“Well,” continued Hopkins, “say the word and we’ll revolutionize this country, get into the government, and run the mint.”
I was getting impatient with this nonsense, and I said, “Now see here my friends, we are four men against thousands—why talk such rubbish? We’re all in danger because of our imprudence but I think we can steer away safely though our difficulties, get the confidence of everyone—perhaps more, and come out, as you might say Spruce, on the Top of the Heap. Ziliah knows what she is talking about and she says we’re to be put out of the way. But that perhaps won’t be so easy now. I’ve stolen the tubes and buried them out of sight forever.”
The three men sprang around me and seized me with one exclamation: “No!”
“Yes I have—they’re gone. Come to our rooms and I’ll tell you everything. We must use diplomacy, but if they push us to the wall there are our guns. The people are accustomed to us and are indifferent. Those little doctors never will let us get out alive if they can help it. There’s more than our lives at stake; there’s the revelation we shall give to the great world outside of this polar hole—about these strange people, their achievements, their knowledge, above all about that radium mass which may change all the civilization we are acquainted with into something quite different. I do not agree with Goritz, though I can sympathize with his appeal. Science must know of this place, and what is here. Science, I say, MUST KNOW.”
In a few words I explained what had happened, when we had gotten to our rooms, which still remained undisturbed. I told them of the curious suggestive influence on Ziliah (Hopkins said he “didn’t like it”), how we penetrated the subterranean room, how I found and seized those menacing little vials, and how I despatched every one of them into the fathomless mud and water (the Professor compared it with “the crime of the Caliph Omar who burned the Alexandrian Library”), and how now, with Ziliah as an ally, and with our guns, we might turn the tables on the discomfited doctors. “Guess you’ve taken the sting out of their tails—the little wasps,” exclaimed Hopkins.
We did not have to wait long for developments. The storm passed, the light returned and it was much colder. Warmer clothing was given us, and our meals were even more liberal. This excessive hospitality made me suspicious and I insisted that the bearers of the cakes and bread, the wine and milk, the meat and vegetables should partake of a little of each, before us, and this I ingeniously explained to them was the custom of our native countries. They never hesitated, and the courtesy, as they understood it, quite delighted and propitiated them. This too was a part of my rule. I intended to conciliate them so thoroughly that I might be able to make them spies on our enemies—“pump ’em,” said Hopkins. Ziliah watched diligently; the beloved Spooce was an invaluable hostage.
Our liberty was not interfered with, it seemed extended, and the Professor kept up his unremitting labors in making notes for the voluminous papers he was contemplating, and which he idolatrously regarded as his possible monument in the files of time. Goritz became a confirmed pilferer, and his stock of gold objects, whittlings and fragments grew dangerously. I remonstrated, but he kept at it. I could not get the wizened little doctors to talk. I addressed them as I met them in the palace in the Hebrew patois I had acquired, and which I was convinced they understood. But no—not a word; a bow, those wrinkling smiles, that deferential obeisance, and the palms of their hands rubbed together meditatively, while the prodigious eyes watched me, I thought, with an unmistakable malice, and—with FEAR.
We seldom saw the ladies of their households which, as Hopkins expressed it, “considering our extreme manly beauty, as compared with the ALL IN look of their own matrimonial boobs, is a reflection on their good taste, a proof of their imperfect education. Everybody else likes us,” he said. And that was true. We met with the most amiable reception, and Goritz’s skill in talking with the Eskimos, and my astounding success with the Hebrew lingo was giving us a vogue that it seemed unreasonable the little rulers did not see was ruinous to their prestige. Could it be possible that they were afraid of us—afraid of our popularity? I thought that they would avail themselves of the discovered thefts of the tree shrines and of the unpropitious storm, on the day of the Oblation, to turn the populace against us as personae non gratae to their deity.
But they had not, and the storm was forgotten. It was bewildering, for I felt sure Ziliah was not deceiving me, and that our lives somehow were at stake. Perhaps—perhaps—in that curious complicated psychology of their dwarfed natures, cowardice, deceit, sharpness, superstition, ferocity even, were so mixed up with an enervating feebleness of mind, in spite of their astuteness, that it made them, as Lady Macbeth puts it, “infirm of purpose.”
At any rate we would watch our guns, in all senses, and we literally did watch those we owned, carrying them with us, always strapped to our backs, our cartridge belts at our waists, and a part of our dress. I think this alarmed our spies a little.