Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  Here, before Captain Jat landed, he bid the boy lay on his oar, whilst he listened. But they could hear nothing, except the far dull booming of the sea upon the exposed beach beyond the great reef — the solemn noise of the sea coming very hushed and distant to them, and blending with the dree little sounds that came out of the near forest, as the night airs went wandering on into its gloom.

  “Keep her afloat till I come, boy,” said Captain Jat, as he stepped ashore. He walked a few paces up the beach, settling a brace of great double-barrelled pistols in his belt. Then he turned sharply and came back: —

  “Not a sound, boy, or you’re as good as dead,” he said grimly, in a low tone. “Not a sound, so what you hears! Keep off there in the shadow of the reef. You’ll hear me squark like a catched molley-hawk, when I come. Keep your eyes wide open, boy!” And with that, he slewed round on his heel, and went up pretty quick across the sand into the darkness of the black trees.

  Pibby Tawles, the boy, stood in the bows of the boat, and stared after him, listening to the vague sounds of his passage growing ever distant and more distant, but odd-whiles sounding out clear through the dark forests, as some dried kippin snapped under his weight. Then, as Captain Jat went farther and farther, the silence of the island fell again about Pibby, save for the odd whispering of the leaves in the little airs that came off the sea, and the constant solemn booming of the ocean on the far breach that lay exposed upon the outward arc of the great reef.

  And so, listening there, and full of the mystery of all the vague and muddled tales that Captain Jat had maundered through so often, over the toddy, is it any matter for surprise that the lad, Pibby, grew suddenly frightened of the loneliness and the silence, and began to think there were pale ovals, among the dark tree-trunks, that peered at him?

  He thrust his hand down, inside his trousers, and eased a small double-barrelled pistol out of a canvas pocket he had stitched in there with a palm and needle, and sail-twine for thread. The feel of the small weapon gave him a degree of comfort, and abruptly he remembered that Captain Jat had told him to keep the boat off in the shadow of the reef. He jumped out over the bows, holding the pistol in his right hand, and found to his dismay that the boat was aground. He put his bare shoulder to her stern, and hove madly awhile, sweating; for he felt that Captain Jat was quite capable of knifing him on his return, if he found the boat hard ashore. With a determination, vague but dogged, to protect himself with his pistol if necessary, he made one vast, final effort, and the boat slid afloat.

  He jumped in over the bows, ran aft and put his pistol on the stern thwart; then with the boat-hook he pushed out, and so came in a minute under the gloom of the reef, which rose up just there into a chaos of great rocks, weed-hidden at their bases. He thrust the boat-hook into a mass of weed, and anchored the boat temporarily.

  Then, with a sudden shiver, he remembered his shirt, and, having freed it, he covered his damp back.

  Pibby Tawles had been sitting quietly in the boat for, maybe, half an hour, when he heard something that made him lean forward on the thwart and listen tensely. There was something moving, in among the great rocks and boulders where the reef thrust into the shore; and the sounds were exceedingly curious: — Slither! Slither! click-click, and then a loud squelch and a great splashing, as if some huge thing scrambling over the rocks, had slipped and fallen into one of the pools left by the sea.

  There was a little time of silence, and then again came the sharp, click, click, followed by a loud grating noise over the rocks. The noise frightened the boy extraordinarily, and he freed the boat-hook silently from the weed, and began nervously to punt the boat out farther from the shore; but keeping very carefully in the gloom that the shadow of the reef cast.

  He held the boat again, some dozen fathoms farther out, and waited. He could hear the strange noises continuing, oddly broken by pauses of profound quiet; then again the slithering and clicking sounds. Abruptly, there was a loud crash — a huge boulder had been moved bodily and sent rolling down from the higher parts of the reef to the shore. The boulder was a big one; for Pibby could see it vaguely through the darkness, where it had bounded out into the soft sand. He thought vividly and horridly of Captain Jat’s muddled yarns of grim things, and he began again silently to push the boat farther out.

  Even as he loosed the hook of the boat-hook out from the weed, there came a tremendous scrambling noise among the rocks inshore, and something moved out silently onto the vague white sand of the beach. It passed over a darker patch of pebbles, and the lad heard the rounded stones grinding against each other, as if under a vast weight. The pistol seemed only a foolish toy in his hand, and he got down suddenly onto the bottom-boards of the boat and lay flat.

  A long while seemed to pass, during which he heard further sounds that told him the thing was moving along the beach. He kept very still, and presently there was only silence of the quiet sea and the island about him again, with the seas booming far and hollowly on the unprotected shore beyond the reef, and the faint stirrings of the forest trees whispering oddly to him across the quiet strip of sea that held the boat off the sand.

  He sat up, cautiously, and found that the boat still rose and fell on the gentle heaves of the sea close in under the gloom of the reef. He took the boat-hook and anchored her again, and all the time his gaze searched the vauge shore; but he saw nothing and heard nothing, and gradually he grew easier.

  A long time passed, whilst he sat, pistol in hand, watching and listening. Everything remained quiet, and slowly he began to nod, drowsing and waking through the minutes, so that he could not be said to be either awake or asleep. And then, in a moment, he was wide awake, for there was a sound breaking the utter stillness. He sat up, gripping his pistol, and stared nervously; and as he stared, the sound came again, a far, faint inhuman howling away up through the dark forests of to the North of him. He stood up in the boat, and, abruptly, a great way off in the night, there came the sound of a shot, and once more the howling, only that now there was a strange screaming as well. There was another shot, and one single, shrill scream that came to him far and attenuated out of the night air; and then, for the best part of an hour, an absolute silence.

  Suddenly, far off among the trees, Pibby saw a faint gleam of light, moving here and there, and growing bigger as the minutes passed. Presently, he saw that there were four of these gleams, and then six, and all moving and dancing about strangely; but no sound; at least, not for a time.

  All at once, he heard the snapping of a twig, apparently a long way off in the wood, the sound echoing strangely in the quietness. And then, very abrupt and dreadful, the inhuman howling began again, mingled with a wild screaming, seeming to be but a few hundred paces deep in the woods. To the boy, it seemed as though something that was half a woman and half something else, howled and shrieked there among the trees; and he chilled with a very literal fright.

  The six lights danced and blended and again separated, and all the time the abominable howling and screaming continued through the grim woods. Then, very sharp and sudden, the noise of one Captain Jat’s double-barrelled pistols: — bang! bang! And, almost immediately, Captain Jat’s voice shouting, at some distance, to bring the boat in, to bring the boat in.

  The lad freed the boat-hook, and started the dingy in to the shore, and as he did so, he heard the crashing of Captain Jat’s footsteps through the rotten wood and leaves; and it was plain to him that the Captain had started to make an undisguised run for the boat.

  As Pibby thrust the boat inshore, he realised a number of things: — The Captain was being followed, and those lights and the strange howling had something to do with whatever followed him. The nose of the boat grounded, and Pibby picked up his weapon, and ran forrard and stood on the fore thwart, waiting.

  The strange lights came nearer, moving swiftly among the trees; and suddenly the lad saw something that was plainly monstrous. He had a clear view up a long vista of dark trees, which the lights had made visible, and he saw
the figure of a man, black and immensely tall against the light, running and staggering down towards the beach. He knew it was Captain Jat. The dancing lights, beyond, entered the vista, and came dancing and flaring down through the wood; and abruptly the boy got a clear view of the things that carried them. The lights were great torches, and were carried by a number of wild looking women who were nearly naked, with great manes of hair all loose and wild about them.

  But the monstrous and horrid thing that caught the boy’s eye was something he saw as the women came nearer, running. They had faces so flat as to be almost featureless. At first, if he thought at all, he supposed that they were wearing some kind of mask; but as they ran, the nearest woman opened her mouth and howled, the same disgusting sound that he had heard earlier that night. As she howled, she brandished both the hand that held the torch, and the other hand, above her head. But she had no hands; her arms ended in enormous claws, like the claws of a great crab. The other women began to howl, and to wave their torches and arms as they ran, and Pibby saw that some of them were like the foremost woman. He stared, with the wide-eyed acceptance of youth of the horrific and monstrous.

  Captain Jat came blundering and reeling out of the wood. He stubbed his foot against something, and fell headlong onto the sand, and those extraordinary and brutish things close astern of him. Pibby saw suddenly that three of the women had knives, enormous knives, and somehow the sight of the knives made him feel better — it was more human. In the same moment, he loosed off his right barrel and immediately his left, and with each shot there fell a woman, screaming, their torches flying along the sand, and throwing up great sparks. Captain Jat staggered up, and came on at a heavy run to the boat. He reached it, and fell all his great length in over the bows.

  “Put off, boy!” he gasped. “Put off!” And even as he spoke, the boat was away from the shore with the push that he had given it as he came aboard. He scrambled to his feet, seized an oar, and thrust down hard, so that the water boiled under the stern, with the way that he gave the boat. In a moment, they had the oars between the tholes, and were backing the boat madly out into the darkness of the sea; so that in a few minutes they were a good way off the shore, and the quiet and hush of the water about them.

  But there danced on the beach, at the edge of the sea, those monstrous-faced and monstrous-armed women, and howled at them across the sea, and a dreadful enough noise to hear. They waved their great torches, and jigged crazily, so that the light splashed redly across the swells; and all the time as they danced, their black manes flew about them, and always they howled.

  “Pull, boy!” said Captain Jat, still very hoarse with breathlessness. “Pull, Boy!” But indeed, the lad was pulling fit to break his youthful back. There passed a further time of labour and gasping silence, and presently they were out in the open water, where the quiet swells moved big and free under them in the darkness, and the reef lay between them and the shore. But they could still see the mad dancing of the lights at the edge of the sea.

  Awhile later, Captain Jat eased, and they put the boat round, after which he lay on his oar, and the boy the same, for he could scarcely breathe. The lights were gone now from the shore, and there was no sound, except the far hollow noise of the breaking seas upon the exposed beaches of the island, to the Eastward.

  Now, never a word of thanks said Captain Jat for the way the boy had saved him with the pistol; but presently he pulled his oar in across the boat, and lit his pipe, after which he hove the plug of his tobacco at the lad. That was his way.

  “Boy,” he said, after smoking a little, “I’m wondering if they knew I was whistlin’ to her.”

  “Who, Sir?” asked Pibby.

  But Captain Jat made no answer to this. After smoking a long time, he said suddenly:— “Them was the Ud-women, boy… Devil-women…. Priestesses of the Ud, that’s Devil in their talk. I was here a matter of four years gone for water, and I found out somethin’ then, boy, about them an’ their pearl-fishin’ an’ devil-worshipping, an’ how they’ve kep’ it quiet from all the world. I found one of the priestesses alone one time, a little woman an’ pretty, not like them!” (He jerked his thumb shorewards.) “I was a week lyin’ off here, an’ there mightn’t have been anyone on the island, the way they kep’ hid, boy; not till I found the little priestess down near by the spring. I knew her lingo, a bit, and we got talking. I saw her all that week, every night, secret like. She liked me. I liked her. I had her aboard once, an’ she told me a heap. When I put her ashore, I took the Mate with me, Jeremiah Stimple, he was, an’ we went prospecting for them pearls I’d learned about; but she’d never told me proper about the Ud an’ the Ud-women. She’d never say much that way. That’s how we got into trouble. We’d near got to the top of the hill, an’ then come some of them devil-women. I was all cut about, an’ I guess they likely sacrificed the Mate. I never saw him again.

  “There must be hundreds of them devil-women ashore there in them forests. But I always meant to come back, boy. I’ve seen the pearls this very night. They’re down in the bottom of the crater that’s inside of yon hill in the middle of the island, all strung round a great carved post; an’ I’m going to get ’em too, boy. You sh’d see the pearls them hag-women was dressed with. You mustn’t be feared of their claws, boy. They’m only cast off claw-shells, or somethin’ of that sort. Mind you, the little priestess, she said some of ’em was real — growed that way; but I can’t think it, scarcely. But you never know what you may find in them sorts of places. What their pet Devil is, I don’t know….”

  “I saw somethin’, Sir, after you was gone,” began Pibby, interrupting. “It were a ‘orrible thing….”

  “I saw the little Priestess tonight, down in the crater,” went on Captain Jat, without taking the least apparent notice of what the boy had begun to tell him. “I was at the top; It’s not all of twenty fathom deep. I whistled soft an’ gentle to her. She saw me, an’ near did faint, boy, by the look of her, an’ waved me to go away pretty quick. By the look of things down there, they’re in for one of their Devil-Festas. They’d big torches burning — you can seethe light of ’em now.” And Captain Jat nodded towards the island.

  The lad, Pibby, stared away through the darkness, and surely enough there was a faint loom of light in the night above the island.

  “I reck’n the festa’ll be pretty soon now, boy, at the dark of the moon, an’ like there’ll be Chiefs from the islands round for a thousand miles, and a sprinklin’ of rotten whites, I guess, and devil-work uncounted. I’m hopin’ them devil-priestesses didn’t see the little woman wavin’ me away, or maybe she’ll be in bad trouble. They come on me, just after she signed to me to clear out, an’ near finished me before I’d time to slew round. They’ve butcher’s knives, some on ’em , as long as your leg, boy, an’ one of ’em near ripped me up.” He opened his coat, and the lad saw dimly in the gloom that his shirt was all stained dark.

  “I settled four of the brutes,” Captain Jat continued, “and you outed two. That’s six gone to hell, where they come from….” He broke off, and puffed meditatively at his pipe for a time, leaning on his oar, which rested on the gunnels. Pibby had never heard him talk so much before when sober.

  “The native name for yon island means ‘The Island of the Devil,’ boy,” said Captain Jat, presently. “I heard that years gone from more than one; but none of ’em could tell me anythin’, or wouldn’t, ‘cept it was an almighty unhealthy place for a white man… or a native either, for that matter, except, maybe, as I’m thinking, when there’s one of their big, secret, damn Ud-Festas on….” He broke off short, and slipped his pipe into his pocket.

  “Pull, boy, an’ break your damn back. There’s the ship!” he said.

  Ten minutes later they were safe aboard.

  All next day, Captain Jat kept the barque away to the Southward of the island; but he sent Pibby aloft, time and again, with his own telescope; and when the youth came down finally in the late afternoon, to report numbers of small cra
ft on the horizon, steering North, he nodded his head, as if the news were what he had expected.

  “Native boats, boy,” he said. “Keep your mouth shut, an’ tell nothin’ to no one. They’ll hold that festa tonight, an’ they’ll have all their pearls strung up, an’ we’ll be there. You clean up all them big double-barr’lled pistols, an’ load ’em nice and careful, like I’ve showed you. Get a move on you now!”

  That night, with all lights dowsed, the barque stood again to the Northward, and dropped Captain Jat and the lad in the dingy, off the island. Captain Jat had four great pistols in his belt, and he had spent the dog-watches in mounting an old duck-gun on its swivel, in the bows of the boat. Pibby, the boy, had also two big heavy pistols tucked into his belt, not to mention his own small weapon which reposed snugly in its canvas pocket inside his trousers. They were quite heavily armed. Moreover, he had seen to it, this time, that the oars were properly muffled.

  In addition to those preparations, Captain Jat had been very particular concerning the depositing in the boat of a considerable length of chain, with two stout padlocks in the ends.

  Captain Jat took the boat round to the North of the island, and, presently, after pulling cautiously for an hour, he bid the lad ease up and lay on his oar a bit, and keep his eyes well skinned. For his part, the Captain lay down on his stomach on the thwarts, and spied along the surface of the quietly heaving sea, with his night-glass. And suddenly, he reached out and caught Pibby a clip with the glass.

  “Down under the gunnel, boy, or they’ll see you!” he muttered, and Pibby ducked and slid down under his oar, and stared away breathlessly through the darkness to the Northward.