CHAPTER XIII.
THE FATE OF MERVYN.
BUT what of Professor Mervyn? How was he faring the while his friends were making such strenuous efforts to effect his rescue?
For a time his terror at finding himself in so perilous a position completely overcame him.
With each stride of his monstrous steed he was being borne farther and farther from his friends; deeper and deeper into the unknown wilds of this subterranean world. He knew that ere long, unless he took prompt action, he would be carried beyond all reach of aid, yet, so great was the fear that gripped him, for a time he could do nought, save cling convulsively to the armoured hide of the brute he rode.
As his first panic subsided, and his brain resumed its sway of his trembling body, he began to cast about for some means of escape from his predicament.
Full twenty feet he was from the ground, and the Triceratops was travelling at the rate of at least thirty miles an hour, so that a leap could not be other than dangerous. Yet it must be done if he would ever see his friends again.
The thought that perhaps he might break a limb in descending deterred him for some time, but at length he summoned up courage to make the attempt.
To do so, however, he must first rise to a standing position upon the huge back of the Triceratops, in order to obtain sufficient spring to leap clear of the pounding hoofs.
This feat he accomplished, after considerable difficulty; then, while he stood essaying to leap, the brute beneath him swerved suddenly to the right.
It might have been that the scientist’s movements irritated the creature, and so caused it to change its course, or it may have been but a whim on its part.
However it was, the sudden move destroyed the professor’s balance; he was flung headlong and dropped, in a stunned and bleeding heap, beside the track.
Nought he knew of the coming of the wolf-men who had already captured Garth; nought of the passage of the bridge; even the rough journey thence to the caves of the savages did not rouse him.
When he did at length return to a sense of things around him, two impressions forced themselves upon his brain. One was the sensation that utter, impenetrable darkness shut him in—darkness, thick and tangible; the other, that every bone in his body had been broken and re-set.
Of the twain, the former gave him the more uneasiness.
His aches and pains, he knew, were the result of his fall, but this other he could not explain.
Where was he, that this darkness surrounded him? Surely, if he lay where he had fallen, the twilight of the underworld would be about him?
Then of a sudden the thought that he was blind swept over him. The shock of his fall had perhaps destroyed his sight!
“Oh, God!” he cried despairingly, and raised his hands.
The clank of metal startled him, and he became conscious of something which, in his state of semi-bewilderment, he had not felt before.
His arms were chained at the wrists!
A low gasp escaped him at this discovery, yet with it came a feeling of relief. The darkness, then, was the result of his surroundings, and not of any accident to his eyes. But into whose hands had he fallen? What beings were they who held him captive?
As yet he was unaware of the existence of the wolf-men, and it was well that he knew nothing of the horrors, or surely his brain would have given way beneath the strain of his terrible situation during the long hours he spent in the darkness of his prison.
His first action was to attempt to slip the chain from his wrists, but this he found before long to be an utter impossibility. Evidently the creatures who had fastened him had a shrewd idea as to the method of securing a prisoner.
Luckily, his feet were not in a like plight, so that, after a time, he made shift to rise, and, with manacled hands outstretched before him, feel his way about his prison.
As nearly as he could judge, his cell was about four yards in length by rather less than half this in width. Its rock walls, rough-hewn and rugged for the most part, were, in one particular place, smooth as glass.
Carefully Mervyn passed his fingers over this slab, suspecting that it was the door to his cell yet not a crack could he find.
The rock there seemed not less solid than elsewhere. Again and again he tried, but never with the same result.
As the hours dragged by, and no one came to him, the scientist began to think that his captors had forgotten his existence.
Whoever they were, whatever they were, they surely could not intend him to be entombed alive? They would scarcely have troubled to chain him had they meant him to be shut away here for ever.
So thinking, Mervyn raised his voice in a shout.
The sound rang round the walls of his prison in an appalling uproar, yet apparently it was unheard without.
Allowing some moments to elapse, he repeated his effort.
The cell rang again with his cry, but still there came no answer, and at last he flung himself down upon the floor again.
Scarcely had he done so ere to his ears came the creaking of machinery, and a dazzling light flooded his cell.
Looking up, he saw that the stone slab, which he believed to be the door, had been pulled aside, and in the doorway, his features lit up with a look of fiendish glee, stood a man—but such a man!
Tall he was, and lean as a greyhound. Yet his bare, brown arms looked strong as iron; from his shoulders a fur mantle fell in graceful folds to his feet; his face—distorted now by its malevolent expression into the semblance of a fiend—must have been pleasing once, if not handsome. But passion had left its mark upon the features, and the eyes, cold and merciless in their glitter, betrayed the hideous cruelty of their owner’s nature.
Upon the forehead of the man, bound in place by a tiny metal chain, was a stone, the like of which Mervyn had never seen before.
In fashion it was like a rough-cut diamond, but much larger than any gem ever discovered in the mines of the upper world, and from its glowing heart proceeded the dazzling light which illumined the cell.
All this Mervyn noted in the first few seconds of his surprise.
A little while he sat gazing at the man, then, scrambling to his feet, stood upright before him.
“Wabozi!” The word rang mockingly from the lips of the fellow, and the scientist recognised it in a moment.
“How comes this fellow to speak Ayuti?” he questioned mentally. “Perhaps——”
“Wabozi, zea!”
The mocking voice, this time with a note of menace in it, broke sharply in upon his reflections.
Quick as thought Mervyn answered in the same tongue, using the same words, “Wabozi, zea!” (“Greeting, dog!”)
“So,” continued his captor, “thou knowest the language of the underworld? ’Tis well. Thou wilt have need of it ere long, when I question thee concerning thy presence in my kingdom. Know you that I am Nordhu, High Priest of Ramouni, Ruler of the Under-world! Who are ye? Take heed that ye speak naught but the truth, for I know more than ye think.”
A faint hope flickered up in the scientist’s breast that, by telling his story in its fulness, the priest might be induced to set him free, that he might return to his friends.
So he began narrating the misadventures and accidents which landed him in so unfortunate a position.
But never an atom of interest did the priest show. His features were inscrutable as a mask.
“What is that to me?” he asked, as Mervyn concluded with a plea for his freedom; “what need was there for ye to seek out this secret place in your upper world, which ye call the ‘Pole’?”
“None,” was the scientist’s answer, “save that it was a mystery, and we were minded to solve it.”
“Granted there were need for that,” pursued the priest, “there were none for ye to set foot upon my land—the land of my people.”
The arrogance of the fellow was fast arousing Mervyn’s temper, yet he strove to keep it in check, unwilling to make an open enemy of the man he had—all unwittingly—offended.
“We knew not that the land was inhabited,” he explained, “and even had we, we could not have known that the law forbade the landing of strangers. Our desire now is but to return to our own world.”
“Doubtless,” was the mocking answer; “but ere ye return, ye must recompense me for the loss of those of my people whom thy friends have slain. Hearest thou?”
“Ay!” returned Mervyn angrily, “yet remember, if any of thy savages have been slain, they must first have attacked my friends. But how know ye that any are slain?”
“Cease thy baying, dog!” snapped the priest in answer, “lest I am tempted to deal hardly by ye. Listen! I am minded to know more of these fire-weapons ye use. Show me the secret and ye are free.”
For an instant the professor hesitated. Here was a chance at which his heart leapt, yet he feared to take it. On the one hand was life and liberty; on the other, death, and that as terrible as the priest of Ramouni could make it for his helpless prisoner.
What if he showed Nordhu the secret he wished to know?
He would be arming the people of the underworld with weapons that would make them the equals of any nation on the face of the globe; but would there be harm in so doing?
While he stood wavering the priest clapped his hands, and, into the light of the flashing jewel, slid two of the fearful wolf-men.
It was the scientist’s first view of the creatures, and his brain reeled with the horror of the things.
His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, his limbs trembled beneath him.
Nordhu grinned broadly at the obvious terror of his victim.
A wave of his hand, and the two wolfish figures vanished into the gloom again.
“Well?” the priest demanded, “will ye show me the secret? Five millions have I of these people; what think ye of them? Would’st like to be given into their hands, that they might make sport with ye?”
At the words Mervyn’s terror vanished; in its place came a cool, dauntless courage that surprised even himself.
Better that he should be torn to pieces by these fearsome brutes than that he should be the primary cause of arming them with the weapons of civilised warfare. Should the brutes ever find their way to the upper world, they would overwhelm the whole globe.
“No,” he returned, drawing himself up, “I will not show ye the secret of the fire-weapons. Do with me as thou wilt.”
“So,” snarled the priest, “ye defy me. Bolder wills than thine have I overcome. ’Tis an evil moment for ye when ye cross Nordhu.”
He bent his piercing eyes upon Mervyn, and his look seemed to sear the scientist’s very soul.
With all the force of his brain Mervyn struggled against that fascinating gaze. It was a contest of wills.
Could the priest but succeed in bending his prisoner’s will to his this once, hereafter the unfortunate man would be as clay in the hands of the potter.
Knowing this, Mervyn fought on, although the desire to submit grew almost overpowering. Never before had he taken part in so fierce a struggle. His eyes seemed starting from his head beneath the strain, and still the merciless ones of his enemy glared into his brain.
Then, when he was almost upon the point of yielding, the gaze of the priest changed to a look of baffled fury.
“So ye resist the supremacy of my will,” he hissed. “So be it; I have other methods. But mark this: if thou wilt not yield me this secret, upon which I have set my heart, I will make thee wish that thou had’st never been born.”
“Do your worst,” returned Mervyn doggedly. “Rather would I be torn limb from limb than reveal to you the secret of our weapons.”
A sneering laugh broke from the priest.
“Dragged limb from limb, sayest thou?” he cried. “That were an easy death to the one I will give thee if thou wilt not obey me.”
Once more he clapped his hands, and the two savages reappeared.
“Bring him forth,” he commanded, and the wolf-men, their faces aglow with diabolical cruelty, hustled Mervyn out of the cell.
Following the priest, a guard on either side of him, the scientist moved down the passage on to which the door of the cell gave access.
It was apparently a natural tunnel in the rock, rough-hewn in places where it had been too narrow to admit of the passage of the savages. From it, on either side, opened galleries, which seemed to run deep into the bowels of the earth.
Up these openings, as captive and captors passed them, came strange sounds, boomings and clangings, as of a mighty forge, and at times a lurid glow would flash up for an instant, then die away again.
Past all these openings the priest went, pausing at length before the open doorway of a rock chamber.
“Enter,” he commanded, and, realising the futility of resistance, the scientist obeyed.
The light of the priest’s stone illumined every corner of the chamber. A rough rectangle it was in shape, about twenty feet by twelve. Across the floor, parallel with, and about a couple of feet from, the doorway, ran a strange crack, not more than three inches in width at its widest part.
Over this Mervyn stepped, then turned and faced his captors.
“I will give thee time to decide,” Nordhu said, “whether ye will do my bidding or be delivered to the sacred beast of Ramouni. See, here is food”—flinging a couple of mushroom-like fungi towards his prisoner—“eat, and think well over your answer. Thy fate is in thine own hands.”
“Stand back against the further wall,” he added, a moment later. Without a word Mervyn obeyed. As he did so Nordhu stamped with his foot upon the floor of the passage. Instantly, from the crack in the floor leapt a dazzling sheet of flame, forming an impenetrable barrier between the scientist and the doorway. Almost to the roof the flaming wall towered, darting and flashing in innumerable little tongues.
The heat from the barrier was terrible; its glare seemed to shrivel Mervyn’s eyes, and his ears throbbed with the roaring of the flames.
The fungi lay untasted at his side, and he sat with his head buried in his hands, the personification of despair.
His fate was in his own hands, so the priest had said; his own it was to decide whether he should earn freedom or a terrible death.
A subtle temptation came to him as he sat there in the fiery cell, to yield to circumstances, to drift with the tide.
Almost it overcame him, but to his aid came another thought. What guarantee had he that Nordhu would fulfil his promise and set him free if he obeyed him? Would not the priest rather keep him captive, that he might wring from him knowledge of other things besides firearms?
It was scarcely likely that he would allow such a prize as Mervyn would prove to slip through his fingers, promise or no promise.
“No,” the scientist muttered; “he can shrivel me to a cinder if he likes. I will not obey him!” So was his determination taken.