"What is it that impels a mortal towards this fruit?"

"It is curious," I said; "nothing more."

"As for that," said he, "it is not curious at all; the seed of the lobelia of upper earth is more curious, because, while it is as exquisitely corrugated, it is also microscopically small. In the second place you err when you say it is simply curious, 'nothing more,' for no mortal ever yet pa.s.sed that bowl without doing exactly as you have done.

The vein of curiosity, were it that alone that impels you, could not but have an exception."

Then he cracked the sh.e.l.l of the fruit by striking it on the stony floor, and carefully opened the sh.e.l.l, handing me one of the halves filled with a green fluid. As he did so he spoke the single word, "Drink," and I did as directed. He stood upright before me, and as I looked him in the face he seemingly, without a reason, struck off into a dissertation, apparently as distinct from our line of thought as a disconnected subject could be, as follows:

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HANDING ME ONE OF THE HALVES, HE SPOKE THE SINGLE WORD, DRINK."]

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

DRUNKENNESS.--THE DRINKS OF MAN.

"Intemperance has been the vice of every people, and is prevalent in all climes, notwithstanding that intoxicants, properly employed, may serve humanity's highest aims. Beginning early in the history of a people, the disease increases with the growth of a nation, until, at last, unless the knife is used, civilization perishes. A lowly people becomes more depraved as the use of liquor increases; a cultivated people pa.s.ses backward into barbarism with the depravities that come from dissipation.

Here nations meet, and individuals sink to a common level. No drinking man is strong enough to say, 'I can not become dissipated;' no nation is rich and cultivated enough to view the debauch of its people without alarm.

"The disgusting habit of the drunken African finds its counterpart in the lascivious wine-bibber of aristocratic society. To picture the indecencies of society, that may be charged to debauchery, when the Grecian and Roman empires were at the height of greatness, would obscure the orgies of the barbarous African, and make preferable the brutality of the drunken American Indian. Intemperance brings men to the lowest level, and holds its power over all lands and all nations."

"Did the aborigines know how to make intoxicants, and were barbarians intemperate before contact with civilized nations?"

"Yes."

"But I have understood that drunkenness is a vice inherent only in civilized people; are not you mistaken?"

"No. Every clime, unless it be the far North where men are scarcely more than animals, furnishes intoxicants, and all people use them. I will tell you part of this record of nations.

"The Nubians make a barley beer which they call bouze, and also a wine, from the palm tree. The savages of Africa draw the clear, sweet juice of the palm oil tree into a gourd, in the morning, and by night it becomes a violent intoxicant. The natives of the Malayan Archipelago ferment and drink the sap of the flower stems of the cocoanut. The Tartar tribes make an intoxicating drink from mare's milk, called koomis. In South America the natives drink a vile compound, called cana, distilled from sugar cane; and in the Sandwich Islands, the shrub kava supplies the intoxicant kava-kava, drunk by all the inhabitants, from king to slave, and mother to child. In the heart of Africa, cannibal tribes make legyce of a cereal, and indulge in wild orgies over their barbaric cup. In North America the Indians, before Columbus discovered America, made an intoxicating drink of the sap of the maple tree. The national drink of the Mexicans is pulque, a beastly intoxicant, prepared from the Agave Americana. Mead is an alcoholic drink, made of honey, and used in many countries. In China wine was indulged in from the earliest day, and in former times, had it not been for the influence of their philosophers, especially Confucius, who foresaw the end, the Chinese nation would have perished from drunkenness. Opium, that fearful enslaver of millions of human beings, is in every sense a narcotic intoxicant, and stands conspicuous as an agent, capable of being either a friend, a companion, or a master, as man permits. History fails to indicate the date of its introduction to humanity. In South America the leaf of the cocoa plant is a stimulant scarcely less to be dreaded than opium. The juice of a species of asclepias produces the intoxicant soma, used once by the Brahmins, not only as a drink, but also in sacrificial and religious ceremonies. Many different flavored liquors made of palm, cocoanuts, sugar, pepper, honey, spices, etc., were used by native Hindoos, and as intoxicants have been employed from the earliest days in India. The Vedic people were fearfully dissipated, and page after page of that wonderful sacred book, the Rigs-Veda, is devoted to the habit of drunkenness. The worst cla.s.ses of drunkards of India used Indian hemp to make bhang, or combined the deadly narcotic stramonium with arrack, a native beer, to produce a poisonous intoxicant. In that early day the inhabitants of India and China were fearfully depraved drunkards, and but for the reforms inst.i.tuted by their wise men, must have perished as a people. Parahaoma, or 'homa,' is an intoxicant made from a lost plant that is described as having yellow blossoms, used by the ancient dissolute Persians from the day of Zoroaster. Cannabis sativa produces an intoxicant that in Turkey is known as hadschy, in Arabia and India as hashish, and to the Hottentots as dacha, and serves as a drunkard's food in other lands. The fruit of the juniper produces gin, and the fermented juice of the grape, or malt liquors, in all civilized countries are the favorite intoxicants, their origin being lost in antiquity. Other substances, such as palm, apples, dates, and pomegranates have also been universally employed as drink producers.

"Go where you will, man's tendency seems to be towards the bowl that inebriates, and yet it is not the use but the abuse of intoxicants that man has to dread. Could he be temperate, exhilarants would befriend."

"But here," I replied, "in this underground land, where food is free, and existence possible without an effort, this shameful vice has no existence. Here there is no incentive to intemperance, and even though man were present with his inherent pa.s.sion for drink, he could not find means to gratify his appet.i.te."

"Ah," my guide replied, "that is an error. Why should this part of the earth prove an exception to the general rule? Nature always supplies the means, and man's instinct teaches him how to prepare an intoxicant. So long as man is human his pa.s.sions will rule. If you should prove unequal to the task you have undertaken, if you shrink from your journey, and turn back, the chances are you will fail to reach the surface of the earth. You will surely stop in the chamber which we now approach, and which I have now prepared you to enter, and will then become one of a band of earth drunkards; having all the lower pa.s.sions of a mortal you will yet be lost to the virtues of man. In this chamber those who falter and turn back, stop and remain for all time, sinking until they become lower in the human scale than any drunkard on earth. Without any restraining influence, without a care, without necessity of food or incentive to exertion, in this habitation where heat and cold are unknown, and no motive for self-preservation exists, they turn their thoughts toward the ruling pa.s.sion of mankind and--Listen! Do you not hear them? Listen!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

THE DRUNKARD'S VOICE.

Then I noticed a medley of sounds seemingly rising out of the depths beyond us. The noise was not such as to lead me to infer that persons were speaking coherently, but rather resembled a jargon such as might come from a mult.i.tude of persons talking indiscriminately and aimlessly.

It was a constant volley, now rising and now falling in intensity, as though many persons regardless of one another were chanting different tunes in that peculiar sing-song tone often characteristic of the drunkard. As we advanced, the noise became louder and more of a medley, until at last we were surrounded by confusion. Then a single voice rose up strong and full, and at once, from about us, close to us, yes, against our very persons, cries and shrieks unearthly smote my ears. I could distinguish words of various tongues, English, Irish, German, and many unfamiliar and disjointed cries, imprecations, and maledictions.

The cavern about seemed now to be resonant with voices,--shrieks, yells, and maniacal cries commingled,--and yet no form appeared. As we rushed onward, for now my guide grasped my arm tightly and drew me rapidly down the cavern floor, the voices subsided, and at length sounded as if behind us. Now however it seemed as though innumerable arrows, each possessed of a whistle or tone of its own, were in wave-like gusts shrieking by us. Coming from in front, they burst in the rear. Stopping to listen, I found that a connection could be traced between the screech of the arrow-like shriek, and a drunkard's distant voice. It seemed as though a rocket made of an escaping voice would scream past, and bursting in the cavern behind, liberate a human cry. Now and then all but a few would subside, to burst out with increased violence, as if a flight of rockets each with a cry of its own would rush past, to be followed after their explosion by a medley of maniacal cries, songs, shrieks, and groans, commingled. It was as though a sh.e.l.l containing a voice that escaped slowly as by pressure from an orifice, were fired past my ears, to explode and liberate the voice within my hearing. The dreadful utterance was not an echo, was not hallucination, it was real.

I stopped and looked at my guide in amazement. He explained: "Did you not sometime back experience that your own voice was thrown from your body?"

"Yes," I answered.

"These crazed persons or rather experiences depraved, are shouting in the cavern beyond," he said. "They are in front; their voices pa.s.s us to burst into expression in the rear."

Then, even as he spoke, from a fungus stalk near us, a hideous creature unfolded itself, and shambled to my side. It had the frame of a man, and yet it moved like a serpent, writhing towards me. I stepped back in horror, but the tall, ungainly creature reached out an arm and grasped me tightly. Leaning over he placed his hideous mouth close to my ear, and moaned: "Back, back, go thou back."

I made no reply, being horror-stricken.

"Back, I say, back to earth, or--"

He hesitated, and still possessed of fear, and unable to reply, I was silent.

"Then go on," he said, "on to your destiny, unhappy man," and slinking back to the fungus whence he arose, he disappeared from sight.

"Come," said my guide, "let us pa.s.s the Drunkard's Den. This was but a straggler; nerve yourself, for his companions will soon surround us."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE DRUNKARDS' DEN.

As we progressed the voices in our rear became more faint, and yet the whistling volleys of screeching voice bombs pa.s.sed us as before. I shuddered in antic.i.p.ation of the sight that was surely to meet our gaze, and could not but tremble for fear. Then I stopped and recoiled, for at my very feet I beheld a huge, living human head. It rested on the solid rock, and had I not stopped suddenly when I did, I would have kicked it at the next leap. The eyes of the monster were fixed in supplication on my face; the great brow indicated intelligence, the finely-cut mouth denoted refinement, the well-modeled head denoted brain, but the whole const.i.tuted a monster. The mouth opened, and a whizzing, arrow voice swept past, and was lost in the distance.

"What is this?" I gasped.

"The fate of a drunkard," my guide replied. "This was once an intelligent man, but now he has lost his body, and enslaved his soul, in the den of drink beyond us, and has been brought here by his comrades, who thus rid themselves of his presence. Here he must rest eternally. He can not move, he has but one desire, drink, and that craving, deeper than life, can not be satiated."

"But he desires to speak; speak lower, man, or head of man, if you wish me to know your wants," I said, and leaned toward him.

Then the monster whispered, and I caught the words:

"Back, back, go thou back!"

I made no reply.

"Back I say, back to earth or--"

Still I remained silent.

"Then go on," he said; "on to your destiny, unhappy man."

"This is horrible," I muttered.