Read Ebook: Dominica De Aarde en haar Volken 1904 by Kol H Van

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Ebook has 268 lines and 22213 words, and 6 pages

In Antigua wordt de oppervlakte van het bebouwde land geschat op 6,630 van de 21,380 hect., en van St.-Kitts-Nevis op 7,430 van de 30,580 hect.

De voornaamste zijn: de Morne Diablotin, 4747 voet; de Trois Pitons, 4672; de Mosquito Mountain, 3678; de Microtin, 3891, en de Morne Anglais, 3746 Eng. voeten.

Elis?e Reclus leidt hun naam af van >>Cari-a?ba", dat piraten of menscheneters zou beteekenen.

Davis, in zijn >>History of the Caribby Islands", deelt mede dat de Cara?ben, na zoowel Spanjaarden als Franschen, Hollanders, Engelschen, Negers en Arowakken te hebben geproefd, aan het malsche vleesch der Franschen de voorkeur gaven, doch de Spanjaarden taai vonden en van goede Christenen kiespijn kregen.

"Nineteen-O-thirty south. Sixty-three--seven, west."

"I can't see you. Move due east two long steps and stand still. I'll reach for you."

She complied and called out to him.

"What's your reading now?" he asked, and she thought his voice sounded strange as she replied, "Same south reading. Sixty-three--six, west."

"Jake! Where are you and what's your reading?"

"I'm right here, Mr. Adam. Can't see you? This silt doesn't seem to settle down. There's a current of some kind carrying it; I can just stand against it. My reading's eighteen-forty--forty-two south; sixty-two--fifteen west."

"Bjornsen, Rossiter! Report and extend hands. If you don't touch anyone, reach out with the safe ends of your bomb-spears and swing them in a circle till you do.... Ah, who's that who just touched me?"

"Rossiter, sir."

"That makes three of--"

The words were suddenly cut off by the shock of an explosion that nearly tore them from their feet and a heavier cloud of the milky silt came eddying past, fragments of chain-weed moving through it. Burchall's voice came through the earphones. "Attacked! New kind of animal! Eighteen-forty--twenty-one south. Twenty--thirty-two west!"

"Never mind the bearings!" cried Adam. "Rossiter, Paulette! Hang on to the ends of these spears, and take three steps with me, don't lose contact!"

The three leaped as one, then again and again, through the murk in which everything was invisible. As they touched bottom at the end of the last leap, Adam saw a long writhing arm, with a barbed tip at the end of it, swing past his helmet view-ports, caught a gasp from Jake through his earphones, and then felt Paulette at his side pull free from his gripping hand and reach up with the bomb-spear.

There was the shock of another explosion. Down he went, and saw something murky with whirling arms fly past the view-ports. Then Paulette's voice came through, clear and triumphant.

"I got rid of it, Adam, and here's Jake. He's all right, I guess."

"Everyone attention," said Adam, picking himself up. "Make toward the direction where that explosion came from. Then join hands and get back into the ship, quick!"

A few moments later, when the space suits had been put away, and the men were dispersing along the corridors to their cabins, Paulette touched Adam's arm.

"What was the idea of keeping asking for those compass bearings?" she said. "We found the main lock all right, didn't we?"

"Yes," replied Adam shortly, "thanks to your compass. And thanks to you, too, Jake's life was saved. But didn't you hear the reports from those others? Every one of those compasses was wrong, sometimes wrong by a whole degree, and every one was different."

"I don't understand," replied the girl. "Didn't you have the compasses checked before you started?"

"That's just the point. I did have them checked and adjusted. And Professor Reuter was the man who adjusted them. If you hadn't been with us--"

The girl snapped off her key and hurried down the corridor to the open lock. Above her the loudspeaker system was booming: "All watches. Summon all watches. Second Mate Wayland report to Captain McCausland. Diggers have broken through into a cavern. Seven men have fallen. All watches."

Two or three men were standing at the edge of the air-lock, gazing down the spiral staircase that wound its way into the digging.

"Who's down there?" asked Paulette.

The man saluted. "First Mate Longworth," he replied. "Six men with him. We're trying communication by radio, but haven't got in touch with him yet."

An icy hand gripped tightly at Paulette's heart.

"Adam!" she cried and was surprised to discover there were tears in her eyes, as a touch fell on her shoulder, and she looked around to see the face of Captain Walter McCausland.

"What's the matter, my dear?" he asked.

"Your dear!" she half shrieked. "I'm not your dear, and I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on Earth! You did this!"

The captain's mouth curled in a sneer. "So that's it, is it? He's persuaded you he can run you as well as the expedition. Well, I hope he can run things down where he is as well as he can everything else." He turned on his heel and walked away without another word.

Suddenly, one of the diggers took on a new, high-pitched note. Adam turned; and as he turned felt himself slipping, clutched at something, and the next minute was sliding down, down, a long slant it seemed into total darkness. A weight gripped him around the chest; he rolled over, but his hands caught only loose stones, and when the slide came to a stop as abrupt as its beginning, he found himself lying on his back, the weight across his legs, looking up, far up toward where a speck of light from the ship seemed miles away.

He reached out one hand and touched something as smooth as though it were polished and gently warm. "Mr. Adam!" said a voice suddenly, and he recognized it as Jake's. "Are you all right, Mr. Adam?"

"I think so, but my legs are caught."

"I'll get you free in a minute. Anybody else?"

"I got hit in the belly," came a voice. "Where's Flack?"

The engineer was lifting something. "Can you get out there now, Mr. Adam? We'll be all right in a minute." Adam gave a heave, felt his entangled legs slide free and pulled himself onto a pile of debris just as a light glared on like a star from one of the other men.

"Are we all here? Where's Flack?" There was a counting of noses and a general feeling of bodies for bruises. Above them, where the wall of the cylinder stopped, they could make out that the sudden break through had carried them down some twenty feet. "Here he is. Just an arm sticking out. I'm afraid he's done for. Come here, everyone."

One of the digging machines was brought into play and they labored to get the prisoned man free, but as they cleared the broken stone and rubble from around his face, it became evident that the effort was useless. The eyes were glazed, the head hung limp. Adam stepped back against the wall of the cave-in around them, and as he did so his hand touched it. Once more he noticed it was both smooth and warm. He turned, and in the light of the atomic lamps now blazing across the top of the cave-in examined it. It was not only smooth and warm, but polished; and just over his head he could see where the rock stopped and metal began--a clean-fitted job, a manufactured wall!

"Jake!" he called excitedly, "bring that digging machine over here for a second. The one with the cutting head."

The little engineer turned, and bounded over in a couple of steps, digging machine in hand. "Why, that's a metal wall," he cried, and applied the head for a moment in a brief surge of power. The bit cut out an inch-deep circle of metal, dropping it on some of the rubble with a tinny clang. Jake bent to pick it up.

"It's light enough to be beryllium," he said, handing the disc to Adam, and turning back to the wall, drove his cutter into it with renewed energy.

"What are you doing?" demanded the mate, hefting the disc of metal.

"This wall sounds hollow. Here goes!" He had driven the machine deep in, and stepping back, pulled the handle marked "Split." There was a sudden rending clang; a crash and a six-foot section of the wall fell inwards. The two men stared into the hole it had left, heedless of the fact that the other members of the excavating crew were crowding up behind them.

They were looking into a low square room, perhaps twenty feet across. At the far side was a doorway, and in the doorway stood a man!

To be sure he was such a man as none of them had ever before seen. He was not over four and a half feet tall, yet with arms as long as an earthling's hanging down below his knees, tremendously broad shoulders, and a head that seemed permanently pushed forward and downward above them. Below that head the creature was wrapped from neck to toe in some shimmering blue material with a metallic luster, banded around the arms and legs with red metal.

As they gazed in astonishment, the man took two steps forward, his head bobbing on his neck at each step, opened his lips, and uttered "Wahwahroo!" in a voice thick with gutturals.

Adam glanced around at his own men, then once more at the Plutonian dwarf, whose face, as far as he could judge, bore an expression of intense interest rather than of fear or anger. The remark, he judged, would be a greeting.

"Wahwahroo!" he replied amiably, but the Plutonian continued to stare in a manner that indicated Adam's first lesson in this unknown tongue was far from a success.

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