Gordon stopped in a cavern slightly larger than the average, and waved his hand towards the end wall in the manner of a showman.
'There's a problem for you,' he said.
Mark advanced to examine more closely a line of figures graven in low relief.
'The Egyptian gods?' he asked.
'Some of them, but others too. Look here.' He began pointing them out. 'Here's Hathor, with the cow's head— and this chap I think is Set, though the head's a bit different; shorter in the muzzle than usual—and, see, this must be meant for Ra; the hawk's head, all right, but they've missed out the sun's disc. And look at his sceptre, it's got a globe instead of a dog's head on it____Mahmud says that the globe is symbolic of these.' He pointed up to the glowing lights. 'If so, it means that the carving was done after these people renounced the upper world and the sunlight. Ra was the creator, the giver of all things—without that light there could be no life down here. And what's this?' 'This' was a female figure upon which was mounted a fish in place of a head. 'Presumably a fertility goddess of some kind. There was a goddess Hamhit, but she had a fish on top of her head, not instead of it. And here's another chap with a serpent's head—now, if it were a uraeus____But it's a plain, ordinary snake's head. Next to him is Bast, sis-trum and all....'
'Bast?' said Mark suddenly.
'Of course, look at the cat's head. The Greeks called her Bubastis later, and mixed her up; they made her preside over a lot of things she was never intended to. The Egyptians saw her as a gentle, warming influence, she was tied up somehow with Ra, but...'
But Mark was not listening. Bast—that damned cat. Could there be any connection? He remembered that Margaret had been holding the cat when they were attacked.
'The pygmies did these?' he asked, breaking in.
Gordon, knocked out of his vocal stride, looked puzzled. Mark repeated:
'Did the pygmies do these carvings?'
'Pretty certainly. Long ago, I should think, before these were used as prison caves. Why?'
'Do they still worship these gods?'
'I think so—or some very like them, according to Mahmud. Why?'
Mark ignored the second question as he had the first. The possibility of the cat's presence making any difference had never struck him until now. There had been no reason why it should before he had seen that cat-headed figure. Might not the fact that she was carrying it account for Margaret's non-appearance in the prison caves? He put the question to Gordon, who looked thoughtful.
'I wonder. It might be so. Of course,' he added, 'it's not absolutely certain that the pygmies carved these. There must have been Egyptians down here at some time—pure law of averages—but the carvings are sufficiently different in detail to convince me that they didn't do them. Ra, in particular, would never have been allowed to lack his disc of the sun. If prisoners had made them they would have tended to exaggerate the sun; it would have been the most potent symbol of the lot. So I think on the strength of that we are justified in assuming that the pygmies did do them. Moreover, Mahmud has talked about a kind of animal worship. Animals are so rare that when one does get in, it becomes deified automatically.'
'Then it is possible that Bast—our cat, I mean—is being worshipped?'
'Possibly, yes, but I wouldn't build on it. We don't really know much about them.'
Nevertheless, Mark did allow, even encouraged, his mind to build upon the unsteady foundation. If it were true that the ancient worship of Bast persisted here and that the cat remained her sacred symbol, what would Margaret's position be? Would she not be revered as a messenger of the goddess, divinely appointed to convey a token? Treated with honour, perhaps declared a demi-goddess? The misgivings which has closed about him grew tenuous and began to drift away. This, without any doubt, must be the explanation of her absence from the prison caves....
Gordon watched him, and, seeing his face clear, knew the line his thoughts were taking. There was little to be gained from pulling down such a castle in the air, though for his own part he remained unconvinced of the girl's safety. It seemed every bit as likely that she might have been condemned as impious for handling a sacred object —and the crime of impiety usually involves penalties of the more unpleasant kinds. Still, that probability need not be broached. "Mark was not yet fully recovered from his illness. The sense of hope would be a better medicine than any they could provide, so Gordon went on talking about the pygmies.
'They must have been much more numerous in the old days. They're dwindling now, like all the primitive races, and the whole system of caves is far larger than they need. I have thought that those carvings were probably made when the population was dense, before they were able to abandon this system for use as a prison, but I may be wrong. They could have been made by pygmy prisoners in some effort at atonement. There's no telling. The only certainty is that the figures are like, and yet unlike their Egyptian counterparts.'
Mark came down to earth.
'But it's odd that they should have adopted and kept the Egyptian gods.'
'If they did.'
'But, surely-'
'I mean how do you know that the Egyptians did not adopt their gods, or that the two sets did not spring from some common source. This pygmy race is old, I fancy— older than you have any conception. The ancient Egyptians are moderns compared with our pygmies.'
'How do you make that out? The system of caves, of course, must have taken centuries to perfect, but still to say that they are older than the Egyptians ...?'
Gordon shrugged. 'I'll give you my reasoning sometime, but it is a long explanation. We must get on now.'
He led from the cave of the carvings into a gently descending tunnel, and before long Mark became aware that the silence about them was no longer complete. There grew at first a mere agitation of murmurous echoes, indefinite and hard to place, but a new sound, different from the confused shuffle of occasional feet and voices. It grew clearer as they proceeded, clarifying gradually from one composite disturbance until the splash of trickling water became audible against the background of its gurgling passage.
They paused at the spot where a small stream gushed from a crack in the wall. Gordon picked up a stone bowl and held it under the flow. He drank thankfully.
'It's a blessing the salt hasn't got into our water yet,' he said relievedly. 'That'd be worse than drowning.'
He went on morbidly to elaborate the horrors which would attend lack of fresh water, but even the picture he drew of the prisoners driven crazy by thirst failed to subdue the elation which had risen in Mark.
By this time he had contrived out of a few straws of suggestion to build a raft of remarkable buoyancy. A feeling of hope had come flooding in to change every mental process. His spirits had stirred out of lethargy. It was as if weakness and worry had created a rust in him; now that rust was all washed away, and there was fresh oil on the bearings. He felt that his body would be able to break out of this prison even as his mind had. Gordon was astonished at the transformation. He looked almost a stranger, and one who walked with a springy step rare among the cave dwellers. He was silently astonished at the control the mental was showing over the physical.
A faint, familiar odour and a dampness became noticeable, and Mark knew that they must be nearing the fungus caves. There were five of them, interconnected, Gordon had told him, of which the combined acreage had easily supplied their needs until lately, but with the increase of population, both by new arrivals and births, the margin had been narrowed. All the conditions of life in this underground world, it seemed, were hastening concurrently to crisis.