When I told my friends about this, we all felt a mad desire to see, even at a distance, this intolerable land, a mineral Gehenna. I knew of the man’s devotion to the Professor, and I felt certain we could gain his consent for us to accompany him. No one of us felt a keener impatience for the trip than Antoine Goritz. I told Ziliah of our wish. She grew pale with horror at the suggestion; her beautiful eyes pleaded with me to abandon the suicidal project; she pointed to Spruce Hopkins in piteous despair, she indeed flung herself at his feet, and invoked his commiseration of her should he be lost. Then she became tempestuous with scorn and indignation.
We could not go. The guards would prevent us. She would summon the magistrates of the city. Was she not Ziliah, daughter of the President, head man of the Council? We should not stir. NOT HE.
And that feminine transport over, she again importuned us, with terrible threats of our fate, not to consider it; so many had perished in the same outrageous pursuit; dead bodies marked the way; it was forbidden; the curse of the Crocodilo-Python followed those who went there; it meant madness, hysteria, death.
Finally it was made clear to us that whatever Oogalah Ikimya might say this influential and enamored young woman would prove hopelessly obstinate. Physical force would be invoked to restrain us. Oogalah himself rather welcomed this opportunity to show off his skill, his exceptional prowess, but his volubility and transports availed nothing. Hopkins executed what the French might call a coup d’amour and liberated us. His overture to the despairing or incensed Ziliah through me was rather compromising and risky, but its effect was instantaneous and certain. Opposition vanished when Hopkins explained that the lovely woman might get herself disliked, and that any conceivable state of future happiness for both of them depended on his having his way.
So it eventually ended, as the mountainous objections seemed to melt away like dew before the sun, that we found ourselves on the road that led westward from Radiumopolis, under the guidance of Oogalah Ikimya, who strode before us with rapid swinging of legs and arms, his face radiant with pride. We had cautiously promised to be careful, not to go farther than was prudent, to satisfy ourselves with a distant view of the blasted land, and to return as quickly as we went, for it was insisted that we should hold ourselves ready for the disposition of the Council, when the long delayed pilgrims returned, to settle our fate.
The noisy rumor of our departure for the Radium Country, and the haggling and delays that preceded it, Ziliah’s outbursts and excitement, the consultations over the permission to let us go at all, Oogalah’s gossiping activity about it, led to the population’s—which besieged us and surrounded us almost daily—outpouring on the day of our departure, so that for miles we were accompanied by a crowd watching us with increased wonder, and, among the older, with much ominous head shaking, and, with the younger, many sneering comments, a little cheering and some obstreperous farewells. The Professor evoked much enthusiasm—he always did. I do not know the rationale or the etiquette of love matters in Krocker Land, but I remember that Hopkins took the profusely smiling and opulently lovely, young and small Ziliah aside, and tried to make her understand—without my help—that their public parting should be very formal, no matter how ecstatic their private one might be. On top of that, considerably to his disappointment or chagrin perhaps, Ziliah hugged him pretty tightly when they stood on the terrace stairs as we left the palace, and the very observing public gathered about were neither amused nor interested.
It was rather funny I thought, but I admitted, I am sure, that as a display of superb manners it would be unmatched anywhere else in the world of so-called culture today. Atala came into my mind, though Spruce Hopkins was a good deal of a contrast to the sentimental Rene, and there was a certain aplomb, directness, vivacity and insistence in Ziliah that hardly suggested the Natchez maiden. And there certainly was no Outogamiz.
Well, at length we were on our journey. At first the highway, for, though seldom used, this western road was in a state of fine preservation, traversed a thick but low wood entangled with undergrowth. We had never entered this wood before and had been especially prohibited from entering it. Of course we tried to see all we could, but there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it. The land to the left sloped off into a marshy tract. The people were numerous also at this point, which interfered with our inspection, and I know now that Oogalah, obedient to instructions, hurried us along this section of the route—he first, the Professor second, then Goritz, then myself, then Hopkins—until we reached a spare, meagre country, beyond which rose the western ranges of the Pine Tree Gredin.
The land rose steeply, but it was almost bare, the parched soil supported a ragged growth, and in this appeared a few stunted pine trees. Apparently, for many miles north and south, this condition prevailed, an unhappy and strong contrast to the pine tree zone to the east of the amphitheater, where the land bubbled with springs, was murmurous with brooks, and where the lofty, splendid trees spread a temple-like shade over the vast decline.
Beyond us already rose the faint shimmer of the Perpetual Nimbus, that wall-like screen of vapor that enclosed Krocker Land within the mountainous Rim that lies outside of this veil of cloud, though here, as I have already noted, the Nimbus was wavering, inconstant, and in patches of the distance absent. The Deer Fels country and the aquatic and marshy plateaux were from here scarcely distinguishable. A level tract of stony wastes was this, varied by occasional rugged hills, depressions that glistened balefully, dead ravines barely supporting the niggardly growth of sapless yellow plants that lurked here and there below boulders, or sought the moisture of a few sullen pools whose replenishment depended upon the infrequent but, we were told, furious storms.