“Your machetes” shouted Mabrey. “Watch the window ! It may break the glass!”
Scarcely had he spoken ere a window pane shattered —fell in a tinkling shower. A writhing green arm shot through the opening, touched Anita, and wrapped around her slender waist.
As she screamed in deadly terror and pain I sprang to her assistance. But she was jerked toward the window with incredible swiftness.
CHAPTER IV In the Power of the Adept
I SWUNG my machete at the writhing thing that was dragging Anita toward the window. It moved downward as I struck, and consequently was only cut half through—green liquid oozing from the wound. Goaded to a frenzy by the cries of the tortured girl, I slashed again and again at the great green arm, not realizing that my second blow had bitten clear through, and that I was merely cutting the severed end to pieces.
The oozing stump was withdrawn through the broken window. Brought to a realization of what I was doing, I turned and found Anita swaying—about to fall. The relaxed tentacles had slipped from her, but I knew from experience the stinging wounds it had left. She was biting her lips—attempting to suppress her moans of agony. I caught her in my arms—spoke to her soothingly. And she sobbed hysterically, her head on my shoulder.
Suddenly I was aware of a change outside. The patter of the rain had ceased. The muttering of the thunder was dying in the distance. And the mighty tentacles no longer slithered and groped outside the cottage. Suddenly the moon appeared from behind a cloud, flooding the drenched mountainside with its soft light. A gigantic figure like a huge upturned, uprooted tree appeared on the rim of the crater, wobbled unsteadily for a moment, and then disappeared.
“It’s gone, Anita!” I said. “The thing has gone back to its lair ! We’re saved !”
“I’m so glad,” she whispered, “but I am hurt—terribly.”
The professor had gone into the laboratory. In a moment he returned with bottles, gauze and cotton. After washing our smarting, itching wounds with alcohol, he swabbed them with mercurochrome. Presently I felt some relief, and Anita, plucky little thing that she was, declared that her pains were gone.
Pedro made coffee, which he served piping hot to all of us. Nobody cared to sleep, so we sat and smoked, sipping our coffee and discussing our terrible visitor.
The professor, of course, said nothing more about his theory of mass hypnotism. Nor did I have the heart to twit him about it. He had saved my life. No doubt his presence of mind in closing the doors and windows had saved all of us.
He examined the two green things that had ceased to writhe on the floor, except when touched. Then they showed startling reactions.
“They are hollow,” he said, "with terminal orifices much like the mouths of anemones. The tubes are lined with cells that digest the creature’s food, taken in through the orifices. The ectoderm-the outer skin—is dotted with the stinging nettle cells which can be employed either for defense or aggression. Without a doubt the thing is an ambulatory hydra—a gigantic individual belonging to the strange species we saw in the reservoir. Throw the filthy things out, Pedro. The stench is nauseating.”
Impaling one of the green things on his machete, Pedro held it at arms’ length, dragged it to the screen door and flung it outside. He returned for the other and handled it in a like manner, then closed the door softly and tiptoed back into the room.
“Seex men come!” he said excitedly, “over the hut. They get here een a minute!”
The professor, Anita and I hurried to the window. Clearly visible in the moonlight were six figures, poking about the ruins of the native hut. One, taller than the others and wearing a large feather crown, was familiar to all of us.
“It’s Bahna,” said Mabrey, “with five of his followers. No doubt he means trouble, or he wouldn’t have brought all those men with him. See to your side arms, everybody. Don’t start anything, but he ready to finish anything they may start.”
I loaded my emptied forty-five. Pedro and the professor were similarly armed with forty-fives and heavy machetes. Anita carried a thirty-eight and a lighter machete. Our shotguns and rifles stood in a corner.
“You stand guard over those guns, Pedro,” ordered Mabrey. “We’ll use our side arms if attacked, and make a dash for the other weapons, but we don’t want to appear hostile unnecessarily. It may provoke an attack.”
We took seats and waited, tensely alert. The professor and I smoked our pipes. Pedro puffed at his inevitable cigarette.
The splashing of footsteps sounded on the rain-soaked ground outside. The screen door opened. There was the tramp of feet on the porch. Then Bahna stalked into the room, his features as expressionless and inscrutable as before. Behind him walked five Indians. Two took positions on each side of the door. The other remained standing in the doorway with arms folded.
The professor nodded pleasantly, as if such visits in the dead of night were of ordinary occurrence. He was an admirable actor.
“Evening, Bahna,” he said. “Beautiful night after the rain. Won’t you sit down and have some coffee?” Bahna stared straight at the professor, his face expressionless as a moulded death mask.
“I warned you,” he said, “of the wrath of Nayana Idra. You did not heed my warning. Had I not risked my own life to beseech him to leave, your lives would have been forfeit.”
“And who,” asked the professor evenly, “is Nayana Idra? I saw no such person.”
“If you saw him not, then are you blind indeed,” replied Bahna, “for he has carried one of your servants away with him, and another lies at the edge of the clearing, dead from fright. He looked upon the Divine One, and died.”
“Perhaps you refer to the giant ambulatory hydra as Nayana Idra,” said the professor. “We saw that, to be sure. If you prevailed upon it to leave, we are much obliged, as it is a disagreeable beast. But I was of the opinion that it had left because the rainstorm had ceased. Couldn’t stay in the open air long, you know, unless the rain was falling. It would be dehydrated.”
“I was about to warn you to leave, for the second and last time,” said Bahna, “but it seems that you have been prying into secrets that do not concern you. Under the circumstances, I can no longer permit you to go.”
‘‘Indeed!” The professor stood up. "Get this, Bahna. We'll come and go as we damn please.”
“Fool!”
The Indian suddenly whipped something from beneath his clothing. It looked like a glass ampulla. With his other hand he drew a handkerchief from his pocket, held it over his nostrils. Then he shattered the ampulla on the floor. Instantly the air was filled with an acrid odor. Through a dim haze I saw the other Indians holding cloths to their noses. I tried to reach for my forty-five, but couldn’t raise my arm. My senses whirled. The room, its figures distorted, seemed to revolve about me. Then I lost consciousness.
WHEN I came to my senses once more I was in total darkness, lying, bound hand and foot, on a cold, damp stone floor. My head felt as big as a balloon. Every muscle of my body ached as if it had been pounded. And recurrent waves of nausea added to my general feeling of unpleasantness. Someone was speaking in the darkness quite near me. I recognized the voice of the professor.
“Must have been a concentrated, highly volatile solution of some member of the hemp family in that ampulla,” he was saying. “Possibly cannabis indica the stuff your people call inirijuana, Pedro.”
“Ees damn’ bad stoi'f, I tal you,” said Pedro. “I feel lak I been dronk for whole year and the wild horse, she's jom all over me.”
Then I heard the voice of Anita.
“Isn’t that something like hashish, Uncle Charley?” .she asked.
“It is hashish, or bhantj, so called in the Orient.”
Evidently I had been the last to recover from the torpor induced by the drug.
“A clever chemist, that Bahna,” the professor was saving, when we were suddenly half blinded by an unexpected glare of light.
A door had been silently opened by an Indian. Just behind
it was a room flooded with sunlight shining in through a large, iron-barred window. The Indian came in, followed by three companions. Each carried a machete with which he cut the ropes from our ankles. Then we were helped to our feet.
“Holy One send for you,” was the curt remark of the leader. They led us away through the sunny room, and along a narrow hallway which presently opened into another room lighted by sputtering candles set at intervals in holders in the wall, and giving off a heavy perfume of cloying sweetness.
Seated on a glittering, jewel-encrusted golden throne on a dais at one end of the room, was Bahna, staring straight ahead of him, his features as inscrutable and expressionless as if they had been of graven bronze.
Our four conductors stood us in a row before the throne. Then they departed noiselessly, leaving us alone with Bahna. lie addressed 11s collectively, his expression changeless.
“Twice,” he said, “have you earned death, and twice has the great god, Nayana Idra, spared you. Nayana Idra seeks votaries, not corpses, therefore I, his mouthpiece, offer you a final opportunity to live. The Divine One can use all of you, alive and well—can bring happiness and greatness to all. Your scientific knowledge, Professor Mabrey, can be employed in his service. You might in time, become one of his adepts—help to spread his religion as it was spread before, and will be again, to the four corners of the earth. He could use your strong arm, Jimmie Brown, and yours, Pedro, to fight in his service. He requires a High Priestess Consort for his earthly vicar, such a one as Senorita de Orellana, with youth, culture and beauty. Make oath, all of you, that you will observe his commands as administered through me, that you will make no attempts to escape, and you will be admitted as honored members of our cult. I await your answers.”
“You won’t have to wait long for mine,” replied Mabrey. “It's ‘No.’ ”
“That goes for me, too,” I said.
“And for me,” said Anita.
“An’ for me,” said Pedro defiantly, “you can pliz go to hal.”
“Perhaps,” said Bahna, apparently unperturbed, “you will all he glad to decide otherwise when you have seen what you shall shortly see. For I swear to you all, that your fate shall be as the fate of the one who is about to die. if you persist in your folly.”
He clapped his hands, and four Indians came in to take us away.
CHAPTER V The Sacrifice
WE were conducted from the throne room to another smaller one, where our hands were unbound and we were given breakfast, while a guard, armed with a machete, stood over each of us. After breakfast our hands were bound behind our backs once more, and we were all very effectually gagged. Then we were taken to the sunny room through which we had passed some time before, and led up to the barred window. Looking down from this I saw that we were just above the place of sacrifice which we had observed the day before. The window through which we were looking had been concealed from below by the jungle growth.
Evidently a ceremony was about to take place, for the terraces were lined with what appeared to be four orders of priests, from neophites to acolytes. Bahna, the adept, was nowhere in sight. Just as the sun reached the meridian, the priests began chanting a somber, dirge-like melody in a minor key, to the weird accompaniment of drums and reed instruments. This chant kept up for perhaps five minutes. Looking around, I saw that the shores of the lake were lined with thousands of spectators, who must have been drawn from a large part of the surrounding territory.
The chanting suddenly ceased, and eight acolytes stepped forward, blowing conch shells. The din was terrific. The other priests were shouting something in which I could catch, from time to time, the word “Nayana Idra.” I judged from their manner that they were crying a summons to their snakey god. Suddenly I saw, waving above the water, writhing and twisting in their green and menacing ugliness, the tentacles of the gigantic hydra.
All noise ceased as if at some secret sign, and standing in a wisp of curling smoke on the top terrace below me, apparently materialized from nowhere to this spot directly in front of the great engraved stone, I recognized the tall form of Bahna, attired in brilliant ceremonial robes and wearing a hideous mask, Beside him stood an Indian maiden, naked save for an extremely short apron of plaited sisal, and some jeweled breast ornaments. Her head was covered by a black cloth hood, and to her bands, which were bound behind her, was tied a heavy, grooved stone that must have weighed at least twenty-five pounds.
As Bahna advanced with slow, measured steps, the priests began a soft, weird chant. Descending the terraces, he guided the girl, who was not only unable to see because of her black mask, but from her automaton-like movements, was either under the influence of some drug or hypnotism.
When the High Priest and his victim crossed the bridge and neared the altar steps, the chanting increased in volume. Drums, reed instruments and conches once more added to the din. The volume of sound was terrific—almost car-splitting when, after mounting the steps, priest and sacrifice reached the top of the altar.
Babna led the girl out on the stone which projected over the water, For a moment he stood there looking down at the writhing green arms below. Then there was a quick, outward thrust of his arm, the flash of a brown body in the air, and a boiling and seething of the water for a moment after it disappeared.
Scarcely had the boiling subsided, ere the high-priest himself, holding his hands for a moment above his head, dived straight down into the water.
I was astounded—mystified. It seemed to me that this was nothing short of suicidal. But then I was not, as Professor Mabrey had previously remarked, conversant with the complex ramifications of savage cunning. It was an act which was capable of producing a powerful effect on the minds of the watchers—would prove to them that Bahna was really friendly with this terrible god—if Bahna should later reappear before them alive.
The din continued. Suddenly 1 was aware that Bahna was again standing in a cloud of smoke on the center of the top terrace before the graven stone plate. His costume and mask were as dry as they had been before he took the plunge into the water.
The weird music ceased. But there went up from the throats of the watchers a great cry of applause.
Bahna removed his mask. Then holding his hands aloft, he stilled the shouting of the multitude and addressed them in a language which I was unable to understand. They listened silently—raptly. It was plain that he had tremendous power over these simple people.
Then our Indian guards led us away from the window, removed our gags, and confined us once more in our lightless prison.
For many hours, during which time we slept once and were fed twice, we were left to discuss and meditate on the threats of Bahna, there in the darkness. Then the door opened once more and four Indian guards came in to escort us away, our hands still bound behind our backs. They led us along the familiar route to the throne room. After conducting us before the throne, they left silently.
His features inscrutable as ever, Bahna surveyed us all. Then he clapped his hands.
From a doorway at the right of the throne, a door opened, and marching stiffly erect between two Indians, his hands, like ours bound behind his back, there entered a short, black-bearded, brown-eyed man of professional aspect, with thick-lense glasses.
“Dad!” cried Anita.
",Anita, mia!” he answered, “and Charlce, amigo! I feared you would come, but could not warn you.”
“It’s all right, old pal,” said the professor. “We’d have come anyway, warning or no warning.”
And so 1 knew that this man was Anita’s father, Dr. Fernando de Orellana.
Bahna raised his hand. The two men who were leading the doctor, whirled him about and marched him out of the room. When the door had closed behind him the man on the throne spoke.
“Senorita de Orellana,” he said, “I have permitted you to look upon your father, alive and well. If, by high noon today you have willingly become High Priestess of Nayana Idra, which is the greatest honor I can bestow upon you, your f
ather will still be living and unharmed. If not, then will he suffer the fate meted out to the girl in the black mask at high noon yesterday, and you, willing or unwilling, will have become my slave and handmaiden.
“My people have demanded your death—have said that by raiding your camp Nayana Idra signified his desire for a white girl. But I, the mouthpiece of the great god, can tell them it was a white man they wanted. It is thus that I can save you. And as I have four white prisoners, any one will do for the sacrifice. I will permit you to choose which of these men shall live, and which man will die. One must be sacrificed at high noon, today.
“You have had sufficient time since yesterday to think this offer over. Now let me have your answer.”
“My father! You would sacrifice him if I should refuse to become your High Priestess?”
“If you do other than consent now, there will be no hope for him.”
“And if I do consent, only one of the others will die? You promise me that?”
“I promise that.”
“They are all my very dear friends. They have risked their lives to come here with me, to search for my father. Spare me all their lives, and I consent.’’
“You ask too much, senorita. I cannot disappoint my people.”
“Then I refuse.”
“Think of your father.”
“I refuse.”"
“Very well. Your refusal is his death warrant, and you are my slave. When my flock has grown I will have many beautiful white slaves, though none. I swear, so beautiful as you.”
He stood up and slowly drew a jeweled dagger—the only weapon that he carried—from its hilt in his sash. Then he descended the dais, while we watched him tensely, wondering what he was going to do.
My heart leaped to my throat, and I stood tensely, ready to hurl myself at him, bound hands and all, as he stepped up before Anita. He looked down at her for a moment. Then he spun her around, and cut her bonds.
The Thing That Walked In The Rain Page 3