Shortly after three, a ship, half a mile away on the starboard quarter of the convoy leader, suddenly blazed off with one of its guns. Instantly every ship leapt into activity, put on its maximum speed and, altering course, began to zigzag from side to side.
Carruthers came running out on to the bridge with a pair of binoculars and swift signals from one ship to another fluttered up and down. But there was no more firing; very soon everything returned to normal and Carruthers went back to his bunk. One of the look-outs on the ship that had fired the gun had thought that he had sighted the periscope of an enemy submarine, but it had turned out to be a piece of driftwood which was bobbing up and down some distance away.
As the afternoon wore on Simon and Marie Lou became thoroughly bored with their job but they did not relax their vigilance. At five o’clock a steward roused the Captain and brought him tea, after which he went out on to the bridge again. Dusk was now closing in upon the troubled waters and the other ships were only just visible. In all the long day they had not sighted another vessel, and had seen only one British patrolling aeroplane, but at about half-past five they heard the drone of powerful engines and the sailors immediately rushed to anti-aircraft stations.
However, it proved that the planes were a flight of new bombers being flown across from Canada to Britain. As their leader sighted the convoy on the darkening sea he dipped in salute, bringing the great plane down quite low so that for a moment it looked as though it must graze the mast-heads, while the sailors, who had all run up on deck, gave the airmen a rousing cheer.
Just before six the second-in-command entered the bridge cabin and made a report to Carruthers about a seaman who had met with an accident the previous day. Apparently the doctor had feared that he would die, but the man had now taken a turn for the better. The two officers had a pink-gin together and talked for a little time about routine matters, then they listened to the six-o’clock news on the wireless.
By this time Simon was getting restless, as normally he needed little sleep and nine hours was an unusually long spell for him, although he had thought that he would manage it quite easily after having been up all the previous night. Marie Lou told him that he could go home if he wished, as she was quite capable of staying on duty for another couple of hours if necessary, and the Duke was due to put in an appearance long before that; but Simon said that he was determined to stick it out and subdue his urge to return to his body until de Richleau relieved him.
De Richleau arrived at seven o’clock to the moment, as the ship’s bell was still clanging, and they told him that they had nothing to report. Night had now fallen and all three of them were standing out in the black darkness of the bridge. The Duke was just about to tell the others that they could return home when he suddenly shivered and looked about him quickly.
Astral bodies are not affected by the weather conditions of Earth, so the clothing that the three were wearing was a mental concession to the scene about them and in no sense because such garments were necessary to protect them from the wind and flying spray; but astral forms do feel the cold or heat natural to any astral phenomena which may be in their vicinity—hence the discomfort that the Duke had suffered when he had had to take the form of an Able Seaman on the first night that he had gone out to watch the Admiral and the Admiral had sailed an astral sea in on astral ship.
‘Do either of you feel anything unusual?’ the Duke asked sharply.
As astrals present in an Earth scene, neither of the others had, up to that moment, been conscious of the temperature at all, but as de Richleau spoke Marie Lou said:
‘Yes. It seems to be getting awfully cold.’
Simon turned at the same moment and glanced over his shoulder. ‘There’s quite a wind blowing from somewhere, and it can’t be an Earth wind; there must be something pretty nasty passing near us at the moment.’
De Richleau nodded. ‘It may be passing; but somehow I don’t think so. For the time being you two had better remain with me.’
The cold had increased to a deadly chill and he knew that abominable wind to be a certain indication of the presence of disembodied Evil. With a sudden absolute conviction that his theory was right—the Nazis were using the occult—he turned towards the cabin.
‘Come on!’ he cried. ‘Quick! This is the thing for which we have been waiting.’
8
A Nightmare that was Lived
Now that the presence of the unknown Evil could be so definitely felt, de Richleau knew that the astral which was working for the Nazis might appear at any moment. If they remained as they were the astral would see them and, if it realised that they were spying on it, would either make off or give battle, according to its power. In either case they would be robbed of the opportunity of seeing how it did its work, so as they passed into the Captain’s cabin de Richleau, knowing that his companions could not raise themselves to a higher level of consciousness, swiftly told them to change their forms. As he spoke, he became a fly and they immediately followed suit.
So far no strange astral form was visible and there was nothing whatever to indicate the presence of Evil except that grim, unnatural cold which they could feel but which, apparently, the Captain could not, for his cabin was warmly heated and he was not wearing his fleece-lined oilskins or sou’-wester.
Carruthers was now seated at a wall desk with a ledger opened up in front of him. For some little time nothing happened. Then Marie Lou, her sense of the mischievous getting the better of her uneasiness about the source of the cold, decided to amuse herself by tickling the taciturn sailor and alighted with her six feet spread well out, on the tip of his nose.
Contrary to her expectations, he did not draw back and make an ineffective grab at her, but sat there unheeding, as he continued to examine his accounts regarding the bottom of his glass. She performed a little dance to rouse him, but almost at once de Richleau’s voice reached her.
‘This is no time for playing the fool,’ he said with unusual sharpness, ‘and you ought to have the sense to realise that he can neither feel nor see you, because whatever form you take you’re still on the astral. I ordered the change only to make us less conspicuous to any evil entity that may appear.’
With a word of contrition, Marie Lou gave up her sport and flew off to one of the white-painted girders above the Captain’s head. Just as she had settled there his steward came in to lay the table for dinner.
In due course dinner was served but the Captain did not seem to have much of an appetite and only toyed with his food. He sat there for some time over each course and appeared deep in thought; a “thriller” lay open on the table beside him but he did not attempt to read it.
Having finished his dinner Carruthers went over and lay down on his bunk, while the table was cleared and the cabin tidied. For the best part of an hour the intense cold had continued unabated, and Simon was now having to struggle hard to keep himself asleep, but no manifestation of any kind other than the cold was perceptible to the astral senses of the watchers.
It was well past eight when the Captain rolled off his bunk and, crossing the cabin to the safe, began to fumble for his keys.
De Richleau signed to his two companion flies to come near him so that all three of them by standing with their legs just touching could increase their resistance should the evil Entity actually appear now that the critical moment was come.
Carruthers got the safe open, pulled out the despatch-box, unlocked it and took out the convoy route order. Carrying it over to his bunk, he sat down with the instructions in his hand and began to re-read them.
The cold had now become positively icy and Simon felt himself absolutely drooping with desire to fall awake, but at a slight pressure from the Duke he roused and saw that something was moving just above the Captain’s head.
Next minute the ‘Thing’ was plain to all three of them. It was a thick-lipped negro face behind which a high-domed head and powerful shoulders began to materialise.
Instantly they r
ealised that this was the enemy astral and that he was now memorising the convoy route as the Captain held it open in his hand.
Within a split second de Richleau had changed himself into a great blue dragon-fly of the highly-poisonous variety that is found in the forests of the Amazon. Almost as quickly Marie Lou converted herself into a fat black-and-yellow queen wasp. Together they launched themselves upon the Negro, while Simon, whose processes on the astral were much slower, was still struggling to equip himself suitably for participation in such a battle.
Although they streaked at him from behind, the negroid astral must have sensed the presence of an enemy. He suddenly changed form, becoming a huge black flying beetle which zoomed up to the roof of the cabin so that the dragon-fly and queen wasp shot past underneath him. Dropping like a plummet, he would have severed Marie Lou’s pointed tail with his powerful pincers had not Simon, in the guise of a hornet, come hurtling towards him at that instant.
For the space of an aircraft dog-fight the four winged astrals circled about one another with amazing speed, the three bright champions of Light endeavouring to pierce the beetle’s guard and bury their stings in his body. But his back was armoured, so they could not get at him from above, and each time they darted at him he drove them off with swift slashes of his formidable knife-like claws.
Suddenly the beetle changed, swelling in size and assuming the appearance of a large black bird with a vulture-like beak. One snap of that beak would have cut any of his three enemies clean in half, and his movements were so swift that Marie Lou and Simon had to zip with lightning speed to sanctuary in corners among the white-painted girders where the great bird could not get at them.
While they were both striving to formulate in their minds a more suitable astral the Duke had already changed to a golden eagle and one slash of his strong claws tore half a dozen feathers out of the black vulture’s tail. The bird screeched with rage and next second was gone from the cabin with the eagle sailing swiftly in pursuit.
Both Simon and Marie Lou knew that they were leaving Earth to continue this astral battle in other spheres and, converting themselves into powerful feathered creatures, they made off in the track of the two birds. As she left the cabin Marie Lou caught a last glimpse of Captain Carruthers. He had not seen or heard the faintest indication of that strange fight which had raged within a few feet of his head, and he was still sitting there holding the open order, evidently conscientiously committing its contents to memory.
The Evil entity led them to a dark country on the astral plane which has no replica on Earth. It was a place of black mountains and great gorges; yet it had a tropical richness of strange verdure in its valleys. Many of the plants were forms of cactus; others were like huge toadstools. Instead of grass the ground was covered with poison-ivy and fly-eating plants and the whole of this thick vegetation swarmed with poisonous insects and reptiles.
As yet the enemy had not thrown off his disguise and still appeared as a black vulture that flew screaming through the dark valleys which were lit only by a faint, uncanny, moon-like radiance. De Richleau, too, had continued his semblance of an eagle.
Suddenly the vulture dropped like a stone and disappeared among the leprous-looking foliage. De Richleau plunged after it and was lost to sight. The other two then knew that unless they were to lose their quarry they must assume forms which would enable them to follow through the seemingly impenetrable tangle of hideous undergrowth.
Marie Lou again became a queen wasp and Simon, with a great effort of his tired will, changed back into a hornet. Swiftly they flew between the needle-like cactus spines and darted in and out among the giant funguses until they reached a small, stony clearing where a terrible conflict was raging.
A whirl of claws, sharp teeth, fur, legs and tails made it impossible to distinguish at first which of the two animals was the Duke and the Evil astral; and the difficulty was increased by the fact that the two beasts changed their forms a dozen times in sixty seconds.
After an agonised snarl one beast detached itself from the other, and, whipping away, slithered swiftly along the rock in the form of a king cobra, by which the two watchers at once knew that this must be the enemy; but in an instant de Richleau had changed into a mongoose and was after the snake like a flash of light.
The cobra reared up, hissed and stabbed with its heavy, bespeckled head, but missed. The mongoose got its teeth into the snake’s scaly body; the victim’s tail began to thresh but it drew in, changed form and became one of the many great hairy legs of a huge tarantula.
In an instant the mongoose had become an armadillo, whose thick armour protected it from the tarantula’s poisonous bite. Suddenly the tarantula seemed to disappear, but the armadillo routed furiously among the loose stones and narrowly escaped being stung in the boot by a baby scorpion. With a swift flick the armadillo half-crushed the scorpion beneath a stone but it changed into a crab that increased in size with extraordinary rapidity, forcing the stone upwards with its great back of solid shell and at the same time seizing the armadillo’s long snout between one pair of its powerful pincers.
The Armadillo gave a screaming grunt, but Simon shot forward like a golden bullet and buried his hornet’s sting in the soft part of the crab’s great body. It made no sound, but its bulbous eyes on their long stalks jerked upward and it released its grip as the armadillo turned back into an eagle, having prevented its snout from being severed by this swift transformance of it into a steely beak.
For a moment the eagle circled above the crab and then swooped to attack its eyes, but the crab had changed into a great black panther which bounded into the air to meet the eagle’s onrush. At that, Marie Lou saw her chance and took the form of a lion. As she sprang all three of them went down in a whirling ball of fur and feathers, while Simon, unable to change himself so easily as the others, gyrated above them in frantic circles.
The panther, bested by his two powerful antagonists, the King of Beasts and the King of Birds, saved itself by shrinking and a quick transformation into a deadly little black-widow spider. Both the lion and the eagle jerked away from it. Next second it was a hare, which bounded from them with such speed that they were compelled to disintegrate their astrals again into dragon-fly and queen wasp in order to keep up with it.
The effort of the new chase proved too much for Simon. He had now utterly exhausted all his powers of sleep. Although he fought with all his will to continue the pace, he found himself dropping behind and that the scene of those grim valleys was fading. Next moment he shuddered and was awake.
De Richleau outdistanced the hare, resumed the form of an eagle and suddenly pounced upon it, but the hare swerved, evaded the striking beak and raced on. Next moment it had gone under ground.
Marie Lou knew now what was ahead of them, and it was one of the tests which she loathed and dreaded more than anything else on the astral plane. They would have to follow through some long, narrow tunnel far below the soil, with the awful feeling that at any moment the tunnel would cave in upon them and that they would be buried alive. She knew perfectly well that in her astral form that could not occur, but it was a fear which she had carried over with her from her dreads as a mortal and had not yet conquered, so it was none the less real. Steeling herself to the ordeal she followed the Duke’s example, changed herself into a ferret, and disappeared after him down the hole.
The tunnel was only just large enough for them to wriggle along it and it was useless for them to reduce their size because each time they did so the Evil thing ahead caused the walls of the tunnel to close in round them. It was abominably hot and stuffy and the darkness was impenetrable even to their astral eyes because they were surrounded by what—for lack of a better term—may be called astral matter, through which it was beyond their powers to see; and down in that foul warren the air was poisonous with the stench of decaying bodies.
The chase seemed interminable and hardly a minute passed without both the pursuers having the impressions that they were s
tuck underground and could go no further; only the extreme exercise of their will-power enabled them to do so.
Suddenly Marie Lou caught a muffled shout of warning from the Duke, and almost instantly he was swept back upon her as a strong current of water rushed against them and submerged them both.
They gasped and for a moment knew the first horror of drowning in an underground cavern, until they turned themselves into fish and determinedly struck forward against the current. As they darted along, Marie Lou caught a thought that de Richleau sent out to encourage her, ‘We’re wearing him down—he must be tiring or he would never have used that trick,’ and a little further on the tunnel broadened until it grew in width to a great cleft which came out under water in a cave faintly lit by daylight.
The second they debouched into it the slimy tentacles of a huge octopus seized them, but both had the same inspriation and changed themselves before they could be crushed into electric eels. The giant squid released them as swiftly as it had seized upon them and disappeared in a cloud of inky fluid which it shot out to cover its retreat; but de Richleau was after it in the form of a swordfish, while Marie Lou quickly turned herself into a shark.
As they darted towards the entrance of the cavern they could see, by the full daylight which now percolated through the greenish waters, the red coral fans and the brilliant-coloured fish beneath them. During a few anxious moments they lost the octopus, but just in time Marie Lou saw it shrink into a tiny shrimp and, darting forward, snapped at it with her huge jaws. For a second the shrimp was actually in her mouth, but before she could crush it between her seven rows of teeth it slipped out again and began to swell to giant proportions, assuming the form of a vast hammer-head whale.
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