The Steampunk Megapack

by Jay Lake

  A glance showed that the rest of the enemy—perhaps ten thousand strong—were between us and the encircling ditch, and pressing forward to the assault. Consequently we had them all! and had them past help. Time for the last act of the tragedy. I fired the three appointed revolver shots—which meant:

  “Turn on the water!”

  There was a sudden rush and roar, and in a minute the mountain brook was raging through the big ditch and creating a river a hundred feet wide and twenty-five deep.

  “Stand to your guns, men! Open fire!”

  The thirteen gatlings began to vomit death into the fated ten thousand. They halted, they stood their ground a moment against that withering deluge of fire, then they broke, faced about and swept toward the ditch like chaff before a gale. A full fourth part of their force never reached the top of the lofty embankment; the three-fourths reached it and plunged over—to death by drowning.

  Within ten short minutes after we had opened fire, armed resistance was totally annihilated, the campaign was ended, we fifty-four were masters of England. Twenty-five thousand men lay dead around us.

  But how treacherous is fortune! In a little while—say an hour—happened a thing, by my own fault, which—but I have no heart to write that. Let the record end here.

  CHAPTER XLIV

  A POSTSCRIPT BY CLARENCE

  I, Clarence, must write it for him. He proposed that we two go out and see if any help could be accorded the wounded. I was strenuous against the project. I said that if there were many, we could do but little for them; and it would not be wise for us to trust ourselves among them, anyway. But he could seldom be turned from a purpose once formed; so we shut off the electric current from the fences, took an escort along, climbed over the enclosing ramparts of dead knights, and moved out upon the field. The first wounded mall who appealed for help was sitting with his back against a dead comrade. When The Boss bent over him and spoke to him, the man recognized him and stabbed him. That knight was Sir Meliagraunce, as I found out by tearing off his helmet. He will not ask for help any more.

  We carried The Boss to the cave and gave his wound, which was not very serious, the best care we could. In this service we had the help of Merlin, though we did not know it. He was disguised as a woman, and appeared to be a simple old peasant goodwife. In this disguise, with brown-stained face and smooth shaven, he had appeared a few days after The Boss was hurt and offered to cook for us, saying her people had gone off to join certain new camps which the enemy were forming, and that she was starving. The Boss had been getting along very well, and had amused himself with finishing up his record.

  We were glad to have this woman, for we were short handed. We were in a trap, you see—a trap of our own making. If we stayed where we were, our dead would kill us; if we moved out of our defenses, we should no longer be invincible. We had conquered; in turn we were conquered. The Boss recognized this; we all recognized it. If we could go to one of those new camps and patch up some kind of terms with the enemy—yes, but The Boss could not go, and neither could I, for I was among the first that were made sick by the poisonous air bred by those dead thousands. Others were taken down, and still others. To-morrow—

  To-morrow. It is here. And with it the end. About midnight I awoke, and saw that hag making curious passes in the air about The Boss’s head and face, and wondered what it meant. Everybody but the dynamo-watch lay steeped in sleep; there was no sound. The woman ceased from her mysterious foolery, and started tip-toeing toward the door. I called out:

  “Stop! What have you been doing?”

  She halted, and said with an accent of malicious satisfaction:

  “Ye were conquerors; ye are conquered! These others are perishing—you also. Ye shall all die in this place—every one—except him. He sleepeth now—and shall sleep thirteen centuries. I am Merlin!”

  Then such a delirium of silly laughter overtook him that he reeled about like a drunken man, and presently fetched up against one of our wires. His mouth is spread open yet; apparently he is still laughing. I suppose the face will retain that petrified laugh until the corpse turns to dust.

  The Boss has never stirred—sleeps like a stone. If he does not wake to-day we shall understand what kind of a sleep it is, and his body will then be borne to a place in one of the remote recesses of the cave where none will ever find it to desecrate it. As for the rest of us—well, it is agreed that if any one of us ever escapes alive from this place, he will write the fact here, and loyally hide this Manuscript with The Boss, our dear good chief, whose property it is, be he alive or dead.

  THE END OF THE MANUSCRIPT

  FINAL P.S. BY M.T.

  The dawn was come when I laid the Manuscript aside. The rain had almost ceased, the world was gray and sad, the exhausted storm was sighing and sobbing itself to rest. I went to the stranger’s room, and listened at his door, which was slightly ajar. I could hear his voice, and so I knocked. There was no answer, but I still heard the voice. I peeped in.

  The man lay on his back in bed, talking brokenly but with spirit, and punctuating with his arms, which he thrashed about, restlessly, as sick people do in delirium. I slipped in softly and bent over him. His mutterings and ejaculations went on. I spoke—merely a word, to call his attention. His glassy eyes and his ashy face were alight in an instant with pleasure, gratitude, gladness, welcome:

  “Oh, Sandy, you are come at last—how I have longed for you! Sit by me—do not leave me—never leave me again, Sandy, never again. Where is your hand?—give it me, dear, let me hold it—there—now all is well, all is peace, and I am happy again—we are happy again, isn’t it so, Sandy? You are so dim, so vague, you are but a mist, a cloud, but you are here, and that is blessedness sufficient; and I have your hand; don’t take it away—it is for only a little while, I shall not require it long.… Was that the child?… Hello-Central!… she doesn’t answer. Asleep, perhaps? Bring her when she wakes, and let me touch her hands, her face, her hair, and tell her good-bye.… Sandy! Yes, you are there. I lost myself a moment, and I thought you were gone.… Have I been sick long? It must be so; it seems months to me. And such dreams! such strange and awful dreams, Sandy! Dreams that were as real as reality—delirium, of course, but so real! Why, I thought the king was dead, I thought you were in Gaul and couldn’t get home, I thought there was a revolution; in the fantastic frenzy of these dreams, I thought that Clarence and I and a handful of my cadets fought and exterminated the whole chivalry of England! But even that was not the strangest. I seemed to be a creature out of a remote unborn age, centuries hence, and even that was as real as the rest! Yes, I seemed to have flown back out of that age into this of ours, and then forward to it again, and was set down, a stranger and forlorn in that strange England, with an abyss of thirteen centuries yawning between me and you! between me and my home and my friends! between me and all that is dear to me, all that could make life worth the living! It was awful—awfuler than you can ever imagine, Sandy. Ah, watch by me, Sandy—stay by me every moment—don’t let me go out of my mind again; death is nothing, let it come, but not with those dreams, not with the torture of those hideous dreams—I cannot endure that again.… Sandy?…”

  He lay muttering incoherently some little time; then for a time he lay silent, and apparently sinking away toward death. Presently his fingers began to pick busily at the coverlet, and by that sign I knew that his end was at hand with the first suggestion of the death-rattle in his throat he started up slightly, and seemed to listen: then he said:

  “A bugle?… It is the king! The drawbridge, there! Man the battlements!—turn out the—”

  He was getting up his last “effect”; but he never finished it.

  THE TRUMPETER, by Arthur O. Friel

  Deos Padre! Hear that war-horn!

  Hand me your field glasses quickly, senhor! Something is happening over there on the southern bank of the river, and I can not see it plainly. If it is an attack there will be rifle shots, unless the settlers are overpowered at on
ce. Listen!

  Ah, it is nothing. Only a celebration. I can see Indians with great false heads doing a devil-dance before the house of some planter, who stands there with his woman and laughs. Probably he is their patrao, and has given them a holiday to keep them in good humor.

  If the harsh blast of that turé had not struck my ear so suddenly I might have realized that it was blown only in merrymaking, for the days when hordes of bloody barbaros attacked settlers here on the Amazon are long past. Past, I mean, on the Amazon itself. Up the great wild rivers which flow in from the south there are still plenty of savage killers, and we Brazilians who rove the unknown jungle know well what the turé means. It is the voice of death.

  You can not blame me, then, for leaping up so suddenly just now. That jarring note made me forget for an instant that I was safe on the deck of a steamer instead of back in the wilderness of the Javary. Moreover, it is not many months since I heard the turé blown in deadly earnest, and I have not forgotten what followed.

  Certainly, senhor, I will tell you the story if you care to hear it. Wait a moment until I make another cigarette. The one which I was smoking must have dropped overboard when I sprang up.

  Now this thing of which I speak came about while the waters of the great yearly flood were sweeping over the lowlands of the Javary region, where I was a rubber-worker for Coronel Nunes. As you know, there are really two floods each year here on the upper Amazon, but only one of these is the great rise. Then the water overwhelms all except the highest places, and our work in the swampy forests must stop until it drains away to the far-off ocean. And it was at this time that I met the Trumpeter.

  With my comrade, Pedro Andrada, I had paddled southward through flooded channels to the upper reaches of the river Jurua. We were in no hurry, for we thought there would be nothing to do when we should reach our journey’s end. But two days after leaving the river, as we were looking about among the half-drowned trees for a solid spot fit to sleep on that night, Pedro spoke in a tone of concern.

  “Lourenço, we had best paddle a little harder tomorrow. The enchente has ended and the vasante has set in.”

  As he said, the great rise had reached its height. On the trees around us were wet stains showing that it was beginning to ebb. From now on the waters would drop steadily until they were fifty feet or more below their present level. We had never traveled on this furo before, knew nothing of its depth ahead of us, and were not even sure that it ran all the way to the Javary region. So, though we did not worry, we knew it would be well to waste no time and take no chance of finding ourselves stranded in un­known country.

  When we found firm land and went ashore to sling our hammocks I nicked a tree with my machete, making a mark just at the waterline. The next morning that mark was more than the width of my hand above the surface. And all that day, as we swung on homeward, we saw the wet stains lengthen on the big trunks towering around us and knew we were sinking toward the thick bush submerged far below. So we talked little, ate without delay, and kept going until darkness was near. When we landed again we were tired.

  “A good day’s work, comrade,” Pedro said. “I do not know where we are, but we are nearer to the Javary than last night. It is good that the dull skies of the rainy time have gone and the sun shines steadily. Now we can tell better which way we are traveling.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “And now that the sunny verao has come we should hear birds calling more often. This country has been too still to suit me. I should like to hear the sweet song of the realejo—the organ-bird—or the long piping of that fifer, the uira-mimbeu.”

  Just then, as if in answer to my wish, a long clear call came floating through the forest. It died so softly that it seemed to hang in the air when we could not hear it more. As we stared at each other it came again. Three times in all it sounded, neither rising nor falling—just the one note, long and slow. Then we heard nothing further.

  “That is not a fifer, and it certainly is not the realejo,” said Pedro. “It must be a trumpeter. You have heard that bird, of course.”

  I nodded. I had not only heard it, but I had seen it. The trumpeter is that blackish bird which the Peruvians call trom­petero—a creature about the size of a big hen, but with longer legs and neck. It is a fast runner but a poor flyer, and the Indians sometimes tame it. I had known one caboclo who kept such a bird, and when it died I carefully cut it open to see how it made its trumpeting cry. I found that its windpipe was very long, running down under the skin almost to the tail, then doubling around and rising again to the chest, where it went inside the breastbone to the throat.

  The sound which had just come to us was much like the call of that bird I had known, and yet it did not seem quite the same. If I had heard it anywhere else I should have said it was made by a man with a horn. But here in this desolate region such a thing seemed not possible, unless the man were an Indian; and a blast from an Indian trumpet would never have such smooth sweetness.

  “Yes, it must be the trumpet bird,” I agreed. “If it would only stay where it is until tomorrow we might see it, for it is over to the westward. But probably we shall not even hear it again.”

  I was wrong. We were to hear it once more that day, and several times in the days to come.

  * * * *

  We built a little fire, ate, got into our hammocks, and lay back smoking. Around us it was quite dim; but high up overhead, where were scattered openings in the tangled roof of branches, the sunshine still glinted. Then suddenly it was gone. Darkness swallowed everything but our tiny fire.

  With the passing of the sun the distant trumpeter spoke again. And this time the sound was not one unchanging call. Slowly, sweetly, it rose and fell, going higher on each long note, quivering on the highest, and then sinking to the one on which it had begun. There it died away. And we lay there silent, senhores, silent with surprise, and silent with a feeling of loneliness and sadness which that strain left in our hearts.

  At last Pedro spoke.

  “That is no bird, Lourenço. It is no wild man of the bush, either. Then what can it be?”

  “I do not know,” I said. “Some things happen in the jungle which can not be explained. But listen. Perhaps it will come again.”

  We listened long, but heard only the usual night sounds. After a time these noises blurred and faded into nothing. I slept.

  * * * *

  Morning brought the trumpet call again. While we were making our coffee we stiffened into listening. The sound was the same one we had first heard—three slow notes in the same tone. But somehow it seemed to us that this time they were weaker than before, and that in them was a note of despair.

  We said no word. We only looked at each other. But we hastened our meal, rolled up our hammocks speedily, and paddled away with swift strokes. As we went we searched the jungle with sharp glances. The furo was leading us straight toward the place whence those sounds must have come.

  After a time we halted. We had heard nothing more, nor seen anything alive. Yet we knew we must be near the spot we sought.

  “It can not be a bird or a beast,” said Pedro. “If it has a body it can be nothing but a man.” Then, breathing deep, he roared out the call we give in our own region when approaching a house—

  “O da casa!”

  For a moment no answer came. We heard only the slight sucking sound of water around the tree trunks. Then, not far away to our left, the trumpeter answered. And now the notes were not long and slow. They were quick, urgent, discordant—as if a man were blowing a horn in a frenzy of hope and fear lest we go past and leave him.

  We yelled together, swung our dugout, and passed in among the trees toward the noise. Soon we found land. We called again, but no voice answered. Several small sounds came to us, though, and we stepped ashore and moved toward them.

  Suddenly we stopped, staring at the ground.

  A man was dragging himself along toward us. His head hung down so that we could not see his face—only a thick mass of long blo
nd hair. He moved on both hands and one knee. The other leg dragged behind him as if useless. At each forward lift of his knee he grunted as if the movement cost him a mighty effort.

  “Stop, friend,” I said quietly. “We are here.”

  He stopped. His arms quivered under him, then suddenly bent and let him slump down. But as we dropped on our knees beside him he turned his head and, lying quiet, peered up at us. We looked into blue eyes gleaming in a tanned face overgrown with short yellow beard. The face looked drawn and pinched.

  “Howdy!” he said hoarsely. “Got any grub?”

  “We have plenty of food, senhor,” Pedro said. “Have you hunger?”

  “You said it. That’s all I’ve got—hunger and a busted leg. For the love of God, slip me some eats!”

  “Por amor de Deos, we will do so,” smiled Pedro. “Lie still.” And he arose and strode back to our canoe.

  While he was gone I looked the man over more deliberately. His speech and his dress—pocketed shirt, khaki breeches, knee boots, web belt and flat pistol—showed him to be American. The clothing was not so badly worn and stained as it would be if he had been long in the bush. The right leg was unbooted, and rough splints were tied to it below the knee. Glancing again at his face, I saw that his teeth were set and the sweat of pain was on his forehead.

  “You have hurt that broken leg by your crawling,” I said. “Why did you not lie still and let us come to you?”

  “Because that would be the sensible thing to do.” His voice was weak, but he grinned gamely. “I never show any sense. If I did I wouldn’t be here at all. Besides, I’ve been on my back for a week, and I’ve learned what it is to be lonesome.”

  “What! You have been lying here a week?”