H G Wells Omnibus, page 224
“Go back!” cried Mr. Barnstaple to the Utopians. “Go back! Quickly! Quickly!”
Came a clatter of feet from below and then the eight men who constituted the combatant strength of the Earthling forces in Utopia emerged from under the archway running towards the two astonished Utopians. Mr. Mush led, with Ridley at his heels; he was pointing his revolver and shouting. Next came M. Dupont zealous and active. Father Amerton brought up the rear with the rope.
“Go back!” screamed Mr. Barnstaple, with his voice breaking.
Then he stopped shouting and watched—with his hands clenched.
The aviator was running down the slope from his machine to the assistance of Serpentine and Cedar. And above out of the blue two other aeroplanes had appeared.
The two Utopians disdained to hurry and in a few seconds their pursuers had come up with them. Hunker, Ridley and Mush led the attack. M. Dupont, flourishing his stick, was abreast with them but running out to the right as though he intended to get between them and the aviator. Mr. Catskill and Penk were a little behind the leading three; the one-armed Barralonga was perhaps ten yards behind and Father Amerton had halted to re-coil his rope more conveniently.
There seemed to be a moment’s parley and then Serpentine had moved quickly as if to seize Hunker. A pistol cracked and then another went off rapidly three times. “Oh God!” cried Mr. Barnstaple. “Oh God!” as he saw Serpentine throw up his arms and fall backward, and then Cedar had grasped and lifted up Mush and hurled him at Mr. Catskill and Penk, bowling both of them over into one indistinguishable heap. With a wild cry M. Dupont closed in on Cedar but not quickly enough. His club shot into the air as Cedar parried his blow, and then the Utopian stooped, caught him by a leg, overthrew him, lifted him and whirled him round as one might whirl a rabbit, to inflict a stunning blow on Mr. Hunker.
Lord Barralonga ran back some paces and began shooting at the approaching aviator.
The confusion of legs and arms on the ground became three separate people again. Mr. Catskill, shouting directions, made for Cedar, followed by Penk and Mush and, a moment after, by Hunker and Dupont. They clung to Cedar as hounds will cling to a boar. Time after time he flung them off him. Father Amerton hovered unhelpfully with his rope.
For some moments Mr. Barnstaple’s attention was concentrated upon this swaying and staggering attempt to overpower Cedar, and then he became aware of other Utopians running down the slope to join the fray… . The other two aeroplanes had landed.
Mr. Catskill realized the coming of these reinforcements almost as soon as Mr. Barnstaple. His shouts of “Back! Back to the castle!” reached Mr. Barnstaple’s ears. The Earthlings scattered away from the tall dishevelled figure, hesitated, and began to walk and then run back towards the Castle.
And then Ridley turned and very deliberately shot Cedar, who clutched at his breast and fell into a sitting position.
The Earthlings retreated to the foot of the steps that led up through the archway into the castle, and stood there in a panting, bruised and ruffled group. Fifty yards away Serpentine lay still, the aviator whom Barralonga had shot writhed and moaned, and Cedar sat up with blood upon his chest trying to feel his back. Five other Utopians came hurrying to their assistance.
“What is all this firing?” said Lady Stella, suddenly at Mr. Barnstaple’s elbow.
“Have they caught their hostages?” asked Miss Greeta Grey.
“For the life of me!” said Mr. Burleigh, who had come out upon the wall a yard or so away, “this ought never to have happened. How did this get—muffed, Lady Stella?”
“I called out to them,” said Mr. Barnstaple.
“You—called—out to them!” said Mr. Burleigh incredulous.
“Treason I did not calculate upon,” came the wrathful voice of Mr. Catskill ascending out of the archway.
§ 4
For some moments Mr. Barnstaple made no attempt to escape the danger that closed in upon him. He had always lived a life of very great security and with him, as with so many highly civilized types, the power of apprehending personal danger was very largely atrophied. He was a spectator by temperament and training alike. He stood now as if he looked at himself, the central figure of a great and hopeless tragedy. The idea of flight came belatedly, in a reluctant and apologetic manner into his mind.
“Shot as a traitor,” he said aloud. “Shot as a traitor.”
There was that bridge over the narrow gorge. He might still get over that, if he went for it at once. If he was quick—quicker than they were. He was too intelligent to dash off for it; that would certainly have set the others running. He walked along the wall in a leisurely fashion past Mr. Burleigh, himself too civilized to intervene. In a quickening stroll he gained the steps that led to the citadel. Then he stood still for a moment to survey the situation. Catskill was busy setting sentinels at the gate. Perhaps he had not thought yet of the little bridge and imagined that Mr. Barnstaple was at his disposal at any time that suited him. Up the slope the Utopians were carrying off the dead or wounded men.
Mr. Barnstaple ascended the steps as if buried in thought and stood on the citadel for some seconds, his hands in his trouser pockets, as if he surveyed the view. Then he turned to the winding staircase that went down to a sort of guard-room below. As soon as he was surely out of sight he began to think and move very quickly.
The guard-room was perplexing. It had five doors, any one of which except the one by which he had just entered the room might lead down to the staircase. Against one, however, stood a pile of neat packing-cases. That left three to choose from. He ran from one to the other leaving each door open. In each case stone steps ran down to a landing and a turning place. He stood hesitating at the third and noted that a cold draught came blowing up it. Surely that meant that this went down to the cliff face, or whence came the air? Surely this was it!
Should he shut the doors he had opened? No! Leave them all open.
He heard a clatter coming down the staircase from the citadel. Softly and swiftly he ran down the steps and halted for a second at the corner landing. He was compelled to stop and listen to the movements of his pursuers. “This is the door to the bridge, Sir!” he heard Ridley cry, and then he heard Catskill say, “The Tarpeian Rock,” and Barralonga, “Exactly! Why should we waste a cartridge? Are you sure this goes to the bridge, Ridley?”
The footsteps pattered across the guard-room and passed—down one of the other staircases.
“A reprieve!” whispered Mr. Barnstaple and then stopped aghast.
He was trapped! The staircase they were on was the staircase to the bridge!
They would go down as far as the bridge and as soon as they got to it they would see that he was neither on it nor on the steps on the opposite side of the gorge and that therefore he could not possibly have escaped. They would certainly bar that way either by closing and fastening any door there might be or, failing such a barrier, by setting a sentinel, and then they would come back and hunt for him at their leisure.
What was it Catskill had been saying? The Tarpeian Rock? …
Horrible!
They mustn’t take him alive… .
He must fight like a rat in a corner and oblige them to shoot him… .
He went on down the staircase. It became very dark and then grew light again. It ended in an ordinary big cellar, which may once have been a gun-pit or magazine. It was fairly well lit by two unglazed windows cut in the rock. It now contained a store of provisions. Along one side stood an array of the flask-like bottles that were used for wine in Utopia; along the other was a miscellany of packing-cases and cubes wrapped in gold-leaf. He lifted one of the glass flasks by its neck. It would make an effective club. Suppose he made a sort of barrier of the packing-cases across the entrance and stood beside it and clubbed the pursuers as they came in! Glass and wine would smash over their skulls… . It would take time to make the barrier… . He chose and carried three of the larger flasks to the doorway where they would be handy for him. Then he had an inspiration and looked at the window.
He listened at the door of the staircase for a time. Not a sound came from above. He went to the window and lay down in the deep embrasure and wriggled forward until he could see out and up and down. The cliff below fell sheer; he could have spat on to the brawling torrent fifteen hundred feet perhaps below. The crag here was made up of almost vertical strata which projected and receded; a big buttress hid almost all of the bridge except the far end which seemed to be about twenty or thirty yards lower than the opening from which Mr. Barnstaple was looking. Mr. Catskill appeared upon this bridge, very small and distant, scrutinizing the rocky stair-way beyond the bridge. Mr. Barnstaple withdrew his head hastily. Then very discreetly he peeped again. Mr. Catskill was no longer to be seen. He was coming back.
To business! There was not much time.
In his earlier days before the great war had made travel dear and uncomfortable Mr. Barnstaple had done some rock climbing in Switzerland and he had also had some experience in Cumberland and Wales. He surveyed now the rocks close at hand with an intelligent expertness. They were cut by almost horizontal joint planes into which there had been a considerable infiltration chiefly of white crystalline material. This stuff, which he guessed was calcite, had weathered more rapidly than the general material of the rock, leaving a series of irregular horizontal grooves. With luck it might be possible to work along the cliff face, turn the buttress and scramble to the bridge.
And then came an even more hopeful idea. He could easily get along the cliff face to the first recess, flatten himself there and remain until the Earthlings had searched his cellar. After they had searched he might creep back to the cellar. Even if they looked out of the window they would not see him and even if he left finger marks and so forth in the embrasure, they would be likely to conclude that he had either jumped or fallen down the crag into the gorge below. But at first it might be slow work negotiating the cliff face… . And this would cut him off from his weapons, the flasks… .
But the idea of hiding in the recess had taken a strong hold upon his imagination. Very cautiously he got out of the window, found a handhold, got his feet on to his ledge and began to work his way along towards his niche.
But there were unexpected difficulties, a gap of nearly five yards in the handhold—nothing. He had to flatten himself and trust to his feet and for a time he remained quite still in that position.
Further on was a rotten lump of the vein mineral and it broke away under him very disconcertingly, but happily his fingers had a grip and the other foot was firm. The detached crystals slithered down the rock face for a moment and then made no further sound. They had dropped into the void. . For a time he was paralyzed.
“I’m not in good form,” whispered Mr. Barnstaple. “I’m not in good form.”
He clung motionless and prayed.
With an effort he resumed his traverse.
He was at the very corner of the recess when some faint noise drew his eyes to the window from which he had emerged. Ridley’s face was poked out slowly and cautiously, his eye red and fierce among his white bandages.
§ 5
He did not at first see Mr. Barnstaple. “Gawd!” he said when he did so and withdrew his head hastily.
Came a sound of voices saying indistinguishable things.
Some inappropriate instinct kept Mr. Barnstaple quite still, though he could have got into cover in the recess quite easily before Mr. Catskill looked out revolver in hand.
For some moments they stared at each other in silence.
“Come back or I shoot,” said Mr. Catskill unconvincingly.
“Shoot!” said Mr. Barnstaple after a moment’s reflection.
Mr. Catskill craned his head out and stared down into the shadowy blue depths of the canyon. “It isn’t necessary,” he answered. “We have to save cartridges.”
“You haven’t the guts,” said Mr. Barnstaple.
“It’s not quite that,” said Mr. Catskill.
“No,” said Mr. Barnstaple, “it isn’t. You are fundamentally a civilized man.”
Mr. Catskill scowled at him without hostility.
“You have a very good imagination,” Mr. Barnstaple reflected. “The trouble is that you have been so damnably educated. What is the trouble with you? You are be-Kiplinged. Empire and Anglo-Saxon and boy-scout and sleuth are the stuff in your mind. If I had gone to Eton I might have been the same as you are, I suppose.”
“Harrow,” corrected Mr. Catskil.
“A perfectly beastly public school. Suburban place where the boys wear chignons and straw haloes. I might have guessed Harrow. But it’s queer I bear you no malice. Given decent ideas you might have been very different from what you are. If I had been your schoolmaster_____ But it’s too late now.”
“It is,” said Mr. Rupert Catskill, smiling genially, and cocked his eye down into the canyon.
Mr. Barnstaple began to feel for his ledge round the corner with one foot.
“Don’t go for a minute,” said Mr. Catskill. “I’m not going to shoot.”
A voice from within, probably Lord Barralonga’s, said something about heaving a rock at Mr. Barnstaple. Someone else, probably Ridley, approved ferociously.
“Not without due form of trial,” said Mr. Catskill over his shoulder. His face was inscrutable, but a fantastic idea began to run about in Mr. Barnstaple’s mind that Mr. Catskill did not want to have him killed. He had thought about things and he wanted him now to escape—to the Utopians and perhaps rig up some sort of settlement with them.
“We intend to try you, Sir,” said Mr. Catskill. “We intend to try you. We cite you to appear.”
Mr. Catskill moistened his lips and considered. “The court will sit almost at once.” His little bright brown eyes estimated the chances of Mr. Barnstaple’s position very rapidly. He craned towards the bridge. “We shall not waste time over our procedure,” he said. “And I have little doubt of our verdict. We shall condemn you to death. So—there you are, Sir. I doubt if we shall be more than a quarter of an hour before your fate is legally settled.”
He glanced up trying to see the crest of the crag. “We shall probably throw rocks,” he said.
“Moriturus te saluo” said Mr. Barnstaple with an air of making a witty remark. “If you will forgive me I will go on now to find a more comfortable position.”
Mr. Catskill remained looking hard at him.
“I’ve never borne you any ill-will,” said Mr. Barnstaple. “Had I been your schoolmaster everything might have been different. Thanks for the quarter of an hour more you give me. And if by any chance_____”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Catskill.
They understood one another.
When Mr. Barnstaple stepped round the bend into the recess Mr. Catskill was still looking out and Lord Barralonga was faintly audible advocating the immediate heaving of rocks.
§ 6
The ways of the human mind are past finding out. From desperation Mr. Barnstaple’s mood had passed to exhilaration. His first sick horror of climbing above this immense height had given place now to an almost boyish assurance. His sense of immediate death had gone. He was appreciating this adventure, indeed he was enjoying it, with an entire disregard now of how it was to end.
He made fairly good time until he got to the angle of the buttress, though his arms began to ache rather badly, and then he had a shock. He had now a full view of the bridge and up the narrow gorge. The ledge he was working along did not run to the bridge at all. It ran a good thirty feet below it. And what was worse, between himself and the bridge were two gullies and chimneys of uncertain depth. At this discovery he regretted for the first time that he had not stayed in the cellar and made a fight for it there.
He had some minutes of indecision—with the ache in his arms increasing.
He was roused from his inaction by what he thought at first was the shadow of a swift-flying bird on the rock. Presently it returned. He hoped he was not to be assailed by birds. He had read a story —but never mind that now.
Then came a loud crack overhead, and he glanced up to see a lump of rock which had just struck a little bulge above him fly to fragments. From which incident he gathered firstly that the court had delivered an adverse verdict rather in advance of Mr, Catskill’s time, and secondly that he was visible from above. He resumed his traverse towards the shelter of the gully with feverish energy.
The gully was better than he expected, a chimney; difficult, he thought, to ascend, but quite practicable downward. It was completely overhung. And perhaps a hundred feet below there was a sort of step in it that gave a quite broad recess, sheltered from above and with room enough for a man to sprawl on it if he wanted to do so. There would be rest for Mr. Barnstaple’s arms, and without any needless delay he clambered down to it and abandoned himself to the delightful sensation of not holding on to anything. He was out of sight and out of reach of his Earthling pursuers.
In the back of the recess was a trickle of water. He drank and began to think of food and to regret that he had not brought some provision with him from the store in the cellar. He might have opened one of those gold-leaf-covered cubes or pocketed a small flask of wine. Wine would be very heartening just now. But it did not do to think of that. He stayed for a long time, as it seemed to him, on this precious shelf, scrutinizing the chimney below very carefully. It seemed quite practicable for a long way down. The sides became very smooth, but they seemed close enough together to get down with his back against one side and his feet against the other.
He looked at his wrist-watch. It was still not nine o’clock in the morning—it was about ten minutes to nine. He had been called by Ridley before half-past five. At half-past six he had been handing out breakfast in the courtyard. Serpentine and Cedar must have appeared about eight o’clock. In about ten minutes Serpentine had been murdered. Then the flight and the pursuit. How quickly things had happened! …
He had all day before him. He would resume his descent at half-past nine. Until then he would rest… . It was absurd to feel hungry yet… .
