A voice from the pit by Bernard Redward Capes Signior, where arrived, whispered
the old man in my ear, and he put out a sudden cold hand
caught it like melon, rinned to stay me. In the stumbling darkness.
We were on a tilted table land of the mountain, and looking forth and
below, the far and ago crescent of the bay, where it swept towards
Castlemere, seemed to rise up at me as if it were a perpendicular wall,
across which white crests of the waves flew like ghost moths. We skirted
a boulder and came upon a field of sleek, purple lava, sewn all
over with little lemon jets of silent smoke, which, in their van and
melancholy glow, might have been the corpse lights of those innumerable dead, whose
tombstone was the mountain itself. Far away to the right, the great projecting
socket of the crater flickered intermittently with a nerve of fire. It was like
the glint of the watchful eye of some vast crui satosine, and in the
harsh and stupendous desolation, seemed the final crown and expression of utter in humanity.
I started upon hearing the low whisper of my companion at my year in
the bay yesterday. The Signor saved my life. I give the Signor in
return my life's secret. He seized my right hand in his left with a
sinewy clutch, and pointed a stiff finger at the luminous bloods. See there,
and there and there he shielled. One floats and wavers like a spineless
ribbon of seaweed in the water. Another burns with a steady radiance. A
third blares from its fissure like a flame driven by the blue pipe. It
is all a question of the undertrown, and some may feel it a little,
and some a little more or a little less. Ah. But I
will show you one that feels it not at all. A whole a narrow
shaft that goes down into the pit of the great hill, and as cold
as the mouth of a barbel. The bones of his face stood out like
rocks against sand, and the pupils of his maniac eyes were glazed or fell
into shadow as the volcano lightnings fluttered. Suddenly he drew me to a broken
pile of sulfur rock, lying tumbled against a ridge of the mountain that ran
towards the crater. It lay heaped, a fused and fantastic ruin, and
in a moment that old man leapt from me and was tugging by main strength
a vast fragment from its place. I leaned over his shoulder and looked down
upon the hollow revealed by the displaced boulder. It was like the bell of
a mighty trumpet, and in the middle a puckered opening seemed to suck inwards,
as it were the mouth of some subterranean monster risen to the surface of
the world for air. Quick, quick, muttered, pollow. The signor
must place his ear to the hole. With a little lod stir my heart.
I dropped upon my knees and leaned my head deep into the cup.
I must have stayed thus for a full minute before I drew myself back and
looked up at the old mountaineer. His eyes gazed down into mine with mad
intensity. Sir, Sir, he whispered, what didst thou hear? I
heard a long surging thunder polo and the deep shrill screaming of many gas jets.
He panned down with livid face, Signor, it is the booming of
the everlasting fire, And thou hast heard the voices of the dand no,
my friend, no, But it is a marvelous transmission of the uproar of
hidden forces. He leaped to the shallow pit. Listen and believe, he
cried, and funneling his hands about his lips, he stooped over the central
hole. Marco, Marco. He screeched in a piercing voice. Something answered
back. What was it? A malformed and twisted echo, a whistle of
imprisoned steam, tricked into some horrible caricature of a human voice. Polo,
it seemed, too, will weaken faint with agony. Liquerra, liquerra,
Polo. The old man stran to his feet and looking down upon me in
a sort of terrible triumph, and slung a water flask from his belt,
and, pulling out the cock, poured the cold liquid down into the puckered
orifice. Then I felt his clutch on my arm again, Heat drinks.
He cried, Listen, and thou wilt understand. I rose with the ghost
of a laugh, and once more addressed my ear to the opening. From
unthinkable depths came up a strange gloating sound, as from a ravenous throat,
made vibrant with ecstasy. Polo I cried as I rose and stood before him,
and there was an admonitory note in my voice. Oh, feather may
decide the balance. Weware meddling with hidden thunders, or thou mayst set rolling
such another tombstone as that on which these corps fires are yet flaming. And
he only answered me, set and deadly, we of the mountains signor no
more things than we may tell off end off. A voice from the pit