenites as fresh facts flowed upon him to modify his conclusions, and
accordingly one gives the quotations that follow with a certain amount of
reservation. They are quoted from the ninth, thirteenth, and sixteenth
messages, and, altogether vague and fragmentary as they are, they probably
give as complete a picture of the social life of this strange community as
mankind can now hope to have for many generations.

"In the moon," says Cavor, "every citizen knows his place. He is born to
that place, and the elaborate discipline of training and education and
surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he has
neither ideas nor organs for any purpose beyond it. 'Why should he?'
Phi-oo would ask. If, for example, a Selenite is destined to be a
mathematician, his teachers and trainers set out at once to that end. They
check any incipient disposition to other pursuits, they encourage his
mathematical bias with a perfect psychological skill. His brain grows, or
at least the mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the rest of him
only so much as is necessary to sustain this essential part of him. At
last, save for rest and food, his one delight lies in the exercise and
display of his faculty, his one interest in its application, his sole
society with other specialists in his own line. His brain grows
continually larger, at least so far as the portions engaging in
mathematics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and seem to suck all
life and vigour from the rest of his frame. His limbs shrivel, his heart
and digestive organs diminish, his insect face is hidden under its bulging
contours. His voice becomes a mere stridulation for the stating of
formula; he seems deaf to all but properly enunciated problems. The
faculty of laughter, save for the sudden discovery of some paradox, is
lost to him; his deepest emotion is the evolution of a novel computation.
And so he attains his end.

"Or, again, a Selenite appointed to be a minder of mooncalves is from his
earliest years induced to think and live mooncalf, to find his pleasure in
mooncalf lore, his exercise in their tending and pursuit. He is trained to
become wiry and active, his eye is indurated to the tight wrappings, the
angular contours that constitute a 'smart mooncalfishness.' He takes at
last no interest in the deeper part of the moon; he regards all Selenites
not equally versed in mooncalves with indifference, derision, or
hostility. His thoughts are of mooncalf pastures, and his dialect an
accomplished mooncalf technique. So also he loves his work, and discharges
in perfect happiness the duty that justifies his being. And so it is with
all sorts and conditions of Selenites--each is a perfect unit in a world
machine....

"These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall, form
a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of them,
quintessential of the moon, is that marvellous gigantic ganglion the Grand
Lunar, into whose presence I am finally to come. The unlimited development
of the minds of the intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence
of any bony skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that
clamps about the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting 'thus far
and no farther' to all his possibilities. They fall into three main
classes differing greatly in influence and respect. There are
administrators, of whom Phi-oo is one, Selenites of considerable
initiative and versatility, responsible each for a certain cubic content
of the moon's bulk; the experts like the football-headed thinker, who are
trained to perform certain special operations; and the erudite, who are
the repositories of all knowledge. To the latter class belongs Tsi-puff,
the first lunar professor of terrestrial languages. With regard to these
latter, it is a curious little thing to note that the unlimited growth of
the lunar brain has rendered unnecessary the invention of all those
mechanical aids to brain work which have distinguished the career of man.
There are no books, no records of any sort, no libraries or inscriptions.
All knowledge is stored in distended brains much as the honey-ants of
Texas store honey in their distended abdomens. The lunar Somerset House
and the lunar British Museum Library are collections of living brains...

"The less specialised administrators, I note, do for the most part take a
very lively interest in me whenever they encounter me. They will come out
of the way and stare at me and ask questions to which Phi-oo will reply. I
see them going hither and thither with a retinue of bearers, attendants,
shouters, parachute-carriers, and so forth--queer groups to see. The
experts for the most part ignore me completely, even as they ignore each
other, or notice me only to begin a clamorous exhibition of their
distinctive skill. The erudite for the most part are rapt in an impervious
and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of their erudition
can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little watchers and
attendants, and often there are small and active-looking creatures, small
females usually, that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife to them;
but some of the profounder scholars are altogether too great for
locomotion, and are carried from place to place in a sort of sedan tub,
wabbling jellies of knowledge that enlist my respectful astonishment. I
have just passed one in coming to this place where I am permitted to amuse
myself with these electrical toys, a vast, shaven, shaky head, bald and
thin-skinned, carried on his grotesque stretcher. In front and behind came
his bearers, and curious, almost trumpet-faced, news disseminators
shrieked his fame.

"I have already mentioned the retinues that accompany most of the
intellectuals: ushers, bearers, valets, extraneous tentacles and muscles,
as it were, to replace the abortive physical powers of these hypertrophied
minds. Porters almost invariably accompany them. There are also extremely
swift messengers with spider-like legs and 'hands' for grasping
parachutes, and attendants with vocal organs that could well nigh wake the
dead. Apart from their controlling intelligence these subordinates are as
inert and helpless as umbrellas in a stand. They exist only in relation to
the orders they have to obey, the duties they have to perform.

"The bulk of these insects, however, who go to and fro upon the spiral
ways, who fill the ascending balloons and drop past me clinging to flimsy
parachutes are, I gather, of the operative class. 'Machine hands,' indeed,
some of these are in actual nature--it is not figure of speech, the
single tentacle of the mooncalf herd is profoundly modified for clawing,
lifting, guiding, the rest of them no more than necessary subordinate
appendages to these important mechanisms, have enormously developed
auditory organs; some whose work lies in delicate chemical operations
project a vast olfactory organ; others again have flat feet for
treadles with anchylosed joints; and others--who I have been told are
glassblowers--seem mere lung-bellows. But every one of these common
Selenites I have seen at work is exquisitely adapted to the social need
it meets. Fine work is done by fined-down workers, amazingly dwarfed
and neat. Some I could hold on the palm of my hand. There is even a
sort of turnspit Selenite, very common, whose duty and only delight it
is to apply the motive power for various small appliances. And to rule
over these things and order any erring tendency there might be in some
aberrant natures are the most muscular beings I have seen in the moon,
a sort of lunar police, who must have been trained from their earliest
years to give a perfect respect and obedience to the swollen heads.

"The making of these various sorts of operative must be a very curious and
interesting process. I am very much in the dark about it, but quite
recently I came upon a number of young Selenites confined in jars from
which only the fore-limbs protruded, who were being compressed to become
machine-minders of a special sort. The extended 'hand' in this highly
developed system of technical education is stimulated by irritants and
nourished by injection, while the rest of the body is starved. Phi-oo,
unless I misunderstood him, explained that in the earlier stages these
queer little creatures are apt to display signs of suffering in their
various cramped situations, but they easily become indurated to their lot;
and he took me on to where a number of flexible-minded messengers were
being drawn out and broken in. It is quite unreasonable, I know, but such
glimpses of the educational methods of these beings affect me
disagreeably. I hope, however, that may pass off, and I may be able to
see more of this aspect of their wonderful social order. That
wretched-looking hand-tentacle sticking out of its jar seemed to have a
sort of limp appeal for lost possibilities; it haunts me still, although,
of course it is really in the end a far more humane proceeding than our
earthly method of leaving children to grow into human beings, and then
making machines of them.

"Quite recently, too--I think it was on the eleventh or twelfth visit I
made to this apparatus--I had a curious light upon the lives of these
operatives. I was being guided through a short cut hither, instead of
going down the spiral, and by the quays to the Central Sea. From the
devious windings of a long, dark gallery, we emerged into a vast, low
cavern, pervaded by an earthy smell, and as things go in this darkness,
rather brightly lit. The light came from a tumultuous growth of livid
fungoid shapes--some indeed singularly like our terrestrial mushrooms,
but standing as high or higher than a man.

"'Mooneys eat these?' said I to Phi-oo.

"'Yes, food.'

"'Goodness me!' I cried; 'what's that?'

"My eye had just caught the figure of an exceptionally big and ungainly
Selenite lying motionless among the stems, face downward. We stopped.

"'Dead?' I asked. (For as yet I have seen no dead the moon, and I have
grown curious.)

"'No!' exclaimed Phi-oo. 'Him--worker--no work to do. Get little drink
then--make sleep--till we him want. What good him wake, eh? No want him
walking about.'

"'There's another!' cried I.

"And indeed all that huge extent of mushroom ground was, I found, peppered
with these prostrate figures sleeping under an opiate until the moon had
need of them. There were scores of them of all sorts, and we were able to
turn over some of them, and examine them more precisely than I had been
able to previously. They breathed noisily at my doing so, but did not
wake. One, I remember very distinctly: he left a strong impression, I
think, because some trick the light and of his attitude was strongly
suggestive a drawn-up human figure. His fore-limbs were long, delicate
tentacles--he was some kind of refined manipulator--and the pose of his
slumber suggested a submissive suffering. No doubt it was a mistake for
me to interpret his expression in that way, but I did. And as Phi-oo
rolled him over into the darkness among the livid fleshiness again I felt
a distinctly unpleasant sensation, although as he rolled the insect in
him was confessed.

"It simply illustrates the unthinking way in which one acquires habits of
feeling. To drug the worker one does not want and toss him aside is surely
far better than to expel him from his factory to wander starving in the
streets. In every complicated social community there is necessarily a
certain intermittency of employment for all specialised labour, and in
this way the trouble of an 'unemployed' problem is altogether anticipated.
And yet, so unreasonable are even scientifically trained minds, I still do
not like the memory of those prostrate forms amidst those quiet, luminous
arcades of fleshy growth, and I avoid that short cut in spite of the
inconveniences of the longer, more noisy, and more crowded alternative.

"My alternative route takes me round by a huge, shadowy cavern, very
crowded and clamorous, and here it is I see peering out of the hexagonal
openings of a sort of honeycomb wall, or parading a large open space
behind, or selecting the toys and amulets made to please them by the
dainty-tentacled jewellers who work in kennels below, the mothers of the
moon world--the queen bees, as it were, of the hive. They are
noble-looking beings, fantastically and sometimes quite beautifully
adorned, with a proud carriage, and, save for their mouths, almost
microscopic heads.

"Of the condition of the moon sexes, marrying and giving in marriage, and
of birth and so forth among the Selenites, I have as yet been able to
learn very little. With the steady progress of Phi-oo in English, however,
my ignorance will no doubt as steadily disappear. I am of opinion that, as
with the ants and bees, there is a large majority of the members in this
community of the neuter sex. Of course on earth in our cities there are
now many who never live that life of parentage which is the natural life
of man. Here, as with the ants, this thing has become a normal condition
of the race, and the whole of such eplacement as is necessary falls upon
this special and by no means numerous class of matrons, the mothers of the
moon-world, large and stately beings beautifully fitted to bear the larval
Selenite. Unless I misunderstand an explanation of Phi-oo's, they are
absolutely incapable of cherishing the young they bring into the moon;
periods of foolish indulgence alternate with moods of aggressive violence,
and as soon as possible the little creatures, who are quite soft and
flabby and pale coloured, are transferred to the charge of celibate
females, women 'workers' as it were, who in some cases possess brains of
almost masculine dimensions."

Just at this point, unhappily, this message broke off. Fragmentary and
tantalising as the matter constituting this chapter is, it does
nevertheless give a vague, broad impression of an altogether strange and
wonderful world--a world with which our own may have to reckon we know
not how speedily. This intermittent trickle of messages, this whispering
of a record needle in the stillness of the mountain slopes, is the first
warning of such a change in human conditions as mankind has scarcely
imagined heretofore. In that satellite of ours there are new elements, new
appliances, traditions, an overwhelming avalanche of new ideas, a strange
race with whom we must inevitably struggle for mastery--gold as common as
iron or wood...





Chapter 25




The Grand Lunar

The penultimate message describes, with occasionally elaborate detail, the
encounter between Cavor and the Grand Lunar, who is the ruler or master of
the moon. Cavor seems to have sent most of it without interference, but to
have been interrupted in the concluding portion. The second came after an
interval of a week.

The first message begins: "At last I am able to resume this--" it then
becomes illegible for a space, and after a time resumed in mid-sentence.

The missing words of the following sentence are probably "the crowd."
There follows quite clearly: "grew ever denser as we drew near the palace
of the Grand Lunar--if I may call a series of excavations a palace.
Everywhere faces stared at me--blank, chitinous gapes and masks, eyes
peering over tremendous olfactory developments, eyes beneath monstrous
forehead plates; and undergrowth of smaller creatures dodged and yelped,
and helmet faces poised on sinuous, long-jointed necks appeared craning
over shoulders and beneath armpits. Keeping a welcome space about me
marched a cordon of stolid, scuttle-headed guards, who had joined us on
our leaving the boat in which we had come along the channels of the
Central Sea. The quick-eyed artist with the little brain joined us also,
and a thick bunch of lean porter-insects swayed and struggled under the
multitude of conveniences that were considered essential to my state. I
was carried in a litter during the final stage of our journey. This litter
was made of some very ductile metal that looked dark to me, meshed and
woven, and with bars of paler metal, and about me as I advanced there
grouped itself a long and complicated procession.

"In front, after the manner of heralds, marched four trumpet-faced
creatures making a devastating bray; and then came squat, resolute-moving
ushers before and behind, and on either hand a galaxy of learned heads, a
sort of animated encyclopedia, who were, Phi-oo explained, to stand about
the Grand Lunar for purposes of reference. (Not a thing in lunar science,
not a point of view or method of thinking, that these wonderful beings did
not carry in their heads!) Followed guards and porters, and then Phi-oo's
shivering brain borne also on a litter. Then came Tsi-puff in a slightly
less important litter; then myself on a litter of greater elegance than
any other, and surrounded by my food and drink attendants. More trumpeters
came next, splitting the ear with vehement outcries, and then several
big brains, special correspondents one might well call them, or
historiographers, charged with the task of observing and remembering every
detail of this epoch-making interview. A company of attendants, bearing
and dragging banners and masses of scented fungus and curious symbols,
vanished in the darkness behind. The way was lined by ushers and officers
in caparisons that gleamed like steel, and beyond their line, so far as my
eyes could pierce the gloom, the heads of that enormous crowd extended.

"I will own that I am still by no means indurated to the peculiar effect
of the Selenite appearance, and to find myself, as it were, adrift on this
broad sea of excited entomology was by no means agreeable. Just for a
space I had something very like what I should imagine people mean when
they speak of the 'horrors.' It had come to me before in these lunar
caverns, when on occasion I have found myself weaponless and with an
undefended back, amidst a crowd of these Selenites, but never quite so
vividly. It is, of course, as absolutely irrational a feeling as one could
well have, and I hope gradually to subdue it. But just for a moment, as I
swept forward into the welter of the vast crowd, it was only by gripping
my litter tightly and summoning all my will-power that I succeeded in
avoiding an outcry or some such manifestation. It lasted perhaps three
minutes; then I had myself in hand again.

"We ascended the spiral of a vertical way for some time, and then passed
through a series of huge halls dome-roofed and elaborately decorated. The
approach to the Grand Lunar was certainly contrived to give one a vivid
impression of his greatness. Each cavern one entered seemed greater and
more boldly arched than its predecessor. This effect of progressive size
was enhanced by a thin haze of faintly phosphorescent blue incense that
thickened as one advanced, and robbed even the nearer figures of
clearness. I seemed to advance continually to something larger, dimmer,
and less material.

"I must confess that all this multitude made me feel extremely shabby and
unworthy. I was unshaven and unkempt; I had brought no razor; I had a
coarse beard over my mouth. On earth I have always been inclined to
despise any attention to my person beyond a proper care for cleanliness;
but under the exceptional circumstances in which I found myself,
representing, as I did, my planet and my kind, and depending very largely
upon the attractiveness of my appearance for a proper reception, I could
have given much for something a little more artistic and dignified than
the husks I wore. I had been so serene in the belief that the moon was
uninhabited as to overlook such precautions altogether. As it was I was
dressed in a flannel jacket, knickerbockers, and golfing stockings,
stained with every sort of dirt the moon offered, slippers (of which the
left heel was wanting), and a blanket, through a hole in which I thrust my
head. (These clothes, indeed, I still wear.) Sharp bristles are anything
but an improvement to my cast of features, and there was an unmended tear
at the knee of my knickerbockers that showed conspicuously as I squatted
in my litter; my right stocking, too, persisted in getting about my ankle.
I am fully alive to the injustice my appearance did humanity, and if by
any expedient I could have improvised something a little out of the way
and imposing I would have done so. But I could hit upon nothing. I did
what I could with my blanket--folding it somewhat after the fashion of a
toga, and for the rest I sat as upright as the swaying of my litter
permitted.

"Imagine the largest hall you have ever been in, imperfectly lit with blue
light and obscured by a gray-blue fog, surging with metallic or livid-gray
creatures of such a mad diversity as I have hinted. Imagine this hall to
end in an open archway beyond which is a still larger hall, and beyond
this yet another and still larger one, and so on. At the end of the vista,
dimly seen, a flight of steps, like the steps of Ara Coeli at Rome, ascend
out of sight. Higher and higher these steps appear to go as one draws
nearer their base. But at last I came under a huge archway and beheld the
summit of these steps, and upon it the Grand Lunar exalted on his throne.

"He was seated in what was relatively a blaze of incandescent blue. This,
and the darkness about him gave him an effect of floating in a blue-black
void. He seemed a small, self-luminous cloud at first, brooding on his
sombre throne; his brain case must have measured many yards in diameter.
For some reason that I cannot fathom a number of blue search-lights
radiated from behind the throne on which he sat, and immediately
encircling him was a halo. About him, and little and indistinct in this
glow, a number of body-servants sustained and supported him, and
overshadowed and standing in a huge semicircle beneath him were his
intellectual subordinates, his remembrancers and computators and searchers
and servants, and all the distinguished insects of the court of the moon.
Still lower stood ushers and messengers, and then all down the countless
steps of the throne were guards, and at the base, enormous, various,
indistinct, vanishing at last into an absolute black, a vast swaying
multitude of the minor dignitaries of the moon. Their feet made a
perpetual scraping whisper on the rocky floor, as their limbs moved with a
rustling murmur.

"As I entered the penultimate hall the music rose and expanded into an
imperial magnificence of sound, and the shrieks of the news-bearers died
away....

"I entered the last and greatest hall....

"My procession opened out like a fan. My ushers and guards went right and
left, and the three litters bearing myself and Phi-oo and Tsi-puff marched
across a shiny darkness of floor to the foot of the giant stairs. Then
began a vast throbbing hum, that mingled with the music. The two Selenites
dismounted, but I was bidden remain seated--I imagine as a special
honour. The music ceased, but not that humming, and by a simultaneous
movement of ten thousand respectful heads my attention was directed to the
enhaloed supreme intelligence that hovered above me.

"At first as I peered into the radiating glow this quintessential brain
looked very much like an opaque, featureless bladder with dim, undulating
ghosts of convolutions writhing visibly within. Then beneath its enormity
and just above the edge of the throne one saw with a start minute elfin
eyes peering out of the glow. No face, but eyes, as if they peered through
holes. At first I could see no more than these two staring little eyes,
and then below I distinguished the little dwarfed body and its
insect-jointed limbs shrivelled and white. The eyes stared down at me with
a strange intensity, and the lower part of the swollen globe was wrinkled.
Ineffectual-looking little hand-tentacles steadied this shape on the
throne....

"It was great. It was pitiful. One forgot the hall and the crowd.

"I ascended the staircase by jerks. It seemed to me that this darkly
glowing brain case above us spread over me, and took more and more of the
whole effect into itself as I drew nearer. The tiers of attendants and
helpers grouped about their master seemed to dwindle and fade into the
night. I saw that shadowy attendants were busy spraying that great brain
with a cooling spray, and patting and sustaining it. For my own part, I
sat gripping my swaying litter and staring at the Grand Lunar, unable to
turn my gaze aside. And at last, as I reached a little landing that was
separated only by ten steps or so from the supreme seat, the woven
splendour of the music reached a climax and ceased, and I was left naked,
as it were, in that vastness, beneath the still scrutiny of the Grand
Lunar's eyes.

"He was scrutinising the first man he had ever seen....

"My eyes dropped at last from his greatness to the ant figures in the blue
mist about him, and then down the steps to the massed Selenites, still and
expectant in their thousands, packed on the floor below. Once again an
unreasonable horror reached out towards me.... And passed.

"After the pause came the salutation. I was assisted from my litter, and
stood awkwardly while a number of curious and no doubt deeply symbolical
gestures were vicariously performed for me by two slender officials. The
encyclopaedic galaxy of the learned that had accompanied me to the
entrance of the last hall appeared two steps above me and left and right
of me, in readiness for the Grand Lunar's need, and Phi-oo's pale brain
placed itself about half-way up to the throne in such a position as to
communicate easily between us without turning his back on either the Grand
Lunar or myself. Tsi-puff took up position behind him. Dexterous ushers
sidled sideways towards me, keeping a full face to the Presence. I seated
myself Turkish fashion, and Phi-oo and Tsi-puff also knelt down above me.
There came a pause. The eyes of the nearer court went from me to the Grand
Lunar and came back to me, and a hissing and piping of expectation passed
across the hidden multitudes below and ceased.

"That humming ceased.

"For the first and last time in my experience the moon was silent.

"I became aware of a faint wheezy noise. The Grand Lunar was addressing
me. It was like the rubbing of a finger upon a pane of glass.

"I watched him attentively for a time, and then glanced at the alert
Phi-oo. I felt amidst these slender beings ridiculously thick and fleshy
and solid; my head all jaw and black hair. My eyes went back to the Grand
Lunar. He had ceased; his attendants were busy, and his shining superfices
was glistening and running with cooling spray.

"Phi-oo meditated through an interval. He consulted Tsi-puff. Then he
began piping his recognisable English--at first a little nervously, so
that he was not very clear.

"'M'm--the Grand Lunar--wished to say--wishes to say--he gathers you
are--m'm--men--that you are a man from the planet earth. He wishes to
say that he welcomes you--welcomes you--and wishes to learn--learn, if
I may use the word--the state of your world, and the reason why you came
to this.'

"He paused. I was about to reply when he resumed. He proceeded to remarks
of which the drift was not very clear, though I am inclined to think they
were intended to be complimentary. He told me that the earth was to the
moon what the sun is to the earth, and that the Selenites desired very
greatly to learn about the earth and men. He then told me no doubt in
compliment also, the relative magnitude and diameter of earth and moon,
and the perpetual wonder and speculation with which the Selenites had
regarded our planet. I meditated with downcast eyes, and decided to reply
that men too had wondered what might lie in the moon, and had judged it
dead, little recking of such magnificence as I had seen that day. The
Grand Lunar, in token of recognition, caused his long blue rays to rotate
in a very confusing manner, and all about the great hall ran the pipings
and whisperings and rustlings of the report of what I had said. He then
proceeded to put to Phi-oo a number of inquiries which were easier to
answer.

"He understood, he explained, that we lived on the surface of the earth,
that our air and sea were outside the globe; the latter part, indeed, he
already knew from his astronomical specialists. He was very anxious to
have more detailed information of what he called this extraordinary state
of affairs, for from the solidity of the earth there had always been a
disposition regard it as uninhabitable. He endeavoured first to ascertain
the extremes of temperature to which we earth beings were exposed, and he
was deeply interested by my descriptive treatment of clouds and rain. His
imagination was assisted by the fact that the lunar atmosphere in the
outer galleries of the night side is not infrequently very foggy. He
seemed inclined to marvel that we did not find the sunlight too intense
for our eyes, and was interested in my attempt to explain that the sky was
tempered to a bluish colour through the refraction of the air, though I
doubt if he clearly understood that. I explained how the iris of the human
eyes can contract the pupil and save the delicate internal structure from
the excess of sunlight, and was allowed to approach within a few feet of
the Presence in order that this structure might be seen. This led to a
comparison of the lunar and terrestrial eyes. The former is not only
excessively sensitive to such light as men can see, but it can also _see_
heat, and every difference in temperature within the moon renders objects
visible to it.

"The iris was quite a new organ to the Grand Lunar. For a time he amused
himself by flashing his rays into my face and watching my pupils contract.
As a consequence, I was dazzled and blinded for some little time....

"But in spite of that discomfort I found something reassuring by
insensible degrees in the rationality of this business of question and
answer. I could shut my eyes, think of my answer, and almost forget that
the the Grand Lunar has no face....

"When I had descended again to my proper place the Grand Lunar asked how
we sheltered ourselves from heat and storms, and I expounded to him the
arts of building and furnishing. Here we wandered into misunderstandings
and cross-purposes, due largely, I must admit, to the looseness of my
expressions. For a long time I had great difficulty in making him
understand the nature of a house. To him and his attendant Selenites it
seemed, no doubt, the most whimsical thing in the world that men should
build houses when they might descend into excavations, and an additional
complication was introduced by the attempt I made to explain that men had
originally begun their homes in caves, and that they were now taking their
railways and many establishments beneath the surface. Here I think a
desire for intellectual completeness betrayed me. There was also a
considerable tangle due to an equally unwise attempt on my part to explain
about mines. Dismissing this topic at last in an incomplete state, the
Grand Lunar inquired what we did with the interior of our globe.

"A tide of twittering and piping swept into the remotest corners of that
great assembly then it was last made clear that we men know absolutely
nothing of the contents of the world upon which the immemorial generations
of our ancestors had been evolved. Three times had I to repeat that of all
the 4000 miles of distance between the earth and its centre men knew only
to the depth of a mile, and that very vaguely. I understood the Grand
Lunar to ask why had I come to the moon seeing we had scarcely touched our
own planet yet, but he did not trouble me at that time to proceed to an
explanation, being too anxious to pursue the details of this mad inversion
of all his ideas.

"He reverted to the question of weather, and I tried to describe the
perpetually changing sky, and snow, and frost and hurricanes. 'But when
the night comes,' he asked, 'is it not cold?'

"I told him it was colder than by day.

"'And does not your atmosphere freeze?'

"I told him not; that it was never cold enough for that, because our
nights were so short.

"'Not even liquefy?'

"I was about to say 'No,' but then it occurred to me that one part at
least of our atmosphere, the water vapour of it, does sometimes liquefy
and form dew, and sometimes freeze and form frost--a process perfectly
analogous to the freezing of all the external atmosphere of the moon
during its longer night. I made myself clear on this point, and from that
the Grand Lunar went on to speak with me of sleep. For the need of sleep
that comes so regularly every twenty-four hours to all things is part also
of our earthly inheritance. On the moon they rest only at rare intervals,
and after exceptional exertions. Then I tried to describe to him the soft
splendours of a summer night, and from that I passed to a description of
those animals that prowl by night and sleep by day. I told him of lions
and tigers, and here it seemed as though we had come to a deadlock. For,
save in their waters, there are no creatures in the moon not absolutely
domestic and subject to his will, and so it has been for immemorial years.
They have monstrous water creatures, but no evil beasts, and the idea of
anything strong and large existing 'outside' in the night is very
difficult for them...."

[The record is here too broken to transcribe for the space of perhaps
twenty words or more.]

"He talked with his attendants, as I suppose, upon the strange
superficiality and unreasonableness of (man) who lives on the mere surface
of a world, a creature of waves and winds, and all the chances of space,
who cannot even unite to overcome the beasts that prey upon his kind, and
yet who dares to invade another planet. During this aside I sat thinking,
and then at his desire I told him of the different sorts of men. He
searched me with questions. 'And for all sorts of work you have the same
sort of men. But who thinks? Who governs?'

"I gave him an outline of the democratic method.

"When I had done he ordered cooling sprays upon his brow, and then
requested me to repeat my explanation conceiving something had miscarried.

"'Do they not do different things, then?' said Phi-oo.

"Some, I admitted, were thinkers and some officials; some hunted, some
were mechanics, some artists, some toilers. 'But _all_ rule,' I said.

"'And have they not different shapes to fit them to their different
duties?'

"'None that you can see,' I said, 'except perhaps, for clothes. Their
minds perhaps differ a little,' I reflected.

"'Their minds must differ a great deal,' said the Grand Lunar, 'or they
would all want to do the same things.'

"In order to bring myself into a closer harmony with his preconceptions, I
said that his surmise was right. 'It was all hidden in the brain,' I said;
'but the difference was there. Perhaps if one could see the minds and
souls of men they would be as varied and unequal as the Selenites. There
were great men and small men, men who could reach out far and wide, men
who could go swiftly; noisy, trumpet-minded men, and men who could
remember without thinking....'"

[The record is indistinct for three words.]

"He interrupted me to recall me to my previous statements. 'But you said
all men rule?' he pressed.

"'To a certain extent,' I said, and made, I fear, a denser fog with my
explanation.

"He reached out to a salient fact. 'Do you mean,' asked, 'that there is
no Grand Earthly?'

"I thought of several people, but assured him finally there was none. I
explained that such autocrats and emperors as we had tried upon earth had
usually ended in drink, or vice, or violence, and that the large and
influential section of the people of the earth to which I belonged, the
Anglo-Saxons, did not mean to try that sort of thing again. At which the
Grand Lunar was even more amazed.

"'But how do you keep even such wisdom as you have?' he asked; and I
explained to him the way we helped our limited"

[A word omitted here, probably "brains."]

"with libraries of books. I explained to him how our science was
growing by the united labours of innumerable little men, and on
that he made no comment save that it was evident we had mastered much
in spite of our social savagery, or we could not have come to the moon.
Yet the contrast was very marked. With knowledge the Selenites grew
and changed; mankind stored their knowledge about them and remained
brutes--equipped. He said this..."

[Here there is a short piece of the record indistinct.]

"He then caused me to describe how we went about this earth of ours, and I
described to him our railways and ships. For a time he could not
understand that we had had the use of steam only one hundred years, but
when he did he was clearly amazed. (I may mention as a singular thing,
that the Selenites use years to count by, just as we do on earth, though I
can make nothing of their numeral system. That, however, does not matter,
because Phi-oo understands ours.) From that I went on to tell him that
mankind had dwelt in cities only for nine or ten thousand years, and that
we were still not united in one brotherhood, but under many different
forms of government. This astonished the Grand Lunar very much, when it
was made clear to him. At first he thought we referred merely to
administrative areas.

"'Our States and Empires are still the rawest sketches of what order will
some day be,' I said, and so I came to tell him...."

[At this point a length of record that probably represents thirty or
forty words is totally illegible.]

"The Grand Lunar was greatly impressed by the folly of men in clinging to
the inconvenience of diverse tongues. 'They want to communicate, and yet
not to communicate,' he said, and then for a long time he questioned me
closely concerning war.

"He was at first perplexed and incredulous. 'You mean to say,' he asked,
seeking confirmation, 'that you run about over the surface of your
world--this world, whose riches you have scarcely begun to scrape--killing
one another for beasts to eat?'

"I told him that was perfectly correct.

"He asked for particulars to assist his imagination.

"'But do not ships and your poor little cities get injured?' he asked,
and I found the waste of property and conveniences seemed to impress him
almost as much as the killing. 'Tell me more,' said the Grand Lunar; 'make
me see pictures. I cannot conceive these things.'

"And so, for a space, though something loath, I told him the story of
earthly War.

"I told him of the first orders and ceremonies of war, of warnings and
ultimatums, and the marshalling and marching of troops. I gave him an idea
of manoeuvres and positions and battle joined. I told him of sieges and
assaults, of starvation and hardship in trenches, and of sentinels
freezing in the snow. I told him of routs and surprises, and desperate
last stands and faint hopes, and the pitiless pursuit of fugitives and the
dead upon the field. I told, too, of the past, of invasions and massacres,
of the Huns and Tartars, and the wars of Mahomet and the Caliphs, and of
the Crusades. And as I went on, and Phi-oo translated, and the Selenites
cooed and murmured in a steadily intensified emotion.

"I told them an ironclad could fire a shot of a ton twelve miles, and go
through 20 feet of iron--and how we could steer torpedoes under water. I
went on to describe a Maxim gun in action, and what I could imagine of the
Battle of Colenso. The Grand Lunar was so incredulous that he interrupted
the translation of what I had said in order to have my verification of my
account. They particularly doubted my description of the men cheering and
rejoicing as they went into battle.

"'But surely they do not like it!' translated Phi-oo.

"I assured them men of my race considered battle the most glorious
experience of life, at which the whole assembly was stricken with
amazement.

"'But what good is this war?' asked the Grand Lunar, sticking to his
theme.

"'Oh! as for _good_!' said I; 'it thins the population!'

"'But why should there be a need--?'

"There came a pause, the cooling sprays impinged upon his brow, and then
he spoke again."

[At this point a series of undulations that have been apparent as a
perplexing complication as far back as Cavor's description of the silence
that fell before the first speaking of the Grand Lunar become confusingly
predominant in the record. These undulations are evidently the result of
radiations proceeding from a lunar source, and their persistent
approximation to the alternating signals of Cavor is curiously suggestive
of some operator deliberately seeking to mix them in with his message and
render it illegible. At first they are small and regular, so that with a
little care and the loss of very few words we have been able to
disentangle Cavor's message; then they become broad and larger, then
suddenly they are irregular, with an irregularity that gives the effect at
last of some one scribbling through a line of writing. For a long time
nothing can be made of this madly zigzagging trace; then quite abruptly
the interruption ceases, leaves a few words clear, and then resumes and
continues for the rest of the message, completely obliterating whatever
Cavor was attempting to transmit. Why, if this is indeed a deliberate
intervention, the Selenites should have preferred to let Cavor go on
transmitting his message in happy ignorance of their obliteration of its
record, when it was clearly quite in their power and much more easy and
convenient for them to stop his proceedings at any time, is a problem to
which I can contribute nothing. The thing seems to have happened so, and
that is all I can say. This last rag of his description of the Grand Lunar
begins in mid-sentence.]

"...interrogated me very closely upon my secret. I was able in a little
while to get to an understanding with them, and at last to elucidate what
has been a puzzle to me ever since I realised the vastness of their
science, namely, how it is they themselves have never discovered
'Cavorite.' I find they know of it as a theoretical substance, but they
have always regarded it as a practical impossibility, because for some
reason there is no helium in the moon, and helium..."

[Across the last letters of helium slashes the resumption of that
obliterating trace. Note that word "secret," for that, and that alone, I
base my interpretation of the message that follows, the last message, as
both Mr. Wendigee and myself now believe it to be, that he is ever likely
to send us.]





Chapter 26




The Last Message Cavor sent to the Earth

On this unsatisfactory manner the penultimate message of Cavor dies out.
One seems to see him away there in the blue obscurity amidst his apparatus
intently signalling us to the last, all unaware of the curtain of
confusion that drops between us; all unaware, too, of the final dangers
that even then must have been creeping upon him. His disastrous want of
vulgar common sense had utterly betrayed him. He had talked of war, he had
talked of all the strength and irrational violence of men, of their
insatiable aggressions, their tireless futility of conflict. He had filled
the whole moon world with this impression of our race, and then I think it
is plain that he made the most fatal admission that upon himself alone
hung the possibility--at least for a long time--of any further men
reaching the moon. The line the cold, inhuman reason of the moon would
take seems plain enough to me, and a suspicion of it, and then perhaps
some sudden sharp realisation of it, must have come to him. One imagines
him about the moon with the remorse of this fatal indiscretion growing in
his mind. During a certain time I am inclined to guess the Grand Lunar was
deliberating the new situation, and for all that time Cavor may have gone
as free as ever he had gone. But obstacles of some sort prevented his
getting to his electromagnetic apparatus again after that message I have
just given. For some days we received nothing. Perhaps he was having fresh
audiences, and trying to evade his previous admissions. Who can hope to
guess?

And then suddenly, like a cry in the night, like a cry that is followed by
a stillness, came the last message. It is the briefest fragment, the
broken beginnings of two sentences.

The first was: "I was mad to let the Grand Lunar know--"

There was an interval of perhaps a minute. One imagines some interruption
from without. A departure from the instrument--a dreadful hesitation
among the looming masses of apparatus in that dim, blue-lit cavern--a
sudden rush back to it, full of a resolve that came too late. Then, as if
it were hastily transmitted came: "Cavorite made as follows: take--"

There followed one word, a quite unmeaning word as it stands: "uless."

And that is all.

It may be he made a hasty attempt to spell "useless" when his fate was
close upon him. Whatever it was that was happening about that apparatus we
cannot tell. Whatever it was we shall never, I know, receive another
message from the moon. For my own part a vivid dream has come to my help,
and I see, almost as plainly as though I had seen it in actual fact, a
blue-lit shadowy dishevelled Cavor struggling in the grip of these insect
Selenites, struggling ever more desperately and hopelessly as they press
upon him, shouting, expostulating, perhaps even at last fighting, and
being forced backwards step by step out of all speech or sign of his
fellows, for evermore into the Unknown--into the dark, into that silence
that has no end....


________________________________________________________________________

Randolph Carter undertakes THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH

as told by H. P. LOVECRAFT


Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three
times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace
above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls,
temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-
basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed
gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-
laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep
northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables
harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods,
a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals.
Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain;
and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded
parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-
vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to
place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.

He knew that for him its meaning must once have been supreme; though
in what cycle or incarnation he had known it, or whether in dream or
in waking, he could not tell. Vaguely it called up glimpses of a far
forgotten first youth, when wonder and pleasure lay in all the mystery
of days, and dawn and dusk alike strode forth prophetic to the eager
sound of lutes and song, unclosing fiery gates toward further and
surprising marvels. But each night as he stood on that high marble
terrace with the curious urns and carven rail and looked off over that
hushed sunset city of beauty and unearthly immanence he felt the
bondage of dream's tyrannous gods; for in no wise could he leave that
lofty spot, or descend the wide marmoreal fights flung endlessly down
to where those streets of elder witchery lay outspread and beckoning.

When for the third time he awakened with those flights still
undescended and those hushed sunset streets still untraversed, he
prayed long and earnestly to the hidden gods of dream that brood
capricious above the clouds on unknown Kadath, in the cold waste where
no man treads. But the gods made no answer and shewed no relenting,
nor did they give any favouring sign when he prayed to them in dream,
and invoked them sacrificially through the bearded priests of Nasht
and Kaman-Thah, whose cavern-temple with its pillar of flame lies not
far from the gates of the waking world. It seemed, however, that his
prayers must have been adversely heard, for after even the first of
them he ceased wholly to behold the marvellous city; as if his three
glimpses from afar had been mere accidents or oversights, and against
some hidden plan or wish of the gods.

At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and
cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or
waking to drive them from his mind, Carter resolved to go with bold
entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts
through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned
with unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of
the Great Ones.

In light slumber he descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame
and talked of this design to the bearded priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah.
And the priests shook their pshent-bearing heads and vowed it would be
the death of his soul. They pointed out that the Great Ones had shown
already their wish, and that it is not agreeable to them to be
harassed by insistent pleas. They reminded him, too, that not only had
no man ever been to Kadath, but no man had ever suspected in what part
of space it may lie; whether it be in the dreamlands around our own
world, or in those surrounding some unguessed companion of Fomalhaut
or Aldebaran. If in our dreamland, it might conceivably be reached,
but only three human souls since time began had ever crossed and
recrossed the black impious gulfs to other dreamlands, and of that
three, two had come back quite mad. There were, in such voyages,
incalculable local dangers; as well as that shocking final peril which
gibbers unmentionably outside the ordered universe, where no dreams
reach; that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which
blasphemes and bubbles at the centre of all infinity--the boundless
daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who
gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time amidst
the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin, monotonous
whine of accursed flutes; to which detestable pounding and piping
dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic Ultimate gods, the
blind, voiceless, tenebrous, mindless Other gods whose soul and
messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

Of these things was Carter warned by the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah
in the cavern of flame, but still he resolved to find the gods on
unknown Kadath in the cold waste, wherever that might be, and to win
from them the sight and remembrance and shelter of the marvellous
sunset city. He knew that his journey would be strange and long, and
that the Great Ones would be against it; but being old in the land of
dream he counted on many useful memories and devices to aid him. So
asking a formal blessing of the priests and thinking shrewdly on his
course, he boldly descended the seven hundred steps to the Gate of
Deeper Slumber and set out through the Enchanted Wood.

In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine
groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange
fungi, dwell the furtive and secretive Zoogs; who know many obscure
secrets of the dream world and a few of the waking world, since the
wood at two places touches the lands of men, though it would be
disastrous to say where. Certain unexplained rumours, events, and
vanishments occur among men where the Zoogs have access, and it is
well that they cannot travel far outside the world of dreams. But over
the nearer parts of the dream world they pass freely, flitting small
and brown and unseen and bearing back piquant tales to beguile the
hours around their hearths in the forest they love. Most of them live
in burrows, but some inhabit the trunks of the great trees; and
although they live mostly on fungi it is muttered that they have also
a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual, for certainly
many dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out. Carter,
however, had no fear; for he was an old dreamer and had learnt their
fluttering language and made many a treaty with them; having found
through their help the splendid city of Celephais in Ooth-Nargai
beyond the Tanarian Hills, where reigns half the year the great King
Kuranes, a man he had known by another name in life. Kuranes was the
one soul who had been to the star-gulls and returned free from
madness.

Threading now the low phosphorescent aisles between those gigantic
trunks, Carter made fluttering sounds in the manner of the Zoogs, and
listened now and then for responses. He remembered one particular
village of the creatures was in the centre of the wood, where a circle
of great mossy stones in what was once a cleaning tells of older and
more terrible dwellers long forgotten, and toward this spot he
hastened. He traced his way by the grotesque fungi, which always seem
better nourished as one approaches the dread circle where elder beings
danced and sacrificed. Finally the great light of those thicker fungi
revealed a sinister green and grey vastness pushing up through the
roof of the forest and out of sight. This was the nearest of the great
ring of stones, and Carter knew he was close to the Zoog village.
Renewing his fluttering sound, he waited patiently; and was at last
rewarded by an impression of many eyes watching him. It was the Zoogs,
for one sees their weird eyes long before one can discern their small,
slippery brown outlines.

Out they swarmed, from hidden burrow and honeycombed tree, till the
whole dim-litten region was alive with them. Some of the wilder ones
brushed Carter unpleasantly, and one even nipped loathsomely at his
ear; but these lawless spirits were soon restrained by their elders.
The Council of Sages, recognizing the visitor, offered a gourd of
fermented sap from a haunted tree unlike the others, which had grown
from a seed dropt down by someone on the moon; and as Carter drank it
ceremoniously a very strange colloquy began. The Zoogs did not,
unfortunately, know where the peak of Kadath lies, nor could they even
say whether the cold waste is in our dream world or in another.
Rumours of the Great Ones came equally from all points; and one might
only say that they were likelier to be seen on high mountain peaks
than in valleys, since on such peaks they dance reminiscently when the
moon is above and the clouds beneath.

Then one very ancient Zoog recalled a thing unheard-of by the others;
and said that in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, there still lingered
the last copy of those inconceivably old Pnakotic Manuscripts made by
waking men in forgotten boreal kingdoms and borne into the land of
dreams when the hairy cannibal Gnophkehs overcame many-templed Olathoe
and slew all the heroes of the land of Lomar. Those manuscripts he
said, told much of the gods, and besides, in Ulthar there were men who
had seen the signs of the gods, and even one old priest who had scaled
a great mountain to behold them dancing by moonlight. He had failed,
though his companion had succeeded and perished namelessly.

So Randolph Carter thanked the Zoogs, who fluttered amicably and gave
him another gourd of moon-tree wine to take with him, and set out
through the phosphorescent wood for the other side, where the rushing
Skai flows down from the slopes of Lerion, and Hatheg and Nir and
Ulthar dot the plain. Behind him, furtive and unseen, crept several of
the curious Zoogs; for they wished to learn what might befall him, and
bear back the legend to their people. The vast oaks grew thicker as he
pushed on beyond the village, and he looked sharply for a certain spot
where they would thin somewhat, standing quite dead or dying among the
unnaturally dense fungi and the rotting mould and mushy logs of their
fallen brothers. There he would turn sharply aside, for at that spot a
mighty slab of stone rests on the forest floor; and those who have
dared approach it say that it bears an iron ring three feet wide.
Remembering the archaic circle of great mossy rocks, and what it was
possibly set up for, the Zoogs do not pause near that expansive slab
with its huge ring; for they realise that all which is forgotten need
not necessarily be dead, and they would not like to see the slab rise
slowly and deliberately.

Carter detoured at the proper place, and heard behind him the
frightened fluttering of some of the more timid Zoogs. He had known
they would follow him, so he was not disturbed; for one grows
accustomed to the anomalies of these prying creatures. It was twilight
when he came to the edge of the wood, and the strengthening glow told
him it was the twilight of morning. Over fertile plains rolling down
to the Skai he saw the smoke of cottage chimneys, and on every hand
were the hedges and ploughed fields and thatched roofs of a peaceful
land. Once he stopped at a farmhouse well for a cup of water, and all
the dogs barked affrightedly at the inconspicuous Zoogs that crept
through the grass behind. At another house, where people were
stirring, he asked questions about the gods, and whether they danced
often upon Lerion; but the farmer and his wile would only make the
Elder Sign and tell him the way to Nir and Ulthar.

At noon he walked through the one broad high street of Nir, which he
had once visited and which marked his farthest former travels in this
direction; and soon afterward he came to the great stone bridge across
the Skai, into whose central piece the masons had sealed a living
human sacrifice when they built it thirteen-hundred years before. Once
on the other side, the frequent presence of cats (who all arched their
backs at the trailing Zoogs) revealed the near neighborhood of Ulthar;
for in Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law, no man may
kill a cat. Very pleasant were the suburbs of Ulthar, with their
little green cottages and neatly fenced farms; and still pleasanter
was the quaint town itself, with its old peaked roofs and overhanging
upper stories and numberless chimney-pots and narrow hill streets
where one can see old cobbles whenever the graceful cats afford space
enough. Carter, the cats being somewhat dispersed by the half-seen
Zoogs, picked his way directly to the modest Temple of the Elder Ones
where the priests and old records were said to be; and once within
that venerable circular tower of ivied stone--which crowns Ulthar's
highest hill--he sought out the patriarch Atal, who had been up the
forbidden peak Hatheg-Kia in the stony desert and had come down again
alive.

Atal, seated on an ivory dais in a festooned shrine at the top of the
temple, was fully three centuries old; but still very keen of mind and
memory. From him Carter learned many things about the gods, but mainly
that they are indeed only Earth's gods, ruling feebly our own
dreamland and having no power or habitation elsewhere. They might,
Atal said, heed a man's prayer if in good humour; but one must not
think of climbing to their onyx stronghold atop Kadath in the cold
waste. It was lucky that no man knew where Kadath towers, for the
fruits of ascending it would be very grave. Atal's companion Banni the
Wise had been drawn screaming into the sky for climbing merely the
known peak of Hatheg-Kia. With unknown Kadath, if ever found, matters
would be much worse; for although Earth's gods may sometimes be
surpassed by a wise mortal, they are protected by the Other Gods from
Outside, whom it is better not to discuss. At least twice in the
world's history the Other Gods set their seal upon Earth's primal
granite; once in antediluvian times, as guessed from a drawing in
those parts of the Pnakotic Manuscripts too ancient to be read, and
once on Hatheg-Kia when Barzai the Wise tried to see Earth's gods
dancing by moonlight. So, Atal said, it would be much better to let
all gods alone except in tactful prayers.

Carter, though disappointed by Atal's discouraging advice and by the
meagre help to be found in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Seven
Cryptical Books of Hsan, did not wholly despair. First he questioned
the old priest about that marvellous sunset city seen from the railed
terrace, thinking that perhaps he might find it without the gods' aid;
but Atal could tell him nothing. Probably, Atal said, the place
belonged to his especial dream world and not to the general land of
vision that many know; and conceivably it might be on another planet.
In that case Earth's gods could not guide him if they would. But this
was not likely, since the stopping of the dreams shewed pretty clearly
that it was something the Great Ones wished to hide from him.

Then Carter did a wicked thing, offering his guileless host so many
draughts of the moon-wine which the Zoogs had given him that the old
man became irresponsibly talkative. Robbed of his reserve, poor Atal
babbled freely of forbidden things; telling of a great image reported
by travellers as carved on the solid rock of the mountain Ngranek, on
the isle of Oriab in the Southern Sea, and hinting that it may be a
likeness which Earth's gods once wrought of their own features in the
days when they danced by moonlight on that mountain. And he hiccoughed
likewise that the features of that image are very strange, so that one
might easily recognize them, and that they are sure signs of the
authentic race of the gods.

Now the use of all this in finding the gods became at once apparent to
Carter. It is known that in disguise the younger among the Great Ones
often espouse the daughters of men, so that around the borders of the
cold waste wherein stands Kadath the peasants must all bear their
blood. This being so, the way to find that waste must be to see the
stone face on Ngranek and mark the features; then, having noted them
with care, to search for such features among living men. Where they
are plainest and thickest, there must the gods dwell nearest; and
whatever stony waste lies back of the villages in that place must be
that wherein stands Kadath.

Much of the Great Ones might be learnt in such regions, and those with
their blood might inherit little memories very useful to a seeker.
They might not know their parentage, for the gods so dislike to be
known among men that none can be found who has seen their faces
wittingly; a thing which Carter realized even as he sought to scale
Kadath. But they would have queer lofty thoughts misunderstood by
their fellows, and would sing of far places and gardens so unlike any
known even in the dreamland that common folk would call them fools;
and from all this one could perhaps learn old secrets of Kadath, or
gain hints of the marvellous sunset city which the gods held secret.
And more, one might in certain cases seize some well-loved child of a
god as hostage; or even capture some young god himself, disguised and
dwelling amongst men with a comely peasant maiden as his bride.

Atal, however, did not know how to find Ngranek on its isle of Oriab;
and recommended that Carter follow the singing Skai under its bridges
down to the Southern Sea; where no burgess of Ulthar has ever been,
but whence the merchants come in boats or with long caravans of mules
and two-wheeled carts. There is a great city there, Dylath-Leen, but
in Ulthar its reputation is bad because of the black three-banked
galleys that sail to it with rubies from no clearly named shore. The
traders that come from those galleys to deal with the jewellers are
human, or nearly so, but the rowers are never beheld; and it is not
thought wholesome in Ulthar that merchants should trade with black
ships from unknown places whose rowers cannot be exhibited.

By the time he had given this information Atal was very drowsy, and
Carter laid him gently on a couch of inlaid ebony and gathered his
long beard decorously on his chest. As he turned to go, he observed
that no suppressed fluttering followed him, and wondered why the Zoogs
had become so lax in their curious pursuit. Then he noticed all the
sleek complacent cats of Ulthar licking their chops with unusual
gusto, and recalled the spitting and caterwauling he had faintly
heard, in lower parts of the temple while absorbed in the old priest's
conversation. He recalled, too, the evilly hungry way in which an
especially impudent young Zoog had regarded a small black kitten in
the cobbled street outside. And because he loved nothing on earth more
than small black kittens, he stooped and petted the sleek cats of
Ulthar as they licked their chops, and did not mourn because those
inquisitive Zoogs would escort him no farther.

It was sunset now, so Carter stopped at an ancient inn on a steep
little street overlooking the lower town. And as he went out on the
balcony of his room and gazed down at the sea of red tiled roofs and
cobbled ways and the pleasant fields beyond, all mellow and magical in
the slanted light, he swore that Ulthar would be a very likely place
to dwell in always, were not the memory of a greater sunset city ever
goading one onward toward unknown perils. Then twilight fell, and the
pink walls of the plastered gables turned violet and mystic, and
little yellow lights floated up one by one from old lattice windows.
And sweet bells pealed in. the temple tower above, and the first star
winked softly above the meadows across the Skai. With the night came
song, and Carter nodded as the lutanists praised ancient days from
beyond the filigreed balconies and tesselated courts of simple Ulthar.
And there might have been sweetness even in the voices of Ulthar's
many cats, but that they were mostly heavy and silent from strange
feasting. Some of them stole off to those cryptical realms which are
known only to cats and which villagers say are on the moon's dark
side, whither the cats leap from tall housetops, but one small black
kitten crept upstairs and sprang in Carter's lap to purr and play, and
curled up near his feet when he lay down at last on the little couch
whose pillows were stuffed with fragrant, drowsy herbs.

In the morning Carter joined a caravan of merchants bound for Dylath-
Leen with the spun wool of Ulthar and the cabbages of Ulthar's busy
farms. And for six days they rode with tinkling bells on the smooth
road beside the Skai; stopping some nights at the inns of little
quaint fishing towns, and on other nights camping under the stars
while snatches of boatmen's songs came from the placid river. The
country was very beautiful, with green hedges and groves and
picturesque peaked cottages and octagonal windmills.

On the seventh day a blur of smoke rose on the horizon ahead, and then
the tall black towers of Dylath-Leen, which is built mostly of basalt.
Dylath-Leen with its thin angular towers looks in the distance like a
bit of the Giant's Causeway, and its streets are dark and uninviting.
There are many dismal sea-taverns near the myriad wharves, and all the
town is thronged with the strange seamen of every land on earth and of
a few which are said to be not on earth. Carter questioned the oddly
robed men of that city about the peak of Ngranek on the isle of Oriab,
and found that they knew of it well.

Ships came from Baharna on that island, one being due to return
thither in only a month, and Ngranek is but two days' zebra-ride from
that port. But few had seen the stone face of the god, because it is
on a very difficult side of Ngranek, which overlooks only sheer crags
and a valley of sinister lava. Once the gods were angered with men on
that side, and spoke of the matter to the Other Gods.

It was hard to get this information from the traders and sailors in
Dylath-Leen's sea taverns, because they mostly preferred to whisper of
the black galleys. One of them was due in a week with rubies from its
unknown shore, and the townsfolk dreaded to see it dock. The mouths of
the men who came from it to trade were too wide, and the way their
turbans were humped up in two points above their foreheads was in
especially bad taste. And their shoes were the shortest and queerest
ever seen in the Six Kingdoms. But worst of all was the matter of the
unseen rowers. Those three banks of oars moved too briskly and
accurately and vigorously to be comfortable, and it was not right for
a ship to stay in port for weeks while the merchants traded, yet to
give no glimpse of its crew. It was not fair to the tavern-keepers of
Dylath-Leen, or to the grocers and butchers, either; for not a scrap
of provisions was ever sent aboard. The merchants took only gold and
stout black slaves from Parg across the river. That was all they ever
took, those unpleasantly featured merchants and their unseen rowers;
never anything from the butchers and grocers, but only gold and the
fat black men of Parg whom they bought by the pound. And the odours
from those galleys which the south wind blew in from the wharves are
not to be described. Only by constantly smoking strong thagweed could
even the hardiest denizen of the old sea-taverns bear them. Dylath-
Leen would never have tolerated the black galleys had such rubies been
obtainable elsewhere, but no mine in all Barth's dreamland was known
to produce their like.

Of these things Dylath-Leen's cosmopolitan folk chiefly gossiped
whilst Carter waited patiently for the ship from Baharna, which might
bear him to the isle whereon carven Ngranek towers lofty and barren.
Meanwhile he did not fall to seek through the haunts of far travellers
for any tales they might have concerning Kadath in the cold waste or a
marvellous city of marble walls and silver fountains seen below
terraces in the sunset. Of these things, however, he learned nothing;
though he once thought that a certain old slant-eyed merchant looked
queerly intelligent when the cold waste was spoken of. This man was
reputed to trade with the horrible stone villages on the icy desert
plateau of Leng, which no healthy folk visit and whose evil fires are
seen at night from afar. He was even rumoured to have dealt with that
High-Priest Not To Be Described, which wears a yellow silken mask over
its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric stone monastery. That
such a person might well have had nibbling traffick with such beings
as may conceivably dwell in the cold waste was not to be doubted, but
Carter soon found that it was no use questioning him.

Then the black galley slipped into the harbour past the basalt wale
and the tall lighthouse, silent and alien, and with a strange stench
that the south wind drove into the town. Uneasiness rustled through
the taverns along that waterfront, and after a while the dark wide-
mouthed merchants with humped turbans and short feet clumped steathily
ashore to seek the bazaars of the jewellers. Carter observed them
closely, and disliked them more the longer he looked at them. Then he
saw them drive the stout black men of Parg up the gangplank grunting
and sweating into that singular galley, and wondered in what lands--or
if in any lands at all--those fat pathetic creatures might be destined
to serve.

And on the third evening of that galley's stay one of the
uncomfortable merchants spoke to him, smirking sinfully and hinting of
what he had heard in the taverns of Carter's quest. He appeared to
have knowledge too secret for public telling; and although the sound
of his voice was unbearably hateful, Carter felt that the lore of so
far a traveller must not be overlooked. He bade him therefore be his
guest in locked chambers above, and drew out the last of the Zoogs'
moon-wine to loosen his tongue. The strange merchant drank heavily,
but smirked unchanged by the draught. Then he drew forth a curious
bottle with wine of his own, and Carter saw that the bottle was a
single hollowed ruby, grotesquely carved in patterns too fabulous to
be comprehended. He offered his wine to his host, and though Carter
took only the least sip, he felt the dizziness of space and the fever
of unimagined jungles. All the while the guest had been smiling more
and more broadly, and as Carter slipped into blankness the last thing
he saw was that dark odious face convulsed with evil laughter and
something quite unspeakable where one of the two frontal puffs of that
orange turban had become disarranged with the shakings of that
epileptic mirth.

Carter next had consciousness amidst horrible odours beneath a tent-
like awning on the deck of a ship, with the marvellous coasts of the
Southern Sea flying by in unnatural swiftness. He was not chained, but
three of the dark sardonic merchants stood grinning nearby, and the
sight of those humps in their turbans made him almost as faint as did
the stench that filtered up through the sinister hatches. He saw slip
past him the glorious lands and cities of which a fellow-dreamer of
earth--a lighthouse-keeper in ancient Kingsport--had often discoursed
in the old days, and recognized the templed terraces of Zak, abode of
forgotten dreams; the spires of infamous Thalarion, that daemon-city
of a thousand wonders where the eidolon Lathi reigns; the charnel
gardens of Zura, land of pleasures unattained, and the twin headlands
of crystal, meeting above in a resplendent arch, which guard the
harbour of Sona-Nyl, blessed land of fancy.

Past all these gorgeous lands the malodourous ship flew unwholesomely,
urged by the abnormal strokes of those unseen rowers below. And before
the day was done Carter saw that the steersman could have no other
goal than the Basalt Pillars of the West, beyond which simple folk say
splendid Cathuria lies, but which wise dreamers well know are the
gates of a monstrous cataract wherein the oceans of earth's dreamland
drop wholly to abysmal nothingness and shoot through the empty spaces
toward other worlds and other stars and the awful voids outside the
ordered universe where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in
chaos amid pounding and piping and the hellish dancing of the Other
Gods, blind, voiceless, tenebrous, and mindless, with their soul and
messenger Nyarlathotep.

Meanwhile the three sardonic merchants would give no word of their
intent, though Carter well knew that they must be leagued with those
who wished to hold him from his quest. It is understood in the land of
dream that the Other Gods have many agents moving among men; and all
these agents, whether wholly human or slightly less than human, are
eager to work the will of those blind and mindless things in return
for the favour of their hideous soul and messenger, the crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep. So Carter inferred that the merchants of the humped
turbans, hearing of his daring search for the Great Ones in their
castle of Kadath, had decided to take him away and deliver him to
Nyarlathotep for whatever nameless bounty might be offered for such a
prize. What might be the land of those merchants in our known universe
or in the eldritch spaces outside, Carter could not guess; nor could
he imagine at what hellish trysting-place they would meet the crawling
chaos to give him up and claim their reward. He knew, however, that no
beings as nearly human as these would dare approach the ultimate
nighted throne of the daemon Azathoth in the formless central void.

At the set of sun the merchants licked their excessively wide lips and
glared hungrily and one of them went below and returned from some
hidden and offensive cabin with a pot and basket of plates. Then they
squatted close together beneath the awning and ate the smoking meat
that was passed around. But when they gave Carter a portion, he found
something very terrible in the size and shape of it; so that he turned
even paler than before and cast that portion into the sea when no eye
was on him. And again he thought of those unseen rowers beneath, and
of the suspicious nourishment from which their far too mechanical
strength was derived.

It was dark when the galley passed betwixt the Basalt Pillars of the
West and the sound of the ultimate cataract swelled portentous from
ahead. And the spray of that cataract rose to obscure the stars, and
the deck grew damp, and the vessel reeled in the surging current of
the brink. Then with a queer whistle and plunge the leap was taken,
and Carter felt the terrors of nightmare as earth fell away and the
great boat shot silent and comet-like into planetary space. Never
before had he known what shapeless black things lurk and caper and
flounder all through the aether, leering and grinning at such voyagers
as may pass, and sometimes feeling about with slimy paws when some
moving object excites their curiosity. These are the nameless larvae
of the Other Gods, and like them are blind and without mind, and
possessed of singular hungers and thirsts.

But that offensive galley did not aim as far as Carter had feared, for
he soon saw that the helmsman was steering a course directly for the
moon. The moon was a crescent shining larger and larger as they
approached it, and shewing its singular craters and peaks
uncomfortably. The ship made for the edge, and it soon became clear
that its destination was that secret and mysterious side which is
always turned away from earth, and which no fully human person, save
perhaps the dreamer Snireth-Ko, has ever beheld. The close aspect of
the moon as the galley drew near proved very disturbing to Carter, and
he did not like the size and shape of the ruins which crumbled here
and there. The dead temples on the mountains were so placed that they
could have glorified no suitable or wholesome gods, and in the
symmetries of the broken columns there seemed to be some dark and
inner meaning which did not invite solution. And what the structure
and proportions of the olden worshippers could have been, Carter
steadily refused to conjecture.

When the ship rounded the edge, and sailed over those lands unseen by
man, there appeared in the queer landscape certain signs of life, and
Carter saw many low, broad, round cottages in fields of grotesque
whitish fungi. He noticed that these cottages had no windows, and
thought that their shape suggested the huts of Esquimaux. Then he
glimpsed the oily waves of a sluggish sea, and knew that the voyage
was once more to be by water--or at least through some liquid. The
galley struck the surface with a peculiar sound, and the odd elastic
way the waves received it was very perplexing to Carter.

They now slid along at great speed, once passing and hailing another
galley of kindred form, but generally seeing nothing but that curious
sea and a sky that was black and star-strewn even though the sun shone
scorchingly in it.

There presently rose ahead the jagged hills of a leprous-looking
coast, and Carter saw the thick unpleasant grey towers of a city. The
way they leaned and bent, the manner in which they were clustered, and
the fact that they had no windows at all, was very disturbing to the
prisoner; and he bitterly mourned the folly which had made him sip the
curious wine of that merchant with the humped turban. As the coast
drew nearer, and the hideous stench of that city grew stronger, he saw
upon the jagged hills many forests, some of whose trees he recognized
as akin to that solitary moon-tree in the enchanted wood of earth,
from whose sap the small brown Zoogs ferment their curious wine.

Carter could now distinguish moving figures on the noisome wharves
ahead, and the better he saw them the worse he began to fear and
detest them. For they were not men at all, or even approximately men,
but great greyish-white slippery things which could expand and
contract at will, and whose principal shape--though it often changed--
was that of a sort of toad without any eyes, but with a curious
vibrating mass of short pink tentacles on the end of its blunt, vague
snout. These objects were waddling busily about the wharves, moving
bales and crates and boxes with preternatural strength, and now and
then hopping on or off some anchored galley with long oars in their
forepaws. And now and then one would appear driving a herd of clumping
slaves, which indeed were approximate human beings with wide mouths
like those merchants who traded in Dylath-Leen; only these herds,
being without turbans or shoes or clothing, did not seem so very human
after all. Some of the slaves--the fatter ones, whom a sort of
overseer would pinch experimentally--were unloaded from ships and
nailed in crates which workers pushed into the low warehouses or
loaded on great lumbering vans.

Once a van was hitched and driven off, and the, fabulous thing which
drew it was such that Carter gasped, even after having seen the other
monstrosities of that hateful place. Now and then a small herd of
slaves dressed and turbaned like the dark merchants would be driven
aboard a galley, followed by a great crew of the slippery toad-things
as officers, navigators, and rowers. And Carter saw that the almost-
human creatures were reserved for the more ignominious kinds of
servitude which required no strength, such as steering and cooking,
fetching and carrying, and bargaining with men on the earth or other
planets where they traded. These creatures must have been convenient
on earth, for they were truly not unlike men when dressed and
carefully shod and turbaned, and could haggle in the shops of men
without embarrassment or curious explanations. But most of them,
unless lean or ill-favoured, were unclothed and packed in crates and
drawn off in lumbering lorries by fabulous things. Occasionally other
beings were unloaded and crated; some very like these semi-humans,
some not so similar, and some not similar at all. And he wondered if
any of the poor stout black men of Parg were left to be unloaded and
crated and shipped inland in those obnoxious drays.

When the galley landed at a greasy-looking quay of spongy rock a
nightmare horde of toad-things wiggled out of the hatches, and two of
them seized Carter and dragged him ashore. The smell and aspect of
that city are beyond telling, and Carter held only scattered images of
the tiled streets and black doorways and endless precipices of grey
vertical walls without windows. At length he was dragged within a low
doorway and made to climb infinite steps in pitch blackness. It was,
apparently, all one to the toad-things whether it were light or dark.
The odour of the place was intolerable, and when Carter was locked
into a chamber and left alone he scarcely had strength to crawl around
and ascertain its form and dimensions. It was circular, and about
twenty feet across.

From then on time ceased to exist. At intervals food was pushed in,
but Carter would not touch it. What his fate would be, he did not
know; but he felt that he was held for the coming of that frightful
soul and messenger of infinity's Other Gods, the crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep. Finally, after an unguessed span of hours or days, the
great stone door swung wide again, and Carter was shoved down the
stairs and out into the red-litten streets of that fearsome city. It
was night on the moon, and all through the town were stationed slaves
bearing torches.

In a detestable square a sort of procession was formed; ten of the
toad-things and twenty-four almost human torch-bearers, eleven on
either side, and one each before and behind. Carter was placed in the
middle of the line; five toad-things ahead and five behind, and one
almost-human torch-bearer on either side of him. Certain of the toad-
things produced disgustingly carven flutes of ivory and made loathsome
sounds. To that hellish piping the column advanced out of the tiled
streets and into nighted plains of obscene fungi, soon commencing to
climb one of the lower and more gradual hills that lay behind the
city. That on some frightful slope or blasphemous plateau the crawling
chaos waited, Carter could not doubt; and he wished that the suspense
might soon be over. The whining of those impious flutes was shocking,
and he would have given worlds for some even half-normal sound; but
these toad-things had no voices, and the slaves did not talk.

Then through that star-specked darkness there did come a normal sound.
It rolled from the higher hills, and from all the jagged peaks around
it was caught up and echoed in a swelling pandaemoniac chorus. It was
the midnight yell of the cat, and Carter knew at last that the old
village folk were right when they made low guesses about the cryptical
realms which are known only to cats, and to which the elders among
cats repair by stealth nocturnally, springing from high housetops.
Verily, it is to the moon's dark side that they go to leap and gambol
on the hills and converse with ancient shadows, and here amidst that
column of foetid things Carter heard their homely, friendly cry, and
thought of the steep roofs and warm hearths and little lighted windows
of home.

Now much of the speech of cats was known to Randolph Carter, and in
this far terrible place he uttered the cry that was suitable. But that
he need not have done, for even as his lips opened he heard the chorus
wax and draw nearer, and saw swift shadows against the stars as small
graceful shapes leaped from hill to hill in gathering legions. The
call of the clan had been given, and before the foul procession had
time even to be frightened a cloud of smothering fur and a phalanx of
murderous claws were tidally and tempestuously upon it. The flutes
stopped, and there were shrieks in the night. Dying almost-humans
screamed, and cats spit and yowled and roared, but the toad-things
made never a sound as their stinking green ichor oozed fatally upon
that porous earth with the obscene fungi.

It was a stupendous sight while the torches lasted, and Carter had
never before seen so many cats. Black, grey, and white; yellow, tiger,
and mixed; common, Persian, and Marix; Thibetan, Angora, and Egyptian;
all were there in the fury of battle, and there hovered over them some
trace of that profound and inviolate sanctity which made their goddess
great in the temples of Bubastis. They would leap seven strong at the
throat of an almost-human or the pink tentacled snout of a toad-thing
and drag it down savagely to the fungous plain, where myriads of their
fellows would surge over it and into it with the frenzied claws and
teeth of a divine battle-fury. Carter had seized a torch from a
stricken slave, but was soon overborne by the surging waves of his
loyal defenders. Then he lay in the utter blackness hearing the
clangour of war and the shouts of the victors, and feeling the soft
paws of his friends as they rushed to and fro over him in the fray.

At last awe and exhaustion closed his eyes, and when he opened them
again it was upon a strange scene. The great shining disc of the
earth, thirteen times greater than that of the moon as we see it, had
risen with floods of weird light over the lunar landscape; and across
all those leagues of wild plateau and ragged crest there squatted one
endless sea of cats in orderly array. Circle on circle they reached,
and two or three leaders out of the ranks were licking his face and
purring to him consolingly. Of the dead slaves and toad-things there
were not many signs, but Carter thought he saw one bone a little way
off in the open space between him and the warriors.

Carter now spoke with the leaders in the soft language of cats, and
learned that his ancient friendship with the species was well known
and often spoken of in the places where cats congregate. He had not
been unmarked in Ulthar when he passed through, and the sleek old cats
had remembered how he patted them after they had attended to the
hungry Zoogs who looked evilly at a small black kitten. And they
recalled, too, how he had welcomed the very little kitten who came to
see him at the inn, and how he had given it a saucer of rich cream in
the morning before he left. The grandfather of that very little kitten
was the leader of the army now assembled, for he had seen the evil
procession from a far hill and recognized the prisoner as a sworn
friend of his kind on earth and in the land of dream.

A yowl now came from the farther peak, and the old leader paused
abruptly in his conversation. It was one of the army's outposts,
stationed on the highest of the mountains to watch the one foe which
Earth's cats fear; the very large and peculiar cats from Saturn, who
for some reason have not been oblivious of the charm of our moon's
dark side. They are leagued by treaty with the evil toad-things, and
are notoriously hostile to our earthly cats; so that at this juncture
a meeting would have been a somewhat grave matter.

After a brief consultation of generals, the cats rose and assumed a
closer formation, crowding protectingly around Carter and preparing to
take the great leap through space back to the housetops of our earth
and its dreamland. The old field-marshal advised Carter to let himself
be borne along smoothly and passively in the massed ranks of furry
leapers, and told him how to spring when the rest sprang and land
gracefully when the rest landed. He also offered to deposit him in any
spot he desired, and Carter decided on the city of Dylath-Leen whence
the black galley had set out; for he wished to sail thence for Oriab
and the carven crest Ngranek, and also to warn the people of the city
to have no more traffick with black galleys, if indeed that traffick
could be tactfully and judiciously broken off. Then, upon a signal,
the cats all leaped gracefully with their friend packed securely in
their midst; while in a black cave on an unhallowed summit of the
moon-mountains still vainly waited the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

The leap of the cats through space was very swift; and being
surrounded by his companions Carter did not see this time the great
black shapelessnesses that lurk and caper and flounder in the abyss.
Before he fully realised what had happened he was back in his familiar
room at the inn at Dylath-Leen, and the stealthy, friendly cats were
pouring out of the window in streams. The old leader from Ulthar was
the last to leave, and as Carter shook his paw he said he would be
able to get home by cockcrow. When dawn came, Carter went downstairs
and learned that a week had elapsed since his capture and leaving.
There was still nearly a fortnight to wait for the ship bound toward
Oriab, and during that time he said what he could against the black
galleys and their infamous ways. Most of the townsfolk believed him;
yet so fond were the jewellers of great rubies that none would wholly
promise to cease trafficking with the wide-mouthed merchants. If aught
of evil ever befalls Dylath-Leen through such traffick, it will not be
his fault.

In about a week the desiderate ship put in by the black wale and tall
lighthouse, and Carter was glad to see that she was a barque of
wholesome men, with painted sides and yellow lateen sails and a grey
captain in silken robes. Her cargo was the fragrant resin of Oriab's
inner groves, and the delicate pottery baked by the artists of
Baharna, and the strange little figures carved from Ngranek's ancient
lava. For this they were paid in the wool of Ulthar and the iridescent
textiles of Hatheg and the ivory that the black men carve across the
river in Parg. Carter made arrangements with the captain to go to
Baharna and was told that the voyage would take ten days. And during
his week of waiting he talked much with that captain of Ngranek, and
was told that very few had seen the carven face thereon; but that most
travellers are content to learn its legends from old people and lava-
gatherers and image-makers in Baharna and afterward say in their far
homes that they have indeed beheld it. The captain was not even sure
that any person now living had beheld that carven face, for the wrong
side of Ngranek is very difficult and barren and sinister, and there
are rumours of caves near the peak wherein dwell the night-gaunts. But
the captain did not wish to say just what a night-gaunt might be like,
since such cattle are known to haunt most persistently the dreams of
those who think too often of them. Then Carter asked that captain
about unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and the marvellous sunset
city, but of these the good man could truly tell nothing.

Carter sailed out of Dylath-Leen one early morning when the tide
turned, and saw the first rays of sunrise on the thin angular towers
of that dismal basalt town. And for two days they sailed eastward in
sight of green coasts, and saw often the pleasant fishing towns that
climbed up steeply with their red roofs and chimney-pots from old
dreaming wharves and beaches where nets lay drying. But on the third
day they turned sharply south where the roll of water was stronger,
and soon passed from sight of any land. On the fifth day the sailors
were nervous, but the captain apologized for their fears, saying that
the ship was about to pass over the weedy walls and broken columns of
a sunken city too old for memory, and that when the water was clear
one could see so many moving shadows in that deep place that simple
folk disliked it. He admitted, moreover, that many ships had been lost
in that part of the sea; having been hailed when quite close to it,
but never seen again.

That night the moon was very bright, and one could see a great way
down in the water. There was so little wind that the ship could not
move much, and the ocean was very calm. Looking over the rail Carter
saw many fathoms deep the dome of the great temple, and in front of it
an avenue of unnatural sphinxes leading to what was once a public
square. Dolphins sported merrily in and out of the ruins, and
porpoises revelled clumsily here and there, sometimes coming to the
surface and leaping clear out of the sea. As the ship drifted on a
little the floor of the ocean rose in hills, and one could clearly
mark the lines of ancient climbing streets and the washed-down walls
of myriad little houses.

Then the suburbs appeared, and finally a great lone building on a
hill, of simpler architecture than the other structures, and in much
better repair. It was dark and low and covered four sides of a square,
with a tower at each corner, a paved court in the centre, and small
curious round windows all over it. Probably it was of basalt, though
weeds draped the greater part; and such was its lonely and impressive
place on that far hill that it may have been a temple or a monastery.
Some phosphorescent fish inside it gave the small round windows an
aspect of shining, and Carter did not blame the sailors much for their
fears. Then by the watery moonlight he noticed an odd high monolith in
the middle of that central court, and saw that something was tied to
it. And when after getting a telescope from the captain's cabin he saw
that that bound thing was a sailor in the silk robes of Oriab, head
downward and without any eyes, he was glad that a rising breeze soon
took the ship ahead to more healthy parts of the sea.

The next day they spoke with a ship with violet sails bound for Zar,
in the land of forgotten dreams, with bulbs of strange coloured lilies
for cargo. And on the evening of the eleventh day they came in sight
of the isle of Oriab with Ngranek rising jagged and snow-crowned in
the distance. Oriab is a very great isle, and its port of Baharna a
mighty city. The wharves of Baharna are of porphyry, and the city
rises in great stone terraces behind them, having streets of steps
that are frequently arched over by buildings and the bridges between
buildings. There is a great canal which goes under the whole city in a
tunnel with granite gates and leads to the inland lake of Yath, on
whose farther shore are the vast clay-brick ruins of a primal city
whose name is not remembered. As the ship drew into the harbour at
evening the twin beacons Thon and Thal gleamed a welcome, and in all
the million windows of Baharna's terraces mellow lights peeped out
quietly and gradually as the stars peep out overhead in the dusk, till
that steep and climbing seaport became a glittering constellation hung
between the stars of heaven and the reflections of those stars in the
still harbour.

The captain, after landing, made Carter a guest in his own small house
on the shores of Yath where the rear of the town slopes down to it;
and his wife and servants brought strange toothsome foods for the
traveller's delight. And in the days after that Carter asked for
rumours and legends of Ngranek in all the taverns and public places
where lava-gatherers and image-makers meet, but could find no one who
had been up the higher slopes or seen the carven face. Ngranek was a
hard mountain with only an accursed valley behind it, and besides, one
could never depend on the certainty that night-gaunts are altogether
fabulous.

When the captain sailed hack to Dylath-Leen Carter took quarters in an
ancient tavern opening on an alley of steps in the original part of
the town, which is built of brick and resembles the ruins of Yath's
farther shore. Here he laid his plans for the ascent of Ngranek, and
correlated all that he had learned from the lava-gatherers about the
roads thither. The keeper of the tavern was a very old man, and had
heard so many legends that he was a great help. He even took Carter to
an upper room in that ancient house and shewed him a crude picture
which a traveller had scratched on the clay wall in the old days when
men were bolder and less reluctant to visit Ngranek's higher slopes.
The old tavern-keeper's great-grandfather had heard from his great-
grandfather that the traveller who scratched that picture had climbed
Ngranek and seen the carven face, here drawing it for others to
behold, but Carter had very great doubts, since the large rough
features on the wall were hasty and careless, and wholly overshadowed
by a crowd of little companion shapes in the worst possible taste,
with horns and wings and claws and curling tails.

At last, having gained all the information he was likely to gain in
the taverns and public places of Baharna, Carter hired a zebra and set
out one morning on the road by Yath's shore for those inland parts
wherein towers stony Ngranek. On his right were rolling hills and
pleasant orchards and neat little stone farmhouses, and he was much
reminded of those fertile fields that flank the Skai. By evening he
was near the nameless ancient ruins on Yath's farther shore, and
though old lava-gatherers had warned him not to camp there at night,
he tethered his zebra to a curious pillar before a crumbling wall and
laid his blanket in a sheltered corner beneath some carvings whose
meaning none could decipher. Around him he wrapped another blanket,
for the nights are cold in Oriab; and when upon awaking once he
thought he felt the wings of some insect brushing his face he covered
his head altogether and slept in peace till roused by the magah birds
in distant resin groves.

The sun had just come up over the great slope whereon leagues of
primal brick foundations and worn walls and occasional cracked pillars
and pedestals stretched down desolate to the shore of Yath, and Carter
looked about for his tethered zebra. Great was his dismay to see that
docile beast stretched prostrate beside the curious pillar to which it
had been tied, and still greater was he vexed on finding that the
steed was quite dead, with its blood all sucked away through a
singular wound in its throat. His pack had been disturbed, and several
shiny knickknacks taken away, and all round on the dusty soil' were
great webbed footprints for which he could not in any way account. The
legends and warnings of lava-gatherers occurred to him, and he thought
of what had brushed his face in the night. Then he shouldered his pack
and strode on toward Ngranek, though not without a shiver when he saw
close to him as the highway passed through the ruins a great gaping
arch low in the wall of an old temple, with steps leading down into
darkness farther than he could peer.

His course now lay uphill through wilder and partly wooded country,
and he saw only the huts of charcoal-burners and the camp of those who
gathered resin from the groves. The whole air was fragrant with
balsam, and all the magah birds sang blithely as they flashed their
seven colours in the sun. Near sunset he came on a new camp of lava-
gatherers returning with laden sacks from Ngranek's lower slopes; and
here he also camped, listening to the songs and tales of the men, and
overhearing what they whispered about a companion they had lost. He
had climbed high to reach a mass of fine lava above him, and at
nightfall did not return to his fellows. When they looked for him the
next day they found only his turban, nor was there any sign on the
crags below that he had fallen. They did not search any more, because
the old man among them said it would be of no use.

No one ever found what the night-gaunts took, though those beasts
themselves were so uncertain as to be almost fabulous. Carter asked
them if night-gaunts sucked blood and liked shiny things and left
webbed footprints, but they all shook their heads negatively and
seemed frightened at his making such an inquiry. When he saw how
taciturn they had become he asked them no more, but went to sleep in
his blanket.

The next day he rose with the lava-gatherers and exchanged farewells
as they rode west and he rode east on a zebra he bought of them. Their
older men gave him blessings and warnings, and told him he had better
not climb too high on Ngranek, but while he thanked them heartily he
was in no wise dissuaded. For still did he feel that he must find the
gods on unknown Kadath; and win from them a way to that haunting and
marvellous city in the sunset. By noon, after a long uphill ride, he
came upon some abandoned brick villages of the hill-people who had
once dwelt thus close to Ngranek and carved images from its smooth
lava. Here they had dwelt till the days of the old tavernkeeper's
grandfather, but about that time they felt that their presence was
disliked. Their homes had crept even up the mountain's slope, and the
higher they built the more people they would miss when the sun rose.
At last they decided it would be better to leave altogether, since
things were sometimes glimpsed in the darkness which no one could
interpret favourably; so in the end all of them went down to the sea
and dwelt in Baharna, inhabiting a very old quarter and teaching their
sons the old art of image-making which to this day they carry on. It
was from these children of the exiled hill-people that Carter had
heard the best tales about Ngranek when searching through Baharna's
ancient taverns.

All this time the great gaunt side of Ngranek was looming up higher
and higher as Carter approached it. There were sparse trees on the
lower slopes and feeble shrubs above them, and then the bare hideous
rock rose spectral into the sky, to mix with frost and ice and eternal
snow. Carter could see the rifts and ruggedness of that sombre stone,
and did not welcome the prospect of climbing it. In places there were
solid streams of lava, and scoriac heaps that littered slopes and
ledges. Ninety aeons ago, before even the gods had danced upon its
pointed peak, that mountain had spoken with fire and roared with the
voices of the inner thunders. Now it towered all silent and sinister,
bearing on the hidden side that secret titan image whereof rumour
told. And there were caves in that mountain, which might be empty and
alone with elder darkness, or might--if legend spoke truly--hold
horrors of a form not to be surmised.

The ground sloped upward to the foot of Ngranek, thinly covered with
scrub oaks and ash trees, and strewn with bits of rock, lava, and
ancient cinder. There were the charred embers of many camps, where the
lava-gatherers were wont to stop, and several rude altars which they
had built either to propitiate the Great Ones or to ward off what they
dreamed of in Ngranek's high passes and labyrinthine caves. At evening
Carter reached the farthermost pile of embers and camped for the
night, tethering his zebra to a sapling and wrapping himself well in
his blankets before going to sleep. And all through the night a
voonith howled distantly from the shore of some hidden pool, but
Carter felt no fear of that amphibious terror, since he had been told
with certainty that not one of them dares even approach the slope of
Ngranek.

In the clear sunshine of morning Carter began the long ascent, taking
his zebra as far as that useful beast could go, but tying it to a
stunted ash tree when the floor of the thin wood became too steep.
Thereafter he scrambled up alone; first through the forest with its
ruins of old villages in overgrown clearings, and then over the tough
grass where anaemic shrubs grew here and there. He regretted coming
clear of the trees, since the slope was very precipitous and the whole
thing rather dizzying. At length he began to discern all the
countryside spread out beneath him whenever he looked about; the
deserted huts of the image-makers, the groves of resin trees and the
camps of those who gathered from them, the woods where prismatic
magahs nest and sing, and even a hint very far away of the shores of
Yath and of those forbidding ancient ruins whose name is forgotten. He
found it best not to look around, and kept on climbing and climbing
till the shrubs became very sparse and there was often nothing but the
tough grass to cling to.

Then the soil became meagre, with great patches of bare rock cropping
out, and now and then the nest of a condor in a crevice. Finally there
was nothing at all but the bare rock, and had it not been very rough
and weathered, he could scarcely have ascended farther. Knobs, ledges,
and pinnacles, however, helped greatly; and it was cheering to see
occasionally the sign of some lava-gatherer scratched clumsily in the
friable stone, and know that wholesome human creatures had been there
before him. After a certain height the presence of man was further
shewn by handholds and footholds hewn where they were needed, and by
little quarries and excavations where some choice vein or stream of
lava had been found. In one place a narrow ledge had been chopped
artificially to an especially rich deposit far to the right of the
main line of ascent. Once or twice Carter dared to look around, and
was almost stunned by the spread of landscape below. All the island
betwixt him and the coast lay open to his sight, with Baharna's stone
terraces and the smoke of its chimneys mystical in the distance. And
beyond that the illimitable Southern Sea with all its curious secrets.

Thus far there had been much winding around the mountain, so that the
farther and carven side was still hidden. Carter now saw a ledge
running upward and to the left which seemed to head the way he wished,
and this course he took in the hope that it might prove continuous.
After ten minutes he saw it was indeed no cul-de-sac, but that it led
steeply on in an arc which would, unless suddenly interrupted or
deflected, bring him after a few hours' climbing to that unknown
southern slope overlooking the desolate crags and the accursed valley
of lava. As new country came into view below him he saw that it was
bleaker and wilder than those seaward lands he had traversed. The
mountain's side, too, was somewhat different; being here pierced by
curious cracks and caves not found on the straighter route he had
left. Some of these were above him and some beneath him, all opening
on sheerly perpendicular cliffs and wholly unreachable by the feet of
man. The air was very cold now, but so hard was the climbing that he
did not mind it. Only the increasing rarity bothered him, and he
thought that perhaps it was this which had turned the heads of other
travellers and excited those absurd tales of night-gaunts whereby they
explained the loss of such climbers as fell from these perilous paths.
He was not much impressed by travellers' tales, but had a good curved
scimitar in case of any trouble. All lesser thoughts were lost in the
wish to see that carven face which might set him on the track of the
gods atop unknown Kadath.

At last, in the fearsome iciness of upper space, he came round fully
to the hidden side of Ngranek and saw in infinite gulfs below him the
lesser crags and sterile abysses of lava which marked olden wrath of
the Great Ones. There was unfolded, too, a vast expanse of country to
the south; but it was a desert land without fair fields or cottage
chimneys, and seemed to have no ending. No trace of the sea was
visible on this side, for Oriab is a great island. Black caverns and
odd crevices were still numerous on the sheer vertical cliffs, but
none of them was accessible to a climber. There now loomed aloft a
great beetling mass which hampered the upward view, and Carter was for
a moment shaken with doubt lest it prove impassable. Poised in windy
insecurity miles above earth, with only space and death on one side
and only slippery walls of rock on the other, he knew for a moment the
fear that makes men shun Ngranek's hidden side. He could not turn
round, yet the sun was already low. If there were no way aloft, the
night would find him crouching there still, and the dawn would not
find him at all.

But there was a way, and he saw it in due season. Only a very expert
dreamer could have used those imperceptible footholds, yet to Carter
they were sufficient. Surmounting now the outward-hanging rock, he
found the slope above much easier than that below, since a great
glacier's melting had left a generous space with loam and ledges. To
the left a precipice dropped straight from unknown heights to unknown
depths, with a cave's dark mouth just out of reach above him.
Elsewhere, however, the mountain slanted back strongly, and even gave
him space to lean and rest.

He felt from the chill that he must be near the snow line, and looked
up to see what glittering pinnacles might be shining in that late
ruddy sunlight. Surely enough, there was the snow uncounted thousands
of feet above, and below it a great beetling crag like that. he had
just climbed; hanging there forever in bold outline. And when he saw
that crag he gasped and cried out aloud, and clutched at the jagged
rock in awe; for the titan bulge had not stayed as earth's dawn had
shaped it, but gleamed red and stupendous in the sunset with the
carved and polished features of a god.

Stern and terrible shone that face that the sunset lit with fire. How
vast it was no mind can ever measure, but Carter knew at once that man
could never have fashioned it. It was a god chiselled by the hands of
the gods, and it looked down haughty and majestic upon the seeker.
Rumour had said it was strange and not to be mistaken, and Carter saw
that it was indeed so; for those long narrow eyes and long-lobed ears,
and that thin nose and pointed chin, all spoke of a race that is not
of men but of gods.

He clung overawed in that lofty and perilous eyrie, even though it was
this which he had expected and come to find; for there is in a god's
face more of marvel than prediction can tell, and when that face is
vaster than a great temple and seen looking downward at sunset in the
scyptic silences of that upper world from whose dark lava it was
divinely hewn of old, the marvel is so strong that none may escape it.

Here, too, was the added marvel of recognition; for although he had
planned to search all dreamland over for those whose likeness to this
face might mark them as the god's children, he now knew that he need
not do so. Certainly, the great face carven on that mountain was of no
strange sort, but the kin of such as he had seen often in the taverns
of the seaport Celephais which lies in Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian
Hills and is ruled over by that King Kuranes whom Carter once knew in
waking life. Every year sailors with such a face came in dark ships
from the north to trade their onyx for the carved jade and spun gold
and little red singing birds of Celephais, and it was clear that these
could be no others than the hall-gods he sought. Where they dwelt,
there must the cold waste lie close, and within it unknown Kadath and
its onyx castle for the Great Ones. So to Celephais he must go, far
distant from the isle of Oriab, and in such parts as would take him
back to Dylath-Teen and up the Skai to the bridge by Nir, and again
into the enchanted wood of the Zoogs, whence the way would bend
northward through the garden lands by Oukranos to the gilded spires of
Thran, where he might find a galleon bound over the Cerenarian Sea.

But dusk was now thick, and the great carven face looked down even
sterner in shadow. Perched on that ledge night found the seeker; and
in the blackness he might neither go down nor go up, but only stand
and cling and shiver in that narrow place till the day came, praying
to keep awake lest sleep loose his hold and send him down the dizzy
miles of air to the crags and sharp rocks of the accursed valley. The
stars came out, but save for them there was only black nothingness in
his eyes; nothingness leagued with death, against whose beckoning he
might do no more than cling to the rocks and lean back away from an
unseen brink. The last thing of earth that he saw in the gloaming was
a condor soaring close to the westward precipice beside him, and
darting screaming away when it came near the cave whose mouth yawned
just out of reach.

Suddenly, without a warning sound in the dark, Carter felt his curved
scimitar drawn stealthily out of his belt by some unseen hand. Then he
heard it clatter down over the rocks below. And between him and the
Milky Way he thought he saw a very terrible outline of something
noxiously thin and horned and tailed and bat-winged. Other things,
too, had begun to blot out patches of stars west of him, as if a flock
of vague entities were flapping thickly and silently out of that
inaccessible cave in the face of the precipice. Then a sort of cold
rubbery arm seized his neck and something else seized his feet, and he
was lifted inconsiderately up and swung about in space. Another minute
and the stars were gone, and Carter knew that the night-gaunts had got
him.

They bore him breathless into that cliffside cavern and through
monstrous labyrinths beyond. When he struggled, as at first he did by
instinct, they tickled him with deliberation. They made no sound at
all themselves, and even their membranous wings were silent. They were
frightfully cold and damp and slippery, and their paws kneaded one
detestably. Soon they were plunging hideously downward through
inconceivable abysses in a whirling, giddying, sickening rush of dank,
tomb-like air; and Carter felt they were shooting into the ultimate
vortex of shrieking and daemonic madness. He screamed again and again,
but whenever he did so the black paws tickled him with greater
subtlety. Then he saw a sort of grey phosphorescence about, and
guessed they were coming even to that inner world of subterrene horror
of which dim legends tell, and which is litten only by the pale death-
fire wherewith reeks the ghoulish air and the primal mists of the pits
at earth's core.

At last far below him he saw faint lines of grey and ominous pinnacles
which he knew must be the fabled Peaks of Throk. Awful and sinister
they stand in the haunted disc of sunless and eternal depths; higher
than man may reckon, and guarding terrible valleys where the Dholes
crawl and burrow nastily. But Carter preferred to look at them than at
his captors, which were indeed shocking and uncouth black things with
smooth, oily, whale-like surfaces, unpleasant horns that curved inward
toward each other, bat wings whose beating made no sound, ugly
prehensile paws, and barbed tails that lashed needlessly and
disquietingly. And worst of all, they never spoke or laughed, and
never smiled because they had no faces at all to smile with, but only
a suggestive blankness where a face ought to be. All they ever did was
clutch and fly and tickle; that was the way of night-gaunts.

As the band flew lower the Peaks of Throk rose grey and towering on
all sides, and one saw clearly that nothing lived on that austere and
impressive granite of the endless twilight. At still lower levels the
death-fires in the air gave out, and one met only the primal blackness
of the void save aloft where the thin peaks stood out goblin-like.
Soon the peaks were very far away, and nothing about but great rushing
winds with the dankness of nethermost grottoes in them. Then in the
end the night-gaunts landed on a floor of unseen things which felt
like layers of bones, and left Carter all alone in that black valley.
To bring him thither was the duty of the night-gaunts that guard
Ngranek; and this done, they flapped away silently. When Carter tried
to trace their flight he found he could not, since even the Peaks of
Throk had faded out of sight. There was nothing anywhere but blackness
and horror and silence and bones.

Now Carter knew from a certain source that he was in the vale of
Pnoth, where crawl and burrow the enormous Dholes; but he did not know
what to expect, because no one has ever seen a Dhole or even guessed
what such a thing may be like. Dholes are known only by dim rumour,
from the rustling they make amongst mountains of bones and the slimy
touch they have when they wriggle past one. They cannot be seen
because they creep only in the dark. Carter did not wish to meet a
Dhole, so listened intently for any sound in the unknown depths of
bones about him. Even in this fearsome place he had a plan and an
objective, for whispers of Pnoth were not unknown to one with whom he
had talked much in the old days. In brief, it seemed fairly likely
that this was the spot into which all the ghouls of the waking world
cast the refuse of their feastings; and that if he but had good luck
he might stumble upon that mighty crag taller even than Throk's peaks
which marks the edge of their domain. Showers of bones would tell him
where to look, and once found he could call to a ghoul to let down a
ladder; for strange to say, he had a very singular link with these
terrible creatures.

A man he had known in Boston--a painter of strange pictures with a
secret studio in an ancient and unhallowed alley near a graveyard--had
actually made friends with the ghouls and had taught him to understand
the simpler part of their disgusting meeping and glibbering. This man
had vanished at last, and Carter was not sure but that he might find
him now, and use for the first time in dreamland that far-away English
of his dim waking life. In any case, he felt he could persuade a ghoul
to guide him out of Pnoth; and it would be better to meet a ghoul,
which one can see, than a Dhole, which one cannot see.

So Carter walked in the dark, and ran when he thought he heard
something among the bones underfoot. Once he bumped into a stony
slope, and knew it must be the base of one of Throk's peaks. Then at
last he heard a monstrous rattling and clatter which reached far up in
the air, and became sure he had come nigh the crag of the ghouls. He
was not sure he could be heard from this valley miles below, but
realised that the inner world has strange laws. As he pondered he was
struck by a flying bone so heavy that it must have been a skull, and
therefore realising his nearness to the fateful crag he sent up as
best he might that meeping cry which is the call of the ghoul.

Sound travels slowly, so it was some time before he heard an answering
glibber. But it came at last, and before long he was told that a rope
ladder would be lowered. The wait for this was very tense, since there
was no telling what might not have been stirred up among those bones
by his shouting. Indeed, it was not long before he actually did hear a
vague rustling afar off. As this thoughtfully approached, he became
more and more uncomfortable; for he did not wish to move away from the
spot where the ladder would come. Finally the tension grew almost
unbearable, and he was about to flee in panic when the thud of
something on the newly heaped bones nearby drew his notice from the
other sound. It was the ladder, and after a minute of groping he had
it taut in his hands. But the other sound did not cease, and followed
him even as he climbed. He had gone fully five feet from the ground
when the rattling beneath waxed emphatic, and was a good ten feet up
when something swayed the ladder from below. At a height which must
have been fifteen or twenty feet he felt his whole side brushed by a
great slippery length which grew alternately convex and concave with
wriggling; and hereafter he climbed desperately to escape the
unendurable nuzzling of that loathsome and overfed Dhole whose form no
man might see.

For hours he climbed with aching and blistered hands, seeing again the
grey death-fire and Throk's uncomfortable pinnacles. At last he
discerned above him the projecting edge of the great crag of the
ghouls, whose vertical side he could not glimpse; and hours later he
saw a curious face peering over it as a gargoyle peers over a parapet
of Notre Dame. This almost made him lose his hold through faintness,
but a moment later he was himself again; for his vanished friend
Richard Pickman had once introduced him to a ghoul, and he knew well
their canine faces and slumping forms and unmentionable
idiosyncrasies. So he had himself well under control when that hideous
thing pulled him out of the dizzy emptiness over the edge of the crag,
and did not scream at the partly consumed refuse heaped at one side or
at the squatting circles of ghouls who gnawed and watched curiously.

He was now on a dim-litten plain whose sole topographical features
were great boulders and the entrances of burrows. The ghouls were in
general respectful, even if one did attempt to pinch him while several
others eyed his leanness speculatively. Through patient glibbering he
made inquiries regarding his vanished friend, and found he had become
a ghoul of some prominence in abysses nearer the waking world. A
greenish elderly ghoul offered to conduct him to Pickman's present
habitation, so despite a natural loathing he followed the creature
into a capacious burrow and crawled after him for hours in the
blackness of rank mould. They emerged on a dim plain strewn with
singular relics of earth--old gravestones, broken urns, and grotesque
fragments of monuments--and Carter realised with some emotion that he
was probably nearer the waking world than at any other time since he
had gone down the seven hundred steps from the cavern of flame to the
Gate of Deeper Slumber.

There, on a tombstone of 1768 stolen from the Granary Burying Ground
in Boston, sat a ghoul which was once the artist Richard Upton
Pickman. It was naked and rubbery, and had acquired so much of the
ghoulish physiognomy that its human origin was already obscure. But it
still remembered a little English, and was able to converse with
Carter in grunts and monosyllables, helped out now and then by the
glibbering of ghouls. When it learned that Carter wished to get to the
enchanted wood and from there to the city Celephais in Ooth-Nargai
beyond the Tanarian Hills, it seemed rather doubtful; for these ghouls
of the waking world do no business in the graveyards of upper
dreamland (leaving that to the red-footed wamps that are spawned in
dead cities), and many things intervene betwixt their gulf and the
enchanted wood, including the terrible kingdom of the Gugs.

The Gugs, hairy and gigantic, once reared stone circles in that wood
and made strange sacrifices to the Other Gods and the crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep, until one night an abomination of theirs reached the
ears of earth's gods and they were banished to caverns below. Only a
great trap door of stone with an iron ring connects the abyss of the
earth-ghouls with the enchanted wood, and this the Gugs are afraid to
open because of a curse. That a mortal dreamer could traverse their
cavern realm and leave by that door is inconceivable; for mortal
dreamers were their former food, and they have legends of the
toothsomeness of such dreamers even though banishment has restricted
their diet to the ghasts, those repulsive beings which die in the
light, and which live in the vaults of Zin and leap on long hind legs
like kangaroos.

So the ghoul that was Pickman advised Carter either to leave the abyss
at Sarkomand, that deserted city in the valley below Leng where black
nitrous stairways guarded by winged diarote lions lead down from
dreamland to the lower gulfs, or to return through a churchyard to the
waking world and begin the quest anew down the seventy steps of light
slumber to the cavern of flame and the seven hundred steps to the Gate
of Deeper Slumber and the enchanted wood. This, however, did not suit
the seeker; for he knew nothing of the way from Leng to Ooth-Nargai,
and was likewise reluctant to awake lest he forget all he had so far
gained in this dream. It was disastrous to his quest to forget the
august and celestial faces of those seamen from the north who traded
onyx in Celephais, and who, being the sons of gods, must point the way
to the cold waste and Kadath where the Great Ones dwell.

After much persuasion the ghoul consented to guide his guest inside
the great wall of the Gugs' kingdom. There was one chance that Carter
might be able to steal through that twilight realm of circular stone
towers at an hour when the giants would be all gorged and snoring
indoors, and reach the central tower with the sign of Koth upon it,
which has the stairs leading up to that stone trap door in the
enchanted wood. Pickman even consented to lend three ghouls to help
with a tombstone lever in raising the stone door; for of ghouls the
Gugs are somewhat afraid, and they often flee from their own colossal
graveyards when they see them feasting there.

He also advised Carter to disguise as a ghoul himself; shaving the
beard he had allowed to grow (for ghouls have none), wallowing naked
in the mould to get the correct surface, and loping in the usual
slumping way, with his clothing carried in a bundle as if it were a
choice morsel from a tomb. They would reach the city of Gugs--which is
coterminous with the whole kingdom--through the proper burrows,
emerging in a cemetery not far from the stair-containing Tower of
Koth. They must beware, however, of a large cave near the cemetery;
for this is the mouth of the vaults of Zin, and the vindictive ghasts
are always on watch there murderously for those denizens of the upper
abyss who hunt and prey on them. The ghasts try to come out when the
Gugs sleep and they attack ghouls as readily as Gugs, for they cannot
discriminate. They are very primitive, and eat one another. The Gugs
have a sentry at a narrow in the vaults of Zin, but he is often drowsy
and is sometimes surprised by a party of ghasts. Though ghasts cannot
live in real light, they can endure the grey twilight of the abyss for
hours.

So at length Carter crawled through endless burrows with three helpful
ghouls bearing the slate gravestone of Col. Nepemiah Derby, obit 1719,
from the Charter Street Burying Ground in Salem. When they came again
into open twilight they were in a forest of vast lichened monoliths
reaching nearly as high as the eye could see and forming the modest
gravestones of the Gugs. On the right of the hole out of which they
wriggled, and seen through aisles of monoliths, was a stupendous vista
of cyclopean round towers mounting up illimitable into the grey air of
inner earth. This was the great city of the Gugs, whose doorways are
thirty feet high. Ghouls come here often, for a buried Gug will feed a
community for almost a year, and even with the added peril it is
better to burrow for Gugs than to bother with the graves of men.
Carter now understood the occasional titan bones he had felt beneath
him in the vale of Pnoth.

Straight ahead, and just outside the cemetery, rose a sheer
perpendicular cliff at whose base an immense and forbidding cavern
yawned. This the ghouls told Carter to avoid as much as possible,
since it was the entrance to the unhallowed vaults of Zin where Gugs
hunt ghasts in the darkness. And truly, that warning was soon well
justified; for the moment a ghoul began to creep toward the towers to
see if the hour of the Gugs' resting had been rightly timed, there
glowed in the gloom of that great cavern's mouth first one pair of
yellowish-red eyes and then another, implying that the Gugs were one
sentry less, and that ghasts have indeed an excellent sharpness of
smell. So the ghoul returned to the burrow and motioned his companions
to be silent. It was best to leave the ghasts to their own devices,
and there was a possibility that they might soon withdraw, since they
must naturally be rather tired after coping with a Gug sentry in the
black vaults. After a moment something about the size of a small horse
hopped out into the grey twilight, and Carter turned sick at the
aspect of that scabrous and unwholesome beast, whose face is so
curiously human despite the absence of a nose, a forehead, and other
important particulars.

Presently three other ghasts hopped out to join their fellow, and a
ghoul glibbered softly at Carter that their absence of battle-scars
was a bad sign. It proved that theY had not fought the Gug sentry at
all, but had merely slipped past him as he slept, so that their
strength and savagery were still unimpaired and would remain so till
they had found and disposed of a victim. It was very unpleasant to see
those filthy and disproportioned animals which soon numbered about
fifteen, grubbing about and making their kangaroo leaps in the grey
twilight where titan towers and monoliths arose, but it was still more
unpleasant when they spoke among themselves in the coughing gutturals
of ghasts. And yet, horrible as they were, they were not so horrible
as what presently came out of the cave after them with disconcerting
suddenness.

It was a paw, fully two feet and a half across, and equipped with
formidable talons. Alter it came another paw, and after that a great
black-furred arm to which both of the paws were attached by short
forearms. Then two pink eyes shone, and the head of the awakened Gug
sentry, large as a barrel, wabbled into view. The eyes jutted two
inches from each side, shaded by bony protuberances overgrown with
coarse hairs. But the head was chiefly terrible because of the mouth.
That mouth had great yellow fangs and ran from the top to the bottom
of the head, opening vertically instead of horizontally.

But before that unfortunate Gug could emerge from the cave and rise to
his full twenty feet, the vindictive ghasts were upon him. Carter
feared for a moment that he would give an alarm and arouse all his
kin, till a ghoul softly glibbered that Gugs have no voice but talk by
means of facial expression. The battle which then ensued was truly a
frightful one. From all sides the venomous ghasts rushed feverishly at
the creeping Gug, nipping and tearing with their muzzles, and mauling
murderously with their hard pointed hooves. All the time they coughed
excitedly, screaming when the great vertical mouth of the Gug would
occasionally bite into one of their number, so that the noise of the
combat would surely have aroused the sleeping city had not the
weakening of the sentry begun to transfer the action farther and
farther within the cavern. As it was, the tumult soon receded
altogether from sight in the blackness, with only occasional evil
echoes to mark its continuance.

Then the most alert of the ghouls gave the signal for all to advance,
and Carter followed the loping three out of the forest of monoliths
and into the dark noisome streets of that awful city whose rounded
towers of cyclopean stone soared up beyond the sight. Silently they
shambled over that rough rock pavement, hearing with disgust the
abominable muffled snortings from great black doorways which marked
the slumber of the Gugs. Apprehensive of the ending of the rest hour,
the ghouls set a somewhat rapid pace; but even so the journey was no
brief one, for distances in that town of giants are on a great scale.
At last, however, they came to a somewhat open space before a tower
even vaster than the rest; above whose colossal doorway was fixed a
monstrous symbol in bas-relief which made one shudder without knowing
its meaning. This was the central tower with the sign of Koth, and
those huge stone steps just visible through the dusk within were the
beginning of the great flight leading to upper dreamland and the
enchanted wood.

There now began a climb of interminable length in utter blackness:
made almost impossible by the monstrous size of the steps, which were
fashioned for Gugs, and were therefore nearly a yard high. Of their
number Carter could form no just estimate, for he soon became so worn
out that the tireless and elastic ghouls were forced to aid him. All
through the endless climb there lurked the peril of detection and
pursuit; for though no Gug dares lift the stone door to the forest
because of the Great One's curse, there are no such restraints
concerning the tower and the steps, and escaped ghasts are often
chased, even to the very top. So sharp are the ears of Gugs, that the
bare feet and hands of the climbers might readily be heard when the
city awoke; and it would of course take but little time for the
striding giants, accustomed from their ghast-hunts in the vaults of
Zin to seeing without light, to overtake their smaller and slower
quarry on those cyclopean steps. It was very depressing to reflect
that the silent pursuing Gugs would not be heard at all, but would
come very suddenly and shockingly in the dark upon the climbers. Nor
could the traditional fear of Gugs for ghouls be depended upon in that
peculiar place where the advantages lay so heavily with the Gugs.
There was also some peril from the furtive and venomous ghasts, which
frequently hopped up onto the tower during the sleep hour of the Gugs.
If the Gugs slept long, and the ghasts returned soon from their deed
in the cavern, the scent of the climbers might easily be picked up by
those loathsome and ill-disposed things; in which case it would almost
be better to be eaten by a Gug.

Then, after aeons of climbing, there came a cough from the darkness
above; and matters assumed a very grave and unexpected turn.

It was clear that a ghast, or perhaps even more, had strayed into that
tower before the coming of Carter and his guides; and it was equally
clear that this peril was very close. Alter a breathless second the
leading ghoul pushed Carter to the wall and arranged his kinfolk in
the best possible way, with the old slate tombstone raised for a
crushing blow whenever the enemy might come in sight. Ghouls can see
in the dark, so the party was not as badly off as Carter would have
been alone. In another moment the clatter of hooves revealed the
downward hopping of at least one beast, and the slab-bearing ghouls
poised their weapon for a desperate blow. Presently two yellowish-red
eyes flashed into view, and the panting of the ghast became audible
above its clattering. As it hopped down to the step above the ghouls,
they wielded the ancient gravestone with prodigious force, so that
there was only a wheeze and a choking before the victim collapsed in a
noxious heap. There seemed to be only this one animal, and after a
moment of listening the ghouls tapped Carter as a signal to proceed
again. As before, they were obliged to aid him; and he was glad to
leave that place of carnage where the ghast's uncouth remains sprawled
invisible in the blackness.

At last the ghouls brought their companion to a halt; and feeling
above him, Carter realised that the great stone trap door was reached
at last. To open so vast a thing completely was not to be thought of,
but the ghouls hoped to get it up just enough to slip the gravestone
under as a prop, and permit Carter to escape through the crack. They
themselves planned to descend again and return through the city of the
Gugs, since their elusiveness was great, and they did not know the way
overland to spectral Sarkomand with its lion-guarded gate to the
abyss.

Mighty was the straining of those three ghouls at the stone of the
door above them, and Carter helped push with as much strength as he
had. They judged the edge next the top of the staircase to be the
right one, and to this they bent all the force of their disreputably
nourished muscles. Alter a few moments a crack of light appeared; and
Carter, to whom that task had been entrusted, slipped the end of the
old gravestone in the aperture. There now ensued a mighty heaving; but
progress was very slow, and they had of course to return to their
first position every time they failed to turn the slab and prop the
portal open.

Suddenly their desperation was magnified a thousand fold by a sound on
the steps below them. It was only the thumping and rattling of the
slain ghast's hooved body as it rolled down to lower levels; but of
all the possible causes of that body's dislodgement and rolling, none
was in the least reassuring. Therefore, knowing the ways of Gugs, the
ghouls set to with something of a frenzy; and in a surprisingly short
time had the door so high that they were able to hold it still whilst
Carter turned the slab and left a generous opening. They now helped
Carter through, letting him climb up to their rubbery shoulders and
later guiding his feet as he clutched at the blessed soil of the upper
dreamland outside. Another second and they were through themselves,
knocking away the gravestone and closing the great trap door while a
panting became audible beneath. Because of the Great One's curse no
Gug might ever emerge from that portal, so with a deep relief and
sense of repose Carter lay quietly on the thick grotesque fungi of the
enchanted wood while his guides squatted near in the manner that
ghouls rest.

Weird as was that enchanted wood through which he had fared so long
ago, it was verily a haven and a delight after those gulfs he had now
left behind. There was no living denizen about, for Zoogs shun the
mysterious door in fear and Carter at once consulted with his ghouls
about their future course. To return through the tower they no longer
dared, and the waking world did not appeal to them when they learned
that they must pass the priests Nasht and Kaman-Thah in the cavern of
flame. So at length they decided to return through Sarkomand and its
gate of the abyss, though of how to get there they knew nothing.
Carter recalled that it lies in the valley below Leng, and recalled
likewise that he had seen in Dylath-Leen a sinister, slant-eyed old
merchant reputed to trade on Leng, therefore he advised the ghouls to
seek out Dylath-Leen, crossing the fields to Nir and the Skai and
following the river to its mouth. This they at once resolved to do,
and lost no time in loping off, since the thickening of the dusk
promised a full night ahead for travel. And Carter shook the paws of
those repulsive beasts, thanking them for their help and sending his
gratitude to the beast which once was Pickman; but could not help
sighing with pleasure when they left. For a ghoul is a ghoul, and at
best an unpleasant companion for man. After that Carter sought a
forest pool and cleansed himself of the mud of nether earth, thereupon
reassuming the clothes he had so carefully carried.

It was now night in that redoubtable wood of monstrous trees, but
because of the phosphorescence one might travel as well as by day;
wherefore Carter set out upon the well-known route toward Celephais,
in Ooth-Nargai beyond the Tanarian Hills. And as he went he thought of
the zebra he had left tethered to an ash-tree on Ngranek in far-away
Oriab so many aeons ago, and wondered if any lava-gatherers had fed
and released it. And he wondered, too, if he would ever return to
Baharna and pay for the zebra that was slain by night in those ancient
ruins by Yath's shore, and if the old tavernkeeper would remember him.
Such were the thoughts that came to him in the air of the regained
upper dreamland.

But presently his progress was halted by a sound from a very large
hollow tree. He had avoided the great circle of stones, since he did
not care to speak with Zoogs just now; but it appeared from the
singular fluttering in that huge tree that important councils were in
session elsewhere. Upon drawing nearer he made out the accents of a
tense and heated discussion; and before long became conscious of
matters which he viewed with the greatest concern. For a war on the
cats was under debate in that sovereign assembly of Zoogs. It all came
from the loss of the party which had sneaked after Carter to Ulthar,
and which the cats had justly punished for unsuitable intentions. The
matter had long rankled; and now, or at least within a month, the
marshalled Zoogs were about to strike the whole feline tribe in a
series of surprise attacks, taking individual cats or groups of cats
unawares, and giving not even the myriad cats of Ulthar a proper
chance to drill and mobilise. This was the plan of the Zoogs, and
Carter saw that he must foil it before leaving upon his mighty quest.

Very quietly therefore did Randolph Carter steal to the edge of the
wood and send the cry of the cat over the starlit fields. And a great
grimalkin in a nearby cottage took up the burden and relayed it across
leagues of rolling meadow to warriors large and small, black, grey,
tiger, white, yellow, and mixed, and it echoed through Nir and beyond
the Skai even into Ulthar, and Ulthar's numerous cats called in chorus
and fell into a line of march. It was fortunate that the moon was not
up, so that all the cats were on earth. Swiftly and silently leaping,
they sprang from every hearth and housetop and poured in a great furry
sea across the plains to the edge of the wood. Carter was there to
greet them, and the sight of shapely, wholesome cats was indeed good
for his eyes after the things he had seen and walked with in the
abyss. He was glad to see his venerable friend and one-time rescuer at
the head of Ulthar's detachment, a collar of rank around his sleek
neck, and whiskers bristling at a martial angle. Better still, as a
sub-lieutenant in that army was a brisk young fellow who proved to be
none other than the very little kitten at the inn to whom Carter had
given a saucer of rich cream on that long-vanished morning in Ulthar.
He was a strapping and promising cat now, and purred as he shook hands
with his friend. His grandfather said he was doing very well in the
army, and that he might well expect a captaincy after one more
campaign.

Carter now outlined the peril of the cat tribe, and was rewarded by
deep-throated purrs of gratitude from all sides. Consulting with the
generals, he prepared a plan of instant action which involved marching
at once upon the Zoog council and other known strongholds of Zoogs;
forestalling their surprise attacks and forcing them to terms before
the mobilization of their army of invasion. Thereupon without a
moment's loss that great ocean of cats flooded the enchanted wood and
surged around the council tree and the great stone circle. Flutterings
rose to panic pitch as the enemy saw the newcomers and there was very
little resistance among the furtive and curious brown Zoogs. They saw
that they were beaten in advance, and turned from thoughts of
vengeance to thoughts of present self-preservation.

Half the cats now seated themselves in a circular formation with the
captured Zoogs in the centre, leaving open a lane down which were
marched the additional captives rounded up by the other cats in other
parts of the wood. Terms were discussed at length, Carter acting as
interpreter, and it was decided that the Zoogs might remain a free
tribe on condition of rendering to the cats a large tribute of grouse,
quail, and pheasants from the less fabulous parts of the forest.
Twelve young Zoogs of noble families were taken as hostages to be kept
in the Temple of Cats at Ulthar, and the victors made it plain that
any disappearances of cats on the borders of the Zoog domain would be
followed by consequences highly disastrous to Zoogs. These matters
disposed of, the assembled cats broke ranks and permitted the Zoogs to
slink off one by one to their respective homes, which they hastened to
do with many a sullen backward glance.

The old cat general now offered Carter an escort through the forest to
whatever border he wished to reach, deeming it likely that the Zoogs
would harbour dire resentment against him for the frustration of their
warlike enterprise. This offer he welcomed with gratitude; not only
for the safety it afforded, but because he liked the graceful
companionship of cats. So in the midst of a pleasant and playful
regiment, relaxed after the successful performance of its duty,
Randolph Carter walked with dignity through that enchanted and
phosphorescent wood of titan trees, talking of his quest with the old
general and his grandson whilst others of the band indulged in
fantastic gambols or chased fallen leaves that the wind drove among
the fungi of that primeval floor. And the old cat said that he had
heard much of unknown Kadath in the cold waste, but did not know where
it was. As for the marvellous sunset city, he had not even heard of
that, but would gladly relay to Carter anything he might later learn.

He gave the seeker some passwords of great value among the cats of
dreamland, and commended him especially to the old chief of the cats
in Celephais, whither he was bound. That old cat, already slightly
known to Carter, was a dignified maltese; and would prove highly
influential in any transaction. It was dawn when they came to the
proper edge of the wood, and Carter bade his friends a reluctant
farewell. The young sub-lieutenant he had met as a small kitten would
have followed him had not the old general forbidden it, but that
austere patriarch insisted that the path of duty lay with the tribe
and the army. So Carter set out alone over the golden fields that
stretched mysterious beside a willow-fringed river, and the cats went
back into the wood.

Well did the traveller know those garden lands that lie betwixt the
wood of the Cerenerian Sea, and blithely did he follow the singing
river Oukianos that marked his course. The sun rose higher over gentle
slopes of grove and lawn, and heightened the colours of the thousand
flowers that starred each knoll and dangle. A blessed haze lies upon
all this region, wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than
other places hold, and a little more of the summer's humming music of
birds and bees; so that men walk through it as through a faery place,
and feel greater joy and wonder than they ever afterward remember.

By noon Carter reached the jasper terraces of Kiran which slope down
to the river's edge and bear that temple of loveliness wherein the
King of Ilek-Vad comes from his far realm on the twilight sea once a
year in a golden palanqnin to pray to the god of Oukianos, who sang to
him in youth when he dwelt in a cottage by its banks. All of jasper is
that temple, and covering an acre of ground with its walls and courts,
its seven pinnacled towers, and its inner shrine where the river
enters through hidden channels and the god sings softly in the night.
Many times the moon hears strange music as it shines on those courts
and terraces and pinnacles, but whether that music be the song of the
god or the chant of the cryptical priests, none but the King of Ilek-
Vad may say; for only he had entered the temple or seen the priests.
Now, in the drowsiness of day, that carven and delicate fane was
silent, and Carter heard only the murmur of the great stream and the
hum of the birds and bees as he walked onward under the enchanted sun.

All that afternoon the pilgrim wandered on through perfumed meadows
and in the lee of gentle riverward hills bearing peaceful thatched
cottages and the shrines of amiable gods carven from jasper or
chrysoberyl. Sometimes he walked close to the bank of Oukianos and
whistled to the sprightly and iridescent fish of that crystal stream,
and at other times he paused amidst the whispering rushes and gazed at
the great dark wood on the farther side, whose trees came down clear
to the water's edge. In former dreams he had seen quaint lumbering
buopoths come shyly out of that wood to drink, but now he could not
glimpse any. Once in a while he paused to watch a carnivorous fish
catch a fishing bird, which it lured to the water by showing its
tempting scales in the sun, and grasped by the beak with its enormous
mouth as the winged hunter sought to dart down upon it.

Toward evening he mounted a low grassy rise and saw before him flaming
in the sunset the thousand gilded spires of Thran. Lofty beyond belief
are the alabaster walls of that incredible city, sloping inward toward
the top and wrought in one solid piece by what means no man knows, for
they are more ancient than memory. Yet lofty as they are with their
hundred gates and two hundred turrets, the clustered towers within,
all white beneath their golden spires, are loftier still; so that men
on the plain around see them soaring into the sky, sometimes shining
clear, sometimes caught at the top in tangles of cloud and mist, and
sometimes clouded lower down with their utmost pinnacles blazing free
above the vapours. And where Thran's gates open on the river are great
wharves of marble, with ornate galleons of fragrant cedar and
calamander riding gently at anchor, and strange bearded sailors
sitting on casks and bales with the hieroglyphs of far places.
Landward beyond the walls lies the farm country, where small white
cottages dream between little hills, and narrow roads with many stone
bridges wind gracefully among streams and gardens.

Down through this verdant land Carter walked at evening, and saw
twilight float up from the river to the marvellous golden spires of
Thran. And just at the hour of dusk he came to the southern gate, and
was stopped by a red-robed sentry till he had told three dreams beyond
belief, and proved himself a dreamer worthy to walk up Thran's steep
mysterious streets and linger in the bazaars where the wares of the
ornate galleons were sold. Then into that incredible city he walked;
through a wall so thick that the gate was a tunnel, and thereafter
amidst curved and undulant ways winding deep and narrow between the
heavenward towers. Lights shone through grated and balconied windows,
and,the sound of lutes and pipes stole timid from inner courts where
marble fountains bubbled. Carter knew his way, and edged down through
darker streets to the river, where at an old sea tavern he found the
captains and seamen he had known in myriad other dreams. There he
bought his passage to Celephais on a great green galleon, and there he
stopped for the night after speaking gravely to the venerable cat of
that inn, who blinked dozing before an enormous hearth and dreamed of
old wars and forgotten gods.

In the morning Carter boarded the galleon bound for Celephais, and sat
in the prow as the ropes were cast off and the long sail down to the
Cerenerian Sea begun. For many leagues the banks were much as they
were above Thran, with now and then a curious temple rising on the
farther hills toward the right, and a drowsy village on the shore,
with steep red roofs and nets spread in the sun. Mindful of his
search, Carter questioned all the mariners closely about those whom
they had met in the taverns of Celephais, asking the names and ways of
the strange men with long, narrow eyes, long-lobed ears, thin noses,
and pointed chins who came in dark ships from the north and traded
onyx for the carved jade and spun gold and little red singing birds of
Celephais. Of these men the sailors knew not much, save that they
talked but seldom and spread a kind of awe about them.

Their land, very far away, was called Inquanok, and not many people
cared to go thither because it was a cold twilight land, and said to
be close to unpleasant Leng; although high impassable mountains
towered on the side where Leng was thought to lie, so that none might
say whether this evil plateau with its horrible stone villages and
unmentionable monastery were really there, or whether the rumour were
only a fear that timid people felt in the night when those formidable
barrier peaks loomed black against a rising moon. Certainly, men
reached Leng from very different oceans. Of other boundaries of
Inquanok those sailors had no notion, nor had they heard of the cold
waste and unknown Kadath save from vague unplaced report. And of the
marvellous sunset city which Carter sought they knew nothing at all.
So the traveller asked no more of far things, but bided his time till
he might talk with those strange men from cold and twilight Inquanok
who are the seed of such gods as carved their features on Ngranek.

Late in the day the galleon reached those bends of the river which
traverse the perfumed jungles of Kied. Here Carter wished he might
disembark, for in those tropic tangles sleep wondrous palaces of
ivory, lone and unbroken, where once dwelt fabulous monarchs of a land
whose name is forgotten. Spells of the Elder Ones keep those places
unharmed and undecayed, for it is written that there may one day be
need of them again; and elephant caravans have glimpsed them from afar
by moonlight, though none dares approach them closely because of the
guardians to which their wholeness is due. But the ship swept on, and
dusk hushed the hum of the day, and the first stars above blinked
answers to the early fireflies on the banks as that jungle fell far
behind, leaving only its fragrance as a memory that it had been. And
all through the night that galleon floated on past mysteries unseen
and unsuspected. Once a lookout reported fires on the hills to the
east, but the sleepy captain said they had better not be looked at too
much, since it was highly uncertain just who or what had lit them.

In the morning the river had broadened out greatly, and Carter saw by
the houses along the banks that they were close to the vast trading
city of Hlanith on the Cerenerian Sea. Here the walls are of rugged
granite, and the houses peakedly fantastic with beamed and plastered
gables. The men of Hlanith are more like those of the waking world
than any others in dreamland; so that the city is not sought except
for barter, but is prized for the solid work of its artisans. The
wharves of Hlanith are of oak, and there the galleon made fast while
the captain traded in the taverns. Carter also went ashore, and looked
curiously upon the rutted streets where wooden ox carts lumbered and
feverish merchants cried their wares vacuously in the bazaars. The sea
taverns were all close to the wharves on cobbled lanes salted with the
spray of high tides, and seemed exceedingly ancient with their low
black-beamed ceilings and casements of greenish bull's-eye panes.
Ancient sailors in those taverns talked much of distant ports, and
told many stories of the curious men from twilight Inquanok, but had
little to add to what the seamen of the galleon had told. Then at
last, after much unloading and loading, the ship set sail once more
over the sunset sea, and the high walls and gables of Hlanith grew
less as the last golden light of day lent them a wonder and beauty
beyond any that men had given them.

Two nights and two days the galleon sailed over the Cerenerian Sea,
sighting no land and speaking but one other vessel. Then near sunset
of the second day there loomed up ahead the snowy peak of Aran with
its gingko-trees swaying on the lower slope, and Carter knew that they
were come to the land of Ooth-Nargai and the marvellous city of
Celephais. Swiftly there came into sight the glittering minarets of
that fabulous town, and the untarnished marble walls with their bronze
statues, and the great stone bridge where Naraxa joins the sea. Then
rose the gentle hills behind the town, with their groves and gardens
of asphodels and the small shrines and cottages upon them; and far in
the background the purple ridge of the Tanarians, potent and mystical,
behind which lay forbidden ways into the waking world and toward other
regions of dream.

The harbour was full of painted galleys, some of which were from the
marble cloud-city of Serannian, that lies in ethereal space beyond
where the sea meets the sky, and some of which were from more
substantial parts of dreamland. Among these the steersman threaded his
way up to the spice-fragrant wharves, where the galleon made fast in
the dusk as the city's million lights began to twinkle out over the
water. Ever new seemed this deathless city of vision, for here time
has no power to tarnish or destroy. As it has always been is still the
turquoise of Nath-Horthath, and the eighty orchid-wreathed priests are
the same who builded it ten thousand years ago. Shining still is the
bronze of the great gates, nor are the onyx pavements ever worn or
broken. And the great bronze statues on the walls look down on
merchants and camel drivers older than fable, yet without one grey
hair in their forked beards.

Carter did not once seek out the temple or the palace or the citadel,
but stayed by the seaward wall among traders and sailors. And when it
was too late for rumours and legends he sought out an ancient tavern
he knew well, and rested with dreams of the gods on unknown Kadath
whom he sought. The next day he searched all along the quays for some
of the strange mariners of Inquanok, but was told that none were now
in port, their galley not being due from the north for full two weeks.
He found, however, one Thorabonian sailor who had been to Inquanok and
had worked in the onyx quarries of that twilight place; and this
sailor said there was certainly a descent to the north of the peopled
region, which everybody seemed to fear and shun. The Thorabonian
opined that this desert led around the utmost rim of impassable peaks
into Leng's horrible plateau, and that this was why men feared it;
though he admitted there were other vague tales of evil presences and
nameless sentinels. Whether or not this could be the fabled waste
wherein unknown Kadath stands he did not know; but it seemed unlikely
that those presences and sentinels, if indeed they existed, were
stationed for nought.

On the following day Carter walked up the Street of the Pillars to the
turquoise temple and talked with the High-Priest. Though Nath-Horthath
is chiefly worshipped in Celephais, all the Great Ones are mentioned
in diurnal prayers; and the priest was reasonably versed in their
moods. Like Atal in distant Ulthar, he strongly advised against any
attempts to see them; declaring that they are testy and capricious,
and subject to strange protection from the mindless Other Gods from
Outside, whose soul and messenger is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.
Their jealous hiding of the marvellous sunset city shewed clearly that
they did not wish Carter to reach it, and it was doubtful how they
would regard a guest whose object was to see them and plead before
them. No man had ever found Kadath in the past, and it might be just
as well if none ever found it in the future. Such rumours as were told
about that onyx castle of the Great Ones were not by any means
reassuring.

Having thanked the orchid-crowned High-Priest, Carter left the temple
and sought out the bazaar of the sheep-butchers, where the old chief
of Celephais' cats dwelt sleek and contented. That grey and dignified
being was sunning himself on the onyx pavement, and extended a languid
paw as his caller approached. But when Carter repeated the passwords
and introductions furnished him by the old cat general of Ulthar, the
furry patriarch became very cordial and communicative; and told much
of the secret lore known to cats on the seaward slopes of Ooth-Nargai.
Best of all, he repeated several things told him furtively by the
timid waterfront cats of Celephais about the men of Inquanok, on whose
dark ships no cat will go.

It seems that these men have an aura not of earth about them, though
that is not the reason why no cat will sail on their ships. The reason
for this is that Inquanok holds shadows which no cat can endure, so
that in all that cold twilight realm there is never a cheering purr or
a homely mew. Whether it be because of things wafted over the
impassable peaks from hypothetical Leng, or because of things
filtering down from the chilly desert to the north, none may say; but
it remains a fact that in that far land there broods a hint of outer
space which cats do not like, and to which they are more sensitive
than men. Therefore they will not go on the dark ships that seek the
basalt quays of Inquanok.

The old chief of the cats also told him where to find his friend King
Kuranes, who in Carter's latter dreams had reigned alternately in the
rose-crystal Palace of the Seventy Delights at Celephais and in the
turreted cloud-castle of sky-floating Serannian. It seemed that he
could no more find content in those places, but had formed a mighty
longing for the English cliffs and downlands of his boyhood; where in
little dreaming villages England's old songs hover at evening behind
lattice windows, and where grey church towers peep lovely through the
verdure of distant valleys. He could not go back to these things in
the waking world because his body was dead; but he had done the next
best thing and dreamed a small tract of such countryside in the region
east of the city where meadows roll gracefully up from the sea-cliffs
to the foot of the Tanarian Hills. There he dwelt in a grey Gothic
manor-house of stone looking on the sea, and tried to think it was
ancient Trevor Towers, where he was born and where thirteen
generations of his forefathers had first seen the light. And on the
coast nearby he had built a little Cornish fishing village with steep
cobbled ways, settling therein such people as had the most English
faces, and seeking ever to teach them the dear remembered accents of
old Cornwall fishers. And in a valley not far off he had reared a
great Norman Abbey whose tower he could see from his window, placing
around it in the churchyard grey stones with the names of his
ancestors carved thereon, and with a moss somewhat like Old England's
moss. For though Kuranes was a monarch in the land of dream, with all
imagined pomps and marvels, splendours and beauties, ecstasies and
delights, novelties and excitements at his command, he would gladly
have resigned forever the whole of his power and luxury and freedom
for one blessed day as a simple boy in that pure and quiet England,
that ancient, beloved England which had moulded his being and of which
he must always be immutably a part.

So when Carter bade that old grey chief of the cats adieu, he did not
seek the terraced palace of rose crystal but walked out the eastern
gate and across the daisied fields toward a peaked gable which he
glimpsed through the oaks of a park sloping up to the sea-cliffs. And
in time he came to a great hedge and a gate with a little brick lodge,
and when he rang the bell there hobbled to admit him no robed and
annointed lackey of the palace, but a small stubby old man in a smock
who spoke as best he could in the quaint tones of far Cornwall. And
Carter walked up the shady path between trees as near as possible to
England's trees, and clumbed the terraces among gardens set out as in
Queen Anne's time. At the door, flanked by stone cats in the old way,
he was met by a whiskered butler in suitable livery; and was presently
taken to the library where Kuranes, Lord of Ooth-Nargai and the Sky
around Serannian, sat pensive in a chair by the window looking on his
little seacoast village and wishing that his old nurse would come in
and scold him because he was not ready for that hateful lawn-party at
the vicar's, with the carriage waiting and his mother nearly out of
patience.

Kuranes, clad in a dressing gown of the sort favoured by London
tailors in his youth, rose eagerly to meet his guest; for the sight of
an Anglo-Saxon from the waking world was very dear to him, even if it
was a Saxon from Boston, Massachusetts, instead of from Cornwall. And
for long they talked of old times, having much to say because both
were old dreamers and well versed in the wonders of incredible places.
Kuranes, indeed, had been out beyond the stars in the ultimate void,
and was said to be the only one who had ever returned sane from such a
voyage.

At length Carter brought up the subject of his quest, and asked of his
host those questions he had asked of so many others. Kuranes did not
know where Kadath was, or the marvellous sunset city; but he did know
that the Great Ones were very dangerous creatures to seek out, and
that the Other Gods had strange ways of protecting them from
impertinent curiosity. He had learned much of the Other Gods in
distant parts of space, especially in that region where form does not
exist, and coloured gases study the innermost secrets. The violet gas
S'ngac had told him terrible things of the crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep, and had warned him never to approach the central void
where the daemon sultan Azathoth gnaws hungrily in the dark.

Altogether, it was not well to meddle with the Elder Ones; and if they
persistently denied all access to the marvellous sunset city, it were
better not to seek that city.

Kuranes furthermore doubted whether his guest would profit aught by
coming to the city even were he to gain it. He himself had dreamed and
yearned long years for lovely Celephais and the land of Ooth-Nargai,
and for the freedom and colour and high experience of life devoid of
its chains, and conventions, and stupidities. But now that he was come
into that city and that land, and was the king thereof, he found the
freedom and the vividness all too soon worn out, and monotonous for
want of linkage with anything firm in his feelings and memories. He
was a king in Ooth-Nargai, but found no meaning therein, and drooped
always for the old familiar things of England that had shaped his
youth. All his kingdom would he give for the sound of Cornish church
bells over the downs, and all the thousand minarets of Celephais for
the steep homely roofs of the village near his home. So he told his
guest that the unknown sunset city might not hold quite that content
he sought, and that perhaps it had better remain a glorious and half-
remembered dream. For he had visited Carter often in the old waking
days, and knew well the lovely New England slopes that had given him
birth.

At the last, he was very certain, the seeker would long only for the
early remembered scenes; the glow of Beacon Hill at evening, the tall
steeples and winding hill streets of quaint Kingsport, the hoary
gambrel roofs of ancient and witch-haunted Arkham, and the blessed
meads and valleys where stone walls rambled and white farmhouse gables
peeped out from bowers of verdure. These things he told Randolph
Carter, but still the seeker held to his purpose. And in the end they
parted each with his own conviction, and Carter went back through the
bronze gate into Celephais and down the Street of Pillars to the old
sea wall, where he talked more with the mariners of far ports and
waited for the dark ship from cold and twilight Inquanok, whose
strange-faced sailors and onyx-traders had in them the blood of the
Great Ones.

One starlit evening when the Pharos shone splendid over the harbour
the longed-for ship put in, and strange-faced sailors and traders
appeared one by one and group by group in the ancient taverns along
the sea wall. It was very exciting to see again those living faces so
like the godlike features of Ngranek, but Carter did not hasten to
speak with the silent seamen. He did not know how much of pride and
secrecy and dim supernal memory might fill those children of the Great
Ones, and was sure it would not be wise to tell them of his quest or
ask too closely of that cold desert stretching north of their twilight
land. They talked little with the other folk in those ancient sea
taverns; but would gather in groups in remote comers and sing among
themselves the haunting airs of unknown places, or chant long tales to
one another in accents alien to the rest of dreamland. And so rare and
moving were those airs and tales that one might guess their wonders
from the faces of those who listened, even though the words came to
common ears only as strange cadence and obscure melody.

For a week the strange seamen lingered in the taverns and traded in
the bazaars of Celephais, and before they sailed Carter had taken
passage on their dark ship, telling them that he was an old onyx miner
and wishful to work in their quarries. That ship was very lovey and
cunningly wrought, being of teakwood with ebony fittings and traceries
of gold, and the cabin in which the traveller lodged had hangings of
silk and velvet. One morning at the turn of the tide the sails were
raised and the anchor lilted, and as Carter stood on the high stern he
saw the sunrise-blazing walls and bronze statues and golden minarets
of ageless Celephais sink into the distance, and the snowy peak of
Mount Man grow smaller and smaller. By noon there was nothing in sight
save the gentle blue of the Cerenerian Sea, with one painted galley
afar off bound for that realm of Serannian where the sea meets the
sky.

And the night came with gorgeous stars, and the dark ship steered for
Charles' Wain and the Little Bear as they swung slowly round the pole.
And the sailors sang strange songs of unknown places, and they stole
off one by one to the forecastle while the wistful watchers murmured
old chants and leaned over the rail to glimpse the luminous fish
playing in bowers beneath the sea. Carter went to sleep at midnight,
and rose in the glow of a young morning, marking that the sun seemed
farther south than was its wont. And all through that second day he
made progress in knowing the men of the ship, getting them little by
little to talk of their cold twilight land, of their exquisite onyx
city, and of their fear of the high and impassable peaks beyond which
Leng was said to be. They told him how sorry they were that no cats
would stay in the land of Inquanok, and how they thought the hidden
nearness of Leng was to blame for it. Only of the stony desert to the
north they would not talk. There was something disquieting about that
desert, and it was thought expedient not to admit its existence.

On later days they talked of the quarries in which Carter said he was
going to work. There were many of them, for all the city of Inquanok
was builded of onyx, whilst great polished blocks of it were traded in
Rinar, Ogrothan, and Celephais and at home with the merchants of
Thraa, Flarnek, and Kadatheron, for the beautiful wares of those
fabulous ports. And far to the north, almost in the cold desert whose
existence the men of Inquanok did not care to admit, there was an
unused quarry greater than all the rest; from which had been hewn in
forgotten times such prodigious lumps and blocks that the sight of
their chiselled vacancies struck terror to all who beheld. Who had
mined those incredible blocks, and whither they had been transported,
no man might say; but it was thought best not to trouble that quarry,
around which such inhuman memories might conceivably cling. So it was
left all alone in the twilight, with only the raven and the rumoured
Shantak-bird to brood on its immensities. when Carter heard of this
quarry he was moved to deep thought, for he knew from old tales that
the Great Ones' castle atop unknown Kadath is of onyx.

Each day the sun wheeled lower and lower in the sky, and the mists
overhead grew thicker and thicker. And in two weeks there was not any
sunlight at all, but only a weird grey twilight shining through a dome
of eternal cloud by day, and a cold starless phosphorescence from the
under side of that cloud by night. On the twentieth day a great jagged
rock in the sea was sighted from afar, the first land glimpsed since
Man's snowy peak had dwindled behind the ship. Carter asked the
captain the name of that rock, but was told that it had no name and
had never been sought by any vessel because of the sounds that came
from it at night. And when, after dark, a dull and ceaseless howling
arose from that jagged granite place, the traveller was glad that no
stop had been made, and that the rock had no name. The seamen prayed
and chanted till the noise was out of earshot, and Carter dreamed
terrible dreams within dreams in the small hours.

Two mornings after that there loomed far ahead and to the east a line
of great grey peaks whose tops were lost in the changeless clouds of
that twilight world. And at the sight of them the sailors sang glad
songs, and some knelt down on the deck to pray, so that Carter knew
they were come to the land of Inquanok and would soon be moored to the
basalt quays of the great town bearing that land's name. Toward noon a
dark coastline appeared, and before three o'clock there stood out
against the north the bulbous domes and fantastic spires of the onyx
city. Rare and curious did that archaic city rise above its walls and
quays, all of delicate black with scrolls, flutings, and arabesques of
inlaid gold. Tall and many-windowed were the houses, and carved on
every side with flowers and patterns whose dark symmetries dazzled the
eye with a beauty more poignant than light. Some ended in swelling
domes that tapered to a point, others in terraced pyramids whereon
rose clustered minarets displaying every phase of strangeness and
imagination. The walls were low, and pierced by frequent gates, each
under a great arch rising high above the general level and capped by
the head of a god chiselled with that same skill displayed in the
monstrous face on distant Ngranek. On a hill in the centre rose a
sixteen-angled tower greater than all the rest and bearing a high
pinnacled belfry resting on a flattened dome. This, the seamen said,
was the Temple of the Elder Ones, and was ruled by an old High-Priest
sad with inner secrets.

At intervals the clang of a strange bell shivered over the onyx city,
answered each time by a peal of mystic music made up of horns, viols,
and chanting voices. And from a row of tripods on a galley round the
high dome of the temple there burst flares of flame at certain
moments; for the priests and people of that city were wise in the
primal mysteries, and faithful in keeping the rhythms of the Great
Ones as set forth in scrolls older than the Pnakotic Manuscripts. As
the ship rode past the great basalt breakwater into the harbour the
lesser noises of the city grew manifest, and Carter saw the slaves,
sailors, and merchants on the docks. The sailors and merchants were of
the strange-faced race of the gods, but the slaves were squat, slant-
eyed folk said by rumour to have drifted somehow across or around the
impassable peaks from the valleys beyond Leng. The wharves reached
wide outside the city wall and bore upon them all manner of
merchandise from the galleys anchored there, while at one end were
great piles of onyx both carved and uncarved awaiting shipment to the
far markets of Rinar, Ograthan and Celephais.

It was not yet evening when the dark ship anchored beside a jutting
quay of stone, and all the sailors and traders filed ashore and
through the arched gate into the city. The streets of that city were
paved with onyx and some of them were wide and straight whilst others
were crooked and narrow. The houses near the water were lower than the
rest, and bore above their curiously arched doorways certain signs of
gold said to be in honour of the respective small gods that favoured
each. The captain of the ship took Carter to an old sea tavern where
flocked the mariners of quaint countries, and promised that he would
next day shew him the wonders of the twilight city, and lead him to
the taverns of the onyx-miners by the northern wall. And evening fell,
and little bronze lamps were lighted, and the sailors in that tavern
sang songs of remote places. But when from its high tower the great
bell shivered over the city, and the peal of the horns and viols and
voices rose cryptical in answer thereto, all ceased their songs or
tales and bowed silent till the. last echo died away. For there is a
wonder and a strangeness on the twilight city of Inquanok, and men
fear to be lax in its rites lest a doom and a vengeance lurk
unsuspectedly close.

Far in the shadows of that tavern Carter saw a squat form he did not
like, for it was unmistakably that of the old slant-eyed merchant he
had seen so long before in the taverns of Dylath-Leen, who was reputed
to trade with the horrible stone villages of Leng which no healthy
folk visit and whose evil fires are seen at night from afar, and even
to have dealt with that High-Priest Not To Be Described, which wears a
yellow silken mask over its face and dwells all alone in a prehistoric
stone monastery. This man had seemed to shew a queer gleam of knowing
when Carter asked the traders of DylathLeen about the cold waste and
Kadath; and somehow his presence in dark and haunted Inquanok, so
close to the wonders of the north, was not a reassuring thing. He
slipped wholly out of sight before Carter could speak to him, and
sailors later said that he had come with a yak caravan from some point
not well determined, bearing the colossal and rich-flavoured eggs of
the rumoured Shantak-bird to trade for the dextrous jade goblets that
merchants brought from Ilarnek.

On the following morning the ship-captain led Carter through the onyx
streets of Inquanok, dark under their twilight sky. The inlaid doors
and figured house-fronts, carven balconies and crystal-paned oriels
all gleamed with a sombre and polished loveliness; and now and then a
plaza would open out with black pillars, colonades, and the statues of
curious beings both human and fabulous. Some of the vistas down long
and unbending streets, or through side alleys and over bulbous domes,
spires, and arabesqued roofs, were weird and beautiful beyond words;
and nothing was more splendid than the massive heights of the great
central Temple of the Elder Ones with its sixteen carven sides, its
flattened dome, and its lofty pinnacled belfry, overtopping all else,
and majestic whatever its foreground. And always to the east, far
beyond the city walls and the leagues of pasture land, rose the gaunt
grey sides of those topless and impassable peaks across which hideous
Leng was said to lie.

The captain took Carter to the mighty temple, which is set with its
walled garden in a great round plaza whence the streets go as spokes
from a wheel's hub. The seven arched gates of that garden, each having
over it a carven face like those on the city's gates, are always open,
and the people roam reverently at will down the tiled paths and
through the little lanes lined with grotesque termini and the shrines
of modest gods. And there are fountains, pools, and basins there to
reflect the frequent blaze of the tripods on the high balcony, all of
onyx and having in them small luminous fish taken by divers from the
lower bowers of ocean. When the deep clang from the temple belfry
shivers over the garden and the city, and the answer of the horns and
viols and voices peals out from the seven lodges by the garden gates,
there issue from the seven doors of the temple long columns of masked
and hooded priests in black, bearing at arm's length before them great
golden bowls from which a curious steam rises. And all the seven
columns strut peculiarly in single file, legs thrown far forward
without bending the knees, down the walks that lead to the seven
lodges, wherein they disappear and do not appear again. It is said
that subterrene paths connect the lodges with the temple, and that the
long files of priests return through them; nor is it unwhispered that
deep flights of onyx steps go down to mysteries that are never told.
But only a few are those who hint that the priests in the masked and
hooded columns are not human beings.

Carter did not enter the temple, because none but the Veiled King is
permitted to do that. But before he left the garden the hour of the
bell came, and he heard the shivering clang deafening above him, and
the wailing of the horns and viols and voices loud from the lodges by
the gates. And down the seven great walks stalked the long files of
bowl-bearing priests in their singular way, giving to the traveller a
fear which human priests do not often give. When the last of them had
vanished he left that garden, noting as he did so a spot on the
pavement over which the bowls had passed. Even the ship-captain did
not like that spot, and hurried him on toward the hill whereon the
Veiled King's palace rises many-domed and marvellous.

The ways to the onyx palace are steep and narrow, all but the broad
curving one where the king and his companions ride on yaks or in yak-
drawn chariots. Carter and his guide climbed up an alley that was all
steps, between inlaid walls hearing strange signs in gold, and under
balconies and oriels whence sometimes floated soft strains of music or
breaths of exotic fragrance. Always ahead loomed those titan walls,
mighty buttresses, and clustered and bulbous domes for which the
Veiled King's palace is famous; and at length they passed under a
great black arch and emerged in the gardens of the monarch's pleasure.
There Carter paused in faintness at so much beauty, for the onyx
terraces and colonnaded walks, the gay porterres and delicate
flowering trees espaliered to golden lattices, the brazen urns and
tripods with cunning bas-reliefs, the pedestalled and almost breathing
statues of veined black marble, the basalt-bottomed lagoon's tiled
fountains with luminous fish, the tiny temples of iridescent singing
birds atop carven columns, the marvellous scrollwork of the great
bronze gates, and the blossoming vines trained along every inch of the
polished walls all joined to form a sight whose loveliness was beyond
reality, and half-fabulous even in the land of dreams. There it
shimmered like a vision under that grey twilight sky, with the domed
and fretted magnificence of the palace ahead, and the fantastic
silhouette of the distant impassable peaks on the right. And ever the
small birds and the fountains sang, while the perfume of rare blossoms
spread like a veil over that incredible garden. No other human
presence was there, and Carter was glad it was so. Then they turned
and descended again the onyx alley of steps, for the palace itself no
visitor may enter; and it is not well to look too long and steadily at
the great central dome, since it is said to house the archaic father
of all the rumoured Shantak-birds, and to send out queer dreams to the
curious.

After that the captain took Carter to the north quarter of the town,
near the Gate of the Caravans, where are the taverns of the yak-
merchants and the onyx-miners. And there, in a low-ceiled inn of
quarrymen, they said farewell; for business called the captain whilst
Carter was eager to talk with miners about the north. There were many
men in that inn, and the traveller was not long in speaking to some of
them; saying that he was an old miner of onyx, and anxious to know
somewhat of Inquanok's quarries. But all that he learned was not much
more than he knew before, for the miners were timid and evasive about
the cold desert to the north and the quarry that no man visits. They
had fears of fabled emissaries from around the mountains where Leng is
said to lie, and of evil presences and nameless sentinels far north
among the scattered rocks. And they whispered also that the rumoured
Shantak-birds are no wholesome things; it being. indeed for the best
that no man has ever truly seen one (for that fabled father of
Shantaks in the king's dome is fed in the dark).

The next day, saying that he wished to look over all the various mines
for himself and to visit the scattered farms and quaint onyx villages
of Inquanok, Carter hired a yak and stuffed great leathern saddle-bags
for a journey. Beyond the Gate of the Caravans the road lay straight
betwixt tilled fields, with many odd farmhouses crowned by low domes.
At some of these houses the seeker stopped to ask questions; once
finding a host so austere and reticent, and so full of an unplaced
majesty like to that in the huge features on Ngranek, that he felt
certain he had come at last upon one of the Great Ones themselves, or
upon one with full nine-tenths of their blood, dwelling amongst men.
And to that austere and reticent cotter he was careful to speak very
well of the gods, and to praise all the blessings they had ever
accorded him.

That night Carter camped in a roadside meadow beneath a great lygath-
tree to which he tied his yak, and in the morning resumed his
northward pilgrimage. At about ten o'clock he reached the small-domed
village of Urg, where traders rest and miners tell their tales, and
paused in its taverns till noon. It is here that the great caravan
road turns west toward Selarn, but Carter kept on north by the quarry
road. All the afternoon he followed that rising road, which was
somewhat narrower than the great highway, and which now led through a
region with more rocks than tilled fields. And by evening the low
hills on his left had risen into sizable black cliffs, so that he knew
he was close to the mining country. All the while the great gaunt
sides of the impassable mountains towered afar off at his right, and
the farther he went, the worse tales he heard of them from the
scattered farmers and traders and drivers of lumbering onyx-carts
along the way.

On the second night he camped in the shadow of a large black crag,
tethering his yak to a stake driven in the ground. He observed the
greater phosphorescence of the clouds at his northerly point, and more
than once thought he saw dark shapes outlined against them. And on the
third morning he came in sight of the first onyx quarry, and greeted
the men who there laboured with picks and chisels. Before evening he
had passed eleven quarries; the land being here given over altogether
to onyx cliffs and boulders, with no vegetation at all, but only great
rocky fragments scattered about a floor of black earth, with the grey
impassable peaks always rising gaunt and sinister on his right. The
third night he spent in a camp of quarry men whose flickering fires
cast weird reflections on the polished cliffs to the west. And they
sang many songs and told many tales, shewing such strange knowledge of
the olden days and the habits of gods that Carter could see they held
many latent memories of their sires the Great Ones. They asked him
whither he went, and cautioned him not to go too far to the north; but
he replied that he was seeking new cliffs of onyx, and would take no
more risks than were common among prospectors. In the morning he bade
them adieu and rode on into the darkening north, where they had warned
him he would find the feared and unvisited quarry whence hands older
than men's hands had wrenched prodigious blocks. But he did not like
it when, turning back to wave a last farewell, he thought he saw
approaching the camp that squat and evasive old merchant with slanting
eyes, whose conjectured traffick with Leng was the gossip of distant
Dylath-Leen.

After two more quarries the inhabited part of Inquanok seemed to end,
and the road narrowed to a steeply rising yak-path among forbidding
black cliffs. Always on the right towered the gaunt and distant peaks,
and as Carter climbed farther and farther into this untraversed realm
he found it grew darker and colder. Soon he perceived that there were
no prints of feet or hooves on the black path beneath, and realised
that he was indeed come into strange and deserted ways of elder time.
Once in a while a raven would croak far overhead, and now and then a
flapping behind some vast rock would make him think uncomfortably of
the rumoured Shantak-bird. But in the main he was alone with his
shaggy steed, and it troubled him to observe that this excellent yak
became more and more reluctant to advance, and more and more disposed
to snort affrightedly at any small noise along the route.

The path now contracted between sable and glistening walls, and began
to display an even greater steepness than before. It was a bad
footing, and the yak often slipped on the stony fragments strewn
thickly about. In two hours Carter saw ahead a definite crest, beyond
which was nothing but dull grey sky, and blessed the prospect of a
level or downward course. To reach this crest, however, was no easy
task; for the way had grown nearly perpendicular, and was perilous
with loose black gravel and small stones. Eventually Carter dismounted
and led his dubious yak; pulling very hard when the animal balked or
stumbled, and keeping his own footing as best he might. Then suddenly
he came to the top and saw beyond, and gasped at what he saw.

The path indeed led straight ahead and slightly down, with the same
lines of high natural walls as before; but on the left hand there
opened out a monstrous space, vast acres in extent, where some archaic
power had riven and rent the native cliffs of onyx in the form of a
giant's quarry. Far back into the solid precipice ran that cyclopean
gouge, and deep down within earth's bowels its lower delvings yawned.
It was no quarry of man, and the concave sides were scarred with great
squares, yards wide, which told of the size of the blocks once hewn by
nameless hands and chisels. High over its jagged rim huge ravens
flapped and croaked, and vague whirrings in the unseen depths told of
bats or urhags or less mentionable presences haunting the endless
blackness. There Carter stood in the narrow way amidst the twilight
with the rocky path sloping down before him; tall onyx cliffs on his
right that led on as far as he could see and tall cliffs on the left
chopped off just ahead to make that terrible and unearthly quarry.

All at once the yak uttered a cry and burst from his control, leaping
past him and darting on in a panic till it vanished down the narrow
slope toward the north. Stones kicked by its flying hooves fell over
the brink of the quarry and lost themselves in the dark without any
sound of striking bottom; but Carter ignored the perils of that scanty
path as he raced breathlessly after the flying steed. Soon the left-
behind cliffs resumed their course, making the way once more a narrow
lane; and still the traveller leaped on after the yak whose great wide
prints told of its desperate flight.

Once he thought he heard the hoofbeats of the frightened beast, and
doubled his speed from this encouragement. He was covering miles, and
little by little the way was broadening in front till he knew he must
soon emerge on the cold and dreaded desert to the north. The gaunt
grey flanks of the distant impassable peaks were again visible above
the right-hand crags, and ahead were the rocks and boulders of an open
space which was clearly a foretaste of the dark arid limitless plain.
And once more those hoofbeats sounded in his ears, plainer than
before, but this time giving terror instead of encouragement because
he realised that they were not the frightened hoofbeats of his fleeing
yak. The beats were ruthless and purposeful, and they were behind him.

Carter's pursuit of the yak became now a flight from an unseen thing,
for though he dared not glance over his shoulder he felt that the
presence behind him could be nothing wholesome or mentionable. His yak
must have heard or felt it first, and he did not like to ask himself
whether it had followed him from the haunts of men or had floundered
up out of that black quarry pit. Meanwhile the cliffs had been left
behind, so that the oncoming night fell over a great waste of sand and
spectral rocks wherein all paths were lost. He could not see the
hoofprints of his yak, but always from behind him there came that
detestable clopping; mingled now and then with what he fancied were
titanic flappings and whirrings. That he was losing ground seemed
unhappily clear to him, and he knew he was hopelessly lost in this
broken and blasted desert of meaningless rocks and untravelled sands.
Only those remote and impassable peaks on the right gave him any sense
of direction, and even they were less clear as the grey twilight waned
and the sickly phosphorescence of the clouds took its place.

Then dim and misty in the darkling north before him he glimpsed a
terrible thing. He had thought it for some moments a range of black
mountains, but now he saw it was something more. The phosphorescence
of the brooding clouds shewed it plainly, and even silhouetted parts
of it as vapours glowed behind. How distant it was he could not tell,
but it must have been very far. It was thousands of feet high,
stretching in a great concave arc from the grey impassable peaks to
the unimagined westward spaces, and had once indeed been a ridge of
mighty onyx hills. But now these hills were hills no more, for some
hand greater than man's had touched them. Silent they squatted there
atop the world like wolves or ghouls, crowned with clouds and mists
and guarding the secrets of the north forever. All in a great half
circle they squatted, those dog-like mountains carven into monstrous
watching statues, and their right hands were raised in menace against
mankind.

It was only the flickering light of the clouds that made their mitred
double heads seem to move, but as Carter stumbled on he saw arise from
their shadowy caps great forms whose motions were no delusion. Winged
and whirring, those forms grew larger each moment, and the traveller
knew his stumbling was at an end. They were not any birds or bats
known elsewhere on earth or in dreamland, for they were larger than
elephants and had heads like a horse's. Carter knew that they must be
the Shantak-birds of ill rumour, and wondered no more what evil
guardians and nameless sentinels made men avoid the boreal rock
desert. And as he stopped in final resignation he dared at last to
look behind him, where indeed was trotting the squat slant-eyed trader
of evil legend, grinning astride a lean yak and leading on a noxious
horde of leering Shantaks to whose wings still clung the rime and
nitre of the nether pits.

Trapped though he was by fabulous and hippocephalic winged nightmares
that pressed around in great unholy circles, Randolph Carter did not
lose consciousness. Lofty and horrible those titan gargoyles towered
above him, while the slant-eyed merchant leaped down from his yak and
stood grinning before the captive. Then the man motioned Carter to
mount one of the repugnant Shantaks, helping him up as his judgement
struggled with his loathing. It was hard work ascending, for the
Shantak-bird has scales instead of feathers, and those scales are very
slippery. Once he was seated, the slant-eyed man hopped up behind him,
leaving the lean yak to be led away northward toward the ring of
carven mountains by one of the incredible bird colossi.

There now followed a hideous whirl through frigid space, endlessly up
and eastward toward the gaunt grey flanks of those impassable
mountains beyond which Leng was said to be. Far above the clouds they
flew, till at last there lay beneath them those fabled summits which
the folk of Inquanok have never seen, and which lie always in high
vortices of gleaming mist. Carter beheld them very plainly as they
passed below, and saw upon their topmost peaks strange caves which
made him think of those on Ngranek; but he did not question his captor
about these things when he noticed that both the man and the horse-
headed Shantak appeared oddly fearful of them, hurrying past nervously
and shewing great tension until they were left far in the rear.

The Shantak now flew lower, revealing beneath the canopy of cloud a
grey barren plain whereon at great distances shone little feeble
fires. As they descended there appeared at intervals lone huts of
granite and bleak stone villages whose tiny windows glowed with pallid
light. And there came from those huts and villages a shrill droning of
pipes and a nauseous rattle of crotala which proved at once that
Inquanok's people are right in their geographic rumours. For
travellers have heard such sounds before, and know that they float
only from the cold desert plateau which healthy folk never visit; that
haunted place of evil and mystery which is Leng.

Around the feeble fires dark forms were dancing, and Carter was
curious as to what manner of beings they might be; for no healthy folk
have ever been to Leng, and the place is known only by its fires and
stone huts as seen from afar. Very slowly and awkwardly did those
forms leap, and with an insane twisting and bending not good to
behold; so that Carter did not wonder at the monstrous evil imputed to
them by vague legend, or the fear in which all dreamland holds their
abhorrent frozen plateau. As the Shantak flew lower, the repulsiveness
of the dancers became tinged with a certain hellish familiarity; and
the prisoner kept straining his eyes and racking his memory for clues
to where he had seen such creatures before.

They leaped as though they had hooves instead of feet, and seemed to
wear a sort of wig or headpiece with small horns. Of other clothing
they had none, but most of them were quite furry. Behind they had
dwarfish tails, and when they glanced upward he saw the excessive
width of their mouths. Then he knew what they were, and that they did
not wear any wigs or headpieces after all. For the cryptic folk of
Leng were of one race with the uncomfortable merchants of the black
galleys that traded rubies at Dylath-Leen; those not quite human
merchants who are the slaves of the monstrous moon-things! They were
indeed the same dark folk who had shanghaied Carter on their noisome
galley so long ago, and whose kith he had seen driven in herds about
the unclean wharves of that accursed lunar city, with the leaner ones
toiling and the fatter ones taken away in crates for other needs of
their polypous and amorphous masters. Now he saw where such ambiguous
creatures came from, and shuddered at the thought that Leng must be
known to these formless abominations from the moon.

But the Shantak flew on past the fires and the stone huts and the less
than human dancers, and soared over sterile hills of grey granite and
dim wastes of rock and ice and snow. Day came, and the phosphorescence
of low clouds gave place to the misty twilight of that northern world,
and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence.
At times the slant-eyed man talked with his steed in a hateful and
guttural language, and the Shantak would answer with tittering tones
that rasped like the scratching of ground glass. AlI this while the
land was getting higher, and finally they came to a wind-swept table-
land which seemed the very roof of a blasted and tenantless world.
There, all alone in the hush and the dusk and the cold, rose the
uncouth stones of a squat windowless building, around which a circle
of crude monoliths stood. In all this arrangement there was nothing
human, and Carter surmised from old tales that he was indeed come to
that most dreadful and legendary of all places, the remote and
prehistoric monastery wherein dwells uncompanioned the High-Priest Not
To Be Described, which wears a yellow silken mask over its face and
prays to the Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

The loathsome bird now settled to the ground, and the slant-eyed man
hopped down and helped his captive alight. Of the purpose of his
seizure Carter now felt very sure; for clearly the slant-eyed merchant
was an agent of the darker powers, eager to drag before his masters a
mortal whose presumption had aimed at the finding of unknown Kadath
and the saying of a prayer before the faces of the Great Ones in their
onyx castle. It seemed likely that this merchant had caused his former
capture by the slaves of the moon-things in Dylath-Leen, and that he
now meant to do what the rescuing cats had baffled; taking the victim
to some dread rendezvous with monstrous Nyarlathotep and telling with
what boldness the seeking of unknown Kadath had been tried. Leng and
the cold waste north of Inquanok must be close to the Other Gods, and
there the passes to Kadath are well guarded.

The slant-eyed man was small, but the great hippocephalic bird was
there to see he was obeyed; so Carter followed where he led, and
passed within the circle of standing rocks and into the low arched
doorway of that windowless stone monastery. There were no lights
inside, but the evil merchant lit a small clay lamp bearing morbid
bas-reliefs and prodded his prisoner on through mazes of narrow
winding corridors. On the walls of the corridors were printed
frightful scenes older than history, and in a style unknown to the
archaeologists of earth. After countless aeons their pigments were
brilliant still, for the cold and dryness of hideous Leng keep alive
many primal things. Carter saw them fleetingly in the rays of that dim
and moving lamp, and shuddered at the tale they told.

Through those archaic frescoes Leng's annals stalked; and the horned,
hooved, and wide-mouthed almost-humans danced evilly amidst forgotten
cities. There were scenes of old wars, wherein Leng's almost-humans
fought with the bloated purple spiders of the neighbouring vales; and
there were scenes also of the coming of the black galleys from the
moon, and of the submission of Leng's people to the polypous and
amorphous blasphemies that hopped and floundered and wriggled out of
them. Those slippery greyish-white blasphemies they worshipped as
gods, nor ever complained when scores of their best and fatted males
were taken away in the black galleys. The monstrous moon-beasts made
their camp on a jagged isle in the sea, and Carter could tell from the
frescoes that this was none other than the lone nameless rock he had
seen when sailing to Inquanok; that grey accursed rock which
Inquanok's seamen shun, and from which vile howlings reverberate all
through the night.

And in those frescoes was shewn the great seaport and capital of the
almost-humans; proud and pillared betwixt the cliffs and the basalt
wharves, and wondrous with high fanes and carven places. Great gardens
and columned streets led from the cliffs and from each of the six
sphinx-crowned gates to a vast central plaza, and in that plaza was a
pair of winged colossal lions guarding the top of a subterrene
staircase. Again and again were those huge winged lions shewn, their
mighty flanks of diarite glistening in the grey twilight of the day
and the cloudy phosphorescence of the night. And as Carter stumbled
past their frequent and repeated pictures it came to him at last what
indeed they were, and what city it was that the almost-humans had
ruled so anciently before the coming of the black galleys. There could
be no mistake, for the legends of dreamland are generous and profuse.
Indubitably that primal city was no less a place than storied
Sarkomand, whose ruins had bleached for a million years before the
first true human saw the light, and whose twin titan lions guard
eternally the steps that lead down from dreamland to the Great Abyss.

Other views shewed the gaunt grey peaks dividing Leng from Inquanok,
and the monstrous Shantak-birds that build nests on the ledges half
way up. And they shewed likewise the curious caves near the very
topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the Shantaks fly
screaming away from them. Carter had seen those caves when he passed
over them, and had noticed their likeness to the caves on Ngranek. Now
he knew that the likeness was more than a chance one, for in these
pictures were shewn their fearsome denizens; and those bat-wings,
curving horns, barbed tails, prehensile paws and rubbery bodies were
not strange to him. He had met those silent, flitting and clutching
creatures before; those mindless guardians of the Great Abyss whom
even the Great Ones fear, and who own not Nyarlathotep but hoary
Nodens as their lord. For they were the dreaded night-gaunts, who
never laugh or smile because they have no faces, and who flop
unendingly in the dark betwixt the Vale of Pnath and the passes to the
outer world.

The slant-eyed merchant had now prodded Carter into a great domed
space whose walls were carved in shocking bas-reliefs, and whose
centre held a gaping circular pit surrounded by six malignly stained
stone altars in a ring. There was no light in this vast evil-smelling
crypt, and the small lamp of the sinister merchant shone so feebly
that one could grasp details only little by little. At the farther end
was a high stone dais reached by five steps; and there on a golden
throne sat a lumpish figure robed in yellow silk figured with red and
having a yellow silken mask over its face. To this being the slant-
eyed man made certain signs with his hands, and the lurker in the dark
replied by raising a disgustingly carven flute of ivory in silk-
covered paws and blowing certain loathsome sounds from beneath its
flowing yellow mask. This colloquy went on for some time, and to
Carter there was something sickeningly familiar in the sound of that
flute and the stench of the malodorous place. It made him think of a
frightful red-litten city and of the revolting procession that once
filed through it; of that, and of an awful climb through lunar
countryside beyond, before the rescuing rush of earth's friendly cats.
He knew that the creature on the dais was without doubt the High-
Priest Not To Be Described, of which legend whispers such fiendish and
abnormal possibilities, but he feared to think just what that abhorred
High-Priest might be.

Then the figured silk slipped a trifle from one of the greyish-white
paws, and Carter knew what the noisome High-Priest was. And in that
hideous second, stark fear drove him to something his reason would
never have dared to attempt, for in all his shaken consciousness there
was room only for one frantic will to escape from what squatted on
that golden throne. He knew that hopeless labyrinths of stone lay
betwixt him and the cold table-land outside, and that even on that
table-land the noxious Shantek still waited; yet in spite of all this
there was in his mind only the instant need to get away from that
wriggling, silk-robed monstrosity.

The slant-eyed man had set the curious lamp upon one of the high and
wickedly stained altar-stones by the pit, and had moved forward
somewhat to talk to the High-Priest with his hands. Carter, hitherto
wholly passive, now gave that man a terrific push with all the wild
strength of fear, so that the victim toppled at once into that gaping
well which rumour holds to reach down to the hellish Vaults of Zin
where Gugs hunt ghasts in the dark. In almost the same second he
seized the lamp from the altar and darted out into the frescoed
labyrinths, racing this way and that as chance determined and trying
not to think of the stealthy padding of shapeless paws on the stones
behind him, or of the silent wrigglings and crawlings which must be
going on back there in lightless corridors.

After a few moments he regretted his thoughtless haste, and wished he
had tried to follow backward the frescoes he had passed on the way in.
True, they were so confused and duplicated that they could not have
done him much good, but he wished none the less he had made the
attempt. Those he now saw were even more horrible than those he had
seen then, and he knew he was not in the corridors leading outside. In
time he became quite sure he was not followed, and slackened his pace
somewhat; but scarce had he breathed in half relief when a new peril
beset him. His lamp was waning, and he would soon be in pitch
blackness with no means of sight or guidance.

When the light was all gone he groped slowly in the dark, and prayed
to the Great Ones for such help as they might afford. At times he felt
the stone floor sloping up or down, and once he stumbled over a step
for which no reason seemed to exist. The farther he went the damper it
seemed to be, and when he was able to feel a junction or the mouth of
a side passage he always chose the way which sloped downward the
least. He believed, though, that his general course was down; and the
vault-like smell and incrustations on the greasy walls and floor alike
warned him he was burrowing deep in Leng's unwholesome table-land. But
there was not any warning of the thing which came at last; only the
thing itself with its terror and shock and breath-taking chaos. One
moment he was groping slowly over the slippery floor of an almost
level place, and the next he was shooting dizzily downward in the dark
through a burrow which must have been well-nigh vertical.

Of the length of that hideous sliding he could never be sure, but it
seemed to take hours of delirious nausea and ecstatic frenzy. Then he
realized he was still, with the phosphorescent clouds of a northern
night shining sickly above him. All around were crumbling walls and
broken columns, and the pavement on which he lay was pierced by
straggling grass and wrenched asunder by frequent shrubs and roots.
Behind him a basalt cliff rose topless and perpendicular; its dark
side sculptured into repellent scenes, and pierced by an arched and
carven entrance to the inner blacknesses out of which he had come.
Ahead stretched double rows of pillars, and the fragments and
pedestals of pillars, that spoke of a broad and bygone street; and
from the urns and basins along the way he knew it had been a great
street of gardens. Far off at its end the pillars spread to mark a
vast round plaza, and in that open circle there loomed gigantic under
the lurid night clouds a pair of monstrous things. Huge winged lions
of diarite they were, with blackness and shadow between them. Full
twenty feet they reared their grotesque and unbroken heads, and
snarled derisive on the ruins around them. And Carter knew right well
what they must be, for legend tells of only one such twain. They were
the changeless guardians of the Great Abyss, and these dark ruins were
in truth primordial Sarkomand.

Carter's first act was to close and barricade the archway in the cliff
with fallen blocks and odd debris that lay around. He wished no
follower from Leng's hateful monastery, for along the way ahead would
lurk enough of other dangers. Of how to get from Sarkomand to the
peopled parts of dreamland he knew nothing at all; nor could he gain
much by descending to the grottoes of the ghouls, since he knew they
were no better informed than he. The three ghouls which had helped him
through the city of Gugs to the outer world had not known how to reach
Sarkomand in their journey back, but had planned to ask old traders in
Dylath-Leen. He did not like to think of going again to the subterrene
world of Gugs and risking once more that hellish tower of Koth with
its Cyclopean steps leading to the enchanted wood, yet he felt he
might have to try this course if all else failed. Over Leng's plateau
past the lone monastery he dared not go unaided; for the High-Priest's
emissaries must be many, while at the journey's end there would no
doubt be the Shantaks and perhaps other things to deal with. If he
could get a boat he might sail back to Inquanok past the jagged and
hideous rock in the sea, for the primal frescoes in the monastery
labyrinth had shewn that this frightful place lies not far from
Sarkomand's basalt quays. But to find a boat in this aeon-deserted
city was no probable thing, and it did not appear likely that he could
ever make one.

Such were the thoughts of Randolph Carter when a new impression began
beating upon his mind. All this while there had stretched before him
the great corpse-like width of fabled Sarkomand with its black broken
pillars and crumbling sphinx-crowned gates and titan stones and
monstrous winged lions against the sickly glow of those luminous night
clouds. Now he saw far ahead and on the right a glow that no clouds
could account for, and knew he was not alone in the silence of that
dead city. The glow rose and fell fitfully, flickering with a greenish
tinge which did not reassure the watcher. And when he crept closer,
down the littered street and through some narrow gaps between tumbled
walls, he perceived that it was a campfire near the wharves with many
vague forms clustered darkly around it; and a lethal odour hanging
heavily over all. Beyond was the oily lapping of the harbour water
with a great ship riding at anchor, and Carter paused in stark terror
when he saw that the ship was indeed one of the dreaded black galleys
from the moon.

Then, just as he was about to creep back from that detestable flame,
he saw a stirring among the vague dark forms and heard a peculiar and
unmistakable sound. It was the frightened meeping of a ghoul, and in a
moment it had swelled to a veritable chorus of anguish. Secure as he
was in the shadow of monstrous ruins, Carter allowed his curiosity to
conquer his fear, and crept forward again instead of retreating. Once
in crossing an open street he wriggled worm-like on his stomach, and
in another place he had to rise to his feet to avoid making a noise
among heaps of fallen marble. But always he succeeded in avoiding
discovery, so that in a short time he had found a spot behind a titan
pillar where he could watch the whole green-litten scene of action.
There around a hideous fire fed by the obnoxious stems of lunar fungi,
there squatted a stinking circle of the toadlike moonbeasts and their
almost-human slaves. Some of these slaves were heating curious iron
spears in the leaping flames, and at intervals applying their white-
hot points to three tightly trussed prisoners that lay writhing before
the leaders of the party. From the motions of their tentacles Carter
could see that the blunt-snouted moonbeasts were enjoying the
spectacle hugely, and vast was his horror when he suddenly recognised
the frantic meeping and knew that the tortured ghouls were none other
than the faithful trio which had guided him safely from the abyss, and
had thereafter set out from the enchanted wood to find Sarkomand and
the gate to their native deeps.

The number of malodorous moonbeasts about that greenish fire was very
great, and Carter saw that he could do nothing now to save his former
allies. Of how the ghouls had been captured he could not guess; but
fancied that the grey toadlike blasphemies had heard them inquire in
Dylath-Leen concerning the way to Sarkomand and had not wished them to
approach so closely the hateful plateau of Leng and the High-Priest
Not To Be Described. For a moment he pondered on what he ought to do,
and recalled how near he was to the gate of the ghouls' black kingdom.
Clearly it was wisest to creep east to the plaza of twin lions and
descend at once to the gulf, where assuredly he would meet no horrors
worse than those above, and where he might soon find ghouls eager to
rescue their brethren and perhaps to wipe out the moonbeasts from the
black galley. It occurred to him that the portal, like other gates to
the abyss, might be guarded by flocks of night-gaunts; but he did not
fear these faceless creatures now. He had learned that they are bound
by solemn treaties with the ghouls, and the ghoul which was Pickman
had taught him how to glibber a password they understood.

So Carter began another silent crawl through the ruins, edging slowly
toward the great central plaza and the winged lions. It was ticklish
work, but the moonbeasts were pleasantly busy and did not hear the
slight noises which he twice made by accident among the scattered
stones. At last he reached the open space and picked his way among the
stunned trees and vines that had grown up therein. The gigantic lions
loomed terrible above him in the sickly glow of the phosphorescent
night clouds, but he manfully persisted toward them and presently
crept round to their faces, knowing it was on that side he would find
the mighty darkness which they guard. Ten feet apart crouched the
mocking-faced beasts of diarite, brooding on cyclopean pedestals whose
sides were chiselled in fearsome bas-reliefs. Betwixt them was a tiled
court with a central space which had once been railed with balusters
of onyx. Midway in this space a black well opened, and Carter soon saw
that he had indeed reached the yawning gulf whose crusted and mouldy
stone steps lead down to the crypts of nightmare.

Terrible is the memory of that dark descent in which hours wore
themselves away whilst Carter wound sightlessly round and round down a
fathomless spiral of steep and slippery stairs. So worn and narrow
were the steps, and so greasy with the ooze of inner earth, that the
climber never quite knew when to expect a breathless fall and hurtling
down to the ultimate pits; and he was likewise uncertain just when or
how the guardian night-gaunts would suddenly pounce upon him, if
indeed there were any stationed in this primeval passage. All about
him was a stifling odour of nether gulfs, and he felt that the air of
these choking depths was not made for mankind. In time he became very
numb and somnolent, moving more from automatic impulse than from
reasoned will; nor did he realize any change when he stopped moving
altogether as something quietly seized him from behind. He was flying
very rapidly through the air before a malevolent tickling told him
that the rubbery night-gaunts had performed their duty.

Awaked to the fact that he was in the cold, damp clutch of the
faceless flutterers, Carter remembered the password of the ghouls and
glibbered it as loudly as he could amidst the wind and chaos of
flight. Mindless though night-gaunts are said to be, the effect was
instantaneous; for all tickling stopped at once, and the creatures
hastened to shift their captive to a more comfortable position. Thus
encouraged Carter ventured some explanations; telling of the seizure
and torture of three ghouls by the moonbeasts, and of the need of
assembling a party to rescue them. The night-gaunts, though
inarticulate, seemed to understand what was said; and shewed greater
haste and purpose in their flight. Suddenly the dense blackness gave
place to the grey twilight of inner earth, and there opened up ahead
one of those flat sterile plains on which ghouls love to squat and
gnaw. Scattered tombstones and osseous fragments told of the denizens
of that place; and as Carter gave a loud meep of urgent summons, a
score of burrows emptied forth their leathery, dog-like tenants. The
night-gaunts now flew low and set their passenger upon his feet,
afterward withdrawing a little and forming a hunched semicircle on the
ground while the ghouls greeted the newcomer.

Carter glibbered his message rapidly and explicitly to the grotesque
company, and four of them at once departed through different burrows
to spread the news to others and gather such troops as might be
available for a rescue. After a long wait a ghoul of some importance
appeared, and made significant signs to the night-gaunts, causing two
of the latter to fly off into the dark. Thereafter there were constant
accessions to the hunched flock of night-gaunts on the plain, till at
length the slimy soil was fairly black with them. Meanwhile fresh
ghouls crawled out of the burrows one by one, all glibbering excitedly
and forming in crude battle array not far from the huddled night-
gaunts. In time there appeared that proud and influential ghoul which
was once the artist Richard Pickman of Boston, and to him Carter
glibbered a very full account of what had occurred. The erstwhile
Pickman, pleased to greet his ancient friend again, seemed very much
impressed, and held a conference with other chiefs a little apart from
the growing throng.

Finally, after scanning the ranks with care, the assembled chiefs all
meeped in unison and began glibbering orders to the crowds of ghouls
and night-gaunts. A large detachment of the horned flyers vanished at
once, while the rest grouped themselves two by two on their knees with
extended forelegs, awaiting the approach of the ghouls one by one. As
each ghoul reached the pair of night-gaunts to which he was assigned,
he was taken up and borne away into the blackness; till at last the
whole throng had vanished save for Carter, Pickman, and the other
chiefs, and a few pairs of night-gaunts. Pickman explained that night-
gaunts are the advance guard and battle steeds of the ghouls, and that
the army was issuing forth to Sarkomand to deal with the moonbeasts.
Then Carter and the ghoulish chiefs approached the waiting bearers and
were taken up by the damp, slippery paws. Another moment and all were
whirling in wind and darkness; endlessly up, up, up to the gate of the
winged and the special ruins of primal Sarkomand.

When, after a great interval, Carter saw again the sickly light of
Sarkomand's nocturnal sky, it was to behold the great central plaza
swarming with militant ghouls and night-gaunts. Day, he felt sure,
must be almost due; but so strong was the army that no surprise of the
enemy would be needed. The greenish flare near the wharves still
glimmered faintly, though the absence of ghoulish meeping shewed that
the torture of the prisoners was over for the nonce. Softly glibbering
directions to their steeds and to the flock of riderless night-gaunts
ahead, the ghouls presently rose in wide whirring columns and swept on
over the bleak ruins toward the evil flame. Carter was now beside
Pickman in the front rank of ghouls, and saw as they approached the
noisome camp that the moonbeasts were totally unprepared. The three
prisoners lay bound and inert beside the fire, while their toadlike
captors slumped drowsily about in no certain order. The almost-human
slaves were asleep, even the sentinels shirking a duty which in this
realm must have seemed to them merely perfunctory.

The final swoop of the night-gaunts and mounted ghouls was very
sudden, each of the greyish toadlike blasphemies and their almost-
human slaves being seized by a group of night-gaunts before a sound
was made. The moonbeasts, of course, were voiceless; and even the
slaves had little chance to scream before rubbery paws choked them
into silence. Horrible were the writhings of those great jellyfish
abnormalities as the sardonic night-gaunts clutched them, but nothing
availed against the strength of those black prehensile talons. When a
moonbeast writhed too violently, a night-gaunt would seize and pull
its quivering pink tentacles; which seemed to hurt so much that the
victim would cease its struggles. Carter expected to see much
slaughter, but found that the ghouls were far subtler in their plans.
They glibbered certain simple orders to the night-gaunts which held
the captives, trusting the rest to instinct; and soon the hapless
creatures were borne silently away into the Great Abyss, to be
distributed impartially amongst the Dholes, Gugs, ghasts and other
dwellers in darkness whose modes of nourishment are not painless to
their chosen victims. Meanwhile the three bound ghouls had been
released and consoled by their conquering kinsfolk, whilst various
parties searched the neighborhood for possible remaining moonbeasts,
and boarded the evil-smelling black galley at the wharf to make sure
that nothing had escaped the general defeat. Surely enough, the
capture had been thorough, for not a sign of further life could the
victors detect. Carter, anxious to preserve a means of access to the
rest of dreamland, urged them not to sink the anchored galley; and
this request was freely granted out of gratitude for his act in
reporting the plight of the captured trio. On the ship were found some
very curious objects and decorations, some of which Carter cast at
once into the sea.

Ghouls and night-gaunts now formed themselves in separate groups, the
former questioning their rescued fellow anent past happenings. It
appeared that the three had followed Carter's directions and proceeded
from the enchanted wood to Dylath-Leen by way of Nir and the Skin,
stealing human clothes at a lonely farmhouse and loping as closely as
possible in the fashion of a man's walk. In Dylath-Leen's taverns
their grotesque ways and faces had aroused much comment; but they had
persisted in asking the way to Sarkomand until at last an old
traveller was able to tell them. Then they knew that only a ship for
Lelag-Leng would serve their purpose, and prepared to wait patiently
for such a vessel.

But evil spies had doubtless reported much; for shortly a black galley
put into port, and the wide-mouthed ruby merchants invited the ghouls
to drink with them in a tavern. Wine was produced from one of those
sinister bottles grotesquely carven from a single ruby, and after that
the ghouls found themselves prisoners on the black galley as Carter
had found himself. This time, however, the unseen rowers steered not
for the moon but for antique Sarkomand; bent evidently on taking their
captives before the High-Priest Not To Be Described. They had touched
at the jagged rock in the northern sea which Inquanok's mariners shun,
and the ghouls had there seen for the first time the red masters of
the ship; being sickened despite their own callousness by such
extremes of malign shapelessness and fearsome odour. There, too, were
witnessed the nameless pastimes of the toadlike resident garrison-such
pastimes as give rise to the night-howlings which men fear. After that
had come the landing at ruined Sarkomand and the beginning of the
tortures, whose continuance the present rescue had prevented.

Future plans were next discussed, the three rescued ghouls suggesting
a raid on the jagged rock and the extermination of the toadlike
garrison there. To this, however, the night-gaunts objected; since the
prospect of flying over water did not please them. Most of the ghouls
favoured the design, but were at a loss how to follow it without the
help of the winged night-gaunts. Thereupon Carter, seeing that they
could not navigate the anchored galley, offered to teach them the use
of the great banks of oars; to which proposal they eagerly assented.
Grey day had now come, and under that leaden northern sky a picked
detachment of ghouls filed into the noisome ship and took their seats
on the rowers' benches. Carter found them fairly apt at learning, and
before night had risked several experimental trips around the harbour.
Not till three days later, however, did he deem it safe to attempt the
voyage of conquest. Then, the rowers trained and the night-gaunts
safely stowed in the forecastle, the party set sail at last; Pickman
and the other chiefs gathering on deck and discussing models of
approach and procedure.

On the very first night the howlings from the rock were heard. Such
was their timbre that all the galley's crew shook visibly; but most of
all trembled the three rescued ghouls who knew precisely what those
howlings meant. It was not thought best to attempt an attack by night,
so the ship lay to under the phosphorescent clouds to wait for the
dawn of a greyish day. when the light was ample and the howlings still
the rowers resumed their strokes, and the galley drew closer and
closer to that jagged rock whose granite pinnacles clawed
fantastically at the dull sky. The sides of the rock were very steep;
but on ledges here and there could be seen the bulging walls of queer
windowless dwellings, and the low railings guarding travelled
highroads. No ship of men had ever come so near the place, or at
least, had never come so near and departed again; but Carter and the
ghouls were void of fear and kept inflexibly on, rounding the eastern
face of the rock and seeking the wharves which the rescued trio
described as being on the southern side within a harbour formed of
steep headlands.

The headlands were prolongations of the island proper, and came so
closely together that only one ship at a time might pass between them.
There seemed to be no watchers on the outside, so the galley was
steered boldly through the flume-like strait and into the stagnant
putrid harbour beyond. Here, however, all was bustle and activity;
with several ships lying at anchor along a forbidding stone quay, and
scores of almost-human slaves and moonbeasts by the waterfront
handling crates and boxes or driving nameless and fabulous horrors
hitched to lumbering lorries. There was a small stone town hewn out of
the vertical cliff above the wharves, with the start of a winding road
that spiralled out of sight toward higher ledges of the rock. Of what
lay inside that prodigious peak of granite none might say, but the
things one saw on the outside were far from encouraging.

At sight of the incoming galley the crowds on the wharves displayed
much eagerness; those with eyes staring intently, and those without
eyes wriggling their pink tentacles expectantly. They did not, of
course, realize that the black ship had changed hands; for ghouls look
much like the horned and hooved almost-humans, and the night-gaunts
were all out of sight below. By this time the leaders had fully formed
a plan; which was to loose the night-gaunts as soon as the wharf was
touched, and then to sail directly away, leaving matters wholly to the
instincts of those almost-mindless creatures. Marooned on the rock,
the horned flyers would first of all seize whatever living things they
found there, and afterward, quite helpless to think except in terms of
the homing instinct, would forget their fears of water and fly swiftly
back to the abyss; bearing their noisome prey to appropriate
destinations in the dark, from which not much would emerge alive.

The ghoul that was Pickman now went below and gave the night-gaunts
their simple instructions, while the ship drew very near to the
ominous and malodorous wharves. Presently a fresh stir rose along the
waterfront, and Carter saw that the motions of the galley had begun to
excite suspicion. Evidently the steersman was not making for the right
dock, and probably the watchers had noticed the difference between the
hideous ghouls and the almost-human slaves whose places they were
taking. Some silent alarm must have been given, for almost at once a
horde of the mephitic moonbeasts began to pour from the little black
doorways of the windowless houses and down the winding road at the
right. A rain of curious javelins struck the galley as the prow hit
the wharf felling two ghouls and slightly wounding another; but at
this point all the hatches were thrown open to emit a black cloud of
whirring night-gaunts which swarmed over the town like a flock of
horned and cyclopean bats.

The jellyish moonbeasts had procured a great pole and were trying to
push off the invading ship, but when the night-gaunts struck them they
thought of such things no more. It was a very terrible spectacle to
see those faceless and rubbery ticklers at their pastime, and
tremendously impressive to watch the dense cloud of them spreading
through the town and up the winding roadway to the reaches above.
Sometimes a group of the black flutterers would drop a toadlike
prisoner from aloft by mistake, and the manner in which the victim
would burst was highly offensive to the sight and smell. When the last
of the night-gaunts had left the galley the ghoulish leaders glibbered
an order of withdrawal, and the rowers pulled quietly out of the
harbour between the grey headlands while still the town was a chaos of
battle and conquest.

The Pickman ghoul allowed several hours for the night-gaunts to make
up their rudimentary minds and overcome their fear of flying over the
sea, and kept the galley standing about a mile off the jagged rock
while he waited, and dressed the wounds of the injured men. Night
fell, and the grey twilight gave place to the sickly phosphorescence
of low clouds, and all the while the leaders watched the high peaks of
that accursed rock for signs of the night-gaunts' flight. Toward
morning a black speck was seen hovering timidly over the top-most
pinnacle, and shortly afterward the speck had become a swarm. Just
before daybreak the swarm seemed to scatter, and within a quarter of
an hour it had vanished wholly in the distance toward the northeast.
Once or twice something seemed to fall from the thing swarm into the
sea; but Carter did not worry, since he knew from observation that the
toadlike moonbeasts cannot swim. At length, when the ghouls were
satisfied that all the night-gaunts had left for Sarkomand and the
Great Abyss with their doomed burdens, the galley put back into the
harbour betwixt the grey headlands; and all the hideous company landed
and roamed curiously over the denuded rock with its towers and eyries
and fortresses chiselled from the solid stone.

Frightful were the secrets uncovered in those evil and windowless
crypts; for the remnants of unfinished pastimes were many, and in
various stages of departure from their primal state. Carter put out of
the way certain things which were after a fashion alive, and fled
precipitately from a few other things about which he could not be very
positive. The stench-filled houses were furnished mostly with
grotesque stools and benches carven from moon-trees, and were painted
inside with nameless and frantic designs. Countless weapons,
implements, and ornaments lay about, including some large idols of
solid ruby depicting singular beings not found on the earth. These
latter did not, despite their material, invite either appropriation or
long inspection; and Carter took the trouble to hammer five of them
into very small pieces. The scattered spears and javelins he
collected, and with Pickman's approval distributed among the ghouls.
Such devices were new to the doglike lopers, but their relative
simplicity made them easy to master after a few concise hints.

The upper parts of the rock held more temples than private homes, and
in numerous hewn chambers were found terrible carven altars and
doubtfully stained fonts and shrines for the worship of things more
monstrous than the wild gods atop Kadath. From the rear of one great
temple stretched a low black passage which Carter followed far into
the rock with a torch till he came to a lightless domed hall of vast
proportions, whose vaultings were covered with demoniac carvings and
in whose centre yawned a foul and bottomless well like that in the
hideous monastery of Leng where broods alone the High-Priest Not To Be
Described. On the distant shadowy side, beyond the noisome well, he
thought he discerned a small door of strangely wrought bronze; but for
some reason he felt an unaccountable dread of opening it or even
approaching it, and hastened back through the cavern to his unlovely
allies as they shambled about with an ease and abandon he could
scarcely feel. The ghouls had observed the unfinished pastimes of the
moonbeasts, and had profited in their fashion. They had also found a
hogshead of potent moon-wine, and were rolling it down to the wharves
for removal and later use in diplomatic dealings, though the rescued
trio, remembering its effect on them in Dylath-Leen, had warned their
company to taste none of it. Of rubies from lunar mines there was a
great store, both rough and polished, in one of the vaults near the
water; but when the ghouls found they were not good to eat they lost
all interest in them. Carter did not try to carry any away, since he
knew too much about those which had mined them.

Suddenly there came an excited meeping from the sentries on the
wharves, and all the loathsome foragers turned from their tasks to
stare seaward and cluster round the waterfront. Betwixt the grey
headlands a fresh black galley was rapidly advancing, and it would be
but a moment before the almost-humans on deck would perceive the
invasion of the town and give the alarm to the monstrous things below.
Fortunately the ghouls still bore the spears and javelins which Carter
had distributed amongst them; and at his command, sustained by the
being that was Pickman, they now formed a line of battle and prepared
to prevent the landing of the ship. Presently a burst of excitement on
the galley told of the crew's discovery of the changed state of
things, and the instant stoppage of the vessel proved that the
superior numbers of the ghouls had been noted and taken into account.
After a moment of hesitation the new comers silently turned and passed
out between the headlands again, but not for an instant did the ghouls
imagine that the conflict was averted. Either the dark ship would seek
reinforcements or the crew would try to land elsewhere on the island;
hence a party of scouts was at once sent up toward the pinnacle to see
what the enemy's course would be.

In a very few minutes the ghoul returned breathless to say that the
moonbeasts and almost-humans were landing on the outside of the more
easterly of the rugged grey headlands, and ascending by hidden paths
and ledges which a goat could scarcely tread in safety. Almost
immediately afterward the galley was sighted again through the flume-
like strait, but only for a second. Then a few moments later, a second
messenger panted down from aloft to say that another party was landing
on the other headland; both being much more numerous than the size of
the galley would seem to allow for. The ship itself, moving slowly
with only one sparsely manned tier of oars, soon hove in sight betwixt
the cliffs, and lay to in the foetid harbour as if to watch the coming
fray and stand by for any possible use.

By this time Carter and Pickman had divided the ghouls into three
parties, one to meet each of the two invading columns and one to
remain in the town. The first two at once scrambled up the rocks in
their respective directions, while the third was subdivided into a
land party and a sea party. The sea party, commanded by Carter,
boarded the anchored galley and rowed out to meet the under-manned
galley of the newcomers; whereat the latter retreated through the
strait to the open sea. Carter did not at once pursue it, for he knew
he might be needed more acutely near the town.

Meanwhile the frightful detachments of the moonbeasts and almost-
humans had lumbered up to the top of the headlands and were shockingly
silhouetted on either side against the grey twilight sky. The thin
hellish flutes of the invaders had now begun to whine, and the general
effect of those hybrid, half-amorphous processions was as nauseating
as the actual odour given off by the toadlike lunar blasphemies. Then
the two parties of the ghouls swarmed into sight and joined the
silhouetted panorama. Javelins began to fly from both sides, and the
swelling meeps of the ghouls and the bestial howls of the almost-
humans gradually joined the hellish whine of the flutes to form a
frantick and indescribable chaos of daemon cacophony. Now and then
bodies fell from the narrow ridges of the headlands into the sea
outside or the harbour inside, in the latter case being sucked quickly
under by certain submarine lurkers whose presence was indicated only
by prodigious bubbles.

For half an hour this dual battle raged in the sky, till upon the west
cliff the invaders were completely annihilated. On the east cliff,
however, where the leader of the moonbeast party appeared to be
present, the ghouls had not fared so well; and were slowly retreating
to the slopes of the pinnacle proper. Pickman had quickly ordered
reinforcements for this front from the party in the town, and these
had helped greatly in the earlier stages of the combat. Then, when the
western battle was over, the victorious survivors hastened across to
the aid of their hard-pressed fellows; turning the tide and forcing
the invaders back again along the narrow ridge of the headland. The
almost-humans were by this time all slain, but the last of the
toadlike horrors fought desperately with the great spears clutched in
their powerful and disgusting paws. The time for javelins was now
nearly past, and the fight became a hand-to-hand contest of what few
spearmen could meet upon that narrow ridge.

As fury and recklessness increased, the number falling into the sea
became very great. Those striking the harbour met nameless extinction
from the unseen bubblers, but of those striking the open sea some were
able to swim to the foot of the cliffs and land on tidal rocks, while
the hovering galley of the enemy rescued several moonbeasts. The
cliffs were unscalable except where the monsters had debarked, so that
none of the ghouls on the rocks could rejoin their battle-line. Some
were killed by javelins from the hostile galley or from the moonbeasts
above, but a few survived to be rescued. When the security of the land
parties seemed assured, Carter's galley sallied forth between the
headlands and drove the hostile ship far out to sea; pausing to rescue
such ghouls as were on the rocks or still swimming in the ocean.
Several moonbeasts washed on rocks or reefs were speedily put out of
the way.

Finally, the moonbeast galley being safely in the distance and the
invading land army concentrated in one place, Carter landed a
considerable force on the eastern headland in the enemy's rear; after
which the fight was short-lived indeed. Attacked from both sides, the
noisome flounderers were rapidly cut to pieces or pushed into the sea,
till by evening the ghoulish chiefs agreed that the island was again
clear of them. The hostile galley, meanwhile, had disappeared; and it
was decided that the evil jagged rock had better be evacuated before
any overwhelming horde of lunar horrors might be assembled and brought
against the victors.

So by night Pickman and Carter assembled all the ghouls and counted
them with care, finding that over a fourth had been lost in the day's
battles. The wounded were placed on bunks in the galley, for Pickman
always discouraged the old ghoulish custom of killing and eating one's
own wounded, and the able-bodied troops were assigned to the oars or
to such other places as they might most usefully fill. Under the low
phosphorescent clouds of night the galley sailed, and Carter was not
sorry to be departing from the island of unwholesome secrets, whose
lightless domed hall with its bottomless well and repellent bronze
door lingered restlessly in his fancy. Dawn found the ship in sight of
Sarkomand's ruined quays of basalt, where a few night-gaunt sentries
still waited, squatting like black horned gargoyles on the broken
columns and crumbling sphinxes of that fearful city which lived and
died before the years of man.

The ghouls made camp amongst the fallen stones of Sarkomand,
despatching a messenger for enough night-gaunts to serve them as
steeds. Pickman and the other chiefs were effusive in their gratitude
for the aid Carter had lent them. Carter now began to feel that his
plans were indeed maturing well, and that he would be able to command
the help of these fearsome allies not only in quitting this part of
dreamland, but in pursuing his ultimate quest for the gods atop
unknown Kadath, and the marvellous sunset city they so strangely
withheld from his slumbers. Accordingly he spoke of these things to
the ghoulish leaders; telling what he knew of the cold waste wherein
Kadath stands and of the monstrous Shantaks and the mountains carven
into double-headed images which guard it. He spoke of the fear of
Shantaks for night-gaunts, and of how the vast hippocephalic birds fly
screaming from the black burrows high up on the gaunt grey peaks that
divide Inquanok from hateful Leng. He spoke, too, of the things he had
learned concerning night-gaunts from the frescoes in the windowless
monastery of the High-Priest Not To Be Described; how even the Great
Ones fear them, and how their ruler is not the crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep at all, but hoary and immemorial Nodens, Lord of the
Great Abyss.

All these things Carter glibbered to the assembled ghouls, and
presently outlined that request which he had in mind and which he did
not think extravagant considering the services he had so lately
rendered the rubbery doglike lopers. He wished very much, he said, for
the services of enough night-gaunts to bear him safely through the aft
past the realm of Shantaks and carven mountains, and up into the old
waste beyond the returning tracks of any other mortal. He desired to
fly to the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste to plead
with the Great Ones for the sunset city they denied him, and felt sure
that the night-gaunts could take him thither without trouble; high
above the perils of the plain, and over the hideous double heads of
those carven sentinel mountains that squat eternally in the grey dusk.
For the horned and faceless creatures there could be no danger from
aught of earth since the Great Ones themselves dread them. And even
were unexpected things to come from the Other Gods, who are prone to
oversee the affairs of earth's milder gods, the night-gaunts need not
fear; for the outer hells are indifferent matters to such silent and
slippery flyers as own not Nyarlathotep for their master, but bow only
to potent and archaic Nodens.

A flock of ten or fifteen night-gaunts, Carter glibbered, would surely
be enough to keep any combination of Shantaks at a distance, though
perhaps it might be well to have some ghouls in the party to manage
the creatures, their ways being better known to their ghoulish allies
than to men. The party could land him at some convenient point within
whatever walls that fabulous onyx citadel might have, waiting in the
shadows for his return or his signal whilst he ventured inside the
castle to give prayer to the gods of earth. If any ghouls chose to
escort him into the throne-room of the Great Ones, he would be
thankful, for their presence would add weight and importance to his
plea. He would not, however, insist upon this but merely wished
transportation to and from the castle atop unknown Kadath; the final
journey being either to the marvellous sunset city itself, in case of
gods proved favourable, or back to the earthward Gate of Deeper
Slumber in the Enchanted Wood in case his prayers were fruitless.

Whilst Carter was speaking all the ghouls listened with great
attention, and as the moments advanced the sky became black with
clouds of those night-gaunts for which messengers had been sent. The
winged steeds settled in a semicircle around the ghoulish army,
waiting respectfully as the doglike chieftains considered the wish of
the earthly traveller. The ghoul that was Pickman glibbered gravely
with his fellows and in the end Carter was offered far more than he
had at most expected. As he had aided the ghouls in their conquest of
the moonbeasts, so would they aid him in his daring voyage to realms
whence none had ever returned; lending him not merely a few of their
allied night-gaunts, but their entire army as then encamped, veteran
fighting ghouls and newly assembled night-gaunts alike, save only a
small garrison for the captured black galley and such spoils as had
come from the jagged rock in the sea. They would set out through the
aft whenever he might wish, and once arrived on Kadath a suitable
train of ghouls would attend him in state as he placed his petition
before earth's gods in their onyx castle.

Moved by a gratitude and satisfaction beyond words, Carter made plans
with the ghoulish leaders for his audacious voyage. The army would fly
high, they decided, over hideous Leng with its nameless monastery and
wicked stone villages; stopping only at the vast grey peaks to confer
with the Shantak-frightening night-gaunts whose burrows honeycombed
their summits. They would then, according to what advice they might
receive from those denizens, choose their final course; approaching
unknown Kadath either through the desert of carven mountains north of
Inquanok, or through the more northerly reaches of repulsive Leng
itself. Doglike and soulless as they are, the ghouls and night-gaunts
had no dread of what those untrodden deserts might reveal; nor did
they feel any deterring awe at the thought of Kadath towering lone
with its onyx castle of mystery.

About midday the ghouls and night-gaunts prepared for flight, each
ghoul selecting a suitable pair of horned steeds to bear him. Carter
was placed well up toward the head of the column beside Pickman, and
in front of the whole a double line of riderless night-gaunts was
provided as a vanguard. At a brisk meep from Pickman the whole
shocking army rose in a nightmare cloud above the broken columns and
crumbling sphinxes of primordial Sarkomand; higher and higher, till
even the great basalt cliff behind the town was cleared, and the cold,
sterile table-land of Leng's outskirts laid open to sight. Still
higher flew the black host, till even this table-land grew small
beneath them; and as they worked northward over the wind-swept plateau
of horror Carter saw once again with a shudder the circle of crude
monoliths and the squat windowless building which he knew held that
frightful silken-masked blasphemy from whose clutches he had so
narrowly escaped. This time no descent was made as the army swept
batlike over the sterile landscape, passing the feeble fires of the
unwholesome stone villages at a great altitude, and pausing not at all
to mark the morbid twistings of the hooved, horned almost-humans that
dance and pipe eternally therein. Once they saw a Shantak-bird flying
low over the plain, but when it saw them it screamed noxiously and
flapped off to the north in grotesque panic.

At dusk they reached the jagged grey peaks that form the barrier of
Inquanok, and hovered about these strange caves near the summits which
Carter recalled as so frightful to the Shantaks. At the insistent
meeping of the ghoulish leaders there issued forth from each lofty
burrow a stream of horned black flyers with which the ghouls and
night-gaunts of the party conferred at length by means of ugly
gestures. It soon became clear that the best course would be that over
the cold waste north of Inquanok, for Leng's northward reaches are
full of unseen pitfalls that even the night-gaunts dislike; abysmal
influences centering in certain white hemispherical buildings on
curious knolls, which common folklore associates unpleasantly with the
Other Gods and their crawling chaos Nyarlathotep.

Of Kadath the flutterers of the peaks knew almost nothing, save that
there must be some mighty marvel toward the north, over which the
Shantaks and the carven mountains stand guard. They hinted at rumoured
abnormalities of proportion in those trackless leagues beyond, and
recalled vague whispers of a realm where night broods eternally; but
of definite data they had nothing to give. So Carter and his party
thanked them kindly; and, crossing the topmost granite pinnacles to
the skies of Inquanok, dropped below the level of the phosphorescent
night clouds and beheld in the distance those terrible squatting
gargoyles that were mountains till some titan hand carved fright into
their virgin rock.

There they squatted in a hellish half-circle, their legs on the desert
sand and their mitres piercing the luminous clouds; sinister,
wolflike, and double-headed, with faces of fury and right hands
raised, dully and malignly watching the rim of man's world and
guarding with horror the reaches of a cold northern world that is not
man's. From their hideous laps rose evil Shantaks of elephantine bulk,
but these all fled with insane titters as the vanguard of night-gaunts
was sighted in the misty sky. Northward above those gargoyle mountains
the army flew, and over leagues of dim desert where never a landmark
rose. Less and less luminous grew the clouds, till at length Carter
could see only blackness around him; but never did the winged steeds
falter, bred as they were in earth's blackest crypts, and seeing not
with any eyes, but with the whole dank surface of their slippery
forms. On and on they flew, past winds of dubious scent and sounds of
dubious import; ever in thickest darkness, and covering such
prodigious spaces that Carter wondered whether or not they could still
be within earth's dreamland.

Then suddenly the clouds thinned and the stars shone spectrally above.
All below was still black, but those pallid beacons in the sky seemed
alive with a meaning and directiveness they had never possessed
elsewhere. It was not that the figures of the constellations were
different, but that the same familiar shapes now revealed a
significance they had formerly failed to make plain. Everything
focussed toward the north; every curve and asterism of the glittering
sky became part of a vast design whose function was to hurry first the
eye and then the whole observer onward to some secret and terrible
goal of convergence beyond the frozen waste that stretched endlessly
ahead. Carter looked toward the east where the great ridge of barrier
peaks had towered along all the length of Inquanok and saw against the
stars a jagged silhouette which told of its continued presence. It was
more broken now, with yawning clefts and fantastically erratic
pinnacles; and Carter studied closely the suggestive turnings and
inclinations of that grotesque outline, which seemed to share with the
stars some subtle northward urge.

They were flying past at a tremendous speed, so that the watcher had
to strain hard to catch details; when all at once he beheld just above
the line of the topmost peaks a dark and moving object against the
stars, whose course exactly paralleled that of his own bizarre party.
The ghouls had likewise glimpsed it, for he heard their low glibbering
all about him, and for a moment he fancied the object was a gigantic
Shantak, of a size vastly greater than that of the average specimen.
Soon, however, he saw that this theory would not hold; for the shape
of the thing above the mountains was not that of any hippocephalic
bird. Its outline against the stars, necessarily vague as it was,
resembled rather some huge mitred head, or pair of heads infinitely
magnified; and its rapid bobbing flight through the sky seemed most
peculiarly a wingless one. Carter could not tell which side of the
mountains it was on, but soon perceived that it had parts below the
parts he had first seen, since it blotted out all the stars in places
where the ridge was deeply cleft.

Then came a wide gap in the range, where the hideous reaches of
transmontane Leng were joined to the cold waste on this side by a low
pass trough which the stars shone wanly. Carter watched this gap with
intense care, knowing that he might see outlined against the sky
beyond it the lower parts of the vast thing that flew undulantly above
the pinnacles. The object had now floated ahead a trifle, and every
eye of the party was fixed on the rift where it would presently appear
in full-length silhouette. Gradually the huge thing above the peaks
neared the gap, slightly slackening its speed as if conscious of
having outdistanced the ghoulish army. For another minute suspense was
keen, and then the brief instant of full silhouette and revelation
came; bringing to the lips of the ghouls an awed and half-choked meep
of cosmic fear, and to the soul of the traveller a chill that never
wholly left it. For the mammoth bobbing shape that overtopped the
ridge was only a head--a mitred double head--and below it in terrible
vastness loped the frightful swollen body that bore it; the mountain-
high monstrosity that walked in stealth and silence; the hyaena-like
distortion of a giant anthropoid shape that trotted blackly against
the sky, its repulsive pair of cone-capped heads reaching half way to
the zenith.

Carter did not lose consciousness or even scream aloud, for he was an
old dreamer; but he looked behind him in horror and shuddered when he
saw that there were other monstrous heads silhouetted above the level
of the peaks, bobbing along stealthily after the first one. And
straight in the rear were three of the mighty mountain shapes seen
full against the southern stars, tiptoeing wolflike and lumberingly,
their tall mitres nodding thousands of feet in the aft. The carven
mountains, then, had not stayed squatting in that rigid semicircle
north of Inquanok, with right hands uplifted. They had duties to
perform, and were not remiss. But it was horrible that they never
spoke, and never even made a sound in walking.

Meanwhile the ghoul that was Pickman had glibbered an order to the
night-gaunts, and the whole army soared higher into the air. Up toward
the stars the grotesque column shot, till nothing stood out any longer
against the sky; neither the grey granite ridge that was still nor the
carven mitred mountains that walked. All was blackness beneath as the
fluttering legion surged northward amidst rushing winds and invisible
laughter in the aether, and never a Shantak or less mentionable entity
rose from the haunted wastes to pursue them. The farther they went,
the faster they flew, till soon their dizzying speed seemed to pass
that of a rifle ball and approach that of a planet in its orbit.
Carter wondered how with such speed the earth could still stretch
beneath them, but knew that in the land of dream dimensions have
strange properties. That they were in a realm of eternal night he felt
certain, and he fancied that the constellations overhead had subtly
emphasized their northward focus; gathering themselves up as it were
to cast the flying army into the void of the boreal pole, as the folds
of a bag are gathered up to cast out the last bits of substance
therein.

Then he noticed with terror that the wings of the night-gaunts were
not flapping any more. The horned and faceless steeds had folded their
membranous appendages, and were resting quite passive in the chaos of
wind that whirled and chuckled as it bore them on. A force not of
earth had seized on the army, and ghouls and night-gaunts alike were
powerless before a current which pulled madly and relentlessly into
the north whence no mortal had ever returned. At length a lone pallid
light was seen on the skyline ahead, thereafter rising steadily as
they approached, and having beneath it a black mass that blotted out
the stars. Carter saw that it must be some beacon on a mountain, for
only a mountain could rise so vast as seen from so prodigious a height
in the air.

Higher and higher rose the light and the blackness beneath it, till
all the northern sky was obscured by the rugged conical mass. Lofty as
the army was, that pale and sinister beacon rose above it, towering
monstrous over all peaks and concernments of earth, and tasting the
atomless aether where the cryptical moon and the mad planets reel. No
mountain known of man was that which loomed before them. The high
clouds far below were but a fringe for its foothills. The groping
dizziness of topmost air was but a girdle for its loins. Scornful and
spectral climbed that bridge betwixt earth and heaven, black in
eternal night, and crowned with a pshent of unknown stars whose awful
and significant outline grew every moment clearer. Ghouls meeped in
wonder as they saw it, and Carter shivered in fear lest all the
hurtling army be dashed to pieces on the unyielding onyx of that
cyclopean cliff.

Higher and higher rose the light, till it mingled with the loftiest
orbs of the zenith and winked down at the flyers with lurid mockery.
All the north beneath it was blackness now; dread, stony blackness
from infinite depths to infinite heights, with only that pale winking
beacon perched unreachably at the top of all vision. Carter studied
the light more closely, and saw at last what lines its inky background
made against the stars. There were towers on that titan mountaintop;
horrible domed towers in noxious and incalculable tiers and clusters
beyond any dreamable workmanship of man; battlements and terraces of
wonder and menace, all limned tiny and black and distant against the
starry pshent that glowed malevolently at the uppermost rim of sight.
Capping that most measureless of mountains was a castle beyond all
mortal thought, and in it glowed the daemon-light. Then Randolph
Carter knew that his quest was done, and that he saw above him the
goal of all forbidden steps and audacious visions; the fabulous, the
incredible home of the Great Ones atop unknown Kadath.

Even as he realised this thing, Carter noticed a change in the course
of the helplessly wind-sucked party. They were rising abruptly now,
and it was plain that the focus of their flight was the onyx castle
where the pale light shone. So close was the great black mountain that
its sides sped by them dizzily as they shot upward, and in the
darkness they could discern nothing upon it. Vaster and vaster loomed
the tenebrous towers of the nighted castle above, and Carter could see
that it was well-nigh blasphemous in its immensity. Well might its
stones have been quarried by nameless workmen in that horrible gulf
rent out of the rock in the hill pass north of Inquanok, for such was
its size that a man on its threshold stood even as air out on the
steps of earth's loftiest fortress. The pshent of unknown stars above
the myriad domed turrets glowed with a sallow, sickly flare, so that a
kind of twilight hung about the murky walls of slippery onyx. The
pallid beacon was now seen to be a single shining window high up in
one of the loftiest towers, and as the helpless army neared the top of
the mountain Carter thought he detected unpleasant shadows flitting
across the feebly luminous expanse. It was a strangely arched window,
of a design wholly alien to earth.

The solid rock now gave place to the giant foundations of the
monstrous castle, and it seemed that the speed of the party was
somewhat abated. Vast walls shot up, and there was a glimpse of a
great gate through which the voyagers were swept. All was night in the
titan courtyard, and then came the deeper blackness of inmost things
as a huge arched portal engulfed the column. Vortices of cold wind
surged dankly through sightless labyrinths of onyx, and Carter could
never tell what Cyclopean stairs and corridors lay silent along the
route of his endless aerial twisting. Always upward led the terrible
plunge in darkness, and never a sound, touch or glimpse broke the
dense pall of mystery. Large as the army of ghouls and night-gaunts
was, it was lost in the prodigious voids of that more than earthly
castle. And when at last there suddenly dawned around him the lurid
light of that single tower room whose lofty window had served as a
beacon, it took Carter long to discern the far walls and high, distant
ceiling, and to realize that he was indeed not again in the boundless
air outside.

Randolph Carter had hoped to come into the throne-room of the Great
Ones with poise and dignity, flanked and followed by impressive lines
of ghouls in ceremonial order, and offering his prayer as a free and
potent master among dreamers. He had known that the Great Ones
themselves are not beyond a mortal's power to cope with, and had
trusted to luck that the Other Gods and their crawling chaos
Nyarlathotep would not happen to come to their aid at the crucial
moment, as they had so often done before when men sought out earth's
gods in their home or on their mountains. And with his hideous escort
he had half hoped to defy even the Other Gods if need were, knowing as
he did that ghouls have no masters, and that night-gaunts own not
Nyarlathotep but only archaic Nodens for their lord. But now he saw
that supernal Kadath in its cold waste is indeed girt with dark
wonders and nameless sentinels, and that the Other Gods are of a
surety vigilant in guarding the mild, feeble gods of earth. Void as
they are of lordship over ghouls and night-gaunts, the mindless,
shapeless blasphemies of outer space can yet control them when they
must; so that it was not in state as a free and potent master of
dreamers that Randolph Carter came into the Great Ones' throne-room
with his ghouls. Swept and herded by nightmare tempests from the
stars, and dogged by unseen horrors of the northern waste, all that
army floated captive and helpless in the lurid light, dropping numbly
to the onyx floor when by some voiceless order the winds of fright
dissolved.

Before no golden dais had Randolph Carter come, nor was there any
august circle of crowned and haloed beings with narrow eyes, long-
lobed ears, thin nose, and pointed chin whose kinship to the carven
face on Ngranek might stamp them as those to whom a dreamer might
pray. Save for the one tower room the onyx castle atop Kadath was
dark, and the masters were not there. Carter had come to unknown
Kadath in the cold waste, but he had not found the gods. Yet still the
lurid light glowed in that one tower room whose size was so little
less than that of all outdoors, and whose distant walls and roof were
so nearly lost to sight in thin, curling mists. Earth's gods were not
there, it was true, but of subtler and less visible presences there
could be no lack. Where the mild gods are absent, the Other Gods are
not unrepresented; and certainly, the onyx castle of castles was far
from tenantless. In what outrageous form or forms terror would next
reveal itself Carter could by no means imagine. He felt that his visit
had been expected, and wondered how close a watch had all along been
kept upon him by the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep. It is Nyarlathotep,
horror of infinite shapes and dread soul and messenger of the Other
Gods, that the fungous moonbeasts serve; and Carter thought of the
black galley that had vanished when the tide of battle turned against
the toadlike abnormalities on the jagged rock in the sea.

Reflecting upon these things, he was staggering to his feet in the
midst of his nightmare company when there rang without warning through
that pale-litten and limitless chamber the hideous blast of a daemon
trumpet. Three times pealed that frightful brazen scream, and when the
echoes of the third blast had died chucklingly away Randolph Carter
saw that he was alone. Whither, why and how the ghouls and night-
gaunts had been snatched from sight was not for him to divine. He knew
only that he was suddenly alone, and that whatever unseen powers
lurked mockingly around him were no powers of earth's friendly
dreamland. Presently from the chamber's uttermost reaches a new sound
came. This, too, was a rhythmic trumpeting; but of a kind far removed
from the three raucous blasts which had dissolved his goodly cohorts.
In this low fanfare echoed all the wonder and melody of ethereal
dream; exotic vistas of unimagined loveliness floating from each
strange chord and subtly alien cadence. Odours of incense came to
match the golden notes; and overhead a great light dawned, its colours
changing in cycles unknown to earth's spectrum, and following the song
of the trumpets in weird symphonic harmonies. Torches flared in the
distance, and the beat of drums throbbed nearer amidst waves of tense
expectancy.

Out of the thinning mists and the cloud of strange incenses filed twin
columns of giant black slaves with loin-cloths of iridescent silk.
Upon their heads were strapped vast helmet-like torches of glittering
metal, from which the fragrance of obscure balsams spread in fumous
spirals. In their right hands were crystal wands whose tips were
carven into leering chimaeras, while their left hands grasped long
thin silver trumpets which they blew in turn. Armlets and anklets of
gold they had, and between each pair of anklets stretched a golden
chain that held its wearer to a sober gait. That they were true black
men of earth's dreamland was at once apparent, but it seemed less
likely that their rites and costumes were wholly things of our earth.
Ten feet from Carter the columns stopped, and as they did so each
trumpet flew abruptly to its bearer's thick lips. Wild and ecstatic
was the blast that followed, and wilder still the cry that chorused
just after from dark throats somehow made shrill by strange artifice.

Then down the wide lane betwixt the two columns a lone figure strode;
a tall, slim figure with the young face of an antique Pharaoh, gay
with prismatic robes and crowned with a golden pshent that glowed with
inherent light. Close up to Carter strode that regal figure; whose
proud carriage and smart features had in them the fascination of a
dark god or fallen archangel, and around whose eyes there lurked the
languid sparkle of capricious humour. It spoke, and in its mellow
tones there rippled the wild music of Lethean streams.

"Randolph Carter," said the voice, "you have come to see the Great
Ones whom it is unlawful for men to see. Watchers have spoken of this
thing, and the Other Gods have grunted as they rolled and tumbled
mindlessly to the sound of thin flutes in the black ultimate void
where broods the daemon-sultan whose name no lips dare speak aloud.

"When Barzai the Wise climbed Hatheg-Kia to see the Greater Ones dance
and howl above the clouds in the moonlight he never returned. The
Other Gods were there, and they did what was expected. Zenig of
Aphorat sought to reach unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and his
skull is now set in a ring on the little finger of one whom I need not
name.

"But you, Randolph Carter, have braved all things of earth's
dreamland, and burn still with the flame of quest. You came not as one
curious, but as one seeking his due, nor have you failed ever in
reverence toward the mild gods of earth. Yet have these gods kept you
from the marvellous sunset city of your dreams, and wholly through
their own small covetousness; for verily, they craved the weird
loveliness of that which your fancy had fashioned, and vowed that
henceforward no other spot should be their abode.

"They are gone from their castle on unknown Kadath to dwell in your
marvellous city. All through its palaces of veined marble they revel
by day, and when the sun sets they go out in the perfumed gardens and
watch the golden glory on temples and colonnades, arched bridges and
silver-basined fountains, and wide streets with blossom-laden urns and
ivory statues in gleaming rows. And when night comes they climb tall
terraces in the dew, and sit on carved benches of porphyry scanning
the stars, or lean over pale balustrades to gaze at the town's steep
northward slopes, where one by one the little windows in old peaked
gables shine softly out with the calm yellow light of homely candles.

"The gods love your marvellous city, and walk no more in the ways of
the gods. They have forgotten the high places of earth, and the
mountains that knew their youth. The earth has no longer any gods that
are gods, and only the Other Ones from outer space hold sway on
unremembered Kadath. Far away in a valley of your own childhood,
Randolph Carter, play the heedless Great Ones. You have dreamed too
well, O wise arch-dreamer, for you have drawn dream's gods away from
the world of all men's visions to that which is wholly yours; having
builded out of your boyhood's small fancies a city more lovely than
all the phantoms that have gone before.

"It is not well that earth's gods leave their thrones for the spider
to spin on, and their realm for the Others to sway in the dark manner
of Others. Fain would the powers from outside bring chaos and horror
to you, Randolph Carter, who are the cause of their upsetting, but
that they know it is by you alone that the gods may be sent back to
their world. In that half-waking dreamland which is yours, no power of
uttermost night may pursue; and only you can send the selfish Great
Ones gently out of your marvellous sunset city, back through the
northern twilight to their wonted place atop unknown Kadath in the
cold waste.

"So. Randolph Carter, in the name of the Other Gods I spare you and
charge you to seek that sunset city which is yours, and to send thence
the drowsy truant gods for whom the dream world waits. Not hard to
find is that roseal fever of the gods, that fanfare of supernal
trumpets and clash of immortal cymbals, that mystery whose place and
meaning have haunted you through the halls of waking and the gulfs of
dreaming, and tormented you with hints of vanished memory and the pain
of lost things awesome and momentous. Not hard to find is that symbol
and relic of your days of wonder, for truly, it is but the stable and
eternal gem wherein all that wonder sparkles crystallised to light
your evening path. Behold! It is not over unknown seas but back over
well-known years that your quest must go; back to the bright strange
things of infancy and the quick sun-drenched glimpses of magic that
old scenes brought to wide young eyes.

"For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the
sum of what you have seen and loved in youth. It is the glory of
Boston's hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset, of the
flower-fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle
of gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged
Charles flows drowsily. These things you saw, Randolph Carter, when
your nurse first wheeled you out in the springtime, and they will be
the last things you will ever see with eyes of memory and of love. And
there is antique Salem with its brooding years, and spectral
Marblehead scaling its rocky precipices into past centuries! And the
glory of Salem's towers and spires seen afar from Marblehead's
pastures across the harbour against the setting sun.

"There is Providence quaint and lordly on its seven hills over the
blue harbour, with terraces of green leading up to steeples and
citadels of living antiquity, and Newport climbing wraithlike from its
dreaming breakwater. Arkham is there, with its moss-grown gambrel
roofs and the rocky rolling meadows behind it; and antediluvian
Kingsport hoary with stacked chimneys and deserted quays and
overhanging gables, and the marvel of high cliffs and the milky-misted
ocean with tolling buoys beyond.

"Cool vales in Concord, cobbled lands in Portsmouth, twilight bends of
rustic New Hampshire roads where giant elms half hide white farmhouse
walls and creaking well-sweeps. Gloucester's salt wharves and Truro's
windy willows. Vistas of distant steepled towns and hills beyond hills
along the North Shore, hushed stony slopes and low ivied cottages in
the lee of huge boulders in Rhode Island's back country. Scent of the
sea and fragrance of the fields; spell of the dark woods and joy of
the orchards and gardens at dawn. These, Randolph Carter, are your
city; for they are yourself. New England bore you, and into your soul
she poured a liquid loveliness which cannot die. This loveliness,
moulded, crystallised, and polished by years of memory and dreaming,
is your terraced wonder of elusive sunsets; and to find that marble
parapet with curious urns and carven rail, and descend at last these
endless balustraded steps to the city of broad squares and prismatic
fountains, you need only to turn back to the thoughts and visions of
your wistful boyhood.

"Look! through that window shine the stars of eternal night. Even now
they are shining above the scenes you have known and cherished,
drinking of their charm that they may shine more lovely over the
gardens of dream. There is Antares-he is winking at this moment over
the roofs of Tremont Street, and you could see him from your window on
Beacon Hill. Out beyond those stars yawn the gulfs from whence my
mindless masters have sent me. Some day you too may traverse them, but
if you are wise you will beware such folly; for of those mortals who
have been and returned, only one preserves a mind unshattered by the
pounding, clawing horrors of the void. Terrors and blasphemies gnaw at
one another for space, and there is more evil in the lesser ones than
in the greater; even as you know from the deeds of those who sought to
deliver you into my hands, whilst I myself harboured no wish to
shatter you, and would indeed have helped you hither long ago had I
not been elsewhere busy,and certain that you would yourself find the
way. Shun then, the outer hells, and stick to the calm, lovely things
of your youth. Seek out your marvellous city and drive thence the
recreant Great Ones, sending them back gently to those scenes which
are of their own youth, and which wait uneasy for their return.

"Easier even then the way of dim memory is the way I will prepare for
you. See! There comes hither a monstrous Shantak, led by a slave who
for your peace of mind had best keep invisible. Mount and be ready--
there! Yogash the Black will help you on the scaly horror. Steer for
that brightest star just south of the zenith--it is Vega, and in two
hours will be just above the terrace of your sunset city. Steer for it
only till you hear a far-off singing in the high aether. Higher than
that lurks madness, so rein your Shantak when the first note lures.
Look then back to earth, and you will see shining the deathless altar-
flame of Ired-Naa from the sacred roof of a temple. That temple is in
your desiderate sunset city, so steer for it before you heed the
singing and are lost.

"When you draw nigh the city steer for the same high parapet whence of
old you scanned the outspread glory, prodding the Shantak till he cry
aloud. That cry the Great Ones will hear and know as they sit on their
perfumed terraces, and there will come upon them such a homesickness
that all of your city's wonders will not console them for the absence
of Kadath's grim castle and the pshent of eternal stars that crowns
it.

"Then must you land amongst them with the Shantak, and let them see
and touch that noisome and hippocephalic bird; meanwhile discoursing
to them of unknown Kadath, which you will so lately have left, and
telling them how its boundless halls are lovely and unlighted, where
of old they used to leap and revel in supernal radiance. And the
Shantak will talk to them in the manner of Shantaks, but it will have
no powers of persuasion beyond the recalling of elder days.

"Over and over must you speak to the wandering Great Ones of their
home and youth, till at last they will weep and ask to be shewn the
returning path they have forgotten. Thereat can you loose the waiting
Shantak, sending him skyward with the homing cry of his kind; hearing
which the Great Ones will prance and jump with antique mirth, and
forthwith stride after the loathly bird in the fashion of gods,
through the deep gulfs of heaven to Kadath's familiar towers and
domes.

"Then will the marvellous sunset city be yours to cherish and inhabit
for ever, and once more will earth's gods rule the dreams of men from
their accustomed seat. Go now--the casement is open and the stars
await outside. Already your Shantak wheezes and titters with
impatience. Steer for Vega through the night, but turn when the
singing sounds. Forget not this warning, lest horrors unthinkable suck
you into the gulf of shrieking and ululant madness. Remember the Other
Gods; they are great and mindless and terrible, and lurk in the outer
voids. They are good gods to shun.

"Hei! Aa-shanta 'nygh! You are off! Send back earth's gods to their
haunts on unknown Kadath, and pray to all space that you may never
meet me in my thousand other forms. Farewell, Randolph Carter, and
beware; for I am Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos."

And Randolph Carter, gasping and dizzy on his hideous Shantak, shot
screamingly into space toward the cold blue glare of boreal Vega;
looking but once behind him at the clustered and chaotic turrets of
the onyx nightmare wherein still glowed the lone lurid light of that
window above the air and the clouds of earth's dreamland. Great
polypous horrors slid darkly past, and unseen bat wings beat
multitudinous around him, but still he clung to the unwholesome mane
of that loathly and hippocephalic scaled bird. The stars danced
mockingly, almost shifting now and then to form pale signs of doom
that one might wonder one had not seen and feared before; and ever the
winds of nether howled of vague blackness and loneliness beyond the
cosmos.

Then through the glittering vault ahead there fell a hush of portent,
and all the winds and horrors slunk away as night things slink away
before the dawn. Trembling in waves that golden wisps of nebula made
weirdly visible, there rose a timid hint of far-off melody, droning in
faint chords that our own universe of stars knows not. And as that
music grew, the Shantak raised its ears and plunged ahead, and Carter
likewise bent to catch each lovely strain. It was a song, but not the
song of any voice. Night and the spheres sang it, and it was old when
space and Nyarlathotep and the Other Gods were born.

Faster flew the Shantak, and lower bent the rider, drunk with the
marvel of strange gulfs, and whirling in the crystal coils of outer
magic. Then came too late the warning of the evil one, the sardonic
caution of the daemon legate who had bidden the seeker beware the
madness of that song. Only to taunt had Nyarlathotep marked out the
way to safety and the marvellous sunset city; only to mock had that
black messenger revealed the secret of these truant gods whose steps
he could so easily lead back at will. For madness and the void's wild
vengeance are Nyarlathotep's only gifts to the presumptuous; and
frantick though the rider strove to turn his disgusting steed, that
leering, tittering Shantak coursed on impetuous and relentless,
flapping its great slippery wings in malignant joy and headed for
those unhallowed pits whither no dreams reach; that last amorphous
blight of nether-most confusion where bubbles and blasphemes at
infinity's centre the mindless daemon-sultan Azathoth, whose name no
lips dare speak aloud.

Unswerving and obedient to the foul legate's orders, that hellish bird
plunged onward through shoals of shapeless lurkers and caperers in
darkness, and vacuous herds of drifting entities that pawed and groped
and groped and pawed; the nameless larvae of the Other Gods, that are
like them blind and without mind, and possessed of singular hungers
and thirsts

Onward unswerving and relentless, and tittering hilariously to watch
the chuckling and hysterics into which the risen song of night and the
spheres had turned, that eldritch scaly monster bore its helpless
rider; hurtling and shooting, cleaving the uttermost rim and spanning
the outermost abysses; leaving behind the stars and the realms of
matter, and darting meteor-like through stark formlessness toward
those inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time wherein Azathoth
gnaws shapeless and ravenous amidst the muffled, maddening beat of
vile drums and the thin, monotonous whine of accursed flutes.

Onward--onward--through the screaming, cackling, and blackly populous
gulfs--and then from some dim blessed distance there came an image and
a thought to Randolph Carter the doomed. Too well had Nyarlathotep
planned his mocking and his tantalising, for he had brought up that
which no gusts of icy terror could quite efface. Home--New England--
Beacon Hill--the waking world.

"For know you, that your gold and marble city of wonder is only the
sum of what you have seen and loved in youth... the glory of Boston's
hillside roofs and western windows aflame with sunset; of the flower-
fragrant Common and the great dome on the hill and the tangle of
gables and chimneys in the violet valley where the many-bridged
Charles flows drowsily... this loveliness, moulded, crystallised, and
polished by years of memory and dreaming, is your terraced wonder of
elusive sunsets; and to find that marble parapet with curious urns and
carven rail, and descend at last those endless balustraded steps to
the city of broad squares and prismatic fountains, you need only to
turn back to the thoughts and visions of your wistful boyhood."

Onward--onward--dizzily onward to ultimate doom through the blackness
where sightless feelers pawed and slimy snouts jostled and nameless
things tittered and tittered and tittered. But the image and the
thought had come, and Randolph Carter knew clearly that he was
dreaming and only dreaming, and that somewhere in the background the
world of waking and the city of his infancy still lay. Words came
again--"You need only turn back to the thoughts and visions of your
wistful boyhood."  Turn--turn--blackness on every side, but Randolph
Carter could turn.

Thick though the rushing nightmare that clutched his senses, Randolph
Carter could turn and move. He could move, and if he chose he could
leap off the evil Shantak that bore him hurtlingly doomward at the
orders of Nyarlathotep. He could leap off and dare those depths of
night that yawned interminably down, those depths of fear whose
terrors yet could not exceed the nameless doom that lurked waiting at
chaos' core. He could turn and move and leap--he could--he would--he
would--he would.

Off that vast hippocephalic abomination leaped the doomed and
desperate dreamer, and down through endless voids of sentient
blackness he fell. Aeons reeled, universes died and were born again,
stars became nebulae and nebulae became stars, and still Randolph
Carter fell through those endless voids of sentient blackness.

Then in the slow creeping course of eternity the utmost cycle of the
cosmos churned itself into another futile completion, and all things
became again as they were unreckoned kalpas before. Matter and light
were born anew as space once had known them; and comets, suns and
worlds sprang flaming into life, though nothing survived to tell that
they had been and gone, been and gone, always and always, back to no
first beginning.

And there was a firmament again, and a wind, and a glare of purple
light in the eyes of the falling dreamer. There were gods and
presences and wills; beauty and evil, and the shrieking of noxious
night robbed of its prey. For through the unknown ultimate cycle had
lived a thought and a vision of a dreamer's boyhood, and now there
were remade a waking world and an old cherished city to body and to
justify these things. Out of the void S'ngac the violet gas had
pointed the way, and archaic Nodens was bellowing his guidance from
unhinted deeps.

Stars swelled to dawns, and dawns burst into fountains of gold,
carmine, and purple, and still the dreamer fell. Cries rent the aether
as ribbons of light beat back the fiends from outside. And hoary
Nodens raised a howl of triumph when Nyarlathotep, close on his
quarry, stopped baffled by a glare that seared his formless hunting-
horrors to grey dust. Randolph Carter had indeed descended at last the
wide marmoreal flights to his marvellous city, for he was come again
to the fair New England world that had wrought him.

So to the organ chords of morning's myriad whistles, and dawn's blaze
thrown dazzling through purple panes by the great gold dome of the
State House on the hill, Randolph Carter leaped shoutingly awake
within his Boston room. Birds sang in hidden gardens and the perfume
of trellised vines came wistful from arbours his grandfather had
reared. Beauty and light glowed from classic mantel and carven cornice
and walls grotesquely figured, while a sleek black cat rose yawning
from hearthside sleep that his master's start and shriek had
disturbed. And vast infinities away, past the Gate of Deeper Slumber
and the enchanted wood and the garden lands and the Cerenarian Sea and
the twilight reaches of Inquanok, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep
strode brooding into the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold
waste, and taunted insolently the mild gods of earth whom he had
snatched abruptly from their scented revels in the marvellous sunset
city.

_____________________________________________________________________


John Carter encounters A PRINCESS OF MARS

as told by EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS


FOREWORD


To the Reader of this Work:

In submitting Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book
form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable
personality will be of interest.

My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months he
spent at my father's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of
the civil war.  I was then a child of but five years, yet I well
remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic man whom I called
Uncle Jack.

He seemed always to be laughing; and he entered into the sports
of the children with the same hearty good fellowship he displayed
toward those pastimes in which the men and women of his own age
indulged; or he would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old
grandmother with stories of his strange, wild life in all parts of
the world.  We all loved him, and our slaves fairly worshipped the
ground he trod.

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches
over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the
carriage of the trained fighting man.  His features were regular
and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes
were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character,
filled with fire and initiative.  His manners were perfect, and
his courtliness was that of a typical southern gentleman of the
highest type.

His horsemanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight
even in that country of magnificent horsemen.  I have often heard
my father caution him against his wild recklessness, but he would
only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed him would be from
the back of a horse yet unfoaled.

When the war broke out he left us, nor did I see him again for some
fifteen or sixteen years.  When he returned it was without warning,
and I was much surprised to note that he had not aged apparently a
moment, nor had he changed in any other outward way.  He was, when
others were with him, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of
old, but when he thought himself alone I have seen him sit for
hours gazing off into space, his face set in a look of wistful
longing and hopeless misery; and at night he would sit thus looking
up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read his
manuscript years afterward.

He told us that he had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part
of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful
was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which he was
supplied.  As to the details of his life during these years he
was very reticent, in fact he would not talk of them at all.

He remained with us for about a year and then went to New York,
where he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited
him once a year on the occasions of my trips to the New York
market--my father and I owning and operating a string of general
stores throughout Virginia at that time.  Captain Carter had a
small but beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff overlooking the
river, and during one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I
observed he was much occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this
manuscript.

He told me at this time that if anything should happen to him he
wished me to take charge of his estate, and he gave me a key to a
compartment in the safe which stood in his study, telling me I
would find his will there and some personal instructions which he
had me pledge myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.

After I had retired for the night I have seen him from my window
standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the
Hudson with his arms stretched out to the heavens as though in
appeal.  I thought at the time that he was praying, although I never
understood that he was in the strict sense of the term a religious
man.

Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the
first of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from him asking
me to come to him at once.  I had always been his favorite among the
younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with his
demand.

I arrived at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on
the morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery man to
drive me out to Captain Carter's he replied that if I was a friend
of the Captain's he had some very bad news for me; the Captain had
been found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the
watchman attached to an adjoining property.

For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to
his place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the
body and of his affairs.

I found the watchman who had discovered him, together with the local
police chief and several townspeople, assembled in his little study.
The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of
the body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it.
It lay, he said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms
outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when
he showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical
one where I had seen him on those other nights, with his arms
raised in supplication to the skies.

There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a
local physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of
death from heart failure.  Left alone in the study, I opened the
safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer in which he had told
me I would find my instructions.  They were in part peculiar
indeed, but I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully
as I was able.

He directed that I remove his body to Virginia without embalming,
and that he be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which he
previously had had constructed and which, as I later learned, was
well ventilated.  The instructions impressed upon me that I must
personally see that this was carried out just as he directed,
even in secrecy if necessary.

His property was left in such a way that I was to receive the
entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to
become mine. His further instructions related to this manuscript
which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for
eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one
years after his death.

A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is
that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated
spring lock which can be opened _only from the inside_.

Yours very sincerely,

Edgar Rice Burroughs.



CONTENTS

     I  On the Arizona Hills
    II  The Escape of the Dead
   III  My Advent on Mars
    IV  A Prisoner
     V  I Elude My Watch Dog
    VI  A Fight That Won Friends
   VII  Child-Raising on Mars
  VIII  A Fair Captive from the Sky
    IX  I Learn the Language
     X  Champion and Chief
    XI  With Dejah Thoris
   XII  A Prisoner with Power
  XIII  Love-Making on Mars
   XIV  A Duel to the Death
    XV  Sola Tells Me Her Story
   XVI  We Plan Escape
  XVII  A Costly Recapture
 XVIII  Chained in Warhoon
   XIX  Battling in the Arena
    XX  In the Atmosphere Factory
   XXI  An Air Scout for Zodanga
  XXII  I Find Dejah
 XXIII  Lost in the Sky
  XXIV  Tars Tarkas Finds a Friend
   XXV  The Looting of Zodanga
  XXVI  Through Carnage to Joy
 XXVII  From Joy to Death
XXVIII  At the Arizona Cave





CHAPTER I

ON THE ARIZONA HILLS



I am a very old man; how old I do not know.  Possibly I am a
hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged
as other men, nor do I remember any childhood.  So far as I can
recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty.  I appear
today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I
cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real
death from which there is no resurrection.  I do not know why I
should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet
I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is
because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced
of my mortality.

And because of this conviction I have determined to write down the
story of the interesting periods of my life and of my death.  I
cannot explain the phenomena; I can only set down here in the words
of an ordinary soldier of fortune a chronicle of the strange events
that befell me during the ten years that my dead body lay
undiscovered in an Arizona cave.

I have never told this story, nor shall mortal man see this
manuscript until after I have passed over for eternity.  I know that
the average human mind will not believe what it cannot grasp, and so
I do not purpose being pilloried by the public, the pulpit, and the
press, and held up as a colossal liar when I am but telling the
simple truths which some day science will substantiate.  Possibly
the suggestions which I gained upon Mars, and the knowledge which I
can set down in this chronicle, will aid in an earlier understanding
of the mysteries of our sister planet; mysteries to you, but no
longer mysteries to me.

My name is John Carter; I am better known as Captain Jack Carter of
Virginia.  At the close of the Civil War I found myself possessed
of several hundred thousand dollars (Confederate) and a captain's
commission in the cavalry arm of an army which no longer existed;
the servant of a state which had vanished with the hopes of the
South.  Masterless, penniless, and with my only means of livelihood,
fighting, gone, I determined to work my way to the southwest and
attempt to retrieve my fallen fortunes in a search for gold.

I spent nearly a year prospecting in company with another
Confederate officer, Captain James K. Powell of Richmond.  We
were extremely fortunate, for late in the winter of 1865, after
many hardships and privations, we located the most remarkable
gold-bearing quartz vein that our wildest dreams had ever pictured.
Powell, who was a mining engineer by education, stated that we had
uncovered over a million dollars worth of ore in a trifle over three
months.

As our equipment was crude in the extreme we decided that one of us
must return to civilization, purchase the necessary machinery and
return with a sufficient force of men properly to work the mine.

As Powell was familiar with the country, as well as with the
mechanical requirements of mining we determined that it would be
best for him to make the trip.  It was agreed that I was to hold
down our claim against the remote possibility of its being jumped
by some wandering prospector.

On March 3, 1866, Powell and I packed his provisions on two of our
burros, and bidding me good-bye he mounted his horse, and started
down the mountainside toward the valley, across which led the first
stage of his journey.

The morning of Powell's departure was, like nearly all Arizona
mornings, clear and beautiful; I could see him and his little pack
animals picking their way down the mountainside toward the valley,
and all during the morning I would catch occasional glimpses of them
as they topped a hog back or came out upon a level plateau.  My last
sight of Powell was about three in the afternoon as he entered the
shadows of the range on the opposite side of the valley.

Some half hour later I happened to glance casually across the valley
and was much surprised to note three little dots in about the same
place I had last seen my friend and his two pack animals.  I am not
given to needless worrying, but the more I tried to convince myself
that all was well with Powell, and that the dots I had seen on his
trail were antelope or wild horses, the less I was able to assure
myself.

Since we had entered the territory we had not seen a hostile Indian,
and we had, therefore, become careless in the extreme, and were wont
to ridicule the stories we had heard of the great numbers of these
vicious marauders that were supposed to haunt the trails, taking
their toll in lives and torture of every white party which fell into
their merciless clutches.

Powell, I knew, was well armed and, further, an experienced Indian
fighter; but I too had lived and fought for years among the Sioux in
the North, and I knew that his chances were small against a party of
cunning trailing Apaches.  Finally I could endure the suspense no
longer, and, arming myself with my two Colt revolvers and a carbine,
I strapped two belts of cartridges about me and catching my saddle
horse, started down the trail taken by Powell in the morning.

As soon as I reached comparatively level ground I urged my mount
into a canter and continued this, where the going permitted, until,
close upon dusk, I discovered the point where other tracks joined
those of Powell.  They were the tracks of unshod ponies, three of
them, and the ponies had been galloping.

I followed rapidly until, darkness shutting down, I was forced to
await the rising of the moon, and given an opportunity to speculate
on the question of the wisdom of my chase.  Possibly I had conjured
up impossible dangers, like some nervous old housewife, and when
I should catch up with Powell would get a good laugh for my pains.
However, I am not prone to sensitiveness, and the following of a
sense of duty, wherever it may lead, has always been a kind of
fetich with me throughout my life; which may account for the honors
bestowed upon me by three republics and the decorations and
friendships of an old and powerful emperor and several lesser kings,
in whose service my sword has been red many a time.

About nine o'clock the moon was sufficiently bright for me to
proceed on my way and I had no difficulty in following the trail
at a fast walk, and in some places at a brisk trot until, about
midnight, I reached the water hole where Powell had expected to
camp.  I came upon the spot unexpectedly, finding it entirely
deserted, with no signs of having been recently occupied as a camp.

I was interested to note that the tracks of the pursuing horsemen,
for such I was now convinced they must be, continued after Powell
with only a brief stop at the hole for water; and always at the same
rate of speed as his.

I was positive now that the trailers were Apaches and that they
wished to capture Powell alive for the fiendish pleasure of the
torture, so I urged my horse onward at a most dangerous pace, hoping
against hope that I would catch up with the red rascals before they
attacked him.

Further speculation was suddenly cut short by the faint report of
two shots far ahead of me.  I knew that Powell would need me now if
ever, and I instantly urged my horse to his topmost speed up the
narrow and difficult mountain trail.

I had forged ahead for perhaps a mile or more without hearing
further sounds, when the trail suddenly debouched onto a small, open
plateau near the summit of the pass.  I had passed through a narrow,
overhanging gorge just before entering suddenly upon this table
land, and the sight which met my eyes filled me with consternation
and dismay.

The little stretch of level land was white with Indian tepees, and
there were probably half a thousand red warriors clustered around
some object near the center of the camp.  Their attention was so
wholly riveted to this point of interest that they did not notice
me, and I easily could have turned back into the dark recesses of
the gorge and made my escape with perfect safety.  The fact,
however, that this thought did not occur to me until the following
day removes any possible right to a claim to heroism to which the
narration of this episode might possibly otherwise entitle me.

I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes
heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my
voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot
recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took
occurred to me until many hours later.  My mind is evidently so
constituted that I am subconsciously forced into the path of duty
without recourse to tiresome mental processes.  However that may be,
I have never regretted that cowardice is not optional with me.

In this instance I was, of course, positive that Powell was the
center of attraction, but whether I thought or acted first I do not
know, but within an instant from the moment the scene broke upon my
view I had whipped out my revolvers and was charging down upon the
entire army of warriors, shooting rapidly, and whooping at the top
of my lungs.  Singlehanded, I could not have pursued better tactics,
for the red men, convinced by sudden surprise that not less than a
regiment of regulars was upon them, turned and fled in every
direction for their bows, arrows, and rifles.

The view which their hurried routing disclosed filled me with
apprehension and with rage.  Under the clear rays of the Arizona
moon lay Powell, his body fairly bristling with the hostile arrows
of the braves.  That he was already dead I could not but be
convinced, and yet I would have saved his body from mutilation at
the hands of the Apaches as quickly as I would have saved the man
himself from death.

Riding close to him I reached down from the saddle, and grasping
his cartridge belt drew him up across the withers of my mount.  A
backward glance convinced me that to return by the way I had come
would be more hazardous than to continue across the plateau, so,
putting spurs to my poor beast, I made a dash for the opening to the
pass which I could distinguish on the far side of the table land.

The Indians had by this time discovered that I was alone and I was
pursued with imprecations, arrows, and rifle balls.  The fact that
it is difficult to aim anything but imprecations accurately by
moonlight, that they were upset by the sudden and unexpected manner
of my advent, and that I was a rather rapidly moving target saved me
from the various deadly projectiles of the enemy and permitted me to
reach the shadows of the surrounding peaks before an orderly pursuit
could be organized.

My horse was traveling practically unguided as I knew that I had
probably less knowledge of the exact location of the trail to the
pass than he, and thus it happened that he entered a defile which
led to the summit of the range and not to the pass which I had
hoped would carry me to the valley and to safety.  It is probable,
however, that to this fact I owe my life and the remarkable
experiences and adventures which befell me during the following
ten years.

My first knowledge that I was on the wrong trail came when I heard
the yells of the pursuing savages suddenly grow fainter and fainter
far off to my left.

I knew then that they had passed to the left of the jagged rock
formation at the edge of the plateau, to the right of which my
horse had borne me and the body of Powell.

I drew rein on a little level promontory overlooking the trail below
and to my left, and saw the party of pursuing savages disappearing
around the point of a neighboring peak.

I knew the Indians would soon discover that they were on the wrong
trail and that the search for me would be renewed in the right
direction as soon as they located my tracks.

I had gone but a short distance further when what seemed to be an
excellent trail opened up around the face of a high cliff.  The
trail was level and quite broad and led upward and in the general
direction I wished to go.  The cliff arose for several hundred feet
on my right, and on my left was an equal and nearly perpendicular
drop to the bottom of a rocky ravine.

I had followed this trail for perhaps a hundred yards when a sharp
turn to the right brought me to the mouth of a large cave.  The
opening was about four feet in height and three to four feet wide,
and at this opening the trail ended.

It was now morning, and, with the customary lack of dawn which is a
startling characteristic of Arizona, it had become daylight almost
without warning.

Dismounting, I laid Powell upon the ground, but the most painstaking
examination failed to reveal the faintest spark of life.  I forced
water from my canteen between his dead lips, bathed his face and
rubbed his hands, working over him continuously for the better part
of an hour in the face of the fact that I knew him to be dead.

I was very fond of Powell; he was thoroughly a man in every respect;
a polished southern gentleman; a staunch and true friend; and it was
with a feeling of the deepest grief that I finally gave up my crude
endeavors at resuscitation.

Leaving Powell's body where it lay on the ledge I crept into the
cave to reconnoiter.  I found a large chamber, possibly a hundred
feet in diameter and thirty or forty feet in height; a smooth and
well-worn floor, and many other evidences that the cave had, at some
remote period, been inhabited.  The back of the cave was so lost in
dense shadow that I could not distinguish whether there were
openings into other apartments or not.

As I was continuing my examination I commenced to feel a pleasant
drowsiness creeping over me which I attributed to the fatigue of my
long and strenuous ride, and the reaction from the excitement of the
fight and the pursuit.  I felt comparatively safe in my present
location as I knew that one man could defend the trail to the cave
against an army.

I soon became so drowsy that I could scarcely resist the strong
desire to throw myself on the floor of the cave for a few moments'
rest, but I knew that this would never do, as it would mean certain
death at the hands of my red friends, who might be upon me at any
moment.  With an effort I started toward the opening of the cave
only to reel drunkenly against a side wall, and from there slip
prone upon the floor.




CHAPTER II

THE ESCAPE OF THE DEAD



A sense of delicious dreaminess overcame me, my muscles relaxed,
and I was on the point of giving way to my desire to sleep when the
sound of approaching horses reached my ears.  I attempted to spring
to my feet but was horrified to discover that my muscles refused to
respond to my will.  I was now thoroughly awake, but as unable to
move a muscle as though turned to stone.  It was then, for the first
time, that I noticed a slight vapor filling the cave.  It was
extremely tenuous and only noticeable against the opening which led
to daylight.  There also came to my nostrils a faintly pungent odor,
and I could only assume that I had been overcome by some poisonous
gas, but why I should retain my mental faculties and yet be unable
to move I could not fathom.

I lay facing the opening of the cave and where I could see the short
stretch of trail which lay between the cave and the turn of the
cliff around which the trail led.  The noise of the approaching
horses had ceased, and I judged the Indians were creeping stealthily
upon me along the little ledge which led to my living tomb.  I
remember that I hoped they would make short work of me as I did not
particularly relish the thought of the innumerable things they might
do to me if the spirit prompted them.

I had not long to wait before a stealthy sound apprised me of their
nearness, and then a war-bonneted, paint-streaked face was thrust
cautiously around the shoulder of the cliff, and savage eyes looked
into mine.  That he could see me in the dim light of the cave I was
sure for the early morning sun was falling full upon me through the
opening.

The fellow, instead of approaching, merely stood and stared; his
eyes bulging and his jaw dropped.  And then another savage face
appeared, and a third and fourth and fifth, craning their necks over
the shoulders of their fellows whom they could not pass upon the
narrow ledge.  Each face was the picture of awe and fear, but for
what reason I did not know, nor did I learn until ten years later.
That there were still other braves behind those who regarded me was
apparent from the fact that the leaders passed back whispered word
to those behind them.

Suddenly a low but distinct moaning sound issued from the recesses
of the cave behind me, and, as it reached the ears of the Indians,
they turned and fled in terror, panic-stricken.  So frantic were
their efforts to escape from the unseen thing behind me that one of
the braves was hurled headlong from the cliff to the rocks below.
Their wild cries echoed in the canyon for a short time, and then
all was still once more.

The sound which had frightened them was not repeated, but it had
been sufficient as it was to start me speculating on the possible
horror which lurked in the shadows at my back.  Fear is a relative
term and so I can only measure my feelings at that time by what I
had experienced in previous positions of danger and by those that I
have passed through since; but I can say without shame that if the
sensations I endured during the next few minutes were fear, then may
God help the coward, for cowardice is of a surety its own
punishment.

To be held paralyzed, with one's back toward some horrible and
unknown danger from the very sound of which the ferocious Apache
warriors turn in wild stampede, as a flock of sheep would madly
flee from a pack of wolves, seems to me the last word in fearsome
predicaments for a man who had ever been used to fighting for his
life with all the energy of a powerful physique.

Several times I thought I heard faint sounds behind me as of
somebody moving cautiously, but eventually even these ceased, and I
was left to the contemplation of my position without interruption.
I could but vaguely conjecture the cause of my paralysis, and my
only hope lay in that it might pass off as suddenly as it had fallen
upon me.

Late in the afternoon my horse, which had been standing with
dragging rein before the cave, started slowly down the trail,
evidently in search of food and water, and I was left alone with
my mysterious unknown companion and the dead body of my friend,
which lay just within my range of vision upon the ledge where I
had placed it in the early morning.

From then until possibly midnight all was silence, the silence of
the dead; then, suddenly, the awful moan of the morning broke upon
my startled ears, and there came again from the black shadows the
sound of a moving thing, and a faint rustling as of dead leaves.
The shock to my already overstrained nervous system was terrible in
the extreme, and with a superhuman effort I strove to break my awful
bonds.  It was an effort of the mind, of the will, of the nerves;
not muscular, for I could not move even so much as my little finger,
but none the less mighty for all that.  And then something gave,
there was a momentary feeling of nausea, a sharp click as of the
snapping of a steel wire, and I stood with my back against the wall
of the cave facing my unknown foe.

And then the moonlight flooded the cave, and there before me lay my
own body as it had been lying all these hours, with the eyes staring
toward the open ledge and the hands resting limply upon the ground.
I looked first at my lifeless clay there upon the floor of the cave
and then down at myself in utter bewilderment; for there I lay
clothed, and yet here I stood but naked as at the minute of my
birth.

The transition had been so sudden and so unexpected that it left me
for a moment forgetful of aught else than my strange metamorphosis.
My first thought was, is this then death!  Have I indeed passed over
forever into that other life!  But I could not well believe this, as
I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs from the exertion of
my efforts to release myself from the anaesthesis which had held me.
My breath was coming in quick, short gasps, cold sweat stood out
from every pore of my body, and the ancient experiment of pinching
revealed the fact that I was anything other than a wraith.

Again was I suddenly recalled to my immediate surroundings by a
repetition of the weird moan from the depths of the cave.  Naked and
unarmed as I was, I had no desire to face the unseen thing which
menaced me.

My revolvers were strapped to my lifeless body which, for some
unfathomable reason, I could not bring myself to touch.  My carbine
was in its boot, strapped to my saddle, and as my horse had wandered
off I was left without means of defense.  My only alternative seemed
to lie in flight and my decision was crystallized by a recurrence of
the rustling sound from the thing which now seemed, in the darkness
of the cave and to my distorted imagination, to be creeping
stealthily upon me.

Unable longer to resist the temptation to escape this horrible place
I leaped quickly through the opening into the starlight of a clear
Arizona night.  The crisp, fresh mountain air outside the cave acted
as an immediate tonic and I felt new life and new courage coursing
through me.  Pausing upon the brink of the ledge I upbraided myself
for what now seemed to me wholly unwarranted apprehension.  I
reasoned with myself that I had lain helpless for many hours within
the cave, yet nothing had molested me, and my better judgment, when
permitted the direction of clear and logical reasoning, convinced me
that the noises I had heard must have resulted from purely natural
and harmless causes; probably the conformation of the cave was such
that a slight breeze had caused the sounds I heard.

I decided to investigate, but first I lifted my head to fill my
lungs with the pure, invigorating night air of the mountains.  As I
did so I saw stretching far below me the beautiful vista of rocky
gorge, and level, cacti-studded flat, wrought by the moonlight into
a miracle of soft splendor and wondrous enchantment.

Few western wonders are more inspiring than the beauties of an
Arizona moonlit landscape; the silvered mountains in the distance,
the strange lights and shadows upon hog back and arroyo, and the
grotesque details of the stiff, yet beautiful cacti form a picture
at once enchanting and inspiring; as though one were catching for
the first time a glimpse of some dead and forgotten world, so
different is it from the aspect of any other spot upon our earth.

As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to
the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting
canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene.  My attention was
quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon.
As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination--it
was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had
always held the power of irresistible enchantment.  As I gazed at
it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable
void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a
particle of iron.

My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes,
stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself
drawn with the suddenness of thought through the trackless immensity
of space.  There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness.




CHAPTER III

MY ADVENT ON MARS



I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape.  I knew that
I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my
wakefulness.  I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner
consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your
conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth.  You do not
question the fact; neither did I.

I found myself lying prone upon a bed of yellowish, mosslike
vegetation which stretched around me in all directions for
interminable miles.  I seemed to be lying in a deep, circular
basin, along the outer verge of which I could distinguish the
irregularities of low hills.

It was midday, the sun was shining full upon me and the heat of it
was rather intense upon my naked body, yet no greater than would
have been true under similar conditions on an Arizona desert.  Here
and there were slight outcroppings of quartz-bearing rock which
glistened in the sunlight; and a little to my left, perhaps a
hundred yards, appeared a low, walled enclosure about four feet in
height.  No water, and no other vegetation than the moss was in
evidence, and as I was somewhat thirsty I determined to do a little
exploring.

Springing to my feet I received my first Martian surprise, for
the effort, which on Earth would have brought me standing upright,
carried me into the Martian air to the height of about three yards.
I alighted softly upon the ground, however, without appreciable
shock or jar.  Now commenced a series of evolutions which even then
seemed ludicrous in the extreme.  I found that I must learn to walk
all over again, as the muscular exertion which carried me easily and
safely upon Earth played strange antics with me upon Mars.

Instead of progressing in a sane and dignified manner, my attempts
to walk resulted in a variety of hops which took me clear of the
ground a couple of feet at each step and landed me sprawling upon my
face or back at the end of each second or third hop.  My muscles,
perfectly attuned and accustomed to the force of gravity on Earth,
played the mischief with me in attempting for the first time to cope
with the lesser gravitation and lower air pressure on Mars.

I was determined, however, to explore the low structure which was
the only evidence of habitation in sight, and so I hit upon the
unique plan of reverting to first principles in locomotion,
creeping.  I did fairly well at this and in a few moments had
reached the low, encircling wall of the enclosure.

There appeared to be no doors or windows upon the side nearest me,
but as the wall was but about four feet high I cautiously gained my
feet and peered over the top upon the strangest sight it had ever
been given me to see.

The roof of the enclosure was of solid glass about four or five
inches in thickness, and beneath this were several hundred large
eggs, perfectly round and snowy white.  The eggs were nearly uniform
in size being about two and one-half feet in diameter.

Five or six had already hatched and the grotesque caricatures which
sat blinking in the sunlight were enough to cause me to doubt my
sanity.  They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long
necks and six legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two
arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will
either as arms or legs.  Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of
their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner
that they could be directed either forward or back and also
independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to
look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the
necessity of turning the head.

The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together,
were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on
these young specimens.  Their noses were but longitudinal slits in
the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears.

There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light
yellowish-green color.  In the adults, as I was to learn quite soon,
this color deepens to an olive green and is darker in the male than
in the female.  Further, the heads of the adults are not so out of
proportion to their bodies as in the case of the young.

The iris of the eyes is blood red, as in Albinos, while the pupil
is dark.  The eyeball itself is very white, as are the teeth.
These latter add a most ferocious appearance to an otherwise
fearsome and terrible countenance, as the lower tusks curve upward
to sharp points which end about where the eyes of earthly human
beings are located.  The whiteness of the teeth is not that of
ivory, but of the snowiest and most gleaming of china.  Against
the dark background of their olive skins their tusks stand out in
a most striking manner, making these weapons present a singularly
formidable appearance.

Most of these details I noted later, for I was given but little time
to speculate on the wonders of my new discovery.  I had seen that
the eggs were in the process of hatching, and as I stood watching
the hideous little monsters break from their shells I failed to note
the approach of a score of full-grown Martians from behind me.

Coming, as they did, over the soft and soundless moss, which covers
practically the entire surface of Mars with the exception of the
frozen areas at the poles and the scattered cultivated districts,
they might have captured me easily, but their intentions were far
more sinister.  It was the rattling of the accouterments of the
foremost warrior which warned me.

On such a little thing my life hung that I often marvel that I
escaped so easily.  Had not the rifle of the leader of the party
swung from its fastenings beside his saddle in such a way as to
strike against the butt of his great metal-shod spear I should have
snuffed out without ever knowing that death was near me.  But the
little sound caused me to turn, and there upon me, not ten feet
from my breast, was the point of that huge spear, a spear forty
feet long, tipped with gleaming metal, and held low at the side
of a mounted replica of the little devils I had been watching.

But how puny and harmless they now looked beside this huge and
terrific incarnation of hate, of vengeance and of death.  The man
himself, for such I may call him, was fully fifteen feet in height
and, on Earth, would have weighed some four hundred pounds.  He sat
his mount as we sit a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with his
lower limbs, while the hands of his two right arms held his immense
spear low at the side of his mount; his two left arms were
outstretched laterally to help preserve his balance, the thing he
rode having neither bridle or reins of any description for guidance.

And his mount!  How can earthly words describe it!  It towered ten
feet at the shoulder; had four legs on either side; a broad flat
tail, larger at the tip than at the root, and which it held straight
out behind while running; a gaping mouth which split its head from
its snout to its long, massive neck.

Like its master, it was entirely devoid of hair, but was of a dark
slate color and exceeding smooth and glossy.  Its belly was white,
and its legs shaded from the slate of its shoulders and hips to a
vivid yellow at the feet.  The feet themselves were heavily padded
and nailless, which fact had also contributed to the noiselessness
of their approach, and, in common with a multiplicity of legs, is a
characteristic feature of the fauna of Mars.  The highest type of
man and one other animal, the only mammal existing on Mars, alone
have well-formed nails, and there are absolutely no hoofed animals
in existence there.

Behind this first charging demon trailed nineteen others, similar
in all respects, but, as I learned later, bearing individual
characteristics peculiar to themselves; precisely as no two of us
are identical although we are all cast in a similar mold.  This
picture, or rather materialized nightmare, which I have described at
length, made but one terrible and swift impression on me as I turned
to meet it.

Unarmed and naked as I was, the first law of nature manifested
itself in the only possible solution of my immediate problem, and
that was to get out of the vicinity of the point of the charging
spear.  Consequently I gave a very earthly and at the same time
superhuman leap to reach the top of the Martian incubator, for
such I had determined it must be.

My effort was crowned with a success which appalled me no less than
it seemed to surprise the Martian warriors, for it carried me fully
thirty feet into the air and landed me a hundred feet from my
pursuers and on the opposite side of the enclosure.

I alighted upon the soft moss easily and without mishap, and turning
saw my enemies lined up along the further wall.  Some were surveying
me with expressions which I afterward discovered marked extreme
astonishment, and the others were evidently satisfying themselves
that I had not molested their young.

They were conversing together in low tones, and gesticulating and
pointing toward me.  Their discovery that I had not harmed the
little Martians, and that I was unarmed, must have caused them to
look upon me with less ferocity; but, as I was to learn later, the
thing which weighed most in my favor was my exhibition of hurdling.

While the Martians are immense, their bones are very large and they
are muscled only in proportion to the gravitation which they must
overcome.  The result is that they are infinitely less agile and
less powerful, in proportion to their weight, than an Earth man, and
I doubt that were one of them suddenly to be transported to Earth he
could lift his own weight from the ground; in fact, I am convinced
that he could not do so.

My feat then was as marvelous upon Mars as it would have been upon
Earth, and from desiring to annihilate me they suddenly looked upon
me as a wonderful discovery to be captured and exhibited among their
fellows.

The respite my unexpected agility had given me permitted me to
formulate plans for the immediate future and to note more closely
the appearance of the warriors, for I could not disassociate these
people in my mind from those other warriors who, only the day
before, had been pursuing me.

I noted that each was armed with several other weapons in addition
to the huge spear which I have described.  The weapon which caused
me to decide against an attempt at escape by flight was what was
evidently a rifle of some description, and which I felt, for some
reason, they were peculiarly efficient in handling.

These rifles were of a white metal stocked with wood, which I
learned later was a very light and intensely hard growth much prized
on Mars, and entirely unknown to us denizens of Earth.  The metal of
the barrel is an alloy composed principally of aluminum and steel
which they have learned to temper to a hardness far exceeding that
of the steel with which we are familiar.  The weight of these rifles
is comparatively little, and with the small caliber, explosive,
radium projectiles which they use, and the great length of the
barrel, they are deadly in the extreme and at ranges which would be
unthinkable on Earth.  The theoretic effective radius of this rifle
is three hundred miles, but the best they can do in actual service
when equipped with their wireless finders and sighters is but a
trifle over two hundred miles.

This is quite far enough to imbue me with great respect for the
Martian firearm, and some telepathic force must have warned me
against an attempt to escape in broad daylight from under the
muzzles of twenty of these death-dealing machines.

The Martians, after conversing for a short time, turned and rode
away in the direction from which they had come, leaving one of their
number alone by the enclosure.  When they had covered perhaps two
hundred yards they halted, and turning their mounts toward us sat
watching the warrior by the enclosure.

He was the one whose spear had so nearly transfixed me, and was
evidently the leader of the band, as I had noted that they seemed
to have moved to their present position at his direction.  When
his force had come to a halt he dismounted, threw down his spear
and small arms, and came around the end of the incubator toward
me, entirely unarmed and as naked as I, except for the ornaments
strapped upon his head, limbs, and breast.

When he was within about fifty feet of me he unclasped an enormous
metal armlet, and holding it toward me in the open palm of his hand,
addressed me in a clear, resonant voice, but in a language, it is
needless to say, I could not understand.  He then stopped as though
waiting for my reply, pricking up his antennae-like ears and cocking
his strange-looking eyes still further toward me.

As the silence became painful I concluded to hazard a little
conversation on my own part, as I had guessed that he was making
overtures of peace.  The throwing down of his weapons and the
withdrawing of his troop before his advance toward me would have
signified a peaceful mission anywhere on Earth, so why not, then,
on Mars!

Placing my hand over my heart I bowed low to the Martian and
explained to him that while I did not understand his language, his
actions spoke for the peace and friendship that at the present
moment were most dear to my heart.  Of course I might have been a
babbling brook for all the intelligence my speech carried to him,
but he understood the action with which I immediately followed my
words.

Stretching my hand toward him, I advanced and took the armlet from
his open palm, clasping it about my arm above the elbow; smiled at
him and stood waiting.  His wide mouth spread into an answering
smile, and locking one of his intermediary arms in mine we turned
and walked back toward his mount.  At the same time he motioned his
followers to advance.  They started toward us on a wild run, but
were checked by a signal from him.  Evidently he feared that were
I to be really frightened again I might jump entirely out of the
landscape.

He exchanged a few words with his men, motioned to me that I would
ride behind one of them, and then mounted his own animal.  The
fellow designated reached down two or three hands and lifted me up
behind him on the glossy back of his mount, where I hung on as best
I could by the belts and straps which held the Martian's weapons and
ornaments.

The entire cavalcade then turned and galloped away toward the range
of hills in the distance.




CHAPTER IV

A PRISONER



We had gone perhaps ten miles when the ground began to rise very
rapidly.  We were, as I was later to learn, nearing the edge of one
of Mars' long-dead seas, in the bottom of which my encounter with
the Martians had taken place.

In a short time we gained the foot of the mountains, and after
traversing a narrow gorge came to an open valley, at the far
extremity of which was a low table land upon which I beheld an
enormous city.  Toward this we galloped, entering it by what
appeared to be a ruined roadway leading out from the city, but only
to the edge of the table land, where it ended abruptly in a flight
of broad steps.

Upon closer observation I saw as we passed them that the buildings
were deserted, and while not greatly decayed had the appearance of
not having been tenanted for years, possibly for ages.  Toward the
center of the city was a large plaza, and upon this and in the
buildings immediately surrounding it were camped some nine or ten
hundred creatures of the same breed as my captors, for such I now
considered them despite the suave manner in which I had been
trapped.

With the exception of their ornaments all were naked.  The women
varied in appearance but little from the men, except that their
tusks were much larger in proportion to their height, in some
instances curving nearly to their high-set ears.  Their bodies were
smaller and lighter in color, and their fingers and toes bore the
rudiments of nails, which were entirely lacking among the males.
The adult females ranged in height from ten to twelve feet.

The children were light in color, even lighter than the women, and
all looked precisely alike to me, except that some were taller than
others; older, I presumed.

I saw no signs of extreme age among them, nor is there any
appreciable difference in their appearance from the age of maturity,
about forty, until, at about the age of one thousand years, they go
voluntarily upon their last strange pilgrimage down the river Iss,
which leads no living Martian knows whither and from whose bosom no
Martian has ever returned, or would be allowed to live did he return
after once embarking upon its cold, dark waters.

Only about one Martian in a thousand dies of sickness or disease,
and possibly about twenty take the voluntary pilgrimage.  The other
nine hundred and seventy-nine die violent deaths in duels, in
hunting, in aviation and in war; but perhaps by far the greatest
death loss comes during the age of childhood, when vast numbers of
the little Martians fall victims to the great white apes of Mars.

The average life expectancy of a Martian after the age of maturity
is about three hundred years, but would be nearer the one-thousand
mark were it not for the various means leading to violent death.
Owing to the waning resources of the planet it evidently became
necessary to counteract the increasing longevity which their
remarkable skill in therapeutics and surgery produced, and so human
life has come to be considered but lightly on Mars, as is evidenced
by their dangerous sports and the almost continual warfare between
the various communities.

There are other and natural causes tending toward a diminution of
population, but nothing contributes so greatly to this end as the
fact that no male or female Martian is ever voluntarily without a
weapon of destruction.

As we neared the plaza and my presence was discovered we were
immediately surrounded by hundreds of the creatures who seemed
anxious to pluck me from my seat behind my guard.  A word from the
leader of the party stilled their clamor, and we proceeded at a
trot across the plaza to the entrance of as magnificent an edifice
as mortal eye has rested upon.

The building was low, but covered an enormous area.  It was
constructed of gleaming white marble inlaid with gold and brilliant
stones which sparkled and scintillated in the sunlight.  The main
entrance was some hundred feet in width and projected from the
building proper to form a huge canopy above the entrance hall.
There was no stairway, but a gentle incline to the first floor of
the building opened into an enormous chamber encircled by galleries.

On the floor of this chamber, which was dotted with highly carved
wooden desks and chairs, were assembled about forty or fifty male
Martians around the steps of a rostrum.  On the platform proper
squatted an enormous warrior heavily loaded with metal ornaments,
gay-colored feathers and beautifully wrought leather trappings
ingeniously set with precious stones.  From his shoulders depended
a short cape of white fur lined with brilliant scarlet silk.

What struck me as most remarkable about this assemblage and the
hall in which they were congregated was the fact that the creatures
were entirely out of proportion to the desks, chairs, and other
furnishings; these being of a size adapted to human beings such as
I, whereas the great bulks of the Martians could scarcely have
squeezed into the chairs, nor was there room beneath the desks for
their long legs.  Evidently, then, there were other denizens on Mars
than the wild and grotesque creatures into whose hands I had fallen,
but the evidences of extreme antiquity which showed all around me
indicated that these buildings might have belonged to some
long-extinct and forgotten race in the dim antiquity of Mars.

Our party had halted at the entrance to the building, and at a sign
from the leader I had been lowered to the ground.  Again locking his
arm in mine, we had proceeded into the audience chamber.  There were
few formalities observed in approaching the Martian chieftain.  My
captor merely strode up to the rostrum, the others making way for
him as he advanced.  The chieftain rose to his feet and uttered the
name of my escort who, in turn, halted and repeated the name of the
ruler followed by his title.

At the time, this ceremony and the words they uttered meant nothing
to me, but later I came to know that this was the customary greeting
between green Martians.  Had the men been strangers, and therefore
unable to exchange names, they would have silently exchanged
ornaments, had their missions been peaceful--otherwise they would
have exchanged shots, or have fought out their introduction with
some other of their various weapons.

My captor, whose name was Tars Tarkas, was virtually the
vice-chieftain of the community, and a man of great ability as a
statesman and warrior.  He evidently explained briefly the incidents
connected with his expedition, including my capture, and when he had
concluded the chieftain addressed me at some length.

I replied in our good old English tongue merely to convince him that
neither of us could understand the other; but I noticed that when I
smiled slightly on concluding, he did likewise.  This fact, and the
similar occurrence during my first talk with Tars Tarkas, convinced
me that we had at least something in common; the ability to smile,
therefore to laugh; denoting a sense of humor.  But I was to learn
that the Martian smile is merely perfunctory, and that the Martian
laugh is a thing to cause strong men to blanch in horror.

The ideas of humor among the green men of Mars are widely at
variance with our conceptions of incitants to merriment.  The
death agonies of a fellow being are, to these strange creatures
provocative of the wildest hilarity, while their chief form of
commonest amusement is to inflict death on their prisoners of
war in various ingenious and horrible ways.

The assembled warriors and chieftains examined me closely, feeling
my muscles and the texture of my skin.  The principal chieftain then
evidently signified a desire to see me perform, and, motioning me
to follow, he started with Tars Tarkas for the open plaza.

Now, I had made no attempt to walk, since my first signal failure,
except while tightly grasping Tars Tarkas' arm, and so now I went
skipping and flitting about among the desks and chairs like some
monstrous grasshopper.  After bruising myself severely, much to
the amusement of the Martians, I again had recourse to creeping,
but this did not suit them and I was roughly jerked to my feet by
a towering fellow who had laughed most heartily at my misfortunes.

As he banged me down upon my feet his face was bent close to
mine and I did the only thing a gentleman might do under the
circumstances of brutality, boorishness, and lack of consideration
for a stranger's rights; I swung my fist squarely to his jaw and
he went down like a felled ox.  As he sunk to the floor I wheeled
around with my back toward the nearest desk, expecting to be
overwhelmed by the vengeance of his fellows, but determined to
give them as good a battle as the unequal odds would permit before
I gave up my life.

My fears were groundless, however, as the other Martians, at first
struck dumb with wonderment, finally broke into wild peals of
laughter and applause.  I did not recognize the applause as such,
but later, when I had become acquainted with their customs, I
learned that I had won what they seldom accord, a manifestation
of approbation.

The fellow whom I had struck lay where he had fallen, nor did any of
his mates approach him.  Tars Tarkas advanced toward me, holding out
one of his arms, and we thus proceeded to the plaza without further
mishap.  I did not, of course, know the reason for which we had come
to the open, but I was not long in being enlightened.  They first
repeated the word "sak" a number of times, and then Tars Tarkas made
several jumps, repeating the same word before each leap; then,
turning to me, he said, "sak!"  I saw what they were after, and
gathering myself together I "sakked" with such marvelous success
that I cleared a good hundred and fifty feet; nor did I this time,
lose my equilibrium, but landed squarely upon my feet without
falling.  I then returned by easy jumps of twenty-five or thirty
feet to the little group of warriors.

My exhibition had been witnessed by several hundred lesser Martians,
and they immediately broke into demands for a repetition, which the
chieftain then ordered me to make; but I was both hungry and
thirsty, and determined on the spot that my only method of salvation
was to demand the consideration from these creatures which they
evidently would not voluntarily accord.  I therefore ignored the
repeated commands to "sak," and each time they were made I motioned
to my mouth and rubbed my stomach.

Tars Tarkas and the chief exchanged a few words, and the former,
calling to a young female among the throng, gave her some
instructions and motioned me to accompany her.  I grasped her
proffered arm and together we crossed the plaza toward a large
building on the far side.

My fair companion was about eight feet tall, having just arrived
at maturity, but not yet to her full height.  She was of a light
olive-green color, with a smooth, glossy hide.  Her name, as I
afterward learned, was Sola, and she belonged to the retinue of
Tars Tarkas.  She conducted me to a spacious chamber in one of the
buildings fronting on the plaza, and which, from the litter of
silks and furs upon the floor, I took to be the sleeping quarters
of several of the natives.

The room was well lighted by a number of large windows and was
beautifully decorated with mural paintings and mosaics, but upon
all there seemed to rest that indefinable touch of the finger of
antiquity which convinced me that the architects and builders of
these wondrous creations had nothing in common with the crude
half-brutes which now occupied them.

Sola motioned me to be seated upon a pile of silks near the center
of the room, and, turning, made a peculiar hissing sound, as though
signaling to someone in an adjoining room.  In response to her call
I obtained my first sight of a new Martian wonder.  It waddled in
on its ten short legs, and squatted down before the girl like an
obedient puppy.  The thing was about the size of a Shetland pony,
but its head bore a slight resemblance to that of a frog, except
that the jaws were equipped with three rows of long, sharp tusks.




CHAPTER V

I ELUDE MY WATCH DOG



Sola stared into the brute's wicked-looking eyes, muttered a word or
two of command, pointed to me, and left the chamber.  I could not but
wonder what this ferocious-looking monstrosity might do when left
alone in such close proximity to such a relatively tender morsel of
meat; but my fears were groundless, as the beast, after surveying me
intently for a moment, crossed the room to the only exit which led
to the street, and lay down full length across the threshold.

This was my first experience with a Martian watch dog, but it was
destined not to be my last, for this fellow guarded me carefully
during the time I remained a captive among these green men; twice
saving my life, and never voluntarily being away from me a moment.

While Sola was away I took occasion to examine more minutely the
room in which I found myself captive.  The mural painting depicted
scenes of rare and wonderful beauty; mountains, rivers, lake,
ocean, meadow, trees and flowers, winding roadways, sun-kissed
gardens--scenes which might have portrayed earthly views but for
the different colorings of the vegetation.  The work had evidently
been wrought by a master hand, so subtle the atmosphere, so perfect
the technique; yet nowhere was there a representation of a living
animal, either human or brute, by which I could guess at the
likeness of these other and perhaps extinct denizens of Mars.

While I was allowing my fancy to run riot in wild conjecture on the
possible explanation of the strange anomalies which I had so far met
with on Mars, Sola returned bearing both food and drink.  These she
placed on the floor beside me, and seating herself a short ways off
regarded me intently.  The food consisted of about a pound of some
solid substance of the consistency of cheese and almost tasteless,
while the liquid was apparently milk from some animal.  It was not
unpleasant to the taste, though slightly acid, and I learned in a
short time to prize it very highly.  It came, as I later discovered,
not from an animal, as there is only one mammal on Mars and that one
very rare indeed, but from a large plant which grows practically
without water, but seems to distill its plentiful supply of milk
from the products of the soil, the moisture of the air, and the rays
of the sun.  A single plant of this species will give eight or ten
quarts of milk per day.

After I had eaten I was greatly invigorated, but feeling the need
of rest I stretched out upon the silks and was soon asleep.  I must
have slept several hours, as it was dark when I awoke, and I was
very cold.  I noticed that someone had thrown a fur over me, but it
had become partially dislodged and in the darkness I could not see
to replace it.  Suddenly a hand reached out and pulled the fur over
me, shortly afterwards adding another to my covering.

I presumed that my watchful guardian was Sola, nor was I wrong.
This girl alone, among all the green Martians with whom I came in
contact, disclosed characteristics of sympathy, kindliness, and
affection; her ministrations to my bodily wants were unfailing, and
her solicitous care saved me from much suffering and many hardships.

As I was to learn, the Martian nights are extremely cold, and as
there is practically no twilight or dawn, the changes in temperature
are sudden and most uncomfortable, as are the transitions from
brilliant daylight to darkness.  The nights are either brilliantly
illumined or very dark, for if neither of the two moons of Mars
happen to be in the sky almost total darkness results, since the
lack of atmosphere, or, rather, the very thin atmosphere, fails to
diffuse the starlight to any great extent; on the other hand, if
both of the moons are in the heavens at night the surface of the
ground is brightly illuminated.

Both of Mars' moons are vastly nearer her than is our moon to Earth;
the nearer moon being but about five thousand miles distant, while
the further is but little more than fourteen thousand miles away,
against the nearly one-quarter million miles which separate us from
our moon.  The nearer moon of Mars makes a complete revolution
around the planet in a little over seven and one-half hours, so that
she may be seen hurtling through the sky like some huge meteor two
or three times each night, revealing all her phases during each
transit of the heavens.

The further moon revolves about Mars in something over thirty and
one-quarter hours, and with her sister satellite makes a nocturnal
Martian scene one of splendid and weird grandeur.  And it is well
that nature has so graciously and abundantly lighted the Martian
night, for the green men of Mars, being a nomadic race without
high intellectual development, have but crude means for artificial
lighting; depending principally upon torches, a kind of candle, and
a peculiar oil lamp which generates a gas and burns without a wick.

This last device produces an intensely brilliant far-reaching white
light, but as the natural oil which it requires can only be obtained
by mining in one of several widely separated and remote localities
it is seldom used by these creatures whose only thought is for
today, and whose hatred for manual labor has kept them in a
semi-barbaric state for countless ages.

After Sola had replenished my coverings I again slept, nor did I
awaken until daylight.  The other occupants of the room, five in
number, were all females, and they were still sleeping, piled high
with a motley array of silks and furs.  Across the threshold lay
stretched the sleepless guardian brute, just as I had last seen him
on the preceding day; apparently he had not moved a muscle; his eyes
were fairly glued upon me, and I fell to wondering just what might
befall me should I endeavor to escape.

I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and
experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.  It
therefore now occurred to me that the surest way of learning the
exact attitude of this beast toward me would be to attempt to leave
the room.  I felt fairly secure in my belief that I could escape him
should he pursue me once I was outside the building, for I had begun
to take great pride in my ability as a jumper.  Furthermore, I could
see from the shortness of his legs that the brute himself was no
jumper and probably no runner.

Slowly and carefully, therefore, I gained my feet, only to see that
my watcher did the same; cautiously I advanced toward him, finding
that by moving with a shuffling gait I could retain my balance as
well as make reasonably rapid progress.  As I neared the brute he
backed cautiously away from me, and when I had reached the open he
moved to one side to let me pass.  He then fell in behind me and
followed about ten paces in my rear as I made my way along the
deserted street.

Evidently his mission was to protect me only, I thought, but when we
reached the edge of the city he suddenly sprang before me, uttering
strange sounds and baring his ugly and ferocious tusks.  Thinking to
have some amusement at his expense, I rushed toward him, and when
almost upon him sprang into the air, alighting far beyond him and
away from the city.  He wheeled instantly and charged me with the
most appalling speed I had ever beheld.  I had thought his short
legs a bar to swiftness, but had he been coursing with greyhounds
the latter would have appeared as though asleep on a door mat.  As I
was to learn, this is the fleetest animal on Mars, and owing to its
intelligence, loyalty, and ferocity is used in hunting, in war, and
as the protector of the Martian man.

I quickly saw that I would have difficulty in escaping the fangs
of the beast on a straightaway course, and so I met his charge by
doubling in my tracks and leaping over him as he was almost upon me.
This maneuver gave me a considerable advantage, and I was able to
reach the city quite a bit ahead of him, and as he came tearing
after me I jumped for a window about thirty feet from the ground
in the face of one of the buildings overlooking the valley.

Grasping the sill I pulled myself up to a sitting posture without
looking into the building, and gazed down at the baffled animal
beneath me.  My exultation was short-lived, however, for scarcely
had I gained a secure seat upon the sill than a huge hand grasped
me by the neck from behind and dragged me violently into the room.
Here I was thrown upon my back, and beheld standing over me a
colossal ape-like creature, white and hairless except for an
enormous shock of bristly hair upon its head.




CHAPTER VI

A FIGHT THAT WON FRIENDS



The thing, which more nearly resembled our earthly men than it did
the Martians I had seen, held me pinioned to the ground with one
huge foot, while it jabbered and gesticulated at some answering
creature behind me.  This other, which was evidently its mate,
soon came toward us, bearing a mighty stone cudgel with which it
evidently intended to brain me.

The creatures were about ten or fifteen feet tall, standing erect,
and had, like the green Martians, an intermediary set of arms or
legs, midway between their upper and lower limbs.  Their eyes were
close together and non-protruding; their ears were high set, but
more laterally located than those of the Martians, while their
snouts and teeth were strikingly like those of our African gorilla.
Altogether they were not unlovely when viewed in comparison with
the green Martians.

The cudgel was swinging in the arc which ended upon my upturned
face when a bolt of myriad-legged horror hurled itself through the
doorway full upon the breast of my executioner.  With a shriek of
fear the ape which held me leaped through the open window, but its
mate closed in a terrific death struggle with my preserver, which
was nothing less than my faithful watch-thing; I cannot bring myself
to call so hideous a creature a dog.

As quickly as possible I gained my feet and backing against the wall
I witnessed such a battle as it is vouchsafed few beings to see.
The strength, agility, and blind ferocity of these two creatures
is approached by nothing known to earthly man.  My beast had an
advantage in his first hold, having sunk his mighty fangs far into
the breast of his adversary; but the great arms and paws of the ape,
backed by muscles far transcending those of the Martian men I had
seen, had locked the throat of my guardian and slowly were choking
out his life, and bending back his head and neck upon his body,
where I momentarily expected the former to fall limp at the end of
a broken neck.

In accomplishing this the ape was tearing away the entire front of
its breast, which was held in the vise-like grip of the powerful
jaws.  Back and forth upon the floor they rolled, neither one
emitting a sound of fear or pain.  Presently I saw the great eyes
of my beast bulging completely from their sockets and blood flowing
from its nostrils.  That he was weakening perceptibly was evident,
but so also was the ape, whose struggles were growing momentarily
less.

Suddenly I came to myself and, with that strange instinct which
seems ever to prompt me to my duty, I seized the cudgel, which had
fallen to the floor at the commencement of the battle, and swinging
it with all the power of my earthly arms I crashed it full upon the
head of the ape, crushing his skull as though it had been an
eggshell.

Scarcely had the blow descended when I was confronted with a new
danger.  The ape's mate, recovered from its first shock of terror,
had returned to the scene of the encounter by way of the interior
of the building.  I glimpsed him just before he reached the doorway
and the sight of him, now roaring as he perceived his lifeless
fellow stretched upon the floor, and frothing at the mouth, in the
extremity of his rage, filled me, I must confess, with dire
forebodings.

I am ever willing to stand and fight when the odds are not too
overwhelmingly against me, but in this instance I perceived neither
glory nor profit in pitting my relatively puny strength against
the iron muscles and brutal ferocity of this enraged denizen of an
unknown world; in fact, the only outcome of such an encounter, so
far as I might be concerned, seemed sudden death.

I was standing near the window and I knew that once in the street I
might gain the plaza and safety before the creature could overtake
me; at least there was a chance for safety in flight, against almost
certain death should I remain and fight however desperately.

It is true I held the cudgel, but what could I do with it against
his four great arms?  Even should I break one of them with my first
blow, for I figured that he would attempt to ward off the cudgel,
he could reach out and annihilate me with the others before I could
recover for a second attack.

In the instant that these thoughts passed through my mind I had
turned to make for the window, but my eyes alighting on the form
of my erstwhile guardian threw all thoughts of flight to the four
winds.  He lay gasping upon the floor of the chamber, his great eyes
fastened upon me in what seemed a pitiful appeal for protection.  I
could not withstand that look, nor could I, on second thought, have
deserted my rescuer without giving as good an account of myself in
his behalf as he had in mine.

Without more ado, therefore, I turned to meet the charge of the
infuriated bull ape.  He was now too close upon me for the cudgel to
prove of any effective assistance, so I merely threw it as heavily
as I could at his advancing bulk.  It struck him just below the
knees, eliciting a howl of pain and rage, and so throwing him off
his balance that he lunged full upon me with arms wide stretched
to ease his fall.

Again, as on the preceding day, I had recourse to earthly tactics,
and swinging my right fist full upon the point of his chin I
followed it with a smashing left to the pit of his stomach.
The effect was marvelous, for, as I lightly sidestepped, after
delivering the second blow, he reeled and fell upon the floor
doubled up with pain and gasping for wind.  Leaping over his
prostrate body, I seized the cudgel and finished the monster
before he could regain his feet.

As I delivered the blow a low laugh rang out behind me, and,
turning, I beheld Tars Tarkas, Sola, and three or four warriors
standing in the doorway of the chamber.  As my eyes met theirs I
was, for the second time, the recipient of their zealously guarded
applause.

My absence had been noted by Sola on her awakening, and she had
quickly informed Tars Tarkas, who had set out immediately with a
handful of warriors to search for me.  As they had approached the
limits of the city they had witnessed the actions of the bull ape
as he bolted into the building, frothing with rage.

They had followed immediately behind him, thinking it barely
possible that his actions might prove a clew to my whereabouts
and had witnessed my short but decisive battle with him.  This
encounter, together with my set-to with the Martian warrior on the
previous day and my feats of jumping placed me upon a high pinnacle
in their regard.  Evidently devoid of all the finer sentiments of
friendship, love, or affection, these people fairly worship physical
prowess and bravery, and nothing is too good for the object of their
adoration as long as he maintains his position by repeated examples
of his skill, strength, and courage.

Sola, who had accompanied the searching party of her own volition,
was the only one of the Martians whose face had not been twisted in
laughter as I battled for my life.  She, on the contrary, was sober
with apparent solicitude and, as soon as I had finished the monster,
rushed to me and carefully examined my body for possible wounds or
injuries.  Satisfying herself that I had come off unscathed she
smiled quietly, and, taking my hand, started toward the door of
the chamber.

Tars Tarkas and the other warriors had entered and were standing
over the now rapidly reviving brute which had saved my life, and
whose life I, in turn, had rescued.  They seemed to be deep in
argument, and finally one of them addressed me, but remembering
my ignorance of his language turned back to Tars Tarkas, who, with
a word and gesture, gave some command to the fellow and turned to
follow us from the room.

There seemed something menacing in their attitude toward my beast,
and I hesitated to leave until I had learned the outcome.  It was
well I did so, for the warrior drew an evil looking pistol from its
holster and was on the point of putting an end to the creature when
I sprang forward and struck up his arm.  The bullet striking the
wooden casing of the window exploded, blowing a hole completely
through the wood and masonry.

I then knelt down beside the fearsome-looking thing, and raising it
to its feet motioned for it to follow me.  The looks of surprise
which my actions elicited from the Martians were ludicrous; they
could not understand, except in a feeble and childish way, such
attributes as gratitude and compassion.  The warrior whose gun I
had struck up looked enquiringly at Tars Tarkas, but the latter
signed that I be left to my own devices, and so we returned to
the plaza with my great beast following close at heel, and Sola
grasping me tightly by the arm.

I had at least two friends on Mars; a young woman who watched over
me with motherly solicitude, and a dumb brute which, as I later came
to know, held in its poor ugly carcass more love, more loyalty, more
gratitude than could have been found in the entire five million
green Martians who rove the deserted cities and dead sea bottoms
of Mars.




CHAPTER VII

CHILD-RAISING ON MARS



After a breakfast, which was an exact replica of the meal of the
preceding day and an index of practically every meal which followed
while I was with the green men of Mars, Sola escorted me to the
plaza, where I found the entire community engaged in watching or
helping at the harnessing of huge mastodonian animals to great
three-wheeled chariots.  There were about two hundred and fifty of
these vehicles, each drawn by a single animal, any one of which,
from their appearance, might easily have drawn the entire wagon
train when fully loaded.

The chariots themselves were large, commodious, and gorgeously
decorated.  In each was seated a female Martian loaded with
ornaments of metal, with jewels and silks and furs, and upon the
back of each of the beasts which drew the chariots was perched a
young Martian driver.  Like the animals upon which the warriors were
mounted, the heavier draft animals wore neither bit nor bridle, but
were guided entirely by telepathic means.

This power is wonderfully developed in all Martians, and accounts
largely for the simplicity of their language and the relatively
few spoken words exchanged even in long conversations.  It is the
universal language of Mars, through the medium of which the higher
and lower animals of this world of paradoxes are able to communicate
to a greater or less extent, depending upon the intellectual sphere
of the species and the development of the individual.

As the cavalcade took up the line of march in single file, Sola
dragged me into an empty chariot and we proceeded with the
procession toward the point by which I had entered the city the
day before.  At the head of the caravan rode some two hundred
warriors, five abreast, and a like number brought up the rear,
while twenty-five or thirty outriders flanked us on either side.

Every one but myself--men, women, and children--were heavily armed,
and at the tail of each chariot trotted a Martian hound, my own
beast following closely behind ours; in fact, the faithful creature
never left me voluntarily during the entire ten years I spent on
Mars.  Our way led out across the little valley before the city,
through the hills, and down into the dead sea bottom which I had
traversed on my journey from the incubator to the plaza.  The
incubator, as it proved, was the terminal point of our journey this
day, and, as the entire cavalcade broke into a mad gallop as soon
as we reached the level expanse of sea bottom, we were soon within
sight of our goal.

On reaching it the chariots were parked with military precision
on the four sides of the enclosure, and half a score of warriors,
headed by the enormous chieftain, and including Tars Tarkas and
several other lesser chiefs, dismounted and advanced toward it.
I could see Tars Tarkas explaining something to the principal
chieftain, whose name, by the way, was, as nearly as I can
translate it into English, Lorquas Ptomel, Jed; jed being his
title.

I was soon appraised of the subject of their conversation, as,
calling to Sola, Tars Tarkas signed for her to send me to him.  I
had by this time mastered the intricacies of walking under Martian
conditions, and quickly responding to his command I advanced to
the side of the incubator where the warriors stood.

As I reached their side a glance showed me that all but a very few
eggs had hatched, the incubator being fairly alive with the hideous
little devils.  They ranged in height from three to four feet, and
were moving restlessly about the enclosure as though searching for
food.

As I came to a halt before him, Tars Tarkas pointed over the
incubator and said, "Sak."  I saw that he wanted me to repeat my
performance of yesterday for the edification of Lorquas Ptomel, and,
as I must confess that my prowess gave me no little satisfaction, I
responded quickly, leaping entirely over the parked chariots on the
far side of the incubator.  As I returned, Lorquas Ptomel grunted
something at me, and turning to his warriors gave a few words of
command relative to the incubator.  They paid no further attention
to me and I was thus permitted to remain close and watch their
operations, which consisted in breaking an opening in the wall of
the incubator large enough to permit of the exit of the young
Martians.

On either side of this opening the women and the younger Martians,
both male and female, formed two solid walls leading out through the
chariots and quite away into the plain beyond.  Between these walls
the little Martians scampered, wild as deer; being permitted to run
the full length of the aisle, where they were captured one at a time
by the women and older children; the last in the line capturing the
first little one to reach the end of the gauntlet, her opposite in
the line capturing the second, and so on until all the little
fellows had left the enclosure and been appropriated by some youth
or female.  As the women caught the young they fell out of line and
returned to their respective chariots, while those who fell into the
hands of the young men were later turned over to some of the women.

I saw that the ceremony, if it could be dignified by such a name,
was over, and seeking out Sola I found her in our chariot with a
hideous little creature held tightly in her arms.

The work of rearing young, green Martians consists solely in
teaching them to talk, and to use the weapons of warfare with
which they are loaded down from the very first year of their lives.
Coming from eggs in which they have lain for five years, the period
of incubation, they step forth into the world perfectly developed
except in size.  Entirely unknown to their mothers, who, in turn,
would have difficulty in pointing out the fathers with any degree of
accuracy, they are the common children of the community, and their
education devolves upon the females who chance to capture them as
they leave the incubator.

Their foster mothers may not even have had an egg in the incubator,
as was the case with Sola, who had not commenced to lay, until
less than a year before she became the mother of another woman's
offspring.  But this counts for little among the green Martians, as
parental and filial love is as unknown to them as it is common among
us.  I believe this horrible system which has been carried on for
ages is the direct cause of the loss of all the finer feelings and
higher humanitarian instincts among these poor creatures.  From
birth they know no father or mother love, they know not the meaning
of the word home; they are taught that they are only suffered to
live until they can demonstrate by their physique and ferocity that
they are fit to live.  Should they prove deformed or defective in
any way they are promptly shot; nor do they see a tear shed for a
single one of the many cruel hardships they pass through from
earliest infancy.

I do not mean that the adult Martians are unnecessarily or
intentionally cruel to the young, but theirs is a hard and pitiless
struggle for existence upon a dying planet, the natural resources of
which have dwindled to a point where the support of each additional
life means an added tax upon the community into which it is thrown.

By careful selection they rear only the hardiest specimens of each
species, and with almost supernatural foresight they regulate the
birth rate to merely offset the loss by death.

Each adult Martian female brings forth about thirteen eggs each
year, and those which meet the size, weight, and specific gravity
tests are hidden in the recesses of some subterranean vault where
the temperature is too low for incubation.  Every year these eggs
are carefully examined by a council of twenty chieftains, and all
but about one hundred of the most perfect are destroyed out of each
yearly supply.  At the end of five years about five hundred almost
perfect eggs have been chosen from the thousands brought forth.
These are then placed in the almost air-tight incubators to be
hatched by the sun's rays after a period of another five years.  The
hatching which we had witnessed today was a fairly representative
event of its kind, all but about one per cent of the eggs hatching
in two days.  If the remaining eggs ever hatched we knew nothing of
the fate of the little Martians.  They were not wanted, as their
offspring might inherit and transmit the tendency to prolonged
incubation, and thus upset the system which has maintained for ages
and which permits the adult Martians to figure the proper time for
return to the incubators, almost to an hour.

The incubators are built in remote fastnesses, where there is little
or no likelihood of their being discovered by other tribes.  The
result of such a catastrophe would mean no children in the community
for another five years.  I was later to witness the results of the
discovery of an alien incubator.

The community of which the green Martians with whom my lot was cast
formed a part was composed of some thirty thousand souls.  They
roamed an enormous tract of arid and semi-arid land between forty
and eighty degrees south latitude, and bounded on the east and
west by two large fertile tracts.  Their headquarters lay in the
southwest corner of this district, near the crossing of two of
the so-called Martian canals.

As the incubator had been placed far north of their own territory
in a supposedly uninhabited and unfrequented area, we had before us
a tremendous journey, concerning which I, of course, knew nothing.

After our return to the dead city I passed several days in
comparative idleness.  On the day following our return all the
warriors had ridden forth early in the morning and had not returned
until just before darkness fell.  As I later learned, they had been
to the subterranean vaults in which the eggs were kept and had
transported them to the incubator, which they had then walled up
for another five years, and which, in all probability, would not
be visited again during that period.

The vaults which hid the eggs until they were ready for the
incubator were located many miles south of the incubator, and would
be visited yearly by the council of twenty chieftains.  Why they did
not arrange to build their vaults and incubators nearer home has
always been a mystery to me, and, like many other Martian mysteries,
unsolved and unsolvable by earthly reasoning and customs.

Sola's duties were now doubled, as she was compelled to care for the
young Martian as well as for me, but neither one of us required much
attention, and as we were both about equally advanced in Martian
education, Sola took it upon herself to train us together.

Her prize consisted in a male about four feet tall, very strong
and physically perfect; also, he learned quickly, and we had
considerable amusement, at least I did, over the keen rivalry we
displayed.  The Martian language, as I have said, is extremely
simple, and in a week I could make all my wants known and understand
nearly everything that was said to me.  Likewise, under Sola's
tutelage, I developed my telepathic powers so that I shortly could
sense practically everything that went on around me.

What surprised Sola most in me was that while I could catch
telepathic messages easily from others, and often when they were
not intended for me, no one could read a jot from my mind under any
circumstances.  At first this vexed me, but later I was very glad
of it, as it gave me an undoubted advantage over the Martians.




CHAPTER VIII

A FAIR CAPTIVE FROM THE SKY



The third day after the incubator ceremony we set forth toward home,
but scarcely had the head of the procession debouched into the open
ground before the city than orders were given for an immediate and
hasty return.  As though trained for years in this particular
evolution, the green Martians melted like mist into the spacious
doorways of the nearby buildings, until, in less than three minutes,
the entire cavalcade of chariots, mastodons and mounted warriors
was nowhere to be seen.

Sola and I had entered a building upon the front of the city, in
fact, the same one in which I had had my encounter with the apes,
and, wishing to see what had caused the sudden retreat, I mounted
to an upper floor and peered from the window out over the valley
and the hills beyond; and there I saw the cause of their sudden
scurrying to cover.  A huge craft, long, low, and gray-painted,
swung slowly over the crest of the nearest hill.  Following it came
another, and another, and another, until twenty of them, swinging
low above the ground, sailed slowly and majestically toward us.

Each carried a strange banner swung from stem to stern above the
upper works, and upon the prow of each was painted some odd device
that gleamed in the sunlight and showed plainly even at the distance
at which we were from the vessels.  I could see figures crowding
the forward decks and upper works of the air craft.  Whether they
had discovered us or simply were looking at the deserted city I
could not say, but in any event they received a rude reception,
for suddenly and without warning the green Martian warriors fired a
terrific volley from the windows of the buildings facing the little
valley across which the great ships were so peacefully advancing.

Instantly the scene changed as by magic; the foremost vessel swung
broadside toward us, and bringing her guns into play returned our
fire, at the same time moving parallel to our front for a short
distance and then turning back with the evident intention of
completing a great circle which would bring her up to position once
more opposite our firing line; the other vessels followed in her
wake, each one opening upon us as she swung into position.  Our own
fire never diminished, and I doubt if twenty-five per cent of our
shots went wild.  It had never been given me to see such deadly
accuracy of aim, and it seemed as though a little figure on one of
the craft dropped at the explosion of each bullet, while the banners
and upper works dissolved in spurts of flame as the irresistible
projectiles of our warriors mowed through them.

The fire from the vessels was most ineffectual, owing, as I
afterward learned, to the unexpected suddenness of the first volley,
which caught the ship's crews entirely unprepared and the sighting
apparatus of the guns unprotected from the deadly aim of our
warriors.

It seems that each green warrior has certain objective points for
his fire under relatively identical circumstances of warfare.  For
example, a proportion of them, always the best marksmen, direct
their fire entirely upon the wireless finding and sighting apparatus
of the big guns of an attacking naval force; another detail attends
to the smaller guns in the same way; others pick off the gunners;
still others the officers; while certain other quotas concentrate
their attention upon the other members of the crew, upon the upper
works, and upon the steering gear and propellers.

Twenty minutes after the first volley the great fleet swung trailing
off in the direction from which it had first appeared.  Several of
the craft were limping perceptibly, and seemed but barely under the
control of their depleted crews.  Their fire had ceased entirely
and all their energies seemed focused upon escape.  Our warriors
then rushed up to the roofs of the buildings which we occupied and
followed the retreating armada with a continuous fusillade of deadly
fire.

One by one, however, the ships managed to dip below the crests of
the outlying hills until only one barely moving craft was in sight.
This had received the brunt of our fire and seemed to be entirely
unmanned, as not a moving figure was visible upon her decks.  Slowly
she swung from her course, circling back toward us in an erratic and
pitiful manner.  Instantly the warriors ceased firing, for it was
quite apparent that the vessel was entirely helpless, and, far from
being in a position to inflict harm upon us, she could not even
control herself sufficiently to escape.

As she neared the city the warriors rushed out upon the plain to
meet her, but it was evident that she still was too high for them
to hope to reach her decks.  From my vantage point in the window I
could see the bodies of her crew strewn about, although I could not
make out what manner of creatures they might be.  Not a sign of life
was manifest upon her as she drifted slowly with the light breeze
in a southeasterly direction.

She was drifting some fifty feet above the ground, followed by all
but some hundred of the warriors who had been ordered back to the
roofs to cover the possibility of a return of the fleet, or of
reinforcements.  It soon became evident that she would strike the
face of the buildings about a mile south of our position, and as I
watched the progress of the chase I saw a number of warriors gallop
ahead, dismount and enter the building she seemed destined to touch.

As the craft neared the building, and just before she struck, the
Martian warriors swarmed upon her from the windows, and with their
great spears eased the shock of the collision, and in a few moments
they had thrown out grappling hooks and the big boat was being
hauled to ground by their fellows below.

After making her fast, they swarmed the sides and searched the
vessel from stem to stern.  I could see them examining the dead
sailors, evidently for signs of life, and presently a party of
them appeared from below dragging a little figure among them.
The creature was considerably less than half as tall as the green
Martian warriors, and from my balcony I could see that it walked
erect upon two legs and surmised that it was some new and strange
Martian monstrosity with which I had not as yet become acquainted.

They removed their prisoner to the ground and then commenced a
systematic rifling of the vessel.  This operation required several
hours, during which time a number of the chariots were requisitioned
to transport the loot, which consisted in arms, ammunition, silks,
furs, jewels, strangely carved stone vessels, and a quantity of
solid foods and liquids, including many casks of water, the first
I had seen since my advent upon Mars.

After the last load had been removed the warriors made lines fast to
the craft and towed her far out into the valley in a southwesterly
direction.  A few of them then boarded her and were busily engaged
in what appeared, from my distant position, as the emptying of the
contents of various carboys upon the dead bodies of the sailors and
over the decks and works of the vessel.

This operation concluded, they hastily clambered over her sides,
sliding down the guy ropes to the ground.  The last warrior to leave
the deck turned and threw something back upon the vessel, waiting an
instant to note the outcome of his act.  As a faint spurt of flame
rose from the point where the missile struck he swung over the side
and was quickly upon the ground.  Scarcely had he alighted than
the guy ropes were simultaneous released, and the great warship,
lightened by the removal of the loot, soared majestically into
the air, her decks and upper works a mass of roaring flames.

Slowly she drifted to the southeast, rising higher and higher as the
flames ate away her wooden parts and diminished the weight upon her.
Ascending to the roof of the building I watched her for hours, until
finally she was lost in the dim vistas of the distance.  The sight
was awe-inspiring in the extreme as one contemplated this mighty
floating funeral pyre, drifting unguided and unmanned through
the lonely wastes of the Martian heavens; a derelict of death
and destruction, typifying the life story of these strange and
ferocious creatures into whose unfriendly hands fate had carried it.

Much depressed, and, to me, unaccountably so, I slowly descended to
the street.  The scene I had witnessed seemed to mark the defeat
and annihilation of the forces of a kindred people, rather than
the routing by our green warriors of a horde of similar, though
unfriendly, creatures.  I could not fathom the seeming
hallucination, nor could I free myself from it; but somewhere in
the innermost recesses of my soul I felt a strange yearning toward
these unknown foemen, and a mighty hope surged through me that the
fleet would return and demand a reckoning from the green warriors
who had so ruthlessly and wantonly attacked it.

Close at my heel, in his now accustomed place, followed Woola, the
hound, and as I emerged upon the street Sola rushed up to me as
though I had been the object of some search on her part.  The
cavalcade was returning to the plaza, the homeward march having been
given up for that day; nor, in fact, was it recommenced for more
than a week, owing to the fear of a return attack by the air craft.

Lorquas Ptomel was too astute an old warrior to be caught upon the
open plains with a caravan of chariots and children, and so we
remained at the deserted city until the danger seemed passed.

As Sola and I entered the plaza a sight met my eyes which filled my
whole being with a great surge of mingled hope, fear, exultation,
and depression, and yet most dominant was a subtle sense of relief
and happiness; for just as we neared the throng of Martians I caught
a glimpse of the prisoner from the battle craft who was being
roughly dragged into a nearby building by a couple of green Martian
females.

And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish
figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past
life.  She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing
through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she
turned, and her eyes met mine.  Her face was oval and beautiful in
the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite,
her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of
coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming
coiffure.  Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against
which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully
molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who
accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she
was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty
of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

As her gaze rested on me her eyes opened wide in astonishment, and
she made a little sign with her free hand; a sign which I did not,
of course, understand.  Just a moment we gazed upon each other, and
then the look of hope and renewed courage which had glorified her
face as she discovered me, faded into one of utter dejection,
mingled with loathing and contempt.  I realized I had not answered
her signal, and ignorant as I was of Martian customs, I intuitively
felt that she had made an appeal for succor and protection which my
unfortunate ignorance had prevented me from answering.  And then she
was dragged out of my sight into the depths of the deserted edifice.




CHAPTER IX

I LEARN THE LANGUAGE



As I came back to myself I glanced at Sola, who had witnessed this
encounter and I was surprised to note a strange expression upon her
usually expressionless countenance.  What her thoughts were I did
not know, for as yet I had learned but little of the Martian tongue;
enough only to suffice for my daily needs.

As I reached the doorway of our building a strange surprise awaited
me.  A warrior approached bearing the arms, ornaments, and full
accouterments of his kind.  These he presented to me with a few
unintelligible words, and a bearing at once respectful and menacing.

Later, Sola, with the aid of several of the other women, remodeled
the trappings to fit my lesser proportions, and after they completed
the work I went about garbed in all the panoply of war.

From then on Sola instructed me in the mysteries of the various
weapons, and with the Martian young I spent several hours each day
practicing upon the plaza.  I was not yet proficient with all the
weapons, but my great familiarity with similar earthly weapons made
me an unusually apt pupil, and I progressed in a very satisfactory
manner.

The training of myself and the young Martians was conducted solely
by the women, who not only attend to the education of the young
in the arts of individual defense and offense, but are also the
artisans who produce every manufactured article wrought by the
green Martians.  They make the powder, the cartridges, the firearms;
in fact everything of value is produced by the females.  In time
of actual warfare they form a part of the reserves, and when the
necessity arises fight with even greater intelligence and ferocity
than the men.

The men are trained in the higher branches of the art of war; in
strategy and the maneuvering of large bodies of troops.  They make
the laws as they are needed; a new law for each emergency.  They are
unfettered by precedent in the administration of justice.  Customs
have been handed down by ages of repetition, but the punishment for
ignoring a custom is a matter for individual treatment by a jury of
the culprit's peers, and I may say that justice seldom misses fire,
but seems rather to rule in inverse ratio to the ascendency of law.
In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people; they have
no lawyers.

I did not see the prisoner again for several days subsequent to our
first encounter, and then only to catch a fleeting glimpse of her as
she was being conducted to the great audience chamber where I had
had my first meeting with Lorquas Ptomel.  I could not but note the
unnecessary harshness and brutality with which her guards treated
her; so different from the almost maternal kindliness which Sola
manifested toward me, and the respectful attitude of the few green
Martians who took the trouble to notice me at all.

I had observed on the two occasions when I had seen her that the
prisoner exchanged words with her guards, and this convinced me that
they spoke, or at least could make themselves understood by a common
language.  With this added incentive I nearly drove Sola distracted
by my importunities to hasten on my education and within a few more
days I had mastered the Martian tongue sufficiently well to enable
me to carry on a passable conversation and to fully understand
practically all that I heard.

At this time our sleeping quarters were occupied by three or four
females and a couple of the recently hatched young, beside Sola and
her youthful ward, myself, and Woola the hound.  After they had
retired for the night it was customary for the adults to carry on a
desultory conversation for a short time before lapsing into sleep,
and now that I could understand their language I was always a keen
listener, although I never proffered any remarks myself.

On the night following the prisoner's visit to the audience chamber
the conversation finally fell upon this subject, and I was all ears
on the instant.  I had feared to question Sola relative to the
beautiful captive, as I could not but recall the strange expression
I had noted upon her face after my first encounter with the
prisoner.  That it denoted jealousy I could not say, and yet,
judging all things by mundane standards as I still did, I felt it
safer to affect indifference in the matter until I learned more
surely Sola's attitude toward the object of my solicitude.

Sarkoja, one of the older women who shared our domicile, had been
present at the audience as one of the captive's guards, and it
was toward her the question turned.

"When," asked one of the women, "will we enjoy the death throes of
the red one? or does Lorquas Ptomel, Jed, intend holding her for
ransom?"

"They have decided to carry her with us back to Thark, and exhibit
her last agonies at the great games before Tal Hajus," replied
Sarkoja.

"What will be the manner of her going out?" inquired Sola.  "She
is very small and very beautiful; I had hoped that they would hold
her for ransom."

Sarkoja and the other women grunted angrily at this evidence of
weakness on the part of Sola.

"It is sad, Sola, that you were not born a million years ago,"
snapped Sarkoja, "when all the hollows of the land were filled with
water, and the peoples were as soft as the stuff they sailed upon.
In our day we have progressed to a point where such sentiments mark
weakness and atavism.  It will not be well for you to permit Tars
Tarkas to learn that you hold such degenerate sentiments, as I
doubt that he would care to entrust such as you with the grave
responsibilities of maternity."

"I see nothing wrong with my expression of interest in this red
woman," retorted Sola.  "She has never harmed us, nor would she
should we have fallen into her hands.  It is only the men of her
kind who war upon us, and I have ever thought that their attitude
toward us is but the reflection of ours toward them.  They live at
peace with all their fellows, except when duty calls upon them to
make war, while we are at peace with none; forever warring among
our own kind as well as upon the red men, and even in our own
communities the individuals fight amongst themselves.  Oh, it is
one continual, awful period of bloodshed from the time we break the
shell until we gladly embrace the bosom of the river of mystery,
the dark and ancient Iss which carries us to an unknown, but at
least no more frightful and terrible existence!  Fortunate indeed is
he who meets his end in an early death.  Say what you please to Tars
Tarkas, he can mete out no worse fate to me than a continuation of
the horrible existence we are forced to lead in this life."

This wild outbreak on the part of Sola so greatly surprised and
shocked the other women, that, after a few words of general
reprimand, they all lapsed into silence and were soon asleep.  One
thing the episode had accomplished was to assure me of Sola's
friendliness toward the poor girl, and also to convince me that I
had been extremely fortunate in falling into her hands rather than
those of some of the other females.  I knew that she was fond of me,
and now that I had discovered that she hated cruelty and barbarity
I was confident that I could depend upon her to aid me and the girl
captive to escape, provided of course that such a thing was within
the range of possibilities.

I did not even know that there were any better conditions to escape
to, but I was more than willing to take my chances among people
fashioned after my own mold rather than to remain longer among the
hideous and bloodthirsty green men of Mars.  But where to go, and
how, was as much of a puzzle to me as the age-old search for the
spring of eternal life has been to earthly men since the beginning
of time.

I decided that at the first opportunity I would take Sola into my
confidence and openly ask her to aid me, and with this resolution
strong upon me I turned among my silks and furs and slept the
dreamless and refreshing sleep of Mars.




CHAPTER X

CHAMPION AND CHIEF



Early the next morning I was astir.  Considerable freedom was
allowed me, as Sola had informed me that so long as I did not
attempt to leave the city I was free to go and come as I pleased.
She had warned me, however, against venturing forth unarmed, as
this city, like all other deserted metropolises of an ancient
Martian civilization, was peopled by the great white apes of my
second day's adventure.

In advising me that I must not leave the boundaries of the city Sola
had explained that Woola would prevent this anyway should I attempt
it, and she warned me most urgently not to arouse his fierce nature
by ignoring his warnings should I venture too close to the forbidden
territory.  His nature was such, she said, that he would bring me
back into the city dead or alive should I persist in opposing him;
"preferably dead," she added.

On this morning I had chosen a new street to explore when suddenly
I found myself at the limits of the city.  Before me were low hills
pierced by narrow and inviting ravines.  I longed to explore the
country before me, and, like the pioneer stock from which I sprang,
to view what the landscape beyond the encircling hills might
disclose from the summits which shut out my view.

It also occurred to me that this would prove an excellent
opportunity to test the qualities of Woola.  I was convinced that
the brute loved me; I had seen more evidences of affection in him
than in any other Martian animal, man or beast, and I was sure that
gratitude for the acts that had twice saved his life would more
than outweigh his loyalty to the duty imposed upon him by cruel
and loveless masters.

As I approached the boundary line Woola ran anxiously before me, and
thrust his body against my legs.  His expression was pleading rather
than ferocious, nor did he bare his great tusks or utter his fearful
guttural warnings.  Denied the friendship and companionship of my
kind, I had developed considerable affection for Woola and Sola,
for the normal earthly man must have some outlet for his natural
affections, and so I decided upon an appeal to a like instinct in
this great brute, sure that I would not be disappointed.

I had never petted nor fondled him, but now I sat upon the ground
and putting my arms around his heavy neck I stroked and coaxed him,
talking in my newly acquired Martian tongue as I would have to my
hound at home, as I would have talked to any other friend among the
lower animals.  His response to my manifestation of affection was
remarkable to a degree; he stretched his great mouth to its full
width, baring the entire expanse of his upper rows of tusks and
wrinkling his snout until his great eyes were almost hidden by the
folds of flesh.  If you have ever seen a collie smile you may have
some idea of Woola's facial distortion.

He threw himself upon his back and fairly wallowed at my feet;
jumped up and sprang upon me, rolling me upon the ground by his
great weight; then wriggling and squirming around me like a playful
puppy presenting its back for the petting it craves.  I could not
resist the ludicrousness of the spectacle, and holding my sides I
rocked back and forth in the first laughter which had passed my lips
in many days; the first, in fact, since the morning Powell had left
camp when his horse, long unused, had precipitately and unexpectedly
bucked him off headforemost into a pot of frijoles.

My laughter frightened Woola, his antics ceased and he crawled
pitifully toward me, poking his ugly head far into my lap; and then
I remembered what laughter signified on Mars--torture, suffering,
death.  Quieting myself, I rubbed the poor old fellow's head and
back, talked to him for a few minutes, and then in an authoritative
tone commanded him to follow me, and arising started for the hills.

There was no further question of authority between us; Woola was my
devoted slave from that moment hence, and I his only and undisputed
master.  My walk to the hills occupied but a few minutes, and I
found nothing of particular interest to reward me.  Numerous
brilliantly colored and strangely formed wild flowers dotted the
ravines and from the summit of the first hill I saw still other
hills stretching off toward the north, and rising, one range above
another, until lost in mountains of quite respectable dimensions;
though I afterward found that only a few peaks on all Mars exceed
four thousand feet in height; the suggestion of magnitude was merely
relative.

My morning's walk had been large with importance to me for it had
resulted in a perfect understanding with Woola, upon whom Tars
Tarkas relied for my safe keeping.  I now knew that while
theoretically a prisoner I was virtually free, and I hastened to
regain the city limits before the defection of Woola could be
discovered by his erstwhile masters.  The adventure decided me never
again to leave the limits of my prescribed stamping grounds until I
was ready to venture forth for good and all, as it would certainly
result in a curtailment of my liberties, as well as the probable
death of Woola, were we to be discovered.

On regaining the plaza I had my third glimpse of the captive girl.
She was standing with her guards before the entrance to the audience
chamber, and as I approached she gave me one haughty glance and
turned her back full upon me.  The act was so womanly, so earthly
womanly, that though it stung my pride it also warmed my heart with
a feeling of companionship; it was good to know that someone else on
Mars beside myself had human instincts of a civilized order, even
though the manifestation of them was so painful and mortifying.

Had a green Martian woman desired to show dislike or contempt she
would, in all likelihood, have done it with a sword thrust or a
movement of her trigger finger; but as their sentiments are mostly
atrophied it would have required a serious injury to have aroused
such passions in them.  Sola, let me add, was an exception; I never
saw her perform a cruel or uncouth act, or fail in uniform
kindliness and good nature.  She was indeed, as her fellow Martian
had said of her, an atavism; a dear and precious reversion to a
former type of loved and loving ancestor.

Seeing that the prisoner seemed the center of attraction I halted to
view the proceedings.  I had not long to wait for presently Lorquas
Ptomel and his retinue of chieftains approached the building and,
signing the guards to follow with the prisoner entered the audience
chamber.  Realizing that I was a somewhat favored character, and
also convinced that the warriors did not know of my proficiency in
their language, as I had pleaded with Sola to keep this a secret on
the grounds that I did not wish to be forced to talk with the men
until I had perfectly mastered the Martian tongue, I chanced an
attempt to enter the audience chamber and listen to the proceedings.

The council squatted upon the steps of the rostrum, while below them
stood the prisoner and her two guards.  I saw that one of the women
was Sarkoja, and thus understood how she had been present at the
hearing of the preceding day, the results of which she had reported
to the occupants of our dormitory last night.  Her attitude toward
the captive was most harsh and brutal.  When she held her, she sunk
her rudimentary nails into the poor girl's flesh, or twisted her
arm in a most painful manner.  When it was necessary to move from
one spot to another she either jerked her roughly, or pushed her
headlong before her.  She seemed to be venting upon this poor
defenseless creature all the hatred, cruelty, ferocity, and spite
of her nine hundred years, backed by unguessable ages of fierce
and brutal ancestors.

The other woman was less cruel because she was entirely indifferent;
if the prisoner had been left to her alone, and fortunately she was
at night, she would have received no harsh treatment, nor, by the
same token would she have received any attention at all.

As Lorquas Ptomel raised his eyes to address the prisoner they fell
on me and he turned to Tars Tarkas with a word, and gesture of
impatience.  Tars Tarkas made some reply which I could not catch,
but which caused Lorquas Ptomel to smile; after which they paid no
further attention to me.

"What is your name?" asked Lorquas Ptomel, addressing the prisoner.

"Dejah Thoris, daughter of Mors Kajak of Helium."

"And the nature of your expedition?" he continued.

"It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father's
father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to
take atmospheric density tests," replied the fair prisoner, in a
low, well-modulated voice.

"We were unprepared for battle," she continued, "as we were on a
peaceful mission, as our banners and the colors of our craft
denoted.  The work we were doing was as much in your interests as
in ours, for you know full well that were it not for our labors and
the fruits of our scientific operations there would not be enough
air or water on Mars to support a single human life.  For ages we
have maintained the air and water supply at practically the same
point without an appreciable loss, and we have done this in the
face of the brutal and ignorant interference of your green men.

"Why, oh, why will you not learn to live in amity with your fellows,
must you ever go on down the ages to your final extinction but
little above the plane of the dumb brutes that serve you!  A people
without written language, without art, without homes, without love;
the victim of eons of the horrible community idea.  Owning
everything in common, even to your women and children, has resulted
in your owning nothing in common.  You hate each other as you hate
all else except yourselves.  Come back to the ways of our common
ancestors, come back to the light of kindliness and fellowship.  The
way is open to you, you will find the hands of the red men stretched
out to aid you.  Together we may do still more to regenerate our
dying planet.  The granddaughter of the greatest and mightiest of
the red jeddaks has asked you.  Will you come?"

Lorquas Ptomel and the warriors sat looking silently and intently at
the young woman for several moments after she had ceased speaking.
What was passing in their minds no man may know, but that they were
moved I truly believe, and if one man high among them had been
strong enough to rise above custom, that moment would have marked
a new and mighty era for Mars.

I saw Tars Tarkas rise to speak, and on his face was such an
expression as I had never seen upon the countenance of a green
Martian warrior.  It bespoke an inward and mighty battle with self,
with heredity, with age-old custom, and as he opened his mouth to
speak, a look almost of benignity, of kindliness, momentarily
lighted up his fierce and terrible countenance.

What words of moment were to have fallen from his lips were never
spoken, as just then a young warrior, evidently sensing the trend
of thought among the older men, leaped down from the steps of the
rostrum, and striking the frail captive a powerful blow across
the face, which felled her to the floor, placed his foot upon her
prostrate form and turning toward the assembled council broke into
peals of horrid, mirthless laughter.

For an instant I thought Tars Tarkas would strike him dead, nor did
the aspect of Lorquas Ptomel augur any too favorably for the brute,
but the mood passed, their old selves reasserted their ascendency,
and they smiled.  It was portentous however that they did not laugh
aloud, for the brute's act constituted a side-splitting witticism
according to the ethics which rule green Martian humor.

That I have taken moments to write down a part of what occurred as
that blow fell does not signify that I remained inactive for any
such length of time.  I think I must have sensed something of what
was coming, for I realize now that I was crouched as for a spring as
I saw the blow aimed at her beautiful, upturned, pleading face, and
ere the hand descended I was halfway across the hall.

Scarcely had his hideous laugh rang out but once, when I was upon
him.  The brute was twelve feet in height and armed to the teeth,
but I believe that I could have accounted for the whole roomful in
the terrific intensity of my rage.  Springing upward, I struck him
full in the face as he turned at my warning cry and then as he drew
his short-sword I drew mine and sprang up again upon his breast,
hooking one leg over the butt of his pistol and grasping one of his
huge tusks with my left hand while I delivered blow after blow upon
his enormous chest.

He could not use his short-sword to advantage because I was too
close to him, nor could he draw his pistol, which he attempted to do
in direct opposition to Martian custom which says that you may not
fight a fellow warrior in private combat with any other than the
weapon with which you are attacked.  In fact he could do nothing but
make a wild and futile attempt to dislodge me.  With all his immense
bulk he was little if any stronger than I, and it was but the matter
of a moment or two before he sank, bleeding and lifeless, to the
floor.

Dejah Thoris had raised herself upon one elbow and was watching the
battle with wide, staring eyes.  When I had regained my feet I
raised her in my arms and bore her to one of the benches at the side
of the room.

Again no Martian interfered with me, and tearing a piece of silk
from my cape I endeavored to staunch the flow of blood from her
nostrils.  I was soon successful as her injuries amounted to little
more than an ordinary nosebleed, and when she could speak she placed
her hand upon my arm and looking up into my eyes, said:

"Why did you do it?  You who refused me even friendly recognition in
the first hour of my peril!  And now you risk your life and kill one
of your companions for my sake.  I cannot understand.  What strange
manner of man are you, that you consort with the green men, though
your form is that of my race, while your color is little darker than
that of the white ape?  Tell me, are you human, or are you more than
human?"

"It is a strange tale," I replied, "too long to attempt to tell you
now, and one which I so much doubt the credibility of myself that
I fear to hope that others will believe it.  Suffice it, for the
present, that I am your friend, and, so far as our captors will
permit, your protector and your servant."

"Then you too are a prisoner?  But why, then, those arms and the
regalia of a Tharkian chieftain?  What is your name?  Where your
country?"

"Yes, Dejah Thoris, I too am a prisoner; my name is John Carter,
and I claim Virginia, one of the United States of America, Earth,
as my home; but why I am permitted to wear arms I do not know,
nor was I aware that my regalia was that of a chieftain."

We were interrupted at this juncture by the approach of one of the
warriors, bearing arms, accouterments and ornaments, and in a flash
one of her questions was answered and a puzzle cleared up for me.
I saw that the body of my dead antagonist had been stripped, and I
read in the menacing yet respectful attitude of the warrior who had
brought me these trophies of the kill the same demeanor as that
evinced by the other who had brought me my original equipment, and
now for the first time I realized that my blow, on the occasion of
my first battle in the audience chamber had resulted in the death
of my adversary.

The reason for the whole attitude displayed toward me was now
apparent; I had won my spurs, so to speak, and in the crude justice,
which always marks Martian dealings, and which, among other things,
has caused me to call her the planet of paradoxes, I was accorded
the honors due a conqueror; the trappings and the position of the
man I killed.  In truth, I was a Martian chieftain, and this I
learned later was the cause of my great freedom and my toleration
in the audience chamber.

As I had turned to receive the dead warrior's chattels I had
noticed that Tars Tarkas and several others had pushed forward
toward us, and the eyes of the former rested upon me in a most
quizzical manner.  Finally he addressed me:

"You speak the tongue of Barsoom quite readily for one who was deaf
and dumb to us a few short days ago.  Where did you learn it, John
Carter?"

"You, yourself, are responsible, Tars Tarkas," I replied, "in that
you furnished me with an instructress of remarkable ability; I have
to thank Sola for my learning."

"She has done well," he answered, "but your education in other
respects needs considerable polish.  Do you know what your
unprecedented temerity would have cost you had you failed to
kill either of the two chieftains whose metal you now wear?"

"I presume that that one whom I had failed to kill, would have
killed me," I answered, smiling.

"No, you are wrong.  Only in the last extremity of self-defense
would a Martian warrior kill a prisoner; we like to save them for
other purposes," and his face bespoke possibilities that were not
pleasant to dwell upon.

"But one thing can save you now," he continued.  "Should you, in
recognition of your remarkable valor, ferocity, and prowess, be
considered by Tal Hajus as worthy of his service you may be taken
into the community and become a full-fledged Tharkian.  Until we
reach the headquarters of Tal Hajus it is the will of Lorquas Ptomel
that you be accorded the respect your acts have earned you.  You
will be treated by us as a Tharkian chieftain, but you must not
forget that every chief who ranks you is responsible for your safe
delivery to our mighty and most ferocious ruler.  I am done."

"I hear you, Tars Tarkas," I answered.  "As you know I am not of
Barsoom; your ways are not my ways, and I can only act in the
future as I have in the past, in accordance with the dictates of
my conscience and guided by the standards of mine own people.  If
you will leave me alone I will go in peace, but if not, let the
individual Barsoomians with whom I must deal either respect my
rights as a stranger among you, or take whatever consequences may
befall.  Of one thing let us be sure, whatever may be your ultimate
intentions toward this unfortunate young woman, whoever would offer
her injury or insult in the future must figure on making a full
accounting to me.  I understand that you belittle all sentiments of
generosity and kindliness, but I do not, and I can convince your
most doughty warrior that these characteristics are not incompatible
with an ability to fight."

Ordinarily I am not given to long speeches, nor ever before had I
descended to bombast, but I had guessed at the keynote which would
strike an answering chord in the breasts of the green Martians, nor
was I wrong, for my harangue evidently deeply impressed them, and
their attitude toward me thereafter was still further respectful.

Tars Tarkas himself seemed pleased with my reply, but his only
comment was more or less enigmatical--"And I think I know Tal Hajus,
Jeddak of Thark."

I now turned my attention to Dejah Thoris, and assisting her to
her feet I turned with her toward the exit, ignoring her hovering
guardian harpies as well as the inquiring glances of the chieftains.
Was I not now a chieftain also!  Well, then, I would assume the
responsibilities of one.  They did not molest us, and so Dejah
Thoris, Princess of Helium, and John Carter, gentleman of Virginia,
followed by the faithful Woola, passed through utter silence from
the audience chamber of Lorquas Ptomel, Jed among the Tharks of
Barsoom.




CHAPTER XI

WITH DEJAH THORIS



As we reached the open the two female guards who had been detailed
to watch over Dejah Thoris hurried up and made as though to assume
custody of her once more.  The poor child shrank against me and I
felt her two little hands fold tightly over my arm.  Waving the
women away, I informed them that Sola would attend the captive
hereafter, and I further warned Sarkoja that any more of her cruel
attentions bestowed upon Dejah Thoris would result in Sarkoja's
sudden and painful demise.

My threat was unfortunate and resulted in more harm than good to
Dejah Thoris, for, as I learned later, men do not kill women upon
Mars, nor women, men.  So Sarkoja merely gave us an ugly look and
departed to hatch up deviltries against us.

I soon found Sola and explained to her that I wished her to guard
Dejah Thoris as she had guarded me; that I wished her to find other
quarters where they would not be molested by Sarkoja, and I finally
informed her that I myself would take up my quarters among the men.

Sola glanced at the accouterments which were carried in my hand and
slung across my shoulder.

"You are a great chieftain now, John Carter," she said, "and I
must do your bidding, though indeed I am glad to do it under any
circumstances.  The man whose metal you carry was young, but he was
a great warrior, and had by his promotions and kills won his way
close to the rank of Tars Tarkas, who, as you know, is second to
Lorquas Ptomel only.  You are eleventh, there are but ten chieftains
in this community who rank you in prowess."

"And if I should kill Lorquas Ptomel?" I asked.

"You would be first, John Carter; but you may only win that honor
by the will of the entire council that Lorquas Ptomel meet you in
combat, or should he attack you, you may kill him in self-defense,
and thus win first place."

I laughed, and changed the subject.  I had no particular desire
to kill Lorquas Ptomel, and less to be a jed among the Tharks.

I accompanied Sola and Dejah Thoris in a search for new quarters,
which we found in a building nearer the audience chamber and of far
more pretentious architecture than our former habitation.  We also
found in this building real sleeping apartments with ancient beds of
highly wrought metal swinging from enormous gold chains depending
from the marble ceilings.  The decoration of the walls was most
elaborate, and, unlike the frescoes in the other buildings I had
examined, portrayed many human figures in the compositions.  These
were of people like myself, and of a much lighter color than
Dejah Thoris.  They were clad in graceful, flowing robes, highly
ornamented with metal and jewels, and their luxuriant hair was of
a beautiful golden and reddish bronze.  The men were beardless
and only a few wore arms.  The scenes depicted for the most part,
a fair-skinned, fair-haired people at play.

Dejah Thoris clasped her hands with an exclamation of rapture as she
gazed upon these magnificent works of art, wrought by a people long
extinct; while Sola, on the other hand, apparently did not see them.

We decided to use this room, on the second floor and overlooking
the plaza, for Dejah Thoris and Sola, and another room adjoining
and in the rear for the cooking and supplies.  I then dispatched
Sola to bring the bedding and such food and utensils as she might
need, telling her that I would guard Dejah Thoris until her return.

As Sola departed Dejah Thoris turned to me with a faint smile.

"And whereto, then, would your prisoner escape should you leave her,
unless it was to follow you and crave your protection, and ask your
pardon for the cruel thoughts she has harbored against you these
past few days?"

"You are right," I answered, "there is no escape for either of us
unless we go together."

"I heard your challenge to the creature you call Tars Tarkas, and
I think I understand your position among these people, but what I
cannot fathom is your statement that you are not of Barsoom."

"In the name of my first ancestor, then," she continued, "where may
you be from?  You are like unto my people, and yet so unlike.  You
speak my language, and yet I heard you tell Tars Tarkas that you had
but learned it recently.  All Barsoomians speak the same tongue from
the ice-clad south to the ice-clad north, though their written
languages differ.  Only in the valley Dor, where the river Iss
empties into the lost sea of Korus, is there supposed to be a
different language spoken, and, except in the legends of our
ancestors, there is no record of a Barsoomian returning up the river
Iss, from the shores of Korus in the valley of Dor.  Do not tell me
that you have thus returned!  They would kill you horribly anywhere
upon the surface of Barsoom if that were true; tell me it is not!"

Her eyes were filled with a strange, weird light; her voice was
pleading, and her little hands, reached up upon my breast, were
pressed against me as though to wring a denial from my very heart.

"I do not know your customs, Dejah Thoris, but in my own Virginia
a gentleman does not lie to save himself; I am not of Dor; I have
never seen the mysterious Iss; the lost sea of Korus is still lost,
so far as I am concerned.  Do you believe me?"

And then it struck me suddenly that I was very anxious that she
should believe me.  It was not that I feared the results which would
follow a general belief that I had returned from the Barsoomian
heaven or hell, or whatever it was.  Why was it, then!  Why should
I care what she thought?  I looked down at her; her beautiful face
upturned, and her wonderful eyes opening up the very depth of her
soul; and as my eyes met hers I knew why, and--I shuddered.

A similar wave of feeling seemed to stir her; she drew away from me
with a sigh, and with her earnest, beautiful face turned up to mine,
she whispered: "I believe you, John Carter; I do not know what a
'gentleman' is, nor have I ever heard before of Virginia; but on
Barsoom no man lies; if he does not wish to speak the truth he is
silent.  Where is this Virginia, your country, John Carter?" she
asked, and it seemed that this fair name of my fair land had never
sounded more beautiful than as it fell from those perfect lips on
that far-gone day.

"I am of another world," I answered, "the great planet Earth, which
revolves about our common sun and next within the orbit of your
Barsoom, which we know as Mars.  How I came here I cannot tell you,
for I do not know; but here I am, and since my presence has
permitted me to serve Dejah Thoris I am glad that I am here."

She gazed at me with troubled eyes, long and questioningly.  That
it was difficult to believe my statement I well knew, nor could I
hope that she would do so however much I craved her confidence and
respect.  I would much rather not have told her anything of my
antecedents, but no man could look into the depth of those eyes
and refuse her slightest behest.

Finally she smiled, and, rising, said: "I shall have to believe even
though I cannot understand.  I can readily perceive that you are not
of the Barsoom of today; you are like us, yet different--but why
should I trouble my poor head with such a problem, when my heart
tells me that I believe because I wish to believe!"

It was good logic, good, earthly, feminine logic, and if it
satisfied her I certainly could pick no flaws in it.  As a matter of
fact it was about the only kind of logic that could be brought to
bear upon my problem.  We fell into a general conversation then,
asking and answering many questions on each side.  She was curious
to learn of the customs of my people and displayed a remarkable
knowledge of events on Earth.  When I questioned her closely on this
seeming familiarity with earthly things she laughed, and cried out:

"Why, every school boy on Barsoom knows the geography, and much
concerning the fauna and flora, as well as the history of your
planet fully as well as of his own.  Can we not see everything which
takes place upon Earth, as you call it; is it not hanging there in
the heavens in plain sight?"

This baffled me, I must confess, fully as much as my statements had
confounded her; and I told her so.  She then explained in general
the instruments her people had used and been perfecting for ages,
which permit them to throw upon a screen a perfect image of what
is transpiring upon any planet and upon many of the stars.  These
pictures are so perfect in detail that, when photographed and
enlarged, objects no greater than a blade of grass may be distinctly
recognized.  I afterward, in Helium, saw many of these pictures, as
well as the instruments which produced them.

"If, then, you are so familiar with earthly things," I asked, "why
is it that you do not recognize me as identical with the inhabitants
of that planet?"

She smiled again as one might in bored indulgence of a questioning
child.

"Because, John Carter," she replied, "nearly every planet and star
having atmospheric conditions at all approaching those of Barsoom,
shows forms of animal life almost identical with you and me; and,
further, Earth men, almost without exception, cover their bodies
with strange, unsightly pieces of cloth, and their heads with
hideous contraptions the purpose of which we have been unable to
conceive; while you, when found by the Tharkian warriors, were
entirely undisfigured and unadorned.

"The fact that you wore no ornaments is a strong proof of your
un-Barsoomian origin, while the absence of grotesque coverings
might cause a doubt as to your earthliness."

I then narrated the details of my departure from the Earth,
explaining that my body there lay fully clothed in all the, to her,
strange garments of mundane dwellers.  At this point Sola returned
with our meager belongings and her young Martian protege, who, of
course, would have to share the quarters with them.

Sola asked us if we had had a visitor during her absence, and seemed
much surprised when we answered in the negative.  It seemed that as
she had mounted the approach to the upper floors where our quarters
were located, she had met Sarkoja descending.  We decided that she
must have been eavesdropping, but as we could recall nothing of
importance that had passed between us we dismissed the matter as of
little consequence, merely promising ourselves to be warned to the
utmost caution in the future.

Dejah Thoris and I then fell to examining the architecture and
decorations of the beautiful chambers of the building we were
occupying.  She told me that these people had presumably flourished
over a hundred thousand years before.  They were the early
progenitors of her race, but had mixed with the other great race
of early Martians, who were very dark, almost black, and also with
the reddish yellow race which had flourished at the same time.

These three great divisions of the higher Martians had been forced
into a mighty alliance as the drying up of the Martian seas had
compelled them to seek the comparatively few and always diminishing
fertile areas, and to defend themselves, under new conditions of
life, against the wild hordes of green men.

Ages of close relationship and intermarrying had resulted in the
race of red men, of which Dejah Thoris was a fair and beautiful
daughter.  During the ages of hardships and incessant warring
between their own various races, as well as with the green men, and
before they had fitted themselves to the changed conditions, much
of the high civilization and many of the arts of the fair-haired
Martians had become lost; but the red race of today has reached a
point where it feels that it has made up in new discoveries and in a
more practical civilization for all that lies irretrievably buried
with the ancient Barsoomians, beneath the countless intervening
ages.

These ancient Martians had been a highly cultivated and literary
race, but during the vicissitudes of those trying centuries of
readjustment to new conditions, not only did their advancement and
production cease entirely, but practically all their archives,
records, and literature were lost.

Dejah Thoris related many interesting facts and legends concerning
this lost race of noble and kindly people.  She said that the city
in which we were camping was supposed to have been a center of
commerce and culture known as Korad.  It had been built upon a
beautiful, natural harbor, landlocked by magnificent hills.  The
little valley on the west front of the city, she explained, was all
that remained of the harbor, while the pass through the hills to
the old sea bottom had been the channel through which the shipping
passed up to the city's gates.

The shores of the ancient seas were dotted with just such cities,
and lesser ones, in diminishing numbers, were to be found converging
toward the center of the oceans, as the people had found it
necessary to follow the receding waters until necessity had forced
upon them their ultimate salvation, the so-called Martian canals.

We had been so engrossed in exploration of the building and in our
conversation that it was late in the afternoon before we realized
it.  We were brought back to a realization of our present conditions
by a messenger bearing a summons from Lorquas Ptomel directing me
to appear before him forthwith.  Bidding Dejah Thoris and Sola
farewell, and commanding Woola to remain on guard, I hastened to
the audience chamber, where I found Lorquas Ptomel and Tars Tarkas
seated upon the rostrum.




CHAPTER XII

A PRISONER WITH POWER



As I entered and saluted, Lorquas Ptomel signaled me to advance,
and, fixing his great, hideous eyes upon me, addressed me thus:

"You have been with us a few days, yet during that time you have
by your prowess won a high position among us.  Be that as it may,
you are not one of us; you owe us no allegiance.

"Your position is a peculiar one," he continued; "you are a prisoner
and yet you give commands which must be obeyed; you are an alien and
yet you are a Tharkian chieftain; you are a midget and yet you can
kill a mighty warrior with one blow of your fist.  And now you are
reported to have been plotting to escape with another prisoner of
another race; a prisoner who, from her own admission, half believes
you are returned from the valley of Dor.  Either one of these
accusations, if proved, would be sufficient grounds for your
execution, but we are a just people and you shall have a trial on
our return to Thark, if Tal Hajus so commands.

"But," he continued, in his fierce guttural tones, "if you run off
with the red girl it is I who shall have to account to Tal Hajus;
it is I who shall have to face Tars Tarkas, and either demonstrate
my right to command, or the metal from my dead carcass will go to
a better man, for such is the custom of the Tharks.

"I have no quarrel with Tars Tarkas; together we rule supreme the
greatest of the lesser communities among the green men; we do not
wish to fight between ourselves; and so if you were dead, John
Carter, I should be glad.  Under two conditions only, however, may
you be killed by us without orders from Tal Hajus; in personal
combat in self-defense, should you attack one of us, or were you
apprehended in an attempt to escape.

"As a matter of justice I must warn you that we only await one
of these two excuses for ridding ourselves of so great a
responsibility.  The safe delivery of the red girl to Tal Hajus
is of the greatest importance.  Not in a thousand years have the
Tharks made such a capture; she is the granddaughter of the
greatest of the red jeddaks, who is also our bitterest enemy.
I have spoken.  The red girl told us that we were without the
softer sentiments of humanity, but we are a just and truthful
race.  You may go."

Turning, I left the audience chamber.  So this was the beginning of
Sarkoja's persecution!  I knew that none other could be responsible
for this report which had reached the ears of Lorquas Ptomel so
quickly, and now I recalled those portions of our conversation
which had touched upon escape and upon my origin.

Sarkoja was at this time Tars Tarkas' oldest and most trusted
female.  As such she was a mighty power behind the throne, for no
warrior had the confidence of Lorquas Ptomel to such an extent as
did his ablest lieutenant, Tars Tarkas.

However, instead of putting thoughts of possible escape from my
mind, my audience with Lorquas Ptomel only served to center my
every faculty on this subject.  Now, more than before, the absolute
necessity for escape, in so far as Dejah Thoris was concerned, was
impressed upon me, for I was convinced that some horrible fate
awaited her at the headquarters of Tal Hajus.

As described by Sola, this monster was the exaggerated
personification of all the ages of cruelty, ferocity, and brutality
from which he had descended.  Cold, cunning, calculating; he was,
also, in marked contrast to most of his fellows, a slave to that
brute passion which the waning demands for procreation upon their
dying planet has almost stilled in the Martian breast.

The thought that the divine Dejah Thoris might fall into the
clutches of such an abysmal atavism started the cold sweat upon me.
Far better that we save friendly bullets for ourselves at the last
moment, as did those brave frontier women of my lost land, who took
their own lives rather than fall into the hands of the Indian
braves.

As I wandered about the plaza lost in my gloomy forebodings Tars
Tarkas approached me on his way from the audience chamber.  His
demeanor toward me was unchanged, and he greeted me as though we
had not just parted a few moments before.

"Where are your quarters, John Carter?" he asked.

"I have selected none," I replied.  "It seemed best that I quartered
either by myself or among the other warriors, and I was awaiting an
opportunity to ask your advice.  As you know," and I smiled, "I am
not yet familiar with all the customs of the Tharks."

"Come with me," he directed, and together we moved off across the
plaza to a building which I was glad to see adjoined that occupied
by Sola and her charges.

"My quarters are on the first floor of this building," he said, "and
the second floor also is fully occupied by warriors, but the third
floor and the floors above are vacant; you may take your choice of
these.

"I understand," he continued, "that you have given up your woman to
the red prisoner.  Well, as you have said, your ways are not our
ways, but you can fight well enough to do about as you please, and
so, if you wish to give your woman to a captive, it is your own
affair; but as a chieftain you should have those to serve you, and
in accordance with our customs you may select any or all the females
from the retinues of the chieftains whose metal you now wear."

I thanked him, but assured him that I could get along very nicely
without assistance except in the matter of preparing food, and so he
promised to send women to me for this purpose and also for the care
of my arms and the manufacture of my ammunition, which he said would
be necessary.  I suggested that they might also bring some of the
sleeping silks and furs which belonged to me as spoils of combat,
for the nights were cold and I had none of my own.

He promised to do so, and departed.  Left alone, I ascended the
winding corridor to the upper floors in search of suitable quarters.
The beauties of the other buildings were repeated in this, and, as
usual, I was soon lost in a tour of investigation and discovery.

I finally chose a front room on the third floor, because this
brought me nearer to Dejah Thoris, whose apartment was on the second
floor of the adjoining building, and it flashed upon me that I could
rig up some means of communication whereby she might signal me in
case she needed either my services or my protection.

Adjoining my sleeping apartment were baths, dressing rooms, and
other sleeping and living apartments, in all some ten rooms on this
floor.  The windows of the back rooms overlooked an enormous court,
which formed the center of the square made by the buildings which
faced the four contiguous streets, and which was now given over to
the quartering of the various animals belonging to the warriors
occupying the adjoining buildings.

While the court was entirely overgrown with the yellow, moss-like
vegetation which blankets practically the entire surface of Mars,
yet numerous fountains, statuary, benches, and pergola-like
contraptions bore witness to the beauty which the court must have
presented in bygone times, when graced by the fair-haired, laughing
people whom stern and unalterable cosmic laws had driven not only
from their homes, but from all except the vague legends of their
descendants.

One could easily picture the gorgeous foliage of the luxuriant
Martian vegetation which once filled this scene with life and color;
the graceful figures of the beautiful women, the straight and
handsome men; the happy frolicking children--all sunlight, happiness
and peace.  It was difficult to realize that they had gone; down
through ages of darkness, cruelty, and ignorance, until their
hereditary instincts of culture and humanitarianism had risen
ascendant once more in the final composite race which now is
dominant upon Mars.

My thoughts were cut short by the advent of several young females
bearing loads of weapons, silks, furs, jewels, cooking utensils,
and casks of food and drink, including considerable loot from the
air craft.  All this, it seemed, had been the property of the two
chieftains I had slain, and now, by the customs of the Tharks, it
had become mine.  At my direction they placed the stuff in one of
the back rooms, and then departed, only to return with a second
load, which they advised me constituted the balance of my goods.
On the second trip they were accompanied by ten or fifteen other
women and youths, who, it seemed, formed the retinues of the two
chieftains.

They were not their families, nor their wives, nor their servants;
the relationship was peculiar, and so unlike anything known to us
that it is most difficult to describe.  All property among the green
Martians is owned in common by the community, except the personal
weapons, ornaments and sleeping silks and furs of the individuals.
These alone can one claim undisputed right to, nor may he accumulate
more of these than are required for his actual needs.  The surplus
he holds merely as custodian, and it is passed on to the younger
members of the community as necessity demands.

The women and children of a man's retinue may be likened to a
military unit for which he is responsible in various ways, as in
matters of instruction, discipline, sustenance, and the exigencies
of their continual roamings and their unending strife with other
communities and with the red Martians.  His women are in no sense
wives.  The green Martians use no word corresponding in meaning with
this earthly word.  Their mating is a matter of community interest
solely, and is directed without reference to natural selection.
The council of chieftains of each community control the matter
as surely as the owner of a Kentucky racing stud directs the
scientific breeding of his stock for the improvement of the whole.

In theory it may sound well, as is often the case with theories, but
the results of ages of this unnatural practice, coupled with the
community interest in the offspring being held paramount to that of
the mother, is shown in the cold, cruel creatures, and their gloomy,
loveless, mirthless existence.

It is true that the green Martians are absolutely virtuous, both
men and women, with the exception of such degenerates as Tal Hajus;
but better far a finer balance of human characteristics even at
the expense of a slight and occasional loss of chastity.

Finding that I must assume responsibility for these creatures,
whether I would or not, I made the best of it and directed them to
find quarters on the upper floors, leaving the third floor to me.
One of the girls I charged with the duties of my simple cuisine,
and directed the others to take up the various activities which had
formerly constituted their vocations.  Thereafter I saw little of
them, nor did I care to.




CHAPTER XIII

LOVE-MAKING ON MARS



Following the battle with the air ships, the community remained
within the city for several days, abandoning the homeward march
until they could feel reasonably assured that the ships would not
return; for to be caught on the open plains with a cavalcade of
chariots and children was far from the desire of even so warlike
a people as the green Martians.

During our period of inactivity, Tars Tarkas had instructed me
in many of the customs and arts of war familiar to the Tharks,
including lessons in riding and guiding the great beasts which bore
the warriors.  These creatures, which are known as thoats, are as
dangerous and vicious as their masters, but when once subdued are
sufficiently tractable for the purposes of the green Martians.

Two of these animals had fallen to me from the warriors whose metal
I wore, and in a short time I could handle them quite as well as the
native warriors.  The method was not at all complicated.  If the
thoats did not respond with sufficient celerity to the telepathic
instructions of their riders they were dealt a terrific blow between
the ears with the butt of a pistol, and if they showed fight this
treatment was continued until the brutes either were subdued, or
had unseated their riders.

In the latter case it became a life and death struggle between the
man and the beast.  If the former were quick enough with his pistol
he might live to ride again, though upon some other beast; if not,
his torn and mangled body was gathered up by his women and burned
in accordance with Tharkian custom.

My experience with Woola determined me to attempt the experiment
of kindness in my treatment of my thoats.  First I taught them
that they could not unseat me, and even rapped them sharply between
the ears to impress upon them my authority and mastery.  Then, by
degrees, I won their confidence in much the same manner as I had
adopted countless times with my many mundane mounts.  I was ever a
good hand with animals, and by inclination, as well as because it
brought more lasting and satisfactory results, I was always kind and
humane in my dealings with the lower orders.  I could take a human
life, if necessary, with far less compunction than that of a poor,
unreasoning, irresponsible brute.

In the course of a few days my thoats were the wonder of the entire
community.  They would follow me like dogs, rubbing their great
snouts against my body in awkward evidence of affection, and respond
to my every command with an alacrity and docility which caused the
Martian warriors to ascribe to me the possession of some earthly
power unknown on Mars.

"How have you bewitched them?" asked Tars Tarkas one afternoon, when
he had seen me run my arm far between the great jaws of one of my
thoats which had wedged a piece of stone between two of his teeth
while feeding upon the moss-like vegetation within our court yard.

"By kindness," I replied.  "You see, Tars Tarkas, the softer
sentiments have their value, even to a warrior.  In the height of
battle as well as upon the march I know that my thoats will obey my
every command, and therefore my fighting efficiency is enhanced, and
I am a better warrior for the reason that I am a kind master.  Your
other warriors would find it to the advantage of themselves as well
as of the community to adopt my methods in this respect.  Only a few
days since you, yourself, told me that these great brutes, by the
uncertainty of their tempers, often were the means of turning
victory into defeat, since, at a crucial moment, they might elect
to unseat and rend their riders."

"Show me how you accomplish these results," was Tars Tarkas'
only rejoinder.

And so I explained as carefully as I could the entire method of
training I had adopted with my beasts, and later he had me repeat
it before Lorquas Ptomel and the assembled warriors.  That moment
marked the beginning of a new existence for the poor thoats, and
before I left the community of Lorquas Ptomel I had the satisfaction
of observing a regiment of as tractable and docile mounts as one
might care to see.  The effect on the precision and celerity of the
military movements was so remarkable that Lorquas Ptomel presented
me with a massive anklet of gold from his own leg, as a sign of
his appreciation of my service to the horde.

On the seventh day following the battle with the air craft we again
took up the march toward Thark, all probability of another attack
being deemed remote by Lorquas Ptomel.

During the days just preceding our departure I had seen but little
of Dejah Thoris, as I had been kept very busy by Tars Tarkas with my
lessons in the art of Martian warfare, as well as in the training of
my thoats.  The few times I had visited her quarters she had been
absent, walking upon the streets with Sola, or investigating the
buildings in the near vicinity of the plaza.  I had warned them
against venturing far from the plaza for fear of the great white
apes, whose ferocity I was only too well acquainted with.  However,
since Woola accompanied them on all their excursions, and as Sola
was well armed, there was comparatively little cause for fear.

On the evening before our departure I saw them approaching along
one of the great avenues which lead into the plaza from the east.
I advanced to meet them, and telling Sola that I would take the
responsibility for Dejah Thoris' safekeeping, I directed her to
return to her quarters on some trivial errand.  I liked and trusted
Sola, but for some reason I desired to be alone with Dejah Thoris,
who represented to me all that I had left behind upon Earth in
agreeable and congenial companionship.  There seemed bonds of mutual
interest between us as powerful as though we had been born under the
same roof rather than upon different planets, hurtling through space
some forty-eight million miles apart.

That she shared my sentiments in this respect I was positive, for
on my approach the look of pitiful hopelessness left her sweet
countenance to be replaced by a smile of joyful welcome, as she
placed her little right hand upon my left shoulder in true red
Martian salute.

"Sarkoja told Sola that you had become a true Thark," she said,
"and that I would now see no more of you than of any of the
other warriors."

"Sarkoja is a liar of the first magnitude," I replied,
"notwithstanding the proud claim of the Tharks to absolute verity."

Dejah Thoris laughed.

"I knew that even though you became a member of the community you
would not cease to be my friend; 'A warrior may change his metal,
but not his heart,' as the saying is upon Barsoom."

"I think they have been trying to keep us apart," she continued,
"for whenever you have been off duty one of the older women of Tars
Tarkas' retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get
Sola and me out of sight.  They have had me down in the pits below
the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make
their terrible projectiles.  You know that these have to be
manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always
results in an explosion.  You have noticed that their bullets
explode when they strike an object?  Well, the opaque, outer coating
is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid,
in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder.
The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder
it explodes with a violence which nothing can withstand.  If you
ever witness a night battle you will note the absence of these
explosions, while the morning following the battle will be filled at
sunrise with the sharp detonations of exploding missiles fired the
preceding night.  As a rule, however, non-exploding projectiles are
used at night."  [I have used the word radium in describing this
powder because in the light of recent discoveries on Earth I believe
it to be a mixture of which radium is the base.  In Captain Carter's
manuscript it is mentioned always by the name used in the written
language of Helium and is spelled in hieroglyphics which it would be
difficult and useless to reproduce.]

While I was much interested in Dejah Thoris' explanation of this
wonderful adjunct to Martian warfare, I was more concerned by the
immediate problem of their treatment of her.  That they were keeping
her away from me was not a matter for surprise, but that they should
subject her to dangerous and arduous labor filled me with rage.

"Have they ever subjected you to cruelty and ignominy, Dejah
Thoris?" I asked, feeling the hot blood of my fighting ancestors
leap in my veins as I awaited her reply.

"Only in little ways, John Carter," she answered.  "Nothing that can
harm me outside my pride.  They know that I am the daughter of ten
thousand jeddaks, that I trace my ancestry straight back without a
break to the builder of the first great waterway, and they, who do
not even know their own mothers, are jealous of me.  At heart they
hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who
stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and
never can attain.  Let us pity them, my chieftain, for even though
we die at their hands we can afford them pity, since we are greater
than they and they know it."

Had I known the significance of those words "my chieftain," as
applied by a red Martian woman to a man, I should have had the
surprise of my life, but I did not know at that time, nor for many
months thereafter.  Yes, I still had much to learn upon Barsoom.

"I presume it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our
fate with as good grace as possible, Dejah Thoris; but I hope,
nevertheless, that I may be present the next time that any Martian,
green, red, pink, or violet, has the temerity to even so much as
frown on you, my princess."

Dejah Thoris caught her breath at my last words, and gazed upon me
with dilated eyes and quickening breath, and then, with an odd
little laugh, which brought roguish dimples to the corners of her
mouth, she shook her head and cried:

"What a child!  A great warrior and yet a stumbling little child."

"What have I done now?" I asked, in sore perplexity.

"Some day you shall know, John Carter, if we live; but I may not
tell you.  And I, the daughter of Mors Kajak, son of Tardos Mors,
have listened without anger," she soliloquized in conclusion.

Then she broke out again into one of her gay, happy, laughing moods;
joking with me on my prowess as a Thark warrior as contrasted with
my soft heart and natural kindliness.

"I presume that should you accidentally wound an enemy you would
take him home and nurse him back to health," she laughed.

"That is precisely what we do on Earth," I answered.  "At least
among civilized men."

This made her laugh again.  She could not understand it, for, with
all her tenderness and womanly sweetness, she was still a Martian,
and to a Martian the only good enemy is a dead enemy; for every
dead foeman means so much more to divide between those who live.

I was very curious to know what I had said or done to cause her so
much perturbation a moment before and so I continued to importune
her to enlighten me.

"No," she exclaimed, "it is enough that you have said it and that I
have listened.  And when you learn, John Carter, and if I be dead,
as likely I shall be ere the further moon has circled Barsoom
another twelve times, remember that I listened and that I--smiled."

It was all Greek to me, but the more I begged her to explain the
more positive became her denials of my request, and, so, in very
hopelessness, I desisted.

Day had now given away to night and as we wandered along the great
avenue lighted by the two moons of Barsoom, and with Earth looking
down upon us out of her luminous green eye, it seemed that we were
alone in the universe, and I, at least, was content that it should
be so.

The chill of the Martian night was upon us, and removing my silks I
threw them across the shoulders of Dejah Thoris.  As my arm rested
for an instant upon her I felt a thrill pass through every fiber of
my being such as contact with no other mortal had even produced; and
it seemed to me that she had leaned slightly toward me, but of that
I was not sure.  Only I knew that as my arm rested there across her
shoulders longer than the act of adjusting the silk required she did
not draw away, nor did she speak.  And so, in silence, we walked the
surface of a dying world, but in the breast of one of us at least
had been born that which is ever oldest, yet ever new.

I loved Dejah Thoris.  The touch of my arm upon her naked shoulder
had spoken to me in words I would not mistake, and I knew that I had
loved her since the first moment that my eyes had met hers that
first time in the plaza of the dead city of Korad.




CHAPTER XIV

A DUEL TO THE DEATH



My first impulse was to tell her of my love, and then I thought of
the helplessness of her position wherein I alone could lighten the
burdens of her captivity, and protect her in my poor way against the
thousands of hereditary enemies she must face upon our arrival at
Thark.  I could not chance causing her additional pain or sorrow
by declaring a love which, in all probability she did not return.
Should I be so indiscreet, her position would be even more
unbearable than now, and the thought that she might feel that
I was taking advantage of her helplessness, to influence her
decision was the final argument which sealed my lips.

"Why are you so quiet, Dejah Thoris?" I asked.  "Possibly you
would rather return to Sola and your quarters."

"No," she murmured, "I am happy here.  I do not know why it is that
I should always be happy and contented when you, John Carter, a
stranger, are with me; yet at such times it seems that I am safe and
that, with you, I shall soon return to my father's court and feel
his strong arms about me and my mother's tears and kisses on my
cheek."

"Do people kiss, then, upon Barsoom?" I asked, when she had
explained the word she used, in answer to my inquiry as to its
meaning.

"Parents, brothers, and sisters, yes; and," she added in a low,
thoughtful tone, "lovers."

"And you, Dejah Thoris, have parents and brothers and sisters?"

"Yes."

"And a--lover?"

She was silent, nor could I venture to repeat the question.

"The man of Barsoom," she finally ventured, "does not ask personal
questions of women, except his mother, and the woman he has fought
for and won."

"But I have fought--" I started, and then I wished my tongue had
been cut from my mouth; for she turned even as I caught myself and
ceased, and drawing my silks from her shoulder she held them out to
me, and without a word, and with head held high, she moved with the
carriage of the queen she was toward the plaza and the doorway of
her quarters.

I did not attempt to follow her, other than to see that she reached
the building in safety, but, directing Woola to accompany her, I
turned disconsolately and entered my own house.  I sat for hours
cross-legged, and cross-tempered, upon my silks meditating upon
the queer freaks chance plays upon us poor devils of mortals.

So this was love!  I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed
the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful
women and urging opportunity; in spite of a half-desire for love and
a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall
furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world,
of a species similar possibly, yet not identical with mine.  A woman
who was hatched from an egg, and whose span of life might cover a
thousand years; whose people had strange customs and ideas; a woman
whose hopes, whose pleasures, whose standards of virtue and of right
and wrong might vary as greatly from mine as did those of the green
Martians.

Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the
greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise
for all the riches of Barsoom.  Such is love, and such are lovers
wherever love is known.

To me, Dejah Thoris was all that was perfect; all that was virtuous
and beautiful and noble and good.  I believed that from the bottom
of my heart, from the depth of my soul on that night in Korad as I
sat cross-legged upon my silks while the nearer moon of Barsoom
raced through the western sky toward the horizon, and lighted up the
gold and marble, and jeweled mosaics of my world-old chamber, and I
believe it today as I sit at my desk in the little study overlooking
the Hudson.  Twenty years have intervened; for ten of them I lived
and fought for Dejah Thoris and her people, and for ten I have lived
upon her memory.

The morning of our departure for Thark dawned clear and hot, as do
all Martian mornings except for the six weeks when the snow melts at
the poles.

I sought out Dejah Thoris in the throng of departing chariots, but
she turned her shoulder to me, and I could see the red blood mount
to her cheek.  With the foolish inconsistency of love I held my
peace when I might have plead ignorance of the nature of my offense,
or at least the gravity of it, and so have effected, at worst, a
half conciliation.

My duty dictated that I must see that she was comfortable, and
so I glanced into her chariot and rearranged her silks and furs.
In doing so I noted with horror that she was heavily chained by
one ankle to the side of the vehicle.

"What does this mean?" I cried, turning to Sola.

"Sarkoja thought it best," she answered, her face betokening her
disapproval of the procedure.

Examining the manacles I saw that they fastened with a massive
spring lock.

"Where is the key, Sola?  Let me have it."

"Sarkoja wears it, John Carter," she answered.

I turned without further word and sought out Tars Tarkas, to whom I
vehemently objected to the unnecessary humiliations and cruelties,
as they seemed to my lover's eyes, that were being heaped upon Dejah
Thoris.

"John Carter," he answered, "if ever you and Dejah Thoris escape the
Tharks it will be upon this journey.  We know that you will not go
without her.  You have shown yourself a mighty fighter, and we do
not wish to manacle you, so we hold you both in the easiest way
that will yet ensure security.  I have spoken."

I saw the strength of his reasoning at a flash, and knew that it
were futile to appeal from his decision, but I asked that the
key be taken from Sarkoja and that she be directed to leave the
prisoner alone in future.

"This much, Tars Tarkas, you may do for me in return for the
friendship that, I must confess, I feel for you."

"Friendship?" he replied.  "There is no such thing, John Carter;
but have your will.  I shall direct that Sarkoja cease to annoy
the girl, and I myself will take the custody of the key."

"Unless you wish me to assume the responsibility," I said, smiling.

He looked at me long and earnestly before he spoke.

"Were you to give me your word that neither you nor Dejah Thoris
would attempt to escape until after we have safely reached the court
of Tal Hajus you might have the key and throw the chains into the
river Iss."

"It were better that you held the key, Tars Tarkas," I replied

He smiled, and said no more, but that night as we were making camp
I saw him unfasten Dejah Thoris' fetters himself.

With all his cruel ferocity and coldness there was an undercurrent
of something in Tars Tarkas which he seemed ever battling to subdue.
Could it be a vestige of some human instinct come back from an
ancient forbear to haunt him with the horror of his people's ways!

As I was approaching Dejah Thoris' chariot I passed Sarkoja, and the
black, venomous look she accorded me was the sweetest balm I had
felt for many hours.  Lord, how she hated me!  It bristled from her
so palpably that one might almost have cut it with a sword.

A few moments later I saw her deep in conversation with a warrior
named Zad; a big, hulking, powerful brute, but one who had never
made a kill among his own chieftains, and a second name only with
the metal of some chieftain.  It was this custom which entitled me
to the names of either of the chieftains I had killed; in fact, some
of the warriors addressed me as Dotar Sojat, a combination of the
surnames of the two warrior chieftains whose metal I had taken, or,
in other words, whom I had slain in fair fight.

As Sarkoja talked with Zad he cast occasional glances in my
direction, while she seemed to be urging him very strongly to some
action.  I paid little attention to it at the time, but the next
day I had good reason to recall the circumstances, and at the same
time gain a slight insight into the depths of Sarkoja's hatred and
the lengths to which she was capable of going to wreak her horrid
vengeance on me.

Dejah Thoris would have none of me again on this evening, and though
I spoke her name she neither replied, nor conceded by so much as
the flutter of an eyelid that she realized my existence.  In my
extremity I did what most other lovers would have done; I sought
word from her through an intimate.  In this instance it was Sola
whom I intercepted in another part of camp.

"What is the matter with Dejah Thoris?" I blurted out at her.
"Why will she not speak to me?"

Sola seemed puzzled herself, as though such strange actions on
the part of two humans were quite beyond her, as indeed they were,
poor child.

"She says you have angered her, and that is all she will say, except
that she is the daughter of a jed and the granddaughter of a jeddak
and she has been humiliated by a creature who could not polish the
teeth of her grandmother's sorak."

I pondered over this report for some time, finally asking,
"What might a sorak be, Sola?"

"A little animal about as big as my hand, which the red
Martian women keep to play with," explained Sola.

Not fit to polish the teeth of her grandmother's cat!  I must rank
pretty low in the consideration of Dejah Thoris, I thought; but I
could not help laughing at the strange figure of speech, so homely
and in this respect so earthly.  It made me homesick, for it sounded
very much like "not fit to polish her shoes."  And then commenced a
train of thought quite new to me.  I began to wonder what my people
at home were doing.  I had not seen them for years.  There was a
family of Carters in Virginia who claimed close relationship with
me; I was supposed to be a great uncle, or something of the kind
equally foolish.  I could pass anywhere for twenty-five to thirty
years of age, and to be a great uncle always seemed the height of
incongruity, for my thoughts and feelings were those of a boy.
There was two little kiddies in the Carter family whom I had loved
and who had thought there was no one on Earth like Uncle Jack; I
could see them just as plainly, as I stood there under the moonlit
skies of Barsoom, and I longed for them as I had never longed for
any mortals before.  By nature a wanderer, I had never known the
true meaning of the word home, but the great hall of the Carters had
always stood for all that the word did mean to me, and now my heart
turned toward it from the cold and unfriendly peoples I had been
thrown amongst.  For did not even Dejah Thoris despise me!  I was a
low creature, so low in fact that I was not even fit to polish the
teeth of her grandmother's cat; and then my saving sense of humor
came to my rescue, and laughing I turned into my silks and furs and
slept upon the moon-haunted ground the sleep of a tired and healthy
fighting man.

We broke camp the next day at an early hour and marched with only
a single halt until just before dark.  Two incidents broke the
tediousness of the march.  About noon we espied far to our right
what was evidently an incubator, and Lorquas Ptomel directed Tars
Tarkas to investigate it.  The latter took a dozen warriors,
including myself, and we raced across the velvety carpeting of
moss to the little enclosure.

It was indeed an incubator, but the eggs were very small in
comparison with those I had seen hatching in ours at the time
of my arrival on Mars.

Tars Tarkas dismounted and examined the enclosure minutely, finally
announcing that it belonged to the green men of Warhoon and that
the cement was scarcely dry where it had been walled up.

"They cannot be a day's march ahead of us," he exclaimed,
the light of battle leaping to his fierce face.

The work at the incubator was short indeed.  The warriors tore open
the entrance and a couple of them, crawling in, soon demolished all
the eggs with their short-swords.  Then remounting we dashed back
to join the cavalcade.  During the ride I took occasion to ask Tars
Tarkas if these Warhoons whose eggs we had destroyed were a
smaller people than his Tharks.

"I noticed that their eggs were so much smaller than those
I saw hatching in your incubator," I added.

He explained that the eggs had just been placed there; but, like all
green Martian eggs, they would grow during the five-year period of
incubation until they obtained the size of those I had seen hatching
on the day of my arrival on Barsoom.  This was indeed an interesting
piece of information, for it had always seemed remarkable to me that
the green Martian women, large as they were, could bring forth such
enormous eggs as I had seen the four-foot infants emerging from.
As a matter of fact, the new-laid egg is but little larger than
an ordinary goose egg, and as it does not commence to grow until
subjected to the light of the sun the chieftains have little
difficulty in transporting several hundreds of them at one time
from the storage vaults to the incubators.

Shortly after the incident of the Warhoon eggs we halted to rest the
animals, and it was during this halt that the second of the day's
interesting episodes occurred.  I was engaged in changing my riding
cloths from one of my thoats to the other, for I divided the day's
work between them, when Zad approached me, and without a word struck
my animal a terrific blow with his long-sword.

I did not need a manual of green Martian etiquette to know what
reply to make, for, in fact, I was so wild with anger that I could
scarcely refrain from drawing my pistol and shooting him down for
the brute he was; but he stood waiting with drawn long-sword, and
my only choice was to draw my own and meet him in fair fight with
his choice of weapons or a lesser one.

This latter alternative is always permissible, therefore I could
have used my short-sword, my dagger, my hatchet, or my fists had
I wished, and been entirely within my rights, but I could not use
firearms or a spear while he held only his long-sword.

I chose the same weapon he had drawn because I knew he prided
himself upon his ability with it, and I wished, if I worsted him
at all, to do it with his own weapon.  The fight that followed was
a long one and delayed the resumption of the march for an hour.
The entire community surrounded us, leaving a clear space about
one hundred feet in diameter for our battle.

Zad first attempted to rush me down as a bull might a wolf, but I
was much too quick for him, and each time I side-stepped his rushes
he would go lunging past me, only to receive a nick from my sword
upon his arm or back.  He was soon streaming blood from a half
dozen minor wounds, but I could not obtain an opening to deliver an
effective thrust.  Then he changed his tactics, and fighting warily
and with extreme dexterity, he tried to do by science what he
was unable to do by brute strength.  I must admit that he was a
magnificent swordsman, and had it not been for my greater endurance
and the remarkable agility the lesser gravitation of Mars lent me
I might not have been able to put up the creditable fight I did
against him.

We circled for some time without doing much damage on either side;
the long, straight, needle-like swords flashing in the sunlight, and
ringing out upon the stillness as they crashed together with each
effective parry.  Finally Zad, realizing that he was tiring more
than I, evidently decided to close in and end the battle in a final
blaze of glory for himself; just as he rushed me a blinding flash of
light struck full in my eyes, so that I could not see his approach
and could only leap blindly to one side in an effort to escape the
mighty blade that it seemed I could already feel in my vitals.  I
was only partially successful, as a sharp pain in my left shoulder
attested, but in the sweep of my glance as I sought to again locate
my adversary, a sight met my astonished gaze which paid me well for
the wound the temporary blindness had caused me.  There, upon Dejah
Thoris' chariot stood three figures, for the purpose evidently of
witnessing the encounter above the heads of the intervening Tharks.
There were Dejah Thoris, Sola, and Sarkoja, and as my fleeting
glance swept over them a little tableau was presented which will
stand graven in my memory to the day of my death.

As I looked, Dejah Thoris turned upon Sarkoja with the fury of a
young tigress and struck something from her upraised hand; something
which flashed in the sunlight as it spun to the ground.  Then I knew
what had blinded me at that crucial moment of the fight, and how
Sarkoja had found a way to kill me without herself delivering the
final thrust.  Another thing I saw, too, which almost lost my life
for me then and there, for it took my mind for the fraction of an
instant entirely from my antagonist; for, as Dejah Thoris struck the
tiny mirror from her hand, Sarkoja, her face livid with hatred and
baffled rage, whipped out her dagger and aimed a terrific blow at
Dejah Thoris; and then Sola, our dear and faithful Sola, sprang
between them; the last I saw was the great knife descending upon her
shielding breast.

My enemy had recovered from his thrust and was making it extremely
interesting for me, so I reluctantly gave my attention to the work
in hand, but my mind was not upon the battle.

We rushed each other furiously time after time, 'til suddenly,
feeling the sharp point of his sword at my breast in a thrust
I could neither parry nor escape, I threw myself upon him with
outstretched sword and with all the weight of my body, determined
that I would not die alone if I could prevent it.  I felt the
steel tear into my chest, all went black before me, my head
whirled in dizziness, and I felt my knees giving beneath me.




CHAPTER XV

SOLA TELLS ME HER STORY



When consciousness returned, and, as I soon learned, I was down but
a moment, I sprang quickly to my feet searching for my sword, and
there I found it, buried to the hilt in the green breast of Zad, who
lay stone dead upon the ochre moss of the ancient sea bottom.  As I
regained my full senses I found his weapon piercing my left breast,
but only through the flesh and muscles which cover my ribs, entering
near the center of my chest and coming out below the shoulder.  As I
had lunged I had turned so that his sword merely passed beneath the
muscles, inflicting a painful but not dangerous wound.

Removing the blade from my body I also regained my own, and turning
my back upon his ugly carcass, I moved, sick, sore, and disgusted,
toward the chariots which bore my retinue and my belongings.  A
murmur of Martian applause greeted me, but I cared not for it.

Bleeding and weak I reached my women, who, accustomed to such
happenings, dressed my wounds, applying the wonderful healing and
remedial agents which make only the most instantaneous of death
blows fatal.  Give a Martian woman a chance and death must take a
back seat.  They soon had me patched up so that, except for weakness
from loss of blood and a little soreness around the wound, I
suffered no great distress from this thrust which, under earthly
treatment, undoubtedly would have put me flat on my back for days.

As soon as they were through with me I hastened to the chariot of
Dejah Thoris, where I found my poor Sola with her chest swathed in
bandages, but apparently little the worse for her encounter with
Sarkoja, whose dagger it seemed had struck the edge of one of Sola's
metal breast ornaments and, thus deflected, had inflicted but a
slight flesh wound.

As I approached I found Dejah Thoris lying prone upon her silks
and furs, her lithe form wracked with sobs.  She did not notice my
presence, nor did she hear me speaking with Sola, who was standing
a short distance from the vehicle.

"Is she injured?" I asked of Sola, indicating Dejah Thoris by an
inclination of my head.

"No," she answered, "she thinks that you are dead."

"And that her grandmother's cat may now have no one to polish its
teeth?" I queried, smiling.

"I think you wrong her, John Carter," said Sola.  "I do not
understand either her ways or yours, but I am sure the granddaughter
of ten thousand jeddaks would never grieve like this over any who
held but the highest claim upon her affections.  They are a proud
race, but they are just, as are all Barsoomians, and you must have
hurt or wronged her grievously that she will not admit your
existence living, though she mourns you dead.

"Tears are a strange sight upon Barsoom," she continued, "and so it
is difficult for me to interpret them.  I have seen but two people
weep in all my life, other than Dejah Thoris; one wept from sorrow,
the other from baffled rage.  The first was my mother, years ago
before they killed her; the other was Sarkoja, when they dragged
her from me today."

"Your mother!" I exclaimed, "but, Sola, you could not have known
your mother, child."

"But I did.  And my father also," she added.  "If you would like
to hear the strange and un-Barsoomian story come to the chariot
tonight, John Carter, and I will tell you that of which I have
never spoken in all my life before.  And now the signal has been
given to resume the march, you must go."

"I will come tonight, Sola," I promised.  "Be sure to tell Dejah
Thoris I am alive and well.  I shall not force myself upon her,
and be sure that you do not let her know I saw her tears.  If she
would speak with me I but await her command."

Sola mounted the chariot, which was swinging into its place
in line, and I hastened to my waiting thoat and galloped
to my station beside Tars Tarkas at the rear of the column.

We made a most imposing and awe-inspiring spectacle as we strung out
across the yellow landscape; the two hundred and fifty ornate and
brightly colored chariots, preceded by an advance guard of some two
hundred mounted warriors and chieftains riding five abreast and one
hundred yards apart, and followed by a like number in the same
formation, with a score or more of flankers on either side; the
fifty extra mastodons, or heavy draught animals, known as zitidars,
and the five or six hundred extra thoats of the warriors running
loose within the hollow square formed by the surrounding warriors.
The gleaming metal and jewels of the gorgeous ornaments of the men
and women, duplicated in the trappings of the zitidars and thoats,
and interspersed with the flashing colors of magnificent silks and
furs and feathers, lent a barbaric splendor to the caravan which
would have turned an East Indian potentate green with envy.

The enormous broad tires of the chariots and the padded feet of the
animals brought forth no sound from the moss-covered sea bottom; and
so we moved in utter silence, like some huge phantasmagoria, except
when the stillness was broken by the guttural growling of a goaded
zitidar, or the squealing of fighting thoats.  The green Martians
converse but little, and then usually in monosyllables, low and
like the faint rumbling of distant thunder.

We traversed a trackless waste of moss which, bending to the
pressure of broad tire or padded foot, rose up again behind us,
leaving no sign that we had passed.  We might indeed have been the
wraiths of the departed dead upon the dead sea of that dying planet
for all the sound or sign we made in passing.  It was the first
march of a large body of men and animals I had ever witnessed which
raised no dust and left no spoor; for there is no dust upon Mars
except in the cultivated districts during the winter months, and
even then the absence of high winds renders it almost unnoticeable.

We camped that night at the foot of the hills we had been
approaching for two days and which marked the southern boundary of
this particular sea.  Our animals had been two days without drink,
nor had they had water for nearly two months, not since shortly
after leaving Thark; but, as Tars Tarkas explained to me, they
require but little and can live almost indefinitely upon the moss
which covers Barsoom, and which, he told me, holds in its tiny stems
sufficient moisture to meet the limited demands of the animals.

After partaking of my evening meal of cheese-like food and vegetable
milk I sought out Sola, whom I found working by the light of a torch
upon some of Tars Tarkas' trappings.  She looked up at my approach,
her face lighting with pleasure and with welcome.

"I am glad you came," she said; "Dejah Thoris sleeps and I am
lonely.  Mine own people do not care for me, John Carter; I am too
unlike them.  It is a sad fate, since I must live my life amongst
them, and I often wish that I were a true green Martian woman,
without love and without hope; but I have known love and so I
am lost.

"I promised to tell you my story, or rather the story of my parents.
From what I have learned of you and the ways of your people I am
sure that the tale will not seem strange to you, but among green
Martians it has no parallel within the memory of the oldest living
Thark, nor do our legends hold many similar tales.

"My mother was rather small, in fact too small to be allowed the
responsibilities of maternity, as our chieftains breed principally
for size.  She was also less cold and cruel than most green Martian
women, and caring little for their society, she often roamed the
deserted avenues of Thark alone, or went and sat among the wild
flowers that deck the nearby hills, thinking thoughts and wishing
wishes which I believe I alone among Tharkian women today may
understand, for am I not the child of my mother?

"And there among the hills she met a young warrior, whose duty it
was to guard the feeding zitidars and thoats and see that they
roamed not beyond the hills.  They spoke at first only of such
things as interest a community of Tharks, but gradually, as they
came to meet more often, and, as was now quite evident to both, no
longer by chance, they talked about themselves, their likes, their
ambitions and their hopes.  She trusted him and told him of the
awful repugnance she felt for the cruelties of their kind, for the
hideous, loveless lives they must ever lead, and then she waited
for the storm of denunciation to break from his cold, hard lips;
but instead he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"They kept their love a secret for six long years.  She, my mother,
was of the retinue of the great Tal Hajus, while her lover was a
simple warrior, wearing only his own metal.  Had their defection
from the traditions of the Tharks been discovered both would have
paid the penalty in the great arena before Tal Hajus and the
assembled hordes.

"The egg from which I came was hidden beneath a great glass vessel
upon the highest and most inaccessible of the partially ruined
towers of ancient Thark.  Once each year my mother visited it for
the five long years it lay there in the process of incubation.  She
dared not come oftener, for in the mighty guilt of her conscience
she feared that her every move was watched.  During this period
my father gained great distinction as a warrior and had taken the
metal from several chieftains.  His love for my mother had never
diminished, and his own ambition in life was to reach a point where
he might wrest the metal from Tal Hajus himself, and thus, as ruler
of the Tharks, be free to claim her as his own, as well as, by the
might of his power, protect the child which otherwise would be
quickly dispatched should the truth become known.

"It was a wild dream, that of wresting the metal from Tal Hajus in
five short years, but his advance was rapid, and he soon stood high
in the councils of Thark.  But one day the chance was lost forever,
in so far as it could come in time to save his loved ones, for he
was ordered away upon a long expedition to the ice-clad south, to
make war upon the natives there and despoil them of their furs, for
such is the manner of the green Barsoomian; he does not labor for
what he can wrest in battle from others.

"He was gone for four years, and when he returned all had been over
for three; for about a year after his departure, and shortly before
the time for the return of an expedition which had gone forth to
fetch the fruits of a community incubator, the egg had hatched.
Thereafter my mother continued to keep me in the old tower, visiting
me nightly and lavishing upon me the love the community life
would have robbed us both of.  She hoped, upon the return of the
expedition from the incubator, to mix me with the other young
assigned to the quarters of Tal Hajus, and thus escape the fate
which would surely follow discovery of her sin against the ancient
traditions of the green men.

"She taught me rapidly the language and customs of my kind, and one
night she told me the story I have told to you up to this point,
impressing upon me the necessity for absolute secrecy and the great
caution I must exercise after she had placed me with the other young
Tharks to permit no one to guess that I was further advanced in
education than they, nor by any sign to divulge in the presence of
others my affection for her, or my knowledge of my parentage; and
then drawing me close to her she whispered in my ear the name of
my father.

"And then a light flashed out upon the darkness of the tower
chamber, and there stood Sarkoja, her gleaming, baleful eyes fixed
in a frenzy of loathing and contempt upon my mother.  The torrent of
hatred and abuse she poured out upon her turned my young heart cold
in terror.  That she had heard the entire story was apparent, and
that she had suspected something wrong from my mother's long nightly
absences from her quarters accounted for her presence there on that
fateful night.

"One thing she had not heard, nor did she know, the whispered name
of my father.  This was apparent from her repeated demands upon my
mother to disclose the name of her partner in sin, but no amount of
abuse or threats could wring this from her, and to save me from
needless torture she lied, for she told Sarkoja that she alone
knew nor would she even tell her child.

"With final imprecations, Sarkoja hastened away to Tal Hajus to
report her discovery, and while she was gone my mother, wrapping me
in the silks and furs of her night coverings, so that I was scarcely
noticeable, descended to the streets and ran wildly away toward the
outskirts of the city, in the direction which led to the far south,
out toward the man whose protection she might not claim, but on
whose face she wished to look once more before she died.

"As we neared the city's southern extremity a sound came to us from
across the mossy flat, from the direction of the only pass through
the hills which led to the gates, the pass by which caravans from
either north or south or east or west would enter the city.  The
sounds we heard were the squealing of thoats and the grumbling of
zitidars, with the occasional clank of arms which announced the
approach of a body of warriors.  The thought uppermost in her mind
was that it was my father returned from his expedition, but the
cunning of the Thark held her from headlong and precipitate flight
to greet him.

"Retreating into the shadows of a doorway she awaited the coming
of the cavalcade which shortly entered the avenue, breaking its
formation and thronging the thoroughfare from wall to wall.  As the
head of the procession passed us the lesser moon swung clear of the
overhanging roofs and lit up the scene with all the brilliancy of
her wondrous light.  My mother shrank further back into the friendly
shadows, and from her hiding place saw that the expedition was not
that of my father, but the returning caravan bearing the young
Tharks.  Instantly her plan was formed, and as a great chariot
swung close to our hiding place she slipped stealthily in upon the
trailing tailboard, crouching low in the shadow of the high side,
straining me to her bosom in a frenzy of love.

"She knew, what I did not, that never again after that night would
she hold me to her breast, nor was it likely we would ever look upon
each other's face again.  In the confusion of the plaza she mixed me
with the other children, whose guardians during the journey were now
free to relinquish their responsibility.  We were herded together
into a great room, fed by women who had not accompanied the
expedition, and the next day we were parceled out among the
retinues of the chieftains.

"I never saw my mother after that night.  She was imprisoned by Tal
Hajus, and every effort, including the most horrible and shameful
torture, was brought to bear upon her to wring from her lips the
name of my father; but she remained steadfast and loyal, dying at
last amidst the laughter of Tal Hajus and his chieftains during
some awful torture she was undergoing.

"I learned afterwards that she told them that she had killed me to
save me from a like fate at their hands, and that she had thrown my
body to the white apes.  Sarkoja alone disbelieved her, and I feel
to this day that she suspects my true origin, but does not dare
expose me, at the present, at all events, because she also guesses,
I am sure, the identity of my father.

"When he returned from his expedition and learned the story of my
mother's fate I was present as Tal Hajus told him; but never by the
quiver of a muscle did he betray the slightest emotion; only he did
not laugh as Tal Hajus gleefully described her death struggles.
From that moment on he was the cruelest of the cruel, and I am
awaiting the day when he shall win the goal of his ambition, and
feel the carcass of Tal Hajus beneath his foot, for I am as sure
that he but waits the opportunity to wreak a terrible vengeance,
and that his great love is as strong in his breast as when it first
transfigured him nearly forty years ago, as I am that we sit here
upon the edge of a world-old ocean while sensible people sleep,
John Carter."

"And your father, Sola, is he with us now?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied, "but he does not know me for what I am, nor
does he know who betrayed my mother to Tal Hajus.  I alone know my
father's name, and only I and Tal Hajus and Sarkoja know that it
was she who carried the tale that brought death and torture upon
her he loved."

We sat silent for a few moments, she wrapped in the gloomy thoughts
of her terrible past, and I in pity for the poor creatures whom the
heartless, senseless customs of their race had doomed to loveless
lives of cruelty and of hate.  Presently she spoke.

"John Carter, if ever a real man walked the cold, dead bosom of
Barsoom you are one.  I know that I can trust you, and because the
knowledge may someday help you or him or Dejah Thoris or myself,
I am going to tell you the name of my father, nor place any
restrictions or conditions upon your tongue.  When the time comes,
speak the truth if it seems best to you.  I trust you because I
know that you are not cursed with the terrible trait of absolute
and unswerving truthfulness, that you could lie like one of your
own Virginia gentlemen if a lie would save others from sorrow or
suffering.  My father's name is Tars Tarkas."




CHAPTER XVI

WE PLAN ESCAPE



The remainder of our journey to Thark was uneventful.  We were
twenty days upon the road, crossing two sea bottoms and passing
through or around a number of ruined cities, mostly smaller than
Korad.  Twice we crossed the famous Martian waterways, or canals,
so-called by our earthly astronomers.  When we approached these
points a warrior would be sent far ahead with a powerful field
glass, and if no great body of red Martian troops was in sight we
would advance as close as possible without chance of being seen and
then camp until dark, when we would slowly approach the cultivated
tract, and, locating one of the numerous, broad highways which cross
these areas at regular intervals, creep silently and stealthily
across to the arid lands upon the other side.  It required five
hours to make one of these crossings without a single halt, and the
other consumed the entire night, so that we were just leaving the
confines of the high-walled fields when the sun broke out upon us.

Crossing in the darkness, as we did, I was unable to see but little,
except as the nearer moon, in her wild and ceaseless hurtling
through the Barsoomian heavens, lit up little patches of the
landscape from time to time, disclosing walled fields and low,
rambling buildings, presenting much the appearance of earthly farms.
There were many trees, methodically arranged, and some of them were
of enormous height; there were animals in some of the enclosures,
and they announced their presence by terrified squealings and
snortings as they scented our queer, wild beasts and wilder human
beings.

Only once did I perceive a human being, and that was at the
intersection of our crossroad with the wide, white turnpike which
cuts each cultivated district longitudinally at its exact center.
The fellow must have been sleeping beside the road, for, as I came
abreast of him, he raised upon one elbow and after a single glance
at the approaching caravan leaped shrieking to his feet and fled
madly down the road, scaling a nearby wall with the agility of a
scared cat.  The Tharks paid him not the slightest attention; they
were not out upon the warpath, and the only sign that I had that
they had seen him was a quickening of the pace of the caravan as we
hastened toward the bordering desert which marked our entrance into
the realm of Tal Hajus.

Not once did I have speech with Dejah Thoris, as she sent no word to
me that I would be welcome at her chariot, and my foolish pride kept
me from making any advances.  I verily believe that a man's way with
women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men.  The weakling
and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex,
while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers
unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.

Just thirty days after my advent upon Barsoom we entered the ancient
city of Thark, from whose long-forgotten people this horde of green
men have stolen even their name.  The hordes of Thark number some
thirty thousand souls, and are divided into twenty-five communities.
Each community has its own jed and lesser chieftains, but all are
under the rule of Tal Hajus, Jeddak of Thark.  Five communities
make their headquarters at the city of Thark, and the balance are
scattered among other deserted cities of ancient Mars throughout
the district claimed by Tal Hajus.

We made our entry into the great central plaza early in the
afternoon.  There were no enthusiastic friendly greetings for the
returned expedition.  Those who chanced to be in sight spoke the
names of warriors or women with whom they came in direct contact,
in the formal greeting of their kind, but when it was discovered
that they brought two captives a greater interest was aroused,
and Dejah Thoris and I were the centers of inquiring groups.

We were soon assigned to new quarters, and the balance of the day
was devoted to settling ourselves to the changed conditions.  My
home now was upon an avenue leading into the plaza from the south,
the main artery down which we had marched from the gates of the
city.  I was at the far end of the square and had an entire
building to myself.  The same grandeur of architecture which was
so noticeable a characteristic of Korad was in evidence here, only,
if that were possible, on a larger and richer scale.  My quarters
would have been suitable for housing the greatest of earthly
emperors, but to these queer creatures nothing about a building
appealed to them but its size and the enormity of its chambers; the
larger the building, the more desirable; and so Tal Hajus occupied
what must have been an enormous public building, the largest in the
city, but entirely unfitted for residence purposes; the next largest
was reserved for Lorquas Ptomel, the next for the jed of a lesser
rank, and so on to the bottom of the list of five jeds.  The
warriors occupied the buildings with the chieftains to whose
retinues they belonged; or, if they preferred, sought shelter among
any of the thousands of untenanted buildings in their own quarter of
town; each community being assigned a certain section of the city.
The selection of building had to be made in accordance with these
divisions, except in so far as the jeds were concerned, they all
occupying edifices which fronted upon the plaza.

When I had finally put my house in order, or rather seen that it
had been done, it was nearing sunset, and I hastened out with the
intention of locating Sola and her charges, as I had determined
upon having speech with Dejah Thoris and trying to impress on her
the necessity of our at least patching up a truce until I could
find some way of aiding her to escape.  I searched in vain until
the upper rim of the great red sun was just disappearing behind
the horizon and then I spied the ugly head of Woola peering from
a second-story window on the opposite side of the very street
where I was quartered, but nearer the plaza.

Without waiting for a further invitation I bolted up the winding
runway which led to the second floor, and entering a great chamber
at the front of the building was greeted by the frenzied Woola, who
threw his great carcass upon me, nearly hurling me to the floor; the
poor old fellow was so glad to see me that I thought he would devour
me, his head split from ear to ear, showing his three rows of tusks
in his hobgoblin smile.

Quieting him with a word of command and a caress, I looked hurriedly
through the approaching gloom for a sign of Dejah Thoris, and then,
not seeing her, I called her name.  There was an answering murmur
from the far corner of the apartment, and with a couple of quick
strides I was standing beside her where she crouched among the furs
and silks upon an ancient carved wooden seat.  As I waited she rose
to her full height and looking me straight in the eye said:

"What would Dotar Sojat, Thark, of Dejah Thoris his captive?"

"Dejah Thoris, I do not know how I have angered you.  It was
furtherest from my desire to hurt or offend you, whom I had hoped
to protect and comfort.  Have none of me if it is your will, but
that you must aid me in effecting your escape, if such a thing be
possible, is not my request, but my command.  When you are safe
once more at your father's court you may do with me as you please,
but from now on until that day I am your master, and you must obey
and aid me."

She looked at me long and earnestly and I thought that she was
softening toward me.

"I understand your words, Dotar Sojat," she replied, "but you I do
not understand.  You are a queer mixture of child and man, of brute
and noble.  I only wish that I might read your heart."

"Look down at your feet, Dejah Thoris; it lies there now where it
has lain since that other night at Korad, and where it will ever lie
beating alone for you until death stills it forever."

She took a little step toward me, her beautiful hands outstretched
in a strange, groping gesture.

"What do you mean, John Carter?" she whispered.  "What are you
saying to me?"

"I am saying what I had promised myself that I would not say to you,
at least until you were no longer a captive among the green men;
what from your attitude toward me for the past twenty days I had
thought never to say to you; I am saying, Dejah Thoris, that I am
yours, body and soul, to serve you, to fight for you, and to die for
you.  Only one thing I ask of you in return, and that is that you
make no sign, either of condemnation or of approbation of my words
until you are safe among your own people, and that whatever
sentiments you harbor toward me they be not influenced or colored
by gratitude; whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted
solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to
serve you than not."

"I will respect your wishes, John Carter, because I understand
the motives which prompt them, and I accept your service no more
willingly than I bow to your authority; your word shall be my
law.  I have twice wronged you in my thoughts and again I ask
your forgiveness."

Further conversation of a personal nature was prevented by the
entrance of Sola, who was much agitated and wholly unlike her
usual calm and possessed self.

"That horrible Sarkoja has been before Tal Hajus," she cried, "and
from what I heard upon the plaza there is little hope for either of
you."

"What do they say?" inquired Dejah Thoris.

"That you will be thrown to the wild calots [dogs] in the great
arena as soon as the hordes have assembled for the yearly games."

"Sola," I said, "you are a Thark, but you hate and loathe the
customs of your people as much as we do.  Will you not accompany us
in one supreme effort to escape?  I am sure that Dejah Thoris can
offer you a home and protection among her people, and your fate
can be no worse among them than it must ever be here."

"Yes," cried Dejah Thoris, "come with us, Sola, you will be better
off among the red men of Helium than you are here, and I can promise
you not only a home with us, but the love and affection your nature
craves and which must always be denied you by the customs of your
own race.  Come with us, Sola; we might go without you, but your
fate would be terrible if they thought you had connived to aid us.
I know that even that fear would not tempt you to interfere in our
escape, but we want you with us, we want you to come to a land of
sunshine and happiness, amongst a people who know the meaning of
love, of sympathy, and of gratitude.  Say that you will, Sola;
tell me that you will."

"The great waterway which leads to Helium is but fifty miles to the
south," murmured Sola, half to herself; "a swift thoat might make it
in three hours; and then to Helium it is five hundred miles, most of
the way through thinly settled districts.  They would know and they
would follow us.  We might hide among the great trees for a time,
but the chances are small indeed for escape.  They would follow us
to the very gates of Helium, and they would take toll of life at
every step; you do not know them."

"Is there no other way we might reach Helium?" I asked.  "Can you not
draw me a rough map of the country we must traverse, Dejah Thoris?"

"Yes," she replied, and taking a great diamond from her hair she
drew upon the marble floor the first map of Barsoomian territory I
had ever seen.  It was crisscrossed in every direction with long
straight lines, sometimes running parallel and sometimes converging
toward some great circle.  The lines, she said, were waterways; the
circles, cities; and one far to the northwest of us she pointed out
as Helium.  There were other cities closer, but she said she feared
to enter many of them, as they were not all friendly toward Helium.

Finally, after studying the map carefully in the moonlight which
now flooded the room, I pointed out a waterway far to the north of
us which also seemed to lead to Helium.

"Does not this pierce your grandfather's territory?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered, "but it is two hundred miles north of us;
it is one of the waterways we crossed on the trip to Thark."

"They would never suspect that we would try for that distant
waterway," I answered, "and that is why I think that it is the
best route for our escape."

Sola agreed with me, and it was decided that we should leave Thark
this same night; just as quickly, in fact, as I could find and
saddle my thoats.  Sola was to ride one and Dejah Thoris and I the
other; each of us carrying sufficient food and drink to last us for
two days, since the animals could not be urged too rapidly for so
long a distance.

I directed Sola to proceed with Dejah Thoris along one of the less
frequented avenues to the southern boundary of the city, where I
would overtake them with the thoats as quickly as possible; then,
leaving them to gather what food, silks, and furs we were to need,
I slipped quietly to the rear of the first floor, and entered the
courtyard, where our animals were moving restlessly about, as was
their habit, before settling down for the night.

In the shadows of the buildings and out beneath the radiance of the
Martian moons moved the great herd of thoats and zitidars, the
latter grunting their low gutturals and the former occasionally
emitting the sharp squeal which denotes the almost habitual state
of rage in which these creatures passed their existence.  They were
quieter now, owing to the absence of man, but as they scented me
they became more restless and their hideous noise increased.  It
was risky business, this entering a paddock of thoats alone and at
night; first, because their increasing noisiness might warn the
nearby warriors that something was amiss, and also because for the
slightest cause, or for no cause at all some great bull thoat might
take it upon himself to lead a charge upon me.

Having no desire to awaken their nasty tempers upon such a night as
this, where so much depended upon secrecy and dispatch, I hugged the
shadows of the buildings, ready at an instant's warning to leap into
the safety of a nearby door or window.  Thus I moved silently to the
great gates which opened upon the street at the back of the court,
and as I neared the exit I called softly to my two animals.  How I
thanked the kind providence which had given me the foresight to win
the love and confidence of these wild dumb brutes, for presently
from the far side of the court I saw two huge bulks forcing their
way toward me through the surging mountains of flesh.

They came quite close to me, rubbing their muzzles against my body
and nosing for the bits of food it was always my practice to reward
them with.  Opening the gates I ordered the two great beasts to pass
out, and then slipping quietly after them I closed the portals
behind me.

I did not saddle or mount the animals there, but instead walked
quietly in the shadows of the buildings toward an unfrequented
avenue which led toward the point I had arranged to meet Dejah
Thoris and Sola.  With the noiselessness of disembodied spirits
we moved stealthily along the deserted streets, but not until we
were within sight of the plain beyond the city did I commence to
breathe freely.  I was sure that Sola and Dejah Thoris would find
no difficulty in reaching our rendezvous undetected, but with my
great thoats I was not so sure for myself, as it was quite unusual
for warriors to leave the city after dark; in fact there was no
place for them to go within any but a long ride.

I reached the appointed meeting place safely, but as Dejah Thoris
and Sola were not there I led my animals into the entrance hall of
one of the large buildings.  Presuming that one of the other women
of the same household may have come in to speak to Sola, and so
delayed their departure, I did not feel any undue apprehension until
nearly an hour had passed without a sign of them, and by the time
another half hour had crawled away I was becoming filled with grave
anxiety.  Then there broke upon the stillness of the night the sound
of an approaching party, which, from the noise, I knew could be no
fugitives creeping stealthily toward liberty.  Soon the party was
near me, and from the black shadows of my entranceway I perceived
a score of mounted warriors, who, in passing, dropped a dozen
words that fetched my heart clean into the top of my head.

"He would likely have arranged to meet them just without the city,
and so--"  I heard no more, they had passed on; but it was enough.
Our plan had been discovered, and the chances for escape from now
on to the fearful end would be small indeed.  My one hope now was
to return undetected to the quarters of Dejah Thoris and learn what
fate had overtaken her, but how to do it with these great monstrous
thoats upon my hands, now that the city probably was aroused by the
knowledge of my escape was a problem of no mean proportions.

Suddenly an idea occurred to me, and acting on my knowledge of the
construction of the buildings of these ancient Martian cities with
a hollow court within the center of each square, I groped my way
blindly through the dark chambers, calling the great thoats after
me.  They had difficulty in negotiating some of the doorways, but
as the buildings fronting the city's principal exposures were all
designed upon a magnificent scale, they were able to wriggle through
without sticking fast; and thus we finally made the inner court
where I found, as I had expected, the usual carpet of moss-like
vegetation which would prove their food and drink until I could
return them to their own enclosure.  That they would be as quiet
and contented here as elsewhere I was confident, nor was there but
the remotest possibility that they would be discovered, as the
green men had no great desire to enter these outlying buildings,
which were frequented by the only thing, I believe, which caused
them the sensation of fear--the great white apes of Barsoom.

Removing the saddle trappings, I hid them just within the rear
doorway of the building through which we had entered the court, and,
turning the beasts loose, quickly made my way across the court to
the rear of the buildings upon the further side, and thence to the
avenue beyond.  Waiting in the doorway of the building until I was
assured that no one was approaching, I hurried across to the
opposite side and through the first doorway to the court beyond;
thus, crossing through court after court with only the slight chance
of detection which the necessary crossing of the avenues entailed,
I made my way in safety to the courtyard in the rear of Dejah
Thoris' quarters.

Here, of course, I found the beasts of the warriors who quartered in
the adjacent buildings, and the warriors themselves I might expect
to meet within if I entered; but, fortunately for me, I had another
and safer method of reaching the upper story where Dejah Thoris
should be found, and, after first determining as nearly as possible
which of the buildings she occupied, for I had never observed them
before from the court side, I took advantage of my relatively great
strength and agility and sprang upward until I grasped the sill of
a second-story window which I thought to be in the rear of her
apartment.  Drawing myself inside the room I moved stealthily toward
the front of the building, and not until I had quite reached the
doorway of her room was I made aware by voices that it was occupied.

I did not rush headlong in, but listened without to assure myself
that it was Dejah Thoris and that it was safe to venture within.  It
was well indeed that I took this precaution, for the conversation I
heard was in the low gutturals of men, and the words which finally
came to me proved a most timely warning.  The speaker was a
chieftain and he was giving orders to four of his warriors.

"And when he returns to this chamber," he was saying, "as he surely
will when he finds she does not meet him at the city's edge, you
four are to spring upon him and disarm him.  It will require the
combined strength of all of you to do it if the reports they bring
back from Korad are correct.  When you have him fast bound bear him
to the vaults beneath the jeddak's quarters and chain him securely
where he may be found when Tal Hajus wishes him.  Allow him to speak
with none, nor permit any other to enter this apartment before he
comes.  There will be no danger of the girl returning, for by this
time she is safe in the arms of Tal Hajus, and may all her ancestors
have pity upon her, for Tal Hajus will have none; the great Sarkoja
has done a noble night's work.  I go, and if you fail to capture him
when he comes, I commend your carcasses to the cold bosom of Iss."




CHAPTER XVII

A COSTLY RECAPTURE



As the speaker ceased he turned to leave the apartment by the door
where I was standing, but I needed to wait no longer; I had heard
enough to fill my soul with dread, and stealing quietly away I
returned to the courtyard by the way I had come.  My plan of action
was formed upon the instant, and crossing the square and the
bordering avenue upon the opposite side I soon stood within the
courtyard of Tal Hajus.

The brilliantly lighted apartments of the first floor told me where
first to seek, and advancing to the windows I peered within.  I
soon discovered that my approach was not to be the easy thing I
had hoped, for the rear rooms bordering the court were filled
with warriors and women.  I then glanced up at the stories above,
discovering that the third was apparently unlighted, and so decided
to make my entrance to the building from that point.  It was the
work of but a moment for me to reach the windows above, and soon
I had drawn myself within the sheltering shadows of the unlighted
third floor.

Fortunately the room I had selected was untenanted, and creeping
noiselessly to the corridor beyond I discovered a light in the
apartments ahead of me.  Reaching what appeared to be a doorway I
discovered that it was but an opening upon an immense inner chamber
which towered from the first floor, two stories below me, to the
dome-like roof of the building, high above my head.  The floor of
this great circular hall was thronged with chieftains, warriors
and women, and at one end was a great raised platform upon which
squatted the most hideous beast I had ever put my eyes upon.  He had
all the cold, hard, cruel, terrible features of the green warriors,
but accentuated and debased by the animal passions to which he had
given himself over for many years.  There was not a mark of dignity
or pride upon his bestial countenance, while his enormous bulk
spread itself out upon the platform where he squatted like some huge
devil fish, his six limbs accentuating the similarity in a horrible
and startling manner.

But the sight that froze me with apprehension was that of Dejah
Thoris and Sola standing there before him, and the fiendish leer of
him as he let his great protruding eyes gloat upon the lines of her
beautiful figure.  She was speaking, but I could not hear what she
said, nor could I make out the low grumbling of his reply.  She
stood there erect before him, her head high held, and even at the
distance I was from them I could read the scorn and disgust upon her
face as she let her haughty glance rest without sign of fear upon
him.  She was indeed the proud daughter of a thousand jeddaks, every
inch of her dear, precious little body; so small, so frail beside
the towering warriors around her, but in her majesty dwarfing them
into insignificance; she was the mightiest figure among them and I
verily believe that they felt it.

Presently Tal Hajus made a sign that the chamber be cleared, and
that the prisoners be left alone before him.  Slowly the chieftains,
the warriors and the women melted away into the shadows of the
surrounding chambers, and Dejah Thoris and Sola stood alone before
the jeddak of the Tharks.

One chieftain alone had hesitated before departing; I saw him
standing in the shadows of a mighty column, his fingers nervously
toying with the hilt of his great-sword and his cruel eyes bent in
implacable hatred upon Tal Hajus.  It was Tars Tarkas, and I could
read his thoughts as they were an open book for the undisguised
loathing upon his face.  He was thinking of that other woman who,
forty years ago, had stood before this beast, and could I have
spoken a word into his ear at that moment the reign of Tal Hajus
would have been over; but finally he also strode from the room,
not knowing that he left his own daughter at the mercy of the
creature he most loathed.

Tal Hajus arose, and I, half fearing, half anticipating his
intentions, hurried to the winding runway which led to the floors
below.  No one was near to intercept me, and I reached the main
floor of the chamber unobserved, taking my station in the shadow
of the same column that Tars Tarkas had but just deserted.  As I
reached the floor Tal Hajus was speaking.

"Princess of Helium, I might wring a mighty ransom from your people
would I but return you to them unharmed, but a thousand times rather
would I watch that beautiful face writhe in the agony of torture; it
shall be long drawn out, that I promise you; ten days of pleasure
were all too short to show the love I harbor for your race.  The
terrors of your death shall haunt the slumbers of the red men
through all the ages to come; they will shudder in the shadows of
the night as their fathers tell them of the awful vengeance of the
green men; of the power and might and hate and cruelty of Tal Hajus.
But before the torture you shall be mine for one short hour, and
word of that too shall go forth to Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium,
your grandfather, that he may grovel upon the ground in the agony of
his sorrow.  Tomorrow the torture will commence; tonight thou art Tal
Hajus'; come!"

He sprang down from the platform and grasped her roughly by the arm,
but scarcely had he touched her than I leaped between them.  My
short-sword, sharp and gleaming was in my right hand; I could have
plunged it into his putrid heart before he realized that I was upon
him; but as I raised my arm to strike I thought of Tars Tarkas, and,
with all my rage, with all my hatred, I could not rob him of that
sweet moment for which he had lived and hoped all these long, weary
years, and so, instead, I swung my good right fist full upon the
point of his jaw.  Without a sound he slipped to the floor as one
dead.

In the same deathly silence I grasped Dejah Thoris by the hand, and
motioning Sola to follow we sped noiselessly from the chamber and
to the floor above.  Unseen we reached a rear window and with the
straps and leather of my trappings I lowered, first Sola and then
Dejah Thoris to the ground below.  Dropping lightly after them I
drew them rapidly around the court in the shadows of the buildings,
and thus we returned over the same course I had so recently
followed from the distant boundary of the city.

We finally came upon my thoats in the courtyard where I had left
them, and placing the trappings upon them we hastened through the
building to the avenue beyond.  Mounting, Sola upon one beast,
and Dejah Thoris behind me upon the other, we rode from the city
of Thark through the hills to the south.

Instead of circling back around the city to the northwest and toward
the nearest waterway which lay so short a distance from us, we
turned to the northeast and struck out upon the mossy waste across
which, for two hundred dangerous and weary miles, lay another main
artery leading to Helium.

No word was spoken until we had left the city far behind, but I
could hear the quiet sobbing of Dejah Thoris as she clung to me
with her dear head resting against my shoulder.

"If we make it, my chieftain, the debt of Helium will be a mighty
one; greater than she can ever pay you; and should we not make it,"
she continued, "the debt is no less, though Helium will never know,
for you have saved the last of our line from worse than death."

I did not answer, but instead reached to my side and pressed the
little fingers of her I loved where they clung to me for support,
and then, in unbroken silence, we sped over the yellow, moonlit
moss; each of us occupied with his own thoughts.  For my part I
could not be other than joyful had I tried, with Dejah Thoris' warm
body pressed close to mine, and with all our unpassed danger my
heart was singing as gaily as though we were already entering the
gates of Helium.

Our earlier plans had been so sadly upset that we now found
ourselves without food or drink, and I alone was armed.  We
therefore urged our beasts to a speed that must tell on them
sorely before we could hope to sight the ending of the first
stage of our journey.

We rode all night and all the following day with only a few short
rests.  On the second night both we and our animals were completely
fagged, and so we lay down upon the moss and slept for some five or
six hours, taking up the journey once more before daylight.  All
the following day we rode, and when, late in the afternoon we had
sighted no distant trees, the mark of the great waterways throughout
all Barsoom, the terrible truth flashed upon us--we were lost.

Evidently we had circled, but which way it was difficult to say,
nor did it seem possible with the sun to guide us by day and the
moons and stars by night.  At any rate no waterway was in sight,
and the entire party was almost ready to drop from hunger, thirst
and fatigue.  Far ahead of us and a trifle to the right we could
distinguish the outlines of low mountains.  These we decided to
attempt to reach in the hope that from some ridge we might discern
the missing waterway.  Night fell upon us before we reached our goal,
and, almost fainting from weariness and weakness, we lay down and
slept.

I was awakened early in the morning by some huge body pressing close
to mine, and opening my eyes with a start I beheld my blessed old
Woola snuggling close to me; the faithful brute had followed us
across that trackless waste to share our fate, whatever it might be.
Putting my arms about his neck I pressed my cheek close to his, nor
am I ashamed that I did it, nor of the tears that came to my eyes as
I thought of his love for me.  Shortly after this Dejah Thoris and
Sola awakened, and it was decided that we push on at once in an
effort to gain the hills.

We had gone scarcely a mile when I noticed that my thoat was
commencing to stumble and stagger in a most pitiful manner, although
we had not attempted to force them out of a walk since about noon
of the preceding day.  Suddenly he lurched wildly to one side and
pitched violently to the ground.  Dejah Thoris and I were thrown
clear of him and fell upon the soft moss with scarcely a jar; but
the poor beast was in a pitiable condition, not even being able
to rise, although relieved of our weight.  Sola told me that the
coolness of the night, when it fell, together with the rest would
doubtless revive him, and so I decided not to kill him, as was my
first intention, as I had thought it cruel to leave him alone there
to die of hunger and thirst.  Relieving him of his trappings, which
I flung down beside him, we left the poor fellow to his fate, and
pushed on with the one thoat as best we could.  Sola and I walked,
making Dejah Thoris ride, much against her will.  In this way we had
progressed to within about a mile of the hills we were endeavoring
to reach when Dejah Thoris, from her point of vantage upon the
thoat, cried out that she saw a great party of mounted men filing
down from a pass in the hills several miles away.  Sola and I
both looked in the direction she indicated, and there, plainly
discernible, were several hundred mounted warriors.  They seemed to
be headed in a southwesterly direction, which would take them away
from us.

They doubtless were Thark warriors who had been sent out to capture
us, and we breathed a great sigh of relief that they were traveling
in the opposite direction.  Quickly lifting Dejah Thoris from the
thoat, I commanded the animal to lie down and we three did the same,
presenting as small an object as possible for fear of attracting
the attention of the warriors toward us.

We could see them as they filed out of the pass, just for an
instant, before they were lost to view behind a friendly ridge; to
us a most providential ridge; since, had they been in view for any
great length of time, they scarcely could have failed to discover
us.  As what proved to be the last warrior came into view from the
pass, he halted and, to our consternation, threw his small but
powerful fieldglass to his eye and scanned the sea bottom in all
directions.  Evidently he was a chieftain, for in certain marching
formations among the green men a chieftain brings up the extreme
rear of the column.  As his glass swung toward us our hearts stopped
in our breasts, and I could feel the cold sweat start from every
pore in my body.

Presently it swung full upon us and--stopped.  The tension on
our nerves was near the breaking point, and I doubt if any of us
breathed for the few moments he held us covered by his glass; and
then he lowered it and we could see him shout a command to the
warriors who had passed from our sight behind the ridge.  He did
not wait for them to join him, however, instead he wheeled his
thoat and came tearing madly in our direction.

There was but one slight chance and that we must take quickly.
Raising my strange Martian rifle to my shoulder I sighted and
touched the button which controlled the trigger; there was a
sharp explosion as the missile reached its goal, and the
charging chieftain pitched backward from his flying mount.

Springing to my feet I urged the thoat to rise, and directed Sola
to take Dejah Thoris with her upon him and make a mighty effort to
reach the hills before the green warriors were upon us.  I knew that
in the ravines and gullies they might find a temporary hiding place,
and even though they died there of hunger and thirst it would be
better so than that they fell into the hands of the Tharks.  Forcing
my two revolvers upon them as a slight means of protection, and, as
a last resort, as an escape for themselves from the horrid death
which recapture would surely mean, I lifted Dejah Thoris in my arms
and placed her upon the thoat behind Sola, who had already mounted
at my command.

"Good-bye, my princess," I whispered, "we may meet in Helium yet.
I have escaped from worse plights than this," and I tried to smile
as I lied.

"What," she cried, "are you not coming with us?"

"How may I, Dejah Thoris?  Someone must hold these fellows off for a
while, and I can better escape them alone than could the three of us
together."

She sprang quickly from the thoat and, throwing her dear arms about
my neck, turned to Sola, saying with quiet dignity: "Fly, Sola!
Dejah Thoris remains to die with the man she loves."

Those words are engraved upon my heart.  Ah, gladly would I give
up my life a thousand times could I only hear them once again; but
I could not then give even a second to the rapture of her sweet
embrace, and pressing my lips to hers for the first time, I picked
her up bodily and tossed her to her seat behind Sola again,
commanding the latter in peremptory tones to hold her there by
force, and then, slapping the thoat upon the flank, I saw them
borne away; Dejah Thoris struggling to the last to free herself
from Sola's grasp.

Turning, I beheld the green warriors mounting the ridge and looking
for their chieftain.  In a moment they saw him, and then me; but
scarcely had they discovered me than I commenced firing, lying flat
upon my belly in the moss.  I had an even hundred rounds in the
magazine of my rifle, and another hundred in the belt at my back,
and I kept up a continuous stream of fire until I saw all of the
warriors who had been first to return from behind the ridge either
dead or scurrying to cover.

My respite was short-lived however, for soon the entire party,
numbering some thousand men, came charging into view, racing madly
toward me.  I fired until my rifle was empty and they were almost
upon me, and then a glance showing me that Dejah Thoris and Sola had
disappeared among the hills, I sprang up, throwing down my useless
gun, and started away in the direction opposite to that taken by
Sola and her charge.

If ever Martians had an exhibition of jumping, it was granted those
astonished warriors on that day long years ago, but while it led
them away from Dejah Thoris it did not distract their attention
from endeavoring to capture me.

They raced wildly after me until, finally, my foot struck a
projecting piece of quartz, and down I went sprawling upon the moss.
As I looked up they were upon me, and although I drew my long-sword
in an attempt to sell my life as dearly as possible, it was soon
over.  I reeled beneath their blows which fell upon me in perfect
torrents; my head swam; all was black, and I went down beneath them
to oblivion.




CHAPTER XVIII

CHAINED IN WARHOON



It must have been several hours before I regained consciousness
and I well remember the feeling of surprise which swept over me as
I realized that I was not dead.

I was lying among a pile of sleeping silks and furs in the corner of
a small room in which were several green warriors, and bending over
me was an ancient and ugly female.

As I opened my eyes she turned to one of the warriors, saying,

"He will live, O Jed."

"'Tis well," replied the one so addressed, rising and approaching my
couch, "he should render rare sport for the great games."

And now as my eyes fell upon him, I saw that he was no Thark, for
his ornaments and metal were not of that horde.  He was a huge
fellow, terribly scarred about the face and chest, and with one
broken tusk and a missing ear.  Strapped on either breast were human
skulls and depending from these a number of dried human hands.

His reference to the great games of which I had heard so much while
among the Tharks convinced me that I had but jumped from purgatory
into gehenna.

After a few more words with the female, during which she assured him
that I was now fully fit to travel, the jed ordered that we mount
and ride after the main column.

I was strapped securely to as wild and unmanageable a thoat as I had
ever seen, and, with a mounted warrior on either side to prevent the
beast from bolting, we rode forth at a furious pace in pursuit of
the column.  My wounds gave me but little pain, so wonderfully and
rapidly had the applications and injections of the female exercised
their therapeutic powers, and so deftly had she bound and plastered
the injuries.

Just before dark we reached the main body of troops shortly after
they had made camp for the night.  I was immediately taken before
the leader, who proved to be the jeddak of the hordes of Warhoon.

Like the jed who had brought me, he was frightfully scarred, and
also decorated with the breastplate of human skulls and dried dead
hands which seemed to mark all the greater warriors among the
Warhoons, as well as to indicate their awful ferocity, which
greatly transcends even that of the Tharks.

The jeddak, Bar Comas, who was comparatively young, was the object
of the fierce and jealous hatred of his old lieutenant, Dak Kova,
the jed who had captured me, and I could not but note the almost
studied efforts which the latter made to affront his superior.

He entirely omitted the usual formal salutation as we entered the
presence of the jeddak, and as he pushed me roughly before the
ruler he exclaimed in a loud and menacing voice.

"I have brought a strange creature wearing the metal of a Thark
whom it is my pleasure to have battle with a wild thoat at the
great games."

"He will die as Bar Comas, your jeddak, sees fit, if at all,"
replied the young ruler, with emphasis and dignity.

"If at all?" roared Dak Kova.  "By the dead hands at my throat but
he shall die, Bar Comas.  No maudlin weakness on your part shall
save him.  O, would that Warhoon were ruled by a real jeddak rather
than by a water-hearted weakling from whom even old Dak Kova could
tear the metal with his bare hands!"

Bar Comas eyed the defiant and insubordinate chieftain for an
instant, his expression one of haughty, fearless contempt and hate,
and then without drawing a weapon and without uttering a word he
hurled himself at the throat of his defamer.

I never before had seen two green Martian warriors battle with
nature's weapons and the exhibition of animal ferocity which ensued
was as fearful a thing as the most disordered imagination could
picture.  They tore at each others' eyes and ears with their hands
and with their gleaming tusks repeatedly slashed and gored until
both were cut fairly to ribbons from head to foot.

Bar Comas had much the better of the battle as he was stronger,
quicker and more intelligent.  It soon seemed that the encounter was
done saving only the final death thrust when Bar Comas slipped in
breaking away from a clinch.  It was the one little opening that Dak
Kova needed, and hurling himself at the body of his adversary he
buried his single mighty tusk in Bar Comas' groin and with a last
powerful effort ripped the young jeddak wide open the full length of
his body, the great tusk finally wedging in the bones of Bar Comas'
jaw.  Victor and vanquished rolled limp and lifeless upon the moss,
a huge mass of torn and bloody flesh.

Bar Comas was stone dead, and only the most herculean efforts on
the part of Dak Kova's females saved him from the fate he deserved.
Three days later he walked without assistance to the body of Bar
Comas which, by custom, had not been moved from where it fell, and
placing his foot upon the neck of his erstwhile ruler he assumed
the title of Jeddak of Warhoon.

The dead jeddak's hands and head were removed to be added to the
ornaments of his conqueror, and then his women cremated what
remained, amid wild and terrible laughter.

The injuries to Dak Kova had delayed the march so greatly that it
was decided to give up the expedition, which was a raid upon a small
Thark community in retaliation for the destruction of the incubator,
until after the great games, and the entire body of warriors, ten
thousand in number, turned back toward Warhoon.

My introduction to these cruel and bloodthirsty people was but an
index to the scenes I witnessed almost daily while with them.  They
are a smaller horde than the Tharks but much more ferocious.  Not a
day passed but that some members of the various Warhoon communities
met in deadly combat.  I have seen as high as eight mortal duels
within a single day.

We reached the city of Warhoon after some three days march and I was
immediately cast into a dungeon and heavily chained to the floor
and walls.  Food was brought me at intervals but owing to the utter
darkness of the place I do not know whether I lay there days, or
weeks, or months.  It was the most horrible experience of all my
life and that my mind did not give way to the terrors of that inky
blackness has been a wonder to me ever since.  The place was filled
with creeping, crawling things; cold, sinuous bodies passed over me
when I lay down, and in the darkness I occasionally caught glimpses
of gleaming, fiery eyes, fixed in horrible intentness upon me.  No
sound reached me from the world above and no word would my jailer
vouchsafe when my food was brought to me, although I at first
bombarded him with questions.

Finally all the hatred and maniacal loathing for these awful
creatures who had placed me in this horrible place was centered
by my tottering reason upon this single emissary who represented
to me the entire horde of Warhoons.

I had noticed that he always advanced with his dim torch to where he
could place the food within my reach and as he stooped to place it
upon the floor his head was about on a level with my breast.  So,
with the cunning of a madman, I backed into the far corner of my
cell when next I heard him approaching and gathering a little slack
of the great chain which held me in my hand I waited his coming,
crouching like some beast of prey.  As he stooped to place my food
upon the ground I swung the chain above my head and crashed the
links with all my strength upon his skull.  Without a sound he
slipped to the floor, stone dead.

Laughing and chattering like the idiot I was fast becoming I fell
upon his prostrate form my fingers feeling for his dead throat.
Presently they came in contact with a small chain at the end of
which dangled a number of keys.  The touch of my fingers on these
keys brought back my reason with the suddenness of thought.  No
longer was I a jibbering idiot, but a sane, reasoning man with
the means of escape within my very hands.

As I was groping to remove the chain from about my victim's neck
I glanced up into the darkness to see six pairs of gleaming eyes
fixed, unwinking, upon me.  Slowly they approached and slowly I
shrank back from the awful horror of them.  Back into my corner I
crouched holding my hands palms out, before me, and stealthily on
came the awful eyes until they reached the dead body at my feet.
Then slowly they retreated but this time with a strange grating
sound and finally they disappeared in some black and distant recess
of my dungeon.




CHAPTER XIX

BATTLING IN THE ARENA



Slowly I regained my composure and finally essayed again to attempt
to remove the keys from the dead body of my former jailer.  But as
I reached out into the darkness to locate it I found to my horror
that it was gone.  Then the truth flashed on me; the owners of
those gleaming eyes had dragged my prize away from me to be
devoured in their neighboring lair; as they had been waiting for
days, for weeks, for months, through all this awful eternity of
my imprisonment to drag my dead carcass to their feast.

For two days no food was brought me, but then a new messenger
appeared and my incarceration went on as before, but not again did
I allow my reason to be submerged by the horror of my position.

Shortly after this episode another prisoner was brought in and
chained near me.  By the dim torch light I saw that he was a red
Martian and I could scarcely await the departure of his guards to
address him.  As their retreating footsteps died away in the
distance, I called out softly the Martian word of greeting, kaor.

"Who are you who speaks out of the darkness?" he answered

"John Carter, a friend of the red men of Helium."

"I am of Helium," he said, "but I do not recall your name."

And then I told him my story as I have written it here, omitting
only any reference to my love for Dejah Thoris.  He was much excited
by the news of Helium's princess and seemed quite positive that she
and Sola could easily have reached a point of safety from where they
left me.  He said that he knew the place well because the defile
through which the Warhoon warriors had passed when they discovered
us was the only one ever used by them when marching to the south.

"Dejah Thoris and Sola entered the hills not five miles from a great
waterway and are now probably quite safe," he assured me.

My fellow prisoner was Kantos Kan, a padwar (lieutenant) in the navy
of Helium.  He had been a member of the ill-fated expedition which
had fallen into the hands of the Tharks at the time of Dejah Thoris'
capture, and he briefly related the events which followed the defeat
of the battleships.

Badly injured and only partially manned they had limped slowly
toward Helium, but while passing near the city of Zodanga, the
capital of Helium's hereditary enemies among the red men of Barsoom,
they had been attacked by a great body of war vessels and all but
the craft to which Kantos Kan belonged were either destroyed or
captured.  His vessel was chased for days by three of the Zodangan
war ships but finally escaped during the darkness of a moonless
night.

Thirty days after the capture of Dejah Thoris, or about the time of
our coming to Thark, his vessel had reached Helium with about ten
survivors of the original crew of seven hundred officers and men.
Immediately seven great fleets, each of one hundred mighty war
ships, had been dispatched to search for Dejah Thoris, and from
these vessels two thousand smaller craft had been kept out
continuously in futile search for the missing princess.

Two green Martian communities had been wiped off the face of Barsoom
by the avenging fleets, but no trace of Dejah Thoris had been found.
They had been searching among the northern hordes, and only within
the past few days had they extended their quest to the south.

Kantos Kan had been detailed to one of the small one-man fliers
and had had the misfortune to be discovered by the Warhoons while
exploring their city.  The bravery and daring of the man won my
greatest respect and admiration.  Alone he had landed at the city's
boundary and on foot had penetrated to the buildings surrounding the
plaza.  For two days and nights he had explored their quarters and
their dungeons in search of his beloved princess only to fall into
the hands of a party of Warhoons as he was about to leave, after
assuring himself that Dejah Thoris was not a captive there.

During the period of our incarceration Kantos Kan and I became well
acquainted, and formed a warm personal friendship.  A few days only
elapsed, however, before we were dragged forth from our dungeon for
the great games.  We were conducted early one morning to an enormous
amphitheater, which instead of having been built upon the surface of
the ground was excavated below the surface.  It had partially filled
with debris so that how large it had originally been was difficult
to say.  In its present condition it held the entire twenty thousand
Warhoons of the assembled hordes.

The arena was immense but extremely uneven and unkempt.  Around
it the Warhoons had piled building stone from some of the ruined
edifices of the ancient city to prevent the animals and the
captives from escaping into the audience, and at each end had been
constructed cages to hold them until their turns came to meet some
horrible death upon the arena.

Kantos Kan and I were confined together in one of the cages.  In the
others were wild calots, thoats, mad zitidars, green warriors, and
women of other hordes, and many strange and ferocious wild beasts of
Barsoom which I had never before seen.  The din of their roaring,
growling and squealing was deafening and the formidable appearance
of any one of them was enough to make the stoutest heart feel grave
forebodings.

Kantos Kan explained to me that at the end of the day one of these
prisoners would gain freedom and the others would lie dead about
the arena.  The winners in the various contests of the day would be
pitted against each other until only two remained alive; the victor
in the last encounter being set free, whether animal or man.  The
following morning the cages would be filled with a new consignment
of victims, and so on throughout the ten days of the games.

Shortly after we had been caged the amphitheater began to fill
and within an hour every available part of the seating space was
occupied.  Dak Kova, with his jeds and chieftains, sat at the
center of one side of the arena upon a large raised platform.

At a signal from Dak Kova the doors of two cages were thrown open
and a dozen green Martian females were driven to the center of the
arena.  Each was given a dagger and then, at the far end, a pack
of twelve calots, or wild dogs were loosed upon them.

As the brutes, growling and foaming, rushed upon the almost
defenseless women I turned my head that I might not see the horrid
sight.  The yells and laughter of the green horde bore witness to
the excellent quality of the sport and when I turned back to the
arena, as Kantos Kan told me it was over, I saw three victorious
calots, snarling and growling over the bodies of their prey.
The women had given a good account of themselves.

Next a mad zitidar was loosed among the remaining dogs, and so it
went throughout the long, hot, horrible day.

During the day I was pitted against first men and then beasts, but
as I was armed with a long-sword and always outclassed my adversary
in agility and generally in strength as well, it proved but child's
play to me.  Time and time again I won the applause of the
bloodthirsty multitude, and toward the end there were cries that
I be taken from the arena and be made a member of the hordes of
Warhoon.

Finally there were but three of us left, a great green warrior of
some far northern horde, Kantos Kan, and myself.

The other two were to battle and then I to fight the conqueror for
the liberty which was accorded the final winner.

Kantos Kan had fought several times during the day and like myself
had always proven victorious, but occasionally by the smallest of
margins, especially when pitted against the green warriors.  I had
little hope that he could best his giant adversary who had mowed
down all before him during the day.  The fellow towered nearly
sixteen feet in height, while Kantos Kan was some inches under six
feet.  As they advanced to meet one another I saw for the first time
a trick of Martian swordsmanship which centered Kantos Kan's every
hope of victory and life on one cast of the dice, for, as he came to
within about twenty feet of the huge fellow he threw his sword arm
far behind him over his shoulder and with a mighty sweep hurled his
weapon point foremost at the green warrior.  It flew true as an
arrow and piercing the poor devil's heart laid him dead upon the
arena.

Kantos Kan and I were now pitted against each other but as we
approached to the encounter I whispered to him to prolong the battle
until nearly dark in the hope that we might find some means of
escape.  The horde evidently guessed that we had no hearts to fight
each other and so they howled in rage as neither of us placed a
fatal thrust.  Just as I saw the sudden coming of dark I whispered
to Kantos Kan to thrust his sword between my left arm and my body.
As he did so I staggered back clasping the sword tightly with my arm
and thus fell to the ground with his weapon apparently protruding
from my chest.  Kantos Kan perceived my coup and stepping quickly to
my side he placed his foot upon my neck and withdrawing his sword
from my body gave me the final death blow through the neck which is
supposed to sever the jugular vein, but in this instance the cold
blade slipped harmlessly into the sand of the arena.  In the
darkness which had now fallen none could tell but that he had really
finished me.  I whispered to him to go and claim his freedom and
then look for me in the hills east of the city, and so he left me.

When the amphitheater had cleared I crept stealthily to the top and
as the great excavation lay far from the plaza and in an untenanted
portion of the great dead city I had little trouble in reaching the
hills beyond.




CHAPTER XX

IN THE ATMOSPHERE FACTORY



For two days I waited there for Kantos Kan, but as he did not come
I started off on foot in a northwesterly direction toward a point
where he had told me lay the nearest waterway.  My only food
consisted of vegetable milk from the plants which gave so
bounteously of this priceless fluid.

Through two long weeks I wandered, stumbling through the nights
guided only by the stars and hiding during the days behind some
protruding rock or among the occasional hills I traversed.  Several
times I was attacked by wild beasts; strange, uncouth monstrosities
that leaped upon me in the dark, so that I had ever to grasp my
long-sword in my hand that I might be ready for them.  Usually my
strange, newly acquired telepathic power warned me in ample time,
but once I was down with vicious fangs at my jugular and a hairy
face pressed close to mine before I knew that I was even threatened.

What manner of thing was upon me I did not know, but that it was
large and heavy and many-legged I could feel.  My hands were at its
throat before the fangs had a chance to bury themselves in my neck,
and slowly I forced the hairy face from me and closed my fingers,
vise-like, upon its windpipe.

Without sound we lay there, the beast exerting every effort to reach
me with those awful fangs, and I straining to maintain my grip and
choke the life from it as I kept it from my throat.  Slowly my arms
gave to the unequal struggle, and inch by inch the burning eyes and
gleaming tusks of my antagonist crept toward me, until, as the hairy
face touched mine again, I realized that all was over.  And then a
living mass of destruction sprang from the surrounding darkness full
upon the creature that held me pinioned to the ground.  The two
rolled growling upon the moss, tearing and rending one another in
a frightful manner, but it was soon over and my preserver stood
with lowered head above the throat of the dead thing which would
have killed me.

The nearer moon, hurtling suddenly above the horizon and lighting
up the Barsoomian scene, showed me that my preserver was Woola, but
from whence he had come, or how found me, I was at a loss to know.
That I was glad of his companionship it is needless to say, but my
pleasure at seeing him was tempered by anxiety as to the reason of
his leaving Dejah Thoris.  Only her death I felt sure, could account
for his absence from her, so faithful I knew him to be to my
commands.

By the light of the now brilliant moons I saw that he was but a
shadow of his former self, and as he turned from my caress and
commenced greedily to devour the dead carcass at my feet I realized
that the poor fellow was more than half starved.  I, myself, was in
but little better plight but I could not bring myself to eat the
uncooked flesh and I had no means of making a fire.  When Woola had
finished his meal I again took up my weary and seemingly endless
wandering in quest of the elusive waterway.

At daybreak of the fifteenth day of my search I was overjoyed to
see the high trees that denoted the object of my search.  About noon
I dragged myself wearily to the portals of a huge building which
covered perhaps four square miles and towered two hundred feet in
the air.  It showed no aperture in the mighty walls other than the
tiny door at which I sank exhausted, nor was there any sign of life
about it.

I could find no bell or other method of making my presence known to
the inmates of the place, unless a small round role in the wall
near the door was for that purpose.  It was of about the bigness
of a lead pencil and thinking that it might be in the nature of a
speaking tube I put my mouth to it and was about to call into it
when a voice issued from it asking me whom I might be, where from,
and the nature of my errand.

I explained that I had escaped from the Warhoons and was dying of
starvation and exhaustion.

"You wear the metal of a green warrior and are followed by a calot,
yet you are of the figure of a red man.  In color you are neither
green nor red.  In the name of the ninth day, what manner of
creature are you?"

"I am a friend of the red men of Barsoom and I am starving.  In the
name of humanity open to us," I replied.

Presently the door commenced to recede before me until it had sunk
into the wall fifty feet, then it stopped and slid easily to the
left, exposing a short, narrow corridor of concrete, at the further
end of which was another door, similar in every respect to the one I
had just passed.  No one was in sight, yet immediately we passed the
first door it slid gently into place behind us and receded rapidly
to its original position in the front wall of the building.  As the
door had slipped aside I had noted its great thickness, fully twenty
feet, and as it reached its place once more after closing behind us,
great cylinders of steel had dropped from the ceiling behind it and
fitted their lower ends into apertures countersunk in the floor.

A second and third door receded before me and slipped to one side as
the first, before I reached a large inner chamber where I found food
and drink set out upon a great stone table.  A voice directed me to
satisfy my hunger and to feed my calot, and while I was thus engaged
my invisible host put me through a severe and searching
cross-examination.

"Your statements are most remarkable," said the voice, on concluding
its questioning, "but you are evidently speaking the truth, and it
is equally evident that you are not of Barsoom.  I can tell that by
the conformation of your brain and the strange location of your
internal organs and the shape and size of your heart."

"Can you see through me?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, I can see all but your thoughts, and were you a Barsoomian I
could read those."

Then a door opened at the far side of the chamber and a strange,
dried up, little mummy of a man came toward me.  He wore but a
single article of clothing or adornment, a small collar of gold from
which depended upon his chest a great ornament as large as a dinner
plate set solid with huge diamonds, except for the exact center
which was occupied by a strange stone, an inch in diameter, that
scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven colors of
our earthly prism and two beautiful rays which, to me, were new and
nameless.  I cannot describe them any more than you could describe
red to a blind man.  I only know that they were beautiful in the
extreme.

The old man sat and talked with me for hours, and the strangest part
of our intercourse was that I could read his every thought while he
could not fathom an iota from my mind unless I spoke.

I did not apprise him of my ability to sense his mental operations,
and thus I learned a great deal which proved of immense value to me
later and which I would never have known had he suspected my strange
power, for the Martians have such perfect control of their mental
machinery that they are able to direct their thoughts with absolute
precision.

The building in which I found myself contained the machinery which
produces that artificial atmosphere which sustains life on Mars.
The secret of the entire process hinges on the use of the ninth ray,
one of the beautiful scintillations which I had noted emanating from
the great stone in my host's diadem.

This ray is separated from the other rays of the sun by means
of finely adjusted instruments placed upon the roof of the huge
building, three-quarters of which is used for reservoirs in which
the ninth ray is stored.  This product is then treated electrically,
or rather certain proportions of refined electric vibrations are
incorporated with it, and the result is then pumped to the five
principal air centers of the planet where, as it is released,
contact with the ether of space transforms it into atmosphere.

There is always sufficient reserve of the ninth ray stored in the
great building to maintain the present Martian atmosphere for a
thousand years, and the only fear, as my new friend told me, was
that some accident might befall the pumping apparatus.

He led me to an inner chamber where I beheld a battery of twenty
radium pumps any one of which was equal to the task of furnishing
all Mars with the atmosphere compound.  For eight hundred years, he
told me, he had watched these pumps which are used alternately a day
each at a stretch, or a little over twenty-four and one-half Earth
hours.  He has one assistant who divides the watch with him.  Half a
Martian year, about three hundred and forty-four of our days, each
of these men spend alone in this huge, isolated plant.

Every red Martian is taught during earliest childhood the principles
of the manufacture of atmosphere, but only two at one time ever
hold the secret of ingress to the great building, which, built as
it is with walls a hundred and fifty feet thick, is absolutely
unassailable, even the roof being guarded from assault by air craft
by a glass covering five feet thick.

The only fear they entertain of attack is from the green Martians
or some demented red man, as all Barsoomians realize that the
very existence of every form of life of Mars is dependent upon
the uninterrupted working of this plant.

One curious fact I discovered as I watched his thoughts was that
the outer doors are manipulated by telepathic means.  The locks
are so finely adjusted that the doors are released by the action
of a certain combination of thought waves.  To experiment with
my new-found toy I thought to surprise him into revealing this
combination and so I asked him in a casual manner how he had managed
to unlock the massive doors for me from the inner chambers of the
building.  As quick as a flash there leaped to his mind nine Martian
sounds, but as quickly faded as he answered that this was a secret
he must not divulge.

From then on his manner toward me changed as though he feared that
he had been surprised into divulging his great secret, and I read
suspicion and fear in his looks and thoughts, though his words were
still fair.

Before I retired for the night he promised to give me a letter to a
nearby agricultural officer who would help me on my way to Zodanga,
which he said, was the nearest Martian city.

"But be sure that you do not let them know you are bound for Helium
as they are at war with that country.  My assistant and I are of no
country, we belong to all Barsoom and this talisman which we wear
protects us in all lands, even among the green men--though we do
not trust ourselves to their hands if we can avoid it," he added.

"And so good-night, my friend," he continued, "may you have a long
and restful sleep--yes, a long sleep."

And though he smiled pleasantly I saw in his thoughts the wish that
he had never admitted me, and then a picture of him standing over me
in the night, and the swift thrust of a long dagger and the half
formed words, "I am sorry, but it is for the best good of Barsoom."

As he closed the door of my chamber behind him his thoughts were
cut off from me as was the sight of him, which seemed strange to me
in my little knowledge of thought transference.

What was I to do?  How could I escape through these mighty walls?
Easily could I kill him now that I was warned, but once he was dead
I could no more escape, and with the stopping of the machinery of
the great plant I should die with all the other inhabitants of the
planet--all, even Dejah Thoris were she not already dead.  For the
others I did not give the snap of my finger, but the thought of
Dejah Thoris drove from my mind all desire to kill my mistaken host.

Cautiously I opened the door of my apartment and, followed by Woola,
sought the inner of the great doors.  A wild scheme had come to me;
I would attempt to force the great locks by the nine thought waves
I had read in my host's mind.

Creeping stealthily through corridor after corridor and down winding
runways which turned hither and thither I finally reached the great
hall in which I had broken my long fast that morning.  Nowhere had
I seen my host, nor did I know where he kept himself by night.

I was on the point of stepping boldly out into the room when a
slight noise behind me warned me back into the shadows of a recess
in the corridor.  Dragging Woola after me I crouched low in the
darkness.

Presently the old man passed close by me, and as he entered the
dimly lighted chamber which I had been about to pass through I
saw that he held a long thin dagger in his hand and that he was
sharpening it upon a stone.  In his mind was the decision to inspect
the radium pumps, which would take about thirty minutes, and then
return to my bed chamber and finish me.

As he passed through the great hall and disappeared down the runway
which led to the pump-room, I stole stealthily from my hiding place
and crossed to the great door, the inner of the three which stood
between me and liberty.

Concentrating my mind upon the massive lock I hurled the nine
thought waves against it.  In breathless expectancy I waited, when
finally the great door moved softly toward me and slid quietly to
one side.  One after the other the remaining mighty portals opened
at my command and Woola and I stepped forth into the darkness, free,
but little better off than we had been before, other than that we
had full stomachs.

Hastening away from the shadows of the formidable pile I made for
the first crossroad, intending to strike the central turnpike as
quickly as possible.  This I reached about morning and entering
the first enclosure I came to I searched for some evidences of a
habitation.

There were low rambling buildings of concrete barred with heavy
impassable doors, and no amount of hammering and hallooing brought
any response.  Weary and exhausted from sleeplessness I threw
myself upon the ground commanding Woola to stand guard.

Some time later I was awakened by his frightful growlings and opened
my eyes to see three red Martians standing a short distance from us
and covering me with their rifles.

"I am unarmed and no enemy," I hastened to explain.  "I have been a
prisoner among the green men and am on my way to Zodanga.  All I ask
is food and rest for myself and my calot and the proper directions
for reaching my destination."

They lowered their rifles and advanced pleasantly toward me placing
their right hands upon my left shoulder, after the manner of their
custom of salute, and asking me many questions about myself and my
wanderings.  They then took me to the house of one of them which was
only a short distance away.

The buildings I had been hammering at in the early morning were
occupied only by stock and farm produce, the house proper standing
among a grove of enormous trees, and, like all red-Martian homes,
had been raised at night some forty or fifty feet from the ground
on a large round metal shaft which slid up or down within a sleeve
sunk in the ground, and was operated by a tiny radium engine in the
entrance hall of the building.  Instead of bothering with bolts and
bars for their dwellings, the red Martians simply run them up out
of harm's way during the night.  They also have private means for
lowering or raising them from the ground without if they wish to
go away and leave them.

These brothers, with their wives and children, occupied three
similar houses on this farm.  They did no work themselves, being
government officers in charge.  The labor was performed by convicts,
prisoners of war, delinquent debtors and confirmed bachelors who
were too poor to pay the high celibate tax which all red-Martian
governments impose.

They were the personification of cordiality and hospitality and I
spent several days with them, resting and recuperating from my long
and arduous experiences.

When they had heard my story--I omitted all reference to Dejah
Thoris and the old man of the atmosphere plant--they advised me
to color my body to more nearly resemble their own race and then
attempt to find employment in Zodanga, either in the army or the
navy.

"The chances are small that your tale will be believed until after
you have proven your trustworthiness and won friends among the
higher nobles of the court.  This you can most easily do through
military service, as we are a warlike people on Barsoom," explained
one of them, "and save our richest favors for the fighting man."

When I was ready to depart they furnished me with a small domestic
bull thoat, such as is used for saddle purposes by all red Martians.
The animal is about the size of a horse and quite gentle, but in
color and shape an exact replica of his huge and fierce cousin of
the wilds.

The brothers had supplied me with a reddish oil with which I
anointed my entire body and one of them cut my hair, which had grown
quite long, in the prevailing fashion of the time, square at the
back and banged in front, so that I could have passed anywhere upon
Barsoom as a full-fledged red Martian.  My metal and ornaments were
also renewed in the style of a Zodangan gentleman, attached to the
house of Ptor, which was the family name of my benefactors.

They filled a little sack at my side with Zodangan money.  The
medium of exchange upon Mars is not dissimilar from our own except
that the coins are oval.  Paper money is issued by individuals as
they require it and redeemed twice yearly.  If a man issues more
than he can redeem, the government pays his creditors in full and
the debtor works out the amount upon the farms or in mines, which
are all owned by the government.  This suits everybody except the
debtor as it has been a difficult thing to obtain sufficient
voluntary labor to work the great isolated farm lands of Mars,
stretching as they do like narrow ribbons from pole to pole,
through wild stretches peopled by wild animals and wilder men.

When I mentioned my inability to repay them for their kindness to me
they assured me that I would have ample opportunity if I lived long
upon Barsoom, and bidding me farewell they watched me until I was
out of sight upon the broad white turnpike.




CHAPTER XXI

AN AIR SCOUT FOR ZODANGA



As I proceeded on my journey toward Zodanga many strange and
interesting sights arrested my attention, and at the several farm
houses where I stopped I learned a number of new and instructive
things concerning the methods and manners of Barsoom.

The water which supplies the farms of Mars is collected in immense
underground reservoirs at either pole from the melting ice caps,
and pumped through long conduits to the various populated centers.
Along either side of these conduits, and extending their entire
length, lie the cultivated districts.  These are divided into tracts
of about the same size, each tract being under the supervision of
one or more government officers.

Instead of flooding the surface of the fields, and thus wasting
immense quantities of water by evaporation, the precious liquid is
carried underground through a vast network of small pipes directly
to the roots of the vegetation.  The crops upon Mars are always
uniform, for there are no droughts, no rains, no high winds, and
no insects, or destroying birds.

On this trip I tasted the first meat I had eaten since leaving
Earth--large, juicy steaks and chops from the well-fed domestic
animals of the farms.  Also I enjoyed luscious fruits and
vegetables, but not a single article of food which was exactly
similar to anything on Earth.  Every plant and flower and vegetable
and animal has been so refined by ages of careful, scientific
cultivation and breeding that the like of them on Earth dwindled
into pale, gray, characterless nothingness by comparison.

At a second stop I met some highly cultivated people of the noble
class and while in conversation we chanced to speak of Helium.  One
of the older men had been there on a diplomatic mission several
years before and spoke with regret of the conditions which seemed
destined ever to keep these two countries at war.

"Helium," he said, "rightly boasts the most beautiful women of
Barsoom, and of all her treasures the wondrous daughter of Mors
Kajak, Dejah Thoris, is the most exquisite flower.

"Why," he added, "the people really worship the ground she walks
upon and since her loss on that ill-starred expedition all Helium
has been draped in mourning.

"That our ruler should have attacked the disabled fleet as it was
returning to Helium was but another of his awful blunders which I
fear will sooner or later compel Zodanga to elevate a wiser man to
his place."

"Even now, though our victorious armies are surrounding Helium, the
people of Zodanga are voicing their displeasure, for the war is
not a popular one, since it is not based on right or justice.  Our
forces took advantage of the absence of the principal fleet of
Helium on their search for the princess, and so we have been able
easily to reduce the city to a sorry plight.  It is said she will
fall within the next few passages of the further moon."

"And what, think you, may have been the fate of the princess, Dejah
Thoris?" I asked as casually as possible.

"She is dead," he answered.  "This much was learned from a green
warrior recently captured by our forces in the south.  She escaped
from the hordes of Thark with a strange creature of another world,
only to fall into the hands of the Warhoons.  Their thoats were
found wandering upon the sea bottom and evidences of a bloody
conflict were discovered nearby."

While this information was in no way reassuring, neither was it
at all conclusive proof of the death of Dejah Thoris, and so I
determined to make every effort possible to reach Helium as quickly
as I could and carry to Tardos Mors such news of his granddaughter's
possible whereabouts as lay in my power.

Ten days after leaving the three Ptor brothers I arrived at Zodanga.
From the moment that I had come in contact with the red inhabitants
of Mars I had noticed that Woola drew a great amount of unwelcome
attention to me, since the huge brute belonged to a species which is
never domesticated by the red men.  Were one to stroll down Broadway
with a Numidian lion at his heels the effect would be somewhat
similar to that which I should have produced had I entered Zodanga
with Woola.

The very thought of parting with the faithful fellow caused me so
great regret and genuine sorrow that I put it off until just before
we arrived at the city's gates; but then, finally, it became
imperative that we separate.  Had nothing further than my own safety
or pleasure been at stake no argument could have prevailed upon me
to turn away the one creature upon Barsoom that had never failed in
a demonstration of affection and loyalty; but as I would willingly
have offered my life in the service of her in search of whom I was
about to challenge the unknown dangers of this, to me, mysterious
city, I could not permit even Woola's life to threaten the success
of my venture, much less his momentary happiness, for I doubted
not he soon would forget me.  And so I bade the poor beast an
affectionate farewell, promising him, however, that if I came
through my adventure in safety that in some way I should find
the means to search him out.

He seemed to understand me fully, and when I pointed back in the
direction of Thark he turned sorrowfully away, nor could I bear to
watch him go; but resolutely set my face toward Zodanga and with
a touch of heartsickness approached her frowning walls.

The letter I bore from them gained me immediate entrance to the
vast, walled city.  It was still very early in the morning and the
streets were practically deserted.  The residences, raised high
upon their metal columns, resembled huge rookeries, while the
uprights themselves presented the appearance of steel tree trunks.
The shops as a rule were not raised from the ground nor were their
doors bolted or barred, since thievery is practically unknown upon
Barsoom.  Assassination is the ever-present fear of all Barsoomians,
and for this reason alone their homes are raised high above the
ground at night, or in times of danger.

The Ptor brothers had given me explicit directions for reaching the
point of the city where I could find living accommodations and be
near the offices of the government agents to whom they had given me
letters.  My way led to the central square or plaza, which is a
characteristic of all Martian cities.

The plaza of Zodanga covers a square mile and is bounded by the
palaces of the jeddak, the jeds, and other members of the royalty
and nobility of Zodanga, as well as by the principal public
buildings, cafes, and shops.

As I was crossing the great square lost in wonder and admiration of
the magnificent architecture and the gorgeous scarlet vegetation
which carpeted the broad lawns I discovered a red Martian walking
briskly toward me from one of the avenues.  He paid not the
slightest attention to me, but as he came abreast I recognized him,
and turning I placed my hand upon his shoulder, calling out:

"Kaor, Kantos Kan!"

Like lightning he wheeled and before I could so much as lower my
hand the point of his long-sword was at my breast.

"Who are you?" he growled, and then as a backward leap carried me
fifty feet from his sword he dropped the point to the ground and
exclaimed, laughing,

"I do not need a better reply, there is but one man upon all Barsoom
who can bounce about like a rubber ball.  By the mother of the
further moon, John Carter, how came you here, and have you become
a Darseen that you can change your color at will?"

"You gave me a bad half minute my friend," he continued, after I had
briefly outlined my adventures since parting with him in the arena
at Warhoon.  "Were my name and city known to the Zodangans I would
shortly be sitting on the banks of the lost sea of Korus with my
revered and departed ancestors.  I am here in the interest of Tardos
Mors, Jeddak of Helium, to discover the whereabouts of Dejah Thoris,
our princess.  Sab Than, prince of Zodanga, has her hidden in the
city and has fallen madly in love with her.  His father, Than Kosis,
Jeddak of Zodanga, has made her voluntary marriage to his son the
price of peace between our countries, but Tardos Mors will not
accede to the demands and has sent word that he and his people would
rather look upon the dead face of their princess than see her wed to
any than her own choice, and that personally he would prefer being
engulfed in the ashes of a lost and burning Helium to joining the
metal of his house with that of Than Kosis.  His reply was the
deadliest affront he could have put upon Than Kosis and the
Zodangans, but his people love him the more for it and his strength
in Helium is greater today than ever.

"I have been here three days," continued Kantos Kan, "but I have
not yet found where Dejah Thoris is imprisoned.  Today I join the
Zodangan navy as an air scout and I hope in this way to win the
confidence of Sab Than, the prince, who is commander of this
division of the navy, and thus learn the whereabouts of Dejah
Thoris.  I am glad that you are here, John Carter, for I know your
loyalty to my princess and two of us working together should be
able to accomplish much."

The plaza was now commencing to fill with people going and coming
upon the daily activities of their duties.  The shops were opening
and the cafes filling with early morning patrons.  Kantos Kan led me
to one of these gorgeous eating places where we were served entirely
by mechanical apparatus.  No hand touched the food from the time it
entered the building in its raw state until it emerged hot and
delicious upon the tables before the guests, in response to the
touching of tiny buttons to indicate their desires.

After our meal, Kantos Kan took me with him to the headquarters of
the air-scout squadron and introducing me to his superior asked that
I be enrolled as a member of the corps.  In accordance with custom
an examination was necessary, but Kantos Kan had told me to have no
fear on this score as he would attend to that part of the matter.
He accomplished this by taking my order for examination to the
examining officer and representing himself as John Carter.

"This ruse will be discovered later," he cheerfully explained,
"when they check up my weights, measurements, and other personal
identification data, but it will be several months before this is
done and our mission should be accomplished or have failed long
before that time."

The next few days were spent by Kantos Kan in teaching me
the intricacies of flying and of repairing the dainty little
contrivances which the Martians use for this purpose.  The body
of the one-man air craft is about sixteen feet long, two feet wide
and three inches thick, tapering to a point at each end.  The driver
sits on top of this plane upon a seat constructed over the small,
noiseless radium engine which propels it.  The medium of buoyancy is
contained within the thin metal walls of the body and consists of
the eighth Barsoomian ray, or ray of propulsion, as it may be termed
in view of its properties.

This ray, like the ninth ray, is unknown on Earth, but the Martians
have discovered that it is an inherent property of all light no
matter from what source it emanates.  They have learned that it
is the solar eighth ray which propels the light of the sun to the
various planets, and that it is the individual eighth ray of each
planet which "reflects," or propels the light thus obtained out
into space once more.  The solar eighth ray would be absorbed by the
surface of Barsoom, but the Barsoomian eighth ray, which tends to
propel light from Mars into space, is constantly streaming out from
the planet constituting a force of repulsion of gravity which when
confined is able to lift enormous weights from the surface of the
ground.

It is this ray which has enabled them to so perfect aviation that
battle ships far outweighing anything known upon Earth sail as
gracefully and lightly through the thin air of Barsoom as a toy
balloon in the heavy atmosphere of Earth.

During the early years of the discovery of this ray many strange
accidents occurred before the Martians learned to measure and
control the wonderful power they had found.  In one instance, some
nine hundred years before, the first great battle ship to be built
with eighth ray reservoirs was stored with too great a quantity
of the rays and she had sailed up from Helium with five hundred
officers and men, never to return.

Her power of repulsion for the planet was so great that it had
carried her far into space, where she can be seen today, by the aid
of powerful telescopes, hurtling through the heavens ten thousand
miles from Mars; a tiny satellite that will thus encircle Barsoom
to the end of time.

The fourth day after my arrival at Zodanga I made my first flight,
and as a result of it I won a promotion which included quarters in
the palace of Than Kosis.

As I rose above the city I circled several times, as I had seen
Kantos Kan do, and then throwing my engine into top speed I raced
at terrific velocity toward the south, following one of the great
waterways which enter Zodanga from that direction.

I had traversed perhaps two hundred miles in a little less than an
hour when I descried far below me a party of three green warriors
racing madly toward a small figure on foot which seemed to be trying
to reach the confines of one of the walled fields.

Dropping my machine rapidly toward them, and circling to the rear
of the warriors, I soon saw that the object of their pursuit was a
red Martian wearing the metal of the scout squadron to which I was
attached.  A short distance away lay his tiny flier, surrounded by
the tools with which he had evidently been occupied in repairing
some damage when surprised by the green warriors.

They were now almost upon him; their flying mounts charging down on
the relatively puny figure at terrific speed, while the warriors
leaned low to the right, with their great metal-shod spears.  Each
seemed striving to be the first to impale the poor Zodangan and in
another moment his fate would have been sealed had it not been for
my timely arrival.

Driving my fleet air craft at high speed directly behind the
warriors I soon overtook them and without diminishing my speed I
rammed the prow of my little flier between the shoulders of the
nearest.  The impact sufficient to have torn through inches of
solid steel, hurled the fellow's headless body into the air over the
head of his thoat, where it fell sprawling upon the moss.  The mounts
of the other two warriors turned squealing in terror, and bolted in
opposite directions.

Reducing my speed I circled and came to the ground at the feet of
the astonished Zodangan.  He was warm in his thanks for my timely
aid and promised that my day's work would bring the reward it
merited, for it was none other than a cousin of the jeddak of
Zodanga whose life I had saved.

We wasted no time in talk as we knew that the warriors would
surely return as soon as they had gained control of their mounts.
Hastening to his damaged machine we were bending every effort to
finish the needed repairs and had almost completed them when we saw
the two green monsters returning at top speed from opposite sides of
us.  When they had approached within a hundred yards their thoats
again became unmanageable and absolutely refused to advance further
toward the air craft which had frightened them.

The warriors finally dismounted and hobbling their animals advanced
toward us on foot with drawn long-swords.

I advanced to meet the larger, telling the Zodangan to do the best
he could with the other.  Finishing my man with almost no effort, as
had now from much practice become habitual with me, I hastened to
return to my new acquaintance whom I found indeed in desperate
straits.

He was wounded and down with the huge foot of his antagonist upon
his throat and the great long-sword raised to deal the final thrust.
With a bound I cleared the fifty feet intervening between us, and
with outstretched point drove my sword completely through the body
of the green warrior.  His sword fell, harmless, to the ground and
he sank limply upon the prostrate form of the Zodangan.

A cursory examination of the latter revealed no mortal injuries
and after a brief rest he asserted that he felt fit to attempt the
return voyage.  He would have to pilot his own craft, however, as
these frail vessels are not intended to convey but a single person.

Quickly completing the repairs we rose together into the still,
cloudless Martian sky, and at great speed and without further mishap
returned to Zodanga.

As we neared the city we discovered a mighty concourse of civilians
and troops assembled upon the plain before the city.  The sky was
black with naval vessels and private and public pleasure craft,
flying long streamers of gay-colored silks, and banners and flags
of odd and picturesque design.

My companion signaled that I slow down, and running his machine
close beside mine suggested that we approach and watch the ceremony,
which, he said, was for the purpose of conferring honors on
individual officers and men for bravery and other distinguished
service.  He then unfurled a little ensign which denoted that his
craft bore a member of the royal family of Zodanga, and together we
made our way through the maze of low-lying air vessels until we hung
directly over the jeddak of Zodanga and his staff.  All were mounted
upon the small domestic bull thoats of the red Martians, and their
trappings and ornamentation bore such a quantity of gorgeously
colored feathers that I could not but be struck with the startling
resemblance the concourse bore to a band of the red Indians of my
own Earth.

One of the staff called the attention of Than Kosis to the presence
of my companion above them and the ruler motioned for him to
descend.  As they waited for the troops to move into position facing
the jeddak the two talked earnestly together, the jeddak and his
staff occasionally glancing up at me.  I could not hear their
conversation and presently it ceased and all dismounted, as the last
body of troops had wheeled into position before their emperor.  A
member of the staff advanced toward the troops, and calling the name
of a soldier commanded him to advance.  The officer then recited the
nature of the heroic act which had won the approval of the jeddak,
and the latter advanced and placed a metal ornament upon the left
arm of the lucky man.

Ten men had been so decorated when the aide called out,

"John Carter, air scout!"

Never in my life had I been so surprised, but the habit of military
discipline is strong within me, and I dropped my little machine
lightly to the ground and advanced on foot as I had seen the others
do.  As I halted before the officer, he addressed me in a voice
audible to the entire assemblage of troops and spectators.

"In recognition, John Carter," he said, "of your remarkable courage
and skill in defending the person of the cousin of the jeddak Than
Kosis and, singlehanded, vanquishing three green warriors, it is the
pleasure of our jeddak to confer on you the mark of his esteem."

Than Kosis then advanced toward me and placing an ornament upon me,
said:

"My cousin has narrated the details of your wonderful achievement,
which seems little short of miraculous, and if you can so well
defend a cousin of the jeddak how much better could you defend the
person of the jeddak himself.  You are therefore appointed a padwar
of The Guards and will be quartered in my palace hereafter."

I thanked him, and at his direction joined the members of his staff.
After the ceremony I returned my machine to its quarters on the roof
of the barracks of the air-scout squadron, and with an orderly from
the palace to guide me I reported to the officer in charge of the
palace.




CHAPTER XXII

I FIND DEJAH



The major-domo to whom I reported had been given instructions to
station me near the person of the jeddak, who, in time of war, is
always in great danger of assassination, as the rule that all is
fair in war seems to constitute the entire ethics of Martian
conflict.

He therefore escorted me immediately to the apartment in which Than
Kosis then was.  The ruler was engaged in conversation with his son,
Sab Than, and several courtiers of his household, and did not
perceive my entrance.

The walls of the apartment were completely hung with splendid
tapestries which hid any windows or doors which may have pierced
them.  The room was lighted by imprisoned rays of sunshine held
between the ceiling proper and what appeared to be a ground-glass
false ceiling a few inches below.

My guide drew aside one of the tapestries, disclosing a passage
which encircled the room, between the hangings and the walls of the
chamber.  Within this passage I was to remain, he said, so long as
Than Kosis was in the apartment.  When he left I was to follow.
My only duty was to guard the ruler and keep out of sight as much
as possible.  I would be relieved after a period of four hours.
The major-domo then left me.

The tapestries were of a strange weaving which gave the appearance
of heavy solidity from one side, but from my hiding place I could
perceive all that took place within the room as readily as though
there had been no curtain intervening.

Scarcely had I gained my post than the tapestry at the opposite end
of the chamber separated and four soldiers of The Guard entered,
surrounding a female figure.  As they approached Than Kosis the
soldiers fell to either side and there standing before the jeddak
and not ten feet from me, her beautiful face radiant with smiles,
was Dejah Thoris.

Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga, advanced to meet her, and hand in hand
they approached close to the jeddak.  Than Kosis looked up in
surprise, and, rising, saluted her.

"To what strange freak do I owe this visit from the Princess of
Helium, who, two days ago, with rare consideration for my pride,
assured me that she would prefer Tal Hajus, the green Thark, to my
son?"

Dejah Thoris only smiled the more and with the roguish dimples
playing at the corners of her mouth she made answer:

"From the beginning of time upon Barsoom it has been the prerogative
of woman to change her mind as she listed and to dissemble in
matters concerning her heart.  That you will forgive, Than Kosis, as
has your son.  Two days ago I was not sure of his love for me, but
now I am, and I have come to beg of you to forget my rash words and
to accept the assurance of the Princess of Helium that when the time
comes she will wed Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga."

"I am glad that you have so decided," replied Than Kosis.  "It is
far from my desire to push war further against the people of Helium,
and, your promise shall be recorded and a proclamation to my people
issued forthwith."

"It were better, Than Kosis," interrupted Dejah Thoris, "that the
proclamation wait the ending of this war.  It would look strange
indeed to my people and to yours were the Princess of Helium to
give herself to her country's enemy in the midst of hostilities."

"Cannot the war be ended at once?" spoke Sab Than.  "It requires but
the word of Than Kosis to bring peace.  Say it, my father, say the
word that will hasten my happiness, and end this unpopular strife."

"We shall see," replied Than Kosis, "how the people of Helium take
to peace.  I shall at least offer it to them."

Dejah Thoris, after a few words, turned and left the apartment,
still followed by her guards.

Thus was the edifice of my brief dream of happiness dashed, broken,
to the ground of reality.  The woman for whom I had offered my life,
and from whose lips I had so recently heard a declaration of love
for me, had lightly forgotten my very existence and smilingly given
herself to the son of her people's most hated enemy.

Although I had heard it with my own ears I could not believe it.
I must search out her apartments and force her to repeat the cruel
truth to me alone before I would be convinced, and so I deserted my
post and hastened through the passage behind the tapestries toward
the door by which she had left the chamber.  Slipping quietly
through this opening I discovered a maze of winding corridors,
branching and turning in every direction.

Running rapidly down first one and then another of them I soon
became hopelessly lost and was standing panting against a side wall
when I heard voices near me.  Apparently they were coming from the
opposite side of the partition against which I leaned and presently
I made out the tones of Dejah Thoris.  I could not hear the words
but I knew that I could not possibly be mistaken in the voice.

Moving on a few steps I discovered another passageway at the end of
which lay a door.  Walking boldly forward I pushed into the room
only to find myself in a small antechamber in which were the four
guards who had accompanied her.  One of them instantly arose and
accosted me, asking the nature of my business.

"I am from Than Kosis," I replied, "and wish to speak privately with
Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium."

"And your order?" asked the fellow.

I did not know what he meant, but replied that I was a member of The
Guard, and without waiting for a reply from him I strode toward the
opposite door of the antechamber, behind which I could hear Dejah
Thoris conversing.

But my entrance was not to be so easily accomplished.  The guardsman
stepped before me, saying,

"No one comes from Than Kosis without carrying an order or the
password.  You must give me one or the other before you may pass."

"The only order I require, my friend, to enter where I will, hangs
at my side," I answered, tapping my long-sword; "will you let me
pass in peace or no?"

For reply he whipped out his own sword, calling to the others to
join him, and thus the four stood, with drawn weapons, barring my
further progress.

"You are not here by the order of Than Kosis," cried the one who had
first addressed me, "and not only shall you not enter the apartments
of the Princess of Helium but you shall go back to Than Kosis under
guard to explain this unwarranted temerity.  Throw down your sword;
you cannot hope to overcome four of us," he added with a grim smile.

My reply was a quick thrust which left me but three antagonists and
I can assure you that they were worthy of my metal.  They had me
backed against the wall in no time, fighting for my life.  Slowly I
worked my way to a corner of the room where I could force them to
come at me only one at a time, and thus we fought upward of twenty
minutes; the clanging of steel on steel producing a veritable bedlam
in the little room.

The noise had brought Dejah Thoris to the door of her apartment,
and there she stood throughout the conflict with Sola at her back
peering over her shoulder.  Her face was set and emotionless and
I knew that she did not recognize me, nor did Sola.

Finally a lucky cut brought down a second guardsman and then, with
only two opposing me, I changed my tactics and rushed them down
after the fashion of my fighting that had won me many a victory.
The third fell within ten seconds after the second, and the last lay
dead upon the bloody floor a few moments later.  They were brave men
and noble fighters, and it grieved me that I had been forced to kill
them, but I would have willingly depopulated all Barsoom could I
have reached the side of my Dejah Thoris in no other way.

Sheathing my bloody blade I advanced toward my Martian Princess,
who still stood mutely gazing at me without sign of recognition.

"Who are you, Zodangan?" she whispered.  "Another enemy to harass me
in my misery?"

"I am a friend," I answered, "a once cherished friend."

"No friend of Helium's princess wears that metal," she replied,
"and yet the voice!  I have heard it before; it is not--it cannot
be--no, for he is dead."

"It is, though, my Princess, none other than John Carter,"
I said.  "Do you not recognize, even through paint and strange
metal, the heart of your chieftain?"

As I came close to her she swayed toward me with outstretched hands,
but as I reached to take her in my arms she drew back with a shudder
and a little moan of misery.

"Too late, too late," she grieved.  "O my chieftain that was,
and whom I thought dead, had you but returned one little hour
before--but now it is too late, too late."

"What do you mean, Dejah Thoris?" I cried.  "That you would not have
promised yourself to the Zodangan prince had you known that I
lived?"

"Think you, John Carter, that I would give my heart to you yesterday
and today to another?  I thought that it lay buried with your ashes
in the pits of Warhoon, and so today I have promised my body to
another to save my people from the curse of a victorious Zodangan
army."

"But I am not dead, my princess.  I have come to claim you, and all
Zodanga cannot prevent it."

"It is too late, John Carter, my promise is given, and on Barsoom
that is final.  The ceremonies which follow later are but
meaningless formalities.  They make the fact of marriage no more
certain than does the funeral cortege of a jeddak again place the
seal of death upon him.  I am as good as married, John Carter.
No longer may you call me your princess.  No longer are you my
chieftain."

"I know but little of your customs here upon Barsoom, Dejah Thoris,
but I do know that I love you, and if you meant the last words you
spoke to me that day as the hordes of Warhoon were charging down
upon us, no other man shall ever claim you as his bride.  You meant
them then, my princess, and you mean them still!  Say that it is
true."

"I meant them, John Carter," she whispered.  "I cannot repeat them
now for I have given myself to another.  Ah, if you had only known
our ways, my friend," she continued, half to herself, "the promise
would have been yours long months ago, and you could have claimed
me before all others.  It might have meant the fall of Helium, but
I would have given my empire for my Tharkian chief."

Then aloud she said: "Do you remember the night when you offended
me?  You called me your princess without having asked my hand of me,
and then you boasted that you had fought for me.  You did not know,
and I should not have been offended; I see that now.  But there was
no one to tell you what I could not, that upon Barsoom there are two
kinds of women in the cities of the red men.  The one they fight for
that they may ask them in marriage; the other kind they fight for
also, but never ask their hands.  When a man has won a woman he may
address her as his princess, or in any of the several terms which
signify possession.  You had fought for me, but had never asked me
in marriage, and so when you called me your princess, you see," she
faltered, "I was hurt, but even then, John Carter, I did not repulse
you, as I should have done, until you made it doubly worse by
taunting me with having won me through combat."

"I do not need ask your forgiveness now, Dejah Thoris," I cried.
"You must know that my fault was of ignorance of your Barsoomian
customs.  What I failed to do, through implicit belief that my
petition would be presumptuous and unwelcome, I do now, Dejah
Thoris; I ask you to be my wife, and by all the Virginian fighting
blood that flows in my veins you shall be."

"No, John Carter, it is useless," she cried, hopelessly,
"I may never be yours while Sab Than lives."

"You have sealed his death warrant, my princess--Sab Than dies."

"Nor that either," she hastened to explain.  "I may not wed the man
who slays my husband, even in self-defense.  It is custom.  We are
ruled by custom upon Barsoom.  It is useless, my friend.  You must
bear the sorrow with me.  That at least we may share in common.
That, and the memory of the brief days among the Tharks.  You must
go now, nor ever see me again.  Good-bye, my chieftain that was."

Disheartened and dejected, I withdrew from the room, but I was not
entirely discouraged, nor would I admit that Dejah Thoris was lost
to me until the ceremony had actually been performed.

As I wandered along the corridors, I was as absolutely lost in the
mazes of winding passageways as I had been before I discovered Dejah
Thoris' apartments.

I knew that my only hope lay in escape from the city of Zodanga, for
the matter of the four dead guardsmen would have to be explained,
and as I could never reach my original post without a guide,
suspicion would surely rest on me so soon as I was discovered
wandering aimlessly through the palace.

Presently I came upon a spiral runway leading to a lower floor, and
this I followed downward for several stories until I reached the
doorway of a large apartment in which were a number of guardsmen.
The walls of this room were hung with transparent tapestries behind
which I secreted myself without being apprehended.

The conversation of the guardsmen was general, and awakened no
interest in me until an officer entered the room and ordered four
of the men to relieve the detail who were guarding the Princess of
Helium.  Now, I knew, my troubles would commence in earnest and
indeed they were upon me all too soon, for it seemed that the squad
had scarcely left the guardroom before one of their number burst in
again breathlessly, crying that they had found their four comrades
butchered in the antechamber.

In a moment the entire palace was alive with people.  Guardsmen,
officers, courtiers, servants, and slaves ran helter-skelter
through the corridors and apartments carrying messages and orders,
and searching for signs of the assassin.

This was my opportunity and slim as it appeared I grasped it, for as
a number of soldiers came hurrying past my hiding place I fell in
behind them and followed through the mazes of the palace until, in
passing through a great hall, I saw the blessed light of day coming
in through a series of larger windows.

Here I left my guides, and, slipping to the nearest window, sought
for an avenue of escape.  The windows opened upon a great balcony
which overlooked one of the broad avenues of Zodanga.  The ground
was about thirty feet below, and at a like distance from the
building was a wall fully twenty feet high, constructed of polished
glass about a foot in thickness.  To a red Martian escape by this
path would have appeared impossible, but to me, with my earthly
strength and agility, it seemed already accomplished.  My only fear
was in being detected before darkness fell, for I could not make the
leap in broad daylight while the court below and the avenue beyond
were crowded with Zodangans.

Accordingly I searched for a hiding place and finally found one
by accident, inside a huge hanging ornament which swung from the
ceiling of the hall, and about ten feet from the floor.  Into the
capacious bowl-like vase I sprang with ease, and scarcely had I
settled down within it than I heard a number of people enter the
apartment.  The group stopped beneath my hiding place and I could
plainly overhear their every word.

"It is the work of Heliumites," said one of the men.

"Yes, O Jeddak, but how had they access to the palace?  I could
believe that even with the diligent care of your guardsmen a single
enemy might reach the inner chambers, but how a force of six or
eight fighting men could have done so unobserved is beyond me.  We
shall soon know, however, for here comes the royal psychologist."

Another man now joined the group, and, after making his formal
greetings to his ruler, said:

"O mighty Jeddak, it is a strange tale I read in the dead minds
of your faithful guardsmen.  They were felled not by a number
of fighting men, but by a single opponent."

He paused to let the full weight of this announcement impress his
hearers, and that his statement was scarcely credited was evidenced
by the impatient exclamation of incredulity which escaped the lips
of Than Kosis.

"What manner of weird tale are you bringing me, Notan?" he cried.

"It is the truth, my Jeddak," replied the psychologist.  "In fact
the impressions were strongly marked on the brain of each of the
four guardsmen.  Their antagonist was a very tall man, wearing the
metal of one of your own guardsmen, and his fighting ability was
little short of marvelous for he fought fair against the entire four
and vanquished them by his surpassing skill and superhuman strength
and endurance.  Though he wore the metal of Zodanga, my Jeddak, such
a man was never seen before in this or any other country upon
Barsoom.

"The mind of the Princess of Helium whom I have examined and
questioned was a blank to me, she has perfect control, and I could
not read one iota of it.  She said that she witnessed a portion of
the encounter, and that when she looked there was but one man
engaged with the guardsmen; a man whom she did not recognize as
ever having seen."

"Where is my erstwhile savior?" spoke another of the party, and I
recognized the voice of the cousin of Than Kosis, whom I had rescued
from the green warriors.  "By the metal of my first ancestor," he
went on, "but the description fits him to perfection, especially as
to his fighting ability."

"Where is this man?" cried Than Kosis.  "Have him brought to me at
once.  What know you of him, cousin?  It seemed strange to me now
that I think upon it that there should have been such a fighting man
in Zodanga, of whose name, even, we were ignorant before today.  And
his name too, John Carter, who ever heard of such a name upon
Barsoom!"

Word was soon brought that I was nowhere to be found, either in the
palace or at my former quarters in the barracks of the air-scout
squadron.  Kantos Kan, they had found and questioned, but he knew
nothing of my whereabouts, and as to my past, he had told them he
knew as little, since he had but recently met me during our
captivity among the Warhoons.

"Keep your eyes on this other one," commanded Than Kosis.  "He also
is a stranger and likely as not they both hail from Helium, and
where one is we shall sooner or later find the other.  Quadruple
the air patrol, and let every man who leaves the city by air or
ground be subjected to the closest scrutiny."

Another messenger now entered with word that I was still within the
palace walls.

"The likeness of every person who has entered or left the palace
grounds today has been carefully examined," concluded the fellow,
"and not one approaches the likeness of this new padwar of the
guards, other than that which was recorded of him at the time he
entered."

"Then we will have him shortly," commented Than Kosis contentedly,
"and in the meanwhile we will repair to the apartments of the
Princess of Helium and question her in regard to the affair.  She
may know more than she cared to divulge to you, Notan.  Come."

They left the hall, and, as darkness had fallen without, I slipped
lightly from my hiding place and hastened to the balcony.  Few were
in sight, and choosing a moment when none seemed near I sprang
quickly to the top of the glass wall and from there to the avenue
beyond the palace grounds.




CHAPTER XXIII

LOST IN THE SKY



Without effort at concealment I hastened to the vicinity of our
quarters, where I felt sure I should find Kantos Kan.  As I neared
the building I became more careful, as I judged, and rightly, that
the place would be guarded.  Several men in civilian metal loitered
near the front entrance and in the rear were others.  My only means
of reaching, unseen, the upper story where our apartments were
situated was through an adjoining building, and after considerable
maneuvering I managed to attain the roof of a shop several doors
away.

Leaping from roof to roof, I soon reached an open window in the
building where I hoped to find the Heliumite, and in another moment
I stood in the room before him.  He was alone and showed no surprise
at my coming, saying he had expected me much earlier, as my tour of
duty must have ended some time since.

I saw that he knew nothing of the events of the day at the palace,
and when I had enlightened him he was all excitement.  The news that
Dejah Thoris had promised her hand to Sab Than filled him with
dismay.

"It cannot be," he exclaimed.  "It is impossible!  Why no man in all
Helium but would prefer death to the selling of our loved princess
to the ruling house of Zodanga.  She must have lost her mind to have
assented to such an atrocious bargain.  You, who do not know how we
of Helium love the members of our ruling house, cannot appreciate
the horror with which I contemplate such an unholy alliance."

"What can be done, John Carter?" he continued.  "You are a
resourceful man.  Can you not think of some way to save Helium from
this disgrace?"

"If I can come within sword's reach of Sab Than," I answered, "I can
solve the difficulty in so far as Helium is concerned, but for
personal reasons I would prefer that another struck the blow that
frees Dejah Thoris."

Kantos Kan eyed me narrowly before he spoke.

"You love her!" he said.  "Does she know it?"

"She knows it, Kantos Kan, and repulses me only because she is
promised to Sab Than."

The splendid fellow sprang to his feet, and grasping me by the
shoulder raised his sword on high, exclaiming:

"And had the choice been left to me I could not have chosen a more
fitting mate for the first princess of Barsoom.  Here is my hand
upon your shoulder, John Carter, and my word that Sab Than shall go
out at the point of my sword for the sake of my love for Helium, for
Dejah Thoris, and for you.  This very night I shall try to reach his
quarters in the palace."

"How?" I asked.  "You are strongly guarded and a quadruple force
patrols the sky."

He bent his head in thought a moment, then raised it with an air of
confidence.

"I only need to pass these guards and I can do it," he said at last.
"I know a secret entrance to the palace through the pinnacle of the
highest tower.  I fell upon it by chance one day as I was passing
above the palace on patrol duty.  In this work it is required that
we investigate any unusual occurrence we may witness, and a face
peering from the pinnacle of the high tower of the palace was, to
me, most unusual.  I therefore drew near and discovered that the
possessor of the peering face was none other than Sab Than.  He was
slightly put out at being detected and commanded me to keep the
matter to myself, explaining that the passage from the tower led
directly to his apartments, and was known only to him.  If I can
reach the roof of the barracks and get my machine I can be in Sab
Than's quarters in five minutes; but how am I to escape from this
building, guarded as you say it is?"

"How well are the machine sheds at the barracks guarded?" I asked.

"There is usually but one man on duty there at night upon the roof."

"Go to the roof of this building, Kantos Kan, and wait me there."

Without stopping to explain my plans I retraced my way to the street
and hastened to the barracks.  I did not dare to enter the building,
filled as it was with members of the air-scout squadron, who, in
common with all Zodanga, were on the lookout for me.

The building was an enormous one, rearing its lofty head fully a
thousand feet into the air.  But few buildings in Zodanga were
higher than these barracks, though several topped it by a few
hundred feet; the docks of the great battleships of the line
standing some fifteen hundred feet from the ground, while the
freight and passenger stations of the merchant squadrons rose nearly
as high.

It was a long climb up the face of the building, and one fraught
with much danger, but there was no other way, and so I essayed the
task.  The fact that Barsoomian architecture is extremely ornate
made the feat much simpler than I had anticipated, since I found
ornamental ledges and projections which fairly formed a perfect
ladder for me all the way to the eaves of the building.  Here I met
my first real obstacle.  The eaves projected nearly twenty feet from
the wall to which I clung, and though I encircled the great building
I could find no opening through them.

The top floor was alight, and filled with soldiers engaged in the
pastimes of their kind; I could not, therefore, reach the roof
through the building.

There was one slight, desperate chance, and that I decided I must
take--it was for Dejah Thoris, and no man has lived who would not
risk a thousand deaths for such as she.

Clinging to the wall with my feet and one hand, I unloosened one of
the long leather straps of my trappings at the end of which dangled
a great hook by which air sailors are hung to the sides and bottoms
of their craft for various purposes of repair, and by means of which
landing parties are lowered to the ground from the battleships.

I swung this hook cautiously to the roof several times before it
finally found lodgment; gently I pulled on it to strengthen its
hold, but whether it would bear the weight of my body I did not
know.  It might be barely caught upon the very outer verge of the
roof, so that as my body swung out at the end of the strap it would
slip off and launch me to the pavement a thousand feet below.

An instant I hesitated, and then, releasing my grasp upon the
supporting ornament, I swung out into space at the end of the
strap.  Far below me lay the brilliantly lighted streets, the hard
pavements, and death.  There was a little jerk at the top of the
supporting eaves, and a nasty slipping, grating sound which turned
me cold with apprehension; then the hook caught and I was safe.

Clambering quickly aloft I grasped the edge of the eaves and drew
myself to the surface of the roof above.  As I gained my feet I was
confronted by the sentry on duty, into the muzzle of whose revolver
I found myself looking.

"Who are you and whence came you?" he cried.

"I am an air scout, friend, and very near a dead one, for just by
the merest chance I escaped falling to the avenue below," I replied.

"But how came you upon the roof, man?  No one has landed or come up
from the building for the past hour.  Quick, explain yourself, or I
call the guard."

"Look you here, sentry, and you shall see how I came and how close a
shave I had to not coming at all," I answered, turning toward the
edge of the roof, where, twenty feet below, at the end of my strap,
hung all my weapons.

The fellow, acting on impulse of curiosity, stepped to my side and
to his undoing, for as he leaned to peer over the eaves I grasped
him by his throat and his pistol arm and threw him heavily to the
roof.  The weapon dropped from his grasp, and my fingers choked off
his attempted cry for assistance.  I gagged and bound him and then
hung him over the edge of the roof as I myself had hung a few
moments before.  I knew it would be morning before he would be
discovered, and I needed all the time that I could gain.

Donning my trappings and weapons I hastened to the sheds, and soon
had out both my machine and Kantos Kan's.  Making his fast behind
mine I started my engine, and skimming over the edge of the roof I
dove down into the streets of the city far below the plane usually
occupied by the air patrol.  In less than a minute I was settling
safely upon the roof of our apartment beside the astonished Kantos
Kan.

I lost no time in explanation, but plunged immediately into a
discussion of our plans for the immediate future.  It was decided
that I was to try to make Helium while Kantos Kan was to enter the
palace and dispatch Sab Than.  If successful he was then to follow
me.  He set my compass for me, a clever little device which will
remain steadfastly fixed upon any given point on the surface of
Barsoom, and bidding each other farewell we rose together and sped
in the direction of the palace which lay in the route which I must
take to reach Helium.

As we neared the high tower a patrol shot down from above, throwing
its piercing searchlight full upon my craft, and a voice roared out
a command to halt, following with a shot as I paid no attention to
his hail.  Kantos Kan dropped quickly into the darkness, while I
rose steadily and at terrific speed raced through the Martian sky
followed by a dozen of the air-scout craft which had joined the
pursuit, and later by a swift cruiser carrying a hundred men and
a battery of rapid-fire guns.  By twisting and turning my little
machine, now rising and now falling, I managed to elude their
search-lights most of the time, but I was also losing ground by
these tactics, and so I decided to hazard everything on a
straight-away course and leave the result to fate and the speed
of my machine.

Kantos Kan had shown me a trick of gearing, which is known only
to the navy of Helium, that greatly increased the speed of our
machines, so that I felt sure I could distance my pursuers if
I could dodge their projectiles for a few moments.

As I sped through the air the screeching of the bullets around me
convinced me that only by a miracle could I escape, but the die was
cast, and throwing on full speed I raced a straight course toward
Helium.  Gradually I left my pursuers further and further behind,
and I was just congratulating myself on my lucky escape, when a
well-directed shot from the cruiser exploded at the prow of my
little craft.  The concussion nearly capsized her, and with a
sickening plunge she hurtled downward through the dark night.

How far I fell before I regained control of the plane I do not know,
but I must have been very close to the ground when I started to rise
again, as I plainly heard the squealing of animals below me.  Rising
again I scanned the heavens for my pursuers, and finally making out
their lights far behind me, saw that they were landing, evidently
in search of me.

Not until their lights were no longer discernible did I venture
to flash my little lamp upon my compass, and then I found to my
consternation that a fragment of the projectile had utterly
destroyed my only guide, as well as my speedometer.  It was true
I could follow the stars in the general direction of Helium, but
without knowing the exact location of the city or the speed at
which I was traveling my chances for finding it were slim.

Helium lies a thousand miles southwest of Zodanga, and with my
compass intact I should have made the trip, barring accidents, in
between four and five hours.  As it turned out, however, morning
found me speeding over a vast expanse of dead sea bottom after
nearly six hours of continuous flight at high speed.  Presently a
great city showed below me, but it was not Helium, as that alone of
all Barsoomian metropolises consists in two immense circular walled
cities about seventy-five miles apart and would have been easily
distinguishable from the altitude at which I was flying.

Believing that I had come too far to the north and west, I turned
back in a southeasterly direction, passing during the forenoon
several other large cities, but none resembling the description
which Kantos Kan had given me of Helium.  In addition to the
twin-city formation of Helium, another distinguishing feature is the
two immense towers, one of vivid scarlet rising nearly a mile into
the air from the center of one of the cities, while the other, of
bright yellow and of the same height, marks her sister.




CHAPTER XXIV

TARS TARKAS FINDS A FRIEND



About noon I passed low over a great dead city of ancient Mars, and
as I skimmed out across the plain beyond I came full upon several
thousand green warriors engaged in a terrific battle.  Scarcely had
I seen them than a volley of shots was directed at me, and with the
almost unfailing accuracy of their aim my little craft was instantly
a ruined wreck, sinking erratically to the ground.

I fell almost directly in the center of the fierce combat, among
warriors who had not seen my approach so busily were they engaged
in life and death struggles.  The men were fighting on foot with
long-swords, while an occasional shot from a sharpshooter on the
outskirts of the conflict would bring down a warrior who might
for an instant separate himself from the entangled mass.

As my machine sank among them I realized that it was fight or die,
with good chances of dying in any event, and so I struck the ground
with drawn long-sword ready to defend myself as I could.

I fell beside a huge monster who was engaged with three antagonists,
and as I glanced at his fierce face, filled with the light of
battle, I recognized Tars Tarkas the Thark.  He did not see me, as I
was a trifle behind him, and just then the three warriors opposing
him, and whom I recognized as Warhoons, charged simultaneously.  The
mighty fellow made quick work of one of them, but in stepping back
for another thrust he fell over a dead body behind him and was down
and at the mercy of his foes in an instant.  Quick as lightning they
were upon him, and Tars Tarkas would have been gathered to his
fathers in short order had I not sprung before his prostrate form
and engaged his adversaries.  I had accounted for one of them when
the mighty Thark regained his feet and quickly settled the other.

He gave me one look, and a slight smile touched his grim lip as,
touching my shoulder, he said,

"I would scarcely recognize you, John Carter, but there is no other
mortal upon Barsoom who would have done what you have for me.  I
think I have learned that there is such a thing as friendship, my
friend."

He said no more, nor was there opportunity, for the Warhoons were
closing in about us, and together we fought, shoulder to shoulder,
during all that long, hot afternoon, until the tide of battle turned
and the remnant of the fierce Warhoon horde fell back upon their
thoats, and fled into the gathering darkness.

Ten thousand men had been engaged in that titanic struggle, and upon
the field of battle lay three thousand dead.  Neither side asked or
gave quarter, nor did they attempt to take prisoners.

On our return to the city after the battle we had gone directly to
Tars Tarkas' quarters, where I was left alone while the chieftain
attended the customary council which immediately follows an
engagement.

As I sat awaiting the return of the green warrior I heard something
move in an adjoining apartment, and as I glanced up there rushed
suddenly upon me a huge and hideous creature which bore me backward
upon the pile of silks and furs upon which I had been reclining.  It
was Woola--faithful, loving Woola.  He had found his way back to
Thark and, as Tars Tarkas later told me, had gone immediately to my
former quarters where he had taken up his pathetic and seemingly
hopeless watch for my return.

"Tal Hajus knows that you are here, John Carter," said Tars Tarkas,
on his return from the jeddak's quarters; "Sarkoja saw and
recognized you as we were returning.  Tal Hajus has ordered me to
bring you before him tonight.  I have ten thoats, John Carter; you
may take your choice from among them, and I will accompany you to
the nearest waterway that leads to Helium.  Tars Tarkas may be a
cruel green warrior, but he can be a friend as well.  Come, we
must start."

"And when you return, Tars Tarkas?" I asked.

"The wild calots, possibly, or worse," he replied.  "Unless I should
chance to have the opportunity I have so long waited of battling
with Tal Hajus."

"We will stay, Tars Tarkas, and see Tal Hajus tonight.  You shall
not sacrifice yourself, and it may be that tonight you can have the
chance you wait."

He objected strenuously, saying that Tal Hajus often flew into wild
fits of passion at the mere thought of the blow I had dealt him, and
that if ever he laid his hands upon me I would be subjected to the
most horrible tortures.

While we were eating I repeated to Tars Tarkas the story which Sola
had told me that night upon the sea bottom during the march to
Thark.

He said but little, but the great muscles of his face worked in
passion and in agony at recollection of the horrors which had been
heaped upon the only thing he had ever loved in all his cold, cruel,
terrible existence.

He no longer demurred when I suggested that we go before Tal Hajus,
only saying that he would like to speak to Sarkoja first.  At his
request I accompanied him to her quarters, and the look of venomous
hatred she cast upon me was almost adequate recompense for any
future misfortunes this accidental return to Thark might bring me.

"Sarkoja," said Tars Tarkas, "forty years ago you were instrumental
in bringing about the torture and death of a woman named Gozava.
I have just discovered that the warrior who loved that woman has
learned of your part in the transaction.  He may not kill you,
Sarkoja, it is not our custom, but there is nothing to prevent him
tying one end of a strap about your neck and the other end to a wild
thoat, merely to test your fitness to survive and help perpetuate
our race.  Having heard that he would do this on the morrow, I
thought it only right to warn you, for I am a just man.  The river
Iss is but a short pilgrimage, Sarkoja.  Come, John Carter."

The next morning Sarkoja was gone, nor was she ever seen after.

In silence we hastened to the jeddak's palace, where we were
immediately admitted to his presence; in fact, he could scarcely
wait to see me and was standing erect upon his platform glowering
at the entrance as I came in.

"Strap him to that pillar," he shrieked.  "We shall see who it is
dares strike the mighty Tal Hajus.  Heat the irons; with my own
hands I shall burn the eyes from his head that he may not pollute
my person with his vile gaze."

"Chieftains of Thark," I cried, turning to the assembled council and
ignoring Tal Hajus, "I have been a chief among you, and today I have
fought for Thark shoulder to shoulder with her greatest warrior.
You owe me, at least, a hearing.  I have won that much today.  You
claim to be just people--"

"Silence," roared Tal Hajus.  "Gag the creature and bind him as I
command."

"Justice, Tal Hajus," exclaimed Lorquas Ptomel.  "Who are you to set
aside the customs of ages among the Tharks."

"Yes, justice!" echoed a dozen voices, and so, while Tal Hajus fumed
and frothed, I continued.

"You are a brave people and you love bravery, but where was your
mighty jeddak during the fighting today?  I did not see him in the
thick of battle; he was not there.  He rends defenseless women and
little children in his lair, but how recently has one of you seen
him fight with men?  Why, even I, a midget beside him, felled him
with a single blow of my fist.  Is it of such that the Tharks
fashion their jeddaks?  There stands beside me now a great Thark,
a mighty warrior and a noble man.  Chieftains, how sounds, Tars
Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark?"

A roar of deep-toned applause greeted this suggestion.

"It but remains for this council to command, and Tal Hajus must
prove his fitness to rule.  Were he a brave man he would invite Tars
Tarkas to combat, for he does not love him, but Tal Hajus is afraid;
Tal Hajus, your jeddak, is a coward.  With my bare hands I could
kill him, and he knows it."

After I ceased there was tense silence, as all eyes were riveted
upon Tal Hajus.  He did not speak or move, but the blotchy green of
his countenance turned livid, and the froth froze upon his lips.

"Tal Hajus," said Lorquas Ptomel in a cold, hard voice, "never in my
long life have I seen a jeddak of the Tharks so humiliated.  There
could be but one answer to this arraignment.  We wait it."  And
still Tal Hajus stood as though electrified.

"Chieftains," continued Lorquas Ptomel, "shall the jeddak, Tal
Hajus, prove his fitness to rule over Tars Tarkas?"

There were twenty chieftains about the rostrum, and twenty swords
flashed high in assent.

There was no alternative.  That decree was final, and so Tal Hajus
drew his long-sword and advanced to meet Tars Tarkas.

The combat was soon over, and, with his foot upon the neck of the
dead monster, Tars Tarkas became jeddak among the Tharks.

His first act was to make me a full-fledged chieftain with the rank
I had won by my combats the first few weeks of my captivity among
them.

Seeing the favorable disposition of the warriors toward Tars Tarkas,
as well as toward me, I grasped the opportunity to enlist them in
my cause against Zodanga.  I told Tars Tarkas the story of my
adventures, and in a few words had explained to him the thought
I had in mind.

"John Carter has made a proposal," he said, addressing the council,
"which meets with my sanction.  I shall put it to you briefly.
Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Helium, who was our prisoner, is now
held by the jeddak of Zodanga, whose son she must wed to save her
country from devastation at the hands of the Zodangan forces.

"John Carter suggests that we rescue her and return her to Helium.
The loot of Zodanga would be magnificent, and I have often thought
that had we an alliance with the people of Helium we could obtain
sufficient assurance of sustenance to permit us to increase the size
and frequency of our hatchings, and thus become unquestionably
supreme among the green men of all Barsoom.  What say you?"

It was a chance to fight, an opportunity to loot, and they rose to
the bait as a speckled trout to a fly.

For Tharks they were wildly enthusiastic, and before another half
hour had passed twenty mounted messengers were speeding across dead
sea bottoms to call the hordes together for the expedition.

In three days we were on the march toward Zodanga, one hundred
thousand strong, as Tars Tarkas had been able to enlist the services
of three smaller hordes on the promise of the great loot of Zodanga.

At the head of the column I rode beside the great Thark while at the
heels of my mount trotted my beloved Woola.

We traveled entirely by night, timing our marches so that we camped
during the day at deserted cities where, even to the beasts, we
were all kept indoors during the daylight hours.  On the march Tars
Tarkas, through his remarkable ability and statesmanship, enlisted
fifty thousand more warriors from various hordes, so that, ten days
after we set out we halted at midnight outside the great walled city
of Zodanga, one hundred and fifty thousand strong.

The fighting strength and efficiency of this horde of ferocious
green monsters was equivalent to ten times their number of red men.
Never in the history of Barsoom, Tars Tarkas told me, had such a
force of green warriors marched to battle together.  It was a
monstrous task to keep even a semblance of harmony among them, and
it was a marvel to me that he got them to the city without a mighty
battle among themselves.

But as we neared Zodanga their personal quarrels were submerged
by their greater hatred for the red men, and especially for
the Zodangans, who had for years waged a ruthless campaign of
extermination against the green men, directing special attention
toward despoiling their incubators.

Now that we were before Zodanga the task of obtaining entry to the
city devolved upon me, and directing Tars Tarkas to hold his forces
in two divisions out of earshot of the city, with each division
opposite a large gateway, I took twenty dismounted warriors and
approached one of the small gates that pierced the walls at short
intervals.  These gates have no regular guard, but are covered by
sentries, who patrol the avenue that encircles the city just
within the walls as our metropolitan police patrol their beats.

The walls of Zodanga are seventy-five feet in height and fifty feet
thick.  They are built of enormous blocks of carborundum, and the
task of entering the city seemed, to my escort of green warriors, an
impossibility.  The fellows who had been detailed to accompany me
were of one of the smaller hordes, and therefore did not know me.

Placing three of them with their faces to the wall and arms locked,
I commanded two more to mount to their shoulders, and a sixth I
ordered to climb upon the shoulders of the upper two.  The head
of the topmost warrior towered over forty feet from the ground.

In this way, with ten warriors, I built a series of three steps from
the ground to the shoulders of the topmost man.  Then starting from
a short distance behind them I ran swiftly up from one tier to the
next, and with a final bound from the broad shoulders of the highest
I clutched the top of the great wall and quietly drew myself to its
broad expanse.  After me I dragged six lengths of leather from an
equal number of my warriors.  These lengths we had previously
fastened together, and passing one end to the topmost warrior I
lowered the other end cautiously over the opposite side of the wall
toward the avenue below.  No one was in sight, so, lowering myself
to the end of my leather strap, I dropped the remaining thirty feet
to the pavement below.

I had learned from Kantos Kan the secret of opening these gates,
and in another moment my twenty great fighting men stood within
the doomed city of Zodanga.

I found to my delight that I had entered at the lower boundary of
the enormous palace grounds.  The building itself showed in the
distance a blaze of glorious light, and on the instant I determined
to lead a detachment of warriors directly within the palace itself,
while the balance of the great horde was attacking the barracks of
the soldiery.

Dispatching one of my men to Tars Tarkas for a detail of fifty
Tharks, with word of my intentions, I ordered ten warriors to
capture and open one of the great gates while with the nine
remaining I took the other.  We were to do our work quietly, no
shots were to be fired and no general advance made until I had
reached the palace with my fifty Tharks.  Our plans worked to
perfection.  The two sentries we met were dispatched to their
fathers upon the banks of the lost sea of Korus, and the guards
at both gates followed them in silence.




CHAPTER XXV

THE LOOTING OF ZODANGA



As the great gate where I stood swung open my fifty Tharks, headed
by Tars Tarkas himself, rode in upon their mighty thoats.  I led
them to the palace walls, which I negotiated easily without
assistance.  Once inside, however, the gate gave me considerable
trouble, but I finally was rewarded by seeing it swing upon its
huge hinges, and soon my fierce escort was riding across the
gardens of the jeddak of Zodanga.

As we approached the palace I could see through the great windows of
the first floor into the brilliantly illuminated audience chamber
of Than Kosis.  The immense hall was crowded with nobles and their
women, as though some important function was in progress.  There was
not a guard in sight without the palace, due, I presume, to the fact
that the city and palace walls were considered impregnable, and so
I came close and peered within.

At one end of the chamber, upon massive golden thrones encrusted
with diamonds, sat Than Kosis and his consort, surrounded by
officers and dignitaries of state.  Before them stretched a broad
aisle lined on either side with soldiery, and as I looked there
entered this aisle at the far end of the hall, the head of a
procession which advanced to the foot of the throne.

First there marched four officers of the jeddak's Guard bearing a
huge salver on which reposed, upon a cushion of scarlet silk, a
great golden chain with a collar and padlock at each end.  Directly
behind these officers came four others carrying a similar salver
which supported the magnificent ornaments of a prince and princess
of the reigning house of Zodanga.

At the foot of the throne these two parties separated and halted,
facing each other at opposite sides of the aisle.  Then came more
dignitaries, and the officers of the palace and of the army, and
finally two figures entirely muffled in scarlet silk, so that not
a feature of either was discernible.  These two stopped at the
foot of the throne, facing Than Kosis.  When the balance of the
procession had entered and assumed their stations Than Kosis
addressed the couple standing before him.  I could not hear his
words, but presently two officers advanced and removed the scarlet
robe from one of the figures, and I saw that Kantos Kan had failed
in his mission, for it was Sab Than, Prince of Zodanga, who stood
revealed before me.

Than Kosis now took a set of the ornaments from one of the salvers
and placed one of the collars of gold about his son's neck,
springing the padlock fast.  After a few more words addressed to
Sab Than he turned to the other figure, from which the officers
now removed the enshrouding silks, disclosing to my now
comprehending view Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium.

The object of the ceremony was clear to me; in another moment Dejah
Thoris would be joined forever to the Prince of Zodanga.  It was an
impressive and beautiful ceremony, I presume, but to me it seemed
the most fiendish sight I had ever witnessed, and as the ornaments
were adjusted upon her beautiful figure and her collar of gold swung
open in the hands of Than Kosis I raised my long-sword above my
head, and, with the heavy hilt, I shattered the glass of the great
window and sprang into the midst of the astonished assemblage.  With
a bound I was on the steps of the platform beside Than Kosis, and as
he stood riveted with surprise I brought my long-sword down upon the
golden chain that would have bound Dejah Thoris to another.

In an instant all was confusion; a thousand drawn swords menaced me
from every quarter, and Sab Than sprang upon me with a jeweled
dagger he had drawn from his nuptial ornaments.  I could have killed
him as easily as I might a fly, but the age-old custom of Barsoom
stayed my hand, and grasping his wrist as the dagger flew toward my
heart I held him as though in a vise and with my long-sword pointed
to the far end of the hall.

"Zodanga has fallen," I cried.  "Look!"

All eyes turned in the direction I had indicated, and there, forging
through the portals of the entranceway rode Tars Tarkas and his
fifty warriors on their great thoats.

A cry of alarm and amazement broke from the assemblage, but no word
of fear, and in a moment the soldiers and nobles of Zodanga were
hurling themselves upon the advancing Tharks.

Thrusting Sab Than headlong from the platform, I drew Dejah Thoris
to my side.  Behind the throne was a narrow doorway and in this Than
Kosis now stood facing me, with drawn long-sword.  In an instant we
were engaged, and I found no mean antagonist.

As we circled upon the broad platform I saw Sab Than rushing up the
steps to aid his father, but, as he raised his hand to strike, Dejah
Thoris sprang before him and then my sword found the spot that made
Sab Than jeddak of Zodanga.  As his father rolled dead upon the
floor the new jeddak tore himself free from Dejah Thoris' grasp,
and again we faced each other.  He was soon joined by a quartet of
officers, and, with my back against a golden throne, I fought once
again for Dejah Thoris.  I was hard pressed to defend myself and yet
not strike down Sab Than and, with him, my last chance to win the
woman I loved.  My blade was swinging with the rapidity of lightning
as I sought to parry the thrusts and cuts of my opponents.  Two I
had disarmed, and one was down, when several more rushed to the aid
of their new ruler, and to avenge the death of the old.

As they advanced there were cries of "The woman!  The woman!
Strike her down; it is her plot.  Kill her!  Kill her!"

Calling to Dejah Thoris to get behind me I worked my way toward the
little doorway back of the throne, but the officers realized my
intentions, and three of them sprang in behind me and blocked my
chances for gaining a position where I could have defended Dejah
Thoris against any army of swordsmen.

The Tharks were having their hands full in the center of the room,
and I began to realize that nothing short of a miracle could save
Dejah Thoris and myself, when I saw Tars Tarkas surging through the
crowd of pygmies that swarmed about him.  With one swing of his
mighty longsword he laid a dozen corpses at his feet, and so he
hewed a pathway before him until in another moment he stood upon the
platform beside me, dealing death and destruction right and left.

The bravery of the Zodangans was awe-inspiring, not one attempted
to escape, and when the fighting ceased it was because only Tharks
remained alive in the great hall, other than Dejah Thoris and
myself.

Sab Than lay dead beside his father, and the corpses of the flower
of Zodangan nobility and chivalry covered the floor of the bloody
shambles.

My first thought when the battle was over was for Kantos Kan,
and leaving Dejah Thoris in charge of Tars Tarkas I took a dozen
warriors and hastened to the dungeons beneath the palace.  The
jailers had all left to join the fighters in the throne room, so
we searched the labyrinthine prison without opposition.

I called Kantos Kan's name aloud in each new corridor and
compartment, and finally I was rewarded by hearing a faint response.
Guided by the sound, we soon found him helpless in a dark recess.

He was overjoyed at seeing me, and to know the meaning of the fight,
faint echoes of which had reached his prison cell.  He told me that
the air patrol had captured him before he reached the high tower of
the palace, so that he had not even seen Sab Than.

We discovered that it would be futile to attempt to cut away the
bars and chains which held him prisoner, so, at his suggestion I
returned to search the bodies on the floor above for keys to open
the padlocks of his cell and of his chains.

Fortunately among the first I examined I found his jailer, and soon
we had Kantos Kan with us in the throne room.

The sounds of heavy firing, mingled with shouts and cries, came to
us from the city's streets, and Tars Tarkas hastened away to direct
the fighting without.  Kantos Kan accompanied him to act as guide,
the green warriors commencing a thorough search of the palace for
other Zodangans and for loot, and Dejah Thoris and I were left
alone.

She had sunk into one of the golden thrones, and as I turned to her
she greeted me with a wan smile.

"Was there ever such a man!" she exclaimed.  "I know that Barsoom
has never before seen your like.  Can it be that all Earth men are
as you?  Alone, a stranger, hunted, threatened, persecuted, you have
done in a few short months what in all the past ages of Barsoom no
man has ever done: joined together the wild hordes of the sea
bottoms and brought them to fight as allies of a red Martian
people."

"The answer is easy, Dejah Thoris," I replied smiling.  "It was not
I who did it, it was love, love for Dejah Thoris, a power that would
work greater miracles than this you have seen."

A pretty flush overspread her face and she answered,

"You may say that now, John Carter, and I may listen, for I
am free."

"And more still I have to say, ere it is again too late," I
returned.  "I have done many strange things in my life, many things
that wiser men would not have dared, but never in my wildest fancies
have I dreamed of winning a Dejah Thoris for myself--for never had I
dreamed that in all the universe dwelt such a woman as the Princess
of Helium.  That you are a princess does not abash me, but that you
are you is enough to make me doubt my sanity as I ask you, my
princess, to be mine."

"He does not need to be abashed who so well knew the answer to his
plea before the plea were made," she replied, rising and placing her
dear hands upon my shoulders, and so I took her in my arms and
kissed her.

And thus in the midst of a city of wild conflict, filled with the
alarms of war; with death and destruction reaping their terrible
harvest around her, did Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, true
daughter of Mars, the God of War, promise herself in marriage to
John Carter, Gentleman of Virginia.




CHAPTER XXVI

THROUGH CARNAGE TO JOY



Sometime later Tars Tarkas and Kantos Kan returned to report that
Zodanga had been completely reduced.  Her forces were entirely
destroyed or captured, and no further resistance was to be expected
from within.  Several battleships had escaped, but there were
thousands of war and merchant vessels under guard of Thark warriors.

The lesser hordes had commenced looting and quarreling among
themselves, so it was decided that we collect what warriors we
could, man as many vessels as possible with Zodangan prisoners
and make for Helium without further loss of time.

Five hours later we sailed from the roofs of the dock buildings with
a fleet of two hundred and fifty battleships, carrying nearly one
hundred thousand green warriors, followed by a fleet of transports
with our thoats.

Behind us we left the stricken city in the fierce and brutal
clutches of some forty thousand green warriors of the lesser hordes.
They were looting, murdering, and fighting amongst themselves.  In
a hundred places they had applied the torch, and columns of dense
smoke were rising above the city as though to blot out from the
eye of heaven the horrid sights beneath.

In the middle of the afternoon we sighted the scarlet and yellow
towers of Helium, and a short time later a great fleet of Zodangan
battleships rose from the camps of the besiegers without the city,
and advanced to meet us.

The banners of Helium had been strung from stem to stern of each
of our mighty craft, but the Zodangans did not need this sign to
realize that we were enemies, for our green Martian warriors had
opened fire upon them almost as they left the ground.  With their
uncanny marksmanship they raked the on-coming fleet with volley
after volley.

The twin cities of Helium, perceiving that we were friends, sent out
hundreds of vessels to aid us, and then began the first real air
battle I had ever witnessed.

The vessels carrying our green warriors were kept circling above
the contending fleets of Helium and Zodanga, since their batteries
were useless in the hands of the Tharks who, having no navy, have
no skill in naval gunnery.  Their small-arm fire, however, was
most effective, and the final outcome of the engagement was
strongly influenced, if not wholly determined, by their presence.

At first the two forces circled at the same altitude, pouring
broadside after broadside into each other.  Presently a great hole
was torn in the hull of one of the immense battle craft from the
Zodangan camp; with a lurch she turned completely over, the little
figures of her crew plunging, turning and twisting toward the
ground a thousand feet below; then with sickening velocity she tore
after them, almost completely burying herself in the soft loam of
the ancient sea bottom.

A wild cry of exultation arose from the Heliumite squadron, and with
redoubled ferocity they fell upon the Zodangan fleet.  By a pretty
maneuver two of the vessels of Helium gained a position above their
adversaries, from which they poured upon them from their keel bomb
batteries a perfect torrent of exploding bombs.

Then, one by one, the battleships of Helium succeeded in rising
above the Zodangans, and in a short time a number of the
beleaguering battleships were drifting hopeless wrecks toward the
high scarlet tower of greater Helium.  Several others attempted
to escape, but they were soon surrounded by thousands of tiny
individual fliers, and above each hung a monster battleship of
Helium ready to drop boarding parties upon their decks.

Within but little more than an hour from the moment the victorious
Zodangan squadron had risen to meet us from the camp of the
besiegers the battle was over, and the remaining vessels of the
conquered Zodangans were headed toward the cities of Helium under
prize crews.

There was an extremely pathetic side to the surrender of these
mighty fliers, the result of an age-old custom which demanded that
surrender should be signalized by the voluntary plunging to earth of
the commander of the vanquished vessel.  One after another the brave
fellows, holding their colors high above their heads, leaped from
the towering bows of their mighty craft to an awful death.

Not until the commander of the entire fleet took the fearful plunge,
thus indicating the surrender of the remaining vessels, did the
fighting cease, and the useless sacrifice of brave men come to an
end.

We now signaled the flagship of Helium's navy to approach, and
when she was within hailing distance I called out that we had the
Princess Dejah Thoris on board, and that we wished to transfer her
to the flagship that she might be taken immediately to the city.

As the full import of my announcement bore in upon them a great cry
arose from the decks of the flagship, and a moment later the colors
of the Princess of Helium broke from a hundred points upon her upper
works.  When the other vessels of the squadron caught the meaning of
the signals flashed them they took up the wild acclaim and unfurled
her colors in the gleaming sunlight.

The flagship bore down upon us, and as she swung gracefully to and
touched our side a dozen officers sprang upon our decks.  As their
astonished gaze fell upon the hundreds of green warriors, who now
came forth from the fighting shelters, they stopped aghast, but at
sight of Kantos Kan, who advanced to meet them, they came forward,
crowding about him.

Dejah Thoris and I then advanced, and they had no eyes for other
than her.  She received them gracefully, calling each by name, for
they were men high in the esteem and service of her grandfather,
and she knew them well.

"Lay your hands upon the shoulder of John Carter," she said to them,
turning toward me, "the man to whom Helium owes her princess as well
as her victory today."

They were very courteous to me and said many kind and complimentary
things, but what seemed to impress them most was that I had won the
aid of the fierce Tharks in my campaign for the liberation of Dejah
Thoris, and the relief of Helium.

"You owe your thanks more to another man than to me," I said, "and
here he is; meet one of Barsoom's greatest soldiers and statesmen,
Tars Tarkas, Jeddak of Thark."

With the same polished courtesy that had marked their manner toward
me they extended their greetings to the great Thark, nor, to my
surprise, was he much behind them in ease of bearing or in courtly
speech.  Though not a garrulous race, the Tharks are extremely
formal, and their ways lend themselves amazingly well to dignified
and courtly manners.

Dejah Thoris went aboard the flagship, and was much put out that I
would not follow, but, as I explained to her, the battle was but
partly won; we still had the land forces of the besieging Zodangans
to account for, and I would not leave Tars Tarkas until that had
been accomplished.

The commander of the naval forces of Helium promised to arrange to
have the armies of Helium attack from the city in conjunction with
our land attack, and so the vessels separated and Dejah Thoris was
borne in triumph back to the court of her grandfather, Tardos Mors,
Jeddak of Helium.

In the distance lay our fleet of transports, with the thoats of the
green warriors, where they had remained during the battle.  Without
landing stages it was to be a difficult matter to unload these
beasts upon the open plain, but there was nothing else for it, and
so we put out for a point about ten miles from the city and began
the task.

It was necessary to lower the animals to the ground in slings and
this work occupied the remainder of the day and half the night.
Twice we were attacked by parties of Zodangan cavalry, but with
little loss, however, and after darkness shut down they withdrew.

As soon as the last thoat was unloaded Tars Tarkas gave the command
to advance, and in three parties we crept upon the Zodangan camp
from the north, the south and the east.

About a mile from the main camp we encountered their outposts and,
as had been prearranged, accepted this as the signal to charge.
With wild, ferocious cries and amidst the nasty squealing of
battle-enraged thoats we bore down upon the Zodangans.

We did not catch them napping, but found a well-entrenched battle
line confronting us.  Time after time we were repulsed until, toward
noon, I began to fear for the result of the battle.

The Zodangans numbered nearly a million fighting men, gathered
from pole to pole, wherever stretched their ribbon-like waterways,
while pitted against them were less than a hundred thousand green
warriors.  The forces from Helium had not arrived, nor could we
receive any word from them.

Just at noon we heard heavy firing all along the line between the
Zodangans and the cities, and we knew then that our much-needed
reinforcements had come.

Again Tars Tarkas ordered the charge, and once more the mighty
thoats bore their terrible riders against the ramparts of the enemy.
At the same moment the battle line of Helium surged over the
opposite breastworks of the Zodangans and in another moment they
were being crushed as between two millstones.  Nobly they fought,
but in vain.

The plain before the city became a veritable shambles ere the last
Zodangan surrendered, but finally the carnage ceased, the prisoners
were marched back to Helium, and we entered the greater city's
gates, a huge triumphal procession of conquering heroes.

The broad avenues were lined with women and children, among which
were the few men whose duties necessitated that they remain within
the city during the battle.  We were greeted with an endless round
of applause and showered with ornaments of gold, platinum, silver,
and precious jewels.  The city had gone mad with joy.

My fierce Tharks caused the wildest excitement and enthusiasm.
Never before had an armed body of green warriors entered the gates
of Helium, and that they came now as friends and allies filled the
red men with rejoicing.

That my poor services to Dejah Thoris had become known to the
Heliumites was evidenced by the loud crying of my name, and by the
loads of ornaments that were fastened upon me and my huge thoat as
we passed up the avenues to the palace, for even in the face of the
ferocious appearance of Woola the populace pressed close about me.

As we approached this magnificent pile we were met by a party of
officers who greeted us warmly and requested that Tars Tarkas and
his jeds with the jeddaks and jeds of his wild allies, together with
myself, dismount and accompany them to receive from Tardos Mors an
expression of his gratitude for our services.

At the top of the great steps leading up to the main portals of the
palace stood the royal party, and as we reached the lower steps one
of their number descended to meet us.

He was an almost perfect specimen of manhood; tall, straight as an
arrow, superbly muscled and with the carriage and bearing of a ruler
of men.  I did not need to be told that he was Tardos Mors, Jeddak
of Helium.

The first member of our party he met was Tars Tarkas and his first
words sealed forever the new friendship between the races.

"That Tardos Mors," he said, earnestly, "may meet the greatest
living warrior of Barsoom is a priceless honor, but that he
may lay his hand on the shoulder of a friend and ally is a far
greater boon."

"Jeddak of Helium," returned Tars Tarkas, "it has remained for a man
of another world to teach the green warriors of Barsoom the meaning
of friendship; to him we owe the fact that the hordes of Thark can
understand you; that they can appreciate and reciprocate the
sentiments so graciously expressed."

Tardos Mors then greeted each of the green jeddaks and jeds, and to
each spoke words of friendship and appreciation.

As he approached me he laid both hands upon my shoulders.

"Welcome, my son," he said; "that you are granted, gladly, and
without one word of opposition, the most precious jewel in all
Helium, yes, on all Barsoom, is sufficient earnest of my esteem."

We were then presented to Mors Kajak, Jed of lesser Helium, and
father of Dejah Thoris.  He had followed close behind Tardos Mors
and seemed even more affected by the meeting than had his father.

He tried a dozen times to express his gratitude to me, but his voice
choked with emotion and he could not speak, and yet he had, as I was
to later learn, a reputation for ferocity and fearlessness as a
fighter that was remarkable even upon warlike Barsoom.  In common
with all Helium he worshiped his daughter, nor could he think of
what she had escaped without deep emotion.




CHAPTER XXVII

FROM JOY TO DEATH



For ten days the hordes of Thark and their wild allies were feasted
and entertained, and, then, loaded with costly presents and escorted
by ten thousand soldiers of Helium commanded by Mors Kajak, they
started on the return journey to their own lands.  The jed of lesser
Helium with a small party of nobles accompanied them all the way to
Thark to cement more closely the new bonds of peace and friendship.

Sola also accompanied Tars Tarkas, her father, who before all his
chieftains had acknowledged her as his daughter.

Three weeks later, Mors Kajak and his officers, accompanied by Tars
Tarkas and Sola, returned upon a battleship that had been dispatched
to Thark to fetch them in time for the ceremony which made Dejah
Thoris and John Carter one.

For nine years I served in the councils and fought in the armies of
Helium as a prince of the house of Tardos Mors.  The people seemed
never to tire of heaping honors upon me, and no day passed that
did not bring some new proof of their love for my princess, the
incomparable Dejah Thoris.

In a golden incubator upon the roof of our palace lay a snow-white
egg.  For nearly five years ten soldiers of the jeddak's Guard had
constantly stood over it, and not a day passed when I was in the
city that Dejah Thoris and I did not stand hand in hand before our
little shrine planning for the future, when the delicate shell
should break.

Vivid in my memory is the picture of the last night as we sat there
talking in low tones of the strange romance which had woven our
lives together and of this wonder which was coming to augment our
happiness and fulfill our hopes.

In the distance we saw the bright-white light of an approaching
airship, but we attached no special significance to so common a
sight.  Like a bolt of lightning it raced toward Helium until its
very speed bespoke the unusual.

Flashing the signals which proclaimed it a dispatch bearer for the
jeddak, it circled impatiently awaiting the tardy patrol boat which
must convoy it to the palace docks.

Ten minutes after it touched at the palace a message called me to
the council chamber, which I found filling with the members of that
body.

On the raised platform of the throne was Tardos Mors, pacing back
and forth with tense-drawn face.  When all were in their seats he
turned toward us.

"This morning," he said, "word reached the several governments of
Barsoom that the keeper of the atmosphere plant had made no wireless
report for two days, nor had almost ceaseless calls upon him from a
score of capitals elicited a sign of response.

"The ambassadors of the other nations asked us to take the matter
in hand and hasten the assistant keeper to the plant.  All day a
thousand cruisers have been searching for him until just now one
of them returns bearing his dead body, which was found in the pits
beneath his house horribly mutilated by some assassin.

"I do not need to tell you what this means to Barsoom.  It would
take months to penetrate those mighty walls, in fact the work has
already commenced, and there would be little to fear were the engine
of the pumping plant to run as it should and as they all have for
hundreds of years now; but the worst, we fear, has happened.  The
instruments show a rapidly decreasing air pressure on all parts of
Barsoom--the engine has stopped."

"My gentlemen," he concluded, "we have at best three days to live."

There was absolute silence for several minutes, and then a young
noble arose, and with his drawn sword held high above his head
addressed Tardos Mors.

"The men of Helium have prided themselves that they have ever shown
Barsoom how a nation of red men should live, now is our opportunity
to show them how they should die.  Let us go about our duties as
though a thousand useful years still lay before us."

The chamber rang with applause and as there was nothing better to
do than to allay the fears of the people by our example we went our
ways with smiles upon our faces and sorrow gnawing at our hearts.

When I returned to my palace I found that the rumor already had
reached Dejah Thoris, so I told her all that I had heard.

"We have been very happy, John Carter," she said, "and I thank
whatever fate overtakes us that it permits us to die together."

The next two days brought no noticeable change in the supply of air,
but on the morning of the third day breathing became difficult at
the higher altitudes of the rooftops.  The avenues and plazas of
Helium were filled with people.  All business had ceased.  For
the most part the people looked bravely into the face of their
unalterable doom.  Here and there, however, men and women gave
way to quiet grief.

Toward the middle of the day many of the weaker commenced to succumb
and within an hour the people of Barsoom were sinking by thousands
into the unconsciousness which precedes death by asphyxiation.

Dejah Thoris and I with the other members of the royal family had
collected in a sunken garden within an inner courtyard of the
palace.  We conversed in low tones, when we conversed at all, as
the awe of the grim shadow of death crept over us.  Even Woola
seemed to feel the weight of the impending calamity, for he
pressed close to Dejah Thoris and to me, whining pitifully.

The little incubator had been brought from the roof of our palace
at request of Dejah Thoris and now she sat gazing longingly upon
the unknown little life that now she would never know.

As it was becoming perceptibly difficult to breathe Tardos Mors
arose, saying,

"Let us bid each other farewell.  The days of the greatness of
Barsoom are over.  Tomorrow's sun will look down upon a dead world
which through all eternity must go swinging through the heavens
peopled not even by memories.  It is the end."

He stooped and kissed the women of his family, and laid his strong
hand upon the shoulders of the men.

As I turned sadly from him my eyes fell upon Dejah Thoris.  Her head
was drooping upon her breast, to all appearances she was lifeless.
With a cry I sprang to her and raised her in my arms.

Her eyes opened and looked into mine.

"Kiss me, John Carter," she murmured.  "I love you!  I love you!
It is cruel that we must be torn apart who were just starting upon
a life of love and happiness."

As I pressed her dear lips to mine the old feeling of unconquerable
power and authority rose in me.  The fighting blood of Virginia
sprang to life in my veins.

"It shall not be, my princess," I cried.  "There is, there must be
some way, and John Carter, who has fought his way through a strange
world for love of you, will find it."

And with my words there crept above the threshold of my conscious
mind a series of nine long forgotten sounds.  Like a flash of
lightning in the darkness their full purport dawned upon me--the
key to the three great doors of the atmosphere plant!

Turning suddenly toward Tardos Mors as I still clasped my dying love
to my breast I cried.

"A flier, Jeddak!  Quick!  Order your swiftest flier to the palace
top.  I can save Barsoom yet."

He did not wait to question, but in an instant a guard was racing
to the nearest dock and though the air was thin and almost gone at
the rooftop they managed to launch the fastest one-man, air-scout
machine that the skill of Barsoom had ever produced.

Kissing Dejah Thoris a dozen times and commanding Woola, who would
have followed me, to remain and guard her, I bounded with my old
agility and strength to the high ramparts of the palace, and in
another moment I was headed toward the goal of the hopes of all
Barsoom.

I had to fly low to get sufficient air to breathe, but I took a
straight course across an old sea bottom and so had to rise only
a few feet above the ground.

I traveled with awful velocity for my errand was a race against time
with death.  The face of Dejah Thoris hung always before me.  As I
turned for a last look as I left the palace garden I had seen her
stagger and sink upon the ground beside the little incubator.  That
she had dropped into the last coma which would end in death, if the
air supply remained unreplenished, I well knew, and so, throwing
caution to the winds, I flung overboard everything but the engine
and compass, even to my ornaments, and lying on my belly along the
deck with one hand on the steering wheel and the other pushing the
speed lever to its last notch I split the thin air of dying Mars
with the speed of a meteor.

An hour before dark the great walls of the atmosphere plant loomed
suddenly before me, and with a sickening thud I plunged to the
ground before the small door which was withholding the spark of
life from the inhabitants of an entire planet.

Beside the door a great crew of men had been laboring to pierce the
wall, but they had scarcely scratched the flint-like surface, and
now most of them lay in the last sleep from which not even air would
awaken them.

Conditions seemed much worse here than at Helium, and it was with
difficulty that I breathed at all.  There were a few men still
conscious, and to one of these I spoke.

"If I can open these doors is there a man who can start the
engines?" I asked.

"I can," he replied, "if you open quickly.  I can last but a few
moments more.  But it is useless, they are both dead and no one else
upon Barsoom knew the secret of these awful locks.  For three days
men crazed with fear have surged about this portal in vain attempts
to solve its mystery."

I had no time to talk, I was becoming very weak and it was with
difficulty that I controlled my mind at all.

But, with a final effort, as I sank weakly to my knees I hurled the
nine thought waves at that awful thing before me.  The Martian had
crawled to my side and with staring eyes fixed on the single panel
before us we waited in the silence of death.

Slowly the mighty door receded before us.  I attempted to rise and
follow it but I was too weak.

"After it," I cried to my companion, "and if you reach the pump room
turn loose all the pumps.  It is the only chance Barsoom has to
exist tomorrow!"

From where I lay I opened the second door, and then the third, and
as I saw the hope of Barsoom crawling weakly on hands and knees
through the last doorway I sank unconscious upon the ground.




CHAPTER XXVIII

AT THE ARIZONA CAVE



It was dark when I opened my eyes again.  Strange, stiff garments
were upon my body; garments that cracked and powdered away from me
as I rose to a sitting posture.

I felt myself over from head to foot and from head to foot I was
clothed, though when I fell unconscious at the little doorway I had
been naked.  Before me was a small patch of moonlit sky which showed
through a ragged aperture.

As my hands passed over my body they came in contact with pockets
and in one of these a small parcel of matches wrapped in oiled
paper.  One of these matches I struck, and its dim flame lighted
up what appeared to be a huge cave, toward the back of which I
discovered a strange, still figure huddled over a tiny bench.  As
I approached it I saw that it was the dead and mummified remains
of a little old woman with long black hair, and the thing it
leaned over was a small charcoal burner upon which rested a round
copper vessel containing a small quantity of greenish powder.

Behind her, depending from the roof upon rawhide thongs, and
stretching entirely across the cave, was a row of human skeletons.
From the thong which held them stretched another to the dead hand
of the little old woman; as I touched the cord the skeletons swung
to the motion with a noise as of the rustling of dry leaves.

It was a most grotesque and horrid tableau and I hastened out
into the fresh air; glad to escape from so gruesome a place.

The sight that met my eyes as I stepped out upon a small ledge which
ran before the entrance of the cave filled me with consternation.

A new heaven and a new landscape met my gaze.  The silvered
mountains in the distance, the almost stationary moon hanging in
the sky, the cacti-studded valley below me were not of Mars.  I
could scarcely believe my eyes, but the truth slowly forced itself
upon me--I was looking upon Arizona from the same ledge from which
ten years before I had gazed with longing upon Mars.

Burying my head in my arms I turned, broken, and sorrowful, down the
trail from the cave.

Above me shone the red eye of Mars holding her awful secret,
forty-eight million miles away.

Did the Martian reach the pump room?  Did the vitalizing air reach
the people of that distant planet in time to save them?  Was my
Dejah Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body lie cold in death
beside the tiny golden incubator in the sunken garden of the inner
courtyard of the palace of Tardos Mors, the jeddak of Helium?

For ten years I have waited and prayed for an answer to my
questions.  For ten years I have waited and prayed to be taken
back to the world of my lost love.  I would rather lie dead beside
her there than live on Earth all those millions of terrible miles
from her.

The old mine, which I found untouched, has made me fabulously
wealthy; but what care I for wealth!

As I sit here tonight in my little study overlooking the Hudson,
just twenty years have elapsed since I first opened my eyes upon
Mars.

I can see her shining in the sky through the little window by my
desk, and tonight she seems calling to me again as she has not
called before since that long dead night, and I think I can see,
across that awful abyss of space, a beautiful black-haired woman
standing in the garden of a palace, and at her side is a little boy
who puts his arm around her as she points into the sky toward the
planet Earth, while at their feet is a huge and hideous creature
with a heart of gold.

I believe that they are waiting there for me, and something tells me
that I shall soon know.

____________________________________________________________________



The Time Traveler voyages in THE TIME MACHINE

as told by H. G. WELLS



I


The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)
was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and
twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The
fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent
lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and
passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and
caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that
luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully
free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this
way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as we sat and lazily
admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it)
and his fecundity.

'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for
instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.'

'Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.

'I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable
ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You
know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness _nil_,
has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a
mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.'

'That is all right,' said the Psychologist.

'Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.'

'There I object,' said Filby. 'Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things--'

'So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an _instantaneous_
cube exist?'

'Don't follow you,' said Filby.

'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
existence?'

Filby became pensive. 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any
real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have
Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural
infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we
incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions,
three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time.
There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between
the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that
our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the
latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.'

'That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight
his cigar over the lamp; 'that ... very clear indeed.'

'Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,'
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of
cheerfulness. 'Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension,
though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know
they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. _There is
no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space
except that our consciousness moves along it_. But some foolish
people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all
heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?'

'_I_ have not,' said the Provincial Mayor.

'It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to
three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some
philosophical people have been asking why _three_ dimensions
particularly--why not another direction at right angles to the other
three?--and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry.
Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York
Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat
surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of
a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models
of three dimensions they could represent one of four--if they could
master the perspective of the thing. See?'

'I think so,' murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his
brows, he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one
who repeats mystic words. 'Yes, I think I see it now,' he said after
some time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.

'Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this
geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results
are curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight
years old, another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at
twenty-three, and so on. All these are evidently sections, as it
were, Three-Dimensional representations of his Four-Dimensioned
being, which is a fixed and unalterable thing.

'Scientific people,' proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
required for the proper assimilation of this, 'know very well that
Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram,
a weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the
movement of the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night
it fell, then this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to
here. Surely the mercury did not trace this line in any of the
dimensions of Space generally recognized? But certainly it traced
such a line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along
the Time-Dimension.'

'But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, 'if
Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why
has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot
we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?'

The Time Traveller smiled. 'Are you sure we can move freely in
Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough,
and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two
dimensions. But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.'

'Not exactly,' said the Medical Man. 'There are balloons.'

'But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical
movement.'

'Still they could move a little up and down,' said the Medical Man.

'Easier, far easier down than up.'

'And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
present moment.'

'My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where
the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the
present moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have
no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel _down_
if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface.'

'But the great difficulty is this,' interrupted the Psychologist.
'You _can_ move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot
move about in Time.'

'That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say
that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling
an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence:
I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of
course we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any
more than a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the
ground. But a civilized man is better off than the savage in this
respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why
should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or
accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about
and travel the other way?'

'Oh, _this_,' began Filby, 'is all--'

'Why not?' said the Time Traveller.

'It's against reason,' said Filby.

'What reason?' said the Time Traveller.

'You can show black is white by argument,' said Filby, 'but you will
never convince me.'

'Possibly not,' said the Time Traveller. 'But now you begin to see
the object of my investigations into the geometry of Four
Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine--'

'To travel through Time!' exclaimed the Very Young Man.

'That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time,
as the driver determines.'

Filby contented himself with laughter.

'But I have experimental verification,' said the Time Traveller.

'It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,' the
Psychologist suggested. 'One might travel back and verify the
accepted account of the Battle of Hastings, for instance!'

'Don't you think you would attract attention?' said the Medical Man.
'Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.'

'One might get one's Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,'
the Very Young Man thought.

'In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go.
The German scholars have improved Greek so much.'

'Then there is the future,' said the Very Young Man. 'Just think!
One might invest all one's money, leave it to accumulate at
interest, and hurry on ahead!'

'To discover a society,' said I, 'erected on a strictly communistic
basis.'

'Of all the wild extravagant theories!' began the Psychologist.

'Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until--'

'Experimental verification!' cried I. 'You are going to verify
_that_?'

'The experiment!' cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.

'Let's see your experiment anyhow,' said the Psychologist, 'though
it's all humbug, you know.'

The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly,
and with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly
out of the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long
passage to his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. 'I wonder what he's got?'

'Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,' said the Medical Man, and
Filby tried to tell us about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but
before he had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and
Filby's anecdote collapsed.

The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering
metallic framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very
delicately made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent
crystalline substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that
follows--unless his explanation is to be accepted--is an absolutely
unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that
were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with
two legs on the hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism.
Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the
table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon
the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in
brass candlesticks upon the mantel and several in sconces, so that
the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair
nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to be almost between
the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him, looking
over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the Provincial Mayor watched
him in profile from the right, the Psychologist from the left. The
Very Young Man stood behind the Psychologist. We were all on the
alert. It appears incredible to me that any kind of trick, however
subtly conceived and however adroitly done, could have been played
upon us under these conditions.

The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. 'Well?'
said the Psychologist.

'This little affair,' said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows
upon the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus,
'is only a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through
time. You will notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there
is an odd twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in
some way unreal.' He pointed to the part with his finger. 'Also,
here is one little white lever, and here is another.'

The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
'It's beautifully made,' he said.

'It took two years to make,' retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when
we had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: 'Now I
want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over,
sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses
the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller.
Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will
go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a
good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy
yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model,
and then be told I'm a quack.'

There was a minute's pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
his finger towards the lever. 'No,' he said suddenly. 'Lend me your
hand.' And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual's
hand in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it
was the Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine
on its interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am
absolutely certain there was no trickery. There was a breath of
wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel
was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became
indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of
faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone--vanished! Save
for the lamp the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked
under the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully.
'Well?' he said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then,
getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his
back to us began to fill his pipe.

We stared at each other. 'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you
in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine
has travelled into time?'

'Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at
the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the
Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not
unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.)
'What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'--he
indicated the laboratory--'and when that is put together I mean to
have a journey on my own account.'

'You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?'
said Filby.

'Into the future or the past--I don't, for certain, know which.'

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. 'It must have
gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said.

'Why?' said the Time Traveller.

'Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it
travelled into the future it would still be here all this time,
since it must have travelled through this time.'

'But,' I said, 'If it travelled into the past it would have been
visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!'

'Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

'Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: 'You
think. You can explain that. It's presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation.'

'Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us. 'That's a
simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It's plain
enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor
can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of
a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is
travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than
we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second,
the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or
one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in
time. That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through the space in
which the machine had been. 'You see?' he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the
Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

'It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but
wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.'

'Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time
Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the
way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember
vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette,
the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but
incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger
edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before
our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly
been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally
complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the
bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better
look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.

'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you perfectly serious?
Or is this a trick--like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?'

'Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp
aloft, 'I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more
serious in my life.'

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
winked at me solemnly.



II


I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who
are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round
him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in
ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and
explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have
shown _him_ far less scepticism. For we should have perceived his
motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time
Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we
distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less
clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things
too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt
quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting
their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a
nursery with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very
much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and
the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of
our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness,
the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it
suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the
trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man,
whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar
thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out
of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not explain.

The next Thursday I went again to Richmond--I suppose I was one of
the Time Traveller's most constant guests--and, arriving late, found
four or five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical
Man was standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand
and his watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller,
and--'It's half-past seven now,' said the Medical Man. 'I suppose
we'd better have dinner?'

'Where's----?' said I, naming our host.

'You've just come? It's rather odd. He's unavoidably detained. He
asks me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's not
back. Says he'll explain when he comes.'

'It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said the Editor of a
well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself
who had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the
Editor aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another--a quiet,
shy man with a beard--whom I didn't know, and who, as far as my
observation went, never opened his mouth all the evening. There was
some speculation at the dinner-table about the Time Traveller's
absence, and I suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit.
The Editor wanted that explained to him, and the Psychologist
volunteered a wooden account of the 'ingenious paradox and trick' we
had witnessed that day week. He was in the midst of his exposition
when the door from the corridor opened slowly and without noise. I
was facing the door, and saw it first. 'Hallo!' I said. 'At last!'
And the door opened wider, and the Time Traveller stood before us.
I gave a cry of surprise. 'Good heavens! man, what's the matter?'
cried the Medical Man, who saw him next. And the whole tableful
turned towards the door.

He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and
smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it
seemed to me greyer--either with dust and dirt or because its colour
had actually faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown
cut on it--a cut half healed; his expression was haggard and drawn,
as by intense suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway,
as if he had been dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room.
He walked with just such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps.
We stared at him in silence, expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a
motion towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and
pushed it towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good:
for he looked round the table, and the ghost of his old smile
flickered across his face. 'What on earth have you been up to, man?'
said the Doctor. The Time Traveller did not seem to hear. 'Don't let
me disturb you,' he said, with a certain faltering articulation.
'I'm all right.' He stopped, held out his glass for more, and took
it off at a draught. 'That's good,' he said. His eyes grew brighter,
and a faint colour came into his cheeks. His glance flickered over
our faces with a certain dull approval, and then went round the warm
and comfortable room. Then he spoke again, still as it were feeling
his way among his words. 'I'm going to wash and dress, and then I'll
come down and explain things ... Save me some of that mutton. I'm
starving for a bit of meat.'

He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
was all right. The Editor began a question. 'Tell you presently,'
said the Time Traveller. 'I'm--funny! Be all right in a minute.'

He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again
I remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall,
and standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had
nothing on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the
door closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered
how he detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my
mind was wool-gathering. Then, 'Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent
Scientist,' I heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in
headlines. And this brought my attention back to the bright
dinner-table.

'What's the game?' said the Journalist. 'Has he been doing the
Amateur Cadger? I don't follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist,
and read my own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time
Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else had
noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical
Man, who rang the bell--the Time Traveller hated to have servants
waiting at dinner--for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his
knife and fork with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The
dinner was resumed. Conversation was exclamatory for a little while,
with gaps of wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his
curiosity. 'Does our friend eke out his modest income with a
crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar phases?' he inquired. 'I feel
assured it's this business of the Time Machine,' I said, and took up
the Psychologist's account of our previous meeting. The new guests
were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. 'What _was_
this time travelling? A man couldn't cover himself with dust by
rolling in a paradox, could he?' And then, as the idea came home to
him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn't they any clothes-brushes in
the Future? The Journalist too, would not believe at any price, and
joined the Editor in the easy work of heaping ridicule on the whole
thing. They were both the new kind of journalist--very joyous,
irreverent young men. 'Our Special Correspondent in the Day
after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist was saying--or rather
shouting--when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in
ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look remained
of the change that had startled me.

'I say,' said the Editor hilariously, 'these chaps here say you have
been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about
little Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?'

The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a
word. He smiled quietly, in his old way. 'Where's my mutton?' he
said. 'What a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!'

'Story!' cried the Editor.

'Story be damned!' said the Time Traveller. 'I want something to
eat. I won't say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries.
Thanks. And the salt.'

'One word,' said I. 'Have you been time travelling?'

'Yes,' said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his
head.

'I'd give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,' said the Editor.
The Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang
it with his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been
staring at his face, started convulsively, and poured him wine.
The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden
questions kept on rising to my lips, and I dare say it was the same
with the others. The Journalist tried to relieve the tension by
telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The Time Traveller devoted his
attention to his dinner, and displayed the appetite of a tramp.
The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched the Time Traveller
through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even more clumsy than
usual, and drank champagne with regularity and determination out of
sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller pushed his plate away,
and looked round us. 'I suppose I must apologize,' he said. 'I was
simply starving. I've had a most amazing time.' He reached out his
hand for a cigar, and cut the end. 'But come into the smoking-room.
It's too long a story to tell over greasy plates.' And ringing the
bell in passing, he led the way into the adjoining room.

'You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?' he
said to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new
guests.

'But the thing's a mere paradox,' said the Editor.

'I can't argue to-night. I don't mind telling you the story, but
I can't argue. I will,' he went on, 'tell you the story of what
has happened to me, if you like, but you must refrain from
interruptions. I want to tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like
lying. So be it! It's true--every word of it, all the same. I was in
my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then ... I've lived eight
days ... such days as no human being ever lived before! I'm nearly
worn out, but I shan't sleep till I've told this thing over to you.
Then I shall go to bed. But no interruptions! Is it agreed?'

'Agreed,' said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed 'Agreed.' And
with that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth.
He sat back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man.
Afterwards he got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only
too much keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink--and, above all, my
own inadequacy--to express its quality. You read, I will suppose,
attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker's white,
sincere face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the
intonation of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed
the turns of his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the
candles in the smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face
of the Journalist and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees
downward were illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each
other. After a time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the
Time Traveller's face.



III


'I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of
the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of
it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday,
when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the
nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get
remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It
was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began
its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put
one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the
saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels
much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took
the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other,
pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to
reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round,
I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For
a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted
the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute
or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!

'I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went
dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing
me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to
traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room
like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The
night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment
came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter
and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night
again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled
my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind.

'I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling
exactly like that one has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong
motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent
smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a
black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to
fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky,
leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed
the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air.
I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too
fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that
ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of
darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the
intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her
quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling
stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the
palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness;
the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous
color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak
of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating
band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a
brighter circle flickering in the blue.

'The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hill-side
upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me
grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour,
now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away.
I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams.
The whole surface of the earth seemed changed--melting and flowing
under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my
speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun
belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or
less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and
minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and
vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring.

'The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They
merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked
indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to
account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a
kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At
first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but
these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions
grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and therewith a certain
dread--until at last they took complete possession of me. What
strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our
rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to
look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated
before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about
me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it
seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the
hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even
through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so
my mind came round to the business of stopping.

'The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some
substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long
as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely
mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour
through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to
a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into
whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate
contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical
reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion--would result, and blow
myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the
Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I
was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an
unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the
risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light.
The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything,
the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the
feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told
myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I
resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over
the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was
flung headlong through the air.

'There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have
been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me,
and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine.
Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the
confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what
seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron
bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were
dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones. The
rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove
along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin.
"Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable
years to see you."

'Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.

'My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail
grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very
large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white
marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings,
instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so
that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of
bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was
towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the
faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn,
and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood
looking at it for a little space--half a minute, perhaps, or half an
hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it
denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and
saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was
lightening with the promise of the sun.

'I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full
temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when
that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have
happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion?
What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had
developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly
powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more
dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness--a foul creature to
be incontinently slain.

'Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate
parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping
in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic
fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to
readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the
thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like
the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue
of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into
nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and
distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out
in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I
felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in
the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear
grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again
grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under
my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One
hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
in attitude to mount again.

'But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer
house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had
seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

'Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by
the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of
these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon
which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature--perhaps
four feet high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a
leather belt. Sandals or buskins--I could not clearly distinguish
which--were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his
head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm
the air was.

'He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more
beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic beauty of which we used
to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence.
I took my hands from the machine.



IV


'In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and
spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

'There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps
eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was
too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my
ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then
touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my
back and shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was
nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in
these pretty little people that inspired confidence--a graceful
gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so
frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen of them
about like nine-pins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I
saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily
then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto
forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the
little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my
pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of
communication.

'And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some
further peculiarities in their Dresden-china type of prettiness.
Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the
neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the
face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small,
with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a
point. The eyes were large and mild; and--this may seem egotism on
my part--I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the
interest I might have expected in them.

'As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood
round me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I
began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself.
Then hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the
sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and
white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the
sound of thunder.

'For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was
plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were
these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me.
You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight
Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in
knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a
question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of
our five-year-old children--asked me, in fact, if I had come from
the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended
upon their clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features.
A flow of disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt
that I had built the Time Machine in vain.

'I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering
of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so
and bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of
beautiful flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck.
The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they
were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging
them upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom. You who
have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and
wonderful flowers countless years of culture had created. Then
someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the
nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble,
which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my
astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone. As I
went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a
profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible
merriment, to my mind.

'The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal
dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me
shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw
over their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and
flowers, a long neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number
of tall spikes of strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps
across the spread of the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if
wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine
them closely at this time. The Time Machine was left deserted on the
turf among the rhododendrons.

'The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did
not observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw
suggestions of old Phoenician decorations as I passed through, and
it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather-worn.
Several more brightly clad people met me in the doorway, and so we
entered, I, dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking
grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an
eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs,
in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.

'The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed
with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered
light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white
metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I
judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply
channelled along the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length
were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised
perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits.
Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange,
but for the most part they were strange.

'Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions.
Upon these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do
likewise. With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the
fruit with their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into
the round openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to
follow their example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I
surveyed the hall at my leisure.

'And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.
The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical
pattern, were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung
across the lower end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that
the corner of the marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless,
the general effect was extremely rich and picturesque. There were,
perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in the hall, and most of
them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with
interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating.
All were clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material.

'Fruit, by the by, was all their diet. These people of the remote
future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite
of some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I
found afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the
Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful;
one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was
there--a floury thing in a three-sided husk--was especially good,
and I made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange
fruits, and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to
perceive their import.

'However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future
now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to
make a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of
mine. Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a
convenient thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began
a series of interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some
considerable difficulty in conveying my meaning. At first my efforts
met with a stare of surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but
presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention
and repeated a name. They had to chatter and explain the business
at great length to each other, and my first attempts to make the
exquisite little sounds of their language caused an immense amount
of amusement. However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children,
and persisted, and presently I had a score of noun substantives at
least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and
even the verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little people
soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations, so I
determined, rather of necessity, to let them give their lessons in
little doses when they felt inclined. And very little doses I found
they were before long, for I never met people more indolent or more
easily fatigued.

'A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was
their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of
astonishment, like children, but like children they would soon stop
examining me and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my
conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that
almost all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is
odd, too, how speedily I came to disregard these little people. I
went out through the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as
my hunger was satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men
of the future, who would follow me a little distance, chatter and
laugh about me, and, having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly
way, leave me again to my own devices.

'The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great
hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun.
At first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely
different from the world I had known--even the flowers. The big
building I had left was situated on the slope of a broad river
valley, but the Thames had shifted perhaps a mile from its present
position. I resolved to mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a
mile and a half away, from which I could get a wider view of this
our planet in the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred
and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little
dials of my machine recorded.

'As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly
help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I
found the world--for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for
instance, was a great heap of granite, bound together by masses of
aluminium, a vast labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled
heaps, amidst which were thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like
plants--nettles possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown about
the leaves, and incapable of stinging. It was evidently the derelict
remains of some vast structure, to what end built I could not
determine. It was here that I was destined, at a later date, to have
a very strange experience--the first intimation of a still stranger
discovery--but of that I will speak in its proper place.

'Looking round with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I
rested for a while, I realized that there were no small houses to be
seen. Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household,
had vanished. Here and there among the greenery were palace-like
buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such
characteristic features of our own English landscape, had
disappeared.

'"Communism," said I to myself.

'And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the
half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash,
I perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft
hairless visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem
strange, perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything
was so strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and
in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the
sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike. And
the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their
parents. I judged, then, that the children of that time were
extremely precocious, physically at least, and I found afterwards
abundant verification of my opinion.

'Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I
felt that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what
one would expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a
woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of
occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical
force; where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing
becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where
violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there is less
necessity--indeed there is no necessity--for an efficient family,
and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their
children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even
in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I
must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to
appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.

'While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by
a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in
a transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then
resumed the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings
towards the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently
miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a
strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.

'There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize,
corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered
in soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of
griffins' heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of
our old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and
fair a view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the
horizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal
bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in
which the river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already
spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated
greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied. Here and there rose
a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and
there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There
were no hedges, no signs of proprietary rights, no evidences of
agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.

'So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had
seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation
was something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a
half-truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)

'It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane.
The ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the
first time I began to realize an odd consequence of the social
effort in which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think,
it is a logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need;
security sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the
conditions of life--the true civilizing process that makes life more
and more secure--had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a
united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are
now mere dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and
carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw!

'After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still
in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but
a little department of the field of human disease, but even so,
it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our
agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and
cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the
greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our
favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by
selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless
grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed
of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague
and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature,
too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will
be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the
current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent,
educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster
towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully
we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit
our human needs.

'This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done
indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine
had leaped. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or
fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers;
brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of
preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I
saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay. And I
shall have to tell you later that even the processes of putrefaction
and decay had been profoundly affected by these changes.

'Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in
splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them
engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social
nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all
that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It
was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of
a social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been
met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.

'But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to
the change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is
the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom:
conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and
the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the
loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and
decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that
arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring,
parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in
the imminent dangers of the young. _Now_, where are these imminent
dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against
connubial jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion
of all sorts; unnecessary things now, and things that make us
uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant
life.

'I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of
intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my
belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes
Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had
used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which
it lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.

'Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that
restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness.
Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary
to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and
the love of battle, for instance, are no great help--may even be
hindrances--to a civilized man. And in a state of physical balance
and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out
of place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of
war or solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting
disease to require strength of constitution, no need of toil. For
such a life, what we should call the weak are as well equipped as
the strong, are indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they
are, for the strong would be fretted by an energy for which there
was no outlet. No doubt the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw
was the outcome of the last surgings of the now purposeless energy
of mankind before it settled down into perfect harmony with the
conditions under which it lived--the flourish of that triumph which
began the last great peace. This has ever been the fate of energy in
security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor
and decay.

'Even this artistic impetus would at last die away--had almost died
in the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to
sing in the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and
no more. Even that would fade in the end into a contented
inactivity. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and
necessity, and, it seemed to me, that here was that hateful
grindstone broken at last!

'As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this
simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world--mastered
the whole secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they
had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well,
and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary.
That would account for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my
explanation, and plausible enough--as most wrong theories are!



V


'As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the
full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver
light in the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to move
about below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the
chill of the night. I determined to descend and find where I could
sleep.

'I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to
the figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing
distinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could see
the silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron
bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn.
I looked at the lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency.
"No," said I stoutly to myself, "that was not the lawn."

'But it _was_ the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was
towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came
home to me? But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone!

'At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of
losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.
The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I could
feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. In another
moment I was in a passion of fear and running with great leaping
strides down the slope. Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost
no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a
warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran I was saying
to myself: "They have moved it a little, pushed it under the bushes
out of the way." Nevertheless, I ran with all my might. All the
time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread,
I knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the
machine was removed out of my reach. My breath came with pain. I
suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the
little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a young
man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the
machine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and none
answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit
world.

'When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace
of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the
empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it
furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then
stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered
the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in
the light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my
dismay.

'I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put
the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of
their physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed
me: the sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose
intervention my invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt
assured: unless some other age had produced its exact duplicate,
the machine could not have moved in time. The attachment of the
levers--I will show you the method later--prevented any one from
tampering with it in that way when they were removed. It had moved,
and was hid, only in space. But then, where could it be?

'I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running
violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx,
and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a
small deer. I remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes
with my clenched fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding
from the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of
mind, I went down to the great building of stone. The big hall was
dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the uneven floor, and fell
over one of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a
match and went on past the dusty curtains, of which I have told you.

'There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon
which, perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I
have no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming
suddenly out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the
splutter and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches.
"Where is my Time Machine?" I began, bawling like an angry child,
laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. It must have
been very queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely
frightened. When I saw them standing round me, it came into my head
that I was doing as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do
under the circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear.
For, reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fear
must be forgotten.

'Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and, knocking one of the people
over in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again,
out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little
feet running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all
I did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected
nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from
my own kind--a strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved
to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory
of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of
looking in this impossible place and that; of groping among moon-lit
ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last,
of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute
wretchedness. I had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when
I woke again it was full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping
round me on the turf within reach of my arm.

'I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how
I had got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertion
and despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain,
reasonable daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the
face. I saw the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could
reason with myself. "Suppose the worst?" I said. "Suppose the
machine altogether lost--perhaps destroyed? It behoves me to be
calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear
idea of the method of my loss, and the means of getting materials
and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make another." That
would be my only hope, perhaps, but better than despair. And, after
all, it was a beautiful and curious world.

'But probably, the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must
be calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by force
or cunning. And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked about
me, wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and
travel-soiled. The freshness of the morning made me desire an equal
freshness. I had exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as I went about
my business, I found myself wondering at my intense excitement
overnight. I made a careful examination of the ground about the
little lawn. I wasted some time in futile questionings, conveyed, as
well as I was able, to such of the little people as came by. They
all failed to understand my gestures; some were simply stolid, some
thought it was a jest and laughed at me. I had the hardest task in
the world to keep my hands off their pretty laughing faces. It was
a foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of fear and blind anger
was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage of my perplexity.
The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it, about
midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet
where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow
footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed
my closer attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said,
of bronze. It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep
framed panels on either side. I went and rapped at these. The
pedestal was hollow. Examining the panels with care I found them
discontinuous with the frames. There were no handles or keyholes,
but possibly the panels, if they were doors, as I supposed, opened
from within. One thing was clear enough to my mind. It took no very
great mental effort to infer that my Time Machine was inside that
pedestal. But how it got there was a different problem.

'I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes
and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned
smiling to them and beckoned them to me. They came, and then,
pointing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open
it. But at my first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. I
don't know how to convey their expression to you. Suppose you were
to use a grossly improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman--it is
how she would look. They went off as if they had received the last
possible insult. I tried a sweet-looking little chap in white next,
with exactly the same result. Somehow, his manner made me feel
ashamed of myself. But, as you know, I wanted the Time Machine, and
I tried him once more. As he turned off, like the others, my temper
got the better of me. In three strides I was after him, had him by
the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him
towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror and repugnance of his
face, and all of a sudden I let him go.

'But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze
panels. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit,
I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle--but I must have been
mistaken. Then I got a big pebble from the river, and came and
hammered till I had flattened a coil in the decorations, and the
verdigris came off in powdery flakes. The delicate little people
must have heard me hammering in gusty outbreaks a mile away on
either hand, but nothing came of it. I saw a crowd of them upon the
slopes, looking furtively at me. At last, hot and tired, I sat down
to watch the place. But I was too restless to watch long; I am too
Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years,
but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours--that is another matter.

'I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the
bushes towards the hill again. "Patience," said I to myself. "If you
want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they
mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their
bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as
you can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a
puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this
world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses
at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all." Then
suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought
of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future
age, and now my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had made
myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a
man devised. Although it was at my own expense, I could not help
myself. I laughed aloud.

'Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little
people avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had
something to do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt
tolerably sure of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no
concern and to abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course
of a day or two things got back to the old footing. I made what
progress I could in the language, and in addition I pushed my
explorations here and there. Either I missed some subtle point or
their language was excessively simple--almost exclusively composed
of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any,
abstract terms, or little use of figurative language. Their
sentences were usually simple and of two words, and I failed to
convey or understand any but the simplest propositions. I determined
to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze
doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory,
until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural
way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand, tethered me in a
circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.

'So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant
richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the
same abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material
and style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same
blossom-laden trees and tree-ferns. Here and there water shone like
silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and
so faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, which
presently attracted my attention, was the presence of certain
circular wells, several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth.
One lay by the path up the hill, which I had followed during my
first walk. Like the others, it was rimmed with bronze, curiously
wrought, and protected by a little cupola from the rain. Sitting by
the side of these wells, and peering down into the shafted darkness,
I could see no gleam of water, nor could I start any reflection
with a lighted match. But in all of them I heard a certain sound:
a thud--thud--thud, like the beating of some big engine; and I
discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady current of
air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper into the
throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was at
once sucked swiftly out of sight.

'After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers
standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was
often just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above
a sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong
suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose
true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to
associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an
obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.

'And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and
bells and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my
time in this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and
coming times which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail
about building, and social arrangements, and so forth. But while
such details are easy enough to obtain when the whole world is
contained in one's imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to
a real traveller amid such realities as I found here. Conceive the
tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take
back to his tribe! What would he know of railway companies, of
social movements, of telephone and telegraph wires, of the Parcels
Delivery Company, and postal orders and the like? Yet we, at least,
should be willing enough to explain these things to him! And even of
what he knew, how much could he make his untravelled friend either
apprehend or believe? Then, think how narrow the gap between a negro
and a white man of our own times, and how wide the interval between
myself and these of the Golden Age! I was sensible of much which was
unseen, and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general
impression of automatic organization, I fear I can convey very
little of the difference to your mind.

'In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of
crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me
that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere
beyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I
deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely
defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make
a further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm
among this people there were none.

'I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an
automatic civilization and a decadent humanity did not long endure.
Yet I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The
several big palaces I had explored were mere living places, great
dining-halls and sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no
appliances of any kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant
fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though
undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow
such things must be made. And the little people displayed no vestige
of a creative tendency. There were no shops, no workshops, no sign
of importations among them. They spent all their time in playing
gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful
fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things
were kept going.

'Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what,
had taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. Why? For
the life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too,
those flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt--how shall
I put it? Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and
there in excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others
made up of words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well,
on the third day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight
Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to
me!

'That day, too, I made a friend--of a sort. It happened that, as I
was watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of
them was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main
current ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate
swimmer. It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange
deficiency in these creatures, when I tell you that none made the
slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying little thing which
was drowning before their eyes. When I realized this, I hurriedly
slipped off my clothes, and, wading in at a point lower down, I
caught the poor mite and drew her safe to land. A little rubbing of
the limbs soon brought her round, and I had the satisfaction of
seeing she was all right before I left her. I had got to such a low
estimate of her kind that I did not expect any gratitude from her.
In that, however, I was wrong.

'This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little
woman, as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre
from an exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and
presented me with a big garland of flowers--evidently made for me
and me alone. The thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had
been feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to display my
appreciation of the gift. We were soon seated together in a little
stone arbour, engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles. The
creature's friendliness affected me exactly as a child's might have
done. We passed each other flowers, and she kissed my hands. I did
the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and found that her name was
Weena, which, though I don't know what it meant, somehow seemed
appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a queer friendship
which lasted a week, and ended--as I will tell you!

'She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She
tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about
it went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last,
exhausted and calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems
of the world had to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come
into the future to carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress
when I left her was very great, her expostulations at the parting
were sometimes frantic, and I think, altogether, I had as much
trouble as comfort from her devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow,
a very great comfort. I thought it was mere childish affection that
made her cling to me. Until it was too late, I did not clearly know
what I had inflicted upon her when I left her. Nor until it was too
late did I clearly understand what she was to me. For, by merely
seeming fond of me, and showing in her weak, futile way that she
cared for me, the little doll of a creature presently gave my return
to the neighbourhood of the White Sphinx almost the feeling of
coming home; and I would watch for her tiny figure of white and gold
so soon as I came over the hill.

'It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the
world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the
oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made
threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she
dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness
to her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate
emotion, and it set me thinking and observing. I discovered then,
among other things, that these little people gathered into the great
houses after dark, and slept in droves. To enter upon them without a
light was to put them into a tumult of apprehension. I never found
one out of doors, or one sleeping alone within doors, after dark.
Yet I was still such a blockhead that I missed the lesson of that
fear, and in spite of Weena's distress I insisted upon sleeping away
from these slumbering multitudes.

'It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me
triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including
the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm.
But my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been
the night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had
been restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and
that sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps.
I woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal
had just rushed out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again,
but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour
when things are just creeping out of darkness, when everything is
colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I got up, and went down
into the great hall, and so out upon the flagstones in front of the
palace. I thought I would make a virtue of necessity, and see the
sunrise.

'The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor
of dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky
black, the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless.
And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There several times,
as I scanned the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw
a solitary white, ape-like creature running rather quickly up the
hill, and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some
dark body. They moved hastily. I did not see what became of them.
It seemed that they vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still
indistinct, you must understand. I was feeling that chill,
uncertain, early-morning feeling you may have known. I doubted
my eyes.

'As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on
and its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned
the view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were
mere creatures of the half light. "They must have been ghosts," I
said; "I wonder whence they dated." For a queer notion of Grant
Allen's came into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and
leave ghosts, he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with
them. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight
Hundred Thousand Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four
at once. But the jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these
figures all the morning, until Weena's rescue drove them out of my
head. I associated them in some indefinite way with the white animal
I had startled in my first passionate search for the Time Machine.
But Weena was a pleasant substitute. Yet all the same, they were
soon destined to take far deadlier possession of my mind.

'I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather
of this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun
was hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that
the sun will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people,
unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin,
forget that the planets must ultimately fall back one by one into
the parent body. As these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze
with renewed energy; and it may be that some inner planet had
suffered this fate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the
sun was very much hotter than we know it.

'Well, one very hot morning--my fourth, I think--as I was seeking
shelter from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great
house where I slept and fed, there happened this strange thing:
Clambering among these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery,
whose end and side windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone.
By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first
impenetrably dark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from
light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. Suddenly I
halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against
the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.

'The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched
my hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was
afraid to turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which
humanity appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I
remembered that strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to
some extent, I advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my
voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touched
something soft. At once the eyes darted sideways, and something
white ran past me. I turned with my heart in my mouth, and saw a
queer little ape-like figure, its head held down in a peculiar
manner, running across the sunlit space behind me. It blundered
against a block of granite, staggered aside, and in a moment was
hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

'My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a
dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there
was flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it
went too fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it
ran on all-fours, or only with its forearms held very low. After an
instant's pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could
not find it at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I
came upon one of those round well-like openings of which I have told
you, half closed by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me.
Could this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and,
looking down, I saw a small, white, moving creature, with large
bright eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it retreated. It made
me shudder. It was so like a human spider! It was clambering down
the wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal foot
and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft. Then the
light burned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it
dropped, and when I had lit another the little monster had
disappeared.

'I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for
some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I
had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that
Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two
distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upper-world were
not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached,
obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir
to all the ages.

'I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an
underground ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And
what, I wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly
balanced organization? How was it related to the indolent serenity
of the beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden down there,
at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling
myself that, at any rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there
I must descend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I
was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful
Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the
daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging
flowers at her as he ran.

'They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned
pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form
to remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried
to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more
visibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my
matches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about
the well, and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to
go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But my mind was
already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and
sliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these
wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to
say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the
fate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion
towards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

'Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was
subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which
made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome
of a long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was
the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the
dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then,
those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are
common features of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat.
And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty
yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar
carriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced the theory
of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

'Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of
ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in
fact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were its
ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in
this artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the
comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible
that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the _how_ of this
splitting of the human species. I dare say you will anticipate the
shape of my theory; though, for myself, I very soon felt that it
fell far short of the truth.

'At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed
clear as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present
merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and
the Labourer, was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will
seem grotesque enough to you--and wildly incredible!--and yet even
now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is
a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental
purposes of civilization; there is the Metropolitan Railway in
London, for instance, there are new electric railways, there are
subways, there are underground workrooms and restaurants, and they
increase and multiply. Evidently, I thought, this tendency had
increased till Industry had gradually lost its birthright in the
sky. I mean that it had gone deeper and deeper into larger and ever
larger underground factories, spending a still-increasing amount of
its time therein, till, in the end--! Even now, does not an East-end
worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut
off from the natural surface of the earth?

'Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people--due, no doubt, to
the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf
between them and the rude violence of the poor--is already leading
to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the
surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the
prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same
widening gulf--which is due to the length and expense of the higher
educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations
towards refined habits on the part of the rich--will make that
exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage
which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines
of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end,
above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort
and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting
continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they
were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little
of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused,
they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were
so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in
the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as
well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in
their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. As it seemed to
me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed naturally
enough.

'The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different
shape in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and
general co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real
aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical
conclusion the industrial system of to-day. Its triumph had not been
simply a triumph over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the
fellow-man. This, I must warn you, was my theory at the time. I had
no convenient cicerone in the pattern of the Utopian books. My
explanation may be absolutely wrong. I still think it is the
most plausible one. But even on this supposition the balanced
civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed
its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfect
security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of
degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and
intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What had
happened to the Under-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what
I had seen of the Morlocks--that, by the by, was the name by which
these creatures were called--I could imagine that the modification
of the human type was even far more profound than among the "Eloi,"
the beautiful race that I already knew.

'Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time
Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if
the Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And
why were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have
said, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I was
disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and
presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the
topic was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little
harshly, she burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my
own, I ever saw in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased
abruptly to trouble about the Morlocks, and was only concerned in
banishing these signs of the human inheritance from Weena's eyes.
And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I
solemnly burned a match.



VI


'It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow
up the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt
a peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the
half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in
spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the
touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic
influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began
to appreciate.

'The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a
little disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once
or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive
no definite reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great
hall where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight--that
night Weena was among them--and feeling reassured by their presence.
It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the
moon must pass through its last quarter, and the nights grow dark,
when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these
whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be
more abundant. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of
one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time
Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these
underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If only I
had had a companion it would have been different. But I was so
horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness of the
well appalled me. I don't know if you will understand my feeling,
but I never felt quite safe at my back.

'It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me
further and further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the
south-westward towards the rising country that is now called Combe
Wood, I observed far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century
Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any
I had hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the palaces
or ruins I knew, and the facade had an Oriental look: the face
of it having the lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind
of bluish-green, of a certain type of Chinese porcelain. This
difference in aspect suggested a difference in use, and I was minded
to push on and explore. But the day was growing late, and I had come
upon the sight of the place after a long and tiring circuit; so I
resolved to hold over the adventure for the following day, and I
returned to the welcome and the caresses of little Weena. But next
morning I perceived clearly enough that my curiosity regarding the
Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of self-deception, to enable
me to shirk, by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I
would make the descent without further waste of time, and started
out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins of granite
and aluminium.

'Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but
when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed
strangely disconcerted. "Good-bye, little Weena," I said, kissing
her; and then putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet
for the climbing hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for
I feared my courage might leak away! At first she watched me in
amazement. Then she gave a most piteous cry, and running to me, she
began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition
nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little
roughly, and in another moment I was in the throat of the well. I
saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her.
Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks to which I clung.

'I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The
descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from
the sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of
a creature much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily
cramped and fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of
the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into
the blackness beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after
that experience I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and
back were presently acutely painful, I went on clambering down the
sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible. Glancing upward,
I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible,
while little Weena's head showed as a round black projection. The
thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive.
Everything save that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when
I looked up again Weena had disappeared.

'I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go
up the shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone. But even while
I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with
intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a
slender loophole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the
aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and
rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I
was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the
unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air
was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the
shaft.

'I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by a soft hand touching
my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and,
hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar
to the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating
before the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me
impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and
sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they
reflected the light in the same way. I have no doubt they could see
me in that rayless obscurity, and they did not seem to have any fear
of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in
order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark
gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the
strangest fashion.

'I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently
different from that of the Over-world people; so that I was needs
left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before
exploration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, "You are
in for it now," and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the
noise of machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from
me, and I came to a large open space, and striking another match,
saw that I had entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into
utter darkness beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it
was as much as one could see in the burning of a match.

'Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose
out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim
spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the by,
was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly
shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a
little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The
Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember
wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red
joint I saw. It was all very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big
unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking in the shadows, and
only waiting for the darkness to come at me again! Then the match
burned down, and stung my fingers, and fell, a wriggling red spot
in the blackness.

'I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such
an experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had
started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would
certainly be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances.
I had come without arms, without medicine, without anything to
smoke--at times I missed tobacco frightfully--even without enough
matches. If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that
glimpse of the Underworld in a second, and examined it at leisure.
But, as it was, I stood there with only the weapons and the powers
that Nature had endowed me with--hands, feet, and teeth; these, and
four safety-matches that still remained to me.

'I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the
dark, and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered
that my store of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me
until that moment that there was any need to economize them, and I
had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to
whom fire was a novelty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I
stood in the dark, a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling
over my face, and I was sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I
fancied I heard the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little
beings about me. I felt the box of matches in my hand being gently
disengaged, and other hands behind me plucking at my clothing. The
sense of these unseen creatures examining me was indescribably
unpleasant. The sudden realization of my ignorance of their ways of
thinking and doing came home to me very vividly in the darkness. I
shouted at them as loudly as I could. They started away, and then
I could feel them approaching me again. They clutched at me more
boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently,
and shouted again--rather discordantly. This time they were not so
seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as they came
back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined
to strike another match and escape under the protection of its
glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of paper
from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But I
had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the
blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves,
and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after me.

'In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no
mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine
how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale, chinless faces
and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!--as they stared in their
blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise
you: I retreated again, and when my second match had ended, I struck
my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the opening
into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great
pump below made me giddy. Then I felt sideways for the projecting
hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and I
was violently tugged backward. I lit my last match ... and it
incontinently went out. But I had my hand on the climbing bars now,
and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from the clutches of the
Morlocks and was speedily clambering up the shaft, while they stayed
peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who
followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a trophy.

'That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or
thirty feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest
difficulty in keeping my hold. The last few yards was a frightful
struggle against this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I
felt all the sensations of falling. At last, however, I got over the
well-mouth somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding
sunlight. I fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt sweet and clean.
Then I remember Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of
others among the Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.



VII


'Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto,
except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine,
I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was
staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought
myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and
by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome;
but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of
the Morlocks--a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I
loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen
into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it.
Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him
soon.

'The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the
new moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first
incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now
such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights
might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer
interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at
least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people for
the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that
the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that
my second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upper-world people might
once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their
mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The two
species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding
down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new
relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed
to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on
sufferance: since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable
generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface
intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and
maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through the
survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing horse
paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport:
because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the
organism. But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed.
The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago,
thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of
the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back
changed! Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew.
They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came
into my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-world.
It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it
were by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like a
question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had a
vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was
at the time.

'Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their
mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of this
age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not
paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend
myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a
fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could
face this strange world with some of that confidence I had lost in
realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt
I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I
shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined
me.

'I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but
found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All
the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous
climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the
tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished
gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening,
taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills
towards the south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or
eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen
the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively
diminished. In addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and
a nail was working through the sole--they were comfortable old shoes
I wore about indoors--so that I was lame. And it was already long
past sunset when I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted black
against the pale yellow of the sky.

'Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but
after a while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the
side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers
to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at
the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase
for floral decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose.
And that reminds me! In changing my jacket I found...'

The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and
silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white
mallows, upon the little table. Then he resumed his narrative.

'As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over
the hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to
return to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant
pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to
make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her
Fear. You know that great pause that comes upon things before the
dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an
air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear,
remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the
sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my
fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally
sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground
beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks
on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark.
In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of
their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my
Time Machine?

'So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night.
The clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another
came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena's fears and
her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her
and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her
arms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face
against my shoulder. So we went down a long slope into a valley, and
there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I
waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number
of sleeping houses, and by a statue--a Faun, or some such figure,
_minus_ the head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of
the Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours
before the old moon rose were still to come.

'From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide
and black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to
it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired--my feet, in
particular, were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from my
shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf. I could no
longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my
direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought of
what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would
be out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking
danger--a danger I did not care to let my imagination loose
upon--there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the
tree-boles to strike against.

'I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I
decided that I would not face it, but would pass the night upon the
open hill.

'Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her
in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The
hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood
there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the
stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of
friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations
had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is
imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since
rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it
seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as
of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that
was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green Sirius.
And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet
shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.

'Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all
the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable
distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of
the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great
precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty
times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that
I had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity,
all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations,
languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as
I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these
frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white
Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear
that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a
sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen
might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping
beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and
forthwith dismissed the thought.

'Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as
I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find
signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept
very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at
times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward
sky, like the reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon
rose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind, and overtaking
it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then
growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had
seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed
day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I
stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle
and painful under the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes,
and flung them away.

'I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and
pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit
wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones,
laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such
thing in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the
meat that I had seen. I felt assured now of what it was, and from
the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great
flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human
decay the Morlocks' food had run short. Possibly they had lived on
rats and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating
and exclusive in his food than he was--far less than any monkey. His
prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so
these inhuman sons of men----! I tried to look at the thing in a
scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more remote
than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago.
And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a
torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere
fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed
upon--probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing
at my side!

'Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming
upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human
selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon
the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword
and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to
him. I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy
in decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible. However great
their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the
human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a
sharer in their degradation and their Fear.

'I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should
pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to
make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That
necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some
means of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand,
for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks.
Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of
bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I had
a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of
light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. I
could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far
away. Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our own time. And
turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the
building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.



VIII


'I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about
noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass
remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high
upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I
was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged
Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then--though
I never followed up the thought--of what might have happened, or
might be happening, to the living things in the sea.

'The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might
help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea of
writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I
fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so
human.

'Within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--we
found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many
side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum.
The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of
miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then
I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall,
what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized
by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the
fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay
beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had
dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn
away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a
Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the
side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away
the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own
time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair
preservation of some of their contents.

'Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South
Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section,
and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the
inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and
had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine
hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if
with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and
there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare
fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the
cases had in some instances been bodily removed--by the Morlocks as
I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our
footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping
glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very
quietly took my hand and stood beside me.

'And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an
intellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it
presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a
little from my mind.

'To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain
had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology;
possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me,
at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more
interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay.
Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the
first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a
block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find
no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had
deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a
train of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery,
though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had
little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on
down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had
entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural
history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A
few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed
animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a
brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that,
because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by
which the conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then we
came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly
ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the
end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the
ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--which suggested that
originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in
my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of
big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some
still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for
mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as
for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make
only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if
I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of
powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

'Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she
startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have
noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It
may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum
was built into the side of a hill.--ED.] The end I had come in at
was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As
you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows,
until at last there was a pit like the "area" of a London house
before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went
slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent
upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until
Weena's increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that
the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and
then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant
and its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it
appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. My
sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that.
I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination of
machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the
afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means
of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the
gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had
heard down the well.

'I took Weena's hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her
and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike
those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this
lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly
Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged
the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a
minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than
sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I
longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may
think, to want to go killing one's own descendants! But it was
impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my
disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to
slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained
me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I
heard.

'Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that
gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first
glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags.
The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I
presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had
long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left
them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic
clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I
might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition.
But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the
enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting
paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly
of the _Philosophical Transactions_ and my own seventeen papers upon
physical optics.

'Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have
been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little
hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had
collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every
unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases,
I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were
perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to Weena. "Dance,"
I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed
against the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict
museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's huge
delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling
_The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a
modest _cancan_, in part a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far
as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally
inventive, as you know.

'Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped
the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for
me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far
unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed
jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed.
I fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass
accordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In the
universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive,
perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a
sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil
Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions
of years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that
it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame--was, in
fact, an excellent candle--and I put it in my pocket. I found no
explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze
doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had
chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

'I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would
require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all
the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of
arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a
sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised
best against the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols,
and rifles. The most were masses of rust, but many were of some
new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder
there may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was
charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the
specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols--Polynesian,
Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think.
And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon
the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly
took my fancy.

'As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery
after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes
mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I
suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the
merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite
cartridges! I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed the case with joy. Then
came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery,
I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did in
waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came.
Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from
their presence. I really believe that had they not been so, I should
have rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and
(as it proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together
into non-existence.

'It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court
within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we
rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider
our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible
hiding-place had still to be found. But that troubled me very little
now. I had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of
all defences against the Morlocks--I had matches! I had the camphor
in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that
the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open,
protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the
Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But
now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards
those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them,
largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had never
impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of
iron not altogether inadequate for the work.



IX


'We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above
the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the
next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods
that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as
far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep
in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I
gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms
full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had
anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from
sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the
wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped,
fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending
calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me
onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was
feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the
Morlocks with it.

'While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim
against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was
scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from
their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather
less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare
hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer
resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could
contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was
evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should
have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down.
And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind
by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this
proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering
our retreat.

'I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must
be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun's
heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by
dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.
Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to
widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with
the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In
this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on
the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were
an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

'She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have
cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up,
and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the
wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking
back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my
heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a
curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed
at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very
black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as
my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to
avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of
remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. I struck none of
my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my
little one, in my right hand I had my iron bar.

'For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet,
the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the
throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a
pattering about me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more
distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had
heard in the Under-world. There were evidently several of the
Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another
minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena
shivered violently, and became quite still.

'It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did
so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the
darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the
same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands,
too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.
Then the match scratched and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the
white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees. I hastily took
a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon
as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying
clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground.
With a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to
breathe. I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground,
and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the
shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of
the stir and murmur of a great company!

'She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder
and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realization. In
manoeuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about
several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction
lay my path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the
Palace of Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to
think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire and encamp
where we were. I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy
bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began
collecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness
round me the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.

'The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so,
two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.
One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I
felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of
dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece
of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed
how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival
on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So,
instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began
leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking
smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my
camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I
tried what I could to revive her, but she lay like one dead. I could
not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.

'Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have
made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in
the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I
felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was
full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just
to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had
their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily
felt in my pocket for the match-box, and--it had gone! Then they
gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had
happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness
of death came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of
burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms,
and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to
feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in
a monstrous spider's web. I was overpowered, and went down. I felt
little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my
hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled
up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short,
I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the
succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment
I was free.

'The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard
fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I
determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my
back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was
full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices
seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements
grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I stood glaring at the
blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were
afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The
darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the
Morlocks about me--three battered at my feet--and then I recognized,
with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in an
incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through the
wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.
As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap
of starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I
understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was
growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks'
flight.

'Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through
the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning
forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for
Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the
explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little
time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the
Morlocks' path. It was a close race. Once the flames crept forward
so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to
strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open
space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering towards me, and
past me, and went on straight into the fire!

'And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of
all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright
as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock
or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was
another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already
writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of
fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled
by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against
each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their
blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of
fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more.
But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the
hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured
of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck
no more of them.

'Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting
loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one
time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures
would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the
fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but the
fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about
the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of
Weena. But Weena was gone.

'At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this
strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and
making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat
on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and
through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they
belonged to another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three
Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows
of my fists, trembling as I did so.

'For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare.
I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat
the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and
wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to
rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw
Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the
flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the
streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening
tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures,
came the white light of the day.

'I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was
plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I
cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the
awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was
almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about
me, but I contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind
of island in the forest. From its summit I could now make out
through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that
I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the
remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and
moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet
and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still
pulsated internally with fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time
Machine. I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as
lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death
of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this
old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an
actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely
again--terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of
this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing
that was pain.

'But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning
sky, I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose
matches. The box must have leaked before it was lost.



X


'About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of
yellow metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of
my arrival. I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and
could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here
was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same
splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river
running between its fertile banks. The gay robes of the beautiful
people moved hither and thither among the trees. Some were bathing
in exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave
me a keen stab of pain. And like blots upon the landscape rose the
cupolas above the ways to the Under-world. I understood now what all
the beauty of the Over-world people covered. Very pleasant was their
day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the
cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And
their end was the same.

'I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had
been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly
towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and
permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes--to come
to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost
absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and
comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that
perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social
question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

'It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility
is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal
perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism.
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are
useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no
need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have
to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

'So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his
feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry.
But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical
perfection--absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the
feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected, had become
disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a
few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The
Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect,
still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained
perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human
character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed them, they
turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw it
in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven
Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as mortal wit
could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I
give it to you.

'After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and
in spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm
sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon
my theorizing passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my
own hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and
refreshing sleep.

'I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being
caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on
down the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one
hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.

'And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal
of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid
down into grooves.

'At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.

'Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner
of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket.
So here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the
White Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost
sorry not to use it.

'A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal.
For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks.
Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the
bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it
had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that
the Morlocks had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in
their dim way to grasp its purpose.

'Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere
touch of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The
bronze panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang.
I was in the dark--trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I
chuckled gleefully.

'I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards
me. Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on
the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one
little thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light
only on the box.

'You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were
close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at
them with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the
machine. Then came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had
simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and
at the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted. One,
indeed, they almost got away from me. As it slipped from my hand,
I had to butt in the dark with my head--I could hear the Morlock's
skull ring--to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in
the forest, I think, this last scramble.

'But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging
hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes.
I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already
described.



XI


'I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes
with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the
saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite
time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite
unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials
again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records
days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and
another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers,
I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I
came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was
sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch--into
futurity.

'As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of
things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then--though I was
still travelling with prodigious velocity--the blinking succession
of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace,
returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much
at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower,
and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed
to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over
the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared
across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the
sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set--it
simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more
red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars,
growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of
light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very
large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with
a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At
one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again,
but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this
slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal
drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun,
even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously,
for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse
my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the
thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a
mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a
desolate beach grew visible.

'I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.
The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black,
and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale
white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and
south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by
the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The
rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of
life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation
that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It
was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the
lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual
twilight.

'The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away
to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the
wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of
wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a
gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving
and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was
a thick incrustation of salt--pink under the lurid sky. There was a
sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing
very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of
mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied
than it is now.

'Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a
thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into
the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The
sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself
more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that,
quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving
slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous
crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,
with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws
swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving and feeling,
and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic
front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses,
and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see
the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it
moved.

'As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt
a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to
brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught
something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a
frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna
of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes
were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with
appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime,
were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and
I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was
still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I
stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the
sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.

'I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over
the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt
Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring
monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous
plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an
appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same
red sun--a little larger, a little duller--the same dying sea, the
same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in
and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward
sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

'So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a
thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate,
watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller
in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At
last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of
the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling
heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of
crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green
liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with
white. A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again
came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay
under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating
crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the
sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse
of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still
unfrozen.

'I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A
certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the
machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green
slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A
shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded
from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about
upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I
judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was
merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed
to me to twinkle very little.

'Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun
had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I
saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this
blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that
an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was
passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be
the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I
really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to
the earth.

'The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening
gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air
increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and
whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent?
It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of
man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects,
the stir that makes the background of our lives--all that was over.
As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant,
dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At
last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of
the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a
moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping
towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All
else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.

'A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote
to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I
shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow
in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to
recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return
journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing
upon the shoal--there was no mistake now that it was a moving
thing--against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the
size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles
trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering
blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I
was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote
and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.



XII


'So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon
the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was
resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with
greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and
flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again
the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.
These, too, changed and passed, and others came. Presently, when the
million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize
our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back
to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower.
Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently,
now, I slowed the mechanism down.

'I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told
you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs.
Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me,
like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when
she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to
be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower
end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost,
and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.
Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed
like a flash.

'Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar
laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got
off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several
minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was
my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept
there, and the whole thing have been a dream.

'And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east
corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the
north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the
exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White
Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine.

'For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came
through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still
painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the _Pall Mall Gazette_
on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and
looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o'clock. I
heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated--I felt so
sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the
door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am
telling you the story.

'I know,' he said, after a pause, 'that all this will be absolutely
incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here
to-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces
and telling you these strange adventures.'

He looked at the Medical Man. 'No. I cannot expect you to believe
it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the
workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our
race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its
truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking
it as a story, what do you think of it?'

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap
with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary
stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the
carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's face, and looked
round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of
colour swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the
contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end
of his cigar--the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The
others, as far as I remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. 'What a pity it is you're not
a writer of stories!' he said, putting his hand on the Time
Traveller's shoulder.

'You don't believe it?'

'Well----'

'I thought not.'

The Time Traveller turned to us. 'Where are the matches?' he said.
He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. 'To tell you the truth
... I hardly believe it myself.... And yet...'

His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers
upon the little table. Then he turned over the hand holding his
pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his
knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers.
'The gynaeceum's odd,' he said. The Psychologist leant forward to
see, holding out his hand for a specimen.

'I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one,' said the Journalist.
'How shall we get home?'

'Plenty of cabs at the station,' said the Psychologist.

'It's a curious thing,' said the Medical Man; 'but I certainly don't
know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?'

The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: 'Certainly not.'

'Where did you really get them?' said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who
was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. 'They were put
into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.' He stared
round the room. 'I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you
and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. Did I
ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all
only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at
times--but I can't stand another that won't fit. It's madness. And
where did the dream come from? ... I must look at that machine. If
there is one!'

He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through
the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering
light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and
askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering
quartz. Solid to the touch--for I put out my hand and felt the rail
of it--and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of
grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.

The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand
along the damaged rail. 'It's all right now,' he said. 'The story I
told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought you out here in the
cold.' He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we
returned to the smoking-room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his
coat. The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain
hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he
laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling
good night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a 'gaudy lie.'
For my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion. The story was
so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I
lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go
next day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the
laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the
Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the
squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the
wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer
reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to
meddle. I came back through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me
in the smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small
camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when
he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake. 'I'm frightfully busy,'
said he, 'with that thing in there.'

'But is it not some hoax?' I said. 'Do you really travel through
time?'

'Really and truly I do.' And he looked frankly into my eyes. He
hesitated. His eye wandered about the room. 'I only want half an
hour,' he said. 'I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you.
There's some magazines here. If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you
this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you'll
forgive my leaving you now?'

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words,
and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of
the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily
paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then suddenly
I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet
Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw
that I could barely save that engagement. I got up and went down the
passage to tell the Time Traveller.

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation,
oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air
whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the
sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was
not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in
a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment--a figure so
transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was
absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes.
The Time Machine had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the
further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane of the skylight had,
apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had
happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange
thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened,
and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. 'Has Mr. ----
gone out that way?' said I.

'No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him
here.'

At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I
stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second,
perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he
would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must
wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And,
as everybody knows now, he has never returned.



EPILOGUE


One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he
swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy
savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the
Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian
brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now--if I may use the
phrase--be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral
reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did
he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still
men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome
problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own
part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment,
fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's culminating
time! I say, for my own part. He, I know--for the question had been
discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made--thought
but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the
growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must
inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that
is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me
the future is still black and blank--is a vast ignorance, lit at a
few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for
my comfort, two strange white flowers--shrivelled now, and brown and
flat and brittle--to witness that even when mind and strength had
gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart
of man.
___________________________________________________________________


Lady Ragnall encounters THE IVORY CHILD along with Allan Quatermain

as told by H. RIDER HAGGARD




CHAPTER I

ALLAN GIVES A SHOOTING LESSON

Now I, Allan Quatermain, come to the story of what was, perhaps, one of
the strangest of all the adventures which have befallen me in the course
of a life that so far can scarcely be called tame or humdrum.

Amongst many other things it tells of the war against the Black Kendah
people and the dead of Jana, their elephant god. Often since then I
have wondered if this creature was or was not anything more than a mere
gigantic beast of the forest. It seems improbable, even impossible, but
the reader of future days may judge of this matter for himself.

Also he can form his opinion as to the religion of the White Kendah and
their pretensions to a certain degree of magical skill. Of this magic
I will make only one remark: If it existed at all, it was by no means
infallible. To take a single instance, Harut and Marut were convinced
by divination that I, and I only, could kill Jana, which was why they
invited me to Kendahland. Yet in the end it was Hans who killed him.
Jana nearly killed me!

Now to my tale.



In another history, called "The Holy Flower," I have told how I came to
England with a young gentleman of the name of Scroope, partly to see him
safely home after a hunting accident, and partly to try to dispose of
a unique orchid for a friend of mine called Brother John by the white
people, and Dogeetah by the natives, who was popularly supposed to be
mad, but, in fact, was very sane indeed. So sane was he that he pursued
what seemed to be an absolutely desperate quest for over twenty years,
until, with some humble assistance on my part, he brought it to a
curiously successful issue. But all this tale is told in "The Holy
Flower," and I only allude to it here, that is at present, to explain
how I came to be in England.

While in this country I stayed for a few days with Scroope, or, rather,
with his fiancee and her people, at a fine house in Essex. (I called it
Essex to avoid the place being identified, but really it was one of the
neighbouring counties.) During my visit I was taken to see a much finer
place, a splendid old castle with brick gateway towers, that had been
wonderfully well restored and turned into a most luxurious modern
dwelling. Let us call it "Ragnall," the seat of a baron of that name.

I had heard a good deal about Lord Ragnall, who, according to all
accounts, seemed a kind of Admirable Crichton. He was said to be
wonderfully handsome, a great scholar--he had taken a double first at
college; a great athlete--he had been captain of the Oxford boat at the
University race; a very promising speaker who had already made his mark
in the House of Lords; a sportsman who had shot tigers and other large
game in India; a poet who had published a successful volume of verse
under a pseudonym; a good solider until he left the Service; and lastly,
a man of enormous wealth, owning, in addition to his estates, several
coal mines and an entire town in the north of England.

"Dear me!" I said when the list was finished, "he seems to have been
born with a whole case of gold spoons in his mouth. I hope one of them
will not choke him," adding: "Perhaps he will be unlucky in love."

"That's just where he is most lucky of all," answered the young lady to
whom I was talking--it was Scroope's fiancee, Miss Manners--"for he is
engaged to a lady that, I am told, is the loveliest, sweetest, cleverest
girl in all England, and they absolutely adore each other."

"Dear me!" I repeated. "I wonder what Fate _has_ got up its sleeve for
Lord Ragnall and his perfect lady-love?"

I was doomed to find out one day.

So it came about that when, on the following morning, I was asked if
I would like to see the wonders of Ragnall Castle, I answered "Yes."
Really, however, I wanted to have a look at Lord Ragnall himself, if
possible, for the account of his many perfections had impressed the
imagination of a poor colonist like myself, who had never found an
opportunity of setting his eyes upon a kind of human angel. Human devils
I had met in plenty, but never a single angel--at least, of the male
sex. Also there was always the possibility that I might get a glimpse
of the still more angelic lady to whom he was engaged, whose name,
I understood, was the Hon. Miss Holmes. So I said that nothing would
please me more than to see this castle.

Thither we drove accordingly through the fine, frosty air, for the month
was December. On reaching the castle, Mr. Scroope was told that Lord
Ragnall, whom he knew well, was out shooting somewhere in the park, but
that, of course, he could show his friend over the place. So we went
in, the three of us, for Miss Manners, to whom Scroope was to be married
very shortly, had driven us over in her pony carriage. The porter at the
gateway towers took us to the main door of the castle and handed us over
to another man, whom he addressed as Mr. Savage, whispering to me that
he was his lordship's personal attendant.

I remember the name, because it seemed to me that I had never seen
anyone who looked much less savage. In truth, his appearance was that
of a duke in disguise, as I imagine dukes to be, for I never set eyes
on one. His dress--he wore a black morning cut-away coat--was faultless.
His manners were exquisite, polite to the verge of irony, but with a
hint of haughty pride in the background. He was handsome also, with a
fine nose and a hawk-like eye, while a touch of baldness added to the
general effect. His age may have been anything between thirty-five and
forty, and the way he deprived me of my hat and stick, to which I
strove to cling, showed, I thought, resolution of character. Probably, I
reflected to myself, he considers me an unusual sort of person who might
damage the pictures and other objects of art with the stick, and not
seeing his way how to ask me to give it up without suggesting suspicion,
has hit upon the expedient of taking my hat also.

In after days Mr. Samuel Savage informed me that I was quite right
in this surmise. He said he thought that, judging from my somewhat
unconventional appearance, I might be one of the dangerous class of whom
he had been reading in the papers, namely, a "hanarchist." I write the
word as he pronounced it, for here comes the curious thing. This man,
so flawless, so well instructed in some respects, had a fault which gave
everything away. His h's were uncertain. Three of them would come quite
right, but the fourth, let us say, would be conspicuous either by
its utter absence or by its unwanted appearance. He could speak, when
describing the Ragnall pictures, in rotund and flowing periods that
would scarcely have disgraced the pen of Gibbon. Then suddenly that
"h" would appear or disappear, and the illusion was over. It was like a
sudden shock of cold water down the back. I never discovered the origin
of his family; it was a matter of which he did not speak, perhaps
because he was vague about it himself; but if an earl of Norman blood
had married a handsome Cockney kitchenmaid of native ability, I can
quite imagine that Samuel Savage might have been a child of the union.
For the rest he was a good man and a faithful one, for whom I have a
high respect.

On this occasion he conducted us round the castle, or, rather, its more
public rooms, showing us many treasures and, I should think, at least
two hundred pictures by eminent and departed artists, which gave him an
opportunity of exhibiting a peculiar, if somewhat erratic, knowledge of
history. To tell the truth, I began to wish that it were a little less
full in detail, since on a December day those large apartments felt
uncommonly cold. Scroope and Miss Manners seemed to keep warm, perhaps
with the inward fires of mutual admiration, but as I had no one to
admire except Mr. Savage, a temperature of about 35 degrees produced its
natural effect upon me.

At length we took a short cut from the large to the little gallery
through a warmed and comfortable room, which I understood was Lord
Ragnall's study. Halting for a moment by one of the fires, I observed
a picture on the wall, over which a curtain was drawn, and asked Mr.
Savage what it might be.

"That, sir," he replied with a kind of haughty reserve, "is the portrait
of her future ladyship, which his lordship keeps for his private heye."

Miss Manners sniggered, and I said:

"Oh, thank you. What an ill-omened kind of thing to do!"

Then, observing through an open door the hall in which my hat had been
taken from me, I lingered and as the others vanished in the little
gallery, slipped into it, recovered my belongings, and passed out to
the garden, purposing to walk there till I was warm again and Scroope
reappeared. While I marched up and down a terrace, on which, I remember,
several very cold-looking peacocks were seated, like conscientious
birds that knew it was their duty to be ornamental, however low the
temperature, I heard some shots fired, apparently in a clump of ilex
oaks which grew about five hundred yards away, and reflected to myself
that they seemed to be those of a small rifle, not of a shotgun.

My curiosity being excited as to what was to be an almost professional
matter, I walked towards the grove, making a circuit through a
shrubbery. At length I found myself near to the edge of a glade, and
perceived, standing behind the shelter of a magnificent ilex, two men.
One of these was a young keeper, and the other, from his appearance,
I felt sure must be Lord Ragnall himself. Certainly he was a
splendid-looking man, very tall, very broad, very handsome, with a
peaked beard, a kind and charming face, and large dark eyes. He wore a
cloak upon his shoulders, which was thrown back from over a velvet coat,
and, except for the light double-barrelled rifle in his hand, looked
exactly like a picture by Van Dyck which Mr. Savage had just informed me
was that of one of his lordship's ancestors of the time of Charles I.

Standing behind another oak, I observed that he was trying to shoot
wood-pigeons as they descended to feed upon the acorns, for which the
hard weather had made them greedy. From time to time these beautiful
blue birds appeared and hovered a moment before they settled, whereon
the sportsman fired and--they flew away. _Bang! Bang!_ went the
double-barrelled rifle, and off fled the pigeon.

"Damn!" said the sportsman in a pleasant, laughing voice; "that's the
twelfth I have missed, Charles."

"You hit his tail, my lord. I saw a feather come out. But, my lord, as
I told you, there ain't no man living what can kill pigeons on the wing
with a bullet, even when they seem to sit still in the air."

"I have heard of one, Charles. Mr. Scroope has a friend from Africa
staying with him who, he swears, could knock over four out of six."

"Then, my lord, Mr. Scroope has a friend what lies," replied Charles as
he handed him the second rifle.

This was too much for me. I stepped forward, raising my hat politely,
and said:

"Sir, forgive me for interrupting you, but you are not shooting at those
wood-pigeons in the right way. Although they seem to hover just before
they settle, they are dropping much faster than you think. Your keeper
was mistaken when he said that you knocked a feather out of the tail of
that last bird at which you fired two barrels. In both cases you shot at
least a foot above it, and what fell was a leaf from the ilex tree."

There was a moment's silence, which was broken by Charles, who
ejaculated in a thick voice:

"Well, of all the cheek!"

Lord Ragnall, however, for it was he, looked first angry and then
amused.

"Sir," he said, "I thank you for your advice, which no doubt is
excellent, for it is certainly true that I have missed every pigeon
which I tried to shoot with these confounded little rifles. But if you
could demonstrate in practice what you so kindly set out in precept, the
value of your counsel would be enhanced."

Thus he spoke, mimicking, I have no doubt (for he had a sense of
humour), the manner of my address, which nervousness had made somewhat
pompous.

"Give me the rifle," I answered, taking off my greatcoat.

He handed it me with a bow.

"Mind what you are about," growled Charles. "That there thing is full
cocked and 'air-triggered."

I withered, or, rather, tried to wither him with a glance, but this
unbelieving keeper only stared back at me with insolence in his round
and bird-like eyes. Never before had I felt quite so angry with a
menial. Then a horrible doubt struck me. Supposing I should miss! I knew
very little of the manner of flight of English wood-pigeons, which
are not difficult to miss with a bullet, and nothing at all of these
particular rifles, though a glance at them showed me that they were
exquisite weapons of their sort and by a great maker. If I muffed
the thing now, how should I bear the scorn of Charles and the polite
amusement of his noble master? Almost I prayed that no more pigeons
would put in an appearance, and thus that the issue of my supposed skill
might be left in doubt.

But this was not to be. These birds came from far in ones or twos to
search for their favourite food, and the fact that others had been
scared away did not cause them to cease from coming. Presently I heard
Charles mutter:

"Now, then, look out, guv'nor. Here's your chance of teaching his
lordship how to do it, though he does happen to be the best shot in
these counties."

While he spoke two pigeons appeared, one a little behind the other,
coming down very straight. As they reached the opening in the ilex grove
they hovered, preparing to alight, for of us they could see nothing, one
at a distance of about fifty and the other of, say, seventy yards away.
I took the nearest, got on to it, allowing for the drop and the angle,
and touched the trigger of the rifle, which fell to my shoulder very
sweetly. The bullet struck that pigeon on the crop, out of which fell a
shower of acorns that it had been eating, as it sank to the ground stone
dead. Number two pigeon, realizing danger, began to mount upwards almost
straight. I fired the second barrel, and by good luck shot its head
off. Then I snatched the other rifle, which Charles had been loading
automatically, from his outstretched hand, for at that moment I saw two
more pigeons coming. At the first I risked a difficult shot and hit it
far back, knocking out its tail, but bringing it, still fluttering, to
the ground. The other, too, I covered, but when I touched the trigger
there was a click, no more.

This was my opportunity of coming even with Charles, and I availed
myself of it.

"Young man," I said, while he gaped at me open-mouthed, "you should
learn to be careful with rifles, which are dangerous weapons. If you
give one to a shooter that is not loaded, it shows that you are capable
of anything."

Then I turned, and addressing Lord Ragnall, added:

"I must apologize for that third shot of mine, which was infamous, for
I committed a similar fault to that against which I warned you, sir,
and did not fire far enough ahead. However, it may serve to show your
attendant the difference between the tail of a pigeon and an oak leaf,"
and I pointed to one of the feathers of the poor bird, which was still
drifting to the ground.

"Well, if this here snipe of a chap ain't the devil in boots!" exclaimed
Charles to himself.

But his master cut him short with a look, then lifted his hat to me and
said:

"Sir, the practice much surpasses the precept, which is unusual. I
congratulate you upon a skill that almost partakes of the marvellous,
unless, indeed, chance----" And he stopped.

"It is natural that you should think so," I replied; "but if more
pigeons come, and Mr. Charles will make sure that he loads the rifle, I
hope to undeceive you."

At this moment, however, a loud shout from Scroope, who was looking for
me, reinforced by a shrill cry uttered by Miss Manners, banished every
pigeon within half a mile, a fact of which I was not sorry, since who
knows whether I should have it all, or any, of the next three birds?

"I think my friends are calling me, so I will bid you good morning," I
said awkwardly.

"One moment, sir," he exclaimed. "Might I first ask you your name? Mine
is Ragnall--Lord Ragnall."

"And mine is Allan Quatermain," I said.

"Oh!" he answered, "that explains matters. Charles, this is Mr.
Scroope's friend, the gentleman that you said--exaggerated. I think you
had better apologize."

But Charles was gone, to pick up the pigeons, I suppose.

At this moment Scroope and the young lady appeared, having heard our
voices, and a general explanation ensued.

"Mr. Quatermain has been giving me a lesson in shooting pigeons on the
wing with a small-bore rifle," said Lord Ragnall, pointing to the dead
birds that still lay upon the ground.

"He is competent to do that," said Scroope.

"Painfully competent," replied his lordship. "If you don't believe me,
ask the under-keeper."

"It is the only thing I can do," I explained modestly. "Rifle-shooting
is my trade, and I have made a habit of practising at birds on the wing
with ball. I have no doubt that with a shot-gun your lordship would
leave me nowhere, for that is a game at which I have had little
practice, except when shooting for the pot in Africa."

"Yes," interrupted Scroope, "you wouldn't have any chance at that,
Allan, against one of the finest shots in England."

"I'm not so sure," said Lord Ragnall, laughing pleasantly. "I have an
idea that Mr. Quatermain is full of surprises. However, with his leave,
we'll see. If you have a day to spare, Mr. Quatermain, we are going to
shoot through the home coverts to-morrow, which haven't been touched
till now, and I hope you will join us."

"It is most kind of you, but that is impossible," I answered with
firmness. "I have no gun here."

"Oh, never mind that, Mr. Quatermain. I have a pair of
breech-loaders"--these were new things at that date--"which have been
sent down to me to try. I am going to return them, because they are much
too short in the stock for me. I think they would just suit you, and you
are quite welcome to the use of them."

Again I excused myself, guessing that the discomfited Charles would
put all sorts of stories about concerning me, and not wishing to look
foolish before a party of grand strangers, no doubt chosen for their
skill at this particular form of sport.

"Well, Allan," exclaimed Scroope, who always had a talent for saying the
wrong thing, "you are quite right not to go into a competition with Lord
Ragnall over high pheasants."

I flushed, for there was some truth in his blundering remark, whereon
Lord Ragnall said with ready tact:

"I asked Mr. Quatermain to shoot, not to a shooting match, Scroope, and
I hope he'll come."

This left me no option, and with a sinking heart I had to accept.

"Sorry I can't ask you too, Scroope," said his lordship, when details
had been arranged, "but we can only manage seven guns at this shoot. But
will you and Miss Manners come to dine and sleep to-morrow evening? I
should like to introduce your future wife to my future wife," he added,
colouring a little.

Miss Manners being devoured with curiosity as to the wonderful Miss
Holmes, of whom she had heard so much but never actually seen, accepted
at once, before her lover could get out a word, whereon Scroope
volunteered to bring me over in the morning and load for me. Being
possessed by a terror that I should be handed over to the care of the
unsympathetic Charles, I replied that I should be very grateful, and so
the thing was settled.

On our way home we passed through a country town, of which I forget the
name, and the sight of a gunsmith's shop there reminded me that I had
no cartridges. So I stopped to order some, as, fortunately, Lord Ragnall
had mentioned that the guns he was going to lend me were twelve-bores.
The tradesman asked me how many cartridges I wanted, and when I replied
"a hundred," stared at me and said:

"If, as I understood, sir, you are going to the big winter shoot at
Ragnall to-morrow, you had better make it three hundred and fifty at
least. I shall be there to watch, like lots of others, and I expect to
see nearly two hundred fired by each gun at the last Lake stand."

"Very well," I answered, fearing to show more ignorance by further
discussion. "I will call for the cartridges on my way to-morrow morning.
Please load them with three drachms of powder."

"Yes, sir, and an ounce and an eighth of No. 5 shot, sir? That's what
all the gentlemen use."

"No," I answered, "No. 3; please be sure as to that. Good evening."

The gunsmith stared at me, and as I left the shop I heard him remark to
his assistant:

"That African gent must think he's going out to shoot ostriches with
buck shot. I expect he ain't no good, whatever they may say about him."



CHAPTER II

ALLAN MAKES A BET

On the following morning Scroope and I arrived at Castle Ragnall at
or about a quarter to ten. On our way we stopped to pick up my three
hundred and fifty cartridges. I had to pay something over three solid
sovereigns for them, as in those days such things were dear, which
showed me that I was not going to get my lesson in English pheasant
shooting for nothing. The gunsmith, however, to whom Scroope gave a lift
in his cart to the castle, impressed upon me that they were dirt cheap,
since he and his assistant had sat up most of the night loading them
with my special No. 3 shot.

As I climbed out of the vehicle a splendid-looking and portly person,
arrayed in a velvet coat and a scarlet waistcoat, approached with
the air of an emperor, followed by an individual in whom I recognized
Charles, carrying a gun under each arm.

"That's the head-keeper," whispered Scroope; "mind you treat him
respectfully."

Much alarmed, I took off my hat and waited.

"Do I speak to Mr. Allan Quatermain?" said his majesty in a deep and
rumbling voice, surveying me the while with a cold and disapproving eye.

I intimated that he did.

"Then, sir," he went on, pausing a little at the "sir," as though he
suspected me of being no more than an African colleague of his own, "I
have been ordered by his lordship to bring you these guns, and I hope,
sir, that you will be careful of them, as they are here on sale or
return. Charles, explain the working of them there guns to this foreign
gentleman, and in doing so keep the muzzles up _or_ down. They ain't
loaded, it's true, but the example is always useful."

"Thank you, Mr. Keeper," I replied, growing somewhat nettled, "but I
think that I am already acquainted with most that there is to learn
about guns."

"I am glad to hear it, sir," said his majesty with evident disbelief.
"Charles, I understand that Squire Scroope is going to load for the
gentleman, which I hope he knows how to do with safety. His lordship's
orders are that you accompany them and carry the cartridges. And,
Charles, you will please keep count of the number fired and what
is killed dead, not reckoning runners. I'm sick of them stories of
runners."

These directions were given in a portentous stage aside which we were
not supposed to hear. They caused Scroope to snigger and Charles to
grin, but in me they raised a feeling of indignation.

I took one of the guns and looked at it. It was a costly and beautifully
made weapon of the period, with an under-lever action.

"There's nothing wrong with the gun, sir," rumbled Red Waistcoat. "If
you hold it straight it will do the rest. But keep the muzzle up, sir,
keep it up, for I know what the bore is without studying the same with
my eye. Also perhaps you won't take it amiss if I tell you that here at
Ragnall we hates a low pheasant. I mention it because the last gentleman
who came from foreign parts--he was French, he was--shot nothing all day
but one hen bird sitting just on the top of the brush, two beaters, his
lordship's hat, and a starling."

At this point Scroope broke into a roar of idiotic laughter. Charles,
from whom Fortune decreed that I was not to escape, after all, turned
his back and doubled up as though seized with sudden pain in the
stomach, and I grew absolutely furious.

"Confound it, Mr. Keeper," I explained, "what do you mean by lecturing
me? Attend to your business, and I'll attend to mine."

At this moment who should appear from behind the angle of some
building--we were talking in the stableyard, near the gun-room--but Lord
Ragnall himself. I could see that he had overheard the conversation, for
he looked angry.

"Jenkins," he said, addressing the keeper, "do what Mr. Quatermain has
said and attend to your own business. Perhaps you are not aware that he
has shot more lions, elephants, and other big game than you have cats.
But, however that may be, it is not your place to try to instruct him or
any of my guests. Now go and see to the beaters."

"Beg pardon, my lord," ejaculated Jenkins, his face, that was as florid
as his waistcoat, turning quite pale; "no offence meant, my lord, but
elephants and lions don't fly, my lord, and those accustomed to such
ground varmin are apt to shoot low, my lord. Beaters all ready at the
Hunt Copse, my lord."

Thus speaking he backed himself out of sight. Lord Ragnall watched him
go, then said with a laugh:

"I apologize to you, Mr. Quatermain. That silly old fool was part of my
inheritance, so to speak; and the joke of it is that he is himself the
worst and most dangerous shot I ever saw. However, on the other hand,
he is the best rearer of pheasants in the county, so I put up with
him. Come in, now, won't you? Charles will look after your guns and
cartridges."

So Scroope and I were taken through a side entrance into the big hall
and there introduced to the other members of the shooting party, most of
whom were staying at the castle. They were famous shots. Indeed, I
had read of the prowess of some of them in _The Field_, a paper that I
always took in Africa, although often enough, when I was on my distant
expeditions, I did not see a copy of it for a year at a time.

To my astonishment I found that I knew one of these gentlemen. We had
not, it is true, met for a dozen years; but I seldom forget a face,
and I was sure that I could not be mistaken in this instance. That mean
appearance, those small, shifty grey eyes, that red, pointed nose could
belong to nobody except Van Koop, so famous in his day in South Africa
in connexion with certain gigantic and most successful frauds that the
law seemed quite unable to touch, of which frauds I had been one of the
many victims to the extent of L250, a large sum for me.

The last time we met there had been a stormy scene between us, which
ended in my declaring in my wrath that if I came across him on the veld
I should shoot him at sight. Perhaps that was one of the reasons why Mr.
van Koop vanished from South Africa, for I may add that he was a cur
of the first water. I believe that he had only just entered the room,
having driven over from wherever he lived at some distance from Ragnall.
At any rate, he knew nothing of my presence at this shoot. Had he known
I am quite sure that he would have been absent. He turned, and seeing
me, ejaculated: "Allan Quatermain, by heaven!" beneath his breath, but
in such a tone of astonishment that it attracted the attention of Lord
Ragnall, who was standing near.

"Yes, Mr. van Koop," I answered in a cheerful voice, "Allan Quatermain,
no other, and I hope you are as glad to see me as I am to see you."

"I think there is some mistake," said Lord Ragnall, staring at us. "This
is Sir Junius Fortescue, who used to be Mr. Fortescue."

"Indeed," I replied. "I don't know that I ever remember his being called
by that particular name, but I do know that we are old--friends."

Lord Ragnall moved away as though he did not wish to continue the
conversation, which no one else had overheard, and Van Koop sidled up to
me.

"Mr. Quatermain," he said in a low voice, "circumstances have changed
with me since last we met."

"So I gather," I replied; "but mine have remained much the same, and if
it is convenient to you to repay me that L250 you owe me, with interest,
I shall be much obliged. If not, I think I have a good story to tell
about you."

"Oh, Mr. Quatermain," he answered with a sort of smile which made me
feel inclined to kick him, "you know I dispute that debt."

"Do you?" I exclaimed. "Well, perhaps you will dispute the story also.
But the question is, will you be believed when I give the proofs?"

"Ever heard of the Statute of Limitations, Mr. Quatermain?" he asked
with a sneer.

"Not where character is concerned," I replied stoutly. "Now, what are
you going to do?"

He reflected for a moment, and answered:

"Look here, Mr. Quatermain, you were always a bit of a sportsman, and
I'll make you an offer. If I kill more birds than you do to-day, you
shall promise to hold your tongue about my affairs in South Africa; and
if you kill more than I do, you shall still hold your tongue, but I will
pay you that L250 and interest for six years."

I also reflected for a moment, knowing that the man had something up his
sleeve. Of course, I could refuse and make a scandal. But that was not
in my line, and would not bring me nearer my L250, which, if I chanced
to win, might find its way back to me.

"All right, done!" I said.

"What is your bet, Sir Junius?" asked Lord Ragnall, who was approaching
again.

"It is rather a long story," he answered, "but, to put it shortly, years
ago, when I was travelling in Africa, Mr. Quatermain and I had a dispute
as to a sum of L5 which he thought I owed him, and to save argument
about a trifle we have agreed that I should shoot against him for it
to-day."

"Indeed," said Lord Ragnall rather seriously, for I could see that
he did not believe Van Koop's statement as to the amount of the bet;
perhaps he had heard more than we thought. "To be frank, Sir Junius, I
don't much care for betting--for that's what it comes to--here. Also I
think Mr. Quatermain said yesterday that he had never shot pheasants in
England, so the match seems scarcely fair. However, you gentlemen know
your own business best. Only I must tell you both that if money is
concerned, I shall have to set someone whose decision will be final to
count your birds and report the number to me."

"Agreed," said Van Koop, or, rather, Sir Junius; but I answered nothing,
for, to tell the truth, already I felt ashamed of the whole affair.

As it happened, Lord Ragnall and I walked together ahead of the others,
to the first covert, which was half a mile or more away.

"You have met Sir Junius before?" he said to me interrogatively.

"I have met Mr. van Koop before," I answered, "about twelve years
since, shortly after which he vanished from South Africa, where he was a
well-known and very successful--speculator."

"To reappear here. Ten years ago he bought a large property in this
neighbourhood. Three years ago he became a baronet."

"How did a man like Van Koop become a baronet?" I inquired.

"By purchase, I believe."

"By purchase! Are honours in England purchased?"

"You are delightfully innocent, Mr. Quatermain, as a hunter from Africa
should be," said Lord Ragnall, laughing. "Your friend----"

"Excuse me, Lord Ragnall, I am a very humble person, not so elevated,
indeed, as that gamekeeper of yours; therefore I should not venture to
call Sir Junius, late Mr. van Koop, my friend, at least in earnest."

He laughed again.

"Well, the individual with whom you make bets subscribed largely to the
funds of his party. I am telling you what I know to be true, though the
amount I do not know. It has been variously stated to be from fifteen
to fifty thousand pounds, and, perhaps by coincidence, subsequently was
somehow created a baronet."

I stared at him.

"That's all the story," he went on. "I don't like the man myself, but he
is a wonderful pheasant shot, which passes him everywhere. Shooting has
become a kind of fetish in these parts, Mr. Quatermain. For instance, it
is a tradition on this estate that we must kill more pheasants than on
any other in the country, and therefore I have to ask the best guns, who
are not always the best fellows. It annoys me, but it seems that I must
do what was done before me."

"Under those circumstances I should be inclined to give up the thing
altogether, Lord Ragnall. Sport as sport is good, but when it becomes a
business it grows hateful. I know, who have had to follow it as a trade
for many years."

"That's an idea," he replied reflectively. "Meanwhile, I do hope that
you will win back your--L5 from Sir Junius. He is so vain that I would
gladly give L50 to see you do so."

"There is little chance of that," I said, "for, as I told you, I have
never shot pheasants before. Still, I'll try, as you wish it."

"That's right. And look here, Mr. Quatermain, shoot well forward of
them. You see, I am venturing to advise you now, as you advised me
yesterday. Shot does not travel so fast as ball, and the pheasant is a
bird that is generally going much quicker than you think. Now, here we
are. Charles will show you your stand. Good luck to you."

Ten minutes later the game began outside of a long covert, all the
seven guns being posted within sight of each other. So occupied was I in
watching the preliminaries, which were quite new to me, that I allowed
first a hare and then a hen pheasant to depart without firing at them,
which hen pheasant, by the way, curved round and was beautifully killed
by Van Koop, who stood two guns off upon my right.

"Look here, Allan," said Scroope, "if you are going to beat your African
friend you had better wake up, for you won't do it by admiring the
scenery or that squirrel on a tree."

So I woke up. Just at that moment there was a cry of "cock forward."
I thought it meant a cock pheasant, and was astonished when I saw a
beautiful brown bird with a long beak flitting towards me through the
tops of the oak trees.

"Am I to shoot at that?" I asked.

"Of course. It is a woodcock," answered Scroope.

By this time the brown bird was rocking past me within ten yards. I
fired and killed it, for where it had been appeared nothing but a cloud
of feathers. It was a quick and clever shot, or so I thought. But when
Charles stepped out and picked from the ground only a beak and a head, a
titter of laughter went down the whole line of guns and loaders.

"I say, old chap," said Scroope, "if you will use No. 3 shot, let your
birds get a little farther off you."

The incident upset me so much that immediately afterwards I missed three
easy pheasants in succession, while Van Koop added two to his bag.

Scroope shook his head and Charles groaned audibly. Now that I was not
in competition with his master he had become suddenly anxious that I
should win, for in some mysterious way the news of that bet had spread,
and my adversary was not popular amongst the keeper class.

"Here you come again," said Scroope, pointing to an advancing pheasant.

It was an extraordinarily high pheasant, flushed, I think, outside the
covert by a stop, so high that, as it travelled down the line, although
three guns fired at it, including Van Koop, none of them seemed to touch
it. Then I fired, and remembering Lord Ragnall's advice, far in front.
Its flight changed. Still it travelled through the air, but with the
momentum of a stone to fall fifty yards to my right, dead.

"That's better!" said Scroope, while Charles grinned all over his round
face, muttering:

"Wiped his eye that time."

This shot seemed to give me confidence, and I improved considerably,
though, oddly enough, I found that it was the high and difficult
pheasants which I killed and the easy ones that I was apt to muff. But
Van Koop, who was certainly a finished artist, killed both.

At the next stand Lord Ragnall, who had been observing my somewhat
indifferent performance, asked me to stand back with him behind the
other guns.

"I see the tall ones are your line, Mr. Quatermain," he said, "and you
will get some here."

On this occasion we were placed in a dip between two long coverts which
lay about three hundred yards apart. That which was being beaten proved
full of pheasants, and the shooting of those picked guns was really a
thing to see. I did quite well here, nearly, but not altogether, as well
as Lord Ragnall himself, though that is saying a great deal, for he was
a lovely shot.

"Bravo!" he said at the end of the beat. "I believe you have got a
chance of winning your L5, after all."

When, however, at luncheon, more than an hour later, I found that I
was thirty pheasants behind my adversary, I shook my head, and so did
everybody else. On the whole, that luncheon, of which we partook in
a keeper's house, was a very pleasant meal, though Van Koop talked so
continuously and in such a boastful strain that I saw it irritated our
host and some of the other gentlemen, who were very pleasant people. At
last he began to patronize me, asking me how I had been getting on with
my "elephant-potting" of late years.

I replied, "Fairly well."

"Then you should tell our friends some of your famous stories, which
I promise I won't contradict," he said, adding: "You see, they are
different from us, and have no experience of big-game shooting."

"I did not know that you had any, either, Sir Junius," I answered,
nettled. "Indeed, I thought I remembered your telling me in Africa that
the only big game you had ever shot was an ox sick with the red-water.
Anyway, shooting is a business with me, not an amusement, as it is to
you, and I do not talk shop."

At this he collapsed amid some laughter, after which Scroope, the most
loyal of friends, began to repeat exploits of mine till my ears tingled,
and I rose and went outside to look at the weather.

It had changed very much during luncheon. The fair promise of the
morning had departed, the sky was overcast, and a wind, blowing in
strong gusts, was rising rapidly, driving before it occasional scurries
of snow.

"My word," said Lord Ragnall, who had joined me, "the Lake
covert--that's our great stand here, you know--will take some shooting
this afternoon. We ought to kill seven hundred pheasants in it with this
team, but I doubt if we shall get five. Now, Mr. Quatermain, I am going
to stand Sir Junius Fortescue and you back in the covert, where you
will have the best of it, as a lot of pheasants will never face the lake
against this wind. What is more, I am coming with you, if I may, as
six guns are enough for this beat, and I don't mean to shoot any more
to-day."

"I fear that you will be disappointed," I said nervously.

"Oh, no, I sha'n't," he answered. "I tell you frankly that if only you
could have a season's practice, in my opinion you would make the best
pheasant shot of the lot of us. At present you don't quite understand
the ways of the birds, that's all; also those guns are strange to you.
Have a glass of cherry brandy; it will steady your nerves."

I drank the cherry brandy, and presently off we went. The covert we
were going to shoot, into which we had been driving pheasants all the
morning, must have been nearly a mile long. At the top end it was broad,
narrowing at the bottom to a width of about two hundred yards. Here it
ran into a horse-shoe shaped piece of water that was about fifty yards
in breadth. Four of the guns were placed round the bow of this water,
but on its farther side, in such a position that the pheasants should
stream over them to yet another covert behind at the top of a slope, Van
Koop and I, however, were ordered to take our places, he to the right
and I to the left, about seventy yards up the tongue in little glades in
the woodland, having the lake to our right and our left respectively.
I noticed with dismay that we were so set that the guns below us on
its farther side could note all that we did or did not do; also that a
little band of watchers, among whom I recognized my friend the gunsmith,
were gathered in a place where, without interfering with us, they could
see the sport. On our way to the boat, however, which was to row us
across the water, an incident happened that put me in very good spirits
and earned some applause.

I was walking with Lord Ragnall, Scroope and Charles, about sixty yards
clear of a belt of tall trees, when from far away on the other side of
the trees came a cry of "Partridges over!" in the hoarse voice of the
red-waistcoated Jenkins, who was engaged in superintending the driving
in of some low scrub before he joined his army at the top of the covert.

"Look out, Mr. Quatermain, they are coming this way," said Lord Ragnall,
while Charles thrust a loaded gun into my hand.

Another moment and they appeared over the tree-tops, a big covey of them
in a long, straggling line, travelling at I know not what speed, for a
fierce gust from the rising gale had caught them. I fired at the first
bird, which fell at my feet. I fired again, and another fell behind me.
I snatched up the second gun and killed a third as it passed over me
high up. Then, wheeling round, I covered the last retreating bird, and
lo! it too fell, a very long shot indeed.

"By George!" said Scroope, "I never saw that done before," while Ragnall
stared and Charles whistled.

But now I will tell the truth and expose all my weakness. The second
bird was not the one I aimed at. I was behind it and caught that which
followed. And in my vanity I did not own up, at least not till that
evening.

The four dead partridges--there was not a runner among them--having been
collected amidst many congratulations, we went on and were punted across
the lake to the covert. As we entered the boat I observed that, in
addition to the great bags, Charles was carrying a box of cartridges
under his arm, and asked him where he got it from.

He replied, from Mr. Popham--that was the gunsmith's name--who had
brought it with him in case I should not have enough. I made no remark,
but as I knew I had quite half of my cartridges left out of the three
hundred and fifty that I had bought, I wondered to myself what kind of a
shoot this was going to be.

Well, we took up our stands, and while we were doing so, suddenly the
wind increased to a tearing gale, which seemed to me to blow from all
points of the compass in turn. Rooks flying homewards, and pigeons
disturbed by the beaters were swept over us like drifting leaves; wild
duck, of which I got one, went by like arrows; the great bare oaks
tossed their boughs and groaned; while not far off a fir tree was blown
down, falling with a splash into the water.

"It's a wild afternoon," said Lord Ragnall, and as he spoke Van Koop
came from his stand, looking rather scared, and suggested that the shoot
should be given up.

Lord Ragnall asked me what I wished to do. I replied that I would rather
go on, but that I was in his hands.

"I think we are fairly safe in these open places, Sir Junius," he said;
"and as the pheasants have been so much disturbed already, it does not
much matter if they are blown about a bit. But if you are of another
opinion, perhaps you had better get out of it and stand with the others
over the lake. I'll send for my guns and take your place."

On hearing this Van Koop changed his mind and said that he would go on.

So the beat began. At first the wind blew from behind us, and pheasants
in increasing numbers passed over our heads, most of them rather low,
to the guns on the farther side of the water, who, skilled though they
were, did not make very good work with them. We had been instructed not
to fire at birds going forward, so I let these be. Van Koop, however,
did not interpret the order in the same spirit, for he loosed at
several, killing one or two and missing others.

"That fellow is no sportsman," I heard Lord Ragnall remark. "I suppose
it is the bet."

Then he sent Charles to ask him to desist.

Shortly after this the gale worked round to the north and settled there,
blowing with ever-increasing violence. The pheasants, however, still
flew forward in the shelter of the trees, for they were making for the
covert on the hill, where they had been bred. But when they got into the
open and felt the full force of the wind, quite four out of six of
them turned and came back at a most fearful pace, many so high as to be
almost out of shot.

For the next three-quarters of an hour or more--as I think I have
explained, the beat was a very long one--I had such covert shooting as
I suppose I shall never see again. High above those shrieking trees,
or over the lake to my left, flashed the wind-driven pheasants in an
endless procession. Oddly enough, I found that this wild work suited me,
for as time went on and the pheasants grew more and more impossible, I
shot better and better. One after another down they came far behind me
with a crash in the brushwood or a splash in the lake, till the
guns grew almost too hot to hold. There were so many of them that I
discovered I could pick my shots; also that nine out of ten were caught
by the wind and curved at a certain angle, and that the time to fire was
just before they took the curve. The excitement was great and the
sport splendid, as anyone will testify who has shot December pheasants
breaking back over the covert and in a tearing gale. Van Koop also
was doing very well, but the guns in front got comparatively little
shooting. They were forced to stand there, poor fellows, and watch our
performance from afar.

As the thing drew towards an end the birds came thicker and thicker, and
I shot, as I have said, better and better. This may be judged from the
fact that, notwithstanding their height and tremendous pace, I killed
my last thirty pheasants with thirty-five cartridges. The final bird
of all, a splendid cock, appeared by himself out of nothingness when we
thought that all was done. I think it must have been flushed from the
covert on the hill, or been turned back just as it reached it by the
resistless strength of the storm. Over it came, so high above us that it
looked quite small in the dark snow-scud.

"Too far--no use!" said Lord Ragnall, as I lifted the gun.

Still, I fired, holding I know not how much in front, and lo! that
pheasant died in mid air, falling with a mighty splash near the bank of
the lake, but at a great distance behind us. The shot was so remarkable
that everyone who saw it, including most of the beaters, who had passed
us by now, uttered a cheer, and the red-waistcoated old Jenkins, who had
stopped by us, remarked: "Well, bust me if that bain't a master one!"

Scroope made me angry by slapping me so hard upon the back that it hurt,
and nearly caused me to let off the other barrel of the gun. Charles
seemed to become one great grin, and Lord Ragnall, with a brief
congratulatory "Never enjoyed a shoot so much in my life," called to the
men who were posted behind us to pick up all the dead pheasants, being
careful to keep mine apart from those of Sir Junius Fortescue.

"You should have a hundred and forty-three at this stand," he said,
"allowing for every possible runner. Charles and I make the same total."

I remarked that I did not think there were many runners, as the No. 3
shot had served me very well, and getting into the boat was rowed to the
other side, where I received more congratulations. Then, as all further
shooting was out of the question because of the weather, we walked back
to the castle to tea.

As I emptied my cup Lord Ragnall, who had left the room, returned and
asked us to come and see the game. So we went, to find it laid out in
endless lines upon the snow-powdered grass in the quadrangle of the
castle, arranged in one main and two separate lots.

"Those are yours and Sir Junius's," said Scroope. "I wonder which of you
has won. I'll put a sovereign on you, old fellow."

"Then you're a donkey for your pains," I answered, feeling vexed, for at
that moment I had forgotten all about the bet.

I do not remember how many pheasants were killed altogether, but the
total was much smaller than had been hoped for, because of the gale.

"Jenkins," said Lord Ragnall presently to Red Waistcoat, "how many have
you to the credit of Sir Junius Fortescue?"

"Two hundred and seventy-seven, my lord, twelve hares, two woodcocks,
and three pigeons."

"And how many to that of Mr. Quatermain?" adding: "I must remind
you both, gentlemen, that the birds have been picked as carefully as
possible and kept unmixed, and therefore that the figures given by
Jenkins must be considered as final."

"Quite so," I answered, but Van Koop said nothing. Then, while we all
waited anxiously, came the amazing answer:

"Two hundred and seventy-seven pheasants, my lord, same number as those
of Sir Junius, Bart., fifteen hares, three pigeons, four partridges, one
duck, and a beak--I mean a woodcock."

"Then it seems you have won your L5, Mr. Quatermain, upon which I
congratulate you," said Lord Ragnall.

"Stop a minute," broke in Van Koop. "The bet was as to pheasants; the
other things don't count."

"I think the term used was 'birds,'" I remarked. "But to be frank, when
I made it I was thinking of pheasants, as no doubt Sir Junius was also.
Therefore, if the counting is correct, there is a dead heat and the
wager falls through."

"I am sure we all appreciate the view you take of the matter," said Lord
Ragnall, "for it might be argued another way. In these circumstances Sir
Junius keeps his L5 in his pocket. It is unlucky for you, Quatermain,"
he added, dropping the "mister," "that the last high pheasant you shot
can't be found. It fell into the lake, you remember, and, I suppose,
swam ashore and ran."

"Yes," I replied, "especially as I could have sworn that it was quite
dead."

"So could I, Quatermain; but the fact remains that it isn't there."

"If we had all the pheasants that we think fall dead our bags would
be much bigger than they are," remarked Van Koop, with a look of great
relief upon his face, adding in his horrid, patronizing way: "Still,
you shot uncommonly well, Quatermain. I'd no idea you would run me so
close."

I felt inclined to answer, but didn't. Only Lord Ragnall said:

"Mr. Quatermain shot more than well. His performance in the Lake covert
was the most brilliant that I have ever seen. When you went in there
together, Sir Junius, you were thirty ahead of him, and you fired
seventeen more cartridges at the stand."

Then, just as we turned to go, something happened. The round-eyed
Charles ran puffing into the quadrangle, followed by another man with
a dog, who had been specially set to pick my birds, and carrying in his
hand a much-bedraggled cock pheasant without a tail.

"I've got him, my lord," he gasped, for he had run very fast; "the
little gent's--I mean that which he killed in the clouds with the last
shot he fired. It had gone right down into the mud and stuck there. Tom
and me fished him up with a pole."

Lord Ragnall took the bird and looked at it. It was almost cold, but
evidently freshly killed, for the limbs were quite flexible.

"That turns the scale in favour of Mr. Quatermain," he said, "so, Sir
Junius, you had better pay your money and congratulate him, as I do."

"I protest," exclaimed Van Koop, looking very angry and meaner than
usual. "How am I to know that this was Mr. Quatermain's pheasant? The
sum involved is more than L5 and I feel it is my duty to protest."

"Because my men say so, Sir Junius; moreover, seeing the height from
which the bird fell, their story is obviously true."

Then he examined the pheasant further, pointing out that it appeared
to have only one wound--a shot through the throat almost exactly at the
root of the beak, of which shot there was no mark of exit. "What sized
shot were you using, Sir Junius?" he asked.

"No. 4 at the last stand."

"And you were using No. 3, Mr. Quatermain. Now, was any other gun using
No. 3?"

All shook their heads.

"Jenkins, open that bird's head. I think the shot that killed it will be
found in the brain."

Jenkins obeyed, using a penknife cleverly enough. Pressed against the
bone of the skull he found the shot.

"No. 3 it is, sure enough, my lord," he said.

"You will agree that settles the matter, Sir Junius," said Lord Ragnall.
"And now, as a bet has been made here it had better be paid."

"I have not enough money on me," said Van Koop sulkily.

"I think your banker is mine," said Lord Ragnall quietly, "so you can
write a cheque in the house. Come in, all of you, it is cold in this
wind."

So we went into the smoking-room, and Lord Ragnall, who, I could see,
was annoyed, instantly fetched a blank cheque from his study and handed
it to Van Koop in rather a pointed manner.

He took it, and turning to me, said:

"I remember the capital sum, but how much is the interest? Sorry to
trouble you, but I am not very good at figures."

"Then you must have changed a good deal during the last twelve years,
Sir Junius," I could not help saying. "Still, never mind the interest, I
shall be quite satisfied with the principal."

So he filled up the cheque for L250 and threw it down on the table
before me, saying something about its being a bother to mix up business
with pleasure.

I took the draft, saw that it was correct though rather illegible, and
proceeded to dry it by waving it in the air. As I did so it came into my
mind that I would not touch the money of this successful scamp, won back
from him in such a way.

Yielding to a perhaps foolish impulse, I said:

"Lord Ragnall, this cheque is for a debt which years ago I wrote off
as lost. At luncheon to-day you were talking of a Cottage Hospital for
which you are trying to get up an endowment fund in this neighbourhood,
and in answer to a question from you Sir Junius Fortescue said that he
had not as yet made any subscription to its fund. Will you allow me to
hand you Sir Junius's subscription--to be entered in his name, if you
please?" And I passed him the cheque, which was drawn to myself or
bearer.

He looked at the amount, and seeing that it was not L5, but L250,
flushed, then asked:

"What do you say to this act of generosity on the part of Mr.
Quatermain, Sir Junius?"

There was no answer, because Sir Junius had gone. I never saw him
again, for years ago the poor man died quite disgraced. His passion for
semi-fraudulent speculations reasserted itself, and he became a bankrupt
in conditions which caused him to leave the country for America, where
he was killed in a railway accident while travelling as an immigrant. I
have heard, however, that he was not asked to shoot at Ragnall any more.

The cheque was passed to the credit of the Cottage Hospital, but not, as
I had requested, as a subscription from Sir Junius Fortescue. A couple
of years later, indeed, I learned that this sum of money was used to
build a little room in that institution to accommodate sick children,
which room was named the Allan Quatermain ward.

Now, I have told this story of that December shoot because it was the
beginning of my long and close friendship with Ragnall.

When he found that Van Koop had gone away without saying good-bye, Lord
Ragnall made no remark. Only he took my hand and shook it.

I have only to add that, although, except for the element of competition
which entered into it, I enjoyed this day's shooting very much indeed,
when I came to count up its cost I felt glad that I had not been
asked to any more such entertainments. Here it is, taken from an old
note-book:

     Cartridges, including those not used and given to Charles L4  0  0
     Game License                                               3  0  0
     Tip to Red Waistcoat (keeper)                              2  0  0
     Tip to Charles                                             0 10  0
     Tip to man who helped Charles to find pheasant             0  5  0
     Tip to man who collected pheasants behind me               0 10  0
     ---------
          L10  5  0
     ---------

Truly pheasant shooting in England is, or was, a sport for the rich!



CHAPTER III

MISS HOLMES

Two and a half hours passed by, most of which time I spent lying down to
rest and get rid of a headache caused by the continual, rapid firing
and the roar of the gale, or both; also in rubbing my shoulder with
ointment, for it was sore from the recoil of the guns. Then Scroope
appeared, as, being unable to find my way about the long passages of
that great old castle, I had asked him to do, and we descended together
to the large drawing-room.

It was a splendid apartment, only used upon state occasions, lighted,
I should think, with at least two or three hundred wax candles, which
threw a soft glow over the panelled and pictured walls, the priceless
antique furniture, and the bejewelled ladies who were gathered there. To
my mind there never was and never will be any artificial light to equal
that of wax candles in sufficient quantity. The company was large; I
think thirty sat down to dinner that night, which was given to introduce
Lord Ragnall's future wife to the neighbourhood, whereof she was
destined to be the leader.

Miss Manners, who was looking very happy and charming in her jewels and
fine clothes, joined us at once, and informed Scroope that "she" was
just coming; the maid in the cloakroom had told her so.

"Is she?" replied Scroope indifferently. "Well, so long as you have come
I don't care about anyone else."

Then he told her she was looking beautiful, and stared at her with such
affection that I fell back a step or two and contemplated a picture of
Judith vigorously engaged in cutting off the head of Holofernes.

Presently the large door at the end of the room was thrown open and the
immaculate Savage, who was acting as a kind of master of the ceremonies,
announced in well-bred but penetrating tones, "Lady Longden and the
Honourable Miss Holmes." I stared, like everybody else, but for a while
her ladyship filled my eye. She was an ample and, to my mind, rather
awful-looking person, clad in black satin--she was a widow--and very
large diamonds. Her hair was white, her nose was hooked, her dark eyes
were penetrating, and she had a bad cold in her head. That was all I
found time to notice about her, for suddenly her daughter came into my
line of vision.

Truly she was a lovely girl, or rather, young woman, for she must
have been two or three-and-twenty. Not very tall, her proportions were
rounded and exquisite, and her movements as graceful as those of a doe.
Altogether she was doe-like, especially in the fineness of her lines
and her large and liquid eyes. She was a dark beauty, with rich brown,
waving hair, a clear olive complexion, a perfectly shaped mouth and very
red lips. To me she looked more Italian or Spanish than Anglo-Saxon, and
I believe that, as a matter of fact, she had some southern blood in her
on her father's side. She wore a dress of soft rose colour, and her only
ornaments were a string of pearls and a single red camellia. I could see
but one blemish, if it were a blemish, in her perfect person, and that
was a curious white mark upon her breast, which in its shape exactly
resembled the crescent moon.

The face, however, impressed me with other than its physical qualities.
It was bright, intelligent, sympathetic and, just now, happy. But I
thought it more, I thought it mystical. Something that her mother said
to her, probably about her dress, caused her smile to vanish for a
moment, and then, from beneath it as it were, appeared this shadow of
innate mysticism. In a second it was gone and she was laughing again;
but I, who am accustomed to observe, had caught it, perhaps alone of all
that company. Moreover, it reminded me of something.

What was it? Ah! I knew. A look that sometimes I had seen upon the face
of a certain Zulu lady named Mameena, especially at the moment of her
wonderful and tragic death. The thought made me shiver a little; I could
not tell why, for certainly, I reflected, this high-placed and fortunate
English girl had nothing in common with that fate-driven Child of Storm,
whose dark and imperial spirit dwelt in the woman called Mameena. They
were as far apart as Zululand is from Essex. Yet it was quite sure that
both of them had touch with hidden things.

Lord Ragnall, looking more like a splendid Van Dyck than ever in his
evening dress, stepped forward to greet his fiancee and her mother with
a courtly bow, and I turned again to continue my contemplation of the
stalwart Judith and the very ugly head of Holofernes. Presently I was
aware of a soft voice--a very rich and thrilling voice--asking quite
close to me:

"Which is he? Oh! you need not answer, dear. I know him from the
description."

"Yes," replied Lord Ragnall to Miss Holmes--for it was she--"you are
quite right. I will introduce you to him presently. But, love, whom do
you wish to take you in to dinner? I can't--your mother, you know; and
as there are no titles here to-night, you may make your choice. Would
you like old Dr. Jeffreys, the clergyman?"

"No," she replied, with quiet firmness, "I know him; he took me in once
before. I wish Mr. Allan Quatermain to take me in. He is interesting,
and I want to hear about Africa."

"Very well," he answered, "and he _is_ more interesting than all the
rest put together. But, Luna, why are you always thinking and talking
about Africa? One might imagine that you were going to live there."

"So I may one day," she answered dreamily. "Who knows where one has
lived, or where one will live!" And again I saw that mystic look come
into her face.

I heard no more of that conversation, which it is improbable that anyone
whose ears had not been sharpened by a lifetime of listening in great
silences would have caught at all. To tell the truth, I made myself
scarce, slipping off to the other end of the big room in the hope of
evading the kind intentions of Miss Holmes. I have a great dislike
of being put out of my place, and I felt that among all these local
celebrities it was not fitting that I should be selected to take in
the future bride on an occasion of this sort. But it was of no use, for
presently Lord Ragnall hunted me up, bringing the young lady with him.

"Let me introduce you to Miss Holmes, Quatermain," he said. "She is
anxious that you should take her in to dinner, if you will be so kind.
She is very interested in--in----"

"Africa," I suggested.

"In Mr. Quatermain, who, I am told, is one of the greatest hunters in
Africa," she corrected me, with a dazzling smile.

I bowed, not knowing what to say. Lord Ragnall laughed and vanished,
leaving us together. Dinner was announced. Presently we were wending in
the centre of a long and glittering procession across the central hall
to the banqueting chamber, a splendid room with a roof like a church
that was said to have been built in the times of the Plantagenets. Here
Mr. Savage, who evidently had been looking out for her future ladyship,
conducted us to our places, which were upon the left of Lord Ragnall,
who sat at the head of the broad table with Lady Longden on his right.
Then the old clergyman, Dr. Jeffreys, a pompous and rather frowsy
ecclesiastic, said grace, for grace was still in fashion at such feasts
in those days, asking Heaven to make us truly thankful for the dinner we
were about to consume.

Certainly there was a great deal to be thankful for in the eating and
drinking line, but of all I remember little, except a general vision of
silver dishes, champagne, splendour, and things I did not want to eat
being constantly handed to me. What I do remember is Miss Holmes, and
nothing but Miss Holmes; the charm of her conversation, the light of her
beautiful eyes, the fragrance of her hair, her most flattering interest
in my unworthy self. To tell the truth, we got on "like fire in the
winter grass," as the Zulus say, and when that dinner was over the grass
was still burning.

I don't think that Lord Ragnall quite liked it, but fortunately Lady
Longden was a talkative person. First she conversed about her cold in
the head, sneezing at intervals, poor soul, and being reduced to send
for another handkerchief after the entrees. Then she got off upon
business matters; to judge from the look of boredom on her host's face,
I think it must have been of settlements. Three times did I hear him
refer her to the lawyers--without avail. Lastly, when he thought he had
escaped, she embarked upon a quite vigorous argument with Dr. Jeffreys
about church matters--I gathered that she was "low" and he was
"high"--in which she insisted upon his lordship acting as referee.

"Do try and keep your attention fixed, George," I heard her say
severely. "To allow it to wander when high spiritual affairs are under
discussion (sneeze) is scarcely reverent. Could you tell the man to shut
that door? The draught is dreadful. It is quite impossible for you to
agree with both of us, as you say you do, seeing that metaphorically Dr.
Jeffreys is at one pole and I am at the other." (Sneeze.)

"Then I wish I were at the Tropic of Cancer," I heard him mutter with a
groan.

In vain; he had to keep his "attention fixed" on this point for the next
three-quarters of an hour. So as Miss Manners was at the other side
of me, and Scroope, unhampered by the presence of any prospective
mother-in-law, was at the other side of her, for all practical purposes
Miss Holmes and I were left alone.

She began by saying:

"I hear you beat Sir Junius Fortescue out shooting to-day, and won a lot
of money from him which you gave to the Cottage Hospital. I don't like
shooting, and I don't like betting; and it's strange, because you don't
look like a man who bets. But I detest Sir Junius Fortescue, and that is
a bond of union between us."

"I never said I detested him."

"No, but I am sure you do. Your face changed when I mentioned his name."

"As it happens, you are right. But, Miss Holmes, I should like you to
understand that you were also right when you said I did not look like a
betting man." And I told her some of the story of Van Koop and the L250.

"Ah!" she said, when I had finished, "I always felt sure he was a
horror. And my mother wanted me, just because he pretended to be low
church--but that's a secret."

Then I congratulated her upon her approaching marriage, saying what
a joyful thing it was now and again to see everything going in real,
happy, storybook fashion: beauty, male and female, united by love, high
rank, wealth, troops of friends, health of body, a lovely and an ancient
home in a settled land where dangers do not come--at present--respect
and affection of crowds of dependants, the prospect of a high and useful
career of a sort whereof the door is shut to most people, everything
in short that human beings who are not actually royalty could desire or
deserve. Indeed after my second glass of champagne I grew quite eloquent
on these and kindred points, being moved thereto by memories of the
misery that is in the world which formed so great a contrast to the lot
of this striking and brilliant pair.

She listened to me attentively and answered:

"Thank you for your kind thoughts and wishes. But does it not strike
you, Mr. Quatermain, that there is something ill-omened in such talk? I
believe that it does; that as you finished speaking it occurred to you
that after all the future is as much veiled from all of us as--as the
picture which hangs behind its curtain of rose-coloured silk in Lord
Ragnall's study is from you."

"How did you know that?" I asked sharply in a low voice. For by the
strangest of coincidences, as I concluded my somewhat old-fashioned
little speech of compliments, this very reflection had entered my
mind, and with it the memory of the veiled picture which Mr. Savage had
pointed out to me on the previous morning.

"I can't say, Mr. Quatermain, but I did know it. You were thinking of
the picture, were you not?"

"And if I was," I said, avoiding a direct reply, "what of it? Though
it is hidden from everybody else, he has only to draw the curtain and
see--you."

"Supposing he should draw the curtain one day and see nothing, Mr.
Quatermain?"

"Then the picture would have been stolen, that is all, and he would have
to search for it till he found it again, which doubtless sooner or later
he would do."

"Yes, sooner or later. But where? Perhaps you have lost a picture or two
in your time, Mr. Quatermain, and are better able to answer the question
than I am."

There was silence for a few moments, for this talk of lost pictures
brought back memories which choked me.

Then she began to speak again, low, quickly, and with suppressed
passion, but acting wonderfully all the while. Knowing that eyes were on
her, her gestures and the expression of her face were such as might
have been those of any young lady of fashion who was talking of everyday
affairs, such as dancing, or flowers, or jewels. She smiled and even
laughed occasionally. She played with the golden salt-cellar in front
of her and, upsetting a little of the salt, threw it over her left
shoulder, appearing to ask me if I were a victim of that ancient habit,
and so on.

But all the while she was talking deeply of deep things, such as I
should never have thought would pass her mind. This was the substance
of what she said, for I cannot set it all down verbatim; after so many
years my memory fails me.

"I am not like other women. Something moves me to tell you so, something
very real and powerful which pushes me as a strong man might. It is odd,
because I have never spoken to anyone else like that, not to my mother
for instance, or even to Lord Ragnall. They would neither of them
understand, although they would misunderstand differently. My mother
would think I ought to see a doctor--and if you knew that doctor! He,"
and she nodded towards Lord Ragnall, "would think that my engagement had
upset me, or that I had grown rather more religious than I ought to be
at my age, and been reflecting too much--well, on the end of all things.
From a child I have understood that I am a mystery set in the midst of
many other mysteries. It all came to me one night when I was about nine
years old. I seemed to see the past and the future, although I could
grasp neither. Such a long, long past and such an infinite future. I
don't know what I saw, and still see sometimes. It comes in a flash, and
is in a flash forgotten. My mind cannot hold it. It is too big for
my mind; you might as well try to pack Dr. Jeffreys there into this
wineglass. Only two facts remain written on my heart. The first is
that there is trouble ahead of me, curious and unusual trouble; and
the second, that permanently, continually, I, or a part of me, have
something to do with Africa, a country of which I know nothing
except from a few very dull books. Also, by the way--this is a new
thought--that I have a great deal to do with _you_. That is why I am
so interested in Africa and you. Tell me about Africa and yourself now,
while we have the chance." And she ended rather abruptly, adding in a
louder voice, "You have lived there all your life, have you not, Mr.
Quatermain?"

"I rather think your mother would be right--about the doctor, I mean," I
said.

"You _say_ that, but you don't _believe_ it. Oh! you are very
transparent, Mr. Quatermain--at least, to me."

So, hurriedly enough, for these subjects seemed to be uncomfortable,
even dangerous in a sense, I began to talk of the first thing about
Africa that I remembered--namely, of the legend of the Holy Flower that
was guarded by a huge ape, of which I had heard from a white man who was
supposed to be rather mad, who went by the name of Brother John. Also I
told her that there was something in it, as I had with me a specimen of
the flower.

"Oh! show it me," she said.

I replied that I feared I could not, as it was locked away in a safe in
London, whither I was returning on the morrow. I promised, however, to
send her a life-sized water-colour drawing of which I had caused several
to be made. She asked me if I were going to look for this flower, and
I said that I hoped so if I could make the necessary arrangements. Next
she asked me if there chanced to be any other African quests upon which
I had set my mind. I replied that there were several. For instance, I
had heard vaguely through Brother John, and indirectly from one or
two other sources, of the existence of a certain tribe in East Central
Africa--Arabs or semi-Arabs--who were reported to worship a child that
always remained a child. This child, I took it, was a dwarf; but as I
was interested in native religious customs which were infinite in their
variety, I should much like to find out the truth of the matter.

"Talking of Arabs," she broke in, "I will tell you a curious story. Once
when I was a little girl, eight or nine years of age--it was just before
that kind of awakening of which I have spoken to you--I was playing in
Kensington Gardens, for we lived in London at the time, in the charge of
my nurse-governess. She was talking to some young man who she said was
her cousin, and told me to run about with my hoop and not to bother. I
drove the hoop across the grass to some elm trees. From behind one of
the trees came out two tall men dressed in white robes and turbans, who
looked to me like scriptural characters in a picture-book. One was an
elderly man with flashing, black eyes, hooked nose, and a long grey
beard. The other was much younger, but I do not remember him so well.
They were both brown in colour, but otherwise almost like white men; not
Negroes by any means. My hoop hit the elder man, and I stood still, not
knowing what to say. He bowed politely and picked it up, but did not
offer to return it to me. They talked together rapidly, and one of them
pointed to the moon-shaped birthmark which you see I have upon my
neck, for it was hot weather, and I was wearing a low-cut frock. It was
because of this mark that my father named me Luna. The elder of the two
said in broken English:

"'What is your name, pretty little girl?'

"I told him it was Luna Holmes. Then he drew from his robe a box made of
scented wood, and, opening it, took out some sweetmeat which looked
as if it had been frozen, and gave me a piece that, being very fond of
sweet, I put into my mouth. Next, he bowled the hoop along the ground
into the shadow of the trees--it was evening time and beginning to grow
dark--saying, 'Run, catch it, little girl!'

"I began to run, but something in the taste of that sweet caused me to
drop it from my lips. Then all grew misty, and the next thing I remember
was finding myself in the arms of the younger Eastern, with the nurse
and her 'cousin,' a stalwart person like a soldier, standing in front of
us.

"'Little girl go ill,' said the elder Arab. 'We seek policeman.'

"'You drop that child,' answered the 'cousin,' doubling his fists. Then
I grew faint again, and when I came to myself the two white-robed men
had gone. All the way home my governess scolded me for accepting sweets
from strangers, saying that if my parents came to know of it, I should
be whipped and sent to bed. Of course, I begged her not to tell them,
and at last she consented. Do you know, I think you are the first to
whom I have ever mentioned the matter, of which I am sure the governess
never breathed a word, though after that, whenever we walked in the
gardens, her 'cousin' always came to look after us. In the end I think
she married him."

"You believe the sweet was drugged?" I asked.

She nodded. "There was something very strange in it. It was a night
or two after I had tasted it that I had what just now I called my
awakening, and began to think about Africa."

"Have you ever seen these men again, Miss Holmes?"

"No, never."

At this moment I heard Lady Longden say, in a severe voice:

"My dear Luna, I am sorry to interrupt your absorbing conversation, but
we are all waiting for you."

So they were, for to my horror I saw that everyone was standing up
except ourselves.

Miss Holmes departed in a hurry, while Scroope whispered in my ear with
a snigger:

"I say, Allan, if you carry on like that with his young lady, his
lordship will be growing jealous of you."

"Don't be a fool," I said sharply. But there was something in his
remark, for as Lord Ragnall passed on his way to the other end of the
table, he said in a low voice and with rather a forced smile:

"Well, Quatermain, I hope your dinner has not been as dull as mine,
although your appetite seemed so poor."

Then I reflected that I could not remember having eaten a thing since
the first entree. So overcome was I that, rejecting all Scroope's
attempts at conversation, I sat silent, drinking port and filling up
with dates, until not long afterwards we went into the drawing-room,
where I sat down as far from Miss Holmes as possible, and looked at a
book of views of Jerusalem.

While I was thus engaged, Lord Ragnall, pitying my lonely condition, or
being instigated thereto by Miss Holmes, I know not which, came up and
began to chat with me about African big-game shooting. Also he asked me
what was my permanent address in that country. I told him Durban, and in
my turn asked why he wanted to know.

"Because Miss Holmes seems quite crazy about the place, and I expect I
shall be dragged out there one day," he replied, quite gloomily. It was
a prophetic remark.

At this moment our conversation was interrupted by Lady Longden, who
came to bid her future son-in-law good night. She said that she must go
to bed, and put her feet in mustard and water as her cold was so bad,
which left me wondering whether she meant to carry out this operation
in bed. I recommended her to take quinine, a suggestion she acknowledged
rather inconsequently by remarking in somewhat icy tones that she
supposed I sat up to all hours of the night in Africa. I replied that
frequently I did, waiting for the sun to rise next day, for that member
of the British aristocracy irritated me.

Thus we parted, and I never saw her again. She died many years ago,
poor soul, and I suppose is now freezing her former acquaintances in
the Shades, for I cannot imagine that she ever had a friend. They talk
a great deal about the influences of heredity nowadays, but I don't
believe very much in them myself. Who, for instance, could conceive
that persons so utterly different in every way as Lady Longden and her
daughter, Miss Holmes, could be mother and child? Our bodies, no doubt,
we do inherit from our ancestors, but not our individualities. These
come from far away.

A good many of the guests went at the same time, having long distances
to drive on that cold frosty night, although it was only just ten
o'clock. For as was usual at that period even in fashionable houses, we
had dined at seven.



CHAPTER IV

HARUT AND MARUT

After Lord Ragnall had seen his guests to the door in the old-fashioned
manner, he returned and asked me if I played cards, or whether I
preferred music. I was assuring him that I hated the sight of a card
when Mr. Savage appeared in his silent way and respectfully inquired
of his lordship whether any gentleman was staying in the house whose
Christian name was _Here-come-a-zany_. Lord Ragnall looked at him with a
searching eye as though he suspected him of being drunk, and then asked
what he meant by such a ridiculous question.

"I mean, my lord," replied Mr. Savage with a touch of offence in his
tone, "that two foreign individuals in white clothes have arrived at
the castle, stating that they wish to speak at once with a _Mr.
Here-come-a-zany_ who is staying here. I told them to go away as the
butler said he could make nothing of their talk, but they only sat down
in the snow and said they would wait for _Here-come-a-zany_."

"Then you had better put them in the old guardroom, lock them up with
something to eat, and send the stable-boy for the policeman, who is a
zany if ever anybody was. I expect they are after the pheasants."

"Stop a bit," I said, for an idea had occurred to me. "The message may
be meant for me, though I can't conceive who sent it. My native name is
Macumazana, which possibly Mr. Savage has not caught quite correctly.
Shall I go to see these men?"

"I wouldn't do that in this cold, Quatermain," Lord Ragnall answered.
"Did they say what they are, Savage?"

"I made out that they were conjurers, my lord. At least when I told them
to go away one of them said, 'You will go first, gentleman.' Then, my
lord, I heard a hissing sound in my coat-tail pocket and, putting my
hand into it, I found a large snake which dropped on the ground and
vanished. It quite paralysed me, my lord, and while I stood there
wondering whether I was bitten, a mouse jumped out of the kitchenmaid's
hair. She had been laughing at their dress, my lord, but _now_ she's
screaming in hysterics."

The solemn aspect of Mr. Savage as he narrated these unholy marvels was
such that, like the kitchenmaid, we both burst into ill-timed merriment.
Attracted by our laughter, Miss Holmes, Miss Manners, with whom she was
talking, and some of the other guests, approached and asked what was the
matter.

"Savage here declares that there are two conjurers in the kitchen
premises, who have been producing snakes out of his pocket and mice from
the hair of one of the maids, and who want to see Mr. Quatermain," Lord
Ragnall answered.

"Conjurers! Oh, do have them in, George," exclaimed Miss Holmes;
while Miss Manners and the others, who were getting a little tired of
promiscuous conversation, echoed her request.

"By all means," he answered, "though we have enough mice here without
their bringing any more. Savage, go and tell your two friends that _Mr.
Here-come-a-zany_ is waiting for them in the drawing-room, and that the
company would like to see some of their tricks."

Savage bowed and departed, like a hero to execution, for by his pallor I
could see that he was in a great fright. When he had gone we set to
work and cleared a space in the middle of the room, in front of which we
arranged chairs for the company to sit on.

"No doubt they are Indian jugglers," said Lord Ragnall, "and will want
a place to grow their mango-tree, as I remember seeing them do in
Kashmir."

As he spoke the door opened and Mr. Savage appeared through it, walking
much faster than was his wont. I noted also that he gripped the pockets
of his swallow-tail coat firmly in his hand.

"Mr. Hare-root and Mr. Mare-root," he announced.

"Hare-root and Mare-root!" repeated Lord Ragnall.

"Harut and Marut, I expect," I said. "I think I have read somewhere
that they were great magicians, whose names these conjurers have taken."
(Since then I have discovered that they are mentioned in the Koran as
masters of the Black Art.)

A moment later two men followed him through the doorway. The first was
a tall, Eastern-looking person with a grave countenance, a long, white
beard, a hooked nose, and flashing, hawk-like eyes. The second was
shorter and rather stout, also much younger. He had a genial, smiling
face, small, beady-black eyes, and was clean-shaven. They were very
light in colour; indeed I have seen Italians who are much darker; and
there was about their whole aspect a certain air of power.

Instantly I remembered the story that Miss Holmes had told me at dinner
and looked at her covertly, to see that she had turned quite pale and
was trembling a little. I do not think that anyone else noticed this,
however, as all were staring at the strangers. Moreover she recovered
herself in a moment, and, catching my eye, laid her finger on her lips
in token of silence.

The men were clothed in thick, fur-lined cloaks, which they took off
and, folding them neatly, laid upon the floor, standing revealed in
robes of a beautiful whiteness and in large plain turbans, also white.

"High-class Somali Arabs," thought I to myself, noting the while that as
they arranged the robes they were taking in every one of us with their
quick eyes. One of them shut the door, leaving Savage on this side of
it as though they meant him to be present. Then they walked towards
us, each of them carrying an ornamental basket made apparently of split
reeds, that contained doubtless their conjuring outfit and probably the
snake which Savage had found in his pocket. To my surprise they came
straight to me, and, having set down the baskets, lifted their hands
above their heads, as a person about to dive might do, and bowed till
the points of their fingers touched the floor. Next they spoke, not in
Arabic as I had expected that they would, but in Bantu, which of course
I understood perfectly well.

"I, Harut, head priest and doctor of the White Kendah People, greet you,
O Macumazana," said the elder man.

"I, Marut, a priest and doctor of the People of the White Kendah, greet
you, O Watcher-by-night, whom we have travelled far to find," said the
younger man. Then together,

"We both greet you, O Lord, who seem small but are great, O Chief with
a troubled past and with a mighty future, O Beloved of Mameena who has
'gone down' but still speaks from beneath, Mameena who was and is of our
company."

At this point it was my turn to shiver and become pale, as any may guess
who may have chanced to read the history of Mameena, and the turn of
Miss Holmes to watch _me_ with animated interest.

"O Slayer of evil men and beasts!" they went on, in their rich-voiced,
monotonous chant, "who, as our magic tells us, are destined to deliver
our land from the terrible scourge, we greet you, we bow before you, we
acknowledge you as our lord and brother, to whom we vow safety among us
and in the desert, to whom we promise a great reward."

Again they bowed, once, twice, thrice; then stood silent before me with
folded arms.

"What on earth are they saying?" asked Scroope. "I could catch a few
words"--he knew a little kitchen Zulu--"but not much."

I told him briefly while the others listened.

"What does Mameena mean?" asked Miss Holmes, with a horrible acuteness.
"Is it a woman's name?"

Hearing her, Harut and Marut bowed as though doing reverence to that
name. I am sorry to say that at this point I grew confused, though
really there was no reason why I should, and muttered something about a
native girl who had made trouble in her day.

Miss Holmes and the other ladies looked at me with amused disbelief,
and to my dismay the venerable Harut turned to Miss Holmes, and with his
inevitable bow, said in broken English:

"Mameena very beautiful woman, perhaps more beautiful than you, lady.
Mameena love the white lord Macumazana. She love him while she live, she
love him now she dead. She tell me so again just now. You ask white lord
tell you pretty story of how he kiss her before she kill herself."

Needless to say all this very misleading information was received by the
audience with an attention that I can but call rapt, and in a kind of
holy silence which was broken only by a sudden burst of sniggering on
the part of Scroope. I favoured him with my fiercest frown. Then I fell
upon that venerable villain Harut, and belaboured him in Bantu, while
the audience listened as intently as though they understood.

I asked him what he meant by coming here to asperse my character. I
asked him who the deuce he was. I asked him how he came to know anything
about Mameena, and finally I told him that soon or late I would be even
with him, and paused exhausted.

He stood there looking for all the world like a statue of the patriarch
Job as I imagine him, and when I had done, replied without moving a
muscle and in English:

"O Lord, Zikali, Zulu wizard, friend of mine! All great wizard friend
just like all elephant and all snake. Zikali make me know Mameena,
and she tell me story and send you much love, and say she wait for
you always." (More sniggers from Scroope, and still intenser interest
evinced by Miss Holmes and others.) "If you like, I show you Mameena
'fore I go." (Murmurs from Miss Holmes and Miss Manners of "Oh, _please_
do!") "But that very little business, for what one long-ago lady out of
so many?"

Then suddenly he broke into Bantu, and added: "A jest is a jest,
Macumazana, though often there is meaning in a jest, and you shall see
Mameena if you will. I come here to ask you to do my people a service
for which you shall not lack reward. We, the White Kendah, the People of
the Child, are at war with the Black Kendah, our subjects who outnumber
us. The Black Kendah have an evil spirit for a god, which spirit from
the beginning has dwelt in the largest elephant in all the world, a
beast that none can kill, but which kills many and bewitches more. While
that elephant, which is named Jana, lives we, the People of the Child,
go in terror, for day by day it destroys us. We have learned--how it
does not matter--that you alone can kill that elephant. If you will come
and kill it, we will show you the place where all the elephants go to
die, and you shall take their ivory, many wagon-loads, and grow rich.
Soon you are going on a journey that has to do with a flower, and you
will visit peoples named the Mazitu and the Pongo who live on an island
in a lake. Far beyond the Pongo and across the desert dwell my people,
the Kendah, in a secret land. When you wish to visit us, as you will do,
journey to the north of that lake where the Pongo dwell, and stay there
on the edge of the desert shooting till we come. Now mock me if you
will, but do not forget, for these things shall befall in their season,
though that time be far. If we meet no more for a while, still do not
forget. When you have need of gold or of the ivory that is gold, then
journey to the north of the lake where the Pongo dwell, and call on the
names of Harut and Marut."

"And call on the names of Harut and Marut," repeated the younger man,
who hitherto appeared to take no interest in our talk.

Next, before I could answer, before I could think the thing out indeed,
for all this breath from savage and mystical Africa blowing on me
suddenly here in an Essex drawing-room, seemed to overwhelm me, the
ineffable Harut proceeded in his English conjurer's patter:

"Rich ladies and gentlemen want see trick by poor old wizard from centre
Africa. Well, we show them, but please 'member no magic, all quite
simple trick. Teach it you if you pay. Please not look too hard, no want
you learn how it done. What you like see? Tree grow out of nothing, eh?
Good! Please lend me that plate--what you call him--china."

Then the performance began. The tree grew admirably upon the china plate
under the cover of an antimacassar. A number of bits of stick danced
together on the said plate, apparently without being touched. At a
whistle from Marut a second snake crawled out of the pocket of the
horrified Mr. Savage, who stood observing these proceedings at a
respectful distance, erected itself on its tail upon the plate and took
fire till it was consumed to ashes, and so forth.

The show was very good, but to tell the truth I did not take much notice
of it, for I had seen similar things before and was engaged in thoughts
much excited by what Harut had said to me. At length the pair paused
amidst the clapping of the audience, and Marut began to pack up the
properties as though all were done. Then Harut observed casually:

"The Lord Macumazana think this poor business and he right. Very poor
business, any conjurer do better. All common trick"--here his eye fell
upon Mr. Savage who was wriggling uneasily in the background. "What
matter with that gentleman? Brother Marut, go see."

Brother Marut went and freed Mr. Savage from two more snakes which
seemed to have taken possession of various parts of his garments. Also,
amidst shouts of laughter, from a large dead rat which he appeared to
draw from his well-oiled hair.

"Ah!" said Harut, as his confederate returned with these prizes, leaving
Savage collapsed in a chair, "snake love that gentleman much. He earn
great money in Africa. Well, he keep rat in hair; hungry snake always
want rat. But as I say, this poor business. Now you like to see some
better, eh? Mameena, eh?"

"No," I replied firmly, whereat everyone laughed.

"Elephant Jana we want you kill, eh? Just as he look this minute."

"Yes," I said, "very much indeed, only how will you show it me?"

"That quite easy, Macumazana. You just smoke little Kendah 'bacco and
see many things, if you have gift, as I _think_ you got, and as I almost
_sure_ that lady got," and he pointed to Miss Holmes. "Sometimes they
things people want see, and sometimes they things people not want see."

"Dakka," I said contemptuously, alluding to the Indian hemp on which
natives make themselves drunk throughout great districts of Africa.

"Oh! no, not dakka, that common stuff; this 'bacco much better than
dakka, only grow in Kendah-land. You think all nonsense? Well, you see.
Give me match please."

Then while we watched he placed some tobacco, at least it looked like
tobacco, in a little wooden bowl that he also produced from his basket.
Next he said something to his companion, Marut, who drew a flute from
his robe made out of a thick reed, and began to play on it a wild and
melancholy music, the sound of which seemed to affect my backbone as
standing on a great height often does. Presently too Harut broke into a
low song whereof I could not understand a word, that rose and fell with
the music of the flute. Now he struck a match, which seemed incongruous
in the midst of this semi-magical ceremony, and taking a pinch of the
tobacco, lit it and dropped it among the rest. A pale, blue smoke arose
from the bowl and with it a very sweet odour not unlike that of the
tuberoses gardeners grow in hot-houses, but more searching.

"Now you breath smoke, Macumazana," he said, "and tell us what you
see. Oh! no fear, that not hurt you. Just like cigarette. Look," and he
inhaled some of the vapour and blew it out through his nostrils, after
which his face seemed to change to me, though what the change was I
could not define.

I hesitated till Scroope said:

"Come, Allan, don't shirk this Central African adventure. I'll try if
you like."

"No," said Harut brusquely, "_you_ no good."

Then curiosity and perhaps the fear of being laughed at overcame me. I
took the bowl and held it under my nose, while Harut threw over my head
the antimacassar which he had used in the mango trick, to keep in the
fumes I suppose.

At first these fumes were unpleasant, but just as I was about to drop
the bowl they seemed to become agreeable and to penetrate to the inmost
recesses of my being. The general affect of them was not unlike that of
the laughing gas which dentists give, with this difference, that whereas
the gas produces insensibility, these fumes seemed to set the mind
on fire and to burn away all limitations of time and distance. Things
shifted before me. It was as though I were no longer in that room but
travelling with inconceivable rapidity.

Suddenly I appeared to stop before a curtain of mist. The mist rolled
up in front of me and I saw a wild and wonderful scene. There lay a lake
surrounded by dense African forest. The sky above was still red with the
last lights of sunset and in it floated the full moon. On the eastern
side of the lake was a great open space where nothing seemed to grow and
all about this space were the skeletons of hundreds of dead elephants.
There they lay, some of them almost covered with grey mosses hanging to
their bones, through which their yellow tusks projected as though they
had been dead for centuries; others with the rotting hide still on them.
I knew that I was looking on a cemetery of elephants, the place where
these great beasts went to die, as I have since been told the extinct
moas did in New Zealand. All my life as a hunter had I heard rumours
of these cemeteries, but never before did I see such a spot even in a
dream.

See! There was one dying now, a huge gaunt bull that looked as though it
were several hundred years old. It stood there swaying to and fro. Then
it lifted its trunk, I suppose to trumpet, though of course I could
hear nothing, and slowly sank upon its knees and so remained in the last
relaxation of death.

Almost in the centre of this cemetery was a little mound of water-washed
rock that had endured when the rest of the stony plain was denuded in
past epochs. Suddenly upon that rock appeared the shape of the most
gigantic elephant that ever I beheld in all my long experience. It had
one enormous tusk, but the other was deformed and broken off short. Its
sides were scarred as though with fighting and its eyes shone red and
wickedly. Held in its trunk was the body of a woman whose hair hung down
upon one side and whose feet hung down upon the other. Clasped in her
arms was a child that seemed to be still living.

The rogue, as a brute of this sort is called, for evidently such it was,
dropped the corpse to the ground and stood a while, flapping its ears.
Then it felt for and picked up the child with its trunk, swung it to and
fro and finally tossed it high into the air, hurling it far away. After
this it walked to the elephant that I had just seen die, and charged
the carcass, knocking it over. Then having lifted its trunk as though to
trumpet in triumph, it shambled off towards the forest and vanished.

The curtain of mist fell again and in it, dimly, I thought I saw--well,
never mind who or what I saw. Then I awoke.

"Well, did you see anything?" asked a chorus of voices.

I told them what I had seen, leaving out the last part.

"I say, old fellow," said Scroope, "you must have been pretty clever to
get all that in, for your eyes weren't shut for more than ten seconds."

"Then I wonder what you would say if I repeated everything," I answered,
for I still felt dreamy and not quite myself.

"You see elephant Jana?" asked Harut. "He kill woman and child, eh?
Well, he do that every night. Well, that why people of White Kendah
want you to kill _him_ and take all that ivory which they no dare touch
because it in holy place and Black Kendah not let them. So he live
still. That what we wish know. Thank you much, Macumazana. You very good
look through-distance man. Just what I think. Kendah 'bacco smoke work
very well in you. Now, beautiful lady," he added turning to Miss Holmes,
"you like look too? Better look. Who knows what you see?"

Miss Holmes hesitated a moment, studying me with an inquiring eye. But I
made no sign, being in truth very curious to hear _her_ experience.

"Yes," she said.

"I would prefer, Luna, that you left this business alone," remarked Lord
Ragnall uneasily. "I think it is time that you ladies went to bed."

"Here is a match," said Miss Holmes to Harut who was engaged in putting
more tobacco into the bowl, the suspicion of a smile upon his grave
and statuesque countenance. Harut received the match with a low bow
and fired the stuff as before. Then he handed the bowl, from which once
again the blue smoke curled upwards, to Miss Holmes, and gently and
gracefully let the antimacassar fall over it and her head, which it
draped as a wedding veil might do. A few seconds later she threw off the
antimacassar and cast the bowl, in which the fire was now out, on to the
floor. Then she stood up with wide eyes, looking wondrous lovely and,
notwithstanding her lack of height, majestic.

"I have been in another world," she said in a low voice as though she
spoke to the air, "I have travelled a great way. I found myself in a
small place made of stone. It was dark in the place, the fire in that
bowl lit it up. There was nothing there except a beautiful statue of a
naked baby which seemed to be carved in yellow ivory, and a chair made
of ebony inlaid with ivory and seated with string. I stood in front of
the statue of the Ivory Child. It seemed to come to life and smile at
me. Round its neck was a string of red stones. It took them from its
neck and set them upon mine. Then it pointed to the chair, and I sat
down in the chair. That was all."

Harut followed her words with an interest that I could see was intense,
although he attempted to hide it. Then he asked me to translate them,
which I did.

As their full sense came home to him, although his face remained
impassive, I saw his dark eyes shine with the light of triumph. Moreover
I heard him whisper to Marut words that seemed to mean,

"The Sacred Child accepts the Guardian. The Spirit of the White Kendah
finds a voice again."

Then as though involuntarily, but with the utmost reverence, both of
them bowed deeply towards Miss Holmes.

A babel of conversation broke out.

"What a ridiculous dream," I heard Lord Ragnall say in a vexed voice.
"An ivory child that seemed to come to life and to give you a necklace.
Whoever heard such nonsense?"

"Whoever heard such nonsense?" repeated Miss Holmes after him, as though
in polite acquiescence, but speaking as an automaton might speak.

"I say," interrupted Scroope, addressing Miss Manners, "this is a
drawing-room entertainment and a half, isn't it, dear?"

"I don't know," answered Miss Manners, doubtfully, "it is rather too
queer for my taste. Tricks are all very well, but when it comes to magic
and visions I get frightened."

"Well, I suppose the show is over," said Lord Ragnall. "Quatermain,
would you mind asking your conjurer friends what I owe them?"

Here Harut, who had understood, paused from packing up his properties
and answered,

"Nothing, O great Lord, nothing. It is we owe you much. Here we learn
what we want know long time. I mean if elephant Jana still kill people
of Kendah. Kendah 'bacco no speak to us. Only speak to new spirit. You
got great gift, lady, and you too, Macumazana. You not like smoke more
Kendah 'bacco and look into past, eh? Better look! Very full, past,
learn much there about all us; learn how things begin. Make you
understand lot what seem odd to-day. No! Well, one day you look p'raps,
'cause past pull hard and call loud, only no one hear what it say.
Good night, O great Lord. Good night, O beautiful lady. Good night,
O Macumazana, till we meet again when you come kill elephant Jana.
Blessing of the Heaven-Child, who give rain, who protect all danger, who
give food, who give health, on you all."

Then making many obeisances they walked backwards to the door where they
put on their long cloaks.

At a sign from Lord Ragnall I accompanied them, an office which, fearing
more snakes, Mr. Savage was very glad to resign to me. Presently we
stood outside the house amidst the moaning trees, and very cold it was
there.

"What does all this mean, O men of Africa?" I asked.

"Answer the question yourself when you stand face to face with the great
elephant Jana that has in it an evil spirit, O Macumazana," replied
Harut. "Nay, listen. We are far from our home and we sought tidings
through those who could give it to us, and we have won those tidings,
that is all. We are worshippers of the Heavenly Child that is eternal
youth and all good things, but of late the Child has lacked a tongue.
Yet to-night it spoke again. Seek to know no more, you who in due season
will know all things."

"Seek to know no more," echoed Marut, "who already, perhaps, know too
much, lest harm should come to you, Macumazana."

"Where are you going to sleep to-night?" I asked.

"We do not sleep here," answered Harut, "we walk to the great city and
thence find our way to Africa, where we shall meet you again. You know
that we are no liars, common readers of thought and makers of tricks,
for did not Dogeetah, the wandering white man, speak to you of the
people of whom he had heard who worshipped the Child of Heaven? Go in,
Macumazana, ere you take harm in this horrible cold, and take with you
this as a marriage gift from the Child of Heaven whom she met to-night,
to the beautiful lady stamped with the sign of the young moon who is
about to marry the great lord she loves."

Then he thrust a little linen-wrapped parcel into my hand and with his
companion vanished into the darkness.

I returned to the drawing-room where the others were still discussing
the remarkable performance of the two native conjurers.

"They have gone," I said in answer to Lord Ragnall, "to walk to London
as they said. But they have sent a wedding-present to Miss Holmes," and
I showed the parcel.

"Open it, Quatermain," he said again.

"No, George," interrupted Miss Holmes, laughing, for by now she seemed
to have quite recovered herself, "I like to open my own presents."



He shrugged his shoulders and I handed her the parcel, which was neatly
sewn up. Somebody produced scissors and the stitches were cut. Within
the linen was a necklace of beautiful red stones, oval-shaped like amber
beads and of the size of a robin's egg. They were roughly polished and
threaded on what I recognized at once to be hair from an elephant's
tail. From certain indications I judged these stones, which might have
been spinels or carbuncles, or even rubies, to be very ancient. Possibly
they had once hung round the neck of some lady in old Egypt. Indeed a
beautiful little statuette, also of red stone, which was suspended from
the centre of the necklace, suggested that this was so, for it may well
have been a likeness of one of the great gods of the Egyptians, the
infant Horus, the son of Isis.

"That is the necklace I saw which the Ivory Child gave me in my dream,"
said Miss Holmes quietly.

Then with much deliberation she clasped it round her throat.



CHAPTER V

THE PLOT

The sequel to the events of this evening may be told very briefly and of
it the reader can form his own judgment. I narrate it as it happened.

That night I did not sleep at all well. It may have been because of the
excitement of the great shoot in which I found myself in competition
with another man whom I disliked and who had defrauded me in the past,
to say nothing of its physical strain in cold and heavy weather. Or it
may have been that my imagination was stirred by the arrival of that
strange pair, Harut and Marut, apparently in search of myself, seven
thousand miles away from any place where they can have known aught of an
insignificant individual with a purely local repute. Or it may have been
that the pictures which they showed me when under the influence of
the fumes of their "tobacco"--or of their hypnotism--took an undue
possession of my brain.

Or lastly, the strange coincidence that the beautiful betrothed of my
host should have related to me a tale of her childhood of which she
declared she had never spoken before, and that within an hour the two
principal actors in that tale should have appeared before my eyes and
hers (for I may state that from the beginning I had no doubt that
they were the same men), moved me and filled me with quite natural
foreboding. Or all these things together may have tended to a
concomitant effect. At any rate the issue was that I could not sleep.

For hour after hour I lay thinking and in an irritated way listening for
the chimes of the Ragnall stable-clock which once had adorned the tower
of the church and struck the quarters with a damnable reiteration. I
concluded that Messrs. Harut and Marut were a couple of common Arab
rogues such as I had seen performing at the African ports. Then a
quarter struck and I concluded that the elephants' cemetery which I
beheld in the smoke undoubtedly existed and that I meant to collar those
thousands of pounds' worth of ivory before I died. Then after another
quarter I concluded that there was no elephants' cemetery--although by
the way my old friend, Dogeetah or Brother John, had mentioned such
a thing to me--but that probably there was a tribe, as he had also
mentioned, called the Kendah, who worshipped a baby, or rather its
effigy.

Well now, as had already occurred to me, the old Egyptians, of whom I
was always fond of reading when I got a chance, also worshipped a child,
Horus the Saviour. And that child had a mother called Isis symbolized in
the crescent moon, the great Nature goddess, the mistress of mysteries
to whose cult ten thousand priests were sworn--do not Herodotus and
others, especially Apuleius, tell us all about her? And by a queer
coincidence Miss Holmes had the mark of a crescent moon upon her breast.
And when she was a child those two men, or others very like them, had
pointed out that mark to each other. And I had seen them staring hard
at it that night. And in her vapour-invoked dream the "Heavenly Child,"
_alias_ Horus, or the double of Horus, the _Ka_, I think the Egyptians
called it, had awakened at the sight of her and kissed her and given her
the necklace of the goddess, and--all the rest. What did it mean?

I went to sleep at last wondering what on earth it _could_ mean, till
presently that confounded clock woke me up again and I must go through
the whole business once more.

By degrees, this was towards dawn, I became aware that all hope of rest
had vanished from me utterly; that I was most painfully awake, and what
is more, oppressed by a curious fear to the effect that something was
going to happen to Miss Holmes. So vivid did this fear become that at
length I arose, lit a candle and dressed myself. As it happened I knew
where Miss Holmes slept. Her room, which I had seen her enter, was on
the same corridor as mine though at the other end of it near the head
of a stair that ran I knew not whither. In my portmanteau that had been
sent over from Miss Manners's house, amongst other things was a small
double-barrelled pistol which from long habit I always carried with me
loaded, except for the caps that were in a little leather case with some
spare ammunition attached to the pistol belt. I took it out, capped it
and thrust it into my pocket. Then I slipped from the room and stood
behind a tall clock in the corridor, watching Miss Holmes's door and
reflecting what a fool I should look if anyone chanced to find me.

Half an hour or so later by the light of the setting moon which
struggled through a window, I saw the door open and Miss Holmes emerge
in a kind of dressing-gown and still wearing the necklace which Harut
and Marut had given her. Of this I was sure for the light gleamed upon
the red stones.

Also it shone upon her face and showed me without doubt that she was
walking in her sleep.

Gliding as silently as a ghost she crossed the corridor and vanished.
I followed and saw that she had descended an ancient, twisting stairway
which I had noted in the castle wall. I went after her, my stockinged
feet making no noise, feeling my way carefully in the darkness of the
stair, for I did not dare to strike a match. Beneath me I heard a noise
as of someone fumbling with bolts. Then a door creaked on its hinges and
there was some light. When I reached the doorway I caught sight of the
figure of Miss Holmes flitting across a hollow garden that was laid out
in the bottom of the castle moat which had been drained. The garden, as
I had observed when we walked through it on the previous day on our way
to the first covert that we shot, was bordered by a shrubbery through
which ran paths that led to the back drive of the castle.

Across the garden glided the figure of Miss Holmes and after it went I,
crouching and taking cover behind every bush as though I were stalking
big game, which indeed I was. She entered the shrubbery, moving much
more swiftly now, for as she went she seemed to gather speed, like a
stone which is rolled down a hill. It was as though whatever might be
attracting her, for I felt sure that she was being drawn by something,
acted more strongly upon her sleeping will as she drew nearer to it.
For a while I lost sight of her in the shadow of the tall trees. Then
suddenly I saw her again, standing quite still in an opening caused by
the blowing down in the gale of one of the avenue of elms that bordered
the back drive. But now she was no longer alone, for advancing towards
her were two cloaked figures in whom I recognized Harut and Marut.

There she stood with outstretched arms, and towards her, stealthily as
lions stalking a buck, came Harut and Marut. Moreover, between the naked
boughs of the fallen elm I caught sight of what looked like the outline
of a closed carriage standing upon the drive. Also I heard a horse
stamp upon the frosty ground. Round the edge of the little glade I ran,
keeping in the dark shadow, as I went cocking the pistol that was in my
pocket. Then suddenly I darted out and stood between Harut and Marut and
Miss Holmes.

Not a word passed between us. I think that all three of us
subconsciously were anxious not to awake the sleeping woman, knowing
that if we did so there would be a terrible scene. Only after motioning
to me to stand aside, of course in vain, Harut and Marut drew from their
robes curved and cruel-looking knives and bowed, for even now their
politeness did not forsake them. I bowed back and when I straightened
myself those enterprising Easterns found that I was covering the heart
of Harut with my pistol. Then with that perception which is part of the
mental outfit of the great, they saw that the game was up since I could
have shot them both before a knife touched me.

"You have won this time, O Watcher-by-Night," whispered Harut softly,
"but another time you will lose. That beautiful lady belongs to us and
the People of the White Kendah, for she is marked with the holy mark of
the young moon. The call of the Child of Heaven is heard in her heart,
and will bring her home to the Child as it has brought her to us
to-night. Now lead her hence still sleeping, O brave and clever one, so
well named Watcher-by-Night."

Then they were gone and presently I heard the sound of horses being
driven rapidly along the drive.

For a moment I hesitated as to whether I would or would not run in and
shoot those horses. Two considerations stayed me. The first was that
if I did so my pistol would be empty, or even if I shot one horse
and retained a barrel loaded, with it I could only kill a single man,
leaving myself defenceless against the knife of the other. The second
consideration was that now as before I did not wish to wake up Miss
Holmes.

I crept to her and not knowing what else to do, took hold of one of her
outstretched hands. She turned and came with me at once as though she
knew me, remaining all the while fast asleep. Thus we went back to the
house, through the still open door, up the stairway straight to her own
room, on the threshold of which I loosed her hand. The room was dark and
I could see nothing, but I listened until I heard a sound as of a person
throwing herself upon the bed and drawing up the blankets. Then knowing
that she was safe for a while, I shut the door, which opened outwards
as doors of ancient make sometimes do, and set against it a little table
that stood in the passage.

Next, after reflecting for a minute, the circumstances being awkward in
many ways, I went to my room and lit a candle. Obviously it was my
duty to inform Lord Ragnall of what had happened and that as soon as
possible. But I had no idea in what part of that huge building his
sleeping place might be, nor, for patent reasons, was it desirable
that I should disturb the house and so create talk. In this dilemma I
remembered that Lord Ragnall's confidential servant, Mr. Savage, when he
conducted me to my room on the previous night, which he made a point of
doing perhaps because he wished to talk over the matter of the snakes
that had found their way into his pockets, had shown me a bell in it
which he said rang outside his door. He called it an "emergency bell." I
remarked idly that it was improbable that I should have any occasion for
its use.

"Who knows, sir?" said Mr. Savage prophetically. "There are folk who say
that this old castle is haunted, which after what I have seen to-night
I can well believe. If you should chance to meet a ghost looking, let us
say, like those black villains, Harum and Scarum, or whatever they call
themselves--well, sir, two's better company than one."

I considered that bell but was loath to ring it for the reasons I have
given. Then I went outside the room and looked. As I had hoped might be
the case, there ran the wire on the face of the wall connected along its
length by other wires with the various rooms it passed.

I set to work and followed that wire. It was not an easy job; indeed
once or twice it reminded me of that story of the old Greek hero who
found his way through a labyrinth by means of a silken thread. I forget
whether it were a bull or a lady he was looking for, but with care and
perseverance he found one or the other, or it may have been both.

Down staircases and various passages I went with my eye glued upon the
wire, which occasionally got mixed up with other wires, till at length
it led me through a swing door covered with red baize into what appeared
to be a modern annexe to the castle. Here at last it terminated on
the spring of an alarming-looking and deep-throated bell that hung
immediately over a certain door.

On this door I knocked, hoping that it might be that of Mr. Savage and
praying earnestly that it did not enclose the chaste resting-place of
the cook or any other female. Too late, I mean after I had knocked,
it occurred to me that if so my position would be painful to a degree.
However in this particular Fortune stood my friend, which does not
always happen to the virtuous. For presently I heard a voice which I
recognized as that of Mr. Savage, asking, not without a certain quaver
in its tone,

"Who the devil is that?"

"Me," I replied, being flustered.

"'Me' won't do," said the voice. "'Me' might be Harum or it might be
Scarum, or it might be someone worse. Who's 'Me'?"

"Allan Quatermain, you idiot," I whispered through the keyhole.

"Anna who? Well, never mind. Go away, Hanna. I'll talk to you in the
morning."

Then I kicked the door, and at length, very cautiously, Mr. Savage
opened it.

"Good heavens, sir," he said, "what are you doing here, sir? Dressed
too, at this hour, and with the handle of a pistol sticking out of your
pocket--or is it--the head of a snake?" and he jumped back, a strange
and stately figure in a long white nightshirt which apparently he wore
over his underclothing.

I entered the room and shut the door, whereon he politely handed me a
chair, remarking,

"Is it ghosts, sir, or are you ill, or is it Harum and Scarum, of whom
I have been thinking all night? Very cold too, sir, being afraid to pull
up the bedclothes for fear lest there might be more reptiles in them."
He pointed to his dress-coat hanging on the back of another chair with
both the pockets turned inside out, adding tragically, "To think, sir,
that this new coat has been a nest of snakes, which I have hated like
poison from a child, and me almost a teetotaller!"

"Yes," I said impatiently, "it's Harum and Scarum as you call them. Take
me to Lord Ragnall's bedroom at once."

"Ah! sir, burgling, I suppose, or mayhap worse," he exclaimed as he
threw on some miscellaneous garments and seized a life-preserver which
hung upon a hook. "Now I'm ready, only I hope they have left their
snakes behind. I never could bear the sight of a snake, and they seem to
know it--the brutes."

In due course we reached Lord Ragnall's room, which Mr. Savage entered,
and in answer to a stifled inquiry exclaimed,

"Mr. Allan Quatermain to see you, my lord."

"What is it, Quatermain?" he asked, sitting up in bed and yawning. "Have
you had a nightmare?"

"Yes," I answered, and Savage having left us and shut the door, I told
him everything as it is written down.

"Great heavens!" he exclaimed when I had finished. "If it had not been
for you and your intuition and courage----"

"Never mind me," I interrupted. "The question is--what should be done
now? Are you going to try to arrest these men, or will you--hold your
tongue and merely cause them to be watched?"

"Really I don't know. Even if we can catch them the whole story would
sound so strange in a law-court, and all sorts of things might be
suggested."

"Yes, Lord Ragnall, it would sound so strange that I beg you will come
at once to see the evidences of what I tell you, before rain or snow
obliterates them, bringing another witness with you. Lady Longden,
perhaps."

"Lady Longden! Why one might as well write to _The Times_. I have it!
There's Savage. He is faithful and can be silent."

So Savage was called in and, while Lord Ragnall dressed himself
hurriedly, told the outline of his story under pain of instant dismissal
if he breathed a word. Really to watch his face was as good as a play.
So astonished was he that all he could ejaculate was--

"The black-hearted villains! Well, they ain't friendly with snakes for
nothing."

Then having made sure that Miss Holmes was still in her room, we went
down the twisting stair and through the side doorway, locking the door
after us. By now the dawn was breaking and there was enough light to
enable me in certain places where the snow that fell after the gale
remained, to show Lord Ragnall and Savage the impress of the little
bedroom slippers which Miss Holmes wore, and of my stockinged feet
following after.

In the plantation things were still easier, for every detail of the
movements of the four of us could be traced. Moreover, on the back drive
was the spoor of the horses and the marks of the wheels of the carriage
that had been brought for the purposes of the abduction. Also my great
good fortune, for this seemed to prove my theory, we found a parcel
wrapped in native linen that appeared to have fallen out of the carriage
when Harut and Marut made their hurried escape, as one of the wheels had
gone over it. It contained an Eastern woman's dress and veil, intended,
I suppose, to be used in disguising Miss Holmes, who thence-forward
would have appeared to be the wife or daughter of one of the abductors.

Savage discovered this parcel, which he lifted only to drop it with a
yell, for underneath it lay a torpid snake, doubtless one of those that
had been used in the performance.

Of these discoveries and many other details, on our return to the house,
Lord Ragnall made full notes in a pocket-book, that when completed were
signed by all three of us.

There is not much more to tell, that is of this part of the story. The
matter was put into the hands of detectives who discovered that the
Easterns had driven to London, where all traces of the carriage which
conveyed them was lost. They, however, embarked upon a steamer called
the _Antelope_, together with two native women, who probably had been
provided to look after Miss Holmes, and sailed that very afternoon for
Egypt. Thither, of course, it was useless to follow them in those days,
even if it had been advisable to do so.



To return to Miss Holmes. She came down to breakfast looking very
charming but rather pale. Again I sat next to her and took some
opportunity to ask her how she had rested that night.

She replied, Very well and yet very ill, since, although she never
remembered sleeping more soundly in her life, she had experienced all
sorts of queer dreams of which she could remember nothing at all, a
circumstance that annoyed her much, as she was sure that they were most
interesting. Then she added,

"Do you know, Mr. Quatermain, I found a lot of mud on my dressing-gown
this morning, and my bedroom slippers were also a mass of mud and wet
through. How do you account for that? It is just as though I had been
walking about outside in my sleep, which is absurd, as I never did such
a thing in my life."

Not feeling equal to the invention of any convincing explanation of
these phenomena, I upset the marmalade pot on to the table in such a way
that some of it fell upon her dress, and then covered my retreat with
profuse apologies. Understanding my dilemma, for he had heard something
of this talk, Lord Ragnall came to my aid with a startling statement of
which I forget the purport, and thus that crisis passed.

Shortly after breakfast Scroope announced to Miss Manners that her
carriage was waiting, and we departed. Before I went, as it chanced,
I had a few private words with my host, with Miss Holmes, and with the
magnificent Mr. Savage. To the last, by the way, I offered a tip which
he refused, saying that after all we had gone through together he could
not allow "money to come between us," by which he meant, to pass from my
pocket to his. Lord Ragnall asked me for both my English and my African
addresses, which he noted in his pocket-book. Then he said,

"Really, Quatermain, I feel as though I had known you for years instead
of three days; if you will allow me I will add that I should like to
know a great deal more of you." (He was destined to do so, poor fellow,
though neither of us knew it at the time.) "If ever you come to England
again I hope you will make this house your headquarters."

"And if ever you come to South Africa, Lord Ragnall, I hope you will
make my four-roomed shanty on the Berea at Durban your headquarters. You
will get a hearty welcome there and something to eat, but little more."

"There is nothing I should like better, Quatermain. Circumstances have
put me in a certain position in this country, still to tell you the
truth there is a great deal about the life of which I grow very tired.
But you see I am going to be married, and that I fear means an end
of travelling, since naturally my wife will wish to take her place in
society and the rest."

"Of course," I replied, "for it is not every young lady who has the luck
to become an English peeress with all the etceteras, is it? Still I
am not so sure but that Miss Holmes will take to travelling some day,
although I _am_ sure that she would do better to stay at home."

He looked at me curiously, then asked,

"You don't think there is anything really serious in all this business,
do you?"

"I don't know what to think," I answered, "except that you will do well
to keep a good eye upon your wife. What those Easterns tried to do last
night and, I think, years ago, they may try again soon, or years hence,
for evidently they are patient and determined men with much to win.
Also it is a curious coincidence that she should have that mark upon her
which appeals so strongly to Messrs. Harut and Marut, and, to be brief,
she is in some ways different from most young women. As she said to
me herself last night, Lord Ragnall, we are surrounded by mysteries;
mysteries of blood, of inherited spirit, of this world generally in
which it is probable that we all descended from quite a few common
ancestors. And beyond these are other mysteries of the measureless
universe to which we belong, that may already be exercising their strong
and secret influences upon us, as perhaps, did we know it, they have
done for millions of years in the Infinite whence we came and whither we
go."

I suppose I spoke somewhat solemnly, for he said,

"Do you know you frighten me a little, though I don't quite understand
what you mean." Then we parted.

With Miss Holmes my conversation was shorter. She remarked,

"It has been a great pleasure to me to meet you. I do not remember
anybody with whom I have found myself in so much sympathy--except one
of course. It is strange to think that when we meet again I shall be a
married woman."

"I do not suppose we shall ever meet again, Miss Holmes. Your life is
here, mine is in the wildest places of a wild land far away."

"Oh! yes, we shall," she answered. "I learned this and lots of other
things when I held my head in that smoke last night."

Then we also parted.

Lastly Mr. Savage arrived with my coat. "Goodbye, Mr. Quatermain," he
said. "If I forget everything else I shall never forget you and those
villains, Harum and Scarum and their snakes. I hope it won't be my lot
ever to clap eyes on them again, Mr. Quatermain, and yet somehow I don't
feel so sure of that."

"Nor do I," I replied, with a kind of inspiration, after which followed
the episode of the rejected tip.



CHAPTER VI

THE BONA FIDE GOLD MINE

Fully two years had gone by since I bade farewell to Lord Ragnall and
Miss Holmes, and when the curtain draws up again behold me seated on the
stoep of my little house at Durban, plunged in reflection and very sad
indeed. Why I was sad I will explain presently.

In that interval of time I had heard once or twice about Lord Ragnall.
Thus I received from Scroope a letter telling of his lordship's marriage
with Miss Holmes, which, it appeared, had been a very fine affair
indeed, quite one of the events of the London season. Two Royalties
attended the ceremony, a duke was the best man, and the presents
according to all accounts were superb and of great value, including a
priceless pearl necklace given by the bridegroom to the bride. A cutting
from a society paper which Scroope enclosed dwelt at length upon the
splendid appearance of the bridegroom and the sweet loveliness of the
bride. Also it described her dress in language which was Greek to me.
One sentence, however, interested me intensely.

It ran: "The bride occasioned some comment by wearing only one ornament,
although the Ragnall family diamonds, which have not seen the light for
many years, are known to be some of the finest in the country. It was
a necklace of what appeared to be large but rather roughly polished
rubies, to which hung a small effigy of an Egyptian god also fashioned
from a ruby. It must be added that although of an unusual nature on
such an occasion this jewel suited her dark beauty well. Lady Ragnall's
selection of it, however, from the many she possesses was the cause of
much speculation. When asked by a friend why she had chosen it, she is
reported to have said that it was to bring her good fortune."

Now why did she wear the barbaric marriage gift of Harut and Marut in
preference to all the other gems at her disposal, I wondered. The thing
was so strange as to be almost uncanny.

The second piece of information concerning this pair reached me through
the medium of an old _Times_ newspaper which I received over a year
later. It was to the effect that a son and heir had been born to Lord
Ragnall and that both mother and child were doing well.

So there's the end to a very curious little story, thought I to myself.



Well, during those two years many things befell me. First of all, in
company with my old friend Sir Stephen Somers, I made the expedition to
Pongoland in search of the wonderful orchid which he desired to add
to his collection. I have already written of that journey and our
extraordinary adventures, and need therefore allude to it no more here,
except to say that during the course of it I was sorely tempted to
travel to the territory north of the lake in which the Pongos dwelt.
Much did I desire to see whether Messrs. Harut and Marut would in truth
appear to conduct me to the land where the wonderful elephant which was
supposed to be animated by an evil spirit was waiting to be killed by
my rifle. However, I resisted the impulse, as indeed our circumstances
obliged me to do. In the end we returned safely to Durban, and here I
came to the conclusion that never again would I risk my life on such mad
expeditions.

Owing to circumstances which I have detailed elsewhere I was now in
possession of a considerable sum of cash, and this I determined to lay
out in such a fashion as to make me independent of hunting and trading
in the wilder regions of Africa. As usual when money is forthcoming, an
opportunity soon presented itself in the shape of a gold mine which had
been discovered on the borders of Zululand, one of the first that was
ever found in those districts. A Jew trader named Jacob brought it to
my notice and offered me a half share if I would put up the capital
necessary to work the mine. I made a journey of inspection and convinced
myself that it was indeed a wonderful proposition. I need not enter into
the particulars nor, to tell the truth, have I any desire to do so, for
the subject is still painful to me, further than to say that this Jew
and some friends of his panned out visible gold before my eyes and
then revealed to me the magnificent quartz reef from which, as they
demonstrated, it had been washed in the bygone ages of the world. The
news of our discovery spread like wildfire, and as, whatever else I
might be, everyone knew that I was honest, in the end a small company
was formed with Allan Quatermain, Esq., as the chairman of the Bona Fide
Gold Mine, Limited.

Oh! that company! Often to this day I dream of it when I have
indigestion.

Our capital was small, L10,000, of which the Jew, who was well named
Jacob, and his friends, took half (for nothing of course) as the
purchase price of their rights. I thought the proportion large and said
so, especially after I had ascertained that these rights had cost them
exactly three dozen of square-face gin, a broken-down wagon, four cows
past the bearing age and L5 in cash. However, when it was pointed out
to me that by their peculiar knowledge and genius they had located and
provided the value of a property of enormous potential worth, moreover
that this sum was to be paid to them in scrip which would only be
realizable when success was assured and not in money, after a night of
anxious consideration I gave way.

Personally, before I consented to accept the chairmanship, which carried
with it a salary of L100 a year (which I never got), I bought and paid
for in cash, shares to the value of L1,000 sterling. I remember that
Jacob and his friends seemed surprised at this act of mine, as they
had offered to give me five hundred of their shares for nothing "in
consideration of the guarantee of my name." These I refused, saying that
I would not ask others to invest in a venture in which I had no actual
money stake; whereon they accepted my decision, not without enthusiasm.
In the end the balance of L4,000 was subscribed and we got to work. Work
is a good name for it so far as I was concerned, for never in all my
days have I gone through so harrowing a time.

We began by washing a certain patch of gravel and obtained results which
seemed really astonishing. So remarkable were they that on publication
the shares rose to 10s. premium. Jacob and Co. took advantage of
this opportunity to sell quite half of their bonus holding to eager
applicants, explaining to me that they did so not for personal profit,
which they scorned, but "to broaden the basis of the undertaking by
admitting fresh blood."

It was shortly after this boom that the gravel surrounding the rich
patch became very gravelly indeed, and it was determined that we should
buy a small battery and begin to crush the quartz from which the gold
was supposed to flow in a Pactolian stream. We negotiated for that
battery through a Cape Town firm of engineers--but why follow the
melancholy business in all its details? The shares began to decrease in
value. They shrank to their original price of L1, then to 15s., then
to 10s. Jacob, he was managing director, explained to me that it
was necessary to "support the market," as he was already doing to an
enormous extent, and that I as chairman ought to take a "lead in this
good work" in order to show my faith in the concern.

I took a lead to the extent of another L500, which was all that I could
afford. I admit that it was a shock to such trust in human nature as
remained to me when I discovered subsequently that the 1,000 shares
which I bought for my L500 had really been the property of Jacob,
although they appeared to be sold to me in various other names.

The crisis came at last, for before that battery was delivered our
available funds were exhausted, and no one would subscribe another
halfpenny. Debentures, it is true, had been issued and taken up to the
extent of about L1,000 out of the L5,000 offered, though who bought them
remained at the time a mystery to me. Ultimately a meeting was called to
consider the question of liquidating the company, and at this meeting,
after three sleepless nights, I occupied the chair.

When I entered the room, to my amazement I found that of the five
directors only one was present besides myself, an honest old retired
sea captain who had bought and paid for 300 shares. Jacob and the two
friends who represented his interests had, it appeared, taken ship that
morning for Cape Town, whither they were summoned to attend various
relatives who had been seized with illness.

It was a stormy meeting at first. I explained the position to the best
of my ability, and when I had finished was assailed with a number of
questions which I could not answer to the satisfaction of myself or
of anybody else. Then a gentleman, the owner of ten shares, who had
evidently been drinking, suggested in plain language that I had cheated
the shareholders by issuing false reports.

I jumped up in a fury and, although he was twice my size, asked him to
come and argue the question outside, whereon he promptly went away. This
incident excited a laugh, and then the whole truth came out. A man with
coloured blood in him stood up and told a story which was subsequently
proved to be true. Jacob had employed him to "salt" the mine by mixing
a heavy sprinkling of gold in the gravel we had first washed (which the
coloured man swore he did in innocence), and subsequently had defrauded
him of his wages. That was all. I sank back in my chair overcome. Then
some good fellow in the audience, who had lost money himself in the
affair and whom I scarcely knew, got up and made a noble speech which
went far to restore my belief in human nature.

He said in effect that it was well known that I, Allan Quatermain,
after working like a horse in the interests of the shareholders, had
practically ruined myself over this enterprise, and that the real thief
was Jacob, who had made tracks for the Cape, taking with him a large
cash profit resulting from the sale of shares. Finally he concluded by
calling for "three cheers for our honest friend and fellow sufferer, Mr.
Allan Quatermain."

Strange to say the audience gave them very heartily indeed. I thanked
them with tears in my eyes, saying that I was glad to leave the room as
poor as I had ever been, but with a reputation which my conscience as
well as their kindness assured me was quite unblemished.

Thus the winding-up resolution was passed and that meeting came to
an end. After shaking hands with my deliverer from a most unpleasant
situation, I walked homewards with the lightest heart in the world. My
money was gone, it was true; also my over-confidence in others had led
me to make a fool of myself by accepting as fact, on what I believed
to be the evidence of my eyes, that which I had not sufficient expert
knowledge to verify. But my honour was saved, and as I have again and
again seen in the course of life, money is nothing when compared with
honour, a remark which Shakespeare made long ago, though like many other
truths this is one of which a full appreciation can only be gained by
personal experience.

Not very far from the place where our meeting had been held I passed a
side street then in embryo, for it had only one or two houses situated
in their gardens and a rather large and muddy sluit of water running
down one side at the edge of the footpath. Save for two people this
street was empty, but that pair attracted my attention. They were
a white man, in whom I recognized the stout and half-intoxicated
individual who had accused me of cheating the company and then departed,
and a withered old Hottentot who at that distance, nearly a hundred
yards away, much reminded me of a certain Hans.

This Hans, I must explain, was originally a servant of my father, who
was a missionary in the Cape Colony, and had been my companion in
many adventures. Thus in my youth he and I alone escaped when Dingaan
murdered Retief and his party of Boers,[*] and he had been one of my
party in our quest for the wonderful orchid, the record of which I have
written down in "The Holy Flower."

     [*] See the book called "Marie."--Editor.

Hans had his weak points, among which must be counted his love of
liquor, but he was a gallant and resourceful old fellow as indeed he had
amply proved upon that orchid-seeking expedition. Moreover he loved me
with a love passing the love of women. Now, having acquired some
money in a way I need not stop to describe--for is it not written
elsewhere?--he was settled as a kind of little chief on a farm not very
far from Durban, where he lived in great honour because of the fame of
his deeds.

The white man and Hans, if Hans it was, were engaged in violent
altercation whereof snatches floated to me on the breeze, spoken in the
Dutch tongue.

"You dirty little Hottentot!" shouted the white man, waving a stick,
"I'll cut the liver out of you. What do you mean by nosing about after
me like a jackal?" And he struck at Hans, who jumped aside.

"Son of a fat white sow," screamed Hans in answer (for the moment I
heard his voice I knew that it was Hans), "did you dare to call the Baas
a thief? Yes, a thief, O Rooter in the mud, O Feeder on filth and worms,
O Hog of the gutter--the Baas, the clipping of whose nail is worth
more than you and all your family, he whose honour is as clear as the
sunlight and whose heart is cleaner than the white sand of the sea."

"Yes, I did," roared the white man; "for he got my money in the gold
mine."

"Then, hog, why did you run away. Why did you not wait to tell him so
outside that house?"

"I'll teach you about running away, you little yellow dog," replied the
other, catching Hans a cut across the ribs.

"Oh! you want to see me run, do you?" said Hans, skipping back a few
yards with wonderful agility. "Then look!"

Thus speaking he lowered his head and charged like a buffalo. Fair
in the middle he caught that white man, causing him to double up, fly
backwards and land with a most resounding splash in the deepest part of
the muddy sluit. Here I may remark that, as his shins are the weakest,
a Hottentot's head is by far the hardest and most dangerous part of him.
Indeed it seems to partake of the nature of a cannon ball, for,
without more than temporary disturbance to its possessor, I have seen a
half-loaded wagon go over one of them on a muddy road.

Having delivered this home thrust Hans bolted round a corner and
disappeared, while I waited trembling to see what happened to his
adversary. To my relief nearly a minute later he crept out of the sluit
covered with mud and dripping with water and hobbled off slowly down the
street, his head so near his feet that he looked as though he had been
folded in two, and his hands pressed upon what I believe is medically
known as the diaphragm. Then I also went upon my way roaring with
laughter. Often I have heard Hottentots called the lowest of mankind,
but, reflected I, they can at any rate be good friends to those who
treat them well--a fact of which I was to have further proof ere long.

By the time I reached my house and had filled my pipe and sat myself
down in the dilapidated cane chair on the veranda, that natural reaction
set in which so often follows rejoicing at the escape from a great
danger. It was true that no one believed I had cheated them over that
thrice-accursed gold mine, but how about other matters?

I mused upon the Bible narrative of Jacob and Esau with a new and very
poignant sympathy for Esau. I wondered what would become of my Jacob.
Jacob, I mean the original, prospered exceedingly as a result of
his deal in porridge, and, as thought I, probably would his artful
descendant who so appropriately bore his name. As a matter of fact I do
not know what became of him, but bearing his talents in mind I think
it probable that, like Van Koop, under some other patronymic he has now
been rewarded with a title by the British Government. At any rate I
had eaten the porridge in the shape of worthless but dearly purchased
shares, after labouring hard at the chase of the golden calf, while
brother Jacob had got my inheritance, or rather my money. Probably he
was now counting it over in sovereigns upon the ship and sniggering as
he thought of the shareholders' meeting with me in the chair. Well,
he was a thief and would run his road to whatever end is appointed for
thieves, so why should I bother my head more about him? As I had kept my
honour--let him take my savings.

But I had a son to support, and now what was I to do with scarcely three
hundred pounds, a good stock of guns and this little Durban property
left to me in the world? Commerce in all its shapes I renounced once
and for ever. It was too high--or too low--for me; so it would seem that
there remained to me only my old business of professional hunting. Once
again I must seek those adventures which I had forsworn when my evil
star shone so brightly over a gold mine. What was it to be? Elephants, I
supposed, since these are the only creatures worth killing from a money
point of view. But most of my old haunts had been more or less shot out.
The competition of younger professionals, of wandering backveld Boers
and even of poaching natives who had obtained guns, was growing severe.
If I went at all I should have to travel farther afield.

Whilst I meditated thus, turning over the comparative advantages
or disadvantages of various possible hunting grounds in my mind, my
attention was caught by a kind of cough that seemed to proceed from the
farther side of a large gardenia bush. It was not a human cough, but
rather resembled that made by a certain small buck at night, probably
to signal to its mate, which of course it could not be as there were no
buck within several miles. Yet I knew it came from a human throat, for
had I not heard it before in many an hour of difficulty and danger?

"Draw near, Hans," I said in Dutch, and instantly out of a clump of
aloes that grew in front of the pomegranate hedge, crept the withered
shape of the old Hottentot, as a big yellow snake might do. Why he
should choose this method of advance instead of that offered by the
garden path I did not know, but it was quite in accordance with his
secretive nature, inherited from a hundred generations of ancestors who
spent their lives avoiding the observation of murderous foes.

He squatted down in front of me, staring in a vacant way at the fierce
ball of the westering sun without blinking an eyelid, just as a vulture
does.

"You look to me as though you had been fighting, Hans," I said. "The
crown of your hat is knocked out; you are splashed with mud and there is
the mark of a stick upon your left side."

"Yes, Baas. You are right as usual, Baas. I had a quarrel with a man
about sixpence that he owed me, and knocked him over with my head,
forgetting to take my hat off first. Therefore it is spoiled, for which
I am sorry, as it was quite a new hat, not two years old. The Baas gave
it me. He bought it in a store at Utrecht when we were coming back from
Pongoland."

"Why do you lie to me?" I asked "You have been fighting a white man
and for more than sixpence. You knocked him into a sluit and the mud
splashed up over you."

"Yes, Baas, that is so. Your spirit speaks truly to you of the matter.
Yet it wanders a little from the path, since I fought the white man for
less than sixpence. I fought him for love, which is nothing at all."

"Then you are even a bigger fool than I took you for, Hans. What do you
want now?"

"I want to borrow a pound, Baas. The white man will take me before
the magistrate, and I shall be fined a pound, or fourteen days in the
_trunk_ (i.e. jail). It is true that the white man struck me first, but
the magistrate will not believe the word of a poor old Hottentot against
his, and I have no witness. He will say, 'Hans, you were drunk again.
Hans, you are a liar and deserve to be flogged, which you will be next
time. Pay a pound and ten shillings more, which is the price of good
white justice, or go to the _trunk_ for fourteen days and make baskets
there for the great Queen to use.' Baas, I have the price of the justice
which is ten shillings, but I want to borrow the pound for the fine."

"Hans, I think that just now you are better able to lend me a pound than
I am to lend one to you. My bag is empty, Hans."

"Is it so, Baas? Well, it does not matter. If necessary I can make
baskets for the great white Queen to put her food in, for fourteen days,
or mats on which she will wipe her feet. The _trunk_ is not such a bad
place, Baas. It gives time to think of the white man's justice and to
thank the Great One in the Sky, because the little sins one did not do
have been found out and punished, while the big sins one did do,
such as--well, never mind, Baas--have not been found out at all. Your
reverend father, the Predikant, always taught me to have a thankful
heart, Baas, and when I remember that I have only been in the _trunk_
for three months altogether who, if all were known, ought to have been
there for years, I remember his words, Baas."

"Why should you go to the _trunk_ at all, Hans, when you are rich and
can pay a fine, even if it were a hundred pounds?"

"A month or two ago it is true I was rich, Baas, but now I am poor. I
have nothing left except ten shillings."

"Hans," I said severely, "you have been gambling again; you have been
drinking again. You have sold your property and your cattle to pay your
gambling debts and to buy square-face gin."

"Yes, Baas, and for no good it seems; though it is not true that I have
been drinking. I sold the land and the cattle for L650, Baas, and with
the money I bought other things."

"What did you buy?" I said.

He fumbled first in one pocket of his coat and then in the other, and
ultimately produced a crumpled and dirty-looking piece of paper that
resembled a bank-note. I took and examined this document and next minute
nearly fainted. It certified that Hans was the proprietor of I know not
how many debentures or shares, I forget which they were, in the Bona
Fide Gold Mine, Limited, that same company of which I was the unlucky
chairman, in consideration for which he had paid a sum of over six
hundred and fifty pounds.

"Hans," I said feebly, "from whom did you buy this?"

"From the baas with the hooked nose, Baas. He who was named Jacob, after
the great man in the Bible of whom your father, the Predikant, used to
tell us, that one who was so slim and dressed himself up in a goatskin
and gave his brother mealie porridge when he was hungry, after he had
come in from shooting buck, Baas, and got his farm and cattle, Baas, and
then went to Heaven up a ladder, Baas."

"And who told you to buy them, Hans?"

"Sammy, Baas, he who was your cook when we went to Pongoland, he who hid
in the mealie-pit when the slavers burned Beza-Town and came out half
cooked like a fowl from the oven. The Baas Jacob stopped at Sammy's
hotel, Baas, and told him that unless he bought bits of paper like this,
of which he had plenty, you would be brought before the magistrate and
sent to the _trunk_, Baas. So Sammy bought some, Baas, but not many for
he had only a little money, and the Baas Jacob paid him for all he ate
and drank with other bits of paper. Then Sammy came to me and showed me
what it was my duty to do, reminding me that your reverend father, the
Predikant, had left you in my charge till one of us dies, whether you
were well or ill and whether you got better or got worse--just like a
white wife, Baas. So I sold the farm and the cattle to a friend of the
Baas Jacob's, at a very low price, Baas, and that is all the story."

I heard and, to tell the honest truth, almost I wept, since the thought
of the sacrifice which this poor old Hottentot had made for my sake on
the instigation of a rogue utterly overwhelmed me.

"Hans," I asked recovering myself, "tell me what was that new name which
the Zulu captain Mavovo gave you before he died, I mean after you had
fired Beza-Town and caught Hassan and his slavers in their own trap?"

Hans, who had suddenly found something that interested him extremely
out at sea, perhaps because he did not wish to witness my grief, turned
round slowly and answered:

"Mavovo named me Light-in-Darkness, and by that name the Kafirs know me
now, Baas, though some of them call me Lord-of-the-Fire."

"Then Mavovo named you well, for indeed, Hans, you shine like a light in
the darkness of my heart. I whom you think wise am but a fool, Hans, who
has been tricked by a _vernuker_, a common cheat, and he has tricked you
and Sammy as well. But as he has shown me that man can be very vile, you
have shown me that he can be very noble; and, setting the one against
the other, my spirit that was in the dust rises up once more like a
withered flower after rain. Light-in-Darkness, although if I had ten
thousand pounds I could never pay you back--since what you have given
me is more than all the gold in the world and all the land and all the
cattle--yet with honour and with love I will try to pay you," and I held
out my hand to him.

He took it and pressed it against his wrinkled old forehead, then
answered:

"Talk no more of that, Baas, for it makes me sad, who am so happy. How
often have you forgiven me when I have done wrong? How often have you
not flogged me when I should have been flogged for being drunk and other
things--yes, even when once I stole some of your powder and sold it to
buy square-face gin, though it is true I knew it was bad powder, not fit
for you to use? Did I thank you then overmuch? Why therefore should you
thank me who have done but a little thing, not really to help you but
because, as you know, I love gambling, and was told that this bit of
paper would soon be worth much more than I gave for it. If it had proved
so, should I have given you that money? No, I should have kept it myself
and bought a bigger farm and more cattle."

"Hans," I said sternly, "if you lie so hard, you will certainly go to
hell, as the Predikant, my father, often told you."

"Not if I lie for you, Baas, or if I do it doesn't matter, except that
then we should be separated by the big kloof written of in the Book,
especially as there I should meet the Baas Jacob, as I very much want to
do for a reason of my own."

Not wishing to pursue this somewhat unchristian line of thought, I
inquired of him why he felt happy.

"Oh! Baas," he answered with a twinkle in his little black eyes, "can't
you guess why? Now you have very little money left and I have none at
all. Therefore it is plain that we must go somewhere to earn money,
and I am glad of that, Baas, for I am tired of sitting on that farm out
there and growing mealies and milking cows, especially as I am too old
to marry, Baas, as you are tired of looking for gold where there isn't
any and singing sad songs in that house of meeting yonder like you did
this afternoon. Oh! the Great Father in the skies knew what He was about
when He sent the Baas Jacob our way. He beat us for our good, Baas, as
He does always if we could only understand."

I reflected to myself that I had not often heard the doctrine of the
Church better or more concisely put, but I only said:

"That is true, Hans, and I thank you for the lesson, the second you have
taught me to-day. But where are we to go to, Hans? Remember, it must be
elephants."

He suggested some places; indeed he seemed to have come provided with a
list of them, and I sat silent making no comment. At length he finished
and squatted there before me, chewing a bit of tobacco I had given him,
and looking up at me interrogatively with his head on one side, for all
the world like a dilapidated and inquisitive bird.

"Hans," I said, "do you remember a story I told you when you came to see
me a year or more ago, about a tribe called the Kendah in whose country
there is said to be a great cemetery of elephants which travel there
to die from all the land about? A country that lies somewhere to the
north-east of the lake island on which the Pongo used to dwell?"

"Yes, Baas."

"And you said, I think, that you had never heard of such a people."

"No, Baas, I never said anything at all. I have heard a good deal about
them."

"Then why did you not tell me so before, you little idiot?" I asked
indignantly.

"What was the good, Baas? You were hunting gold then, not ivory. Why
should I make you unhappy, and waste my own breath by talking about
beautiful things which were far beyond the reach of either of us, far as
that sky?"

"Don't ask fool's questions but tell me what you know, Hans. Tell me at
once."

"This, Baas: When we were up at Beza-Town after we came back from
killing the gorilla-god, and the Baas Stephen your friend lay sick, and
there was nothing else to do, I talked with everyone I could find worth
talking to, and they were not many, Baas. But there was one very old
woman who was not of the Mazitu race and whose husband and children
were all dead, but whom the people in the town looked up to and feared
because she was wise and made medicines out of herbs, and told fortunes.
I used to go to see her. She was quite blind, Baas, and fond of talking
with me--which shows how wise she was. I told her all about the Pongo
gorilla-god, of which already she knew something. When I had done she
said that he was as nothing compared with a certain god that she
had seen in her youth, seven tens of years ago, when she became
marriageable. I asked her for that story, and she spoke it thus:

"Far away to the north and east live a people called the Kendah, who are
ruled over by a sultan. They are a very great people and inhabit a most
fertile country. But all round their country the land is desolate and
manless, peopled only by game, for the reason that they will suffer none
to dwell there. That is why nobody knows anything about them: he that
comes across the wilderness into that land is killed and never returns
to tell of it.

"She told me also that she was born of this people, but fled because
their sultan wished to place her in his house of women, which she did
not desire. For a long while she wandered southwards, living on roots
and berries, till she came to desert land and at last, worn out, lay
down to die. Then she was found by some of the Mazitu who were on an
expedition seeking ostrich feathers for war-plumes. They gave her food
and, seeing that she was fair, brought her back to their country, where
one of them married her. But of her own land she uttered only lying
words to them because she feared that if she told the truth the gods who
guard its secrets would be avenged on her, though now when she was near
to death she dreaded them no more, since even the Kendah gods cannot
swim through the waters of death. That is all she said about her journey
because she had forgotten the rest."

"Bother her journey, Hans. What did she say about her god and the Kendah
people?"

"This, Baas: that the Kendah have not one god but two, and not one ruler
but two. They have a good god who is a child-fetish" (here I started)
"that speaks through the mouth of an oracle who is always a woman. If
that woman dies the god does not speak until they find another woman
bearing certain marks which show that she holds the spirit of the god.
Before the woman dies she always tells the priests in what land they are
to look for her who is to come after her; but sometimes they cannot find
her and then trouble falls because 'the Child has lost its tongue,' and
the people become the prey of the other god that never dies."

"And what is that god, Hans?"

"That god, Baas, is an elephant" (here I started again), "a very bad
elephant to which human sacrifice is offered. I think, Baas, that it is
the devil wearing the shape of an elephant, at least that is what she
said. Now the sultan is a worshipper of the god that dwells in the
elephant Jana" (here I positively whistled) "and so are most of the
people, indeed all those among them who are black. For once far away
in the beginning the Kendah were two peoples, but the lighter-coloured
people who worshipped the Child came down from the north and conquered
the black people, bringing the Child with them, or so I understood her,
Baas, thousands and thousands of years ago when the world was young.
Since then they have flowed on side by side like two streams in the same
channel, never mixing, for each keeps its own colour. Only, she said,
that stream which comes from the north grows weaker and that from the
south more strong."

"Then why does not the strong swallow up the weak?"

"Because the weak are still the pure and the wise, Baas, or so the old
vrouw declared. Because they worship the good while the others worship
the devil, and as your father the Predikant used to say, Good is the
cock which always wins the fight at the last, Baas. Yes, when he seems
to be dead he gets up again and kicks the devil in the stomach and
stands on him and crows, Baas. Also these northern folk are mighty
magicians. Through their Child-fetish they give rain and fat seasons and
keep away sickness, whereas Jana gives only evil gifts that have to do
with cruelty and war and so forth. Lastly, the priests who rule through
the Child have the secrets of wealth and ancient knowledge, whereas the
sultan and his followers have only the might of the spear. This was the
song which the old woman sang to me, Baas."

"Why did you not tell me of these matters when we were at Beza-Town and
I could have talked with her myself, Hans?"

"For two reasons, Baas. The first was that I feared, if I told you,
you would wish to go on to find these people, whereas I was tired of
travelling and wanted to come to Natal to rest. The second was that
on the night when the old woman finished telling me her story, she was
taken sick and died, and therefore it would have been no use to bring
you to see her. So I saved it up in my head until it was wanted.
Moreover, Baas, all the Mazitu declared that old woman to be the
greatest of liars."

"She was not altogether a liar, Hans. Hear what I have learned," and I
told him of the magic of Harut and Marut and of the picture that I had
seemed to see of the elephant Jana and of the prayer that Harut and
Marut had made to me, to all of which he listened quite stolidly. It is
not easy to astonish a Hottentot's brain, which often draws no accurate
dividing-line between the possible and what the modern world holds to be
impossible.

"Yes, Baas," he said when I had finished, "then it seems that the old
woman was not such a liar after all. Baas, when shall we start after
that hoard of dead ivory, and which way will you go? By Kilwa or through
Zululand? It should be settled soon because of the seasons."

After this we talked together for a long while, for with pockets as
empty as mine were then, the problem seemed difficult, if not insoluble.



CHAPTER VII

LORD RAGNALL'S STORY

That night Hans slept at my house, or rather outside of it in the
garden, or upon the stoep, saying that he feared arrest if he went to
the town, because of his quarrel with the white man. As it happened,
however, the other party concerned never stirred further in the
business, probably because he was too drunk to remember who had knocked
him into the sluit or whether he had gravitated thither by accident.

On the following morning we renewed our discussion, debating in detail
every possible method of reaching the Kendah people by help of such
means as we could command. Like that of the previous night it proved
somewhat abortive. Obviously such a long and hazardous expedition ought
to be properly financed and--where was the money? At length I came
to the conclusion that if we went at all it would be best, in the
circumstances, for Hans and myself to start alone with a Scotch cart
drawn by oxen and driven by a couple of Zulu hunters, which we could
lade with ammunition and a few necessaries.

Thus lightly equipped we might work through Zululand and thence
northward to Beza-Town, the capital of the Mazitu, where we were sure of
a welcome. After that we must take our chance. It was probable that
we should never reach the district where these Kendah were supposed to
dwell, but at least I might be able to kill some elephants in the wild
country beyond Zululand.

While we were talking I heard the gun fired which announced the arrival
of the English mail, and stepping to the end of the garden, saw the
steamer lying at anchor outside the bar. Then I went indoors to write a
few business letters which, since I had become immersed in the affairs
of that unlucky gold mine, had grown to be almost a daily task with me.
I had got through several with many groanings, for none were agreeable
in their tenor, when Hans poked his head through the window in a silent
kind of a way as a big snake might do, and said: "Baas, I think there
are two baases out on the road there who are looking for you. Very fine
baases whom I don't know."

"Shareholders in the Bona Fide Gold Mine," thought I to myself, then
added as I prepared to leave through the back door: "If they come here
tell them I am not at home. Tell them I left early this morning for the
Congo River to look for the sources of the Nile."

"Yes, Baas," said Hans, collapsing on to the stoep.

I went out through the back door, sorrowing that I, Allan Quatermain,
should have reached a rung in the ladder of life whence I shrank from
looking any stranger in the face, for fear of what he might have to say
to me. Then suddenly my pride asserted itself. After all what was there
of which I should be ashamed? I would face these irate shareholders as I
had faced the others yesterday.

I walked round the little house to the front garden which was planted
with orange trees, and up to a big moonflower bush, I believe _datura_
is its right name, that grew near the pomegranate hedge which separated
my domain from the road. There a conversation was in progress, if so it
may be called.

"_Ikona_" (that is: "I don't know"), "_Inkoosi_" (i.e. "Chief"), said
some Kafir in a stupid drawl.

Thereon a voice that instantly struck me as familiar, answered:

"We want to know where the great hunter lives."

"_Ikona_," said the Kafir.

"Can't you remember his native name?" asked another voice which was also
familiar to me, for I never forget voices though I am unable to place
them at once.

"The great hunter, Here-come-a-zany," said the first voice triumphantly,
and instantly there flashed back upon my mind a vision of the splendid
drawing-room at Ragnall Castle and of an imposing majordomo introducing
into it two white-robed, Arab-looking men.

"Mr. Savage, by the Heavens!" I muttered. "What in the name of goodness
is he doing here?"

"There," said the second voice, "your black friend has bolted, and no
wonder, for who can be called by such a name? If you had done what I
told you, Savage, and hired a white guide, it would have saved us a lot
of trouble. Why will you always think that you know better than anyone
else?"

"Seemed an unnecessary expense, my lord, considering we are travelling
incog., my lord."

"How long shall we travel 'incog.' if you persist in calling me my lord
at the top of your voice, Savage? There is a house beyond those trees;
go in and ask where----"

By this time I had reached the gate which I opened, remarking quietly,

"How do you do, Lord Ragnall? How do you do, Mr. Savage? I thought that
I recognized your voices on the road and came to see if I was right.
Please walk in; that is, if it is I whom you wish to visit."

As I spoke I studied them both, and observed that while Savage
looked much the same, although slightly out of place in these strange
surroundings, the time that had passed since we met had changed Lord
Ragnall a good deal. He was still a magnificent-looking man, one of
those whom no one that had seen him would ever forget, but now his
handsome face was stamped with some new seal of suffering. I felt at
once that he had become acquainted with grief. The shadow in his dark
eyes and a certain worn expression about the mouth told me that this was
so.

"Yes, Quatermain," he said as he took my hand, "it is you whom I have
travelled seven thousand miles to visit, and I thank God that I have
been so fortunate as to find you. I feared lest you might be dead, or
perhaps far away in the centre of Africa where I should never be able to
track you down."

"A week later perhaps you would not have found me, Lord Ragnall," I
answered, "but as it happens misfortune has kept me here."

"And misfortune has brought me here, Quatermain."

Then before I had time to answer Savage came up and we went into the
house.

"You are just in time for lunch," I said, "and as luck will have it
there is a good rock cod and a leg of oribe buck for you to eat. Boy,
set two more places."

"One more place, if you please, sir," said Savage. "I should prefer to
take my food afterwards."

"You will have to get over that in Africa," I muttered. Still I let him
have his way, with the result that presently the strange sight was seen
of the magnificent English majordomo standing behind my chair in
the little room and handing round the square-face as though it were
champagne. It was a spectacle that excited the greatest interest in my
primitive establishment and caused Hans with some native hangers-on
to gather at the window. However, Lord Ragnall took it as a matter of
course and I thought it better not to interfere.

When we had finished we went on to the stoep to smoke, leaving Savage
to eat his dinner, and I asked Lord Ragnall where his luggage was. He
replied that he had left it at the Customs. "Then," I said, "I will send
a native with Savage to arrange about getting it up here. If you do not
mind my rough accommodation there is a room for you, and your man can
pitch a tent in the garden."

After some demur he accepted with gratitude, and a little later Savage
and the native were sent off with a note to a man who hired out a
mule-cart.

"Now," I said when the gate had shut behind them, "will you tell me why
you have come to Africa?"

"Disaster," he replied. "Disaster of the worst sort."

"Is your wife dead, Lord Ragnall?"

"I do not know. I almost hope that she is. At any rate she is lost to
me."

An idea leapt to my mind to the effect that she might have run away with
somebody else, a thing which often happens in the world. But fortunately
I kept it to myself and only said,

"She was nearly lost once before, was she not?"

"Yes, when you saved her. Oh! if only you had been with us, Quatermain,
this would never have happened. Listen: About eighteen months ago she
had a son, a very beautiful child. She recovered well from the business
and we were as happy as two mortals could be, for we loved each other,
Quatermain, and God has blessed us in every way; we were so happy that
I remember her telling me that our great good fortune made her feel
afraid. One day last September when I was out shooting, she drove in a
little pony cart we had, with the nurse, and the child but no man, to
call on Mrs. Scroope who also had been recently confined. She often went
out thus, for the pony was an old animal and quiet as a sheep.

"By some cursed trick of fate it chanced that when they were passing
through the little town which you may remember near Ragnall, they met a
travelling menagerie that was going to some new encampment. At the head
of the procession marched a large bull elephant, which I discovered
afterwards was an ill-tempered brute that had already killed a man and
should never have been allowed upon the roads. The sight of the pony
cart, or perhaps a red cloak which my wife was wearing, as she always
liked bright colours, for some unknown reason seems to have infuriated
this beast, which trumpeted. The pony becoming frightened wheeled round
and overturned the cart right in front of the animal, but apparently
without hurting anybody. Then"--here he paused a moment and with
an effort continued--"that devil in beast's shape cocked its ears,
stretched out its long trunk, dragged the baby from the nurse's arms,
whirled it round and threw it high into the air, to fall crushed upon
the kerb. It sniffed at the body of the child, feeling it over with the
tip of its trunk, as though to make sure that it was dead. Next, once
more it trumpeted triumphantly, and without attempting to harm my wife
or anybody else, walked quietly past the broken cart and continued its
journey, until outside the town it was made fast and shot."

"What an awful story!" I said with a gasp.

"Yes, but there is worse to follow. My poor wife went off her head, with
the shock I suppose, for no physical injury could be found upon her. She
did not suffer in health or become violent, quite the reverse indeed
for her gentleness increased. She just went off her head. For hours at
a time she would sit silent and smiling, playing with the stones of that
red necklace which those conjurers gave her, or rather counting them,
as a nun might do with the beads of her rosary. At times, however, she
would talk, but always to the baby, as though it lay before her or she
were nursing it. Oh! Quatermain, it was pitiful, pitiful!

"I did everything I could. She was seen by three of the greatest
brain-doctors in England, but none of them was able to help. The only
hope they gave was that the fit might pass off as suddenly as it had
come. They said too that a thorough change of scene would perhaps be
beneficial, and suggested Egypt; that was in October. I did not take
much to the idea, I don't know why, and personally should not have
acceded to it had it not been for a curious circumstance. The last
consultation took place in the big drawing-room at Ragnall. When it was
over my wife remained with her mother at one end of the room while I and
the doctors talked together at the other, as I thought quite out of her
earshot. Presently, however, she called to me, saying in a perfectly
clear and natural voice:

"'Yes, George, I will go to Egypt. I should like to go to Egypt.' Then
she went on playing with the necklace and talking to the imaginary
child.

"Again on the following morning as I came into her room to kiss her, she
exclaimed,

"'When do we start for Egypt? Let it be soon.'

"With these sayings the doctors were very pleased, declaring that they
showed signs of a returning interest in life and begging me not to
thwart her wish.

"So I gave way and in the end we went to Egypt together with Lady
Longden, who insisted upon accompanying us although she is a wretched
sailor. At Cairo a large dahabeeyah that I had hired in advance, manned
by an excellent crew and a guard of four soldiers, was awaiting us. In
it we started up the Nile. For a month or more all went well; also to
my delight my wife seemed now and again to show signs of returning
intelligence. Thus she took some interest in the sculptures on the walls
of the temples, about which she had been very fond of reading when in
health. I remember that only a few days before the--the catastrophe,
she pointed out one of them to me, it was of Isis and the infant Horus,
saying, 'Look, George, the holy Mother and the holy Child,' and then
bowed to it reverently as she might have done to an altar. At length
after passing the First Cataract and the Island of Philae we came to
the temple of Abu Simbel, opposite to which our boat was moored. On the
following morning we explored the temple at daybreak and saw the sun
strike upon the four statues which sit at its farther end, spending
the rest of that day studying the colossal figures of Rameses that are
carved upon its face and watching some cavalcades of Arabs mounted upon
camels travelling along the banks of the Nile.

"My wife was unusually quiet that afternoon. For hour after hour she sat
still upon the deck, gazing first at the mouth of the rock-hewn temple
and the mighty figures which guard it and then at the surrounding
desert. Only once did I hear her speak and then she said, 'Beautiful,
beautiful! Now I am at home.' We dined and as there was no moon, went
to bed rather early after listening to the Sudanese singers as they sang
one of their weird chanties.

"My wife and her mother slept together in the state cabin of the
dahabeeyah, which was at the stern of the boat. My cabin, a small one,
was on one side of this, and that of the trained nurse on the other. The
crew and the guard were forward of the saloon. A gangway was fixed from
the side to the shore and over it a sentry stood, or was supposed to
stand. During the night a Khamsin wind began to blow, though lightly as
was to be expected at this season of the year. I did not hear it for, as
a matter of fact, I slept very soundly, as it appears did everyone else
upon the dahabeeyah, including the sentry as I suspect.

"The first thing I remember was the appearance of Lady Longden just
at daybreak at the doorway of my cabin and the frightened sound of her
voice asking if Luna, that is my wife, was with me. Then it transpired
that she had left her cabin clad in a fur cloak, evidently some
time before, as the bed in which she had been lying was quite cold.
Quatermain, we searched everywhere; we searched for four days, but from
that hour to this no trace whatever of her has been found."

"Have you any theory?" I asked.

"Yes, or at least all the experts whom we consulted have a theory. It is
that she slipped down the saloon in the dark, gained the deck and thence
fell or threw herself into the Nile, which of course would have carried
her body away. As you may have heard, the Nile is full of bodies. I
myself saw two of them during that journey. The Egyptian police
and others were so convinced that this was what had happened that,
notwithstanding the reward of a thousand pounds which I offered for any
valuable information, they could scarcely be persuaded to continue the
search."

"You said that a wind was blowing and I understand that the shores are
sandy, so I suppose that all footprints would have been filled in?"

He nodded and I went on. "What is your own belief? Do you think she was
drowned?"

He countered my query with another of:

"What do _you_ think?"

"I? Oh! although I have no right to say so, I don't think at all. I
am quite sure that she was _not_ drowned; that she is living at this
moment."

"Where?"

"As to that you had better inquire of our friends, Harut and Marut," I
answered dryly.

"What have you to go on, Quatermain? There is no clue."

"On the contrary I hold that there are a good many clues. The whole
English part of the story in which we were concerned, and the threats
those mysterious persons uttered are the first and greatest of these
clues. The second is the fact that your hiring of the dahabeeyah
regardless of expense was known a long time before your arrival in
Egypt, for I suppose you did so in your own name, which is not
exactly that of Smith or Brown. The third is your wife's sleep-walking
propensities, which would have made it quite easy for her to be drawn
ashore under some kind of mesmeric influence. The fourth is that you had
seen Arabs mounted on camels upon the banks of the Nile. The fifth is
the heavy sleep you say held everybody on board that particular night,
which suggests to me that your food may have been drugged. The sixth is
the apathy displayed by those employed in the search, which suggests to
me that some person or persons in authority may have been bribed, as is
common in the East, or perhaps frightened with threats of bewitchment.
The seventh is that a night was chosen when a wind blew which would
obliterate all spoor whether of men or of swiftly travelling camels.
These are enough to begin with, though doubtless if I had time to think
I could find others. You must remember too that although the journey
would be long, this country of the Kendah can doubtless be reached
from the Sudan by those who know the road, as well as from southern or
eastern Africa."

"Then you think that my wife has been kidnapped by those villains, Harut
and Marut?"

"Of course, though villains is a strong term to apply to them. They
might be quite honest men according to their peculiar lights, as indeed
I expect they are. Remember that they serve a god or a fetish, or
rather, as they believe, a god _in_ a fetish, who to them doubtless is
a very terrible master, especially when, as I understand, that god is
threatened by a rival god."

"Why do you say that, Quatermain?"

By way of answer I repeated to him the story which Hans said he had
heard from the old woman at Beza, the town of the Mazitu. Lord Ragnall
listened with the deepest interest, then said in an agitated voice:

"That is a very strange tale, but has it struck you, Quatermain, that
if your suppositions are correct, one of the most terrible circumstances
connected with my case is that our child should have chanced to come to
its dreadful death through the wickedness of an elephant?"

"That curious coincidence has struck me most forcibly, Lord Ragnall.
At the same time I do not see how it can be set down as more than
a coincidence, since the elephant which slaughtered your child was
certainly not that called Jana. To suppose because there is a war
between an elephant-god and a child-god somewhere in the heart of
Africa, that therefore another elephant can be so influenced that it
kills a child in England, is to my mind out of all reason."

That is what I said to him, as I did not wish to introduce a new horror
into an affair that was already horrible enough. But, recollecting that
these priests, Harut and Marut, believed the mother of this murdered
infant to be none other than the oracle of their worship (though how
this chanced passed my comprehension), and therefore the great enemy
of the evil elephant-god, I confess that at heart I felt afraid. If any
powers of magic, black or white or both, were mixed up with the matter
as my experiences in England seemed to suggest, who could say what might
be their exact limits? As, however, it has been demonstrated again and
again by the learned that no such thing as African magic exists, this
line of thought appeared to be too foolish to follow. So passing it by I
asked Lord Ragnall to continue.

"For over a month," he went on, "I stopped in Egypt waiting till
emissaries who had been sent to the chiefs of various tribes in the
Sudan and elsewhere, returned with the news that nothing whatsoever had
been seen of a white woman travelling in the company of natives, nor
had they heard of any such woman being sold as a slave. Also through the
Khedive, on whom I was able to bring influence to bear by help of
the British Government, I caused many harems in Egypt to be visited,
entirely without result. After this, leaving the inquiry in the hands of
the British Consul and a firm of French lawyers, although in truth all
hope had gone, I returned to England whither I had already sent Lady
Longden, broken-hearted, for it occurred to me as possible that my wife
might have drifted or been taken thither. But here, too, there was no
trace of her or of anybody who could possibly answer to her description.
So at last I came to the conclusion that her bones must lie somewhere at
the bottom of the Nile, and gave way to despair."

"Always a foolish thing to do," I remarked.

"You will say so indeed when you hear the end, Quatermain. My
bereavement and the sleeplessness which it caused prayed upon me so
much, for now that the child was dead my wife was everything to me,
that, I will tell you the truth, my brain became affected and like Job I
cursed God in my heart and determined to die. Indeed I should have died
by my own hand, had it not been for Savage. I had procured the laudanum
and loaded the pistol with which I proposed to shoot myself immediately
after it was swallowed so that there might be no mistake. One night only
a couple of months or so ago, Quatermain, I sat in my study at Ragnall,
with the doors locked as I thought, writing a few final letters before
I did the deed. The last of them was just finished about twelve when
hearing a noise, I looked up and saw Savage standing before me. I asked
him angrily how he came there (I suppose he must have had another key to
one of the other doors) and what he wanted. Ignoring the first part of
the question he replied:

"'My lord, I have been thinking over our trouble'--he was with us in
Egypt--'I have been thinking so much that it has got a hold of my sleep.
To-night as you said you did not want me any more and I was tired, I
went to bed early and had a dream. I dreamed that we were once more in
the shrubbery, as happened some years ago, and that the little African
gent who shot like a book, was showing us the traces of those two black
men, just as he did when they tried to steal her ladyship. Then in my
dream I seemed to go back to bed and that beastly snake which we found
lying under the parcel in the road seemed to follow me. When I had got
to sleep again, all in the dream, there it was standing on its tail
at the end of the bed, hissing till it woke me. Then it spoke in good
English and not in African as might have been expected.

"'"Savage," it said, "get up and dress yourself and go at once and tell
his lordship to travel to Natal and find Mr. Allan Quatermain" (you may
remember that was the African gentleman's name, my lord, which, with so
many coming and going in this great house, I had quite forgotten, until
I had the dream). "Find Mr. Allan Quatermain," that slimy reptile went
on, opening and shutting its mouth for all the world like a Christian
making a speech, "for he will have something to tell him as to that
which has made a hole in his heart that is now filled with the seven
devils. Be quick, Savage, and don't stop to put on your shirt or your
tie"--I have not, my lord, as you may see. "He is shut up in the study,
but you know how to get into it. If he will not listen to you let him
look round the study and he will see something which will tell him that
this is a true dream."

"'Then the snake vanished, seeming to wriggle down the left bottom
bed-post, and I woke up in a cold sweat, my lord, and did what it had
told me.'

"Those were his very words, Quatermain, for I wrote them down afterwards
while they were fresh in my memory, and you see here they are in my
pocket-book.

"Well, I answered him, rather brusquely I am afraid, for a crazed man
who is about to leave the world under such circumstances does not show
at his best when disturbed almost in the very act, to the edge of which
long agony has brought him. I told him that all his dream of snakes
seemed ridiculous, which obviously it was, and was about to send him
away, when it occurred to me that the suggestion it conveyed that I
should put myself in communication with you was not ridiculous in view
of the part you had already played in the story."

"Very far from ridiculous," I interpolated.

"To tell the truth," went on Lord Ragnall, "I had already thought of
doing the same thing, but somehow beneath the pressure of my imminent
grief the idea was squeezed out of my mind, perhaps because you were so
far away and I did not know if I could find you even if I tried. Pausing
for a moment before I dismissed Savage, I rose from the desk at which I
was writing and began to walk up and down the room thinking what I would
do. I am not certain if you saw it when you were at Ragnall, but it is
a large room, fifty feet long or so though not very broad. It has two
fireplaces, in both of which fires were burning on this night, and it
was lit by four standing lamps besides that upon my desk. Now between
these fireplaces, in a kind of niche in the wall, and a little in the
shadow because none of the lamps was exactly opposite to it, hung a
portrait of my wife which I had caused to be painted by a fashionable
artist when first we became engaged."

"I remember it," I said. "Or rather, I remember its existence. I did not
see it because a curtain hung over the picture, which Savage told me
you did not wish to be looked at by anybody but yourself. At the time
I remarked to him, or rather to myself, that to veil the likeness of a
living woman in such a way seemed to me rather an ill-omened thing to
do, though why I should have thought it so I do not quite know."

"You are quite right, Quatermain. I had that foolish fancy, a lover's
freak, I suppose. When we married the curtain was removed although the
brass rod on which it hung was left by some oversight. On my return to
England after my loss, however, I found that I could not bear to
look upon this lifeless likeness of one who had been taken from me so
cruelly, and I caused it to be replaced. I did more. In order that it
might not be disturbed by some dusting housemaid, I myself made it fast
with three or four tin-tacks which I remember I drove through the velvet
stuff into the panelling, using a fireiron as a hammer. At the time
I thought it a good job although by accident I struck the nail of the
third finger of my left hand so hard that it came off. Look, it has not
quite finished growing again," and he showed the finger on which the new
nail was still in process of formation.

"Well, as I walked up and down the room some impulse caused me to look
towards the picture. To my astonishment I saw that it was no longer
veiled, although to the best of my belief the curtain had been drawn
over it as lately as that afternoon; indeed I could have sworn that this
was so. I called to Savage to bring the lamp that stood upon my table,
and by its light made an examination. The curtain was drawn back, very
tidily, being fastened in its place clear of the little alcove by means
of a thin brass chain. Also along one edge of it, that which I had
nailed to the panelling, the tin-tacks were still in their places; that
is, three of them were, the fourth I found afterwards upon the floor.

"'She looks beautiful, doesn't she, my lord,' said Savage, 'and please
God so we shall still find her somewhere in the world.'

"I did not answer him, or even remark upon the withdrawal of the
curtain, as to which indeed I never made an inquiry. I suppose that
it was done by some zealous servant while I was pretending to eat my
dinner--there were one or two new ones in the house whose names and
appearance I did not know. What impressed itself upon my mind was that
the face which I had never expected to see again on the earth, even in
a picture, was once more given to my eyes, it mattered not how. This, in
my excited state, for laudanum waiting to be swallowed and a pistol at
full cock for firing do not induce calmness in a man already almost mad,
at any rate until they have fulfilled their offices, did in truth appear
to me to be something of the nature of a sign such as that spoken of
in Savage's idiotic dream, which I was to find if 'I looked round the
study.'

"'Savage,' I said, 'I don't think much of your dreams about snakes that
talk to you, but I do think that it might be well to see Mr. Quatermain.
To-day is Sunday and I believe that the African mail sails on Friday. Go
to town early to-morrow and book passages.'

"Also I told him to see various gunsmiths and bid them send down a
selection of rifles and other weapons for me to choose from, as I
did not know whither we might wander in Africa, and to make further
necessary arrangements. All of these things he did, and--here we are."

"Yes," I answered reflectively, "here you are. What is more, here is
your luggage of which there seems to be enough for a regiment," and I
pointed to a Scotch cart piled up with baggage and followed by a
long line of Kafirs carrying sundry packages upon their heads that,
marshalled by Savage, had halted at my gate.



CHAPTER VIII

THE START

That evening when the baggage had been disposed of and locked up in my
little stable and arrangements were made for the delivery of some cases
containing tinned foods, etc., which had proved too heavy for the Scotch
cart, Lord Ragnall and I continued our conversation. First, however, we
unpacked the guns and checked the ammunition, of which there was a large
supply, with more to follow.

A beautiful battery they were of all sorts from elephant guns down, the
most costly and best finished that money could buy at the time. It made
me shiver to think what the bill for them must have been, while their
appearance when they were put together and stood in a long line against
the wall of my sitting-room, moved old Hans to a kind of ecstasy. For a
long while he contemplated them, patting the stocks one after the other
and giving to each a name as though they were all alive, then exclaimed:

"With such weapons as these the Baas could kill the devil himself.
Still, let the Baas bring Intombi with him"--a favourite old rifle of
mine and a mere toy in size, that had however done me good service in
the past, as those who have read what I have written in "Marie" and
"The Holy Flower" may remember. "For, Baas, after all, the wife of one's
youth often proves more to be trusted than the fine young ones a man
buys in his age. Also one knows all her faults, but who can say how
many there may be hidden up in new women however beautifully they are
tattooed?" and he pointed to the elaborate engraving upon the guns.

I translated this speech to Lord Ragnall. It made him laugh, at which
I was glad for up till then I had not seen him even smile. I should
add that in addition to these sporting weapons there were no fewer than
fifty military rifles of the best make, they were large-bore Sniders
that had just then been put upon the market, and with them, packed in
tin cases, a great quantity of ammunition. Although the regulations
were not so strict then as they are now, I met with a great deal of
difficulty in getting all this armament through the Customs. Lord
Ragnall however had letters from the Colonial Office to such authorities
as ruled in Natal, and on our giving a joint undertaking that they were
for defensive purposes only in unexplored territory and not for sale,
they were allowed through. Fortunate did it prove for us in after days
that this matter was arranged.

That night before we went to bed I narrated to Lord Ragnall all the
history of our search for the Holy Flower, which he seemed to find very
entertaining. Also I told him of my adventures, to me far more terrible,
as chairman of the Bona Fide Gold Mine and of their melancholy end.

"The lesson of which is," he remarked when I had finished, "that because
a man is master of one trade, it does not follow that he is master of
another. You are, I should judge, one of the finest shots in the
world, you are also a great hunter and explorer. But when it comes to
companies, Quatermain----! Still," he went on, "I ought to be grateful
to that Bona Fide Gold Mine, since I gather that had it not been for
it and for your rascally friend, Mr. Jacob, I should not have found you
here."

"No," I answered, "it is probable that you would not, as by this time
I might have been far in the interior where a man cannot be traced and
letters do not reach him."

Then he made a few pointed inquiries about the affairs of the mine,
noting my answers down in his pocket-book. I thought this odd but
concluded that he wished to verify my statements before entering into
a close companionship with me, since for aught he knew I might be the
largest liar in the world and a swindler to boot. So I said nothing,
even when I heard through a roundabout channel on the morrow that he had
sought an interview with the late secretary of the defunct company.

A few days later, for I may as well finish with this matter at once, the
astonishing object of these inquiries was made clear to me. One morning
I found upon my table a whole pile of correspondence, at the sight
of which I groaned, feeling sure that it must come from duns and be
connected with that infernal mine. Curiosity and a desire to face the
worst, however, led me to open the first letter which as it happened
proved to be from that very shareholder who had proposed a vote of
confidence in me at the winding-up meeting. By the time that it was
finished my eyes were swimming and really I felt quite faint. It ran:

"Honoured Sir,--I knew that I was putting my money on the right horse
when I said the other day that you were one of the straightest that ever
ran. Well, I have got the cheque sent me by the lawyer on your account,
being payment in full for every farthing I invested in the Bona Fide
Gold Mine, and I can only say that it is uncommonly useful, for that
business had pretty well cleaned me out. God bless you, Mr. Quatermain."

I opened another letter, and another, and another. They were all to the
same effect. Bewildered I went on to the stoep, where I found Hans with
an epistle in his hand which he requested me to be good enough to read.
I read it. It was from a well-known firm of local lawyers and said:

"On behalf of Allan Quatermain, Esq., we beg to enclose a draft for
the sum of L650, being the value of the interest in the Bona Fide Gold
Company, Limited (in liquidation), which stands in your name on the
books of the company. Please sign enclosed receipt and return same to
us."

Yes, and there was the draft for L650 sterling!

I explained the matter to Hans, or rather I translated the document,
adding:

"You see you have got your money back again. But Hans, I never sent it;
I don't know where it comes from."

"Is it money, Baas?" asked Hans, surveying the draft with suspicion. "It
looks very much like the other bit of paper for which I paid money."

Again I explained, reiterating that I knew nothing of the transaction.

"Well, Baas," he said, "if you did not send it someone did--perhaps
your father the reverend Predikant, who sees that you are in trouble and
wishes to wash your name white again. Meanwhile, Baas, please put that
bit of paper in your pocket-book and keep it for me, for otherwise I
might be tempted to buy square-face with it."

"No," I answered, "you can now buy your land back, or some other land,
and there will be no need for you to come with me to the country of the
Kendah."

Hans thought a moment and then very deliberately began to tear up the
draft; indeed I was only just in time to save it from destruction.

"If the Baas is going to turn me off because of this paper," he said, "I
will make it small and eat it."

"You silly old fool," I said as I possessed myself of the cheque.

Then the conversation was interrupted, for who should appear but Sammy,
my old cook, who began in his pompous language:

"The perfect rectitude of your conduct, Mr. Quatermain, moves me to the
deepest gratitude, though indeed I wish that I had put something into
the food of the knave Jacob who beguiled us all, that would have caused
him internal pangs of a severe if not of a dangerous order. My holding
in the gold mine was not extensive, but the unpaid bill of the said
Jacob and his friends----"

Here I cut him short and fled, since I saw yet another shareholder
galloping to the gate, and behind him two more in a spider. First I took
refuge in my room, my idea being to put away that pile of letters. In so
doing I observed that there was one still unopened. Half mechanically
I took it from the envelope and glanced at its contents. They were
word for word identical with those of that addressed to "Mr. Hans,
Hottentot," only my name was at the bottom of it instead of that of Hans
and the cheque was for L1,500, the amount I had paid for the shares I
held in the venture.

Feeling as though my brain were in a melting-pot, I departed from the
house into a patch of native bush that in those days still grew upon the
slope of the hill behind. Here I sat myself down, as I had often
done before when there was a knotty point to be considered, aimlessly
watching a lovely emerald cuckoo flashing, a jewel of light, from tree
to tree, while I turned all this fairy-godmother business over in my
mind.

Of course it soon became clear to me. Lord Ragnall in this case was
the little old lady with the wand, the touch of which could convert
worthless share certificates into bank-notes of their face value. I
remembered now that his wealth was said to be phenomenal and after
all the cash capital of the company was quite small. But the question
was--could I accept his bounty?

I returned to the house where the first person whom I met was Lord
Ragnall himself, just arrived from some interview about the fifty Snider
rifles, which were still in bond. I told him solemnly that I wished to
speak to him, whereon he remarked in a cheerful voice,

"Advance, friend, and all's well!"

I don't know that I need set out the details of the interview. He
waited till I had got through my halting speech of mingled gratitude and
expostulation, then remarked:

"My friend, if you will allow me to call you so, it is quite true that I
have done this because I wished to do it. But it is equally true that to
me it is a small thing--to be frank, scarcely a month's income; what I
have saved travelling on that ship to Natal would pay for it all. Also
I have weighed my own interest in the matter, for I am anxious that you
should start upon this hazardous journey of ours up country with a mind
absolutely free from self-reproach or any money care, for thus you will
be able to do me better service. Therefore I beg that you will say no
more of the episode. I have only one thing to add, namely that I have
myself bought up at par value a few of the debentures. The price of them
will pay the lawyers and the liquidation fees; moreover they give me a
status as a shareholder which will enable me to sue Mr. Jacob for his
fraud, to which business I have already issued instructions. For please
understand that I have not paid off any shares still standing in his
name or in those of his friends."

Here I may add that nothing ever came of this action, for the lawyers
found themselves unable to serve any writ upon that elusive person,
Mr. Jacob, who by then had probably adopted the name of some other
patriarch.

"Please put it all down as a rich man's whim," he concluded.

"I can't call that a whim which has returned L1,500 odd to my pocket
that I had lost upon a gamble, Lord Ragnall."

"Do you remember, Quatermain, how you won L250 upon a gamble at my place
and what you did with it, which sum probably represented to you twenty
or fifty times what it would to me? Also if that argument does not
appeal to you, may I remark that I do not expect you to give me your
services as a professional hunter and guide for nothing."

"Ah!" I answered, fixing on this point and ignoring the rest, "now
we come to business. If I may look upon this amount as salary, a very
handsome salary by the way, paid in advance, you taking the risks of my
dying or becoming incapacitated before it is earned, I will say no more
of the matter. If not I must refuse to accept what is an unearned gift."

"I confess, Quatermain, that I did not regard it in that light, though I
might have been willing to call it a retaining fee. However, do not let
us wrangle about money any more. We can always settle our accounts when
the bill is added up, if ever we reach so far. Now let us come to more
important details."

So we fell to discussing the scheme, route and details of our proposed
journey. Expenditure being practically no object, there were several
plans open to us. We might sail up the coast and go by Kilwa, as I had
done on the search for the Holy Flower, or we might retrace the line of
our retreat from the Mazitu country which ran through Zululand. Again,
we might advance by whatever road we selected with a small army of
drilled and disciplined retainers, trusting to force to break a way
through to the Kendah. Or we might go practically unaccompanied, relying
on our native wit and good fortune to attain our ends. Each of these
alternatives had so much to recommend it and yet presented so many
difficulties, that after long hours of discussion, for this talk was
renewed again and again, I found it quite impossible to decide upon
any one of them, especially as in the end Lord Ragnall always left the
choice with its heavy responsibilities to me.

At length in despair I opened the window and whistled twice on a certain
low note. A minute later Hans shuffled in, shaking the wet off the new
corduroy clothes which he had bought upon the strength of his return to
affluence, for it was raining outside, and squatted himself down upon
the floor at a little distance. In the shadow of the table which cut off
the light from the hanging lamp he looked, I remember, exactly like
an enormous and antique toad. I threw him a piece of tobacco which he
thrust into his corn-cob pipe and lit with a match.

"The Baas called me," he said when it was drawing to his satisfaction,
"what does Baas want of Hans?"

"Light in darkness!" I replied, playing on his native name, and
proceeded to set out the whole case to him.

He listened without a word, then asked for a small glass of gin, which
I gave him doubtfully. Having swallowed this at a gulp as though it were
water, he delivered himself briefly to this effect:

"I think the Baas will do well not to go to Kilwa, since it means
waiting for a ship, or hiring one; also there may be more slave-traders
there by now who will bear him no love because of a lesson he taught
them a while ago. On the other hand the road through Zululand is open,
though it be long, and there the name of Macumazana is one well known.
I think also that the Baas would do well not to take too many men, who
make marching slow, only a wagon or two and some drivers which might be
sent back when they can go no farther. From Zululand messengers can be
dispatched to the Mazitu, who love you, and Bausi or whoever is king
there to-day will order bearers to meet us on the road, until which time
we can hire other bearers in Zululand. The old woman at Beza-Town told
me, moreover, as you will remember, that the Kendah are a very great
people who live by themselves and will allow none to enter their land,
which is bordered by deserts. Therefore no force that you could take
with you and feed upon a road without water would be strong enough to
knock down their gates like an elephant, and it seems better that you
should try to creep through them like a wise snake, although they appear
to be shut in your face. Perhaps also they will not be shut since did
you not say that two of their great doctors promised to meet you and
guide you through them?"

"Yes," I interrupted, "I dare say it will be easier to get in than to
get out of Kendahland."

"Last of all, Baas, if you take many men armed with guns, the black part
of the Kendah people of whom I told you will perhaps think you come to
make war, whatever the white Kendah may say, and kill us all, whereas if
we be but a few perchance they will let us pass in peace. I think that
is all, Baas. Let the Baas and the Lord Igeza forgive me if my words are
foolish."

Here I should explain that "Igeza" was the name which the natives
had given to Lord Ragnall because of his appearance. The word means a
handsome person in the Zulu tongue. Savage they called "Bena," I don't
know why. "Bena" in Zulu means to push out the breast and it may be
that the name was a round-about allusion to the proud appearance of the
dignified Savage, or possibly it had some other recondite signification.
At any rate Lord Ragnall, Hans and myself knew the splendid Savage
thenceforward by the homely appellation of Beans. His master said it
suited him very well because he was so green.

"The advice seems wise, Hans. Go now. No, no more gin," I answered.

As a matter of fact careful consideration convinced us it was so wise
that we acted on it down to the last detail.



So it came about that one fine afternoon about a fortnight later, for
hurry as we would our preparations took a little time, we trekked for
Zululand over the sandy roads that ran from the outskirts of Durban.
Our baggage and stores were stowed in two half-tented wagons, very good
wagons since everything we had with us was the best that money could
buy, the after-part of which served us as sleeping-places at night.
Hans sat on the _voor-kisse_ or driving-seat of one of the wagons; Lord
Ragnall, Savage and I were mounted upon "salted" horses, that is, horses
which had recovered from and were therefore supposed to be proof against
the dreadful sickness, valuable and docile animals which were trained to
shooting.

At our start a little contretemps occurred. To my amazement I saw
Savage, who insisted upon continuing to wear his funereal upper
servant's cut-away coat, engaged with grim determination in mounting his
steed from the wrong side. He got into the saddle somehow, but there
was worse to follow. The horse, astonished at such treatment, bolted
a little way, Savage sawing at its mouth. Lord Ragnall and I cantered
after it past the wagons, fearing disaster. All of a sudden it swerved
violently and Savage flew into the air, landing heavily in a sitting
posture.

"Poor Beans!" ejaculated Lord Ragnall as we sped forward. "I expect
there is an end of his journeyings."

To our surprise, however, we saw him leap from the ground with the most
marvellous agility and begin to dance about slapping at his posterior
parts and shouting,

"Take it off! Kill it!"

A few seconds later we discovered the reason. The horse had shied at
a sleeping puff adder which was curled up in the sand of that little
frequented road, and on this puff adder Savage had descended with
so much force, for he weighed thirteen stone, that the creature was
squashed quite flat and never stirred again. This, however, he did not
notice in his agitation, being convinced indeed that it was hanging to
him behind like a bulldog.

"Snakes! my lord," he exclaimed, when at last after careful search we
demonstrated to him that the adder had died before it could come into
action.

"I hate 'em, my lord, and they haunts" (he said 'aunts) "me. If ever
I get out of this I'll go and live in Ireland, my lord, where they
say there ain't none. But it isn't likely that I shall," he added
mournfully, "for the omen is horrid."

"On the contrary," I answered, "it is splendid, for you have killed the
snake and not the snake you. 'The dog it was that died,' Savage."

After this the Kafirs gave Savage a second very long name which meant
"He-who-sits-down-on-snakes-and-makes-them-flat." Having remounted him
on his horse, which was standing patiently a few yards away, at
length we got off. I lingered a minute behind the others to give some
directions to my old Griqua gardener, Jack, who snivelled at parting
with me, and to take a last look at my little home. Alack! I feared it
might be the last indeed, knowing as I did that this was a dangerous
enterprise upon which I found myself embarked, I who had vowed that I
would be done with danger.

With a lump in my throat I turned from the contemplation of that
peaceful dwelling and happy garden in which each tree and plant was dear
to me, and waving a good-bye to Jack, cantered on to where Ragnall was
waiting for me.

"I am afraid this is rather a sad hour for you, who are leaving your
little boy and your home," he said gently, "to face unknown perils."

"Not so sad as others I have passed," I answered, "and perils are my
daily bread in every sense of the word. Moreover, whatever it is for me
it is for you also."

"No, Quatermain. For me it is an hour of hope; a faint hope, I admit,
but the only one left, for the letters I got last night from Egypt and
England report that no clue whatsoever has been found, and indeed that
the search for any has been abandoned. Yes, I follow the last star left
in my sky and if it sets I hope that I may set also, at any rate to this
world. Therefore I am happier than I have been for months, thanks to
you," and he stretched out his hand, which I shook.

It was a token of friendship and mutual confidence which I am glad to
say nothing that happened afterwards ever disturbed for a moment.



CHAPTER IX

THE MEETING IN THE DESERT

Now I do not propose to describe all our journey to Kendahland, or at
any rate the first part thereof. It was interesting enough in its way
and we met with a few hunting adventures, also some others. But there is
so much to tell of what happened to us after we reached the place that
I have not the time, even if I had the inclination to set all these
matters down. Let it be sufficient, then, to say that although owing
to political events the country happened to be rather disturbed at the
time, we trekked through Zululand without any great difficulty. For
here my name was a power in the land and all parties united to help me.
Thence, too, I managed to dispatch three messengers, half-bred border
men, lean fellows and swift of foot, forward to the king of the Mazitu,
as Hans had suggested that I should do, advising him that his old
friends, Macumazana, Watcher-by-Night, and the yellow man who was named
Light-in-Darkness and Lord-of-the-Fire, were about to visit him again.

As I knew we could not take the wagons beyond a certain point where
there was a river called the Luba, unfordable by anything on wheels, I
requested him, moreover, to send a hundred bearers with whatever escort
might be necessary, to meet us on the banks of that river at a spot
which was known to both of us. These words the messengers promised to
deliver for a fee of five head of cattle apiece, to be paid on their
return, or to their families if they died on the road, which cattle we
purchased and left in charge of a chief, who was their kinsman. As it
happened two of the poor fellows did die, one of them of cold in a swamp
through which they took a short cut, and the other at the teeth of a
hungry lion. The third, however, won through and delivered the message.

After resting for a fortnight in the northern parts of Zululand, to give
time to our wayworn oxen to get some flesh on their bones in the warm
bushveld where grass was plentiful even in the dry season, we trekked
forward by a route known to Hans and myself. Indeed it was the
same which we had followed on our journey from Mazituland after our
expedition in search for the Holy Flower.

We took with us a small army of Zulu bearers. This, although they were
difficult to feed in a country where no corn could be bought, proved
fortunate in the end, since so many of our cattle died from tsetse bite
that we were obliged to abandon one of the wagons, which meant that
the goods it contained must be carried by men. At length we reached the
banks of the river, and camped there one night by three tall peaks
of rock which the natives called "The Three Doctors," where I had
instructed the messengers to tell the Mazitu to meet us. For four days
we remained here, since rains in the interior had made the river quite
impassable. Every morning I climbed the tallest of the "Doctors" and
with my glasses looked over its broad yellow flood, searching the wide,
bush-clad land beyond in the hope of discovering the Mazitu advancing to
meet us. Not a man was to be seen, however, and on the fourth evening,
as the river had now become fordable, we determined that we would cross
on the morrow, leaving the remaining wagon, which it was impossible to
drag over its rocky bottom, to be taken back to Natal by our drivers.

Here a difficulty arose. No promise of reward would induce any of our
Zulu bearers even to wet their feet in the waters of this River Luba,
which for some reason that I could not extract from them they declared
to be _tagati_, that is, bewitched, to people of their blood. When I
pointed out that three Zulus had already undertaken to cross it, they
answered that those men were half-breeds, so that for them it was only
half bewitched, but they thought that even so one or more of them would
pay the penalty of death for this rash crime.

It chanced that this happened, for, as I have said, two of the poor
fellows did die, though not, I think, owing to the magical properties
of the waters of the Luba. This is how African superstitions are kept
alive. Sooner or later some saying of the sort fulfils itself and then
the instance is remembered and handed down for generations, while
other instances in which nothing out of the common has occurred are not
heeded, or are forgotten.

This decision on the part of those stupid Zulus put us in an awkward
fix, since it was impossible for us to carry over all our baggage and
ammunition without help. Therefore glad was I when before dawn on the
fifth morning the nocturnal Hans crept into the wagon, in the after
part of which Ragnall and I were sleeping, and informed us that he heard
men's voices on the farther side of the river, though how he could hear
anything above that roar of water passed my comprehension.

At the first break of dawn again we climbed the tallest of the "Doctor"
rocks and stared into the mist. At length it rolled away and there on
the farther side of the river I saw quite a hundred men who by their
dress and spears I knew to be Mazitu. They saw me also and raising a
cheer, dashed into the water, groups of them holding each other round
the middle to prevent their being swept away. Thereupon our silly Zulus
seized their spears and formed up upon the bank. I slid down the steep
side of the "Great Doctor" and ran forward, calling out that these were
friends who came.

"Friends or foes," answered their captain sullenly, "it is a pity that
we should walk so far and not have a fight with those Mazitu dogs."

Well, I drove them off to a distance, not knowing what might happen if
the two peoples met, and then went down to the bank. By now the Mazitu
were near, and to my delight at the head of them I perceived no other
than my old friend, their chief general, Babemba, a one-eyed man with
whom Hans and I had shared many adventures. Through the water he plunged
with great bounds and reaching the shore, greeted me literally with
rapture.

"O Macumazana," he said, "little did I hope that ever again I should
look upon your face. Welcome to you, a thousand welcomes, and to you
too, Light-in-Darkness, Lord-of-the-Fire, Cunning-one whose wit saved us
in the battle of the Gate. But where is Dogeetah, where is Wazeela, and
where are the Mother and the Child of the Flower?"

"Far away across the Black Water, Babemba," I answered. "But here are
two others in place of them," and I introduced him to Ragnall and Savage
by their native names of Igeza and Bena.

He contemplated them for a moment, then said:

"This," pointing to Ragnall, "is a great lord, but this," pointing to
Savage, who was much the better dressed of the two, "is a cock of the
ashpit arrayed in an eagle's feathers," a remark I did not translate,
but one which caused Hans to snigger vacuously.

While we breakfasted on food prepared by the "Cock of the Ashpit," who
amongst many other merits had that of being an excellent cook, I heard
all the news. Bausi the king was dead but had been succeeded by one
of his sons, also named Bausi, whom I remembered. Beza-Town had been
rebuilt after the great fire that destroyed the slavers, and much more
strongly fortified than before. Of the slavers themselves nothing more
had been seen, or of the Pongo either, though the Mazitu declared that
their ghosts, or those of their victims, still haunted the island in the
lake. That was all, except the ill tidings as to two of our messengers
which the third, who had returned with the Mazitu, reported to us.

After breakfast I addressed and sent away our Zulus, each with a
handsome present from the trade goods, giving into their charge the
remaining wagon and our servants, none of whom, somewhat to my relief,
wished to accompany us farther. They sang their song of good-bye,
saluted and departed over the rise, still looking hungrily behind them
at the Mazitu, and we were very pleased to see the last of them without
bloodshed or trouble.

When we had watched the white tilt of the wagon vanish, we set to work
to get ourselves and our goods across the river. This we accomplished
safely, for the Mazitu worked for us like friends and not as do hired
men. On the farther bank, however, it took us two full days so to divide
up the loads that the bearers could carry them without being overladen.

At length all was arranged and we started. Of the month's trek that
followed there is nothing to tell, except that we completed it without
notable accidents and at last reached the new Beza-Town, which much
resembled the old, where we were accorded a great public reception.
Bausi II himself headed the procession which met us outside the south
gate on that very mound which we had occupied in the great fight, where
the bones of the gallant Mavovo and my other hunters lay buried. Almost
did it seem to me as though I could hear their deep voices joining in
the shouts of welcome.

That night, while the Mazitu feasted in our honour, we held an _indaba_
in the big new guest house with Bausi II, a pleasant-faced young
man, and old Babemba. The king asked us how long we meant to stay at
Beza-Town, intimating his hope that the visit would be prolonged. I
replied, but a few days, as we were travelling far to the north to find
a people called the Kendah whom we wished to see, and hoped that he
would give us bearers to carry our goods as far as the confines of their
country. At the name of Kendah a look of astonishment appeared upon
their faces and Babemba said:

"Has madness seized you, Macumazana, that you would attempt this thing?
Oh surely you must be mad."

"You thought us mad, Babemba, when we crossed the lake to Rica Town, yet
we came back safely."

"True, Macumazana, but compared to the Kendah the Pongo were but as the
smallest star before the face of the sun."

"What do you know of them then?" I asked. "But stay--before you answer,
I will speak what I know," and I repeated what I had learned from Hans,
who confirmed my words, and from Harut and Marut, leaving out, however,
any mention of their dealings with Lady Ragnall.

"It is all true," said Babemba when I had finished, "for that old woman
of whom Light-in-the-Darkness speaks, was one of the wives of my uncle
and I knew her well. Hearken! These Kendah are a terrible nation and
countless in number and of all the people the fiercest. Their king is
called Simba, which means Lion. He who rules is always called Simba,
and has been so called for hundreds of years. He is of the Black Kendah
whose god is the elephant Jana, but as Light-in-Darkness has said, there
are also the White Kendah who are Arab men, the priests and traders of
the people. The Kendah will allow no stranger within their doors; if one
comes they kill him by torment, or blind him and turn him out into the
desert which surrounds their country, there to die. These things the
old woman who married my uncle told me, as she told them to
Light-in-Darkness, also I have heard them from others, and what she
did not tell me, that the White Kendah are great breeders of the beasts
called camels which they sell to the Arabs of the north. Go not near
them, for if you pass the desert the Black Kendah will kill you; and
if you escape these, then their king, Simba, will kill you; and if you
escape him, then their god Jana will kill you; and if you escape him,
then their white priests will kill you with their magic. Oh! long before
you look upon the faces of those priests you will be dead many times
over."

"Then why did they ask me to visit them, Babemba?"

"I know not, Macumazana, but perhaps because they wished to make an
offering of you to the god Jana, whom no spear can harm; no, nor even
your bullets that pierce a tree."

"I am willing to make trial of that matter," I answered confidently,
"and any way we must go to see these things for ourselves."

"Yes," echoed Ragnall, "we must certainly go," while even Savage, for I
had been translating to them all this while, nodded his head although he
looked as though he would much rather stay behind.

"Ask him if there are any snakes there, sir," he said, and foolishly
enough I put the question to give me time to think of other things.

"Yes, O Bena. Yes, O Cock of the Ashpit," replied Babemba. "My uncle's
Kendar wife told me that one of the guardians of the shrine of the White
Kendah is such a snake as was never seen elsewhere in the world."

"Then say to him, sir," said Savage, when I had translated almost
automatically, "that shrine ain't a church where _I_ shall go to say my
prayers."

Alas! poor Savage little knew the future and its gifts.

Then we came to the question of bearers. The end of it was that after
some hesitation Bausi II, because of his great affection for us,
promised to provide us with these upon our solemnly undertaking to
dismiss them at the borders of the desert, "so that they might escape
our doom," as he remarked cheerfully.

Four days later we started, accompanied by about one hundred and twenty
picked men under the command of old Babemba himself, who, he explained,
wished to be the last to see us alive in the world. This was depressing,
but other circumstances connected with our start were calculated to
weigh even more upon my spirit. Thus the night before we left Hans
arrived and asked me to "write a paper" for him. I inquired what he
wanted me to put in the paper. He replied that as he was going to his
death and had property, namely the L650 that had been left in a bank to
his credit, he desired to make a "white man's will" to be left in the
charge of Babemba. The only provision of the said will was that I was to
inherit his property, if I lived. If I died, which, he added, "of course
you must, Baas, like the rest of us," it was to be devoted to furnishing
poor black people in hospital with something comforting to drink instead
of the "cow's water" that was given to them there. Needless to say
I turned him out at once, and that testamentary deposition remained
unrecorded. Indeed it was unnecessary, since, as I reminded him, on my
advice he had already made a will before we left Durban, a circumstance
that he had quite forgotten.

The second event, which occurred about an hour before our departure,
was, that hearing a mighty wailing in the market-place where once Hans
and I had been tied to stakes to be shot to death with arrows, I went
out to see what was the matter. At the gateway I was greeted by the
sight of about a hundred old women plastered all over with ashes,
engaged in howling their loudest in a melancholy unison. Behind these
stood the entire population of Beza-Town, who chanted a kind of chorus.

"What the devil are they doing?" I asked of Hans.

"Singing our death-song, Baas," he replied stolidly, "as they say that
where we are going no one will take the trouble to do so, and it is
not right that great lords should die and the heavens above remain
uninformed that they are coming."

"That's cheerful," I remarked, and wheeling round, asked Ragnall
straight out if he wished to persevere in this business, for to tell the
truth my nerve was shaken.

"I must," he answered simply, "but there is no reason why you and Hans
should, or Savage either for the matter of that."

"Oh! I'm going where you go," I said, "and where I go Hans will go.
Savage must speak for himself."

This he did and to the same effect, being a very honest and faithful
man. It was the more to his credit since, as he informed me in private,
he did not enjoy African adventure and often dreamed at nights of
his comfortable room at Ragnall whence he superintended the social
activities of that great establishment.

So we departed and marched for the matter of a month or more through
every kind of country. After we had passed the head of the great lake
wherein lay the island, if it really was an island, where the Pongo used
to dwell (one clear morning through my glasses I discerned the mountain
top that marked the former residence of the Mother of the Flower, and by
contrast it made me feel quite homesick), we struck up north, following
a route known to Babemba and our guides. After this we steered by the
stars through a land with very few inhabitants, timid and nondescript
folk who dwelt in scattered villages and scarcely understood the art of
cultivating the soil, even in its most primitive form.

A hundred miles or so farther on these villages ceased and thenceforward
we only encountered some nomads, little bushmen who lived on game which
they shot with poisoned arrows. Once they attacked us and killed two
of the Mazitu with those horrid arrows, against the venom of which no
remedy that we had in our medicine chest proved of any avail. On this
occasion Savage exhibited his courage if not his discretion, for rushing
out of our thorn fence, after missing a bushmen with both barrels at a
distance of five yards--he was, I think, the worst shot I ever saw--he
seized the little viper with his hands and dragged him back to camp. How
Savage escaped with his life I do not know, for one poisoned arrow went
through his hat and stuck in his hair and another just grazed his leg
without drawing blood.

This valorous deed was of great service to us, since we were able
through Hans, who knew something of the bushmen's language, to explain
to our prisoner that if we were shot at again he would be hung. This
information he contrived to shout, or rather to squeak and grunt, to
his amiable tribe, of which it appeared he was a kind of chief, with the
result that we were no more molested. Later, when we were clear of the
bushmen country, we let him depart, which he did with great rapidity.

By degrees the land grew more and more barren and utterly devoid of
inhabitants, till at last it merged into desert. At the edge of this
desert which rolled away without apparent limit we came, however, to
a kind of oasis where there was a strong and beautiful spring of water
that formed a stream which soon lost itself in the surrounding sand.
As we could go no farther, for even if we had wished to do so, and were
able to find water there, the Mazitu refused to accompany us into the
desert, not knowing what else to do, we camped in the oasis and waited.

As it happened, the place was a kind of hunter's paradise, since every
kind of game, large and small, came to the water to drink at night, and
in the daytime browsed upon the saltish grass that at this season of the
year grew plentifully upon the edge of the wilderness.

Amongst other creatures there were elephants in plenty that travelled
hither out of the bushlands we had passed, or sometimes emerged from
the desert itself, suggesting that beyond this waste there lay fertile
country. So numerous were these great beasts indeed that for my part I
hoped earnestly that it would prove impossible for us to continue our
journey, since I saw that in a few months I could collect an enormous
amount of ivory, enough to make me comparatively rich, if only I were
able to get it away. As it was we only killed a few of them, ten in all
to be accurate, that we might send back the tusks as presents to Bausi
II. To slaughter the poor animals uselessly was cruel, especially as
being unaccustomed to the sight of man, they were as easy to approach as
cows. Even Savage slew one--by carefully aiming at another five paces to
its left.

For the rest we lived on the fat of the land and, as meat was necessary
to us, had as much sport as we could desire among the various antelope.

For fourteen days or so this went on, till at length we grew thoroughly
tired of the business, as did the Mazitu, who were so gorged with flesh
that they began to desire vegetable food. Twice we rode as far into the
desert as we dared, for our horses remained to us and had grown fresh
again after the rest, but only to return without information. The place
was just a vast wilderness strewn with brown stones beautifully polished
by the wind-driven sand of ages, and quite devoid of water.

After our second trip, on which we suffered severely from thirst, we
held a consultation. Old Babemba said that he could keep his men no
longer, even for us, as they insisted upon returning home, and inquired
what we meant to do and why we sat here "like a stone." I answered that
we were waiting for some of the Kendah who had bid me to shoot game
hereabouts until they arrived to be our guides. He remarked that the
Kendah to the best of his belief lived in a country that was still
hundreds of miles away and that, as they did not know of our presence,
any communication across the desert being impossible, our proceedings
seemed to be foolish.

I retorted that I was not quite so sure of this, since the Kendah seemed
to have remarkable ways of acquiring information.

"Then, Macumazana, I fear that you will have to wait by yourselves until
you discover which of us is right," he said stolidly.

Turning to Ragnall, I asked him what he would do, pointing out that
to journey into the desert meant death, especially as we did not know
whither we were going, and that to return alone, without the stores
which we must abandon, through the country of the bushmen to Mazituland,
would also be a risky proceeding. However, it was for him to decide.

Now he grew much perturbed. Taking me apart again he dwelt earnestly
upon his secret reasons for wishing to visit these Kendah, with which of
course I was already acquainted, as indeed was Savage.

"I desire to stay here," he ended.

"Which means that we must all stay, Ragnall, since Savage will not
desert you. Nor will Hans desert me although he thinks us mad. He points
out that I came to seek ivory and here about is ivory in plenty for the
trouble of taking."

"I might remain alone, Quatermain----" he began, but I looked at him in
such a way that he never finished the sentence.

Ultimately we came to a compromise. Babemba, on behalf of the Mazitu,
agreed to wait three more days. If nothing happened during that period
we on our part agreed to return with them to a stretch of well-watered
bush about fifty miles behind us, which we knew swarmed with elephants,
that by now were growing shy of approaching our oasis where there was so
much noise and shooting. There we would kill as much ivory as we could
carry, an operation in which they were willing to assist for the fun of
it, and then go back with them to Mazituland.

The three days went by and with every hour that passed my spirits rose,
as did those of Savage and Hans, while Lord Ragnall became more and
more depressed. The third afternoon was devoted to a jubilant packing of
loads, for in accordance with the terms of our bargain we were to start
backwards on our spoor at dawn upon the morrow. Most happily did I lay
myself down to sleep in my little bough shelter that night, feeling that
at last I was rid of an uncommonly awkward adventure. If I thought that
we could do any good by staying on, it would have been another matter.
But as I was certain that there was no earthly chance of our finding
among the Kendah--if ever we reached them--the lady who had tumbled in
the Nile in Egypt, well, I was glad that Providence had been so good as
to make it impossible for us to commit suicide by thirst in a desert, or
otherwise. For, notwithstanding my former reasonings to the contrary,
I was now convinced that this was what had happened to poor Ragnall's
wife.

That, however, was just what Providence had not done. In the middle of
the night, to be precise, at exactly two in the morning, I was awakened
by Hans, who slept at the back of my shanty, into which he had crept
through a hole in the faggots, exclaiming in a frightened voice,

"Open your eyes and look, Baas. There are two _spooks_ waiting to see
you outside, Baas."

Very cautiously I lifted myself a little and stared out into the
moonlight. There, seated about five paces from the open end of the hut
were the "spooks" sure enough, two white-robed figures squatting silent
and immovable on the ground. At first I was frightened. Then I bethought
me of thieves and felt for my Colt pistol under the rug that served me
as a pillow. As I got hold of the handle, however, a deep voice said:

"Is it your custom, O Macumazana, Watcher-by-Night, to receive guests
with bullets?"

Now thought I to myself, who is there in the world who could see a man
catch hold of the handle of a pistol in the recesses of a dark place and
under a blanket at night, except the owner of that voice which I seemed
to remember hearing in a certain drawing-room in England?

"Yes, Harut," I answered with an unconcerned yawn, "when the guests come
in such a doubtful fashion and in the middle of the night. But as you
are here at last, will you be so good as to tell us why you have kept us
waiting all this time? Is that your way of fulfilling an engagement?"

"O Lord Macumazana," answered Harut, for of course it was he, in quite a
perturbed tone, "I offer to you our humble apologies. The truth is
that when we heard of your arrival at Beza-Town we started, or tried to
start, from hundreds of miles away to keep our tryst with you here as
we promised we would do. But we are mortal, Macumazana, and accidents
intervened. Thus, when we had ascertained the weight of your baggage,
camels had to be collected to carry it, which were grazing at a
distance. Also it was necessary to send forward to dig out a certain
well in the desert where they must drink. Hence the delay. Still, you
will admit that we have arrived in time, five, or at any rate four hours
before the rising of that sun which was to light you on your homeward
way."

"Yes, you have, O Prophets, or O Liars, whichever you may be," I
exclaimed with pardonable exasperation, for really their knowledge of my
private affairs, however obtained, was enough to anger a saint. "So as
you are here at last, come in and have a drink, for whether you are men
or devils, you must be cold out there in the damp."

In they came accordingly, and, not being Mohammedans, partook of a tot
of square-face from a bottle which I kept locked in a box to put Hans
beyond the reach of temptation.

"To your health, Harut and Marut," I said, drinking a little out of the
pannikin and giving the rest to Hans, who gulped the fiery liquor down
with a smack of his lips. For I will admit that I joined in this unholy
midnight potation to gain time for thought and to steady my nerve.

"To your health, O Lord Macumazana," the pair answered as they swallowed
their tots, which I had made pretty stiff, and set down their pannikins
in front of them with as much reverence as though these had been holy
vessels.

"Now," I said, throwing a blanket over my shoulders, for the air
was chilly, "now let us talk," and taking the lantern which Hans had
thoughtfully lighted, I held it up and contemplated them.

There they were, Harut and Marut without doubt, to all appearance
totally unchanged since some years before I had seen them at Ragnall
in England. "What are you doing here?" I asked in a kind of fiery
indignation inspired by my intense curiosity. "How did you get out of
England after you had tried to steal away the lady to whom you sent the
necklace? What did you do with that lady after you had beguiled her from
the boat at Abu-Simbel? In the name of your Holy Child, or of Shaitan
of the Mohammedans, or of Set of the Egyptians, answer me, lest I should
make an end of both of you, which I can do here without any questions
being asked," and I whipped out my pistol.

"Pardon us," said Harut with a grave smile, "but if you were to do as
you say, Lord Macumazana, many questions would be asked which _you_
might find it hard to answer. So be pleased to put that death-dealer
back into its place, and to tell us before we reply to you, what you
know of Set of the Egyptians."

"As much or as little as you do," I replied.

Both bowed as though this information were of the most satisfactory
order. Then Harut went on: "In reply to your requests, O Macumazana, we
left England by a steamboat and in due course after long journeyings we
reached our own country. We do not understand your allusions to a place
called Abu-Simbel on the Nile, whence, never having been there, we have
taken no lady. Indeed, we never meant to take that lady to whom we sent
a necklace in England. We only meant to ask certain questions of her, as
she had the gift of vision, when you appeared and interrupted us. What
should we want with white ladies, who have already far too many of our
own?"

"I don't know," I replied, "but I do know that you are the biggest liars
I ever met."

At these words, which some might have thought insulting, Harut and Marut
bowed again as though to acknowledge a great compliment. Then Harut
said:

"Let us leave the question of ladies and come to matters that have to do
with men. You are here as we told you that you would be at a time when
you did not believe us, and we here to meet _you_, as we told you that
we would be. How we knew that you were coming and how we came do not
matter at all. Believe what you will. Are you ready to start with us,
O Lord Macumazana, that you may bring to its death the wicked elephant
Jana which ravages our land, and receive the great reward of ivory? If
so, your camel waits."

"One camel cannot carry four men," I answered, avoiding the question.

"In courage and skill you are more than many men, O Macumazana, yet in
body you are but one and not four."

"If you think that I am going with you alone, you are much mistaken,
Harut and Marut," I exclaimed. "Here with me is my servant without whom
I do not stir," and I pointed to Hans, whom they contemplated gravely.
"Also there is the Lord Ragnall, who in this land is named Igeza, and
his servant who here is named Bena, the man out of whom you drew snakes
in the room in England. They also must accompany us."

At this news the impassive countenances of Harut and Marut showed, I
thought, some signs of disturbance. They muttered together in an unknown
tongue. Then Harut said:

"Our secret land is open to you alone, O Macumazana, for one purpose
only--to kill the elephant Jana, for which deed we promise you a great
reward. We do not wish to see the others there."

"Then you can kill your own elephant, Harut and Marut, for not one step
do I go with you. Why should I when there is as much ivory here as I
want, to be had for the shooting?"

"How if we take you, O Macumazana?"

"How if I kill you both, O Harut and Marut? Fools, here are many brave
men at my command, and if you or any with you want fighting it shall be
given you in plenty. Hans, bid the Mazitu stand to their arms and summon
Igeza and Bena."

"Stay, Lord," said Harut, "and put down that weapon," for once more I
had produced the pistol. "We would not begin our fellowship by shedding
blood, though we are safer from you than you think. Your companions
shall accompany you to the land of the Kendah, but let them know that
they do so at their own risk. Learn that it is revealed to us that if
they go in there some of them will pass out again as spirits but not as
men."

"Do you mean that you will murder them?"

"No. We mean that yonder are some stronger than us or any men, who will
take their lives in sacrifice. Not yours, Macumazana, for that, it is
decreed, is safe, but those of two of the others, which two we do not
know."

"Indeed, Harut and Marut, and how am I to be sure that any of us are
safe, or that you do not but trick us to your country, there to kill us
with treachery and steal our goods?"

"Because we swear it by the oath that may not be broken; we swear it by
the Heavenly Child," both of them exclaimed solemnly, speaking with one
voice and bowing till their foreheads almost touched the ground.

I shrugged my shoulders and laughed a little.

"You do not believe us," went on Harut, "who have not heard what happens
to those who break this oath. Come now and see something. Within five
paces of your hut is a tall ant-heap upon which doubtless you have been
accustomed to stand and overlook the desert." (This was true, but how
did they guess it, I wondered.) "Go climb that ant-heap once more."

Perhaps it was rash, but my curiosity led me to accept this invitation.
Out I went, followed by Hans with a loaded double-barrelled rifle, and
scrambled up the ant-heap which, as it was twenty feet high and there
were no trees just here, commanded a very fine view of the desert
beyond.

"Look to the north," said Harut from its foot.

I looked, and there in the bright moonlight five or six hundred yards
away, ranged rank by rank upon a slope of sand and along the crest of
the ridge beyond, I saw quite two hundred kneeling camels, and by each
camel a tall, white-robed figure who held in his hand a long lance to
the shaft of which, not far beneath the blade, was attached a little
flag. For a while I stared to make sure that I was not the victim of an
illusion or a mirage. Then when I had satisfied myself that these were
indeed men and camels I descended from the ant-heap.

"You will admit, Macumazana," said Harut politely, "that if we had meant
you any ill, with such a force it would have been easy for us to take a
sleeping camp at night. But these men come here to be your escort, not
to kill or enslave you or yours. And, Macumazana, we have sworn to
you the oath that may not be broken. Now we go to our people. In the
morning, after you have eaten, we will return again unarmed and alone."

Then like shadows they slipped away.



CHAPTER X

CHARGE!

Ten minutes later the truth was known and every man in the camp was up
and armed. At first there were some signs of panic, but these with the
help of Babemba we managed to control, setting the men to make the
best preparations for defence that circumstances would allow, and thus
occupying their minds. For from the first we saw that, except for the
three of us who had horses, escape was impossible. That great camel
corps could catch us within a mile.

Leaving old Babemba in charge of his soldiers, we three white men and
Hans held a council at which I repeated every word that had passed
between Harut and Marut and myself, including their absolute denial of
their having had anything to do with the disappearance of Lady Ragnall
on the Nile.

"Now," I asked, "what is to be done? My fate is sealed, since for
purposes of their own, of which probably we know nothing, these people
intend to take me with them to their country, as indeed they are
justified in doing, since I have been fool enough to keep a kind of
assignation with them here. But they don't want anybody else. Therefore
there is nothing to prevent you Ragnall, and you Savage, and you Hans,
from returning with the Mazitu."

"Oh! Baas," said Hans, who could understand English well enough
although he seldom spoke it, "why are you always bothering me with such
_praatjes_?"--(that is, chatter). "Whatever you do I will do, and I
don't care what you do, except for your own sake, Baas. If I am going to
die, let me die; it doesn't at all matter how, since I must go soon and
make report to your reverend father, the Predikant. And now, Baas, I
have been awake all night, for I heard those camels coming a long while
before the two spook men appeared, and as I have never heard camels
before, could not make out what they were, for they don't walk like
giraffes. So I am going to sleep, Baas, there in the sun. When you have
settled things, you can wake me up and give me your orders," and he
suited the action to the word, for when I glanced at him again he was,
or appeared to be, slumbering, just like a dog at its master's feet.

I looked at Ragnall in interrogation.

"I am going on," he said briefly.

"Despite the denial of these men of any complicity in your wife's
fate?" I asked. "If their words are true, what have you to gain by this
journey, Ragnall?"

"An interesting experience while it lasts; that is all. Like Hans
there, if what they say _is_ true, my future is a matter of complete
indifference to me. But I do not believe a word of what they say.
Something tells me that they know a great deal which they do not choose
to repeat--about my wife I mean. That is why they are so anxious that I
should not accompany you."

"You must judge for yourself," I answered doubtfully, "and I hope to
Heaven that you are judging right. Now, Savage, what have you decided?
Remember before you reply that these uncanny fellows declare that if we
four go, two of us will never return. It seems impossible that they can
read the future, still, without doubt, they _are_ most uncanny."

"Sir," said Savage, "I will take my chance. Before I left England his
lordship made a provision for my old mother and my widowed sister and
her children, and I have none other dependent upon me. Moreover, I won't
return alone with those Mazitu to become a barbarian, for how could I
find my way back to the coast without anyone to guide me? So I'll go on
and leave the rest to God."

"Which is just what we have all got to do," I remarked. "Well, as that
is settled, let us send for Babemba and tell him."

This we did accordingly. The old fellow received the news with more
resignation than I had anticipated. Fixing his one eye upon me, he said:

"Macumazana, these words are what I expected from you. Had any other man
spoken them I should have declared that he was quite mad. But I remember
that I said this when you determined to visit the Pongo, and that you
came back from their country safe and sound, having done wonderful
things there, and that it was the Pongo who suffered, not you. So I
believe it will be again, so far as you are concerned, Macumazana, for
I think that some devil goes with you who looks after his own. For the
others I do not know. They must settle the matter with their own devils,
or with those of the Kendah people. Now farewell, Macumazana, for it
comes to me that we shall meet no more. Well, that happens to all at
last, and it is good to have known you who are so great in your own way.
Often I shall think of you as you will think of me, and hope that in a
country beyond that of the Kendah I may hear from your lips all that
has befallen you on this and other journeys. Now I go to withdraw my
men before these white-robed Arabs come on their strange beasts to seize
you, lest they should take us also and there should be a fight in which
we, being the fewer, must die. The loads are all in order ready to be
laden on their strange beasts. If they declare that the horses cannot
cross the desert, leave them loose and we will catch them and take them
home with us, and since they are male and female, breed young ones from
them which shall be yours when you send for them, or Bausi the king's
if you never send. Nay, I want no more presents who have the gun and the
powder and the bullets you gave me, and the tusks of ivory for Bausi the
king, and what is best of all, the memory of you and of your courage
and wisdom. May these and the gods you worship befriend you. From
yonder hill we will watch till we see that you have gone. Farewell,"
and waiting for no answer, he departed with the tears running from his
solitary eye.

Ten minutes later the Mazitu bearers had also saluted us and gone,
leaving us seated in that deserted camp surrounded by our baggage, and
so far as I was concerned, feeling most lonely. Another ten minutes went
by which we occupied in packing our personal belongings. Then Hans, who
was now washing out the coffee kettle at a little distance, looked up
and said:

"Here come the spook-men, Baas, the whole regiment of them." We ran and
looked. It was true. Marshalled in orderly squadrons, the camels with
their riders were sweeping towards us, and a fine sight the beasts made
with their swaying necks and long, lurching gait. About fifty yards away
they halted just where the stream from our spring entered the desert,
and there proceeded to water the camels, twenty of them at a time. Two
men, however, in whom I recognized Harut and Marut, walked forward and
presently were standing before us, bowing obsequiously.

"Good morning, Lord," said Harut to Ragnall in his broken English. "So
you come with Macumazana to call at our poor house, as we call at your
fine one in England. You think we got the beautiful lady you marry, she
we give old necklace. That is not so. No white lady ever in Kendahland.
We hear story from Macumazana and believe that lady drowned in Nile, for
you 'member she walk much in her sleep. We very sorry for you, but gods
know their business. They leave when they will leave, and take when they
will take. You find her again some day more beautiful still and with her
soul come back."

Here I looked at him sharply. I had told him nothing about Lady Ragnall
having lost her wits. How then did he know of the matter? Still I
thought it best to hold my peace. I think that Harut saw he had made
some mistake, for leaving the subject of Lady Ragnall, he went on:

"You very welcome, O Lord, but it right tell you this most dangerous
journey, since elephant Jana not like strangers, and," he continued
slowly, "think no elephant like your blood, and all elephants brothers.
What one hate rest hate everywhere in world. See it in your face that
you already suffer great hurt from elephant, you or someone near you.
Also some of Kendah very fierce people and love fighting, and p'raps
there war in the land while you there, and in war people get killed."

"Very good, my friend," said Ragnall, "I am prepared to take my
chance of these things. Either we all go to your country together, as
Macumazana has explained to you, or none of us go."

"We understand. That is our bargain and we no break word," replied
Harut.

Then he turned his benevolent gaze upon Savage, and said: "So you come
too, Mr. Bena. That your name here, eh? Well, you learn lot things in
Kendahland, about snakes and all rest."

Here the jovial-looking Marut whispered something into the ear of his
companion, smiling all over his face and showing his white teeth as he
did so. "Oh!" went on Harut, "my brother tells me you meet one snake
already, down in country called Natal, but sit on him so hard, that he
grow quite flat and no bite."

"Who told him that?" gasped Savage.

"Oh! forget. Think Macumazana. No? Then p'raps you tell him in sleep,
for people talk much in sleep, you know, and some other people got good
ears and hear long way. Or p'raps little joke Harut. You 'member, he
first-rate conjurer. P'raps he send that snake. No trouble if know how.
Well, we show you much better snake Kendahland. But you no sit on _him_,
Mr. Bena."

To me, I know not why, there was something horrible in all this
jocosity, something that gave me the creeps as always does the sight
of a cat playing with a mouse. I felt even then that it foreshadowed
terrible things. How _could_ these men know the details of occurrences
at which they were not present and of which no one had told them? Did
that strange "tobacco" of theirs really give them some clairvoyant
power, I wondered, or had they other secret methods of obtaining news?
I glanced at poor Savage and perceived that he too felt as I did, for
he had turned quite pale beneath his tan. Even Hans was affected, for
he whispered to me in Dutch: "These are not men; these are devils, Baas,
and this journey of ours is one into hell."

Only Ragnall sat stern, silent, and apparently quite unmoved. Indeed
there was something almost sphinx-like about the set and expression of
his handsome face. Moreover, I felt sure that Harut and Marut recognized
the man's strength and determination and that he was one with whom they
must reckon seriously. Beneath all their smiles and courtesies I could
read this knowledge in their eyes; also that it was causing them grave
anxiety. It was as though they knew that here was one against whom their
power had no avail, whose fate was the master of their fate. In a sense
Harut admitted this to me, for suddenly he looked up and said in a
changed voice and in Bantu:

"You are a good reader of hearts, O Macumazana, almost as good as I am.
But remember that there is One Who writes upon the book of the heart,
Who is the Lord of us who do but read, and that what He writes, that
will befall, strive as we may, for in His hands is the future."

"Quite so," I replied coolly, "and that is why I am going with you to
Kendahland and fear you not at all."

"So it is and so let it be," he answered. "And now, Lords, are you ready
to start? For long is the road and who knows what awaits us ere we see
its end?"

"Yes," I replied, "long is the road of life and who knows what awaits us
ere we see its end--and after?"



Three hours later I halted the splendid white riding-camel upon which
I was mounted, and looked back from the crest of a wave of the desert.
There far behind us on the horizon, by the help of my glasses, I could
make out the site of the camp we had left and even the tall ant-hill
whence I had gazed in the moonlight at our mysterious escort which
seemed to have sprung from the desert as though by magic.

This was the manner of our march: A mile or so ahead of us went a picket
of eight or ten men mounted on the swiftest beasts, doubtless to give
warning of any danger. Next, three or four hundred yards away, followed
a body of about fifty Kendah, travelling in a double line, and behind
these the baggage men, mounted like everyone else, and leading behind
them strings of camels laden with water, provisions, tents of skin
and all our goods, including the fifty rifles and the ammunition that
Ragnall had brought from England. Then came we three white men and Hans,
each of us riding as swift and fine a camel as Africa can breed. On
our right at a distance of about half a mile, and also on our left,
travelled other bodies of the Kendah of the same numerical strength
as that ahead, while the rear was brought up by the remainder of the
company who drove a number of spare camels.

Thus we journeyed in the centre of a square whence any escape would have
been impossible, for I forgot to say that our keepers Harut and Marut
rode exactly behind us, at such a distance that we could call to them if
we wished.

At first I found this method of travelling very tiring, as does everyone
who is quite unaccustomed to camel-back. Indeed the swing and the jolt
of the swift creature beneath me seemed to wrench my bones asunder to
such an extent that at the beginning I had once or twice to be lifted
from the saddle when, after hours of torture, at length we camped for
the night. Poor Savage suffered even more than I did, for the motion
reduced him to a kind of jelly. Ragnall, however, who I think had ridden
camels before, felt little inconvenience, and the same may be said of
Hans, who rode in all sorts of positions, sometimes sideways like
a lady, and at others kneeling on the saddle like a monkey on a
barrel-organ. Also, being very light and tough as rimpis, the swaying
motion did not seem to affect him.

By degrees all these troubles left us to such an extent that I could
cover my fifty miles a day, more or less, without even feeling tired.
Indeed I grew to like the life in that pure and sparkling desert air,
perhaps because it was so restful. Day after day we journeyed on across
the endless, sandy plain, watching the sun rise, watching it grow high,
watching it sink again. Night after night we ate our simple food with
appetite and slept beneath the glittering stars till the new dawn broke
in glory from the bosom of the immeasurable East.

We spoke but little during all this time. It was as though the silence
of the wilderness had got hold of us and sealed our lips. Or perhaps
each of us was occupied with his own thoughts. At any rate I know that
for my part I seemed to live in a kind of dreamland, thinking of the
past, reflecting much upon the innumerable problems of this passing show
called life, but not paying much heed to the future. What did the future
matter to me, who did not know whether I should have a share of it even
for another month, or week, or day, surrounded as I was by the shadow of
death? No, I troubled little as to any earthly future, although I admit
that in this oasis of calm I reflected upon that state where past,
present and future will all be one; also that those reflections, which
were in their essence a kind of unshaped prayer, brought much calm to my
spirit.

With the regiment of escort we had practically no communication; I think
that they had been forbidden to talk to us. They were a very silent set
of men, finely-made, capable persons, of an Arab type, light rather than
dark in colour, who seemed for the most part to communicate with each
other by signs or in low-muttered words. Evidently they looked upon
Harut and Marut with great veneration, for any order which either of
these brethren gave, if they were brethren, was obeyed without
dispute or delay. Thus, when I happened to mention that I had lost a
pocket-knife at one of our camping-places two days' journey back, three
of them, much against my wish, were ordered to return to look for it,
and did so, making no question. Eight days later they rejoined us much
exhausted and having lost a camel, but with the knife, which they handed
to me with a low bow; and I confess that I felt ashamed to take the
thing.

Nor did we exchange many further confidences with Harut and Marut. Up
to the time of our arrival at the boundaries of the Kendah country, our
only talk with them was of the incidents of travel, of where we should
camp, of how far it might be to the next water, for water-holes or old
wells existed in this desert, of such birds as we saw, and so forth. As
to other and more important matters a kind of truce seemed to prevail.
Still, I observed that they were always studying us, and especially Lord
Ragnall, who rode on day after day, self-absorbed and staring straight
in front of him as though he looked at something we could not see.

Thus we covered hundreds of miles, not less than five hundred at the
least, reckoning our progress at only thirty miles a day, including
stoppages. For occasionally we stopped at the water-holes or small
oases, where the camels drank and rested. Indeed, these were so
conveniently arranged that I came to the conclusion that once there must
have been some established route running across these wastelands to
the south, of which the traditional knowledge remained with the Kendah
people. If so, it had not been used for generations, for save those of
one or two that had died on the outward march, we saw no skeletons of
camels or other beasts, or indeed any sign of man. The place was an
absolute wilderness where nothing lived except a few small mammals at
the oases and the birds that passed over it in the air on their way to
more fertile regions. Of these, by the way, I saw many that are known
both to Europe and Africa, especially ducks and cranes; also storks
that, for aught I can say, may have come from far-off, homely Holland.

At last the character of the country began to change. Grass appeared on
its lower-lying stretches, then bushes, then occasional trees and among
the trees a few buck. Halting the caravan I crept out and shot two of
these buck with a right and left, a feat that caused our grave escort to
stare in a fashion which showed me that they had never seen anything of
the sort done before.

That night, while we were eating the venison with relish, since it was
the first fresh meat that we had tasted for many a day, I observed that
the disposition of our camp was different from its common form. Thus it
was smaller and placed on an eminence. Also the camels were not allowed
to graze where they would as usual, but were kept within a limited area
while their riders were arranged in groups outside of them. Further, the
stores were piled near our tents, in the centre, with guards set over
them. I asked Harut and Marut, who were sharing our meal, the reason of
these alterations.

"It is because we are on the borders of the Kendah country," answered
old Harut. "Four days' more march will bring us there, Macumazana."

"Then why should you take precautions against your own people? Surely
they will welcome you."

"With spears perhaps. Macumazana, learn that the Kendah are not one but
two people. As you may have heard before, we are the White Kendah, but
there are also Black Kendah who outnumber us many times over, though in
the beginning we from the north conquered them, or so says our history.
The White Kendah have their own territory; but as there is no other
road, to reach it we must pass through that of the Black Kendah, where
it is always possible that we may be attacked, especially as we bring
strangers into the land."

"How is it then that the Black Kendah allow you to live at all, Harut,
if they are so much the more numerous?"

"Because of fear, Macumazana. They fear our wisdom and the decrees of
the Heavenly Child spoken through the mouth of its oracle, which, if it
is offended, can bring a curse upon them. Still, if they find us outside
our borders they may kill us, if they can, as we may kill them if we
find them within our borders."

"Indeed, Harut. Then it looks to me as though there were a war breeding
between you."

"A war is breeding, Macumazana, the last great war in which either the
White Kendah or the Black Kendah must perish. Or perhaps both will die
together. Maybe that is the real reason why we have asked you to be our
guest, Macumazana," and with their usual courteous bows, both of them
rose and departed before I could reply.

"You see how it stands," I said to Ragnall. "We have been brought here
to fight for our friends, Harut, Marut and Co., against their rebellious
subjects, or rather the king who reigns jointly with them."

"It looks like it," he replied quietly, "but doubtless we shall find
out the truth in time and meanwhile speculation is no good. Do you go to
bed, Quatermain, I will watch till midnight and then wake you."

That night passed in safety. Next day we marched before the dawn,
passing through country that grew continually better watered and more
fertile, though it was still open plain but sloping upwards ever more
steeply. On this plain I saw herds of antelopes and what in the distance
looked like cattle, but no human being. Before evening we camped where
there was good water and plenty of food for the camels.

While the camp was being set Harut came and invited us to follow him to
the outposts, whence he said we should see a view. We walked with him, a
matter of not more than a quarter of a mile to the head of that rise up
which we had been travelling all day, and thence perceived one of
the most glorious prospects on which my eyes have fallen in all great
Africa. From where we stood the land sloped steeply for a matter of ten
or fifteen miles, till finally the fall ended in a vast plain like to
the bottom of a gigantic saucer, that I presume in some far time of the
world's history was once an enormous lake. A river ran east and west
across this plain and into it fell tributaries. Far beyond this river
the contours of the country rose again till, many, many miles away,
there appeared a solitary hill, tumulus-shaped, which seemed to be
covered with bush.

Beyond and surrounding this hill was more plain which with the aid of my
powerful glasses was, we could see, bordered at last by a range of
great mountains, looking like a blue line pencilled across the northern
distance. To the east and west the plain seemed to be illimitable.
Obviously its soil was of a most fertile character and supported numbers
of inhabitants, for everywhere we could see their kraals or villages.
Much of it to the west, however, was covered with dense forest with, to
all appearance, a clearing in its midst.

"Behold the land of the Kendah," said Harut. "On this side of the River
Tava live the Black Kendah, on the farther side, the White Kendah."

"And what is that hill?"

"That is the Holy Mount, the Home of the Heavenly Child, where no man
may set foot"--here he looked at us meaningly--"save the priests of the
Child."

"What happens to him if he does?" I asked.

"He dies, my Lord Macumazana."

"Then it is guarded, Harut?"

"It is guarded, not with mortal weapons, Macumazana, but by the spirits
that watch over the Child."

As he would say no more on this interesting matter, I asked him as to
the numbers of the Kendah people, to which he replied that the Black
Kendah might number twenty thousand men of arm-bearing age, but the
White Kendah not more than two thousand.

"Then no wonder you want spirits to guard your Heavenly Child," I
remarked, "since the Black Kendah are your foes and with you warriors
are few."

At this moment our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a
picket on a camel, who reported something to Harut which appeared to
disturb him. I asked him what was the matter.

"That is the matter," he said, pointing to a man mounted on a rough pony
who just then appeared from behind some bushes about half a mile away,
galloping down the slope towards the plain. "He is one of the scouts of
Simba, King of the Black Kendah, and he goes to Simba's town in yonder
forest to make report of our arrival. Return to camp, Macumazana, and
eat, for we must march with the rising of the moon."

As soon as the moon rose we marched accordingly, although the camels,
many of which were much worn with the long journey, scarcely had been
given time to fill themselves and none to rest. All night we marched
down the long slope, only halting for half an hour before daylight to
eat something and rearrange the loads on the baggage beasts, which now,
I noticed, were guarded with extra care. When we were starting again
Marut came to us and remarked with his usual smile, on behalf of his
brother Harut, who was otherwise engaged, that it might be well if we
had our guns ready, since we were entering the land of the elephant Jana
and "who knew but that we might meet him?"

"Or his worshippers on two legs," I suggested, to which his only reply
was a nod.

So we got our repeating rifles, some of the first that were ever made,
serviceable but rather complicated weapons that fired five cartridges.
Hans, however, with my permission, armed himself with the little Purdey
piece that was named "Intombi," the singe-barrelled, muzzle-loading gun
which had done me so much service in earlier days, and even on my last
journey to Pongoland. He said that he was accustomed to it and did not
understand these new-fangled breechloaders, also that it was "lucky." I
consented as I did not think that it made much difference with what kind
of rifle Hans was provided. As a marksman he had this peculiarity: up to
a hundred yards or so he was an excellent shot, but beyond that distance
no good at all.

A quarter of an hour later, as the dawn was breaking, we passed through
a kind of _nek_ of rough stones bordering the flat land, and emerged
into a compact body on to the edge of the grassy plain. Here the word
was given to halt for a reason that became clear to me so soon as I was
out of the rocks. For there, marching rapidly, not half a mile away,
were some five hundred white-robed men. A large proportion of these
were mounted, the best being foot-soldiers, of whom more were running
up every minute, appearing out of bush that grew upon the hill-side,
apparently to dispute our passage. These people, who were black-faced
with fuzzy hair upon which they wore no head-dress, all seemed to be
armed with spears.

Presently from out of the mass of them two horsemen dashed forward, one
of whom bore a white flag in token that they came to parley. Our advance
guard allowed them to pass and they galloped on, dodging in and out
between the camels with wonderful skill till at length they came to
where we were with Harut and Marut, and pulling up their horses so
sharply that the animals almost sat down on their haunches, saluted by
raising their spears. They were very fine-looking fellows, perfectly
black in colour with a negroid cast of countenance and long frizzled
hair which hung down on to their shoulders. Their clothing was light,
consisting of hide riding breeches that resembled bathing drawers,
sandals, and an arrangement of triple chains which seemed to be made
of some silvery metal that hung from their necks across the breast and
back. Their arms consisted of a long lance similar to that carried by
the White Kendah, and a straight, cross-handled sword suspended from
a belt. This, as I ascertained afterwards, was the regulation cavalry
equipment among these people. The footmen carried a shorter spear, a
round leather shield, two throwing javelins or assegais, and a curved
knife with a horn handle.

"Greeting, Prophets of the Child!" cried one of them. "We are messengers
from the god Jana who speaks through the mouth of Simba the King."

"Say on, worshippers of the devil Jana. What word has Simba the King for
us?" answered Harut.

"The word of war, Prophet. What do you beyond your southern boundary of
the Tava river in the territory of the Black Kendah, that was sealed
to them by pact after the battle of a hundred years ago? Is not all
the land to the north as far as the mountains and beyond the mountains
enough for you? Simba the King let you go out, hoping that the desert
would swallow you, but return you shall not."

"That we shall know presently," replied Harut in a suave voice. "It
depends upon whether the Heavenly Child or the devil Jana is the more
powerful in the land. Still, as we would avoid bloodshed if we may, we
desire to explain to you, messengers of King Simba, that we are here
upon a peaceful errand. It was necessary that we should convey the white
lords to make an offering to the Child, and this was the only road by
which we could lead them to the Holy Mount, since they come from the
south. Through the forests and the swamps that lie to the east and west
camels cannot travel."

"And what is the offering that the white men would make to the Child,
Prophet? Oh! we know well, for like you we have our magic. The offering
that they must make is the blood of Jana our god, which you have brought
them here to kill with their strange weapons, as though any weapon could
prevail against Jana the god. Now, give to us these white men that we
may offer them to the god, and perchance Simba the King will let you go
through."

"Why?" asked Harut, "seeing that you declare that the white men cannot
harm Jana, to whom indeed they wish no harm. To surrender them to you
that they may be torn to pieces by the devil Jana would be to break the
law of hospitality, for they are our guests. Now return to Simba the
King, and say to Simba that if he lifts a spear against us the threefold
curse of the Child shall fall upon him and upon you his people: The
curse of Heaven by storm or by drought. The curse of famine. The curse
of war. I the prophet have spoken. Depart."

Watching, I could see that this ultimatum delivered by Harut in a most
impressive voice, and seconded as it was by the sudden and simultaneous
lifting of the spears of all our escort that were within hearing,
produced a considerable effect upon the messengers. Their faces grew
afraid and they shrank a little. Evidently the "threefold curse of the
Child" suggested calamities which they dreaded. Making no answer, they
wheeled their horses about and galloped back to the force that was
gathering below as swiftly as they had come.

"We must fight, my Lord Macumazana," said Harut, "and if we would live,
conquer, as I know that we shall do."

Then he issued some orders, of which the result was that the caravan
adopted a wedge-shaped formation like to that of a great flock of
wildfowl on the wing. Harut stationed himself almost at the apex of the
triangle. I with Hans and Marut were about the centre of the line, while
Ragnall and Savage were placed opposite to us in the right line, the
whole width of the wedge being between us. The baggage camels and their
leaders occupied the middle space between the lines and were followed by
a small rear-guard.

At first we white men were inclined to protest at this separation, but
when Marut explained to us that its object was to give confidence to the
two divisions of the force and also to minimize the risk of destruction
or capture of all three of us, of course we had nothing more to say.
So we just shook hands, and with as much assurance as we could command
wished each other well through the job.

Then we parted, poor Savage looking very limp indeed, for this was his
first experience of war. Ragnall, however, who came of an old fighting
stock, seemed to be happy as a king. I who had known so many battles,
was the reverse of happy, for inconveniently enough there flashed into
my mind at this juncture the dying words of the Zulu captain and seer,
Mavovo, which foretold that I too should fall far away in war; and I
wondered whether this were the occasion that had been present to his
foreseeing mind.

Only Hans seemed quite unconcerned. Indeed I noted that he took the
opportunity of the halt to fill and light his large corn-cob pipe, a bit
of bravado in the face of Providence for which I could have kicked him
had he not been perched in his usual monkey fashion on the top of a very
tall camel. The act, however, excited the admiration of the Kendah, for
I heard one of them call to the others:

"Look! He is not a monkey after all, but a man--more of a man than his
master."

The arrangements were soon made. Within a quarter of an hour of the
departure of the messengers Harut, after bowing thrice towards the Holy
Mountain, rose in his stirrups and shaking a long spear above his head,
shouted a single word:

"Charge!"



CHAPTER XI

ALLAN IS CAPTURED

The ride that followed was really quite exhilarating. The camels,
notwithstanding their long journey, seemed to have caught some of the
enthusiasm of the war-horse as described in the Book of Job; indeed I
had no idea that they could travel at such a rate. On we swung down the
slope, keeping excellent order, the forest of tall spears shining
and the little lancer-like pennons fluttering on the breeze in a very
gallant way. In silence we went save for the thudding of the hoofs of
the camels and an occasional squeal of anger as some rider drove his
lance handle into their ribs. Not until we actually joined battle did
a single man open his lips. Then, it is true, there went up one
simultaneous and mighty roar of:

"The Child! Death to Jana! The Child! The Child!"

But this happened a few minutes later.

As we drew near the enemy I saw that they had massed their footmen in
a dense body, six or eight lines thick. There they stood to receive the
impact of our charge, or rather they did not all stand, for the first
two ranks were kneeling with long spears stretched out in front of them.
I imagine that their appearance must have greatly resembled that of the
Greek phalanx, or that of the Swiss prepared to receive cavalry in the
Middle Ages. On either side of this formidable body, which by now must
have numbered four or five hundred men, and at a distance perhaps of
a quarter of a mile from them, were gathered the horsemen of the Black
Kendah, divided into two bodies of nearly equal strength, say about a
hundred horse in each body.

As we approached, our triangle curved a little, no doubt under the
direction of Harut. A minute or so later I saw the reason. It was that
we might strike the foot-soldiers not full in front but at an angle. It
was an admirable manoeuvre, for when presently we did strike, we caught
them swiftly on the flank and crumpled them up. My word! we went through
those fellows like a knife through butter; they had as much chance
against the rush of our camels as a brown-paper screen has against a
typhoon. Over they rolled in heaps while the White Kendah spitted them
with their lances.

"The Child is top dog! My money on the Child," reflected I in irreverent
ecstasy. But that exultation was premature, for those Black Kendah were
by no means all dead. Presently I saw that scores of them had appeared
among the camels, which they were engaged in stabbing, or trying
to stab, in the stomach with their spears. Also I had forgotten the
horsemen. As our charge slackened owing to the complication in front,
these arrived on our flanks like two thunderbolts. We faced about and
did our best to meet the onslaught, of which the net result was that
both our left and right lines were pierced through about fifty yards
behind the baggage camels. Luckily for us the very impetuosity of the
Black Kendah rush deprived it of most of the fruits of victory, since
the two squadrons, being unable to check their horses, ended by charging
into each other and becoming mixed in inextricable confusion. Then, I
do not know who gave the order, we wheeled our camels in and fell upon
them, a struggling, stationary mass, with the result that many of them
were speared, or overthrown and trampled.

"I have said we, but that is not quite correct, at any rate so far
as Marut, Hans, I and about fifteen camelmen were concerned. How it
happened I could not tell in that dust and confusion, but we were
cut off from the main body and presently found ourselves fighting
desperately in a group at which Black Kendah horsemen were charging
again and again. We made the best stand we could. By degrees the
bewildered camels sank under the repeated spear-thrusts of the enemy,
all except one, oddly enough that ridden by Hans, which by some strange
chance was never touched. The rest of us were thrown or tumbled off the
camels and continued the fight from behind their struggling bodies."

That is where I came in. Up to this time I had not fired a single shot,
partly because I do not like missing, which it is so easy to do from the
back of a swaying camel, and still more for the reason that I had
not the slightest desire to kill any of these savage men unless I was
obliged to do so in self-defence. Now, however, the thing was different,
as I was fighting for my life. Leaning against my camel, which was dying
and beating its head upon the ground, groaning horribly the while, I
emptied the five cartridges of the repeater into those Black Kendah,
pausing between each shot to take aim, with the result that presently
five riderless horses were galloping loose about the veld.

The effect was electrical, since our attackers had never seen anything
of the kind before. For a while they all drew off, which gave me time to
reload. Then they came on again and I repeated the process. For a second
time they retreated and after consultation which lasted for a minute or
more, made a third attack. Once more I saluted them to the best of my
ability, though on this occasion only three men and a horse fell. The
fifth shot was a clean miss because they came on in such a scattered
formation that I had to turn from side to side to fire.

Now at last the game was up, for the simple reason that I had no more
cartridges save two in my double-barrelled pistol. It may be asked why.
The answer is, want of foresight. Too many cartridges in one's pocket
are apt to chafe on camel-back and so is a belt full of them. In those
days also the engagements were few in which a man fired over fifteen.
I had forty or fifty more in a bag, which bag Savage with his usual
politeness had taken and hung upon his saddle without saying a word to
me. At the beginning of the action I found this out, but could not then
get them from him as he was separated from me. Hans, always careless in
small matters, was really to blame as he ought to have seen that I had
the cartridges, or at any rate to have carried them himself. In short,
it was one of those accidents that will happen. There is nothing more to
be said.

After a still longer consultation our enemies advanced on us for the
fourth time, but very slowly. Meanwhile I had been taking stock of the
position. The camel corps, or what was left of it, oblivious of our
plight which the dust of conflict had hidden from them, was travelling
on to the north, more or less victorious. That is to say, it had cut its
way through the Black Kendah and was escaping unpursued, huddled up in
a mob with the baggage animals safe in its centre. The Black Kendah
themselves were engaged in killing our wounded and succouring their
own; also in collecting the bodies of the dead. In short, quite
unintentionally, we were deserted. Probably, if anybody thought about us
at all in the turmoil of desperate battle, they concluded that we were
among the slain.

Marut came up to me, unhurt, still smiling and waving a bloody spear.

"Lord Macumazana," he said, "the end is at hand. The Child has saved the
others, or most of them, but us it has abandoned. Now what will you do?
Kill yourself, or if that does not please you, suffer me to kill you? Or
shoot on until you must surrender?"

"I have nothing to shoot with any more," I answered. "But if we
surrender, what will happen to us?"

"We shall be taken to Simba's town and there sacrificed to the devil
Jana--I have not time to tell you how. Therefore I propose to kill
myself."

"Then I think you are foolish, Marut, since once we are dead, we are
dead; but while we are alive it is always possible that we may escape
from Jana. If the worst comes to the worst I have a pistol with two
bullets in it, one for you and one for me."

"The wisdom of the Child is in you," he replied. "I shall surrender with
you, Macumazana, and take my chance."

Then he turned and explained things to his followers, who spoke together
for a moment. In the end these took a strange and, to my mind, a very
heroic decision. Waiting till the attacking Kendah were quite close
to us, with the exception of three men, who either because they lacked
courage or for some other reason, stayed with us, they advanced humbly
as though to make submission. A number of the Black Kendah dismounted
and ran up, I suppose to take them prisoners. The men waited till
these were all round them. Then with a yell of "The Child!" they sprang
forward, taking the enemy unawares and fighting like demons, inflicted
great loss upon them before they fell themselves covered with wounds.

"Brave men indeed!" said Marut approvingly. "Well, now they are all at
peace with the Child, where doubtless we shall find them ere long."

I nodded but answered nothing. To tell the truth, I was too much engaged
in nursing the remains of my own courage to enter into conversation
about that of other people.

This fierce and cunning stratagem of desperate men which had cost their
enemies so dear, seemed to infuriate the Black Kendah.

At us came the whole mob of them--we were but six now--roaring "Jana!
Jana!" and led by a grey-beard who, to judge from the number of silver
chains upon his breast and his other trappings, seemed to be a great man
among them. When they were about fifty yards away and I was preparing
for the worst, a shot rang out from above and behind me. At the same
instant Greybeard threw his arms wide and letting fall the spear he
held, pitched from his horse, evidently stone dead. I glanced back and
saw Hans, the corn-cob pipe still in his mouth and the little rifle,
"Intombi," still at his shoulder. He had fired from the back of the
camel, I think for the first time that day, and whether by chance or
through good marksmanship, I do not know, had killed this man.

His sudden and unexpected end seemed to fill the Black Kendah with grief
and dismay. Halting in their charge they gathered round him, while a
fierce-looking middle-aged man, also adorned with much barbaric finery,
dismounted to examine him.

"That is Simba the King," said Marut, "and the slain one is his uncle,
Goru, the great general who brought him up from a babe."

"Then I wish I had another cartridge left for the nephew," I began and
stopped, for Hans was speaking to me.

"Good-bye, Baas," he said, "I must go, for I cannot load 'Intombi' on
the back of this beast. If you meet your reverend father the Predikant
before I do, tell him to make a nice place ready for me among the
fires."

Then before I could get out an answer, Hans dragged his camel round;
as I have said, it was quite uninjured. Urging it to a shambling gallop
with blows of the rifle stock, he departed at a great rate, not towards
the home of the Child but up the hill into a brake of giant grass
mingled with thorn trees that grew quite close at hand. Here with
startling suddenness both he and the camel vanished away.

If the Black Kendah saw him go, of which I am doubtful, for they all
seemed to be lost in consultation round their king and the dead general,
Goru, they made no attempt to follow him. Another possibility is that
they thought he was trying to lead them into some snare or ambush.

I do not know what they thought because I never heard them mention Hans
or the matter of his disappearance, if indeed they ever realized that
there was such a person. Curiously enough in the case of men who had
just shown themselves so brave, this last accident of the decease of
Goru coming on the top of all their other casualties, seemed to take the
courage out of them. It was as though they had come to the conclusion
that we with our guns were something more than mortal.

For several minutes they debated in evident hesitation. At last from out
of their array rode a single man, in whom I recognized one of the envoys
who had met us in the morning, carrying in his hand a white flag as he
had done before. Thereon I laid down my rifle in token that I would not
fire at him, which indeed I could not do having nothing to fire. Seeing
this he came to within a few yards and halting, addressed Marut.

"O second Prophet of the Child," he said, "these are the words of Simba
the King: Your god has been too strong for us to-day, though in a day
to come it may be otherwise. I thought I had you in a pit; that you were
the bucks and I the hunter. But, though with loss, you have escaped out
of the pit," and the speaker glanced towards our retreating force which
was now but a cloud of dust in the far distance, "while I the hunter
have been gored by your horns," and again he glanced at the dead that
were scattered about the plain. "The noblest of the buck, the white bull
of the herd," and he looked at me, who in any other circumstances
would have felt complimented, "and you, O Prophet Marut, and one or two
others, besides those that I have slain, are however still in the pit
and your horn is a magic horn," here he pointed to my rifle, "which
pierces from afar and kills dead all by whom it is touched."

"So I caught those gentry well in the middle," thought I to myself, "and
with soft-nosed bullets!"

"Therefore I, Simba the King, make you an offer. Yield yourselves and
I swear that no spear shall be driven through your hearts and no knife
come near your throats. You shall only be taken to my town and there
be fed on the best and kept as prisoners, till once more there is peace
between the Black Kendah and the White. If you refuse, then I will
ring you round and perhaps in the dark rush on you and kill you all. Or
perhaps I will watch you from day to day till you, who have no water,
die of thirst in the heat of the sun. These are my words to which
nothing may be added and from which nothing shall be taken away."

Having finished this speech he rode back a few yards out of earshot, and
waited.

"What will you answer, Lord Macumazana?" asked Marut.

I replied by another question. "Is there any chance of our being rescued
by your people?"

He shook his head. "None. What we have seen to-day is but a small part
of the army of the Black Kendah, one regiment of foot and one of horse,
that are always ready. By to-morrow thousands will be gathered, many
more than we can hope to deal with in the open and still less in their
strongholds, also Harut will believe that we are dead. Unless the Child
saves us we shall be left to our fate."

"Then it seems that we are indeed in a pit, as that black brute of
a king puts it, Marut, and if he does what he says and rushes us at
sundown, everyone of us will be killed. Also I am thirsty already and
there is nothing to drink. But will this king keep his word? There are
other ways of dying besides by steel."

"I think that he will keep his word, but as that messenger said, he will
not add to his word. Choose now, for see, they are beginning to hedge us
round."

"What do you say, men?" I asked of the three who had remained with us.

"We say, Lord, that we are in the hands of the Child, though we wish
now that we had died with our brothers," answered their spokesman
fatalistically.

So after Marut and I had consulted together for a little as to the form
of his reply, he beckoned to the messenger and said:

"We accept the offer of Simba, although it would be easy for this lord
to kill him now where he stands, namely, to yield ourselves as prisoners
on his oath that no harm shall come to us. For know that if harm does
come, the vengeance will be terrible. Now in proof of his good faith,
let Simba draw near and drink the cup of peace with us, for we thirst."

"Not so," said the messenger, "for then that white lord might kill him
with his tube. Give me the tube and Simba shall come."

"Take it," I said magnanimously, handing him the rifle, which he
received in a very gingerly fashion. After all, I reflected, there is
nothing much more useless than a rifle without ammunition.

Off he went holding the weapon at arm's length, and presently Simba
himself, accompanied by some of his men, one of whom carried a skin of
water and another a large cup hollowed from an elephant's tusk, rode up
to us. This Simba was a fine and rather terrifying person with a large
moustache and a chin shaved except for a little tuft of hair which
he wore at its point like an Italian. His eyes were big and dark,
frank-looking, yet now and again with sinister expression in the corners
of them. He was not nearly so black as most of his followers; probably
in bygone generations his blood had been crossed with that of the White
Kendah. He wore his hair long without any head-dress, held in place by a
band of gold which I suppose represented a crown. On his forehead was
a large white scar, probably received in some battle. Such was his
appearance.

He looked at me with great curiosity, and I have often wondered since
what kind of an impression I produced upon him. My hat had fallen off,
or I had knocked it off when I fired my last cartridge into his people,
and forgotten to replace it, and my intractable hair, which was longer
than usual, had not been recently brushed. My worn Norfolk jacket was
dyed with blood from a wounded or dying man who had tumbled against me
in the scrimmage when the cavalry charged us, and my right leg and boot
were stained in a similar fashion from having rubbed against my camel
where a spear had entered it. Altogether I must have appeared a most
disreputable object.

Some indication of his opinion was given, however, in a remark, which of
course I pretended not to understand, that I overheard him make to one
of his officers:

"Truly," he said, "we must not always look to the strong for strength.
And yet this little white porcupine is strength itself, for see how much
damage he has wrought us. Also consider his eyes that appear to pierce
everything. Jana himself might fear those eyes. Well, time that grinds
the rocks will tell us all."

All of this I caught perfectly, my ears being very sharp, although he
thought that he spoke out of my hearing, for after spending a month in
their company I understood the Kendah dialect of Bantu very well.

Having delivered himself thus he rode nearer and said:

"You, Prophet Marut, my enemy, have heard the terms of me, Simba the
King, and have accepted them. Therefore discuss them no more. What I
have promised I will keep. What I have given I give, neither greater nor
less by the weight of a hair."

"So be it, O King," answered Marut with his usual smile, which nothing
ever seemed to disturb. "Only remember that if those terms are broken
either in the letter or in the spirit, especially the spirit" (that is
the best rendering I can give of his word), "the manifold curses of
the Child will fall upon you and yours. Yes, though you kill us all by
treachery, still those curses will fall."

"May Jana take the Child and all who worship it," exclaimed the king
with evident irritation.

"In the end, O King, Jana will take the Child and its followers--or
the Child will take Jana and his followers. Which of these things must
happen is known to the Child alone, and perchance to its prophets.
Meanwhile, for every one of those of the Child I think that three of the
followers of Jana, or more, lie dead upon this field. Also the caravan
is now out of your reach with two of the white lords and many of such
tubes which deal death, like that which we have surrendered to you.
Therefore because we are helpless, do not think that the Child is
helpless. Jana must have been asleep, O King, or you would have set your
trap better."

I thought that this coolly insolent speech would have produced some
outburst, but in fact it seemed to have an opposite effect. Making no
reply to it, Simba said almost humbly:

"I come to drink the cup of peace with you and the white lord, O
Prophet. Afterwards we can talk. Give me water, slave."

Then a man filled the great ivory cup with water from the skin he
carried. Simba took it and having sprinkled a little upon the ground,
I suppose as an offering, drank from the cup, doubtless to show that it
was not poisoned. Watching carefully, I made sure that he swallowed what
he drank by studying the motions of his throat. Then he handed the cup
with a bow to Marut, who with a still deeper bow passed it to me. Being
absolutely parched I absorbed about a pint of it, and feeling a new man,
passed the horn to Marut, who swallowed the rest. Then it was filled
again for our three White Kendah, the King first tasting the water as
before, after which Marut and I had a second pull.

When at length our thirst was satisfied, horses were brought to us,
serviceable and docile little beasts with sheepskins for saddles and
loops of hide for stirrups. On these we mounted and for the next three
hours rode across the plain, surrounded by a strong escort and with an
armed Black Kendah running on each side of our horses and holding in his
hand a thong attached to the ring of the bridle, no doubt to prevent any
attempt to escape.

Our road ran past but not through some villages whence we saw many women
and children staring at us, and through beautiful crops of mealies and
other sorts of grain that in this country were now just ripening. The
luxuriant appearance of these crops suggested that the rains must have
been plentiful and the season all that could be desired. From some of
the villages by the track arose a miserable sound of wailing. Evidently
their inhabitants had already heard that certain of their menkind had
fallen in that morning's fight.

At the end of the third hour we began to enter the great forest which
I had seen when first we looked down on Kendahland. It was filled with
splendid trees, most of them quite strange to me, but perhaps because of
the denseness of their overshadowing crowns there was comparatively
no undergrowth. The general effect of the place was very gloomy, since
little light could pass through the interlacing foliage of the tops of
those mighty trees.

Towards evening we came to a clearing in this forest, it may have been
four or five miles in diameter, but whether it was natural or artificial
I am not sure. I think, however, that it was probably the former for
two reasons: the hollow nature of the ground, which lay a good many feet
lower than the surrounding forest, and the wonderful fertility of the
soil, which suggested that it had once been deposited upon an old
lake bottom. Never did I see such crops as those that grew upon that
clearing; they were magnificent.

Wending our way along the road that ran through the tall corn, for here
every inch was cultivated, we came suddenly upon the capital of the
Black Kendah, which was known as Simba Town. It was a large place,
somewhat different from any other African settlement with which I
am acquainted, inasmuch as it was not only stockaded but completely
surrounded by a broad artificial moat filled with water from a stream
that ran through the centre of the town, over which moat there were
four timber bridges placed at the cardinal points of the compass. These
bridges were strong enough to bear horses or stock, but so made that in
the event of attack they could be destroyed in a few minutes.

Riding through the eastern gate, a stout timber structure on the farther
side of the corresponding bridge, where the king was received with
salutes by an armed guard, we entered one of the main streets of the
town which ran from north to south and from east to west. It was broad
and on either side of it were the dwellings of the inhabitants set close
together because the space within the stockade was limited. These were
not huts but square buildings of mud with flat roofs of some kind of
cement. Evidently they were built upon the model of Oriental and North
African houses of which some debased tradition remained with these
people. Thus a stairway or ladder ran from the interior to the roof of
each house, whereon its inhabitants were accustomed, as I discovered
afterwards, to sleep during a good part of the year, also to eat in the
cool of the day. Many of them were gathered there now to watch us pass,
men, women, and children, all except the little ones decently clothed in
long garments of various colours, the women for the most part in white
and the men in a kind of bluish linen.

I saw at once that they had already heard of the fight and of the
considerable losses which their people had sustained, for their
reception of us prisoners was most unfriendly. Indeed the men shook
their fists at us, the women screamed out curses, while the children
stuck out their tongues in token of derision or defiance. Most of these
demonstrations, however, were directed at Marut and his followers, who
only smiled indifferently. At me they stared in wonder not unmixed with
fear.

A quarter of a mile or so from the gate we came to an inner enclosure,
that answered to the South African cattle kraal, surrounded by a dry
ditch and a timber palisade outside of which was planted a green fence
of some shrub with long white thorns. Here we passed through more
gates, to find ourselves in an oval space, perhaps five acres in extent.
Evidently this served as a market ground, but all around it were open
sheds where hundreds of horses were stabled. No cattle seemed to be kept
there, except a few that with sheep and goats were driven in every day
for slaughter purposes at a shambles at the north end, from the great
stock kraals built beyond the forest to the south, where they were safe
from possible raiding by the White Kendah.

A tall reed fence cut off the southern end of this marketplace, outside
of which we were ordered to dismount. Passing through yet another gate
we found within the fence a large hut or house built on the same model
as the others in the town, which Marut whispered to me was that of the
king. Behind it were smaller houses in which lived his queen and women,
good-looking females, who advanced to meet him with obsequious bows. To
the right and left were two more buildings of about equal size, one of
which was occupied by the royal guard and the other was the guest-house
whither we were conducted.

It proved to be a comfortable dwelling about thirty feet square but
containing only one room, with various huts behind it that served for
cooking and other purposes. In one of these the three camelmen were
placed. Immediately on our arrival food was brought to us, a lamb or kid
roasted whole upon a wooden platter, and some green mealie-cobs boiled
upon another platter; also water to drink and wash with in earthenware
jars of sun-dried clay.

I ate heartily, for I was starving. Then, as it was useless to attempt
precautions against murder, without any talk to my fellow prisoner, for
which we were both too tired, I threw myself down on a mattress stuffed
with corn husks in a corner of the hut, drew a skin rug over me and,
having commended myself to the protection of the Power above, fell fast
asleep.



CHAPTER XII

THE FIRST CURSE

The next thing I remember was feeling upon my face the sunlight that
poured through a window-place which was protected by immovable wooden
bars. For a while I lay still, reflecting as memory returned to me upon
all the events of the previous day and upon my present unhappy position.
Here I was a prisoner in the hands of a horde of fierce savages who had
every reason to hate me, for though this was done in self-defence, had
I not killed a number of their people against whom personally I had no
quarrel? It was true that their king had promised me safety, but what
reliance could be put upon the word of such a man? Unless something
occurred to save me, without doubt my days were numbered. In this way
or in that I should be murdered, which served me right for ever entering
upon such a business.

The only satisfactory point in the story was that, for the present at
any rate, Ragnall and Savage had escaped, though doubtless sooner or
later fate would overtake them also. I was sure that they had escaped,
since two of the camelmen with us had informed Marut that they saw them
swept away surrounded by our people and quite unharmed. Now they would
be grieving over my death, since none survived who could tell them
of our capture, unless the Black Kendah chose to do so, which was not
likely. I wondered what course they would take when Ragnall found that
his quest was vain, as of course must happen. Try to get out of the
country, I suppose, as I prayed they might succeed in doing, though this
was most improbable.

Then there was Hans. He of course would attempt to retrace our road
across the desert, if he had got clear away. Having a good camel,
a rifle and some ammunition, it was just possible that he might win
through, as he never forgot a path which he had once travelled, though
probably in a week's time a few bones upon the desert would be all that
remained of him. Well, as he had suggested, perhaps we should soon be
talking the event over in some far sphere with my father--and others.
Poor old Hans!

I opened my eyes and looked about me. The first thing I noticed was that
my double-barrelled pistol, which I had placed at full cock beside
me before I went to sleep, was gone, also my large clasp-knife. This
discovery did not tend to raise my spirits, since I was now quite
weaponless. Then I observed Marut seated on the floor of the hut staring
straight in front of him, and noted that at length even he had ceased to
smile, but that his lips were moving as though he were engaged in prayer
or meditation.

"Marut," I said, "someone has been in this place while we were asleep
and stolen my pistol and knife."

"Yes, Lord," he answered, "and my knife also. I saw them come in the
middle of the night, two men who walked softly as cats, and searched
everything."

"Then why did you not wake me?"

"What would have been the use, Lord? If we had caught hold of the men,
they would have called out and we should have been murdered at once. It
was best to let them take the things, which after all are of no good to
us here."

"The pistol might have been of some good," I replied significantly.

"Yes," he said, nodding, "but at the worst death is easy to find."

"Do you think, Marut, that we could manage to let Harut and the others
know our plight? That smoke which I breathed in England, for instance,
seemed to show me far-off things--if we could get any of it."

"The smoke was nothing, Lord, but some harmless burning powder which
clouded your mind for a minute, and enabled you to see the thoughts that
were in _our_ minds. _We_ drew the pictures at which you looked. Also
here there is none."

"Oh!" I said, "the old trick of suggestion; just what I imagined. Then
there's an end of that, and as the others will think that we are
dead and we cannot communicate with them, we have no hope except in
ourselves."

"Or the Child," suggested Marut gently.

"Look here!" I said with irritation. "After you have just told me that
your smoke vision was a mere conjurer's trick, how do you expect me
to believe in your blessed Child? Who is the Child? What is the Child,
and--this is more important--what can it do? As your throat is going to
be cut shortly you may as well tell me the truth."

"Lord Macumazana, I will. Who and what the Child is I cannot say because
I do not know. But it has been our god for thousands of years, and we
believe that our remote forefathers brought it with them when they were
driven out of Egypt at some time unknown. We have writings concerning it
done up in little rolls, but as we cannot read them they are of no use
to us. It has an hereditary priesthood, of which Harut my uncle, for he
is my uncle, is the head. We believe that the Child is God, or rather
a symbol in which God dwells, and that it can save us in this world and
the next, for we hold that man is an immortal spirit. We believe also
that through its Oracle--a priestess who is called Guardian of the
Child--it can declare the future and bring blessings or curses upon men,
especially upon our enemies. When the Oracle dies we are helpless
since the Child has no 'mouth' and our enemies prevail against us. This
happened a long while ago, and the last Oracle having declared before
her death that her successor was to be found in England, my uncle and I
travelled thither disguised as conjurers and made search for many years.
We thought that we had found the new Oracle in the lady who married the
Lord Igeza, because of that mark of the new moon upon her neck. After
our return to Africa, however, for as I have spoken of this matter I may
as well tell you all," here he stared me full in the eyes and spoke in
a clear metallic voice which somehow no longer convinced me, "we found
that we had made a mistake, for the real Oracle, a mere girl, was
discovered among our own people, and has now been for two years
installed in her office. Without doubt the last Guardian of the Child
was wandering in her mind when she told us that story before her death
as to a woman in England, a country of which she had heard through
Arabs. That is all."

"Thank you," I replied, feeling that it would be useless to show any
suspicion of his story. "Now will you be so good as to tell me who and
what is the god, or the elephant Jana, whom you have brought me here to
kill? Is the elephant a god, or is the god an elephant? In either case
what has it to do with the Child?"

"Lord, Jana among us Kendah represents the evil in the world, as the
Child represents the good. Jana is he whom the Mohammedans call Shaitan
and the Christians call Satan, and our forefathers, the old Egyptians,
called Set."

"Ah!" thought I to myself, "now we have got it. Horus the Divine Child,
and Set the evil monster, with whom it strives everlastingly."

"Always," went on Marut, "there has been war between the Child and Jana,
that is, between Good and Evil, and we know that in the end one of them
must conquer the other."

"The whole world has known that from the beginning," I interrupted. "But
who and what is this Jana?"

"Among the Black Kendah, Lord, Jana is an elephant, or at any rate his
symbol is an elephant, a very terrible beast to which sacrifices are
made, that kills all who do not worship him if he chances to meet them.
He lives farther on in the forest yonder, and the Black Kendah make use
of him in war, for the devil in him obeys their priests."

"Indeed, and is this elephant always the same?"

"I cannot tell you, but for many generations it has been the same, for
it is known by its size and by the fact that one of its tusks is twisted
downwards."

"Well," I remarked, "all this proves nothing, since elephants certainly
live for at least two hundred years, and perhaps much longer. Also,
after they become 'rogues' they acquire every kind of wicked and
unnatural habit, as to which I could tell you lots of stories. Have you
seen this elephant?"

"No, Macumazana," he answered with a shiver. "If I had seen it should
I have been alive to-day? Yet I fear I am fated to see it ere long,
not alone," and again he shivered, looking at me in a very suggestive
manner.

At this moment our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of two
Black Kendahs who brought us our breakfast of porridge and a boiled
fowl, and stood there while we ate it. For my part I was not sorry, as
I had learned all I wanted to know of the theological opinions and
practice of the land, and had come to the conclusion that the terrible
devil-god of the Black Kendah was merely a rogue elephant of unusual
size and ferocity, which under other circumstances it would have given
me the greatest pleasure to try to shoot.

When we had finished eating, that is soon, for neither of our appetites
was good that morning, we walked out of the house into the surrounding
compound and visited the camelmen in their hut. Here we found them
squatted on the ground looking very depressed indeed. When I asked them
what was the matter they replied, "Nothing," except that they were men
about to die and life was pleasant. Also they had wives and children
whom they would never see again.

Having tried to cheer them up to the best of my ability, which I fear I
did without conviction, for in my heart I agreed with their view of the
case, we returned to the guest-house and mounted the stair which led to
the flat roof. Hence we saw that some curious ceremony was in progress
in the centre of the market-place. At that distance we could not make
out the details, for I forgot to say that my glasses had been stolen
with the pistol and knife, probably because they were supposed to be
lethal weapons or instruments of magic.

A rough altar had been erected, on which a fire burned. Behind it the
king, Simba, was seated on a stool with various councillors about him.
In front of the altar was a stout wooden table, on which lay what
looked like the body of a goat or a sheep. A fantastically dressed man,
assisted by other men, appeared to be engaged in inspecting the inside
of this animal with, we gathered, unsatisfactory results, for presently
he raised his arms and uttered a loud wail. Then the creature's viscera
were removed from it and thrown upon the fire, while the rest of the
carcass was carried off.

I asked Marut what he thought they were doing. He replied dejectedly:

"Consulting their Oracle; perhaps as to whether we should live or die,
Macumazana."

Just then the priest in the strange, feathered attire approached the
king, carrying some small object in his hand. I wondered what it could
be, till the sound of a report reached my ears and I saw the man begin
to jump round upon one leg, holding the other with both his hands at the
knee and howling loudly.

"Ah!" I said, "that pistol was full cocked, and the bullet got him in
the foot."

Simba shouted out something, whereon a man picked up the pistol and
threw it into the fire, round which the others gathered to watch it
burn.

"You wait," I said to Marut, and as I spoke the words the inevitable
happened.

Off went the other barrel of the pistol, which hopped out of the fire
with the recoil like a living thing. But as it happened one of the
assistant priests was standing in front of the mouth of that barrel, and
he also hopped once, but never again, for the heavy bullet struck him
somewhere in the body and killed him. Now there was consternation.
Everyone ran away, leaving the dead man lying on the ground. Simba led
the rout and the head-priest brought up the rear, skipping along upon
one leg.

Having observed these events, which filled me with an unholy joy, we
descended into the house again as there was nothing more to see, also
because it occurred to me that our presence on the roof, watching their
discomfiture, might irritate these savages. About ten minutes later the
gate of the fence round the guest-house was thrown open, and through it
came four men carrying on a stretcher the body of the priest whom the
bullet had killed, which they laid down in front of our door. Then
followed the king with an armed guard, and after him the befeathered
diviner with his foot bound up, who supported himself upon the shoulders
of two of his colleagues. This man, I now perceived, wore a hideous
mask, from which projected two tusks in imitation of those of an
elephant. Also there were others, as many as the space would hold.

The king called to us to come out of the house, which, having no choice,
we did. One glance at him showed me that the man was frantic with fear,
or rage, or both.

"Look upon your work, magicians!" he said in a terrible voice, pointing
first to the dead priest, then to the diviner's wounded foot.

"It is no work of ours, King Simba," answered Marut. "It is your own
work. You stole the magic weapon of the white lord and made it angry, so
that it has revenged itself upon you."

"It is true," said Simba, "that the tube has killed one of those who
took it away from you and wounded the other" (here was luck indeed).
"But it was you who ordered it to do so, magicians. Now, hark! Yesterday
I promised you safety, that no spear should pierce your hearts and no
knife come near your throats, and drank the cup of peace with you. But
you have broken the pact, working us more harm, and therefore it no
longer holds, since there are many other ways in which men can die.
Listen again! This is my decree. By your magic you have taken away the
life of one of my servants and hurt another of my servants, destroying
the middle toe of his left foot. If within three days you do not give
back the life to him who seems to be dead, and give back the toe to him
who seems to be hurt, as you well can do, then you shall join those whom
you have slain in the land of death, how I will not tell you."

Now when I heard this amazing sentence I gasped within myself, but
thinking it better to keep up my role of understanding nothing of their
talk, I preserved an immovable countenance and left Marut to answer.
This, to his credit be it recorded, he did with his customary pleasant
smile.

"O King," he said, "who can bring the dead back to life? Not even the
Child itself, at any rate in this world, for there is no way."

"Then, Prophet of the Child, you had better find a way, or, I repeat, I
send you to join them," he shouted, rolling his eyes.

"What did my brother, the great Prophet, promise to you but yesterday,
O King, if you harmed us?" asked Marut. "Was it not that the three great
curses should fall upon your people? Learn now that if so much as one
of us is murdered by you, these things shall swiftly come to pass. I,
Marut, who am also a Prophet of the Child, have said it."

Now Simba seemed to go quite mad, so mad that I thought all was over. He
waved his spear and danced about in front of us, till the silver chains
clanked upon his breast. He vituperated the Child and its worshippers,
who, he declared, had worked evil on the Black Kendah for generations.
He appealed to his god Jana to avenge these evils, "to pierce the Child
with his tusks, to tear it with his trunk, and to trample it with his
feet," all of which the wounded diviner ably seconded through his horrid
mask.

There we stood before him, I leaning against the wall of the house with
an air of studied nonchalance mingled with mild interest, at least that
is what I meant to do, and Marut smiling sweetly and staring at the
heavens. Whilst I was wondering what exact portion of my frame was
destined to become acquainted with that spear, of a sudden Simba gave it
up. Turning to his followers, he bade them dig a hole in the corner of
our little enclosure and set the dead man in it, "with his head out so
that he may breathe," an order which they promptly executed.

Then he issued a command that we should be well fed and tended, and
remarking that if the departed was not alive and healthy on the third
morning from that day, we should hear from him again, he and his company
stalked off, except those men who were occupied with the interment.

Soon this was finished also. There sat the deceased buried to the neck
with his face looking towards the house, a most disagreeable sight.
Presently, however, matters were improved in this respect by one of the
sextons fetching a large earthenware pot and several smaller pots full
of food and water. The latter they set round the head, I suppose for the
sustenance of the body beneath, and then placed the big vessel inverted
over all, "to keep the sun off our sleeping brother," as I heard one say
to the other.

This pot looked innocent enough when all was done, like one of those
that gardeners in England put over forced rhubarb, no more. And yet,
such is the strength of the imagination, I think that on the whole I
should have preferred the object underneath naked and unadorned. For
instance, I have forgotten to say that the heads of those of the White
Kendah who had fallen in the fight had been set up on poles in front of
Simba's house. They were unpleasant to contemplate, but to my mind not
so unpleasant as that pot.

As a matter of fact, this precaution against injury from the sun to the
late diviner proved unnecessary, since by some strange chance from
that moment the sun ceased to shine. Quite suddenly clouds arose which
gradually covered the whole sky and the weather began to turn very cold,
unprecedentedly so, Marut informed me, for the time of year, which, it
will be remembered, in this country was the season just before harvest.
Obviously the Black Kendah thought so also, since from our seats on the
roof, whither we had retreated to be as far as possible from the pot, we
saw them gathered in the market-place, staring at the sky and talking to
each other.

The day passed without any further event, except the arrival of our
meals, for which we had no great appetite. The night came, earlier than
usual because of the clouds, and we fell asleep, or rather into a series
of dozes. Once I thought that I heard someone stirring in the huts
behind us, but as it was followed by silence I took no more notice. At
length the light broke very slowly, for now the clouds were denser
than ever. Shivering with the cold, Marut and I made a visit to the
camel-drivers, who were not allowed to enter our house. On going into
their hut we saw to our horror that only two of them remained, seated
stonily upon the floor. We asked where the third was. They replied they
did not know. In the middle of the night, they said, men had crept in,
who seized, bound and gagged him, then dragged him away. As there was
nothing to be said or done, we returned to breakfast filled with horrid
fears.

Nothing happened that day except that some priests arrived, lifted
the earthenware pot, examined their departed colleague, who by now had
become an unencouraging spectacle, removed old dishes of food, arranged
more about him, and went off. Also the clouds grew thicker and thicker,
and the air more and more chilly, till, had we been in any northern
latitude, I should have said that snow was pending. From our perch on
the roof-top I observed the population of Simba Town discussing the
weather with ever-increasing eagerness; also that the people who were
going out to work in the fields wore mats over their shoulders.

Once more darkness came, and this night, notwithstanding the cold, we
spent wrapped in rugs, on the roof of the house. It had occurred to us
that kidnapping would be less easy there, as we could make some sort of
a fight at the head of the stairway, or, if the worst came to the worst,
dive from the parapet and break our necks. We kept watch turn and turn
about. During my watch about midnight I heard a noise going on in the
hut behind us; scuffling and a stifled cry which turned my blood cold.
About an hour later a fire was lighted in the centre of the market-place
where the sheep had been sacrificed, and by the flare of it I could see
people moving. But what they did I could not see, which was perhaps as
well.

Next morning only one of the camelmen was left. This remaining man was
now almost crazy with fear, and could give no clear account of what had
happened to his companion.

The poor fellow implored us to take him away to our house, as he feared
to be left alone with "the black devils." We tried to do so, but armed
guards appeared mysteriously and thrust him back into his own hut.

This day was an exact repetition of the others. The same inspection of
the deceased and renewal of his food; the same cold, clouded sky, the
same agitated conferences in the market-place.

For the third time darkness fell upon us in that horrible place. Once
more we took refuge on the roof, but this night neither of us slept.
We were too cold, too physically miserable, and too filled with mental
apprehensions. All nature seemed to be big with impending disaster. The
sky appeared to be sinking down upon the earth. The moon was hidden, yet
a faint and lurid light shone now in one quarter of the horizon, now in
another. There was no wind, but the air moaned audibly. It was as though
the end of the world were near as, I reflected, probably might be
the case so far as we were concerned. Never, perhaps, have I felt so
spiritually terrified as I was during the dreadful inaction of that
night. Even if I had known that I was going to be executed at dawn, I
think that by comparison I should have been light-hearted. But the worst
part of the business was that I knew nothing. I was like a man forced to
walk through dense darkness among precipices, quite unable to guess when
my journey would end in space, but enduring all the agonies of death at
every step.

About midnight again we heard that scuffle and stifled cry in the hut
behind us.

"He's gone," I whispered to Marut, wiping the cold sweat from my brow.

"Yes," answered Marut, "and very soon we shall follow him, Macumazana."

I wished that his face were visible so that I could see if he still
smiled when he uttered those words.

An hour or so later the usual fire appeared in the marketplace, round
which the usual figures flitted dimly. The sight of them fascinated
me, although I did not want to look, fearing what I might see. Luckily,
however, we were too far off to discern anything at night.

While these unholy ceremonies were in progress the climax came, that is
so far as the weather was concerned. Of a sudden a great gale sprang
up, a gale of icy wind such as in Southern Africa sometimes precedes
a thunderstorm. It blew for half an hour or more, then lulled. Now
lightning flashed across the heavens, and by the glare of it we
perceived that all the population of Simba Town seemed to be gathered in
the market-place. At least there were some thousands of them, talking,
gesticulating, pointing at the sky.

A few minutes later there came a great crash of thunder, of which it
was impossible to locate the sound, for it rolled from everywhere. Then
suddenly something hard struck the roof by my side and rebounded, to be
followed next moment by a blow upon my shoulder which nearly knocked me
flat, although I was well protected by the skin rugs.

"Down the stair!" I called. "They are stoning us," and suited the action
to the word.

Ten seconds later we were both in the room, crouched in its farther
corner, for the stones or whatever they were seemed to be following us.
I struck a match, of which fortunately I had some, together with my pipe
and a good pocketful of tobacco--my only solace in those days--and, as
it burned up, saw first that blood was running down Marut's face,
and secondly, that these stones were great lumps of ice, some of them
weighing several ounces, which hopped about the floor like live things.

"Hailstorm!" remarked Marut with his accustomed smile.

"Hell storm!" I replied, "for whoever saw hail like that before?"

Then the match burnt out and conversation came to an end for the reason
that we could no longer hear each other speak. The hail came down with
a perpetual, rattling roar, that in its sum was one of the most terrible
sounds to which I ever listened. And yet above it I thought that I could
catch another, still more terrible, the wail of hundreds of people in
agony. After the first few minutes I began to be afraid that the roof
would be battered in, or that the walls would crumble beneath this
perpetual fire of the musketry of heaven. But the cement was good and
the place well built.

So it came about that the house stood the tempest, which had it been
roofed with tiles or galvanized iron I am sure it would never have done,
since the lumps of ice must have shattered one and pierced the other
like paper. Indeed I have seen this happen in a bad hailstorm in
Natal which killed my best horse. But even that hail was as snowflakes
compared to this.

I suppose that this natural phenomenon continued for about twenty
minutes, not more, during ten of which it was at its worst. Then by
degrees it ceased, the sky cleared and the moon shone out beautifully.
We climbed to the roof again and looked. It was several inches deep in
jagged ice, while the market-place and all the country round appeared in
the bright moonlight to be buried beneath a veil of snow.

Very rapidly, as the normal temperature of that warm land reasserted
itself, this snow or rather hail melted, causing a flood of water which,
where there was any fall, began to rush away with a gurgling sound. Also
we heard other sounds, such as that from the galloping hoofs of many
of the horses which had broken loose from their wrecked stables at
the north end of the market-place, where in great number they had been
killed by the falling roofs or had kicked each other to death, and a
wild universal wail that rose from every quarter of the big town, in
which quantities of the worst-built houses had collapsed. Further, lying
here and there about the market-place we could see scores of dark shapes
that we knew to be those of men, women and children, whom those sharp
missiles hurled from heaven had caught before they could escape and
slain or wounded almost to death. For it will be remembered that perhaps
not fewer than two thousand people were gathered on this market-place,
attending the horrid midnight sacrifice and discussing the unnatural
weather when the storm burst upon them suddenly as an avalanche.

"The Child is small, yet its strength is great. Behold the first curse!"
said Marut solemnly.

I stared at him, but as he chose to believe that a very unusual
hailstorm was a visitation from heaven I did not think it worth while
arguing the point. Only I wondered if he really did believe this. Then
I remembered that such an event was said to have afflicted the old
Egyptians in the hour of their pride because they would not "let the
people go." Well, these blackguardedly Black Kendah were certainly worse
than the Egyptians can ever have been; also they would not let _us_
go. It was not wonderful therefore that Marut should be the victim of
phantasies on the matter.

Not until the following morning did we come to understand the full
extent of the calamity which had overtaken the Black Kendah. I think I
have said that their crops this year were magnificent and just ripening
to harvest. From our roof on previous days we could see a great area
of them stretching to the edge of the forest. When the sun rose that
morning this area had vanished, and the ground was covered with a
carpet of green pulp. Also the forest itself appeared suddenly to have
experienced the full effects of a northern winter. Not a leaf was left
upon the trees, which stood their pointing their naked boughs to heaven.

No one who had not seen it could imagine the devastating fury of that
storm. For example, the head of the diviner who was buried in the
court-yard awaiting resurrection through our magic was, it may be
recalled, covered with a stout earthenware pot. Now that pot had
shattered into sherds and the head beneath was nothing but bits of
broken bone which it would have been impossible for the very best magic
to reconstruct to the likeness of a human being.

Calamity indeed stalked naked through the land.



CHAPTER XIII

JANA

No breakfast was brought to us that morning, probably for the reason
that there was none to bring. This did not matter, however, seeing that
plenty of food accumulated from supper and other meals stood in a corner
of the house practically untouched. So we ate what we could and then
paid our usual visit to the hut in which the camelmen had been confined.
I say had been, for now it was quite empty, the last poor fellow having
vanished away like his companions.

The sight of this vacuum filled me with a kind of fury.

"They have all been murdered!" I said to Marut.

"No," he replied with gentle accuracy. "They have been sacrificed to
Jana. What we have seen on the market-place at night was the rite of
their sacrifice. Now it will be our turn, Lord Macumazana."

"Well," I exclaimed, "I hope these devils are satisfied with Jana's
answer to their accursed offerings, and if they try their fiendish
pranks on us----"

"Doubtless there will be another answer. But, Lord, the question is,
will that help us?"

Dumb with impotent rage I returned to the house, where presently the
remains of the reed gate opened. Through it appeared Simba the King, the
diviner with the injured foot walking upon crutches, and others of whom
the most were more or less wounded, presumably by the hailstones. Then
it was that in my wrath I put off the pretence of not understanding
their language and went for them before they could utter a single word.

"Where are our servants, you murderers?" I asked, shaking my fist at
them. "Have you sacrificed them to your devil-god? If so, behold the
fruits of sacrifice!" and I swept my arm towards the country beyond.
"Where are your crops?" I went on. "Tell me on what you will live this
winter?" (At these words they quailed. In their imagination already they
saw famine stalking towards them.) "Why do you keep us here? Is it that
you wait for a worse thing to befall you? Why do you visit us here now?"
and I paused, gasping with indignation.

"We came to look whether you had brought back to life that doctor whom
you killed with your magic, white man," answered the king heavily.

I stepped to the corner of the court-yard and, drawing aside a mat that
I had thrown there, showed them what lay beneath.

"Look then," I said, "and be sure that if you do not let us go, as
yonder thing is, so shall all of you be before another moon has been
born and died. Such is the life we shall give to evil men like you."

Now they grew positively terrified.

"Lord," said Simba, for the first time addressing me by a title of
respect, "your magic is too strong for us. Great misfortune has fallen
upon our land. Hundreds of people are dead, killed by the ice-stones
that you have called down. Our harvest is ruined, and there is but
little corn left in the storepits now when we looked to gather the new
grain. Messengers come in from the outlying land telling us that nearly
all the sheep and goats and very many of the cattle are slain. Soon we
shall starve."

"As you deserve to starve," I answered. "Now--will you let us go?"

Simba stared at me doubtfully, then began to whisper into the ear of
the lamed diviner. I could not catch what they said, so I watched their
faces. That of the diviner whose head I was glad to see had been cut by
a hailstone so that both ends of him were now injured, told me a good
deal. His mask had been ugly, but now that it was off the countenance
beneath was far uglier. Of a negroid type, pendulous-lipped, sensuous
and loose-eyed, he was indeed a hideous fellow, yet very cunning and
cruel-looking, as men of his class are apt to be. Humbled as he was
for the moment, I felt sure that he was still plotting evil against us,
somewhat against the will of his master. The issue showed that I was
right. At length Simba spoke, saying:

"We had intended, Lord, to keep you and the priest of the Child here as
hostages against mischief that might be worked on us by the followers
of the Child, who have always been our bitter enemies and done us much
undeserved wrong, although on our part we have faithfully kept the pact
concluded in the days of our grandfathers. It seems, however, that fate,
or your magic, is too strong for us, and therefore I have determined to
let you go. To-night at sundown we will set you on the road which leads
to the ford of the River Tava, which divides our territory from that of
the White Kendah, and you may depart where you will, since our wish is
that never again may we see your ill-omened faces."

At this intelligence my heart leapt in joy that was altogether
premature. But, preserving my indignant air, I exclaimed:

"To-night! Why to-night? Why not at once? It is hard for us to cross
unknown rivers in the dark."

"The water is low, Lord, and the ford easy. Moreover, if you started
now you would reach it in the dark; whereas if you start at sundown, you
will reach it in the morning. Lastly, we cannot conduct you hence until
we have buried our dead."

Then, without giving me time to answer, he turned and left the place,
followed by the others. Only at the gateway the diviner wheeled round on
his crutches and glared at us both, muttering something with his thick
lips; probably it was curses.

"At any rate they are going to set us free," I said to Marut, not
without exultation, when they had all vanished.

"Yes, Lord," he replied, "but _where_ are they going to set us free? The
demon Jana lives in the forests and the swamps by the banks of the Tava
River, and it is said that he ravages at night."

I did not pursue the subject, but reflected to myself cheerfully that
this mystic rogue-elephant was a long way off and might be circumvented,
whereas that altar of sacrifice was extremely near and very difficult to
avoid.

Never did a thief with a rich booty in view, or a wooer having an
assignation with his lady, wait for sundown more eagerly than I did that
day. Hour after hour I sat upon the house-top, watching the Black Kendah
carrying off the dead killed by the hailstones and generally trying to
repair the damage done by the terrific tempest. Watching the sun also
as it climbed down the cloudless sky, and literally counting the minutes
till it should reach the horizon, although I knew well that it would
have been wiser after such a night to prepare for our journey by lying
down to sleep.

At length the great orb began to sink in majesty behind the tattered
western forest, and, punctual to the minute, Simba, with a mounted
escort of some twenty men and two led horses, appeared at our gate. As
our preparations, which consisted only of Marut stuffing such food as
was available into the breast of his robe, were already made, we walked
out of that accursed guest-house and, at a sign from the king, mounted
the horses. Riding across the empty market-place and past the spot where
the rough stone altar still stood with charred bones protruding from
the ashes of its extinguished fire--were they those of our friends the
camel-drivers? I wondered--we entered the north street of the town.

Here, standing at the doors of their houses, were many of the
inhabitants who had gathered to watch us pass. Never did I see hate more
savage than was written on those faces as they shook their fists at us
and muttered curses not loud but deep.

No wonder! for they were all ruined, poor folk, with nothing to look
forward to but starvation until long months hence the harvest came again
for those who would live to gather it. Also they were convinced that we,
the white magician and the prophet of their enemy the Child, had brought
this disaster on them. Had it not been for the escort I believe they
would have fallen on us and torn us to pieces. Considering them I
understood for the first time how disagreeable real unpopularity _can
be_. But when I saw the actual condition of the fruitful gardens without
in the waning daylight, I confess that I was moved to some sympathy with
their owners. It was appalling. Not a handful of grain was there left
to gather, for the corn had been not only "laid" but literally cut to
ribbons by the hail.

After running for some miles through the cultivated land the road
entered the forest. Here it was dark as pitch, so dark that I wondered
how our guides found their way. In that blackness dreadful apprehensions
seized me, for I became convinced that we had been brought here to be
murdered. Every minute I expected to feel a knife-thrust in my back. I
thought of digging my heels into the horse's sides and trying to gallop
off anywhere, but abandoned the idea, first because I could not desert
Marut, of whom I had lost touch in the gloom, and secondly because I was
hemmed in by the escort. For the same reason I did not try to slip from
the horse and glide away into the forest. There was nothing to be done
save to go on and await the end.

It came at last some hours later. We were out of the forest now, and
there was the moon rising, past her full but still very bright. Her
light showed me that we were on a wild moorland, swampy, with scattered
trees growing here and there, across which what seemed to be a game
track ran down hill. That was all I could make out. Here the escort
halted, and Simba the King said in a sullen voice:

"Dismount and go your ways, evil spirits, for we travel no farther
across this place which is haunted. Follow the track and it will lead
you to a lake. Pass the lake and by morning you will come to the river
beyond which lies the country of your friends. May its waters swallow
you if you reach them. For learn, there is one who watches on this road
whom few care to meet."

As he finished speaking men sprang at us and, pulling us from the
horses, thrust us out of their company. Then they turned and in another
minute were lost in the darkness, leaving us alone.

"What now, friend Marut?" I asked.

"Now, Lord, all we can do is to go forward, for if we stay here Simba
and his people will return and kill us at the daylight. One of them said
so to me."

"Then, 'come on, Macduff,'" I exclaimed, stepping out briskly, and
though he had never read Shakespeare, Marut understood and followed.

"What did Simba mean about 'one on the road whom few care to meet'?" I
asked over my shoulder when we had done half a mile or so.

"I think he meant the elephant Jana," replied Marut with a groan.

"Then I hope Jana isn't at home. Cheer up, Marut. The chances are that
we shall never meet a single elephant in this big place."

"Yet many elephants have been here, Lord," and he pointed to the ground.
"It is said that they come to die by the waters of the lake and this
is one of the roads they follow on their death journey, a road that no
other living thing dare travel."

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "Then after all that was a true dream I had in the
house in England."

"Yes, Lord, because my brother Harut once lost his way out hunting when
he was young and saw what his mind showed you in the dream, and what we
shall see presently, if we live to come so far."

I made no reply, both because what he said was either true or false,
which I should ascertain presently, and because I was engaged in
searching the ground with my eyes. He was right; many elephants had
travelled this path--one quite recently. I, a hunter of those brutes,
could not be deceived on this point. Once or twice also I thought that
I caught sight of the outline of some tall creature moving silently
through the scattered thorns a couple of hundred yards or so to our
right. It might have been an elephant or a giraffe, or perhaps nothing
but a shadow, so I said nothing. As I heard no noise I was inclined
to believe the latter explanation. In any case, what was the good of
speaking? Unarmed and solitary amidst unknown dangers, our position was
desperate, and as Marut's nerve was already giving out, to emphasize its
horrors to him would be mere foolishness.

On we trudged for another two hours, during which time the only living
thing that I saw was a large owl which sailed round our heads as though
to look at us, and then flew away ahead.

This owl, Marut informed me, was one of "Jana's spies" that kept him
advised of all that was passing in his territory. I muttered "Bosh"
and tramped on. Still I was glad that we saw no more of the owl, for in
certain circumstances such dark fears are catching.

We reached the top of a rise, and there beneath us lay the most desolate
scene that ever I have seen. At least it would have been the most
desolate if I did not chance to have looked on it before, in the
drawing-room of Ragnall Castle! There was no doubt about it. Below was
the black, melancholy lake, a large sheet of water surrounded by reeds.
Around, but at a considerable distance, appeared the tropical forest. To
the east of the lake stretched a stony plain. At the time I could make
out no more because of the uncertain light and the distance, for we had
still over a mile to go before we reached the edge of the lake.

The aspect of the place filled me with tremblings, both because of its
utter uncanniness and because of the inexplicable truth that I had seen
it before. Most people will have experienced this kind of moral shock
when on going to some new land they recognize a locality as being quite
familiar to them in all its details. Or it may be the rooms of a house
hitherto unvisited by them. Or it may be a conversation of which, when
it begins, they already foreknow the sequence and the end, because in
some dim state, when or how who can say, they have taken part in
that talk with those same speakers. If this be so even in cheerful
surroundings and among our friends or acquaintances, it is easy to
imagine how much greater was the shock to me, a traveller on such a
journey and in such a night.

I shrank from approaching the shores of this lake, remembering that as
yet all the vision was not unrolled. I looked about me. If we went to
the left we should either strike the water, or if we followed its edge,
still bearing to the left, must ultimately reach the forest, where
probably we should be lost. I looked to the right. The ground was strewn
with boulders, among which grew thorns and rank grass, impracticable for
men on foot at night. I looked behind me, meditating retreat, and there,
some hundreds of yards away behind low, scrubby mimosas mixed with
aloe-like plants, I saw something brown toss up and disappear again that
might very well have been the trunk of an elephant. Then, animated
by the courage of despair and a desire to know the worst, I began to
descend the elephant track towards the lake almost at a run.

Ten minutes or so more brought us to the eastern head of the lake, where
the reeds whispered in the breath of the night wind like things alive.
As I expected, it proved to be a bare, open space where nothing seemed
to grow. Yes, and all about me were the decaying remains of elephants,
hundreds of them, some with their bones covered in moss, that may have
lain here for generations, and others more newly dead. They were all
old beasts as I could tell by the tusks, whether male or female. Indeed
about me within a radius of a quarter of a mile lay enough ivory to make
a man very rich for life, since although discoloured, much of it seemed
to have kept quite sound, like human teeth in a mummy case. The sight
gave me a new zest for life. If only I could manage to survive and carry
off that ivory! I would. In this way or in that I swore that I would!
Who could possibly die with so much ivory to be had for the taking? Not
that old hunter, Allan Quatermain.

Then I forgot about the ivory, for there in front of me, just where
it should be, just as I had seen it in the dream-picture, was the bull
elephant dying, a thin and ancient brute that had lived its long life
to the last hour. It searched about as though to find a convenient
resting-place, and when this was discovered, stood over it, swaying
to and fro for a full minute. Then it lifted its trunk and trumpeted
shrilly thrice, singing its swan-song, after which it sank slowly to its
knees, its trunk outstretched and the points of its worn tusks resting
on the ground. Evidently it was dead.

I let my eyes travel on, and behold! about fifty yards beyond the dead
bull was a mound of hard rock. I watched it with gasping expectation
and--yes, on the top of the mound something slowly materialized.
Although I knew what it must be well enough, for a while I could not see
quite clearly because there were certain little clouds about and one of
them had floated over the face of the moon. It passed, and before me,
perhaps a hundred and forty paces away, outlined clearly against the
sky, I perceived the devilish elephant of my vision.

Oh! what a brute was that! In bulk and height it appeared to be half
as big again as any of its tribe which I had known in all my life's
experience. It was enormous, unearthly; a survivor perhaps of some
ancient species that lived before the Flood, or at least a very giant of
its kind. Its grey-black sides were scarred as though with fighting. One
of its huge tusks, much worn at the end, for evidently it was very old,
gleamed white in the moonlight. The other was broken off about halfway
down its length. When perfect it had been malformed, for it curved
downwards and not upwards, also rather out to the right.

There stood this mammoth, this leviathan, this _monstrum horrendum,
informe, ingens_, as I remember my old father used to call a certain
gigantic and misshapen bull that we had on the Station, flapping a pair
of ears that looked like the sides of a Kafir hut, and waving a trunk
as big as a weaver's beam--whatever a weaver's beam may be--an appalling
and a petrifying sight.

I squatted behind the skeleton of an elephant which happened to be handy
and well covered with moss and ferns and watched the beast, fascinated,
wishing that I had a large-bore rifle in my hand. What became of Marut I
do not exactly know, but I think that he lay down on the ground.

During the minute or so that followed I reflected a good deal, as we
do in times of emergency, often after a useless sort of a fashion. For
instance, I wondered why the brute appeared thus upon yonder mound, and
the thought suggested itself to me that it was summoned thither from
some neighbouring lair by the trumpet call of the dying elephant. It
occurred to me even that it was a kind of king of the elephants, to
which they felt bound to report themselves, as it were, in the hour
of their decease. Certainly what followed gave some credence to my
fantastical notion which, if there were anything in it, might account
for this great graveyard at that particular spot.

After standing for a while in the attitude that I have described,
testing the air with its trunk, Jana, for I will call him so, lumbered
down the mound and advanced straight to where the elephant that I had
thought to be dead was kneeling. As a matter of fact it was not quite
dead, for when Jana arrived it lifted its trunk and curled it round
that of Jana as though in affectionate greeting, then let it fall to
the ground again. Thereon Jana did what I had seen it do in my dream or
vision at Ragnall, namely, attacked it, knocking it over on to its side,
where it lay motionless; quite dead this time.

Now I remembered that the vision was not accurate after all, since in it
I had seen Jana destroy a woman and a child, who on the present occasion
were wanting. Since then I have thought that this was because Harut,
clairvoyantly or telepathically, had conveyed to me, as indeed Marut
declared, a scene which he had witnessed similar to that which I was
witnessing, but not identical in its incidents. Thus it happened,
perhaps, that while the act of the woman and the child was omitted,
in our case there was another act of the play to follow of which I had
received no inkling in my Ragnall experience. Indeed, if I had received
it, I should not have been there that night, for no inducement on earth
would have brought me to Kendahland.

This was the act. Jana, having prodded his dead brother to his
satisfaction, whether from viciousness or to put it out of pain, I
cannot say, stood over the carcass in an attitude of grief or pious
meditation. At this time, I should mention, the wind, which had been
rustling the hail-stripped reeds at the lake border, had died away
almost, but not completely; that is to say, only a very faint gust
blew now and again, which, with a hunter's instinct, I observed with
satisfaction drew _from_ the direction of Jana towards ourselves. This I
knew, because it struck on my forehead, which was wet with perspiration,
and cooled the skin.

Presently, however, by a cursed spite of fate, one of these gusts--a
very little one--came from some quarter behind us, for I felt it in my
back hair, that was as damp as the rest of me. Just then I was glancing
to my right, where it seemed to me that out of the corner of my eye I
had caught sight of something passing among the stones at a distance
of a hundred yards or so, possibly the shadow of a cloud or another
elephant. At the time I did not ascertain which it was, since a faint
rattle from Jana's trunk reconcentrated all my faculties on him in a
painfully vivid fashion.

I looked to see that all the contemplation had departed from his
attitude, now as alert as that of a fox-terrier which imagines he has
seen a rat. His vast ears were cocked, his huge bulk trembled, his
enormous trunk sniffed the air.

"Great Heavens!" thought I to myself, "he has winded us!" Then I took
such consolation as I could from the fact that the next gust once more
struck upon my forehead, for I hoped he would conclude that he had made
a mistake.

Not a bit of it! Jana as far too old a bird--or beast--to make any
mistake. He grunted, got himself going like a luggage train, and with
great deliberation walked towards us, smelling at the ground, smelling
at the air, smelling to the right, to the left, and even towards heaven
above, as though he expected that thence might fall upon him vengeance
for his many sins. A dozen times as he came did I cover him with an
imaginary rifle, marking the exact spots where I might have hoped to
send a bullet to his vitals, in a kind of automatic fashion, for all my
real brain was contemplating my own approaching end.

I wondered how it would happen. Would he drive that great tusk through
me, would he throw me into the air, or would he kneel upon my poor
little body, and avenge the deaths of his kin that had fallen at my
hands? Marut was speaking in a rattling whisper:

"His priests have told Jana to kill us; we are about to die," he said.
"Before I die I want to say that the lady, the wife of the lord----"

"Silence!" I hissed. "He will hear you," for at that instant I took not
the slightest interest in any lady on the earth. Fiercely I glared at
Marut and noted even then how pitiful was his countenance. There was no
smile there now. All its jovial roundness had vanished. It had sunk in;
it was blue and ghastly with large, protruding eyes, like to that of a
man who had been three days dead.

I was right--Jana _had_ heard. Low as the whisper was, through that
intense silence it had penetrated to his almost preternatural senses.
Forward he came at a run for twenty paces or more with his trunk held
straight out in front of him. Then he halted again, perhaps the length
of a cricket pitch away, and smelt as before.

The sight was too much for Marut. He sprang up and ran for his life
towards the lake, purposing, I suppose, to take refuge in the water.
Oh! how he ran. After him went Jana like a railway engine--express this
time--trumpeting as he charged. Marut reached the lake, which was quite
close, about ten yards ahead, and plunging into it with a bound, began
to swim.

Now, I thought, he may get away if the crocodiles don't have him, for
that devil will scarcely take to the water. But this was just where I
made a mistake, for with a mighty splash in went Jana too. Also he was
the better swimmer. Marut soon saw this and swung round to the shore, by
which manoeuvre he gained a little as he could turn quicker than Jana.

Back they came, Jana just behind Marut, striking at him with his great
trunk. They landed, Marut flew a few yards ahead doubling in and out
among the rocks like a hare and, to my horror, making for where I lay,
whether by accident or in a mad hope of obtaining protection, I do not
know.

It may be asked why I had not taken the opportunity to run also in the
opposite direction. There are several answers. The first was that there
seemed to be nowhere to run; the second, that I felt sure, if I did run,
I should trip up over the skeletons of those elephants or the stones;
the third, that I did not think of it at once; the fourth, that Jana
had not yet seen me, and I had no craving to introduce myself to him
personally; and the fifth and greatest, that I was so paralysed with
fear that I did not feel as though I could lift myself from the ground.
Everything about me seemed to be dead, except my powers of observation,
which were painfully alive.

Of a sudden Marut gave up. Less than a stone's throw from me he wheeled
round and, facing Jana, hurled at him some fearful and concentrated
curse, of which all that I could distinguish were the words: "The
Child!"

Oddly enough it seemed to have an effect upon the furious rogue, which
halted in its rush and, putting its four feet together, slid a few paces
nearer and stood still. It was just as though the beast had understood
the words and were considering them. If so, their effect was to rouse
him to perfect madness. He screamed terribly; he lashed his sides with
his trunk; his red and wicked eyes rolled; foam flew from the cavern
of his open mouth; he danced upon his great feet, a sort of hideous
Scottish reel. Then he charged!

I shut my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again it was to see
poor Marut higher in the air than ever he flew before. I thought that
he would never come down, but he did at last with an awesome thud. Jana
went to him and very gently, now that he was dead, picked him up in his
trunk. I prayed that he might carry him away to some hiding-place and
leave me in peace. But not so. With slow and stately strides, rocking
the deceased Marut up and down in his trunk, as a nurse might rock
a baby, he marched on to the very stone where I lay, behind which I
suppose he had seen or smelt me all the time.

For quite a long while, it seemed more than a century, he stood over me,
studying me as though I interested him very much, the water of the lake
trickling in a refreshing stream from his great ears on to my back. Had
it not been for that water I think I should have fainted, but as it was
I did the next best thing--pretended to be dead. Perhaps this monster
would scorn to touch a dead man. Watching out of the corner of my eye, I
saw him lift one vast paw that was the size of an arm-chair and hold it
over me.

Now good-bye to the world, thought I. Then the foot descended as a
steam-hammer does, but also as a steam-hammer sometimes does when used
to crack nuts, stopped as it touched my back, and presently came to
earth again alongside of me, perhaps because Jana thought the foothold
dangerous. At any rate, he took another and better way. Depositing the
remains of Marut with the most tender care beside me, as though the
nurse were putting the child to bed, he unwound his yards of trunk and
began to feel me all over with its tip, commencing at the back of my
neck. Oh! the sensation of that clammy, wriggling tip upon my spinal
column!

Down it went till it reached the seat of my trousers. There it pinched,
presumably to ascertain whether or no I were malingering, a most
agonizing pinch like to that of a pair of blacksmith's tongs. So sharp
was it that, although I did not stir, who was aware that the slightest
movement meant death, it tore a piece out of the stout cloth of my
breeches, to say nothing of a portion of the skin beneath. This seemed
to astonish the beast, for it lifted the tip of its trunk and shifted
its head, as though to examine the fragment by the light of the moon.

Now indeed all was over, for when it saw blood upon that cloth----! I
put up one short, piteous prayer to Heaven to save me from this terrible
end, and lo, it was answered!

For just as Jana, the results of the inspection being unsatisfactory,
was cocking his ears and making ready to slay me, there rang out the
short, sharp report of a rifle fired within a few yards. Glancing up
at the instant, I saw blood spurt from the monster's left eye, where
evidently the bullet had found a home.

He felt at his eye with his trunk; then, uttering a scream of pain,
wheeled round and rushed away.



CHAPTER XIV

THE CHASE

I suppose that I swooned for a minute or two. At any rate I remember
a long and very curious dream, such a dream as is evolved by a patient
under laughing gas, that is very clear and vivid at the time but
immediately afterwards slips from the mind's grasp as water does
from the clenched hand. It was something to the effect that all those
hundreds of skeleton elephants rose and marshalled themselves before me,
making obeisance to me by bending their bony knees, because, as I quite
understood, I was the only human being that had ever escaped from Jana.
Moreover, on the foremost elephant's skull Hans was perched like a
mahout, giving words of command, to their serried ranks and explaining
to them that it would be very convenient if they would carry their
tusks, for which they had no further use, and pile them in a certain
place--I forget where--that must be near a good road to facilitate their
subsequent transport to a land where they would be made into billiard
balls and the backs of ladies' hair-brushes. Next, through the figments
of that retreating dream, I heard the undoubted voice of Hans himself,
which of course I knew to be absurd as Hans was lost and doubtless dead,
saying:

"If you are alive, Baas, please wake up soon, as I have finished
reloading Intombi, and it is time to be going. I think I hit Jana in the
eye, but so big a beast will soon get over so little a thing as that and
look for us, and the bullet from Intombi is too small to kill him, Baas,
especially as it is not likely that either of us could hit him in the
other eye."

Now I sat up and stared. Yes, there was Hans himself looking just the
same as usual, only perhaps rather dirtier, engaged in setting a cap on
to the nipple of the little rifle Intombi.

"Hans," I said in a hollow voice, "why the devil are you here?"

"To save you from the devil, of course, Baas," he replied aptly. Then,
resting the gun against the stone, the old fellow knelt down by my side
and, throwing his arms around me, began to blubber over me, exclaiming:

"Just in time, Baas! Only just in time, for as usual Hans made a mess of
things and judged badly--I'll tell you afterwards. Still, just in time,
thanks be to your reverend father, the Predikant. Oh! if he had delayed
me for one more minute you would have been as flat as my nose, Baas. Now
come quickly. I've got the camel tied up there, and he can carry two,
being fat and strong after four days' rest with plenty to eat. This
place is haunted, Baas, and that king of the devils, Jana, will be back
after us presently, as soon as he has wiped the blood out of his eye."

I didn't make any remark, having no taste for conversation just then,
but only looked at poor Marut, who lay by me as though he was sleeping.

"Oh, Baas," said Hans, "there is no need to trouble about him, for
his neck is broken and he's quite dead. Also it is as well," he added
cheerfully. "For, as your reverend father doubtless remembered, the
camel could never carry three. Moreover, if he stops here, perhaps Jana
will come back to play with him instead of following us."

Poor Marut! This was his requiem as sung by Hans.

With a last glance at the unhappy man to whom I had grown attached in a
way during our time of joint captivity and trial, I took the arm of the
old Hottentot, or rather leant upon his shoulder, for at first I felt
too weak to walk by myself, and picked my path with him through the
stones and skeletons of elephants across the plateau eastwards, that
is, away from the lake. About two hundred yards from the scene of our
tragedy was a mound of rock similar to that on which Jana had appeared,
but much smaller, behind which we found the camel, kneeling as a
well-trained beast of the sort should do and tethered to a stone.

As we went, in brief but sufficient language Hans told me his story.
It seemed that after he had shot the Kendah general it came into his
cunning, foreseeing mind that he might be of more use to me free than as
a companion in captivity, or that if I were killed he might in that case
live to bring vengeance on my slayers. So he broke away, as has been
described, and hid till nightfall on the hill-side. Then by the light
of the moon he tracked us, avoiding the villages, and ultimately found
a place of shelter in a kind of cave in the forest near to Simba Town,
where no people lived. Here he fed the camel at night, concealing it
at dawn in the cave. The days he spent up a tall tree, whence he could
watch all that went on in the town beneath, living meanwhile on some
food which he carried in a bag tied to the saddle, helped out by green
mealies which he stole from a neighbouring field.

Thus he saw most of what passed in the town, including the desolation
wrought by the fearful tempest of hail, which, being in their cave, both
he and the camel escaped without harm. On the next evening from his
post of outlook up the tree, where he had now some difficulty in hiding
himself because the hail had stripped off all its leaves, he saw Marut
and myself brought from the guest-house and taken away by the escort.
Descending and running to the cave, he saddled the camel and started
in pursuit, plunging into the forest and hiding there when he perceived
that the escort were leaving us.

Here he waited until they had gone by on their return journey. So close
did they pass to him that he could overhear their talk, which told him
they expected, or rather were sure, that we should be destroyed by the
elephant Jana, their devil god, to whom the camelmen had been already
sacrificed. After they had departed he remounted and followed us. Here I
asked him why he had not overtaken us before we came to the cemetery of
elephants, as I presumed he might have done, since he stated that he was
close in our rear. This indeed was the case, for it was the head of the
camel I saw behind the thorn trees when I looked back, and not the trunk
of an elephant as I had supposed.

At the time he would give me no direct answer, except that he grew
muddled as he had already suggested, and thought it best to keep in the
background and see what happened. Long afterwards, however, he admitted
to me that he acted on a presentiment.

"It seemed to me, Baas," he said, "that your reverend father was telling
me that I should do best to let you two go on and not show myself, since
if I did so we should all three be killed, as one of us must walk whom
the other two could not desert. Whereas if I left you as you were, one
of you would be killed and the other escape, and that the one to be
killed would not be _you_, Baas. All of which came about as the Spirit
spoke in my head, for Marut was killed, who did not matter, and--you
know the rest, Baas."

To return to Hans' story. He saw us march down to the borders of the
lake, and, keeping to our right, took cover behind the knoll of rock,
whence he watched also all that followed. When Jana advanced to attack
us Hans crept forward in the hope, a very wild one, of crippling him
with the little Purdey rifle. Indeed, he was about to fire at the hind
leg when Marut made his run for life and plunged into the lake. Then he
crawled on to lead me away to the camel, but when he was within a few
yards the chase returned our way and Marut was killed.

From that moment he waited for an opportunity to shoot Jana in the only
spot where so soft a bullet would, as he knew, have the faintest chance
of injuring him vitally--namely, in the eye--for he was sure that its
penetration would not be sufficient to reach the vitals through that
thick hide and the mass of flesh behind. With an infinite and wonderful
patience he waited, knowing that my life or death hung in the balance.
While Jana held his foot over me, while he felt me with his trunk, still
Hans waited, balancing the arguments for and against firing upon the
scales of experience in his clever old mind, and in the end coming to a
right and wise conclusion.

At length his chance came, the brute exposed his eye, and by the light
of the clear moon Hans, always a very good shot at a distance when it
was not necessary to allow for trajectory and wind, let drive and _hit_.
The bullet did not get to the brain as he had hoped; it had not strength
for that, but it destroyed this left eye and gave Jana such pain that
for a while he forgot all about me and everything else except escape.

Such was the Hottentot's tale as I picked it up from his laconic,
colourless, Dutch _patois_ sentences, then and afterwards; a very
wonderful tale I thought. But for him, his fidelity and his bushman's
cunning, where should I have found myself before that moon set?



We mounted the camel after I had paused a minute to take a pull from
a flask of brandy which remained in the saddlebags. Although he loved
strong drink so well Hans had saved it untouched on the mere chance
that it might some time be of service to me, his master. The monkey-like
Hottentot sat in front and directed the camel, while I accommodated
myself as best I could on the sheepskins behind. Luckily they were thick
and soft, for Jana's pinch was not exactly that of a lover.

Off we went, picking our way carefully till we reached the elephant
track beyond the mound where Jana had appeared, which, in the light of
faith, we hoped would lead us to the River Tava. Here we made better
progress, but still could not go very fast because of the holes made by
the feet of Jana and his company. Soon we had left the cemetery behind
us, and lost sight of the lake which I devoutly trusted I might never
see again.

Now the track ran upwards from the hollow to a ridge two or three miles
away. We reached the crest of this ridge without accident, except that
on our road we met another aged elephant, a cow with very poor tusks,
travelling to its last resting place, or so I suppose. I don't know
which was the more frightened, the sick cow or the camel, for camels
hate elephants as horses hate camels until they get used to them. The
cow bolted to the right as quickly as it could, which was not very fast,
and the camel bolted to the left with such convulsive bounds that we
were nearly thrown off its back. However, being an equable brute, it
soon recovered its balance, and we got back to the track beyond the cow.

From the top of the rise we saw that before us lay a sandy plain lightly
clothed in grass, and, to our joy, about ten miles away at the foot of
a very gentle slope, the moonlight gleamed upon the waters of a broad
river. It was not easy to make out, but it was there, we were both sure
it was there; we could not mistake the wavering, silver flash. On we
went for another quarter of a mile, when something caused me to turn
round on the sheepskin and look back.

Oh Heavens! At the very top of the rise, clearly outlined against
the sky, stood Jana himself with his trunk lifted. Next instant he
trumpeted, a furious, rattling challenge of rage and defiance.

"Allemagte! Baas," said Hans, "the old devil is coming to look for
his lost eye, and has seen us with that which remains. He has been
travelling on our spoor."

"Forward!" I answered, bringing my heels into the camel's ribs.

Then the race began. The camel was a very good camel, one of the real
running breed; also, as Hans said, it was comparatively fresh, and may,
moreover, have been aware that it was near to the plains where it had
been bred. Lastly, the going was now excellent, soft to its spongy feet
but not too deep in sand, nor were there any rocks over which it could
fall. It went off like the wind, making nothing of our united weights
which did not come to more than two hundred pounds, or a half of what
it could carry with ease, being perhaps urged to its top speed by the
knowledge that the elephant was behind. For mile after mile we rushed
down the plain. But we did not go alone, for Jana came after us like a
cruiser after a gunboat. Moreover, swiftly as we travelled, he travelled
just a little swifter, gaining say a few yards in every hundred. For the
last mile before we came to the river bank, half an hour later perhaps,
though it seemed to be a week, he was not more than fifty paces to our
rear. I glanced back at him, and in the light of the moon, which was
growing low, he bore a strange resemblance to a mud cottage with broken
chimneys (which were his ears flapping on each side of him), and the
yard pump projecting from the upper window.

"We shall beat him now, Hans," I said looking at the broad river which
was now close at hand.

"Yes, Baas," answered Hans doubtfully and in jerks. "This is very good
camel, Baas. He runs so fast that I have no inside left, I suppose
because he smells his wife over that river, to say nothing of death
behind him. But, Baas, I am not sure; that devil Jana is still faster
than the camel, and he wants to settle for his lost eye, which makes him
lively. Also I see stones ahead, which are bad for camels. Then there
is the river, and I don't know if camels can swim, but Jana can as Marut
learned. Do you think, Baas, that you could manage to sting him up
with a bullet in his knee or that great trunk of his, just to give him
something to think about besides ourselves?"

Thus he prattled on, I believe to occupy my mind and his own, till at
length, growing impatient, I replied:

"Be silent, donkey. Can I shoot an elephant backwards over my shoulder
with a rifle meant for springbuck? Hit the camel! Hit it hard!"

Alas! Hans was right! There _were_ stones at the verge of the river,
which doubtless it had washed out in periods of past flood, and
presently we were among them. Now a camel, so good on sand that is its
native heath, is a worthless brute among stones, over which it slips and
flounders. But to Jana these appeared to offer little or no obstacle. At
any rate he came over them almost if not quite as fast as before. By
the time that we reached the brink of the water he was not more than ten
yards behind. I could even see the blood running down from the socket of
his ruined eye.

Moreover, at the sight of the foaming but shallow torrent, the camel,
a creature unaccustomed to water, pulled up in a mulish kind of way and
for a moment refused to stir. Luckily at this instant Jana let off one
of his archangel kind of trumpetings which started our beast again,
since it was more afraid of elephants than it was of water.

In we went and were presently floundering among the loose stones at the
bottom of the river, which was nowhere over four feet deep, with Jana
splashing after us not more than five yards behind. I twisted myself
round and fired at him with the rifle. Whether I hit him or no I could
not say, but he stopped for a few seconds, perhaps because he remembered
the effect of a similar explosion upon his eye, which gave us a trifling
start. Then he came on again in his steam-engine fashion.

When we were about in the middle of the river the inevitable happened.
The camel fell, pitching us over its head into the stream. Still
clinging to the rifle I picked myself up and began half to swim half to
wade towards the farther shore, catching hold of Hans with my free hand.
In a moment Jana was on to that camel. He gored it with his tusks, he
trampled it with his feet, he got it round the neck with his trunk,
dragging nearly the whole bulk of it out of the water. Then he set to
work to pound it down into the mud and stones at the bottom of the river
with such a persistent thoroughness, that he gave us time to reach
the other bank and climb up a stout tree which grew there, a sloping,
flat-topped kind of tree that was fortunately easy to ascend, at least
for a man. Here we sat gasping, perhaps about thirty feet above the
ground level, and waited.

Presently Jana, having finished with the camel, followed us, and
without any difficulty located us in that tree. He walked all round it
considering the situation. Then he wound his huge trunk about the bole
of the tree and, putting out his strength, tried to pull it over. It was
an anxious moment, but this particular child of the forest had not grown
there for some hundreds of years, withstanding all the shocks of wind,
weather and water, in order to be laid low by an elephant, however
enormous. It shook a little--no more. Abandoning this attempt as futile,
Jana next began to try to dig it up by driving his tusk under its roots.
Here, too, he failed because they grew among stones which evidently
jarred him.

Ceasing from these agricultural efforts with a deep rumble of rage, he
adopted yet a third expedient. Rearing his huge bulk into the air he
brought down his forefeet with all the tremendous weight of his great
body behind them on to the sloping trunk of the tree just below where
the branches sprang, perhaps twelve or thirteen feet above the ground.
The shock was so heavy that for a moment I thought the tree would be
uprooted or snapped in two. Thank Heaven! it held, but the vibration was
such that Hans and I were nearly shaken out of the upper branches, like
autumn apples from a bough. Indeed, I think I should have gone had not
the monkey-like Hans, who had toes to cling with as well as fingers,
gripped me by the collar.

Thrice did Jana repeat this manoeuvre, and at the third onslaught I saw
to my horror that the roots were loosening. I heard some of them snap,
and a crack appeared in the ground not far from the bole. Fortunately
Jana never noted these symptoms, for abandoning a plan which he
considered unavailing, he stood for a while swaying his trunk and lost
in gentle thought.

"Hans," I whispered, "load the rifle quick! I can get him in the spine
or the other eye."

"Wet powder won't go off, Baas," groaned Hans. "The water got to it in
the river."

"No," I answered, "and it is all your fault for making me shoot at him
when I could take no aim."

"It would have been just the same, Baas, for the rifle went under water
also when we fell from the camel, and the cap would have been damp, and
perhaps the powder too. Also the shot made Jana stop for a moment."

This was true, but it was maddening to be obliged to sit there with an
empty gun, when if I had but one charge, or even my pistol, I was sure
that I could have blinded or crippled this satanic pachyderm.

A few minutes later Jana played his last card. Coming quite close to
the trunk of the tree he reared himself up as before, but this time
stretched out his forelegs so that these and his body were supported on
the broad bole. Then he elongated his trunk and with it began to break
off boughs which grew between us and him.

"I don't think he can reach us," I said doubtfully to Hans, "that is,
unless he brings a stone to stand on."

"Oh! Baas, pray be silent," answered Hans, "or he will understand and
fetch one."

Although the idea seemed absurd, on the whole I thought it well to take
the hint, for who knew how much this experienced beast did or did not
understand? Then, as we could go no higher, we wriggled as far as we
dared along our boughs and waited.

Presently Jana, having finished his clearing operations, began to
lengthen his trunk to its full measure. Literally, it seemed to expand
like a telescope or an indiarubber ring. Out it came, foot after foot,
till its snapping tip was waving within a few inches of us, just short
of my foot and Han's head, or rather felt hat. One final stretch and he
reached the hat, which he removed with a flourish and thrust into the
red cavern of his mouth. As it appeared no more I suppose he ate it.
This loss of his hat moved Hans to fury. Hurling horrible curses at Jana
he drew his butcher's knife and made ready.

Once more the sinuous brown trunk elongated itself. Evidently Jana had
got a better hold with his hind legs this time, or perhaps had actually
wriggled himself a few inches up the tree. At any rate I saw to my
dismay that there was every prospect of my making a second acquaintance
with that snapping tip. The end of the trunk was lying along my bough
like a huge brown snake and creeping up, up, up.

"He'll get us," I muttered.

Hans said nothing but leaned forward a little, holding on with his left
hand. Next instant in the light of the rising sun I saw a knife flash,
saw also that the point of it had been driven through the lower lip of
Jana's trunk, pinning it to the bough like a butterfly to a board.

My word! what a commotion ensued! Up the trunk came a scream which
nearly blew me away. Then Jana, with a wriggling motion, tried to unnail
himself as gently as possible, for it was clear that the knife point
hurt him, but could not do so because Hans still held the handle and had
driven the blade deep into the wood. Lastly he dragged himself downwards
with such energy that something had to go, that something being the skin
and muscle of the lower lip, which was cut clean through, leaving the
knife erect in the bough.

Over he went backwards, a most imperial cropper. Then he picked himself
up, thrust the tip of his trunk into his mouth, sucked it as one does a
cut finger, and finally, roaring in defeated rage, fled into the river,
which he waded, and back upon his tracks towards his own home. Yes, off
he went, Hans screaming curses and demands that he should restore his
hat to him, and very seldom in all my life have I seen a sight that I
thought more beautiful than that of his whisking tail.

"Now, Baas," chuckled Hans, "the old devil has got a sore nose as well
as a sore eye by which to remember us. And, Baas, I think we had better
be going before he has time to think and comes back with a long stick to
knock us out of this tree."

So we went, in double-quick time I can assure you, or at any rate as
fast as my stiff limbs and general condition would allow. Fortunately
we had now no doubt as to our direction, since standing up through the
mists of dawn with the sunbeams resting on its forest-clad crest, we
could clearly see the strange, tumulus-shaped hill which the White
Kendah called the Holy Mount, the Home of the Child. It appeared to be
about twenty miles away, but in reality was a good deal farther, for
when we had walked for several hours it seemed almost as distant as
ever.

In truth that was a dreadful trudge. Not only was I exhausted with all
the terrors I had passed and our long midnight flight, but the wound
where Jana had pinched out a portion of my frame, inflamed by the
riding, had now grown stiff and intolerably sore, so that every step
gave me pain which sometimes culminated in agony. Moreover, it was
no use giving in, foodless as we were, for Marut had carried the
provisions, and with the chance of Jana returning to look us up. So I
stuck to it and said nothing.

For the first ten miles the country seemed uninhabited; doubtless it
was too near the borders of the Black Kendah to be popular as a place
of residence. After this we saw herds of cattle and a few camels,
apparently untended; perhaps their guards were hidden away in the long
grass. Then we came to some fields of mealies that were, I noticed,
quite untouched by the hailstorm, which, it would seem, had confined its
attentions to the land of the Black Kendah. Of these we ate thankfully
enough. A little farther on we perceived huts perched on an inaccessible
place in a kloof. Also their inhabitants perceived us, for they ran away
as though in a great fright.

Still we did not try to approach the huts, not knowing how we should
be received. After my sojourn in Simba Town I had become possessed of a
love of life in the open.

For another two hours I limped forward with pain and grief--by now I was
leaning on Hans' shoulder--up an endless, uncultivated rise clothed with
euphorbias and fern-like cycads. At length we reached its top and found
ourselves within a rifle shot of a fenced native village. I suppose that
its inhabitants had been warned of our coming by runners from the huts
I have mentioned. At any rate the moment we appeared the men, to the
number of thirty or more, poured out of the south gate armed with spears
and other weapons and proceeded to ring us round and behave in a very
threatening manner. I noticed at once that, although most of them were
comparatively light in colour, some of these men partook of the negro
characteristics of the Black Kendah from whom we had escaped, to such an
extent indeed that this blood was clearly predominant in them. Still,
it was also clear that they were deadly foes of this people, for when
I shouted out to them that we were the friends of Harut and those who
worshipped the Child, they yelled back that we were liars. No friends
of the Child, they said, came from the country of the Black Kendah, who
worshipped the devil Jana. I tried to explain that least of all men in
the world did we worship Jana, who had been hunting us for hours, but
they would not listen.

"You are spies of Simba's, the smell of Jana is upon you" (this may have
been true enough), they yelled, adding: "We will kill you, white-faced
goat. We will kill you, little yellow monkey, for none who are not
enemies come here from the land of the Black Kendah."

"Kill us then," I answered, "and bring the curse of the Child upon you.
Bring famine, bring hail, bring war!"

These words were, I think, well chosen; at any rate they induced a pause
in their murderous intentions. For a while they hesitated, all talking
together at once. At last the advocates of violence appeared to get the
upper hand, and once more a number of the men began to dance about us,
waving their spears and crying out that we must die who came from the
Black Kendah.

I sat down upon the ground, for I was so exhausted that at the time I
did not greatly care whether I died or lived, while Hans drew his
knife and stood over me, cursing them as he had cursed at Jana. By slow
degrees they drew nearer and nearer. I watched them with a kind of
idle curiosity, believing that the moment when they came within actual
spear-thrust would be our last, but, as I have said, not greatly caring
because of my mental and physical exhaustion.

I had already closed my eyes that I might not see the flash of the
falling steel, when an exclamation from Hans caused me to open them
again. Following the line of the knife with which he pointed, I
perceived a troop of men on camels emerging from the gates of the
village at full speed. In front of these, his white garments fluttering
on the wind, rode a bearded and dignified person in whom I recognized
Harut, Harut himself, waving a spear and shouting as he came. Our
assailants heard and saw him also, then flung down their weapons as
though in dismay either at his appearance or his words, which I could
not catch. Harut guided his rushing camel straight at the man who I
presume was their leader, and struck at him with his spear, as though
in fury, wounding him in the shoulder and causing him to fall to the
ground. As he struck he called out:

"Dog! Would you harm the guests of the Child?"

Then I heard no more because I fainted away.



CHAPTER XV

THE DWELLER IN THE CAVE

After this it seemed to me that I dreamed a long and very troubled dream
concerning all sorts of curious things which I cannot remember. At last
I opened my eyes and observed that I lay on a low bed raised about three
inches above the floor, in an Eastern-looking room, large and cool. It
had window-places in it but no windows, only grass mats hung upon a
rod which, I noted inconsequently, worked on a rough, wooden hinge, or
rather pin, that enabled the curtain to be turned back against the wall.

Through one of these window-places I saw at a little distance the slope
of the forest-covered hill, which reminded me of something to do with a
child--for the life of me I could not remember what. As I lay wondering
over the matter I heard a shuffling step which I recognized, and,
turning, saw Hans twiddling a new hat made of straw in his fingers.

"Hans," I said, "where did you get that new hat?"

"They gave it me here, Baas," he answered. "The Baas will remember that
the devil Jana ate the other."

Then I did remember more or less, while Hans continued to twiddle the
hat. I begged him to put it on his head because it fidgeted me, and then
inquired where we were.

"In the Town of the Child, Baas, where they carried you after you had
seemed to die down yonder. A very nice town, where there is plenty to
eat, though, having been asleep for three days, you have had nothing
except a little milk and soup, which was poured down your throat with a
spoon whenever you seemed to half wake up for a while."

"I was tired and wanted a long rest, Hans, and now I feel hungry. Tell
me, are the lord and Bena here also, or were they killed after all?"

"Yes, Baas, they are safe enough, and so are all our goods. They were
both with Harut when he saved us down by the village yonder, but you
went to sleep and did not see them. They have been nursing you ever
since, Baas."

Just then Savage himself entered, carrying some soup upon a wooden tray
and looking almost as smart as he used to do at Ragnall Castle.

"Good day, sir," he said in his best professional manner. "Very glad to
see you back with us, sir, and getting well, I trust, especially after
we had given you and Mr. Hans up as dead."

I thanked him and drank the soup, asking him to cook me something more
substantial as I was starving, which he departed to do. Then I sent Hans
to find Lord Ragnall, who it appeared was out walking in the town. No
sooner had they gone than Harut entered looking more dignified than ever
and, bowing gravely, seated himself upon the mat in the Eastern fashion.

"Some strong spirit must go with you, Lord Macumazana," he said, "that
you should live today, after we were sure that you had been slain."

"That's where you made a mistake. Your magic was not of much service to
you there, friend Harut."

"Yet my magic, as you call it, though I have none, was of some service
after all, Macumazana. As it chanced I had no opportunity of breathing
in the wisdom of the Child for two days from the hour of our arrival
here, because I was hurt on the knee in the fight and so weary that I
could not travel up the mountain and seek light from the eyes of the
Child. On the third day, however, I went and the Oracle told me all.
Then I descended swiftly, gathered men and reached those fools in time
to keep you from harm. They have paid for what they did, Lord."

"I am sorry, Harut, for they knew no better; and, Harut, although I
saved myself, or rather Hans saved me, we have left your brother behind,
and with him the others."

"I know. Jana was too strong for them; you and your servant alone could
prevail against him."

"Not so, Harut. He prevailed against us; all we could do was to injure
his eye and the tip of his trunk and escape from him."

"Which is more than any others have done for many generations, Lord. But
doubtless as the beginning was, so shall the end be. Jana, I think, is
near his death and through you."

"I don't know," I repeated. "Who and what is Jana?"

"Have I not told you that he is an evil spirit who inhabits the body of
a huge elephant?"

"Yes, and so did Marut; but I think that he is just a huge elephant with
a very bad temper of his own. Still, whatever he is, he will take some
killing, and I don't want to meet him again by that horrible lake."

"Then you will meet him elsewhere, Lord. For if you do not go to look
for Jana, Jana will come to look for you who have hurt him so sorely.
Remember that henceforth, wherever you go in all this land, it may
happen that you will meet Jana."

"Do you mean to say that the brute comes into the territory of the White
Kendah?"

"Yes, Macumazana, at times he comes, or a spirit wearing his shape
comes; I know not which. What I do know is that twice in my life I
myself have seen him upon the Holy Mount, though how he came or how he
went none can tell."

"Why was he wandering there, Harut?"

"Who can say, Lord? Tell me why evil wanders through the world and I
will answer your question. Only I repeat--let those who have harmed Jana
beware of Jana."

"And let Jana beware of me if I can meet him with a decent gun in my
hand, for I have a score to settle with the beast. Now, Harut, there is
another matter. Just before he was killed Marut, your brother, began to
tell me something about the wife of the Lord Ragnall. I had no time to
listen to the end of his words, though I thought he said that she was
upon yonder Holy Mount. Did I hear aright?"

Instantly Harut's face became like that of a stone idol, impenetrable,
impassive.

"Either you misunderstood, Lord," he answered, "or my brother raved in
his fear. Wherever she may be, that beautiful lady is not upon the
Holy Mount, unless there is another Holy Mount in the Land of Death.
Moreover, Lord, as we are speaking of this matter, let me tell you the
forest upon that Mount must be trodden by none save the priest of
the Child. If others set foot there they die, for it is watched by a
guardian more terrible even than Jana, nor is he the only one. Ask me
nothing of that guardian, for I will not answer, and, above all, if you
or your comrades value life, let them not seek to look upon him."

Understanding that it was quite useless to pursue this subject farther
at the moment, I turned to another, remarking that the hailstorm which
had smitten the country of the Black Kendah was the worst that I had
ever experienced.

"Yes," answered Harut, "so I have learned. That was the first of the
curses which the Child, through my mouth, promised to Simba and his
people if they molested us upon our road. The second, you will remember,
was famine, which for them is near at hand, seeing that they have little
corn in store and none left to gather, and that most of their cattle are
dead of the hail."

"If they have no corn while, as I noted, you have plenty which the storm
spared, will not they, who are many in number but near to starving,
attack you and take your corn, Harut?"

"Certainly they will do so, Lord, and then will fall the third curse,
the curse of war. All this was foreseen long ago, Macumazana, and you
are here to help us in that war. Among your goods you have many guns and
much powder and lead. You shall teach our people how to use those guns,
that with them we may destroy the Black Kendah."

"I think not," I replied quietly. "I came here to kill a certain
elephant, and to receive payment for my service in ivory, not to fight
the Black Kendah, of whom I have already seen enough. Moreover, the guns
are not my property but that of the Lord Ragnall, who perhaps will ask
his own price for the use of them."

"And the Lord Ragnall, who came here against our will, is, as it
chances, our property and we may ask your own price for his life. Now,
farewell for a while, since you, who are still sick and weak, have
talked enough. Only before I go, as your friend and that of those with
you, I will add one word. If you would continue to look upon the sun,
let none of you try to set foot in the forest upon the Holy Mount.
Wander where you will upon its southern slopes, but strive not to pass
the wall of rock which rings the forest round."

Then he rose, bowed gravely and departed, leaving me full of
reflections.

Shortly afterwards Savage and Hans returned, bringing me some meat which
the former had cooked in an admirable fashion. I ate of it heartily, and
just as they were carrying off the remains of the meal Ragnall himself
arrived. Our greeting was very warm, as might be expected in the case of
two comrades who never thought to speak to each other again on this side
of the grave. As I had supposed, he was certain that Hans and I had been
cut off and killed by the Black Kendah, as, after we were missed, some
of the camelmen asserted that they had actually seen us fall. So he went
on, or rather was carried on by the rush of the camels, grieving, since,
it being impossible to attempt to recover our bodies or even to return,
that was the only thing to do, and in due course reached the Town of
the Child without further accident. Here they rested and mourned for
us, till some days later Harut suddenly announced that we still lived,
though how he knew this they could not ascertain. Then they sallied
out and found us, as has been told, in great danger from the ignorant
villagers who, until we appeared, had not even heard of our existence.

I asked what they had done and what information they had obtained since
their arrival at this place. His answer was: Nothing and none worth
mentioning. The town appeared to be a small one of not much over two
thousand inhabitants, all of whom were engaged in agricultural pursuits
and in camel-breeding. The herds of camels, however, they gathered, for
the most part were kept at outlying settlements on the farther side of
the cone-shaped mountain. As they were unable to talk the language the
only person from whom they could gain knowledge was Harut, who spoke
to them in his broken English and told them much what he had told me,
namely that the upper mountain was a sacred place that might only be
visited by the priests, since any uninitiated person who set foot there
came to a bad end. They had not seen any of these priests in the town,
where no form of worship appeared to be practised, but they had observed
men driving small numbers of sheep or goats up the flanks of the
mountain towards the forest.

Of what went on upon this mountain and who lived there they remained
in complete ignorance. It was a case of stalemate. Harut would not tell
them anything nor could they learn anything for themselves. He added in
a depressed way that the whole business seemed very hopeless, and that
he had begun to doubt whether there was any tidings of his lost wife to
be gained among the Kendah, White or Black.

Now I repeated to him Marut's dying words, of which most unhappily I had
never heard the end. These seemed to give him new life since they showed
that tidings there was of some sort, if only it could be extracted. But
how might this be done? How, how?



For a whole week things went on thus. During this time I recovered
my strength completely, except in one particular which reduced me to
helplessness. The place on my thigh where Jana had pinched out a bit of
the skin healed up well enough, but the inflammation struck inwards to
the nerve of my left leg, where once I had been injured by a lion, with
the result that whenever I tried to move I was tortured by pains of a
sciatic nature. So I was obliged to lie still and to content myself
with being carried on the bed into a little garden which surrounded
the mud-built and white-washed house that had been allotted to us as a
dwelling-place.

There I lay hour after hour, staring at the Holy Mount which began
to spring from the plain within a few hundred yards of the scattered
township. For a mile or so its slopes were bare except for grass on
which sheep and goats were grazed, and a few scattered trees. Studying
the place through glasses I observed that these slopes were crowned by
a vertical precipice of what looked like lava rock, which seemed to
surround the whole mountain and must have been quite a hundred
feet high. Beyond this precipice, which to all appearance was of an
unclimbable nature, began a dense forest of large trees, cedars I
thought, clothing it to the very top, that is so far as I could see.

One day when I was considering the place, Harut entered the garden
suddenly and caught me in the act.

"The House of the god is beautiful," he said, "is it not?"

"Very," I answered, "and of a strange formation. But how do those who
dwell on it climb that precipice?"

"It cannot be climbed," he answered, "but there is a road which I
am about to travel who go to worship the Child. Yet I have told you,
Macumazana, that any strangers who seek to walk that road find death. If
they do not believe me, let them try," he added meaningly.

Then, after many inquiries about my health, he informed me that news had
reached him to the effect that the Black Kendah were mad at the loss
of their crops which the hail had destroyed and because of the near
prospect of starvation.

"Then soon they will be wishing to reap yours with spears," I said.

"That is so. Therefore, my Lord Macumazana, get well quickly that you
may be able to scare away these crows with guns, for in fourteen days
the harvest should begin upon our uplands. Farewell and have no fears,
for during my absence my people will feed and watch you and on the third
night I shall return again."

After Harut's departure a deep depression fell upon all of us. Even
Hans was depressed, while Savage became like a man under sentence of
execution at a near but uncertain date. I tried to cheer him up and
asked him what was the matter.

"I don't know, Mr. Quatermain," he answered, "but the fact is this is
a 'ateful and un'oly 'ole" (in his agitation he quite lost grip of his
h's, which was always weak), "and I am sure that it is the last I shall
ever see, except one."

"Well, Savage," I said jokingly, "at any rate there don't seem to be any
snakes here."

"No, Mr. Quatermain. That is, I haven't met any, but they crawl about me
all night, and whenever I see that prophet man he talks of them to me.
Yes, he talks of them and nothing else with a sort of cold look in his
eyes that makes my back creep. I wish it was over, I do, who shall
never see old England again," and he went away, I think to hide his very
painful and evident emotion.

That evening Hans returned from an expedition on which I had sent him
with instructions to try to get round the mountain and report what was
on its other side. It had been a complete failure, as after he had gone
a few miles men appeared who ordered him back. They were so threatening
in their demeanour that had it not been for the little rifle, Intombi,
which he carried under pretence of shooting buck, a weapon that they
regarded with great awe, they would, he thought, have killed him. He
added that he had been quite unsuccessful in his efforts to collect
any news of value from man, woman or child, all of whom, although very
polite, appeared to have orders to tell him nothing, concluding with the
remark that he considered the White Kendah bigger devils than the Black
Kendah, inasmuch as they were more clever.



Shortly after this abortive attempt we debated our position with
earnestness and came to a certain conclusion, of which I will speak in
its place.

If I remember right it was on this same night of our debate, after
Harut's return from the mountain, that the first incident of interest
happened. There were two rooms in our house divided by a partition
which ran almost up to the roof. In the left-hand room slept Ragnall
and Savage, and in that to the right Hans and I. Just at the breaking of
dawn I was awakened by hearing some agitated conversation between Savage
and his master. A minute later they both entered my sleeping place, and
I saw in the faint light that Ragnall looked very disturbed and Savage
very frightened.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"We have seen my wife," answered Ragnall.

I stared at him and he went on:

"Savage woke me by saying that there was someone in the room. I sat up
and looked and, as I live, Quatermain, standing gazing at me in such a
position that the light of dawn from the window-place fell upon her, was
my wife."

"How was she dressed?" I asked at once.

"In a kind of white robe cut rather low, with her hair loose hanging to
her waist, but carefully combed and held outspread by what appeared to
be a bent piece of ivory about a foot and a half long, to which it was
fastened by a thread of gold."

"Is that all?"

"No. Upon her breast was that necklace of red stones with the little
image hanging from its centre which those rascals gave her and she
always wore."

"Anything more?"

"Yes. In her arms she carried what looked like a veiled child. It was so
still that I think it must have been dead."

"Well. What happened?"

"I was so overcome I could not speak, and she stood gazing at me with
wide-opened eyes, looking more beautiful than I can tell you. She never
stirred, and her lips never moved--that I will swear. And yet both of us
heard her say, very low but quite clearly: 'The mountain, George! Don't
desert me. Seek me on the mountain, my dear, my husband.'"

"Well, what next?"

"I sprang up and she was gone. That's all."

"Now tell me what _you_ saw and heard, Savage."

"What his lordship saw and heard, Mr. Quatermain, neither more nor less.
Except that I was awake, having had one of my bad dreams about snakes,
and saw her come through the door."

"Through the door! Was it open then?"

"No, sir, it was shut and bolted. She just came through it as if it
wasn't there. Then I called to his lordship after she had been looking
at him for half a minute or so, for I couldn't speak at first. There's
one more thing, or rather two. On her head was a little cap that looked
as though it had been made from the skin of a bird, with a gold snake
rising up in front, which snake was the first thing I caught sight of,
as of course it would be, sir. Also the dress she wore was so thin that
through it I could see her shape and the sandals on her feet, which were
fastened at the instep with studs of gold."

"I saw no feather cap or snake," said Ragnall.

"Then that's the oddest part of the whole business," I remarked. "Go
back to your room, both of you, and if you see anything more, call me. I
want to think things over."

They went, in a bewildered sort of fashion, and I called Hans and spoke
with him in a whisper, repeating to him the little that he had not
understood of our talk, for as I have said, although he never spoke it,
Hans knew a great deal of English.

"Now, Hans," I said to him, "what is the use of you? You are no better
than a fraud. You pretend to be the best watchdog in Africa, and yet
a woman comes into this house under your nose and in the grey of the
morning, and you do not see her. Where is your reputation, Hans?"

The old fellow grew almost speechless with indignation, then he
spluttered his answer:

"It was not a woman, Baas, but a spook. Who am I that I should be
expected to catch spooks as though they were thieves or rats? As it
happens I was wide awake half an hour before the dawn and lay with my
eyes fixed upon that door, which I bolted myself last night. It never
opened, Baas; moreover, since this talk began I have been to look at it.
During the night a spider has made its web from door-post to door-post,
and that web is unbroken. If you do not believe me, come and see for
yourself. Yet they say the woman came through the doorway and therefore
through the spider's web. Oh! Baas, what is the use of wasting thought
upon the ways of spooks which, like the wind, come and go as they will,
especially in this haunted land from which, as we have all agreed, we
should do well to get away."

I went and examined the door for myself, for by now my sciatica, or
whatever it may have been, was so much better that I could walk a
little. What Hans said was true. There was the spider's web with the
spider sitting in the middle. Also some of the threads of the web were
fixed from post to post, so that it was impossible that the door could
have been opened or, if opened, that anyone could have passed through
the doorway without breaking them. Therefore, unless the woman came
through one of the little window-places, which was almost incredible as
they were high above the ground, or dropped from the smoke-hole in the
roof, or had been shut into the place when the door was closed on the
previous night, I could not see how she had arrived there. And if any
one of these incredible suppositions was correct, then how did she get
out again with two men watching her?

There were only two solutions to the problem--namely, that the whole
occurrence was hallucination, or that, in fact, Ragnall and Savage had
seen something unnatural and uncanny. If the latter were correct I only
wished that I had shared the experience, as I have always longed to
see a ghost. A real, indisputable ghost would be a great support to our
doubting minds, that is if we _knew_ its owner to be dead.

But--this was another thought--if by any chance Lady Ragnall were still
alive and a prisoner upon that mountain, what they had seen was no
ghost, but a shadow or _simulacrum_ of a living person projected
consciously or unconsciously by that person for some unknown purpose.
What could the purpose be? As it chanced the answer was not difficult,
and to it the words she was reported to have uttered gave a cue. Only a
few hours ago, just before we turned in indeed, as I have said, we had
been discussing matters. What I have not said is that in the end we
arrived at the conclusion that our quest here was wild and useless and
that we should do well to try to escape from the place before we became
involved in a war of extermination between two branches of an obscure
tribe, one of which was quite and the other semi-savage.

Indeed, although Ragnall still hung back a little, it had been arranged
that I should try to purchase camels in exchange for guns, unless I
could get them for nothing which might be less suspicious, and that we
should attempt such an escape under cover of an expedition to kill the
elephant Jana.

Supposing such a vision to be possible, then might it not have come, or
been sent to deter us from this plan? It would seem so.

Thus reflecting I went to sleep worn out with useless wonderment, and
did not wake again till breakfast time. That morning, when we were alone
together, Ragnall said to me:

"I have been thinking over what happened, or seemed to happen last
night. I am not at all a superstitious man, or one given to vain
imaginings, but I am sure that Savage and I really did see and hear the
spirit or the shadow of my wife. Her body it could not have been as you
will admit, though how she could utter, or seem to utter, audible speech
without one is more than I can tell. Also I am sure that she is captive
upon yonder mountain and came to call me to rescue her. Under these
circumstances I feel that it is my duty, as well as my desire, to give
up any idea of leaving the country and try to find out the truth."

"And how will you do that," I asked, "seeing that no one will tell us
anything?"

"By going to see for myself."

"It is impossible, Ragnall. I am too lame at present to walk half a
mile, much less to climb precipices."

"I know, and that is one of the reasons why I did not suggest that you
should accompany me. The other is that there is no object in all of
us risking our lives. I wished to face the thing alone, but that good
fellow Savage says that he will go where I go, leaving you and Hans here
to make further attempts if we do not return. Our plan is to slip out
of the town during the night, wearing white dresses like the Kendah, of
which I have bought some for tobacco, and make the best of our way up
the slope by starlight that is very bright now. When dawn comes we will
try to find the road through that precipice, or over it, and for the
rest trust to Providence."

Dismayed at this intelligence, I did all I could to dissuade him from
such a mad venture, but quite without avail, for never did I know a more
determined or more fearless man than Lord Ragnall. He had made up
his mind and there was an end of the matter. Afterwards I talked with
Savage, pointing out to him all the perils involved in the attempt, but
likewise without avail. He was more depressed than usual, apparently on
the ground that "having seen the ghost of her ladyship" he was sure he
had not long to live. Still, he declared that where his master went he
would go, as he preferred to die with him rather than alone.

So I was obliged to give in and with a melancholy heart to do what I
could to help in the simple preparations for this crazy undertaking,
realizing all the while that the only real help must come from above,
since in such a case man was powerless. I should add that after
consultation, Ragnall gave up the idea of adopting a Kendah disguise
which was certain to be discovered, also of starting at night when the
town was guarded.

That very afternoon they went, going out of the town quite openly on the
pretext of shooting partridges and small buck on the lower slopes of
the mountain, where both were numerous, as Harut had informed us we were
quite at liberty to do. The farewell was somewhat sad, especially
with Savage, who gave me a letter he had written for his old mother in
England, requesting me to post it if ever again I came to a civilized
land.

I did my best to put a better spirit in him but without avail. He only
wrung my hand warmly, said that it was a pleasure to have known such a
"real gentleman" as myself, and expressed a hope that I might get out of
this hell and live to a green old age amongst Christians. Then he wiped
away a tear with the cuff of his coat, touched his hat in the orthodox
fashion and departed. Their outfit, I should add, was very simple: some
food in bags, a flask of spirits, two double-barrelled guns that would
shoot either shot or ball, a bull's-eye lantern, matches and their
pistols.

Hans walked with them a little way and, leaving them outside the town,
returned.

"Why do you look so gloomy, Hans?" I asked.

"Because, Baas," he answered, twiddling his hat, "I had grown to be fond
of the white man, Bena, who was always very kind to me and did not treat
me like dirt as low-born whites are apt to do. Also he cooked well, and
now I shall have to do that work which I do not like."

"What do you mean, Hans? The man isn't dead, is he?"

"No, Baas, but soon he will be, for the shadow of death is in his eyes."

"Then how about Lord Ragnall?"

"I saw no shadow in his eyes; I think that he will live, Baas."

I tried to get some explanation of these dark sayings out of the
Hottentot, but he would add nothing to his words.

All the following night I lay awake filled with heavy fears which
deepened as the hours went on. Just before dawn we heard a knocking on
our door and Ragnall's voice whispering to us to open. Hans did so while
I lit a candle, of which we had a good supply. As it burned up Ragnall
entered, and from his face I saw at once that something terrible had
happened. He went to the jar where we kept our water and drank three
pannikin-fuls, one after the other. Then without waiting to be asked, he
said:

"Savage is dead," and paused a while as though some awful recollection
overcame him. "Listen," he went on presently. "We worked up the
hill-side without firing, although we saw plenty of partridges and one
buck, till just as twilight was closing in, we came to the cliff face.
Here we perceived a track that ran to the mouth of a narrow cave
or tunnel in the lava rock of the precipice, which looked quite
unclimbable. While we were wondering what to do, eight or ten
white-robed men appeared out of the shadows and seized us before we
could make any resistance. After talking together for a little they took
away our guns and pistols, with which some of them disappeared. Then
their leader, with many bows, indicated that we were at liberty to
proceed by pointing first to the mouth of the cave, and next to the top
of the precipice, saying something about '_ingane_,' which I believe
means a little child, does it not?"

I nodded, and he went on:

"After this they all departed down the hill, smiling in a fashion that
disturbed me. We stood for a while irresolute, until it became quite
dark. I asked Savage what he thought we had better do, expecting that he
would say 'Return to the town.' To my surprise, he answered:

"'Go on, of course, my lord. Don't let those brutes say that we white
men daren't walk a step without our guns. Indeed, in any case I mean to
go on, even if your lordship won't.'

"Whilst he spoke he took a bull's-eye lantern from his foodbag, which
had not been interfered with by the Kendah, and lit it. I stared at him
amazed, for the man seemed to be animated by some tremendous purpose.
Or rather it was as though a force from without had got hold of his will
and were pushing him on to an unknown end. Indeed his next words showed
that this was so, for he exclaimed:

"'There is something drawing me into that cave, my lord. It may be
death; I think it is death, but whatever it be, go I must. Perhaps you
would do well to stop outside till I have seen.'

"I stepped forward to catch hold of the man, who I thought had gone mad,
as perhaps was the case. Before I could lay my hands on him he had
run rapidly to the mouth of the cave. Of course I followed, but when I
reached its entrance the star of light thrown forward by the bull's-eye
lantern showed me that he was already about eight yards down the tunnel.
Then I heard a terrible hissing noise and Savage exclaiming: 'Oh! my
God!' twice over. As he spoke the lantern fell from his hand, but did
not go out, because, as you know, it is made to burn in any position.
I leapt forward and picked it from the ground, and while I was doing so
became aware that Savage was running still farther into the depths of
the cave. I lifted the lantern above my head and looked.

"This was what I saw: About ten paces from me was Savage with his arms
outstretched and dancing--yes, dancing--first to the right and then to
the left, with a kind of horrible grace and to the tune of a hideous
hissing music. I held the lantern higher and perceived that beyond him,
lifted eight or nine feet into the air, nearly to the roof of the tunnel
in fact, was the head of the hugest snake of which I have ever heard. It
was as broad as the bottom of a wheelbarrow--were it cut off I think
it would fill a large wheelbarrow--while the neck upon which it was
supported was quite as thick as my middle, and the undulating body
behind it, which stretched far away into the darkness, was the size of
an eighteen-gallon cask and glittered green and grey, lined and splashed
with silver and with gold.

"It hissed and swayed its great head to the right, holding Savage with
cold eyes that yet seemed to be on fire, whereon he danced to the right.
It hissed again and swayed its head to the left, whereon he danced to
the left. Then suddenly it reared its head right to the top of the cave
and so remained for a few seconds, whereon Savage stood still, bending
a little forward, as though he were bowing to the reptile. Next instant,
like a flash it struck, for I saw its white fangs bury themselves in
the back of Savage, who with a kind of sigh fell forward on to his face.
Then there was a convulsion of those shining folds, followed by a sound
as of bones being ground up in a steam-driven mortar.

"I staggered against the wall of the cave and shut my eyes for a moment,
for I felt faint. When I opened them again it was to see something flat,
misshapen, elongated like a reflection in a spoon, something that had
been Savage lying on the floor, and stretched out over it the huge
serpent studying me with its steely eyes. Then I ran; I am not ashamed
to say I ran out of that horrible hole and far into the night."

"Small blame to you," I said, adding: "Hans, give me some square-face
neat." For I felt as queer as though I also had been in that cave with
its guardian.

"There is very little more to tell," went on Ragnall after I had drunk
the hollands. "I lost my way on the mountain-side and wandered for many
hours, till at last I blundered up against one of the outermost houses
of the town, after which things were easy. Perhaps I should add that
wherever I went on my way down the mountain it seemed to me that I heard
people laughing at me in an unnatural kind of voice. That's all."

After this we sat silent for a long while, till at length Hans said in
his unmoved tone:

"The light has come, Baas. Shall I blow out the candle, which it is a
pity to waste? Also, does the Baas wish me to cook the breakfast, now
that the snake devil is making his off Bena, as I hope to make mine off
him before all is done. Snakes are very good to eat, Baas, if you know
how to dress them in the Hottentot way."



CHAPTER XVI

HANS STEALS THE KEYS

A few hours later some of the White Kendah arrived at the house and very
politely delivered to us Ragnall's and poor Savage's guns and pistols,
which they said they had found lying in the grass on the mountain-side,
and with them the bull's-eye lantern that Ragnall had thrown away in his
flight; all of which articles I accepted without comment. That evening
also Harut called and, after salutations, asked where Bena was as he did
not see him. Then my indignation broke out:

"Oh! white-bearded father of liars," I said, "you know well that he is
in the belly of the serpent which lives in the cave of the mountain."

"What, Lord!" exclaimed Harut addressing Ragnall in his peculiar
English, "have you been for walk up to hole in hill? Suppose Bena want
see big snake. He always very fond of snake, you know, and they very
fond of him. You 'member how they come out of his pocket in your house
in England? Well, he know all about snake now."

"You villain!" exclaimed Ragnall, "you murderer! I have a mind to kill
you where you are."

"Why you choke me, Lord, because snake choke your man? Poor snake, he
only want dinner. If you go where lion live, lion kill you. If you go
where snake live, snake kill you. I tell you not to. You take no notice.
Now I tell you all--go if you wish, no one stop you. Perhaps you kill
snake, who knows? Only you no take gun there, please. That not allowed.
When you tired of this town, go see snake. Only, 'member that not right
way to House of Child. There another way which you never find."

"Look here," said Ragnall, "what is the use of all this foolery? You
know very well why we are in your devilish country. It is because I
believe you have stolen my wife to make her the priestess of your evil
religion whatever it may be, and I want her back."

"All this great mistake," replied Harut blandly. "We no steal beautiful
lady you marry because we find she not right priestess. Also Macumazana
here not to look for lady but to kill elephant Jana and get pay in ivory
like good business man. You, Lord, come with him as friend though we no
ask you, that all. Then you try find temple of our god and snake which
watch door kill your servant. Why we not kill _you_, eh?"

"Because you are afraid to," answered Ragnall boldly. "Kill me if you
can and take the consequences. I am ready."

Harut studied him not without admiration.

"You very brave man," he said, "and we no wish kill you and p'raps after
all everything come right in end. Only Child know about that. Also you
help us fight Black Kendah by and by. So, Lord, you quite safe unless
you big fool and go call on snake in cave. He very hungry snake and soon
want more dinner. You hear, Light-in-Darkness, Lord-of-the-Fire," he
added suddenly turning on Hans who was squatted near by twiddling his
hat with a face that for absolute impassiveness resembled a deal board.
"You hear, he very hungry snake, and you make nice tea for him."

Hans rolled his little yellow eyes without even turning his head until
they rested on the stately countenance of Harut, and answered in Bantu:

"I hear, Liar-with-the-White-Beard, but what have I to do with this
matter? Jana is my enemy who would have killed Macumazana, my master,
not your dirty snake. What is the good of this snake of yours? If it
were any good, why does it not kill Jana whom you hate? And if it is no
good, why do you not take a stick and knock it on the head? If you are
afraid I will do so for you if you pay me. That for your snake," and
very energetically he spat upon the floor.

"All right," said Harut, still speaking in English, "you go kill snake.
Go when you like, no one say no. Then we give you new name. Then we call
you Lord-of-the-Snake."

As Hans, who now was engaged in lighting his corn-cob pipe, did not
deign to answer these remarks, Harut turned to me and said:

"Lord Macumazana, your leg still bad, eh? Well, I bring you some
ointment what make it quite well; it holy ointment come from the Child.
We want you get well quick."

Then suddenly he broke into Bantu. "My Lord, war draws near. The Black
Kendah are gathering all their strength to attack us and we must have
your aid. I go down to the River Tava to see to certain matters, as to
the reaping of the outlying crops and other things. Within a week I will
be back; then we must talk again, for by that time, if you will use the
ointment that I have given you, you will be as well as ever you were
in your life. Rub it on your leg, and mix a piece as large as a mealie
grain in water and swallow it at night. It is not poison, see," and
taking the cover off a little earthenware pot which he produced he
scooped from it with his finger some of the contents, which looked like
lard, put it on his tongue and swallowed it.

Then he rose and departed with his usual bows.

Here I may state that I used Harut's prescription with the most
excellent results. That night I took a dose in water, very nasty it was,
and rubbed my leg with the stuff, to find that next morning all pain
had left me and that, except for some local weakness, I was practically
quite well. I kept the rest of the salve for years, and it proved a
perfect specific in cases of sciatica and rheumatism. Now, alas! it is
all used and no recipe is available from which it can be made up again.

The next few days passed uneventfully. As soon as I could walk I began
to go about the town, which was nothing but a scattered village much
resembling those to be seen on the eastern coasts of Africa. Nearly
all the men seemed to be away, making preparations for the harvest, I
suppose, and as the women shut themselves up in their houses after the
Oriental fashion, though the few that I saw about were unveiled and
rather good-looking, I did not gather any intelligence worth noting.

To tell the truth I cannot remember being in a more uninteresting place
than this little town with its extremely uncommunicative population
which, it seemed to me, lived under a shadow of fear that prevented all
gaiety. Even the children, of whom there were not many, crept about in
a depressed fashion and talked in a low voice. I never saw any of them
playing games or heard them shouting and laughing, as young people do
in most parts of the world. For the rest we were very well looked after.
Plenty of food was provided for us and every thought taken for our
comfort. Thus a strong and quiet pony was brought for me to ride because
of my lameness. I had only to go out of the house and call and it
arrived from somewhere, all ready saddled and bridled, in charge of a
lad who appeared to be dumb. At any rate when I spoke to him he would
not answer.

Mounted on this pony I took one or two rides along the southern slopes
of the mountain on the old pretext of shooting for the pot. Hans
accompanied me on these occasions, but was, I noted, very silent and
thoughtful, as though he were hunting something up and down his tortuous
intelligence. Once we got quite near to the mouth of the cave or tunnel
where poor Savage had met his horrid end. As we stood studying it a
white-robed man whose head was shaved, which made me think he must be
a priest, came up and asked me mockingly why we did not go through the
tunnel and see what lay beyond, adding, almost in the words of Harut
himself, that none would attempt to interfere with us as the road was
open to any who could travel it. By way of answer I only smiled and
put him a few questions about a very beautiful breed of goats with long
silky hair, some of which he seemed to be engaged in herding. He replied
that these goats were sacred, being the food of "one who dwelt in the
Mountain who only ate when the moon changed."

When I inquired who this person was he said with his unpleasant
smile that I had better go through the tunnel and see for myself, an
invitation which I did not accept.

That evening Harut appeared unexpectedly, looking very grave and
troubled. He was in a great hurry and only stayed long enough to
congratulate me upon the excellent effects of his ointment, since "no
man could fight Jana on one leg."

I asked him when the fight with Jana was to come off. He replied:

"Lord, I go up to the Mountain to attend the Feast of the First-fruits,
which is held at sunrise on the day of the new moon. After the offering
the Oracle will speak and we shall learn when there will be war with
Jana, and perchance other things."

"May we not attend this feast, Harut, who are weary of doing nothing
here?"

"Certainly," he answered with his grave bow. "That is, if you come
unarmed; for to appear before the Child with arms is death. You know the
road; it runs through yonder cave and the forest beyond the cave. Take
it when you will, Lord."

"Then if we can pass the cave we shall be welcome at the feast?"

"You will be very welcome. None shall hurt you there, going or
returning. I swear it by the Child. Oh! Macumazana," he added, smiling
a little, "why do you talk folly, who know well that one lives in yonder
cave whom none may look upon and love, as Bena learned not long ago? You
are thinking that perhaps you might kill this Dweller in the cave with
your weapons. Put away that dream, seeing that henceforth those who
watch you have orders to see that none of you leave this house carrying
so much as a knife. Indeed, unless you promise me that this shall be so
you will not be suffered to set foot outside its garden until I return
again. Now do you promise?"

I thought a while and, drawing the two others aside out of hearing,
asked them their opinion.

Ragnall was at first unwilling to give any such promise, but Hans said:

"Baas, it is better to go free and unhurt without guns and knives than
to become a prisoner once, as you were among the Black Kendah. Often
there is but a short step between the prison and the grave."

Both Ragnall and I acknowledged the force of this argument and in the
end we gave the promise, speaking one by one.

"It is enough," said Harut; "moreover, know, Lord, that among us White
Kendah he who breaks an oath is put across the River Tava unarmed to
make report thereof to Jana, Father of Lies. Now farewell. If we do
not meet at the Feast of the First-fruits on the day of the new moon,
whither once more I invite you, we can talk together here after I have
heard the voice of the Oracle."

Then he mounted a camel which awaited him outside the gate and departed
with an escort of twelve men, also riding camels.

"There is some other road up that mountain, Quatermain," said Ragnall.
"A camel could sooner pass through the eye of a needle than through that
dreadful cave, even if it were empty."

"Probably," I answered, "but as we don't know where it is and I dare say
it lies miles from here, we need not trouble our heads on the matter.
The cave is _our_ only road, which means that there is _no_ road."

That evening at supper we discovered that Hans was missing; also that he
had got possession of my keys and broken into a box containing liquor,
for there it stood open in the cooking-hut with the keys in the lock.

"He has gone on the drink," I said to Ragnall, "and upon my soul I don't
wonder at it; for sixpence I would follow his example."

Then we went to bed. Next morning we breakfasted rather late, since when
one has nothing to do there is no object in getting up early. As I was
preparing to go to the cook-house to boil some eggs, to our astonishment
Hans appeared with a kettle of coffee.

"Hans," I said, "you are a thief."

"Yes, Baas," answered Hans.

"You have been at the gin box and taking that poison."

"Yes, Baas, I have been taking poison. Also I took a walk and all is
right now. The Baas must not be angry, for it is very dull doing nothing
here. Will the Baases eat porridge as well as eggs?"

As it was no use scolding him I said that we would. Moreover, there was
something about his manner which made me suspicious, for really he did
not look like a person who has just been very drunk.

After we had finished breakfast he came and squatted down before me.
Having lit his pipe he asked suddenly:

"Would the Baases like to walk through that cave to-night? If so, there
will be no trouble."

"What do you mean?" I asked, suspecting that he was still drunk.

"I mean, Baas, that the Dweller-in-the-cave is fast asleep."

"How do you know that, Hans?"

"Because I am the nurse who put him to sleep, Baas, though he kicked
and cried a great deal. He is asleep; he will wake no more. Baas, I have
killed the Father of Serpents."

"Hans," I said, "now I am sure that you are still drunk, although you do
not show it outside."

"Hans," added Ragnall, to whom I had translated as much of this as he
did not understand, "it is too early in the day to tell good stories.
How could you possibly have killed that serpent without a gun--for you
took none with you--or with it either for that matter?"

"Will the Baases come and take a walk through the cave?" asked Hans with
a snigger.

"Not till I am quite sure that you are sober," I replied; then,
remembering certain other events in this worthy's career, added; "Hans,
if you do not tell us the story at once I will beat you."

"There isn't much story, Baas," replied Hans between long sucks at his
pipe, which had nearly gone out, "because the thing was so easy. The
Baas is very clever and so is the Lord Baas, why then can they never
see the stones that lie under their noses? It is because their eyes are
always fixed upon the mountains between this world and the next. But
the poor Hottentot, who looks at the ground to be sure that he does not
stumble, ah! he sees the stones. Now, Baas, did you not hear that man
in a night shirt with his head shaved say that those goats were food for
One who dwelt in the mountain?"

"I did. What of it, Hans?"

"Who would be the One who dwelt in the mountain except the Father of
Snakes in the cave, Baas? Ah, now for the first time you see the stone
that lay at your feet all the while. And, Baas, did not the bald man add
that this One in the mountain was only fed at new and full moon, and is
not to-morrow the day of new moon, and therefore would he not be very
hungry on the day before new moon, that is, last night?"

"No doubt, Hans; but how can you kill a snake by feeding it?"

"Oh! Baas, you may eat things that make you ill, and so can a snake. Now
you will guess the rest, so I had better go to wash the dishes."

"Whether I guess or do not guess," I replied sagely, the latter being
the right hypothesis, "the dishes can wait, Hans, since the Lord there
has not guessed; so continue."

"Very well, Baas. In one of those boxes are some pounds of stuff which,
when mixed with water, is used for preserving skins and skulls."

"You mean the arsenic crystals," I said with a flash of inspiration.

"I don't know what you call them, Baas. At first I thought they were
hard sugar and stole some once, when the real sugar was left behind, to
put into the coffee--without telling the Baas, because it was my fault
that the sugar was left behind."

"Great Heavens!" I ejaculated, "then why aren't we all dead?"

"Because at the last moment, Baas, I thought I would make sure, so I put
some of the hard sugar into hot milk and, when it had melted, I gave it
to that yellow dog which once bit me in the leg, the one that came from
Beza-Town, Baas, that I told you had run away. He was a very greedy dog,
Baas, and drank up the milk at once. Then he gave a howl, twisted about,
foamed at the mouth and died and I buried him at once. After that I
threw some more of the large sugar mixed with mealies to the fowls that
we brought with us for cooking. Two cocks and a hen swallowed them
by mistake for the corn. Presently they fell on their backs, kicked a
little and died. Some of the Mazitu, who were great thieves, stole those
dead fowls, Baas. After this, Baas, I thought it best not to use that
sugar in the coffee, and later on Bena told me that it was deadly
poison. Well, Baas, it came into my mind that if I could make that great
snake swallow enough of this poison, he, too, might die.

"So I stole your keys, as I often do, Baas, when I want anything,
because you leave them lying about everywhere, and to deceive you first
opened one of the boxes that are full of square-face and brandy and left
it open, for I wished you to think that I had just gone to get drunk
like anybody else. Then I opened another box and got out two one-pound
tins of the sugar which kills dogs and fowls. Half a pound of it I
melted in boiling water with some real sugar to make the stuff sweet,
and put it into a bottle. The rest I tied with string in twelve little
packets in the soft paper which is in one of the boxes, and put them in
my pocket. Then I went up the hill, Baas, to the place where I saw those
goats are kraaled at night behind a reed fence. As I had hoped, no one
was watching them because there are no tigers so near this town, and
man does not steal the goats that are sacred. I went into the kraal and
found a fat young ewe which had a kid. I dragged it out and, taking it
behind some stones, I made its leg fast with a bit of cord and poured
this stuff out of the bottle all over its skin, rubbing it in well.
Then I tied the twelve packets of hard poison-sugar everywhere about its
body, making them very fast deep in the long hair so that they could not
tumble or rub off.

"After this I untied the goat, led it near to the mouth of the cave and
held it there for a time while it kept on bleating for its kid. Next I
took it almost up to the cave, wondering how I should drive it in, for I
did not wish to enter there myself, Baas. As it happened I need not have
troubled about that. When the goat was within five yards of the cave, it
stopped bleating, stood still and shivered. Then it began to go forward
with little jumps, as though it did not want to go, yet must do so.
Also, Baas, I felt as though _I_ wished to go with it. So I lay down and
put my heels against a rock, leaving go of the goat.

"For now, Baas, I did not care where that goat went so long as I could
keep out of the hole where dwelt the Father of Serpents that had eaten
Bena. But it was all right, Baas; the goat knew what it had to do and
did it, jumping straight into the cave. As it entered it turned its head
and looked at me. I could see its eyes in the starlight, and, Baas, they
were dreadful. I think it knew what was coming and did not like it at
all. And yet it had to walk on because it could not help it. Just like a
man going to the devil, Baas!

"Holding on to the stone I peered after it, for I had heard something
stirring in the cave making a soft noise like a white lady's dress upon
the floor. There in the blackness I saw two little sparks of fire, which
were the eyes of the serpent, Baas. Then I heard a sound of hissing like
four big kettles boiling all at once, and a little bleat from the goat.
After this there was a noise as of men wrestling, followed by another
noise as of bones breaking, and lastly, yet another sucking noise as of
a pump that won't draw up the water. Then everything grew nice and quiet
and I went some way off, sat down a little to one side of the cave, and
waited to see if anything happened.

"It must have been nearly an hour later that something did begin to
happen, Baas. It was as though sacks filled with chaff were being beaten
against stone walls there in the cave. Ah! thought I to myself, your
stomach is beginning to ache, Eater-up-of-Bena, and, as that goat had
little horns on its head--to which I tied two of the bags of the poison,
Baas--and, like all snakes, no doubt you have spikes in your throat
pointing downwards, you won't be able to get it up again. Then--I
expect this was after the poison-sugar had begun to melt nicely in the
serpent's stomach, Baas--there was a noise as though a whole company of
girls were dancing a war-dance in the cave to a music of hisses.

"And then--oh! then, Baas, of a sudden that Father of Serpents came out.
I tell you, Baas, that when I saw him in the bright starlight my hair
stood up upon my head, for never has there been such another snake in
the whole world. Those that live in trees and eat bucks in Zululand, of
whose skins men make waistcoats and slippers, are but babies compared
to this one. He came out, yard after yard of him. He wriggled about, he
stood upon his tail with his head where the top of a tree might be, he
made himself into a ring, he bit at stones and at his own stomach, while
I hid behind my rock praying to your reverend father that he might not
see me. Then at last he rushed away down the hill, faster than any horse
could gallop.

"Now I hoped that he had gone for good and thought of going myself.
Still I feared to do so lest I should meet him somewhere, so I made up
my mind to wait till daylight. It was as well, Baas, for about half an
hour later he came back again. Only now he could not jump, he could only
crawl. Never in my life did I see a snake look so sick, Baas. Into the
cave he went and lay there hissing. By degrees the hissing grew very
faint, till at length they died away altogether. I waited another
half-hour, Baas, and then I grew so curious that I thought that I would
go to look in the cave.

"I lit the little lantern I had with me and, holding it in one hand and
my stick in the other, I crept into the hole. Before I had crawled ten
paces I saw something white stretched along the ground. It was the belly
of the great snake, Baas, which lay upon its back quite dead.

"I know that it was dead, for I lit three wax matches, setting them to
burn upon its tail and it never stirred, as any live snake will do when
it feels fire. Then I came home, Baas, feeling very proud because I
had outwitted that great-grandfather of all snakes who killed Bena my
friend, and had made the way clear for us to walk through the cave.

"That is all the story, Baas. Now I must go to wash those dishes," and
without waiting for any comment off he went, leaving us marvelling at
his wit, resource and courage.

"What next?" I asked presently.

"Nothing till to-night," answered Ragnall with determination, "when I am
going to look at the snake which the noble Hans has killed and whatever
lies beyond the cave, as you will remember Harut invited us to do
unmolested, if we could."

"Do you think Harut will keep his word, Ragnall?"

"On the whole, yes, and if he doesn't I don't care. Anything is better
than sitting here in this suspense."

"I agree as to Harut, because we are too valuable to be killed just now,
if for no other reason; also as to the suspense, which is unendurable.
Therefore I will walk with you to look at that snake, Ragnall, and so no
doubt will Hans. The exercise will do my leg good."

"Do you think it wise?" he asked doubtfully; "in your case, I mean."

"I think it most unwise that we should separate any more. We had better
stand or fall altogether; further, we do not seem to have any luck
apart."



CHAPTER XVII

THE SANCTUARY AND THE OATH

That evening shortly after sundown the three of us started boldly from
our house wearing over our clothes the Kendah dresses which Ragnall had
bought, and carrying nothing save sticks in our hands, some food and
the lantern in our pockets. On the outskirts of the town we were met by
certain Kendah, one of whom I knew, for I had often ridden by his side
on our march across the desert.

"Have any of you arms upon you, Lord Macumazana?" he asked, looking
curiously at us and our white robes.

"None," I answered. "Search us if you will."

"Your word is sufficient," he replied with the grave courtesy of his
people. "If you are unarmed we have orders to let you go where you wish
however you may be dressed. Yet, Lord," he whispered to me, "I pray you
do not enter the cave, since One lives there who strikes and does not
miss, One whose kiss is death. I pray it for your own sakes, also for
ours who need you."

"We shall not wake him who sleeps in the cave," I answered
enigmatically, as we departed rejoicing, for now we had learned that the
Kendah did not yet know of the death of the serpent.

An hour's walk up the hill, guided by Hans, brought us to the mouth of
the tunnel. To tell the truth I could have wished it had been longer,
for as we drew near all sorts of doubts assailed me. What if Hans really
had been drinking and invented this story to account for his absence?
What if the snake had recovered from a merely temporary indisposition?
What if it had a wife and family living in that cave, every one of them
thirsting for vengeance?

Well, it was too late to hesitate now, but secretly I hoped that one
of the others would prefer to lead the way. We reached the place and
listened. It was silent as a tomb. Then that brave fellow Hans lit the
lantern and said:

"Do you stop here, Baases, while I go to look. If you hear anything
happen to me, you will have time to run away," words that made me feel
somewhat ashamed of myself.

However, knowing that he was quick as a weasel and silent as a cat,
we let him go. A minute or two later suddenly he reappeared out of the
darkness, for he had turned the metal shield over the bull's-eye of the
lantern, and even in that light I could see that he was grinning.

"It is all right, Baas," he said. "The Father of Serpents has really
gone to that land whither he sent Bena, where no doubt he is now
roasting in the fires of hell, and I don't see any others. Come and look
at him."

So in we went and there, true enough, upon the floor of the cave lay the
huge reptile stone dead and already much swollen. I don't know how long
it was, for part of its body was twisted into coils, so I will only say
that it was by far the most enormous snake that I have ever seen. It is
true that I have heard of such reptiles in different parts of
Africa, but hitherto I had always put them down as fabulous creatures
transformed into and worshipped as local gods. Also this particular
specimen was, I presume, of a new variety, since, according to Ragnall,
it both struck like the cobra or the adder, and crushed like the
boa-constrictor. It is possible, however, that he was mistaken on this
point; I do not know, since I had no time, or indeed inclination, to
examine its head for the poison fangs, and when next I passed that way
it was gone.

I shall never forget the stench of that cave. It was horrible, which is
not to be wondered at seeing that probably this creature had dwelt there
for centuries, since these large snakes are said to be as long lived as
tortoises, and, being sacred, of course it had never lacked for food.
Everywhere lay piles of cast bones, amongst one of which I noticed
fragments of a human skull, perhaps that of poor Savage. Also the
projecting rocks in the place were covered with great pieces of snake
skin, doubtless rubbed off by the reptile when once a year it changed
its coat.

For a while we gazed at the loathsome and still glittering creature,
then pushed on fearful lest we should stumble upon more of its kind.
I suppose that it must have been solitary, a kind of serpent rogue,
as Jana was an elephant rogue, for we met none and, if the information
which I obtained afterwards may be believed, there was no species at
all resembling it in the country. What its origin may have been I never
learned. All the Kendah could or would say about it was that it had
lived in this hole from the beginning and that Black Kendah prisoners,
or malefactors, were sometimes given to it to kill, as White Kendah
prisoners were given to Jana.

The cave itself proved to be not very long, perhaps one hundred and
fifty feet, no more. It was not an artificial but a natural hollow in
the lava rock, which I suppose had once been blown through it by an
outburst of steam. Towards the farther end it narrowed so much that I
began to fear there might be no exit. In this I was mistaken, however,
for at its termination we found a hole just large enough for a man to
walk in upright and so difficult to climb through that it became clear
to us that certainly this was not the path by which the White Kendah
approached their sanctuary.

Scrambling out of this aperture with thankfulness, we found ourselves
upon the slope of a kind of huge ditch of lava which ran first downwards
for about eighty paces, then up again to the base of the great cone of
the inner mountain which was covered with dense forest.

I presume that the whole formation of this peculiar hill was the result
of a violent volcanic action in the early ages of the earth. But as I do
not understand such matters I will not dilate upon them further than to
say that, although comparatively small, it bore a certain resemblance
to other extinct volcanoes which I had met with in different parts of
Africa.

We climbed down to the bottom of the ditch that from its general
appearance might have been dug out by some giant race as a protection to
their stronghold, and up its farther side to where the forest began on
deep and fertile soil. Why there should have been rich earth here and
none in the ditch is more than we could guess, but perhaps the presence
of springs of water in this part of the mount may have been a cause. At
any rate it was so.

The trees in this forest were huge and of a variety of cedar, but did
not grow closely together; also there was practically no undergrowth,
perhaps for the reason that their dense, spreading tops shut out the
light. As I saw afterwards both trunks and boughs were clothed with
long grey moss, which even at midday gave the place a very ghostly
appearance. The darkness beneath those trees was intense, literally we
could not see an inch before our faces. Yet rather than stand still we
struggled on, Hans leading the way, for his instincts were quicker than
ours. The steep rise of the ground beneath our feet told us that we were
going uphill, as we wished to do, and from time to time I consulted a
pocket compass I carried by the light of a match, knowing from previous
observations that the top of the Holy Mount lay due north.

Thus for hour after hour we crept up and on, occasionally butting into
the trunk of a tree or stumbling over a fallen bough, but meeting with
no other adventures or obstacles of a physical kind. Of moral, or rather
mental, obstacles there were many, since to all of us the atmosphere
of this forest was as that of a haunted house. It may have been the
embracing darkness, or the sough of the night wind amongst the boughs
and mosses, or the sense of the imminent dangers that we had passed and
that still awaited us. Or it may have been unknown horrors connected
with this place of which some spiritual essence still survived, for
without doubt localities preserve such influences, which can be felt by
the sensitive among living things, especially in favouring conditions of
fear and gloom. At any rate I never experienced more subtle and yet more
penetrating terrors than I did upon that night, and afterwards Ragnall
confessed to me that my case was his own. Black as it was I thought that
I saw apparitions, among them glaring eyes and that of the elephant
Jana standing in front of me with his trunk raised against the bole of a
cedar. I could have sworn that I saw him, nor was I reassured when Hans
whispered to me below his breath, for here we did not seem to dare to
raise our voices:

"Look, Baas. Is it Jana glowing like hot iron who stands yonder?"

"Don't be a fool," I answered. "How can Jana be here and, if he were
here, how could we see him in the night?" But as I said the words I
remembered Harut had told us that Jana had been met with on the Holy
Mount "in the spirit or in the flesh." However this may be, next instant
he was gone and we beheld him or his shadow no more. Also we thought
that from time to time we heard voices speaking all around us, now here,
now there and now in the tree tops above our heads, though what they
said we could not catch or understand.

Thus the long night wore away. Our progress was very slow, but guided by
occasional glimpses at the compass we never stopped but twice, once
when we found ourselves apparently surrounded by tree boles and fallen
boughs, and once when we got into swampy ground. Then we took the risk
of lighting the lantern, and by its aid picked our way through these
difficult places. By degrees the trees grew fewer so that we could see
the stars between their tops. This was a help to us as I knew that one
of them, which I had carefully noted, shone at this season of the year
directly over the cone of the mountain, and we were enabled to steer
thereby.

It must have been not more than half an hour before the dawn that Hans,
who was leading--we were pushing our way through thick bushes at the
time--halted hurriedly, saying:

"Stop, Baas, we are on the edge of a cliff. When I thrust my stick
forward it stands on nothing."

Needless to say we pulled up dead and so remained without stirring
an inch, for who could say what might be beyond us? Ragnall wished to
examine the ground with the lantern. I was about to consent, though
doubtfully, when suddenly I heard voices murmuring and through the
screen of bushes saw lights moving at a little distance, forty feet or
more below us. Then we gave up all idea of making further use of the
lantern and crouched still as mice in our bushes, waiting for the dawn.

It came at last. In the east appeared a faint pearly flush that by
degrees spread itself over the whole arch of the sky and was welcomed
by the barking of monkeys and the call of birds in the depths of the
dew-steeped forest. Next a ray from the unrisen sun, a single spear
of light shot suddenly across the sky, and as it appeared, from the
darkness below us arose a sound of chanting, very low and sweet to hear.
It died away and for a little while there was silence broken only by
a rustling sound like to that of people taking their seats in a dark
theatre. Then a woman began to sing in a beautiful, contralto voice,
but in what language I do not know, for I could not catch the words, if
these were words and not only musical notes.

I felt Ragnall trembling beside me and in a whisper asked him what was
the matter. He answered, also in a whisper:

"I believe that is my wife's voice."

"If so, I beg you to control yourself," I replied.

Now the skies began to flame and the light to pour itself into a misty
hollow beneath us like streams of many-coloured gems into a bowl,
driving away the shadows. By degrees these vanished; by degrees we saw
everything. Beneath us was an amphitheatre, on the southern wall of
which we were seated, though it was not a wall but a lava cliff between
forty and fifty feet high which served as a wall. The amphitheatre
itself, however, almost exactly resembled those of the ancients which
I had seen in pictures and Ragnall had visited in Italy, Greece, and
Southern France. It was oval in shape and not very large, perhaps the
flat space at the bottom may have covered something over an acre, but
all round this oval ran tiers of seats cut in the lava of the crater.
For without doubt this was the crater of an extinct volcano.

Moreover, in what I will call the arena, stood a temple that in its main
outlines, although small, exactly resembled those still to be seen in
Egypt. There was the gateway or pylon; there the open outer court with
columns round it supporting roofed cloisters, which, as we ascertained
afterwards, were used as dwelling-places by the priests. There beyond
and connected with the first by a short passage was a second rather
smaller court, also open to the sky, and beyond this again, built like
all the rest of the temple of lava blocks, a roofed erection measuring
about twelve feet square, which I guessed at once must be the sanctuary.

This temple was, as I have said, small, but extremely well proportioned,
every detail of it being in the most excellent taste though unornamented
by sculpture or painting. I have to add that in front of the sanctuary
door stood a large block of lava, which I concluded was an altar, and in
front of this a stone seat and a basin, also of stone, supported upon a
very low tripod. Further, behind the sanctuary was a square house with
window-places.

At the moment of our first sight of this place the courts were empty,
but on the benches of the amphitheatre were seated about three hundred
persons, male and female, the men to the north and the women to the
south. They were all clad in pure white robes, the heads of the men
being shaved and those of the women veiled, but leaving the face
exposed. Lastly, there were two roadways into the amphitheatre, one
running east and one west through tunnels hollowed in the encircling
rock of the crater, both of which roads were closed at the mouths of the
tunnels by massive wooden double doors, seventeen or eighteen feet
in height. From these roadways and their doors we learned two things.
First, that the cave where had lived the Father of Serpents was, as I
had suspected, not the real approach to the shrine of the Child, but
only a blind; and, secondly, that the ceremony we were about to witness
was secret and might only be attended by the priestly class or families
of this strange tribe.

Scarcely was it full daylight when from the cells of the cloisters
round the outer court issued twelve priests headed by Harut himself, who
looked very dignified in his white garment, each of whom carried on a
wooden platter ears of different kinds of corn. Then from the cells of
the southern cloister issued twelve women, or rather girls, for all were
young and very comely, who ranged themselves alongside of the men. These
also carried wooden platters, and on them blooming flowers.

At a sign they struck up a religious chant and began to walk forward
through the passage that led from the first court to the second.
Arriving in front of the altar they halted and one by one, first a
priest and then a priestess, set down the platters of offerings, piling
them above each other into a cone. Next the priests and the priestesses
ranged themselves in lines on either side of the altar, and Harut took
a platter of corn and a platter of flowers in his hands. These he held
first towards that quarter of the sky in which swam the invisible new
moon, secondly towards the rising sun, and thirdly towards the doors of
the sanctuary, making genuflexions and uttering some chanted prayer, the
words of which we could not hear.

A pause followed, that was succeeded by a sudden outburst of song
wherein all the audience took part. It was a very sonorous and beautiful
song or hymn in some language which I did not understand, divided into
four verses, the end of each verse being marked by the bowing of every
one of those many singers towards the east, towards the west, and
finally towards the altar.

Another pause till suddenly the doors of the sanctuary were thrown wide
and from between them issued--the goddess Isis of the Egyptians as I
have seen her in pictures! She was wrapped in closely clinging draperies
of material so thin that the whiteness of her body could be seen
beneath. Her hair was outspread before her, and she wore a head-dress
or bonnet of glittering feathers from the front of which rose a little
golden snake. In her arms she bore what at that distance seemed to be
a naked child. With her came two women, walking a little behind her
and supporting her arms, who also wore feather bonnets but without the
golden snake, and were clad in tight-fitting, transparent garments.

"My God!" whispered Ragnall, "it is my wife!"

"Then be silent and thank Him that she is alive and well," I answered.

The goddess Isis, or the English lady--in that excitement I did not
reck which--stood still while the priests and priestesses and all the
audience, who, gathered on the upper benches of the amphitheatre, could
see her above the wall of the inner court, raised a thrice-repeated and
triumphant cry of welcome. Then Harut and the first priestess lifted
respectively an ear of corn and a flower from the two topmost platters
and held these first to the lips of the child in her arms and secondly
to her lips.

This ceremony concluded, the two attendant women led her round the altar
to the stone chair, upon which she seated herself. Next fire was kindled
in the bowl on the tripod in front of the chair, how I could not see;
but perhaps it was already smouldering there. At any rate it burnt up
in a thin blue flame, on to which Harut and the head priestess threw
something that caused the flame to turn to smoke. Then Isis, for I
prefer to call her so while describing this ceremony, was caused to bend
her head forward, so that it was enveloped in the smoke exactly as she
and I had done some years before in the drawing-room at Ragnall Castle.
Presently the smoke died away and the two attendants with the feathered
head-dresses straightened her in the chair where she sat still holding
the babe against her breast as she might have done to nurse it, but with
her head bent forward like that of a person in a swoon.

Now Harut stepped forward and appeared to speak to the goddess at some
length, then fell back again and waited, till in the midst of an intense
silence she rose from her seat and, fixing her wide eyes on the heavens,
spoke in her turn, for although we heard nothing of what she said, in
that clear, morning light we could see her lips moving. For some minutes
she spoke, then sat down again upon the chair and remained motionless,
staring straight in front of her. Harut advanced again, this time to
the front of the altar, and, taking his stand upon a kind of stone step,
addressed the priests and priestesses and all the encircling audience in
a voice so loud and clear that I could distinguish and understand every
word he said.

"The Guardian of the heavenly Child, the Nurse decreed, the appointed
Nurturer, She who is the shadow of her that bore the Child, She who in
her day bears the symbol of the Child and is consecrated to its service
from of old, She whose heart is filled with the wisdom of the Child and
who utters the decrees of Heaven, has spoken. Hearken now to the voice
of the Oracle uttered in answer to the questions of me, Harut, the head
priest of the Eternal Child during my life-days. Thus says the Oracle,
the Guardian, the Nurturer, marked like all who went before her with
the holy mark of the new moon. She on whom the spirit, flitting from
generation to generation, has alighted for a while. 'O people of the
White Kendah, worshippers of the Child in this land and descendants of
those who for thousands of years worshipped the Child in a more
ancient land until the barbarians drove it thence with the remnant that
remained. War is upon you, O people of the White Kendah. Jana the evil
one; he whose other name is Set, he whose other name is Satan, he who
for this while lives in the shape of an elephant, he who is worshipped
by the thousands whom once you conquered, and whom still you bridle by
my might, comes up against you. The Darkness wars against the Daylight,
the Evil wars against the Good. My curse has fallen upon the people of
Jana, my hail has smitten them, their corn and their cattle; they have
no food to eat. But they are still strong for war and there is food in
your land. They come to take your corn; Jana comes to trample your god.
The Evil comes to destroy the Good, the Night to Devour the Day. It is
the last of many battles. How shall you conquer, O People of the Child?
Not by your own strength, for you are few in number and Jana is very
strong. Not by the strength of the Child, for the Child grows weak and
old, the days of its dominion are almost done, and its worship is almost
outworn. Here alone that worship lingers, but new gods, who are still
the old gods, press on to take its place and to lead it to its rest.'

"How then shall you conquer that, when the Child has departed to its own
place, a remnant of you may still remain? In one way only--so says
the Guardian, the Nurturer of the Child speaking with the voice of the
Child; by the help of those whom you have summoned to your aid from far.
There were four of them, but one you have suffered to be slain in
the maw of the Watcher in the cave. It was an evil deed, O sons and
daughters of the Child, for as the Watcher is now dead, so ere long
many of you who planned this deed must die who, had it not been for that
man's blood, would have lived on a while. Why did you do this thing?
That you might keep a secret, the secret of the theft of a woman, that
you might continue to act a lie which falls upon your head like a stone
from heaven.

"Thus saith the Child: 'Lift no hand against the three who remain, and
what they shall ask, that give, for thus alone shall some of you be
saved from Jana and those who serve him, even though the Guardian and
the Child be taken away and the Child itself returned to its own
place.' These are the words of the Oracle uttered at the Feast of the
First-fruits, the words that cannot be changed and mayhap its last."


Harut ceased, and there was silence while this portentous message sank
into the minds of his audience. At length they seemed to understand its
ominous nature and from them all there arose a universal, simultaneous
groan. As it died away the two attendants dressed as goddesses assisted
the personification of the Lady Isis to rise from her seat and, opening
the robes upon her breast, pointed to something beneath her throat,
doubtless that birthmark shaped like the new moon which made her so
sacred in their eyes since she who bore it and she alone could fill her
holy office.

All the audience and with them the priests and priestesses bowed before
her. She lifted the symbol of the Child, holding it high above her head,
whereon once more they bowed with the deepest veneration. Then still
holding the effigy aloft, she turned and with her two attendants passed
into the sanctuary and doubtless thence by a covered way into the house
beyond. At any rate we saw her no more.



As soon as she was gone the congregation, if I may call it so, leaving
their seats, swarmed down into the outer court of the temple through
its eastern gate, which was now opened. Here the priests proceeded to
distribute among them the offerings taken from the altar, giving a grain
of corn to each of the men to eat and a flower to each of the women,
which flower she kissed and hid in the bosom of her robe. Evidently it
was a kind of sacrament.

Ragnall lifted himself a little upon his hands and knees, and I saw that
his eyes glowed and his face was very pale.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Demand that those people give me back my wife, whom they have stolen.
Don't try to stop me, Quatermain, I mean what I say."

"But, but," I stammered, "they never will and we are but three unarmed
men."

Hans lifted up his little yellow face between us.

"Baas," he hissed, "I have a thought. The Lord Baas wishes to get the
lady dressed like a bird as to her head and like one for burial as to
her body, who is, he says, his wife. But for us to take her from among
so many is impossible. Now what did that old witch-doctor Harut declare
just now? He declared, speaking for his fetish, that by our help alone
the White Kendah can resist the hosts of the Black Kendah and that no
harm must be done to us if the White Kendah would continue to live. So
it seems, Baas, that we have something to sell which the White Kendah
must buy, namely our help against the Black Kendah, for if we will not
fight for them, they believe that they cannot conquer their enemies and
kill the devil Jana. Well now, supposing that the Baas says that our
price is the white woman dressed like a bird, to be delivered over to us
when we have defeated the Black Kendah and killed Jana--after which they
will have no more use for her. And supposing that the Baas says that if
they refuse to pay that price we will burn all our powder and cartridges
so that the rifles are no use? Is there not a path to walk on here?"

"Perhaps," I answered. "Something of the sort was working in my mind but
I had no time to think it out."

Turning, I explained the idea to Ragnall, adding:

"I pray you not to be rash. If you are, not only may we be killed, which
does not so much matter, but it is very probable that even if they spare
us they will put an end to your wife rather than suffer one whom they
look upon as holy and who is necessary to their faith in its last
struggle to be separated from her charge of the Child."

This was a fortunate argument of mine and one which went home.

"To lose her now would be more than I could bear," he muttered.

"Then will you promise to let me try to manage this affair and not to
interfere with me and show violence?"

He hesitated a moment and answered:

"Yes, I promise, for you two are cleverer than I am and--I cannot trust
my judgment."

"Good," I said, assuming an air of confidence which I did not feel. "Now
we will go down to call upon Harut and his friends. I want to have a
closer look at that temple."

So behind our screen of bushes we wriggled back a little distance till
we knew that the slope of the ground would hide us when we stood up.
Then as quickly as we could we made our way eastwards for something over
a quarter of a mile and after this turned to the north. As I expected,
beyond the ring of the crater we found ourselves on the rising,
tree-clad bosom of the mountain and, threading our path through the
cedars, came presently to that track or roadway which led to the eastern
gate of the amphitheatre. This road we followed unseen until presently
the gateway appeared before us. We walked through it without attracting
any attention, perhaps because all the people were either talking
together, or praying, or perhaps because like themselves we were wrapped
in white robes. At the mouth of the tunnel we stopped and I called out
in a loud voice:

"The white lords and their servant have come to visit Harut, as he
invited them to do. Bring us, we pray you, into the presence of Harut."

Everyone wheeled round and stared at us standing there in the shadow of
the gateway tunnel, for the sun behind us was still low. My word, how
they did stare! A voice cried:

"Kill them! Kill these strangers who desecrate our temple."

"What!" I answered. "Would you kill those to whom your high-priest has
given safe-conduct; those moreover by whose help alone, as your Oracle
has just declared, you can hope to slay Jana and destroy his hosts?"

"How do they know that?" shouted another voice. "They are magicians!"

"Yes," I remarked, "all magic does not dwell in the hearts of the White
Kendah. If you doubt it, go to look at the Watcher in the Cave whom your
Oracle told you is dead. You will find that it did not lie."

As I spoke a man rushed through the gates, his white rob streaming on
the wind, shouting as he emerged from the tunnel:

"O Priests and Priestesses of the Child, the ancient serpent is dead. I
whose office it is to feed the serpent on the day of the new moon have
found him dead in his house."

"You hear," I interpolated calmly. "The Father of Snakes is dead. If you
want to know how, I will tell you. We looked on it and it died."

They might have answered that poor Savage also looked on it with the
result that _he_ died, but luckily it did not occur to them to do so.
On the contrary, they just stood still and stared at us like a flock of
startled sheep.

Presently the sheep parted and the shepherd in the shape of Harut
appeared looking, I reflected, the very picture of Abraham softened by
a touch of the melancholia of Job, that is, as I have always imagined
those patriarchs. He bowed to us with his usual Oriental courtesy, and
we bowed back to him. Hans' bow, I may explain, was of the most peculiar
nature, more like a _skulpat_, as the Boers call a land-tortoise,
drawing its wrinkled head into its shell and putting it out again than
anything else. Then Harut remarked in his peculiar English, which I
suppose the White Kendah took for some tongue known only to magicians:

"So you get here, eh? Why you get here, how the devil you get here, eh?"

"We got here because you asked us to do so if we could," I answered,
"and we thought it rude not to accept your invitation. For the rest, we
came through a cave where you kept a tame snake, an ugly-looking reptile
but very harmless to those who know how to deal with snakes and are not
afraid of them as poor Bena was. If you can spare the skin I should like
to have it to make myself a robe."

Harut looked at me with evident respect, muttering:

"Oh, Macumazana, you what you English call cool, quite cool! Is that
all?"

"No," I answered. "Although you did not happen to notice us, we have
been present at your church service, and heard and seen everything. For
instance, we saw the wife of the lord here whom you stole away in Egypt,
her that, being a liar, Harut, you swore you never stole. Also we heard
her words after you had made her drunk with your tobacco smoke."

Now for once in his life Harut was, in sporting parlance, knocked out.
He looked at us, then turning quite pale, lifted his eyes to heaven and
rocked upon his feet as though he were about to fall.

"How you do it? How you do it, eh?" he queried in a weak voice.

"Never you mind how we did it, my friend," I answered loftily. "What
we want to know is when you are going to hand over that lady to her
husband."

"Not possible," he answered, recovering some of his tone. "First we kill
you, first we kill her, she Nurse of the Child. While Child there, she
stop there till she die."

"See here," broke in Ragnall. "Either you give me my wife or someone
else will die. You will die, Harut. I am a stronger man than you are
and unless you promise to give me my wife I will kill you now with this
stick and my hands. Do not move or call out if you want to live."

"Lord," answered the old man with some dignity, "I know you can kill me,
and if you kill me, I think I say thank you who no wish to live in so
much trouble. But what good that, since in one minute then you die too,
all of you, and lady she stop here till Black Kendah king take her to
wife or she too die?"

"Let us talk," I broke in, treading warningly upon Ragnall's foot. "We
have heard your Oracle and we know that you believe its words. It is
said that we alone can help you to conquer the Black Kendah. If you will
not promise what we ask, we will not help you. We will burn our powder
and melt our lead, so that the guns we have cannot speak with Jana and
with Simba, and after that we will do other things that I need not tell
you. But if you promise what we ask, then we will fight for you against
Jana and Simba and teach your men to use the fifty rifles which we have
here with us, and by our help you shall conquer. Do you understand?"

He nodded and stroking his long beard, asked:

"What you want us promise, eh?"

"We want you to promise that after Jana is dead and the Black Kendah
are driven away, you will give up to us unharmed that lady whom you have
stolen. Also that you will bring her and us safely out of your country
by the roads you know, and meanwhile that you will let this lord see his
wife."

"Not last, no," replied Harut, "that not possible. That bring us all to
grave. Also no good, 'cause her mind empty. For rest, you come to other
place, sit down and eat while I talk with priests. Be afraid nothing;
you quite safe."

"Why should we be afraid? It is you who should be afraid, you who stole
the lady and brought Bena to his death. Do you not remember the words of
your own Oracle, Harut?"

"Yes, I know words, but how _you_ know them _that_ I not know," he
replied.

Then he issued some orders, as a result of which a guard formed itself
about us and conducted us through the crowd and along the passage to the
second court of the temple, which was now empty. Here the guard left us
but remained at the mouth of the passage, keeping watch. Presently women
brought us food and drink, of which Hans and I partook heartily though
Ragnall, who was so near to his lost wife and yet so far away, could eat
but little. Mingled joy because after these months of arduous search he
found her yet alive, and fear lest she should again be taken from him
for ever, deprived him of all appetite.

While we ate, priests to the number of about a dozen, who I suppose had
been summoned by Harut, were admitted by the guard and, gathering out of
earshot of us between the altar and the sanctuary, entered on an earnest
discussion with him. Watching their faces I could see that there was a
strong difference of opinion between them, about half taking one view
on the matter of which they disputed, and half another. At length Harut
made some proposition to which they all agreed. Then the door of the
sanctuary was opened with a strange sort of key which one of the priests
produced, showing a dark interior in which gleamed a white object, I
suppose the statue of the Child. Harut and two others entered, the door
being closed behind them. About five minutes later they appeared again
and others, who listened earnestly and after renewed consultation
signified assent by holding up the right hand. Now one of the priests
walked to where we were and, bowing, begged us to advance to the altar.
This we did, and were stood in a line in front of it, Hans being set in
the middle place, while the priests ranged themselves on either side.
Next Harut, having once more opened the door of the sanctuary, took his
stand a little to the right of it and addressed us, not in English but
in his own language, pausing at the end of each sentence that I might
translate to Ragnall.

"Lords Macumazana and Igeza, and yellow man who is named
Light-in-Darkness," he said, "we, the head priests of the Child,
speaking on behalf of the White Kendah people with full authority so to
do, have taken counsel together and of the wisdom of the Child as to the
demands which you make of us. Those demands are: First, that after you
have killed Jana and defeated the Black Kendah we should give over to
you the white lady who was born in a far land to fill the office of
Guardian of the Child, as is shown by the mark of the new moon upon
her breast, but who, because for the second time we could not take her,
became the wife of you, the Lord Igeza. Secondly, that we should conduct
you and her safely out of our land to some place whence you can return
to your own country. Both of these things we will do, because we know
from of old that if once Jana is dead we shall have no cause to fear the
Black Kendah any more, since we believe that then they will leave their
home and go elsewhere, and therefore that we shall no longer need an
Oracle to declare to us in what way Heaven will protect us from Jana and
from them. Or if another Oracle should become necessary to us, doubtless
in due season she will be found. Also we admit that we stole away this
lady because we must, although she was the wife of one of you. But if we
swear this, you on your part must also swear that you will stay with us
till the end of the war, making our cause your cause and, if need be,
giving your lives for us in battle. You must swear further that none of
you will attempt to see or to take hence that lady who is named Guardian
of the Child until we hand her over to you unharmed. If you will not
swear these things, then since no blood may be shed in this holy place,
here we will ring you round until you die of hunger and of thirst, or if
you escape from this temple, then we will fall upon you and put you to
death and fight our own battle with Jana as best we may."

"And if we make these promises how are we to know that you will keep
yours?" I interrupted.

"Because the oath that we shall give you will be the oath of the Child
that may not be broken."

"Then give it," I said, for although I did not altogether like the
security, obviously it was the best to be had.

So very solemnly they laid their right hands upon the altar and "in the
presence of the Child and the name of the Child and of all the White
Kendah people," repeated after Harut a most solemn oath of which I
have already given the substance. It called down on their heads a very
dreadful doom in this world and the next, should it be broken either in
the spirit or the letter; the said oath, however, to be only binding if
we, on our part, swore to observe their terms and kept our engagement
also in the spirit and the letter.

Then they asked us to fulfil our share of the pact and very
considerately drew out of hearing while we discussed the matter; Harut,
the only one of them who understood a word of English, retiring behind
the sanctuary. At first I had difficulties with Ragnall, who was most
unwilling to bind himself in any way. In the end, on my pointing out
that nothing less than our lives were involved and probably that of his
wife as well, also that no other course was open to us, he gave way, to
my great relief.

Hans announced himself ready to swear anything, adding blandly that
words mattered nothing, as afterwards we could do whatever seemed best
in our own interests, whereon I read him a short moral lecture on the
heinousness of perjury, which did not seem to impress him very much.

This matter settled, we called back the priests and informed them of our
decision. Harut demanded that we should affirm it "by the Child," which
we declined to do, saying that it was our custom to swear only in the
name of our own God. Being a liberal-minded man who had travelled, Harut
gave way on the point. So I swore first to the effect that I would fight
for the White Kendah to the finish in consideration of the promises that
they had made to us. I added that I would not attempt either to see or
to interfere with the lady here known as the Guardian of the Child until
the war was over or even to bring our existence to her knowledge, ending
up, "so help me God," as I had done several times when giving evidence
in a court of law.

Next Ragnall with a great effort repeated my oath in English, Harut
listening carefully to every word and once or twice asking me to explain
the exact meaning of some of them.

Lastly Hans, who seemed very bored with the whole affair, swore, also
repeating the words after me and finishing on his own account with
"so help me the reverend Predikant, the Baas's father," a form that he
utterly declined to vary although it involved more explanations. When
pressed, indeed, he showed considerable ingenuity by pointing out to
the priests that to his mind my poor father stood in exactly the same
relation to the Power above us as their Oracle did to the Child. He
offered generously, however, to throw in the spirits of his grandfather
and grandmother and some extraordinary divinity they worshipped, I think
it was a hare, as an additional guarantee of good faith. This proposal
the priests accepted gravely, whereon Hans whispered into my ear in
Dutch:

"Those fools do not remember that when pressed by dogs the hare often
doubles on its own spoor, and that your reverend father will be very
pleased if I can play them the same trick with the white lady that they
played with the Lord Igeza."

I only looked at him in reply, since the morality of Hans was past
argument. It might perhaps be summed up in one sentence: To get the
better of his neighbour in his master's service, honestly if possible;
if not, by any means that came to his hand down to that of murder. At
the bottom of his dark and mysterious heart Hans worshipped only one
god, named Love, not of woman or child, but of my humble self. His
principles were those of a rather sly but very high-class and exclusive
dog, neither better nor worse. Still, when all is said and done, there
are lower creatures in the world than high-class dogs. At least so
the masters whom they adore are apt to think, especially if their
watchfulness and courage have often saved them from death or disaster.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE EMBASSY

The ceremonies were over and the priests, with the exception of Harut
and two who remained to attend upon him, vanished, probably to inform
the male and female hierophants of their result, and through these the
whole people of the White Kendah. Old Harut stared at us for a little
while, then said in English, which he always liked to talk when Ragnall
was present, perhaps for the sake of practice:

"What you like do now, eh? P'r'aps wish fly back to Town of Child, for
suppose this how you come. If so, please take me with you, because that
save long ride."

"Oh! no," I answered. "We walked here through that hole where lived the
Father of Snakes who died of fear when he saw us, and just mixed with
the rest of you in the court of the temple."

"Good lie," said Harut admiringly, "very first-class lie! Wonder how
you kill great snake, which we all think never die, for he live there
hundred, hundred years; our people find him there when first they come
to this country, and make him kind of god. Well, he nasty beast and best
dead. I say, you like see Child? If so, come, for you our brothers now,
only please take off hat and not speak."

I intimated that we should "like see Child," and led by Harut we entered
the little sanctuary which was barely large enough to hold all of us.
In a niche of the end wall stood the sacred effigy which Ragnall and I
examined with a kind of reverent interest. It proved to be the statue of
an infant about two feet high, cut, I imagine, from the base of a single
but very large elephant's tusk, so ancient that the yellowish ivory had
become rotten and was covered with a multitude of tiny fissures. Indeed,
for its appearance I made up my mind that several thousands of years
must have passed since the beast died from which this ivory was taken,
especially as it had, I presume, always been carefully preserved under
cover.

The workmanship of the object was excellent, that of a fine artist who,
I should think, had taken some living infant for his model, perhaps a
child of the Pharaoh of the day. Here I may say at once that there could
be no doubt of its Egyptian origin, since on one side of the head was a
single lock of hair, while the fourth finger of the right hand was
held before the lips as though to enjoin silence. Both of these
peculiarities, it will be remembered, are characteristic of the infant
Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, as portrayed in bronzes and temple
carvings. So at least Ragnall, who recently had studied many such
effigies in Egypt, informed me later. There was nothing else in the
place except an ancient, string-seated chair of ebony, adorned with
inlaid ivory patterns; an effigy of a snake in porcelain, showing that
serpent worship was in some way mixed up with their religion; and two
rolls of papyrus, at least that is what they looked like, which were
laid in the niche with the statue. These rolls, to my disappointment,
Harut refused to allow us to examine or even to touch.

After we had left the sanctuary I asked Harut when this figure was
brought to their land. He replied that it came when they came, at what
date he could not tell us as it was so long ago, and that with it came
the worship and the ceremonies of their religion.

In answer to further questions he added that this figure, which seemed
to be of ivory, contained the spirits which ruled the sun and the moon,
and through them the world. This, said Ragnall, was just a piece of
Egyptian theology, preserved down to our own times in a remote corner
of Africa, doubtless by descendants of dwellers on the Nile who had been
driven thence in some national catastrophe, and brought away with them
their faith and one of the effigies of their gods. Perhaps they fled at
the time of the Persian invasion by Cambyses.

After we had emerged from this deeply interesting shrine, which was
locked behind us, Harut led us, not through the passage connecting it
with the stone house that we knew was occupied by Ragnall's wife in her
capacity as Guardian of the Child, or a latter-day personification of
Isis, Lady of the Moon, at which house he cast many longing glances, but
back through the two courts and the pylon to the gateway of the temple.
Here on the road by which we had entered the place, a fact which we did
not mention to him, he paused and addressed us.

"Lords," he said, "now you and the People of the White Kendah are one;
your ends are their ends, your fate is their fate, their secrets are
your secrets. You, Lord Igeza, work for a reward, namely the person of
that lady whom we took from you on the Nile."

"How did you do that?" interrupted Ragnall when I had interpreted.

"Lord, we watched you. We knew when you came to Egypt; we followed you
in Egypt, whither we had journeyed on our road to England once more to
seek our Oracles, till the day of our opportunity dawned. Then at night
we called her and she obeyed the call, as she must do whose mind we have
taken away--ask me not how--and brought her to dwell with us, she who
is marked from her birth with the holy sign and wears upon her breast
certain charmed stones and a symbol that for thousands of years have
adorned the body of the Child and those of its Oracles. Do you remember
a company of Arabs whom you saw riding on the banks of the Great River
on the day before the night when she was lost to you? We were with that
company and on our camels we bore her thence, happy and unharmed to this
our land, as I trust, when all is done, we shall bear her back again and
you with her."

"I trust so also, for you have wrought me a great wrong," said Ragnall
briefly, "perhaps a greater wrong than I know at present, for how came
it that my boy was killed by an elephant?"

"Ask that question of Jana and not of me," Harut answered darkly. Then
he went on: "You also, Lord Macumazana, work for a reward, the countless
store of ivory which your eyes have beheld lying in the burial place of
elephants beyond the Tava River. When you have slain Jana who watches
the store, and defeated the Black Kendah who serve him, it is yours and
we will give you camels to bear it, or some of it, for all cannot be
carried, to the sea where it can be taken away in ships. As for the
yellow man, I think that he seeks no reward who soon will inherit all
things."

"The old witch-doctor means that I am going to die," remarked Hans
expectorating reflectively. "Well, Baas, I am quite ready, if only Jana
and certain others die first. Indeed I grow too old to fight and travel
as I used to do, and therefore shall be glad to pass to some land where
I become young again."

"Stuff and rubbish!" I exclaimed, then turned and listened to Harut who,
not understanding our Dutch conversation, was speaking once more.

"Lords," he said, "these paths which run east and west are the real
approach to the mountain top and the temple, not that which, as I
suppose, led you through the cave of the old serpent. The road to
the west, which wanders round the base of the hill to a pass in those
distant mountains and thence across the deserts to the north, is so easy
to stop that by it we need fear no attack. With this eastern road the
case is, however, different, as I shall now show you, if you will ride
with me."

Then he gave some orders to two attendant priests who departed at a run
and presently reappeared at the head of a small train of camels which
had been hidden, I know not where. We mounted and, following the road
across a flat piece of ground, found that not more than half a mile away
was another precipitous ridge of rock which had presumably once formed
the lip of an outer crater. This ridge, however, was broken away for a
width of two or three hundred yards, perhaps by some outrush of lava,
the road running through the centre of the gap on which schanzes had
been built here and there for purposes of defence. Looking at these I
saw that they were very old and inefficient and asked when they had been
erected. Harut replied about a century before when the last war took
place with the Black Kendah, who had been finally driven off at this
spot, for then the White Kendah were more numerous than at present.

"So Simba knows this road?" I said.

"Yes, Lord, and Jana knows it also, for he fought in that war and still
at times visits us here and kills any whom he may meet. Only to the
temple he has never dared to come."

Now I wondered whether we had really seen Jana in the forest on the
previous night, but coming to the conclusion that it was useless to
investigate the matter, made no inquiries, especially as these would
have revealed to Harut the route by which we approached the temple. Only
I pointed out to him that proper defences should be put up here without
delay, that is if they meant to make a stronghold of the mountain.

"We do, Lord," he answered, "since we are not strong enough to attack
the Black Kendah in their own country or to meet them in pitched battle
on the plain. Here and in no other place must be fought the last fight
between Jana and the Child. Therefore it will be your task to build
walls cunningly, so that when they come we may defeat Jana and the hosts
of the Black Kendah."

"Do you mean that this elephant will accompany Simba and his soldiers,
Harut?"

"Without doubt, Lord, since he has always done so from the beginning.
Jana is tame to the king and certain priests of the Black Kendah, whose
forefathers have fed him for generations, and will obey their orders.
Also he can think for himself, being an evil spirit and invulnerable."

"His left eye and the tip of his trunk are not invulnerable," I
remarked, "though from what I saw of him I should say there is no doubt
about his being able to think for himself. Well, I am glad the brute is
coming as I have an account to settle with him."

"As he, Lord, who does not forget, has an account to settle with you and
your servant, Light-in-Darkness," commented Harut in an unpleasant and
suggestive tone.

Then after we had taken a few measurements and Ragnall, who understands
such matters, had drawn a rough sketch of the place in his pocket-book
to serve as data for our proposed scheme of fortifications, we pursued
our journey back to the town, where we had left all our stores and there
were many things to be arranged. It proved to be quite a long ride, down
the eastern slope of the mountain which was easy to negotiate, although
like the rest of this strange hill it was covered with dense cedar
forests that also seemed to me to have defensive possibilities. Reaching
its foot at length we were obliged to make a detour by certain winding
paths to avoid ground that was too rough for the camels, so that in the
end we did not come to our own house in the Town of the Child till about
midday.

Glad enough were we to reach it, since all three of us were tired out
with our terrible night journey and the anxious emotions that we had
undergone. Indeed, after we had eaten we lay down and I rejoiced to
see that, notwithstanding the state of mental excitement into which the
discovery of his wife had plunged him, Ragnall was the first of us to
fall asleep.

About five o'clock we were awakened by a messenger from Harut,
who requested our attendance on important business at a kind of
meeting-house which stood at a little distance on an open place where
the White Kendah bartered produce. Here we found Harut and about twenty
of the headmen seated in the shade of a thatched roof, while behind
them, at a respectful distance, stood quite a hundred of the White
Kendah. Most of these, however, were women and children, for as I have
said the greater part of the male population was absent from the town
because of the commencement of the harvest.

We were conducted to chairs, or rather stools of honour, and when we two
had seated ourselves, Hans taking his stand behind us, Harut rose and
informed us that an embassy had arrived from the Black Kendah which was
about to be admitted.

Presently they came, five of them, great, truculent-looking fellows of
a surprising blackness, unarmed, for they had not been allowed to bring
their weapons in to the town, but adorned with the usual silver chains
across their breasts to show their rank, and other savage finery. In the
man who was their leader I recognized one of those messengers who had
accosted us when first we entered their territory on our way from the
south, before that fight in which I was taken prisoner. Stepping forward
and addressing himself to Harut, he said:

"A while ago, O Prophet of the Child, I, the messenger of the god Jana,
speaking through the mouth of Simba the King, gave to you and your
brother Marut a certain warning to which you did not listen. Now Jana
has Marut, and again I come to warn you, Harut."

"If I remember right," interrupted Harut blandly, "I think that on that
occasion two of you delivered the message and that the Child marked one
of you upon the brow. If Jana has my brother, say, where is yours?"

"We warned you," went on the messenger, "and you cursed us in the name
of the Child."

"Yes," interrupted Harut again, "we cursed you with three curses. The
first was the curse of Heaven by storm or drought, which has fallen upon
you. The second was the curse of famine, which is falling upon you; and
the third was the curse of war, which is yet to fall on you."

"It is of war that we come to speak," replied the messenger,
diplomatically avoiding the other two topics which perhaps he found it
awkward to discuss.

"That is foolish of you," replied the bland Harut, "seeing that the
other day you matched yourselves against us with but small success. Many
of you were killed but only a very few of us, and the white lord whom
you took captive escaped out of your hands and from the tusks of Jana
who, I think, now lacks an eye. If he is a god, how comes it that he
lacks an eye and could not kill an unarmed white man?"

"Let Jana answer for himself, as he will do ere long, O Harut.
Meanwhile, these are the words of Jana spoken through the mouth of Simba
the King: The Child has destroyed my harvest and therefore I demand this
of the people of the Child--that they give me three-fourths of their
harvest, reaping the same and delivering it on the south bank of the
River Tava. That they give me the two white lords to be sacrificed to
me. That they give the white lady who is Guardian of the Child to be a
wife of Simba the King, and with her a hundred virgins of your people.
That the image of the Child be brought to the god Jana in the presence
of his priests and Simba the King. These are the demands of Jana spoken
through the mouth of Simba the King."

Watching, I saw a thrill of horror shake the forms of Harut and of
all those with him as the full meaning of these, to them, most impious
requests sank into their minds. But he only asked very quietly:

"And if we refuse the demands, what then?"

"Then," shouted the messenger insolently, "then Jana declares war upon
you, the last war of all, war till every one of your men be dead and the
Child you worship is burnt to grey ashes with fire. War till your women
are taken as slaves and the corn which you refuse is stored in our grain
pits and your land is a waste and your name forgotten. Already the hosts
of Jana are gathered and the trumpet of Jana calls them to the fight.
To-morrow or the next day they advance upon you, and ere the moon is
full not one of you will be left to look upon her."

Harut rose, and walking from under the shed, turned his back upon the
envoys and stared at the distant line of great mountains which stood out
far away against the sky. Out of curiosity I followed him and observed
that these mountains were no longer visible. Where they had been was
nothing but a line of black and heavy cloud. After looking for a while
he returned and addressing the envoys, said quite casually:

"If you will be advised by me, friends, you will ride hard for the
river. There is such rain upon the mountains as I have never seen
before, and you will be fortunate if you cross it before the flood comes
down, the greatest flood that has happened in our day."

This intelligence seemed to disturb the messengers, for they too stepped
out of the shed and stared at the mountains, muttering to each other
something that I could not understand. Then they returned and with a
fine appearance of indifference demanded an immediate answer to their
challenge.

"Can you not guess it?" answered Harut. Then changing his tone he drew
himself to his full height and thundered out at them: "Get you back
to your evil spirit of a god that hides in the shape of a beast of the
forest and to his slave who calls himself a king, and say to them: 'Thus
speaks the Child to his rebellious servants, the Black Kendah dogs: Swim
my river when you can, which will not be yet, and come up against me
when you will; for whenever you come I shall be ready for you. You are
already dead, O Jana. You are already dead, O Simba the slave. You are
scattered and lost, O dogs of the Black Kendah, and the home of such
of you as remain shall be far away in a barren land, where you must dig
deep for water and live upon the wild game because there little corn
will grow.' Now begone, and swiftly, lest you stop here for ever."

So they turned and went, leaving me full of admiration for the
histrionic powers of Harut.

I must add, however, that being without doubt a keen observer of the
weather conditions of the neighbourhood, he was quite right about
the rain upon the mountains, which by the way never extended to the
territory of the People of the Child. As we heard afterwards, the flood
came down just as the envoys reached the river; indeed, one of them was
drowned in attempting its crossing, and for fourteen days after this it
remained impassable to an army.



That very evening we began our preparations to meet an attack which was
now inevitable. Putting aside the supposed rival powers of the tribal
divinities worshipped under the names of the Child and Jana, which,
while they added a kind of Homeric interest to the contest, could, we
felt, scarcely affect an issue that must be decided with cold steel
and other mortal weapons, the position of the White Kendah was serious
indeed. As I think I have said, in all they did not number more than
about two thousand men between the ages of twenty and fifty-five, or,
including lads between fourteen and twenty and old men still able-bodied
between fifty-five and seventy, say two thousand seven hundred capable
of some sort of martial service. To these might be added something under
two thousand women, since among this dwindling folk, oddly enough, from
causes that I never ascertained, the males out-numbered the females,
which accounted for their marriage customs that were, by comparison with
those of most African peoples, monogamous. At any rate only the
rich among them had more than one wife, while the poor or otherwise
ineligible often had none at all, since inter-marriage with other races
and above all with the Black Kendah dwelling beyond the river was so
strictly taboo that it was punishable with death or expulsion.

Against this little band the Black Kendah could bring up twenty thousand
men, besides boys and aged persons who with the women would probably
be left to defend their own country, that is, not less than ten to one.
Moreover, all of these enemies would be fighting with the courage of
despair, since quite three-fourths of their crops with many of their
cattle and sheep had been destroyed by the terrific hail-burst that
I have described. Therefore, since no other corn was available in the
surrounding land, where they dwelt alone encircled by deserts, either
they must capture that of the White Kendah, or suffer terribly from
starvation until a year later when another harvest ripened.

The only points I could see in favour of the People of the Child
were that they would fight on the vantage ground of their mountain
stronghold, a formidable position if properly defended. Also they would
have the benefit of the skill and knowledge of Ragnall and myself.
Lastly, the enemy must face our rifles. Neither the White nor the
Black Kendah, I should say, possessed any guns, except a few antiquated
flintlock weapons that the former had captured from some nomadic tribe
and kept as curiosities. Why this was the case I do not know, since
undoubtedly at times the White Kendah traded in camels and corn with
Arabs who wandered as far as the Sudan, or Egypt, nomadic tribes to whom
even then firearms were known, although perhaps rarely used by them. But
so it was, possibly because of some old law or prejudice which forbade
their introduction into the country, or mayhap of the difficulty of
procuring powder and lead, or for the reason that they had none to teach
them the use of such new-fangled weapons.

Now it will be remembered that, on the chance of their proving useful,
Ragnall, in addition to our own sporting rifles, had brought with him to
Africa fifty Snider rifles with an ample supply of ammunition, the same
that I had trouble in passing through the Customs at Durban, all of
which had arrived safely at the Town of the Child. Clearly our first
duty was to make the best possible use of this invaluable store. To
that end I asked Harut to select seventy-five of the boldest and most
intelligent young men among his people, and to hand them over to me and
Hans for instruction in musketry. We had only fifty rifles but I drilled
seventy-five men, or fifty per cent. more, that some might be ready to
replace any who fell.

From dawn to dark each day Hans and I worked at trying to convert
these Kendah into sharpshooters. It was no easy task with men, however
willing, who till then had never held a gun, especially as I must be
very sparing of the ammunition necessary to practice, of which of course
our supply was limited. Still we taught them how to take cover, how to
fire and to cease from firing at a word of command, also to hold the
rifles low and waste no shot. To make marksmen of them was more than I
could hope to do under the circumstances.

With the exception of these men nearly the entire male population
were working day and night to get in the harvest. This proved a very
difficult business, both because some of the crops were scarcely fit and
because all the grain had to be carried on camels to be stored in and at
the back of the second court of the temple, the only place where it was
likely to be safe. Indeed in the end a great deal was left unreaped.
Then the herds of cattle and breeding camels which grazed on the farther
sides of the Holy Mount must be brought into places of safety, glens in
the forest on its slope, and forage stacked to feed them. Also it was
necessary to provide scouts to keep watch along the river.

Lastly, the fortifications in the mountain pass required unceasing
labour and attention. This was the task of Ragnall, who fortunately in
his youth, before he succeeded unexpectedly to the title, was for
some years an officer in the Royal Engineers and therefore thoroughly
understood that business. Indeed he understood it rather too well, since
the result of his somewhat complicated and scientific scheme of defence
was a little confusing to the simple native mind. However, with the
assistance of all the priests and of all the women and children who
were not engaged in provisioning the Mount, he built wall after wall and
redoubt after redoubt, if that is the right word, to say nothing of the
shelter trenches he dug and many pitfalls, furnished at the bottom with
sharp stakes, which he hollowed out wherever the soil could be easily
moved, to discomfit a charging enemy.

Indeed, when I saw the amount of work he had concluded in ten
days, which was not until I joined him on the mountain, I was quite
astonished.

About this time a dispute arose as to whether we should attempt to
prevent the Black Kendah from crossing the river which was now running
down, a plan that some of the elders favoured. At last the controversy
was referred to me as head general and I decided against anything of the
sort. It seemed to me that our force was too small, and that if I took
the rifle-men a great deal of ammunition might be expended with poor
result. Also in the event of any reverse or when we were finally driven
back, which must happen, there might be difficulty about remounting the
camels, our only means of escape from the horsemen who would possibly
gallop us down. Moreover the Tava had several fords, any one of which
might be selected by the enemy. So it was arranged that we should make
our first and last stand upon the Holy Mount.

On the fourteenth night from new moon our swift camel-scouts who were
posted in relays between the Tava and the Mount reported that the Black
Kendah were gathered in thousands upon the farther side of the river,
where they were engaged in celebrating magical ceremonies. On the
fifteenth night the scouts reported that they were crossing the river,
about five thousand horsemen and fifteen thousand foot soldiers, and
that at the head of them marched the huge god-elephant Jana, on which
rode Simba the King and a lame priest (evidently my friend whose foot
had been injured by the pistol), who acted as a mahout. This part of the
story I confess I did not believe, since it seemed to me impossible that
anyone could ride upon that mad rogue, Jana. Yet, as subsequent events
showed, it was in fact true. I suppose that in certain hands the beast
became tame. Or perhaps it was drugged.

Two nights later, for the Black Kendah advanced but slowly, spreading
themselves over the country in order to collect such crops as had not
been gathered through lack of time or because they were still unripe,
we saw flames and smoke arising from the Town of the Child beneath us,
which they had fired. Now we knew that the time of trial had come and
until near midnight men, women and children worked feverishly finishing
or trying to finish the fortifications and making every preparation in
our power.

Our position was that we held a very strong post, that is, strong
against an enemy unprovided with big guns or even firearms, which, as
all other possible approaches had been blocked, was only assailable by
direct frontal attack from the east. In the pass we had three main lines
of defence, one arranged behind the other and separated by distances of
a few hundred yards. Our last refuge was furnished by the walls of the
temple itself, in the rear of which were camped the whole White Kendah
tribe, save a few hundred who were employed in watching the herds of
camels and stock in almost inaccessible positions on the northern slopes
of the Mount.

There were perhaps five thousand people of both sexes and every age
gathered in this camp, which was so well provided with food and water
that it could have stood a siege of several months. If, however, our
defences should be carried there was no possibility of escape, since
we learned from our scouts that the Black Kendah, who by tradition and
through spies were well acquainted with every feature of the country,
had detached a party of several thousand men to watch the western road
and the slopes of the mountain, in case we should try to break out by
that route. The only one remaining, that which ran through the cave
of the serpent, we had taken the precaution of blocking up with great
stones, lest through it our flank should be turned.

In short, we were rats in a trap and where we were there we must either
conquer or die--unless indeed we chose to surrender, which for most of
us would mean a fate worse than death.



CHAPTER XIX

ALLAN QUATERMAIN MISSES

I had made my last round of the little corps that I facetiously named
"The Sharpshooters," though to tell the truth at shooting they were
anything but sharp, and seen that each man was in his place behind a
wall with a reserve man squatted at the rear of every pair of them,
waiting to take his rifle if either of these should fall. Also I had
made sure that all of them had twenty rounds of ammunition in their skin
pouches. More I would not serve out, fearing lest in excitement or in
panic they might fire away to the last cartridge uselessly, as before
now even disciplined white troops have been known to do. Therefore I had
arranged that certain old men of standing who could be trusted should
wait in a place of comparative safety behind the line, carrying all our
reserve ammunition, which amounted, allowing for what had been expended
in practice, to nearly sixty rounds per rifle. This they were instructed
to deliver from their wallets to the firing line in small lots when they
saw that it was necessary and not before.

It was, I admit, an arrangement apt to miscarry in the heat of desperate
battle, but I could think of none better, since it was absolutely
necessary that no shot should be wasted.

After a few words of exhortation and caution to the natives who acted
as sergeants to the corps, I returned to a bough shelter that had been
built for us behind a rock to get a few hours' sleep, if that were
possible, before the fight began.

Here I found Ragnall, who had just come in from his inspection. This
was of a much more extensive nature than my own, since it involved going
round some furlongs of the rough walls and trenches that he had prepared
with so much thought and care, and seeing that the various companies of
the White Kendah were ready to play their part in the defence of them.

He was tired and rather excited, too much so to sleep at once. So we
talked a little while, first about the prospects of the morrow's battle,
as to which we were, to say the least of it, dubious, and afterwards of
other things. I asked him if during his stay in this place, while I was
below at the town or later, he had heard or seen anything of his wife.

"Nothing," he answered. "These priests never speak of her, and if
they did Harut is the only one of them that I can really understand.
Moreover, I have kept my word strictly and, even when I had occasion
to see to the blocking of the western road, made a circuit on the
mountain-top in order to avoid the neighbourhood of that house where I
suppose she lives Oh! Quatermain, my friend, my case is a hard one, as
you would think if the woman you loved with your whole heart were shut
up within a few hundred yards of you and no communication with her
possible after all this time of separation and agony. What makes it
worse is, as I gathered from what Harut said the other day, that she is
still out of her mind."

"That has some consolations," I replied, "since the mindless do not
suffer. But if such is the case, how do you account for what you
and poor Savage saw that night in the Town of the Child? It was not
altogether a phantasy, for the dress you described was the same we saw
her wearing at the Feast of the First-fruits."

"I don't know what to make of it, Quatermain, except that many strange
things happen in the world which we mock at as insults to our limited
intelligence because we cannot understand them." (Very soon I was to
have another proof of this remark.) "But what are you driving at? You
are keeping something back."

"Only this, Ragnall. If your wife were utterly mad I cannot conceive
how it came about that she searched you out and spoke to you even in
a vision--for the thing was not an individual dream since both you and
Savage saw her. Nor did she actually visit you in the flesh, as the door
never opened and the spider's web across it was not broken. So it comes
to this: either some part of her is not mad but can still exercise
sufficient will to project itself upon your senses, or she is dead and
her disembodied spirit did this thing. Now we know that she is not
dead, for we have seen her and Harut has confessed as much. Therefore
I maintain that, whatever may be her temporary state, she must still
be fundamentally of a reasonable mind, as she is of a natural body. For
instance, she may only be hypnotized, in which case the spell will break
one day."

"Thank you for that thought, old fellow. It never occurred to me and
it gives me new hope. Now listen! If I should come to grief in this
business, which is very likely, and you should survive, you will do your
best to get her home; will you not? Here is a codicil to my will which I
drew up after that night of dream, duly witnessed by Savage and Hans.
It leaves to you whatever sums may be necessary in this connexion
and something over for yourself. Take it, it is best in your keeping,
especially as if you should be killed it has no value."

"Of course I will do my best," I answered as I put away the paper in
my pocket. "And now don't let us take any more thought of being killed,
which may prevent us from getting the sleep we want. I don't mean to be
killed if I can help it. I mean to give those beggars, the Black Kendah,
such a doing as they never had before, and then start for the coast with
you and Lady Ragnall, as, God willing, we shall do. Good night."

After this I slept like a top for some hours, as I believe Ragnall did
also. When I awoke, which happened suddenly and completely, the first
thing that I saw was Hans seated at the entrance to my little shelter
smoking his corn-cob pipe, and nursing the single-barrelled rifle,
Intombi, on his knee. I asked him what the time was, to which he replied
that it lacked two hours to dawn. Then I asked him why he had not been
sleeping. He replied that he had been asleep and dreamed a dream. Idly
enough I inquired what dream, to which he replied:

"Rather a strange one, Baas, for a man who is about to go into battle. I
dreamed that I was in a large place that was full of quiet. It was light
there, but I could not see any sun or moon, and the air was very soft
and tasted like food and drink, so much so, Baas, that if anyone had
offered me a cup quite full of the best 'Cape smoke' I should have told
him to take it away. Then, Baas, suddenly I saw your reverend father,
the Predikant, standing beside me and looking just as he used to look,
only younger and stronger and very happy, and so of course knew at once
that I was dead and in hell. Only I wondered where the fire that does
not go out might be, for I could not see it. Presently your reverend
father said to me: 'Good day, Hans. So you have come here at last. Now
tell me, how has it gone with my son, the Baas Allan? Have you looked
after him as I told you to do?'

"I answered: 'I have looked after him as well as I could, O reverend
sir. Little enough have I done; still, not once or twice or three times
only have I offered up my life for him as was my duty, and yet we both
have lived.' And that I might be sure he heard the best of me, as was
but natural, I told him the times, Baas, making a big story out of small
things, although all the while I could see that he knew exactly just
where I began to lie and just where I stopped from lying. Still he did
not scold me, Baas; indeed, when I had finished, he said:

"'Well done, O good and faithful servant,' words that I think I have
heard him use before when he was alive, Baas, and used to preach to us
for such a long time on Sunday afternoons. Then he asked: 'And how goes
it with Baas Allan, my son, now, Hans?' to which I replied:

"'The Baas Allan is going to fight a very great battle in which he may
well fall, and if I could feel sorry here, which I can't, I should
weep, O reverend sir, because I have died before that battle began and
therefore cannot stand at his side in the battle and be killed for him
as a servant should for his master!'

"'You will stand at his side in the battle,' said your [missing line
in printed version--JB] do as it is fitting that you should. And
afterwards, Hans, you will make report to me of how the battle went and
of what honour my son has won therein. Moreover, know this, Hans, that
though while you live in the world you seem to see many other things,
they are but dreams, since in all the world there is but one real
thing, and its name is Love, which if it be but strong enough, the stars
themselves must obey, for it is the king of every one of them, and all
who dwell in them worship it day and night under many names for ever and
for ever, Amen.'

"What he meant by that I am sure I don't know, Baas, seeing that I have
never thought much of women, at least not for many years since my last
old vrouw went and drank herself to death after lying in her sleep on
the baby which I loved much better than I did her, Baas.

"Well, before I could ask him, or about hell either, he was gone like a
whiff of smoke from a rifle mouth in a strong wind."

Hans paused, puffed at his pipe, spat upon the ground in his usual
reflective way and asked:

"Is the Baas tired of the dream or would he like to hear the rest?"

"I should like to hear the rest," I said in a low voice, for I was
strangely moved.

"Well, Baas, while I was standing in that place which was so full of
quiet, turning my hat in my hands and wondering what work they would set
me to there among the devils, I looked up. There I saw coming towards
me two very beautiful women, Baas, who had their arms round each other's
necks. They were dressed in white, with the little hard things that are
found in shells hanging about them, and bright stones in their hair.
And as they came, Baas, wherever they set a foot flowers sprang up, very
pretty flowers, so that all their path across the quiet place was marked
with flowers. Birds too sang as they passed, at least I think they were
birds though I could not see them."

"What were they like, Hans?" I whispered.

"One of them, Baas, the taller I did not know. But the other I knew well
enough; it was she whose name is holy, not to be mentioned. Yet I must
mention that name; it was the Missie Marie herself as last we saw
her alive many, many years ago, only grown a hundred times more
beautiful."[*]

     [*] See the book called _Marie_ by H. Rider Haggard.

Now I groaned, and Hans went on:

"The two White Ones came up to me, and stood looking at me with eyes
that were more soft than those of bucks. Then the Missie Marie said to
the other: 'This is Hans of whom I have so often told you, O Star.'"

Here I groaned again, for how did this Hottentot know that name, or
rather its sweet rendering?

"Then she who was called Star asked, 'How goes it with one who is the
heart of all three of us, O Hans?' Yes, Baas, those Shining Ones joined
_me_, the dirty little Hottentot in my old clothes and smelling of
tobacco, with themselves when they spoke of you, for I knew they were
speaking of you, Baas, which made me think I must be drunk, even there
in the quiet place. So I told them all that I had told your reverend
father, and a very great deal more, for they seemed never to be tired of
listening. And once, when I mentioned that sometimes, while pretending
to be asleep, I had heard you praying aloud at night for the Missie
Marie who died for you, and for another who had been your wife whose
name I did not remember but who had also died, they both cried a little,
Baas. Their tears shone like crystals and smelt like that stuff in a
little glass tube which Harut said that he brought from some far land
when he put a drop or two on your handkerchief, after you were faint
from the pain in your leg at the house yonder. Or perhaps it was the
flowers that smelt, for where the tears fell there sprang up white
lilies shaped like two babes' hands held together in prayer."

Hearing this, I hid my face in my hands lest Hans should see human tears
unscented with attar of roses, and bade him continue.

"Baas, the White One who was called Star, asked me of your son, the
young Baas Harry, and I told her that when last I had seen him he was
strong and well and would make a bigger man than you were, whereat she
sighed and shook her head. Then the Missie Marie said: 'Tell the Baas,
Hans, that I also have a child which he will see one day, but it is not
a son.'

"After this they, too, said something about Love, but what it was
I cannot remember, since even as I repeat this dream to you it is
beginning to slip away from me fast as a swallow skimming the water.
Their last words, however, I do remember. They were: 'Say to the Baas
that we who never met in life, but who here are as twin sisters, wait
and count the years and count the months and count the days and count
the hours and count the minutes and count the seconds until once more he
shall hear our voices calling to him across the night.' That's what they
say, Baas. Then they were gone and only the flowers remained to show
that they had been standing there.

"Now I set off to bring you the message and travelled a very long way
at a great rate; if Jana himself had been after me I could not have gone
more fast. At last I got out of that quiet place and among mountains
where there were dark kloofs, and there in the kloofs I heard Zulu impis
singing their war-song; yes, they sang the _ingoma_ or something very
like it. Now suddenly in the pass of the mountains along which I sped,
there appeared before me a very beautiful woman whose skin shone like
the best copper coffee kettle after I have polished it, Baas. She was
dressed in a leopard-like moocha and wore on her shoulders a fur kaross,
and about her neck a circlet of blue beads, and from her hair there rose
one crane's feather tall as a walking-stick, and in her hand she held a
little spear. No flowers sprang beneath her feet when she walked towards
me and no birds sang, only the air was filled with the sound of a royal
salute which rolled among the mountains like the roar of thunder, and
her eyes flashed like summer lightning."

Now I let my hands fall and stared at him, for well I knew what was
coming.

"'Stand, yellow man!' she said, 'and give me the royal salute.'

"So I gave her the _Bayete_, though who she might be I did not know,
since I did not think it wise to stay to ask her if it were hers of
right, although I should have liked to do so. Then she said: 'The Old
Man on the plain yonder and those two pale White Ones have talked to you
of their love for your master, the Lord Macumazana. I tell you, little
Yellow Dog, that they do not know what love can be. There is more love
for him in my eyes alone than they have in all that makes them fair. Say
it to the Lord Macumazana that, as I know well, he goes down to battle
and that the Lady Mameena will be with him in the battle as, though he
saw her not, she has been with him in other battles, and will be with
him till the River of Time has run over the edge of the world and is
lost beyond the sun. Let him remember this when Jana rushes on and death
is very near to him to-day, and let him look--for then perchance he
shall see me. Begone now, Yellow Dog, to the heels of your master, and
play your part well in the battle, for of what you do or leave undone
you shall give account to me. Say that Mameena sends her greetings to
the Lord Macumazana and that she adds this, that when the Old Man and
the White ones told you that Love is the secret blood of the worlds
which makes them to be they did not lie. Love reigns and I, Mameena, am
its priestess, and the heart of Macumazana is my holy house.'

"Then, Baas, I tumbled off a precipice and woke up here; and, Baas, as
we may not light a fire I have kept some coffee hot for you buried in
warm ashes," and without another word he went to fetch that coffee,
leaving me shaken and amazed.

For what kind of a dream was it which revealed to an old Hottentot all
these mysteries and hidden things about persons whom he had never seen
and of whom I had never spoken to him? My father and my wife Marie might
be explained, for with these he had been mixed up, but how about Stella
and above all Mameena, although of course it was possible that he had
heard of the latter, who made some stir in her time? But to hit her off
as he had done in all her pride, splendour, and dominion of desire!

Well, that was his story which, perhaps fortunately, I lacked time to
analyse or brood upon, since there was much in it calculated to unnerve
a man just entering the crisis of a desperate fray. Indeed a minute or
so later, as I was swallowing the last of the coffee, messengers arrived
about some business, I forget what, sent by Ragnall I think, who had
risen before I woke. I turned to give the pannikin to Hans, but he had
vanished in his snake-like fashion, so I threw it down upon the ground
and devoted my mind to the question raised in Ragnall's message.

Next minute scouts came in who had been watching the camp of the Black
Kendah all night.

These were sleeping not more than half a mile away, in an open place on
the slope of the hill with pickets thrown out round them, intending to
advance upon us, it was said, as soon as the sun rose, since because of
their number they feared lest to march at night should throw them into
confusion and, in case of their falling into an ambush, bring about a
disaster. Such at least was the story of two spies whom our people had
captured.

There had been some question as to whether we should not attempt a night
attack upon their camp, of which I was rather in favour. After full
debate, however, the idea had been abandoned, owing to the fewness of
our numbers, the dislike which the White Kendah shared with the Black of
attempting to operate in the dark, and the well chosen position of our
enemy, whom it would be impossible to rush before we were discovered by
their outposts. What I hoped in my heart was that they might try to
rush us, notwithstanding the story of the two captured spies, and in
the gloom, after the moon had sunk low and before the dawn came, become
entangled in our pitfalls and outlying entrenchments, where we should be
able to destroy a great number of them. Only on the previous afternoon
that cunning old fellow, Hans, had pointed out to me how advantageous
such an event would be to our cause and, while agreeing with him, I
suggested that probably the Black Kendah knew this as well as we did, as
the prisoners had told us.

Yet that very thing happened, and through Hans himself. Thus: Old Harut
had come to me just one hour before the dawn to inform me that all
our people were awake and at their stations, and to make some last
arrangements as to the course of the defence, also about our final
concentration behind the last line of walls and in the first court of
the temple, if we should be driven from the outer entrenchments. He
was telling me that the Oracle of the Child had uttered words at the
ceremony that night which he and all the priests considered were of the
most favourable import, news to which I listened with some impatience,
feeling as I did that this business had passed out of the range of the
Child and its Oracle. As he spoke, suddenly through the silence that
precedes the dawn, there floated to our ears the unmistakable sound of
a rifle. Yes, a rifle shot, half a mile or so away, followed by the
roaring murmur of a great camp unexpectedly alarmed at night.

"Who can have fired that?" I asked. "The Black Kendah have no guns."

He replied that he did not know, unless some of my fifty men had left
their posts.

While we were investigating the matter, scouts rushed in with the
intelligence that the Black Kendah, thinking apparently that they were
being attacked, had broken camp and were advancing towards us. We passed
a warning all down the lines and stood to arms. Five minutes later, as I
stood listening to that approaching roar, filled with every kind of fear
and melancholy foreboding such as the hour and the occasion might well
have evoked, through the gloom, which was dense, the moon being hidden
behind the hill, I thought I caught sight of something running towards
me like a crouching man. I lifted my rifle to fire but, reflecting that
it might be no more than a hyena and fearing to provoke a fusilade from
my half-trained company, did not do so.

Next instant I was glad indeed, for immediately on the other side of the
wall behind which I was standing I heard a well-known voice gasp out:

"Don't shoot, Baas, it is I."

"What have you been doing, Hans?" I said as he scrambled over the wall
to my side, limping a little as I fancied.

"Baas," he puffed, "I have been paying the Black Kendah a visit. I crept
down between their stupid outposts, who are as blind in the dark as a
bat in daytime, hoping to find Jana and put a bullet into his leg or
trunk. I didn't find him, Baas, although I heard him. But one of their
captains stood up in front of a watchfire, giving a good shot. My bullet
found _him_, Baas, for he tumbled back into the fire making the sparks
fly this way and that. Then I ran and, as you see, got here quite
safely."

"Why did you play that fool's trick?" I asked, "seeing that it ought to
have cost you your life?"

"I shall die just when I have to die, not before, Baas," he replied in
the intervals of reloading the little rifle. "Also it was the trick of a
wise man, not of a fool, seeing that it has made the Black Kendah think
that we were attacking them and caused them to hurry on to attack _us_
in the dark over ground that they do not know. Listen to them coming!"

As he spoke a roar of sound told us that the great charge had swept
round a turn there was in the pass and was heading towards us up
the straight. Ivory horns brayed, captains shouted orders, the very
mountains shook beneath the beating of thousands of feet of men and
horses, while in one great yell that echoed from the cliffs and forests
went up the battle-cry of "_Jana! Jana!_"--a mixed tumult of noise which
contrasted very strangely with the utter silence in our ranks.

"They will be among the pitfalls presently," sniggered Hans, shifting
his weight nervously from one leg on to the other. "Hark! they are going
into them."

It was true. Screams of fear and pain told me that the front ranks
had begun to fall, horse and foot together, into the cunningly devised
snares of which with so much labour we had dug many, concealing them
with earth spread over thin wickerwork, or rather interlaced
boughs. Into them went the forerunners, to be pierced by the sharp,
fire-hardened stakes set at the bottom of each pit. Vainly did those who
were near enough to understand their danger call to the ranks behind to
stop. They could not or would not comprehend, and had no room to extend
their front. Forward surged the human torrent, thrusting all in front of
it to death by wounds or suffocation in those deadly holes, till one by
one they were filled level with the ground by struggling men and horses,
over whom the army still rushed on.

How many perished there I do not know, but after the battle was over we
found scarcely a pit that was not crowded to the brim with dead. Truly
this device of Ragnall's, for if I had conceived the idea, which
was unfamiliar to the Kendah, it was he who had carried it out in so
masterly a fashion, had served us well.

Still the enemy surged on, since the pits were only large enough to hold
a tithe of them, till at length, horsemen and footmen mixed up together
in inextricable confusion, their mighty mass became faintly visible
quite close to us, a blacker blot upon the gloom.

Then my turn came. When they were not more than fifty yards away from
the first wall, I shouted an order to my riflemen to fire, aiming low,
and set the example by loosing both barrels of an elephant gun at the
thickest of the mob. At that distance even the most inexperienced shots
could not miss such a mark, especially as those bullets that went high
struck among the oncoming troops behind, or caught the horsemen lifted
above their fellows. Indeed, of the first few rounds I do not think that
one was wasted, while often single balls killed or injured several men.

The result was instantaneous. The Black Kendah who, be it remembered,
were totally unaccustomed to the effects of rifle fire and imagined that
we only possessed two or three guns in all, stopped their advance as
though paralyzed. For a few seconds there was silence, except for the
intermittent crackle of the rifles as my men loaded and fired. Next came
the cries of the smitten men and horses that were falling everywhere,
and then--the unmistakable sound of a stampede.

"They have gone. That was too warm for them, Baas," chuckled Hans
exultingly.

"Yes," I answered, when I had at length succeeded in stopping the
firing, "but I expect they will come back with the light. Still, that
trick of yours has cost them dear, Hans."

By degrees the dawn began to break. It was, I remember, a particularly
beautiful dawn, resembling a gigantic and vivid rose opening in the
east, or a cup of brightness from which many coloured wines were poured
all athwart the firmament. Very peaceful also, for not a breath of wind
was stirring. But what a scene the first rays of the sun revealed upon
that narrow stretch of pass in front of us. Everywhere the pitfalls and
trenches were filled with still surging heaps of men and horses, while
all about lay dead and wounded men, the red harvest of our rifle fire.
It was dreadful to contrast the heavenly peace above and the hellish
horror beneath.

We took count and found that up to this moment we had not lost a single
man, one only having been slightly wounded by a thrown spear. As is
common among semi-savages, this fact filled the White Kendah with an
undue exultation. Thinking that as the beginning was so the end must
be, they cheered and shouted, shaking each other's hands, then fell to
eating the food which the women brought them with appetite, chattering
incessantly, although as a general rule they were a very silent people.
Even the grave Harut, who arrived full of congratulations, seemed as
high-spirited as a boy, till I reminded him that the real battle had not
yet commenced.

The Black Kendah had fallen into a trap and lost some of their number,
that was all, which was fortunate for us but could scarcely affect the
issue of the struggle, since they had many thousands left. Ragnall, who
had come up from his lines, agreed with me. As he said, these people
were fighting for life as well as honour, seeing that most of the corn
which they needed for their sustenance was stored in great heaps either
in or to the rear of the temple behind us. Therefore they must come on
until they won or were destroyed. How with our small force could we hope
to destroy this multitude? That was the problem which weighed upon our
hearts.

About a quarter of an hour later two spies that we had set upon the
top of the precipitous cliffs, whence they had a good view of the pass
beyond the bend, came scrambling down the rocks like monkeys by a route
that was known to them. These boys, for they were no more, reported that
the Black Kendah were reforming their army beyond the bend of the pass,
and that the cavalry were dismounting and sending their horses to the
rear, evidently because they found them useless in such a place. A
little later solitary men appeared from behind the bend, carrying
bundles of long sticks to each of which was attached a piece of white
cloth, a proceeding that excited my curiosity.

Soon its object became apparent. Swiftly these men, of whom in the end
there may have been thirty or forty, ran to and fro, testing the ground
with spears in search for pitfalls. I think they only found a very few
that had not been broken into, but in front of these and also of those
that were already full of men and horses they set up the flags as a
warning that they should be avoided in the advance. Also they removed a
number of their wounded.

We had great difficulty in restraining the White Kendah from rushing out
to attack them, which of course would only have led us into a trap in
our turn, since they would have fled and conducted their pursuers into
the arms of the enemy. Nor would I allow my riflemen to fire, as the
result must have been many misses and a great waste of ammunition which
ere long would be badly wanted. I, however, did shoot two or three, then
gave it up as the remainder took no notice whatever.

When they had thoroughly explored the ground they retired until, a
little later, the Black Kendah army began to appear, marching in serried
regiments and excellent order round the bend, till perhaps eight or ten
thousand of them were visible, a very fierce and awe-inspiring _impi_.
Their front ranks halted between three and four hundred yards away,
which I thought farther off than it was advisable to open fire on them
with Snider rifles held by unskilled troops. Then came a pause, which
at length was broken by the blowing of horns and a sound of exultant
shouting beyond the turn of the pass.

Now from round this turn appeared the strangest sight that I think my
eyes had ever seen. Yes, there came the huge elephant, Jana, at a slow,
shambling trot. On his back and head were two men in whom, with my
glasses, I recognized the lame priest whom I already knew too well and
Simba, the king of the Black Kendah, himself, gorgeously apparelled and
waving a long spear, seated in a kind of wooden chair. Round the brute's
neck were a number of bright metal chains, twelve in all, and each of
these chains was held by a spearman who ran alongside, six on one side
and six on the other. Lastly, ingeniously fastened to the end of his
trunk were three other chains to which were attached spiked knobs of
metal.

On he came as docilely as any Indian elephant used for carrying teak
logs, passing through the centre of the host up a wide lane which had
been left, I suppose for his convenience, and intelligently avoiding the
pitfalls filled with dead. I thought that he would stop among the first
ranks. But not so. Slackening his pace to a walk he marched forwards
towards our fortifications. Now, of course, I saw my chance and made
sure that my double-barrelled elephant rifle was ready and that Hans
held a second rifle, also double-barrelled and of similar calibre,
full-cocked in such a position that I could snatch it from him in a
moment.

"I am going to kill that elephant," I said. "Let no one else fire. Stand
still and you shall see the god Jana die."

Still the enormous beast floundered forward; up to that moment I had
never realized how truly huge it was, not even when it stood over me in
the moonlight about to crush me with its foot. Of this I am sure, that
none to equal it ever lived in Africa, at least in any times of which I
have knowledge.

"Fire, Baas," whispered Hans, "it is near enough."

But like the Frenchman and the cock pheasant, I determined to wait until
it stopped, wishing to finish it with a single ball, if only for the
prestige of the thing.

At length it did stop and, opening its cavern of a mouth, lifted its
great trunk and trumpeted, while Simba, standing up in his chair, began
to shout out some command to us to surrender to the god Jana, "the
Invincible, the Invulnerable."

"I will show you if you are invulnerable, my boy," said I to myself,
glancing round to make sure that Hans had the second rifle ready and
catching sight of Ragnall and Harut and all the White Kendah standing
up in their trenches, breathlessly awaiting the end, as were the Black
Kendah a few hundred yards away. Never could there have been a fairer
shot and one more certain to result in a fatal wound. The brute's head
was up and its mouth was open. All I had to do was to send a hard-tipped
bullet crashing through the palate to the brain behind. It was so easy
that I would have made a bet that I could have finished him with one
hand tied behind me.

I lifted the heavy rifle. I got the sights dead on to a certain spot at
the back of that red cave. I pressed the trigger; the charge boomed--and
nothing happened! I heard no bullet strike and Jana did not even take
the trouble to close his mouth.

An exclamation of "O-oh!" went up from the watchers. Before it had
died away the second bullet followed the first, with the same result
or rather lack of result, and another louder "O-oh!" arose. Then Jana
tranquilly shut his mouth, having finished trumpeting, and as though
to give me a still better target, turned broadside on and stood quite
still.

With an inward curse I snatched the second rifle and aiming behind the
ear at a spot which long experience told me covered the heart let drive
again, first one barrel and then the other.

Jana never stirred. No bullet thudded. No mark of blood appeared upon
his hide. The horrible thought overcame me that I, Allan Quatermain,
I the famous shot, the renowned elephant-hunter, had four times missed
this haystack of a brute from a distance of forty yards. So great was
my shame that I think I almost fainted. Through a kind of mist I heard
various ejaculations:

"Great Heavens!" said Ragnall.

"_Allemagte!_" remarked Hans.

"The Child help us!" muttered Harut.

All the rest of them stared at me as though I were a freak or a lunatic.
Then somebody laughed nervously, and immediately everybody began to
laugh. Even the distant army of the Black Kendah became convulsed with
roars of unholy merriment and I, Allan Quatermain, was the centre of
all this mockery, till I felt as though I were going mad. Suddenly the
laughter ceased and once more Simba the King began to roar out something
about "Jana the Invincible and Invulnerable," to which the White Kendah
replied with cries of "Magic" and "Bewitched! Bewitched!"

"Yes," yelled Simba, "no bullet can touch Jana the god, not even those
of the white lord who was brought from far to kill him."

Hans leaped on to the top of the wall, where he danced up and down like
an intoxicated monkey, and screamed:

"Then where is Jana's left eye? Did not my bullet put it out like a
lamp? If Jana is invulnerable, why did my bullet put out his left eye?"

Hans ceased from dancing on the wall and steadying himself, lifted the
little rifle Intombi, shouting:

"Let us see whether after all this beast is a god or an elephant."

Then he touched the trigger, and simultaneously with the report, I heard
the bullet clap and saw blood appear on Jana's hide just by the very
spot over the heart at which I had aimed without result. Of course, the
soft ball driven from a small-bore rifle with a light charge of powder
was far too weak to penetrate to the vitals. Probably it did not do much
more than pierce through the skin and an inch or two of flesh behind it.

Still, its effects upon this "invulnerable" god were of a marked order.
He whipped round; he lifted his trunk and screamed with rage and pain.
Then off he lumbered back towards his own people, at such a pace that
the attendants who held the chains on either side of him were thrown
over and forced to leave go of him, while the king and the priest upon
his back could only retain their seats by clinging to the chair and the
rope about his neck.

The result was satisfactory so far as the dispelling of magical
illusions went, but it left me in a worse position than before, since
it now became evident that what had protected Jana from my bullets was
nothing more supernatural than my own lack of skill. Oh! never in my
life did I drink of such a cup of humiliation as it was my lot to drain
to the dregs in this most unhappy hour. Almost did I hope that I might
be killed at once.

And yet, and yet, how was it possible that with all my skill I should
have missed this towering mountain of flesh four times in succession.
The question is one to which I have never discovered any answer,
especially as Hans hit it easily enough, which at the time I wished
heartily he had not done, since his success only served to emphasize
my miserable failure. Fortunately, just then a diversion occurred which
freed my unhappy self from further public attention. With a shout and a
roar the great army of the Black Kendah woke into life.

The advance had begun.



CHAPTER XX

ALLAN WEEPS

On they came, slowly and steadily, preceded by a cloud of skirmishers--a
thousand or more of these--who kept as open an order as the narrow
ground would allow and carried, each of them, a bundle of throwing
spears arranged in loops or sockets at the back of the shield. When
these men were about a hundred yards away we opened fire and killed a
great number of them, also some of the marshalled troops behind. But
this did not stop them in the least, for what could fifty rifles do
against a horde of brave barbarians who, it seemed, had no fear of
death? Presently their spears were falling among us and a few casualties
began to occur, not many, because of the protecting wall, but still
some. Again and again we loaded and fired, sweeping away those in front
of us, but always others came to take their places. Finally at some word
of command these light skirmishers vanished, except whose who were dead
or wounded, taking shelter behind the advancing regiments which now were
within fifty yards of us.

Then, after a momentary pause another command was shouted out and the
first regiment charged in three solid ranks. We fired a volley point
blank into them and, as it was hopeless for fifty men to withstand such
an onslaught, bolted during the temporary confusion that ensued, taking
refuge, as it had been arranged that we should do, at a point of vantage
farther down the line of fortifications, whence we maintained our
galling fire.

Now it was that the main body of the White Kendah came into action under
the leadership of Ragnall and Harut. The enemy scrambled over the first
wall, which we had just vacated, to find themselves in a network of
other walls held by our spearmen in a narrow place where numbers gave no
great advantage.

Here the fighting was terrible and the loss of the attackers great, for
always as they carried one entrenchment they found another a few yards
in front of them, out of which the defenders could only be driven at
much cost of life.

Two hours or more the battle went on thus. In spite of the desperate
resistance which we offered, the multitude of the Black Kendah, who I
must say fought magnificently, stormed wall after wall, leaving hundreds
of dead and wounded to mark their difficult progress. Meanwhile I and
my riflemen rained bullets on them from certain positions which we had
selected beforehand, until at length our ammunition began to run low.

At half-past eight in the morning we were driven back over the open
ground to our last entrenchment, a very strong one just outside of the
eastern gate of the temple which, it will be remembered, was set in
a tunnel pierced through the natural lava rock. Thrice did the Black
Kendah come on and thrice we beat them off, till the ditch in front of
the wall was almost full of fallen. As fast as they climbed to the top
of it the White Kendah thrust them through with their long spears, or we
shot them with our rifles, the nature of the ground being such that only
a direct frontal attack was possible.

In the end they drew back sullenly, having, as we hoped, given up the
assault. As it turned out, this was not so. They were only resting
and waiting for the arrival of their reserve. It came up shouting and
singing a war-song, two thousand strong or more, and presently once more
they charged like a flood of water. We beat them back. They reformed and
charged a second time and we beat them back.

Then they took another counsel. Standing among the dead and dying at the
base of the wall, which was built of loose stones and earth, where we
could not easily get at them because of the showers of spears which
were rained at anyone who showed himself, they began to undermine it,
levering out the bottom stones with stakes and battering them with
poles.

In five minutes a breach appeared, through which they poured
tumultuously. It was hopeless to withstand that onslaught of so vast a
number. Fighting desperately, we were driven down the tunnel and through
the doors that were opened to us, into the first court of the temple.
By furious efforts we managed to close these doors and block them
with stones and earth. But this did not avail us long, for, bringing
brushwood and dry grass, they built a fire against them that soon caught
the thick cedar wood of which they were made.

While they burned we consulted together. Further retreat seemed
impossible, since the second court of the temple, save for a narrow
passage, was filled with corn which allowed no room for fighting,
while behind it were gathered all the women and children, more than two
thousand of them. Here, or nowhere, we must make our stand and conquer
or die. Up to this time, compared with what which we had inflicted upon
the Black Kendah, of whom a couple of thousand or more had fallen, our
loss was comparatively slight, say two hundred killed and as many more
wounded. Most of such of the latter as could not walk we had managed to
carry into the first court of the temple, laying them close against the
cloister walls, whence they watched us in a grisly ring.

This left us about sixteen hundred able-bodied men or many more than we
could employ with effect in that narrow place. Therefore we determined
to act upon a plan which we had already designed in case such an
emergency as ours should arise. About three hundred and fifty of the
best men were to remain to defend the temple till all were slain. The
rest, to the number of over a thousand, were to withdraw through the
second court and the gates beyond to the camp of the women and children.
These they were to conduct by secret paths that were known to them to
where the camels were kraaled, and mounting as many as possible of
them on the camels to fly whither they could. Our hope was that the
victorious Black Kendah would be too exhausted to follow them across the
plain to the distant mountains. It was a dreadful determination, but we
had no choice.

"What of my wife?" Ragnall asked hoarsely.

"While the temple stands she must remain in the temple," replied Harut.
"But when all is lost, if I have fallen, do you, White Lord, go to the
sanctuary with those who remain and take her and the Ivory Child and
flee after the others. Only I lay this charge on you under pain of the
curse of Heaven, that you do not suffer the Ivory Child to fall into the
hands of the Black Kendah. First must you burn it with fire or grind it
to dust with stones. Moreover, I give this command to all in case of
the priests in charge of it should fail me, that they set flame to the
brushwood that is built up with the stacks of corn, so that, after all,
those of our enemies who escape may die of famine."

Instantly and without murmuring, for never did I see more perfect
discipline than that which prevailed among these poor people, the orders
given by Harut, who in addition to his office as head priest was a kind
of president of what was in fact a republic, were put in the way of
execution. Company by company the men appointed to escort the women and
children departed through the gateway of the second court, each company
turning in the gateway to salute us who remained, by raising their
spears, till all were gone. Then we, the three hundred and fifty who
were left, marshalled ourselves as the Greeks may have done in the Pass
of Thermopylae.

First stood I and my riflemen, to whom all the remaining ammunition was
served out; it amounted to eight rounds per man. Then, ranged across
the court in four lines, came the spearmen armed with lances and swords
under the immediate command of Harut. Behind these, near the gate of the
second court so that at the last they might attempt the rescue of the
priestess, were fifty picked men, captained by Ragnall, who, I forgot
to say, was wounded in two places, though not badly, having received
a spear thrust in the left shoulder and a sword cut to the left thigh
during his desperate defence of the entrenchment.

By the time that all was ready and every man had been given to drink
from the great jars of water which stood along the walls, the massive
wooden doors began to burn through, though this did not happen for quite
half an hour after the enemy had begun to attempt to fire them. They
fell at length beneath the battering of poles, leaving only the mound of
earth and stones which we had piled up in the gateway after the closing
of the doors. This the Black Kendah, who had raked out the burning
embers, set themselves to dig away with hands and sticks and spears, a
task that was made very difficult to them by about a score of our people
who stabbed at them with their long lances or dashed them down with
stones, killing and disabling many. But always the dead and wounded were
dragged off while others took their places, so that at last the gateway
was practically cleared. Then I called back the spearmen who passed into
the ranks behind us, and made ready to play my part.

I had not long to wait. With a rush and a roar a great company of the
Black Kendah charged the gateway. Just as they began to emerge into the
court I gave the word to fire, sending fifty Snider bullets tearing into
them from a distance of a few yards. They fell in a heap; they fell like
corn before the scythe, not a man won through. Quickly we reloaded and
waited for the next rush. In due course it came and the dreadful scene
repeated itself. Now the gateway and the tunnel beyond were so choked
with fallen men that the enemy must drag these out before they could
charge any more. It was done under the fire of myself, Hans and a few
picked shots--somehow it was done.

Once more they charged, and once more were mown down. So it went on
till our last cartridge was spent, for never did I see more magnificent
courage than was shown by those Black Kendah in the face of terrific
loss. Then my people threw aside their useless rifles and arming
themselves with spears and swords fell back to rest, leaving Harut and
his company to take their place. For half an hour or more raged that
awful struggle, since the spot being so narrow, charge as they would,
the Black Kendah could not win through the spears of despairing
warriors defending their lives and the sanctuary of their god. Nor, the
encircling cliffs being so sheer, could they get round any other way.

At length the enemy drew back as though defeated, giving us time to drag
aside our dead and wounded and drink more water, for the heat in the
place was now overwhelming. We hoped against hope that they had given up
the attack. But this was far from the case; they were but making a new
plan.

Suddenly in the gateway there appeared the huge bulk of the elephant
Jana, rushing forward at speed and being urged on by men who pricked it
with spears behind. It swept through the defenders as though they were
but dry grass, battering those in front of it with its great trunk
from which swung the iron balls that crushed all on whom they fell, and
paying no more heed to the lance thrusts than it might have done to the
bites of gnats. On it came, trumpeting and trampling, and after it in a
flood flowed the Black Kendah, upon whom our spearmen flung themselves
from either side.

At the time I, followed by Hans, was just returning from speaking with
Ragnall at the gate of the second court. A little before I had retired
exhausted from the fierce and fearful fighting, whereon he took my place
and repelled several of the Black Kendah charges, including the last. In
this fray he received a further injury, a knock on the head from a stick
or stone which stunned him for a few minutes, whereon some of our people
had carried him off and set him on the ground with his back against one
of the pillars of the second gate. Being told that he was hurt I ran
to see what was the matter. Finding to my joy that it was nothing very
serious, I was hurrying to the front again when I looked up and saw that
devil Jana charging straight towards me, the throng of armed men parting
on each side of him, as rough water does before the leaping prow of a
storm-driven ship.

To tell the truth, although I was never fond of unnecessary risks, I
rejoiced at the sight. Not even all the excitement of that hideous and
prolonged battle had obliterated from my mind the burning sense of shame
at the exhibition which I had made of myself by missing this beast with
four barrels at forty yards.

Now, thought I to myself with a kind of exultant thrill, now, Jana,
I will wipe out both my disgrace and you. This time there shall be no
mistake, or if there is, let it be my last.

On thundered Jana, whirling the iron balls among the soldiers, who fled
to right and left leaving a clear path between me and him. To make quite
sure of things, for I was trembling a little with fatigue and somewhat
sick from the continuous sight of bloodshed, I knelt down upon my right
knee, using the other as a prop for my left elbow, and since I could
not make certain of a head shot because of the continual whirling of
the huge trunk, got the sight of my big-game rifle dead on to the beast
where the throat joins the chest. I hoped that the heavy conical
bullet would either pierce through to the spine or cut one of the large
arteries in the neck, or at least that the tremendous shock of its
impact would bring him down.

At about twenty paces I fired and hit--not Jana but the lame priest who
was fulfilling the office of mahout, perched upon his shoulders many
feet above the point at which I had aimed. Yes! I hit him in the head,
which was shattered like an eggshell, so that he fell lifeless to the
ground.

In perfect desperation again I aimed, and fired when Jana was not more
than thirty feet away. This time the bullet must have gone wide to
the left, for I saw a chip fly from the end of the animal's broken and
deformed tusk, which stuck out in that direction several feet clear of
its side.

Then I gave up all hope. There was no time to gain my feet and escape;
indeed I did not wish to do so, who felt that there are some failures
which can only be absolved by death. I just knelt there, waiting for the
end.

In an instant the giant creature was almost over me. I remember looking
up at it and thinking in a queer sort of a way--perhaps it was some
ancestral memory--that I was a little ape-like child about to be slain
by a primordial elephant, thrice as big as any that now inhabit the
earth. Then something appeared to happen which I only repeat to show how
at such moments absurd and impossible things seem real to us.

The reader may remember the strange dream which Hans had related to me
that morning.

One incident of this phantasy was that he had met the spirit of the Zulu
lady Mameena, whom I knew in bygone years, and that she bade him tell me
she would be with me in the battle and that I was to look for her when
death drew near to me and "Jana thundered on," for then perchance I
should see her.

Well, no doubt in some lightning flash of thought the memory of these
words occurred to me at this juncture, with the ridiculous result that
my subjective intelligence, if that is the right term, actually created
the scene which they described. As clearly, or perhaps more clearly than
ever I saw anything else in my life, I appeared to behold the beautiful
Mameena in her fur cloak and her blue beads, standing between Jana and
myself with her arms folded upon her breast and looking exactly as she
did in the tremendous moment of her death before King Panda. I even
noted how the faint breeze stirred a loose end of her outspread hair
and how the sunlight caught a particular point of a copper bangle on her
upper arm.

So she stood, or rather seemed to stand, quite still; and as it
happened, at that moment the giant Jana, either because something had
frightened him, or perhaps owing to the shock of my bullet striking on
his tusk having jarred the brain, suddenly pulled up, sliding along a
little with all his four feet together, till I thought he was going to
sit down like a performing elephant. Then it appeared to me as though
Mameena turned round very slowly, bent towards me, whispering something
which I could not hear although her lips moved, looked at me sweetly
with those wonderful eyes of hers and vanished away.

A fraction of a second later all this vision had gone and something that
was no vision took its place. Jana had recovered himself and was at me
again with open mouth and lifted trunk. I heard a Dutch curse and saw
a little yellow form; saw Hans, for it was he, thrust the barrels of
my second elephant rifle almost into that red cave of a mouth, which
however they could not reach, and fire, first one barrel, then the
other.

Another moment, and the mighty trunk had wrapped itself about Hans and
hurled him through the air to fall on to his head and arms thirty or
forty feet away.

Jana staggered as though he too were about to fall; recovered himself,
swerved to the right, perhaps to follow Hans, stumbled on a few paces,
missing me altogether, then again came to a standstill. I wriggled
myself round and, seated on the pavement of the court, watched what
followed, and glad am I that I was able to do so, for never shall I
behold such another scene.

First I saw Ragnall run up with a rifle and fire two barrels at the
brute's head, of which he took no notice whatsoever. Then I saw his
wife, who in this land was known as the Guardian of the Child, issuing
from the portals of the second court, dressed in her goddess robes,
wearing the cap of bird's feathers, attended by the two priestesses also
dressed as goddesses, as we had seen her on the morning of sacrifice,
and holding in front of her the statue of the Ivory Child.

On she came quite quietly, her wide, empty eyes fixed upon Jana. As she
advanced the monster seemed to grow uneasy. Turning his head, he lifted
his trunk and thrust it along his back until it gripped the ankle of the
King Simba, who all this while was seated there in his chair making no
movement.

With a slow, steady pull he dragged Simba from the chair so that he fell
upon the ground near his left foreleg. Next very composedly he wound his
trunk about the body of the helpless man, whose horrified eyes I can see
to this day, and began to whirl him round and round in the air, gently
at first but with a motion that grew ever more rapid, until the bright
chains on the victim's breast flashed in the sunlight like a silver
wheel. Then he hurled him to the ground, where the poor king lay a mere
shattered pulp that had been human.

Now the priestess was standing in front of the beast-god, apparently
quite without fear, though her two attendants had fallen back. Ragnall
sprang forward as though to drag her away, but a dozen men leapt on to
him and held him fast, either to save his life or for some secret reason
of their own which I never learned.

Jana looked down at her and she looked up at Jana. Then he screamed
furiously and, shooting out his trunk, snatched the Ivory Child from her
hands, whirled it round as he had whirled Simba, and at last dashed it
to the stone pavement as he had dashed Simba, so that its substance,
grown brittle on the passage of the ages, shattered into ten thousand
fragments.

At this sight a great groan went up from the men of the White Kendah,
the women dressed as goddesses shrieked and tore their robes, and Harut,
who stood near, fell down in a fit or faint.

Once more Jana screamed. Then slowly he knelt down, beat his trunk and
the clattering metal balls upon the ground thrice, as though he were
making obeisance to the beautiful priestess who stood before him,
shivered throughout his mighty bulk, and rolled over--dead!



The fighting ceased. The Black Kendah, who all this while had been
pressing into the court of the temple, saw and stood stupefied. It was
as though in the presence of events to them so pregnant and terrible men
could no longer lift their swords in war.

A voice called: "The god is dead! The king is dead! Jana has slain Simba
and has himself been slain! Shattered is the Child; spilt is the blood
of Jana! Fly, People of the Black Kendah; fly, for the gods are dead and
your land is a land of ghosts!"

From every side was this wail echoed: "Fly, People of the Black Kendah,
for the gods are dead!"

They turned; they sped away like shadows, carrying their wounded with
them, nor did any attempt to stay them. Thirty minutes later, save for
some desperately hurt or dying men, not one of them was left in the
temple or the pass beyond. They had all gone, leaving none but the dead
behind them.

The fight was finished! The fight that had seemed lost was won!



I dragged myself from the ground. As I gained my tottering feet, for now
that all was over I felt as if I were made of running water, I saw the
men who held Ragnall loose their grip of him. He sprang to where his
wife was and stood before her as though confused, much as Jana had
stood, Jana against whose head he rested, his left hand holding to the
brute's gigantic tusk, for I think that he also was weak with toil,
terror, loss of blood and emotion.

"Luna," he gasped, "Luna!"

Leaning on the shoulder of a Kendah man, I drew nearer to see what
passed between them, for my curiosity overcame my faintness. For quite a
long while she stared at him, till suddenly her eyes began to change. It
was as though a soul were arising in their emptiness as the moon arises
in the quiet evening sky, giving them light and life. At length she
spoke in a slow, hesitating voice, the tones of which I remembered well
enough, saying:

"Oh! George, that dreadful brute," and she pointed to the dead elephant,
"has killed our baby. Look at it! Look at it! We must be everything to
each other now, dear, as we were before it came--unless God sends us
another."

Then she burst into a flood of weeping and fell into his arms, after
which I turned away. So, to their honour be it said, did the Kendah,
leaving the pair alone behind the bulk of dead Jana.

Here I may state two things: first, that Lady Ragnall, whose bodily
health had remained perfect throughout, entirely recovered her reason
from that moment. It was as though on the shattering of the Ivory Child
some spell had been lifted off her. What this spell may have been I am
quite unable to explain, but I presume that in a dim and unknown way she
connected this effigy with her own lost infant and that while she held
and tended it her intellect remained in abeyance. If so, she must also
have connected its destruction with the death of her own child which,
strangely enough, it will be remembered, was likewise killed by an
elephant. The first death that occurred in her presence took away her
reason, the second seeming death, which also occurred in her presence,
brought it back again!

Secondly, from the moment of the destruction of her boy in the streets
of the English country town to that of the shattering of the Ivory Child
in Central Africa her memory was an utter blank, with one exception.
This exception was a dream which a few days later she narrated to
Ragnall in my presence. That dream was that she had seen him and Savage
sleeping together in a native house one night. In view of a certain
incident recorded in this history I leave the reader to draw his own
conclusions as to this curious incident. I have none to offer, or if I
have I prefer to keep them to myself.

Leaving Ragnall and his wife, I staggered off to look for Hans and found
him lying senseless near the north wall of the temple. Evidently he was
beyond human help, for Jana seemed to have crushed most of his ribs in
his iron trunk. We carried him to one of the priest's cells and there I
watched him till the end, which came at sundown.

Before he died he became quite conscious and talked with me a good deal.

"Don't grieve about missing Jana, Baas," he said, "for it wasn't you who
missed him but some devil that turned your bullets. You see, Baas, he
was bewitched against you white men. When you look at him closely you
will find that the Lord Igeza missed him also" (strange as it may seem,
this proved to be the case), "and when you managed to hit the tip of his
tusk with the last ball the magic was wearing off him, that's all.
But, Baas, those Black Kendah wizards forgot to bewitch him against
the little yellow man, of whom they took no account. So I hit him sure
enough every time I fired at him, and I hope he liked the taste of my
bullets in that great mouth of his. He knew who had sent them there very
well. That's why he left you alone and made for me, as I had hoped he
would. Oh! Baas, I die happy, quite happy since I have killed Jana and
he caught me and not you, me who was nearly finished anyhow. For, Baas,
though I didn't say anything about it, a thrown spear struck my groin
when I went down among the Black Kendah this morning. It was only a
small cut, which bled little, but as the fighting went on something gave
way and my inside began to come through it, though I tied it up with a
bit of cloth, which of course means death in a day or two." (Subsequent
examination showed me that Hans's story of this wound was perfectly
true. He could not have lived for very long.)

"Baas," he went on after a pause, "no doubt I shall meet that Zulu lady
Mameena to-night. Tell me, is she really entitled to the royal salute?
Because if not, when I am as much a spook as she is I will not give it
to her again. She never gave me my titles, which are good ones in their
way, so why should I give her the _Bayete_, unless it is hers by right
of blood, although I am only a little 'yellow dog' as she chose to call
me?"

As this ridiculous point seemed to weigh upon his mind I told him that
Mameena was not even of royal blood and in nowise entitled to the salute
of kings.

"Ah!" he said with a feeble grin, "then now I shall know how to deal
with her, especially as she cannot pretend that I did not play my part
in the battle, as she bade me do. Did you see anything of her when Jana
charged, Baas, because I thought I did?"

"I seemed to see something, but no doubt it was only a fancy."

"A fancy? Explain to me, Baas, where truths end and fancies begin and
whether what we think are fancies are not sometimes the real truths.
Once or twice I have thought so of late, Baas."

I could not answer this riddle, so instead I gave him some water which
he asked for, and he continued:

"Baas, have you any messages for the two Shining ones, for her whose
name is holy and her sister, and for the child of her whose name is
holy, the Missie Marie, and for your reverend father, the Predikant? If
so, tell it quickly before my head grows too empty to hold the words."

I will confess, however foolish it may seem, that I gave him certain
messages, but what they were I shall not write down. Let them remain
secret between me and him. Yes, between me and him and perhaps those to
whom they were to be delivered. For after all, in his own words, who
can know exactly where fancies end and truth begin, and whether at times
fancies are not the veritable truths in this universal mystery of which
the individual life of each of us is so small a part?

Hans repeated what I had spoken to him word for word, as a native does,
repeated it twice over, after which he said he knew it by heart and
remained silent for a long while. Then he asked me to lift him up in
the doorway of the cell so that he might look at the sun setting for
the last time, "for, Baas," he added, "I think I am going far beyond the
sun."

He stared at it for a while, remarking that from the look of the sky
there should be fine weather coming, "which will be good for your
journey towards the Black Water, Baas, with all that ivory to carry."

I answered that perhaps I should never get the ivory from the graveyard
of the elephants, as the Black Kendah might prevent this.

"No, no, Baas," he replied, "now that Jana is dead the Black Kendah will
go away. I know it, I know it!"

Then he wandered for a space, speaking of sundry adventures we had
shared together, till quite before the last indeed, when his mind
returned to him.

"Baas," he said, "did not the captain Mavovo name me Light-in-Darkness,
and is not that my name? When you too enter the Darkness, look for that
Light; it will be shining very close to you."

He only spoke once more. His words were:

"Baas, I understand now what your reverend father, the Predikant, meant
when he spoke to me about Love last night. It had nothing to do with
women, Baas, at least not much. It was something a great deal bigger,
Baas, something as big as what I feel for you!"

Then Hans died with a smile on his wrinkled face.

I wept!



CHAPTER XXI

HOMEWARDS

There is not much more to write of this expedition, or if that statement
be not strictly true, not much more that I wish to write, though I have
no doubt that Ragnall, if he had a mind that way, could make a good and
valuable book concerning many matters on which, confining myself to the
history of our adventure, I have scarcely touched. All the affinities
between this Central African Worship of the Heavenly Child and
its Guardian and that of Horus and Isis in Egypt from which it was
undoubtedly descended, for instance. Also the part which the great
serpent played therein, as it may be seen playing a part in every tomb
upon the Nile, and indeed plays a part in our own and other religions.
Further, our journey across the desert to the Red Sea was very
interesting, but I am tired of describing journeys--and of making them.

The truth is that after the death of Hans, like to Queen Sheba when she
had surveyed the wonders of Solomon's court, there was no more spirit in
me. For quite a long while I did not seem to care at all what happened
to me or to anybody else. We buried him in a place of honour, exactly
where he shot Jana before the gateway of the second court, and when the
earth was thrown over his little yellow face I felt as though half my
past had departed with him into that hole. Poor drunken old Hans, where
in the world shall I find such another man as you were? Where in the
world shall I find so much love as filled the cup of that strange heart
of yours?

I dare say it is a form of selfishness, but what every man desires is
something that cares for him _alone_, which is just why we are so fond
of dogs. Now Hans was a dog with a human brain and he cared for me
alone. Often our vanity makes us think that this has happened to some of
us in the instance of one or more women. But honest and quiet reflection
may well cause us to doubt the truth of such supposings. The woman who
as we believed adored us solely has probably in the course of her career
adored others, or at any rate other things.

To take but one instance, that of Mameena, the Zulu lady whom Hans
thought he saw in the Shades. She, I believe, did me the honour to be
very fond of me, but I am convinced that she was fonder still of her
ambition. Now Hans never cared for any living creature, or for any human
hope or object, as he cared for me. There was no man or woman whom
he would not have cheated, or even murdered for my sake. There was no
earthly advantage, down to that of life itself, that he would not, and
in the end did not forgo for my sake; witness the case of his little
fortune which he invested in my rotten gold mine and thought nothing of
losing--for my sake.

That is love _in excelsis_, and the man who has succeeded in inspiring
it in any creature, even in a low, bibulous, old Hottentot, may feel
proud indeed. At least I am proud and as the years go by the pride
increases, as the hope grows that somewhere in the quiet of that great
plain which he saw in his dream, I may find the light of Hans's love
burning like a beacon in the darkness, as he promised I should do, and
that it may guide and warm my shivering, new-born soul before I dare the
adventure of the Infinite.

Meanwhile, since the sublime and the ridiculous are so very near akin,
I often wonder how he and Mameena settled that question of her right to
the royal salute. Perhaps I shall learn one day--indeed already I have
had a hint of it. If so, even in the blaze of a new and universal Truth,
I am certain that their stories will differ wildly.



Hans was quite right about the Black Kendah. They cleared out, probably
in search of food, where I do not know and I do not care, though whether
this were a temporary or permanent move on their part remains, and so
far as I am concerned is likely to remain, veiled in obscurity. They
were great blackguards, though extraordinarily fine soldiers, and what
became of them is a matter of complete indifference to me. One thing is
certain, however, a very large percentage of them never migrated at all,
for something over three thousand of their bodies did our people have to
bury in the pass and about the temple, a purpose for which all the pits
and trenches we had dug came in very useful. Our loss, by the way, was
five hundred and three, including those who died of wounds. It was a
great fight and, except for those who perished in the pitfalls during
the first rush, all practically hand to hand.

Jana we interred where he fell because we could not move him, within a
few feet of the body of his slayer Hans. I have always regretted that
I did not take the exact measurements of this brute, as I believe the
record elephant of the world, but I had no time to do so and no rule or
tape at hand. I only saw him for a minute on the following morning, just
as he was being tumbled into a huge hole, together with the remains of
his master, Simba the King. I found, however, that the sole wounds upon
him, save some cuts and scratches from spears, were those inflicted by
Hans--namely, the loss of one eye, the puncture through the skin over
the heart made when he shot at him for the second time with the little
rifle Intombi, and two neat holes at the back of the mouth through which
the bullets from the elephant gun had driven upwards to the base of the
brain, causing his death from haemorrhage on that organ.

I asked the White Kendah to give me his two enormous tusks, unequalled,
I suppose, in size and weight in Africa, although one was deformed
and broken. But they refused. These, I presume, they wished to keep,
together with the chains off his breast and trunk, as mementoes of their
victory over the god of their foes. At any rate they hewed the former
out with axes and removed the latter before tumbling the carcass into
the grave. From the worn-down state of the teeth I concluded that this
beast must have been extraordinarily old, how old it is impossible to
say.

That is all I have to tell of Jana. May he rest in peace, which
certainly he will not do if Hans dwells anywhere in his neighbourhood,
in the region which the old boy used to call that of the "fires that
do not go out." Because of my horrible failure in connection with this
beast, the very memory of which humiliates me, I do not like to think of
it more than I can help.

For the rest the White Kendah kept faith with us in every particular. In
a curious and semi-religious ceremony, at which I was not present, Lady
Ragnall was absolved from her high office of Guardian or Nurse to a god
whereof the symbol no longer existed, though I believe that the priests
collected the tiny fragments of ivory, or as many of them as could be
found, and preserved them in a jar in the sanctuary. After this had
been done women stripped the Nurse of her hallowed robes, of the ancient
origin of which, by the way, I believe that none of them, except perhaps
Harut, had any idea, any more than they knew that the Child represented
the Egyptian Horus and his lady Guardian the moon-goddess Isis. Then,
dressed in some native garments, she was handed over to Ragnall and
thenceforth treated as a stranger-guest, like ourselves, being allowed,
however, to live with her husband in the same house that she had
occupied during all the period of her strange captivity. Here they abode
together, lost in the mutual bliss of this wonderful reunion to which
they had attained through so much bodily and spiritual darkness and
misery, until a month or so later we started upon our journey across the
mountains and the great desert that lay beyond them.

Only once did I find any real opportunity of private conversation with
Lady Ragnall.

This happened after her husband had recovered from the hurts he received
in the battle, on an occasion when he was obliged to separate from her
for a day in order to attend to some matter in the Town of the Child.
I think it had to do with the rifles used in the battle, which he had
presented to the White Kendah. So, leaving me to look after her, he
went, unwillingly enough, who seemed to hate losing sight of his wife
even for an hour.

I took her for a walk in the wood, to that very point indeed on the lip
of the crater whence we had watched her play her part as priestess at
the Feast of the First-fruits. After we had stood there a while we went
down among the great cedars, trying to retrace the last part of our
march through the darkness of that anxious night, whereof now for the
first time I told her all the story.

Growing tired of scrambling among the fallen boughs, at length Lady
Ragnall sat down and said:

"Do you know, Mr. Quatermain, these are the first words we have really
had since that party at Ragnall before I was married, when, as you may
have forgotten, you took me in to dinner."

I replied that there was nothing I recollected much more clearly, which
was both true and the right thing to say, or so I supposed.

"Well," she said slowly, "you see that after all there was something in
those fancies of mine which at the time you thought would best be dealt
with by a doctor--about Africa and the rest, I mean."

"Yes, Lady Ragnall, though of course we should always remember that
coincidence accounts for many things. In any case they are done with
now."

"Not quite, Mr. Quatermain, even as you mean, since we have still a long
way to go. Also in another sense I believe that they are but begun."

"I do not understand, Lady Ragnall."

"Nor do I, but listen. You know that of anything which happened during
those months I have no memory at all, except of that one dream when I
seemed to see George and Savage in the hut. I remember my baby being
killed by that horrible circus elephant, just as the Ivory Child was
killed or rather destroyed by Jana, which I suppose is another of your
coincidences, Mr. Quatermain. After that I remember nothing until I woke
up and saw George standing in front of me covered with blood, and you,
and Jana dead, and the rest."

"Because during that time your mind was gone, Lady Ragnall."

"Yes, but where had it gone? I tell you, Mr. Quatermain, that although
I remember nothing of what was passing about me then, I do remember a
great deal of what seemed to be passing either long ago or in some time
to come, though I have said nothing of it to George, as I hope you will
not either. It might upset him."

"What do you remember?" I asked.

"That's the trouble; I can't tell you. What was once very clear to me
has for the most part become vague and formless. When my mind tries to
grasp it, it slips away. It was another life to this, quite a different
life; and there was a great story in it of which I think what we have
been going through is either a sequel or a prologue. I see, or saw,
cities and temples with people moving about them, George and you among
them, also that old priest, Harut. You will laugh, but my recollection
is that you stood in some relationship to me, either that of father or
brother."

"Or perhaps a cousin," I suggested.

"Or perhaps a cousin," she repeated, smiling, "or a great friend; at any
rate something very intimate. As for George, I don't know what he was,
or Harut either. But the odd thing is that little yellow man, Hans, whom
I only saw once living for a few minutes that I can remember, comes more
clearly back to my mind than any of you. He was a dwarf, much stouter
than when I saw him the other day, but very like. I recall him curiously
dressed with feathers and holding an ivory rod, seated upon a stool
at the feet of a great personage--a king, I think. The king asked him
questions, and everyone listened to his answers. That is all, except
that the scenes seemed to be flooded with sunlight."

"Which is more than this place is. I think we had better be moving, Lady
Ragnall, or you will catch a chill under these damp cedars."

I said this because I did not wish to pursue the conversation. I
considered it too exciting under all her circumstances, especially as I
perceived that mystical look gathering on her face and in her beautiful
eyes, which I remembered noting before she was married.

She read my thoughts and answered with a laugh:

"Yes, it is damp; but you know I am very strong and damp will not hurt
me. For the rest you need not be afraid, Mr. Quatermain. I did not lose
my mind. It was taken from me by some power and sent to live elsewhere.
Now it has been given back and I do not think it will be taken again in
that way."

"Of course it won't," I exclaimed confidently. "Whoever dreamed of such
a thing?"

"_You_ did," she answered, looking me in the eyes. "Now before we go I
want to say one more thing. Harut and the head priestess have made me a
present. They have given me a box full of that herb they called tobacco,
but of which I have discovered the real name is Taduki. It is the same
that they burned in the bowl when you and I saw visions at Ragnall
Castle, which visions, Mr. Quatermain, by another of your coincidences,
have since been translated into facts."

"I know. We saw you breathe that smoke again as priestess when you
uttered the prophecy as Oracle of the Child at the Feast of the
First-fruits. But what are you going to do with this stuff, Lady
Ragnall? I think you have had enough of visions just at present."

"So do I, though to tell you the truth I like them. I am going to keep
it and do nothing--as yet. Still, I want you always to remember one
thing--don't laugh at me"--here again she looked me in the eyes--"that
there is a time coming, some way off I think, when I and you--no one
else, Mr. Quatermain--will breathe that smoke again together and see
strange things."

"No, no!" I replied, "I have given up tobacco of the Kendah variety; it
is too strong for me."

"Yes, yes!" she said, "for something that is stronger than the Kendah
tobacco will make you do it--when I wish."

"Did Harut tell you that, Lady Ragnall?"

"I don't know," she answered confusedly. "I think the Ivory Child
told me; it used to talk to me often. You know that Child isn't really
destroyed. Like my reason that seemed to be lost, it has only gone
backwards or forwards where you and I shall see it again. You and I and
no others--unless it be the little yellow man. I repeat that I do not
know when that will be. Perhaps it is written in those rolls of papyrus,
which they have given me also, because they said they belonged to me
who am 'the first priestess and the last.' They told me, however, or
perhaps," she added, passing her hand across her forehead, "it was the
Child who told me, that I was not to attempt to read them or have them
read, until after a great change in my life. What the change will be I
do not know."

"And had better not inquire, Lady Ragnall, since in this world most
changes are for the worse."

"I agree, and shall not inquire. Now I have spoken to you like this
because I felt that I must do so. Also I want to thank you for all you
have done for me and George. Probably we shall not talk in such a way
again; as I am situated the opportunity will be lacking, even if the
wish is present. So once more I thank you from my heart. Until we meet
again--I mean really meet--good-bye," and she held her right hand to me
in such a fashion that I knew she meant me to kiss it.

This I did very reverently and we walked back to the temple almost in
silence.



That month of rest, or rather the last three weeks of it, since for the
first few days after the battle I was quite prostrate, I occupied in
various ways, amongst others in a journey with Harut to Simba Town. This
we made after our spies had assured us that the Black Kendah were
really gone somewhere to the south-west, in which direction fertile and
unoccupied lands were said to exist about three hundred miles away. It
was with very strange feelings that I retraced our road and looked once
more upon that wind-bent tree still scored with the marks of Jana's
huge tusk, in the boughs of which Hans and I had taken refuge from the
monster's fury. Crossing the river, quite low now, I travelled up the
slope down which we raced for our lives and came to the melancholy lake
and the cemetery of dead elephants.

Here all was unchanged. There was the little mount worn by his feet, on
which Jana was wont to stand. There were the rocks behind which I had
tried to hide, and near to them some crushed human bones which I knew to
be those of the unfortunate Marut. These we buried with due reverence on
the spot where he had fallen, I meanwhile thanking God that my own bones
were not being interred at their side, as but for Hans would have been
the case--if they were ever interred at all. All about lay the skeletons
of dead elephants, and from among these we collected as much of the best
ivory as we could carry, namely about fifty camel loads. Of course there
was much more, but a great deal of the stuff had been exposed for so
long to sun and weather that it was almost worthless.

Having sent this ivory back to the Town of the Child, which was being
rebuilt after a fashion, we went on to Simba Town through the forest,
dispatching pickets ahead of us to search and make sure that it was
empty. Empty it was indeed; never did I see such a place of desolation.

The Black Kendah had left it just as it stood, except for a pile of
corpses which lay around and over the altar in the market-place, where
the three poor camelmen were sacrificed to Jana, doubtless those of
wounded men who had died during or after the retreat. The doors of the
houses stood open, many domestic articles, such as great jars resembling
that which had been set over the head of the dead man whom we were
commanded to restore life, and other furniture lay about because they
could not be carried away. So did a great quantity of spears and various
weapons of war, whose owners being killed would never want them again.
Except a few starved dogs and jackals no living creature remained in the
town. It was in its own way as waste and even more impressive than the
graveyard of elephants by the lonely lake.

"The curse of the Child worked well," said Harut to me grimly. "First,
the storm; the hunger; then the battle; and now the misery of flight and
ruin."

"It seems so," I answered. "Yet that curse, like others, came back to
roost, for if Jana is dead and his people fled, where are the Child and
many of its people? What will you do without your god, Harut?"

"Repent us of our sins and wait till the Heavens send us another, as
doubtless they will in their own season," he replied very sadly.

I wonder whether they ever did and, if so, what form that new divinity
put on.

I slept, or rather did not sleep, that night in the same guest-house in
which Marut and I had been imprisoned during our dreadful days of fear,
reconstructing in my mind every event connected with them. Once more I
saw the fires of sacrifice flaring upon the altar and heard the roar of
the dancing hail that proclaimed the ruin of the Black Kendah as loudly
as the trumpet of a destroying angel. Very glad was I when the morning
came at length and, having looked my last upon Simba Town, I crossed
the moats and set out homewards through the forest whereof the stripped
boughs also spoke of death, though in the spring these would grow green
again.

Ten days later we started from the Holy Mount, a caravan of about a
hundred camels, of which fifty were laden with the ivory and the rest
ridden by our escort under the command of Harut and our three selves.
But there was an evil fate upon this ivory, as on everything else that
had to do with Jana. Some weeks later in the desert a great sandstorm
overtook us in which we barely escaped with our lives. At the height of
the storm the ivory-laden camels broke loose, flying before it. Probably
they fell and were buried beneath the sand; at any rate of the fifty we
only recovered ten.

Ragnall wished to pay me the value of the remaining loads, which ran
into thousands of pounds, but I would not take the money, saying it
was outside our bargain. Sometimes since then I have thought that I
was foolish, especially when on glancing at that codicil to his will in
after days, the same which he had given me before the battle, I found
that he had set me down for a legacy of L10,000. But in such matters
every man must follow his own instinct.

The White Kendah, an unemotional people especially now when they were
mourning for their lost god and their dead, watched us go without any
demonstration of affection, or even of farewell. Only those priestesses
who had attended upon the person of Lady Ragnall while she played a
divine part among them wept when they parted from her, and uttered
prayers that they might meet her again "in the presence of the Child."

The pass through the great mountains proved hard to climb, as the
foothold for the camels was bad. But we managed it at last, most of the
way on foot, pausing a little while on their crest to look our last for
ever at the land which we had left, where the Mount of the Child was
still dimly visible. Then we descended their farther slope and entered
the northern desert.

Day after day and week after week we travelled across that endless
desert by a way known to Harut on which water could be found, the only
living things in all its vastness, meeting with no accidents save that
of the sandstorm in which the ivory was lost. I was much alone during
that time, since Harut spoke little and Ragnall and his wife were
wrapped up in each other.

At length, months later, we struck a little port on the Red Sea, of
which I forget the Arab name, a place as hot as the infernal regions.
Shortly afterwards, by great good luck, two trading vessels put in for
water, one bound for Aden, in which I embarked en route for Natal, and
the other for the port of Suez, whence Ragnall and his wife could travel
overland to Alexandria.

Our parting was so hurried at the last, as is often the way after long
fellowship, that beyond mutual thanks and good wishes we said little
to one another. I can see them now standing with their arms about each
other watching me disappear. Concerning their future there is so much
to tell that of it I shall say nothing; at any rate here and now, except
that Lady Ragnall was right. We did not part for the last time.

As I shook old Harut's hand in farewell he told me that he was going on
to Egypt, and I asked him why.

"Perchance to look for another god, Lord Macumazana," he answered
gravely, "whom now there is no Jana to destroy. We may speak of that
matter if we should meet again."

Such are some of the things that I remember about this journey, but to
tell truth I paid little attention to them and many others.

For oh! my heart was sore because of Hans.


* * * * * * * *


THE END