Chapter XVIII: Lost in the Purple Forest

We walked off east through the level green meadows, beneath the scattered trees that were bright with purple blooms. For my own part, I was much more interested in the vegetation than in any game we might come upon. In fact, I would not have been greatly disappointed if our hunt had been in vain.

The leaves of what I have called grass were really so wide and thick that it was hardly grass at all. The higher stems of it bore myriads of tiny, bright-red flowers. The great trees were, in shape and foliage, somewhat like the oak, though the rich profusion of the purple flowers almost concealed the leaves. They bore small fruits, in appearance a little like the date, which, as we were later to learn, were edible. But, in all the time I was in that strange world, I found no single plant that was exactly like any I had known above.

Indeed that was a strange hunt, under a flaming scarlet sky, nine miles beneath the ocean, through forests of the purple trees that burdened the air with their unfamiliar fragrance, in search of we knew not what in the way of game.

We tramped steadily eastward over the green meadows for perhaps half an hour, rewarded with the sight of no living thing. The Omnimobile had long been out of sight. We crossed a low greasy ridge and made our way out across another broad smooth valley.

At last, as we looked from a screen of brush at the edge of a little meadow, we saw an odd-looking creature gazing unalarmed a hundred yards away. It was somewhat larger than a hog, with gray, hairless skin and long white tusks or horns. It had an oddly heavy, barrel-like body.

It must have winded us, for it threw up its head with a peculiar squeal, tossing its great tusks. Sam and I both fired. We have never agreed which of us hit it, but it slumped over on the green vegetation. We hurried up to it. It was quite dead. It had great claws, and somewhat resembled a sloth, although it was exactly like nothing that I had ever seen.

Sam took out his knife and skilfully removed half of the skin, wrapping up a piece of meat in it. The beast had thick rolls of fat along the back, but the flesh beneath looked so nice and tender that he took some of it to try for steak.

"We'll try some of it broiled when we get back," he anticipated, smacking his lips.

"Let's hurry on," I said. "We've been gone longer than I intended, already. What if Xenora wakes up and we're not there?"

"Let's see," Sam said doubtfully. "The wind was from the south, wasn't it?"

I looked around in sudden panic. I was almost sure that I knew the way back to the machine--almost!

The strange world about us was suddenly very alien and cruel. The plains were lonely and flat and dead. The trees were suddenly wild and mysterious, as if they concealed strange monsters. There was a ghastly, unearthly menace in the red gleam of the sky.

In all directions the country looked much the same. There was no definite landmark. We stood there for a time, scanning the unfamiliar panorama, in the beginning of panic. There were half a dozen groups of trees, any of which might have been the one from which we fired. It occurred to me that it would be very inconvenient if one of the flying plants came along, and I began to think of other things that might happen. I came to a tardy realization of our helplessness and utter ignorance of the dangers that might surround us.

The purple trees and the scarlet sky seemed to leer at us, to gather closer, to laugh in fiendish joy at the unnamable doom they might have in store for us. Unconsciously I drew my pistol, and my muscles were involuntarily tensed, so that I started when Sam spoke.

"Of course we can see the wall of cliffs in the north. That will give us the general direction. If we can get up on that hill, we might be able to see the machine."

He pointed toward a round, bare, green hilltop that rose several hundred feet toward the red sky. It was perhaps a mile away, in the direction of the hazy blue cliffs. He slung the piece of meat over his shoulder and we set out over the open field. It was very hot, and the perspiration was dripping from us. I had hardly noticed the damp, hot wind before, but now it felt like a blast from a furnace. The intense scarlet radiation of the flaming sky dried up our energy. The steady beam of heat brought over us a growing languor, a depressed and spiritless weariness.

The whole weird region was very still. The only sounds were the soft sighing of the wind in the trees, and the thrashing and rustling of our feet in the rank grass. The tiny scarlet flowers danced before the wind almost like little insects, and a few brilliant petals blew sometimes from one of the sparsely scattered trees.

"Phew!" Sam whistled, stopping to mop his brow with the huge red bandanna he had tied around his neck. "This is beginning to feel like the Sahara! I'm glad I didn't happen to be a native of the place! You bet the machine will look good, when we find it!"

"If we find it," I could not refrain from saying.

In five minutes more we were far up the side of the little hill. The side of the eminence was bare of the great flowering trees, so the strange forest lay about us southward for many miles. Eagerly we looked in the direction that should have been southwest, for the Omnimobile.

A vast stretch of the rolling plateau lay before our eyes, low verdant hills, and vast green meadows, scattered with the brilliant purple trees, singly and in groves. Far away, all across the southern horizon, stretched the black sea on which we had landed, glancing with the crimson light of the sky. But nowhere, in all that vast strange expanse, did we catch a glimpse of the machine.

"It must be just in a low place," Sam said hopefully. "Or, I think I remember now that there was a little grove just north of it. We will see it in a minute, if we climb higher up."

"I hope so," I said, raising my binoculars for a better look.

"And we have compasses and instruments to guide ourselves around the world, if we'd just thought to bring them!"

"It's no use!" I said. "Let's go on to the top."