Thunderbolts
From our vantage-point near the cavern roof, we could not clearly follow all that was happening a mile beneath; however, we were able to observe more than a little. In the beginning, we were astonished to see the doors at the base of the excavation all thrown open, to admit a multitude of black ant-like mites, which we did not at first recognize as human beings. So minute were they, in view of their distance, that they might have been mere swarming insects. To discover much about their appearance or costume was out of the question; nevertheless, we were not long in learning their nature, for they immediately drew themselves up into precise rectangular formations, each of which was divided into scores of long, mathematically even columns.
"By Heaven!" I gasped, as I lay peeping across the edge of the abyss. "If it isn't an army!"
"Sure enough, an army!" agreed Clay, his mouth agape till the lower jaw seemed ready to drop off. "I'll swear they look like the devil's own recruits! Just see the banners gleaming!"
By straining my eyes, I could distinguish flashes of yellow and purple, as from the waving of battle flags.
"Say, look down there!" my companion ejaculated the next second, leaning over the edge of the void until I feared he would take a mile-long fall. "There's not one army! There's two!"
"Sure you're not seeing double, old pal?" I demanded. And then, at the risk of losing my own balance, I leaned out fully as far as Clay, staring into the dreadful chasm directly below.
It was indeed as my friend had said! Just under us was a second army, its innumerable multitudes arrayed in neat rectangles, and its banners flashing in vermilion and green!
From the opposite sides of the cavern the two great masses of men, each composed of scores of thousands of individuals, were approaching one another with slow and gracefully coördinated movements. Had they a hostile intent?—or were they merely on friendly parade? So quietly were they advancing that both Clay and I leapt to the latter explanation. It would not be long before we would learn our mistake!
"By my grandmother's ghost, Frank! Where do all those fellows come from?" exclaimed Clay, turning toward me with eyes bulging in wonder and alarm. "What would you have said only yesterday, old chap, if some one had drawn you a picture of all this?"
"I'd have said he was dafter than a mad hatter!"
"Chances are we'd have had him locked up!" agreed Clay. "Say, do you know—"
But he was not to complete his sentence. For at this point a never-to-be-forgotten demonstration burst forth.
It was as if the entire cavern had shot all at once into flames. It was as if a thunder-storm of unparalleled fury had flared simultaneously at a hundred points. There came a wave of dazzling white light which flashed across the cavern on a jagged course and all but blinded us; then, while our stunned senses reeled beneath the blow, we were smitten by a clap of thunder so severe that our ear-drums fairly rang. Almost instantly, other detonations followed, with a banging as of tremendous explosions; and new lightnings streaked and blazed, with red and green and orange coruscations as their long twisting lances zigzagged from wall to wall. At the same time, the ground began to shake once more, to shake so violently that we had to cling desperately to a rocky ledge; and from moment to moment the tremors increased in severity. At last we could understand the source of the earthquakes!
New lightnings streaked and blazed with red and green and orange coruscations as their long twisting lances zigzagged from wall to wall.
Speechless as deaf-mutes, Clay and I stared across at one another in horror. But in his startled eyes I read a message: "Come, let's go!" And his hand was motioning away down the gallery.
Gladly I would have followed his suggestion. But I was as if glued to the ledge. My panic-stricken muscles would not obey my will; I quivered, rose to my knees, and then dropped down full-length once more, terrified lest the heaving earth should pitch me over the cavern edge.
Yet terror could not subdue curiosity; I still gazed down at that fantastic cavern floor, over which the colored lightnings flickered. And what a ghastly discovery I made! Where were those orderly armies that had thronged across the abyss a minute before?
For a moment, I merely gaped wide-eyed, wondering if my senses were deceiving me. The armies had both vanished! In their place were multitudes of black specks strewn pell-mell about the cavern floor, in all manner of distorted positions, some of them bunched together in great dark heaps, some of them clustered amid little new-made crimson patches!
"Do you see? Do you see?" I exclaimed, when a lull in the thunder once more permitted conversation. "Shot to tatters, the whole lot of them!"
"Shot to tatters!" Clay echoed, his bruised face performing wry antics as he spoke. "Wonder what the whole infernal mess was all about."
"Marvelous, anyway, how they use their lightnings to kill," I commented.
"Marvelous the way both sides won!" he snapped back. "Doesn't seem to be much left of either of them!"
In this statement, however, Clay was mistaken. We were soon to learn that all too much was left of both factions.
While the lightnings still leapt and vaulted through space, crossing and criss-crossing the atmosphere with dagger-flames of blue and yellow, there rose a low, regular, distant rumbling—a rumbling too even and continuous for thunder, and yet more ominous-sounding than thunder, since it gained each moment in force and volume and had a monotonous, rhythmical, thudding effect reminding one of the motor of some great machine.
"God be merciful, what's this coming?" suddenly cried my companion, pointing far down the cavern. "See, Frank! Can you make out what it is?"
At the renewed risk of falling over the edge, I peered in the indicated direction; and, as I did so, I received perhaps the severest shock I had yet had on this day of horrors. "Lord Almighty!" I gasped. "It's a battleship on wheels!"
"It's not one of them! It's two!" shouted Clay.
And indeed, two monster shapes, each as large as the dreadnoughts of a modern navy, were gliding toward us out of the greenish-yellow glare far to the right. With long, pointed, steel-like prows, thin tapering sterns, and squat funnels belching smoke and steam, they had the shape and appearance of warships, except that they displayed no masts or gun-turrets. But little dark tubes curving from their sides looked very much like guns.
"See the wheels," yelled Clay, trying to make himself heard above the increasing uproar of the monsters' approach; and I observed how scores of wheels, each of them twenty or thirty feet across, were arranged all along the sides of the great machines, bearing them forward with the speed of an ocean liner.
"Seems to be in a hurry!" I yelled back, as I noticed with what steady roaring haste the vessels pressed forward.
But I had no time to wonder what the machines might be, or what incredible people, populating the abysses of the earth, had developed such giant mechanisms. Before I had half recovered from my surprise, I was aware that Clay, no longer able to make his voice heard above the din of the approaching monsters, was nudging my elbow and pointing in great agitation to our left.
"See! See there!" I read the unexpressed words on his lips. "Just look at that! Just look! Just look!"
Well might he be agitated. From far down the cavern to our left, three more land-battleships were rumbling toward us, shooting out flashes of red and white lightning like a challenge, while hastening to meet the other Titans as though intending a head-on collision.