blackness; and I can only thank Heaven that in that initial
moment I had no faintest glimmering of what had really
taken place.
My eyes, however, were becoming more accustomed
to the darkness now, and even as I thought a little regretfully of Helen and the chocolates I looked about me more intently to see if I could recognize this place into which
I had wandered.
Stare as I might, I could discern nothing even vaguely
familiar in the spot on which I stood. Instead, on every
side strange bamboolike trees swayed in the night wind
like some sort of Chinese tropical forest rooted in sandstone. There was no vegetation around the coarse boulders beneath my feet, nor did there seem to be any leaves on the trees directly around me.
Slowly I sat down again to think. And this time I was
more than puzzled: I was aware of a touch of fear, the
shadow of the dread of the unknown. There was not a
foot of the country surrounding our farm with which I
had not been intimately acquainted since boyhood,
scarcely a field or patch of woods that I could not have
recognized almost immediately or after a little thought.
But nowhere near us was there any spot resembling in
the least this sandstone-bouldered, spear-like forest that
lay around me. Not even in the valley of the Upper
Branch were there trees that looked like monster rushes
of some new variety.
Where, then, was I?
Was I still in a state of nightmare shock? Or was I
really in a place such as my eyes perceived?
With this last question I rose slowly and stood a moment trying to decide what to do. For I had become used in a measure to the rushing roar of the trees rubbing their
A T T A
13
long flat branches against one another—although it was
not the most comforting sound in the world, I can assure
you—and it had not yet occurred to me that any danger
might threaten me from the dark mass of foliage that
stretched on all sides.
Now, however, I gave an involuntary shudder. Above
the weird noise of the jungle trees I had heard a slight
scraping sound as of some beast moving scaly claws on
hard sandstone. It was a sound precisely like that made
by an alligator or an armored reptile drawing himself up
on a rocky beach, and for a moment I smiled to myself
at my overheated imagination. Obviously the only alligator along the Upper Branch would be either Billy himself or some neighbor’s cow floundering in a sandy pool.
The next second my smile froze on my lips. Directly in
front of me, among the jungle trees, a black shape had appeared, distorted by the darkness out of all resemblance to any beast I had ever seen, but obviously a living creature. In the uncertain shadows of the night I could have sworn that it was an antediluvian monster, some throwback to man’s primeval past. Two pale luminous eyes set somewhere in the center of its head shed a vague glow
upon its body, and even in the darkness its queer flat legs
and the long forked feelers thrust out from its armored
hide gave it a resemblance to some prehistoric creature
that lived in slime. Its luminous eyes, too, staring at me
with vague intentness, bore no resemblance to any I had
ever seen.
For a moment I had the horrible sensation of being
caught in a nightmare, paralyzed by some apparition.
Then my instinct of self-preservation awoke, and I turned
and fled madly, blindly, away from the beast stumbling
over huge boulders, crashing into the sharp edges of the
flat trees, tearing my clothes and skin, plunging over
stones and unseen obstacles only to rise and stagger o n -
in what direction I neither knew nor cared so long as
I kept ahead of the thing that scraped and rustled inexorably behind me.
14
A T T A
How long I fled thus cravenly I have no means of
knowing. Five minutes, ten minutes—it could have been
years and cycles of years. All I know is that there was no
single instant when anything but utter fear filled my soul.
Then there was a sudden change in the jungle itself
and in the ground underfoot. Instead of banging into
clumps of bamboo that struck me in the face even as I
slipped on the boulders beneath, I emerged without
warning on to some kind of open rocky plateau whose
surface was like congealed lava.
Out on to this I staggered, with sweat on my eyelashes
and my breath coming in short painful gasps; and for
the first time the light of a dim cloud-covered moon
allowed me to see what was following me. It was no
apparition or hallucination. Not more than thirty yards
behind me lumbered a forked monster with armored legs
and flanks, pursuing me with a kind of scrabbling inexorable hatred that was terrifying in the extreme. In the dim light he looked more like some kind of antediluvian beetle
than any creature of the present day.
A huge storm was coming, too, I saw as I threw back
my head and fell to running again. Black clouds were
driving across the gray mist that obscured the moon,
and the distant horizon held ominous flashes of lightning.
What would happen to me if rain were added to the
horror of the dreadful pursuer at my heels?
This was my one despairing thought as I forced myself
onward, and what might eventually have been the outcome I do not know. For I had run perhaps only a hundred and fifty yards in the open when suddenly the night was rent with a jagged streak of white lightning, and
with a gasp of horror I fell upon my knees, almost clutching the rock floor itself to keep from going one step farther.
Directly before and below me lay a precipice that cut
straight down for a full two hunderd feet. At its foot,
far down, swept and bent the tops of great trees of gargantuan size and strange foliage. A second flare of light
A T T A
15
ning lit them up as I gasped, and I saw that I clutched
the edge of a cliff above a valley that stretched for miles,
ending in the distance in other monster trees with strange
cuplike heads that reared themselves at least a thousand-
feet in the air, their tops swaying like shorn waterspouts.
Even in the midst of my terror the sight almost stunned me. In God’s name, what country was this into which I had come? Was I, finally, struck with madness?
For an instant, cold with terror and unable to move,
I resigned myself to certain destruction. Even without
thinking I knew that to leap down upon those gargantuan
tree tops far below me meant certain death; and behind
me the scrabbling, scraping footsteps of my pursuer now
sounded almost in my ears.
Yet so dear and instinctive is the impulse to hold on to
life until the last second that I did not jump. Instead I
drove myself to my feet and faced my pursuer desperately; and even as I confronted his shapeless form and vague luminous eyes there came again a third vivid flash
of lightning, so overpowering that it seemed to fill the
whole universe.
It lasted no more than a second, I suppose, before darkness rushed back, accompanied by the ear-splitting crash and roll of thunder. But that second revealed something
wholly unexpected. In a slight crevice in the lava floor at
my feet glittered something that resembled a rounded
steel pole, sharp at its far end and broken off at the end
near me. Even in the darkness I could see it, and a picture of Crusaders in the Holy Land bearing down on the Saracens flashed into my mind.
A rude lance! A weapon!
This was my despairing thought, and with an inarticulate cry like that of a convict suddenly reprieved from the gallows, I reached down for my unexpected find and
grasped it firmly with both hand. Over ten feet long it
was, but not so heavy that to lift it in the darkness and
poise it for action took more muscle than twenty years
on the farm had given me. Strength came to me instantly.
18
A T T A
Indeed, I needed but one more look at the huge beast
now drawing close to me, thrusting out his obscene feelers like some monster from the Pleiocene Age, to make me lift the lance like a sword and hold it poised for
action, resolved to rush him and at least die fighting.
For I knew instinctively that to await his onslaught on
the edge of that cliff could result only in disaster. My sole
chance of survival lay in rushing my enemy and plunging my lance into his very eyes before his long feelers could seize me.
For perhaps three seconds I stood there, praying for
just one more flash of lightning, Then my prayer was
answered. The white lightning flooded the dark rock,
and simultaneously with the roll of the thunder I rushed
at my antagonist and with all the strength at my command drove the steel pole straight at his ugly head.
There was a sickening crunch as the lance went home
between his vague eyes. Then it was instantly tom from
my grasp as the monster reared on his stumpy legs, shook
his impaled head, grotesque in the darkness, and went
into a horrible paroxysm of shuddering and shaking, trying to rid himself of the pole and at the same time attack me. Even in his agony he made one last effort to reach
me. Despite the lance between his eyes he rose on his
hind legs and staggered toward me, half blind with the
piercing pain in his head, while I sought to evade him
on the very edge of the cliff.
I suppose he must have been mortally struck. For he
did not appear to see me as I fled down the narrow edge,
nor did he apparently see the abyss before him or realize
the danger of the trees far below. Instead he swayed
straight ahead, tearing the pole from his head with his
great feelers, and not until he was half over the precipice
did he try to stop himself. Then, in one last soundless
fury, he tore the lance from his eyes and threw it almost
at my feet just as he lost his balance.
An instant he clawed with his hind legs on the edge of
the abyss, a nightmare figure in the dim light above the
A T T A
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17
great treetops, and then he went plunging over and downwards into the dark valley far below.
Almost before I could credit my senses the faint sound
of his heavy bulk striking the treetops and crashing on
down to the ground came faintly up from the valley, and
I realized that he was indeed gone and my life had been
spared.
Then, as I stooped in the empty darkness to pick up
my lance and give inarticulate thanks for my blessings,
the long-threatening storm at last broke; and almost before I knew it the whole world was as if drowned in water.
I have experienced many storms in my life, both before
and since, but never have I been suddenly assaulted by
one of such furious violence as was unleashed upon me
at that moment of my deliverance. There were no separate small drops in that abrupt downpour, nor even anything so bearable as the sweeping sheets of water that sometimes mark our worst storms in the Middle West.
This rain fell from the inky sky like a Johnstown flood
from the clouds. What separate drops there were, if one
can call such prodigious splashes drops, fell in masses as
large as barrels of solid water, one of these alone nearly
sufficing to drown me as it drenched me from head to
foot, leaving me gasping and scarcely able to stand upright.
Even as I shouldered my lance, streams of water up to
my knees began to rush down the plateau upon me, and
I had to struggle desperately to keep my footing and at
the same time draw myself and my precious weapon away
from the dangerous edge of the cliff lest I be swept over.
For all of five dreadful minutes I bent against the onset
of what amounted to a torrent.
Gradually, however, by using the lance as a riverman
does a pole I succeeded in working my way up the
treacherous plateau against the swirling water until I
reached what appeared to be a great round sloping hillock of rock. Climbing this, I was out of the raging water,
18
A T T A
except for the drenching rain itself, and for the first time
I was able to shudder at the narrow margin by which
I had escaped destruction by both beast and flood.
Meanwhile, however, the wind was turning cold, and
even as I stood on my wet open refuge a cold shiver ran
across me, making my teeth chatter and driving all
thought of past terrors from my mind. One thing was
plain, I perceived: I should have to find shelter, and soon,
or morning would see me down with chills and fever—
an illness too rich for the blood of a man who might still
be obliged to meet all comers with a steel lance.
Driven by this thought, I did not hesitate for long. I
succeeded by another of almost the same size, climbed
up onto this to explore it, and stood on its dim top in the
still blinding downpour. I could see nothing, however,
except what looked like a succession of hills of the same
kind, stretching in almost a straight line. I clambered up
on a third one, and then a fourth, and for a long time I
struggled thus through the gradually ceasing downpour
in a world that seemed composed of nothing but wet,
streaming smooth weatherbeaten stone.
I found no shelter. But the rain itself was ceasing, I realized, almost as abruptly as it had begun, and a few stars were beginning to come out. They seemed singularly bright and large now, and as I gazed at them the first real doubt of my sanity came sharply over me. Were
these actually the stars over my home, or was I imagining them? Did I really exist in this country that was natural to no human eye? And if so, what was I doing, wandering with a steel lance in the night, beneath giant
stars, plunging up and down a series of stone hillocks?
The questions startled me, for I could think of no
answer that satisfied me. And the very weirdness of my
surroundings enhanced the incredibility of my actions.
Indeed, almost at the next moment I was brought to a
full stop by a new strange shape gleaming before me in
the increasing starlight. It was nothing alive, I realized,
A T T A
19
as I grasped my lance tightly and peered at it with a
slight resurgence of my earlier fears
. It appeared to be
more like some kind of huge metal hogshead lying on its
side.
Cautiously I approached and tapped it with my lance.
It was nearly round at its open entrance, I saw, and it was
empty, as I soon reassured myself by poking my lance
into its depths until it struck the far end. It held nothing,
either, despite its length of twelve feet and its seven-foot
circular entrance. I could imagine for it no appreciable
purpose.
Nevertheless it was dry inside, and it provided a
shelter, even a kind of defensible refuge, for a wanderer
like myself. I finally walked into it, drew my lance in
after me, and sat down just inside its rim. To my relief
it gave me such a feeling of security that I drew a deep
breath of relaxation and leaned back almost as if I had
found a home.
For at least I had a shelter now; I was safe from the
chill wind whose successive gusts still swept the plateau
and the incredible valley outside.
Just what I intended to do when the wind ceased I
cannot say now. For to point out that everything seemed
like some monstrous dream is still grossly to understate
the truth. Already my mind had refused to accept as
reasonable the grotesque country I was in. Now, no
matter how often I went over the incidents that had
happened, my common sense refused to admit as possible
the position in which I found myself: alone in a strange
world of stranger beasts and vegetation than I had ever
read of, and armed only with a steel pole with which to
defend myself and get food and drink.
How on earth could such a thing be?
Nevertheless it was the unalterable fact before me, and
I tried to confront it with equanimity as hour after hour
wore slowly away. The gradual disappearance of the
storm winds helped a little as the tempest fell below the
distant horizon and a gentle warm breeze took its place.
20
A T T A
With the warmth, too, came an almost deafening chorus
of night sounds which, despite their intensity, brought a
kind of familiar peace. But still I could not reconcile myself to the reality of my situation.