Along the table-edge before him, limp in its sling, his wounded arm lay useless. Yet with his left hand he controlled the sleeping giant in the dish. And as he dropped the glycerin, he counted.
"Ten, eleven, twelve—fifteen, sixteen—twenty! Now! Now pour the water off, quick! Quick!"
Splendidly the girl obeyed. The water ran, foaming strangely, out into a glass jar set to receive it. Her hands trembled not, nor did she hesitate. Only, a line formed between her brows; and her breath, half-held, came quickly through her lips.
"Stop!"
His voice rang like a shot.
"Now, decant it through this funnel, into the vials!"
Again, using both hands for steadiness, she did his bidding.
And one by one as she filled the little flasks of chained death, the engineer stoppered them with his left hand.
When the last was done, Stern drew a tremendous sigh, and dashed the sweat from his forehead with a gesture of victory.
Into the residue in the dish he poured a little nitric acid.
"That's got no kick left in it, now, anyhow," said he relieved. "The HNO3 tames it, quick enough. But the bottles—take care—don't tip one over, as you love your life!"
He stood up, slowly, and for a moment remained there, his face in the shadow of the lamp-shade, holding to the table-edge for support, with his left hand.
At him the girl looked.
"And now," she began, "now—?"
The question had no time for completion. For even as she spoke, a swift little something flicked through the window, behind them.
It struck the opposite wall with a sharp crack! then fell slithering to the floor.
Outside, against the building, they heard another and another little shock; and all at once a second missile darted through the air.
This hit the lamp. Stern grabbed the shade and steadied it. Beatrice stooped and snatched up the thing from where it lay beside the table.
Only one glance Stern gave at it, as she held it up. A long reed stem he saw wrapped at its base with cotton fibers—a fish-bone point, firm-lashed—and on that point a dull red stain, a blotch of something dry and shiny.
"Blow-gun darts!" cried he. "Poisoned! They've seen the light—got our range! They're up there in the tree-tops—shooting at us!"
With one puff, the light was gone. By the wrist he seized Beatrice. He dragged her toward the front wall, off to one side, out of range.
"The flasks of Pulverite! Suppose a dart should hit one?" exclaimed the girl.
"That's so! Wait here—I'll get them!"
But she was there beside him as, in the thick dark, he cautiously felt for the deadly things and found them with a hand that dared not tremble. And though here, there, the little venom-stings whis-s-shed over them and past them, to shatter on the rear wall, she helped him bear the vials, all nine of them, to a place of safety in the left-hand front corner where by no possibility could they be struck.
Together then, quietly as wraiths, they stole into the next room; and there, from a window not as yet attacked, they spied out at the dark tree-tops that lay in dense masses almost brushing the walls.
"See? See there?" whispered Stern in the girl's ear. He pointed where, not ten yards away and below, a blacker shadow seemed to move along a hemlock branch. Forgotten now, his wounds. Forgotten his loss of blood, his fever and his weakness. The sight of that creeping stealthy attack nerved him with new vigor. And, even as the girl looked, Stern drew his revolver.
Speaking no further word, he laid the ugly barrel firm across the sill.
Carefully he sighted, as best he could in that gloom lit only by the stars. Coldly as though at a target-shot, he brought the muzzle-sight to bear on that deep, crawling shadow.
Then suddenly a spurt of fire split the night. The crackling report echoed away. And with a bubbling scream, the shadow loosened from the limb, as a ripe fruit loosens.
Vaguely they saw it fall, whirl, strike a branch, slide off, and disappear.
All at once a pattering rain of darts flickered around them. Stern felt one strike his fur jacket and bounce off. Another grazed the girl's head. But to their work they stood, and flinched not.
Now her revolver was speaking, in antiphony with his; and from the branches, two, three, five, eight, ten of the ape-things fell.
"Give it to 'em!" shouted the engineer, as though he had a regiment behind him. "Give it to 'em!" And again he pulled the trigger.
The revolver was empty.
With a cry he threw it down, and, running to where the shotgun stood, snatched it up. He scooped into his pocket a handful of shells from the box where they were stored; and as he darted back to the window, he cocked both hammers.
"Poom! Poom!"
The deep baying of the revolver roared out in twin jets of flame.
Stern broke the gun and jacked in two more shells.
Again he fired.
"Good Heaven! How many of 'em are there in the trees?" shouted he.
"Try the Pulverite!" cried Beatrice. "Maybe you might hit a branch!"
Stern flung down the gun. To the corner where the vials were standing he ran.
Up he caught one—he dared not take two lest they should by some accident strike together.
"Here—here, now, take this!" he bellowed.
And from the window, aiming at a pine that stood seventy-five feet away—a pine whose branches seemed to hang thick with the Horde's blowgun-men—he slung it with all the strength of his uninjured arm.
Into the gloom it vanished, the little meteorite of latent death, of potential horror and destruction.
"If it hits 'em, they'll think we are gods, after all, what?" cried the engineer, peering eagerly. But for a moment, nothing happened.
"Missed it!" he groaned. "If I only had my right arm to use now, I might—"
Far below, down there a hundred feet beneath them and out a long way from the tower base, night yawned wide in a burst of hellish glare.
A vast conical hole of flame was gouged in the dark. For a fraction of a second every tree, limb, twig stood out in vivid detail, as that blue-white glory shot aloft.
All up through the forest the girl and Stern got a momentary glimpse of little, clinging Things, crouching misshapen, hideous.
Then, as a riven and distorted whirl burst upward in a huge geyser of annihilation, came a detonation that ripped, stunned, shattered; that sent both the defenders staggering backward from the window.
Darkness closed again, like a gaping mouth that shuts. And all about the building, through the trees, and down again in a titanic, slashing rain fell the wreckage of things that had been stone, and earth, and root, and tree, and living creatures—that had been—that now were but one indistinguishable mass of ruin and of death.
After that, here and there, small dark objects came dropping, thudding, crashing down. You might have thought some cosmic gardener had shaken his orchard, his orchard where the plums and pears were rotten-ripe.
"One!" cried the engineer, in a strange, wild, exultant voice.
Chapter XXIX - The Battle on the Stairs
*
Almost like the echo of his shout, a faint snarling cry rose from the corridor, outside. They heard a clicking, sliding, ominous sound; and, with instant comprehension, knew the truth.
"They've got up, some of them—somehow!" Stern cried. "They'll be at our throats, here, in a moment! Load! Load! You shoot—I'll give 'em Pulverite!"
No time, now, for caution. While the girl hastily threw in more cartridges, Stern gathered up all the remaining vials of the explosive.
These, garnered along his wounded arm which clasped them to his body, made a little bristling row of death. His left hand remained free, to fling the little glass bombs.
"Come! Come, meet 'em—they mustn't trap us, here!"
And together they crept noiselessly into the other room and thence to the corridor-door.
Out they peered.
"Look! Torches!" whispered he.
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There at the far end of the hallway, a red glare already flickered on the wall around the turn by the elevator-shaft. Already the confused sounds of the attackers were drawing near.
"They've managed to dig away the barricade, somehow," said Stern. "And now they're out for business—clubs, poisoned darts and all—and fangs, and claws! How many of 'em? God knows! A swarm, that's all!"
His mouth felt hot and dry, with fever, and the mad excitement of the impending battle. His skin seemed tense and drawn, especially upon the forehead. As he stood there, waiting, he heard the girl's quick breathing. Though he could hardly see her in the gloom, he felt her presence and he loved it.
"Beatrice," said he, and for a moment his hand sought hers, "Beatrice, little girl o' mine, if this is the big finish, if we both go down together and there's no to-morrow, I want to tell you now—"
A yapping outcry interrupted him. The girl seized his arm. Brighter the torchlight grew.
"Allan!" she whispered. "Come back, back, away from here. We've got to get up those stairs, there, at the other end of the hall. This is no kind of place to meet them—we're exposed, here. There's no protection!"
"You're right." he answered. "Come!"
Like ghosts they slid away, noiselessly, through the enshrouding gloom.
Even as they gained the shelter of the winding stairway, the scouts of the Horde, flaring their torches into each room they passed, came into view around the corner at the distant end.
Shuffling, hideous beyond all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened, blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a ruck of horror.
The defenders, peering from behind the broken balustrade, could hear the guttural jabber of their beast-talk, the clicking play of their fangs; could see the craning necks, the talons that held spears, bludgeons, blow-guns, even jagged rocks.
Over all, the smoky gleams wavered in a ghastly interplay of light and darkness. Uncanny shadows leaped along the walls. From every corner and recess and black, empty door, ghoulish shapes seemed creeping.
Tense, now, the moment hung.
Suddenly the engineer bent forward, staring.
"The chief!" he whispered. And as he spoke, Beatrice aimed.
There, shambling among the drove of things, they saw him clearly for a moment: Uglier, more incredibly brutal than ever he looked, now, by that uncanny light.
Stern saw—and rejoiced in the sight—that the obeah's jaw hung surely broken, all awry. The quick-blinking, narrow-ridded eyes shuttled here, there, as the creature sought to spy out his enemies. The nostrils dilated, to catch the spoor of man. Man, no longer god, but mortal.
One hand held a crackling pine-knot. The other gripped the heft of a stone ax, one blow of which would dash to pulp the stoutest skull.
This much Stern noted, as in a flash; when at his side the girl's revolver spat.
The report roared heavily in that constricted space. For a moment the obeah stopped short. A look of brute pain, of wonder, then of quintupled rage passed over his face. A twitching grin of passion distorted the huge, wounded gash of the mouth. He screamed. Up came the stone ax.
"Again!" shouted Stern. "Give it to him again!"
She fired on the instant. But already, with a chattering howl, the obeah was running forward. And after him, screaming, snarling, foaming till their lips were all a slaver, the pack swept toward them.
Stern dragged the girl away, back to the landing.
"Up! Up!" he yelled.
Then, turning, he hurled the second bomb.
A blinding glare dazzled him. A shock, as of a suddenly unleashed volcano, all but flung him headlong.
Dazed, choked by the gush of fumes that burst in a billowing cloud out along the hall and up the stairs, he staggered forward. Tightly to his body he clutched the remaining vials. Where was Beatrice? He knew not. Everything boomed and echoed in his stunned ears. Below there, he heard thunderous crashes as wrecked walls and floors went reeling down. And ever, all about him, eddied the strangling smoke.
Then, how long after he knew not, he found himself gasping for air beside a window.
"Beatrice!" he shouted with his first breath. Everything seemed strangely still. No sound of pursuit, no howling now. Dead calm. Not even the drum-beat in the forest, far below.
"Beatrice! Where are you? Beatrice!"
His heart leaped gladly as he heard her answer.
"Oh! Are you safe? Thank God! I—I was afraid—I didn't know—"
To him she ran along the dark passageway.
"No more!" she panted. "No more Pulverite here in the building!" pleaded she. "Or the whole tower will fall—and bury us! No more!"
Stern laughed. Beatrice was unharmed; he had found her.
"I'll sow it broadcast outside," he answered, in a kind of exaltation, almost a madness from the strain and horror of that night, the weakness of his fever and his loss of blood. "Maybe the others, down there still, may need it. Here goes!"
And, one by one, all seven of the bombs he hurled far out and away, to right, to left, straight ahead, slinging them in vast parabolas from the height.
And as they struck one by one, night blazed like noonday; and even to the Palisades the crashing echoes roared.
The forest, swept as by a giant broom, became a jackstraw tangle of destruction.
Thus it perished.
When the last vial of wrath had been out-poured, when silence had once more dropped its soothing mantle and the great brooding dark had come again, "girdled with gracious watchings of the stars," Stern spoke.
"Gods!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Gods we are now to them—to such of them as may still live. Gods we are—gods we shall be forever!
"Whatever happens now, they know us. The Great White Gods of Terror! They'll flee before our very look! Unarmed, if we meet a thousand, we'll be safe. Gods!"
Another silence.
Then suddenly he knew that Beatrice was weeping.
And forgetful of all save that, forgetful of his weakness and his wounds, he comforted her—as only a man can comfort the woman he loves, the woman who, in turn, loves him.
Chapter XXX - Consummation
*
After a while, both calmer grown, they looked again from the high window.
"See!" exclaimed the engineer, and pointed.
There, far away to westward, a few straggling lights—only a very few—slowly and uncertainly were making their way across the broad black breast of the river.
Even as the man and woman watched, one vanished. Then another winked out, and did not reappear. No more than fifteen seemed to reach the Jersey shore, there to creep vaguely, slowly away and vanish in the dense primeval woods.
"Come," said Stern at last. "We must be going, too. The night's half spent. By morning we must be very far away."
"What? We've got to leave the city?"
"Yes. There's no such thing as staying here now. The tower's quite untenable. Racked and shaken as it is, it's liable to fall at any time. But, even if it should stand, we can't live here any more."
"But—where now?"
"I don't just know. Somewhere else, that's certain. Everything in this whole vicinity is ruined. The spring's gone. Nothing remains of the forest, nothing but horror and death. Pestilence is bound to sweep this place in the wake of such a—such an affair.
"The sights all about here aren't such as you should see. Neither should I. We mustn't even think of them. Some way or other we can find a path down out of here, away—away—"
"But," she cried anxiously, "but all our treasures? All the tools and dishes, all the food and clothing, and everything? All our precious, hard-won things?"
"Nothing left of them now. Down on the fifth floor, at that end of the building, I'm positive there's nothing but a vast hole blown out of the side of the tower. So there's nothing left to salvage. Nothing at all."
"Can you replace the things?"
"Why not? Wherever we settle down we can get along for a few day
s on what game I can snare or shoot with the few remaining cartridges. And after that—"
"Yes?"
"After that, once we get established a little, I can come into the city and go to raiding again. What we've lost is a mere trifle compared to what's left in New York. Why, the latent resources of this vast ruin haven't been even touched yet! We've got our lives. That's the only vital factor. With those everything else is possible. It all looks dark and hard to you now, Beatrice. But in a few days—wait and see!"
"Allan!"
"What, Beatrice?"
"I trust you in everything. I'm in your hands. Lead me."
"Come, then, for the way is long before us. Come!"
Two hours later, undaunted by the far howling of a wolfpack, as the wan crescent of the moon came up the untroubled sky, they reached the brink of the river, almost due west of where the southern end of Central Park hall been.
This course, they felt, would avoid any possible encounter with stragglers of the Horde. Through Madison Forest—or what remained of it—they had not gone; but had struck eastward from the building, then northward, and so in a wide detour had avoided all the horrors that they knew lay near the wreck of the tower.
The river, flowing onward to the sea as calmly as though pain and death and ruin and all the dark tragedy of the past night, the past centuries, had never been, filled their tired souls and bodies with a grateful peace. Slowly, gently it lapped the wooded shore, where docks and slips had all gone back to nature; the moonlit ripples spoke of beauty, life, hope, love.
Though they could not drink the brackish waters, yet they laved their faces, arms and hands, and felt refreshed. Then for some time in silence they skirted the flood, ever northward, away from the dead city's heart. And the moon rose even higher, higher still, and great thoughts welled within their hearts. The cool night breeze, freshening in from the vast salt wastes of the sea—unsailed forever now—cooled their cheeks and soothed the fever of their thoughts.
Where the grim ruin of Grant's Tomb looked down upon the river, they came at length upon a strange, rude boat, another, then a third—a whole flotilla, moored with plaited ropes of grass to trees along the shore.
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