Brood of the Dark Moon
With the skeleton of a huge palm leaf he raked the fire out into an open
space; they had plenty of fuel and they fed the blaze until its mounting
flames lighted the entire enclosure. But outside the barricade were dark
shadows, and Chet saw that this light would only make targets of the
defenders, while the attackers could creep up in safety.
"'Way up," he ordered; "we've got to have the fire on the top of the
rocks." He clambered to the topmost level of the rocky outcrop and
dragged a blazing stick with him. Harkness handed him more; and now the
light struck down and over the stockade and illumined the ground
outside.
"Here's your job, Kreiss," said Chet, "if you're equal to it. You keep
that fire going and have a pile of dried husks handy if I call for a
bright blaze.
"We've got to defend the whole works," he explained. "That bunch today
tried to jump us just from one side, but trust Schwartzmann to divide
his force and hit us from all sides next time.
"But we'll hold the fort," he said and he forced a confidence into his
voice that his inner thoughts did not warrant. To Harkness he whispered
when Diane was away: "Six shells in the gun, Walt; we won't waste them
on the apes. There's one for each of us including Towahg, and one extra
in case you miss. We'll fight as long as we are able; then it's up to
you to shoot quick and straight."
But Walt Harkness felt for the pistol in his belt and handed it to Chet.
"I couldn't," he said, and his voice was harsh and strained, "--not
Diane; you'll have to, Chet." And Chet Bullard dropped his own useless
pistol to the ground while he slipped the other into its holster on the
belt that bound his ragged clothes about him, but he said nothing. He
was facing a situation where words were hardly adequate to express the
surging emotion within.
* * * * *
Diane had returned when he addressed Walt casually. "Wonder why the
beggars didn't attack again," he pondered. "Why has Schwartzmann waited;
why hasn't he or one of his men crept up in the grass for a shot at us?
He's got some deviltry brewing."
"Waiting for night," hazarded Walt. He looked up to see Kreiss who had
joined them.
"If Towahg could tend the fire," suggested the scientist, "I could fire
my little catapult with one hand. I think I could do some damage." But
Chet shook his head and answered gently:
"I'm afraid Towahg's the better man to-night, Kreiss. You can help best
by giving us light. That's the province of science, you know," he added,
and grinned up at the anxious man.
Each moment of this companionship meant much to Chet. It was the last
conference, he knew. They would be swamped, overwhelmed, and then--only
the pistol with its six shells was left. But he drew his thoughts back
to the peaceful quiet of the present moment, though the hush was ominous
with the threat of the approaching storm and of the other assault that
must come in the storm's concealing darkness. He looked at Diane and
Walt--comrades true and tender. The leaping flames from the rocks above
made flickering shadows on their upturned faces.
* * * * *
The moment ended. A growl from where Towahg was on guard brought them
scrambling to their feet. "Gr-r-ranga!" Towahg was warning. "Granga
come!"
They fired from their platforms as before, then raced for the rocks and
the elevation they afforded, for the black bodies had reached the
stockade quickly in the half light. But they came again from one
point--the farthest curve of the U-shaped fence this time--and though a
score of black animal faces showed staring eyes and snarling fangs where
heavy bodies were drawn up on the barricade, no one of them reached the
inside.
"We're holding them!" Chet was shouting. But the easy victory was too
good to believe; he knew there were more to come; this force of some
thirty or forty was not all that Schwartzmann could throw into the
fight. And Schwartzmann, himself! Chet had seen the bronzed faces of Max
and another standing back of the assaulting force, but where was
Schwartzmann?
It was Kreiss who answered the insistent question. From above on the
rocks, where he had kept the fire blazing, Kreiss was calling in a
high-pitched voice.
"The water!" he shouted, "they're attacking from the water!" And Chet
rushed around the broken rock-heap to see a lake like an inky pool,
where the firelight showed faint reflections from black, shining faces;
where rippling lines of phosphorescence marked each swimming savage; and
where larger waves of ghostly light came from a log raft on which was a
familiar figure whose face, through its black beard, showed white in
contrast with the faces of his companions.
* * * * *
Still a hundred feet from the shore, they were approaching steadily,
inexorably; and the storm, at that instant, broke with a ripping flash
of light that tore the heavens apart, and that seared the picture of the
attackers upon the eyeballs of the man who stared down.
From behind him came sounds of a renewed attack. He heard Harkness:
"Shoot, Diane! Nail 'em, Towahg! There's a hundred of them!" And the
wind that came with the lightning flash, though it brought no rain,
whipped the black water of the lake to waves that drove the raft and the
swimming savages closer--closer--
Chet glanced above him. "Come down, Kreiss!" he ordered. "Get down here,
quick! This is the finish. We could have licked them on land, but these
others will get us." He stood, dumb with amazement, as he saw the thin
figure of Kreiss leap excitedly from his rocky perch and vanish like a
terrified rabbit into the cave in the rocks.
"I didn't think--" he was telling himself in wondering disbelief at this
cowardice, when Kreiss reappeared. His one hand was white with a rubbery
coating that Chet vaguely knew for latex. He was holding a gray, earthy
mass, and he threw himself forward to the catapult where it stood idly
erect in the wind that beat and whipped at it.
"Help me!" It was Kreiss who ordered, and once more he spoke as if he
were conducting only an interesting experiment. "Pull here! Bend
it--bend it! Now hold steady; this is metallic sodium, a deposit I found
deep in the earth."
The gray mass was in the crude bucket of the machine. Kreiss' knife was
ready. He slashed at the vine that he'd the bent sapling, and a gray
mass whirled out into the dark; out and down--and the inky waters were
in that instant ablaze with fire.
Fire that threw itself in flaming balls; that broke into many parts and
each part, like a living thing, darted crazily about; that leaped into
the air to fall again among ape-men who screamed frenziedly in animal
terror.
* * * * *
"It unites with water," Kreiss was saying: "a spontaneous liberation and
ignition of hydrogen." The white-coated hand had dumped another mass
into the primitive engine of war. "Now pull--so--and I cut it!" And the
leaping, flashing fires tore furiously in redoubled madness where a
shrieking mob of terrified beasts, and one white man among them, drove
ashore beyond the end of a barricade.
Chet felt Harkness beside him. "We drove 'em off in back. What the devil
is going on here?" Walt was demanding. But Chet was watching the retreat
of the blacks straight off and down the shore where the sand was smooth
and neither grass nor trees could hinder their wild flight.
"You've got them licked," Harkness was exulting: "and we've cleaned them
up on our side. Just came over to see if you needed help."
"We sure would have," said Chet; "more than you could give if it hadn't
been for Kreiss."
"We've got 'em licked!" Harkness repeated wonderingly; "we've won!" It
was too much to grasp all at once. The victory had been so quick, and he
had already given up hope.
The two had clasped hands; they stood so for silent minutes. Chet had
been nerved to the point of destroying his companions and himself; the
revulsion of feeling that victory brought was more stupefying than the
threat of impending defeat.
* * * * *
Staring out over the black waters, he knew only vaguely when Harkness
left; a moment later he followed him gropingly around the jagged rocks,
while there came to him, blurred by his own mental numbness, a shouted
call.... But a moment elapsed before he was aroused, before he knew it
for Walt's voice. He recognized the agonized tone and sprang forward
into the clearing.
The fire still blazed on the rocky platform above; its uncertain light
reached the figure of a running man who was making madly for the opening
in the wall. As he ran he screamed over and over, in a voice hoarse and
horrible like one seized in the fright of a fearful dream: "Diane!
Diane, wait! For God's sake, Diane, don't go!"
And the driven clouds were torn apart for a space to let through a clear
golden light. The great lantern of Earth was flashing down through space
to light a grassy opening in a jungle of another world, where, stark and
rigid, a girl was walking toward the shadow-world beyond, while before
her went a black shape, huge and powerful, in whose head were eyes like
burning lights, and whose arms were rigidly extended as if to draw the
stricken girl on and on.
The running figure overtook them. Chet saw him checked in mid-spring,
and Harkness, too, stood rigid as if carved from stone, then followed as
did Diane, where the ape-thing led.... From the far side of the
clearing, where Schwartzmann's men had gone, came a great shout of
laughter that jarred Chet from the stupor that bound him.
"The messenger!" he said aloud. "God help them; it's the messenger--and
he's taking them to the pyramid!"
Then the torn clouds closed that the greater darkness might cover those
who vanished in the shadowed fringe of a stormy, wind-whipped jungle....
CHAPTER XX
_On to the Pyramid_
It was like Walt Harkness to rush impetuously after where Diane was
being drawn away; but who, under the same circumstances, would have done
otherwise? Yet it was like Chet, too, to keep a sane and level head, to
check the first wild impulse to dash to their rescue, to realize that he
would be throwing himself away by doing it and helping them not at all.
It was like Chet to stop and think when thinking was desperately needed,
though what it would lead to he could not have told. There were many
factors that entered into his calculations.
Half-consciously he had walked to the barricade that he might stare into
the blackness beyond. The worst of the storm had passed, and the strong
Earth-light forced its way through the thinning clouds in a cold, gray
glow. It served to show the great gateway to the jungle, empty and
black, until Chet saw more of the man-beasts he had called messengers.
A file of them, stolid, woodenly walking--he could not fail to know them
from the ape-men of the tribe. And they moved through the darkness
toward the sounds of shouts and laughter.
Chet saw them when they returned; following them were three others.
Schwartzmann was not one of them; but the pilot, Max, Chet could
distinguish plainly; the other two, he was sure, were the men of
Schwartzmann's crew.
And, for each of them, all laughter and shouted jests had escaped. They
moved like wooden toys half-come to life. And they, too, vanished where
Walt and Diane had gone through the high arch of the jungle's open door.
Chet knew Kreiss was beside him; at a short distance, Towahg, staring
above the palisade, buried his unkempt, hairy head in the shelter of his
arms. All of Towahg's savage bravery had oozed away at direct sight of
the pyramid men; Chet, even through his heavy-hearted dismay, was aware