Page:Weird Tales Volume 09 Issue 02 (1927-02).djvu/74

 are not at the bottom of that chasm—well, I am not anxious to have another shave like that."

"I have not forgotten. Bill. I have an idea, though, that those awful tragedies up there were purely accidental. Certainly we know that the demon's attack upon ourselves was entirely so."

"Accidental? Great Scott, some consolation, that!"

I looked at Milton Rhodes, and I looked at the angel, who had taken a few steps forward and was awaiting those hurrying figures—a white-robed figure, still and tall, one lovely, majestic. And, if I didn't sigh, I certainly felt like doing so.

"No demon there, Bill," observed Milton at last, his eyes upon those advancing forms.

"I see none. Four figures."

"Four," nodded Rhodes. "Two men and two women."

A few moments, and they stepped out into a sort of aisle amongst the great limestone pillars. The figure in advance came to an abrupt halt. An exclamation broke from him and echoed and re-echoed eerily through the vast and gloomy cavern. It was answered by the angel, and, as her voice came murmuring back to us, it was as though fairies were hidden amongst the columns and were answering her.

But there was nothing fairy like in the aspect of that leader (who was advancing again) or his male companion. That aspect was grim, formidable. Each carried a powerful bow and had an arrow fitted to the string, and at the left side a short, heavy sword. That aspect of theirs underwent a remarkable metamorphosis, however, as they came on toward us, what with the explanations that our angel gave them. When they at last halted, a few yards from the spot where we stood, every sign of hostility had vanished. It was patent, however, that they were wary, suspicious. That they should be so was not at all strange, but just the same there was something in their manner that I could not understand—something that made me resolve to be on my guard whatever might betide.

The leader was a tall man, of sinewy and powerful frame. Though he had, I judged, passed the half-century mark, he had suffered, it seemed, no loss of youthful vitality or strength. His companion, tall and almost as powerful as himself, was a much younger man—in his early twenties. Their golden hair was bobbed, for all the world like your truly bobbified flapper's. The arms were bare, as were the legs from midway the thigh to half-way below the knee, the nether extremities being incased in buskins, light but evidently of excellent material.

As for the companions of the twain, one was a girl seventeen or eighteen years of age, the other a girl a couple of years older. Each had a bow and quiver, as did our angel. The older of these young ladies had golden hair, a shade lighter than the angel's, whilst the hair of the younger was white as snow. At first I thought that it must be powdered, but this was not so. And as I gazed with interest and wonder upon this lovely creature, I thought—of Christopher Columbus and Sir Isaac Newton. At thirty, they had hair like hers. That thought, however, was a fleeting one. This was no time, forsooth, to be thinking of old Christopher and Sir Isaac. Stranger, more wonderful was this old world of ours than even Columbus or Newton ever had dreamed it.

The age of our angel, by the way, I placed at about twenty-five years. And I wondered how they could possibly reckon time here in this underground world, a world that could have neither months nor years.