Out of Time's Abyss
That night they dropped anchor at the mouth of a sluggish stream whose
warm waters swarmed with millions of tiny tadpolelike organisms--minute
human spawn starting on their precarious journey from some inland pool
toward "the beginning"--a journey which one in millions, perhaps, might
survive to complete. Already almost at the inception of life they were
being greeted by thousands of voracious mouths as fish and reptiles of
many kinds fought to devour them, the while other and larger creatures
pursued the devourers, to be, in turn, preyed upon by some other of the
countless forms that inhabit the deeps of Caprona's frightful sea.
The second day was practically a repetition of the first. They moved
very slowly with frequent stops and once they landed in the Kro-lu
country to hunt. Here they were attacked by the bow-and-arrow men,
whom they could not persuade to palaver with them. So belligerent were
the natives that it became necessary to fire into them in order to
escape their persistent and ferocious attentions.
"What chance," asked Bradley, as they were returning to the boat with
their game, "could Tyler and Miss La Rue have had among such as these?"
But they continued on their fruitless quest, and the third day, after
cruising along the shore of a deep inlet, they passed a line of lofty
cliffs that formed the southern shore of the inlet and rounded a sharp
promontory about noon. Co-Tan and Bradley were on deck alone, and as
the new shoreline appeared beyond the point, the girl gave an
exclamation of joy and seized the man's hand in hers.
"Oh, look!" she cried. "The Galu country! The Galu country! It is my
country that I never thought to see again."
"You are glad to come again, Co-Tan?" asked Bradley.
"Oh, so glad!" she cried. "And you will come with me to my people? We
may live here among them, and you will be a great warrior--oh, when Jor
dies you may even be chief, for there is none so mighty as my warrior.
You will come?"
Bradley shook his head. "I cannot, little Co-Tan," he answered. "My
country needs me, and I must go back. Maybe someday I shall return.
You will not forget me, Co-Tan?"
She looked at him in wide-eyed wonder. "You are going away from me?"
she asked in a very small voice. "You are going away from Co-Tan?"
Bradley looked down upon the little bowed head. He felt the soft cheek
against his bare arm; and he felt something else there too--hot drops
of moisture that ran down to his very finger-tips and splashed, but
each one wrung from a woman's heart.
He bent low and raised the tear-stained face to his own. "No, Co-Tan,"
he said, "I am not going away from you--for you are going with me. You
are going back to my own country to be my wife. Tell me that you will,
Co-Tan." And he bent still lower yet from his height and kissed her
lips. Nor did he need more than the wonderful new light in her eyes to
tell him that she would go to the end of the world with him if he would
but take her. And then the gun-crew came up from below again to fire a
signal shot, and the two were brought down from the high heaven of
their new happiness to the scarred and weather-beaten deck of the U-33.
An hour later the vessel was running close in by a shore of wondrous
beauty beside a parklike meadow that stretched back a mile inland to
the foot of a plateau when Whitely called attention to a score of
figures clambering downward from the elevation to the lowland below.
The engines were reversed and the boat brought to a stop while all
hands gathered on deck to watch the little party coming toward them
across the meadow.
"They are Galus," cried Co-Tan; "they are my own people. Let me speak
to them lest they think we come to fight them. Put me ashore, my man,
and I will go meet them."
The nose of the U-boat was run close in to the steep bank; but when
Co-Tan would have run forward alone, Bradley seized her hand and held
her back. "I will go with you, Co-Tan," he said; and together they
advanced to meet the oncoming party.
There were about twenty warriors moving forward in a thin line, as our
infantry advance as skirmishers. Bradley could not but notice the
marked difference between this formation and the moblike methods of the
lower tribes he had come in contact with, and he commented upon it to
Co-Tan.
"Galu warriors always advance into battle thus," she said. "The lesser
people remain in a huddled group where they can scarce use their
weapons the while they present so big a mark to us that our spears and
arrows cannot miss them; but when they hurl theirs at our warriors, if
they miss the first man, there is no chance that they will kill some
one behind him.
"Stand still now," she cautioned, "and fold your arms. They will not
harm us then."
Bradley did as he was bid, and the two stood with arms folded as the
line of warriors approached. When they had come within some fifty
yards, they halted and one spoke. "Who are you and from whence do you
come?" he asked; and then Co-Tan gave a little, glad cry and sprang
forward with out-stretched arms.
"Oh, Tan!" she exclaimed. "Do you not know your little Co-Tan?"
The warrior stared, incredulous, for a moment, and then he, too, ran
forward and when they met, took the girl in his arms. It was then that
Bradley experienced to the full a sensation that was new to him--a
sudden hatred for the strange warrior before him and a desire to kill
without knowing why he would kill. He moved quickly to the girl's side
and grasped her wrist.
"Who is this man?" he demanded in cold tones.
Co-Tan turned a surprised face toward the Englishman and then of a
sudden broke forth into a merry peal of laughter. "This is my father,
Brad-lee," she cried.
"And who is Brad-lee?" demanded the warrior.
"He is my man," replied Co-Tan simply.
"By what right?" insisted Tan.
And then she told him briefly of all that she had passed through since
the Wieroos had stolen her and of how Bradley had rescued her and
sought to rescue An-Tak, her brother.
"You are satisfied with him?" asked Tan.
"Yes," replied the girl proudly.
It was then that Bradley's attention was attracted to the edge of the
plateau by a movement there, and looking closely he saw a horse bearing
two figures sliding down the steep declivity. Once at the bottom, the
animal came charging across the meadowland at a rapid run. It was a
magnificent animal--a great bay stallion with a white-blazed face and
white forelegs to the knees, its barrel encircled by a broad surcingle
of white; and as it came to a sudden stop beside Tan, the Englishman
saw that it bore a man and a girl--a tall man and a girl as beautiful
as Co-Tan. When the girl espied the latter, she slid from the horse
and ran toward her, fairly screaming for joy.
The man dismounted and stood beside Tan. Like Bradley he was garbed
after the fashion of the surrounding warriors; but there was a subtle
difference between him and his companion. Possibly he detected a
similar difference in Bradley, for his first question was, "From what
country?" and though he spoke in Galu Bradley thought he detected an
accent.
"England," replied Bradley.
A broad smile lighted the newcomer's face as he held out his hand. "I
am Tom Billings of Santa Monica, California," he said. "I know all
about you, and I'm mighty glad to find you alive."
"How did you get here?" asked Bradley. "I thought ours was the only
party of men from the outer world ever to enter Caprona."
"It was, until we came in search of Bowen J. Tyler, Jr.," replied
Billings. "We found him and sent him home with his bride; but I was
kept a prisoner here."
Bradley's face darkened--then they were not among friends after all.
"There are ten of us down there on a German sub with small-arms and a
gun," he said quickly in English. "It will be no trick to get away
from these people."
"You don't know my jailer," replied Billings, "or you'd not be so sure.
Wait, I'll introduce you." And then turning to the girl who had
accompanied him he called her by name. "Ajor," he said, "permit me to
introduce Lieutenant Bradley; Lieutenant, Mrs. Billings--my jailer!"
The Englishman laughed as he shook hands with the girl. "You are not
as good a soldier as I," he said to Billings. "Instead of being taken
prisoner myself I have taken one--Mrs. Bradley, this is Mr. Billings."
Ajor, quick to understand, turned toward Co-Tan. "You are going back
with him to his country?" she asked. Co-Tan admitted it.
"You dare?" asked Ajor. "But your father will not permit it--Jor, my
father, High Chief of the Galus, will not permit it, for like me you
are cos-ata-lo. Oh, Co-Tan, if we but could! How I would love to see
all the strange and wonderful things of which my Tom tells me!"
Bradley bent and whispered in her ear. "Say the word and you may both
go with us."
Billings heard and speaking in English, asked Ajor if she would go.
"Yes," she answered, "If you wish it; but you know, my Tom, that if Jor
captures us, both you and Co-Tan's man will pay the penalty with your
lives--not even his love for me nor his admiration for you can save
you."
Bradley noticed that she spoke in English--broken English like Co-Tan's
but equally appealing. "We can easily get you aboard the ship," he
said, "on some pretext or other, and then we can steam away. They can
neither harm nor detain us, nor will we have to fire a shot at them."
And so it was done, Bradley and Co-Tan taking Ajor and Billings aboard
to "show" them the vessel, which almost immediately raised anchor and
moved slowly out into the sea.
"I hate to do it," said Billings. "They have been fine to me. Jor and
Tan are splendid men and they will think me an ingrate; but I can't
waste my life here when there is so much to be done in the outer world."
As they steamed down the inland sea past the island of Oo-oh, the
stories of their adventures were retold, and Bradley learned that Bowen
Tyler and his bride had left the Galu country but a fortnight before
and that there was every reason to believe that the Toreador might
still be lying in the Pacific not far off the subterranean mouth of the
river which emitted Caprona's heated waters into the ocean.
Late in the second day, after running through swarms of hideous
reptiles, they submerged at the point where the river entered beneath
the cliffs and shortly after rose to the sunlit surface of the Pacific;
but nowhere as far as they could see was sign of another craft. Down
the coast they steamed toward the beach where Billings had made his
crossing in the hydro-aeroplane and just at dusk the lookout announced
a light dead ahead. It proved to be aboard the Toreador, and a
half-hour later there was such a reunion on the deck of the trim little
yacht as no one there had ever dreamed might be possible. Of the
Allies there were only Tippet and James to be mourned, and no one
mourned any of the Germans dead nor Benson, the traitor, whose ugly
story was first told in Bowen Tyler's manuscript.
Tyler and the rescue party had but just reached the yacht that
afternoon. They had heard, faintly, the signal shots fired by the U-33
but had been unable to locate their direction and so had assumed that
they had come from the guns of the Toreador.
It was a happy party that sailed north toward sunny, southern
California, the old U-33 trailing in the wake of the Toreador and
flying with the latter the glorious Stars and Stripes beneath which she
had been born in the shipyard at Santa Monica. Three newly married
couples, their bonds now duly solemnized by the master of the ship,
joyed in the peace and security of the untracked waters of the south
Pacific and the unique honeymoon which, had it not been for stern duty