H. Wells - Selected Stories of H. G. Wells

Suddenly he saw, he saw plainly, a new crack leap across a shining green mass, and then across the valley came the sound of it like the shot of a gun that starts a race. The mass was moving now! There was no more time to waste. No more time for pleas and plans.

“Stop!” he cried. “Stop!” and put out his hands as if to thrust back that slow deliberate catastrophe. It is preposterous but he believes he said, “Wait one minute!”

He ran headlong to the little bridge and the gate and rushed down towards the houses, waving his arms and shouting. “The mountain is falling,” he screamed. “The whole mountain is falling upon you all. Medina-saroté! Medina-saroté!”

He clattered to the house of old Yacob and burst in upon the sleepers. He shook them and shouted at them, going from one to the other.

“He’s gone mad again,” they cried aghast at him and even Medina-saroté cowered away from his excitement.

“Come,” he said. “Come. Even now it is falling. The mountain is falling.” And he seized her wrist in a grip of steel. “Come!” he cried so masterfully that in terror she obeyed him.

But outside the house there was a crowd that his shouts and noise had awakened, and a score of men had run out already and assembled outside the house and stood in his way.

“Let me pass,” he cried. “Let me pass. And come with me—up the further slopes there before it is too late.”

“This is too much. This is the last blasphemy,” shrieked one of the elders. “Seize him. Hold him!”

“I tell you the mountain is falling. It is coming down upon you even now as you hold me here.”

“The Wisdom Above us that loves and protects us cannot fall.”

“Listen. That rumbling?”

“There has been rumbling like that before. The Wisdom is warning us. It is because of your blasphemies.”

“And the ground rocking?”

“Brothers cast him out! Cast him out of the valley. We have been foolish to harbour him so long. His sin is more than our Providence can endure.”

“But I tell you the rocks are falling. The whole mountain is coming down. Listen and you can hear the crashing and the rending of them.”

He was aware of a loud hoarse voice intoning through the uproar and drowning his own. “The Wisdom Above loves us. It protects us from all harm. No evil can touch us while the Wisdom is over us. Cast him forth! Cast him forth. Let him take our sins upon him and go!” “Out you go, Bogota,” cried a chorus of voices. “Out you go.”

“Medina-saroté! Come with me. Come out of this place!”

Pedro threw protective arms about his cousin.

“Medina-saroté!” cried Nunez. “Medina-saroté!”

They pushed him, struggling fiercely, up the path towards the boundaries. They showed all the cruelty now of frightened men. For the gathering noise of the advancing rocks dismayed them all. They wanted to out-do each other in repudiating him. They beat at his face with their fists and kicked his shins and ankles and feet. One or two jabbed at him with knives. He could not see Medina-saroté any longer and he could not see the shifting cliffs because of the blows and because of the blood that poured from a cut in his forehead, but the voices about him seemed to fade as the rumbling clatter of falling fragments wove together and rose into a thunderous roar. He shouted weeping for Medina-saroté to escape as they drove him before them.

They thrust him through a little door and flung him out on to a stony slope with a deliberate violence that sent a flock of llamas helter-skelter. He lay like a cast clout. “And there you stay—and starve,” said one. “You and your —seeing. ”

He lifted his head for a last reply.

“I tell you. You will be dead before I am.”

“You fool!” said the one he had fought, and came back to kick him again and again. “Will you never learn reason?” But he turned hastily to join his fellows when Nunez struggled clumsily to his feet.

He stood swaying like a drunken man.

He had no strength in his limbs. He did his best to wipe the blood from his eyes. He looked at the impending mountain-fall, he looked for the high rocky ledge he had noted that morning and then he turned a despairful face to the encircling doom of the valley. But he did not attempt to climb any further away.

“What’s the good of going alone?” he said. “Even if I could, I shall only starve up there.”

And then suddenly he saw Medina-saroté seeking him. She emerged from the little door and she was calling his name. In some manner she had contrived to slip away and come to search for him. “Bogota my darling!” she cried. “What have they done to you? Oh what have they done to you?”

He staggered to meet her, calling her name over and over again.

In another moment her hands were upon his face and she was wiping away the blood and searching softly and skilfully for his cuts and bruises.

“You must stay here now,” she panted. “You must stay here for a time. Until you repent. Until you learn to repent. Why did you behave so madly? Why did you say those horrible blasphemies? You don’t know you say them, but how are they to tell that? If you come back now they will certainly kill you. I will bring you food. Stay here.”

“Neither of us can stay here. Look !”

She drew the air in sharply between her teeth at that horrible word “look” which showed that his madness was still upon him.

“There! That thunder!”

“What is it?”

“A stream of rocks are pouring down by the meadows and it is only the beginning of them. Look at them. Listen anyhow to the drumming and beating of them! What do you think those sounds mean? That and that! Stones! They are bouncing and dancing across the lower meadows by the lake and the waters of the lake are brimming over and rising up to the further houses. Come my darling. Come! Do not question, but come!”

She stood hesitating for a moment. There was a frightful menace now in the storm of sounds that filled the air. Then she crept into his arms. “I am afraid,” she said.

He drew her to him and with a renewal of strength began to climb, guiding her feet. His blood smeared her face and there was no time to remedy that. At first she dragged upon him and then, perceiving the strain she caused, she helped and supported him. She was sobbing but also she obeyed.

He concentrated himself now upon reaching that distant shelf, but presently he had to halt for breath, and then only was he free to look back across the valley.

He saw that the foot of the cliff was sliding now down into the lake, scooping its waters before it towards the remoter houses, and that the cascade of rocks was now swifter and greater. They drove over the ground in leaps and bounds with a frightful suggestion in their movements as though they were hunting victims. They were smashing down trees and bushes and demolishing walls and buildings, and still the main bulk of the creeping mountain, deprived now of its supports, had to gather momentum and fall. It was breaking up as it came down. And now little figures appeared from the houses and ran hither and thither…

For the first time Nunez was glad that Medina-saroté was blind.

“Climb! my darling,” he said. “Climb!”

“I do not understand.”

“Climb!”

A rush of terrified llamas came crowding up past them.

“It is so steep, so steep here. Why are these creatures coming with us?”

“Because they understand. Because they know we are with them. Push through them. Climb.”

With an effect of extreme deliberation that mountain-side hung over the doomed valley. For some tense instants Nunez did not hear a sound. His whole being was concentrated in his eyes. Then came the fall and then a stunning concussion that struck his chest a giant’s blow. Medina-saroté was flung against the rocks and clung to them with clawing hands. Nunez had an instant’s impression of a sea of rocks and earth and fragments of paths and walls and houses, pouring in a swift flood towards him. A spray of wind-driven water bedewed him; they were pelted with mud and broken rock fragments, the wave of debris surged and receded a little and abruptly came still, and then colossal pillars of mist and dust rose up solemnly and deliberately and mounted towering overhead and unfolded and rolled together about them until they were in an impenetrable stinging fog. Silence fell again upon the world and the Valley of the Blind was hidden from him for evermore.