CHAPTER XXVI
The Wooing of Lakla
I HAD SLEPT soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in
the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O'Keefe
and myself after that culminating experience of crowded,
nerve-racking hours - the facing of the Three.
Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I
heard Larry's voice:
"They look like birds." Evidently he was thinking of the
Three; a silence - then: "Yes, they look like BIRDS - and they
look, and it's meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they
look like LIZARDS" - and another silence - "they look like
some sort of gods, and, by the good sword-arm of Brian
Boru, they look human, too! And it's NONE of them they are
either, so what - what the - what the sainted St. Bridget are
they?" Another short silence, and then in a tone of awed
and absolute conviction: "That's it, sure! That's what they
are - it all hangs in - they couldn't be anything else - "
He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across
the head.
"Wake up!" shouted Larry. "Wake up, ye seething caldron
of fossilized superstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man
of scientific unwisdom!"
Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a
moment with quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with
laughter, and my anger was swept away.
"Doc," he said, very seriously, after this, "I know who the
Three are!"
"Yes?" I queried, with studied sarcasm.
"Yes?" he mimicked. "Yes! Ye - ye" He paused under
the menace of my look, grinned. "Yes, I know," he continued. "They're of the Tuatha De, the old ones, the great
people of Ireland, THAT'S who they are!"
I knew, of course, of the Tuatha De Danann, the tribes of
the god Danu, the half-legendary, half-historical clan who
found their home in Erin some four thousand years before
the Christian era, and who have left so deep an impress upon
the Celtic mind and its myths.
"Yes," said Larry again, "the Tuatha De - the Ancient
Ones who had spells that could compel Mananan, who is the
spirit of all the seas, an' Keithor, who is the god of all green
living things, an' even Hesus, the unseen god, whose pulse is
the pulse of all the firmament; yes, an' Orchil too, who sits
within the earth an' weaves with the shuttle of mystery and
her three looms of birth an' life an' death - even Orchil
would weave as they commanded!"
He was silent - then:
"They are of them - the mighty ones - why else would I
have bent my knee to them as I would have to the spirit of
my dead mother? Why else would Lakla, whose gold-brown
hair is the hair of Eilidh the Fair, whose mouth is the sweet
mouth of Deirdre, an' whose soul walked with mine ages
agone among the fragrant green myrtle of Erin, serve them?"
he whispered, eyes full of dream.
"Have you any idea how they got here?" I asked, not
unreasonably.
"I haven't thought about that," he replied somewhat testily. "But at once, me excellent man o' wisdom, a number
occur to me. One of them is that this little party of three
might have stopped here on their way to Ireland, an' for good
reasons of their own decided to stay a while; an' another is
that they might have come here afterward, havin' got wind
of what those rats out there were contemplatin', and have
stayed on the job till the time was ripe to save Ireland from
'em; the rest of the world, too, of course," he added magnanimously, "but Ireland in particular. And do any of those
reasons appeal to ye?"
I shook my head.
"Well, what do you think?" he asked wearily.
"I think," I said cautiously, "that we face an evolution of
highly intelligent beings from ancestral sources radically removed from those through which mankind ascended. These
half-human, highly developed batrachians they call the Akka
prove that evolution in these caverned spaces has certainly
pursued one different path than on earth. The Englishman,
Wells, wrote an imaginative and very entertaining book concerning an invasion of earth by Martians, and he made his
Martians enormously specialized cuttlefish. There was nothing inherently improbable in Wells' choice. Man is the ruling
animal of earth today solely by reason of a series of accidents; under another series spiders or ants, or even elephants, could have become the dominant race.
"I think," I said, even more cautiously, "that the race to
which the Three belong never appeared on earth's surface;
that their development took place here, unhindered through
aeons. And if this be true, the structure of their brains, and
therefore all their reactions, must be different from ours.
Hence their knowledge and command of energies unfamiliar
to us - and hence also the question whether they may not
have an entirely different sense of values, of justice - and
that is rather terrifying," I concluded.
Larry shook his head.
"That last sort of knocks your argument, Doc," he said.
"They had sense of justice enough to help ME out - and certainly they know love - for I saw the way they looked at
Lakla; and sorrow - for there was no mistaking that in their
faces.
"No," he went on. "I hold to my own idea. They're of the
Old People. The little leprechaun knew his way here, an'
I'll bet it was they who sent the word. An' if the O'Keefe banshee comes here - which save the mark! - I'll bet she'll drop
in on the Silent Ones for a social visit before she an' her clan
get busy. Well, it'll make her feel more at home, the good old
body. No, Doc, no," he concluded, "I'm right; it all fits in too
well to be wrong."
I made a last despairing attempt.
"Is there anything anywhere in Ireland that would indicate
that the Tuatha De ever looked like the Three?" I asked -
and again I had spoken most unfortunately.
"Is there?" he shouted. "Is there? By the kilt of Cormack
MacCormack, I'm glad ye reminded me. It was worryin' me
a little meself. There was Daghda, who could put on the
head of a great boar an' the body of a giant fish and cleave
the waves an' tear to pieces the birlins of any who came
against Erin; an' there was Rinn - "
How many more of the metamorphoses of the Old People
I might have heard, I do not know, for the curtains parted
and in walked Rador.
"You have rested well," he smiled, "I can see. The handmaiden bade me call you. You are to eat with her in her
garden."
Down long corridors we trod and out upon a gardened
terrace as beautiful as any of those of Yolara's city; bowered, blossoming, fragrant, set high upon the cliffs beside the
domed castle. A table, as of milky jade, was spread at one
corner, but the Golden Girl was not there. A little path ran
on and up, hemmed in by the mass of verdure. I looked at
it longingly; Rador saw the glance, interpreted it, and led me
up the stepped sharp slope into a rock embrasure.
Here I was above the foliage, and everywhere the view
was clear. Below me stretched the incredible bridge, with the
frog people hurrying back and forth upon it. A pinnacle at
my side hid the abyss. My eyes followed the cavern ledge.
Above it the rock rose bare, but at the ends of the semicircular strand a luxuriant vegetation began, stretching from
the crimson shores back into far distances. Of browns and
reds and yellows, like an autumn forest, was the foliage,
with here and there patches of dark-green, as of conifers.
Five miles or more, on each side, the forests swept, and then
were lost to sight in the haze.
I turned and faced an immensity of crimson waters, unbroken, a true sea, if ever there was one. A breeze blew -
the first real wind I had encountered in the hidden places;
under it the surface, that had been as molten lacquer, rippled
and dimpled. Little waves broke with a spray of rose-pearls
and rubies. The giant Medusae drifted - stately, luminous
kaleidoscopic elfin moons.
Far down, peeping around a jutting tower of the cliff, I saw
dipping with the motion of the waves a floating garden. The
flowers, too, were luminous - indeed sparkling - gleaming
brilliants of scarlet and vermilions lighter than the flood on
which they lay, mauves and odd shades of reddish-blue.
They gleamed and shone like a little lake of jewels.
Rador broke in upon my musings.
"Lakla comes! Let us go down."
It was a shy Lakla who came slowly around the end of the
path and, blushing furiously, held her hands out to Larry.
And the Irishman took them, placed them over his heart,
kissed them with a tenderness that had been lacking in the
half-mocking, half-fierce caresses he had given the priestess.
She blushed deeper, holding out the tapering fingers - then
pressed them to her own heart.
"I like the touch of your lips, Larry," she whispered.
"They warm me here" - she pressed her heart again - "and
they send little sparkles of light through me." Her brows
tilted perplexedly, accenting the nuance of diablerie, delicate and fascinating, that they cast upon the flower face.
"Do you?" whispered the O'Keefe fervently. "Do you,
Lakla?" He bent toward her. She caught the amused glance
of Rador; drew herself aside half-haughtily.
"Rador," she said, "is it not time that you and the strong
one, Olaf, were setting forth?"
"Truly it is, handmaiden," he answered respectfully
enough - yet with a current of laughter under his words.
"But as you know the strong one, Olaf, wished to see his
friends here before we were gone - and he comes even now,"
he added, glancing down the pathway, along which came
striding the Norseman.
As he faced us I saw that a transformation had been
wrought in him. Gone was the pitiful seeking, and gone too
the just as pitiful hope. The set face softened as he looked at
the Golden Girl and bowed low to her. He thrust a hand to
O'Keefe and to me.
"There is to be battle," he said. "I go with Rador to call
the armies of these frog people. As for me - Lakla has
spoken. There is no hope for - for mine Helma in life, but
there is hope that we destroy the Shining Devil and give
mine Helma peace. And with that I am well content, ja! Well
content!" He gripped our hands again. "We will fight!" he
muttered. "Ja! And I will have vengeance!" The sternness
returned; and with a salute Rador and he were gone.
Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.
"Not even the Silent Ones can heal those the Shining One
has taken," she said. "He asked me - and it was better that
I tell him. It is part of the Three's - PUNISHMENT - but of that
you will soon learn," she went on hurriedly. "Ask me no
questions now of the Silent Ones. I thought it better for Olaf
to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mind other
than sorrow upon which to feed."
Up the path came five of the frog-women, bearing platters and ewers. Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were
tinkling; their middles covered with short kirtles of woven
cloth studded with the sparkling ornaments.
And here let me say that if I have given the impression
that the Akka are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Froglike they are, and hence my phrase for them - but as unlike
the frog, as we know it, as man is unlike the chimpanzee.
Springing, I hazard, from the stegocephalia, the ancestor of
the frogs, these batrachians followed a different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as man did his
from the four-footed folk.
The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were froglike, but the highly developed brain had set upon the head
and shape of it vital differences. The forehead, for instance,
was not low, flat, and retreating - its frontal arch was well
defined. The head was, in a sense, shapely, and with the
females the great horny carapace that stood over it like a
fantastic helmet was much modified, as were the spurs that
were so formidable in the male; colouration was different
also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them
their crouching gait - but I wander from my subject.1
1 The Akka are viviparous. The female produces progeny at fiveyear intervals, never more than two at a time. They are monogamous,
like certain of our own Ranidae. Pending my monograph upon what
little I had time to learn of their interesting habits and customs, the
curious will find instruction and entertainment in Brandes and Schvenichen's Brutpflege der Schwanzlosen Batrachier, p. 395; and Lilian V.
Sampson's Unusual Modes of Breeding among Anura, Amer. Nat.
xxxiv., 1900. - W. T. G.
They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with
interest.
"You surely have those things well trained, Lakla," he
said.
"Things!" The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing with indignation. "You call my Akka things!"
"Well," said Larry, a bit taken aback, "what do you call them?"
"My Akka are a PEOPLE," she retorted. "As much a people
as your race or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have
speech and arts, and they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think them beautiful, Larry, BEAUTIFUL!"
She stamped her foot. "And you call them - THINGS!"
Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque fashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from
babyhood, they were not strange, at all. Why shouldn't she
think them beautiful? The same thought must have struck
O'Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.
"I think them beautiful, too, Lakla," he said remorsefully.
"It's my not knowing your tongue too well that traps me.
TRULY, I think them beautiful - I'd tell them so, if I knew
their talk."
Lakla dimpled, laughed - spoke to the attendants in that
strange speech that was unquestionably a language; they
bridled, looked at O'Keefe with fantastic coquetry, cracked
and boomed softly among themselves.
"They say they like YOU better than the men of Muria,"
laughed Lakla.
"Did I ever think I'd be swapping compliments with lady
frogs!" he murmured to me. "Buck up, Larry - keep your
eyes on the captive Irish princess!" he muttered to himself.
"Rador goes to meet one of the ladala who is slipping
through with news," said the Golden Girl as we addressed
ourselves to the food. "Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to
muster the Akka - for there will be battle, and we must prepare. Nak," she added, "is he who went before me when you
were dancing with Yolara, Larry." She stole a swift, mischievous glance at him. "He is headman of all the Akka."
"Just what forces can we muster against them when they
come, darlin'?" said Larry.
"Darlin'?" - the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the
word - "what's that?"
"It's a little word that means Lakla," he answered. "It
does - that is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means
Larry."
"I like that word," mused Lakla.
"You can even say Larry darlin'!" suggested O'Keefe.
"Larry darlin'!" said Lakla. "When they come we shall
have first of all my Akka - "
"Can they fight, mavourneen?" interrupted Larry.
"Can they fight! My Akka!" Again her eyes flashed. "They
will fight to the last of them - with the spears that give the
swift rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those
Saddu there - " She pointed through a rift in the foliage
across which, on the surface of the sea, was floating one of
the moon globes - and now I know why Rador had warned
Larry against a plunge there. "With spears and clubs and
with teeth and nails and spurs - they are a strong and brave
people, Larry - darlin', and though they hurl the Keth at
them, it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while
they are passing into the nothingness!"
"And have we none of the Keth?" he asked.
"No" - she shook her head - "none of their weapons have
we here, although it was - it was the Ancient Ones who
shaped them."
"But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?" I cried. "Surely
they can tell - "
"No," she said slowly. "No - there is something you must
know - and soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You, especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom."
"Then," said Larry, "we have the Akka; and we have the
four men of us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges - an' - an' the power of the Three - but what
about the Shining One, Fireworks - "
"I do not know." Again the indecision that had been in
her eyes when Yolara had launched her defiance crept back.
"The Shining One is strong - and he has his - slaves!"
"Well, we'd better get busy good and quick!" the O'Keefe's
voice rang. But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would
pursue the matter no further. The trouble fled from her eyes
- they danced.
"Larry darlin'?" she murmured. "I like the touch of your
lips - "
"You do?" he whispered, all thought flying of anything
but the beautiful, provocative face so close to his. "Then,
acushla, you're goin' to get acquainted with 'em! Turn your
head, Doc!" he said.
And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by
an interested, soft outburst of gentle boomings from the
serving frog-maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla's head
lay on the Irishman's shoulder, the golden eyes misty sunpools of love and adoration; and the O'Keefe, a new look of
power and strength upon his clear-cut features, was gazing
down into them with that look which rises only from the
heart touched for the first time with that true, all-powerful
love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the real music
of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is
stronger than death itself, immortal as the high gods and the
true soul of all that mystery we call life.
Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry's head,
kissed him between the eyes, drew herself with a trembling
little laugh from his embrace.
"The future Mrs. Larry O'Keefe, Goodwin," said Larry to
me a little unsteadily.
I took their hands - and Lakla kissed me!
She turned to the booming - smiling - frog-maids; gave
them some command, for they filed away down the path.
Suddenly I felt, well, a little superfluous.
"If you don't mind," I said, "I think I'll go up the path
there again and look about."
But they were so engrossed with each other that they did
not even hear me - so I walked away, up to the embrasure
where Rador had taken me. The movement of the batrachians over the bridge had ceased. Dimly at the far end I
could see the cluster of the garrison. My thoughts flew back
to Lakla and to Larry.
What was to be the end?
If we won, if we were able to pass from this place, could
she live in our world? A product of these caverns with their
atmosphere and light that seemed in some subtle way to be
both food and drink - how would she react to the unfamiliar
foods and air and light of outer earth? Further, here so far
as I was able to discover, there were no malignant bacilli -
what immunity could Lakla have then to those microscopic
evils without, which only long ages of sickness and death
have bought for us a modicum of protection? I began to be
oppressed. Surely they bad been long enough by themselves.
I went down the path.
I heard Larry.
"It's a green land, mavourneen. And the sea rocks and
dimples around it - blue as the heavens, green as the isle
itself, and foam horses toss their white manes, and the great
clean winds blow over it, and the sun shines down on it like
your eyes, acushla - "
"And are you a king of Ireland, Larry darlin'?" Thus
Lakla -
But enough!
At last we turned to go - and around the corner of the path
I caught another glimpse of what I have called the lake of
jewels. I pointed to it.
"Those are lovely flowers, Lakla," I said. "I have never
seen anything like them in the place from whence we come."
She followed my pointing finger - laughed.
"Come," she said, "let me show you them."
She ran down an intersecting way, we following; came out
of it upon a little ledge close to the brink, three feet or more
I suppose about it. The Golden Girl's voice rang out in a
high-pitched, tremulous, throbbing call.
The lake of jewels stirred as though a breeze had passed
over it; stirred, shook, and then began to move swiftly, a
shimmering torrent of shining flowers down upon us! She
called again, the movement became more rapid; the gem
blooms streamed closer - closer, wavering, shifting, winding
- at our very feet. Above them hovered a little radiant mist.
The Golden Girl leaned over; called softly, and up from the
sparkling mass shot a green vine whose heads were five
flowers of flaming ruby - shot up, flew into her hand and
coiled about the white arm, its quintette of lambent blossoms - regarding us!
It was the thing Lakla had called the Yekta; that with
which she had threatened the priestess; the thing that carried
the dreadful death - and the Golden Girl was handling it
like a rose!
Larry swore - I looked at the thing more closely. It was a
hydroid, a development of that strange animal-vegetable
that, sometimes almost microscopic, waves in the sea depths
like a cluster of flowers paralyzing its prey with the mysterious force that dwells in its blossom heads!1
1 The Yekta of the Crimson Sea, are as extraordinary developments
of hydroid forms as the giant Medusae, of which, of course, they are
not too remote cousins. The closest resemblances to them in outer
water forms are among the Gymnoblastic Hydroids, notably Clavetella
prolifera, a most interesting ambulatory form of six tentacles. Almost
every bather in Southern waters, Northern too, knows the pain that
contact with certain "jelly fish" produces. The Yekta's development
was prodigious and, to us, monstrous. It secretes in its five heads an
almost incredibly swiftly acting poison which I suspect, for I had no
chance to verify the theory, destroys the entire nervous system to the
accompaniment of truly infernal agony; carrying at the same time the
illusion that the torment stretches through infinities of time. Both ether
and nitrous oxide gas produce in the majority this sensation of time
extension, without of course the pain symptom. What Lakla called
the Yekta kiss is I imagine about as close to the orthodox idea of Hell
as can be conceived. The secret of her control over them I had no
opportunity of learning in the rush of events that followed. Knowledge
of the appalling effects of their touch came, she told me, from those
few "who had been kissed so lightly" that they recovered. Certainly
nothing, not even the Shining One, was dreaded by the Murians as
these were - W. T. G.
"Put it down, Lakla," the distress in O'Keefe's voice was
deep. Lakla laughed mischievously, caught the real fear for
her in his eyes; opened her hand, gave another faint call -
and back it flew to its fellows.
"Why, it wouldn't hurt me, Larry!" she expostulated.
"They know me!"
"Put it down!" he repeated hoarsely.
She sighed, gave another sweet, prolonged call. The lake
of gems - rubies and amethysts, mauves and scarlet-tinged
blues - wavered and shook even as it had before - and swept
swiftly back to that place whence she had drawn them!
Then, with Larry and Lakla walking ahead, white arm
about his brown neck; the O'Keefe still expostulating, the
handmaiden laughing merrily, we passed through her bower
to the domed castle.
Glancing through a cleft I caught sight again of the far end
of the bridge; noted among the clustered figures of its garrison of the frog-men a movement, a flashing of green fire
like marshlights on spear tips; wondered idly what it was,
and then, other thoughts crowding in, followed along, head
bent, behind the pair who had found in what was Olaf's hell,
their true paradise.
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