Part 24 (1/2)

”Don't choke me,” I heard Bickley say to Bastin, and the latter's murmured reply of:

”I never could bear these moving staircases and tubelifts. They always make me feel sick.”

I admit that for my part I also felt rather sick and clung tightly to the hand of the Glittering Lady. She, however, placed her other hand upon my shoulder, saying in a low voice:

”Did I not tell you to have no fear?”

Then I felt comforted, for somehow I knew that it was not her desire to harm and much less to destroy me. Also Tommy was seated quite at his ease with his head resting against my leg, and his absence of alarm was rea.s.suring. The only stoic of the party was Bickley. I have no doubt that he was quite as frightened as we were, but rather than show it he would have died.

”I presume this machinery is pneumatic,” he began when suddenly and without shock, we arrived at the end of our journey. How far we had fallen I am sure I do not know, but I should judge from the awful speed at which we travelled, that it must have been several thousand feet, probably four or five.

”Everything seems steady now,” remarked Bastin, ”so I suppose this luggage lift has stopped. The odd thing is that I can't see anything of it. There ought to be a shaft, but we seem to be standing on a level floor.”

”The odd thing is,” said Bickley, ”that we can see at all. Where the devil does the light come from thousands of feet underground?”

”I don't know,” answered Bastin, ”unless there is natural gas here, as I am told there is at a town called Medicine Hat in Canada.”

”Natural gas be blowed,” said Bickley. ”It is more like moonlight magnified ten times.”

So it was. The whole place was filled with a soft radiance, equal to that of the sun at noon, but gentler and without heat.

”Where does it come from?” I whispered to Yva.

”Oh!” she replied, as I thought evasively. ”It is the light of the Under-world which we know how to use. The earth is full of light, which is not wonderful, is it, seeing that its heart is fire? Now look about you.”

I looked and leant on her harder than ever, since amazement made me weak. We were in some vast place whereof the roof seemed almost as far off as the sky at night. At least all that I could make out was a dim and distant arch which might have been one of cloud. For the rest, in every direction stretched vastness, illuminated far as the eye could reach by the soft light of which I have spoken, that is, probably for several miles. But this vastness was not empty. On the contrary it was occupied by a great city. There were streets much wider than Piccadilly, all bordered by houses, though these, I observed, were roofless, very fine houses, some of them, built of white stone or marble. There were roadways and pavements worn by the pa.s.sage of feet. There, farther on, were market-places or public squares, and there, lastly, was a huge central enclosure one or two hundred acres in extent, which was filled with majestic buildings that looked like palaces, or town-halls; and, in the midst of them all, a vast temple with courts and a central dome. For here, notwithstanding the lack of necessity, its builders seemed to have adhered to the Over-world tradition, and had roofed their fane.

And now came the terror. All of this enormous city was dead. Had it stood upon the moon it could not have been more dead. None paced its streets; none looked from its window-places. None trafficked in its markets, none wors.h.i.+pped in its temple. Swept, garnished, lighted, practically untouched by the hand of Time, here where no rains fell and no winds blew, it was yet a howling wilderness. For what wilderness is there to equal that which once has been the busy haunt of men? Let those who have stood among the buried cities of Central Asia, or of Anaraj.a.pura in Ceylon, or even amid the ruins of Salamis on the coast of Cyprus, answer the question. But here was something infinitely more awful. A huge human haunt in the bowels of the earth utterly devoid of human beings, and yet as perfect as on the day when these ceased to be.

”I do not care for underground localities,” remarked Bastin, his gruff voice echoing strangely in that terrible silence, ”but it does seem a pity that all these fine buildings should be wasted. I suppose their inhabitants left them in search of fresh air.”

”Why did they leave them?” I asked of Yva.

”Because death took them,” she answered solemnly. ”Even those who live a thousand years die at last, and if they have no children, with them dies the race.”

”Then were you the last of your people?” I asked.

”Inquire of my father,” she replied, and led the way through the ma.s.sive arch of a great building.

It led into a walled courtyard in the centre of which was a plain cupola of marble with a gate of some pale metal that looked like platinum mixed with gold. This gate stood open. Within it was the statue of a woman beautifully executed in white marble and set in a niche of some black stone. The figure was draped as though to conceal the shape, and the face was stern and majestic rather than beautiful. The eyes of the statue were cunningly made of some enamel which gave them a strange and lifelike appearance. They stared upwards as though looking away from the earth and its concerns. The arms were outstretched. In the right hand was a cup of black marble, in the left a similar cup of white marble.

From each of these cups trickled a thin stream of sparkling water, which two streams met and mingled at a distance of about three feet beneath the cups. Then they fell into a metal basin which, although it must have been quite a foot thick, was cut right through by their constant impact, and apparently vanished down some pipe beneath. Out of this metal basin Tommy, who gambolled into the place ahead of us, began to drink in a greedy and demonstrative fas.h.i.+on.

”The Life-water?” I said, looking at our guide.

She nodded and asked in her turn:

”What is the statue and what does it signify, Humphrey?”

I hesitated, but Bastin answered:

”Just a rather ugly woman who hid up her figure because it was bad.