Drome

By John Martin Leahy

Illustrated By John Martin Leahy

FANTASY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
Los Angeles, California

Copyright 1952 By John Martin Leahy
Copyright 1925 By Weird Tales Magazine

Manufactured in the U. S. A.

[Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Contents

"For there is one descent into this region."—Josephus: Discourse to the Greeks Concerning Hades.

Drome

Preface

by Darwin Frontenac

"But please to remember that although we can prove to our own satisfaction that some things really exist, we can not prove that any imaginable thing outside our experience can not possibly exist. Imagine the wildest impossibility you can think of; you will not induce a modern man of science to admit the impossibility of it as an absolute."—F. Marion Crawford: Whosoever Shall Offend.

On my return from the Antarctic, it was with surprise and grief that I learned of the very strange and wholly inexplicable disappearance of Milton Rhodes and William Carter. The special work of Rhodes was in a department of science very different from that to which my own pertains; but we were much interested in each other's investigations and problems, and, indeed, we even conducted some experiments together.

It will be quite patent, then, that, as the Multnomah made her way northward, I was looking forward with much pleasure anticipated to the meeting with my friend—with all that I had to tell him of our adventures and discoveries in the region of the Southern Pole, picturing to myself the astonishment that would most certainly be his on seeing some of the things brought from that mysterious region; above all, imagining his reaction when we would behold our poor Sleeping Beauty in her crystal coffin, in which she had lain (neither living nor dead, as I believe; or as my friend Bond McQuestion has it, in a living death) from some awful day in that period men call the Pliocene.

And then to come back and find that Milton Rhodes had disappeared, and with him William Carter!

They had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as though a secret departure had been made for the moon or Mars or Venus.

It was very little, I was surprised to learn, that any one could tell me. And that very little presented some very singular features indeed. This was certain: Milton Rhodes had planned to begin in a very few days a series of experiments (the exact nature of which was unknown) that would claim his close and undivided attention for weeks, possibly months, experiments that would keep him imprisoned, so to speak, in his laboratory. But he had not even begun those experiments; he had vanished. What had caused the sudden change? What had happened?

As for William Carter, he was about to start on a journey which would take him as far as Central America. Again, what had happened? What had caused him to give over all that he had purposed and go and disappear along with Milton Rhodes?

Here there was but one bit of light, but that light seemed to make the problem the more perplexing. The very day before that on which Rhodes and Carter got into the automobile and started for Mount Rainier, some visitor had come and had been received by Rhodes in the library, Carter being present at this meeting. Some of the concomitants of this visit had been a little unusual, it was remembered, though at the time no one had given that a thought.

It was believed that this man had remained there with Rhodes and Carter for a period somewhat extended. But who had this mysterious visitor been? It was, of course, held as certain that something told by this man to the scientist and his companion was the key to the mystery. But what had the visitor told them?

We knew that Rhodes and Carter had gone to Mount Rainier. But why had they so suddenly abandoned all their plans and gone to the mountain? On the mountain they had disappeared. More than that no man could tell.

And now we come to another enigma. Rhodes seldom drove a car himself. On this trip, however, he was at the wheel. The only other occupant of that car was Carter. And Rhodes had left with his chauffeur, Everett Castleman, instructions over which I puzzled my head a good deal but without my ever becoming any the wiser. These instructions were somewhat extraordinary.

They were these:

If Rhodes had not returned, or if no word had been received from him, within a period of ten days, then Castleman was to go to Mount Rainier. He was to go to Paradise, and he was to go on the eleventh day. And he was to maintain a strict silence about everything appertaining to this whole proceeding. At Paradise he was to remain for another period. This was one of eight days. If, at the expiration of that time, neither Rhodes nor Carter had appeared, Castleman was, on the ninth day, to take the car back to Seattle, and then the imposition of silence regarding that part which Castleman had played was at an end.

The mystery, of course, was what had become of Milton Rhodes and William Carter. Had some fatal accident occurred? Had they, for instance, fallen into a crevasse and perished? Or had they just gone off on some wild mountain hike and would they be returning any day?

As to this last hypothesis, those instructions given to Castleman should have shown its utter untenability.

And so the time passed. And Milton Rhodes and William Carter never came back. Week followed week. Month followed month. All hope was abandoned—had been abandoned long before the Multnomah entered Elliott Bay.

And that mysterious visitor? Why had he not spoken? Why had he not come forward and told what he knew? Where was he? Had he too vanished? Had he joined Rhodes and Carter on the mountain, and had the three vanished together? And what had he told them there in Rhodes' library on that fateful day?

Thus matters stood when one afternoon an automobile came gliding into my place, and there in it were Milton Rhodes and William Carter!

With respect to the mystery of their disappearance, I could for some time elicit from them no enlightenment whatever.

Instead:

"Where is she, Darwin?" asked Milton Rhodes, looking about. "Let me see her! Let me meet her! Quick!"

"So you know about my Sleeping Beauty in the Ice?"

"Of course. The first thing that I did," he told me, "was to get a copy of Zandara[1]. We've just finished reading it. And, if it hadn't been for what has happened to us, to Bill here and me, then I might have been inclined, Darwin old tillicum, to fancy that Bond had been romancing in that book of his instead of setting forth an account of actual adventure and discovery."

"But, Milton," I asked, "what in the world did happen?"

"We'll come to that soon, Darwin old top. What Bill and I want now is to see your Zandara."

"Well, you'll have to wait till she gets back. That should be in an hour or so.

"But, again, what on earth happened? Where have you two been all this time?"

But I must not go on like this, or I will find that I am writing a book myself instead of a preface to William Carter's narrative.

You will see it mentioned in his Prolegomenon that his manuscript was to be placed in my keeping, to be given by me to the world when the time fixed upon had expired. All that I need say on that point is that the raison d'être of this prospective measure will be quite obvious to you ere you have read to the last page of Drome.

Save for three very brief footnotes, and to those my name is appended, every word in the pages that follow is from the hand of William Barrington Carter.

I hasten to conclude, that you may proceed to learn who that mysterious visitor was, what he told them, where Rhodes and Carter went—where they are now.

Seattle, Washington,
September 18, 1951.

Prolegomenon

"Our world has lately discovered another: and who will assure us it is the last of his brothers, since the demons, the Sibyls and we ourselves have been ignorant of this till now?"

"Nostre monde vient d'en retrouver un autre: et qui nous rêpond si c'est le dernier de ses frêres, puisque les dêmons, les sibylles et nous avons ignorê cettui-ci jusqu'à cette heure?"—Montaigne.

"There is," says August Derleth, "an element of the unnecessary about even the most apparently needed introduction."

What with that element, and what with my own experience, as a reader, with introductions, it was my intention to write nothing in the species of a foreword to this my narrative of those amazing adventures and discoveries in which Milton Rhodes and I so unexpectedly and so suddenly found ourselves involved. I thought that I would most certainly have set down in the account itself everything that I should wish to write upon the subject.

But, now that my manuscript is finished, and now that the time draws on apace when it is to be placed in the keeping of our valued friend Darwin Frontenac, by whom, when the period fixed upon has elapsed, it will be given to the world, I feel that there are some points anent which it would be well to say a few words.

In the first place, apropos of the shortcomings, of which, in some instances, I am painfully sensible, of this work when viewed through the glasses of the literary artist, I may say in extenuation that this is the first book that I have ever written—and certainly, by the by, it will be the last.

Whether the fact that this is an initial venture in authorship excuses my deficiencies as a craftsman with pen, paper and words I can not say; but, at any rate, it is an explanation.

Furthermore, far outweighing (so it seems to me) any artistic desiderata, is this: the following narrative does not come to you from any secondhand source or from any source even farther removed; it is written by one who was an eye-witness of, and an actor in, the scenes, adventures and discoveries described in it—an actor that, I do assure you, would at times have given much to be some place else.

Also, in the writing of this book, I placed above all other things the endeavor to attain the utmost accuracy possible; the style was, therefore, in a great measure, left to take care of itself. With old Anatomy Burton, though very likely he quoted,[2] I can say:

"I write for minds, not ears."

Too, more than once when disposing of difficulties obtruded upon me by the noncoincidence of thought with words, have I had in mind this observation of Saint Augustine:

"For there are but few things which we speak properly, many things improperly; but what we may wish to say is understood."

And, similarly, when reminding myself that I had not set out to produce a work of art but merely to put down upon paper a plain and straightforward account of actual happenings and discoveries, many a time did I think of these words of John Stuart Mill:

"For it is no objection to a harrow that it is not a plough, nor to a saw that it is not a chisel."

And so it should be no objection to this my account of our discovery of another world that it has not the charm of Dante's Hell or the delicate beauties of Kipling's Gunga Din.

In the second place, I wish that I could say more about that mysterious phenomenon the firedrake, Saint Elmo's fire, or whatever it should be called, light-cloudlet, light-cloud, light-mass, light-ghost—sometimes it looks like luminous mist—but I know no more at this date about the origin of that most remarkable manifestation than I did after seeing the first "ghost," nor does Milton Rhodes himself, and Milton Rhodes, as everybody knows, is a scientist.

Of course, if people were like Trimalchio in the Satyricon of Petronius (and many people are) authors or scientists would not need to bother their heads about explanations, conjectures, theories, hypothesis or such sort when telling about strange phenomena or events; for, when some matter was being expounded by one of his guests, a gentleman by the name of Agamemnon, Trimalchio disposed of the whole business in this simple and summary fashion:

"If the thing really happened, there is no problem; if it never happened, it is all nonsense."

But, in the present instance—not to the Trimalchios, of course, but to any person with an iota of the scientific spirit in his encephalon—the fact is the very converse of this; for, if the firedrakes, the light-clouds, did not "happen," there would be no problem at all.

The Trimalchios, I have no doubt, would at once put the stamp of their approval upon this statement, which I lift from Hudibras:

"But what, alas! is it to us

Whether i' th' moon men thus or thus

Do eat their porridge, cut their corns,

Or whether they have tails or horns?"

But the light in that other world is not the only problem to the solution of which I wish that I had something to offer. There are many problems. Here is one: the "eclipses." These are sometimes truly awful.

For instance, just imagine yourself in a forest dense and mysterious, and, furthermore, imagine that one of those fearful carnivores the snake-cats, is stealing toward you, stealing nearer and nearer, watching for the chance to spring; imagine yourself in such a pleasant pass as that, and then imagine a sudden and total extinction of the light (which is what, for want of a better word, we call an eclipse) so that you yourself and everything about you are involved in impenetrable darkness. How would you like to find yourself in such a place as that and have that happen to you? Well, as you will see in its proper pages, that is just where we were, and that, and more too, is just what happened to us.

And that will give you an idea of what I mean when I say an eclipse can sometimes be awful indeed.

Why the light at times quivers, shakes, fades, bursts out so brightly, or why, slowly or all of a sudden, it ceases to be at all, is certainly an extremely curious and most mystifying business.

But

"To them we leave it to expound

That deal in sciences profound."

A possibility has occurred to Rhodes and me that is by no means conducive, what with the care and labor that I have expended in the endeavor to be accurate in the writing of this true history, to any feeling of happiness on my part. My companion in adventure and discovery is, however, pleased to entertain the idea that it would certainly be "funny." Funny?

That possibility is simply this: so very strange is the story which I tell in the pages that follow, many a reader may be disposed to set the whole thing down as fiction! And, indeed, many a reader may do just that!

Fiction, forsooth!

Well, if any one actually is of that opinion or belief when he has finished reading this book, all I can say is that I wish such a one had been with us there on that narrow bridge, the yawning black chasm of unknown profundity, on either side, when the angel and her demon so suddenly appeared there directly before us!

I have an idea that, if he had been there, he would have wished, and have wished as hard as he had ever wished anything in his life, that the whole business would turn out to be fiction or nightmare!

"Why then should witlesse man so much misweene

That nothing is but that which he hath seene?"

But I must hasten to bring this introduction to a close. Already I have exceeded the space that I had allotted for it, without even mentioning a number of things that I had in mind, and without having yet set down that which especially brought me to the decision to write anything prolegomenary at all.

And, now that I come to it, I feel hesitant. But this will not do.

In my whole narrative, there is, I am sure, but one single allusion, and that most brief—namely, Amor ordinem nescit—to my own heart-tragedy; and, as that allusion, even, is involved in obscurity, I will in this place and incontinently make it clear, and I do it by writing this:

I would rather have, though it were but for one single hour, Drorathusa as My Only than have for a lifetime any other woman I have ever known.

You will, I have no doubt, smile when you read this; you may think Eros has put me into a state very similar to the one in which the poor wight found himself of whom Burton wrote:

"He wisheth himself a saddle for her to sit on, a posy for her to smell to, and it would not grieve him to be hanged if he might be strangled in her garters."

Well, that busy little imp Venus's son (and he's as busy in that other world as he is in this) enjoys getting men and women into just such states of mind and heart. He moved even the rather cold-hearted Plato—I mean the great philosopher, not one of the poets so named, the philosopher who banished poets and Love himself from his Republic—the little imp moved even him to write:

"Thou gazest on the stars, my Life! Ah! gladly would I be

Yon starry skies, with thousand eyes, that I might gaze on thee!"

And I would rather have this heart-tragedy mine—have loved and lost Drorathusa—than never to have seen my lady.

"The heart has its reasons," says Pascal, "that reason can not understand."

Swiftly now the time draws on, on towards that final journey which Milton Rhodes and I are to make, and to make with glad hearts, that journey from which there is never to be a return, that journey back to another world, a world where there is no sun, no moon, no skies, no stars—a world where there is neither day nor night.

Vale.
William Barrington Carter

Chapter 1

THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR

The forenoon of that momentous August day (how momentous time, like unto some spirit-shaking vision, was soon and swiftly to show us) had been bright and sunny. Snowy cumuli sailed along before a breeze from the north. When the wind comes from that quarter here in Seattle, it means good weather. But there was something sinister about this one.

As the day advanced, the clouds increased in number and volume; by noon the whole sky was overcast. And now? It was midafternoon now; a gale from the south was savagely flinging and dashing the rain against the windows, and it had become so dark that Milton Rhodes had turned on one of the library-lamps. There was something strange about that darkness which so suddenly had fallen upon us.

"Too fierce to last long, Bill," observed Milton Rhodes, raising his head and listening to the beating of the rain and the roar of the wind.

He arose from his chair, went over to one of the southern windows and stood looking out into the storm.

"Coming down in sheets, Bill. It can't keep this up for very long."

I went over and stood beside him.

"No," I returned; "it can't keep this up. But, rain or sun, our trip is spoiled now."

"For today, yes. But there is tomorrow, Bill."

But, in the sense that Milton Rhodes meant, there was to be no tomorrow: at the very moment, in the midst of the roar and the rage of the elements, Destiny spoke, in the ring of a telephone-bell—Destiny, she who is wont to make such strange sport with the lives of men. I sometimes wonder if stranger sport any man has ever known than she was to make with ours.

"Wonder who the deuce 'tis now," muttered Milton Rhodes as he left the room to answer the call.

I remained there at the window. Of that fateful conversation over the wire, I heard not so much as a single syllable. I must have fallen into a deep reverie or something; at any rate, the next thing I knew there was a sudden voice, and Milton Rhodes was standing beside me again, a quizzical expression on his dark features.

"What is it, Bill?" he smiled. "In love at last, old tillicum? Didn't hear me until I spoke the third time."

"Gosh," I said, "this is getting dreadful! But—"

"Well?"

"What is it?"

"Oh, a visitor."

I regarded him for a moment in silence.

"You don't seem very enthusiastic," I observed.

"Why should I be? Some crank, most likely. Must be, or he wouldn't set out in such a storm as this is."

"Great Pluvius, is he coming through this deluge?"

"He is. Unless I'm mighty badly mistaken, he is on his way over right now."

"Must be something mighty important."

"Oh, it's important all right, important to him," said Milton Rhodes. "But will it interest me?"

"I'll tell you that before the day is done. But who is this queer gentleman?"

"Name's Scranton, Mr. James W. Scranton. That's all that I know about him, save that he is bringing us a mystery. He called it a terrible, horrible scientific mystery."

"That," I exclaimed, "sounds interesting!"

It was patent, however, that Milton Rhodes was not looking forward to the meeting with any particular enthusiasm.

"It may sound interesting," he said; "but will it prove so? That is the question, Bill. To some people, you know, some very funny things constitute a mystery. Mr. James W. Scranton's mystery may prove to belong to that species. We must wait and see. Said that he had heard of me, that, as I have a gift (that is what he called it, Bill, a gift) of solving puzzles and mysteries, whether scientific, psychic, spooky or otherwise—well, he had a story to tell me that would eclipse any I ever had heard, a mystery that would drive Sherlock Holmes himself to suicide. Yes, that's what he really said, Bill—the great Sherlock himself to suicide."

"That's coming big!" I said.

Milton Rhodes smiled wanly.

"We haven't heard his yarn yet. We can't come to a judgment on such uncertain data."

"Scranton," said I. "Scranton. Hold on a minute."

"What is it now?"

"Wonder if he belongs to the old Scranton family."

"Never heard of it, Bill."

"Pioneers," I said. "Came out here before ever Seattle was founded. Homesteaded down at Puyallup or somewhere, about the same time as Ezra Meeker. It seems to me—"

"Well?" queried Milton Rhodes after some moments, during which I tried my level best to recollect the particulars of a certain wild, gloomy story of mystery and death and horror that I had heard long years before—in my boyhood days, in fact.

"I can not recollect it," I told him. "I didn't understand it even when I heard the man, an old acquaintance of the Scrantons, tell the story—a story of some black fate, some curse that had fallen upon the family."

"So that's the kind of mystery it is! From what the man said, though that was vague, shadowy, I thought that it was something very different. I thought that it was scientific."

"Maybe it is. We are speculating, you know, if one may call it that, on pretty flimsy data. One thing: I distinctly remember that Rainier had something to do with it."

"What Rainier?"

"Why, Mount Rainier."

"This is becoming intriguing," said Milton Rhodes, "if it isn't anything else. You spoke of a black fate, a curse: what has noble Old He, as the old mountain-men called Rainier, to do with such insignificant matters as the destinies of us insects called humans?"

"According to the old fellow I mentioned, that old acquaintance of the Scrantons, it was there, on Rainier, that this dark and mysterious business started."

"What was it that started?"

"That's just it. The man didn't know himself what had happened up there."

"Hum," said Milton Rhodes.

"That," I went on, "was many years ago. It was just, I believe, after Kautz climbed the mountain. Yes, I am sure he said 'twas just after that. And this man who told us the story—his name was Simpson—said 'twas something that Scranton learned on Kautz's return to Steilacoom that led to his, Scranton's, visit, to Old He. Not from Kautz himself, though Scranton knew the lieutenant well, but from the soldier Hamilton."

"What was it that he learned?"

"There it is again!" I told him. "Simpson said he could tell what that something was, but he told us that he would not do so."

"A very mysterious business," smiled Milton Rhodes. "I hope that our visitor's story, whatever it is, will prove more definite."

"Wasn't it," I asked, "in the fifties that Kautz made the ascent?"

"In July, 1857. And pretty shabbily has history treated him, too. It's always Stevens and Van Trump, Van Trump and Stevens. Why, their Indian, Sluiskin, is better known than Kautz!"

"But I thought," said I, "that Stevens and Van Trump were the very first men to reach the summit of Mount Rainier."

"Oh, don't misunderstand me, Bill," answered Milton Rhodes. "All honor to Stevens and Van Trump, the first of men to reach the very top of the mountain; but all honor, too, to the first white man to set foot on Rainier, the discoverer of the great Nisqually Glacier, the first to stand upon the top of Old He, though adverse circumstances prevented his reaching the highest point."

"Amen," said I—as little dreaming as Kautz, Stevens and Van Trump themselves had ever done of that discovery which was to follow, and soon now at that.

For a time we held desultory talk, then fell silent and waited.

There was a lull in the storm; the darkness lifted, then suddenly it fell again, and the rain began to descend with greater violence than ever.

Milton Rhodes had left his chair and was standing by one of the eastern windows.

"This must be our visitor, Bill," he said suddenly.

I arose and went over to his side, to see a big sedan swinging in to the curb.

"Yes!" exclaimed Rhodes, his face beginning to brighten. "There is Mr. James W. Scranton.

"Let us hope, Bill," he added, "that the mystery which he is bringing us will prove a real one, real and scientific."

The next moment a slight figure, collar up to ears, stepped from the car and headed swiftly up the walk, leaning sidewise against the wind and rain.

"'Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson'," quoted Milton Rhodes with a smile as he started towards the door, "'when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill'."

Chapter 2

WHAT HE TOLD US

A few moments, and Milton Rhodes and his visitor entered the room.

"My friend Mr. Carter," Rhodes remarked to Mr. James W. Scranton as he introduced us, "has assisted me in some of my problems; he is my colleague, so to say, and you may speak with the utmost confidence that your story, if you wish it so, will be held an utter secret."

"For the present, I wish it to be a secret," returned Scranton, seating himself in the chair which Rhodes had pushed forward, "and so always if no discovery follows. If, however, you discover things—and I have no doubt that you will do so—why, then, of course, you may make everything public where, when and in whatsoever manner you wish."

"And so," said Milton, "you bring us a mystery—a scientific mystery."

"Yes, Mr. Rhodes. It is scientific, and I believe that it will prove to be something more. In all probability stranger than any which any man on this earth has ever known."

There was not the slightest change on Milton Rhodes' features, and yet I could have sworn that a slight fleeting smile had touched them. I turned my look back to our visitor, and I saw upon his face an expression so strange that I stared at him in something very like surprise.

What was it that this man was going to tell us?

Soon that expression was gone, though its shadow still rested on his thin and pale features.

"This mystery of which I have come to tell you," he said suddenly, "is an old, old one."

I glanced at Milton Rhodes.

"Then why," he asked, "bring it to me?"

An enigmatic smile flitted across Scranton's face.

"Because it is new as well. You will soon see what I mean, Mr. Rhodes. You will see why, after all these years, I suddenly found myself so anxious to see you that I couldn't even wait until this storm and deluge ended."

From the inside pocket of his coat he drew a leather-covered notebook, much worn and evidently very old.

"This," said he, holding the book up between thumb and forefinger, "is the journal kept by my grandfather, Charles Scranton, during his journey to, and partial ascent of, Mount Rainier in the year 1858."

Milton Rhodes glanced over at me and said:

"Our little deduction, Bill, wasn't so bad, after all."

Scranton turned his eyes from one to the other of us with a questioning look.

"Mr. Carter," Rhodes explained, "was just telling me about that trip, and he wondered if you belonged to the old pioneer Scranton family."

"This," exclaimed the other, "is something of a surprise to me! Few people, I thought, very few people, even knew of the journey."

"Well, Mr. Carter happens to be one of the few."

"May I ask," said Scranton, addressing himself to me, "how you learned that my grandfather had visited the mountain? And what you know?"

"When I was a boy, I heard a man—his name was Simpson—tell about it."

"Oh," said Scranton, and it was as though some fear or some thing of dread had suddenly left him.

"His story, however," I added, "was vague, mysterious. Even at the time I couldn't understand what it was all about."

"Of course. For, though Simpson knew of the journey, he knew but little of what had happened. And more than once did I hear my grandfather express regret that he had told Simpson even as much as he had. I suppose there was something, perhaps a great deal, of that I-could-tell-a-lot-if-I-wanted-to in Simpson's yarn."

"There was," I nodded.

"The man, however, knew virtually nothing—in fact, nothing at all about it. I have no doubt, though, that he did a lot of guessing. I don't believe that my grandfather, dead these many years now, ever told a single living soul all. And, as for all that he told me—well, I can't tell everything even to you, Mr. Rhodes."

A strange look came into the eyes of Milton Rhodes, but he remained silent.

Scranton raised the notebook again.

"Nor is everything here. Nor do I propose to read everything that is here. Just now the details do not matter. It is the facts, the principal facts, with which we have to do now. This record, if you are interested—and I have no doubt that you will be—I shall leave in your hands until such time as you care to return it to me.

"Now for my grandfather's journey.

"With three companions, he left the old homestead near what is now Puyallup, on the 16th of August, 1858. At Steilacoom, they got an Indian guide, Sklokoyum by name. The journey was made on horseback to the Sick Moon Prairie.[3] There the animals were left, with one man to guard them, and my grandfather, his two companions and the Indian—this guide, however, had never been higher up the Nisqually River than Copper Creek—set out on foot for the mountain."

"One moment," Milton Rhodes interrupted. "According to that Simpson, it was something that your grandfather heard from the soldier Hamilton, and not from Kautz himself, that led to his making this journey to Mount Rainier. Is that correct?"

"Yes; it is correct."

"May I ask, Mr. Scranton, what it was that he learned?"

Again that enigmatic smile on Scranton's face. He tapped the old journal.

"You will learn that, Mr. Rhodes, when you read this record."

"I see. Pray proceed."

Chapter 3

THE MYSTERY OF OLD HE

"It was about three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th," said Scranton, "that they reached the foot of the Nisqually Glacier, called Kautz Glacier by my grandfather. As for what followed, I shall give you that in my grandfather's own words."

He opened the book, at a place marked with a strip of paper, and read from it the following:

"August 24th, 10 p.m.—At last we are on the mountain. And how can I set it down—this thing that has happened? What I write here must be inadequate indeed, but I shall not worry about that, for a hundred years could never dim the memory of what I saw. I have often wondered why the Indians were afraid of Rainier; I know now. And what do I really know? I know what I saw, I know what happened; but only God in Heaven knows what it means.

"Got started early. Still following the river. Going very difficult. Crossed stream a number of times and once had to take to the woods. Reached the glacier about three o'clock—an enormous wall of dirty ice, four or five hundred feet in height, with the Nisqually flowing right out of it. Day had turned dark and threatening. Climbed the eastern wall of the cañon. Clouds suddenly settled down—a fog cold and thick and dripping—and we made camp by a tiny stream, near the edge of the cañon cut by the glacier. Soon had a good fire burning. And it was not long before it came—the shrouded figure and with it that horrible shape, 'if,' as old Milton has it in Paradise Lost, 'shape it might be called that shape had none.'

"At times the fog would settle down so thick we could see no farther than fifty feet. Then suddenly objects could be made out two or three hundred feet away. At the moment the fog was about us thicker than ever. We were sitting by the fire, warming ourselves and talking—White, Long and myself. All at once there was an exclamation. I looked at Long, and what I saw on his face and in his eyes brought me to my feet in an instant and whirled my look up in that direction in which he was staring.

"And there on the top of the bank, not more than thirty feet from us, stood a tall, white, shrouded figure, a female figure, and beside it, seemingly squatting like a monstrous toad, was that dark shape that had no shape. But, though shape it had none, it had eyes—big eyes that burned at us with a greenish, hellish fire.

"White snatched up his rifle and thrust it forward, but I stepped over and shoved the muzzle aside. When we looked up there again, the woman, for a woman, a white woman too, it certainly was—well, she was gone, and with her that formless thing with the hellish fire in its big eyes.

"'What was it?' exclaimed White.

"He rubbed his eyes and stared up there again, then this way and that, all about into the thick vapor.

"'Was it only a dream?'

"'It was real enough,' I told him. 'It was a woman, a white woman.'

"'Or,' put in Long, 'the spirit of one.'

"'I know one thing,' said White: 'she may be a flesh-and-blood creature, and she may be a spirit; but that thing that crouched there beside her was not of this world of ours!'

"He shuddered.

"'Not of this world of ours! Men, what was that thing?'

"That, of course, was a question that neither Long nor myself could answer.

"'If,' I said, 'it hadn't been for this fog! If we could only have seen them better!'

"Of a sudden White exclaimed:

"'Where's Sklokoyum?'

"'Not far,' I told him. 'Say—he was up there, up there where they came from. Come, let's look into this.'

"I sprang up the bank. They followed. A moment, and we were in that very spot where the woman and the thing had stood so brief a space before.

"'It was no dream, at any rate,' observed Long, pointing to the crushed purple flowers—a species, I believe, of aster.

"'No,' I returned; 'it was not a dream.'

"'Maybe,' said White, peering about, 'we'll wish, before this business is ended, that it all had been a dream.'

"Came a loud scream from above. Silence. And then the crash of some heavy body through the branches and shrubs.

"'Sklokoyum!' I cried.

"White's hand closed on my arm with the grip of a vice.

"'Hear that?'

"I heard it. It was the voice of a woman or a girl.

"'She's calling,' said Long, 'calling to it.'

"'Great Heaven!' I exclaimed. 'It's after the Indian! Come!'

"I started up, but I had taken only a half-dozen springs or so when Sklokoyum came leaping, plunging into view. I have seen fear, horrible fear, that of cowards and the fear of brave men; but never had I, never have I, seen anything like that fear which I saw now. And Sklokoyum, whatever his faults, has a skookum tumtum—in other words, is no coward.

"Down the Indian came plunging. There was a glimpse of a blood-covered visage; then he was past. The next instant a shock, a savage oath from White, and he and the Siwash fell in a heap, went over the edge and rolled down the bank and clean to the fire.

"Long and I followed, keeping a sharp lookout behind us, and, indeed, in every direction. But no glimpse was caught of any moving thing, nor did the faintest sound come to us from out that cursed vapor, settling on the trees and dripping, dripping, dripping.

"Sklokoyum's right cheek was slashed as though by some great talon, and he had been terribly bitten in the throat.

"'A little more,' observed Long, 'and it would have been the jugular, and that would have meant klahowya, Sklokoyum.'

"The Indian declared that he had been attacked by a demon, a klale tamahnowis, a winged fiend from the white man's hell itself. What was it like? Sklokoyum could not tell us that. All he knew was that the demon had wings, teeth a foot in length and that fire shot out of its eyes and smoke belched from its nostrils. And surely it would have killed him (and I have no doubt that it would have) if an angel, an angel from the white man's Heaven, had not come and driven it off. What was the angel like? Sklokoyum could not describe her, so wonderful was the vision. And her voice—why, at the very sound of her voice, that horrible tamahnowis flapped its wings and slunk away into the fog and the gloom of the trees.

"Poor Sklokoyum! No wonder he gave us so wild an account of what had happened up there! And, said he, to remain here would be certain death. We must go back, start at once. Well, we are still here, and we are not going to turn back at this spot, though I have no doubt that Sklokoyum himself will do so the very first thing in the morning.

"The fog is thinning. Now and again I see a star gleaming down with ghostly fire. We came here seeking a mystery; well, we certainly have found one. I wonder if I can get any sleep tonight. Long is to relieve me at twelve o'clock. For, of course, we can not, after what has happened, leave our camp without a guard. And I wonder if—what, though, is the good of wondering? But what is she, Sklokoyum's angel? And what is that klale tamahnowis, that demon? And where is the angel now?"

Chapter 4

"VOICES!"

Scranton closed the journal on the forefinger of his right hand and looked at Milton Rhodes.

"Well," said he, "what do you think of that?"

Rhodes did not say what he thought of it. I thought that I knew, though I had to acknowledge that I wasn't sure just what I thought of this wild yarn myself.

After a little silence, Milton Rhodes asked:

"Is that all?"

"All? Indeed, no!" returned Scranton.

He opened the book and prepared to read from it again.

"This adventure that I have just read to you," he said looking over the top of the journal at Milton Rhodes, "took place in what is now known as Paradise Park—a Paradise where, as you well know, there is sometimes twenty-five feet of snow in the winter."

"Of course that was the place," Milton nodded, "for they had climbed the eastern wall of the cañon and had camped near the edge."

"And the one that followed," Scranton added, "on what we now call the Cowlitz Glacier. I believe, Mr. Rhodes, that you have visited Rainier a number of times?"

"Many times, Mr. Scranton. Few men, I believe, know the great mountain better than I do; and I never followed in the footsteps of a guide, imported or otherwise, either."

"Then, in all likelihood, you know the Tamahnowis Rocks in the Cowlitz Glacier."

"I have been there a dozen times."

"Did you ever, Mr. Rhodes, notice anything unusual at that place?"

"Nothing whatever. I found the ascent of the rocks themselves rather difficult and the crevasses there interesting, but nothing more."

"Well, it was there," said Scranton, "that what I am going to read to you now took place. Yes, I know that it was there at the Tamahnowis Rocks, though I myself never could find anything there, either. And now, after all these long years, once more it is in that very spot that—"

He broke off abruptly and dropped his look to the old record.

Milton Rhodes leaned forward.

"Mr. Scranton," he asked, "what were you going to say?"

Scranton tapped the old journal with a forefinger.

"This first," he said. "Then that."

"The story begins to take shape," observed Milton Rhodes; and I wondered what on earth he meant. "Pray proceed."

Whereupon the other raised the book, cleared his throat with an ahem and started to read to us this astonishing record:

"August 25th.—I was right: the very first thing in the morning the Indian left us. Nothing could induce him to go forward, to remain at the camp even. The demons of Rainier would get us, said he, if we went on—the terrible tamahnowis that dwelt in the fiery lake on the summit and in the caverns in the mountain side, caverns dark and fiery and horrible as the caves in hell itself. Had we not had warning? One had come down here, even among the trees, and undoubtedly it would have killed us all had it not been for that angel. He, Sklokoyum, would not go forward a single foot. He was going to klatawah hyak kopa Steilacoom. How the old fellow begged us to turn back, too! It was quite touching, as was his leave-taking when he finally saw that we were determined to go on. Old Sklokoyum acted as though he was taking leave of the dead—as, indeed, he was. And at last he turned and left us, and in a few minutes he had vanished from sight.

"How I wish to God now that we had gone back with him!"

At this point, Scranton paused and said:

"The Indian was never seen again or even heard of again."

The account (which I am copying from the journal itself) went on thus:

"Fog disappeared during the night. A fairer morning, I believe, never dawned on Rainier. Sky the softest, the loveliest of blues. A few fleecy clouds about the summit of the mountain, but not a single wisp of vapor to be seen anywhere else in all the sky.

"Proceeded to get a good survey of things. From the edge of the cañon, got a fine view clear down the glacier and clear up it, too. Ice here covered with dirt and rock-fragments, save a strip in the middle, showing white and bluish. Badly crevassed. It must have been right about here that Kautz left the glacier. He climbed the cliffs on the other side, and then, the next morning, he started for the top. It seemed, to us, however, that the ascent could be made more easily on this side. But we were not headed for the summit; we had a mystery to solve, and we immediately set about trying to do it.

"We started to trail them—the angel and that thing with the big eyes that burned with a greenish, hellish fire. Where they had crushed through the flower-meadows, this was not difficult. At other places, however, no more sign than if they had moved on through the air itself. One thing was soon clear: they had held steadily upward, never swinging far from the edge of that profound cañon in which flows that mighty river of ice.

"The ground became rocky. No sign. Then at last, in a sandy spot, we suddenly came to the plain prints left by the feet of the angel as she passed there, and, mingled with those prints, there were marks over which we bent in perplexity and then in utter amazement.

"These marks were about eight inches in length, and, as I looked at them, I felt a shiver run through me and I thought of a monstrous bird and even of a reptilian horror. But that squatting form we had seen for those few fleeting moments—well, that had not been either a bird or a reptile.

"'One thing,' said Long, 'is plain: it was leading and the angel was following.'

"White and I looked closely, and we saw that this had certainly been so.

"'It appears,' Long remarked, 'that the fog didn't interfere any with their journey. They seem to have gone along as steadily and surely as if they had been in bright sunshine.'

"'I wonder,' White said, 'if the thing was smelling the way back like a dog.'

"'Back where?' I asked. 'And I see no sign of a down trail.'

"'Lord,' exclaimed Long, looking about uneasily, 'the Siwashes say that queer things go on up here, that the mountain is haunted; and, blame me, if I ain't beginning to think that they are right! Maybe, before we are done, we'll wish that we had turned back with old Sklokoyum.'

"I didn't like to hear him talk like that. He spoke as though he were jesting, but I knew that superstitious dread had laid a hand upon him.

"'Nonsense!' I laughed. 'Haunted? That woman that we saw and that thing—well, we know that they were real enough, and we knew that even when we didn't have these footprints to tell us.'

"'Oh, they are real, all right,' said Long. 'But real what?'

"A little while after that, we came to a snowfield, an acre or two in extent, and there we made a strange discovery. The trail led right across it. And it was plain that it had still been leading and the angel had been following. Of a sudden White, who was in advance, exclaimed and pointed.

"'Look at that,' he said. 'See that? Its tracks end here.'

"And that is just what they did! But the tracks of the angel went right on across the snow.

"'Where did the thing go to?' I wondered.

"'Perhaps,' suggested Long, 'she picked it up and carried it.'

"But I shook my head.

"'A woman—or a man either, for the matter of that—carrying that thing!' White exclaimed. 'She could never have done that. And you can see for yourself; she never even paused here. Had she stopped to pick the thing up—what a queer thought—we would have the story written here in the snow.'

"'Then,' said Long, 'it must have gone on through the air.'

"'Humph!' White ejaculated. 'Through the air! Well, Sklokoyum said that the thing has wings—the bat wings of the white man's devil!'

"'But,' I objected, 'Sklokoyum was so badly scared that he didn't know what he saw.'

"'I wonder,' said White.

"Beyond the snowfield, the place was strewn in all directions with rock-fragments. It was comparatively level, however, and the going was not difficult. A tiny stream off to the right, a steep rocky mass before us. We were soon, having crossed the stream, ascending this. It was a steep climb, but we were not long in getting up it. At this place we passed the last shrub. We figured that we must be near an altitude of seven thousand feet now. Dark clouds forming. At times, in a cloud-shadow, the place would have a gloomy and wild aspect. No trail, though at intervals we would find a disturbed stone or faint marks in the earth. Our route lay along a broken ridge of rock. On our left the land fell away toward Kautz's Glacier [the Nisqually] while on the right, coming up close, was another glacier [the Paradise] white and beautiful.

"Ere long we reached a point where the ridge had a width of but a few yards, a small glacier on the left, the great beautiful one on the other side. And here we found it, found the trail of the thing and Sklokoyum's angel. They had come up along the edge of the ice on our left (to avoid the climb up over the rocks) crossed over the ridge (very low at this point) and held steadily along the glacier, keeping close to the edge. And in that dense fog! And just to the right the ice went sweeping down, like a smooth frozen waterfall. A single false step there, and one would go sliding down, down into yawning crevasses. How had they done it? And to where had they been going, in this region of barren rock and eternal snow and ice, through that awful fog and with night drawing on?

"There was but one way to get the answer to that, and that was to follow.

"And so we followed.

"And how can I set down here what happened? I can not. I simply can not. Not that it matters, for it can never, in even the slightest feature, fade from my mind. It may be that I shall find myself wishing that some of it would.

"Clouds grew larger, thicker, blacker. The change was a sudden, sinister one; there seemed to be something uncanny about it even. Our surroundings became gloomy, indescribably dreary and savage. We halted, there in the tracks of the thing and the angel, and looked about us, and we looked with a growing uneasiness and with an awe that sent a chill to the heart—at any rate, I know that it did to mine.

"White and Long wanted to turn back. Clouds had fallen upon the summit of Rainier and were settling lower and lower. Viewed from a distance, they are clouds, but, when you find yourself in them, they are fog; and to find our way back in fog would be no easy matter. However, so I objected, it would be by no means impossible. There would be no danger, I said, if we were careful.

"'There is that pile of rocks,' I added, pointing ahead. 'Let's go on to that at any rate. The trail seems to lead straight towards those rocks. I hate to even think of turning back now, now when we are so near.'

"Still, I noted with some uneasiness, my companions hesitated, their minds, I suppose, a prey to feelings for which they could not have found a rational explanation. All this, however, really was not strange, for it was truly a wild and savage and awesome place and hour.

"At length, in an evil moment, we moved forward.

"Yes, soon there could be no doubt whatever about it: the trail led straight toward those rocks. What would we find there?

"So engrossed were we that we did not see it coming. There was a sudden exclamation, we halted, and there was the fog—the dreaded fog that we had forgotten—drifting about us. The next moment it was gone, but more was drifting after. We resumed our advance. It was not far now. Why couldn't the fog have waited a little longer? But what did it matter? It could affect but little our immediate purpose; and, though I knew that it would be difficult, surely we could find our way back to the camp.

"The fog thinned, and the rocks loomed up before us, dim and ghostly but close at hand. Then the vapor thickened about us again, and they were gone. We were in the midst of crevasses now and had to proceed with great caution. How it happened none of us knew; but of a sudden we saw that we had lost the trail. But we did not turn back to find it. It didn't matter, really. The demon and the angel had gone to those rocks. Of that we were certain. And there the rocks were, right there before us. 'Tis true we couldn't see them now, but they were there.

"We went on. Minutes passed. And still there were no rocks. At length we had to acknowledge it: in the twistings and turnings we had been compelled to make among those cursed crevasses, we had missed our objective, and now we knew not where we were.

"But we knew that we were not far. White and Long cursed and wanted to know how we were ever going to find our way back through this fog, since we had failed to find the rocks when they had been right there in front of us. But it was nothing really serious; we would find that rock-mass. We started. Of a sudden Long gave a sharp but low exclamation, and his hand clutched at my arm.

"'What is it?' I asked in a voice low and guarded.

"'Voices!' he whispered."

Chapter 5

"DROME!"

"We listened. Not a sound. Suddenly the glacier cracked and boomed, then silence again. We waited, listening. Still not the faintest sound. Long, so White and I decided, must have been deceived. But Long declared that he had not.

"'I heard voices, I tell you! I know that I was not mistaken at all. I heard voices.'

"Again we listened.

"'There!' Long said suddenly. 'Hear them?'

"Yes, there, coming to us from out of the fog, were voices, plain, unmistakable, and yet at the same time—how shall I say it?—strangely muffled. Yes, that is the word, muffled. I wondered if the fog did that; but it couldn't, I decided, be the fog. One voice was silvery and strong, that of Sklokoyum's angel doubtless; the other deep and rough, the voice of a man. The woman (or girl) seemed to be urging something, pleading with him. Once we thought that there came a third voice, but we could not be sure of that. But of one thing we were sure: they were not speaking in English, in Spanish, French, Siwash or Chinook. And we felt certain, too, that it was not Scandinavian, German or Italian.

"'They are over there,' said Long, pointing. 'I am sure of it.'

"'No, there!' whispered White.

"For my part, I was convinced that these mysterious beings were in still a different direction!

"'Well,' I suggested, 'let's be moving. We won't get the solution of this queer business by standing here and wondering.'

"We got in motion, uncertain, though, whether we were really advancing in the right direction; but we could not, I thought, be greatly in error. Soon we came to a great crevasse. White leaped across it, and on that instant the voices ceased.

"Had they heard?

"We waited, White crouching there on the other side. Soon the sounds came again, whereupon White, in spite of my whispered remonstrance, began stealing forward. Long and I being less active, did not care to risk that jump, and so we made our way along the edge of the fissure, seeking a place to cross. This we were not long in finding, but by this time, to my profound uneasiness, White had disappeared in the fog.

"We advanced cautiously, and as swiftly as possible. This, however, was not very swiftly. See! There it was, the ghostly loom of the rocks through the vapor. At that instant the voices ceased. Came a scream, a short, sharp scream from the woman. A cry from White, the crack of his revolver, and then that scream he gave—oh, the horror of that I can never forget. Long and I could not see him, or the others—only the ghostly rocks; and soon, too, they were disappearing, for the fog was growing denser.

"We heard the sound of a body striking the ice and knew that White had fallen. He was still screaming that piercing, blood-curdling scream. We struggled to reach him, but the crevasses, those damnable crevasses, held us up.

"The sound sank. Of a sudden it ceased.

"But there was no silence. The voice of the woman rang out sharp and clear. And I thought that I understood it: she was calling to it, to that thing we had seen, down at the camp, squatting beside her, its eyes burning with that demoniacal fire—calling it off!

"Came a short silence, broken by a cry of horror from the angel. The man's voice was heard, then her own in sudden, fierce, angry pleading; at any rate, so it seemed to me—that she was pleading with him again.

"But what had happened to White?

"All this time—which, indeed, was very brief—Long and I were struggling forward. When we got out of that fissured ice and reached the place of the tragedy, the surroundings were as still as death. There lay our companion stretched out on the blood-soaked ice, a gurgle and wheezing coming from his torn throat with his every gasp for breath.

"I knelt down beside him, while Long, poor fellow, stood staring about into the fog, his revolver in his hand. A single glance showed that there was no hope, that it was only a matter of moments.

"'Go!' gasped the dying man. 'It was Satan, the Fiend himself. And an angel. And the angel, she said:

"'"Drome!"

"'Yes, I heard her say it. She said:

"'"Drome!"'

"There was a shudder, and White was dead. And the fog drifted down denser than ever, and the stillness there was as the stillness of the grave."

Chapter 6

AGAIN!

"What was that? The angel's voice again, seeming to issue from the very heart of that mass of rocks. A loud cry and a succession of sharp cries—cries that, I thought, ended in a sobbing sound. Then silence. But no. What was that, that rustling, that flapping in the air?

"Long and I looked wildly—overhead, and then I knew a fear that sent an icy shudder into my heart.

"I cried out—probably it was a scream that I gave—and sprang backward. My soles were well calked, but this could not save me, and down I went flat on my back. The revolver was knocked from my hand and went sliding along the ice for many feet. I sprang up. At this instant the thing came driving down at Long.

"He fired, but he must have missed. The thing struck him in the throat and chest and drove him to the ice. I sprang for my weapon. Long screamed, screamed as White had done, and fought with the fury of a fiend. I got the revolver and started back. The thing had its teeth buried in Long's throat. So fierce was the struggle that I could not fire for fear lest I should hit my companion. As I came up, the monster loosened its hold and sprang high into the air, flapping its bat wings, then it came diving straight at me.

"I fired, but the bullet must have gone wild. Again, and it screamed and went struggling upward. I emptied my revolver, but I fear that I missed with every shot, except that second one. A few seconds, and that winged monster had disappeared.

"I turned to Long. I have seen some horrible sights in my time but never anything so horrible as what I saw now. For there was Long, my companion, my friend—there he was raised up on his hands, his arms rigid as steel, and the blood pouring from his throat. And I—I could only weep and watch him as he bled to death. But it did not last long. In Heaven's mercy, the horror was ended soon.

"And then—well, what followed is not very clear in my mind. I know that a madness seemed to come over me. But I did not flee from that place of mystery and death; the madness, if madness it was, was not like that. It was not of myself that I was thinking; it was not of escape. It was as though a bloody mist had fallen upon the place. Vengeance was what I wanted—vengeance and blood, vengeance and slaughter. I reloaded my revolver, picked up Long's and thrust it into my pocket, then caught up White's weapon with my left hand and started for the rocks, shouting defiance and curses as I went.

"I reached that pile of stone, found the tracks of the angel and the man and of that winged beast; but, at the edge of the rocks, the tracks vanished, and I could not follow farther. But I did not stop there. I went on, clear around that pile, and again and yet again. I climbed it, clear to the summit, searched everywhere; but I could not find a single trace of them I sought. Once, indeed, I thought that I heard a voice, the voice of the angel—thought that I heard that cursed word Drome.

"But I can not write any more now. Why, oh, why didn't we listen to Sklokoyum and keep away from this hellish mountain? That, of course, would have been foolish; but it would not have been this thing which will haunt me to my dying hour."

Chapter 7

"AND NOW TELL ME!"

Scranton closed the journal, leaned back in his chair and looked questioningly at Milton Rhodes.

"There you are!" he said. "I told you that I was bringing you a mystery, and I trust that I have, at least in a great measure, met your expectations."

There was silence for a moment.

"Hellish mountain!" said Rhodes. "Hellish mountain! Noble old Rainier a hellish mountain!

"Pardon my soliloquy," he added suddenly, "And I want to thank you, Mr. Scranton, for bringing me a problem that, unless I am greatly in error, promises to be one of extraordinary scientific interest."

Extraordinary scientific interest! What on earth did he mean by that?

"Still," he subjoined, "I must confess that there are some things about it that are very perplexing, and more than perplexing."

"I think I know what you mean. And that explains why the story has been kept a secret all these years."

"Your grandfather, Mr. Scranton, seems to have been a well-educated man."

"Yes; he was."

Milton Rhodes' pause was a significant one, but Scranton did not enlighten him further.

"On his return from Old He, did he tell just what had happened up there?"

"He did not, of course, care to tell everything, Mr. Rhodes, for fear he would not be believed. And little wonder. He was cautious, very guarded in his story; but, at that, not a single soul believed him. Perhaps, indeed, his very fear of distrust and suspicion and his consequent caution and vagueness, hastened and enhanced those dark and sinister thoughts and suspicions of his neighbors, and, indeed, of every one else who heard the story. There was talk of insanity, of murder even. This was the cruelest wound of all, and my grandfather carried the scar of it to his grave."

"Probably it would have been better," said Rhodes, "had he given them the whole of the story, down to the minutest detail."

"I do not see how. When they did not believe the little that he did tell, how on earth could they have believed the wild, the fantastic, the horrible thing itself?"

"Well, you may be right, Mr. Scranton. And here is a strange thing, too. It is inexplicable, a mystery indeed. For many years now, thousands of sightseers have every summer visited the mountain—this mountain that your grandfather found so mysterious, so hellish—and yet nothing has ever happened."

"That is true, Mr. Rhodes."

"They have found Rainier," said Milton Rhodes, "beautiful, majestic, a sight to delight the hearts of the gods; but no man has ever found anything having even the remotest resemblance to what your grandfather saw—has ever even found strange footprints in the snow. I ask you: where has the mystery been hiding all these years?"

"That is a question I shall not try to answer, Mr. Rhodes. It is my belief, however, that the mystery has never been hiding—using the word, that is, in its literal signification."

"Of course," Milton said. "But you know what I mean."

The other nodded.

"And now, Mr. Rhodes, I am going to tell you why I this day so suddenly found myself so anxious to come to you and give you this story."

Milton Rhodes leaned forward, and the look which he fixed on the face of Scranton was eager and keen.

"I believe, Mr. Rhodes, I at one point said enough to give you an idea of what—"

"Yes, yes!" Milton interrupted. "And now tell me!"

"The angel," said Scranton, "has come again!"

"Alone?"

"No; the demon is with her."

Chapter 8

"DROME" AGAIN

Scranton produced a clipping from a newspaper.

"This," he told us, "is from today's noon edition of The Herald. The account, you observe, is a short one; but it is my belief that it will prove to have been (at any rate, the pre-cursor of) the most extraordinary piece of news that this paper has ever printed."

He looked from one to the other of us as if challenging us to doubt it.

"What," asked Rhodes, "is it about?"

"The mysterious death (which the writer would have us believe was not mysterious at all) of Miss Rhoda Dillingham, daughter of the well-known landscape painter, on the Cowlitz Glacier, at the Tamahnowis Rocks, on the afternoon of Wednesday last."

"Mysterious?" queried Milton Rhodes. "I remember reading a short account of the girl's death. There was, however, nothing to indicate that there had been anything at all mysterious about the tragedy. Nor was there any mention of the Tamahnowis Rocks even. It said only that she had been killed, by a fall, on the Cowlitz Glacier."

"But there was something mysterious, Mr. Rhodes, how mysterious no one seems to even dream. For again we have it, that word which White heard the angel speak—that awful word Drome."

"Drome!" Milton Rhodes exclaimed. "That word again—after all these years?"

"Yes," said Scranton. "And you will understand the full and fearful meaning of what has just happened there on Mount Rainier when I tell you that knowledge of that mysterious word has always been held an utter secret by the Scrantons. No living man but myself knew it, and yet there it is again."

"This is becoming interesting indeed!" exclaimed Milton Rhodes.

"I was sure that you would find it so. And now permit me to read to you what the newspaper has to say about this poor girl's death."

He held the clipping up to get a better light upon it and read the following:

"The death of Miss Rhoda Dillingham, daughter of Francis Dillingham, the well-known painter of mountain scenery, on the Cowlitz Glacier on the afternoon of last Wednesday, was, it has now been definitely ascertained, a purely accidental one. Victor Boileau, the veteran Swiss guide, has shown that there is not the slightest foundation for the wild, fantastic rumors that began to be heard just after the girl's death. Boileau's visit to the Tamahnowis Rocks, the scene of the tragedy, and his careful examination of the place, have proved that the victim came to her death by a fall from the rocks.

"There was no witness to the tragedy itself. Francis Dillingham, the father of the unfortunate girl, was on another part of the rocks at the time, sketching. On hearing the screams, he rushed to his daughter. He found her lying on the ice at the foot of the rock, and on the point of expiring. She spoke but once, and this was to utter these enigmatic words:

"'Drome!' She said, 'Drome!'

"This is one of those features which gave rise to the stories that something uncanny and mysterious had occurred at the Tamahnowis Rocks, as if the spot, indeed, was justifying its eerie name.

"Another is that Dillingham declared that he himself, as he made his way over the rocks in answer to his daughter's screams, heard another voice, an unknown voice, and that he is sure that he distinctly heard that voice pronounce that strange word Drome.

"Victor Boileau, however, has shown that there had been no third person there at the occurrence of the tragedy, that Rhoda Dillingham's death was wholly accidental, that it was caused by a fall, from a height of about thirty feet, down the broken and precipitous face of the rocky mass.

"Another feature much stressed by those who see a mystery in everything connected with this tragic accident was the cruel wound in the throat of the victim. The throat, it is said, had every appearance of having been torn by teeth; but it is now known that the wound was made by some sharp, jagged point of rock, struck by the girl during her fall."

Chapter 9

"TO MY DYING HOUR"

Scranton folded the clipping and placed it between leaves of the journal.

"There!" he said. "My story is ended. You have all the principal facts now. Additional details may be found in this old record—if you are interested in the case and care to peruse it."

Milton Rhodes reached forth a hand for the battered old journal.

"I am indeed interested," he said. "And I wish to thank you again, Mr. Scranton, for bringing to me a problem that promises to be one of extraordinary scientific interest."

"I suppose that you will visit the mountain, the Tamahnowis Rocks, as soon as possible."

Milton Rhodes nodded.

"It will take some time, some hours, that is, to make the necessary preparations; for this journey, I fancy, is going to prove a very strange one and perhaps a very terrible one, too. But tomorrow evening, I trust, will find us at Paradise. If so, on the following morning, we will be at the Tamahnowis Rocks."

"We?" queried Scranton.

"Yes; my friend Carter here is going along. Indeed, without Bill at my side, I don't know that I would care to face this thing."

"Me?" I exclaimed. "Where did you get that? I didn't say that I was going."

"That is true, Bill," Milton laughed; "you didn't say that you were going."

A silence ensued, during which Scranton sat in deep thought, as, indeed, did Milton Rhodes and myself. What did it all mean? Oh, what was I to make of this wild, this fantastic, this fearful thing?

"There is no necessity," Scranton said suddenly, "for the warning, I know; and yet I can't help pointing out that this adventure that you are about to enter upon may prove a very dangerous, even a very horrible one."

"Yes," Rhodes nodded; "it may prove a very dangerous, a very horrible adventure indeed."

"Why," I exclaimed, "all this cabalistic lingo and all this mystery? Why not be explicit? There is only one place that the angel could possibly have come from, this wonderful and terrible creature that says Drome and has a demon for her companion."

"Yes, Bill," Milton nodded; "here is only one place. And it was from that very place that she and her demon came."

"Good Heaven! Why, that supposition is absurd. The thing's preposterous."

"Do you think so, Bill? The submarine, the airplane, the radio—all were absurd, all were preposterous, Bill, until men got them. And many other things, too. Why, it was only yesterday that the sphericity of this old world that we inhabit ceased to be absurd, ceased to be preposterous. Don't be too sure, old tillicum. Remember the oft-repeated observation of Hamlet:

"'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"

"That is true enough. But this is different. This isn't philosophy or something in philosophy. This—"

"Awaits us!" said Milton Rhodes. "The question of prime importance to us now is if we can find the way to that place whence the angel and the demon came; for, so it seems to me, there can be little doubt that it is only on rare occasions, on very rare occasions, that these strange beings appear on the mountain."

"It is," Scranton remarked, "as, of course, you know, against the rules to take any firearm into the Park; but, if I were you, I should never start upon this enterprise without weapons."

"You may rest assured on that point," Milton told him: "we will be armed. The hazardous possibilities of this very strange problem that we are going to endeavor to solve justifies this infraction of the rule."

"Well," said Scranton, suddenly rising from his chair, "you are doubtless anxious to start your preparations at once, and I am keeping you from them. There is one thing, though, Mr. Rhodes, that I, that—"

He paused, and a look of trouble, of distress settled upon his pale, pinched features.

"What is it?" Milton Rhodes queried.

"I am glad that you are going, and yet—and yet I may regret this day, this visit, to my dying hour. For the thing that I have brought you is dangerous. It is more than that; it is awful."

"And probably," said Milton, "it is very wonderful indeed."

"But," Scranton added, "one should not blink the possibility that—"

"Tut, tut, man!" Milton Rhodes exclaimed, laughing. "We mustn't find you a bird of ill-omen now. You mustn't think things like that."

"Yet I can't help thinking about them, Mr. Rhodes. I wish that I could accompany you, at least as far as the scene of the tragedies; but I am far from strong. Even to drive a car sometimes taxes my strength. I doubt if I could now make the climb even from the Inn as far as Sluiskin Falls."

A silence fell, to be suddenly broken by Milton.

"Let us regard that as a happy augury," said he, pointing towards the southern windows, through which the sunlight, bright and sparkling, came streaming in: "the gloom and the storm have passed away, and all is bright once more."

"I pray Heaven that it prove so!" the other exclaimed.

"For my part, I shall always be glad that you came to me, Mr. Scranton; glad always, even—even," said Milton Rhodes, "if I never come back."

Chapter 10

ON THE MOUNTAIN

It was a few minutes past three on the afternoon of the day following when Milton Rhodes and I got into his automobile and started for Mount Rainier. When we arrived at the Park entrance, which we did about half-past six, the speedometer showed a run of one hundred and two miles.

"Any firearms, a cat or a dog in that car?" was the question when Milton went over to register.

"Nope," said Milton.

There was a revolver in one of his pockets, however, and another in one of mine. But there was no weapon in the car: hadn't I got out of the car so that there wouldn't be?

A few moments, and we were under way again, the road, which ran through primeval forest, a narrow one now, sinuous and, it must be confessed, hardly as smooth as glass.

Soon we crossed Tahoma Creek, where we had a glimpse of the mountain, its snowy, rocky heights aglow with a wonderful golden tint in the rays of the setting sun. Strange, wild, fantastic thoughts and fears came to me again, and upon my mind settled gloomy foreboding—sinister, nameless, foreboding terrible as a pall. We were drawing near the great mountain now, with its unutterable cosmic grandeur and loneliness, near to its unknown, which Milton Rhodes and I were perhaps fated to know soon and perhaps to know to our sorrow.

From these gloomy, disturbing thoughts, which yet had a strange fascination too, I was at length aroused by the voice of Rhodes.

"Kautz Creek," said he.

And the next moment we shot across the stream, which went racing and growling over its boulders, the pale chocolate hue of its water advertising its glacial origin.

"Up about two thousand four hundred feet now," Milton added. "Longmire Springs next. I say, Bill, I wonder where we shall be this time tomorrow, eh?"

"Goodness knows. Sometimes I find myself wondering if the whole thing isn't pure moonshine, a dream. An angel and a demon on the slopes of Mount Rainier! And they say that this is the Twentieth Century!"

Rhodes smiled wanly.

"I think that you will find the thing real enough, Billy, me lad," said he.

"Too real, maybe. The fact is that I don't know what on earth to think."

"The only thing to do is to wait, Bill. And we won't have to wait long, either."

When we swung to the grade out of Longmire, I thought that we were at last beginning the real climb to the mountain. But Milton said no.

"When we reach the Van Trump auto park, then we'll start up," said he.

And we did—the road turning and twisting up a forest-clad steep. Then, its sinuosities behind us, it ran along in a comparatively straight line, ascending all the time, to Christine Falls and to the crossing of the Nisqually, the latter just below the end of the glacier—snout, as they call it. Yes, there it was, the great wall of ice, four or five hundred feet in height, looking, however, what with the earth and boulders ground into it, more like a mass of rock than like ice. There it was, the first glacier I ever had seen, the first living glacier, indeed, ever discovered in all these United States—at any rate, the first one ever reported. Elevation four thousand feet.

The bridge behind us, we swung sharp to the right and went slanting up a steep rampart of rock, moving now away from the glacier, away from the mountain; in other words, we were heading straight for Longmire but climbing, climbing. At length the road, cut in the precipitous rock, narrowed to the width of but a single auto; and at this point we halted, for descending cars had the way.

The view here was a striking one indeed, down the Nisqually Valley and over its flanking, tumbled mountains, and the scene would probably have been even more striking than I found it had the spot not been one to make the head swim. I had the out side of the auto, and I could look right over the edge, over the edge and down the precipitous wall of rock to the bed of the Nisqually, half a thousand feet below.

The last car rolled by, and we got the signal to come on. This narrow part of the road passed, we swung in from the edge of the rampart, and I confess that I was not at all sorry that we did so.

Silver Forest, Frog Heaven, Narada Falls, Inspiration Point, then Paradise Valley, with its strange tree-forms, its beautiful flower-meadows, and, in the distance, the Inn on its commanding height, five thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea; and, filling all the background, the great mountain itself, towering fourteen thousand four hundred feet aloft; the end of our journey in sight at last!

The end? Yes—until tomorrow. And then what? The beginning then—the beginning of what would, in all likelihood, prove an adventure as hazardous as it was strange, a most fearful quest.

Had I been a believer in the oneirocritical science, the things that I dreamed that night would have ended the enterprise (as far as I was concerned) then and there: in the morning I would have started for Seattle instanter. But I was not, and I am not now; and yet often I wonder why I dreamed some of those terrible things—those things which came true.

And, through all the horror, a cowled thing, a figure with bat wings, hovered or glided in the shadows of the background and at intervals, in tones cavernous and sepulchral, gave utterance to that dreaded name:

"Drome!"

Chapter 11

THE TAMAHNOWIS ROCKS

It was very early—in fact, the first rays of the sun, not yet risen, had just touched the lofty heights of Rainier—when Rhodes and I left the Inn.

Besides our revolvers and a goodly supply of ammunition, there were the lights, an aneroid, a thermometer, our canteens, ice-picks; two pieces of light but very strong rope, each seventy-five feet in length; our knives, like those which hunters carry; and food sufficient to last us a week.

Yes, and there were the ice-creepers, which we should need in making our way over the glaciers, the Paradise and the Cowlitz, to that mass of rock, the scene of those mysterious tragedies.

We did not take the direct trail up but went over to the edge of the cañon that I—for this was my first visit to Mount Rainier—might see the Nisqually Glacier.

And, as we made our way upward through the brightening scene, as I gazed upon the grim cosmic beauty all about me, up into the great cirque of the Nisqually, up to the broad summit of the mountain and (in the opposite direction) out over the Tatoosh Range to distant Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens all violet and gold in the morning sun—well, that strange story which had brought us here then took on the seeming of a mirage or a dream.

"The mountain," said Milton Rhodes, as we stood leaning on our alpenstocks during one of our halts, "once rose to a height of sixteen thousand feet or more. The dip of the lava layers shows that. The whole top was blown clean off."

"Must have been some real fireworks," was my comment, "when that happened."

"See that line of bare rock there on the very summit, Bill, midway between Point Success up here on the left and Gibraltar here on the right?"

"I noticed that," I told him, "and was wondering about it. Why isn't there any snow there?"

"Heat, Bill," said Rhodes. "Heat."

"Heat! Great Vesuvius, I thought that Mount Rainier was a dead volcano."

"Not dead, Bill. Only slumbering. Four eruptions are on record.[4] Whether Old He is to die in his slumber, or whether he is one day to awake in mad fury—that, of course, no man can tell us."

"To see it belching forth smoke and sending down streams of lava would be an interesting sight certainly," said I. "And I wonder what effect that would have on this Drome business—that is, if there is any such thing as Drome at all."

"Drome!" Milton echoed.

For some moments he stood there with a strange look of abstraction upon his face.

"Drome! Ah, Bill," said he, "I wish that I knew what it means. But come, we'll never reach the Tamahnowis Rocks if we stand here wondering."

And so we resumed our climb. We were the early birds this morning; not a living soul was to be seen anywhere on the mountain. But hark! What was that? Somebody whistling somewhere up there and off to the right. The whistles came in rapid succession, and they were loud and clear and ringing. I stopped and looked but could see nothing.

I should have explained that we had turned aside from the edge of the cañon, had crossed that little stream mentioned by grandfather Scranton and had begun to climb that steep rocky mass that he spoke of.

"What the deuce," said I, "is that fellow whistling like that for? It can't be to us."

"That," Milton Rhodes smiled, "isn't a man, Bill."

"Not a man?"

"It's a marmot," Milton told me.

"A marmot? Well," said I, "we live and we learn. I could have sworn, Milton, that it was a human being."

The ascent was a steep one, and we climbed in silence. The horse-trail, coming from the left, goes slanting and then twisting its way up this rocky rampart. On reaching the path, we paused for some moments to get our breath, then plodded on.

"I was thinking," said Milton Rhodes at last, "of what Francis Parkman said."

"What did he say?"

"'I would go farther for one look into the crater of Vesuvius than to see all the ruined temples in Italy.'"

"I wonder," I returned, "how far we shall have to go to see that angel that says Drome, not to mention her pretty demon."

Rhodes laughed.

"We are getting there, Bill; we're getting there—near the scene of the tragedies at any rate."

Ere long we reached the top. Here we passed the last shrub and in a little space came to a small glacier. The tracks of the horses led straight across it. But our route did not go thither; it led up over the rocks.

Suddenly, as we toiled our way upward, Rhodes, with the remark that Science had some strange stories to tell, asked me if I had ever heard of Tartaglia's slates. I never had, though I had heard of Tartaglia, and I wanted to know about those slates.

"Tombstones," said Milton.

"Tombstones?"

"Tombstones, Bill. What with the terrible poverty, Tartaglia, when educating himself, could not get even a slate, and so he went out and wrote his exercises on tombstones."

"Gosh!"

"And did you ever hear of Demoivre's death? There is a problem for your psychological sharks."

"I never heard of him. And how did the gentleman die?"

"He told them that he had to sleep so many minutes longer each day."

"And did he do it?"

"That's what he did, Bill."

"And," I asked with growing curiosity, "when he had slept through the twenty-four hours? Then what?"

"He never woke up," said Milton Rhodes.

Then he told me that queer story about Isaac Barrow, or, rather, about his father. When sent to school, at Charter-house, young Barrow raised the very deuce and raised it high; so much deuce, in fact, that dad Barrow, whilst praying, said that, if it should be the Divine pleasure to take from him any of his children, he could best stand the loss of Isaac.

And did I know what the heart of a man does when his head is cut off? I (who was wondering at his sudden turn to these queer scientific matters) said I supposed that the heart stops beating. But Milton Rhodes said no; the organ continues its pulsations for an hour or longer.

And had I heard of Spallanzani's very curious experiment with the crow? I never had, but I wanted to. Spallanzani, Milton told me, gave a crow a good feed and then chopped its head off. (That decapitation didn't surprise me any, for I knew that Spallanzani was a real scientist.) The body was placed in a temperature the same as that of the living bird and kept there for six hours. Spallanzani then took the body out, opened it and found that the food which he had given the bird was thoroughly digested.

"These scientists," was my comment, "are queer birds themselves."

Then he told me some strange things about sympathetic vibrations—that a drinking-glass can be smashed by the human voice (I knew that) that an alpine avalanche can be started thundering down by the tinkle of a bell; and so, as Tyndall tells us, the muleteers in the Swiss mountains silence the bells of their animals when in proximity to such danger. And he told me of that musician who came near destroying the Colebrook Dale suspension bridge with his fiddle.[5]

Then came the strangest thing of all—the story of Vogt's cricket. The professor severed the body of a cricket (a living cricket, of course) into two pieces, and the fore part then turned round and ate up the hinder!

"Yes," Milton Rhodes said, "Science has some queer stories to tell."

"I should say that she has!"

"And maybe," he added, "she'll have a stranger one than ever to tell when we get back—that is, if we ever do."

We passed McClure's Rock, height about seven thousand four hundred feet; made our way along the head of a small glacier, which fell away towards the Nisqually; ascended the cleaver, at this point very low and along the base of which we had been moving; and there, on the other side and coming up within a few yards of the spot where we stood, was the Paradise Glacier, white and beautiful in the sunlight.

Milton Rhodes gave me an inquiring look.

"Recognize this spot?" he queried.

"I never saw it before, of course; but, yes, I believe that I do: this is the place where the angel and the demon crossed over, the spot where Scranton, White and Long found the tracks again."

"This is the place."

"And where," I asked, "are the Tamahnowis Rocks?"

"Can't see them from here, Bill. They're right over there, half a mile distant or so, probably three-quarters."

He moved down to the edge of the snow and ice; I followed.

"Now for the creepers," said Milton, seating himself on a rock-fragment. "Then we are off."

A few moments, and we had fastened on the toothed soles of steel and were under way again.

Suddenly Rhodes, who was leading, stopped, raised his alpenstock and pointed with it.

"There they are, Bill!"

And there they were. The Rocks of Tamahnowis—the Spirit, the Demon Rocks—in sight at last.

Chapter 12

WE ENTER THEIR SHADOW

For a space we stood there in silence looking at that dark mass which reared itself up, like a temple in ruins I thought, in the midst of the crevassed ice.

Then I said:

"Who, looking at that pile, would ever dream that there was anything mysterious and terrible about it, anything scientific?"

"The place," Milton Rhodes returned, "certainly has an innocent look; but looks, you know, are often deceiving. And how deceiving in this particular instance, that we know full well indeed. Besides Scranton, yourself and me, not a living soul knows how horrible was the death of that poor girl."

I made no response. Many were the thoughts that came and went as I stood there and looked at those Tamahnowis Rocks.

Of a sudden I noticed a slight smile in the eyes of my companion.

"Why the grin?" I queried. "This, I must say, is a sweet time for grins. I would suggest that, instead, you say your prayers."

Rhodes laughed. Then he pointed to my right hand. This, I now discovered, was resting on that pocket which held my revolver.

"I see," he said, "that you have your artillery very handy."

"Yes; and I notice that you have, too."

"I wish that I could have it even more so, Bill.

"You know, old tillicum," he added, his brows contracting and a shadow seeming to pass athwart his face and then to return and linger there, "maybe I'll wish that I hadn't dragged you into this wild, unearthly business. And yet I wouldn't care to face it without you beside me."

"Dragged me into it?" I exclaimed. "Now, look here: please, Milton, don't say that again."

"I hope, Bill, that I haven't—"

"Not a bit, not a bit. But I hope you will never talk like that any more."

He raised a hand and placed it on my shoulder.

"Pardon me, old tillicum," he said. "And yet, after all, I may regret it, for this business before us may prove a most terrible one—something even worse than that."

For a few moments there was silence, and then I said:

"Well, let's klatawah."

"Yes," said he, turning and starting; "let's klatawah.

"And," he added, "do you know what that reminds me of?"

"I wonder."

"Of Sluiskin's appeal to Stevens and Van Trump, down there at the falls that now bear his name:

"'Wake klatawah! Wake klatawah!'"

"But," said I, "they went, and they came back. That's an augury."

"But," he answered, "if it hadn't been for those steam-caves up there in the crater, they might not have come back, might have perished on the summit that night in the bitter cold. And then the Siwash would have been a true prophet."

"Well, there may be something equivalent to those steam-caves somewhere in the place that we are going to. I don't mean, of course, in that pile of rock over there."

"Of course not. But that isn't what's troubling me; it's the possibility that we may be too late."

"Too late?" I exclaimed.

"Just so. It is only at long intervals—so far as we know, that is—that these strange beings appear on the mountain."

"Well?" I queried.

"Well, Bill, glaciers, you know, move."

"I know that. But what on earth has the movement of the ice to do with the appearance of this angel on Mount Rainier?"

But Milton wouldn't tell me that. Instead, he told me to think. Think? I did. I thought hard; but I couldn't see it. However, we were drawing close to the rocks now, and soon I would have the answer. I felt that pocket again. Yes, the revolver was still there!

"Look here!" said I suddenly.

Milton Rhodes, who was on the point of springing across a fissure, turned and looked.

"How does this come?" I wanted to know. "I thought that the Tamahnowis Rocks were on the Cowlitz Glacier?"

"This is the Cowlitz, Bill."

"But we haven't left the Paradise yet."

"Oh, yes, we have. There is no cleaver between them, no anything; at this place it is all one continuous sheet of ice."

"Oh, that's it. Well, the ice is pretty badly crevassed before us. Glad it isn't all like this."

We worked our way forward, twisting and turning. Slowly but steadily we advanced, drawing near and nearer to that dark, frowning, broken mass, wondering (at any rate, I was) about the secrets that we should find there—unless, indeed, we were too late. What had Milton meant by that? How on earth could the apparition of the angel and the demon be in any manner contingent upon the movement of the ice?

Well, we were very near now; we were so near, in fact, that, if there was any one, any thing lurking there in the rocks, human or monster (or both) he or it could hear us.

We would soon know whether we had come too late.

Ere long we had got over the fissures and were moving over ice unbroken and smooth. I wondered if this was the spot where, so many years ago, White and Long had been killed. But I did not voice that thought. The truth is that this terrible place held me silent. And, when we moved into the shadow cast by the broken, towering pile, the scene became more weird and terrible than ever.

A few moments, and we halted, so close to the rocky wall, precipitous and broken, that I could have touched it with outstretched hand.

How cold it seemed here, how strange that sinister quality (or was it only my imagination?) of the enveloping shadows!

"Well," said Milton Rhodes, and I noticed that his voice was low and guarded, "here we are."

I made no response.

The silence there was as the silence of a tomb.

Chapter 13

"I THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING"

"What," I asked, "is the first thing to do now?"

"Find the spot where Rhoda Dillingham was killed. The snowfall of the day before yesterday covered the stains, of course. I feel confident, however, what with the description that Victor Boileau gave me, that I shall recognize the spot the moment I see it. It's over there on the other side, Bill, in the sunlight."

"Why that precise spot?"

"Because I hope to find something there—something that Victor Boileau himself didn't see."

A cold shiver went through my heart. We were so near now. Yes, so near; but near to what? Or had we come too late?

"Now for it, Bill!" said Milton Rhodes.

He turned and began to work his way down along the base of the rock-wall. The ice now sloped steeply, and, from there to the end of the frowning mass of rocks, and for some distance beyond it, the glacier was fissured and split in all directions. The going was really difficult. Had we tried it without the creepers, we should have broken our necks. One consolation was that the distance was a short one. Why on earth had the artist brought his daughter to this awful place?

But, then, there had been nothing terrible about the scene to Dillingham, until the tragedy. As for the appearance of the rocks—yes, I had to acknowledge that—there was nothing intrinsically terrible about it: it was what one knew that made it so. Its sinister, its awful seeming would not have been there had I not known what had happened.

We made our way around the end of the rocky pile into the glare of the sunlight and started up the crevassed and split surface there. The slope, however, was not near so steep as the one we had descended on the other side. Sixty feet, and Rhodes stopped and said, looking eagerly, keenly this way and that:

"This is the place, Bill. There can be no mistake. Here are the two big crevasses that Boileau described. Yes, it was in this very spot, ten or twelve feet from the base of the wall, that the girl lay when her father came—lay dying, that terrible wound in her throat."

He began to scrape the snow away with his steel-soled shoes. A few moments, and he paused and pointed. I shuddered as I saw that stain he had uncovered.

"There. You see, Bill?"

"I see. Cover it up."

I ran my eyes along the base of the rocks; I searched every spot that the eye could reach on the face or in the shadowy recesses of the dark, broken mass, towering there high above us; I looked all around at the fissured ice: but there was nothing unusual to be seen anywhere.

"Where," I asked, and my tones were low and guarded, "did the angel, if the angel was here—where, Milton, could the angel and the demon have vanished so suddenly and without leaving a single trace?"

"There lies our problem, Bill. A very few minutes should find us in possession of the answer—if, that is, we have not come too late. As to the vanishing without leaving a single trace behind them, that no trace was found is by no means tantamount to saying that they left none."

"I know that. But where did they go?"

"Let us," said Rhodes, "see if we can discover the answer."

"I don't think," I observed, "that they could have gone right into the rocks: either Dillingham, as he made his way here to the girl, would have seen them, or Boileau would have found the entrance to the way that they took."

"At any rate," Rhodes answered, "we may take that, for the moment, as a working hypothesis, and so we will turn our attention now to another quarter. If we fail there—though, remember, ice moves, Bill—we will then give these rocks a complete and careful examination with the object of settling the question whether the great Boileau really did see everything that is to be found here."

"And so—" I began.

"And so?" he queried.

"Then they—or it—disappeared by way of the ice."

"Precisely," Rhodes nodded: "by way of the ice. And now you see what I meant when I reminded you that the ice here moves."

"Yes; I believe that I do, at last. Great Heaven, Milton, what can this thing mean?"

"That is for us to seek to discover. And so we will give our attention to these crevasses."

He moved to the edge of one of those big fissures that I have mentioned, the upper one, and peered down into the bluish depths of it. I followed and stood beside him.

"It couldn't have been into this one," he said.

"Impossible," I told him.

He moved along the edge of the crevasse, in the direction of the rocks. I went along after him, my right hand near that pocket which held my revolver.

"And," thought I bitterly to myself, "this is the Twentieth Century!"

"They could," said Rhodes at length, stopping within a few yards of the wall of rock, "have gone into the crevasse at this point. Yes, most certainly they could have done so."

"But where could they have gone to? There is no break in the wall here, not even a crack."

"Don't forget, Bill, that ice moves."

"If that is the explanation, we shall go back no wiser than when we came."

"Let us hope," he returned, "that it doesn't prove the explanation. I have no knowledge as to the rate of the ice-movement here. The Nisqually moves a foot or more a day in summer. The movement here may be very similar, though, on the other hand, there are certain considerations which suggest the possibility that it may be only a few inches per diem."

"It may be so."

"However, Bill, this speculation or surmise will avail us nothing now. So let's give our attention to this other crevasse. And, if it too should reveal nothing—well, there are plenty of others."

"Yes," said I rather dubiously; "there are plenty of others."

"The unusual size of these two," he went on, "and this being the scene of the tragedy led me to think that it would not be a bad idea to start the examination at this point. The great Boileau—and I learned this with not a little satisfaction, Bill, though I may say 'twas with no colossal surprise—the great Boileau did not give even the slightest attention to any crevasse. He knew before ever he came up here, of course, that the girl's death had been a purely accidental one.

"However, let us see what we are to find in this other fissure."

We found it even wider than the one which we had just quitted. And scarcely had we come to a pause there on the edge of it, and within a few yards of the rock, when I started and gave a low exclamation for silence.

For some moments we stood listening intently, but all was silent, save for the low, ghostly whisper of the mountain wind.

"What was it?" Rhodes asked in a low voice.

"I don't know. It may have been nothing, of course. But I certainly thought I heard something."

"Where?"

"I can't say. It seemed to come from out of the rock itself or—from this."

And I indicated the crevasse at our feet.

Chapter 14

THE WAY TO DROME

The depth of the fissure was here twelve or fifteen feet. A short distance out, however, it narrowed, and at that point it was almost completely filled with snow. I noticed even then, in that moment of tense uncertainty, that it would be very easy for a person to make his way down that snow to the bottom. A few steps then, and he would be at the real base of that wall of rock. Yes, that would explain it!

A strange excitement possessed me, though I endeavored to suppress every sign of it. Yes, the angel and the demon—if the angel had been out upon the ice at the moment of the tragedy—could have disappeared easily enough. 'Tis true, no tracks had been noticed there. That, however, was no proof positive that there had been none. And perhaps, forsooth, there had been no tracks there to discover. The angel might not have been out upon the glacier at all, and the thing might not have left a single mark in the snow. It could have disappeared without doing that. For I knew what had killed poor Rhoda Dillingham.

Supposing, however, that this was indeed the secret, what then? A great deal was explained, but as much remained inexplicable. For where on earth, after reaching the bottom of the crevasse, could the angel and the demon have gone? There was, so far as I could see, no possible way of escape. There was a remarkable overhang of rock there at the end, coming down within a yard or so of the floor. But that was all it was, an overhang. It was not the entrance to any subterranean passage.

Perhaps, if this was indeed the way, we had come too late; perhaps there had been an opening there, an opening that, what with the movement of the ice, was now wholly concealed.

I looked at Milton Rhodes, and on the instant I knew that he too had been noticing all these things. Had the same thoughts come to him also?

"Everything is still now," I observed. "That sound might have been only a fancy."

He nodded slowly.

"Or it might have been made by the glacier. No telling, though, Bill. It might have been real enough and something else. We mustn't forget that for one moment."

"I am not likely to do so. However, what do you make of this?"

"It may be the way to—the way to Drome. And it may, of course, be nothing of the kind. They easily could have vanished into this crevasse."

"And then where could they have gone?"

"Probably the way is blocked by the ice now. Who can say? That overhang down there—"

"Is not an entrance," I told him.

"There may, however, Bill, be something there. It will take us only a moment to find that out."

He turned forthwith and moved along the edge to that spot where the fissure narrowed and it was filled with snow. I followed. A few moments, and we stood at the bottom.

"Great Heaven!" said I as we moved along between those walls of ice.

"What is it, Bill?" queried Milton, pausing and looking back at me.

"Suppose this ice-mass here above were to slip! We'd be flattened between these walls like pancakes!"

Rhodes smiled a little and said he guessed we'd be like pancakes all right if that happened. The next moment we were moving forward again, our steel soles grating harshly, though not loudly, upon the glacier-polished bottom.

"You see," said I as we drew near to the end, "the way to Drome does not lie here. Under that overhang there is nothing but rock. There is not even a crack, to say nothing of an entrance."

"It certainly looks like it, Bill. However, it will do no harm to make an examination. That there is an entrance we know. And, if it isn't here—well, then it must be some place else. And, unless we are too late, we'll search these Rocks of Tamahnowis until we find it."

A few steps, and Rhodes halted, his left hand resting against the rock. He stooped to peer under. I exclaimed and involuntarily seized him by the sleeve.

"There it is again!"

He straightened up, and we stood in an attitude of riveted attention. The place, however, was as silent as the grave.

"I know that I heard something," I told him.

"Yes; I heard it that time, too," said Milton Rhodes. "Where did it come from?"

I shook my head.

"Maybe one of the sounds that the glacier makes," he proffered.

"It is possible. But—"

"Well?"

"It seemed to come right out of the rocks; but that isn't possible."

"We'll see about that, Bill."

He pressed a button, and the strong rays of his electric light played upon the dark rock and the blue ice. The light in his left hand, he dropped to his knees and looked under. I heard an exclamation and saw him move forward. At that instant a sound brought me up and whirled me around.

My heart was in my throat. I could have sworn that the sound had issued from some point just behind me. But there was nothing to be seen there—only the walls of blue ice and the blue sky above.

"Must have been some sound made by the glacier slipping or something," I told myself.

I turned—to find that Milton Rhodes had vanished!

For a little space I stood staring and wondering, then called in a low voice:

"Milton. Oh, Milton."

No answer.

"Milton."

Silence still.

"Milton," I called once more. "Where are you?"

The answer was a scream, a scream that threatened to arrest the coursing blood in my veins—the sound seeming to issue from the very heart of the rock-mass there before me.

Chapter 15

THE ANGEL

The scream ceased as suddenly as it had come. I drew my revolver, snapped on the electric light, and, stooping low, looked into that spot where, a few moments before, Milton Rhodes had so suddenly and mysteriously disappeared.

Nothing but the unbroken rock before me. And yet Rhodes had vanished. I turned the light full upon the low roof, and then I exclaimed aloud: the entrance was there!

I dropped to my hands and knees and moved under, the pack not a little impeding my movements. An instant, and I was standing upright peering into a high, narrow tunnel, which some convulsion of nature, in some lost age of the earth, had rent right through the living rock.

Nothing was to be seen, save the broken walls, floor and roof, deep, eerie shadows crawling and gliding as the light moved. The view, however, was a very restricted one, for the gallery, which sloped gently upward, gave a sudden turn at a distance of only thirty feet or so. What awaited me somewhere beyond that turn?

For a few moments I listened intently. Not the faintest sound—nothing but the loud beating of my heart. What had happened to Rhodes?

"Milton!" I called softly. "Oh, Milton!"

No answer came.

I grasped a projection of rock, drew myself up into the tunnel and advanced as rapidly and silently as possible, the light and the alpenstock in my left hand, the revolver in the right. But it was not very silently, what with the creepers. At times they grated harshly; it was as if spirit-things were mocking me with suppressed, demoniacal laughter. Yet I could not pause to remove those grating shoes of toothed steel. Every second even might be precious now.

I drew near the turn, the revolver thrust forward in readiness for instant action.

I reached it, and there just beyond, a dark figure was standing, framed in a blaze of light.

It was Milton Rhodes.

He turned his head, and I saw a smile move athwart his features.

"Well, we've found it, Bill!" said he.

I was drawing near to him.

"That scream?" I said. "Who gave that terrible scream?"

"Terrible? It didn't sound terrible to me," smiled Milton Rhodes. "Fact is, Bill, I'd like to hear it again."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"'Tis so."

"Who was it? Or what was it?"

"Why, the angel herself!" he told me.

"Where is she now?"

"Gone, Bill; she's gone. When she saw me, she fetched up, gave that scream, then turned and vanished—around that next turn."

"What is she like, Milton?"

"I wish that I could tell you! But how can a man describe Venus? I know one thing, Bill: if all the daughters of Drome are as fair as this one that I saw, I know where all the movie queens of the future are coming from."

I looked at him, and I laughed.

"Wait till you see her, Bill. Complexion like alabaster, white as Rainier's purest snow! And hair! Oh, that hair, Bill! Like ten billion dollars' worth of spun gold!"

"Gosh."

"Wait till you see her," said Milton.

"And the demon?" I queried.

"I didn't see any demon, Bill."

There was silence for a little space.

"Then," I said, "the whole thing is true, after all."

"You mean what grandfather Scranton set down in his journal, and the rest of it?"

I nodded.

"I never doubted that, Bill."

"At times," I told him, "I didn't doubt it. Then, again, it all seemed so wild and unearthly that I didn't know what to think."

"I think," he said with a wan smile, "that you know what to think now—now when you are standing in this very way to Drome, whatever Drome may be."

"Yes. And yet the thing is so strange. Think of it. A world of which men have never dreamed, save in the wildest romance! An underground world. Subterranean ways, subterranean cities, men and women there—"

"Cavernicolous Aphrodites!" said Milton Rhodes.

"And all down there in eternal darkness!" I exclaimed. "Why, the thing is incredible. No wonder that I sometimes find myself wondering if I am not in a dream."

Said Milton Rhodes:

"'All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.'

"But come, Bill," he added. "Don't let this a priori stuff bowl you over. In the first place, it isn't dark down there—when, that is, you get down far enough."

"In Heaven's name, how do you know that?"

"Why, for one thing, if this subterranean world was one of unbroken darkness, the angel (and the demon) would be blind, like those poor fishes in the Mammoth Cave. But she is no more blind than you or I. Ergo, if for no other reason, we shall find light down there."

"Of course, they have artificial light, or—"

"I don't mean that. If there had not been some other illumination, this strange race (of whose very existence Science has never even dreamed) would have ceased to exist long ago—if, indeed, it ever could have begun."

"But no gleam of sunlight can ever find its way down to that world."

"It never can, of course. But there are other sources of light—nebulas and comets in the heavens, for example, and auroras, phosphorus and fire-flies here on earth. The phenomena of phosphorescence are by no means so rare as might be imagined. Why, as Nichol showed, though any man who uses his eyes can see it himself, there is light inherent even in clouds."

I have the professor's book before me as I write—J. P. Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow—and here are his own words:

"Whatever their origin, they [the auroras] show the existence of causes in virtue of whose energy the upper strata of our atmosphere become self-luminous, sometimes in a high degree; for, in northern regions, our travelers have read by their brilliance. But the Aurora is not the only phenomenon which indicates the existence of a power in the matter of our globe to emit light. One fact, that must have been often noticed, forcibly impresses me with the conviction, that here, through what seems common, truths of much import will yet be reached. In the dead of night, when the sky is clear, and one is admiring the brilliancy of the stars, hanging over a perfectly obscured earth, a cloud, well known to observing astronomers, will at times begin to form, and it then spreads with astonishing rapidity over the whole heavens. The light of the stars being thus utterly shut out, one might suppose that surrounding objects would, if possible, become more indistinct: but no! what was formerly invisible can now be clearly seen; not because of lights from the earth being reflected back from the cloud—for very often there are none—but in virtue of the light of the cloud itself, which, however faint, is yet a similitude of the dazzling shell of the Sun."

After mentioning the phosphorescence of the dark hemisphere of Venus and the belief that something similar has been seen on the unillumined surface of our satellite, he continues thus:

"But the circumstance most remarkably corroborative of the mysterious truth to which these indications point, is the appearance of our midnight luminary during a total eclipse. By theory, she ought to disappear utterly from the heavens. She should vanish, and the sky seem as if no Moon were in being; but, on the contrary, and even when she passes the very centre of the Earth's shadow, she seems a huge disc of bronze, in which the chief spots can easily be described by a telescope."

And that, remember, when the moon is in the utter blackness of the earth's shadow. Of course, another explanation has been advanced; but it does not take the professor long to dispose of that.

"It has been put forth in explanation," he says, "that a portion of the rays of the Sun must be reflected by our atmosphere and bent toward the eclipsed disc, from which again they are reflected to the Earth—thus giving the Moon that bronze color; but, the instant the hypothesis is tested by calculation, we discern its utter inefficiency. Nor is there any tenable conclusion save this:—That the matter both of Sun and planets is capable, in certain circumstances whose exact conditions are not known, of evolving the energy we term light."

All this, and more, Rhodes explained to me, succinctly but clearly.

"Oh, we'll find light, Bill," said he.

All the same this subterranean world for which we were bound presented some unpleasant possibilities, in addition, that is, to those concomitant to its being a habitat of demons—and Heaven only knew what besides.

"And then there is the air," I said. "As we descend, it will become denser and denser, until at last we will be able to use these ice-picks on it."

Rhodes, who was removing his creepers, laughed.

"We will have to make a vertical descent of three and one half miles below the level of the sea—a vertical descent of near five miles from this spot where we stand, Bill—before we reach a pressure of even two atmospheres."

"The density then increases rapidly, doesn't it?"

"Oh, yes. Three and a half miles more, and we are under a pressure of four atmospheres, or about sixty pounds to the square inch. Three and a half miles farther down, or ten and one half miles in all below the level of the sea, and we have a pressure upon us of eight atmospheres. Fourteen miles, and it will be sixteen atmospheres. At thirty-five miles the air will have the density of water, at forty-eight miles it will be as dense as mercury, and at fifty miles we shall have it as dense as gold."

"That will do!" I told him. "You know that we can never get down that far."

"I have no idea how far we can go down, Bill."

"You know that we could never stand such pressures as those."

"I know that. But, as a matter of fact, I don't know what the pressures are at those depths. Nor does any other man know. What I said a moment ago is, of course, according to the law; but there is something wrong with the law, founded upon that of Mariotte—as any physicist will tell you."

"What's wrong with it?"

"At any rate, the law breaks down as one goes upward, and I have no doubt that it will be found to do so as one descends below the level of the sea. If the densities of the atmosphere decrease in a geometrical ratio as the distances from sea-level increase in an arithmetical ratio, then, at a distance of only one hundred miles up, we should have virtually a perfect vacuum. The rarity there would be absolutely inconceivable. For the atmospheric density at that height would be only one billioneth of what it is at the earth's surface."

"And what is the real density there?"

"No man knows or can know," replied Rhodes, "until he goes up there to see. But meteors, rendered incandescent by the resistance they encounter, show that a state of things exists at that high altitude very different from the one that would be found there if our formulae were correct and our theories were valid. And so, I have no doubt, we shall find it down in Drome.

"Formulae are very well in their place," he went on, "but we should never forget, Bill, that they are often builded on mere assumption and that a theory is only a theory until experiment (or experience) has shown us that it is a fact. And that reminds me: do you know what Percival Lowell says about formulae?"

I said that I didn't.

"'Formulae,' says the great astronomer, 'are the anaesthetics of thought.'

"I commend that very highly," Milton Rhodes added, "to our fiction editors and our writers of short stories."

"But—"

"But me no buts, Bill," said Milton. "And what do your scientists know about the interior of this old earth that we inhabit, anyway? Forsooth, but very little, Billy, me lad. Why they don't even know what a volcano is. One can't make a journey into the interior of the earth on a scratch-pad and a lead-pencil, or, if he does, we may be pardoned if we do not give implicit credence to all that he chooses to tell us when he comes back. For instance, one of these armchair Columbuses (he made the journey in a machine called d²y by dx² and came out in China) says that he found the interior in a state of igneous fluidity. And another? Why, he tells us that the whole earth is as rigid as steel, that it is solid to the very core."

"It seems," said I, "to be a case of

"'Great contest follows, and much learned dust

Involves the combatants; each claiming truth,

And truth disclaiming both.'"

"The truth, in this case, is not yet known, of course," replied Milton Rhodes, "though I trust that you and I, Bill, are fated to learn it—some of it, I should say."

He smiled a queer, wan smile.

"Whether we are fated, also, to reveal it to the world, to our world—well, as for that, quién sabe?" he said.

"Then," I remarked, my fingers busy removing my ice-creepers, "what we read about the state of things in the interior of the earth—the temperature, the pressure, the density—then all that is pure theory?"

"Of course. How could it be anything else? All theory, save, that is, the mean density of the earth. And that mean density gives us something to think about, for it is just a little more than twice that of the surface materials. With all this enormous pressure that we hear so much about and the resultant increase of density with depth, the weight of the earth certainly ought to be more than only five and one half times that of a globe of equal size composed of nothing but water."[6]

"Kind of queer, all right," was my comment.

"It is queer, all right—as the old lady said when she kissed the cow. However, as old Dante has it, 'Son! our time asks thrifter using.'"

As the last words left his lips, I straightened up, the toothed shoes in my hand; and, as I did so, I started and cried:

"Hear that?"

Rhodes made no answer. For some moments we stood there in breathless expectation; but that low mysterious sound did not come again.

I said:

"What was that?"

"I wish that I knew, Bill. It was faint, it was—well, rather strange."

"It was more than that," I told him. "It seemed to me to be hollow—like the sound of some great door suddenly closing."

My companion looked at me rather quickly.

"Think so, Bill?" he said. "I thought 'twas like the sound of something falling."

There was a pause, one of many moments, during which pause we stood listening and waiting; but the gallery remained as silent as though it had never known the tread of any living thing.

"Well, Bill," said Milton Rhodes suddenly, "we shall never learn what Drome means if we stay in this spot. As for the creepers, I am going to leave mine here."

The place where he put them, a jutting piece of rock, was a conspicuous one; no one passing along the tunnel could possibly fail to notice the objects resting there. Mine I placed beside them, wondering as I did so if I should ever see this spot again.

Milton then wrote a short note, which recorded little more than our names, the date of our great discovery and that we were going farther. This, carefully folded, he placed beside the creepers and put a rock-fragment upon it. I wondered as I watched him whose would be the eyes that would discover it. Some inhabitant of this underground world, of course, and to such a one the record would be so much Greek. 'Twas utterly unlikely that any one from the world which we were leaving would ever see that record.

"And now, Bill," said Milton Rhodes, "down we go!"

And the next moment we were going—had begun our descent into this most mysterious and dreadful place.

Chapter 16

"ARE WE ENTERING DANTE'S INFERNO ITSELF?"

When Scranton came with his weird story of Old He, I was, I confess, not a little puzzled by his and Milton's reference to the extraordinary scientific possibilities that it presented. At first I could not imagine what on earth they meant. But I saw all those possibilities very clearly now, and a thousand more I imagined. I knew a wild joy, exultation, and yet at the same time the wonder and the mystery of it all made me humble and sober of spirit. I admit, too, that a fear—a fear for which I can find no adequate name—had laid its palsied and cold fingers upon me.

In a few moments we reached that spot where the angel had vanished. There we paused in curiosity, looking about; but nothing was to be seen. The gallery—which from this point swung sharp to the right and went down at a rather steep angle—was as silent as some interstellar void.

"Bill," smiled Milton Rhodes, "he is idle who might be better employed."

And he started on, or, rather, down. A hundred feet, however—we were now under the glacier—and he halted, turned his light full upon the left-hand wall, pointed and said:

"There you are, Bill—the writing on the wall."

I pressed to his side and stood staring. The rock there was as smooth, almost, as a blackboard; and upon it, traced in white chalk, were three inscriptions, with what we took to be names appended to them. That on the right was clearly a very recent one—had been placed there doubtless, at the most but a few days since, by that "cavernicolous Venus" that Milton Rhodes had seen for so fleeting a moment.

It was Milton's opinion that the characters were alphabetical ones, though at first I was at a loss to understand how they could be anything to him but an utter mystery. The letters were formed by straight lines only. The simplest character was exactly like a plain capital T, with, that is, the vertical line somewhat elongated. And it was made to perform the office of another letter by the simple expedient of standing it upon its head. The number of cross-lines increased up to six, three at the top and three at the bottom; and in one or two characters there were two vertical lines, placed close together.

"Evidently," observed Milton Rhodes, "this alphabet was constructed on strictly scientific principles."

For a space we stood there looking, wondering what was recorded in that writing so strange and yet, after all, so very and beautifully simple. Then Milton proceeded to place another record there, and, as he wrote, he hummed:

"'When I see a person's name

Scratched upon a glass,

I know he owns a diamond

And his father owns an ass.'"

The inscription finished, we resumed our descent. The way soon became steep and very difficult.

"That Aphrodite of yours," I observed as we made our way down a particularly rugged place, "must have the agility of a mountain-goat."

"Your rhetoric, Bill Barrington Carter, is horrible. Wait till you see her; you'll never be guilty of thinking of a goat when she has your thoughts."

"By the way, what kind of a light did the lady have?"

"Light? Don't know. I was so interested in the angel herself that I never once thought of the light that she carried. I don't know that she needs a light, anyway."

"What on earth are you talking about?"

"Why, I fancy, Bill, that her very presence would make even Pluto's gloomy realm bright and beautiful as the Garden of the Hesperides."

"Oh, gosh!" was my comment.

"Wait till you see her, Bill."

"I'll probably see her demon first."

"Hello!" exclaimed Milton.

"What now?"

"Look at that," said he, pointing. "I think we have the explanation of that mysterious sound, which you thought was like that of a great door suddenly closing: in her descent, she dislodged a rock-fragment, and that sound we heard must have been produced by the mass as it went plunging down."

"'Tis very likely, but—"

"Great Heaven!" he exclaimed.

"What is it now?"

"I wonder, Bill, if she lost her footing here and went plunging down, too."

I had not thought of that. And the possibility that that lovely and mysterious being might be lying somewhere down there crushed and bleeding, perhaps dying or lifeless, made me feel very sad. We sent the rays of our powerful lights down into those silent depths of the tunnel, but nothing was visible there, save the dark rock and those fearful shadows—fearful what with the secrets that might be hidden there.

"The answer won't come to us, Bill," said Milton.

"No," I returned as we started down; "we must go get it."

The gallery at this place had an average width of, I suppose, ten feet, and the height would average perhaps fifteen. The reader must not picture the walls, the roof and the floor as smooth, however. The rock was much broken, in some spots very jagged. The gallery pitched at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, which will give some idea of the difficulties encountered in the descent.

At length we reached what may be called the bottom; here the tunnel gave another turn and the pitch became a gentle slope. And there we found it, the rock-fragment, weighing perhaps two hundred pounds, that the angel had dislodged in her descent—which doubtless had been a hurried, a wild one.

"Thank Heaven!" I exclaimed, "she didn't come down with it!"

"Amen," said Milton.

Then a sudden thought struck me, a thought so unworthy that I did not voice it aloud. But to myself I said:

"It is possible that we may find ourselves, before we get out of this, wishing that she had."

If a human being, one of the very best of human beings even, were to voice his uttermost, his inmost thoughts, what a shameful, what a terrible monster they would call him—or her!

And the demon? Where was the angel's demon?

I could give no adequate description of those hours that succeeded. Steadily we continued the descent—now gentle, now steep, rugged and difficult. Sometimes the way became very narrow—indeed, at one point we had to squeeze our way through, so closely did the walls approach each other—then, again, it would open out, and we would find ourselves in a veritable chamber. And, in one of these, a lofty place, the vaulted roof a hundred feet or more above our heads, we made a discovery—a skeleton, quasi-human and with wings.

I made an exclamation of amazement.

"In the name of all that's wonderful and terrible," I cried, "are we entering Dante's Inferno itself?"

A faint smile touched the face of Rhodes.

"Don't you," he asked, "know what this is?"

"It must be the bones of a demon."

"Precisely. Grandfather Scranton, you'll remember, wounded that monster, up there by the Tamahnowis Rocks. Undoubtedly the bullet reached a vital spot, and these are that creature's bones."

"But," I objected, "these are human bones—a human skeleton with wings. According to Scranton, there was nothing at all human about the appearance of that thing which he called a demon."

"I admit," said Rhodes, "that this skeleton, at the first glance, has an appearance remarkably human—if, that is, one can forget the wings. The skull, I believe, more than anything else, contributes to that effect; and yet, at a second glance, even that loses its human semblance. For look at those terrible jaws and those terrible teeth. Who ever saw a human being with jaws and teeth like those? And look at the large scapulae and the small hips and the dwarfish, though strong, nether limbs. Batlike, Bill, strikingly so. And those feet. No toes; they are talons. And see that medial ridge on the sternum, for the attachment of the great pectoral muscles."

"A bat-man, then?" I queried.

"I should say a bat-ape."

"Or an ape-bat."

"Whichever you prefer," smiled Milton.

"Well," I added, "at any rate, we have a fair idea now of what a demon is like."

Little wonder, forsooth, that old Sklokoyum had declared that the thing was a demon from the white man's Inferno itself. And this creature so dreadful—well, the angel had one like it for a companion. When Rhodes saw her, she was, of course, without that terrible attendant: undoubtedly the next time, though—how long would it be?—she would not be alone.

"Oh, well," I consoled myself, "we have our revolvers."

Chapter 17

LIKE BALEFUL EYES

According to the aneroid, this great chamber is about four thousand feet above the level of the sea; in other words, we had already made a vertical descent of some four thousand feet. We were now about as high above the sea as the snout of the Nisqually Glacier. But what was our direction from the Tamahnowis Rocks? So sinuous had been this strange subterranean gallery, my orientation had been knocked into a cocked hat. It was Milton's belief, however, that we had been moving in a northerly direction, that we were still under the peak itself, probably under the great Emmons Glacier. I confess that I would not have cared to place a wager on the subject. Goodness only knew where we were, but of one thing there could be no doubt: we were certainly there.

"Why," I asked, "didn't we bring along a compass?"

"I think," returned Milton Rhodes, slipping loose his pack and lowering it to the floor, "that, as it was, we had a case of another straw and the camel's back's busted. Let's take a rest—it's twenty minutes after one—and a snack. And another thing: we wouldn't know whether to trust the compass or not."

"Why so?"

"Local attraction, Bill. Many instances of this could be given. One will suffice. Lieutenant Underwood, of the Wilkes Exploring Expedition, found a deviation of thirteen and a quarter points on the summit of the Cobu Rock, in the Feejees—one hundred and forty-nine degrees. The Island of Nairai was directly north, and yet, according to the compass, it bore southeast-by-south one quarter south, whilst, placed at the foot of the rock, that very same compass said Nairai bore north! So you see that that faithful friend of man, and especially of the mariner, has in its friendships some qualities that are remarkably human.

"Still," Rhodes added, "I wish that we had brought one along. Also, we should have brought a manometer, for the aneroid will be worthless after we have descended below sea-level. Oh, well, the boiling-point of water will give us the atmospheric pressure: under a pressure of two atmospheres, water boils at 249.5° Fahrenheit; under a pressure of three atmospheres, at 273.3°; four atmospheres, 291.2°; five, 306°; six, 318.2°; seven, 329.6°; eight, 339.5°; and so on. On the summit of Rainier, it boils at about 185°."

"I wish that we were headed for the summit," said I. "Eight atmospheres! When we reach that pressure—if we ever do—we'll be ten and a half miles below the level of the sea, won't we?"

Rhodes nodded.

"According to the law. But, as I remarked, there is something wrong with the law. 'Tis my belief that we shall be able to descend much deeper than ten and one half miles—that is, that the atmospheric pressure will permit us to do so."

"That qualification," I told him, "is very apropos, for there is no telling what the inhabitants of this underground world will permit us to do or will do to us—bat-apes or ape-bats, humans, or both."

"That, of course, is very true, Bill."

"And," said I, "we won't need a manometer, or we won't need to ascertain the boiling-point of water, to know that the pressure is increasing. Our eardrums will make us painfully aware of that fact."

"When that comes, swallow, Billy, swallow, and the pain will be no more."

"Swallow?"

"Swallow," Milton nodded.

"Great Barmecide, swallow what?"

"Swallow the pain, Bill. For look you. Deglutition opens the Eustachian tube. Some of the dense air enters the drum and counteracts the pressure on the outside of the membrane. You keep swallowing. The air in the drum becomes as dense as that outside; there is no pressure on the membrane now—or, rather, the pressures are in perfect equilibrium—and, presto and abracadabra, the pain is gone."

"Who would have thunk it?"

"A gink," said Rhodes, "going into compressed air had better think it, or do it without thinking it. He may have his eardrums burst in if he doesn't."

"But why does the Eustachian tube open only when we swallow?"

"To shut from the ear the sounds produced in the throat and mouth. If the tube were always open, our heads would be so many bedlams."

"Wonderful Nature!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, she does fairly well," admitted Milton Rhodes.

"And I suppose," I said, "that the pain in the ears experienced by those who ascend high mountains is to be explained in the same way, only vice versa. They too ought to swallow."

"Of course. At lofty heights, the dense air in the drum presses the membrane outwards. Swallowing permits the dense air to escape. One swallows until the pressure on the inside equals that of the rarefied outside air, and, hocus-pocus and presto, the pain has evaporated."

"I hope," I said, "that all our difficulties will be as easily resolved."

"Hey!" cried Milton.

"What's the matter now?"

"Stop swallowing that water! We've got food sufficient for a week, but we haven't got water to last a week or anything like a week. Keep up that guzzling, and your canteen will be empty before sunset."

"Sunset? Sweet Pluto! Sunrise, sunset or high noon, it's all the same here in Erebus."

"You'll say that it's very different," dryly remarked Milton Rhodes, "if you find the fingers of Thirst at your throat."

"Surely there is water in this place—somewhere."

"Most certainly there is. But we don't know how far we are from that somewhere. And, until we get to it, our policy, Bill, must be one of watchful conservation."

A silence ensued. I sank into profound and gloomy meditation. Four thousand feet down. A mile deeper, and where would we be? The prospect certainly was, from any point of view, dark and mysterious enough, dark and mysterious enough, forsooth, to satisfy the wildest dream of a Poe or a Doré. To imagine a Dante's Inferno, however, is one thing, and to find yourself in it is quite another. These are things, by the way, that should not be confounded. 'Tis true, we weren't in it yet; but we were on our way.

I hasten to say, though, that I had no thoughts of turning back. No such thought, even the slightest, was entertained for one single moment. I did not blink, that was all. I believed our enterprise was a very dangerous one; I believed it was very probable that we should never return to the light of the sun. Such thoughts are not pleasant, are, indeed, horrible. And yet, in the very horror of them, I found a strange fascination. Yes, we might leave our bones in this underground world, in this very gallery even. Even so, we should have our own exceeding great reward. For ours would be the guerdon of dying in a stranger, a more wonderful quest than any science or discovery ever had known. A strange reward, you say mayhap, and perhaps you wonder what such a reward can mean to a dying or a dead man. All I have to say is that, if you do, you know naught of that flaming spirit which moves the scientist and the discoverer, that such as you should never—indeed, can ever—seek the dread secrets of Nature or journey to her hidden places.

We rested there for exactly one hour. The temperature, by the way, was 57° Fahrenheit. When we resumed the descent, I was using the phosphorus-lamp instead of the electric one. It was not likely that even our electric lights would fail us; still there was no guessing what might happen, and it might be well, I thought, to adopt a policy of light-conservation also. As for the phosphorus lamps, these would furnish light for six months. In this, they were simply wonderful; but there was one serious drawback: the light emitted was a feeble one.

The manufacture of this lamp (at one time used, I believe, in Paris, and probably elsewhere, in magazines containing explosives) is simplicity itself. Into a glass phial is put a small piece of phosphorus. The phial is filled two-thirds full of olive-oil, heated to the boiling point. The thing is hermetically corked, and there you are. When you wish to use your wonderful little pharos, you simply allow air to enter. The space above the oil becomes luminous then. You replace the cork, and the phial remains sealed until there is occasion to restore the waning light, which you do, of course, by allowing more air to enter. As has been said, such a phial will furnish light for a half-year.

These phials of ours were set each in a metal frame and protected by a guard in such fashion that it would take a heavy blow to break the glass. When not in use, they were kept in strong metal cylinders. Of course, the electric light could be turned on at any instant.

There were places where the gallery pitched in a way to make the head swim, many spots in which we had to exercise every caution; a false step might have spelled irrevocable disaster. I wondered how the angel had passed down those difficult places, and many pictures of that mysterious creature, as I wondered, came and went. Well, she had passed down and that without mishap. Where was she now? Indeed, where were we ourselves?

Steadily we toiled our downward way. For a long distance, the gallery ran with but slight deviation either to the right or to the left, though the descent was much broken; I mean now was steep and now gentle, now at some angle intermediate. Rhodes thought that we were now moving in an easterly direction; it might have been north, east, south or west for all I knew. Not a trickle of water had we seen, not even a single drop, which I confess caused some unpleasant thoughts to flicker through my mind.

The light clung to them like wraiths of fog, to be slowly dissipated, as they advanced, in little streams and eddies behind them.

At five o'clock we were two thousand feet above sea-level; at half past seven, about half a thousand. And we then decided to call it a day. Nor was I at all sorry to do so, even though we might be near some strange, even great discovery, for I was very tired, and sore from the top of my head to the end of my toes. I was in fair trim, and so was Milton Rhodes; but it would take us some time to get used to such work as this.

A very gentle current of air, so slight that it required experiment to detect it, was passing down the gallery. The temperature here was 62° Fahrenheit.

We had stopped before a cavity in the wall, and, in that little chamber, we passed the night, one holding watch whilst the other slept.

My dreams were dreadful, but otherwise the night was as peaceful as any that ever passed over Eden. Neither Rhodes nor I, during that strange, eerie vigil there in the heart of the living rock, heard even the faintest, the most fleeting sound. As the watcher sat there waiting and listening, whilst the minutes slowly passed, he found himself—at any rate, I know that I did—almost wishing that some pulsation would come, so heavy and awful was the stillness of the place.

But a sound we were to hear. We had been journeying for about an hour and a half and had just passed below sea-level. In that place Rhodes had left the aneroid. Of a sudden Milton, who was leading the way, halted with a low, sharp interjection for silence. When my look struck him, he was standing in an attitude of the most riveted attention.

"There!" he exclaimed. "Did you hear that, Bill?"

The air had pulsed to the faintest sound; now all was still again.

"What was it?" I asked, my voice a whisper.

"Don't know, Bill. Haven't an idea. There!"

Again that gentle pulsation touched the ear, and again it was gone. And a strange thing was that, for the life of me, I could not have told whether it came from below or from behind us.

"There it is again!" said Rhodes.

I flashed on my electric light, to the full power.

"A whisper!" I exclaimed. "Angel, demon, human or what? And, great Heaven, Milton!"

"What now, Bill?" he asked quickly.

"It's something behind us!"

He started. He turned his light up the tunnel, and for some moments we stood peering intently. Not a moving thing was to be seen there, however—only the moving shadows.

"Again!" said Milton Rhodes. "But it isn't a whisper, Bill. And it didn't come from up there."

"The thing," I told him, "could be hiding in shadow—hiding and watching us."

"It's not up there; it's ahead."

"Wherever it is, what on earth can it be? Whatever it is, what does this mean?"

"That we shall learn."

We resumed our descent, every sense, you may be sure, on the qui vive. The tunnel here inclined rather steeply; a little space, however, and the dip was a gentle one. The sounds soon became one steady, unbroken whisper; then a dull melancholy murmur.

Abruptly Milton Rhodes stopped. He turned to me, and he laughed.

"Know now what it is, Bill?"

This was not a moment, I thought, for laughter or anything like it.

"Sounds like the growling of beasts," I said, peering intently down the passage. "I wonder if the angel—there are two kinds of angel, you know—has turned loose a whole pack, or herd, or flock, of those demons."

To my surprise and astonishment, Rhodes burst into outright laughter.

"Well?" said I rather testily. "Why all the cachinnation?"

"Forgive me, Bill. But it isn't a pack of demons—or a flock of those charming creatures."

"How on earth do you know what it is?"

"It's water."

"Water?"

"Yes. H₂O."

"Water? I'm from Missouri. You'd better see that your revolver is handy. Who ever heard water make a shivery sound like that?"

"You'll see that I'm right, Bill, though I think that you'll hear first."

Ere long there could be no doubt about it: Milton was right; it was the sound of falling water. I was not in a hurry, however, to admit the fact. I had to let myself down gracefully. At length, though, it was impossible to hold out any longer.

"Must be at quite a distance," I said; "sounds carry a long way in tubes, and that is what this tunnel is."

Steadily we made our way along and down, and, just as steadily, the sound increased in volume. The gallery made several sharp turns, and then of a sudden the sound rose from a loud growl to a roar, and we fetched up and an exclamation burst from us.

It is impossible to convey to the reader the eerie effect of that sudden, strange transition. One moment we were in the gallery; the next we had issued from it and stood in a most tremendous cavern, or, rather, we stood on a ledge or a shelf high up on one of the walls of that cavern.

The opposite side was but dimly visible. The roof swept across a hundred feet or more above our heads. And the bottom? I gazed at the edge of the rock-shelf on which we stood, out and down into that yawning abyss, and I felt a shudder run through me and one through my heart. The roar of the falling waters came from our right. We turned the rays of our lights in that direction, but nothing was visible there, save the dark limestone rock and Cimmerian blackness.

We then moved to the edge and turned our lights down into those awful depths—to depths perhaps never before touched by ray of light since time began. Far down the beams went plunging and farther still; but we could not see the bottom. Bottom there was, however, for the water was tumbling and growling down there.

I was glad to draw back from the edge, and I leaned against the rock-wall and gazed upon the dark scene in wonder, amazement and in awe.

In a few moments Rhodes joined me.

"Well, what do you think of it, Bill?"

"Milton, this is awful."

"It is. I have never seen a sight more strange and terrible."

"And the angel?" I queried.

"What about her, Bill?"

"How on earth did she make her way through this awful place?"

"Why, along this ledge on which we are standing. There is no other way."

I glanced along that shelf, and I did not like what I saw.

"She's got a better head," I told him, "than I have got. Why didn't we bring along an airplane? I wonder if the way lies down or up, up towards the fall."

We bent over and examined the rock.

"Down," I observed.

"Down," Milton nodded.

Whilst I stood there pondering this and wondering what was down there in the blackness of that frightful chasm, Rhodes moved off to the right and examined the ledge there.

"And up too," he announced. "Somebody or some thing, or both, has gone up towards the fall."

"Great Heaven, if we get caught between them!"

"The programme is becoming interesting," Milton Rhodes admitted.

For a time we stood in silence, then he said:

"I suggest, Bill, that we go up and take a look-see."

I nodded. So far as I could perceive, one way was just as good—I mean just as bad—as the other.

That shelf was, as a whole, not an easy thing to negotiate, and some spots made my head swim and made me wish mightily that I was somewhere else. Undoubtedly, some thousands of years in the dim and mysterious past, the stream once flowed at this level; at any rate, this is the only theory that, in my opinion, will explain that ledge, and something which we were soon to discover. Not that I ever spent much time in worrying about theories and hypotheses; the facts themselves gave me enough to think about, enough and to spare.

At times the shelf would be twenty or thirty feet in width or even more, and then the going was easy enough; but at other times the space would contract to something like a yard, and then it was quite another story. Indeed, once or twice Milton Rhodes himself, an experienced and fearless mountain-climber, was glad, I believe, that the way was no narrower. As for what those moments meant to me—well, I never posed as a mountaineer or a steeple-jack.

For fifteen minutes or so, I believe, we toiled along that terrible place, and then of a sudden came the end. Nothing before us but the bare precipitous rocky wall and the black profundity of the chasm, and up above a ghostly thing crawling, crawling down, ever down, and filling the place with thunder—the fall itself. Where did the water come from? From one of the glaciers? And, a question more interesting, where did it go?

"We must go back," said Milton Rhodes. "The road to Drome does not lie here."

Scarcely had we turned when I started, and then I cried out sharply.

"Look!" I said, pointing with my alpenstock down the cavern. "Look at that!"

Far down the cave a light was gleaming, where a moment before no light had been. And on the instant another shone beside it. A second or two, however, and they had vanished.

"Moving," was Rhodes' explanation. "The bearers of those lights moved behind something."

"No!" I told him. "They didn't move. They just went out. And look! Again!"

There the lights were again—gleaming at us for all the world like the dim and baleful eyes of some waiting monster.

Chapter 18

"THAT'S WHERE THEY ARE WAITING FOR US!"

For some moments those yellow eyes gleamed at us, then vanished. The lids of that waiting monster (so to speak) had closed over them.

I had watched them very intently, and I was sure that there had been no movement of the eyes themselves. Milton, however, was just as sure that they had moved.

"To the right or to the left?" I queried.

"Neither. Down," said Rhodes.

"Then it must have been straight down."