CHAPTER XXVI.
THE PLACE OF THE HORROR.
Was he awake--asleep and dreaming--or--dead?
All these questions did Laurence Stanninghame ask himself by turn as herecovered his confused and scattered senses; and there was abundantscope for such conjecture for, in truth, the place wherein he foundhimself was a strange one.
A wall of rock arose on either side of him--one straight, perpendicular,the other overhanging, arching out above the first. As he lay there inthe semi-gloom, his first thought was that he was in a cave; a furtherglance, however, convinced him that the place was a gigantic fissure orrift. But how had he come there?
With an effort, for he still felt strangely languid and confused, hesent his mind back to the events of the previous day. Stay, though--wasit the previous day? Somehow it seemed much longer ago. He rememberedthe long hurried march into the heart of the mountains with his gruesomeescort. He remembered partaking of a plentiful meal and some excellentcorn-beer; this he had done with a view to keeping up his strength,which he might need to the full. Then he remembered no more. The liquorhad been drugged, he decided.
But to what end? To what end, indeed, was he there? How had he beenbrought there? He raised himself on his elbow and looked around.
He started. A large bundle lay beside him--something rolled up in anative blanket. Speedily undoing this, he discovered several grassbaskets with lids. These contained pounded corn, such as is eaten with_amati_, or curdled milk--and, indeed, a large calabash of the latter,tightly stoppered, was among the stores. Well, whatever was to become ofhim, he was not to starve, anyhow. But was he only being fattened for aworse fate?
Then a thought struck him, which set all his pulses tingling intorenewed life. He, too, had been sent out of the country, and thesestores were to last him for, at any rate, part of his journey. True, theprospect was anything but an exhilarating one, seeing that he wasunarmed, and had but the vaguest idea which way to turn; that theBa-gcatya country was surrounded by ferocious and hostile races. Butthen, everything is relative in this world, and to a man who has spenthours of a long day journeying towards a mysterious, horrible, andcertain death, the discovery of release and life, even with such slenderchances, was joy after the boding dread which those long hours had heldfor him. Yes, that was it, of course. Tyisandhlu had not been faithlessto the friendship between them. While openly consenting to hissacrifice, for even the king dare not, in such a matter, run counter tothe feelings of the nation, Tyisandhlu had given secret orders that heshould be smuggled out of the country.
Having arrived at this conclusion, it occurred to Laurence that hemight as well explore a little. He would leave his stores here for thepresent; for a glance served to show that the rift or fissure endedthere, so taking only a handful of the pounded corn, to eat as hewalked, he started at once.
But there was a something, a cold creepiness in the air perhaps, thatquelled much of his new-born hope. The rift seemed to form a kind ofcircle, for he walked on and on, ever trending to the right, never ableto see more than a short distance in front; never able to behold thesky. There was something silently, horribly eloquent in the grimsameness of those tomblike walls. Just then, to his relief, thesemi-gloom widened into light. The cliffs no longer overhung each other.A narrow strip of sky became visible, and, in front, the open daylight.
But with the joy of the discovery another sight met his gaze, a sightwhich sent the blood tingling through his veins. Yet, at first glance,it was not a particularly moving one. On the ground, at his feet, laytwo unobtrusive-looking pebbles of a bluish gray. But as the next momenthe held them in his hands, Laurence knew that he held in a moment whathe had gone through years of privation and ruthless bloodshed toobtain--wealth, to wit. For these two unobtrusive pebbles were, in fact,splendid diamonds!
More of them? Of course there were. The exploration could wait a littlelonger. An accident might cut him off from this spot--might cut him offfrom such a chance forever. The hands of the seasoned adventurertrembled like those of a palsied old woman as he turned over the loosesoil with his foot, for instrument of any kind he had none; and indeed,his agitation was not surprising, for in less than an hour Laurence wasin possession of eight more splendid stones as large as the first,besides a number of small ones. He knew that he held that which shouldenable him to pass the remainder of his life in wealth and ease, couldhe once get safe away.
Could he? Ah, there came in the dead weight--the fulfilling of thatstrange irony of fate which well-nigh invariably wills that the good oflife comes to us a trifle too late. For his search had brought him quiteinto the open day once more. Before him lay a valley--or ratherhollow--of no great size, and--it was shut in--completely walled in byan amphitheatre of lofty cliffs.
Cliffs on all sides--at some points smooth and perpendicular, at othersactually overhanging, at others, again, craggy and broken into terraces;but, even with the proper appliances, probably unscalable; that detailhis practised eye could take in at a glance. How, then, should he hopeto scale them, absolutely devoid, as he was, of so much as a stick--letalone a cord.
A cord? How had he been brought there? Had he been let down by acord--or brought in by some secret entrance? the latter appeared moreprobable; and that entrance he would find,--would find and traverse, beits risks, be its terrors what they might. He had that upon him nowwhich rendered life worth any struggle to preserve.
He stepped forth. The sky was over his head once more, clear and blue.That was something. By the slant of the sunrays he judged it must beabout the middle of afternoon. The floor of the hollow was bumpy anduneven. Sparse and half-dry grass bents sprung from the soil, but nolarger vegetation--no trees, no brush. Stranger still, there was no signof life--even of bird or insect life. An evil, haunted silence seemed tobrood over the great, crater-like hollow.
The silence became weighty, oppressive. Laurence, in spite of himself,felt it steal upon his nerves, and began to whistle a lively tune--as hewalked slowly around, examining the cliffs, and every crack and cranny,with critical eye. The echoing notes reverberated weirdly among thebrooding rocks. Suddenly his foot struck something--something hard. Helooked down, and could not repress a start. There at his feet, grinningup at him, lay a human skull--nay, more, a well-nigh complete skeleton.
It was a gruesome find under the circumstances. Laurence, his nervesunstrung by the effects of the drug, and recent alternations ofexultation and what was akin to despair, felt his flesh creep. What didit mean? Why, that no way of escape did this valley of death afford.This former victim--had he been placed there in the same way as himself,and, all means of exit failing, had succumbed to starvation when hisprovisions were exhausted? It looked that way. Bending down, he examinedthis sorry relic of humanity--examined it long and carefully. No bonewas broken, the skeleton was almost complete; where it was not, thejoints had fallen asunder without wrench, and the smooth round craniumshowed not the slightest sign of abrasion or blow.
With sinking heart he pursued his search; yet somehow his attention nowwas given but languidly to potential means of exit which the faces ofthe cliffs might afford. Something seemed irresistibly to draw it to theground. Ha! that was it. Again that horrid gleam of whitened bones.Another skeleton lay before him--and look, another, and another, atshort distances apart. All these, like the first, were unshattered,uninjured; but--the whole area here was strewn with skulls, yellow andbrown with age,--was strewn with bones also, mossy, mahogany-hued, andwhich crackled under his tread.
No one could be more ruthless, more callous; no man could view scenes ofcruelty and bloodshed more unmoved than Laurence Stanninghame,--as wehave shown,--or bear his part more coolly and effectively in thefiercest conflict; yet there was something in these silent human relicslying there bloodless; in the unnatural, haunted silence of thisdreadful death-valley that caused his flesh to creep. Then he noticedthat all were lying along the slope of a ridge which ran right acrossthe hollow, dividing the floor of the same into two sections. He mustneeds go ov
er that ridge to complete his explorations, yet now he shrankfrom it with awe and repugnance which in any other man he would havedefined as little short of terror. What would await him on the otherside?
Well, he must go through with it. Probably he would find more of suchghastly relics--that was all. But as he stood upon the apex of theridge, with pulses somewhat quickened, no whitening bones met hisgaze--fixed, dilated as that gaze was. The cliff in front--he thoughtto descry some faint chance of escape there, for its face was terracedand sloping backward somewhat. Moreover, it was rent by crannies andcrevices, which, to a desperate and determined man, might afford handand foothold.
And now for the first time it flashed upon Laurence that the mystery of"The Spider" stood explained. This horrible hole whence there was noescape--where men were thrust to die by inches as all of these had diedbefore him--the repulsive and blood-sucking insect was in truth afitting name allegorically for such a place, which swallowed up thelives of men. Besides, for all he knew, the configuration of the cratermight, from above, resemble the tutelary insect of the Ba-gcatya. Yes;he had solved the mystery, as to that he was confident--the next thingto do was to find some way out, to break through the fatality of theplace.
For the first time now his shoulder began to feel stiff and sore, wherethe stick hurled by Lindela had struck him. That was a bad preparationfor the most perilous kind of cliff-climbing. Then the incident recalledto mind Lindela herself. Her sudden change of front was just such anoddity as any of the half-ironical incidents which go to make up the sumof life's experiences. Well, savage or civilized, human nature wassingularly alike. A touch of superstition and the god of yesterdaybecame the demon of to-day.
Thus musing, he came, suddenly and unexpectedly, upon another skeleton.But the effect of the discovery of this was even more disconcerting thanthat of the first. For, around, lay rotting rags of clothing, and agold ornament or two. These remains he recognized at a glance. They werethose of Lutali.
Yes, here was a broad bracelet of gold, curiously worked with the textof the Koran, which he had seen last on the Arab's sinewy wrist. Nowthat wrist was but a grisly bone. There, too, were parchment strips,also inscribed with Koran passages, and worn in a pouch as amulets. Theidentity of these remains was established beyond a doubt.
But the discovery inspired within him a renewed chill of despair. IfLutali had been unable to find means of escape, how should he? The Arabwas a man of great readiness of resource, of indomitable courage, andpowerfully built. If such a one had succumbed, why should he, Laurence,fare any better? He sat down once more, and, gazing upon the sorryremnant of his late confederate, began to think.
What a strange, vast, practical joke was that thing called life. Herewas he at the end of it, and the very means of ending it for him had, atthe same time, put him into possession of that which rendered it worthhaving at all. He felt the stones lying hard and angular in his pockets,he even took out one of them and turned it over sadly in his hands. Hewould gladly give a portion of these to be standing on the summit ofyonder cliff instead of at the base; not yet had he come to feel hewould gladly give them all. It was only of a continuance with what lifehad brought him that he should be there at all. He had sacrificedhimself for another. The sublimity of the act even yet did not strikehim. He regarded it as half-humorous, half-idiotic,--the first becausehis cynical creed was bolstered up by the consciousness that Holmeswould never more than half appreciate it; the last, because--well--allunselfishness, all consideration, was idiotic.
Then it occurred to him that it would be time enough to sit down anddream when he had exhausted all expedients, and he had not explored thatside of the hollow at all yet. To this end he moved forward. A verybrief scrutiny, however, of the face of the cliff sufficed to show thatfor climbing purposes the cracks and crannies were useless.
Ha! What was this? A cave or a rift? Right in front of him the cliffyawned in just such a rift as the one in which he had awakened to findhimself, only not on anything like such a large scale. Eagerly Laurenceplunged into this. Here might be a way to the outer world--to safety.
He pressed onward in the semi-gloom. The rocks darkened overhead,forming, in effect, a cave. And now it seemed that he could hear astrange, soft, scraping, a kind of sighing noise. A puff-adder was hisfirst thought, looking around for the reptile. But no such reptile layin his path, and he had no means of striking a light. With a dullshrinking, his flesh creeping with a strange foreboding, as with theconsciousness of some fearful prescience, he decided to push on, beingcareful, however, to tread warily. This was no time for sticking attrifles.
But as he advanced the air became foetid with a strange, pungent,nauseous odour. There were lateral clefts branching off the maingallery, but of no depth, and to these he had given but small notice.Now, however, something occurred of so appalling a nature that he stoodas one turned to stone.
There shot out from one of these lateral recesses two enormoustentacles--black, wavy as serpents, covered with hair, armed at theextremity with a strong double claw. They reached forth noiselessly towithin a couple of yards of where he stood, then two more followed witha quick, wavy jerk. And now behind these, a head, as large as that of aman, black, hairy, bearing a strange resemblance to the most awful andcruel human face ever stamped with the devil's image--whose dull, goggleeyes, fixed on the appalled ones of its discoverer, seemed to glow andburn with a truly diabolical glare.
Laurence stood--staring into the countenance of this awful thing--hisblood curdled to ice within him, his hair literally standing up. Was itthe Fiend himself who had taken such unknown and fearful shape to appearbefore him here in the gloom of this foul and loathsome cavern? Then, ashis eyes grew more and more used to the dim shades, he made out a hugebody crouched back in the recess, half hidden by a quivering mass ofblack, hairy tentacles.
For a few moments thus he stood--then with a cry of horror he threw outhis hand as though instinctively to ward off an attack. The fourtentacles already protruded were quickly withdrawn, and the fearfulcreature, whatever it was, seemed to shrink back into the cranny. Onelast look upon the hairy heap of moving, writhing horror--upon thosedreadful demon eyes, and this man, who had faced death again and againwithout shrinking, now felt it all he could do to resist an impulse toturn and flee like a hunted hare. He did, however, resist it--yet it waswith flesh shuddering and knees trembling beneath him that he withdrew,step by step, backwards, until he stood once more in the full light ofday.
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