What was she to Gazda but a woman? And what was he but a man of the jungle—here so beautiful, born of nature—a lord and master. Who could dare to judge them in his realm bereft of law and convention, and the stifling nature of someone else’s broken promise?
A promise that had long ago lost all meaning. Never had those foolish words caused her skin to flame and flesh to tremble as they did now before her wild man’s eyes.
The promise had been empty of life and of passion.
Yet here was Gazda in living, indomitable flesh, both of these things.
Memory was death, he was the life.
The wild man’s eyes gleamed hungrily. He shifted his position, panting rapidly, his excitement growing between them.
He kissed and licked her mouth and throat, and all the while a deep growl rumbled in his mighty chest. His muscles shivered with unstoppable power, and yet his fingers caressed her with a gentle stroke.
The full lips pressed her neck, and then he pulled away, his perfect face looking down upon her—hesitant, a moment. His body trembling.
Virginia closed her eyes as happy tears slid over her cheeks, and she lifted her head to press her lips to his strong jaw.
“How I have longed to see your face appear from the gray loneliness that shrouds my life,” Virginia whispered in his ear, before she lay back to stare at the wild man’s fiery eyes. “A fog has ever closed in to suffocate all hopes. I was wrong to wait for a man who did not love me.”
He watched her, brow furrowing, lips moving mutely over something—understanding, perhaps—was he trying to understand? Or were his lips now moving over her words, silently repeating what she had just said?
“Gazda,” he said gruffly, finally, pausing a moment before rising up on one elbow to point at his chest repeating, “Gazda.”
“Your name or your heart? I never asked...” Virginia followed his gesture, before sliding her own white fingers over her naked left breast. “In your arms, Gazda, Virginia is one and the same.”
CHAPTER 21 – Ship of the Trees
The ranger remembered leaving his friends in the tree house and leading Jacob on a search for Virginia through the dark until sunrise, before carrying on from there at a stagger until the early afternoon when they walked right into an ambush.
He should have stopped to rest well before that, and he blamed his exhaustion for leaving them open to attack. Jacob couldn’t be faulted. He was a butler for God’s sake. Of African origin or not, the man was out of his element here, better suited to pouring tea and no more at home in the jungle than the tattered suit that was draped over his angular frame.
Seward looked down at his own disheveled state. His boots were caked with mud, the knees were out of his pants, buttons off his vest, and his shirt sleeves were shredded to the elbow. He couldn’t even remember what had happened to his jacket.
Damn it all! He was a former Texas Ranger and he should have known better. While he’d never dealt with savages as queer as those that currently held him captive, he had fought wild men back home, and should have remembered the dangers of trespassing in their lands.
So what had he found on this search?
He had no idea if these masked men had kidnapped Miss James and now he’d likely never know.
And if he was honest, the ranger knew his predicament was the result of his being tired. He wouldn’t have run blindly through the jungle 20 or even ten years before.
He just wouldn’t.
Seward was getting old, and prideful, and in the end his recklessness had only proven that he didn’t want to admit it.
So, age and decrepitude be damned, he’d have to think of a way out of this if he wanted to come square with his ego and wear his pride the way he liked.
After the fight, Seward had awakened tied hand and foot to a pole that was carried over the shoulders of a couple of brawny savages. That was sometime in the afternoon—late—and his head had been throbbing.
The bindings at his ankles and wrists were painful, but without any means of escape, he had arranged himself in such a way that would minimize the discomfort and conserve the energy he had left. He knew that would never restore him, but it was better than what was yet to come.
It might have been his wounds or exhaustion or the rocking motion of the warriors who slung him along, but Seward somehow fell into a restless sleep.
Only to awaken some time just before nightfall to see a resolute and hard-eyed Jacob tied to a pole on the ground beside him. Both men had been cut free of their “carrying poles,” at that time, given water and a few mouthfuls of some kind of bread before having their hands tied across their bellies and their necks lashed together with an eight-foot length of rope.
Jacob brought up the rear and Seward led after the savages whipped them with branches to get them onto their feet and push them forward at a jog.
Seward kept up with his captors, forcing his muscles to work by focusing on the scarred back of the skull-faced devil that ran before him, all the while planning the ways he’d murder the heathen if given the chance.
They were forced to travel this way for hours, jogging and marching at a pace that had the old ranger feeling every scratch, blister and bruise and pining for his carrying pole. Behind him, Jacob suffered along in silence as was the black man’s ability to do, though the sheen of perspiration on his brow, and his forlorn expression suggested he was also worn down to the nub.
Regardless, Seward credited the man’s steel for rarely did he lag and force the rope between them to tighten.
The masked men stopped at regular intervals to rest, chew up strips of jerky and share around flasks containing a tarry liquor that stung the lips and tongue so bad it had to be chased down with water.
Both Seward and Jacob relished the dried meat, and though the drink was a challenge to swallow, they found it invigorated their bodies, bringing them back a step or two from the grave and energizing them enough to make the next few miles at a stagger.
There were only ten savages left in the group that separated into even numbers ahead of and behind the captives who jogged between them. All of the masked men took turns on the pole in back from which the wretched ape’s head dangled in a cloud of flies.
Well before they’d lost the light, and Seward drifted into a hazy, timeless place of constant movement and pain, he had a chance to study his captors.
They wore leather loincloths over crudely fashioned woven britches that came down to the knee. While all had chest protectors of sticks and bones, and others grassy capes—the leader had a coat that was cut at the waist in front, but hung down to his knees in the back—a fashion that reminded the ranger of the tailcoats worn by soldiers of rank and favored by some of the high-born he’d seen at play in London.
The savages wore wooden masks carved and made to resemble oversized grinning skulls with a pair of crossed long bones cut into the wood beneath the chin. Long bunches of grass and hair hung down to hide the back of their heads like a wig.
At the first rest stop, the warriors had lifted their masks to eat, and both Seward and Jacob had seen the disfigured faces hidden beneath. For the youngest it was little more than a purplish scar or rotten wound on cheek or forehead; while the older savages showed missing lips, dripping blisters and lifeless eyes.
Seward did not know if the injuries had come from war or sickness, but he was relieved when the masks were set back over the wild men’s faces.
For weapons, they all carried clubs or axes and most had bows and arrows. About half of them had tall leaf-shaped shields.
The rest of the night was a torment to Seward as he jogged with thoughts coming like dreams, and in them he saw old friends from his rangering days who talked about action on the southern border.
“Saddle up,” they’d say but he’d suddenly remember that his friends were dead.
Which left, Seward waking up to find himself on his face in the mud on a riverbank, mumbling to the ghosts of his compadres as his captors whipped and beat hi
m to his feet again.
Then after a quick, thick gulp of their foul tonic, he’d push on.
At sunup he had a moment’s clarity to look back and see Jacob there, face ashen, stumbling after him.
“Sorry to see you ain’t dead,” the ranger had drawled. “I reckon that’s the best we can hope for.”
It was mid-morning when the group struggled through a shallow, foggy stream and came to a halt on the pale clay slope of the opposite shore. There the early light and mist played eerily across their captors’ savage masks.
With a glance at these, and a look at the village where the fog rose around a fence of poles, Seward shouted through his exhaustion.
“Well, I didn’t get the joke, but there it is! Skull and crossbones!” he cackled, mad with exhaustion. A puzzle had preyed upon his mind. Black flags similarly decorated had once flown from the masts of pirate ships along the Gulf Coast. “These ain’t savages, they’re sailors—and that’s their boat!”
With his bound hands he pointed at the “village” that was protected by a palisade of tightly spaced and rounded timbers of 20 feet and more in height. They were lashed together up to their pointed ends to form a wall that from Seward’s vantage point rose to left and right in the distinct outline of a ship.
Behind the palisade, three-masts were evenly spaced along the construction’s length and towered over the surroundings, rising up to almost touch the leafy jungle canopy that closed at intervals overhead.
To Seward’s left, the stern stood some 30 feet tall in defense of a solid structure on stilts that resembled a poop deck, while on his right the prow was raised skyward and held aloft a great elephant’s skull with curved tusks.
“Dear Lord, I’m crazy or I’ve gone to Hell,” the old ranger muttered, and then laughed dangerously as he rolled his eyes at Jacob. “It’s anchors aweigh!”
“But...but—how can this be?” the manservant gasped, wincing.
Seward staggered in place glancing at Jacob who stood wide eyed, and back again to the unbelievable ship in the misty jungle. He imagined the uncanny thing rising and falling on frothy green waves.
Voices rang within, and men scurried down from the center mast while others of these fellows shinnied up ropes, and climbed upon a spider web of rigging that was slung between the three uprights, in place for doing all manner of business.
The knotted lines on the foremast looked to be used by the butcher for large string bags of meat were hanging there, while over the stern, reams of colored cloth fluttered in odd shapes and sheets—freshly dyed perhaps, or new-washed.
The leader of their captors shouted something in his sing-song gab, and there was sudden movement behind the wall before a gate swung open, hung from pillars center to the ship’s starboard side.
“It is a boat, Captain,” Jacob whispered, as the large door was pushed wide and the dying fog was swept away like a rolling tide.
A group of warriors ran out with weapons raised, while others—women and children by their size and shape—cowered back behind the gate posts.
Those and some of the men who exited the palisade had changed out their wooden masks for face paint applied to resemble the same naked human skulls that was apparently the height of fashion in those parts.
In the light of day it was plain to see that like their captors these folk showed dark skin between festering wounds and tattoos in the gaps next to iron arm and leg bands, clothing and grime.
These people weren’t strictly black and were of mixed race that back home in Texas would have been called mulattos, half-breeds or worse.
The ranger had a few choice names for these ones himself.
The leader of Seward’s group shouted and talked it up in a volume over those who approached, and soon the hunters bearing the great ape’s head came forward from the rear to set the grisly object out for all to see.
The result was immediate. A roar of terror sent the crowd of savages springing back from the rotting thing like they half-expected it might come to life.
But the shock wore off quickly, and soon the others at the gate: men, women, young and old, and children came forward, and many of these wore little or no face paint or mask, though Seward wished they had for in the growing light, he saw that all were marked with boils, and scars and festering wounds.
The worst cases were the oldest—man and woman, gray-haired and toothless. These misshapen sufferers came hobbling out and Seward wondered again what disease or curse lay over the village to afflict them so, that scarred their bodies and twisted them up like sun-baked corpses.
The people gathered around the severed head, and formed a circle talking, their tones swinging from overjoyed to terrified...
...until three strange looking men forced their way through the throng.
One fellow was much taller than the rest, and while his clothing was similar to the others: beaded tailcoat, leather britches, a sword and scabbard; he wore a big three-pointed hat on his head that again put Seward in mind of soldiers and sailors of rank.
A half-skull mask covered each of their faces down to the cheekbones and a thick braided beard grew from there almost to their waists.
Another fellow like the tall man hung back a ways. The hat perched on his greasy hair was of four-points and made from fur.
“It’s the Devil’s costume party,” Seward muttered as the third fellow moved forward and knelt by the ape’s head.
This one wore a long waistcoat that swept down close to his ankles, and tight snakeskin pants below to cover his skinny legs. A battered quadrant hung from a cord around his neck, and he held an old spyglass in his right hand.
A simple round hat with narrow brim was pulled tight over his skull.
As the tall man knelt beside him, this strange fellow lifted the spyglass to his eye and ran its lens over the severed head for a minute or two, all the while jabbering and groaning like an Indian medicine man with bits of chatter going back and forth with his companion.
Then this chap, the medicine man for so Seward thought him, rose up to his full height where with spyglass held high, he shouted something to the gathering that was answered by a great joyful cry.
And the savages began to dance en masse in a way that was strangely familiar.
“Now they’re doing jigs,” Seward hissed, winking at Jacob. “Next they’ll square dance, I reckon.”
“Reminds me of Galveston now,” Jacob came close to whisper. “Old Mr. Quarrie had us loading ships and the sailors worked and sang at the same time.”
Seward only nodded uncomfortably. He didn’t like the Quarries’ manservant reminding him he was a freed slave. That’s what Jacob always meant when he used the word “us” to mean “us slaves.” Like many Texans, the ranger was still uncomfortable with the notion.
True, Jacob was a decent fellow and a hard worker, but Seward didn’t see any point to throwing “liberty” on top of the man’s burdens.
As he heard the tale, the Quarries had treated him well in their service—free man or not.
A few of the masked men grabbed up the grisly head and lifted it high as they jigged forward with the others toward the gate. Somewhere in back of those, drums were beating, and flutes trilled shrilly with the chanting horde...
...Seward was almost pulled off his feet as the tall savage in the admiral’s hat grabbed up the rope that bound the captives and yanked it with both hands.
He rasped something unintelligible.
“You and me, Admiral Nelson!” Seward growled as he regained his balance, twisting his bindings as he lunged forward, but other savages heaved him back. “Ropes be damned, I’m ready for you.”
The savage Nelson growled something and passed the rope off to another skull-faced heathen. He then pointed at the Texan, and Seward couldn’t miss the man’s twisted finger suddenly sliding down from his chest to gesture between his legs.
Nelson grumbled something to the priest and the pair of them walked away laughing.
“I don’t like the
direction that conversation took,” Seward rasped.
“Captain, what will we do?” Jacob asked, still close by his ear. “We can’t fight our way out.”
“You might be surprised,” Seward answered. His blood was up, and he was ready to kill. As he cast his eyes left and right in search of ready foes, the growing daylight illuminated a certain uncomfortable truth.
At a distance, he’d seen that the “made-up” savages from behind the palisade shared a liking for a singular bead with each wearing strings of them, while others had woven them into garments.
The beads were unusual and it was a moment before Seward finally realized they were human finger bones!
CHAPTER 22 – Miss James’ Dilemma
Gazda carried Virginia down out of the trees cooing softly, cradling her the way a she-ape would embrace a babe. The wild man kept that gentle iron grip upon her until he took a final leap from the lowest branches and landed where the long grass grew waist high.
He set her carefully upon her feet, then looked across the clearing and up at the overcast sky. The clouds were bright directly overhead, masking the noonday sun. The wild man hooted worriedly, hesitating, but the governess slipped her fingers around his corded right wrist and pulled, coaxing him forward.
She knew his hesitation could not come from fear, so she supposed that his isolated life among the trees had left him shy or superstitious.
He did not resist her encouragement and soon walked with her in his way, swaying side to side like the upright gait was unfamiliar to him. He seemed more comfortable on all fours, though his height, thick torso and arms might have exaggerated his top-heavy and unbalanced movements.
Gazda had seemed confused when she earlier implored him to take her home—to the others—and she suspected that for a time he had purposefully misunderstood her. However, it had only taken a moment’s break in her fortitude—with tears—to make him relent.
Dracula of the Apes 3 Page 17
