I had no means of stitching them further, and the rough usage they had received had already caused such damage that they would dispense with me, if I did not dispense with them very promptly.
I considered temperature, but the sun was already gaining power, and I knew how warm it became on the lower levels in the daytime.
Under the surface I knew that I had found the tunnel to be of a comfortable warmth.
I took off my boots, and knew that the operation was final. A sole already tied with string on the previous day, was now entirely loose. The other was scarcely better. The uppers were leaving me by successive details. My socks—what was left of them—were clotted with dirt and blood.
My companion watched the gradual revelation with amused and lively eyes, but she hid her thoughts from me as it proceeded.
In the end, public opinion was too strong for me. All my life I had made myself grotesque in the ugliest garments by which the human form can be hidden, because my fellow-men required it.
Here I was conscious of a different verdict, and the slave crouched instinctively to the crack of a new whip. On a sudden impulse, I resolved to leave them.
I wrapped my small possessions in my waistcoat, which was still a fairly sound garment. I tied it securely. Then I threaded a piece of cord through the buttonholes, which I fastened round my waist, so that the little parcel could be easily carried behind me.
I made of the boots and other garments a bundle which I resolved to sink in the lake, so that there should be no sign left of our presence, and we dived into the water together.
The lake was smooth, and the water was not too cold to be pleasant. It became clear and very deep as we left the bank behind us. I swam strongly at first, rejoicing in the morning freshness of sun and air and water, and buoyed by the exhilaration of my companion’s mind. But a time came when I looked with doubt at the distance of the wooded headland which we had agreed to make our objective. The shore was far off, but yet I seemed to have made no progress to the one before us.
My comrade swam beneath, but not closely. In the delight of her recovered element she dived and rose, and swam beneath and round me, with a speed and ease that did nothing to encourage me to satisfaction with my clumsier efforts.
I had a strong desire to call on her for the vitality of which I was learning to rely too absolutely, but against this I fought with a stubborn wish to show her that I was not entirely incapable, even in an unfamiliar element.
For a moment she stayed quietly beside me, sliding through the water at the same pace as myself, but without apparent effort, while she rose sufficiently to view the scene around her.
“Look back,” she suggested suddenly, and I changed a stroke which was becoming wearier than I was willing to recognise, so that I might turn my eyes to the distant heights behind us.
I searched them, but could see nothing of a new interest. Once I thought that there was a flicker of flame on the hillside, but it was too minute and far off for any certainty, and the next moment I had lost it entirely.
“I’m afraid your sight is not much use, even in daylight,” she considered, “but please swim as low as you are able, for the Dwellers may not be equally deficient.
“There is one who has scraped together all the ash and litter of the burning, and it has flamed up afresh.”
I changed to the breaststroke, and she sank to three feet under the surface, as I answered, “I suppose they will make an end of it entirely. Is it because of the Forbidden Thing, and do they, I wonder, wrongly blame the Killers for using it?
“I cannot understand why they should object to fire so strongly. In the world from which I come there are so many inventions less useful and with greater potentialities of mischief; and their own works show that their engineering skill and practice is advanced beyond the knowledge of my contemporaries.”
She answered, “Perhaps it is only that they do not wish the creatures that they allow to live on the surface to develop knowledge. I can only guess, as you can. But we are likely to learn many things before the next dawn comes, though we shall not see it.”
I did not answer, for a trailing growth of water-weed had caught my left leg, and I kicked free with difficulty. The next moment I was surrounded by the floating growth, and I was some moments under water before I could release myself sufficiently to continue.
My companion regarded me with the merriment which my bodily difficulties always prompted, only now it was more irrepressible, because she was intoxicated by the joyous freedom that the water gave her, after so long an absence.
“Is it really so,” she asked, “that if you were below the surface for more than a few moments your body would become useless beyond repair, and you would die out of it entirely? and did you know this when you offered to swim so far across the surface?”
“It is true enough,” I answered, “but I
