On we flew, drawn by the mighty current, till at last I noticed thatthe sound of the water was not half so deafening as it had been, andconcluded that this must be because there was more room for the echoesto disperse in. I could now hear Alphonse's howls much more distinctly;they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the SupremePower and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible toconceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved themfrom profanity, were, to say the least, very remarkable. Taking up apaddle I managed to drive it into his ribs, whereon he, thinking thatthe end had come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and cautiouslyraised myself on my knees and stretched my hand upwards, but could touchno roof. Next I took the paddle and lifted it above my head as high asI could, but with the same result. I also thrust it out laterally to theright and left, but could touch nothing except water. Then I bethoughtme that there was in the boat, amongst our other remaining possessions,a bull's-eye lantern and a tin of oil. I groped about and found it, andhaving a match on me carefully lit it, and as soon as the flame had gota hold of the wick I turned it on down the boat. As it happened, thefirst thing the light lit on was the white and scared face of Alphonse,who, thinking that it was all over at last, and that he was witnessinga preliminary celestial phenomenon, gave a terrific yell and was withdifficulty reassured with the paddle. As for the other three, Good waslying on the flat of his back, his eyeglass still fixed in his eye, andgazing blankly into the upper darkness. Sir Henry had his head restingon the thwarts of the canoe, and with his hand was trying to test thespeed of the water. But when the beam of light fell upon old UmslopogaasI could really have laughed. I think I have said that we had put a roastquarter of water-buck into the canoe. Well, it so happened that when weall prostrated ourselves to avoid being swept out of the boat and intothe water by the rock roof, Umslopogaas's head had come down uncommonlynear this roast buck, and so soon as he had recovered a little fromthe first shock of our position it occurred to him that he was hungry.Thereupon he coolly cut off a chop with Inkosi-kaas, and was nowemployed in eating it with every appearance of satisfaction. As heafterwards explained, he thought that he was going 'on a long journey',and preferred to start on a full stomach. It reminded me of the peoplewho are going to be hanged, and who are generally reported in theEnglish daily papers to have made 'an excellent breakfast'.
As soon as the others saw that I had managed to light the lamp, webundled Alphonse into the farther end of the canoe with a threat whichcalmed him down wonderfully, that if he would insist upon making thedarkness hideous with his cries we would put him out of suspense bysending him to join the Wakwafi and wait for Annette in another sphere,and began to discuss the situation as well as we could. First, however,at Good's suggestion, we bound two paddles mast-fashion in the bows sothat they might give us warning against any sudden lowering of theroof of the cave or waterway. It was clear to us that we were in anunderground river or, as Alphonse defined it, 'main drain', whichcarried off the superfluous waters of the lake. Such rivers are wellknown to exist in many parts of the world, but it has not often been theevil fortune of explorers to travel by them. That the river was wide wecould clearly see, for the light from the bull's-eye lantern failed toreach from shore to shore, although occasionally, when the current sweptus either to one side or the other, we could distinguish the rock wallof the tunnel, which, as far as we could make out, appeared to archabout twenty-five feet above our heads. As for the current itself, itran, Good estimated, at least eight knots, and, fortunately for us, was,as is usual, fiercest in the middle of the stream. Still, our first actwas to arrange that one of us, with the lantern and a pole there was inthe canoe, should always be in the bows ready, if possible, to preventus from being stove in against the side of the cave or any projectingrock. Umslopogaas, having already dined, took the first turn. This wasabsolutely, with one exception, all that we could do towards preservingour safety. The exception was that another of us took up a position inthe stern with a paddle by means of which it was possible to steer thecanoe more or less and to keep her from the sides of the cave. Thesematters attended to, we made a somewhat sparing meal off the cold buck'smeat (for we did not know how long it might have to last us), and thenfeeling in rather better spirits I gave my opinion that, serious asit undoubtedly was, I did not consider our position altogether withouthope, unless, indeed, the natives were right, and the river plungedstraight down into the bowels of the earth. If not, it was clear that itmust emerge somewhere, probably on the other side of the mountains, andin that case all we had to think of was to keep ourselves alive tillwe got there, wherever 'there' might be. But, of course, as Goodlugubriously pointed out, on the other hand we might fall victims toa hundred unsuspected horrors--or the river might go on winding awayinside the earth till it dried up, in which case our fate would indeedbe 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 towerof strength in the time of trouble. 'We have come out of so many queerscrapes together, that somehow I almost fancy we shall come out ofthis,' he added.
This was excellent advice, and we proceeded to take it each in ourseparate way--that is, except Alphonse, who had by now sunk into a sortof 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 liedown in the canoe and think. It certainly was a curious, and indeedalmost 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 Curtissaid. And how dark it was! The feeble ray from our little lamp did butserve to show the darkness. There in the bows sat old Umslopogaas, likePleasure in the poem, {Endnote 9} watchful and untiring, the pole readyto his hand, and behind in the shadow I could just make out the formof Good peering forward at the ray of light in order to make out howto steer with the paddle that he held and now and again dipped into thewater.
'Well, well,' thought I, 'you have come in search of adventures, Allanmy boy, and you have certainly got them. At your time of life, too! Youought to be ashamed of yourself; but somehow you are not, and, awful asit 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 anunderground river will make a very appropriate burying-place.'
At first, however, I am bound to say that the strain upon the nerves wasvery great. It is trying to the coolest and most experienced person notto 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 patrollingunder the window--nor how long we have to live. It is all arranged forus, my sons, so what is the use of bothering?
It was nearly midday when we made our dive into darkness, and we had setour watch (Good and Umslopogaas) at two, having agreed that it shouldbe of a duration of five hours. At seven o'clock, accordingly, Sir Henryand I went on, Sir Henry at the bow and I at the stern, and the othertwo lay down and went to sleep. For three hours all went well, Sir Henryonly finding it necessary once to push us off from the side; and I thatbut little steering was required to keep us straight, as the violentcurrent did all that was needed, though occasionally the canoe showeda tendency which had to be guarded against to veer and travel broadsideon. What struck me as the most curious thing about this wonderful riverwas: how did the air keep fresh? It was muggy and thick, no doubt,but still not sufficiently so to render it bad or even remarkablyunpleasant. The only explanation that I can suggest is that the water ofthe lake had sufficient air in it to keep the atmosphere of the tunnelfrom absolute stagnation, this air being given out as it proceeded onits headlong way. Of course I only give the
solution of the mystery forwhat it is worth, which perhaps is not much.
When I had been for three hours or so at the helm, I began to notice adecided change in the temperature, which was getting warmer. At first Itook 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 andasked him if he noticed it, or if it was only my imagination. 'Noticedit!' 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 beginto discard their clothes. Here Umslopogaas had the advantage, for he didnot 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 wewere all now stark naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was likean antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand intothe water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. Weconsulted a little thermometer we had--the mercury stood at 123 degrees.From the surface of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonsegroaned out that we were already in purgatory, which indeed we were,though not in the sense that he meant it. Sir Henry suggested that wemust be passing near the seat of some underground volcanic fire, andI am inclined to think, especially in the light of what subsequentlyoccurred, that he was right. Our sufferings for some time after thisreally pass my powers of description. We no longer perspired, for allthe perspiration had been sweated out of us. We simply lay in thebottom of the boat, which we were now physically incapable of directing,feeling like hot embers, and I fancy undergoing very much the samesensations that the poor fish do when they are dying on land--namely,that of slow suffocation. Our skins began to crack, and the blood tothrob in our heads like the beating of a steam-engine.
This had been going on for some time, when suddenly the river turneda 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 ofthe stream--which we could now see was about ninety feet broad--a hugepillar-like jet of almost white flame rose from the surface of the waterand sprang fifty feet into the air, when it struck the roof and spreadout some forty feet in diameter, falling back in curved sheets of fireshaped like the petals of a full-blown rose. Indeed this awful gas jetresembled nothing so much as a great flaming flower rising out of theblack water. Below was the straight stalk, a foot or more thick, andabove the dreadful bloom. And as for the fearfulness of it and itsfierce and awesome beauty, who can describe it? Certainly I cannot.Although we were now some five hundred yards away, it, notwithstandingthe steam, lit up the whole cavern as clear as day, and we could seethat the roof was here about forty feet above us, and washed perfectlysmooth with water. The rock was black, and here and there I could makeout long shining lines of ore running through it like great veins, butof what metal they were I know not.
On we rushed towards this pillar of fire, which gleamed fiercer than anyfurnace ever lit by man.
'Keep the boat to the right, Quatermain--to the right,' shouted SirHenry, and a minute afterwards I saw him fall forward senseless.Alphonse had already gone. Good was the next to go. There they lay asthough dead; only Umslopogaas and I kept our senses. We were withinfifty yards of it now, and I saw the Zulu's head fall forward on hishands. He had gone too, and I was alone. I could not breathe; the fierceheat dried me up. For yards and yards round the great rose of fire therock-roof was red-hot. The wood of the boat was almost burning. I sawthe feathers on one of the dead swans begin to twist and shrivel up; butI would not give in. I knew that if I did we should pass within three orfour yards of the gas jet and perish miserably. I set the paddle so asto 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 Icould see the fierce light. We were nearly opposite now; it roared likeall the fires of hell, and the water boiled furiously around it. Fiveseconds more. We were past; I heard the roar behind me.
Then I too fell senseless. The next thing that I recollect is feelinga breath of air upon my face. My eyes opened with great difficulty. Ilooked up. Far, far above me there was light, though around me was greatgloom. Then I remembered and looked. The canoe still floated down theriver, 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 handover the edge of the boat into the water and drew it up again with acry. No wonder: nearly all the skin was burnt off the back of it. Thewater, however, was cold, or nearly so, and I drank pints and splashedmyself all over. My body seemed to suck up the fluid as one may see abrick wall suck up rain after a drought; but where I was burnt the touchof it caused intense pain. Then I bethought myself of the others, and,dragging myself towards them with difficulty, I sprinkled them withwater, and to my joy they began to recover--Umslopogaas first, then theothers. Next they drank, absorbing water like so many sponges. Then,feeling chilly--a queer contrast to our recent sensations--we began asbest we could to get into our clothes. As we did so Good pointed to theport side of the canoe: it was all blistered with heat, and in placesactually charred. Had it been built like our civilized boats, Good saidthat the planks would certainly have warped and let in enough water tosink us; but fortunately it was dug out of the soft, willowy wood of asingle great tree, and had sides nearly three inches and a bottom fourinches thick. What that awful flame was we never discovered, but Isuppose that there was at this spot a crack or hole in the bed ofthe river through which a vast volume of gas forced its way from itsvolcanic home in the bowels of the earth towards the upper air. Howit first became ignited is, of course, impossible to say--probably, Ishould think, from some spontaneous explosion of mephitic gases.
As soon as we had got some things together and shaken ourselves togethera little, we set to work to make out where we were now. I have said thatthere was light above, and on examination we found that it came from thesky. Our river that was, Sir Henry said, a literal realization of thewild vision of the poet {Endnote 10}, was no longer underground, butwas running on its darksome way, not now through 'caverns measureless toman', but between two frightful cliffs which cannot have been less thantwo thousand feet high. So high were they, indeed, that though the skywas above us, where we were was dense gloom--not darkness indeed, butthe gloom of a room closely shuttered in the daytime. Up on either siderose the great straight cliffs, grim and forbidding, till the eye grewdizzy with trying to measure their sheer height. The little space ofsky that marked where they ended lay like a thread of blue upon theirsoaring blackness, which was unrelieved by any tree or creeper. Hereand there, however, grew ghostly patches of a long grey lichen, hangingmotionless to the rock as the white beard to the chin of a dead man. Itseemed as though only the dregs or heavier part of the light had sunk tothe bottom of this awful place. No bright-winged sunbeam could fall solow: they died far, far above our heads.
By the river's edge was a little shore formed of round fragments of rockwashed into this shape by the constant action of water, and giving theplace the appearance of being strewn with thousands of fossil cannonballs. Evidently when the water of the underground river is high thereis no beach at all, or very little, between the border of the streamand the precipitous cliffs; but now there was a space of seven or eightyards. And here, on this beach, we determined to land, in order to restourselves a little after all that we had gone through and to stretch ourlimbs. It was a dreadful place, but it would give an hour's respite fromthe terrors of the river, and also allow of our repacking and arrangingthe canoe. Accordingly we selected what looked like a favourable spot,and with some little difficulty managed to beach the canoe and scrambleout on to the round, inhospitable pebbles.
'My word,' called out Good, who was on shore the first, 'what an awfulplace! It's enough to give one a fit.' And he laughed.
Instantly a thundering
voice took up his words, magnifying them ahundred 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! afit! a fit!_ chimed in voice after voice--each flinging the words toand fro with shouts of awful laughter to the invisible lips of the othertill the whole place echoed with the words and with shrieks of fiendishmerriment, which at last ceased as suddenly as they had begun.
'Oh, mon Dieu!' yelled Alphonse, startled quite out of such self-commandas 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 livehere. Well, the place looks like it.'
I tried to explain to him that the cause of all the hubbub was a veryremarkable and interesting echo, but he would not believe it.
'Ah,' he said, 'I know an echo when I hear one. There was one livedopposite my kraal in Zululand, and the Intombis [maidens] used to talkwith it. But if what we hear is a full-grown echo, mine at home can onlyhave been a baby. No, no--they are devils up there. But I don't thinkmuch of them, though,' he added, taking a pinch of snuff. 'They cancopy what one says, but they don't seem to be able to talk on theirown account, and they dare not show their faces,' and he relapsed intosilence, and apparently paid no further attention to such contemptiblefiends.
After this we found it necessary to keep our conversation down to awhisper--for it was really unbearable to have every word one utteredtossed to and fro like a tennis-ball, as precipice called to precipice.
But even our whispers ran up the rocks in mysterious murmurs till atlast they died away in long-drawn sighs of sound. Echoes are delightfuland romantic things, but we had more than enough of them in thatdreadful gulf.
As soon as we had settled ourselves a little on the round stones, wewent on to wash and dress our burns as well as we could. As we had but alittle 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, whichproved an excellent substitute. Then we repacked the canoe, and finallybegan 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 ourwatches showed, midday. Accordingly we seated ourselves in a circle, andwere soon engaged in discussing our cold meat with such appetite as wecould muster, which, in my case at any rate, was not much, as I feltsick and faint after my sufferings of the previous night, and hadbesides a racking headache. It was a curious meal. The gloom was sointense that we could scarcely see the way to cut our food and conveyit to our mouths. Still we got on pretty well, till I happened to lookbehind me--my attention being attracted by a noise of something crawlingover the stones, and perceived sitting upon a rock in my immediate reara huge species of black freshwater crab, only it was five times the sizeof any crab I ever saw. This hideous and loathsome-looking animal hadprojecting eyes that seemed to glare at one, very long and flexibleantennae or feelers, and gigantic claws. Nor was I especially favouredwith its company. From every quarter dozens of these horrid brutes werecreeping up, drawn, I suppose, by the smell of the food, from betweenthe round stones and out of holes in the precipice. Some were alreadyquite close to us. I stared quite fascinated by the unusual sight, andas I did so I saw one of the beasts stretch out its huge claw and givethe 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 declinedto 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 ofit, whereon it set up a horrid screaming which the echoes multiplieda thousandfold, and began to foam at the mouth, a proceeding that drewhundreds more of its friends out of unsuspected holes and corners.Those on the spot perceiving that the animal was hurt fell upon it likecreditors on a bankrupt, and literally rent it limb from limb with theirhuge pincers and devoured it, using their claws to convey the fragmentsto their mouths. Seizing whatever weapons were handy, such as stonesor paddles, we commenced a war upon the monsters--whose numbers wereincreasing by leaps and bounds, and whose stench was overpowering.So fast as we cracked their armour others seized the injured ones anddevoured them, foaming at the mouth, and screaming as they did so. Nordid the brutes stop at that. When they could they nipped hold of us--andawful nips they were--or tried to steal the meat. One enormous fellowgot hold of the swan we had skinned and began to drag it off. Instantlya score of others flung themselves upon the prey, and then began aghastly and disgusting scene. How the monsters foamed and screamed, andrent 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 asit was in the deep, oppressive gloom, and set to the unceasing music ofthe many-toned nerve-shaking echoes. Strange as it may seem to sayso, there was something so shockingly human about these fiendishcreatures--it was as though all the most evil passions and desires ofman had got into the shell of a magnified crab and gone mad. They wereso dreadfully courageous and intelligent, and they looked as if they_understood_. The whole scene might have furnished material for anothercanto of Dante's 'Inferno', as Curtis said.
'I say, you fellows, let's get out of this or we shall all go off ourheads,' sung out Good; and we were not slow to take the hint. Pushingthe canoe, around which the animals were now crawling by hundreds andmaking vain attempts to climb, off the rocks, we bundled into it and gotout into mid-stream, leaving behind us the fragments of our meal and thescreaming, foaming, stinking mass of monsters in full possession of theground.
'Those are the devils of the place,' said Umslopogaas with the air ofone who has solved a problem, and upon my word I felt almost inclined toagree 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 theafternoon and well into the evening we floated on in the gloom beneaththe far-off line of blue sky, scarcely knowing when day ended and nightbegan, for down in that vast gulf the difference was not marked, tillat length Good pointed out a star hanging right above us, which, havingnothing better to do, we observed with great interest. Suddenly itvanished, the darkness became intense, and a familiar murmuring soundfilled the air. 'Underground again,' I said with a groan, holding up thelamp. 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 thenthere began another long, long night of danger and horror. To describeall its incidents would be too wearisome, so I will simply say thatabout midnight we struck on a flat projecting rock in mid-stream andwere as nearly as possible overturned and drowned. However, at last wegot off, and went upon the uneven tenor of our way. And so the hourspassed till it was nearly three o'clock. Sir Henry, Good, and Alphonsewere asleep, utterly worn out; Umslopogaas was at the bow with the pole,and I was steering, when I perceived that the rate at which wewere travelling had perceptibly increased. Then, suddenly, I heardUmslopogaas make an exclamation, and next second came a sound as ofparting branches, and I became aware that the canoe was being forcedthrough hanging bushes or creepers. Another minute, and the breath ofsweet open air fanned my face, and I felt that we had emerged from thetunnel and were floating upon clear water. I say felt, for I couldsee nothing, the darkness being absolutely pitchy, as it often is justbefore the dawn. But even this could scarcely damp my joy. We were outof that dreadful river, and wherever we might have got to this at leastwas something to be thankful for. And so I sat down and inhaled thesweet night air and waited for the dawn with such patience as I couldcommand.
CHAPTER XI THE FROWNING CITY