A Strange Discovery by Charles Romyn Dake
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Charles Romyn Dake >> A Strange Discovery
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"After several hours of laborious ascent, the small party of four
(Diregus had taken with them only one of the boatmen) came within plain
sight of the rim of Crater Lake, half a mile ahead of them, and almost
perpendicularly above, though nearly two miles away measured along the
shortest route that travellers might pursue. It was not at the time
known, and therefore never will be known, whether or not Lilama had
caught a glimpse of her approaching friends; but at that moment a
piercing scream rang through the air from above. Peters thinks that
Lilama saw some of the party, because the quality of the scream was not
such as to convey an impression that she was in instant danger. The
signal, if signal it was, was not repeated, nor did the party wait for a
repetition. They all hurried onward with renewed vigor; and, in a short
time, considering the severity of the ascent, had reached a point near
which they supposed the scream must have been uttered.
"The party had scattered, and were searching among the mammoth
lava-bowlders, and in the small side valleys and fissures; Peters,
however, as he then always instinctively did, keeping by the side of
Pym. The two had separated to quite a distance from the others, when,
being then quite close to the edge of the great chasm, they heard a deep
though penetrating voice say the one word (of course in the Hili-li
language), 'Well?'
"Looking in the direction from which the voice came, they saw on the
opposite side of the chasm a young and handsome man, dressed much as was
the exile, Medosus. There could not for a moment be any doubt in the
minds of Pym and Peters concerning the identity of this young man; but
if there had been, it would immediately have been dispelled.
"'Well, gentlemen?' the voice further said.
"Pym and Peters had stepped up close to the edge of the abyss, which
here was, as it was throughout the upper third of its length, from
forty-five to fifty-five feet in width (Peters thinks that at this part
of its course it was fully fifty feet broad).
"'Well, gentlemen: why are you two, strangers to me, and to my people,
also, I think--why are you here?'
"The speaker would have seemed very far from insane, had it not been for
his large black eyes, shifting and glittering in the bright volcanic
light.
"At last Pym spoke:
"'Sir,' he said, very calmly, 'we came to assist our friends of the
neighboring island--friends who have been very kind to us--to search for
a maiden who by some strange mischance has been lost from her
people--from her people and her friends, who grieve sorely over their
loss.'
"'Ah, ha,' said Ahpilus--for it was he--'very good. And they grieve, do
they? Curse them, let them grieve! And a certain lover--and curse him,
too--does he grieve? He would better! Ah, ha, ha, ha'--the voice rising
with each syllable, until the last was almost shrieked at Pym--'Kind to
you, were they? Well, there is one of them near by--on this side the
chasm, curse you--who won't be kind to you again. Yes, and you may see
her, too.' Then Ahpilus stepped off behind some thick, stunted bushes of
a variety of evergreen, whence, in a moment, he returned, leading by the
wrist Lilama. 'Great Jove above! Girl, do you see your lover over there?
You have no love for me--you never had; but never again in time or in
eternity shall I lie with burning brain, thinking of those snowy arms
about the stranger's neck--aye, as once I saw them in the palace
grounds. Curse you all, and may you all alike be d----d. Why should a
stranger come through ten thousand perils to add to all my untold
agonies.' Here for a moment his voice softened, almost to a gentle
whisper. 'Ah, Lilama, once, only once, you shall, of your own free will,
clasp those arms around me--if not in love, then in terror. A moment
more, and over this abyss together we shall go!' With terror in his
eyes, Pym glanced at Peters; and even the phlegmatic Peters was
startled. 'Yes, for one moment in each other's arms; and then for me,
the everlasting darkness of Tartarus, or of endless oblivion.'
"As he talked, he had dropped the wrist of Lilama, and she crouched upon
the ground with her hands before her face, whilst Ahpilus continued to
rave, and to pace from the chasm's edge away and back again, in maniac
strides, until he had almost beaten where he paced a pathway. There was
not the slightest necessity for Ahpilus to guard Lilama, for the awful
chasm was more than twice the width that any sane and normal man, even
an athlete, would dare attempt to leap, even to preserve his own life;
and the distance to be traversed to gain a point in the chasm so narrow
that an ordinary man would dare attempt to leap it, was several miles
down the mountain-side; so that Lilama was at least ten miles beyond the
reach of Pym, though less than eighty feet away.
"The mental strain on poor Pym was almost enough to make him a madman.
There strode the maniac, to and from the edge of the abyss,
rhythmically, rarely varying the distance by a yard--twenty yards off,
then back again, then away. On every third or fourth approach he stepped
literally to the edge of the chasm, and glanced down, ten thousand feet
to where the stream below looked like the finest silver thread, lighted
by the dazzling light from the giant crater, reflected into every
smallest fissure. Now and again the madman would lash himself into a
fury, and stop for a moment to gaze at Lilama, who never moved from her
crouching position some ten feet from the canyon's brink. Even Peters,
the stoic, was moved--but moved to anger rather than to grief or fear.
He inwardly chafed, and madly raved, by turns, at the impotency of his
position; whilst Pym seemed frozen into statuesque despair. How much
longer would this scene of terror last? Oh, the thought of that awful
leap into space! The maniac might any moment end the scene--each time as
he approached in that wild rush backward and forward might be the last.
The slightest move, the slightest sound, might precipitate the dire
calamity--and Lilama as well as Pym and Peters seemed to feel this
truth. The madman, like the wild beast, appears to need an extraneous
stimulus, be it ever so slight, to suggest an initiative: the crooking
of a finger, the whispering of a word, may be sufficient, but it must be
something.--Ah! Has the moment come? Has the insane man caught some
sound inaudible to the others? He pauses. Yes, he is going to act.
"'Oh! friend,' wailed Pym to Peters, in a low voice, 'save her, save
her, or where she goes, there go I.'
"Then Peters looks across the chasm, down upon the scene beyond. The
opposite brink at this point is ten or twelve feet lower than the spot
where Pym and Peters stand, which gives them an excellent view of Lilama
and Ahpilus. It is impossible to say just why, but it is obvious that
the time which they dread has come. Ahpilus stands looking at the
beautiful maiden who crouches in front of him; and as he gazes his
powerful form seems to swell, as does that of a wild animal that has
determined to spring upon its prey. His arms move forward to grasp her.
He has no fear of interruption--he has for the moment forgotten the
strangers. He slightly alters his position--his back is toward the
chasm--his hands touch the person of his prey. Lilama partly raises her
head. She glances past the maniac for a last look at her lover. She does
not scream, even as those vise-like hands close upon her, and slowly,
oh, so slowly, but steadily, draw her within that iron embrace--slowly,
slowly, as might a maniac devotee move in the desecration of his idol.
"But why does she not scream? Why are her eyes fastened--not on her
lover--not on the madman, but upon another object? What is that object?
Is it a man? Can any man move as that thing moves? Surely that cannot be
a man, that streak of drab color--yonder thing that casts to the ground
a garment, then shoots backward twenty feet from the abyss--swifter than
a panther, as silent as death, with two balls of living fire glaring
from--from a face? Surely not a human face! Yes, it is a human face. She
does not see the pallid face, the wild eyes of her lover, looking, too,
at that thing--that human embodiment of animal agility. No: she has not
time to look, for though the human eye is quick, that thing is quicker;
and if she take her eye from it for half a second, her gaze will lose
it. She cannot take from it her gaze--she is fascinated. Within the past
second of time an heroic resolve has been formed, and a drama has begun;
in the next two seconds an act in the drama will be completed; in sixty
seconds more, a whole tragedy will be added to the list of human
sorrows.
"No tongue can tell what cannot quite be seen. A rush of color toward
that awful gap; it reaches the edge; it rises in the air and shoots out
over that gulf that might indeed have been the portal of Tartarus. Fifty
feet as flies the bird. It is in the air--it is half-way over--and yet
the maniac has seen it not. But the maniac is turning with his victim in
his arms. The streak of drab has passed forty feet--ten feet further if
it is to reach the other brink--ten thousand if it fails to reach it;
and it has already sunk ten feet in space--with ten feet more of
horizontal distance to cover, it is already on a level with the edge of
the abyss which it must safely reach, or--The maniac has turned; and the
streak of drab has reached the brink--but, ah! below the surface. The
form is that of Peters--the only man who could be in such a situation
yet live on. One of those invincible arms is thrown upon the surface
above the chasm, and those long fingers fasten upon the immovable lava.
And now the madman sees the danger that menaces his design--but too
late, for Peters the unconquerable stands erect between him and the
chasm. Then Ahpilus quickly sets on the ground his living burden; and
Peters, the human bird of passage, risks again his life.
"But, for a man like Peters, such a contest was scarcely a risk. Had
Ahpilus been less savage in his baffled rage, Peters would have spared
the madman; but it was not to be. There was scarcely a man in all
Hili-li that could physically cope with Ahpilus; but he was no match for
Peters. For a few moments the sailor protected himself without any act
of aggression; but it soon became apparent that he would be obliged to
destroy his adversary, or himself be destroyed. Ahpilus had pushed
Peters, or Peters had carelessly allowed himself to shift his own
position, to within dangerously close proximity to the chasm, and at the
moment when Peters noticed this circumstance, he also saw that he was
between Ahpilus and the abyss: and Ahpilus, in all his furious madness,
also observed his advantage. Peters had in his possession a very long
and keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talking over this incident,
he had never yet seen the time when he was compelled to use an
artificial weapon in an encounter with a single combatant; and
particularly would he never have used a knife, even though his adversary
were a maniac, if a maniac without an artificial weapon. Peters saw that
Diregus had found Pym, and, as was also the boatman, he and Pym were, of
course, viewing the struggle. I should not, however, have included Pym
in the party of observers; for he knew too well how the combat would end
to be much absorbed in it. He had no eyes for anything but Lilama.--But
to return: As Ahpilus saw his advantage, by a supreme effort he summoned
all his great muscular strength, and aided by that invincible motor, the
will of a madman, he endeavored to force Peters over the brink. At that
precise moment the sailor had his right hand closed on the top of
Ahpilus's left shoulder, and his left hand just beneath Ahpilus's right
arm on the side of the exile's chest. He quickly shifted his left hand
to the side of the hip; and then those great gorilla arms raised from
the ground the body of the madman, swung it overhead as another man
might swing the body of a three-year-old child, as he did so bringing
the back of his adversary downward; and then came a movement of
Herculean power in which the long arms approximated with a twisting,
bending effect; two vertebras in Ahpilus's back at the point of least
resistance separated, the spine was dislocated, and a mass of helpless,
vibrating human flesh fell at the feet of the victor. Peters, whilst his
brute instinct was in full possession of him, might, instead of dropping
Ahpilus to the ground, have thrown the body into the abyss; but Diregus
had anticipated such an action, and called to Peters not to injure the
poor insane fellow more than was necessary to prevent him from injuring
others. Ahpilus was not dead--that is, he was not dead over his entire
body: the hips and all below were as nerveless as the body of a corpse;
but above the hips, the same old vigor remained--and so it would be
though he lived for yet a hundred years."
Here Doctor Bainbridge ceased to speak. Doctor Castleton had entered the
room two or three minutes before, and, keeping silent, had heard the
last three or four hundred words, which described the close of that
brief but terrible combat.
The FIFTEENTH Chapter
"Well," said Doctor Castleton, as Bainbridge closed. "Peters could, when
he was fifty years younger, have done that very thing to any living man
weighing not more than a hundred and eighty or a hundred and ninety
pounds. I myself have seen him throw to the ground a powerful horse, and
the little giant must have been older than sixty at the time. Then
again, he possesses that wonderful instinct of certainty in action which
belongs to purely animal life. It is said that the tiger when it strikes
never misses its aim; and that our American panther makes the most
unusual leaps without ever making an attempt beyond its powers. I have
many times observed that even our comparatively degenerate domestic cat
very rarely indeed, if ever, fails to accomplish the purpose of a
stroke. Peters possesses, or did possess, that instinct."
"Yes," said Bainbridge, "you are right. Peters says that on almost every
vessel he ever shipped on he was called 'the baboon'--because of his
great physical power and agility, he says; but as we know, rather
because of his extremely short stature, his large mouth--in fact, his
resemblance in many striking ways to the gorilla, or the orang-outang;
and perhaps, also, in part, to his habit, mentioned in Pym's description
of him, of feigning mental aberration--assuming to be 'simple.'"
"This won't do," said Castleton, with that peculiar look on his face
which always appeared when he was about to deflect from the serious to
the humorous. "Whilst I should not object to hearing my old friend
Peters called a gorilla, I draw the line at gorilla. I should object to
the appellation orang-outang, and I should resent with emphasis that of
baboon. But gorilla I will accept, for in many ways the gorilla is, or
at least once was, the superior of man. Even if we limit the source of
our deductions to the skeleton of the animal, the truth of my last
assertion is strongly evidenced. In the first place, the gorilla is more
sedate and less pettily curious than man; this is proved by his having
only three, instead of four, bones in the last division of his spine,
giving him a shorter caudal appendage than man's, and proving the animal
to be farther from the monkey than are we; then in the second place, the
gorilla has thirteen ribs, which would seem to be rational evidence
that, whatever the present gorilla may be, his ancestors of by-gone ages
were handsomer than man; because in the gorilla's first search for a
wife the field of operations was not limited to his own chest."
"That will do very well, doctor; but don't you think you are a little
severe on Adam?" I said.
"I have no sympathies with Adam. Not that I ever blamed him for his
weakness in the apple incident; but I do blame him for his garrulity,
and his paltry cowardice in exposing Eve. Eve was an instinctive
agnostic--and she didn't purpose to be anybody's slave. If Adam decided
to keep up with the procession, as he at first did decide to do, he had
no business to whine over the outcome. I'd wager freely that Eve earned
the living after the pair left paradise. Cain took after his mother; and
I hazard the opinion that Eve was in sympathy with Cain in the Abel
episode--that is, after the tragedy. Eve and Cain had the best of
everything all the way through, for they acted in harmony with their
feelings; whilst poor old feeble, vacillating Adam tried to use his
worthless old brain-box, and the natural consequence ensued. His
feelings, which constituted the strongest part of his mind, were always
in conflict with his intellect, which was just strong enough to get him
into trouble when a pure out-and-out unreasoning animal would have been
safe; and he never had enough will properly to correct an error when he
did see it."
We laughed over this conceit of Castleton's, and Bainbridge said:
"Speaking of biblical characters, I have thought that Moses would, with
even slight literary training, have far surpassed the modern writer of
adventure-fiction. His style may be open to adverse criticism, but his
originality is beyond question. If he left any material for a purely
original story, I fail to detect it. He gave to literature the
sea-story, the war-story, and the love-story--stories that hinge on all
the human passions, and stories of the supernatural in all its phases.
He first presented to a world innocent of fiction-literature the giant
and the dwarf; the brave man, the strong man, and the man of supreme
fortitude; the honest man, the truthful king, and the woman that knows
how to wait for the man she loves; voices in the air, signs in the
sky--in short, everything. Even poor old Aesop wasn't in time to grasp a
reputation for originality. The modern story-teller may combine, extend,
and elaborate; but all opportunity for a display of invention seems to
be forever barred."
"By the bye, doctor," said Castleton, evidently impatient at his
enforced silence whilst another spoke, "do any of your volcanoes or
mountains in Hili-li blow up?"
"No, sir," answered Bainbridge, with dignity.
"Well, if I had been Pym I should have blown those mountains into the
Antarctic Ocean," said Castleton. "I understand from the words that I
caught this evening as I entered here that your heroine is safe; but if
I had been Pym, I should have taken no risks. I should have sent your
madman word to return the girl, or take the consequences--the
consequences being that I should have blown him and the entire mountain
into the mighty deep. 'Sir,' I should have said, 'return the lady, or I
will annihilate you.' And so I should have done, if a hair of her head
had been harmed.--By the bye, gentlemen, I believe you never heard of my
invention for stopping war, did you?" We intimated that we had thus far
been deprived of that pleasure. I saw that one of his peculiar outbursts
was at hand--one of those apparently serious, though, I thought,
intentionally humorous sallies, so puzzling coming from a man of
Castleton's intellectual attainments, and the mental _primum mobile_ of
which I had already been much interested in trying to determine.
"Well, gentlemen," he continued, "it was about fourteen years ago,
during the dark days of The War"--he referred to the great rebellion in
the United States, which began in 1861, and which it required the
existing government about four years to suppress. "It was during the
period when our great President was most worried. I had thought the
matter over--as I always do think over vast questions, from the
standpoint of true greatness. 'Why not,' I mentally soliloquized, 'why
not end this matter at a blow? 'As I drove about through our retired
roads and lanes, I gave the subject my very best attention. I thought to
myself how the present system of the universe depends upon what we term
the luminiferous ether; of the perfect elasticity and inexpansibility of
that ether; of what its nature must be. I concluded that no ultimate
particle of it--as with matter no atom--is ever added to or removed from
the universe. Now, if we could succeed in removing from this
inexpansible, universal ocean of ether even the most ultimate portion,
there would be a literal vacuum with nothing to fill it, and the
equilibrium of the universe would be destroyed. Now, gentlemen, is or is
not this supposition logical?"
We admitted our inability to deny its truth.
"'Well, then,' I reasoned, looking at the subject on the reverse side,
'could an additional portion of ether be created, there would be in
space no place to receive it; the universe in its present state--a state
in which what we term matter or substance exists--would just simply
cease to exist--instantly, and within the compass of every star and
planet.'
"But how to create that particle of ether--that was what occupied my
mind for weeks. I would seem to grasp the hint that came and went within
the recesses of a brain which--so say my friends--has perhaps never had
its equal for variety of conception and rapid response to the slightest
external or internal stimulus. Now, many physicists suppose matter to be
simply a form of ether--plainly, that matter originated out of
ether--was made from ether; so that, after all, the universe was created
from nothing--that is, nothing if we correctly define matter. It was but
a step for me, then, to the end: remove all radiant energy from a fixed
gas--a gas without the property of condensation to another form of
matter, _i.e._, to a fluid or a solid--and the thing, I said to myself,
is done. I am positive that I know of such a gas, and within a few years
all physicists will recognize it. At present the method of procuring it
is my secret, as I may still wish to experiment with what is now but a
theoretical discovery, though certain to unfold in practice exactly as I
have explained it. You understand, of course, that I remove from my gas,
by artificial cold and compression, the last vestige of heat, my gas
becomes ether, there is no place for it in the universal ocean of
inexpansible ether, the balance of the universe as it now exists is
destroyed, all matter instantly ceases to exist, and we just sit back
and wait for a few billions of trillions of cycles of time, until
another system of nature is formed."
For a time we all kept silence: Doctor Bainbridge, I suppose, like
myself, marvelling at the peculiarities of our strange companion. At
last I said:
"And how about the war, doctor?"
"Now comes the humiliation!" he replied. "Oh, must genius ever grovel at
the feet of mere physical power--insolent official power! Why are great
men so difficult of access! Why, in 1453, did not Constantine in his day
of trouble listen to your brainy countryman, and save Europe from the
inroads of the Turk? Well, I hastened to Washington City, determined
that no ear other than the President's own should hear the secret; and
that no power on earth should draw it from me. I went to the White
House. I admit that war-times are busy times--but those infernal White
House flunkies kept me waiting in the reception-rooms for four hours! I
told my plans to the ushers, to a waiting soldier or two, and to a
foreign diplomat with whom I struck up a talk. All of them acted
suspiciously, and I believe were jealous of my wisdom. When, for the
third time, an usher took my card--or pretended to take my card--to the
President, his secretary came down to me. At first I told him that my
secret was for the President's ear alone; but at last I gave him a clew
to the nature of my business. He left me, but he did not return. Such is
reflected political power. But I thought of my power--aye, and physical
power, too--the only real power. I never blamed the President--I to this
day believe that that fellow H---- never told Lincoln of my visit to the
White House."
After an appreciative murmur and movement on the part of Bainbridge and
myself--for we felt like laughing, and yet sighs of wonderment were
expected by Castleton--and after a grunt from Arthur in his corner, I
asked, for want of something better to say,
"Were you ever in the army, doctor?"
"Well--ah--no--yes--no, sir; not exactly," Castleton replied. "But I had
a younger brother who beat the drum for a whole week in an
enlisting-office tent in Chicago. Poor boy! he died of brain fever in
1869--always a genius--great brain.--And this talk reminds me that I am
getting no pension from the United States Government on that poor,
neglected, sacrificed boy. Curse my thoughtlessness! Yes, and--but no: I
belong to the old school of patriots--I will not curse my country."
As Castleton uttered the last sentence, he approached the door of exit
to the hall. He had as usual been pacing the floor; and with the closing
word he shot into the hall and was gone. And as the sound of his
footsteps rang through the corridors of the hotel, Arthur remarked, from
his corner:
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