The End of the Tunnel

by Paul Capon

  “Sorry, we don’t understand,” said Tom. “Can you speak English?”

  As he spoke, he put his left hand up so the sergeant could see his watch.

  It did not have quite the same effect it had had on Yoaf, but the sergeant looked disconcerted and his expression softened.

  “Desil a’peds,” he growled and gestured that they were to get out of the gondola. The boys jumped out, then helped Jane and Ruth.

  The sergeant strutted back to Yoaf, shouting and threatening him with the sword. Timidly, Yoaf held out a scrap of paper, but the sergeant did not notice it until his lungs were empty and he had apparently run out of terms of abuse. Then he snatched the paper, glanced at it and waved to the soldier in charge of the gate. At once its white painted spars started to rise into the air. Yoaf scrambled back to the dinkey, touched the lever, and the train moved away.

  “Good-by, Yoaf!” shouted Ruth. “Thanks for the bread and drink. It was more than we’ll get from this old horror!”

  “For goodness’ sake,” muttered Tom. “You don’t know that he doesn’t understand English.”

  “I don’t care. I’ve never seen a man with a nastier face.”

  “You didn’t see the man with the scar.”

  By now the train was beyond the gate, and the sergeant turned to the foursome.

  “Venyee!” he snapped, and with a jerk of his head indicated that they were to follow him. He headed for the big, white building, which looked bleak and sinister.

  They were put into a bare, square room with a young, red-haired soldier to guard them. There was no furniture except a stone bench along two of the walls, and nothing but the ugly desert they had crossed could be seen from the window. They tried to make conversation in sign language with their guard, who looked less inhuman than the soldiers they had seen outside, but he was either too awed or too well disciplined to do anything other than stare blankly in front of him.

  “If we don’t eat soon, I’ll faint,” remarked Ruth. “What time is it, Boyd?”

  “Ten to nine.”

  “Think of it! Mummy and Daddy are just finishing their breakfast. Except they’ll be too worried to eat anything.”

  “Gee, I wish these people would get moving,” said Boyd. “If they’d only snap out of it and get us another train, we could be back at White Gates by tonight.”

  Just then the sergeant reappeared and indicated they were to go with him.

  “Perhaps we’re going to have breakfast,” said Ruth, jumping up eagerly. “Surely they can see we’re starving.”

  They followed the sergeant along a number of bare passages, sustaining themselves with the thought that at the end there might be food. At the top of a flight of stairs, their surroundings abruptly became more luxurious. There was carpet on the landing. The walls instead of being plain white were blue and yellow, and on them hung what appeared to be ceremonial helmets, swords and shields — glittering, highly polished objects studded with semiprecious stones.

  A guard at one of the doors sprang to attention. The sergeant waved him aside and threw open the door, motioning the foursome into the room beyond.

  This room did not seem to belong to the stark white building. It might have been the den of an old-fashioned millionaire or a movie star. There was a great deal of marble and plush. A thick carpet covered the floor, and the walls were hung with heavy brocades. The air was scented, velvet curtains concealed the window, and light was supplied by an enormous chandelier in the center of the ceiling.

  The room was occupied, although it took the children a few moments to realize it. Finally they saw, reclining on a sofa with his eyes closed, an extremely fat man with curly, black hair and pasty, flabby cheeks. He was presumably a soldier and an officer since he was wearing a version of the uniform they had seen downstairs, but he did not look like either. His tunic was unbuttoned, he had seven or eight rings on his fingers and one on his left thumb, and instead of boots he wore scarlet slippers with curled, pointed toes.

  Tom coughed politely. The fat man half opened his eyes and gazed at each of the four in turn. Then he wearily lifted a beringed hand and pointed to the ceiling, at the same time raising his eyebrows inquiringly. He was clearly asking if they had come from the outside world.

  “Yes,” Tom said and nodded emphatically.

  There was a telephone on the floor at the side of the sofa, but it was of a type the visitors had seen only in costume movies and old photographs. It consisted of a wooden box with a little crank at the side, and mounted on the box was a curved cradle holding a giant-sized hand-piece.

  The effort of lifting it was almost too much for the fat man, and some seconds passed before he summoned enough energy to turn the little crank.

  He managed it at last and for nearly a minute spoke into the telephone, no doubt telling someone what was to be done about the strangers. His voice matched his personality, soft, thick and throaty, and he did not so much speak as purr like a large, sleepy, well-fed cat.

  “You’ll tell him we’re hungry, won’t you, Tom?” whispered Ruth.

  “Of course,” said Tom, and, as soon as the fat man rang off, he touched on the matter of breakfast in sign language, using the same gestures he had used with Yoaf.

  “Fahm?” murmured the fat man and blew shrilly on a whistle that hung around his neck. The guard came at once, and his master purred a few rapid instructions.

  Ruth could hardly contain her excitement. “We’re going to eat! Cheer up, Tom. You don’t look a bit happy.”

  “Well, something just came to me,” he told her. “Gosh, how dumb can you get?”

  “Me?”

  “No. Me.”

  “What, then?”

  “I can’t explain now. Wait until breakfast.”

  The fat man motioned them to sit down, which they did rather nervously, the girls on one of the sofas, and Tom and Boyd on spindly, gilded chairs. Their host did not seem to be badly disposed toward them, but perhaps that was because he was too lazy to be bothered. When the foursome were seated, he heaved a sigh and closed his eyes again. In fact, he made his visitors feel quite guilty for disturbing his nap.

  “I wonder if any work ever gets done around here?” muttered Boyd, and his gaze moved to the large table at his side on which were spread a few letters and documents. They looked as if they had not been disturbed for months.

  “Say, this is interesting,” he remarked with his eyes on the nearest letter. “These folks have the same alphabet we have. They use typewriters, too.”

  “Typewriters and telephones,” whispered Tom. “Railways and electricity. Yet watches seem to take their breath away, and their soldiers are armed with swords. It’s some mixture, isn’t it?”

  Breakfast was brought by two girls, the first women the children had seen. They were tall and strongly built, with dark hair and blue eyes. They might easily have been Yoaf’s daughters. Their clothes were similar to his — white, high-necked, full-sleeved bodices and voluminous trousers caught at the ankles. While Yoaf’s trousers had been black, the girls’ were brightly colored — red with white spots for one, and green and white stripes for the other. They were quite as cowed and servile as Yoaf, and, when they passed near the fat man, they curtsied. As for Tom and Boyd, their sisters hardly dared look at them for fear of giggling. No doubt this was on account of the boys’ watches, and the servants could not have been more impressed or dropped more curtsies had they worn crowns. Apart from that, preparations for the meal were much as they would have been in England.

  As the visitors sat at the table waiting for the food, Tom made another discovery. The table knives had been made in Sheffield. Clearly, then, there was a certain amount of trade between this underworld and the world above; but, if so, how was it that none of them had ever heard of this place? Why wasn’t it mentioned in geography books?

  Just then the waitresses came back, bringing food that was unusual but wonderful. There were eggs in a rich fish sauce, slices of smoked meat cooked in batter and a g
reat hot sausage filled with something delectable but impossible to identify. Nor could the foursome identify the steaming liquid they were given to drink. It was delicious, and none of the group had less than four cups.

  “I could drink it all day long,” said Ruth. “Gosh, do I feel better!”

  They all felt better. Tom was relieved to see that the color had come back into Jane’s cheeks. She had been as white as a sheet and extremely quiet ever since her mishap on the train, but now she had recovered her spirits and was laughing and talking with Ruth.

  “Fatso’s gone to sleep with his mouth open,” Jane whispered with a nod toward their host. “How would it be if we salt-and-peppered his tongue?”

  “Yes!” exclaimed Ruth. “And mustard. Come on, Tom!”

  “I was only teasing,” said Jane hastily. “Why, he’d probably have our heads chopped off.”

  “Suppose so,” said Ruth regretfully. “Anyway, Tom, now that he’s asleep, you can tell us that idea you had. You said something just came to you.”

  Tom nodded, his eyes lighted with excitement. “It suddenly came to me what sort of language these people are speaking. It was when I showed old Fatso that we were hungry, and he said, ‘Fahm?’ I thought about that for a bit, and remembered that the French word for ‘hunger’ is faim, but this didn’t sound quite the same; it might be fames, the Latin for ‘hunger,’ and that really started my brain ticking. For instance, old Yoaf addressed the man with the scar as Domnee, which I imagine is really the Latin domine, meaning ‘master.’ Oh, there were several — ”

  Boyd’s expression had grown more puzzled every moment, and now he broke in with, “Say, Tom, are you trying to say these people speak Latin?”

  “Not Latin exactly, but a sort of dialect based on Latin. Look, I’ll tell you how I think it happened. There used to be a Roman fort on the cliffs at Orleigh, and it’s said to be the last Roman fort to fall to the Saxons. I’ll bet the Romans retreated to Orleigh Cave and holed up there. Sooner or later they found the tunnel, just as we did. They raided at night when they needed supplies, and, when a man was ready to marry, he kidnapped a Saxon girl.”

  “No wonder the villagers think that Orleigh Cave is haunted,” said Ruth.

  “Probably about King Alfred’s time they found this place,” Tom continued. “I think that’s why we didn’t find any coins in the Devil’s Well earlier than King Alfred; up to that time the Romans were there to catch anything that came down. They probably invented the superstition and spread it around themselves as a means of getting money.”

  “Would they have any use for money?” asked Jane.

  “Not a lot, I suppose, but there must have been some things they could buy, but couldn’t steal.”

  “I think you’re got something all right, Tom,” said Boyd, “but there’s still plenty that needs explaining. What about the railroad — ”

  He broke off as the buzzer of the telephone sounded. The fat man finally reached for the handpiece and grunted into the transmitter without troubling to open his eyes, but the information that came to him over the wire had a spectacular effect on him. He reacted as if he’d been stung by a wasp.

  “He’s waiting for some important person to come on the line,” muttered Boyd. While the fat man waited, he fumblingly buttoned his tunic as if the very important person could see as well as hear him. He even got to his feet and made some show of standing at attention.

  The telephone crackled, and the fat man’s cheeks started to tremble.

  “Ahvey, Domnee!” he gasped, giving a slight bow. “Ahvey!”

  His manner was abject, and his side of the conversation limited almost entirely to, “Beany, Domnee, beany! Beany. Beany, Domnee!” He could hardly have sweated and trembled more had he been listening to his own death sentence.

  The fat man’s side of the conversation ended much as it had begun. “Vahlyay, Domnee!” he whispered, swallowing hard and bowing again. While one shaking hand replaced the telephone, the other produced a pale-blue silk handkerchief with which he mopped his flabby face and bulging neck.

  He blew his whistle and the guard appeared.

  “I think we’re going to meet the V.I.P.,” murmured Ruth, watching the fat man instruct the guard with frequent glances toward the foursome. “I hope they give us a chance to wash up first. I feel as if I’d been pulled backward through forty hedges.”

  “Me, too,” agreed Boyd. “I guess we all look worse for wear.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The next stage of the explorers’ journey was a great improvement on anything that had preceded it. They still traveled by rail, but they traveled in luxury. They had been given what was probably the flabby commandant’s personal railcar, a smart affair painted red and gold, superbly upholstered and elaborately furnished. There was plenty of room, and riding in it was like riding on a cloud. It was drawn by a gleaming, new electric dinkey, and its driver was a young soldier with blue pompons on his shoulders and a genial expression — he was probably the equivalent of a corporal, the foursome decided. He had the pleasantest face they had so far seen.

  The visitors spoke little, for there was so much to see and wonder over. The mist was still with them, but it wasn’t any thicker, and they had a fairly clear view of everything within a hundred yards of the railway. The air was warm without being uncomfortably hot, and the light grew steadily stronger. It had none of the sparkle and sharpness of sunlight, and in place of clear-cut shadows there were only vague blotches of shade that bore almost no relation to the shape of the objects that cast them.

  Soon after they left the frontier post, the landscape became quite gentle and, once they were used to its outlandish features, even quite attractive. There were still no trees or grass, but there was a luxuriant emerald-green moss that seemed to grow everywhere. Browsing on it were herds of domestic animals — goats, deer, sheep and cattle. They also saw pigs and great numbers of tough-looking little donkeys.

  Although there was nothing that could be called soil, there were fields of a sort — tracts that had been spread with dead moss, crushed rock and presumably some form of compost. On some of these tracts hardy-looking crops grew. There was some barley, but mostly there was millet. Boyd said he would bet that the bread Yoaf had given them was made from a mixture of millet and barley.

  They saw several people, but all were either soldiers or peasants. There seemed to be a military depot every two or three miles, and the troops hanging around the blockhouses looked as brutal and remorseless as those at the frontier post. They made Ruth feel uneasy, and she remarked that she couldn’t see the point of them.

  “After all, these people can’t have enemies, can they?” she said.

  “I don’t suppose so,” said Tom. “It’s more likely that the soldiers’ chief job is to keep the peasants down. The peasants we’ve seen so far seem thoroughly cowed.”

  “Yes, poor things.”

  The peasants working in the fields or tending the cattle and even the children wore baggy trousers like those worn by Yoaf and the waitresses. All the men were bearded. Tom did not think they were slaves since there were no overseers, but they were certainly as abject as slaves. They seemed totally lacking in spirit and were ready to bow to anybody and anything, even the railcar.

  Presently, as the train approached a curve, the driver glanced around with a grin and conveyed by signs that they were nearing their destination. Then suddenly, when the train was halfway around the curve, there burst upon the couples a sight so wonderful that they would remember it as long as they lived.

  They were looking down into a deep, broad valley, a world of clear light, spacious vistas and glorious buildings. The mist had evaporated, and, although the light was still not like sunlight, it had a strange exciting quality.

  Now there was no doubt about the origins of this culture. It was Roman, and the foursome might have been looking down on the Tiber Valley as it was two thousand years ago. There were wide, straight roads, elaborate canals and aqueducts, monumenta
l columns, pedestaled statues, a great avenue of winged sphinxes and an arena nearly as big as the Coliseum. On the slopes of the valley grew grapevines, and below were large gardens radiant with flowers. Peacocks and flamingos strutted on the lawns, and swans drifted on artificial lakes. More extraordinary than anything else was the background of the whole scene, for the sky across the valley was one dazzling blaze of light against which the distant hills seemed to shimmer and waver as if about to crumble to ashes. So powerful was the light that they could not look in its direction for more than an instant: it was like looking into the sun.

  “So that’s where all the light comes from!” remarked Boyd.

  They had all been too entranced by the wonderful valley to notice that the train had stopped at the terminal, a square, white building almost exactly like the one at the frontier post. Their driver jumped from the dinkey, opened the door of the railcar and ushered them out. Then he took two rucksacks in one hand and two in the other and carried them across to a litter slung between two donkeys.

  “Are we going to ride in that?” asked Jane. “It doesn’t look safe to me.”

  “You can say that again,” murmured Boyd. “I’d rather walk.”

  The litter certainly looked frail. It resembled a lightweight boat on shafts to which the donkeys were harnessed. There were basketwork seats at each end, and, although there was plenty of room, it seemed unfair to expect the donkeys to carry all four of them. Boyd and Tom tried to indicate that they would be happy to walk, but their escort looked shocked and, shaking his head vigorously, helped them into the litter.

  “Anyway, the donkeys don’t seem to mind,” said Jane. “I guess they have to carry heavier weights than us.”

  Ruth agreed. “They’re the best-tempered donkeys I’ve ever seen,” she said. “I’d like to take one home with us.”

  In charge of the donkeys was a gnarled, old man with a wispish, gray beard, and at a nod from the soldier he took the leading donkey’s bridle and urged both animals forward.