Speaker 1: A voice from the pit by Bernard Edward Capes sineor
we're arrived, whispered the old man in my ear, and
he put out a sudden, cold hand, corded like melon rind,
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 ego crescent of the bay,
where it swept towards Castle Mare, 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
tomstone 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 Crusatusin and in the
harsh and stupendous desolation, seemed the final crown and expression
of utter inhumanity. I started upon hearing the low whisper
of my companion at my ear in the bay yesterday
the sieor saved my life. I give the signor in
return my life's secret. He seized my right hand in
his lift with a sinewy clutch, and pointed a stiff
finger at the luminous blots. See there, and there and
there He shrilled. One floats and wavers like a spineless
ribbon of seaweed in the water. Another burns with a
steady radiance. A third blaze from its fissure, like a
flame driven by the bluepipe. It is all a question
of the undertrot. 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 hole, a narrow shaft that goes to
down into the pit of the great hill, and as
cold as the mouth of a barbell. 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, affused and fantastic ruin, and in a
moment that old man leapt from me and was stugging
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 Polo, the signor must
place his ear to the hole with a little lod
stir at 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
pollo and the deep shrill screaming of many gas jets.
He penned down with livid face, Signor it is the
booming of the everlasting fire, and thou hast heard the
voices of the damned. 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 faneling 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 malforondin twisted echo,
a whistle of imprisoned steam, tricked into some horrible caricature
of a human voice. Paullo. It seemed to wail, weak
and faint with agony. Liquera, liquera, Pollo. The old man
sprang 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. He 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. Paulo,
I cried as I rose and stood before him, And
there was an admonitory note in my voice. Oer feather
may decide the balance, Beware meddling with hidden thunders, or
thou mayst set rolling such another tombstone as that on
which these corpse fires are yet flaming. And he only
answered me, set and deadly oe of the mountain, senor
no more things than we may tell of end off
A voice from the pit