“I am afraid I am not very brave,” I told her. “I am almost weak from fright even now—I was so afraid that I would not reach you in time, Nah-ee-lah.”
“It is the brave man who is afraid after the danger is past,” she said. “He has no time to think of fear until after the happening is all over. You may have been afraid for me, Julian, but you could not have been afraid for yourself, or otherwise you would not have taken the risk of catching me as I fell. Even now I cannot understand how you were able to hold me.”
“Perhaps,” I reminded her, “I am stronger than the men of Va-nah, for my earthly muscles are accustomed to overcoming a gravity six times as great as that upon your world. Had this same accident happened upon Earth I might not have been able to hold you when you fell.”
CHAPTER IX
AN ATTACK BY KALKARS
The tunnel in which I found myself and along which Nah-ee-lah led me toward the city of Laythe was remarkable in several particulars. It was largely of natural origin, seemingly consisting of a series of caves which may have been formed by bubbles in the cooling lava of the original molten flow and which had later been connected by man to form a continuous subterranean corridor. The caves themselves were usually more or less spherical in shape and the debris from the connecting passageways had been utilized to fill the bottoms of them to the level of the main floor of the passageway. The general trend of the tunnel was upward from the point at which we had entered it, and there was a constant draught of air rushing along it in the same direction in which we were moving, assuring me that it was undoubtedly well ventilated for its full length. The walls and ceiling were coated with a substance of which radium was evidently one of the ingredients, since even after we had lost sight of the entrance the passageway was well illuminated. We had been moving along in silence for quite a little distance when I finally addressed Nah-ee-lah.
“It must seem good,” I said, “to travel again this familiar tunnel of your native city. I know how happy I should be were I thus approaching my own birthplace.”
“I am glad to be returning to Laythe,” she said, “for many reasons, but for one I am sorry, and as for this passageway it is scarcely more familiar to me than to you, since I have traversed it but once before in my life and that when I was a little girl and came here with my father and his court upon the occasion of his periodical inspection of the passageway, which is now practically never used.”
“If you are not familiar with the tunnel,” I asked, “are you sure that there is no danger of our going astray at some fork or branch?”
“There is but the one passageway,” she replied, “which leads from the crater to Laythe.”