“Yes, but then—?”
“Perhaps he wants to get in touch with us, again; learn from us; try to struggle up out of the mire of degeneration, who knows? If so—and it’s possible—of course he’d try to warn us of a poisoned spring!”
Acting on this hypothesis, of which he was now half-convinced, Stern nodded. By gesture-play he answered: Yes. Yes, this woman and he intended to drink of the water. The obeah-man, grinning, showed signs of lively interest. His eyes brightened, and a look of craft, of wizened cunning crept over his uncanny features.
Then he raised his head and gave a long, shrill, throaty call, ululating and unspeakably weird.
Something stirred in the forest. Stern heard a rustle and a creeping murmur; and quick fear chilled his heart.
To him it seemed as though a voice were calling, perhaps the inner, secret voice of his own subjective self—a voice that cried:
“You, who must drink water—now he knows you are not gods, but mortal creatures. Tricked by his question and your answer, your peril now is on you! Flee!”
The voice died. Stern found himself, with a strange, taut eagerness tingling all through him, facing the obeah and—and not daring to turn his back.
Retreat they must, he knew. Retreat, at once! Already in the forest he understood that heads were being lifted, beastlike ears were listening, brute eyes peering and ape-hands clutching the little, flint-pointed spears. Already the girl and he should have been halfway back to the tower; yet still, inhibited by that slow, grinning, staring advance of the chief, there the engineer stood.
But all at once the spell was broken.
For with a cry, a hoarse and frightful yell of passion, the obeah leaped—leaped like a huge and frightfully agile ape—leaped the whole distance intervening.
Stern saw the Thing’s red-gleaming eyes fixed on Beatrice. In those eyes he clearly saw the hell-flame of lust. And as the woman screamed in terror, Stern pulled trigger with a savage curse.
The shot went wild. For at the instant—though he felt no pain—his arm dropped down and sideways.
Astounded, he looked. Something was wrong! What? His trigger-finger refused to serve. It had lost all power, all control.
For God’s sake, what could it be?
Then—all this taking but a second—Stern saw; he knew the truth. Staring, pale and horrified, he understood.
There, through the fleshy part of his forearm, thrust clean from side to side by a lightning-swift stroke, he saw the obeah’s spear!
It dangled strangely in the firm muscles. The steel barb and full eighteen inches of the shaft were red and dripping.
Yet still the engineer felt no slightest twinge of pain.
From his numbed, paralyzed hand the automatic dropped, fell noiselessly into the moss.
And with a formless roar of killing-rage, Stern swung on the obeah, with the rifle.
Stern felt his heart about to burst with hate. He did not even think of the second revolver in the holster at his side. With only his left hand now to use, the weapon could only have given clumsy service.
Instead, the man reverted instantly to the jungle stage, himself—to the law of claw and fang, of clutching talon, of stone and club.
The beloved woman’s cry, ringing in his ears, drove him mad. Up he whirled the Krag again, up, up, by the muzzle; and down upon that villainous skull he dashed it with a force that would have brained an ox.
The obeah, screeching, reeled back. But he was not dead. Not dead, only stunned a moment. And Stern, horrified, found himself holding only a gun-barrel. The stock, shattered, had whirled away and vanished among the tall and waving ferns.
Beatrice snatched up the fallen revolver. She stumbled; and the pail was empty. Spurting, splashing away, the precious water flew. No time, now, for any more.
For all about them, behind them and on every hand, the Things were closing in.
They had seen blood—had heard the obeah’s cry; they knew! Not gods, now, but mortal creatures! Not gods!
“Run! Run!” gasped Beatrice.
The spear still hanging from his arm, Stern wheeled and followed. High and hard he swung the rifle-barrel, like a war-club.
No counting of steps, now; no play at divinity. Panting, horror-stricken, frenzied with rage, bleeding, they ran. It was a hunt—the hunt of the last two humans by the nightmare Horde.
In front, a bluish and confused mass seemed to dance and quiver through the forest; and a pattering rain of spears and little arrows began to fall about the fugitives.
Then the girl’s revolver sputtered in a quick volley; and again, for a space, silence fell. The way again was clear. But in the path, silent and still, or writhing horribly, lay a few of the Things. And the pine-needles and soft moss were very red, in spots.
Stern had his pistol out too, by now. For behind and on his flanks, like ferrets hanging to a hunted creature, the swarm was closing in.
The engineer, his face very white and drawn, veins standing out on his sweat-beaded forehead, heard Beatrice cry out to him, but he could not understand her words.
Yet as they ran, he saw her level the pistol and snap the hammer twice, thrice, with no result. The little dead click sounded like a death-warrant to him.
“Empty?” cried he. “Here, take this one! You can shoot better now than I can!” And into her hand he thrust the second revolver.
Something stung him on the left shoulder. He glanced round. A dart was hanging there.
With an oath, the engineer wheeled about. His eyes burned and his lips drew back, taut, from his fine white teeth.
There, already recovered from the blow which would have killed a man ten times over, he saw the obeah snarling after him. Right down along the path the monster was howling, beating his breast with both huge fists. And, now feeling fear no more than pain, Stern crouched to meet his onslaught.
CHAPTER XXV
THE GOAL, AND THROUGH IT
It all happened in a moment of time, a moment, long—in seeming—as an hour. The girl’s revolver crackled, there behind him. Stern saw a little round bluish hole take shape in the obeah’s ear, and red drops start.
Then with a ghastly screaming, the Thing was upon him.
Out struck the engineer, with the rifle-barrel. All the force of his splendid muscles lay behind that blow. The Thing tried to dodge. But Stern had been too quick.
Even as it sprang, with talons clutching for the man’s throat, the steel barrel drove home on the jaw.
An unearthly, piercing yell split the forest air. Then Stern saw the obeah, his jaw hanging oddly awry, all loose and shattered, fall headlong in the path.
But before he could strike again, could batter in the base of the tough skull, a moan from Beatrice sent him to her aid.
“Oh, God!” he cried, and sank beside her on his knees.
On her forehead, as she lay gasping among the bushes, he saw an ugly welt.
“A stone? They’ve hit her with a stone! Killed her, perhaps?”
Kneeling there, up he snatched the revolver, and in a deadly fire he poured out the last spitting shots, pointblank in the faces of the crowding rabble.
Up he leaped. The rifle barrel flashed and glittered as he whirled it. Like a reaper, laying a clean swath behind him, the engineer mowed down a dozen of the beast-men.
Shrieks, grunts, snarls, mingled with his execrations.
Then fair into a jabbering ape-face he flung the bloodstained barrel. The face fell, faded, vanished, as hideous illusions fade in a dream.
And Stern, with a strength he never dreamed was his, caught up the fainting girl in his left arm, as easily as though she had been a child.
Still dragging the spear which pierced his right—his right that yet protected her a little—he ran.
Stones, darts, spears, clattered in about him. He heard the swish and tang of them; heard the leaves flutter as the missiles whirled through.
Struck? Was he struck again?
He knew not, nor cared. Only he thoug
ht of shielding Beatrice. Nothing but that, just that!
“The gate—oh, let me reach the gate! God! The gate—”
And all of a sudden, though how he could not tell, there he seemed to see the gate before him. Could it be? Or was that, too, a dream? A cruel, vicious mockery of his disordered mind?
Yes—the gate! It must be! He recognized the giant pine, in a moment of lucidity. Then everything began to dance again, to quiver in the mocking sunlight.
“The gate!” he gasped once more, and staggered on. Behind him, a little trail of blood-drops from his wounded arm fell on the trampled leaves.
Something struck his bent head. Through it a blinding pain darted. Thousands of beautiful and tiny lights of every color began to quiver, to leap and whirl.
“They’ve—set the building on fire!” thought he; yet all the while he knew it was impossible, he understood it was only an illusion.
He heard the rustle of the wind through the forest. It blent and mingled with a horrid tumult of grunts, of clicking cries, of gnashing teeth and little bestial cries.
“The—gate!” sobbed Stern, between hard-set teeth, and stumbled forward, ever forward, through the Horde.
To him, protectingly, he clasped the beautiful body in the tiger-skin.
Living? Was she living yet? A great, aching wonder filled him. Could he reach the stair with her, and bear her up it? Hurl back these devils? Save her, after all?
The pain had grown exquisite, in his head. Something seemed hammering there, with regular strokes—a red-hot sledge upon an anvil of white-hot steel.
To him it looked as though a hundred, a thousand of the little blue fiends were leaping, shrieking, circling there in front of him. Ten thousand! And he must break through.
Break through!
Where had he heard those words? Ah—Yes—
To him instantly recurred a distant echo of a song, a Harvard football-song. He remembered. Now he was back again. Yale, 0; Harvard, 17—New Haven, 1898. And see the thousands of cheering spectators! The hats flying through the air—flags waving—red, most of them! Crimson—like blood!
Came the crash and boom of the old Harvard Band, with big Joe Foley banging the drum till it was fit to burst, with Marsh blowing his lungs out on the cornet, and all the other fellows raising Cain.
Uproar! Cheering! And again the music. Everybody was singing now, everybody roaring out that brave old fighting chorus:
“.....Now—all to-geth-er,
Smash them—and—break—through!”
And see! Look there! The goal!
The scene shifted, all at once, in a quite unaccountable and puzzling manner.
Somehow, victory wasn’t quite won, after all. Not quite yet. What was the matter, then? What was wrong? Where was he?
Ah, the Goal!
Yes, there through the rack and mass of the Blues, he saw it, again, quite clearly. He was sure of that, anyhow.
The goal-posts seemed a trifle near together, and they were certainly made of crumbling stone, instead of straight wooden beams. Odd, that!
He wondered, too, why the management allowed trees to grow on the field, trees and bushes—why a huge pine should be standing right there by the left-hand post. That was certainly a matter to be investigated and complained of, later. But now was no time for kicks.
“Probably some Blue trick,” thought Stern. “No matter, it won’t do ‘em any good, this time!”
Ah! An opening! Stern’s head went lower still. He braced himself for a leap.
“Come on, come on!” he yelled defiance.
Again he heard the cheering, once wind like a chorus of mad devils.
An opening? No, he was mistaken. Instead, the Blues were massing there by the Goal.
Bitterly he swore. Under his arm he tightened the ball. He ran!
What?
They were trying to tackle?
“Damn you!” he cried, in boiling anger. “I’ll—I’ll show you a trick or two—yet!”
He stopped, circled, dodged the clutching hands, feinted with a tactic long unthought of, and broke into a straight, resistless dash for the posts.
As he ran, he yelled:
“Smash them—and—break through! . .....”
All his waning strength upgathered for that run. Yet how strangely tired he felt—how heavy the ball was growing!
What was the matter with his head? With his right arm? They both ached hideously. He must have got hurt, some way, in one of the “downs.” Some dirty work, somewhere. Rotten sport!
He ran. Never in all his many games had he seen such peculiar gridiron, all tangled and overgrown. Never, such host of tackles. Hundreds of them! Where were the Crimsons? What? No support, no interference? Hell!
Yet the Goal was surely just there, now right ahead. He ran.
“Foul!” he shouted savagely, as a Blue struck at him, then another and another, and many more. The taste of blood came to his tongue. He spat. “Foul!”
Right and left he dashed them, with a giant’s strength. They scattered in panic, with strange and unintelligible cries.
“The goal!”
He reached it. And, as he crossed the line, he fell.
“Down, down!” sobbed he.
CHAPTER XXVI
BEATRICE DARES
An hour later, Stern and Beatrice sat weak and shaken in their stronghold on the fifth floor, resting, trying to gather up some strength again, to pull together for resistance to the siege that had set in.
With the return of reason to the engineer—his free bleeding had somewhat checked the onset of fever—and of consciousness to the girl, they began to piece out, bit by bit, the stages of their retreat.
Now that Stern had barricaded the stairs, two stories below, and that for a little while they felt reasonably safe, they were able to take their bearings, to recall the flight, to plan a bit for the future, a future dark with menace, seemingly hopeless in its outlook.
“If it—hadn’t been for you,” Beatrice was saying, “if you hadn’t picked me up and carried me, when that stone struck, I—I—”
“How’s the ache now?” Stern hastily interrupted, in a rather weak yet brisk voice, which he was trying hard to render matter-of-fact. “Of course the lack of water, except that half-pint or so, to bathe your bruise with, is a rank barbarity. But if we haven’t got any, we haven’t—that’s all. All—till we have another go at ‘em!”
“Oh, Allan!” she exclaimed, tremulously. “Don’t think of me! Of me, when your back’s gashed with a spear-cut, your head’s battered, arm pierced, and we’ve neither water nor bandages—nothing of any kind to treat your wounds with!”
“Come now, don’t you bother about me!” he objected trying hard to smile, though racked with pain. “I’ll be O. K., fit as a fiddle, in no time. Perfect health and all that sort of thing, you know. It’ll heal right away.
“Head’s clear again already, in spite of that whack with the war-club, or whatever it was they landed with. But for a while I certainly was seeing things. I had ‘em—had ‘em bad! Thought—well, strange things.
“My back? Only a scratch, that’s all. It’s begun to coagulate already, the blood has, hasn’t it?” And he strove to peer over his own shoulder at the slash. But the pain made him desist. He could hardly keep back a groan. His face twitched involuntarily.
The girl sank on her knees beside him. Her arm encircled him; her hand smoothed his forehead; and with a strange look she studied his unnaturally pale face.
“It’s your arm I’m thinking about, more than anything,” said she. “We’ve got to have something to treat that with. Tell me, does it hurt you very much, Allan?”
He tried to laugh, as he glanced down at the wounded arm, which, ligatured about the spear-thrust with a thong, and supported by a rawhide sling, looked strangely blue and swollen.
“Hurt me? Nonsense! I’ll be fine and dandy in no time. The only trouble is, I’m not much good as a fighter this way. Southpaw, you see. Can’t shoot worth a—a
cent, you know, with my left. Otherwise, I wouldn’t mind.”
“Shoot? Trust me for that now!” she exclaimed. “We’ve still got two revolvers and the shotgun left, and lots of ammunition. I’ll do the shooting—if there’s got to be any done!”
“You’re all right, Beatrice!” exclaimed the wounded man fervently. “What would I do without you? And to think how near you came to—but never mind. That’s over now; forget it!”
“Yes, but what next?”
“Don’t know. Get well, maybe. Things might be worse. I might have a broken arm, or something; laid up for weeks—slow starvation and all that. What’s a mere puncture? Nothing! Now that the spear’s out, it’ll begin healing right away.
“Bet a million, though, that What’s-His-Name down there, Big Chief the Monk, won’t get out of his scrape in a hurry. His face is certainly scrambled, or I miss my guess. You got him through the ear with one shot, by the way. Know that? Fact! Drilled it clean! Just a little to the right and you’d have had him for keeps. But never mind, we’ll save him for the encore—if there is any.”
“You think they’ll try again?”
“Can’t say. They’ve lost a lot of fighters, killed and wounded, already. And they’ve had a pretty liberal taste of our style. That ought to hold them for a while! We’ll see, at any rate. And if luck stays good, we’ll maybe have a thing or two to show them if they keep on hanging round where they aren’t wanted!”
Came now a little silence. Beside Stern the girl sat, half supporting his wounded body with her firm, white arm. Thirst was beginning to torment them both, particularly Stern, whose injuries had already given him a marked temperature. But water there was absolutely none. And so, still planless, glad only to recuperate a little, content that for the present the Horde had been held back, they waited. Waiting, they both thought. The girl’s thoughts were all of him; but he, man-fashion, was trying to piece out what had happened, to frame some coherent idea of it all, to analyze the urgent necessities that lay upon them both.
Here and there, a disjointed bit recurred to him, even from out of the delirium that had followed the blow on the head. From the time he had recovered his senses in the building, things were clearer.
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