Читать книгу The Day the World Ended - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 19

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This was the Devil’s Elbow—so called in my map; and the only point, I believed, from which one might overlook the heights of Felsenweir. I halted, a little breathless. My pipe had gone out, and I relighted it before consulting a pocket compass which I had brought with me.

“A quarter north of northeast by east,” was my note.

The naked rock offered no facilities for comfortable observation. But since my purpose was to study the distant ruins at some length, I could not possibly stand upright.

Being now unpleasantly warm, I removed my coat, folded it to form a cushion, and, having the compass before me, lay prone, my elbows resting on the folded coat. I focussed the Zeiss glasses on a hazy blue crest lying northeast by east and a quarter north of the Devil’s Elbow.

Forest climbed its slopes densely ranked. Gaps there were, here and there, and naked rock jutting out. But the height was warmly clothed almost to its summit.

At one point—as I had calculated—no verdure protected the ruins from observation. I could see the upper walls, and they appeared to be in a fair state of preservation; I could see parts of the main building; and I could see very clearly the high keep, and a tower, like a minaret, which rose above it.

Felsenweir had been a mighty hold in days when marauding barons had ruled the Rhineland.

Carefully, I adjusted focusses. That curious blue haze which overhangs the Black Forest dispersed magically through ever lighter shades as I turned the threads. At last, I secured a sharp, clear view. Intervening miles were spanned by the lenses. I could count the embrasures on the upper battlements and pick out iron bars of a window high in the frowning keep.

Except that the place seemed to be in wonderfully good preservation, I was unable at first to detect anything confirming my theory—viz.: that Felsenweir was inhabited.

But, with intervals of rest, since the eye strain of close watching was considerable, I continued to study the distant ruin.

I had hoped for no more than a glimpse of a moving figure. And this was what I presently saw—a moving figure. But never can I forget the figure which came into view....

The winged horror of the graveyard had turned me cold: I had had a desperate fight with myself to conquer panic on that occasion. The Voice in the night would disturb my dreams while memory remained. But the thing I saw now on the battlements of Felsenweir produced an almost sharper dread.

I saw it passing the embrasures of the upper battlements, and I counted, mentally, “One—Two—Three,” and so on. It reached and passed the last one visible to me, and I lowered the glasses.

So clear are recollections of this extraordinary spectacle I can even remember that I closed my eyes for a moment, in an endeavour to concentrate on facts—to arrange my ideas in some sort of harmony with what I had seen. I told myself that I lived in the Twentieth Century, not in the Tenth.

A tall man, encased from head to foot in black armour, and carrying a heavy mace, had slowly patrolled the walls of Felsenweir! ...

My pipe lay near my hand. I stared down at it dazedly. It seemed to have lost significance—to belong to another age. I raised the glasses again. I became an impersonal intelligence, belonging to no generation, but merely a time-detached spectator, watching—watching....

Heedless, now, of eye strain, I waited, for five, seven, ten minutes; and then:

A second man at arms crossed the battlements!

I think, as I watched him disappear, I was nearer to doubting my own sanity than I had ever been in my life. The giant bat. Had I really seen it? The Voice in the night. Had I really heard it? ... “You have two days ...”

Again I dropped the glasses, and:

“Am I mad?” I said aloud.

“Not a bit of it!” a strident voice replied.

Stiff as I was from crouching so long upon the rock, that voice had me on my feet in three seconds. I twisted around.

Not six feet away, an unlighted cigar hanging from his mouth, Aldous P. Kluster stood regarding me!

“Don’t get fussed,” he went on quietly. “I’ve got you placed at last. We’re together on this.”