Chapter III: A Monster

When next I realized events, the life of the Stone Age had begun. We dwelt in a cave; a fire of drift wood was burning; a bird was frying. My head was pillowed on coarse grass, and one of Isabella’s purple wraps covered me. It was night, and rain was falling.

They had hoped for my return to health for many days. They told me that they had learned much concerning the little star. It was about three hundred miles in circumference. The lofty peaks were disproportioned to the size, according to all our standards of measurement; they served as observatories for overlooking the surface of one-half the sphere. The ball seemed belted by a continuous continent, with deeply indented shores; this made a very long coast line.

“There are fine harbors and very good locations for great towns,” said Isabella to me.

Towns! One person in a town! My brain was still dull from my illness. As a worrying remembrance, I thought of ships, people, tumult of business. Then I looked away at the great star which was our Earth. Home was there. All was there. This was a wilderness of uncooled lava!

“He must be told of our discovery,” cheeringly remarked Father Renaudin.

Thereupon he brought and arranged upon a large flat stone a little circle of smoke-blackened stones, surrounding some charred sticks, and a couple of bones.

I looked at this collection and then wonderingly at their triumphant faces, astonished at their waiting, expectant manner. What did they mean me to see in that little circle?

“Father Renaudin found it on the top of the mountain,” explained Isabella, joyfully.

“I appoint you to commence, continue and control manufactures and all the commerce of the star,” said Regan.

Still I did not see. I had been very ill. I had not, as yet, become accustomed to the chances of the planet.

“Roy,” said Isabella, “some man built this circle! Don’t you know that neither beasts nor birds could build a hearth and light a fire?”

That was it! In the childish toy before me was the promise of a world! There was commerce, manufactures, wealth, hope, life—the old life! What did I care that Regan was monarch! The wealth would be the real power! That would be mine again, all mine! I should rule the sea, I, Roy Lee!

I had been weak, but I was strong now; my lethargy was gone. There was work to be done at once.

As the course of the star was toward the sun, the heat was becoming intense, and we removed from our station in the black ravine to the edge of the forest, where it was more pleasant, and near the sea, where it was cooler.

We traveled, in moving, over the roughest way, crossing mountains and going around deep arms of the sea. The air was much more dense than that which we had been accustomed to breathe. It seemed as if we were inhaling warm water. As we ascended into the heights we found it more comfortable, except when we struck one of the chilly clouds.

The small ball with its little gravitation caused us to be so light that we were not fatigued, and as the days were only six hours long we had but a short time to labor.

Having found a site which was remarkably pleasant, we built ourselves four stone houses, and proceeded to adorn the grounds.

We called the broad, rapid river which flowed past to the sea the Styx, because its waters were so dark and because the forest on the further side was so mysterious.

The tall trees about us were of corn stalk consistency. They grew from a deep morass. The broad leaves formed so close a surface that they penned the heated air beneath them, and at noon-time we could see the atmosphere turn to a greenish hue, and vibrate as if over a heated stove.

Sometimes the roots became too heavy and, falling somewhere, pulled the tops to the ground. Sometimes the tops became too heavy and the tree toppled on one side, lodged, and, after awhile, fell with some of its fellows into a pile of green reeds and vines. These heaps of trunks and webs of vines made it possible for us to cross the river; from isle to isle there were vine bridges formed, and thus we were enabled to investigate the forest, where we were glad to find an abundance of fruit and berries.

Into this bewildering maze, a dreamland of bottomless swamps and foundationless jungle, Regan and I went often. Always in the morning, as at noon its heat became unendurable. We found many birds, which we killed with no difficulty, several different fruits, and a few harmless serpents. There was a lack of animal life in the seething woodlands of the Star.

We gathered a bark, softer and lighter than that of the birch, and this we used for paper, upon which we chronicled every important event, fact and discovery of our Earth, as fast as we could remember them. We were making wooden type and printing presses, but meantime wrote everything so as not to forget; forget and grow like the uncivilized nations of Earth before we could find those people who had built the fire.

We were late this day. The burdens of bark were heavy and hindered our progress through the vines and over the fallen trunks.

The hours, always too few, had gone before we knew it, and we were hastening to get into the cooler air, in momentary expectation of falling from the heat.

“Where does this intense heat come from?” asked Regan. “Is it all from the sun?”

“The Star itself is not cooled,” replied I. “I imagine, if the heat were from the sun wholly, the seas would boil over their entire surface rather than in spots.”

“’Tis a Planet in construction, not nearly finished,” said Regan. “Now what possible reason can there be for such a thing as that?”

He pointed to a great black surface of lava, which rose in a mud lake or very deep slough. Around were trees veiled in vines, a reed-grown width of swamp and a waste of reddish mud.

I noticed that the great reeds were matted like crushed cornstalks in many places; they were also mud-spattered and generally draggled and disturbed.

It was necessary for us to spring from one of the matted foot-holds to the ball of lava and from there reach the overhanging vines on the other side; unless we did this we must make a long, uncertain tour around the steaming slough into the vibrating heat of the forest.

“Shall we cross, or go around?” I asked.

“Let us cross, leaving our burdens of bark in this tree; we will return for them to-morrow,” said Regan.

We swung them into the low bough and sprang upon the block, wondering again that it should be there, in the bottomless morass.

It began to move! It shook, commenced to sink! From the mud rose a pillar of black flesh, surmounted by a hideous, yellow-eyed, serpent-tongued head.

With a powerful stroke the shape reached after us, and, striking Regan, cast him like a ball into the vines of the bank.

Meantime, with the sinking bulk, I was slipping, sliding into the muddy depths, clutching at the shell and shrieking at the trees. I fell under the shade of a huge paw, with fingers like those on the human hand, but at least four feet in length. As I sank into the iron-like mire, that hand fell, splashing and clawing, after me in a surge of mud. I rolled between two fingers, over the paw again uplifted, and into a mass of crushed reeds.

Dashing the mud from my face, I saw Regan spring upon the huge back, now heaving and moving like a small mountain; dodging the head, he sprang into the morass beside me; missing the reeds, he sunk into the mud to his shoulders, but, clutching some vines and reeds as he fell, he drew himself partly up, and reaching a log stood upon it.

He stretched out his hand to me and I clambered to where he stood; together we climbed up the bank, not pausing for even a moment’s rest. The sun burned down; the morass was steaming in white vapor, but the monster began to loosen its bulk from the slough bed and, partially turned, came toward us, swaying its hideous head, its tongue darting not far from us. It clawed the banks, but they fell under its feet, and it splashed into the slough. Recovering its lost ground, it clumsily climbed on. Trees crushed down like the grass as it moved. I could not breathe in the heat; even with that creature coming I did not think I could flee.

“Leave me, leave me! Escape? I cannot move!” I gasped to Regan.

“Man, have you nothing to live for?” cried Regan, with a look of rage in his face which even then I noticed. “It is a terrible death! Rouse up! There is the river! Run, Roy, run!”

I saw the blue water. I thought I might as well try. We ran a few steps and came where a bridge of vines, falling to the surface of the river, gave us the salvation of a little island.

We swung across and sank down in some shade to dash water on our hot faces and hands.

Then we glanced back. There came the awful shape, blindly and madly following us. We could see it plainly—a head like that of a hippopotamus on a huge trunk which looked like a tree bole, a great flattened body like a turtle’s, a black shell which we had thought lava, long paws ending, as I had before observed, in human-shaped hands. Devoid of instinct, although in bulk as large as twenty full-grown elephants and in strength proportioned, it did not stop when it clawed vines instead of earth, but pushed itself over the river’s edge of lava rocks and fell headlong, helpless, into the water.

“If it can swim, we are lost!” I said.

“Yes, or if the water is shallow it will crawl out!” said Regan.

“Swing back on the vines; a few farther up are left!” shouted I.

“It is gone!” said Regan. “Look!”

There was a mighty surge of the waves, a few tremendous tossings; then the water settled silently, and whatever became of the monster in the depths below we saw it no more.

“Like lead or like a leaf, all is the same in those swallowing waters!” said we, as we wearily sought a path home.

Then I could but think how brave he was, that Regan, to return from comparative safety upon the very block of his danger to drag from death one who claimed not even to be his friend!

I could not understand why so persistently Regan always befriended me to the utmost of his power when our natural hate was unconcealed from each other! I was forced to admire his courage. I could not comprehend why he should take so much unnecessary and thankless trouble, for I almost wished that I had died rather than that he had saved me.

Having learned the signs of the lairs of these beasts, we avoided them in our future visits. They were somnolent creatures and never woke but under provocation. With greater precautions we continued our investigations in the forests, for we must know the resources and productions of our world.

There was a long, long winter before us, far off, but inevitable.

We made collections of large plantain-shaped leaves, which we used for building triple platforms to serve for shades above the roofs of our houses.