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Page 39
"'You come for knowledge of The Lily. Behold!'
"He pointed to a cube of crystal near him, which, Peters will swear, was
a moment earlier perfectly transparent. But now it looked as if filled
with milk of purest whiteness. As they gazed at it, a fire appeared in
the centre; and soon around the fire there sprang into being a circular
range of mountains, and on the side of one of these--the nearest--stood
two persons.
"'Lilama--Ahpilus,' screamed Diregus; 'he has stolen her away!'
"Yes: for though Pym and Peters had never seen the exiled lover, they
recognized Lilama; and even they could surmise the rest.
"'The youth is mad,' said the Duke. 'We must rescue our darling from the
maniac.'
"Pym, in his impatience, was about to rush from the room; but the old
man beckoned for him to approach. He did as desired. Then the aged man
placed a hand upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him; and the man who
had lived thousands of years whispered some words into the ear of the
youth who had lived not yet four lustrums. As Peters described for me in
his homely way the change that came over the face of Pym as that human
millenarian spoke perhaps one hundred words into the young man's ear, I
was reminded of reading as a boy, some years ago, a description of the
burning somewhere in South America of a great cathedral. The fire
occurred during a morning service, and with the alarm the doorways of
the building were at once obstructed by a mass of struggling humanity.
Some two or three thousand persons were consumed in this terrible
holocaust. The correspondent who wrote the description of the fire of
which I speak said that for ten minutes he stood outside the cathedral
after the surrounding heat had become so intense that efforts at rescue
ceased, and from a raised spot he looked through the windows from which
the glass had crumbled--looked across the great window-sills raised
eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked into the faces of the
doomed. And as he gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens with their
lovers by their side--(it was a gala day, and all were in their best
attire). As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he saw horror-stricken
eyes gaze at the approaching fire, and at other victims sixty feet away
already burning; then quickly would the fire approach the owner of those
eyes, reach him, consume him: And in those fleeting moments the face of
a young girl would pass through every stage from youth to extreme age,
and then sink down in death. As the aged mystic whispered to Pym, the
young man's face turned ghastly, then worked convulsively, then settled
into firm resolve. And Peters never again saw on the face of the youth
whom he loved with the love of a mother and of a father in one--never
again saw the old, careless, boyish smile. Did the old man--shall we
call him a man?--did the old man whisper into Pym's ear the secret of
eternity? Would such a revelation have changed youth to manhood in a
hundred seconds?
"As Pym was led by Diregus from the room, Peters started to follow; but
the aged mystic motioned for him, too, to approach. Peters says that
after what he had just seen he felt much more like taking to flight than
he did like obeying the summons; but he obeyed it. The old man pointed
to one of the smaller crystal cubes, which would have measured some five
feet across. As Peters gazed upon it, it began to take on the milky hue
which he had before witnessed. Peters says that at first he thought
these cubes were of solid crystal, but after he witnessed the strange
alterations of which they were capable, he believed they were hollow. He
continued to gaze as directed, and soon he saw, sitting at a table, with
a lighted candle by her side, knitting, his poor old mother, from whose
side he had, fifteen years before, when a thoughtless, wicked boy, ran
away to sea. He had never seen her again--he has not seen her again to
the present day. As he gazed upon that aged, wrinkled face--that hard,
Indian face (his mother was a civilized Indian), he saw that look which
man sees nowhere else on sea or land save only in a mother's face. He
threw himself face-downward on the floor, and wrung in agony his hands,
and moaned out pleas for forgiveness; but the poor, old, fragile form
knitted on, and on, and the face was never raised. Alas! why must we all
feel the full force of a mother's love and sacrifices only when too
late? Why must it be that the deepest of all unselfish love goes ever
unrewarded?
"Peters scarcely knows how he got from the room. He staggered out into
the grounds, and saw that the remainder of the party were already seated
in the boat.
"But I must hasten on. Let me say in a few words, that the party
returned to the ducal palace, and immediately prepared to rescue Lilama
from the power of her discarded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The rescue
party, on the advice of the Duke, was small. He explained to Peters that
so far as mere human force was concerned, a thousand men could never
rescue the maiden. Her return to them, alive and in health, would depend
upon strategy, or possibly might be accomplished as a result of some
superhuman individual effort. He was of opinion, he remarked--and he
judged from what he had been told by government officials lately
returned from 'Crater Mountains' and also from changes in the young man
observed by himself preceding the sentence of banishment--that Ahpilus
was a maniac. The Duke went on to say that he really felt but little
hope of ever again seeing, alive, his loved young 'cousin.' Then he
explained that, whilst there were spots on 'Crater Mountains,' from five
to eight miles from the central crater, on the far side of the nearer
hills, hot enough to roast a large animal, there were other spots on the
far side of the remoter mountain ranges where, protected from crater
radiation and exposed to antarctic air-currents, the temperature was
almost always far below the freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that
no animal life, even antarctic animal life, could endure it for an hour.
He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save
her--which was unlikely, even if possible--or unless we could invent
some plan of capture so peculiar as to baffle the madman--a man, by the
bye, of enormous physical strength, and with a madman's cunning. Peters
stood drinking in every word spoken by the Duke; whilst Pym listened as
if heartbroken, but in an impatient, anxious way, indicative of a
restless impulse to be gone. The Duke continued to instruct and advise
them, until a large sail-boat was provisioned and manned, when the
rescue party hastened away on its errand of love and mercy.
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