With a few individualists such as Miguel, a problem was presented. They were unstable or unsocial characters. The workers knew that they could not be depended upon for regular work, yet they managed to keep their minds free of the sluggish acquiescence which engulfed the rest. They were misfits and, as such, undesirables; they were ignored as far as possible.
Among the workers themselves things had not always proceeded with complete smoothness. Twice there had arisen major differences of opinion. Some years before Smith's arrival, a man named Jameson had caused a split in the party by announcing his conviction that the present methods were, if not useless, at least far too laborious. Why not, he asked, drive a horizontal tunnel? It would be bound before long to connect with one of the pygmy caves, and then they could fight their way out. There were enough of them to overcome a whole army of dwarfs.
He was permitted, after some dissension to start his horizontal tunnel, but after fifty yards had encountered an underground river which rendered farther progress out of the question—his suggestion of trying again elsewhere met with no support.
Still another passage had been begun by a Greek whose name no one remembered. From an unknown source he had obtained information that another series of caverns was situated below the prison system at no great depth. He, like Jameson, was convinced that once in the main caverns they would have little difficulty in fighting their way to the surface. His downward passage had been extended by his followers to a depth of over two hundred feet without result, but was still regarded by some as having possibility of ultimate success. It was against this Greek's Tunnel, as it was called, that Gordon had unhesitatingly advised.
'Why?' Smith asked.
'For one thing I haven't much faith in it, but the real reason is that it's noisy. If we go on working there, and Miguel's spying round in earnest, he'll find it sooner or later.'
'Does it matter much? After all, the up passage is the main thing. I was thinking that if we can get it through, it might act as a kind of drain in case we do get flooded.'
'There's something in that,' Gordon admitted. 'But I've got a feeling that it's better not to let Miguel know anything—he must have a pretty good reason for wanting to learn.'
'Well, that's simple enough,' suggested one of the others. 'Why not just bump him off?'
'It's not so easy. He's got pals. Besides, you can't tell how the rest would take it-—or the "natives". Two can play at bumping off. We don't want our hands full with a vendetta just when we've decided to push the work on. No, the best thing is to work like hell on the up passage, there'll be no noise from that. We must be nearly through by now.'
The men looked unimpressed by the last hope. Mark, watching their faces, wondered how often they and others before them had heard those same words—'we must be nearly through.' Perhaps they had begun to doubt that the phrase could ever be true. Nevertheless, they accepted the suggestion of intensified work enthusiastically. It was as though a limit however indefinite, had been set. They were to work against time until they won or the floods came. It was a change from the weary monotony in which time counted for nothing. Smith rose to his feet.
'Come on, we'll tell the rest,' he said.
Mark, forgotten, watched them leave. Gordon turned back and thrust his head in through the doorway.
'You go to sleep for a while,' he directed. 'I'll show you round a bit more tomorrow. And if Miguel shows up here—though I don't suppose he will—not a word about the tunnels.'
He disappeared again, and there was a sound of quick steps as he hurried to catch up the others. Mark stretched out thankfully on his couch. He felt exhausted, and the activity had started the throbbing in his head again. He was not yet as strong as he had thought, it seemed. He began to drift sleepward with a better serenity, due partly to weariness, but more to wakened hopes of escape.
It had been good to hear Gordon's slip of the tongue. His 'tomorrow' had given a sense of hopeful future to this place of unending 'today'.
CHAPTER IV
'Where now?' Mark asked, as he and Gordon emerged once again into the large cavern.
'About time you saw the fungus caves—you'll have to put in your spell of work there later.' Gordon spoke in an unnecessarily loud voice which caused the members of several conversing groups to turn and look in their direction. One of the women pointed at Mark and laughed. Her voice held a jeering note which recalled a sudden memory of himself as a new boy at school being shown round by his housemaster. The words with which she followed the laugh were in a language unknown to him, but he could feel their implication. He had heard the same tones in the voices of practical men who condemned impractical idealists. It put him into the class of the self-righteous.
Yet there was nothing of self-righteousness about those of the 'workers' party he had met so far. They worked because they needed an outlet, and to keep sane, just as the Negro, Zickle, worked at his carving. Such superiority as they undoubtedly did maintain was incidental rather than intentional; the merely static condition of avoiding the mental rot which set in in the minds of the unoccupied. The attitude of the latter showed that they were not entirely unaware of their own deterioration though they had not considered it worth checking. Life in the caves offered the minimum of joys, why forgo them? The women particularly quailed at the thought of dying with the knowledge that they had never lived. It was more easy and more comprehensible to live within an established order than to attempt to change it. What, he wondered, would Margaret have done had she been condemned to this place? Would she tend to accept the customs of the majority as these women did, or would she fight...?
He tried once more to suppress the figure of her which was constantly slipping into his mind. Bad enough for her influence to be rising continually from his subconscious, but far worse when she slit the diaphragm between his selves and invaded his active thoughts. He endeavoured again to thrust her back by taking an active interest in his surroundings.
The way led this time past the turning to Zickle's cave and through a larger tunnel. Mark noticed that the prison caves like the rest were a mixture of nature and craft. The interconnecting passages had been enlarged often from mere cracks to eight or ten-foot tunnels, according to their importance. Awkward or dangerous corners were smoothed and trimmed. Before the roof lights were fixed, a clearance had been made of those massive slabs which in natural caverns hang aloft, ready, to all appearance, to crash upon the heads of the venturesome. Cracks in the ground had been filled up or bridged over. Stalactites had been ground away in order that their spikes might no longer hang like Damoclean swords. Fallen rocks, conical stalagmites, and all the litter which must once have rendered these places fantastic and awe-inspiring, were gone. The floors had been made as level as possible, the walls regularised, and disorderly nature tamed to a prison-like severity.
Gordon indicated various side openings as they passed. This, he said, led to a series of caves given over to the 'natives'; another to the pygmy prisoners' warren.
Mark gave up trying to memorise their route. He was aware of a constant succession of caves, passages, and side turnings, all as full of character for his guide as the streets of a town, but to a newcomer monotonously indistinguishable from one another. The men and women whom they met glanced at them with little interest and passed on with unhurried steps. He noticed that a number of them were bearing sections of the great fungi upon their backs.