Yonita let out a muffled cry and drew herself sharply free of De Brissac’s embrace. He kept a firm hold on her with one hand, but leaned forward peering into the darkness.
‘What is it?’ murmured Basil starting up from his uneasy doze.
‘Silence,’ snapped De Brissac. ‘Listen!’
This time all three of them heard it—a sudden slither of stones and then again the horrid tap—tap—tap.
In an instant they were on their feet, and De Brissac was roughly shaking Corncob out of his slumber.
The two white men gripped their Winchesters and Corncob the automatic that De Brissac had lent him. De Brissac thrust Yonita behind them into the deepest recess of the shallow cave, and stepped out into the darkness, his rifle poised ready.
‘Stay, I beg you,’ she pleaded, and a moment later he saw that there was no point in advancing farther. He could see nothing in the utter blackness that blanketed them in and it was sheer stupidity to risk being caught out in the open. The cave was hardly a cave in the true sense, since its greatest depth in the low wall of rock was no more than six feet, but at least the rock provided protection for their backs if some vile monster was coming up out of the weed at them.
Tap—tap—tap—the noise came again—and another slither of stones. Silence fell; for several moments they strained their ears, until they could hear the blood drumming in them from their quickened heart-beats.
‘It’s nothing,’ muttered Basil, ‘or whatever it was has gone.’ He had hardly spoken when there came the sound of a loud splash, and further sharp, clear tapping so that it sounded now as though half a dozen small hammers were being beaten at the same time upon the ringing rock.
Corncob’s knees began to knock together. The misty air about them was still damp and cold, but he was in a bath of perspiration; his teeth chattered, and his eyes bulged from his head. ‘I’se scared, Bass, I’se scared,’ he gibbered suddenly. ‘Dem’s unholy things—coming to get us—out o’ de night.’
‘Quiet!’ said De Brissac sharply. Silence fell again; moments that seemed ages drifted by while they stood with muscles tensed, gripped by the stark fear of the unknown. The murk had lightened slightly; a faint, misty shimmer from the hidden moon low on the horizon gave just sufficient light for them to see each other’s outlines indistinctly at close quarters.
The sounds came once more, nearer now, a loud, horrid tapping and clicking upon the rocks. Corncob was moaning softly in an extremity of terror. Suddenly, before the others could stop him, he threw down the revolver and dashed out of the cave, stumbling over the jagged rocks that he could not see, away from the creatures that were approaching.
‘Come back!’ yelled Basil. ‘Come back, you fool!’
De Brissac plunged forward in pursuit; Yonita, sensing rather than seeing the Frenchman’s intention, flung both arms round his waist and clung to him with all her might.
‘Let go!’ cried De Brissac furiously, ‘let go! Anything may happen to that fool unless I can get him back.’
‘No, no, stay here, stay here. It’s your only chance. You will be killed yourself,’ she cried, fighting to maintain her hold on him like a small tiger-cat.
Even as they were struggling the tapping noise ceased and a great rushing slither took its place. The unseen horror passed some yards in front of them, no more than a long, irregular outline about twenty feet in length and nearly shoulder high. In a second it was gone again, swiftly following on the heels of the flying Negro.
De Brissac had given in to Yonita’s pleadings, and for grim seconds they stood there huddled together, listening breathlessly as the slithering sound died away in the distance.
Suddenly a hoarse scream came muffled through the murk. Again and again it pierced the gloom, chilling their hearts by its sheer, unadulterated terror. The screams were followed by one long, whimpering wail—then there was again deadly silence.
The palms of Basil’s hands were wet. De Brissac passed his handkerchief over his perspiring face. Yonita was sobbing softly as she clung to him. For a quarter of an hour they remained standing there, transfixed with an utter fear of the incredibly beastly thing which had come up out of the weed and slain Corncob. There are few brave soldiers who have not known fear, and De Brissac’s colonial experience had provided him with a fair share of tight corners, but never in his life had he been faced with any experience so frightful.
It was the awful fear of some nameless evil which held them spellbound. If they could have seen the things that threatened them they would have at least been able to take some steps for their protection, but such creatures as might possibly live in this loathsome weed sea were utterly beyond all ordinary imagination. They could only wait, clinging to the scant shelter of their shallow cave, peering out into the darkness.
The moon had risen and its light filtered greyly through the mist which seemed to have lightened a little. At a distance of a couple of feet they could now make out each other’s forms, and, vaguely, even each other’s faces, but outside the radius of a couple of yards everything was hidden from them.
With unsteady fingers Basil fumbled for his cigarettes, got one out, and, forgetting the balloons, lit it.
‘Put that out, you fool,’ De Brissac snapped, as the match burst into flame. ‘The thing is probably still on the island and you’re giving our position away.’
‘Sorry,’ Basil murmured shakily, stubbing out the cigarette against the low cliff on his right. ‘I don’t think I’ve given anything away though. The thing that came out of the weed knows where we are. It came straight at us and would have attacked us by now if it hadn’t been for that poor devil, Corncob, dashing out into the open.’
‘That’s true,’ De Brissac muttered. ‘I’m afraid I’m a bit jumpy.’
Basil gave a rueful laugh. ‘Aren’t we all. I’m in a bath of perspiration. What sort of brute d’you think it was?’
‘God knows! It couldn’t have been an octopus. Octopuses live among the rocks and caves under water but they never come up on land.’
Yonita ceased her sobbing. ‘Methinks—methinks I know,’ she stammered, but De Brissac checked her.
‘Wait—there it is again.’
Once more the stealthy tap—tap—tap reached their straining ears; coming this time from the direction in which Corncob had fled. In an agony of apprehension they awaited the beast’s approach. The tapping became a rapid, irregular tattoo. Pebbles and rocks tinkled and tumbled as the creature advanced and the awful scrambling noise came closer and closer.
Then it stopped—ten paces away. Suddenly it started again. Next moment a thing that seemed to have five great humps loomed up sideways-on out of the murk and came charging at them.
14
The Things that Tapped in the Night
The rifles cracked. The roar of their explosion echoed and reverberated against the rocky wall of the shallow cave. The flames from their barrels stabbed the black night and lit it for a second with the blinding glare of a photographer’s flashlight.
An instant later the darkness, blacker than ever by contrast, blinded them utterly so that they could not see a single thing, but, in the moment of the flash, a clear and terrifying picture of their enemy had been indelibly imprinted upon the minds of them all. They were faced by five giant crabs.
The creatures were enormous beyond anything ever seen in any natural history museum. Reared up on their curved, hairy, back legs they stood shoulder high; their dead-black eyes, protruding on thick, six-inch stalks over their flat backs, were as large as tennis balls. Their oval shells were from five to six feet wide across the back and above them in the air they waved huge pincers, of gigantic strength, as thick as a man’s thigh.
Basil and De Brissac fired again, both aiming blind but firing low in the hope of hitting the creature’s exposed bodies.
No sound came from the dumb brutes to show if any of them were hit, but a loud click suggested that a bullet had ricocheted off one of the creatures’ backs or claws. Both men
knew that even armour-piercing bullets could not penetrate the solid shells of beasts of such a size. Their only hope of saving themselves from being torn to pieces by those terrific pincers, which could have clipped away a human limb as easily as one cuts the stem of a rose with a pair of garden scissors, lay in hitting them in their under parts, where softer shell covered their lungs and intestines.
At the blast of the rifles the creatures had drawn back a little, but now they came on again, scrambling sideways over the rocks with fierce determination, each waving one great claw high in the air. For a moment a rift in the mist enabled the gentle light of the rising moon to penetrate and outline these macabre monsters of the weed.
De Brissac fired at the upraised middle of the nearest brute. Its pincer flapped violently and it toppled forward. Immediately the others flung themselves upon it with cannibal lust. In its death agony it clipped off the pointed leg of one of the others but they threw it over on its back, nipped off its eyes and dug their claws deep into its body; tearing at it till it was completely disembowelled.
Basil was trembling violently, but, with a supreme effort, he steadied himself, took careful aim, and fired again. Both he and De Brissac had forgotten the danger of an explosion from the balloons which were only a few feet behind then. His bullet ripped away the soft shell under the throat of another of the huge crustaceans.
Two of the others, seeing it wounded, attacked it instantly. Pincer seized pincer, and a silent, gruesome fight began, but the third unwounded brute now came swiftly sideways at the human prey.
De Brissac and Basil fired at it simultaneously, but, in the bad light, their aim was uncertain and their bullets apparently had no effect. Next second the monster was right upon them, stretching out with one great claw for De Brissac’s neck and with the other at Yonita.
De Brissac leapt aside, escaping the snap of the pincer by inches.
Yonita screamed and fell right under the beast’s body. Basil clubbed his rifle, and leaping forward gave a mighty sideways sweep, bashing in both of the brute’s eyes with one swift stroke.
Blinded now, it struck out right and left at them in terrible, silent fury. Basil stooped to drag Yonita from beneath it, but one of the claws caught him on the shoulder with such violence that it sent him spinning half a dozen feet away. De Brissac thrust the barrel of his Winchester right into the brute’s slit-like, slavering mouth and pulled the trigger. It jerked back violently, clutched frantically at the air with its claws and collapsed, falling across Yonita’s legs.
She screamed again as the two men flung themselves upon the beast and tried to lever it upwards, but the weight was so great that they could not shift it.
Next second they had to abandon their attempt as the two other brutes came slipping and sliding rapidly towards them. Yonita’s piercing cries sank to a terrified whimper. Both the men were grey-faced, ashen with fear; either would rather have faced a legion of savages then these silent, ferocious giants of the weed sea. An awful, reeking stench of dead fish came from the huge crabs and the flash of the rifles showed the sea-lice crawling in swarms upon them.
They fired again at the nearest of the creatures, Basil emptying the remaining contents of his magazine into the great brute’s chest. It halted and sank down by the one which pinioned Yonita, tapping feebly with its great claws and long, sharp-pointed legs upon the rocks. The other came scrambling over it and made straight at Basil.
He pressed the trigger of his rifle but it was empty now and gave only a faint click. He tried to grab the barrel to use it again as a club, but the evil-smelling horror was right upon him, a huge pincer reached out to nip off his head. In a frenzy of fear he ducked below it and came up inside the giant pincer. Almost before he realised what had happened he received a terrific blow across his back and felt himself forced up against the front of the brute, caught by the pressure of its claw as in a great spring-trap. Next moment, seized as in a vice against the dank, slimy chest of the the foul monster, he was lifted from his feet and it began to scuttle away with him towards the weed.
Another bank of mist had drifted up, dimming the moonlight so that De Brissac was no longer able to see with any clearness. A breathless silence descended upon the frightful scene. It was broken only by Yonita’s faint moaning and the slithering of the monster that was carrying Basil away until there came his sudden scream for help. The giant crab had covered fifteen yards before De Brissac realised what was happening. At Basil’s scream he sprang forward towards the sound.
Plunging across the rocks he stumbled and fell, picked himself up again and raced on. The slithering sound was only just ahead of him and next minute he could make out the rough outline of the crab as it scuttled rapidly towards the beach.
Basil was fast in its grip, his spine near breaking-point at the pressure the great claw exerted on him. His chin was just above the huge crab’s shell and the fetid stench of decayed fish came up from the creature’s mouth to him, nauseating him to such an extent that he vomited violently in the midst of his terrified cries for succour.
De Brissac ran on down the uneven slope, his fastest speed only just enabling him to outdistance the crab. It had covered seventy yards and was within twenty of the waterline by the time he caught up with it.
His Winchester was useless. To fire at the monster’s back, covered by the solid armour of its shell, would have had no more effect than using a pea-shooter, and, even if he could have got in front of it, all its vulnerable part was protected as it was hugging Basil to its chest.
Without a second’s hesitation De Brissac dropped his rifle, flung himself headlong upon the brute’s back and grabbing its protruding eyeballs, one in each hand, gouged them out with his fingers. The beast instantly dropped Basil, and waving its great pincers high in the air, tried frantically to nip the man upon its back.
Still clinging to its shell with one hand De Brissac wrenched his big silver cigarette-case out of his pocket with the other and thrust it with all the force he could into the creature’s mouth and right down its gullet.
The effort nearly cost him his arm as the huge claw descended with a snap and he was only just able to get his hand away in time. The crab reared up and De Brissac slid off its back, stumbling away, before it could turn, to try to find his rifle.
Basil had slipped from underneath it and was now a dozen feet distant. The mist parted again and showed him wild-eyed and panting as he lifted a great rock above his head. With the super-strength of a madman he hurled it at the brute’s chest.
The blinded crab began to gyrate wildly round and round upon its needle-sharp, hairy, pointed legs, nipping the air again and again with incredible swiftness.
De Brissac caught sight of his Winchester in the moonlight, grabbed it up and knelt, taking careful aim. As the brute came face to face with him he emptied the contents of the magazine into its front and finished it.
Basil had collapsed upon the rocks. De Brissac stumbled over and sank down beside him. For a few moments they lay there panting; shaken by their terrible experience.
‘You hurt?’ De Brissac asked at last.
‘No, thank God,’ Basil gasped, ‘only bruised. The brute had the grip of a polar bear. I thought it ’ud crush my ribs in. How about Yonita?’
‘She’s all right. Her legs are pinned under the second one we killed. We’ll free her directly we’ve got our breath back.’
Basil groaned. ‘God, that was a near thing. If you hadn’t turned up when you did that devilish brute would be making a meal off me by now—somewhere down there in the weed. What a nightmare!’
De Brissac got slowly to his feet. ‘Let’s hope there are no more of them about. We must get back to Yonita and reload our rifles.’
‘I hope to goodness she’s all right,’ Basil muttered.
‘We’d have heard her screaming if she had been attacked by another of them,’ De Brissac reassured him.
Back in the shallow cave they found her lying full length on the ground, sobbing quietly; h
er feet were still pinned under the soft body of the huge brute that had attacked her.
The dead crab was so heavy that at first they could not move it, but after an hour’s hard work with their clasp-knives they managed to cut through the rubbery tendons where the two great claws were jointed to hinge on to the body. Dragging these aside they got a shoulder each under the enormous shell and heaved it up the few inches necessary for Yonita to wriggle free.
Her legs were badly bruised from the feet to below the knees but she could stand without assistance and none of the bones in her feet seemed to have been broken. She told them then what she had been about to say when De Brissac checked her, just before the attack.
‘I have never set eyes on any of the odious creatures, but our islanders speak of occasional encounters with them; it only occurred to me the moment they came at us that was what they must be. I vow I was near out of my wits with fright.’
De Brissac tried to comfort her by saying the night would soon be over, but looking at his wrist-watch he saw that it was only a quarter past two; they still had over two hours to wait for daylight. The mist had cleared entirely now, which was some comfort to them, as, by keeping a careful watch, they could overlook both beaches and have ample warning if any more of the great crustaceans came up out of the weed to attack them and the moon, now high in the heavens and free of cloud, gave a bright, cold light which would enable them to shoot with some accuracy at a fair distance.
Nevertheless it was a grim and agonising period of waiting. Had there been more of the brutes they would certainly have been overwhelmed and torn to pieces and they had every reason to suppose that the weed held hundreds of such monsters who might easily be attracted by the stench of their dead comrades or by whatever sense it is which guides crustaceans to the carrion of the beaches.
Time passed on with leaden feet. At half past three the uncanny, but friendly moonlight failed them. Shadows crept up about their refuge once again and only the faint radiance of the stars showed the rough outline of the bulkier rocks in the near distance.
Uncharted Seas Page 20