I saw in the centre of the square a car somewhat smaller than that in which we had travelled previously, but, like it, visible throughout. It was just alighting as I came up. Signor Davelli was standing in the square, and the man in the car was the same whom he had assigned yesterday to Jack, and as he alighted he addressed him with a few words and signs as before, and the man went away towards the stairway.
Signor Niccolo turned to me, and, after the usual [173] ]salutation, he said shortly but civilly, “I have had a car prepared like the other. As we use them ourselves, you might find them awkward and even dangerous. I have left the larger car for your friend.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “I daresay we shall both do very well.”
I was glad to know that Jack would have the opportunity that he wished for, and I felt sure that he would make the most of it. I felt confident now that we were on the verge of a desperate effort for freedom. It was likely enough, indeed most likely, that the issue of such an effort would be immediately fatal to us, but, if not immediately fatal, then I thought that we might escape. Meanwhile I was determined to observe as closely as possible every person and thing that should come under my notice to-day.
There was no difference between this car and the other except in respect of size. This one was a shade smaller. Also this one was furnished with some instruments which I had not observed in the other. There were two good field-glasses and a very powerful microscope. There were also some instruments whose use I did not recognise, but they seemed to suggest spectrum analysis. In addition to these there were some glass instruments that looked like test tubes, and other [174] ]chemical apparatus of apparently simple construction, but quite unfamiliar to me.
We got under way just as formerly, and we moved rapidly towards the western end of the valley. I reckon that it was two miles, or perhaps a little more, from the eastern to the western extremity. The valley was bounded all round by hills. But I seemed to see to-day more than ever before an air of artificial construction about these. From some points of view this disappeared altogether, while from other points the evidence of it was all but conclusive. I made sure sometimes that I could detect the junction of a great embankment with the hills on either side, but in each case after I had got another view I was not quite so sure. Just the same impression, as I have told you, was produced on me by the view of the hills when I first approached them from the east; but the appearance or impression of artificial construction was very much stronger now.
I had on this day a very full view of the arrangement of the valley from end to end. You remember the large square in which on the second day we had seen the men drilled, and in which on the day after we had witnessed our host’s wonderful disappearance and reappearance. You remember also the broad walk [175] ]which led from the eastern stairway to the square. Very well; at the further end of the square that walk was continued. It was the same breadth all the way through, and it was planted with trees and with flowering shrubs, mostly of a kind which I had never seen elsewhere. On each side of it narrower ways branched off, leading to houses of the same style as those in which Jack and I were lodged. There was an air of trimness and regularity about the whole but no beauty. I can imagine one looking at the scene and pronouncing it stiff and formal and nothing more. But as I looked I felt that if there was no beauty there was at least an eerie suggestiveness that took the place of beauty. Seen from above, as we saw, even trimness and regularity have an odd look. But after all the trimness and regularity of the scene were its least remarkable characteristics. The frowning hills with rampart-like ridges between them that might be walls or that might be natural embankments; the silence broken only by the whirr of our motion through the air, for there was no bird in the valley from end to end, and indeed no living creature of any sort except its human (if they were human) inhabitants, and I think a few snakes; the uncouth aspect of the chimneyless and smokeless houses; the absence of every object that [176] ]might remind one of the cares and pleasures of life: no garden, or orchard, or playground, no child or woman;—all this formed altogether a picture as unearthly and inhuman as the barren surface of the moon. The odd-looking trees and shrubs which, as I have told you, were planted along the roadway, made this worse and not better. Their approach to naturalness made the unnaturalness of all the rest only the more apparent. Besides, their very presence made you feel that it was not nature, as on the surface of the moon, which caused the silence and desolation, but some foul and maleficent influence which was external to nature. The broad walk and the rows of houses both ended abruptly, abutting upon a belt of timber artificially planted. The trees were like the blue gum, they were so close together that no passage between them was possible, and as far as I could judge the intervals from tree to tree were quite equal and regular. This plantation extended a good way up the cliff on both sides, and it was a hundred yards across, or more. Beyond it was a space of about twenty feet, and then another row of trees of quite a different kind, and like nothing that I had ever seen. But as far as I could guess from such a height the leaves were as thick as the gum leaves, but in other ways much larger. This row of trees [177] ]was nearly of the same depth as the other, and extended like it high up on either side of the cliff. I have little doubt that all these trees were intended as a defence against the vapours which were generated by certain works which were carried on beyond, and of which I must now try to tell you what I saw.
From what I have said it will be clear to you that there was only one way from the eastern part of the valley to the western, and that was through the air. No one could pass through either belt of timber. And as we floated over them I noticed that Signor Niccolo at once raised the car several hundred feet, and kept well away to the south. Then he stopped; then he lowered the car a little and asked me what I saw.
I saw several very unequal belts of what seemed to be cultivated ground. But it was a very queer-looking sort of cultivation. There was almost no green from end to end of it, and what green there was looked like the scum that you sometimes see floating upon the surface of a stagnant pool. And even this was only to be seen at the southern extremity of the cultivated ground. As you looked north the growth was more and more foul and offensive, and thick, filthy looking vapours floated over it here and there. I thought of Shelley’s ruined garden, where—
“Agaric and fungi with mildew and mould[178]