that big regular-shaped rock we saw on the other side of the island? That’s a monolith.”
“A which?”
“The big one near the shore, that stuck up like a pillar, flat on top—now you remember?”
“What about it?”
“I thought it looked queer, and I peeled off some of the moss. The thing is all carved with some ancient writing, related, I think, both to Egyptian and Chinese, maybe Mexican. And another thing, the stone is granite. You won’t find another piece on the island.”
“Whew!” Pug waited for a moment, studying these bits of information in the light of the other’s facial expression. But a solution not immediately presenting itself, he turned again to the fish.
“And that wasn’t all,” Rill went on. “It looked as if there might have been a road into the island there, and I followed it up. About fifty yards from the monolith there’s a big hole, some twenty feet across. I dropped in a rock or two and judged they fell maybe a hundred feet, and then rolled down a slanting shaft. To-morrow we’ll go look it over. There’s copper indications near there.”
There was new excitement in the sailor that had not appeared even in the fight with the surf. After the meal the explanation came:
“I ran across a poor bum,” Pug said, “down in Sitka a couple of years ago. We had a drink, and he spieled a lot of queer bunk. They said he’d gone nuts. Anyhow, he sez he was with a party of Indians in these here islands, prospecting for ore. There was a small island with a big pine in the middle of it what the Indians called ‘The Island of the Lost God.’ They wouldn’t land him till he pulled his gun and threatened to shoot them-said a green devil lived there in a deep cave; a bad one.
“This guy laughs at ’em an’ makes ’em lower him into this here cave on a rope—he sez it looks to him like an old copper-mine shaft. The boys up top get scared as soon as he hits the bottom and light out for keeps. He doesn’t know it, though, and goes on in. It’s great, the story he tells about that, about how he meets this green devil coming, grinning at him. He takes a pot-shot at him and shinnies the rope like he was a cat. By an’ by somebody picks him up—crazy with the thirst and the fright and all. But he ain’t never forgot that green thing. Say, I wish we could get picked up right now—”
Rill allowed himself an ironical smile.
“Why, you believe in the story?” he asked.
“No, I don’t say that—but still, my mother was Irish, and she saw the banshee once, an’ she knew the runes of the fairies—we’d best go ’round the hole,”
“No devil’ll scare me away from a lost copper, mine. If there’s anything there you can buy out fifty devils—”
“Make fun if you want—I’ll keep clear.”
Rill made for the inscriptured rock the next day and the sailor followed, somewhat curious. The characters were large and deeply cut, excellently preserved by the six-inch skin of moss that covers everything in that region. Rill scraped merely enough to determine that the entire monolith was carved.
They dug also below the surface, and still finding the strange characters, determined that what they saw was merely the summit or upper half, possibly, of an obelisk. The writing ran in regular lines, sometimes horizontally and sometimes vertically. Rill discovered one line larger and more freely written than the rest, with simpler glyphs. He studied long over this, so long that the sailor tired of it and began to saunter off.
“Wait,” Rill said. “I’ve got part of it. I happen to have a smattering of this science—and when I go down the shaft I want to know as much as this will tell us.”
He began to elucidate, pointing to the row that ran around the stone.
“This line was written in a hurry; it’s more elemental. It’s the original stuff. See the serpent in the second group?—that stands for wisdom. The Pharaohs used the asp, symbol of their wisdom. The serpent tempted Adam and Eve, that is, the beginnings of wisdom or thought brought them self-knowledge. The dragon is the Chinese development of that idea; Hermes’s caduceus has the serpents of wisdom intertwined; there’s a Hindu god that holds out in one hand a big snake—all the same idea.
“Now, that first mark is the anthropomorphic sign and can stand for God. Right under it is a mouth, sign of talk. See the zigzag sign in the second group?—that’s water. Then comes the moon or month and the setting sun; the one like a dead bush is a hand, sign of force or power. The zigzag on a line means mountains sometimes, and in the next group is forest. The triangle thing’s got me guessing, but I can get the epic out of it, anyway.”
“You mean you can read the stuff?” Pug was somewhat incredulous, this feat appearing miraculous.
“It starts like this—the god speaks, evidently in warning, because the wise ones take to their boats and go off on the water, six to the boat rowing, I think. Then elapses the time from the new moon to the old moon and two days besides. Again the god warns in some way, and again a period of time. Finally the god acts or uses his power (you see the hand), and some terrible catastrophe occurs.
“The writer tells us of the chaos by putting the sun upside down, as if to say they never saw the sun or the days. But still the men number as the trees of a forest. They had no understanding, and put to sea. You can read the next sign—a big storm, all perish. And finally the god speaks once more, saying that man’s day is over. Some story, Pug?”
“It must have been the green god that did the talking and all. We’d best let the shaft alone. There’s always somebody scouting around these islands: we’ll get took off before long.”
They did wait. The sailor fished and performed the practical duties. The other was absorbed in the efforts to perfect the message, blocked by the meaning of the triangle signs. Together they struggled with the water supply. The pools were slowly drying, and becoming more brackish and filled with life. That was the big problem, the daily mounting worry—water.
The shaft held the only hope. Yet Pug preferred on the whole to struggle with the known phenomena of the surface, and Rill could not bring himself to the point of contending with the physical difficulties, the trusting himself to the rope, the dangers. There was also their mutual suspicion, natural and inevitable, that precluded, short of imminent necessity a combining of forces wherein one must trust the other.
A morning came when Rill, of weaker constitution, vomited after a swallow of the green water. That was enough; he determined immediately to explore the hole. They got the rope, and Pug came presently with a couple of pine-knots and burning brands from the fire to light them.
The edge of the shaft was clean-cut in the soft rock, so that they could peer over and down. Kneeling there, Rill whispered and the sibilance rushed back and forth ended finally in a subdued, venomous hissing at the bottom.
They dropped a stone, and the crash of its impacts mounted in a hollow roar now loudly, now softly, multitudinously. They could distinguish various upper strata, but the lower portion was shrouded in impenetrable black. The sailor glanced at Rill, and saw a sheen of damp on his forehead.
“What’s up?” he asked, thinking himself of the green thing of the legend.
“Suppose the rope isn’t long enough, or should cut on the rock—sure you can pull me up—and will?”
They did not talk much while the sailor knotted a loop in the rope for Rill’s foot, and tied the other end to a stake driven in a deft of the rock. Perhaps Rill did feel a qualm, but if so it was not again apparent to the other.
As his end of the rope eventually came into Pug’s hands a frown of worry lowered his eyebrows. He was certain that it was not long enough, when the tension laxed. He peered down. Far away the smoky yellow of the torch wavered upon the roughness of the rock. The man holding it called up, but long before the words came to the sailor they had been mingled and churned into a confused rumble.
Then the torch moved slowly