Goritz: “Well I should say nothing about it. Let it be. We can use what we learn about its powers for ourselves. That seems right enough to me. What can be the use of turning the whole world topsy-turvy, and of course as a consequence exterminating these innocent people. Do you suppose you could hold back for one hour the rampaging hordes that would pour into this little valley and inundate it with hungry, riotous savages? Put a mining town with its rum and its demons in the place of this contented realm with its picturesque life, its peaceful ceremonies, its long inherited customs that for centuries upon centuries have never changed; erase or debauch a community that on the very edge of the roaring world, since time began, has kept on its quiet hidden way in this unassailable nook, and do you think you will ever forgive yourselves for the ruin, the devastation? It would curse you to your death.”
We all looked at Goritz with surprise. He did not often turn on the oratory like this. It was a touch, I said to myself, of his old nature. The plea was well made and it kept us silent for some time, and I think the longer we measured its meaning the more it affected us. Suddenly Hopkins broke the silence.
“Say, where’s everybody? There isn’t a soul in sight.” It was true; the mound hill, the courtyards, the road, the steps, the doorway, the snake pasture, the parapets, which it seemed but a few moments before had been crammed with the chattering multitude, were deserted. In our absorption, seated above the heads of the crowd on the comfortable ledge, we had forgotten to note its disappearance. Always anxious over some possible new development which would endanger our safety, and never confident of the good intentions of the little wiseacres with their preternatural powers, their minute crooked devices, and their probable deceit and malevolence, I now felt some alarm at this silence and desertion. Was it some new turn in affairs, a new stage in their ceremonial procedure that portended any harm to us? I had wondered over the apparent forgetfulness of our presence, and our absolute neglect. Was it part of some preconcerted design, an ostentatious indifference, concealing some mischievous plot for our undoing? For it was quite easy, indeed unavoidable to conceive, that these little rulers, impregnable hitherto in their power, would view suspiciously our advent among them. A secluded bred-in civilization like this, is jealous of intrusion, resents the foreigner, and spurns novelty. It has always been so and the Faculty—the word the Professor complimented them with—would readily descry in us the forerunners of a more dangerous invasion. It would be well to watch them and—where they were?
I leaped to the ground and the rest at once followed. We ran around the corner of the building, first to the north—in which direction the city was far less expanded than southward and eastward—and the same emptiness confronted us. But to the south and at the west the contrast was startling. The areas were packed with streaming throngs; crowds from streets were discharging into the broad highway leading westward, that one on which we had just returned from the radium hunt, and, as we hastened to the west side of the Capitol, we saw that the concourse was passing out on the same boulevard towards the swamp land just outside the ranges of the city. Our elevation enabled us to trace the variegated ribbon of people, made up of the little folk for the most part, and occasionally a towering figure, moving silently outward in an enormous evacuation of the city. What had preceded them or what they followed we could not undertake to determine.
Fragments and sections of the formal parade, as it had returned from the ceremonial circuit, were embedded in the stream, and we guessed the Council led the procession. Glancing into the broad central hall of the Capitol—where the radium lamps were—nothing was seen. The big communal house of government was bare and abandoned. Goritz’s hand passed enviously over the broad encrusting plates of gold which now any ruthless pillager could have torn away, but he did not attempt to remove one. We certainly would have interposed had he tried it. It required no deliberation on our part to conclude to mingle in the crowds. It might be that if their destination was the swamps we now might learn something of the uses of that mystery-shrouded depression and reservoir.
Running down the western terrace of steps we were soon immersed in the multitude, though by reason of our physical proportions we rose above them like tall saplings among bushes. Some familiarization with us had been gained by the Radiumopolites, and although we never stirred abroad without awakening interest, they no longer regarded us with the first unsubdued wonder and curiosity. And on this occasion we were less likely to excite attention, as a more dreadful expectation filled their minds.
Slowly we made our way for a mile or so until the sombre thickets and enshrouding vegetation of the swamps came into view. And then a rapid dispersal began. Down innumerable paths and trails, all more or less artificially finished, the people vanished. Files of them entered these forest alleyways and the quickly thinning throngs left us comparatively free. We passed a broad road leading to the left, down which in the distance we discerned a line of vans pulled by Eskimos, and on them prostrate and bandaged or chained figures, some moving, we thought! For the moment we were rooted with horror. What could they be? What was this? A public execution, a sacrifice, a holocaust? Good God—could it be a cannibalistic feast? Great as were our suspicion and terror, the constraining power of a savage curiosity drove us on. Down the very next lane we met, we rushed pele-mele, with something like rage, something like disgust, something like a sickening fear, a blend hard to analyze.
Perhaps we had run a half a mile, when we burst through the last encircling hedge of bushes and found ourselves on the shore of a turbid, muddy, malodorous pool, confined by a low wall of clay, paved with tile, and then surrounded by the outstretched cordons of the adult population—not a child was visible—of Radiumopolis! And immediately above us, at the side, so that we could inspect the actions of its occupants, was a low platform, also of clay, perhaps twenty feet high. On this platform, ranged in a circle, were those detestable worthies (?) and behind them stood the vans, and on the vans—motionless bodies in small low heaps, like fagoted wood! Yes! They were dead—all dead—quite dead. God be praised for that!
From somewhere back of the platform the cymbals began their clamorous cries, but whether it was due to an augmented band or an exasperated effort, the noise seemed redoubled, rising into a screeching tumult quite indescribable. And then the people shouted. It sounded like Lam-bo-o, Lam-bo-oo.
It was a curious vocality and perhaps as nearly as anything might be likened to the querulous squeal of monkeys, with just a faint amelioration of disapproval on the assumption that it was singing. That—the combined discord of the cymbals and the singing—continued for perhaps fifteen minutes, with intervals of a minute or so. It was altogether unearthly. Now we began to see that the pond or pool or swamp connected by a narrow neck of water with more remote basins, that may have had interminable connections in all directions, forming a web of waterways.