Limanora

CHAPTER VII
LEOMARIE

AS I was attached to Leomarie or the science of earth-seeing, I did not follow up their experiments in the building of air-cars; I only saw the results when at last they came out perfect from their hands, and greatly admired the easy and swift action of their corfaleena. Over the hills and valleys and plains we flew close enough to see what was going on upon the earth below. Again and again we passed over long wisps of steam or columns of dense smoke. I conjectured that the steam indicated the heat wells like that which penetrated the rock near the house of my proparents, and supplied every chamber with heat or power as required. It went down some miles into the crust of the earth, and could be closed or opened at will by a huge lever worked by the steam it emitted itself. The denser brooms of smoke I took to indicate the sinking of their artesian power wells by the leomoran.

For I had seen ours being mined; I had seen the entrance of the great irelium tube into the earth, ring within ring, and its slow but inevitable work from day to day and week to week. The principle of this leomoran or earth perforator had been found by investigation of the anatomy and method of work of the pholas or rock-boring shell, partly chemical, partly mechanical. The edge of the lowest ring was like a sharp-toothed file that, as it rotated by means of power applied from the centre of force, wore its way gradually into the rock, the ridges of the file being as hard as the diamond. An inner ring-file was attached to it on the inside, and between the two was let down a certain chemical compound, which by the friction of the files produced little explosions in the rock below and thus quickened the process. Other ring-files followed in the same way. Another chemical compound, differing according to the character of the rock to be attacked, was let down in the space within the concentric rings, and rapidly decayed the rock so that it ascended like a column of thick black smoke. After all the ring-files were at work, the leomoran needed little guidance; for by an application of the principle of the spectroscope, its use of the chemicals according to the nature of the rock became automatic. As soon as the volatilised mineral that ascended out of the rings changed its character, the beams of light that passed through it changed the spectrum; and the new spectrum influenced a certain solution that controlled a thread, and this thread set free a stream of the proper chemical compound down the leomoran.

A still more striking use of the spectrum was the linoklar or spectroscope analyst and recorder. It analysed the vapours that ascended from the tubes, and recorded their spectra on a moving strip of irelium that was guided by the descent of the leomoran into the earth. Thus anyone could see what strata were passed through in any given time and the extent of the strata. But the linoklar did much more than this; whenever it struck any vein that had the much-desired irelium in it in any quantity, its spectrum released a spring which opened a small tube; through this streamed the irelium vapour into a cavity of the earth, where by means of a purifier it deposited only the pure metal. There was less demand for the other metals, gold, silver, platinum, tin, copper, iron. But there was also an arrangement for separating and depositing their volatilised forms in other cavities. Thus they were able to have more than they required of the metals, and especially of irelium, the most precious because the most adaptable of all.

I was now to see a further development of these mining instruments. We winged our way to a part of the coast which was farthest from the surrounding islands and most easily protected from invaders by the storm-cone. I noticed the exceptional lowness of the sandy beach, as shelving as that on which I had originally landed; there were none of the great bastions of rock which, moulded with such symmetry of terrace and escarpment, barred off all landing on the island. We directed our course far up the mountain and alighted on a rocky platform overlooking the sea. The new apparatus had been sent after us in a faleena and was now placed in position. A cylinder was erected on the ground and attached by machinery to wires and pipes that had been laid from the centre of force. But this was unlike the old leomoran in having the mouth tightly closed, and I soon saw the principle on which the new perforator was to work. The air was exhausted in the cylinder, and then a powerful stream of electricity was made to pass through a piston constructed of innumerable wires which kept moving with lightning rapidity over the surface of the rock at the bottom. The success of the experiment soon manifested itself; for, as soon as a spring was touched, a valve that separated the end of a projecting tube from the air-tight cylinder was opened, and out streamed a dense column into the atmosphere above. The spring was afterwards managed automatically so that as soon as the red-hot electric piston had eroded enough of the rock and volatilised it, the valve sprang open, and the moment the vapour and smoke had all escaped, it was shut, and the air was immediately exhausted.

We returned day after day to the place and found that the new perforator, or tirleomoran as it was called, worked with ten times the swiftness of the old instrument. The chief objections to it were that the metal vapours were denser and more offensive, and that the irelium cylinders had to be oftener renewed because of the great friction and the intensity of the electric heat. The one was obviated by a longer smoke-tube and an application of a vent of wind from the storm-cone; the other was obviated by longer cylinders and refrigerative packing between two of their layers of irelium. But the strangest result—strangest for me at least—was to come. The tirleomoran descended miles beyond the usual force well into the crust of the earth, at a great rate of speed, and I soon saw preparations for some change. Great channels of their usual metal were laid down to the beach, and irelium barriers erected in the sea along the shelving shore from bastion to bastion. By the greater rapidity of the descent, the increase of the proportion of their favourite metal, and the ease with which the electric current volatilised the material below, our guides judged that they had reached rock that was already molten. Before long there began to ooze out of the smoke-tube a red-hot stream, that trickled its way down the slope. Then the air-tight lid was burst off the cylinder, out of it came the electric piston on a wave of red-hot lava, and down the channels the thick stream of molten rock flowed till it reached the barriers in the sea. There with vast columns of steam it cooled and solidified, forming a new and stronger rampart to check the inflowing fire. Day after day we found that the beach was disappearing, and in its place, when the steam cleared, we could see that the great gap in the bastion-works of the island was filled up.

This was the first of their lava wells I had seen. Its operations explained to me the massive symmetry of the rocky shores and the cyclopean terraces and shoots down the mountain-sides, that had, I thought, been either chiselled by tens of thousands of years of slavish labour, or laid by the hands of a race of giants now vanished from the earth. This little people was itself the Vulcan that turned the bowels of the world into smelting-works and used the mighty forces lying underneath the crust of our orb with the ease of a smith at his forge. What had the Limanorans to fear from invaders with even the mightiest war-engines that had ever been invented? They had made themselves fortifications which would outlast the attacks of any human invention. When the beetling circle of precipices was complete around their island who could land troops, even if they evaded the blast of the storm-cone? To the Limanorans themselves the height of their shores was no disadvantage; in fact it gave them easy starting-points for their wing expeditions; they could plunge from the jutting cliffs into the air and so gain impetus for their flight.

Thus had they been able to destroy that spirit of militarism which, after a certain stage, is the implacable foe of true progress. It is based on two of the most childish and most primitive of forces in the human breast, combativeness and the passion for display. Hence the impossibility of stamping out the contagion. Ever and anon in the former history of the island the age of peace seemed to have begun; but marauders from abroad would land and stir the instinct of brigandage and make an army and a military leader necessary. Thenceforward again all the arrangements of the community were made subordinate to the ambition of the soldier. An intrusion of savagery and brute force, however veiled in glory and the panoplies of civilisation, is irresistible by the powers of peace. Only slow and silent conquest of the armed power brought back progress in peaceful arts again, again to be maimed and thrown back from some external accident. Not that they ever pretended that they could eject struggle out of their life, but they did aim to raise the plane of conflict and competition. Never could this people have entered on the rapid development of their powers without their lava ramparts and their storm-cone to keep off all occasions of militarism.

These lava wells had still other uses. Out of their flow were made the rock foundations on which the houses of this people were built. It puzzled me for years to know how they succeeded in making their immense platforms and terraces out of the hardest trap. Their mansions stood out from the precipices and cliffy sides of the mountain on isolated plateaus that gave the inmates free view on every side and free circulation of air around. They rose picturesque and romantic from the top of lonely rocks, like the castles of the Rhine, dominating the whole locality. Down the rocky foundations poured at times torrents of water from the sluice-gates of the mountain, cleansing or cooling the surroundings; yet never was there any danger for these everlasting ramparts.

Another use to which these lava wells were put was to modify the temperature. They were generally opened and let flow in the coolest months of winter, and the red-hot cascades falling into the sea heated it to such an extent that the climate of the whole island was mellowed and tempered. From the wells far up the slope of the mountain the lava flow had been so guided and moulded that immense channels had been made down to the edge of the cliffs, with sides as lofty as the precipitous shores themselves. Down these were shot in summer great avalanches of mountain snow right into the ocean, so tempering the strength of the summer heat.

But these were only subsidiary uses of the tappings of the central earth fires. Their main and original purpose was to relieve the perturbations of Lilaroma. It was one of the chief duties of the Leomo to watch over the destiny of their island, which was volcanic in its origin, though it had been greatly added to in former ages by the coral insect. Lava-streams had overspread the coral, and then the myriads of minute architects had thrust out their structures farther and farther into the sea and thus the lowlands had been broadly extended, while the red-hot layers of lava added massiveness to the body of the island. Yet it was continually shaken by earthquakes and threatened with partial if not complete disaster. It was the function of Leomarie to watch the approach of these earthquakes and guard against them. The Leomo had the most delicate instruments for recording every tremor of the earth’s crust. They had also thermometers and electrometers down their heat wells and lava wells, and these automatically recorded at the surface every variation of the heat and magnetism of the earth. They had classified through many centuries all the preliminary and concomitant circumstances of earthquakes, and had found and formulated certain causal relations amongst them. Thus the minutest symptom of change in the records made by their instruments roused them to watchfulness. They were soon able to tell in what direction the explosive materials were accumulating and how far below the surface of the earth; then, when they had fixed with more or less definiteness the time they had to spare, they began sinking lava wells right into the perturbed lake of fire. The vent acted as safety-valve; the shakings of the island ceased as the steam roared forth, and the molten rock began to yeast down the side of the mountain. All danger was past for another period of time. Again and again throughout the past ages the Leomo had saved the island from the ravages of earthquake and uncontrolled lava-streams from the crater of Lilaroma. Never did they intermit their vigilance or cease to advance their knowledge of the earth and its habits and laws. It seemed to me at first that nothing could occur in the crust of our planet which they would not foresee. I came afterwards to know the limits of Leomarie, and the reasons why they pushed almost feverishly forward to further knowledge. They were ever afraid that something unforeseen might occur and threaten the stability of their land and the progress towards the nobler life.

Once in the dark ages before the great exilings an appalling disaster had occurred which ploughed deep into the consciousness of the people the necessity for the development of this earth science. Their central city stood upon a great plateau up the slope of Lilaroma. Within recorded memory there had been no great outburst from the mountain; and the inhabitants travelled fearlessly up to its rim and down the bowl of its crater. At times there had been slight spittings of ashes and once or twice a new fumarole or hot spring or even lava fountain had opened at some point on the mountain slope; but these were all at a distance from the bustling, luxurious city; and most of them had awakened slight notice. The volcano indeed had been practically quiescent since the great migration from the Antarctic regions and the sealing of the archipelago by the circle of fog. The citizens were keeping one of their annual feasts, and were lapped in luxurious ease and pleasure. They had been exhilarated by a long period of prosperity and a recent victory over the savage clan that inhabited one of the adjacent islands. The country people and a number of hermits living in lonely parts of Limanora had been alarmed by various premonitory symptoms, sultry clouds turbaning the head of Lilaroma, tremors in the earth more and more threateningly repeated, great and unaccountable disturbances in the sea, and a hot, heavy, brooding atmosphere around the whole island. Some of them came to the city and warned the revellers to be prepared for some catastrophe; but they were waved aside as dreamers, mere superstitious disturbers of life and its traffic. Half the city was gathered together in the central market-place to see a great spectacle, when the earth shook beneath them. They fell on their faces and cried to their gods; but it was in vain. The market stood upon a plateau high above the rest of the city, overlooking the ocean. Like a cap this platform was blown into the air, and all the pleasure-seekers vanished like smoke. Out on the sea and here and there on the land a rain of dust fell mingled with minute pieces of human flesh; but never was any one of the gathered thousands found; and as if to obliterate the traces of her ghastly work, the mountain sent down a broad stream of lava, which filled up the gulf where the market-place had been, and sealed up the dust-buried city, preserving it for after-ages like a fly in amber. Those who escaped destruction fled, some to distant parts of Limanora, some to other islands; but all were buried for centuries in grovelling superstition. It was out of the hermits and the country people that a new nation was built up, which set itself as a first duty to establish Leomarie, that it should not be taken unawares by any repetition of this great catastrophe. Nor has it ever recurred, although there have been many premonitory symptoms. The lava wells or vents eased the labours of the internal fires and saved the island.

Their new and deeper wells, driven by the tirleomoran, and reaching the internal fires, gave them greater sense of security. Irelium floats were let down which would not be injured by the great heat, and these, communicating with an indicator at the mouth, told of every disturbance in the surface of the lake of fire. All the indicators were connected with the centre of force, and automatically recorded there all they had to tell. The same system of centralised record placed the various indications of the climolans or earth-sensors at every moment ready to the hand of the Leomo. These climolans were down every force-well and told every variation in the heat, the density of the air, the kind of vapour, the magnetism, and the movement of the crust of the earth. No change in the earth below the island down to a distance of thirty or forty miles (the latter the greatest depth they had reached) was neglected. Every indication was properly tabulated and classified, and year was compared with year and month with month, till the meaning and importance of every change were exactly known. The furthest records of the past, as well as those more recent, were daily consulted in order to find the generalisation that would fit any new symptom. The Leomo felt daily the pulse of Lilaroma as a doctor would that of his most valued fever patient. They knew that they had the fate of the race in their hands, and no indication was of too little importance for them to consider. What would all the strivings and labours of the nation come to if any laxity on their part should allow such a volcanic catastrophe to recur as had destroyed the capital of old?