by Robert Lamb
‘Ouch!’ cried Cindy as she fell. ‘I thought there was another step.’ And she felt around with her foot. ‘We’re at the top,’ she cried, excited. ‘The top,’ she repeated, but there was no reply. ‘Hello,’ but only the dripping of icicles next to her face could be heard.
Suddenly she realized she was sliding, very slowly, on something smooth. ‘Help!’ Oh, why hadn’t she hurried on the stairs to be near Craig. Then she would never have been separated from him. He was somewhere safe, walking along, while she was sliding through the dark.
She tried to stop by putting out her hands and then her feet, but she was in a large round tube with smooth moss all around.
‘Help! Craig! Moses! Old Man!’ Oh, why hadn’t she even asked him for his name? He would never come if she just called ‘old man.’
But where was she going? And how could she have been separated from the others so quickly, right at the top of the stairs? Coming down them she could not remember this tube or anything … but a door … yes, a door with a spoked wheel. ‘The door,’ she said out loud. ‘That was it.’
‘The door must be for the tube and the tube must be. for something. It must go somewhere.’ Her body kept twisting, sliding down in the dark. She suddenly thought she would like this slide very much if she could only know where it led and if she could see where she was. But in the dark, with wet seaweed slapping in her face, it was terrifying.
At the same moment, in another part of the dark caverns, the old man and Mrs Mermaid realized that Cindy was gone. They too began calling in the dark without any answer.
Stumbling in the dark they had entered the Chamber of Art. Its lights were almost entirely out. They could see only by the tiny flames of a few fires burning between the many crowded tugboats and fish nets, seaweed and driftwood. Shadows of giants carrying strange pots seemed to flicker over the walls from the firelight.
‘Everything is topsy-turvy down here,’ said the old man disapprovingly.
‘I hope the others are all right,’ added Mrs. Mermaid.
‘I hope so too. But that little girl and boy said it was their responsibility, and I can’t let them off lightly for all this hullabaloo.’
‘But it wasn’t their fault. It was an accident. Besides, you pulled out the other plug and let the water out to the other side.’
‘I carried out my orders,’ he said, shaking his beard back and forth. ‘My orders from the king were …’
But Mrs Mermaid put her finger to her lips and listened. They were next to a small aeroplane balancing by its wings between two smoke funnels. There was a strange scraping noise from one of the smoke funnels, which echoed round the cavern.
‘How did this thing get down here?’ asked the old man, tapping the aeroplane.
‘It probably got caught in the great winds,’ whispered Mrs Mermaid as she covered the beak of the penguin, who was making strange noises.
‘But,’ insisted the old man quite loudly, ‘it doesn’t look like a boat or anything that floats on …’ ‘Shhh,’ she pointed to the great funnel. The penguin squawked and she clamped her hand over his beak again. ‘There’s something moving in that funnel,’ she whispered.
Just then three beaks poked out of the funnel and, in the firelight, Mrs Mermaid saw three little vests just like the penguin’s. She looked down at him to make sure of her eyes. ‘Penguins?’
That’s right. The old man laughed, checking them off in his book with his feathered pen. ‘We’ve found quite a few in ship funnels. I guess the water in the boiler freezes into ice. The water out here is too salty or there’s just too much of it to freeze.’
They were both laughing when the penguin waddled up the wing of the aeroplane to tap beaks and flippers and make noises with the crowd of his relatives that kept hopping out of other funnels.
‘Now, come on you all,’ the old man called to the penguins as they were all pecking beaks in friendship. ‘It’s time to move on.’
He helped Mrs Mermaid over the funnel and then jumped over nimbly himself. ‘We must hurry.’ They climbed through the dark with the small fires between nets, shadows, and driftwood.
At the same time Moses, Noah, Craig, Captain Tiny and Occi were crawling over fallen boxes and through a tunnel of fallen rock to the steps leading to the War Chamber beyond which was the Great Chamber of Knowledge. They continued to the top of the steps till they saw the lights from the War Chamber through a gigantic door.
It was an even larger chamber than the ones they had seen. Strange ribs of light and holes of dark covered the ceiling, and dark and light hills and valleys cut down into a deep hole in the floor. The entire cavern was shaped like two corkscrew horn shells face to face, floor to ceiling. As they moved further into the cavern they saw the ceiling twisting around up in the air like a pinwheel.
‘That ceiling makes me dizzy just looking at it,’ whispered Craig, as they approached the bridge which spanned the cave.
‘The first king planned it that way. He thought war made people dizzy,’ explained Noah. ‘You’d better not look down over the side of this bridge, because the bottom’s just the same.’
Sure enough the floor was cut into by a twisting spiral hole, like the inside of a shell, with only a narrow bridge across it.
On the bottom below them, Craig saw parts of ships: sails and funnels, masts and anchors, rudders and ropes. Hanging from the foot bridge was a broken spoked wheel.
‘What is that wheel emblem I see engraved all over the place?’ Craig counted the doors and the walls. ‘Everywhere.’
‘Some call it the sailor’s wheel,’ answered Moses, ‘but most men call it Geiges’ Ring, after the first King of the West.’
Noah nodded and continued. ‘The spokes are to turn it and Geiges, the first King of January, thought the wheel with spokes had some magical powers because it could turn ships or carts and many other things so quickly. He believed that with the wheel he could turn everything, even the peoples of the world. So he made it the symbol of his kingdom and hoped it would bring peace.’
‘Well, with his plug he certainly didn’t seem to do that,’ added Craig.
Suddenly they all stopped. They saw that part of the bridge was broken away. It was hundreds of feet to fall if they tried to jump across the break, or if they tripped.
‘What should we do?’ Craig asked Moses.
‘Never mind what we should do, what will we do?’ Captain Tiny cried out, as always.
There was nothing to throw a rope across to, for it might pull loose some more of the weak bridge or the railing.
It was just then that Occi, who was still holding the candles, now very short and almost burnt out, slid along the edge of the narrow bridge. With arms out he felt over the edge and across the empty space a few feet. Further and further till he was about to fall. Then suddenly he jumped.
They were all so surprised they couldn’t speak. All his legs went flying through the air till, as quickly as he had jumped, he landed very gracefully on the other side.
‘What? Why?’ everyone asked until Noah took the rope from Moses and, coiling it round, he held it up to Occi. When Occi raised two arms, they knew he wanted them to throw the rope. Noah was not so tall as Moses and was round as a ball. His first four throws just wrapped around himself, but on the fifth toss Occi caught the rope and held it with one arm, while the other seven arms held on to the railing and the bridge.
‘Now, he’s not very strong, so we’ll have to go one at a time,’ warned Moses. It was terrifying. Finally they all helped Occi hold the rope for Moses, who came across last. Then Moses tied some more rope to the bridge end and carried it along to a statue of a great bird where he tied it securely.
‘Is that for when we come back?’ questioned Craig.
Just as he asked this, they all heard a blood-curdling scream echoing through the next cavern. It seemed to go on for hours. They had to stop their ears as they hurried towards the great door ahead, which was half open. It led to the Great Chamber of Knowledge. It w
as from there that the gigantic scream was coming. The scream grew louder. Just before he covered his ears again, Craig thought he recognized Cindy’s voice in the high ‘Help.’
It’s Cindy, he thought, feeling dreadfully guilty; he had not thought about her the whole time. He had been so worried about himself.
Chapter 12
Cindy Commands
Now Cindy had been sliding all this time, for hours it seemed, in great circles, down a dark mossy tube. But she could not stop. She was afraid no matter what was at the bottom, she was going to crash and that would be the end. The very end. She tried to imagine what it could be at the end. What monster made this tube and why. Maybe it was meant for torturing victims like her and a flaming pool awaited her. She began to think over all the naughty things she had done to deserve an end like this. It was just in the middle of wondering that she saw the end of the tube, approaching like a tiny white dot. It grew larger and larger, till soon it looked enormous. The tube was widening like the end of a great horn.
It was at this point she began to scream, and it was this hornlike tube that had made her screams echo so loudly. As she screamed, there right in front of her, was a great circle of gold, like the one she had seen that morning. It was the other great plug, coming towards her, faster and faster. She was going to hit it. She was … She …
Suddenly everything stopped.
All was clear.
She was staring at the gold, unable to breathe from the force of her stop. Something had hit her in the tummy and, feeling around, she felt a wide band, like elastic.
‘What’s this?’ she said out loud. Her voice boomed out, magnified by the most gigantic cave she had ever seen or heard of. She pulled herself out of the elastic and climbed to the edge of the horn tube where there was a balcony. She looked down hundreds of feet to the darkest, strangest sight she had ever seen.
Under a ceiling of luminous shells, as the map had said, shaped like two waves, were thousands upon thousands of boats, sails, masts, ropes, and sailors, all piled almost to the ceiling against the far wall.
On the side wall was the bottom of the gigantic golden plug, lit by a tiny fire on the floor. Its reflection flickered over the entire cave. That must be the plug on the other side of the world, she thought, suddenly feeling scared. She wondered which country or sea she was under. India? China? Australia?
The water at the bottom of the cave glistened. When she looked again she saw it was the shine of thousands of fish on top of each other.
‘Oh,’ she moaned and her moan echoed throughout the cave. A gigantic moan, like the sound of a great organ, Cindy thought. In the dark the shiny masts of ship funnels and the fish looked like the pipes of an organ. For just like pipes of different sizes, she saw that everything and everyone in the cave was arranged in rows. Long and tall rows to the ceiling. High rows that became piles.
In the middle of the cave she saw an island with a small temple just as the map had pictured it. Many, very tiny figures were looking up at her. Sailors around fires, fish in the water— in fact, everyone in the cavern was staring up at her.
‘Cindy,’ she heard a tiny voice call from below in the dark. ‘Cindy, can you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ she called, and the cave exploded with noise and ended with an echoing SSSSssssssssssssssssssss …
She heard a whisper from somewhere else. ‘It’s Craig down here by the door.’ She looked around. There were many doors around the hall and she could not tell which way the sound came from. Then she saw Occi waving four candles around in a circle.
‘I see you,’ she cried.
Just then there was another tiny cry. It came from directly beneath her. Cindy looked over the balcony and far below were the old man, Mrs Mermaid, and dozens of penguins. Cindy waved, careful not to shout after the noises she had caused before.
‘Little girl—’ the voice paused to be corrected—‘Cindy? All right, Cindy, if that’s her name. You have come down the secret passage built by Geiges, King of the West, to slide from his iceberg palace. That’s why you sound so loud. I am the old man with the beard. It is important that you stay there to tell all the people what to do, so we can remove the plug and bring back the water.’
Cindy felt very important all of a sudden. She was above everyone and was going to tell everyone what to do to save them all. But then she thought, I don’t know what to do at all. I’m lost down here … and up here.
Just then the tiny voice came again. ‘I will stay here to tell you what to say. Don’t worry and don’t shout… whisper and you will be obeyed.’
At that same moment Moses and his group saw the plug and started over to it around the side of the cave. Noah explained, ‘We tried to prise it loose with masts and anchors. We tried to melt it with fires but nothing seemed to move the plug an inch.’ They kept walking around the walls till they came to the bottom of the plug where the little fire was.
‘Now,’ said Moses. ‘I have been thinking all the way from the time I first met you and Cindy of a way to open the plug if it should be closed. You, Craig, gave me the idea.’ Moses’ red beard glowed in the firelight. Everyone looked at Craig without any idea of what Moses was talking about.
“It’s the lightning that started the sails of the windmill,’ explained Moses. Craig laughed and everyone laughed after him because they thought this must be a joke. There is no lightning underground. Captain Tiny, as always, was the first to point this out.
‘Lightning? Down here? You must be crackers!’
‘Lightning is electricity,’ answered Moses, ‘And there must be a great deal of electricity in the electric eels, electric moss, and electric seaweed, not to mention what’s on the ships. If we gathered it all together we would have an enormous spark, as great as lightning.’
‘It sounds good.’ Noah nodded. ‘But how can you make the lightning open up the plug?’
‘Craig gave me this idea too.’ Moses pointed at a steel mast of a ship. ‘If we put this in the crack and put the blasting powder in a pile at the end, with the mast going straight through it, then we touch the spark to the end of the mast and … bang!’ He opened his hands like an explosion.
‘Well, if you want my opinion,’ began Captain Tiny, not waiting for anyone to shake their head. ‘I think we ought to use that missile back there.’ There was silence.
‘A missile is the newest thing. Why, I’ve exploded many mis …’ But he looked around and saw that no one believed him. ‘Well, there must be someone down here that knows how …’
But everyone had turned to Moses, who was shouting up to Cindy. ‘I am going to give you instructions, one by one, and you relay them.’
Moses called up to Cindy and she began to boom out over the cavern. ‘Now, everyone, we are going to try and get out of the cave, and bring all the water back to the other side of the earth by cracking the plug open using electricity. Moses has asked me to ask you for your help. If you promise to help, we will be out soon and the world will be saved. If you agree with the plan please say “Aye”.’
A mighty shout went up. ‘Aye, Aye,’ cried all the sailors, captains, pilots, and crews.
‘Now,’ said Moses, ‘I shall give the instructions to you, Cindy.’ Cindy swallowed. She knew that the success of the entire operation depended on her.
Far below, Craig knew it too. He was burning with envy. How had she been able to get up there? Why? And then he had to laugh to himself as he thought, it was probably a complete accident, like everything else Cindy does.
Moses’ voice came floating up to Gindy, thin and wispy. She automatically repeated what he said. ‘We must collect everything electric. All the fish who are electric must get together over there by the temple!’ Cindy suddenly saw a flurry in the water as the glistening bodies began to move. Some flying fish began to jump to get there faster. Soon the water round the temple was almost solid silver with fishes’ bodies, led by Mrs Mermaid.
The voice came floating up to Cindy again.
‘Ships,
bring all your electrical and metal things over to the bottom of the plug!’ Cindy repeated. At once, captains and mates began to pull at the masts and electric wires of their ships and carried them over, like a procession carrying banners, to the plug.
‘Now, a special order for Mrs Mermaid. Would she please organize the fish so they are holding on to each other, tail to head!’ Cindy saw the slim figure of the mermaid slip through the water till the mass of silver round the temple became a long chain, reaching almost to the plug.
In the meantime, Moses, Craig, and the others had been piling blasting powder, bullets, and bombs round the bottom of the plug.
Cindy boomed out the next order.
‘Would a few people from each ship go out and collect as much electric moss and seaweed as they can and pile it around the masts!’ Immediately men began to climb up and down looking for moss and seaweed that glowed. After they had built a pile round the masts, Moses ordered them to pile it on top of the explosives.
There was only one more order to be given. The most dangerous moment had almost arrived.
Craig was frightened as he carried the last box of explosives towards the plug. He had felt very important a few minutes before, telling the sailors where to put the masts and seaweed. Now he wondered if Moses’ plan would really work. What if they blasted too big a hole and the water came pouring down, drowning them all? He shivered, wondering how many fathoms down they were. The last box of dynamite was very heavy as Craig reached the great pile of boxes leaning against the dull gold of the giant plug. Craig was tired as he began to lift the box up into place.
Just then, while reaching high to rest the box on top of the pile above his head. Craig felt the leather map drop from inside his shirt down onto the wet rock floor.