The Mystery Part 19

We jumped ash.o.r.e eagerly. I left the men, very reluctant, and ascended a natural trail to a high sloping down over which blew the great Trades.

Gra.s.s sprung knee-high. A low hill rose at the back. From below the fall of the cliff came the pounding of surf.

I walked to the edge. Various ledges, sloping toward me, ran down to the sea. Against one of them was a wreck, not so very old, head on, her afterworks gone. I recognised the name _Golden Horn_, and was vastly astonished to find her here against this unknown island.

Far up the coast I could see--with the surges dashing up like the explosion of sh.e.l.ls, and the cliffs, and the rampart of hills grown with gra.s.s and cactus. A bold promontory terminated the coast view to the north, and behind it I could glimpse a more fertile and wooded country. The sky was partly overcast by the volcanic murk. It fled before the Trades, and the red sun alternately blazed and clouded through it.

As there was nothing more to be seen here, I turned above the hollow of our cove, skirted the base of the hill, and so down to the beach.

It occupied a wide semicircle where the hills drew back. The flat was dry and grown with thick, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s. A stream emerged from a sort of canon on its landward side. I tasted it, found it sulphurous, and a trifle worse than lukewarm. A little nearer the cliff, however, was a clear, cold spring from the rock, and of this I had a satisfying drink. When I arose from my knees, I made out an animal on the hill crest looking at me, but before I could distinguish its characteristics it had disappeared.

I returned along the tide sands. The surf dashed and roared, lifting seaweeds of a blood red, so that in places the water looked pink.

Seals innumerable watched me from just outside the breakers. As the waves lifted to a semi-transparence, I could make out others playing, darting back and forth, up and down like disturbed tadpoles, clinging to the wave until the very instant of its fall, then disappearing as though blotted out. The salt smell of seaweed was in my nostrils: I found the place pleasant--

With these few and scattered impressions we returned to the ship. It had been warped to a secure anchorage, and snugged down. Dr.

Schermerhorn and Darrow were on deck waiting to go ash.o.r.e.

I made my report. The two pa.s.sengers disappeared. They carried lunch and would not be back until night-fall. We had orders to pitch a large tent at a suitable spot and to lighten ship of the doctor's personal and scientific effects. By the time this was accomplished, the two had returned.

"It's all right," Darrow volunteered to Captain Selover, as he came over the side. "We've found what we want."

Their clothes were picked by brush and their boots muddy. Next morning Captain Selover detailed me to especial work.

"You'll take two of the men and go ash.o.r.e under Darrow's orders," said he.

Darrow told us to take clothes for a week, an axe apiece, and a block and tackle. We made up our ditty bags, stepped into one of the surf boats, and were rowed ash.o.r.e. There Darrow at once took the lead.

Our way proceeded across the gra.s.s flat, through the opening of the narrow canon, and so on back into the interior by way of the bed through which flowed the sulphur stream. The country was badly eroded.

Most of the time we marched between perpendicular clay banks about forty feet high. These were occasionally broken by smaller tributary arroyos of the same sort. It would have been impossible to reach the level of the upper country. The bed of the main arroyo was flat, and grown with gra.s.ses and herbage of an extraordinary vividness, due, I supposed, to the sulphur water. The stream itself meandered aimlessly through the broader bed. It steadily grew warmer and the sulphur smell more noticeable. Above us we could see the sky and the sharp clay edge of the arroyo. I noticed the tracks of Darrow and Dr. Schermerhorn made the day before.

After a mile of this, the bottom ran up nearly to the level of the sides, and we stepped out on the floor of a little valley almost surrounded by more hills.

It was an extraordinary place, and since much happened there, I must give you an idea of it.

It was round and nearly encircled by naked painted hills. From its floor came steam and a roaring sound. The steam blew here and there among the pines on the floor; rose to eddy about the naked painted hills. At one end we saw intermittently a broad ascending canon--deep red and blue-black--ending in the cone of a smoking volcano. The other seemed quite closed by the sheer hills; in fact the only exit was the route by which we had come.

For the hills were utterly precipitous. I suppose a man might have made his way up the various k.n.o.bs, ledges, and inequalities, but it would have required long study and a careful head. I, myself, later worked my way a short distance, merely to examine the texture of their marvellous colour.

This was at once varied and of great body--not at all like the smooth, glossed colour of most rock, but soft and rich. You've seen painters'

palettes--it was just like that, pasty and _fat_. There were reds of all shades, from a veritable scarlet to a red umber; greens, from sea-green to emerald; several kinds of blue, and an indeterminate purple-mauve. The whole effect was splendid and barbaric.

We stopped and gasped as it hit our eyes. Darrow alone was unmoved.

He led the way forward and in an instant had disappeared behind the veil of steam. Thrackles and Perdosa hung back murmuring, but at a sharp word from me gathered their courage in their two hands and proceeded.

We found that the first veil of steam, and a fearful stench of gases, proceeded from a miniature crater whose edge was heavily encrusted with a white salt. Beyond, close under the rise of the hill, was another. Between the two Percy Darrow had stopped and was waiting.

He eyed us with his lazy, half-quizzical glance as we approached.

"Think the place is going to blow up?" he inquired, with a tinge of irony. "Well, it isn't." He turned to me. "Here's where we shall stay for a while. You and the men are to cut a number of these pine trees for a house. Better pick out the little ones, about three or four inches through: they're easier handled. I'll be back by noon."

We set to work then in the roaring, steaming valley with the vapour swirling about us, sometimes concealing us, sometimes half revealing us gigantic, again in the utterness of exposure showing us dwindled pigmies against the magnitudes about us. The labour was not difficult.

By the time Darrow returned we had a pile of the saplings ready for his next direction.

He was accompanied by the n.i.g.g.e.r, very much terrified, very much burdened with food and cooking utensils. The a.s.sistant was lazily relating tales of voodoos, a glimmer of mischief in his eyes.

VII

CAPTAIN SELOVER LOSES HIS NERVE

I lived in the place for three weeks. We were afoot shortly after daybreak, under way by sun-up, and at work before the heats began.

Three of us worked on the buildings, and the rest formed a pack train carrying all sorts of things from the sh.o.r.e to the valley. The men grumbled fiercely at this, but Captain Selover drove them with slight regard for their opinions or feelings.

"You're getting double pay," was his only word, "earn it!"

They certainly earned it during those three weeks. The things they brought up were astounding. Besides a lot of scientific apparatus and chests of chemical supplies, everything that could possibly be required, had been provided by that omniscient young man. After we had built a long, low structure, windows were forthcoming, shelves, tables, sinks, faucets, forges, burners, all cut out, fitted and ready to put together, each with its proper screws, nails, clamps, or pipes ready to our hands. When we had finished, we had constructed as complete a laboratory on a small scale as you could find on a college campus, even to the stone pillar down to bed-rock for delicate microscopic experiments, and hot and cold water led from the springs.

And we were utterly unskilled. It was all Percy Darrow.

I was toward the last engaged in s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g on a fixture for the generation of acetelyne gas.

"Darrow," said I, "there's one thing you've overlooked; you forgot to bring a cupola and a gilt weather-c.o.c.k for this concern."

After the laboratory was completed, we put up sleeping quarters for the two men, with wide porches well screened, and a square, heavy storeroom. By the end of the third week we had quite finished.

Dr. Schermerhorn had turned with enthusiasm to the unpacking of his chemical apparatus. Almost immediately at the close of the freight-carrying, he had appeared, lugging his precious chest, this time suffering the a.s.sistance of Darrow, and had camped on the spot.

We could not induce him to leave, so we put up a tent for him. Darrow remained with him by way of safety against the men, whose measure, I believe, he had taken. Now that all the work was finished, the doctor put in a sudden appearance.

"Percy," said he, "now we will have the defence built."

He dragged us with him to the narrow part of the arroyo, just before it rose to the level of the valley.

"Here we will build the stockade-defence," he announced.

Darrow and I stared at each other blankly.

"What for, sir?" inquired the a.s.sistant.

"I haf come to be undisturbed," announced the doctor, with owl-like, Teutonic gravity, "and I will not be disturbed."

Darrow nodded to me and drew his princ.i.p.al aside.

They conversed earnestly for several minutes. Then the a.s.sistant returned to me.

"No use," he shrugged in complete return to his indifferent manner.

"Stockade it is. Better make it of fourteen foot logs, slanted out.

Dig a trench across, plant your logs three or four feet, bind them at the top. That's his specification for it. Go at it."