The Great Fog (7 page)

“Don't you see? I knew my bearings that amount, you bet. I was lying on my right side. The star was setting. We weren't going North—we were going South! Again I felt I must be dead, or mad. Anyhow, I was frightened out of my acquiescence. I forced my head up a bit so my goggles could get a line ahead. What I saw kept my neck cricked till it nearly broke.

“Yes, I was strapped to a sled heaped over with some wrapping. It was certainly effective enough, for I felt no excessive cold, though it must have been as cold as Dante's Hell. What did send cold right through me, though, was my—my retinue. Of course, the sled jerked because the team that drew it literally bounded ahead; the going was smooth enough, but the animals that pulled sprang ahead with such odd leaps that, if I'd been sitting up I'd have been thrown off backward.

“But, though the team was odd, the teamsters held my attention. There were four of them. They ran alongside the ‘dogs.' They were stocky figures with short boots, a curious, tailed coat and—I suppose, because of the frightful cold—queer long-nosed masks. I could see the light of the quarter moon, which was low behind us, gleaming on their masks as they turned their heads a bit to and fro as they ran. They were so wrapped up that my alarm for myself was almost forgotten in my amazement at the speed at which they ran—they seemed almost to skim along the frozen ground with their thickly swathed arms held out a little from their bulky bodies.

“Still, I don't think your anthropological interest in the physical prowess of any kind of savage would have kept your mind off yourself if you'd looked, as I naturally did, a little farther ahead. There was no longer a possible shadow of doubt about it. We were bundling along as fast as any dog-team's ever scurried, I was tied up as neatly as a corpse and bound, not for rescue, home, and glory—no, bound for the ultimate cold storage—the absolute refrigeration. I hadn't been wrong about that star—no such luck. The view ahead left no doubt. We were climbing up a vast slope.

“I must say to my credit that I spared a moment from the misery of my predicament to admire the speed which my captors and their team kept up, breasting that slope. I might have been wrong about East and West—not about North and South. You know, Antarctica rises, sweeping up from the northern seacoast and the Great Ice Barrier to that awe-inspiring range from which tower those two most terrible peaks in the world—the volcanoes aptly named Erebus and Terror—infernal fire blasting out on infernal cold. Poor little life shudders away as these two ancient enemies rush out at each other.

“Well, there we were, swinging along up that slope to where those awful bastions of the Inferno towered above us. The most modest fancy that flitted through my pulsing head was that some mad, unknown Eskimo cannibals were whisking off this windfall of fresh meat to broil it in some convenient larva crack.

“I suppose I was terribly exhausted. I must have dozed off, because I had failed to keep my lookout. Anyhow, next time I squinted ahead we had made wonderful progress. The team was still bounding ahead, the flapping teamsters still prancing along beside them, and we were far up the slope at the top of which I felt sure my sorry miseries would end. That was true enough. But truth was stranger than my wildest dread. The jerking was extremely tiring in itself, and, of course, I was nearly dead with fatigue to start with. It doesn't matter whether you call it a dead faint or a sleep of complete exhaustion.

“My next waking did what I'd certainly have bet was impossible—it beat my first—and beat it hollow—so hollow that though I remembered my start at that first come-to, at that second I thought again that now at last it must be true—this is death—this kind of grim nonsense can only take place after death, after one has taken leave of the last vestiges of the world of common sense. It couldn't fit into this earth, anyhow, anywhere. This, baldly, is what I saw. I was still more or less on my back, so that's why I first noticed the sky. There wasn't a star in it. It was all fogged over. Nothing odd in that, you'll say. But wait a minute. It was all fog, but a fog such as I've never seen before or since. For a moment I thought my sight had gone, that, perhaps, in the afterlife everything was vague and misty. If I am alive, I reflected, I've lost the power to focus. It was—how shall I put it?—like looking up at the flies in the transformation scene of a pantomime, only all out of focus. There was wave upon wave of fringes, skirts, curtains, all of some filmy, faintly fluted draping. They rustled as they undulated. The sound was so quiet and natural that, since I couldn't see them clearly enough to judge their distance, I thought they must be near, perhaps twenty or thirty feet above my head.

“But, if the form was ambiguous, the color was—well, I have to work that word pretty hard—
amazing
. You know the colors of a large vacuum tube when current's in it? The whole of what I was looking up at was flushing and pulsing as it was washed by these tides of uncanny color.

“Perhaps it was the word ‘pulsing' that made me realize that the actual pulsing had stopped. Yes, I was at a standstill or, rather, at a lie-still. Perhaps it was dumb to wish I could see what all those eerie searchlights were falling on. I tried to raise my head and at once felt a curious broad hand helping me. But what I saw made me forget the odd feel, forget the odd sky. Oh I could see well enough. There was nothing wrong with my eyes. If anything was wrong, it was with my brain.

“I was still lying on the sled, and my goggles and wrappings were gone. But there was no need for them. It was warm, damply warm. And there was no doubt that I was still out of doors. Why that made me go back again to the belief that I was dead—gone for good from this world—I don't know, though neither of ‘the other places' are said to be ‘muggy,' are they?

“But I couldn't keep my mind on the climate, any more than on the lighting. For I wasn't alone. Standing close about me, looking down on me—but with their long-nosed masks still on, so that I couldn't judge their expression—were my captors, rescuers, kidnapers, what you will. I gazed at their snow kit with the dull amazement of a very small child looking for the first time at a diver in his inflated suit and valve-fitted helmet. And then my amazement turned to dismay—dismay, disgust, yes, horror. I was, you see, trying to make sense of these people—to pierce, as it were, their disguise: trying to judge, behind their masks, what their intentions were toward me. And then—it was as bad as seeing ghosts—I suddenly saw that they weren't disguised; they weren't wrapped up. They hadn't any clothes on, not a stitch! Then what did they have on?—these bulky, booted, masked fellows?

“I say again”—his voice cracked with a very convincing accent of dismay—“they had no clothes on, and yet, true enough, they were able—just as I saw them equipped then—to trot about in subzero cold.

“You've guessed? No, you couldn't. I know I struggled I don't know how long against believing my eyes, for the light, though pulsing, was like a torrent of floodlighting. There was, I tell you, never a moment's doubt as to what I was seeing. The resistance came from my owning up to the clear meaning of what I saw. I struggled with all my might to believe that I was looking at masked kidnapers, inquisitors, anything you like, however dangerous and dreadful, as long as it was human. And all the time my eyes kept on saying to me—yes, and will you believe me?—the last, unnerving touch, my nose, too was saying it: What you are looking at—these things that are close enough for you to smell, are big, giant big, bigger than most men, but not men—they're big bipeds, big stalking birds! Yes, that was it. Under that insanely colored sky, as though in some grotesque, glass-lidded aviary, I lay, shrunken like Alice after she'd eaten the mushroom, looked down on by those large, powerful birds.

“I own, at that, my last vestiges of interest in topography fled. I remember recalling instead, and most infelicitously, Wells's grim story,
Aepyornis Island
, about the man who came within an ace of being pecked to death by his pet, a giant bird.

“And I was these creatures' captive. They swayed their heads a little. Their glassy eyes regarded me, but what I regarded was the way the glittering varicolored light ran up and down their long, strong, polished, pointed beaks. I don't know whether the next thing was a relief. It ought to have been. For at least it made clear that my immediate fear wasn't going to be practiced on me without delay. But the way I learned that was itself so shocking that I think I was more upset then than ever. I suppose we fear madness more than pain or death. And this forced me, I felt, one step nearer madness.

“These creatures weren't disguised men. I'd faced up to that shock—a nasty enough one, in all conscience. And then there was another one, right on—as one might say—the other side of the jaw of my reason. For this shock was just the reverse of the first. I couldn't resist the evidence of my ears as I'd tried to hold out against that of my eyes. These creatures, these birds, were talking to each other—talking about me. Of course, I couldn't understand a word. But when half-a-dozen stout old gentlemen, standing around a man on his back, look at him, point fat, flipperish hands at him, and then turn and quack at each other and then look at him and quack again—Well, then I say it's no use; the game's up: they are birds—which is bad enough—and they are discussing his disposal.

“Of course, you see what is coming, don't you? Why, after a few fell-considered—yes, I know they were—remarks, the senior and gravest of all the company turned to me again and requested—requested my co-operation. There couldn't be a doubt about that. Well, I did what you'd have done. I nodded, coughed, cleared my throat. And, believe me, after that exhibition of myself, of my superior human readiness and address, I felt I was the dumb bird. They weren't dumb by any means.

“Again they considered. Finally I felt that queer paw on my back and smelled that queer musky bird-smell, and then I was assisted to my feet. Of course, I felt extremely odd—odd beyond words. I think the air itself is odd there; through the bird-smell I could catch quite strong whiffs of sulphur and ozone also. Those people haven't any sense of smell; they have rather different senses from ours, but I'll get to that later. Of course, I was dead-beat, though they had already evidently given me some sort of cordial before I quite came to. There was a queer, keen taste in my mouth and throat. Anyhow, you wait till you find yourself strolling along, courteously assisted by two giant birds, who—metaphorically and actually, since they stood about seven feet high—are carrying on a conversation over your head. You see if you won't feel a bit giddy.

“Still, I noticed quite a few things. For instance, we were going along a path—not much of a path, but quite a well-beaten trail. You couldn't see far because just then the atmosphere was so iridescent. It wasn't what you'd call fog-though, as I've said, the temperature must have been over sixty and the humidity was high. It was the strange flickering light; as if the whole ill-defined sky were a sort of rainbow badly off color and quite unable to pull itself together into a decent arch with properly outlined bands.

“But interest in general meteorology was again brought back to earth with a bump. Right ahead of me loomed—houses. They weren't much as architecture. They appeared to be built of uncut stones piled together with no clear courses. But when I was close enough, I saw that the stones were all set in hard mortar and were well smoothed and fitted.

“When we reached the first of these huts, my companions wheeled around and gently ushered me inside the place. One stayed with me while the other disappeared. When he returned, he was holding a covered dish in his bill. There was a small table in the room, but no chair—nothing at all to sit on, or to lie on, for that matter. Just that small table, nothing else, though the bareness of the room's four walls was relieved by a kind of alcove in one place, a sort of doorless and shelfless cupboard. The creature which had come in with the dish placed it on the table and deftly whisked off the cover. It was a large soup plate full of what looked like a thick broth. My two guardians looked at me, bowed with an odd mixture of the ridiculous and the stately, and marched out. I was hungry; the broth smelled good. It tasted better. It was also very filling. As there was nowhere to sit and no-where to go, after eating the broth, I lay on the floor and fell asleep. I'd become used to sleeping on the ground—you know, half over on your face, your hands curled around your head.

“I don't know how long I slept. I woke to find the light the same, quivering but just as bright, and, of course, my watch was long dead. Looking up, I found a ‘guardian' looking at me with that expressionless attention which these creatures had. I scrambled to my feet, and he bowed low to the doorless doorway—the window had no glazing or frame, either. I was quite ready to see all I could; I felt refreshed and was more curious than anxious now. But he led me away from—what shall I call it?—the Penguinry? We followed a path which led straight towards a steep cliff, the top of which was lost in the iridescent mist. When we reached the cliff, we saw a cleft in it. This turned out to be the opening of a very narrow canyon, its walls not more than some six feet apart and going up pretty sheer till along the top one could see a ribbon of pulsing light—the sky, as it appeared in that odd place. Our path, which was smooth sand—the bed of some stream that once had issued through this cleft, I suppose—opened into a small amphitheater—after perhaps five or six loops and bends. The place was small, but up till then it was the most wonderful spot I'd ever seen.

“Talk of the Forty Thieves' cave in
Ali Baba!
All the rocks were of different colors; but that's simply to start with. The amazing thing was that they all seemed to be lit from within. They were partly translucent and were partly glowing with a queer radiance that seemed to flush out from their crystalline structure. Then I realized what, of course, it must be: They were fluorescing. The queer sky above must, for some reason, have been making these queer minerals—just as labradorite and other such do—send back a kind of light-echo, a sort of secondary radiation. But there nearly every rock seemed to have its own flush and pulse of color. You've never seen color until you've seen stuff like this. And that wasn't the end of the show which was being put on for me to gape at.