ahead in brilliant clarity, piercing no oceandepths or ooze or mud-flats, but glancing over the racing ripples of aflowing river. Above the river surface the rocks came down, so low Petecould hear them touch the hull, scrape, grind free, as their touch sentthe craft deeper in the hurrying water.
"Holy old Harry," growled McCarthy, rubbing at his slackened features."She fell right through the bottom of the sea into some subterraneanflow...." He yawned, and stretched a little, and cursed again. "Sure, Icouldn't expect her to do anything else, with my luck aboard her. Therewere trees and sunlight, and water ... ah, water ... up there,somewhere. I saw them, falling in, I did. Do I land where I can getanything like water? Hell no! I crash right on down into this hole!" Helaughed a weak bitter laugh. Then he leaned back and began to singthrough cracked and bleeding lips:
"_There's a hole in the bottom of the sea; There's a rock in a hole in the bottom of the sea; There's a crab on a rock in the hole in the bottom...._"
And he began to snore, having fallen asleep.
* * * * *
Some hours later, Peter McCarthy awoke, little refreshed because of theraging thirst within him. With terrific effort he got to his feet,noting that the ship was no longer moving.
The bow light was still burning, but it showed only a black wall ofsmooth rock ahead. He switched it off, turning on the inside lights. Hestaggered and cursed his weakness, but he made it to the airlock. Withfeeble hands he tugged the little wheel around that pulled back the bigbars on the lock door.
"I'll get this over with, somehow. I'll just jump into the damned blackwater and drink the damn river dry...."
The big outer lock door swung open, and he straightened, half expectinga rush of icy water about his feet. But instead a warm and slightlyfragrant air drifted silently in, touched his tangled hair with idle andsomehow playful fingers.
"Still teasing me, you dirty old tramp!" growled the lean McCarthy, towhom death had become a personal enemy, a figure he had both pursued andfled from across a vast and empty space. A nemesis he could not escape,and a fiend he could not quite catch.
He tugged loose a hand flash from the bracket by the lock, and staggeredout upon the smooth rock floor against which the ship had come to rest.He snapped on the light, and then he stood gaping stupidly at the rockwalls in disbelief.
There were carvings, deep cut reliefs of utter beauty, twining vineleaves, little figures half-human peeping from the leaves, lovely femalebodies as the flowers, incredibly lovely female heads in clusters as thefruit.
"I've come to the Halls of Bacchus himself! Sure, I must be deadalready. No wonder I can't manage to die! But if that ain't the vineitself, I've never been drunk!" Pete was half delirious, half in thedarkness of utter despair. But his Irish heart whispered to him, "Wherethere's the vine there's wine," and he tottered off weakly into the darkin search of it.
Somewhere afar off he heard a faint mysterious laugh, strangelyfeminine, strangely friendly. He stopped, for ahead of him wasapproaching a strange faint light. Closer it came, stalking toward himfearfully, and to anyone else it would have seemed like an animatedclothing store dummy without the clothes. But the figure was feminine,and it bore on its shoulder a tall oval vase-like vessel.
Pete straightened, and awe swept over him. In a low voice he heardhimself quoting--
"_Came toward me through the dusk an angel-shape, Bearing on her shoulder a vessel ... And bid me taste of it. 'Twas the grape!_"
McCarthy's tongue twisted strangely in his mouth with a desirous life ofits own. The glowing angel-shape bent, and held the vessel to his lips,and he drank long and deep. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand,and looked into the angel's glowing eyes.
As he looked the shape changed, subtly, adapting itself to his approvallike a dream might, and McCarthy whispered in an awed voice:
"Sure, lady, it is the grape right enough! Now tell me, are you the sameangel who gave drink to Omar? Or was she your sister, maybe?"
The glowing shape, growing second by second more sweetly curved to hiseye, unsmilingly replaced the vessel on her shoulder. Her voice was adistant melody though her face was right before his eyes:
"I am but a messenger, dear welcome stranger. I bid you consider theseancient halls your home. When you are well and strong, there will bemany things to talk of, for I have been long alone. Mine eyes are gladwith the sight of you."
McCarthy touched the naked angel's shoulder, and was surprised to findit hard as steel. The glowing being did not seem surprised, and her armwent about his shoulders, supporting him easily. After a minute of thisslow progress, she bent and picked McCarthy up in her arms as if he werea babe. McCarthy murmured, "Sure angel, be this Heaven or Hell I'mdamned glad to get here."
* * * * *
The voyager lay unconscious for many days. While he slept, dozens of theweird "angels" hovered over him and what they poured down his throat andwhat they injected into his veins he never knew. But when at last heawakened he felt like the man he had been twenty years before, young inheart and with a boundless happiness of well-being surging up in himlike a great spring of Omar's wine.
So waking, he sprang to his feet as he had used to do in the morning,unable to wait to learn what new and curious thing the day would bearfor him. He looked about him with eyes that could not believe, and hewas a long time remembering how he had got here or where he was. Andwhen he did, it was to wonder why he had been so sunk in despair and soready to accept death.
One of the tall glowing shapes came and bowed low before him, andMcCarthy saw for an instant she was not a living woman at all, nor anyangel either!
"Why you're a robot kind of thing!" cried Pete, recoiling in suddendistrust, for there was something revolting to him about a metal machinemasquerading as a human form.
The glowing woman-shape straightened proudly, and her long fiery eyesnarrowed a little, and her voice like distant tinkling magic murmuredsoftly, "Are you so very sure I am not alive, man from afar?"
McCarthy kept looking at her, and she changed before his very eyes, andat last his wits awoke, so that he said gallantly, "Sure and you're asbeautiful a woman as ever I saw in my life! I'm owing you my life, andI'd be the last would want to hurt your feelings. Nobody could besorrier for the mistake than I am."
Now whatever she was, he could no longer tell her from a living woman ofgreat beauty, for she had changed before his eyes from a metallicmonstrosity of glowing terror to a softly curved beauty that would havegraced the stage of any musical show, and her voice was far too good forany show that Pete had ever listened to. As she moved closer to him, herweirdly lovely voice whispered, "So my arms are hard as steel, man fromspace?" and put her arms around him, and they were soft and firm andfine arms to feel indeed.
Peter McCarthy, in sudden wonder, kissed the glowing weird lips of thelovely thing, and the taste was different but far more lovely than anywoman's lips had ever been before.
"Now may God strike me, but I must be losing my wits," swore McCarthy,"but I had thought you were made of steel for sure!"
Somewhere afar there came a music of laughter; he could not exactly hearit but he felt it, as if the very walls were amused with him. It was apowerful laugh, with an undertinkling to it, like a distant bell beneathwater, struck by a little stone so that it gave out both strong soundsand little sounds.... A very beautiful laugh but very strange to hear.
With the sound of that laughter an awe came to McCarthy; he felt thetouch of some terrific magic, and he gave up trying to understand whatwas happening to him.
"This is a strange place," he muttered, rubbing his chin. "A strangeplace indeed. Could ye tell me, Miss Angel, what place this is and how Ican expect to get along here and why you're so good to a poor wandererlike myself?"
The angel-shape--which second by second was getting to be more and morethe shape of ultimate beauty to his eye, as if she was learning the wayof it better and better right out of his mind, as if she
was taking fromhis own thinking the colors and the shapes and form and spirit thatwould please him most--gave a laugh that was very like the strange greattinkling sound from nowhere. Her voice was like sparkling water fallingon suspended crystals that rang musically, and she looked into his eyesout of her own fiery strange eyes of terrible beauty.
"This is the best of all possible places you could have come to, andyour host is the best of all possible hosts and what more do you need toknow today, Peter McCarthy?"
For an instant a shadow passed over the strange glowing eyes of theangel-shape, as if she remembered something she did not want toremember, and he asked:
"What is that shadow of trouble, if this is so good a place for me?"
She answered him quickly as the shadow passed from her eyes: