The Moth Message by Laurence Manning Read online

  butterfly that fluttered near. LaBrot peered

  “This is the place.” I heard LaBrot say

  intently until the thing had gone. Then he to Stevens. “Could you land us on the edge of turned to us. “I think that was one of our the cliff somewhere, d’you suppose?”

  chaps,” he said, and turned away to stare Stevens looked doubtful and juggled

  down over the country we had come to

  the controls so that we lost altitude and the explore—his cheeks flushed slightly and his motors were idling. The great upthrust area of eyes sparkling. We had gained some notion as timbered wilderness seemed to come closer by to the lay of this high land from the airship.

  the second until we floated only a hundred Although such a jumble of stone and wooded feet above it. “Stand by to lower the anchor,”

  cliff could be termed nothing but capricious, called Stevens and then, “Let her go .... about such plan as there was might be described as two hundred feet of line .... with a little luck, follows: first, the encircling cliff-top, varying now. . . .”

  from one to two thousand feet in height;

  And then, miraculously, the ship second, from where we landed, a gorge lurched gently and we were swinging closer leading away southwest and forking into two and closer to a flat area of perhaps twenty feet main gorges, which might be termed East and width and a hundred feet length at the very top West Gorge; third, a series of smaller

  of the cliff. LaBrot was in the open door of the branching valleys and gorges on both sides of gondola and presently he jumped six feet the main depressions; fourth, a central raised down to the solid rock. I threw out our portion, which might have been originally a equipment, piece by piece, and tricky work it conical mountain now deeply scarred and cleft

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  by weather and geological action. Our first beating. Coffee and beans were hot as the strip undertaking was to descend the sharp slope of sky far overhead became dark and filled which led to the uneven floor of the main with stars. After that we talked and speculated gorge two hundred feet below us. We left our and I remember telling LaBrot:

  reserve supplies up on the rocky table where

  “So far as I am concerned, this trip is

  we had landed and loaded ourselves with a just plain vacation—I’m inclined to think that day’s rations and ammunition. Each of us your butterflies were too liberally treated in carried a knife and a revolver and a coil of one the matter of a translation. And even if not, I hundred feet of strong, light rope.

  hardly expect that this particular bit of

  “We have water, but hadn’t we better

  Colorado is the source of their emanation.

  look for more?” asked Seeman, the veteran Now, considered as a vacation, I think we are camper among us. And we agreed to make this having a bully time!”

  our first search and set off slithering and LaBrot was earnestly indignant—sure

  scrambling down the slope—aided by the we would find something unusual.

  half-dozen dwarfed spruces that grew upon it.

  “Always investigate the unusual!”

  At the bottom we trudged along between steep Colonel Marsh grunted. “No man ever

  cliffs for perhaps a mile over a none-too-explored this plateau before, did he? There smooth surface. At the end of a mile, Colonel you are! That was enough for me to go on, Marsh stopped and drew in his breath sharply, back in New York, and it’s enough now.”

  eyeing the ground closely.

  “Does it occur

  Seeman refused to enter the discussion and we to you youngsters,” he said, “that this canyon finally fell asleep under the stars.

  bottom is getting to look more and more like a

  . . . . path!”

  Have you ever had that sort of nightmare

  We hadn’t noticed, but it was true—

  where you lie on your back and can’t move here and there were unmistakable evidences of legs or arms while a beast or a villain (or smoothing, “Couldn’t be a water course?” whatever) slowly approaches? That’s the way suggested LaBrot.

  I woke up—and I thought I was still dreaming

  “It doesn’t always run at the lowest

  until the ropes cut into my wrists at their level,” pointed out Seeman. I felt a chill run striving and I saw in the half-dawn the curious up my back all of a sudden and glanced up misshapen figures bending over my

  nervously at the steep slopes that hemmed us companions and Colonel Marsh’s furious

  in. We proceeded down the canyon until we shouting broke the silence of the gorge with came to the great fork of the main gorges and wild echoes! The sweat poured suddenly cold here a careful study of the rocky soil revealed over my forehead—what creatures had

  the fact that someone or something had used captured us? Why? I had no time for such

  the path before us frequently. “It could be imaginings, for a blanket-draped figure

  animals—goats or bears, perhaps,” I approached me and brought me shrieking to suggested. “Let’s make camp right here before my feet with an expert twist on my wrist

  it gets too dark. There’s some firewood even lashings. Then with a sharp jab in the thigh, he if we have to use water from our flasks.”

  set me walking, and when I turned my head to The others agreed and we rolled our

  look back at my companions, I felt a spear blankets close to the canyon wall in a slight point draw blood on my left cheek and kept depression and built a roaring fire to keep my face straight ahead after that. About five away the beasts that had done the path-minutes later I heard behind me the sounds of

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  others walking (we were passing through vanished through the gateway. We waited in gravel) and called out: “Are you all right back silence for five minutes until another figure there?” The painful wound in my buttocks that came into the bright sunlight from out of the resulted was only partly compensated for by gold-framed darkness. Then we stared in real the threefold response from the rear that earnest!

  assured me my companions were at least in no I don’t quite know how to write down

  worse case than I. After that we walked in what she looked like—the first time we saw silence for an hour. It was broad daylight by Val-Bel. Her hair was a cloud of red-gold and now and our path broadened to all of two feet her skin a creamy olive. Her figure was

  width and we came upon a canyon deeply

  magnificent and stirring to the pulses with its overhung by cliffs from above. Up this bow-string tautness, and set off with as gloomy tunnel we marched, to round a corner beautiful a face as I ever expert to see this side suddenly upon a cul-de-sac by perhaps two of Paradise. She looked straight at us and her hundred yards across in the form of a circle eyes became fixed upon (I turned slightly to broken for twenty feet only by the entering make sure) no other than LaBrot. He

  canyon. Cliffs partly overhung this open area supported the look, like a dazed man, for a full so that a double handful of sky showed five minute. I noticed that the girl’s face was hundred feet above us. Our eyes, however, did tinged with the least touch of pinkness when not glance upward—there were more amazing she finally started and turned to the old man.

  sights to draw them. The entire face of the Two words were said. They saved our lives, as cliff was the facade of a vast circular building I know now, but we did not at the time. They evidently extending into the living rock. It were followed by a sharp command and our

  was regularly carved into great square pillars guards herded us promptly at the word off to with a massive overhanging pediment and the left and into a minor doorway and along a between the pillars, the rock was dressed and dark hallway cut in the stone of the

  pierced with openings for windows and with mountains. We tramped on echoing stone for a flat-arched doorways. This sight, in the midst minute or two and then turned into a large of a wilderness, mig
ht be considered room and—our guards cut our bonds and bewildering enough. Yet, in addition, there remained in the doorway!

  was that which took our breath away; the

  There we were, you see—prisoners.

  facade fairly blazed with gold! It was Colonel Marsh grunted and pulled his plastered in sheets upon every pillar, and the mustache through his fingers, eyeing the

  main doorway, facing us, seemed to have been guards speculatively. The other three of us built entirely of the yellow metal!

  explored our quarters and found that a dark There we were in a group, surrounded

  archway gave entrance to still another room in by our squat and ugly captors (they looked which were four palette beds upon the floor—

  almost humpbacked) and gasping at it all. And straw mattresses, for I felt them. Off that again then out from the cool gloom of the golden was a small room in which was sunk a pool of gateway stalked a tall, clean-limbed old man water about six feet square and four feet deep, in purple robes that fell to his golden shoes.

  and with a constant flow entering at one end He looked at us in silence a moment and then and going out at the other, over a groove cut clapped his hands. A dark-faced dwarf—like in the rocky floor of the room. Rude enough our guards—ran to him dog-like from the comfort, perhaps, but entirely adequate, shadows, was given a quiet order, and except for light, which was furnished by

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  enormously long shafts a foot square and him was intolerable smirch. His fellow led extending, evidently, up to the very top of the him stumbling out of our presence, and her cliff in which the caves were excavated. We face lost that frightening haughty look as she went back into our “living-room” and found turned to us once more.

  Colonel Marsh alone, but the butt of a spear With her hand, she pointed to her

  showing beyond the archway indicated that a breast, said “Val-Bel” and then pointed to guard was outside.

  LaBrot. He only looked at her as though he

  “And now what?” asked Seeman. We

  had lost his wits. She repeated the action and did not reply. After a while, a tray of food was then he came to himself with a start and gave brought in and placed on the floor, the swart his own name. In turn she learned all our squat servitor instantly retiring. There was names. We found that wax-tapers were called cold meat and a sort of scone baked in ashes,

  “ge-luce” and that shoes were “pod-la.” For with sheep’s milk (so the Colonel pronounced an hour she gave us a thorough lesson in her it) in a leather bottle. We ate in silence in the language and signifying that she would return half gloom of the stone walls, and when we the next day, she left us. A little later we were had finished the tray was removed.

  brought our evening meal, and upon

  “They are feeding us, anyway,” I said

  consuming this we retired, feeling unusually to the others.

  sleepy. I know that I was asleep before I had

  “I suppose you chaps realize that they

  time to fully reflect upon the events of the have left us our revolvers!”

  day—when I awoke I still felt tired and gazed

  “What! Why, that’s right! Took our

  around in a half stupor before I realized that I knives and left the guns on us!”

  was dressed in a flowing cotton robe instead

  “Then we can walk out of here of my own clothes! In surprise I rose upon an whenever we want to!”

  elbow and peered around in the half gloom at

  “Wait a minute,” cut in LaBrot. “What

  my sleeping companions. Our clothes had

  did we come here for? To find out what was been taken away and with them— our

  here and why, yes? We’re being fed—let’s

  revolvers!

  wait a few days and see what it’s all about.”

  I roused the others one by one and told

  It was an absurd situation. Yet if we

  them the news.

  broke for freedom, killing the guards, we

  “We’ve been drugged!” grunted

  might never learn who these people were. We Colonel Marsh. “Now we’re in a fine pickle!”

  agreed to pretend to be prisoners—but “we

  “What do you suppose they are going

  mustn’t let ’em tie us up again, you know,”

  to do to us?” asked Seeman.

  stipulated Seeman.

  I feared the worst, but LaBrot seemed

  And just as we had that matter settled,

  unalarmed. “Val-Bel won’t let anything

  in walked Val-Bel followed by two awkward happen to us,” he said confidently. She came fellows carrying wax tapers. Her hair seemed shortly afterwards, and two guards with her to like a third light in the room and she walked give us our breakfast. She looked interestedly proudly looking straight toward us. She at our new clothes and seemed much pleased beckoned to the guards to set down the with the effect, particularly with LaBrot’s candles and in doing so one guard touched her appearance. Our language lesson commenced dress—she flared up in a great rage as though at once and lasted for the entire day.

  she were of different clay from that humble, cringing being—as though a mere touch from For the next two weeks we remained in that

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  semidungeon, unable to determine upon a distance without words. Certainly she seemed definite attempt to escape and speculating to have received a warning of some sort. “I upon whether our pilot would continue to call must not say any more—let us continue with week after week for us at the edge of the our lesson!”

  plateau. We could converse with some

  “But one thing—just one! Surely it

  freedom in the new language by now, yet had cannot be forbidden,” pleaded LaBrot. She learned absolutely nothing of the inhabitants looked at him and her face softened. “What is of the plateau, nor the purpose of our it?”

  captivity. Val-Bel simply refused to answer

  “How does it happen that the plateau is

  any questions and confined her attentions now half a mile above the plain outside and entirely to teaching us words. Every morning where has the great river you mention now she arrived shortly after our breakfast and gone?”

  remained with us for six or seven hours of Her brow furrowed and she glanced

  intensive study. And for the rest of the day around uneasily. “Well .... I will answer that, and the long evenings we had “ennui,” as

  for what harm? The books speak of a great LaBrot called it—sheer boredom.

  earthquake, of the rocks shaking and

  One day Val-Bel did let in a little light tumbling. Many of our colonists were killed.

  upon our mystery—she spoke hesitantly, as Out over the plain as far as they could see, the though afraid to reveal more than a very little.

  ground rose and fell rhythmically and sections I had framed a sentence in her language: rose hour after hour until they became distant

  “How is it, Val-Bel, that your people ever got mountains. The water in the river all ran down up on this plateau if they cannot now get into great cracks that opened to receive it in down again?”

  the earth’s crust. The sun set on that terrible

  “But when they first came here it was

  day and after a night of terror the sun rose on not a plateau,” she replied, her eyes wide at a new countryside—even as we see it now ....

  the thought. “That was in very ancient days There! Now we must stop talking and study!”

  and all around stretched level land, save for these small ravines and bluffs—or so the Thus the days passed. Each morning we books say. The ships sailed right up to the old looked forward to Val-Bel’s coming. Finally wharf that was not half a mile distant—up the one morning we heard the expected sounds

  great river they sailed, and brought new and looked up to see not Val-Bel,
but the tall colonists and took away the gold.”

  white-bearded figure we had seen on the first

  “The gold! How did the gold get day. He gazed at us in silence a moment.

  here?”

  Then: “You will follow me!” he commanded

  She looked more surprised than ever.

  and turned on his gold-sandaled heel. Six

  “From the mines, of course! This colony was guards came in and we followed him without the most productive gold mine in all the waiting to be prodded into it! The sunlight empire—why else would a colony be set here was startlingly bright, even in that deep so many thousands of miles from . . . .”

  canyon, after our long stay in the prison, and She started, and her eyes half closed

  the air was crisp and clean in our nostrils. We and gazed vacantly over our heads while she found ourselves led, however, directly toward appeared to listen. But I could hear no the enormous golden portal of the main cavern sound—I wondered then and have wondered

  and quickly plunged into its gloomy interior.

  since whether these people could converse at a When our eyes could make out any details at

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  all, we gasped—all four of us. Never in my absurd,” he answered coldly. “What purpose life have I imagined so much gold! The room can you have in seeking to deceive me?”

  was square and measured fully a hundred feet

  “We do not know Atlantis,” put in

  across, while overhead the stone walls curved LaBrat. “It has sunk under the ocean.”

  over to make a pointed arch enormously high Our host was visibly growing angry.