“Here, pretty, pretty!” our captor called, leaning forward between two columns. “Come up and see the brave white men who may come to play with you. Here, pretty pet; come up, come up!”
We stared into the purple waters like lost souls gazing on the hell prepared for them, but no motion agitated the depths.
“Sulky brute!” the half-caste exclaimed, and snatched a pistol from the girdle of one of his attendants. “Come up,” he repeated harshly. “Damn you, come when I call!” He tossed the weapon into the pool below.
De Grandin and I uttered a gasp of horror in unison, and I felt his nails bite into my arm as his strong slender fingers gripped me convulsively.
AS THOUGH THE PISTOL had been superheated and capable of setting the water in the cave boiling by its touch, the deep, blue-black pool beneath us suddenly woke to life. Ripples—living, groping ripples—appeared on the pool’s smooth face and long, twisting arms, sinuous as snakes, thick as fire-hose, seemed waving just under the surface, flicking into the air now and again and displaying tentacles roughened with great, wart-like protuberances. Something like a monster bubble, transparent-gray like a jelly-fish, yet, oddly, spotted like an unclean reptile, almost as big around as the umbrellas used by teamsters on their wagons in summer-time, and, like an umbrella, ribbed at regular intervals, rose from the darker water, and a pair of monstrous, hideous white eyes, large as dinner plates, with black pupils large as saucers, stared greedily, unwinkingly, at us.
“Nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu!” de Grandin breathed. “The sea-devil; the giant octopus!”
“Quite so,” Goonong Besar agreed affably, “the giant octopus. What he grasps he holds forever, and he grasps all he can reach. A full-grown elephant thrown into that water would have no more chance of escape than a minnow—or, for unpleasant example, than you gentlemen would. Now, perhaps you realize why Captain Van Thun and his first officer wished they had chosen to enter my—er—employ, albeit in a somewhat extraordinary capacity. I did not afford them a chance of viewing the alternative beforehand, as I have you, however. Now that you have had your chance, I am sure you will take the matter under serious advisement before you refuse.
“There is no hurry; you will be given all tonight and tomorrow to arrive at a decision. I shall expect your answer, at dinner tomorrow. Good gentlemen, my boys will show you to your room. Good night, and—er—may I wish you pleasant dreams?”
With a mocking laugh he stepped quickly back into the shadows, we heard the sound we had come to recognize as the closing of one of the hidden stone doors, and found ourselves alone upon the balcony over-looking the den of the giant octopus.
“Bon Dieu!” de Grandin cried despairingly, “Trowbridge, my friend, they make a mistake, those people who insist the devil dwells in hell. Parbleu! What is that?”
The noise which startled him was the shuffling of bare brown feet. The tongueless youths who acted as our valets de chambre were coming reluctantly toward us down the passageway, their eyes rolling in fearful glances toward the balustrade beyond which the devil of the sea lurked in his watery lair.
“En bien,” the Frenchman shrugged, “it is the two devilkins again. Lead on, mes enfants; any place is better than this threshold of hell.”
7
“AND NOW,” HE ANNOUNCED as he dropped into one of the bedroom’s wicker chairs and lighted a cigarette, “we are in what you Americans would call a tight fix, Friend Trowbridge. To accede to that half-caste hellion’s proposition would be to dishonor ourselves forever—that is unthinkable. But to be eaten up by that so infernal octopus, that, too, is unthinkable. Morbleu, had I known then what I know now I should have demanded one thousand pounds a day from those Messieurs Lloyd and then refused their offer. As your so splendid soldiers were wont to say during the war, we are, of a surety, S.O.L., my friend.”
Beneath the bamboo bedstead across the room a slight rustling sounded. I looked apathetically toward the bed, indifferent to any fresh horror which might appear; but, wretched as I was, I was not prepared for the apparition which emerged.
Stripped of her gorgeous raiment of pineapple gauze, a sarong and jacket of the cheapest native cotton inadequately covering her glorious body, an ivory-wood button replacing her diamond nose-stud, her feet bare and no article of jewelry adorning her, Miriam, the dancer, crept forth and flung herself to her knees before de Grandin.
“Oh, Monsieur,” she begged in a voice choked with tears, “have pity on me, I implore you. Be merciful to me, as you would have another in your place be pitiful to your sister, were she in mine.”
“Morbleu, child, is it of me you ask pity?” de Grandin demanded. “How can I, who can not even choose my own death, show compassion to you?”
“Kill me,” she answered fiercely. “Kill me now, while yet there is time. See, I have brought you this”—from the folds of her scanty sarong she drew a native kris, a wavy-bladed short sword with a razor edge and needle point.
“Stab me with it,” she besought, “then, if you wish, use it on your friend and yourself; there is no other hope. Look about you, do not you see there is no way of dying in this prison room? Once on a time the mirror was of glass, but a captive white man broke it and almost succeeded in cutting his wrists with the pieces until he died. Since then Goonong Besar has had a metal mirror in this room.”
“Pardieu, you are right, child!” de Grandin agreed as he glanced at the dressing table over which the metal mirror hung. “But why do you seek death? Are you, too, destined for the octopus?”
She shuddered. “Some day, perhaps, but while I retain my beauty there is small fear of that. Every day old Umera, the one-eyed she-devil, teaches me to dance, and when I do not please her (and she is very hard to please) she beats me with bamboo rods on the soles of my feet till I can scarcely bear to walk. And Goonong Besar makes me dance for him every night till I am ready to drop, and if I do not smile upon him as I dance, or if I grow weary too soon, so that my feet lag before he gives me permission to stop, he beats me.
“Every time a ship is caught in his trap he saves some of the officers and makes me dance before them, and I know they are to be fed to the fish-devil, yet I must smile upon them, or he will beat me till my feet bleed, and the old woman will beat me when he is weary of it.
“My father was French, Monsieur, though I, myself, was born in England of a Spanish mother. We lost all our money in the war, for my father kept a goldsmith’s shop in Rheims, and the sale boche stole everything he had. We came to the islands after the war, and my father made money as a trader. We were returning home on the Dutch ship Van Damm when Goonong Besar caught her in his trap.
“Me he kept to be taught to dance the dances of the islands and to be tortured—see, he has put a ring in my nose, like a native woman’s.” She lifted a trembling hand to the wooden peg which kept the hole pierced in her nose from growing together when she was not wearing her jeweled stud. “My father—oh, God of Israel!—he fed to the devil-fish before my eyes and told me he would serve me the same way if I proved not submissive to his will in all things.
“And so, Monsieur,” she ended simply, “I would that you cause me to die and be out of my unhappiness.”
As the girl talked, de Grandin’s face registered every emotion from amazement to horror and compassion. As she completed her narrative he looked thoughtful. “Wait, wait, my pretty one,” he besought, as she would have forced the kris into his hand. “I must think. Pardieu! Jules de Grandin, you silly fool, you must think now as never before.” He sank his face in his hands and bowed his chin nearly to his knees.
“Tell me, my little cabbage,” he demanded suddenly, “do they let you out of this accurst house by daylight, hein?”
“Oh, yes,” she responded. “I may go or come as I will when I am not practicing my dances or being beaten. I may go anywhere on the island I wish, for no one, not even the cannibals who live on the shore, would dare lay his little finger on me for fear of the master. I belong to Goonong Besar, and he woul
d feed anyone who touched his property to the great fish-devil.”
“And why have you never sought to die by your own hand?” de Grandin asked suspiciously.
“Jews do not commit suicide,” she answered proudly. “To die by another’s hand is not forbidden—Jephthah’s daughter so died—but to go from life with your hands reddened with your own blood is against the law of my fathers.”
“Ah, yes, I understand,” he agreed with a short nod. “You children of Jacob shame us so-called Christians in the way you keep your precepts, child. Eh bien, ’tis fortunate for all us you have a strong conscience, my beautiful.
“Attend me: In your walks about this never-enough-to-be-execrated island have you observed, near the spot where the masts which carry the false ship’s lights stand, certain plants growing, plants with shining leaves and a fruit like the unripe apple which grows in France—a low bush with fruit of pale green?”
The girl wrinkled her white forehead thoughtfully, then nodded twice. “Yes,” she replied, “I have seen such a plant.”
“Très bien,” he nodded approvingly, “the way from this evil place seems to open before us, mes amis. At least, we have the sporting chance. Now listen, and listen well, my little half-orange, for upon your obedience rests our chance of freedom.
“Tomorrow, when you have a chance to leave this vestibule of hell, go you to the place where those fruits like apples grow and gather as many of them as you can carry in your sarong. Bring these fruits of the Cocculus indicus to the house and mash them to a pulp in some jar which you must procure. At the dinner hour, pour the contents of that jar into the water where dwells the devil-fish. Do not fail us, my little pigeon, for upon your faithful performance of your trust our lives, and yours, depend, pardieu! If you do but carry out your orders we shall feed that Monsieur Octopus such a meal as he will have small belly for, parbleu!
“When you have poured all the crushed fruit into the water, secret yourself in the shadows near by and wait till we come. You can swim? Good. When we do leap into the water, do you leap also, and altogether we shall swim to that boat I was about to borrow when we met this so excellent Monsieur Goonong-Besar-James-Abingdon-Richardson-Devil. Cordieu, I think that Jules de Grandin is not such a fool as I thought he was!
“Good night, fairest one, and may the God of your people, and the gentle Mary, too, guard you this night, and all the nights of your life.”
8
“GOOD EVENING, GENTLEMEN,” GOONONG Besar greeted as we entered the dining room next evening; “have you decided upon our little proposition?”
“But certainly,” de Grandin assured him. “If we must choose between a few minutes’ conversation with the octopus and a lifetime, or even half an hour’s sight of your neither-black-nor-white face, we cast our vote for the fish. He, at least, does what he does from nature; he is no vile parody of his kind. Let us go to the fish-house tout vite, Monsieur. The sooner we get this business completed, the sooner we shall be rid of you!”
Goonong Besar’s pale countenance went absolutely livid with fury. “You insignificant little fool,” he cried, “I’ll teach you to insult me! Ha-room!” he sent the call echoing through the marble-lined cave. “You’ll not be so brave when you feel those tentacles strangling the life out of your puny body and that beak tearing your flesh off your bones before the water has a chance to drown you.”
He poured a string of burning orders at his two guards, who seized their rifles and thrust them at us. “Off, off to the grotto!” he shrieked, beside himself with rage. “Don’t think you can escape the devil-fish by resisting my men. They won’t shoot to kill; they’ll only cripple you and drag you to the pool. Will you walk, or shall we shoot you first and pull you there?”
“Monsieur,” de Grandin drew himself proudly erect, “a gentleman of France fears no death a Malay batard can offer. Lead on!”
Biting his pale lips till the blood ran to keep from screaming with fury, Goonong Besar signaled his guards, and we took up our way toward the sea monster’s lair.
“La bon Dieu grant la belle juive has done her work thoroughly,” de Grandin whispered as we came out upon the balcony. “I like not this part of our little playlet, my friend. Should our plan have failed, adieu.” He gave my hand a hasty pressure.
“Who goes first?” Goonong Besar asked as we halted by the balustrade.
“Pardieu, you do!” de Grandin shouted, and before anyone was aware of his intention he dashed one of his small hard fists squarely into the astonished half-caste’s face, seized him about the waist and flung him bodily into the black, menacing water below.
“In, Friend Trowbridge!” he called, leaping upon the parapet. “Dive and swim—it is our only chance!”
I waited no second bidding, but jumped as far outward as possible, striking out vigorously toward the far end of the cave, striving to keep my head as near water level as possible, yet draw an occasional breath.
Horror swam beside me. Each stroke I took I expected one of the monster’s slimy tentacles to seize me and drag me under; but no great, gray bubble rose from the black depths, no questing arms reached toward me. For all we could observe to the contrary, the pool was as harmless as any of the thousands of rocky caves which dot the volcanic coast of Malaya.
Bullets whipped and tore the water around us, striking rocky walls and singing off in vicious ricochets; but the light was poor, and the Malay marksmen emptied their pieces with no effect.
“Triomphe!” de Grandin announced, blowing the water from his mouth in a great, gusty sigh of relief as we gained the shingle outside the cave. “Miriam, my beautiful one, are you with us?”
“Yes,” responded a voice from the darkness. “I did as you bade me, Monsieur, and the great fish-devil sank almost as soon as he thrust his snake-arms into the fruit as it floated on the water. But when I saw he was dead I did not dare wait; but swam out here to abide your coming.”
“It is good,” de Grandin commended. “One of those bullets might easily have hit you. They are execrable marksmen, those Malays, but accidents do occur.
“Now, Monsieur,” he addressed the limp bundle he towed behind him in the water, “I have a little business proposition to make to you. Will you accompany us, and be delivered to the Dutch or British to be hanged for the damned pirate you are, or will you fight me for your so miserable life here and now?”
“I cannot fight you now,” Goonong Besar answered, “you broke my arm with your cowardly jiu jitsu when you took advantage of me and attacked me without warning.”
“Ah, so?” de Grandin replied, helping his captive to the beach. “That is unfortunate, for—Mordieu, scoundrel, would you do so!”
The Eurasian had suddenly drawn a dagger from his coat and lunged viciously at de Grandin’s breast.
With the agility of a cat the Frenchman evaded the thrust, seized his antagonist’s wrist, and twisted the knife from his grasp. His foot shot out, he drove his fist savagely into Goonong’s throat, and the half-caste sprawled helplessly on the sand.
“Attend Mademoiselle!” de Grandin called to me. “It is not well for her to see what I must do here.”
There was the sound of a scuffle, then a horrible gargling noise, and the beating of hands and feet upon the sands.
“Fini!” de Grandin remarked nonchalantly, dipping his hands in the water and cleansing them of some dark stains.
“You … ?” I began.
“Mais certainement,” he replied matter-of-factly. “I slit his throat. What would you have? He was a mad dog; why should he continue to live?”
Walking hurriedly along the beach, we came to the little power-boat moored in the inlet and set her going.
“Where to?” I asked as de Grandin swung the trim little craft around a rocky promontory.
“Do you forget, cher Trowbridge, that we have a score to settle with those cannibals?” he asked.
We settled it. Running the launch close inshore, de Grandin shouted defiance to the Papuans till they came tu
mbling out of their cone-shaped huts like angry bees from their hives.
“Sa ha, messieurs,” de Grandin called, “we give you food of another sort this night. Eat it, sacré canaille; eat it!” The Lewis machine-gun barked and sputtered, and a chorus of cries and groans rose from the beach.
“IT IS WELL,” HE announced as he resumed the wheel. “They eat no more white women, those ones. Indeed, did I still believe the teachings of my youth, I should say they were even now partaking of the devil’s hospitality with their late master.”
“But see here,” I demanded as we chugged our way toward the open water, “what was it you told Miriam to put in the water where the octopus was, de Grandin?”
He chuckled. “Had you studied as much biology as I, Friend Trowbridge, you would recognize that glorious plant, the Cocculus indicus, when you saw it. All over the Polynesian islands the lazy natives, who desire to obtain food with the minimum of labor, mash up the berry of that plant and spread it in the water where the fish swim. A little of it will render the fish insensible, a little more will kill him as dead as the late lamented Goonong Besar. I noticed that plant growing on the island, and when our lovely Jewess told me she could go and come at will I said to me, ‘By the George, why not have her poison that great devil-fish and swim to freedom?’ Voilà tout!”
A PASSING DUTCH STEAMER PICKED us up two days later.
The passengers and crew gaped widely at Miriam’s imperial beauty, and wider still at de Grandin’s account of our exploits. “Pardieu!” he confided to me one night as we walked the deck, “I fear those Dutchmen misbelieve me, Friend Trowbridge. Perhaps I shall have to slit their ears to teach them to respect the word of a Frenchman.”
The Horror on the Links Page 12
