John Martin Leahy

“ Rhodes and Drorathusa evinced an admirable nonchalance, but in the eyes of the others burned the dull light of despair. And perhaps, too, in my own. I tried to hide it, but I could not disguise it from myself—the numbing, maddening fact that I had abandoned hope.
For a time I lay watching Rhodes, who was writing, writing in his journal. How could he do it? Who could ever find the record? At any rate, even though found, it could never be read, for the finder would be a Droman. It made me angry to see a man doing a thing so absurd. ”

“ And I would rather have this heart-tragedy mine—have loved and lost Drorathusa—than never to have seen my lady.
"The heart has its reasons," says Pascal, "that reason can not understand."
Swiftly now the time draws on, on towards that final journey which Milton Rhodes and I are to make, and to make with glad hearts, that journey from which there is never to be a return, that journey back to another world, a world where there is no sun, no moon, no skies, no stars—a world where there is neither day nor night. ”

“ And a feature that I noticed with some unpleasant misgivings was the diminution of width at the farther end. Just how wide it was there we could not tell, what with the uncertain light that struggled to the spot; but we saw enough to know that that way which we should have to cross was a very narrow one indeed; and on either side was the black chasm yawning to receive us. And just beyond, dim and ghostly as though seen in a dream, stupendous columns rose up and were involved in the darkness of the lofty cavern.
"What on earth are those?" I queried. "It reminds one of a Grecian temple." ”

“ One who has never heard it could never believe that so strange and so frightful a sound could come from human throats. The Dromans sprang to their feet—not men and women now, but metamorphosed by the cunning and the diablerie of Brendaldoombro into veritable fiends.
"We're in for it, Bill!" cried Milton, springing to his feet and whipping out his revolver.
I sprang to his side, and we faced them.
Drorathusa, with a fierce cry, threw herself between us and the crowd. We were moving slowly backward, back toward the throne. The voice of our Sibyl rang out clear and full. ”

“ I glanced at Rhodes; I thought that even he looked grave and troubled. Well, so I thought, might he be.
I said nothing, however, until the angel had rejoined her companions. Then:
"There can be not the slightest doubt that they look with great fear upon the coming of people from that world above, a world as mysterious, I suppose, to them as this subterranean world of theirs is to us. And, now they know that they have the great secret also when they have you and me—well, Milton, old tillicum, I think it will indeed be strange if either of us ever again casts a shadow in the sun." ”

“ Science, science! This was the age of science, the age of the jet-plane, the atom-bomb, radium, television and radio; and yet here was a scene to make Science herself rub her eyes in amazement, a scene that might have been taken right out of some wild story or out of some myth of the ancient world. Well, that ancient world too had its science, some of which science, I fear (though this thought would have brought a pooh-pooh from Milton Rhodes) man has lost to his sorrow. ”

“ That scene, like some terrible vision from the pages of Doré, often rises before me—the tall white figure of the angel, the dark, squatting winged monster before her, and we two men from the sunlit world standing there upon that narrow way, the black profundity of the chasm yawning on either side of us.
The angel had indeed well chosen the moment. If that hideous ape-bat, straining at its leash, were loosed at us, our position, despite our revolvers, would be a truly terrible one. Scarce twenty-five feet lay between that Cerberus and ourselves. ”

“ All he knew was that the demon had wings, teeth a foot in length and that fire shot out of its eyes and smoke belched from its nostrils. And surely it would have killed him (and I have no doubt that it would have) if an angel, an angel from the white man's Heaven, had not come and driven it off. What was the angel like? Sklokoyum could not describe her, so wonderful was the vision. And her voice—why, at the very sound of her voice, that horrible tamahnowis flapped its wings and slunk away into the fog and the gloom of the trees. ”

“ That we might at any moment find a demon or a dozen demons driving at us—well, that was a possibility which never left our thoughts for one single second. And, in those narrow places, where the ledge contracted to a mere ribbon of rock, it was all that one wanted to do to hug the wall and make sure of his footing. A frightful place truly in which to meet, even with a revolver, the attack of but one of those winged monsters; and we might find ourselves attacked by a dozen. ”

“ Of a sudden there was a sharp exclamation from the lips of Drorathusa, who was some little distance in advance—an exclamation that fetched me up on the instant.
She had stopped and was pointing towards the left-hand wall, her attitude and the look upon her face such that I started and a sudden fear shot through me.
"What in the world can it be?" I said. "I see nothing but rock and shadows and blackness. What has she found?"
Milton Rhodes made no answer. He was moving forward. I followed. A moment, and he was beside the Dromans, his light turned full upon the wall.
"Look at that, Bill!" ”

“ One of these phantoms, large, amorphous, writhing (its light so strong that it was bright in the rays of the lamps but not of the electric ones) came crawling along, swaying and shaking, straight toward us. Rhodes and I, as if by instinct, moved over so as to miss it; but Drorathusa and the others walked right into it. As they emerged from the spectral, phosphorescent cloudlet, the light clung to them like wraiths of fog, to be slowly dissipated as they advanced in little streams and eddies behind them. ”

“ I sometimes wonder if stranger sport any man has ever known than she was to make with ours.
"Wonder who the deuce 'tis now," muttered Milton Rhodes as he left the room to answer the call.
I remained there at the window. Of that fateful conversation over the wire, I heard not so much as a single syllable. I must have fallen into a deep reverie or something; at any rate, the next thing I knew there was a sudden voice, and Milton Rhodes was standing beside me again, a quizzical expression on his dark features.
"What is it, Bill?" he smiled. "In love at last, old tillicum? ”

“ Scranton. And here is a strange thing, too. It is inexplicable, a mystery indeed. For many years now, thousands of sightseers have every summer visited the mountain—this mountain that your grandfather found so mysterious, so hellish—and yet nothing has ever happened."
"That is true, Mr. Rhodes."
"They have found Rainier," said Milton Rhodes, "beautiful, majestic, a sight to delight the hearts of the gods; but no man has ever found anything having even the remotest resemblance to what your grandfather saw—has ever even found strange footprints in the snow. ”

“ He was about sixty years of age, lean to emaciation and with the cold, hard look of the fanatic in his eyes and, indeed, in his every lineament. His face, smooth-shaven, as is the Droman custom, was like that of some cruel bird of prey. Coldly he received, and returned, the salutation of Drorathusa, and dark with malevolence had been the look which he had fixed upon Rhodes and me.
There could not be the slightest doubt that this human raptor purposed to rend us beak and talon. ”

“ We are prone, some of us, to think the record of the intellect a shabby one; but, after all, the record is not, all things considered, so bad as it may seem at a first glance to be. It might have been better, much better; but we should rejoice that it is not worse, much worse; that the mind, the hope of the world, has made even the slightest advance that it has. Man, however, is on his way at last. And, with Science on his right hand and Invention on his left, he can not fail to conquer the ape and the tiger, to win to a future brighter even than the most beautiful of our brightest dreams. ”

“ I exclaimed.
"The world is proud of its Newtons now," said Rhodes. "But was it proud of them when they came? Whenever I see a man going into ecstasy over the wonders and the beauties and the glories of the human mind—remember, Dante was driven from his country—then I think of these words, written by the Philosopher of Ferney:
"When we reflect that Newton, Locke, Clarke, and Liebnitz, would have been persecuted in France, imprisoned at Rome, and burned at Lisbon, what are we to think of human reason?" ”

“ An ape-bat?"
"That is no ape-bat."
He turned to Ondonarkus.
"Loopmuke?" he queried.
No; it was not a loopmuke. But what it was neither Ondonarkus's pantomime nor Drorathusa's could tell us.
"I don't think it's as bad as that. But the Dromans all know what it is themselves."
"There!" I cried, whirling round. "Did you hear that, Milton? There's that other thing again—that thing behind us!"
"I heard nothing."
"I heard something, I tell you. That mystery with the eyes is not the only thing that is watching us, watching us and waiting." ”

“ A revolver is only a revolver, while that thing—who knows what that monster is?"
"The Dromans know, or at any rate, they think that they do."
"And look at the Dromans. Fear has them. Did you ever see fear like that before? See how they are signing to us to come on. Even Drorathusa is shaken to the very soul."
"After all, 'tis no wonder, Bill, that she is. Those shrieks! How can it continue to shriek and shriek like that?"
Ere long we had come up with the Dromans, who at once quickened their pace. On we went, casting apprehensive glances into the gloom about us. ”

“ Chapter 19 THE ANGEL AND HER DEMON
"I shouldn't be a bit surprised," said Milton Rhodes. "And a strange bridge, that, truly. It looks like a ruin, a ruin that has not fallen."
It looked like a ruin indeed. So ruinous did it appear that I wondered how the mass could possibly remain intact. A short advance, however, and the mystery was solved. The hand of man had not builded that great arch across this dreadful chasm; Nature had fashioned it, there in that region of everlasting darkness. It has, Rhodes said, a remarkable semblance to the celebrated Natural Bridge in Virginia. ”

“ For a time I sat there, my aching body leaning back against the rock-wall, my fevered, tortured mind revolving the grisly possibilities that confronted us. Meditation, however, only served to make our situation the more appalling. With an exclamation of despair, I lay down, longing for sleep's sweet oblivion. At this moment Ondonarkus and the young man—whose name, by the way, was Zenvothunbro—were seen approaching. ”

“ And that which chilled my heart was enhanced by the fact that before me, where Rhodes and the Dromans must be; there was no agitation amongst the ferns, not the slightest movement amongst them. I was alone, alone in that place of dense, concealing vegetation, of silence and mystery. But no; they were there, my companions, right there before me. The ferns hid them, that was all. But why were they so still? Why utterly silent? What had happened? That exclamation, that scream, the silence that had followed—what did it mean? ”

“ A strange, indefinable dread had its grip upon me, and yet I was anxious to go, to put the thing to an issue. In all probability, we should not have far to travel. Nor, in fact, did we.
The way was much like the one that we had traversed in the opposite direction. One or two spots were even more dangerous than any we had found up there. And, over those narrow, dangerous places, where a false step or a slip of the foot on the smooth rock would have meant a most horrible death—along this airy, dizzy Stygian way, the angel had passed. Well, she was a brave angel, at any rate. ”

“ How Rhodes and I, as we sat there, wished that we could understand the words being spoken!
"Always, O Drorathusa," said Brendaldoombro, "has your spirit been strange and wayward. Always have you been a seeker after that which is dark and mysterious. And, of a truth, dark and mysterious is the evil which you have brought down upon Drome.
"Never content with what it is given us to know! Always seeking the obscure, the concealed! Sometimes, I fear, even that which is forbidden!"
At those words the eyes of Drorathusa flashed, but she made no answer. ”

“ On we went, blindly and in desperation, on and on and deeper and deeper into the earth. At length there was a change, whether for good or ill we could not know; but we welcomed it, nevertheless—simply because it was a change. At last we were emerging from the labyrinth. But what lay ahead?
Yes, soon we were no longer in a maze of caverns, grottoes, passages, but in a wide and lofty tunnel. We had made our way down it but a little distance when an inscription was discovered on the right-hand wall. The discovery was made by Rhodes, who happened to be in the rear. ”

“ I asked, "didn't grandfather Scranton say that the eyes of the demon burned with a greenish fire?"
Rhodes nodded.
"Then what I saw was a demon's eye. But why didn't I see two. Is this a Polyphemus demon?"
"Can't say, Bill. The greenish fire, however, is nothing but reflected light; in other words, light has to reach them, or the eyes can't shine. In absolute darkness they would not do so."
"It may be different down here in this world. At any rate, that eye shone, though ghostly. And so the angel at least—and Heaven only knows what besides—is waiting there with her demon!" ”