by Ron Miller
We needed to wait until the next day, after Englehorn had threaded the pass between the reefs. The island itself shelved off quickly, with deep water less than a hundred yards from shore, allowing Englehorn to anchor close in.
We were not far from where a stubby peninsula joined the main body of the island. The native village had been on the peninsula, but I didn’t see any signs of life. Human life, I mean. The top of the mammoth stone wall was just barely visible above the treetops. I knew it cut off the peninsula, running from the west to east shores, but I could see little or nothing of its nearer terminus what with all the trees, giant ferns and whatnot. Beyond, to the north, was the looming bulk of Skull Mountain with its cavernous eyes.
The Venture anchored and Ito’s men immediately began preparing to unload their tank and whatever other unholy they’d stored in the hold. I had been wondering how they’d plan to get a tank onto the island but shouldn’t have been surprised when I found out. A prefabricated raft was the first thing to be assembled. Supported by enormous inflatable rubber pontoons, it could have carried half a dozen tanks.
“This is going to take them all day,” I told Pat. “There’s no moon tonight. It should be a snap to take one of the ship’s boats and make the shore. Everyone will be either too tired or too busy to notice. It’d be the last thing in the world Ito would expect.”
“I hope so. But what do you expect to accomplish once you’re there? I mean, according to you, the island is some sort of prehistoric zoo. Seems to me you’d just be making Ito’s job easier since he’d no longer have to worry about getting rid of you.”
“Yeah, but he still needs me. It was the fact that I’d mentioned seeing pools of crude oil that got the Japs all wound up in the first place.”
“That’s what I understood from what I overheard. Apparently your description of the island’s geology was pretty thorough. They’re certain there’s oil, natural gas and who knows what all minerals and ores here.”
“Well, they’ll never find them on their own, not in this decade at any rate. If Ito doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life turning over every leaf and rock on the damned island, he needs to know what I know.”
“Still, I don’t see how you plan to get word out.”
“Let’s worry about one thing at a time.”
We told Andrews about our plans and he was all for it. Probably saw another book in it for him but whatever his motives might have been, he was an experienced outdoorsman and it’d be good to have him along.
We needed to get some supplies together, and weapons, too, if possible. This proved easier than we’d thought. Ito was so busy, and so confident in our helplessness, that he paid us little attention. He was occupied enough in overseeing both his own men and Englehorn’s that he pretty much dismissed Pat, Andrews and me as being relatively harmless.
One of the first things Ito had done after taking over the ship was to commandeer the Venture’s gun locker. But he hadn’t checked our baggage. Turned out that Andrews had come well-heeled and I was pretty sure that Pat packed more than just the big Colt revolver she kept in her purse.
“Over the past few weeks,” she said, “I’ve been poking around in the hold and know where some of the Jap weapons are stowed. At least the stuff we could handle.”
“You think you could get hold of some of that?”
“Sure. Why not?”
I saw no reason to doubt her. I volunteered to find some food. I knew we wouldn’t need much. Skull Island has as much to eat as it has things that want to eat you, but we’d need something until we felt safe enough to forage on our own. There was plenty of fresh water on the island, too, so a couple of canteens would suffice us to start.
That evening we played poker as usual, figuring that sticking to our routine wouldn’t raise any suspicions in Ito’s crafty Oriental brain. In fact, I figured that Ito had gotten so used to our evening ritual that he had grown to completely ignore us.
We slipped out of Andrew’s cabin around two, making sure to leave the light on behind us. We had each spent the afternoon smuggling whatever we could in the way of supplies, though we knew there’d be precious little we could easily and safely take with us. We split up the supplies and stowed them in our backpacks. Pat had found what she said was a Japanese Type 38 carbine along with a couple of boxes of cartridges. She had the rifle slung over her shoulder while her rucksack rattled ominously.
The sky was moonless and slightly overcast. The darkness was complete. It looked like a velvet blanket had been draped over the ship.
One of the Venture’s boats had been lowered that afternoon so Ito could supervise the assembly of the raft from it. It was tied alongside the ship, and on the island side I was glad to see. We unreeled a rope ladder and let it drop over the railing. It further end landed in the boat with a soft thump. The sound probably hadn’t carried ten yards, but I looked around nervously. There were guards only at the bow, stern and the main hatch. Ito, for all his efficiency, had become complacent, lulled by the remoteness of the island and his self-assurance that escape would be pointless. His only worry was the possibility of sabotage, so he had his men focused on protecting his precious cargo.
We scurried down the side of the ship and in two minutes were in the boat and in another two were far enough away that the darkness cloaked us completely. Andrews and I each took an oar and pulled for the shore. We weren’t especially worried about making any noise by that point: the surf pounding over the reef and on the distant rocks and beach masked any sound we were making. Our only worry was that the missing boat or empty cabins might be discovered prematurely. We’d left the lights burning in Andrew’s cabin in the hope it’d fool any nosy Japs into thinking we were still intent on our game.
The beach shelved gently so we were able to slide well up onto shore. We hopped out into only a few inches of water. The jungle grew down to within a few yards of us and we would have liked to have pulled the boat into its shelter so it would be harder to spot from the ship. But the thing probably weighed a ton and was beyond the three of us to move. We’d just have to take our chances. The best thing would be to get as far from the boat and under cover of the jungle as quickly as possible. We gathered our packs and bags, everything we could carry, and scuttled into the gloomy forest.
If you’ll take a look at that sketch map I drew for Ito, you’ll see a peninsula sticking out toward the south-southwest. This is cut off from the main part of the island by a heavy dark line. That is the titanic stone wall the natives had built to keep Kong at bay. It had worked just fine until it had gotten between the big monkey and Ann Darrow. Then it was just too bad for the giant gate and the village it was supposed to protect.
The spot where we had landed was just to the north of where the wall met the sea. From here on up, the coast quickly turned into high, rocky cliffs that fell directly into the sea. But between where the cliffs began and the end of the wall was a gap that, I hoped, would give us access to the interior of the island.
I could see the end of the wall to our left, looming like a skyscraper above the trees, a black silhouette against the starry sky. With a gesture, I told the others to follow me and we silently slipped into the dense forest.
After we’d gotten a hundred yards in, Andrews touched my shoulder. I paused and felt him lean his face near mine.
“It’s best we get as far as we can while it’s dark,” he whispered. “If everything you’ve said about this place is true, we’ll be safest then. Most reptiles are diurnal. They don’t hunt at night. We should be all right until first light.”
I told him that sounded jake to me.
Pat had gone a few paces ahead and when I glanced up, I saw a gleam of light. It had never occurred to me to bring a flashlight and I was glad she did. And she’d waited until it would have been impossible to see the light from the ship before turning it on.
“Good idea,” I said, coming up beside her.
“We wouldn’t get ten feet further into this jungle othe
rwise. We were lucky to get this far without killing ourselves.”
She was right, of course. The edge of the jungle, where it came down to meet the sea, had been fairly easy going, even in the near pitch-darkness. Tides and storms had kept the forest floor fairly clear and the trees didn’t grow close together. But I could see that an entirely different story was ahead of us. Vines the size of transatlantic cables covered the ground in looped tangles. More vines hung from above, just waiting to garrote us. And the trees and giant ferns were closing together into a solid mass. Even in the beam of the powerful flashlight, I could see little ahead of us but blackness.
Fortunately, I knew there was a large clearing near the middle of the wall, on its north side. It was where the natives had built a kind of altar for their human sacrifices to Kong. It was only a mile or two from where we were. If we kept as close to the wall as we could, we only needed to follow it until we came to the clearing. We’d be pretty safe from Ito, too, at least for a while. I hadn’t indicated the clearing on the map and he had no idea it was there.
It was a slow, painful process—and nerve-racking as hell, not knowing what was in front of your face. I’d seen the giant spiders that’d eaten the men at the bottom of the ravine into which Kong had dumped them . . . and I could all too easily see running into one of their webs. With the spider on the wrong side.
For my part, I figured a known danger was better than an unknown one, and as for Pat and Andrews, they were safe in their ignorance. So we forged on ahead.
The sky was pink with dawn when we spotted the clearing ahead. It was maybe three or four acres in extent, with the altar in the center. To our left was the gigantic door. It looked like it should have been able to stop a battleship . . . but it had proved to be no match for a lovelorn gorilla. It was a wreck now: timbers the size of those giant trees in California were scattered in the gateway, shattered and splintered like so much kindling. This kind of puzzled me, so I clambered over the pile of debris and looked into where the native village had been.
There was nothing but devastation. Kong had gone on a rampage before we’d gassed him, and had stomped any number of grass huts—and natives—into the ground. But there’d been people left when we’d taken Kong away—and there was no one there now. The village was as silent as a graveyard, and just as deserted. By the living at least.
Pat and Andrews scrambled up beside me.
“Holy cow!” Pat said. “Kong did this?”
“Not all of it,” I said. “At least, I mean, he didn’t kill all the natives. I don’t know where they went.”
“Probably had enough of the place,” Andrews said.
“But where would they go?” Pat asked. “We’re thousands of miles from anywhere.”
“They probably didn’t know themselves, so long as this island was behind them. For untold generations they had thought they had their god under control. It must have been a rude shock when they discovered how wrong they were.”
“But where did they go?”
“I have a feeling they didn’t go anywhere. That wall kept back more than Kong.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I think I see what you mean.”
“I’m interested in this wall,” Andrews said as he climbed down from the remains of the giant door. “Look at these carvings.”
I’d never noticed them before, but then, I’d had other things on my mind the last time I’d been in the neighborhood. I couldn’t quite make heads or tails of them, largely because of their scale. I had to back away a hundred paces just to take them in. They reminded me of the enormous statuary and bas reliefs that decorate some of the Egyptian ruins I’ve seen, where everything is on a scale that would shame Zeigfeld.
“There are a couple of things,” Andrews was saying, “that intrigue me about all this. You know, of course, there are vast megalithic stone structures on a few Pacific islands. For instance, the great stone city of Nan Madol on Pohnpei and hints of a cyclopean stone structure off the coast of Japan bigger than anything anyone has seen—but this wall dwarfs anything I’ve ever even heard of. Look at those blocks! Some of them are the size of small houses! The Egyptians and Aztec were masters at manipulating massive blocks of stone, to say nothing of the ancient builders of Stonehenge, but this would have been beyond even their best engineers.”
“And the other thing?” Pat asked.
“These carvings. There’s a story here, I know it. If I could only see the entire continuity . . .”
“Well,” I said, “we’re safe enough here and we need some rest. We might as well camp for a spell and have something to eat.”
“You think it’d be safe to have a fire?” Andrews asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Pat replied. “I brought a little alcohol stove.”
While Pat and I made coffee and something hot to eat, Andrews went over every inch of the wall, scrutinizing its surface with his binoculars. He even made his way through the ruined gate and examined the far side.
When he finally returned to where Pat and I were lounging on the pedestal of the altar, I could see the excitement in his face. She handed him a cup of hot coffee as he sat down heavily, with a sigh of exhaustion and contentment.
“Had you noticed, Carl,” he said, “that there are no carvings or even decorations on the village side of the wall? It’s just a cliff of unadorned stone?”
“I can’t say I did.”
“I found it very curious that all of the imagery is on this side, the side facing toward the interior.”
“So?”
“If the natives—or more likely, their distant ancestors—built the wall, why not decorate the side on which they lived? The side they would have seen every day?”
“Beats me.”
“Another thing. As near as I can figure from what remains of the carvings—and the degree to which such a hard stone has degraded only speaks for the immense antiquity of this structure—leads me to believe that the wall was not built to keep something away from the village.”
“I don’t get it. What are you talking about?”
“Well, it would seem that it was built not to keep the dinosaurs and other monsters in but the rest of the world out.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The fact that the carvings and inscriptions—in what primal language I don’t know—are all on this side, what we had been taking for the outside, suggests that they were placed there not only for the benefit of the civilization that occupied the bulk of the island but by that civilization.”
“You mean whoever built that wall did it to keep the natives out?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“That’s crazy. Those poor people were totally helpless. All they had were stone-tipped spears. They couldn’t possibly have been a threat to anyone. Certainly not anyone capable of building that thing.”
“It’s a mystery to me, too. But there are those vast structures in the Pacific I spoke of, to say nothing of similar cyclopean artifacts elsewhere in the world. No one knows who built them, how or when. For my part, I believe they tie in with eons-old legends of a race of ‘Old Ones’ that were once supposed to inhabit this globe, millions of years before humankind appeared.”
“You’ve been reading too much Lovecraft.”
“Don’t laugh. He may have known more than you think.”
While we had our coffee and something to eat, I told them what I had been thinking by way of a plan.
“It’s not much, but here it is for all it’s worth. This wall runs entirely across the peninsula. At the further end, cliffs come nearly to the wall itself. With the sea on the west, this gives us natural barriers on three sides.”
With a stick I sketched a map of the peninsula and the wall in the dirt.
“The only access to us the Japs would have would be from the direction we’ve come and, frankly, I don’t think they’ll bother. They’ll have their hands plenty full as it is. But there’d be nothing stopping us from acting as a three
-man guerilla unit.”
“Like the resistance fighters we met in China,” Pat said.
“Exactly! We can keep up a program of sabotage until something turns up. Nothing big, just enough to keep the Japs delayed. The fact that they have neither Roy nor me is going to be a big handicap. They were counting on our experience and expertise.
“And don’t forget Frank,” Pat added. “If he was able to make his way to the Dutch or British authorities . . .”
“If he’s even alive,” Andrews interrupted. “We’re only assuming he made an escape during the pirate attack. For all we know for sure, he might have been killed and fallen overboard.”
“I think someone would have seen that.”
“Well, until we know otherwise,” I added, “let’s think positively.”
We decided to start out toward the end of the afternoon, figuring we’d be least likely to run into any of the island’s hungrier denizens then. We also had some hope that the animals might give a wide berth to the wall and stick to the denser woodland that stretched away from it.
Fortunately, the clearing seemed to extend west, with only a hundred yards of brush and grass between the wall and the forest to our right. I told Pat it looked like pretty smooth sailing, but I spoke too soon.
We had been hiking for no more than fifteen minutes when there was a sound from the jungle that froze me solid. I don’t know how the others reacted, but I’d heard that horrible roar before and I knew what it meant. It was like a cross between every tiger and lion on the planet and a steam calliope.
“Good God!” said Andrews. “What in the world is that?”
“I’m afraid we’re about to find out,” replied Pat, instinctively unshipping her rifle from her shoulder and making sure there was a cartridge in the chamber.
There was no need for me to explain. The monster that leaped from the forest took care of that. I recognized it as a Tyrannosaurus rex (I’d learned something about dinosaurs since my last visit). It was absolutely the most horrifying thing to ever walk this planet—and there one was, not three hundred feet away, panting like a steam engine. The thing stood at least twelve feet tall on a pair of hugely muscular legs, and must have stretched fully forty feet from the tip of its tail to a gaping maw that seemed to be nothing but teeth. Its two forelegs looked pitifully—even comically—small, but I knew that in fact they were immensely powerful and were each equipped with a pair of scimitar-like talons. The creature took one step forward and I could feel the ground shake under its seven tons of muscle.