Part 4 (2/2)

This unpleasant thought had not occurred to the rest of us before.

Martin returned to the opening and sniffed, and then with happy inspiration, he rolled up his jacket and stuffed it in. Baker nodded approval.

So the time pa.s.sed. We listened at the door for footsteps but none came.

Presently we became aware of a now familiar sensation. The floor commenced to shake gently and regularly. We counted the steps. There were twelve, and then they stopped. Chamberlin calculated mentally.

”Say, about 250 feet per step. That would be three thousand feet--six tenths of a mile. Wonder where--”

Martin, still near the ventilator, shushed him, and pulled the coat out.

Through the small hole we heard a deep sound, a sort of low pitched irregular rumble. Baker suddenly jumped up and listened at the opening.

After a bit the sound stopped. Baker became excited.

”It was a voice,” he explained. ”I think it was _his_ voice. It was speaking j.a.panese. I couldn't catch many words, but I think he was talking about us.”

Now the rumble came again, and louder. A few words, a pause, and then more words, as though he was in conversation with someone whom we could not hear. Baker listened intently, but he could catch only fragments, owing to his small knowledge of j.a.panese and the extremely low pitched articulation of the giant. Presently the voice rose to a volume which literally made the mountain tremble, and then it stopped.

Baker shook his head. ”Couldn't make it out. I think he was inquiring where we were, but it was too idiomatic. I think he became excited or angry at the last.”

”Fee, fi, fo, fum,” said Chamberlin. ”Now wouldn't _that_ be an interesting end?”

Martin laughed. ”We wouldn't even be enough to taste.”

As no one else seemed anxious to pursue this subject further, we subsided into a sort of lethargy. Even plans for what we should do when the guards came were forgotten. And then, suddenly, the door was opened.

We all sprang to our feet. A priest--in fact, the same one who had brought us here originally--came in. A squad of guards stood outside.

”Good afternoon, how are you? Chief Priest ask me to tell you, Buddha wish to see you. Please you come with me.” He politely indicated the door.

With a shrug Baker complied, and the rest of us followed. Down the hall we marched again, through all of the turns of the morning and so at last into the corridor which ended in a window. This time we pa.s.sed the aluminum door and continued right to the end. The window, we now saw, was really a French door which opened to a small balcony. Our guide opened the door and pushed us out. The balcony, we found, was about four hundred feet above the valley floor, but we did not spend much time enjoying the view.

Scarcely fifty feet in front of us stood the Living Buddha!

For a full minute we stared at each other, and then I began to realize that he was embarra.s.sed! A wrinkle appeared between his eyes and he swallowed a couple of times. Then he spoke.

”Good afternoon, Professor Baker and party. I am happy to meet you.”

The voice, and particularly the language, so startled us that for a moment n.o.body could think of a reply. The voice was a deep pulsing rumble, like the tone of the biggest pipes of an organ, and filled with a variety of glottal wheezings and windy overtones. I think it was through these additional sounds rather than the actual tones that we could understand him at all, for the fundamentals were surely below the ordinary limits of human audibility. What we heard and could translate into articulate words was hardly more than a cavernous whisper. The important thing was that we could understand him, and, more than that, that he was friendly. Baker made reply at last.

”Good afternoon. We also are happy, and most honored. How should we address you?”

”My name is Kazu Takahas.h.i.+, but I am told that I am also Buddha. This I would like to discuss with you, if you have time.”

”We have time for nothing else,” said Baker.

Buddha's eyebrows raised slightly. ”So I was right. They are going to kill you.”

Baker glanced at us meaningfully. This giant was no fool. Suddenly there came over me a little thrill of hope. Maybe--but he was speaking again.

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