Eleven Possible Cases Part 19

"A mocking laugh was their only reply. In another moment a slender rope was knotted under my pinioned arms and a sudden push left me swinging helplessly in the mouth of the awful pit beside which we had halted.

"'We'll wait here just one hour, Major,' came to me in Case Haffner's voice, 'and give you a chance to consider the situation. If you decide to let us have the money inside of that time, jest holler, and we'll pull you up. If you decide to go to h.e.l.l and take the greenbacks with you, why, we'll jest have ter bid you good-by, that's all.'

"Then I was slowly lowered down, down, down, through the blackness. So slow was my descent that I seemed to be suspended for hours and to sink miles into the heart of the earth. The pain of the slender cord cutting into my flesh was well-nigh intolerable, and I bear livid evidences of it to this day; with each moment the moaning, gurgling, and groaning from the unknown depths into which I was sinking became more distinct and horrible.

"Suddenly, those above let go of the rope and with a yell of despair I dropped, I do not know how far, into water that closed above my head. As I rose to the surface, choking and gasping for breath, I felt that I was being swept forward by a powerful current, and as I again sank my feet touched bottom. A moment later I stood in water up to my shoulders and again breathed freely. For some time I was confused beyond the power of thought by the hollow roar of the black waters rus.h.i.+ng through those awful caverns. All surrounding s.p.a.ce seemed filled with snarling, formless monsters, cautiously advancing and making ready to spring at me. Even now I often awake at night with the horror of that moment strong upon me. It was so unendurable that I resolved to end it. It was with great difficulty that I maintained my footing. I could not do so much longer. Why should I attempt to? There was absolutely no hope of escape. I tried to pray 'Oh, Lord Jesus, receive my soul.' Then my muscles relaxed and I was swept away by the rus.h.i.+ng torrent.

"I have no idea how far I was carried before my feet again touched bottom, this time in water that was not above my waist. I had closed my eyes. Now I opened them. A bright light was swinging to and fro not a hundred feet from me. I stared at it blankly and with little interest, only wondering with a languid curiosity what sort of a subterranean _ignis fatuus_ it might be, when suddenly my bewildered senses were startled into renewed activity by the sound of a shout. It was a human voice uttering a long-drawn 'h.e.l.lo-o-o!' that echoed and reechoed weirdly through the cavernous depths about me. I essayed to answer, but could not. Then I slowly made my way through the shoaling water toward the light.

"In another minute I stood beside a boy, the one whose life I had saved two months before, and as he cut the thongs that bound my arms he said cheerily:

"'It's all right, Major. Paw'lowed you'd be coming along this yere way 'bout this time o' night, en' telled me to sh.o.r.ely be on hand to meet up with yer. Now, ef yo'll foller me, we'll be outen this direckly.'

"The boy was standing in the mouth of a narrow pa.s.sage, that, free from water, led away almost at right angles to the main channel of the underground river. It ended at a well-like opening in which stood a rude ladder, climbing this, we emerged through a well concealed trap door into the very room where Abner Haffner had laid at the point of death two months before."

"Is that all?" I asked, as the major paused and lighted a fresh cigar.

"Yes, it's all of that story. I could not cause the arrest of the gang, even had I known who composed it, without causing that of their leader, and from the moment that blessed light illumined the black waters of that underground river I would not have harmed Case Haffner for anything the world holds best worth having. No; by daylight I was well out of that section of country, nor have I ever since set foot in it."

"Have you ever heard again from that boy?"

"Who, Abner? Well, I should say I had. I put him through college, and he is in Congress to-day. If I should tell you his real name you would instantly recognize it as that of one of the smartest men ever sent to Was.h.i.+ngton from the far South."

THE END OF ALL.

BY NYM CRINKLE.

The difficulty that I experience in complying with your request, dear spirit, springs from the terrestrial limitations of thought and expression, from which, as you may well know, I have not been long enough with you to free myself.

I shall, however, give you a plain narrative of the events attending the extinction of life on our planet, asking you only to remember that I am doing it just as I would have done it, were it possible, for a fellow human being while on earth, using the phraseology and the terrestrial time divisions with which I am most familiar.

The circ.u.mstance which at our last intercourse I was trying to explain to you was simply this: In the early summer of the year 1892 a sudden interruption of navigation occurred on the Pacific coast, which, curiously enough, attracted very little attention outside of scientific circles. I was living at the house of my wealthy friend, Judge Brisbane, in Gramercy Park. To tell you the truth, I was in love with his beautiful daughter, of whom I shall have to speak more fully to you, for she was intimately a.s.sociated with me in the appalling scenes which you desire me to describe.

I was sitting in the Judge's library on the night of June 25. His daughter was present, and I had been conversing with her in an undertone while the Judge read the evening papers. He suddenly laid down the paper, took off his spectacles, and, turning round in his chair, said to me: "Did you see the brief dispatch in the morning papers two days ago from San Francisco, saying that all the eastern-bound vessels were overdue on that coast?"

I replied at once that I had not noticed it.

"It is astonis.h.i.+ng," he said, "that in our present system of journalism the most important events connected with the welfare of mankind receive the slightest attention from the newspapers, and the trivialities of life are most voluminously treated. A movement in the iron trade that affects millions of homes gets a brief paragraph in small type, and the quarrel of a ballet girl with her paramour receives illuminated attention down whole columns. Here is something taking place in the Pacific Ocean of surpa.s.sing interest to the race, and n.o.body pays the slightest attention to it except, perhaps, the consignees and s.h.i.+pping clerks."

"What is it?" we both asked, with the languid interest that young people, having an overmastering personal affair on hand, would be apt to take in matters of national or universal importance.

The Judge got up, and going to a side table, where he kept his papers piled in chronological order, pulled out a recent issue of a morning journal, and after looking it over searchingly a moment, said:

"Here. I should think you would notice such a paragraph as this." Then he read, as I recollect, a telegraphic dispatch to this effect:

"SAN FRANCISCO, June 23.--Considerable anxiety is felt here in commercial circles by the non-arrival of any eastward-bound vessels for a week. The steams.h.i.+p _Cathay_ of the Occidental Line is overdue four days. An unusual easterly wind has been blowing for twenty-four hours. Weather mild.

"That dispatch, you will perceive," said the Judge, "was sent two days ago. Now here, on the 25th, I read in the evening paper another dispatch from San Francisco, hidden away at the bottom of a column of commercial news. Listen to this:

"SAN FRANCISCO, June 25.--The entire suspension of travel from the West continues to excite the gravest apprehensions. Nothing but coastwise vessels have come in during the past eight days. The U.

S. cruiser _Mobile_ left Honolulu three weeks ago for this coast.

There is no official intimation of a storm in the Chinese seas."

The Judge laid the paper down, and regarded us both a moment in silence, as if expecting to hear some remark that indicated our suddenly awakened curiosity.

I don't think we responded with any adequate interest to the occasion.

Miss Brisbane did, indeed, stare at her father in her dreamy, abstracted way a moment, and then got up, and, going to the open window, began to arrange the curtains, as if relinquis.h.i.+ng whatever problem there was to the superior ac.u.men of the masculine mind.

I think I said that it looked as if there had been a cyclone somewhere, and if there had we should in all probability get the accounts of it soon enough.

"But, young man," replied the Judge, with his majesterial emphasis, "cyclones do not extend from the fiftieth degree of north lat.i.tude to the fortieth degree of south lat.i.tude, and vessels are due at San Francisco from Melbourne and j.a.pan."

"What, then, other than a storm at sea could have caused a detention of all these vessels?" I asked, and I must have unwittingly betrayed in the tone of my voice, or the expression of my face, that considerate superciliousness with which youth regards the serious notions of mature philosophers, for the Judge, putting his gold spectacles upon his nose, and regarding me over the top of them a moment, said rather severely:

"Other than the known and regular phenomena of this planet do not interest young men. If I could answer your question there would be no special interest in the matter."

I mention these trivial incidents because, insignificant as they may seem, they were the first ripples of that disaster which was soon enough to overwhelm us all, and to show you what were the only premonitions the world had of the events which were to follow.

On June 26, the subject did not occur to me. A hundred other things of far more immediate consequence to me occupied my attention. A young man who is preparing to get married is not apt to take somber views of anything. Nor is he very apt to allow the contumacy of age in his prospective father-in-law to aggravate him. It was a pardonable freak, I thought, in a man who had retired in most respects from the active world, to dogmatize a little about that world now that he judged it through his favorite evening paper. When, therefore, on the night of the 26th, while at the tea-table, the Judge broke out again about the meteorological wave on the Pacific coast, his daughter Kate and I exchanged a rapid but furtive glance which said, in the perfect understanding of lovers, "There comes the old gentleman's new hobby again, and we can well afford to treat it leniently."

The Judge had the damp evening paper in his hand, and he disregarded the steaming cup of tea which his daughter had poured for him.

"Well," he said, with a toss of self-satisfied import. "Now the newspapers are waking up to the significance of the California news." He then read from the paper, as nearly as I can recollect, something like the following:

SAN FRANCISCO, June 26.--There is an intense and growing anxiety on this coast with respect to the non-appearance of any eastward-bound vessels. The breeze from the east continues, and is unprecedented.

"Now, I should like to know," said the Judge, as he laid down the paper and took up his tea-cup, "why a breeze from the east in California should be unprecedented."

"Because," I ventured to remark, "it usually blows from the sea at this season."

"Nonsense," exclaimed the Judge with vigor. "A variation for a few days in wind or weather is a common occurrence everywhere. Fancy a message sent all over the world from the West Indies that the trade winds were six days late, or a telegram from Minnesota that the winter frosts had been interfered with for a week by pleasant suns.h.i.+ne. No, sir. The event of importance to the Californian at this moment is the mysterious something that has happened out at sea, and there is no excuse for his a.s.sociating a summer breeze from the east with it, except that there is something peculiar about that breeze that a.s.sociates it in the mind with the predominant mystery."

I smiled. "You will pardon me, Judge, but it seems to me," I said, "that you are trying to invest the whole affair with an occult significance that is subjective. I suppose that in a few hours the matter will be explained and forgotten."

In a moment we were in one of those foolish little wrangles in which, so far as argument is concerned, the younger man is at a great disadvantage, when the elder, however unreasonable his claims, enforces them with the advantage of age and position. I remember that the desire to convince Kate on the one hand that I was free from what I conceived to be her father's unreasonableness, and sustain my independence of views on the other hand, led me to say much more than was polite, for I exasperated the old gentleman, and with a curt and not altogether complimentary remark he got up and left the room.

The moment he was gone I turned to the daughter and laughingly said: "Well, my dear, I am afraid I have offended your father without intending it, but you at least understand me, and are free from his superst.i.tion."

To my surprise she regarded me with a serious air, and replied: "I do not know what you mean by superst.i.tion. My father believes that something has happened, and I feel that he is right."

"You do not mean to tell me," I said, "that you believe anything has happened that can concern us?"

She made no reply. I looked at her with some astonishment, and wondered if I had offended her by opposing her father's childish views.