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15 - Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey · Thrilling Adventures - Daily

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