Chapter VI: The Island of Darkness

A destroyer took the pair northward, flinging itself madly over the dark, dark sea. After the lights of Portland vanished behind them there was a period when the solid deck beneath seemed the only object in existence. There was no sky, no sun, no horizon. There was no land. There was only an invisible bulk beneath them which quivered insanely, and a wind blowing from the oblivion before them to the oblivion behind. There was no up, no down. One grew giddy from the sheer absence of anything by which to orient oneself. The utter loneliness of the dark was terrifying, because not even the sea could be seen. Even in some imagined spaceship, isolated in empty space, there would be stars for comfort. Here there was only nothingness.

When a yellow light glowed far away and seemed like a star, it was actually a lamp in a farmhouse window overlooking the sea. And in that farmhouse the sense of isolation was so great as to induce hysteria. The folk in the farmhouse were experiencing exactly the sensations of people on a tiny fragment of earth set floating free in a cosmos containing nothing else--nothing! Not even other worlds unthinkably remote.

It was a loneliness, a desolation, that clutched at the throat. All through the world that same despair was descending. In the cities it was less appalling, but on ships that steamed over invisible seas, and in lighthouses that were always isolated and now became small hells, and in tiny mountain cabins, and small hamlets and places innumerable, the dread of the dark grew and grew.

Some people went insane, and many grew hysterical. It is a matter of record that folk went solemnly out of their villages and set the woods about them on fire so that the flames and firelit smoke would give them something to look at other than the awful blackness which lay over the world. It was a curious aftermath of the darkness that the use of illuminants at night was multiplied many times. But on the destroyer these things were unknown. It swept on northward, horribly alone, until presently lights appeared to the left, and searchlights stabbed futilely upward, and there was a confused droning tumult over the land. The whole air force of the Army and Navy was being massed for action, together with the ships of a naval division and the artillery of an army corps.

Then the destroyer slackened speed, and went on into a bay where bonfires burned brightly, and its engines stopped and its anchor-chain clanged thunderously as it ran out. A thirty-foot cutter came alongside, moving by oars, and made fast to the landing-ladder of the destroyer. It waited.

"Efficiency," said Hines dryly. "No time lost, Schaaf. These men are volunteers for our forlorn hope. You know why I want to be on the island, but I'm able to have the zero hour held off only because the government wants to get hold of Preston's apparatus if it can. As a military weapon. We're going to try to take the island by storm."

"Der idea," observed Schaaf grimly, "is a lot of hooey."

Hines said nothing. He led the way down to the boat.

* * * * *

Oars dipped. The cutter pulled away. A navy launch swarmed up officiously and flung a line. Half a minute later the launch was speeding for the blackness of the open sea and the cutter went tearing through the water after it, squatted down astern until it seemed the waves should come in over the gunwale.

They could see little as the two boats moved, of course, but Hines stared up at the dark shore line. Guns were massed and massing there. Waiting and ready along a four-mile front. At one single word a storm of steel would spring from the hungry muzzles. A hurtling, screaming hail of death would leap upward and forward through the darkness. Six miles away it would descend.

Four miles of guns, packed as closely together as they could be brought up by straining locomotives and racing, swearing men. Four miles of guns concentrating on a little more than one mile of target, with the heaviest guns of the fleet to blast away what little of the island the shore artillery left.

There was no wind save that made by the movement of the towing launch, but that was bitter. The men on the seats of the cutter huddled down into their greatcoats, taking it easy. A flash light signaled off to seaward.

"We're passing between some islands," said Hines evenly. "They'll cast off when we're well on our way. The oars are muffled. If we can land on the damned island secretly, so much the better."

Five minutes, and the launch on ahead was slowing up. The men in the cutter bestirred themselves. A man in the bow tossed the towline overboard. The oars stretched out again. The launch swept around and went purring softly back into the darkness.

The cutter, without a word of command, began to move with the rhythmic pulsatory effect of a rowed boat toward the utter blackness of the open sea.

"Who's in command here?" demanded Hines.

"I am," said a voice. A flash light glowed through cupped fingers. A clean-shaved and rather anxious young ensign's face could be made out.

"Shoot der works," said Schaaf amiably. "What haff you done?"

"I've a pair of microphones overboard," explained the young officer nervously, "of the sort used for listening for submarines. They'll give us the line on two launches that are working submerged sounders for us. I can get the angles from both of them to make a course for the island even if we are blinded. And besides, we'll be able to hear the waves on the beach when we get near."

"Clefer," said Schaaf. "Fery good."

"And my men are all in linemen's boots and rubber. They're armed with--er--the regular mopping-up equipment."

"Which is?" said Schaaf encouragingly.

"Why--er--grenades, automatic pistols, and automatic shotguns throwing nine extra-sized buckshots to a shell. Also we've a couple of Lewis guns with us. We have twenty men."

"I can think of nothing you haff left out for a fine party but der beer," said Schaaf. "You haff done excellently, sir."

Oars rose and fell in a ghostlike silence. There was no splashing. Hines had ordered a boat propelled by oars because any motor-driven craft would be heard approaching the island. Hines had no hope of leaving that spot of land, but he did want to land on it alive. He fumbled for a cigar and lit it. The light of his match was the only glow of illumination in all the world.

They were far enough from shore and low enough in the water to make any possible light invisible. The sky was wholly black. The water was wholly black. Ahead and behind and to the right hand and the left there was no relief from the abysmal blackness anywhere. Hines's cigar small as was its gleam, provided a literal illumination by which the farthest man in the bow of the boat saw the face of his seat-mate faintly pinkened.

"If that darkness--" began the ensign.

He stopped. He was watching Hines's cigar fascinatedly. It had been a dull-red coal, brightening to what seemed a vivid incandescence when Hines puffed on it. Now it seemed to have gone out, and revived very, very faintly at each puffing. A moment later it seemed no longer to exist.

* * * * *

"We're in the darkness now," said Hines dryly.

His tone was entirely matter-of-fact, which was wise; for the men at the oars had been watching the glow of his cigar. It was the only spot of light in the universe. And when it went out, the effect was horrible.

"How do der microphones work?" asked Schaaf interestedly.

"I have the line," said the ensign unsteadily. "We're a shade under three miles from the island."

The boat went on silently. About the island Preston had brought darkness down to earth over a circular space some six miles across.

The cutter rose and fell, and rose and fell, and the three men in the stern felt the rhythmic pulling of the oars. Every man felt the opacity of the air weighing upon him, pressing upon him.

All the world had been dark enough anyhow, but to feel that by no possible device could a light be made to shine was queerly horrible. A man felt as if he were buried alive. He had an almost hysterical impulse to beat at the darkness with his hands, to thrust it away from him.

"I hear the surf on the beach in the headphones," said the ensign, a long time later.

"You should," said Schaaf placidly.

Hines then spoke shortly.

"We land and form a line. By the way, we want to land at the southern-most tip of the island. I know the lay of the land, roughly. We are to be entirely silent, passing signals by touching each other in the blackness. There are probably charged wires about the island. If we run into lines of wire, we will short-circuit them with gun-barrels to the earth, and then cut them. When Preston's instruments show a short-circuit, he will probably cut the darkness to see about it. We go ahead then. Mop up the island. There is one woman here. Be careful not to hurt her. But this is one time to fight hard! If we don't kill Preston, he'll kill us!"

The ensign said--steadily this time--"You men heard that. Those are your orders."

There was a little gurgling noise ahead, a washing, splashing sound. It ran a long distance in a straight line across the bow of the boat. The rudder squeaked, and the boat's course shifted until the sound was abeam. The oars worked monotonously. Presently the washing sound seemed to come to an end and to go away in the distance. The rudder squeaked again. They went on their former course once more.

"If you put your ear to the gunwale," said the ensign in a voice that was barely a whisper, "you'll hear a queer humming, sir. The hull picks up the sound from the water. I've been hearing it in the microphones for some time. It sounds like engines, sir."

"Dynamos," said Schaaf in as low a tone. "Der dynamos and der Diesel engines that make der juice."

"I'm heading in for the beach," whispered the ensign. "Easy, men! Get ready to beach her, up forward."

The word passed to the bow in murmurs. The washing of waves became louder and louder. The booming of small breakers on sand grew more distinct. Hines visualized the southern end of the island as he had seen it from the air and tried to guess at the spot from the fact that they were headed for a sandy beach. He nodded to himself.

The boat checked with a grating sound. There was the little lifting feel of men leaping out to ease it ashore.

"And now," said Schaaf grimly, "_Gott strafe_ Breston!"

* * * * *

They disembarked as blind men, feeling the foaming small breakers beating utterly unseen about their rubber-booted legs. They fumbled at each other to form a skirmish-line. At a low word from Hines they moved on.

It was a slow, a stumbling, an infinitely cautious party of the blind. Every man's eyes were wide and staring, through sheer instinctive effort to catch some glimmer of the light that in nature is nowhere quite absent. But here, the very air was opaque.

The blackness was oppressive past conception. A man felt as if he were buried alive, as if the darkness pressed upon him, as if a shifting stuff pressed upon his breast and would presently stop his breathing.

A tiny clatter, off in the darkness. The line halted. A message passed along its length in a murmur.

"A wire about a foot off the ground. It isn't charged."

"Step over it and go on," ordered Hines. "At any alarm, fling yourselves flat on the ground and wait." The line moved on again. Hines had cracked the crystal from a watch-compass and by the feel of its needle led the way. He, also, came upon that uncharged wire, stretched upon stakes no more than a foot above ground. It gave a little as he touched it. He passed over it.

Then, quite suddenly, a man screamed, down at the end of the line. A weapon went off thunderously in the blackness. One of the two Lewis guns roared itself empty. There was the clatter of men flinging themselves to the earth. Then silence.

Hines pressed his jaws tightly together. Instinctively he peered about, though his eyes could convey no possible sensation to his brain. There was only blackness and stillness.

Presently he became aware of the surf drumming away behind him. Then he heard the faintest possible humming noise overheard. At the same time a pungent odor stung his nostrils. He heard Schaaf exclaim softly, swearing under his breath.

Some one came writhing along the ground, counting the prone figures he passed.

"Inspector Hines!"

The faint humming noise passed toward the right. It died away.

"Here," said Hines quietly.

The ensign's voice panted.

"We've lost three men. Stone dead. Electrocuted."

Schaaf's voice came from astonishingly near by.

"Der four-centimeter beam," he said grimly. "They heard us. Perhaps der low wires were burglar-alarms. Breston passed der beam of four-centimeter wafes all about, with der high-tension current in it. Those three men were struck by it. It was like being struck by a life wire with ten thousand volts in it. I smelled ozone just now. My nose stings yet with it. Der beam passed humming ofer our heads."

The ensign asked nervously: "What do we do now, sir?"

"Lie still," said Hines coldly. "They'll get curious presently."

The ensign crawled away. Darkness. Blackness. The sound of the surf behind them. Time seemed endless, waiting. One had a ghastly feeling that it had been an hour or more, two hours--that it was time for the massed guns, six miles away, to open fire. One's ears strained for the whistling sound of that first flight of projectiles from four miles of guns.

Gradually an infinitely faint rumbling noise made itself felt. It was felt as much as heard. The sound came through the earth. The dynamos and the monstrous generators in Preston's underground dugouts, making the power that had darkened the world.

* * * * *

Without a trace of flickering, the darkness broke. With startling clarity the line of prone men could see. An unbearable glare smote upon their eyes, but despite it they saw.

The darkness had vanished from before their eyes. They seemed to be in a monstrous cavern whose walls were angular masses of jetty black. A great magnesium flare was burning on the ground. It lighted up three clumsy concrete structures three-quarters sunk in the ground. There were men standing near those structures. Three of them stood by a bowl-shaped thing of wires. They were looking--all the men were looking--at the line of prone riflemen. The darkness seemed to have been lifted for the precise purpose of permitting Preston's aids to look. From half a dozen tripods some six feet or so across darkness poured out in wide, fanlike beams. Those beams united overhead to form a roof of darkness, seemingly supported by the inverted pyramids of black. They united to shut off the rest of the world. They blended almost at the edge of the surf to cut off all vision upon the water. Hines and Schaaf and the volunteers gazed for exactly three seconds the length of a colossal cavern in which lights could glow, but which was roofed and walled with opacity.

Three seconds; while a man could breathe in and out and in again. Then from all along the line of prone men gunfire flashed at the exact instant that darkness fell upon them again. The remaining Lewis gum blared into nothingness, emptying its drum of cartridges. The automatic shotguns bellowed their magazines empty.

Somewhere off in the darkness a man shrieked, and there were shoutings, and then a deadly, snarling voice cried out. Something was roaring horribly, off there in the new-fallen blackness. A spark was leaping a colossal gap with the tearing thunderous rasp that only a current up in the thousands of volts will make.

"Scatter!" snapped Hines. "They've sighted that beam on us!"

He leaped to his feet and bolted--ahead. Some one pounded along beside him, though the presence of the other man was felt rather than heard, and of course nothing at all could be seen. Up ahead the sparking sound cut off sharply, leaving Hines's ears ringing with the sudden silence.

It seemed as if some wire--perhaps the high-tension wire to the four-centimeter beam--had been cut by a bullet, and now a switch was thrown. Through the ringing in his ears Hines heard the snarling voice ahead of him shout an order. He blundered on and tripped over something. The smell of scorched rubber rose from his boots.

He struck savagely at the thing with his gun-barrel, and somehow the darkness about him seemed to change. It was probably a beam darkness-transmitter, which he had smashed. But in an intangible cavern whose walls were opacity there was no great difference.

He went racing on, straining his yet-ringing ears for sounds, and crashed headlong into concrete. He gave a cry of satisfaction and began to fumble his way feverishly along its length. The man who had run beside him, panting, grunted with satisfaction as he in turn felt the concrete.

It was Schaaf. He mumbled to himself and Hines caught, "_verdammt_," and "_Schrecklichkeit_" and other much less repeatable words.

A door! Hines fumbled at his belt and found one single grenade.

"A steel door, Schaaf!" he panted. "I'm setting off a grenade before it. Get back around the corner!"

He deposited the little globe of iron, jerked out the pin, and fled.

The earth shook and a blast of sound which was like a blow on the chest smote them--for all that they were around the corner of the concrete. Then Hines flung himself forward again, rasping his fingers on the rough concrete and choking on the fumes of the explosive.

The door was blown away, blasted from its frame. No glimmer of illumination came through the awful darkness that was everywhere, but Hines stepped boldly through the opening with his automatic shotgun held ready for the instant light should reach him.

The curious feeling of a metal floor under his foot. Then emptiness! He went hurtling downward, falling into bright and blinding light. He struck something with his shoulder in the act of falling, and it wrenched his muscles cruelly but partly broke the drop. He wound up with a crash on concrete, all of fifteen feet down, and lay still for an instant, dazed.

* * * * *

He had a vague impression of a room that was sunk deep in the ground. There were masses of glittering glass, and many lights, and a humming noise filled all the air with a monotonous drone. Hines realized indistinctly that the curious squat structures on the island were merely the roofs of dugouts, dug down to safety below the surface of the earth. Then he heard a peculiar tearing, spitting sound near by.

His eyes focused dazedly on his shotgun, lying on the floor a little distance off. It was smoking strangely. Sparks were darting from it into the stone floor. It began abruptly to glow a dull red. Suddenly it exploded luridly. Every shell in its magazine went off in a single blast which was not disastrous solely because the red hot metal offered so little resistance to the expanding gases. They tore it apart almost like so much dough.

Somebody or other was racing down the steel steps Hines had tumbled from. Huge hands swept Hines from the floor. He smelled burning rubber. He knew that it was Schaaf who tore his automatic pistol out of his belt and flung it away. He knew, also, that it was Schaaf who leaped with him to one side of the room. He had a dizzy impression of glowing tubes of glass ail about him.

Then a snarling, arrogant voice said in insolent satisfaction:

"Police Inspector Hines, I believe, and my former assistant, Professor Schaaf. Very well met! I've wanted to have you two men killed for a long time."