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Title: The world below

Author: S. Fowler Wright

Release date: June 22, 2025 [eBook #76352]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Books for Today Ltd, 1929

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD
BELOW ***

THE WORLD BELOW
BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FICTION
THE ADVENTURE OF WYNDHAM SMITH
THE ISLAND OF CAPTAIN SPARROW
LORD’S RIGHT IN LANGUEDOC
SEVEN THOUSAND IN ISRAEL
THE SCREAMING LAKE
THE SIEGE OF MALTA
THE NEWS GODS LEAD
PRELUDE IN PRAGUE
VENGEANCE OF GWA
THE HIDDEN TRIBE
ORDEAL OF BARATA
MEGIDDO’S RIDGE
BEYOND THE RIM
FOUR DAYS’ WAR
THE WITCHFINDER
ELFWIN
DELUGE
DREAM
DAVID
POWER
DAWN

VERSE
THE SONG OF SONGS AND OTHER POEMS
SCENES FROM THE MORTE D’ARTHUR
THE RIDING OF LANCELOT
THE BALLAD OF ELAINE
RESIDUE

TRANSLATION
DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY

POLITICAL
POLICE AND PUBLIC
SHOULD WE SURRENDER COLONIES?

BIOGRAPHY
THE LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT

THE WORLD BELOW
by
S. FOWLER WRIGHT
Author of “Deluge,” “The Island of Captain Sparrow,” etc.

BOOKS FOR TODAY LTD
50-52 OLD BROMPTON ROAD
LONDON S.W. 7
Second Impression

Copyright, 1929
Made and Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold & Sons Ltd.,
Norwich, Mcmxlix
CONTENTS

BOOK I. THE AMPHIBIANS
I. OF PLACE AND TIME
II. THE EMPTY DAWN
III. DEATH?
IV. THE OPAL WAY
V. THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE
VI. THE FROG-MOUTHS
VII. CAPTURE
VIII. THE BIRDS
IX. THE TUNNEL OF FEAR
X. THE AMPHIBIANS
XI. THE PROBLEM
XII. THE MARCH
XIII. THE KILLERS
XIV. THE HALT
XV. THE PLAN OF ATTACK
XVI. THE SENTRY

XVII. THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE
XVIII. THE ARSENAL OF THE KILLERS
XIX. THE DUEL IN THE NIGHT
XX. THE BOW
XXI. THE BAT-WINGS
XXII. NIGHT IN THE ARSENAL
XXIII. THE ESCAPE
XXIV. THE FIGHT IN THE ARSENAL
XXV. THE FORBIDDEN THING
XXVI. THE TRIAL
XXVII. THE VERDICT
XXVIII. THE FATE OF THE KILLERS

BOOK II. THE WORLD BELOW
I. COUNSEL
II. THE UNKNOWN WAY
III. THE PERIL OF THE LAKE
IV. THE SILENCE IN THE WOOD
V. THE TEMPLE
VI. THE DOWNWARD PATH
VII. THE LIVING BOOK
VIII. THE TREATY
IX. THE FLAME OF LIFE
X. VISIONS
XI. WAR
XII. THE FATE OF TEMPLETON
XIII. SEPARATION
XIV. LOVE AND WAR
XV. RELEASE
XVI. RETURN
Book I
THE AMPHIBIANS

CHAPTER I
OF PLACE AND TIME

“Applied science,” said the Professor, “is always incredible to the vulgar
mind.”
“You know, George, they really did go—disappeared absolutely—and
there’s only one door to the room, and we sat round it. There’s no kid about
that,” young Danby added—perhaps recognising that his father lacked
somewhat in the amenities of social intercourse.
“If I go at all, I shall take an axe,” I remarked irrelevantly.
Bryant leant forward, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
“Templeton went like a Pirate Chief,” he said, smiling slightly.
It was the first time he had spoken.
“Look here, Bryant,” I said, “tell me what really happened, and I’ll do
my best to believe it.”
He hesitated a moment, and then answered slowly, “It’s true enough,
what they’ve told you, as far as we can tell it. As to theories of time and
space, I know no more than you do. I used to think they were obvious. I’ve
heard the Professor talk two nights a week for three years, and I’ve realised
that it isn’t all quite as simple as it seemed, though I don’t get much further.
But the next room’s a fact. We lay things down on the central slab, and the
room goes dark, and we go back in two minutes, and it gets light again, and
they’re still there. And the Professor says he’s projected them 500,000 years
ahead in the interval, and they don’t look any the worse for the journey.”
“And it must be true, because they don’t deny it,” I said flippantly. “It
sounds rather a dull game, but not very difficult.”
“Yes, I know how it sounds,” he answered, “and we thought just the
same; but it did seem to prove one thing—that it did no harm to the objects
of the experiment.

“If they went anywhere, at least they came back safely. So at last we
tried it with Harry Brett—and he didn’t. We left him there, and we went
back, and the room was empty. It’s just a bare circular room, metal-walled,
with one exit. You can see for yourself. It wouldn’t hide a fly.
“The next day Harry’s wife came and kicked up a row, and we got
frightened, and told Templeton, and he said he didn’t believe a word of it,
but he was going to find out, and so we tried it on him too.”
“And he disappeared in the same way?”
“No, he didn’t. He came out all right, and he said, ‘It’s true enough, but I
reckon you’ve settled Brett. But what’s the use of half-an-hour? I’m going
back now. Give me a year, and I may find him.’
“The Professor told him he couldn’t repeat the experiment twice the
same night, but he could come back the next, and so he did—and that’s the
end of it so far.”
“But if he were to be gone for a year, and he went last Tuesday?”
“He wasn’t to be gone for a year; he was to be there for a year, and be
back in two minutes. That’s quite simple. The Professor’ll tell you.”
“But—if the Professor will excuse the remark—it wouldn’t be any good
if he did. I’ve read The Time Machine, and I know that space is curved,
thanks to Einstein’s enterprising investigation. I quite understand that, if I
got at the right distance from the earth (and my eyesight were good
enough), I should see our Darwinian ancestor shinning up the tree-trunk for
the fatal apple, but I don’t profess to follow these mysteries further. When I
had to learn science, I always preferred the demonstrations. Now, if the
Professor would project a pullet six months old backward, and it returned a
chicken——”
Young Danby laughed, and I saw Bryant’s eyes twinkle, but the
Professor answered me patiently.
“It is obviously impossible to project anything into the past, which is
fixed irrevocably.
“Otherwise there would be no finality, and the confusion would be
intolerable. It requires no scientific training of intellect to understand that
the ordered experience of life would become chaotic if, for instance, upon
reading of a long-past murder, I could project myself into the past, and
intervene to save the victim.

“In such event the murder would both have occurred, and been
prevented: which is absurd.
“But the future is different. It is unformed, or, at least, its facts are in a
condition of fluidity. We are all occupied in forming them. If I kill an insect,
I do not destroy it only, but its descendants also. I also influence the lives of
other insects with which they would have mated, and which will form other
alliances. From such alliances other insects will be born which would not
have existed. The present consequences of any action, even the most
momentous, are trivial, because the present is but a moment. Its future
consequences are incalculably greater, because the future is infinite.
“Realising this, we recognise that our present actions belong to the future
almost entirely, and it becomes a less important possibility that we may be
able to project ourselves forward into some future period, and influence its
circumstances by the physical methods with which we are familiar here.”
I don’t suppose the Professor had finished, but he paused for breath for a
second, and I took the chance he offered.
“I’m sorry I came a cropper over the pullet plan. And, anyway, there
wasn’t much sense in it. It would be too unprofitable to become popular.
But why not get the chickens, and project them forward? Nine months
ahead, say, and they come back cackling, with the first egg on the table?
—‘Professor Danby, the Magic Poulterer.’ There’s a fortune there, anyway.”
For the first time the Professor showed distinct signs of irritation. “You
may not be a scientist,” he said, “but as a business man you must know that
you are talking nonsense. Would you send your chickens into the future
without a hen to brood them?
“Would you expect the people of some future age to rear them for your
benefit? When they discovered that they always vanished at maturity, would
they not kill them a few days earlier?—But this is idle talk. Something of
the kind you imagine may follow in the years to be, as the penetration of the
future, which is now the subject of theory and experiment, becomes an
exact science, and when it does, such minds as yours will take it as casually
as you now do the transmission of speech and sight over the earth’s surface,
in ways which your fathers would have considered incredible. The scientists
who have conquered space have less honour in the mouths of men than
Napoleon, who conquered Europe,—and had not the brains to hold it. It is

not reasonable to suppose that those who conquer time will be more highly
regarded.
“But all this is beside the point. There are two men who have vanished,
or so we tell you. We have no proof, and you are under no obligation to
believe us. We may have murdered them, though we have no evident object,
and your knowledge of our characters should enable you to discount that
possibility. If you will take the same risk, be it much or little, I will find the
sum you need, which is somewhat large, and which you tell me is urgent.”
I said, “I do need it; and if I don’t accept at once, it’s because the whole
tale sounds too wild for believing. I should like to ask a few questions.
“First, you say these two men have disappeared entirely. I believe what
you have told me is genuine, or at least that you believe it to be so. But have
you told me all? Is there nothing you are holding back that might influence
my decision? No?
“But you say that Templeton returned from his first adventure, and went
again the next night. Surely he told you something of his experiences?”
“No; he didn’t seem to want to talk,” Bryant answered; “he only said it
was too strange to explain, and he must go back and find out. When we
pressed him, he said he supposed we thought that, if a stranger to our planet
stood in his back-garden for half-an-hour, he would be able to describe the
whole earth in detail, from the marriage customs of Alaska to the flora of
the Zambesi. You know Templeton’s way.
“But he was anxious enough to get back, and he turned up next night
with a sack of things he thought he would find useful, and enough weapons
in his belt to stock an arsenal.”
“And he didn’t return,” I added, “so the things he took don’t seem to
have been sufficiently useful. As I said before, if I go, I shall take an axe;
for one reason, because I spend half my leisure in tree-felling, and I know
how to use it. For another, it’s a useful tool, and not only intended for the
destruction of your fellow-men. Whether I shall find any fellow-men, I
don’t know, but, if I go into a strange world, I don’t propose to equip myself
as though I intended to engage it in single combat. It seems tactless to me.
—But did he say nothing about temperature? I don’t want to stumble into a
glacial epoch, without even a fur collar in which to face it.”

“You need have no fear of that,” said the Professor, “you will be at least
thirty-thousand years away from the nearest glacial epoch, and Templeton
didn’t seem to have suffered either from change of air or an excessively
high temperature.”
“He took plenty of clothes when he went back,” young Danby added,
“but he said it was much easier to throw off clothes you didn’t want than to
put on those you hadn’t got, and he didn’t know where he would be going,
‘it might be up, or it might be down!’—whatever that meant.”
“It doesn’t sound as though he had much confidence in the resources of
the future world,” I said doubtfully, “and there are about fifty questions I
should like to ask, but they wouldn’t make much difference, even if you
knew the answers, which you probably don’t.
“I’ve got to-morrow to make any preparations that seem worth while. I’ll
take the cheque now, Professor, if you will be so kind as to draw it,—and
I’ll give you a note to-morrow which will clear you with Clara, if I follow
Templeton’s example.”

CHAPTER II
THE EMPTY DAWN

The room which the Professor had constructed for his experiments was
circular, walled in an iron-grey metallic substance, empty, and, when the
door closed upon me, it was in absolute darkness.
Waiting there, I had a curious and disquieting consciousness, as of
absolute vacancy, such as a disembodied spirit might feel before its next
incarnation, but nothing happened, neither did the Professor return as he
promised. I knew that the two minutes were long past, but there was no
movement in the room, and no break in the darkness. Had he misled me, I
wondered, and was I the victim of some quite different experiment,—
perhaps of how much strain the human mind could endure, and yet retain its
sanity? And why was the room so much colder?—and the air against my
face was damp, as though a mist were rising.
I looked round, and saw nothing,—upward, and the three great stars of
Orion’s belt showed through the fog, and the upper part of the constellation;
and other stars were in the central heavens, but lower down the mist hid
them.
If I were indeed transported to some remote and future time, at least the
same stars were there, with little change, even of their positions in the
heavens.
It was a moment when any source of confidence was needed. I had
imagined many ways in which a strange world might appear around me, but
I had overlooked the possibility that I might arrive in the night-time. But
there I was, standing on something which felt hard and very smooth, and
afraid to move a step in the darkness.
How long I stood there I have no means of knowing. The mist increased,
and the night continued dark, and very strangely silent.
Fortunately, I had clothed myself warmly, in a suit of close-fitting leather
garments, with the fur turned inward. I had brought sandwiches which I had

calculated would be sufficient for two days, if other food should be hard to
gain, and I ate some of them, and then as the hours passed, I grew too tired
to stand, and sat down on the hard pavement beneath me. It felt like very
smooth and polished stone, and I reached out on either hand, thinking to
feel some joining which would confirm this supposition, but could find
nothing. As the hours passed, I tried to lie and sleep, but only those who
have done this for the first time on a hard and level surface will understand
my discomfort.
Yet I slept at last, and waked again, feeling both cold and hunger, and ate
and slept, and waked and ate and slept again, till I became aware that all the
food was gone, and still the night continued.
Then fear came, indeed.
Had Templeton come to this, and had he fired his foolish pistols into the
mocking stillness of a perpetual and lifeless night?
The silence was absolute.
An ordinary English night is full of joyous, furtive, or defiant sound. A
tropic night is full of life and movement, and noon is the time of quietness.
The owl hoots even above the silence of the Arctic snow.
But here there was no faintest distant call, nor any whisper of movement.
Yet I recalled that Templeton had been once, and returned, so once at
least he must have seen daylight. Then I realised that the darkness was less
dense, and the stars were dimmer.
Dawn approached, but how slowly!
I must have watched for hours while the sky flushed faintly, and still the
darkness was but slightly lifted.
Gradually, very gradually, the strange scene opened.
Sloping downward, and stretching as far as sight could reach toward the
coming sun, was one unbroken plain of purple-brown, on which were
growths of one kind only, compact and round, and averaging some eight
feet in height, like gigantic cabbages in shape, and of a very vivid green.
Behind me rose a high grey cliff, so smooth and straight that I doubted
whether it were of natural formation, or the work of some directing
intelligence.

Between the cliff and the great plain there was a strip of smooth and
lucent paving, about twenty feet in breadth, on which I had rested while the
long night passed.
As the familiar sun rose slowly, a gradual gold spread over the vivid
green that sloped toward it, till the whole expanse shone with a dazzling
splendour; and as the rising light struck across the path on which I stood, it
showed a shining band of opalescence that stretched right and left to the
horizon limits, beneath the background of the dark-grey wall.
The sky was of a deep unbroken blue, and the whole scene was one of
great though alien beauty.
I had imagined that I might find myself lost amidst the inexplicable
complexities of a civilisation different from anything of which I had heard
or known, or perhaps amidst enormous jungle growths, and beasts of
unfamiliar terrors. But here seemed only an interminable and barren
weirdness, offering neither menace to life nor any means by which to
support it.
So I thought, in a double error, as I was to learn very quickly.
The sun was by now almost completely visible, but there was no cry or
stir of life to break the silence, nor did any bird cross the blue expanse
above me.
The need to explore the new world in which I found myself was urgent.
There was no hope from inaction amid such surroundings. The cliff on one
side was a wall unclimbable. The purple soil, from which I could see that a
slight steam was rising, offered no invitation to lose myself among the great
green globes, which seemed to be its sole fertility. There remained only the
opal platform on which I stood, by which it seemed that I might go on, to
right or left, for ever.
With nothing to direct my choice, I turned southward, and strapping on
the knapsack in which I carried such things as I had brought with me, but
from which my stock of food was exhausted, and shouldering the
woodman’s axe, which was the only thing beside a heavy clasp-knife which
I carried as tool or weapon, I walked briskly forward.

CHAPTER III
DEATH?

I had gone no great distance, and the sun had yet scarcely cleared the
horizon, when I came to a high cavity in the cliff-wall.
It was of such height that an elephant would have looked a pigmy as he
passed inward, and of a shape too regular to have been formed without the
tools of some controlling mind.
The level sun shone into it, and illumed it, a very spacious tunnel, for a
considerable distance. Then it bent out of sight. I went inward a few steps,
and hesitated.
Anyone who, on a strange and lonely road, has reached a place where it
branches in two directions, without knowledge or sign to guide his choice,
will understand my feeling. Still in doubt, I walked back to the cave-mouth,
and then, down the middle of the opal way, came something very swift and
light. Someone who was neither man, nor beast, nor monkey. Someone who
ran without effort, but as in urgent and silent fear.
She did not see me until she was level with the gap from which I
watched her, and when she did, she leapt sideways with incredible agility.
The leap took her to the very edge of the opal way, and her left foot pressed
for a second on the purple soil beyond. As it did so, with the speed of light
itself, the nearest of the bright-green globes shot open in a score of writhing
tentacles, of which one caught the slipping foot, and dragged its victim
down.
There came one scream, intense and dreadful, high and shrill, and then I
watched a lithe furred human-seeming body which struggled against the
clinging, twisting arm which dragged her in.
The tentacles were very long and thin, and of a brick-red colour. The one
which reached her first was not thicker, toward its end, than a man’s finger,
but for a moment only was there any doubt of the issue.

Then a stronger tentacle got a firm grip of its victim’s body, and as it did
so the scream came again, but shriller, louder, and more exultant, and I
realised that it was the plant that screamed, and not the prize it had
captured.
I don’t think I should have interfered but for that second scream of
triumph, but there was something in its tone so hateful, so bestial, that an
impulse of pity for its victim broke across the blank amazement of my
mind, and with the feeling, as thought that answered thought, I knew that
she was calling to me to help her.
The axe lay ready to my hand on the cave-floor, and I picked it up and
ran forward.
I brought the blade down on the nearest tentacle with such force as
would have severed a branch of a well-grown tree, but it only dented a skin
that was soft and flexible, but tough, like rubber.
As I swung the axe again, a long arm caught me round both ankles and
pulled. Had I not been so strange to it, had it better gauged my strength and
weight, or had it not been occupied with its earlier capture, I suppose that
the next minute would have ended my experience, but as it was, the clutch
only stirred me to a desperation of terror that brought the axe down with
double force, and the severed limb fell quivering to the ground.
As it did so, the creature screamed again. It was a cry of the most utter
terror, abject and hellish beyond any possibility of words to tell it.
And the forest answered.
It answered in a hundred voices that screamed, and clamoured, and
questioned, and replied.
I had never known before the strength which panic and loathing may
give to human muscles.
Backward writhed the frightened tentacles, their victim dropped and
forgotten, and every axe-stroke that followed gashed or severed one of
them, and where they were cut through, a wine-red semi-liquid jelly slowly
welled from the gap.
I think as the creature contracted and closed its petals I might have
stayed the blows if it had not screamed for mercy on a note which gave me
a feeling of nausea, and a lust to kill, so that I struck till the great flesh-like

leaves were gashed and shredded; till, as the cries continued, I realised that
the centre of its life was underground, beyond my power to reach it.
Then I lowered the axe, and looked round.
Dimly I was aware that my heart was beating wildly, and that I was
breathing with difficulty.
Still the forest was screaming around me in deafening tones of fear and
hate and menace.
I looked back to the comparative safety of the cave I had left, and I saw
the one that I had saved slowly dragging herself towards it, and as I did so I
was conscious that she knew my thought, and answered.
I became aware for the first time that the soil on which I stood was hot,
and that my feet were scorching.
I threw the axe towards the cave, and went to help the one that I had
ventured to rescue, and doing this, I had a strange feeling of repulsion, as
from an alien body, and of attraction, as to a kindred soul.
I knew that she was mortally injured, and feared that I must horribly hurt
the limp body as I picked it up.
I was startled by its lightness, and surprised that it made no sound.
As I lifted her, I was conscious again of the interchange of wordless
thought, but when I answered mechanically with a spoken word I was
rebuffed by the expression of repulsion and wonder which crossed her eyes.
But as I laid her down in the cave-mouth, wondering what I could do to
aid her further, her thought answered mine clearly, “Do not touch my body.
It is dead.”
Then our minds met, and for some moments wrestled abortively, till I
realised that I could not understand unless my own were willing, and blank,
and receptive. Nor could she understand my thought unless it were
consciously approached to hers.
After that, we conversed in silence for some time, but very slowly. So
wide was the gulf of separation in knowledge and experience, so baffling
the mental shorthand by which agreed fact is implied without expression, so
difficult was it to avoid the continual byways of explanation which only led
to others, that it was a long time before I could receive even a blurred
outline of the urgent facts which she was striving to give me.

By this time I realised that she regarded me as something strange and
beast-like, and that any noise from my mouth would intensify this feeling
against me, and confirm the judgment. I knew also that she recognised me
as sympathetic, and in some measure intelligent, however physically
repulsive—a repulsion made more acute by the clothes I wore, of which I
was made to feel a sense of acute shame, so strongly did her mind impress
my own with a conception of their indecency.
I thought that she regarded me much as we should do a half-tamed dog,
ferocious, but amenable to kindness and reason, and of a possible loyalty.
I knew also that she regarded her body as a broken and negligible thing,
and that her mind had concentrated on persuading me to undertake, and
enabling me to understand, an errand which the accident had interrupted,
and which was of a very urgent nature.
So I sat there at the cave-mouth, while the sun rose clear from the hateful
vivid green of the forest, that was still vocal with fear and excitement, while
I slowly took my first and very difficult lesson in the new world I had
entered.
“And now,” she thought, “if that be all, and you understand, I shall be
very glad to die. You will not touch me when I am dead? If you are a beast
that needs such food, you will find that the jelly in the tentacles will supply
you. You must wait here till the twilight.”
And then she turned over, with a movement of surprising ease in the
broken limbs, and curled up, and I knew that she had left the cave.
And I sat there thinking of all she had told me, and felt a great loneliness,
and a great fear.

CHAPTER IV
THE OPAL WAY

I sat there a long time, trying to reconstruct her tale, and to find some
possible explanation of its apparent paradoxes. Why should I stay there till
the twilight came? I had learnt that where I sat I was in the very shadow of
death. I knew that the way was long, and the message I had undertaken was
of the utmost urgency.
Some reason for delay there had been, but it was like a dream which
eludes waking thought. And how, in light or dark, could I cross the great
chasm where the pavement ended? I had asked her this, but she had replied
as though she did not understand my difficulty. The bridge was where it was
not. There was no meaning in that. Perhaps my physical limitations were
beyond her understanding. Surely, if I tried that road by night, though I
should avoid the terrors on either hand, I must fall into the abyss beyond,
and perish.
I resolved that I would go forward, at least as far as the path was clear,
and, at the worst, I knew that there were other cavities, such as this one, in
which I could take refuge with no greater danger than was behind me here.
But again my resolve faltered. I knew that there was some reason against
my going, though my thought could not recall it.
Why should I go by night?
Patiently I recalled the visions which had crossed my mind as our
thoughts encountered.
But there was nothing there to guide me. Only there were gaps I knew in
the cliff-wall, and these were associated with the idea of deadly danger, but
of what kind I could not discover. Her thought had gone forward with the
message I was to bear to her kinsfolk on the dim grey beaches. These I saw
clearly, and strange and mist-like as the vision rose, there at least was the
lapping tide of the unchanging sea. I would go also to these creatures which
were intelligent, though they were not men. Creatures which could

understand, and perhaps show friendship, though they might think of me as
the uncouth Caliban of some forgotten age.
Why should I wait for the dark? Safety to them might be to me the
deadliest peril.
I would go now.
But first for food, and—was there no fresh water in this accursed place?
The thought struck me with such fear as I had not felt till then. There had
been rain in the night, or at least a heavy mist, but now the sun shone with
increasing strength in a sky of absolute and cloudless blue. There was a
slight steam rising from the hot dark-purple powdery soil of the forest. The
cliff-side was hot to touch. There was no moisture on the opal pavement
now.
Had I to wait till the long-distant night and the cold mist returned?
Well, I might live till then, if I must, but at least it was a new reason for
exploring further.
As to food—the severed tentacles lay on the soil before me. I had been
advised to try them. Raw? I looked at them more carefully than I had yet
done. They had not bled, as severed limbs would do on the earth I knew.
But not plants.
Dare I go again across the burning soil, and would the monster dare to
renew the conflict? Every moment there had been less sign of the havoc the
axe had made. The hacked and shredded petals were growing to their old
form again, but now they lay half-open to the sun, as did the whole of the
forest.
Should I fear to approach it? And could it also read my thoughts, and
would my fear give it confidence?
If that were so, I must school myself to feel courage. Is it not always the
unknown that inspires terror, and was I not as strange to them as they to
me?
My thought stopped to watch a new thing that was happening. Very
cautiously, one of the petals moved aside, and very slowly an uninjured
tentacle crept out across the soil. Was it feeling in the hope that its first
victim still lay there? Did it hope to retrieve those broken tentacles? No, not
that; for it touched one, as it seemed by chance, and shrank back, and
trembled, and crept forward a different way.

Well, I would resolve it confidently. Axe in hand, I went forward. As I
did so, I commenced to sing a lively tune that my subconscious mind
suggested to the occasion.
But before the first line ended, it was drowned in the shrill scream of the
monster, and the creeping arm leapt back to safety.
And again the scream was taken up and re-echoed by a hundred voices,
hideous and deafening beyond description; and with no more thought of
danger I went forward into that deadly space, among creatures that could
destroy me in a moment, but that a song could terrify.
I walked quickly over the steaming soil, which was much hotter than
before, picked up a piece of tentacle, perhaps six feet in length, and flung it
on the pavement. Then I took it into the cave to examine it. The skin was
tough and flexible, with a curious fibrous growth inside it, with hollow cells
intervening. Then there was a thin membrane, and inside this a ruby-
coloured jelly-like substance, outwardly firm, but semi-liquid towards the
centre, from which a few drops fell as I turned it.
I tasted this jelly and found it very sweet, but otherwise unlike anything
to which I can make comparison. I ate a little, hesitating, and then decided
to sling my snake-like larder over my shoulder, and have a good meal later,
if I felt no ill-effects from my first adventure.

CHAPTER V
THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE

I had now resolved to go forward while I had the use of daylight to guide
me. Yet, so pliable is the human mind, I felt already the reluctance with
which a man must take farewell of familiar things, to face the perils of a
homeless way.
I glanced again at my companion of an hour, and with a more detailed
consideration than I had previously given.
Slim and graceful still, the body curved in death.
Very close and soft was the fur that covered her, silver-grey on the back,
but changing forward into a deepening chestnut. The legs were well and
finely shaped, but below the knee of each there was a slender snake-like
appendage, ending with curving fingers, like a tiny monkey’s hand, which
could close round the opposite limb and bind them together. The feet also
were delicately shaped, but deeply slit into three webbed toes, of which the
central one was the longest. Others—one at each side,—set far back, were
curled up normally, but could open sideways with a thumb-like claw. The
feet were furred equally with the legs, the silver-grey of the undersides
lying so closely that it looked almost like a shining skin. They showed no
sign of damage from the long rough journey that I knew they had made, nor
was any road-dust upon them.
The limbs were coloured in the same way as the body,—silver-grey
behind and chestnut-brown before, and the hands were almost human, but
for the webbing which had shown between the open fingers.
The head was to me the most singular, being furred like the body, and of
a similar colouring. The eyes were of a very human quality, and I had seen
them to be alert and intelligent. Now they were covered by a heavy lid
which rose upward, and in its turn was protected by a thin film which
closed down, and was lashed like a human eyelid. The ears were set far

back, and were covered by a furry flap which could be closed at will to shut
out air or water.
The mouth was lipless, a thin slit, with no sign of teeth. The cheeks were
covered by retractile pads beneath which was a gill-like device for water-
breathing.
The tail, which could curl up beneath the body till it was practically
invisible, was forked, with two more of those tiny monkey-hands at its
extremities.
I saw, or guessed, these details and their significance imperfectly at the
time,—the more so for my pledge not to touch the abandoned body,—but it
was evident that it was adapted for land or water living with almost equal
excellence.
I recognised that the novelty of what I saw was not surprising, but rather
that there was so little structural change in the form of animal life over so
long a period of earthly time. Still there was the vertebrate body, the limbs,
the head; still a general similarity of external and, presumably, of internal
organs.
I looked at the sinuous, graceful body, and wondered what it was that
repelled me.
To an impartial intelligence it might be considered more beautiful than
even an ideal human body, and the ideal in the human race is not the
majority.
Surely, it was more so than the average of our domestic animals.
Was it the unfamiliarity only, or was it the doubt of humanity, which
repelled me?
But repulsion, from whatever cause, was countered by a very different
feeling, which made my feet slow as I left the cave, and my glance go
backward.
Then I turned resolutely to the task which I had undertaken.
The day was very still. There was no cry or motion from the great cliff-
height above me. There was no flying life that crossed the unbroken blue.
The forest had stilled its fear, and the monstrous growths were sprawling
open upon the steaming soil. I wondered what control it might be which
held them so far backward that none could reach a deadly arm across the

path I kept. Perhaps the nearer soil was too shallow for the growth they
needed.
I went forward in this quiet peace for about four hours, stopping twice to
eat from the store I carried, which I found, though only semi-liquid at the
centre, had a gratifying quality of quenching thirst almost with the first
mouthful. I suppose it to have been formed largely of water, as many solids
are, and to have been soluble to digestion to an unusual degree. But it is a
matter which I have no competence to decide.
I know that I must have covered more than twelve miles in the first four
hours, with times for rest included ... and then came the abyss.
The cliff-wall ended, and ran back in a black and barren hill, immense
and desolate in the daylight.
The forest ended abruptly on the edge of a chasm so deep that, though it
must have been nearly a quarter of a mile to the further side, the great depth
made it look narrow.
Far below, dim and snake-like in the distance, a great river wound,
between deep shelving banks that looked moss-grown, but were covered
with (perhaps familiar) trees.
I stood upon the edge, which sank like a wall, and I saw no possible way
to go forward, or to clamber down.
I knew that there was a way which I had been meant to take, and more
than once I walked from side to side of the path on which I stood, bending
perilously over an edge which fell almost sheer to not less than five-
thousand feet below.
As I did this, the rope-like tentacle, which I was carrying over my
shoulder, slipped forward. I made one effort to clutch it; then, conscious of
my peril, let it go, but I was overbalanced already. With an involuntary cry,
that echoed and re-echoed through the barren heights, I fell forward.

CHAPTER VI
THE FROG-MOUTHS

Was the abyss an illusion only?
Dizzy and blank of mind, with a heart that beat to choking, and with a
bruised and injured knee, I lay upon a level vacancy, and the cause of the
accident lay, as on nothing, beside me.
How long I lay there I have no conception. I believe that as my heart-
beats slowed, and my senses cleared, I fainted from a revulsion of terror,
and, reviving, I lay afraid to move, and gazing with half-delirious eyes into
the appalling depth beneath me. But memory is indistinct, and it is a terror
which I recall with reluctance.
Soon or late, at last I realised that the path, though invisible to me, must
run out across the gorge, and timidly, and then more boldly I felt to right
and left, and wriggled back, and stood once more upon the evident
platform.
I remained there for a long time, seeking courage to go forward. With a
knowledge of what to look for, I fancied that the sunshine caught a faint
gleam of opal light that crossed the chasm.
How should I venture to tread it? How could so frail a bridge extend so
far without support or suspension? Would it sway beneath me as I
advanced? Would it break at last, and drop me, a dead thing, before I
reached the silver streak below?
In vain I tried to stimulate myself to the adventure. What hope was there
if I did not cross it? Was I not pledged in honour to the attempt, and might
not the path of honour be the path of safety also? Here, without apparent
reason, an old line of forgotten verse intruded,—
“‘Be bold,’ ‘be bold’ and everywhere ‘be bold.’”
My mind searched backward to place it. In that remoteness of time, when
all material things were unimaginably far, the imagination which formed the

greatest romantic poem in the English tongue could reach to inspire me. I
saw the vision of Britomart, her shield lifted over her face, go forward into
the certain-seeming death of flame, against which her trusted weapons were
useless.
With no conscious change of resolution, I rose slowly and stepped
forward, sounding my way by tapping to right and left with the axe-head,
and giving that snake-like tentacle a push that sent it over the invisible edge
into the depths below.
As I felt my way, I tried to look downward to watch my steps without
gazing into the gulf beneath me, but when I found it impossible to do so, in
a sickening terror I closed my eyes and felt forward blindly, or opened them
only to gaze at the further hills, which I was so slowly approaching.
And in this way, when I was more than half across, I first saw them, and
as I did so I recalled in a moment the forgotten warning that had eluded my
mind before. These were they which must be avoided at all costs, even at
that of waiting in the deadly cavity till night had darkened.
They were descending the cliffs with an awkward waddle, comic enough
to watch from some place of security, their bodies showing dead-white
against the dull grey background.
I could not tell certainly that I was their objective. They would reach the
level some distance to the right of the end of the bridge I was crossing. The
cliffs on that side left some margin by which they could reach the bridge-
head, but if I could pass that, I saw that the cliff ran on as before, flush with
the path, and with a similar expanse upon the left to that to which I had
become accustomed. If, I thought, I could reach the bridge-end first, I
should at least have a clear course, if I could outrun them. If I were caught
here, I had no hope whatever.
It is strange how a more urgent fear may drive out one which had seemed
invincible. By some optical difference the path here was very faintly
visible, a thin ribbon of opal-coloured transparency, and the fact that I could
fix my eyes on the point at which it reached the solid ground gave
confidence. I ceased to feel my steps, and ran forward.
Doing so, I thought for a moment that my time was ample, but when they
were on level ground their gait changed. They were coming with great

bounds, and straight for the bridge-head, to pass which was my only hope
of safety.
I saw them more clearly now. They were as white as an ant’s egg, and in
shape like a squatting man. There were more than twenty coming with
bounds of thirty feet, but with a distinct pause between each leap.
I was running hard now, and as I did so I shouted what I meant for a bold
defiance, and the sound echoed and re-echoed up the gorge, and came back
like a wail of terror from the depth below.
As I left the bridge, I saw the foremost coming on my right hand, not a
hundred yards distant. In another moment I was on the path that ran on as
before, the high cliff on my right, and what I had taken for a similar forest
to that I had been passing hitherto, on my left hand.
I knew that it would be useless to run further. No human speed could
equal those gigantic leaps. I had no mind to feel one of the loathsome brutes
upon my shoulder as I ran.
Fear more than courage, desperate fear it was, which turned my feet, and
swung the axe to meet them. As I did so, I was aware that the cliff-wall was
open. Not an irregular cave-hollow, but another of those masoned tunnels
towering high overhead. Then the foremost of my pursuers came down
floppingly not two yards away.
I saw a hairless, dead-white, ape-like, frog-mouthed form, a width of
jaws in a flat skull, and small malignant eyes, that had in them a
malevolence different from anything I had known, or to which I can make
comparison. Its hind-limbs ended in large round pads of flesh which
splayed out as it hit the ground, and took the force of the impact, and
appeared, with a jerking motion of the strong forelimbs against the ground,
to give the impetus to the next leap.
All this I saw as I realised that for a second’s space it could not recover
itself and leap again, and I swung the axe and struck. As I did it the thought
crossed me that if the blade caught in the skull I should be weaponless, and
I brought it round to take the side of the neck as though I felled a tree.
If they were strong brutes, they were not agile. The sharp blade cut
straight through the throat some inches deep from side to side. The creature
made no cry or motion, and no blood came from the wound. As I recovered
the weapon, I stepped quickly back into the archway.

It was twenty feet wide or more, and disproportionately high. An upright
bar of a grey metal thinly veined with red divided the entrance for six feet
upwards.
There were a dozen of them by now that were close around the entrance,
or that had leapt short, and were coming along with an awkward shambling
motion.
I stood within, with the poised axe, desperately alert and watchful, and
they squatted motionlessly around. Even the one I had cut still sat with
intent gaze fixed upon me,—no, not on me, suddenly I realised, it was at
that red-grey bar that divided us. And then I knew that it was not fear of me,
but of it, which held them back, and that they dared not enter.
And as my own fear relaxed, I looked around, and saw that I was at the
entrance of a very lofty passage which ran curving downward behind me.
Step by step I went backward, still facing them, till the turn hid them from
view.
There I waited. Perhaps in time they would retire, and leave me a free
exit.
After hours, it seemed, I went forward again, but they were there still,
only there were so many more that all the space was crowded.
I was conscious now that I was tired to the point of exhaustion, and
thirsty beyond patient endurance. To stay there was not hopeful. I gathered
my remaining courage, and commenced to explore my refuge further.

CHAPTER VII
CAPTURE

Very fearfully I went forward. The fact that those fierce beasts did not
dare to follow was itself a warning. One thing was certain. I was in the
presence here of an engineering capacity such as I had not seen previously,
unless it were in the opal pavement. The passage sloped down steeply in a
steady spiral. It was of ample width, and of great height. The floor was not
earth or rock, but a smooth rubber-like substance that gave pleasantly
underfoot. The walls were smooth and hard, coloured a light grey, having a
polished surface. The ceiling was opalescent, giving a faint but sufficient
light, which was reflected from the polished walls.
I went down, expecting always that the steady turning descent would
bring me into some great hall or chamber, or at least into a level passage,
but it did neither. I went on because I was too tired to stop, or at least
because I was too tired to think of climbing upward, and to stay was
hopeless.
There was no least change in the monotony of floor, or wall, or ceiling,
till I felt that they must surely go on for ever, till I swayed dizzily as I
descended on that continued curve, till I lost consciousness of time, and
went on half-asleep, and half-believing myself to be in some nightmare of
illusion. And because I was so dazed, when it came, I almost missed it.
It was a niche, or rather a cavity, in the wall, flatly paved, and having a
great jar standing in it. I think the instinct of my parched frame told me it
was water. The jar or basin was of the height of my shoulder, and about ten
feet across. I bent my head into it and drank, and knew the joy of life as I
had not imagined it to exist before.
I stopped myself sharply with the thought that it might be something
different from wholesome water, in this place where all was strange, but I
had drunk well by then. I looked round and saw a heap of large cakes of a
dark-brown bread-like substance. There were nine of these neatly piled, and

behind them was a white slab in the wall, on which there were three blue
paintings, like Chinese picture-writing, one under the other, each about a
foot deep, and too high on the slab for me to examine them nearly.
I shredded off a great slice from the bread with the axe, and found it
good, and sat down and ate heartily.
After I had eaten, I felt so refreshed that I thought that I would rest for a
few minutes only, and resume my exploration, but I must have fallen asleep,
I don’t know for how long,—I had been awake already beyond the length of
my accustomed day,—but I woke as from a long night’s rest, hungry and
thirsty again, and I ate and drank awhile, and hesitated whether I should
turn back, and hope for a clear passage, or continue down, to find I knew
not what of fear or horror at the end. But the thought of those squatting
forms above was not encouraging, and to go down is easier than to climb,
and so at last I decided to continue downward.
For many hours I continued. Always there was the steady spiral of
descent, the opal light, the high wide dove-grey walls, the steel-grey
flooring, which looked so hard, but was so soft and springy to the tread.
And always—I should have mentioned it before—a steady current of air
came upward. I cannot say “blew” upward, it was too gentle, and too
absolutely regular. It was of an exhilarating freshness, and like a cushion on
which to lean forward, in a descent which might otherwise have been too
steep.
So I went on, never knowing what might open before me at the next step
of the turning way, but with a mind which became dulled with the
monotony of the passage, so that I went on at last in a semi-conscious,
dream-like condition that took no count of time,—there was a sound behind
me. There was something with a heavier tread than mine that pursued me
downward. With an instinct of unreasoned terror I commenced to run. And
so doing, I kept ahead, but I gained little. I looked back, but the curving
passage was bare. Only I heard the tread, which I could not distance.
A sense of the uselessness of flight steadied me, and I recalled my
resolution to meet the unknown boldly, as the safest way.
I stopped, stepped back against the wall, and waited. Then he strode past,
and was gone in a moment. He was a man of giant size, with a skin
yellower than old ivory, and of a curious smoothness. He wore no clothes,

but had a sack or basket hanging upon his back, and round his waist a belt
with bright metal studs or clips, from which, three on each side, six of the
frog-like apes that had pursued me hung by a leg, swinging and writhing,
and snapping with fierce teeth against the flanks of their captor,—teeth
which made less mark on the polished smoothness of the skin than if it had
been the ivory to which its colour compared it.
So much I noticed as he passed. He gave no sign that he saw me.
I was still standing there when I heard him returning.
This time he picked me up, as a gardener might pick up an earwig, and
dropped me over his shoulder into the basket he carried.
I fell among moss, of a coarse growth, like sea-weed, but very soft and
yielding. It was of a sage-green colour, and of a very pleasant odour, which
I cannot describe. A new scent is, like a new colour, beyond imagination.
I burrowed deeply into the softness of the moss, and feared and
wondered. But the present comfort was very great, and I reflected that I had
not been hurt, and that for such strength so to lift me meant that I had been
picked up very gently.
I think I should have slept, had he not lifted the basket from his
shoulders, and lowered it to the ground, closing the top, which drew in with
a short thong, as he did so.
For a few moments I lay still, and then wriggled through the moss till I
could see out of the opening, which was wide enough for a considerable
view, though not sufficient for me to escape.
I saw that we were in a cavity, like that in which I had rested previously.
There were the same furnishings, and on the wall-tablet the giant was
painting a fourth mark, below three which were there already.
He had taken off his belt, and thrown it into a corner, with the six
captives still fastened to it.
He now pulled one of them off, and taking it between thumb and finger,
shredded the four limbs. While he did this, the creature made no sound, but
the wide jaws snapped continually.
Laying down the limbless body, he proceeded to peel and eat the limbs
as one might shred off the skin of a banana. They did not bleed, the flesh
being like a stiff jelly, of a bright-red colour, and veined with a gristly white
substance, giving an appearance like the flesh of a pomegranate.

Hideous as these creatures were, it shocked me to see this callous tearing
of one that still lived, apparently with undiminished vitality; but the eater’s
face, as I now saw it, had no suggestion of savagery. Rather it was
melancholy and preoccupied, and as he ate he talked continually to himself
in a plaintive monotone, though with an organ volume.
I reflected that men who are otherwise humane will swallow a living
oyster, of the skinning of eels, of the fish that are boiled alive in Indian
kettles, and of a hundred cruelties to which custom has inured mankind, and
thought I understood, however incompletely,—which, of course, I did not.
The limbs being gone, he picked up the trunk, and, twisting off the
gnashing head, he threw it down and proceeded to complete his meal. Such
offal as there was,—it was unlike that of any creature familiar to me,—he
collected neatly, with the peeled skin, and the severed head, and opening the
bag in which I lay, threw them in with me. I realised afterwards that it was
for the orderly deposit of such refuse, among the aromatic moss, that he
carried it with him.
Afterwards,—but not then. For as he shook and closed the bag the
severed head rolled against me, and the snapping teeth ripped the leather of
my left sleeve from wrist to elbow. Panic seized me at this, beyond reason,
and I was more terrified of one severed head than I had been before of the
whole animal. How, I thought, if we were both carried in the bag together,
and it were shaken against me? Already I felt its wide mouth closing on my
flesh, and biting deeper while I strove to shake it free, with no body to
strike at. How if there should be five more heads tumbling about me? And
how soon did they really die? Terror edging my wits, I realised that because
their bodies had not the thin fluid of familiar blood, the head could only be
very slowly affected by the separation. Then how long might——? I
struggled up to the mouth of the bag. It was drawn too tightly for escape,
though I could see through it as before.
My captor lay stretched full length. An arm moved restlessly. More than
once he muttered the same words. E-lo-ne, E-lo-ne, so it sounded, with a
hopeless, falling cadence, infinitely sad.
Evidently I was forgotten, if I had ever held his thought beyond a
moment.
After a time he slept.

Then I struggled to kick back the moss, and gain a space to stand upright,
and swing the axe, and desperately I attacked the side of the bag.
It proved unexpectedly easy, and then difficult.
The first stroke cut down a long slit with a rasping sound, and the light
shone through it. The next stroke made a parallel slit, and I thought that a
few more would bring my freedom. But I found that, though I could make
many downward slits, I could not squeeze myself through them, and to
cross-cut was a different matter. I hacked long and desperately before I
contrived a ragged hole, through which I crawled to freedom.
As I escaped, my fear left me. I did not dread the sleeping giant one tenth
as much as the contact of the unbodied head, with its snapping jaws, and
small malignant eyes.
Deliberately, I drank and ate before I turned to take the upward way.
Of that long toil there is little that is worth a word, with so much else for
telling.
Somewhat the rising current of air must have buoyed me. Coming to the
higher resting-place, I slept long, and ate and drank before and after.

CHAPTER VIII
THE BIRDS

When I came again to the surface-world there was no sign of life around,
but a great stillness, and the dawn was breaking in an unimagined
splendour.
On my left hand, not distant, sank the ravine, black and terrible. Beyond
it was the distant forest of the nameless things. But before me, to the reach
of sight, the ground sloped downward, and was covered with a level-
surfaced growth, so close that I could only guess its depth, but showing
only a sea of leaves, not larger than a man’s hand, and of a bright green, as
though varnished; and these leaves the dawn-light altered to reflected gold,
so that my dazzled sight recoiled from a splendour beyond endurance.
It was as though one should look straight at the noonday sun, to find a
glory not of one small-seeming orb, but of stretched leagues, and myriad
facets, of an equal brilliance.
But at length, as the sun rose, the light changed and faded. A thin mist
moved over the surface of the unending field of green, but was not dense
enough to hide it.
The green growth came to the very edge of the opal path, and looking
down I saw a tangle of sinuous macaroni-like stalks that twisted restlessly,
having leaves only at the top, on the close and level surface; and as I
watched, tongues like pink worms pushed upward, and licked and wavered
in the air, and drew backward. As the day advanced, thousands of these pink
tongues were thrust upward and withdrawn continually, giving a wavering
pinkness to the glossy green. It might have had beauty to familiar eyes, but
to mine it had a loathsome strangeness, so that I was reluctant to walk
beside it, and for some time I sat at the cave-mouth and pondered. I was
half tempted to descend once more and face what might be in the depths
below. Certainly, there I had found water and something akin to human

food, and evidence was in that mighty tunnel itself of such work as no brute
creatures could contrive or fashion.
I reflected, was it not reasonable that there should be a less highly
cultured life on a planet’s surface, subject to wind and rain and all
inclemencies, than in the sheltered security of its vast interior? Was it not an
amazing thing that the men of my own time, fatuously imagining
communication with incredibly distant worlds, had been contentedly
ignorant of their own, ten miles below the surface; had made facile and
contradictory theories of its interior, none of which the few known facts
supported; and because they found some increase in the temperature for a
trivial distance downward, had been content to conclude, without attempt at
verification, that this heat increased indefinitely. How diligently they
searched the secrets of the most distant stars, while they had scarcely
scratched the surface of the one on which their lives depended!
So I thought, but instinct conquered. I was a creature born to the wind
and rain, and not to the hidden depths beneath me. Even though these
bordering growths were but the kitchen-gardens of the intelligences below,
—as indeed they might be,—in a moment I saw it, wondering that I had not
seen it sooner. Great stretches of one plant in weedless soil. Even if the life
around me were but as that of insects, useful or noxious, or of beasts of
food for their keepers,—still here at least was the sun, and something of the
stars I knew.
Here too, I had met the only creature with which I had changed thoughts,
however strangely, and to whom I had made a voiceless promise. At the
thought, I rose and went onward.
As I thought of it, the idea that I was in a vegetable garden of
subterranean giants gained in plausibility. The memory of that unrailed
invisible bridge, which to my imagination had seemed as thin and fragile as
a sheet of mica, made me doubt for a moment, till I remembered that it
spanned the whole space without support from beneath or above, and had
not swayed when I crossed it, and that it was of a sufficient width to give
breadth of foothold even to the huge bulk of my recent captor, if he were
able to walk in confidence across it.
With this thought came a wonder of what different world might be upon
the higher level of the cliff-top, which now seemed to me as no more than

the side of a trenched space of tillage, but I knew that my pledged way was
straight onward, even could I have climbed the abrupt wall, which gave no
foothold.
On my left hand, as I went on, the sea of varnished leaves still sloped
downward, stretched away to a now misty horizon, and I began to compare
its sameness unfavourably with that of the familiar world I knew, till I
considered how little I had yet seen, in comparison with the extent of the
probable land-surface which lay beyond me.
If a visitor to my own world, from some distant planet, were set down for
a few days on the Antarctic continent, how different would be his report
from that of one who spent the same time wandering in the Sahara desert, or
amid the steaming heat of the Amazonian forests, or the cotton-mills of
Lancashire. And there were indications already that I had reached a world
where life extended deeply below the surface of the land, and where the sea
had its nations also.
Only the air seemed vacant, and I was soon to see that that conclusion
was premature.
I had come to a place at which the cliff-wall, though still too steep to
climb for the first ten or twenty yards, sloped backward considerably, so
that I had a wider view of the sky above me, and looking up I saw a flock of
birds of the appearance of pigeons, having a similar habit of flight, but
larger, that moved above me, not flying as at ease, but darting wildly from
side to side, as though in avoidance of some deadly danger.
The next moment the cause of their agitation became visible. There were
a number of huge black flying shapes which pursued them. But the
inexplicable thing was that the hunted birds did not fly from their enemies
across the open sky which stretched away to the horizon.
Rather, as though held back by some invisible wall, they swerved and
dodged backwards and forwards, while their pursuers, with huge black
slower-beating wings stretched across the sky, were always heading them
back, but seemed themselves to be of no mind to follow them closely.
For some time I watched the duel, while the black hunters gradually
closed upon their intended victims, till they had no space left to manœuvre,
and were becoming crowded overhead, yet still with no bird going over the
invisible boundary within which the deadly game was played.

Then came the last act of the drama. The desperate quarry turned and
tried to dart backward, through the dark line of the beaters.
Many—unless they had other enemies beyond my line of sight—must
have succeeded. Many were struck by the heavy wings, so that they spun
upwards, stunned or dead, and a long neck shot out to snap them as they
descended.
Screams of syren-like exultation deafened the sky.
Then a cornered bird must have crossed the invisible boundary which
they had avoided so desperately.
Like a stone it fell instantly. For a moment, as the glossy leaves parted,
and the pink tongues dragged it in, I had the sight of a dove-like bird, of a
wedgwood-blue colour, but with a very long and slender beak, curving
slightly downward. In size it resembled the large pigeons, called runts,
which are bred for eating in Italy.
It was the most familiar-seeming thing, except the friendly stars, that I
had yet seen.
But I had no time for such thoughts now.
Its attacker, perhaps misled by the error of the bird it followed, must
have got at least one of its wide-spreading wings above that fatal vacancy.
Down it came also, though more slowly, turning in the air, striving with
desperate flutterings to recover balance in a space between the cliff and the
region of its terror, which was too narrow to give its wings full freedom.
It came down on the path quite near me; the great flapping vans making
a wind against which I stood with difficulty.
Then it closed them, and gained its feet, and looked round, with a
monstrous long-necked head reaching out to either side like a hen’s as it did
so.
It was not black, as it had looked to be in the sunlight, but of a dull-
brown colour, inclining on the head and neck to a dark yellow. It was not
feathered at all, but the skin, which lay in loose folds and ridges, which it
could inflate at will, and which had no doubt served to break its fall, was of
a leathery texture, and the wide-spreading wings were of a similar material.
It had one eye only, but of two facets, or perhaps I should say that its
eyes were contained beneath one eyelid. The eye, or facet, with which it

looked, would sparkle and light up with intelligence, while the other
remained dull and vacant.
When it saw me first, it had, I thought, an instant of terror, turning into a
vast perplexity. For some seconds the head remained twisted in my
direction.
I had learned something in the lesson of confidence, and I looked back as
steadily, but with a thought that if it wished to come my way it should have
all the space available to pass me in comfort.
Whether it understood my thought I could not tell, but at length it turned
its head away, and from that moment showed no consciousness of my
existence. No doubt its own troubles were sufficient.
It had its head lifted now, and was calling loudly, with a whistling
scream, to which a call replied from the cliff-top, and looking up I saw that
the edge was lined by the great birds, now perched upon it, with long necks
craning over.
I began to recognise its dilemma. For some reason it was evident that the
air above the plain had no power to sustain its flight. Why, I could not
imagine, but the fact was clear. On the other side was the cliff-wall, and
between was the width of the opal path, on which there would be less than
space to have spread its wings if it tried to rise and fly along it, even if it
could rise from level ground, of which it might not be capable. The cliff
here receded somewhat, as I have said, and I wondered whether it would
attempt to scramble up it with beak and claws, and such help as its wings
could give. But the recession was not regular. There were perpendicular
crags which might well have baffled it. Anyway, after much consultation
with its friends above, of which one seemed to have the most to say,
whether from leadership or affection, it decided to make its way backward
the way I had come, where it may have considered that the width of the
gorge, or the easier rocks from which those frog-faced brutes assailed me,
would give it access to the space it needed.
So it turned from me with a rapid shuffling walk, while its companions
moved along the cliff-top beside it with continued screams of advice, or
encouragement; and it was with no reluctance that I proceeded in the
opposite direction.

CHAPTER IX
THE TUNNEL OF FEAR

The nervousness of the great bird while (as it were) trespassing on the
opal pavement, confirmed my impression of the prestige enjoyed by the
subterranean dwellers, among the creatures of the outer surface of the world
into which I had entered. Its initial terror of myself, until it had recognised
me as something distinct and inferior, was sufficiently significant.
So far, I had seen only one of these dreaded beings, from whom I had
escaped with an ease which might not be repeated. How often, or at what
times, they were likely to appear on the surface, I could not know, but I had
learnt in that first dream-like interview, that the entrances to their
excavations were of special danger, and I knew that these were not
numerous.
Anyway, I had no choice but to push forward. It was the more urgent
because the claims of thirst and hunger were becoming unpleasantly
assertive—indeed, at this time, had I crossed another of those subterranean
entrances, I think I must have adventured down it at the call of this primal
need, but no such opportunity came, and before the sun had reached its
meridian, I saw the end of this stage of my journey.
I had learnt, in my first instructions, that the path that led down to the
grey beaches was one which must be traversed with the utmost rapidity. I
did not guess its length, nor could I foresee that in all the strange and
dreadful adventures which were before me, there would be few indeed to
exceed its horror.
I knew, from the depth of the gorge I had crossed, that I was high above
the sea-level. I saw that the garden-ground (if such it were) sloped down,
for many gradual miles, to an indistinct horizon. I looked continually for the
break in that sea of pink and glossy green which would enable me to cross
it.

When it came, I did not see at first, my eyes being drawn to the steaming
tank upon my other side. For here the cliff curved backward, giving space
for an artificial lake of heated water, from which a steam rose continually,
such as almost hid the cliffs upon the farther sides.
I found it too hot to drink, but I filled a tin cup which my knapsack held,
and waited for it to cool, till my thirst overcame me.
It had a bitter and unpleasant taste, but I was in too great a need to be
cautious. While I cooled a second cup at greater leisure I looked round and
discovered that I had reached the place I was seeking.
I saw, on my left, the entrance to a long straight tunnel sloping gently
downward. This entrance was reached by a terraced drop in the opal
roadway. The tunnel had a floor of yellow sand, which was divided by a
narrow conduit down which an overflow from the heated tank ran smoothly,
and very swiftly, owing to the slope at which it flowed. The sides of the
tunnel were of a smooth grey material, not concave but flat, converging
upwards, till they almost met at the top, but not quite, there being a slit of
perhaps two inches dividing them, through which a certain amount of light
entered the tunnel.
It had a sinister appearance, and as I sat for a time regarding it, I
considered what I might possibly have to fear if I should endeavour to
penetrate it.
The purpose of the great lake of heated water behind me appeared to be
evident. It must be the source from which the great expanse of ordered
growth was irrigated, and perhaps fed. The stream that came through the
tunnel might be a mere overflow, which was drained off into the sea, or it
might be used for the filling of subterranean pipes lower down the slope. In
either case, it did not greatly concern me,—or so I thought, not foreseeing
how greatly I should need its help in the coming peril.
The yellow sand on either side supplied a sufficient space on which to
walk upright beneath the shelving walls.
It was dimly lit from above, and obscured by the steam which rose from
the water, but I could see that it ran straight on for a long distance. Actually,
it was a length of about twelve miles, as I learnt afterwards.
It appeared that, being entered, it would offer no exit until I reached the
further end, however far it might be.

But there was no appearance of any possible danger, and I knew that it
was the way which I had been directed to take. The only warning I had
received was to traverse it as rapidly as possible, and it certainly did not
appear to be an inviting avenue in which to linger.
Perhaps it was the fact that I must emerge from it on the threshold of a
new experience, the nature of which I could only guess very dimly, that
made me rest so long, even when I waked from the sleep I needed, before I
entered the passage, but I remember that I did it with a great reluctance, and
started at a pace which, though it might not be equal to the light swift
running of my instructress, was sufficient to take me a long way forward in
safety.
After a time, I noticed that my feet were becoming warm, and realised
that the sand must be heated, though not so much so as the soil on which I
had walked previously. I did not think it to be sufficiently so to constitute a
serious danger, or discomfort, but I considered that it might be a different
matter to a foot protected only by its own fur, and, supposing that I had
found the explanation of the warning, and that it did not affect me, and
being somewhat short of breath from the long spurt I had taken, I slackened
to a quieter walk,—and as my right foot came down, a pink streak shot out
of the sand a few inches from it, and smacked against my ankle, with a
sound like a whip lash. I jumped, with a cry of horror, or at least I tried to
jump, and came down on my hands, for the grip held, and I was powerless
to break it. The pink worm did not twine round my foot, but lay up the side,
holding on, leech-like, by power of suction. It was trying to drag the foot
into the sand, but, for the moment, that was beyond its power. Wrenching
desperately, I tried to get loose the axe, for which I had expected no use,
and which was slung on my back, under the knapsack, for convenience as I
ran. When I got it clear I realised that I could not strike hard against my
own ankle, and to an attempt at cutting, my assailant showed the resilient
rubber-like quality which seemed common to several of the forms of life
with which I was becoming familiar. With a despairing effort I strained my
foot a few inches from the ground, and drove a hard blow beneath it, at
which the severed worm fell writhing on the sand.
But now there were two others round my left foot, and their united
strength was too great for me to lift it to enable me to deal with them in the

same way. I gave up the axe, and hacked them free with the clasp knife.
Then I saw that the ground behind me, and for several yards in front,
showed similar worms that had pushed up through the sand, and waved and
felt around for the origin of the vibrations which had disturbed them.
No doubt they had been rising behind me all the time, but I had passed
over the ground so quickly that I had always been in advance of my danger,
and unaware that it threatened me.
I suppose that the roots of the plants without,—if plants they could be
called,—grew under the wall of the tunnel, and lived among the sand,
though the conditions did not allow of the leaves shooting up in such soil,
or in the absence of the light they needed.
I noticed with some relief that the surrounding tongues could not reach
me while I remained motionless, and I concluded that they must be in some
way rooted, or growing from a common source, which kept them in their
places securely.
I watched for perhaps half an hour without motion while the long
tongues gradually quietened, and then thinking that the time would soon
come when I could make a rush to pass them, I made a careless movement,
which stirred them to fresh activity, and the weary waiting had to be
commenced again. At last, when most of them had withdrawn, and the rest
were quiescent, I made a sudden rush, and though more than one shot
upward as I passed, I ran through them successfully.
For some time I ran on at my utmost speed, and exhausted myself
proportionately. For another mile, perhaps, I kept to a panting trot, and I
began to see the pink heads thrust up as I passed them. I looked back and
saw them already high in the air a few yards behind. The sight gave me a
fresh spurt, but it could not last. I could see no end to the tunnel. In fact I
could see a very moderate distance only, owing to the steam in the
atmosphere, and the narrow slit through which the light must enter. I had no
means of estimating its length. It might be five miles. It might be fifty. Soon
my pace slackened. Soon I was hacking with my knife again. Then there
was the weary motionless waiting, till I could again go forward in safety.
The next time my foot was caught I fell forward, and before I could rise,
a dozen of them were round me. One held me by the right wrist, pulling till
the hand was sunk in the sand, despite my frenzied efforts to free it. I was

carrying the clasp-knife open in this hand, but I caught it up with my left
and hacked through the sand, and at last cut the pulling worm that held me.
I turned to others that were straining at my sides and legs, and one by one I
cut them through. Then I noticed that my right wrist was streaming with
blood, and thought at first that the knife had slashed it, till I saw that a
broad line across the back was mottled with punctured wounds, where the
worm had sucked it.
I sat there for a long time, with neither strength nor courage to adventure
farther. I thought of going back, but I felt that the distance would be beyond
my strength to traverse.
The distance ahead might be less,—it seemed my one hope. (It was
actually much longer, if I estimate correctly how far I had then gone.)
Anyway, it would be uphill back, and that would defeat my speed, and I
supposed that the creatures might be more alert after I had disturbed them. I
wondered if I could tap the ground in front of me and cut them down, one
by one, as they pushed upward. But I had had no food for many hours, and I
was already conscious of exhaustion. Water I could have, and I drank again,
after cooling it. I thought of wading in the central stream, but even could I
have kept my feet in that swift smooth current I supposed that the heat
would be unendurable. And then came a thought which animated me with a
fresh hope. Could I leap to the other side? It seemed too broad to be
possible,—and I could get no run for the jump, unless I took it at a slant,
which would make it longer. I had no more than space to stand upright for
about a yard from the water’s edge. I could step two paces back if I
crouched.
The sand had become quiet now. I would go forward while I could, and
try the leap when the need grew urgent. Was it wise to wait till I should be
again too exhausted to try it? On an impulse I leapt. In the nervous fear of
falling into the stream I leapt too far, and my head struck the opposite wall,
though not severely.
There was no relief on this side. The jar with which I struck the ground
roused my enemies with such celerity that I barely escaped them. As I ran I
thought I had gained nothing, till I realised that if I were hard pressed I
could always win a moment’s freedom, or a fresh start, if I jumped again.
It was not much, but it was something.

Of the rest of that passage I do not wish to write in detail. I do not wish
to recall it.
It is enough that the time came when a point of light showed in the
distance, and when I staggered into the daylight. Of the scene that lay
before me, I was not clearly conscious. I was at the utmost point of fatigue
of nerve and body. I lay down and slept till the day,—which now covered a
period of more than four times that to which I was accustomed,—was
sinking toward sunset.

CHAPTER X
THE AMPHIBIANS

I awakened at last to a confused memory only, recalling how I had leapt
short and fallen into the steaming water, which, when it reached that place,
must have cooled. Vaguely I remembered how it had swept me down, and
of a half-stunned instinctive effort to regain my feet, but of how I got out, or
whether I had struggled long in the water, or been able to wade down it, and
so escape the danger of the sand, I could not recall with certainty. I think I
must have been on the sand for the last few yards, or I should have been
swept over the edge by the stream, which fell sheer five hundred feet into
the sea beneath. For I was lying on a level opal path such as I had traversed
previously, with this difference only, that the cultivated ground sloped
upward behind me, and the cliff upon the other side sank steeply to the sea.
The sun was still hot,—more so on this lower level than on the higher
ground I had left,—and it had dried me while I slept, but I was stiff with
wounds and exhaustion, and faint with hunger, and I found that I could only
stand with difficulty. My boots were soaked with blood, and the laces were
torn away, so that I had to use some string from my little store of necessities
with which to fasten them.
If I wished to reach the end of my journey alive I knew that I must do so
quickly; but I looked round in vain for any path to help me.
Beneath me now was the unchanging sea, blue and smooth, with a touch
of white where the ground shallowed it. Three miles out, it may be, showed
the long line of rocks for which I had been told to look.
Beyond, I knew, must be the grey beaches which I was seeking.
But how could I cross the intervening water? It was a difficulty which
might not have occurred to a creature no more at home on land than in the
water, or perhaps less so. But I was not gilled or web-footed.
Sign of life there was none. Not even a bird was winging across the
unclouded blue.

Even to descend the cliff was impossible.
I might explore the path either to right or left, and with no choice
between them, for it ran straight on as far as I could see in either direction,
and the cliff-wall showed no change.
And then my eyes were attracted by a dark spot, a blur,—a slowly
lengthening blur, which came from the black rocks, and was gradually
stretching itself toward me over the water.
My perception was quickened by past experience. Here must be another
invisible bridge, by which something large and formidable was crossing
toward me.
In fact, as I quickly proved, the bridge stretched out straight before the
place where I was seated, and I had only to remain, and whatever was
coming must inevitably encounter me.
Almost too worn for fear, and recognising the futility of evasion, I
resolved to do so.
I had arrived at so low a point that only active help could aid me. If that
which approached were hostile or indifferent the result would be similar. So
I sat and waited.
It was not very long—for the approach came swiftly—before I was able
to guess that it consisted of a long column of creatures similar to her whom
I had first met. They stretched for half a furlong in mid-air, advancing at a
rapid trot, and as they came nearer I recalled their mode of conversing, and
tried to adjust my mind, to get, if possible, into sympathy with them.
After a time I succeeded,—at least in hearing their minds, though they
did not respond. I suppose that this was because they were all thinking as
one, for normally I found it impossible to establish conversation in this way,
except by mutual willingness.
I found that these creatures, who had no use for articulate speech, and to
whom sound was an outrage, possessed at once a finer music and a higher
poetry than our clumsier arts had even reached out to imagine.
For they made the music in their minds, or recited it, if it had been
composed earlier, and its notes, that rose and fell, were the very thoughts
that inspired it. It was now a marching chant, and a war-song of a kind, as I
heard it,—

“We have offered our lives on the palm of one hand,
(Is it Wrong that hath willed? Is it God Who hath planned?)
To be taken and lost at our Leaders’ command.
We who are but God’s thought——”
So far I followed it, and then the unison broke, for they perceived me,
and doubted.
Nothing more of their thoughts could I learn till they had reached the
spot where I sat, and were filing past it. I saw that they were in all respects
similar to the one with whom I had been first acquainted, except that the fur
of each was trimmed or patterned in a distinctive manner, until, when the
first score had passed, there came a group of five who had no such marks
upon them, but were in that, and in all other respects, like the one I first
met. Of these, one detached herself from the group and came toward me,
while the others passed onward.
I had learnt enough of their conversing to make my mind at once blank
and receptive to receive her question. I say “her,” not because these
creatures showed any divergencies of form to indicate a bi-sexual species,
but because the slim bodies gave me an impression of femininity, which
makes “it” an inadequate pronoun. She asked,—“You bring a message? We
have received it already, but I should like to hear it from you.” I replied, “It
is this, ‘I could do nothing. She is in the fifth killing-pen on the left. There is
no watch on the higher side, and it can be climbed with little peril. The
weapons are not guarded, but the pens are. Bring all you can, except those
who pass the fish forward. You must leave my body till the return, for the
fault was mine.’”
She replied, her mind an open curiosity concerning me as she did so,
“You have remembered well. And she tells me that you saved her body, for
which we are grateful.”
I answered, “I thought I left her dead in the tunnel. Has she come here
before me?”
“We hope her body may still be there. It is dead now, but it should not be
damaged beyond remedy.”
My mind wondered vaguely, and her own answered. “You are a strange
animal, and as ignorant as you are dirty. There are two coming which will

bring you food, and which you must first eat, and then continue with us, for
we could not leave you in safety, and your body, apart from its deficiencies
and that its clumsy coverings are damaged, appears to be useless until food
has restored it.”
Her thought was without hostility; it was kind in tone, however offensive
in substance. She was clearly startled on realising the mental protest with
which I received it. She went on, “You have been useful, and what we can
do for you we will. But if this wild inevitable folly does not destroy us, I
suppose that we must give you up to the Dwellers, for you seem to me as
one that comes from the other lands, whom we are unable to harbour.”
I have tried to translate the thoughts she gave me into English words, but
it is not easy, and the difficulty is particularly great where people or places
are mentioned. For in the language of thought it is evident that proper
names can have no place. The clumsy device of names is a necessity of
articulate speech, which Adam first discovered when he attempted
language. Consequently, when I write of the “Dwellers” I use the best word
I can apply to the idea she gave me, which was that of a dominant race, by
whom the earth—or that part of it—was held as men hold civilised lands to-
day, and without whose consent no other creature can remain in security.
There was a subtle implication of a shadow beyond, against which they
were leagued in common, but it was too formless for me to understand it....
Had dogs continued, I wondered, through five hundred millenniums?
The two creatures which trotted at the rear of the column, and which now
paused at her signal, were shaggy, web-footed, with the flapped gills with
which I was already familiar, obviously amphibious, with seals’ eyes, and
of the bulk of a walrus. Why should I think of dogs? But the identity of a
dog is not the result of a physical pattern, or how should we call a Great
Dane by the same name as a Skye Terrier?
Not for the first time or the last, I wondered less at the differences of this
strange world than at its similarities to the one behind me.
Round the neck of each of these creatures hung a bag containing food,
intended (as I learnt later) for their own eating. Of this she directed me to
take some for my own use from the nearer one, and when I hesitated, with
mingled fear and repulsion, the sea-dog thrust out an unexpected length of
narrow tongue, that curled down, snake-like, into the bag, and drew out an

object the size of a swan’s egg, but covered with a tough flexible skin of
mottled grey, and held it toward me.
At this my guide threw me a thought of sharp impatience, and enjoined
me to eat it quickly.
I took it then, and broke the skin, and found it contained a semi-liquid
substance, of a slate-grey colour, which I tasted doubtfully, and then ate
with eagerness, for it was sweet and of a delightful taste, and had a quality
which appeased both thirst and hunger.

CHAPTER XI
THE PROBLEM

I ate quickly, for the impatience of my companion’s mind was affecting
me like a physical pressure, and we then set off rapidly to overtake the
troop, which had now disappeared in the tunnel, my energy being
stimulated to the swift exertion, either by the force of my companion’s will,
or by the strange food which I had taken.
As we ran, our minds met and contended, making little progress at first,
for her curiosity was keen, and was of a kind which, being without anxiety,
and regarding me only as a strange animal which had lost its way, was not
easily turned, while I was acutely conscious that I had here a friendly
intelligence which, if I could use the time to advantage, might give me
information of vital importance, to enable me to move with safety through
the unfamiliar ways to which I had committed myself.
Consequently we each strove for some moments to obtain information
rather than provide it, but in the end she gave way, thinking she would gain
more by humouring me, and that my questions could hardly fail to disclose
much of my own identity.
I then asked her how it was that the troop, the rear of which we had now
gained, was able to traverse the tunnel in safety. I recognised that the pace
at which they moved must give some advantage, but I should have
supposed that, though the first might pass, the roused worms would strike at
those that followed. She replied that the combined will-power of the troop
held them down very easily, on which I mentioned my own experience, and
admitted that I had made no effort to use my will-power against them. She
replied that this was natural in such an animal as I, and that I had possibly
allowed anger, or even fear, to enter my mind, so descending to their own
level, and rendering it easier for them to attack me.
I could not deny this, but asked why she regarded me so contemptuously.
She replied that, as I was a strange creature to her, she could only judge me

by the degree of intelligence which I exhibited, but that a species of any
eminence could hardly be content to exist in bodies so ugly, so awkward,
and so badly made. She added that many of the lowest creatures of the
ocean-floor possessed bodies which were complete and sufficient without
extraneous coverings.
I replied that the human body was not necessarily insufficient, but that
clothing might be worn from a sense of shame, or as an ornament only.
She said that she understood the sense of shame, which she should feel
very strongly herself if she were burdened with such a body, but if I
regarded my clothes as ornamental, it was a point on which we must differ;
and, in that case, the wearing of clothes confessed me to be an inferior, even
among my own kind, as a Leader naturally would not enter into such a
competition.
I was puzzled by this reply, and she instanced the fact that she, and other
Leaders of her kind, did not pattern their fur, which would bring them into
unseemly competition with those below them—a competition which would
lead to envy if they succeeded, or ridicule if they failed to outdo their rivals.
I then asked a number of questions intended to guide me as to the
conditions of the world I had entered, and it will be most convenient to give
the facts,—as far as I was then able to understand them,—in the form of a
direct statement rather than in that of the conversation which gained them.
I learnt that the country in which I found myself was an island continent,
of about the size of Australia, but in the northern hemisphere, as the stars
had told me. It was controlled by the Dwellers, who had lived below its
surface for a long period of time, of the duration of which I could form no
idea, nor could I obtain any information as to the depth or extent of their
subterranean excavations, for the sufficient reason that no Amphibian had
ever penetrated them. The island continent was surrounded on every side by
a great ocean, beyond which was a world containing such inhabitants that
the Dwellers had first gone underground to escape them, and then, at a later
period, planted around the whole extent of the coast a girdle of strange
growths, above which the air had no sustaining power, and which had
protected it so effectively that for an enormous period of time they had been
left in undisputed isolation.

In some remote antiquity they had entered into a treaty with the
Amphibians by which it was agreed that they should be left in possession of
the numerous rocky islets which surrounded a large part of the coast, on
three conditions;—they were to keep certain subterranean reservoirs filled
with fresh fish continually; they were to hold no intercourse with the farther
world; and they were to make no attempt to penetrate inland, either above
or below the surface.
Until recently, these conditions had been observed with exactness. They
had, beneath the ocean, an undisputed dominion of enormous area; they did
not even cross to the farther sides of the fish-tanks they filled, from which
the Dwellers netted the shoals of fish which they had herded into them; they
made no attempt to penetrate the protective belt which surrounded the
surface area; and they entirely avoided the other continents of which the
land surface of the earth consisted.
For the whole period since this treaty was made—I could only marvel at
their longevity—they had been ruled by a Council of Seven, whose
headquarters were beneath the black rocks which I had observed to
seaward.
The Council decided all matters affecting the welfare of the community
by thinking upon them until they arrived at unanimity, and these decisions
were always accepted without dissent.
But there was one of the seven who had not been present when the treaty
was made. She had been long absent, and was supposed to have been dead,
but she had subsequently returned from the exploration of the caves of a
range of submarine mountains at the farther end of the earth, in which she
had met with such adventures as had detained her for a long period. Not
having been a party to the treaty, she had not felt herself bound in honour,
as had the other six, to observe it. Nor, being of the seven, did she feel
controlled by their authority, as did the rest of the community. She was of a
disposition which loved the adventures of strange ways, and, from the first,
had wished to explore the interior of the forbidden continent. For a very
long period she had been held back by the wishes of her companions, and
by the fear that she might be the cause of disaster to them, but at last a time
had come when the impulse had been irresistible, and there had been none
near to restrain her. She had spent the night on the forbidden land, and had

returned at dawn with a strange tale of a silent country, where all things
slept, and where trees and grasses grew, such as they had never seen, or
remembered only with the vagueness of a distant dream.
After this escapade they watched in doubt lest the Dwellers had been
aware of it, but the days passed in safety, and at length she ventured again
—and again—always returning before the dawn, until the tales she brought
enabled them to visualise a land inhabited by many species of creatures,
such as the Dwellers permitted to run wild, or conserved for their utilities to
themselves, and of a fertility which was alluringly different from the ocean
meadows in which they were accustomed to wander, but in which all
creatures slept in the night-time, and even the Dwellers did not appear upon
the surface of the land they owned.
After a time it appeared certain that these expeditions might be taken
with impunity, providing that the night were chosen, and a return made
before sunrise. But the time came when the desire to see the moving life of
the daytime overcame her. She remained in hiding, she saw much, and the
next time she stayed away for three days. Acting with great caution, and
with the advantage of her past experience, she returned in safety and
unsuspected; but in the meantime a companion, alarmed at her lengthened
absence, had started out to find her. On learning this, she at once set out
again, though the day was then dawning, and the open paths had to be taken
at a new peril; she found her would-be rescuer herself captured, and
apparently in the greatest danger, and on her return to obtain the help which
was essential, had encountered me, with the result of which I knew already.
Conscious that her body was damaged beyond immediate remedy, and
aware that her separate mind could not communicate with her friends unless
their own should be receptive, she had entrusted me with the message
which I had tardily delivered. But in the meantime, she had found it easy to
establish intercourse with minds which were anxiously awaiting news of
herself and her companion, and it was on the information that she had
supplied that the expedition was started.
It was a deliberate breach of the treaty on which their security was
founded, but with two of their number in jeopardy, and the body of one
lying where the Dwellers could not fail to find it sooner or later, they had
felt that they had no alternative but to attempt the enterprise.

Among the various creatures which lived upon the surface of the
continent, it appeared that there were certain ferocious animals of the
lowest kind, gregarious in their habits, collected in mountain strongholds,
and having bodies which were like those of fish in this respect, that they
decayed after a short space of years, sometimes even rotting while the
unfortunate animals remained within them, and being continually replaced
by young of the same species which grew up around them. They did not
appear to have any life apart from these bodies, though my informant could
not tell with certainty whether they actually ceased to exist when their
bodies perished, or were incarnated in their descendants.
These creatures had carnivorous feasts at regular intervals, in
anticipation of which they hunted the wild things of the land, and set traps
for them, into one of which the unfortunate Amphibian had fallen. As one of
these feast days was shortly due, she was now penned up, not merely in
anticipation of death, but that her body might be destroyed beyond remedy,
in which case I understood that the path of reincarnation might be both long
and difficult.
The problems were, therefore, first, to remove the body which lay in the
tunnel entrance to a place of safety, where it could be repaired, and its
owner could resume it; and second, to rescue her companion either by force
or subtlety, bringing their faculty of thinking in unison, and of combined
will-power, to operate against opponents who were not expecting attack,
and who relied upon their savage strength and weapons to maintain their
own security, and to hold the prey that they had captured; and third, to do
these things, if either were possible, without the knowledge of the Dwellers,
whose means of information were only vaguely guessed, but who were
known to come out on the surface in the daytime.

CHAPTER XII
THE MARCH

We were now clear of the covered way, under a sky of brilliant starshine,
holding a course through the darkness that never wavered or slackened,
even when the gorge was crossed by the invisible bridge.
Here it occurred to me to ask how, if the country relied upon its girdle of
strange growths for its immunity from the outside world, it could afford to
risk invasion up so wide an unprotected channel as the gorge supplied, but I
could learn nothing beyond the suggestion that its enemies would probably
be too stupid to discover the gap, (if it really were unprotected), which
seemed a strange supposition when applied to a power so dreaded, and the
information that this gorge was remembered as the scene of a great battle
before the protective girdle had been planted, in which the Dwellers had
been destroyed in hundreds, but in which one of their enemies had also
perished, and the remains of its body had blocked the channel for many
years afterwards.
I had thought of the Dwellers hitherto as dominating by their strength
and size, as well as by their evident physical knowledge and engineering
skill, in both of which my present companions appeared to take little
interest, but I now had a vision as of a world in which a race of ants of
superior intelligence might revolt successfully against mankind, and of a
warfare in which they had been trodden down, as a man might stamp on an
ant’s nest. But the truth, as I learnt later, was somewhat different.
My companion now pressed for some account of myself, and I answered
many questions, finding her more ready to believe that I was the product of
an earlier civilisation than I should have anticipated, but that this
information made it appear the more necessary that the Dwellers should be
informed of my existence, and the less probable that they would regard it
with complacency.

She explained that it was known to the Dwellers that the earth had been
the scene of countless civilisations, through aeons of forgotten times, all of
which had successively destroyed themselves by the misuse of their own
discoveries, and that their whole energy was directed to overcoming this
recurrent danger, which had appeared to operate with the certainty of a
fundamental law. To them I might well appear as the seed of death which
nature had sent forward to frustrate a purpose which might otherwise have
defeated her own intention. On the other hand, she suggested kindly, my
obvious ignorance and insignificance might be my protection, as I had so
evidently been born upon the earth in one of its more barbarous epochs. As
to their own course regarding myself, they would do what they could, but
——and her mind shut suddenly, though not before I had caught a glimpse
of her difficulty.
For if they were discovered in the present enterprise, even if it did not in
itself cause their destruction, they might find themselves at open war with
the Dwellers, in which case there would be no purpose in surrendering me,
while if the expedition returned in success and secrecy, they might wish to
give me up rather than risk another cause of difference,—but how then
could they secure that I should withhold my knowledge of the events which
were now proceeding?
It appeared to me to be a position in which they might well decide to
destroy what was, to them, nothing more than a strange and inferior animal;
nor did the alternative appear more attractive in its probabilities, for if they
were at war with the Dwellers, would they not retreat to the ocean-floor
which was their familiar resort, and where, I supposed, their enemies would
be unable to pursue them, and how could I adapt myself to such an
existence?
I decided that I could only act as circumstances developed, and that, in
the meantime, it was both duty and policy to give such service as I could to
those who had shown me kindness.
Meanwhile, the rapid march continued. There was a moon now, the first I
had seen, a thin bowl of silver in the eastern sky, more brilliant than that to
which I had been used—a difference which may have arisen only from the
fact that I was in a more equatorial region than that which I had left behind
me.

By its light the path became visible, a faint opalescence beneath us, and,
later, the black entrance to the tunnel of my first adventure.
Here we halted for the recovery of the body that I had left within it. But
after some space of silence, a sense of grief and oppression invaded me,
which I knew was felt by all those around me, as the news spread from
mind to mind. The body was not there.
Whatever had happened to it—and that it had fallen into the hands of the
Dwellers was almost certain—I understood that the inquiry must be delayed
till the further object of the expedition had been accomplished, or at least
attempted.
The sea-dogs, which had been brought for the purpose of conveying back
the body, were now ordered to return, and the forward march continued. My
guide had rejoined the other Leaders of the expedition, assigning me to the
care of the rearmost of the troop, beside whom I went forward, keeping up
the pace with difficulty, but afraid to fall behind, and aware from the
thought which combined us that there was still much ground to be covered
before the darkness lifted. When I had continued for about half-an-hour,
during which some miles must have been covered at the rapid trot which
was maintained without alteration upon the level surface, a knowledge of
my exhaustion must have entered the mind of my neighbour, for I found a
small webbed hand passed into mine, and with it a thrill of nervous energy
that enabled me to continue, till we shortly turned to the left, and took a
rough uphill path, on which we slackened to a walk, and were soon
climbing over rough boulders, and up sharp ascents where hand and knee
were needed.
For a mile, perhaps two, we continued up this arduous way, at times with
a glimpse, right-hand, of a gorge of black forbidding precipices, silvered in
the moonlight, but most often with sight of little beyond the immediate
rocks among which we clambered.
Then we became aware that a high wall of overhanging cliff confronted
us, into which those who led us had disappeared already, and, guided by my
companion’s hand, I entered a narrow gulley, whether natural or artificial I
cannot say, but which extended for many miles through the mountains. It
was not more than five feet wide from wall to wall. A narrow line of sky

showed its stars, where the gulley opened on the mountain slope some
hundreds of feet above us.
We emerged at last at a great height, on an open slope, on which trees
grew, but not thickly. They were tall and somewhat slender, silver-grey in
the moonlight, as a poplar shows its leaves when the wind lifts them. Here
we continued a long time, going forward, as I thought, not directly, but
keeping always where the trees were thickest. Once, far below, we had a
view of the gorge from which we climbed, narrow here, but opening out to
seaward many miles away, a vision of mysterious and incredible beauty
which the next step ended.
I judged now, by the moon’s height, that we must have travelled rapidly
for about twenty-four hours of my accustomed reckoning, and that the night
was half over. When the sea-dogs left, I had been given a store of the food
they carried, and to this I had resorted more than once already. My
companions appeared to be equally independent of fatigue or food, but my
condition was different. I had been without sleep for a long period, and I
was aware that it was only the vitality that I received from my companion’s
hand, and the fear of the contempt of my new associates, that dragged me
onward. These might not have availed me much longer, but now we had
approached a dense wood of a different kind. I was instructed to lie flat and
crawl forward under boughs too thick and low for any other method of
progression. At once we were in darkness, with the great boughs close
above us, and beneath us a bed of soft resilient moss, which must have been
nearly a foot in depth, over which we crawled and wriggled quite easily, but
which yielded to our weight unless we moved forward. It was warmer here,
—the night air on the higher ground had been cold since we left the gulley,
—and there was a strange and pleasant fragrance from the boughs above us,
so that when an order was passed to rest, I sank into the soft moss very
willingly, and had I known that it would close over and suffocate me while I
slept, I think that I should scarcely have had the strength of mind to reject
its embraces.

CHAPTER XIII
THE KILLERS

I could not say if the others slept, for I knew nothing more till I waked
bewildered in a dim golden light, with my comrade of the night touching
my hand to rouse me. The rest of the troop had begun to move forward
already.
I was sunk deeply in the soft moss, which was of a very close texture,
and of so dark a green as to look black in the shadow. The branches
overhead spread low and wide, as do those of a beech. The leaves also were
beech-like, but of a golden yellow. Not the yellow of Autumn, but one of an
abundant vitality. I noticed the fragrance which had soothed my exhaustion
when we entered. It gave me now a sense of contentment and physical well-
being such as I had never experienced.
It must have been full daylight without, for the light did not increase
farther within the wood, but here it was a golden twilight only. I was able to
look clearly for the first time at my companion. The human mind is so
ductile that already the slim furred form gave an impression of familiarity.
Not being one of the Seven, she had the distinctive patterning by which
each was individualised. In her case, a zebra-like striping on the back,
produced by trimming the fur shorter, as it was of a darker shade beneath,
the silver-grey marking of the back being superficial only.
We conversed freely as we crawled forward for some hours over the
springy moss. I met here with a mind of a ready friendliness, and a very
lively curiosity. I suppose, by our reckoning, she had lived for an enormous
period, but the mind that met me gave an impression of an invincibly child-
like quality,—but it had other characteristics which I was to learn more
slowly. The impression which I gave to her was, no doubt, somewhat
different.
Her keen delight in the new world,—as new to her as to me,—through
which we were passing, contended with her curiosity to learn the still

stranger world of which I could tell her, and gave little time for me to learn
of her, or of the life to which she was native. But she gave me glimpses of
an existence which found its pleasure in wandering through a marine world
which was as much more extensive than the dry ground as it is to-day, and
which I judged to have changed but little. One episode she gave me vividly
because of the indelible impression which it had made upon her. It appeared
that her kind can wander freely among the huge savage creatures of the
ocean-depths, exploring its heights and valleys, and penetrating its caves
with impunity, because they can control every form of life it contains by a
will-power which works without effort. She had attempted, in a spirit of
mischief, to allow various savage creatures to attack her, intending to forbid
them at the latest second, but she found invariably that though their minds
were confused by a feeling of her complacence, the respect of her kind was
too deep an instinct for them to disobey, until she tried the trick upon a
species of shark of an exceptional ferocity. Vividly I saw it, under depths of
green water, from which all weaker forms of life had withdrawn in terror.
The savage rushes of the hungry fish which she had foiled at the last
moment with a thought of derision, and the snap of his disappointed jaws.
And then,—the instant’s diversion of mind in its too-confident certainty,
and the half-second too late,—the passionate repulse that sent the great fish
cowed and grovelling to the sea-floor a hundred feet below,—and the
consciousness that her right arm was hanging torn and useless. And then the
long swim homeward for two thousand miles to the only place where help
could be given, and how she had told her tale to the Seven, and they had
decreed that the arm should never entirely heal, so that it should be a
warning to her and all her race for ever. And in evidence she showed the
scars, where no fur grew, and I understood that the scar of a healed wound
was something beyond the previous experience of her kind.
Of the swimming of the great tunnel she told me also, which extends for
several thousand miles from one sea to another, through an intervening
continent, and of strange forms that lurk in its labyrinth of caves, such as
the open oceans have never seen,—labyrinths in which you may wander for
many months, seeking in vain for an exit.
Of such things I learnt much, but I noticed that her mind was little fixed
upon the object of the expedition. That she understood that it was very

dangerous, and might terminate her bodily life was clear enough, and that
the thought of such potential sacrifice for her Leader’s rescue filled her with
a pleasurable exhilaration that was stronger than fear, this I understood; but
of the thought of any possible aggressive violence to achieve her end, her
mind seemed as incapable as her body seemed ill-adapted for such a
purpose. Frequently her thoughts were of the movements in the moss below,
which must have teemed with life, though it did not annoy us in any way; or
of the occasional sound of wings in the boughs above us; or of the straight
and narrow paths that cut through the moss continually, down which we
once saw a small form disappearing, looking like a beetle running upright
on its hind legs, and of the size of a field-mouse.
But though her mind was not anxious as to the result of the expedition, I
soon had evidence that those of her Leaders were differently occupied.
A thought came down the line to halt, and for me alone to go forward.
This I did, till I came to an open space in the forest. Here I found the five
Leaders seated where the moss-carpet extended somewhat beyond the trees,
and for a moment they waited while my mind was held by the beauty of the
sight which met me.
The trees which surrounded the glade were of one kind only: beech-like
in growth, though the branches spread and drooped with greater regularity.
The gold which shows faintly on an oak in springtime was here the
dominant colour, tinged with green if the wind lifted the leaves, which were
of a fine transparency, or deepening to the background of a Tuscan fresco,
as it sank again into quietude. The moss, which extended on all sides
outward from the trees for a short distance, showed dark in a strong
sunlight. Beyond this, the glade was covered with a short growth of coral-
pink, on which blue pigeons, such as I had seen before, were feeding, and
showing no concern at our presence.
Grace of line and harmony of colour—everywhere I found them, as in
the world I had left. Surely beauty is more fundamental than righteousness!
Or may the two be one only?
If there were any difference in the new world, it was only that nature
produced her effects with greater economy of material, massing her colours,
and content to display a few varieties of plant or tree only, where I had been
used to the combinations of hundreds. But I recognised that I had seen too

little to justify such generalisations. It would be as though a man were to
spend a few days on the Norfolk Broads, or in the Highlands of Scotland,
and imagine the whole surface of the earth to be similar to the scenes he
witnessed.
But the Five were waiting. My guide of the previous night addressed her
mind to mine, and the others arranged themselves to perceive us. I was first
asked if I were willing to give my aid to the object of the expedition, if it
should be of any utility. It did not appear to occur to them to offer any
reward or inducement, and in reply I consented unconditionally.
I was then asked to explain the purpose of the axe I carried, with which I
had defeated the vegetable octopus of my first adventure. This led me to
inquire why its victim had not been able to save herself by the power of will
on which they relied for their protection, to which I received the answer that
it would have been of little avail, as the whole forest was against her, and
was conscious that it was carrying out the duty for which it had been
planted, whereas she was breaking the treaty with its originators. I recalled
the way in which it had quailed before me, but it was pointed out that I was
not under the obligations of the Amphibians. None the less, I felt that the
incident gave me some increased prestige in the minds that considered it.
The fact was that my hatred of the creature as an octopus was blended with
the contempt which I felt for it as a cabbage—the first idea persisting—and
that this attitude toward something which they regarded as formidable, both
in itself and in its anger, impressed them inevitably.
But I soon modified this advantage. In explaining the uses of the axe, I
offered to demonstrate it by felling one of the trees around us. The idea that
I should destroy life for an illustration broke upon their minds with
incredulity, that gave way to contempt. For a moment they regarded me as
morally unfit to be associated with their enterprise, but recalling that they
were contending against creatures even baser than myself (if that were
possible) they decided to interrogate me further.
It was first explained to me that the spirit of her whom I had rescued so
unsuccessfully was now guiding the expedition, and I was asked to put my
mind at her disposal, so that I might see the creatures against which we
were operating. On doing this, I received a vision of a forest path, on which
three of them were walking in single file. They were about three feet in

height, and in appearance they seemed to me such caricatures of humanity
as might be the outcome of a nightmare dream. In colour they were a bright
worm-pink, and of a surface which was repulsive beyond the resource of
any word we have to describe it. Their heads were bald, but of a darker
colour than their bodies and limbs. Their eyes moved continuously with an
alert and restless malignity. Their lips—or rather the orifice of their mouths
—elongated into a narrow tube about twelve inches long, through which
they could take nourishment by suction only. Through these tubes they
could make whistling sounds, by which they communicated with one
another. They could stand easily on their legs if sight or reach required it,
but squatting was their more natural posture. Each of them carried some
kind of rope or cord in considerable quantity.
There was a fourth that followed, of the same form and colour, but of
more than twice the size, and of a ferocity more brutal, though not more
malevolent, than that of those who preceded him. He carried a powerful
bow of dark wood, bent for use, and with a shaft ready for the cord.
It was conveyed to me that these were not adult and young of the
species, but that the archer was of an exceptional growth, of which they had
two or three only in each generation.
In the vision, I could hear plainly that others of their kind were whistling
to them through the trees, to whom they replied with notes of rising
excitement. Soon I perceived that one of the frog-mouthed apes that I had
already encountered was being driven towards the party that I watched. I
understood that it had been separated from its companions, and headed off
from the safety of its native rocks. It now came bounding in a heavy
bewildered terror toward the waiting archer.
Remembering how my own axe had cut through the throat of one of
these creatures without apparently disturbing its equanimity, I was curious
to see how a shaft could discommode it. I soon learnt. The hunted creature
saw its new foes, and turned sideways. As it did so, it crossed the bole of a
giant tree, and at the instant the archer wrenched the bow back to his ear,
and the shaft flew. It drove through its victim’s neck, and deep into the
trunk behind it. Before the shaft had ceased to quiver, the three that bore the
ropes leapt forward and were twining them round the now struggling

victim, binding it first to the trunk, and then, heedless of the gnashing teeth
above the fastened neck, till every limb was useless.
By now the beasts that had driven it were arriving, and with an inferno of
exultant whistlings the worm-pink crowd had loosed it from the tree, and
drawn the shaft out of its neck, that they might drag it with them, now roped
beyond movement. I watched it drawn for some miles in this way, clear of
the woods, and up by rocky paths, until a high plateau was reached, a mile-
wide shelf of rock, beyond which the mountain rose abruptly once again.
On this shelf was their stronghold. A low, continuous, smooth-sided back-
sloping stone-seeming wall, very broad at the base, and rising to a sharp
ridge, swept crescent-shaped from the cliff, and enclosed the larger half of
the plateau.
To this wall there was one barricaded entrance only, through which the
hunters dragged their victim. Many more of their kind, of all sizes, were
within the enclosure, but the sight of the captured prey was evidently too
commonplace to attract their attention, and I saw that they squatted in the
sun, or moved on their own errands, in complete indifference, while it was
dragged toward a large cistern of boiling water, which was sunk in the
ground, and into the centre of which a stone pier jutted. By carrying their
ropes round the sides of the cistern they were able to draw their victim
along this pier, so that it fell off at the extremity into the boiling vat. It was
bound too tightly to struggle, and sank at once to the bottom, where it
continued to move spasmodically as long as I observed it. I understood that
it would boil there for many hours till the contents of the tough skin should
be reduced to a semi-liquid form, such as its captors could draw in through
their sucking mouths, and the whole sight filled me with a loathing for these
bestial forms, and for the cruelties they practised. I did not reflect that the
boiling of living fish, which is common in Asia, or of lobsters in our own
country, is a far greater cruelty, being exercised on creatures of higher
sensibility, and with far less excuse, as they could be killed without
difficulty, which was by no means certain in the instance which I was
observing.
I saw also that the centre of the crescent did not contain any buildings
except such as were of a public character. Of these one confined the
selected victims of the approaching feast, and this was built over one end of

the boiling tank, and guarded by one of the giant archers, with a number of
assistants round him. There was one other giant lying with a leg discoloured
and useless against the cliff-wall, in an evidently dying condition,—shortly,
no doubt, to share the fate of a dead body of one of their number which I
saw flung over the farther side of the plateau, where it fell abruptly to a
great depth.
I saw that the wall was hollow, with many doorways on the inner side,
and that it formed the dwellings of the settlement. There were many young,
moving in a more lively manner than the adults, and including two of the
archer kind, which, though evidently immature, were already larger than the
rest of the tribe.

CHAPTER XIV
THE HALT

I was recalled from this contemplation by the pressure of the minds
around me, and my first thought was to ask why, if the Dwellers were
supreme, they allowed the existence of such foulness. I was answered that it
was all as strange to them as to myself, but I learnt later that the blood of
creatures of a malevolent kind had a chemical quality which was required
for certain purposes in connection with the defence of the continent, and
that these creatures were deliberately bred to supply it.
I was then asked whether I were familiar with the weapon carried by the
archers, and could use it if necessary. I replied that the bow had long been
regarded as a deadly weapon in the world from which I came, but that in
my own time and country it had fallen into disuse. I was not entirely
unfamiliar with it, having consorted with some who had used it in
competitions of skill, in which I had done indifferently well, but the bows I
had used had been little better than toys when compared with that which I
had now seen, and the memory of the depth that the shaft had been driven
into the hard wood made me doubt whether I should have the strength to
bend it.
This information was received with quiet satisfaction. I began to have an
increased respect for these Amphibians, as I recognised the serenity with
which they faced a problem which might well seem insoluble, under
conditions which were in some respects more alien, and must have been far
more repugnant, to themselves than to me.
I noticed the unhurried care with which they arranged the facts as they
perceived them, and that while they had outlined an intention of effecting
the rescue by the power of their own wills, without arousing the opposition
of the will-power of their opponents, they were careful to avoid any detailed
plan, until all the available information had been obtained to guide them. I
began to understand how it was that they could rely upon arriving at

unanimous decisions for all their actions, and the unquestioning faith with
which these decisions were received by their followers. I felt that if the
Dwellers were to appear at that moment with the threat of some
overwhelming penalty, it would not radically disturb the equanimity of the
minds that met them.
I was next asked whether I thought I could descend the cliff that rose at
the back of the settlement in the moonlight, as the vision had shown it, and
replied with certainty that I could not do so, either by night or day. I am
without any special aptitude for climbing, and I think there are few men
who would have attempted that descent under any conceivable
circumstances.
I was then directed to await my previous companion, and the crawling
march continued. As they passed me, two and two, I was able to estimate
their numbers, for the Leaders had been at the head, and my own place was
at the rear of the procession. I found that there were over three hundred
whose lives had been committed to this enterprise.
On rejoining my companion I asked her whether this were the whole of
her tribe or nation, to which she replied that there were many more, but that
they could not have been summoned without delay, being scattered in many
oceans, and a proportion of those available had to remain, that the Dwellers
might not notice the absence of their accustomed service.
Only, I learnt, at an annual date which the stars showed them, did they all
congregate, to sleep for three days’ space in the feeding-tanks, and gain
strength for the year to be.
I gathered that my own method of continual eating, and the swallowing
of waste matter, which my body promptly rejected, placed me definitely
with the lower animals in her thought, though not unkindly—or rather with
the sea-dogs and the fishes, for of a lower terrestial creation she had little
previous knowledge, and it was, indeed, stranger to her world than to that
from which I had wandered. I wondered how she regarded the Dwellers, of
whom the one I had seen was certainly more of my own kind, but I
recognised that she had other reasons to respect, if not to love them.
I next asked what might be the natural longevity of her kind, and if there
were no old, infirm, or children that had been left behind, but to this she
replied that they were not fishes, and their bodies did not alter or decay as

the years passed. Obviously, if their bodies were damaged beyond remedy,
they withdrew from them.
How, I queried, if they were not subject to birth or change, could one so
disembodied hope for any new incarnation, and by what channel could it be
gained?
But I could only learn that she was unperturbed by the suggested
difficulty. Beyond this, her explanation faltered, or my mind was deficient
to comprehend it. But the longer that I conversed with my companion,
while the slow hours passed, and the crawling march continued, the more I
realised that life persisted to the same ends, by the same methods, through
all its physical changes, and even these—how slight they might appear to a
detached observer!
In the softened golden light of this unending forest, could I have said
certainly that I was not in some untravelled part of the world I knew?
Nothing was too strange for that, except perhaps the Amphibian whose
hand I held, and whose nervous strength it was which enabled me to go
forward. And even she—was her form as grotesque, even to my human
mind, as that of many beasts or reptiles which I could have seen in my own
garden, or behind the bars of menageries? And was she not, of all the things
around me, becoming the most familiar through the mental intimacy which
was growing up between us?
In this great forest there was an atmosphere of enduring peace; it was a
lake of stillness, rippled by softly-rustling unseen wings above us, or, more
faintly, by the stir of slighter life in the moss below. Frequently we crossed
the narrow roads I have mentioned, and as I looked at them more closely I
was confirmed in the opinion that they were the work of the beetle-bipeds,
one of which I had seen for a moment, for the moss on either side was
trimmed with formal regularity, for doing which the mandibles of such a
creature would be well adapted. The moss would be far too close in its
growth for them to penetrate it in any other way, and yet not close enough
for them to walk over it without sinking, so that it would otherwise form an
insurmountable barrier. I was confirmed in this opinion when we passed an
open glade which was white with low regular mounds of mushroom shape,
from one of which I had a glimpse of two of these creatures issuing, and
passing rapidly out of sight behind it....

I began to think of the Amphibians as being independent of sleep, as they
were of food, but as the morning advanced an order came that we were to
move sideways to the left (the two in front of us moving to the opposite
side) until we were at the edge of the forest, which we were then
approaching, and there to rest, and await the order to undertake the more
arduous part of the journey, which must be accomplished while the daylight
lasted.
Meanwhile all minds were to be concentrated upon the object of the
expedition, which I now learnt was their method of sleeping, the mind
being rested upon one thought only for a previously-decided period, a
method surely superior to our own, in which it wanders blindly through
disjointed recollections, and in vain conceptions of foolish or repugnant
things.
A number were, however, directed to remain alert and wakeful, and to
watch for any menace which might appear from the open country before us,
from which only (it was assumed) could any danger threaten.
Being now on the extreme left of the line which the last movement had
extended in echelon along the edges of an out-jutting spur of the forest,
with our Leaders at its advanced point, I was asked whether I were able to
assist in this manner, and was directed to watch as long as I could do so
without exhaustion, and then to arouse my companion.
The halt would continue until the sun had reached its meridian. The mind
of one of the Leaders would remain receptive to any report I might send it.
Even if I had not undertaken this duty, and recognised its importance in a
land which was as potentially hostile to my companions as to myself, and
which was even stranger in some of its aspects to themselves than to me, I
could hardly have failed, for a time at least, to remain awake and aware of
the strange beauty of the scene which was extended beneath me.
My companion sank at once oblivious in the deep moss, which yielded to
our weight when we halted, and in which I took a sitting position, enabling
me to look out from beneath the boughs which spread low overhead, and
were sufficient to screen me from the outside observation of anything which
did not approach very closely.
The ground before me sloped gently down to a deep and very wide
valley. Far to the left were low hills; to the right front was a distance of

wilder mountains, with snowy sides, height beyond height, with a
suggestion of the foothills of the Himalayas. The valley undulated, and was
heavily wooded in some places. It had wide plains, but without sign of
cultivation, or of moving life.
The sky above us was the unclouded blue I had seen previously, very
deep now in the strong sunlight. Far off,—and sight went far in the clear air,
across the lower land,—there was a wide low forest with a silver hint of
lake beyond it.
In colour, the whole scene gave me a first impression of a splendour of
gold and blue, with dark hills around, and snowy mountains above them,
but as I looked more closely I saw that there was an undertone of green, as
in the old familiar landscapes, but with this difference, that where I had
been used to the dark blue-green of trees and hedges breaking the yellow-
green of the corn and grass-lands, here yellow-green, deepening to many
shades of gold, was the prevailing tone of the woodlands, while open slopes
and plains were covered with a blue-green verdure, in some places with no
more hint of blue than in the leaves of a rhododendron, at others brighter
than a peacock’s neck.
This was the general impression of a wide stretch of country, which
might show differently at a closer view, or with a change of season. When I
looked immediately in front of me I saw that the moss extended for two or
three feet only from the forest-shade, and beyond this was a blue-green
growth, of an orchis-like kind, which covered the ground where it sloped
gently before me. Here and there, other plants struggled for existence
among it, including one of a trailing habit which I noticed for a very fragile
and beautiful flower shaped like a campanula, and approaching a very deep
orange shade, but different from anything I had seen, and I have therefore
no word by which to describe it.
Last, and nearest, I noticed, a bare yard to my left, where a low branch
shaded the moss a little in advance of the trees around it, a ground-nest of
beaten moss, of the size of a hand-bowl, and in it three small black puppy-
like creatures, curled close, and sleeping in the shaded warmth of the
morning.
Surely there was little change in the new world from the world behind
me!

Here I watched for many hours, as the sun rose slowly. Once a huge bird
crossed the sky, coming from the lower hills and disappearing at last over
the distant heights of snow. It was many times larger than those which I had
seen previously. It flew with strong steady strokes, but was too distant for
more detailed observation.
Then I noticed a dark object moving slowly up the slope toward me, and
grazing as it came.
Its body was of a dull blue colour, and was of the size of a sheep, or
somewhat larger, but as round as an orange. It walked on two legs only, and
there was no sign of forelimbs. But for the absence of any head I might
have imagined it to be some kind of chicken, and looked round for the
apparition of a monstrous hen.
There was a face set in the front of the round body, consisting of two
eyes which surveyed the world with a twinkling and mischievous humour,
and a mouth, of which the upper lip was elongated, like an elephant’s trunk,
but to somewhat different purpose, and proportionately longer. Hard and
thin and snake-like, it had the under side serrated with sharp bony ridges.
With this trunk it felt doubtfully over the surface of the herbage on which
it fed. Then, finding a patch that grew to its liking, it pushed its trunk into
the close growth, which appeared to resist its passage, with a rasping,
tearing sound, till it was curled round the selected tuft, and then it pulled,
and the sharp edges cut and tore the fibrous growth from the resisting roots,
till the trunk turned inwards, to push its sheaf into the gap of the wide slit
mouth, that was scarcely large enough to receive it, till the trunk had
pressed and packed it in. And like a thrush that has won his worm after
much pulling, the mischievous eyes twinkled with a humorous satisfaction.
Care or fear, it seemed, it had none, nor any thought of enmity, as it came
with leisurely steps and jovial roving eyes towards the edge of the wood
where we were lying.
I passed the information to my Leader’s mind, but received no
instructions to do more than observe it. Closer it came, peering beneath the
branches, its trunk moving so near to me that in a sudden panic I gripped
the axe to strike, if it should attempt to molest me. But it only gazed with
eyes in which curiosity appeared to be overcome by amusement at my
comic aspect.

Indeed, it was this derisive glance which first made me realise at all
adequately the appearance I must present in my tattered clothes to these
creatures whose bodies were so much more easily cared for, and sufficient
for their environment.
I thought that I had met with the humorist of the new world, and did not
guess that I was on the threshold of tragedy.
My companions rested undisturbed, and it did not appear even to realise
their presence, at which I was puzzled for a moment, thinking that they
must be as strange to it as myself, and not understanding that the calm
indifference of their minds, and the serene tranquillity of that of the Leader
to whom I had reported its presence, were impregnable bulwarks against
any form of molestation from a single animal of its order of intelligence.
Its eyes wandered from me, as having exhausted the amusement I
offered, and fell upon the nest beside me. I thought that it surveyed the
sleeping inmates with a greedy but doubtful interest. Right and left, with
swift apprehensive glances, went the twinkling eyes, then a long trunk
thrust in, and one of the sleepers was caught and swept into the gaping
mouth-slit, too quickly for me to have interposed, had I wished to do so.
I had a thought that it was not its accustomed food, and that it had acted
rather in a spirit of practical joking, amused to imagine the consternation of
the returning parent, and the vain search for the missing puppy. If that were
so, it was a jest of the shortest.
Even as the mouth closed, I had an instant vision of a lithe shape, like a
small black panther, that sprang down from a nearby tree at the wood’s
edge, something in its mouth like a snake curled close, or as a wire-worm
shows when the spade exposes it. Then, on the instant, as it reached the
ground, it saw, and dropped its prey, and leapt, a lightning bound of twenty
feet, for the back of the robber.
Swift as it was, it was too late for its purpose. With the speed of fear, the
jester had rolled on to his back with drawn-up legs, and it was the long
toothed trunk that met the panther with a blow that flung it sideward.
The foiled beast drew back for a moment, crouching to spring, in its eyes
a ferocity that left no doubt of its purpose, while in the glance of its
opponent there was a consternation that had yet in it something that was
grotesquely comic, like a fat man’s pathos.

Twice the panther leapt in, and was flung back with a reddening line of
torn fur on the glossy back. Again it sprang, and held on for a moment with
tearing teeth, while the trunk slashed it. Then it struggled clear with a torn
side, and a forelimb that dragged awkwardly. But where its teeth had been
in the blue-black skin, a jet of pale red fluid squirted up in the sunlight.
It was more cautious now, if no less resolute in its purpose. It circled
round, crouching and watchful, but the cunning frightened eyes never left it,
and the back-drawn trunk was ready. When next it sprang, the wounded
limb told, and it fell short, and drew back with a torn ear and a bleeding
jaw. I cannot say whether that gave it the idea, or whether the chance of
battle befriended it. I should not have supposed it likely to succeed by
cunning, when strength and agility had proved unavailing. But so it was. It
leapt, and the trunk shot out to meet it, but the leap fell short, either through
sleight or weakness, so short that it came down on the very end of the trunk,
as it missed the intended stroke, and the strong jaws snapped upon it. Back
the captured trunk wrenched desperately, and the panther was dragged some
distance forward, but by now the uninjured fore-paw was holding also, and
the back legs were straining to keep their ground, against an opponent
which had no grip of that on which it lay. The serrated teeth were on the
underside of the trunk, and as it slapped down, missing its stroke, it was
caught on the upper surface, which was smooth and soft, so that the teeth
sank deeply. And then, inch by inch, the panther bit upwards, biting till, foot
by foot, she left it limp and useless behind her.
And gradually, as she bit, the struggles weakened. All this time that thin
jet had sprayed upward, and from the appalled eyes the twinkling
intelligence was gone out, as the panther leapt at last on the ball-like body,
and ripped it open with strong claws that found no resistance. With each
tear, the thin blood jetted out like a fountain, till the round body collapsed
like a prickled bladder, in which the victor’s head was sunk with a growling
contentment, so that I thought that, panther-like, she was already making a
meal of her opponent’s body, till the head emerged again, and in her mouth
was the recovered puppy.
Purring gently, she laid it in the nest, licked it all over, still alive, and
seeming none the worse for its first adventure. As she did so she saw me,
and the light of battle glared again in the fierce eyes for a moment, and then

died, and, regarding me no more, she lay down and licked her wounds, and
cleansed her damaged fur to something of the glossy smoothness on which
her comfort and her pride depended.
While she was occupied in this way, I realised that it had become time to
arouse my companion, and having done this, and communicated what had
occurred, I sank into a sleep of exhaustion, from which the strangeness and
excitement of my surroundings were powerless to hinder me.

CHAPTER XV
THE PLAN OF ATTACK

I was awakened by my companion from a deep sleep, out of which I was
aroused with difficulty, and found that it was high noon, and the order had
already been passed that we who were on the left hand of the outlying spur
of the forest, around which we had rested, should cross to the other side,
from which the next stage of the advance would be taken.
This we did, forming a second line behind those who were already in that
position, and halting there while final instructions were given to us, to the
effect that we were now approaching the most hazardous part of the
journey, and that speed and silence, with readiness to obey any orders we
might receive with instant alacrity, were essential.
We were directed to avoid separate intercourse, and to concentrate our
minds upon the path we were taking, while holding them at the disposal of
our Leaders, and under no circumstances to allow any emotion to control
us, unless it were the ordered feeling of the expedition, and were operated
in unison.
Although these orders were not directly applicable to myself, I was
conscious of an increasing willingness to adapt myself to the methods and
controls of my new companions, and was not insensible to the relief of
mind which arose from the knowledge that the will of every member of the
expedition could be brought to operate in this way.
It is true that all my habits were alien from a method of warfare which
moved against unknown hostilities, such as were certainly capable of
physical violence, without weapons or any evident means of self-defence,
trusting, apparently, only to a mental attitude for its protection, and leaving
me to wonder how any aggressive action could be even attempted. But I
had already realised that the Amphibians had powers of intellect which,
though different from my own, were very far from contemptible.

I was inclined to wonder whether my own complacency might not be the
result of some subtle exercise of their will-power upon my own mind,
which was probably so, though not in the way in which I supposed it, their
influence not being the result of any mental violence or assault, but
resulting from my gradual recognition of the assured serenity with which
they possessed their souls against any pressure of surrounding
circumstance, a serenity which had no root in obtuseness or indifference,
but, with their leaders at least, was consistent with an unsleeping vigilance
and forethought, and a chivalrous willingness to sacrifice themselves at the
call of their companion’s peril.
We were now told to advance out of the forest in double file, all
emerging at the same spot, on the right front, which was immediately before
me, so that I watched the whole of the front line as it crawled to this spot
and moved out into the sunlight.
Last of this line came the Five, an order passing ahead of them that I
should be in readiness to follow. I was conscious of a strong reluctance to
leave my zebra’d companion, of whose vitality I had taken so freely, and to
whom I was drawn in consequence in a strange inhuman intimacy. But they
answered my thought instantly that this was not intended. We were to move
out together, immediately behind them. Being in the rearward line, we had
been able to see little beneath the low and level branches till the moment
came for us to go forward. Then the first sight that met me was a round
blue-black body, from which two humorous twinkling eyes surveyed me
satirically. For a moment I thought that I had encountered the most amazing
reincarnation of this amazing world; at the next I recognised that there were
two other similar creatures a short distance away, and that I was not
encountering a reproduction of the one I had seen collapse so thoroughly,
but only others of the same species.
Beyond these creatures, I had a moment’s glimpse of a different
landscape from that which I had watched from the other side of the spur.
Here the ground rose, the upward slopes growing steeper, toward a bare and
desolate mountain grandeur. The next moment I saw the last of the Five
leap lightly downward into a deep and narrow trench which cut through the
ground before us, and I followed more awkwardly, my companion gaining
my side as I did so.

I am conscious in this narration of the paucity of proper names,—of the
use of no arbitrary sounds to distinguish the kinds or even the individuals of
the strange beings amongst which I was moving, but the fact is that, unless I
am to invent them, I have none to offer. It is the evident difference between
mental intercourse and oral or written speech that such signs are
imperatively needed in the latter, while in the former they would be worse
than useless. The thought that brings the picture of the individual or place
itself has no use for a sign by which to describe it. But of these I felt the
lack even before I attempted to write down my experiences. It is the
inevitable result of the constant use of a spoken language that we acquire
the habit of substituting words for realities, even in the processes of our
own thought. I found in the minds of my companions no names for each
other, nor any vaguest desire for such a method of differentiation, but I
accustomed myself to this omission with difficulty, and am fully conscious
of the disadvantage under which I am now writing.
It was now the nearest of the Leaders—the one with whom I had held
intercourse previously—who addressed herself to my mind. She
commenced by informing me that she was about to describe the plans
which they had formed, because they included a part for myself of the first
importance, but of which they believed I should be capable.
Though I knew that I should undertake whatever might be suggested, if it
were within my capacity, yet the feeling that I had been called up like a dog
to receive my instructions, and the instinct of my commercial training,
prompting me to make a bargain for my ultimate protection, complicated
my reaction to this suggestion. “Are you less than a sea-dog?” queried the
mind that met me, but perceiving that I intended assent, it became
indifferent.
It appeared (I attempt no explanation) that the member of their number
whom I had first met, on whom they were depending for guidance, could
only communicate such knowledge as she had gained before she had left
her body; and beyond that was only able to help them by the doubts or
dissent with which she had met the various plans which they had put before
her. They were therefore in ignorance of events that were now transpiring,
but were able to receive detailed descriptions of the ground they were about

to traverse, and of the experiences or observations she had made thereon,
one of which had been shown to me in the vision which I have told already.
The plan now proposed had been received with assent, though
doubtfully, and they had finally decided to adopt it.
She explained that trenches, such as we were now following, extended
for many miles along the lower slopes of the hills, and through the valleys,
bisecting each other, and dividing the ground into fields of very large area.
Whether they were the work of the Dwellers, or were constructed by our
present opponents,—whom I should not have supposed to be sufficiently
numerous or intelligent for works of such magnitude,—was not known, but
it was certain that the latter made use of their extensive existence to herd
some of the creatures they ate, which were not of sufficient agility to leap
the barriers. In this connection the blue-black monstrosities I had
encountered were used by them as watch-dogs or drovers, being themselves
immune from slaughter in return for these services. It was certain that these
creatures would carry the news of our presence to their masters as soon as
they were able to do so. While they had been in our immediate vicinity the
will-power of our Leaders had been sufficient to restrain them, but this
would not last in a case in which it was exercised against the instincts and
obligations of the creatures themselves; and a suggestion from my mind that
we might destroy them was dismissed contemptuously.
They would, however, continue to watch for a while, and would know,
from the direction which would shortly be taken, that the expedition was
turning into the mountains. Their masters would know that no danger could
threaten from that direction for a space of one or two days, as the distance
to be covered was not less than five hundred miles, and part of it was over
very difficult surfaces, whereas we were only about one hundred and thirty
miles from their stronghold, if the direct course were taken, and the
trenches which I have mentioned, which were well drained on the higher
slopes, provided a road along which the Amphibians could have proceeded
with great rapidity. The distances were, of course, conveyed to me visually
and not by terms of measurement.
The way through the mountains was, for the Amphibians, sufficiently
hazardous, and would be, for me, impossible; and the Five had decided that
it would be best for me to proceed with my one companion by the easier

way, where it might be anticipated that my presence would not be
suspected, and myself to attempt the rescue, by peaceful stratagem if
possible, or by force if it should be necessary to do so.
My companion would supply the nervous energy necessary to enable me
to cover the intervening distance in the forty-eight hours which yet
remained before sunset, while, if any physical violence were necessary to
effect my purpose, I should be acting according to the laws of my own
nature, and against creatures more or less on my own level of conduct.
The enclosure which it would be necessary to enter I had already seen in
the vision. It was the custom to place all the hunting weapons of the tribe
during the night in a central building, which was not guarded, as no attack
was ever anticipated from outside, particularly during the long night, when
all the creatures on the earth’s surface rested. The building in which were
the killing-pens was guarded day and night by one of the giant archers, lest
its victims should attempt escape, and for other reasons which I could not
follow.
The main force of the expedition would arrive, if all went well, on the
top of the great cliff which overlooked the enclosure, at the commencement
of the second night. Had I found it impossible to attempt a rescue, or had I
failed, they would then proceed by other methods.
Should I succeed, I was to place myself under the orders of the one I
rescued, who, being one of the Leaders, would naturally assume control of
myself and my companion.
I was given a few minutes to consider this plan, and to make any
inquiries which might occur to me, while our course continued in the same
direction.
As I reflected upon it, I was conscious of many points which invited
criticism. It appeared that the whole expedition was being led into the
mountains for no very evident purpose, while I was to take the individual
peril and responsibility of the rescue for which it had been designed. If the
mountains offered even greater perils, it were the more reason why a
different procedure would be adopted.
On the other hand, we were operating under conditions which were in
some respects as strange to them as to myself, and for which they might be
said to be even more unfit. I was, at least, the only one who carried

anything that could be used as an offensive weapon, and there was some
justice in the reflection that I came from conditions of life from which the
argument of violence was less alien than it was from theirs. Also, the fact
that I could not pass the dangers of the mountain way, if it were really so,
was unanswerable, and the fact that our opponents could not expect an
attack from that direction for so long a time, certainly suggested that I could
best be used in the interval in the way they had planned. Whether they
expected me to succeed, or regarded me simply as a forlorn hope, or even
as a feint attack to disguise a deeper purpose, I could not know. I considered
that if I should be successful in effecting the rescue undetected, we might be
far on the return journey before the dawn, but that they would arrive after it
had certainly been discovered, and with their enemies between them and
their retreat, in which case they would have their full share of the peril.
I had, at least, no better plan to propose, and I shortly signified that I had
no further questions. I was then told that I must restrain any impulse of
violence which I might feel, unless there were no alternative possible, as it
developed action on a plane which they despised, and on which they were
unaccustomed to operate, and might bring us into additional and
incalculable trouble with the Dwellers also, if they should become aware of
our expedition, or were already cognisant of it. It was to descend to the
level of the Killers themselves.
I write “Killers” as the nearest word I have in which to describe the
thought with which she defined our opponents, but it is quite inadequate.
Scorn was in it, and loathing, if such feelings can be entirely passionless
and judicial, and in it was the whole summary of what they were and did,
but centrally there was the conception of them as things that killed
continually, and that enjoyed killing, and as such I translate it. These worm-
pink horrors with the sucking mouths were too low for any emotion to stir
in regarding them. She looked on them as I, whom she regarded as a beast
only, look upon one of my own kind who can kill birds for pleasure.

CHAPTER XVI
THE SENTRY

We now came to a place at which another trench extended on the right
hand, at right angles to the one we followed, and striking upward toward the
mountainside that now rose above us with an abruptness that appeared
unscalable. Looking up the straight line of the trench we could not see the
defile by which those heights were entered, nor was it easy to imagine that
this bleak forbidding precipice was only the first of a wilderness of loftier
ridges, from the top of which it would appear almost as low and flat as the
plain around us.
We watched the long column of our companions as it proceeded up the
narrow trench, at the end of which we saw it emerging on the open hillside,
where it must have been visible for many miles to any watchers on the
plains below. Then we turned, not without a feeling of loneliness which
increased the intimacy of our companionship, and went on at a gentle walk
—for the time at our disposal required no haste—in the direction which had
been indicated.
Yet the leisured pace had a consequence which might have been
disastrous, and the exact result of which I am still unable to determine.
We were engaged in a pleasant intercourse, in which I was realising that
the apparent apathy of my companion’s mind in regard to the issue of an
expedition for which her Leaders were responsible, which had previously
surprised me, did not preclude a keen adventurous delight in an enterprise
which had now been entrusted to our own initiative, when I was conscious
of a shadow that fell for a moment across the floor of the trench before me,
into which the midday sun shone directly downward.
Looking up sharply, I caught sight of an egg-shaped body and two
jovially derisive eyes that withdrew at the instant of their detection. Instant
also was my thought of the consequences if the news of our coming should
go before us, and with that thought I loosed my companion’s hand, and

jumped for the side of the trench. The abundant vitality which that grasp
supplied me lasted long enough after I had loosed my hold to enable me to
grip the edge of the ground two feet above my head, and swing myself on to
the surface.
Rising here, I confronted the detected spy not ten feet distant, gazing at
me with a glance of humorous contempt, from which doubt and even
consternation were not entirely absent. Its body was less round than that of
the panther’s victim, being like an egg balanced on two legs, with the
thicker end in front, from which the twinkling eyes looked out, with the
long trunk curled beneath them.
I realised suddenly that I was not beyond reach of this weapon, and that I
was likely to be swept back into the trench with little ceremony, even if no
worse befell me. But the next moment I was aware that my companion was
beside me.
Whatever brain was in that blue-black body, or courage for the facing of
meaner things, it had no will to meet its new antagonist. Nor did the order
which she gave it to avoid us even disturb the quietness of the mind that
formed it. Accustomed for so long to an unquestioned supremacy over all
the creatures that the oceans held, it could not occur to her as a possibility
that such a one could resist her will, or disturb her serenity.
Fear was in the cowed but cunning eyes as it moved backward, but when
it had retreated for fifty yards or more it suddenly threw up its trunk in a
defiant gesture, as of one released from a reluctant hypnotism, and
commenced a rapid run toward the farther end of the valley.
As it did this, I realised that I was losing it, and that our lives and the
success of our enterprise were at issue.
I unslung the axe from my back, and started in pursuit. But my feet sank
deeply in the soft herbage, and I found that speed was impossible. At times,
too, the ground itself gave way beneath me, and I stumbled forward with
difficulty. Struggle as I might, I saw that the distance was increasing
continually.
My companion’s mind called me to return, but I would not heed it.
Then I saw that she also was running, but far out on the left as though
she were leaving me.

I was still wallowing forward in a stubborn stupidity when I realised her
purpose. She was endeavouring to cut it off, and, running far more swiftly
and lightly than either of us, she was soon in a position to do so.
But having gained the advantage, she appeared content to hold it, not
closing in, but edging the chase continually toward the higher ground.
I did not understand her purpose till I found myself running upon the
hard surface of the hillside, and gaining at every stride. The chased beast
knew it also, and turned to face me.
My hunting instinct was roused now, to reinforce my judgment of a
compelling necessity, and I was determined to kill it. But I had sufficient
caution to pause outside the range of the sweeping trunk that threatened me.
It did not throw itself on its back, as I expected from the conflict which I
had witnessed previously, and I began to realise that it had been running not
so much to avoid me, as to carry the news to its masters. It might be in awe
of my companion’s mind, but toward myself it very certainly had no such
feeling.
I became aware that it was advancing upon me.
My companion had paused at a distance, and made no motion to assist
me further.
The trunk was waving now within three feet of my face. I swung the axe
as it was raised to strike. The sharp blade grazed the tip, and it winced back
swiftly.
For some moments we faced each other silently, neither willing to
retreat, nor to come within range of the confronting danger. I was on the
point of springing in, and risking all on one stroke, when the memory of
how the blue-black body had punctured where the claws tore, suggested
that I could throw the axe with sufficient force to disable it.
But the throwing of axes is an occupation in which I was quite
unpractised. Trying to fling it over the trunk that waved and feinted before
me, and with sufficient force to effect my purpose, I misjudged entirely, so
that it skimmed the smooth back only, and fell ten or twelve feet behind it.
Reckless, I ran forward to recover the weapon. My antagonist might
easily have struck me off my feet as I did so, but it had turned also with the
same object.

Not having to turn, I was a second quicker. I stooped for the axe with the
consciousness that my opponent was already upon me, and as I seized it I
threw it desperately backward.
The next moment I was struck to the ground. I felt the clothes tearing
from my back, and turning round I tried to come to grips with the trunk
which would otherwise beat the life from my body. As I did so I was
conscious that the attack had ceased.
I looked up, and saw my companion standing above us. My antagonist
cowed away from her with terrified eyes. The axe I had thrown had stuck
into its back, and remained there.
Very quietly she took the haft and drew it out. As she did this a fountain
of thin red blood, such as I had seen before, shot up and sparkled in the
sunlight.
I rose up, and we stood side by side looking at the creature that made no
more resistance, but lay dying before us.
She handed me the axe in silence.
A moment after, she gave me her hand again, and we returned to the
trench together. But though I tried to speak, her mind would not answer.
She had closed it against me, and for many hours we continued thus, her
mind a blank wall of negation at the advances I made continually.

CHAPTER XVII
THE ETHICS OF VIOLENCE

Dusk was already rising in the narrow trench, though the world was still
bright with the colour of a sun that set early over the mountains, when she
addressed me in the medium which is fifty times more swift than speech,
and a thousand times more accurate in its transmission of the thoughts
which form it.
“How could I answer you till there was peace in my own mind?” she
asked me. “I was confused by violence. It is a thing we do not practise,
either for defence or aggression. You appear to me to be partly as we are,
and in part as the lower order of created things, and with such a body as is
more base than either. For the first time in all my life I could not tell what
was right to do—to withhold, or to aid you. It seems to me that you must
have much sorrow.
“But now I have thought of what is right. It was to you that the charge
was given. You were to avoid violence if it were possible. It was left to you
to judge of that necessity. The responsibility is not mine. From now you
will have my help when you ask it. When I thought this, peace came, by
which I know that I have thought rightly.
“For yourself, it came to me, as I saw your mind when you fell, that you
have a brave spirit in a body of deplorable weakness. It is full also of
strange passions, which you can scarcely control yourself, and for that
reason the lowest creatures can defy you. But I saw the spirit that is
imprisoned within you, and for that I respect you.
“When we return we will ask the Leaders that all shall think together that
your body may be destroyed, and you may escape from its misery.”
I answered, “I am glad that there is peace between us, and some measure
of understanding, and for your promise of future help I thank you also. But
in the world from which I came my kind is supreme of all created things.
Here you despise me, yet you yourselves are not supreme in your world.

You fear the Dwellers, who, as I understand, eat and use violence as I do. I
understand that you supply them with fish, which seems inconsistent with
your objection to the slaughter of meaner creatures around you.”
She replied, “I know that you are telling me the truth as you see it; and
some kind of supremacy you may have in your place, though it must be,
indeed, a strange one. I cannot suppose that there are other creatures with
bodies weaker than yours, more quickly tired, or more awkward. Are all its
animals wearers of those tattered things in which you conceal yourself so
quaintly?”
I replied, “Our bodies are doubtless better adapted to their familiar
conditions than for those in which I now find myself, as our clothes are
also. The lower animals—with some unimportant exceptions—have no
outer coverings. Should we dispense with our clothes we should consider
that we had descended to their level. We wear them from shame, from self-
respect, and to enable us to endure the climatic changes, and the severities
of the colder portions of the earth on which we dwell.”
“I can well understand,” she said, “that you are ashamed to show your
bodies to other animals, or even to each other, but can you really say that
you cover them from climatic changes? Your face and hands are bare,
which would be of all parts the most sensitive. If you can harden them to
such exposure, could you not harden the remainder of your bodies also, and
feel the joys of sun and wind and water, as all creatures should?”
“The custom of wearing clothes among my own kind,” I answered, “is
very ancient, and is universally practised. Whether it be for warmth or
ornament, or from causes more difficult of definition, it would be
impossible for any one of us to break it. He would be persecuted or
destroyed by his fellows. You must understand that we have no individual
freedom. In my own land this loss of discretion has been reduced to an
absurdity, there being so many laws to be obeyed that it is impossible for
any one—even those who give them unceasing study—to know all that
there are. Also, we pay men to make more laws continually, so that, in
theory, we may be brought into yet closer bondage, but in practice that is a
thing which is barely possible, and as new laws are made, others fall into
disuse and forgetfulness, because it is beyond human capacity to observe so
many. We do not want more laws, but we have started a machine in which

we ourselves are involved, so that we have no power to stop it. Many of us
despise the laws that we have already—so far as we understand them—and
break them whenever we can do so to our own advantage, and with
sufficient secrecy. Others respect them so greatly that they will do mean and
base things without shame, if the law require them, thinking it to be
sufficient apology.”
“It is too strange,” she answered, “to be understood, unless it be told
more fully, and our time is too short for that, but I have not replied to your
question concerning the fish-feeding of the Dwellers. I see clearly what you
mean, but it is a thing which had been done from the beginning. It was
arranged by our Leaders, and we have not thought to question it. It is true
that the Dwellers, though they are superior to your kind beyond comparing,
are of more animal bodies than we. They must be fed, and their food, in
part, is the fish, which themselves live by the destruction of others, and are
destroyed by them continually. We divide the shoals and drive those that
become excessive into the great tanks which extend beneath the mountains,
where the Dwellers do with them as they will. I neither doubt nor excuse it.
The mackerel that we drive, or the deep-sea salmon, will eat even of their
own kind, and the fruits of death are in their own entrails while we drive
them. They obey us, as is natural, without protest, and this thing which we
do has never troubled our peace.
“You say that you are supreme, and we are not. I think you can have
supremacy only amidst a very low creation. It is something which, until
now, we have neither sought nor heeded. In all the oceans we have held it
without challenge.
“But I think the difference is not there. It is that you are not sure of
yourself. Your own thoughts, or even your own body, may resist your will.
You are like the state of which you tell me, wherein laws are confused and
changing, and may be broken by those who make them.
“Of all this we know nothing, and therefore, were I in the midst of the
Dwellers, whose powers are terrible, I should walk in greater freedom than
you could do in your own land, whatever be your supremacy among inferior
things. But I am hindering your mind from the adventure which is before
us. It is yours to direct it, as our Leaders rightly saw, for we are contending
against creatures who are more of your own kind than ours. Let me know

what is your purpose, and I will give you all the aid I may, either with mind
or body.”
As she concluded thus, we reached the place where the trench we
followed stopped abruptly before a rising bank, and we knew that we were
at the end of the divided fields, and could no longer travel in the same
concealment. Steps led here to a trodden path, which we left immediately
for the lesser risk of a hillside which was covered with gigantic boulders,
between which we moved cautiously upward, while the day was slowly
dying, the western sky showing, for the first time in my experience,
something of the sunset-light of my familiar world, in a cloud-born glory of
yellow and purple light above the mountains.
My companion answered my thought: “It is the season of storms
approaching. In three days’ time there will be cloud, and great winds, and
hidden skies. It is nothing to us, but for those that live on the earth’s surface
it must be distasteful.”
I made no reply, for at that moment my glance fell on a Browning pistol
which lay amongst the loose stones I was treading. In the compelling
strangeness of the experiences through which I had passed I had given little
thought to those who had come here before me, but I remembered now the
arsenal of weapons with which Templeton had returned and vanished.
I looked round, as though expecting him to appear before me. In the
growing gloom I searched round for some further sign, but could find
nothing. I opened my mind to my companion, but she could not help me,
though she searched with keener eyes than mine. I reflected that we were a
long distance from the spot on which I—and presumably he, but was that
certain?—had first arrived. If he had travelled so far, he might have gone
farther. The abandoned pistol was ominous, but perhaps he had only thrown
it away because his ammunition was ended. Possibly he had left it there,
intending to return. Possibly he dropped it by accident. Anyway, it was
useless to me, and I laid it down where I found it.
And as I rose, my companion’s mind, to which I was becoming
increasingly sensitive, interjected urgently: “Do not move, or fear. Look up
to the right hand.”
The ridge of the rocky hill we climbed stood out sharply against the
sunset light behind it, and above it rose the head and shoulders of a giant

form. He had stepped over to our side of the ridge, and stood above us, one
hand on the crest, as a man might lean his hand on his own gate, and was
gazing around, as one who is more occupied with his own thoughts than
with a familiar scene beneath him.
So he stayed for a moment, and then descended the hill with giant
strides, as the Titans may have moved when they found the earth too small,
and thought to own the heavens.
He might have crushed us under foot, as a plough-horse treads a
crouching mouse in the furrow, but we stood quiet and unmoving as he
went past without seeing us—or so I thought, but my companion differed.
“You cannot know the thoughts of the Dwellers,” she told me. “They are
not as we, or as you are. They are terrible in power, and, sometimes, in
forbearance also. But they are beyond our understanding.”
My own impression was different. I saw a Titan indeed, but one of my
own kind, and one, I thought, who was preoccupied with a great perplexity.
But whether he had seen us I could not tell.

CHAPTER XVIII
THE ARSENAL OF THE KILLERS

The moon had not yet risen, but the starlight was brilliant, as we climbed
the path that led to the stronghold of the Killers.
As we approached it in the darkness it looked larger than it had appeared
to me in the vision, and our task more formidable.
At this high altitude the night began to be cold already, and I supposed
that the temperature might fall very low before the dawn of the next day. I
began to understand why I had found the stillness of the first night so
absolute, and why all creatures sought for rest and warmth during a night-
time so much longer than our own, and in which the change of temperature
might be so much greater.
But I had more urgent considerations to engage my thoughts. To rescue
the imprisoned Amphibian from a guarded prison in the midst of the
stronghold of the Killers, whether it were attempted by force or strategy,
appeared about equally hopeless, but the Leaders had laid this task upon
me, and whether they really believed me capable of performing it, or had
used me as a pawn in a larger purpose, I was equally committed to the
adventure.
My comrade also laid the responsibility upon me, as she clearly had the
right to do. I had her promise of unquestioning aid in anything for which I
might call upon her, and I had learnt to rely more than a little upon her
fearless serenity of mind, as well as upon the abundant physical vitality
which she shared with me so freely.
On the other hand, the more I relied upon her powers of spirit or body,
the more menacing became the fact that I was braving those who had
entrapped one of her own kind, of superior grade to herself, who apparently
could not escape unrescued.
Whether they had received warning of our coming I could not tell, but I
reflected that even though a report should have reached them that the

regiment of the Amphibians had passed into the mountains six score miles
away, they would not only suppose that no fear from that quarter would be
possible for a day at least (or much longer if they should judge by their own
speed of progression), but might not even think that any hostility to
themselves were intended, nor might it occur to them as possible that an
attack would be made in the night-time, when they might suppose the
custom of rest to be universal.
Even if they knew that two of us were wandering on the lower slopes, we
might only appear to them as prey to be sought in the morning, and, I
thought, with a sudden lightening of humour, they might be right in their
estimate.
On the balance of probabilities, I thought the better course would be to
approach them boldly, and try what might be done in secrecy while the
darkness was round us.
Indeed, when we gained the plateau, caution lacked opportunity, if we
were to advance at all. For outside the enclosure it was bare and flat beneath
the starlight, and a rat could have found no shelter.
Having crossed the open space as quietly as we could, we walked for
some distance along the outside of the enclosure. It was a back-sloping
wall, or roof, as I had seen it before, having no door or window in all its
length; but knowing that there were doors along the inner side, and that the
Killers slept within it, and not knowing how lightly they might do so, or
how thin might be the wall that divided us from them, we now moved very
silently till we came to the gateway. Here we paused in surprise, for it was
not only unguarded, but open.
There was a double gate that opened inward. Sockets were faintly visible
in the ground, into which vertical bolts could be driven to secure them.
You know how a fox will use all its cunning to find some illicit entrance
to the poultry house, but will turn away from open door or window, lest a
trap be concealed behind the apparent negligence? So I felt as I looked, and
saw something dimly on the ground behind the gateway, and hesitated, and
remembered that the night was long, and haste was needless, and asked my
companion how soon would be the moonrise.
In the end, we went back and waited under the edge of the plateau.

It is commonly held that the capacity of the average woman for logical
reasoning is inferior to that of a man, but that she has a compensating
advantage in a superior ability of intuitive perception, and may even reach a
more correct conclusion in some instances by such unreasoned cognition,
than a man will do by the exercise of a superior logical faculty.
Whatever impressions of femininity my companion might give in other
aspects, it is certain that in this comparison she was more masculine than
myself, and the light which I had given her into the workings of my own
mind—for, in view of our understanding, I had been careful to open it to her
as I had considered the various possibilities which might affect the success
of our enterprise—had aroused a wonder which she now expressed with her
usual clarity.
“It appears,” she considered, “that there is a difference between the
processes of your mind and mine. When I encounter a difficulty which
requires decision, I reflect upon it systematically and thoroughly. It may be
a long time before I arrive at any possible conclusion, but, when I have
done so, it is final. You appear to make choices, and to decide plans,
without always having recognised your reasons—if such there be—even in
your own mind, and you would be unable to explain them to another if you
wished to do so. This method appears to be the cause of much hesitation,
worry, and discord, by which your mind is drained of its energy to no
sufficient purpose, and of actions which are contradictory or indecisive.
There are even times when you appear not to be acting either by reason, or
by your own will, but to have surrendered your personality to the body
which it inhabits. This is repulsive to me, because I cannot conceive of a
reasoning spirit being reduced to a baser servitude. Fear is good, and it
would be a poor kind of body which did not give you that warning. But
your body is not content with warning, it attempts control, and if you refuse
obedience, you do so with difficulty. I think that this arises because your
mind is not sure of itself, and your body lacks respect for its weakness.
Then your physical impulses fight among themselves for supremacy, and
you have no power to rule them. When I look into your mind I see also that
it has little knowledge, as it has little control, of the body in which it dwells,
of which the major functions are carried on quite independently of its
volition, and of the existence of which it may even be entirely ignorant.

“In all these respects you might be considered inferior to ourselves. I
think you are so; and I recognise the admiration you feel for our larger
measure of control, both of ourselves and of the creatures that surround us.
Certainly I would not be like you. It would be as though we should be eaten
by our own dogs. But when I see how your mind endures amidst such
surroundings I am unable to despise you. I seem as one who swims with a
friendly tide, and can make no boast, though she outdistance one who fights
onward amidst contrary and contending currents. Therefore, I think God
may judge you the prize at last, though He has given you a body that is
lower than that of a sea-dog, and a mind that has no power to control it, and
that walks in circles.
“I see further, that your own methods of inductive reasoning, casual as
they are, may be more appropriate to the fluctuating barbarism of the
conditions of life to which you are native than would be those to which we
are accustomed, and I know surely that you can use your own methods to
better purpose than I could possibly do.”
By this time a crescent moon was rising behind us, among stars that
shone with a frosty brightness, and a cold wind moved over the plateau as
we crossed it once more, so that I shivered in the torn and shredded
garments that I had sewn together, as best I might, when the halts had
permitted.
We came again to the vague menace of the open gateway. In the clearer
light we saw that objects lay on the ground immediately within it,
reminding me of the twisted bands of hay which farmers sometimes use for
the binding of fodder, and before them were shallow shining oval
depressions, as though moulds had been lifted from them.
Neither of us could make any guess as to what they were, or of what they
might be significant, but of one thing I was certain, they had not been there
when I saw the Killers draw their roped prey through the gateway; nor were
they appropriate for a free passage.
There is a fear that comes when the nerves revolt from a danger which
they perceive, which my companion had deprecated, but there is another
that arises from a reasoned caution, which it is often well to heed, though
the physical frame would disregard it.

I knew that my comrade’s mind approved, when I turned from that
unknown fear, and continued along the wall to select a spot at which we
should attempt to scale it.
Of itself, it gave no choice, being everywhere of the same height and
smoothness, and leaning at the same angle. Everywhere, so far as my
observation had shown, it was inhabited by the Killers, but whether in
separate cells, or whether the numerous openings led into one common
living chamber, I had no means of telling.
The only choice lay in selecting the nearest spot to our objective inside
the enclosure, and this we did as far as memory and judgment enabled us to
determine it.
The sides of the wall or dwelling, were about ten feet high, and sloping
together at such an angle that the inner floor (without deducting the
thickness of the walls, of which we had no knowledge) must have been
about eight feet in width. The walls inside must have narrowed rapidly
upward, suggesting that the Killers required little space for comfort during
their long night’s rest. Of ventilation there was no sign whatever.
The outer side, being quite smooth, was far too steep to be climbed, and
we scaled it at last by my companion leaning against it while I mounted her
shoulders and gripped the ridge. When I had a firm hold she caught my foot
and climbed up very lightly, and then, with her help, I was soon astride the
ridge, and the descent was easy. Our only real difficulty was to do it in
silence. We had to move along the ridge for a short distance before
descending, as we found ourselves directly over one of the apertures by
which they entered. It was fortunate for us that we took this precaution, for
when we had reached the ground, and moved cautiously across the
doorway, we found that it was closed by a door which slid down from the
inside, but not entirely so. It came to within about three inches of the
ground, and beneath it protruded three of the long suckers, which were the
mouths of the Killers. Moving onward, we saw that similar suckers were
thrust out from every doorway, which at least explained in part the omission
of any higher apertures by which air or light could reach them.
There was a wide bare space between the outer wall in which they slept,
and the buildings we were seeking. Of these there were eight in all, each of
which must have had its place in the social economy of those loathsome

creatures, but we were concerned with two only, and of the others I learnt
nothing, either then or later.
As we had been told that the building in which they stored their weapons
during the night was left unguarded, I had determined to proceed there first,
and if I were able to enter it without detection I had resolved to remain,
while my companion went forward alone to the killing-pens, and
endeavoured to establish communication with her imprisoned Leader. I
calculated that she would be more easily able to do this than I, and the
distance separating us would not be too great for her to communicate with
me, so that I should know exactly what was occurring. If she were
disturbed, she could return to me more quickly than any Killer could pursue
her. If a diversion were necessary, I could easily make sufficient noise to
draw the investigation in my direction. For two to go in the first instance
would double the risk of detection, without any compensating advantage. If
my aid were desirable after the first reconnoitre, and no alarm had been
raised, I could easily join her. If an alarm were raised, I supposed that they
would make first for the place in which their arms were stored, and in that
case it was our only hope of safety that someone should be there to bar the
access.
So I reasoned, not entirely at ease in thinking that I had allotted her a part
which might prove the more perilous, but yet seeing that it would be a
double folly to reverse our undertakings, and content that she knew my
motives, and approved the plan.
I think, in her own way, she was as keen as myself that we should effect
the rescue before the Leaders came to interpose their own methods, or take
direction of those which we had already formulated. I know that it was in a
state of controlled excitement, which approached the ecstatic, though it left
her mind in its accustomed serenity, that she went with me hand-in-hand
across the moonlight space, which we did not cross till we had reached a
point at which the other buildings would hide us from any watchers at the
killing-pens, if such there were.
By this means we reached the arsenal in safety, and stood beneath thick
walls of some smooth hard substance, having a low flat roof, and a door at
one end which showed no handle or fastening of any kind upon the outer
side.

I still think that the plan I made was in itself the best that could have
been devised from the facts as I knew them, but I admit that I was less
cautious here than I had been at the outer gate. Perhaps the silence, and the
fact that we had advanced to this point so easily, had given me a feeling of
too great security. Anyway, I can only tell what happened, and you must
judge it as you will.
I passed my hand down the door, in the shadow of the jamb, feeling for a
catch which the light might be insufficient to show me, when it yielded to
the slight pressure I gave, and opened gently. Then I pushed it wider, and
we entered together. We stood for a moment in the entrance, side by side,
looking into the dark interior, which was only very faintly lighted by two
small windows at the sides of the door. The long side-walls, the far end, and
the roof, were without lighting entirely. The moon shone through the two
small windows, and patterned a bare floor with the horizontal bars that
crossed them.
We stood there for a moment, and then my comrade slipped quietly from
me, and vanished in the shadow of the darker side of the building.
Thinking to sample some of the weapons which I knew to be stored
there, I stepped inward, loosing the door as I did so. Smoothly and swiftly it
closed behind me, with a slight ominous sound, to which the night gave full
value. It had a menace of finality, and my heart paused as I heard it.
The next moment I recalled my courage and stepped back to reopen it.
My foot sounded loudly in the stillness, and something moved in the dark
roof that was not more than three feet overhead. With nervous haste I felt
down the inside of the door, but, as upon the outside, there was no
indication of lock or latch or handle. I thought to prise it open with the axe-
blade, but it fitted so closely that I could only find the crack with difficulty
and to force the blade in was impossible.
Was I to be imprisoned here till the light came, and then hurried out to
such a fate as I had seen dealt to another of their captives? Or did the
stealthy movement above me imply an even nearer menace? I raised the
axe, and brought it down with all my force on the door, in the hope that it
would split beneath it, and careless of the noise I made. Noise there was in
the narrow chamber and beyond it also, as I was soon to learn; but the door
did not even shake to the blow. It was of so hard a substance, whether of

wood or metal, that I realised that it would be the axe-edge only which
would suffer should I continue.
The movements overhead were louder now, and I had the impression that
something was about to spring down from the darkness. The fear of the
unknown was upon me, which is of all fears the most dreadful.

CHAPTER XIX
THE DUEL IN THE NIGHT

I think we do less than justice to the alchemists of the dark ages of
Europe, and to their opponents also. We are accustomed to regard them as
charlatans, and to brand those as superstitious fools who burnt them. There
is a folly of credulity, but there is a folly of incredulity, which is far greater.
If they asked their patrons for money which would enable them to turn
lead into gold, the scientist of to-day is approaching the same point of
research which they must have reached when the possibility dawned upon
them. Perhaps his own progress would have been more rapid had he been
readier to assume that their theories were deserving of as much respect as
his own. It is not many years since it was announced as a momentous
discovery that bubonic plague is distributed by rats. This was known to the
Egyptian priesthood, and the information was available in one of the oldest
books in the world for any one who cared to read it. But that was a
superstition only! No doubt there are other “superstitions” in the same book
which we shall believe when we have rediscovered them.
On the other hand, it was realised by those among whom the alchemists
practised that they were the repositories of an esoteric knowledge, the
extent and power of which could be only dimly imagined, and of which
there was no guarantee that it would be used beneficently. Even now, a
scientist will present his fellow-men with a more nutritious infants’ food, or
a deadlier poison-gas, than has been previously invented, with the same
fatuous complacency. The evil eye may have been fact or imagination. I do
not know. It is no more inherently improbable than wireless telegraphy.
But it is the unknown that terrifies. I do not suppose that the Killers were
exceptionally intelligent. All the evidence is against it. Yet this episode of
the closing door, because it was beyond my understanding, was more
daunting than would have been a far more urgent danger of a familiar kind.

I stood there in a panic fear which it shames me to remember, feeling that I
was surrounded by those who watched and mocked in the darkness.
I think, also, that the increasing cold of the night, and the loss of my
companion’s vitality, may have assisted to depress me. Anyway, I stood
there for some time, afraid to move, in a terror more abject than anything I
had felt since I waited for the first dawn, on the mystery of the opal
pavement.
Nothing happened. The noises ceased in the roof. The moon clouded,
and the narrow windows darkened.
At last, I stepped up to one of them, and saw that a fine sleet was falling
without. For the first time, with a start of shame, I recalled my companion. I
had promised to keep my mind in touch with hers, and had forgotten her
entirely while I shrank from shadows.
The next moment we were in communication. She had been waiting to
report, and to hear from me, in a natural doubt as to the meaning of my
silence, but her thought showed no agitation, and learning that she was in
apparent security, and that her own report had no urgency, I first explained
what had happened. What she thought I cannot say, for her mind closed for
a moment. Then it answered quietly: “Shall I come back and push it open
again? Perhaps I had better tell you first what I have seen and heard.
“First, there is the open tank, which was boiling, as when you saw it.
There are few bodies in it. I suppose it is kept boiling continually. Beyond
this are the killing-sheds. There are two of these. Each consists of ten
apartments. One is empty. The other is filled. Each compartment consists of
four walls of metal bars, and a roof of a very hard material. Probably it is
the same as the door that has shut you in. The floors are of bars only. The
boiling water extends beneath. Three days before the feast the bars will be
withdrawn, and the victims will fall into the vat. I have spoken to my
Leader, and this she told me. The feast is four days from now. She will say
nothing, as the Leaders have decided it, but I think she has no desire to be
rescued. The other nine cells are filled by victims that the Dwellers have
given them. She says that these are creatures that have offended the
Dwellers. They are like my description of you, but with wings.
“There is one entrance only, from which the two sheds branch. It is at the
further end: an open archway. One of the archers guards it, with six of the

smaller Killers. They were all sleeping when I first approached, but the
noise you made woke one of them, and he roused the others. Four of them
have scattered now to search round the buildings. If one should come to the
arsenal it will be well that he find the door closed. If it be pushed open, you
will know that it is he, not I, and you can strike quickly, if you wish to do
so. The smaller Killers carry a strangling-cord, and a short javelin. It is two
feet long, and for a third of its length it is sharpened on both sides. It is
balanced for throwing. The smaller Killers are without intellect. They have
only greed, and cunning, and ferocity. The archers are in every way more
dangerous. The smaller Killers obey them. They cannot communicate by
thought, but signal to each other by whistling noises, which they make
through their suckers.
“I am in no danger. I can move more quickly and silently than they can
search in the shadows. I am lying now in the steam of the vat, which is
dense on the side to which the wind moves it. They have searched here
already and will not....”
My mind broke in: “The door is opening. Wait.”
I stood with the axe lifted to strike, as the door moved softly.
The drift of sleet was over, and the moon shone again on the entrance.
Cautiously, as the door opened, a head came round it, about three feet
from the ground. I brought the axe down with all my force, but the Killer
dodged very swiftly, and avoided it, slipping past me into the dark interior.
Losing its mark, the axe glanced off the edge of the door, barely missing
my foot, the side of the axe-head striking the ankle-bone so sharply that I
lost my footing and was on my knee for a moment. As I slipped, I heard the
whizz of the javelin that passed above me. The Killer had turned and
thrown it so quickly that it passed out over my head, through the gap of the
closing door.
As the door clicked, I sank lower, listening for a sound of my opponent
in the darkness, and thinking with a moment’s satisfaction that he had now
lost his weapon beyond recovery. Then, with fear, that he must be
surrounded by other weapons, of which he would know the positions, and
that any moment a javelin might transfix me.
I think it partly redeemed the dishonour of my previous cowardice, from
which all the trouble came, that I thought at this extremity to warn my

companion not to come into the same danger. I could not have imagined
that I should be saving my own life as I did so. Quick as a thought came the
answer: “I will wait as you wish. I have told my Leader. She says, ‘Do not
move. Put your hand on your neck with the palm outward. He will not think
of other weapons until he has tried the strangling-cord. It is forbidden to use
the weapons of others, and his sense is small.’”
Deadly peril and quick thought are comrades ever. At the instant,
something soft and slimy flicked my face, and drew backward. It was round
my neck the next moment, but my hand was there already.
Soft and slimy, and very cold, it tightened, not with a steady pressure,
but by a succession of contractile spasms, through which I realised with a
new horror that the cord itself was as living as the arm that threw it.
But for my hand, I should have been strangled instantly. As it was, my
utmost straining hardly sufficed for breathing, and I knew that I must act
quickly. The Killer, supposing that I must already be reduced to impotence,
was endeavouring to drag me toward him by the living rope he held.
An idea came to me. I loosed the axe, and drawing out the clasp-knife, I
opened it with my teeth. Then, with a sudden wrench of the left hand, I got
space for a moment to thrust it up within the ring, so that as the pressure
came again it closed on the sharp blade and helped to cut itself as it did so. I
pressed the knife outward with all my strength and the next instant the
deadly noose had parted.
I snatched at the loathsome cord as it writhed backward, let the knife
drop, caught at the axe with my free hand, and allowed myself to be
dragged forward.
Simple in conception, I realised now that my idea was more difficult in
execution. My opponent no doubt considered me to be strangled and
insensible. My intention was to take him by surprise, and to strike him
down with a sudden blow. But where he stood was in absolute darkness,
and I did not know the length of the cord. If I rose too soon, in the half-light
of the central chamber, I should defeat my purpose, even if I were not an
easy mark for any weapon he had available. If I waited too long it might be
equally disastrous.
Fortune helped me. He moved his foot as the cord shortened. He was
within three feet of where I lay as he did so. I loosed the cord, so that he

staggered back as the weight left it. Then I leapt, and struck. The blow must
have caught him fairly on the side, but (as I knew afterward) it did not
break the skin. The body gave way before it, and was flung against the wall,
with a great rattling of the arms upon it. I struck again, missing him, I think,
but with a blow that swept the wall and scattered the javelins.
Pandemonium followed. With a high whistling squeal he fled down the
dark hall and, knowing it to be my one chance to give him no time for
recovery, I followed blindly, with sweeping blows that got him more than
once, and raked the walls of their weapons. It drowned the rustling in the
roof, which had gone unheeded through the more urgent dangers, and which
had been accompanied at times by a plaintive chattering noise, by no means
formidable.
It is curious that it was while I chased him thus, in the height of the
uproar and physical exertion, that my mind found leisure to recall my
companion, and to tell her what was happening. She answered me with the
unhurried speed which was her characteristic in moments of crisis. “The
whole settlement is awake. I think they hear you. They are running across
the enclosure. The five here, which are armed, are also coming. I cannot
join you, even now, unless I run very swiftly. Shall I come?”
I answered, “If you will,” and knew that she was already running across
the open, at a pace no Killer could match for a moment.
It was just then that I really got him. My earlier blows had only thrown
him from side to side, buffeted but not broken, while he retaliated more
than once with a thrown javelin, not without result, as was shown by a foot
that limped, even in the midst of this urgency. But this time the stroke
caught his left leg with the wall behind it, and cut it cleanly through. He fell
on the floor, in a place where the moon still lighted it. As he did so, I struck
again, and the soft toughness of the elastic body, which gave way so easily
in a free space, burst when the blow came with the hard floor beneath it.
The contents ran out over the floor like an over-ripe tomato, or so it seemed
in the moonlight. It was an uglier sight when the day found it.
The door was moved swiftly, and my companion was beside me.

CHAPTER XX
THE BOW

The next moment a rush of the Killers broke upon the door through
which she had slipped, but it did not yield. With far better sight than mine in
the darkness, and with a cool detachment of mind, which did not seem to be
affected by her ecstatic delight at the swift movement of the adventure, she
had noticed instantly that, though the door had no fastening, there were
slots in the wall—three each side—and heavy bars propped against it to fit
them.
Lightly lifted, the first bar fell into place as the rush of the Killers
reached the entrance.
As she placed the other bars she told me, “There is one of the great
bows, and a bundle of shafts on the wall behind you—You don’t see at
night as I do?—They’re about the only things that are left on the wall.”
(Her mind smiled as she thought of it.) “Do you always make so much
commotion when you kill anything? The archer shot me as I ran. He shot
straight. I heard the shaft coming behind me. My mind became like yours. I
was uncertain what to do, and had no time to think thoroughly. I did not
know whether I had will-power enough to turn the shaft. I leapt up. It
passed between my thighs as I did so. It cut the fur of one, but without
breaking the skin.” “That isn’t serious,” my mind interjected, with a thought
on my own wounded foot. “It may be,” she answered. “I should have bent
aside. It’s absurd to be caught in such a way, because my thought failed me.
I never understood so clearly before how you live and think. It must be all
chance and guessing. The shaft went on into the crowd of the Killers that
were running from the sleeping-places. They all whistled with fear. They
are great cowards. I could not see that it struck any of them.”
As our thoughts crossed, I had felt along the wall, and found the bow. It
was five feet in length or more, bent for use, and of such strength that I
doubted whether I could handle it. I found the shafts, and fixing one on the

cord, I stepped to the left-hand window, risking any missile they might
throw, but protected somewhat by the darkness behind me. It was about
four feet from the ground, and about four feet broad, but not more than a
foot high, and with two horizontal bars crossing it, about four inches apart.
As the ordinary Killers were about three feet high, they were below its
level as they crowded round the door. There was an excited hubbub of
whistling and whining noises, their suckers waggling in every direction as
they all talked at once and found no listeners—or so I thought.
Then they were silenced by the higher note of the archer behind them.
Evidently he gave them an order to move aside, for they quickly cleared on
either hand, till the space was bare before him. With his five supporters
beside him, their javelins in readiness, he advanced, bow in hand, toward
the window.
I thought that I had better get my shot in first, if I wished to have any
further interest in the adventure. I noticed with a flicker of amusement that
my companion’s mind was of the same opinion. I thought she was learning
fast—or was she coming down to my level?
It was a very bow of Ulysses. I pulled it back with difficulty, and the
arrow leapt from the cord with little aiming. It rose high over the heads of
the advancing line, and—amazing fluke!—it struck the other archer—(there
were only two of these monsters who were adult and vigorous)—who was
coming up behind them, and whom I had not seen at all till the shaft hit
him.
He was not seriously hurt, as we learnt afterwards, but had that one
arrow ended half the pack the immediate result could not have been more
decisive. Right and left they scattered, with a discordant clamour of
whistling signals, till the whole space was empty before us.
I was feeling the relief natural to a timid nature at the withdrawal of an
instant danger, and an illogical satisfaction at the result of my clumsy shot,
when my mood was changed by the realisation of the laughing gaiety of my
companion’s mind.
If I were in a world of strange sights and chances, it was in many ways
more native to me than to her, and a condition of existence in which you
directed your body to do something within its capacity and it did quite
differently, had a weirdness beyond her experience or imagination.

“It seems to me,” she thought, still mirthfully, “that your life in any
world must be a succession of unexpected happenings, and I begin to
understand why you seem to me both so brave and so cowardly. I would
gladly give a hundred years of my life for a day in your company. But we
may give more than either of us wish, if we disregard what the Killers are
doing. You should judge their ways better than I, being more nearly of their
kind; do you think they will attack us again, and how?”
I answered, “They are not of my kind at all, but very loathsome vermin. I
don’t think they will attack us again very quickly. I suppose we have most
of their weapons here. Also, this place seems to be designed for defence—
though against what we have no means of knowing. The bars on the inside
show its intention. I suppose they kept their arms here because they would
retire here in any emergency. Then, we are in a world which is not used to
action in the night. They may feel the cold more than we do. The fact that
we have wounded or killed one of their leaders at the first attempt will
dispirit them. Unless there be another entrance, which is our greatest
danger, I think we shall be safe till the light comes.”
She replied, “But shall we wait till dawn without action? How will that
help us? At least, if you are right, we shall have time for clearer thinking.
Let us go to the farther end.”
She led the way, for it seemed that her sight was little less in the dark
than in the daytime, telling me, as she did so, that she saw no sign of any
entrance, and we rested at the farther end.
Even if we decided to wait till dawn, the prospect was not pleasant. It
could not be a less space away than three nights of my familiar time. I
became aware that my left foot was very painful, and that the boot was full
of blood. I was hungry also, tired, and very thirsty. The night, even in this
shelter, was very cold. Outside, it was fine again, and the moon still shone
through the windows.
I knew that my companion felt no need of food or drink, and the thin
striped body seemed indifferent to heat or cold, and while I had held her
hand, and shared her vitality, the call for food had been dormant in myself
also. But I had fought out this last struggle unaided, and it was long since I
had eaten, though I had drunk deeply at a spring on the hillside as the dusk
was falling.

“Your foot is hurt,” she thought, “can we mend it?” I took off the boot—
what was left of it—and pulled away the remains of a clotted sock, but it
was too dark for me to see the wound. With a feeling of relief unspeakable,
I knew that the small webbed fingers were on it, with a vitality that thudded
through the whole of my exhausted body. She said, “The javelin must have
struck aslant, across the front of the foot, and entered where the string held
the boot together. It did not cut deeply enough to keep its place, and must
have fallen as the foot moved. I think it will heal quite easily. I suppose you
are of a kind that grows again without difficulty. I know among the sea-
creatures that the lower the form of the body the more easily it unites or
grows, if it be torn or shredded. May I clean and close it?”
I know it was done very delicately, and the wound was trivial. A small
furred finger cleaned and searched it, so that it began to bleed freshly. “I am
going to tear a little skin from its sides, because it is so unclean. Do you
mind?” she asked. Of course, I assented. It felt to me that it was more than a
little. I think the vitality that her hand gave made the pain greater.
“If you slept,” she suggested, “and I kept my hand here, I think it would
be well in a short time, and your body would be fit for use. It is no good to
us now.”
I have noticed among my kind, that there is nothing that draws us
together so intimately as the common sharing of any physical danger;
perhaps it was from this cause in part, perhaps in part that the method of our
communication established an intimacy of a kind of which—however
commonplace to her—I had no previous experience, perhaps, also, that the
very difference of our minds attracted me, but, from whatever cause, I was
aware of an attachment to this creature, who, I told myself, was less like a
man than a seal, and had no sex as we understand it, such as I had never felt
for any earthly woman.
As I lay there, at the gate of sleep, the slim webbed hand that pressed my
foot was the dearest thing that any world contained, and half-a-million
years had no power to divide us.
And then—for one incautious instant—she let me see her mind, and I
knew how she regarded me.
I remember once, at a call of urgency, I volunteered to assist a shepherd
who was ministering to some neglected sheep, which had been bitten by

blow-flies. The grubs had hatched in the wounds, and had burrowed inward.
The sores had festered, and some had become cavities several inches deep,
laying bare bone and flesh, or going down to the vital organs themselves,
and in them were a mass of grubs that burrowed and fed.
Some of the sheep lay dying, others might be saved if prompt attention
were paid to the wounds.
I still remember acutely the repulsion with which I touched and cleansed,
and dressed them. Others might have felt it less, but from such things I am
constitutionally averse.
But the feeling was mild to the repulsion with which she regarded the
foot on which her fingers rested. It was different in quality, because she had
a mind which saw clearly what should be done, and a body that did not
dream of rebellion; but it remained that she regarded the foot she touched as
something more grotesque and repulsive than her familiar fishes, which
swam in the clean flood, and that she felt as I might have done, had duty
called me to minister to one of the Killers—to touch the worm-pink
sliminess of the loathsome body while it waved its sucker in a whistling
gratitude for my attentions.
She knew her error instantly. “I should not have shown you. All is well.
Sleep. I will think of it thoroughly. Besides, I must communicate with our
Leader.”
Then her mind closed entirely; and after a time I slept.

CHAPTER XXI
THE BAT-WINGS

When I waked, the long night was far spent, and the moonlight had left
the window. My companion’s hand was still laid closely upon the injured
foot, and as I stirred, her thought met me.
“I have much to tell. Lie still, and listen.
“First, of ourselves. It is true that your body is, to me, a thing both
absurd and repulsive. But should this divide us? My own body does not
wear out, and, if injured, in most cases can be repaired, though not easily. I
know that I exist independently of it, and that I am separate from it, even
though I am in it, perhaps, for ever.
“Your body is of little use, and you control it imperfectly. It needs
constant repair, and it is of a kind that wears out very rapidly. What you do
afterward, or whether you continue at all, is doubtful even to yourself,
though in that, I suppose, you are misled by your body’s impermanence.
Whether you could be provided with such a body as mine, or whether you
could use it, I do not know. My Leaders might, but in such matters we have
little knowledge. The Dwellers know much of these things, as you will
understand from what I am about to tell you. If you have the courage to ask
them, they can tell you much, if they will; but they may destroy you at
once, if they think it needful.
“Still, you have little to lose, for such a body cannot be of much account,
even to its owner, and it may be worth attempting. If you should succeed,
we could be companions for always, for it seems to me that there are ways
in which you are greater than I. If I dislike the body in which you live, it
should have no power to divide us. I may dislike the killing-pens, but do I
therefore dislike my Leader because she is in them? I know that you dislike
my body also, because it is strange to you, though it is in all ways better
made, and is perfect for the uses for which I need it.”

I answered, “I do not think my body is of little account, and I have no
mind that the Dwellers should destroy it, till I have an assurance of
something better, which you cannot give. It is true that in some ways you
repel me, and that I know best how well I love you when we are both in
darkness. But what you say is right, and generous also. My foot feels well,
and I am refreshed and rested. Tell me what you have learnt, and we will
decide what can be done before morning finds us.”
She replied, “I have been told much by my Leader, and some of the
things are very strange. You may understand them better than I do. She is in
no fear for herself, and might have escaped before, had she been in haste to
do so. She was caught in a deep pit, the top of which was covered over, in a
way the Killers use to capture their prey. As she fell, she found that many of
the strangling-cords, of which you have had some experience, closed round
her. They are like living worms, having no head, but with an instinct to bind
anything which they strike, or which strikes them. The Killers know how to
carry them safely. It is from these that we have most to fear, if we should be
attacked again, or should ourselves attack them. They all have these cords,
which they keep with them both night and day.
“She was not strangled, but was so tightly bound that she could not
escape when they found her a few minutes later. Had there been more time
for thought she would certainly have seen a way to escape them. She found
her will had no power whatever against the cords. They had no minds that
she could subject to hers. There is such life in the oceans—too low for us to
influence it. That is a mystery to us, but I cannot talk of it now.
“When the Killers arrived, she confused them for a time by the serenity
of her mind, but, as more collected, and they became very eager to capture
her, as a strange prey for the coming feast, she found it increasingly difficult
to hold them back, and she determined to save her power and to see what
they would attempt.
“They then bound her with many ropes and removed the cords, (which
relax after a time, and are useless till their vigour returns), and carried her to
the pen, where she has remained ever since. As its only exit is through the
bars of the floor, and the vat beneath is flooded with the boiling water, they
left the ropes loose, so that she was soon able to free herself. In this they
showed their stupidity. Because the boiling water would kill such things as

themselves they supposed that it would kill her. So she resolved to wait till
the bars should be withdrawn, and learn what she might of the strange
world she had entered.”
“Do you mean,” I asked, “that the heat of fire or water has no power over
your bodies?”
“No,” she said, “of fire I know less, but water of such heat would destroy
us if we were to attempt to breathe it. There are boiling springs beneath the
ocean, and it was in one of these that the one damaged her body beyond
remedy, of whom I told you. But we often swim those springs in safety. No
water of any temperature can penetrate our fur, nor can it be injured by such
means. We have, therefore, to swim with closed gills and eyes, and with
other precautions. We cannot breathe or see, nor dare we attempt either until
we are quite sure that we are in cooler water again.
“My Leader’s intention was not easy. It was to dive blindly into the
boiling water as soon as the bars were withdrawn; to swim to the nearest
side of the vat where it extends beyond the pens that are built above it; to
clamber out of it, and trust to her speed for safety. She had considered every
possibility, and had decided that she could do it, so that it concerned her
mind no further. Our coming has altered this.
“It was the thought that I may have to swim in such water, and shall be
injured, that caused me to blame my own folly when I allowed the arrow to
graze me. In such event the scars on my right arm would give me trouble
sufficient, though they are not as a fresh wound.
“Being in the pens, and having resolved on her own course of action, she
attempted to establish communication with the creatures which were in the
other compartments. She found, after a time, that she was able to do so. She
learnt that they are not creatures of this age at all, and they are so like you
in mind—(though in some ways baser)—that when I told her of you she
first supposed that another of their kind had escaped the custody of the
Dwellers.
“They told her this. In the interior where they live, the Dwellers have
captive specimens of the inhabitants of many bygone ages. These they keep
under such conditions as approximate to those from which they come, so
that they may study their habits and acquire their knowledge, if they should
have any which may be worth recording.

“Sometimes, part or all of a collection of these specimens are condemned
to destruction because they do something which the Dwellers regard as
intolerable, though it may be, to them, a natural action.
“The nine creatures now awaiting death have been condemned in this
way. My Leader tells me that they are not worth saving, as you will agree
when you hear their own account of their condemnation.
“They say that they were the controlling race on the earth’s surface about
200,000 years ago. When I learnt this I remembered that you had said that
you came of a race 300,000 years more ancient, and I asked my Leader to
inquire whether the Dwellers had any specimens of your race also.
“They replied that they did not know, as they had never left their own
reservation until this undeserved (as they considered) catastrophe had fallen
upon them, but from their own knowledge of the civilisations which had
preceded their own, they should think it unlikely. They said that the time
mentioned was one at which there was a race of men existing for a short
period, too transient and too barbarous for the Dwellers to be likely to
consider them worthy of any study. Of all the myriad creations that the
earth has known before and since, they were in some ways the most
abortive. Although they only occupied, at their most numerous time, about
one-half of the earth’s surface, they are believed to have destroyed
themselves for fear of their own fecundity. They killed each other in many
violent ways, and rewarded those who devised fresh methods for their own
destruction. The stench of their diseases rose in the sky till the other planets
protested, and there would certainly have been a Divine intervention, had
they not destroyed themselves, as I have told you.
“All this may be true, or not. You can judge of that. The creatures that
tell it believe themselves to be much better, but are of a very filthy kind.
Their appearances may be better than yours, but their minds are worse. I
will show them to you, as my Leader has given them to me.”
She then gave me a picture which was as vivid in her thought as though I
stood at the side of the killing-pens, and looked through the steam at those
who were confined within them.
The first I saw was of the size and shape of a man, the body very thickly
and grossly formed, and of a dark sepia colour, irregularly blotched with
yellow, in some places as light as sulphur.

It sat cross-legged. It had a heavy head, which hung forward; the nose
was very large and horny, like a vulture’s beak. The natural impression of
the face was rapacious and cruel, but it had now an appearance of abject
and hopeless misery, which was almost comic, through all its tragic reality.
It had large bat-wings, wide open on either side, and as it crouched thus,
with wings extended, it appeared to me as though it were seeking a space
beneath an umbrella which was not sufficient to cover it.
There were six more of these creatures—all males. There were two
others—one male, one female—alike, except that their faces, though
equally brutal, were less intelligent, and that their wings were closed when I
saw them.
My companion interpreted—“The seven were judges, and the two were
witnesses in a recent trial which has brought them all to this end, very
justly. The seven cannot close their wings, which are broken at birth in
recognition that they are of a high caste which does no work.” (I thought of
the finger-nails of a Chinese mandarin, but I was too much interested in the
tale which her Leader had obtained from them to break her thought to
discuss it.)
“The other two can use their wings, but they do not fly as a bird does.
They can use them only to flutter up to the perches on which they sleep. It
appears that there is some reason in their own land why they should not
sleep on the ground, but it was not explained.
“The two came before the judges with a complaint against a female of
their kind. She had been short of food, which, it seems, is divided among
them according to certain duties which they fulfil, which are sometimes
very difficult to complete, or from attempting which they might even be
forbidden by others who have more power than themselves.
“Lacking food, and knowing that these two had it in plenty, she asked
them for some, which they refused to give. She then took it, while they
were absent.
“The judges did not punish these two who had refused food to the one
who needed it, and who were not ashamed of the tale they told.
“They decided that the one who had taken the food she needed should be
beaten.

“They did not know that there was any world beyond that in which they
lived, or that the Dwellers existed.
“But the Dwellers had watched them, and it appears that they were
appalled at the wickedness of the creatures that they had caused to continue,
when nature would have destroyed them. They intended at first to end the
colony, thinking that they had no right to let such creatures live, whatever
they might learn by observing them, but in the end they relented.
“They have removed these nine for the fate they merit, and have deputed
one of themselves to endeavour to teach the first decencies of existence to
the remainder of their kind.
“The Dwellers can be very merciful.”
I answered, “The tale is strange enough, but it contains some things
which are less so to me than they must be to you, for I have known of such
in my own time and race. But there is one thing that puzzles me. When
these creatures have fallen into the boiling tanks, and their bodies have
become sodden with heat, and the Killers have sucked them in, it will be an
end of their bodies surely, and the bodies of the Killers (who may be no
better, though, it is true, we know no such thing of them, as you have told of
these) will benefit.
“But that is their bodies only. If these creatures exist apart from their
bodies, what is gained?”
She said, “If you cannot answer that, neither can I. It is a thing of which I
have never thought till now, for all this is very new. The Dwellers, who
have many thoughts, and who do things, may know, but I begin to suppose
that, though they are so much greater than you, they may sometimes change
and blunder, as you do. I have also blundered since I followed you in the
doing of new things. They may know what you ask, but, for me, it is too
difficult.”

CHAPTER XXII
NIGHT IN THE ARSENAL

It was now very cold, and, had I been alone, I should have suffered
intensely. She asked me if any plan had formed while I rested, and I replied
that I had thought of many things, but that it was always difficult for me to
make up my mind quickly, unless circumstances were urgent. The night was
still young. We could unbar the door, if we would, but, if we were not
attacked again, we could not open it. This was a difficulty that spoilt almost
any plan for aggressive action. If her Leader could really swim the boiling
tank in safety, the time might come when she could release us, if we should
still require it, but this was not yet possible unless she could also unbar the
place which captured her.
“I have no doubt you are right,” her mind answered. “If we cannot open
the door, it is best to let others open it for us. If there be a way to open it,
we can see it in the morning. You see so badly at night that we should find it
a great disadvantage. But I have really little fear of the Killers.
“If my Leader could release herself now, they would see her as she ran
toward us. There would be less than nothing gained if she entered, for there
would be no-one left outside who could open later, if a chance should
favour us. Let us think of other things while the night passes. Are there any
in your own land who could be as base as those who wait their end in the
killing-sheds?”
I answered frankly, “I think there are, though it is difficult to explain,
without making them appear even worse than they may really be. It is in our
natures to act independently of one another. Each has his own store of food,
and of the things his life requires. There are often those who depend upon
him, and for whom he cares more than for his own life. If all the wealth we
have were divided equally, even if we would then work equally to maintain
it, we should become restless and dissatisfied. Adventure, risk, and chance,
are essential to our contentment.

“Then, we grow old and die very quickly, and it is our nature that we can
learn little except by our own experience, so that it is always a world of
children.
“Living the life we do, we feel that we cannot dwell together at all,
unless we can trust each other not to take the things which are ours. We
could not keep any social order without judges who could punish those who
transgress it. These judges, even though they might be merciful and
forgiving in their private life, may feel that they have no right to be so when
complaint is made by another.”
She answered, “It seems to me that I have sight of a very terrible world,
which you could easily alter if you would, but you have not really answered
my question. In the case of which I told you, it appears to me that the real
wrongs are two. First, that they had such laws that one of their kind could
be short of food, and debarred from the means by which she might obtain it.
Second, that those who had it should have refused to share. The first seems
to me to condemn the whole race which endures such conditions, for
themselves or their neighbours. The second condemns alike the two who
refused, and the judges who failed to see that the real wrong was there, and
not in the theft which followed. But I cannot think quickly of these things.
They are too strange, and too far below the lives of any of the creatures that
the ocean holds.”
I replied again, still trying to be fair to all, though my own thought was
hers, and with a more vivid bitterness, having been in actual contact with
the life from which she revolted.
“I agree with all that you think, but there is, with us, another trouble,
which you could hardly imagine. I do not know how the food which you
say you take, in your own way, once in every year, may be obtained, nor
with what effort, but I suppose that there is plenty for all, and it has become
evident to me from what you have told me of the lives you lead, that you
have abundant freedom and leisure, and that whatever communal duties
each individual may have, they are not very onerous. Our conditions are
very different. Life is maintained by the constant toil of the majority of our
race—a toil often burdened by very adverse conditions, and numerous
perils to health or life. Even so, there may be times when food fails, and
some must go short.

“You will see that it would be unfair if some, avoiding this toil, should
take by trickery or theft that which is won by the exertions of others.”
“It seems to me,” she replied, “that to condone one baseness you suggest
another, which is even more despicable. It seems to me, also, that you may
require many to judge wrong, because you have few who can lead rightly.
“I think that there are two ways of life which are good. There is the
higher way, which is ours, in which all are united; and there is the lower
way, of the shark or the shell-fish, of freedom and violence, which only
greater violence can destroy, and which nothing can bring into slavery. But
the vision which you give me is of a state which is lower than either of
these, of blind servitudes and oppressions, to which you yield without
willingness.
“The more you tell me, the more easily do I understand the sudden
violences and crafts of your mind, and the disorders through which you
think. But has there been none who has pointed out to you either the road of
freedom, or the road of concord? Are you content with a social state as
uncontrolled as the bodies in which you live so briefly? Have you no law-
makers whom you can reverence, and whom you can obey with serenity?”
I answered, “In the country in which I live, we have invented a very
curious state, in which we believe that we ourselves make all laws, for
ourselves or each other. When I consider it, I know that it is not true, but it
is a fact of many consequences that we believe it to be so.
“You must allow for the fact that if, in any part of our world, there
should arise a trusted ruler—and there have been such, who have been
followed gladly by its best men, and who have made such laws that their
race has prospered and increased—he will probably have lived most of his
life before he gain his position, and his body will quickly decay, and there
will be none to succeed him.
“In my own land we had, at one time, a custom that the son of a ruler
should be a ruler after him, whether he were fit or not. Some of them did
good, or at least attempted to do so. Few of them did great harm. They took
more than their share of the good things of the land, and they gave to their
friends. They sometimes made war when their people would have been
content to remain at peace. They sometimes—but less often—prevented
war, when their people desired it.

“They interfered little with the personal freedom of their subjects, so
long as their own pleasures were gratified. For their own sakes they liked to
be popular. Few laws were made, and if such as there were should be
considered oppressive, the people would unite to insist that they should be
reduced or altered. When the king and his subjects differed, it was always
that they wanted less law, and there was confusion, and sometimes
violence, till they succeeded in their desire.
“They objected particularly to having their goods or money taken by
taxation, and their kings did not dare to tax them heavily. To enforce many
laws requires the employment of many men, and great expenditure of
treasure, from which a king gets no benefit. Had the king made many laws,
he would have had no money to administer them, even had he wished to do
so.
“But even so, men were not satisfied. There is an old tale with us of a
colony of frogs in a river, which had no king, and thinking that it would
increase their importance to have one, they petitioned their Creator, and he,
being kindly, showed them a dead log in the stream, and told them that their
king was there. But when they found that this king was inactive, they
complained again, and he, being angered at their folly, gave them a stork,
who chased and ate them as often as hunger moved him. The tale says that
they were no more pleased than before, but that they complained in vain,
for their Creator would hear them no further. We, having tried kings of both
qualities, the predatory and the inactive, and being no more satisfied than
the frogs, have devised an imagination which has conquered those who
conceived it. Even though we recognise the incubus which is upon us, and
that it is of our own devising, we cannot hereby perceive any way to
remove it.
“The fact is this. Our ancestors of a previous century, believing that they
had discovered a way to freedom, devised a plan by which the people of
each locality should choose one of their number, and these men, meeting
together, should have power to frame laws, and to make impositions upon
them. Every few years a new choice should be made, so that they could
replace any with whose actions they were dissatisfied.
“This procedure has now been followed for many years, with a variety of
unforeseen consequences, all of which I could not explain without a

previous understanding of the whole social order—or disorder—in which it
is rooted.
“But one sequel is simple. These men, being appointed to make laws,
have proceeded to do so for many years with uninterrupted diligence, and
there is no power to stop them.
“How can they be stopped, but by a law of their own making? And that is
the last law which they would consider.
“The result is that we are oppressed by a weight of laws, to which we
render a partial and bewildered obedience, aware that there are many of
which we have not even heard; and every year hundreds of thousands of us,
most of whom have no intention of law-breaking—are indeed nervously
anxious to avoid it—are insulted and plundered by the innumerable officials
through whom these laws are administered, and whom we toil to support for
our own undoing.”
I went on to show her pictures of the life from which I came, so that she
should realise the existence which was possible under such conditions,
where personal freedom had disappeared beyond anything which our planet
had previously known, or is ever likely to experience again; where you
might not even die in peace, except under the penalty that your body would
afterwards be seized and cut open, to ascertain how you had contrived to do
it.
Horror, pity, curiosity, disgust, contempt, and wonder chased themselves
across the surface of my companion’s mind as the nature of this life became
visualised before her. With these there was a satisfaction that I had escaped,
by whatever channel, from conditions of such barbarity, and a certain
admiration or respect for myself, such as we may feel for one whom we
recognise to have lived through some unusual tragedy, beyond the common
experience of mankind. Then there was a desire to see for herself the
strange and alien life which I showed her, and I knew that, were it not an
impossibility for her to enter a past to which she did not belong, she would
gladly have adventured it with me. I thought, with curiosity, of how she
would encounter such an existence, could I have translated her to a mortal
body and the conditions of life with which I was myself familiar, and I had
a moment’s doubt of one who, I felt, had experienced only the pleasures of

existence without its pain, but my final thought was that the serenity of her
mind was a spiritual quality too fundamental for any servitude to subdue it.
She asked me whether our world had always lacked a leader to propose
any rule of life other than this state which lacked either individual freedom
or a rational mutuality, and I replied that there had been an event of two
millenniums earlier than my own life, which was commonly regarded as a
revelation from Heaven. Its Exponent had announced a series of
paradoxical aphorisms for the conduct of life, which were of an
unforgettable kind, and were still highly respected. If they were obeyed, life
would be fundamentally different, but the common opinion was that they
were quite impracticable. Each of these aphorisms prescribed a line of
conduct and foretold its result. It might seem difficult to honour the
Teacher, and reject His wisdom so absolutely. But it was contrived very
simply. The consequences which had been ascribed to the course of life
which He taught were allocated to a vague existence which was to follow at
a distant time, and in another sphere. Meanwhile, if they were obeyed at all,
it was regarded as an act of self-sacrifice, no one supposing for a moment
that the results which He foretold would actually follow. I admitted that I
knew of no authenticated instance of anyone obeying these precepts with
results unsatisfactory to himself or others.
As the long night passed I went on, in response to a curiosity which
seemed insatiable in its desire of exploration, to describe many phases of
the social and economic chaos which we call civilisation, often illuminating
my own mind as I did so.
I noticed that she was particularly impressed by the precarious tenure on
which we hold the houses which our defective bodies require, and the
uncertainty of many of us in obtaining a regular and sufficient supply of the
very necessities of life itself and the consequent bitterness with which we
regard a stranger who lays hands on anything to which we consider we have
a prior claim.
Realising this, she began to understand how those among us of the baser
sort, who have more than sufficient for their own comfort, may yet
persecute any who attempt to share it, without incurring the contempt or
punishment of their fellows.

Joined to this bitter resentment at any private theft, I had to exhibit the
docility with which we allow ourselves to be robbed by legal process, and
the immunity and respect enjoyed by those who are the instruments and
beneficiaries of these extortions; and, as I showed it, I had to realise the
fantastic inequity with which these impositions are levied, as, for instance,
that a man who prefers salt shall pay less than one who eats sugar, or that
one who keeps a dog shall pay more than one who keeps a pet of another
species, or—an idea almost devilish in its lunacy—that a man shall pay
more heavily because he provides a larger home, with the increase of young
children who are dependent upon him.
I reverted to the explanation that, while no king could have imposed this
burden of taxation upon us, we were bewildered by the belief that it was of
our own doing, and that this conviction acted as a paralysis....
The shaft struck the wall sharply, and rebounded to the floor beside us.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE ESCAPE

It is the habit of mankind to depreciate the appliances of its ancestors,
when it has superseded them with other contrivances. In our time, bows and
arrows have become symbolic of futility among engines of war. Yet, before
the introduction of gunpowder, the longbow was considered a weapon
sufficiently formidable to threaten the whole order of feudalism, and it is at
least doubtful whether stupidity alone, or a deliberate purpose, exposed the
archers at Bannockburn, without the usual support of pikemen, to the
charge of the Scottish horse.
It is certainly true that a company of Crécy archers would have quickly
cleared more than one of the Flanders trenches, which were too near for
comfort, yet too far for a grenade to reach them, and too deep for the
trajectory of a bullet.
We had talked and slept and talked again as the long night continued, and
had not noticed the first faint light that came slowly from a sun that rose to
so prolonged a dawn, till the arrow fell rattling on the floor beside us.
My companion laughed as it fell—not with her lips, that only opening
slightly for a breathing which it seemed no haste could quicken, nor with
her eyes, to my knowing, for it was too dark to see them, though they must
have been alight with the joy of unfamiliar action, but with her mind,
through which the laughter and its cause were conveyed together, and by
which means mirth, though amid a crowd of others, could be private to
those who shared it.
Our thought was single that we should go back to our first station
beneath the door, where we supposed we should be safe from the arrows.
She rose lightly—another shaft striking the place where she had lain, as she
left it—and slowly and stiffly, from my long vigil, I followed her. She was
becoming used to the frequent evidences of the imperfections of my
physical existence, but this exhibition stirred her to a fresh wonder. “Didn’t

it know,” she asked, “that you wanted to get up quickly? Is it insubordinate,
or entirely stupid?” I defended it as I could, “I think it does its best for me,
in its own way. I have used it very hardly of late, and it needs repair; within
a few minutes, when it understands that it must work again, it will be ready.
Did it never protest, I should use it beyond its capacity, and soon destroy it.
But perhaps if you had come to my world, you would have found your own
body less perfectly adapted to more strange conditions than you find here.”
She answered frankly, “It is likely enough. Though I should at least
know what was happening. You seem to me to live in yours like a stranger,
without control or confidence, and not knowing what goes on within it.
“But I agree with you the more easily because I am already feeling the
need of the water in which I most naturally live, and I am also conscious of
the loss of the energy I have given you, which, in about two months from
now, should it continue at the same rate, would exhaust me entirely.”
As this thought reached me, we were moving down the centre of the hall,
she in front, because she was confident that her will could turn a shaft if it
were coming directly at her. Suddenly I saw her bulk more broadly in the
dim light, and was sharply startled, till her thought assisted my eyes to
explain it. She had lifted and shaken loose her fur, which was of a
surprising length, and then drawn it down again more closely than ever, so
that its surface was as smooth and shining as a serpent’s skin.
I had an impulse to lay my hand on the glossy back, but dare not break
the barrier of her physical difference and aloofness. It was as though an
unapproachable virginity surrounded her. I vaguely realised the power by
which she could control the fiercest creatures of the deep, and how they felt
as they cowered before her.
If she understood my thought, she gave no sign, but went on to tell me,
“In the ocean are many springs, some that are hot, and some that are very
cold, where we can lie with lifted fur, and let the water go through it. Here I
can only shake it loose, and every hair is too sensitive to rest content if any
speck of dust be upon it, especially of organic origin, for they dread
corruption in any form.”
We were two-thirds down the floor by now, and she was stepping
delicately to avoid the body of the Killer, which had spilled across it, when
an arrow passed us, and the next moment I was struck sharply behind the

shoulder so that I staggered and recovered myself with difficulty. “I’ve got
it now,” I thought, for there was a dull pain under my shoulder-blade, and I
was aware of a feathered shaft that projected behind me, but her mind only
laughed in answer.
“It isn’t easy to tell where your body begins or ends, but I don’t think
that arrow’s hurt you.”
She was right. It had entered the knapsack in a downward direction,
pierced a variety of its contents, and then been deflected by a burning-glass
which I had brought in case my small stock of matches should be exhausted
—but so far I had had no occasion to use it. Now it projected three inches
from the lower corner of the knapsack, a narrow, steel-like, unbarbed head,
of razor sharpness.
But how had it struck me there?
We crouched with our backs to the barred door, and watched and
understood.
The walls and ceiling were of the same substance as the door that had
turned my axe-edge, and the shafts that struck them fairly rebounded, but
they were shooting now so that the shafts glanced from the roof, and then
did diabolic turns, like the wizardry of billiard balls when a master guides
them. Whether there were any quality of an unfamiliar kind in shaft or
ceiling I cannot say, but such shooting I had never seen, or imagined.
Fortunately for us the side walls were still hung with enough weapons to
make such jugglery difficult upon them—(the end was bare like the ceiling)
—and the floor was scattered with those I had brought down in my chase of
the Killer.
“Unless you have something better to suggest than sitting here, we shall
probably be in the stewing-vats before sunset,” my comrade considered
judicially, as a shaft slanted across us at about two feet distance.
“I am of the same mind,” I answered amiably, “but what can we do? I
might send one arrow from the window. I should probably aim too hastily
to hit anyone. I should not be likely to send a second. We can unbar the
door, but we cannot open it. We could ask your Leader to do so, if she can
escape from her present confinement, but the moment seems inopportune.
Can you get in touch with her, and learn what is happening outside?”

In response to this suggestion she established communication almost at
once, and was soon passing on the report to me.
“There are two archers shooting. The one you hit is hurt in the head, but
only slightly. The smaller Killers have gone to the farther side, and are out
of view. The very old, the diseased, and the young, are congregated together
at the far end of the enclosure. The infirm archer is with them, but he was
consulted by the others, and it seemed that he gave them the plan of attack
which they are following.
“There is a young one of the larger kind who is turning somersaults in
excitement, because he hopes that the older may be killed, and he will be
able to obtain a bow.
“They suppose that the arrows have destroyed you already, but they are
cautious, and will continue to shoot till their ammunition is ended. The
smaller Killers, who have gone round to the side, are well provided with
strangling-cords, and have also many javelins. They have fetched a quantity
from one of the other buildings. They are elaborately made, and have red
shafts. Probably they were of a sacred or ornamental character, and have
been acquired for fighting purposes only in this emergency.
“The javelins are not dangerous to you at present, as they turn in the air
when thrown, and the window bars are too narrow for them to pass.
“There is no guard here now, and the bat-winged victims are greatly
excited by the hope of escape, but they appear to have no means of
releasing themselves.... I think the arrows are ended.”
We thought so too, for they had now ceased to enter. If our enemies
hoped or supposed that we had been disabled, they must advance to
investigate, and I had the sense of relief which comes when you can at last
strike back, after being exposed to an attack which there is no means of
resisting. I had a moment’s inclination to unbar the door, and rush out upon
them when they pushed it open, with such axe-blows as might scatter them,
and win our freedom at a moment.
I had the thought that if the archers could be cut down, the rest would be
panic-stricken to see it, and that without their bows they might not be very
formidable, but the recollection of the strangling-cords was enough to check
this impulse effectually.

Then I thought that if they expected that they had killed us, they would
not suppose that the door had been unbarred, and how would they
endeavour to enter?
The light had increased now, so that the whole extent of the hall was
visible. It showed nothing that we had not already seen or imagined, except
that in the roof there were slits of an oblong shape, and of a regular
occurrence, and over the sides of these we saw the heads of small lizard-
like creatures protruding—bright yellow, snout-like heads, with small
emerald eyes, that watched us fearfully, but with an impression of
malevolence, and of an intelligence that gave me a feeling of actual
discomfort as I gazed, so that I looked elsewhere, and then remembered
how an animal will turn uneasily from a man’s eyes, and was ashamed, and
looked back, and found my gaze was reluctant.
My comrade followed my thought, and surveyed them with her usual
coolness. “They are more intelligent than the Killers, of whom they are not
afraid. The Killers serve them. They must have built that roof for their
dwelling. They fear us, and therefore hate us. It might be well if you sent an
arrow to frighten them.”
But as the thought came, the yellow heads shot back, and the openings
were quiet and vacant.
“I thought so,” she smiled, “they can read our thoughts, while they watch
us. They are dangerous and might do us mischief, but I think the Killers are
too stupid to use them.”
Meanwhile, I had again secured the bow, which I had used the night
before with such unmerited success.
When I had drawn it once or twice, and felt that I could control it to
some purpose, though it was almost beyond my strength to handle, I
stepped to one of the windows on a sudden impulse, and saw the ground
before me was pink with advancing Killers. Swiftly and silently they came,
having appeared again from the side which had hidden them from the sight
of our Leader. There was no whistling from the suckers, but they were
waving them from right to left, and tossing them in the air in their
excitement, as does an elephant when he trumpets. Many of them had the
red-stemmed javelins. All had their strangling-cords in readiness.

The archers moved beside them, one on each flank, bow in hand, but I
saw that there were no arrows on the strings.
There was no need to aim. I bent the bow to my strength’s limit, and sent
the long shaft into the hideous crowd that confronted me. I think that it
might only have dented the slimy bladder-like skin of the first it struck,
without puncturing it, had it been able to throw him back without striking
any solid substance behind him, but—perhaps because they were advancing
so closely—it went through him and two others before it spent its force, and
left them heaped and squealing. In a moment the whistling cries arose to a
point which I cannot hope to tell, for I lack words for any possible
comparison. Right and left ran the Killers, the archers first in flight, and in a
few seconds were beyond my range and seeing, beneath the side walls of
the arsenal that was at once our jail and our safety.
My comrade, looking from the other window, gazed at the stricken,
struggling heap with eyes that danced in triumph. Her age-long wandering
in the ocean ways had familiarised her to death and cruelty in a hundred
forms. Her repugnance had been to doing things herself which she regarded
as natural only to a lower order of creation. I suppose in all her life she had
never knowingly done harm to any sentient thing. But she loved adventure
as a child loves it.
Then her eyes clouded to an instant’s blankness, and turned to me again,
and this was the thought she gave.
“My Leader says, ‘Tell that animal not to shoot again, and if it does so,
leave it entirely. We are not Killers, nor do we practise their ways. Besides,
it may cause trouble with the Dwellers, of which we have prepared
sufficient already.’”
I answered in anger at such perversity. “Tell her that if she is not a Killer,
neither am I an Amphibian, and I shall play this game in my own way.”
“But she is a Leader——”
“She is not mine. Tell her I have the authority of five Leaders, and she
had better do as she is told herself.”
“She says that she has already loosed a bar from the floor, and is coming
herself to take direction.”
“Tell her that if we open the door to let her in we shall have to keep it
open, and how then shall we resist them? If we close it, who will be left

outside to open it, when we are ready? Tell her to stay where she is.”
“Be quiet, please. She has dived in the boiling tank. We must not divert
her mind. She dare not look nor breathe. Now she has reached the outer
tank. It is worse than she expected, and she is very nearly exhausted. She
has risen to the surface and is looking through the steam for a place to land.
There are Killers on that side. She will dive again, and swim under the
killing-sheds so that she may reach the farther side before they can run
round. You must help her with such will as you have. She has risen. But it is
too soon. There’s a floor above her head, in the water. She is swimming on.
She has struck something under water. It is one of the boiling bodies. It is a
Frog-mouth. It is not quite dead. It has seized her with its teeth. Now she
has willed herself free. She has risen to the surface. She can breathe, but she
can only swim very slowly. She is exhausted, and she is holding one arm
out of the water. It has been burnt by the water where she was bitten. She is
at the edge now, but the Killers are there also. There are only three yet, and
their wills are not strong enough to resist her. They are confused and
frightened in mind. One has tried to push her back, striking with a javelin.
She has caught it in her hand. He has fallen into the water. I have not heard
one of them squeal quite like that before. She has pulled him out again, but
he is still squealing. I think he will die. More Killers are coming. She is
running here. She says, ‘Have the door unbarred.’”
I lifted the bars down, though I was far from sure of the wisdom of
opening. Then I went to the window. She was already in view, running at a
great pace, but with an ease and coolness that gave no impression of being
hunted, but rather of one who constrained others to follow. I cannot easily
convey the feeling that came to my mind as I watched her. They were too
far behind to throw to any good purpose.
But round the side of the building from which I watched came another
crowd, forgetful of arrows in their excitement, and were between her and
the door in a moment.
“She says, do not shoot. She will draw them off, and then return to the
door, and I must be ready to run out with her. They will then try to cut us off
from the gate, but we shall make for the cliff behind, and climb it, and go to
meet our companions. She says I can bring you if I will, and if you can
climb.”

I answered, “I cannot climb that cliff. No man could.”
“She says, we must go that way. It is necessary. The animals can go on
killing each other if they will. She will have none of it.”
I said, “Tell her I did not come here for my own pleasure, but to help her.
If she does not need my help she can go her own way, and you can choose
for yourself also. I am not going to lose the chance of giving these brutes
another lesson.”
All these thoughts exchanged in less time than it will take to read them,
and even while my comrade answered, with a troubled mind, “She is a
Leader. She will do right. Do not shoot.” I had already sent a shaft among
them which found its victim, and this I followed with another which went
weakly astray as they turned and fled to safety.
The Amphibian, who had first taken a sideward leap to avoid their rush,
was already moving away to draw them off the door, but seeing the effect of
my shot she ran swiftly forward and pushed it open, and entered.
She stood there, holding the door open with her right hand—the left arm,
which had been bitten and then scalded in the water, hanging loosely beside
her—with a quiet dignity, which I could not but respect, however much I
might resent her attitude to myself. She did not turn her eyes to me, nor give
me a thought—she never did this from first to last—and I was conscious
that there was no anger in her mind. I was too far beneath her.
She looked at the inside of the door for a moment, and then I was aware
that their minds were in contact. Thought is swift, but it seemed a long time
that we stood there. I was conscious that my comrade was fighting for her
own will, and was, in a way, defying her Leader, if defiance it could be
called, where I knew that both minds retained their poise and coolness, and
the one that heard was both aloof and judicial.
At last she asked me, “Are you content that I go with her, and can you
escape by the way we came?”
I replied, “You must make your own choice,” and closed my mind very
quickly. I was angered at the course that events had taken, and in no mood
to let her know that I was at an extremity of exhaustion. As I drew the bow
the second time I knew that it was my own giddiness that made the shaft go
wrong. I was standing upright with difficulty, and knew that if we separated

there was not one chance in a thousand that I should escape the handling of
those nauseous suckers.
Her mind fought for a moment to pierce the blankness with which I met
it. Then it recognised its failure. “Wait,” she answered. “I have a thought,”
and again she turned to her Leader, and a longer silence followed.
At last she turned to me, and relief of some kind gave light to the
serenity of her eyes. “She goes. I stay with you. How long depends on
yourself. But it is a condition that I must not explain.”
I was so gladdened by this decision that I was disposed to be generous.
“I am very glad,” I answered, “unless it will expose you to greater danger
than you would otherwise meet. But I hope I have not been the cause of any
difference between you and your Leader, who so plainly dislikes me.”
She answered coldly, “I am in no danger that I fear to meet. We are not
animals such as you are. Nor do we differ among ourselves. Our Leaders
are always right.”
As she gave me this thought, her Leader looked at me for the first time. I
thought there was inquiry in her glance, but it passed me dumbly. She threw
a thought to my companion, “You should watch the floor,” and turned and
went out, and the door closed behind her, with the click which had sounded
so ominously in the night when I first heard it.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIGHT IN THE ARSENAL

When the door closed I was very glad to sit down with my back against
it, as we had done before, and my companion was quick to perceive my
exhaustion. Again I felt the small life-giving hand in mine, and, for the time
at least, the effects of thirst and starvation, and the long night-hours, were
overcome by the reserves of her vitality.
She was very quiet at first, and indisposed for conversing.
At length I asked her, “I know how I must appear to you in many ways,
but why was your Leader so contemptuous of me, beyond anything I have
met among your people previously?”
She answered, “She was not contemptuous. She did not regard you at all.
Why should she? She had more serious things of which to think. Besides,
you think of our Leaders as one, because their decisions are always
unanimous. But this is wrong. Each is different. There is none like this one
in all practical issues, and in control of material things. That is why it was
she who came to seek the first one, when she did not return. I think she
regards the whole expedition as a mistake, and that she should have been
left to her own ways. But such things are not for me. They are for
themselves only.
“She taught me much while we talked together. When I am with you
only, I think myself superior in many ways. Your body breaks so easily, and
you are never sure when it will fail you. Your mind is confused, and
inconsequent. It is only when I think of yourself as of a Leader whose
followers are mostly treacherous or disloyal, but who still endeavours
without loss of courage to fulfil his purpose, that I respect you at all. But
when my Leader showed my stupidity I felt that there is little difference
between us.
“She showed me, among other things, that I accept your conclusions
without thought, and that I do not even take notice of what is beneath me.

“You are used to opening doors in certain ways, and so you assumed that
this could not be opened at all from the inside, and I believed you without
reason. The Killers must have been preparing an attack from beneath our
feet, and were only interrupted when they ran out to waylay my Leader, and
I did not hear it. I know that your senses are rudimentary, but do you not
hear it now?”
No—I heard nothing. But she said that they were moving busily under
our feet, so that we must be prepared for an attack at any moment. She
showed me what her Leader had known at a glance, that if we pressed the
hinge the door would open.
I said, “If there be a cavity beneath us, there is probably a trap-door from
it to this hall. In that case, I wonder they haven’t used it earlier. Let us see
what we can discover.”
We examined the floor from end to end. It was of the same hard smooth
substance as the walls. It was laid in squares, about a yard each way, so
finely morticed that the divisions were scarcely perceptible. But there was
one in the middle of the hall that attracted our attention.
It was set as close as the others, even more so, but there was no
appearance of mortar between it and those adjoining. I cleaned the dust
from the floor with my ragged sleeve, and the difference became more
evident.
As we bent above it, there was a slight sound overhead, and looking up
suddenly I saw a row of yellow heads that were regarding our movements
with interest. “I wish I could kill those creatures. They will harm us yet,” I
thought, and my companion answered, “They wish us evil, but you will do
us injury if you fear them. They know every thought they cause you. But
tell me what plans you have. Our Leader is rescued—if any rescue were
needed. We can open the door when we will, and there is nothing to keep us
here, if we have courage to venture out. But perhaps it would be better to
defend this sheltered place, till our friends come in the evening?”
I answered, “I think we can go free together when we will, though I
could not have done so singly, for I shall have no strength of my own till I
come on food of some kind; but we shall need to know where we are going,
and to what purpose.

“I suppose that at any moment this stone may move, and there will be a
rush of enemies upon us. Yet if we wait till that moment we lose nothing,
for they could not come up quickly through such an opening, and the more
of our enemies that are congregated beneath the building when the door is
opened, the better it will be. But you are right that we should have a plan as
to where we are going, and why we do it, either together or separately.
“When I came here, it was with the object of finding two of my friends
who had preceded me. Almost at once I involved myself in another
obligation. It seemed to me that the one might help the other, and apart from
that I had no guidance as to where to search, nor hope that any creature
would aid me.
“So far, I have not found them, though I have seen evidence that one has
been near here. I think it is most probable, if they live at all, which I greatly
doubt, that they are in the hands of the Dwellers, and it is there that I should
seek them.
“I have no wish to do this. It is very perilous, and not hopeful. Also, I do
not wish to part from you, and I know you cannot come there.
“But if I should return with you, I suppose that there is no way by which
I could live in your own element.
“If you will help me to get clear of this danger, and back to where food
and water are possible, I think I ought to leave you, and by doing this I shall
also relieve your Leaders of a difficulty with the Dwellers, which they have
indicated already.”
She replied, “I think we shall not part so soon, if we escape the vats of
the Killers. I have something to tell you. When my Leader wished me to go
with her, and leave you here, I objected. Then I told her my reasons—as our
custom is—knowing that she would judge them fairly, and more capably
than I could do myself. She found that they were not good. She showed me
that you are yourself of the kind of the Killers, that you have little faculty of
reason or self-control, that you are violent and untrustworthy, and (she
thought) untamable. If that should prove to be so, we could not even make
you as one of the sea-dogs. Also, you could only live on the roof of our
island, where you would probably die when the first storms swept over it.
“First or last, you would have to go to the Dwellers.

“She has seen that, every day, as the sun sets, one or more of them will
come over the mountains, and disappear to seaward. She supposes that it is
a regular patrol, and that they come out at some inland spot during the
earlier day, and retire down one of the passages which you have seen.
“When they pass, the Killers are afraid, and hide in the wall.
“She proposed that we should leave you here, where you could defend
yourself till the evening, and you could then go out and give yourself up to
the Dwellers, or escape entirely, while the Killers will be hiding, if you
should prefer to do so. She thought it best that you should give yourself up,
as they would deal with you as you deserve, and would not kill you unless it
should be desirable, as she thought likely.
“At first I could not answer this; but then I had a new thought. I replied
that now she was safe we had still to rescue the body of our Leader which
was left in the tunnel, if that should be possible. I should be willing to go to
seek it, if you were with me, but not otherwise. It is plain that we cannot
take it by force from the Dwellers, even though we should all go together. If
we go secretly, we must be few. In many ways you might help me there, for
you are more nearly of their kind, and you do not fear them as you do
smaller things. Even if the body be destroyed it is necessary that we should
know.
“She did not like my plan. I thought that she would refuse it, and I held
to it with all the force I had, which was little. Then she closed her mind
from me. I knew she had many thoughts which she would not show me. At
last she decided, ‘You may do this, if you can. But you must not ask this
animal to go down to the Dwellers to aid you. If he offer to do so, you may
take him with you. But he must make his own plan before he hear of yours,
and to that he must keep. You must be in hiding before the sun goes down.
If we should return this way, and should meet with the Dwellers, you may
watch us meet, but you must hold your minds blank and closed, so that
neither they nor we can perceive you, unless we ourselves should signal to
you. You must not release the Bat-winged men, nor allow their escape. They
must die, as the Dwellers have willed.’ That is all she told me, but there is
none like her for foresight, even of the Seven, or for plans that are so made
that they can change as the chances alter, and still reach to where they will.

She saw me foolish, but she decided to make a plan which used my folly. I
am glad that we shall go together, and shall see the homes of the Dwellers.”
I answered, “I am glad also. I cannot say that if I had no search to make I
should give myself to the Dwellers, as your Leader advised so kindly. They
might decide my fate with great wisdom, but I prefer to do that for myself.
As she said, I am not easily tamable. Besides, if I once get clear of this
place, I think I might find means both to hide and to live in this new world,
and I should well like to explore it. It is already apparent to me that it is full
of beauty and of strange wonders, of which I have yet seen very little—and
the tunnels of the Dwellers seem the more perilous way. But we both have
good reasons for the choice we have made, and I think we may do better
together than either could do separately. But why should we not attempt
escape immediately? Why should we not return to the lower way while
there is still daylight to guide us, and before the Dwellers appear, to add a
new peril to the road we take?”
“I am not certain which is best, and I think, as you do, that we might
escape at any time with no great risk, if we were sudden and rapid in the
attempt; but I think that she wished us to remain to see whether my friends
will still come by this way, and are allowed to pass in safety. There is also
this to think, that if the Dwellers always return to the interior when the night
comes, and they travel more rapidly than we should do, they might overtake
us if we enter one of the tunnels earlier, while, if we follow behind them,
we may do so in safety, with little fear that they will know of our coming
till we have passed the tunnel and arrive at that which lies beneath it.”
So we agreed to wait, and as we thought that the loose stone in the floor
was now the point that threatened us, we sat closely round it. I kept the bow
beside me, thinking to send a shaft through any opening that might appear,
but as the time passed without movement I loosed my knapsack, and
finding thread and a strong needle, I commenced to repair my rags as best I
was able, my companion watching, half in amusement and half in
sympathy, and wondering why the creatures of my race never tried to train
their skins to utility.
Then for some time she was silent, her head rested on her updrawn
knees, and when at last she moved again she told me, “I suppose you think
of us as all being alike, as we live the same lives, just as I should think of

your kind, if I were among them, while to you they are widely different by
character and appearance and occupation. But we are not so. I have a vice
which I cannot break, which is shared by one only among all our thousands.
Our Leaders have considered it, and showed us that it comes only when our
minds are tired by new things, and desire rest when we do not will to take
it.
“Then our thoughts change to sleep of themselves, and on a note which
is not of our own choosing.
“There was a distant time when I was very foolish, and I went into a part
of the ocean where there was much depth and great darkness. There I found
a pressure which came upon me so that I could not release myself. I was
held there very long, with a horror which you may have some power to
imagine.
“When the time came at which our nation assembles, and my absence
was noticed, the Leader whose body we are now seeking, and who is like
myself in the love of strange and difficult ways, though of a much higher
capacity to traverse them successfully, undertook to search for me, and
knowing the direction which I had been seen to go, she at last discovered
and released me, by methods which would be beyond your comprehension,
if I should attempt to tell them. In doing this she risked her own life, and
lost so much of her vitality that she rested afterwards for many years till her
strength returned, and did not even take part in the Councils of the Seven.
“Now, when I wished to gain my own way, I looked for every argument
that would support me, and I recalled this to my Leader’s mind, as a reason
why I should go, if someone must be risked to seek her. Then, as we sat
here, the horror of that place came back to me, and in a moment I was
asleep and within it. But it has left me now, and, I hope, for ever....
“It is in my mind that there will be fighting when that stone moves, and
that I am pledged to help you.”
She picked up one of the short javelins from the floor, and balanced it
thoughtfully on an outstretched finger. When she had turned it over, and
looked at it carefully for some time, she threw it against the wall, watching
its flight very closely. It turned once in the air, failed in its balance, and
struck the wall with a slanting feeble stroke.

Unperturbed, she collected six others, and threw them one by one, so
quickly that the next was in the air before the first had fallen. Of these the
two last struck the wall at the same spot, and with the full force of the
throw.
“I think I can play that game if they should ask it,” she laughed in her
mind, and collected others to her hand.
“Could you hit the same spot twice in succession?” I asked.
“Surely,” she answered, “even you could not forget so quickly. But I
myself forget that your body is not as mine. I understand that yours may do
your will with exactness on one occasion, and on the next, though you have
the same will, and it be equally capable, it may fail entirely. All the games
of which you told me, in which your body is used, are based on this quality.
But with us it is different. I know now that I can hit any spot at which I can
aim, and as often as I attempt it. I will show you with these.”
She picked up two of the javelins, and sent the first against the farther
wall—but the second did not follow it. At the moment her hand was lifted,
the stone beside us disappeared from sight, leaving a yard-wide gap, and as
swift as thought itself her javelin was flung into the open pit beneath us.
An outburst of whistling screams told us that it had carried no welcome
message, but the next second we had our own troubles to deal with. Back
into its place the stone shot upward, and with such force that certain things
which had been placed upon it were thrown to the roof and fell scattering
upon us. Four of them there were—four eight-foot lengths of living,
writhing rope—but to me, at least, they seemed forty.
I suppose that my companion, of cooler mind, and of quicker hands also,
made no such error.
I know that while I was struggling with one that had caught my leg and
was thrusting upward for a more deadly grip, her mind reached mine with
the quiet quickness of thought and buoyant gaiety of spirit that physical
danger always waked within her. I had a feeling that the idea that she should
be threatened by hostile violence always came to her as an absurdity, to be
met with laughter.
“We must watch the stone. Put your foot on its end. Jump to the left, or
the other one will get you.” So she called to me, while she ripped one which
had fallen round her own waist with a javelin point till it loosed her and fell

squirming, and as it did so she flung the javelin, not at the next of them,
though it was round her feet already, nor at the gap which showed again
where the stone had left it, but at the lizard-forms, that were now twittering
with excitement above us.
It struck one of them fairly on the outstretched head, and down it came, a
bright yellow snake-like form, turning head-under-heels as it came—or
under tail, to be literal—and falling in the open gap, at which there rose a
chorus of such consternation from the unseen Killers beneath us, that it was
evident that to them a lizard must be a very dreaded or a very sacred thing.
“Two each,” she laughed, as she caught the still restless portions of the
living cords on an arrow’s point, and threw them back into the gap beneath
us. “Did you notice that they became almost harmless after I had struck one
of the lizards, and the others bolted? I believe it was their minds that guided
them to attack us. It was to reach them, if the need came, that I first tried the
javelins, but I dare not tell you, nor let the thought make growth in my own
mind, lest they should know it. I fear them, but I do not fear the Killers at
all.” And just then the Killers came.
I think the falling of the lizard must have produced a confusion that
delayed their attack, but that this was succeeded by such a tide of fury as
swept away the natural cowardice that underlay their ferocity, and caused
them to forget the caution with which they had approached us previously.
They came leaping upward, with their hands on the edge of the gap, and
the first fell back with a javelin in the throat, and a second I knocked back
with a sidesweep of the axe, and from the third I sliced off the sucker at its
root, and stopped his whistling. But the crowd pushed up, and flung him
sprawling outward.
They had no cords—perhaps they thought them useless after the way we
returned the four they sent us; perhaps they would have been too dangerous
to themselves in that crowded rush—and they had little time or space to use
their javelins before the axe was on them. I struck, and struck, with steady
sweeping strokes, at the pushing crowd that rose against me, the tough skins
denting to the blade, and bursting as they felt the pressure behind them.
And always, if they rose too fast, or one should dodge my stroke, a
javelin found it, from where my comrade had stepped back to the wall to
reach them down as she needed them. Once I thought I had failed, as the

pressure spued up two or three at once, too quickly for the axe to take them,
but her mind reached me serenely. “Keep the others down—and leave these
to me,” and was vaguely conscious that she was avoiding their weapons
with a cool celerity, while her own bore them her message that their hours
were over.
And then amid an up-rush of damaged bodies which he was using for his
own protection I saw the red-brown malignant head of one of the archers,
and struck with all my strength a straight-down cleaving blow, and was
conscious that the attack had collapsed before me, and the gap was empty.
With a sudden dizziness I looked on the shambles that now surrounded
the opening. I have told something of the outward repulsiveness of the
Killers, with their worm-pink skins that were both tough and slimy, but of
the interiors of these foul bodies I cannot write. An axe-stroke has no
reticence.
I thought it was from that nauseous sight that a sudden faintness
threatened, and I struggled against it, stepping back, and leaning on the axe,
and turning to my companion for her to snare my triumph.
She stood very still, her eyes bright and watchful, her mind beginning to
question her for the thing she had done—which was, no doubt, outside the
experience not only of herself, but of all her kind—but her will meeting it
confidently. Then she looked at me, and her thought changed. I made an
effort to reassure her that I was uninjured, and was aware that I was falling.
I don’t think I was unconscious for long, and I believe that she neither
helped nor hindered, but watched quietly beside a phenomenon which was
beyond her experience.
When my senses returned, she was alert and near, and her mind was
quick to reach me.
“You can rest while you will. I think your last stroke was enough to still
them. You made it work that time!” She always spoke of my body thus, as
something separate from myself, as we might praise a friend who carved
well with a blunted chisel. “I am sorry that I failed you. The Killer rose on
your farther side, and I could not reach it till it had made its throw. I have
much yet to learn of the ways of fighting—do you not understand me? Did
you not know that your body was broken again?—does it tell you nothing?
—look under your right arm.”

I looked, and understood. The excitement of the fight, in which my life
had literally depended upon the speed and force with which I could strike,
and recover, and strike again, and then the utter exhaustion that had
followed, and now the dizzy weakness that possessed me—each in turn had
left me unaware that a javelin had found its mark. Thrown straight upward,
and probably with no great force, in the pushing crowd that gave scant
space for free movement, it had struck me in the armpit as the axe was
lifted—no depth of wound, but one that bled very freely.
It was evident that I must rest for a time at least, and so I lay there, while
she sat beside me and watched the empty gap before us, conquering once
again the repugnance she felt at touching my body, so that the smooth
furred fingers should close the wound, and the soft palm should give its
strength to heal me.
“I am ashamed,” I thought, “that I should be so incapable from so slight
a wound. You regard me as a creature of violence, yet I break down at every
conflict, where you come through with a clearer victory. I think I am more
an encumbrance than a help, even in such ways as these.”
She answered, “It was I who failed you. I should have stood nearer, and
it need not have happened. I held them too lightly, and you, who took the
harder part, have been hurt through my folly.”
My mind protested, but as the thought formed I was sleeping.

CHAPTER XXV
THE FORBIDDEN THING

There have been those, from the Egyptian civilisation to our own times,
who have believed a dream to be in the nature of an occult visitation, from
which future events can be foretold or avoided. But even they would admit
that a dream must be remembered on waking if it is to be of any utility, and
that is just where so few dreams are entirely satisfactory.
When I waked I recollected vividly that I had dreamed of the making of
a fire a short distance outside the door, which had stood open while I made
it. I had built up a pile of wood, which I had cut from the javelin shafts, and
set the burning-glass in their midst, and I had sat and watched the smoke of
the heated wood curl upward, till a blaze showed faintly in the sunlight.
So far I remembered clearly, and I supposed that the incident when the
arrow had struck the glass might have brought it into my dreaming mind,
but I knew that the dream went further, and was of a very exciting character.
I had a feeling that it was very urgent that I should recall it, but I tried in
vain to do so.
I was on the point of telling my trouble to my companion, but the feeling
that it might only increase her contempt or pity for the internal anarchy in
which I existed, deterred me. Had I done so she would have given me a
convincing reason why no fire should be attempted, and our adventure must
have had a widely different sequel.
As it was, I rose, and with my left hand—for my other arm was stiff at
the shoulder, and likely to be of little use to me for some time to come—I
picked up one of the javelins, to ascertain whether it were suitable to the
purpose for which my dream had used it.
For one-third of its length it was of metal, pointed and with double knife-
like edges, but the remainder was of a dark and very resinous wood, such as
would take fire readily. Here, at least, my dream had made no error.

It seemed to me that, as my arm would be of little use for further axe-
work if they should attempt to rush us again, a fire, which could be lighted
safely on the stone floor beside the opening, would be our best protection,
as it could be instantly swept down upon them, and could scarcely fail to be
sufficiently disconcerting to give time for my companion’s javelins to
operate.
I was elated in mind that I should be able to demonstrate my practical
genius in this way, recalling in some wonder that I had as yet seen no
evidence of fire in all my wanderings, unless the heated water supplied it.
But I would say nothing until I had proved the success of my project, and
the fire was blazing.
I wondered for one foolish moment why I had dreamed that the fire was
lighted on the open ground, till I noticed that the sun, which was now past
its noon, was no longer visible from the windows, and that, within the hall,
the glass on which I relied would be useless. Here again, the dream was
wiser than my waking thought, and its reality impressed me proportionately.
I told my companion that I would demonstrate a new method of fighting,
as my arm was useless, and I made a heap of javelins upon the very edge of
the pit, while she regarded my work with an observant curiosity. Then,
using the clasp-knife with the left hand as best I could, I shredded some of
the wooden shafts into such splinters as should take fire very easily, and
asking her to watch the hole for a moment, and giving an assurance that I
should not go far from the door, I opened it, and stepped into the brighter
light without.
The space around me was bare, as far as sight could reach it, except that
a group of Killers, probably the infirm and young, showed at the far end of
the enclosure, but I knew that there might come a rush of them from round
the side of the building at any moment, and very watchfully therefore I
arranged the splinters with the glass in the midst of them. It was a very
short time before a rising smoke changed into the uncoloured flame of a
noonday fire, and, picking up two or three of the longer splinters by their
outer ends, I went back into the hall. My companion did not turn as I
approached, but told me, “There is something that has frightened the
lizards. They have thrown themselves from the roof into the pit beneath us.
If they have read your mind, your new way of fighting must be very

terrible.” With the thought she looked round, and her mind waked to a swift
insistent protest—“No! It is the Forbidden Thing!”—but at the same
moment I had thrust the splinters into the pile I had prepared to receive
them.
For a few seconds our minds fought strenuously. “Do not let it burn. We
know little of the ways of the Dwellers, but all the world knows that. It is
the one thing they will not endure.” “I am not bound to the Dwellers. To us
it may be a weapon of safety.” “But I am; and to my Leaders it would be
unforgivable.” “We can keep a watch for the Dwellers, and put it out if they
approach.” “The mere knowledge that it had been lit might destroy us all.”
“The responsibility is mine only.” “If I am with you I share it.” “It can be
put out in a moment, if it be scattered on the stones.” “I know nothing of
that; but I know that for many centuries it has not been seen on the surface
of this continent—not since it was used in the great war, before the barrier
had been planted.” “Do they use it under the surface for themselves? How
are the tanks heated?” “I do not know; but I think that there may be other
ways. Please put it out if you can do so. It threatens war to my nation.” “I
think you fly from a shadow, and that it would save your life, not destroy;
but, as you wish it, I will.”
I felt a resentment which I could hardly restrain at the folly of this
objection, and the unexpected reception of my successful experiment. Apart
from this, I had felt a real relief from the added security it would give us,
for I knew that I was in no fit condition to face a second attack, if they
should resolve to make it. But to such a plea only one answer was possible.
The swift exchange of thought was of a moment’s duration only, but
already the dry wood was crackling, as I kicked it apart, and commenced to
stamp upon it. And then a fresh fact met me. The hard cold stony
smoothness of the floor, which looked less inflammable than asbestos, was
more so than celluloid. As I tried to stamp them out the flames did not
appear to bite into it, but played over its surface with a slight clear hissing
noise. It was only for a second that the event was doubtful. Then I leapt
back from the flames that were all around me. The next I was flying down
the hall, with the flames licking their way as fast behind me.
A second sooner than myself my comrade had judged the issue, and was
at the door before me, and held it open. But for that I do not think it

possible that I could have escaped alive from that swift inferno.
As we turned to look back at the building we had left, a flame crept out
of the right-hand window, and spread swiftly in all directions. As we gazed,
my companion’s mind turned to me with unruffled gravity. “For your part, I
know that you meant well, and I think that you did rightly. I see also that
you have powers of which the limits are beyond my sight. But I think also
that the world I have known is ended.”
Above that gravity, a dancing light of adventure crossed her eyes for a
moment, and beneath was a fortitude which I knew would face what came
without flinching.
I answered more hopefully, “The flames appear to move over the surface
only. The building is of such material as will not burn at all in the world I
come from. I think that it must be covered with some protecting varnish,
which is inflammable. That will burn itself out very quickly, and it will be
as though nothing had happened.”
“No,” she said, “the building burns,” and even with the thought the
increasing heat drove us farther away, and the flames, which burned with a
hissing sound, rose higher.
“In any case,” I continued, “the fault is mine, and if we meet the
Dwellers, I will tell them.”
“The act was yours, but the cause was ours,” she answered—“and the
Dwellers will soon be here, that is a very certain thing, and it is our part to
decide how we shall meet them.”
By now the building rose a solid oblong of bright flame in a windless air,
and the heat was terrible.
On our right hand as we faced it, we saw six other buildings of a similar
type, and on our left was the steaming vat, with the killing-pens built over
it.
I thought, “The next building is catching.”
“Yes,” she answered, “they will all go.”
On the farther edge of the enclosure we saw the Killers, a pink crescent
standing outside the doors of the inner wall. They were quite silent, and
very still.
A yellow blotch on the sand, the wiser lizards made their way to the open
gate.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE TRIAL

As the heat increased we again moved backward, and stood there in a
pause of indecision; at least my own mind hesitated, and hers had closed, as
it would when she sought decision from a too-difficult complexity.
At last I asked her, “Had we not better follow the example which the
lizards set so promptly? There is nothing here to do, and the Killers seem
too appalled for movement. As the fires die, their consternation may give
place to fury. I have lost my axe, and my knapsack, and all it held. The bow
is burnt, and were it not so, my right arm is useless. I think we should make
a sudden rush for the gate, for it is only speed which will save us.”
She had a javelin in her hand, and she spun it in the air, and caught it
lightly as it fell, before she answered.
“Should the Killers try again, there is one that will sorrow. But I think
differently. It is with the Dwellers only that this game is played from now
onward. Perhaps it may be well to go. It is hard to say. But you have not
thought of the Bat-wings.”
No, I had not thought of the Bat-wings. It was not clear why I should. It
seemed to me that if we thought of ourselves we were sufficiently occupied
for the moment.
But I could not avoid the thought when she raised it, for they were
making a clamour which the hissing roar of the fire itself could not entirely
silence.
“I don’t see that they concern us,” I answered, “unless you think that we
should release them before we leave. They are not very attractive animals,
but I don’t know that I want them to be burnt to death. Still, your Leader
said they ought to die.”
“That is just the point,” she replied, “it was the order that they should
die, and I am of no mind to go, and leave them living.”

“I suppose your Leader meant that if we drove off the Killers, we should
do wrong to release them, and I have no wish to do so. But the Killers are
still here to boil them, if the fire should prove more merciful. Surely that is
sufficient. I did not think you so bloodthirsty. Besides, the circumstances
are different from anything that your Leader could have foreseen.”
“Yes, the circumstances are certainly different. I think, where you are
concerned, they always are,” she answered drily, “but it is in my mind that
the Killers will not be here much longer. I think, also, that my Leaders see
very far, and that when we have gone a different way we have not found it a
good one. It seems to me that it is a thing that we cannot leave to the chance
that the Killers will remain, or of the flames falling. We have this to think.
We are in the land of the Dwellers, where we have no right to be. They had
judged these Bat-wings, which were theirs, and they had given them to be
used at a Feast which will very surely not be held, through our doing. They
had not judged them to burn. I think we should see that their will is done, if
we are able.”
I saw that she regarded the fate of the Bat-wings no more than that of a
shoal of cod that she might guide to the fish-tanks—or, indeed, less, if she
compared them, for the cod would be innocent of anything worse than
feeding when hunger urged them—but that her feeling was as that of one
who has unavoidably trampled his neighbour’s garden, and would smooth it
over, as best he may, before leaving.
I said, “I see your view, and for you it may be right. But though you
regard me as a lower creature than yourself, and addicted to violence, I am
not willing to throw wretches into the boiling tank—which seems your
purpose—for faults which I have not judged, and the guilt of which I am
unable to estimate. Neither am I willing to release them, lest they might do
us mischief, or desire our company. Nor do I think the fire will reach them,
for the steam will quench it.”
She answered equably, “Of steam and fire I know something, though not
on the earth’s surface, and this is not the time for the telling. But I think that
the killing-pens will burn to the water’s edge as the heat increases. As to the
Bat-wings, I have lived for many centuries, and I did not know that
creatures of such baseness are, or had been. I care nothing for them, except
that they should cease to be, and it seems best to me that it should be done

quickly. I know that my Leader’s mind is more far-seeing than mine, and
that she thought so also. But I think that we have done so much harm that it
might not be easy to increase it. I can see that we cannot go on together
unless we find some reconciling way when our thoughts differ. Let us do
this. We will go to them, and they shall say for themselves what they can
say, to which one of us shall answer, and the other shall judge their fate.
Which is to question, and which to decide, shall be their own choice; and
we will both agree to take the judgment of the other, which we know will be
fairly given.”
I said, “Come quickly, for the fire increases,” and we ran together.
We went round to the entrance, where the sound of my axe-stroke had
roused the sleeping guard, the night—it seemed so long!—before, and
finding none there to stay us, we climbed some stairs to a platform-grating
which extended between the pens. There were five a-side. The floors of
them were of loose bars only, and were somewhat higher than the grating
on which we stood, so that the Killers could pull out the bars without
stooping. The water steamed and bubbled beneath them, and we looked
down and saw it below the grating on which we stood. Beyond the pens we
saw the open tank extending on every side but that by which we entered. At
the farther end was the stone pier which I had seen previously, reaching far
out into the deep water.
Four of the pens on the left hand were occupied. In each was one of the
judges. They crouched dismally on the bars, with wings extended. The
heavy dark bald heads, with their cruel horny beaks, were drooping
hopelessly forward. Their eyes followed us with an intelligence that seemed
afraid to hope, but begged for pity.
On the other side, there were three like them, and then two others that
could move their wings, and these two were not still, but flopped
unceasingly from side to side, sometimes almost reaching to the roof, and
then coming down with clumsy flappings.
My companion addressed the one with the largest beak, and reached her
point very promptly. “My Leader told me of you. It appears from your own
tale that you are unfit for life. Do you agree?”
He answered, “She was very treacherous, for she let us tell all before she
gave any sign that she had a Dweller’s mind.”

“I also may have a Dweller’s mind,” she answered coldly, “but listen, for
your lives are balanced on the choice I give you. There is one with me who
is not as I. You may think him more of your kind. I do not know. I think that
you should die quickly, but he is less willing.
“Neither of us has heard your defence, and we will do so fairly. Your
choice is this. One of us will question you to show that you should be in the
tank below, and you shall reply as best you may. The other shall judge, and
all shall accept the issue. It is yours to choose the one that shall judge you.
You can also choose the one that shall speak for the rest, but it must be one
only, except that the two who were the accusers can speak separately, if
they will.”
Then the nine closed their minds from us, and disputed for a long time
(as thought is counted) among themselves. Then the one to whom we had
spoken told us, “We are all agreed that we shall argue this thing, and accept
your verdict. The two wish to speak separately. We are not agreed on who
shall speak for the seven, nor which shall judge us.”
My companion answered with patience, “It is necessary that you should
agree quickly, but we cannot make you do so. In two minutes from now, if
you should still be in this difficulty, we will drop one of you into the tank,
and perhaps you will find that six agree more easily. If not, we will make
further reductions as long as this assistance is needed.”
He looked at us with eyes that were naturally hard and cruel, but were
now flaccid with misery, and a cunning gleam was in them, as he tried to
probe our minds to find which would be the first to be sentenced, but my
companion baffled him.
It was but a few seconds later that he answered, “I am to speak for the
seven. You will argue against me, and the Prehistoric will judge us. So we
have decided by a majority, for fools are many.”
“You may be right in that,” my companion answered, “but I think that it
will make no difference.”

CHAPTER XXVII
THE VERDICT

My companion commenced her examination immediately. I have thought
since that it might be a model in many ways for the conduct of a
prosecuting counsel in our own courts.
I knew that she considered the accused unfit to live, and that they had
been competently tried and condemned already. Yet, now that the decision
had been placed with me, and it was her part to accuse them, her questions
were direct and fair, without subtlety or dissimulation, seeking the truth
without favour, and equally ready to develop a point, whether it were
against or for them.
The fact that the spokesman of the accused was accustomed to legal
argument, (which she certainly was not), and was of an acute and vigorous
mentality, gave additional interest to the quick exchange of thoughts by
which their lives were decided.
“We have been told that you are judges among your own kind?”
“Yes.”
“Is it necessary that you should be unanimous, or do you decide by a
majority?”
“By a majority.”
“A female was brought before you for stealing food, and was condemned
to be beaten?”
“Yes.”
“Were you unanimous in this case?”
“Yes. I should explain. She was first brought before two only. She was
condemned, and appealed. The appeal was heard by five, who confirmed
the verdict.”
“Did the appeal relate to her guilt only, or to her sentence also?”
“To both.”

“Was the sentence altered at the appeal?”
“It was increased. But that was because the accused attempted escape,
while the appeal was pending.”
“What were the two sentences?”
“Eight strokes were to be given under the wings with a five-thonged
scourge for the theft, and sixteen similar strokes for attempt to break her
prison.”
“Then two of the judges are not responsible for the larger part of the
sentence?”
“We are all responsible. It is our law that if a sentence be increased, or an
additional one given, by an appeal court, it must be approved by the court
below. The power of the appeal court being to confirm, reduce, or cancel.”
“Tell us, in your own way, of what this female was charged, on what
evidence she was condemned, why you considered her action worthy of
punishment, and defend the sentences.”
“She was charged with the theft of a neighbour’s food. She confessed her
guilt. We consider theft deserves punishment, and that the safety of the
community requires it. But we do not make the laws. It is our duty to
administer them. The responsibility rests with the whole community. We
considered the sentence to be fair and moderate, and such as is necessary to
prevent the spread of dishonesty among the class of population to which the
accused belonged. We have ourselves been condemned with greater
severity, for a fault which we do not recognise or understand, by a tribunal
of which we were previously ignorant, and under a code of conduct of
which we had not even heard, and under which our civilisation could not be
maintained for a week.”
“You have not defended the second sentence.”
“I did not suppose that any defence were needed. She had been
condemned as guilty, and was in custody, pending appeal against the
sentence she had received. To attempt to escape under such circumstances
was a defiance of the laws under which we live, and it would be impossible
to maintain order or discipline if such incidents should pass unpunished.”
“I understand your arguments, though they may not convince me. The
injustice of inflicting further penalties for an attempt to escape those already
threatened is too obvious for serious argument, and I notice that you do not

attempt to assert it, but prefer to rely upon the argument of expediency only.
It is not reasonable to suppose that the victim of such a sentence as you had
imposed should be a consenting party thereto, and in this instance you knew
that she was not, for she had appealed against it. You could not suppose that
she would submit to the sentence, if she could avoid it successfully. By
keeping her in custody while the appeal was pending, you admitted this to
be so. This duty (if such it were) was performed inefficiently, or the
opportunity to escape could not have arisen. For this fault of your own
servants you condemned her to a penalty even heavier than that which had
been inflicted originally.
“The argument of necessity could have been used with greater force in
her own defence as against the first accusation than by you in this
connection, and additionally so because the rights of the community, if it be
justly organised, must always be subordinate to those of the individuals who
compose it. For the rest, I propose to explain exactly why I think the
decision of the Dwellers is right, and that your lives should not be
continued. You will then be better able to reply in such a way as may be
convincing to the one you have chosen to judge you. But there are a few
points of fact on which I am ignorant, which may possibly help you, and
these I will ask you first. You complain that you yourselves have been
condemned under a law of which you had not known, and to which you had
not consented. You said also that she had confessed her guilt, and you said
later that she appealed both against the verdict and the sentence. This
requires explanation. I think you should answer here very carefully, for I
think we are confronted with that which threatens the foundation of the
strongest of the defences which you have set up.”
For the first time there was a pause of some seconds before his mind
took up the challenge. I think he was quick to recognise her meaning, and
the danger of which she warned him. I think he also appreciated for the first
time the keenness of the intellect which confronted him.
“The explanation is simple. We were dealing with a female of
exceptional obstinacy. She was charged with theft. She admitted the theft.
That is a plea of guilty according to the custom of our courts. She appealed
on the ground that the theft was justified. There is no such thing as a
justified theft in the code of any civilised state. Her appeal had no

possibility of succeeding. She was in the position of having pleaded guilty,
yet of declining to admit that she had done so.”
“Then, when you said that she admitted her guilt, you meant only that
she admitted the accuracy of the statements made by those who complained
against her. You also admit the facts on which your own condemnation is
founded. To that extent you have pleaded guilty also. How can you assert
the authority of your own tribunal over this female, and deny that of the
Dwellers who condemned you?”
“Very easily. She was a female of our nation, and was under the authority
of our laws.”
“Do you contend that she was under the authority of your laws simply
because she was a female of your species, or had she herself consented to
them?”
“It is necessary in any civilised state to assume the assent, or, in any
case, the liability, of individuals to the laws of those among whom they live,
and to impose penalties should they fail to obey them.”
“Let us be clear upon our facts before we argue upon them. She had not
consented?”
“To obtain individual consent to every law is obviously impossible.”
“She had not consented?”
“Not in that way; but she knew that she must obey the laws of the
country in which she lived.”
“That cannot be so, because in fact she refused to do so.”
“She knew that she must submit to the laws of her people, or render
herself liable to the penalties provided.”
“But such knowledge—if she had it—did not imply consent?”
“Not necessarily, but, as I have said, the individual must be subordinate
to the state, or no civilised community could continue.”
“It is not self-evident that every civilised community should continue.
But your contention is clearly not that she consented, but that such consent
is not necessary. By whom were you appointed a judge, and under what
compulsion, if any?”
“I belong to the class from which judges are chosen, after certain tests
have been passed.”

“Would there have been any penalty, had you declined to act in that
capacity?”
“No; but I had no reason to do so. It is regarded as a position of honour
among us.”
“Do you regard all the laws of your country as just and good?”
“They are not perfect, but they are well adapted for the needs of those for
whom they are made, and they are being improved continually.”
“They cannot be very good, or continual improvement would be
impossible. What course do you, or your fellow-judges, take when
confronted with a bad law?”
“It is not our duty to consider whether a law be good or bad, but to
administer it. The responsibility of the law is not on us, but on the whole
nation. Ours is to administer it accurately and impartially.”
“The responsibility for a law cannot be upon a whole nation, unless it be
agreed unanimously. It is upon those who make or support it. This
responsibility must rest in the largest degree upon those who directly
enforce it.”
The rapid interchange paused for a moment, and thinking that my
companion was about to formulate her accusation, I interposed a
suggestion. The swift duel of thought which I have translated into written
words as best I can, had taken a few minutes only, but the heat already
seemed greater than when we entered the building. Through the open bars
of the pens we could see the towering pinnacle of fire, where the seven
buildings were now burning together. A wind moved occasionally in our
direction, and the high flames swayed toward us.
I said, “If we are not speedy, we shall all burn together. I understand that
you wish to set out their guilt as it appears to you, now that you have heard
their explanations, to which the horny-beaked orator will make reply, and
then I am to judge the issue. Will it not save time if we interrogate the other
two before these speeches are made?”
She agreed at once, but added, “I think you should question them. I am
conscious that their world is less strange to you than to myself, and you
might discover circumstances in their favour which I should fail to do.”
I assented, and we walked down to where the two whose complaint had
originated the trouble were flapping with impatience to pour out their

wrongs.
I think it was well that I had taken on the interrogation. Here was no
keen argument, cool when at its deadliest, but a confused clamour from two
vulgarities that exposed themselves without shame, or appreciation of their
effect upon the minds that heard them.
I cannot translate the mental invectives, vituperations, recriminations,
and contradictions they poured upon us, but the facts came out with
unmistakable clearness.
Their tale was this. Through the vague impression of a complex and
highly-organised civilisation, there stood out clearly a group of dwellings,
inhabited by members of a trading class, of one of which these two were
occupants, and (apparently) owners.
As was customary, they did not use the ground floor, on account of a
plague of white slugs which rose from the ground at certain seasons and
crawled into the houses. The higher floors were gained through circular
openings in the ceilings, to which they flew from perches in the rooms
below. This left much of their domestic economy unexplained, but I did not
pursue a subject that was only indirectly material to the inquiry. I gained an
impression that the higher floors were in some way immune from these
slugs, which were a serious danger or annoyance, and of which no method
had been discovered by which to keep the ground floor entirely free. For
this reason it was usual to allow an industrial worker of the poorer kind to
occupy it in return for certain menial services. These sub-tenants were not
allowed to fly into the upper stories under any circumstances.
Until a few weeks earlier, the present couple had lived prosperously.
Trade was good, and they had only been detected in cheating once in every
moon as the law permitted. They had been fortunate enough to breed a
daughter with a bright yellow blotch on either shoulder, which they had
been able to sell for a large sum.
The ground floor had been occupied by a female who had been
employed in some industrial process by which the wings were liable to
become damaged, and had lost the use of hers, so that the ring on which she
perched at night had to be hanged within a few feet of the ground. A
beneficent law provided that those who suffered in this way could take
certain pickings from the main roads, by the sale of which life could be

maintained. She had, however, complained of a growing blindness, which
prevented her from snatching her due share of this bounty, and when the
time of the spring meal approached had caused annoyance by waylaying her
employers as they went in and out of the house, and petitioning that they
would provide food for her. They declined a request so unreasonable, and
had advised her kindly of the methods of suicide best adapted to her
condition, and when they saw that their advice was not taken, they even
went the length of recommending her to a medical practitioner who would
destroy her without a fee, in return for an opportunity of investigating the
diseases from which she suffered. Unfortunately, they did not kill her
themselves, which they could have done for a slight penalty, for their laws
are, in this instance, more just than ours, the penalty of murder being in
proportion to the expectation of the victim’s life, and its estimated value to
him. Then they might have committed the murder jointly, and halved the
penalty between them, for in this also their law is more equitable than ours,
and if two or three people unite to commit a crime they can each be
punished for one-half or one-third of the crime, or for their fair proportion
only.
But the time passed without decisive action being taken, till the week of
the summer meal approached, and the wretch, being blinder than before,
and weak from six months’ fasting, had failed to gain the right to a meal for
herself, and had again resorted to begging them to supply her need.
On the eve of the feast they had collected their food in an upper room,
and had gone out to barter a ring-eared monkey, very quaintly tattooed, for
the wing-powder which they would need after the second day’s eating, and
on coming back they had found her sitting on the edge of the aperture above
the room she occupied, afraid to flutter down, owing to the condition of her
wings. They found a savoury mess of pomegranates and pig’s liver, (such as
is eaten on the first day before sustaining food is taken), had been entirely
consumed, and two of the food-balls also. She would give no explanation of
how she climbed into the room, and it was supposed that she must have had
an accomplice, who should have helped her down also, but who had
become alarmed, and fled. She admitted that she had eaten the food, but
claimed that she was obliged to do so, and that there was an abundance
remaining for their own necessities.

The two judges before whom she was taken had treated her with great
consideration. They had sentenced her to eight strokes, which she would
almost certainly have survived, in view of the food that she had swallowed,
and they had ordered that the sentence should not be executed for three
days, during which she should be placed in a cell designed for such cases,
where she could release herself from her troubles without further difficulty.
The cell had a deep well, in which she could have drowned herself very
easily had she had sufficient sense to do so. A kindly regulation had
provided that the sides of the well, above the water, should be deep and
smooth, as there had been distressing instances of prisoners who had
changed their minds when half-drowned and had clambered out, so that all
their misery was repeated. There were also weights which she could have
tied to her feet, had she wished to do so.
Instead, however, of following these suggestions, she had
contumaciously appealed against the sentence she had received, which had
delayed its execution, and entailed a two-days’ journey into the Upper City
for her accusers. The food she had taken appeared to have renewed her
youth, or rather her energy, (for she was not old), so that she had attempted
to escape her confinement, and had almost succeeded; and when rebuked by
the Superior Judges for not availing herself of the provision for her comfort
which the cell provided, she had actually uncrossed her legs, and shaken the
damaged wings derisively, asking if she were likely to commit suicide with
three months’ food in her body.
I endeavoured to put such questions as might have elicited any
extenuating circumstance which had bearing on the main incident, such as a
past kindness, or a past ingratitude, but I obtained nothing that was helpful.
Their replies were inconsequent, and their minds worked round
continually to self-reproaches that they had not killed her themselves, and
to a choking indignation at the thought that it was the stolen food in her
body which had supplied her with strength to contest the issue.
We went back to where the Chief Justice crouched unmoving, but with
eyes that had watched the scene with sombre keenness.
My companion commenced immediately—“I have thought of all that
you said, and of much that your thoughts implied, though it was not stated.
The conditions of life which you showed me are beneath anything I had

imagined previously, though I have heard strange and dark things from the
friend beside me. It may be that your own state is no worse than that to
which he is native, but that it appears different to him because he is of a
different kind. For when I heard how that half-blinded creature, whom you
had condemned to wretchedness, and would have persuaded to destruction,
shook derisive wings at your inability to subdue her, it came to me that even
in these dark and dreadful worlds there may be fair ways to tread for such
spirits as are sufficient in themselves to find them. It seemed to me for a
moment that our spirits are the only reality, and all the rest illusion. Yet, if
that be so, round spirits of what kind can so dark a dream have gathered as
that which has brought you here? It is a thought which I cannot grasp in a
moment, but to which I may give much time when occasion allows it.
Meanwhile, my inclination is changed. I still think that you should die, and
my Leader, who is wiser than I, was of the same mind, as were the Dwellers
who condemned you. But I am less sure than I was, and I will say nothing
more to urge it. You have chosen another judge, and I am content for him to
decide it.”
When she ceased he looked at her in silence for a few seconds. I think he
was regretting again the choice of judge which the majority had forced
upon him. Then he accepted the position, and seeing that I was waiting to
consider the defence which he would set up, he opened his mind toward me.
“You are of a world different from ours,” he began, “but sufficiently like
it to understand how necessary are the laws which regulate the possession
of property, and that any law without penalty would be no deterrent. You
know also that the function of a judge is different from that of a legislator,
and that it would be grotesque to punish a judge for a defect in the law
which he dispenses. We have fallen into strange hands, of whom we knew
nothing previously, and it is by the mercy of circumstance that we are able
to lay our case before you. I can do this confidently because I know that
you will understand our position, and I am assured that you are not in
yourself either unjust or merciless. I will not weary you with many
thoughts, for I know that you are in haste, and we would ourselves very
gladly be free from the increasing heat and danger. Our defence is threefold,
and I submit that each point is in itself sufficient: (1) We think that the
sentence was fair; (2) if it were harsh, which we deny, it was in accordance

with the laws of our country, which we were sworn to administer; (3) if
these two pleas should fail,—which is beyond my imagination,—it would
still remain that for any possible fault we have been tortured and punished
already beyond our deserving. Consider that it is in the name of mercy that
this fate has been threatened! We are accused of brutality, but we have
never sentenced any of our people to be boiled alive, even for the foulest
crimes. It may be that the Dwellers did not intend that such a horror should
happen. I think it more likely that they proposed to alarm us only, and
foresaw your coming, and that you would release us, so that we can go back
to our duties, knowing their wishes, and introducing their methods into our
country, with consequences which they will no doubt themselves direct to a
satisfactory issue.”
I replied, “I will not torture your minds with a long judgment, though the
issues which you have raised invite it. I will tell you at once that the first
two pleas fail. The sentence was not fair, and on hearing the evidence you
should rather have addressed your minds to the inequity of the social
conditions which it revealed, and to exhort the prosecutors to observe a
higher standard of social morality in future. Having heard them, however, I
think your arguments would have been wasted. They, at least, are unfit to
exist, and as I do not wish to prolong their agony, after they have heard this
decision, I propose to deal with them before I complete my judgment.”
I then went with my companion to the two pens which contained them,
and drew out the bars on which they rested. As we thought the male culprit
was slightly the less repulsive of the two, we soused him first, that his
trouble should be the sooner over.
As we commenced to draw the bars, their cries became deafening in
volume, and the female, in a frenzy of fear and vituperation, commenced
spitting in our direction.
As the last bar withdrew, the male leapt to the uprights at the side, but
found that they were made of a material too smooth for his grasp to hold,
and he fell backward into the water which bubbled beneath him.
Having disposed of the female in the same way, I resumed my verdict.
“The second point, as I have said, is of no more avail than the first, because
it appears to me to be a very evil thing that legislators or judges should
attempt to exalt the laws they dispense as being higher than the essential

justice which they are intended to demonstrate. It should be the greatest
difficulty in putting an unjust law into operation that no judges of good
character should be found who would consent to enforce it. A judge who
solemnly administers a law which he knows in his heart to be unjust is
baser than one who takes bribes from a litigant. In the one case he is bribed
by an individual to do injustice at some risk to his own position; in the other
he is bribed by the State to do injustice, with an assurance that it can be
perpetrated with impunity.
“But your third point is of a different quality. To consider it fully would
take more time than is now available, and we might all be involved in a
common fate the while I should do so. It appears to me that there is force in
your contention that the fate to which you have been condemned has an
even greater severity than the harshness of your own laws, for which they
have condemned you. I am not sure that this is so, but it is at least a
plausible and confusing argument. I have endeavoured to consider it from
their standpoint, and I think that their reply would be that there is no point
in the comparison, because they have acted from different motives, and
with different intentions. Your laws are designed to produce certain courses
of conduct in your individual citizens, to repress tendencies which might be
subversive of the State as it is organised, and as you were content to
continue it; you endeavoured (we may hope) to use no more harshness than
you considered that these objects required. They have no such objects in
view. They do not make you examples to others, nor design to coerce you
into observing any rules of future conduct. They regard you as having a
mentality so base that it should be destroyed entirely. But you say that they
may not have intended that this fate should fall upon you. I think that this is
less than possible, for, having heard your arguments, I accept their decision
very heartily.”
Saying this I commenced to withdraw the bars, and my companion
helped me in silence.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FATE OF THE KILLERS

The horny beak must have been softening in the boiling tank before my
mind could free itself from the fierce despairing cry, “The fools, the fools!”
with which the chief of the culprits had splashed down to his allotted end. It
confirmed my opinion that there would have been a different choice of
judge if his advice had been taken.
But we had no time for thought, where action was urgent. With a sense
of good work done, we passed out from a building on which the fire was
already falling. The wind had risen, and as the buildings burned, not down
but inwards—I mean that the outside of the walls was burnt off evenly to a
core of somewhat different quality—burning flakes, almost as light as air,
began to float on the wind, and sometimes would have driven against us, so
that we avoided them with difficulty.
It was to withdraw from these that we moved away from the boiling
tank, which my companion left with reluctance, so much did the sight of
any water allure her, and but for the fact that it was in the condition of a thin
soup from the many bodies which had been boiled within it, and
indescribably repulsive, I doubt whether the heat would have been
sufficient to deter her from the swim she needed. For myself, my thirst was
such that only this new danger was sufficient to force me from it. But my
cup was gone, with all my other possessions, excepting only what my
pockets held. So I had no means of cooling the water, if I could have
persuaded myself to drink it; and of boiling water I had just had a sufficient
experience. For the Chief Justice, as he plunged, had contrived a kick which
sent a swirl of water over the grating on which I stood as I pulled at the last
bar, and though I jumped very quickly I had not escaped entirely, and to a
stiff right arm I now added the infirmity of a left foot that limped and
blistered.

I scarcely grudged him his revenge,—he was a good fighter, and perhaps
fate had used him hardly,—but I felt an increased doubt of how we could
hope to escape from the surrounding Killers that grouped beneath the
crescent wall that enclosed us.
My companion was not troubled in that direction. “There is water near,”
she told me jubilantly, and the next moment we were standing beside a large
pool that sparkled clear and cool in the sunlight. A stream came in at one
end from the cliff-side, and was drained away through a sluice at the other,
so that it was fresh continually. Weeds grew in a clear depth, but did not
reach the surface.
She dropped the javelin, and dived.
I had seen seals swim, and many graceful forms to which the water is
native, but I had seen nothing like I saw then.
The legs did not move separately, but the appendages of which I have
told held them together as one limb. The double tail, which was carried on
land in such a way that it was barely visible, now came out, and with the
tiny monkey hands at each extremity, may have done much, both in steering
and propulsion. But the whole body seemed to move without effort. A
curve, a twist and it shot the pool’s length and back, without evidence of
any further directing motion.
I have always loved the water and (having drunk all I would) I was
already taking off my damaged rags to join her, when I noticed that she was
motionless above the weeds and looking intently at or through them. I
marvelled how she could maintain her position, and paused a moment to
watch her. The next, she had looked up, and must have recognised what I
was doing, for her thought was urgent against it. I was not instantly willing
to give up my intention, and while she still pressed me to desist, there came
a movement under the weeds that caused the whole surface to tremble. The
next second she had shot upward, and leapt out beside me.
“Water-snakes,” she answered. “They do not know us here, as do those
of the ocean. Under the weeds, it is deep beyond seeing. I do not think I
could have saved you, if you had come in. But I have taught those snakes
that such as I am are not for a meal for their larder.”
I did not reply, for I had looked up, and seen that the living-wall was
ablaze for all its length from cliff to cliff.

She saw it also, but more coolly. “Did you not foresee that it must be? I
only thought that the Dwellers would be here sooner. It is a place of hiding
that we need; but the water drew me.”
“I do not see where we can hide on this plateau.”
“I think there is only one place, and that I have seen it already.”
She led me toward the southern corner, where the cliff was met by the
blazing wall. The Killers had left it at this point, for they were all thronging
wildly to the gateway, and pouring out through the narrow neck between the
burning of the open gates.
When we were about fifty yards from the wall, we turned to the cliff-
side, and looking up saw a fault in the rock, it could scarcely be called a
cave, but there was a shallow horizontal gap, about two feet high at one
end, and about ten feet wide, narrowing to a point at the farther side, and
about eight feet from the ground. I don’t think I could easily have climbed
even that height in the condition in which I was, but she led the way, and
wriggled easily, feet first, into the gap, and helped me till I was lying there
beside her.
In the shadow, with the sun already descending toward the hills behind
us, they would be good eyes indeed which would have detected us from any
distance, while we had a wide view of the whole plateau, of the cliff on the
left hand where it curved slightly forward, and of the whole stretch of the
lower country beneath us.
“It is to our left,” she told me, as we watched and waited, “that our
people will descend the cliff if they continue in that purpose. It is only there
that it is possible to climb it.”
It looked impossible to me, even there, but I did not question it.
“The Dwellers come,” she said, “we are none too soon. If you make your
mind blank and observe only, I do not think they will detect us. Everything
may depend on that. Avoid thought. Do not communicate with my kind
either, if they should appear.”
Then she closed her mind, and I was alone beside her.

When the Killers ran out from the blazing gateway, they had scattered
aimlessly about the plateau, as ants do when their nest is broken, and for
some time they remained in restless tumult, moving continually without
direction or purpose, but this was changed in a moment to the frantic
desperate rushes of rats when the dogs are among them, and they can find
no outlet.
The Dwellers came up the hillside in no appearance of haste, and what
they thought or knew of the events we had occasioned they gave no sign to
indicate.
There were three of them side by side, taking cliffs in their stride round
which our path had wound, and approaching from the only point at which
the sides were not too precipitous and deep, even for their attempting.
Arriving on the level ground they consulted for a moment, and then one
of them came forward alone. The wall was still blazing in places, or I think
he would have stepped over it without change of pace, but, as it was, he
leapt easily, and then proceeded systematically to investigate the
smouldering ruins of the settlement. The killing-pens, which had caught fire
last, were still blazing, and he approached them with caution, but I think
that ivory-yellow skin, on which I had seen the teeth of the Frog-mouths
bite in vain, must have been insensitive to fire also, so closely was he
standing, as he looked down to observe the victims that boiled beneath it.
He stood there for a long while, as though he found difficulty—as well
he might—in understanding all that had happened. I tried to avoid thought,
as I had been directed, but the idea crossed me that had the Bat-wings lived,
they would not have failed to disclose the whole tale of the imprisoned
Leader, and of my companion’s presence, if they had thought that they
could have gained anything by so doing. Had it been in that Leader’s mind
when she had directed us to destroy them? I thought it likely; but at least the
minds of my companion and myself had been free from any such
consideration, and the deed itself had been a good one.
With a heavy thoughtfulness he went back to his companions.
Meanwhile, they had not been idle.
It is probable that it had not been the mere coming of the Dwellers, so
much as the sight of the things they carried, which had produced so sudden

a panic among the Killers who saw them. For they had now shaken out a
net, with which they were sweeping the ground from end to end till the
whole of the Killers were a kicking, whistling confusion within its ample
meshes. One of them then sat on the ground, and taking the basket from his
back, he abstracted from it a lidded vessel or cup, which he set open before
him.
One by one he pulled the frantic victims loose from the net that held
them, and after a glance of inspection, squeezed them in his hand over the
cup, so that their blood drained into it.
When he had squeezed sufficiently, he threw the empty carcase with a
careless aim, high into the air, to fall far off in the boiling tank, from which
its own meals had been so often taken.
This went on for about an hour, during which he dealt with some
hundreds in this way, and also selected about two dozen which he inspected
more carefully, and then passed to his companion, who also looked over
them, and either handed them back to take their turn at the squeezing, or
dropped them into his basket.
I supposed that they had decided to destroy this colony, and to found a
new one with the few which they had saved for that purpose, but I reflected
that this could not have been their intention when they handed over the Bat-
wings for destruction, at a feast which would never be held, and if they had
now come prepared to take that course, it implied a foresight or knowledge
of what was passing, which was sufficiently disconcerting.
I could not resolve that problem, but it soon became evident that the
occasion was of some further importance, for one by one they were joined
by others, until I had counted fourteen of these giants that were assembled
on the plateau.
More than once their words came over to us as the wind helped them, but
to me they bore no meaning. Whether they conversed among themselves by
other means, as they were able to do with the Amphibians, I could not tell,
but they spoke little outwardly, and mainly monosyllables. They seemed to
be waiting for an event impending.
Thus they waited, till the twilight was nearing. As I saw them on the
plateau, their huge bulks dwarfed by the proportions of the scenery around

them, I thought of them again as Titans of an earlier world, and of a size the
most natural to the background against which they moved.
I was conscious not only of my own insignificance, but of a vulgarity
also, which was not personal to myself, but belonging to the race from
which I came.
I clothed them in imagination with the garments to which I was
accustomed, and their significance and their dignity at once departed.
But for what were they delaying? As the time passed I was increasingly
convinced that they were aware of the Amphibians, and were awaiting their
arrival; and as this conviction grew, there came with it an increasing fear
that I was watching the prelude of a tragedy, for which the great sweep of
the wooded valleys beneath us, and the amphitheatre of mighty hills, were a
setting of appropriate grandeur.
The thought impressed me with an awe which left no space for
consideration of my own relation to the shadow which I believed to be
falling, nor do I think the fear I had was influenced by the expectation of
any personal consequence.
But when this depression was at its worst, and the strain of uncertainty
was becoming unendurable, I was suddenly aware of the influence of a
bolder and more confident spirit, and into my mind there came a music,
such as I had felt when I first watched the Amphibians approach across the
seaward bridge:
From the force that withstands shall we falter or flee,
Who have bent in our hands the untamable sea?
From the cloud that is close ...
Surely the Amphibians were approaching over the cliffs behind us.
From the nights that have been, from the midnights to be,
There shall dawns intervene, there shall ...
My companion’s mind spoke once only, but very urgently. “It may be the
end of all, if you cannot isolate yourself from that which is near us.”
I closed my thoughts as best I could from everything but a passive
photography of that which was developing before me.

The Dwellers had risen, and were standing in a group of no regular order,
upon the side of the plateau from which descent was possible. They were
looking silently toward the cliffs above us.
Next, on my left hand, I saw the Amphibians descending. The six
Leaders came first. They climbed down as easily as a fly walks on a wall. I
think the long centre toe gripped the rock more firmly and easily than a
human foot could do, and the appendages of the legs helped also, the little
hands grasping and steadying, but there was an ease of balance, and a
certainty in every movement for which these differences were less than
explanation. After them came the whole regiment of the Amphibians. They
formed up below, with the six Leaders in the front. I think their song was
still continued, but I would not hear it. They took no notice of the smoking
ruins, or of the steaming tank, which was now covered with the floating
husks of the bodies which had designed it.
Straight forward went the Amphibians to the spot where the Dwellers
blocked their passage. They did not hesitate, nor did the Dwellers give way
before them.
What would have happened I can only guess, had there not come an
unexpected incident.
From I know not where, there appeared the group of yellow lizards that
had fled from the burning arsenal.
A small bright yellow patch they showed on the sandy soil, and the
Amphibians stopped, and the Dwellers grouped to look down upon them.
I have thought since that they must have timed their appearance,
intending to give such information to the Dwellers as would win favour to
themselves, and bring destruction on others.
Whether they knew of our hiding-place I could not tell, nor whether they
were aware of the confinement of the Leader who had escaped—but of
what use is conjecture?—all I know is what I saw from my hiding-place.
There were long seconds of silence, which seemed minutes as I watched,
and then one of the Dwellers stepped forward and put his foot firmly down
upon the spot of bright yellow malignity. When he lifted it the colour was
gone, and there was nothing left that showed at that distance.
He stepped back, and the protagonists remained facing one another in a
continued silence.

Then, at last, the Dwellers stepped wide of the path on either hand, and
the Amphibians moved quietly forward between them, filing through till the
last had passed. I noticed that three of the Leaders had remained aside, and
supposed that they might be retained as hostages or culprits, by
surrendering whom the rest had won to safety, but as the last file passed I
saw them fall in behind it, and the Dwellers made no motion till they had
disappeared into the narrow trench which we had traversed on the night
before.
Then they also turned, and departed.
The dusk was already falling over the valley, as my companion’s mind
laughed its relief, and the tension ended.
“I think,” she said, “that this is the beginning of the next adventure.”
Book II
THE WORLD BELOW

CHAPTER I
COUNSEL

The night had fallen to blackness while we still lay in the rock-cleft.
The ashes of the central buildings glowed with a pale blue light, and an
occasional flame would rise up and lick across them like a ghostly tongue.
The long curve of the living-wall had fallen in from end to end, but the
ashes were burning still, with a paler flame, so that it showed like a white
bow in the darkness.
There were no stars; the night had clouded while we slept,—for I lay
long in a sleep of utter weariness and exhaustion, both of mind and body;
and so, I think, in her own way, did my companion.
But I waked at length, with a dim sense of peril ended, and the short
pause of security which is so precious to those who walk in dangerous
ways, but conscious also of thirst and hunger, and of the shadow of great
events, of which the significance was beyond my knowing.
I lay for some time in silence, pondering the strange things I had seen;
reviewing—not without some mental discords—my judgment of the Bat-
wings, and the fate to which it had cast them, and wondering vainly what
new marvels or terrors might be before us, when we should penetrate the
subterranean world of which we were about equally ignorant.
As I lay I became aware that the night was chilly, though, being cloudy,
it was less so than we had experienced previously. But I was suffering from
a lowered vitality, and though my wounds were trivial I was conscious of
the throbbing of my scalded foot, and that my right shoulder was both stiff
and painful.
I then fell into a mood of depression, in which I saw very vividly the
folly of the adventure which we had undertaken. How could we hope to
penetrate undetected into the domain of the Dwellers? There was no sanity
in the supposition. If I wished to live till the year of my exile were over,
should I not endeavour to find some crevice in the surface-world, of which I

already knew something, where I might hope that my insignificance would
save me?
If those whom I had come to seek survived at all, was I not more likely
to discover them under such conditions, than among those whom I had seen
squeezing the juice from the living bodies of the Killers, as casually as a
cook stones raisins?
While I thought thus, my companion’s mind gave no sign, nor had I
heard any movement from her. With a sudden start of terror I imagined that
she were no longer beside me. It was in that panic fear that I realised how
greatly I had come to depend upon her: alike upon her body for its vigour,
and upon her mind for its counsel. And beyond this I knew that there was a
spiritual quality in our intimacy, through which I was able to face the
shadows of the unknown with something of her own serenity.
It was a simple action to reach out to feel where she lay beside me, and
yet my hand delayed it.
Partly I may have been deterred by the atmosphere of aloof virginity
which always made me diffident of any physical contact, partly it was that I
dreaded to test my fear, as a man with a coward’s mind may leave a letter
unopened, knowing that it may hold the news of his ruin.
At last, I felt across the narrow space which had divided us as we lay and
watched the concluding drama of our adventure, and with a sense of
measureless relief my hand touched lightly for a moment on the smoothness
of the soft warm fur.
Her mind opened instantly, realised the mood I showed her, and crossed
it with the dancing gaiety with which she ever faced the thought of peril.
Then,—with the subtle distinction which she always drew between myself
and the body in which I lived,—she asked me, “Is it more trouble than
usual? Has it no gratitude for the rest you have given it?”
I answered, “It is rested by sleep, but has gone without food long beyond
its accustomed time. It can do this while it shares your vitality, but
afterwards the need re-asserts itself with increased urgency. It is cold also,
and, as you know, it has suffered recent damage, which it needs rest to
repair.”
She replied, “I can give you strength, if you need it, and if you think it
wise; but consider.

“We have resolved on an adventure of which we do not know the length
or the end. Of myself, I should continue in the ordinary course without food
for about four months, after which I should require a time of rest and
nourishment, before I should be fit for another year. If necessary, I could
continue living, and in some measure of activity, for a much longer period.
But I have been giving you of my own energy so freely that, if we continue
in this way, I shall be exhausted in a much shorter time. Then I must return
to my own place and people, as the food on which you rely—and the
Dwellers also—is of no use to me. I ask this,—is it better that we should
continue to share the strength I have, or should we find food for your body,
and so regulate our movements in future that we can make it self-
supporting?”
I answered, though my body ached for the vitality on which it had learnt
to rely, “I think that it will be wiser for us to conserve the strength you
have, which we may need in days to come, when there may be no means of
renewal. But it will make important differences, for which there must be
allowance in the plans we form. I am used to sleeping at short intervals,
because my accustomed day is only about a quarter the length of that which
you now have; and even though I obtain regular and suitable food, I shall
still be incapable of the rapid and prolonged exertions which I have endured
with the stimulus of your hand to help me.
“It appears to me that we must commence our enterprise by penetrating
one of the tunnels that open on to the opal pavement. It is true that there
must be other means of access inland, by which the Dwellers emerge in the
daytime, but there are two reasons against attempting to use them. One is
that we do not know their location, and though they may be nearer, it is
equally possible that they may be more distant. The other is more serious.
We are told that the Dwellers come up through the inland passages, and
descend by those which are on the lower level. By choosing the latter, and
following behind them when the night has fallen, we may reasonably hope
that we shall be able to enter their abodes without encountering any who are
coming in the opposite direction. In addition to these reasons, it occurs to
me that the country inland is of an extremely forbidding and mountainous
formation, and though the Dwellers are able to traverse it, it might be
absolutely impossible for us to do so.”

My companion answered with her usual equanimity, “It is a choice
which must be made, and your decision contents me. But I notice a quality
in your reasoning which must, I suppose, introduce the adventure of your
life to many avoidable difficulties. I think the arguments which you gave
me were good, but they did not cover all the considerations which might
influence such a decision, and of which I feel sure you could have thought,
had you wished to do so.
“It appears to me that you first elect your own preference, and then call
upon your mind to furnish arguments to support it. It is not bound to do this,
and it knows that you rely upon it to suggest any serious danger or difficulty
which might impel you to alter your decision, but, no less, it understands
your wish, and that if there be any sufficient arguments to justify your
choice it is expected to find them. Like your body, it is separate from
yourself, and may even work without your own awareness, but it is of a
readier loyalty.
“I think, had you for any reason desired to adventure into the mountains,
that your mind would have been quick to suggest that you could travel in
greater security on the surface if you should avoid the paths which you have
traversed already, where the Dwellers would be most likely to seek you. It
would have used the argument of the unknown distance in an exactly
contrary way, and it would not have failed to remind you that the tunnel
which you have already explored contained no possible hiding-place, so
that an alternative passage could not be worse, and might be better. It would
have recalled that the whole length of the opal pavement is without any
possible cover: that the bridge would be difficult for you to traverse in the
darkness, while the Frog-mouths would be dangerous in the day: and that
you have already been discovered once in the tunnel, so that it is at least
possible that a watch has been set to take you there, should you again
invade it.
“I could give you many more arguments of the same kind, but I am not
resisting your plan. I am only interested in a method of decision which has,
at least, the merit that it can operate more speedily than mine is easily able
to do.”
I had not thought her to be slow of decision when the need was urgent,
but I felt that she had more to tell me, and I kept my mind open and

receptive.
“You slept very long,” her thought continued, “and I considered these
things, after my own method. I first collected in my mind all that I have
known of the Dwellers from the beginning, and of the things you have told
me. I added that which I know of your own character and capacities. From
these facts I endeavoured to deduce a method by which we could succeed in
our objects, if we be not already too late. I made little progress, for the facts
are few and insufficient. But I made progress to this extent, that I realised
that we are supposing some things which we do not know.
“In particular, you have shown me your mind, and I have seen that you
visualise an end to these tunnels which opens into a hall, a chamber, or a
large passage, or at least some public space, populated by the Dwellers, and
where concealment for ourselves would be difficult, if not impossible. Your
imagination may be correct, and it is a possibility for which we must be
prepared. But in your mind it is less a possibility than an expectation, for
which there is no sufficient ground whatever. Yet you had imagined it so
confidently that I had difficulty in separating it from the facts you had
shown me.
“I thought of this very long, and I see that your life is so brief, and so
confusingly occupied, that you are obliged to proceed through a labyrinth of
assumptions by which you hope to reach the thing you wish more rapidly
than would otherwise be possible. But in this case, I cannot see that the
assumption has any basis of probability.
“I know, from what you have shown me already, that you come of a race
which has lived only on the earth’s surface, and any cave or tunnel by
which you enter it implies the approach to a confined and narrow space, so
that when you attempt to visualise the condition of a race which lives under
the surface, your imagination is of a cave, and not of a country.
“Now if the interior of the earth be completely solid, or nearly so, this
imagination may be quite accurate. But is it? Neither of us knows. We do
know from your own experience that the tunnels go down for many miles,
though we do not know their ultimate depth. That suggests that there must
be some reason for so deep a penetration. To make such tunnels must have
been a great labour. To descend and ascend them continually must be an
unceasing toil. There must be some compensating advantage in the depth

which is reached. The hollowness of the interior would supply it. But there
might be quite different reasons. We know that there are areas of great heat
that lie closely under the surface. There are parts of the ocean floor where
this heat causes eruptions. Such areas may be of great extent. They may
render it difficult or impossible to live under the surface till a greater depth
is reached. True, the tunnels must penetrate this region, on this supposition,
and it must therefore have been found possible to render them heat-proof.
“We have one other fact. The Dwellers reach the surface at very distant
points. But this has no certain significance.”
I answered, “I see the point you make, and I agree that I was inclined to a
too-hasty assumption. Also, it enters my mind that if the earth be indeed
hollow at a depth of a few hundred miles, and an inner surface be land only,
it must be of far greater extent, not merely than this continent, but than the
whole of the solid land of the earth’s surface as I knew it, and as it appears
to be to-day. It is also possible to imagine tiers of hollowed space in which
such areas might be many times repeated, but the artificial creation of such
tiers would require an amount of labour which appears stupendous and the
dumping on the earth’s surface of excavated material to an incredible
volume.”
She responded, “All that you think appears reasonable, and part is new to
my mind. It would help us greatly if we knew whether the Dwellers are a
numerous race, but of this I am able to tell you little.
“Before the time of the Great War, we believe that they dwelt on the
surface only, or, at least, until a comparatively short period before it. Up to
that time, for reasons into which I must not now enter, being irrelevant, we
knew little of them, or they of us. That was about eleven thousand years
ago.
“We know that they are bi-sexual, like the race from which you come.
We suspect that their bodies age and decay, and are replaced by others, but
of this we have no certain knowledge.
“In all the time I mention I cannot recall having seen more than two
hundred of their men and three of their women. We do not suppose that they
exist in these proportions. Our observation of the sea-creatures is that they
cannot dwell in peace together unless their females are at least equally
numerous, but we have seen those only who first negotiated the treaty with

our Leaders, of which you have been told, and such as have been in
attendance at the fish-tanks. Of these I mention, I cannot recall that more
than thirty have been seen at any one period. As the centuries have passed,
there has been a gradual change. But this might only mean that they have
exchanged to other duties. I have never seen one that showed signs of age,
nor that was less than full-grown. The eight which we saw last night I had
not seen previously.”
I answered, “But, even in the absence of more direct evidence, the works
which we have seen suggest that they are a numerous race.
“The protective belt which surrounds the continent cannot be less than
five thousand miles in length, and it was twelve miles in breadth at the point
at which we crossed it. Even for giants such as they, it would be an
impossible task for a small community. Then we see that they patrol the
coast, which must be the work of many.”
She replied, “That is also probable, though not certain. We do not know
that they patrol the whole coast. This region may be their headquarters, as I
believe it to be. The work you mention is great, but so are their skill and
knowledge. Their methods may be beyond our imagination. Or they may
have worked through the agency of subject creatures.
“It seems that we have little certainty. Our safety must be in assuming
nothing, so that we may understand the true significance of the facts that
meet us.
“But our first purpose must be to gain the entrance of the tunnel by
which we propose to descend. To do this we may retrace the path we came.
But is this necessary?
“Our Leaders wished to recover the body which we are now seeking, and
for that reason they had to go as far north as the second tunnel.
“They may have had other reasons, but, if so, I do not know them. If we
choose to explore the one by which you descended, the distance must be
much shorter across the wide valley which lies beneath us, and the way
does not appear impracticable. The crossing of the further hills, and the
descent of the cliffs, may be difficult, and in this strange world there may be
dangers in a new way of which we can have no foresight. It is certainly
shorter. It will avoid the long transit of the opal path which is perilous if

they be watching to take us. But I do not pretend that I think it the safer
way. It is the doubt that calls me.”
I answered, “I do not think it the safer way either. I have lost the axe on
which you have seen that I relied for any defence I could make against the
creatures which threatened me. I have also lost my knapsack, and with it all
the necessities I carried, except such small things as my pockets held. I have
a damaged arm, and a lame foot. I think that I shall be unable to move more
than slowly, however urgent the call. But if you are not afraid to venture
with one so useless beside you, it is the doubt of the unknown way that calls
me also.”
She answered generously, “You are too good for the body in which you
live. I have the javelin still, and, as I said before, we will pass in peace, or
there will be one that will sorrow.”

CHAPTER II
THE UNKNOWN WAY

I did not ask, for I remembered our compact, and I closed my mind
securely against her doubt of my welfare, but there are times, with thought
as with the spoken word, when silence is of an equal significance.
“It is in my mind,” she told me, “that the intention which we have
formed to feed your body when next we may, will give it no strength
beforehand. It is in my mind, also, that the food of the Killers would hardly
please you, if we could find it amid the ashes.
“Beyond this, I think that the Dwellers may return very early to resume
their investigation of events which (I hope) are still of some mystery to
them, and that it is well that we should be clear of this place before the
darkness leaves us.”
Again I felt the silk-soft palm in mine, and the slim webbed fingers
closing, and again the current of her finer life possessed and thrilled me.
It was a reluctant pleasure, since I had realised the concealed repugnance
with which she touched me, but my need was too great, and the wisdom of
her action, in our common interest, too evident for me to refuse.
“I am stronger now,” I replied, after a time, “shall we start?” and side by
side we let ourselves down into the darkness.
Clear of the shelter which had protected us, I was conscious of a thin
cold rain, and of a chilling wind from the north, which penetrated the
leather rags that I had no longer the means of stitching together, and made
me glad to move my stiffened limbs as rapidly as I could, while we crossed
the enclosure, to where the still-smouldering ruins gave a dim, unearthly
light from both before and behind us.
I drank again at the pool-side, while my companion dived for a moment
in the cool darkness. We passed near enough to the great tank for her to see
that there was no longer any water within it. To this end, the Dwellers must
have taken some action while the fire still burned, for our vice of curiosity

led us backward to view it, and she showed me that the bodies which it
contained were charred beyond recognition.
Then we made for the gap in the barrier of the burning ashes where the
gate had been, and left that desolation behind us for ever.
As we passed out, our steps were lighted for some distance by the glow
from the line of smouldering ashes beside us, but the darkness became
denser at every yard as we turned from it to cross the plateau. Yet she went
on swiftly, and, in the confidence that her hand supplied, I found no
difficulty while the level ground continued. When the path fell roughly I
held back to a slower pace, and even then I stumbled frequently. “Can you
not see at all?” she asked, “for if we can do no better than this our plan must
be altered. We have eighty miles to cover before the dawn, if we are to
reach the valley woods while the night-time cloaks us.”
I answered, “I cannot see when the darkness is absolute, and you go
forward as though the day were round you. I suppose that other creatures
are like me in this, or how would the darkness aid us? Can your eyes see
when there is no light whatever?”
She replied, “When there is no light whatever, I can see nothing that is
more than a few yards away, but within that space it is not my eyes only, it
is my whole body that perceives what is around it. I do not see, but I know.
My body is too much alive to walk into any tree that confronts it. But we
must do something. If you would keep your mind blank and ready, I think I
could show you always for a few steps before us.”
This we tried, and for many hours we went forward with the way visible
to me for about three yards ahead, and, beyond that, blackness. It was
difficult, and very tiring, for neither of us could think at all, but we made
good progress. Steadily she kept me aware of things before me, but more
than once my own mind wavered, and in a moment I was stumbling in the
darkness. And the darkness did not lift at all. There came a cold and steady
rain, without wind, which descended straightly upon us. My rags were
quickly drenched, and for the most part of the remaining night this rain
continued pitilessly.
Our way was often very rough, and in the darkness we could not choose
it. We could only go forward directly, and take what came. For the most part
we descended, but not regularly. The ground we crossed was not cultivated

in any evident way, nor was it enclosed or protected—or not till we had
crossed the lake, and that was later.
At times we walked on a prickly growth of some kind that was too close
and stiff for our feet to break it. Often we walked, or, I might say, waded,
through herbage such as we had encountered on the previous day, making
our progress slow and heavy, but always her buoyant vitality sustained me.
Once we found the ground falling precipitously before us, and
discovered that we were on the bank of a river. We could not tell its width,
and my companion’s suggestion that we should swim it found me
unwilling. Bearing leftward, we continued beside it for some miles, and
then found it had left us. It was about here that we began to feel touches as
of light hands on the face, in a place where trees were frequent. I was
frightened at first, till I realised that they were only trailing leaves,—
creepers, I thought, but they were really of the trees themselves, as we saw
when the daylight came.
But the real horror of the night was at the last. For some time the ground
had been flat and bare, soft from the rain, which had now ceased, but easy
to traverse, so that we increased our pace, and were making good progress,
when we found our feet sinking in a shaking bog, from which we pulled
them with difficulty. Then it was firmer again, and then softer at times, till
we were in a swamp which became worse as we went forward. For a
moment we stopped, and I found myself in darkness, as my companion’s
mind asked me, “Shall we not go back, if we can? If we sink deeply in such
slime we cannot swim or live. Nor can either of us think clearly while I
show you the way. If we move from the straight line ahead we should
remember our turns. Shall I lead you only?”
I agreed, and we turned back, as we thought, with exactness. Indeed, it
must have been so at first, for she saw the marks we had left, but it was
unexpectedly difficult. I was in darkness now, following the guidance of her
hand, and content to think that her own sight and thought were concentrated
on getting us clear of the swamp, when I suddenly felt her sinking beside
me.
Cool, but urgent, her mind called me, “I have no footing: pull.” I was up
to my ankles in the slime, and found my left foot slipping from beneath me
as I leant away from her. (For I had been at her left hand previously, but

when we turned back we had changed hands, not positions, and I was now
on her right). A step ahead, it was firmer ground. A struggle to the right, and
she had footing once more. Then I went in deeply. After that we moved as
best we might. One only at a time, and feeling each step carefully. I lost
sense of direction entirely. And it was there—or nearly there—that the
dawn found us.
But that was after,—well, I cannot hope to describe it, but I must tell it as
best I can.
It was fortunate that our minds were in closest touch at the moment, or
the second’s interchange of thought might have been a half-second later,
and there my life would, I suppose, have ended.
Her own mind was alert to give me the indications that her sight
supplied, when it suddenly changed to a great doubt, paused on the brink of
consternation, recovered to the high gaiety with which it was accustomed to
encounter peril, shot me a thought-swift warning, reverted to its poised
serenity, and closed from me entirely; and, in the slow process of words the
warning that she gave was this,—
“We come here of good right, fearing none, and we mean no harm to any.
Therefore we move in security. Our minds are serene and friendly, and we
walk at peace with all things. If you doubt or fear we are both lost entirely.
As your body fought the Killers with the axe for both of us, so my mind
fights for both now. You must help now, as I helped then. I have passed you
the javelin, for there is no use for weapons here, and I must not hold it. All
is well. Be quite sure to believe it. Step as I guide you. Jump when I call on
you, I will tell you just how far. Separate now.”
The whole thought was instant, and in the same moment I knew that that
on which we walked was swaying beneath us. Her hand pulled me quickly
to the left, and we ran up something that moved from under us like a
treadmill,—if we had been on the outside of the wheel,—jumped at last,
landed on something smooth and slippery, like that which we had left, and
having—the thought crossed me—a living softness. Then I caught my foot,
stumbled, recovered, jumped again, clambered a few yards of rising ground,
slimy enough, but firm also, and felt the soft touch on my cheek that I had
felt before, and knew that trees were round us.

We went on for a hundred yards, while the ground sloped upward. Then
it commenced to fall away, and we stopped at once. There we stayed, and
there, at last, the dawn found us, still distant from the cover which we had
aimed to reach in the darkness.
We were on a narrow twisting tongue of land, perhaps fifty yards broad
by two-hundred long, the conformation of which had betrayed us to the
swamp in the darkness. On the left hand it merged into bog and water, with
occasional islands of verdure, and scattered trees. On the right hand was the
deep water of the great lake that we had seen from the mountains two days
before.
The sun had not yet appeared above the ridge of higher ground that ran
between us and the sea, but the faint light of dawn was sufficient to show us
a mile-width of still water, and beyond it a level woodland of great trees,
the extent of which, from the low ground on which we stood, we could not
determine.
The few trees that surrounded us were of a different character. Most of
them were of the kind that had touched us in the night so weirdly. They had
trunks of a livid white, not more than eight feet high, from the top of which
a cluster of rising boughs rayed outward. On the length of these there were
no leaves, but large flowers of a very brilliant scarlet only, while at the end
of every bough grew a cluster of long ribbon-like leaves of a bright green,
that hung downward, almost to the ground in the still air, or fluttered very
lightly when the wind stirred them. I was not sure whether I thought them
beautiful, or strange only. I had an unreasonable feeling that they were
unfriendly.
In the hollow of one of these tree-tops, where the branches rose, there sat
a duck-billed bird, of a halcyon blue colour, and of the size, and somewhat
of the shape of a partridge. As the dawn widened, it rose and flew outward,
not crossing the lake, but going up the mid-water, to the right, where it
extended for many miles, gradually widening as it did so.
“It does not fear us at all,” I remarked to my companion, before it rose to
leave us.
“I made peace in the night with all things,” she answered, “come and see.
You will know that it was needful.”

I walked with her to the end of the tongue of land on which we stood,
and, where the lake and swamp were mingling, there were huge shapes that
wallowed in the mud like gigantic tadpoles, but with two forelimbs, short
and thick, and ending in a row of claws of great length. A hippopotamus
would have been small beside them. The most part of the head was a large-
toothed mouth, flat and shallow, with one down-curving tusk, growing like
a hook from the centre of the upper jaw. There were two large circular eyes,
on the top of the flat head.
“They were lying closely,” she told me, “in the deeper mud. We were
walking on, or slipping between them for some time before I knew they
were living.
“It was only as one of them waked to consciousness of us, and began to
roll over, that I became aware of that on which we were walking.
“I knew that he had already decided to spill us in the mud, so that he
should reach us the more easily, and that if the others should combine
against us we should be helpless. They are the Dwellers’ creatures, not of
the sea, and for a moment I almost had the doubt which would have
destroyed us. But I think I have not ruled the monsters that the oceans hold
for so long, to lose my body at last in such talons. Also, you did well.
“A javelin, such as this, is a cunning weapon, and I had joy when I used
it, but I think that our ways of peace are greater than those which you are
designed to practise.
“You see the monster that still has his tusk hooked on to that projecting
root, to steady him while he slept in the shallow? It was in the edge of his
eye-socket that your foot caught when you stumbled.”

CHAPTER III
THE PERIL OF THE LAKE

We watched for some minutes while the giant leviathans lazily moved
themselves from the mud-shallows to the deeper water. They seemed half-
asleep, and very slow, and somewhat clumsy, as they did so, with no life in
the flat unlustred eyes, and a thought crossed me as to whether they were
really as formidable as my companion had supposed them, when I noticed
that one of them, who had moved out a short distance, had sunk his head,
and raised his tail, as a duck does when he feeds under water.
Suddenly his tail waggled in an uncontrolled excitement, and in an
instant a dozen of these huge creatures had flung themselves at the spot.
Those that were already in the deeper water drove like huge torpedoes
toward it.
Those that were still in the shallows propelled themselves at almost
equal speed with huge claw-grips and flapping tails through mud and water.
So great was the converging rush that the spot at which they aimed was
splashed bare for an instant, and we saw that tusks and claws were tearing
up the muddy bottom in chase of something that was burrowing deeply to
avoid them. The next moment something of a dirty-white colour, and of the
size of a small cow—but we could not see clearly—was dragged out and
torn to pieces.
Then with contented grunts, and a switching of great tails, they swam out
phalanx shape into the deep water, where they dived together, and the still
lake gave no sign of their presence.
It was after this that my companion closed her mind from me, as she
would do when a doubt came which she could not quickly answer.
At last she told me, “It is in my mind that we have done wrongly to come
this way. The morning is here, and we have not reached the forest which
should be our immediate safety. Between us and it the swamp is extending
far on the left, and the lake for many miles on the right. If we try to go

round on either hand, I have little doubt that we shall be observed from the
heights behind us, where the Dwellers will be patrolling.
“If we hide through the day, we shall have a long way to go over the low
land, which we have proved to be an evil path in the darkness, and to cross
the hills beyond may be still more difficult. Beside that, the delay is
misfortunate, for we should not arrive at the tunnel-entrance at the
beginning of the night, as we had planned to do.”
I replied, “Can we not swim the lake?” and surprised a thought of relief
and wonder in the mind that heard me.
She answered, “I could, of course, do so very easily. I should swim under
the water, and land beneath the cover of the trees upon the farther bank. But
I supposed that you could only swim on the surface, if at all, and that in any
case the distance would be beyond your power.”
The answer annoyed me, for her contempt of my physical capacity was
always hurtful, friendly and entirely reasonable though I knew it to be, and I
had always accounted myself an accomplished swimmer.
I said, “I have swum longer distances. I can swim under water for a short
time, if necessary; but one of us swimming on the surface will be far less
conspicuous than two walking on the bank, and we shall be out of sight
very much sooner. Beside that, if we are seen and chased, we shall have a
far better opportunity of escaping.”
I do not think my reply quite satisfied her. I saw that she thought I was
illustrating the habit of collecting all the available arguments for a course
that I had pre-chosen, of which she had already accused me, but after a
moment she answered equably, “It is far best, if you are sure that you can
do it; and for myself it is far pleasanter. If we are going that way, it is
foolish to stand here longer, where we may be observed easily.
“But can you swim in those rags, or will you not at last discard them?”
I think that most people would have hesitated, as I did. I could not swim
such a distance encumbered by the clothes I was wearing. I could make
them into a bundle in such a way that they would not impede me too
greatly. All my instincts were against their abandonment. There were still a
few things in the pockets which I greatly valued—my clasp-knife,—some
matches—some cord—a note book (but I had made no use of this, so far)—
some small scissors—a razor, and a quantity of spare blades. But I knew

that the rags I wore in this new world exposed me to the contempt of every
eye that beheld them. To be modest is to be inconspicuous. It is to follow
the mode. By that test my present clothes reached the last extreme of
indecency.
I had no means of stitching them further, and the rough usage they had
received had already caused such damage that they would dispense with
me, if I did not dispense with them very promptly.
I considered temperature, but the sun was already gaining power, and I
knew how warm it became on the lower levels in the daytime.
Under the surface I knew that I had found the tunnel to be of a
comfortable warmth.
I took off my boots, and knew that the operation was final. A sole already
tied with string on the previous day, was now entirely loose. The other was
scarcely better. The uppers were leaving me by successive details. My socks
—what was left of them—were clotted with dirt and blood.
My companion watched the gradual revelation with amused and lively
eyes, but she hid her thoughts from me as it proceeded.
In the end, public opinion was too strong for me. All my life I had made
myself grotesque in the ugliest garments by which the human form can be
hidden, because my fellow-men required it.
Here I was conscious of a different verdict, and the slave crouched
instinctively to the crack of a new whip. On a sudden impulse, I resolved to
leave them.
I wrapped my small possessions in my waistcoat, which was still a fairly
sound garment. I tied it securely. Then I threaded a piece of cord through
the button-holes, which I fastened round my waist, so that the little parcel
could be easily carried behind me.
I made of the boots and other garments a bundle which I resolved to sink
in the lake, so that there should be no sign left of our presence, and we
dived into the water together.
The lake was smooth, and the water was not too cold to be pleasant. It
became clear and very deep as we left the bank behind us. I swam strongly
at first, rejoicing in the morning freshness of sun and air and water, and
buoyed by the exhilaration of my companion’s mind. But a time came when
I looked with doubt at the distance of the wooded headland which we had

agreed to make our objective. The shore was far off, but yet I seemed to
have made no progress to the one before us.
My comrade swam beneath, but not closely. In the delight of her
recovered element she dived and rose, and swam beneath and round me,
with a speed and ease that did nothing to encourage me to satisfaction with
my clumsier efforts.
I had a strong desire to call on her for the vitality of which I was learning
to rely too absolutely, but against this I fought with a stubborn wish to show
her that I was not entirely incapable, even in an unfamiliar element.
For a moment she stayed quietly beside me, sliding through the water at
the same pace as myself, but without apparent effort, while she rose
sufficiently to view the scene around her.
“Look back,” she suggested suddenly, and I changed a stroke which was
becoming wearier than I was willing to recognise, so that I might turn my
eyes to the distant heights behind us.
I searched them, but could see nothing of a new interest. Once I thought
that there was a flicker of flame on the hillside, but it was too minute and
far off for any certainty, and the next moment I had lost it entirely.
“I’m afraid your sight is not much use, even in daylight,” she considered,
“but please swim as low as you are able, for the Dwellers may not be
equally deficient.
“There is one who has scraped together all the ash and litter of the
burning, and it has flamed up afresh.”
I changed to the breast-stroke, and she sank to three feet under the
surface, as I answered, “I suppose they will make an end of it entirely. Is it
because of the Forbidden Thing, and do they, I wonder, wrongly blame the
Killers for using it?
“I cannot understand why they should object to fire so strongly. In the
world from which I come there are so many inventions less useful and with
greater potentialities of mischief; and their own works show that their
engineering skill and practice is advanced beyond the knowledge of my
contemporaries.”
She answered, “Perhaps it is only that they do not wish the creatures that
they allow to live on the surface to develop knowledge. I can only guess, as

you can. But we are likely to learn many things before the next dawn
comes, though we shall not see it.”
I did not answer, for a trailing growth of water-weed had caught my left
leg, and I kicked free with difficulty. The next moment I was surrounded by
the floating growth, and I was some moments under water before I could
release myself sufficiently to continue.
My companion regarded me with the merriment which my bodily
difficulties always prompted, only now it was more irrepressible, because
she was intoxicated by the joyous freedom that the water gave her, after so
long an absence.
“Is it really so,” she asked, “that if you were below the surface for more
than a few moments your body would become useless beyond repair, and
you would die out of it entirely? and did you know this when you offered to
swim so far across the surface?”
“It is true enough,” I answered, “but I have no intention of drowning. In
my world, we live dangerously in many ways, and when there is sufficient
necessity we take such risks as we must, and we have contempt for those
who will not take them.”
“It is very well,” she replied, with a mocking gaiety of mind which
would not quieten, “but the contempt of your fellow-men is a somewhat
distant eventuality; and as I desire your company when we invade the
tunnel of the Dwellers, I hope you may decide that the risk will still be
sufficient if you swim in some other direction.”
I replied, “I am swimming to the nearest point at which we can land, and
at the best pace I can. I do not know what better I can do, unless I am to
sink to the bottom. But if you can give me any reason why I should not
swim in this direction I shall be glad to have it.”
She said, “I can give you two, and they are both rather good ones. Let me
show you them as I see them.”
She then gave me a most unwelcome vision of a mass of floating weed
through which to swim would be hopeless, and downward, through clear
water below it—for it was not rooted—to where our acquaintances of the
morning lay scattered on the lake-floor, with wide unwinking eyes looking
upward, doubtless for the capture of any prey which might be caught in the
green snare above them. I do not think it needs excuse that the sight

appalled me. We were in the very middle of the lake, and I was tired
already.
“How far do the weeds extend?” I asked.
“I cannot say. It is farther than I can see. If you will turn and rest for a
minute, I will find out which way we can best attempt to go round them.
But swim quietly backward, for you will not wish to rouse our friends
below while I am absent. I know that when you meet any strange thing your
first thought is to fear, and then to fight it, but as your axe is gone, and you
would not find it easy to reach your clasp-knife, I suggest that you should
not rouse them.”
I agreed very heartily, although I knew that she mocked me, and, indeed,
the idea of using an axe in the water to defend myself from such an attack
was sufficiently comic, as she visualised it to me.
The fact was that now she was in her natural element the idea of any
living thing within it provoking either fear or hostility had regained its
normal absurdity. Had she been alone, I knew that she would have dived
beneath the weeds at once, without a second glance or thought for the
creatures that lay below her.
She had left now, and I swam back for a short distance, and then turned
on my back, and floated on the sunny water, glad of the rest, but becoming
increasingly frightened as I reflected that at any moment I might find
myself in the grip of those wide flat jaws. I understood why these beasts
had their eyes so flatly placed, as I recalled that unwelcome vision. How far
could their sight extend to the surface of the lake above them? Were they
resting oblivious of such small things as I, that might be swimming in the
water, or did they watch there, as a kestrel hovers, ready to rush upward at
the first sight of their expected prey?
I was somewhat reassured, as the moments lapsed, by a shoal of silvery
fish which passed me. They were as long as salmon, but much slimmer, and
they swam in a long line two or three broad, straight toward the place of
danger which I was avoiding. They, at least, had no cause for fear, unless
they were too stupid to know, or sufficiently agile to avoid it.
And then she was again beside me:
“It is not very far round on the left, and there is clear water for a long
way forward. There is a cold spring at the bottom when we have rounded

the weed. The water there is purer than the lake itself, and I am desirous to
bathe in it. If you swim on, I shall catch you up very quickly. But we will
stay together till we are clear of this place.”
We swam on, side by side, in silence. I was already aware that I must
conserve my strength to the utmost, if I were to reach the shore unaided.
After a short distance, the weed receded so that we were able to approach
the shore obliquely, and then it disappeared from before us, and again we
could head straight forward.
It was here that my companion left me. I know that she was in some
doubt as she did so, for she asked me whether I would not prefer to float
only, till she could rejoin me. But I was anxious to get forward while my
strength lasted, and I had caught a glimpse of her mind, from which I knew
how keenly she desired and needed her intended pleasure, so I answered
only, “I will go on. You will catch me easily. The farther I leave the beasts
behind us, the better pleased I am. But you will keep your mind open, in
case there should be anything to let you know.”
“Surely,” she answered, and the next instant had left me.
The headland was nearer now, and it was with the hope that the struggle
would soon be over that I settled down to swim the remaining distance.
Once I called to my companion, and she gave me a sight of herself as she
lay with lifted fur on the lake-floor, and let the cold stream go through it.
But, for the most part, I tried to think of distant or abstract things, to turn
my mind from the weariness which now made every stroke an effort.
Then a swell came from the left hand, as though a large boat were
passing at no great distance.
I looked round in wonder, but for a moment I could see nothing to cause
it.
Then a huge black body rose from the water, like an enormous porpoise,
and turned a somersault which sent a heavier swell across the level surface
of the lake.
My stroke quickened without conscious effort as I beheld it. But at the
first moment I was not greatly frightened. It was evident that it did not
pursue me, and my course was not toward it. Fortunately, I called my
companion, and the answer, “I am coming now,” was unperturbed in its

promptness. I had an instant’s vision of her, as the loose fur contracted, and
the slim swift body shot forward.
But the next minute was rapid in thought and action.
My mind called urgently, “There is another one that has risen nearer.”
“They may not see you while they are on the surface. Their eyes look
upward only.”
“They may do so, as they roll in their gambols—I think they have done
so now. They are both coming.”
“I am coming quickly.”
“It is useless. What can you do against them?”
The two huge brutes were racing over the surface in their competition to
secure me, with a speed which would have left a motor-boat behind very
quickly. I could not doubt that in twenty seconds they would be quarrelling
over my divided body.
My terror warned her only to avoid the danger which must destroy me.
“Refuse fear,” she called back, “it is that which gives them power to
destroy you.”
But fear I must, and as she realised it, I think—though I am not sure—
that there was a second during which her own mind faltered. But if so, it
was for an instant only. Then she realised the full peril of the moment, and
her courage rose to meet it.
Cool and swift, and very urgent, she thrust forward the full force of her
mind to overcome the panic which had possessed me. “I shall be first. Swim
on. Listen. You are safe if you hear me. You must stop thinking. Give your
mind to mine, and I can save you. Do not think at all, but believe it. It is
everything that you do this.”
The rest is a dream only.
I was dimly conscious that the first of the rushing beasts was upon me,
and that it dived slightly as it came, so that it should snap at me from below.
I saw the wide flat shovel-jaws opened to take me, and then two things
happened. Almost into the mouth of the gaping jaws she came between us
—she had swum at least three times the distance that our opponents had
covered—and at the same instant the second monster charged sideways into
its rival in its eagerness to get a share of the expected dainty.

They were afraid of her, clearly. They both recoiled for a moment.
But it was clear also that they regarded me as a prey of which she had no
right to deprive them.
On they came again from different sides, and into their very teeth she
swam to thwart them.
Even so, had they been capable of concerted action, I do not see how she
could have saved me. But she was cooler, swifter, more agile, with a mind
that mocked them and bewildered. Nor was she content with defensive
movements only, but as either would draw back for a moment, she followed
the retreated mouth as though she dared it to harm her, as no doubt she did.
How it would have ended I cannot say, but at that moment fate
interposed to help us. We were still a hundred yards from the shore, when
the ground beneath us shallowed, and they pursued us no further.
We climbed out into a place of shade and of mossy softness, but I was
too exhausted to regard it. Where I sank I lay. Perhaps, she was exhausted
also. Anyway she gave me no thought, but remained in silence beside me.
After a time I slept.

CHAPTER IV
THE SILENCE IN THE WOOD

When I waked, she was sitting looking into the water with brooding eyes
in which amusement flickered more than once as I watched them, but which
seemed, for the most part, to be puzzled by some thoughts for which she
could find no solving.
She looked at me at last, and saw that I was awake, and offered me her
mind in a moment.
“I am glad,” she thought, “that I saved you, and I think that the Leaders
will approve it; but of this I cannot be as certain as I gladly would be.
“As we were made companions in this enterprise, it seemed that it was
right to do so. But it is a law of our kind that, as no creatures in all the
oceans will dare to harm us, so we do not interfere between them. Were we
to withhold their prey from them, I cannot say that our immunity would
continue. It is a thing so fundamental that from the beginning I have never
known it attempted. We cannot be as one of themselves, and above them
also. It comes to me again, as I have thought before, that you are like a seed
of death to the world I know, and the end is beyond my dreaming.”
I answered, “I owe you the debt of my life, and I cannot tell at how great
a risk you have saved it. But I do not wish you to do things for me of which
the consequences may be beyond our understanding.
“I thought to show you that I could cross the lake unaided, and I have
only made my weakness more evident. I think it may be right that I should
go alone in future; for when you called upon me first not to fear, I am aware
that I failed you, and I suppose it was from that that the danger became so
imminent.”
She answered, “That is true; and by my code it may be right to say that
you failed me, where it was beyond the power of your body (which is truly
contemptible) to do otherwise. But I have thought, and see that by your own
code I failed you for my pleasure only, for which I have no excuse of

weakness to offer. I do not think another man would have left you, as I did.
You think I showed courage because I interposed to save you, at some risk
to myself.
“Whether there were risk I do not know; nor how great it may have been;
but I think you showed a greater courage, being what you are, to go forward
alone, and that, not to save my life, but to give me a needless pleasure,
against which you might have protested reasonably.
“But we have still a long way to go before evening, and we shall do well
to face the remainder of the journey, the difficulties of which we cannot tell
till we meet them.”
While we conversed in this way, I had been observing the scene around
me. We had landed upon the edge of a forest of a more varied luxuriance
than that in which we had rested upon the higher land two nights before.
Here, as elsewhere, I saw no sign of grass, nor of any similar straight-
bladed growth, but the ground was covered by mosses, very deep and soft,
and close-creeping herbage of other kinds in many shades of green and
yellow. The trees were of many beautiful and unfamiliar forms, some of
great size and height, but not too crowded to show their contours, nor the
sky between them. Their foliage was of shades that varied from the palest
yellow to the deepest gold, with infrequent hints of red, and there was one
broad-spreading bush which was entirely of a beetroot crimson.
It was very still—for the coming storms of which I had been told might
bring rain in the night, but did not yet disturb the peace of the daytime—and
of a beauty at which my breath paused for a moment, and of which I cannot
hope to tell you.
But I was not looking for beauty. The need for beauty is continual, and
for food is intermittent only. Yet the last is the more urgent while it remains
unsatisfied.
It is true that man cannot live by bread alone, but it is equally so that he
cannot live long without it. I remembered our compact that I should be self-
supporting in future. I knew the swiftness with which my companion
considered it natural to travel. I was aware of the importance, not merely of
reaching the tunnel-entrance by nightfall, but of doing so in such condition
that we should be prepared at once to explore it. I looked round in a natural
anxiety to discover some means of nourishment.

I saw nothing to encourage hope, except that there was a curious fruit-
like formation upon the hanging branches of a tree behind us.
The leaves of this tree were very long and narrow, and of so light a
yellow as to give an effect of whiteness, like the palest petals of the
Californian poppy. At the root of many of the leaves there was a smooth-
skinned tawny fruit, of the size of a loganberry. Opening it, I found that it
was a fruit very certainly, containing a juicy pulp, and in the midst a single
slender seed, of the size and shape of that of a lettuce. I tasted it cautiously,
and found it delicious. My companion watched me with a friendly but
unconcealed amusement.
After a time, she gave the glance by which I knew that she wished our
minds to communicate.
“You have really no means of knowing,” she asked, “whether they may
assist or kill you? Is this because you are in a world of strangeness, or are
you accustomed to this exciting uncertainty?”
I replied, “I have senses of taste and scent, which warn me that many
things are unfit for eating, but they are not entirely reliable. The creatures of
my kind depend largely upon tradition, as their own lives are too short to
acquire much knowledge—and as, even were it otherwise, they would
doubtless die in the experimental stages of obtaining it—and we eat such
things as our ancestors have eaten before us.
“Here, my only method is to choose such substances as appear most like
to those which I have known to be wholesome, and eat a small portion. If
the taste be good, and no ill consequence follow, in a few hours I can eat
more freely.”
“Your lives may be short,” she said, “but, at least, they lack dullness.
How shall you go bad, if it should chance to be a wrong thing that you are
now eating?”
I controlled an impulse of irritation before I answered, “I shall not go
bad, for I am testing the food very carefully. But I shall be the more careful
because of the thoughts you have, and I may keep you here in consequence
till you are tired of waiting. There are many ways of going bad for those
who eat the wrong things, and none of them is pleasant.”
“If your kind can avoid such poisons through their traditions, how do
you know of the effects of many?” she asked me.

It was ever so, when we commenced exchange of thought upon the
world which I had left, that the starting-point was quickly out of sight
behind us.
“There are a variety of very poisonous substances, either vegetable or
mineral abstracts, which can be mixed with food or drink without easy
detection. As our bodies frequently break down through defective
construction, or our own misuses, or from unavoidable hardships, before
their final dissolution, we employ men to repair them, and they make use of
these poisons in minute quantities, and in the honest belief that we benefit
from them.
“It follows that these poisons are prepared in great quantities, and are
readily procurable.
“There is a custom among us of mixing one or other of these poisons in
the food or drink of an acquaintance or relation whose life might be
terminated to our advantage. Probably this custom is not very general, but
that is difficult to judge, as it is practised very quietly, owing to a law which
provides that the neck of a successful poisoner shall be broken, after an
interval of some weeks, during which they are kept alive in great mental
agony.” (“Do you mean that an unsuccessful poisoner would be treated with
comparative leniency?” her mind interpolated. “Yes,” I replied, “our laws
always encourage incompetence). However many of these cases may
escape notice, it is usual to detect a few every year.”
“The one who is considered to be the most likely to have committed the
crime is then arrested, and all the available evidence is so arranged as (if
possible) to prove his guilt. But strict proof is not necessary for a conviction
in such cases, the practice being that the degree of proof required is in an
inverse ratio to the repellent nature of the crime committed.
“I suppose that the great majority of those who are convicted are guilty,
although, owing to the way in which these trials are conducted, and the
nature of the evidence which is accepted as conclusive, it would be a very
simple matter for anyone of average intelligence to poison another in such a
way that suspicion would fall upon some other member of the household,
and it is not reasonable to suppose that this is never attempted successfully.
“But my mind wanders.

“At these trials it is usual to announce in public the nature of the poison
used, the quantities required, the methods by which they may be procured,
their effects, and the ease or difficulty with which they may afterwards be
detected, and these particulars are distributed throughout the nation, so that
anyone desiring to poison another need not be hindered by ignorance of
such essential details.
“There is also, every year, a large number of people who destroy their
own bodies, although we have (grotesquely enough) a law prohibiting this
practice,—and here, at least, we discourage incompetence, for we can only
punish those who fail, the rest being beyond the reach of our cruelties,—
and a proportion of these people use poisons to effect their purpose, so that
you will see that there is no difficulty in obtaining knowledge of the effect
of such substances.”
“I think” she replied, “that my Leader showed the accuracy of her
judgment when she classified you as of the Batwing Kind, though your race
is, at least collectively, of a stupidity which it must be hard to rival
throughout the ages.
“But tell me this. You have shown me already that there are many other
species of animals which dwell in your world, and which you consider to be
inferior, because you have the power to destroy them,—Surely no
conclusive reason!—Do they also suffer from the same disability, or are
they better able to select their appropriate foods?”
I answered, conscious of the derision which laughed within her, and not
entirely without a flicker of satisfaction, as I recognised that the ellipses of
my thought confused her.
“It is true that for one species to have the power of destruction over
another is a practical supremacy, and I may have impressed my thought
upon you in that way without careful differentiation. To admit it absolutely
would be to place the germ of a disease which we might be unable to
conquer as beside or above us.
“We do consider that we are supreme of earthly creatures, but we could
assert this supremacy on widely different grounds....
“As to your first question, the physical senses of the lower animals are
more acute than our own, because they depend entirely upon them.

“Those that are allowed to live wildly, through our indifference, or in
parts of the earth which we have not yet populated, appear to avoid
unwholesome food without difficulty. But if they cause us any annoyance
we are able to show our superiority by cunningly mixing poison with some
attractive substance, by eating which they die very miserably.”
“I am glad to think,” she answered, “that there are some parts of your
earth which are still clean,” and then she received my thought in silence as
it continued.
“But I must qualify my thought to this extent. There are numerous
species of animals which we have subdued to our own purposes, and that
we confine around us, either that they may do work on our behalf, or that
we may eat their bodies, or both, and there is a diminished ability to avoid
poisonous substances among these creatures, as their lives approximate
more nearly to the condition of those who keep them.—But this touches on
much which would be long to explain, and I see that you do not understand
fairly, if I give you the facts only.”
She answered, “It is a wonderful world, and a very hideous. But I have
much to ask concerning these creatures that dwell with you, and that you
eat when they die. For the time, let us leave it.”
While we had conversed in this way, I had been occupied in opening the
small parcel of my remaining possessions, and drying them as well as I was
able, their importance to me being too great for my mind to be seriously
affected by the knowledge that she regarded them as a humorous evidence
of my inferiority to every other created thing, though she admitted very
frankly that the Dwellers were not entirely exempt from a corresponding
necessity.
Now I made up my bundle again, and having eaten freely of the strange
fruit, I expressed my readiness to explore the golden lights and shadows of
the forest that lay before us.
We had agreed that I should now depend upon my own vitality, even
though our progress must necessarily be slower in consequence, but I rose
and went forward very buoyantly, and though I knew that she was
restraining her natural pace to keep beside me, I was well content to feel
that I was moving with a lightness and energy which she could not have
expected from any previous experience. There may have been some

exhilarating quality in the food which I had just eaten, but, apart from that
possibility, I had rested well, the air was pleasantly warm, and I had a sense
of unaccustomed freedom from the rags which I had discarded.
Had there been a hard surface beneath us, I might have regretted the
impulse on which I had left my boots,—though it would have been equally
correct to say they had left me,—but the moss was soft and deep, and
though it gave a curious tingling sensation (which I forgot subsequently) it
was otherwise a very soft and pleasant carpet on which to tread.
The wood which we were now entering must have stretched (as I
calculated) for about forty miles along the great valley which lay within the
ridge of coast-wise hills which we had to reach and cross to gain our
objective. It was probably about ten miles wide at the point at which we
were attempting to pass it.
We had gone about half-a-mile at a very quick walk, the trees not being
sufficiently close to obstruct us seriously, when my companion asked me if
there were nothing that occurred to me as unusual in the scene around us.
I had not thought of anything. I had been occupied by the beauty and
variety of the trees which we were passing, but as she asked I felt it, and
shuddered.
“Yes,” I said, “it is the silence.”
She answered, “Silence is good; but it is the cause of the silence. The
trees live, but they do not move. I think that wind is forbidden. Besides the
trees and the moss, it seems that we are the only creatures that live.”
And I knew, as her thought reached me, that she was right. There was no
moving life in the trees, nor in the air, nor in the moss beneath us. I
searched, and if I could have found the smallest insect, I think it would have
broken the spell which oppressed me, as I realised the isolation in which we
moved.
I stood, and hesitated. I was ashamed of my thought, but at last I gave it.
“I do not want to go farther.”
“Do you feel it?” she answered, “I felt it sooner.”
“It is not that I fear,” I answered, “there seems no cause to fear in so
great a peace, but I find it hard to go forward.”
“Yes,” she said, “the Dwellers may not be here, but I think that they have
left their wills to protect it. It is a new thing to me. Shall we yield, and turn,

or resist it?”
I hesitated for a moment, for I felt a curious disinclination to go farther,
beneath which there was a stubborn unwillingness to turn back with so little
of reason to justify it.
“It must be a long way round,” I thought at last, “and it might be even
more perilous. You shall decide.”
She answered readily, “Then we will go forward. I will go first, if you
will, because I am the more sensitive to the power against which we shall
be contending, and I may also be more resolute to resist it.
“I know that you were trying to decide in this way, though you found it
hard to do so.
“My own decision is not because it is a long way round, which is of little
moment, nor because it may be more dangerous to take that way, for it may
be less so, which is more probable. But I think that these were not your
reasons. They were only those which your mind supplied, as best it might,
to support your preference.
“You know, as I do, that there may be great danger if we go forward,
though you cannot understand what it may be. Therefore you fear it. But
you have within you a spirit which has been trained to conflict by the
conditions of your life, and which is reluctant to turn aside from a chosen
path, and especially so when the danger is not immediately evident, nor
physically apparent.
“My own reason is different. I feel that these woods are held by a power
which will turn us back, if it be sufficient to do so. I suppose this power to
derive from the Dwellers, because I know them to be supreme in these
regions, and I cannot think that there could be any other whose wills could
contend against my own so stubbornly. But it is in my thought that if we
accept defeat here we may as well abandon our attempt at once. It is your
nature to depend upon weapons for your protection, and you have none. It is
mine to depend upon the assertion of my own will, and if, at the first
challenge, we confess defeat without effort, in what confidence may we
continue? We have this to think also. The Dwellers have much knowledge
which is not ours, and many powers, but of the issue of such a conflict
neither we nor they have had any experience.

“I supposed that the meeting of last night would resolve it, for I believed
that my own people had determined to go straight forward, and that the
Dwellers were resolute not to move aside to allow it. But the appearance of
the lizards between them caused my people to halt of their own will, and the
issue was not contested in that way.”
Then she went forward, and I followed closely behind her. Peace was
round us, and a dream-like beauty, golden-green, and deep blue sky where
the trees showed it. The stillness could be felt.
As the body feels when a great wind meets it, so that, though it stoop
against it, it can make no headway, so was the pressure against my mind to
hold me backward.
My companion gave me no thought, and I saw her go on slowly, but with
no sign of effort.
As the pressure increased against me, my heart began to beat very
violently. I became sick with terror. I forced each limb forward with
difficulty, as though there were a weight that dragged it backward. I
concentrated my thought on the fear that if she should leave me I should be
lost entirely, and strove with a despairing energy to lessen the gap between
us, as it threatened to widen. And then, suddenly, I knew that the pressure
ceased, and she looked back with laughing eyes, and a mind which was
elate with victory.
The trees here became very dense, so that we could not see far ahead,
and there were many of the fruit-bearing bushes, such as that on which I
had fed before, that grew between them. I had a sense of great exhaustion,
which I think she shared also, and we sat down and rested.
I saw that she was elate that we had not been turned by this obstacle, but
I found myself less responsive to her mood than usual. I felt that we were
confronted by powers which were entirely beyond our calculation, and
against which we could make no effectual provision. I even doubted our
present success.
“Suppose,” I suggested suddenly, “that while we think we are victors, we
are caught in a trap which we cannot break? Suppose a new danger were to
confront us, how could we flee backward through the stubborn wall we
have passed? Suppose that it is a circle through which return may be more
difficult than the entrance?”

“We may suppose what we will,” she answered happily, “and we may be
right one time in a hundred, but what use is there in that? And such thoughts
seem to me to be of a great folly, for by such means you make those against
whom you should contend the more formidable. You defeat yourself. You
are frightened by a new thing. It is new to me also, but it is no more
wonderful than are many of the invisible powers of which you have told
me, which are known to your own kind, and of which even the Dwellers—
for all I know—may be ignorant.”
I answered, though still unable to rise to her own mood, “I know that you
are right when you say that I defeat myself, for it is the weakness of my
kind to do so. Even in our wars, it is only rarely that a battle is fought out to
the extremity of either side, but a moment comes when the spirit of
confidence dies in one side or the other, and it retires or surrenders. Often, it
is found afterwards that its opponents were dispirited also, and that the
defeated could have been the victors had they endured for a short time
longer.
“But your comparison with the powers of my own world gives me little
encouragement. In our last war it was considered necessary to prevent
people from crossing from one country to another. To effect this a wire
fence was erected along the boundary. It looked harmless, and easy to pass.
Those who touched it died instantly, as by lightning. To an earlier
generation it would have seemed incredible. How can we tell by what
incredible-seeming horrors the Dwellers may be able to protect their
territories?”
She answered buoyantly, “I agree with what you think, though not with
the mood it induces. You are exactly right that we cannot tell, and it is
useless to speculate. But the moment is ours, and I am content to have a
mind untroubled.
“Why is it that your mind and body are alike in this, that they will fear
when there is no cause, or a doubt only, but will rise above it when a cause
confronts them? You are at least clear from the barbarisms of your own
time, which appear to be such by your own telling that it is a marvel that
any of you remain alive to endure them. And you can take courage from the
thought that the Dwellers are not of your kind.”

I did not answer further, for I was now rested, and had eaten freely, and
with the physical comfort the mood was passing, but I had less confidence
than she in the Dwellers, and a greater fear than I had felt before.

CHAPTER V
THE TEMPLE

Now the trees were thinner again, and of a changing character. They
appeared to be a larger variety of those which we had encountered during
the previous night. Light and graceful they rose around us, with a crown of
spreading boughs from which long ribbon-leaves fell thickly. These leaves
were many yards in length, of the width of a finger, and of an almost
incredible lightness. The air was quiet, but not with the unreasonable
stillness of the area of that forbidding will, and when a light wind moved,
the leaves were lifted like a woman’s hair, and blown aside, so that the
straight slim trunks showed nakedly between them.
Always these light leaves murmured with a stealthy whispering sound,
so like to speech that I had a feeling that there were words which I almost
heard, which I should catch if I should listen more carefully. I began to
imagine that they were urgent to warn or threaten.
I turned to my companion’s mind to break the spell they were casting,
and found her receiving it with a like pleasure to that with which she bathed
in the cold springs of the lake-floor.
Her mind paused reluctantly from its enjoyment to answer me when I
queried in wonder how she should find a delight which approached to
ecstasy in such a way, when I had understood that the sounds of speech, and
(I supposed) all noise, were a barbarism that repelled her.
She answered, “You confuse things the most opposite. Is the beauty of
bird or beast increased if it be torn open? The sea is full of sound, and like
the wind it has many voices, which it contains within itself, as the air
contains them. These voices are as the very basis of life to every sea-born
thing. Even a dead shell cannot forget them. The unending murmur of these
leaves soothes me with delight, while it arouses longing to return to the
ocean-depths where there is neither noise nor stillness. Do you not hear that
it is at once monotonous and many-toned, as all sound should be? Would

not even such as you are shrink to violate it with the intolerable noises of
the speech you practise?”
I did not answer, for her mind left me as it ceased its protest, and we
went forward in silence, soothed to drowsiness of thought by this monotony
of multitudinous sounds, till the trees ceased, and I was suddenly conscious
that my companion was left behind, and that her thought was urgent to call
me.
Thoughts that pass from mind to mind are swifter than speech, a
thousand times, and more luminous. So it was that we had mutually realised
in a moment that which would have been beyond the ready apprehension of
human intercourse.
She stood back because she was confronted by a wall of blackness,
where I saw sunlight, and a level lawn. It was not darkness that she saw, as
that of night, but a blackness as of a curtain, gross and palpable.
When she knew that the way was clear to me, and that it held no visible
menace, she decided instantly to go forward. “We will hold our purpose of
boldness, as the better hope both of success and of safety. I will see with
your mind, as you saw with mine in the night-time.”
I agreed, and we joined hands, and went on together.
Now, as we had found before, it is the disadvantage of this method of
helping another mind that it hinders thought, so that I went on with my will
fixed on conveying that which I saw to my companion, and could not
reflect, or even wonder, without some blurring of the vision which I was
transmitting.
The forest which we had left swept a wide forward curve on either hand
around a level plain, on which was a circular building which must have
been more than a mile in diameter. It consisted of a series of platforms, each
receding from the one below. There were many of these, each about four
feet higher than the last, and the central elevation must have been
considerable, though the extent of the building dwarfed it. In colour it was
opalescent, reminding me of the pavement which I had first encountered,
but it was of such extent and such beauty that the comparison is one of kind
only.
So far as I could see from that position, it was crowned by a level
platform. It was entirely silent: no life moved nor was visible.

All this I showed to my companion, who received it without interruption
as we paused for me to view it, but when the survey was completed, and I
would have continued our advance, I found her slow to follow, and it was
only after an interval of irresolution that at last she told me. “I am afraid. I
have doubted whether we should go forward. There is a mystery here which
awes me, whereas the unknown, or the perilous, has allured me always. I
have thought backward as far as mind will reach, and the feeling is new.
But, after this, I thought that we have taken a new road with minds aware of
its danger. We may come through harmless, or with broken bodies, or, for
all we know, we may be destroyed by forces which are beyond experience
or imagination. But there is one thing that remains to our own wills, that if
we fail we may do so conscious either of a bold or of a craven failure.
Having lived so long, I have no will to perish with shame in my thoughts.
You have walked where your sight failed, and I can surely do so. We will go
forward together, and you can give me the sight I need, unless a greater
urgency should require you. It may be that the darkness will pass, as did the
pressure.
“But, perhaps, you are yourself unwilling to continue with a comrade so
helpless? If you would rather that we turn aside, or that you go forward
alone, I am content for it to be as you will.”
I answered readily, “I am well content to go on together. I do not share or
understand your feeling. So far as I can see them, the platforms are quiet
and vacant, and nothing warns me of danger. It is a strange thing that you
cannot see, and may be ominous. But we have chosen a dangerous search,
and we are little likely to reach success if we turn from shadows. To do so,
would be (it is your own thought) to defeat ourselves, before any hostile
movement should avail to thwart us. Let us at least go round the base of the
building until we find whether the other side be alike. We might do this
without penetrating the space within which you cannot see.”
She answered, “Not by my will. For the fear is less since my resolution
denied it; and how do we know that the higher platforms may not show us
the entrance which we seek? Or that my sight may not avail when we gain
them?”
But her sight did not return, and though I was able to convey the scene so
that she walked confidently, yet our minds could not divert to the exchange

of other thoughts,—could, indeed, scarcely think at all, without reducing
her to a darkness which was not merely such as I had experienced on the
previous night, but blackness absolute and unrelieved.
We went straight upward from one circular platform to another, finding
no change whatever. We walked on surfaces as smooth as polished granite,
in some places of a milky opaqueness, at others of deep and multi-coloured
transparencies. Always before us was a wall of the same substance:
climbing it, we found another similar platform to traverse. The outer edge
of each curved very slightly upward, not more than a few inches, like the
low rim of a gigantic saucer. It was nothing, proportionately, to the
dimensions of the platforms themselves, but was enough to make me
wonder how they were drained, when the rain fell. Then I wondered
whether rain were allowed to fall in that solitude. Looking closely, I
noticed, at the foot of the next wall, that there was a space of an inch or two
between its apparent base and the platform beneath it.
Apart from these apertures, which gave to each of the circular walls an
appearance of being unsupported, there was no opening anywhere, as of
door or window, nor sign of joint nor division in the whole extents of walls
or platforms.
The colours before and beneath us were of innumerable variety, and of
deep and glowing intensities, changing continually as we advanced. They
changed, but did not flicker, nor sparkle. We walked on lakes of frozen fire,
that faded as we advanced to the quiet green of an English sunset when the
mists are windless. Here, I thought, might be the place of the birth of
sunsets. Sometimes the approaching wall would show a violet colour of an
intensity which I had neither seen nor imagined, but this colour was never
beneath our feet, nor could we reach it closely, for as we approached, it
always changed and faded, if fading it could be called which was most
often into a blue of more than peacock brilliance. But it was dull to the
violet light which had preceded.
So we climbed unhindered, till we traversed a much wider platform than
those below, and knew that the last wall was before us. It was higher than
the previous ones had been, and we mounted it with some difficulty. We
then saw a circular space of a diameter of about two hundred yards, and of
an absolute flatness. It seemed that there was nothing more than the sides

had shown already to reward our climbing. Except—so small a thing. A tiny
point of light on the surface at the centre—so small a point. As we walked
toward it I expected it to show more largely, but it did not do so. When we
stood within a few yards, which was the nearest that we dared to venture, it
was still too small for the eye to measure. It was a point without magnitude.
I cannot say that it was embedded in, or that it lay upon, the surface. I
cannot say that it was red or yellow: it was fire. It did not change or sparkle.
We stood there for a long time. I had no thoughts that I can translate to
words. I have none now.
At last, we continued our way to the farther side of the platform, where
we found a new reason for pausing. Beneath us lay the penultimate terrace
which we had noticed to be so much wider than the others.
Where we had crossed it in ascending there had been no other difference.
But here I looked upon the body of one of the Dwellers, who lay face-
downwards before us.
She did not lie on the flat surface, but in a shallow depression, hollowed
to the shape of her body, which was half beneath and half above the surface
of the platform on which she lay. It fitted her as though it were a mould in
which she had been cast. It fitted her arms, that lay stretched straight and
wide above her head. The whole attitude was one of grief or adoration. We
watched, and saw no movement.
We walked aside for some distance, before climbing down to the
platform on which she lay. Having done this, I looked toward her, and saw
that she was now standing. We remained motionless. We could merely
watch. If she saw us there could be no escape nor evasion. We could not
exchange thought, for my mind was occupied in conveying to my
companion the vision of what I saw, but she contrived to let me know that it
was as inexplicable to her as to me, and I remembered that she had told me
that she had never seen more than three women among the Dwellers,
although she supposed them to be more numerous.
The one we now saw stood upright, showing a girlish slimness, her great
size neutralised by the parity of her surroundings. She was gazing towards
the point of light, her arms held down before her, and the joined hands
twisting as in an extremity of controlled emotion.

Unlike the male Dwellers, she had hair on her head, abundant, though
not long. It was golden-brown in colour, and extended down the spine, a
narrow lifted ridge. Otherwise the body was hairless. The back was the
brown of a burnt biscuit, changing in front to rich cream-colour. Otherwise,
she might have been a woman of to-day or yesterday, with the grace and
symmetry of a Grecian statue.
So, for a time, she stood, and then turned, and descended.
As I watched her do so, I became conscious that she could see no more
than my companion. For though she walked confidently enough down what
to her were no more than very wide and shallow stairs, I saw her twice put a
foot forward, as with an instant’s doubt, to feel the slight flange which rose
at the edge of each platform.
Before we descended farther, we walked to the edge of the hollow in
which she had lain, and I had an impression of the enormous mould of a
human form, as though it had been pressed in wet sand, but all the
substance of that hollow showed the violet light of which I have told before,
and though it did not flash nor shine into the eyes as sunlight does, but was,
as it were, buried within the stone that contained it, yet it was of such
intensity that my sight was lost as I saw it, and for some moments after I
turned away I was a sharer of my companion’s blindness.
It was inevitable that we should take much longer in our descent than
had the Dweller, whose stride from platform to platform was so different
from our shorter steps, yet when we arrived again on the level ground she
was still there, and had turned to face the temple (if such it were) with
thrown-back head, and uplifted arms, and an expression as of one who has
been hopelessly repulsed, and yet makes one more appeal, not with
expectation, but because it is intolerable to turn away, and to admit defeat
which is final.

It may be convenient here to explain certain facts regarding the Dwellers
of which I learnt later, and in gradual ways. They had, in the course of
numerous millenniums, developed bodies which were immune from
disease, and (in comparison with our own) from accidental injury also. So
far as their experience showed, there was no physical deterioration, nor any
reason why they should not continue indefinitely. Yet their solution of the

problem of longevity proved inferior to that which had been evolved by the
Amphibians, in an unforeseen way. In our own race, we know that the
desire of life may persist in a body which is both old and organically
defective, and that the brain is usually the last stronghold of a vitality which
is reluctantly surrendered. Their experience was opposite. A time would
come when the body functioned, but the mind grew weary. Year by year, an
increasing lethargy would be succeeded by a more active desire for death,
till the slow operation of their own will-power would destroy their bodies
through the misery of its final centuries. To the young, this condition would
appear incredible, and they would confidently boast that they would resist it
successfully, but, sooner or later, it would inevitably descend upon them.
Such was their individual doom: as a race they lived under a darker
shadow. When it became evident that they had so far overcome the threats
of disease and decay that the individual might continue indefinitely, they
had naturally been concerned rather by the fear that there might be an
ultimate congestion of population, than that the race should fail in
fecundity. But this fear had not been acute, because they were then engaged
in exploiting a new, and seemingly almost limitless, subterranean territory.
Also, they passed through a period of warfare with the inhuman population
of other portions of the earth’s surface, in the course of which many of them
were destroyed, and which remained as a continuing menace when the
actual conflict ceased.
They had soon learned that though the lives of their women were
prolonged indefinitely, their power of procreation did not continue, and they
had first observed, immediately after the war of which I have spoken, that
the children that were born were males in a considerable majority. They
were not alarmed at this circumstance, which those who specialised in such
matters assured them to be of a temporary character, either because (as
some held) their males had been weakened in strife, and their boldest and
strongest killed, and it was (they said) a natural law that the young should
be of the sex of the weaker half of the community; or (as others held)
because the spirits of the dead were reincarnated, so that, in time of warfare,
an excess of male births was a natural consequence of the fatalities which
preceded them. With all their wisdom they could not resolve this question
with certainty. They were not even agreed as to whether there were any

necessary relation between the births and deaths that occurred among them,
or whether, should they cease entirely to die, new spirits could be
incarnated indefinitely from the Unseen.
But the war ceased, and the years passed, and the excess of male births
did not cease, but augmented continually. Many troubles resulted, many
expedients were tried, many laws were passed, but this condition persisted.
At this day, while the males and older females must have numbered tens
and may have numbered hundreds of thousands, there were less than
seventy women of marriageable age alive, and of some two score of
children there were three girls only.

As the Dweller stood thus, a feeling of desolation came upon me, settling
into a dull despair, which I had no force to combat. It may have been the
attitude in which she stood, solitary and silent, in that strange setting, the
vacant beauty of the temple before, and the golden circle of the woods
behind her, her arms lifted in dumb protest against the inexorable destiny
which overshadowed her.
It may have been her attitude only, or it may have been more than that, as
I realised later.
For when at last she cast down her arms with a gesture of impotence, and
turned with bowed head, and descended into some cavity of the ground, my
companion opened her mind toward me, and the shadow darkened as she
did it. Then her thought grew clear to this issue,—“When you have shown
me the dark things of the time from which you came, I have been curious,
or repelled; or I have sympathised or marvelled only; yet it has been as
unreal as is a reflection in water. But here I find it close, and very terrible.
Its meaning is beyond me, but I had not imagined that the world could hold
such sorrow.... It is strange that we could receive thoughts which were not
directed to us, but it may be that when they are cast loose in such intensity
of petition they may be received by all who are near them.”
I replied, “That is scarcely so, for I saw only, and her thoughts were
hidden.”
She answered, “It may be that you do not receive the thoughts of the
Dwellers as easily as we do, or as you receive ours, or there may be another
cause, but to me her thought was clear and vivid, though it was formless,

being a desire that was so strong that it could endure with little hope to
support it. I do not know for what she asked, but I think she called for help
which will not be given. I can show you her thought.”
Then she gave me the prayer which had gained so unexpected an
audience, and my mind was filled at once with a sense of intolerable
calamity, and with the cry of one who knew that the time for hope was over,
and who struggled to reject a despair which would be beyond her
endurance, so that her mind beat lamentably against the repulse of closed
and indifferent doors.
I suppose it to have been because her trouble was of a nature more easily
explicable to myself than to my companion that I found in the transmitted
thought a more concrete quality than she had recognised as she received it.
I could not tell the cause of her calamity, or its incidence, but I became
aware that it was the impending destruction of her race against which she
pleaded, and that this was joined in some undisclosed manner with a
personal grief, the larger shadow being a connected background to the more
imminent catastrophe.
It was not evident that we were concerned in the troubles of any one of
the Dwellers, or in their general welfare. Indeed, their perils or pre-
occupations might contain our safety. They were alien from, and might be
contemptuously hostile to, my own humanity. Yet the depression of that
telepathy would not lift, and it was with a sense of overhanging tragedy,
illogically enough, that we advanced to investigate the cavity by which she
had descended.
The ground declined as we approached it, becoming a rounded channel
or gutter, down which we moved, the temple on our right, and the surface
soon above the level of our heads on the left. We must have descended
thirty or forty feet when we came to the lowest point, the ground
commencing to rise before us, and at the same time we became aware of the
entrance to a tunnel on our right which sloped down and inward beneath the
temple.
In dimensions it reminded me of the tunnels beside the opal path with
which I was already familiar, but it was otherwise different. There was no
vertical rod, such as that which had drawn the eyes, and stayed the pursuit
of the Frog-Mouths. There was no difference between floor and walls, but

all were marble-smooth, and hard, and cold. They were opalescent, but of a
kind and colour which I had not seen previously. The sides and roof were of
the dim green of the under-surface of an arching wave, and like a wave they
curved over, differing from the upright walls and flat ceiling of the earlier
tunnels. The floor gave an impression of dark green depths through which
we could have seen to the remoteness of the earth’s interior, had the faint
light allowed it.
We had ceased to think as we moved forward, so that I might once again
give to my companion the benefit of the sight she lacked, and it must have
been my own volition that caused us to take a few steps within the entrance
of the cavity. But as we did so, her thought broke sharply across my own,
“You need show no more: I can see here.” It was a relief that did not lessen
the marvel. She showed me that the blackness still fell like a curtain over
the very mouth of the cavity, where I looked out into sunlight, but the
gloom within was alike to both of us, and in the relief of this renewed
equality we sat down, not very prudently, against the wall of the passage,
forgetting its potential dangers in the pleasure of needed rest, and in the
necessity of reconsidering our position.
“The question is,” I began immediately, “shall we continue the plan we
made before we knew that this tunnel existed, or shall we do better to
attempt to descend it?”
“It is one question, among several,” my companion answered, “but it is
hard to answer. We have some facts now of which we were ignorant when
we decided two nights ago. If we exchange our thoughts at once, we shall
make confusion only. Let us think separately till we have each resolved
what is best, and have made our reasons clear to ourselves. Then, should we
differ, and either prove unable to convince the other, I will give way very
willingly.”
I assented to this, knowing it to be unlikely that such a difference would
arise or continue, and we remained silent for a considerable time, for my
own thoughts were chaotic, and I was anxious not to interrupt the
exhaustive logic of the mind beside me.
My inclination was to explore the cavity to which we had now come, but
when I attempted to formulate arguments in support of this preference, I
knew that I could not do so conclusively. I was in a state of nervous

exhaustion, and my courage sank at the thought of struggling outward
through the belt of the resisting will, only to front the perils of the pathless
hills, and the jaws of the waiting Frog Mouths. Though to descend to the
Dwellers might mean destruction, I was in no mood to defer it, but rather to
cast myself upon their mercy, with a feeling of indifference as to what the
end might be. So that when my comrade indicated her willingness to
converse again, I was quick to ask her opinion first, to which she assented
with her usual equanimity.
“It is evident,” she began, “that though we know more than we did, we
still know so little that all decision must be guessing, and each new fact, as
we gain it, can only demonstrate how foolish may have been the choice we
made before we perceived it. Yet, when the roads branch, a choice must be
made.
“The Dwellers may have information by which they know of our
movements, or they may be searching for us, in ignorance of where we are;
or they may be entirely unaware or indifferent.
“In the first case, it seems clear that should we return we are adding
useless dangers to a sufficient peril, for we must face them, first or last, and
we can gain nothing by wandering upon the surface before we do so; in the
second, we may be more likely to avoid them if we descend here, by an
entrance which appears unwatched, and where they do not know us to be,
than if we return to those with which they already know us to be familiar; in
the third case, it may still be to our advantage to descend at once, rather
than to wander farther upon the unfriendly surface of an unfamiliar world. I
can see that there may be facts which would make folly of these
conclusions. We are certainly distant from where my Leader’s body was left
to their mercy. We have no reason to suppose, if it have been preserved at
all, that it has been conveyed below the surface in this direction. We have
no reason to suppose that we shall be able to penetrate under the surface
toward the point from which our search should commence more easily than
we can do above it. We have no certainty that there is any connection
whatever between this passage and those of which we knew previously.
Should we descend, and escape capture or destruction, it may still be that a
later day will see us emerge with time lost, to no end but the experience of
an abortive adventure. This is the more likely because there is no evidence

of traffic to or from the entrance, but the whole aspect is of the reservation
of a peculiar and sacred place. I cannot tell which may be best, but my
inclination is to go down.”
I answered, “So is mine; and I can add to your reasons two at least which
you have not mentioned. The one is that while within the tunnel you have
lost the disability of the blindness which had hindered us in the surrounding
area; the other, which is more serious (because I suppose that we could
quickly reach the woods where you would presumably see as before) is that,
after this delay, it is doubtful whether we could cross the hills before the
night falls, and now that my last remnants of clothing have left me, my
body is ill-adapted to meet either storm or frost, and I have less fear of the
more even temperature of the subterranean places.
“It is true that this passage is not like the one which I first penetrated. Its
slope is less. Its current of upward air is less evident. Its floor is less easy to
tread. Its roof does not give the same measure of light. It may not be
frequently used, and it may lack the stores of food and water on which I
subsisted. But beyond this, all is conjecture. It is a choice of risks, and we
agree as to the one to be chosen.”
So we rose, and went down together.

CHAPTER VI
THE DOWNWARD PATH

I have often speculated as to what might have happened had we decided
differently, and had I survived the dangers of the surface world, and
attempted the penetration of one of the seaward tunnels. Knowing what I do
now, I suppose that it must have ended fatally for myself, if not for my
companion also. But so much is still mystery, so much conjecture, that even
that may not be certainly true.
As it was, we went on for some time in an eventless silence, the dark
green shadowy smoothness of the surface on which we trod sloping gently
downward, the glassy arch above us becoming gloomier as we left the
daylight. The idea oppressed me that we were actually traversing a wave’s
interior cavity. I think that I had been mentally exhausted by the prolonged
effort of conveying the scene through which we had passed to my
companion’s mind.
Once or twice I tried to establish connection with her, but her thoughts
were closed against me, and I gained no more than a knowledge that she
was abstracted and troubled, and indisposed for conversing. Then we came
to a place where we must needs pause and consult, for the straight path
ceased. The slope ceased. We stood on a level path that curved forward,
right and left, with a blank wall before us. Either side we might turn, and
the choice could scarcely be made in silence.
I questioned my companion with thought and eyes. It was too dark for
me to see hers, but mine may have been visible to her better sight. She
answered readily.
“Yes, we must choose; but I have been concerned with a greater urgency.
As we entered the tunnel my mind inquired for my own people, with whom
I had been disconnected since the encounter with the Dwellers which we
witnessed together, and though I have learnt nothing of their welfare I found
that an urgent message is being sent out to me continually,—‘Return at

once. Further concealment useless. The animal must go to the Dwellers,
who have already dealt suitably with those he Seeks. Do not reply.’
“That is the message, about which I am troubled. I cannot quickly tell
what is right to do. I conclude that no reply is desired because there is either
fear or certainty that it would be intercepted, and understood by the
Dwellers, and might do harm in ways which I cannot know, and might not
therefore avoid. It may be from the same cause that the message contains no
mention of the body of my Leader, though that is the object for which I am
here. It may be that this trouble is over; even that it is returned already. Yet
the objection to any reply being sent indicates less than complete harmony,
and there may be actual hostility between the Dwellers and ourselves.
“From these thoughts two questions follow.
“If there be dissension between the Dwellers and ourselves, and
concealment be useless, how can I hope to return openly and in safety?
Possibly they may have agreed that I shall not be hindered, if you remain,
though there are some improbabilities in this supposition. So far, I have
thought of no other.
“The second question, which is greatly the more important, is this. Am I
right to leave you? Never, from the remotest memory, have I known such a
doubt to rise, nor can I tell how to resolve it. Always we have acted
together. Our Leaders have thought for all, and our will has been single.”
The news which she gave had disconcerted me sufficiently for my
thoughts to be both confused and depressed at the first hearing, and I cannot
say to what protest or reproach they might otherwise have led me, but to
this appeal there could be only one answer possible.
“If you feel under the obligation of the promise that we should explore
the tunnels of the Dwellers together, there is no need for concern on that
point, for I release you from it. Even if I should not, I think that your first
duty must be to your own kind, and that the news which your message gives
has altered the whole position so radically that no arrangement could be
binding which was made in ignorance of it.”
She answered, “You confuse me with vague thoughts. Let us be silent,”
and for some minutes she closed her mind.
Then she continued, “Your thought is generous, and I should be unfair
not to recognise it, but it is born of conditions which are as alien from

ourselves as are the ways of the Frog-Mouths. If I be under obligation to
keep an undertaking to you which may have already altered your course,
and changed the experiences which you must now encounter, how can it
affect what is right for me to do, that you should accept my desertion
without protest? When you suppose that you can release me in such a way,
you assume a position of Deity—and of a Deity who could alter the
essentials of what is right and wrong. It is not your willingness that I should
go which concerns me—it is the verdict of my own mind.”
I answered, “I have no doubt that you are right, and that you have
rebuked me justly. Yet, no less, I should like to feel that you have decided
with a mind untroubled by any thought of consequence to myself; for the
event, whether you stay or go, is beyond forecasting. Either way may be the
more dangerous for me. It is beyond knowing. But for yourself, it seems
evident that should you stay you will incur a needless risk of the anger of
the Dwellers, and must be troubled by the additional fear that you will have
disobeyed your Leaders, and may have to face the consequences of their
anger, should you escape the perils of our present enterprise. It seems to me
that your position would then be worse even than my own, and I cannot
willingly agree that you should incur such dangers to aid me.”
“You think,” she answered, “after your own kind, and suppose a fear
which I could not feel, and a contingency which will not occur. If it be evil
that there should be discord of thought between me and my people, is it
reasonable that either side should desire to continue and perhaps increase it,
in a vain quarrel concerning what will have happened?
“Should I finally return, I shall give my reasons, and, should they be
found insufficient or otherwise, the event must be a source of wisdom for
all of us. But that must wait its time. In which direction shall we go?”
We looked to right and left, along corridors that curved forward on either
hand, and which were more nearly of the kind that I had first explored than
was the tunnel behind us, excepting that they were level-floored, and were
not lighted in the same way.
The walls were vertical: the ceiling flat: the flooring was of the material
that looked like polished steel, and was soft to the feet, with which I was
already familiar. But in place of the dove-gray walls, and the faint
opalescence of the roof of my first experience, there was an intermittent

darkness, broken by moving fires that glowed, as it seemed, deep within the
substance of the walls, and changed, and faded, and revived elsewhere.
It shows how dulled we had become to unfamiliar wonder, or how
concentrated our minds had been upon the new problem which had
disturbed us, that we had not observed these shifting lights when first our
eyes must have beheld them.
Now, as we gazed, the left-hand side of the leftward passage glowed with
a sudden redness not twenty yards away. The light spread, and spread, along
the glassy surface of the wall, until it had almost reached us. It rose up till it
neared the gloom of the distant roof, of which the darkness was not pierced
but was changed to a dusky red. The steel-gray floor was stained also with a
faint reflected redness. The glowing colour showed the lofty passage before
us till it curved out of view.
“Come,” she said, “while the light lasts,” and I knew that, with the
decision made, her mind had recovered all its buoyant serenity.
As we left the light, it was already fading, but others showed ahead, and
we went on in an ever-changing darkness, seldom far from some luminosity
which was sufficient to guide us on a plain and unimpeded way.
The colours in the walls were various, not only in their kind, or in their
intensity, area, or duration, but they had an appearance of being of varying
distance from us, so that we would look at the dark wall, and see the
transient motion of some glowing splendour, as it seemed, a mile within it,
and then an interval of darkness and then a burst of light and colour, like an
open rose, that seemed to be scarcely covered by the surface of the wall that
held it.
So we went on until, in no great space of time, we came to an opening on
the left hand, wide and high as the passage in which we were, and on the
same level, but in an absolute blackness.
We were of one mind to explore it, for the thought had come to both of
us that if we continued to traverse that in which we were, we must return to
the point from which we started, should the curve continue. My companion,
whose judgment was far more accurate than my own on such points, was
definite that we had completed a quarter of the full circle when this side-
corridor was reached. So we decided; not doubting that it would be lighted
in the same manner, and foreseeing no obstacle. I have little doubt, from our

later experiences, that we were right on the first point, as we were certainly
wrong on the second, for we found at the first step that we were confronted
by the same withstanding force that had obstructed our passage of the
sleeping wood, but more instant and urgent in its application, so that we did
not attempt to hold our ground, but fell back at the same impulse to consult
whether we should again adventure against it.
Recalling our previous decision, and our successful effort, I was
disposed to accept the challenge it gave us, but my companion differed. She
pointed out that it had then resisted the straightforward path which we had
resolved to take, but that now we should be turning aside to face a needless
difficulty, without knowing that the passage we left might not be in every
way the more direct to our purpose.
So we went on, and twice again, at similar intervals, did we come to such
a passage, and each time we attempted it for a few paces, and recoiled from
the resistance of the will that met us.
But the third time we did not accept defeat as we had done previously.
We considered that these passages had appeared at similar intervals, and
that it was probable that this was the last we should meet, the fourth quarter
of the curving path returning us to the point from which we had started.
Faced by this probability, we rested awhile, and then, hand in hand, that my
companion’s vitality might give me the physical strength I needed, so that
my will should be free for the nervous conflict before us, we went
resolutely into the dark mouth of the cavity.
In the course of a few steps, taken with difficulty, as though our feet
dragged in a heavy sand, and our limbs and bodies were pressed against a
trammelling and resisting garment, we found that we were in an absolute
blackness, so that we could not see our steps, and it is doubtful, indeed,
whether we should not have retired at once from so menacing a prospect,
had not my inferior power of progression caused us to bend our course
somewhat to the right, on which side I was, and as we drew nearer to the
wall we discovered that it was of a quality which I may best describe as
having an interior luminosity. It gave no light to the passage at all, but
standing closely to it we could look into it, as into a glass, yet seeing no
reflection of ourselves, but a vision that held us absorbed and silent. At first
we saw a dark pool, or it might be the shadowed space of a river, but it

showed no current, nor any motion of wind. Strange, fronded trees grew
beside it. At some distance, there was a touch of moonlight on the water,
but it did not waver. We watched for some time, as though expecting
something to happen, and yet I thought it to be nothing more than a picture
of some primeval creation. Then it seemed that the dark surface of the water
broke, and a long snout, as of an alligator, moved into the lighted space, and
sank again very quietly. Nothing else. We watched a long time further, but
nothing changed, unless, perhaps, the light on the water was slightly fainter.
“Is it real?” I wondered. “No, surely,” she thought, “I suppose it to be a
picture of things long past. I do not think it to be of the earth of this time.
Shall we look at the other wall?”
I agreed, though I was reluctant to withdraw my gaze from that primeval
night, where I might see I knew not what of mystery or of wonder if I
should wait till its morning came. The pressure was more tolerable while
we made no effort to move directly forward, and we crossed the interval of
blackness quite easily, to find, as my companion had thought, that the
opposite wall held a corresponding wonder. But it was not of any strange or
terrible or momentous scene.
There was a faint light, as of the late evening, or the very early dawn of a
winter day, and snow was falling thickly. Bare trees showed dimly, and one
ivied trunk was close, as though we might have reached to touch it, and on
the dark berries a pair of hawfinches were feeding. They were so real and
close that it seemed strange that no sound came as they changed footing
with a flutter of wings, or pulled the sprays apart.
That was all. It might have been a scene from winter of my own day, or
of millenniums before or after.
And while we gazed, we became aware that something with a heavy
tread had entered the passage. We thought it (and rightly) to be one of the
Dwellers. The steps passed us, and went forward. We were of one mind to
follow.
Returning to the centre of the tunnel, we were again in darkness, but the
footsteps led us, and we found that the resistance against which we had
fought had ceased to trouble us while we followed the unseen feet.
Realising this, we increased our pace to a run, lest the dividing space should
widen, so that we were but ten or fifteen yards behind—our feet making no

sounds on the soft flooring—when our unseen guide turned sideways into a
chamber on the right-hand side of the passage.

CHAPTER VII
THE LIVING BOOK

We stood at the entrance of a room of (to us) enormous proportions. It
was filled with an equally-diffused light, of which I saw no origin.
Neither, when I considered it later, could I observe any appliances for the
regulation of temperature or ventilation. Yet the warmth was such that I did
not suffer from my lack of clothing; the air was fresh and exhilarating. The
arched entrance to the room had no door, but the light stayed at the
threshold. Standing on the outer side of the entrance, we supposed ourselves
to be unobservable in the darkness.
The Dweller that we had followed was a woman, like the one that we
had last seen, but her colouring was different. The hair on her head was
short, curling, and glossy black. It extended down the spine in the same
way. The body-colour varied from a dark bluish-black to the softest, palest
greys. The effect was beautiful beyond describing.
Her form was as straight and graceful as had been that of the other, nor
did it give an impression of great size in a room which was proportioned to
it. It was not she that was large, but we that were small. Her body was slim
and perfect in its proportions, and her face was flawless, yet where the other
had given an impression of youth, there was here an atmosphere of age
incalculable. I cannot say from what it came, unless from one thing only.
Her eyes were intolerably tired.
As she entered the room she had an object about the size of a football
perched on her left shoulder. There was a table in the centre, of a
transparent blue substance. It had three legs which joined in a twisted knot,
and then spread out. I noticed that these legs moved so that the table
adjusted itself to her as she approached it, but whether this movement were
sentient or mechanical I could not tell. She extended her left arm to the
surface of the table, and the object on her shoulder rolled slowly down.

It was of the colour of a boiled lobster, with many bluish-white
appendages hanging from its surface. They were about an inch in length,
and of the shape to a dachshund’s ear. As it rolled forward they spread out
like hands, to balance and control its motion, and when it rested those that
were close to the ground would support it steadily.
It was evidently alive, but it had no other features that I could observe,
and it appeared equally comfortable whatever part of its surface were
uppermost.
The table was relatively higher than those to which we are accustomed,
and there was no chair or other seat in the room.
The Dweller remained standing, as though her attention were fixed upon
the red globule before her. I turned to my companion to convey my wonder,
but she gave me a quick thought that she was trying to follow what was
happening, and did not wish for distraction, so I looked quietly round the
room while I waited.
The wall on the side on which we stood, and those to right and left, were
blank of all but colour, which was blue, of a very delicately-beautiful tint,
which I had not seen previously, evidently designed to harmonise with the
colouring of its occupant.
The farther wall was of the same nature as those we had passed in the
passage, having a living picture within it—if living it could be called, much
was an epitome of desolation.
It showed far more plainly, or at least to a far greater distance, than did
those into which we had looked before. It was a scene of a frozen river,
which itself must have been half-a-mile in width, and of an endless solitary
frozen plain beyond it. The sky was frosty blue and cloudless. There were
no trees,—nothing but the frozen river, and the frozen snow.
I had a perception that it had lain thus for many centuries, lifeless,
windless, and unchanging, and that it was in some inexplicable way akin to
the one who appeared to have selected it to companion her, and that within
it lay the explanation of the weariness in her eyes.
But its desolation was less than hers, for it must have ended at some time
in the earth’s history. Though it might have endured for millenniums, yet
the time had come when the earth again swung sunward, and the warmth

found it. But for the weariness from which she suffered there was no hope
at all.
Following this impression, it occurred to me as a natural thing that, if
reflections of the earth’s changing past were used as mural decorations,
such scenes and periods would be preferred as would show little or very
gradual differences, or their suitability might be lost.
The articles in the room were few. There was a wide shelf at the centre of
the left-hand wall, on which were stacked a number of flat boards which
were probably pictures, or material for them, for, to the right of the table,
there was an easel, such as would have looked natural enough, apart from
its size, in a studio of our own day, with a similar board upon it, on which a
picture of the frozen desolation was half completed.
There were various smaller articles ranged beneath the shelf, of which I
could not understand the nature or utility.
I returned my attention to my companion, to find her ready for
conversing. She said “I cannot learn much, as the thoughts which are
passing are not meant for us, but it seems that there is something here
similar to your own device, of which you have told me. I know that you
have a method of recording ideas and facts by means of marks on retentive
substances, so that the knowledge of them may remain, though the brain in
which they originated be ended, and that, by this means, you have partly
overcome one of the defects of your individual mortality. It seems to me
that this method must be subject to great disadvantages, as it must be even
easier for such as you are to make marks which will be false, or the record
of foolish imaginations, than to be accurate in fact, and wise in deduction;
and, as you have no authority to distinguish between them, your children
must often be induced to foolishness, or misled to disaster. Possibly the
confusion may be so great that they are distracted from any continuing path,
and the result is the inconsequent and abortive activities of mind and body
to which you are so largely accustomed.
“However that may be, it appears that the Dwellers have devised a
somewhat similar method of recording the facts they accumulate, or the
theories which they formulate, such as is more suited to their greater
longevity, and their superior intelligence.

“This which we see is one of their books—a living creature of a kind,
designed to store the thoughts that are given to it, and to convey them at
later periods to any inquiring mind. She whom we now see is both the
custodian and the compiler of these volumes, and I gather that she is now
placing on record the events in which we have so lately participated.”
While I received this explanation, the Dweller had crossed the room, and
picked up a metal article of a brass colour, and of the shape of a figure
eight, which she laid flatly on the ground, and within one of the loops of
which she placed the living ball, with which she had now apparently
finished, and then stood for some time gazing at the half-painted picture,
and at the scene from which it was taken. Her method of painting was
different from our own in this particular, that one part of the picture was
entirely finished, but ended abruptly at a blank which was not touched at
all.
After a time, she resumed her work, and the reason of this became
evident. She painted with a long pencil terminating in a small flat pad, of a
surface of two or three square inches, and this she dipped into saucers of
various semi-liquid colours which were arranged upon a wide ledge of the
easel below the picture. There could only have been black and white and
shades of blue and grey that were needed, but the pad was dipped many
times, and touched lightly with a finely pointed instrument in her left hand,
till at last she was satisfied, and it was pressed upon the surface of the
picture, to which it added a further rectangle of finished work. The picture
was then touched slightly with another pad, apparently to blend the added
portion perfectly with the earlier work, and the same process was resumed.
It was slow to watch, but my companion was of an unhurried mind, and
it is my own disposition to go cautiously when in doubt. I was neither
willing to leave this scene for a further risk of the dark passage, nor to face
a crisis by revealing ourselves in the room, and so we sat and watched in
the outer darkness. It was not a very long vigil, for the artist appeared to
weary, laid down her tools, hesitated, walked towards the scene which she
had been painting, stood gazing at it for some time in silence, and then lay
down beneath it, where it appeared that the floor rose in a smooth curve, a
few feet above the surrounding level.

This surface gave way gently to the impression of her body, which sank
down partly within it. She lay face forward, her head turned from us, her
arms extended straightly above her head. Lying so, she stretched for half the
length of the room. There was no sound of breathing, and we could not tell
whether she slept, but after watching for some time longer we were of one
mind to adventure a further investigation, and very quietly we entered the
room together.

CHAPTER VIII
THE TREATY

It was with a common impulse of curiosity that we first went towards the
living book which was resting motionless within the metal circle. It had no
distinguishable features, and I cannot tell how it became aware of our
existence, but it was its function to respond to the approach of any inquiring
mind. It rebuffed any attempt to explain our own presence, or what we
were, being evidently unable, or forbidden, to accept information except
from the official librarian, but as we were more anxious to obtain
information than to impart it, we had no objection to this, and, as we found
it a cause of confusion to question it together, my companion generously
gave the preference to my own curiosities, and composed her mind to
receive the replies which it should give me.
We learnt at once that it was the last volume of the official History of the
Dwellers, its record extending back for about two hundred years, and it
would have been quite willing to begin at chapter one of that period, and go
on for a week, had we been willing for it to do so. When it understood that
it was required to select specific information in response to my questions, it
assented, rather sulkily, though I soon realised that its function was limited
to supplying the actual information which it possessed. It was unable to
give any explanation or comment beyond anything which it had received
with the facts. To any question which went outside its period, or beyond its
province, it returned no answer. Even of the way to the library from which
it had come it had no knowledge, though it wished to be returned to its
accustomed shelf. It knew, however, that it must not venture to cross the
metal circle which now confined it, under penalty of a swift destruction,
should it touch it at any point.
My companion perceived the reason for this, as she was aware, without
touching it, that the metal was heavily charged with some petrifying force

having the vigour of electricity, and of a current sufficient to overcome a
much larger creature than that which it now imprisoned.
“Are you impervious to electricity?” I was led to ask, as I perceived her
indifference to this new danger.
“No,” she replied, “of course not. How could we live without it? But we
can naturally control the quantity which we receive. Otherwise our bodies
would be continually exposed to the risk of a sudden destruction. Are you
so liable?”
I said that I was certainly not immune from such danger, and it added a
new peril to our investigations if the Dwellers were accustomed to use it or
other forces of unknown potentialities, in such a manner. She agreed, but
assured me that she could give warning very easily, now that she knew of
this additional infirmity of my body, as she could always tell the quantity
and direction of any electric force which might be in her neighbourhood.
I was puzzled to think that the Dwellers should expose so valuable a
record to the risk of destruction as a penalty for its own disobedience, and
this made me somewhat sceptical of the accuracy of my companion’s
explanation, but I learnt afterwards that the effect would merely have been
that a new volume would have been commenced. These creatures are only
kept alive until they have received as much information as they are capable
of retaining, and are then slaughtered. The information which they contain
being permanently available, as is that of a gramophone record, and the
minds that hold it being more surely and easily stored when they are dead,
than in a living state.
Having realised the character and limitations of the record at our
disposal, I asked first concerning the safety of the two friends whom I had
come to seek. I had to repeat the question in many forms before obtaining
any response, but I finally obtained this information, which was obviously
the only record which had been made, and the extent of the help which was
here available.

Two Primitives of the False-Skin Age were captured by the 42nd
Coast Patrol. One was of a venomous kind. They were received by the
Bureau of Prehistoric Zoology. The body of one was found to be
suffering from microbic disease beyond sterilisation, and was scraped

by the Vivisection Department. The other was transferred to the
Experimental Section, after the usual method.

That was all. The fate of one of those who had preceded me was
sufficiently indicated, and that of the other was, at the best, enigmatic; but I
could learn no more. Even of the place or nature of the Bureau it mentioned
the living book was entirely ignorant.
Little as it was, it was sufficient to suggest that I should be very foolish
to place myself in the hands of the Dwellers, unless I were compelled to do
so. I realised, as I had not done previously, that my position was that to
which, in my own time, the human race had reduced all the other living
creatures on the earth’s surface, and that the Dwellers, however justly they
might act to each other, would probably consider it an absolute duty to put
me to death or torture if they could gain any knowledge, obtain any
advantage to themselves, or even avert some trivial inconvenience, by so
doing, as many men, and nearly all women, would subject a mouse to a
violent or lingering death for no greater reason than that it had annoyed
them by a sound in the night.
Having realised that I could obtain no further information on the subject
of my own search, I remembered—none too soon—that my companion
must be equally urgent to learn of the one for whom she was seeking, and of
the events which had occasioned the recall which had reached her, and I
inquired accordingly, and received this answer:

Article 5. In consideration of the foregoing, the body of the
Amphibian will be delivered at the Fishgates, at once, and uninjured.
The one who is seeking it will be allowed, and, if needful, assisted to
return in safety, provided that such return be made before the third
sunset, and that she shall not have entered the Sacred Places. The
Primitive shall remain. He shall be treated with such kindness as
circumstances admit, and, if healthy and quiet, shall be transferred to
an appropriate Reservation. But if he be in any way diseased he may
be dealt with according to the nature of his infirmity, and as the
protection of the community may require. Otherwise, unless he be
violent or intractable, he shall not be slaughtered, either for food or

for any other purpose, except in the ordinary course, and at such
period as is usual.

Certainly there was information here, and warning, and some mystery
also. Our thought was single that this must be the purport of an agreement
that must have been made between the Amphibians and the Dwellers since
the commencement of our expedition, and we were alike in desiring to learn
the other clauses of the treaty, before we considered our course of action.
These were very promptly given, for I believe that these living books
were so constituted that they derived a positive physical pleasure from such
thought-transference as would convey their contents to other minds, such as
is commonly experienced in the exercise of the ordinary functions of the
human body.
The treaty (omitting the fifth clause already given) was this:

Article 1. The Leaders of the Amphibians pledge themselves and
their nation, without reservation or exception, that they will not
henceforward, or any of them, invade the continent of the Dwellers,
either above, at, or on the sea-level, unless or except as may be
mutually agreed hereafter.
Article 2. The Leaders of the Amphibians shall appoint two of their
number, and the Dwellers shall appoint two of their number, to confer
and agree upon the times at and the conditions on if any which the
Amphibians or any of them may enter or remain upon the surface of
the territory of the Dwellers, or any part thereof.
Article 3. The Amphibians pledge themselves that they will not give
any aid, assistance, or information, active or passive, to the
Antipodeans or hold any communications with them, except, if at all,
at the desire of the Dwellers, and to obtain information on their behalf.
Article 4. The Amphibians will forthwith institute and maintain a
complete service of observation upon the coasts of the Antipodeans,
and upon all aerial movements above or from their coasts, with such
relays of communication as shall convey all such information to the
Dwellers at the least possible intervals of time after the observation of
such movements.

Article 5. (Already given).
Article 6. Should the Amphibian who is now landed have invaded,
or invade, the Sacred Places, or should she remain hidden in the land
until after the time of the third sunset, or should she neglect or refuse
to return by or before the time stated, then the Dwellers shall be free to
deal with her as may appear just to them, or as their safety or interests
may require, and the Amphibians shall none the less carry out the first
four Articles of this treaty, as though she should have returned safely.
Article 7. In the event of the successful resuscitation of the body of
the Amphibian Leader and of her assent to this clause, and providing
that the Amphibian now on the territory of the Dwellers shall have
returned in safety whether within the period stated in Article 5, or later
by the clemency of the Dwellers, then, and in these events, the Leaders
of the Amphibians severally and on behalf of their nation and of every
member thereof, do pledge themselves actively to assist the Dwellers
against the Antipodeans, in the hostilities now impending, to the full
extent of their national and individual capacities, according to their
natures, and by such means as they are spiritually and physically
qualified to do.
Article 8. The Amphibians are entitled to communicate with the
member of their nation who is now on the territory of the Dwellers for
the purpose of recalling her, but not otherwise, nor shall they invite or
receive any communication from her while she remain upon any part
of that territory or within it, nor with the Primitive who was her
companion.
Article 9. This treaty is made in honour, verity, and goodwill,
without guile and without duress, each nation contracting freely, and
on its own territory, that which is past being forgotten as though it had
not been; by the six acting Leaders of the Amphibians, and, on behalf
of the Dwellers, by the High Council of Five, and by the device of the
Aged Ones, all equally, severally, and unanimously assenting thereto,
in the Audience of Space, and in the Light of the Perpetual Stars.

Had I been alone I might have delighted the source of this information
by requiring its repetition several times, for it contained much which

required exactness of memory for its consideration, and it suffered from the
defect of all treaties since the world began, that the effort to avoid
possibilities of ambiguity or evasion results in an added obscurity, so that
they are much more vulnerable to misconstruction, as they are more
difficult to readily comprehend, than are simpler and more straightforward
documents. But my companion intimated at once that she could recall it as
required, and she proposed that we should retire into the comparative
security of the darkness while we considered it together.
This we did, and I opened my mind to her at once in this manner, “There
is much in what we have heard which must be clearer to you than it is to
me, but it is evident that some larger issue of impending warfare has
assisted your nation to adjust their differences with the Dwellers, and that
you have no further need for concealment, or cause to continue our
enterprise. On the contrary, your safety lies in a prompt and open return to
your own people.
“But my position is different. Your people have abandoned me to the
Dwellers, and it appears that, if I fall into their hands, I shall lose my liberty
at the least, and be exposed to death, or even torture, or the foulest outrage,
as caprice, or self-interest, or curiosity may suggest.
“For though you appear to regard the Dwellers as of superior mentality
to myself, they do not demonstrate this by brutalities, such as it appears
may have been fatal to my friends already, and which can only regard a
being whom they know to have reached them from an earlier age, as
something to be killed and eaten. In some parts of my own world there are
savages so degraded in type that they will eat the decrepit members of their
own race, or strangers who wander into their territory, but they are regarded
as the lowest specimens of their kind.
“In the experience of my own time it is not usual to find exceptional
brutality such as this to be allied with any high level of intelligence, and it
occurs to my mind that the Dwellers have not shown any conspicuous
ability in discovering our movements, and that when I was actually
captured by one of them, I escaped very easily.
“So far am I from deciding to place myself in their power that I am
resolved to outwit them. I suppose from what we have heard that one of my
friends has already become a victim of their cruelty. The other I am

resolved to rescue, if he be still living. After that, I hope to find some means
of concealment and sustenance on the surface, to which I shall return, until
the time come when I shall be able to rejoin the civilisation that you deride,
but which offers a peace and security which I am never likely to find among
the barbarous cruelties which you esteem so lightly.”
My companion closed her mind from me when I had finished, but only
for a short time, and then answered quietly. “I think I understand something
of the feeling from which your thoughts had their origin, and at the injustice
to myself and to my nation which you have implied I am not angered at all,
but I think that our minds have never been so far apart since first I met you.
“There was not a single thought which you showed me which was not
either false or foolish, and it is easy to believe that you come of a species
which devour each other, though there are few created things so base as to
do this, in all the seas that I have known until I came in contact with you.”
I was startled by the unexpectedness of this rebuke, the justice of which I
did not easily realise, but my mind was cooled by contact with one which
declined to rise to its temperature, and I replied in a somewhat different
mood, “I should be sorry to be unfair to your nation, and especially to
yourself, from whom I have had nothing but a loyal comradeship which I
have done little to merit. I know that my mind was troubled and indignant,
though it still seems to me that I had cause for such feelings. But if you
think differently, can you not show me in what I have deserved your
censure?”
“Yes,” she replied, “I think I can do that very easily, but it is the more
interesting to me to observe how entirely the use of your reason ceases
when you are moved by anger or fear, or, perhaps, by other feelings, for I
can see that the thought that we were about to part was among the
disturbances that suspended your capacity to think to any useful purpose.
“First, it is by no means clear that I can return in safety, or at all. How do
you know that I have not invaded the Sacred Places, or even that we are not
now within them? I think we may be.
“Second, there would, in any case, be no occasion for us to part
immediately, should we remain undiscovered. The third sunset is still
distant.

“Third, my people have done nothing to cause you to fall into the hands
of the Dwellers, which you are still free to avoid if you are able. They have
been careful to make a treaty which gives you a measure of protection
which you could not otherwise have secured should you be captured. We
have explained already that you could not come with us, being physically
unfit to endure existence in the only territory we control, or in the waters to
which we are native, were we willing to have you, and were we able to
remove you from the place that you have chosen to enter.
“Fourth, you are unjust to the Dwellers, and forgetful of things which
you have told me of your own kind.
“You have told me that your own race will destroy other creatures
without shame, not only for their own food, or safety (in which you would
not yourself say that they are wrong) but merely for the pleasure which they
derive from inflicting misery upon those who have done them no injury, or
for the gratification of curiosity, or in the hope of some material advantage
resulting to themselves or their fellows.
“More than this, with an unnatural baseness, they will even accept
service from, or make such professions of friendship as will gain the
confidence of, other creatures, which they will not then hesitate to betray
and murder, as caprice or self-interest may incline them. You have told me
that you habitually destroy creatures whose affection and loyalty you have
gained, when they become old and infirm, or are injured by accident,
readily persuading yourselves that you do these things out of kindness,
although you do not desire that you should be dealt with in a similar manner
when your own body shall show evidence that its vigour is decreasing.
“You have shown me that you justify these things in your own minds by
arguing that you are of such superior nature that the welfare, or existence of
all other creatures is of comparative triviality.
“But even though such conduct could be condoned by a demonstration of
superiority, or would be consistent therewith, it is difficult to understand by
what arguments this asserted superiority could be maintained.
“Is it by your power to cause the deaths of others? Then a disease-germ
(as you have yourself admitted) may be greater than you.
“Is it by conduct? But you have shown me that you work violence, fraud,
and cruelty among yourselves, and against the creatures around you.

“Is it wisdom? Have you discovered a way of life which is more safe,
more leisured, more healthy, more in harmony with your surrounding
conditions, than that of the creatures which you despise and destroy? Are
their conditions more abject than are those of the disordered and disastrous
lives of which you have told me, where you crowd together in disease and
dirt, inexplicably separated from the land which supplies you with the food
which your bodies need so continually?
“As are the vermin which you trap and kill without mercy, so, and less
than so, and rightly less than so, must you be to the Dwellers.
“You are not of their world. You came unasked. You may bring strange
disease. You may produce discord in a thousand ways. Your mind is
indignant and hostile, merely at the assurance that they will deal with you in
patient justice, after inquiry has been held,—or, it may be, at the worst, with
that expediency which is the basis of the civilisation from which you
come.”
I answered quickly, for my mind responded to hers with more thoughts
than I could easily control for transference, “I see that you have judged
more reasonably than I was able to do. My mind was moved by fear, under
which influence its reactions are instinctive rather than rational. There is
much in your thoughts which is true, as it reflects upon my own kind, and
there is much also that might be urged in defence or extenuation of conduct
which appears to you so monstrous. But there are questions of practical
urgency also which must be faced, and the occasion is scarcely one for
explanation or argument concerning abstract or distant things.
“Yet one thing I should like to show you. You may reflect adversely upon
our treatment of living creatures of other kinds than our own, and your
thought may not be far from mine, but were you one of ourselves, you
would be faced by issues which are not simple to decide, and by conditions
which are not easy to alter.
“It is true, for the most part, of the domestic animals that we eat, that we
work for them all their lives in a willing servitude, which is the price we
pay for the right to kill them at last. We build their houses; we prepare their
food; we heal their diseases: we wait upon them in the most menial ways.
They are fed with regularity, and without their own exertion: they are
protected from inclement weather. We may even risk our own lives to guard

them from the murderous attacks of other beasts of prey. Finally, they
probably die with less pain, and with far less of fear and foreboding, than
will be the lot of those who minister to, and then destroy them.
“It is true that we do these things for our own ends, and they owe us no
gratitude, but it is also true that, apart from these things, they would not
exist at all, nor is it true that we are regardless of their well-being nor
indifferent to their suffering. Some may be, but many are not.
“I am not sure but that the heavier indictment against us may be, not that
we give them death at last, which comes to all, but that we deny them life
while living. It is an inevitable result of their protected lives, that they have
degenerated in intelligence and character, and compare very poorly with
those of their kind that have retained their freedom in remoter places.
“Further, it appears evident that, with rare and doubtful exceptions, they
have no understanding or premonition of death, and are in this respect
happier than ourselves.
“You have asked why we should consider that we are greater than the
other creatures around us. I agree that a superior capacity for successful
violence is a poor argument in support of such a claim, nor should I urge it.
Nor should I urge that our conduct of life is superior, for there is a barrier
dividing their mentalities from ours that no man has been able to cross, and
I should confuse assumption with evidence: nor can I, for the same reason,
and for others also, claim that we are of greater wisdom than they. Greater
knowledge we may have, but it is of the race rather than the individual, and
it would be a poor ground for such a claim, at the best.
“If I should seek to support such a plea, I would rather urge the difficulty
of the conditions against which we contend, than the extent to which we
triumph.
“Our ancestors broke from their environment, and may have shown a
doubtful wisdom in so doing. But having so broken, we are confronted with
difficulties from which the rest of the creation is free. If our conduct be
worse, our circumstances are more treacherous.
“But there is another difference. Most other creatures, though we may
not prematurely destroy them, are even shorter-lived than we. They lack the
assistance of our inventions for recording knowledge, and, to some extent,
handing it down to our children. So far as we can judge, they have no

substitute for these, and their individual ignorance of our purpose to destroy
them, and of the methods we use, is a natural consequence.
“I am not sure that this thought does not bring us nearer to understanding
the difference between my kind and other animals than would any of the
three tests you proposed. All animals have an inherited fear of pain or
damage to their bodies, and this leads them to such actions or reactions as
will conserve their lives, but it is a curious thought that, since the hidden
beginning of created things, no one can have had any inherited experiences
of death, of which we know by observation only. Our parents were alive at
our conceptions and births, as were all their ancestors before them, and our
direct inherited experience could be no different were they all alive and
immortal. But the accumulated observations and records of the race
familiarise us with the nature of death—at least in its physical
consequences,—and teach us its inevitability, from our earliest years. ‘In his
eyes foreknowledge of death,’ that is the burden, and perhaps the glory, of
our kind; and that which may divide us furthest from those who have been
content to obey the laws of their creation. It is curious fact that such animals
as we may allow to associate with us in any intimacy must share to some
extent this difference, be it height or depth, which divides us from the rest
of our creation. A lion cannot sin: but a dog can.
“—But perhaps I weary you with details which are beyond your
interest?”
She answered, “No, for I would gladly know more of these things, were
there time for the learning, though we must leave them now. For it seems
that the more our thoughts exchange, the more nearly do our minds
approach to a common point. It may be that we both see truly, though the
same things may appear different. Looking from a distant point, I see the
outlines of your existence as you cannot easily do. Knowing it more closely,
you are aware of dangers and fertilities which I overlook, seeing only the
contours of the mountain peaks, and of the depths which divide them.
“But there is one thought in which you may take some comfort. You
have told me that your kind, or some of them, will eat their fellow-men
when occasion offers. The Dwellers are, at the worst, so entirely incapable
of such conduct, that you may reasonably hope that there will be a similar
measure of difference between your own treatment of your domestic

animals, and that which you will receive from them, should you be captured
or surrender to them.”
I replied, “I should be glad to think so; but the fact is that the practice I
mentioned is almost entirely confined to men with darker skins than mine. I
have, as you observe, a light skin, tinged with pink. All men whose skins
are of this kind believe it to be an evidence of every kind of superiority,—
and how the darker cannibals may treat their domestic animals it is
unfortunate that I do not know.”
Her mind replied with a sudden ripple of merriment. “I suppose you jest.
But let us turn from these things, and consider what next we shall do, and
how quickly. For time is short before I must take decision as to whether I
shall return within the limit fixed. Yet much may be done, if we are
fortunate, in the space remaining; and, as you said in your anger, the
Dwellers are not quick to discover us. Yet I think you err when you make
light of our peril. Are there no vermin in your own buildings, which you
might disregard for more urgent matters, but which you would destroy very
easily at the allotted time, or should occasion arise to do so?”
I said, “Yes, there are; yet some of them have found craft by which they
continue, and so must we also. But, first, cannot we learn something more
from this book which we have borrowed so easily? For myself, I am
determined to seek my friend, till I know of his death, or have found him.
He may be near us now, or he may be a thousand miles away, or in depths
beyond our imaginations. What can we tell, with so little to guide our
guessing? And for you, if we can discover whether we have yet intruded
into one of the Sacred Places to which the treaty alludes, it may make a
vital difference to the action which you should take for your own security.”
She answered “Let us try,” and we rose, and moved again as quietly as
possible into the lighted room. I do not think that this was really necessary,
but it gave us a sense of secrecy to interrogate the red globe from the
shorter distance, and appeared to reduce the risk that our thoughts would
disturb the mind of the sleeper.

CHAPTER IX
THE FLAME OF LIFE

For a long time we asked questions to which we could obtain no answer,
or not such as conveyed any meaning to us.
We tried to learn the extent and depth of the domain of the Dwellers, and
the location of the Reservations in which my friend might be confined. But
the book was not a geography. Neither was it a first volume. Its records
evidently assumed a mass of knowledge which we did not possess.
We made progress of a kind when it occurred to me that it would give us
some indication of the probable extent of the subterranean world if we
could learn its population.
“How many are there of the nation of the Dwellers?” I queried.
There was no answer.
“How many were there last year?”
No answer came.
“Have you any records of population?”
It seemed as though there were a mental impulse of hesitation, but still
no answer came.
“How many children were born last year?” it occurred to me to ask.
The answer was immediate, “It was reported to the Council of Five that
three boys had been born in the Great Nursery, and one in the Place of
Renunciation.”
“And how many girls?” I replied, in a natural supposition that this
information was incomplete, but there was no answer.
I then went back, querying from year to year, getting for each year a
similar answer but with a total that increased as the years receded, and with
a record of male births only, till, at ten years’ distance, the reply came—
It was reported to the Council of Five that eight boys had been born in
the Great Nursery, and twenty-four boys and one girl in the Place of

Twilight.
I would have asked further, but my companion interposed with reason. “I
think that we are learning little. If it can tell how long they live, and how
many are their deaths, (for as they are born, I suppose that they may die
also), we can then judge how numerous they may be, but from their births
only we cannot.” This we tried, but only to be met again with silence, or
with baffling answers.
By persistence and variety in the form of queries we obtained allusion to
“those of the Great Lethargy,” and to “The Desire of the Darkness,” but
nothing more definite. In a final desperation I tried to obtain information by
means of inquiry as to their customs of marriage, and at last obtained
abstracts from the report of a very lengthy trial or debate, which threw a
sombre and uncertain light upon the information which we had obtained
already.
Mainly, it consisted of a duel of argument between The First, who was
evidently male, and whom we supposed to be the head of the Council of
Five,—and the Elected One, who was a woman.
It was evident from the moods of both that the matter with which they
dealt was of a tragic and overwhelming importance, though there could
hardly have been a greater contrast than was shown in the styles of their
controversy.
The thoughts of The First were slow, deliberate, weighty, solemn, yet
with an extremity of urging which almost amounted to supplication. Those
of the Elected One were swift, insistent, passionate, crowding thought on
thought, in protest, defiance, and vindication. They were impatient with the
intolerance of youth, and bold with the assurance of immortality.
It appeared that the First One put forward a new method of life for the
women of their kind, or for their descendants, pleading that its adoption was
essential to the continuance of the race of the Dwellers.
But with a fierce scorn she repelled it—“Do you think that women will
consent to be as uncoloured and alike as men? Or that they will conceal
themselves in dead hangings, as in some savage infancy of the world?”
He answered slowly, “It is only this, that you will be alone if you will
not. If you will not that your daughters do these things to save our race from
extinction, then you will be alone in your own places. No man will come to

you. It is already resolved that all shall take this vow, if you refuse to aid
us.”
The reply came with a swift derision. “And would they keep it for a
score of sunsets? Is there a man in the Lower Places that would not come if
I should call him? But it is the thing which we have resolved also. It is no
threat to us. Till we have the girl, there is no man shall come near us. There
is no man shall cross the Blue Darkness, nor enter into the Place of
Twilight. We will not appear at the Feasts of the Inner Moon, nor at the
Mimes of the Recollections. Should we rejoice in our seats on the Upper
Slopes, knowing that we had doomed our daughters to be less than we?”
The First One answered with the same deliberation as before, but with a
cold finality, as one delivering a judgment from which no appeal could be
made. “For six months’ time, unless you sooner yield, there is no man will
come near you. If you are rebellious longer, we shall use such force as may
be needed that our wills may conquer, and thereafter there will be nothing
of the Place of Twilight, nor of the Blue Darkness, nor of the Place of
Preparation.
“If your seats be in the Upper Slopes at the time of the Great Assembly,
are not these seats made by the hands of men? Are they not known as the
Given Places?
“That which we give we can take.
“If there be any wisdom among you, all these things may continue; but
for your daughters is a different way.”
His thought smote the mind decisively, as a doom relentless and
unescapable, but it did not daunt the courage nor abase the mockery of the
thought that met it. “You threaten that which is beyond your power, nor do
we fear, nor believe you. In six months’ time you will not waste the Blue
Darkness nor the Place of Twilight, for if we do not have the girl by the
next new moon, we will ourselves destroy them. Tell your young men that.
Tell them that we shall uproot the Wilderness and the Five Approaches. You
may counsel; but will they refrain? You may threaten; but will they act?
“You are old and weary of life, but we are not old, and we shall never
weary. Life is ours, and we have learnt by your failure. But we will not
resign our customs either in the Choosing of Males, or in the Rites of the
Preparations. Shall our daughters be less than we? Or shall we degrade