“Is he following, Jack?”
“I’ve been wondering that same thing,” Driscoll said in a tight disturbed voice. “I can’t believe that brute has sense enough to follow a trail he can’t see. And we’ve certainly outdistanced him. I can’t believe either that he will go back to the village just because he remembers you. He ought to want to stop to eat. He must be as hungry as we are, and in a beast hunger comes ahead of everything.”
“If he really is all beast,” Ann said in a low tone.
“If?”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said in a voice which she could not keep steady:
“Jack! It was horrible being in his hands. You can’t imagine such hands, unless they have really touched you…felt you, as though trying to puzzle you out.
“And sometimes, from the way he looked at me…from the way he carried me carefully up in the crook of his arm instead of dragging me along, as he did at the start…I wondered…I thought…” Her voice went up on a note of hysterical terror.
Driscoll put out a steadying hand.
“Forget about Kong!” he ordered. “He’s no mystery. And if you weren’t so tired, you wouldn’t think so.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t,” said Ann, and drew close to him under the water.
They glided along, white shadow and dark shaft, beneath the soft rays of the moon. The current grew steadily less rapid, and the effort to make progress increasingly hard. Once, in spite of her protests, Driscoll made Ann go to a bank and rest. A very brief rest. He had insisted, but when she obeyed he was on edge until they got off again.
“See how the banks are drawing apart,” he whispered after a time. For some distance they had spoken seldom and in whispers. Apprehension was growing in them both.
“We are near your lagoon,” Ann hazarded.
Shortly it became plain that they were. Their drifting progress became imperceptible and Driscoll cautiously guided them both ashore.
Once there he lifted Ann’s tired body in his arms. Her protests were faint. Securely cradled, she admitted her exhaustion and fell drowsily against his breast. Her eyelids slipped down as he strode away from the shore into the shadowed thickness of trees and brush. There was a deep comfort in the pressure of his arms, in the occasional grazing touch of his head upon her soft shoulder. She kept her eyes closed until he put her down.
“Just resting a minute,” he whispered.
They were in a dense growth, and in the shadow of a great tree, but even there the moonlight penetrated a little and he shifted to put her body, so betrayingly white, out of the faint light.
“All right,” he whispered, and picked her up again.
He rested three times more. When he made the fourth stop and her feet touched ground, Ann found they had come back to the stream. Its current was apparent again. The lagoon was behind them.
“What was that?”
Driscoll stiffened. Far to their rear, they heard a crashing in the forest.
“It might be anything, of course,” he said abruptly. “But let’s go.”
Ann knew that he did not believe it might be anything. She knew that he believed that it was Kong. Horror stole upon her again.
Swimming, she found that this horror gave her new strength. She was less tired, too, after her rest in Driscoll’s arms, and the immersion seemed to revive Driscoll. They swam steadily. When Ann lagged, he made her put a hand on his shoulder and so carried her along. That went much better than the old program of floating.
Ahead they heard a faint liquid murmur. At the sound Driscoll touched her exultantly.
“Remember!” he whispered. “I told you this water led by the chute down to the Plain of the Altar? That’s the chute we are hearing.”
The murmur grew more distinct.
“It’s going to be tough,” he whispered. “Almost as bad as the water tunnel, Ann. But we daren’t delay long enough to go down by the trail along the bank.”
“I’m not afraid,” Ann said.
“Brave lady!”
“I’m really not. But you stay close, Jack.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Now they saw tumbling dark water ahead.
“Easy does it,” Driscoll said.
Behind them the crashing in the forest came again. It was still far behind, but they both heard it distinctly. The menace of it urged them ahead.
The tumbling stream whirled about them, swept them down the water chute.
It was over in a moment, but this time, in the brief descent they both suffered. Driscoll’s right arm hung down, numb and bleeding; Ann’s white thigh was streaked crimson from hip to knee, when they clambered out onto the shore.
“Is it broken?” Ann whispered at sight of the loosely swinging arm.
“Just numb; and the cut isn’t anything at all. But Ann! You’re hurt.”
“The poor girl hasn’t a bandage, either!” Ann laughed, looking down ruefully at her virtually non-existent clothing. “But what does it matter? Look, Jack! Look!”
Across the black plain, beyond the dimly visible bulk of the altar, rose a long shaft of light. It required a second look to make clear what it was…torch light showing through the slightly opened gate.
“They’re waiting for us!” Ann cried. “Jack, oh, Jack! We’re safe!”
Standing still, hands clasped, they stared in relief and thanksgiving. Then, stooping, Driscoll cradled her weight into his good left arm and marched toward the beckoning torches.
Once, as they went through the darkness, Ann thought that she heard again a faint crashing up on the precipice, but it was very faint and she heard it only once. She put it out of her mind and rested, exhausted but at peace, against Driscoll’s breast.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lumpy saw them first. There had been so much talk about this big black brute called Kong that Lumpy felt a trifle jumpy. It was all wind, of course; all just so much jaw exercise. The idea of grown men holding to such a notion! But just the same it wouldn’t do any harm to ramble over to the open gate and take a look out onto the consolingly empty plain….
Lumpy strolled with studied nonchalance over to the gate. And what he saw sent tingling currents through all his dry old bones. The plain was by no means empty. Not by a long nautical mile!
“Yo-o-oh!” Lumpy howled and tacked through the gate as fast as his surprised, ancient legs would take him. “It’s Miss Ann! And the mate!”
Denham cut short his confident praise of Driscoll, forgot his philosophical summation of Beauties and Beasts, and ran. Englehorn swallowed a freshly cut half-inch of plug cut, but in spite of this he was the third man out into the Plain of the Altar. Behind swarmed a delirious, shouting train of sailors.
Just in front of the altar, close enough so that the longest rays of high-held torches picked out his drenched, sagging figure walked Driscoll. In Driscoll’s arms was Ann whose white, still form opened the sailors’ mouths wider.
“Gott sei dank!” said Englehorn, finally coughing up his plug cut. And the measure of his gratitude was indicated by his use of a language he had discarded for English these twenty years.
“Jack!” cried Denham. He turned to the sailors with the air of a man who has just scored a personal triumph of the first magnitude. “By God!” he roared. “Didn’t I tell you Jack would bring her back if anybody could?”
No one disputed that. Eyes popping, tongues loose at both ends, the crew trotted around Driscoll and Ann pouring out an unintelligible confusion of relief. All save Lumpy! He promptly got back his customary manner, blunt and casual.
“Lively!” he snapped. “Some of you mudhens take Miss Ann from the mate before he falls in his tracks. Can’t you see he’s dead beat?”
“Give her to me!” Denham said.
Englehorn pulled out the bottle from which Denham had taken his pick-me-up earlier
. It still held something. He went over to Driscoll as Denham turned toward the gate with Ann. The mate took a long swallow and shuddered.
“Do you good,” Englehorn murmured.
“I got her!” Driscoll said hoarsely. “I got her, Skipper.”
“Good man, Mr. Driscoll.”
“Good man, my eye!” snapped Lumpy. “Great man!”
Driscoll, helped by the liquor, turned a broad smile in Lumpy’s direction and plodded ahead surrounded by a back-slapping ring of sailormen.
Ann had been stretched out in the council square upon a hastily built bed of coats and whatnot. Driscoll knelt stiffly and tried to pour the remainder of the bottle’s contents down her throat. She swallowed a spoonful, choked and pushed the bottle away.
“Pretty stiff stuff for her,” Englehorn murmured.
“I don’t need anything,” Ann gasped, sitting up. “I’m all right.” She caught at Driscoll and hid her face against him. “Oh, Jack! We’re really back.” She began to sob.
“Now! Now!” Englehorn soothed her. “Of course, you’re back. And we’ll have you on the ship in no time.”
“Cry away, honey!” whispered Driscoll. “You’ve got a cry coming.”
“It’s the first time,” he said to the others, “that I’ve seen even a tear from her.”
They had all been so absorbed in the miraculous return of Ann and Driscoll that no one had noticed the returning natives; but the whole tribe was filtering back. At first a single woman had peered from her hut at the reunion out on the plain, and then had slipped out of sight. Other women had followed to stare in unbelief. Then one had gone swiftly to the dark outskirts of the village. And now the men, led by the chief and the witch doctor, were edging slowly into the council square. Some, with newly lighted torches, were climbing to the top of the wall.
Englehorn was first to see the pressing black mass and he whipped about with a sharp command.
“Bado!” he ordered. “Stop!”
The sailors were prompt to encircle Ann, but it was immediately plain that the natives meant no trouble. They were simply puzzled and, like their women, unbelieving. They stared at Ann and babbled low and monotonously:
“Kong…Kong…Kong…Kong…Kong…Kong…Kong.”
“That,” said Denham emphatically, “is just what I want to know, too. What about Kong?”
“What about him?” Driscoll asked.
“I came here to make a moving picture,” Denham replied. “But Kong is worth all the movies in the world. Now Jack and Ann are safe, I…want…that…beast!”
The crew, Englehorn, and Driscoll who was holding Ann in a close embrace, all stared.
“What?”
“He’s crazy!”
“Don’t he know when he’s got enough?”
“I mean it,” Denham insisted. “We’ve got our bombs. If we capture him alive…”
“No!” Driscoll burst out. Concealing the portent he had read in the distant crashing sounds which had followed him and Ann on the last stages of their flight, he faced Denham in denial. “Kong is miles away. In his lair. And that’s on top of a cliff an army couldn’t get at.”
“Not if he chooses to stay there,” Denham agreed. “But will he choose?”
“Why not?”
Denham eyed Driscoll meaningly.
“Because we’ve got what Kong wants. You’re the man who knows that, Jack, as well as I.”
“Something he’ll never get again, Denham. If you’re planning to…”
“To use Ann as bait?” Denham finished. “Not a bit. You know better than that, Jack. But you know, too, and so does everybody else, that when I start a thing I finish it.
“Well!” His gaze circled, challenging one man after another. “I’ve started to get my hands on Kong. And I’m going to see it through. The Beast has seen Beauty so I won’t have to use bait. He’ll come without any. His instinct, the instinct of the Beast, is telling him to stay safe in his mountain. But the memory of Beauty is in him. That’s stronger than instinct. And he will come.”
Driscoll stood up with Ann in his arms.
“I’m taking her back to the ship,” he said.
High on the wall, in that instant, the murmuring monotone broke into a terrified cry, and the torches swept in broad warning arcs.
“Kong! Kong!”
From the dark plain beyond the wall came a deep, swift drumming and then Kong’s thunderous defiant roar.
Ann screamed, and Driscoll held her closer.
“He’s followed her!”
“Close that gate,” Denham shouted. “Bar it!”
Englehorn held Lumpy and several other sailors to form a guard for Ann, but all the rest raced for the gate. Half a hundred suddenly frantic natives followed.
The two great doors began to close slowly. But already through the narrowing gap the torchlight uncovered Kong’s racing bulk; and his deep rolling shout aroused a shriller wail of terror upon the wall.
The gap at the gate had become scarcely more than a wide crack when Kong’s charge struck home. Before it the crack spread again and Kong’s foot squeezed through. As deft as any hand, that closed upon the bottom of one massive door and thrust prodigiously. The mob upon the wall whimpered and panic swept the council square.
Driscoll disappeared with Ann behind the first hut. Denham ran up to reinforce the crew at the gate. The gate gave. Inch by stubborn inch the crack grew wider. Kong shot an arm through, groped, found a sailor, swung the man high above the heads of his comrades and crushed him to death against the barrier.
At that the natives who had been posing the massive wooden bolts, ready to shove them home when the two doors joined, wailed in defeat and ran.
Kong turned himself into a battering ram. Again and again and again he swung his shoulder against the logs of the barricade. The broad iron hinges began to rip. Under a fresh battering they tore loose with a harsh rending sound. The massive gate fell inward with a majestic deliberation.
The sailors scrambled shrewdly to safety on either side but a press of natives, fleeing straight to the rear, were crushed wholesale beneath the descending mass.
Kong filled the aperture, his body in a crouch, his eyes peering above the little men at his feet to the dark huts.
“The bombs!” Denham shouted. From one flank he gazed unbelievingly at the bulk of the invader and raced back. “The bombs!”
Kong lumbered forward to begin a slow patient search of the dark village. Over the cluster of huts darkness was now complete save for such moonlight as filtered through the trees. The last native had thrown away his torch and fled to the deceptive shelter of his home or out into the encircling brush. Kong ripped off the top of one hut after another, stooping down to peer into each. At first he only rumbled an impatient disappointment but as he met repeated failure his tone sharpened to fury.
Denham, by a wide swinging run behind concealing huts and trees, finally interposed himself across Kong’s line of advance. Gripping a prized bomb in either hand, he kept his distance watchfully. A score of sailors, all armed now and a few carrying bombs in addition, supported him. Driscoll, with Ann and the small bodyguard, had already hurried through the outskirts of the village and was plunging beneath the far too bright moonlight toward the beach and the boats.
“He hasn’t seen us yet,” Denham told the sailors as Kong halted at another hut. “You men break back to Driscoll. I’ll follow. If Kong chases I’ll bomb him, but I’d rather not, yet. So many huts might stop the drift of the gas cloud.”
The men ran, Denham a wary, backward-looking last. Kong shredded another hut, uncovered a cowering family of natives. Insensate massacre followed. Denham paused as the screams reached him, then ran on helplessly.
Kong kept up his methodical quest. When he emerged at last from the village Driscoll had got Ann almost to the boats. The moonlight,
however, was so bright that the two were in plain view.
Drumming upon his chest, Kong began to run at a spraddling speed which ate up the intervening distance.
Denham called out and the sailors formed a blocking line between Ann and her monstrous pursuer. Forward of this Denham took a stand, his hands still holding their bombs. Beside him Lumpy waited with two more.
While Kong was still far away the first bomb landed squarely on his line of advance. As it broke a thick vapor rose and enveloped the beast-god from head to foot.
Denham raced back, turned and threw again. Kong plunged into and through a second cloud, and a third.
By now he was no more than a hundred yards from where Driscoll hurried Ann into a boat, but his great speed was gone. His deep challenging cry changed into a strangling cough, his head swung from shoulder to shoulder and his gait was no more than a staggering walk.
“What did I tell you?” Denham cried.
Recklessly the director stepped close enough to break a fourth bomb so squarely against Kong’s chest that the liquid in it soaked into the thick hair and evaporated in a cloud which stayed with Kong as he struggled blindly on.
One slowly swinging hand of the beast-god grazed Denham and knocked him down. Both hands rose toward Ann, now almost within arm’s reach. Unable to lift his heavy feet Kong groped, swung in a wide circle and crashed to the sand. Prone, his body still made a figure of incredible bulk in the moonlight.
“Man the boats,” Englehorn ordered. “We’ll get out of this.”
He ran to pick Denham up.
“Are you hurt?”
“Me? Not a bit! Come on, we’ve got him.”
“We’d best get back to the ship, Mr. Denham.”
“Sure! Send some of the crew. Tell ’em to fetch anchor chains and tools.”
“You don’t dare…”
“Why not? He’ll be out for hours. Snap into it.”
King Kong Page 13
