CHAPTER XXVI
Writhing, Wriggling Ramphs
To prevent Toplinsky from sending a swarm of crickets out of thecrater hole Epworth planted an army beneath the opening. The soldierswere armed with the longest range chloroform guns, and many of themwere placed on the mountains that thrust up their summits near thecrater. Then the young man turned his attention to solving the problemof seeing in the dark.
Tearing apart the cavern lamps he had hidden when he left his gliderat this place he called in the brightest of the Selinite scientistsand studied the lamps carefully. Fortunately he had worked with ofenglass in his aviation work, and now he discovered that the outer lensof the lamps were made of this quartz glass, and the scientistsinformed him that behind the glass had been placed a coat of rhodaminedye. Thus an invisible image had been formed by ultra violet rays, andhad been held by the rhodamine dye in a way that the darkness couldnot dissolve the image before it reached the eye.
When this discovery was made and the secret of the cavern lampsexposed he ordered two hundred thousand cavern lamps made as quicklyas possible.
While he was doing this Toplinsky came down near the crater opening onthe back of a crawling cricket, discovered the army camped beneathhim, and dropped two large bombs on the Selinites.
“That’s just a reminder,” the giant shouted through a huge megaphone,“that I am getting busy. In two weeks—ah, ha! perhaps in two weeks—Ishall come again.” The Selinites shot up at him and his crickets withtheir chloroform guns, and were rewarded by a loud laugh, and thensilence.
A terrifying, baffling gloom settled down on the Selinites. They hadwon a great victory, they had chased the crickets out of their countryand had captured the Land of Taunan, and yet they realized that a manwho could drop bombs out of the sky in the end would defeat them.Epworth, who was also puzzled deeply over a way to get into thecrater, heard this underground rumbling, and felt his own spiritsdampen. He and his sister, Joan, and Billy, of all the people in theLunar world, knew just how dangerous Toplinsky was.
It was during a period of his deepest gloom that the leader of theSons of the Great Selina came out of his mountain retreat and calledon him.
“You wish to go up into the crater?” the councilman inquired with asly smile.
Epworth did not like the smile. There seemed to be hidden treacherybehind the smirk. But he was in a desperate hurry. He felt sure thatif given time he could finally build an airship operated byelectricity with a wire line attached to a power plant constructedbeneath the crater to run an electric motor on the plane but thiscould only carry a limited number of soldiers, and what he had to domust be done at once. “I certainly do,” he answered abruptly, puttingaside his suspicions.
“It will take courage.”
“I am not boasting of courage,” the young American said quietly.
“The path leads through a nest of ramphs—many thousands of the mostvicious reptiles known.”
Epworth shuddered. The fights he had had with this monstrous Thing onthe bridge, and inside of the crater were still fresh in his mind.
“If it is the only way,” he responded.
The councilman of the Great Selina patted him on the shoulder.
“Certainly you have courage. It is a pity you are not a Son of theGreat Selina. Perhaps if you clean out the dangers of this world wemay make you an honorary member. You remember the dark chasm beneaththe bridge that is near the retreat of our order?”
“I should say. I was just thinking of the terrific battle we had withone of the monsters on that bridge as you were speaking of them.”
“It came up out of that chasm. Drop down to the bottom of that chasm,follow it inside of the planet into a narrow tunnel until you come tothe Chamber of Horrors, clean out the Chamber of Horrors, cross it andenter another corridor that leads straight ahead and upward, and ifyou live you will come to the home of the crickets.”
“Did you ever make that journey?” Epworth demanded sharply.
“No, I care not to meet those terrifying reptiles.”
“How then do you know that this chasm will lead me to the crickets?”
“Other Sons of the Great Selina, more hardy than our present council,made the trip ages ago, and left records.”
* * * * *
Epworth put himself at the head of an army of two hundred thousandSelinites armed with chloroform guns and long sharp steel spears, andwith their heads covered with gas masks, and their eyes aided bycavern lamps, lowered the soldiers into the chasm on long ropes,gliders, and various devices of a temporary character. At a pointwhere the chasm extended into the earth and the light of day was shutout he stopped in a narrow defile, and addressed the army briefly.
“We are going into that hole,” he said slowly, instructing all whocould hear to carry his words on to the rear ranks. “If we come outyour country will be saved. If we do not come out your wives andchildren will know that you are dead, and become the slaves of thecrickets and Taunans.”
With this he adjusted his cavern lamp, and darted forward. The momenthe left the light of day and looked downward he saw that the floor ofthe cavern was slightly sandy. Soon he discovered evidence of giganticbodies having been dragged through the sandy soil. Examinationdisclosed the fact that they had been made by lizard-shaped ramphsover a hundred feet long with six feet on each side of their bodies.
When Epworth and Joan saw the imprint of these feet cold chills passeddown their backs. Very likely there were thousands of these Thingsahead of them, and every time they thought of the fight they had hadwith one of the Things near the cricket home Epworth shook with fear,and Joan thought that her mind would be shattered.
Nevertheless they marched bravely into the hole in the moon.
Onward, climbing steadily upward, hour after hour, moving like silentshadows in order that their presence might not be betrayed, theSelinites marched with Epworth, Joan, Billy, and Queen Moawha at theirhead. They traveled with their chloroform guns in their hands, andtheir eyes straining ahead, the way being given additional light bystrong electric flash lights. The danger Epworth was aware would nothave been as great if he had had room to spread out his army but thecorridor was so narrow in places that he could march his men only ahundred abreast.
* * * * *
They had been climbing upward fifteen hours, pushing earnestly ahead,when they were warned that they were approaching something by anoisome smell that came to their nostrils. Joan was the first to getthe scent, and she stopped with a shudder.
“I know now what that smell means,” she whispered in a frightenedvoice, “and I can also feel the invisible movement of the Thingsahead. They are preparing for us.”
The idea that innumerable great and mysterious monsters were preparingto do battle against them caused Epworth and Billy to pause also andshoot their flash lights far ahead.
“There is something uncanny, terrifying, unnatural, inhuman about theThings,” Epworth answered. “I feel as if I were going forth to battlewith gigantic spiritual monsters of evil. They move so swiftly, sosilently. They are on you before you know it.”
Billy’s teeth chattered, and Joan trembled violently. The horrors ofthat dark underground world were upon them notwithstanding the factthat they were backed by a splendid army.
Epworth waited until several hundred soldiers were around them, andthen gave orders to march forward with all their flash lights hurlingflames ahead.
The cavern heretofore had been a long, narrow corridor. Now itsuddenly flared out into an immense underground chamber, and at theentrance of this chamber, lying flat and the color of their bodieschanging like variegated lizards to fit into their surroundings, weretwelve round-bodied, scaly backed animals with polygonal platescovering their heads. They had their tongues sticking out, and theirthree red eyes glared savagely.
“Flash every light into their eyes,” Epworth shouted. “Blind them.”
Instantly a hundr
ed flashes of steady crimson shot into the eyes ofthe ramphs, and their tails began to lash up and down on the grayfloor. Their changing colors made this motion barely perceptible.
“Now let twenty chloroform guns shoot into their eyes and nostrils.”
The gas guns were long straight tubes that carried repeated shots ofchloroform, and by the time the twenty guns had fired one shot eachthe twelve ramphs had dropped their heads.
“Glory be!” Joan cried. “It works.”
“Advance and use your spears.”
One hundred men rushed forward, and began to thrust at the dopedreptiles. Their thrusts were seemingly useless, the hard gristle ofthe lizards turning the spears easily. For a moment Epworth wasnonplussed. They could chloroform the Things but how could they killthem?
“Stab them in their eyes!” he commanded sharply, stepping up to one ofthe monsters, which was over a hundred feet long, and jabbing his ownweapon into the monster’s middle eye. “Perhaps that will get them.”
It did. The animal, stricken, doubled up suddenly, and lashed downwardwith its tail then quieted down. Epworth stepped over its immense leg,and looked into the chamber. What he saw caused him to draw backhastily.
He was looking into a large subterranean world alive with hideousThings. Thousands of them were slinking back against the floor,changing their color to suit the rugged rocks around them until theywere almost invisible; others were standing on their rear feet gazingtoward the entrance; others were fastened to the walls of the chamberwith their fierce eyes glaring fire. The young American felt his bloodrun cold.
Would it be possible to wipe out this pest hole with his army oflittle children—small men who depended entirely on his leadership?
A little thought convinced him that it was imperative that they musttake the ramphs by surprise. But the fact that there had been twelvereptiles at the entrance indicated that there was some sort of amilitary organization that knew the value of sentinels.
He glanced again into the chamber. This time he steeled himself tomeet the horror. The monsters, while many of them had their headslifted, had not discovered the presence of enemies.
Fearing that the flash lights might arouse them he ordered all lightsclosed, and made an investigation with his cavern lamps. In front ofhim the enormous chamber extended as far as the eye could reach, andthe walls went up to a ceiling he knew was there but could not see. Atthe outer edge of his vision he could make out a pool of black water.The pool and the chamber were full of writhing, wriggling, monstrousreptiles. Old lizards, young lizards, male lizards, female lizards,baby lizards, lizards in all stages of growth, crawled like antsaround the chamber and into the lake.
A wave of despondency swept over the young man. A single lizard,crashing into the narrow corridor where his army was concealed, couldwipe it clean of human life. He must get his men out of the corridorwhere they could spread out, and he must do it without letting thelizards know they were in the chamber.
Quietly, with desperate courage, he placed himself at the head of hissoldiers and gave whispered orders, and slipped cautiously into theramph chamber. The smell was awful, nauseating, sickening, almostdeath-dealing.
“A Chamber of Horrors, truly!” Joan gasped. “Will we ever get out?”
However the Selinites moved with such caution that several hundredsoldiers were in the room, and lined up along the sides of the wallsnearest the entrance before their presence was noticed.
“We must protect the entrance,” Epworth urged. “The second a lizardstarts into it we must get him, and keep the door open for ourcompanions to come in. Fire obliquely with your chloroform guns.”
He had hardly ceased speaking when the battle began.
One who has seen a lizard dart up the trunk of a tree can form an ideaof the incredible swiftness of these great monsters. Before Epworthwas aware a huge Thing dropped from the ceiling in front of him with ashrill siren call to its companions. Its eyes were flaming red; itsmouth was foaming; its split tongue, protruding in evil menacing,twisted to and fro swiftly. It came with such awful quickness thatEpworth was paralyzed for a second.
Joan saved him.
With remarkable calmness she extended her long light chloroform tube,and squirted the gas into the reptile’s snorting nostrils. It sent outa flaming, overpowering smoke, snorted fearfully, and toppled overimmediately in front of Epworth, who jumped back hastily against thewall, and thrust his sharp spear into its eye. Then with a little gaspof horror he grabbed Joan and dropped down behind the animal’s body,making it a fortress against another attack. Thus protected the twobegan to use their dope guns with deadly effect. Their example wasfollowed by the soldiers under their command.
In the meantime Billy and Moawha, who were leading the attack on theopposite side of the entrance, were having an experience very similar,although Billy dropped the first reptile quicker than Epworth haddone, and protected his men with greater ease.
In a short time the lizards were piled up around the entrance forseveral hundred yards, and were climbing over each other in a vainattempt to get to the soldiers. This enabled the Selinites to run outof the narrow corridor and join their companions, thus pushing thetide of battle back on the lizards, and piling them high around. Whilemany of the Selinites were hurt, in two hours the entire army wasinside of the Chamber of Horrors, and the battle was won.
Soon the great chamber was full of chlorine gas, and the ramphs werechoking, snorting, snapping death (without knowing where it came from)while the Selinites were protected by their gas masks. Now Epworthcommanded a company of soldiers to circle around the place, find thetunnel on the other side that led to the Cricket World, and bar it upwith stones in order to keep the gas inside of the ramph chamber.
When this was accomplished the reptiles were driven from the walls andfloors into the lake of black water. This lake, Epworth found out, wasseveral miles long and over a mile wide but the water was shallow, andproved of little aid to the lizards. When the reptiles stuck theirheads under the water they gained some respite but not understandingwhat was troubling them they lifted their heads immediately, again tobe caught by the breath of chloroform. Then they sank never to rise.
When the dope had cleaned them out, the Selinites calmly plunged theirspears into their eyes.
At the end of a day’s hard fighting the work was done. Not a singleramph was left to start another race of monsters, and Epworth, openingthe tunnel on the opposite side, led his soldiers out of theterrifying place, and sealed it up again in order that the fumesshould be confined to the area occupied by the lizards.
Then, after a long rest, he turned his face toward that nightmare ofhorror—the home of the crickets. Here he expected to meet Toplinskyarmed with gun cotton, huge guns, and powerful explosives, anintelligent man leading a multiple host of soulless insects—insectsthat ate flesh of all kinds of men and animals.