Read Ebook: The Drone A Play in Three Acts by Mayne Rutherford

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Ebook has 594 lines and 28901 words, and 12 pages

For ten or fifteen minutes we plodded on without a word, moving at a snail's pace in our anxiety, and not aware of any change in our environment. The walls were still as polished and regular as ever; the blackness was as absolute and as unbroken; the occasional jarring of the earth continued at uneven intervals, growing a little more pronounced than before, but disturbing us less, since we were now becoming used to it.

Then, unexpectedly, the gallery curved, turning almost at right angles; and, as we felt our way around the bend, it curved again at an even sharper angle; then it curved once more, while, as if to add to our bewilderment, we discovered several side-galleries branching off in various directions.

At the same time, the thuddings of the earth grew more severe than ever and they were accompanied by rumblings, roars, and reverberations of terrifying force and insistency. Crash after crash burst upon our ears as if from some remote storm-center--crash after crash that echoed and re-echoed eerily in that narrow corridor, until our ear-drums ached from the strain and our agitated hearts pumped with a thumping rapidity.

What could it be?--some volcanic disturbance in the heart of the earth? So we were inclined to believe as, sweating with fear, we halted for a consultation. In another moment, might we not feel the reek of sulphur in our nostrils and gasp our last beneath the suffocating fumes?

For several minutes we conferred, but could reach no conclusion. Standing there against the invisible cavern wall, with the earth almost constantly quivering and with low, gruff, distant detonations dinning upon our ears, we found it difficult, almost impossible to exchange ideas. That terror which is close to madness was upon us both; and since the most difficult thing to do was to do nothing at all, it was not long before we were on our way again.

A moment later we were to receive a sharp surprise. Groping around another bend in the gallery, we were startled to see, far ahead of us, an indistinct patch of light. Vaguely rectangular in shape, and of an unearthly greenish hue, it wavered and flickered strangely, at times almost disappearing, at times flaring to a hectic, momentary brilliance, shot through with flashes of red, orange, and violet. And, simultaneously, the far-off thunders grew more deep-throated, with occasional snarls and reports as of siege-artillery.

"Sacred Catfish!" muttered Clay in awe-stricken tones. "You could almost believe the old yarns about Satan and his court of devils!"

I must confess that, hard-headed man of science though I pride myself on being, a wave of superstitions fright went through me at these words; some old ancestral terror had gripped me until my legs shook and all but sank beneath me. Nevertheless, I strove desperately to rally what remained of my strength.

"Court of devils?" I tossed back, mockingly. "The only devils are in your imagination, Phil! It's clear enough what's wrong; the earth is suffering from a little fit of indigestion, something out of gear down here in her volcanic entrails. Most likely it'll clear up any moment."

Hardly were these words out of my mouth when the earth gave a lurch so violent that we were both knocked off our feet. And for one instant, the light from down the gallery became a sun-like illumination, by whose glare I caught a glimpse of Clay's harried face, scarred and red with newly clotted blood, with one eye half closed, and with a long gash across the great dome of his forehead.

Probably I did not present a more inviting sight, for, as we both picked ourselves up from the cavern floor, he exclaimed, "Say, old fellow, I ought to have your picture now! The way you're looking, you'd scare off a brigade of fighting Hottentots!"

Not thanking him for this compliment, I started away again along the gallery, whose walls were now and then dimly visible by the flickering light from ahead. All lingering idea that it was the channel of a subterranean river was now dissipated! To our astonishment, we saw that the ceiling formed a perfect triangle, an inverted V like the roof of a house! Here was the handiwork of man--or else we were both dreaming! But what man before us had penetrated to these abysmal labyrinths?

But it was useless to speculate. Let us go forward and find out! It is difficult for me today to say how Clay and I, fear-stricken and wounded, found courage to press on through that hideous, down-sloping cavern, where at any moment we might expect annihilation. Perhaps it was that we realized the impossibility of retracing our footsteps through the darkness; perhaps it was that the light ahead, mysterious and frightening as it was, seemed less to be dreaded than the gloom behind; perhaps it was that curiosity, which so often is the father of recklessness, led us on moth-like toward the seduction of the far-off radiance.

In any case, we did continue to move forward, though very slowly and cautiously; and as by degrees we approached the light, we were relieved to find that the earth trembled less violently and less often, and that the illumination down the passageway grew more steady and distinct.

"See, Phil, I told you the earthquakes would be over soon!" I reassured my companion; and he, not venturing a reply, merely quickened his footsteps, as if in tacit agreement.

Little did either of us foresee how much more violent, how much more amazing, how much more terrifying our adventures would be after we had gained the longed-for haven of the light.

The Brink of the Abyss

At last we were drawing near the mysterious light. It had now ceased to flicker and shone with a steady greenish-yellow glare, so bright as to illuminate the gallery with a weird radiance, wherein we could clearly distinguish each other's features. The source of the light, however, remained an enigma; while we, pressing on with increasing boldness, were resolved to discover its nature or perish in the attempt.

In a few minutes we had reached the end of the corridor, and, turning sharply, we found ourselves in a wider passageway penetrated by scores of cross-galleries and ending, about a hundred yards beyond, in a perfect blaze of greenish light.

"Lord in Heaven!" exclaimed the awe-stricken Clay, as we reached the new thoroughfare. "Are we dreaming?--or am I simply crazy?"

"Guess we're both crazy!" I muttered. And then, shielding my eyes from the glare and nerving myself for a supreme effort, I said, "Come on; let's find out what's what!"

"Might as well die exploring!" he conceded grimly as we resumed our pilgrimage.

I now noticed for the first time that Clay was walking with a slight limp; I also noticed that his rude mining costume was not only soiled with great streaks and blotches of black, but was ripped and torn in a hundred places, exposing the bare skin every here and there, so that he looked a perfect ragamuffin. But my own clothes, I could see, were in an equally sorry condition.

As we slowly covered the hundred yards to the end of the second gallery, Clay's mind seemed to center on somber thoughts. I could see the bleak furrows on his long, lean, battered face; I could read his disconsolate expression as, with a great hairy hand, he thoughtfully stroked his dishevelled red locks. But I was little prepared for his next words.

"Say, Frank, if anything happens to me, see that my old mother back in Denver gets my watch as a remembrance. And tell her I was thinking of her at the last--"

"The devil I will! Tell her yourself! What's getting into you, Phil?" I interrupted, almost savagely. "Haven't you as good a chance as I of getting out of this infernal mess?"

"I suppose I have, at that!" he acknowledged, wryly. "Guess it's both of us, or neither!"

At this point our conversation was interrupted by our arrival at the end of the second gallery, where we were to make a discovery compared with which our previous surprises appeared insignificant.

I remember that it was Clay, who, preceding me by half a dozen feet, was the first to stop short and gasp out his astonishment.

"God above!" I heard his swift exclamation; and I observed how, stricken all but speechless, he gaped open-mouthed into the green-lighted vacancy beyond. "God above!" he murmured a second time, before a dumbfounded silence overwhelmed him.

At a bound I had gained his side; and I too, as I gazed in bewilderment before me, seemed to have lost my tongue. "Merciful Heavens!" was all I could mumble in my amazement. "Merciful Heavens, what's this?" And I rubbed my eyes and pinched my sides, to make sure that I was not dreaming.

How shall I describe that stupendous scene which suddenly unfolded before us? Surely, the discoverer of a new planet could not have had a deeper sense of awe and wonder! For it was literally a new world that we beheld. The gallery had ended as if on the brink of a precipice; we were staring down, through yellowish-green abysses, into a chasm as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon of Arizona--as wide and deep, but by no means as irregular--by no means so narrow at the bottom! Unlike the great gorge of the Colorado River, it showed no unevenness of structure; sheer stone walls, straight and precipitous as the walls of a room, shot down beneath us a mile deep; sheer stone walls, equally precipitous and straight, rose opposite us at a distance of more than a mile, and between them spread the bare, level floor of the cavern, which reached to our right and left to an incalculable remoteness.

An unspeakably weird sensation overcame me as I gazed, in the thunderstricken silence, at that tremendous excavation. There was such an atmosphere of unreality about it all that only by degrees did my startled senses absorb the details--the gentle curve of the ceiling, which, arching but a few hundred feet above us, revealed fantastic figures, vaguely man-shaped, that stood out sharply in cameo--the multitude of greenish-yellow bulbs which, square or rounded or elongated into rods and spirals, studded the walls by the thousand and hung in long strings from above--the small round openings like the portholes of a vessel, which dotted the opposite side of the cavern in inestimable myriads, confronting us in scores of horizontal lines, and the little door-like apertures that opened at regular intervals all along the cavern floor.

Long and intently we gazed into that miraculous abyss; many minutes must have passed while we stood there spellbound. It was I that first regained some measure of composure; with a shock, I saw my companion standing entranced, so near the brink of the precipice that I trembled for his safety.

With a hasty gesture, I pulled him back a step. "Better watch out, Phil!" I warned, "else I won't have even your watch to bring back to your mother!"

Like a man in a daze, he wiped a grimy hand over his carrot-colored hair. "Good thing she can't see me now!" he gasped. "Lord preserve me! she'd be offering up prayers for the soul of her poor boy lost in Hell!"

"Lost in Hell is right!" I acknowledged, grimly.

"If I hadn't bit my lips to make sure I was alive, Frank," he continued, with an ugly grimace of his scarred face, "I'd think we had both died and were wandering around somewhere in the devil's back yard!"

Before I had had time to reply, fresh alarm swept aver us both; once more the earth wavered violently and the distant thunders and detonations burst out with renewed fury. At the same time, a shaft of violet light, from some unknown source, shot across the cavern with lightning swiftness. Then, in the barest fraction of a second, waves of orange light and of vermilion followed; then, while Clay and I stared at each other in consternation, the greenish-yellow luminaries all flickered and seemed about to be extinguished. Simultaneously, our ears were struck by a distant blast of sound, a little like the notes of a bugle; and the next instant, as the greenish-yellow lights regained their former brilliancy, a scene of startling activity became visible on the cavern floor.

Had we obeyed the dictates of our hammering hearts, we should have turned and fled. The impulse to flee was, indeed, powerful within us; but partly because we did not wish to seem cowards in each other's eyes, and partly because of our insatiable curiosity, we fought down our self-protective instinct, flung ourselves full-length upon the gallery floor, crept to the edge of the abyss, and gazed across. And there, in that recumbent position, like small boys secretly watching a ball game, we witnessed a spectacle so unimaginably strange that I cannot recall it even today without a shudder of the old horror.

Thunderbolts

From our vantage-point near the cavern roof, we could not clearly follow all that was happening a mile beneath; however, we were able to observe more than a little. In the beginning, we were astonished to see the doors at the base of the excavation all thrown open, to admit a multitude of black ant-like mites, which we did not at first recognize as human beings. So minute were they, in view of their distance, that they might have been mere swarming insects. To discover much about their appearance or costume was out of the question; nevertheless, we were not long in learning their nature, for they immediately drew themselves up into precise rectangular formations, each of which was divided into scores of long, mathematically even columns.

"Sure enough, an army!" agreed Clay, his mouth agape till the lower jaw seemed ready to drop off. "I'll swear they look like the devil's own recruits! Just see the banners gleaming!"

"Say, look down there!" my companion ejaculated the next second, leaning over the edge of the void until I feared he would take a mile-long fall. "There's not one army! There's two!"

"Sure you're not seeing double, old pal?" I demanded. And then, at the risk of losing my own balance, I leaned out fully as far as Clay, staring into the dreadful chasm directly below.

It was indeed as my friend had said! Just under us was a second army, its innumerable multitudes arrayed in neat rectangles, and its banners flashing in vermilion and green!

From the opposite sides of the cavern the two great masses of men, each composed of scores of thousands of individuals, were approaching one another with slow and gracefully co?rdinated movements. Had they a hostile intent?--or were they merely on friendly parade? So quietly were they advancing that both Clay and I leapt to the latter explanation. It would not be long before we would learn our mistake!

"I'd have said he was dafter than a mad hatter!"

"Chances are we'd have had him locked up!" agreed Clay. "Say, do you know--"

But he was not to complete his sentence. For at this point a never-to-be-forgotten demonstration burst forth.

It was as if the entire cavern had shot all at once into flames. It was as if a thunder-storm of unparalleled fury had flared simultaneously at a hundred points. There came a wave of dazzling white light which flashed across the cavern on a jagged course and all but blinded us; then, while our stunned senses reeled beneath the blow, we were smitten by a clap of thunder so severe that our ear-drums fairly rang. Almost instantly, other detonations followed, with a banging as of tremendous explosions; and new lightnings streaked and blazed, with red and green and orange coruscations as their long twisting lances zigzagged from wall to wall. At the same time, the ground began to shake once more, to shake so violently that we had to cling desperately to a rocky ledge; and from moment to moment the tremors increased in severity. At last we could understand the source of the earthquakes!

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