CHAPTER XXXI
ESCAPE?
Who could, indeed, suspect aught of this threatening danger?Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forthin their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Everysleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed theprincipal staple of the community.
The weaving of seaweed fiber, the making of mats, blankets, nets andslings went on as probably for many centuries before.
At forges here and there, where gas-wells blazed, the smiths of theFolk shaped their iron implements or worked most skillfully in goldand copper; and the ringing of the hammers, through the dim-lit gloomaround the strange blue fires, formed a chorus fit for Vulcan or thetempering of Siegfried's master-sword.
Stern took occasion to visit many of the huts. They were all similar.As yet he could not talk freely with the Folk but he took keeninterest in examining their household arrangements, which were of thesimplest. Stone benches and tables, beds of weed, and coarse blankets,utensils of metal or bone--these completed the total.
Stern groaned inwardly at thought of all the arts he still must teachthem before they should once more even approximate the civilizationwhence they had fallen since the great catastrophe.
Behind the village rose a gigantic black cliff, always dripping andrunning with water from the condensation of the fogs. This water theFolk very sensibly and cleverly drained down into large tanks cut inthe rock floor. The tanks, always full, furnished their entire supplyfor drinking and cooking. Flat, warm and tasteless though it was, itseemed reasonably pure. None of this water was ever used for bathing.What little bathing the Folk ever indulged in took place at certainpoints along the shore, where the fine and jet-black sand made a goodbottom.
Along the base of the vast cliff, which, broken and jagged, rosegleaming in the light of the great flame till it gradually faded inthe luminous mist, they carried on their primitive cooking.
Over cracks in the stone, whence gas escaped steadily and burned witha blue flicker, hung copper pots fairly well fashioned, though ofbizarre shapes. Here the communal cuisine went steadily forward,tended by the strange, white-haired, long-cloaked women; and odors ofboiling and of frying, over hot iron plates, rose and mingled with theshifting, swirling vapors from the sea.
Beatrice tried, a few times, to take some part in this work. She waseager to teach the women better methods, but at last the patriarchtold her to let them alone, as she was only irritating them. Unlikethe men, who almost worshipped the revolvers, and would have handledthem, and even quickly learned to shoot, if Stern had allowed, thewomen clung sternly to their old ways.
The patriarch had a special cooking place made for Beatrice, and gother a lot of the clumsy utensils. Here she busied herself preparingfood for Allan and herself--and a strange sight that was, the Americangirl, dressed in her long, brown robe, her thick hair full of goldpins, cooking over natural gas in the Abyss, with heavy copper pansand kettles of incredible forms!
Almost at once, the old man abandoned the native cookery and grewdevoted to hers. Anything that told him of the other and better times,the days about which he dreamed continually in his blindness, was verydear to him.
The Merucaans were, truly, barbarously dull about their ways ofpreparing food. Day after day they never varied. The menu was limitedin the extreme. Stern felt astonished that a race could maintainitself in such fine condition and keep so splendidly energetic, sokeen and warlike, on such a miserable diet. The food must, he thought,possess nutritive qualities far beyond any expectation.
Fish was the basis of all--a score of strange and unnatural-lookingvarieties, not one of which he had ever seen in surface waters. Forthe most part, they were gray or white; two or three species showedsome rudiments of coloring. All were blind, with at most some faintvestigia of eye-structure, wholly degenerated and useless.
"Speaking of evolution," said the engineer, one day, to Beatrice, asthey stood on the black boulder-beach and watched the fishermen tosstheir weird freight out upon the slippery stones--"these fish heregive a magnificent example of it. You see, where the use for an organceases, the organ itself eventually perishes. But take these creaturesand put them back into the surface-ocean--"
"The eyes would develop again?" she queried.
"Precisely! And so with everything! Take the Folk themselves, forinstance. Now that they've been living here a thousand or fifteenhundred years, away from the sunlight, all the protecting pigmentationthat used to shield the human race from the actinic sun rays hasgradually faded out. So they've got white hair, colorless skins, andpinkish eyes. Out in the world again, they'd gradually grow normalagain. How I wish some of my old-time opponents to the evolutionarytheory could stand here with me to-day in the Abyss! I bet a million Icould mighty soon upset their nonsense!"
Such of the fish as were not eaten in their natural state were salteddown in vats hollowed in the rock, at the far end of the village.Still others were dried, strung by the gills on long cords of seaweedfiber, and hung in rows near the great flame. There were certain daysfor this process.
At other times no fish were allowed anywhere near the fire. Why thiswas, Stern could not discover. Even the patriarch would not tell him.
Beside the fish, several seaweeds were cooked and eaten in the form ofleaves, bulbs, and roots, which some of the Folk dived for or draggedfrom the bottom with iron grapples. All the weeds tasted alike toStern and Beatrice; but the old man assured them there were reallygreat differences, and that certain of them were rare delicacies.
A kind of huge, misshapen sea-turtle was the chief prize of all. Threewere taken during the strangers' first fortnight in the Abyss; but thefortunate boat-crews that brought them in devoured them, refusing toshare even a morsel with any other of the people.
Stern and the girl were warned against tasting any weed, fish, ormussel on their own initiative. The patriarch told them certain deadlyspecies existed--species used only in preparing venoms in which to dipthe spear and lance-points of the fighting men.
Beyond these foods the only others were the flesh and eggs of thehighly singular birds the strangers had seen on their first entry intothe village. These tasted rankly of fish, and were at first verydisagreeable. But gradually the newcomers were able to tolerate themwhen cooked by Beatrice in as near an approximation to modern methodsas she could manage.
The birds made a peculiar feature of this weird, uncanny life. Long ofleg, wattled and web-footed, with ungainly bodies, sparsely feathered,and bare necks, they were, Stern thought, absolutely the most hideousand unreal-appearing creatures he had ever seen. In size they somewhatresembled an albatross. The folk called them _kalamakee_. They were sofully domesticated as to make free with all the refuse of the villageand even to waddle into the huts in croaking search of plunder; yetthey nested among the broken rocks along the cliff to northward of theplace.
There they built clumsy structures of weed for their eggs and theirincredibly ugly young. Every day at a certain time they took theirflight out into the fog, with hoarse and mournful cries, and stayedthe equivalent of some three hours.
Their number Stern could only estimate, but it must have mounted welltoward five or six thousand. One of the most singular sights thenewcomers had in the Abyss was the homecoming of the flight, thefeeding of the young--by discharging half-digested fish--and thesubsequent noisy powwow of the waddling multitude. All this, heard andseen by torch-light, produced a picture weirdly fascinating.
Fish, weeds, sea-fowl--these constituted the sum tote of food sourcesfor the Folk. There existed neither bread, flesh--meat, milk, fruit,sweets, or any of the abundant vegetables of the surface. Nor yet wasthere any plant which might be dried and smoked, like tobacco, nor anywhence alcohol might be distilled. The folk had neither stimulants nornarcotics.
Stern blessed fate for this. If any such had existed, he knew humannature well enough to feel certain that, there in the eternal gloomand fog, the race would soon have given itself over to excesses andhave
miserably perished.
"To my mind," he said to Beatrice, one time, "the survival of our raceunder such conditions is one of the most marvelous things possibly tobe conceived." Out toward the black and mist-hidden sea that rolledforever in the gloom he gestured from the wall where they werestanding.
"Imagine!" he continued. "No sunlight--for centuries! Without that,nothing containing chlorophyl can grow; and science has alwaysmaintained that human life must depend, at last analysis, onchlorophyl, on the green plants containing it. No grains, no soil, oragriculture, no mammals even! Why, the very Eskimo have to depend onmammals for their life!
"But these people here, and the Lanskaarn, and whatever other unknowntribes live in this vast Abyss, have to get their entire living fromthis tepid sea. They don't even possess wood to work with! If thisdoesn't prove the human race all but godlike in its skill and courageand adaptability, what does?"
She stood a while in thought, plainly much troubled. It was evidenther mind was far from following his analysis. At last she spoke.
"Allan!" she suddenly exclaimed.
"Well?"
"It's still out there somewhere, isn't it? Out there, in those black,unsounded depths--the biplane?"
"You mean--"
"Why couldn't we raise it again, and--"
"Of course! You know I mean to try as soon as I have these peopleunder some control so I can get them to cooperate with me--get them tounderstand!"
"Not till then? No escape till then? But, Allan, it may be too late!"she burst out with passionate eagerness.
Puzzled, he turned and peered at her in the bluish gloom.
"Escape?" he queried. "Too late? Why, what do you mean? Escape fromwhat? You mean that we should leave these people, here, before we'veeven begun to teach them? Before we've discovered some way out of theAbyss for them? Leave everything that means the regeneration of thehuman race, the world? Why--"
A touch upon his arm interrupted him.
He turned quickly to find the patriarch standing at his side. Silentand dim through the fog, he had come thither with sandaled feet, andnow stood with a strange, inscrutable smile on his long-bearded lips.
"What keeps my children here," asked he, "when already it is long pastthe sleeping-hour? Verily, this should not be! Come," he commanded."Come away! To-morrow will be time for speech."
And, giving them no further opportunity to talk of this new problem,he spoke of other matters, and so led them back to his hospitable hutof stone.
But for a long time Allan could not sleep. Weird thoughts and newsuspicions now aroused, he lay and pondered many things.
What if, after all, this seeming friendliness and homage of the savageFolk were but a mask?
A vision of the boiling geyser-pit rose to his memory. And the dreamshe dreamed that night were filled with strange, confused, disquietingimages.
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