Out of Time's Abyss
Wieroos--the peculiar, uncanny wailing rising above the dismal flapping
of countless wings.
"They have heard of the killing of Him Who Speaks for Luata," whispered
the girl. "Soon they will spread in all directions searching for us."
"And will they find us?"
"As surely as Lua gives light by day," she replied; "and when they find
us, they will tear us to pieces, for only the Wieroos may murder--only
they may practice tas-ad."
"But they will not kill you," said Bradley. "You did not slay him."
"It will make no difference," she insisted. "If they find us together
they will slay us both."
"Then they won't find us together," announced Bradley decisively. "You
stay right here--you won't be any worse off than before I came--and
I'll get as far as I can and account for as many of the beggars as
possible before they get me. Good-bye! You're a mighty decent little
girl. I wish that I might have helped you."
"No," she cried. "Do not leave me. I would rather die. I had hoped
and hoped to find some way to return to my own country. I wanted to go
back to An-Tak, who must be very lonely without me; but I know that it
can never be. It is difficult to kill hope, though mine is nearly
dead. Do not leave me."
"An-Tak!" Bradley repeated. "You loved a man called An-Tak?"
"Yes," replied the girl. "An-Tak was away, hunting, when the Wieroo
caught me. How he must have grieved for me! He also was cos-ata-lu,
twelve moons older than I, and all our lives we have been together."
Bradley remained silent. So she loved An-Tak. He hadn't the heart to
tell her that An-Tak had died, or how.
At the door of Fosh-bal-soj's storeroom they halted to listen. No
sound came from within, and gently Bradley pushed open the door. All
was inky darkness as they entered; but presently their eyes became
accustomed to the gloom that was partially relieved by the soft
starlight without. The Englishman searched and found those things for
which he had come--two robes, two pairs of dead wings and several
lengths of fiber rope. One pair of the wings he adjusted to the girl's
shoulders by means of the rope. Then he draped the robe about her,
carrying the cowl over her head.
He heard her gasp of astonishment when she realized the ingenuity and
boldness of his plan; then he directed her to adjust the other pair of
wings and the robe upon him. Working with strong, deft fingers she
soon had the work completed, and the two stepped out upon the roof, to
all intent and purpose genuine Wieroos. Besides his pistol Bradley
carried the sword of the slain Wieroo prophet, while the girl was armed
with the small blade of the red Wieroo.
Side by side they walked slowly across the roofs toward the north edge
of the city. Wieroos flapped above them and several times they passed
others walking or sitting upon the roofs. From the temple still rose
the sounds of commotion, now pierced by occasional shrill screams.
"The murderers are abroad," whispered the girl. "Thus will another
become the tongue of Luata. It is well for us, since it keeps them too
busy to give the time for searching for us. They think that we cannot
escape the city, and they know that we cannot leave the island--and so
do I."
Bradley shook his head. "If there is any way, we will find it," he
said.
"There is no way," replied the girl.
Bradley made no response, and in silence they continued until the outer
edge of roofs was visible before them. "We are almost there," he
whispered.
The girl felt for his fingers and pressed them. He could feel hers
trembling as he returned the pressure, nor did he relinquish her hand;
and thus they came to the edge of the last roof.
Here they halted and looked about them. To be seen attempting to
descend to the ground below would be to betray the fact that they were
not Wieroos. Bradley wished that their wings were attached to their
bodies by sinew and muscle rather than by ropes of fiber. A Wieroo was
flapping far overhead. Two more stood near a door a few yards distant.
Standing between these and one of the outer pedestals that supported
one of the numerous skulls Bradley made one end of a piece of rope fast
about the pedestal and dropped the other end to the ground outside the
city. Then they waited.
It was an hour before the coast was entirely clear and then a moment
came when no Wieroo was in sight. "Now!" whispered Bradley; and the
girl grasped the rope and slid over the edge of the roof into the
darkness below. A moment later Bradley felt two quick pulls upon the
rope and immediately followed to the girl's side.
Across a narrow clearing they made their way and into a wood beyond.
All night they walked, following the river upward toward its source,
and at dawn they took shelter in a thicket beside the stream. At no
time did they hear the cry of a carnivore, and though many startled
animals fled as they approached, they were not once menaced by a wild
beast. When Bradley expressed surprise at the absence of the fiercest
beasts that are so numerous upon the mainland of Caprona, the girl
explained the reason that is contained in one of their ancient legends.
"When the Wieroos first developed wings upon which they could fly, they
found this island devoid of any life other than a few reptiles that
live either upon land or in the water and these only close to the
coast. Requiring meat for food the Wieroos carried to the island such
animals as they wished for that purpose. They still occasionally bring
them, and this with the natural increase keeps them provided with
flesh."
"As it will us," suggested Bradley.
The first day they remained in hiding, eating only the dried food that
Bradley had brought with him from the temple storeroom, and the next
night they set out again up the river, continuing steadily on until
almost dawn, when they came to low hills where the river wound through
a gorge--it was little more than rivulet now, the water clear and cold
and filled with fish similar to brook trout though much larger. Not
wishing to leave the stream the two waded along its bed to a spot where
the gorge widened between perpendicular bluffs to a wooded acre of
level land. Here they stopped, for here also the stream ended. They
had reached its source--many cold springs bubbling up from the center
of a little natural amphitheater in the hills and forming a clear and
beautiful pool overshadowed by trees upon one side and bounded by a
little clearing upon the other.
With the coming of the sun they saw they had stumbled upon a place
where they might remain hidden from the Wieroos for a long time and
also one that they could defend against these winged creatures, since
the trees would shield them from an attack from above and also hamper
the movements of the creatures should they attempt to follow them into
the wood.
For three days they rested here before trying to explore the
neighboring country. On the fourth, Bradley stated that he was going
to scale the bluffs and learn what lay beyond. He told the girl that
she should remain in hiding; but she refused to be left, saying that
whatever fate was to be his, she intended to share it, so that he was
at last forced to permit her to come with him. Through woods at the
summit of the bluff they made their way toward the north and had gone
but a short distance when the wood ended and before them they saw the
waters of the inland sea and dimly in the distance the coveted shore.
The beach lay some two hundred yards from the foot of the hill on which
they stood, nor was there a tree nor any other form of shelter between
them and the water as far up and down the coast as they could see.
Among other plans Bradley had thought of constructing a covered raft
upon which they might drift to the mainland; but as such a contrivance
would necessarily be of considerable weight, it must be built in the
water of the sea, since they could not hope to move it even a short
distance overland.
"If this wood was only at the edge of the water," he sighed.
"But it is not," the girl reminded him, and then: "Let us make the
best of it. We have escaped from death for a time at least. We have
food and good water and peace and each other. What more could we have
upon the mainland?"
"But I thought you wanted to get back to your own country!" he
exclaimed.
She cast her eyes upon the ground and half turned away. "I do," she
said, "yet I am happy here. I could be little happier there."
Bradley stood in silent thought. "`We have food and good water and
peace and each other!'" he repeated to himself. He turned then and
looked at the girl, and it was as though in the days that they had been
together this was the first time that he had really seen her. The
circumstances that had thrown them together, the dangers through which
they had passed, all the weird and horrible surroundings that had
formed the background of his knowledge of her had had their effect--she
had been but the companion of an adventure; her self-reliance, her
endurance, her loyalty, had been only what one man might expect of
another, and he saw that he had unconsciously assumed an attitude
toward her that he might have assumed toward a man. Yet there had been
a difference--he recalled now the strange sensation of elation that had
thrilled him upon the occasions when the girl had pressed his hand in
hers, and the depression that had followed her announcement of her love
for An-Tak.
He took a step toward her. A fierce yearning to seize her and crush
her in his arms, swept over him, and then there flashed upon the screen
of recollection the picture of a stately hall set amidst broad gardens
and ancient trees and of a proud old man with beetling brows--an old
man who held his head very high--and Bradley shook his head and turned
away again.
They went back then to their little acre, and the days came and went,
and the man fashioned spear and bow and arrows and hunted with them
that they might have meat, and he made hooks of fishbone and caught
fishes with wondrous flies of his own invention; and the girl gathered
fruits and cooked the flesh and the fish and made beds of branches and
soft grasses. She cured the hides of the animals he killed and made
them soft by much pounding. She made sandals for herself and for the
man and fashioned a hide after the manner of those worn by the warriors
of her tribe and made the man wear it, for his own garments were in
rags.
She was always the same--sweet and kind and helpful--but always there
was about her manner and her expression just a trace of wistfulness,
and often she sat and looked at the man when he did not know it, her
brows puckered in thought as though she were trying to fathom and to
understand him.
In the face of the cliff, Bradley scooped a cave from the rotted
granite of which the hill was composed, making a shelter for them
against the rains. He brought wood for their cook-fire which they used
only in the middle of the day--a time when there was little likelihood
of Wieroos being in the air so far from their city--and then he learned
to bank it with earth in such a way that the embers held until the
following noon without giving off smoke.
Always he was planning on reaching the mainland, and never a day passed
that he did not go to the top of the hill and look out across the sea
toward the dark, distant line that meant for him comparative freedom
and possibly reunion with his comrades. The girl always went with him,
standing at his side and watching the stern expression on his face with
just a tinge of sadness on her own.
"You are not happy," she said once.
"I should be over there with my men," he replied. "I do not know what
may have happened to them."