The brush which grew thick upon the Plain of the Altar rose more often than not above Denham’s waist as he dragged his weary feet along. Sometimes when it grew especially tall, or when he bent in a moment of unusual fatigue, it concealed him entirely. Night was well forward, too. A dozen factors made his slow-moving, exhausted figure hard to pick up, even from the high vantage point of the wall. Sharp eyes, however, were watching. The smoky flames of torches marked the niche where a dozen sailors kept vigilant guard down by the gate, ready to pull its great doors wide. Other torches, flickering on high, told of more men leaning forward to peer from the rampart. And one of these last sighted the solitary walker long before he got to the cleared ground around the altar.
“Yo-ho! Denham!”
It was Englehorn who called. His white cap swung dimly in a wide encouraging circle. The torches became trailing arcs of flame as the crew joined in the shout.
“Yo-ho-o-o-o! Yo-ho-o-o-o, away there!”
The figures on the wall vanished, reappearing almost at once to swell the ranks at the gate. The gate swung wide, and the loud shout rang on until Denham had struggled through the last fringe of brush and had slogged past the altar. Then, however, silence fell, as abruptly as the shout had risen. The whole group at the gate stood taut, gazing in bewilderment over Denham’s head when the darkness there failed to reveal any others following.
Englehorn recovered first. Dropping his torch, he ran out and got an arm under Denham’s sagging shoulders.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured, and all but carried his friend to a bench inside the gate.
“Where are the others?” a sailor wanted to know.
“Let that wait!” Englehorn ordered brusquely. “Get some whiskey and some food. And close the gate.”
“No!” Denham cut in. “Leave the gate open. If Driscoll comes, he’ll come in a hurry.”
“Where is Driscoll?”
“Where’s Miss Ann?” Lumpy added.
“I said, let that wait,” Englehorn emphasized. “Where’s the whiskey?”
While the bottle stood tilted against Denham’s mouth, the eyes of the Skipper and the rest searched his torn clothing, his cut and bruised flesh, his grey face. They waited fearfully for a beginning of the dark account of adventure they felt was impending.
Englehorn did not move the bottle until the liquor had dropped to an imaginary line drawn by a generously measuring thumb. With the final swallow, Denham shuddered, and wiping his mouth slowly with the back of his hand leaned against the captain’s hard thigh.
“I could do with that grub you spoke of,” he said.
Englehorn nodded and cocked a commanding eye. The man he picked out went reluctantly. He half swung back as the others crowded around for Denham’s next word, but Englehorn’s sharp “Shove along!” kept him going.
Denham straightened on his bench as the whiskey took hold and faced his crew squarely.
“Well!” he said. “There’s no use trying to give it to you softly. Here’s the story. Everyone’s wiped out, except Driscoll and possibly Ann. And I’m asking for volunteers to go back after them. Who is coming with me?”
His audience, eyes shining under the smoky torches, gazed down uncomprehendingly.
“What do you mean, wiped out?”
“You mean something’s happened?”
“I mean…” The words caught in his throat and Denham stopped to swallow. “I mean wiped out,” he plunged on. “Wait till I tell you what we ran into.
“That black, hairy brute you saw go off with Miss Darrow is only the beginning of what this hell-made island has to offer. And the men I took out last night didn’t miss anything.”
He paused, to order his mind, and then told them as briefly as a profound sense of responsibility would let him what had happened. Reaching the tragic crisis upon the log bridge he gave every detail.
“I want you to know just what you’ll be up against,” he said, “when you decide to go back with me.”
“I ain’t sure I get it all,” one of the sailors said. “How…” he ended lamely in a mumble of words.
“You want to know how I got clear?” Denham asked. “Is that it? How I and Driscoll got away?” His nod of agreement had all his normal tolerance, as he set out patiently to explain the happenstance which had placed him in a position to leap to safety, and Driscoll in one of equal advantage while the rest were trapped between the tricerotop and Kong.
“I don’t mean to claim any credit,” he emphasized. “If I had kept a proper eye on the bombs we’d all be safe, including Miss Darrow. But just the same it was because I was trying to see the others safely across that I happened to be off the log. And as for Driscoll, at the time he went over to the far side of the ravine, he was taking a far bigger risk than anyone who stayed behind.”
The man who had put the question nodded solemnly, and the others were plainly in agreement.
“You couldn’t have helped what happened,” Englehorn murmured. “No matter what you did.”
“Not a nickel’s worth,” Denham said confidently. “I’ll tell you the truth. I’ll never forget I was the one to take them into it. But nobody can say I let them down. And if I weren’t here now, Driscoll and Ann wouldn’t have a Chinaman’s chance.”
“We’ll never see them again,” Lumpy declared blackly.
“The hell we won’t!” Denham shouted, and stood up. “We’ll see ’em both. And quick! Skipper, I want a case of bombs fetched. I’m backtrailing on the jump.” He looked around and repeated his earlier question. “Who is coming with me?”
“Lemme go, Mr. Denham,” Lumpy begged.
“If I can’t get stouter, younger men, you can go and welcome,” Denham said frankly. He looked up at the others. “How about it?”
The whole lot of them stepped forward in a confusion of assent…casual, reckless, indifferent or jovial, according as each man reacted to the sharp stimulant of danger.
“I’ll string along.”
“Hell’s bells! Why not?”
“Seein’ it don’t cost anything.”
“Might as well.”
“I guess I owe the mate this one.”
“Miss Ann sewed some buttons on my shirt once.”
Having had their say, their faces fell into a common sobriety. They had no illusions about what they would face if they went out, and as they remembered what had happened to their comrades their humor and bravado died away.
Englehorn was among the volunteers, along with a persistent Lumpy, but Denham waved these two back.
“I’ve got enough without you,” he said to Lumpy, “and as for you, Skipper, you draw the same billet. You stay here and keep the gate.”
“I’m fresher than you,” Englehorn pointed out.
“But I know the trail.”
“You could draw me a map.”
“Skipper! I wouldn’t let the freshest man in all the Indian Ocean take my place,” Denham said wryly. “Not even if he was the best map reader in the seven seas.”
“I wouldn’t either, in your shoes, Mr. Denham,” the Skipper responded with understanding heartiness.
Denham nodded, and turned to the food the commandeered cook had brought up. As he ate, he gave his orders.
“Get me a rifle,” he directed, “and a full bandolier. Every other man take the same. A knife apiece, too. There’ll be a dozen bombs in the box when it comes up. Six of you take two apiece. And remember! All the hell we drew on the first trip came because neither I nor anyone else had sense enough to hang on to a couple of bombs. Don’t you lads lose yours.”
“You think the bombs will stop those big brutes you told us about?” a sailor asked.
The others waited expectantly.
“Stop them?” Denham laughed. “Just one will stop the biggest of the lot in his tracks. Even Kong.” And in proof he retold in d
etail how the first huge enemy had been halted and brought down.
“When do you plan to start?” Englehorn wanted to know.
“Now! On the dot.”
“Too soon, Mr. Denham,” the Skipper murmured. After his first shock and concern, he was chewing tobacco again in his customary placid thoughtfulness.
“This second wouldn’t be too soon.”
“Figure it out, Mr. Denham. If you go now, you’ll get to the ravine long before dawn. And then what can you do? Nothing but sit around, to be picked off by whatever comes along until you can see to follow Driscoll’s trail.”
Denham hurriedly thought out a time schedule and then he nodded in reluctant agreement.
“But how I can sit around here, waiting, for almost four hours is more than I know.”
“Call in that dirty little witch doctor,” Lumpy suggested malevolently. “He ought to be able to give us some tips. And if he won’t, I know ways we can make him.”
“Where is he?”
Englehorn hadn’t seen either the witch doctor or the chief for hours. Nor had any of the others.
“I knocked the chief cold just after you and Driscoll started off,” he explained placidly. “With the butt of his own spear. Because he acted as though he was going to follow and stop you. And after I did that the whole tribe seemed to get low in the mouth. I got the idea they felt trouble was coming and wanted to get as far away as possible.”
“I wonder where they could have gone?” Denham puzzled.
“I think a lot of the women are still in the huts. We’ve all heard sounds now and then. And as for the bucks! Well, this part of the island back of the wall is pretty big, and covered with brush. Hiding in it wouldn’t be very hard.”
“You don’t think they’re planning a surprise attack, do you?”
“Not if I know natives,” Englehorn said confidently. “And I think I know ’em pretty well. The truth is, they don’t think they need to attack us themselves. They figure Kong’ll do it for them. We’ve been pretty high-handed, first refusing Kong a sacrifice and then chasing him after he got one. Knowing Kong, they think we can’t do such things without paying. And they think it’ll be Kong who will be back to collect. And when he does they want to be as far away as possible.”
“By the Lord!” Denham cried softly. “They’re right! Kong will be back. At least he will if we manage to recapture Ann.”
The sailors, busy with their rifles and knives, looked up in a total lack of comprehension. Even Englehorn was puzzled, and after chewing awhile he said so.
“I don’t see why. It seems to me he’ll more likely be hunting something to eat.”
Denham, clinging doggedly to the theory he had revealed to Driscoll, shook his head.
“Kong,” he insisted, “is the one thing outside the wall that is something more than beast. He’s one of nature’s errors, like all the others, but he was nearly not an error. And in that huge head of his is a spark. Ann means something to him.”
Englehorn made a doubtful sound.
“Yes she does,” Denham declared. “If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t have a solitary hope of seeing her again. You don’t suppose he took such care of the native girls they tied to the altar, do you?”
Englehorn conceded that Kong probably hadn’t. He had gathered in his brief talk with the chief that the natives had been surprised when Kong carried Ann with such care into the dark shadow of the precipice.
“He sensed that Ann was different,” Denham said, seizing upon the Skipper’s concession. “He hadn’t the faintest notion why she is different. And he doesn’t in the least know what to do with her. But when he looked on her something inside him gave way. It was Beauty and the Beast over again.”
Speaking solely to Englehorn…as a matter of fact, the sailors, after listening for a little in perplexity, had shaken their heads and pushed forward their preparations for the hunt…Denham once again outlined his theory of how Beauty softens and attracts and in the end encompasses the destruction of the Beast.
“He’ll lose Ann in the end,” Denham said. “One way or another. And after he does, he’ll never again be quite the same king of the forest. Brute strength will have yielded to something higher, and by the extent of its yielding will be weakened for its future battles with other brutes.”
“A very pretty theory,” Englehorn murmured, “but in my opinion, Mr. Denham, it isn’t worth the rust on a single hull plate. It’s moon talk and nothing more. Kong was attracted by Ann’s bright head, I’ll grant you. But only because it was strange. Only as a magpie is attracted by a shining stone. And he’ll tire of her brightness just as the magpie does. When he gets hungry he’ll drop Ann. And my prayer is that when he does, Driscoll will be there to pick her up.”
“We can trust Jack,” Denham said confidently. He looked at his watch. “I wish to heaven it was time for me to do my share.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kong was following no beaten trail; but he left his great tracks plainly upon bruised leaves, and broken branches, and sodden jungle floor. Driscoll had far less difficulty in pursuing him than he had anticipated. Even without the telltale marks he would have been seldom puzzled. Kong bothered so little about the noise he made that the crash of his heavy progress was often a guiding echo through the thick wood. It helped, too, that his gait was leisurely. He seemed in no hurry at all; and if there were enemies about he certainly did not seem to fear them.
Only one aspect of the beast-god’s march indicated that the district might not be as empty of dangers as it appeared. This was the fact that he travelled by no well defined paths. All along the way there were crossing and criss-crossing of trails which could have belonged only to the great creatures of the incredible island. But Kong broke a way through virgin jungle. He used no old path which his enemies could have come to know.
Driscoll found the pursuit so easy that on occasion he misjudged his own speed and got too close. He always had a moment of panic when this happened, and had to swerve hastily for cover. He was still convinced that his one hope of rescuing Ann, either by himself or by keeping contact until a larger rescuing party caught up, depended upon his success in arousing no suspicion of pursuit. If Kong discovered he was being followed, anything might happen. So Driscoll kept well back, following by sound rather than by sight.
Around noon, despite his care, he emerged into one border of a clearing as Kong disappeared on the other. And because he had been so long without any reassuring glimpse, he risked the briefest of inspections.
Ann was, apparently, still unconscious. He prayed that she was not merely motionless from fright. In any event she made no movement while Driscoll had her in view. Even one drooping arm seemed utterly without life. She lay in the crook of one of the beast-god’s enormous arms. She might have been in a swing-seat she rode so easily, the curved prop giving with every stride and every shift of Kong’s loose-jointed body. The last pin had fallen from her hair and it foamed down her back in a bright cascade made more bright by its contrast with Kong’s black snarl of fur. One sleeve of her dress had been torn, so that her right shoulder was bare. The soft, white rondure made another, more startling contrast with her captor’s sooty bulk.
The clearing proved to be the beginning of thinner vegetation. The trail, which had led for a time gently downward from the crest of the ravine, sloped up again. Gradually the tangle of vines and lush undergrowth disappeared. The trees, taller now, stood by themselves with no cluttering brush at their roots. By mid-afternoon Driscoll began to catch glimpses of the tip of Skull Mountain. And by that time Kong’s purposeful travel made it additionally plain that he was on his way to his lair.
That lair could be nowhere except up the slope of the island’s highest peak, Driscoll reasoned; some fastness accessible only to a mighty climber. Such a spot, far from the vegetation which nourished most of the other beasts, would be doubly attr
active since it would have no attraction to draw the rarer, meat-eating creatures. The likelihood of all this became more evident as the curious pursuit continued, the dogged man-animal clinging to the trail of an enemy twenty times as large.
Toward twilight the chase led more steeply upward through a boulder-strewn region, and Driscoll tired rapidly. His body throbbed from falls and blows of branches; he was hungry, besides; and his feet and legs were numb from exhaustion as he stumbled along after the sounds Kong made.
It was only tardily that he noted a phenomenon which confronted him after one long swing to the left. This was a great spout of water bursting from the very side of the mountain itself. A white, misty torrent, it had dug a deep pit under its point of egress and from this it spilled into a narrow channel to tumble down and disappear into the jungle below.
Upon Driscoll’s mind, grown hard from fatigue, the existence of this stream made at first only the faintest of marks. A stream! But the mark deepened as it came to him that this might well be the beginning of the stream which far back widened into the lagoon of the dinosaur, and which still farther poured softly over that slide leading down to the Plain of the Altar. He was contemplating this possibility when he rounded a jutting corner of rock and discovered Kong scarcely a hundred yards ahead and in full view.
Only a frantic speed which brought an added protest from his tired muscles got him back behind the shield of rock in time.
Peering out from his hiding place he saw that Kong had come to a full stop in a great, natural amphitheater which was encircled in three-quarters of its circumference by a curving cliff. A broad black pool lay just forward of the beast-god, and at this he was staring with greater and greater suspicion. It was a curious pool, as still as it was black, and seemingly without any source. At one point it came to within a few feet of the base of the cliff. High up on this last a ledge ran, and at one place the ledge broadened to make a wide platform before a cave.
Nowhere was there any sign of flowing water which fed the pool. On the contrary, on the side unfettered by wall, Driscoll caught sight of a whirling movement which could mean only an outlet. An underground outlet of considerable size, too. The mystery broke clear for him then, and simultaneously he realized that his conclusion about the spout of water seen earlier had been only half right. The spout was one beginning of the stream, but not the beginning. That was here, in the black, still pool. From somewhere, doubtless from a source far below in the ocean’s bed, this water welled up to the pool. There, through the ages, it had eaten away a fault in the rock to make a subterranean passage. By this it broke at last through the mountain’s side.
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