Walking rapidly at times, and even occasionally breaking into an undignified hop-skip-and-run, Captain Davenport inspected his ship’s deck.
“It is a matter of hours now, if not of minutes,” he announced on his return to the poop.
The cry of land came down from the masthead. From the deck the land was invisible, and McCoy went aloft, while the captain took advantage of the opportunity to curse some of the bitterness out of his heart. But the cursing was suddenly stopped by a dark line on the water which the sighted to the northeast. It was not a squall, but a regular breeze—the disrupted trade-wind, eight points out of its direction, but resuming business once more.
“Hold her up, captain,” McCoy said as soon as he reached the poop. “That’s the easterly point of Fakarava, and we’ll go in through the passage full tilt, and wind abeam, and every sail drawing.”
At the end of an hour, the coco-nut trees and the low-lying land were visible from the deck. The feeling that the end of the Pyrenees’ resistance was imminent weighed heavily on everybody. Captain Davenport had the three boats lowered and dropped short astern, a man in each to keep them apart. The Pyrenees closely skirted the shore, the surf-whitened atoll a bare two cablelengths away.
“Get ready to wear her, captain,” McCoy warned.
And a minute later the land parted, exposing a narrow passage and the lagoon beyond, a great mirror, thirty miles in length and a third as broad.
“Now, captain.”
For the last time the yards of the Pyrenees swung around as she obeyed the wheel and headed into the passage. The turns had scarcely been made, and nothing had been coiled down, when the men and mates swept back to the poop in panic terror. Nothing had happened, yet they averred that something was going to happen. They could not tell why. They merely knew that it was about to happen. McCoy started forward to take up his position on the bow in order to con the vessel in; but the captain gripped his arm and whirled him around.
“Do it from here,” he said. “That deck’s not safe. What’s the matter?” he demanded the next instant. “We’re standing still.”
McCoy smiled.
“You are bucking a seven-knot current, captain,” he said. “That is the way the full ebb runs out of this passage.”
At the end of another hour the Pyrenees had scarcely gained her length, but the wind freshened and she began to forge ahead.
“Better get into the boats, some of you,” Captain Davenport commanded.
His voice was still ringing, and the men were just beginning to move in obedience, when the amidship deck of the Pyrenees, in a mass of flame and smoke, was flung upward into the sails and rigging, part of it remaining there and the rest falling into the sea. The wind being abeam was what had saved the men crowded aft. They made a blind rush to gain the boats, but McCoy’s voice, carrying its convincing message of vast calm and endless time, stopped them.
“Take it easy,” he was saying, “Everything is all right. Pass that boy down somebody, please.”
The man at the wheel had forsaken it in a funk, and Captain Davenport had leaped and caught the spokes in time to prevent the ship from yawing in the current and going ashore.
“Better take charge of the boats,” he said to Mr. Konig. “Tow one of them short, right under the quarter. . . . When I go over, it’ll be on the jump.”
Mr. Konig hesitated, then went over the rail and lowered himself into the boat.
“Keep her off half a point, captain.”
Captain Davenport gave a start. He had thought he had the ship to himself.
“Ay, ay; half a point it is,” he answered.
Amidships, the Pyrenees was an open, flaming furnace, out of which poured an immense volume of smoke which rose high above the masts and completely hid the forward part of the ship. McCoy, in the shelter of the mizzen-shrouds, continued his difficult task of conning the ship through the intricate channel. The fire was working aft along the deck from the seat of explosion, while the soaring tower of canvas on the main-mast went up and vanished in a sheet of flame. Forward, though they could not see them, they knew that the headsails were still drawing.
“If only she don’t burn all her canvas off before she makes inside.” The captain groaned.
“She’ll make it,” McCoy assured him with supreme confidence. “There is plenty of time. She is bound to make it. And once inside, we’ll put her before it; that will keep the smoke away from us and hold back the fire from working aft.”
A tongue of flame sprang up the mizzen, reached hungrily for the lowest tier of canvas, missed it, and vanished. From aloft a burning shred of ropestuff fell square on the back of Captain Davenport’s neck. He acted with the celerity of one stung by a bee as he reached up and brushed the offending fire from his skin.
“How is the heading, captain?”
“Nor’-west by west.”
“Keep her west-nor’-west.”
Captain Davenport put the wheel up and steadied her.
“West by north, captain.”
“West by north she is.”
“And now west.”
Slowly, point by point, as she entered the lagoon, the Pyrenees described the circle that put her before the wind; and point by point, with all the calm certitude of a thousand years of time to spare, McCoy chanted the changing course.
“Another point, captain.”
“A point it is.”
Captain Davenport whirled several spokes over suddenly reversing and coming back one to check her.
“Steady.”
“Steady she is—right on it.”
Despite the fact that the wind was now astern, the heat was so intense that Captain Davenport was compelled to steal sidelong glances into the binnacle, letting go the wheel, now with one hand, now with the other, to rub or shield his blistering cheeks. McCoy’s beard was crinkling and shrivelling, and the smell of it, strong in the other’s nostrils, compelled him to look toward McCoy with sudden solicitude. Captain Davenport was letting go the spokes alternately with his hands in order to rub their blistering backs against his trousers. Every sail on the mizzen-mast vanished in a rush of flame, compelling the two men to crouch and shield their faces.
“Now,” said McCoy, stealing a glance ahead at the low shore, “four points up, captain, and let her drive.”
Shreds and patches of burning rope and canvas were falling about them and upon them. The tarry smoke from a smouldering piece of rope at the captain’s feet set him off into a violent coughing fit, during which he still clung to the spokes.
The Pyrenees struck, her bow lifted, and she ground ahead gently to a stop. A shower of burning fragments, dislodged by the shock, fell about them. The ship moved ahead again and struck a second time. She crushed the fragile coral under her keel, drove on, and struck a third time.
“Hard over,” said McCoy. “Hard over?” he questioned gently, a minute later.
“She won’t answer,” was the reply.
“All right. She is swinging around.” McCoy peered over the side. “Soft, white sand. Couldn’t ask better. A beautiful bed.”
As the Pyrenees swung around, her stern away from the wind, a fearful blast of smoke and flame poured aft. Captain Davenport deserted the wheel in blistering agony. He reached the painter of the boat that lay under the quarter, then looked for McCoy, who was standing aside to let him go down.
“You first,” the captain cried, gripping him by the shoulder and almost throwing him over the rail. But the flame and smoke were too terrible, and be followed hard after McCoy, both men wriggling on the rope and sliding down into the boat together. A sailor in the bow, without waiting for orders, slashed the painter through with his sheath-knife. The oars, poised in readiness, bit into the water, and the boat shot away.
“A beautiful bed, captain,” McCoy murmured, looking back.
“Ay, a beautiful bed, and all thanks to you,” was the answer.
The three boats pulled away for the white beach of pounded coral, beyond which, on th
e edge of a coco-nut grove, could be seen a half-dozen grasshouses, and a score or more of excited natives, gazing wide-eyed at the conflagration that had come to land.
The boats grounded and they stepped out on the white beach.
“And now,” said McCoy, “I must see about getting back to Pitcairn.”
TARZAN OF THE APES
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
In the forest of the table-land a mile back from the ocean old Kerchak the Ape was on a rampage of rage among his people.
The younger and lighter members of his tribe scampered to the higher branches of the great trees to escape his wrath; risking their lives upon branches that scarce supported their weight rather than face old Kerchak in one of his fits of uncontrolled anger.
The other males scattered in all directions, but not before the infuriated brute had felt the vertebra of one snap between his great, foaming jaws.
A luckless young female slipped from an insecure hold upon a high branch and came crashing to the ground almost at Kerchak’s feet.
With a wild scream he was upon her, tearing a great piece from her side with his mighty teeth, and striking her viciously upon her head and shoulders with a broken tree limb until her skull was crushed to a jelly.
And then he spied Kala, who, returning from a search for food with her young babe, was ignorant of the state of the mighty male’s temper until suddenly the shrill warnings of her fellows caused her to scamper madly for safety.
But Kerchak was close upon her, so close that he had almost grasped her ankle had she not made a furious leap far into space from one tree to another— a perilous chance which apes seldom if ever take, unless so closely pursued by danger that there is no alternative.
She made the leap successfully, but as she grasped the limb of the further tree the sudden jar loosened the hold of the tiny babe where it clung frantically to her neck, and she saw the little thing hurled, turning and twisting, to the ground thirty feet below.
With a low cry of dismay Kala rushed headlong to its side, thoughtless now of the danger from Kerchak; but when she gathered the wee, mangled form to her bosom life had left it.
With low moans, she sat cuddling the body to her; nor did Kerchak attempt to molest her. With the death of the babe his fit of demoniacal rage passed as suddenly as it had seized him.
Kerchak was a huge king ape, weighing perhaps three hundred and fifty pounds. His forehead was extremely low and receding, his eyes bloodshot, small and close set to his coarse, flat nose; his ears large and thin, but smaller than most of his kind.
His awful temper and his mighty strength made him supreme among the little tribe into which he had been born some twenty years before.
Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all the mighty forest through which he roved that dared contest his right to rule nor did the other and larger animals molest him.
Old Tantor, the elephant, alone of all the wild savage life, feared him not— and he alone did Kerchak fear. When Tantor trumpeted, the great ape scurried with his fellows high among the trees of the second terrace.
The tribe of anthropoids over which Kerchak ruled with an iron hand and bared fangs, numbered some six or eight families, each family consisting of an adult male with his wives and their young, numbering in all some sixty or seventy apes.
Kala was the youngest wife of a male called Tublat, meaning broken nose, and the child she had seen dashed to death was her first; for she was but nine or ten years old.
Notwithstanding her youth, she was large and powerful—a splendid, clean-limbed animal, with a round, high forehead, which denoted more intelligence than most of her kind possessed. So, also, she had a greater capacity for mother love and mother sorrow.
But she was still an ape, a huge, fierce, terrible beast of a species closely allied to the gorilla, yet more intelligent; which, with the strength of their cousin, made her kind the most fearsome of those awe-inspiring progenitors of man.
When the tribe saw that Kerchak’s rage had ceased they came slowly down from their arboreal retreats and pursued again the various occupations which he had interrupted.
The young played and frolicked about among the trees and bushes. Some of the adults lay prone upon the soft mat of dead and decaying vegetation which covered the ground, while others turned over pieces of fallen branches and clods of earth in search of the small bugs and reptiles which formed a part of their food.
Others, again, searched the surrounding trees for fruits, nuts, small birds, and eggs.
They had passed an hour or so thus when Kerchak called them together, and with a word of command to them to follow him, set off toward the sea.
They traveled for the most part upon the ground, where it was open, following the path of the great elephants whose comings and goings break the only roads through those tangled mazes of bush, vine, creeper, and tree. When they walked it was with a rolling, awkward motion, placing the knuckles of their closed hands upon the ground and swinging their ungainly bodies forward.
But when the way was through the lower trees they moved more swiftly, swinging from branch to branch with the agility of their smaller cousins, the monkeys. And all the way Kala carried her little dead baby hugged closely to her breast.
It was shortly after noon when they reached a ridge overlooking the beach where below them lay the tiny cottage which was Kerchak’s goal.
He had seen many of his kind go to their deaths before the loud noise made by the little black stick in the hands of the strange white ape who lived in that wonderful lair, and Kerchak had made up his brute mind to own that death-dealing contrivance, and to explore the interior of the mysterious den.
He wanted, very, very much, to feel his teeth sink into the neck of the queer animal that he had learned to hate and fear, and because of this, he came often with his tribe to reconnoiter, waiting for a time when then white ape should be off his guard.
Of late they had quit attacking, or even showing themselves; for every time they had done so in the past the little stick had roared out its terrible message of death to some member of the tribe.
To-day there was no sign of the man about, and from where they watched they could see that the cabin door was open. Slowly, cautiously, and noiselessly they crept through the jungle toward the little cabin.
There were no growls, no fierce screams of rage—the little black stick had taught them to come quietly lest they awaken it.
On, on they came until Kerchak himself slunk stealthily to the very door peered within. Behind were two males, and then Kala, closely straining the little dead form to her breast.
Inside the den they saw the strange white ape lying half across a table, his head buried in his arms; and on the bed lay a figure covered by a sail cloth, while from a tiny rustic cradle came the plaintive wailing of a babe.
Noiselessly Kerchak entered, crouching for the charge; and then John Clayton rose with a sudden start and faced them.
The sight that met his eyes must have frozen him with horror, for there, within the door, stood three great bull apes, while behind them crowded many more; how many he never knew, for his revolvers were hanging on the far wall beside his rifle, and Kerchak was charging.
When the king ape released the limp form which and been John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, he turned his attention toward the little cradle; but Kala was there before him, and when he would have grasped the child she snatched it herself, and before he could intercept her she had bolted through the door and taken refuge in a high tree.
As she took up the little live baby of Alice Clayton she dropped the dead body of her own into the empty cradle; for the wail of the living had answered the call of universal motherhood within her wild breast which the dead could not still.
High up among the branches of a mighty tree she hugged the shrieking infant to her bosom, and soon the instinct that was as dominant in this fierce female as it had been in the breast of his tender and beautiful mother—the instinct of mother love—reached out to t
he tiny man-child’s half-formed understanding, and he became quiet.
Then hunger closed the gap between them, and the son of an English lord and an English lady nursed at the breast of Kala, the great ape.
In the meantime the beasts within the cabin were warily examining the contents of this strange lair.
Once satisfied that Clayton was dead, Kerchak turned his attention to the thing which lay upon the bed, covered by a piece of sailcloth.
Gingerly he lifted one corner of the shroud, but when he saw the body of the woman beneath he tore the cloth roughly from her form and seized the still, white throat in his huge, hairy hands.
A moment he let his fingers sink deep into the cold flesh, and then, realizing that she was already dead, he turned from her, to examine the contents of the room; nor did he again molest the body of either Lady Alice or Sir John.
The rifle hanging upon the wall caught his first attention; it was for this strange, death-dealing thunder-stick that he had yearned for months; but now that it was within his grasp he scarcely had the temerity to seize it.
Cautiously he approached the thing, ready to flee precipitately should it speak in its deep roaring tones, as he had heard it speak before, the last words to those of his kind who, through ignorance or rashness, had attacked the wonderful white ape that had borne it.
Deep in the beast’s intelligence was something which assured him that the thunder-stick was only dangerous when in the hands of one who could manipulate it, but yet it was several minutes ere he could bring himself to touch it.
Instead, he walked back and forth along the floor before it, turning his head so that never once did his eyes leave the object of his desire.
Using his long arms as a man uses crutches, and rolling his huge carcass from side to side with each stride, the great king ape paced to and fro, uttering deep growls, occasionally punctuated with the earpiercing scream, than which there is no more terrifying noise in all the jungle.
Presently he halted before the rifle. Slowly he raised a huge hand until it almost touched the shining barrel, only to withdraw it once more and continue his hurried pacing.
The Best Adventure and Exploration Stories Ever Told Page 23
