The Magic City by E. Nesbit (top novels txt) 📗

'Be a man,' he said in tones of comradeship and encouragement. 'I'm perfectly certain nothing's going to happen. We're just going through a tunnel, and presently we shall just come out into the open air again, with the sky and the stars going on as usual.'

He spoke this standing on the prow beside Lucy, and as he spoke she clutched his arm.

'Oh, look,' she breathed, 'oh, listen!'

[269]He listened. And he heard a dull echoing roar that got louder and louder. And he looked. The light of the lamps shone ahead on the dark gleaming water, and then quite suddenly it did not shine on the water because there was no longer any water for it to shine[271] on. Only great empty black darkness. A great hole, ahead, into which the stream poured itself. And now they were at the edge of the gulf. The Lightning Loose gave a shudder and a bound and hung for what seemed a long moment on the edge of the precipice down which the underground river was pouring itself in a smooth sleek stream, rather like poured treacle, over what felt like the edge of everything solid.

The moment ended, and the little yacht, with Philip and Lucy and the parrot and the two dogs, plunged headlong over the edge into the dark unknown abyss below.

'It's all right, Lu,' said Philip in that moment. 'I'll take care of you.'

And then there was silence in the cavern—only the rushing sound of the great waterfall echoed in the rocky arch.[272]

You have heard of Indians shooting rapids in their birch-bark canoes? And perhaps you have yourself sailed a toy boat on a stream, and made a dam of clay, and waited with more or less patience till the water rose nearly to the top, and then broken a bit of your dam out and made a waterfall and let your boat drift over the edge of it. You know how it goes slowly at first, then hesitates and sweeps on more and more quickly. Sometimes it upsets; and sometimes it shudders and strains and trembles and sways to one side and to the other, and at last rights itself and makes up its mind, and rushes on down the stream, usually to be entangled in the clump of rushes at the stream's next turn. This is what happened to that good yacht, the Lightning Loose. She shot over the edge of that dark smooth subterranean waterfall, hung a long breathless moment between still air and[273] falling water, slid down like a flash, dashed into the stream below, shuddered, reeled, righted herself and sped on. You have perhaps been down the water chute at Earl's Court? It was rather like that.

'It's—it's all right,' said Philip, in a rather shaky whisper. 'She's going on all right.'

'Yes,' said Lucy, holding his arm very tight; 'yes, I'm sure she's going on all right.'

'Are we drowned?' said a trembling squeak. 'Oh, Max, are we really drowned?'

'I don't think so,' Max replied with caution. 'And if we are, my dear, we cannot undrown ourselves by screams.'

'Far from it,' said the parrot, who had for the moment been rendered quite speechless by the shock. And you know a parrot is not made speechless just by any little thing. 'So we may just as well try to behave,' it said.

The lamps had certainly behaved, and behaved beautifully; through the wild air of the fall, the wild splash as the Lightning Loose struck the stream below, the lamps had shone on, seemingly undisturbed.

'An example to us all,' said the parrot.

'Yes, but,' said Lucy, 'what are we to do?'

'When adventures take a turn one is far from expecting, one does what one can,' said the parrot.[274]

'And what's that?'

'Nothing,' said the parrot. 'Philip has relieved Max at the helm and is steering a straight course between the banks—if you can call them banks. There is nothing else to be done.'

There plainly wasn't. The Lightning Loose rushed on through the darkness. Lucy reflected for a moment and then made cocoa. This was real heroism. It cheered every one up, including the cocoa-maker herself. It was impossible to believe that anything dreadful was going to happen when you were making that soft, sweet, ordinary drink.

'I say,' Philip remarked when she carried a cup to him at the wheel, 'I've been thinking. All this is out of a book. Some one must have let it out. I know what book it's out of too. And if the whole story got out of the book we're all right. Only we shall go on for ages and climb out at last, three days' journey from Trieste.'

'I see,' said Lucy, and added that she hated geography. 'Drink your cocoa while it's hot,' she said in motherly accents, and 'what book is it?'

'It's The Last Cruise of the Teal,' he said. 'Helen gave it me just before she went away. It's a ripping book, and I used it for the roof[275] of the outer court of the Hall of Justice. I remember it perfectly. The chaps on the Teal made torches of paper soaked in paraffin.'

'We haven't any,' said Lucy; 'besides our lamps light everything up all right. Oh! there's Brenda crying again. She hasn't a shadow of pluck.'

She went quickly to the cabin where Max was trying to cheer Brenda by remarks full of solid good sense, to which Brenda paid no attention whatever.

'I knew how it would be,' she kept saying in a whining voice; 'I told you so from the beginning. I wish we hadn't come. I want to go home. Oh! what a dreadful thing to happen to dear little dogs.'

'Brenda,' said Lucy firmly, 'if you don't stop whining you shan't have any cocoa.'

Brenda stopped at once and wagged her tail appealingly.

'Cocoa?' she said, 'did any one say cocoa? My nerves are so delicate. I know I'm a trial, dear Max, it's no use your pretending I'm not, but there is nothing like cocoa for the nerves. Plenty of sugar, please, dear Lucy. Thank you so much! Yes, it's just as I like it.'

'There will be other things to eat by and by,' said Lucy. 'People who whine won't get any.'[276]

'I'm sure nobody would dream of whining,' said Brenda. 'I know I'm too sensitive; but you can do anything with dear little dogs by kindness. And as for whining—do you know it's a thing I've never been subject to, from a child, never. Max will tell you the same.'

Max said nothing, but only fixed his beautiful eyes hopefully on the cocoa jug.

And all the time the yacht was speeding along the underground stream, beneath the vast arch of the underground cavern.

'The worst of it is we may be going ever so far away from where we want to get to,' said Philip, when Max had undertaken the steering again.

'All roads,' remarked the parrot, 'lead to Somnolentia. And besides the ship is travelling due north—at least so the ship's compass states, and I have no reason as yet for doubting its word.'

'Hullo!' cried more than one voice, and the ship shot out of the dark cavern into a sheet of water that lay spread under a white dome. The stream that had brought them there seemed to run across one side of this pool. Max, directed by the parrot, steered the ship into smooth water, where she lay at rest at last in the very middle of this great underground lake.[277]

'This isn't out of The Cruise of the Teal,' said Philip. 'They must have shut that book.'

'I think it's out of a book about Mexico or Peru or Ingots or some geographical place,' said Lucy; 'it had a green-and-gold binding. I think you used it for the other end of the outer justice court. And if you did, this dome's solid silver, and there's a hole in it, and under this dome there's untold treasure in gold incas.'

'What's incas?'

'Gold bars, I believe,' said Lucy; 'and Mexicans come down through the hole in the roof and get it, and when enemies come they flood it with water. It's flooded now,' she added unnecessarily.

'I wish adventures had never been invented,' said Brenda. 'No, dear Lucy, I am not whining. Far from it. But if a dear little dog might suggest it, we should all be better in a home, should we not?'

All eyes now perceived a dark hole in the roof, a round hole exactly in the middle of the shining dome. And as they gazed the dark hole became light. And they saw above them a white shining disk like a very large and very bright moon. It was the light of day.

'Some one has opened the trap-door,' said[278] Lucy. 'The Ingots always closed their treasure-vaults with trap-doors.'

The bright disk was obscured; confused shapes broke its shining roundness. Then another disk, small and very black appeared in the middle of it; the black disk grew larger and larger and larger. It was coming down to them. Slowly and steadily it came; now it reached the level of the dome, now it hung below it; down, down, down it came, past the level of their eager eyes and splashed in the water close by the ship. It was a large empty bucket. The rope which held it was jerked from above; the bucket dipped and filled and was drawn