CHAPTER III

At the beginning of the eleventh morning in the valley, Kirby had again

posted himself close to the mouth of the black tunnel, and again felt

that hidden eyes were observing him.

But this morning differed from the first morning, because now, for the

first time, he was ready to do something about the watcher or watchers.

Exploration of the whole valley had not helped. Therefore, there lay at

his feet a considerable coil of rope, the manufacture of which from

plaited strands of the tough grass in his Eden had taken him whole days.

With what patience he could find, he was waiting for the gigantic spout

of milky-colored, perfumed water which would mean that the geyser had

gone off and would erupt no more for exactly forty-four minutes.

Eleven days in the valley!

While he waited, Kirby considered them. Who had made the beautiful

footprints beside him, when he had slept at last after his arrival here?

Why had so many of the queer, fuzzy topped shrubs with immense

yam-shaped roots, which grew here been taken away during that first

sleep, and during all his other periods of sleep? Who had taken them?

Early in his stay, he had learned that the tuberlike roots were good to

eat and would sustain life, and he supposed that the unseen people of

the valley took them for food. But who were these people of the valley?

Who had laid beside him during his first sleep the immense lily with

perfume like that which came with the milky geyser spray--that spray of

death and delight mingled? Why had someone scratched a line in the earth

from him directly to the distant orifice of the geyser? Was this, as he

believed, a signal to come not only to the edge of the orifice, _but to

lower himself down into its depths_? And if the line were intended as a

signal, did the persons who came to the valley while he slept, always

eluding him, wish him well or mean to do him harm?

Last question of all: had the beautiful girl's face he believed he had

seen just once, been real or an hallucination? It had been while he was

kneeling at the very edge of the geyser cone, staring down its many

colored throat, that the vision had appeared. Misty white amidst the

green gloom, the face had been turned up to him, smiling, its lips

forming a kiss, and its great eyes beckoning. Had the face been real or

a dream?

Eleven days in the valley! Now, with his braided rope ready at last, he

was going to do something which might help to answer his questions.

* * * * *

Kirby reached out and began to run his grass rope, yard by yard, through

his hands, searching carefully for any flaw. A canyon wren made the air

sweet above him, while the morning sun began to wink and blink against

the shadows which still lay against the face of the guardian cliffs.

Kirby glanced at his watch and got up.

Crossing beyond the mouth of the geyser, he grinned good morning at his

friend the Conquistadore, and marched on into the shade of the live oak

which grew nearest the geyser. Here he made one end of his rope fast to

the gnarled trunk, inspected his pistol, patted his tunic to make sure

that the cylinder of gold was safe, then stood by to await the geyser.

With the passing of three minutes there came from the still empty

orifice a sonorous rumbling. Kirby grinned.

From deep in the earth issued a sound of fizzing and bubbling, and

then, to the accompaniment of subterranean thunder, burst loose the

milky, upward column which had never ceased to awe the man who watched

so eagerly this morning. As the titanic jet leaped skyward now, the

slanting rays of the sun caught it, and turned the water, fanning out,

into a fire opal, into a sheet of living color.

Kirby, hard headed to the last, drew from the supply in one pocket of

his tunic, a strip of one of the tuberlike roots, and munched it.

The thunder ceased. The waters receded.

After that Kirby hesitated not a second. Promptly he moved forward,

flung his coil of line down into the geyser tunnel, and swung on to the

line. By the time he had swallowed the last bite of his breakfast, the

world he knew had been left behind, and he was climbing down to a new.

* * * * *

It became at once apparent that the gorgeously colored, glassy-smooth

throat glowed with tints which were unfamiliar to him. He could perceive

these new shades of color, yet had no name for them.

As he stopped after fifty feet to breathe, the color phenomenon made him

wonder if the tuber roots he had been eating had affected his vision;

then decided they had not. In addition to food value, the roots had some

power to stimulate courage and a slight mental exhilaration. But the

drug had proved non-habit forming, and Kirby knew that his powers of

perception were not now, and never had been, affected.

He swung down further.

Just a moment after he began that progress was when things began to

happen to him. First he heard what seemed to be the low titter of a

human voice laughing sweetly. Next came a far off, unutterably lovely

strumming of music. And then he realized that, at a depth of about a

hundred feet, he was hanging level with a hole which marked the mouth

of another tunnel.

This new tunnel sloped down into the earth on his right hand. The floor

and walls were glassy smooth, and the angle of descent was steep, but by

no means as steep as the drop of the vertical geyser shaft in which he

now hung.

Laughter, music, the new tunnel suddenly aroused an excitement which

made him quiver.

"When I saw _her_," he gasped, "she was standing here, in the mouth of

this tunnel, looking up at me!"

Violently, Freddie Kirby forgot the maple-shaded street of his Kansas

town, forgot everything but desire to reach the mouth of the new tunnel,

where the girl of the exquisite face and beckoning lips had stood.

Tightening his grip on the rope, he began to swing himself back and

forth like a pendulum.

It seemed probable that when the geyser water shot up past the

horizontal tunnel, its force was so great that no water at all entered.

He redoubled his efforts to widen his swing.

* * * * *

Then his feet scraped on the floor, and in a second he had alighted

there. He still hung stoutly to his line, however, for the tunnel sloped

down sharply enough, and was slippery enough, to prohibit the

maintenance of footing unaided.

The music which issued from the depths of that stunningly mysterious

passage swelled to a crescendo--and stopped. Kirby clung there to his

precarious perch, his feet slipping on the glass under them with every

move he made, and feelings stirred in his heart which had never been

there before.

Then, as silence reigned where the music had been, something prompted

him to look up. The next instant he stifled a cry.

With widening eyes he saw the flash of a white arm and the gleam of a

knife hovering over the spot where his taut rope passed out of the

geyser opening into the sunshine of the outer world. Again he stifled a

cry. For crying out would do no good. While the suppressed sound was

still on his lips, the knife flickered.

Then Kirby was shooting downward, the severed line whipping out after

him. The first plunge flung him off his feet. A long swoop which he took

on his back dizzied him. But as the fall continued, he was able to slow

it a little by bracing arms and legs against the tunnel walls.

"Holy Jeehosophat!" he gurgled.

But there seemed to be no particular danger. The slide was as smooth as

most of the chutes he had ever encountered at summer swimming pools. If

ever the confounded spiral passage came to an end, he might find that he

was still all right. As seconds passed and he fell and fell, it seemed

that he was bound for the center of the earth. It seemed that--

* * * * *

He swished around a multiple bend, and eyes which had been accustomed to

darkness were blinded by light.

It was light which radiated in all colors--blue, yellow, browns,

purples, reds, pinks, and then all the new colors for which he had no

name. Somehow Kirby knew that he had shot out of the tunnel, which

emerged high up in the face of a cliff, and that he was dropping through

perfumed, brilliant air resonant with the sound of birds and insects and

human cries. The funny thing was that the pull of gravity was not right,

somehow, and he was dropping fairly slowly. From far below, a body of

what looked like water was sweeping up to meet him. Kirby closed his

eyes.

When he opened them again, his whole body was stinging with the slap of

his impact, and he found that it was water which he had struck. The

proof of it lay in the fact that he was swimming, and was approaching a

shore.

But such water! It was milky white and perfumed as the geyser flow had

been, and it seemed luminous as with a radium fire. Had he not realized

presently that the fluid probably contained enough arsenic to finish a

thousand like him, he would have thought of himself as bathing in the

waters of Paradise.

But then he began to forget about the poison which might already be at

work upon him.

Ahead of him, stretched out in the gorgeous, colored light, ran a beach

which was backed by heavy jungle. And on the beach stood the lovely

creatures, all clad in shimmering, glistening garments, whose flutelike

cries had come to him as he fell.

* * * * *

Kirby looked, and became almost powerless to continue his swim. The

beauty of those frail women was like the reputed beauty of bright

angels. That paralyzing effect of wonder, however, did not last long.

The girls moved forward to the water's edge, and, laughing amongst

themselves, beckoned to him with lovely slender hands whose every motion

was a caress.

"Be not afraid," called one in a curious patois dialect, about

five-sixths of which seemed made up of Spanish words, distorted but

recognizable.

"The water would kill you," called another, "as it killed the Spaniard

in armor. But we are here to save you. I will give you a draught to

drink which will defeat the poison. Come on to us!"

Kirby's heart was almost literally in his mouth now, because the girl

who promised him salvation was she whose lips had formed a kiss at him

from the green-gloomy throat of the geyser.

His feet struck a shale bottom. Panting, he stood up and was conscious

of the fact that despite his forlornly dripping and dishevelled

condition, he was tall and straight and big, and that for some reason

all of the girls on the gleaming sand, and one girl in particular, were

anxious to receive him here.

The one girl had drawn a small, gleaming flask of gold from the misty

bodice of her gown, and was holding it out while she laughed with red

lips and great, dazzling dark eyes.

"_Pronto!_" she called in pure Spanish, and other girls echoed the word.

"Oh," went on the bright owner of the flask, "we thought you would

_never_ have done with your work on the rope. It took you so long!"

* * * * *

Kirby left the smooth lake behind him and stood dripping on the sand.

The moment the air touched his clothes, he felt that they were

stiffening slightly. Yet the sensation brought no terror. He could not

feel terror as he faced the girls.

"Give him the flask, Naida!" someone exclaimed.

"Ah, but the Gods _have_ been kind to us!" echoed another.

The girl with the flask made a gesture for silence.

"Is it Naida you are called?" Kirby put in quickly, and as he spoke the

Spanish words, the roll of them on his tongue did much to make him know

that he was sane and awake, and not dreaming, that this was still the

Twentieth Century, and that he was Freddie Kirby.

Answering his question, Naida nodded, and gave him the flask.

"A single draught will act as antidote to the poison," she said.

"I drink," said Kirby as he raised the flask, "to the many of you who

have been so gracious as to save me!"

A flashing smile, a blush was his answer. And then he had wetted his

lips with, and was swallowing, a limpid liquid which tasted of some

drug.

"Enough!" Naida ordered in a second.

As she reached for the flask, her companions closed in as though a

ceremony of some sort had been completed.

"Is it time to tell him yet, Naida?" piped one of the girls, younger

than the rest, whom someone had called Elana.

"Oh, _do_ begin, Naida," chorused two more. "We can't wait _much_ longer

to find out if he is going to help us!"

Kirby turned to Naida, while a soothing sensation crept through him from

the draught he had taken.

"Pray tell me what it is that I am to be permitted to do for you. I

can promise you that the whole of my life and strength, and such

intelligence as I possess, is yours to command."

* * * * *

Excited small cries and a clapping of hands answered him. As for Naida,

her face lighted with glowing joy.

"Oh, one who could say that, _must_ be the friend and protector of whom

we have stood in such bitter need!"

"What," asked Kirby, "is this need which made one of you cut my rope, so

that I should come here?"

A momentary silence was broken only by the hum of insects in the

perfumed air, and by the golden thrilling of a bird back in the jungle.

Then Kirby beheld Naida bowing to him.

"So be it," she said in a voice low and flutelike. "I will speak now

since you request it. Already you have seen that you are here in our

world because we conspired amongst ourselves to bring you here. Our

reason--"

She paused, looked deep into his eyes.

"Amigo," she continued slowly, "we whom you see here are the People of

the Temple. For more centuries than even our sages can tell, our

progenitors have dwelt here, where you find us, knowing always of your

outer world, but remaining always unknown by it. But now the time has

come when those of us who are left amongst our race need the help of one

from the outer races we have shunned. Dangers of various orders confront

us who have waited here for your coming. When we first discovered you in

the Valley of the Geyser, the idea came to me that we must make you

understand our troubles, and ask of you--"

But then she stopped.

As Kirby stared at her, the gentleness of her expression was replaced by

a swift strength which made her majestic.

The next moment bedlam reigned upon the beach.

"_They are after us!_" gasped one of the girls in terror. "Quick, Naida!

Quick! Quick!"

* * * * *

Whatever it was that threatened, Naida did not need to be told that the

need for action was pressing. She shouted at her companions some order

which Kirby did not understand. From a pouch at her side, she snatched

out a greyish, spherical vegetable substance which looked almost like a

tennis ball. Then she braced herself as if to withstand an assault.

"Stand back!" she cried to Kirby.

He had long ago ceased to wonder at anything that might happen here.

Disappointed that Naida's story had been interrupted, wondering what was

wrong, he obeyed Naida's order to keep clear.

As he fell back and stood motionless, there came from behind a dense

screen of shrubs which would have resembled aloe and prickly pear

bushes, save that they were as big as oak trees, a ghastly howling. The

next second, hopped and hurtled across the beach toward the girls, a

group of hair-covered, shaggy creatures which were neither apes nor men.

The faces, contorted with lust, were hideously leathery and brown, the

foreheads small and beetling, and the mouths enormous, with immense

yellow teeth.

Helpless, Kirby realized that Naida and all the others had clapped over

their faces curious masks which seemed to be made of some crystalline

substance, and that now others had armed themselves with the tennis

balls. And that was the last observation he made before the battle

opened furiously.

With a cry muffled behind her mask, Naida leaped out in front of her

squadron and cut loose her queer vegetable ball with whizzing aim and

force.

Full into the snarling face of one of the ape-men the thing smashed,

filling the air all about the creature with a yellow, mistlike powder.

Kirby was half deafened by the yells of rage and terror which went up

from the entire attacking band. The creature who had been hit fell to

his knees the while he made agonized tearing movements at his face and

uttered shrill, jabbering yelps.

Other balls flashed instantly from Naida's ranks, and each brought about

the same ghastly result as the first. But then Kirby saw that the whole

jungle seethed with the hairy, awful men.

"Keep back!" Naida shrieked at him through her mask. "We have no mask

for you. If the powder from our fungi touches you, it will be the end!"

* * * * *

With gaps in the advancing line filled as soon as each screeching ape

went down, the attackers leaped on until Kirby knew they would be upon

the girls in a matter of seconds. A sweat broke out on his neck.

But then an idea gripped him, and suddenly, without even a last glance

at Naida, he leaped away even as she had commanded.

A great boulder lay on the shore fifty yards away. Toward it Kirby

streaked as though he had become coward. But he had not turned coward.

By the time he reached the shelter which would protect him from the

fungus mist, a turning point had come in the battle. The ape-men had

closed in on the girls, were swarming about them, and the mist balls had

almost ceased to fly. But the thing which gave Kirby hope was that the

apes were not attempting to harm the girls. They seemed victors, but

they were not committing atrocities.

It was the sharp intuition that something like this might happen which

had sent Kirby fleeing from the fight. He believed he might yet prove

useful.

The thickest group of attackers were jostling about Naida. As the

screams and sobs of the girls quivered out, mingled with the guttural

roaring of the men, Naida was shut off by a solid wall of aggressors.

Then Kirby saw her again. But now two of the most powerful of the

ape-men had caught her up and was carrying her. Her kicking and writhing

and biting accomplished nothing. The apes were headed directly back to

the jungle.

* * * * *

Now, however, most of the yellow mist had disappeared, and that was all

Kirby had been waiting for. With a growling shout, he tore out from

behind his boulder, his Luger ready. Naida's captors were in full

retreat, and other pairs of men were snatching up other girls and

hopping after them. Toward Naida Kirby ran madly but not blindly.

"Naida! Naida!" he bellowed.

He got in two strides for every one the apes made.

"Naida!" he shouted, and at last saw her look at him.

Her face was pallid with loathing and terror. As her glimmering dark

eyes met his, they flashed a plea which made his heart thrash against

his lungs.

With a final roar of encouragement Kirby closed in on the hair-covered

men, and fired instantly a shot which caught one full in the heart. The

creature wavered on its legs, looked at the unexpected enemy with

dismayed, swinish little red eyes, and relaxing his hold upon Naida,

dropped without making a sound.

After that--

But suddenly Kirby found himself unable to comprehend fully the other

terrific results of his intervention. Before the echoes of his shot

died, there came to him the rumble of what seemed to be tons of falling

rock. In the bright air a slight mist was precipitated. To all of which

was added the effect upon the ape-men of fear of a weapon and a type of

fighter utterly new to them.

Kirby had fired believing that he would have to fight other ape-men

when the first fell. But not so. Instead of that--

* * * * *

He blinked rapidly as he took in the scene.

Naida had been released. Lying on the sand beside the dead ape-man, she

was looking up at him in stupefied wonder. And her other captor, instead

of remaining to fight, had clapped shaggy hands over his ears, and was

leaping headlong for the protection of the jungle!

Moreover, the soprano cries of the girls and the deep howls of the men

were rising everywhere, and everywhere the ape-men were dropping their

captives and plunging away after their leader.

"Huh," Kirby muttered aloud, and wondered what the citizens of Kansas

would have to say about _this_.

Naida looked at the dead and bleeding ape-man and shuddered, and then at

the score or so of others brought down by the puff balls. Then she

looked up at Kirby, raised her arms for his support, and smiled up into

his brown face.

Kirby forgot Kansas, lifted her, warm and alive, radiantly beautiful, in

his arms.

"Our friends the enemies," she whispered as she remained for a second in

his embrace and then drew away, "will attack no more this day--thanks to

you."

There was no possible need for another shot, Kirby saw. In terrified

silence, the first of the apes had already floundered behind the prickly

pear and aloe bushes, and the last stragglers were using all the power

in their legs to catch up. On the beach, Naida's followers were picking

themselves up, and already a few of them had burst into ringing

laughter.

"Come on, all of you," Naida said to them, and, including Kirby in her

glance, added, "We may as well go to the caciques now, and have it over

with."