THE BLONDE GODDESS OF BAL-SAGOTH by Robert E. Howard …….3
THE CHAIN OF AFORCOMON by Clark Ashton Smith............................ '34
IN THE VALLEY OF THE SORCERESS from
"Tales of Secret
Egypt," by Sax Rohmer
48
Permission
to reprint granted to Paul R. Reynolds & Son.
THE KELPIE by Manly Wade Wellman.........................................................
61
THE CAPTURED CROSS-SECTION by Miles Breuer.................................
67
THE WONDERFUL WINDOW from THE BOOK OF WONDER
by Lord Dunsany
80
TIGER DUST by Basset Morgan...................................................................
84
Copyright,
1943, by the Popular Fiction Publishing Company, for Weird Talc! magazine.
AN EPISODE OF CATHEDRAE HISTORY by M. R. lames ................... 102
THE DAY HAS COME by Walter Kubitius................................................... 116
THE BLONDE GODDESS OF BAL-SAGOTH by Robert E. Howard
During his unfortunately too brief lifetime,
Robert E. Howard was as prolific a writer
as anyone might hope for. He was that sort of natural writer to whom the speed
of narrating a tale did not interfere with the quality. He liked to write—and that is The secret of most good
fiction. And he loved nothing better than a lusty, gusty tale of uninhibited men battling fiercely against a primitive environment. Add to that the fulsome color of the mystery and
magic of the past: the horizons clouded with mist and fearsome legendry, the heavens a conspiracy of supernatural powers, and
fellow man nearly as dangerous and unpredictable as the beasts of the field,
and a Robert E. Howard story is bound to be an epic of weird and exciting peril. Here we have such a saga—a story of a Celtic
barbarian's challenge to the age-old and fast-sinking
evil of an Atlantean remnant.
1. Steel in the Storm
LIGHTNING
dazzled the eyes of Turlogh O'Brien and his foot slipped in a smear of blood as
he staggered on the reeling deck. The clashing of steel rivaled the bellowing
of the thunder, and screams of death cut through the roar of waves and wind. The
incessant lightning flicker gleamed on the corpses sprawling redly, the
gigantic horned figures that roared and smote like huge demons of The midnight storm, the great beaked prow looming above.
The
play was quick and desperate; in the momentary illumination a ferocious bearded
face shone before Turlogh, and his swift ax licked out. splitting
it to the chin. In the brief, utter blackness that followed the flash, an
unseen stroke swept Turlogh's helmet from his head and he struck back blindly,
feeling his ax sink into flesh, and hearing a man howl. Again the fires of the
raging skies sprang, showing the Gael the ring of savage faces, the hedge of
gleaming steel that hemmed him in.
Back
against the mainmast Turlogh parried and smote; then through the madness of the
fray a great voice thundered, and in a flashing instant the Gael caught a
glimpse of a giant form—a strangely familiar face. Then the world crashed into
fire-shot blackness.
Consciousness
returned slowly. Turlogh was first aware of a swaying, rocking motion of his
whole body which he could not check. Then a dull throbbing in his head racked him and he sought to raise his
3 ' i
hands to it. Then it was lie realized he was bound hand and foot—not an
altogether new experience. Clearing sight showed him that he was tied to the
mast of the dragon ship whose warriors had struck him down. Why they had spared
him, he could not understand, because if they knew him at all, they knew him to
be an outlaw—an outcast from his clan, who would nay no ransom to save him from
the very pits of Hell.
The
wind had fallen greatly but a heavy sea was flowing, which tossed the long ship
like a chip from gulf-like trough to foaming crest. A round silver moon,
peering through broken clouds, lighted the tossing billows. The Gael, raised
on the wild west coast of Ireland, knew thai the
serpent ship was crippled. He could tell it by the way she labored, plowing
deep into the spume, heeling to the lilt of the surge. Well, the tempest which
had been raging on these southern waters had been enough to damage even such
staunch craft as these Vikings built.
The same gale had caught the French vessel on
which Turlogh had
been a passenger, driving her off her course and far southward. Days
and nights had been a blind, howling chaos in which the ship had
been hurled flying like a wounded bird before the storm. And in the
very rack of the tempest a beaked prow had loomed in the scud above
the lower, broader craft, and the grappling irons had sunk in. Surely
these Norsemen were wolves and the blood-lust that burned in their
hearts was not human. In the terror and roar of the storm they leaped
howling to the onslaught, and while the raging heavens hurled their
full wrath upon them, and each shock of the frenzied waves threat-
ened to engulf both vessels, these sea-wolves glutted their fury to the
utmost—true sons of the sea, whose wildest rages found echo in their
own bosoms. It had been a slaughter rather than a fight—the Celt had
been the only fighting man aboard the doomed ship—and now he
remembered the strange familiarity of the face he had glimpsed just
before he was struck down. Who--------- ?
"Good hail, my bold Dalcassian, it's long since we met!"
Turlogh
stared at the man who stood before him, feet braced to
the lifting of the deck. He was of huge stature, a good half head taller than
Turlogh who stood well above six feet. His legs were like columns, his arms
like oak and iron. His beard was of crisp gold, matching the massive armlets he
wore. A shirt of scale-mail added to his war-like appearance as the horned
helmet seemed to increase his height. But there was no wrath in the calm gray
eyes which gazed tranquilly into the smoldering blue eyes of the Gael.
"Athelstane, the
Saxon!"
"Aye—it's
been a long day since you gave me this," the giant indicated a thin white
scar on his temple. "We seem fated to meet on nights of fury—we first
crossed steel the night you burned ThorfcTs
4
skaJli. Then I fell before your ax and you saved mc
from Brogar's Picts—alone of all the folk who followed Thorfel. Tonight it was
I who struck you down." lie touched the great two-handed sword strapped to
his shoulders and Turlogh cursed.
"Nay,
revile me not," said Athetstanc with a pained expression, "I could
have slain you in the press—I struck with the flat, but knowing you Irish have
cursed hard skulls, I struck with both hands. You have been senseless for
hours. Lodbrog would have slain you with the rest of the merchant ship's crew
but I claimed your life. But the Vikings would only agree to spare yon on
condition that you be bound to the mast. Thry know you
of old."
"Where are we?"
"Ask
me not. The storm blew us far out of our course. We were sailing to harry the
coasts of Spain. When chance threw us in with your vessel, of course we seized
the opportunity, but there was scant spoil. Now we are racing with the
sea-flow, unknowing. The steer sweep is crippled and the whole ship lamed. We
may be riding the very rim of the
world for aught I know. Swear to join us and 1 will loose you."
"Swear
to join the hosts of Hell!" snarled Turlogh. "Rather will I go down
with the ship ami sleep for ever under the green waters, bound to this mast. My only regret is that I cannot send more sea-wolves
to join the hundred-odd 1 have already sent to Purgatory!"
"Well,
well," said Athelstane tolerantly, "a man must eat—here—I will loose
your hands at least - now, set your teeth into this joint of meat."
Turlogh
bent his head to the great joint and tore at it ravenously. The Saxon watched
him a moment, then turned away. A strange man, reflected Turlogh, this renegade
Saxon who hunted with the wolf-pack of the
North—a savage warrior in battle, but with fibers of kindliness in his make-up
which set him apart from the men with whom he consorted.
The
ship reeled on blindly in the night, and Athelstane, returning with a great
horn of foaming ale, remarked on the fact that the clouds were gathering again,
obscuring the seething face of the sea. lie left the
Gael's hands unbound but Turlogh was held fast to the mast by cords about legs
and hotly. The rovers paid, no heed to their prisoner;
they were too much occupied in keeping their crippled ship from going down
under their feet.
At
last Turlogh believed he could catch at times a deep roaring above the wash of
the waves. This grew in volume, and even as the duller-eared Norsemen heard it,
the ship leaped like a spurred horse, straining in every timber. As by magic,
tlx1 clouds, lightening for dawn, rolled away on each side, showing
a wild waste of tossing gray waters, and a long line of breakers dead ahead.
Beyond the frothing madness of the reefs loomed land, apparently an island. The
roaring
increased to deafening proportions, as the long ship,
caught in the tide rip, raced headlong to her doom. Turlogh saw Lodbrog rushing
about, his long beard flowing in the wind as he brandished his fists and bellowed
futile commands. Athelstane came running across the deck.
"Little chance for any of us," he
growled as he cut the Gael's bonds,
"but you shall have as much as the rest---------- "
Turlogh sprang free.
"Where is my ax?"
"There in that weapon-rack. But Thor's
blood, man," marvelled the
big Saxon, "you won't burden yourself now--------- "
Turlogh
had snatched the ax and confidence flowed like wine through his veins at the
familiar feci of the slim, graceful shaft. His ax was as much a part of him as
his right hand; if he must die he wished to die with it in his grip. He hastily
slung it to his girdle. All armor had been shipped from him when he had been
captured.
"There are sharks in these waters,"
said Athelstane, preparing to
doff his scale-mail. "If we have to swim--------- "
The
ship struck with a crash that snapped her masts and shivered her prow like
glass. Her dragon beak shot high in the air and men tumbled like tenpins from
her slanted deck. A moment she poised, shuddering like a live thing, then slid
from the liklden reef and went down in a blinding smother of spray.
Turlogh
had left the deck in a long dive that carried him clear. Now he rose in the
turmoil, fought the waves for a mad moment, then
caught a piece of wreckage that the breakers flung up. As he clambered across
this, a shape bumped against him and went down again. Turlogh plunged his arm deep, caught a sword-belt and heaved the man up and on his
makeshift raft. For in that instant he had recognized the Saxon, Athelstane,
still burdened with the armor he had not had time to remove. The man seemed
dazed. He lay limp, limbs trailing.
Turlogh
remembered that ride through the breakers as a chaotic nightmare. The tide tore
them through, plunging their frail craft into the depths, then flinging them
into the skies. There was naught to do but hold on and trust to luck. And
Turlogh held on, gripping the Saxon with one hand and their raft with the
other, while it seemed his fingers would crack with the strain. Again and again
they were almost swamped; then by some miracle they were through, riding in
water comparatively calm and Turlogh saw a lean fin cutting the surface a yard
away. It swirled in and Turlogh unslung his ax and struck. lied
dyed the waters instantly and a rush of sinuous shapes made the craft rock.
While the sharks tore their brother, Turlogh, paddling with his hands, urged
the rude raft ashore until he could feel the bottom. lie
waded to the beach, half carrying the Saxon; then, iron though he was, Turlogh
O'Brien sank down, exhausted and soon slept soundly.
2. Gods from the Abyss
Turlogh did not sleep long. When he awoke the
sun was just risen above the sea-rim. The Gael rose,
feeling as refreshed as if he had slept the whole night through, and looked
about him. The broad white beach sloped gently from the water to a waving
expanse of gigantic trees. There seemed no underbrush, but so close together
were the huge boles, his sight could not pierce into the jungle. Athelstane was
standing some distance away on a spit of sand that ran out into the sea. The
huge Saxon leaned on his great sword and gazed out toward the reefs.
Here
and there on the beach lay the stiff figures that had been washed ashore. A
sudden snarl of satisfaction broke from Turlogh's lips. Here at his very feet
was a gift from the gods; a dead Viking lay there, fully armed in the helmet
and mail shirt he had not had time to doff when the ship foundered, and Turlogh
saw they were his own. Even the round light buckler strapped to the Norseman's
back was his. Turlogh did pause to wonder how all his accouterments had come iuto
the possession of one man, but stripped the dead and donned the plain round
helmet and the shirt of black chain mail. Thus armed he went up the beach
toward Athelstane, his eyes gleaming unpleasantly.
The
Saxon turned as he approached. "Hail to you, Gael," he greeted,
"We be all of Lodbrog's ship-people left alive. The hungry green sea drank
them all. By Thor, I owe my life to you! What with the weight of
my mail, and the crack my skull got on the rail, I had most certainly been food
for the sharks but for you. It all seems like a dream now."
"You
saved my life," snarled Turlogh, "I saved yours. Now the debt is
paid, the accounts are squared, so up with your sword and let us make an
end."
Athelstane stared. "You wish to fight me? Why—what--------- ?"
"I
hate your breed as I hate Satan!" roared the Gael, a tinge of madness in his blazing
eyes, "Your wolves have ravaged my people for five hundred years! The
smoking ruins of the Southland, the seas of spilled blood call for vengeance!
The screams of a thousand ravished girls are ringing in my ears, night and day!
Would that the North had but a single oreast for my
ax to
cleave!"
"But I am no Norseman," rumbled the giant in worrimont.
"The
more shame to you, renegade," raved the maddened Gael, "Defend
yourself lest I cut you down in cold blood!"
"This
is not to my liking," protested Athelstane, lifting his mighty blade, his
gray eyes serious but unafraid, "Men speak truly who say there is madness
in you."
Words
ceased as the men prepared to go into deadly action. The Gael approached his
foe, crouching panther-like, eyes ablaze. The
Saxon waited the onslaught,
feet braced wide apart, sword held high
in both hands. It was Turlogh's ax and shield against Athelstane's
two-handed sword; in a contest one stroke might end either way. Like
two great jungle beasts they played their deadly, wary game, then---------
Even
as Turlogh's muscles tensed for the death-leap, a fearful sound split the
silence! both men started and recoiled. From the
depths of the forest behind them rose a ghastly and inhuman scream. Shrill, yet
of great volume, it rose higher and higher until it ceased at the highest
pitch, like the triumph of a demon, like the cry of some grisly ogre gloating
over its human prey.
"Thor's
blood!" gasped the Saxon, letting his sword-point fall, "What was
that?"
Turlogh
shook his head. Even his iron nerve was slightly shaken. "Some
fiend of the forest. This is a strange land in a strange sea. Mayhap
Satan himself reigns here and it is the gate to Hell."
Athelstane
looked uncertain. He was more pagan than Christian and his devils were heathen
devils. But they were none the less grim for that.
"Well," said he, "let us drop
our quarrel until we see what it may be.
Two blades are better than one, whether for man or devil------------
A
wild shriek cut him short. This time it was a human voice, blood-cliilling in
its horror and despair. Simultaneously came the swift
patter of feet and the lumbering rush of some heavy body among the trees. The
warriors wheeled toward the sound, and out of the deep shadows a half-naked
woman came flying like a white leaf blown on the wind.
Her loose hair streamed like a ilame of gold behind
her, her white limbs flashed in the morning sun, her eyes blazed with frenzied
terror. And behind her —
Even
Turlogh's hair stood up. The thing that pursued the fleeing girl was neither
man nor beast. In form it was like a bird, but such a bird as the rest of the
world had not seen for many an age. Some twelve feet high it towered, and its
evil head with the wicked red eyes and cruel curved beak was as big as a
horse's head. The long arched neck was thicker than a man's thigh and the huge
taloned feet could have gripped the fleeing woman as an eagle grips a sparrow.
This
much Turlogh saw in one glance as he sprang between the monster and its prey
who sank down with a cry on the beach, It loomed above him like a mountain of
death and the evil beak darted down, denting the shield he raised and
staggering him with the impact. At the same instant he struck, but the keen ax
sank harmlessly into a cushioning mass of spiky feathers. Again the beak
flashed at him and his sidelong leap saved his life by a hair's breadth. And
then Athelstane ran in, and bracing his feet wide, swung his great sword with
both hands and all his strength. The mighty blade sheared through one of the
tree-like legs below the knee, and with an abhorrent screech, the monster sank
on its side, flapping its short heavy wings wildly. Turlogh drove the
hack-spike of his ax between the glaring red eyes and the gigantic bird kicked
convulsively and lay still.
"Thor's blood I" Athelstanc's gray
eyes were blazing with battle lust,
"Truly we've come to the rim of the world-------- "
"Watch
the forest lest another come forth," snapped Turlogh, turning to the
woman who had scrambled to her feet and stood panting, eyes wide with wonder.
She was a splendid young animal, tall, cleanlimbed, slim and shapely. Her only
garment was a sheer bit of silk hung carelessly about her hips. But though the
scantiness of her dress suggested the savage, her skin was snowy while, her
loose hair of purest gold and her eyes gray. Now she spoke hastily,
stammeringly, in the tongue of the Norse, as if she had not so spoken in years.
"You - who arc you men? Whence come you?
What do you on the Isle of the Gods?"
"Thor's bloodl"
rumbled the Saxon. "She's of our own kind!"
"Not
mine!" snapped Turlogh, unable even in that moment to forget his hate for
the people of the North.
The
giil looked curiously at the two. "The world must have changed greatly
since I left it," said she, evidently in full control of herself once
more, "else how is it that wolf and wild bull hunt together? By your black
hair, you are a Gael,
and you, big man, have a slur
in your speech that can be naught but Saxon."
"We
are two outcasts," answered Turlogh, "You see these dead men lining
the strand? They were the crew of the dragon ship which bore us here,
storm-driven. This man, Athelstane, once of Wessex, was a swordsman on that
ship and I was a captive. I am Turlogh Dubh, once a chief of Clan na O'Brien. Who are yon and what land is this?"
"This
is the oldest land in the world," answered the girl, "Rome, Egypt,
Cathay are as but infants beside it. I am Brunhild,
daughter of Bane Thorfin's son, of the Orkneys, and until a lew days ago, queen
of this ancient kingdom."
Turlogh looked uncertainly
at Athelstane. This sounded like sorcery.
"After
what we have just seen," rumbled the giant, "1 am ready to believe anything. But are you in
truth Rane Thorfin's son's stolen child?"
"Aye!" cried the girl, "I am
that one! I was stolen when Tostig the
Mad raided the Orkneys and burned Bane's steading in the absence
of its master------ "
"And
then Tostig vanished from the face of the earth—or the seal" interrupted
Athelstane, "He was in truth a madman. I sailed with him for a
ship-harrying many years ago when I was but a youth."
"And
his madness cast me on this island," answered Brunhild; "for after he
had harried die shores of England, the fire in his brain drove him out into
unknown seas—south and south and ever south until even
9
the fierce wolves he led murmured. Then a storm drove us
on yonder reef, though at another part, rending the dragon ship even as yours
was rended last night. Tostig and all his strong men perished
in the waves, but I clung to pieces of wreckage and a whim of the gods cast me
ashore, half dead. 1 was
fifteen years old. That was ten years ago.
"I
found a strange terrible people dwelling here, a brown-skinned folk who knew
many dark secrets of magic. They found me lying senseless on the beach and
because I was the first white human they had ever seen,
their priests divined that I was
a goddess given them by the sea, whom they worship. So they put me in the
temple with the rest of their curious gods and did reverence to me. And their
high-priest, old Cothan— cursed be his name!—taught me many strange and fearful
things. Soon I learned their language and much of their priests* inner
mysteries. And as I grew into womanhood the desire for power
stirred in me; for the people of the North are made to rule the folk of the
world, and it is not for the daughter of a sea-king to sit meekly in a temple
and accept the offerings of fruit and flowers and human sacrifices!''
She
stopped for a moment, eyes blazing. Truly, she looked a worthy daughter of the fierce race she claimed.
"Well,"
she continued, "there was one who loved me—Kotar, a young chief. With him 1 plotted and at last I rose and flung olf the yoke of old Cothan. That was a wild season of
plot and counter-plot, intrigue, rebellion and red carnage! Men and women died
like Hies and the streets of Bal-Sagoth ran red—but in the end we triumphed,
Kotar and !! Tin- dynasty of Angar came to an end on a
night of blood and fury and I reigned
supreme on the Isle of the Gods, queen and goddess!"
She
had drawn herself up to her full height, her beautiful face alight with fierce
pride, her bosom heaving. Turlogh was at once fascinated and repelled. He had
seen rulers rise and fall, and between the lines of her brief narrative he read
the bloodshed and carnage, the cruelty and the treachery sensing the basic
ruthlessness of this girl-woman.
"but if you were queen," he asked, "how is it that
we find you hunted through the forests of your domain by this monster, like a
runaway serving wench?"
Brunhild
bit her lip and an angry flush mounted to her cheeks. "What is it that
brings down every woman, whatever her station? I trusted a man—Kotar, my lover,
with whom I shared my rule. He betrayed
mc; after I had raised him to the highest power in the kingdom, next to my
own, I found he secretly made love to another girl. I killed them both!"
Turlogh smiled coldly:
"You are a true Brunhild! And then what?"
"Kotar was loved by the people. Old
Gothan stirred them up. I made my greatest mistake when I let that old one live. Yet I dared not slay him. Well, Gothan rose
against me, as I had risen against him, and the warriors rebelled, slaying
those who stood faidiful to me. Me they took captive but dared not kill; for
after all, I was a goddess,
they believed. So before dawn, fearing die people woidd change their minds
again and restore me to power, Gothan had me taken to the lagoon which
separates tins part of the island from the other. The priests rowed me across
the lagoon and left me, naked and helpless, to my fate."
"And
that fate was- this?" Athelstane touched the huge carcass with his foot.
Brunhild
shuddered. "Many ages ago there were many of these monsters on the isle,
the legends say. They warred on the people of Bal-Sagoth and devoured them by
hundreds. But at last all were exterminated on the main part of the isle and
on this side of the lagoon all died but this one, who lias abided here for
centuries. In the old times hosts of men came against him, but he was greatest
of all the devil-birds and he slew all who fought him. So the priests made a
god of him and left this part of the island to him. None comes here except
those brought as sacrifices—as I was.
lie could not cross to the main island, because the
lagoon swarms with great sharks which would rend even him to pieces.
"For
a while I eluded him, stealing among the trees, but at
last he spied me out—and you know the rest. I owe my life to you. Now what will
you do with me?"
Athelstane
looked at Turlogh and Turlogh shrugged. "What can we do, save starve in
this forest?'
"I will tell you!" the girl cried in a
ringing voice, her eyes blazing anew to the swift working of her keen
brain.Thcre is an old legend among this people—that men of iron will come out
of the sea and the city of Bal-Sagoth will fall! You, with your mail and
helmets, will seem as iron men to these folk who know nothing of armor! You
have slain Grolh-golka the bird-god you have come out of the sea as did I—the
people will look on you as gods. Come with me and aid me to win back my
kingdom! You shall be my right-hand men and I will heap honors on you! Fine
garments, gorgeous palaces, fairest girls shall be yours!"
Her
promises slid from Turlogh's mind without leaving an imprint, but the mad
splendor of the proposal intrigued him. Strongly he desired to look on this
strange city of which Brunhild spoke, and the thought of two warriors and one
girl pitted against a whole nation for a crown stirred the utmost depths of his knight-errant Celtic soul.
"It is well,"
said he. "And what of you, Athelstane?"
"My
belly is empty," growled the giant. "Lead me
to where there is food and I'll hew my way to it, through a horde of priests and warriors."
"Lead us lo this city!" said Turlogh to Brunhild.
"Hail!"
she cried Hinging her white arms high in wild
exultation. "Now let Cothan and Ska and Gelka tremble! With ye at my side I'll win back the crown they tore from me, and
this time I'll not spare my enemy! I'll hurl old Cothan from the highest
battlement, though the bellowing of his demons shake
the very bowels of the earth! And we shall sec if the god Gol-goroth shall
stand against the sword that cut Groth golka's leg from under him. Now hew the
head from this carcass that the people may know you have overcome the bird-god.
Now follow me, for the sun mounts the sky and 1 would sleep in my own palace tonight!"
The
three passed into the shadows of the mighty forest. The interlocking branches,
hundreds of feet above their heads, made dim and strange such sunlight as
filtered through. No life was seen except for an occasional gayly-hued bird or
a huge ape. These beasts, Brunhild said, were
survivors of another age, harmless except when attacked. Presently the growth
changed somewhat, the trees thinned and became smaller and fruit of many kinds
was seen among the branches. Brunhild told the warriors which to pluck and eat
as they walked along. Turlogh was quite satisfied with the fruit, but
Athelstane, though he ate enormously, did so with scant relish. Fruit was light
sustenance to a man used to such solid stuff as formed his regular diet. Even
among the gluttonous Danes the Saxon's capacity for beef and ale was admired.
"Look!"
cried Brunhild sharply, halting and pointing. "The
spires of Bal-Sagoth!"
Through
the trees the warriors caught a glimmer, white and shim-mery, and apparently
far away. There was an illusory impression of towering battlements, high in the
air, with lleeey clouds hovering about them. The sight woke strange dreams in
the mystic deeps of the Gael's soul, and even Athelstane was silent as il he too were struck by the pagan beauty and mystery of the
scene.
So
they progressed through the forest, now losing sight of the distant city as
tree tops obstructed the view, now seeing it again. And at last they came out
on the low shelving banks of a broad blue lagoon and the full beauty of the
landscape burst upon their eyes. From the opposite shores the country sloped
upward in long gentle undulations which broke like great slow waves at the foot
of a range of blue hills a few miles away. These wide swells were covered with
deep grass and many groves of trees, while miles away on either hand there was
seen curving away into the distance the strip of thick forest which Brunhild
said belted the whole island. And among those blue dreaming hills brooded the age-old city of Bal-Sagoth, its white walls and
sapphire towers clean-cut against the morning sky. The suggestion of great
distance had been an illusion.
"Is that not a kingdom worth fighting for?" cried Brunhild, her voice vibrant.
"Swift now—let us bind this dry wood together for a raft. We coidd not live an instant swimming in that shark-haunted
water."
At
that instant a figure leaped up from the tall grass on the other shore—a naked,
brown-skinned man who stared for a moment, agape. Then as Athelstane shouted
and held up the grim head of Groth-golka, the fellow gave a startled cry and
raced away like an antelope.
"A
slave Gothan left to see if I tried to swim die lagoon," said Brunhild
with angry satisfaction. "Let him run to the city and tell them—but let us
make haste and cross the lagoon before Gothan can arrive and dispute our
passage."
Turlogh
and Athelstane were already busy. A number of dead trees lay about and these
they stripped of their branches and bound together with long vines. In a short
time diey had built a raft, crude and clumsy, but capable of bearing them
across the lagoon. Brunhild gave a frank
sigh of relief when they stepped on the other shore.
"Let
us go straight to the city," said she. "The slave has reached it ere
now and they will be watching us from the walls. A bold course is our only one. Thor's hammer, but I'd like to see Gothan's face when die
slave tells him Brunhild is returning with two strange warriors and die head of
him to whom she was given as sacrificel"
"Why
did you not kill Gothan when you had the power?" asked Athelstane.
She
shook her head, her eyes clouding with something akin to fear: "Easier
said than done. Half the people hate Gothan, half love him, and all fear him.
The most ancient men of the city say that he was old when they were babes. The
people believe him to be more god than priest, and 1 myself
have seen him do terrible and mysterious things, beyond the power of a common
man.
"Nay,
when I was but a puppet in his hands, I came only to the outer fringe of his
mysteries, yet I have looked on sights that froze my blood. 1 have seen strange shadows flit along the
midnight walls, and groping along black subterranean corridors in the dead of
night I have heard unhallowed sounds and have felt the presence of hideous beings.
And once J heard the grisly slavering bellowings of the nameless Thing Gothan
has chained deep in die bowels of the hills on which vests die city of
Bal-Sagoth."
Brunhild shuddered.
"There
are many gods in Bal-Sagodi, but the greatest of all is Col-goroth, the god of
darkness who sits forever in the Temple of Shadows. When I overthrew the power
of Gothan, I forbade men to worship Col-goroth, and made the priests hail, as
the one true diety, A-ala, the daughter of the sea—myself. I had strong men
take heavy hammers and smite the image of Gol-goroth, but their blows only
shattered the hammers and gave strange hurts to the men who wielded diem. Colli goroth was indestructible and showed no mar. So
I desisted and shut the doors of the Temple of Shadows which were opened only
when I was overthrown and Cothan, who had been skulking in the secret places of
the city, came again into his own. Then Gol-goroth reigned again in his full
terror and the idols of A-ala were overthrown in the Temple of the Sea, and the
priests of A-ala died howling on the red-stained altar before the black god.
But now we shall see!"
"Surely
you are a very Valkyrie," muttered Athelstane. "But three against a
nation is great odds—especially such a people as this, who must assuredly be
all witches and sorcerers."
"Bah!"
cried Brunhild contemptuously, "there are many sorcerers, it is true, but
though the people are strange to us, they are mere fools in their own way, as
arc all nations. When Cothan led me captive down the streets they spat on me.
Now watch them turn on Ska, the new king Cothan has given them, when it seems
my star rises again! But now we approach the city gates—be
bold but wary!"
They
had ascended the long swelling slopes and were not far from the walls which
rose immensely upward. Surely, thought Turlogh, heathen gods built tin's city.
The walls seemed of marble and with their fretted battlements and slim
watch-towers, dwarfed the memory of such cities as Rome, Damascus and
Byzantium. A broad white winding road led op from the lower levels to the
plateau before the gates and as they came up this road, the three adventurers
felt hundreds of hidden eyes fixed on them with fierce intensity. The walls
seemed deserted; it might have been a dead city. But the impact of those
staring eyes was felt.
Now
they stood before the massive gates, which to the amazed eyes of the warriors
seemed to be of chased silver.
"Here
is an emperor's ransom!" muttered Athelstane, eyes ablaze. "Thor's
blood, if we had but a stout band of reavers and a ship to carry away the
plunder!"
"Smite
on the gate and then step back, lest something fall upon you," said
Brunhild, and the thunder of Turlogh's ax on the portals woke the echoes in the
sleeping hills.
The
three then fell back a few paces and suddenly the mighty gates swung inward and
a strange concourse of people stood revealed. The two white warriors looked on
a pageant of barbaric grandeur. A throng of tall, slim, brown-skinned men stood
in the gates. Their only garments were loin-cloths of silk, the fine work of
which contrasted strangely with the near-nudity of the wearers. Tall waving
plumes of many colors decked their heads, and armlets and Ieglets of gold and
silver, crusted with gleaming gems, completed their ornamentation. Armor they
wore none, but each carried a light shield on his left arm, made of hard wood,
highly polished, and braced with silver. Their weapons were slim-bladed spears,
fight hatchets and slender daggers, all bladcd with fine steel. Evidently these
warriors depended more on speed and skill than on brute force.
At the front of this band stood three men who
instantly commanded attention. One was a lean hawk-faced warrior, almost as tall as Atiielstane, who
wore about his neck a great golden chain from which was suspended a curious symbol in jade. One of the other men was young, evil-eyed; an
impressive riot of colors in the mantle of parrot-feathers which swung from his
shoulders. The third man had nothing to set him apart from the rest save his
own strange personality, fie wore no mantle, bore no weapons. His only garment
was a plain loincloth. He was very old; he alone of all the throng was
bearded, and his beard was as white as the long hair which fell about his
shoulders. He was very tall and very lean, and his great dark eyes blazed as
from a
hidden fire. Turlogh knew
without being told that this man was Cothan, priest of the Black God. The
ancient exuded a very aura of age and mystery. His great eyes were like windows
of some forgotten temple, behind which passed like ghosts his dark and terrible
thoughts. Turlogh sensed that Cothan had delved too deep in forbidden secrets
to remain altogether human. He had passed through doors that had cut him off
from the dreams, desires and emotions of ordinary mortals. Looking into those
unwinking orbs Turlogh loll his skin crawl, as if he had looked into the eyes
of a great serpent.
Now
a glance upward showed that the walls were thronged with silent dark-eyed
folk. The stage was set; all was in readiness for the swift, red drama. Turlogh
felt his pulse quicken with fierce exhilaration and Athelstane's eyes began to
glow with ferocious light.
Brunhild
stepped forward boldly, head high, her splendid figure vibrant- The white
warriors naturally could not understand what passed between her ami the others,
except as they read from gestures and expressions, but later Brunhild narrated
the conversation almost word for word.
"Well,
people of Bal-Sagoth," said she, spacing her words slowly, "what
words have you for your goddess whom you mocked and reviled?"
"What will you have, false one?"
exclaimed the tall man, Ska, the
king set up by Cothan; "you who mocked at the customs of our an-
cestors, defied the laws of Bal-Sagoth, which are older than the world,
murdered your lover and defiled the shrine of Col-goroth? You were
doomed by law, king and god and placed in the grim forest beyond
the lagoon------ "
"And
I, who am likewise a goddess and greater than any god," answered
Brunhild mockingly, "am returned from the realm of horror with the head of
Groth-golka!"
At a word
from her, Atiielstane held up the great beaked head, and a low whispering ran about the battlements, tense with fear and
bewilderment.
"Who
are diese men?" Ska bent a worried frown on the two warriors.
"They are iron men who have come out of
the sear answered
Brunhild in a clear voice that carried far; "the beings who have come in
response to the old prophecy, to overthrow the city of Bal-Sagoth, whose people
arc traitors and whose priests are false!"
At
these words the fearful murmur broke out afresh all up and down the line of die
walls, till Gothan lifted his vulture-head and the people fell silent and
shrank before the icy stare of his terrible eyes.
Ska
glared bewilderedly, his ambition struggling with his superstitious fears.
Turlogh,
looking closely at Gothan, believed that he read beneath the inscrutable mask
of the old priest's face. For all his inhuman wisdom, Gothan had his
limitations. This sudden return of one he thought well disposed of, and the
appearance of the white-skinned giants accompanying her, had caught Gothan off
his guard, Turlogh believed, rightly. There had been no time to properly
prepare for their reception. The people had already begun to murmur in the
streets against the severity of Ska's brief rule. They had always believed in
Brunhild's divinity; now that she returned with two tall men of her own hue,
bearing the grim trophy that marked the conquest of another of their gods, die
people were wavering. Any small thing might turn the title either way.
"People
of Bal-Sagoth!" shouted Brunhild suddenly, springing back and flinging her
arms high, gazing full into the faces that looked down at her, "I bid you avert your doom before it is too
late! You cast me out and spat on me; you turned to darker gods than 1! Yet all this will I forgive
if you return and do obeisance to me! Once you reviled me— you called mc bloody
and cruel! True, I was a hard mistress—but has Ska been an easy
master? You said I lashed the people with whips of rawhide - has
Ska stroked you with parrot feathers?
"A virgin died on my altar at the full
title of each moon—but youths and maidens die at the waxing and the waning, the
rising and the setting of each moon, before Gol-goroth, on whose altar a fresh
human heart forever throbs! Ska is but a shadow! Your real lord is Gothan, who
sits above the city like a vulture! Once you were a mighty people; your galleys
filled the seas. Now you are a remnant and that is dwindling fasti Fools! You will all die on the altar of Gol-goroth ere
Gothan is done and he will stalk alone among the silent ruins of Bal-Sagothl
"Look
at him!" her voice rose to a scream
as she lashed herself to an inspired frenzy, and even Turlogh, to whom die
words were meaningless, shivered. "Look at him where he stands there like
an evil spirit
16
out of the past! He is not even human! I tell
you, he is a foul ghost, whose beard is dabbled with the
blood of a million butcheries—an incarnate fiend out of the mist of the ages
come to destroy the people of Bal-Sagoth!
"Choose
now! Rise up against that ancient devil and his blasphemous gods,
receive your rightful queen and deity again and you shall regain some of your
former greatness. Refuse, and the ancient prophesy shall be fulfilled and the
sun will set on the silent and crumbled ruins of Bal-Sagoth!"
Fired by her dynamic words, a young warrior with the insignia of a chief sprang to the parapet and
shouted: "Hail to A-ala! Down with the bloody gods!"
Among
the multitude many took up the shout and steel clashed as a score of fights
started. The crowd on the battlements and in the streets surged and eddied,
while Ska glared, bewildered. Brunhild, forcing back her companions who quivered
with eagerness for action of some kind, shouted: "Hold! Let no man strike
a blow yet! People of Bal-Sagoth, it has been a tradition since the beginning
of time that a king must fight for his crown! Let Ska cross steel with one of
these warriors! If Ska wins, I will kneel before him and let him strike oil my
head! If Ska loses, then you shall accept me as your rightful queen and
goddess!"
A
great roar of approval went up from the walls as the people ceased their
brawls, glad enough to shift the responsibility to their rulers.
"Will
you fight, Ska?" asked Brunhild, turning to the king mockingly. "Or
will you give me your head without further arguments?"
"Slut!"
howled Ska, driven to madness, "I will take the skulls of these fools for
drinking-cups, and then I will rend you between two bent trees!"
Gothan
laid a hand on his arm and whispered in his ear, but Ska had reached the point
where he was deaf to all but his fury. His achieved ambition, he had found, had
faded to the mere part of a puppet
dancing on Cothan's string; now even the hollow bauble of his kingship was
slipping from him and this weneh mocked him to his face before his people. Ska
went, to all practical effects, stark mad.
Brunhild turned to her two allies. "One
of you must fight Ska."
"Let me be the one!" urged Turlogh,
eyes dancing with eager
battle-lust. "He has the look of a man quick as a wildcat, and Athcl-
stanc, while a very bull for strength, is a thought slow for
such
work----- "
"Slow!" broke in Athelstane
reproachfully. "Why, Turlogh, lor a
man my weight------- "
"Enough," Brunhild interrupted.
"He must choose lor himself. She spoke to Ska, who glared red-eyed for an
instant, then indicated
17
Athelstane,
who grinned joyfully, cast aside the bird's head and wishing his sword.
Turlogh swore and stepped back. The king had decided that he would have a
better chance against this huge buffalo of a man who looked slow, than against
the black-haired tigerish warrior, whose eat-like
quickness was evident.
"This Ska is without armor,"
rumbled the Saxon. "Let me likewise
dofl my mail and helmet so that we fight on equal terms--------------------- "
"No!"
cried Brunhild. "Your armor is your only chancel I tell you, this false
king fights like the play of summer lightning! You will be hard put to hold
your own as it is. Keep on your armor, I sayl"
"Well,
well," grumbled Athelstane, "1 will—I will. Though I say it is
scarcely fair. But let him come on and make an end of it."
The
huge Saxon strode ponderously toward his foe, who
warily crouched and circled away. Atiielstane held his great sword in both
hands before him, pointed upward, the hilt somewhat below the level of his
chin, in position to strike a blow to right or left, or parry a sudden attack.
Ska
had flung away his light shield, his fighting-sense telling him that it would
be useless before the stroke of that heavy blade. In his right hand he held his
slim spear as a man holds a throwing-dart, in his left a light, keen-edged
hatchet, lie meant to make a fast, shifty fight of it, and his tactics were
good. But Ska, having never encountered armor before, made his fatal mistake in
supposing it to be apparel or ornament through which his weapons would pierce.
Now
he sprang in, tin listing at Athclslaoe's face with his spear. The Saxon
parried with ease and instantly cut tremendously at Ska's legs. The king
Ixnmded high, clearing the whistling blade, and in midair he hacked down at
Athelslane's bent head. The light hatchet shivered to bits on the Viking's
helmet and Ska sprang back out of reach with a blood-lusting howl.
And
now it was Athelstane who rushed with unexpected quickness, like a charging
bull, and before that terrible onslaught Ska. bewildered
by the breaking of his hatchet, was caught oil his guard flat-footed. He caught
a fleeting glimpse of the giant looming over him like an overwhelming wave and
he sprang in, instead of out, stabbing ferociously. That mistake was his last.
The thrusting spear glanced harmlessly from the Saxon's mail, and in that
instant the great sword sang down in a stroke the king could not evade. The
force of that stroke tossed him as a man is tossed by a plunging bull. A dozen
feet away fell Ska, king of Bal-Sagoth, to -lie
shattered and dead in a ghastly welter of blood and entrails. The throng gaped,
struck silent by the prowess of that deed.
"Hew
off his head!'' cried Brunhild, her eyes flaming as she clenched li.i hind, mi thai the nails bit into the palms. "Impale that carrion'..
18
head on your sword-point so that we may carry it
through the city gates with us as a token of victory I"
But
Athclstane shook his head, cleansing his blade: "Nay, he was a brave man
and I will not mutilate his corpse. It is no great feat I have done, for he was
naked and I full-armed. Else it is in my mind, the brawl had gone differently."
Turlogh glanced at the people on the walls.
They had recovered
from their astonishment and now a vast roar went up: "A-ala! Hail to
the true goddess!" And the warriors in the gateway dropped to their
knees and bowed their foreheads in the dust before Brunhild, who
stood proudly erect, bosorn heaving with fierce triumph. Truly,
thought Turlogh, she is more than a queen—she is a shield woman, a
Valkyrie, as Athclstane said. I
Now
she stepped aside and, tearing the golden chain with its jade symbol from the
dead neck of Ska. held it on high and shouted:
"People of Bal-Sagoth, you have seen how your false king died before this
golden-bearded giant who, being ol iron, shows no single cut! Choose now—do you
receive me of your own free will?"
"Aye,
we do!" the multitude answered in a great shout. "Return
to your people, oh mighty and all-powerful queen!"
Brunhild
smiled sardonically. "Come," said she to the warriors; "they are
lashing themselves into a very frenzy of love and loyalty, having already
forgotten their treachery. The memory of the mob is short!"
Aye,
thought Turlogh, as at Brunhild's side he and the Saxon passed through the
mighty gates between Gles of prostrate chieftains; aye, the memory of the mob
is very short. But a few days have passed since thev were yelling as wildly for
Ska the liberator scant hours had passed since Ska sat enthroned, master of
life and death, and the people bowed before Iris feet. Now- Turlogh glanced at
the mangled corpse which lay deserted and forgotten before the silver gates.
The shadow of a circling vulture fell across it. The clamor of the multitude
filled Turlogh's ears and he smiled a bitter smile.
lire great gates closed behind the three
adventurers and Turlogh saw a broad white street stretching away in front of
him. Other lesser streets radiated from this one. The two warriors caught a
jumbled and chaotic impression of great white stone buildings shouldering each
other; of sky-lifting towers and broad stair-fronted palaces. Turlogh knew
there must be an ordered svstem by which the city was laid out, but to him all
seemed a waste or stone and metal and polished wood, without rime or reason.
IIis baffled eyes sought the street again.
Far
up the street extended a mass of humanity, from which rose a rhythmic thunder
of sound. Thousands of naked, gayly plumed men and women knelt there, bending
forward to touch the marble flags with their foreheads, then
swaying back with an upward Hinging of
19
their arms, all moving in perfect unison like the bending and rising of tall grass
before the wind. And in time to their bowing they lifted a monotoned chant that sunk and swelled in a frenzy of ecstasy. So kcr wayward people welcomed back the goddess A-ala.
Just
within the gates Brunhild
stopped and there came to her the young chief who had first raised the shout of
revolt upon the walk, lie knelt and kissed her bare feet, saying: "Oh
great queen and goddess, thou knowest Zomar was ever faithful to thee! Thou
knowest how I fought for thee and barely escaped the altar of Gol-goroth for
thy sake!"
"Thou
hast indeed been faithful, Zomai," answered Brunhild in the stilted language
required for such occasions, "nor shall thy fidelity go unrewarded. Henceforth thou are commander of my own bodyguard." Then in a lower voice she added: "Gather a band
from your own retainers and from those who have espoused my cause all along,
and bring them to the palace. I do not trust the people any more than I have
to!"
Suddenly
Athelstane, not understanding this conversation, broke in: "Where is the
old one with the beardr'
Turlogh
started and glanced around, lie had almost forgotten the wizard. He had not seen him go—yet he was gone! Brunhild laughed ruefully.
"He's
stolen away to breed more
trouble in the shadows, lie
and Gelka vanished when Ska tell. He has secret ways of coming and going and
none may stay him. Forget him lor the time being; heed ye well—wc shall have plenty of him anon!"
Now
the chiefs brought a finely carved and highly ornamented palanquin carried by
two strong slaves, and Brunhild stepped into this, saying to her companions:
"They are fearful of touching you, but ask if you would be carried. I think it better that you walk, one on each side;
of me."
"Thor's
blood!" rumbled Athelstane. shouldering the huge
sword he had never sheathed, 'Tin no infant!
I'll split the skull of the man who seeks to carry me!"
And
so up the long white street went Brunhild,
daughter of Bane Thorfin's son in the Orkneys, goddess ol the sea,
queen of age-old
IJal-Sagoth. Borne by two great slaves she went, with a while giant striding on each
side with bared steel, and a concourse
of chiefs following, while the multitude gave way to right and left, leaving a wide
lane down which she passed. Golden trumpets sounded a fanfare of triumph, chums thundered, chants of worship echoed to the ringing skies. Surely in this riot ol glory, this barbaric pageant of splendor,
the proud soul of the North-born girl drank deep and grew drunken with imperial pride.
Athelstaue's eyes glowed with simple delight at this flame of pagan
20 magnificence, but to the black-haired fighting man of die West, it
seemed that even in the loudest clamor of triumph, the trumpet, the drum and
the shouting faded away into the forgotten dust and silence of eternity.
Kingdoms and empires pass away like mist from the sea, thought Turlogh; the
people shout and triumph and even in the revelry of Belshazzar's feast, the
Medes break the gates of Babylon. Even now the shadow of doom is over this city
and the slow tides of oblivion lap the feet of this unheeding race. So in a
strange mood Turlogh O'Brien strode beside the palanquin,
and it seemed to him that he and Athclstane walked in a dead city, through
throngs of dim ghosts, cheering a ghost queen.
3.
The Fall of the Cods
Night had fallen on the ancient city of
Bal-Sagoth. Turlogh, Athclstane and Brunhild sat alone in a room of the inner
palace. The queen half reclined on a silken couch, while the men sat on
mahogany eliairs, engaged in the viands that slave-girls had served them on
golden dishes. The walls of this room, as of all the
palace, were of marble, with golden scrollwork. The ceiling was of lapis-lazuli
and the floor of silver-inlaid marble tiles. Heavy velvet hangings decorated
the walls and silken cushions; richly made divans and mahogany chairs and
tables littered the room in careless profusion.
"1
would give much for a horn of ale, but this wine is riot sour to the
palate," said Athclstane, emptying a golden flagon with relish.
"Brunhild, you have deceived us. You let us understand it would take hard
fighting to win back your crown—yet 1 have struck but one blow and my sword is
thirsty as Turlogh's ax which has not drunk at all. We hammered on the gates
and the people fell down and worshipped with no more ado. And until a little
while ago. we but stood by your throne in the great palace room, while you
spoke to the throngs that came and knocked their heads on the floor before
you—by Thor, never have I heard such chattering and jabbering! My ears ring
till now— what were they saying? And where is that old conjurer Gothan?"
"Your
steel will drink deep yet, Saxon," answered the girl grimly, resting her
chin on her hands and eyeing the warriors with deep moody eyes. "Had you
gambled with cities and crowns as I have done, you would know that seizing a
throne may be easier than keeping it. Our sudden appearance with the bird-god's
head, your killing of Ska, swept the people off their feet. As for the rest—I
held audience in the palace as you saw, even if you did not understand, and the
people who came in bowing droves were assuring me of their unswerving loyalty
—ha! 1 graciously pardoned them all, but I am no fool. When they have time to
think, they will begin to grumble again. Gothan is linking in the shadows
somewhere, plotting evil to us all, you may be sure.
This
city is honeycombed witli secret corridors and subterranean passages of which
only the priests know. Even I, who
have traversed some of them when I was
Cothan's puppet, know not where to look for the secret doors, since Cothan
always led me through them blindfolded.
"just now, I think [ hold the upper hand. The people look on
you with more awe than (hey regard me. They think your armor and helmets are
part of your bodies and that you are invulnerable. Did you not note them
timidly touching your mail as wc passed through the
crowd, and the amazement on their faces as they felt the iron of it?"
"For
a people so wise in some ways they are very foolish in others," said
Turlogh. "Who are they ancl whence came they?"
"They
are so old," answered "Brunhild, "that their most ancient legends
give no hint of their origin. Ages ago they were a part of a great empire which
spread out over the many isles of this sea. But some of the islands sank and
vanished with their cities and people. Then the red-skinned savages assailed
them and isle after isle fell before them. At last only this island was left
unconquered, and the people have become weaker and forgotten many ancient arts.
For lack of ports to sail to, the galleys rotted by the
wharves which themselves crumbled into decay. Not in the memory of man
has any son of Bal-Sagoth sailed the seas. At irregular intervals the red
people descend upon the Isle of the Gods, traversing the seas in their long
war-canoes which bear grinning skulls on the prows. Not far away as a Viking
would reckon a sea-voyage, but out of sight over the sea rim lie
the islands inhabited by these red men who centuries ago slaughtered the folk
who dwelt there. We have alwavs beaten them off; they cannot scale the walls,
but still they come and the fear of their raid is always hovering over the
isle.
"But
it is not them 1 fear; it is Cothan, who is at this moment either slipping like
a loathly serpent through his black tunnels or else brewing abominations in
one of his hidden chambers. In the caves deep in the hills to which his tunnels
lead, he works fearful and unholy magic. His subjects are beasts—serpents,
spiders, and great apes; and men— red captives and wretches of his own race.
Deep in his grisly caverns he makes beasts of men and hall -men of beasts,
mingling bestial with human in ghastly creation. No man dares guess at the
horrors that have spawned in the darkness, or what shapes of terror and
blasphemy have come into being during the ages Cothan has wrought his abominations;
for he is not as other men, and has discovered the secret of life everlasting.
He has at least brought into foul life one creature that even he fears, the
gibbering, mowing, nameless Thing he keeps chained in the furtherest cavern
that no human foot save his lias trod, j He would loose it against me if he
dared. ...
22
"But it grows late and I would sleep. I
will sleep in the room next to this, which has no other opening than this door.
Not even a slave-girl will I keep with me, for I trust none of these people
fully. You shall keep this room, and though the outer door is bolted, one had
better watch while the other sleeps. Zomar and his guardsmen patrol the
corridors outside, but I shall feel safer with two men of my own blood
between me and the rest of the city."
She
rose, and with a strangely lingering glance at Turlogh, entered her chamber and
closed the door behind her.
Athclstane
stretched and yawned. "Well, Turlogh," said he lazily, "men's
fortunes are unstable as the sea. Last night I was the picked swordsman of a band of reavers and you a captive. This
dawn we were lost outcasts springing at each other's throats. Now we are sword
brothers and right-hand men to a queen. And you, I think, are destined to
become a king."
"How
so?"
"Why, have you not noticed the Orkney
girl's eyes on you? Faith,
there's more than friendship in her glances that rest on those black
locks and that brown face of yours. 1 tell
you---------- "
"Enough," Turlogh's voice was harsh
as an old wound stung him.
"Women in power are white-fanged wolves. It was the spite of a
woman that------- " He stopped.
"Well,
well," returned Athclstane tolerantly, "there are more good women
than bad ones. I know—it was the intrigues of a woman that made you an outcast.
Well, we should be good comrades. I am an outlaw, too. If I should show my face
in Wcssex I would soon be looking down on the countryside from a stout oak
limb."
"What
drove you out on the Viking path? So far have the Saxons forgotten the
ocean-ways that King Alfred was obliged to hire Frisian rovers to build and man
his lleet when he fought the Danes."
Athclstane
shrugged his mighty shoulders and began whetting his dirk.
"I
had a yearning for the sea even when I was a shock-headed child in Wessex. I
was still a youth when I killed a young eorl and fled the vengeance of his
people. I found refuge in the Orkneys and the ways of
the Vikings were more to my liking than the ways of my own blood. But f came
back to fight against Canute, and when England submitted to his rule, he gave
me command of his house-carles. That made the Danes jealous because of the
honor given a Saxon who had fought against them, and the Saxons remembered I
had left Wcssex under a cloud once, and murmured that I was overly-well favored
by the conquerors. Well, there was a Saxon thane and a Danish jarl who one night at feast assailed me with fiery words and I
forgot myself and slew them both.
23
"So England—was—again—barred—to—me. I—took—the—Viking
- -path—again-------- "
Athclstane's
words trailed oil. His hands slid limply from his lap and the whetstone and
dirk dropped to the floor. His head fell forward on his broad chest and his
eyes closed.
"To much wine," muttered Turlogh. "But let him
slumber; I'll keep watch."
Yet
even as he spoke, the Gael was aware of a strange lassitude stealing over him. lie lay back in the broad chair. His eyes felt heavy and
sleep veiled his brain despite himself. And as he lay there, a strange
nightmare vision came to him. One of the heavy hangings on the wall opposite
the door swayed violently and from behind it slunk a fearful shape that crept
slavering across the room. Turlogh watched it apathetically, aware that he was
dreaming and at the same time wondering at the strangeness of the dream. The
thing was grotesquely like a crooked gnarled man in shape, but its face was
bestial. It bared yellow fangs as it lurched silently toward him, and from
under penthouse brows small reddened eyes gleamed demoniacally. Yet there was
something of the human in its countenance; it was neither ape nor man, but an
unnatural creature horribly compounded of both.
Now
the foul apparition halted before him, and as the gnarled fingers clutched his
throat, Turlogh was suddenly and fearfully aware that this was no dream but a
fiendish reality. With a burst of desperate effort he broke the unseen chains
that held him and hurled himself from the chair. The
grasping fingers missed his throat, but quick as he was, he could not elude the
swift lunge of those hairy arms, and the next moment he was tumbling about the
floor in a death grip with the monster, whose sinews felt like pliant steel.
That
fearful battle was fought in silence save for the hissing of hard-drawn breath.
Turlogh's left forearm was thrust under the apish chin, holding back the grisly
fangs from his throat, about which the monster's fingers had locked. Athelstane
still slept in his chair, head fallen forward. Turlogh tried to call to him,
but those throttling hands had shut oil his voice were last choking out his life. The room swam in a red haze before his
distended eyes. His right hand, clenched into an iron mallet, haltered
desperately at the fearful face bent toward his. tin*
beast like teeth shattered under his blows and blood splaUciod, but still the
red eyes gloated and the taloned lingers sank deeper and deeper until a ringing
in Turlogh's ears knelled his soul's departure.
Even
as he sank into semi-unconsciousness, his falling hand struck something his
numbed fighting-brain recognized as the dirk Athelstane had dropped on the
floor. Blindly, with a dying gesture. Turlogh struck
ana felt the fingers loosen suddenly. Feeling the return of life and power, he
heaved up and over, with his assailant beneath him. Through red mists that slowly
lightened, Turlogh Dubh saw the ape-man, now encrimsoned, writhing beneath him,
and he drove the dirk home until the dumb horror lay still with wide staring
eyes.
The
Gael staggered to his feet, dizzy and panting, trembling in every limb. He drew
in great gulps of air and his giddiness slowly cleared. Blood trickled
plentifully from the wounds in his throat. He noted with amazement that the
Saxon still slumbered. And suddenly he began to feci again the tides of
unnatural weariness and lassitude that had rendered him helpless before.
Picking up his ax, he shook off the feeling with difficulty and stepped toward
the curtain from behind which the ape-man had come. Like an invisible wave a
subtle
i |
tower
emanating from those
hangings struck him, and with weighted iinbs he forced his way across the room.
Now he stood before the curtain and fell the
power of a terrific evil will beating upon his own, menacing his very soul,
threatening to enslave him, brain and body. Twice he raised his hand and twice
it dropped limply to his side. Now for the third time he made
a mighty effort and tore the hangings bodily from the wall. For a
Hashing instant he caught a glimpse
of a bizarre, half-naked figure in a mantle of
parrot-feathers and a headgear of waving plumes. Then as he felt the full
hypnotic blast of those blazing eyes, he closed his own eyes and struck blind.
He felt his ax sink deep; then he opened his eyes and gazed at the silent
figure which lay at his feet, cleft head in a widening crimson pool.
And now Athelstane suddenly heaved erect,
eyes flaring bewil-
dercdly, sword out. "What------- ?"
he stammered, glaring wildly, 'Tur-
logh, what in Thor's name's happened?
Thor's blood! That is a priest
there, but what is this dead thing?"
"One of the devils of this foul
city," answered Turlogh, wrenching
his ax free, "1 think Cothan has failed again. This one stood behind
the hangings and bewitched us unawares. He put the spell of sleep
on us------ "
"Aye, I slept," the Saxon nodded
dazedly. "But how came they
here----- "
"There must be a secret door behind
these hangings, though 1 can-
not find it------ "
"Hark!"
From the room where the queen slept there came a vague scuffling sound, that in
its very faintness seemed fraught with grisly potentialities.
"Brunhild!" Turlogh shouted. A strangled gurgle answered
him. He thrust against the door. It was locked. As he heaved up his ax to hew
it open, Athelstane brushed him aside and hurled his full weight against it.
The panels crashed and through their ruins Athelstane plunged into the room. A
roar burst from his lips. Over the Saxon's shoulder Turlogh saw a vision of delirium. Brunhild, queen of Bal-Sagoth, writhed helpless in
midair, gripped by the black shadow of
25
a nightmare. Then as the great black shape turned
cold flaming eyes on them Turlogh saw it was a living creature. It stood,
man-like, upon two tree-like legs, but its outline and face were not of a man,
beast or devil. This, Turlogh felt, was the horror that even Cothan had
hesitated to loose upon his foes; the arch-fiend that the demoniac priest had
brought into life in his hidden caves of horror. What ghastly knowledge had
been necessary, what hideous blending of human and bestial things with nameless
shapes from outer voids of darkness?
Held
like a bat le in arms Brunhild writhed, eyes flaring with horror, and as the
Thing took a misshapen hand from her white throat to defend itself, a scream of
heart-shaking fright burst from her pale lips. Athelstane, first in the room,
was ahead of the Gael. The black shape loomed over the giant Saxon, dwarfing
and overshadowing him, but Athelstane, gripping the hilt with both hands,
lunged upward. The great sword sank over half its length into the black body
and came out crimson as the monster reeled back. A hellish pandemonium of sound
burst forth, and the echoes of that hideous yell
thundered through the palace and deafened the hearers. Turlogh was springing
in, ax high, when the fiend dropped the girl and lied reeling across the room,
vanishing in a dark opening that now gaped in the wall. Athelstane, clean
berserk, plunged after it.
Turlogh
made to follow, but Brunhild, reeling up, threw her white arms around him in a
grip even he could hardly break. "No!" she screamed, eyes ablaze with
terror, "do not follow them into that fearful
corridor! It must lead to Hell itself! The Saxon will never return! Let you not
share his fate!"
"Loose
me, woman!" roared Turlogh in a frenzy, striving to disengage himself
without hurting her. "My comrade may be fighting for his* life!"
"Wait
till I summon the guard!" she cried, but Turlogh flung her from him, and
as he sprang through the secret doorway, Brunhild smote on the jade gong until
the palace re-echoed. A loud pounding began in the corridor and Zomar's voice
shouted: "Oh queen, are you in peril? Shall we burst the door?"
Hasten!"
she screamed, as she rushed to the outer door and flung it open.
Turlogh,
leaping recklessly into the corridor, raced along in darkness for a few
moments, hearing ahead of him the agonized bellowing of the wounded monster and
the deep fierce shouts of the Viking. Then these noises faded away in the
distance as he came into a narrow passageway faintly lighted with torches
stuck into niches. Face down on the floor lay a brown
man, clad in gay feathers, his skull crushed like an egg-shell.
How
long Turlogh O'Brien followed the dizzy windings of the shadowy corridor he
never knew. Other smaller passages led off to
26
each side but he kept to the main corridor. At last he passed under an arched doorway and came out into a strange
vasty room.
Somber
massive columns upheld a shadowy ceiling so high it seemed like a brooding cloud arched against a midnight sky. Turlogh saw that he was in
a temple. Behind a black red-stained stone altar loomed a mighty form, sinister and abhorrent. The god Gol-gorothl Surely it must be he. But Turlogh spared only a single
glance for die colossal figure that brooded diere in the shadows. Before him
was a strange tableau. Athclstane leaned on his
great sword and gazed at the two shapes which sprawled in a red welter at his
feet. Whatever foul magic had brought the Black Thing into life, it had taken
but a thrust of English steel to hurl it back into
the limbo whence it came. The monster lay half across its last victim—a gaunt
white-bearded man whose eyes were starkly evil, even in death.
"Gothanl"
ejaculated the startled Gael.
"Aye,
the priest—I was close behind this troll or whatever it is, all the way along the corridor, but for all its size it fled like a deer.
Once one in a feather mantle tried to halt it, and it smashed his skull and paused not an instant. At last we burst into this temple, I close upon die monster's heels with my sword raised for die death-cut.
But Thor's blood! When it saw the old one standing by that altar, it gave one
fearful howl and tore him to pieces and died itself, all in an instant, before I could reach it and strike."
Turlogh
gazed at the huge formless thing. Looking directly at it, he could form no
estimate of its nature. He got only a chaotic impression of great size and
inhuman evil. Now it lay like a vast
shadow blotchcct out on the marble floor. Surely black wings beating from
moonless gulfs had hovered over its birth, and d>e
grisly souls of nameless demons had gone into its being.
And
now Brunhild rushed from the dark corridor with Zomar and the guardsmen. And
from outer doors and secret nooks came others silently—warriors,
and priests in feathered mantles, until a great
throng stood in the Temple of Darkness.
A
fierce cry broke from the queen as she saw what had happened. Her eyes blazed
terribly and she was gripped by a strange madness.
"At
last!" she screamed, spurning the corpse of her arch-foe with her heel,
"at last I am true mistress of Bal-Sagoth! The secrets
of the hidden ways are mine now, and old Gothan's beard is dabbled in his own
bloodl"
She
flung her arms high In fearful triumph, and ran toward
the grim idol, screaming exultant insults like a mad-woman. And at that instant
the temple rocked! The colossal image swayed outward, and then
( |
lilched
suddenly forward as a tall tower falls. Turlogh
shouted and eaped forward, but even as he did. with
a thunder like the bursting of a world, the god Gol-goroth crashed down upon
the doomed
woman, who stood frozen. The mighty image
splintered into a thousand great fragments, blotting from the sight of men for
ever Brunhild, <laughter of Bane ThorfiVs son, queen of Bal-Sagoth. From
under the ruins there oozed a wide crimson stream.
Warriors
and priests stood frozen, deafened by the crash of that fall, stunned by the
weird catastrophe. An icy hand touched Turlogh's spine. Had that vast bulk been
thrust over by the hand of a dead man? As it had rushed downward it had seemed
to the Cael that the inhuman features had for an instant taken on the likeness
of the dead Cothan!
Now
as all stood speechless, the acolyte Gelka saw and seized his opportunity.
"Col-goroth
has spoken!" he screamed. "He has crushed the false goddess! She was
but a wicked mortal! And these strangers, too, are mortal! See—he bleeds!"
The
priest's finger stabbed at the dried blood on Turlogh's throat and a wild roar
went up from the throng. Dazed and bewildered by the swiftness and magnitude of
the late events, they were like crazed wolves, ready to wipe out doubts and
fear in a burst of bloodshed. Gelka bounded at Turlogh, hatchet Hashing, and a
knife in the hand of a satellite licked into Zomar's back. Turlogh had not
understood the shout, but he realized the air was tense with danger for
Athelstane and himself. He met the leaping Gelka with a stroke that sheared
through the waving plumes and the skull beneath, then hall a dozen lances broke
on his buckler and a rush of bodies swept him back against a great pillar. Then
Athelstane, slow of thought, who had stood gaping for the Hashing second it had
taken this to transpire, awoke in a blast of awesome fury. With a deafening
roar he swung his heavy sword in a mighty arc. The whistling blade whipped off
a head, sheared through a torso and sank deep into a spinal column. The three
corpses fell across each other and even in the madness of the strife, men cried
out at the marvel of that single stroke.
But
like a brown, blind tide of fury the maddened people of Bal-Sagoth rolled on
their foes. The guardsmen of the dead queen, trapped in the press, died to a
man without a chance to strike a blow. But the overthrow of the two white
warriors was no such easy task. Back to back they smashed and smote;
Athelstane's sword was a thunderbolt of death; Turlogh's ax was lightning.
Hedged close by a sea of snarling brown laces and (lashing steel, they hacked
their way slowly toward a doorway. The very mass of the attackers hindered the
warriors of Bal-Sagoth, for they had no space to guide their strokes, while the
weapons of the seafarers kept a bloody ring clear in front of them.
Heaping
a ghastly row of corpses as they went, the comrades slowly cut their way
through the snarling press. The Temple of
28
Shadows,
witness of many a bloody deed, was flooded with gore spilled like a red
sacrifice to her broken gods. The heavy weapons of the white fighters wrought
fearful havoc among their naked, lighter-limbed foes, while their armor guarded
their own lives. But their arms, legs and faces were cut and gashed by the
frantically flying steel and it seemed the sheer number of their foes woidd
overwhelm them ere they could reach the door.
Then
they had reached it, and made desperate play until the brown warriors, no
longer able to come upon them from all sides, drew back for a breathing-space,
leaving a torn red heap before the threshold. And in that
instant the two sprang back into the corridor and seizing the great brazen
door, slammed it in the very faces of the warriors who leaped howling to
prevent it. Athelslanc, bracing his mighty legs, held it against their
combined efforts until Turlogh had time to find and slip the bolt.
"Thor!"
gasped the Saxon, shaking the blood in a red shower from his face. 'This is
close play! What now, Turlogh?"
"Down
the corridor, quick!" snapped the Gael, "before they come on us from
this way and trap us like rats against this door. By Satan, die whole city must
be roused! Hark to that roaring!"
In
truth, as they raced down the shadowed corridor, it seemed to them that all
Bal-Sagoth had burst into rebellion and civil war. From all sides came the
clashing of steel, the shouts of men, and the screams of women, overshadowed by
a hideous howling. A lurid glow became apparent down the corridor and then even
as Turlogh, in the lead, rounded a corner and came out into an open courtyard,
a vague figure leaped at him and a heavy weapon fell with unexpected force on
his shield, almost felling him. But even as he staggered he struck back and the
upper-spike on his ax sank under the heart of his attacker, who fell at his
feet. In the glare that illumined all, Turlogh saw his victim diflered from the
brown warriors he had been fighting. This man was naked, powerfully muscled and
of a copperish red rather than brown. The heavy animal-like jaw, the slanting
low forehead showed none of the intelligence and refinement of the brown
people, but only a brute ferocity. A heavy war-club, rudely carved, lay beside
him.
"By Thor!"
exclaimed Athelstane, "the city burns!"
Turlogh
looked up. They were standing on a sort of raised courtyard from which broad
steps led down into the streets and from this vantage-point they had a plain
view of the terrific end of Bal-Sagoth, Flames leaped madly higher and higher,
paling the moon, and in the red glare pigmy figures ran to and fro, falling and
dying like puppets dancing to the tune of the Black Gods. Through the roar of
the flames and the crashing of falling walls cut screams of death and shrieks
<>( ghastly triumph. The city was swarming with
naked, copper-skinned
29
devils who burned and ravished and butchered in one red carnival
of madness.
The
red men of the isles! By the thousands they had descended on the Isle of the
Gods in the night, and whether stealth or treachery let them through the walls,
the comrades never knew, but now they ravened through the corpse-strewn streets,
glutting their blood-lust in holocaust and massacre wholesale. Not all the
gashed forms that lay in the crimson-running streets were brown; the people of
the doomed city fought with desperate courage but, outnumbered and caught off
guard, their courage was futile. The red men were like blood-hungry tigers.
"What
ho, Turlogh!" shouted Athelstane, beard abristle, eyes ablaze as the
madness of the scene fired a like passion in his own fierce soul. "The
world ends! Let us into the thick of it and glut our steel before we diel Who shall we strike for—the red or the brown?"
"Steady!"
snapped the Gael. "Either people woidd cut our throats. We must hack our
way through to the gates, and the Devil take them all.
We have no friends here. This way—down these stairs.
Across the roofs in yonder direction I see the arch of a gate."
The
comrades sprang down the stairs, gained the narrow street below and ran swiftly
in the way Turlogh indicated. About them washed a red inundation of slaughter.
A thick smoke veiled all now, and in the murk chaotic groups merged, writhed
and scattered, littering the shattered flags with gory shapes. It was like a nightmare in which demoniac figures leaped and capered, looming suddenly
in the fire-shot mist, vanishing as suddenly. The Haines from each side of the streets shouldered each
other, singeing the hair of the warriors as they ran. Boofs fell in with an awesome thunder and walls crashing into
ruin filled the air with flying death. Men struck blindly from the smoke and
the seafarers cut them down and never knew whether their skins were brown or
red.
Now
a new note rose in the cataclysmic horror. Blinded by the smoke, confused by
the winding streets, the red men were trapped in the snare of their own making.
Fire is impartial; it can burn the lighter, as well as the intended victim; and
a tailing wall is blind, The red men abandoned their prey and ran howling to
and fro like beasts, seeking escape; many, finding this futile, turned back in
a last unreasoning storm of madness as a blinded tiger turns, and made their
last moments of life a crimson hurst of slaughter.
Turlogh,
with the unerring sense of direction that comes to men who live the life of the
wolf, ran toward the point where he knew an outer gate to be; yet in the
windings of the streets and the screen of smoke, doubt assailed him. From the
flame-shot murk in front of him a fearful scream rang out. A naked girl reeled
blindly into view and fell at Turlogh's feet, blood gushing from her mutilated
breast. A howling, red-stained devil, close on her
heels, jerked back her head and cut her throat a fraction of a second before
Turloghs ax ripped the head from its shoulders and spun it grinning into the
street. And at that second a sudden wind shifted the writhing smoke and the
comrades saw die open gateway ahead of them, aswarm with red warriors. A fierce
shout, a blasting rush, a mad instant of volcanic ferocity that littered the
gateway with corpses, and they were through and racing down the slopes toward
the distant forest and the beach beyond. Before them the sky was reddening for
dawn; behind them rose the soul-shaking tumult of the
doomed city.
Like
hunted things they fled, seeking brief shelter among the many groves from time
to time, to avoid groups of savages who ran toward the city. The whole island
seemed to be swarming with them; the chiefs must have drawn on all the isles
within hundreds of miles for a raid of such magnitude. And at last the comrades
reached the strip of forest, and breathed deeply as they came to the beach and
found it abandoned save for a number of long skull-decorated war canoes.
Athclstane
sat down and gasped for breath. "Thor's blood!
What now? What may we do but hide in these woods until those red devils hunt us
out?"
"Help me launch this boat," snapped
Turlogh. "We'll take our
chance on the open main........ -"
"Ho!" Athclstane
leaped creel, pointing, "Thor's blood, a ship!"
The
sun was just up, gleaming like a great golden coin on the sea-rim. And limned
in the sun swam a tall, high-pooped craft. The comrades leaped into the
nearest canoe, shoved off and rowed like mad, shouting and waving their oars to
attract the attention of the crew. Powerful muscles drove the long shin craft
along at an incredible chp, and it was not long before the ship stood about and
allowed diem to come alongside. Darkfaced men, clad in
mail, looked over the rail.
"Spaniards,"
muttered Athclstane. "If they recognize me, I had better stayed on the
island!"
But
he clambered up the chain without hesitation, and the two wanderers fronted the
lean somber-faced man whose armor was that of a knight of Asturias. He spoke to
them in Spanish and Turlogh answered him, for the Gael, like many of his race,
was a natural linguist and had wandered far and spoken many tongues. In a few
words the Dalcasstan told their story and explained trie great pillar of smoke
which now rolled upward in the morning air from the isle.
"Tell
him there is a king's ransom for the taking," put in Athelslane. "tell him of the silver gates, Turlogh."
But
when the Gael spoke of the vast loot in the doomed city, the commander shook
his head.
"Good sir, we have no time to secure it,
nor men to waste in the
31 taking. Those red fiends yon describe would hardly
give up anything - though useless to them—without a fierce battle and neither my time nor my force is mine. 1 am Don Boderigo del Cortcz of Castile and this ship, the Gray Friar, is one of a fleet that sailed to harry the
Moorish Corsairs. Some clays agone we were separated from the rest of the fleet
in a sea skirmish and the tempest blew us far off our course. We are even now
beating back to rejoin the fleet if we can find it; if not, to harry the
inlidel as well as we may. We serve Cod and the king and we cannot halt for
mere dross as you suggest. But you are welcome aboard this ship and we have
need of such fighting men as you appear to be. You will not regret it, should
you wish to join us and strike a blow for Christendom against the
Moslems."
In
the narrow-bridged nose and deep dark eyes, as in the lean ascetic face,
Turlogh read the fanatic, the stainless cavalier, the knight errant. He spoke
to Athelstane: "This man is mad, but there arc good blows to be struck and
strange lands to see; anyway, we have no other choice."
"One
place is as good as another to masterless men and wanderers," quoth the
huge Saxon. "Tell him we will follow him to Hell and singe the tail of the
Devil if there be any chance of loot.'
4. Empire
Turlogh and Athelstane leaned on the rail,
gazing back at the swiftly receding Island of the Gods, from which rose a
pillar of smoke, laden with the ghosts of a thousand centuries and the shadows
and mysteries of forgotten empire, and Athelstane cursed as only a Saxon can.
"A
king's ransom—and after all that blood-letting—no loot!"
Turlogh
shook his head. "We have seen an ancient kingdom fall— we have seen the
last remnant of the world's oldest empire sink into flames and the abyss of oblivion, and barbarism rear its brute head above the ruins.
So pass the glory and the splendor and the imperial purple—in red flames and
yellow smoke."
"But not one bit of plunder-------- "
persisted the Viking.
Again
Turlogh shook his head. "I brought away with me the rarest gem upon the
island—something for which men and women have died and the gutters run with
blood."
He
drew from his girdle a small object—a curiously carved symbol of jade.
"The emblem of
kingship!" exclaimed Athelstane.
"Aye—as
Brunhild struggled with me to keep me from following you into the corridor,
this thing caught in my mail and was torn from the golden chain that held
it."
S2
"He who bears it is king of
Bal-Sagoth," ruminated the mighty Saxon. "As I predicted, Turlogh,
you are a king!"
Turlogh
laughed with bitter mirth and pointed to the great billowing column of smoke
which floated in the sky away on the sea-rim.
'Aye—a kingdom of the dead—an empire of
ghosts and smoke. I am Ard-Righ of a phantom city—I am King Turlogh of Bal-Sagoth and my
kingdom is fading in the morning sky. And therein it is like all other empires
in the world—dreams and ghosts and smoke."
!lJ/ie
dliain oj^ ^Mj^org
onion
Lu
Cfarli -Million Smitlt
It is the peculiar genius of Clark Ashton
Smith In lie up the world of fantasy with the world .»ƒ modern man. Himself chained to this planet hy
the bonds of flesh, his poetic mind constantly dwells on the fathomless wonders
of the stars, and on the infinite corridors of time. Your editor considers his
prose to he the most talented in fantastic imagery of any writer now alive,
with tlic possible exception of Lord Dunsany and not excepting James Branch
Cabell. In this selection of Smith's work, tlte tic between the world of man
and the howidlcss infinity of the universe is brought out in breathtaking vision.
F
IS Indeed strange that Jolin Milwarp and his writings
should have fallen so speedily into semi-oblivion. His books, treating of
Oriental life in a somewhat flowery, romantic style, were popular a few months
ago. But now, in spite ol their range and penetration, their pervasive verbal
sorcery, they are seldom mentioned; and they seem to have vanished
unaccountably from the shelves of bookstores and libraries.
Even
the mystery of Milwarp's death, baffling to both law and science, has evoked
but a passing interest, an excitement quickly lulled and forgotten.
I
was well acquainted with Milwarp over a term of years. But my recollection ol
the man is becoming strangely blurred, like an image in a misted mirror. His dark, hall-alien personality, his preoccupation with the occult, his immense
knowledge' of Eastern life and lore, are things I remember with such effort and
vagueness as attends the recovery of a dream. Sometimes 1 almost doubt that he ever existed. It is as if the man, and all that pertains to him, were being erased from human record by some
mysterious acceleration of the common process of obliteration.
In
bis will, he appointed me his executor. I have vainly tried to interest publishers in
the novel he left among his papers: a novel surely not inferior to anything he
ever wrote. They say that his vogue has passed. Now I am publishing the
contents of the diary kept by Milwarp for a period preceding his demise.
Perhaps,
for the open-minded, this diary will explain the enigma of his death. It would
seem that the circumstances of that death are
34
virtually forgotten, and I repeat them here as part of
my endeavor to revive and perpetuate Milwarp's memory.
Milwarp
had returned to his house in San Francisco after a long sojourn in Indo-China.
We who knew him gathered that he had gone into places seldom visited by
Occidentals. At the time of his demise he had just finished correcting the
typescript of a novel which dealt with the more romantic and mysterious aspects
of Burma.
On the
morning of April 2, 1933, his housekeeper, a middle-aged woman, was startled by
a glare of brilliant light which issued from the half-open door of Milwarp's
study. It was as if the whole room were in flames.
Horrified, the woman hastened to investigate. Entering the study, she saw her
master sitting in an armchair at the table, wearing the rich, somber robes of
Clunese brocade which he affected as a dressing-gown. He sat stiffly erect, a
pen clutched unmoving in his fingers on the open pages of a manuscript volume.
About him, in a sort of nimbus, glowed and flickered the strange light; and her
only thought was that his garments were on fire.
She
ran toward him, crying out a warning. At that moment the weird nimbus
brightened intolerably, and the wan early dayshine, the electric bulbs that
still burned to attest the night's labor, were alike blotted out. It seemed to
the housekeeper that something had gone wrong with the room itself; for the
walls and table vanished, and a great, luminous gulf opened before her; and on
the verge of the gulf, in a seat that was not his cushioned armchair but a huge
and rough-hewn seat of stone, she beheld her master stark and rigid. His heavy
brocaded robes were gone, and about him, from head to foot, were blinding coils
of pure white fire, in the form of linked chains. She could not endure the
brilliance of the chains and, cowering back, she shielded her eyes with her
hands. When she dared to look again, the weird glowing had faded, the room was
as usual; and Milwarp's motionless figure was sealed at the table in the
posture of writing.
Shaken
and terrified as she was, the woman found courage to approach her master. A
hideous smell of burnt flesh arose from beneath his garments, which were wholly
intact and without visible trace of fire. He was dead, his fingers clenched on
the pen and his features frozen in a stare of tetanic agony. His neck and
wrists were completely encircled by frightful burns that had charred them
deeply. The coroner, in his examination, found that these burns, preserving an
outline as of heavy links, were extended in long unbroken spirals around the
arms and legs and torso. The burning was apparently the cause of Milwarp's
death: it was as if iron chains, heated to incandescence, had been wrapped
about him.
Small
credit was given to the housekeeper's storv of what she had seen. No one. however, could suggest an
acceptable explanation of
35
the bizarre mystery. There was, at the time,
much aimless discussion; but, as I have hinted, people soon turned to other
matters. The efforts made to solve the riddle were somewhat perfunctory.
Chemists tried to determine the nature of a queer drug, in the form of a gray
powder with pearly granules, to which use Mil warp had become addicted. But
their tests merely revealed the presence of an alkaloid whose source and
attributes were obscure to Western science.
Day
by day, the whole incredible business lapsed from public attention; and those
who had known Mil warp began to display the forget'
fulness that was no less unaccountable than his weird doom. The housekeeper,
who had held steadfastly in the beginning to her story, came at length to share
the common dubiety. Her account, with repetition, became vague and
contradictory; detail by detail, she seemed to forget the abnormal
circumstances that she had witnessed with overwhelming horror.
The
manuscript volume, in which Milwarp had apparently been writing at the time of
death, was given into my charge with his other papers. It proved to be a diary,
its last entry breaking olf abruptly. Since reading the diary, 1 have hastened to transcribe it in my own hand, because, for
some mysterious reason, the ink of the original is already fading and has
become almost illegible in places.
The
reader will note certain lacuna?, due to passages
written in an alphabet which neither I nor any scholar of mv acquaintance can
transliterate. These passages seem to form an integral part of the narrative, and
they occur mainly toward the end, as ¡1 the writer had turned more and more to
a language remembered from his ancient avatar. To the same mental reversion one
must attribute the singular dating, in which Milwarp, still employing English
script, appears to pass from our contemporary notation to that of some
premundanc world.
I
give hereunder the entire diary, which begins with an undated footnote:
This book, unless 1 have
been misinformed concerning the qualities of the drug souvara. will be the record of my former life in a lost
cycle. I have had the drug in my possession for seven months, but fear has
prevented me from using it. Now, by certain tokens, 1 perceive
that the longing for knowledge will soon overcome the fear.
liver since my earliest childhood I have been
troubled by intimations, dim, unplaceable, that seemed to argue a forgotten
existence. These intimations partook of the nature of feelings rather than
ideas or images: they were like the wraiths of dead memories. In the background
of my mind there has lurked a sentiment of formless, melancholy desire for
some nameless beauty long perished out of time. And, coincidentally, I have
been haunted by an equally formless dread, an apprehension as of some bygone
but still imminent doom.
3G
Such feelings have persisted, undiminished,
throughout my youth and maturity, but nowhere have I found any clue to their causation. My travels
in the mystic Orient, my delvings into occultism, have merely convinced me that
these shadowy intuitions pertain to some incarnation buried under the wreck of
remotest cycles.
Many
times, in my wanderings through Buddhistic lands, I had heard of the drug souvara, which
is believed to restore, even for the uninitiate, the memory of other lives. And
at last, after many vain efforts, 1 managed
to procure a supply of tho drug. The manner in which I obtained it is a talc
sufficiently remarkable hi itself, but of no special relevance here. So far—perhaps because of that apprehension which I have
hinted— I
have not dared to use the drug.
March Oth, 1933. This morning I took sow
urn for the first time,
dissolving the proper amount in pure distilled water as 1 had been instructed
to do. Afterward I leaned back easily in my chair, breathing
with a slow, regular rhythm. 1 had no preconceived idea of the sensations that
would mark the drug's initial effect, since these were said to vary
prodigiously with the temperament of the user; but I composed myself to await them with tranquillity, after formulating
dearly in my mind the purpose of the experiment.
For
a while there was no change in my awareness. I noticed a slight quickening of
the pulse, and modulated my breathing in conformity with this. Then, by slow
degrees, I experienced a sharpening of visual
perception. The Chinese rugs on the door, the backs of the serried volumes in
my bookcases, the very wood of chairs, table and shelves,
began to exhibit new and unimagined colors. At the same time there were curious
alterations of outline, every object seeming to extend itself in a hitherto
unsuspected fashion. Following this, my surroundings became semi-transparent,
like molded shapes of mist. 1 found
that I could see through the marbled cover the
illustrations in a volume of John Martin's edition of Paradise Lost, which lay before me on the table.
All
this, I knew, was a mere extension of ordinary
physical vision. It was only a prelude to those apperceptions of occult realms
which I sought through souvara. Fixing my mind once more on the goal of the experiment, I became aware that the misty walls had vanished like a drawn arras. About
me, like reflections in rippled water, dim sceneries wavered and shifted,
erasing one another from instant to instant. I seemed to hear a vague but ever-present sound, more musical than the
murmurs of air, water or fire, which was a properly of the unknown element that
environed me.
With
a sense of troublous familiarity, I beheld
the blurred unstable pictures which flowed past me upon this never-resting
medium. Orient temples, flashing with sun-struck bronze and gold; the sharp,
37
crowded gables and spires of medieval cities; tropic
and northern forests; the costumes and physiognomies of the Levant, of Persia,
of old Rome and Carthage, went by like blown, flying mirages. Each succeeding
tableau belonged to a more ancient period than the one before it—and I knew
that each was a scene from some former existence of my own.
Still
tethered, as it were, to my present self, I reviewed these visible memories,
which took on tri-dimensional depth and clarity. I saw myself as warrior and
troubadour, as noble and merchant and mendicant. I trembled with dead fears, I thrilled with lost hopes and raptures, and was
drawn by ties that death and Lethe had broken. Yet never did I fully identify
myself with those other avatars: for 1 knew well that the memory I sought
pertained to some incarnation of older epochs.
Still
the phantasmagoria streamed on, and I turned giddy with vertigo ineffable
before the vastness and diuturnity of the cycles of being. It seemed that I,
the watcher, was lost in a gray land where the homeless ghosts of all dead
ages went fleeing from oblivion to oblivion.
The
walls of Nineveh, the columns and towers of unnamed cities, rose before me and
were swept away. I saw the luxuriant plains that are now the Cobi Desert. The
sea-lost capitals of Atlantis were drawn to the light in unquenched glory. I
gazed on lush and cloudy scenes from the first continents of Earth. Briefly I
relived the beginnings of terrestrial man—and knew that the secret 1 would
learn was ancienter even than these.
My
visions faded into black voidness—and yet, in that void, through fathomless
eons, it seemed that I existed still like a blind atom in the space between the
worlds. About me was the darkness and repose of that night which antedated the
Earth's creation. Time flowed backward with the silence of dreamless sleep. .
. .
The
illumination, when it came, was instant and complete. I stood in the full,
fervid blaze of day amid royally towering blossoms in a deep garden, beyond
whose lofty, vine-clad walls I heard the confused murmuring of the great city
called Kalood. Above ine, at their vernal zenith, were the four small suns that
illumed the planet lies tan. Jewel-colored insects fluttered about me, lighting
without fear on the rich habiliments of gold and black, enwrought with
astronomic symbols, in which I was attired. Beside me was a dial-shaped altar
of zoned agate, carved with the same symbols, which were those of the dreadful
omnipotent time-god, Aforgomon, whom I served as a priest.
I
had not even the slightest memory of myself as John Mirwarp, and the long
pageant of my terrestrial lives was as something that had never been -or was yet
to be. Sorrow and desolation choked my heart as ashes fill some urn consecrated
to the dead; and all the hues and perfumes of the garden about me were redolent
only of the bitterness
of death. Gazing darkly upon the altar, I
muttered blasphemy against Aforgomon who, in his inexorable course, had taken
away my beloved and had sent no solace for my grief. .Separately I cursed the signs upon the altar: the stars, the worlds, the suns, the
moons, that meted and fulfilled the processes of time. Bclthoris, my betrothed,
had died at the curl of the previous autumn: and so, with double maledictions.
I cursed the stars and planets presiding over that season.
f became aware that a shadow had fallen beside my own on the altar, and
knew that the dark sage and sorcerer Attnox had obeyed my summons. Fearfully
but not without hope 1 turned toward him, noting first of all that
he bore under his arm a heavy, sinister-looking volume with covers of black
steel ami hasps of adamant. Only when I had
made sure of this did 1 lift my eyes to his face, which was little
less somber and forbidding than the tome he carried.
"Creeling,
O Calaspa," he said harshly. "I have eoine
against my own will and
judgment. The lore that you request is in this volume; and since you saved me
in former years from the inquisitorial wrath of the time-god's priests, I
cannot refuse to share it with you. lint understand well that even 1, who have called upon names that are dreadful to utter, and have evoked
forbidden presences, shall never dare to assist you in this conjuration. Gladly
would I help you to hold converse with the shadow of Bclthoris, or to animate
her still unwith-ered body and draw it forth from the tomb. But that which you
purpose is another mailer. You alone must perform the ordained rites, must
speak the necessary words: for the consequences of this thing will be direr
than you deem."
"1 care not for the consequences," 1 replied eagerly, "if it be possible to bring back the lost hours
which I shared with Bclthoris. Think you that I could content myself with her shadow, wandering thinly back from the Borderland?
Or that I could take pleasure in the fair clay that the breath of necromancy
has troubled and lias made to arise and walk without mind or soul? Nay, the
Bclthoris I would summon is she on whom the shadow of
death has never yet fallen!"
It seemed that Atinox, the master of doubtful
arts, the vassal of umbrageous powers,recoiled and
blenched before my vehement declaration.
"Bethink
you," he said with minatory sternness, "that this thing will
constitute a breach of the sacred logic of time and a blasphemy against
Aforgomon, god of the minutes and the cycles. Moreover, there is little to be
gained: lor not in its entirety may you bring back the season of your love, but only one single hour, torn with in Unite violence from
its rightful period in time. . . . Refrain, I adjure yovi, and content yourself with a lesser sorcery."
"Give
me the book," I demanded. "My service to Aforgomon is forfeit. With
due reverence and devotion 1 have
worshipped tin- time-
39 god, and have done in his honor the rites
ordained from
eternity; and for all this
the god has betrayed me."
Then,
in that high-climbing, luxuriant garden beneath the four suns, Atmox opened the
adamantine clasps of the steel-hound volume; and, turning to a certain page, he
laidthe book reluctantly in my hands. The page, like its fellows, was of some
unholy parchment streaked with musty diseolorations and blackening at the margin
with sheer antiquity; but upon it shone unquenchably the dread characters a
primal archimage had written with an ink bright as the new-shod ichor of
demons. Above this page I bent in my madness, conning it over and over till f
was dazzled by the fiery runes; and, shutting my eyes, I saw them burn on a red
darkness, still legible, and writhing like hellish worms.
"Hollowly,
like the sound of a far bell, I heard the voice of Atmox: "You have
learned, () Calaspa, the unutterable name of that One whose assistance can
alone restore the fled hours. And you have learned the incantation that will
rouse that hidden power, and the sacrifice needed for its propitiation. Knowing
these things, is your heart still strong and your purpose firm?"
The
name 1 had read in the wizard volume was that of the chief cosmic power
antagonistic to Aforgomon; the incantation and the required offering were those
of a foul demonolatry. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate, but gave resolute
affirmative answer to the somber query of Atmox.
Perceiving
thai 1 was inflexible, he bowed his head, trying no
more to dissuade me. Then, as the llaine-runed volume had bade
me do, 1 defiled the altar of Aforgomon, blotting certain ol its prime symbols
with dust and spittle. While Atmox looked on in silence, 1 wounded my right arm
to its deepest vein on the sharp-tip peel gnomon of the dial: and, letting the
blood drip Iron) zone to zone, from orb to orb of the graven agate, I made
unlawful sacrifice, and intoned aloud, in the name of the Lurking Chaos. Xexanoth, an abominable ritual composed by a backward repetition
and jumbling of litanies sacred to the time- god.
Even as 1 chanted the incantation, it seemed that webs of shadow were woven foully
athwart the suns; and the ground shook a little, as if colossal demons trod the
world's rim. striding stupendously from abysses
beyond. The garden walls and trees wavered like a windblown reflection in a
pool; and 1 grew faint with the loss of that life-blood I had |>oured out in
dcinuuolatrous offering. Then, in my (lesh and in my brain, I felt the
intolerable racking of a vibration like the long-drawn shock of cities riven by
earthquake, and coasts crumbling before some chaotic sea; and my flesh was torn
and harrowed, and my brain shuddered with the toneless discords sweeping
through me from deep to deep.
I faltered, and confusion gnawed at my inmost
being. Dimly I heard the prompting of Atmox, and dimmer
still was the sound of my own voice that made answer to Xexanoth, naming die
impious necromancy which was to be effected only
through its power. Madly 1 implored
from Xexanoth, in despite of time
and its ordered seasons, one hour of that
bygone autumn which I had shared with Belthoris; and imploring tins, I named no special hour: for all, in memory, had seemed
of an equal joy and gladness.
As
the words ceased upon my lips, I thought
that darkness fluttered in the air like a great
wing; and the four suns went out, and my heart was stilled as if in death. Then
the light returned, falling obliquely from suns mellow with full-tided autumn;
and nowhere beside ine was there any shadow of Atmox; and the altar
of zoned agate was bloodless and undefiled. I, the lover of Belthoris, witting not of the doom and sorrow to come,
stood happily widi my beloved before the altar, and saw her young hands crown
its ancient dial with the flowers we had plucked from the garden.
Dreadful
beyond all fathoming are the mysteries of time. Even I, the priest and initiate, though wise in the secret doctrines of Aforgo-mon,
know little enough of that elusive, ineluctable process whereby the present
becomes the past and the future resolves itself into the present. All men have
pondered the riddles of duration and transience; have wondered, vainly, to
what bourn the lost days and the sped cycles arc
consigned. Some have dreamt that the past abides unchanged, becoming eternity
as it slips from our mortal ken; and others have deemed that time is a stairway
whose steps crumble one by one behind the climber, falling into a gulf of
nothing.
Howsoever
this may be, I know that she who stood beside me was the
Belthoris on whom no shadow of mortality had yet descended. The hour was one
new-born in a golden season; and the minutes to come were pregnant with all
wonder and surprise belonging to the untried future.
Taller was my beloved than the frail, unbowed
lilies of the garden. In her eyes was the sapphire of moonless evenings sown
with small golden stars. Her lips were strangely curved, but only blitheness
and joy had gone to their shaping. She and I had been betrothed from our
childhood, and the time of the marriage-rites was now approaching. Our
intercourse was wholly free, according to the custom of that world. Often she
came to walk with me in my garden and to decorate the altar of that god whose
revolving moons and suns would soon bring the season of our felicity.
The
moths that flew about us, winged with aerial cloth of gold, were no lighter than our hearts. Making blithe holiday, we fanned om frolic mood to a high
flame of rapture. We were akin to the lull hued,
climbing flowers, die swift-darting insects, and our spmis Minded
41 and soared with the perfumes that were drawn
skyward in the warm air. Unheard by us was the loud murmuring of the mighty city of Kalood lying
beyond my garden walls; for us the many-peopled planet known as Hestan no
longer existed; and we dwelt alone in a universe of ligbt, in a blossomed
heaven. Exalted by love in the high harmony of those moments, we seemed to
touch eternity; and even 1, the priest of Aforgomon, forgot the
blossom-fretting days, the system-devouring cycles.
In
the sublime folly of passion, I swore then that death or discord could never
mar the perfect communion of our hearts. After we had wreathed the altar, I
sought the rarest, the most delectable flowers: frail-curving cups of
winc-washod pearl, of moony azure and white with scrolled purple lips; and
these I twined, between kisses and laughter, in the black maze of Belthoris'
hair, saying that another shrine than that of time should receive its due
offering.
Tenderly,
with a lover's delay, 1 lingered over the wreathing; and, ere I had finished,
there fluttered to the ground beside us a great, crimson-spotted moth whose
wing had somehow been broken in its airy voyaging through the garden. And
Belthoris, ever tender of heart and pitiful, turned from me and took up the
moth in her hands; and some of the bright blossoms dropped from her hair
unheeded. Tears welled from her deep blue eyes; and seeing that the moth was
sorely hurt and would never fly again, she refused to be comlorted; and no
longer would she respond to my passionate wooing. I, who grieved less for the
moth than she, was somewhat vexed; and between her sadness and my vexation,
there grew between us some tiny, temporary rift. . . .
Then,
ere love had mended the misunderstanding; then, while we stood before the dread
altar of time with sundered hands, with eyes averted from each other, it seemed
that a shroud of darkness descended upon the garden. T heard the crash and
crumbling of shattered worlds, and a black flowing of
ruinous tilings that went past me through the darkness. The dead leaves of
winter were blown about me, and there was a falling of tears or rain. . . .
Then the vernal suns came back, high-stationed in cruel splendor; and with them
came the knowledge of all that had been, of Belthoris' death and my sorrow, and
the madness that had led to forbidden sorcery. Vain now, like all other hours,
was the resummoned hour; and doubly irredeemable was my loss. My blood dripped
heavily on the dishallowed altar, my faintness grew deathly, and I saw through
murky mist the face of Atmox beside me; and the face was like that of some
comminatory demon. . , ,
March 13th. I, John Milwarp, write this date
and my name with an odd dubiety, My visionary
experience imder the drug souvara ended
42
with that rilling of my blood on the symboled
dial, that glimpse of the terror-distorted face of Atmox. All this was in
another world, in a life removed from the present by births and deaths without
numl>er; and yet, it seems, not wholly have 1 returned from the twice-ancient past.
Memories, broken but strangely vivid and living, press upon me from the
existence of which my vision was a fragment; and portions of die lore of
Ilestan, and scraps of its history, and words from its lost language, arise
unbidden in my mind.
Above
all, my heart is still shadowed by the sorrow of Calaspa. His desperate
necromancy, which would seem to odiers no more than a dream within a dream, is stamped as with fire on the black page of
recollection. I know the awfulness of the god he had blasphemed; and the
foulness of the demonolatry he had done, and the sense of guilt and despair
under which he swooned. It is this that
I have striven all my life to remember, this which 1 have been doomed to re-experi-encc. And I fear with a great fear the
further knowledge which a second experiment with the drug will reveal to me.
The next entry of Milwarp's diary begins with
a strange dating in English script: "The second day of the moon Occalat,
in the thousand-and-iu'nth year of die lied Eon." This dating,
perhaps, is repeated in the language of Ilestan: for, directly beneath it, a
line of unknown ciphers is set apart. Several lines of the subsequent text are
in the alien tongue; and then, as if by an unconscious reversion, Milwarp continues
the diary in English. There is no reference to another experiment with souvarii: But apparently such had been made, with a continued revival of his lost memories.
. . . What genius of the nadir gulf had
tempted me to this thing and had caused me to overlook the consequences?
Verily, when I called up for myself and Belthoris an hour of former autumn,
with all that was attendant upon the hour, tlud bygone interim was likewise evoked and
repeated for the whole world Hestan, and the four suns of Ilestan. From the full midst of spring, all men had stepped backward into autumn,
keeping only the memory of things prior to the hour thus resurrected, and
knowing not the events future to the hour. But, returning to the present, they
recalled widi amazement the unnatural necromancy; and fear and bewilderment
were upon them; and none could interpret the meaning.
For
a brief period, the dead had lived again; the fallen leaves had returned to the
bough; the heavenly bodies had stood at a long-abandoned station; the (lower
had gone back into the seed, the plant into the root. Then, with eternal
disorder set among all its cycles, time had resumed its delayed course.
No movement of any cosmic body, no year or instant of the future,
43
would be precisely as it should have been. The
error and discrepancy I had wrought would bear fruit in ways innumerable. The
suns would find themselves at fault; the worlds and atoms would go always a
little astray from their appointed bourn.
It
was of these matters that Atmox spoke, warning me, after he had stanched my
bleeding wound. For he too, in that rein mined hour, had gone
back and had lived again through a past happening. For him the hour was
one in which he had descended into the nether vaults of his house. There,
standing in a many-pentacled circle, with burning of unholy incense and
uttering of accurst formulae, he had called upon a malign spirit from the
bowels of Hestan and had questioned it concerning the future. But the spirit,
black and voluminous as the fumes of pitch, refused to answer him directly and
pressed furiously with its clawed members against the confines of the circle.
It said only: "Thou hast summoned me at thy peril. Potent are the spells
thou hast used, and strong is the circle to withstand me, and I am restrained
by lime and space from the wreaking of my anger upon thee. But haply thou shall summon me again, albeit in the same hour of the same autumn; and
in that summoning the laws of time shall be broken, and a rill shall be made in
space; and through the rift, though with some delay and divagation, I will yet
win to thee."
Saying
no more, it prowled restlessly about the circle; and its eyes burned down upon
Atmox like embers in a high-lifted sooty brazier; and ever and anon its fanged
mouth was flattened on the spell-defended air. And in the end he could dismiss
it only after a double repetition of the form of exorcism.
As he told me this tale in the garden. Atmox trembled; and his eyes searched the
narrow shadows wrought by the high sons; and he seemed to listen for the noise
of some evil thing that burrowed toward him beneath the earth.
Fourth day of the moon Occalat. Stricken with terrors beyond those of Atmox,
I kept apart in my mansion amid the city of Kalood. 1 was still weak with the
loss of blood I had yielded to Xexanoth; my senses were full of strange
shadows; my servitors, coming and going after me, were as phantoms, and
scarcely I heeded the pale fear in their eyes or heard the dreadful things they
whispered. . . . Madness and chaos, they told me, were abroad in Kalood; the
divinity of Aforgomon was angered. All men thought that some baleful doom
impended because of that unnatural confusion which had been wrought among the
hours of time.
This
afternoon they brought me the story of Atmox's death. In bated tones they told
me how his neophytes had heard a roaring as of a loosed tempest in the chamber
where he sat alone with his wizard volumes and paraphernalia. Above the
roaring, for a little,
human
44
screams had sounded, together with a clashing as of
hurled censers and braziers, a crashing as of overthrown tables and tomes.
Blood rilled from under the shut door of the chamber and, rilling, it took from
instant to instant the form of dire ciphers that spelled an unspeakable name.
After the noises had ceased, the neophytes wailed a long while ere they dared
to open the door. Entering at last, they saw the floor and the walls heavily
bespattered with blood, and rags of the sorcerers raiment mingled everywhere
with the sheets of his torn volumes of magic, and the shreds and manglings of
his flesh strewn amid broken furniture, and his brains daubed in a horrible
paste on the high ceiling.
Hearing
this tale, 1 knew that the earthly demon feared by AtmoK
had found him somehow and had wreaked its wrath upon him. In ways unguessable,
it had reached him through the chasm made in ordered lime and space by one hour
repeated through necromancy. And because of that lawless chasm, the magician's
power and lore had utterly failed to defend him from the demon. . , .
Filth day of the moon Oecalat. Atmox, 1 am sure, had not betrayed me: lor in so doing, he must have betrayed his
own implicit share in my crime. . . . Howbeit, this evening the priests came to
my house ere the setting of the westernmost sun: silent, grim, with eyes
averted as if from a foulness innouiinable. Me, their fellow, they enjoined
with loth gestures to accompany them. . . .
Thus
they took me from my house and along the thoroughfares of Kalood toward the
lowering suns. The streets were empty of all other passers, and it seemed (hat
no man desired to meet or behold the blasphemer. . . .
Down
the avenue of gnomon-shaped pillars, I was led to the portals of Aforgomon's
fane: those awfully gaping portals arched in the likeness of some devouring
chimera's mouth. . . .
Sixth day of the moon Oecalat. They had thrust me into an oubliette beneath
the temple, dark, noisome and soundless except for the maddening, measured
drip of water beside me. There 1 lay and knew not when the night passed and the
morning came. Light was admitted only when my captors opened the iron door,
coming to lead me before the tribunal. . . .
. .
. Thus the priests condemned me, speaking with one voice in whose dreadful
volume the tones of all were indistinguishably blended. Then the aged
high-priest Ilelpcnor called aloud upon Aforgomon, offering himself as a
mouthpiece to the god, and asking the god to pronounce through him the doom
that was adequate for such enormities as those of which 1 had been judged
guilty by my fellows.
Instantly, it seemed, the god descended into
Helpenor; and the figure of the high-priest appeared to dilate prodigiously
beneath his mufflings; and The accents that issued
from his mouth were like thunders of the upper heaven:
"O
Calaspa, thou hast set disorder amid all future hours and eons through diis
evil necromancy. Thereby, moreover, thou hast wrought thine own doom: fettered
art thou for ever to the hour thus unlawfully repeated, apart from its due
place in time. According to hieratic rule, thou shalt meet the death of the
fiery chains: but deem not that this death is more than the symbol of thy true
punishment. Thou shalt pass hereafter through other lives in Ilestan, and shalt
climb midway in the cycles of die world subsequent to Hestan in time and space.
But through all thine incarnations the chaos thou hast invoked will attend
thee, widening ever like a rift. And always, in all they lives, the rift will
bar thee from reunion with the soul of Belthoris; and always, though merely by
an hour, thou shalt miss the love that should otherwise have been oftentimes
regained.
"At
last, when the chasm has widened overmuch, thy soul shall fare no farther in
the onward cycles of incarnation. At that time it shall be given thee to
remember clearly thine ancient sin; and remembering, thou shalt perish out of
time. Upon the body of that latter life shall be found the charred imprint of
the chains, as the final token of thy bondage. But they that knew thee will
soon forget, and thou shalt belong wholly to the cycles limited for thee by thy
sin."
March 29th. I write this date with infinite
desperation, trying to convince myself that there is a John Milwarp who exists
on Earth, in the Twentieth Century. For two days running, I have not taken the
drug souvara: and yet 1 have
returned twice to that oubliette of Aforgo-mon's temple, in which the priest
Calaspa awaits his doom. Twice I have been immersed in its stagnant darkness,
hearing the slow drip of water beside me, like a clepsyda that tells the black
ages of the damned.
Even
as I write this at my library table, it seems that an ancient midnight plucks
at the lamp. The bookcases turn to walls of oozing, nighted stone. There is no
longer a table . . . nor one who writes . . . and I breathe the noisome dankness of a dungeon lying unfath-omed by any sun,
in a lost world.
Eighteenth day of the moon Occalat. Today, for the last time, they took me from
my prison. Helpenor, together with three others, came and led me to the adytum
of the god. Far beneath the outer temple we went, through spacious crypts
unknown to the common worshippers. There was no word spoken, no glance
exchanged between the others
46
and me; and it seemed that they already regarded
me as one cast out from time and claimed by oblivion.
We
came ultimately to diat sheer-falling gulf in which the spirit of Aforgomon is
said to dwell. Lights, feeble and far-scattered, shone around it like stars on
the rim of cosmic vastness, shedding no ray into the depths. There, in a seat
of hewn stone overhanging the frightful verge, I was placed by the executioners; and a ponderous chain of black unrusted
metal, stapled in the solid rock, was wound about and about me, circling my
naked body and separate limbs, from head to foot.
To
this doom, others had been condemned for heresy or impiety . . . though never
for a sin such as mine. After the chaining or the victim, he was left for a
stated interim, to ponder his crime—and haply to confront the dark divinity of
Aforgomon. At length, from the abyss into which his position forced him to
peer, a light would dawn, and a bolt of strange flame would leap upward,
striking the many-coiled chain about him and heating it instantly to the
whiteness of candescent iron. The source and nature of the flame were mysterious,
and many ascribed it to the god himself rather than to mortal agency. . . .
Even
thus they have left me, and have gone away. Long since die burden of the massy
links, cutting deeper and deeper into my flesh, has become an agony. I am dizzy from gazing downward into the abyss—and yet I cannot fall. Beneath, immeasurably beneath, at recurrent intervals, I hear a hollow and solemn sound. Perhaps it is the sigh of sunken waters ... of cavern-straying winds ... or the respiration of One that abides in the darkness, meting with his breath the
slow minutes, the hours, the days, the ages. . . . My terror has become heavier
than the chain, my vertigo is bom of a twofold gulf. .
. .
Eons
have passed by and all the worlds have ebbed into nothingness, like wreckage
borne on a chasm-falling stream, taking with them the lost face of Belthoris. I am poised above the gaping maw of the Shadow. . . . Somehow, in another
work!, an exile phantom has written these words ... a phantom who must fade utterly from time and place, even as I, the doomed priest Calaspa. I cannot
remember die name of the phantom.
Beneath me, in die black depths, there is an
awful brightening. . . .
Jn I he IJctiit'tj of
The
J*>orcereAi
hij Sax f^ohmer
|
The history of ancient Egypt is hy no means
complete. Pieced together by painstaking research, the main outlines have been
mapped out of this civilization which may have been the first on earth-and was
at any rate the direct ancestor of that civilization we call
"Western." How many chapters of human experience still wait for
uncovering beneath the featureless sands of the Sahara? The penetration into
these "time-capsules" of tlte past must be replete with thrills and
wonders. And it is not surprising that out of such emotional experiences,
there arise such legends as the one Sax Rohmvr mnv spins.
I
•
ONDOR wrote to me three times before the end (said Neville, Assistant-Inspector
of Antiquities, staring vaguely from his open window at a squad drilling
before the Kasr-en-Nil Barracks). He dated his letters from the camp at
Deir-cl-Bahari. Judging from these, success appeared to be almost within his
grasp, lie shared my theories, of course, respecting Queen Hatasu, and was
devoting the whole of his energies to the task of clearing up die great mystery
of Ancient Egypt which centers around that queen.
For
him, as for inc, there was a strange fascination about
those defaced walls and roughly obliterated inscriptions. That the queen under
whom Egyptian art came to the apogee of perfection should thus have been
treated by her successors; that no perfect figure of the wise, famous, and
beautiful Hatasu should have been spared to posterity; that her very cartouche
should have been ruthlessly removed from every inscription upon which it
appeared, presented to Condors mind a problem only second in interest to the
immortal riddle of Gizeh.
You
know my own views upon die matter? My monograph, "Hatasu, the
Sorceress," embodies my opinion. In short, upon certain evidences, some
adduced by Theodore Davis, some by poor Condor, ami some resulting from my own
inquiries, 1 have come to the conclusion that the source—real or imaginary—of
this queen's power was an intimate acquaintance with what nowadays we term,
vaguely, magic. Pursuing her studies beyond the limit which is lawful, she met
with a certain end, not uncommon, if the old writings are to be be-
48
lieved, in the case of those who penetrate too far
into the realms of the Borderland.
For this reason- the practice of black
magic—her statues were dishonored, and her name erased from the monuments.
Now, I do not propose to enter into any discussion respecting the reality of
such practices; in my monograph I have merely endeavored to show that,
according to contemporary belief, the queen was a sorceress. Condor was seeking
to prove the same thing; and when I took up the inquiry, it was in the hope of
completing his interrupted work.
He
wrote to me early in the winter of 1908, from his camp by the Rock Temple.
Davis's tomb, at Bibau el-Muhik, with its long, narrow
E |
assage,
apparently had little interest for him; he was at work on the igh ground behind
the temple, at a point one hundred yards or so due west of the upper platform.
He had an idea that he should find there the mummies of Ilatasu -and another;
the latter, a certain Sen-Mut, who appears in the inscriptions of the reign as
an architect high in the queen s favor. The archaeological points of the letter
do not concern us in the least, but there was one odd little paragraph which I
had cause to remember afterwards.
"A
girl belonging to some Arab tribe," wrote Condor, "came
racing to the camp two nights ago to claim my protection. What crime she had
committed, and what punishment she feared, were far
from clear; but she clung to me, trembling like a leaf, and positively refused
to depart. It was a difficult situation, for a camp of fifty native excavators,
and one highly respectable European enthusiast, affords no suitable quarters
for an Arab girl—and a very personable Arab girl. At any rate, she is still
here; I have had a sort of lean-to rigged up in a little valley east of my own
tent, but it is very embarrassing."
Nearly
a month passed before I heard from Condor again; then came a second letter,
with the news that on the eve of a great discovery—as he believed—his entire
native staff- the whole fifty—had deserted one night in a body! "Two days'
work," he wrote, 'would have seen the tomb opened- for I am more than ever
certain that my plans are accurate. Then I woke up one morning to find every
man jack of my fellows missing! I went down into the village where a lot of
them live, in a towering rage, but not one of the brutes was
to be foimd, and their relations professed entire ignorance respecting their
whereabouts. What caused me almost as much anxiety as the check in my work was
the fact that Mahara- the Arab girl—had vanished also. I am wondering if the
thing has any sinister significance."
Condor
finished with the statement that he was making tremendous efforts to secure a
new gang. "But," said he, "I shall finish the
excavation, if I have to do it with my own hands."
His
third and last letter contained even stranger matters than the two preceding it.
He had succeeded in borrowing a few men from the
49
British Archaeological Camp in the Fayum. Then, just as the work was
restarting, the Arab girl, Mahara, turned up again, and entreated him to bring her
down the Nile, "at least as far as Dendera. For the vengeance of her
tribesmen," stated Condor, "otherwise; would result not only in her
own death, but in mine! At the moment of writing I am in two minds what to do.
If Mahara is to go upon this journey, 1 do not feel justified in sending her alone,
and there is no one here who could perform the duty," etc.
I
began to wonder, of course; and I had it in mind to take the train to Luxor
merely in order to see this Arab maiden, who seemed to occupy so prominent a
place in Condor's mind. However, Fate would have it otherwise; and the next
thing 1 heard was that Condor had been brought into
Cairo, and was at the English hospital.
He
had been bitten by a cat—presumably from the neighboring village; and although
the doctor at Luxor dealt with the bite at once, traveled down with him, and
placed him in the hand of the Pasteur man at the hospital, he died, as you
remember, in the night of his arrival, raving mad; the Pasteur treatment failed
entirely.
I
never saw him before the end, but they told me that his howls were horribly
like those of a cat. His eyes changed in some way, too, I understand; and, with
his fingers all contracted, he tried to scratch everyone
and everything within reach.
They
had to strap the poor beggar down, and even then he tore the sheets into
ribbons.
Well, as soon as possible, I made the
necessary arrangements to finish Condor's inquiry. 1 had access to his papers,
plans, etc., and in the spring of the same year I took up my quarters near
Deir-el-Bahari, roped oil (lie approaches to the cam]), stuck up the usual
notices, and prepared to finish the excavation, which, I gathered, was in a
fairly advanced state.
My
first surprise came very soon after my arrival, for when, with the plan before
me, I started out to find the shaft, I found it,
certainly, but only with great difficulty.
It
had been filled in again with sand and loose rock right to the very top!
II
All my inquiries availed me nothing. With
what object the excavation had been thus closed 1 was unable to conjecture.
That Condor had not reclosed it I was quite certain, for at the time of his
mishap he had actually been at work at the bottom of the shaft, as inquiries
from a native of Sucfee, in the Fayum, who was his only companion at the time,
had revealed.
In bis eagerness to complete the inquiry. Condor, by lantern light,
50
had been engaged upon a solitary night-shift
below, and the rabid cat had apparently fallen into the pit; probably in a
frenzy of fear, it had attacked Condor, after which it had escaped.
Only
this one man was with him, and he, for some reason that I could not make out,
had apparently been sleeping in the temple — quite a considerable distance from
Condor's camp. The poor fellow's cries had aroused him, and he had met Condor
running down the path and away from the shaft.
This,
however, was good evidence of the existence of the shaft at the time, and as 1 stood contemplating the tightly packed rubble which alone marked its
site, Í
grew more and more
mystified, lor this task of reclosing the cutting represented much hard labor.
Beyond
perfecting my plans in one or two particulars, I did little on the day of my
arrival. I had only a handful of men with me, all of whom 1 knew, having worked with them before, and beyond clearing Condor's shaft
1 did not intend to excavate further.
Ifatasu's
Temple presents a lively enough scene in the daytime during the winter and
early spring months, with the streams of tourists constantly passing from the
white causeway to Cook's Best House on the edge of the desert. There had been a
goodly number of visitors that day to the temple below, and one or two of the
more curious and venturesome had scrambled up the steep path to the little
plateau which was the scene of my operations. None had penetrated beyond the
notice boards, however, and now, with the evening sky passing through those
innumerable shades which defy palette and brush, which can only be
distinguished by the trained eye, but which, from
S |
talest
blue melt into exquisite pink, and by some magical combination orm that deep
violet which does not exist to perfection elsewhere than in the skies of Egypt,
I found myself in the silence and the solitude of "the 1 loly Valley."
I
stood at the edge of the plateau, looking out at the rosy belt which marked the
course of the distant Nile, with the Arabian hills vaguely sketched beyond. The
rocks stood up against that prospect as great black smudges, and what I could
see of the causeway looked like a gray smear upon a drab canvas. Beneath me were
the chambers of the Rock Temple, with those wall paintings depicting events in
the reign of Hatasu which rank among the wonders of Egypt.
Not
a sound disturbed my reverie, save a faint clatter of cooking utensils from the
camp behind me a descration of that sacred solitude. Then a dog began to howl
in the neighboring village. The dog ceased, and faintly to my ears came the
note of a reed pipe. The breeze died away, and with it
the piping.
I
turned back to the camp and, having partaken of a frugal supper, turned in upon my campaigner's bed, thoroughly enjoying
my free
dom from the routine of official life in Cairo,
and looking forward to the morrow's work pleasurably.
Under
such circumstances a man sleeps well; and when, in an uncanny gray half-light,
which probably heralded the dawn, I awoke with a start, I knew that something
of au unusual nature alone could have disturbed my slumbers.
Firstly,
then, I identified this with a concerted
howling of the village dogs. They seemed to have conspired to make night
hideous; I have never heard such an eerie din my life. Then it gradually began
to die away, and I realized, secondly, that the howling of the dogs and my own
awakening might be due to some common cause. This idea grew upon me and, as the
howling subsided, a sort of disquiet possessed me and, despite my
efforts to shake it off, grew more urgent with the passing of every moment.
In
short, I fancied that the thing which had alarmed or enraged the dogs was
passing from the village; tluough the Holy Valley, upward to the Temple;, upward to the plateau, and was approaching me.
I
have never experienced an identical sensation since, but I seemed to be audient
of a sort of psychic patrol, which, from a remote pianissimo, swelled fortissimo, to an intimate but silent clamor, which beat
in some way upon my brain, but not through the faculty of hearing, fen now the
night was deathly still.
Yet
1 was persuaded of some approach—of
the coming of something sinister, and the suspense of waiting had become almost
insupportable, so that 1 began to accuse my Spartan supper ol having given me
nightmare, when the tent-flap was suddenly raised and, outlined against the
paling blue of the sky, with a sent of reflected elfin light playing upon her
face, I saw an Arab girl looking in at me!
By
dint of exerting all my self-control I managed to restrain the cry and upward
start which this apparition prompted. Quite still, with my fists tightly
clenched, I lay and looked into the eyes which were looking into mine.
The
style of literary work which it has been my lot to cultivate fails me in
describing that beautiful and evil face. The features were severely classical
and small, something of the Bisharin type, with a cruel little mouth and a rounded chin, firm to
hardness. In the eyes alone lay the languor of the Orient; they were
exceedingly—indeed, excessively—long and narrow. The ordinary ragged,
picturesque finery of a desert girl bedecked this midnight visitant,
who, motionless, stood there watching me.
I once
read a work by Pierre de 1'An ere, dealing with the Black Sabbaths of the
Middle Ages, and now the evil beauty of this Arab face threw my memory back to
those singular pages, for, perhaps, owing to the reflected light which I have
mentioned, although the
52
explanation scarcely seemed adequate, those long, narrow
eyes shone catlike in the gloom.
Suddenly
I made up my mind. Throwing the blanket from me, I leaped to the ground, and in
a flash had gripped the girl by the wrists. Confuting some lingering doubts,
she proved to be substantial enough. My electric torch lay upon a box at the
foot of the bed and, stooping, I caught it up and
turned its searching rays upon the face of my captive.
She
fell back from rue, panting like a wild creature trapped, then dropped upon her
knees and began to plead—began to plead in a voice and with a manner which
touched some chord of consciousness that I could swear had never spoken before,
and has never spoken since.
She
spoke in Arabic, of course, but the words fell from her lips as liquid music in
which lay all the beauty and all the deviltry of the "Siren's Song." Fully
opening her astonishing eyes, she looked up at me and, with her free nand
pressed to her bosom, told me how she had fled from an unwelcome marriage; how,
an outcast and a pariah, she had hidden in the desert places for three days and
three nights, sustaining life only by means of a few dates which she had
brought with her, and quenching her thirst with stolen watermelons.
"I
can bear it no longer, effendi.
Another night out in the
desert, with the cruel moon beating, beating, beating upon my brain, with
creeping things coming out from the rocks, wriggling, wriggling, their many
feet making whisperings in the sand—ah, it will kill me! And I am for ever
outcast from my tribe, from my people. No tent of all the Arabs, though I fly
to the gates of Damascus, is open to me, save I enter in shame, as a slave, as
a plaything, as a toy. My heart"— furiously she beat upon her breast
-" is empty and desolate, effendi. I am
meaner than the lowliest thing that creeps upon the sand; yet the Cod that made
that creeping thing made me also—and you, you, who are merciful and strong,
would not crush any creature because it was weak and helpless."
I
had released her wrist now, and was looking down at her in a sort of stupor.
The evil which at first I had seemed to perceive in her was effaced, wiped out
as an artist wipes out an error in his drawing. Her dark beauty was speaking to
me in a language of its own; a strange language, yet one so intelligible that I
struggled in vain to disregard it. And her voice, her gestures, and the
witch-fire of her eyes were whipping up my blood to a fever heat of passionate
sorrow—of despair. Yes, incredible as it sounds, despair!
In
short, as I see it now, this siren of the wilderness was playing upon me as an
accomplished musician might play upon a harp, striking this string and that at
will, and sounding each with such full notes as diey had rarely, if ever,
emitted before.
53
Most damnable anomaly of all, I—Edward
Neville, archaeologist, most prosy and matter-of-fact man in Cairo, perhaps—knew that this nomad who had burst into my tent, upon whom I had set eyes for
the first time scarce three minutes before, held me enthralled; and yet, with
her wondrous eyes upon me, I could summon up no resentment, and could offer but
poor resistance.
"In
the Little Oasis, effendi,
1 have a sister who will admit me into her household, if only as a servant. There I can be safe, there I can rest. O Inglisi, at
home in England you have a sister
of your own I Would you sec her pursued, a hunted dung from rock to rock,
crouching for shelter in the lair of some jackal, stealing that she might
live— and flying always, never resting, her heart leaping for fear, flying,
flying, with nothing but dishonor before her?"
She
shuddered and clasped my left hand in both her own convulsively, pulling it
down to her bosom.
"There
can be only one thing, effendi,"
she whispered. "Do you
not see the white bones bleaching in the sun?"
Throwing
all my resolution into the act, 1 released my hand from her clasp and, turning
aside, sat down upon the box which served me as chair and table, too.
A
thought had come to my assistance, had strengthened me in the moment of my
greatest weakness; it was the thought of that Arab girl mentioned in Condor's
letters. And a scheme of things, an incredible scheme, that embraced and
explained some, if not all, of the horrible circumstances attendant upon his
death, began to form in my brain.
Bizarre
it was, stretching out beyond the realm of things natural and proper, yet I
clung to it, for there, in die solitude, with this wildly beautiful creature
kneeling at my feet, and with her uncanny powers of fascination yet enveloping
me like a cloak, I found it not so improbable as inevitably it must have
seemed at another lime.
I
turned my head, and through the gloom sought to look into the long eyes. As I
did so they closed and appeared as two darkly luminous slits in the perfect
oval of the face.
"You
are an impostor!" I said in Arabic, speaking firmly and deliberately.
"To Mr. Condor"—I could have sworn that she started slightly at sound
of the name—"you called yourself Mabara. I know you, and I will have nothing to do with
you."
But
in saying it I had to turn my head aside, for the strangest, maddest impulses
were bubbling up in my brain in response to the glances of those half-shut
eyes.
I
reached for my coat, which lay upon the foot of the bed, and, taking out some
loose money, I placed fifty piastres in the nerveless brown hand.
"That
will enable you to reach the Little Oasis, if such is your desire," 1 said, "It is all I can do for you, and now—you must go."
The light of the dawn was growing stronger
momentarily, so that I could see my visitor quite clearly. She rose to her
feet, and stood before me, a straight, slim figure, sweeping me from head to
foot with such a glance of passionate contempt as I had never known or
suffered.
She
threw back her head magnificently, dashed the money on the ground at my feet
and, turning, leaped out of the tent.
For
a moment f hesitated, doubting, questioning my humanity, testing my fears; then
I took a step forward, and peered out across the plateau. Not a soul was in
sight. The rocks stood up gray and eerie, and beneath lay the carpet of the
desert stretching unbroken to the shadows of die Nile Valley.
Ill
We commenced the work of clearing the shaft
at an early hour that morning. The strangest ideas were now playing in my mind,
and in some way I felt myself to be in opposition to definite enmity. My
excavators labored with a will and, once we had penetrated below the
first-three feet or so of tightly packed stone, it became a mere matter of
shoveling, for apparently the lower part of the shaft had been filled up principally
with sand.
I
calculated that four days' work at the outside would see the shaft clear to the
base of Condor's excavation. There remained, according to his own notes, only
another six feet or so; but it was solid limestone —the roof of the passage, if
his plans were correct, communicating with the tomb of Hatasu.
With
the approach of night, tired as I was, I felt little inclination for sleep. I lay down on my bed with a small Browning pistol under the
pillow, but after an hour or so of nervous listening drifted off into slumber.
As on the night before, I awoke shortly before the coming of dawn.
Again
the village dogs were raising a hideous outcry, and again I was keenly
conscious of some ever-nearing menace. This consciousness grew stronger as the
howling of the dogs grow fainter, and the sense of approach assailed me as ou the previous occasion.
I
sat up immediately with the pistol in my hand and, gently raising the tent
flap, looked out over the darksome plateau. For a long time I could perceive
nothing; then, vaguely outlined against the sky, I detected something that
moved above the rocky edge.
It
was so indefinite in form that for a time f was unable to identily it, but as
it slowly rose higher and higher, two luminous eyes obviously feline eyes,
since they glittered greenly in the darkness—came into view. In character and
in shape they were the eyes of a cat, but in point of size they were larger
than the eyes of any cat I had ever seen.
Nor were they jackal eyes. It occurred to me tltat some predatory beast
from the Sudan might conceivably have strayed thus far north.
The
presence of such a creature would account for the nightly disturbance amongst
the village dogs; ami, dismissing the superstitious notions which had led me to
associate the mysterious Arab girl with the phenomenon of the howling dogs, 1 seized upon this new idea with a sort
of gladness.
Stepping
boldly out of the tent, I strode in the direction of the gleaming eyes.
Although my only weapon was the Browning pistol, it was a weapon of
considerable power and, moreover, I counted upon the well-known cowardice of
nocturnal animals. 1 was not disappointed in the result.
The
eyes dropped out of sight, and as 1 leaped
to the edge of rock overhanging the Temple a lithe shape went streaking oil in
the gray-ness beneath me. Its coloring appeared to be black, but this appearance
may have been due to the had light. Certainly it was
no cat, was no jackal; and once, twice, thrice my Browning spat into the
darkness.
Apparently
I had not scored a hit, but the loud reports of the weapon aroused the men
sleeping in the camp, and soon I was
surrounded by a ring of inquiring faces.
But
there I stood on the rock-edge, looking out across the deseit in silence.
Something in the long, luminous eyes, something in the sinuous, flying shape
had spoken to me intimately, horribly.
Hassan
es-Sugra, the headman, touched my arm, and 1 knew that I must ofler some explanation.
"Jackals,"
1 said shortly. And with no other word I walked
back to my tent.
The
night passed without further event, and in the morning we addressed ourselves
to the work with such a will that I saw.
to my satisfaction, that by noon of the following day
the labor of clearing the loose sand would he completed.
During
the preparation of the evening meal I became aware of a
certain disquiet in the camp, and I noted a disinclination on the part
of the native lalnirers to stray far from the tents. They hung together in a group, and whilst individually they seemed to avoid meeting my eye,
collectively they watched me in a furtive fashion.
A
gang of Moslem workmen calls for delicate handling, and I wondered if,
inadvertently, I had transgressed in some way their iron-bound code of conduct.
I called Hassan es-Sugra aside.
"What ails the men?" I asked him.
"Have diey some grievance?"
Hassan spread his palms
eloquently.
"If
they have," he replied, "they are secret about it, and I am not in
their confidence. Shall I thrash three or four of them in order to learn the
nature of this grievance?"
"No,
thanks all the same," I said, laughing at this
characteristic pro-
56
posal. "If they refuse to work to-morrow,
there will be time enough for you to adopt those measures."
On
this, the third night of my sojourn in the Holy Valley by the Temple of Hatasu,
I slept soundly and uninterruptedly. I had been looking forward with the
keenest zest to the morrow's work, which promised to bring me within sight of
my goal, and when Hassan came to awaken me, I leaped out of bed immediately.
Hassan
es-Sugra, having performed his duty, did not, as was his custom, retire; he
stood there, a tall, angular figure looking at me strangely,
"Well?" I said.
"There
is trouble," was his simple reply. "Follow me, Neville Effendi."
Wondering
greatly, I followed him across the plateau and down the slip to the excavation.
There I pulled up short with a cry
of amazement.
Condor's
shaft was filled in to the very top, and presented, to my astonished gaze, much
the same aspect that had greeted me upon my first arrival!
"The men----- " I
began.
Hassan es-Sugra spread wide
his palms.
"Gone!" he replied. "Those Coptic dogs, those eaters of
carrion, have fled in the night."
"And
this"—1 pointed to the little mound of broken granite and sand—"is
their work?"
"So it would seem," was the reply;
and Hassan sniffed his sublime contempt.
I stood looking bitterly at this destruction of
my toils. The strangeness of the thing at the moment did not strike me, in my
anger; I was only concerned with the outrageous impudence of the missing workmen,
and if 1 could have laid hands upon one of them it had surely gone hard with
him.
As
for Hassan es-Sugra, 1 believe he would cheerfully have broken the necks of the
entire gang. But he was a man
of resource.
"It
is so newly filled in," lie said, "that you
and I, in three days, or in four, can restore it to the state it had reached
when those nameless dogs, who regularly prayed with their shoes on, those
devourers of pork, began their dirty work."
His example was
stimulating. I was not going to be beaten, either.
After
a hasty breakfast, the pair of us set to work with pick and shovel and basket.
We worked as those slaves must have worked whose toil was directed by the lash
of the Pharaoh's overseer. My back acquired an almost permanent crook, and
every muscle in my body seemed to he on fire. Not even in the midday heat did
we slacken or stay our toils; and when dusk fell that night a great mound had arisen
beside Condor's shaft, and we had excavated to a
depth it had taken our gang double the time to reach.
When
at last we threw down our tools in utter exhaustion, I held out my band to Hassan,
and wrung his brown fist enthusiastically. His eyes sparkled as he met my
glance.
"Neville Effcndi," he said,
"you are a true Moslem!"
And
only the initiated can know how high was the compliment
conveyed.
That
night I slept the sleep of utter weariness, yet it was not a dreamless sleep,
or perhaps it was not so deep as I supposed, for
blazing cat-eyes encircled me in my dreams, and a constant feline howling
seemed to fill the night.
When
I awoke the sun was blazing down upon the rock outside my tent and, springing
out of bed, I perceived, with amazement, that the morning was far advanced.
Indeed, I could hear the distant voices of the donkey-boys and other harbingers
of the coming tourists.
Why had Hassan es-Sugra not
awakened me?
I
stepped out of the tent and called him in a loud voice. There was no reply. 1
ran across the plateau to the edge of the hollow.
Condor's shaft had been
recloscd to the top!
Language
fails me to convey the wave of anger, amazement, incredulity, which swept over
me. I looked across to the deserted camp and back to my own tent; I looked down
at the mound, where but a few hours before had been a pit, and seriously I
began to question whether I was mad or whether madness had seized upon all who
had been with me. Then, pegged dowu upon the heap of Woken stones, I perceived,
fluttering, a small piece of paper.
Dully
I walked across and picked it up. Hassan, a man of some education, clearly was
the writer. It was a pencil scrawl in doubtful Arabic and, not without
difficulty, I deciphered it as follows:
"Fly, Neville Eliendi!
This is a haunted place!"
Standing
there by the mound, I tore the scrap of paper into minute fragments, bitterly
casting them from me upon the ground. It was incredible; it was insane.
The
man who had written that absurd message, the man who had undone his own work,
had the reputation of being fearless and honorable. He had been with me before
a score of times, and had quelled petty mutinies in the camp in a manner which
marked him a born overseer. I could not understand; I could scarcely believe
the evidence of my own senses.
What did I do?
I
suppose there are some who would have abandoned the thing at once and for
always, but I take it that the national traits are strong within me. I went
over to the camp and prepared my own breakfast; then, shouldering pick and
shovel, I went down into the valley and set
58 to work. What ten men could not do, what two men had
failed to do, one man was determined to do.
It
was about half an hour after commencing my toils, and when, I suppose, the
surprise and rage occasioned by the discovery had begun to wear off, that I
found myself making comparisons between my own case and that of Condor. It
became more and more evident to me that events—mysterious events—were repeating
themselves.
The
frightful happenings attendant upon Condor's death were marshaling in my mind.
The sun was blazing down upon me, and distant voices could be heard in the
desert stillness. I knew that the plain below was dotted with pleasure-seeking
tourists, yet nervous tremors shook me. Frankly, I dreaded the coining of the
night.
Well,
tenacity or pugnacity conquered, and 1 worked on until dusk. My supper
despatched, 1 sat down on my bed and toyed with the Browning.
I
realized already that sleep, under existing conditions, was impossible. I
perceived that on the morrow I must abandon my one-man enterprise, pocket my
pride, in a sense, and seek new assistants, new companions.
The
fact was coming home to me conclusively that a menace, real and not mythical,
hung over that valley. Although, in the morning sunlight and filled with
indignation, I had thought contemptuously of Hassan es-Sugra, now, in the
mysterious violet dusk so conducive to calm consideration, 1 was forced to
admit that he was at least as brave a man as I. And he had fled! What did that
night hold in keeping for me?
• •••••
I will tell yon what occurred, and it is the
only explanation I have to give of why Condor's shaft, said to communicate with
the real tomb of Hatasu, to this day remains unopened.
There,
on the edge of my bed, I sat far into the night, not daring to closed my eyes. But physical weariness conquered in the end
and, although I have no recollection of its coming, I must have succumbed to
sleep, since I remember—can never forget—a repetition of the dream, or what I
had assumed to be a dream, of the night before.
A
ring of blazing green eyes surrounded me. At oik; point this ring was broken, and in a kind of nightmare panic 1 leaped
at that promise ol safety, and found myself outside the tent.
Lithe,
slinking shapes hemmed me in—cat shapes, ghoul shapes, veritable
figures of the pit. And the eyes, the shapes, although they were the eyes and
shapes of cats, sometimes changed clusivcly, and became the wicked eyes and the
sinuous, writhing shapes of women. Always the ring was incomplete, and always I
retreated in the
?9
only direction by which retreat was possible. I
retreated from those
cat-things.
In
this fashion I came at last to the shaft, and there I saw the tools which I had
left at the end of my day's toil.
Looking
around me, I saw also, with such a pang of horror as I cannot hope to convey to
you, that the ring of green eyes was now unbroken about me.
And it was closing in.
Nameless feline creatures were crowding silently to
the edge of the pit, some preparing to spring down upon me where I stood. A
voice seemed to speak in my brain; it spoke of capitulation, telling me to
accept defeat lest, resisting, my fate be the fate of Condor.
Peals
of shrill laughter rose upon the silence. The laughter was mine.
Filling
the night with this hideous, hysterical merriment, I was working feverishly
with pick and with shovel filling in the shaft.
The end? The end is that I awoke, in the morning,
lying, not on my bed, but outside on the plateau, my hands torn and bleeding and
every muscle in my body throbbing agonizingly. Remembering my dream for even in
that moment of awakening I thought I had dreamed— I staggered across to the
valley of the excavation.
Condor's shaft was reclosed
to the top.
7/ kt1 •
(,» Want, UUc WelL
man
The
trouble with many writert of weird
yarns is the tendency to stick to the old and established si>ooks—and not to
take the time to dig into The voluminous supernatural
company found in the pages of
folklore. Certainly there are many good tales to be written about the other
spectral beings of animism—ilie
spirits of field and tree and stream.
Here we have an example of such a
creature. Meet the kelpie, a pet not recommended to home aquarium fanciers.
Just why, you'll see.
SOONER had Cannon closed and latched the door
than Lu was in his arms, and they were kissing with the hungry fierceness of
lovers who doubt their own good fortune. Thus for a delirious, heart-battering
moment; then Lu pulled nervously away. "We're being watched," she
whispered breathlessly. The big, dark man laughed down at her worried blue
eyes, her shining wealth ol ale-brown hair, her face like an ivory heart, the
apprehensive tautness of her slender figure, "That's guilty conscience,
Lu," he leased. "You know I wouldn't have invited you to my apartment
without giving my man the night off. And even if someone did see us, why be
afraid? Don't we love each other?"
She
allowed him to bring her into the parlor and draw her down beside him on a
divan, but she still mused apprehensively.
"I
could swear there were eyes upon us," she insisted, half apologetically. "Hostile eyes."
"Maybe
they're spirits," Cannon cried gayly, his own twinkling gaze sweeping
around to view in turn the paintings on the walls, the hooded lamps, the
bookshelves, the rich, comfortable furniture, the big box-shaped aquarium in
the darkest coiner. Again he chuckled. "Spirits—that's a pun, you know. The lowest form of wit."
From
a taborct at his elbow he lifted a decanter of brandy and poured two drinks
with a humorous flourish. Lu, forgetting her uneasiness of a moment before,
lifted her glass. "To us," she toasted.
But Cannon set his own drink down untasted
and peered around a second time, this time without gayety. "You've got mc
thinking it now," he muttered. "Thinking what?"
"That something is watching-and not
liking what it sees." lie glanced quickly over his shoulder, then
continued, as if seeking to reassure them both. "Nothing in that corner,
of course, except the aquarium."
"What's
the latest tenantry there?" Lu asked, glad to
change the disquieting subject.
"Some
Scotch water plants—new laboratory project." Cannon was at ease the moment
his hobby came into the conversation. "They arrived this afternoon in a
sealed tin box. Doctor MacKenzie's letter says they were gathered from the Pool
Kelp, wherever that is in his highland wildernesses. I'm letting them soak and
wash overnight. In the morning I'll begin experimenting."
Lu
sipped more brandy, her eyes interested. "Pool Kelp," she repeated.
"It sounds seaweedy."
"But these arc fresh-water growths. As I
say, I never heard of the
pool before." Cannon broke off. "Here, though, why talk botany when
we can------ "
His
lips abruptly smothered hers, his arms gathered her so
close as to bruise her. but even as she yielded
happily to his embrace the telephone rang loudly in the front entry. Cannon
released her with a muttered curse of impatience, rose
and hurried out to answer. He closed the door behind him, and his voice,
muffled and indistinct, sounded aggrieved as he spoke into the transmitter.
Lu,
finishing her brandy alone, picked up the drink Cannon had set down. As she
lifted it to her lips she glanced idly over the rim of the glass at the moist
tangle in the aquarium. In the dim light it seemed to fall into all manner of
rich greens—darkest emerald, beryl, malachite, olive, grass, lettuce. Something
moved, too, filliped and swerved in the heart of the little submerged grove.
Cannon
was still talking. Lu rose, drink in hand, to stroll curiously toward the big
glass box. As she did so the moving trifle seemed to glide upward toward the
surface. Coming closer yet, Lu paused to peer in the half-light.
A fish? If so, a very green fish
and a very small one—perhaps a tadpole. A bubble broke audibly on top
of the water. Lu, genuinely interested, bent closer, just as something rose
through the little ripples and hooked its tip on the rim of the aquarium.
It was a tiny,
spinach-colored hand.
Half
a second later another fringe of tiny fingers appeared, clutching the rim in
turn. Lu, woodenly motionless, stared in her effort to rationalize. She could
see the tiny digits, each tapering and flexible, each armed with a jet-colored
claw. Through the glass, under and behind the fingers, she made out thumbs—
deft, opposable thumbs—and smooth, wet palms of a dead, oystery gray. Her
breath caught in mute, helpless astonishment. A blunt head rose slowly into
view behind and
62
between the fists, something with flat brow, broad lump of nose and wide month, like a grotesque Mayan mask—and it was growing.
Lu told herself, a little stupidly, that she must not have seen clearly at first. She had thought the creature a little green minnow, but it was as big as a squirrel. No, as big as a baby! Its bright eyes, white-ringed, fixed hers, projecting a wave of malignant challenge that staggered her like a blow. The full, lead-hucd lips parted loosely and the forked tip of a purple tongue quivered out for a moment. A snaky odor steamed up to Lu's nostrils, making her dizzy and weak. Wet, scabby-green shoulders had heaved into view by now, and after them the twin mounds of a grotesquely feminine bosom. The thing was climbing out at her, and as it did so it swelled and grew, grew. . . .
The brandy-glass fell from her hand and loudly exploded into splinters upon the floor. The sound of the breaking gave Lu back her voice, and she screamed tremulously, then managed to move back and away, half stumbling and half staggering. The monster, all damp and green and stinking, was writhing a leg into view. Lu noted that, and then everything went into a whirling white blur and she began to collapse.
Faintly she heard the rush of Cannon's feet, felt the clutch of his strong aims as though many thicknesses of fabric separated them from her. lie almost shouted her name in panic. After a moment her sight and mind cleared, and she looked up into his concerned face. With all her shaken strength she clung to him.
"That thing," she chattered, "that horrid female thing in the
aquarium--
Cannon managed a comforting tone. "But there's nothing, dearest, nothing at all. Those two brandies—you took mine, too, you shameless glutton —went to your head."
"Look at ill" She pointed an unsteady finger. "Deep down there in the weeds."
He looked. "Oh, that?" he laughed. "I noticed it, too, just before you came. It's a little frog or toad—must have been gathered with the weeds and shipped all the way from Scotland."
Lu caressed her throbbing forehead with her slender white hand and mumbled something about "seeing things." Already she believed that she had somehow dreamed of the green water-monster. Still, it was a distinct effort to walk with Cannon to the aquarium and look in.
Through the thick tangle of stems and fronds that made a dank stew in the water she could make out a tiny something that wriggled and glided. It was only minnow-size after all, and seemed smooth and innocuous. Funny what notions two quick drinks will give you. . . . She lowered a cupped palm toward the surface, as if to scoop down and seize the little creature, but the chilly touch of the topmost weed-tips repelled her, and she drew back her arm.
63
"You'd never catch it," Cannon told
her. "It won't wait for you to grab. I had a try when 1 first saw it, and got a wet sleeve— and
this."
He
held out his left hand. For the first time that evening Lu saw the gold band
that he wore on his third finger.
"A
ring," her lover explainer!. "I was lying on
the bottom. Apparently it came with the weeds, too."
"You put it on your
wedding finger!" Lu wailed.
"That
was the only one it would fit," Cannon defended as she caught his hand and
tugged with all her might at the ring. It did not budge.
"Please," she
begged, "get rid of it."
"Why,
Lu, whats the trouble? Are you being jealous because a present was given me by
that mess of weed—or maybe by the little lady frog?"
The
tiny swimmer in the tank splashed water, as if in punctuation of his joke, and
Cannon, falling abruptly silent, suddenly began wrenching at the gold circlet.
But not even his strength, twice that of Lu. could bring it over the joint.
"Here
I don't like this," he announced, his voice steady but a little tight.
"I'm going to put soap on my finger. That will make the thing slip
off."
Lu
made no reply, but her eyes encouraged him. Cannon kissed her pale forehead, strode across the room and into a little corridor
beyond. After a moment Lu could hear the spurt of a water-jet in a bowl, then
the sound of industrious scrubbing with lather.
In
command of herself once again but still a trifle faint
and shaky, Lu leaned her hand lightly upon the thick, smooth edge of the
aquarium glass. A fond little smile came to her lips as she pondered on Cannon
s eagerness to please her whim. Not even in a silly little matter like this one
did he cross her will or offer argument that might embarrass or hurt her. The
shedding of that ring would be a symbol between them, of understanding and
faith.
Her
eyes dropped to the table that stood against the aquarium, with its litter of
papers and notebooks. At the edge nearest Lu lay a thick volume bound in gray—a
dictionary. What was the term she had puzzled over? Oh, yes. . . . Still
lounging with one hand on the glass, she flipped the book open with the other
and turned the pages to the K's:
Kelp:
Any one of various large brown seaweeds of the families Laminariaceae and Fucaceae.
Her
hazy memory had been right, then, about the word. But why should a body of
fresh water be called Pool Kelp? Glancing back at the page, her eyes caught die
next definition.
It answered her question.
Kelpie: (Gael, Myth.) A malicious water spirit or demon believed
64
to haunt streams or marshes. Sometimes it falls
in love with human beings, striving jealously against mortal rivals. . . .
The
words swam before her vision, for the snake-smell had risen
siekeningly around her. And something was gripping the hand that rested on the
rim of the tank.
Lii's
mouth opened but, as before, terror throttled her. Take a sleeper in the throes
of nightmare, she struggled half-heartedly. She dared not look, yet some power
forced her head around.
The
grip had shifted to her wrist. Long, elaw-tipped fingers were clamped there
fingers as large as her own, scrofulous green and of a swampy chill. Lu's eyes
slid in fascinated horror along the scale-ridged, corded arm to the
moldy-looking body, stuck and festooned over with weed-fronds, that was rising
from the water. Another foul baud stole swiftly out, fastened on Lu's shoulder,
and jerked her close. The (lat, grotesque face, grown to human size, was level
with hers, its eyes triumphant within their dead white rings, its dark tongue
quivering between gaping lips.
Yet
again Lu tried to find her voice. All she could achieve was a wordless moan, no
louder than a sigh.
"Dili
you call, sweetheart?" came Cannon's cheery response from his washing.
"FU be with you in a minute now; this thing is still hanging on like a
poor relation!"
The
reptilian jaw dropped suddenly, like the lid of a box turned upside down. Lu
stared into the slate-gray cave that was the yawning mouth. Teeth,
sharp teeth, gleamed there—not one row, but many.
Lu's
hands lifted feebly in an effort at defense, then
dropped wearily to her sides. The monster crinkled its humid features in
something like a triumphant grin. Then its blunt head shot forward with incredible
swiftness, nuzzling Lu at the juncture of neck and shoulder.
For
a moment she felt exquisite pain, as of many piercing needles. After that she neither felt, heard nor saw anything.
The medical examiner was drawing a sheet over
the still, agony-distorted body of the dead girl. The police sergeant,
scribbling his final notes, addressed Cannon with official sternness.
"Sorry,"
he said, "but you haven't explained this business at all satisfactorily.
You come down to headquarters with me."
Cannon
glanced wanly up from his senseless wrestling with the ring that would not quit
his wedding finger. "I didn't do it, he reiterated dully.
The
medical examiner was also speaking, more to himself than anyone: "An
autopsy might clear up some points. Those inflamed, suppurated wounds on the
neck might have been made by a big
water-snake. Or," he added, with a canny
glance at the sergeant, "by a poisoned
weapon constructed to simulate such a creature's bite.
65
Cannon's last vestige of control went. "I tell you," lie snarled desperately, "that she and I were the only living things here tonight—die only living things." He broke off, becoming aware of movement in the aquarium. "Except, of course, that little frog in there."
The creature among the weeds, a tiny sliver of agile greenness, cavorted for a moment on the surface of the water as if in exultation, then, before any of the three watchers could get a fair look at it, dived deep into the heart of the floating mess.
^Jfie (Captured C^.ro6&Seclion
l,j WiL J. Eeuer, M3X
n 'HE |
F.ver since imaginative writers got hold of the concept advanced by
higher mathematics of a hypothetical "fourth" dimension,
we have been treated to a vast amount of explanations and simplifications.
With cimvinang logic, we have been shown that this new dimension—at right
angles to those our senses perceive—is time, is density, is a parallel world,
is infinity, and so forth. Actually the fourth dimension remains as unprobed as
ever—a mere mathematical premise. In this early
science-fiction classic. Dr. lireucr presents one aspect of a fourth
dimension penetration . . . an amusing one which makes use of some of the qualities
of an object having the ability to find an easier way out of a perfectly sealed
box than that possessed by llnudini.
HE
HEAD of Jiles Heagey, Instructor in Mathematics, was bent low over the sheets
of figures; and becomingly close to it, leaned the curly-haired one of his
fiancee, Sheila Mathers, daughter of the Head of the Mathematics Department.
Sheila was no mean mathematician herself, and had published some original
papers.
"Are
you trying to tell me that this stuff mates any sense?" she laughed,
shaking her head over the stack of papers.
"Your
father couldn't follow it either," Heagey answered. "He used abusive
language at me when 1 showed it to him."
"Now
don't be mean to my father. Someday you'll learn that under his blustering
exterior he has a heart of gold. But what do these things mean, and what did
yovi bring me in here for?"
"You
have followed through Einstein's equation for the transformation of
coordinates, have you not?" Heagey explained. "Well, this is
Einstein's stuff, only I've carried it farther than he did."
"It doesn't look the same-------- "
Sheila shook her head.
"That
is because I am using four coordinates. The most complicated existing
equations, with the three coordinates x, y, and z, and involving three equations each with the variables:
jr., y», z„ X2, y2, Z2, Xa. y», Z3,
require
that you keep in mind nine equations at a time. That is a heavy burden and
relatively few men are able to do it. Here I have (our coordinates, w, x, y,
and z, and the variables:
67
|
|
y<- |
Zi. |
Wj, |
|
y» |
|
Wj, |
x.-. |
y». |
Zs. |
W|, |
|
y." |
|
and
requiring diat I cany in my mind sixteen equations at one time. Thai may seem
impossible, hut I've drilled myself at it for two years,
and gradually 1 was able to go farther and
farther--------- "
"But
there are other quantities here," Sheila interrupted, studying the paper
intently, "that do not belong in equations for the rotation of
coordinates. They look like the integrals in electromagnetic equations."
"Good
for you!" Ileagey cried enthusiastically. "That pretty little head
has something on the inside, too. That is jus* exactly what they are:
electromagnetic integrals. You see, the rotation of coordinates looks very
pretty in theory, but when you hook it up with a little practical
dynamics—don't you understand yet?"
Sheila stared at the young
mathematician in questioning wonder.
"Sheila,
jewel, you're just irresistible that way. I can't help it." He gathered
her in his arms and kissed her face in a dozen places. She pushed him away.
"No
more until you tell me what this is about. I mean it!" She stamped her foot,
but a merry smile contradicted her stern frown.
"You're
just like your father when you're like that," he said, taking up the
papers again. "Very simple little conception," he continued.
"Why be satisfied with rotating coordinates on paper? Here's a way to
rotate them in concrete, physical reality.
"Listen now. When you rotate two
coordinates through ninety de-
grees, you have an ordinate where then- previously was an abscissa.
If you rotate three coordinates through ninety degrees, you can make
a vertical plane occupy a horizontal position. Now—suppose you
rotate four coordinates through forty-five degrees: you can then make
a portion of space occupy a new position, outside of what we know
as space. And we can bring into this space of ours a portion of the
unknown space along the fourth coordinate------------ "
"The fourth
dimension!" gasped Sheila.
"There
it is on paper. But we're going to do it in reality. There—" pointing
across the room—"are the coils by means of which we can rotate some real
space. 1 want you to see the preliminary trial. As I
do not know just exactly what may happen, 1 am going to rotate only a small |x>rtion to begin with."
Sheila's eyes gleamed with
excited comprehension.
"Call father in. He's just across the corridor--------- "
"Not for the very first trial. I want
you to see that alone. After wo
know what it will do--------- "
"But it may be
dangerous. Something may happenf
"You think it might injure the furniture
or damage the building? For the preliminary trial I shall rotate it only for an
instant and turn it back instantly."
She
clung to his arm nervously while he grasped the black handle of the switch and
threw it down, waited a few seconds, and pulled it out again.
They
saw nothing. There was a crash, instantaneously loud, and fading almost
instantly to a distant, muffled rumble, and ceasing suddenly. There was a
heavy thud and a pounding on the floor. Sheila gave a little scream.
There
in front of them was a rapidly moving object; it bounced up and down off the
floor to a height of three feet about once a second. It did not have the
harmonic motion of a bouncing body, however; it stopped abruptly up in the air
and shot downward at high speed, hit the floor, stopped a moment and shot back
upward. Then it stopped suddenly and hung in the air. It was about the size of
a large watermelon, and looked for all the world like
human skin: smooth, uniform, unbroken all around.
The
two stared at it amazed. Ileagey walked up and touched it with the tip of a
finger. It grew smaller. And suddenly it decreased to about one-half its former
size, retaining its surface smoothness and uniformity unchanged.
It had felt soft and warm,
like human flesh.
Now
it was increasing in size again, while they stared gasping, speechless, at it.
When it stopped growing suddenly, it was the size of a big barrel, with rounded
ends. There was a bulging ridge around the middle, on each side of which was a
dark brown strap of something like leather. The rest of it was just naked
skin.
Sheila
and Ileagey stood rooted to the spot, staring at it and at each other. What was
the thing? Where had it come from?
The
Thing began thumping up and down off the door again, with great, thudding shocks. After a while it desisted and lay still. It was
a most uncouth, hideous looking thing: a great lump of naked flesh with two
straps around it. It looked for all the world like
some huge tumor in a medical museum, or like some monstrosity of birth. Could
it be alive?
Both
of them approached it cautiously. Ileagey pricked it with a pin. The skin was
tough and he jabbed hard. A drop of blood appeared.
Then
there was a terrible commotion. The object decreased in size to a small sphere
like a baseball. In fact, there were several baseball-sized lumps of flesh all
around; just naked flesh. They moved rapidly, and two of them were between him
and Sheila. Two or three were on the far side of her. He counted ten of them
altogether. Five of thera closed swiftly around her. Then she was gone!
69
Her scream, cut suddenly short, still rang in
his ears. And she was gone! Suddenly vanished from in front of him! He groped
about, feeling for her in the empty air, but there was nothing anywhere. There
lay the watermelon-like lump of flesh that he had first seen. It was on the
floor and lay quite still. And she was gone! He held his head distractedly.
The door opened and Professor Mathers,
Sheila's father, came in.
"What's going on
here?" he demanded, blinking his eyes.
Hcagey stared blankly,
trying to think.
"This thumping and
screaming?" the professor continued.
"I think I begin to
understand,' Hcagey began.
"Think
you understand!" the professor shouted. "What have you done to my
daughter? She doesn't scream for nothing."
He
caught sight of the ovoid lump of flesh. He turned pale and stopped as if
frozen. Some terrible thought crossed his mind, connecting it with his
daughter; had some nefarious experiment turned her into that tiling?
"What's that?" he
snapped savagely.
"Something's
got to be done," Heagey said, chiefly to himself. "We've got to bring
her back here. I'm afraid to manipulate the thing too many times; the Lord only
knows what else it may dip up."
The professor glared.
"You sound like a first-rate manic-depressive crazy man-------- "
"Wait
till I shut that thing up," Hcagey said, getting a hold on himself;
"and I'll explain all I know about this. I was getting ready to try to
rotate a clog out of space, and so I have a new, strong dog-cage here."
He
set the dog-cage down beside the lump of flesh; very gently, very slowly, he
pushed it in. His touch recoiled at the warm, soft feel of it; but he got it
into the cage and locked the door. Then lie set out a chair for the professor,
but his hand shook, for his mind was on Sheila.
He
sat down facing the professor, his back to the cage. Suddenly the professor's
face fell, and his eyes stared ahead with a look of utter blankness. Hcagey
whirled around and looked at his "specimen." It was out of the cage!
There
hadn't been a sound. 11 is eyes had not been off it for ten seconds.
The cage was still lucked. There it lay, three feet away from the cage, only it
wasn't the same. There were two pieces of it now, long, cylindrical, rounded at
the ends. Like a couple of legs without knees or feet. Heagey got up and
unlocked the cage, noting that it required fifteen seconds. Jle felt around
inside the cage with his hands, but found nothing.
"Alter all." he
sighed, "it is very simple."
The professor stared at
him. now thoroughly convinced that he was
70
crazy. Heagey explained about his sixteen
equations and how readily they interlocked with the electromagnetic integrals, and of how the very simple application of any
form of electromagnetic energy would rotate four coordinates.
"I
wanted her to see the preliminary experiment. I used but little power on a
small field, just opened a little trap-door into space, so to speak. There is
only one explanation for what has happened here. 1 rotated a portion of a
fourth dimension, and left a hole in hyperspace for an instant. Just as if you
rotate up a portion of this floor, there will be a hole left. As chance would
have it, just at that moment some inhabitant of hyperspace came along and
stumbled into it, and 1 swung back on hirn and caught him.
"Here he is, stuck. What we see and feci
is a cross-section of him,
a solid cross-section of that part of him that is cut by our three-
dimensional space. See! If f stick my finger through this sheet of paper,
the two-dimensional inhabitants on its surface will perceive only a
circle. At first the nail
occupies a portion of its circumference; as I
push my finger on through, the nail is gone, and folds and ridges
appear and disappear. If my whole hand goes through, the circle
increases greatly in size. If they draw a circle around my finger and
try to imprison it, I can withdraw it and stick it through somewhere
else, and they cannot understand how it was done-----------
"But
what about Sheila? Where is she?"
Hcagey's
face dropped. He had been full of interest and exultation in his problem. The
reminder of her was an icy shock.
"There
is only one possible conclusion," he went on in a dead voice. "The
struggles of the fourth-dimensional creature swept her out into
hyperspace."
The
professor sprang up and walked rapidly out of the room. There was something
determined in his stride. He slammed the door. Heagey sat down and thought.
Somehow he must rescue Sheila.
How
could it be done? Should he try the rotation again? He had all the figures and
could repeat it accurately. But, that would not be at all certain to get her
back. The captured fourth-dimensional creature might get away. Heagey didn't
want to lose him. Not only that he wanted to study him, but somehow he felt
that he must hang on to the onlv link with that world where Sheila was now
lost.
The
thouglit of its getting away worried him. How could he make sure that it would
not escape? He reasoned back to the plane section of a three-dimensional
object. Enclosing it in a circle would do no good. But, if tied tightly with a
circle of rope, it might be kept from moving up and down. Analogically, if he
could get this thing into sonic sort of a tight bag, he might feel free to flip
his trap-door once more. Ah! then came the brilliant
idea!
He could sally out into
hyperspace and look for Sheila!
71
He got the lump of flesh fastened up tight in
a canvas sack and lashed the other end of the
stout rope with which he tied it around a concrete
pillar. Then the door opened and two policemen walked in, followed by the
professor. He was urging them on. "There he is! Grab him!" he seemed
to say in attitude and gesture, though not in words.
A
pang of alarm shot through I lea gey. He was needed right here to rescue
Sheila. What would become of her if they locked him up? His mind as usual
worked quickly and logically, in contradistinction to the professor's, who
seemed to have been thrown into an unreasoning rage by bis daughter's
disappearance, lie sprang to his switchboard and shouted:
"Stop!"
Something
in his determined attitude alarmed the policemen; his hand on the
ominous-looking apparatus might mean something. They stopped.
"What's this? What do you want?"
Ileagey demanded. The professor's torrents broke loose.
"He
murdered my daughter. Made away with her. I've got a warrant for his arrest. Nonsensical
twaddle about the fourth dimension. Prosecute him to the limit; that's
what 111 do. Been hanging around her
too much. He's crazy. Throw him in jail. Make him bring her backl"
Ileagey laughed a desperate laugh, which made the other three more certain that he was a dangerous maniac.
"Like
throwing debtors into jail," Hcagey derided acidly. "Fat
chance of paying the debt then! Move another step and I'll throw the
three of you into unknown hvporspace."
They
were all afraid, of they knew not what. Ileagey outlined to them that he wanted
to go out into hypcrspace and search for Sheila. But he would tie himself on a rope fastened at this end. And he wanted someone here at this end, who was friendly to him, to manage things. He telephoned
out for a rope and for two of his students. The
policemen watched, too puzzled to know what to do. The professor acquiesced,
more from fear, like a man at the point of a gun, dian because he saw the
reason of it.
The
rope was delivered and the two students, Adkins and Becnier, arrived. They helped him fix a firm sling
around his shoulders, waist, and thighs. The loose rope was coiled up on die
floor, several hundred feet of it, and the other end tied to a concrete pillar.
There was some amazed staring by the students at the writhing thing in the
canvas sack.
"I'll
tell you about that later," Hcagey said. "All the pointers and dials
are set. All you need to do is to throw this switch and jerk it back at once.
Adkins, you do that; and, Beeiner, you
watch the rope.
72
When I signal by jerking it six times,
Adkins. you throw the switch again the same way."
That
was all. Without another word Adkins threw the switch. There was the same
crash, instantaneously muffled and almost suddenly fading away as at a
distance. There was a momentary sensation of agitation, though nothing really
moved.
Hcagey
was gone. The loose end of the rope that had tied him lay on the floor. It was
certainly a breathless thing. The professor stared with a sort of vacant
expression on his face, as though the solid ground had suddenly dropped from
beneath his feet. It dawned upon him that perhaps Sheila had really disappeared
that way.
Beeiner
picked up the end of the rope. It was not an end; it merely looked that way.
There was a strong tension on it; in fact it soon began to slip through his
hands, and coil after coil was drawn oil the pile on the floor, and simply
vanished. For a while it stopped and then went on unwinding.
The
policemen gazed blankly. They were unable to understand what had happened. The
man they were to arrest had suddenly melted from sight. They mumbled astonished
monosyllables to each other, but they were not as astonished as was Professor
Mathers. They did not grasp the enormity of what was going on, as he did. It
upset his whole mental universe. He sat a while and then paced nervously up and
down the vast room. He came and looked at the rope. Then he looked at the
canvas sack. The sack lay loose as though the contents had escaped. He felt of
it and found that it contained three soft baseball-sized objects. He jumped
back and shrauk away from it. The time seemed interminable, fie waited and
waited.
Besides
an occasional mumble between the policemen or a short exclamation from Adkins
or Bccmcr, there was no conversation. Becmer watched die rope closely. There
was a tense nervous strain created largely by the professor's distracted
movements. Then, after what seemed hours, though in reality less than one hour,
there were six short tugs on the rope. Adkins threw his switch, and out of the
crash and tremor Ilea gey tumbled out on the floor, all tangled up in coils of
rope.
He
was breathless, haggard, wild-eyed. He lay for a
moment on the floor, panting. Then he sprang up and gazed fiercely, wildly
about. He seemed suddenly to perceive where he was. An expression of relief
came over his face; he sighed deeply and sank down to a sitting position. He
looked exhausted; his clothes were disarranged and ripped in some places, and
were covered with dust.
The
five people looked at him in silent amazement. He looked from one to the other
of them; it was a long time before he spoke.
"Good
to be back here. I can hardly believe I'm really back. Never
again for me."
"What about Slieila?
Where is she?" the professor demanded.
Heagcy
recoiled as though from some shock. He sank again into rofound depression. At
first he had seemed a little happy to get ack. Apparently
Sheila had been forcibly driven out of his mind for the time.
"Let
me tell you about it," he began slowly. He seemed not to know just how to
proceed. "That is, if 1 can. 1 don't even know
how to tell it. I know what it must feel like to go insane
"I
heard the switch go down as I gave Adkins the signal. Then it seemed like an
elevator starting, and that was all. Until I looked around.
"I
was sitting on something that looked like rock or cement. Not far from me was
that barrel-like lump of flesh with the two straps around it, just exactly as I had seen it in the laboratory. And then a row of
shapes reaching into the dim, blue distance. The nearer ones seemed to
be of concrete or cement. You've heard me jeer at the crazy, cubistic and
futuristic designs on book wrappers and wallpaper. Well, those are pleasant
and harmonious compared with the dizzy, jagged angles, the irregular, zig-zag shapes
with peaks and slants, and everything out of sense and reason except
perspective. Perspective was still correct. Just a long,
straight row fading into the distauce. What in the world it could be, I
hadn't the faintest idea. However, I gradually reasoned it out.
"Naturally,
since I am a three-dimensional organism, I can only perceive three dimensions.
Even out in hyperspace I can only see three dimensions. What I saw must therefore be the spatial cross-section of some sort of
buildings. I couldn't see the entire buildings, but merely the cross-section
cut by the particular set of coordinates in which I was. Now it occurs to me,
that since that barrel-like thing looked exactly the same to me out there as it
did in the room here, I must have been in a 'space' or set of coordinates
parallel to the ones we are in now.
"Imagine
a two-dimensional being, whose life had been confined to a sheet of paper and
who could only perceive in two dimensions, suddenly turned loose in a room. He
could only see one plane at a time. Everything he saw would be cross-sections
of things as we know them. Wouldn't he go crazy? I nearly did.
"I
first started out to walk along beside the row of rock-like shapes. Suddenly
near me there appeared two spheres of flesh, just like this one we have here.
They rapidly increased in size, coalesced into a barrel-shaped thing with a
metal-web belt around the middle, and then dwindled quickly; there were three
or four smaller gobs of stuff and then ten or a dozen little ones: finally an
irregular, blotchy, melon-like thing which quickly disappeared. In fifteen
seconds it had all materialized and gone.
"I was beginning to understand the stuff
now. Merely some inhabitant or creature of hypcrspace going
by. As he passed through my particular spatial plane, I saw successive
cross-sections of him. Just as though my body were passing through a plane, say feet first: first there would be two irregular circles; then
a larger oval, the trunk, with two circles, the arms, at the sides and separate
from it; and so on until the top of the head vanished as a small spot.
"I
followed down the line of buildings, looking around. Bizarre shapes appeared
around me, changing size and shape in the wildest, dizziest, most uncouth ways,
splitting into a dozen pieces and coming together into large,
irregular chunks. Some seemed to be metal or concrete, some human flesh, naked
or clothed. In a few minutes my mind became accustomed to interpreting this
passage of fourth-dimensional things through my 'plane' and 1 studied them with
interest. Then I slipped and fell down. Down 1 whizzed for a while, and
everything about me disappeared.
"I
found myself rolling; and sitting up, 1 looked
around again. There was nothing. 1 still
seemed to be on cement or stone; and in all directions it stretched away
endlessly into the distance. It was the most disconcerting thing I had ever
seen in my life. I was just a speck
in a universe of cement pavement. 1 began to get panicky, but controlled
myself and started to walk, feeling the reassuring pull of the rope behind me.
I walked nervously and saw nothing anywhere. Evidently I had slipped off my
former 'plane' and gotten into a new
one. The rope tightened suddenly; perhaps I had reached the end of it. It
jerked me backwards and I swung dizzily, my fect hanging loose.
"1 swung among millions of small
spherical bodies disposed irregu-
larly in all directions about me, even below. They moved gently back
and forth in small arcs; and there were large brown bodies----------
"Why
go through it all? I stumbled from one spatial plane into another. Each seemed
a totally different universe. I couldn't get them correlated in my mind into
any kind of a consistent whole at all. For a long time I climbed over some huge metal framework; I ran into moving
things that grew larger and disappeared; I struggled through a jungle of some soft, green, vegetable stuff. Just all of a sudden I made
up my mind that I'd never find Sheila.
"She
might be within a foot of me all the time, yet 1 couldn't get to her, because I
couldn't see out of three dimensions. I yelled her name until I was hoarse and
my head throbbed, but nothing happened. 1 grew panicky and decided I wanted to
go back. I pulled on the rope and dragged myself toward the direction from
which it came; sometimes I slid rapidly toward it; at others 1 could feel myself dragging my entire weight
with my arms. Then I could go no further, pull as I might. It seemed like
trying to reach an inch higher
75
than you really can; I couldn't quite stretch
that far. So I gave it six short tugs. Very quietly I tumbled out here. I
haven't seen Sheila."
The professor was calm. His
face was set hard.
"Either
you're telling the truth or you're insane as a loon," he said, and his voice was puzzled and sincere.
"Perhaps I'm crazy, too. I'm broad-minded enough to admit that is
possible. I've got you charged with murder. But I'll give you a chance. What
are you going to do about Sheila?"
Heagey's eyes blazed.
"You
can go to hell with your chance," he roared. "I want Sheila back worse than you do. If anyone can get her back, it is myself. If you interfere, you simply guarantee that she's
lost, that's all. If you want to see her again, keep your hands oil! See!"
The
professor was a better man than his blustering actions might lead one to think.
"Well, I'm worried," he said
shortly. "Can 1 help you any?"
Heagey never changed
expression.
"Perbaps
you can. 1 may need more money than I've got. Just now you can help mc most by
getting out of herí1
and taking everybody with
you and letting me think. I ve got an idea. I'll phone you when I want
something."
"Well,
remember you're charged with murder, and there will be a police guard around
this place."
How great and yet how small
men will be under trying conditions!
Heagey,
left alone, sat and thought. He jumped up and ran his hands through his hair.
"God! Think of it!" he gasped. "Sheila out there alone! In that mad place! Not even a
rope!"
He
paced rapidly around the room. Then he seized paper and pencil and began to
draw. lie drew circles and ellipsoids of different
sizes and laid the drawings in a row.
The professor came in an hour later and found him at it.
"How
do you ever expect to find her that way?" he growled peevishly.
"Shut
up!" Heagey snapped, his nerves tautened into
disrespect. He swept up the papers with his hand and crumpled them into the
waste-basket. "No use. Can't study four-dimensional stuff on a
two-dimensional plane Say!" he shouted roughly at the professor; "get
me a hundred pounds of modeling clay up here. Quick as you can!"
The
professor trotted out after it without a word,
much less with any understanding of what it was about.
'Do
you think you'll do it?" was his eager attitude one moment, and, "If
you don't, you go on trial for murder," he raved a moment later.
Far
into the night Heagey worked with modeling clay, moulding the forms that had
appeared in the laboratory and some of those he
76 had seen in hypcrspace. He tried to recollect the order in which the
various shapes nau appeared to him, and laid them in rows in that order. Late
into the night he modeled and arranged and stared and studied. Near midnight
the professor poked his head in the door,
"She's
really gone,' he moaned. "She hasn't come home.
She's nowhere!" lie turned on the haggard Heagey. "The policemen are
on the job, so don't try to get away, but I'm offering five thousand dollars to
anyone who brings Sheila back."
Heagey
snatched a few hours' sleep on the floor. In the morning when the professor
opened the door, he was arranging clay balls and clubs into rows and staring at
them. As soon as the professor's head appeared, he shouted:
"I've
got itl The biggest photographs you can get of Sheila.
Head and full-length both. And hist! I lurry!"
He
now turned his attention to the object in the canvas sack. He untied the rope
from the fourteen-ounce duck, tied the corners of the canvas together, inserted
a stout stick (obtained by breaking the leg off a chair), and twisted it,
scpiee/.ing the small ball of llcsh unmercifully. At fust
sight it was a cruel looking procedure, but there was method in it. The thing
began to jump back and forth excitedly. He loosened the hulk of his pressure,
but kept up a steady, firm tension. His strength was sufficient to hold it
fairly steady. Suddenly he loosened all pressure. The mass of flesh suddenly
grew larger and the satisfied expression in Heagey's face showed that was what he
was working for. Just as when you push hard against someone and then suddenly
let go: he falls toward you.
He
persisted steadily along (his line. When the cross-section increased in size
he held it loosely, patted it gently, and even talked soothingly. As soon as it
started to decrease, he screwed up his stick and bore down on it remorselessly.
For an hour be wrestled. Then the professor entered with two 16 by 20
photographs taken out of frames.
"Wail!"
shouted Heagey peremptorily. "Stand there and hold "em." He
twisted up his stick again, held it. and loosened it;
and was rewarded by seeing the barrel-shaped mass appear; then two long,
cylindrical bodies beside it, covered with metal-mesh.
"What's your
idea?" the professor asked.
"Don't
bother me!" Heagey panted irritatcdly. "And don't move. I might need
you any minute.
Finally
the thing decreased in size again; but this time Heagey seemed satisfied with
it. He removed the canvas sack. There was an irregular sphere the size of a
bucket. Over its surface were queer patches, glassy places, and iridescent,
rainbow-like spots that changed color and looked deep.
"Quick now, the
pictures!"
Heagey
set up the pictures in front of the thing, as if to show them
77
to it. The professor stared at him as he would
at a silly child. Heagey suddenly hit himself in the side of the head with his
fist.
"What
a prize fool! 1 keep on being a fool!" he
shouted. lie turned savagely to the professor:
"Gel
me the two best fellows out of the fine-arts department. Quick! Sculptors!"
If
the professor thought Heagey was crazy, nevertheless some glimmer ol hope of
rescuing Sheila lent him willingness and speed of thinking, lie scolded rapidly
into the telephone for a few minutes, repeating the word emergency several
times. Then lie started down (he driveway, taking a
policeman with him.
Heagey
was feverishly busy. He seemed to be bringing every object in the room thai could be conveniently carried, to set before the unearthly
specimen he had there. He seemed to be showing it things. He acted for all the world like some ignorant, superstitious savage,
bringing things to his god. books, chairs, hats and coats, mathematical medals,
hammers and wrenches, one thing after another; he held (hem up in front of it
for a while and tossed them aside on the growing heap. When the two sculptors
arrived, he barked his directions at them, and continued what seemed his silly
efforts to entertain the object in front of him by showing it everything he
could find. At least it remained quiet and unchanged.
The
sculptors, infected with his determination, worked rapidly. First there was a
model of a heavy, bulging man, with his foot caught in a hole like a
coal-chute, and held fast by a square lid. Then from the pictures a model of
Sheila; considering the speed with which it was made, it was a wonderful thing,
with her pointed chin and curly hair all hue to life. Then a
rough model of Heagey.
fleagey set the models down in front of the
iridescent, patchy Thing and played puppets with the models; went through a
regular dramatic performance with them. The models of Sheila and himself stood
near the man caught in the trap-door. The imprisoned man struggled and knocked
Sheila over and she rolled away; she fell down off the surface of the block to
a lower level. The imprisoned man continued to struggle, and the model of Heagey
searched around, but could not get past the edge of the block.
Then,
very impressively motioning toward the Thing, as though he really believed it
was looking, Heagey made the model of the imprisoned
man lean over and pick up Sheila, and hand her over to the model of himself.
The model of himself held on to Sheila, and raised the trap-door that
imprisoned the bulging man, who hopped out of the hole and hastened away. That
was the little show that Heagey put on with the yard-high clay models.
The patchy sphere changed suddenly. First it
shrank and dien it
swelled; then theve were three or four things moving
hack and forth. And suddenly, there stood Sheila!
Pale
and distracted and wan she looked; and she swayed as she looked hlankly around.
Then her eyes widened and she gave a little scream; hut a look of peace and
content spread over her features. By the time Heagey was at her side, she fell
limply into his arms.
"One
moment, dear," he said gently as he laid her down carefully in the
arm-chair. The professor was down on the floor beside her in a moment, watching
her fluttering eyelids.
"Dad?" she
breathed. "I'm all right."
Heagey
stepped quickly to his switches and threw the big one in and out again. Again came the crash cut short, and the sensation of movement. And
the Thing was gone. There was nothing left of it at all.
"Did you let the Thing
go?" the professor reproved querulously.
"1 had to," Heagey snapped. "It was a
promise—for finding Sheila."
Hie professor was sitting
on the floor, writing a check.
"Do
you think you deserve this?" he said testily. He was merely trying to hide
his emotion. "You won't get it until you prove it. Explain how you did
this!"
Heagey dropped into a
chair, looking exhausted to the limit.
"I
reasoned from the things I saw Out There that this creature must be
intelligent. There were buildings, machines, and leather and metal-webbing. So
I made models and tried to deduce its shape. Somewhere on it there must be a
head and eyes. Yon saw how I coaxed it 'through' this 'space' of ours until the
head was cut by our 'space' and the eyes could see us. Then I told it what I
wanted it to do with models just as 1 would
explain things to you by means of drawings on a sheet of paper.
"Now
do you believe there are four dimensions?" Heagey demanded by way of
vengeance.
"Hm. Do you?" the professor countered.
"Four? I'm convinced
there are a down or a thousand dimensions!"
to it. The professor stared at him as he would
at a silly child. Heagey suddenly hit himself in the side of the head with his
fist.
"What
a prize fool! I keep on being a fool!" he shouted. He turned savagely to
the professor:
"Gel
me the two best fellows out of the fine-arts department. Quick! Sculptors!"
If
the professor thought Heagey was crazy, nevertheless some glimmer ol hope of
rescuing Sheila lent him willingness and speed of thinking. He scolded rapidly
into the telephone for a few minutes, repealing the word emergency several
times. Then he started down the driveway, taking a policeman with him.
Heagey
was feverishly busy, lie seemed to be bringing every object in the room that
could be conveniently carried, to set before the unearthly specimen he had
there, lie seemed to be showing it things. He acted for all
the world like some ignorant, superstitious savage, bringing things to
his god. books, chairs, hats and coats, mathematical medals, hammers and
wrenches, one thing after another; ho held them up in front of it for a while
and tossed them aside on the growing heap. When the two sculptors arrived, he
barked his directions at them, and continued what seemed his silly efforts to
entertain the object in front of him by showing it everything he could find. At
least it remained quiet and unchanged.
The
sculptors, infected with his determination, worked rapidly. First there was a
model of a heavy, bulging man, with his foot caught in a hole like a
coal-chute, and held fast by a square lid. Then from the pictures a model of
Sheila; considering the speed with which it was made, it was a wonderfid thing,
with her pointed chin and curly hair all hue to life. Then a
rough model of Heagey.
Heagey
set the models down in front of the iridescent, patchy Thing and played puppets
with the models; went through a regular dramatic performance with them. The
models of Sheila and himself stood near the man caught in the trap-door. The
imprisoned man struggled and knocked Sheila over and she rolled away; she fell
down off the surface of the block to a lower level. The imprisoned man continued
to struggle, and the model of Heagey searched around, but could not get past
the edge of the block.
Then,
very impressively motioning toward the Thing, as though he really believed it
was looking, Heagey made the model of the imprisoned man lean over and pick up
Sheila, anil hand her over to (he model of himself. The model of himself held
on to Sheila, and raised the trap-door that imprisoned the bulging man, who
hopped out of the hole and hastened away. That was the little show that Heagey
put on with the yard-high clay models.
The patchy sphere changed suddenly. First it
shrank and then it
78
lo fil (lie magical window into his only room
thai it occurred In Mr. Sladdcu's mind that he did not want a window. And then
they were at the door ol the house in which he rented a room, and it seemed too
late to explain.
The
stranger demanded privacy while he Gltid up the
window, so Mr. Sladdci) remained outside the door at the top of a little flight of creaky stairs, lie heard no sound of hammering.
Ami
presently the strange old man came out with his faded yellow robe and his great
heard, and his eyes on far-oil places. "It is finished," he said, and
he and the young man parted. And whether he remained a spot of eoloin and anachronism in I .ondon. or whether he ever came again to
Baghdad, and what dark hands kept on the circulation of his
twcnly-five-aiid-si.v Mr. Sladdcn never knew.
Mr.
Sladdcn entered the bare-boarded room in which he slept and spent all his
indoor hours between closiug-lime and the hour at which Messrs. Mergin and (.'hater commenced. To the I'enales of so dingy a room his neat frock-coat must have been a continual wonder. Mr. Sladdcn
took it oil and folded it carefully; and there was the old mans window rather
high up in the wall. There had been no window in that wall hitherto, nor any
ornament at all but a small cupboard, so when Mr. Sladdcn had put
his frock-coat safely away lie glanced through his new window. It was where his
cupboard had been in which he kept his tea-things: they were all standing on
the table now. When Mr. Sladdcn "lanced through his new window it was late
in a summer's evening; the butterflies some while ago would have closed their
wings, though the bats would scarcely yet be drifting abroad—but this was in
London: the shops were shut and street-lamps not yet lighted.
Mr.
Sladdcn rubbed his eyes, then rubbed the window, and
still he saw a sky of blazing blue, and far, far down beneath him, so that no
sound came up from it or smoke of chimneys, a mediaeval city set with towers. Brown roofs and cobbled streets, and then white walls and
buttresses, and beyond them bright green fields ami tiny streams. On the
towers archers lolled, and along the walls were pikemen, and now and then a
wagon went down some old-world street and lumbered through the gateway and out
to the country, anil now and then a wagon
drew up lo the city from the mist that was rolling with evening over the
fields. Sometimes folk put their heads out of lattice windows, sometimes some
idle troubadour seemed to sing, and nobody hurried or troubled about anything.
Airy and dizzy though the distance was, for Mr. Sladdcn seemed higher above the
city than any cathedral gargoyle, vet one clear detail lie obtained as a clue:
the banners floating from every tower over the idle archers had liltle golden
dragons all over a pure white field.
He
heard motor-buses roar by his other window, be heard the newsboys howling.
Mr. Sladden grew dreamier than ever after
that on the premises in die establishment of Messrs. Mergin and Cliater. But in
one matter he was wise and wakeful: he made continuous and careful inquiries
about golden dragons on a white flag, and talked to no one of his wonderful
window. He came to know the flags of every king in Europe, he even dabbled in
history, he made inquiries at shops that understood heraldry, but nowhere could
he learn any trace of little dragons or on a field argent. And
when it seemed that for him alone those golden dragons had fluttered became to
love diem as an exile in sonic desert might love the lilies of his home or as a sick man might love
swallows when he cannot easily live to another spring.
As soon as Messrs. Mergin and Chatcr closed, Mr.
Sladden used to go back to his dingy room and gaze through the wonderful window
until it grew dark in the city and the guard would go widi a lantern round the
ramparts and the night came up like velvet, full of strange stars. Another clue
he tried to obtain one night by jolting down the shapes of the constellations,
but this led him no further, for they were unlike any that shone upon either
hemisphere.
Each
day as soon as he woke he went first to the wonderful window, and there was the
city, diminutive in the distance, all shining in the morning, and the golden
dragons dancing in the sun, and the archers stretching themselves or swinging
their arms on the toils of the windy towers. The window would not open, so that
he never heard the songs that the troubadours sang down there beneath gilded
balconies; he did not even hear the belfries' chimes, though he saw the
jackdaws routed every hour from their homes. And the first thing thai he always
did was to cast his eye round all the little towers that rose up from the
ramparts to see that the little golden dragons were flying there on their
flags. And when he saw them flaunting themselves on while folds from every
lower against the marvelous deep blue of the sky he dressed contentedly and,
taking one last look, went off to his work with a glory in his mind. It would have been difficult for the customers of Messrs. Mergin and < lialer to guess the precise ambition of Mr.
Sladden as he walked before them in his neat frock-coat: it was that he might
be a man-at-arms or an archer in order to fight for the little golden dragons
that flew on a white (lag for an unknown king in an inaccessible city. At fust Mr. Sladden used to walk round and round the mean street that he lived in, but he gained no clue from that; and soon he
noticed that quite different winds blew below his wonderful window from those
that blew on the other side of the house.
In
August the evenings began to grow shorter, this was the very remark that the
olher employees made to him at the emporium, so that he almost feared that they suspected his secret, and he had much
less time for the wonderful window, for lights were few down there and they
blinked out early.
One morning late in August, just before he
went to Business, Mr. Sladdcn saw a company of pilcemen running clown the
cobbled road towards the gateway of the mediaeval city Golden Dragon City he
used to call it alone in his own mind, but he never spoke of it to anyone. The
next thing that he noticed was that the archers on the towers were talking a
good deal together and were handling round bundles of arrows in addition to the
quivers which they wore. Heads were thrust out of windows more than usual, a
woman ran out and called some children indoors, a knight rode down the street,
and then more pikemen appeared along the walls, and all the jackdaws were in
the air. In the street no troubadour sang. Mr. Sladden took one look along the towers to see that the flags were Hying, and all the golden
dragons were streaming in the wind. Then he had to go to Business. He took a
'bus back that evening and ran upstairs. Nothing seemed to be happening in
Golden Dragon City except a crowd in the cobbled street that led down to the
gateway; the archers seemed to be reclining as usual lazily in their towers,
then a white Hag went down with all its golden dragons; he did not see at first
that all the archers were dead. The crowd was pouring towards him, towards the
precipitous wall from which he looked, men with a white, flag covered with
golden dragons were moving backwards slowly, men with another Hag were pressing
them, a Hag on which there was one huge red bear. Another banner went down upon
a tower. Then he saw it all: the golden dragons were being beaten- his little
golden dragons. The men of the bear were coining under the window; whatever he
threw from that height would fall with terrific force: fire-irons, coal, his
clock, whatever he had he would fight lor his little golden dragons yet. A
flame broke out from one of the towers and licked the feet of a reclining
archer; he dill not stir. And now the alien standard
was out of sight directly underneath. Mr. Sladden broke the panes of the
wonderful window and wrenched away with a poker the lead that held them. Just
as the glass broke he saw a banner covered with golden dragons fluttering
still, and then as he drew back to hurl the poker there came to him the scent
of mysterious spices, and there was nothing there, not even the daylight, for
behind the fragments of the wonderful window was nothing but that
small cupboard in which he kept his tea-things.
And
though Mr. Sladden is older now and knows more of the world, and even has a
Business of his own, he has never been able to buy such another window, and has
not ever since, either from books or men
beard any rumour at all of Golden Dragon City.
Worg
Basset t Morgan'* best known story 1.5 the remarkable "Laocoou," a talc of a sea serpent, of a
scientist wild with curiosity, and of a Chinese who traded his human soul for
that of the deep-sen beast. "Laocoon" has been made available in
other collections-bat Bassett Morgan's output was not restricted to that
classic alone. "Tiger Dust" is replete with the same tropical Asia
background, with feeling ¡01 the ways of jungle-dwelling people, and with the
potency of the oriental magic that may transform a tiger from a beast to a
thing of marvel. The story of a Malayan wife's vengeance is a fantastic classic
reminiscent of Somerset Maugham's tropical tales.
ITU
an order for Paradise birds to bo shipped to a private collector, Dineen
decided to see if any could be bought from Omar Sung 1,00, a native dealer whose unscrupulous trickery
had made all dealers warv of him and caused the captains of cargo boats to
refuse to carry his trapped animals and birds. Dineen had been cheated by Omar
Sung 1,00 in his early davs of collecting but he had
cut his eye-teeth in the game and wiped off his score against the native
dealer. lie was on his guard, and with him went his
chief trapper and right-hand man, Tom Rnurkc, big. devil-may-care
Irishman, equally at home with the natives ami white men in their gathering-places
of Malaysia.
Over
a drink before they started, Rourkc unbosomed the fact that he had taken a
native wife.
"Faith,
a man that might any day set his foot on the tail of a king cobra has no
business to many a nice white girl," he said. "Should I meet up wid a hungry tiger, my fate wouldn't be good for her to contemplate.
Hut native women understand their country an' its peculiar accidents. What's
more, they have ways of avengin' a man just as white widows have accident
insurance claims. There's a savin' that where nature grows a poison the
antidote is near by. Maybe 'tis true. Rut anyway 1 paid dear for a little golden native woman from the temple. She dances
finely, an' she knows native magic. I hope
you'll feel free to visit our bungalow any time, sir."
Time
came when Dineen wished to God he had not bothered with the order for Paradise
birds or met Rourke's native wife.
84
The cages in Omar Sun Loo's kampong were small and badly kept. The luckless prisoners drooped in merciless
sun heat. Omar Sung Loo was a mongrel of bad ancestry despised by Malays and
Chinese alike, and as Dineen stole his business by honest dealings, Omar Snug
Loo went in for side-show freaks. There was a two-headed carabao calf, an
elephant with twenty instead of eighteen toes held for a high price from nabobs
who considered them lucky, and in a case two cobras joined lor three-quarters
ol their length. 1'ourke spat with disgust as he looked at
them.
"Freaks
should be killed," he mentioned. "But Dineen, damned if them cobras look as if they was bom that way! Look at the
puckered scar between them."
Omar
.Sung Loo led them to a shallow pond where a small monkey lay along the sloping
bank, its lower extremity in the water. Dineen cursed as he gazed. Instead ol legs
the tail ol a fish was joined to its hips! Agony burned in its eyes. It
.snatched at a banana Omar offered and a t .'hiucse
attendant forced a tablet down its throat, which seemed to relieve its pain. It
would not live long, but Omar Sung Loo tried hard to make Dineen buy it while
it lived.
Oriental
curio shops are lull of mummied monkey bodies joined to dried fishtails, the
"mermaid" of commerce, but Dineen realized some hellishly ingenious
master surgeon had attempted this revolting living experiment. Koui'kc's curses
were livid. His hand went to his pocket and the searing sunlight shone on a
small black revolver in his hand.
"I'm
of two minds whether to shoot you or the monkey," he said to Omar Sung
Loo, who backed away from the belligerent Irishman and snarled out an order.
The Chinese darted to a cage and howled a warning. From the open cage door
swung the head of a tiger.
Omar
was running to the house and the two white men followed. Dineen knew that trick
of Omar's to frighten visitors by the peril of a tiger on the loose and gouge
eumshaw Irom them. But this time the Chinese was having trouble jamming the
cage door on the tiger's neck to force him back into the cage. The beast had a
foreleg outside the bars. They heard the wooden rods splinter and the tiger
leaped down, letting out roars of defiance. The Chinese fled for cover and Omar
cursed as the tiger cleared the kampong fence
at one bound.
Shrieks
of frightened villagers shrilled through the heated silence, but Omar snarled
commands and the coolies opened the kampong gales
and wheeled the tiger cage across the opening. Then Omar took a small sack from
his turban folds and loosed the puckering string.
In
the sun-baked emptiness of the village road stalked the royal beast, roaring at
intervals. A native coining down the road unaware of peril saw it and ran up
the kampong fence in an incredible burst of agility and
dived over. Hourkc chuckled. Bui Omar went into the road and tossed a little
powder from the pouch in his hand. The tiger
85
crouched with lashing tail, ready to spring, took a
crawling step forward and sniffed the white powder. Instead of leaping, it
began to lick the dust. Omar dribbled a line of white powder to the cage and
the beast lapped and purred, rolling as it went along licking the powder to a
few grains on the floor of the cage. The cage door was jammed shut, with a
contented, purring tiger inside.
With a malignant smirk Omar
turned to the two white men.
"My lord knows his
master," he said.
"Will you sell me some
of that powder';'" asked Dineen.
"No,
Tuan, it is my great secret," said Omar,
drawing up the pouch string. An instant later Konrkc's hand darted, snatched
the pouch, and with his gun covering Omar's breast he nudged Dineen to go and
backed out of the place with the curses and threats of Omar Sung Loo shrieked
after them.
"Curses don't worry me none," said
Rourke "But he's said 'em of a nature to blast my body now an' my soul
hereafter."
No
native showed a face to them in that otherwise friendly village as they plodded
the hot road back to Socrabaya after a fruitless search for birds and with
trouble hot on their heels for the theft of the tiger dust.
"I'll go get ye
some birds," said Rourke. "It'd be as well fer me to get inland
anyway. Omar is lower than a cobra, but he's clever an' he's in with the worst
fiends of undiluted Asiatic hellishness this side o' Sheol. Dineen, some o' his
Chink surgeons joined them two cobras, sure as I live! I've heard o' graflin'
fins on fish, but that monkey business makes a man sick inside. He's got smart
surgeons on his staff, an' no laws o' Cod or man, heaven or hell to keep him in
bounds. I'll give that tiger dust to my wife, who believes tigers have souls.
She even
says humans can change into tigers, an'---------- " Rourke launched into
stories of
wcrc-tigers that lasted until they were back at the hotel, bathed and sipping
cool drinks.
Next
day Rourke departed for the interior after Paradise birds, and Dineen waited.
No word came for months and he grew worried and decided to call on Rourke's
native wife in a village of the interior. He came after the heat of the day to
a pretty bungalow covered with wine-colored bougainvillea, and coming up the
path heard the soft notes of a native bell-gong and the croon of a love song
which ceased as he drew near. Rourke's wife came to the porch clad in a silk
sarong, her dark hair in a coil over one ear, a red flower over the other.
She
was dainty and pretty, but her dark eyes held the enigmatic look of coquetry
arrested in full flush by tragedy. He had brought her a string of small seed
pearls as a wedding gift, but dropping them into her hand made him feel as
awkward as if he gave red-heeled slippers to a nun. She spoke port English and
he asked if she had heard horn Rourke.
Dineen came from that interview with a chill
in spite of the tropic heat. Undoubtedly Rourke's wife was fey. Her passion for
Rourke was apparent, her loyalty intense. She talked «|oeerly. cautiously, but she said evil had befallen her man. She had
heard him calling in agony yet warning her not to try to reach him. He was not
dead, yet devils tormented him. lie loved her, vet
their life together was ended, lie commanded her not to avenge him as love
might prompt. Dineen realized that she accepted her loss with native philosophy
but she was waiting to learn the mystery regarding Hourke and brooding vengeance
in spite of his warning.
Dineen
decided to search for his chief trapper, and Rourke's wife sent him a relative
of her family named Inbain who knew Hourke and was loyal to his wile. Inbam
gathered native carriers and supplies for the trip, one item of which surprised
Dineen. a supply of thick long candles. Dineen
reminded Inbam that they had flashlights, but the natives said Hourke always
carried "corpse-candles," which in case of his death were to be
lighted around his body. Rourke's wife added her gift for good luck, a
treasured crncifiv of Rourke's, finely carved of ebony and ivory wrapped in a
length of silk, which Dineen placed in the box containing the "corpse-candles" and some canned and bottled delicacies
for his own personal use.
Native
canoes took them up shoreless rivers where mangrove pods ripen on branches and
drop roots in tenuous webs bedded in the coze. Crocodiles rested their opened
jaws on the roots and small siesac: birds flew in and out taking food particles
from their fangs. The country swarmed with small monkeys that scattered when a
big orang-outang would come along and peer curiously .it the canoes. Dineen
noticed his natives were uneasy from the start, and their fears affected him.
But there were compensations for the discomforts of insects and leeches and
guarding against the swinging tails of crocodiles. The mountain peaks were
mist-wreathed, the wooded jungles held orchids like
tinted flames. Birds of Paradise; danced on upper tree branches at sunrise.
There were (lashes of gaudy parrots and butterflies like windblown bits of gay
silks.
They
found a blazed trail where Rourke had cut his way inland. But the irritating
thing to Dineen was the constant torturing roll and stuttering of native drums
talking back and forth.
Inbam,
who understood the drum gossip, was worried. The other natives wanted to turn
back, but there is a penalty for deserting a white man in the jungle; also,
Inbam held over them the fear of vengeance from Rourke's wife, who had a
definite reputation as a sorceress.
Leaving
the canoes, they went through saw-edged jungle grass, plagued by leeches and
stinging insects. Around the evening camp-fire the men picked off leeches and polished their jinmts, which
are
87
charms against evil. The villagers met willi were
friendly and they remembered Rourke goiiig through, hut refused to furnish
guides. "There are dcbbil-debbils,' they said.
Inbam
translated, but Dineen did not scoff. There was a tangible apprehension in his own mind, a feeling of weird things going lor-ward in the jungle, fie decided that a
rest from the laborious travelling and a little hunting might cheer the men.
Birds were plentiful. So at the foot of a hill range standing like the
vertebra: of a monster that had fossilized as it crawled seaward, they made
camp.
Dineen's
personal supplies were kept in a hut they built on high stilt legs. He was
sitting in the doorway one sundown when he saw a huge orang-outang standing in the crotch of a near-by tree holding the blanches apart and peering down. Inbam also saw it and
silently handed up a gun
to Dineen's hand. Instantly the branches crashed together, the ape fled, and
the swish of other branches springing back as it leaped from one to another
told of its size and weight.
That
night the native drums were livelier. Inbam went to the nearest village and
returned late with a tale
that kept Dineen awake longer than usual. lie said a
native girl had been carried into the jungle by one of the orang-outangs. The
villagers were mourning her loss and talking about terrible magic in the hills.
In barn's own tale was interrupted as he ceased shaking and pointed toward the
tree, and in the moonlight Dineen saw again an orang-outang with its fangs
bared as if it grinned. There came a bellow from that hairy throat which sent
the men lying around the small campfire scuttling toward the hut, their curved
knives ready for defense.
The
big ape stood on a branch balanced by its hand-grip on a higher limb and from its black lips came sounds so uncouth that Dineen felt the hair prickling
on the nape of his neck. Me could have sworn he heard
the creature mouth words:
"Hy. Tuan, by . . ." which means "It is true, Tuan."
A
silence bred of fear held Dineen mute. Slowly and laboriously the great ape
mouthed sounds like Malay words. The natives huddled together, whispering in
terror. At Dineen's ear Inbam breathed:
"He
says 'orang put eh ubal,'
Tuan. He wants white man
medicine. What devil is it that gives speech to a man of the woods, Tuan?"
"That
is foolish talk," said Dineen stubbornly- "Your wits wander. Gel the
express rifle." But at sight of Dineen with the elephant gun in his hand,
the ape disappeared.
Below
the hut the natives were chattering in frenzied outbursts and Dineen knew they
were ready to bolt.
"It
is an ape that somebody has trained and taught to speak," he said, knowing
it was folly to contradict their belief that the creature had used their own
speech. He did not yet believe it, and his men needed to be handled carefully
lest they desert him now.
That night the drums spoke in purring spurts
and tattoo roils, bursting sometimes into violent throbbing, and his men lav
awake whispering. At dawn they pleaded to leave this evil place- Dineen was one
white man among a crowd of savages almost uncontrollable from superstitious
fear, lie started them placing bird-lime on sticks to lodge in the trees and
building cages on tall poles beyond the reach of snakes; then he led them into
the jungle to hunt.
That
night in camp, while supper was cooking, hi- sat cleaning oil leeches that had
penetrated his puttees and laced boots, and decided to open canned peaches for
a treat. He pulled the box with his clothing from under the camp bed and
groped for the other case. Then Dineen cursed. The ease ol precious canned food
was gone, and with it the candles and crucifix packed among the liottlcs. lie did not suspect a thief among his own men; yet around
the hut lay his shaving tackle, weapons and ammunition, far more appealing to a native from the village, left undisturbed. He
searched further, then called Inbam, who had
discovered that a sack of rice was missing also. The sack had been punctured
ami rice had trickled from the hole as it was carried away.
At
dawn they saw birds alighting to feed on the rice. Dineen marked their swooping
flight toward a shadowy crevasse in the hills.
"We'll follow the
thief," he announced.
With
a few picked men and Inbam he started across the valley and camped near tin;
hills that night. He was wakened from sleep beside the campfire by a sound that
lilted his hair. The light of dying embers showed his men crouching or Creeping toward him. From the caves of gloom beyond the dim
fire-glow came a booming voice like a minor tune played on the bass notes ol an
ancient Organ. No human throat could have emitted its rumbling sonorousness.
Inbam touched Dinecn's arm and his teeth chattered as Ik; whispered:
"Titan,
the man of the woods sings a mating-song that I have sung to women. It is a devil!"
"I've
heard that damned ditty." agreed Dineen. Yet fear clawed at his brain.
Cold sweat broke Irom his pores. "It's that talking ape," he added.
"Yes, Tutm. He is singing to the native girl he stole from the village," said
Inbam.
There
was a restless rustling of tree branches that told of more than one great ape
in the vicinity. To Dineeifs increasing horror there came
a gusty burst of profanity in a voice
as mighty as that of the singer:
"Shut
up. ye damned brute. Quit yer singin' love songs to
what the Chinks"II make o' that poor little native girl that ye stole an'
dropped in their kampong. Godl I could kill ye
for doing that if it wouldn't be so hellish lonesome without yer bad company in
my own misery."
89
The
speech ended with a volley of oaths that should have blasted their victim; then
came the reply in port Pidgin from the voice that had
sung the pan tun:
"Be
not angry with thy servant, Tuan. Long
have I followed you into the perils of trapping beasts and birds.
Now 1 am trapped with you. Yet perhaps it was so written. Strange magic I have
seen, yet never did I think to lie caught by it. The spirit of my first woman
entered into the body of a tigress. Now my spirit has entered into the body of
a man of the woods."
A
snarl ended the stentorian musings. Dineen pinched his own forearm until it
hurt convincing himself that he was not dreaming. The
crashing of tree branches ended the jungle parley.
There
was no more sleep for Dineen. At daybreak he led his men toward the purple gap
in the lulls and again camped at the edge of flat country bordering another
crocodile-infested river. Leaving the men and supplies, Dineen and Inbam went
forward, picking then-way through masses of creepers and rotting deadwood to the
gloom of mangroves bordering the water. From one twisted root to another they
stepped cautiously. The muggers slipped into the water and sank slowly, their
unblinking eyes staring upward, bubbles breaking where they sank. The stench of
rotting vegetation and nauseating crocodile odor was thick and heavy. Then as
Dineen peered up and down the dark stream he caught sight of a neat modern
powerboat on the opposite side, moored to a tree. From where it lay, a trail
had been hacked into the farther jungle.
Small
monkeys chattered and lied with sudden cries, a sign that orang-outangs were
coming. At the sound of distant branches swish ing, Dineen turned to retrace
his way to solid ground. Inbam was younger and more agile and lie left Dineen
behind. Creepers cut off Dineen's sight of the native, when suddenly a great
ape dropped and confronted the white man.
It stood erect, horribly huge and menacing.
Dineen tried to shoot, but as he swung the gun to his shoulder it was wrenched
from his grasp by a second orang-outang which hung by its paws from an overhead
tree branch. His blood seemed to congeal in his flesh-as the big ape came
nearer, mouthing uncouth sounds that even in his terror Dineen could not refuse
to understand.
"Dineen,
ye don't know me," it said mournfully. "Ye don't know Rourke, an' I
don't blame ye. Ye couldn't believe it's me in this
awful shape. But it's true, Dineen. It's Bourke's brain in the head of an ape.
That's what the Chinks did to me. Oinar Sung Loo's Chink surgeons played their
hellish tricks on me an' my trapper, jist because I stole that tiger dust o'
his. Cod! what a price fcr a man to pay."
Dineen
felt his senses whirling, his legs wobbling. The stench of the crocodile swamp
filled his throat and nostrils and vertigo clamped
90
its claws in his vitals. He tried to leap to the
next tree-root and his legs were paralyzed like a man in a nightmare trying to
escape from demons. He stumbled and fell across a mangrove root widi nis legs in tlic stinking ooze.
The
giant ape came nearer, a paw reached for him. He was lifted close to that
terrible face. Then he knew nothing more until his eyes opened on a leafy
canopy of cool shade and cleaner wind. It was some minutes before he saw the
great apes crouching near him and realized that he lay on a platform of bamltoo
crudely lashed to branches high in the trees, which swayed gently as the apes
moved and shifted their weight.
"Dineen,"
came die rasping and thick sounds from a tongue that was slowly accustoming
itself to human speech, "It's liourke talkin'.
Cod! I don't blame yc for doubtin' what I say. But listen to what I'm sayin'
an' try to understand. Here, take a swig o' this coconut milk." He whanged
a nut on tlx: tree branch and broke the shell.
Dineen
s throat was parched and he drank eagerly; then as his head lifted he dropped
it again on his arm, hoping to God he dreamed the sight before him. Yet the
voice went on relentlessly:
"Dineen, I'm a sight to scare a man, I
know, but listen. Omar Sung Loo's Chink surgeons have a kampong near here an' a nice little surgery. Tabak that's my trapper as was,
though he's an ape now same as 1 am
- well, we walked into it innocent as babes. The Chinks was polite and give us
food an' drinks. They was both doped, Dineen. An' them
devils butchered us an' put our brains into the heads of orang-outangs. They
meant to ship us to Omar an' sell us as freaks, but we broke away. Omar owed me
a grudge, an' you remember how he cursed inc. He said
he'd pay back, an' he did."
It
took time for the slow and labored utterance to be voiced. Dineen listened
helplessly, and something in that sorrowful wail penetrated past fear, which
was his only sensation.
"Ye
can't believe," mourned the ape, "but I'll show ye presently how true
it is. My wife knows. I went there an' told her I was in a devil land an' could
never come home to her again. I told her not to search for me. But I said if
Omar Sung Loo came tiger-trapping in die jungles she might slip the word to the
natives to let a tiger maul him to death. Tis a poor revenge but 'twill keep
him from further hellishness. An' Dineen, I want your help now. My man, Tabak-
the unbaptized son of a slut!—stole a native girl an' handed her down to the kampong fer this Chink surgeon to make him a
sweetheart orang-outang. We stoic her before the head wound healed, an' she's
here on our tree-nest dyin' by inches. You've some skill with wounds, Dineen.
Look at her an' see can ye do anything. I'd end it for her, only it's so damned
lonesome, an' Tabak an' me would fight.
91
Somehow
I want to live to know Omar is dead first ...
if I can stand it that long."
Dineen
lay shuddering, hearing hut not heeding. The great ape
lifted him with his back against the tree bole and pointed toward a female ape
that sat slumped in a heap as native women sit. its
body leaning forward between its opthrust knees. Around its head was a pink
puckered scar like the edge of a cap. One look at the scar revealed to Dineen
the badly infected state. His dread-filled eyes gazed at the other apes and saw
the healed sears around their heads. A burst of insane laughter came from his
lips.
"It's
tough on ye, Dineen, but you're safe with us, if
that's any comfort. Tell me about the ape-girl."
"That
wound needs surgical attention and disinfectants," he muttered hoarsely.
"We
got none, but there's plenty in the Chinks" kampong. Yon know drugs better'n J do. I'll take ye along."
"Í wont
go!" Dineen protested, but his resistance was feeble. The big ape was
ruthless. Dineen saw that the ape body and instincts were not wholly controlled
by the human brain, and Hourke had been a bold hunter, cruel enough when his
work demanded. Dineen was slung over his shoulder like a sack,
carried in swinging flight that .swooped from branch to tree. To save the
lashing of branches on his face he ducked his head against the hairy breast and
shut his eyes. Presently he must awaken from tisis devil dream. . . .
There
was a glimpse of dark water as the apes leaped and caught branches on the
opposite shore; then he saw sun gleams on a bamboo palisade and thatched
buildings like large huts. I'rom high in the tree Dineen looked down and saw
humans. His first thought was of escape.
Gathering
all his strength in a desperate effort he heaved suddenly against the ape's
grasp. Then he was falling, slithering through thick-foliaged branches,
dropping to the ground inside the stockade. He heard the bellow of the apes and
gun-shots crashing. Opening his eyes later he saw a Chinese walking beside him
as coolies carried him to the hut. He also saw three orang-outangs chained to
trees in the kampong, leaping the length of their fetters, yelling
horridly. The Chinese lashed at them with a whip in his hand, and they cowered
whimpering. A fourth ape slumped between its knees like the she-ape in the tree
eyrie. Their heads were swathed in bandages, their four paws manacled.
Dineen
was glad to lie on a cot on the hut porch behind mosquito netting and drink
what was handed him. Tin; Chinese spoke excellent English, but as Dineen cursed
the nightmare through which he was enduring so dreadfully, there came further
horror.
"It
is neither fever nor a dream," said the Chinese. "Those apes have
human brains. We experimented long ago in that branch of surgery. My countrymen were adepts at
grafting when your Western colleges were being built. Recently we have studied
your wink and gone ahead tremendously. Animals furnish our greatest field ol
experimentation. You have seen some poor specimens in (he cages of Omar Sung
Loo's kampong. lie has a market for side-show freaks. We hope he will be able to sell (he talking apes which we have successfully produced. It has
been possible for us to transplant human bruins into the skulls of
orang-outangs and ha\c them survive. Hut unfortunately our greatest prize, a
man of your race, escaped with a Malay ape-man. They brought me a native girl
who was operated upon, but stole her before her wound healed. She may not
survive, lor such operations need care in treatment. Those men-a pes you see in
the kampong speak no English and will not be so valuable; for side-show purposes in
European countries. So you see1 heiw grateful 1 am that Rourke, the
man-ape who captured you, dropped you here, f hope you will enjoy our hospitality
until we can trap another orang-outang."
The-
sinister menace erf the Chinese's weirds was some time penetrating Dineen*s
mind. He' was given highly spiced curry and cool chinks, which he ate and drank
gratefully. Then lie- slept and wakened behind the- mosquito-netting of the cot
in a contented lethargy only disturbed by the clanking chains and hoarse cries
of the ape prisoners.
A
coolie led him to a bath house and handed him fresh pajamas, comlorliug and
cr<»<»I to his Mesh. lie was enjoying the- rest,
the well-scasoned food and eh inks. His body and brain were still too exhausted
tei anticipate danger en delenel himse-ll against it. Except for the chained
a*x*s, the- place* was quirt and deserted, yet the jungle seemed noisier than iimi.iI
bv day, bc-yeind the- bamboo fence.
He-
rose and strolled toward the fence*, but two natives appeared armed with
ugly-looking krisses and herded him ignominioiislv back to the porch, where one
stood guard while- the other summoned the Chinese surgeon.
Courteous
of speech vet blandly cruel, the surge-em informed Dineen more fully ol the
horror awaiting him.
"You must not leave
(he* house."
Anger
of the white man toward the Oriental stoicism roused Dineen's rage.
"I'll
go where I damn please," he cried. "And you'll
stop me at your peril. My men are* not lar away,
remember."
"They
cannot enter he-re," said the Chinese. "Nor are you free to leave, Dineen. I could not part with so fortunate a guest for the experiment I have- in view, your own intelligent, trained
and educated brain. I lost Hourke, but I shall not risk losing yon. Better have another drink. Mr.
Dineen, to epiiet your nerves."
"Neit
another drop," shouted Dineen. "I believe
you doped my drinks."
"Of course, both your food and drink
were doped, as you call it, But is it not better to meet fate which even the
bravest man puts off as long as he can, the translation from one existence to
another form of life? Think it over. I must attend to diat suffering ape in the
kampong."
Slowly,
frightfully, the ghastly truth dawned in his mind. He sat in a hell of chaotic
ami frenzied rear, and when the drink was brought he struck it from the man's
hand, fie was unarmed, helpless; even his clothes were gone, except the cotton
pajamas in which he sat. His body shuddered as he realized the fiendish surgeon
fully intended to make an ape of him! Chattering fear took him down the steps
to where the Chinese bent over the chained ape, but two Malays dogged his steps
and stood beside him as he began to plead against the fate in store for him.
The
end came suddenly. From the trees dropped a cyclonic fury of fighting apes,
bellowing their rage, knocking the Malays aside, seizing them by the feet and
swinging their heads against the palms, breaking their skulls like egg-shells.
Dineen turned from the sight of the surgeon being torn to shreds. Then he was
caught over the shoulder of an ape and swung to the trees, the guttural Malay
of Tabak in his-ears. The ape-man Rourke was gathering up the surgical
instruments, bottles of medicine and rolls of gauze.
A hell of noise, shrieking, roaring,
screeching, rang in Dineen's ears until he was carried to the tree platform.
The height above ground made him crouch low beside the she-ape which lay limp
on its side. When the case of instruments and drugs was thumped down beside him
Dineen touched the she-ape's body. lie sat back on his
heels and shook his head.
"She is dead," he
said.
In the swaying aerial perch he felt numbed
after the fright in his mind and din of the light, lie watched dully as the
ape-men picked up the dead orang-outang and lowered her body to the thicket of
lianas below, where they vanished. He was alone in the tree as night fell and
the prowlers ol darkness began their mysterious
rustlings, the insect clack and clamor arose. He slept and wakened as the
Scorpion crawled down the sky and the Southern Cross was dimmed by dawnlight,
He
shrank from an attempt to descend, but thirst tortured so badly that summoning
his courage he swung from the platform to the nearest branch, and working his
way by the tree crotches he reached the protruding root-knees and got to solid
ground. He drank from moisture of night dew cupped in leaves, and followed a
well-defined trail to higher ground. His men had lied, leaving the cold ashes
of a campfirc to mark the place where they had been. All day he traveled,
following their trail, and at dark he saw small lights flickering against
94
a hill. With a fresh burst of speed he hurried
on, then halted. Against (Jie little flames he saw the
grotesque figures of the two ape-men.
He
would not risk being their prisoner again, and he circled cautiously along a
hill slope to a rock from which he could look down. And the fear and repulsion
of the unnatural beasts left him as he gazed upon their work. There was a hole
scooped from the earth, and in it lay the body of the she-ape with the ivory
and ebony crucifix stolen from his camp hut, on her breast. Around the grave
stood his stolen candles, their flames wavering in the soft night breeze.
Beside the grave the ape-man Tabak sat crooning that Malay pantun, the love
song roared in the night. Dineen remembered that it was the same song he had
heard Rourke's native wife singing to the accompaniment of bell-gongs as he
went up the path to her bungalow. The voice of Rourke, mournfully unaware of
its volume, came to him sorrowfully:
"Corpse-candles
don't mean much to her, Tabak, but maybe it'll help her soid Gnd its way home.
Cod help me! f wonder if this purgatory I'm goin"
through will be enough fer me to find heaven."
The
cool night breeze was clearing Dinecu's head of the drugs he had imbibed in the
kanijioiig food, lie remembered all that had happened, and
even believed il now! Yet exhaustion forced him to lie
and sleep on the rocky hill. The leeches which had bled him fieely by day
dropped lioin his Mesh at night. A feeling
of fatalism dulled further fear. lie was roused from
sleep by a touch on his arm, and the sight of the ape squalling nc-ai him was
no longer frightening.
"Dineen,
I'll be takiii' ye to yer camp. Co out with your men.
There's nothing yon can do fur mc except !;ill me,
unless maybe you'd see my wife an tell hi
to go back to her people an" lorget me. There's nothing for her to
forgive. We v. as happv while it lasted."
Dineen
was carried swiltly, not caring where, and dropped on the opening ol the lull
crevasse into the valley, high enough to look down on his own camp.
'Tut him there. Taluk," said the other ape. who carried
the gun that had been nil' I '■>
>ln Dineen when he met them at the i ivei "Dineen, when ye get out say a prayei lei the soul o' Tom
Rourke. He's had hell enough alive. There can't be worse hell where he's
goin'." The rumbling voice held tragic sorrow and despair.
Dineen
plunged down the trail. The sound of a shot startled him and he looked back. On
the rock ledge one ape writhed in death agony a moment, then
limply its body fell Irom the ledge. Diecon heard it crash in the bushes.
Then
the other ape squatted and braced the gun between its feet and placed the
muzzle between its open jaws Its hand reached down the
gun-barrel to find the trigger. There was a second report. An ineit mass of hair-covered body slumped from sight. Dineen ran on
Exhausted, speechless, Dineen came to his
camp bleeding from leeches, his feet cut and gashed,
his face gray and grim. He gave the command to go out and fell into Inbam's
arms. They carried him in a hammock
to the dark river and canoe. Repentant over deserting him, lubam made that trip
comfortable and brought him to the house of lh mike's native wife.
For
days he lay. nursed by native women, drinking the
bitter herb tea that combats lever, his body massaged with scented unguents,
his appetite tempted with delicacies. Hourkc's wife asked no questions, but
Inbain called daily and talked with her for hours. Dineen knew that she heard
from Inbain what had happened in the jungle.
Her
house was cool and pleasant, and in time she tried to amuse Dineen with her
dances, her body sheathed in glittering metal cloth sewn with little mirrors.
She crooned songs and tapped the soft-voiced bells, and one night she began the
love pantun he had heard roared from the voice of an ape-man in the jungle.
Dineen started up from his couch protesting.
"Not that song!"
he cried aghast.
"No?"
she asked, her hands still stroking chimes from the bell-gong, "it is the
song I sang to my man in the night, Turin. A
song he loved. And it is time 1 v\ as doing what must be done."
"What must you
do?" ho asked.
"luun, the enemy that tortured him must die. Inbain has told me nuieh. and you shouted much in the fever which tortured you. Omar
Sung I.00 shall not continue his evil magic and fill the jungle with feaiT"
Her small body seemed to grow in height and dignity. Her soft eyes were black
fire.
Dineen
protested verv little. No white man can argue a native from a blood feud, and Dineen had no pity for Omar Sung Loo or the
surgeons who provided his cages with animal freaks.
With
a crash of her hands on the bell-gong, hourke's wife ran to her room and
returned wrapped in a black sarong. She went from the house and did not return
until just before dawn. She slept that day like a woman drugged, but the
servants looked after Dineen. That night as they sat cross-legged at the tiny
low table, she ate little, and again as the moon rose she went from the house.
It was two days before she returned. Dineen was wakened by a sound and saw her
swaying as she made her way through the house to her room.
Then
for several days she stayed in the house and seemed to regain spirits that had
been exhausted on those nights she was away. A week passed, and one day she
said to Dineen:
"Tuan,
word has been carried to
Omar Sung 1,00 that there is good tiger-hunting near here.
He is coming to trap them. But you must not leave the house while he fs
near."
A weird chill touched Dinecn's flesh. It was
evening, with a red
96
moon like an old doubloon rising behind the hills
and tinning siber. The hot thick scent of Bowers weighted the wind.
"I would like to see a
tiger trap him," said Dineen.
"Yes,
Tuan"—her voice held a quivering vibrancc of
satisfaction like the purring of a eat—"but
tigers take vengeance on innocent and guilty men alike. It will not be safe lor
you to lie abroad.''
"How
brave you are," he said, "to say the name of the tiger boldly. Your
people always speak of him as "My Lord." "
lie saw her slow smile in the moonlight.
"Perhaps
the Tuan remembers the little bag of tiger dust my beloved
took from the unmentionable Omar Sung Loo. It is mine now. Besides, there are
tigers and tigers. Most of them are stupid beasts
intent only on lending for existence. Has the Tuan heard of the tiger bcrhaiilu!1'
"Ghost
tigers!" he said, "f have heard. Rourke believed in them. I do not.
Anyway, il happens I have never killed a tiger, so no spirit need take
vengeance on mo."
"Twin,
it is not dead tigers you
need fear, but you will give me the word of a white Tuan that you will not leave my house until vengeance is accomplished!"
She
swayed before him, sitting on her heels with her pretty bead bent in
supplication. He saw his pearls in a string around the creamy column of her
throat. A queer fascination caught him as her head
lilted and he looked into the black fire of her eyes, which slowly brightened
until they were shining amber in the moonlighted porch. He was ready to grant
her slightest wish; yet his mood was unaffected by her prcttiness as a woman.
She was no longer quite normal. He felt the burning desire ol her vengeance
toward Hourke's murderer as she rose and stood before him motionless, then
spread her arms and bent her body as if dedicating herself to a mission.
She
went from the house, but that night Dineen sat in a porch chair, dozing and
waking until the dark hour before dawn, when in the night noises he heard
another sound. Something crept stealthily nearer. The slanting moonlight showed
a long shape stirring the flower hedge it came through, lie saw a tawny body.
Then to his horror it roared up on its hind legs, and the two forepaws ami
velvet-striped head of a tiger rose above the floor boards of the porch. He saw
its shining green eyes, its bristling whiskers, its black muzzle and white
fangs, the long claws clenched on the floor matting.
As
he stared, the tiger head changed. Like breath blown on hot metal it was misted
and blurred. Before his terrified gaze the velvet stripes of the head fused
into the black hair of Hourke's wife, framing her amber-tinted face. The tiger
body flowed up the steps, transfusing itself into the slender body of the girl,
which stood there shuddering, her black hair veiling arms that were torn ami
scratched. One hand
97
was drawn across her lips and came away stained
darkly. Then she
saw Dineen in the porch chair.
Rage leaped furiously to
life in her tired flesh.
"Tumi,
how dare yon sleep here?
Long have we nursed you through fever. The night chill
will bring it on again."
"I'm not afraid of
night chill or ghost tigers!" he said gently.
He
heard a gasping sob as she vanished in the house, heard her cot creak as she
dropped on it to sleep.
That
day Dineen sent for Iiibam, who was plainly reluctant to speak of the fate of
Maurice or the ruse to fetch Omar Sung Loo tiger-trapping, until Dineen forced
him to talk by mentioning that Inbam had deserted him in the jungle, a crime
for which the punishment was severe if complaint was made.
"I shall not interfere with your
affairs, Inbam, but I want some
questions answered. Otherwise------------- " his tone held a
threat. "Now tell
me
what became of the helpers of that Chinese surgeon in the jungle kampong."
"Titan,
they were killed by a
tigress and the ants have picked their bones."
"And
your kinswoman in this house, had she a hand in that vengeance, Inbam?"
he asked.
"Of
a truth, Ttian,
is she not the widow of a
white Titan the Chinese devils killed? More I cannot answer, except that what is written, is written."
"Where does Rourke's
widow go by night, Inbam?"
"Titan, I dare not follow her to know."
"Rut you know where
she goes, Inbam."
"Titan, I know only that what is written,
is written!"
"Where is Omar Sung l,oo, Inbam?"
"Word
comes that he is on his way to trap tigers and should he here soon."
The
widow slept all that day. Intrigued and curious about her,
Dineen came to her couch and stood looking down through Hie mosquito netting.
An impulse prompted him to hum the love pantun softly. Hearing it in her sleep,
she stirred and sighed and began to murmur words. Dineen listened shamelessly.
"Beloved
. . . five have I killed. ... I
leaped from the gloom. My fangs gripped and shook them. A
golden death all too merciful for such dogs. They were his men. Beloved.
. . . And I have his scent. Your murderer shall not escajic long."
Dineen
went quietly away and sat brooding on the mysterious and uncanny problem until
tiffin, but the widow did not appear. He finally went to bed but lay awake, and
as the moon sailed high he was aware of her soundless gliding to the door and
into the flower hedge. He followed and found the black sarong she had left
there.
98
He
hat! slept that afternoon and had no difficulty
staying awake until the hour she returned. From inside the house he watched
again until he heard the soft fluid ol bounding paws and distinctly saw by a
moon late enough to leave ils frail ghost by dawnlight, the striped body of the
tigress transformed as it glided over the porch, into the body of Bounce's
widow. He saw the startling green glow of her eyes as she went to her room.
That morning lie stood beside her again and saw the change in her appearance.
She had been a dainty, perfumed creature. Now her face was haggard, her
amber-colored flesh was scratched, her nails were broken and grimed, and about
her was the fetid odor of the great carnivore's breath, faint yet distinct.
As
he watched, her body moved, stretched and curled again like a cat, and her
fingers flexed and spread like claws. Dinecn touched her wrist. Without a
movement her eyes opened their glowing green fire; yet in the light the iris
narrowed to a thin slit of emerald flame. Her head rubbed against his arm, and
like a kitten her tongue licked at his hand.
He jerked back and spoke sharply. Blood oozed
to the surface of the skin her tongue had rasped. Then he regretted speaking,
for she wakened fully, and he saw she was bewildered,
and shuddered convulsively, moaning a little.
"I dreamed, Tuan! I dreamed I was caught in a trap!"
"Then
take warning," he said gently. "Leave vengeance to the gods."
Then, ashamed of a speech that betrayed his own weak slipping into a belief in
this dreadful metempsychosis, he left her abruptly, thinking it was high time
he cleared out and went back to the haunts of his own logical-minded race;.
"Tomorrow 1
leave," he announced to her late that afternoon.
She
did not demur, and as usual disappeared as the moon rose. As before, he waited
until dawn, but this time his vigil was fruitless. She did not return.
Remembering that she sometimes stayed away for a few days, he was not alarmed
until Inbain came running in the noonday neat when no native willingly stirs
abroad. He was greatly upset and excited and almost incoherent as he blurted
out the news that Omar Sung Loo had trapped a splendid tigress and was shipping
her back to his kampong.
"Tuan,
you must buy this tigress
and set it free," wailed Inbam. "I tried to buy it. I offered all I
possessed and all my kinsfolk possessed, but he will not sell. Tuan, he trapped the tigress with bags of white dust he scattered, a magic
powder that made her forget her cunning and roll in it like a cub at play. But
she must be freed, Tuan.
Buy her. By your hone of
Paradise, you must free this tigress."
Dinecn leaned forward in
his chair, staring at the agonized Inbam.
"Why should I set this
tigress free?" he demanded.
"By the spirit of Tuan Bourkc who was your friend, you must. Tuan,
99
it is past the belief of a white Tuan. But the tigress is my kinswoman, the wife of Tuan Kourkc!"
"Nonsense,"
shouted Dineen. "You lie to me!"
"Tuan, I speak truth. She is a tigress berhantu. A ghost tigress."
"Then why should cage
bars hold her, lnbam?"
"Tuan. it is that magic tiger dust of Omar Sung Loo
drugging her senses. She lies contented licking it, rolling in the dirty straw,
she who loved perfumes and silks and jewels. Tuan, see her and know if I lie to you. She wears the pearls you gave her on
her neck!"
Dineen
laughed harshly. These nightmares were sending him mad. Reason was tottering.
He would get out at once, lnham agreed to go with him, but when they started
from the village they learned that Omar Sung Loo had gone, the tigress was on
her way to his kam-pong.
Driven now by a desire to
see the finish of the affair, Dineen followed. The lumbering cage on
cart-wheels, drawn by carabaos, was somewhere on the river road, but Dineen
took a boat and some time in the night he passed it.
He
wailed in the village until word came that Omar Sting Loo had returned. Then
with a loaded gun in his pocket he went to the kaniponi'.
Omar
Sung lx>o stood at the gate and barred his way belligerently. Smirking and
defiant, he said he had nothing For sale.
"You captured a
tigress. I will buy her," said Dineen.
"She
is not for sale, Tuan.
Down her black throat has
gone more of my magic powder than she is worth. Yet I have an
affection for the beast and will not sell her."
"Let
me sec her!" Dineen s gun poked the belly of Omar Sung Loo and his finger
curved on the trigger. The dealer snarled and backed toward the kampong where the tigress lay in her cage on dirty
jungle grass, her tongue lolling thirstily, her eyes glowing green with hate
and fear. She crouched and snarled as Omar Sung Loo came near, and her lithe
paw reached through the bars.
Dineen
held Omar Sung 1.00 in a corner by the cage, with his gun still indenting the brown skin.
The cries of Omar fell on heedless ears. Dineen began to whistle, then to sing
the tune of the love pantun he had heard Rourkes wife sing, and again heard
roared from the throat of a bull ape in the jungle.
The
effect on the tigress was startling. She lifted her head and roared. She worked
herself into a fury and her long claws tore splinters from the cage bars. Then
she went into a Hurry that made the wooden crate creak and strain. Omar
screeched in fear, his defiance was gone.
"Tuan,
she was kept without food
or water, but the cage bars cannot hold her now. They are breaking!"
It was true. Two of the
bars were gone. The head of the tigress and
100
one foreleg came through. Omar Sung Loo's shaking fingers grabbed a sack
of tiger dust from his loin-rag and he tried to ioosen the string.
The
tigress leaped to earth, and came toward them, her great pads stepping
deliberately, daintily, but she was snarling her rage. Fear-Stricken, Omar
shook the sack of tiger dust, but a hot
wind carried it high in air, over the pond. His scream was pitiful, but it was
cut short as the tigress leaped.
Dineen
whirled as he saw the animal's jaws fasten on the neck of Omar,
and she shook him like a rat. His body fell and lay
still, blood pulsing from his neck into the dust. Over him the tigress stood,
her ears laid back, snarling at Dineen. He saw
her body flatten, her muscles gathered to leap.
There
came the quick staccato of gunshots and the beautiful beast dropped slowly over
the body of the man she had killed.
Dineen
darted toward the gate. There In: halted to look back. He stared, rubbed his eyes and retraced his steps. A cry of near madness
came from his lips.
In
the sun-baked /.wninrnig dust lay the dead Omar Sung Loo, face down, and over
his shoulders was the amber-tinted body of a woman. Blood drained like scarlet
ribbons from the bullet wounds in her breast. About her neck was the string of
small pearls he had given the wife of Tom llooike! Hut it seemed to him her
lips smiled and in her partly opened eyes was
a look of triumph slowly dimming as they
gla/.cd in the chill of death.
~An episode of Cathedral Jdistory. me J
"An Episode of Cathedral History"
is one of the least reprinted tales of the late Provost of Eton College, Dr.
Montague Rhodes James. But it is one of the five James stories singled out by
H. P. Eovecraft as worth special note. In "Supernatural Horror in Literature,"
Lovccraft summarizes the rules laid down by Or. James for the macabre tale. "A ghost story, he
believes, should have a familiar setting in the modern period, in order to approach
closely the reader's sphere of existence. Its spectral phenomena should be
malevolent ratlwr than beneficent, since fear is the emotion primarily to be
excited. And finally the technical patois of occultism or pseudo-science ought
to be avoided lest the charm be smothered in unconvincing pedantry." The
reader will note for himself how Dr. James utilized these rides to work his horrific climax.
'liEl
HERE
WAS once a learned gentleman who was deputed to examine and report upon the
archives of the Cathedral of Southmin-ster. The examination of these records
demanded a very considerable expenditure of time: hence it became advisable for
him to engage lodgings in the city: for though the Cathedral body were profuse
in their offers of hospitality, Mr. Lake felt that he would prefer to be master
of his day. This was recognized as reasonable.
The
Dean eventually wrote advising Mr. Lake, if he were not already suited, to
communicate with Mr. Worby, the principal Verger, who occupied a house
convenient to the church and was prepared to take in a quiet lodger for three
or four weeks. Such an arrangement was precisely what Mr. Lake desired. Terms
were easily agreed upon, and early in December, like another Mr. Datchery (as
he remarked to himself), the investigator found himself in the occupation of a very comfortable room in an ancient and "cathedraly" house.
One
so familiar with the customs of Cathedral churches, and treated with such
obvious consideration by the Dean and Chapter of this Cathedral in particular,
could not fail to command the respect of the Head Verger. Mr. Worby even
acquiesced in certain modifications of. statements he had been accustomed to offer for years to parties of visitors. Mr. Lake, on his part, found the Verger a very cheery companion, and took advantage of any occasion that
presented itself for enjoying his conversation when the day's work was over.
102
One evening, about nine o'clock, Mr. Worby
knocked at bis lodger's door. "I've
occasion," he said, "to go across In the Cathedral. Mr. Lake, and I think I made you a promise when I did so next I
would give you the opportunity to see what it looks like at night time. It's
quite fine and dry outside, if you care to come."
"To
be sure 1 will; very much obliged to you, Mr. Worby. for
thinking of it, but let me get my coal.'
"Here
it is, sir, and I've another lantern here that you'll find advisable for the
steps, as there's no moon.'"
"Anyone
might think we were Jasper and Durdles, over again, mightn't they?" said
Lake, as they crossed the close, for he had ascertained that the Verger had
read Edivin Drood.
"Well,
so they might," said Mr. Worby, with a short laugh, "though 1 don't know whether we ought to take it as a compliment. Odd
ways, 1 often think, they had al that Cathedral, don't
it seem so to you, sir? Full choral matins at seven o'clock
in the morning all the year round. Wouldn't suit our boys' voices
nowadays, and I think there's one or two of the men would be applying for a
rise if the Chapter was to bring it iu- particular the
altos."
They
were now at the south-west door. As Mr. Worby was unlocking
it. Lake said, "Did you ever find anybody locked in here by
accident?"
"Twice
I did. One was a drunk sailor; however he got in I
don't know. I s'pose he went to sleep in the service, but by the time I got to
him he was praying lit to bring the roof in. Lor! what
a noise that man did make! said it was the first time
he'd been inside a church for ten years, and blest if ever he'd try it again.
The other was an old sheep: them boys it was, up to their games. That was the
last time they tried it on, though. There, sir, now you see what we look like;
our late Dean used now and again to bring parties in, but he preferred a moonlight
night, and there was a piece of verse he'd coat to 'em, relating to a Scotch
cathedral, I understand; but I don't know; I almost think the effect's better
when it's all dark-like. Seems to add to the size and
heighth. Now if you won't mind stopping somewhere in the nave while I go
up into the choir where my business lays, you'll see what I mean.'
Accordingly
Lake waited, leaning against a pillar, and watched the light wavering along the
length of the church, and up the steps into the choir, until it was intercepted
by some screen or other furniture, which only allowed the reflection to be seen
on the piers and roof. Not many minutes had passed before Worby reappeared at
the door of the choir and by waving his lantern signalled to Lake to rejoin
him.
"1
suppose it is Worby.
and not a substitute," thought Lake to himself,
as he walked up the nave. There was, in fact, nothing untoward.
103
Worby
showed him tltc papers which he had come to fetch out of the Dean's stall, and
asked him what he thought of the spectacle: Lake agreed that it was well worth
seeing. "1 suppose," he said, as they walked towards the altar-steps
together, "that you're too much used to going about here at night to feel
nervous— but you must get a start
every now and then, don't you, when a book falls down or a door swings to?"
"No,
Mr. Lake, I can't say I think much about noises, not nowadays: I'm much more
afraid of finding an escape of gas or a burst in the stove pipes than anything
else. Still there nave been times, years ago. Did you notice that plain
altar-tomb there fifteenth century we say it is. 1 don't
know if you agree to that? Well, if you didn't look at it, just come back and
give it a glance, if you'd be so good." ft was on the north side of the
choir, and rather awkwardly placed: oidy about three feet from the enclosing
stone screen. Quite plain, as the Verger had said, but for
some, ordinary stone panelling. A metal cross of some
size on the northern side (that next to the screen) was the solitary feature of
any interest.
Lake
agreed that it was not earlier than the Perpendicular period: "but,"
he said, "unless it's the tomb of some remarkable
person, you'll forgive
me for saying that I don't think it's particularly noteworthy."
"Well.
I can't say as it is the tomb of anybody noted in "istory," said
Worby, who had a dry smile on his face, "for we don't own any record
whatsoever of who it was put up to. For all that, if you've
half an hour to spare, sir, when we get back to the house. Mr. Lake, 1
could tell you a tale about that tomb. 1 won't begin on it now; it strikes cold
here, and we don't want to be dawdling about all night."
"Of course I should
like to hear it immensely."
"Very
well, sir, you shall. Now if I might put a question to you." he went on,
as they passed down the choir aisle, "in our little local guide
and not only there, but in tin- little book on
our Cathedral in the series you'll find it stated that this portion of the
building was erected previous to the twelfth century. Now of course I should be
glad enough to take that view, but -mind the step, sir- but, 1 put it to you —
does the lay of the stone 'ere in this poition of the wall (which he tapped
with his key), does it to your eye carry the flavour of what you might call
Saxon masonry? No, I thought not; no more it does to ine: now, if you'll
believe me. I've said as much to those men one's the librarian of our Free
Libry here, and the other came down from London on purpose- fifty limes, if I
have once, but I might just as well have talked to that bit of stonework. Bui
there il is, I sup|>ose every ones got their
opinions."
The
discussion of this peculiar trait of human nature occupied Mr. Worby almost up
to the moment when he and Lake re-entered the former's house. The condition ol
the fire in Lake's sitting-room led
104
to a suggestion from Mr. Worby that they should
finish the evening in his own parlour. We find them accordingly settled there
sonic short time afterwards.
Mr.
Worby made his story a long one, and I will not undertake to tell it wholly in
his own words, or in his own order. Lake committed the substance of it to paper
immediately after hearing it. together with some few
passages of the narrative which bad fixed themselves verbatim in his mind; 1 shall probably find it expedient to condense Lake's record to some extent.
Mr.
Worby was born, it appeared, about the year 182S. His father before him bad
been connected with the Cathedral, and likewise his grandfather. One or both
had been choristers, and in later life both had done work as mason and
carpenter respectively about the fabric. Worby himself, though possessed, as he
frankly acknowledged, of an indifferent voice, had been drafted into the choir
at about ten years of age.
It
was in 1840 that the wave of the Gothic revival smote the Cathedral of
Southminsler. "There was a lot of lovely stufi went then, sir," said
Worbv, with a sigh. "My father couldn't hardly
believe it when he got his orders to clear out the choir. There was a new dean
just come in Dean Hurseougli it was—and my father had been prcnticed to a good firm
of joiners in the city, and knew what good work was when he saw it. Crool it
was, he used to say: all that beautiful wainscot oak.
as good as the day it was put up, ami
garlands-like of foliage and fruit, and lovely old gilding work on the coats of
arms and the oigan pipes. All went to the timber yard every bit except some
little pieces worked up in the Lady Chapel, and 'ere in this overmantel. Well I
may be mistook, but I say our choir never looked as well since. Still there was a lot lound
out about the history of the church, and no doubt but what it did stand in need
of repair. There was very few winters passed but what we'd lose a
pinnacle." Mr, Lake expressed his com uirenee with Worby"s views of restoration, but owns to a fear about ibis
point lest the story proper should never be reached. Possibly this was
perceptible in his manner.
Worby
hastened to reassure him, "Not but what I could carry on about thai topic
lot hours at a time, and do do when I see my opportunity, liul I )ean Biirseoiigli he w;is very set on the Gothic period, and nothing would serve him bul
everything must be made agreeable to that. And one looming alter service he
appointed for my lather to meet him in the t lion, .ind he came back after he'd taken oil his robes in the vestry,
and he'd got a roll of paper with him, and the verger that was then brought in
a table, and they begun spreading it out on the table with prayei books to keep
it down, and my father helped em. and he saw il was a
picture of the inside of a choir In a Cathedral; and the Dean he was a quick -spoken gentleman—he says,
'Well. Worby.
105
what do you think of that?" Why,' says my father, 'I don't think I
'ave The pleasure of knowing that view. Would that be Hereford Cathedral, Mr.
Dean?' 'No. Worby,' says the Dean, 'that's Southminster Cathedral as we hope to
sec it before many years.' Mn-deed, sir,' says my father, and that was all he
did say — leastways to the Dean—but he used to ti II me he felt reelly faint in
himself when he looked round our choir as I can remember it, all comfortable
and furnished-like, and then see this nasty little dry pieter, as he called it,
drawn out by some London architect. Well, there 1 am again. But you'll see what
1 mean if you look at this old view."
Worby
reached down a framed print from the wall. "Well, the long and the short
of it was that the Dean he handed over to my father a copy of an order of the
Chapter that he was to clear out every bit of
the choir....... make
a clean sweep—ready for the new work that was
being
designed up in town, and he was to put it in hand as soon as ever lie could get
the breakers together. Now then, sir, if you look at that view, you'll sec
where the pulpit used to stand: that's what f want you to notice, if you please." It was,
indeed, easily seen; an unusually large structure of timber with a domed
soundingboard, standing at the east cud of the stalls on the north side of the choir, facing the bishop's throne. Worby proceeded
to explain that (luring the alterations, services were held in the nave, the
members of the choir being thereby disappointed of an anticipated holiday, and the organist in particular incurring the
suspicion of having wilfully damaged the mechanism of the temporary organ that
was hired at considerable expense from Loudon.
The
work of demolition began with the choir screen and
organ loft, and proceeded gradually eastwards, disclosing, as Worby said, many
interesting features of older work. While this was going on, the members of
the Chapter were, naturally, in and about the choir a great deal, and it soon
became apparent to the elder Worby—who could not help overhearing some of their
talk—that, on the part of the senior Canons especially, there must have been a good deal of disagreement before the policy now being carried out had been
adopted. Some were of opinion that they should catch their deaths
of cold in the return-stalls, unprotected by a screen from the draughts in the nave: others objected to being exposed
to the views of persons in tfie choir aisles, especially,
they said, during the sermons, when they found it helpful to listen in a
posture which was liable to misconstruction. The strongest opposition, however,
came from the oldest of the body, who up to the last moment objected to the
removal of the pulpit. "You ought not to touch it, Mr. Dean," he said
with great emphasis one morning, when the two were standing before it:
"you don't know what mischief you may do." "Mischief?
it's not a work of any particular merit, Canon." "Don't call me Canon," said the old man with
great
106
asperity,
"that is, for thirty years I've been known as Dr. Ayloff, and I shall he
obliged, Mr. Dean, if you would kindly humour me in that matter. And as to the
pulpit (which I've preached from for thirty years, though I don't insist on
that), all I'll say is, 1 know you're
doing wrong in moving it.'* "But what sense could there be, my dear
Doctor, in leaving it where it is, when we're fitting up the rest of the choir
in a totally different style? What reason could be given—apart from the
look of the thing?" "Reason! reason!"
said old Dr. Ayloff; "if you young men—if I may say so without any
disrespect, Mr. Dean - if you'd only listen to reason a little, and not be
always asking for it, we should get on better. But there, I've said my
say." The old gentleman hobbled off, and as it proved, never entered the
Cathedral again. The season—it was a hot summer—turned sickly on a sudden. Dr.
Ayloff was one of the first to go, with some affection of the muscles of the
thorax, which took him painfully at night. And at many services the number of
choirmcn and boys was very thin.
Meanwhile
the pulpit had been done away with. In fact, the sounding-board (part of which
still exists as a table in a summer-house in the palace garden) was taken down
within an hour or two of Dr. Ayloff's protest. The removal of the base- not effected without considerable trouble disclosed to view,
greatly to the exultation of the restoring party, an altar-tomb- the tomb, of
course, to which Worby had attracted Lake's attention that same evening. Much
fruitless research was expended in attempts to identify the occupant; from that
day to this he has never had a name put to him. The structure had been most
carefully boxed in under the pulpit-base, so that such slight ornament as it
possessed was not defaced; only on the north side of it there was what looked
like an injury; a gap between two of the slabs composing the side. It might be
two or three inches across. Palmer, the mason, was directed to fill it up in a
week's time, when he came to do some other small jobs near that part of the
choir.
The
season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Whether the church was built on a
site that had once been a marsh, as was suggested, or for whatever reason, the
residents in its immediate neighborhood had, many of them, but little enjoyment
of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To
several of the older people—Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen - the
summer proved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a
sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding sense of
oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Gradually there formulated
itself a suspicion—which grew into a conviction—that the alterations in the
Cathedral had something to say in the matter. The widow of a former old verger,
a pensioner of the Chapter of Soutlmiinster, was visited by dreams, which she
retailed to her friends, of a shape that slipped out of the little door of the
south
107
transept
as the dark fell in, and flitted—taking a fresh direction every night—about the
Close, disappearing for a while in house after house, and finally emerging
again when the night sky was paling. She could sec nothing
of it, she said, but that it was a moving form: only she had an impression that
when it returned to the church, as it seemed to do in the end of the dream, it
turned its head: and then, she could not tell why. but
she thought it had red eyes. Worby remembered hearing the old lady tell this
dream at a tea-party in the house of the chapter clerk. Its recurrence might,
perhaps, hi- said, be taken as a symptom of approaching illness; at any rale
before the end of September the old lady was in her grave.
The
interest excited by the restoration of this great church was not confined to
its own county. One day that summer an F.S.A., of some celebrity, visited the
place. His business was to write an account of the discoveries that had been
made, for the Society of Antiquaries, and his wife, who accompanied him, was to
make a series of illustrative drawings for his report. In the morning she
employed herself in making a general sketch of the choir; in the afternoon she
devoted herself to details. She first drew the newly-exposed altar-tomb, and
when that was finished, she called her husband's attention to a beautiful piece
of diaper-ornament on the screen just behind it, which had, like the tomb
itself, been completely concealed by the pulpit. Of course, he said, an
illustration of that must be made; so she seated herself on the tomb and began
a careful drawing which occupied her till dusk.
Her
husband had by this time finished his work of measuring and description, and
they agreed that it was time to bo getting back to
their hotel. "You may as well brush my skirt, Frank," said the lady,
"it must have got covered with dust, I'm
sure." He obeyed dutifully; but, after a moment, ho said, "I don't
know whether you value this dress particularly, my dear, but I'm inclined to
think it's seen its best days. There's a great bit of it gone."
"Gone? Where?" said she. "I don't know where it's gone, but it's
off at the bottom edge behind here." She pulled it hastily into sight, and
was horrified to find a jagged tear extending some way into the substance of
the stuff; very much, she said, as if a dog had rent it away. The dress was, in
any ease", hopelessly spoilt, to her great vexation, and though they
looked everywhere, the missing piece could not be found. There were many ways,
they concluded, in which the injury might have come about, for the choir was
full of old bits of woodwork with nails slicking out of them. Finally, they
could only suppose that one of these had caused the mischief, and that the
workmen, who had been about all day. had carried off
the particular piece with the fragment ol dress still attached to it.
It
was about this time, Worby thought, that his little dog began to wear an
anxious expression when the hour for it to be put into the shed in the back yard
approached. (For his mother had ordained that
it must not sleep in the bouse.) One evening,
be said, when he was just going to pick it up and cany it out, it looked at him
"like a Christian, and waved its 'and, 1 was going to say—well, you know
'ow they do carry on sometimes, and the end of it was I put it under my coat,
and 'uddled it upstairs and I'm afraid I as good as deceived my poor mother on
the subject. After that (lie dog acted very artful with iding itself under the
bed for half an hour or more before bed-time came, and we worked it so as my
mother never found out what we'd done." Of course Worby was glad of its
company anyhow, but more particularly when the nuisance that is still
remembered in Soulh-minster as "the crying" set in.
"Night
after night,' said Worby, "that dog seemed to know it was coming; he'd
creep out, he would, and snuggle into the bed and cuddle right up to me
shivering, and when the crying come he'd be like a wild thing, shoving his head
under my arm, and 1 was fully near as bad. Six or seven times we'd hear it, not
more, and when he'd dror out his ed again I'd know it was over for that night.
What was it like, sir? Well, I never heard but one thing that seemed to hit it
oil. 1 happened to be playing about in the (.'lose,
and there was two of the Canons met and said 'Good morning' one to another.
'Sleep well last night?' says one- it was Mr. Ilenslow that one, and Mr. I.yall
was the other. 'Can't say I did,' says Mr. I.yall, rather too much of Isaiah
xxxiv. 14 for me,' 'xxxiv. 14' says Mr. Ilenslow,
'what's that?' 'You call
i |
tnirsell
a bible reader!" says Mr. Lyall. (Mr. Ilenslow, you must now, he was one
of what used to be termed Simeon's lot—pretty much what we should call the
Evangelical parly.) 'You go and look it up.' I wanted to know what he was gelling at myself,
and so off I ran nome and got out my own Bible, and there it was: 'the satyr
shall cry to his fellow.' Well, I thought, is that what we've been listening to
these past nights? and I tell you it made me look over
my shoulder a time or two. Of course I'd asked my father anil mother about what
it could be before that, but they both said it was most likely cats: hut they
spoke very short, and 1 could see they was troubled.
My word! that was a noise iiujny like, as if it was
calling after someone that wouldn't come. II ever you felt you wanted company, it would be when you was waiting for it to begin
again. I believe two or three nights there was men put on to watch in different
parts of (he Close; but they all used to get together in one corner, the
nearest they could to the High Street, and nothing came of it.
"Well,
the next thing was this. Mc and another of the boys he's in business in the
city now as a grocer, like his father before him - we'd gone up in the choir
after morning service was over, and we heard old Palmer the mason bellowing to
some of his men. So we went up nearer, because we knew he was a rusty old chap
and there might Ik) some fun going. It appears Palmer'd told this
man to stop up the
109
think in thai old tomb. Well, there was this man
keeping on saying he'd done it the best he could, and there was Palmer carrying
on like all possessed about it. 'Call that making a job of it?' he says. 'If
you had your rights you'd get the sack for this. What do you suppose I pay you
your wages for? What do you suppose I'm going to say to the Dean and Chapter
when they come round, as come they may do any time, and see where you've been
bungling about covering the 'ole place with mess and plaster and Lord knows
what?' 'Well, master, I done the best I could, says the man; '1 don't know no
more than what you do ow it come to fall out this way. I tamped it right in the
'ole,' he says, 'and now it's fell out," he says, 'I never see.'
" 'Fell out?' says old Palmer, why it's nowhere near
the place. Blowed out, you mean'; and he picked Up a bit of plaster, and so did I, that was laying up against the screen,
three or four feet off, and not dry yet; and old Palmer he looked at it
curious-like, ami then he turned round on me and he says, 'Now then, you boys,
have you been up to some of your games here?" 'No.' I says, 'I haven't, Mr. Palmer; there's none of us been
about here till just this minute'; and while I was talking the other boy,
Evans, he got looking in through the chink, and I heard him draw in his breath,
and he came away sharp and up to us, and says he, 'I believe there's something
in there. 1 saw something shiny.' 'What! I dare say!' says old Palmer; 'well,
I ain't got time to stop about there. You, William, you go off and get some
more stuff and make a job of it this time; if not, there'll be trouble in my yard,'
he says.
"So
the man he went off, and Palmer too, and us boys stopped behind, and I says to
Evans, 'Did you really see anything in there?' 'Yes,' he says, 'I did indeed.'
So then 1 says, "Let's shove something in and
stir it up.' And we tried several of the bits of wood that was laying about, but they were all too big. Then Evans he had a
sheet of music he'd brought with him, an anthem or a service, I forget which it
was now, and he rolled it up small and shoved it in the chink; two or three
times he did it, and nothing happened, 'Give it me, boy,' 1 said, and I had a
try. No, nothing happened. Then, I don't know why 1 thought of it, I'm sun;,
but 1 stooped down just opposite the chink and put my two fingers in my mouth
and whistled-you know the way -and at that I seemed to think I heard something
stirring, and I says to Evans, 'Come away,' I says; '1 don't like this."
'Oh, rot,' he says, 'give me that roll,' and he took it and shoved it in. And 1
don't think ever I see anyone go so pale as he did.
'I say, Worby,' he says, 'it's caught, or else someone's got hold of it.' Toll
it out or leave it,' 1 says. 'Come and let's get off.' So lie gave a good pull, and it came away. Leastways most of it did, but the
end was gone. Tom off it was, and Evans looked at it for a second and then he
gave a sort of a croak and let it drop, and we both made off out of there as
quick as ever we could. When we got outside Evans says to me, 'Did yon see the
end of that paper?' 'No,' I says, only it was torn.'
'Yes, it was,' he says, 'but it was wet too, and black!' Well, partly because
of the fright we had, and partly because that music was wanted in a day or two.
and we knew there'd be a set-out about it with the
organist, we didn't say nothing to anyone else, and I suppose the workmen they
swept up the bit that was lelt along with the rest of the rubbish. Hut Evans,
if you were to ask him this very day about it. he'd
stick to it he saw that paper wet and black at the end where it was torn."
After that the boys gave the choir a wide
berth, so that Worby was not sure what was the result of the
mason's renewed mending of the tomb. Only he made out from fragments of
conversation dropped by the workmen passing through the choir that some
dilliculty bad been met with, and that the governor Mr. Palmer to wit had tried
his own hand at the job. A little later, he happened to see Mr. Palmer himself
knocking at the door of the Deanery and being admitted by the butler. A day or
so alter tli.it,
he gathered from a remark his father let fall at breakfast that something a
little out of the common was to be done in the Cathedral alter morning service
on the morrow. "And I'd just as soon it was to-day," his father
added; "I don't see the use of running risks.lather.' I says,
"what are you going to do in the Cathedral to-morrow?' And he turned on me
as savage as I ever see him—he was a wonderful good tempered man as a general
thing, my poor father was. 'My lad.' he says. I'll tumble you not to go picking
up your elders' anil belters' talk: it's not manners and it's not straight.
What I'm going to do or not going to do in the Cathedral to-morrow is none of
your business: and if I catch sight of you banging about the place to-morrow
after your woik's done, I'll send you home with a flea in your ear. Now you
mind that.' Ol course I said 1 was very sorry and that, and equally
ol course I went oil and laid my plans with bvans. We knew there was a stair up
in the corner of the transept which you can get up to the trilorium, and in
them days the door to it was pretty well always open, and even if it wasn't we
knew the key usually laid under a bit of malting hud by. So we made up our
minds we'd Ik* putting away music and that, next morning
while the rest of (he boys was clearing oil. and then slip tin the stairs and
watch from the tri-forium if (heir was any signs of work going on.
"Well,
that same night I dropped of I asleep as sound as a boy does, and all of a
sudden the dog woke me up, coming into the bed, and thought 1, now we're going
to get it sharp, for he seemed more frightened than usual. After about live
minutes sure enough came this cry. I can't give you no idea what it was like;
and so near too—nearer than I'd heard it yet and a funny thing, Mr. hake, you
know what a place this Close is for an echo, and particular if you stand this
side of it. Well, this crying never made- no sign of an echo at all. but. as I said, it was dreadful
near this night: and on the top of the start 1 got with hearing it, I got another fright; for
I heard something rustling outside in the passage. Now to be sure I thought I
was done; but 1 noticed the dog seemed to perk up a bit, and next there was
someone whispered outside the door, and I very near laughed out loud, for I
knew it was my father and mother that had got out of bed with the noise.
"Whatever is it?" says my mother. 'Hush! I don't know,' says my
father, excited-like, 'don't disturb the boy, I hope
he didn't hear nothing.'
"So,
me knowing they were just outside, it made me bolder, and I slipped out nl bed
across to my little window—giving on the Close-but the dog he bored right down
to the bottom of the bed—and 1 looked out. First go oil I couldn't see
anything. Then right down in the shadow under a buttress I made out what I
shall always say was two spots of red —a dull red it was- nothing like a lamp
or a fire, but just so as you could pick 'em out of the black shadow. F hadn't but just sighted 'em when it seemed we
wasn't the only people that had been disturbed, because I see a window in a
house on the left-hand side become lighted up, and the light moving. 1 just tinned my head to make sure of it, and
then looked back into the shadow lor those two red things, anil they were gone,
and for all I peered about and stared, there was not a sign more of them. Then
come my last fright that night -something come against my bare leg but that was
all right: that was my little dog had come out of bed, and prancing about making
a great to-do, only holding his tongue, and me seeing he was quite in spirits
again, 1 took him back to bed and we slept the night out!
"Next
morning 1 made out to till my mother I'd had the dog in
my room, and I.was surprised, after all she'd said about it before, how quiet
she took it. 'Did your" she says. 'Well, by good rights you ought to go
without your breakfast for doing such a thing behind my back: but 1 don't know as there's any great harm done, only
another time you ask my permission, do you hear?" A bit after that I said
something to my father about having heard the cats again. 'Cats?' he says; and he looked over at my poor
mother, and she coughed and he says, 'Oh! ah! yes, cats. I believe 1 heard 'cm myself.'
"That
was a funny morning altogether: nothing seemed to go right. The organist he
stopped in bed, and the minor Canon he forgot it was the 19th day and waited
lor the Venite;
and after a bit the deputy
he set oil playing the chant for evensong, which was a minor; and then the
Decani boys were laughing so much they couldn't sing, and when it came to the
anthem the solo boy he got took with the giggles, and made out his nose was
bleeding, and shoved the book at me what hadn't practised the verse and wasn't
much of a singer if I hail known it. Weil, things
was rougher, you see, fifty years ago. and I
got a nip from the counter-tenor behind me that I remembered.
"So we got through somehow, and neither
the men nor the hoys
112
weren't
by way of waiting to see whether the Canon in residence— Mr. Ilenslow it
was—would come to the vestries and fine 'em, but I don't believe he did: for
one thing I fancy he'd read the wrong lesson for the first time in his life,
and knew it. Anyhow, Evans and me didn't find no difficulty in slipping up the
stairs as I told you, and when we got up we laid ourselves down flat on our
stomachs where we could just stretch our heads out over the old tomb, and we
hadn't but just done so when we heard the verger that was then, first shutting
the iron porch-gates and locking the southwest door, and then the transept
door, so we knew there was something up, and they meant to keep the public out
for a bit.
"Next
thing was, the Dean and the Canon come in by their door on the north, and then
I see my father, and old Palmer, and a couple of their best nun. and Palmer stood a talking for a bit with the Dean in the
middle ol the choir. I le had a coil of rope and the men had crows. All of em
looked a bit nervous. So there they stood talking, and
at last I heard the Dean say, 'Well, I've no time to waste. Palmer. If you think
this'll satisfy SouthinuislcT people, I'll permit it to be done; but I must say
this, that never in the whole course of my life have 1 heard such arrant nonsense from a practical
man as I have from you. Don't you 'agree with me, Ilenslow?' As far as I could
hear Mr. Ilenslow said something like 'Oh, well! we're
told, aren't we, Mr. Dean, not to judge others?' And the Dean he gave a kind of
sniff, and walked straight up to the tomb, and took his stand behind it with
his back to the .screen, and the others they come
edging up rather gingerly. Ilenslow. he stopped on the south side and scratched on his chin, he
did. Thin the Dean spoke up: 'Palmer,' he says, 'which can you do easiest, get
the slab oil the top. or shift one ol the side slabs.
"Old
Palmer and his men they pottered about a bit looking round the edge of the top
slab and sounding the sides on the south and east and west and everywhere but
the north. Ilenslow said something about it being bettei to have a try at the
south side, because there was more light and more room
to move about in. Then my father, who'd been watching
ol them, went round to the north side, and knell down and felt of the slab by
the chink, and he got up and dusted his kn-cs and says to the Dean: beg pardon,
Mr. Dean, but I think il Mr. Palmer 11 try this here slab he'll find it'll come
out easy enough. Seems to me one of the men could prise it out with his crow by
means ol this chink.' 'Ah! thank you, Worby,' says the
Dean; 'that's a good Migges tion. Palmer, let one of your men do that, will
you?'
"So
the man come round, and put his bar in mid bore on ¡1 and just that minute when
they were all bending o\ or, and we bow got nui heads well over the edge of the triforium, ihere come a iihi.nI Ir.ulul crash down at the west end of the choir, as il a whole si.u I. ol Lie timber had fallen down a (light of stairs. Well, yon can't expect me to
tell you everything that happened all in a
minute. Of course there was a terrible commotion. I heard die slab fall out,
and the crowbar on the floor, and I heard the Dean say, 'Good God!'
"When
I looked down again I saw the Dean tumbled over on the floor, the men was
making oil down the choir, Ilenslow was just going to
help the Dean up. Palmer was going to stop the men (as he said afterwards) and
my lather was sitting on the altar step with his face in Ins
hands. The Dean he was very cross. 'I wish to goodness you'd look where you're
coming to, Ilenslow,' he says. Why you should all take to your heels when a
stick of wood tumbles down I cannot imagine'; and all Ilenslow could do,
explaining he was right away on the other side of the tomb, would not satisfy
him.
"Then
Palmer came back and reported there was nothing to account for this noise and
nothing seemingly fallen down, and when the Dean finished feeling of himself
they gathered round -except my father, he sat where he was and someone lighted
up a bit of candle and they looked into the tomb. 'Nothing there,' says the
Dean, 'what did I tell you? Stay! here's something.
What's this? a bit of music paper, and a piece of torn
stuff—part of a dress it looks like. Both quite modern-no
interest whatever. Another time perhaps you'll take the advice of an
educated man'—or something like that, and off he went, limping a bit, and out
through the north door, only as he went he called back angry to Palmer for
leaving the door standing open. Palmer called out 'Viiy sorry, sir,' but he:
shrugged his shoulders, and Ilenslow says, 'I fancy Mr. Dean's mistaken. I
closed the door behind me, but he's a little upset.' Then Palmer says, 'Why,
whore's Worby?' and they saw him sitting on the step and went up to him. I le
was recovering himself, it seemed, and wiping his forehead, and Palmer helped
him up on to his legs, as 1 was glad to see.
"They
were too far oil for me to hear what they said, but my father pointed to the
north door in the aisle, and Palmer and Ilenslow both ol them looked very surprised
and scared. After a bit, my father and Ilenslow went out of the church, and the
others made what haste they could to put the slab back and plaster it in. And
about as the clock struck twelve the Cathedral was opened again and us boys
made the best of our way home.
"I
was in a great taking to know what it was had given my poor father such a turn,
and when I got in and found him sitting in his chair taking a glass of spirits,
and my mother standing looking anxious at him, I couldn't keep from bursting out
and making confession where I'd been. But he didn't seem to
take on, not in the way of losing his temper. 'You was
there, was you? Well, did you see it?' '1 see everything, father,' 1 said, except when the noise came.' 'Did you
see what it was knocked the Dean over?' he says, that what come out of the
monument? You didn't? Well, that's a mercy.' 'Why, what was it,
114
father?* I said. 'Come, you must have seen it,' he
says. 'Didn't you sec? A thing like a
man, all over hair, and two great eyes to it?"
"Well,
that was all I could get out of him that time, and later on he seemed as if he
was ashamed of being so frightened, and he used to put me off when I asked him
about it. But years after, when I was got to be a grown man, we had more talk
now and again on the matter, and he always said the same thing. 'Black it was,'
he'd say, 'and a mass of hair, and two legs, and the light caught on its eyes.'
"Well,
that's the tale of that tomb, Mr. Lake; it's one we don't tell to our visitors,
and I should be obliged to you not to make any use of it till I'm out of the
way. I doubt Mr. Evans'll feel the same as I do, if you ask him."
This
proved to be the case. But over twenty years have passed by, and the grass is
growing over both Worby and Evans; so Mr. Lake felt no difficulty about
communicating his notes—taken in 1890—to me. He accompanied them with a sketch
of the tomb and a copy of the short inscription on the metal cross which was
affixed at the expense of Dr. Lyall to the centre of the northern side. It was
from the Vulgate of Isaiah xxxiv., and consisted
merely of die tluee words— IB1 CUBAVIT LAMIA.
puncturing the little man's business-like air. "I
talked with the pilot
before we crashed, big boy."
"Well? Well?" demanded
Johnson.
"There's
nothing here. Nothing!" Millet said. "No
villages. No cities. No railroads. No radios. Nothing! This part of Canada lias
been lifeless since way back in 2036."
The
three were silent, and for that moment the air was colder and the wind blew
with added sharpness. The men shivered and moved together for more warmth.
"Eskimos?" Johnson asked, "there
must be Eskimos around here. We'd get food, blubber, fat and all that sort of
thing."
Millet
slapped his hands together to keep the blood circulating and laughed loudly.
"Point
one for civilization!" he said. "Three citizens of
New Democracy looking for primitive Eskimos to save them! Ha!"
lie suddenly sobered and looked about him, and
listened to the howling wind.
"There
are no Eskimos here," he said, "When the War Disease came we
survived. But the Eskimo is extinct."
"Have we got
food?" Johnson asked.
"None," Millet
said curtly, to dispel all false hopes.
"I
am not sure," Weaver said slowly, "but live minutes before we crashed
I—I'm sure I saw a thin line of smoke coming up from a valley. That valley
there." lie pointed toward a mountain range.
"Nonsense!" Millet muttered, looking at the inhospitable
icy peaks.
"Nonsense?" Johnson shouted, "What do you mean
nonsense? Who are you to say it's nonsense! Maybe
there are explorers here, an expedition of some sort. We've nothing to lose.
If there's a village we're saved. If not—"
"If
not?"
Millet asked, smiling.
Johnson
ignored him. lie drew his meagre overcoat more;
tightly about him and went out into the whirling snow. The three took one final
look at the wreckage of the plane and the bodies that were already covered by a
white mantle. Johnson led the way and Weaver followed,
his arm rapidly he coining numb. Millet, face down to avoid the
bite of the wind, brought up the rear.
The
sun was already overhead when they reached the mountain top and saw before them
in the valley the strange city. It was a city, in the midst of the snow and the
wind of arctic winter, and long spirals of grey smoke from snow-covered
factories rose up into the heavens. Dumbfounded, Millet stared at the city in
the valley. "There!" Johnson said triumphantly, "and you said
this part of Canada was uninhabited. Thai's an industrial city of more than
twenty thousand people!"
"In the arctic?" Millet asked, almost talking to himself,
"So far
117
TJlie ^&ay. ^J4aA dome
VUatler JCuLitini
<3 'hei |
We've
all read about unexpected disasters that follow tn the wake of war souvenirs. A
sltcll or grenade, supposedly a dud, kept on a shelf as a memento of a past war, will suddenly explode.
Europe, for instance, will continue to luioe new casualties from the unexploded mines and sltells of both world wars -and tltese wars, both
past, will mark new victims for many
years to come. Walter Kubilius projects this factor against the modern
technology of warfare. His
unforgettable story of a certain day two hundred years hence is
one that might well come true.
'HERE WAS a whirling flash of bees past the
window. One wing struck a crag and with a mighty crash the plane erased itself
against the mountainside.
Some hours passed before Weaver awoke with a
throbbing pain in his arm. A cut shoulder was caked with frozen blood and the
first tiling he heard was die icy whistle of the cold wind. He staggered to his
feet hut fell back, fainting, upon a drift of snow and would have been lost
were it not for Millet's strong arm.
"Weavcrl"
Millet shouted above the roaring wind. "Are you all right?"
"I'm okay,"
Weaver said feebly. "Go to the others."
Millet
bent to pick up Weavers prostrate body and carried it clumsily over die soft
snow to the meagre protection of a nearby cave. Here Johnson was waiting by a
small fire that was made from parts ol the wreckage. Millet placed the wounded
man next to the fire and quickly bandaged the bleeding arm.
"This
will have to do," he said as he placed the final knot upon a make-shift
sling.
"The
others!
What aliout the odiers?" Weaver asked.
There
are no others," Millet said. "Just the three of us.
The rest are dead."
"Well! Well!" the little man,
Johnson, said impatiently. "Why stand there like that gaping? Do
something! We have to get back to civilization! I have an important
appointment in Norman next week. The air company will pay for this!'
"We're nowhere near Norman," Millet
said, as if taking delight in
116
uncturing
the little man's business-like air. "I talked with the pilot
efore we crashed, big boy." "Well?
Well?" demanded Johnson.
"There's
nothing here. Nothing!" Millet said. "No
villages. No cities. No railroads. No radios. Nothing! This part of Canada has
been lifeless since way back in 2036."
The
three were silent, and for that moment the air was colder and the wind blew
with added sharpness. The men shivered and moved together for more warmdi.
"Eskimos?" Johnson asked, "there
must be Eskimos around here. We'd get food, blubber, fat and all that sort of
thing."
Millet
slapped his hands together to keep the blood circulating and laughed loudly.
"Point
one for civilization!" he said. "Three citizens of
New Democracy looking for primitive Eskimos to save them! Ha!"
He
suddenly sobered and looked about him, and listened to the howling wind.
"There
are no Eskimos here," he said, "When the War Disease came we
survived. But the Eskimo is extinct."
"Have we got
food?" Johnson asked.
"None," Millet
said curtly, to dispel all false hopes.
"I am not sure," Weaver said slowly,
"but five minutes before we ciashcd I—I'm sure I saw a thin line of smoke
coming up from a valley. That valley there." He
pointed toward a mountain range.
"Nonsense!" Millet muttered, looking at the inhospitable
icy peaks.
"Nonsense?" Johnson shouted, "What do you mean
nonsense? Who are you to say it's nonsense! Maybe
there are explorers here, an expedition of some sort. We've nodiing to lose.
If there's a village we're saved. If not—"
"If not?" Millet asked, smiling.
Johnson
ignored him. He drew his meagre overcoat more tightly about him and went out
into the whirling snow. The three took one final look at the wreckage of the
plane and the bodies that were already covered by a white mantle. Johnson led the
way and Weaver followed, his arm rapidly becoming numb. Millet, face down to
avoid the bite of the wind, brought up the rear.
The sun was already overhead when they
reached the mountain and saw before them in the valley the strange city. It was
a city, the midst of the snow and the wind of arctic winter, and long spirals
grey smoke from snow-covered factories rose up into the heavens. Dumbfounded,
Millet stared at the city in the valley. "There!" Johnson said
triumphantly, "and you said this part of Can-*a was
uninhabited. That's an industrial city of more dian twenty ousand people!"
"In the arctic?" Millet asked, almost talking to himself,
"So far
117
north?'* he raised his
arm and pointed to all die sides of the city. "There are no railroads
leaving it," he said.
"Maybe
they're covered by snow," Johnson said. "Anyway, there are what seem
to be flying fields."
They
stopped talking and made their perilous way down to the floor of the valley.
The descent proved dangerous, for each drift of snow might hide underneath it a
deep chasm. By the time they reached the open valley it was nightfall, and the
city was a bare three or four miles away.
They
saw the lights of the factories go out and the lights of each individual home
brighten. The smoke died from the giant chimneys hut each individual house had
its own tiny waft of smoke pouring out of its own individual chimney.
As
they made their way to the city they saw darkness settle upon it. The lights in
the homes died down and when they came to its gates the city was asleep.
The
streets were empty of people. The three exhausted men broke into one of the
homes and collapsed before an electrically glowing fireplace.
For
a time Weaver was dully surprised that the owner of the house did not bother to
come downstairs and ask what they wanted, but he was much too tired to question
that as sleep settled upon him and Millet and Johnson.
Refreshed,
the three woke up with the morning sun and found, much to their surprise, that
the house was empty.
Whoever
was in during the night had already left. There were unmistakable signs of
chairs having been moved and curtains lifted. It was a wooden house, wooden
furniture, and all in simple style.
"They
probably let us sleep, not wanting to disturb us," Johnson said.
"Any food in the house?" Weaver asked. Millet got up, stretched and
yawned, and went to a small room which appeared to be a kitchen. He came back
with two loaves of bread and a jar of water.
"This
is all I could find," he said, cutting the bread and sharing it with
Johnson and Millet.
"H'm,"
murmured Johnson as lie bit into the first slice, "Tough bread, but pretty
good."
"Any idea what city this is?" Weaver asked, crunching the bread hungrily.
"No,"
Millet said between thirsty gulps, "Haven't the faintest idea. Factory
town, that's evident."
When
they had finished eating, they got up to investigate the house but could find
nothing that would help them. There was no printed matter of any sort but for
one sign which hung, almost reverentiy, over the mantelpiece. It read: "The Day Will Come—He Ready!"
'I he ollirr rooms were bare but for
necessary furniture ami elothrs. The three searched the closets until they
found warm coats that would fit them.
"'Ibis
might seem like stealing," Millet said, "but we'll return them when
we find out just what position we're in."
With
stomachs full and warm clothes. Millet, Weaver anil Johnson stepped out of the
house into the street. It was bitterly cold, but there was no wind. The high
mountains that surrounded the valhy seemi'd to protect it from toe) much snow.
Not knowing where to go, they walked aimlessly about the streets. Nowhere'
coiud they find a single soul.
"They must all be at
the factories," Johnson said.
"And
the children?"
"In
schools and
nurseries."
"But
they can't all be in factories anel schools," protested
Weaver. "There's nobe-dy home or in the- streets. Nobody!"
"Let's look into a factory," Millet suggested.
In
the center of the city they found two factories. Both we're of tremendous
size, stretching for many times the size of a city block. From their mighty
stacks stretcheel black fingers of smoke. A strange fe-eling of age hung about
the factory. The windows were unwashed. Here and there great cracks were in the
walls and through them one could See the working men
within. The dull roar of the two factories was almost deafening.
"How old it see'ins!" Weaver gasped.
"Centuries!" Millet whispered.
"Come!
Come!" Johnson said briskly, "We won't get anywhere gaping like that.
Let's go in this one here."
They
walked through the aged gate, into the' courtyard, and up the wide steps te> the; door. They opened it, walked in and almost at
once were drowned by the clanging and banging of machines in operation. But
above the roar of the machines there was yet another sound
the sound e)f a man's voice', amplified se) that
it was a booming monotone, overcoming even the;
shrill screeches of drills and presses.
".
. . be careful. Always be careful," the booming
voice in the factory rang out. "Do not make- mistakes. Efficiency counts
above all else. Efficiency! Work carefully. Work carefully. Work carefully.
Work carefully anel enjoy your work. Enjoy your work. Enjoy your work because
it is your work. You are working for yourselves. You arc working for
yourselves. You are working for yourselves . . ."
And
on it went, repeating over and over again inane advice te>
workmen, urging them to greater efforts and constantly giving them, an added impetus for faster and faster work.
"Speed-up
deluxe!"
Millet said, "What a system!"
Inside the factory they saw the working men
and women and chil-
119
dren. There were thousands of them. Like
automatons each leaned forward at his task. Dynamos and power engines, placed
in floors beneath the level, pulsed into life and the conveyor belts moved on.
The place was a roaring factory in full blast. Giant cranes screeched along,
carrying in their iron hands heavy machines which were placed in position by
the waiting workmen. Long lines of coarsely clad men and women stood by the
conveyors, each with his or her task. Some of the men handled the delicate
tools. Others, the women and the children, did nothing but watch and sometimes
help when a moving mass of machines on the belt rumbled
and shook as it rolled on a bumpy part of the conveyor. Immediately they would run to it, push it
back upon the belt and then go back to their position, their eyes intent again
upon the older men and the older women who handled the drills and who placed
the parts in position.
The
three walked along the conveyor Deles, surprised that no one stopped them to
ask who they were and what they were doing here. They ignored the monotonously
droning voice that roared above them, seeming to come from microphones hidden
in the roof.
Slowly
Millet, Weaver and Johnson began to get the complete picture of the strange
factory. Huge boxes were brought in from the outside, obviously from the
second factory, and were unpacked. The machinery and parts were assorted and
distributed. Motors were sent to one place, girders, wires, steel plates and
glass to other places.
The
trio followed the distribution from one end to another. By the time they
reached the center of the plant they realized what was being made. At the end
of the factory, ready to be rolled out, they saw it.
In
the center of the huge, open, unrolled door, final finishing touches being
placed upon its wings, stood a giant bomber.
"Warplanes!" Millet shouted to Weaver, trying to make
himself heard above the din of the factory, "Giant warplanesl"
"Why
hasn't anyone stopped us?" Weaver asked as they strolled under the wings
of the bomber and out into the open air, "Nobody even looked at us while
we walked through the whole plant!"
"Suppose they're too
busy," Johnson grunted.
"Did
you see the children?" Weaver asked again. "Even
children! What a factory! It's like a tomb!"
"Efficient
though, isn't it?" Millet smiled, "They're getting the bombers out
fast enough. Let's sec where they take them."
They
watched a crew of men roll the bomber out of the hangar-like opening. They
pushed it half-way to the open field and then left it there. Another crew,
coming from the second factory, marched to it and then rolled it on—to the
second plant. The three men followed.
Once
they were inside the second plant with the bomber they saw a strange sight. The finished bomber was rolled on to the center of a scaffold-like structure and the careful work
of disassembling and tak-
120
ing apart the giant plane began. Tbe wings were
carefully taken off, eacli individual plate tagged and marked. Not one screw
was wasted. Nothing was lost.
"I'll
be damned!" Johnson said, astonished.
The
three men gathered around and watched, There could be
no doubt as to what was being done. The bomber, just finished, was now being
taken apart. Its component parts would be packed and sent to the first factory
where it would be rebuilt.
"An insane vicious circle!" Weaver said.
"They
must be crazy!" Johnson said, "There's no sense in that!" He
stepped forward and seized one of the workmen by the shoulders.
"Ilev vou!" he shouted, "I
want to talk to you! What's going on here?"'
The
man resisted and tried to get back to his position. When Johnson would not let
go he turned quickly and struck at Johnson with his wrench. Johnson yelped a
cry ol surprised pain and let go. Tbe man immediately went back to his spot by
the plane as if nothing had happened.
Dammit!"
Johnson shouted to Millet and Weaver. "He struck me! He's crazy! They're
all crazy!"
"in a way," Millet said soberly. "Yes. But let's
get out of here first."
They
Ifft the factory and entered one ol the nearby homes where the glowing warmth
of the fireplace soothed them.
"All right. Millet," Johnson said. "You seem
to know the answers. What's wrong with the city? Everybody seems to be mad.
They won't do anything. They just work work work! That's enough to drive
anybody mad!"
"And the rhythm!"' Weaver said. "That
mechanical voice in each factory roaring over and over again—work—work--work!
Be careful! Be careful! Be careful! What is it all?"
"It's
our heritage," Millet said cryptically.
"Heritage? What heritage?"
"Do
you remember your history? The story of the Second World War
and e\en the Third?"
"Of course'. Of course."
Weaver said, "But this mad city—what has that to do with the wars that
took place two centuries ago?"
"Two
centuries!" Millet said, "'That's it exactly!
For more than two hundred years that factory has been building bombing planes
for a war that ended two hundred years ago!"
"You're
crazy yourself!"
"Crazy, eh? Not as crazy as the facts of history!"
Millet said, "Do you remember the bombings of the Third World War? Wave
after wave of enemy planes came, blowing up the factories and industrial
centers of the enemy. Coventry. Hamburg, Detroit! All of them
121 smashed to bits! When industrial centers were smashed by air-raids,
what is the logical answer? Build factories and plants in out-of-die-way
places, far from the arm of the airplane!"
"1 suppose you'll say that's how this factory was
built?"
"Yes!
And perhaps there are still more throughout the arctic!.
Cities of living dead, still making bombs and bombers after all these centuries.
They started something that they could not finish. They'll keep on building
those bombers till the machines are worn out and become dust!"
"But the people—the
people!"
Weaver protested.
"The people!" Millet snorted, "Did you hear the
phonograph droning over and over again: you must work- you must work—you must
work! Over and over again for two hundred years! It enters into the blood; The child is born and hears those; words; you must work—you
must work—you must work! lie spends his days in the
factory—watching and watching until the day that his father dies. Then he too
goes up to bis position—working—working—working. Not knowing why, nor caring to
know!"
"But the same planes
arc taken apart!"
"One
factory was built for producing planes. Another for dismantling the wreckage
of planes that were shot down or brought in from the outside This
went on for generation and generation until it became mechanical. And when
contact with the outside world finally tii<<!,
what was more, natural than that the process should continue? Anel it go»;s on and on—and
on!"
"But what of the food, what of their
supplies and clothes and pow<:r?"
Millet
shruggeel and gestured vaguely. "There are some smaller factories on the
other side; of the city. They must be bakeries and auxiliary plants. Grain,
supplies . . . supplies were laid in from the surpluses to last for hundreds of
years. These cities expected isolation. They we're places of perpetual
seige."
A shiver went down Weaver's spine.
"Horrible!" he said.
"Something must be done about it!"
Johnson said, indignant. "What?"
"Stop the factory! Find their source of
power—shut it off!"
Millet
laughed, "The men would die! They'd go raving mad! You can't stop a thing
that's been in the blood for two hundred years! Touch the power plant and
they'd rip you to pieces like a wild animal whose; food you try to steal!"
"There
must be somebody in the city who is intelligent and who lias not become a
machine," Weaver said. "From the beginning there was some master,
some commander who guided things, His descendant might be here. Find
him."
"Yes." Millet
said, "there might be one someplace.
"Well! Well!"
Johnson shouted, "what are we waiting for?"
It
was evening and a shrill whistle broke the darkness. The rumble from the
factory died down. The conveyors slowed and stopped and the smoke no longer
ascended from the chimney.
Long
streams of tired men and women walked dully from the factory. Their thin,
gaunt bodies moved slowly over the cobbled snowy streets. Their eyes were misty
and each one was stooped as if upon his shoulder the weight of the factory was
set.
The
three men entered one of the homes. Wordlessly, the woman of the house set
three more chairs by the table and placed three more dishes upon it. They ate
with the family in silence, and when night came they went to sleep by the
fireplace.
In
the morning they awoke and followed the family as they dressed and had
breakfast. When the whistle of the factory blew the family slowly filed out
into the street where hundreds of other families joined them in the procession
towards the factory. Wordlessly, Millet, Weaver and Johnson mingled with the
people, constantly alert for an eye that was not dull, for a face that had more
than a blank stare, but it was the same with everyone. Dull-blank
-mechanical - living dead —living machines.
They
gathered in long lines outside the factory, and when the second whistle blew
they marched slowly in.
The
three men watched them go ami when all had entered they followed. But instead
ol entering the plant itself, they walked into all the smaller rooms, hoping to
find some clue to the mystery.
On the third floor of the
factory, quite by surprise, they found her.
The door of a room was slightly ajar.
'There's some rooms here," Millet said,
"let's take a look."
Someone
inside must have heard them. The door suddenly closed. Millet walked up to it
and tried to open it, but it was locked.
"Strange," he
said, "the door was open a moment ago."
With
his shoulder he pushed tentatively. The wood was old and worn. He stepped back
and crashed into the door. It splintered and fell. Millet and the two men
entered the room.
Amazed,
they stared at the young girl who stood alone, back to the wall, facing them.
Her eyes and face did not bear that dull look which characterized every single
person in the city. Each movement of hers was cat-like and nervous as she moved
along the wall further away from them.
"Hello," Millet said softly.
"A voice!" she
said, "You speak!"
"Yes, of course we speak," Millet
said, walking a bit towards her. "Don't be afraid. We
won't hurt you." "You—you're from
the Outside!" she said, fearfully.
12-3
"We're
friends," Millet said, "We won't hurt you." "How did you
get here?" she asked suddenly. "By airplane.
We crashed . . ."
"Airplane! Bomber!" she said, her voice becoming
high pitched till it was almost a scream. "Then it's true what the books
said! You've come here to kill all of us! You came here to destroy the factory!
You came here to stop the machines! It's you who wanted the war!"
"No.
No." Millet insisted, "We are not going to do anything. Nothing, you
understand, nothing. There's no war going on. No
war."
'No
war!" she cried, "there's always war! Always! The Day will come, my
father told me and his lather told him. There's always war! ALWAYS! THE DAY HAS
COME!"
She
pressed herself against the wall, shrinking in terror, her knees weakening
until she knelt in the corner. Two tears rolled down her cheeks and then sobs
shook her body.
"Crazy
as a loon," Johnson whispered. Millet bent down and tried to soothe her.
"There's
nothing to be afraid of," he said softly. "We're not going to do
anything. Everything's all right. Just stop crying."
She
kept on sobbing and then, her confidence won, Millet put his arms around her
until her sobs died down.
"This
beats everything," Weaver said, scratching his head.
A
few minutes later the three men and the girl sat around the desk. Her face was
still wet with tears, but her fear was now gone.
"What's
your name?" Millet asked.
"I
have none," she said.
"You
were born here?"
"Of course!"
"What
do you do here?"
"Nothing. I'm the governor of the factory."
Millet
repressed a smile and continued. "Why does the factory run?"
"Everybody
knows that—to make airplanes."
"But all the airplanes are taken to the
other factory where they arc-simply taken apart! What's the sense to that?"
She
looked at him as if not understanding the question. He repeated it.
"Because," site said, "because
we've always done so. That's all! Everybody knows that!" "But why? Why?"
"1 don't know," she said sharply and irritated,
"I don't know!" "Did it ever," he said quietly, "occur
to you to stop the machines?" She stood up, pale with fright and anger.
"Stop
the machines?" she asked, trembling. "No! Nobody can do that! Nobody!
The factory must go on! It must! It always went on even when the bombers came.
Always! Always!"
She was almost hysterical. Millet soothed her
and turned to his friends.
"Now
try stopping the machines and see what happens!" he said. 'This girl is
almost normal; think of the others to whom the factory is their heart and soul
by birth."
"You're not going to
stop the factory! No! No!" she said, "you can't!"
"No," Millet
said, "we're not going to stop the factory."
"I
always knew," she said softly, "that The Day
would come. And it has come! It has come!"
"What Day has
come?" Millet asked her, "What Day?"
"The
Day when our bombers fly!" she said exultantly. "That Dayl I knew it
was here when I saw you enter the city!"
"You saw us enter
yesterday?" they asked, in great surprise.
"Yes!"
she said. "I knew. Today is the Day! I told them, the work-ingmen. that they should
let the bombers lly!"
"Fly?"
Millet asked. "Holy Sun! But
where? Those bombers fly blind. Their destination was set into the
controls over two hundred year ago! Even the moment that they drop their bombs
is all set!"
"To
the enemy!" she said, "They'll bomb his cities! Smash his factories!
Destroy his roads and communications! Destroy him!"
Leaving
her alone the three men rushed to one of the windows and looked out upon the
open field. The day before it was empty. Now, upon its
white level, were three large black bombing planes.
"They
mustn't lly!' Weaver said. "Heaven only knows upon what cities they'll
drop their bombs! What a ghastly tiling! Ghosts from the past destroying the
cities of today!"
Weaver
and Johnson rushed to the door but Millet soon called after them.
"It's too late!"
he said, "they're leaving!"
It
was true. From the window they could see the whirling blades of the propellers
as each bomber slowly moved along the runway and up into the air.
The
three bombers, like three strange birds, rose high and flew away over the
mountain-tops.
In
Millet's mind there was a strange thought. Three black bombing planes, relics
of the past, were bombing a glorious new city founded upon peace. What a
mockery!
But
perhaps the planes would never reach the city. Two hundred years had passed.
Perhaps the controls were worn. A wearing of a Hundredth of an inch and the
three bombers would miss their mark.
Perhaps—but the three planes were already
lost in the mists of the clouds. Even the roar of their motors had died away.
After two hundred years the
Day had come.
The Eno
125
^Jor Ifnl^iit treading entertainment, We J}n vile ^our
^Attention to ^lieie
1 FANTASY BOOKS
Selected from AVON'S J4unJr.rU of föctler-selling ^Jitfes
OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET.......................................................... C.
S. Lewis
One of the finest interplanetary novels ever written.
AVON GHOST READER...................................................................... Anthology
An
original collection featuring Lovecraft, Merritt, Heard and many more.
CREEP SHADOW CREEP.................................................................... A.
Merritt
An
eerie novel by die author of "The Moon Pool."
THE LURKING FEAR................................................................ H. P. Lovecraft
Eleven great horror stories by a modern Poe.
THE STONE OF CHASTITY....................................................... Margery
Sharp
A gay adventure about a rural legend and a modern experiment.
THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES............................................. Anthology
New fantasy stories by
Leiber, Long, Wellman, Tcnn, Miller and Grendon.
THE DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU.............................................. Sax
Rohmer
The
mystery of the East makes an unholy pact with die science of the West!
TERROR AT NIGHT............................................................................. Anthology
Great fantasy stories by
Dunsany, Wakefield, Lovecraft, Bierce, etc.
GLADIATOR .................................................................................. Philip
Wylk
A
powerful talc of a superman's struggle for world mastery.
25c per i "/"J
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AVON FANTASY READERS
are Still Available
If you've iimhhimI juiy of llu* previous uumherH, you will be pleancd l<>
know lli.il
llicrc are n limited number
of copies
slill available. Tlicy may not be
obtainable long, ami yon me
uracil i.. lake
advantage of this opporlunily
In acipiiie
ihene lancinating numbers:
No.. I. (Featuring
Merrill, Leinster, Hodgson, C. A.
Smith, «to.»
No. 2.
(Includes Keller,
Wright, Endore, How.ird, Flthar, tic.)
No. 3. (Merritt, Loveeraft,
Moore, Bradbury, Grcndon, etc.)
No. G. (Merritt, Williamson, Loveeraft, Hami'ion, McClu.ky, ele
»
No. T. (Rohmer,
Howard, Merritt, Maore, Long, etc.)
No. 8. (Flsgg, Howard, Bradbury, Blackwood,
Counsclman, etc.)
No. 9. (Kline, Hodgson, Wand.-el, Miller,
Leiber, etc.)
No. tO. (Jaoteson, Breuer, Howard, Loveeraft,
Morgan, etc.)
No. II. (Quinn, SSribiing, Bond,
Bradbury, Flagg, etc)
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Four Action-Packed AVON MYSTERIES
You'll
want to read these outstanding crime novels. Selected for their fast action and
unusual dramatic, mystery quality—they are especially recommended for your
reading pleasure.
THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE
by Robert C. Du See
A ruthless killer takes the wheel on a joy ride to Hell.
ALL DAMES ARE DYNAMITE
by Timothy Trent
A tough guy, a dance-hall cutie, and a murder
plot that went haywire.
LOUIS BERETTI
by Donald Henderson Clarke
The famous realistic novel of the rise and
bloody career of a two-fisted racketeer.
BLONDIE ISCARIOT
by Edgar Lustgarten
A
drama of a fascinating temptress who made herself queen of the
underworld—though her kiss was death!
Available at your local newsdealer at 25c per
copy, or from the. address given below
ar 5c extra per copy to cover the
cost of wrapping and forwarding.
AVON BOOK SALES CORP. 119 West 57th Street, New York 19, N. Y.
PARTIAL LIST OF BEST-SELLING TITLES
AVON BOOKS
139 W. Somerset Maugham....................................................................................................... Lisa of Lambeth
151 Eiskine Caldwell ................................................................................. Where
the Girls Were DiHerent
167
Emile Zola..............................................................................................................................................
Piping Hot
168
Maxwell Bodenheim.......................................................................................................................... Virtuous
Girl
169
Irving Shulman.....................................................................................................................
The Amboy Dukes
174 James M. Cain................................................................................................................................. Sinlul
Woman
177 Erskine Caldwell.......................................................................................................... Midsummer Passion
179
Edgar Lustgarten.......................................................................................................................
Blondie Iscariot
180
Guy Gilpaltick............................................................................................................................ French
Summer
182
Anthology New Avon Bedside Companion
183
David Dortott............... ................... .............. Burial ot
the Fruit
185 Nelson Algren.................................................................................................................. Never
Come Morning
187
Vina Dslmar................................................................... .......................................................... Love Trap
188
W. Somerset Maugham Fools and Their Folly
190
Ward Greene...................................................... The Life and
Loves of a Modern Mr. Bluebeard
191
Maxwell Bodenheim......................................................................................................... /replenishing
lessica
192
Katharine Brush Voung Man ol Manhattan
193
Donald Henderson Clarke Impatient Virgin
194
Anthology....................................................................................................... Avon
Book ol Western
Stories
197 Charles Peltit................................................ ....................................................... Son
ol the Grand Eunuch
200 Lawrence
Gould
your Most Intimate
Problems
202
loey Adams.............................................. ............................... ■............................... From Gags
to Riches
203
W. Somersrt Maugham............................. ............................................................................................ Quartet
204
Hugh Walpole............................................................. Portrait ol a Man with Bed Hair
205
Howard Fasl......................................... The Last Frontier
206
lacques-Rochette De La
Morlier? The Palace ot Pleasure
207
Nalhan Rolhman........................................................................................................................
Virgie Goodbye
208
Robert Du So*.................................................... ............................... ..
The Devil Thumbs a Bide
209
Vina Delmar ..................... ■ • • New Orleans Lady
210
Holon Topping M.ller............................................................. ...................... ....................... Wicked
Sister
211
Robert Bloch................................................................................................................................ Scarf ol Passion
212
W. R. Burnell ................................ Iron Man
213
Donald Henderson Clarke.............................................................................................................................. Nina
214
A. Merrill ........................................... ......... The Fox Woman and Other Stories
215
Ben Ames Williams .............................................................................. Ail the Brothers Were Valiant
216
Philip Wylle ................................................................................................................................... The Gladiator
217
Emily Hahn Miss /ill Irom Shanghai
218
Allred Drake Anyone Can Win at Gin flummy and Canasta
219
Raymond Chandler............................................................................................................................... Finger
Man
220
William Irish .....................................
' Married a Dead Man
221
Ludwig Lewlsohn ..................... ................................................. Don
/uan
222
Nolson Algron ....................................... ................ The Neon Wilderness
223
James Hlllon Three Loves Had Margaret
225
J. L. Stephenson Anyone Can Have a Great Vocabulary
226
Jerome Weldman.................................................................. ' Can Get It lor You Wholesale!
227
Dr. Anthony Bassltl.............................. ........................................ lust What the Doctor Ordered
228
Gilbert 4 Sullivan ................................
Book ol Gilbert <S Sullivan Operas
229
Anthology All About Girls
230
Anthology .... . . - ■ The Big Fights
232
Donald Henderson Clarke ..................................... Aiabam'
233
Robin Maugham ................ The Servant
234
Tittany Thayei ........................................................................... ................................... The Old Goal
MANY MORE IN PREPARATION
On
sale at your newsdealer or direct from Avon Book Sales Corp., 119 W. 57th St.. New York 19, N. Y. Enclose 25c per title plus 5c
each for wrapping and forwarding. /
WITCHERY AND THRILLS
The use
of siren
spells and love charms to
win endearment
and riches continues to
attract the mind and heart
of modern
men and women. For beneath the
surface of our workaday world, there flows deeply every
man's desire for romantic mastery and future fruitfulhess. The storied enchantment of witchcraft—of beautiful
princesses to be won by
valiant deeds—is Instilled in each of us
by the
mankind-old lore of the past. And
no matter
what the
nature of our everyday occupations, the longing
for mystic
thrills remains in full reign.
It is no wonder therefore that
fantasy, stories dealing with the witchery
of the
past and
the romantic
mystery of the future, continues to
dominate and fascinate the public.
WATCH FOR AVON FANTASY READER NO. 13
The next number,
now in
preparation, featuring:
THE LOVE-SLAVE AND THE SCIENTISTS by Frank Belknap Long—Love potions and secret kisses ceased to be
problems for the men and women of the year 5678—for the scientists thought they
had found the solution in—the Love-Slaves. But they failed to reckon with the
new passions of wives and the unstable emotions of lovers . . .
THE CURIOUS CASE OF NORTON HOORNE by
Ray Cum-mings: Wherein the love of a talented man breaks the veil of the
supernatural to reach a heart-shaking climax. A powerfully
emotional masterpiece.
THE SHIP OF SILENCE by Albert Richard Wetjen: In which a modern
"Marie Celeste" is boarded at sea by modern sailors determined to
settle an ancient mystery.
Also other excellent
fantasy "finds" by Donald Wandrei,
Beatrice Grimshaw, Sewell Peaslee
Wright, and many others.
OUT SOON
Ask Your Newsdealer fo Reserve a Copy for You
RUOR FRIITRSV
READER
Only 35c a Copy