A light of wild derision gleamed in Bowen’s eyes, upturned to the flash. Seizing Roberts’ hand he drew the fingers along his bowed ridge of backbone.
“Algae,” he gritted. “Algae from Gileshtai the Accursed. Puncture, you know. Scum grows in the spinal fluid. Every month I stoop more and more. The pain, you know. Now when I run I am bent like a question mark. Oh, I tried to escape a dozen times. Always they caught me. Couldn’t travel far or fast, you see. And no food to take. They—they did this. They are clever. Damned clever!”
Roberts had no answer for this. He was chilled with horror. Such practices had come to his ears as whispered rumors, yet he had not believed. That his big, silent comrade Christensen, and the youth Porterfield, were this minute in the hands of the devils of the caves, perhaps suffering as Bowen had suffered, and certainly absorbing the awful, infectious dampness of the subterranean passages, undermined his nerve as no certainty of instant destruction could have done. He shuddered.
“See here, Bowen!” he cried. “We must get them out! You know the way. It will be terrible suffering for you, but you are a man—a white man! Even if it costs the life you do not value you must give these men their chance. I will have two of the diggers support you....”
Some of his intense earnestness caught hold in Bowen’s dulled brain.
“You’re right,” he mumbled. “White men ... like you and me. Yes, we can get them out, I think, but not yet. Wait till the sun rises. Then all the Yengi are below ground. They have no firearms. By quick attack through the Wall corridor ... yes, we should succeed. But then? Do you know your peril in venturing, even for a moment, below ground?”
“My peril matters not!”
Bowen nodded slowly.
“You are brave,” he mumbled. “But perhaps you have not seen them ... the Yengi?”