by H. F. Heard
But at last we stopped, and, throwing my beam about, I found that the space opened out. The dried river course had come, as I had seen in my earlier trek down, to one of those big sump-holes through which, no doubt after the last pluvial age, the flood water had seeped away. But though I was now familiar with this arrangement of the downstairs, this particular place had several new features. For one thing, instead of a sand floor there was one of large pebbles and rocks. Another thing was that when I looked up and cast my beam again and again, from whatever point I tried to make a light-sounding, not a hint of roof was discernible. I became pretty certain that I must be at the foot of some huge shaft. The next thing was still more unusual. When I had been peering up like this for some time, I was surprised by an action of my guide. For suddenly he extended his wing and quite deliberately put it over the ray of my torch. And, as he did so, I saw him, with his other wing, point up. I looked, and then my eyes, with nothing to blind them, saw a sight which I think was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And that gave me a gauge of what I’d actually been through. What I saw was faint—not a good specimen, I expect, but it meant everything to me, though I meant nothing to it and though it was really more alien to me than this plutonic world in which I’d been wandering and lost all these dark days. It was a star, there was no doubt of it. I was looking up at the dear familiar night-sky. However far down I might be, still there it was above me, straight above me, nothing but air separated us. I gave a gasp of relief. It was then that I had time to notice the other thing in this odd spot—odd, even in all of this mysterious underworld. In all the rest of it there had been silence and stillness save where that shining river of death pulsed down into a still deeper deep. Even the flight of those dark beings scarcely stirred that thick stagnant air. But here there was a wind. That deep, sad, sobbing sound I had been haunted by two “sleeps” ago was here, and I knew I had come much nearer to its source, that it was somewhere in this vast labyrinth. It was blowing up from somewhere below, and, as I noticed, it was getting rapidly stronger. Further, instead of being the cool dead air to which I had become accustomed, this was hot and growing hotter. Even while I noticed it, it began to whirl and come in gusts and finally to drone round me like a rising tempest. It began to flutter and blow about my shirt, and then suddenly a still further increase in what was now a blast suddenly seized on me, and that faithful friend which had followed me through all my falls and plunges, my bandana neck-kerchief, though wrapped and knotted under my chin, could not resist the call and whirled away and up. I caught sight of it flapping like an escaping bird, making for the upper air, and, as I looked again, I saw that the star I had first sighted had begun to wink and waver, as lights do, seen across embers.
And still the gale grew and rose and drove, until the vent in which I was standing began to hum like a Gargantuan trombone, and I shivered as though I were a reed. But not because it was cold. Warmer and warmer grew the blast, and, with a final shrinking and sinking of my spirits, as all my physique seemed to lose all purchase and I was about to be carried off my feet, I realized that this storm of air, this cyclone in a cave that was rushing past me and pulling at me, must be some kind of oncoming volcanic disturbance. I must be in the vent of some old volcano or lava flow. This heated air, driven off by fire or gases, must be rushing up from below. Thank heavens it was air, breathable air, though hot and parched, that was blowing up and past. The outer air must somehow have been sucked in by some other vent and, becoming heated in the depths, pour up this passage.
As the blast grew, I was several times nearly carried off my feet, and then I remembered my companion, whom, for the moment, because of this intrusion of blind, but certainly not motionless, nature, I had forgotten. I was sure I should find him cowering in distress. For what could a living leaf of a creature such as that do, when my podgy body was already straining at its moorings in that tide of rushing air. But, to my surprise, the creature was not cowering on the floor. True enough, he had his sails furled round him most skillfully, so as to give as little purchase as possible to the tearing wind. But he was holding his ground, and, even when whirled up for a moment, he would alight as neatly as an acrobat jumping down from the high trapeze. He could use his thin body so that he could work himself down through the dragging air till he could find purchase on the ground again. And his strange, gripping, clawlike feet stood him in good stead, literally holding to rock ledges and crags that composed the uneven floor. Here there was no sand at all. I imagine that these winds often rushed up this vent—indeed, afterward, as you’ll hear, I got a small piece of evidence on that score—and certainly they would clean the place of a speck of dust or a grain of sand. Even gravel would be swept up by such a superforced draft.
After one of these dives-back which my companion had made, I noticed that he was not alone. He now had two others with him. Skillfully between the gusts—for there were moments of comparative calm when the storm was working up—they maneuvered until they were round me. Were they seeking a further purchase or anchorage in my bulk? My next thought was a variant of that, for now it seemed that they must be trying to moor me. They were proceeding quickly to put fine cords of the cobweb filament round me and under my arms, feet, and knees. As soon as that was finished, the two others made their way out on either side, carrying the strands with them, to make me fast to some ledge or boss in the side of the vent, I felt sure. Though, of course, I couldn’t be quite sure for long; before they reached the rock sides of this giant tube, I had lost sight of their crawling figures in the dusk; my feeble torch now only threw its tiring beam a very little way. So—for there was nothing else to do—I stood like this, or, rather, increasingly I crouched. For in spite of their good services, I felt that if the blast gained but another mile-an-hour rate, we’d all be whirled into the sky, willy-nilly. And, though return to the upperworld was what I wanted more than anything else, yet to be vomited out and dashed to pieces by the very vigor of my deliverance from this dark womb of earth, seemed to me to be most regrettable overzeal.
Then, in a second, it was all over. The two (or a couple like them) returned to my side, but not bringing the cords with them—I could see that when they came into my little circle of dimming light. So, I thought, they have moored me; and naturally, having come to that conclusion, I didn’t suspect anything when they drew in closer and closer, till all three of them were actually crouched under me. Indeed, if you’ll believe it, I began to feel almost a kind of henlike feeling, and began to think of myself as some protective mothering creature, fostering these poor strange chickens cowered beneath my cover from the stormy blast. After all, I’d been so long, at best, the domesticated wild pet among these creatures that it gave my humanity a bit of a lift to find the roles reversed in my favor. But the feeling of actual physical lift soon drove that harmless vanity out of my mind. Bat or man, the leg-creature or the wing-creature were being proved to be equally helpless before this blind unconscious violence of the wind. The gale was going now in great howling pulsations, and, in one second, a flood of air twice as violent as any we had yet stood rushed up around us. That we were in the very vortex of a tornado, I could no longer question. I felt myself stagger and knew that I must be blown over, whirled round, and dashed to pieces, as the shriek of the increasing spin and drive of the air mounted around me. But as I waited for the blow—for my feet now had hardly any purchase on the ground; I was bobbing like a cork—I felt myself gripped. My companions, I remember thinking, must in their natural terror have seized hold of me in their last hope of anchorage. I felt their hold under the arms and round my waist. And then (and again I could only assume it was their wild panic that made them make this last fatal reaction), as every bird will do blindly when in danger, they spread their wings. I realized how fatal this must be, for, as happens in such moments, my inner mind was coldly lucid, while outwardly I was no more than a bit of dust. I knew I must be facing death, for, of course, the spread wings were now round me, so that I was like some absurd
lady of the crinoline period being parachuted up to heaven. And this was just the final perfect purchase that the wind wanted. So, kilted and begirt, I found myself rushing up in a grotesque kind of assumption or ascension.
After the first shock, I must own that it was actually exciting. I certainly had never before in all my cave explorations made the return trip with far more speed and, indeed, ease than I had made my way down; this was the return from Avernus by a de luxe route. Of course, we would be dashed to pieces as soon as this gust failed. But sufficient unto the moment must be the thrill thereof. And then I noticed that the upbearing was not failing, and, oddest of all, that my two mooring ropes, as I’d taken them to be, were mounting with us. This, I then couldn’t help thinking, this is the end of this mad dream. It is all a dream and all has been nothing but a nightmare, and Freud alone would dare to say what it might mean—no doubt an all too vivid birth-experience recollection. I looked up—or down, perhaps I ought to have thought, if this was a birth-dream—and there was the opening above me, and, upon my word, it was growing bigger every second and was holding more and more stars. And, what is more, as it gaped wider and wider, on the faintly lit space I saw not only a number of bright stars but a number of black forms moving against the star glow. I could have no doubt: there was a host of creatures being blown ahead of me. With a moment’s more study I was sure of still another thing: they weren’t merely being blown ahead of me like dead leaves; they were rather flying on the blast as birds that migrate can take a favorable gale, or—for they were much more like that—as in the old fairy tales the witches are said to ride out up the chimneys to their black sabbaths. Before I’d time to think more, the entrance itself rushed upon us, and we were out, out in the upper air again. The conglomerate, of which I was the massive core, as it sailed out under the night sky, veered over to one side, careened violently, and I was dropped fairly crashingly, but not too precipitously, right into the arms of a stunted scrub oak. As a matter of fact, I made rather a good landing and, after a minute to pull myself together, scrambled out with hardly a scratch.
My first feeling was of huge relief. I was in a great quiet, though back of me I could hear that infernal flue roaring away to itself. I sat down on the earth—the good surface earth, patted it, took up some dry leaves that were sticking in my clothes and chewed them, found a blade of dried grass and bit on it—the upper world was back again, I was alive and once more on top—silly words, I know, especially from a speleologist. But you wait till you have been below, not with your quiet self but with a host of subterranean creatures that anyone would pass for demons. Oh, yes, benevolent, no doubt, according to their very deep and dark lights, but still creatures quite polar to oneself. You wait until after so long under that you can’t say how long, you’re suddenly flung back and up, back, if not to day, at least to our own illuminated night.
At last I got up, having given another look of heartfelt relief to the familiar friendly stars and having found my bearings again, at least in the sky. Now I must turn to and find them on the earth under my feet. Where was I? I began to realize that even when you have won back to the surface, still you may be pretty thoroughly lost. I looked around. In the starlight I could see faintly that I was in some large space, a kind of amphitheater, I judged, a small plain with steep sides—rocks, I supposed—around it. I set out to grope my way and tripped up. I was snarled in one of those strange ropes that had been attached to me. I pulled at it, for they were as tough as silk, and that was what brought me back to my still all too realistic situation. For, at my pull, what should come up on my line but one of my captors. I hadn’t left the underworld yet, and perhaps I never would. I was still on the string. Perhaps they’d just brought me out, as people take out the dog for a run at night before tying it up in its kennel.
Well, I wasn’t going to fight. What would be the use? They could see in this gloom and hear all the time. So, with their eyes shut or through the thickest smoke screen, they’d track one, yes, and probably smell one, long before one had a ghost of an idea that they were on one’s trail or anywhere near. Well, he came along looming up on me, paying in the line, methodical, economical creature, until he came up to me, and then neatly unholstered me. Was I then, after all, to be set free? No, he put one of those fingertipped wings on my shoulder and led me off. Provided they didn’t try to force me down again that diabolic oubliette, I’d better continue to fall in with their wishes; though now we were all, as it were, on the level, and I felt more of a man and less of a poor shade that has fallen into the pit, I own I did find them even more uncanny, yes, even repulsive. But there was no doubt I had nothing to do but to wait and watch my chance. Perhaps when day came there’d be an opportunity to get away. The daylight surely would play against them as much as it would aid me. So I consented to be led along, and finally I saw by aid of the dusk of the stars that we had reached a kind of bench of stone, and on this my companion had crouched himself and was giving me some tugs to bring me to sit beside him. I was still rather winded by all that whirling and plunging, so I slumped down.
I don’t know how long we had been sitting when I began to be aware that the sky opposite where we sat had in it a sort of glow. After a few minutes I did realize what that must mean: the moon must be rising, for already I had got my orientation. And, true enough, the light swelled until, with that strange suddenness which any unclouded moonrise has, the disk of the full moon sailed over the rock-ridge. It brought to light a remarkable place, an area, as I’d suspected, with rock walls. It was more regular than any such a place would have been if simply made by nature—a large impressive parallelogram. The walls were machiolated and indented all the way, as if carved into battlements and canopy work. This might have been the floor of some cave and, ranged around, the half-finished stalagmites, before the dripping roof had been blown away. But my attention was drawn from this by something in the sky—a sound. Somewhere up above me, very high, there seemed to be coming a strange, piercing, but quite beautiful note. It was a singing note that wavered and rose as though it were the magnified effect, immensely magnified but very far—of the sound that gnats make when they wheel in droves into the sky on still summer evenings. And, crossed with this, the odd, haunting sound of a huge aeolian harp. The roar of the vent up which I had been expelled was now rapidly dying down to little more than a throbbing, which soon after that itself died away. In the silence, made all the more striking by the absence of that whirlwind, my ear was startled by this other unplaceable music. It was both uncanny and soothing. An odd mixture, I know. But I feel sure that’s how it would have struck you, if you’d heard it. Then I remembered it did remind me of something. Surely it was a variant of that chant I’d heard by the plutonic river at the burial ceremony? At that I felt daunted, I own. For could this be a preliminary to another offering-rite in which this time I might be called on to play a silent, but all too significant, part?
I searched the sky to see if in the dust-light of the stars or against the rising disk of the moon I could find any visible source. Then I saw. Wheeling down from the zenith, flock upon flock, their dusky velvet wings now sheeny in the up-flooding light of the rising moon, there were descending flights upon flights of the men-bats. They came down swinging in the most beautiful formations of flight, weaving in and out of each others’ companies: diving and recovering, looping and lacing, vaulting and swooping. Birds can fly as well as that when in broad sweeps. But no bird could ever effect these surprising variations and what one might call staccato passages: those sudden stances, which, as they stood on beam-ends abaft, with their huge vans vibrating, these creatures could achieve, and with which they punctuated, as it were, the flow of their flight. Their wings would beat in unison, in harmony. They would soar and whir, curvet and back-somersault; they would, as flyers call it, “roll,” so they would revolve on their axis like an unwinding spindle; they would perform unbelievable vaultings, handsprings on the printless air. And all these grace notes of individual movement, these obb
ligatos, were in perfect keeping with one immense pattern of choreography, the time of which was given by their intense moving chant.
And as they approached from that high station in the zenith to which they had climbed to meet the moon, suddenly all the parapets, battlements, the machiolations and canopies, they also suddenly came to life, took wing, and a huge antiphonal and counter-chorus swept up to the sky to join the chorus descending. The two armies interwove, maneuvering with a marvel of skill—not a falter, not a hesitation, not a hint of misapprehension. Ceaselessly, in what seemed the inexhaustible interweaving of extemporized dance, dance at last achieved in three dimensions of full movement, they rushed and paused and hovered and sank, towered, rocketed, plunged, and reared. They were now all facing the moon, which rode clear in the eastern sky. As they were for a moment ranged in this act of presentation, my companion leaped from the earth and was merged in those flocks. Sometimes they would all suddenly alight, falling like a tempest of leaves, until there seemed not a spot of the ground, rock-ridge, or hummock that was not crowded and covered with these strange, terrible, but fantastically harmonious forms. They draped every crag, and their serried lines packed the wide floor-space of the whole area. They would remain thus for a while, chanting antiphonally. Then this would be followed by a long silence when the whole place seemed to have become stone. The ordered ranks edging each contour of this large arena would now be still as a deserted monument, as motionless as a while before they had been a vibrating span filling the sky. There was one sign of life and movement in that vast attention. I, the restless, nervous onlooker spying round me (like the small child who, through its fingers, peeps at the grownups at their prayers), I could see the life of these dark dead-still forms gleaming and flashing in the luminous tapeta of their glowing eyes, myriads of small green mirrors flashing back the calm white splendor of the moon.