At length we reached what may be called the bottom; here the tunnel
gave another turn and the pitch became a gentle slope. And there we
found it, the rock-fragment, weighing perhaps two hundred pounds, that
the angel had dislodged in her descent--which doubtless had been a
hurried, a wild one.
"Thank Heaven!" I exclaimed, "she didn't come down with it!"
"Amen," said Milton.
Then a sudden thought struck me, a thought so unworthy that I did not
voice it aloud. But to myself I said:
"It is possible that we may find ourselves, before we get out of this,
wishing that she had."
If a human being, one of the very best of human beings even, were to
voice his uttermost, his inmost thoughts, what a shameful, what a
terrible monster they would call him--or her!
And the demon? Where was the angel's demon?
I could give no adequate description of those hours that succeeded.
Steadily we continued the descent--now gentle, now steep, rugged
and difficult. Sometimes the way became very narrow--indeed, at one
point we had to squeeze our way through, so closely did the walls
approach each other--then, again, it would open out, and we would find
ourselves in a veritable chamber. And, in one of these, a lofty place,
the vaulted roof a hundred feet or more above our heads, we made a
discovery--a skeleton, quasi-human and _with wings_.
I made an exclamation of amazement.
"In the name of all that's wonderful and terrible," I cried, "are we
entering Dante's Inferno itself?"
A faint smile touched the face of Rhodes.
"Don't you," he asked, "know what this is?"
"It must be the bones of a demon."
"Precisely. Grandfather Scranton, you'll remember, wounded that
monster, up there by the Tamahnowis Rocks. Undoubtedly the bullet
reached a vital spot, and these are that creature's bones."
"But," I objected, "these are _human_ bones--a human skeleton with
wings. According to Scranton, there was nothing at all human about the
appearance of that thing which he called a demon."
"I admit," said Rhodes, "that this skeleton, at the first glance,
has an appearance remarkably human--if, that is, one can forget the
wings. The skull, I believe, more than anything else, contributes to
that effect; and yet, at a second glance, even that loses its human
semblance. For look at those terrible jaws and those terrible teeth.
Who ever saw a human being with jaws and teeth like those? And look at
the large scapulae and the small hips and the dwarfish, though strong,
nether limbs. Batlike, Bill, strikingly so. And those feet. No toes;
they are talons. And see that medial ridge on the sternum, for the
attachment of the great pectoral muscles."
"A bat-man, then?" I queried.
"I should say a bat-ape."
"Or an ape-bat."
"Whichever you prefer," smiled Milton.
"Well," I added, "at any rate, we have a fair idea now of what a demon
is like."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account