On we flew, by the current, till at last I noticed that the sound of the water was not half so as it had been, and concluded that this must be because there was more room for the echoes to in. I could now hear Alphonse’s howls much more distinctly; they were made up of the oddest mixture of invocations to the Power and the name of his beloved Annette that it is possible to conceive; and, in short, though their evident earnestness saved them from profanity, were, to say the least, very . Taking up a paddle I managed to drive it into his , whereon he, thinking that the end had come, howled louder than ever. Then I slowly and cautiously raised myself on my knees and stretched my hand , but could touch no roof. Next I took the paddle and lifted it above my head as high as I could, but with the same result. I also thrust it out to the right and left, but could touch nothing except water. Then I bethought me that there was in the boat, amongst our other remaining possessions, a bull’s-eye lantern and a tin of oil. I groped about and found it, and having a match on me carefully lit it, and as soon as the flame had got a hold of the wick I turned it on down the boat. As it happened, the first thing the light lit on was the white and scared face of Alphonse, who, thinking that it was all over at last, and that he was witnessing a preliminary phenomenon, gave a terrific yell and was with difficulty with the paddle. As for the other three, Good was lying on the flat of his back, his eyeglass still in his eye, and gazing blankly into the upper darkness. Sir Henry had his head resting on the of the canoe, and with his hand was trying to test the speed of the water. But when the beam of light fell upon old Umslopogaas I could really have laughed. I think I have said that we had put a roast quarter of water- into the canoe. Well, it so happened that when we all ourselves to avoid being swept out of the boat and into the water by the rock roof, Umslopogaas’s head had come down near this roast buck, and so soon as he had recovered a little from the first shock of our position it occurred to him that he was hungry. Thereupon he coolly cut off a chop with Inkosi-kaas, and was now employed in eating it with every appearance of satisfaction. As he afterwards explained, he thought that he was going ‘on a long journey’, and preferred to start on a full stomach. It reminded me of the people who are going to be hanged, and who are generally reported in the English daily papers to have made ‘an excellent breakfast’.
As soon as the others saw that I had managed to light the lamp, we bundled Alphonse into the farther end of the canoe with a threat which calmed him down wonderfully, that if he would insist upon making the darkness with his cries we would put him out of by sending him to join the Wakwafi and wait for Annette in another sphere, and began to discuss the situation as well as we could. First, however, at Good’s suggestion, we bound two paddles mast-fashion in the bows so that they might give us warning against any sudden lowering of the roof of the cave or waterway. It was clear to us that we were in an underground river or, as Alphonse defined it, ‘main drain’, which carried off the waters of the lake. Such rivers are well known to exist in many parts of the world, but it has not often been the evil fortune of explorers to travel by them. That the river was wide we could clearly see, for the light from the bull’s-eye lantern failed to reach from shore to shore, although occasionally, when the current swept us either to one side or the other, we could distinguish the rock wall of the tunnel, which, as far as we could make out, appeared to arch about twenty-five feet above our heads. As for the current itself, it ran, Good estimated, at least eight knots, and, fortunately for us, was, as is usual, fiercest in the middle of the stream. Still, our first act was to arrange that one of us, with the lantern and a pole there was in the canoe, should always be in the bows ready, if possible, to prevent us from being stove in against the side of the cave or any projecting rock. Umslopogaas, having already dined, took the first turn. This was absolutely, with one exception, all that we could do towards preserving our safety. The exception was that another of us took up a position in the stern with a paddle by means of which it was possible to the canoe more or less and to keep her from the sides of the cave. These matters attended to, we made a somewhat sparing meal off the cold buck’s meat (for we did not know how long it might have to last us), and then feeling in rather better spirits I gave my opinion that, serious as it was, I did not consider our position altogether without hope, unless, indeed, the natives were right, and the river straight down into the of the earth. If not, it was clear that it must emerge somewhere, probably on the other side of the mountains, and in that case all we had to think of was to keep ourselves alive till we got there, wherever ‘there’ might be. But, of course, as Good out, on the other hand we might fall victims to a hundred unsuspected horrors—or the river might go on away inside the earth till it dried up, in which case our fate would indeed be an awful one.
‘Well, let us hope for the best and prepare ourselves for the worst,’ said Sir Henry, who is always cheerful and even spirited—a very tower of strength in the time of trouble. ‘We have come out of so many queer scrapes together, that somehow I almost fancy we shall come out of this,’ he added.
This was excellent advice, and we proceeded to take it each in our separate way—that is, except Alphonse, who had by now sunk into a sort of terrified . Good was at the helm and Umslopogaas in the bows, so there was nothing left for Sir Henry and myself to do except to lie down in the canoe and think. It certainly was a curious, and indeed almost a , position to be placed in—rushing along, as we were, through the bowels of the earth, borne on the of a Stygian river, something after the fashion of souls being ferried by Charon, as Curtis said. And how dark it was! The feeble ray from our little lamp did but serve to show the darkness. There in the bows sat old Umslopogaas, like Pleasure in the poem, {Endnote 9} and untiring, the pole ready to his hand, and behind in the shadow I could just make out the form of Good peering forward at the ray of light in order to make out how to steer with the paddle that he held and now and again dipped into the water.
‘Well, well,’ thought I, ‘you have come in search of adventures, Allan my boy, and you have certainly got them. At your time of life, too! You ought to be ashamed of yourself; but somehow you are not, and, awful as it all is, perhaps you will pull through after all; and if you don’t, why, you cannot help it, you see! And when all’s said and done an underground river will make a very appropriate burying-place.’
At first, however, I am bound to say that the strain upon the nerves was very great. It is trying to the coolest and most experienced person not to know from one hour to another if he has five minutes more to live, but there is nothing in this world that one cannot get accustomed to, and in time we began to get accustomed even to that. And, after all, our anxiety, though no doubt natural, was, speaking, illogical, seeing that we never know what is going to happen to us the next minute, even when we sit in a well-drained house with two policemen patrolling under the window—nor how long we have to live. It is all arranged for us, my sons, so what is the use of bothering?
It was nearly midday when we made our dive into darkness, and we had set our watch (Good and Umslopogaas) at two, having agreed that it should be of a duration of five hours. At seven o’clock, accordingly, Sir Henry and I went on, Sir Henry at the bow and I at the stern, and the other two lay down and went to sleep. For three hours all went well, Sir Henry only finding it necessary once to push us off from the side; and I that but little was required to keep us straight, as the violent current did all that was needed, though occasionally the canoe showed a tendency which had to be guarded against to and travel broadside on. What struck me as the most curious thing about this wonderful river was: how did the air keep fresh? It was and thick, no doubt, but still not so to render it bad or even unpleasant. The only explanation that I can suggest is that the water of the lake had sufficient air in it to keep the atmosphere of the tunnel from absolute , this air being given out as it proceeded on its headlong way. Of course I only give the solution of the mystery for what it is worth, which perhaps is not much.
When I had been for three hours or so at the helm, I began to notice a change in the temperature, which was getting warmer. At first I took no notice of it, but when, at the of another half-hour, I found that it was getting hotter and hotter, I called to Sir Henry and asked him if he noticed it, or if it was only my imagination. ‘Noticed it!’ he answered; ‘I should think so. I am in a sort of Turkish bath.’ Just about then the others woke up , and were obliged to begin to discard their clothes. Here Umslopogaas had the advantage, for he did not wear any to speak of, except a moocha.
Hotter it grew, and hotter yet, till at last we could scarcely breathe, and the poured out of us. Half an hour more, and though we were all now naked, we could hardly bear it. The place was like an antechamber of the infernal regions proper. I dipped my hand into the water and drew it out almost with a cry; it was nearly boiling. We consulted a little thermometer we had—the mercury stood at 123 degrees. From the surface of the water rose a cloud of steam. Alphonse out that we were already in , which indeed we were, though not in the sense that he meant it. Sir Henry suggested that we must be passing near the seat of some underground fire, and I am inclined to think, especially in the light of what subsequently occurred, that he was right. Our sufferings for some time after this really pass my powers of description. We no longer , for all the perspiration had been sweated out of us. We simply lay in the bottom of the boat, which we were now of directing, feeling like hot embers, and I fancy undergoing very much the same sensations that the poor fish do when they are dying on land—namely, that of slow . Our skins began to crack, and the blood to in our heads like the beating of a steam-engine.
This had been going on for some time, when suddenly the river turned a little, and I heard Sir Henry call out from the bows in a , startled voice, and, looking up, saw a most wonderful and awful thing. About half a mile ahead of us, and a little to the left of the centre of the stream—which we could now see was about ninety feet broad—a huge pillar-like jet of almost white flame rose from the surface of the water and sprang fifty feet into the air, when it struck the roof and spread out some forty feet in diameter, falling back in curved sheets of fire shaped like the of a full-blown rose. Indeed this awful gas jet resembled nothing so much as a great flaming flower rising out of the black water. Below was the straight stalk, a foot or more thick, and above the dreadful bloom. And as for the fearfulness of it and its fierce and beauty, who can describe it? Certainly I cannot. Although we were now some five hundred yards away, it, notwithstanding the steam, lit up the whole as clear as day, and we could see that the roof was here about forty feet above us, and washed smooth with water. The rock was black, and here and there I could make out long shining lines of ore running through it like great , but of what metal they were I know not.
On we rushed towards this pillar of fire, which gleamed fiercer than any furnace ever lit by man.
‘Keep the boat to the right, Quatermain—to the right,’ shouted Sir Henry, and a minute afterwards I saw him fall forward senseless. Alphonse had already gone. Good was the next to go. There they lay as though dead; only Umslopogaas and I kept our senses. We were within fifty yards of it now, and I saw the Zulu’s head fall forward on his hands. He had gone too, and I was alone. I could not breathe; the fierce heat dried me up. For yards and yards round the great rose of fire the rock-roof was red-hot. The wood of the boat was almost burning. I saw the feathers on one of the dead swans begin to twist and shrivel up; but I would not give in. I knew that if I did we should pass within three or four yards of the gas jet and perish . I set the paddle so as to turn the canoe as far from it as possible, and held on grimly.
My eyes seemed to be bursting from my head, and through my closed lids I could see the fierce light. We were nearly opposite now; it roared like............