“I cannot tell now for how many minutes I fought my way up that tunnel, thrown from my feet each time I staggered erect by the wild pitchings of the mountain around me; crawling crazily upward on hands and knees with the terrific grinding of rock-masses beneath and around me like the last roar of doom in my ears. I saw ahead the white circle of light that was the tunnel’s opening just as the first awful quakes began to subside, as the Earth-Brain’s first convulsive rage began to calm.
“I knew the Earth-Brain would now remember me and I flung myself forward, out of the dark tunnel into the daylight on the mountain’s side. Below and far away stretched the glittering ice-fields but now they were heaved and rumpled like waves of a mighty sea, piling here and there in mountainous ridges and attesting the violence of the great quake that had just shaken them.
“Down the mountain’s icy side I started by the path Travis and Skeel and I had cut in ascending. There came a roar from above and an avalanche of ice and rock poured down on me from the mountain’s upper side. I flattened myself beneath the angle of the slant in the side and it roared over and past me. The Earth-Brain had indeed remembered, knew where I was upon its body and was seeking to slay me!
“Thrice it tried to destroy me as I struggled down the mountain’s side. Twice other avalanches were shaken loose upon me, each almost annihilating me, and once the whole mountain shook violently as though to dislodge me and send me tumbling to death. God, what a weird progress was that of mine down the mountain, with the Earth-Brain, with earth itself, trying to destroy me!
“I do not know yet by what chance I evaded those tremendous attacks and got to the ice-field at the mountain’s bottom, bruised and terror-dazed. I looked to where our camp had been and there was but Noskat and one sledge and three dogs. Shan and the other sledge and dogs had been caught and annihilated by the shifting ice. Noskat ran toward me.
“He was babbling madly of the vengeance of the Earth-Brain, of the mighty quake that had killed Shan and the dogs and shaken terribly the earth itself. I cut him short, and we fled southward from the mountain over the ice-fields. Before we had travelled two hours a strong quake shook violently the ice over which we were travelling. A crevice opened suddenly ahead of us that we almost fell into.
“Noskat cried to me that we might as well die, that we had offended the Earth-Brain and that wherever we went upon its body, the earth, it would know and would try to kill us. But I pressed on, motivated only by the insane desire to put more and more distance between myself and that towering ice-mountain in whose heart the Earth-Brain poised.
“The next week was like one in a strange inferno, an icy hell of cold in which we pushed south with the Earth-Brain’s vengeance ever following closely. Nine times during that week we were menaced by violent quakes that shook the ice over which we travelled. How we escaped those suddenly opening crevices and marching ice-ridges and terrific shocks, I cannot now dream. Terror, a terror not of the quakes but of the Earth-Brain causing them, drove us on.
“It came to me during that week of hell that Travis and Skeel had been luckier in being slain outright by the Earth-Brain than had I, with this remorseless vengeance of that mighty ovoid of light and intelligence pursuing me. Yet with that mad persistence that still actuated me, I pushed on. Toward the week’s end Noskat’s strength failed. With him in the sledge, dying and babbling of the Earth-Brain, I struggled south and at last reached the ship.
“To the ship’s officers, who talked excitedly of the great cataclysm that had almost destroyed the vessel and that had seemed to centre where Travis and Skeel and I had been, I lied. I said that there had been a terrific quake and that Travis and Skeel and Shan had been killed in it. Noskat died without regaining consciousness and there was none to contradict me. The ship started south.
“I prayed as we sailed southward that the Earth-Brain would pursue me no farther, but I feared—I feared. My fear was justified, for as the ship passed close to the shore of Grinnell Land, a projecting glacier broke and hurled out a huge mass of ice that barely missed the ship. Two days later an undersea disturbance almost swamped us. The ship’s crew talked of unsettled conditions, of earth-faults caused by the great polar quake; but I knew the truth, knew that my prayer was not answered and that still the Earth-Brain’s vengeance followed me.
“We finally reached Halifax, and there I saw that the Earth-Brain would not reck of killing all my race if it could slay me, who had dared attack it. For, two days after we reached Halifax, came a terrible quake that destroyed half the city and killed thousands of its people. I escaped again, by the mere chance of being in an open park when the quake began.
“The newspapers quoted the scientists as saying, like the ship’s men, that the great polar quake I had gone through had somehow caused faults in earths’s interior structure which had resulted in this quake. I knew how far they were from the truth, knew the Earth-Brain had moved its vast earth-body and caused that quake solely to kill me.
“I fled from Halifax, whose dead seemed to point accusingly at me who had brought the Earth-Brain’s death upon them. I took a boat to Norway and the day I arrived there came a quake that did great damage. By then I knew enough to stay out of buildings that might crash upon me, even sleeping in the open air. I went on from Norway to Russia.
“Russia had a series of three devastating quakes, the third one of which almost got me despite my precautions. When I fled on to Egypt it was worse, for my presence in Alexandria brought a quake and tidal wave that killed more innocent thousands. When I headed north again to Italy, the peninsula was racked by unprecedented quakes and landslides during my stay. And when I went on to England the quakes followed me.
“I knew that sooner or later, despite my carefulness to stay out of buildings and away from mountains and hills that might loose avalanches on me, one of these quakes would get me, the Earth-Brain’s vengeance would find me. But I fled on, took a boat home. I arrived in New York today, and you, Morris, saw what happened.
“You saw that when I had not been in New York more than a few hours there came an earth-tremor. To the people here it seemed only a tremor. But to me it was warning and knowledge, knowledge that the Earth-Brain knew of my presence here, that it was still seeking to slay me with the movements of its great earth-body.
“Yes, following me still with deadly purpose! And that is why I dare not stay here in New York, Morris. If I did stay, sooner or later the Earth-Brain would again attempt to kill me with an earthquake or tidal wave that might kill more innocent thousands or tens of thousands here. I have the blood of enough people now on my head without wanting more killed on my account. So I must go on, must leave here now before I bring doom on New York from the Earth-Brain’s endeavours to take my life.”
That was the story Clark Landon told me in my New York apartment the morning of the tremor. He left the city despite all I could say, a few hours afterward. I parted from him at the station where he took a train to New Orleans. I never saw Landon again but I followed his movements from that time until the end, and will summarise them briefly here.
The train Landon took to New Orleans was derailed by a sudden earth-tremor when a few hundred miles from its destination. Landon escaped, according to the newspaper casualty lists, though a score of people were killed and more injured. There were several earth-shocks of varying violence while Landon was in New Orleans, but they ceased after he took a banana boat to Mexico.