Chapter IV: A Living Island

Shortly the vines and flowers veiled our walls and hid us in temples of green, crimson and white-hued blossoms. A paradise was about us.

We turned water from the mountain springs and made silvery lakes and rippling streams through the shaded fragrance. We almost forgot that Gregg Dempster had predicted a twenty years winter!

There were trees with silver fringes, others with crimson leaves, and masses of shrubs whose leaves were the purple velvet of the pansy. The landscape became like a beautiful dream; its coloring was of a kind which paled the hues of Earth to insipidity.

Nature seemed to move by contraries; everything was a bewilderment. We were afraid the very trees would encroach upon us and wind us in their ever-extending arms.

The waters of the heavy, frothy sea scintillated with the brilliant hues of the rainbow, but not a leaf or a twig would float upon them; everything sank, even the feathers with which we experimented.

The low-hanging clouds had fantastic shapes and were constantly casting wonderful prismatic effects upon sea and rock. The shafts of light which broke through them made the star kaleidoscopic; but during storms we seemed to be in the volume of the bursting thunder-clouds.

Verdure began to bloom on those distant isles out at sea. I had given up hope of reaching them, but Regan ever looked restlessly away at those singular islands, those lonely peaks and mounds in that steaming, unbounded water. Through noon’s heat, through starlit nights, he watched and considered how to reach them.

“To be king of the isles and unable to get to the isles!” he explained to Isabella.

“Try a balloon!” suggested Father Renaudin.

“I have thought of that,” said Regan. “We have no cloth, or the possibility of manufacturing any. Then the laws of atmospheric pressure, the lack of gravitation, the too hot air above volcanoes, or some other reason on this little ball, may cause the work of months to be a failure. I cannot afford to fail!”

“Not there, certainly; failure means death in the sea!” said I.

“I suppose so,” reluctantly assented Regan.

“If by any means we could attach a rope to that central peak of rock!” said Isabella. She was always so intensely interested in anything that Regan wished to do!

In a few minutes Regan sprang to his feet.

“Isabella, I have thought how I can get there!” he said.

“How?” we asked in a breath.

“With ropes and kites!” he replied.

Then for weeks we busied ourselves in making heavy vine cables and strong, light cords. We made, also, with the utmost pains to have them exactly alike, two huge bark kites.

How like child’s play it seemed, I thought, as with diligence, day after day, we devoted our whole time to this petty work.

But why not play? What better were we than children in this land where we looked vainly for any sign of the existence of those people who had lighted the fire on the circle of stones?

I wondered if Regan had not kindled that fire to make us believe that he was king of something! No; I could not think so. I would have been glad to doubt him, but I could not. One who lived daily where he was must believe in him whether he would or not.

All was prepared. The heavy cables wound the huge basket, strung to slide on them. The light cords were attached to the kites, the heavy ones to fly them were ready. When a strong wind blew directly toward the isle we started them. The idea was to sail them above and beyond the peak. Thus they would carry the unbroken cord around the lava column; by cutting the kite strings the kites would fall, dropping the cord where we could draw it so as to bring, instead of its lightness, the great vine cables about the peak, and then we could cross with the basket. Having once drawn ourselves to the isle we could make a permanent basket ferry.

If the cables broke, even if the little cord tangled, our work must be done over again.

“As if to please the king,” Isabella said, the night breeze, strong and straight, blew to the isle.

I looked at that vine-veiled bunch of chaotic, volcanic collection; almost it seemed like some primeval mammoth of the lost ages. How mysterious a common thing becomes when we are hindered from reaching it! But for that fathomless, seething sea we had never desired to go to that particular point.

Something like horror was in my heart as we stood gazing at the flights of the kites. Father Renaudin and Isabella were to remain on shore. There were so few of us if anything should happen.

The kites flew in a gray evening twilight. A black storm slept on the near horizon; around us all things were darkening. How beautiful they were—the kites! Then I stopped my thoughts angrily. Had I, for lack of greater things to watch, reached a stage where I was interested in the flight of a kite, I who had managed great white-sailed fleets of Earth, I who had selected their silken wares, sold their immense cargoes, I, Roy Lee?

I could not shake it off—the feeling that it was of the vastest importance that the kites sail right.

They did sail right. “As if an angel guided them,” Father Renaudin said. I hoped Isabella would not say anything about their sailing to please the king, and she did not; she only breathlessly watched them.

It was a perfect success. Regan’s work again.

At the close of the following day the basket swung on the cables stretching from shore to the island.

Early the next morning we crossed to the island, which looked strange and more dangerous as we neared. We stood upon the shore and from the basket took the shovels, cords, hatchets and spears which we always carried now. There was a roll of blankets of straw cloth, which we had also brought to serve as shelter from heat.

We took each a couple, slung on our shoulders; took long, strong staves in our hands and climbed up the gashed sides of the cliffs.

Wondering more and more at every step at this strange rock, at the singular terror which we could but control with strong determination, we both felt like rushing even into the waters of the sea.

From the high cliffs we gazed into a round, deep cavity, half-dark even at noon with a haze of settling smoke.

“It looks like the throat of a beast,” said Regan, as we hesitated on the brink.

Looking closely, we saw a volcanic crater such as was common all over the continent. It was only faintly alive. The smoke was reddish above the crater’s mouth. Listening, like a giant’s breath we could hear the roar of the surging flames far below.

“What can be those two huge yellow spots in that vale?” I asked.

“They look like two great plates of gold,” answered Regan.

“Like little mirrors laid on the rock,” said I. “Shall we go down?”

“Certainly, I came for that,” responded Regan.

We began the descent. Once I paused. There was the tremor of a slight earthquake. The volcano’s breath was heavier. Under the clouds of smoke we were shaded. Cautiously we stepped from stone to stone, so much terrified that neither of us spoke.

“What are these plates?” at last said I.

They were about twelve feet in diameter, of a round, yellow and wrinkled substance, but whether vegetable, mineral or animal we could not determine.

Without a word of his intention, Regan raised his hammer of stone and struck a powerful blow upon the yellow surface by which we were standing.

The earth shuddered, the cliffs burst and cracked; the island itself leaped from the sea, and about our heads tumbled stone and pillars of rock, dust of lava, deluges of vines. An awful call of rage, a voice from the rocks, the menacing roar from the living soil sounded like the trump of doom about us. Everywhere, from all the walls of stone at once, not like thunder and not like sea—more like the bellow of the most mighty convulsion of earthquake which humanity ever knew.

Trees fell; vines entangled us. We would have fled, but there was no place to flee. The land was raging. That voice—that maddening, horrible voice!

“It’s an eye!”

Like a demon orb, great, horrifying, fusing, flashing, that eye looked at us. Those wrinkled yellow covers were the lids.

The breath was a snort of vengeance now. It was a living island! Those eyes—those awful eyes!

I shrank from their glare. I fell into the crater’s mouth. An instant I swung above a fiery depth. Regan caught my hand with mighty strength. I saw his face, defiant even then, looking up at those toppling peaks and quivering, gashed sides.

“He has only to let go. I shall be out of his way forever then!”

Even in the supreme suspense of the moment I thought I could not die and leave Isabella more happy without me.

He was going to save me. I knew he would.

But the rocks moved from him and together we rolled into the fiery crater, among sulphur and hot stones. We clung to the sides, the voice bewildering us with its roar, the breath shaking the whole surface of the volcano and of the rock. The smoke rose into a pillar above the crater. The yellow glare of the fire showed us where we were, showed us the danger on all sides.

So strange an enemy stilled our hearts and palsied our faculties. We did nothing. Entombed in a volcano, hopelessly we sank upon the sand and waited, waited for death, until the daylight had gone. It was night.

By this time the voice was still; the angry island had ceased to groan. The yellow liquid fire seethed in the cauldron; the smothering flames and smoke were often puffed into our faces.

What would it do? A mad isle had its human hate! Was all the Star alive? Had the ball a huge heart to beat in the fiery centre? Had rocks a brain and nerve to think?

“Did you believe it possible for rock and flame to look and think?” said I.

I spoke to hear my own voice. The silence of voices was as bad as the danger.

“We are not surprised to see that a sponge is vegetable in fibre with animal life,” replied Regan. “Roy, this is yellow gold; see here!”

Regan shook some cooled drops of the liquid of the volcano into my hand.

“Leave it on the ashes. Gold or dross it is all the same here. Let us cast ourselves down into this pit and end it all!” said I.

I could die well enough if Regan would die too!

Our blankets had fallen with us. Regan spread one above the flame. The hot air began to fill it. There was a hope. At once we were more cheerful. We broidered the ends of the blankets together, tied them into a balloon shape, expanding the mouths with our broken staves, leaving loops for our hands.

We held the bag inverted above the crater. It slowly inflated. It began to pull.

“That weak thing to swing above that lava! Never!” I exclaimed, and thoughtlessly, tortured by the heat, I let go the staves.

In a second’s time Regan was swung into the air; the smoke hid him; he did not return.

Then I gave way to my bitter despair and wept as I cast myself on the stones. Forever he was gone! I was alone—entombed by the rage of an island, deserted by the hate of a man!

How long it was I do not know. Day whitened the crater smoke. I heard a voice call: “Roy! Roy!” It sounded in the rocks at my side: “Roy! Roy!”

“Regan!”

“Here, at the right!”

A torch flared. There he was, with water and food; he had found another opening into the crater. After I had drunk the water and eaten the food we returned into the sunlight to life once more.

Looking about us at the strange rocks, we wondered at our unseeing blindness when we had walked on that half-animal surface of wrinkled, unnatural stone and had not thought it a mighty leviathan of unknown existence.

Still the cables were unbroken. We returned over the homeward way, a little apprehensive that the isle could remember as well as groan.

Once more we stood beside the waiting two, Father Renaudin and Isabella. They had seen. The island had half-reared from the sea. Its contour was changed; its rocks were broken. They had seen its peaks topple, had noted its awful voice.

For a time we feared the very soil on which we walked, but we discovered no signs of life in the continental cliffs.

After this we made no more investigations for some time, while the line of white at the far north became less and less. The mass of black and fire-streaked cloud at the south grew larger and redder.

The sun began to burn the whole day, instead of at noon only. When it rose it seemed as if a great furnace door opened on us. We stayed in the shelter of our vines and beside our lake of water.

One night we were sitting before our houses, watching the shimmer of the river where the firelight fell upon it. We heard the sound of wings; looking up at the moonless sky we saw floating black forms—huge birds, we thought. We saw their wings reflecting the light as they moved, saw their eyes shining like glass, saw faces looking wistfully down upon us!

What were those things, circling nearer, lower, slower?

“It is the people at last! Thank God!” cried Father Renaudin.

“It is the people!” hissed Regan. “Monsters with wings!” Then I heard him whisper: “But if there were a God he would do this! He would not people every world the same!”

I was glad that his subjects had wings, those great, strong wings! Magnificent attributes!

They came down and stood beside us, their wings hanging like folded cloaks, mottled and splotched with red, orange and silver. They looked like ambassadors in ’broidered mantles.

“If we could speak to them!” said Regan.

“We can understand all that you say!” they answered.

It was useless to try to find out where and of whom they had learned our language. They only could tell us that they had been taught from the Sun Island, a far-off land of the sea. Sometimes, they said, the tide was low and we could walk on dry rocks to the isle. Sometimes there was a “wall in the air.” Then no one could get there.

Who is there? What is there? There was no answer. We could think of no way of accounting for this; we determined to visit the place at once, but other cares prevented us.

Another strange thing occurred.