A Strange Discovery

by Charles Romyn Dake

"Yes: for though Pym and Peters had never seen the exiled lover, they recognized Lilama; and even they could surmise the rest.

"'The youth is mad,' said the Duke. 'We must rescue our darling from the maniac.'

"Pym, in his impatience, was about to rush from the room; but the old man beckoned for him to approach. He did as desired. Then the aged man placed a hand upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him; and the man who had lived thousands of years whispered some words into the ear of the youth who had lived not yet four lustrums. As Peters described for me in his homely way the change that came over the face of Pym as that human millenarian spoke perhaps one hundred words into the young man's ear, I was reminded of reading as a boy, some years ago, a description of the burning somewhere in South America of a great cathedral. The fire occurred during a morning service, and with the alarm the doorways of the building were at once obstructed by a mass of struggling humanity. Some two or three thousand persons were consumed in this terrible holocaust. The correspondent who wrote the description of the fire of which I speak said that for ten minutes he stood outside the cathedral after the surrounding heat had become so intense that efforts at rescue ceased, and from a raised spot he looked through the windows from which the glass had crumbled—looked across the great window-sills raised eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked into the faces of the doomed. And as he gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens with their lovers by their side—(it was a gala day, and all were in their best attire). As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he saw horror-stricken eyes gaze at the approaching fire, and at other victims sixty feet away already burning; then quickly would the fire approach the owner of those eyes, reach him, consume him: And in those fleeting moments the face of a young girl would pass through every stage from youth to extreme age, and then sink down in death. As the aged mystic whispered to Pym, the young man's face turned ghastly, then worked convulsively, then settled into firm resolve. And Peters never again saw on the face of the youth whom he loved with the love of a mother and of a father in one—never again saw the old, careless, boyish smile. Did the old man—shall we call him a man?—did the old man whisper into Pym's ear the secret of eternity? Would such a revelation have changed youth to manhood in a hundred seconds?

"As Pym was led by Diregus from the room, Peters started to follow; but the aged mystic motioned for him, too, to approach. Peters says that after what he had just seen he felt much more like taking to flight than he did like obeying the summons; but he obeyed it. The old man pointed to one of the smaller crystal cubes, which would have measured some five feet across. As Peters gazed upon it, it began to take on the milky hue which he had before witnessed. Peters says that at first he thought these cubes were of solid crystal, but after he witnessed the strange alterations of which they were capable, he believed they were hollow. He continued to gaze as directed, and soon he saw, sitting at a table, with a lighted candle by her side, knitting, his poor old mother, from whose side he had, fifteen years before, when a thoughtless, wicked boy, ran away to sea. He had never seen her again—he has not seen her again to the present day. As he gazed upon that aged, wrinkled face—that hard, Indian face (his mother was a civilized Indian), he saw that look which man sees nowhere else on sea or land save only in a mother's face. He threw himself face-downward on the floor, and wrung in agony his hands, and moaned out pleas for forgiveness; but the poor, old, fragile form knitted on, and on, and the face was never raised. Alas! why must we all feel the full force of a mother's love and sacrifices only when too late? Why must it be that the deepest of all unselfish love goes ever unrewarded?

"Peters scarcely knows how he got from the room. He staggered out into the grounds, and saw that the remainder of the party were already seated in the boat.

"But I must hasten on. Let me say in a few words, that the party returned to the ducal palace, and immediately prepared to rescue Lilama from the power of her discarded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The rescue party, on the advice of the Duke, was small. He explained to Peters that so far as mere human force was concerned, a thousand men could never rescue the maiden. Her return to them, alive and in health, would depend upon strategy, or possibly might be accomplished as a result of some superhuman individual effort. He was of opinion, he remarked—and he judged from what he had been told by government officials lately returned from 'Crater Mountains' and also from changes in the young man observed by himself preceding the sentence of banishment—that Ahpilus was a maniac. The Duke went on to say that he really felt but little hope of ever again seeing, alive, his loved young 'cousin.' Then he explained that, whilst there were spots on 'Crater Mountains,' from five to eight miles from the central crater, on the far side of the nearer hills, hot enough to roast a large animal, there were other spots on the far side of the remoter mountain ranges where, protected from crater radiation and exposed to antarctic air-currents, the temperature was almost always far below the freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that no animal life, even antarctic animal life, could endure it for an hour. He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save her—which was unlikely, even if possible—or unless we could invent some plan of capture so peculiar as to baffle the madman—a man, by the bye, of enormous physical strength, and with a madman's cunning. Peters stood drinking in every word spoken by the Duke; whilst Pym listened as if heartbroken, but in an impatient, anxious way, indicative of a restless impulse to be gone. The Duke continued to instruct and advise them, until a large sail-boat was provisioned and manned, when the rescue party hastened away on its errand of love and mercy.

"The party consisted of the young man Diregus, Lilama's cousin; of Pym and Peters; and of six boatmen, who might or might not be employed directly in the attack and rescue, as should later seem best. The party had no weapons other than a few peculiarly-shaped clubs, similar to those mentioned by me in describing the fight of the early Hili-lites against the invading barbarians, and a long dirk-knife in the possession of Peters.

"By glancing at this map of Hili-liland, you will observe that the sea-course to 'Crater Mountains' was almost direct, it lying in a straight line out of Hili-li Bay and across the open sea for thirty miles. They were to enter 'Volcano Bay,' which pursued a tortuous course amid the mountains, until they should reach a certain pass between two of the highest mountains in the whole range. In the centre of one of these mountains was a peak some eight miles high, named by the founders of Hili-li 'Mount Olympus.' It was possible to sail (or to push their boat) to within seven miles of a point where the lavabed was still red hot—about thirteen miles from the edge of the central, white-hot, boiling lava. This, however, they did not do; first, because the pass mentioned, which was the best course up into the mountains, began about three or four miles short of the inner extremity of Volcano Bay; and second, because within a mile or two of that extremity the water of the bay sometimes actually boiled, and the heat would there be quite unendurable."

Here Bainbridge paused for a moment, and then continued, "Well, my attentive friend, 'the witching hour' approaches. We lost too much time in discussion this evening—What! only ten o'clock?" he said, looking at his watch. "Well, I am at a good resting-place in the story, anyway, as you will to-morrow evening admit. Why, if I started you up into those mountains to-night, we should get no sleep before daylight. No, no: 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; more I would'—how does it go? Well, it means that the evils of two days should not be crowded into one day. The attempted quotation—as generally happens when I attempt quotation from the Bible—is a double failure: not a success simply in accuracy of repetition; and, at best, not appropriate. For I have more, and a great deal more. But"—rising from his chair—"I must depart. So adieu until the morrow—and good-night to you."

He had not been gone five minutes, and I was just complimenting Arthur on his silence and otherwise commendable behavior, when Doctor Castleton bounced into the room. He knew in a general way the drift of Peters' story, up to the developments of the evening before. His curiosity to hear what Doctor Bainbridge had so patiently and laboriously gleaned from Peters did not seem intense, or it was wonderfully well suppressed. Still, he liked briefly to learn from me the outlines of the story, and had not failed to meet me at some period of each day, and to hint at a desire for information. Therefore, I knew with what object he had this evening come to see me, and I ran rapidly over the facts developed the preceding evening, and then over those of that evening.