CHAPTER XV
THE VALLEY OF THE SACRIFICE
For the first half-hour of their climb down into the valley of thescratch, the three friends were too preoccupied with their own safety totalk more than an occasional sentence. They came upon many places thatat first glance appeared impassable, or at least sufficiently hazardousto cause them to hesitate, but in each instance the changing contour ofthe precipice offered some other means of descent.
After thirty minutes of arduous effort, the Big Business Man sat downsuddenly upon a rock and began to unlace his shoes.
"I've got to rest a while," he groaned. "My feet are in terrible shape."
His two companions were glad of the opportunity to sit with him for amoment.
"Gosh, I'm all in, too!" said the Very Young Man with a sigh.
They were sitting upon a ledge about twenty feet wide, with the walldown which they had come at their back.
"I'll swear that's as far down there as it ever was," said the BigBusiness Man, with a wave of his hand towards the valley below them.
"Further," remarked the Very Young Man. "I've known that right along."
"That's to be expected," said the Doctor. "But we're a third the waydown, just the same; that's the main thing." He glanced up the rocky,precipitous wall behind them. "We've come down a thousand feet, atleast. The valley must be three thousand feet deep or more now."
"Say, how deep does it get before it stops?" inquired the Very YoungMan.
The Doctor smiled at him quietly. "Rogers's note put it about twelvethousand," he answered. "It should reach that depth and stop about"--hehesitated a moment, calculating--"about two o'clock," he finished.
"Some climb," commented the Very Young Man. "We could do this a lotbetter than we're doing it, I think."
For some time they sat in silence. From where they sat the valley hadall the appearance of a rocky, barren canon of their own world above, asit might have looked on the late afternoon of a cloudless summer day. Agentle breeze was blowing, and in the sky overhead they could still seethe huge light that for them was the sun.
"The weather is certainly great down here anyway," observed the VeryYoung Man, "that's one consolation."
The Big Business Man had replaced his shoes, taken a swallow of water,and risen to his feet, preparing to start downward again, when suddenlythey all noticed a curious swaying motion, as though the earth weremoving under them.
"Now what?" ejaculated the Very Young Man, standing up abruptly, withhis feet spread wide apart.
The ground seemed pressing against his feet as if he were weighted downwith a heavy load. And he felt a little also as though in a moving trainwith a side thrust to guard against. The sun was no longer visible, andthe valley was plunged in the semidarkness of twilight. A strong windsprang up, sweeping down upon them from above.
The Very Young Man and the Big Business Man looked puzzled; the Doctoralone of the three seemed to understand what was happening.
"He's moving the ring," he explained, with a note of apprehension in hisvoice.
"Oh," ejaculated the Big Business Man, comprehending at last, "so that'sthe----"
The Very Young Man standing with his back to the wall and his legsspread wide looked hastily at his watch. "Moving the ring? Why, damnit----" he began impetuously.
The Big Business Man interrupted him. "Look there, look!" he almostwhispered, awestruck.
The sky above the valley suddenly had become suffused with red. As theywatched it seemed to take form, appearing no longer space, but filledwith some enormous body of reddish color. In one place they could see itbroken into a line of gray, and underneath the gray, two circular holesof light gleamed down at them.
The Doctor shuddered and closed his eyes; his two friends stared upward,fascinated into immobility.
"What--is--that?" the Very Young Man whispered.
Before he could be answered, the earth swayed under them more violentlythan before. The red faded back out of the sky, and the sun appearedsweeping up into the zenith, where it hung swaying a moment and thenpoised motionless. The valley was flooded again with light; the groundsteadied under them and became quiet. The wind died rapidly away, and inanother moment it was as though nothing unusual had occurred.
For a time the three friends stood silent, too astonished for words atthis extraordinary experience. The Doctor was the first to recoverhimself. "He moved the ring," he said hurriedly. "That's twice. We musthurry."
"It's only quarter past ten. We told him not till eleven," protested theVery Young Man.
"Even that is too soon for safety," said the Doctor back over hisshoulder, for already he had started downward.
It was nearly twelve o'clock when they stopped again for rest. At thistime the valley appeared about seven or eight thousand feet deep: theyestimated themselves to be slightly more than half-way down. From elevenuntil twelve they had momentarily expected some disturbing phenomenaattendant upon the removal of the ring by the Banker from the clubroomto its place in the Museum. But nothing unusual had occurred.
"He probably decided to leave it alone for a while," commented the BigBusiness Man, as they were discussing the matter. "Glad he showed thatmuch sense."
"It would not bother us much now," the Doctor replied. "We're too fardown. See how the light is changing."
The sky showed now only as a narrow ribbon of blue between the edges ofthe canon's walls. The sun was behind the wall down which they wereclimbing, out of sight, and throwing their side of the valley intoshadow. And already they could begin to see a dim phosphorescenceglowing from the rocks near at hand.
The Very Young Man, sitting beside the Doctor, suddenly gripped hisfriend by the arm. "A bird," he said, pointing down the valley. "See itthere?"
From far off they could see a bird coming up the center of the valley ata height apparently almost level with their own position, and flyingtowards them. They watched it in silence as it rapidly approached.
"Great Scott, it's big!" muttered the Big Business Man in an undertone.
As the bird came closer they saw it was fully fifty feet across thewings. It was flying straight down the valley at tremendous speed. Whenit was nearly opposite them they heard a familiar "cheep, cheep," comeechoing across the valley.
"The sparrow," whispered the Very Young Man. "Oh, my gosh, look how bigit is!"
In another moment it had passed them; they watched in silence until itdisappeared in the distance.
"Well," said the Very Young Man, "if that had ever seen us----" He drewa long breath, leaving the rest to the imagination of his hearers.
"What a wonderful thing!" said the Big Business Man, with a note of awein his voice. "Just think--that sparrow when we last saw it wasinfinitesimally small."
The Doctor laughed. "It's far smaller now than it was then," he said."Only since we last saw it we have changed size to a much greater extentthan it has."
"Foolish of us to have sent it in here," remarked the Big Business Mancasually. "Suppose that----" He stopped abruptly.
The Very Young Man started hastily to his feet.
"Oh, golly!" he exclaimed as the same thought occurred to him. "Thatlizard----" He looked about him wildly.
"It was foolish perhaps." The Doctor spoke quietly. "But we can't helpit now. The sparrow has gone. That lizard may be right here at ourfeet"--The Very Young Man jumped involuntarily--"and so small we can'tsee it," the Doctor finished with a smile. "Or it may be a hundred milesaway and big as a dinosaur." The Very Young Man shuddered.
"It was senseless of us to let them get in here anyway," said the BigBusiness Man. "That sparrow evidently has stopped getting smaller. Doyou realize how big it will be to us, after we've diminished a fewhundred more times?"
"We needn't worry over it," said the Doctor. "Even if we knew the lizardgot into the valley the chances of our seeing it here are one in amillion. But we don't even know that. If you'll remember it was stillsome distance away from the scratch when it became invisible; I doubtvery much if i
t even got there. No, I think probably we'll never see itagain."
"I hope not," declared the Very Young Man emphatically.
For another hour they climbed steadily downward, making more rapidprogress than before, for the descent became constantly less difficult.During this time they spoke little, but it was evident that the VeryYoung Man, from the frequent glances he threw around, never for a momentforgot the possibility of encountering the lizard. The sparrow did notreturn, although for that, too, they were constantly on the look-out.
It was nearly half-past one when the Big Business Man threw himself uponthe ground exhausted. The valley at this time had reached a depth ofover ten thousand feet. It was still growing deeper, but the travelershad made good progress and were not more than fifteen hundred feet aboveits bottom.
They had been under tremendous physical exertion for over five hours,too absorbed in their strange experiences to think of eating, and nowall three agreed it was foolish to attempt to travel farther withoutfood and rest.
"We had better wait here an hour or two," the Doctor decided. "Our sizewill soon remain constant and it won't take us long to get down afterwe've rested."
"I'm hungry," suggested the Very Young Man, "how about you?"
They ate and drank sparingly of the little store they had brought withthem. The Doctor would not let them have much, both because he wanted toconserve their supply, and because he knew in their exhausted conditionit would be bad for them to eat heartily.
It was about two o'clock when they noticed that objects around them nolonger were increasing in size. They had finished their meal and feltgreatly refreshed.
"Things have stopped growing," observed the Very Young Man. "We've donefour pills' worth of the journey anyway," he added facetiously. He roseto his feet, stretching. He felt sore and bruised all over, but with themeal and a little rest, not particularly tired.
"I move we go on down now," he suggested, walking to the edge of thehuge crevice in which they were sitting. "It's only a couple of thousandfeet."
"Perhaps we might as well," agreed the Doctor, rising also. "When we getto the floor of the valley, we can find a good spot and turn in for thenight."
The incongruity of his last words with the scene around made the Doctorsmile. Overhead the sky still showed a narrow ribbon of blue. Across thevalley the sunlight sparkled on the yellowish crags of the rocky wall.In the shadow, on the side down which they were climbing, the rocks nowshone distinctly phosphorescent, with a peculiar waviness of outline.
"Not much like either night or day, is it?" added the Doctor. "We'llhave to get used to that."
They started off again, and in another two hours found themselves goingdown a gentle rocky slope and out upon the floor of the valley.
"We're here at last," said the Big Business Man wearily.
The Very Young Man looked up the great, jagged precipice down which theyhad come, to where, far above, its edge against the strip of blue markedthe surface of the ring.
"Some trip," he remarked. "I wouldn't want to tackle that every day."
"Four o'clock," said the Doctor, "the light up there looks just thesame. I wonder what's happened to George."
Neither of his companions answered him. The Big Business Man laystretched full length upon the ground near by, and the Very Young Manstill stood looking up the precipice, lost in thought.
"What a nice climb going back," he suddenly remarked.
The Doctor laughed. "Don't let's worry about that, Jack. If you rememberhow Rogers described it, getting back is easier than getting in. But themain point now," he added seriously, "is for us to make sure of gettingdown to Arite as speedily as possible."
The Very Young Man surveyed the barren waste around them in dismay. Thefloor of the valley was strewn with even larger rocks and bowlders thanthose on the surface above, and looked utterly pathless and desolate."What do we do first?" he asked dubiously.
"First," said the Doctor, smiling at the Big Business Man, who lay uponhis back staring up into the sky and paying no attention to themwhatever, "I think first we had better settle ourselves for a good longrest here."
"If we stop at all, let's sleep a while," said the Very Young Man. "Alittle rest only gets you stiff. It's a pretty exposed place out herethough, isn't it, to sleep?" he added, thinking of the sparrow and thelizard.
"One of us will stay awake and watch," answered the Doctor.