till it dried up, in which case our fate would indeed be an
awful one.
'Well, let us hope for the best and prepare ourselves for the
worst,' said Sir Henry, who is always cheerful and even spirited
- a very tower of strength in the time of trouble. 'We have
come out of so many queer scrapes together, that somehow I almost
fancy we shall come out of this,' he added.
This was excellent advice, and we proceeded to take it each in
our separate way - that is, except Alphonse, who had by now
sunk into a sort of terrified stupor. Good was at the helm and
Umslopogaas in the bows, so there was nothing left for Sir Henry
and myself to do except to lie down in the canoe and think.
It certainly was a curious, and indeed almost a weird, position
to be placed in - rushing along, as we were, through the bowels
of the earth, borne on the bosom of a Stygian river, something
after the fashion of souls being ferried by Charon, as Curtis
said. And how dark it was! The feeble ray from our little lamp
did but serve to show the darkness. There in the bows sat old
Umslopogaas, like Pleasure in the poem, {Endnote 9} watchful
and untiring, the pole ready to his hand, and behind in the shadow
I could just make out the form of Good peering forward at the
ray of light in order to make out how to steer with the paddle
that he held and now and again dipped into the water.
'Well, well,' thought I, 'you have come in search of adventures,
Allan my boy, and you have certainly got them. At your time
of life, too! You ought to be ashamed of yourself; but somehow
you are not, and, awful as it all is, perhaps you will pull through
after all; and if you don't, why, you cannot help it, you see!
And when all's said and done an underground river will make
a very appropriate burying-place.'
At first, however, I am bound to say that the strain upon the
nerves was very great. It is trying to the coolest and most
experienced person not to know from one hour to another if he
has five minutes more to live, but there is nothing in this world
that one cannot get accustomed to, and in time we began to get
accustomed even to that. And, after all, our anxiety, though
no doubt natural, was, strictly speaking, illogical, seeing that
we never know what is going to happen to us the next minute,
even when we sit in a well-drained house with two policemen patrolling
under the window - nor how long we have to live. It is all arranged
for us, my sons, so what is the use of bothering?
It was nearly midday when we made our dive into darkness, and
we had set our watch (Good and Umslopogaas) at two, having agreed
that it should be of a duration of five hours. At seven o'clock,
accordingly, Sir Henry and I went on, Sir Henry at the bow and
I at the stern, and the other two lay down and went to sleep.
For three hours all went well, Sir Henry only finding it necessary
once to push us off from the side; and I that but little steering
was required to keep us straight, as the violent current did
all that was needed, though occasionally the canoe showed a tendency
which had to be guarded against to veer and travel broadside
on. What struck me as the most curious thing about this wonderful
river was: how did the air keep fresh? It was muggy and thick,
no doubt, but still not sufficiently so to render it bad or even
remarkably unpleasant. The only explanation that I can suggest
is that the water of the lake had sufficient air in it to keep
the atmosphere of the tunnel from absolute stagnation, this air
being given out as it proceeded on its headlong way. Of course
I only give the solution of the mystery for what it is worth,
which perhaps is not much.
When I had been for three hours or so at the helm, I began to
notice a decided change in the temperature, which was getting
warmer. At first I took no notice of it, but when, at the expiration
of another half-hour, I found that it was getting hotter and
hotter, I called to Sir Henry and asked him if he noticed it,
or if it was only my imagination. 'Noticed it!' he answered;
'I should think so. I am in a sort of Turkish bath.' Just about
then the others woke up gasping, and were obliged to begin to
discard their clothes. Here Umslopogaas had the advantage, for
he did not wear any to speak of, except a moocha.
Hotter it grew, and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely
breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour
more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly
bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions
proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost
with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer
we had - the mercury stood at 123 degrees. From the surface
of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonse groaned out
that we were already in purgatory, which indeed we were, though
not in the sense that he meant it. Sir Henry suggested that
we must be passing near the seat of some underground volcanic
fire, and I am inclined to think, especially in the light of
what subsequently occurred, that he was right. Our sufferings
for some time after this really pass my powers of description.
We no longer perspired, for all the perspiration had been sweated
out of us. We simply lay in the bottom of the boat, which we
were now physically incapable of directing, feeling like hot
embers, and I fancy undergoing very much the same sensations
that the poor fish do when they are dying on land - namely,
that of slow suffocation. Our skins began to crack, and the
blood to throb in our heads like the beating of a steam-engine.
This had been going on for some time, when suddenly the river
turned a little, and I heard Sir Henry call out from the bows
in a hoarse, startled voice, and, looking up, saw a most wonderful
and awful thing. About half a mile ahead of us, and a little
to the left of the centre of the stream - which we could now
see was about ninety feet broad - a huge pillar-like jet of
almost white flame rose from the surface of the water and sprang
fifty feet into the air, when it struck the roof and spread out
some forty feet in diameter, falling back in curved sheets of
fire shaped like the petals of a full-blown rose. Indeed this
awful gas jet resembled nothing so much as a great flaming flower
rising out of the black water. Below was the straight stalk,
a foot or more thick, and above the dreadful bloom. And as for
the fearfulness of it and its fierce and awesome beauty, who
can describe it? Certainly I cannot. Although we were now some
five hundred yards away, it, notwithstanding the steam, lit up
the whole cavern as clear as day, and we could see that the roof
was here about forty feet above us, and washed perfectly smooth
with water. The rock was black, and here and there I could make
out long shining lines of ore running through it like great veins,
but of what metal they were I know not.
On we rushed towards this pillar of fire, which gleamed fiercer
than any furnace ever lit by man.
'Keep the boat to the right, Quatermain - to the right,' shouted
Sir Henry, and a minute afterwards I saw him fall forward senseless.
Alphonse had already gone. Good was the next to go. There
they lay as though dead; only Umslopogaas and I kept our senses.
We were within fifty yards of it now, and I saw the Zulu's head
fall forward on his hands. He had gone too, and I was alone.
I could not breathe; the fierce heat dried me up. For yards
and yards round the great rose of fire the rock-roof was red-hot.
The wood of the boat was almost burning. I saw the feathers
on one of the dead swans begin to twist and shrivel up; but I
would not give in. I knew that if I did we should pass within
three or four yards of the gas jet and perish miserably. I set
the paddle so as to turn the canoe as far from it as possible,
and held on grimly.
My eyes seemed to be bursting from my head, and through my closed
lids I could see the fierce light. We were nearly opposite now;
it roared like all the fires of hell, and the water boiled furiously
around it. Five seconds more. We were past; I heard the roar
behind me.
Then I too fell senseless. The next thing that I recollect is
feeling a breath of air upon my face. My eyes opened with great
difficulty. I looked up. Far, far above me there was light,
though around me was great gloom. Then I remembered and looked.
The canoe still floated down the river, and in the bottom of
it lay the naked forms of my companions. 'Were they dead?' I
wondered. 'Was I left alone in this awful place?' I knew not.
Next I became conscious of a burning thirst. I put my hand
over the edge of the boat into the water and drew it up again
with a cry. No wonder: nearly all the skin was burnt off the
back of it. The water, however, was cold, or nearly so, and
I drank pints and splashed myself all over. My body seemed to
suck up the fluid as one may see a brick wall suck up rain after
a drought; but where I was burnt the touch of it caused intense
pain. Then I bethought myself of the others, and, dragging myself
towards them with difficulty, I sprinkled them with water, and
to my joy they began to recover - Umslopogaas first, then the
others. Next they drank, absorbing water like so many sponges.
Then, feeling chilly - a queer contrast to our recent sensations
- we began as best we could to get into our clothes. As we
did so Good pointed to the port side of the canoe: it was all
blistered with heat, and in places actually charred. Had it
been built like our civilized boats, Good said that the planks
would certainly have warped and let in enough water to sink us;
but fortunately it was dug out of the soft, willowy wood of a
single great tree, and had sides nearly three inches and a bottom
four inches thick. What that awful flame was we never discovered,
but I suppose that there was at this spot a crack or hole in
the bed of the river through which a vast volume of gas forced
its way from its volcanic home in the bowels of the earth towards
the upper air. How it first became ignited is, of course, impossible
to say - probably, I should think, from some spontaneous explosion
of mephitic gases.
As soon as we had got some things together and shaken ourselves
together a little, we set to work to make out where we were now.
I have said that there was light above, and on examination we
found that it came from the sky. Our river that was, Sir Henry
said, a literal realization of the wild vision of the poet
{Endnote 10}, was no longer underground, but was running on its
darksome way, not now through 'caverns measureless to man', but
between two frightful cliffs which cannot have been less than
two thousand feet high. So high were they, indeed, that though
the sky was above us, where we were was dense gloom - not darkness
indeed, but the gloom of a room closely shuttered in the daytime.
Up on either side rose the great straight cliffs, grim and forbidding,
till the eye grew dizzy with trying to measure their sheer height.
The little space of sky that marked where they ended lay like
a thread of blue upon their soaring blackness, which was unrelieved
by any tree or creeper. Here and there, however, grew ghostly
patches of a long grey lichen, hanging motionless to the rock
as the white beard to the chin of a dead man. It seemed as though
only the dregs or heavier part of the light had sunk to the bottom
of this awful place. No bright-winged sunbeam could fall so low:
they died far, far above our heads.
By the river's edge was a little shore formed of round fragments
of rock washed into this shape by the constant action of water,
and giving the place the appearance of being strewn with thousands
of fossil cannon balls. Evidently when the water of the underground
river is high there is no beach at all, or very little, between
the border of the stream and the precipitous cliffs; but now
there was a space of seven or eight yards. And here, on this
beach, we determined to land, in order to rest ourselves a little
after all that we had gone through and to stretch our limbs.
It was a dreadful place, but it would give an hour's respite
from the terrors of the river, and also allow of our repacking
and arranging the canoe. Accordingly we selected what looked
like a favourable spot, and with some little difficulty managed
to beach the canoe and scramble out on to the round, inhospitable
pebbles.
'My word,' called out Good, who was on shore the first, 'what
an awful place! It's enough to give one a fit.' And he laughed.
Instantly a thundering voice took up his words, magnifying them
a hundred times. '_Give one a fit - Ho! ho! ho!' - 'A fit,
Ho! ho! ho!_' answered another voice in wild accents from far
up the cliff - _a fit! a fit! a fit!_ chimed in voice after voice
- each flinging the words to and fro with shouts of awful laughter
to the invisible lips of the other till the whole place echoed
with the words and with shrieks of fiendish merriment, which
at last ceased as suddenly as they had begun.
'Oh, mon Dieu!' yelled Alphonse, startled quite out of such
self-command as he possessed.
'_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_' the Titanic echoes thundered,
shrieked, and wailed in every conceivable tone.
'Ah,' said Umslopogaas calmly, 'I clearly perceive that devils
live here. Well, the place looks like it.'
I tried to explain to him that the cause of all the hubbub was
a very remarkable and interesting echo, but he would not believe it.
'Ah,' he said, 'I know an echo when I hear one. There was one lived
opposite my kraal in Zululand, and the Intombis [maidens] used
to talk with it. But if what we hear is a full-grown echo, mine
at home can only have been a baby. No, no - they are devils
up there. But I don't think much of them, though,' he added,
taking a pinch of snuff. 'They can copy what one says, but they
don't seem to be able to talk on their own account, and they
dare not show their faces,' and he relapsed into silence, and
apparently paid no further attention to such contemptible fiends.
After this we found it necessary to keep our conversation down
to a whisper - for it was really unbearable to have every word
one uttered tossed to and fro like a tennis-ball, as precipice
called to precipice.
But even our whispers ran up the rocks in mysterious murmurs
till at last they died away in long-drawn sighs of sound. Echoes
are delightful and romantic things, but we had more than enough
of them in that dreadful gulf.
As soon as we had settled ourselves a little on the round stones,
we went on to wash and dress our burns as well as we could.
As we had but a little oil for the lantern, we could not spare
any for this purpose, so we skinned one of the swans, and used
the fat off its breast, which proved an excellent substitute.
Then we repacked the canoe, and finally began to take some food,
of which I need scarcely say we were in need, for our insensibility
had endured for many hours, and it was, as our watches showed,
midday. Accordingly we seated ourselves in a circle, and were
soon engaged in discussing our cold meat with such appetite as
we could muster, which, in my case at any rate, was not much,
as I felt sick and faint after my sufferings of the previous
night, and had besides a racking headache. It was a curious
meal. The gloom was so intense that we could scarcely see the
way to cut our food and convey it to our mouths. Still we got
on pretty well, till I happened to look behind me - my attention
being attracted by a noise of something crawling over the stones,
and perceived sitting upon a rock in my immediate rear a huge
species of black freshwater crab, only it was five times the
size of any crab I ever saw. This hideous and loathsome-looking
animal had projecting eyes that seemed to glare at one, very
long and flexible antennae or feelers, and gigantic claws.
Nor was I especially favoured with its company. From every quarter
dozens of these horrid brutes were creeping up, drawn, I suppose,
by the smell of the food, from between the round stones and out
of holes in the precipice. Some were already quite close to
us. I stared quite fascinated by the unusual sight, and as I
did so I saw one of the beasts stretch out its huge claw and
give the unsuspecting Good such a nip behind that he jumped up
with a howl, and set the 'wild echoes flying' in sober earnest.
Just then, too, another, a very large one, got hold of Alphonse's
leg, and declined to part with it, and, as may be imagined, a
considerable scene ensued. Umslopogaas took his axe and cracked
the shell of one with the flat of it, whereon it set up a horrid
screaming which the echoes multiplied a thousandfold, and began
to foam at the mouth, a proceeding that drew hundreds more of
its friends out of unsuspected holes and corners. Those on the
spot perceiving that the animal was hurt fell upon it like creditors
on a bankrupt, and literally rent it limb from limb with their
huge pincers and devoured it, using their claws to convey the
fragments to their mouths. Seizing whatever weapons were handy,
such as stones or paddles, we commenced a war upon the monsters
- whose numbers were increasing by leaps and bounds, and whose
stench was overpowering. So fast as we cracked their armour
others seized the injured ones and devoured them, foaming at
the mouth, and screaming as they did so. Nor did the brutes
stop at that. When they could they nipped hold of us - and
awful nips they were - or tried to steal the meat. One enormous
fellow got hold of the swan we had skinned and began to drag
it off. Instantly a score of others flung themselves upon the
prey, and then began a ghastly and disgusting scene. How the
monsters foamed and screamed, and rent the flesh, and each other!
It was a sickening and unnatural sight, and one that will haunt
all who saw it till their dying day - enacted as it was in the
deep, oppressive gloom, and set to the unceasing music of the
many-toned nerve-shaking echoes. Strange as it may seem to say
so, there was something so shockingly human about these fiendish
creatures - it was as though all the most evil passions and
desires of man had got into the shell of a magnified crab and
gone mad. They were so dreadfully courageous and intelligent,
and they looked as if they _understood_. The whole scene might
have furnished material for another canto of Dante's 'Inferno',
as Curtis said.
'I say, you fellows, let's get out of this or we shall all go
off our heads,' sung out Good; and we were not slow to take the
hint. Pushing the canoe, around which the animals were now crawling
by hundreds and making vain attempts to climb, off the rocks,
we bundled into it and got out into mid-stream, leaving behind
us the fragments of our meal and the screaming, foaming, stinking
mass of monsters in full possession of the ground.
'Those are the devils of the place,' said Umslopogaas with the
air of one who has solved a problem, and upon my word I felt
almost inclined to agree with him.
Umslopogaas' remarks were like his axe - very much to the point.
'What's to be done next?' said Sir Henry blankly.
'Drift, I suppose,' I answered, and we drifted accordingly.
All the afternoon and well into the evening we floated on in
the gloom beneath the far-off line of blue sky, scarcely knowing
when day ended and night began, for down in that vast gulf the
difference was not marked, till at length Good pointed out a
star hanging right above us, which, having nothing better to
do, we observed with great interest. Suddenly it vanished, the
darkness became intense, and a familiar murmuring sound filled
the air. 'Underground again,' I said with a groan, holding up
the lamp. Yes, there was no doubt about it. I could just make
out the roof. The chasm had come to an end and the tunnel had
recommenced. And then there began another long, long night of
danger and horror. To describe all its incidents would be too
wearisome, so I will simply say that about midnight we struck
on a flat projecting rock in mid-stream and were as nearly as
possible overturned and drowned. However, at last we got off,
and went upon the uneven tenor of our way. And so the hours
passed till it was nearly three o'clock. Sir Henry, Good, and
Alphonse were asleep, utterly worn out; Umslopogaas was at the
bow with the pole, and I was steering, when I perceived that
the rate at which we were travelling had perceptibly increased.
Then, suddenly, I heard Umslopogaas make an exclamation, and
next second came a sound as of parting branches, and I became
aware that the canoe was being forced through hanging bushes
or creepers. Another minute, and the breath of sweet open air
fanned my face, and I felt that we had emerged from the tunnel
and were floating upon clear water. I say felt, for I could
see nothing, the darkness being absolutely pitchy, as it often
is just before the dawn. But even this could scarcely damp my
joy. We were out of that dreadful river, and wherever we might
have got to this at least was something to be thankful for.
And so I sat down and inhaled the sweet night air and waited
for the dawn with such patience as I could command.
CHAPTER XI
THE FROWNING CITY
For an hour or more I sat waiting (Umslopogaas having meanwhile
gone to sleep also) till at length the east turned grey, and
huge misty shapes moved over the surface of the water like ghosts
of long-forgotten dawns. They were the vapours rising from their
watery bed to greet the sun. Then the grey turned to primrose,
and the primrose grew to red. Next, glorious bars of light sprang
up across the eastern sky, and through them the radiant messengers
of the dawn came speeding upon their arrowy way, scattering the
ghostly vapours and awaking the mountains with a kiss, as they
flew from range to range and longitude to longitude. Another
moment, and the golden gates were open and the sun himself came
forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, with pomp and glory and
a flashing as of ten million spears, and embraced the night and
covered her with brightness, and it was day.
But as yet I could see nothing save the beautiful blue sky above,
for over the water was a thick layer of mist exactly as though
the whole surface had been covered with billows of cotton wool.
By degrees, however, the sun sucked up the mists, and then I
saw that we were afloat upon a glorious sheet of blue water of
which I could not make out the shore. Some eight or ten miles
behind us, however, there stretched as far as the eye could reach
a range of precipitous hills that formed a retaining wall of
the lake, and I have no doubt but that it was through some entrance
in these hills that the subterranean river found its way into
the open water. Indeed, I afterwards ascertained this to be
the fact, and it will be some indication of the extraordinary
strength and directness of the current of the mysterious river
that the canoe, even at this distance, was still answering to
it. Presently, too, I, or rather Umslopogaas, who woke up just
then, discovered another indication, and a very unpleasant one
it was. Perceiving some whitish object upon the water, Umslopogaas
called my attention to it, and with a few strokes of the paddle
brought the canoe to the spot, whereupon we discovered that the
object was the body of a man floating face downwards. This was
bad enough, but imagine my horror when Umslopogaas having turned
him on to his back with the paddle, we recognized in the sunken
features the lineaments of - whom do you suppose? None other
than our poor servant who had been sucked down two days before
in the waters of the subterranean river. It quite frightened
me. I thought that we had left him behind for ever, and behold!
borne by the current, he had made the awful journey with us,
and with us had reached the end. His appearance also was dreadful,
for he bore traces of having touched the pillar of fire - one
arm being completely shrivelled up and all his hair being burnt
off. The features were, as I have said, sunken, and yet they
preserved upon them that awful look of despair that I had seen
upon his living face as the poor fellow was sucked down. Really
the sight unnerved me, weary and shaken as I felt with all that
we had gone through, and I was heartily glad when suddenly and
without any warning the body began to sink just as though it
had had a mission, which having been accomplished, it retired;
the real reason no doubt being that turning it on its back allowed
a free passage to the gas. Down it went to the transparent depths