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stone floor below, where he lay motionless.
Tanar turned to Jude. "We cannot help him/' he said. ' 'Come,
we had better get out of this as quickly as possible.9'
Feeling for each new handhold and foothold the two climbed
slowly up the short shaft and presently found themselves in the
tunnel, which Mow had described. Darkness was absolute.
"Do you know the way to the surface?" asked Jude.
"No," said Tanar. "I was depending upon Mow to lead
us."
' 'Then we might as well be back in the cavern,'' said Jude.
"Not I," said Tanar, "for at least I am satisfied now that the
Coripies will not eat me alive, if they eat me at all."
Groping his way through the darkness and followed closely by
Jude, Tanar crept slowly through the Stygian darkness. The
tunnel seemed interminable. They became very hungry and
there was no food, though they would have relished even the
filthy fragments of decayed fish that the Coripies had hurled
them while they were prisoners.
"Almost," said Tanar, "could I eat a toad."
They became exhausted and slept, and then again they
crawled and stumbled onward. There seemed no end to the
interminable, inky corridor.
For long distances the floor of the tunnel was quite level, but
then again it would pitch downward, sometimes so steeply that
they had difficulty in clinging to the sloping floor. It turned and
twisted as though its original excavators had been seldom of the
same mind as to the direction in which they wished to proceed.
On and on the two went; again they slept, but whether that
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meant that they had covered a great distance, or that they were
becoming weak from hunger, neither knew.
When they awoke they went on again for a long time in
silence, but the sleep did not seem to have refreshed them much,
and Jude especially was soon exhausted again.
"I cannot go much further,9' he said. "Why did you him me
into this crazy escapade?"
"You need not have come/' Tanar reminded him, "and if you
had not you would by now be out of your misery since doubtless
all the prisoners have long since been torn to pieces and
devoured by the Coripies of the grotto of Xax."
Jude shuddered.' "I should not mind being dead,9' he said,
"but I should hate to be torn to pieces by those horrible
creatures."
"This is a much nicer death," said Tanar, "for when we are
sufficiently exhausted we shall simply sleep and awake no
more."
"I do not wish to die," wailed Jude.
"You have never seemed very happy," said Tanar. "I should
think one as unhappy as you would be glad to die."
' 'I enjoy being unhappy,'' said Jude.' 'I know that I should be
most miserable were I happy and anyway I should much rather
be alive and unhappy than dead and unable to know that I was
unhappy.''
"Take heart," said Tanar. "It cannot be much further to the
end of this long corridor. Mow came through it and he did not
say that it was so great a length that he became either exhausted
or hungry and he not only traversed it from end to end in one
direction, but he had to turn around and retrace his steps after
he reached the opening into the cavern which we left."
"The Coripies do not eat much; they are accustomed to
starving," said Jude, "and they sleep less than we."
"Perhaps you are right," said Tanar, "but I am sure that we
are nearing the end."
"I am," said Jude, "but not the end that I had wished."
Even as they discussed the matter they were moving slowly
along, when far ahead Tanar discerned a slight luminosity.
' 'Look,'' he said,' 'there is light. We are nearing the end.''
The discovery instilled new strength into both the men and
with quickened steps they hastened along the tunnel in the
direction of the promised escape. A&they advanced, the light
became more apparent until finally they came to the point where
the tunnel they had been traversing opened into a large
corridor, which was filled with a subdued light from occasional
patches of phosphorescent rock in walls and ceiling, but neither
to the right nor the left could they see any sign of daylight.
"Which way now?" demanded Jude.
Tanar shook his head. "I do not know," he said.
"At least I shall not die in that awful blackness," wailed Jude,
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and perhaps that factor of their seemingly inevitable doom had
weighed most heavily upon the two Pellucidarians, for, living as
these people do beneath the brilliant rays of a perpetual
noonday sun, darkness is a hideous and abhorrent thing to
them, so unaccustomed are they to it.
"In this light, however slight it may be," said Tanar, "I can no
longer be depressed. I am sure that we shall escape."
"But in which direction?" again demanded Jude.
"I shall turn to the right," said Tanar.
Jude shook his head. "That probably is the wrong direction,"
he said.
"If you know that the right direction lies to the left," said
Tanar, ' 'let us go to the left.''
"I do not know," said Jude; "doubtless either direction is
wrong."
"All right," said Tanar, with a laugh. "We shall go to the
right,'' and, turning, he set off at a brisk walk along the large
corridor.
"Do you notice anything, Jude?" asked Tanar.
"No. Why do you ask?" demanded the Himean.
(
'I smell fresh air from the upper world,'' said Tanar, * 'and if
I am right we must be near the mouth of the tunnel.'9
Tanar was almost running now; exhaustion was forgotten in
the unexpected hope of immediate deliverance. To be out in the
fresh air and the light of day! To be free from the hideous
darkness and the constant menace of recapture by the hideous
monsters of the underworld! And across that bright hope, like a
sinister shadow, came the numbing fear of disappointment.
What, if, after all, the breath of air which was now clear and
fresh in their nostrils should prove to be entering the corridor
through some unscalable shaft, such as the Well of Sounding
Water into which he had fallen upon his entrance into the
country of the Buried People, or what, if, at the moment of
escape, they should meet a party of the Coripies?
So heavily did these thoughts weigh upon Tanar's mind that
he slackened his speed until once again he moved in a slow walk.
"What is the matter?" demanded Jude. "A moment ago you
were running and now you are barely crawling along, Do not tell
me that you were mistaken and that, after all, we are not
approaching the mouth of the corridor/9
"I do not know," said Tanar. "We may be about to meet a
terrible disappointment and if that is true I wish to delay it as
long as possible. It would be a terrible thing to have hope
crushed within our breasts now."
"I suppose it would," said Jude, "but that is precisely what I
have been expecting."
"You, I presume, would derive some satisfaction from
disappointment," said Tanar.
"Yes," said Jude, "I suppose I would. It is my nature."
"Then prepare to be unhappy," cried Tanar, suddenly, "for
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here indeed is the mouth of the tunnel."
He had spoken just as he had rounded a turn in the corridor,
and when Jude came to his side the latter saw daylight creeping
into the corridor through an opening just in front of them an
opening beyond which he saw the foliage of growing things and
the blue sky of Pellucidar.
Emerging again to the light of the sun after their long
incarceration in the bowels of the earth, the two men were
compelled to cover their eyes with their hands, while they slowly
accustomed themselves again to the brilliant light of the
noonday sun of Pellucidar.
When he was able to uncover his eyes and look about him,
Tanar saw that the mouth of the tunnel was high upon the
precipitous side of a lofty mountain. Below them wooded
ravines ran down to a mighty forest, just beyond which lay the
sparkling waters of a great ocean that, curving upward, merged
in the haze of the distance.
Faintly discernible in the mid-distance an island raised its [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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