Drome/Chapter 32
Chapter 32
"Lepraylya!"
Steadily we made our way along and downward. The light-streams were increasing in volume, the luminosity becoming stronger and stronger, the vegetation more abundant, the weird shapes larger and more unearthly than ever. The silence was broken by the drone of insects—creatures meet inhabitants, forsooth, for a place so indescribably strange and dreadful.
The cavern we were following was very tortuous, our route even more so, what with the twists and turns which we had to make in order to get through that fantasmagoria of fungal things. I do not mean to say that all of those growths were horrible, but most of them were, and some were as repulsive to the touch as they were to the sight.
As we toiled our way through them,. my heart was replete with dire apprehension. I could not banish the horror of those great burning eyes, the horror of those shrieks, which perhaps were still ringing out. What if we were suddenly to find ourselves face to face with one of those monsters (or more than one) here in this nightmare forest?
Gogrugron! Gogrugron! What on earth was that monstrosity known to the Dromans as a gogrugron? Well, most certainly, I was not desirous of obtaining first-hand knowledge upon that interesting item for the great science of natural history.
At length the light no longer lay in streams and rifts in the darkness, but the darkness, instead, lay in streams through the light. The Dromans quickened their already hurried pace, and there were exclamations of "Drome! Drome!"
"Drome!" echoed Milton. Rhodes. "I wonder what we are going to find."
"Something wonderful," said I, "or something worse, perhaps, than anything that we have seen."
Rhodes laughed, and I saw Drorathusa (Narkus was leading the way) turn and send a curious glance in our direction.
"Well," I added, "anything to get out of this horrible forest of fungi."
Some minutes passed, perhaps only fifteen, perhaps a half-hour. Of a sudden the great tunnel, now as light as a place on a sunless day, gave a sharp turn to the right; a glad cry broke from the Hypogeans.
"Drome! Drome!" they cried.
We all hurried forward.
"Look!" I said as we reached the turn. "The mouth, the mouth! The tunnel ends!"
There, but two hundred feet or so away, was the great yawning mouth of it—nothing visible through the opening but light, pearly opalescent light, mystic, beautiful.
"Drome!" cried Delphis, clapping her hands.
A few moments, and we were standing at the entrance, gazing out over the weird and beautiful scene.
"Drome!"
I turned at the sound and saw Drorathusa, her figure and mien ineffably Sibylline and majestic, pointing out over the strange landscape, her eyes on the face of Milton Rhodes.
"Drome!" she said again.
"Drome!" echoed Milton. Then to me: "I wonder, Bill, what this Drome really is. And I have an idea that this is only the outskirts that we see. Can we at last be near our journey's end, or is that end still far away?"
"Who can tell? This place seems to be a wilderness."
"Yes; a forest primeval."
"What," said I, "are we destined to find down there?"
"Things stranger, Bill, than explorer ever found anywhere in that strange world above us."
"No gogrugrons, I hope."
Rhodes laughed.
"Gogrugron!" said Drorathusa.
And I saw that horror and fear again in her eyes.
The cavern had come out high up on a broken, jagged wall, which went beetling up for hundreds of feet, up to the roof, which arched away over the landscape before us. We were fully half a thousand feet above the floor, which was a mass of luxuriant tropical forest. Glimpses were caught of a stream down to the left, perhaps the one which we had followed for so long. I judged the place to be more than a mile wide; Rhodes, however, that it was perhaps not quite a mile in the widest part. Down this enormous cavern, the eye could range for three or four miles, at which distance the misty light drew its veil over the forest, the dark walls, and the roof arching across.
At times the light quivered and shook, and there were strange flickerings and dartings of opalescent streaks through it—streaks ineffably beautiful and yet, strangely enough, terrible too, terrible as the blades of plunging swords in hands savage and murderous.
Once more Drorathusa raised a hand and pointed into the misty distance.
"Lepraylya!" she said.
Again her eyes were on Milton Rhodes, and, as she spoke that name, I saw in those wondrous orbs of hers the strangest look, I do believe, that I have ever seen. I wondered if Rhodes too saw it. I found his eyes upon Drorathusa, but there was in them so abstracted an expression that I believed his thoughts were far away and that he had not noticed. When I turned to Drorathusa again, it was to find that the strange look was gone.
What a mysterious creature this woman was! Try as I would, yet I feared her.
"Lepraylya!" she said again.
"Lepraylya," Mil ton nodded. "I wonder who or what this Lepraylya can be, Bill."
"King maybe—or something worse."
"Queen, I hope," said Milton Rhodes.
He drew forth his note-book and pencil and handed them to Drorathusa, pronouncing as she took them that mysterious name: "Lepraylya?"
A few strokes with the pencil, and Drorathusa had given us the answer.
"You see, Bill?" said Rhodes, smiling. "A woman—undoubtedly, too, the queen."
Drorathusa's Sibylline look was upon him once more—and she did not smile.