When the World Shook · Chapter 10 (2/2)

A young woman, I supposed, at least she looked young, perhaps five or six and twenty years of age, or so I judged. There she lay, her tall and delicate shape half hidden in masses of rich-hued hair in colour of a ruddy blackness. I know not how else to describe it, since never have I seen any of the same tint. Moreover, it shone with a life of its own as though it had been dusted with gold. From between the masses of this hair appeared a face which I can only call divine. There was every beauty that woman can boast, from the curving eyelashes of extraordinary length to the sweet and human mouth. To these charms also were added a wondrous smile and an air of kind dignity, very different from the fierce pride stamped upon the countenance of the old man who was her companion in death.

She was clothed in some close-fitting robe of white broidered with gold; pearls were about her neck, lying far down upon the perfect bosom, a girdle of gold and shining gems encircled her slender waist, and on her little feet were sandals fastened with red stones like rubies. In truth, she was a splendid creature, and yet, I know not how, her beauty suggested more of the spirit than of the flesh. Indeed, in a way, it was unearthly. My senses were smitten, it pulled at my heartstrings, and yet its unutterable strangeness seemed to awake memories within me, though of what I could not tell. A wild fancy came to me that I must have known this heavenly creature in some past life.

By now Bastin had joined us, and, attracted by my exclamation and by the attitude of Bickley, who was staring down at the coffin with a fixed look upon his face, not unlike that of a pointer when he scents game, he began to contemplate the wonder within it in his slow way.

“Well, I never!” he said. “Do you think the Glittering Lady in there is human?”

“The Glittering Lady is dead, but I suppose that she was human in her life,” I answered in an awed whisper.

“Of course she is dead, otherwise she would not be in that glass coffin. I think I should like to read the Burial Service over her, which I daresay was never done when she was put in there.”

“How do you know she is dead?” asked Bickley in a sharp voice and speaking for the first time. “I have seen hundreds of corpses, and mummies too, but never any that looked like these.”

I stared at him. It was strange to hear Bickley, the scoffer at miracles, suggesting that this greatest of all miracles might be possible.

“They must have been here a long time,” I said, “for although human, they are not, I think, of any people known to the world today; their dress, everything, shows it, though perhaps thousands of years ago⁠—” and I stopped.

“Quite so,” answered Bickley; “I agree. That is why I suggest that they may have belonged to a race who knew what we do not, namely, how to suspend animation for great periods of time.”

I said no more, nor did Bastin, who was now engaged in studying the old man, and for once, wonderstruck and overcome. Bickley, however, took one of the candles and began to make a close examination of the coffins. So did Tommy, who sniffed along the join of that of the Glittering Lady until his nose reached a certain spot, where it remained, while his black tail began to wag in a delighted fashion. Bickley pushed him away and investigated.

“As I thought,” he said⁠—“air-holes. See!”

I looked, and there, bored through the crystal of the coffin in a line with the face of its occupant, were a number of little holes that either by accident or design outlined the shape of a human mouth.

“They are not airtight,” murmured Bickley; “and if air can enter, how can dead flesh remain like that for ages?”

Then he continued his search upon the other side.

“The lid of this coffin works on hinges,” he said. “Here they are, fashioned of the crystal itself. A living person within could have pulled it down before the senses departed.”

“No,” I answered; “for look, here is a crystal bolt at the end and it is shot from without.”

This puzzled him; then as though struck by an idea, he began to examine the other coffin.

“I’ve got it!” he exclaimed presently. “The old god in here” (somehow we all thought of this old man as not quite normal) “shut down the Glittering Lady’s coffin and bolted it. His own is not bolted, although the bolt exists in the same place. He just got in and pulled down the lid. Oh! what nonsense I am talking⁠—for how can such things be? Let us get out and think.”

So we crept from the sepulchre in which the perfumed air had begun to oppress us and sat ourselves down upon the floor of the cave, where for a while we remained silent.

“I am very thirsty,” said Bastin presently. “Those smells seem to have dried me up. I am going to get some tea⁠—I mean water, as unfortunately there is no tea,” and he set off towards the mouth of the cave.

We followed him, I don’t quite know why, except that we wished to breathe freely outside, also we knew that the sepulchre and its contents would be as safe as they had been for⁠—well, how long?

It proved to be a beautiful morning outside. We walked up and down enjoying it subconsciously, for really our⁠—that is Bickley’s and my own⁠—intelligences were concentrated on that sepulchre and its contents. Where Bastin’s may have been I do not know, perhaps in a visionary teapot, since I was sure that it would take him a day or two to appreciate the significance of our discoveries. At any rate, he wandered off, making no remarks about them, to drink water, I suppose.

Presently he began to shout to us from the end of the table-rock and we went to see the reason of his noise. It proved to be very satisfactory, for while we were in the cave the Orofenans had brought absolutely everything belonging to us, together with a large supply of food from the main island. Not a single article was missing; even our books, a can with the bottom out, and the broken pieces of a little pocket mirror had been religiously transported, and with these a few articles that had been stolen from us, notably my pocketknife. Evidently a great taboo had been laid upon all our possessions. They were now carefully arranged in one of the grooves of the rock that Bickley supposed had been made by the wheels of aeroplanes, which was why we had not seen them at once.

Each of us rushed for what we desired most⁠—Bastin for one of the canisters of tea, I for my diaries, and Bickley for his chest of instruments and medicines. These were removed to the mouth of the cave, and after them the other things and the food; also a bell tent and some camp furniture that we had brought from the ship. Then Bastin made some tea of which he drank four large pannikins, having first said grace over it with unwonted fervour. Nor did we disdain our share of the beverage, although Bickley preferred cocoa and I coffee. Cocoa and coffee we had no time to make then, and in view of that sepulchre in the cave, what had we to do with cocoa and coffee?

So Bickley and I said to each other, and yet presently he changed his mind and in a special metal machine carefully made some extremely strong black coffee which he poured into a thermos flask, previously warmed with hot water, adding thereto about a claret glass of brandy. Also he extracted certain drugs from his medicine-chest, and with them, as I noted, a hypodermic syringe, which he first boiled in a kettle and then shut up in a little tube with a glass stopper.

These preparations finished, he called to Tommy to give him the scraps of our meal. But there was no Tommy. The dog was missing, and though we hunted everywhere we could not find him. Finally we concluded that he had wandered off down the beach on business of his own and would return in due course. We could not bother about Tommy just then.

After making some further preparations and fidgeting about a little, Bickley announced that as we had now some proper paraffin lamps of the powerful sort which are known as “hurricane,” he proposed by their aid to carry out further examinations in the cave.

“I think I shall stop where I am,” said Bastin, helping himself from the kettle to a fifth pannikin of tea. “Those corpses are very interesting, but I don’t see any use in staring at them again at present. One can always do that at any time. I have missed Marama once already by being away in that cave, and I have a lot to say to him about my people; I don’t want to be absent in case he should return.”

“To wash up the things, I suppose,” said Bickley with a sniff; “or perhaps to eat the tea-leaves.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I have noticed that these natives have a peculiar taste for tea-leaves. I think they believe them to be a medicine, but I don’t suppose they would come so far for them, though perhaps they might in the hope of getting the head of Oro. Anyhow, I am going to stop here.”

“Pray do,” said Bickley. “Are you ready, Humphrey?”

I nodded, and he handed to me a felt-covered flask of the nonconducting kind, filled with boiling water, a tin of preserved milk, and a little bottle of meat extract of a most concentrated sort. Then, having lit two of the hurricane lamps and seen that they were full of oil, we started back up the cave.