CHAPTER X.

THE ROSE OF FIRE

On we flew, drawn by the mighty current, till at last I noticed that

the sound of the water was not half so deafening as it had been, and

concluded that this must be because there was more room for the echoes

to disperse in. I could now hear Alphonse’s howls much more distinctly;

they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the Supreme

Power and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible to

conceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved them

from profanity, were, to say the least, very remarkable.[9] Taking up a

paddle I managed to drive it into his ribs, whereon he, thinking that

the end had come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and cautiously

raised myself on my knees and stretched my hand upwards, but could

touch no roof. Next I took the paddle and lifted it above my head as

high as I could, but with the same result. I also thrust it out

laterally to the right and left, but could touch nothing except water.

Then I bethought me that there was in the boat, amongst our other

remaining possessions, a bull’s-eye lantern and a tin of oil. I groped

about and found it, and having a match on me carefully lit it, and as

soon as the flame had got a hold of the wick I turned it on down the

boat. As it happened, the first thing the light lit on was the white

and scared face of Alphonse, who, thinking that it was all over at

last, and that he was witnessing a preliminary celestial phenomenon,

gave a terrific yell and was with difficulty reassured with the paddle.

As for the other three, Good was lying on the flat of his back, his

eyeglass still fixed in his eye, and gazing blankly into the upper

darkness. Sir Henry had his head resting on the thwarts of the canoe,

and with his hand was trying to test the speed of the water. But when

the beam of light fell upon old Umslopogaas I could really have

laughed. I think I have said that we had put a roast quarter of

water-buck into the canoe. Well, it so happened that when we all

prostrated ourselves to avoid being swept out of the boat and into the

water by the rock roof, Umslopogaas’s head had come down uncommonly

near this roast buck, and so soon as he had recovered a little from the

first shock of our position it occurred to him that he was hungry.

Thereupon he coolly cut off a chop with Inkosi-kaas, and was now

employed in eating it with every appearance of satisfaction. As he

afterwards explained, he thought that he was going “on a long journey”,

and preferred to start on a full stomach. It reminded me of the people

who are going to be hanged, and who are generally reported in the

English daily papers to have made “an excellent breakfast”.

[9] Sir Henry afterwards wrote down one of Alphonse’s prayers as he

overheard it. It ran thus: “Oh, save me! lake me out of this hole! I

will promise never to go exploring again! Oh, Annette, why did I leave

thee? Oh, my false cousin! Oh, deliver me from this horrible main

drain! Never mind the others! Let them drown; they are more used to it

than I am, and they cannot cook! Oh Annette! Annette [_cresendo_]!

Annette [_fortissimo_]!”

As soon as the others saw that I had managed to light the lamp, we

bundled Alphonse into the farther end of the canoe with a threat which

calmed him down wonderfully, that if he would insist upon making the

darkness hideous with his cries we would put him out of suspense by

sending him to join the Wakwafi and wait for Annette in another sphere,

and began to discuss the situation as well as we could. First, however,

at Good’s suggestion, we bound two paddles mast-fashion in the bows so

that they might give us warning against any sudden lowering of the roof

of the cave or waterway. It was clear to us that we were in an

underground river or, as Alphonse defined it, “main drain”, which

carried off the superfluous waters of the lake. Such rivers are well

known to exist in many parts of the world, but it has not often been

the evil fortune of explorers to travel by them. That the river was

wide we could clearly see, for the light from the bull’s-eye lantern

failed to reach from shore to shore, although occasionally, when the

current swept us either to one side or the other, we could distinguish

the rock wall of the tunnel, which, as far as we could make out,

appeared to arch about twenty-five feet above our heads. As for the

current itself, it ran, Good estimated, at least eight knots, and,

fortunately for us, was, as is usual, fiercest in the middle of the

stream. Still, our first act was to arrange that one of us, with the

lantern and a pole there was in the canoe, should always be in the bows

ready, if possible, to prevent us from being stove in against the side

of the cave or any projecting rock. Umslopogaas, having already dined,

took the first turn. This was absolutely, with one exception, all that

we could do towards preserving our safety. The exception was that

another of us took up a position in the stern with a paddle by means of

which it was possible to steer the canoe more or less and to keep her

from the sides of the cave. These matters attended to, we made a

somewhat sparing meal off the cold buck’s meat (for we did not know how

long it might have to last us), and then feeling in rather better

spirits I gave my opinion that, serious as it undoubtedly was, I did

not consider our position altogether without hope, unless, indeed, the

natives were right, and the river plunged straight down into the bowels

of the earth. If not, it was clear that it must emerge somewhere,

probably on the other side of the mountains, and in that case all we

had to think of was to keep ourselves alive till we got there, wherever

“there” might be. But, of course, as Good lugubriously pointed out, on

the other hand we might fall victims to a hundred unsuspected

horrors—or the river might go on winding away inside the earth till it

dried up, in which case our fate would indeed be an awful one.

“Well, let us hope for the best and prepare ourselves for the worst,”

said Sir Henry, who is always cheerful and even spirited—a very tower

of strength in the time of trouble. “We have come out of so many queer

scrapes together, that somehow I almost fancy we shall come out of

this,” he added.

This was excellent advice, and we proceeded to take it each in our

separate way—that is, except Alphonse, who had by now sunk into a sort

of terrified stupor. Good was at the helm and Umslopogaas in the bows,

so there was nothing left for Sir Henry and myself to do except to lie

down in the canoe and think. It certainly was a curious, and indeed

almost a weird, position to be placed in—rushing along, as we were,

through the bowels of the earth, borne on the bosom of a Stygian river,

something after the fashion of souls being ferried by Charon, as Curtis

said. And how dark it was! The feeble ray from our little lamp did but

serve to show the darkness. There in the bows sat old Umslopogaas, like

Pleasure in the poem,[10] watchful and untiring, the pole ready to his

hand, and behind in the shadow I could just make out the form of Good

peering forward at the ray of light in order to make out how to steer

with the paddle that he held and now and again dipped into the water.

[10] Mr Allan Quatermain misquotes—Pleasure sat at the helm.—Editor.

“Well, well,” thought I, “you have come in search of adventures, Allan

my boy, and you have certainly got them. At your time of life, too! You

ought to be ashamed of yourself; but somehow you are not, and, awful as

it all is, perhaps you will pull through after all; and if you don’t,

why, you cannot help it, you see! And when all’s said and done an

underground river will make a very appropriate burying-place.”

At first, however, I am bound to say that the strain upon the nerves

was very great. It is trying to the coolest and most experienced person

not to know from one hour to another if he has five minutes more to

live, but there is nothing in this world that one cannot get accustomed

to, and in time we began to get accustomed even to that. And, after

all, our anxiety, though no doubt natural, was, strictly speaking,

illogical, seeing that we never know what is going to happen to us the

next minute, even when we sit in a well-drained house with two

policemen patrolling under the window—nor how long we have to live. It

is all arranged for us, my sons, so what is the use of bothering?

It was nearly midday when we made our dive into darkness, and we had

set our watch (Good and Umslopogaas) at two, having agreed that it

should be of a duration of five hours. At seven o’clock, accordingly,

Sir Henry and I went on, Sir Henry at the bow and I at the stern, and

the other two lay down and went to sleep. For three hours all went

well, Sir Henry only finding it necessary once to push us off from the

side; and I that but little steering was required to keep us straight,

as the violent current did all that was needed, though occasionally the

canoe showed a tendency which had to be guarded against to veer and

travel broadside on. What struck me as the most curious thing about

this wonderful river was: how did the air keep fresh? It was muggy and

thick, no doubt, but still not sufficiently so to render it bad or even

remarkably unpleasant. The only explanation that I can suggest is that

the water of the lake had sufficient air in it to keep the atmosphere

of the tunnel from absolute stagnation, this air being given out as it

proceeded on its headlong way. Of course I only give the solution of

the mystery for what it is worth, which perhaps is not much.

When I had been for three hours or so at the helm, I began to notice a

decided change in the temperature, which was getting warmer. At first I

took no notice of it, but when, at the expiration of another half-hour,

I found that it was getting hotter and hotter, I called to Sir Henry

and asked him if he noticed it, or if it was only my imagination.

“Noticed it!” he answered; “I should think so. I am in a sort of

Turkish bath.” Just about then the others woke up gasping, and were

obliged to begin to discard their clothes. Here Umslopogaas had the

advantage, for he did not wear any to speak of, except a moocha.

Hotter it grew, and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely breathe,

and the perspiration poured out of us. Half an hour more, and though we

were all now stark naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was like

an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into

the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We

consulted a little thermometer we had—the mercury stood at 123 degrees.

From the surface of the water rose a dense cloud of steam. Alphonse

groaned out that we were already in purgatory, which indeed we were,

though not in the sense that he meant it. Sir Henry suggested that we

must be passing near the seat of some underground volcanic fire, and I

am inclined to think, especially in the light of what subsequently

occurred, that he was right. Our sufferings for some time after this

really pass my powers of description. We no longer perspired, for all

the perspiration had been sweated out of us. We simply lay in the

bottom of the boat, which we were now physically incapable of

directing, feeling like hot embers, and I fancy undergoing very much

the same sensations that the poor fish do when they are dying on

land—namely, that of slow suffocation. Our skins began to crack, and

the blood to throb in our heads like the beating of a steam-engine.

This had been going on for some time, when suddenly the river turned a

little, and I heard Sir Henry call out from the bows in a hoarse,

startled voice, and, looking up, saw a most wonderful and awful thing.

About half a mile ahead of us, and a little to the left of the centre

of the stream—which we could now see was about ninety feet broad—a huge

pillar-like jet of almost white flame rose from the surface of the

water and sprang fifty feet into the air, when it struck the roof and

spread out some forty feet in diameter, falling back in curved sheets

of fire shaped like the petals of a full-blown rose. Indeed this awful

gas jet resembled nothing so much as a great flaming flower rising out

of the black water. Below was the straight stalk, a foot or more thick,

and above the dreadful bloom. And as for the fearfulness of it and its

fierce and awesome beauty, who can describe it? Certainly I cannot.

Although we were now some five hundred yards away, it, notwithstanding

the steam, lit up the whole cavern as clear as day, and we could see

that the roof was here about forty feet above us, and washed perfectly

smooth with water. The rock was black, and here and there I could make

out long shining lines of ore running through it like great veins, but

of what metal they were I know not.

On we rushed towards this pillar of fire, which gleamed fiercer than

any furnace ever lit by man.

“Keep the boat to the right, Quatermain—to the right,” shouted Sir

Henry, and a minute afterwards I saw him fall forward senseless.

Alphonse had already gone. Good was the next to go. There they lay as

though dead; only Umslopogaas and I kept our senses. We were within

fifty yards of it now, and I saw the Zulu’s head fall forward on his

hands. He had gone too, and I was alone. I could not breathe; the

fierce heat dried me up. For yards and yards round the great rose of

fire the rock-roof was red-hot. The wood of the boat was almost

burning. I saw the feathers on one of the dead swans begin to twist and

shrivel up; but I would not give in. I knew that if I did we should

pass within three or four yards of the gas jet and perish miserably. I

set the paddle so as to turn the canoe as far from it as possible, and

held on grimly.

My eyes seemed to be bursting from my head, and through my closed lids

I could see the fierce light. We were nearly opposite now; it roared

like all the fires of hell, and the water boiled furiously around it.

Five seconds more. We were past; I heard the roar behind me.

Then I too fell senseless. The next thing that I recollect is feeling a

breath of air upon my face. My eyes opened with great difficulty. I

looked up. Far, far above me there was light, though around me was

great gloom. Then I remembered and looked. The canoe still floated down

the river, and in the bottom of it lay the naked forms of my

companions. “Were they dead?” I wondered. “Was I left alone in this

awful place?” I knew not. Next I became conscious of a burning thirst.

I put my hand over the edge of the boat into the water and drew it up

again with a cry. No wonder: nearly all the skin was burnt off the back

of it. The water, however, was cold, or nearly so, and I drank pints

and splashed myself all over. My body seemed to suck up the fluid as

one may see a brick wall suck up rain after a drought; but where I was

burnt the touch of it caused intense pain. Then I bethought myself of

the others, and, dragging myself towards them with difficulty, I

sprinkled them with water, and to my joy they began to

recover—Umslopogaas first, then the others. Next they drank, absorbing

water like so many sponges. Then, feeling chilly—a queer contrast to

our recent sensations—we began as best we could to get into our

clothes. As we did so Good pointed to the port side of the canoe: it

was all blistered with heat, and in places actually charred. Had it

been built like our civilized boats, Good said that the planks would

certainly have warped and let in enough water to sink us; but

fortunately it was dug out of the soft, willowy wood of a single great

tree, and had sides nearly three inches and a bottom four inches thick.

What that awful flame was we never discovered, but I suppose that there

was at this spot a crack or hole in the bed of the river through which

a vast volume of gas forced its way from its volcanic home in the

bowels of the earth towards the upper air. How it first became ignited

is, of course, impossible to say—probably, I should think, from some

spontaneous explosion of mephitic gases.

As soon as we had got some things together and shaken ourselves

together a little, we set to work to make out where we were now. I have

said that there was light above, and on examination we found that it

came from the sky. Our river that was, Sir Henry said, a literal

realization of the wild vision of the poet,[11] was no longer

underground, but was running on its darksome way, not now through

“caverns measureless to man”, but between two frightful cliffs which

cannot have been less than two thousand feet high. So high were they,

indeed, that though the sky was above us, where we were was dense

gloom—not darkness indeed, but the gloom of a room closely shuttered in

the daytime. Up on either side rose the great straight cliffs, grim and

forbidding, till the eye grew dizzy with trying to measure their sheer

height. The little space of sky that marked where they ended lay like a

thread of blue upon their soaring blackness, which was unrelieved by

any tree or creeper. Here and there, however, grew ghostly patches of a

long grey lichen, hanging motionless to the rock as the white beard to

the chin of a dead man. It seemed as though only the dregs or heavier

part of the light had sunk to the bottom of this awful place. No

bright-winged sunbeam could fall so low: they died far, far above our

heads.

[11]

In Kubla Khan a river ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea

By the river’s edge was a little shore formed of round fragments of

rock washed into this shape by the constant action of water, and giving

the place the appearance of being strewn with thousands of fossil

cannon balls. Evidently when the water of the underground river is high

there is no beach at all, or very little, between the border of the

stream and the precipitous cliffs; but now there was a space of seven

or eight yards. And here, on this beach, we determined to land, in

order to rest ourselves a little after all that we had gone through and

to stretch our limbs. It was a dreadful place, but it would give an

hour’s respite from the terrors of the river, and also allow of our

repacking and arranging the canoe. Accordingly we selected what looked

like a favourable spot, and with some little difficulty managed to

beach the canoe and scramble out on to the round, inhospitable pebbles.

“My word,” called out Good, who was on shore the first, “what an awful

place! It’s enough to give one a fit.” And he laughed.

Instantly a thundering voice took up his words, magnifying them a

hundred times. “_Give one a fit—Ho! ho! ho!”—“A fit, Ho! ho! ho!_”

answered another voice in wild accents from far up the cliff—_a fit! a

fit! a fit!_ chimed in voice after voice—each flinging the words to and

fro with shouts of awful laughter to the invisible lips of the other

till the whole place echoed with the words and with shrieks of fiendish

merriment, which at last ceased as suddenly as they had begun.

“Oh, mon Dieu!” yelled Alphonse, startled quite out of such

self-command as he possessed.

“_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_” the Titanic echoes thundered,

shrieked, and wailed in every conceivable tone.

“Ah,” said Umslopogaas calmly, “I clearly perceive that devils live

here. Well, the place looks like it.”

I tried to explain to him that the cause of all the hubbub was a very

remarkable and interesting echo, but he would not believe it.

“Ah,” he said, “I know an echo when I hear one. There was one lived

opposite my kraal in Zululand, and the Intombis [maidens] used to talk

with it. But if what we hear is a full-grown echo, mine at home can

only have been a baby. No, no—they are devils up there. But I don’t

think much of them, though,” he added, taking a pinch of snuff. “They

can copy what one says, but they don’t seem to be able to talk on their

own account, and they dare not show their faces,” and he relapsed into

silence, and apparently paid no further attention to such contemptible

fiends.

After this we found it necessary to keep our conversation down to a

whisper—for it was really unbearable to have every word one uttered

tossed to and fro like a tennis-ball, as precipice called to precipice.

But even our whispers ran up the rocks in mysterious murmurs till at

last they died away in long-drawn sighs of sound. Echoes are delightful

and romantic things, but we had more than enough of them in that

dreadful gulf.

As soon as we had settled ourselves a little on the round stones, we

went on to wash and dress our burns as well as we could. As we had but

a little oil for the lantern, we could not spare any for this purpose,

so we skinned one of the swans, and used the fat off its breast, which

proved an excellent substitute. Then we repacked the canoe, and finally

began to take some food, of which I need scarcely say we were in need,

for our insensibility had endured for many hours, and it was, as our

watches showed, midday. Accordingly we seated ourselves in a circle,

and were soon engaged in discussing our cold meat with such appetite as

we could muster, which, in my case at any rate, was not much, as I felt

sick and faint after my sufferings of the previous night, and had

besides a racking headache. It was a curious meal. The gloom was so

intense that we could scarcely see the way to cut our food and convey

it to our mouths. Still we got on pretty well, till I happened to look

behind me—my attention being attracted by a noise of something crawling

over the stones, and perceived sitting upon a rock in my immediate rear

a huge species of black freshwater crab, only it was five times the

size of any crab I ever saw. This hideous and loathsome-looking animal

had projecting eyes that seemed to glare at one, very long and flexible

antennae or feelers, and gigantic claws. Nor was I especially favoured

with its company. From every quarter dozens of these horrid brutes were

creeping up, drawn, I suppose, by the smell of the food, from between

the round stones and out of holes in the precipice. Some were already

quite close to us. I stared quite fascinated by the unusual sight, and

as I did so I saw one of the beasts stretch out its huge claw and give

the unsuspecting Good such a nip behind that he jumped up with a howl,

and set the “wild echoes flying” in sober earnest. Just then, too,

another, a very large one, got hold of Alphonse’s leg, and declined to

part with it, and, as may be imagined, a considerable scene ensued.

Umslopogaas took his axe and cracked the shell of one with the flat of

it, whereon it set up a horrid screaming which the echoes multiplied a

thousandfold, and began to foam at the mouth, a proceeding that drew

hundreds more of its friends out of unsuspected holes and corners.

Those on the spot perceiving that the animal was hurt fell upon it like

creditors on a bankrupt, and literally rent it limb from limb with

their huge pincers and devoured it, using their claws to convey the

fragments to their mouths. Seizing whatever weapons were handy, such as

stones or paddles, we commenced a war upon the monsters—whose numbers

were increasing by leaps and bounds, and whose stench was overpowering.

So fast as we cracked their armour others seized the injured ones and

devoured them, foaming at the mouth, and screaming as they did so. Nor

did the brutes stop at that. When they could they nipped hold of us—and

awful nips they were—or tried to steal the meat. One enormous fellow

got hold of the swan we had skinned and began to drag it off. Instantly

a score of others flung themselves upon the prey, and then began a

ghastly and disgusting scene. How the monsters foamed and screamed, and

rent the flesh, and each other! It was a sickening and unnatural sight,

and one that will haunt all who saw it till their dying day—enacted as

it was in the deep, oppressive gloom, and set to the unceasing music of

the many-toned nerve-shaking echoes. Strange as it may seem to say so,

there was something so shockingly human about these fiendish

creatures—it was as though all the most evil passions and desires of

man had got into the shell of a magnified crab and gone mad. They were

so dreadfully courageous and intelligent, and they looked as if they

_understood_. The whole scene might have furnished material for another

canto of Dante’s “Inferno”, as Curtis said.

“I say, you fellows, let’s get out of this or we shall all go off our

heads,” sung out Good; and we were not slow to take the hint. Pushing

the canoe, around which the animals were now crawling by hundreds and

making vain attempts to climb, off the rocks, we bundled into it and

got out into mid-stream, leaving behind us the fragments of our meal

and the screaming, foaming, stinking mass of monsters in full

possession of the ground.

“Those are the devils of the place,” said Umslopogaas with the air of

one who has solved a problem, and upon my word I felt almost inclined

to agree with him.

Umslopogaas’ remarks were like his axe—very much to the point.

“What’s to be done next?” said Sir Henry blankly.

“Drift, I suppose,” I answered, and we drifted accordingly. All the

afternoon and well into the evening we floated on in the gloom beneath

the far-off line of blue sky, scarcely knowing when day ended and night

began, for down in that vast gulf the difference was not marked, till

at length Good pointed out a star hanging right above us, which, having

nothing better to do, we observed with great interest. Suddenly it

vanished, the darkness became intense, and a familiar murmuring sound

filled the air. “Underground again,” I said with a groan, holding up

the lamp. Yes, there was no doubt about it. I could just make out the

roof. The chasm had come to an end and the tunnel had recommenced. And

then there began another long, long night of danger and horror. To

describe all its incidents would be too wearisome, so I will simply say

that about midnight we struck on a flat projecting rock in mid-stream

and were as nearly as possible overturned and drowned. However, at last

we got off, and went upon the uneven tenor of our way. And so the hours

passed till it was nearly three o’clock. Sir Henry, Good, and Alphonse

were asleep, utterly worn out; Umslopogaas was at the bow with the

pole, and I was steering, when I perceived that the rate at which we

were travelling had perceptibly increased. Then, suddenly, I heard

Umslopogaas make an exclamation, and next second came a sound as of

parting branches, and I became aware that the canoe was being forced

through hanging bushes or creepers. Another minute, and the breath of

sweet open air fanned my face, and I felt that we had emerged from the

tunnel and were floating upon clear water. I say felt, for I could see

nothing, the darkness being absolutely pitchy, as it often is just

before the dawn. But even this could scarcely damp my joy. We were out

of that dreadful river, and wherever we might have got to this at least

was something to be thankful for. And so I sat down and inhaled the

sweet night air and waited for the dawn with such patience as I could

command.