CHAPTER XXVI
"YOU SPEAK ENGLISH!"
Even in his pain and rage and fear, Stern did not lose hiswits. Too great the peril, he subconsciously realized, for any falsestep now. Despite the fact that the stone prison could measure no morethan some ten feet in diameter, he knew that in its floors some pit orfissure might exist, frightfully deep, for their destruction.
And other dangers, too, might lie hidden in this fearful place. So,restraining himself with a strong effort, he stood there motionless afew seconds, listening, trying to think. Severe now the pain from hislashed wrists had grown, but he no longer felt it. Strange visionsseemed to dance before his eyes, for weakness and fever were at workupon him. In his ears still sounded, though muffled now, the constanthissing roar of the great flame, the mysterious and monstrous jet offire which seemed to form the center of this unknown, incomprehensiblelife in the abyss.
"Merciful Heavens!" gasped he. "That fire--those skeletons--this blackcell--what can they mean?" He found no answer in his bewildered brain.Once more he called, "Beatrice! _Beatrice!_" but only the close echoof the prison replied.
He listened, holding his breath in sickening fear. Was there, intruth, some waiting, yawning chasm in the cell, and had she, thrustrudely forward, been hurled down it? At the thought he set his jawswith terrible menace and swore, to the last drop of his blood,vengeance on these inhuman captors.
But as he listened, standing there with bound hands in the thickgloom, he seemed to catch a slow and sighing sound, as of troubledbreathing. Again he called. No answer. Then he understood the truth.And, unable to grope with his hands, he swung one foot slowly, gently,in the partial circumference of a circle.
At first he found nothing save the smooth and slippery stone of thefloor, but, having shifted his position very cautiously and triedagain, he experienced the great joy of feeling his sandaled foot comein contact with the girl's prostrate body.
Beside her on the floor he knelt. He could not free his hands, but hecould call to her and kiss her face. And presently, even while the joyof this discovery was keen upon him, obscuring the hot rage he felt,she moved, she spoke a few vague words, and reached her hands up tohim; she clasped him in her arms.
And there in the close, fetid dark, imprisoned, helpless, doomed, theykissed again, and once more--though no word was spoken--plighted theirlove and deep fidelity until the end.
"Hurt? Are you hurt?" he panted eagerly, as she sat up on the hardfloor and with her hands smoothed back the hair from his hot, achinghead.
"I feel so weak and dizzy," she answered. "And I'm afraid--oh, Allan,I'm afraid! But, no, I'm not hurt."
"Thank God for that!" he breathed fervently. "Can you untie theseinfernal knots? They're almost cutting my hands off!"
"Here, let me try!"
And presently the girl set to work; but even though she labored tillher fingers ached, she could not start the tight and water-soakedligatures.
"Hold on, wait a minute," directed he. "Feel in my right-hand pocket.Maybe they forgot to take my knife."
She obeyed.
"They've got it," she announced. "Even if they don't know the meaningof revolvers, they understand knives all right. It's gone."
"Pest!" he ejaculated hotly. Then for a moment he sat thinking, whilethe girl again tried vainly to loosen the hard-drawn knots.
"Can you find the iron door they shoved us through?" asked he atlength.
"I'll see!"
He heard her creeping cautiously along the walls of stone, feeling asshe went.
"Look out!" he warned. "Keep testing the floor as you go. There may bea crevice or pit or something of that kind."
All at once she cried: "Here it is! I've found it!"
"Good! Now, then, feel it all over and see if there's any rough placeon it. Any sharp edge of a plate, or anything of that kind, that Icould rub the cords on."
Another silence. Then the girl spoke.
"Nothing of that kind here," she answered depairingly. "The door's assmooth as if it had been filed and polished. There's not even a lockof any kind. It must be fastened from the outside in some way."
"By Heaven, this is certainly a hard proposition!" exclaimed theengineer, groaning despite himself. "What the deuce are we going to do_now?_"
For a moment he remained sunk in a kind of dull and apathetic respair.
But suddenly he gave a cry of joy.
"I've got it!" he exclaimed. "Your revolver, quick! Aim at theopposite wall, there, and fire!"
"Shoot, in here?" she queried, astonished. "Why--what for?"
"Never mind! Shoot!"
Amazed, she did his bidding. The crash of the report almost deafenedthem in that narrow room. By the stabbing flare of the discharge theyglimpsed the black and shining walls, a deadly circle all about them.
"Again?" asked she.
"No. That's enough. Now, find the bullet. It's somewhere on the floor.There's no pit; it's all solid. The bullet--find the bullet!"
Questioning no more, yet still not understanding, she groped on handsand knees in the impenetrable blackness. The search lasted more thanfive minutes before her hand fell on the jagged bit of metal.
"Ah!" cried she. "Here it is!"
"Good! Tell me, is the steel jacket burst in any such way as to make ajagged edge?"
A moment's silence, while her deft fingers examined the metal. Thensaid she:
"I think so. It's a terribly small bit to saw with, but--"
"To work, then! I can't stand this much longer."
With splendid energy the girl attacked the tough and water-soakedbonds. She worked half an hour before the first one, thread by threadyielding, gave way. The second followed soon after; and now, with tornand bleeding fingers, she released the final bond.
"Thank Heaven!" he breathed as she began chafing his numb wrists andarms to bring the circulation back again; and presently, when he hadregained some use of his own hands, he also rubbed his arms.
"No great damage done, after all," he judged, "so far as this isconcerned. But, by the Almighty, we're in one frightful fix everyother way! Hark! Hear those demons outside there? God knows whatthey're up to now!"
Both prisoners listened.
Even through the massive walls of the circular dungeon they could heara dull and gruesome chant that rose, fell, died, and then resumed,seemingly in unison with the variant roaring of the flame.
Thereto, also, an irregular metallic sound, as of blows struck oniron, and now and then a shrill, high-pitched cry. The effect of thesestrange sounds, rendered vague and unreal by the density of the walls,and faintly penetrating the dreadful darkness, surpassed all effortsof the imagination.
Beatrice and Stern, bold as they were, hardened to rough adventurings,felt their hearts sink with bodings, and for a while they spokeno word. They sat there together on the floor of polishedstone--perceptibly warm to the touch and greasy with a peculiarlyrepellent substance--and thought long thoughts which neither one daredvoice.
But at length the engineer, now much recovered from his pain and fromthe oppression of the lungs caused by the compressed air, reached forthe girl's hand in the dark.
"Without you where should I be?" he exclaimed. "My good angel now, asalways!"
She made no answer, but returned the pressure of his hand. And for awhile silence fell between them there--silence broken only by theirtroubled breathing and the cadenced roaring of the huge gas-well flameoutside the prison wall.
At last Stern spoke.
"Let's get some better idea of this place," said he. "Maybe if we knowjust what we're up against we'll understand better what to do."
And slowly, cautiously, with every sense alert, he began exploring thedungeon. Floor and walls he felt of, with minute care, reaching ashigh as he could and eagerly seeking some possible crevice, somepromise--no matter how remote--of ultimate escape.
But the examination ended only in discouragement. Smooth almost asglass the walls were, and the floor as well, perhaps worn down bycoun
tless prisoners.
The iron door, cleverly let into the wall, lay flush with it, andoffered not the slightest irregularity to the touch. So nicely was itfitted that not even Stern's finger-nail could penetrate the joint.
"Nothing doing in the escape line," he passed judgment unwillingly."Barbarians these people certainly are, in some ways, but they've gotthe arts of stone and iron working down fine. I, as an engineer, haveto appreciate that, and give the remote descendants of our race creditfor it, even if it works our ruin. Gad, but they're clever, though!"
Discouraged, in spite of all his attempted optimism, he sought thegirl again, there in the deep and velvet dark. To himself he drew her;and, his arm about her sinuous, supple body, tried to comfort her withcheering speech.
"Well, Beatrice, they haven't got us _yet!_ We're better off, on thewhole, than we had any right to hope for, after having fallen one ortwo hundred miles--maybe five hundred, who knows? If I can manage toget a word or two with these confounded barbarians, I'll maybe saveour bacon yet! And, at worst--well, we're in a mighty good little forthere. I pity anybody that tries to come in that door and get us."
"Oh, Allan--those skeletons, those headless skeletons!" she whispered;and in his arms he felt her shudder with unconquerable fear.
"I know; but they aren't going to add _us_ to their little collection,you mark my words! These men are white; they're our own kind, eventhough they have slid back into barbarism. They'll listen to reason,once I get a chance at them."
Thus, talking of the abyss and of their fall--now of one phase, nowanother, of their frightful position--they passed an hour in thestifling dark.
And, joining their observations and ideas, they were able to get somegeneral idea of the conditions under which these incredible folk weredwelling.
From the warmth of the sea and the immense quantities of vapor thatfilled the abyss, they concluded that it must be at a tremendous depthin the earth--perhaps as far down as Stern's extreme guess of fivehundred miles--and also that it must be of very large extent.
Beatrice had noted also that the water was salt. This led them to theconclusion that in some way or other, perhaps intermittently, theoceans on the surface were supplying the subterranean sea.
"If I'm not much mistaken," judged the engineer, "that tremendousmaelstrom near the site of New Haven--the cataract that almost got us,just after we started out--has something very vital to do with thissituation.
"In that case, and if there's a way for water to come down, why mayn'tthere be a way for us to climb _up?_ Who knows?"
"But if there were," she answered, "wouldn't these people have foundit, in all these hundreds and hundreds of years?"
They discussed the question, pro and con, with many another that boreon the folk--this strange and inexplicable imprisonment, the hugeflame at the center of the community's life, the probable intentionsof their captors, and the terrifying rows of headless skeletons.
"What those mean I don't know," said Stern. "There may be humansacrifice here, and offerings of blood to some outlandish god they'veinvented. Or these relics may be trophies of battle with other peoplesof the abyss.
"To judge from the way this place is fortified, I rather think theremust be other tribes, with more or less constant warfare. The infernalfools! When the human race is all destroyed, as it is, except a fewhandfuls of albino survivors, to make war and kill each other! It's ona par with the old Maoris of New Zealand, who practically exterminatedeach other--fought till most of the tribes were wiped clean out andonly a remnant was left for the British to subdue!"
"I'm more interested in what they're going to do with us now," sheanswered, shuddering, "than in how many or how few survive! What arewe going to do, Allan? What on earth can we do now?"
He thought a moment, while the strange chant, dimly heard, rose andfell outside, always in unison with the gigantic flame. Then said he:
"Do? Nothing, for the immediate present. Nothing, except wait, andkeep all the nerve and strength we can. No use in our shouting andmaking a row. They'd only take that as an admission of fear andweakness, just as any barbarians would. No use hammering on the irondoor with our revolver-butts, and annoying our white brothers byinterrupting their song services.
"Positively the only thing I can see to do is just to make sure bothautomatics are crammed full of cartridges, keep our wits about us, andplug the first man that comes in through that door with the notion ofmaking sacrifices of us. I certainly don't hanker after martyrdom ofthat sort, and, by God! the savage that lays hands on you, dies insideof one second by the stop-watch!"
"I know, boy; but against so many, what are two revolvers?"
"They're everything! My guess is that a little target practice wouldput the fear of God into their hearts in a most extraordinary manner!"
He tried to speak lightly and to cheer the girl, but in his breast hisheart lay heavy as a lump of lead.
"Suppose they _don't_ come in, what then?" suddenly resumed Beatrice."What if they leave us here till--"
"There, there, little girl! Don't you go borrowing any trouble! We'vegot enough of the real article, without manufacturing any!"
Silence again, and a long, dark, interminable waiting. In the blackcell the air grew close and frightfully oppressive. Clad as they bothwere in fur garments suitable to outdoor life and to aeroplaning atgreat altitudes, they were suffering intensely from the heat.
Stern's wrists and arms, moreover, still pained considerably, for theyhad been very cruelly bruised with the ropes, which the barbarians haddrawn tight with a force that bespoke both skill and deftness. Hisneed of some occupation forced him to assure himself, a dozen timesover, that both revolvers were completely filled. Fortunately, thecaptors had not known enough to rob either Beatrice or him of thecartridge-belts they wore.
How long a time passed? One hour, two, three?
They could not tell.
But, overcome by the vitiated air and the great heat, Beatrice sleptat last, her head in the man's lap. He, utterly spent, leaned his backagainst the wall of black and polished stone, nodding with wearinessand great exhaustion.
He, too, must have dropped off into a troubled sleep, for he did nothear the unbolting of the massive iron cell-door.
But all at once, with a quick start, he recovered consciousness. Hefound himself broad awake, with the girl clutching at his arm andpointing.
With dazzled eyes he stared--stared at a strange figure standingframed in a rectangle of blue and foggy light.
Even as he shouted: "Hold on, there! Get back out o' that, you!" andjerked his ugly pistol at the old man's breast--for very aged this manseemed, bent and feeble and trembling as he leaned upon an ironstaff--a voice spoke dully through the half-gloom, saying:
"Peace, friends! Peace be unto you!"
Stern started up in wild amaze.
From his nerveless fingers the pistol dropped. And, as it clattered onthe floor, he cried:
"English? You speak _English?_ Who _are_ you? English! English! Oh,my God!"
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