stretch, Iturned upon the old scientist who was puffing along with the natives inthe lead.
The half-insane ancient heard my outburst to the end, staring at methrough the thick lenses of his glasses as if I was some new kind of abug whose appearance he wished to implant firmly within his mind.
"Science calls for sacrifices," he squeaked. "If my daughters areheroines who wish to share my hardships in the pursuit of informationthat will be of great benefit to the world, I fail to see what it has todo with you, sir!"
"But they have no interest in your silly discoveries," I cried. "Theyare doing this infernal tramp to look after you. Do you hear?"
"Confound you, sir!" he screamed. "Mind your own business and don'tinterfere with mine!"
I choked down my wrath as Leith came crashing through from the rear, andthe old egoist, flushed and ruffled, dropped back to meet him, evidentlyconvinced of my insanity through my inability to appreciate his effortsto prove that the skulls of long-dead Polynesians possessed peculiarformations they were foreign to the islanders of the present day.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we began to draw nearthe Vermilion Pit which Leith had mentioned when he had urged haste atthe midday luncheon. The surroundings became more strange and mysteriouswith each step we took. The basalt peaks that we had noticed from thedeck of _The Waif_ were now quite close to us, and they seemed to movein upon us from both sides. The trees and lianas became less numerous,and the black rocks came toward us in a sinister manner that conjured upthoughts of a dead something toward which the encircling ridges wereguiding us like the arms of a corral. The place was fear-inspiring. Ithad the unearthly appearance that made the imaginative minds of theancients people the silent woods with devils and dryads. The softmoaning of the Pacific was barred out by the leafy barriers, and wewalked in a silence that was tremendous. The ticking of our watchessounded to our strained ears like the blows of a hammer, and once, whenthe Professor sneezed mightily, Miss Barbara gave a scream of fearbefore she realized what had caused the noise.
The ascent became still more difficult. The natives puffed under theirloads, and Holman rushed angrily to the front and demanded a halt onbehalf of the girls struggling in the rear. During the few minutes thatLeith grudgingly allowed them in which to recover their breath, theyoungster hurried up to the spot where I was busy fixing the loads ofthe natives, and in a nervous whisper he asked my opinion of the route.
"Where the dickens are we going?" he cried.
"This is the most eerie-looking patch of country that I have ever seenin my life."
"Leith said that we had to reach the Vermilion Pit before the sun wentdown," I replied. "I guess it is somewhere at the end of this staircasethat we are trying to climb."
"Oh, Gee!" cried the boy. "Say, this game has got those two girls scaredto death. There's something wrong with the place, Verslun. My skin feelsit. The island looks as if it has been left too long by itself, and I'mbeginning to think that all those rocks and trees are watching us andwondering what we want here."
That was how it felt to me from the moment I had left _The Waif_, and Ihad tried vainly to overcome the feeling. The island seemed to resentthe appearance of human beings. It possessed a personality through beingtoo long by itself. It had wrapped itself round a dead past, and we werefilled with the awe which suddenly strikes the unimaginative globetrotter who wanders into the cool recesses of a Hindu temple. And I wasof the same opinion as Holman regarding the trees and rocks. Traders inthe lonely spots of the Pacific have gone insane through becomingconvinced that the mountains and the trees were watching theirmovements, and the trees and rocks upon the Isle of Tears struck me aspossessing a watchfulness that smacked of the supernatural. I thoughtof the story which the sailor told in the cafe chantant at Papeete justthen, and I was inclined to give it more credence than I had at themoment he narrated it.
But I tried to rally Holman so that he would cheer up Edith Herndon andher sister.
"You're like an old woman," I growled. "Go back to the girls and makethem laugh over some funny stories instead of getting nightmares aboutthe scenery. Why, this place reminds me of a real pretty bit of scenerynear my home town in Maine."
Of course I lied when I said that. You couldn't find any scenery likethat outside the tropics. That place was queer; there wasn't theslightest doubt about that. I recalled as I stumbled along how a traderat Metalanim in the Caroline Islands had swam out to our schooner whenwe were down there the previous year, and how the poor devil had toldold Hergoff, the captain, that a chatak tree at the back of his hut hadbegun to make faces at him, and I began to understand the complaint thathad gripped that trader as I climbed along by the side of the puffingislanders. He had been jammed up too close against a personality. When aplace has been too long by itself, as Holman had remarked, it cultivatesa strength that tries the nerves of an explorer, more especially if itis situated near the equator. Places like Papua, the Caroline Islands,parts of Borneo, and the Never Never country in inland Australia seemto possess a fist that attempts to push you off when you endeavour tobring the atmosphere of civilization into a silence that has beenunbroken for centuries.
Holman went back to the sisters, and we moved slowly forward. The basaltrocks came closer, showing plainly through the breaks in the lianas thatgrew less thickly on the higher slopes. The creepers fell away slowly,as if they had done the work they were required to do, and before werealized it we were walking between two natural walls of rock abouteighteen feet high, above which the sky looked like a strip of bluepaper that rested upon the marvellously even tops of the barriers.
The Professor was gurgling joyfully as we tramped through that miniaturecanon. He was bumping up against new wonders at every footstep, and hestumbled continuously as he endeavoured to jot down his impressions inthe fat notebook. The Professor felt nothing mysterious about the place.He had the bullet-proof skin of your cold analyst who yearns eternallyfor facts.
"Wonderful geological formation!" he chattered. "My friend ProfessorHanlaw of Oakland would enjoy a glimpse of this spot. A geologist couldspend a lifetime here."
Leith's sallow face was disturbed by a grin as he listened to the oldscience-crazed ancient disbursing information regarding the formation ofthe rock. It troubled me little at that moment whether feldspar andaugite were the two largest components, and I knew that Holman and thetwo girls were not interested. We knew that the place was ugly andsinister, but feldspar and augite didn't give it that look.
The height of the walls increased as we advanced. We were in a narrowroadway scarcely more than twelve feet across, while on each side rosethe nearly perpendicular rocks that blocked our view of the countryimmediately beyond. The ground beneath our feet was covered with smallbits of lava from the crevices of which the moist flabby leaves of thenupu plant stuck up like fat green fingers.
As we stared ahead we noted that the road seemed to dip suddenly as ifthe highest point of the island was reached at that spot, and theprospects of a walk upon a down grade were cheering after the stiffclimbs. As we neared the place, Soma, who was walking about ten paces infront of the carriers, slackened speed, and the islanders dropped backtill Leith and the Professor led the procession.
Leith halted and beckoned to the two girls and Holman, who were somedistance in the rear. "Hurry up!" he cried. "You'll get the sight ofyour lives in a few moments."
"What is it?" gurgled the Professor.
Leith grinned as the scientist dipped his lead pencil into his openmouth so that he would be able to dab down first impressions the momenthe turned his thick lenses upon the wonders.
"You'll see in a moment," replied the big brute, as he walked slowlyforward, and just as he spoke, we did see.
A ridge of bright vermilion came up suddenly about one hundred feet fromthe point where the road seemed to dip, and we walked forward wonderingwhat lay between the spot where the track ended and the bright barrierof rock that appeared to rise higher as we approached the end of thetrail. We seemed to sense
the approach of something that chilled and yetattracted. The place possessed a devilish fascination. It seemed torepel with its very uncanniness, and yet I was aware that I wasimitating Holman in thrusting forward my head in an endeavour to seewhat filled the space that was hidden from our eyes.
The desire was soon satisfied. Fifteen paces brought us to a point thatleft the strange curiosity naked to our eyes. The vermilion walls,thirty yards in front of us, formed part of the sides of an enormouscircular crater, and we stood spellbound as we pulled up within a fewfeet of the ledge and looked into the fearsome depths beneath.
"Ladies and gentlemen," drawled Leith, looking around at us with theair of a cheap showman springing a novelty upon a gaping mob, "you areon the edge of the Vermilion Pit, the greatest wonder between Penang andthe