CHAPTER XVII
A LITTLE DOG’S STUMBLE
It was as Gwen began to lift her voice sweetly in the opening notes of “Just a little bit of string,” that with harassing appropriateness the hawser, which had that morning again been tightened between the anchor and the ship, snapped with a ringing crack. The deck quivered villainously, and I, who had just risen to reach for more tobacco, fell upon my chair and smashed it to matchwood. The doors of the companion flapped to and fro, and the rigging quivered and thrummed. We could hear the jar of the rattled machinery in the engine-room.
At the same moment we were aware that the rocks were grinding upon the ship with a scissor-like movement, though happily they did not close. Had they done so we should have been nipped in their jaws with a very remote chance of escape. We also realized that the smoke-cloud, which had risen and grown thinner during the day, was expanding and thickening, making the twilight of the short Antarctic night a very business-like gloom.
We slipped across the gangways hurriedly, and grouped ourselves upon the rocks. A low rumble came creeping across the empty silences of the glacier. It rolled up to us like the muffled groaning of a buried army. We could fancy that the tombed city of long ago was sending out its desperate call for succor. The rocks shook beneath us. The gravel danced and pattered about our feet. We staggered, catching at one another aimlessly. Gwen, who was next me, tripped comfortably into my arms, where I held her with much content, both of us swaying absurdly.
The dull roar became abruptly a sharp crash. The ground rippled and worked horribly, and we were flung to earth, grasping at the rolling boulders. The cleft beneath the ship yawned like some Titanic mouth. As the remaining hawser parted, the keel sank further into the opening with a thud, and the stones we had built up beneath it went clattering down into the abyss. Not ten yards from where Gwen and I fell abroad, and not two feet from where Lessaution grovelled, a fissure opened and shut with a snap as of teeth. The Professor in fact declared that for one hair-raising moment he looked into the very deepest fastnesses of death.
As the gap closed, a puff of sulphurous steam was shot into the air. It clouded over us, making us cough. A clatter of ice and falling water came from the glacier; a splinter or two fell from the peak. Then, suddenly as came the upheaval, quiet returned and fell upon the scene.
From that moment, though, the darkness was riven. The mushroom-like pall of smoke now hung over us rosy red from fires that burnt beneath it in the lap of the hill. The crimson light flared down into the empty lake basin, reflected back luridly from the rocks. A small, fine rain of soot, gray and woolly, began to fall; it got into our eyes and nostrils, and set us sneezing and winking prodigiously. Then in trembling and with hopelessness in our hearts we climbed the slopes to the cliff-tops, filled with desolation in that the earth having turned traitor, we had but the sea to look to. How vainly we might look and how long we knew but too well.
The red glow wavered upon crestless surges that moved slowly upon the crags. Far out to sea the islands of the first eruption showed black and shattered, dim outlines in the cinder rain. This fell mercilessly on floe and berg, blackening them to filthy patches upon the rosy sea. Far away we could still see the gleam of moonlight upon the outer ocean, peaceful and silvered against the blood-like hue of the landward waters. From above us came the boom of irregular explosions, and gray tufts of smoke shot up into the darkness. Here and there crimson splashes of flame cut the smoke tower. They were spouts of molten stone, the slag of that mighty furnace. The snap and hiss as these fell upon the glacier was like the overboiling of some stupendous kettle.
My eyes were seared with unrest in this hopelessness of sea and land. I turned them upon Gwen, who stood beside me, to give them comfort. She had a lace shawl about her head and arched over her face, shading it from the steady drizzle of cinders. These lay upon the few unprotected curls that flecked her forehead, giving her a poudré effect that in that deep twilight radiance was simply ravishing. The same scarlet duskiness beat upon her complexion, giving it the tint of a moss-rose. Her eyes shone anxiously, but like stars.
I gnawed restlessly at my mustache. I was but human and desperately in love. The desire to take her in my arms and swear that nothing on earth should hurt her was just on the borders of being irresistible.
“Magnificent sight, isn’t it?” I questioned, looking down at her pleasantly.
“Gorgeous,” she answered briefly, coming a step nearer. It was with a curious catch in her voice she added: “But what if it overflows?”
“Oh, it won’t,” I answered confidently. “Besides, the glacier’s between us and it.”
“Another earthquake might split the glacier.”
“We’ll wait till it does,” said I cheerfully. “We shall be well away before anything of that kind happens.”
She stood silent for a minute or two, tapping her fingers idly on the boulder beside her. Then she looked up at me with a quick smile.
“After all, it would be very soon over, wouldn’t it?”
“Quite soon,” said I, with assurance. “And—and we should be all together.”
She glanced up at me again with a queer little smile that tried to cover the catch of her voice.
“I don’t know that I was thinking of—all,” she said, and turned away to join the others as they began to wander back towards the ship, and I strode beside her, fighting my passionate impulses in silence. For no doubt she had meant it for a reminder. Denvarre was the thought of her heart now that possible disaster hung over us, and I, in my blundering way, wanted to shove myself into an equality with him. I chewed the cud of this reflection as we all strolled down the slope, and the bitter hope that the end might come as she had pictured it almost crept into my heart, so far outside the bounds of common sense does the fever of jealousy carry one. But I’m thankful to say that my English birthright of self-possession came back to me within a score of strides, leaving me rational again.
I explained—and the others found it remarkably easy to understand—that it would be folly to think of sleeping aboard again that night. We must take up our residence on the cliff where we had prepared our shelter. So up the ledges of the rock pyramid we scrambled, and lodged ourselves in the tarpaulined crevices at the top. We mostly slept, I believe, but I was restless. For I had realized only too well that the great smoke pall that overhung us and made long the night was Death’s Shadow indeed.
As the dawn began to filter in under the fog of dust, I woke and strode out to see how fared the world of fire and ice. A great hush had fallen with the livid morning light. The thunderous boom of the crater had ceased, and from above came only the distant purr and simmer of undying fires. The boil and roar of active eruption had died down. The great smoke curtain stretched away in a long wreath inland, carried before the cool sea breeze. The heavy sulphur mist had lightened with the same fresh draught, and the gulls had returned and were clamoring overhead in their hundreds. The sea lay in purple splendor, save where it was broken by the soot-begrimed floe. The swish of ripples on the cliff-foot was peaceful as the drip of a well-bucket.
I glanced down to where our ship lay. She seemed to have slipped over yet further in the night. A soft mist clung about her, and I puzzled myself to think how vapor could rise from barren and solid stone. It was dissolving upward as I watched, but ever forming anew. Then I understood that it was coming out of the fissure—the steam, no doubt, of some underground geyser. The carcass of the great whale that had been stranded by the volcanic wave had slidden down the incline of smooth rock almost into the centre of the basin. I reflected with dissatisfaction that the stench of this offal so close to our headquarters would be by no means pleasant.
My eyes wandered to the cliff-top where we had stood the night before, dwelling upon it with half-painful, half-pleasurable reminiscence. How sweet Gwen had looked, and how unattainable. I began the everlasting fight with my inner self that was new and old every morning, thrusting forward to my soul’s attention every possible argument why I should think of her no more, and doing so naturally with the same pain and the same enjoyment as much as ever.
Into the midst of my musings came a sudden jar of unfamiliarity as I stared at the edge of the crags. I blinked unbelievingly. A black breadth of shadow intersected the rocks as if a knife had carved them rigidly to the line. I rubbed my eyes. There was no doubt about it. A clean-cut cleft was in the rocks, some twenty feet broad. How deep I could not tell.
I clambered down the ledges softly from hold to hold, avoiding noise that the others might have their fill of healthful sleep. I crossed the bare flat between me and the new-made fissure, and stood upon the edge. I peered in.
The gash was driven deep into the bosom of the cliff, reaching to within twenty feet of the tide-line. A lump or two of granite had fallen from the parting edges and lay in the nip of the angle below. As I looked, one of them slipped in the vice-like hold, and settled nearer the bottom. A few seconds later another did the same. Then I understood that the gap was widening before me as clay cracks in the June sunshine.
I hung over the pit, gazing into it with hopeful eyes. Would the cliff be riven to its base, and the sea be let in upon us? Then, by Jove, we’d have the old Racoon afloat again. We should escape from this land of desolation like rats from an opened trap. Into a slow opening like this the sea would pour gently. It would not overwhelm the ship with a sudden cascade. Such luck would be too stupendous—I assured myself of it most determinedly. Yet—yet—what a joyous awakening it would be for my companions if so outrageous a thing could come about. How melodramatically we should sweep out into the free spread of waters beyond!
My chain of cheerful prophecy here got a sudden set back. As I looked at the largest stone in the crack, it split across. In spiderlike ramifications cracks multiplied upon it. It fell apart into rubble. Finally only dust filled the crevice. The rocks were closing even as they had opened. A stratum cleavage was here. It worked uneasily in the travail of the mountain behind—yawning in weariness of the constant convulsions. Now in the rest following the upheaval it was settling together again.
As I stood and pondered these things another eruption roared in the crater mouth. The ground rocked uneasily beneath my feet; I stumbled to my knees. With a snap the jaws of the cliff closed, nothing remaining but the ragged dent where the edges had been riven. As I scrambled to my feet a shrill yell re-echoed above the closing roar of the earthquake. I turned hastily to see a funny sight.
Down the lower slopes of the crag we had camped upon rolled a round object; it emitted screams of the most piercing description, and advanced with gathering speed. I recognized the gorgeous sleeping-suit affected by Lessaution, and the eye-searing yellow tassel of his nightcap. They made a vivid flash of meteoric color down the sombre rocks.
The little savant was scrabbling at the stone stairway as he fled along, tearing unavailingly at clumps of lichen, and snatching at the loose boulders. These last he had managed to set moving in some quantity, and they enveloped him in a clattering halo of pebbles that grew in velocity and in volume. The clamor of his onset was prodigious. He revolved like a catherine-wheel. His expressive countenance glared witheringly out into space during the curt moments it was uppermost, returning with a baffled air to face the earth as he flew swiftly round. His little legs threshed desperately into emptiness. Finally with a preposterous bounce he dropped over a ledge some four feet high, and swept out from the crag foot amid his escort of boulders, squirming fearfully.
Choking back my laughter I ran to him with an expression of deepest solicitude. Before I reached him he had risen, and groaning pathetically, began to slap himself about the more outlying portions of his person, slipping his hand from limb to limb delicately, and cursing with fluency as bruise after bruise became manifest. Fortunately his injured shoulder had been well swathed in lint, and showed no signs of having broken out again.
He explained that he was murdered in effect—yes, he had no whole bone in his body. The horrible boulders had mangled him into a fricassee. He would be tender eating for M. le Dinosaure, to whom his remains would be welcome. He, Emil Saiger Lessaution, had for them no further use—no, in their present unbelievable state they would be of no slightest good. He was one large weal. I might figure to myself that, seeing me below, he had started down to join me. After the disgusting sulphurous stenches of the night before, he had had the intention to smell the freshness of the sea. Thus, when he was half-way down, behold the earthquake had swept him from his feet. Engulfed in tumultuous rubble he had been borne down the cliff as in a torrent. His skin was obtused to the baring of the flesh, and his joints—yes, his joints, let it be observed—strained as by a rack. A thousand thunders! These tremblings of the earth were affrighting. For him—he did not care when he left so unsafe a region.
I armed him gently up the ascent to where the rest of our party—also aroused by the eruption—were watching us. I surrendered him into the hands of Rafferty, who, on the strength of the possession of a case of sticking-plaster, had constituted himself surgeon to the ship’s company. From his hands the Professor emerged a few minutes later, with an intricate pattern decking his features, to receive the full sympathy of us all.
After this we proceeded to breakfast, with certain apprehensions of what might happen in the way of further earthquakes, but still with moderate appetite. There was one slight rocking of the ground, but it did not so much as upset a tumbler, and we concluded that the worst was, for the present, over.
As the morning drew on we descended to the ship to examine her plight. She was leaning over at an angle of forty-five degrees, propped by the edge of the crevasse. Her keel was straining at the splinters jammed in the narrows of the opening. She lay so that her bulge almost covered the chamber in the rock. The hot fumes were still rising from below, smelling, for all the world, like the baths at Aix.
We got aboard and went down into the saloon. Everything was in the wildest disorder. The table, being screwed to the floor, was still unmoved, but everything else was piled in heaps between the floor and the lockers. Hardly a bit of crockery but had its crack or two, and many of the plates and glasses were broken outright. In the hold the bilge was leaking through her strained sides, dripping down the rocks against which she leaned. Not a rat squeaked or scampered in this—their usual stronghold—and their damp footprints were visible leading away from the ship. Evidently this dry dock was not to their liking.
We set to work to get up some coal from the bunkers and some provisions from the storeroom. All of us—even the ladies—carried a larger or a smaller package, and in about an hour the procession set back to the cliff abode.
Gerry and Vi were alone on deck as I emerged last from the companion. Gerry’s face was a study in scarlet and surprise. Something had most certainly occurred within the last few minutes to move him greatly, and as I appeared he strode toward me with an air of joyful importance. At the same moment, Vi, who had turned away as I stepped out of the doorway, swung quickly round again toward him.
“Hush!” she ejaculated, frowning with a meaning look toward the accommodation ladder, and Denvarre’s head rose into view as he ascended.
Gerry stopped with a look of indecision. Then with a beneficent grin he wheeled round and offered her his hand to step down off the deck. I saw that below, the others were grouped upon the rocks, waiting for us to begin the ascent again. I was at a loss to account for Gerry’s extraordinary behavior, especially the fact that he was walking happily enough with Vi, after avoiding her like the plague ever since he’d learned of her engagement.
I stepped down to join the party as Denvarre plunged hastily down the companion to fetch, as he explained, another pipe. I began to saunter along with Gwen and Lessaution, still watching with amazement Gerry’s enthusiastic escort of Vi. In two or three minutes Denvarre overtook us. I noticed that Gwen shot a look at him as he reached us, which I found difficult to explain. He was wearing a stony expression, and avoided meeting her gaze. He began to talk to Lessaution with great vivacity, and the two gradually drew ahead of us, swinging between them the sack of coal that the little Frenchman had been staggering under alone. We were all more or less weighed down with stores, even the girls carrying their share. Gwen bore in one hand a pound of candles, and in the other a tin of mustard.
As the other two drew out of earshot, the silence deepened uncomfortably between Gwen and myself. I cannot explain it, but there seemed to be a sense of strain between us. I looked up once to find her regarding me with a fixed expression, and she reddened deeply as I caught the glance. She turned her head away hurriedly. Then as if by an effort she faced me again. I could see by the catch in her pretty throat that she was gathering herself together to say something—something that she found it difficult to express. There came a sudden interruption.
Fidget, the fox-terrier, had been gambolling and ambling aimlessly about. Suddenly, raising her nose, she sniffed the air curiously. She barked sharply, pattering back toward the ship. She leaped the narrowest end of the fissure, and trotted up the further slopes of the basin still yapping angrily. Her nose was in the air defiantly; the bristles of her withers stood up.
She stopped with a quick jerk as she neared the top. Planting her fore-legs stiffly before her, she began a series of shrill yelpings, dancing in her excitement.
Her bark leaped a couple of octaves into a shriek of fear, and out from behind a boulder loomed the hideous triangular head we knew too well. The Monster of the cañon lumbered into view, and the little dog turned and flew for us frantically, not the merest indication of her tail in evidence, so tightly was it tucked between her legs.
In her unseeing terror she fled straight toward us, not avoiding the cleft. Consequently she came slap upon it, and unable to stop, charged straight into it. With a thump and a squeak she fell into the angle of the bottom. Being so far above her, we could plainly see how she was caught in the nip of the crevice, where she remained struggling desperately upon her back, howling piercingly as she twisted and wriggled between the cruel stones.
We had commenced to run for our rock, which was fortunately only about two hundred yards distant. The Beast was still about a quarter of a mile from the ship and the fissure, out of which still came poor Fidget’s heart-rending yells.
“Poor little wretch,” I remarked to Gwen, as I turned back to face the ascent. “But I expect it’ll be mercifully quick and soon over.”
No answer came, and I was aware—and the blood within me seemed to freeze with the knowledge—that Gwen was flying down the slope to where the little dog lay howling, her eyes ablaze, her curls streaming in the wind. She was calling Fidget desperately by name, while toward her with steadfast, leisured tread rolled that great Horror, as three centuries before he had swung down upon the hapless Mayan maiden.
“Stop,” I screamed, “for God’s sake stop,” and I flung away my burden and raced madly down the slope. She gave no heed, still calling loudly to Fidget, whose whinings increased as we drew nearer. I ran as I have never run before or since; I saw the eyes of the Beast glint emerald-sheened in the sun; I saw his ungainly waddle break into a cumbersome trot, and the desperation of my speed brought me to Gwen’s side in a couple of seconds.
“Stop! Are you mad?” I yelled. “What’s a dog’s life to yours?” and I snatched at her shoulder to drag her back.
A pebble shot from under my feet, glancing upon the water-smooth granite; I feel heavily, while a thousand stars danced before my eyes. As I scrambled dazedly to my feet, I saw Gwen thirty yards away lifting Fidget from the cleft, and rushed to meet her as she turned to run toward me. The Beast was a short furlong distant.
I looked up the quarter-of-mile of steep rock escarpment that lay between us and safety, and knew that I, at least, dizzy as I was, could never mount it before he would be upon us. And Gwen might fall. Anything might happen. No, the cavern beneath the ship was the only chance. I staggered forward and caught her elbow as she ran.
“It’s no good,” I said. “We’re done. The cave beneath the ship’s the only possible place.”
“Can’t we run for it?” she gasped.
“I can’t, at any rate,” I answered sadly, “and I don’t think you’d better try.”
“Oh, you’re hurt—you’re hurt,” she whispered pantingly as we raced toward the ship. “And it’s my fault. But I couldn’t stand the screams of the poor little wretch—I couldn’t have seen her torn and mangled. Hadn’t we better get into it?” and she pointed up the ship’s side above us.
“No,” I answered, as I handed her swiftly on to the ledge, and helped her down into the cave beyond, “he might manage to break in upon us. Here we’re safe for the present, at any rate. He may try to starve us out, but it isn’t likely. After a bit, when he finds he can’t get at us, he’ll shuffle away as he came.”
Fidget was barking furiously, and bristling up her hair, but at the farthest end of the cavern. A sludgy, dragging movement became audible, and the murky odor of the Horror clouded down to us. Looking out from under the overhanging roof I saw a single shining claw project over the edge of the cleft. Then the half of the pad came into view, the rock dinting its podginess.
The brute swung his head over me, and parted his thin, inquisitive lips almost to a sneer. For one halting second the head was poised motionless. Then, swift as a dropping stone, it smote down at me, and I flung myself back, the evil eyes flashing past not five yards away. There they hung and balanced, glinting evilly at us, while the long pendant neck strained into the cleft from above. The huge body made twilight in the cavern, swelling eagerly into the space between the rock and the ship. The muscular fore-arms kneaded and crumbled the edges of the fissure. So were we desperately prisoned, and such was our jailer.