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_ On we flew, drawn by the mighty current, till at last I noticed
that the sound of the water was not half so deafening as it had
been, and concluded that this must be because there was more room
for the echoes to disperse in. I could now hear Alphonse's howls
much more distinctly; they were made up of the oddest mixture of
invocations to the Supreme Power and the name of his beloved
Annette that it is possible to conceive; and, in short, though
their evident earnestness saved them from profanity, were, to say
the least, very remarkable. Taking up a paddle I managed to
drive it into his ribs, whereon he, thinking that the end had
come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and cautiously
raised myself on my knees and stretched my hand upwards, but
could touch no roof. Next I took the paddle and lifted it above
my head as high as I could, but with the same result. I also
thrust it out laterally to the right and left, but could touch
nothing except water. Then I bethought me that there was in the
boat, amongst our other remaining possessions, a bull's-eye
lantern and a tin of oil. I groped about and found it, and
having a match on me carefully lit it, and as soon as the flame
had got a hold of the wick I turned it on down the boat. As it
happened, the first thing the light lit on was the white and
scared face of Alphonse, who, thinking that it was all over at
last, and that he was witnessing a preliminary celestial
phenomenon, gave a terrific yell and was with difficulty
reassured with the paddle. As for the other three, Good was
lying on the flat of his back, his eyeglass still fixed in his
eye, and gazing blankly into the upper darkness. Sir Henry had
his head resting on the thwarts of the canoe, and with his hand
was trying to test the speed of the water. But when the beam of
light fell upon old Umslopogaas I could really have laughed. I
think I have said that we had put a roast quarter of water-buck
into the canoe. Well, it so happened that when we all prostrated
ourselves to avoid being swept out of the boat and into the water
by the rock roof, Umslopogaas's head had come down uncommonly
near this roast buck, and so soon as he had recovered a little
from the first shock of our position it occurred to him that he
was hungry. Thereupon he coolly cut off a chop with Inkosi-kaas,
and was now employed in eating it with every appearance of
satisfaction. As he afterwards explained, he thought that he was
going 'on a long journey', and preferred to start on a full
stomach. It reminded me of the people who are going to be
hanged, and who are generally reported in the English daily
papers to have made 'an excellent breakfast'.
As soon as the others saw that I had managed to light the lamp,
we bundled Alphonse into the farther end of the canoe with a
threat which calmed him down wonderfully, that if he would insist
upon making the darkness hideous with his cries we would put him
out of suspense by sending him to join the Wakwafi and wait for
Annette in another sphere, and began to discuss the situation as
well as we could. First, however, at Good's suggestion, we bound
two paddles mast-fashion in the bows so that they might give us
warning against any sudden lowering of the roof of the cave or
waterway. It was clear to us that we were in an underground
river or, as Alphonse defined it, 'main drain', which carried off
the superfluous waters of the lake. Such rivers are well known
to exist in many parts of the world, but it has not often been
the evil fortune of explorers to travel by them. That the river
was wide we could clearly see, for the light from the bull's-eye
lantern failed to reach from shore to shore, although
occasionally, when the current swept us either to one side or the
other, we could distinguish the rock wall of the tunnel, which,
as far as we could make out, appeared to arch about twenty-five
feet above our heads. As for the current itself, it ran, Good
estimated, at least eight knots, and, fortunately for us, was, as
is usual, fiercest in the middle of the stream. Still, our first
act was to arrange that one of us, with the lantern and a pole
there was in the canoe, should always be in the bows ready, if
possible, to prevent us from being stove in against the side of
the cave or any projecting rock. Umslopogaas, having already
dined, took the first turn. This was absolutely, with one
exception, all that we could do towards preserving our safety.
The exception was that another of us took up a position in the
stern with a paddle by means of which it was possible to steer
the canoe more or less and to keep her from the sides of the
cave. These matters attended to, we made a somewhat sparing meal
off the cold buck's meat (for we did not know how long it might
have to last us), and then feeling in rather better spirits I
gave my opinion that, serious as it undoubtedly was, I did not
consider our position altogether without hope, unless, indeed,
the natives were right, and the river plunged straight down into
the bowels of the earth. If not, it was clear that it must
emerge somewhere, probably on the other side of the mountains,
and in that case all we had to think of was to keep ourselves
alive till we got there, wherever 'there' might be. But, of
course, as Good lugubriously pointed out, on the other hand we
might fall victims to a hundred unsuspected horrors--or the river
might go on winding away inside the earth till it dried up, in
which case our fate would indeed be an awful one.
'Well, let us hope for the best and prepare ourselves for the
worst,' said Sir Henry, who is always cheerful and even
spirited--a very tower of strength in the time of trouble. 'We
have come out of so many queer scrapes together, that somehow I
almost fancy we shall come out of this,' he added.
This was excellent advice, and we proceeded to take it each in
our separate way--that is, except Alphonse, who had by now sunk
into a sort of terrified stupor. Good was at the helm and
Umslopogaas in the bows, so there was nothing left for Sir Henry
and myself to do except to lie down in the canoe and think. It
certainly was a curious, and indeed almost a weird, position to
be placed in--rushing along, as we were, through the bowels of
the earth, borne on the bosom of a Stygian river, something after
the fashion of souls being ferried by Charon, as Curtis said.
And how dark it was! The feeble ray from our little lamp did but
serve to show the darkness. There in the bows sat old
Umslopogaas, like Pleasure in the poem, *{Mr Allan Quatermain
misquotes--Pleasure sat at the helm. --EDITOR.} watchful and
untiring, the pole ready to his hand, and behind in the shadow I
could just make out the form of Good peering forward at the ray
of light in order to make out how to steer with the paddle that
he held and now and again dipped into the water.
'Well, well,' thought I, 'you have come in search of adventures,
Allan my boy, and you have certainly got them. At your time of
life, too! You ought to be ashamed of yourself; but somehow you
are not, and, awful as it all is, perhaps you will pull through
after all; and if you don't, why, you cannot help it, you see!
And when all's said and done an underground river will make a
very appropriate burying-place.'
At first, however, I am bound to say that the strain upon the
nerves was very great. It is trying to the coolest and most
experienced person not to know from one hour to another if he has
five minutes more to live, but there is nothing in this world
that one cannot get accustomed to, and in time we began to get
accustomed even to that. And, after all, our anxiety, though no
doubt natural, was, strictly speaking, illogical, seeing that we
never know what is going to happen to us the next minute, even
when we sit in a well-drained house with two policemen patrolling
under the window--nor how long we have to live. It is all
arranged for us, my sons, so what is the use of bothering?
It was nearly midday when we made our dive into darkness, and we
had set our watch (Good and Umslopogaas) at two, having agreed
that it should be of a duration of five hours. At seven o'clock,
accordingly, Sir Henry and I went on, Sir Henry at the bow and I
at the stern, and the other two lay down and went to sleep. For
three hours all went well, Sir Henry only finding it necessary
once to push us off from the side; and I that but little steering
was required to keep us straight, as the violent current did all
that was needed, though occasionally the canoe showed a tendency
which had to be guarded against to veer and travel broadside on.
What struck me as the most curious thing about this wonderful
river was: how did the air keep fresh? It was muggy and thick,
no doubt, but still not sufficiently so to render it bad or even
remarkably unpleasant. The only explanation that I can suggest
is that the water of the lake had sufficient air in it to keep
the atmosphere of the tunnel from absolute stagnation, this air
being given out as it proceeded on its headlong way. Of course I
only give the solution of the mystery for what it is worth, which
perhaps is not much.
When I had been for three hours or so at the helm, I began to
notice a decided change in the temperature, which was getting
warmer. At first I took no notice of it, but when, at the
expiration of another half-hour, I found that it was getting
hotter and hotter, I called to Sir Henry and asked him if he
noticed it, or if it was only my imagination. 'Noticed it!' he
answered; 'I should think so. I am in a sort of Turkish bath.'
Just about then the others woke up gasping, and were obliged to
begin to discard their clothes. Here Umslopogaas had the
advantage, for he did not wear any to speak of, except a moocha.
Hotter it grew, and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely
breathe, and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour
more, and though we were all now stark naked, we could hardly
bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal
regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out
almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little
thermometer we had--the mercury stood at 123 degrees. From the
surface of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonse
groaned out that we were already in purgatory, which indeed we
were, though not in the sense that he meant it. Sir Henry
suggested that we must be passing near the seat of some
underground volcanic fire, and I am inclined to think, especially
in the light of what subsequently occurred, that he was right.
Our sufferings for some time after this really pass my powers of
description. We no longer perspired, for all the perspiration
had been sweated out of us. We simply lay in the bottom of the
boat, which we were now physically incapable of directing,
feeling like hot embers, and I fancy undergoing very much the
same sensations that the poor fish do when they are dying on
land--namely, that of slow suffocation. Our skins began to
crack, and the blood to throb in our heads like the beating of a
steam-engine.
This had been going on for some time, when suddenly the river
turned a little, and I heard Sir Henry call out from the bows in
a hoarse, startled voice, and, looking up, saw a most wonderful
and awful thing. About half a mile ahead of us, and a little to
the left of the centre of the stream--which we could now see was
about ninety feet broad--a huge pillar-like jet of almost white
flame rose from the surface of the water and sprang fifty feet
into the air, when it struck the roof and spread out some forty
feet in diameter, falling back in curved sheets of fire shaped
like the petals of a full-blown rose. Indeed this awful gas jet
resembled nothing so much as a great flaming flower rising out of
the black water. Below was the straight stalk, a foot or more
thick, and above the dreadful bloom. And as for the fearfulness
of it and its fierce and awesome beauty, who can describe it?
Certainly I cannot. Although we were now some five hundred yards
away, it, notwithstanding the steam, lit up the whole cavern as
clear as day, and we could see that the roof was here about forty
feet above us, and washed perfectly smooth with water. The rock
was black, and here and there I could make out long shining lines
of ore running through it like great veins, but of what metal
they were I know not.
On we rushed towards this pillar of fire, which gleamed fiercer
than any furnace ever lit by man.
'Keep the boat to the right, Quatermain--to the right,' shouted
Sir Henry, and a minute afterwards I saw him fall forward
senseless. Alphonse had already gone. Good was the next to go.
There they lay as though dead; only Umslopogaas and I kept our
senses. We were within fifty yards of it now, and I saw the
Zulu's head fall forward on his hands. He had gone too, and I
was alone. I could not breathe; the fierce heat dried me up.
For yards and yards round the great rose of fire the rock-roof
was red-hot. The wood of the boat was almost burning. I saw the
feathers on one of the dead swans begin to twist and shrivel up;
but I would not give in. I knew that if I did we should pass
within three or four yards of the gas jet and perish miserably.
I set the paddle so as to turn the canoe as far from it as
possible, and held on grimly.
My eyes seemed to be bursting from my head, and through my closed
lids I could see the fierce light. We were nearly opposite now;
it roared like all the fires of hell, and the water boiled
furiously around it. Five seconds more. We were past; I heard
the roar behind me.
Then I too fell senseless. The next thing that I recollect is
feeling a breath of air upon my face. My eyes opened with great
difficulty. I looked up. Far, far above me there was light,
though around me was great gloom. Then I remembered and looked.
The canoe still floated down the river, and in the bottom of it
lay the naked forms of my companions. 'Were they dead?' I
wondered. 'Was I left alone in this awful place?' I knew not.
Next I became conscious of a burning thirst. I put my hand over
the edge of the boat into the water and drew it up again with a
cry. No wonder: nearly all the skin was burnt off the back of
it. The water, however, was cold, or nearly so, and I drank
pints and splashed myself all over. My body seemed to suck up
the fluid as one may see a brick wall suck up rain after a
drought; but where I was burnt the touch of it caused intense
pain. Then I bethought myself of the others, and, dragging
myself towards them with difficulty, I sprinkled them with water,
and to my joy they began to recover--Umslopogaas first, then the
others. Next they drank, absorbing water like so many sponges.
Then, feeling chilly--a queer contrast to our recent
sensations--we began as best we could to get into our clothes.
As we did so Good pointed to the port side of the canoe: it was
all blistered with heat, and in places actually charred. Had it
been built like our civilized boats, Good said that the planks
would certainly have warped and let in enough water to sink us;
but fortunately it was dug out of the soft, willowy wood of a
single great tree, and had sides nearly three inches and a bottom
four inches thick. What that awful flame was we never
discovered, but I suppose that there was at this spot a crack or
hole in the bed of the river through which a vast volume of gas
forced its way from its volcanic home in the bowels of the earth
towards the upper air. How it first became ignited is, of
course, impossible to say--probably, I should think, from some
spontaneous explosion of mephitic gases.
As soon as we had got some things together and shaken ourselves
together a little, we set to work to make out where we were now.
I have said that there was light above, and on examination we
found that it came from the sky. Our river that was, Sir Henry
said, a literal realization of the wild vision of the poet,
*{Where Alph the sacred river ran / Through caverns measureless
to man / Down to a sunless sea} was no longer underground, but
was running on its darksome way, not now through 'caverns
measureless to man', but between two frightful cliffs which
cannot have been less than two thousand feet high. So high were
they, indeed, that though the sky was above us, where we were was
dense gloom--not darkness indeed, but the gloom of a room closely
shuttered in the daytime. Up on either side rose the great
straight cliffs, grim and forbidding, till the eye grew dizzy
with trying to measure their sheer height. The little space of
sky that marked where they ended lay like a thread of blue upon
their soaring blackness, which was unrelieved by any tree or
creeper. Here and there, however, grew ghostly patches of a long
grey lichen, hanging motionless to the rock as the white beard to
the chin of a dead man. It seemed as though only the dregs or
heavier part of the light had sunk to the bottom of this awful
place. No bright-winged sunbeam could fall so low: they died
far, far above our heads.
By the river's edge was a little shore formed of round fragments
of rock washed into this shape by the constant action of water,
and giving the place the appearance of being strewn with
thousands of fossil cannon balls. Evidently when the water of
the underground river is high there is no beach at all, or very
little, between the border of the stream and the precipitous
cliffs; but now there was a space of seven or eight yards. And
here, on this beach, we determined to land, in order to rest
ourselves a little after all that we had gone through and to
stretch our limbs. It was a dreadful place, but it would give an
hour's respite from the terrors of the river, and also allow of
our repacking and arranging the canoe. Accordingly we selected
what looked like a favourable spot, and with some little
difficulty managed to beach the canoe and scramble out on to the
round, inhospitable pebbles.
'My word,' called out Good, who was on shore the first, 'what an
awful place! It's enough to give one a fit.' And he laughed.
Instantly a thundering voice took up his words, magnifying them a
hundred times. 'GIVE ONE A FIT--HO! HO! HO!'--'A FIT, HO! HO!
HO!' answered another voice in wild accents from far up the
cliff--A FIT! A FIT! A FIT! chimed in voice after voice--each
flinging the words to and fro with shouts of awful laughter to
the invisible lips of the other till the whole place echoed with
the words and with shrieks of fiendish merriment, which at last
ceased as suddenly as they had begun.
'Oh, mon Dieu!' yelled Alphonse, startled quite out of such
self-command as he possessed.
'MON DIEU! MON DIEU! MON DIEU!' the Titanic echoes thundered,
shrieked, and wailed in every conceivable tone.
'Ah,' said Umslopogaas calmly, 'I clearly perceive that devils
live here. Well, the place looks like it.'
I tried to explain to him that the cause of all the hubbub was a
very remarkable and interesting echo, but he would not believe
it.
'Ah,' he said, 'I know an echo when I hear one. There was one
lived opposite my kraal in Zululand, and the Intombis [maidens]
used to talk with it. But if what we hear is a full-grown echo,
mine at home can only have been a baby. No, no--they are devils
up there. But I don't think much of them, though,' he added,
taking a pinch of snuff. 'They can copy what one says, but they
don't seem to be able to talk on their own account, and they dare
not show their faces,' and he relapsed into silence, and
apparently paid no further attention to such contemptible fiends.
After this we found it necessary to keep our conversation down to
a whisper--for it was really unbearable to have every word one
uttered tossed to and fro like a tennis-ball, as precipice called
to precipice.
But even our whispers ran up the rocks in mysterious murmurs till
at last they died away in long-drawn sighs of sound. Echoes are
delightful and romantic things, but we had more than enough of
them in that dreadful gulf.
As soon as we had settled ourselves a little on the round stones,
we went on to wash and dress our burns as well as we could. As
we had but a little oil for the lantern, we could not spare any
for this purpose, so we skinned one of the swans, and used the
fat off its breast, which proved an excellent substitute. Then
we repacked the canoe, and finally began to take some food, of
which I need scarcely say we were in need, for our insensibility
had endured for many hours, and it was, as our watches showed,
midday. Accordingly we seated ourselves in a circle, and were
soon engaged in discussing our cold meat with such appetite as we
could muster, which, in my case at any rate, was not much, as I
felt sick and faint after my sufferings of the previous night,
and had besides a racking headache. It was a curious meal. The
gloom was so intense that we could scarcely see the way to cut
our food and convey it to our mouths. Still we got on pretty
well, till I happened to look behind me--my attention being
attracted by a noise of something crawling over the stones, and
perceived sitting upon a rock in my immediate rear a huge species
of black freshwater crab, only it was five times the size of any
crab I ever saw. This hideous and loathsome-looking animal had
projecting eyes that seemed to glare at one, very long and
flexible antennae or feelers, and gigantic claws. Nor was I
especially favoured with its company. From every quarter dozens
of these horrid brutes were creeping up, drawn, I suppose, by the
smell of the food, from between the round stones and out of holes
in the precipice. Some were already quite close to us. I stared
quite fascinated by the unusual sight, and as I did so I saw one
of the beasts stretch out its huge claw and give the unsuspecting
Good such a nip behind that he jumped up with a howl, and set the
'wild echoes flying' in sober earnest. Just then, too, another,
a very large one, got hold of Alphonse's leg, and declined to
part with it, and, as may be imagined, a considerable scene
ensued. Umslopogaas took his axe and cracked the shell of one
with the flat of it, whereon it set up a horrid screaming which
the echoes multiplied a thousandfold, and began to foam at the
mouth, a proceeding that drew hundreds more of its friends out of
unsuspected holes and corners. Those on the spot perceiving that
the animal was hurt fell upon it like creditors on a bankrupt,
and literally rent it limb from limb with their huge pincers and
devoured it, using their claws to convey the fragments to their
mouths. Seizing whatever weapons were handy, such as stones or
paddles, we commenced a war upon the monsters--whose numbers were
increasing by leaps and bounds, and whose stench was
overpowering. So fast as we cracked their armour others seized
the injured ones and devoured them, foaming at the mouth, and
screaming as they did so. Nor did the brutes stop at that. When
they could they nipped hold of us--and awful nips they were--or
tried to steal the meat. One enormous fellow got hold of the
swan we had skinned and began to drag it off. Instantly a score
of others flung themselves upon the prey, and then began a
ghastly and disgusting scene. How the monsters foamed and
screamed, and rent the flesh, and each other! It was a sickening
and unnatural sight, and one that will haunt all who saw it till
their dying day--enacted as it was in the deep, oppressive gloom,
and set to the unceasing music of the many-toned nerve-shaking
echoes. Strange as it may seem to say so, there was something so
shockingly human about these fiendish creatures--it was as though
all the most evil passions and desires of man had got into the
shell of a magnified crab and gone mad. They were so dreadfully
courageous and intelligent, and they looked as if they
UNDERSTOOD. The whole scene might have furnished material for
another canto of Dante's 'Inferno', as Curtis said.
'I say, you fellows, let's get out of this or we shall all go off
our heads,' sung out Good; and we were not slow to take the hint.
Pushing the canoe, around which the animals were now crawling by
hundreds and making vain attempts to climb, off the rocks, we
bundled into it and got out into mid-stream, leaving behind us
the fragments of our meal and the screaming, foaming, stinking
mass of monsters in full possession of the ground.
'Those are the devils of the place,' said Umslopogaas with the
air of one who has solved a problem, and upon my word I felt
almost inclined to agree with him.
Umslopogaas' remarks were like his axe--very much to the point.
'What's to be done next?' said Sir Henry blankly.
'Drift, I suppose,' I answered, and we drifted accordingly. All
the afternoon and well into the evening we floated on in the
gloom beneath the far-off line of blue sky, scarcely knowing when
day ended and night began, for down in that vast gulf the
difference was not marked, till at length Good pointed out a star
hanging right above us, which, having nothing better to do, we
observed with great interest. Suddenly it vanished, the darkness
became intense, and a familiar murmuring sound filled the air.
'Underground again,' I said with a groan, holding up the lamp.
Yes, there was no doubt about it. I could just make out the
roof. The chasm had come to an end and the tunnel had
recommenced. And then there began another long, long night of
danger and horror. To describe all its incidents would be too
wearisome, so I will simply say that about midnight we struck on
a flat projecting rock in mid-stream and were as nearly as
possible overturned and drowned. However, at last we got off,
and went upon the uneven tenor of our way. And so the hours
passed till it was nearly three o'clock. Sir Henry, Good, and
Alphonse were asleep, utterly worn out; Umslopogaas was at the
bow with the pole, and I was steering, when I perceived that the
rate at which we were travelling had perceptibly increased.
Then, suddenly, I heard Umslopogaas make an exclamation, and next
second came a sound as of parting branches, and I became aware
that the canoe was being forced through hanging bushes or
creepers. Another minute, and the breath of sweet open air
fanned my face, and I felt that we had emerged from the tunnel
and were floating upon clear water. I say felt, for I could see
nothing, the darkness being absolutely pitchy, as it often is
just before the dawn. But even this could scarcely damp my joy.
We were out of that dreadful river, and wherever we might have
got to this at least was something to be thankful for. And so I
sat down and inhaled the sweet night air and waited for the dawn
with such patience as I could command. _
Read next: CHAPTER XI - THE FROWNING CITY
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