The Moon Terror/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
THE SORCERERS OF CHINA
"DOUBTLESS you never heard of the Seuen-H'sin."
The speaker was Dr. Ferdinand Gresham, and these were the first words he had uttered since we had entered our private compartment on the midnight express for Washington, an hour before.
I lowered my cigar expectantly.
"No," I said; "never until you spoke the name in a momentary fit of illness this evening."
The doctor gave me a swift, searching glance, as if questioning what I might have learned. Presently he went to the door and looked out into the passage, apparently assuring himself no one was within hearing; then, locking the portal, he returned to his seat and said:
"So you never heard of the Seuen-H'sin—'The Sect of the Two Moons'? Then I will tell you: the Seuen-H'sin are the sorcerers of China, and the most murderously diabolical breed of human beings on this earth! They are the makers of these earthquakes that are aimed to wreck our world!"
The astronomer's declaration so dumfounded me that I could only stare at him, wondering if he were serious.
"The Seuen-H'sin are sorcerers," he repeated presently, "whose devilish power is shaking our planet to the core. And I say to you solemnly that this 'KWO'—who is Kwo-Sung-tao, high priest of the Seuen-H'sin—is a thousand times more dangerous than all the conquerors in history! Already he has absolute control of a hundred millions of people—mind and body, body and soul!—holding them enthralled by black arts so terrible that the civilized mind cannot conceive of them!"
Dr. Gresham leaned forward, his eyes shining brightly, his voice betraying deep emotion.
"Have you any idea," he demanded "what goes on in the farthermost interior of China? Has any American or European?
"We read of a republic superseding her ancient monarchy, and we meet her students who are sent here to our schools. We hear of the expansion of our commerce along the jagged edges of that great Unknown, and we learn of Chinese railroad projects fostered by our financiers. But no human being in the outside world could possibly conceive what takes place in that gigantic shadowland—vague and vast as the midnight heavens—a continent unknown, impenetrable!
"Shut away in that remote interior—in a valley so little heard of that it is almost mythical—beyond trackless deserts and the loftiest mountains on the globe—this terrible sect of sorcerers has been growing in power for thousands of years, storing up secret energy that some day should inundate the world with horrors such as never have been known!
"And yet you never heard of the Seuen-H'sin! No; nor has any other Caucasian, except, perhaps, a chance missionary or two.
"But, I tell you, I have seen them!"
Dr. Gresham was becoming strangely excited, and his voice rose almost shrilly above the roar of the train.
"I have seen them," he went on. "I have crossed the Mountains of Fear, whose summits tower as high as from the earth to the moon, and I have watched the stars dance at night upon their glaciers. I have starved upon the dead plains of Dzun-Sz'chuen, and I have swum the River of Death. I have slept in the Caves of Nganhwiu, where the hot winds never cease and the dead light their campfires on their journey to Nirvana. And I have seen, too—" there was a strange, entranced look on his face as he spoke "I have seen the Shadow of God on Tseih Mwan and K'eech-ch'a-an! But in the end I have dwelt in Wu-yang!"
"Wu-yang," he continued, after a brief pause, "is the center of the Seuen-H'sin—a wondrous dream city beside a lake whose waters are as opalescent as the sky at dawn; where the gardens are sweet-scented with a million blooms, and the air is filled with bird songs and the music of golden bells.
"But forgive me," sighed the doctor, rousing himself from his ecstatic train of thought; "I speak in the allegories of another land!"
We were silent for a time, until finally I suggested:
"And the Seuen-H'sin—The Sect of the Two Moons?"
"Ah, yes," responded Dr. Gresham. "In Wu-yang the Beautiful I dwelt among them. For three years that city was my home. I labored in its workshops, studied in its schools, and—yes; I will admit it—I took part in those hellish ceremonies in the Temple of the Moon God—to save myself from death by fiendish torture. And, as my reward, I watched those devils at their miraculous business—the making of another moon!"
We smoked a moment in silence. Then:
"Surely," I objected, "you do not believe in miracles!"
"Miracles? Yes," he affirmed seriously—"miracles of science. For the sorcerers of China are scientists—the greatest that this world has yet produced. Talk to me of modern progress—our arts and sciences, our discoveries and inventions! Bah! They are child's play—clap-trap!—beside the accomplishments of this race of Chinese devils! We Americans boast of our Thomas Edison. Why, the Seuen-H'sin have a thousand Edisons!
"Think of it—thousands of years before Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, Chinese astronomers understood the nature of our solar system and accurately computed the movements of the stars. The use of the magnetic compass was ancient even in those days. A thousand years before Columbus was born their navigators visited the western coast of North America and maintained colonies for a time. In the year 2657 B.C. savants of the Seuen-H'sin completed engineering projects on the Yellow River that never have been surpassed. And forty centuries before Christ the physicians of China practised inoculation against smallpox, and wrote erudite books on human anatomy.
"Scientists? Why, man alive, the Seuen-H'sin are the greatest scientists that ever lived! But they haven't the machinery or the materials or the factories that have made the Western nations great. There they are shut up in their hidden valley, with no commercial incentives, no contact with the world, no desire but to study and experiment.
"Their scientific development through centuries beyond number has had only one object, which was the basis of their fanatical religion—the discovery of a means to split this earth and project an offshoot into space to form a second moon. And if our train stopped this minute you probably could feel them somewhere beneath you hammering, hammering, hammering away at the world with their terrible and mysterious power, which even now it may be too late to stop!"
The astronomer rose and paced the length of the compartment, apparently so deep in thought that I was loth to disturb him. But finally I asked:
"Why do these sorcerers desire a second moon?"
Dr. Gresham resumed his seat and, lighting a fresh cigar, began:
"Numerous legends that are almost as old as the human race represent that the earth once had two moons. And not a few modern astronomers have held the same theory. Mars has two satellites, Uranus four, Jupiter five and Saturn ten. The supposition of these scientists is that the second satellite of the earth was shattered, and that its fragments are the meteors which occasionally encounter our world in their flight.
"Now, in the far, far distant past, before the days of Huang- ti and Yu—even before the time of the great semi-mythical kings, Yao and Shun—there ruled in China an emperor of peculiar fame—Ssu-chuan, the Universal.
"Ssu-chuan was a man of weak character and mediocre talents, but his reign was the greatest in all Chinese history, because of the intelligence and energy of his empress, Chwang-Keang.
"In those days, the legends tell us, the world possessed two moons.
"At the height of his prosperity Ssu-chuan fell in love with a very beautiful girl, called Mei-hsi, who became his mistress.
"The Empress Chwang-Keang was as plain as Mei-hsi was beautiful, and in time the mistress prevailed upon her lord to plot his wife's murder, so that Mei-hsi might be queen. Chwang- Keang was stabbed to death one evening in her garden.
"With her death begins the history of Seuen-H'sin.
"Simultaneous with the murder of the empress, one of the moons vanished from the sky. The Chinese legends say the spirit of the great ruler took refuge upon the satellite, which fled with her from sight of the earth. Modern astronomers say the satellite probably was shattered by an internal explosion.
"Now that the firm hand of Chwang-Keang was lifted from affairs of state, everything went wrong in China—until the country reverted virtually to savagery.
"At last Ssu-chuan aroused himself from his pleasures sufficiently to take alarm. He consulted his priests and seers, who assured him that heaven was angry because of the murder of Chwang-Keang. Never again, they said, would China know happiness or prosperity until the vanished moon returned, bringing the spirit of the dead empress to watch over the affairs of her beloved land. Upon her return, however, the glory of China would rise again, and the Son of Heaven would rule the world.
"Upon receiving these tidings, the legends relate, Ssu-chuan was consumed with pious zeal.
"Upon a lofty mountain behind the city he built the most magnificent temple in the world, and installed there a special priesthood to beseech heaven to restore the second moon. This priesthood was named the Seuen-H'sin, or Sect of the Two Moons. The worship of the Moon God was declared the state religion.
"Gradually the belief that the Seuen-H'sin was to restore the second moon—and that, when this happened, the Celestial Kingdom again would enjoy universal rule—became the fanatical faith of a fourth of China.
"But finally, in a fit of remorse, Ssu-chuan burnt himself alive in his palace.
"The empire of Ssu-chuan dissolved, but the Seuen-H'sin grew greater. Its high priest attained the most terrible and far-reaching power in China. But in the second century B.C., Shi- Hwang-ti the great military emperor made war upon the sorcerers and drove them across the Kuen-lum mountains. Still they retained great wealth and power; and in Wu-yang they made a city that is the dream spot of the world, equipped with splendid colleges for the study of astronomy and the sciences and magic.
"As astronomical knowledge increased among the Seuen-H'sin, they came to believe that the moon once was a part of the earth, having been blown out of the hollow now filled by the Pacific Ocean. In this theory certain eminent American and French astronomers lately have concurred.
"The Chinese sorcerers conceived the idea that by scientific means the earth again could be rent asunder, and its offshoot projected into space to form a second moon. Henceforth, all their labors were directed toward finding that means. And the lust for world domination became the religion of their race.
"When I dwelt among them they seemed to be drawing near their goal—and now they probably have reached it!
"But if we may judge from these demands of Kwo-Sung-tao, their plans for world conquest have taken a new and simpler turn: by threatening to use their mysterious force to dismember the globe they hope to subjugate mankind just as effectively as they expected to do by creating a second moon and fulfilling their prophecy. Why wreck the earth, if they can conquer it by threats?
"If they are able to enforce their demands it will not be long before civilization is face to face with those powers of evil that grind a quarter of China's millions beneath their ghastly rule a rule of fanaticism and terror that would stun the world!"
Dr. Gresham paused and peered out the window. There was an unearthly look on his face when he again turned toward me.
"I have seen," he said, "those hideous powers of the Seuen- H'sin—things of horror such as the Western mind cannot conceive! When the beating of my heart shall cease forever, when my body has been buried in the grave, and when the Seuen-H'sin torture scars—" he tore open his shirt and revealed frightful cicatrices upon his chest "—have vanished in the final dissolution, then, even then, I shall not forget those devils out of hell in Wu-yang, and I shall feel their power clutching at my soul!"