by Dolly
So Cerberus went on licking my hand, until I felt his rough tongue rasping away the tender skin from a recent wound on its back. But I did not heed it, could not heed it, for I was wrapt in ecstatic contemplation of the iridescent colours playing before my entranced eyes, and every muscle was stiff and immobile.
Suddenly, I know not how long after, I became dimly conscioifs that, through the parti - coloured rings of light, Cerberus was standing on the bed at my little May's feet, his hair bristling, his tail lashing the great black sides in angry, spasmodic strokes! The one green eye was glaring fixedly toward the head of the bed; the blind one, as usual, staring up with its patch of jagged crimson to the ceiling.
While I yet watched, my eyes set immovably in their sockets, the pendulum swing of the tail ceased, and the great black body crouched low on the bed for a spring. I felt a sensation of eerie alarm gripping at my heart, though I did not then realise its meaning. It was a premonition of coming disaster, that subsided ere it could be translated into fear.
What was the matter with Cerberus, I wondered,
and as I wondered I saw, mixed up with the
flashing colours, a huge, shadowy body stretched to
its full length as it launched itself through the air. Only for an instant, then it alighted full on my little girl's breast, its giant head partly hid under little May's chin. She awoke from her pleasant dreams with a scream of terror, a peculiar, gurgling cry that seemed stifled and compressed in its utterance.
What did it mean ? I asked myself again, lying there in rigid immobility. She had never been afraid of Cerberus's caresses. I could see in the dim light her blue eyes, widely open, staring wildly, protuberantly upwards. f longed to get up and see what was the matter, but I was bound, fettered.
Presently the slight body beneath the sheets quivered and writhed, and the form of the cat, nestling so close above her, rocked, yet its head remained down.
What did it mean ?
Then slowly the little pulse that remained in my inert body stopped, and my eyes grew dim and clouded with horror. Cerberus had his great yellow fangs buried in my child's throat, and was greedily drinking her life's blood!
The dream-colours were growing deeper now on the white coverlet—growing crimson that before had been palest gold; crimson, sprinkled and scattered. No ! no ! no ! This was no vision ! This was real! O God ! O God ! my little May's blood! And I lay there staring, staring
A deep growl recalled me from my swoon of anguish, and the mists that were gathering before my eyes ran back again into nothingness.
The ghoulish creature was standing erect, its tail swinging again from side to side, the fangs and cruel, snarling lips imbued in gore. Then it stooped its head, and, fixing the terrible claws in her tender flesh, gripped with its teeth the slender throat of my child. And I—I lay there in all the rigidity of death, yet without the merciful oblivion death bestows, watching with appalling clearness this monster deliberately rending and tearing the throat of a human being, and that being — my child!
My reason must have tottered for a moment in its seat, for I began to seek excuses for the grisly deed.
Poor Cerberus! Good Cerberus! He was thirsty and hungry; he had not been fed. Good, gentle Cerberus! Perhaps now he would come and tear open my throat, and dim my eyes again to the horror before them.
But no! He went on rending the white flesh, and there came to my ears the soft rasping of skin and flesh being torn asunder. Presently he raised himself erect once more and looked around. His eye fixed itself on the neighbouring cot, and, with angrily-lashing tail, he sprang across the space that separated the little baby from May, alighting by its side and commencing leisurely to lick the face and throat of the sleeping infant.
My God ! not that! I shrieked, yet shrieking, uttered no sound. I fancied I was wringing my hands in my anguish, yet my limbs were motionless and stiff. Not that! not that! Spare me at least my baby—my little innocent child !
The baby awoke at the touch of his tongue, and smiled confidingly up into the blood-smeared face above, crowing with infant delight, whilst I lay in that frightful nightmare existence watching— watching, with stilled pulses, for the time when, tired of his play, the fiend would
Suddenly I saw the shoulder-blades project from his back as he set himself against the pull. Then the same insistent, ripping sound, the same raw, nauseating odour of fresh blood as he tore causelessly at the tiny throat—causelessly, from sheer ferocity and lust of blood, for he was long surfeited with the holocaust.
Little spots of chameleon hue, tinted by the rainbow-vision colours, were appearing silently on the floor; I knew not whence they came, for I saw them only as they showed forth on the boards. Then the colours faded swiftly away, faded, all but one; that one was crimson. I saw their origin— it was the spurting blood of my babe. I could detect it now in its crimson stream as it rose from the bed and fell in gory fountain through the air. The spots on the floor had run together and formed a pool, and still I gazed wide-eyed and could not stir.
I prayed madly, frantically to God. Ah, how I prayed for but one moment of that glad, free movement that hitherto I had despised, that I might tear the monster from my little one's throat! And when He would not hear me, when He in callous apathy turned His back upon me, I prayed to the demons, the fiends beneath whose bondage I groaned, to grant me, their slave, one minute's respite from the fetters that shackled my limbs in utter helplessness. I prayed that it might at least be given me to close my eyes, to shut out the sight of the ghastly tragedy that was being enacted before them. Oblivion, blindness, death itself, I cared not what so I should not be compelled to gaze upon this foul harpie of Eblis in its horrible carnage.
O God! how joyously I would have welcomed death at that moment! How I would have smiled and striven to kiss the hand that dealt me the stroke of mercy. I tried in my anguish to imagine that I felt the stilly langour of death stealing over my spirit, that to my failing sight the room was growing dim and indistinct, but I could not; every object, every little spurt and splash of blood shone out bright and clear.
There was but one tint, all pervading, the hue of my children's blood. Revolving rings within rings, fires that leapt and flashed around my babes' bodies, all were red, red !
Suddenly something within my brain snapped; there was a loud report, that reverberated through and through my being, and on its fading echoes, amid a whirring of grinding, tearing wheels, I sank away into
I was crouching by the bedside, beside the stiffened corpses of my little children, laughing low as I dabbled my hands in the rapidly-clotting gore, raising great strings of it between my fingers to the light, when next morning the boy came into the room and retreated again in terror to the flat below.
Cerberus was lying curled at the foot of May's bed, glutted and content, purring loudly as he drifted off into a sleep of satiety. Very gently I caressed him, coaxed him to the other end of the bed, laughing softly the while.
At last I had lured him on to May's still breast, and he lay there purring forth his satisfaction, the gory head resting on her smooth, blood-stained forehead.
Very gently, ever laughing, I disengaged from either side the child's head a thick tress of goldenbright hair, now stained so deeply, and rank with the reeking odour of earth and rawness.
Very gently, laughing still, I knotted them loosely over the great cat's neck, retaining the two ends in my hands. Then, with a last exultant shriek of triumph, I threw my whole strength into the effort, and drew the insidious strands of curly hair tight about the ghoul's throat.
It was then that I received the fearful scratches that now disfigure my arms and breast. But I never for an instant released my hold, never relaxed so glorious a game, but drew the strands ever tighter and tighter, until gradually the wildlyclawing paws were stilled, as with a last spasmodic struggle and a violent shivering the hideous fiend stretched his sombre body in death above the corpses of my children.
My blood was flowing freely
now, mingling on the bed with the clotted gore of the little ones, but I heeded it not. I laughed in glee to see the glassy green eye protruding so far from the monster's head, as far, or farther, than the sightless white one with the crimson splash.
I think then several persons burst into the room; I cannot remember. I think there was a scuffle as they tried to drag me from the bedside. It is all so long ago now, months or perhaps years, I must be forgetting.
But every few nights that ghoulish black thing comes creeping stealthily through the closed door, through the wall, anywhere, and, clambering upon my bed, lies a dead weight across my breast and throat, half-suffocating me as I stare in terror up at the hideously-deformed head, with its one protruding orb of blank, red-splashed tissue and malignant green eye.
And in its fulsome breath, as it purrs loudly into my face, I smell again the reeking blood of my little children, and though I shriek in horror and cry out piteously to them to come in God's name and take the frightful thing away, they only stand at my bedside leering at me with a smile of bitter mockery, and tell me I am mad.
Mad ! The hounds! Could I have set forth this terrible story with such lucidity were I mad ?
THE "LEONID."
The " Leonid."
THEY were sitting in the cabin of the second officer of the Cracksang, at Cheemoy, recalling memories of the first Jubilee.
" I was just out of my teens then," concluded the white - haired consul's constable, after a reminiscence.
" I say, chuck it," remonstrated the second, " I was no giddy chicken myself in eighty-seven."
The consul's constable eyed him with nascent indignation, then his eyes twinkled.
" Now, how old would you put me down to be ? " he asked presently.
The second officer looked him critically over.
" Well, wishing to flatter you, I should start the bidding at fifty."
" And you ? " he turned to the first.
" I should go five better," returned that individual.
The consul's constable smiled a little smile that softened for the moment the haggard lines of his face.
" I suppose you 'd be surprised if I told you I was only thirty-four ? " he asked.
" I 'd be more than surprised," the second assured him, " I 'd be jolly well incredulous."
" Nevertheless," mused their visitor, " there are some things that age a man more in a week than ten years of ordinary living can."
" Whisky's one," murmured the first, " taken inconsiderately."
The consul's constable saw the need of vindication.
" Did you ever have a meteorite fall near you at sea ? " he questioned.
" Can't say I have.''
" Well, I will tell you about one."
But the second held up his hand, entreating delay, and bellowed " booy! "
When the China boy made his appearance he pointed desolately to the empty glasses; then, while their visitor held his new-filled glass to the light and gazed at it with the critical eye of the connoisseur, the second coiled himself up more comfortably on the settee, and the first swung into the bunk.
The consul's constable absorbed the moisture on the inside of his glass and looked up.
" What do you want—the yarn of the Leonid ? "
" We want to know why you are thirty-four instead of sixty-four," the second told him severely.
" Well, it happened more than ten years ago, when I was a scatter-brained, devil - may - care youngster like yourself."
The second officer smiled indulgently.
" Steady as she goes," he murmured.
" And held the appointment of third mate in a little coaster owned by a syndicate of wealthy Chinese merchants. We were manned much the same as you, white officers and engineers, China crew, and Malay quartermaster, and used to run down to Saigon and Java, or anywhere that the kind fates offered a decent cargo.
" At the time of the occurrence of which I am to tell you we were on our way up from Bangkok to Hong-Kong. It was a fine, starlit night, and my eight to twelve watch on the bridge of sighs. I was leaning over the rail looking up at the constellation of Orion, some of the stars of which were crossing the meridian about that time, and wondering if it were worth while taking a couple of altitudes, when I saw a shooting star shine out near Betelgeuse, and travel across the heavens.
" One is always more or less interested in a brilliant meteorite, and as I watched this one its angular motion seemed to be getting slower and slower and the star growing brighter.
" A moment after I realised, with a start, that it had left the tangent on which it was moving, and was travelling straight toward us.
" By this time it was far brighter than Venus at her best, and f was debating in my mind whether I should slip down and give the skipper a shake-up, when there came a blinding glare, with a sudden glow of intense heat in my face, followed almost instantly by a terrific explosion that made the old ship reel and tremble from truck to keelson, as the meteorite plunged into the sea a couple of miles on the starboard bow.
" Little enough need was there then to call anybody, for the whole ship's company from the captain to the cook's boy came pouring up on deck inquiring with scared faces what had happened.
" While I still clung to the bridge rails, blinded by the light that had so swiftly been extinguished, and half stunned by the concussion, a dense bank of steam or something rolled like a pall over our ship, the lights flickered for a little and went out, and we found ourselves in impenetrable darkness.
" But this was not the worst. We had turned the ship's head to windward with the idea of steaming out of the fog, but before the engines had made a dozen revolutions, first one began to cough then another. We felt a choking sensation, followed by ever-increasing difficulty of breathing; and as the sulphurous fumes got denser, we lost our heads in the terror of this unknown thing, and panic reigned.
" I can recollect as I fought desperately in that utter blackness for breath, seeing one of the quartermasters rush past, shrieking like mad. Then a Chinaman dashed himself blindly against me, recoiled and fell howling to the deck, where he writhed and gasped, tearing wildly at his throat with both his hands.
" Groping my way along the bridge, I tried to get down the ladder leading to the main deck, missed my footing, and fell several feet landing at last on something soft. It was darker still here, but I seemed to breathe a little easier, and feeling round with my hands, I concluded I must be in the lower hold. In my panic I had slipped through the ladder rail, and plunged, feet first, down one of the cowls that ventilated the lower hold.
" No, you needn 't look at me. I know very well I 'd stand a good chance of sticking half-way now. I was slimmer then."
" Granted! " said the second impatiently. " Go on with the yarn."
" Well, luckily for me, I had come down on bags of rice, and though a good bit shaken, was unhurt. The hold was only two-thirds full, so there was ample standing-room between the bags and the 'tween decks.
"As I sat, half-dazed, under the ventilator, wondering how I was to get up again, the terrible, choking vapour came pouring down on me, threatening soon to make the hold as deadly as the deck I had so precipitately left. There was not much time to think matters over. I saw that if I wanted time to draw many more comfortable breaths I must stufl that ventilator up; so, drawing my knife, I slit three or four bags, emptied the rice out, and jammed them with all my strength up the shaft.
" Then, stumbling across the bags, I did the same with the port ventilator, and when I had got them as air-tight as I could I found I could breathe with comparative freedom.
" There I resolved to wait until that beastly fog cleared up a bit; but the No. 2 hold of a thousandton steamer is none too big to be pleasant, particularly when, it is nearly full, so I told myself I didn't care how soon the vapour cleared away, and gave me the chance of getting out without choking myself.
" While I sat there wondering what they were doing on deck, straining my ears to catch the slightest soun
d, I fancied the regular beat of the propeller was getting slower. Five minutes after I was sure they were slowing her down on deck, and after another half-hour the engines seemed to be hardly moving.
" What was the idea, I wondered, of slowing her down so gradually ?
" While I was still trying to account for this the engines gave a convulsive throb, swung for a moment or two over their centres, then stopped altogether.
" Still I could hear no sound from the deck, nothing but the swish of the water against the ship's sides as she rose and fell on the light swell that was running.
" One can't stand that sort of suspense for long, with nothing but the monotonous lap of the water to be heard, so I got up and pulled the bags to one side, with the intention of sending up a hail for a rope. But a downward rush of deadly gas made me stuff them up again as hard as I could, and sit down again with more of fear in my heart than I had felt when I came down here.
" Then it had been hot, unreasoning panic; but now I felt that something had gone wrong. I must have heard them moving about on deck if they had not left the ship, and why would they want to leave her ? Had anything happened after that fog came along ?
" Look at it which way I would, it was no pleasant predicament I found myself in, cooped up in the hold in blank darkness and utter silence, except for the wash; but I dared not tackle that ventilator again until the vapour had cleared, so there was nothing to do but wait. I tell you, though, I felt like a youngster who is locked up in a dark cellar and doesn't know what is going to happen next.
" I hung out like that for the rest of that night, and when I thought morning had come I tried the ventilator again. The air had cleared a good deal, but a violent fit of coughing warned me of the impossibility of gaining the deck.