Land of the Changing Sun

by Will N. Harben

  Produced by Judith Boss

  THE LAND OF THE CHANGING SUN

  By Will. N. Harben

  Chapter I.

  The balloon seemed scarcely to move, though it was slowly sinking towardthe ocean of white clouds which hung between it and the earth.

  The two inmates of the car were insensible; their faces were bloodless,their cheeks sunken. They were both young and handsome. Harry Johnston,an American, was as dark and sallow as a Spaniard. Charles Thorndyke,an English gentleman, had yellow hair and mustache, blue eyes and afine intellectual face. Both were tall, athletic in build andwell-proportioned.

  Johnston was the first to come to consciousness as the balloon sankinto less rarefied atmosphere. He opened his eyes dreamily and lookedcuriously at the white face of his friend in his lap. Then he shook himand tried to call his name, but his lips made no sound. Drawing himselfup a little with a hand on the edge of the basket, he reached for awater-jug and sprinkled Thorndyke's face. In a moment he was rewarded byseeing the eyes of the latter slowly open.

  "Where are we?" asked Thorndyke in a whisper.

  "I don't know;" Johnston answered, "getting nearer to the earth, for wecan breathe more easily. I can't remember much after the professor fellfrom the car. My God, old man! I shall never forget the horror in thepoor fellow's eyes as he clung to the rope down there and begged usto save him. I tried to get you to look, but you were dozing off. Iattempted to draw him up, but the rope on the edge of the basket wastipping it, and both you and I came near following him. I tried to keepfrom seeing his horrible face as the rope began to slip through hisfingers. I knew the instant he let go by our shooting upward."

  "I came to myself and looked over when the basket tipped," replied theEnglishman, "I thought I was going too, but I could not stir a muscle toprevent it. He said something desperately, but the wind blew it away andcovered his face with his beard, so that I could not see the movement ofhis lips."

  "It may have been some instructions to us about the management of theballoon."

  "I think not--perhaps a good-bye, or a message to his wife and child.Poor fellow!"

  "How long have we been out of our heads?" and Johnston looked over theside of the car.

  "I have not the slightest idea. Days and nights may have passed since hefell."

  "That is true. I remember coming to myself for an instant, and it seemedthat we were being jerked along at the rate of a gunshot. My God, itwas awful! It was as black as condensed midnight. I felt your warm bodyagainst me and was glad I was not alone. Then I went off again, but intoa sort of nightmare. I thought I was in Hell, and that you were with me,and that Professor Helmholtz was Satan."

  "Where can we be?" asked Thorndyke.

  "I don't know; I can't tell what is beneath those clouds. It may beearth, sea or ocean; we were evidently whisked along in a storm while wewere out of our heads. If we are above the ocean we are lost."

  Thorndyke looked over the edge of the car long and attentively, then heexclaimed suddenly:

  "I believe it is the ocean."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "It reflects the sunlight. It is too bright for land. When we got abovethe clouds at the start it looked darker below than it does now; we maybe over the middle of the Atlantic."

  "We are going down," said Johnston gloomily.

  "That we are, and it means something serious."

  Johnston made no answer. Half-an-hour went by. Thorndyke looked at thesun.

  "If the professor had not dropped the compass, we could find ourbearings," he sighed.

  Johnston pointed upward. Thin clouds were floating above them. "We arealmost down," he said, and as they looked over the sides of the car theysaw the reflection of the sun on the bosom of the ocean, and, a momentlater, they caught sight of the blue billows rising and falling.

  "I see something that looks like an island," observed Thorndyke, lookingin the direction toward which the balloon seemed to be drifting. "It isdark and is surrounded by light. It is far away, but we may reach it ifwe do not descend too rapidly."

  "Throw out the last bag of sand," suggested the American, "we need it aslittle now as we ever shall."

  Thorndyke cut the bag with his knife and watched the sand filter throughthe bottom of the basket and trail along in a graceful stream behind theballoon. The great flabby bag overhead steadied itself, rose slightlyand drifted on toward the dark spot on the vast expanse of sunlit water.They could now clearly see that it was a small island, not more than amile in circumference.

  "How far is it?" asked Thorndyke.

  "About two miles," answered the American laconically, "it is a chancefor us, but a slim one."

  The balloon gradually sank. For twenty minutes the car glided along notmore than two hundred feet above the waves. The island was now quitenear. It was a barren mound of stone, worn into gullies and sharpprecipices by the action of the waves and rain. Hardly a tree or a shrubwas in sight.

  "It looks like the rocky crown of a great stone mountain hidden in theocean," said the Englishman; "half a mile to the shore, a hundred feetto the water; at this rate of speed the wind would smash us againstthose rocks like a couple of bird's eggs dropped from the clouds. Wemust fall into the water and swim ashore. There is no use trying to savethe balloon."

  "We had better be about it, then," said Johnston, rising stiffly andholding to the ropes. "If we should go down in the water with theballoon we would get tangled in the ropes and get asphyxiated with thegas. We had better hang down under the basket and let go at exactly thesame time."

  The water was not more than forty feet beneath, and the island wasgetting nearer every instant. The two aeronauts swung over on oppositesides of the car and, face to face, hung by their hands beneath.

  "I dread the plunge," muttered Thorndyke; "I feel as weak as a sickkitten; I am not sure that I can swim that distance, but the water looksstill enough."

  "I am played out too," grunted the American, red in the face; "but itlooks like our only chance. Ugh! she made a big dip then. We'd betterlet go. I'll count three, and three is the signal. Now ready. One, two,three!"

  Down shot the balloonists and up bounded the great liberated bag ofgas; the basket and dangling ropes swung wildly from side to side. Theaeronauts touched the water feet foremost at the same instant, and inhalf a minute they rose, not ten feet apart.

  "Now for it," sputtered Johnston, shaking his bushy head like a swimmingdog. "Look, the shore is not very far." Thorndyke was saving his wind,and said nothing, but accommodated his stroke to that of his companion,and thus they breasted the gently-rolling billows until finally,completely exhausted, they climbed up the shelving rocks and lay down inthe warm sunshine.

  "Not a very encouraging outlook," said Johnston, rising when hisclothing was dry and climbing a slight elevation. "There is nothingin sight except a waste of stone. Let's go up to that point and lookaround."

  The ascent was exceedingly trying, for the incline was steep and it wasat times difficult to get a firm footing. But they were repaid for theexertion, for they had reached the highest point of the island and couldsee all over it. As far as their vision reached there was nothing beyondthe little island except the glistening waves that reached out tillthey met the sky in all directions. High up in the clouds they saw theballoon, now steadily drifting with the wind toward the south.

  "We might as well be dead and done with it," grumbled Thorndyke. "Shipsare not apt to approach this isolated spot, and even if they did, howcould we give a signal of distress?"

  Johnston stroked his dark beard thoughtfully, then he pointed toward theshore.

  "There are some driftwood and seaweed," he said; "with my sun-glass Ican soon have a bonfire." He took a piece of punk from a
waterproof boxthat he carried in his pocket and focussed the sun's rays on it. "Rundown and bring me an armful of dry seaweed and wood," he added, intenton his work.

  Thorndyke clambered down to the shore, and in a few minutes returnedwith an armful of fuel. Johnston was blowing his punk into a flame, andin a moment had a blazing fire.

  "Good," approved the Englishman, rubbing his hands together over theflames. "We'll keep it burning and it may do some good." Then a smile ofsatisfaction came over his face as he began to take some clams from hispockets. "Plenty of these fellows down there, and they are as fat andjuicy as can be. Hurry up and let's bake them. I'm as hungry as a bear.There is a fine spring of fresh water below, too, so we won't die ofthirst."

  They baked the clams and ate them heartily, and then went down to thespring near the shore. The water was deliciously cool and invigorating.The sun sank into the quiet ocean and night crept on. The stars came outslowly, and the moon rose full and red from the waves, adding its beamsto the flickering light of the fire on the hill-top.

  "Suppose we take a walk all round on the beach," proposed theEnglishman; "there is no telling what we may find; we may run onsomething that has drifted ashore from some wrecked ship."

  Johnston consented. They had encompassed the entire island, which wasoval in shape, and were about to ascend to the rock to put fresh fuelon the fire before lying down to sleep for the night, when Thorndykenoticed a road that had evidently been worn in the rock by humanfootsteps.

  "Made by feet," he said, bending down and looking closely at the rockand raking up a handful of white sand, "but whether the feet of savageor civilized mortal I can't make out."

  Johnston was a few yards ahead of him and stooped to pick up somethingglittering in the moonlight. It was a tap from the heel of a shoe andwas of solid silver.

  "Civilized," he said, holding it out to his companion; "and of the veryhighest order of civilization. Whoever heard of people rich enough towear silver heel-taps."

  "Are you sure it is silver?" asked the Englishman, examining it closely.

  "Pure and unalloyed; see how the stone has cut into it, and feel itsweight."

  "You are right, I believe," returned Thorndyke, as Johnston put thestrange trophy into his pocket-book, and the two adventurers paused amoment and looked mutely into each other's eyes.

  "We haven't the faintest idea of where we are," said Johnston, his toneshowing that he was becoming more despondent. "We don't know how long wewere unconscious in the balloon, nor where we were taken in the storm.We may now be in the very centre of the North Polar sea--this knob maybe the very pivot on which this end of the earth revolves."

  The Englishman laughed. "No danger; the sun is too natural. From thepoles it would look different."

  "I don't mean the old sun that you read so much about, and that theymake so much racket over at home, but another of which we are theoriginal discoverer--a sun that isn't in old Sol's beat at all, but onethat revolves round the earth from north to south and dips in once a dayat the north and the south poles. See?"

  The Englishman laughed heartily and slapped his friend on the shoulder.

  "I think we are somewhere in the Atlantic; but your finding thatheel-tap does puzzle me."

  "We are going to have an adventure, beside which all others of our liveswill pale into insignificance. I feel it in my bones. See how evenlythis road has been worn and it is leading toward the centre of theisland."

  In a few minutes the two adventurers came to a point in the road wheretall cliffs on either side stood up perpendicularly. It was dark andcold, and but a faint light from the moon shone down to them.

  "I don't like this," said Johnston, who was behind the Englishman; "wemay be walking into the ambush of an enemy."

  "Pshaw!" and Thorndyke plunged on into the gloomy passage. Presently thewalls began to widen like a letter "Y" and in a great open space theysaw a placid lake on the bosom of which the moon was shining. On allsides the towering walls rose for hundreds of feet. Speechless withwonder and with quickly-beating hearts they stumbled forward over theuneven road till they reached the shore of the lake. The water was soclear and still that the moon and stars were reflected in it as if in agreat mirror.

  "Look at that!" exclaimed Thorndyke, pointing down into the depths,"what can that be?"

  Johnston followed Thorndyke's finger with his eyes. At first he thoughtthat it was a comet moving across the sky and reflected in the water;but, on glancing above, he saw his mistake. It looked, at first, like agreat ball of fire rolling along the bottom of the lake with a stream offlame in its wake.