by Don Wilcox
She edged toward the chasm to see how deep it was.
There was a slight rustle of noise, a little like rapid footsteps. She looked around. It must have come from down there—though not far down. It was like the close echoes of faraway sounds that you hear when you put a seashell to your ear.
“I won’t go on,” she murmured. “I’ll wait—”
There it came again, a pattering like rabbits’ feet. Could it be—
“Oh! Oh;”
The horrifying reality rose before her eyes like ogres springing out of a cauldron. Three snail-eaters bounded up out of the chasm. They seized her, slapped hands over her mouth to stifle her scream, and carried her away down a steep incline hidden within the dark chasm wall.
CHAPTER IX
The Beating of Hands
Prisoner! Worse—a plaything in the hands of murderous, snail-eating monsters, hideous freaks that thought of human beings in the same class with snails and worms and toads!
The horror was redoubled at every thought. There was no way for Bruce to guess what had happened. He would think she had hiked on. He would wonder why he didn’t find her. He might go on and on for miles . . . and then?
Then he would retrace his weary steps to look for some sign of her having taken the wrong course. All in all he might go mad trying to account for her.
If she only could have left some sign, some mark on the stone, a handkerchief, a sprig of foliage pointing—
If only she hadn’t walked ahead. She was angry at having had a sense of modesty; it was mockery that her habits from civilization should be her undoing here in the Mercury wilderness.
Then she thought of Major Vickering and her heart smouldered with hate. He had been at the bottom of all their troubles, right from the start. And still, simply because he was a human being-like themselves, he had been dealt favors and given one chance after another to come back into the fold of fair play.
What a strange thing it was, Mary thought, that human beings should go to such great pains to deal with each other on a friendly basis, even when the underlying evil of a person may be as well known as his face.
How much worse, Mary wondered, could these snail-eating fiends be than some human beings who played their fellows false?
The two ugly creatures who were leading her by the hand down this stony path had cruel and lustful faces. One of them had a pair of antennae rising out of his forehead; one had eyes and ears like a vampire bat.
These three creatures—the third was tagging along, clapping his great crusty hands together with each step—must have come from a strange breed of animal, partly monster, partly human. All three of them had the toes of huge birds, talons that clicked along over the stones like a number of clocks ticking in rhythm. All of them were partly naked, and the yellow and green scales covering their shoulders and back seemed to cast a light around them as the chasm path grew darker.
The daylight was now only a narrow jagged strip of white high above their heads. This descent had already taken them too far to be seen from the top, in the event that Bruce might be looking down for her.
She persuaded her captors to stop while she adjusted her shoe. The tacks were crowding their way up through the half-heel that remained. The days of rough hiking were playing havoc with her clothing.
About two hours later she arrived at what was evidently a snail-eater camp. It was well concealed in a dark cavern with huge stalactites and stalagmites to lend a weird grandeur to the scene.
They tied her to an upright stake in a lonely section of the cave, and for a time she was forgotten.
The jabber of these creatures was something to hear. There were hundreds of them gathered in this temporary stopping place, and they were all talking at once. The chief excitement was the news from the surface. A new band of scouts came back from some observation point with the warning that they were in danger of being passed by beetle-riding giants.
Mary listened intently. There was just enough of the potato giant in their language to enable her to keep up with the topic of conversation. But the details were too swift and too cluttered with excited words for her to be sure of them.
Her impression was that they expected the human scouts to be delayed by her capture. And so they were. They were still unaccountably stalled at a certain chasm—with the exception of one, who was racing around like a bee-stung frog searching for this lost girl.
All of which gave this congregation of snail-eaters a chance to rest and to feast upon snails, in order to be fresh for a continued journey through the night.
Mary then understood why there had been no previous encounters with these scaled creatures. Their luminous bodies lighted their way and enabled them to travel in the dark.
A crowd gathered around her after the feasting, and she supposed that her time had come. This was doubtless to be some sort of death ritual.
She stood looking out over the circle of ugly creatures. Her wrists and ankles throbbed from the bonds. She fought her suffering in silence. To cry out with pain might have given these brutes such satisfaction that they would have added torture upon torture to hear her voice. She had not forgotten her vocal experience with the potato giants.
Now she saw that they were not about to kill her; they were talking of selling her at an auction. This most diabolical of all the fiendish forms was evidently her owner. He was scorning the bids from those onlookers who would have liked to buy her. Some, in their bidding, would make signs with their fingers to indicate how many snails they would give. Others would emphasize their shouting by holding up the payments they could offer—specimens of huge frogs, turtles, over-developed rats, or big, fleshy pea-green worms.
The evil faced owner laughed at this demonstration. He indicated that such bids would be much too low.
There was a call to feast for all the camp and Mary was left alone.
What a strange society. She could see hundreds of these snail-eaters preparing to eat. Curiously they began by clapping their hands in a weird rhythm. There was a meaning to this. She had observed the same action in one of the scouts on the trip down the chasm when there had been talk of food.
And so she knew that it was a gesture akin to licking one’s chops or saying “Yum, yum. Food!”
The feast over, many of them again crowded close around her. A few of them opened up with this batting of hands. Was she, then, to be their dessert?
Her owner laughed at them. He made his own gestures and an abrupt speech to say he’d changed his mind; he would not sell after all. At least not today. For now it was time to gather up the goods and move on with speed toward the summit.
In the custody of this talon-toed owner Mary made the forced march. Her reluctance was as nothing against the eagerness with which these creatures were pressing toward their goal.
She hated their every look. The more she saw of them the more she was convinced that all their beastliness of scales, talons and inhuman faces and insect feelers were only an embodiment of their very evil natures.
This creature who owned her—could he ever have had a mother? Or ever have offered a prayer? Or ever have had once in a lifetime an emotion of compassion or tenderness? No symptom of goodness could have claimed one of his brutal and bestial character. In his sporting moments he would apply hot coals of fire to live frogs to watch them writhe. Mary would be treated to a sight of the sickening pain in the faces of the animals enduring this treatment.
Once one of the frogs struck at him, and then he ate the two legs off the creature alive.
Perhaps he read the fright in her face as he turned from this gruesome sport. “I will eat you next,” he said, and then he laughed and beat his hands together.
CHAPTER X
Mary Is Sold
Another day’s camp brought sale time, and the snail-eaters gathered in and talked in terms of high bids.
From the great stock of worms, rodents and reptiles that they exchanged on this occasion, Mary knew they must have storehouses of slimy things amo
ng these mountain caves. The jungle was far away now; but there was an industrious quality about these creatures and they had evidently prepared long in advance for a march along this route.
When the highest bids for Mary were declared, the owner refused them as too low. He would keep her until some of the stolen beetles were sold back to the enemy, whose caravan was known to be not far distant.
“Sell the beetles,” was the popular cry of the hour. “Let the giants grub to buy them back.”
These creatures knew well the giants’ passion for recovering their lost livestock. There was some question as to whether any giants would desert the march in favor of a trek to the nearest lowlands for more snails and lizards, even to buy back their beetles. But it was worth a try.
Accordingly a small expedition went forth, armed with poison-tipped spears and axes, to take some errant beetles back to market.
Mary overheard one of these say that he knew a certain Rippyick who had promised to exchange a human at any time—that jumping human with the red mouth—for any zwouffer that was returned.
Some of the snail-eaters looked dubious at the mention of the red-mouthed person. He was as active as a wild bird.
These exhibitions of faint-heartedness annoyed Mary’s owner; he himself would go with the party.
And so she was left in the charge of another demon with bright scales and a fishy-looking face and a gravel voice that froze her blood every time he spoke.
He didn’t beat his hands together at the sight of her, and that was some comfort. He was one of the many who never went through the motions of the feast gestures until the feast was set before them; and this, Mary gradually learned, was the customary practice.
But what he did do was sing, in his horrid gravel voice, with words that must have been inspired by creeping things out of the swamp.
When the beetle-selling expedition returned, Mary could “tell it had been a successful venture. There were echoes of resources within grasp that would buy dozens of her.
The beetles had been sold to Rippyick, trailing along at the rear of the potato giant caravan. Mary marvelled that such a transaction could be made when these enemies were supposedly at war. It was only Rippyick’s unaccountable character that could perpetrate such treasonable business.
The treasure kwazz now lay only three days’ journey away. The snail-eaters marched at night; they slept and feasted and bought and sold food in the daytimes. Frequently they would watch Mary as she ate her meals —or refused to eat, as was often the case. They seemed to be measuring her height and her proportions with their eyes.
“How soon,” she overheard one of them asking, “will she become as large as a mushroom?”
“She has not been eating so well,” said her owner’s gravel-voiced assistant. “But wait. I promise you she will become as huge as six mushrooms. That is the way with humans when they eat. Rippyick has told us this.”
“Will she not be sold until she is as huge as six mushrooms?” someone asked.
“She will be sold before we march again,” said the gravel-voiced assistant, “but she must be paid for as if already six mushrooms big.”
At this the potential buyers began to figure whether they would not be buying a whole season’s supply of food. At last all the resources of anticipated victory could be figured in the bidding. The auction was on, the bids mounted higher and higher.
The snail-eaters grew excited. Some of them began to beat their hands in rhythm as they shouted their offers.
Suddenly a voice from the outer edge of the group called.
“I have here a prize which matches value for value. I offer you this one for that one.”
Everyone turned. Mary’s eyes could barely catch the startling sight of these newcomers. They were Red Mouth and Bruce.
Red Mouth was shouting his offer. Bruce stood before him, hands bound at the small of his back to a vertical spear. A prisoner going to his execution? He looked it. Mary’s heart sank. Had Red Mouth betrayed them? Was he, like Rippyick, capable of striking bargains with the enemy? Mary could gladly have dropped away in a dead faint.
But just then Bruce caught her eye. His expression was so slight she couldn’t be quite sure at first. Then one of his eyelids flicked at her with a quick message. She knew. They had come for her.
CHAPTER XI
Flying Spears
Let it be a measure of the animal character of these scaled and taloned snail-eaters that they saw nothing but gain in the offer which Red Mouth made. It was, in their gluttonous eyes, simply a trade of one human being for another—a smaller one for a larger one. Was it not always a gain to trade something smaller for something larger?
Perhaps the fact that Red Mouth clutched a ready spear may have had something to do with the snail-eaters’ promptness to do business with him. There were many of them, only one of him, true. But Red Mouth’s agility was well known, and these creatures had a fearful respect for his uncanny skills. That spear, perhaps tipped with poison, might jump forward into the scales of any one of them. Sudden death was hardly a pleasant thought when one was contemplating a great feast of victory.
With Red Mouth they promptly did business.
“The trade is done,” said the gravel voice. “We will accept this big one. We will fatten him until he exceeds the fullness of nine mushrooms. We will not feed him herbs, as we have done with her, but will fatten him quickly on the choisest of pink snails.
Bruce bowed, apparently resigned to his fate.
“Send the girl to me first,” said Red Mouth.
“Send the large one over to me,” said the gravel voice, beckoning to Red Mouth.
The assembled groups watched nervously, looking from Red Mouth’s poised spear to their own gravel-voiced trader. Mary felt the knots being loosened at her wrists and ankles. She was commanded to walk.
She obediently moved toward Red Mouth’s corner of the crowd.
“Wait,” said the snail-eater suspiciously. “Not another step until the large one comes this way.”
Mary stopped, waited keeping her eyes on Bruce hoping for another cue.
Bruce played innocent. All eyes were on him. He took a step toward his new owner. He bore an attitude of servility that might have convinced the snail-eaters, but not Mary. She saw cold defiance back of his feigned cringing.
“Stop!” Red Mouth commanded in the language the snail-eaters could understand. “Before this trade is complete, where did you get this girl? Did you buy her, or did you steal her?”
“She came here willingly,” said one of the fiends, and all of them laughed a howling, weird, diabolical laugh.
“You stole her. You have no claim—”
Red Mouth did not bother to finish, for the older snail-eaters had suddenly lost their patience. They leaped up, shouting, “Your spears I Quick, your spears!”
Instantly the faked knot that bound Bruce’s hands loosened, his arm swung up free, his hand seized the spear to which he had been bound. He shouted, “Run, Mary, up the path! We’re with you!”
Mary ran. She screamed, too, a long and terribly intense scream. Not that she needed to, but because she remembered how it had frozen the giants.
At the same time Red Mouth cried a threat that the first creature who moved out of his tracks would get the poison spear through his body.
He didn’t make his bluff good. There was at once a great scampering from the outskirts of the crowd and from the camp beyond.
Bruce and Red Mouth ran, close on the heels of Mary. Neither had hurled his spear. Weapons were too few to be wasted.
Zing! Zing! Zing!
A hail of spears came through the air at them.
“That big rock, Mary,” Bruce called. “Get down!”
Mary and her two liberators huddled behind it. One spear chipped the crest of the protecting rock. The others fell short. Then Red Mouth leaped up and hurled his spear. It went straight through a snail-eater’s abdomen. A loud gravel voice cried out in pain. Simultaneously Bruce ga
ve his spear all his strength. It struck into the foreranks and pinned two of the fiends together. The phalanx momentarily fell back.
The three humans took that moment for another gain of distance. Up the narrowing path they ran.
Once a spear clipped the edge of Red Mouth’s prided belt with the metal ornament. Mary thought for an instant it had run through his body. But the three of them were still running when the pursuers fell back to take stock.
Mary reached the turn where a heap of rounded boulders had temporarily lodged. Like lumbermen releasing logs, she and Bruce and Red Mouth set them off. Down the path they went bouncing. Death went with them. The snail-eaters screamed in their own weird way. They scattered to break new paths in their swarm up the mountainside.
When the three humans reached the top they found tooth-and-nail combats on all sides. The potato giants had closed in on the ridge. The fury of war was on. At the head was the valiant Vammerick, leading ferocious attacks on the floodtide of the smaller creatures. Vammerick was sluggish but not lacking in nerve. Through the thick of the fighting, his old personal enemy Rippyick lagged at the rear of the caravan to watch the stock and keep his eyes open for possible spoils.
Giants fell, it seemed, almost as often as the snail-eaters. The big fellows were rather dependent upon their brute force, swinging right and left with their bare hands. The hideous creatures with the scales were not clever with their poison-tipped spears, but their targets were large. Whenever Mary looked back she would see a massive potato giant reel, lose his balance and slump down.
She was still running at Bruce’s side. They were getting away from the fighting, racing toward the summit.
“How are your feet?” Bruce called.
“Killing me. How do you know?”
“You lost a heel,” Bruce said, “right at the head of the chasm. Otherwise we mightn’t have found that hidden passage. We’ve been right with you for days, waiting for a break.”
