Part 16 (1/2)

Smothered at times in a dense tangle of vegetation, where they sweated and worked with aching muscles to tear a path; watching always for the flaming, crimson buds on grotesque trees, whose limbs were waving, undulating arms and from which came tendrils like the one that had nearly ended Diane's life, they fought their way on.

They had seen the buds on that earlier trip; had seen the revolting beauty of them--the fleshy lips that opened above a pool of death into which those reaching arms would drop any living thing they touched. They kept well out of reach when a splash of crimson against the white trees flashed in warning.

Again they would traverse an open s.p.a.ce, where outcropping rocks would send Kreiss into transports of delight over their rich mineral contents.

But always their leader's eyes were turned toward a range of hills.

”It is beyond there,” he a.s.sured them, ”if only we can reach it.”

Harkness pointed to a scar on a mountainside where a crystal outcrop in a sheer face of rock sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight. ”I remember that--it isn't so very far--and we can look back down the valley from there and see our s.h.i.+p.”

”But we'll never make it to-night,” said Chet; ”it's a case of making camp again.”

They had gained an alt.i.tude of perhaps a thousand feet. No longer did the jungle press so hard upon them. Even the single file that had been their manner of marching could be abandoned, and Harkness drew Diane to his side that he might lend her some of his own strength.

Again the soft contours of the rolling ground had been disturbed: a landslide in some other century had sent a torrent of boulders from the high slopes above. Harkness threaded his way among great ma.s.ses of granite to come at last to an opening where ma.s.sive monoliths formed a gateway.

It was an entrance to another valley. They did not need to enter, for they could skirt it and continue toward the high pa.s.s in the hills. But the gateway seemed inviting. Harkness took Diane's hand to help her toward it; the others followed.

The fast sinking sun had buried itself behind a distant range, and long shadows swept swiftly across the world, as if the oncoming night were alive--as if it were rousing from the somnolence of its daytime sleep and reaching out with black and clutching hands toward a fearful, waiting world.

”No twilight here,” Chet observed; ”let's find a hide-out--a cave, by choice--where we can guard the entrance and--”

A gasp from Diane checked him. ”Oh!” she exclaimed. ”It is not real!

_C'est impossible!_”

Chet had been busied with the matter of a secure footing; he looked up now and took a step forward where Harkness and Diane stood motionless in a gateway of stone. And he, too, stopped as if stunned by the weird beauty of the scene.

A valley. Its length reached out before them to end some half mile away.

Sides that might once have sloped evenly seemed weathered to a series of great steps, and an alternation of striations in black and white made a banding that encircled the entire oval. Each step was dead-black stone, each riser was snow-white marble; and the steps mounted up and up until they resembled the sides of a great bowl. In the center, like an altar for the wors.h.i.+p of some wild, gargantuan G.o.d, was a stepped pyramid of the same startling black and white. Banded like the walls, it rose to half their height to finish in a capstone cut square and true.

An altar, perhaps; an arena, beyond a doubt, or so it seemed to Chet. He was first to put the impression in words.

”A stadium!” he marvelled; ”an arena for the games of the G.o.ds!”

”The G.o.ds,” Diane breathed softly, ”of a wild, lost world--” But Chet held to another thought.

”Who--who built it?” he asked. ”It's tremendous! There is nothing like it on Earth!”

Only Kreiss seemed oblivious to the weird beauty of the spectacle. To Professor Kreiss dolomite and black flint rock were dolomite and black flint; interesting specimens--a peculiar arrangement--but nature must be permitted her little vagaries.

”Who built it?” He repeated Chet's question and gave a short laugh before answering in words. ”The rains, Herr Bullard, and the winds of ages past. Yes, yes! A most remarkable example of erosion--most remarkable! I must return this way some time and give it my serious attention.”

Harkness had not spoken; he was shaking his head doubtfully at Kreiss'

words. ”I am inclined to agree with Chet,” he said slowly. ”But who could have built a gigantic work like this? Have there been former civilisations here?”