CHAPTER XIIThe Pool of Oblation
Oogalah was right. It was the return of the pilgrims, and the delighted city, plunged for days in wondering doubt over their safety had rushed bodily out to meet them. Our momentary importance was hopelessly eclipsed. I dreaded lest it might undergo an inverted resurrection, and that these potent little men, incensed over our discovered depredations, might turn angrily upon us and destroy us. For the moment I forgot these apprehensions in pure admiration at the novel exhibition.
When we emerged on the courtyard at the eastern entrance of the Capitol we found the broad mound on which the gold house was erected crowded. Immediately in front of it was a jostling mass of women, and prominent among them, by reason of stature and position, was standing the pretty Ziliah, arrayed in certainly her best and most becoming costume, at the head of the broad stairway, a view down which led the eye straight eastward over the wide thoroughfare, now fenced in by enthusiastic multitudes. Literary reminders constantly recur to me, and just then I was amused to find myself picturing Rome when Pompey entered it and recalling Marullus’ proud words, in Julius Caesar:
“And when you saw his chariot but appear,Have you not made a universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banksTo hear the replication of your soundsMade in her concave shores?”
“And when you saw his chariot but appear,Have you not made a universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banksTo hear the replication of your soundsMade in her concave shores?”
“And when you saw his chariot but appear,Have you not made a universal shout,That Tiber trembled underneath her banksTo hear the replication of your soundsMade in her concave shores?”
“And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made a universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?”
There was no Tiber, to be sure, but there were the people, and the shout, albeit rather more shrill and piercing than thunderous. The air seemed at moments and in places thick with the rising hats that were tossed with splendid nerve, in acclamation of the advancing procession.
On it came, hardly visible at first, save as an oscillating shimmer and movement, and accompanying the incessant rumpus of the shattering cymbals and the thumping drums. The musicians evinced a pardonable pride and extracted as much noise as vigor and appreciation could extort from their very willing instruments. It was exciting enough. As the first companies of the Eskimos approached and the cataract of sound poured over us we sought some higher outlook. A narrow ledge like a water-table separated the second from the first story of rooms in the communal palace. We could, by boosting and climbing on each other, reach this, and once there thecoup d’oeilwould be complete. Goritz bent forward. With the lightness of a deer Hopkins sprang up, straightened himself, and touched the coping. He swung onto it, and—I half dreaded it would give way—it held. Then we maneuvered the Professor up. I followed and with a long pull we jerked Goritz off his feet and hauled him to us, and thus rather absurdly and flagrantly placed, we awaited the event. Our feet dangled over the crowd below and, as we were in full view of the terrace of steps and the road, the first thing the returning “doctors” would behold, would be our desecrating presence on the walls ofthe palace. But we were oblivious to consequences just then.
Gazing down immediately underneath our perch we saw the ladies of the Capitol bunched in a many colored knot at the head of the steps. Crushing upon them were the servants, attendants, guards, and an indiscriminate crowd of citizens, and down these steps, kept inviolately clean, on either side, was a line of the taller Eskimos, a man to every step, with a black snake coiled round his waist, but with its neck and head held outward in an inclined position, so that a view from our seat crossed a profile of extended snakes’ heads and necks, somewhat symmetrically displayed in two series. It was a most peculiar bizarre picture.
Already the first regiment of men in the procession had halted, fallen irregularly backward along the side of the road, and then massed beyond these was the tireless band, men and women in their tight bodices and sacks, their naked legs, and the picturesque gold knee-caps. Almost instantly appeared the bright gold poles, around which, when we met them in the pine forest, had been coiled the imprisoned snakes. The snakes were no longer on them. The companies holding these advanced, strode up the steps, and stalwartly, with a martial erectness absent from everyone else, lined themselves with the snake holders. The diversified and variegated cohorts of the little people which we had noticed in the forest, had evidently dispersed, lost here and there along the route, for they doubtless were adventitious accretions, followers from custom or for amusement, and with them too had vanished the very considerable commissariat.
There remained only the jaunting cars, with their odd but impressive little occupants, and that jolting, shivering, monstrous gold throne, bearing the shocking effigy of the Crocodilo-Python. Yes, andhere they were! The tugging rams with snail tipped horns, and the council in violet gowns bedizened with gold braid and chains, utterly insignificant lilliputian creatures, with their beetle heads. True, but the deadly power lurking in those metal tubes—What was that?—not to be gainsaid, not to be denied. The thought of it gave me a shuddering sense of impotence, before these caricatures of men.
Of course the wagons could not ascend the steps, and the governors softly alighted—it was quite delightful to see their noiseless flitting to and fro—purring into each other’s ears as they came together, and then separating with mimic gestures of expostulation or disgust or approval. They looked, so we thought, almost as they had when we first met them, and I began to wonder whether they did not harbor in their light, frameless and bobbing little anatomies, extraordinary powers of resistance, abnormal energies perhaps.
There was a little decorous shifting to and fro, and ceremonious bowing and scraping, which had the most incalculably ludicrous appearance, as if, after all, they were nothing but vaudeville puppets. Hopkins of course appreciated all that uproariously. Finally they started up the stairs, led by the benignant little gentleman who had told the Professor to “speak,” and afterwards most effectively had gone through the dumb show of telling him to “shut up,” and who, by the way, was Ziliah’s father. They rose towards us with a mincing dignity that was really pleasing. We noticed again their whiteness, their thinness, their long arms, their thin fingers, their senile-like agitation, their pointed beards, and the singular splendor of their eyes. The latter were now uncovered, the disfiguring goggles hung from their necks by the most delicate filaments of gold.
There were quite a number of them, perhapsthirty in all, and as they slowly drew near to us we realized that while they belonged to the racial configuration of the little people, they were probably immensely removed from them, too, by an intellectual gap that bore some reference to training or descent. The Semitic character of these little people was irrefragable.
Hardly had the President—it turned out that such an appellation might describe him—reached the middle of the ascent than we were treated to a charming show of filial affection. Ziliah, ravishingly fixed up in close fitting attire, and distinguished by some gold trinkets that became her extremely well, ran down the steps and—fell into her father’s arms? No—not that—exactly. There were some insurmountable difficulties, related to the comparative sizes of the principals, that made that commonplace impossible. Ziliah took her fatherup, hugged him, kissed and—set him down again.
I heard Hopkins groan, and the query came in an undertone: “Where’s my mother-in-law?”
a woman, standing at the base of the steps up to a small castle, holds a baby. Small men with weapons stand on either side of the stepsZILIAH AND HER FATHER
ZILIAH AND HER FATHER
ZILIAH AND HER FATHER
After that there was a great deal of confusion. Mothers and daughters, wives and sons, the magistrates from the city and innumerable friends poured over the steps to meet the dignitaries, and, for all the world, it just then resembled, allowing for the difference in latitude and other things, the homecoming of a western deputation to your congress; their arrival at the town hall, and their admiring reception by the neighbors. And the democratic expression of things increased. The snake sharps on the steps, so Hopkins designated them, disappeared with their charges, depositing them in the enclosures in the “snake pasture,” the gold-polemen scrambled up the steps and entered the Capitol, the rams, jaunting cars, and the grinning throne-horror left too, but where I could notsee. We encountered the latter again under pretty startling circumstances. Then when all this had happened the crowds from the city jammed everything, with a shrilling of voices ascending to us that sounded like a magnification, a megaphoning, of countless crickets. The bigger people, the Eskimos, were scarcely visible. We felt relieved—I did. We had been quite forgotten, and that spoke volumes for our safety. We discussed the situation.
Hopkins: “Suppose we get down and join the house warming. It’s just possible that they have something better to eat than usual on occasions like this. I’d welcome a change of diet.”
I: “As this was a huge snake picnic, it may be they wind it up by eating snakes.”
Hopkins: “Bah!”
The Professor: “My friends, now that the Faculty has returned Erickson must interview them, explain our mission, establish scientific relations with them if possible, get the records, assure them of the astonishment which will be felt over their existence when we report it before the scientific bodies of the world, solicit from them some demonstration of their knowledge of transmutation, aeronautics, the X-ray; those powerful tubes they manipulate; and then really we should be thinking ofgetting home.”
I: “Professor, I don’t think we’ll find the Faculty, as you call them, very communicative (“Tight wads?” interjected Spruce.) I’ve learned some things from Ziliah, and judging from her communications I believe these people know very little about themselves and what’s more I believe they exercise their occult powers without knowing therationaleof them either. At any rate while I can get along with their speech I know I should be floored in any intricate matter. As to—getting home. I agree with you, but—HOW?”
The Professor: “But Alfred, be reasonable. Learn what you can. Try them. I do admit our return presents difficulties.”
Goritz: “There can’t be much of the naphtha launch left now.”
Hopkins: “But Antoine, you are not thinking of getting out! I believe you intended to apply for naturalization papers.”
The Professor: “There are the—Balloons? Perhaps—”
Hopkins: “Dear Professor, cut it out. There is some difference in size and weight between these midgets and us. Really, if you’re solicitous on the subject of the posthumous notices you are destined to receive in the learned journals of the world, try the balloons. None in mine. Rocking the cradle and watching Ziliah cook snakes is preferable. And seriously I could make a hunch at getting on here if somehow we could improve the brand of the religion—but this snake business has me going. I guess, too, a little eugenics might help the people. Interbreeding, I should say, with the huskies would add something to the linear dimensions of the inhabitants, for really the girls have some class.”
I: “It seems likely to me that one might reach Beaufort Sea by a short overland route to the west. It’s pretty clear that Radiumopolis is far towards the western border of the Valley of Rasselas, and the Rim, and the sea beyond that, are not far off. Our trip to the radium country showed that.”
The Professor: “The importance of this discovery outranks anything that has happened in the world since the discovery of America. It’s too astounding to be even indicated in a few words. The radium deposit alone is the most tremendous fact in nature today. For one, I should deplore the destruction of this most curious aboriginal culture with the ethnic problems displayed in it, but it isour indefeasible right to proclaim to the world the presence here of the radium. The whole aspect, industry, economics, finance,healthof the world will be profoundly modified by its exploitation.”
Goritz: “Well I should say nothing about it. Let it be. We can use what we learn about its powers for ourselves. That seems right enough to me. What can be the use of turning the whole world topsy-turvy, and of course as a consequence exterminating these innocent people. Do you suppose you could hold back for one hour the rampaging hordes that would pour into this little valley and inundate it with hungry, riotous savages? Put a mining town with its rum and its demons in the place of this contented realm with its picturesque life, its peaceful ceremonies, its long inherited customs that for centuries upon centuries have never changed; erase or debauch a community that on the very edge of the roaring world, since time began, has kept on its quiet hidden way in this unassailable nook, and do you think you will ever forgive yourselves for the ruin, the devastation? It would curse you to your death.”
We all looked at Goritz with surprise. He did not often turn on the oratory like this. It was a touch, I said to myself, of his old nature. The plea was well made and it kept us silent for some time, and I think the longer we measured its meaning the more it affected us. Suddenly Hopkins broke the silence.
“Say, where’s everybody? There isn’t a soul in sight.” It was true; the mound hill, the courtyards, the road, the steps, the doorway, the snake pasture, the parapets, which it seemed but a few moments before had been crammed with the chattering multitude, were deserted. In our absorption, seated above the heads of the crowd on the comfortable ledge, we had forgotten to note itsdisappearance. Always anxious over some possible new development which would endanger our safety, and never confident of the good intentions of the little wiseacres with their preternatural powers, their minute crooked devices, and their probable deceit and malevolence, I now felt some alarm at this silence and desertion. Was it some new turn in affairs, a new stage in their ceremonial procedure that portended any harm to us? I had wondered over the apparent forgetfulness of our presence, and our absolute neglect. Was it part of some preconcerted design, an ostentatious indifference, concealing some mischievous plot for our undoing? For it was quite easy, indeed unavoidable to conceive, that these little rulers, impregnable hitherto in their power, would view suspiciously our advent among them. A secluded bred-in civilization like this, is jealous of intrusion, resents the foreigner, and spurns novelty. It has always been so and the Faculty—the word the Professor complimented them with—would readily descry in us the forerunners of a more dangerous invasion. It would be well to watch them and—where they were?
I leaped to the ground and the rest at once followed. We ran around the corner of the building, first to the north—in which direction the city was far less expanded than southward and eastward—and the same emptiness confronted us. But to the south and at the west the contrast was startling. The areas were packed with streaming throngs; crowds from streets were discharging into the broad highway leading westward, that one on which we had just returned from the radium hunt, and, as we hastened to the west side of the Capitol, we saw that the concourse was passing out on the same boulevard towards the swamp land just outside the ranges of the city. Our elevation enabled us to trace the variegated ribbon of people, madeup of the little folk for the most part, and occasionally a towering figure, movingsilentlyoutward in an enormous evacuation of the city. What had preceded them or what they followed we could not undertake to determine.
Fragments and sections of the formal parade, as it had returned from the ceremonial circuit, were embedded in the stream, and we guessed the Council led the procession. Glancing into the broad central hall of the Capitol—where the radium lamps were—nothing was seen. The big communal house of government was bare and abandoned. Goritz’s hand passed enviously over the broad encrusting plates of gold which now any ruthless pillager could have torn away, but he did not attempt to remove one. We certainly would have interposed had he tried it. It required no deliberation on our part to conclude to mingle in the crowds. It might be that if their destination was the swamps we now might learn something of the uses of that mystery-shrouded depression and reservoir.
Running down the western terrace of steps we were soon immersed in the multitude, though by reason of our physical proportions we rose above them like tall saplings among bushes. Some familiarization with us had been gained by the Radiumopolites, and although we never stirred abroad without awakening interest, they no longer regarded us with the first unsubdued wonder and curiosity. And on this occasion we were less likely to excite attention, as a more dreadful expectation filled their minds.
Slowly we made our way for a mile or so until the sombre thickets and enshrouding vegetation of the swamps came into view. And then a rapid dispersal began. Down innumerable paths and trails, all more or less artificially finished, the people vanished. Files of them entered these forest alleywaysand the quickly thinning throngs left us comparatively free. We passed a broad road leading to the left, down which in the distance we discerned a line of vans pulled by Eskimos, and on them prostrate and bandaged or chained figures, some moving, we thought! For the moment we were rooted with horror. What could they be? What was this? A public execution, a sacrifice, a holocaust? Good God—could it be a cannibalistic feast? Great as were our suspicion and terror, the constraining power of a savage curiosity drove us on. Down the very next lane we met, we rushedpele-mele, with something like rage, something like disgust, something like a sickening fear, a blend hard to analyze.
Perhaps we had run a half a mile, when we burst through the last encircling hedge of bushes and found ourselves on the shore of a turbid, muddy, malodorous pool, confined by a low wall of clay, paved with tile, and then surrounded by the outstretched cordons of the adult population—not a child was visible—of Radiumopolis! And immediately above us, at the side, so that we could inspect the actions of its occupants, was a low platform, also of clay, perhaps twenty feet high. On this platform, ranged in a circle, were those detestable worthies (?) and behind them stood the vans, and on the vans—motionless bodies in small low heaps, like fagoted wood! Yes! They were dead—all dead—quite dead. God be praised for that!
From somewhere back of the platform the cymbals began their clamorous cries, but whether it was due to an augmented band or an exasperated effort, the noise seemed redoubled, rising into a screeching tumult quite indescribable. And then the people shouted. It sounded likeLam-bo-o, Lam-bo-oo.
It was a curious vocality and perhaps as nearlyas anything might be likened to the querulous squeal of monkeys, with just a faint amelioration of disapproval on the assumption that it was singing. That—the combined discord of the cymbals and the singing—continued for perhaps fifteen minutes, with intervals of a minute or so. It was altogether unearthly. Now we began to see that the pond or pool or swamp connected by a narrow neck of water with more remote basins, that may have had interminable connections in all directions, forming a web of waterways.
From these distant bayous and lagoons now issued three or four or five sinuous monsters, rushing forward upon the waves of their own disturbance, their saurian heads raised slightly, and the huge convolutions of their tails discerned in the wash of their wakes, as they hastened, as if with some anticipatory avidity for their meal, towards us, towards the platform, from where the immolation awaited them. They were theCrocodilo-Pythons. We recognized at once the white-green beasts we had seen in the Saurian Sea. Yes, the same obscene, unspeakable beasts.
They only revealed their terrifying bulk as they approached the platform and finally came to rest before it. Then inserting their muscular posteriors in the mud, beyond which lazily rolled the python-like tails in portentous folds, their heads and fore-quarters slowly rose into the air. This exposure made us quail and yet exult, with an excitement no language can convey. The same repulsive coloring masked them, the greenish-yellow skin, the agitated and red blotches. Higher and higher, mounted the snapping jaws, and at moments the mucus covered eyes emerged with a baleful glitter; the long neck swayed and the short front legs beat the air, as if in expostulation at delay. The fascinating thrill of horror which such a sightcauses can be understood; only the painter can justify it.
And, sir, they were fed—fedwith corpses, while the infernal cymbals banged on, and the insignificant people wailed their “Lam-bo-oo, Lam-bo-oo!”
The bodies were naked and they were the dead of both races; the gaping jaws caught them as the sea lion catches with inerrant skill the tossed fish, that no sooner reaches the expectant jaws than it vanishes with a hollow-sounding gulp. So for the most part did these small bodies go, the dilating necks of the animals marking their descent to the cavernous abdomens. A few vicious twirls maybe, a shivering hammering together of the jaws, accompanied at times with a dip beneath the water, sending muddy waves to the banks, indicated the less easy negotiation of the larger bodies.
Revolted and overcome by the pervading half-sickening stench—in part the exhalations from the vile saurians—we turned away. As we went back I caught a full view of the little dignitaries in their violet gowns, their glittering chains and their beehive hats, and what an incongruous contrast it made. In their frailness, their whiteness, their chirping volubility, with their overmade heads, their tenuous shanks and their globed eyes they took on, to me, the whimsical likeness to delicately cut and animatednetsukesin ivory, dressed like toys; and I thought too their enlarged heads might keep company with their compressed hearts, though certainly we could not say yet, and religious habits often accompany many horrors, much bad taste, and a lot of antiquated humbug.
two men throw a body into a river. Two bear-like creatures wait belowTHE POOL OF OBLATION
THE POOL OF OBLATION
THE POOL OF OBLATION
We got away, the Professor reluctantly. He said the “mandibular action” merited longer observation, and Hopkins inquired, “I wonder how the undertakers of Radiumopolis relish this sort of burial? It certainly saves the mourner considerablein flowers and gravestones, but I don’t believe I would cotton to finding my ancestors in the bones of an alligator. It’s decidedly composite you know, like as in “The Yarn of the Nancy Bell,” when the man who had eaten a good deal of everybody, sang:
“‘Oh, I am the cook and a captain bold,And the mate of the Nancy brig,And a bo’s’n tight, and a midshipmite,And the crew of the captain’s gig.’”
“‘Oh, I am the cook and a captain bold,And the mate of the Nancy brig,And a bo’s’n tight, and a midshipmite,And the crew of the captain’s gig.’”
“‘Oh, I am the cook and a captain bold,And the mate of the Nancy brig,And a bo’s’n tight, and a midshipmite,And the crew of the captain’s gig.’”
“‘Oh, I am the cook and a captain bold,
And the mate of the Nancy brig,
And a bo’s’n tight, and a midshipmite,
And the crew of the captain’s gig.’”
Long after we had regained the highway, and were on our solitary way to the city we could hear the smashing cymbals, the thudding drums, and the dolorous salutation of the—Well WHAT? Worshippers. Ugh! But we did meet Oogalah and he was in dreadfully low spirits, with a face full of misery, wringing his hands in distress. When he saw the Professor he ran up to him and stood before him in a woe-begone way, quite incapable of explaining his grief. Goritz could make him out fairly well and he asked him “What is the matter? Sick?”
“No! No! Oogalah not sick, but the Big Men have thrown his dead mother to the Serpent!”
Of course we were interested, and Goritz extorted from our friend an astonishing story. Briefly, it was this. Every year at the winter solstice (for later we found that these people possessed a calendar) a ceremony of sacrifice was celebrated at the Pool of Oblation—so I named it. Formerly, many, many decades before this, live men and women had been thrown to the carnivorous saurians, but that had been altered (“by the Progressives,” Hopkins suggested), and now the dead only, and not more than a dozen or so, were thrown to them; a reduction in numbers because the beasts sometimesrefused some of them, and the bodies corrupted the pool.
Every five years the great lustration of the Forest Temples took place. That was the festival whose beginning and termination we had seen. At these times the whole woodland where the chosen trees are cleared—the Tree Temples—would be traversed, and at each Tree Temple chants would be sung, a black snake left, and some gold offering attached to the tree itself. Shorter pilgrimages occurred four times each year. The snake pasture was kept up as a nursery for the supply of the wood temples, for the snakes did not long survive in the pine forest. This year the Great Lustration had been unaccountably delayed—Oogalah did not know why, but he had heard that the “Big Men” (“A decided catachresis,” said the Professor, “for they literally are pygmies”), were very angry about something (my heart jumped with a sudden fear when Goritz told us this).
Oogalah’s mother died while we were away with him in the radium country, and the Magistrates of the city, who saw to the gathering of the yearly hecatomb, hadattachedher. Deaths were not numerous, it appeared; the supply of corpses—adequate, that is, for a satisfactory oblation—was not always secured, and a few sheep or goats made up the deficiency, their saurian majesties being at the same time importuned not to resent the substitution. “A Radiumopolite,” commented Hopkins, “may be a sweet morsel, but, under the circumstances, I surely would prefer mutton.”)
Oogalah could not tell us much about the “Serpent” (our Crocodilo-Python), or his worship. He said it had always been so, and that the “big ponds” toward the south were full of them. He had traversed these once on a raft, and apparently had got the scare of his life, for the beasts wobbledabout him and, except for an inconvenient satiety at the moment, might have picked him and his companions off like crumbs from a plate. He said too that it was in the savannahs, morasses and meadows of the “southland” that the food for the black snakes in the “serpent pasture” was foraged. “A typical surviving remnant, doubtless,” said the Professor, “ofCretaceo-Juro-Triassicscenery.”)
Oogalah’s communications quite restored his peace of mind, and the gift of a pocket knife from Goritz put him into such blissful acceptance of his domestic bereavement, that the theft of two or three dead mothers would have been thankfully condoned for a similar exchange in the case of each.
We had again reached the city but in darkness. The clouds had thickened in an impenetrable curtain over the Stationary Sun, and the deepest gloom had settled over everything. Forebodings filled my mind. Superstitiously watching every symptom of nature I dreaded the effect of this eclipse on the people, and their cunning little governors, who might at any moment change their deferential behavior into a ruthless malignancy. After their rite of propitiation this darkening of the sun might indicate to them a yet unappeased deity, for, as the Professor had put it, the “Serpent and the Sun had a consentaneous meaning in many old mythologies.” Why then was he unappeased?The Strangers and their profanation of the Shrines.I always returned to this suspicion with dread. A few moments later my worst fears were confirmed.
We had ascended the western terrace of steps and were immediately beneath the western facade of the Capitol, still to all appearances empty, when a flying figure met us, and in another instant the arms of Ziliah were about Spruce Hopkins’ neck, and—my conclusion on the matter can scarcely be questioned—hiswere probably about hers. It certainly was a bad case of nerves. Ziliah was in a sort of hysteria, moaning and gasping with (so Hopkins called it) a “strangle hold” on his “wind-pipe,” that also quite robbed her lover of the power of utterance. I intervened. The incident might have terminated in their mutual suffocation—so it seemed to me.
The fair and stricken Ziliah told her story.
She had not gone to the Oblation. No; she did not like it. But then there was something else. “Spooce” was in danger, her own “Spooce”—and all of us,all. The governors did not like us; they were afraid of us, afraid we might bring more—her father was as bad as the rest of them. And they had found out something, she did not know what, something we had done. We were enemies of theSerpent, and—Ziliah’s agitation at this juncture quite robbed her narrative of coherency, but in a lucid interval I understood her—we were to be sacrificed; we would be fed to the Serpent!!!
“Zerubbabel and Heliopolis,” shouted Hopkins. “You don’t mean it? Does she say so? Well so help me—if we don’t blow the pack into kingdom come—and twice as far. How much powder have we got left?”
“The tubes,” I remonstrated.
Hopkins was silent; he remembered their power, and it was not so many hours since something of the same inscrutable influence had nearly brought us all to the verge of extinction.
Never, to the last day of my life, Mr. Link, will I comprehend what happened then. Was it the hand of God—or was it telepathy. WHAT? Ziliah repeated the words I had uttered—exactly. She loosened Hopkins’ embrace, she moved stealthily towards me, I saw her deep, sweet eyes raised to mine, her hands closed on my cheeks;the boreal dusk light that comes from the firmament even when clouded, made her whole face visible. In it shone a strange divination; she repeated the words, “the tubes,” and then sighed; seized with a sudden inspiration, I forced my mind upon hers; my brain contracted (it felt so), as with a fierce concentration of will I projected the sense of my words and all they implied upon, in, through, the spirit before me—the spirit that itself leaped to their comprehension.
She crouched slightly, moved away, but her soft fingers closed around my hand, and she drew me towards her.
We entered the broad hall of the Capitol, Ziliah holding me tightly and leading me. We turned into a passage-way. At its dark end we stumbled on a half raised arched tile. Ziliah raised it, and seemed sinking below me, as I felt her pull me down. I stooped and felt the edges of an opening. My wary foot detected a stairway. Together we descended and in a dozen or more steps reached the floor of a chamber whose walls seemed only a few feet off on every side of us. Ziliah led me to the corner of this room, pushed upon a wooden door and we entered what proved to be a much larger room. Then telling me to wait, my guide left me. Another instant and a soft radiance filled the place. It came from a radium lamp which Ziliah had uncovered. She pointed to a table in the center of this apartment. On it lay a metal box—a leaden trunk. Ziliah raised its lid. I leaped forward. I already knew what to expect.
In the bottom of the box lay, neatly aligned in rows, thirty leaden tubes, one probably for each of the governors. Here at last in our power, our possession, were the murderous little vials. But were they charged with their life-arresting power? And how to use them? I stood perplexed, andZiliah remained motionless by me gazing at me with a mute happiness, as she realized she had attained my wishes. But it was plain that the dear creature knew nothing about them. No—the clever little doctors were not such fools as to popularize their peculiar knowledge, and the dark beauty, tears yet bepearling her long lashes, was just a child before them,as I was. But why had they left them here at all? They must have been deposited after the return, for the doctors indubitably had worn them in their girdles when we so inauspiciously dropped onto the road in the pine forest. Did they have a duplicate set? The thought unnerved me.
Now not the least remarkable circumstance in this startling episode was that I had not talked to Ziliah at all, though we understood each other. Telepathy, or sympathy, or suggestion, had done its perfect work so far; not a word had passed between us, but at this obstructive ignorance staring me, so to speak, in the face I opened my mouth.
“Ziliah are these all?”
“ALL,” came the answer very quietly, but with a frankness and certainty that assured me.
“Do you know anything about them Ziliah? How they work?”
Ziliah knew nothing. “The—,” I understood her to mean the doctors, including her precious father, “will kill you all—Ah! Spooce, too. No! No! Take them away,” pointing to the chest, “AWAY—AWAY.”
The girl’s nerves were reasserting themselves; time was running away too, my friends were deserted, and detection was imminent at any moment. Another glance at the desperate little instruments, and then—nolens, volens—I picked them up and pushed them under my tunic, so that I felt their cold surfaces chilling my skin.
Then I shook Ziliah and pointed to the door, closing the lid of the chest. She understood. Our way back was as noiseless as our entrance had been. Unless our footprints remained as silent betrayers of our robbery, there was no reason for suspicion, no proof of our misdeeds. Misdeed indeed; it was our SALVATION.
In five minutes I was back with my friends, and Ziliah, reaching the limit of her endurance comfortably fled to her familiar refuge—Hopkins’ arms.
Now you may ask incredulously—Why did you not in the first place ask Ziliah where werethe tubes; why impair the credibility of your story by injecting this transcendental nonsense about—telepathy.
I don’t know, sir; the facts are just as I have related them.