Her eyes gleamed with the light of battle, battle for liberty, for life; her cheeks glowed with the tides of generous blood that coursed beneath the skin. Never had Stern beheld her half so beautiful, so regal in that clinging, barbaric Bengal robe of black and yellow, caught at the throat with the clasp of raw gold.
A sudden impulse seized him, dominant, resistless. For a brief moment he detained her; he held her back; about her supple body his arm tightened.
She raised her face in wonder. He bent, a little, and on the brow he kissed her rapturously.
“Thank God for such a comrade and a—friend!” said he.
CHAPTER XXII
GODS!
Some few minutes later, together they approached Pine Tree Gate, leading directly out into the Horde.
The girl, rosier than ever, held her Krag loosely in the hollow of her bare, warm right arm. One of Stern’s revolvers lay in its holster. The other balanced itself in his right hand. His left held the precious water-pail, so vital now to all their plans and hopes.
Girt in his garb of fur, belted and sandaled, well over six feet tall and broad of shoulder, the man was magnificent. His red beard and mustache, close-cropped, gave him a savage air that now well fitted him. For Stern was mad—mad clear through.
That Beatrice should suffer in any way, even from temporary thirst, raised up a savage resentment in his breast. The thought that perhaps it might not be possible to gain access to the spring at all, that these foul Things might try to blockade them and siege them to death, wrought powerfully on him.
For himself he cared nothing. The girl it was who now preoccupied his every thought. And as they made their way through the litter of the explosion, toward the exit, slowly and cautiously, he spied out every foot of the place for possible danger.
If fight he must, he knew now it would be a brutal, utterly merciless fight—slaughter, extermination without any limit, to the end.
But there was scant time for thought. Already they could see daylight glimmering in through the gate, past me massive column of the conifer. Daylight—and with it came a thin and acrid smoke—and sounds of the uproused Horde in Madison Forest.
“Slow! Slow, now!” whispered Stern. “Don’t let ‘em know a thing until we’ve got ‘em covered! If we surprise ‘em just right, who knows but the whole infernal mob may duck and run? Don’t shoot till you have to; but when you do—!”
“I know!” breathed she.
Then, all at once, there they were at the gate, at the big tree, standing out there in the open, on the thick carpet of pine-spills.
And before them lay the mossy, shaded forest aisles—with what a horror camped all through that peaceful, wondrous place!
“Oh!” gasped Beatrice. The engineer stopped as though frozen. His hand tightened on the revolver-butt till the knuckles whitened. And thus, face to face with the Horde, they stood for a long minute.
Neither of them realized exactly the details of that first impression. The narrow slit of view which they had already got through the crack in the wall had only very imperfectly prepared them for any understanding of what these Things really were, en masse.
But both Beatrice and the engineer understood, even at the first moment of their exit there, that they had entered an adventure whereof the end could not be foreseen; that here before them lay possibilities infinitely more serious than any they had contemplated.
For one thing, they had underestimated the numbers of the Horde. They had thought, perhaps, there might be five hundred in all.
The torches had certainly numbered no more than that. But now they realized that the torch-bearers had been but a very small fraction of the whole; for, as their eyes swept out through the forest, whence the fog had almost wholly risen, they beheld a moving, swarming mass of the creatures on every hand. A mass that seemed to extend on, on to indefinite vistas. A mass that moved, clicked, shifted, grunted, stank, snarled, quarreled. A mass of frightful hideousness, of inconceivable menace.
The girl’s first impulse was to turn, to retreat back into the building once more; but her native courage checked it. For Stern, she saw, had no such purpose.
Surprised though he was, he stood there like a rock, head up, revolver ready, every muscle tense and ready for whatsoever might befall. And through the girl flashed a thrill of admiration for this virile, indomitable man, coping with every difficulty, facing every peril—for her sake.
Yet the words he uttered now were not of classic heroism. They were simple, colloquial, inelegant. For Stern, his eyes blazing, said only:
“We’re in bad, girl! They’re on—we’ve got to bluff—bluff like the devil!”
Have you ever seen a herd of cattle on the prairie, a herd of thousands, shift and face and, as by instinct, lower their horned heads against some enemy—a wolfpack, maybe?
You know then, how this Horde of dwarfish, blue, warty, misformed little horrors woke to the presence of the unknown enemy.
Already half alarmed by the warning given by the one, which, near the crack in the wall, had sniffed the intruders and had howled, the pack now broke into commotion. Stern and Beatrice saw a confused upheaving, a shifting and a tumult. They heard a yapping outcry. The long, thin spears began to bristle.
And all at once, as a dull, ugly hornet-hum rose through the wood, they knew the moment for quick action was upon them.
“Here goes!” cried Stern, raging. “Let’s see how this will strike the hell-hounds!”
His face white with passion and with loathing hate, he raised the automatic. He aimed at none of the pack, for angry as he was he realized that the time was not yet come for killing, if other means to reach the spring could possibly avail.
Instead he pointed the ugly blue muzzle up toward the branches of a maple, under which a dense swarm of the Horde had encamped and now was staring, apelike, at him.
Then his finger sought the trigger. And five crackling spurts of flame, five shots spat out into the calm and misty air of morning. A few severed leaves swayed down, idly, with a swinging motion. A broken twig fell, hung suspended a moment, then detached itself again and crapped to earth.
“Good Lord! Look a’ that, will you?” cried Stern.
A startled cry broke from the girl’s lips.
Both of them had expected some effect from the sudden fusillade, but nothing like that which actually resulted.
For, as the quick shots echoed to stillness again, and even before the first of the falling leaves had spiraled to the ground, an absolute, unbroken silence fell upon that vile rabble of beast-men—the silence of a numbing, paralyzing, sheer brute terror.
Some stood motionless, crouching on their bandy legs, holding to whatsoever tree or bush was nearest, staring with wild eyes.
Others dropped to their knees.
But by far the greater part, thousands on thousands of the little monstrosities, fell prone and grovelling. Their hideous masklike faces hidden, there they lay on the moss and all among the undergrowth, the trampled, desecrated, befouled undergrowth of Madison Forest.
Then all at once, over and beyond them, Stern saw the blue-curling smudge of the remains of the great fire by the spring.
He knew that, for a few brief, all-precious moments, the way might possibly be clear to come and go—to get water—to save Beatrice and himself from the thirst—tortures—to procure the one necessary thing for the making of his Pulverite.
His heart gave a great, up-bounding leap.
“Look, Beatrice!” cried he, his voice ringing out over the terror-stricken things. “Look—we’re gods! While this lasts—gods! Come, now’s our only chance! Come on!—”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE OBEAH
Together, as in a dream—a nightmare, dazed, incredible, grotesque—they advanced out into the dim-shaded forest aisles.
“Don’t look!” Stern exclaimed, shuddering at sight of the unspeakable hideousness of the Things, at glimpses of gnawed bones, grisly bits of flesh, dried gouts of blood upon the wo
odland carpet. “Don’t think—just come along!
“Five minutes, and we’re safe, there and back again. S-h-h-h! Don’t hurry! Count, now—count your steps—one, two, three—four, five, six—steady, steady!—”
Now they were ten yards from the tower, now twenty. Bravely they walked, now straight ahead among the trees, now circling some individual, some horrid group. Stern held the water-pail firmly. He gripped the revolver in a grasp of iron. The magazine-rifle lay in both the girl’s hands, ready for instant use.
Suddenly Stern fired again, three shots.
“Some of ‘em are moving, over there!” he said in a crisp, ugly tone. “I guess a little lead close to their ears will fix ‘em for a while!”
His voice went to a hoarse whisper.
“Gods!” he repeated. “Don’t forget it, for a moment; don’t lose that thought, for it may pull us through! These creatures here, if they’re descended from the blacks, must have some story, some tradition of the white man. Of his mastery, his power! We’ll use it now, by Heaven, as it never yet was used!”
Then he began to count again; and so, tense, watching with eager-burning eyes and taut muscles, the man and woman made their way of frightful peril.
A snuffling howl rose.
“You will, will you?” Stern cried, adding another kick to the one he had just dealt to one of the creatures, who had ventured to look up at their approach. “Lie down, ape!” And with the clangorous metal pail he smote the ugly, brutish skull.
Beatrice gasped with fear; but the bluff made good. The creature grovelled, and again the pair strode forward, masterfully. Masterfully they had to go, or not at all. Masterfully, or die. For now their all-in-all lay just in that grim, steel-hard sense of mastery.
Before the girl’s eyes a sort of haze seemed forming. Her heart beat thick and heavy. Stern’s counting sounded very far away and strange; she hardly recognized his voice. To her came wild, disjointed, confused impressions—now a bony and distorted back, now a simian head; again a group that crouched and cowered in its filthy squalor, hideously.
Then all at once, there right before her she saw the little woodland path that, slightly descending, led past a big oak she well knew, down to the margin of the pool.
“Steady, girl, steady!” came the engineer’s warning, tense as piano-wire. “Almost there, now. What’s that?”
For a brief instant he hesitated. The girl felt his arm grow even more taut, she heard his breath catch. Then she, too, looked—and saw.
It was enough, that sight, to have smitten with sick horror the bravest man who ever lived. For there, beside the smouldering embers of the great feast-fire, littered with bones and indescribable refuse, a creature was squatting on its hams—one of the Horde, indeed, yet vastly different, tremendously more venomous, more dangerous of aspect.
Stern knew at once that here, not prostrate nor yet crouching, was the chief of the blue Horde.
He knew it by the superior size and strength of the Thing, by the almost manlike cunning of the low, gorilla face, the gleam of intelligence in the reddened eye, the crude wreath of maple-leaves upon the head, the necklace of finger-bones strung around the neck.
But most of all, he knew it by a thing that shocked him more than the sight of stark, outright cannibalism would have done. A simple thing, yet how ominous! A thing that argued reason in this reversion from the human; a thing that sent the shuddering chills along the engineer’s spine.
For the chief, the obeah-man of this vile drove, rising now from beside the fire with a gibbering chatter and a look of bestial malice, held between his fangs a twisted brown leaf.
Stern knew at a glance the leaf was the rudely cured product of some degenerated tobacco-plant. He saw a glow of red at the tip of the close-rolled tobacco. Vapor issued from the chief’s slit-mouth.
“Good Lord—he’s—smoking!” stammered the engineer. “And that means—means an almost human brain. And—quick, Beatrice, the water! I didn’t expect this! Thought they were all alike. Back to the tower, quick! Here, fill the pail—I’ll keep him covered!”
Up he brought the automatic, till the bead lay fair upon the naked, muscular breast of the obeah.
Beatrice handed Stern the rifle, then snatching the pail, dipped it, filled it to the brim. Stern heard the water lap and gurgle. He knew it was but a few seconds, yet it seemed an hour to him, at the very least.
Keener than ever before in his whole life, his mental pictures now limned themselves with lightning rapidity upon his brain.
Stamped on his consciousness was this lithe, lean, formidable body, showing beyond dispute its human ancestry; the right hand that held a steel-pointed spear; the horrible ornament (a withered little smoked hand) that dangled from the left wrist by a cord of platted fiber.
Vividly Stern beheld a deep gash or scar that ran from the chief’s right eye—a dull, fishlike eye, evidently destroyed by that wound—down across the leathery cheek, across the prognathous jaw; a reddish-purple wale, which on that clay-blue skin produced an effect indescribably repulsive.
Then the chief grunted, and moved forward, toward them. Stern saw that the gait was almost human, not shuffling and uncertain like that of the others, but firm and vigorous. He estimated the height at more than five feet, eight inches; the weight at possibly one hundred and forty pounds. Even at that juncture, his scientific mind, always accustomed to judging, instinctively registered these data, with the others.
“Here, you, get back there!” shouted Stern, as the girl rose again from filling the pail.
The cry was instinctive, for even as he uttered it, he knew it could not be understood. A thousand years of rapid degeneration had long wiped all traces of English speech from the brute-men, who now, at most, chattered some bestial gibberish. Yet the warning echoed loudly through Madison Forest; and the obeah hesitated.
The tone, perhaps, conveyed some meaning to that brain behind the sloping forehead. Perhaps some dim, racial memory of human speech still lingered in that mind, in that strange organism which, by some freak of atavism, had “thrown back” out of the mire of returning animality almost to the human form and stature once again.
However that may have been, the creature-chief halted in his advance. Undecided he stood a moment, leaning upon his spear, sucking at the rude mockery of a cigar. Stern remembered having seen Consul, the trained chimpanzee, smoke in precisely the same manner, and a nameless loathing filled him at his mockery of the dead, buried past.
“Let me carry the pail!” said he. “We’ve got to hurry—hurry—or it may be too late!”
“No, no—I’ll keep the water!” she answered, panting. “You need both hands clear! Come!”
Thus they turned, and, with a shuddering glance behind, started back for the tower again.
But the obeah, with a whining plaint, spat away his tobacco-leaf. They heard a shuffle of feet. And, looking round again, both saw that he had crossed the little brook.
There he stood now, his right hand out, palm upward, his lips curled in the ghastly imitation of a smile, blue gums and yellow lushes showing, a sight to freeze the blood with horror. Yet through it all, the meaning was most clearly evident.
Beatrice, laden as she was with the heavy water-bucket, more precious now to them than all the wealth of the dead world, would still have retreated, but with a word of stern command he bade her wait. He stopped short in his tracks.
“Not a step!” commanded he. “Hold on! If he makes friends with us—with gods—that’s a million times better every way! Hold on—wait, no—this is his move.”
He faced the obeah. His left hand gripped the repeating rifle, his right the automatic, held in readiness for instant action. The muzzle sight never for a second left its aim at the chief’s heart.
And for a second silence fell there in the forest. Save for the rustling murmur of the Horde, and a faint, woodland trickle of the stream, you might have thought the place untouched by life.
Yet death lurked there, and destiny�
��the destiny of the whole world, the future, the human race, forever and ever without end; and the cords of Fate were being loosed for a new knitting.
And Stern, with Beatrice there at his side, stood harsh and strong and very grim; stood like an incarnation of man’s life, waiting.
And slowly, step by step, over the yielding, noiseless moss, the grinning, one-eyed, ghastly obeah-man came nearer, nearer still.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIGHT IN THE FOREST
Now the Thing was close, very close to them, while a hush lay upon the watching Horde and on the forest. So close, that Stern could hear the soughing breath between those hideous lips and see the twitching of the wrinkled lid over the black, glittering eye that blinked as you have often seen a chimpanzee’s.
All at once the obeah stopped. Stopped and leered, his head craned forward, that ghastly rictus on his mouth.
Stern’s hot anger welled up again. Thus to be detained, inspected and seemingly made mock of by a creature no more than three-quarters human, stung the engineer to rage.
“What do you want?” cried he, in a thick and unsteady voice. “Anything I can do for you? If not, I’ll be going.”
The creature shook its head. Yet something of Stern’s meaning may have won to its smoldering intelligence. For now it raised a hand. It pointed to the pail of water, then to its own mouth; again it indicated the pail, then stretched a long, repulsive finger at the mouth of Stern.
The meaning seemed clear. Stern, even as he stood there in anger—and in wonder, too, at the fearlessness of this superthing—grasped the significance of the action.
“Why, he must mean,” said he, to Beatrice, “he must be trying to ask whether we intend to drink any of the water, what? Maybe it’s poisoned, now, or something! Maybe he’s trying to warn us!”
“Warn us? Why should he?”
“How can I tell? It isn’t entirely impossible that he still retains some knowledge of his human ancestors. Perhaps that tradition may have been handed down, some way, and still exists in the form of a crude beast-religion.”
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