“When I crawled in there to escape the Indians, I realized that the old legend was true, and referred to da Verrazano. An earthquake must have cracked the rock floor of the cavern they’d fortified, and he and his buccaneers were overcome as they sat at wine by the poisonous fumes of gases welling up from some vent in the earth. Death guards their loot!”
Harston peered into the tunnel mouth.
“The mist is drifting out into the tunnel,” he growled, “but it dissipates itself in the open air. Damn Vulmea! Let’s climb up after him.”
“Do you think any man on earth could climb those handholds against his sword?” snarled Villiers. “We’ll have the men up here, and set some to watch and shoot him if he shows himself. He had some plan of getting those jewels, and if he could get them, so can we. We’ll tie a hook to a rope, cast it about the leg of that table and drag it, jewels and all, out onto the ledge.”
“Well thought, Guillaume!” came down Vulmea’s mocking voice. “Just what I had in mind. But how will you find your way back to the path? It’ll be dark before you reach the beach, if you have to feel your way through the woods, and I’ll follow you and kill you one by one m the dark.”
“It’s no empty boast,” muttered Harston. “He is like an Indian for stealth. If he hunts us back through the forest, few of us will live to see the beach.”
“Then we’ll kill him here,” gritted Villiers. “Some of us will shoot at him while the rest climb the crag. Listen! Why does he laugh?”
“To hear dead men making plots!” came Vulmea’s grimly amused voice.
“Heed him not,” scowled Villiers, and lifting his voice, he shouted for the men below to join him and Harston on the ledge.
As the sailors started up the slanting trail, there sounded a hum like that of an angry bee, ending in a sharp thud. A buccaneer gasped and sank to his knees, clutching the shaft that quivered in his breast. A yell of alarm went up from his companions.
“What’s the matter?” yelled Harston.
“Indians!” bawled a pirate, and went down with an arrow in his neck.
“Take cover, you fools!” shrieked Villiers. From his vantage point he glimpsed painted figures moving in the bushes. One of the men on the winding path fell back dying. The rest scrambled hastily down among the rocks about the foot of the crag. Arrows flickered from the bushes, splintering on the boulders. The men on the ledge lay prone.
“We’re trapped!” Harston’s face was pale. Bold enough with a deck under his feet, this silent, savage warfare shook his nerves.
“Vulmea said they feared this crag,” said Villiers. “When night falls the men must climb up here. The Indians won’t rush us on the ledge.”
“That’s true!” mocked Vulmea. “They won’t climb the crag. They’ll merely surround it and keep you here until you starve.”
“Make a truce with him,” muttered Harston. “If any man can get us out of this, he can. Time enough to cut his throat later.” Lifting his voice he called: “Vulmea, let’s forget our feud. You’re in this as much as we are.”
“How do you figure that?” retorted the Irishman. “When it’s dark I can climb down the other side of this crag and crawl through the line the Indians have thrown around this hill. They’ll never see me. I can return to the fort and report you all slain by the savages — which will shortly be the truth!”
Harston and Villiers stared at each other in pallid silence.
“But I’m not going to do that!” Vulmea roared. “Not because I have any love for you dogs, but because a white man doesn’t leave white men, even his enemies, to be butchered by red savages.”
The Irishman’s tousled black head appeared over the crest of the crag.
“Listen! There’s only a small band down there. I saw them sneaking through the brush when I laughed, awhile ago. I believe a big war-party is heading in our direction, and those are a group of fleet-footed young braves sent ahead of it to cut us off from the beach.
“They’re all on the west side of the crag. I’m going down on the east side and work around behind them. Meanwhile, you crawl down the path and join your men among the rocks. When you hear me yell, rush the trees.”
“What of the treasure?”
“To hell with it! We’ll be lucky if we get out of here with our scalps.”
The black-maned head vanished. They listened for sounds to indicate that Vulmea had crawled to the almost sheer eastern wall and was working his way down, but they heard nothing. Nor did any sound come from the forest. No more arrows broke against the rocks where the sailors were hidden, but all knew that fierce black eyes were watching with murderous patience. Gingerly Harston, Villiers and the boatswain started down the winding path. They were halfway down when the shafts began to whisper around them. The boatswain groaned and toppled down the slope, shot through the heart. Arrows splintered on the wall about the captains as they tumbled in frantic haste down the steep trail. They reached the foot in a scrambling rush and lay panting among the rocks.
“Is this more of Vulmea’s trickery?” wondered Villiers profanely.
“We can trust him in this matter,” asserted Harston. “There’s a racial principle involved here. He’ll help us against the Indians, even though he plans to murder us himself. Hark!”
A blood-freezing yell knifed the silence. It came from the woods to the west, and simultaneously an object arched out of the trees, struck the ground and rolled bouncingly toward the rocks-a severed human head, the hideously painted face frozen in a death-snarl.
“Vulmea’s signal!” roared Harston, and the desperate pirates rose like a wave from the rocks and rushed headlong toward the woods.
Arrows whirred out of the bushes, but their flight was hurried and erratic. Only three men fell. Then the wild men of the sea plunged through the fringe of foliage and fell on the naked painted figures that rose out of the gloom before them. There was a murderous instant of panting, hand to hand ferocity, cutlasses beating down war-axes, booted feet trampling naked bodies, and then bare feet were rattling through the bushes in headlong flight as the survivors of that brief carnage quit the field, leaving seven still, painted figures stretched on the bloodstained leaves that littered the earth. Further back in the thickets sounded a thrashing and heaving, and then it ceased and Vulmea strode into view, his hat gone, his coat torn, his cutlass dripping in his hand.
“What now?” panted Villiers. He knew the charge had succeeded only because Vulmea’s unexpected attack on the rear of the Indians had demoralized the painted men, and prevented them from melting back before the rush.
“Come on!”
They let their dead lie where they had fallen, and crowded close at his heels as he trotted through the trees. Alone they would have sweated and blundered among the thickets for hours before they found the trail that led to the beach-if they had ever found it. Vulmea led them as unerringly as if he had been following an open road, and the rovers shouted with hysterical relief as they burst suddenly upon the trail that ran westward.
“Fool!” Vulmea clapped a hand on the shoulder of a pirate who started to break into a run, and hurled him back among his companions. “You’d burst your heart within a thousand yards. We’re miles from the beach. Take an easy gait. We may have to sprint the last mile. Save some of your wind for it. Come on, now.”
He set off down the trail at a steady jog-trot, and the seamen followed him, suiting their pace to his.
The sun was touching the waves of the western ocean. Tina stood at the window from which Francoise had watched the storm.
“The sunset turns the ocean to blood,” she said. “The ship’s sail is a white fleck on the crimson waters. The woods are already darkening.”
“What of the seamen on the beach?” asked Francoise languidly. She reclined on a couch, her eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head.
“Both camps are preparing their supper,” answered Tina. “They are gathering driftwood and building fires. I can hear them shouting to one another �
�� what’s that?”
The sudden tenseness in the girl’s tone brought Francoise upright on her couch. Tina gripped the window sill and her face was white.
“Listen! A howling, far off, like many wolves!”
“Wolves?” Francoise sprang up, fear clutching her heart. “Wolves do not hunt in packs at this time of the year!”
“Look!” shrilled the girl. “Men are running out of the forest!”
In an instant Francoise was beside her, staring wide-eyed at the figures, small in the distance, streaming out of the woods.
“The sailors!” she gasped. “Empty handed! I see Villiers- Harston
“Where is Vulmea?” whispered the girl.
Francoise shook her head.
“Listen! Oh, listen!” whimpered the child, clinging to her.
All in the fort could hear it now — a vast ululation of mad blood-lust, rising from the depths of the dark forest.
That sound spurred on the panting men reeling toward the stockade.
“They’re almost at our heels!” gasped Harston, his face a drawn mask of muscular exhaustion. “My ship—”
“She’s too far out for us to reach,” panted Villiers. “Make for the fort. See, the men camped on the beach have seen us!” He waved his arms in breathless pantomime, but the men on the strand had already recognized the significance of that wild howling in the forest. They abandoned their fires and cooking-pots and fled for the stockade gate. They were pouring through it as the fugitives from the forest rounded the south angle and reeled into the gate, half dead from exhaustion. The gate was slammed with frenzied haste, and men swarmed up the firing ledge.
Francoise confronted Villiers.
“Where is Black Vulmea”’
The buccaneer jerked a thumb toward the blackening woods. His chest heaved, and sweat poured down his face. “Their scouts were at our heels before we gained the beach. He paused to slay a few and give us time to get away.”
He staggered away to take his place on the wall, whither Harston had already mounted. Henri stood there, a somber, cloak-wrapped figure, aloof and silent. He was like a man bewitched.
“Look!” yelped a pirate above the howling of the yet unseen horde.
A man emerged from the forest and raced fleetly toward the fort.
“Vulmea!”
Villiers grinned wolfishly.
“We’re safe in the stockade. We know where the treasure is. No reason why we shouldn’t put a bullet through him now.”
“Wait!” Harston caught his arm. “We’ll need his sword! Look!”
Behind the fleeing Irishman a wild horde burst from the forest, howling as they ran-naked savages, hundreds and hundreds of them. Their arrows rained about the fugitive. A few strides more and Vulmea reached the eastern wall of the stockade, bounded high, seized the points of the palisades and heaved himself up and over, his cutlass in his teeth. Arrows thudded venomously into the logs where his body had just been. His resplendent coat was gone, his white silk shirt torn and bloodstained.
“Stop them!” he roared as his feet hit the ground inside. “if they get on the wall we’re done for!”
Seamen, soldiers and henchmen responded instantly and a storm of bullets tore into the oncoming horde.
Vulmea saw Francoise, with Tina clinging to her hand, and his language was picturesque.
“Get into the manor,” he commanded. “Their arrows will arch over the wall-what did I tell you?” A shaft cut into the earth at Francoise’s feet and quivered like a serpent-head. Vulmea caught up a musket and leaped to the firing-ledge. “Some of you dogs prepare torches!” he roared, above the rising clamor of battle. “We can’t fight them in the dark!”
The sun had sunk in a welter of blood; out in the bay the men about the ship had cut the anchor chain and the War-Hawk was rapidly receding on the crimson horizon.
Chapter 7: Men of the Woods
Night had fallen, but torches streamed across the strand, casting the mad scene into lurid revealment. Naked men in paint swarmed the beach; like waves they came against the palisade, bared teeth and blazing eyes gleaming in the glare of the torches thrust over the wall.
From up and down the coast the tribes had gathered to rid their country of the white-skinned invaders, and they surged against the stockade, driving a storm of arrows before them, fighting into the hail of bullets and shafts that tore into their masses. Sometimes they came so close to the wall they were hewing at the gate with their war-axes and thrusting their spears through the loopholes. But each time the tide ebbed back, leaving its drift of dead. In this kind of fighting the pirates were at their stoutest. Their matchlocks tore holes in the charging horde, their cutlasses hewed the wild men from the palisades.
Yet again and again the men of the woods returned to the onslaught with all the stubborn ferocity that had been roused in their fierce hearts.
“They are like mad dogs!” gasped Villiers, hacking downward at the savage hands that grasped at the palisade points, the dark faces that snarled up at him.
“If we can hold the fort till dawn they’ll lose heart,” grunted Vulmea, splitting a feathered skull. “They won’t maintain a long siege. Look, they’re falling back again.”
The charge rolled back and the men on the wall shook the sweat out of their eyes, counted their dead, and took a fresh grasp on the blood-slippery hilts of their swords. Like blood-hungry wolves, grudgingly driven from a cornered prey, the Indians slunk back beyond the ring of torch-light. Only the bodies of the slain lay before the palisades.
“Have they gone?” Harston shook back his wet, tawny locks. The cutlass in his fist was notched and red, his brawny bare arm was splashed with blood.
“They’re still out there.” Vulmea nodded toward the outer darkness which ringed the circle of torches. He glimpsed movements in the shadows, glitter of eyes and the dull sheen of spears.
“They’ve drawn off for a bit, though,” he said. “Put sentries on the wall and let the rest drink and eat. It’s past midnight. We’ve been fighting steadily for hours.”
The captains clambered down, calling their men from the walls. A sentry was posted in the middle of each wall, east, west, north and south, and a clump of soldiers was left at the gate. The Indians, to reach the wall, would have to charge across a wide, torch-lit space, and the defenders could resume their places long before the rush could reach the stockade.
“Where’s d’Chastillon?” demanded Vulmea, gnawing a huge beef-bone as he stood beside the fire the men had built in the center of the compound. Englishmen and Frenchmen mingled together, wolfing the meat and wine the women brought them, and allowing their wounds to be bandaged.
“He was fighting on the wall beside me an hour ago,” grunted Harston, “when suddenly he stopped short and glared out into the darkness as if he saw a ghost. ‘Look!’ he croaked. ‘The black devil! I see him, out there in the night!’ Well, I could swear I saw a strange figure moving among the shadows; it was just a glimpse before it was gone. But Henri jumped down from the wall and staggered into the manor like a man with a mortal wound. I haven’t seen him since.”
“He probably saw a forest-devil,” said Vulmea tranquilly. “The Indians say this coast is lousy with them. What I’m more afraid of is fire-arrows. They’re likely to start shooting them at any time. What’s that? It sounded like a cry for help!”
When the lull came in the fighting, Francoise and Tina had crept to their window, from which they had been driven by the danger of flying arrows. They watched the men gather about the fire.
“There are not enough sentries on the stockade,” said Tina.
In spite of her nausea at the sight of the corpses sprawled about the palisades, Francoise was moved to laugh.
“Do you think you know more about war than the men’?” she chided gently.
“There should be more men on the walls,” insisted the child, shivering. “Suppose the black man came back! One man to a side is not enough. The black man could creep beneath the wall a
nd shoot him with a poisoned dart before he could cry out. He is like a shadow, and hard to see by torchlight.”
Francoise shuddered at the thought.
“I am afraid,” murmured Tina. “I hope Villiers and Harston are killed.”
“And not Vulmea?” asked Francoise curiously.
“Black Vulmea would not harm a woman,” said the child confidently.
“You are wise beyond your years, Tina,” murmured Francoise.
“Look!” Tina stiffened. “The sentry is gone from the south wall! I saw him on the ledge a moment ago. Now he has vanished.”
From their window the palisade points of the south wall were just visible over the slanting roofs of a row of huts which paralleled that wall almost its entire length. A sort of open-topped corridor, three or four yards wide, was formed by the stockade-wall and the back of the huts, which were built in a solid row. These huts were occupied by the retainers.
“Where could the sentry have gone?” whispered Tina uneasily.
Francoise was watching one end of the hut-row which was not far from a side door of the manor. She could have sworn she saw a shadowy figure glide from behind the huts and disappear at the door. Was that the vanished sentry? Why had he left the wall, and why should he steal so subtly into the manor? She did not believe it was the sentry she had seen, and a nameless fear congealed her blood.
“Where is the Count, Tina?” she asked.
“In the great hall, my Lady. He sits alone at the table, wrapped in his cloak and drinking wine, with a face grey as death.”
“Go and tell him what we have seen. I will keep watch from this window, lest the Indians climb the unguarded wall.”
Tina scampered away. Francoise heard her slippered feet pattering along the corridor, receding down the stair. Then suddenly, terribly, there rang out a scream of such poignant fear that Francoise’s heart almost stopped with the shock of it. She was out of the chamber and flying down the corridor before she was aware that her limbs were in motion. She ran down the stair-and halted as if turned to stone.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 326