CHAPTER XIV
IN THE NINTH CIRCLE
As we arrived our noses were greeted with a most stupendous and enwrapping stench. It took me just about the twentieth part of a second to realize that the black objects that lay above the tide mark were the half-dismembered bodies of sea-lions, the intestines protruding black and decayed upon the smeared and oily sand. Round about them were tramplings and churnings of the mud, and spreading away across the landward rubble to the entrance of the ravine were great sloppy paddings—the slow trudge of some ponderous and long-nailed quadruped.
It was almost with gratified expectation that I recognized the trail of the Horror of the cañon. Here doubtless was his feeding-ground, his private abattoir, where he came down to prey upon the sleeping sea-lion, even as centuries before he had lumbered down upon Alfa, Hardal, and probably many another of those hapless immigrants besides. Here as in a trap he found his prey. Often one could suppose the sea-lions passed through the sea entrance at the far end of the bay, failed to find exit, and, tired with wearily threshing round their prison walls, landed to take their siesta in the sun. Here asleep they fell unawares into his maw, or, surprised in the rock-ringed pool, gave him many a jovial hunt in the clear depths between the cliffs.[1]
At the far side of the beach were other lumps, embedded in the sand. To them we strode and began to dig at them with our axes. It scarcely came as a surprise when the powdery silt fell aside to disclose timbers sticking up gauntly from below—the worn joists and ribs of some stranded vessel.
One or two of the great timbers—carven and decorated by hands long dead—were now wind-planed and worn by the sand drift, and slanted deep into the pebbles. We shovelled and scraped to trace them further. Below the soil they rounded almost at right angles, and we uncovered one of them at full length. It measured a good forty paces—the keel, as we could but suppose, of some Mayan bark, sole remnant of what had been a gallant ship in the squadron of that lost and hapless race.
We scratched and delved, but nothing further than dried wood splinters did we discover. Finally we decided to explore the ravine for traces of the Mayans, or for the track of the great Beast. This latter was plain as a cart trail on the softer ground, but soon faded and was lost among the rubble.
We felt no fear of consequences should we suddenly unlair the monster, for though the walls of the cañon were steep, they were broken by ledges. Up these we could skip swiftly enough, while he, with his ungainly body, would be unable to follow. So up the loose, rattling pebbles we toiled to draw near by degrees to the top, where the ravine passed into a scar of the mountain ridge, and then sinking rapidly, clove its way deep among the spurs and gullies of the far side.
At this point the immensity of the glacier we had crossed that morning was apparent. It stretched away westward in broad, horizon-touching acres of snowfield. Through another cleft a branch of it sank into the valley below us. Far down we could see a streamlet issue from its foot. From the heights above, the tumble of crevasses converged in the narrows like the handle of some huge fan. It smote into the gorge at its straitest, the brook pools glinting away between the rocks. On the spur between the valleys was broken rubble dotted with great boulders. Above all, in sunlit, cloud-like purity the snow crest hung majestic. Out in the distance, seen through the tunnel-like formation of the cliffs, the sea glanced and gleamed, flecked with white bergs to the far horizon.
It was the sight of this last that brought us up all standing. It seemed a trifle astounding to be confronted with the sea again when we had thus turned inland, and for some few moments we debated on the problem unavailingly. Then as I gazed round me various things seemed familiar.
In an instant the explanation came. We were standing in the very cañon up which we had marched the previous day, only we were entering the other end. No wonder that I had thought I had seen before that blue glacier foot and that chain of broken pools down the stream. I had—not twenty-four hours before, too—but from the other side. Our ship and the sunk lake basin were on a great promontory. We had followed the circle of the eastern shore and turned inland. Thus we had cut across the cape as the great fissure did—almost at right angles. If we had followed the cañon the previous day we should have attained to the very spot on which we stood.
It was evident that the glacier, into the recesses of which we had penetrated, and on the edge of which the ruined temple hung, was a branch of the one we had crossed an hour or two back. Amidst this identical chaos of boulders we had watched the wounded beast disappear, and from some unseen cave or cranny he might now be spying us with gloating eyes. I stared round me apprehensively, but nothing moved to break the long waste of gray rock and virgin ice. I turned to explain my discovery to my companions.
It did not take them long to recognize the familiar landmarks when I pointed them out, and they at once agreed with me that it was useless to carry further our quest for a beach. It was borne upon us with great conviction that the cliff barrier here stood just as remorselessly between us and the sea as it did on the western side of our lake. We might, therefore, as well give up at once all thought of launching our boat in the ordinary manner. With the endless line of crags stretching for miles in either direction, it but remained to essay the lowering of it by davits or windlasses down the precipice, to chance its escaping uncrushed by the floating floe. For the present we set gloomily back across the glacier to carry news of our discovery to our friends.
We roped up as we left the cliffs, proceeding gingerly upon our way. The crevasses honeycombed the ice at every step; some we bridged with our poles; some we jumped unhandily; some, too broad for either leaping or bridging, we rounded by circuitous ways which took us far out of our dead point for home. At this height upon the glacier slopes we found the passage far more difficult and broken than upon the lower levels we had crossed in the earlier morning.
It was after a couple of hours of hard work, that, with red and glistening faces, we found ourselves within a few score feet of the further side. We stopped to mop our streaming brows and to congratulate ourselves on the conclusion of the hardest part of our labors. I produced my flask, at which the others smiled approvingly.
I took an inspiriting pull, handing it on to Garlicke, who was roped between Gerry and myself. He took it with unfeigned gratitude, and sucked at it sensuously, bestowing a wink at Gerry over the rim. The latter observed him earnestly as the flask tipped gradually higher, and then, dropping his axe upon the ice, strode towards his friend with a very unbenignant air and an outstretched hand. The axe fell with its point buried in the rough surface at Garlicke’s feet; the blade on the opposite side of the handle was uppermost.
“Kindly leave a saltspoonful,” said Gerry irritably. “I happen to be just about as thirsty as you.”
Garlicke turned slowly, the bottle still glued to his lips. He winked again with an indescribably annoying slyness. Gerry—with a touch of temper, it must be owned—snatched at his hand. Garlicke, with mock ferocity, warded him off.
There was a crackling sound as Gerry’s foot burst in an ice-bubble, and he stumbled. He rocked forward to fall prone beside a crevasse edge. The tense cord fell dead upon the keen blade of the axe set so rigidly uppermost.
There was a hum and a flick as the rope parted, the two released ends springing apart like rent elastic. Gerry gave a wild scrabble at the glass-like, elusive surface, and shot like a flash into the yawning gap. There was a yell and a fierce rush from Garlicke, and I instinctively dug my heels into a crevice, bracing myself starkly to meet his sudden pull. I thrust my own axe-point into the ice, buttressing myself upon it. But for this three bodies would have been racing into the womb of the ice-hill instead of one.
A dull thud came echoing up from the dark shadows beneath us; a few glassy splinters crackled and pattered downward; then came a silence broken only by the throb of our pulses as they sang dull and muffled in our ears.
Garlicke was as one possessed. “My God, my God,” he shrieked, “I’ve murdered him—murdered him. What am I to do? What am I to do? Speak, you fool,” he yammered, “tell me what I’m to do—to do,” and his voice rose to a scream, while he shook at my coat tempestuously. “Don’t tell me that we can’t reach him. My God, I shall go mad,” and he flung himself down upon the ice, tearing at it with bruised and bleeding fingers as he chattered hysterically. “For God’s sake, Heatherslie, say there’s hope—that we can get him up. We must—we must. Lord, have mercy upon me; what am I to do?” and he leaned desperately over the crumbling edge, peering hopelessly into the depths.
Do you know the horrible, leaden, choking pain that leaps up and takes you by the throat, strangling you in a very fog of horror, when, suddenly, swiftly, in the midst of light and laughter, the Great Shadow falls between you and one at your very side? When your heart swells with quivering pulses that shake your flesh? When your eyes burn and the deafness of despair is in your ears; when your knees rock, and the guides and thews within you string themselves like cords against your tense nerves?
Those of you who have been in like case to mine can realize what I felt, when I saw the friend who had been to me as a brother, snatched into the darkness of that cold pit. You of the majority, who have stood in no such brain-wrenching mist of terror—to you no words can describe it. Those two seconds stand out redly scarred against the map of my life. They seemed ages untold of cruel anguish.
The strain of Garlicke’s weight had nearly knocked all the breath out of my body, but I managed to swing him to his feet.
“Oh, you fool, you—you, what are you?” I gasped. “Pull yourself into the semblance of a man. Race to the ship for help. Get ropes. Run, you fool, run,” and I thrust him from me roughly as I sat down panting.
He tottered across the few yards of ice between us and the rocks, and began to reel unsteadily down the slopes toward the great basin and the ship. As he disappeared, and the breath began to slide back into my cramped lungs, I seized my axe and hewed myself a standing-place beside the crevasse. Then I lay down upon my face, my head and shoulders outstretching far above the blue gulf, and set myself to listen with hopeless ears.
The hard damp silence of a vault was over all. No vestige of a sound was there, but the chill drip of the melting ice, and far away out of the distance the half-heard break of waves upon the sea-cliffs. Now and again the wail of a tern or the call of a gull broke jarringly across the stillness, but from the grave below came nothing—no smallest sound to poise a hope upon; only the hush of death and the ceaseless drip.
Yet—was it the self-mesmerism of a hope that would not be denied?—so faint that it left the merest echo of a tremor in my ears, a tiny sound seemed to float up from the depths. I called aloud. I shrieked to a fierce unnatural falsetto in my excitement. I struggled desperately to pierce the dulling thicknesses of ice. I strained hazardously across the gulf in my agony to listen, listen, listen for the ghost of a reply. Still no answer came; only the pitiless drip pattered on monotonously. I pictured it falling on Gerry’s cold, upturned face.
I struck savagely at the opposite wall of the crevasse. I cut a cranny and thrust the point of my axe-handle in it. Then leaning on the head I hung out over the depths, my shoulders almost half-way across the cleft.
There was a jerk as the sharp point snapped through the brittle support. My head plunged forward, hitting with tremendous force the smooth, blue surface beyond me. A thousand stars and planets flashed before my eyes, spreading from a core of foaming light. Then swart and sudden as the night closes over a tropical lightning flash followed darkness and insensibility.
I blinked curiously, groping with owl-like eyes in the gray-green light that swathed me. Before me rose a slope of ice—a gleaming hill blue with the cold azure of undying frost. The smooth surface shone duskily; the twilight fell upon it from above in uncertain patches. Behind and above me was a curtain-like overshadowment of rock.
To my right rose the columns and porticoes of a building, shaded and deepening into blackness where the cloistered frontage retreated into the background. Close to my head, rising with gentle gradient from the pebbly floor, was a paved ascent to the main door of the building. To the left was a dark emptiness, and bell-like out of the hollow distance came the tinkle of running water.
A few yards away lay a man’s form—face to earth and still. The forehead leaned upon the fore-arm; the other hand was stretched abroad, as if grasping an unseen hold. The whole body had the pose of death as we find it when met with suddenness. In the tired apathy that follows a great shock I stared upon it wearily—unthinking, unreasoning, seeing something of familiarity, but with listless inability to follow the crude remembrancing of my brain.
As intelligence grew slowly back to me I struggled weakly and sat up. It was as in a long-forgotten and half-remembered vision that I knew Gerry’s brown shooting-jacket and his greasy field-boots. With further recognition memory began to ooze back.
Gerry had been upon the glacier with me. And Garlicke. And my flask. Gerry had wanted the flask. Well, he couldn’t have it now. I’d lost it. I tried wretchedly to remember how or where. Why, of course! that was what Garlicke had taken. That ice-hill, now, over there—just like the toboggan slide at Toronto two winters ago. I wondered if old Jim Paleriste was still aide. No; seen him in town since. Then there was that sweet little—— Oh, my God! Gerry had fallen in—fallen in—and I listened—and the tern had shrieked just as I thought I heard something. Well, that was Gerry—must be—snoozing away over there on his face. And that building? Well—Why, of course, this was a dream. There was that absurd beast. That was part of a dream. Why on earth couldn’t I wake myself? Baines would bring my hot water directly. Beastly unpleasant; just as well to know it was a dream. I’d have another wink or two. Confounded wet and cold—and, by Jove, cord breeches on. In bed, and blood upon them. Ouf! how my shoulder hurt. And what a scratch upon my palm!
A huge drop splashed from the roof upon my forehead.
At the touch of the cold water, suddenly as the sunbeams rend the sea-mist, my senses leaped back to me, and dread—sickening dread—took possession of my heart.
I stared across intently at Gerry’s rigid limbs. So we had fallen together into the depths—into the cold that kills. He was dead, no doubt; a little struggle against the numbing cold, and I too should pass into the land beyond forgetfulness. We had found the ninth circle of the lost.
I rose and touched and stretched myself warily. How my back and shoulders ached, and what a sharp pang ran through my ankle as I dragged myself across the floor. I knelt beside Gerry and turned his face to the light. It was white and hollow-cheeked; his eyes were closed. I ran my hand beneath his coat and laid it above his heart. Was it still?—or was it my own anxious pulse that beat beneath my palm?
No, there was a stirring—a fluttering, faint and scarce discernible, but the life-light still burned. I placed my eyeball before his parted lips. The out-draught of his breathing struck against it, though ever so lightly. I moved his arms. They were limp, but with no unnatural droop. Very, very gently, but perceptibly, his chest rose and fell again, and something like a sigh fluttered out from between his lips. There was a faint flicker of an eyelid, and his fingers twitched automatically at the pebbles.
The worst of the overpowering weight of dread slid away from me hesitatingly. Perhaps after all Gerry was no more than knocked out of time—not injured fatally at all. I shouted into his ear; a tiny movement of the eyelid answered me. I raised his head, scraping the loose sand into a pillow beneath it. I took his hand and began to rub it briskly, clapping it against its fellow. A faint shade of color rose into his cheek; he sighed perceptibly. Again his eyelids fluttered, half closed again, and then opened wonderingly to their widest. He stared about him, his gaze wandering with a drowsy air of astonishment from point to point. His hand swept the floor, picking at the little stones, and his breathing grew louder and more regular.
I called aloud his name, smiting him on the shoulder. He jerked a look at me from his drowsy eyes, frowned, made as if he would turn his head, and then a sudden faint consciousness seemed to return to him.
“W’as’r matter?” he whispered indistinctly.
“Good man,” I bawled joyously. “Wake up, wake up, old chap. Are you hurt? Feel yourself,” and I dragged him to a sitting posture.
“W’as’r time?” he gurgled again sleepily.
“Time! Hang the time. You’re not in bed. We’re in the glacier. Get up and feel yourself.”
He scrabbled weakly at the ground, caught at my sleeve, and leaned against me. He stared at his surroundings, regarding the temple portico with desperate astonishment. Then the ice-hill, sinking down to our very feet, caught his eye. He turned to me with wild amazement in every feature.
“It’s a nightmare,” he declared.
“No such luck,” quoth I, sadly. “We’re here right enough. The question is how to get out before we’re frozen stiff. Can you stand?”
He staggered to his feet, still lurching against me, and began gingerly to press his limbs and ribs. He moaned eloquently as his fingers roamed about his battered bones, making fearful grimaces.
“Ribs nearly bashed in,” he remarked, “but no other damage that I can discover, bar bruises.”
“That’s all right. Now let’s hustle round and see if there’s any sort of way out. That stream over there must go somewhere, if there’s room to follow it. I can hear it tinkling away down some sort of channel.”
In the direction in which I pointed the sides of overhanging rock and glacier converged till they almost met, forming a low tunnel which struck further into the blackness. It was from this burrow that the sound of running water came.
Gerry looked at the dark entrance with much distaste.
“Ugh,” said he, “filthy and cold it’ll be. Don’t you think——”
Click, click, click, and he stopped his argument to stare up to where something clattered above our heads. Gently, invitingly, a flask pattered into view, sliding down the slopes of the ice-hill at the end of a string. It hopped and jigged away most suggestively. We both gave a tumultuous yell of welcome, and dashed at it. I seized it, opened it, and poured half its contents down Gerry’s throat before he could make any demur. Then I took a good pull at it myself, smacking my lips with intense enjoyment. We clutched the string and tugged at it lustily, and those above tugged gladsomely and heartily back. Then I found an old envelope and began to scribble on it, using a rifle-bullet for pencil.
“All right. Get a rope!” was the terse message I attached to the string, and we saw it flit upward when our pressure relaxed, watching it disappear into the blue shadows of the ice-roof with indescribable sensations of relief.
In a few seconds the yell of voices was borne down to us, faint as the chirp of a bird, but delightfully distinct, and we knew that our bulletin was received. Within a minute the flask dropped down for the second time—full too—and on it another bit of paper showed white and welcome. The inscription was—
“Have no rope long as this string. Parsons has gone down for another to splice. Hope all well.”—S.G.
We knew that this meant a wait of half-an-hour at the least, and we took another pull at the spirit to fortify ourselves against the cold, which was wrapping us creepily in its embrace. Then we stamped and tramped violently round the cavern once or twice to enliven our circulations, and this brought us face to face with the stone portico at the back of the cave. We halted before it to stare at each other inquiringly.
I nodded; then together we sauntered up the steps and stood in the entrance.
The temple was square fronted, with an oval doorway; along the facade ran pillared cloisters. It was built of carefully cut and morticed stones, hewn—as we could plainly see by the gaps—from the cliff behind us. Upon the twelve great pillars of the portico were decorated pilasters, chiselled with a clean nicety in the hard stone. They gave evidence of a patient skill and an artistic conception beyond the average. Within their shadow was a pavement, whereon a mosaic of graceful lines and figures entwined themselves. Centrally opened the portal.
The light filtered dimly through the entrance, and as we stood upon the threshold the interior was black and mysterious before us. As our eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, and the shapes of things defined themselves in the twilight, we discerned the grandeur and the horror of the place.
The interior was round—in shape something like the Roman Pantheon—and along the circling walls ran long inscriptions in the Mayan symbol, twisted in varying folds and weavings of devices. The floor was wide and thick with dust. The disturbance of our footsteps made gaps in this, showing the smooth, hard-blocked granite that paved it. It rang hollow beneath our feet, when the nails of our shooting-boots reached it through the carpet of powdery refuse.
At the far end was a towering erection, dominating the emptiness, dimly shadowing through the dusk. It was not till we approached within a yard or two of it that we knew it for a graven similitude of the great Beast. It stood in a sort of chancel of the building, looming high upon a rough majestic mass of granite. This pedestal—a boulder without any mark of hammer or chisel apparent upon it—filled one side of the sanctuary, and the image—carved from virgin rock—reached to the domed roof.
Every loathsome detail of the Thing was reproduced with a skill most marvellous. The horrid foot-webs with claws aspread were there; the long, lowering neck; the malignant head fiendishly erect; the saw-like, serrated tail; the horrible dewlap; the filthy bloatings of the carcass; the thick legs, with bunches of muscle staring harshly out of the stone fore-arms. Below were inscriptions in the familiar symbol.
Far up in the fiercely poised head were eyes that glinted evilly—eyes that licked up into themselves all the poor light of the dim vault and concentrated it into two glistening points of wickedness. They seemed to follow us with such poignancy that we shuddered.
But the greater wonder and the heavier horror lay not in this foul image, terrible though it was in its life-like imitation.
Circling round the throned idol—symbol of the loathliest worship, as I suppose, and the cruellest that the world has ever seen—was a ring of brown and shrivelled objects. They were cloaked with rotting garments, and lean with the waste of centuries. They were mummified by time, but, in the undying cold, undecayed. It was the last worship of the priests of Cay, overwhelmed in the sanctuary, defying the long-drawn death of numbing famine in the presence of their god.
We two drew very near together, and I laid my hand upon Gerry’s shoulder for mere support of a warm and sentient body. The fog of our startled breathings went up steamingly in the air. It smoked like incense before a yet sacred shrine of evil. We gasped as those who seek fresh air in a stuffy atmosphere, and at the same time huddled to one another for warmth. Never in any other condition of heat or cold do I remember to have experienced a freezingly hot oppression.
There were thirty of these poor hapless souls; all were face to earth, with garments hanging about them by mere stillness of pose. Their hands were yellow and claw-like, and were spread abroad upon the pavement. Their faces were swathed in brown hoods that covered their features utterly. Their bony, shrunken outlines showed haggard through the musty rags that clothed them.
We looked questioningly in each other’s eyes before we laid hands upon the rigid kneeling form nearest us. We raised the low-laid face from the floor and turned it towards the scanty light.
The wrinkled features were drawn and crisp with the dryness of a hundred frozen years; the deep-sunk eyes were blurred—the smoothness of the pupils dulled to roughness by the shrinking of the temporal muscles and nerves. As we moved the head, a tooth or two clattered on the floor from the dried, fleshless gums, and gleamed white against the dust. The arms, set stiffly in their parchmenty skin, flopped helplessly abroad as we raised the body from its crouching position. The joints were tense as the bones. The whole body moved as one solid piece, as if it had been run into an invisible mould. Across the drawn forehead was a white band, and on it was broadly sealed the similitude of the great Beast. On the floor in patches remained a few rags of the texture of the rotten clothing.
Silently we gazed on this luckless remnant of a long-forgotten religion and race; then the ghastliness of the thing crowded upon our nerves fearsomely. Reverently we placed the poor gaunt body in its original position, and turned hastily to the door. We shivered as we gained the portico, and I passed the flask to Gerry. At the moment he gulped at the spirit the rope came flapping and uncoiling down the ice-hill opposite, and slipped up almost to our feet.
I sprang forward to catch it up; and began briskly to knot a running loop at the end of it. Gerry eyed me with approval.
“That’s right, old chap,” he remarked. “Up you go.”
I wasted no time or words in argument, being well aware that he would defend for half-an-hour if necessary his proposition that I should have the first chance of ascent. I merely smiled upon him compassionately, reeving a deft hangman’s knot. This done I flung myself suddenly upon my companion, threw the loop over his shoulders and drew it tight beneath his arm-pits. Then I yelled lustily, dragging at the rope with hearty tugs.
Amid the faint echo of an answering shout from above, I had the pleasure of seeing my friend fly swiftly toward the roof of the cavern, using language which might well have melted the adjoining ice. In a very halo of cursing his legs disappeared into the intricacies of the ice-dome, his feet kicking extravagantly at space and dislodging an occasional icicle upon me like a malediction. There was silence, and I was left alone with the ceaseless drip and the dreamy tinkle of the underground waterway.
I will own that for the few moments I was left companionless in the near presence of that musty ring of shrivelled corpses I felt as uncomfortable as I remember to have felt in my life.
You must not forget that I was physically weak from the shock of my fall, and that my nerves had been wrung past tension point by my anxiety for Gerry. Then you will understand that the drip, the purr of the stream ripple, the gray-green light from above in the uncertainty of its shadowing, the knowledge of the gruesomeness behind me, and the vault-like atmosphere, combined to make me almost hysterical. I could have screamed aloud, but didn’t for reasons only known to my English birthright of prejudice and pride.
I wrestled through these æon-long instants of mental breakdown, and then there came the heartsome sound of a crack from above. I opened my eyes to see the rope fall anew upon the pebbly floor. With eager fingers I looped it over my shoulders, and with a mighty jerk gave the signal to haul away. So I fled cherubim-like up out of the glassy solitudes into the untainted air and the blessedness of the sun, and never have I rejoiced with more whole-souled gratitude in the same.
1. Lord Heatherslie makes a mistake here. Professor Lessaution’s subsequent researches proved “the god Cay” to be without doubt Brontosaurus excelsus, remains of which have been found in the Jurassic formation of Colorado. It was purely a land animal.—F.S.