It was five minutes before the end came. It came in one awful hideous convulsion that lifted the mighty cliff a hundred feet aloft, cracking and shattering it to fragments as its face toppled forward into the forest at its foot. Then there was silence — silence awful and ominous. For five minutes the quiet of death reigned upon the face of the earth, until presently from far out at sea came a rushing, swirling sound — a sound that only a few wild beasts were left to hear — and the ocean, mountain high, rushed in upon what had been the village of Nu, the chief.
15. WHAT THE CAVE REVEALED
When Victoria Custer opened her eyes the first face that she saw was that of her brother, Barney, bent above her. She looked at him in puzzled bewilderment for a moment. Presently she reached her hands toward him.
“Where am I?” she asked. “What has happened?”
“You’re all right, Vic,” replied the young man. “You’re safe and sound in Lord Greystoke’s bungalow.”
For another moment the girl knit her brows in perplexity.
“But the earthquake,” she asked, “wasn’t there an earthquake?”
“A little one, Vic, but it didn’t amount to anything — there wasn’t any damage done.”
“How long have I been-er-this way?” she continued.
“You swooned about three minutes ago,” replied her brother. “I just put you down here and sent Esmeralda for some brandy when you opened your eyes.”
“Three minutes,” murmured the girl— “three minutes!”
That night after the others had retired Barney Custer sat beside his sister’s bed, and long into the early morning she told him in simple words and without sign of hysteria the story that I have told here, of Nat-ul and Nu, the son of Nu.
“I think,” she said, when she had finished the strange tale, “that I shall be happier for this vision, or whatever one may call it. I have met my dream man and lived again the life that he and I lived countless ages ago. Even if he comes to me in my dreams again it will not disturb me. I am glad that it was but a dream, and that Mr. Curtiss was not killed by Terkoz, and that all those other terrible things were not real.”
“Now,” said Barney, with a smile, “you may be able to listen to what Curtiss has been trying to tell you.” It was a half question.
Victoria Custer shook her head.
“No,” she said, “I could never love him now. I cannot tell you why, but it may be that what I have lived through in those three minutes revealed more than the dim and distant past. Terkoz has never liked him, you know.”
Barney did not pursue the subject. He kissed the girl good night and as the east commenced to lighten to the coming dawn he sought his own room and a few hours’ sleep.
The next day it was decided that Victoria and Barney should start for the coast as soon as porters could be procured, which would require but a few days at the most. Lieutenant Butzow, Curtiss and I decided to accompany them.
It was the last day of their stay at the Greystoke ranch. The others were hunting. Barney and Victoria had remained to put the finishing touches upon their packing, but that was done now and the girl begged for a last ride over the broad, game dotted valley of Uziri.
Before they had covered a mile Barney saw that his sister had some particular objective in mind, for she rode straight as an arrow and rapidly, with scarce a word, straight south toward the foot of the rugged mountains that bound the Waziri’s country upon that side — in the very direction that she had previously shunned. After a couple of hours of stiff riding they came to the foot of the lofty cliff that had formerly so filled Victoria with terror and misgivings.
“What’s the idea, Vic,” asked the man,” I thought you were through with all this.”
“I am, Barney,” she replied, “or will be after today, but I just couldn’t go away without satisfying my curiosity. I want to know that there is no cave here in which a man might be buried.”
She dismounted and started to climb the rugged escarpment. Barney was amazed at the agility and strength of the slender girl. It kept him puffing to remain near her in her rapid ascent.
At last she stopped suddenly upon a narrow ledge. When Barney reached her side he saw that she was very white, and he paled himself when he saw what her eyes rested upon. The earthquake had dislodged a great boulder that for ages evidently had formed a part of the face of the cliff. Now it had tilted outward a half dozen feet, revealing behind it the mouth of a gloomy cavern.
Barney took Victoria’s hand. It was very cold and trembled a little.
“Come,” he said, “this has gone far enough, Vic. You’ll be sick again if you keep it up. Come back to the horses — we’ve seen all we want to see.”
She shook her head.
“Not until I have searched that cave,” she said, almost defiantly, and Barney knew that she would have her way.
Together they entered the forbidding grotto, Barney in advance, striking matches with one hand while he clung to his cocked rifle with the other; but there was nothing there that longer had the power to injure.
In a far corner the feeble rays of the match lighted something that brought Barney to a sudden halt. He tried to turn the girl back as though there was nothing more to be seen, but she had seen too and pressed forward. She made her brother light another match, and there before them lay the crumbling skeleton of a large man. By its side rested a broken, stone-tipped spear, and there was a stone knife and a stone ax as well.
“Look!” whispered the girl, pointing to something that lay just beyond the skeleton.
Barney raised the match he held until its feeble flame carried to that other object — the grinning skull of a great cat, its upper jaw armed with two mighty, eighteen-inch, curved fangs.
“Oo, the killer of men and of mammals,” whispered Victoria Custer, in an awed voice, “and Nu, the son of Nu, who killed him for his Nat-ul — for me!”
THE END
JUNGLE GIRL (1932)
OR, LAND OF THE HIDDEN MEN
CONTENTS
1. THE JUNGLE
2. THE DELIRIUM
3. THE HUNTER
4. FOU-TAN
5. THE CAPTURE
6. THE LEPER KING
7. A SOLDIER OF THE GUARD
8. IN THE HOUSE OF THE KING
9. THE FLIGHT
10. LOVE AND THE BRUTE
11. WARRIORS FROM PNOM DHEK
12. GUEST AND PRISONER
13. FAREWELL FOR EVER!
14. MY LORD THE TIGER
15. WAR
16. IN THE PALACE OF BENG KHER
17. CONCLUSION
1. THE JUNGLE
“My Lord, I may go no farther,” said the Cambodian.
The young white man turned in astonishment upon his native guide. Behind them lay the partially cleared trail along which they had come. It was overgrown with tall grass that concealed the tree-stumps that had been left behind the axes of the road-builders. Before them lay a ravine, at the near edge of which the trail ended. Beyond the ravine was the primitive jungle untouched by man.
“Why, we haven’t even started yet!” exclaimed the white man. “You cannot turn back now. What do you suppose I hired you for?”
“I promised to take my lord to the jungle,” replied the Cambodian. “There it is. I did not promise to enter it.”
Gordon King lighted a cigarette. “Let’s talk this thing over, my friend,” he said. “It is yet early morning. We can get into the jungle as far as I care to go and out again before sundown.”
The Cambodian shook his head. “I will wait for you here, my lord,” he said; “but I may not enter the jungle, and if you are wise you will not.”
“Why?” demanded King.
“There are wild elephants, my lord, and tigers,” replied the Cambodian, “and panthers which hunt by day as well as by night.”
“Why do you suppose we brought two rifles?” demanded the white. “At Kompong-Thom they told me you were a good shot and a brave man. You knew that we should hav
e no need for rifles up to this point. No, sir, you have lost your nerve at the last minute, and I do not believe that it is because of tigers or wild elephants.”
“There are other things deep in the jungle, my lord, that no man may look upon and live.”
“What, for example?” demanded King.
“The ghosts of my ancestors,” answered the Cambodian, “the Khmers who dwelt here in great cities ages ago. Within the dark shadows of the jungle the ruins of their cities still stand, and down the dark aisles of the forest pass the ancient kings and warriors and little sad-faced queens on ghostly elephants. Fleeing always from the horrible fate that overtook them in life, they pass for ever down the corridors of the jungle, and with them are the millions of the ghostly dead that once were their subjects. We might escape My Lord the Tiger and the wild elephants, but no man may look upon the ghosts of the dead Khmers and live.”
“We shall be out before dark,” insisted King.
“They are abroad both by day and by night,” said the Cambodian. “It is the curse of Siva, the Destroyer.”
King shrugged his shoulders, stamped out his cigarette and picked up his rifle. “Wait for me here, then,” he said. “I shall be out before dark.”
“You will never come out,” said the Cambodian.
Beyond the ravine, savage, mysterious, rose the jungle, its depth screened from view by the spectral trunks of fromagers and a tangle of bamboo. At first the man could find no opening in that solid wall of vegetation. In its sheath, at his side, hung a heavy knife, but already the young day was so oppressively hot that the man did not relish the idea of exhausting himself at the very outset of his adventure if he could find some easier way. That it would be still hotter he knew, for Cambodia lies but twelve degrees above the equator in the same latitude as Nicaragua, the Sudan, and other places infamous for their heat.
Along the edge of the ravine he searched, until at last he was rewarded by what appeared to be not by any means a trail but a far less formidable growth of bamboo through which he saw that he might easily force his way. Glancing back, he saw his Cambodian guide squatted upon his heels in mournful meditation. For an instant the young man hesitated, as though he was of a mind to try again to persuade the Cambodian to accompany him; but, as though immediately conscious of the futility of any such appeal, he turned again and pushed his way into the jungle.
He had advanced but a short distance when the heavy undergrowth gave way to a much more open forest. The spreading branches of the lofty trees cast upon the ground a perpetual shade, which had discouraged a heavy growth of underbrush.
How different looked the jungle from any picture that his imagination had conjured! How mysterious, but above all, how gloomy and how sinister! A fitting haunt, indeed, for the ghosts of weeping queens and murdered kings. Beneath his breath King cursed his Cambodian guide. He felt no fear, but he did feel an unutterable loneliness.
Only for a moment did he permit the gloom of the jungle to oppress him. He glanced at his watch, opened his pocket compass, and set a course as nearly due north as the winding avenues of the jungle permitted. He may have realized that he was something of a fool to have entered upon such an adventure alone; but it was doubtful that he would have admitted it even to himself, for, indeed, what danger was there? He had, he thought, sufficient water for the day; he was well armed and carried a compass and a heavy knife for trail- cutting. Perhaps he was a little short on food, but one cannot carry too heavy a load through the midday heat of a Cambodian jungle.
Gordon King was a young American who had recently graduated in medicine. Having an independent income, he had no need to practice his profession; and well realizing, as he did, that there are already too many poor doctors in the world, he had decided to devote himself for a number of years to the study of strange maladies. For the moment he had permitted himself to be lured from his hobby by the intriguing mysteries of the Khmer ruins of Angkor — ruins that had worked so mightily upon his imagination that it had been impossible for him to withstand the temptation of some independent exploration on his own account. What he expected to discover he did not know; perhaps the ruins of a city more mighty than Angkor Thom; perhaps a temple of greater magnificence and grandeur than Angkor Vat; perhaps nothing more than a day’s adventure. Youth is like that.
The jungle that had at first appeared so silent seemed to awaken at the footfall of the trespasser; scolding birds fluttered above him, and there were monkeys now that seemed to have come from nowhere. They, too, scolded as they hurtled through the lower terraces of the forest.
He found the going more difficult than he had imagined, for the floor of the jungle was far from level. There were gullies and ravines to be crossed and fallen trees across the way, and always he must be careful to move as nearly north as was physically possible, else he might come out far from his Cambodian guide when he sought to return. His rifle grew hotter and heavier; his canteen of water insisted with the perversity of inanimate objects in sliding around in front and bumping him on the belly. He reeked with sweat, and yet he knew that he could not have come more than a few miles from the point where he had left his guide. The tall grasses bothered him most, for he could not see what they hid; and when a cobra slid from beneath his feet and glided away, he realized more fully the menace of the grasses, which in places grew so high that they brushed his face.
At the end of two hours King was perfectly well assured that he was a fool to go on, but there was a certain proportion of bulldog stubbornness in his make-up that would not permit him to turn back so soon. He paused and drank from his canteen. The water was warm and had an unpleasant taste. The best that might be said of it was that it was wet. To his right and a little ahead sounded a sudden crash in the jungle. Startled, he cocked his rifle and stood listening. Perhaps a dead tree had fallen, he thought, or the noise might have been caused by a wild elephant. It was not a ghostly noise at all, and yet it had a strange effect upon his nerves, which, to his disgust, he suddenly realized were on edge. Had he permitted the silly folk tale of the Cambodian to so work upon his imagination that he translated into a suggestion of impending danger every unexpected interruption of the vast silence of the jungle?
Wiping the sweat from his face, he continued on his way, keeping as nearly a northerly direction as was possible. The air was filled with strange odors, among which was one more insistent than the others — a pungent, disagreeable odor that he found strangely familiar and yet could not immediately identify: Lazy air currents, moving sluggishly through the jungle, occasionally brought this odor to his nostrils, sometimes bearing but a vague suggestion of it and again with a strength that was almost sickening; and then suddenly the odor stimulated a memory cell that identified it. He saw himself standing on the concrete floor of a large building, the sides of which were lined with heavily barred cages in which lions and tigers paced nervously to and fro or sprawled in melancholy meditation of their lost freedom; and in his nostrils was the same odor that impinged upon them now. However, it is one thing to contemplate tigers from the safe side of iron bars, and it is quite another thing suddenly to realize their near presence unrestrained by bars of any sort. It occurred to him now that he had not previously considered tigers as anything more serious than a noun; they had not represented a concrete reality. But that mental conception had passed now, routed by the odor that clung in his nostrils. He was not afraid; but realizing for the first time, that he was in actual danger, he advanced more warily, always on the alert.
Some marshy ground and several deep ravines had necessitated various detours. It was already almost noon, the time upon which he was determined he must turn back in order that he might reach the point where he had left his guide before darkness fell upon the jungle. Constantly for some tune there had lurked within his consciousness a question as to his ability to back-track upon his trail. He had had no experience in woodcraft, and he had already found it far more difficult than he had imagined it would be to maintain a true course by comp
ass; nor had he taken the precautions to blaze his trail in any way, as he might have done by marking the trees with the heavy trail cutter that he carried.
Gordon King was disgusted with himself; he had found no ruins; he was hot, tired and hungry. He realized that he had lost all interest in ruins of any and all descriptions, and after a brief rest he turned back towards the south. It was then, almost immediately, that he realized the proportions of the task that lay ahead of him. For six hours he had been plodding deep into the jungle. If he had averaged two miles an hour, he had covered a distance of twelve miles. He did not know how fast he had walked, but he realized that twelve miles was bad enough when he considered that he had started out fresh and well fortified by a hearty breakfast and that he was returning empty, tired, and footsore.
However, he still believed that he could make the distance easily before dark if he could keep to the trail. He was well prepared physically by years of athletic training, having been a field and track man at college. He was glad now that he had gone in for long distance running; he had won a marathon or two and was never appalled at the thought of long distances to be covered on foot. That he could throw the javelin and hurl the discus to almost championship distances seemed less helpful to him in an emergency of the present nature than his running experience. His only regret on this score was that during the year that he had been out of college he had permitted himself to become soft — a condition that had become increasingly noticeable with every mile that he put behind him.
Within the first minute that Gordon King had been upon the back-trail toward his guide he had discovered that it was absolutely impossible for his untrained eyes to find any sign of the trail that he supposed he had made coming in. The way that he thought he had come, his compass told him, let towards the south-west; but he could find no directing spoor.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 462