“You must not say these things,” he told her, sternly. “They are not true, and I don’t think you yourself believe them. I’ve been here too long; I will stay no longer. If you will help me to find Miriam, I will be very grateful; if not, let us part now!”
“No; you and I will never part,” she replied, in a changed voice. “I have offered you myself, and I will never let you go forth to boast of it, or to find another woman. I have brought you to the center of this rock; none but I knows how to enter it, and none can pass out from it but by my leave. Here you shall stay until you die; and I will stay with you. You say I cannot love you; I love you, and hate you, enough for that! When the end of the world comes, and the graves are rent asunder, they will find our bones here, intertwined like lovers. Let Miriam make what she can of that!”
“You have not the power to do what you say,” answered Jack. She stood between him and the entrance to the hall; he put her aside with his arms, and went forward.
But before he had advanced three paces, darkness sudden and absolute descended upon the cavern. It was like no other darkness; it was as if he had been all at once closed about by some black substance that molded itself to him like the matrix to which it holds. All sense of direction was lost; it even seemed as if he knew no longer which was below and which was above. There were whisperings in his ears; soft, mocking laughter, the padding of naked feet, long soughings of drafts through unseen crevices. He attempted to go on in the way he had started; but a few steps, carefully taken and measured, brought him up against the solid wall of the crystal rock. He set out to circumvent the chamber, remembering its circular form, and keeping one hand in touch with the wall; but after journeying for a thousand paces, more than enough to account for more than ten times the circumference of the chamber, he had arrived at nothing; there had been no interruption in the adamantine smoothness; for aught he could tell, indeed, he might have passed into some passage leading yet deeper into the heart of the butte. Again he tried to cross from one side to the other, in the hope of finding the black font, from which he might take a fresh departure; but after many minutes, with every precaution not to deviate from a straight line, he had come to no end; he might have been traveling across an empty and lightless desert. The sounds which he had at first heard had now died away, and an appalling silence had descended, like another darkness; and yet, dogging his footsteps, close behind him, invisible and inaudible, but felt something following him relentlessly; something hostile and formless. What was it? Starvation? Madness? Death? Once he wheeled suddenly and leaped with outstretched arms to grasp it. Nothing!
At length he ceased his futile efforts and stood still, with folded arms. He gathered up the forces of his will, and quieted the throbbing of his heart, which had become vehement and irregular. There was no escape; he would face that fact and accept it. Famine and death; but there should not be madness! The light of the body was gone; but the light of the mind should endure. No fear, or longing, or despair should banish from his thoughts the image of Miriam and his faith in their love. He had bought these at a great price, and he would never give them up. This was the end of his great adventure; he would meet it with the constancy of a true man.
Hark! A sound like the rising of a mighty wind; a rending and shuddering as of the throes of earthquake! The cavern rocked; the foundations of the mountain were shaken. A flicker of light divided the blackness, and at the same moment soft arms were thrown round him, and a bosom, palpitating with terror, pressed against his own. Zarga’s bosom, and her arms!
Before he could free himself, she uttered a wild cry and staggered back, pressing her hands over her heart. She stared at him in amazement and dismay; was that blood upon her fingers? The sapphire talisman still hung round Jack’s neck, and it sparkled vividly, sending forth rays like keen arrows.
Zarga sank down, and huddled with her face upon the floor. The butte was split in twain from summit to foundation, and tumbled in awful ruin to right and left. In the ragged jaws of the cleft stood the snow white figure of Lamara.
CHAPTER XIX
HOME THOUGHTS
THE genius of the Torides had qualities which more affiliated them with the people of our own earth than did that of the Saturnians. Their desire for power had stimulated them to develop the material sciences, and to experiment with a view to the physical control of nature for personal ends; whereas the Saturnians sought knowledge for the sake of its inherent goodness and beauty, and therefore aimed to obliterate self as far as they might, in order to thus remove the obstruction to influx and render themselves obedient channels of the omnipotent force. They used no writing, because such records of the past as were spiritually useful were spontaneously present with them in each passing hour, and the source of their wisdom constantly supplied them to the limits of their capacity; they built no enduring structures, because they could immediately fashion their natural surroundings into the form of their thoughts; they gave no labor to food and protection, because the substances necessary to their bodily nourishment passed into them in measure as waste created the demand, on a principle analogous to the flow of vegetable sap; and for defense, should that be required, they could so modify the vibrations of reflected light as to render themselves invisible. They were wholly occupied with the concerns of the moment; and they were independent of space, by reason of their ability not only to appear and to act at a distance mentally, but also to effect almost immediate bodily transference. The general result of all this was, not a complicated but an extremely simple manner of existence on the physical plane, interrupted on special occasions only for some exceptional purpose; their ordinary life was as artless and naïve as that of children; and they enriched their environment not otherwise than by establishing an increasing harmony between it and themselves. To this harmony was due the extension of their physical life to periods vastly beyond any imaginable limits of ours, accompanied throughout by a perfection of vigor and freshness which we ascribe to the prime of youth alone.