The Mountains Of Madness
CHAPTER IX (Part 1)

I have said that our study of decadent sculpture brought about a change in our immediate goals. This of course has to do with the chisel path to the black inner world, whose existence we have not known before, but which we now want to find and traverse. From a clear scale of engraving, the, we concluded that walking down a steep hill about a mile through one of the neighboring tunnels would lead us to the edge of a dizzy sunless cliff over a deep ravine; down an adequate path, enhanced by the Old, leads to a rocky shore in a hidden and dark ocean. To see this tremendous chasm of separation in real reality is a temptation that seems impossible to resist once we know it is — yet we realize that we must start the search at once if we're hoping to get him on our flight now.

It's now 8 P.M, and we don't have enough battery replacements to leave our torches on forever. We have done so much research and copying below glacier level that our battery supply has at least five hours of near-sustainable use; he said; and although the special dry cell formula is obviously only good for about four more — though by keeping one torch is not used, except for interesting or difficult places, the, we might be able to get a safe margin beyond that. It will not be without light in these Cyclopean catacombs, so to make the journey of the deep abyss, we must release all the meaning of the mural further. Of course we intended to visit the place for days and maybe weeks of intensive study and photography — long-standing curiosity got the better of the horror of — but now we have to hasten. Our supply of trail-blazing paper is far from unlimited, and we are reluctant to sacrifice a spare notebook or sketch paper to add to it; but we did let one big notebook go. If the worst becomes the worst, we can use rock-chipping — and of course it is possible, even if the direction is completely gone, he said, to work up to full daylight by one channel or another if given sufficient time for many trials and errors. So we finally set off in a spirited direction in the direction indicated from the nearby tunnel.

According to the engraving on which we made the map, the mouth of the desired tunnel should not be more than a quarter mile from where we stand; intervening spaces that feature sturdy-looking buildings are most likely still impenetrable at the subglacial level. The opening itself will be in the basement of — at the closest corner to the foothills of — of a large five-pointed building that is clearly public and possibly ceremonial, which we are trying to identify from our last survey of the ruins. No such structure came to our mind when we remembered our flight, so we concluded that the top had been severely damaged, or that it has been completely destroyed in the ice crack we noticed. In the latter case, the tunnel will probably become choked, so we should try the next closest — which is less than a mile to the north. The intervening river course prevented us from trying one of the more southern tunnels on this journey; and indeed, if both neighbors were suffocated, he said, it is doubtful whether our battery will require an effort for the next one to the north of — about a mile beyond our second choice.

As we walk down our dim path through the labyrinth with the help of a map and compass — traverses the room and corridors at every stage of destruction or preservation, climbing the ramps, climbing the, crossing the upper floor and the bridge and climbing down again, finding a choked door and a pile of rubble, speeding up now and then along a neat smooth and immaculate stretch, take false leads and trace our path (in cases like removing the blind paper trail we left behind), and occasionally strike the bottom of the open shaft where daylight pours light or drips down — we are repeatedly teased by the sculptural walls along our route. Many certainly tell a very important historical story, and only the prospect of subsequent visits reconciles us with the need to pass through. Like that, we slowed down occasionally and lit our second torch. If we had more movies, we would have paused for a while to photograph certain reliefs, but copying a time-consuming hand was definitely impossible.

Of course the revelation was not clearly cut at the time as it sounds now. There are some plausible explanations, and we do a lot of hesitant whispers. Most importantly, we did not back down without further investigation; having come this far, we were reluctant to be deterred by certain disasters. By the way, what we should expect is simply too wild to believe. Such things do not happen in any normal world. Perhaps the sheer irrational instinct that made us dim our single torch — is no longer seduced by the decadent and sinister statues that gawk from the walls that oppress — and that soften our progress being cautious tiptoes and crawling on the floor and piles of trash piles that were increasingly scattered with debris.