Drome/Chapter 29
Chapter 29
The Ghost
We waited, listening intently; but the place was as silent as the tomb.
"What," I asked, "did you hear?"
"I have no idea, Bill, what it is."
"What were the sounds like?"
"I don't know."
"Were they loud or faint?"
"Faint—mysterious."
"Great heaven!" said I; "what can it be? How long since you first heard it?"
"Only a few minutes. I can't imagine why the sounds have ceased. I wonder if it has discovered our presence." "Hadn't we better wake the Dro-mans?"
"I see no necessity for it. When the thing comes—and it was coming, I know—they may be awakened suddenly enough. The men are farther from the passage than we are, the ladies farther still. It must pass us before it can reach them; and we have our revolvers."
"Yes; we have our revolvers. But we don't know what's coming."
"There!" Rhodes exclaimed, his voice a whisper. "We'll soon know. Did you hear that?"
"I heard it. And there it is again!"
"It's coming, Bill!"
It was coming. What were we to see issue from that passage? I gripped my revolver and waited in a suspense that was simply agonizing. The sound ceased—came again. It was a pad-pad, and once or twice another sound was heard—as though produced by something brushing along the wall.
"Look!" I said, crouching forward. "Light!"
The rays grew stronger, casting long shadows—shadows swaying, shaking, crawling. Then of a sudden the light itself appeared and a tall figure came gliding out of the passage.
"Drorathusa!" exclaimed Milton Rhodes.
This sudden lurch from agonized suspense and Gorgonic imagination to glad reality left me for some seconds speechless.
"Well, well," laughed Milton Rhodes, pressing the button and flooding the place with light, "isn't imagination a wonderful thing?"
"But," said I, "what on earth does this mean?"
"Look there, Bill, look!" cried Rhodes. "Look at that!"
Drorathusa was moving straight toward us, a strange smile on that Sibylline face of hers.
"What do you mean?"
"The canteen! Look at her canteen!" Milton cried, pointing excitedly.
Drorathusa stopped and raised the canteen, which was incased in canvas-like stuff. It was wet—yes, wet and dripping.
"Water!" I cried, springing up and rushing toward her.
"Narranawnzee!" said Drorathusa, reaching the canteen toward my clutching fingers.
Great Pluvius, how I did drink! I'd be drinking yet if Rhodes hadn't seized the vessel and wrested it from me.
"You must be careful," said he. "We mustn't drink too much at first."
And he raised the canteen forthwith and proceeded to swallow a couple of quarts.
"For heaven's sake," I told him, "leave some for the others!"
"Yes," said Rhodes, handing the water to Drorathusa. "We have been kind of ungallant, Bill—hoggish. But I was as dry as a burnt cork."
Ere he had ceased speaking, Drorathusa was moving toward her companions. How wonderful was that change, that rush from out the black depths of despair! And yet our situation was still truly a terrible one, for we were lost. But we did not think of that. Water, water! We had water now, and we rejoiced as though we had been caught up and set down in the loveliest of all the lovely glades of Paradise.
A few minutes, and we all (with tent and packs) were following Drorathusa through the passage, were hurrying toward the stream or pool that she had discovered. What whim, what freak of strange chance had led that mysterious woman forth whilst others slept the sleep of despair, forth into that particular passage? Even now I do not know the answer.
After following its sinuosities for several hundred feet, we suddenly-stepped out of the passage and into a great chamber. This, like our sleeping place, was weird and savage in the extreme. Broken rock masses rose up, in all directions. There were distorted pyramids, fantastic pinnacles, spires, obelisks—even pillars, but they were pillars grotesque and awful as though seen in a dream.
Wider and wider grew the place, more and more broken and savage. Soon even the walls were involved in darkness. The roof, as we advanced, became more and more lofty. Clearly this cavern was one of enormous extent. I began to glance about with some apprehension. How had Drorathusa found her way into such a place—and out again? I marveled that she had not got lost. But she had not, and evidently there was no likelihood that that could happen. She was moving forward, into that place of savage confusion, with never a sign of hesitation, with the certitude of one following a well-beaten path.
Suddenly Drorathusa stopped, and, after making a sign of silence, she said, pointing into the blackness before us: "Narranawnzee."
Narranawanzee! Yes, there it was, the faint murmur and tinkle of water.
We hurried forward, the wall of the cavern merging from out the darkness. And there it was, a large spring of the purest, coolest water gushing out from the base of the rock, to fall in a gentle cascade and then flow away to a great pool gleaming dark and sullen in the feeble rays that found their way to it.
It was near 9 o'clock of the day
following when we left that spot.
Rhodes and I were smooth-shaven
again; yes, he had brought along a
razor—one of your old-fashioned,
antediluvian scrapers. Narkus and
Thumbra too had gladly availed
themselves of this opportunity to get
rid of their beards, which, however,
they had kept trimmed close with
clippers. Your Droman has a horror
of mustaches, beard or whiskers. As
for the ladies, they were now radiant
and lovely as Dians.
We were following the stream. An hour passed, another. We had advanced five miles or so and had descended probably half a thousand feet. And then we lost our guide; the stream flowed into a cleft in the rock, to burst forth again perhaps far, far down, in some black cavern that has never known, and indeed never may know, the tread of any human foot.
For some minutes we lingered there, as though reluctant to quit the spot; and then, with a last lingering look at those pellucid waters, flashing dark and sullen, however, as the light moved from them, we pressed grimly on and soon were involved in a cavern so rugged and smashed that we actually began to despair of ever getting through it. But we did get through, to step suddenly out into a place as smooth almost as a floor. The slope was a gentle one, and we pressed forward at a rapid rate.
We had gone perhaps a mile and a half when Rhodes, who was walking in advance with Drorathusa, abruptly halted, cried out and pointed.
Something white was dimly visible off in the darkness. We moved toward it, the Dromans evincing a tense excitement. A cry broke from them, and they made a rush forward.
It was a mark upon the wall, a mark which they themselves had placed there. We had found the way to Drome.
"And let us hope," said I to Rhodes in the midst of the rejoicing, "that we don't lose it again."
Drorathusa turned her look upon Rhodes and me and pointed down the cavern.
"Narranawnzee," she said.
We understood that and took a drink upon it.
Again Drorathusa pointed.
"Drome," said she.
That too we understood—that is, we thought we knew what she meant by Drome.
It was a few minutes past 7 (p. m.) when we reached the narranawnzee, a fine deep pool without any discoverable inlet or outlet, and there we halted for the night.
In this spot the Dromans had left a food-depot, and right glad were we to see this accession to the larder. There was also a supply of oil.
That evening (I find it convenient to use these inaccurate terms) I fished out my journal and carefully brought it forward, up to the hour, to the very minute. I felt blithe as a lark, and so, indeed, did everybody else, everybody save Drorathusa, and even she was somberly happy. I thought that our troubles were over!
Of a sudden Rhodes slapped down his journal and, to the surprize of the Dromans and, forsooth, to my own, made a dive at an oil-container, which Narkus had just emptied.
"At last—our depth, Bill!" he cried.
And he proceeded to ascertain the boiling point of water, the heat being furnished by Drorathusa's lamp and that of Siris, the older of the young women. Delphis, by the way, was the name of the other, the white-haired girl.
It was a strange, a striking picture truly—Milton Rhodes bending over his improvised hypogemeter, the Dromans looking on with curiosity, perplexity and strange questionings in their looks.
At last Rhodes was satisfied with the result, that it was as near accuracy as the circumstances would permit.
"We are," said he after computing for some moments in his journal, "at a depth of a little more than twelve thousand feet. The exact figures are 12,260 feet—though we can not, of course, claim for our determination any high degree of accuracy. I feel confident, however, that it is near the truth. Call it twelve thousand feet."
"Twelve thousand feet! Below the level of the sea?"
"Yes, Bill; below the level of the sea."
"Great Erebus, I knew that we had descended a long way, but I would never have believed that we had gone down over two miles. Two miles below sea-level. That is a record-smasher."
"Rather," Milton smiled. "Before us, no man (of our sunlit world) had penetrated into the crust of the earth to a greater depth than 3,758 feet below the level of the sea. That is the depth of the mine at St. John del Rey, Minas Geraes, Brazil."
"Two miles—over two miles down!" said I.
"And probably we are only started."
"But the pressure. We can't go down very far into this steadily increasing pressure, increasing in a geometrical ratio whilst the depth increases only in an arithmetical one."
"But," Milton said, "I showed you that there is something wrong with the law."
"Then how do you know that we have reached a depth of twelve thousand feet and over—if the law breaks down?"
"I don't believe that it has broken down yet. It will hold good for this slight descent which we have made. And, of course, if fact is found to coincide with theory, then our descent will be arrested at no great depth."
"And," I said, "unless the discrepancy between fact and theory is a remarkable one, we will have no means of knowing whether the law has broken down or not."
"We shall have no means of knowing, Bill—unless, as you say, truth and theory are remarkably divergent. Of course, in that case, we should not long remain unaware of the fact. Of the depth, then, we can not be certain; but the boiling point will always give us the atmospheric pressure."
"That isn't what is worrying me," I told him; "it is the pressure itself."
"The pressure itself," Milton returned, "would produce no dire effects. It is not the diminution of pressure that produces the dreaded mountain sickness, as was clearly shown by Dr. Paul Bert. Of educated people, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand will tell you that the acceleration of the pulse as one ascends to lofty heights, the short, troubled breathing, the disordered vision, extreme weakness, nausea, vertigo, bleeding at nose and lungs, in short, all the symptoms of the terrible mal des montagnes, are caused by the diminution of the atmospheric pressure. The average human being—such is their explanation—having a surface of about fifteen square feet, sustains an atmospheric pressure of more than thirty thousand pounds; at an elevation of eighteen thousand feet, the pressure is but one-half of that; is it any wonder, then, that a man gets mountain sickness?"
"Shades of ten thousand Gullivers," I exclaimed, "do you mean to say that those nine hundred and ninety-nine are wrong?"
"Certainly they are wrong, so wrong as to cause Dr. Bert to write:
'It is amazing to find a theory so plainly at variance with elementary physical laws accepted by eminent men.'"
"Well, well," was my sage remark, "I suppose the next thing on the program will be the statement that it is not the fire that makes the pot boil; it is the heat."
"If it doesn't rain, Bill, tomorrow will be Monday. However, Dr. Bert (Professor in the Paris Faculty of Sciences) proved 'that the lessening of the barometric pressure,' to use his own words, 'is of no account, mechanically, in the production of the phenomena.' Yes, he proved that, to use his own words again, 'it is not the lowering of mechanical pressure that produces the symptoms, but the low tension of the oxygen of the dilated air, which low tension prevents the oxygen from entering the blood in sufficient quantity.' Dr. Bert not only experimented on sparrows but entered the air-chamber himself. As the pressure was reduced, he experienced all the symptoms of mountain sickness. 'But,' he says, 'all these symptoms disappeared as by enchantment as soon as I respired some of the oxygen in the bag; returning, however, when I again breathed the air of the cylinder.'
"In one of his experiments, the pressure was reduced to 246 millimeters—9.7 inches. 'This,' he says, 'is exactly the pressure on the highest summit of the Himalayas—the same degree of pressure which was so near proving fatal to Glaisher and Coxwell; I reached this point without the slightest sense of discomfort, or, to speak more accurately, the unpleasant sensations I felt at the beginning had entirely disappeared. A bird in the cylinder with me was leaning on one side, and vary sick. It was my wish to continue the experiment till the bird died, but the steam-pump, conspiring, as I suspect, with the people who were watching me through glass peep-holes, would not work, and so I had to return to normal pressure.'
"So, you see, Bill, it is the low tension of the oxygen and not the diminished pressure that produces the distress and suffering and even death."
"All this is very interesting, but our problem is not one of rarefied air; the atmosphere here is compressed."
"And, in compressed air," said Milton Rhodes, "it is the oxygen again that produces the symptoms. Subject a sparrow to a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and the bird is thrown into convulsions, stronger than those produced by tetanus or strychnin, convulsions which soon end in death. If pure oxygen is used, a pressure of only five atmospheres kills the sparrow. But—and mark this—if the air be deficient in oxygen, the pressure of twenty atmospheres does not produce even a tremor. So, you see, Bill," he concluded, "we could descend to a very great depth in an atmosphere poor in oxygen."
"But how do we know that the atmosphere down there is poor in oxygen? It may be nothing of the kind. It may be saturated with it."
"Of course, we don't know. All we know is that we know nothing. And that reminds me of Socrates. That is what he said—that all he knew was that he didn't know anything. Arcesilaus declared that Socrates didn't even know that! However, hope is as cheap as despair. And, remember, here are our Hypogeans. They can ascend to our world, to a height of eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and that, so far as we know, without suffering the slightest inconvenience."
"Something queer about that," was my comment.
"It is queer, Bill. However, we know that they can live in the (to them) rarefied air of our world; why, then, think that conditions down there, whether five miles down or fifty miles, will prove fatal to us?"
On the following morning, we
were under way at an early hour.
The route led down a great tunnel;
we could not have got lost now if we
had tried. Shortly before noon, the
welcome sounds of narranawnzee
were heard, and there was a large
stream gushing out of the wall. At
times, as we advanced, the stream
would move along dreamy and silent;
then it would be seen rushing and
glancing and again growling and
foaming in lovely cascades.
Steadily, save for the noon halt, we toiled our onward and downward way. It was half past 7 when we halted—the eery silence of the place broken by the soft, musical murmuring of the narranawnzee. Again Rhodes ascertained the boiling-point of water. It was 251° Fahrenheit. We were, therefore, under a pressure of two atmospheres; we had reached the depth of 18,500 feet. In other words, we were three miles and a half below the level of the sea!
It seems strange that I awoke, for I was dreaming the loveliest dream—a dream of fairy landscapes, birds and flowers, with lovely Cinderella in the midst of them. Nor do I know why I turned over onto my right side, for I was very comfortable as it was. But turn I did. And I was just going to close my eyes, to return to the dreamland of the fairies. But I did not close them. Instead, my heart gave a wild leap, and I opened them wide. The next instant I was sitting up, straining my eyes as I looked into the darkness. Pear had its grip upon me, and I felt my hair begin to stand on end.
For there was something in that blackness, something visible—moving!
Scarcely had my eyes fallen upon this amorphous, ghostly thing when it rose into the air, slowly and without the faintest sound. Up it rose and up, whilst I sat watching, immovable, speechless, as though in the clutch of some uncanny charm.
Up! Up to the very roof of the cavern! Of a sudden there was a fearful change in its form. Then the ghost, now of monstrous shape, was coming down—coming down straight toward me!