"_That?_" exclaimed Beatrice. "I never saw a book of that shape!"
"Each page is separately preserved, wherefore it is so very thick,"
explained the old man. "See here?"
He turned the leaves reverently. Stern, peering closely by the dim light, saw that they were loosely hung together by loops of heavy gold wire. Each page was held between two large plates of mica, and these plates were securely sealed around the edges by some black substance like varnish or bitumen.
"Only thus," explained the patriarch, "could we hope to save this precious thing. It was done many hundreds of years ago, and even then the book was almost lost by age and use."
"I should say so!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Stern. Even sealed in its air-tight covering, he saw that every leaf was yellow, broken, rotten, till the merest breath would have disintegrated it to powder. A sense of the infinitudes of time bridged by this volume overwhelmed him; he drew a deep breath, reached out his hand and touched the wondrous relic of the world that was.
"Long ago," continued the old man, "when the book began to crumble, one of my ancestors copied it on gold plates, word by word, letter by letter, every point and line. And our family used only that book of gold and put away the other. But in my grandfather"s time the Lanskaarn raided our village and the gold plates went for loot to make them trinkets, so they were lost.
"My father meant to begin the task again, but was killed in a raid. I, too, in my fighting youth, had plans for the work; but blindness struck me before I could find peace to labor in. So now all that remains of the mother tongue here is my own knowledge and these tattered sc.r.a.ps. And, if you save us not, soon all, all will be lost forever!"
Much moved, the engineer made no reply, yet thoughts came crowding to his brain. Here visibly before him he beheld the final link that tied these lost Folk to the other time, the last and breaking thread. What history could this book have told? What vast catastrophes, famines, pestilences, wars, horrors had it pa.s.sed through? In what unwritten cataclysms, in what anguish and despair and long degeneration had the human mind still clung to it and cherished it?
No one could tell; yet Stern felt the essence of its unknown story. An infinite pathos haloed the ancient volume. And reverently he touched its pages once again; he bent and by the guttering light tried to make out a few words here or there upon the crackled, all but perished leaves.
He came upon a crude old woodcut, vague and dim; then a line of text caught his eye.
"By Gad! "Pilgrim"s Progress"!" he exclaimed. "Look, Beatrice--"Pilgrim"s Progress," of all books! No wonder he says "Verily" and talks archaic stuff and doesn"t catch more than half we say. Well, I"ll be--"
"Is this then not the English of your time?" asked the patriarch.
"Hardly! It was centuries old at the epoch of the catastrophe. Say, father, the quicker you forget this and take a few lessons in the up-to-date language of the real world that perished, the better! I see now why you don"t get on to the idea of steamships and railroads, telephones and wireless and all the rest of it. G.o.d! but you"ve got a lot to learn!"
The old man closed up the precious volume and once more began wrapping it in its many coverings.
"Not for me, all this, I fear," he answered with deep melancholy. "It is too late, too late--I cannot understand."
"Oh, yes, you can, and will!" the engineer a.s.sured him. "Buck up, father! Once I get my biplane to humming again you"ll learn a few things, never fear!"
He stepped to the door of the hut and peered out.
"Rain"s letting up a bit," he announced. "How about it? Do the signs say it"s ready to quit for keeps? If so--all aboard for the dredging expedition!"
CHAPTER x.x.xIV
THE COMING OF KAMROU
The storm, in fact, was now almost at an end, and when the engineer awoke next morning he found the rain had wholly ceased.
Though the sea was still giving forth white vapors, yet these had not yet reached their usual density. From the fortifications he could see, by the reflected lights of the village and of the great flame, a considerable distance out across the dim, mysterious sea. He knew the time was come to try for the recovery of the machine, if ever.
"If I don"t make a go of it to-day," said he, "I might as well quit for good. There"ll never be a better opportunity. And if it"s left down there very much longer, Heaven only knows what kind of shape it"ll be in. I make good to-day or it"s all off."
Beatrice eagerly seconded his plans. The old man, too, was impatient as a child to learn more of this wonder of the upper world. And, translating to the Folk the directions that Stern gave him, he soon had a great throng on the beach, where lay not only the Folk"s canoes, but also many left by the slaughtered and dispersed Lanskaarn.
Two hours after the crude meal that must be called breakfast for want of a better name, the expedition was ready to start.
Twenty-five of the largest boats, some holding twelve men, set out, to the accompaniment of shouting and singing much like that when the captives had been brought in. Stern, Beatrice and the patriarch all sat in one canoe with eight paddlers. In the bottom lay Stern"s heavy grapple with the ten long ropes, now twisted into a single cable, securely knotted to its ring.
To Stern it seemed impossible that any means existed for locating, even approximately, the spot where the machine had fallen. As the sh.o.r.e faded away and the village lights disappeared in the gloom and mist, all landmarks vanished. Everywhere about them the dim, oily sea stretched black and gloomy, with here and there the torches of the little fleet casting strange blue-green lights that wavered like ghostly will-o"-the-wisps over the water.
The boatman"s song wailed high, sank low, trembled and ceased; and for a while came silence, save for the dipping of the paddles, the purling of the waters at the bow of the canoe. The engineer, despite his hard-headed practicality, shuddered a little and drew his mantle closer round him.
Beatrice, too, felt the eerie mystery of the scene. Stern put an arm about her; she slid her hand into his, and thus in silence they sat thinking while the boats drew on and on.
"They really know where they"re going, father?" the engineer asked at length. "It all looks alike to me. How can they tell?"
"Verily, I cannot explain that to you," the old man made answer. "We know, that is all."
"But--"
"Had I been always blind you could not expound sight to me. A deaf man cannot understand sound."
"You mean you"ve developed some new sense, some knowledge of direction and location that _we_ haven"t got?"
"Yea, it must be so. In all these many centuries among the dark mists we have to know. And this gloom, this night, are the same to us as you have told me a lake on the surface would be to you in the brightness of that sun which none of use have ever yet beheld."
"Is that so? Well, hanged if I get it! However, no matter about that just so they locate the place. Can they find the exact spot, father?"
"Perhaps not so. But they will come near to it, my son. Only have patience; you shall see!"
Stern and the girl relapsed into silence again, and for perhaps a quarter-hour the boats moved steadily forward through the vapors in a kind of crescent, the tips of which were hidden by the mist.
Then all at once a sharp cry rang from a boat off to the right, a cry taken up and echoed all along the line. The paddles ceased to ply; the canoes now drifted idly forward, their wakes trailing out behind in long "slicks" of greasy blackness flecked with sparkles from the reflected light of all those many torches.
Another word of command; the boatmen slowed their craft.
"Drop the iron here, son, and drag the bottom," said the patriarch.
"Good!" answered Stern, thrilled with excitement and wonder.
He pitched the dredge into the jetty sea. It sank silently as he payed out the cable. At a depth he estimated--from the amount of cable still left in the boat--as about thirty fathoms, it struck bottom.
He let out another five fathoms.
"All right, father!" he exclaimed sharply. "Tell our boatmen to give way!"
The old man translated the order: "Ghaa vrouaad, m"yaun!" (Go forward, men.) The paddles dipped again and Stern"s canoe moved silently over the inky surface.
Every sense alert, the engineer at the gunwale held the cable. For a few seconds he felt nothing as the slack was taken up; then he perceived a tug and knew the grapple was dragging.
Now intense silence reigned, broken only by the sputter of the smoking torches. The canoes, s.p.a.ced over the foggy sea, seemed floating in a void of nothingness; each reflected light quivered and danced with weird and tremulous patterns.