I was puzzled by this reply, and she instanced the fact that she, and other Leaders of her kind, did not pattern their fur, which would bring them into unseemly competition with those below them—a competition which would lead to envy if they succeeded, or ridicule if they failed to outdo their rivals.
I then asked a number of questions intended to guide me as to the conditions of the world I had entered, and it will be most convenient to give the facts—as far as I was then able to understand them—in the form of a direct statement rather than in that of the conversation which gained them.
I learnt that the country in which I found myself was an island continent, of about the size of Australia, but in the northern hemisphere, as the stars had told me. It was controlled by the Dwellers, who had lived below its surface for a long period of time, of the duration of which I could form no idea, nor could I obtain any information as to the depth or extent of their subterranean excavations, for the sufficient reason that no Amphibian had ever penetrated them. The island continent was surrounded on every side by a great ocean, beyond which was a world containing such inhabitants that the Dwellers had first gone underground to escape them, and then, at a later period, planted around the whole extent of the coast a girdle of strange growths, above which the air had no sustaining power, and which had protected it so effectively that for an enormous period of time they had been left in undisputed isolation.
In some remote antiquity they had entered into a treaty with the Amphibians by which it was agreed that they should be left in possession of the numerous rocky islets which surrounded a large part of the coast, on three conditions;—they were to keep certain subterranean reservoirs filled with fresh fish continually; they were to hold no intercourse with the farther world; and they were to make no attempt to penetrate inland, either above or below the surface.
Until recently, these conditions had been observed with exactness. They had, beneath the ocean, an undisputed dominion of enormous area; they did not even cross to the farther sides of the fish-tanks they filled, from which the Dwellers netted the shoals of fish which they had herded into them; they made no attempt to penetrate the protective belt which surrounded the surface area; and they entirely avoided the other continents of which the land surface of the earth consisted.
For the whole period since this treaty was made—I could only marvel at their longevity—they had been ruled by a Council of Seven, whose headquarters were beneath the black rocks which I had observed to seaward.
The Council decided all matters affecting the welfare of the community by thinking upon them until they arrived at unanimity, and these decisions were always accepted without dissent.
But there was one of the seven who had not been present when the treaty was made. She had been long absent, and was supposed to have been dead, but she had subsequently returned from the exploration of the caves of a range of submarine mountains at the farther end of the earth, in which she had met with such adventures as had detained her for a long period. Not having been a party to the treaty, she had not felt herself bound in honour, as had the other six, to observe it. Nor, being of the seven, did she feel controlled by their authority, as did the rest of the community. She was of a disposition which loved the adventures of strange ways, and, from the first, had wished to explore the interior of the forbidden continent. For a very long period she had been held back by the wishes of her companions, and by the fear that she might be the cause of disaster to them, but at last a time had come when the impulse had been irresistible, and there had been none near to restrain her. She had spent the night on the forbidden land, and had returned at dawn with a strange tale of a silent country, where all things slept, and where trees and grasses grew, such as they had never seen, or remembered only with the vagueness of a distant dream.
After this escapade they watched in doubt lest the Dwellers had been aware of it, but the days passed in safety, and at length she ventured again—and again—always returning before the dawn, until the tales she brought enabled them to visualise a land inhabited by many species of creatures, such as the Dwellers permitted to run wild, or conserved for their utilities to themselves, and of a fertility which was alluringly different from the ocean meadows in which they were accustomed to wander, but in which all creatures slept in the nighttime, and even the Dwellers did not appear upon the surface of the land they owned.
After a time it appeared certain that these expeditions might be taken with impunity, providing that the night were chosen, and a return made before sunrise. But the time came when the desire to see the moving life of the daytime overcame her. She remained in hiding, she saw much, and the next time she stayed away for three days. Acting with great caution, and with the advantage of her past experience, she returned in safety and unsuspected; but in the meantime a companion, alarmed at her lengthened absence, had started out to find her. On learning this, she at once set out again, though the day was then dawning, and the open
