Part 15

“Not as they are now,” said Ferratoni. “They are not the people we have known. As for the Princess, she is holy—they will not harm her—and these others have in no way offended. It is wiser to accept the advice of the Princess and remain here. We should only make her task harder by going.”

I had been ready to join with Gale in facing the people beyond the lake, but I realized the wisdom of Ferratoni’s words and said nothing. Mr. Sturritt too was silent, though I could see that, as usual, he was “with the Admiral,” in whatever the latter might undertake or agree upon.

The Princess and the others now embarked without further delay. The storm overhead was almost upon us. Lightning was more frequent, and the thunder rolling nearer. Large drops of rain were already falling.

The Princess was first to enter her barge. As she did so, she turned and took both of Ferratoni’s hands. Whereupon the three maidens to whom we others had paid some slight attention, likewise turned, and each followed her royal example. Through the mirk a gentle face for a brief instant looked up into mine. Then there came a flash of lightning that turned into an aureola her silken yellow hair. Our attentions had been the merest courtesies, as I have said, but in the instant of blackness that followed I leaned hastily down, and——

What the others did I do not know; I could not see well in the darkness.

We watched them until they reached the other side. The torches crowded thickly to the landing as the barge approached, and a wave of turbulent voices was borne across to us. We saw the torches go swaying to the palace, and a flash of lightning showed them crowding through the gates—the canopy of the Princess borne ahead. Then we retired within the temple, for the storm broke heavily.

It was dark in there, and the air was heavy with the odor of mingled flowers. We groped about until we found something that had steps and cushions on it, where we sat down. We believed it to be the great altar of the sun, which we had been told was so placed in the center of the temple that from every point the sun’s rays touched it, and so lingered throughout the long day. It was probably about the safest spot we could find for the present. Then we waited, while the thunder roared and crashed and the rain outside came down.

“Say,” whispered Gale, “but haven’t I set them swarming! Oh, Lord—what’s a bull without a bee-hive!”

Ferratoni left us presently and went to the doorway, perhaps for a better mental current. We followed him, but all was dark beyond the lake. We presently left him there and returned to our comfort within. The thunder gradually died and the rain slackened, though the darkness did not pass. Suddenly Ferratoni hurried back to us.

They were coming, he said. They had refused to respect the desires of the Princess, or even the sanctity of the temple. They considered that we had violated their hospitality, and they demanded our lives. They had not put anybody to death in that country for five hundred years, but they were ready to do so now, and to begin with us. They had condemned all new mechanisms, and even the invention of the Princess and her brother—the dark-dispeller—they were at this moment preparing to throw into the lake. The telephones they had destroyed, utterly.

“Don’t blame ’em much for pitching that lighting machine into the lake,” muttered Gale, “I wanted to do that, myself. But how about _us_? Are we going to let ’em pitch _us_ in?”

“There are two chances,” replied Ferratoni. “One is immediate flight to the court of the Prince, who will endeavor to give protection and assistance. The other is safety, here. It is pardon—the Pardon of Love.”

“The what?” asked Gale. “Oh, yes, I remember, now. The old law that—um—yes—who are they?”

“The three,” said Ferratoni, “the three whose hands were pressed in parting. They are willing to grant life—and love. They are coming even now, with the others. You must decide—and quickly!”

It had grown very still in the temple. So still that Gale said afterwards he could hear his hair falling out. It was probably but a few seconds before he spoke, though it seemed much longer.

“Nick,” he said, “we’re up against it, hard. It’s marry or move; which will you do?”

My mind was a tumult and a confusion, but the memory of Edith Gale’s words became a path of light.

“Move!” I said, “and with no waste of time!”

“What about you, Tony? Are you in on the deal, too?”

“I know not. I am at the will and service of the Princess. She has not yet spoken.”

“And you, Bill, what do you vote for?”

“I—I—that is—I’m with the Admiral, as always.”

“And the Admiral is for getting out of here. I’ve no fault to find with the young ladies, but I’ve got business in Bottle Bay. Come!”

We hastened outside. It was still dark and a second shower had gathered, though we did not notice this fact. What we did see was that more than half-way across the strip of water that separated us from the shore there was a crowd of torchlit barges, and that they were coming rapidly. For once in their lives these people had forgotten, and were hurrying. In front of the others came a smaller barge, driven by the sturdiest of their rowers. In it sat the Lady of the Lilies, and the three who had pressed our hands at parting. Clearly, there was no time to lose.

We made a hasty attempt to loosen our boat, but fumbled the knot and lost time.

“Haste, or you will be too late,” urged Ferratoni.

“Oh, Lord,” groaned Gale, “if we just hadn’t left our propeller boat down yonder!”

But at that instant the knot untied, and we tumbled in. We had no light and we did not believe they could see us, though they were now very near. Ferratoni still lingered on the step, looking at the approaching barges.

“Come on, Tony,” urged Gale, “don’t take any chances!”

But bending over he caught our boat, and with a push sent us down the tide.

“Go,” he said, “I am not coming. I wait the will and service of the Princess!”

Yet we hesitated to leave him. A heavy projection, or coping, extended from the lower terrace out over the water, and in the blackness beneath we drifted and waited. We could not see Ferratoni from where we lay, but we could watch the oncoming barges and were near enough to get quickly into the midst of things in case of violence. In the end it would almost certainly mean death to us all, but we felt that with the serviceable oars as weapons, we could give some previous account of ourselves.

On came the barges. The first with the Princess was presently at the steps, and almost immediately the others. We saw the Lady of the Lilies and her three companions ascend hastily to where we had left Ferratoni. From the other barges poured a horde of wild-faced creatures, curiously armed with quaint weapons of a forgotten age. We waited until with a fierce clamor they were rushing up the stairs, then with a push against the abutment to which we were clinging, we sent our boat up nearer, and out where we could see.

And now we realized that Ferratoni was no longer where we had left him, but had retired within the temple that we might have a better opportunity to escape unseen. The mob was pushing through the entrance noisily.

“We’ll get round to the north door quick!” whispered Gale. “Mebbe we can see there what’s going on inside, and it’ll be handier to leave suddenly if we decide to.”

By north, Gale meant the direction from which we had entered the country, and by which we now hoped to get out of it. The current ran strongly in that direction, and a stroke of the oars sent us swiftly along the wall. A vivid flash of lightning as we turned the corner, followed by quick thunder, told that the second shower was upon us.

Just below the temple we were caught in a fierce swirl. For a moment it well-nigh swamped our light craft. Then with scornful violence it flung us to the landing steps on that side. We leaped out, each with an oar, and seizing the barge drew it up a little on the lower step, so that it would hold, without fastening. Then we hurried up the stair, and crept cautiously to the entrance.

From the great depths within, there came a general babel that seemed to increase as we approached. By the tone of it they had not yet found Ferratoni. I believe now that in the turbulence of an anger heretofore unknown to them, their perceptions must have been disordered, that they had become mentally blind. But suddenly, just as we slipped into the dark tunnel-like entrance, and parted the heavy curtains beyond, there came a wild uproar as of discovery, then—silence.

We had been about to rush in and do what we could to aid our companion, but Gale, who was ahead and got the first glimpse beyond the curtain, stopped us. Then he drew the curtain still farther aside, and we all looked in.

About the center of the vast depths, the crowded torches were swaying. They made a lurid circle, beyond which the symboled and draped walls melted into shadows and blackness. But in the midst of the torches rose the great central altar, still bestrewn with the flowers of their recent ceremonial. About its base the angry ones had gathered, while above them, before the very shrine of the Sun itself, there stood two of the fairest creatures under heaven—our own beautiful Ferratoni, and at his side, her arms laid about his shoulders, the Princess of the Lilied Hills.

Chauncey Gale insists that grouped on a lower step of the altar, bowed like the children of Niobe, were those who would have granted also to us the sacred Pardon of Love. But I did not see them, nor did Mr. Sturritt, and I do not believe Gale did, either. Indeed, we had eyes only for those other two. Like the populace, spellbound and speechless, forgetting our own existence, we stood and gaped at them. Gale was first to recall himself.

“Tableau!” he said, “show’s over! Let’s ring down the curtain, now, and get out of here, quick!”

Yet we lingered for one final look. And lo, all at once, from some high oriel window, there fell upon them a long golden bar of the returning sunlight. And the silence about them awakened to a wondering murmur that grew to a low chant, then quickly increased in volume, bursting at last into a mighty anthem which we recognized as their marriage chorus.

“Come! Come!” insisted Gale. “That isn’t for us. The orchestra is playing us out. Let’s take the hint and go before they change their minds. ’Tisn’t our wedding, and we don’t want it to be our funeral, either.”

Reluctantly we dropped the curtains then, and hastened down the steps. It was still raining wispily, but the sun was rifting through, and a wonderful rainbow arched the black sky opposite. We pushed off our boat, and bent to the oars with all our strength, sending the light barge swiftly down the tide that between the Lilied Hills, through the Purple Fields, and under the Plains of White found its way at last to the far-off Billowcrest—and home.

XXXV. DOWN THE RIVER OF COMING DARK.

We were not pursued, or, if we were, we saw nothing of our pursuers. When the storm had all cleared away, we saw here and there people along the shore, but they did not offer to interfere with our flight. On the contrary, they seemed rather interested, and even pleased at our rate of speed. We believed that with the wedding ceremony of the Princess and Ferratoni the better nature of the race once more got the upper hand, and that they were satisfied to know that we were getting out of the country as rapidly as our skill and muscular development would permit.

Some mental communication to this effect must have passed between the court of the Lily Princess and that of her brother, the Prince of the Purple Fields, for when some twenty hours later (we had wound our watches now) we reached his palace, we found the Prince and his court assembled at the outer entrance, and our own beautiful propeller boat waiting in readiness for the immediate continuance of our journey.

Noticing the assembly as we came on we had some doubts as to their intentions, but we did not hesitate, and we found the Prince and those about him gentle and kindly as before. Their willingness that we should continue our journey, however, was quite apparent, and as our boat contained all our belongings and had been fully provisioned by the Prince’s household, there was no excuse for delay.

Indeed, we were as eager to get out of their halcyon vale as they were to have us, and we did not remain longer in it than it took for us to climb from one boat into the other and touch the button that started the propeller. The battery had not failed, and aided by the tide we were off with a speed that seemed to us like that of a torpedo boat. We turned then and waved our hands and called good-byes to the gentle Prince and those of his pleasant palace.

And so adieu to the land of my fancy—my isle of lost argosies and forgotten songs. One among us had found there the ideal he sought—life’s perfect chord. For the others—the lives we had lived and the lives of those who had lived before us, had not fitted us for that Port of Dreams.

We would return to our own. When or by what means we did not know—the way ahead seemed long and weary—but come what might, we had resolved to reach once more those who waited beyond the cold desolation between, and with them to go back to the only life we knew, in a world of growth and change.

XXXVI. THE “PASSAGE OF THE DEAD.”

We made time, now. We were not creeping up-stream, delayed by slow-moving barges. We were going with the tide and all handicaps had been removed. In less than thirty hours, including all stops, we had covered the distance that it had taken us days to ascend, and camped once more in the violet fields above the rapids. I had taken an observation at this point, and by taking another now I was able from the position of the sun and a reference to my charts to establish the date and, approximately, the hour. My calculation showed that it was November the Ninth. Seven weeks had elapsed since our departure from the Billowcrest. It seemed as many ages.

The purple flowers that had welcomed us to the enchanted land were withered, but their leaves remained, and in every direction showed as a level carpet of green. Reaching the rapids we once more removed our boat from the water. The snow on the hillside was gone, but we trundled our craft down over the bare rock and shale without serious difficulty, and launched it again in the swift current below. Neither was there any snow on the barren lands ahead as far as we could see, and it was not until some hours later that it began to show along the banks.

The ice, too, seemed entirely gone from the river, but as the snow deepened along the shores we knew we must ere long reach the point where the current plunged beneath the eternal barrier into that darksome passage by which so many of the Antarctic dead had found their way to the Land of the Silent Cold.

The walls of ice and snow on either side of us deepened rapidly. Soon we were sweeping through a chill canyon down whose glittering sides dashed crystal streams from the melting snow above. Here and there appeared places by which it seemed possible to ascend to the snow level, but no one as yet spoke of halting. It would mean the deserting of our boat, which three of us could hardly attempt to push up the homeward incline, and the bundling upon our backs of such supplies and comforts as we could carry, to toil with them across the drifted wastes that lay between us and the Billowcrest. And at the end of that journey—if we ever reached the end—lay the huge perpendicular wall down which we must still find our way. In fact, neither our prospect nor our surroundings were conducive to conversation, and with the increasing cold, and the black, semi-transparent walls becoming rapidly loftier, we said not many words, and these in low voices, as if we were indeed among the dead.

“Do you suppose any of their funeral boats ever get down those rapids without being upset?” whispered Gale, at last.

“It is possible,” I said, “it is only a question of avoiding the rocks. No doubt many of them do. They are of course sunken in the tunnel afterwards. The tide must fill it for a good way up, you know.”

“Nick,” said Gale suddenly, “what would you think of _us_ trying to go through that tunnel?”

I gave a great spasmodic shudder.

“Don’t! I have already thought of it,” I managed to say. “It makes me ill!”

“But I mean it, Nick,” persisted Gale. “There can’t be more than a hundred and fifty miles of it, and it’s not so much colder inside than it is here. We’ve got our electric lamp ahead, and we could make it in seven or eight hours, the way we are going. If we can hit the tide right we might do it as easy as nothing. If we did, we’d be home for dinner. If we didn’t—well, Nick, to talk right out in meeting, I don’t believe we’d have a bit more chance of getting home the other way, and a good deal longer misery before—before we quit trying. Ain’t that so, now? What do you think, Bill?”

Neither of us could reply immediately. The thought had lurked in the minds of all, but when put into words it was a bit staggering. Yet the prospect of being, within a few hours, on the Billowcrest with Edith—for dinner, as her father put it—started the warm blood once more in my veins. Perhaps the latter appealed to Mr. Sturritt also.

“I—I—that is—I’m with—er—the Admiral,” he managed to say at last, “as usual.”

“And so am I,” I agreed. “We can only die once wherever we are, and it is better to take the chances where we will go all together, in a minute, and be carried somewhere near our friends, than to perish lingeringly one after another, away off up yonder in the snow.”

“That’s my ticket!” assented Gale. “And anyway, our boat, some of it, will get through, with all these air-tight compartments, and we can put some messages in each one, so if any pieces are picked up the folks will know what became of us.”

We began doing this at once, for we felt that the entrance to the dark tunnel could not be far distant. The walls on either side were becoming very high, and in places drew inward alarmingly. The river was narrowing too, and was much swifter.

“We couldn’t get up, now, if we wanted to,” commented Gale, presently, “and say, Nick, there’s a bend just ahead.”

But it was not a bend. The walls bent, truly, but they bent inward, and far above they joined. Below was a depth of blackness into which our eyes could pierce but a little way.

It was the “Passage of the Dead!”

We hastily slackened our speed to consider a little. Gale was making a calculation.

“It’s now ten o’clock,” he said, at last, “and as nearly as I can figure, the tide ought to be about half down in Bottle Bay. It’ll be low tide at—say one o’clock, and high tide again about seven, unless the wind’s blowing in there. That would bring the tide up earlier. What we want to do, Nick, is not to waste a minute, so’s to get there if we can before the tide closes the entrance again.”

“Why run that risk?” I shivered. “Why not figure to get there at low tide?”

“Because,” explained Gale, “that tide don’t stop at the opening. It comes on up—perhaps a good ways. When it’s low tide there, there’s a high tide somewhere this side, and coming this way. I don’t know how fast, or how far it would come, or how far up it would close this passage. But somewhere we’ve probably got to meet that tide, and the farther up this way it is, the less likely it’ll be to rise higher than the ceiling.”

I had another spasmodic seizure at this suggestion. It amounted to almost a chill, in fact, and Gale considerately waited until I was better. Then he said:

“If we pass that tide all right, we’ll have a clear run for the entrance, and if I’ve counted the time right we ought to make it before it closes. Of course if there’s a head wind, or our propeller gives out—why——”

“I know,” I said hastily, though with some attempt at calmness, “we wouldn’t get through.”

“Oh, yes we would,” said Gale cheerfully, “we’d get through all right, but we wouldn’t be worth picking up, afterwards.”

We were now at the entrance of the great tunnel. The ceiling above was a vast black arch, hollowed out by the warmer waters of the river, during its great freshets. At the opening it was very high, and the span above thin and crumbling, and hung with huge icicles. Streams of water were pouring from it, and we had barely passed beneath when just behind there came the crash of falling fragments.

We were nearly upset by the upheaval of water, but were presently beyond the reach of this danger. We had turned on our light, and it threw a long white radiance ahead that dazzled back and forth, and up and down, between ice and water in a wonderful iridescence. The wide ceiling lowered rapidly until it was perhaps fifteen feet above our heads and seemed much closer. We remembered that at Bottle Bay it was less than ten, and the tides there rose very high.

We were running at full speed and the current was swift. Our log showed that we were making twenty miles an hour. At this rate we believed that a little more than seven hours would bring us through. Perhaps even less than that. In spite of the vault-like cold and stillness about us, we grew mildly cheerful.

“Nick,” said Gale, “we’re going home in style. What do you suppose Johnnie and Biff will say, if they happen to see us pop out into Bottle Bay, as if we’d been shot out of a gun?”

The prospect seemed almost too joyful to consider.

Gale, meantime, had opened one of the compartments, and brought forth a small flask containing what was left of our supply of brandy. He held it up to the light.

“Just about one apiece,” he commented cheerfully. “If we get through all right, we’ll have plenty more. If we don’t we won’t need it. What is hope without a high-ball? Age before beauty, Bill, you first.”

Mr. Sturritt shook his head. I think he seldom tasted liquors.

“I—er—I have a few of the brown lozenges,” he explained. “They are very stim—that is—sustaining during cold, as you remember.”

“What’s that ahead, Nick?” Gale asked suddenly.

There was an outline in the light over our bow that stopped all tendency to mirth. It was that of a canoe, and presently when we swept by it, we got a glimpse of a white, dead face within.

Silently Gale once more extended toward Mr. Sturritt the depleted flask. This time he did not refuse.

XXXVII. THE RISING TIDE.

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when we noticed that the ceiling seemed to be drawing nearer to our heads. The change was very gradual and at first we could not be sure. Then Gale said:

“It’s getting closer, boys—there’s no doubt of it. We’re probably down to tide-water, and I believe we’re hitting it just about right—it can’t fill up along here.”

We steered the boat toward the side of the passage and examined the ice closely as we passed. Then he indicated a faint line about three feet above us.

“There’s where it gets to, here,” he said; “of course it gets higher farther down. If it gets too high, well——”

He did not finish, and we went on at full speed.

Lower and lower descended the wall above. At half-past four it was within two feet of our heads, when we sat upright, and stretching away into the blackness on either side it seemed an irresistible mountain mass that was to crush us beneath the flood. We felt that we were going slower, too, for the tide had opposed and checked the current.

At quarter of five I was obliged to stoop.

“Low bridge,” said Gale, but less than an hour later the situation lost its last vestige of humor, even for him.

From the bottom of the boat where we were lying, he called:

“Nick, I forgot one thing. The ebb tide and the incoming tide probably meet about here. I think we’re goners.”