CHAPTER XX
How can I make clear the dismay, the confusion that swept over us at this unexpected outcome to our supposedly successful escape? What could we do? Retrace our way back through the winding tunnel? There were many diverging passageways: we would lose ourselves hopelessly in this honeycombed mud-bank. And before us was the cave, into which we could not venture without the practical certainty of capture.
Too bewildered to do otherwise, we crouched and stared down into the cave. It was less crowded now, but there were still a hundred or more Maagogs on its floor, and dispersed about its wall niches.
Across from us, almost at the same level, was that other ledge on which we had formerly perched. Behind it, its tunnel showed as a small circle of blackness. Perhaps we could swim across the cave unnoticed—get into that other, now familiar, passageway—then through the coral barrier and into the open water. . . To safety. . . Unless the monster were still there. . .
Atar aroused me from these thoughts. He was pointing downward into the cave.
“Nemo. Caan. What is he doing there?”
On the platform, Og and three of the white old men were gathered. Around them a small school of fishes was swimming. Ten or twenty fishes—short, squat things, two or three feet long, smooth, dull black skins, and with huge distended mouths. For all their size there was about them an aspect of extraordinary strength—their powerful squat build, the alertness of their movements.
My heart almost stopped with the sudden realization that these fishes—or were they fishes?—were not swimming aimlessly, but were waiting for Og’s command! Like a pack of trained animals they circled about their master. Then Og called to them. They answered with full-throated, yelping cries! Fishes with voices, you exclaim? You need not be amazed. There are “shouting fishes” even in your own waters of Earth.
Og was bending over the shell where Nona had been bound. The rushes that had bound her and which Atar had cut, were still lying there. At Og’s call these swimming creatures gathered around him eagerly. The sound of their voices—yelping, whining—was blood-curdling. Og was raising up the severed bonds—holding them out; and the fishes were smelling of them!
Then, in a pack they gathered; and Og, leading them, swam with them across the cave up near its ceiling to that other ledge from whence, with Nona, we had made our escape.
The black fishes entered the other passageway, with Og and half a dozen other Maagogs after them. As they swept down into it, their gruesome cries died away into the distance.
You, with your knowledge of similar things, will doubtless think it stupid of us to be puzzled at the meaning of all this—at its danger to us. Yet—we had no way of knowing. We stared at each other, relieved that these ugly black things which uncannily answered Og’s commands, had disappeared.
“Nemo! You are hurt!” It was Nona, who now had noticed that my arm was bleeding where the Maagog girl’s dagger had ripped it.
“Nothing.” I said; and I wiped it against my robe.
We tried to plan what we should do. Could we cross the cave? The Maagog girl was still down there, near the platform, with eyes alert to everything around her—eyes that still smouldered with hate and jealous rage. No. To enter the cave would be to court almost certain discovery. We would have to retrace our way—find some other tunnel to lead us out into the open water.
We were starting back, had gone perhaps a hundred yards, when far ahead of us down the narrow passageway, we heard sounds. Yelps! Cries! Whines! Not human—the cries of those squat fishes with their huge slimy jaws!
Panic seized us. We darted back toward the cave. Then forward again, trying to find a side tunnel. But along here there was none.
The yelps grew louder; Og’s voice mingled with them. And then, before we could decide in which direction to go, like a pack of eager hounds following a trail and come at last upon their quarry the black fishes swept down upon us. I tried to fight them off—tried to protect Nona. But they darted about me, under me, over me, and gripped me from every side. Teeth like needles, ripping, tearing at my flesh. . . Og’s voice shouting a command. . . Caan screaming a warning at me. . . Then something heavy struck my head. Silence and blackness descended upon me.
I recovered consciousness to find myself lying in a bed of mud in a dim, cave-like room. My first sensation was one of heat; the water I was breathing was hot, stifling. My head throbbed.
Nona, Caan and Atar were gathered over me, waiting anxiously for me to recover my senses. Nona, hearing my weak voice, seeing my eyes open, threw herself down beside me.
I was not greatly injured. Og had struck me on the head with the flat of his spear. It had cut my scalp and raised an ugly lump. Besides that, the flesh of my legs, arms and shoulders was torn by those fishes’ teeth as if by needles.
The plight of Caan, Atar, and even my dear Nona, was similar—but with none of us was it serious.
They told me now, that we were captives. Back there in the tunnel Og had called off his attacking fishes—called them from us or we would have been torn to ribbons. Then, floating me with them, the Maagogs under Og’s direction had brought us here to this small room adjacent to the main cave—and left us.
I sat up, then swam a little. I was all right! Nona was all right—we were all safe and sound! My hopes revived. Why should we not now escape?
But none of my companions reflected my jubilant mood.
“Let him look around,” said Caan to Atar. Never had I heard Caan speak so sourly, so despondently.
I did look around. We were in a black mud room some forty feet square and half as high. It was bare of furnishings; and lighted overhead by a crude sort of illuminated bladder that gave off a dull green glow. On one side against the black wall were beds, hollowed out of the mud. To you they would have looked like shallow graves; and in one of them I had been lying. Across the room was a shelf of mud with a dozen clay seats on it—like a row of huge toadstools.
A third side gave into a tunnel. I approached it eagerly; then drew back shuddering. That pack of blood-hound fishes was out there, circling back and forth, on guard. They saw me, and darted lazily forward. As I stopped, they seemed satisfied, and went back to their endless circling, following every twist and turn of two or three who seemed to lead them.
Caan laughed cynically. “Not there, Nemo, you see.”
My arms went protectingly about Nona, and she drew me wordlessly to the fourth side of the room. The wall here was gone. A grating of woven seaweed like prison bars, took its place. I stood on a precipice, gazing through the bars into a black void of water.
Can I make you understand the shuddering fear that possessed me? This water out there was moving swiftly downward, like a torrent, or a subterranean waterfall. Its current, drawing the water out of the room, flattened me involuntarily against the bars.
I had never seen swiftly moving water before. I felt as you would feel gazing from a great height into a dizzy abyss. And this water I could see, was boiling hot down there. But for those bars, I should have been whirled down into it! And from far below I could hear a faint sizzling, as of water dropped on a bed of embers.
I forced myself away from the grating, back into the center of the room; and now I was aware that all the water in the room was coming from the tunnel and passing in a current through those bars.
“You see,” said Atar, trying to speak calmly. “You see now—”
But Og abruptly entered from the tunnel. He hovered before us, leering. Nona shrank against me, and I folded her in my arms.
Og did not glance at Nona. He said to Caan: “Have you decided?”
“No,” Caan answered. “He is but this moment recovered. We—”
“Tell him now. I will wait.” Og turned away, swam over to the grating and gazed through it to that boiling, tumbling water.
Then Caan told me. Og offered us freedom—us three men. He would send us back to Rax. The price of it was Nona’s promise to be his Queen—a willing, smiling Queen, none other would the Maagogs have.
I could feel Nona shudder against me, but she said no word.
“No!” I shouted. “No! No!”
Og heard me and smiled. “There is another way. Tell him, Caan.”
And if we did not agree—if Nona did not give her promise—Og, the Executioner, would open the grating and let us three men slip out—down into that boiling water our helpless bodies would be sucked. . .
As Caan said it, my Nona burst out: “And Nona, too. That is best.”
But even that, Og heard. “No,” he smiled. “Not Nona. She will stay here with me—to rule as Queen when I have coaxed the smiles back to her pretty face.”
I was suddenly aware of another figure in the room. That Maagog girl had slipped in from the tunnel. She heard Og’s words. Her face smouldered with fury; but it was Nona, not Og, at whom she gazed so balefully. And I knew then that if ever Nona were left with Og—if we men were killed—this woman would kill Nona if she could.
Og faced the girl.
“Well, Maaret? Why do you come here?” He addressed her gruffly. “Did I not tell you to stay away?”
She gestured behind her. “The time is on us. They are ready—coming now. And Og, I knew that you had forgotten.”
Og grinned. “Yes, girl, you speak well—I had forgotten.” It was doubtless very amusing; he was chuckling as he whirled on us who were hovering in a huddled group. “A fortunate occurrence, my friends from Rax. You shall swim aside now—and watch me as I perform this little duty of mine. You shall see how cleverly, how gracefully I do it.”
He was still grinning; his voice was ironical, mocking—but his eyes were gleaming at Nona. “It will help you to decide, my Queen—help you to choose the fate of your Nemo, your little toy Prince Atar, and your Caan the shell-gatherer!”
There were sounds in the tunnel now—a low wailing, monotonous, like a chant, a dirge. Og waved us imperiously away. Maaret, the Maagog girl, led us to the side of the room near the grating. We followed her, but I kept myself between her and Nona. And there, flattened against the mud wall, we watched and listened.
The wailing swelled in volume, then ceased abruptly. From the tunnel a line of figures came swimming—Maagog women, eight of them. Each held a child; an infant hugged to the mother breast; two or three older little boys dangling in the water held by the mother’s hand; and one, a boy almost half grown, swimming close by his mother’s side.
The children were all naked—puffed, dead-white little things, with goggling eyes and gaping mouths. One or two were crying.
The line slowly passed me, swung about, and went to the platform. On that row of toadstool seats the mothers took their places. They sat there drooping, hugging their children. The older boy huddled against his mother’s knees; his face, turned my way, showed great, staring eyes, dark with a terror but half understood. He was whimpering a little, but his mother silenced him with a low-spoken word.
Og, swimming slowly, went the length of the line, counting the women, searching their faces and the faces of the children. Evidently he was satisfied that all who should be, were there.
“You are ready?” he said.
My gaze, following his, swept the line. A woman sobbed; another clutched her infant hungrily; but they all nodded assent.
“You first,” said Og abruptly. He darted an arm at one of the women. A tremor shook her; a shudder; but obediently she held out her infant to Og. He took it, swam with it to the grating, and opened a little gateway that was there.
As he held the infant poised, his glance turned to me; his eyes were grinning sardonically. Atar was cursing softly. I started forward, but Caan held me back.
“No use, Nemo!”
Og’s arms went up; he slid the infant through the little gateway. I heard its mother scream; but my eyes, fascinated, were on that black, tumbling void of water.
The baby’s body, caught by the current, floated out and downward—slowly at first, then more swiftly. Gradually it turned over. . . An infant face—big eyes full of staring surprise. . . a puny wail of protest as the water grew hotter. . .
Down it went, whirling now—a tiny white blob. . . white, then pink—then turning red. . .
I sank back, sick and faint. And Nona, who had not looked, whispered tremblingly to me the meaning of it all. There were too many male children being born to the Maagogs—too many useless mouths to feed. After each tenth time of sleep, male children were drawn by lot in the different community houses and sent up here to this death chamber for execution.
Og the Executioner! How efficiently, with a smile on his lips, he performed his grisly duty!
You read of this with a shudder perhaps? You marvel that in even so remote a hole of the Universe as this Water of Wild Things in the bowels of my little meteor, such ghastly, inhuman things should take place? You forget. Can you not recall that on your own fair Earth, not so very long ago, they cast infant girl-babies into the sacrificial waters of the Granges, to the hungry, eager jaws of the crocodiles?
I did not look again. Occasionally there was a sob—a scream; once, a brief, despairing scuffle as some mother found the ordeal beyond her strength. The little half-grown boy, as he passed me with Og’s hand in his, gazed at me with a dumb, terrified appeal . . . I hated myself as I looked away. . .
Then—it was all over. The little gateway was replaced. The mothers—empty-armed—swam silently out into the tunnel, through the parted ranks of those alert-eyed, guarding fishes.
Maaret, the girl, had disappeared. Og was again alone with us. His lips were leering triumphantly.
“You see how well I do my work? Quickly—without confusion.” The leer abruptly faded into grim menace; his eyes blazed at us.
“You may take your choice. The hot water, there—” His gesture was to the grating—“Or the cool, sweet water of Rax. But in either case, Nona shall be my Queen.”
He turned away. At the tunnel entrance, he paused. “Soon I shall come back for your answer.”
He was gone.