“Hark! Boy!” said the Captain, sharply; and hove himself round upon his seat, with a single quick jerk. “that’s twice this blessed minute I’ve heard it. Hark!”
They crouched there, listening; with the lantern casting their shadows oddly across the silence of the rocks; and the noise of the fall seeming to come to them with an almost unnatural clearness through the night about. Once, as Pibby shifted his attitude slightly, he thought he heard the faint chink of the money inside his shirt; but this was, possibly, no more than what I might term a conscience-sound; for Captain Jat’s keen ears seemed to have heard nothing.
And then, long-drawn and horrible, away in the night, Pibby heard the sound that had come to them before, in the great wood-belt.
It came again… a curious, big, clamour of sound, floating oddly in the night; and, for the second time, the vague, yet frightening, familiarity of it stirred the boy’s memory oddly.
He had faced round towards it, and without knowing, had drawn a pistol in each hand. The sudden indefinable terror that the sound brought to him had driven out the gold-lust; had driven out even all memory of the gold; for he had a feeling that a very real danger was roaming out there in the vagueness of the night.
He looked swiftly over his sholder at the immoveable, listening, tense, humped shape of his Master. “What is it, Cap’n?” he asked, in a low voice; with the feeling that Captain Jat must know. And then, even as he ventured the question, the abominable, unnaturally familiar clamour broke out again, unmistakeably nearer.
Captain Jat gave out a sudden, fierce grunt of comprehension:—
“Iils!” he said aloud, in a curious voice. “Iils! Sacred dogs, boy! They feeds ’em on the sacrifices, till they won’t eat ought else. I heard about ’em once, further up this same coast. The priest sometimes lets ’em go loose at night. That’s why them niggers was carryin’ torch-lights, so as to frighten ’em off. They’m feared of light, same as wild beasts….”
He broke off, and snatched up the lantern. Then ran towards the water and looked down, holding the lantern low. “I guess that’s why yon Portygee was so cocksure I’d not handle yon gold, when he gave me yon chart,” Pibby, who had followed at a run, heard him grumbling to himself. “He grinned middlin’ rum-like at me; may the devil bust him!”
The curious, tremendous clamour of sound broke out now in the woods to their back; seeming to be very near. And at the sudden noise, Captain Jat swore, and hove the lantern into the water; so that they were instantly in darkness.
“Curse them!” he muttered, with an almost incredible savagery. “They’m here a’ready! Into the water, boy; smart now! There’s dozens of ’em, by the noise of ’em! An’ they’m near big as donkeys, with the way they feeds ’em!”
He caught Pibby swittly by the shoulders, and swung him down through the darkness into the rush of the brook; then, with a spring like a great lean cat, he landed beside him, driving the water in all directions.
Above them, from the direction of the wood, the infernal noise burst out again, near and tremendous; and Captain Jat swore and dashed ahead through the dark, following the course of the shallow stream. Pibby kept close behind, stumbling, splashing and panting; for to his short figure, the water proved an immensely greater obstacle than to the unusually long, lean legs of his Master; who was seldom immersed above his great, bony knees.
Once, Captain Jat whipped round upon the lad, fiercely:—
“Make less your noise, boy!” he growled, stooping down almost to the level of Pibby’s face. “If them Iils gets us, I’ll sure clump you silly!”
Then he led on again.
Away up the stream, they heard now the clamour of the great dogs, making a threatening, broken din. By the sound of them, they had evidently come clear out from the trees, and were hunting the “scent” of the man and the boy, to and fro across the rocky plateau.
Meanwhile, the man and the boy ran on, downstream, through the darkness; the boy fighting desperately to keep up with the tremendous stride of his master. Once, Pibby lost his footing altogether on a slippery stone, and butted headlong into the stern of Captain Jat, bringing the whole lean, vigorous length of the Captain down on top of him, with the result that Pibby Tawles was sadly bruised; and, further, half drowned ruing the time that the long man sat upon the unfortunate and submerged youth, and cursed aloud into the night. And, as soon as Pibby struggled, sobbing for breath, to his feet, the Captain promptly knocked him down again, with a swinging clout; and began then immediately to go downstream once more; his anger seemingly appeased.
Now, whether it was that horde of dogs astern of them, had scent of them through the night air, or whether it was that the Captain’s cursings had been too vehement for personal safety, it is impossible to say. All that is certain is that there came suddenly a fresh note into the crying of the dogs; and immediately a silence; and then, as the man and the boy paused instinctively to listen, they heard, clear and unmistakeable in the distance, the scrambling rush of padded feet coming along the bank towards them.
“They’m sure got us, boy! I told ye I’d clout you proper if they did!” said Captain Jat, and made a heavy blow at Pibby Tawles, with his open fist; but the boy dodged, and kicked his Master savagely on the knee, whereat Captain Jat swore horribly, and hopped about the bottom of the brook on one foot. He slipped, and sat down with an enormous splash, and immediately began to roar with laughter, in a great voice that could have been heard half a mile away in that sudden, threatening silence; for the only other sound was the horrid noise of the running feet, padding along the bank.
“We’ll never see daylight again, boy,” said Captain Jat, in an almost cheerful voice. And, without troubling to rise from where he sat in the rush of water, he loosed off with one of his big pistols at something that dashed past along the bank. “They’m here, boy! Shoot all you can, ’fore they has us!” he shouted, as he pulled the trigger.
But there was no explosion; for the priming had been wet. He cursed Pibby afresh; cursed the brook, the weapons, the powder, the dogs, and his Creator.
Meanwhile, Pibby had tried his own weapons, and found them temporarily useless.
And then, all the dark bank opposite became alive with vague, rustling, racing creatures, indifferently seen against the background of the gloomy woods beyond. There rose a deafening, hoarse, dreadful baying, gargantuan and horrible; and in the same instant the smell of the great, flesh-gorged beasts came to them. There was a sudden splash, and Pibby saw something that looked like the shadow of a huge dog in the water. Then Captain Jat was upon it, striking with his big knife; though Pibby could only guess that he was using his knife.
Pibby saw the Captain leap away from the dog in the water, and dash straight at the high, overhanging bank. The dogs above howled with bestial expectancy. Then, to his amazement, he saw a shower of sparks; and realised that his Master was striking his flint and steel into the great tussocks of the dried grass. But he could not guess that Captain Jat had half-emptied his powder-flask quickly there among the grass.
The dogs had seemed to give back, at the showers of sparks; as though afraid of the last vestige of fire. But now they made a sudden rush. And even as they rushed, the sparks fired the powder; for a vast burst of flame came out of the dry grass that sent Captain Jat staggering back, with his beard all blazing.
But it was not at the Captain that Pibby Tawles looked. In the light of the great flame, he had seen maybe a score of dogs, so enormous in size that their bodies appeared to be as large as the bodies of young donkeys. Their colour was dirty, unhealthy white, and they were hideously blotched with great sores, while their eyes showed scummy and brutishly inert in the light.
The pack of dogs had stiffened back instantly from the great blaze; and, as the fire caught the grass around, and sent up fresh spurts of flame, they gave back farther, in a curiously helpless fashion, whimpering peculiarly. Pibby Tawles saw now that the flames were flickering through the dry grass and bracken in every direction up
on that side of the brook; and the dogs began to run sideways towards the wood beyond, whining as they ran.
Abruptly, the boy saw something extraordinary; for among the hinder dogs, there ran on all fours with the dogs, certain creatures that whined and snarled like dogs, yet certainly were not dogs.
The boy had climbed out of the water, onto the other bank, and had a clear view; and suddenly, he realised that the creatures that ran with the dogs were men, running with incredible swiftness upon all fours… not on their hands and knees, but upon their hands and toes. They were covered from their heads to their feet with what appeared to be great dog-skins.
“Priests, boy!” he heard Captain Jat say, suddenly, at his elbow; for the Captain had climbed up now beside him. “They’m worse nor any of them Iils, boy; if what I’ve heard is truth. They hunts with them at nights, sometimes, like this, so they told me down the coast; an’ now I see ’tis true. An’ they’m as mortal feared of light as the dogs. No use has they for flesh-meat, ’cept it be human meat, I’ve heard; an’ well I believe it now!”
In his angry disgust, Captain Jat raised one of his pistols, and snapped it off in the direction in which the dogs and the men-brutes had disappeared. He had changed the priming, whilst he was speaking, and the report echoed dully against the hoarse roar of the fire upon the far side of the brook; but whether the Captain hit anything, or not, Pibby Tawles could not be sure; though he thought he heard a distant, half-human howling.
“Change your primin’, boy,” said his Master; and busied himself in reloading his discharged pistol, and replacing the primings of the others. When this was done, Captain Jat led off at a good pace downstream; a pistol in each hand, and his eyes busy with every clumping of bush, or tussock of great silver-grass they came near; for they were soon out of the strong light from the fire, which spread no very great way, on account of the rocky nature of the ground, which broke the clumpings of bush and tall grass into odd groups, and so prevented the fire from gaining to the forest beyond.
Presently, in maybe near an hour, the Captain and Pibby were gone sufficiently far from the fire for it to show no more than a dull, red glow against the night-sky to their rear; and all about them had come again the utter and dree silence of the huge, timber-grown slopes of the great headland.
“Quiet, boy!” Captain Jat growled, presently, as Pibby fouled a great root with his foot, and stumbled. A few minutes later, he stopped short in his swift, stealthy walk, and reached his hand back against the boy’s chest. “Ssst!” he said. “They’m followin’. They’ve crost, an’ they’m smellin’ us out. Hark!”
For a little time of silence the two of them stood without movement; then, abruptly, far away in the forest to their backs, there rose again that strange clamouring; half-familiar, utterly horrible, and, in some peculiar fashion, unnatural.
“That’s them priest swine!” said Captain Jat, grimly. “It’s them that makes the funny sound to the dogs’ howlin’. It’s up hellum now, boy, an’ run for all we’re worth, or you won’t never see daylight in this world again. An’ don’t you make a sound, or I’ll clout you good an hearty!”
Captain Jat turned, and went down among the trees at a great pace. They had left the nearness of the brook sometime back; and they went downward now, blindly; yet knowing that by so doing they must eventually reach the seashore. From time to time, as they ran, there came the ugly clamour, away among the far darkness of the wood to their rear; and the trees around would catch the sound, and throw it at them, uncomfortably, from half a dozen directions in the night. And all the while, that cry of bestial hunger was steadily nearing them.
Abruptly, as they raced downward, Pibby missed his footing and went headlong; the pistol he carried in his hand, exploding with a great thud of sound, in the heavy silence among the trees. The bullet flicked between Captain Jat’s legs, skinning one of his knees, and that wrathful length of man turned, cursing at the top of his voice, and clouted Pibby fiercely, right and left, as he rose.
“You damned cork-fender!” he roared. “Stay an’ be eat by them devils astern!”
And with that, he turned, and continued his great stride downward through the darkness; avoiding the trees, almost as though he had some power of seeing in the dark.
Pibby got to his feet again, and followed the Captain; though his head was singing dizzily with the clumping he had received, as well as with the force of his tumble. Yet he ran desperately, managing to keep within sound of the Captain’s footsteps, and slowly overhauling him; for to be left behind was to be caught by those incredible brutes in his rear.
In this fashion, they continued, and at the verge of the wood, the boy overhauled Captain Jat; but he was so breathless, and so shaken by striking himself against the tree trunks in the darkness, that he ran, gasping madly for breath, his legs numb and heavy and almost useless. It was then that Captain Jat did, for him, a surprisingly nice thing; for there broke out now a tremendous clamour of pursing dogs and men-beasts, seeming no more than a hundred fathoms or so, within the wood; and at the horrid sound, Captain Jat let out a brutal oath, and muttering:— “Cub-dunnage!” picked up the blown lad, as though he had been but a kitten, and raced away with him at an amazing pace along the beach; his great legs seeming to cover a full fathom at every stride.
Astern of them, the clamour rose now, fierce and threatening, and so clear, that it was plain the brutes had broken free out of the wood, and were stretching after them along the open shore. At that, the Captain pushed the lad higher in his arms:—
“Over my shoulder, boy!” he grunted. “Fire over my shoulder. Backen the brutes, if you can, boy, or we’re sure gone!”
Pibby Tawles stared along the dark sands, and again came the clamour, very near, and sharp above the constant, wholesome noise of the sea all along his right. Then the boy saw something, many things, vague and black to their rear, that moved swiftly after them. He was, as you know, an extraordinary shot with a pistol, and he loosed off over the Captain’s shoulder, nearly deafening his Master; and a fierce howl out of the semi-darkness told that his shot had hit. Time after time, he fired, and three more of his shots brought maddened yelps out of the gloom along the beach. Then he reached his hand down to Captain Jat’s belt, and drew one of the Captain’s pistols; for he had fired all his own. With this, he loosed off again; and there came a half human crying that was very horrible; and immediately the boy was aware that the pursuit had ceased.
From their rear, there rose now a fierce, bestial snarling, and all the time a terrible voice shrieked and shrieked, and presently died away into a dreadful silence.
“You hit one of them priest fellers!” grunted the Captain, breathlessly. “An’ I guess them Iils has just turned an’ eat the swine; an’ serve his sort right an’ proper too!”
Behind them, there rose afresh the sudden uproar of the horrid chase; which told the two of them that the brutes astern had finished their dreadful meal, and were speeding once more towards them, through the darkness.
“Put me down, Cap’n! said Pibby. “I can run all right now!”
Captain Jat said nothing; but opened his arms, and hove the boy from him, as though he had been no more than a bundle. Pibby struck the sand with a thud that sickened him; but was on his feet in an instant, and racing behind his master; whilst less than a hundred fathoms in his rear, there rose the constant, incredible clamour of the great Iils and the brute-men that hunted them.
“The boat!” said the Captain, a moment later, and spurted forward. As he did so, he must have trodden on one of the larger round stones that strewed the sands here and there, for he slid, and pitched forward with a tremendous thud onto his face. And there he lay, as still as though he had been killed.
“Get up, Cap’n!” But Captain Jat sagged inert upon the sand; for the sudden fall had knocked the senses out of him.
Behind them, the noise of the brutes swept infernally towards them through the night; and Pibby could already hear the patter of many feet, and the
sharp rattle of odd stones, sent flying by the pads of the great dogs. He caught the Captain by one shoulder and arm, and hove him round upon his back, so that he could get his undischarged pistols. Then, swiftly but deliberately, the boy fired barrel after barrel along the sands, holding the heavy weapons no more than a foot above the level of shore.
With each thudding bang of the big pistols, there came ferocious yelps of pain; and then, twice in succession, a wild half-human yelling answered his shots, and the clamour of the dogs turned suddenly once more into that terrible snarling note, out of which came scream after scream, which told what was happening again.
Pibby Tawles turned then upon the Captain and slapped the big man’s face savagely with his open hand. A dozen times, he struck him; and suddenly Captain Jat began to swear thickly, and then turned and sat up, blaspheming insanely.
“Get up, Cap’n! Get up, Cap’n!” said Pibby. “They’ll come after us again in a tick!”
He got the man to his feet, and reeled him towards where the boat lay, not more than a dozen paces away. They reached it, threw off the painter, and pushed madly, and so had it quickly afloat. As the boat took the water, there arose again the roar of the brutes, coming towards them; and the two had scarcely got into the boat, and began to push out from the shore with their oars, when the great dogs were dashing into the shallow water all about them.
Captain Jat swung his oar round by the handle, and struck in among the dogs, and as he struck, Pibby crouched below the sweep of the great ash oar, and pushed steadily with his own against the sea bottom, and so in a few moments, the boat began to move out into deep water.
Yet even in that brief time, one of the great dogs had leapt and crooked its great forelegs in-board over the gunnel of the boat, and was scrambling furiously to climb in over; but Captain Jat beat in its head with the end of his oar, and the huge, foul-smelling beast fell back into the water.
A minute afterwards, they had the boat clear of danger, heading away out to the open sea, beyond the lee of the Headland; while astern of them, there rose the incessant, horrid clamour of the great dogs, and blending with it, a noise that was infinitely more dreadful—the disgusting, human-bestial note of the men-beasts that hunted with the dogs.
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 55
