「ソロモン王の洞窟」第18章・・・絶望 WE ABANDON HOPE

「ソロモン王の洞窟」第18章・・・絶望

WE ABANDON HOPE

I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which
followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for
even in such a position as ours wearied nature will sometimes assert
itself. But I, at any rate, found it impossible to sleep much. Putting
aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom--for the bravest
man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I
never made any pretensions to be brave--the /silence/ itself was too
great to allow of it. Reader, you may have lain awake at night and
thought the quiet oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can
have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect stillness. On the
surface of the earth there is always some sound or motion, and though
it may in itself be imperceptible, yet it deadens the sharp edge of
absolute silence. But here there was none. We were buried in the
bowels of a huge snow-clad peak. Thousands of feet above us the fresh
air rushed over the white snow, but no sound of it reached us. We were
separated by a long tunnel and five feet of rock even from the awful
chamber of the Dead; and the dead make no noise. Did we not know it
who lay by poor Foulata's side? The crashing of all the artillery of
earth and heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb.
We were cut off from every echo of the world--we were as men already
in the grave.

Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us
lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build
a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly
for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be
rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and,
after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our
sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is
a valueless thing at the last.

And so the night wore on.

"Good," said Sir Henry's voice at last, and it sounded awful in the
intense stillness, "how many matches have you in the box?"

"Eight, Curtis."

"Strike one and let us see the time."

He did so, and in contrast to the dense darkness the flame nearly
blinded us. It was five o'clock by my watch. The beautiful dawn was
now blushing on the snow-wreaths far over our heads, and the breeze
would be stirring the night mists in the hollows.

"We had better eat something and keep up our strength," I suggested.

"What is the good of eating?" answered Good; "the sooner we die and
get it over the better."

"While there is life there is hope," said Sir Henry.

Accordingly we ate and sipped some water, and another period of time
elapsed. Then Sir Henry suggested that it might be well to get as near
the door as possible and halloa, on the faint chance of somebody
catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at
sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and set
to work. I must say that he made a most diabolical noise. I never
heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all
the effect they produced.

After a while he gave it up and came back very thirsty, and had to
drink. Then we stopped yelling, as it encroached on the supply of
water.

So we sat down once more against the chests of useless diamonds in
that dreadful inaction which was one of the hardest circumstances of
our fate; and I am bound to say that, for my part, I gave way in
despair. Laying my head against Sir Henry's broad shoulder I burst
into tears; and I think that I heard Good gulping away on the other
side, and swearing hoarsely at himself for doing so.

Ah, how good and brave that great man was! Had we been two frightened
children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated us more
tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to
soothe our broken nerves, telling stories of men who had been in
somewhat similar circumstances, and miraculously escaped; and when
these failed to cheer us, pointing out how, after all, it was only
anticipating an end which must come to us all, that it would soon be
over, and that death from exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not
true). Then, in a diffident sort of way, as once before I had heard
him do, he suggested that we should throw ourselves on the mercy of a
higher Power, which for my part I did with great vigour.

His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong.

And so somehow the day went as the night had gone, if, indeed, one can
use these terms where all was densest night, and when I lit a match to
see the time it was seven o'clock.

Once more we ate and drank, and as we did so an idea occurred to me.

"How is it," said I, "that the air in this place keeps fresh? It is
thick and heavy, but it is perfectly fresh."

"Great heavens!" said Good, starting up, "I never thought of that. It
can't come through the stone door, for it's air-tight, if ever a door
was. It must come from somewhere. It there were no current of air in
the place we should have been stifled or poisoned when we first came
in. Let us have a look."

It was wonderful what a change this mere spark of hope wrought in us.
In a moment we were all three groping about on our hands and knees,
feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardour
received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was dead
Foulata's face.

For an hour or more we went on feeling about, till at last Sir Henry
and I gave it up in despair, having been considerably hurt by
constantly knocking our heads against tusks, chests, and the sides of
the chamber. But Good still persevered, saying, with an approach to
cheerfulness, that it was better than doing nothing.

"I say, you fellows," he said presently, in a constrained sort of
voice, "come here."

Needless to say we scrambled towards him quickly enough.

"Quatermain, put your hand here where mine is. Now, do you feel
anything?"

"I /think/ I feel air coming up."

"Now listen." He rose and stamped upon the place, and a flame of hope
shot up in our hearts. /It rang hollow./

With trembling hands I lit a match. I had only three left, and we saw
that we were in the angle of the far corner of the chamber, a fact
that accounted for our not having noticed the hollow sound of the
place during our former exhaustive examination. As the match burnt we
scrutinised the spot. There was a join in the solid rock floor, and,
great heavens! there, let in level with the rock, was a stone ring. We
said no word, we were too excited, and our hearts beat too wildly with
hope to allow us to speak. Good had a knife, at the back of which was
one of those hooks that are made to extract stones from horses' hoofs.
He opened it, and scratched round the ring with it. Finally he worked
it under, and levered away gently for fear of breaking the hook. The
ring began to move. Being of stone it had not rusted fast in all the
centuries it had lain there, as would have been the case had it been
of iron. Presently it was upright. Then he thrust his hands into it
and tugged with all his force, but nothing budged.

"Let me try," I said impatiently, for the situation of the stone,
right in the angle of the corner, was such that it was impossible for
two to pull at once. I took hold and strained away, but no results.

Then Sir Henry tried and failed.

Taking the hook again, Good scratched all round the crack where we
felt the air coming up.

"Now, Curtis," he said, "tackle on, and put your back into it; you are
as strong as two. Stop," and he took off a stout black silk
handkerchief, which, true to his habits of neatness, he still wore,
and ran it through the ring. "Quatermain, get Curtis round the middle
and pull for dear life when I give the word. /Now./"

Sir Henry put out all his enormous strength, and Good and I did the
same, with such power as nature had given us.

"Heave! heave! it's giving," gasped Sir Henry; and I heard the muscles
of his great back cracking. Suddenly there was a grating sound, then a
rush of air, and we were all on our backs on the floor with a heavy
flag-stone upon the top of us. Sir Henry's strength had done it, and
never did muscular power stand a man in better stead.

"Light a match, Quatermain," he said, so soon as we had picked
ourselves up and got our breath; "carefully, now."

I did so, and there before us, Heaven be praised! was the /first step
of a stone stair./

"Now what is to be done?" asked Good.

"Follow the stair, of course, and trust to Providence."

"Stop!" said Sir Henry; "Quatermain, get the bit of biltong and the
water that are left; we may want them."

I went, creeping back to our place by the chests for that purpose, and
as I was coming away an idea struck me. We had not thought much of the
diamonds for the last twenty-four hours or so; indeed, the very idea
of diamonds was nauseous, seeing what they had entailed upon us; but,
reflected I, I may as well pocket some in case we ever should get out
of this ghastly hole. So I just put my fist into the first chest and
filled all the available pockets of my old shooting-coat and trousers,
topping up--this was a happy thought--with a few handfuls of big ones
from the third chest. Also, by an afterthought, I stuffed Foulata's
basket, which, except for one water-gourd and a little biltong, was
empty now, with great quantities of the stones.

"I say, you fellows," I sang out, "won't you take some diamonds with
you? I've filled my pockets and the basket."

"Oh, come on, Quatermain! and hang the diamonds!" said Sir Henry. "I
hope that I may never see another."

As for Good, he made no answer. He was, I think, taking his last
farewell of all that was left of the poor girl who had loved him so
well. And curious as it may seem to you, my reader, sitting at home at
ease and reflecting on the vast, indeed the immeasurable, wealth which
we were thus abandoning, I can assure you that if you had passed some
twenty-eight hours with next to nothing to eat and drink in that
place, you would not have cared to cumber yourself with diamonds
whilst plunging down into the unknown bowels of the earth, in the wild
hope of escape from an agonising death. If from the habits of a
lifetime, it had not become a sort of second nature with me never to
leave anything worth having behind if there was the slightest chance
of my being able to carry it away, I am sure that I should not have
bothered to fill my pockets and that basket.

"Come on, Quatermain," repeated Sir Henry, who was already standing on
the first step of the stone stair. "Steady, I will go first."

"Mind where you put your feet, there may be some awful hole
underneath," I answered.

"Much more likely to be another room," said Sir Henry, while he
descended slowly, counting the steps as he went.

When he got to "fifteen" he stopped. "Here's the bottom," he said.
"Thank goodness! I think it's a passage. Follow me down."

Good went next, and I came last, carrying the basket, and on reaching
the bottom lit one of the two remaining matches. By its light we could
just see that we were standing in a narrow tunnel, which ran right and
left at right angles to the staircase we had descended. Before we
could make out any more, the match burnt my fingers and went out. Then
arose the delicate question of which way to go. Of course, it was
impossible to know what the tunnel was, or where it led to, and yet to
turn one way might lead us to safety, and the other to destruction. We
were utterly perplexed, till suddenly it struck Good that when I had
lit the match the draught of the passage blew the flame to the left.

"Let us go against the draught," he said; "air draws inwards, not
outwards."

We took this suggestion, and feeling along the wall with our hands,
whilst trying the ground before us at every step, we departed from
that accursed treasure chamber on our terrible quest for life. If ever
it should be entered again by living man, which I do not think
probable, he will find tokens of our visit in the open chests of
jewels, the empty lamp, and the white bones of poor Foulata.

When we had groped our way for about a quarter of an hour along the
passage, suddenly it took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by
another, which we followed, only in course of time to be led into a
third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone
labyrinth that led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course I
cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a
mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and
thither as the ore led them. This is the only way in which we could
account for such a multitude of galleries.

At length we halted, thoroughly worn out with fatigue and with that
hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and ate up our poor
remaining piece of biltong and drank our last sup of water, for our
throats were like lime-kilns. It seemed to us that we had escaped
Death in the darkness of the treasure chamber only to meet him in the
darkness of the tunnels.

As we stood, once more utterly depressed, I thought that I caught a
sound, to which I called the attention of the others. It was very
faint and very far off, but it /was/ a sound, a faint, murmuring
sound, for the others heard it too, and no words can describe the
blessedness of it after all those hours of utter, awful stillness.

"By heaven! it's running water," said Good. "Come on."

Off we started again in the direction from which the faint murmur
seemed to come, groping our way as before along the rocky walls. I
remember that I laid down the basket full of diamonds, wishing to be
rid of its weight, but on second thoughts took it up again. One might
as well die rich as poor, I reflected. As we went the sound became
more and more audible, till at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet.
On, yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of
rushing water. And yet how could there be running water in the bowels
of the earth? Now we were quite near it, and Good, who was leading,
swore that he could smell it.

"Go gently, Good," said Sir Henry, "we must be close." /Splash!/ and a
cry from Good.

He had fallen in.

"Good! Good! where are you?" we shouted, in terrified distress. To our
intense relief an answer came back in a choky voice.

"All right; I've got hold of a rock. Strike a light to show me where
you are."

Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to
us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How wide it was we could
not see, but there, some way out, was the dark form of our companion
hanging on to a projecting rock.

"Stand clear to catch me," sung out Good. "I must swim for it."

Then we heard a splash, and a great struggle. Another minute and he
had grabbed at and caught Sir Henry's outstretched hand, and we had
pulled him up high and dry into the tunnel.

"My word!" he said, between his gasps, "that was touch and go. If I
hadn't managed to catch that rock, and known how to swim, I should
have been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom."

We dared not follow the banks of the subterranean river for fear lest
we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested
a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and
fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we
could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to
retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in
front of us. At length we came to another gallery leading to our
right.

"We may as well take it," said Sir Henry wearily; "all roads are alike
here; we can only go on till we drop."

Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly exhausted, along
this new tunnel, Sir Henry now leading the way. Again I thought of
abandoning that basket, but did not.

Suddenly he stopped, and we bumped up against him.

"Look!" he whispered, "is my brain going, or is that light?"

We stared with all our eyes, and there, yes, there, far ahead of us,
was a faint, glimmering spot, no larger than a cottage window pane. It
was so faint that I doubt if any eyes, except those which, like ours,
had for days seen nothing but blackness, could have perceived it at
all.

With a gasp of hope we pushed on. In five minutes there was no longer
any doubt; it /was/ a patch of faint light. A minute more and a breath
of real live air was fanning us. On we struggled. All at once the
tunnel narrowed. Sir Henry went on his knees. Smaller yet it grew,
till it was only the size of a large fox's earth--it was /earth/ now,
mind you; the rock had ceased.

A squeeze, a struggle, and Sir Henry was out, and so was Good, and so
was I, dragging Foulata's basket after me; and there above us were the
blessed stars, and in our nostrils was the sweet air. Then suddenly
something gave, and we were all rolling over and over and over through
grass and bushes and soft, wet soil.

The basket caught in something and I stopped. Sitting up I halloed
lustily. An answering shout came from below, where Sir Henry's wild
career had been checked by some level ground. I scrambled to him, and
found him unhurt, though breathless. Then we looked for Good. A little
way off we discovered him also, hammed in a forked root. He was a good
deal knocked about, but soon came to himself.

We sat down together, there on the grass, and the revulsion of feeling
was so great that really I think we cried with joy. We had escaped
from that awful dungeon, which was so near to becoming our grave.
Surely some merciful Power guided our footsteps to the jackal hole,
for that is what it must have been, at the termination of the tunnel.
And see, yonder on the mountains the dawn we had never thought to look
upon again was blushing rosy red.

Presently the grey light stole down the slopes, and we saw that we
were at the bottom, or rather, nearly at the bottom, of the vast pit
in front of the entrance to the cave. Now we could make out the dim
forms of the three Colossi who sat upon its verge. Doubtless those
awful passages, along which we had wandered the livelong night, had
been originally in some way connected with the great diamond mine. As
for the subterranean river in the bowels of the mountain, Heaven only
knows what it is, or whence it flows, or whither it goes. I, for one,
have no anxiety to trace its course.

Lighter it grew, and lighter yet. We could see each other now, and
such a spectacle as we presented I have never set eyes on before or
since. Gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust
and mud, bruised, bleeding, the long fear of imminent death yet
written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the
daylight. And yet it is a solemn fact that Good's eye-glass was still
fixed in Good's eye. I doubt whether he had ever taken it out at all.
Neither the darkness, nor the plunge in the subterranean river, nor
the roll down the slope, had been able to separate Good and his eye-
glass.

Presently we rose, fearing that our limbs would stiffen if we stopped
there longer, and commenced with slow and painful steps to struggle up
the sloping sides of the great pit. For an hour or more we toiled
steadfastly up the blue clay, dragging ourselves on by the help of the
roots and grasses with which it was clothed. But now I had no more
thought of leaving the basket; indeed, nothing but death should have
parted us.

At last it was done, and we stood by the great road, on that side of
the pit which is opposite to the Colossi.

At the side of the road, a hundred yards off, a fire was burning in
front of some huts, and round the fire were figures. We staggered
towards them, supporting one another, and halting every few paces.
Presently one of the figures rose, saw us and fell on to the ground,
crying out for fear.

"Infadoos, Infadoos! it is we, thy friends."

He rose; he ran to us, staring wildly, and still shaking with fear.

"Oh, my lords, my lords, it is indeed you come back from the dead!--
come back from the dead!"

And the old warrior flung himself down before us, and clasping Sir
Henry's knees, he wept aloud for joy.