CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SINKING POOL.
FOR some time Wilson plodded on, his one idea being to escape from the ghostly valley. The weirdness of the place, enclosed as it was on every side by towering cliffs, its unnatural stillness, and, above all, the grim remains with which the ground was littered, sent an uncanny thrill through the engineer; and, despite his resolution, he found himself continually glancing backward, to make certain that no spectral form was dogging his steps.
All unconsciously he was moving in exactly the opposite direction to that he wished to take, straying farther at each step into the interior of the underworld. The valley seemed to be endless, and the lonely traveller grew tired after awhile of the eternal monotony of the scene around. More, he grew afraid; afraid that he would never find his way out of these ghostly wilds, where reigned an everlasting silence—afraid that he would never again see the Seal or the comrade from whom he had been snatched so suddenly.
The fear grew. Try as he might he could not shake it off. It seemed to be gripping his heart with icy fingers, paralysing his every energy, and turning him into a craven coward. He started at his own footsteps. The shadow of a boulder, cast in a grotesque, distorted form by the fungi light upon the ground at his feet, brought him up with a jump, and only with great difficulty did he restrain a cry.
The valley seemed to grow full of strange sounds. Ghostly voices whispered in his ears, hideous faces peered out from the shelter of the fungi.
He was in the grip of a terror such as he had never known before!
Then, upon the heels of this wholly imaginary fear, came a real one. Footsteps—stealthy, all but noiseless footsteps—sounded behind him, He glanced backward. A score of yards behind him a black shadow was moving, a shapeless smudge against the green of the moss.
For one terrible instant his heart seemed to stop beating. What was the Thing?
Nearer it crept, sliding from shadow to shadow with a sinister movement horrible to witness. And still the lad stood motionless, his very soul withered by the fear that gripped him.
Nearer still—but a few feet separated the thing from the engineer; then the latter recovered the use of his limbs, and, with a wild yell of terror, dashed madly down the valley. As he did so, the creature behind rose from its crouching position, disclosing to view the hideous form of a wolf-man.
A moment the savage stood gazing after the rapidly-vanishing Wilson, then, picking up something the latter had dropped, he turned without troubling to give chase, and, plunging in among the fungi, disappeared.
Like a hunted stag Wilson bounded over the ground, all other thoughts lost in the one mad desire to get away from the creature behind. He never turned to look if the brute was following. He rushed on blindly, madly, the fear that gripped him lending him fictitious strength. He knew nothing, saw nothing, until, utterly exhausted, his trembling limbs refused to carry him farther, and he dropped full length upon the ground.
A long while he lay where he had fallen, too wearied to move, thoroughly disgusted with himself for so allowing fear to overcome him. When at last he arose he was astonished at his surroundings. Although he had no recollection of so doing, he must, in his flight, have emerged from the valley of bones, for he was in a gloomy defile, between towering cliffs.
From which direction he had come he could not tell, but, trusting to luck, he strode forward into the darkness of the defile.
His terror had gone, but it had left him weak and trembling as with an ague. Not a single fungus grew in the gloomy gorge; not even the twilight peculiar to this strange subterranean world relieved its dark obscurity. Yet, despite this absence of light, Wilson felt safer than amid the fungi. If the darkness concealed dangers, it also hid him from the sight of Lurking enemies.
For a little over a mile he strode on between the cliffs, then a bright light ahead warned him that he was approaching the end of the defile.
Redoubling his caution as he advanced, he soon emerged from the gorge into another valley, much smaller than the one he had left, but lit by the same weird growths. At first he hesitated to advance into the light, the memory of his recent fright being still very vivid; but, putting a bold face on the matter, he moved forward at length from the shadow of the cliffs.
As he stepped into the light of the luminous growths, clear and distinct to his ears came the clang of a bell.
He pulled up short in sheer astonishment, and stood listening for a repetition of the sound.
Clang! Once more it rang across the valley. Drawing his sheath-knife, Wilson moved forward, determined to investigate the mystery. What could be the meaning of the sound, he pondered? Had he reached the haunts of the wolf-men, and was the ringing of the bell some signal? Whatever it was he was resolved to get to the bottom of it.
Clang! For the third time the musical note echoed amid the cliffs. The sound seemed to rise from a dense thicket of fungi, which covered the further end of the valley, and towards this the engineer hurried. Amid the towering growths he threaded his way, moving cautiously, having no wish to fall foul of any savages; then, with a low exclamation, he checked himself upon the edge of a clearing.
Before him, tottering in the last stage of decay, rose a ruined building. Gaunt and ghostly, its roofless walls stood, the relics of some past civilisation. Fascinated, Wilson moved nearer. What was the history of this crumbling pile, the one sign of civilised life that he had seen in this underworld? For what purpose had it been erected, and by whom?
The pillars, which once had graced its front, lay half buried in the spongy ground. Climbing fungi ran riot in the gaping cracks in its walls, and its stone pavement was covered with a carpet of moss. Its air of desolate grandeur strongly impressed Wilson, and for a while he forgot what had brought him thither.
His engineer’s eye took in the monstrous size of the blocks which had formed the walls, and he marvelled how they could have been raised to their places. Surely they who erected such a building must have been men of gigantic stature and strength, unless indeed they were equipped with the appliances of modern engineering?
Dare he enter? The place seemed as deserted as the grave. If there were savages about, they would, without a doubt, have shown themselves ere now. He longed to examine the ruins more closely. There appeared to be no danger, and, if it came to that, he was not safe where he stood. Thus reasoning, curiosity got the better of his prudence, and he strode across the clearing.
Just outside the great arch that had once been the doorway he paused, and stood for a moment with ears strained for any sound from within; but the place was wrapped in silence as in a shroud, and, reassured, he crossed the threshold.
There was danger in his enterprise other than that from savages. At any moment a block of stone might come crashing from the walls, and, were he beneath such, his career would be ended on the spot. Knowing this, he made his examination as brief as possible, keeping well back from the walls.
The building appeared to have been used as a temple at one time, for in the centre stood a stone altar. Time, the destroyer, had not quite obliterated the rude hieroglyphics with which the side of the sacrificial slab had been covered, but Wilson could not gain from them the information he so much desired. To him they were mere meaningless scratches. Mervyn, perhaps, could have read in them the life-history of the builders of the place; but the engineer’s education did not include the sign languages of defunct races.
Suddenly, clear as ever through the silence, came the bell-note.
The sound recalled to Wilson the object of his search, the mysterious bell-ringer. Not a little curious as to the identity of the being, whoever it was, he thoroughly examined the interior of the temple—but in vain. The place was entirely deserted. Not a hole was there large enough to conceal a dog, yet the engineer was certain the sound came from the building.
Was there a vault beneath the temple? It seemed probable, but how came it that the sound was so distinct if the ringer were underground? The thing puzzled him.
Determined to solve the mystery, he examined the moss-grown flags of the floor, but with no better result. Outside the building, when he essayed to search there, failure still attended his efforts. The time flew by, and, though at intervals the musical peal still fell upon his ears, he was no nearer the discovery of the mysterious being; bell and ringer seemed invisible.
Probably he would never have hit upon the true solution of the mystery but for an accident. As he moved amidst the fallen blocks which strewed the ground at the base of the walls, he stumbled and fell, whereupon, from the shelter of a stone close by, scuttled an enormous beetle. The creature was almost a foot in length, and its branched antennae, held over its back as it ran, beat furiously upon its metallic body-covering, thus producing the clanging sound which had puzzled Wilson for so long.
“Well, I’m hanged!” was the engineer’s graceful exclamation as he rose; “to think that it’s only a beetle, after all! But now ‘to get a move on,’ as Silas would say,” and with that he turned his back upon the mysterious temple and resumed his way.
Around the valley he tramped, but no opening could he find in the encircling wall of cliffs, and soon he found himself back at the defile by which he had entered. Loth though he was to return to the valley of bones, there was nothing else to be done.
So through the gorge he hurried, and stood once more, ere long, in the feeding ground of the vampires. He paused a while to consider his course, deciding at length to move along the base of the cliffs until he came to some gorge or pass which would lead him out of this weird valley. To this end he started off at a swinging stride, keeping a sharp look-out for vampires as he went. Before he had covered many yards a distant report broke upon his ears, followed by an explosion, which awoke every echo in the valley.
At the sound, hope leapt into his heart. That first was surely the report of a rifle, which meant that his friends—whom he had deemed lost—were within a few miles of him. Instantly he started off at a run in the direction whence the sound had come. No further reports reached him, yet he did not doubt that he should be able to find his comrades. Occasionally he shouted as he ran on, hoping to attract their attention should they be anywhere within hearing.
He took little heed to his steps as he went, tripping and stumbling among the scattered bones, but ever pressing forward. Had he been more cautious the accident that befel him might have been avoided.
He was moving through a thick clump of fungi, when once more the report of a rifle echoed across the valley. At that he quickened his pace, raising his voice in a lusty shout as he did so. But there came no answering hail. His friends were as yet too far distant to hear his call. Then straining every muscle in his headlong race, he suddenly burst out of the fungi. Before him, almost at his feet, its placid surface unbroken by a single ripple, lay an eerie-looking pool. Its banks rose steeply from the water’s edge, making it impossible to note its presence until close upon it. Wilson, striving in vain to check himself, blundered over the brink and pitched with a splash into the water, eight feet below.
He was a good swimmer, and, though unfortunate, the situation did not cause him the least uneasiness. His wounded arm was now healing rapidly, thanks to Garth’s attentions, so he anticipated little difficulty in escaping from the pool. With a couple of strokes he reached the bank, but failed to touch bottom. Evidently the pool was of considerable depth.
Digging his fingers into the side, he commenced to claw his way up. He was almost clear of the water when the rotten earth crumbled beneath his clutch, and he fell backward, sousing clear under.
“Hang it!” he gasped as he rose spluttering. “I must try another place.”
Treading water for a moment he looked round for a place where the bank would be easy to scale. A spot quickly caught his eye, and towards this he was about to strike out, when a strange phenomenon startled him. The bank appeared to be rising slowly out of the water!
He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes. The sides of the pond had not been more than eight feet in height when first he struck the water; of that he was perfectly sure; yet now, at the very lowest point, they were twelve feet, and seemed to be getting higher each moment.
Was he the victim of some delusion? He rubbed his eyes, he pinched his arm to assure himself that he was not dreaming.
Then, with startling suddenness the truth came to him.
The water of the pool was slowly sinking!