Latest / Classic Adventure Books Library / 15 - Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey

Transcript

15 - Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey · Classic Adventure Books Library

• 0:00
  Chapter fifteen. The guards at the silver Gateway, What they were like our
• 0:05
  reception by them? I make a wonderful discovery the world's first telephone. Bulgar,
• 0:11
  and I succeed in making friends with these strangers. A brief description of
• 0:15
  the pseudopsies, that is, make believe eyes or the former folk, that
• 0:20
  is, aunt people. How a blind man may read your writing? O,
• 0:26
  Great don Fu, Master of all masters, What do I not owe
• 0:29
  THEE for having made known unto me the existence of this wonderful world within a
• 0:34
  world? Would that I had been a worker in metal, I would not
• 0:37
  have passed the glorious portal at which I had halted, without having set in
• 0:41
  deep intaglio upon its silver columns the full name of the most glorious scholar whom
• 0:47
  the world has ever known. Bulgar had warned me that this gateway was guarded,
• 0:52
  and therefore I entered it cautiously, taking care to peer into the dark
• 0:56
  corners, lest I might be a target for some invisible enemy to hurl a
• 1:00
  weapon. No sooner had I passed the gateway than three curious little beings of
• 1:04
  about my own height threw themselves swiftly and silently across the pathway. They wore
• 1:10
  short jackets, knee breeches, and leggings reaching to their ankles, but no
• 1:15
  hats or shoes, and their clothes were profusely decorated with beautiful silver buttons.
• 1:19
  Their hands and feet and heads seemed much too large for their little bodies and
• 1:23
  pipe stemy legs, and gave them an uncanny and browny look, which was
• 1:29
  greatly increased by the staring and glassy expression of their large round eyes. When
• 1:34
  I first caught sight of them, they had hold of hands, but now
• 1:38
  they stood, each with his pair stretched out toward Bulgar and me, waving
• 1:42
  them strangely in the air and agitating their long fingers as if they were endeavoring
• 1:48
  to set a spell upon us. I imagined that I could feel a sensation
• 1:52
  of drowsiness creeping over me, and made haste to call out, Knie.
• 1:56
  Good people do not strive to set a spell upon me. I am the
• 2:00
  illustrious explorer from the upper world, Sebastian von Trump, and come to you
• 2:05
  with most peaceful intent. But they paid no heed to my words, merely
• 2:08
  advancing a few inches and with outstretched hands, continued to beat and claw the
• 2:13
  air, pausing only to signal to each other by touching each other's hands or
• 2:17
  different parts of each other's bodies. I was deeply perplexed by their actions,
• 2:22
  and took a step or two forward, when instantly they fell back the same
• 2:25
  distance. All men are brothers, I exclaimed in a loud tone, and
• 2:30
  carry the same shaped hearts in their breasts. Why do you fear me?
• 2:34
  You are thrice my number in your own home. I pray you stand fast
• 2:38
  and speak to me. As I was pronouncing these words, they kept jerking
• 2:42
  their heads back, as if the sound of my voice were smiting them in
• 2:45
  the face. It was very strange. Suddenly one of them drew from his
• 2:49
  pocket a ball of silken cord, and deathly, unrolling it, tossed one
• 2:53
  end toward me. It flew directly towards me, for its end was weighted
• 2:58
  with a thin disk of polish silver, as was the end retained in the
• 3:01
  hand of the thrower. His next move was to open his jacket and apparently
• 3:06
  press his disc against his bare body, right over his heart. I made
• 3:09
  haste to do the same with mine, holding it firmly in place. This
• 3:14
  done, he retreated a step or two until the silver cord had been drawn
• 3:17
  quite taut. Then he paused and stood for several instants without moving a muscle,
• 3:23
  after which he passed the disk to one of his companions, who,
• 3:27
  having pressed it against his heart, in turn passed it to the third of
• 3:30
  the group. With the quickness of thought, the truth now burst upon me.
• 3:34
  The three brownie like creatures in front of me were not only blind,
• 3:38
  but they were deaf and dumb. The one sense upon which they relied,
• 3:40
  and which in them was of most marvelous keenness, was the sense of feeling.
• 3:46
  The strange motions of their hands and fingers, so much like the beating
• 3:49
  and waving of an insects feelers were simply to intercept and measure the vibrations of
• 3:53
  the air set in motion by the movements of my body. Their large round
• 3:59
  eyes too, But the sense of feeling, but so wondrously acute was it
• 4:02
  that it was almost like the power of sight, enabling them, by the
• 4:06
  vibration of the air upon the balls, to tell exactly how near a moving
• 4:11
  object is to them. Their purpose in throwing the silken cord and silver dish
• 4:15
  to me was by measuring the beating of my heart and comparing it with their
• 4:19
  own to determine whether I was human like them. Judge of my astonishment,
• 4:25
  dear friends, upon seeing one of their number point to the silver disk,
• 4:28
  and by means of sign language, give me to understand that they wanted to
• 4:31
  feel the heart of the living creature in my company. Stooping down, I
• 4:35
  hastened to gratify their curiosity by applying it over my dear Bulgar's heart. At
• 4:41
  once. There was an expression of most comical amazement depicted on their faces as
• 4:46
  they passed the disk from one to the other and pressed it against different parts
• 4:49
  of their bodies, now against their breasts, now against their cheeks, and
• 4:54
  even against their closed eyelids. Of course, I knew that their amazement proceeded
• 4:59
  from the rapid beating of Bulger's heart, and I enjoyed their childlike surprise very
• 5:03
  much. All expression of fear now vanished from their faces, and I was
• 5:08
  delighted with the look of sweet temper and good humor that played about their features.
• 5:13
  Slowly and on tiptoe, they drew nearer to Bulgar and mean, and
• 5:16
  for several minutes amused themselves mightily by running their long, flexible fingers hither and
• 5:21
  thither over our bodies. It did not take to belong to discover that I
• 5:26
  was, to all intents and purposes, a creature of their own kind.
• 5:29
  But not so with Bulgar. Their round faces became seamed and lined with wonder
• 5:33
  as they made themselves acquainted with his to them strange build and ever and anon.
• 5:40
  As they felt him over would they pause, and, in lightning like
• 5:44
  motions of their fingers on each other's hands and arms and faces, exchanged thoughts
• 5:48
  as to the wonderful being which had entered the portal of their city. No
• 5:51
  doubt your dying of impatience, dear friends, to be told something more definite
• 5:56
  concerning these strange people among whom I had fallen. Well know then that their
• 6:01
  existence had been darkly hinted at in the manuscript of the great Master Don Fum.
• 6:06
  I say darkly hinted at. For you must bear in mind that Don
• 6:10
  Fum never visited this world within a world, that his wonderful wisdom enabled him
• 6:14
  to reason it all out without seeing it, just as the great naturalists of
• 6:18
  our day, upon finding a single tooth belonging to some gigantic creature which lived
• 6:25
  thousands of years ago, are able to draw complete pictures of him. While
• 6:29
  these curious beings whose city Bulgar and I had entered are called by two different
• 6:32
  names in Don Fum's Wonderful In some places he speaks of them as the pseudopsies
• 6:39
  or make believe eyes, and in others as the former folk or ant people.
• 6:44
  Either name was most appropriate, their large, round, clear eyes being
• 6:47
  really make believe ones, for as I have told you, they have absolutely
• 6:51
  no sense of sight. While on the other hand, the fact that they
• 6:56
  were deaf, dumb, and blind, and lived in underground homes made them
• 7:00
  well entitled to the name of ant people. In a few moments, the
• 7:02
  three pseudopsies had succeeded in teaching me the main principles of their pressure language,
• 7:08
  so that I was, to their great delight, enabled to answer a number
• 7:12
  of their questions. But think not, dear friends, that these very wise
• 7:15
  and active little folks, skilled in so many arts, have no other language
• 7:18
  than one consisting of pressures of different degree made by their fingertips upon each other's
• 7:24
  bodies. They had a most beautiful language, so rich that they were able
• 7:28
  to express the most difficult thoughts, to give utterance to the most varied emotions.
• 7:32
  In short, a language quite equal of ours in all respects save one.
• 7:38
  It contained absolutely no word that could give them the faintest notion what color
• 7:43
  was. This is not to be wondered at, for they themselves neither had
• 7:46
  nor could have even the faintest conception of what I meant by color, So
• 7:50
  that when I attempted to make them understand that our stars were bright points in
• 7:55
  the sky, they asked me if they would prick my finger if I should
• 7:58
  press upon one of them. But you, doubtless are anxious to know how
• 8:01
  the former folk can possibly make use of any other language than that of pressures.
• 8:05
  Well, I will tell you. Every pseudopsy carried at his girdle a
• 8:09
  little blank book, if I may so term it, the covers being of
• 8:11
  thin silver plates, variously carved and chased as the owner's taste may prompt.
• 8:16
  The leaves of this book also consist of thin sheets of silver, not much
• 8:20
  thicker than our tinfoil. Also fastened to his girdle by a silken cord,
• 8:26
  hangs a silver pen, or rather a stylus. Now, when a pseudopsy
• 8:30
  wishes to say something to one of his people, something too difficult to express
• 8:33
  by pressures of the finger tips, he simply turns over a leaf of the
• 8:37
  silver against the inside of either cover, both of which are slightly padded,
• 8:43
  and taking up his stylus, proceeds to write out what he wishes to say.
• 8:46
  And this done, he deftly tears the leaf out and hands it to
• 8:50
  his companion, who, taking it and turning it over, runs the wonderfully
• 8:54
  sensitive tips of his fingers over the raised writing, and reads it with the
• 8:58
  greyest ease. Only orse, he reads from right to left instead of from
• 9:01
  left to right as it was written. So hereafter, when I repeat my
• 9:05
  conversations with the form of folk, you will understand how they were conducted.
• 9:11
  End of Chapter fifteen.