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The Lost Continent

C >> C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne >> The Lost Continent




There was no difficulty about passing the gate. There was no
gate. There was no wall. The Gods had driven their plough through
it, and it lay flat, and proud Atlantis stood as defenceless as the
open country. Though I knew the cause of this ruin, though, in
fact, I had myself in some measure incited it, I was almost sad at
the ruthlessness with which it had been carried out. The royal
pyramid might go, houses and palaces might be levelled, and for
these I cared little enough; but when I saw those stately ramparts
also filched away, there the soldier in me woke, and I grieved at
this humbling of the mighty city that once had been my only
mistress.

But this was only a passing regret, a mere touch of the
fighting-man's pride. I had a different love now, that had wrapped
herself round me far deeper and more tightly, and my duty was
towards her first and foremost. The night would soon be past, and
then dangers would increase. None had interfered with us so far,
though many had jostled us as I clambered over the ruins; but this
forbearance could not be reckoned upon for long. The earth tremors
had almost died away, and after the panic and the storm, then comes
the time for the spoiling.

All men who were poor would try to seize what lay nearest to
their hands, and those of higher station, and any soldiers who
could be collected and still remained true to command, would
ruthlessly stop and strip any man they saw making off with plunder.
I had no mind to clash with these guardians of law and property,
and so I fled on swiftly through the night with my burden, using
the unfrequented ways; and crying to the few folk who did meet me
that the woman had the plague, and would they lend me the shelter
of their house as ours had fallen. And so in time we came to the
place where the rope dangled from the precipice, and after Nais had
been drawn up to the safety of the Sacred Mountain, I put my leg in
the loop of the rope and followed her.

Now came what was the keenest anxiety of all. We took the
girl and laid her on a bed in one of the houses, and there in the
lit room for the first time I saw her clearly. Her beauty was
drawn and pale. Her eyes were closed, but so thin and transparent
had grown the lids that one could almost see the brown of the pupil
beneath them. Her hair had grown to inordinate thickness and
length, and lay as a cushion behind and beside her head.

There was no flicker of breath; there was none of that pulsing
of the body which denotes life; but still she had not the
appearance of ordinary death. The Nais I had placed nine long
years before to rest in the hollow of the stone, was a fine grown
woman, full bosomed, and well boned. The Nais that remained for
me was half her weight. The old Nais it would have puzzled me to
carry for an hour: this was no burden to impede a grown man.

In other ways too she had altered. The nails of her fingers
had grown to such a great length that they were twisted in spirals,
and the fingers themselves and her hands were so waxy and
transparent that the bony core upon which they were built showed
itself beneath the flesh in plain dull outline. Her clay-cold lips
were so white, that one sighed to remember the full beauty of their
carmine. Her shoulders and neck had lost their comely curves, and
made bony hollows now in which the dust of entombment lodged black
and thickly.

Reverently I set about preparing those things which if all
went well should restore her. I heated water and filled a bath,
and tinctured it heavily with those essences of the life of beasts
which the Priests extract and store against times of urgent need
and sickness. I laid her chin-deep in this bath, and sat beside it
to watch, maintaining that bath at a constant blood heat.

An hour I watched; two hours I watched; three hours--and yet
she showed no flicker of life. The heat of her body given her by
the bath, was the same as the heat of my own. But in the feel of
her skin when I stroked it with my hand, there was something
lacking still. Only when our Lord the Sun rose for His day did I
break off my watching, whilst I said the necessary prayer which is
prescribed, and quickly returned again to the gloom of the house.

I was torn with anxiety, and as the time went on and still no
sign of life came back, the hope that had once been so high within
me began to sicken and leave me downcast and despondent. From
without, came the din of fighting. Already Phorenice had sent her
troops to storm the passageway, and the Priests who defended it
were shattering them with volleys of rocks. But these sounds of
war woke no pulse within me. If Nais did not wake, then the world
for me was ended, and I had no spirit left to care who remained
uppermost. The Gods in Their due time will doubtless smite me for
this impiety. But I make a confession of it here on these sheets,
having no mind to conceal any portion of this history for the small
reason that it does me a personal discredit.

But as the hours went on, and still no flicker of life came to
lessen the dumb agony that racked me, I grew more venturesome, and
added more essences to the bath, and drugs also such as experience
had shown might wake the disused tissues into life. I watched on
with staring eyes, rubbing her wasted body now and again, and
always keeping the heat of the bath at a constant. From the first
I had barred the door against all who would have come near to help
me. With my own hands I had laid my love to sleep, and I could not
bear that others should rouse her, if indeed roused she should ever
be. But after those first offers, no others came, and the snarl
and din of fighting told of what occupied them.

It is hard to take note of small changes which occur with
infinite slowness when one is all the while on the tense watch, and
high strung though my senses were, I think there must have been
some indication of returning life shown before I was keen enough to
notice it. For of a sudden, as I gazed, I saw a faint rippling on
the surface of the water of the bath. Gods! Would it come back
again to my love at last--this life, this wakefulness? The ripple
died out as it had come, and I stooped my head nearer to the bath
to try if I could see some faint heaving of her bosom some small
twitching of the limbs. No, she lay there still without even a
flutter of movement. But as I watched, surely it seemed to my
aching eyes that some tinge was beginning to warm that blank
whiteness of skin?

How I filled myself with that sight. The colour was returning
to her again beyond a doubt. Once more the dried blood was
becoming fluid and beginning again to course in its old channels.
Her hair floated out in the liquid of the bath like some brown
tangle of the ocean weed, and ever and again it twitched and eddied
to some impulse which in itself was too small for the eye to see.

She had slept for nine long years, and I knew that the
wakening could be none of the suddenest. Indeed, it came by its
own gradations and with infinite slowness, and I did not dare do
more to hasten it. Further drugs might very well stop eternally
what those which had been used already had begun. So I sat
motionless where I was, and watched the colour come back, and the
waxenness go, and even the fullness of her curves in some small
measure return. And when growing strength gave her power to endure
them, and she was racked with those pains which are inevitable to
being born back again in this fashion to life, I too felt the
reflex of her agony, and writhed in loving sympathy.

Still further, too, was I wrung by a torment of doubt as to
whether life or these rackings would in the end be conqueror.
After each paroxysm the colour ebbed back from her again, and for
a while she would lie motionless. But strength and power seemed
gradually to grow, and at last these prevailed, and drove death and
sleep beneath them. Her eyelids struggled with their fastenings.
Her lips parted, and her bosom heaved. With shivering gasps her
breath began to pant between her reddening lips. At first it
rattled dryly in her throat, but soon it softened and became more
regular. And then with a last effort her eyes, her glorious loving
eyes, slowly opened.

I leaned over and called her softly by name.

Her eyes met mine, and a glow arose from their depths that
gave me the greatest joy I have met in all the world.

"Deucalion, my love," she whispered. "Oh, my dear, so you
have come for me. How I have dreamed of you! How I have been
racked! But it was worth it all for this."



18. STORM OF THE SACRED MOUNTAIN


It was Nais herself who sent me to attend to my sterner
duties. The din of the attack came to us in the house where I was
tending her, and she asked its meaning. As pithily as might be,
for she was in no condition for tedious listening, I gave her the
history of her nine years' sleep.

The colour flushed more to her face. "My lord is the
properest man in all the world to be King," she whispered.

"I refused to touch the trade till they had given me the Queen
I desired, safe and alive, here upon the Mountain."

"How we poor women are made the chattels of you men! But, for
myself, I seem to like the traffic well enough. You should not
have let me stand in the way of Atlantis' good, Deucalion. Still,
it is very sweet to know you were weak there for once, and that I
was the cause of your weakness. What is that bath over yonder?
Ah! I remember; my wits seem none of the clearest just now."

"You have made the beginning. Your strength will return to
you by quick degrees. But it will not bear hurrying. You must
have a patience."

"Your ear, sir, for one moment, and then I will rest in peace.
My poor looks, are they all gone? You seem to have no mirror here.
I had visions that I should wake up wrinkled and old."

"You are as you were, dear, that first night I saw you--the
most beautiful woman in all the world."

"I am pleased you like me," she said, and took the cup of
broth I offered her. "My hair seems to have grown; but it needs
combing sadly. I had a fancy, dear, once, that you liked ruddy
hair best, and not a plain brown." She closed her eyes then, lying
back amongst the cushions where I had placed her, and dropped off
into healthy sleep, with the smiles still playing upon her lips.
I put the coverlet over her, and kissed her lightly, holding back
my beard lest it should sweep her cheek. And then I went out of
the chamber.

That beard had grown vastly disagreeable to me these last
hours, and then I went into a room in the house, and found
instruments, and shaved it down to the bare chin. A change of robe
also I found there and took it instead of my squalid rags. If a
man is in truth a king, he owes these things to the dignity of his
office.

But, if the din of the fighting was any guide, mine was a
narrowing kingdom. Every hour it seemed to grow fiercer and more
near, and it was clear that some of the gates in the passage up the
cleft in the cliff, impregnable though all men had thought them,
had yielded to the vehemence of Phorenice's attack. And, indeed,
it was scarcely to be marvelled at. With all her genius spurred on
to fury by the blow that had been struck at her by wrecking so fair
a part of the city, the Empress would be no light adversary even
for a strong place to resist, and the Sacred Mountain was no longer
strong.

Defences of stone, cunningly planned and mightily built, it
still possessed, but these will not fight alone. They need men to
line them, and, moreover, abundance of men. For always in a storm
of this kind, some desperate fellows will spit at death and get to
hand grips, or slingers and archers slip in their shot, or the
throwing-fire gets home, or (as here) some newfangled machine like
Phorenice's fire-tubes, make one in a thousand of their wavering
darts find the life; and so, though the general attacking loses his
hundreds, the defenders also are not without their dead.

The slaughter, as it turned out, had been prodigious. As fast
as the stormers came up, the Priests who held the lowest gate
remaining to us rained down great rocks upon them till the narrow
alley of the stair was paved with their writhing dead. But
Phorenice stood on a spur of the rock below them urging on the
charges, and with an insane valour company after company marched up
to hurl themselves hopelessly against the defences. They had no
machines to batter the massive gates, and their attack was as
pathetically useless as that of a child who hammers against a wall
with an orange; and meanwhile the terrible stones from above mowed
them down remorselessly.

Company after company of the troops marched into this terrible
death-trap, and not a man of all of them ever came back. Nor was
it Phorenice's policy that they should do so. In her lust for this
final conquest, she was minded to pour out troops till she had
filled up the passes with the slain, so that at last she might
march on to a level fight over the bridge of their poor bodies. It
was no part of Phorenice's mood ever to count the cost. She set
down the object which was to be gained, and it was her policy that
the people of Atlantis were there to gain it for her.

Two gates then had she carried in this dreadful fashion,
slaughtering those Priests that stood behind, them who had not been
already shot down. And here I came down from above to take my
share in the fight. There was no trumpet to announce my coming, no
herald to proclaim my quality, but the Priests as a sheer custom
picked up "Deucalion!" as a battle-cry; and some shouted that, with
a King to lead, there would be no further ground lost.

It was clear that the name carried to the other side and bore
weight with it. A company of poor, doomed wretches who were
hurrying up stopped in their charge. The word "Deucalion!" was
bandied round and handed back down the line. I though with some
grim satisfaction, that here was evidence I was not completely
forgotten in the land.

There came shouts to them from behind to carry on their advance;
but they did not budge; and presently a glittering officer panted
up, and commenced to strike right and left amongst them with his
sword. From where I stood on the high rampart above the gate,
I could see him plainly, and recognised him at once.

"It matters not what they use for their battle-cry," he was
shouting. "You have the orders of your divine Empress, and that is
enough. You should be proud to die for her wish, you cowards. And
if you do not obey, you will die afterwards under the instruments
of the tormentors, very painfully. As for Deucalion, he is dead
any time these nine years."

"There it seems you lie, my Lord Tatho," I shouted down to
him.

He started, and looked up at me.

"So you are there in real truth, then? Well, old comrade, I
am sorry. But it is too late to make a composition now. You are
on the side of these mangy Priests, and the Empress has made an
edict that they are to be rooted out, and I am her most obedient
servant."

"You used to be skilful of fence," I said, and indeed there
was little enough to choose between us. "If it please you to stop
this pitiful killing, make yourself the champion of your side, and
I will stand for mine, and we will fight out this quarrel in some
fair place, and bind our parties to abide by the result."

"It would be a grand fight between us two, old friend, and it
goes hard with me to balk you of it. But I cannot pleasure you.
I am general here under Phorenice, and she has given me the
strongest orders not to peril myself. And besides, though you are
a great man, Deucalion, you are not chief. You are not even one of
the Three."

"I am King."

Tatho laughed. "Few but yourself would say so, my lord."

"Few truly, but what there are, they are powerful. I was given
the name for the first time yesterday, and as a first blow in
the campaign there was some mischief done in the city. I was there
myself, and saw how you took it."

"You were in Atlantis!"

"I went for Nais. She is on the mountain now, and to-morrow
will be my Queen. Tatho, as a priest to a priest, let me solemnly
bring to your memory the infinite power you bite against on this
Sacred Mountain. Your teaching has warned you of the weapons that
are stored in the Ark of the Mysteries. If you persist in this
attack, at the best you can merely lose; at the worst you can bring
about a wreck over which even the High Gods will shudder as They
order it."

"You cannot scare us back now by words," said Tatho doggedly.
"And as for magic, it will be met by magic. Phorenice has found by
her own cleverness as many powers as were ever stored up in the Ark
of the Mysteries."

"Yet she looked on helplessly enough last night, when her
royal pyramid was trundled into a rubbish heap. Zaemon had
prophesied that this should be so, and for a witness, why I myself
stood closer to her than we two stand now, and saw her."

"I will own you took her by surprise somewhat there. I do not
understand these matters myself; I was never more than one of the
Seven in the old days; and now, quite rightly, Phorenice keeps the
knowledge of her magic to herself: but it seems time is needed when
one magic is to be met by another."

"Well," I said, "I know little about the business either. I
leave these matters now to those who are higher above me in the
priesthood. Indeed, having a liking for Nais, it seems I am
debarred from ever being given understanding about the highest of
the higher Mysteries. So I content myself with being a soldier,
and when the appointed day comes, I shall fall and kiss my mother
the Earth for the last time. You, so I am told, have ambition for
longer life."

He nodded. "Phorenice has found the Great Secret, and I am to
be the first that will share it with her. We shall be as Gods upon
the earth, seeing that Death will be powerless to touch us. And
the twin sons she has borne me, will be made immortal also."

"Phorenice is headstrong. No, my lord, there is no need to
shake your head and try to deny it. I have had some acquaintance
with her. But the order has been made, and her immortality will be
snatched from her very rudely. Now, mark solemnly my words. I,
Deucalion, have been appointed King of Atlantis by the High Council
of the Priests who are the mouthpiece of the most High Gods, and if
I do not have my reign, then there will be no Atlantis left to
carry either King or Empress. You know me, Tatho, for a man that
never lies."

He nodded.

"Then save yourself before it is too late. You shall have
again your vice-royalty in Yucatan."

"But, man, there is no Yucatan. A great horde of little hairy
creatures, that were something less than human and something more
than beasts, swept down upon our cities and ate them out. Oh, you
may sneer if you choose! Others sneered when I came home, till the
Empress stopped them. But you know what a train of driver ants is,
that you meet with in the forests? You may light fires across
their path, and they will march into them in their blind bravery,
and put them out with their bodies, and those that are left will
march on in an unbroken column, and devour all that stands in their
path. I tell you, my lord, those little hairy creatures were like
the ants--aye, for numbers, and wooden bravery, as well as for
appetite. As a result to-day, there is no Yucatan."

"You shall have Egypt, then."

He burst at me hotly. "I would not take seven Egypts and ten
Yucatans. My lord, you think more poorly of me than is kind, when
you ask me to become a traitor. In your place would you throw your
Nais away, if the doing it would save you from a danger?"

"That is different."

"In no degree. You have a kindness for her. I have all that
and more for Phorenice, who is, besides, my wife and the mother of
my children. If I have qualms--and I freely confess I know you are
desperate men up there, and have dreadful powers at your
command--my shiverings are for them and not for myself. But I
think, my lord, this parley is leading to nothing, and though these
common soldiers here will understand little enough of our talk,
they may be picking up a word here and there, and I do not wish
them to go on to their death (as you will see them do shortly) and
carry evil reports about me to whatever Gods they chance to come
before."

He saluted me with his sword and drew back, and once more the
missiles began to fly, and the doomed wretches, who had been
halting beside the steep rock walls of the pass began once more to
press hopelessly forward. They had scaling-ladders certainly, but
they had no chance of getting these planted. They could do naught
but fill the narrow way with their bodies, and to that end they had
been sent, and to that end they humbly died. Our Priests with crow
and lever wrenched from their lodging-places the great rocks which
had been made ready, and sent them crashing down, so that once more
screams filled the pass, and the horrid butchery was renewed.

But ever and again, some arrow or some sling-stone, or some
fire-tube's dart would find its way up from below and through the
defences, and there we would be with a man the less to carry on the
fight. It was well enough for Phorenice to be lavish with her
troops; indeed, if she wished for success, there were no two ways
for it; and when those she had levied were killed, she could
readily press others into the service, seeing that she had the
whole broad face of the country under her rule. But with us it was
different. A man down on our side was a man whose arm would
bitterly be missed, and one which could in no possible way be
replaced.

I made calculation of the chances, and saw clearly that, if we
continued the fight on the present plan, they would storm the gates
one after another as they came to them, and that by the time the
uppermost gate was reached, there would be no Priest alive to
defend it. And so, not disdaining to fashion myself on Phorenice's
newer plan, which held that a general should at times in preference
plot coldly from a place of some safety, and not lead the thick of
the fighting, I left those who stood to the gate with some rough
soldier's words of cheer, and withdrew again up the narrow stair of
the pass.

This one approach to the Sacred Mountain was, as I have said
before, vastly more difficult and dangerous in the olden days when
it stood as a mere bare cleft as the High Gods made it. But a
chasm had been bridged here, a shelf cut through the solid rock
there, and in many places the roadway was built up on piers from
distant crags below so as to make all uniform and easy. It came to
my mind now, that if I could destroy this path, we might gain a
breathing space for further effort.

The idea seemed good, or at least no other occurred to me
which would in any way relieve our desperate situation, and I
looked around me for means to put it into execution. Up and down,
from the mountain to the plains below, I had traversed that narrow
stair of a pass some thousands of times, and so in a manner of
speaking knew every stone, and every turn, and every cut of it by
heart. But I had never looked upon it with an eye to shaving off
all roadway to the Sacred Mountain, and so now, even in this moment
of dreadful stress, I had to traverse it no less than three times
afresh before I could decide upon the best site for demolition.

But once the point was fixed, there was little delay in getting
the scheme in movement. Already I had sent men to the storehouses
amongst the Priests' dwellings to fetch me rams, and crows, and
acids, and hammers, and such other material as was needed, and
these stood handy behind one of the upper gates. I put on
every pair of hands that could be spared to the work, no matter
what was their age and feebleness; yes, if Nais could have walked
so far I would have pressed her for the labour; and presently
carved balustrade, and wayside statue, together with the lettered
wall-stones and the foot-worn cobbles, roared down into the gulf
below, and added their din to the shrieks and yells and crashes of
the fighting. Gods! But it was a hateful task, smashing down that
splendid handiwork of the men of the past. But it was better that
it should crash down to ruin in the abyss below, than that
Phorenice should profane it with her impious sandals.

At first I had feared that it would be needful to sacrifice
the knot of brave men who were so valiantly defending the gate then
being attacked. It is disgusting to be forced into a measure of
this kind, but in hard warfare it is often needful to the carrying
out of his schemes for a general to leave a part of his troops to
fight to a finish, and without hope of rescue, as valiantly as they
may; and all he can do for their reward is to recommend them
earnestly to the care of the Gods. But when the work of destroying
the pathway was nearly completed, I saw a chance of retrieving
them.

We had not been content merely with breaking arches, and throwing
down the piers. We had got our rams and levers under the living
rock itself on which all the whole fabric stood; and fire stood
ready to heat the rams for their work; and when the word was
given, the whole could be sent crashing down the face of the cliffs
beyond chance of repair.

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