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Black Vulmea's Vengeance:
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Black Vulmea's Vengeance
by
Robert E. Howard
ILLUSTRATED BY HAROLD DELAY (1876-1947)
First published in Golden Fleece, November 1938
This e-book edition: Project Gutenberg Australia, 2022
Golden Fleece, November 1938, with "Black Vulmea's Vengeance"
In an instant it had him wrapped about with coils of cold, pliant steel.
OUT of the Cockatoo's cabin staggered
Black Terence Vulmea, pipe in one hand and flagon in the other.
He stood with booted legs wide, teetering slightly to the gentle
lift of the lofty poop. He was bareheaded and his shirt was open,
revealing his broad hairy chest. He emptied the flagon and tossed
it over the side with a gusty sigh of satisfaction, then directed
his somewhat blurred gaze on the deck below. From poop ladder to
forecastle it was littered by sprawling figures. The ship smelt
like a brewery. Empty barrels, with their heads stove in, stood
or rolled between the prostrate forms. Vulmea was the only man on
his feet. From galley-boy to first mate the rest of the ship's
company lay senseless after a debauch that had lasted a whole
night long. There was not even a man at the helm.
But it was lashed securely and in that placid sea no hand was
needed on the wheel. The breeze was light but steady. Land was a
thin blue line to the east. A stainless blue sky held a sun whose
heat had not yet become fierce.
Vulmea blinked indulgently down upon the sprawled figures of
his crew, and glanced idly over the larboard side. He grunted
incredulously and batted his eyes. A ship loomed where he had
expected to see only naked ocean stretching to the skyline. She
was little more than a hundred yards away, and was bearing down
swiftly on the Cockatoo, obviously with the intention of
laying her alongside. She was tall and square-rigged, her white
canvas flashing dazzlingly in the sun. From the maintruck the
flag of England whipped red against the blue. Her bulwarks were
lined with tense figures, bristling with boarding-pikes and
grappling irons, and through her open ports the astounded pirate
glimpsed the glow of the burning matches the gunners held
ready.
"All hands to battle-quarters!" yelled Vulmea confusedly.
Reverberant snores answered the summons. All hands remained as
they were.
"Wake up, you lousy dogs!" roared their captain. "Up, curse
you! A king's ship is at our throats!"
His only response came in the form of staccato commands from
the frigate's deck, barking across the narrowing strip of blue
water.
"Damnation!"
Cursing luridly he lurched in a reeling run across the poop to
the swivel-gun which stood at the head of the larboard ladder.
Seizing this he swung it about until its muzzle bore full on the
bulwark of the approaching frigate. Objects wavered dizzily
before his bloodshot eyes, but he squinted along its barrel as if
he were aiming a musket.
"Strike your colors, you damned pirate!" came a hail from the
trim figure that trod the warship's poop, sword in hand.
"Go to hell!" roared Vulmea, and knocked the glowing coals of
his pipe into the vent of the gun-breech. The falcon crashed,
smoke puffed out in a white cloud, and the double handful of
musket balls with which the gun had been charged mowed a ghastly
lane through the boarding party clustered along the frigate's
bulwark. Like a clap of thunder came the answering broadside and
a storm of metal raked the Cockatoo's decks, turning them
into a red shambles.
Sails ripped, ropes parted, timbers splintered, and blood and
brains mingled with the pools of liquor spilt on the decks. A
round shot as big as a man's head smashed into the falcon,
ripping it loose from the swivel and dashing it against the man
who had fired it. The impact knocked him backward headlong across
the poop where his head hit the rail with a crack that was too
much even for an Irish skull. Black Vulmea sagged senseless to
the boards. He was as deaf to the triumphant shouts and the stamp
of victorious feet on his red-streaming decks as were his men who
had gone from the sleep of drunkenness to the black sleep of
death without knowing what had hit them.
CAPTAIN JOHN WENTYARD, of his Majesty's frigate the
Redoubtable, sipped his wine delicately and set down the
glass with a gesture that in another man would have smacked of
affectation. Wentyard was a tall man, with a narrow, pale face,
colorless eyes, and a prominent nose. His costume was almost
sober in comparison with the glitter of his officers who sat in
respectful silence about the mahogany table in the main
cabin.
"Bring in the prisoner," he ordered, and there was a glint of
satisfaction in his cold eyes.
They brought in Black Vulmea, between four brawny sailors, his
hands manacled before him and a chain on his ankles that was just
long enough to allow him to walk without tripping. Blood was
clotted in the pirate's thick black hair. His shirt was in
tatters, revealing a torso bronzed by the sun and rippling with
great muscles. Through the stern-windows, he could see the
topmasts of the Cockatoo, just sinking out of sight. That
close-range broadside had robbed the frigate of a prize. His
conquerors were before him and there was no mercy in their
stares, but Vulmea did not seem at all abashed or intimidated. He
met the stern eyes of the officers with a level gaze that
reflected only a sardonic amusement. Wentyard frowned. He
preferred that his captives cringe before him. It made him feel
more like Justice personified, looking unemotionally down from a
great height on the sufferings of the evil.
"You are Black Vulmea, the notorious pirate?"
"I'm Vulmea," was the laconic answer.
"I suppose you will say, as do all these rogues," sneered
Wentyard, "that you hold a commission from the Governor of
Tortuga? These privateer commissions from the French mean nothing
to his Majesty. You—"
"Save your breath, fish-eyes!" Vulmea grinned hardly. "I hold
no commission from anybody. I'm not one of your accursed
swashbucklers who hide behind the name of buccaneer. I'm a
pirate, and I've plundered English ships as well as
Spanish—and be damned to you, heron-beak!"
"I'm a pirate, and I've plundered English ships as
well as Spanish—and be damned to you, heron-beak!"
The officers gasped at this effrontery, and Wentyard smiled a
ghastly, mirthless smile, white with the anger he held in
rein.
"You know that I have the authority to hang you out of hand?"
he reminded the other.
"I know," answered the pirate softly. "It won't be the first
time you've hanged me, John Wentyard."
"What?" The Englishman stared.
A flame grew in Vulmea's blue eyes and his voice changed
subtly in tone and inflection; the brogue thickened almost
imperceptibly.
"On the Galway coast it was, years ago, captain. You were a
young officer then, scarce more than a boy—but with all
your ruthlessness fully developed. There were some wholesale
evictions, with the military to see the job was done, and the
Irish were mad enough to make a fight of it—poor, ragged,
half-starved peasants, fighting with sticks against full-armed
English soldiers and sailors. After the massacre and the usual
hangings, a boy crept into a thicket to watch—a lad of ten,
who didn't even know what it was all about. You spied him, John
Wentyard, and had your dogs drag him forth and string him up
alongside the kicking bodies of the others. `He's Irish,' you
said as they heaved him aloft. `Little snakes grow into big
ones.' I was that boy. I've looked forward to this meeting, you
English dog!"
Vulmea still smiled, but the veins knotted in his temples and
the great muscles stood out distinctly on his manacled arms.
Ironed and guarded though the pirate was, Wentyard involuntarily
drew back, daunted by the stark and naked hate that blazed from
those savage eyes.
"How did you escape your just deserts?" he asked coldly,
recovering his poise.
Vulmea laughed shortly.
"Some of the peasants escaped the massacre and were hiding in
the thickets. As soon as you left they came out, and not being
civilized, cultured Englishmen, but only poor, savage Irishry,
they cut me down along with the others, and found there was still
a bit of life in me. We Gaels are hard to kill, as you Britons
have learned to your cost."
"You fell into our hands easily enough this time," observed
Wentyard.
Vulmea grinned. His eyes were grimly amused now, but the glint
of murderous hate still lurked in their deeps.
"Who'd have thought to meet a king's ship in these western
seas? It's been weeks since we sighted a sail of any kind, save
for the carrach we took yesterday, with a cargo of wine bound for
Panama from Valparaiso. It's not the time of year for rich
prizes. When the lads wanted a drinking bout, who was I to deny
them? We drew out of the lanes the Spaniards mostly follow, and
thought we had the ocean to ourselves. I'd been sleeping in my
cabin for some hours before I came on deck to smoke a pipe or so,
and saw you about to board us without firing a shot."
"You killed seven of my men," harshly accused Wentyard.
"And you killed all of mine," retorted Vulmea. "Poor devils,
they'll wake up in hell without knowing how they got there."
He grinned again, fiercely. His toes dug hard against the
floor, unnoticed by the men who gripped him on either side. The
blood was rioting through his veins, and the berserk feel of his
great strength was upon him. He knew he could, in a sudden,
volcanic explosion of power, tear free from the men who held him,
clear the space between him and his enemy with one bound, despite
his chains, and crush Wentyard's skull with a smashing swing of
his manacled fists. That he himself would die an instant later
mattered not at all. In that moment he felt neither fears nor
regrets—only a reckless, ferocious exultation and a cruel
contempt for these stupid Englishmen about him. He laughed in
their faces, joying in the knowledge that they did not know why
he laughed. So they thought to chain the tiger, did they? Little
they guessed of the devastating fury that lurked in his catlike
thews.
He began filling his great chest, drawing in his breath
slowly, imperceptibly, as his calves knotted and the muscles of
his arms grew hard. Then Wentyard spoke again.
"I will not be overstepping my authority if I hang you within
the hour. In any event you hang, either from my yard-arm or from
a gibbet on the Port Royal wharves. But life is sweet, even to
rogues like you, who notoriously cling to every moment granted
them by outraged society. It would gain you a few more months of
life if I were to take you back to Jamaica to be sentenced by the
governor. This I might be persuaded to do, on one condition."
"What's that?" Vulmea's tensed muscles did not relax;
imperceptibly he began to settle into a semi-crouch.
"That you tell me the whereabouts of the pirate, Van
Raven."
In that instant, while his knotted muscles went pliant again,
Vulmea unerringly gauged and appraised the man who faced him, and
changed his plan. He straightened and smiled.
"And why the Dutchman, Wentyard?" he asked softly. "Why not
Tranicos, or Villiers, or McVeigh, or a dozen others more
destructive to English trade than Van Raven? Is it because of the
treasure he took from the Spanish plate-fleet? Aye, the king
would like well to set his hands on that hoard, and there's a
rich prize would go to the captain lucky or bold enough to find
Van Raven and plunder him. Is that why you came all the way
around the Horn, John Wentyard?"
"We are at peace with Spain," answered Wentyard acidly. "As
for the purposes of an officer in his Majesty's navy, they are
not for you to question."
Vulmea laughed at him, the blue flame in his eyes.
"Once I sank a king's cruiser off Hispaniola," he, said. "Damn
you and your prating of `His Majesty'! Your English king is no
more to me than so much rotten driftwood. Van Raven? He's a bird
of passage. Who knows where he sails? But if it's treasure you
want, I can show you a hoard that would make the Dutchman's loot
look like a peat-pool beside the Caribbean Sea!"
A pale spark seemed to snap from Wentyard's colorless eyes,
and his officers leaned forward tensely. Vulmea grinned hardly.
He knew the credulity of navy men, which they shared with
landsmen and honest mariners, in regard to pirates and plunder.
Every seaman not himself a rover, believed that every buccaneer
had knowledge of vast hidden wealth. The loot the men of the Red
Brotherhood took from the Spaniards, rich enough as it was, was
magnified a thousand times in the telling, and rumor made every
swaggering sea-rat the guardian of a treasure-trove.
Coolly plumbing the avarice of Wentyard's hard soul, Vulmea
said: "Ten days' sail from here there's a nameless bay on the
coast of Ecuador. Four years ago Dick Harston, the English pirate
and I anchored there, in quest of a hoard of ancient jewels
called the Fangs of Satan. An Indian swore he had found them,
hidden in a ruined temple in an uninhabited jungle a day's march
inland, but superstitious fear of the old gods kept him from
helping himself. But he was willing to guide us there.
"We marched inland with both crews, for neither of us trusted
the other. To make a long tale short, we found the ruins of an
old city, and beneath an ancient, broken altar, we found the
jewels—rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, bloodstones,
big as hen eggs, making a quivering flame of fire about the
crumbling old shrine!"
The flame grew in Wentyard's eyes. His white fingers knotted
about the slender stem of his wine glass.
"The sight of them was enough to madden a man," Vulmea
continued, watching the captain narrowly. "We camped there for
the night, and, one way or another, we fell out over the division
of the spoil, though there was enough to make every man of us
rich for life. We came to blows, though, and whilst we fought
among ourselves, there came a scout running with word that a
Spanish fleet had come into the bay, driven our ships away, and
sent five hundred men ashore to pursue us. By Satan, they were on
us before the scout ceased the telling! One of my men snatched
the plunder away and hid it in the old temple, and we scattered,
each band for itself. There was no time to take the plunder. We
barely got away with our naked lives. Eventually I, with most of
my crew, made my way back to the coast and was picked up by my
ship which came slinking back after escaping from the
Spaniards.
"Harston gained his ship with a handful of men, after
skirmishing all the way with the Spaniards who chased him instead
of us, and later was slain by savages on the coast of
California.
"The Dons harried me all the way around the Horn, and I never
had an opportunity to go back after the loot—until this
voyage. It was there I was going when you overhauled me. The
treasure's still there. Promise me my life and I'll take you to
it."
"That is impossible," snapped Wentyard. "The best I can
promise you is trial before the governor of Jamaica."
"Well," said Vulmea, "Maybe the governor might be more lenient
than you. And much may happen between here and Jamaica."
Wentyard did not reply, but spread a map on the broad
table.
"Where is this bay?"
Vulmea indicated a certain spot on the coast. The sailors
released their grip on his arms while he marked it, and
Wentyard's head was within reach, but the Irishman's plans were
changed, and they included a chance for life—desperate, but
nevertheless a chance.
"Very well. Take him below."
Vulmea went out with his guards, and Wentyard sneered
coldly.
"A gentleman of his Majesty's navy is not bound by a promise
to such a rogue as he. Once the treasure is aboard the
Redoubtable, gentlemen, I promise you he shall swing from
a yard-arm."
Ten days later the anchors rattled down in the nameless bay
Vulmea had described.
IT seemed desolate enough to have been the coast
of an uninhabited continent. The bay was merely a shallow
indentation of the shore-line. Dense jungle crowded the narrow
strip of white sand that was the beach. Gay-plumed birds flitted
among the broad fronds, and the silence of primordial savagery
brooded over all. But a dim trail led back into the twilight
vistas of green-walled mystery.
Dawn was a white mist on the water when seventeen men marched
down the dim path. One was John Wentyard. On an expedition
designed to find treasure, he would trust the command to none but
himself. Fifteen were soldiers, armed with hangers and muskets.
The seventeenth was Black Vulmea. The Irishman's legs, perforce,
were free, and the irons had been removed from his arms. But his
wrists were bound before him with cords, and one end of the cord
was in the grip of a brawny marine whose other hand held a
cutlass ready to chop down the pirate if he made any move to
escape.
"Fifteen men are enough," Vulmea had told Wentyard. "Too many!
Men go mad easily in the tropics, and the sight of the Fangs of
Satan is enough to madden any man, king's man or not. The more
that see the jewels, the greater chance of mutiny before you
raise the Horn again. You don't need more than three or four. Who
are you afraid of? You said England was at peace with Spain, and
there are no Spaniards anywhere near this spot, in any
event."
"I wasn't thinking of Spaniards," answered Wentyard coldly. "I
am providing against any attempt you might make to escape."
"Well," laughed Vulmea, "do you think you need fifteen men for
that?"
"I'm taking no chances," was the grim retort. "You are
stronger than two or three ordinary men, Vulmea, and full of
wiles. My men will march with pieces ready, and if you try to
bolt, they will shoot you down like the dog you are—should
you, by any chance, avoid being cut down by your guard. Besides,
there is always the chance of savages."
The pirate jeered.
"Go beyond the Cordilleras if you seek real savages. There are
Indians there who cut off your head and shrink it no bigger than
your fist. But they never come on this side of the mountains. As
for the race that built the temple, they've all been dead for
centuries. Bring your armed escort if you want to. It will be of
no use. One strong man can carry away the whole hoard."
"One strong man!" murmured Wentyard, licking his lips as his
mind reeled at the thought of the wealth represented by a load of
jewels that required the full strength of a strong man to carry.
Confused visions of knighthood and admiralty whirled through his
head. "What about the path?" he asked suspiciously. "If this
coast is uninhabited, how comes it there?"
"It was an old road, centuries ago, probably used by the race
that built the city. In some places you can see where it was
paved. But Harston and I were the first to use it for centuries.
And you can tell it hasn't been used since. You can see where the
young growth has sprung up above the scars of the axes we used to
clear a way."
Wentyard was forced to agree. So now, before sunrise, the
landing party was swinging inland at a steady gait that ate up
the miles. The bay and the ship were quickly lost to sight. All
morning they tramped along through steaming heat, between green,
tangled jungle walls where gay-hued birds flitted silently and
monkeys chattered. Thick vines hung low across the trail,
impeding their progress, and they were sorely annoyed by gnats
and other insects. At noon they paused only long enough to drink
some water and eat the ready-cooked food they had brought along.
The men were stolid veterans, inured to long marches, and
Wentyard would allow them no more rest than was necessary for
their brief meal. He was afire with savage eagerness to view the
hoard Vulmea had described.
The trail did not twist as much as most jungle paths. It was
overgrown with vegetation, but it gave evidence that it had once
been a road, well-built and broad. Pieces of paving were still
visible here and there. By mid-afternoon the land began to rise
slightly to be broken by low, jungle-choked hills. They were
aware of this only by the rising and dipping of the trail. The
dense walls on either hand shut off their view.
Neither Wentyard nor any of his men glimpsed the furtive,
shadowy shapes which now glided along through the jungle on
either hand. Vulmea was aware of their presence, but he only
smiled grimly and said nothing. Carefully and so subtly that his
guard did not suspect it, the pirate worked at the cords on his
wrists, weakening and straining the strands by continual tugging
and twisting. He had been doing this all day, and he could feel
them slowly giving way.
The sun hung low in the jungle branches when the pirate halted
and pointed to where the old road bent almost at right angles and
disappeared into the mouth of a ravine.
"Down that ravine lies the old temple where the jewels are
hidden."
"On, then!" snapped Wentyard, fanning himself with his plumed
hat. Sweat trickled down his face, wilting the collar of his
crimson, gilt-embroidered coat. A frenzy of impatience was on
him, his eyes dazzled by the imagined glitter of the gems Vulmea
had so vividly described. Avarice makes for credulity, and it
never occurred to Wentyard to doubt Vulmea's tale. He saw in the
Irishman only a hulking brute eager to buy a few months more of
life. Gentlemen of his Majesty's navy were not accustomed to
analyzing the character of pirates. Wentyard's code was painfully
simple: a heavy hand and a roughshod directness. He had never
bothered to study or try to understand outlaw types.
They entered the mouth of the ravine and marched on between
cliffs fringed with overhanging fronds. Wentyard fanned himself
with his hat and gnawed his lip with impatience as he stared
eagerly about for some sign of the ruins described by his
captive. His face was paler than ever, despite the heat which
reddened the bluff faces of his men, tramping ponderously after
him. Vulmea's brown face showed no undue moisture. He did not
tramp: he moved with the sure, supple tread of a panther, and
without a suggestion of a seaman's lurching roll. His eyes ranged
the walls above them and when a frond swayed without a breath of
wind to move it, he did not miss it.
The ravine was some fifty feet wide, the floor carpeted by a
low, thick growth of vegetation. The jungle ran densely along the
rims of the walls, which were some forty feet high. They were
sheer for the most part, but here and there natural ramps ran
down into the gulch, half-covered with tangled vines. A few
hundred yards ahead of them they saw that the ravine bent out of
sight around a rocky shoulder. From the opposite wall there
jutted a corresponding crag. The outlines of these boulders were
blurred by moss and creepers, but they seemed too symmetrical to
be the work of nature alone.
Vulmea stopped, near one of the natural ramps that sloped down
from the rim. His captors looked at him questioningly.
"Why are you stopping?" demanded Wentyard fretfully. His foot
struck something in the rank grass and he kicked it aside. It
rolled free and grinned up at him—a rotting human skull. He
saw glints of white in the green all about him—skulls and
bones almost covered by the dense vegetation.
It grinned up at him—a rotting human skull.
"Is this where you piratical dogs slew each other?" he
demanded crossly. "What are you waiting on? What are you
listening for?"
Vulmea relaxed his tense attitude and smiled indulgently.
"That used to be a gateway there ahead of us," he said.﹃Those
rocks on each side are really gate-pillars. This ravine was a
roadway, leading to the city when people lived there. It's the
only approach to it, for it's surrounded by sheer cliffs on all
sides.﹄He laughed harshly. "This is like the road to Hell, John
Wentyard: easy to go down—not so easy to go up again."
"What are you maundering about?" snarled Wentyard, clapping
his hat viciously on his head. "You Irish are all babblers and
mooncalves! Get on with—"
From the jungle beyond the mouth of the ravine came a sharp
twang. Something whined venomously down the gulch, ending its
flight with a vicious thud. One of the soldiers gulped and
started convulsively. His musket clattered to the earth and he
reeled, clawing at his throat from which protruded a long shaft,
vibrating like a serpent's head. Suddenly he pitched to the
ground and lay twitching.
"Indians!" yelped Wentyard, and turned furiously on his
prisoner. "Dog! Look at that! You said there were no savages
hereabouts!"
Vulmea laughed scornfully.
"Do you call them savages? Bah! Poor-spirited dogs that skulk
in the jungle, too fearful to show themselves on the coast. Don't
you see them slinking among the trees? Best give them a volley
before they grow too bold."
Wentyard snarled at him, but the Englishman knew the value of
a display of firearms when dealing with natives, and he had a
glimpse of brown figures moving among the green foliage. He
barked an order and fourteen muskets crashed, and the bullets
rattled among the leaves. A few severed fronds drifted down; that
was all. But even as the smoke puffed out in a cloud, Vulmea
snapped the frayed cords on his wrists, knocked his guard
staggering with a buffet under the ear, snatched his cutlass and
was gone, running like a cat up the steep wall of the ravine. The
soldiers with their empty muskets gaped helplessly after him, and
Wentyard's pistol banged futilely, an instant too late. From the
green fringe above them came a mocking laugh.
"Fools! You stand in the door of Hell!"
"Fools! You stand in the door of Hell!"
"Dog!" yelled Wentyard, beside himself, but with his greed
still uppermost in his befuddled mind. "We'll find the treasure
without your help!"
"You can't find something that doesn't exist," retorted the
unseen pirate. "There never were any jewels. It was a lie to draw
you into a trap. Dick Harston never came here. I came here, and
the Indians butchered all my crew in that ravine, as those skulls
in the grass there testify."
"Liar!" was all Wentyard could find tongue for. "Lying dog!
You told me there were no Indians hereabouts!"
"I told you the head-hunters never came over the mountains,"
retorted Vulmea. "They don't either. I told you the people who
built the city were all dead. That's so, too. I didn't tell you
that a tribe of brown devils live in the jungle near here. They
never go down to the coast, and they don't like to have white men
come into the jungle. I think they were the people who wiped out
the race that built the city, long ago. Anyway, they wiped out my
men, and the only reason I got away was because I'd lived with
the red men of North America and learned their woodscraft. You're
in a trap you won't get out of, Wentyard!"
"Climb that wall and take him!" ordered Wentyard, and half a
dozen men slung their muskets on their backs and began clumsily
to essay the rugged ramp up which the pirate had run with such
catlike ease.
"Better trim sail and stand by to repel boarders," Vulmea
advised him from above. "There are hundreds of red devils out
there—and no tame dogs to run at the crack of a caliver,
either."
"And you'd betray white men to savages!" raged Wentyard.
"It goes against my principles," the Irishman admitted, "but
it was my only chance for life. I'm sorry for your men. That's
why I advised you to bring only a handful. I wanted to spare as
many as possible. There are enough Indians out there in the
jungle to eat your whole ship's company. As for you, you filthy
dog, what you did in Ireland forfeited any consideration you
might expect as a white man. I gambled on my neck and took my
chances with all of you. It might have been me that arrow
hit."
The voice ceased abruptly, and just as Wentyard was wondering
if there were no Indians on the wall above them, the foliage was
violently agitated, there sounded a wild yell, and down came a
naked brown body, all asprawl, limbs revolving in the air, it
crashed on the floor of the ravine and lay motionless—the
figure of a brawny warrior, naked but for a loin-cloth of bark.
The dead man was deep-chested, broad-shouldered and muscular,
with features not unintelligent, but hard and brutal. He had been
slashed across the neck.
The bushes waved briefly, and then again, further along the
rim, which Wentyard believed marked the flight of the Irishman
along the ravine wall, pursued by the companions of the dead
warrior, who must have stolen up on Vulmea while the pirate was
shouting his taunts.
The chase was made in deadly silence, but down in the ravine
conditions were anything but silent. At the sight of the falling
body a blood-curdling ululation burst forth from the jungle
outside the mouth of the ravine, and a storm of arrows came
whistling down it. Another man fell, and three more were wounded,
and Wentyard called down the men who were laboriously struggling
up the vine-matted ramp. He fell back down the ravine, almost to
the bend where the ancient gate-posts jutted, and beyond that
point he feared to go. He felt sure that the ravine beyond the
Gateway was filled with lurking savages. They would not have
hemmed him in on all sides and then left open an avenue of
escape.
At the spot where he halted there was a cluster of broken
rocks that looked as though as they might once have formed the
walls of a building of some sort. Among them Wentyard made his
stand. He ordered his men to lie prone, their musket barrels
resting on the rocks. One man he detailed to watch for savages
creeping up the ravine from behind them, the others watched the
green wall visible beyond the path that ran into the mouth of the
ravine. Fear chilled Wentyard's heart. The sun was already lost
behind the trees and the shadows were lengthening. In the brief
dusk of the tropic twilight, how could a white man's eye pick out
a swift, flitting brown body, or a musket ball find its mark? And
when darkness fell—Wentyard shivered despite the heat.
Arrows kept singing down the ravine, but they fell short or
splintered on the rocks. But now bowmen hidden on the walls drove
down their shafts, and from their vantage point the stones
afforded little protection. The screams of men skewered to the
ground rose harrowingly. Wentyard saw his command melting away
under his eyes. The only thing that kept them from being
instantly exterminated was the steady fire he had them keep up at
the foliage on the cliffs. They seldom saw their foes; they only
saw the fronds shake, had an occasional glimpse of a brown arm.
But the heavy balls, ripping through the broad leaves, made the
hidden archers wary, and the shafts came at intervals instead of
in volleys. Once a piercing death yell announced that a blind
ball had gone home, and the English raised a croaking cheer.
Perhaps it was this which brought the infuriated warriors out
of the jungle. Perhaps, like the white men, they disliked
fighting in the dark, and wanted to conclude the slaughter before
night fell. Perhaps they were ashamed longer to lurk hidden from
a handful of men.
At any rate, they came out of the jungle beyond the trail
suddenly, and by the scores, not scrawny primitives, but brawny,
hard-muscled warriors, confident of their strength and physically
a match for even the sinewy Englishmen. They came in a wave of
brown bodies that suddenly flooded the ravine, and others leaped
down the walls, swinging from the lianas. They were hundreds
against the handful of Englishmen left. These rose from the rocks
without orders, meeting death with the bulldog stubbornness of
their breed. They fired a volley full into the tide of snarling
faces that surged upon them, and then drew hangers and clubbed
empty muskets. There was no time to reload. Their blast tore
lanes in the onsweeping human torrent, but it did not falter; it
came on and engulfed the white men in a snarling, slashing,
smiting whirlpool.
HANGERS whirred and bit through flesh and bone, clubbed
muskets rose and fell, spattering brains. But copper-headed axes
flashed dully in the twilight, warclubs made a red ruin of the
skulls they kissed, and there were a score of red arms to drag
down each struggling white man. The ravine was choked with a
milling, eddying mass, revolving about a fast-dwindling cluster
of desperate, white-skinned figures.
Not until his last man fell did Wentyard break away, blood
smeared on his arms, dripping from his sword. He was hemmed in by
a surging ring of ferocious figures, but he had one loaded pistol
left. He fired it full in a painted face surmounted by a
feathered chest and saw it vanish in bloody ruin. He clubbed a
shaven head with the empty barrel, and rushed through the gap
made by the falling bodies. A wild figure leaped at him, swinging
a war-club, but the sword was quicker. Wentyard tore the blade
free as the savage fell. Dusk was ebbing swiftly into darkness,
and the figures swirling about him were becoming indistinct,
vague of outline. Twilight waned quickly in the ravine and
darkness had settled there before it veiled the jungle outside.
It was the darkness that saved Wentyard, confusing his attackers.
As the sworded Indian fell he found himself free, though men were
rushing on him from behind, with clubs lifted.
Blindly he fled down the ravine. It lay empty before him. Fear
lent wings to his feet. He raced through the stone abutted
Gateway. Beyond it he saw the ravine widen out; stone walls rose
ahead of him, almost hidden by vines and creepers, pierced with
blank windows and doorways. His flesh crawled with the momentary
expectation of a thrust in the back. His heart was pounding so
loudly, the blood hammering so agonizingly in his temples that he
could not tell whether or not bare feet were thudding close
behind him.
His hat and coat were gone, his shirt torn and bloodstained,
though somehow he had come through that desperate melee
unwounded. Before him he saw a vine-tangled wall, and an empty
doorway. He ran reelingly into the door and turned, falling to
his knee from sheer exhaustion. He shook the sweat from his eyes,
panting gaspingly as he fumbled to reload his pistols. The ravine
was a dim alleyway before him, running to the rock-buttressed
bend. Moment by moment he expected to see it thronged with fierce
faces, with swarming figures. But it lay empty and fierce cries
of the victorious warriors drew no nearer. For some reason they
had not followed him through the Gateway.
Terror that they were creeping on him from behind brought him
to his feet, pistols cocked, staring this way and that.
He was in a room whose stone walls seemed ready to crumble. It
was roofless, and grass grew between the broken stones of the
floor. Through the gaping roof he could see the stars just
blinking out, and the frond-fringed rim of the cliff. Through a
door opposite the one by which he crouched he had a vague glimpse
of other vegetation-choked, roofless chambers beyond.
Silence brooded over the ruins, and now silence had fallen
beyond the bend of the ravine. He fixed his eyes on the blur that
was the Gateway and waited. It stood empty. Yet he knew that the
Indians were aware of his flight. Why did they not rush in and
cut his throat? Were they afraid of his pistols? They had shown
no fear of his soldiers' muskets. Had they gone away, for some
inexplicable reason? Were those shadowy chambers behind him
filled with lurking warriors? If so, why in God's name were they
waiting?
He rose and went to the opposite door, craned his neck warily
through it, and after some hesitation, entered the adjoining
chamber. It had no outlet into the open. All its doors led into
other chambers, equally ruinous, with broken roofs, cracked
floors and crumbling walls. Three or four he traversed, his
tread, as he crushed down the vegetation growing among the broken
stones, seeming intolerably loud in the stillness. Abandoning his
explorations— for the labyrinth seemed endless—he
returned to the room that opened toward the ravine. No sound came
up the gulch, but it was so dark under the cliff that men could
have entered the Gateway and been crouching near him, without his
being able to see them.
AT last he could endure the suspense no longer. Walking as
quietly as he was able, he left the ruins and approached the
Gateway, now a well of blackness. A few moments later he was
hugging the left-hand abutment and straining his eyes to see into
the ravine beyond. It was too dark to see anything more than the
stars blinking over the rims of the walls. He took a cautious
step beyond the Gateway—it was the swift swish of feet
through the vegetation on the floor that saved his life. He
sensed rather than saw a black shape loom out of the darkness,
and he fired blindly and point-blank. The flash lighted a
ferocious face, falling backward, and beyond it the Englishman
dimly glimpsed other figures, solid ranks of them, surging
inexorably toward him.
With a choked cry he hurled himself back around the
gate-pillar, stumbled and fell and lay dumb and quaking,
clenching his teeth against the sharp agony he expected in the
shape of a spear-thrust. None came. No figure came lunging after
him. Incredulously he gathered himself to his feet, his pistols
shaking in his hands. They were waiting, beyond that bend, but
they would not come through the Gateway, not even to glut their
blood-lust. This fact forced itself upon him, with its
implication of inexplicable mystery.
Stumblingly he made his way back to the ruins and groped into
the black doorway, overcoming an instinctive aversion against
entering the roofless chamber. Starlight shone through the broken
roof, lightening the gloom a little, but black shadows clustered
along the walls and the inner door was an ebon wall of mystery.
Like most Englishmen of his generation, John Wentyard more than
believed in ghosts, and he felt that if ever there was a place
fit to be haunted by the phantoms of a lost and forgotten race,
it was these sullen ruins.
He glanced fearfully through the broken roof at the dark
fringe of overhanging fronds on the cliffs above, hanging
motionless in the breathless air, and wondered if moonrise,
illuminating his refuge, would bring arrows questing down through
the roof. Except for the far lone cry of a nightbird, the jungle
was silent. There was not so much as the rustle of a leaf. If
there were men on the cliffs there was no sign to show it. He was
aware of hunger and an increasing thirst; rage gnawed at him, and
a fear that was already tinged with panic.
He crouched at the doorway, pistols in his hands, naked sword
at his knee, and after a while the moon rose, touching the
overhanging fronds with silver long before it untangled itself
from the trees and rose high enough to pour its light over the
cliffs. Its light invaded the ruins, but no arrows came from the
cliff, nor was there any sound from beyond the Gateway. Wentyard
thrust his head through the door and surveyed his retreat.
The ravine, after it passed between the ancient gate-pillars,
opened into a broad bowl, walled by cliffs, and unbroken except
for the mouth of the gulch. Wentyard saw the rim as a continuous,
roughly circular line, now edged with the fire of moonlight. The
ruins in which he had taken refuge almost filled this bowl, being
butted against the cliffs on one side. Decayed and smothering
vines had almost obliterated the original architectural plan. He
saw the structure as a maze of roofless chambers, the outer doors
opening upon the broad space left between it and the opposite
wall of the cliff. This space was covered with low, dense
vegetation, which also choked some of the chambers.
Wentyard saw no way of escape. The cliffs were not like the
walls of the ravine. They were of solid rock and sheer, even
jutting outward a little at the rim. No vines trailed down them.
They did not rise many yards above the broken roofs of the ruins,
but they were as far out of his reach as if they had towered a
thousand feet. He was caught like a rat in a trap. The only way
out was up the ravine, where the blood-lusting warriors waited
with grim patience. He remembered Vulmea's mocking warning:
"—Like the road to Hell: easy to go down; not so easy to go
up again!" Passionately he hoped that the Indians had caught the
Irishman and slain him slowly and painfully. He could have
watched Vulmea flayed alive with intense satisfaction.
PRESENTLY, despite hunger and thirst and fear, he fell
asleep, to dream of ancient temples where drums muttered and
strange figures in parrot-feather mantles moved through the smoke
of sacrificial fires; and he dreamed at last of a silent, hideous
shape which came to the inner door of his roofless chamber and
regarded him with cold, inhuman eyes.
It was from this dream that he awakened, bathed in cold sweat,
to start up with an incoherent cry, clutching his pistols. Then,
fully awake, he stood in the middle of the chamber, trying to
gather his scattered wits. Memory of the dream was vague but
terrifying. Had he actually seen a shadow sway in the doorway and
vanish as he awoke, or had it been only part of his nightmare?
The red, lopsided moon was poised on the western rim of the
cliffs, and that side of the bowl was in thick shadow, but still
an illusive light found its way into the ruins. Wentyard peered
through the inner doorway, pistols cocked. Light floated rather
than streamed down from above, and showed him an empty chamber
beyond. The vegetation on the floor was crushed down, but he
remembered having walked back and forth across it several
times.
Cursing his nervous imagination he returned to the outer
doorway. He told himself that he chose that place the better to
guard against an attack from the ravine, but the real reason was
that he could not bring himself to select a spot deeper in the
gloomy interior of the ancient ruins.
He sat down cross-legged just inside the doorway, his back
against the wall, his pistols beside him and his sword across his
knees. His eyes burned and his lips felt baked with the thirst
that tortured him. The sight of the heavy globules of dew that
hung on the grass almost maddened him, but he did not seek to
quench his thirst by that means, believing as he did that it was
rank poison, he drew his belt closer, against his hunger, and
told himself that he would not sleep. But he did sleep, in spite
of everything.
IT was a frightful scream close at hand that
awakened Wentyard. He was on his feet before he was fully awake,
glaring wildly about him. The moon had set and the interior of
the chamber was dark as Egypt, in which the outer doorway was but
a somewhat lighter blur. But outside it there sounded a
blood-chilling gurgling, the heaving and flopping of a heavy
body. Then silence.
It was a human being that had screamed. Wentyard groped for
his pistols, found his sword instead, and hurried forth, his taut
nerves thrumming. The starlight in the bowl, dim as it was, was
less Stygian than the absolute blackness of the ruins. But he did
not see the figure stretched in the grass until he stumbled over
it. That was all he saw, then—just that dim form stretched
on the ground before the doorway. The foliage hanging over the
cliff rustled a little in the faint breeze. Shadows hung thick
under the wall and about the ruins. A score of men might have
been lurking near him, unseen. But there was no sound.
After a while, Wentyard knelt beside the figure, straining his
eyes in the starlight. He grunted softly. The dead man was not an
Indian, but a black man, a brawny ebon giant, clad, like the red
men, in a bark loin clout, with a crest of parrot feathers on his
head. A murderous copper-headed axe lay near his hand, and a
great gash showed in his muscular breast, a lesser wound under
his shoulder blade. He had been stabbed so savagely that the
blade had transfixed him and come out through his back.
Wentyard swore at the accumulated mystery of it. The presence
of the black man was not inexplicable. Negro slaves, fleeing from
Spanish masters, frequently took to the jungle and lived with the
natives. This black evidently did not share in whatever
superstition or caution kept the Indians outside the bowl; he had
come in alone to butcher the victim they had at bay. But the
mystery of his death remained. The blow that had impaled him had
been driven with more than ordinary strength. There was a
sinister suggestion about the episode, though the mysterious
killer had saved Wentyard from being brained in his
sleep—it was as if some inscrutable being, having claimed
the Englishman for its own, refused to be robbed of its prey.
Wentyard shivered, shaking off the thought.
Then he realized that he was armed only with his sword. He had
rushed out of the ruins half asleep, leaving his pistols behind
him, after a brief fumbling that failed to find them in the
darkness. He turned and hurried back into the chamber and began
to grope on the floor, first irritably, then with growing horror.
The pistols were gone.
At this realization panic overwhelmed Wentyard. He found
himself out in the starlight again without knowing just how he
had got there. He was sweating, trembling in every limb, biting
his tongue to keep from screaming in hysterical terror.
Frantically he fought for control. It was not imagination,
then, which peopled those ghastly ruins with furtive, sinister
shapes that glided from room to shadowy room on noiseless feet,
and spied upon him while he slept. Something besides
himself had been in that room—something that had stolen his
pistols either while he was fumbling over the dead man outside,
or—grisly thought!—while he slept. He believed the
latter had been the case. He had heard no sound in the ruins
while he was outside. But why had it not taken his sword as well?
Was it the Indians, after all, playing a horrible game with him?
Was it their eyes he seemed to feel burning upon him from the
shadows? But he did not believe it was the Indians. They would
have no reason to kill their black ally.
Wentyard felt that he was near the end of his rope. He was
nearly frantic with thirst and hunger, and he shrank from the
contemplation of another day of heat in that waterless bowl. He
went toward the ravine mouth, grasping his sword in desperation,
telling himself that it was better to be speared quickly than
haunted to an unknown doom by unseen phantoms, or perish of
thirst. But the blind instinct to live drove him back from the
rock-buttressed Gateway. He could not bring himself to exchange
an uncertain fate for certain death. Faint noises beyond the bend
told him that men, many men, were waiting there, and retreated,
cursing weakly.
In a futile gust of passion he dragged the black man's body to
the Gateway and thrust it through. At least he would not have it
for a companion to poison the air when it rotted in the heat.
He sat down about half-way between the ruins and the
ravine-mouth, hugging his sword and straining his eyes into the
shadowy starlight, and felt that he was being watched from the
ruins; he sensed a Presence there, inscrutable, inhuman,
waiting—waiting.
He was still sitting there when dawn flooded jungle and cliffs
with grey light, and a brown warrior, appearing in the Gateway,
bent his bow and sent an arrow at the figure hunkered in the open
space. The shaft cut into the grass near Wentyard's foot, and the
white man sprang up stiffly and ran into the doorway of the
ruins. The warrior did not shoot again. As if frightened by his
own temerity, he turned and hurried back through the Gateway and
vanished from sight.
Wentyard spat dryly and swore. Daylight dispelled some of the
phantom terrors of the night, and he was suffering so much from
thirst that his fear was temporarily submerged. He was determined
to explore the ruins by each crevice and cranny and bring to bay
whatever was lurking among them. At least he would have daylight
by which to face it.
To this end he turned toward the inner door, and then he
stopped in his tracks, his heart in his throat. In the inner
doorway stood a great gourd, newly cut and hollowed, and filled
with water; beside it was a stack of fruit, and in another
calabash there was meat, still smoking faintly. With a stride he
reached the door and glared through. Only an empty chamber met
his eyes.
Sight of water and scent of food drove from his mind all
thoughts of anything except his physical needs. He seized the
water-gourd and drank gulpingly, the precious liquid splashing on
his breast. The water was fresh and sweet, and no wine had ever
given him such delirious satisfaction. The meat he found was
still warm. What it was he neither knew nor cared. He ate
ravenously, grasping the joints in his fingers and tearing away
the flesh with his teeth. It had evidently been roasted over an
open fire, and without salt or seasoning, but it tasted like food
of the gods to the ravenous man. He did not seek to explain the
miracle, nor to wonder if the food were poisoned. The inscrutable
haunter of the ruins which had saved his life that night, and
which had stolen his pistols, apparently meant to preserve him
for the time being, at least, and Wentyard accepted the gifts
without question.
And having eaten he lay down and slept. He did not believe the
Indians would invade the ruins; he did not care much if they did,
and speared him in his sleep. He believed that the unknown being
which haunted the rooms could slay him any time it wished. It had
been close to him again and again and had not struck. It had
showed no signs of hostility so far, except to steal his pistols.
To go searching for it might drive it into hostility.
Wentyard, despite his slaked thirst and full belly, was at the
point where he had a desperate indifference to consequences. His
world seemed to have crumbled about him. He had led his men into
a trap to see them butchered; he had seen his prisoner escape; he
was caught like a caged rat himself; the wealth he had lusted
after and dreamed about had proved a lie. Worn out with vain
ragings against his fate, he slept.
THE sun was high when he awoke and sat up with a startled
oath. Black Vulmea stood looking down at him.
"Damn!" Wentyard sprang up, snatching at his sword. His mind
was a riot of maddening emotions, but physically he was a new
man, and nerved to a rage that was tinged with near-insanity.
"You dog!" he raved. "So the Indians didn't catch you on the
cliffs!"
"Those red dogs?" Vulmea laughed. "They didn't follow me past
the Gateway. They don't come on the cliffs overlooking these
ruins. They've got a cordon of men strung through the jungle,
surrounding this place, but I can get through any time I want to.
I cooked your breakfast—and mine— right under their
noses, and they never saw me."
"My breakfast!" Wentyard glared wildly. "You mean it
was you brought water and food for me?"
"Who else?"
"But—but why?" Wentyard was floundering in a maze of
bewilderment.
Vulmea laughed, but he laughed only with his lips. His eyes
were burning. "Well, at first I thought it would satisfy me if I
saw you get an arrow through your guts. Then when you broke away
and got in here, I said, `Better still! They'll keep the swine
there until he starves, and I'll lurk about and watch him die
slowly.' I knew they wouldn't come in after you. When they
ambushed me and my crew in the ravine, I cut my way through them
and got in here, just as you did, and they didn't follow me in.
But I got out of here the first night. I made sure you wouldn't
get out the way I did that time, and then settled myself to watch
you die. I could come or go as I pleased after nightfall, and
you'd never see or hear me."
"But in that case, I don't see why—"
"You probably wouldn't understand!" snarled Vulmea.﹃But just
watching you starve wasn't enough. I wanted to kill you
myself—I wanted to see your blood gush, and watch your eyes
glaze!﹄The Irishman's voice thickened with his passion, and his
great hands clenched until the knuckles showed white. "And I
didn't want to kill a man half-dead with want. So I went back up
into the jungle on the cliffs and got water and fruit, and
knocked a monkey off a limb with a stone, and roasted him. I
brought you a good meal and set it there in the door while you
were sitting outside the ruins. You couldn't see me from where
you were sitting, and of course you didn't hear anything. You
English are all dull-eared."
"And it was you who stole my pistols last night!" muttered
Wentyard, staring at the butts jutting from Vulmea's Spanish
girdle.
"Aye! I took them from the floor beside you while you slept. I
learned stealth from the Indians of North America. I didn't want
you to shoot me when I came to pay my debt. While I was getting
them I heard somebody sneaking up outside, and saw a black man
coming toward the doorway. I didn't want him to be robbing me of
my revenge, so I stuck my cutlass through him. You awakened when
he howled, and ran out, as you'll remember, but I stepped back
around the corner and in at another door. I didn't want to meet
you except in broad open daylight and you in fighting trim."
"Then it was you who spied on me from the inner door,"
muttered Wentyard. "You whose shadow I saw just before the moon
sank behind the cliffs."
"Not I!" Vulmea's denial was genuine. "I didn't come down into
the ruins until after moonset, when I came to steal your pistols.
Then I went back up on the cliffs, and came again just before
dawn to leave your food."
"But enough of this talk!" he roared gustily, whipping out his
cutlass: "I'm mad with thinking of the Galway coast and dead men
kicking in a row, and a rope that strangled me! I've tricked you,
trapped you, and now I'm going to kill you!"
Wentyard's face was a ghastly mask of hate, livid, with bared
teeth and glaring eyes.
"Dog!" with a screech he lunged, trying to catch Vulmea
offguard.
But the cutlass met and deflected the straight blade, and
Wentyard bounded back just in time to avoid the decapitating
sweep of the pirate's steel. Vulmea laughed fiercely and came on
like a storm, and Wentyard met him with a drowning man's
desperation.
Like most officers of the British navy, Wentyard was
proficient in the use of the long straight sword he carried. He
was almost as tall as Vulmea, and though he looked slender beside
the powerful figure of the pirate, he believed that his skill
would offset the sheer strength of the Irishman.
He was disillusioned within the first few moments of the
fight. Vulmea was neither slow nor clumsy. He was as quick as a
wounded panther, and his sword-play was no less crafty than
Wentyard's. It only seemed so, because of the pirate's furious
style of attack, showering blow on blow with what looked like
sheer recklessness. But the very ferocity of his attack was his
best defense, for it gave his opponent no time to launch a
counter-attack.
The power of his blows, beating down on Wentyard's blade,
rocked and shook the Englishman to his heels, numbing his wrist
and arm with their impact. Blind fury, humiliation, naked fright
combined to rob the captain of his poise and cunning. A stamp of
feet, a louder clash of steel, and Wentyard's blade whirred into
a corner. The Englishman reeled back, his face livid, his eyes
like those of a madman.
"Pick up your sword!" Vulmea was panting, not so much from
exertion as from rage. Wentyard did not seem to hear him.
"Bah!" Vulmea threw aside his cutlass in a spasm of disgust.
"Can't you even fight? I'll kill you with my bare hands!"
He slapped Wentyard viciously first on one side of the face
and then on the other. The Englishman screamed wordlessly and
launched himself at the pirate's throat, and Vulmea checked him
with a buffet in the face and knocked him sprawling with a savage
smash under the heart. Wentyard got to his knees and shook the
blood from his face, while Vulmea stood over him, his brows black
and his great fists knotted.
"Get up'" muttered the Irishman thickly. "Get up, you hangman
of peasants and children!"
Wentyard did not heed him. He was groping inside his shirt,
from which he drew out something he stared at with painful
intensity.
"Get up, damn you, before I set my boot-heels on your
face—"
Vulmea broke off, glaring incredulously. Wentyard, crouching
over the object he had drawn from his shirt, was weeping in
great, racking sobs.
"What the hell!" Vulmea jerked it away from him, consumed by
wonder to learn what could bring tears from John Wentyard. It was
a skillfully painted miniature. The blow he had struck Wentyard
had cracked it, but not enough to obliterate the soft gentle
faces of a pretty young woman and child which smiled up at the
scowling Irishman.
"Well, I'm damned!" Vulmea stared from the broken portrait in
his hand to the man crouching miserably on the floor. "Your wife
and daughter?"
"Well, I'm damned!" Vulmea stared from the broken portrait
in his hand to the man crouching miserably on the floor.
Wentyard, his bloody face sunk in his hands, nodded mutely. He
had endured much within the last night and day. The breaking of
the portrait he always carried over his heart was the last straw;
it seemed like an attack on the one soft spot in his hard soul,
and it left him dazed and demoralized.
Vulmea scowled ferociously, but it somehow seemed forced.
"I didn't know you had a wife and child," he said almost
defensively.
"The lass is but five years old," gulped Wentyard.﹃I haven't
seen them in nearly a year My God, what's to become of them now?
A navy captain's pay is none so great. I've never been able to
save anything. It was for them I sailed in search of Van Raven
and his treasure. I hoped to get a prize that would take care of
them if aught happened to me. Kill me!﹄he cried shrilly, his
voice cracking at the highest pitch. "Kill me and be done with
it, before I lose my manhood with thinking of them, and beg for
my life like a craven dog!"
But Vulmea stood looking down at him with a frown. Varying
expressions crossed his dark face, and suddenly he thrust the
portrait back in the Englishman's hand.
"You're too poor a creature for me to soil my hands with!" he
sneered, and turning on his heel, strode through the inner
door.
Wentyard stared dully after him, then, still on his knees,
began to caress the broken picture, whimpering softly like an
animal in pain as if the breaks in the ivory were wounds in his
own flesh. Men break suddenly and unexpectedly in the tropics,
and Wentyard's collapse was appalling.
He did not look up when the swift stamp of boots announced
Vulmea's sudden return, without the pirate's usual stealth. A
savage clutch on his shoulder raised him to stare stupidly into
the Irishman's convulsed face.
"You're an infernal dog!" snarled Vulmea, in a fury that
differed strangely from his former murderous hate. He broke into
lurid imprecations, cursing Wentyard with all the proficiency he
had acquired during his years at sea.﹃I ought to split your
skull,﹄he wound up. "For years I've dreamed of it, especially
when I was drunk. I'm a cursed fool not to stretch you dead on
the floor. I don't owe you any consideration, blast you! Your
wife and daughter don't mean anything to me. But I'm a fool, like
all the Irish, a blasted, chicken-hearted, sentimental fool, and
I can't be the cause of a helpless woman and her colleen
starving. Get up and quit sniveling!"
Wentyard looked up at him stupidly.
"You—you came back to help me?'
"I might as well stab you as leave you here to starve!" roared
the pirate, sheathing his sword. "Get up and stick your skewer
back in its scabbard. Who'd have ever thought that a scraun like
you would have womenfolk like those innocents? Hell's fire! You
ought to be shot! Pick up your sword. You may need it before we
get away. But remember, I don't trust you any further than I can
throw a whale by the tail, and I'm keeping your pistols. If you
try to stab me when I'm not looking I'll break your head with my
cutlass hilt."
Wentyard, like a man in a daze, replaced the painting
carefully in his bosom and mechanically picked up his sword and
sheathed it. His numbed wits began to thaw out, and he tried to
pull himself together.
"What are we to do now?" he asked.
"Shut up!" growled the pirate. "I'm going to save you for the
sake of the lady and the lass, but I don't have to talk to you!"
With rare consistency he then continued: "We'll leave this trap
the same way I came and went.
"Listen: four years ago I came here with a hundred men. I'd
heard rumors of a ruined city up here, and I thought there might
be loot hidden in it. I followed the old road from the beach, and
those brown dogs let me and my men get in the ravine before they
started butchering us. There must have been five or six hundred
of them. They raked us from the walls, and then charged
us—some came down the ravine and others jumped down the
walls behind us and cut us off. I was the only one who got away,
and I managed to cut my way through them, and ran into this bowl.
They didn't follow me in, but stayed outside the Gateway to see
that I didn't get out.
"But I found another way—a slab had fallen away from the
wall of a room that was built against the cliff, and a stairway
was cut in the rock. I followed it and came out of a sort of trap
door up on the cliffs. A slab of rock was over it, but I don't
think the Indians knew anything about it anyway, because they
never go up on the cliffs that overhang the basin. They never
come in here from the ravine, either. There's something here
they're afraid of—ghosts, most likely.
"The cliffs slope down into the jungle on the outer sides, and
the slopes and the crest are covered with trees and thickets.
They had a cordon of men strung around the foot of the slopes,
but I got through at night easily enough, made my way to the
coast and sailed away with the handful of men I'd left aboard my
ship.
"When you captured me the other day, I was going to kill you
with my manacles, but you started talking about treasure, and a
thought sprang in my mind to steer you into a trap that I might
possibly get out of. I remembered this place, and I mixed a lot
of truth in with some lies. The Fangs of Satan are no myth; they
are a hoard of jewels hidden somewhere on this coast, but this
isn't the place. There's no plunder about here.
"The Indians have a ring of men strung around this place, as
they did before. I can get through, but it isn't going to be so
easy getting you through. You English are like buffaloes when you
start through the brush. We'll start just after dark and try to
get through before the moon rises.
"Come on; I'll show you the stair."
Wentyard followed him through a series of crumbling,
vine-tangled chambers, until he halted against the cliff. A thick
slab leaned against the wall which obviously served as a door.
The Englishman saw a flight of narrow steps, carved in the solid
rock, leading upward through a shaft tunneled in the cliff.
"I meant to block the upper mouth by heaping big rocks on the
slab that covers it," said Vulmea. "That was when I was going to
let you starve. I knew you might find the stair. I doubt if the
Indians know anything about it, as they never come in here or go
up on the cliffs. But they know a man might be able to get out
over the cliffs some way, so they've thrown that cordon around
the slopes.
"That black I killed was a different proposition. A slave ship
was wrecked off this coast a year ago, and the blacks escaped and
took to the jungle. There's a regular mob of them living
somewhere near here. This particular black man wasn't afraid to
come into the ruins. If there are more of his kind out there with
the Indians, they may try again tonight. But I believe he was the
only one, or he wouldn't have come alone."
"Why don't we go up the cliff now and hide among the trees?"
asked Wentyard.
"Because we might be seen by the men watching below the
slopes, and they'd guess that we were going to make a break
tonight, and redouble their vigilance. After awhile I'll go and
get some more food. They won't see me."
THE men returned to the chamber where Wentyard had slept.
Vulmea grew taciturn, and Wentyard made no attempt at
conversation. They sat in silence while the afternoon dragged by.
An hour or so before sundown Vulmea rose with a curt word, went
up the stair and emerged on the cliffs. Among the trees he
brought down a monkey with a dextrously-thrown stone, skinned it,
and brought it back into the ruins along with a calabash of water
from a spring on the hillside. For all his woodscraft he was not
aware that he was being watched; he did not see the fierce black
face that glared at him from a thicket that stood where the
cliffs began to slope down into the jungle below.
Later, when he and Wentyard were roasting the meat over a fire
built in the ruins, he raised his head and listened intently.
"What do you hear?" asked Wentyard.
"A drum," grunted the Irishman.
"I hear it," said Wentyard after a moment. "Nothing unusual
about that."
"It doesn't sound like an Indian drum," answered Vulmea.
"Sounds more like an African drum."
Wentyard nodded agreement; his ship had lain off the mangrove
swamps of the Slave Coast, and he had heard such drums rumbling
to one another through the steaming night. There was a subtle
difference in the rhythm and timbre that distinguished it from an
Indian drum.
Evening came on and ripened slowly to dusk. The drum ceased to
throb. Back in the low hills, beyond the ring of cliffs, a fire
glinted under the dusky trees, casting brown and black faces into
sharp relief.
An Indian whose ornaments and bearing marked him as a chief
squatted on his hams, his immobile face turned toward the ebony
giant who stood facing him. This man was nearly a head taller
than any other man there, his proportions overshadowing both the
Indians squatting about the fire and the black warriors who stood
in a close group behind him. A jaguar-skin mantle was cast
carelessly over his brawny shoulders, and copper bracelets
ornamented his thickly-muscled arms. There was an ivory ring on
his head, and parrot-feathers stood up from his kinky hair. A
shield of hard wood and toughened bullhide was on his left arm,
and in his right hand he gripped a great spear whose hammered
iron head was as broad as a man's hand.
"I came swiftly when I heard the drum," he said gutturally, in
the bastard-Spanish that served as a common speech for the
savages of both colors. "I knew it was N'Onga who called me.
N'Onga had gone from my camp to fetch Ajumba, who was lingering
with your tribe. N'Onga told me by the drum-talk that a white man
was at bay, and Ajumba was dead. I came in haste. Now you tell me
that you dare not enter the Old City."
"I came swiftly when I heard the drum," he said gutturally.
"I have told you a devil dwells there," answered the Indian
doggedly. "He has chosen the white man for his own. He will be
angry it you try to take him away from him. It is death to enter
his kingdom."
The black chief lifted his great spear and shook it
defiantly.
"I was a slave to the Spaniards long enough to know that the
only devil is a white man! I do not fear your devil. In my land
his brothers are big as he, and I have slain one with a spear
like this. A day and a night have passed since the white man fled
into the Old City. Why has not the devil devoured him, or this
other who lingers on the cliffs?"
"The devil is not hungry," muttered the Indian. "He waits
until he is hungry. He has eaten recently. When he is hungry
again he will take them. I will not go into his lair with my men.
You are a stranger in this country. You do not understand these
things."
"I understand that Bigomba who was a king in his own country
fears nothing, neither man nor demon," retorted the black giant.
"You tell me that Ajumba went into the Old City by night, and
died. I have seen his body. The devil did not slay him. One of
the white men stabbed him. If Ajumba could go into the Old City
and not be seized by the devil, then I and my thirty men can go.
I know how the big white man comes and goes between the cliffs
and the ruins. There is a hole in the rock with a slab for a door
over it. N'Onga watched from the bushes high up on the slopes and
saw him come forth and later return through it. I have placed men
there to watch it. If the white men come again through that hole,
my warriors will spear them. If they do not come, we will go in
as soon as the moon rises. Your men hold the ravine, and they can
not flee that way. We will hunt them like rats through the
crumbling houses."
"EASY now," muttered Vulmea.﹃It's as dark as
Hell in this shaft.﹄Dusk had deepened into early darkness. The
white men were groping their way up the steps cut in the rock.
Looking back and down Wentyard made out the lower mouth of the
shaft only as a slightly lighter blur in the blackness. They
climbed on, feeling their way, and presently Vulmea halted with a
muttered warning. Wentyard, groping, touched his thigh and felt
the muscles tensing upon it. He knew that Vulmea had placed his
shoulders under the slab that closed the upper entrance, and was
heaving it up. He saw a crack appear suddenly in the blackness
above him, limning the Irishman's bent head and foreshortened
figure.
The stone came clear and starlight gleamed through the
aperture, laced by the overhanging branches of the trees. Vulmea
let the slab fall on the stone rim, and started to climb out of
the shaft. He had emerged head, shoulders and hips when without
warning a black form loomed against the stars and a gleam of
steel hissed downward at his breast.
Vulmea threw up his cutlass and the spear rang against it,
staggering him on the steps with the impact. Snatching a pistol
from his belt with his left hand he fired point-blank and the
black man groaned and fell head and arms dangling in the opening.
He struck the pirate as he fell, destroying Vulmea's already
precarious balance. He toppled backward down the steps, carrying
Wentyard with him. A dozen steps down they brought up in a
sprawling heap, and staring upward, saw the square well above
them fringed with indistinct black blobs they knew were heads
outlined against the stars.
"I thought you said the Indians never—" panted
Wentyard.
"They're not Indians," growled Vulmea, rising. "They're
Negroes. Cimarroons! The same dogs who escaped from the slave
ship. That drum we heard was one of them calling the others. Look
out!"
Spears came whirring down the shaft, splintering on the steps,
glancing from the walls. The white men hurled themselves
recklessly down the steps at the risk of broken limbs. They
tumbled through the lower doorway and Vulmea slammed the heavy
slab in place.
"They'll be coming down it next," he snarled. "We've got to
heap enough rocks against it to hold it—no, wait a minute!
If they've got the guts to come at all, they'll come by the
ravine if they can't get in this way, or on ropes hung from the
cliffs. This place is easy enough to get into—not so damned
easy to get out of. We'll leave the shaft open. If they come this
way we can get them in a bunch as they try to come out."
He pulled the slab aside, standing carefully away from the
door.
"Suppose they come from the ravine and this way, too?"
"They probably will," growled Vulmea, "but maybe they'll come
this way first, and maybe if they come down in a bunch we can
kill them all. There may not be more than a dozen of them.
They'll never persuade the Indians to follow them in."
He set about reloading the pistol he had fired, with quick
sure hands in the dark. It consumed the last grain of powder in
the flask. The white men lurked like phantoms of murder about the
doorway of the stair, waiting to strike suddenly and deadly. Time
dragged. No sound came from above. Wentyard's imagination was at
work again, picturing an invasion from the ravine, and dusky
figures gliding about them, surrounding the chamber. He spoke of
this and Vulmea shook his head.
"When they come I'll hear them; nothing on two legs can get in
here without my knowing it."
Suddenly Wentyard was aware of a dim glow pervading the ruins.
The moon was rising above the cliffs. Vulmea swore.
"No chance of our getting away tonight. Maybe those black dogs
were waiting for the moon to come up. Go into the chamber where
you slept and watch the ravine. If you see them sneaking in that
way, let me know. I can take care of any that come down the
stair."
Wentyard felt his flesh crawl as he made his way through those
dim chambers. The moonlight glinted down through vines tangled
across the broken roofs, and shadows lay thick across his path.
He reached the chamber where he had slept, and where the coals of
the fire still glowed dully. He started across toward the outer
door when a soft sound brought him whirling around. A cry was
wrenched from his throat.
Out of the darkness of a corner rose a swaying shape; a great
wedge-shaped head and an arched neck were outlined against the
moonlight. In one brain-staggering instant the mystery of the
ruins became clear to him; he knew what had watched him with
lidless eyes as he lay sleeping, and what had glided away from
his door as he awoke—he knew why the Indians would not come
into the ruins or mount the cliffs above them. He was face to
face with the devil of the deserted city, hungry at
last—and that devil was a giant anaconda!
In that moment John Wentyard experienced such fear and
loathing horror as ordinarily come to men only in foul
nightmares. He could not run, and after that first scream his
tongue seemed frozen to his palate. Only when the hideous head
darted toward him did he break free from the paralysis that
engulfed him and then it was too late.
He struck at it wildly and futilely, and in an instant it had
him— lapped and wrapped about with coils which were like
huge cables of cold, pliant steel. He shrieked again, fighting
madly against the crushing constriction—he heard the rush
of Vulmea's boots—then the pirate's pistols crashed
together and he heard plainly the thud of the bullets into the
great snake's body. It jerked convulsively and whipped from about
him, hurling him sprawling to the floor, and then it came at
Vulmea like the rush of a hurricane through the grass, its forked
tongue licking in and out in the moonlight, and the noise of its
hissing filling the chamber.
Vulmea avoided the battering-ram stroke of the blunt nose with
a sidewise spring that would have shamed a starving jaguar, and
his cutlass was a sheen in the moonlight as it hewed deep into
the mighty neck. Blood spurted and the great reptile rolled and
knotted, sweeping the floor and dislodging stones from the wall
with its thrashing tail. Vulmea leaped high, clearing it as it
lashed but Wentyard, just climbing to his feet, was struck and
knocked sprawling into a corner. Vulmea was springing in again,
cutlass lifted, when the monster rolled aside and fled through
the inner door, with a loud rushing sound through the thick
vegetation.
Vulmea was after it, his berserk fury fully roused. He did not
wish the wounded reptile to crawl away and hide, perhaps to
return later and take them by surprise. Through chamber after
chamber the chase led, in a direction neither of the men had
followed in his former explorations, and at last into a room
almost choked by tangled vines. Tearing these aside Vulmea stared
into a black aperture in the wall, just in time to see the
monster vanishing into its depths. Wentyard, trembling in every
limb, had followed, and now looked over the pirate's shoulder. A
reptilian reek came from the aperture, which they now saw as an
arched doorway, partly masked by thick vines. Enough moonlight
found its way through the roof to reveal a glimpse of stone steps
leading up into darkness.
"I MISSED this," muttered Vulmea. "When I found the stair
I didn't look any further for an exit. Look how the doorsill
glistens with scales that have been rubbed off that brute's
belly. He uses it often. I believe those steps lead to a tunnel
that goes clear through the cliffs. There's nothing in this bowl
that even a snake could eat or drink. He has to go out into the
jungle to get water and food. If he was in the habit of going out
by the way of the ravine, there'd be a path worn away through the
vegetation, like there is in the room. Besides, the Indians
wouldn't stay in the ravine. Unless there's some other exit we
haven't found, I believe that he comes and goes this way, and
that means it lets into the outer world. It's worth trying,
anyway."
"You mean to follow that fiend into that black tunnel?"
ejaculated Wentyard aghast.
"Why not? We've got to follow and kill him anyway. If we run
into a nest of them—well, we've got to die some time, and
if we wait here much longer the Cimarroons will be cutting our
throats. This is a chance to get away, I believe. But we won't go
in the dark."
Hurrying back to the room where they had cooked the monkey,
Vulmea caught up a faggot, wrapped a torn strip of his shirt
about one end and set it smouldering in the coals which he blew
into a tiny flame. The improvised torch flickered and smoked, but
it cast light of a sort. Vulmea strode back to the chamber where
the snake had vanished, followed by Wentyard who stayed close
within the dancing ring of light, and saw writhing serpents in
every vine that swayed overhead.
The torch revealed blood thickly spattered on the stone steps.
Squeezing their way between the tangled vines which did not admit
a man's body as easily as a serpent's they mounted the steps
warily. Vulmea went first, holding the torch high and ahead of
him, his cutlass in his right hand. He had thrown away the
useless, empty pistols. They climbed half a dozen steps and came
into a tunnel some fifteen feet wide and perhaps ten feet high
from the stone floor to the vaulted roof. The serpent-reek and
the glisten of the floor told of long occupancy by the brute, and
the blood-drops ran on before them.
The walls, floor and roof of the tunnel were in much better
state of preservation than were the ruins outside, and Wentyard
found time to marvel at the ingenuity of the ancient race which
had built it.
Meanwhile, in the moonlit chamber they had just quitted, a
giant black man appeared as silently as a shadow. His great spear
glinted in the moonlight, and the plumes on his head rustled as
he turned to look about him. Four warriors followed him.
"They went into that door," said one of these, pointing to the
vine-tangled entrance. "I saw their torch vanish into it. But I
feared to follow them, alone as I was, and I ran to tell you,
Bigomba."
"But what of the screams and the shot we heard just before we
descended the shaft?" asked another uneasily.
"I think they met the demon and slew it," answered Bigomba.
"Then they went into this door. Perhaps it is a tunnel which
leads through the cliffs. One of you go gather the rest of the
warriors who are scattered through the rooms searching for the
white dogs. Bring them after me. Bring torches with you. As for
me, I will follow with the other three, at once. Bigomba sees
like a lion in the dark."
As Vulmea and Wentyard advanced through the tunnel Wentyard
watched the torch fearfully. It was not very satisfactory, but it
gave some light, and he shuddered to think of its going out or
burning to a stump and leaving them in darkness. He strained his
eyes into the gloom ahead, momentarily expecting to see a vague,
hideous figure rear up amidst it. But when Vulmea halted suddenly
it was not because of an appearance of the reptile. They had
reached a point where a smaller corridor branched off the main
tunnel, leading away to the left.
"Which shall we take?"
Vulmea bent over the floor, lowering his torch.
"The blood-drops go to the left," he grunted. "That's the way
he went."
"Wait!" Wentyard gripped his arm and pointed along the main
tunnel. "Look! There ahead of us! Light!"
Vulmea thrust his torch behind him, for its flickering glare
made the shadows seem blacker beyond its feeble radius. Ahead of
them, then, he saw something like a floating gray mist, and knew
it was moonlight finding its way somehow into the tunnel.
Abandoning the hunt for the wounded reptile, the men rushed
forward and emerged into a broad square chamber, hewn out of
solid rock. But Wentyard swore in bitter disappointment. The
moonlight was coming, not from a door opening into the jungle,
but from a square shaft in the roof, high above their heads.
An archway opened in each wall, and the one opposite the arch
by which they had entered was fitted with a heavy door, corroded
and eaten by decay. Against the wall to their right stood a stone
image, taller than a man, a carven grotesque, at once manlike and
bestial. A stone altar stood before it, its surface channeled and
darkly stained. Something on the idol's breast caught the
moonlight in a frosty sparkle.
"The devil!" Vulmea sprang forward and wrenched it away. He
held it up—a thing like a giant's necklace, made of jointed
plates of hammered gold, each as broad as a man's palm and set
with curiously-cut jewels.
He held it up—a thing like a giant's necklace.
"I thought I lied when I told you there were gems here,"
grunted the pirate. "It seems I spoke the truth unwittingly!
These are not the Fangs of Satan, but they'll fetch a tidy
fortune anywhere in Europe."
"What are you doing?" demanded Wentyard, as the Irishman laid
the huge necklace on the altar and lifted his cutlass. Vulmea's
reply was a stroke that severed the ornament into equal halves.
One half he thrust into Wentyard's astounded hands.
"If we get out of here alive that will provide for the wife
and child," he grunted.
"But you—" stammered Wentyard. "You hate me—yet
you save my life and then give me this—"
"Shut up!" snarled the pirate. "I'm not giving it to you; I'm
giving it to the girl and her baby. Don't you venture to thank
me, curse you! I hate you as much as I—"
He stiffened suddenly, wheeling to glare down the tunnel up
which they had come. He stamped out the torch and crouched down
behind the altar, drawing Wentyard with him.
"Men!" he snarled. "Coming down the tunnel, I heard steel
clink on stone. I hope they didn't see the torch. Maybe they
didn't. It wasn't much more than a coal in the moonlight."
They strained their eyes down the tunnel. The moon hovered at
an angle above the open shaft which allowed some of its light to
stream a short way down the tunnel. Vision ceased at the spot
where the smaller corridor branched off. Presently four shadows
bulked out of the blackness beyond, taking shape gradually like
figures emerging from a thick fog. They halted, and the white men
saw the largest one—a giant who towered above the
others—point silently with his spear, up the tunnel, then
down the corridor. Two of the shadowy shapes detached themselves
from the group and moved off down the corridor out of sight. The
giant and the other man came on up the tunnel.
"The Cimarroons, hunting us," muttered Vulmea. "They're
splitting their party to make sure they find us. Lie low; there
may be a whole crew right behind them."
They crouched lower behind the altar while the two blacks came
up the tunnel, growing more distinct as they advanced. Wentyard's
skin crawled at the sight of the broad-bladed spears held ready
in their hands. The biggest one moved with the supple tread of a
great panther, head thrust forward, spear poised, shield lifted.
He was a formidable image of rampant barbarism, and Wentyard
wondered if even such a man as Vulmea could stand before him with
naked steel and live.
They halted in the doorway, and the white men caught the white
flash of their eyes as they glared suspiciously about the
chamber. The smaller black seized the giant's arm convulsively
and pointed, and Wentyard's heart jumped into his throat. He
thought they had been discovered, but the Negro was pointing at
the idol. The big man grunted contemptuously. However, slavishly
in awe he might be of the fetishes of his native coast, the gods
and demons of other races held no terrors for him.
But he moved forward majestically to investigate, and Wentyard
realized that discovery was inevitable.
Vulmea whispered fiercely in his ear: "We've got to get them,
quick! Take the brave. I'll take the chief. Now!"
They sprang up together, and the blacks cried out
involuntarily, recoiling from the unexpected apparitions. In that
instant the white men were upon them.
The shock of their sudden appearance had stunned the smaller
black. He was small only in comparison with his gigantic
companion. He was as tall as Wentyard and the great muscles
knotted under his sleek skin. But he was staggering back, gaping
stupidly, spear and shield lowered on limply hanging arms. Only
the bite of steel brought him to his senses, and then it was too
late. He screamed and lunged madly, but Wentyard's sword had
girded deep into his vitals and his lunge was wild. The
Englishman side-stepped and thrust again and yet again, under and
over the shield, fleshing his blade in groin and throat. The
black man swayed in his rush, his arms fell, shield and spear
clattered to the floor and he toppled down upon them.
Wentyard turned to stare at the battle waging behind him,
where the two giants fought under the square beam of moonlight,
black and white, spear and shield against cutlass.
Bigomba, quicker-witted than his follower, had not gone down
under the unexpected rush of the white man. He had reacted
instantly to his fighting instinct. Instead of retreating he had
thrown up his shield to catch the down-swinging cutlass, and had
countered with a ferocious lunge that scraped blood from the
Irishman's neck as he ducked aside.
Now they fought in grim silence, while Wentyard circled about
them, unable to get in a thrust that might not imperil Vulmea.
Both moved with the sure-footed quickness of tigers. The black
man towered above the white, but even his magnificent proportions
could not overshadow the sinewy physique of the pirate. In the
moonlight the great muscles of both men knotted, rippled and
coiled in response to their herculean exertions. The play was
bewildering, almost blinding the eye that tried to follow it.
Again and again the pirate barely avoided the dart of the
great spear, and again and again Bigomba caught on his shield a
stroke that otherwise would have shorn him asunder. Speed of foot
and strength of wrist alone saved Vulmea, for he had no defensive
armor. But repeatedly he either dodged or side-stepped, the
savage thrusts, or beat aside the spear with his blade. And he
rained blow on blow with his cutlass, slashing the bullhide to
ribbons, until the shield was little more than a wooden framework
through which, slipping in a lightning-like thrust, the cutlass
drew first blood as it raked through the flesh across the black
chief's ribs.
At that Bigomba roared like a wounded lion, and like a wounded
lion he leaped. Hurling the shield at Vulmea's head he threw all
his giant body behind the arm that drove the spear at the
Irishman's breast. The muscles leaped up in quivering bunches on
his arm as he smote, and Wentyard cried out, unable to believe
that Vulmea could avoid the lunge. But chain-lightning was slow
compared to the pirate's shift. He ducked, side-stepped, and as
the spear whipped past under his arm-pit, he dealt a cut that
found no shield in the way. The cutlass was a blinding flicker of
steel in the moonlight, ending its arc in a butcher-shop crunch.
Bigomba fell as a tree falls and lay still. His head had been all
but severed from his body.
VULMEA stepped back, panting. His great chest heaved under
the tattered shirt, and sweat dripped from his face. At last he
had met a man almost his match, and the strain of that terrible
encounter left the tendons of his thighs quivering.
"We've got to get out of here before the rest of them come,"
he gasped, catching up his half of the idol's necklace. "That
smaller corridor must lead to the outside, but those blacks are
in it, and we haven't any torch. Let's try this door. Maybe we
can get out that way."
The ancient door was a rotten mass of crumbling panels and
corroded copper bands. It cracked and splintered under the impact
of Vulmea's heavy shoulder, and through the apertures the pirate
felt the stir of fresh air, and caught the scent of a damp
river-reek. He drew back to smash again at the door, when a
chorus of fierce yells brought him about snarling like a trapped
wolf. Swift feet pattered up the tunnel, torches waved, and
barbaric shouts re-echoed under the vaulted roof. The white men
saw a mass of fierce faces and flashing spears, thrown into
relief by the flaring torches, surging up the tunnel. The light
of their coming streamed before them. They had heard and
interpreted the sounds of combat as they hurried up the tunnel,
and now they had sighted their enemies, and they burst into a
run, howling like wolves.
"Break the door, quick!" cried Wentyard!
"No time now," grunted Vulmea. "They'd be on us before we
could get through. We'll make our stand here."
He ran across the chamber to meet them before they could
emerge from the comparatively narrow archway, and Wentyard
followed him. Despair gripped the Englishman and in a spasm of
futile rage he hurled the half-necklace from him. The glint of
its jewels was mockery. He fought down the sick memory of those
who waited for him in England as he took his place at the door
beside the giant pirate.
As they saw their prey at bay the howls of the oncoming blacks
grew wilder. Spears were brandished among the torches—then
a shriek of different timbre cut the din. The foremost blacks had
almost reached the point where the corridor branched off the
tunnel—and out of the corridor raced a frantic figure. It
was one of the black men who had gone down it exploring. And
behind him came a blood-smeared nightmare. The great serpent had
turned at bay at last.
It was among the blacks before they knew what was happening.
Yells of hate changed to screams of terror, and in an instant all
was madness, a clustering tangle of struggling black bodies and
limbs, and that great sinuous cable-like trunk writhing and
whipping among them, the wedge-shaped head darting and battering.
Torches were knocked against the walls, scattering sparks. One
man, caught in the squirming coils, was crushed and killed almost
instantly, and others were dashed to the floor or hurled with
bone-splintering force against the walls by the battering-ram
head, or the lashing, beam-like tail. Shot and slashed as it was,
wounded mortally, the great snake clung to life with the horrible
vitality of its kind, and in the blind fury of its death-throes
it became an appalling engine of destruction.
Within a matter of moments the blacks who survived had broken
away and were fleeing down the tunnel, screaming their fear. Half
a dozen limp and broken bodies lay sprawled behind them, and the
serpent, unlooping himself from these victims, swept down the
tunnel after the living who fled from him. Fugitives and pursuer
vanished into the darkness, from which frantic yells came back
faintly.
"GOD!" Wentyard wiped his brow with a trembling hand.
"That might have happened to us!"
"Those men who went groping down the corridor must have
stumbled onto him lying in the dark," muttered Vulmea. "I guess
he got tired of running. Or maybe he knew he had his death-wound
and turned back to kill somebody before he died. He'll chase
those blacks until either he's killed them all, or died himself.
They may turn on him and spear him to death when they get into
the open. Pick up your part of the necklace. I'm going to try
that door again."
Three powerful drives of his shoulder were required before the
ancient door finally gave way. Fresh, damp air poured through,
though the interior was dark. But Vulmea entered without
hesitation, and Wentyard followed him. After a few yards of
groping in the dark, the narrow corridor turned sharply to the
left, and they emerged into a somewhat wider passage, where a
familiar, nauseating reek made Wentyard shudder.
"The snake used this tunnel," said Vulmea. "This must be the
corridor that branches off the tunnel on the other side of the
idol-room. There must be a regular network of subterranean rooms
and tunnels under these cliffs. I wonder what we'd find if we
explored all of them."
Wentyard fervently disavowed any curiosity in that direction,
and an instant later jumped convulsively when Vulmea snapped
suddenly: "Look there!"
"Where? How can a man look anywhere in this darkness?"
"Ahead of us, damn it! It's light at the other end of this
tunnel!"
"Your eyes are better than mine," muttered Wentyard, but he
followed the pirate with new eagerness, and soon he too could see
the tiny disk of grey that seemed set in a solid black wall.
After that it seemed to the Englishman that they walked for
miles. It was not that far in reality, but the disk grew slowly
in size and clarity, and Wentyard knew that they had come a long
way from the idol-room when at last they thrust their heads
through a round, vine-crossed opening and saw the stars reflected
in the black water of a sullen river flowing beneath them.
"This is the way he came and went, all right," grunted
Vulmea.
The tunnel opened in the steep bank and there was a narrow
strip of beach below it, probably existent only in dry seasons.
They dropped down to it and looked about at the dense jungle
walls which hung over the river.
"Where are we?" asked Wentyard helplessly, his sense of
direction entirely muddled.
"Beyond the foot of the slopes," answered Vulmea, "and that
means we're outside the cordon the Indians have strung around the
cliffs. The coast lies in that direction; come on!"
THE sun hung high above the western horizon when two men
emerged from the jungle that fringed the beach, and saw the tiny
bay stretching before them.
Vulmea stopped in the shadow of the trees.
"There's your ship, lying at anchor where we left her. All
you've got to do now is hail her for a boat to be sent ashore,
and your part of the adventure is over."
Wentyard looked at his companion. The Englishman was bruised,
scratched by briars, his clothing hanging in tatters. He could
hardly have been recognized as the trim captain of the
Redoubtable. But the change was not limited to his
appearance. It went deeper. He was a different man than the one
who marched his prisoner ashore in quest of a mythical hoard of
gems.
"What of you? I owe you a debt that I can never—"
"You owe me nothing," Vulmea broke in. "I don't trust you,
Wentyard."
The other winced. Vulmea did not know that it was the cruelest
thing he could have said. He did not mean it as cruelty. He was
simply speaking his mind, and it did not occur to him that it
would hurt the Englishman.
"Do you think I could ever harm you now, after this?"
exclaimed Wentyard. "Pirate or not, I could never—"
"You're grateful and full of the milk of human kindness now,"
answered Vulmea, and laughed hardly. "But you might change your
mind after you got back on your decks. John Wentyard lost in the
jungle is one man; Captain Wentyard aboard his king's warship is
another."
"I swear—" began Wentyard desperately, and then stopped,
realizing the futility of his protestations. He realized, with an
almost physical pain, that a man can never escape the
consequences of a wrong, even though the victim may forgive him.
His punishment now was an inability to convince Vulmea of his
sincerity, and it hurt him far more bitterly than the Irishman
could ever realize. But he could not expect Vulmea to trust him,
he realized miserably. In that moment he loathed himself for what
he had been, and for the smug, self-sufficient arrogance which
had caused him to ruthlessly trample on all who fell outside the
charmed circle of his approval. At that moment there was nothing
in the world he desired more than the firm handclasp of the man
who had fought and wrought so tremendously for him; but he knew
he did not deserve it.
"You can't stay here!" he protested weakly.
"The Indians never come to this coast," answered Vulmea.﹃I'm
not afraid of the Cimarroons. Don't worry about me.﹄He laughed
again, at what he considered the jest of anyone worrying about
his safety. "I've lived in the wilds before now. I'm not the only
pirate in these seas. There's a rendezvous you know nothing
about. I can reach it easily. I'll be back on the Main with a
ship and a crew the next time you hear about me."
And turning supply, he strode into the foliage and vanished,
while Wentyard, dangling in his hand a jeweled strip of gold,
stared helplessly after him.
THE END
Project Gutenberg Australia