But the chief’s gaze was now fixed insolently upon Beatrice. She, as she stood there, stripped even of her revolver and cartridge-belt, hands bound behind her, hair disheveled, had caught his barbarous fancy. And now in his look Stern saw the kindling of a savage passion so ardent, so consuming, that the man’s heart turned sick within him.
“Ten thousand times better she should die!” thought he, racked at the thought of what might be. “Oh, God! If I only had my revolver for a single minute now! One shot for Kamrou—one for Beatrice—and after that, nothing would matter; nothing!”
Came a disturbance in the Folk. Heads craned; a murmur of voices rose.
The patriarch, no longer trembling, but with his head held proudly up, both hands outstretched, had stepped into the circle. And now, advancing toward Kamrou, he spoke in quick and eager sentences—he gestured at the engineer, raised his hand on high, bowed and stepped back.
And all at once a wild, harsh, swelling chorus of cries arose; every face turned toward Stern; the engineer, amazed, knew not what all this meant, but to the ultimate drop in the arteries he pledged his fighting-blood to one last, bitter struggle.
Silence again.
Kamrou had not stirred. Still his great hands rested on his knees; but a thin, venomous smile lengthened his lips. He, too, looked at the engineer, who gave the stare back with redoubled hate. Tense grew the expectation of the Folk.
“What the devil now?” thought Stern, tautening event muscle for the expected attack.
But attack there came none. Instead the patriarch asked a question of those who stood near him; and hands now guided the old man toward the place where Stern was standing, bound.
“O friend; O son!” exclaimed the old man when he had come close. “Now hearken! For, verily, this is the only way!
“It is an ancient custom of the Merucaans that any man captive or free, can ever challenge our chief, whosoever he be, to the death-combat. If the chief wins, he remains chief. If he loses, the victor takes his place. Many hundreds of years, I know not how long, this has been our way. And many terrible combats have been seen here among our people.
“Kamrou has said that you must die, the girl must be his prize. Only one way remains to save her and yourself—you must struggle with Kamrou. I have delivered to him your challenge already. Let fate decide the issue!”
Everything seemed to whirl before Stern’s eyes, and for a moment all grew black. In his ears sounded a great roaring, louder than the roar of the huge flame. Quick questions flashed through his mind. Fight Kamrou? But how? A duel with revolvers? Spears? Maces?
He knew not. Only he knew that in whatever way the ancient combats must be held he was ready!
“You affirm the challenge I have given in your behalf?” demanded the patriarch. “If you accept it, nod.”
Stern nodded with all the vigor of his terrible rage. Kamrou’s eyes narrowed; his smile grew fixed and hard, but in it Stern perceived the easy contempt of a bully toward any chance weakling. And through him thrilled a passion of hate such as he had never dreamed in all his life.
Came a quick word from the patriarch. Somebody was slashing the engineer’s bonds. All at once the ropes gave way. Free and unfettered, he stepped forward, stretching his arms, opening and closing his cramped, numbed hands, out into the ring toward Kamrou, the chief.
Off came the gag. Stern could speak at last.
His first word was to the girl.
“Beatrice!” he called to her, “there’s one chance left! I’m to fight this ruffian here. If I beat him we’re free—we own this tribe, body and soul! If not—”
He broke off short. Even the possibility was not to be considered.
She looked at him and understood his secret thought. Well the man knew that Beatrice would die by her own hand before Kamrou should have his way with her.
The patriarch spoke again.
“My son,” said he, “there is but one way for all these combats. It has been so these many centuries. By the smooth edge of the great boiling pit the fights are held. Man against man it is. Verily, you two with only your hands must fight! He who loses—”
“Goes into the pit?”
The old man nodded.
“There is no other way,” he answered. “The new, terrible weapons you cannot use. The arrows, slings and spears are all forbidden by ancient custom. It is the naked grasp of the hands, the strong muscles of two men against each other! So we decide our chief!
“I, alas, can help you in nothing. I am powerless, weak, old. Were I to interfere now and try to change this way, my own body would only go to the pit, and my old bones hang, headless, in the place of captives and criminals. All lies in your hands, my son!
“All; everything! Our whole future, and the future of the world! If you lose, the wonderful machine will be destroyed and all its metal forged into spears and battle axes. Barbarism will conquer; darkness will continue, and war, and death. All will be forever lost!
“The last ray of hope, of light, from the great past of the upper world, will vanish forever! Your own death, my son, and the fate of the girl, will be as nothing beside the terrible catastrophe, if you are beaten.
“For, verily, it will be the death of the world!
“And now, my son, now go to battle—to battle for this woman, for yourself, for us, for the future of our race, for everything!
“Kamrou is ready. The pit is boiling.
“Go now! Fight—and—and—”
His voice was lost in a great tumult of cries, yells, shouts. Spears brandished. Came a sound of shields struck with clubs and axes. The copper drums again began to throb and clang.
Kamrou had risen from his seat.
Stern knew the supreme moment of his life was at hand.
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE FINAL STRUGGLE
Kamrou flung off his long and heavy cloak. He stood there in the flamelight, broad-chested, beautifully muscled, lean of hip, the perfect picture of a fighting man. Naked he was, save for his loin-cloth. And still he smiled.
Stern likewise stripped away his own cloak. Clad only like the chief, he faced him.
“Well, now,” said he, “here goes! And may the best man win!”
Kamrou waved the circle back at one side. It opened, revealing the great pit to southward of the flame. Stern saw the vapors rising, bluish in that strange light, from the perpetual boiling of the black waters in its depths. Oddly enough, even at that moment a stray bit of scientific thought nicked into his consciousness—the memory that under compressed air water boils only at very high temperatures. Down here, in this great pressure, the water must easily be over three hundred degrees to seethe like that.
He, too, smiled.
“So much the better,” thought he. “The hotter, the sooner it’s all over for the man who goes!”
Up rose numbers of the two-pronged torches. Stern got confused glimpses of the Folk—he saw the terrible, barbaric eagerness with which they now anticipated this inevitable tragedy of at least one human death in its most awful form.
Beatrice he no longer saw. Where was she? He knew not. But in a long, last cry of farewell he raised his voice. Then, with Kamrou, he strode toward the steaming, boiling pit in the smooth rock floor.
Two tall men broke through the tensely eager throng. In their hands they bore each a golden jar, curiously shaped and chiseled, and bearing a whimsical resemblance to a coffee-urn.
“What the devil now?” wondered Stern, eager to be at work. He saw at once the meaning of the jars. One of the bearers approached Kamrou. The other came to him. They raised the vessels, and over the antagonists’ bare bodies poured a thin, warm stream of some rank-smelling oil. All over the skin they rubbed it, till the bodies glistened strangely in the flamelight. Then, with muttered words he could not catch, they withdrew.
All seemed confused and vague to Stern as in a painful dream. Images and pictures seemed to present themselves to his brain. The light, the fog and heat, the rising stream, the roari
ng of the flame, and over all the throb-throb-throb of those infernal copper drums worked powerfully on his senses.
Already he seemed to feel the grip of Kamrou, the pangs of the hard struggle, the sudden plunge into the vat of scalding death.
With a strong effort he flung off these fancies and faced his sneering foe, who now—his red-wealed face puckered into a malicious grin—stood waiting.
Stern all at once saw the patriarch once more.
“Go, son!” cried the old man. “Now is the moment! When the drums cease, lay hold of him!”
Even as he spoke, the great drums slowed their beat, then stopped.
Stern, with a final thought of Beatrice, advanced.
All the advantage lay with Kamrou. Familiar with the place was he, and with the rules of this incredible contest. Everywhere about him stood crowding hundreds of his Foll; owing him their allegiance, hostile to the newcomer, the man from another world. Out of all that multitude only two hearts’ beat in sympathy and hope for him; only two human beings gave him their thoughts and their support—a helpless girl; a feeble, blind old man.
Kamrou stood taller, too, than Stern, and certainly bulked heavier. He was in perfect condition, while Stern had not yet fully recovered from the fight in the Abyss, from the great change in living conditions there in the depths, and—more important still—from the harsh blow of the rock that had numbed his elbow on the beach.
His arms and hands, too, still felt the cramping of the cords that had bound him. He needed a few hours yet to work them into suppleness and perfect strength. But respite there was none.
He must fight now at once under all handicaps, or die—and in his death yield Beatrice to the barbaric passions of the chief.
Oddly enough there recurred to his mind, as he drew near the waiting, sneering Kamrou, that brave old war-cry of the Greeks of Xenophon as they hurled themselves against the vastly greater army of the Persians—“Zeus Sotor kaì Niké!—Zeus Savior and victory!”
The shout burst from his lips. Forward he ran, on to the battle where either he or the barbarian must perish in the boiling pit—forward, to what? To victory—to death?
Kamrou stood fast till Stern’s right hand had almost gripped his throat—for Stern, the challenger, had to deliver the first attack.
But suddenly he slipped aside; and as Stern swerved for him, made a quick leap.
With an agility, a strength and skill tiger-like and marvelous, he caught Stern round the waist, whirled him and would have dashed him toward the pit. But already the engineer’s right arm was under Kamrou’s left; the right hand had him by the throat, and Kamrou’s head went sharply back till the vertebrae strained hard.
Eel-like, elusive, oiled, the chief broke the hold, even as he flung a leg about one of Stern’s.
A moment they swayed, tugging, straining, panting. In the old days Stern would not for one moment have been a match for this barbaric athlete, but the long months of life close to nature had hardened him and toughened every fiber. And now a stab of joy thrilled through him as he realized that in his muscles lay at least a force to balk the savage for a little while.
To Stern came back his wrestling lore of the very long ago, the days of Harvard, in the dim, vanished past. He freed his left arm from the gorilla-like grip of Kamrou, and, quick as lightning, got a jiu-jitsu stranglehold.
The savage choked, gurgled, writhed; his face grew purple with stagnant blood. Then he leaped, dragging the engineer with him; they fell, rolled, twisted—and Stern’s hold was broken.
A great shout rose as Kamrou struggled up and once more seized the American. He raised him like a child, and took a step, two, three, toward the infernal caldron in the rock floor.
Stern, desperate, wrenched his oiled arms clear. A second later they had closed again about the chief’s throat—the one point of attack that Stern had chosen for his best.
The barbarian faltered. Grunting, panting, he shook the engineer as a dog shakes a rat, but the hold was secure. Kamrou’s great arms wrapped themselves in a formidable “body-scissors” grip; Stern felt the breath squeezed from his body.
Then suddenly the chief’s oily heel slipped on the smooth-worn rock, not ten feet from the lip of the bubbling vat—and for the second time both fell.
This time Stern was atop. Over they rolled, once, twice, straining with madness. Stern’s thumbs were sunk deep in the throat of the barbarian at either side. As he gouged harder, deeper, he felt the terrific pounding of the chief’s jugular. Hot on his own neck panted the choking breath of Kamrou. Oh, could he only hold that grip a minute longer—even a half-minute!
But already his own breath was gone. A buzzing filled his ears; sparkling lights danced, quivering before his eyes. The blood seemed bursting his brain; far off and vague he heard the droning of the flame, the shouts and cries of the great horde of watchers.
A whiff of steam—hot, damp, terrifying—passed across his face, in which the veins were starting from the oily skin. His eyes, half closed, bulged from the sockets. He knew the pit was very close now; dully he heard its steady bubbling.
“If I go—he goes, too!” the engineer swore to himself. “He’ll never have—Beatrice—anyway!”
Over and over they rolled, their grips tight-locked as steel. Now Kamrou was on top, now Stern. But the chief’s muscles were still strong as ever; Stern’s already had begun to weaken.
Strive as he might, he could not get another hold, nor could he throw another ounce of power into that he already had. Up, up, slowly up slipped the chief’s arms; Stern knew the savage meant to throttle him; and once those long, prehensile fingers reached his throat, good-by!
Then it seemed to him a voice, very far and small, was speaking to him, coolly, impersonally, in a matter-of-fact way as though suggesting an experiment.
Dazed as he was, he recognized that voice—it was the voice of Dr. Harbutt, who once had taught him many a wily trick upon the mat; Harbutt, dead and gone these thousand years or more.
“Why not try the satsu-da, Stern?” the voice was saying. “Excellent, at times.”
Though Stern’s face was black and swollen, eyes shut and mouth all twisted awry in this titanic struggle with the ape-hold of the huge chief, yet the soul within him calmly smiled.
The satsu-da—yes, he remembered it now, strongest and best of all the jiu-jitsu feats.
And, suddenly loosening his hands from the chief’s throat, he clenched his right fist, hard as steel.
A second later the “killing-blow” had fallen on the barbarian’s neck, just where the swelling protuberance behind the ear marked the vital spot.
Terrible was the force of that blow, struck for his own life, for the honor of Beatrice, the salvation of the world.
Kamrou gave a strange grunt. His head fell backward. Both eyes closed; the mouth lolled open and a glairy froth began to trickle down.
The frightful grip of the long, hairy arms relaxed. Exhausted, Stern fell prone right on the slippery edge of the boiling pit.
He felt a sudden scalding dash of water, steam and boiling spray; he heard a sudden splash, then a wild, barbarous, long-drawn howling of the massed Folk.
Lying there, spent, gasping, all but dead in the thick steam-drift of the vat, he opened his eyes.
Kamrou was nowhere to be seen.
Seemingly very distant, he heard the copper drums begin to beat once more with feverish haste.
A great, compelling lassitude enveloped him. He knew no more.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE SUN OF SPRING
“What altitude now? Can you make-out, Allan?”
“No. The aneroid’s only good up to five miles. We must have made two hundred, vertically, since this morning. The way the propeller takes hold and the planes climb in this condensed air is just a miracle!”
“Two passengers at that!” Beatrice answered, leaning back in her seat again. She turned to the patriarch, who, sitting in an extra place in the thoroughly overhauled and newly equipped Pau
illac, was holding with nervous hands to the wire stays in front of him.
“Patience, father,” she cheered him. “Two hours more—not over three, at the outside—and you shall breathe the upper air again! For the first time the sunlight shall fall upon your face!”
“The sun! The sun! Oh, is it possible?” murmured the aged man. “Verily, I had never thought to live until this day! The sun!”
Came silence between these three for a time, while the strong heart of the machine beat steadily; and the engineer, with deft and skilful hand, guided it in wide-swept spirals upward, ever up, up, up, back toward the realms of day, of life, once more; up through the fogs and clouds, away from heat and dark and mystery, toward the clear, pure, refreshing air of heaven again.
At last Stern spoke.
“Well, father,” said he, “I never would have thought it; but you were right, after all! They’re like so much clay in the potter’s hand now, for me. I see I can do with them whatever I will.
“I was afraid some of them might object, after all, to any such proposition. It’s one thing for them to accept me as boss down there, and quite another for them to consent to wholesale transplanting, such as we’ve got under way. But I can’t see any possible reason why—with plenty of time and patience—the thing can’t be accomplished all right. The main difficulty was their consent; and now we’ve got that, the rest is mere detail and routine work.”
“Time and patience,” repeated the girl. “Those are our watchwords now, boy. And we’ve got lots of both, haven’t we?”
“Two passengers each trip,” the engineer continued, more practical than she, “and three trips a week, at the most, makes six of the Folk landed on the surface weekly. In other words, it’ll take—”
“No matter about that now!” interrupted Beatrice. “We’ve got all the time there is! Even if it takes five years, what of that? What are months or even years in the life-history of the world?”
Stern kept silence again. In his mind he was revolving a hundred vital questions of shelter, feeding, acclimatization for these men, now to be transported from a place of dark and damp and heat to the strange outer regions of the surface-world.
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