CHAPTER VThe Perpetual Nimbus
You probably might recall, Mr. Link, that wonderful chapter in “Robinson Crusoe,” where Defoe describes the feelings of his hero after he found the footprints in the sand. I mention it here because I am amused at the memory of how different were our emotions as Goritz showed us the gold belt. I turned last night to the pages of Defoe’s masterpiece and jotted down this appropriate quotation; it illustrates completely what I mean.
“I slept none that night: the farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my apprehensions were: which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear: but I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was not a great way off from it. Sometimes I fancied it must be the Devil, and reason joined in with me upon this supposition; for how should any other thing in human shape come into the place?”
That gold belt to us we knew meant human occupation of this New Continent, and it was almost impossible for us to control our violent joy over the discovery. We were not worrying as to whether it was the Devil or savages, and we felt sure we were not the victims of illusion. Perhaps a little trepidation crept in later, but for that moment we were beside ourselves with happiness and wonder. And yet we were at first silent, dumbfounded, bendingover the strange find in dazed delight, eager yet incredulous, lost in a bewilderment of anticipation.
The Professor had produced a small pocket glass and was nervously inspecting the plates, very much to our annoyance, his ears and head seeming constantly to be pushing our faces away. A look of profound vindication appeared on his features, and I think we sympathized with his feelings and applauded them. Goritz beamed benignantly, and I knew Hopkins was on the verge of a metrical quotation. But the Professor had the floor.
“Gentlemen,” he began, “this belt has no possible relation to any know human culture. The fabricators of thischef d’oeuvre—it’s such in every sense—have probably never existed outside of the eccentric depression—the size of a small continent—into which we shall be privileged to descend.” The Professor bowed to Goritz, who was radiant from his approbation.
He continued: “The figures engraved on these plates, the relievos on this buckle, are autochthonous”—Hopkins emitted a low whistle. “They are, however, distinctly colubrine, reptilian, crotaline, lacertilian, poly-catabolic-arbori-animalistic. They indicate a serpent worship and a tree worship, and are reminiscent of the Fall; I may call it the recapitulative survival of myth.”
Hopkins’ whistle had been attempting some shriller ejaculations of surprise, but the verbal avalanche smothered it. It was a suffocating moment for all of us, and when Hopkins said, “Professor, with a cocktail on top of this I believe our cerebral intoxication would be complete,” the interior danger of explosion increased almost beyond control. But the Professor kept on, and a little “plain stuff,” as Hopkins called it helped us out of our embarrassment.
“An animal like a crocodile or an alligator, in apeculiar stage of evolution, approaching that of a serpent, is depicted here,” his finger touched the buckle, “and everywhere else are variations of one theme, the Serpent and the Tree. The people of thisNavel of the Worldretain the traditions of our religion.”
After that we all became intensely interested in the belt or girdle, but we withheld our comments. Our pretense was sincere enough. We were interested, so interested that it would have been impossible for any of us—the Professor alone was capable of such sublime detachment—to have slept a wink if we had tried to, but then our interest, in which mingled the elixir of a fabulous Hope, succeeding days and weeks of danger and uncertainty, was satisfied at a lower stage of realization. With us it was MEN and GOLD, and, scintillating back of these noble facts, was the speechless marveling of the world of letters, of science, at our recital, if ever we got back to those things.
I asked Goritz all about it when we were together outside of the tent. It seems he had walked about three miles from the camp, and was watching a flurry of wind tear up the water of a little pool, literally boring it all out in spray, when, as the action was accomplished, he saw the glint of the gold. Another look and the belt was in his hand. He sat down to catch his breath, and to quiet the beating of his heart, and then when he had recovered his composure, he had gone on, believing that other trinkets might turn up, or that he might encounter its makers, or anything in fact that might explain the treasure trove—but the search had been unavailing.
“Well,” I said as he finished, “what do you think? The Professor has some wild notions about it, but it looks to me as if the Professor has all along sailed pretty close to the wind.”
“Yes, Alfred,” he answered, “there’s a kernel of truth in his talk. Of course I always thought so or I wouldn’t have come at all—And Alfred,” his splendid eyes searched my own in that great way he had, “I have had curious premonitions just now, as I walked back to the camp. We are coming upon incomprehensible things. We must go on, though we may cross starvation before we reach food, and—themarvels beyond. The rations I know are low, and I know too we’ve a bad way ahead—Mais, esperons.”
I would have said more but before us stood Hopkins. He was actually smoking—“to keep from going bug-house,” he explained, and then he muttered:
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure.On a scientific goosechase, with my Coxwell or my Glaisher.”
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure.On a scientific goosechase, with my Coxwell or my Glaisher.”
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure.On a scientific goosechase, with my Coxwell or my Glaisher.”
“Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure.
On a scientific goosechase, with my Coxwell or my Glaisher.”
Camp was broken up the next morning. We were wild to get away. Before we started the dogs were fed the last of the bear meat, and we were all put on half rations; the demands on our strength for the work immediately before us would not be great.
I also got a chance to see the belt better. It was very short and made up of plates hooked together with a larger buckle. There was absolutely no metal but gold in it. The buckle was decorated with an impossible serpentine monster with legs and a snout-bearing head, indeed a thing very well described by the Professor as a cross or mixture of a huge snake and an alligator, and the plates were engraved with hieratic markings that looked like poles encircled by spiral lines.
“So,” I said to myself, “these are the reminiscent Tree and the Serpent.”
“Look to me like bean poles,” remarked Hopkins, who was looking over my shoulder.
On we went west. It seemed as if the abominable rocks and sand would never come to an end, the former sharp and knife-like, cutting our shoes, the latter whirling in blinding sheets against our faces, in spite of the almost constant fog, and even the occasional rain. The sledge was lightened and moved as carefully as possible, but the obstacles could not be avoided in the mist, and before the day was half over it was a wreck, so that its load had to be distributed among us. There was made at once a concentration of everything indispensable, and the rest was abandoned. Our heavy packs did not help our progress. The wind kept westerly. It was strong. We were astonished at the absence of snow and at the moderate temperature. The thermometer denoted 0° and 2°, Centigrade. These conditions seemed to bear out the Professor’s claims, and the altitude was decreasing too. Then came a desperately stony hollow, and the land rose steadily until we were even higher than we had been at the start. But there were no mountains about us, just a broad back of sloping rock, “a gigantic, intrusive, basaltic dike,” said the Professor, between gasps, as fog smote us with almost the solidity of water.
We had made thirty miles, and nature and the day were united in protest against a longer drive. A yelp ahead, a shout from Goritz to “fall back,” showed some danger line in our vicinity. We had not stopped one instant too soon. One of the dogs had plunged over a precipice, and we were then standing on its crumbling edge. By one of those sudden changes in nature which call to mind adivertissementin a scenic theatrical display, the fogbanks now drifted off and in the light of the low western sun we looked out over a strange land.
The barren and roughened ridge at last ended in this inner line of the Krocker Land Rim. It abruptly, like a palisade escarpment, fell off into declivities or occasional slopes made up of the talus of its decomposition or dilapidation. We gazed now on a singular barrenness of steeply slanting land, ribbed with asperities like hogs’ backs, of parallel hills. Over this land, in the channels that they had made for themselves, some entrenched in precipitous valleys, rushed streams fed by that continual precipitation which toward the sea became snow, and inland away from a colder atmosphere fell in torrents of rain.
The scene was indescribable, not by reason of variety but of monotony of detail, and because beyond it, far along a horizon that may have been fifty or more miles distant the most perplexing vaporous effects prevailed. What it might be it was impossible to determine. There were constant motions there, motions explosive and gradual, for we could almost be sure that the cloudy masses were processioning now measuredly in huge volume and then disordered by internal rupture. We thought we caught the flashes of electric storms.
The scene below us was most repellent. The vicissitudes of cold and storm had ejected all semblance of charm from those black, denuded rocks. Their asperities, which were pinnacles hundreds of feet high, were united by valleys bare to the eye, from our point of view, of all vegetation, the whole combination slanting inward, and composing a broad, melanic sterility perhaps only paralleled on the lifeless and crater-pitted plains of the moon. The violent tossing streams, many of them hidden in defiles of erosion, alone imparted the sense of animation, and even this animation seemed ruthless and destructive. It was utterly sullen, and when it was not sullen, it was savage and threatening. Itwas all so overwhelming that we simply stared at it, voiceless and despairing.
Hopkins broke the spell of our dismay: “Well, Professor, this certainly is not Paradise, but I’m willing to believe that it’s the shell, the outside of it, and a pretty hard kind of a nut it makes.Can we crack it?”
That indeed was the question we all silently asked. Where would this wilderness of rocks and waters lead us? Could we expect to find game or any sort of food in this tableland of sheer, stark, desolation? Our supplies were daily shrinking, and we had been a little wasteful too, deluded by the false hope of soon securing succor. It was a long way back to the cache on the tableland, and a longer one to the anchored launch on the sands of the coast, but how far was it ahead of us to life? At least behind there were bears and musk oxen, and seal and duck; did anything replace them before us? It made us pause; the risk of going on was considerable.
Our council convened under rather straightened circumstances of confidence and hope. The dogs would be of no use in the marches before us, unless indeed we threw them into the larder, and their upkeep was an equivocal handicap, which might more than offset their value as an aid to the commissariat. Goritz said we had forty pounds of provisions, about a pound a day for each man for ten days; and there were the guns and ammunition to be carried too, the instruments and the stoves and oil. The tent outfit could be left behind; at a pinch we might battle through without it. Battle, though, to WHAT? Ah! That was the question. Were we in a dead land? Was the gold belt a prehistoric relic, having no relation to any living race, a token of past occupancy by a people who had fled from the fast contracting opportunities of life in thisArctic inferno? It was a good illustration of the caprice of human feelings, our total rejection of the considerations that a few days before had made us jubilant, boastful, careless; so quickly does the average man reflect the color of his surroundings.
Our position was dismal indeed. The inexplicable fogs settled around us, or, if the west wind blew—and only for that brief interval when we caught sight of the bewildering landscape below us, had it ceased to blow—drifted over us in endless cloud-like masses. A precipice was before us, how many more were beyond that? And then the return. The longer we thought over it, and turned the angles of possibility to inspection the more hopeless the prospect grew. But again the Gold Belt? A shining lure of the Demon of Death to tempt us to a horrible doom. As Goritz ostentatiously showed it to us it became loathsome, sinister, a delusive snare!
And this led to our great surprise. Goritz wished to go on. He said so. This quiet, reserved, strong man handed back to the Professor his predictions, subscribed to with his own enthusiastic acceptance, and the Professor, pirouette-fashion, had wheeled around in a rather dogged scepticism. I think Hopkins and myself, out of pure dread, favored the return. Goritz had always resisted the quest. The gold bauble was “getting in its fatal work,” whispered Hopkins.
Goritz put it this way: We couldn’t get back. The return trip would be far harder than to progress in our present course. We had no sledge. Everything pointed to success if we could keep on. The land beyond us indicated a great depression, the fogs rolling over us showed an approaching warmer area; the glimpse that had been permitted us was conclusive; once beyond that cloud zone and the realities, the living realities, would begin. Thisgold belt (he held up the glittering charm that had turned his head) was no relic, its engraving was too fresh, its outlines too sharp; it had been brought where he had found it, it must have come from the west, and the way, practicable for its former wearers, was practicable for us.
“How about a balloon, an aeroplane, anything that flies?” suggested Hopkins. Antoine Goritz became scornful, his French blood often came to the surface. He looked straight at Hopkins, and a frown clouded his face; it did not become him.
“Parbleu vous etes fou, mon frère, que Je crois,Avec de tels discours vous moquez-vous de moi?”
“Parbleu vous etes fou, mon frère, que Je crois,Avec de tels discours vous moquez-vous de moi?”
“Parbleu vous etes fou, mon frère, que Je crois,
Avec de tels discours vous moquez-vous de moi?”
Hopkins didn’t wince; it wasn’t his fashion.
“Well, Goritz, I’m game for the deal. You can’t put it over me with yourparlez-vous. But listen, we’ll never agree on this stake. It’s up to the little Goddess on the Wheel. What do you say?” He tossed something in the air and shouted:
“Fair or Foul?”
“Fair,” called Goritz.
The shining object rattled among the stones; it had a silvery lustre, and as the Yankee stooped and picked it up, there was something strangely grave in his face.
“You win, Goritz,” he calmly said, as he pocketed the trinket, “and I’ll follow you till the curtain drops.”
He rose and extended his hand; it was grasped cordially by the big Dane, the two men facing each other at almost the same level, both beautiful types of manhood.
“Mr. Link, the object that Spruce Hopkins flung upwards, and cast as the die of our destiny that day is in my hand.” (He laid a flat silver medal on thetable between us. I picked it up; on one side was a masterly execution of the face of a lovely woman; on the other was a sort of Satan.)
“Mr. Link,” resumed Erickson, “that woman is Angelica Sigurda Tabasco, and that man Diaz Ilario Aguadiente, the two interesting occupants of No. — east Fifty-eighth Street, from whose unpleasant society you freed me. Hopkins gave me that the last time I saw him alive. What he told me then had something to do with the predicament you found me in.”
(Mr. Erickson again retired into his obviously gloomy thoughts, which I did not attempt to disturb, and, on his emergence, continued his story.)
This impromptu solution won the day, and we prepared for the unknown transit over that unknown territory of which we had had one fleeting glimpse, and which lay somewhere before us, in a vast milkness of mist.
We concluded to take with us two dogs; the rest—now three, one had gone mad (piblocto) and had been shot—were killed, and a cannibalistic feast offered to the survivors. The oil and stoves were left behind; there might be enough fibre or wood for fire, at least we hoped so. Our packs were made as light as possible. We were in a race, like Mikkelsen’s last lap,a Race against Hunger. The sleeping-bags were discarded, the tent we carried a short distance only. No grimmer or braver determination ever animated explorers; we were not running for safety, we were runningawayfrom it. The step taken, our spirits rose, the former fancies swarmed upon us, and perhaps the gold belt again floated before our vision, an omen and a guide. This imaginative sway of anticipation was needed, or else we could never have plucked up courage to make the fateful start.
The beginning was symptomatic enough of ourcoming dangers. To get over and down the precipice on whose edge we stood was impossible without a clearance of the besetting fogs, and fortunately, as if by invitation for us to retain our resolution, the fog lifted on the morning we started. We were on the brink of a high columnar black wall, rising from 200 feet or less to 600 feet or more, from the rocky floor of the country beyond. We searched for some pathway for descent. Innumerable shelves and footholds diversified the precipitous faces but they were far apart, and often offered little more than space for a bird or a goat. Once down the first vertical cliffs the gigantic heaps of talus leaning against their bases would afford us a practicable though rough way to the bottom. And now we saw with astonishment the obvious inclination of the farther land. It seemed an almost unbroken hillside, coursed by streams and stream beds, furrowed by dry, stony valleys, cut by the low, serrated backs of steep hills, the whole landscape terminating in that distant medley of rolling clouds, streaming vapor banks barely discernible, except as, so it seemed, they were lit by flashes of light. Were we on the outer flanks of a continental lava bed, and was that cloud space beyond the lip of a vast volcanic confusion? The question was not asked aloud, but its staggering terror made us tremble. Never, Mr. Link, did men more heroically walk into the shadows of the Valley of Death than did we.
The morning sun sent long shadows westward; the day was actually warm; a sudden brightness encouraged us. If the food lasted! That was the terror that haunted us. Could it? At last Goritz discovered far northward a gorge or ravine reaching almost to the top of the palisade. Down this we scrambled and found ourselves in the bed of a low stream, which a day later became a swollen torrent,so quickly did precipitation feed the rivers, and so enormous was its volume. This made our daily progress more dangerous. We were soaked and miserable ourselves, but the protection to our food was imperfect, and that gave rise to serious doubts as to whether it would last us ten days, the calculated limit before its exhaustion. The biscuit half turned to dough and the drenched tea exuded in tawny drops from our packs. This led to a readjustment and each man carried his rations of tea and biscuit and chocolate underneath his coat. The pemmican, force meat, cabbage and beans are safe enough on our backs.
It soon became necessary to desert the watery defile which we had first entered; it became more and more confined, the banks were literally stone heaps, and after one or two perilous slips which might have accelerated our progress by dumping us into the chasing flood we painfully climbed out over a high rocky ridge on the summit of which our sight was cheered to find low, herbaceous growths. Here we managed to extort a niggardly flame which was assisted by oil Goritz alone had had the prudence to add to his load, and our evening meal was eaten in some gratitude.
The rains, distressing as they were at intervals, when the downpour became most vehement, were on the whole preferable to the fogs. They cleared the air, and we could see our way, calculate interruptions and avoid disaster. As we went on the vegetation increased in quantity, and often smiling—they seemed smiling to our tired eyes although lit by no sunlight—patches around us in sheltered corners afforded welcome though damp camping grounds. Our clothes were torn by frequent falls, and our shoes are turning into tangled shreds. The Professor had sprained his wrist badly—he narrowly escaped rolling down an embankment whichmight have put him out of the running altogether—and Goritz is in pain. I know it by his limping gait, and the twitches of suffering that cross his face. Something is the matter with me too, fatigue and the insufficient or canned food is telling on me. My muscles are stiff and aching, the joints of my limbs red and swollen, and dark blue spots were showing on my skin. Is it scurvy?
It is the sixth day, and we believe we have made seventy miles. The cloud zone is approaching; our prospect every day grows more extraordinary, more terrifying; we encamp behind a shoulder of rock, on a low upland which separated two roaring rivers. The rain had stopped and a colder atmosphere reveals the scene. The temperature is just above 2° Centigrade, the aneroid shows we had fallen two thousand feet since we had left the Krocker Land Rim. We are immobile, in a sort of stupor, yet fascinated by the spectacle. Hopkins alone remains cheerful and garrulous.
“Professor,” he chatters, “the Rocky Road to Dublin had nothing on this boulevard. The gentleman who, by reason of a congenital failing, which was assisted by circumstances outside of his control, complained of the narrowness rather than the length of the street would be inclined to make some severe reflections on this thoroughfare also. But we can be pretty sure the transformation takes place the other side of the proscenium-show yonder.”
Poor Spruce Hopkins, he kept up his joviality for our benefit, but we didn’t care much and I don’t think he did. We were starving; it was half a pound now a day. But Goritz never wavered a hair, he urged us on, he promised food, rest, recreation even, if we would persevere through the cloud curtain.
And now we were under it, cowering in dread before the awfulness and magnitude of it. It rose in towering gushes of stream, belched forth from a huge crack in the crust of the earth in which poured the full rivers that had accompanied our march. Those rivers entered recesses of the heated earth, and were returned in steam with detonations and earthquakes, so that
The frame and huge foundation of the earthShak’d like a coward.
The frame and huge foundation of the earthShak’d like a coward.
The frame and huge foundation of the earthShak’d like a coward.
The frame and huge foundation of the earth
Shak’d like a coward.
Reviewing it now, as it was revealed to us later upon examination and study, the physiography of the stupendous phenomenon we had reached was this. Some strain had cracked the crust of the earth in a long arcuate rift; it suggested the crevice and it was irregular in the same way, which is seen in the Almannaja in Iceland, but it was profoundly deep, and the area communicated with the igneous interior. The water that was continually condensed from the steam that poured upward from the huge fissure, as continually was returned, and, except for interruptions in the reciprocal exchange produced by meteorological conditions, such as cold, heat and varying winds, this curious equilibration was unbroken, had been for ages. The emergence of the steam was irregular, though it was always coming up at some points, and there was a synchrony between points. We discovered later that at very distant places from our position on the great circular break there was no steam. The rock beneath had become thoroughly cooled and congealed, or the inner fires were absent, and the water entering the chasm was lost within the crust, or else, deviously percolating laterally may have subsequently contributed its supply to the active steam geysers when it touched the heated surfaces which formed the sources of the latter’s energy.
Therefore you may place this picture before your mind, of a steam wall projected from a raggedly edged, very broad earth rift, absorbed by the atmosphere, or condensed in clouds, and intermittently returned to the earth in rain or if transferred by westerly winds, falling outside of the Krocker Land Rim in snow.
The explosions that rent and shattered this steam veil, or shattered the cloud masses above us, were at first difficult to explain. It was after we had penetrated and crossed the abyss that the Professor suggested that they were due to a partial decomposition of some part—a very, very small part—of the steam into the gases hydrogen and carbonic oxide, where coal or carbonaceous deposits existed at rare or higher heats, and that these explosive mixtures, retained somehow in the steam, undiffused, were fired by electric-lightning sparks. This theory never seemed scientific to me. But the fact of such disturbances remained, and it was owing to the momentary glimpse a terrific shock of this kind permitted us across the void, that we picked up daring enough to make the attempt to cross the horrid gap.
We were within perhaps five hundred feet of the spouting cauldron, where rain was constantly falling, crawling over rocks wet and slippery, astonished and half delighted at the luxuriant development of moss on the lips of pools or saucers of water, and noting a great rise in temperature, with that peculiar buried tumult of hissing, issuing from the earth, when this happened. There was a flash, a roar, and, as if a gigantic hand had parted the dense curtain before us, our eyes crossed the gulf, and we saw a land of greenness and of light!
Stunned, half sick, hungry, with a gnawing wretchedness of desire, it almost seemed that we had been duped by some illusion born of our weaknessand the deceptive play of the illuminated mist. Huddled together in a niche of the rocks that were in places dissected by cracks, that also discharged tenuous lines of steam, we talked in whispers over the marvelous apparition. Yes, we had all seen it. There could be no mistake, but Goritz had seen more. Across the black, vomiting pit was a bridge of rock! It might have been some remaining partition, holding its place against disintegration, spared in some way for our salvation from the destructive agencies that had here ripped the crust asunder, or indeed it might have been built up from some later solidified eruption.Hadhe seen it?
Goritz was madly certain about that. Well, and if he had, could we use it? There are desperate stages in desperation that breed, Ajax-like, defiance of danger. The sudden realization of a world of beauty, a world of food, on the other side of the steaming pit, nerved our poor flagging bodies, and summoned an audacity of will to our minds! It was our last chance. Myths of the past in that delirious moment flocked back to my mind, which pictured guarded paradises, defended gardens of delight, treasures watched by dragons, elysiums hedged with terrors, and always, always courage won the prize, and passed the dangers. And yet there must be caution; the old refrain sounded in my ears,Be not too bold!
Goritz and Hopkins, the least impaired, reconnoitered the pass. They moved down some stepped ledges and were lost to sight. In an hour or so they returned. Their faces were lighted with hopefulness. They both believed the path was negotiable, and they both agreed that there were periodic cessations of the fiercer ebullitions from below. It was also discovered that we could not make our way to the right or left for any considerable distance. We had trailed our way to an isthmus of land,enclosed by two impassable streams, shooting in rugged wild channels. To think of crossing them was sheer madness. Goritz and Hopkins had actually advanced a little way on the bridge, straining their eyes to catch some further intimations of the delectable country we now believed would be attained were we once over this inscrutable fissure. The daylight, when the sun was highest and easterly, was now short, and in the mist-encumbered land, in the cloud-swept skies, that light was almost eclipsed. Everything contributed to our uncertainty and danger.
We made ready for the start. We consumed every scrap of food, divested ourselves of unnecessary outer clothing, which had already become insufferably warm—kamiks,nanookis,kooletah—packed our ammunition on our breasts, reversed and strapped our guns on our backs (the Professor added to his burden a pot and a fryingpan), tucked away our matches, chewed the last tea leaves our canister afforded, and with a few chocolate cakes in our pockets went down the steps,
“***with a heart for any fate.”
“***with a heart for any fate.”
“***with a heart for any fate.”
“***with a heart for any fate.”
I was indeed sick; exertion pained me, and a nauseating weariness threatened at moments to rob me of consciousness. The two poor dogs which had escaped the extremity of our needs, less through mercy than through revulsion, were turned loose. Yet as we went down the ledges to the brink, I saw them chasing us. Goritz roped us together again, gave a few orders as to signals, and ordered the descent.
We wenta tatons, literally on all fours; Goritz first, then the Professor, then myself, then Hopkins. As we drew near to the ominous edge, and felt our way over the first steps of the stony crossing it required all my strength of will to draw my legsafter my groping hands. At first it presented a tolerable pathway, flat, narrow, but sloping dangerously to either side, slippery from the constant rain that fell from the saturated air. We silently pushed on, Goritz by agreement stopping every thirty counts (seconds), and resting five. Gradually the path contracted and, in about thirty feet, became a sharp backbone over whose sides our legs dangled in the constantly steaming vault. It was warm and almost stifling at intervals and then came relief in the shape of whirling gusts of wind, which however were disconcerting, and made our precarious balance still more uncertain.
We had probably proceeded fifty feet in all, when a blackness shot through with red darts came before my eyes; I reeled slightly and dropped forward, instinctively clutching the wet rock and jerking the rope that bound me to the Professor. The Professor in turn pulled on Goritz, and our thin line halted. It was arduous work for the Professor, whose wrist was still aching.
A detonation thundered far away below us. The spasm passed; I pulled the rope, the Professor passed the signal, and we resumed our insect-like progress. Singular that, as I moved again, the thought of Dante and Virgil crossing the bridge over the tenth circle, as illustrated by Dore, rose distinctly, clear, indubitable, in front of me. It even seemed possible for me to define the pagination of the leaf I actually saw. This strange resuscitated impression kept me conscious.
three men stand, looking into a volcanoTHE PERPETUAL NIMBUS
THE PERPETUAL NIMBUS
THE PERPETUAL NIMBUS
On, on; the arete remained unchanged; our progress was encouraging; I seemed cognizant of a deeper gloom; it was the opposite wall. We had reached it. Alas! It rose above our heads andmustbe scaled! Goritz pulled the rope, the signal ran through the file and we halted again. The path broadened now, as at its eastern end, and ourlegs were relieved from the irksome straddle they had been subjected to. It was a welcome pause to me. I knew that the last scrap of effort I was capable of was needed now, if some vertical wet wall was to be surmounted in that almost impenetrable blackness.
In about fifteen minutes the tug came again, and we knew Goritz had solved some problem of the ascent confronting us. I heard him calling back, and the Professor answering. Then I found myself in this situation; on a fairly wide platform against a broken wall and up it I heard the scratching exertion of the Professor as he seemed to be bodily pulled up the ragged face. The constantly falling rain had ceased. But as the Professor rose, I felt he was no longer attached to me. I drew in the rope before me and came to its loose end. We were separated! Aghast, I was unable to speak, but my outstretched arms encountered Hopkins.
“Hopkins, Hopkins,” I hoarsely whispered, “the rope has parted. We are alone!”
“Don’t worry,” replied that extraordinary man, “we couldn’t be lonelier than we have been. This solitude is the most unbroken bit of isolation I ever walked into. Of course we’re separated. This interesting masonry we’ve struck isn’t very well constructed. It isn’t plumb. It hangs out aleetleabove. Goritz found it out, uncoiled himself, got to the top, told the Professor to drop you and me, and is now engaged in hoisting that scientific encyclopedia up to bliss and safety. We won’t stay dropped long. We’re to go the same way, and really, admirably adapted for concealment of an escaped felon as is this retreat, honest men could afford to dispense with its protection.”
I sometimes thought that when Hopkins talked this way on the verge of destruction he was a little demented from fear. Perhaps I wronged him.
“But say, Erickson, you’re not well, old fellow.”
I had fallen against him; another surge of giddiness and harsh pains lacerating my joints had overcome me. Then I was struck by a rope end; it had descended from above. Understanding it all now, and clutching at the hope of deliverance from the terrors around us, I roused myself.
I heard the voice of Goritz shouting, “Tie up.” And then Hopkins replying, “All right! Alfred is a little out of sorts. He can’t help you much. When Isay, pull together.”
Hopkins unloosed our connection, firmly fastened me to the rope and, indicating my upward course, telling me to “brace up,” and that it was the last lap, pushed me up a declivity bristling with sharp projections. For the first time I saw a dim light filtering from above. I did not attempt to look upward. The pull came, and I scrambled weakly forward. Again the dark, red-riven cloud overwhelmed me, my limbs seemed disjointed; a picture of home, I thought, filled my eyes; a blow on my head, then a vast detachment as if I were falling through space succeeded, and I lost consciousness.
And when I awoke! Ah! Mr. Link I have since often believed that our first glimpse of heaven may be like the vision of loveliness that surrounded me when slowly my eyes took on their functions, and my head cleared, and rational observation again began. My pains, too, had for the instant subsided. I felt almost disembodied, as if indeed in some spiritual trance I had reached the other side of death.
I was lying in deep grass on a hillside, bathed in light; my friends around me—No, Hopkins was not there. I noted that. Backward the steaming wall of vapor was lit with a soft radiance, and resembled an ever-changing cloud land. Above, the sky was clear and blue; the distance was a revelationof beauty, ponds and lakes separated by low hills, whose summits held coppices of trees and shrubs, sparkled and shone in far flung chains and groups, and below, in a softly radiant vale, the slim, long outline of a little lakelet, embosomed in tall, waving reeds or grasses, like some titanic jewel, gleamed, crystalline and keen.
Ducks were swimming on its surface, and skimming with beating wings its tiny waves. Herons or cranes were wading in the sedges on its shores, and a stirring and noisy aquatic bird life everywhere about it, made it vocal and animated. Far away a strange, soft light burned in the heaven, and for a moment it seemed as if another sun had replaced the diurnal traveler of the skies.