I answered him a little sharply, perhaps, being not over-pleased that he should make so light of my own part in the matter.
"Sir," said I, "what a seaman can do I have done already, or you would not be here to speak of it. Let that go by. The news that you bring won't wait for civilities. It must be plain to you that if we are to stand a siege in this house, we must hold every gate of it. There are men in the galleries below; Heaven knows how many of them. I would name that first and let the rest come after."
He was put about at this, and made haste to express a gratitude I had not looked for. His naval training prompted him to habits of authority. I could see that he was itching to be up and acting, and I knew that he needn't wait long for that.
"Indeed," says he, warmly, "we owe our lives to you, as many a good seaman will owe it in the days to come. I should have spoken of that first. The wonders of this place drive other thoughts from a man's head. We were half dead when we saw your signal, captain. What has become of my fellow-passengers and the rest of the crew, God alone knows. They put us ashore on the island after the ship was taken last night, and nine of us, as you see, are here to tell the story. I have heard the tradition of Ken's Island from the Japanese, but I never believed a word of it before yesterday. Now I know that it is true. My fellow-passengers are there, dead or dying, and at sundown I am certainly going ashore to do what I can for them."
"You are a brave man, Captain Nepeen," said I, "a very brave man. Where you go I follow. We cannot leave poor seamen to perish, cost us what it may. Yet I would not hide it from you that it is a big business, and that the man who goes to Ken's Island to-night may never return. We are now fourteen in this house, and our first duty is to leave it safe for those who trust us. With your help, Captain Nepeen, we'll answer the scum down below," said I.
He assented very heartily and began to speak of the arms that we had and of the manner of employing them. His fellows, I learned, were bivouacked in the great hall, and these he waked first while I was getting the sleep out of my eyes and asking myself, "What next?" The room in which I lay was Czerny's own room; and now in the daylight the sea played cool and green upon the arched windows and showed to me such sights on the rocks without as I had never dreamed of in the darker hours. What genius had pitched upon such a house under the waves? I asked. What spirit of evil breathed upon this dreadful place? What craving for solitude sent this master-mind here to the bed of the Pacific Ocean, where it could spy upon these uncanny secrets, watching the still green water, face to face with devilish shapes butting upon the glass, the friend of the horrid creatures which slimed upon the windows and crawled to their rocky haunts, or fought claw to claw in the sight of their enemy, man? Desperate as the plight was, I must stand a minute before the crystal panes and watch that changing spectacle of the sea's own wonders. The very water was so near that I thought I had but to stretch out a hand to touch it. The weird, wild things that crept over the rocks, surely they would enter this room presently! And Czerny could live here, cheek by jowl with these fearsome mysteries! Again I say that man knows little of his fellow-man, of his better nature or his worse.
The same day. At five o'clock.
We open the lower doors and go down into the galleries. Seven men are with me and each carries a musket. The quest is not so much for those shut down in the pit as for the life which they may send up to us. Doctor Gray has put it in a word, and it is true. The great engine, which draws the air from the sea's brink and drives it out in life-giving currents through the corridors of Czerny's house, that engine alone stands between us and eternity this day. If those below have kept that engine going until this time, it is for their own safety's sake. Rob them of food and drink, and what security have we that they will continue at the task? And yet, the deed be my witness, it was a perilous journey. No man in our company could say surely how many of Czerny's crew he would find in the black labyrinth we must face. No man could speak of the hidden mysteries lurking in passage or cavern, far from the sea-gate and the sun's light. We were going into the unknown; and we went with timorous steps, each asking himself, "Shall I live to see the day again?" each saying to the other, "Stand close!"
Now, the knocking had ceased when we opened the gates, and we stood for a little while peering down into that corridor, which I have named already as the backbone of the lower house. Lighted it was, the lamps still burning, its barred doors shut, its branching passages suggesting a hive of rocky nests which might harbour an army of desperadoes. No sound came up to us from below save the sound of the engine throbbing, throbbing, as it fanned a breath of life and drove it upwards to us fresh and sweet upon our faces. Whoever lurked in that abyss feared to show himself or to cry a truce. We were hedged about by black mystery, and, rifle in hand, we set out to learn the truth.
There were lamps in the corridor, but in the passages branching from it no light save that which streamed down, green and silvery, from the windows which shut the still sea out. Oftentimes the seven with me would draw all close together, awed by the fantastic spectacle these glimpses of the sea's heart showed to them. At other times the nearer alarm would set them quaking, and crying "Hist!" they would listen for steps in the silence or other sounds than that of the engine's pulse and the whirring fans. The very stillness, I think, made them afraid. The horrors of the windows—above all, that horror of the nameless fish—could frighten a man as no spectre of God's earth above. If I had accustomed myself in part to these new sensations, if Czerny's house seemed to me rather a refuge than a terror, none the less there were moments when my step halted and my eyes were glued upon the sights I saw. For here it would be a monstrous shark lying still in a glassy pool; or there a very army of ferocious crabs, their eyes outstanding, their claws crushing prey, their great shells shaped like fungi of the deep; or going on a little way again I stopped before a giant porthole and discovered a devil-fish and his nest in the deep and said that nothing like to it had been heard or told of. Here lies a great basin scooped out of the coral rock, and the green water is focused in it until it looks like a prism, and everywhere, in nook and crevice, the deadly tentacles, the frightful eyes of these unnameable creatures seem to twist and stare, and threaten us. Such fish we counted, hundreds of them, at the windows of the second cavern we entered; and, drawing back from it affrighted, we went on like men who fear to speak of that which they have seen.