Out of Time's Abyss
had groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed maniac
from a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he looked up, he
went white and staggered back.
"Gawd!" he almost screamed. "What is it?"
Attracted by Brady's cry the others seized their rifles as they
followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them that was
not moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady spoke again in
an almost inaudible voice. "Holy Mother protect us--it's a banshee!"
Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of danger, felt
a strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as slowly, not a
hundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself across the sky, its
huge, round eyes glaring down upon them. And until it disappeared over
the tops of the trees of a near-by wood the five men stood as though
paralyzed, their eyes never leaving the weird shape; nor never one of
them appearing to recall that he grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.
With the passing of the thing, came the reaction. Tippet sank to the
ground and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, Gord," he moaned. "Tyke
me awy from this orful plice." Brady, recovered from the first shock,
swore loud and luridly. He called upon all the saints to witness that
he was unafraid and that anybody with half an eye could have seen that
the creature was nothing more than "one av thim flyin' alligators" that
they all were familiar with.
"Yes," said Sinclair with fine sarcasm, "we've saw so many of them with
white shrouds on 'em."
"Shut up, you fool!" growled Brady. "If you know so much, tell us what
it was after bein' then."
Then he turned toward Bradley. "What was it, sir, do you think?" he
asked.
Bradley shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "It looked like a
winged human being clothed in a flowing white robe. Its face was more
human than otherwise. That is the way it looked to me; but what it
really was I can't even guess, for such a creature is as far beyond my
experience or knowledge as it is beyond yours. All that I am sure of
is that whatever else it may have been, it was quite material--it was
no ghost; rather just another of the strange forms of life which we
have met here and with which we should be accustomed by this time."
Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. "Yer cawn't tell me," he
cried. "Hi seen hit. Blime, Hi seen hit. Hit was ha dead man flyin'
through the hair. Didn't Hi see 'is heyes? Oh, Gord! Didn't Hi see
'em?"
"It didn't look like any beast or reptile to me," spoke up Sinclair.
"It was lookin' right down at me when I looked up and I saw its face
plain as I see yours. It had big round eyes that looked all cold and
dead, and its cheeks were sunken in deep, and I could see its yellow
teeth behind thin, tight-drawn lips--like a man who had been dead a
long while, sir," he added, turning toward Bradley.
"Yes!" James had not spoken since the apparition had passed over them,
and now it was scarce speech which he uttered--rather a series of
articulate gasps. "Yes--dead--a--long--while. It--means something.
It--come--for some--one. For one--of us. One--of us is goin'--to die.
I'm goin' to die!" he ended in a wail.
"Come! Come!" snapped Bradley. "Won't do. Won't do at all. Get to
work, all of you. Waste of time. Can't waste time."
His authoritative tones brought them all up standing, and presently
each was occupied with his own duties; but each worked in silence and
there was no singing and no bantering such as had marked the making of
previous camps. Not until they had eaten and to each had been issued
the little ration of smoking tobacco allowed after each evening meal
did any sign of a relaxation of taut nerves appear. It was Brady who
showed the first signs of returning good spirits. He commenced humming
"It's a Long Way to Tipperary" and presently to voice the words, but he
was well into his third song before anyone joined him, and even then
there seemed a dismal note in even the gayest of tunes.
A huge fire blazed in the opening of their rocky shelter that the
prowling carnivora might be kept at bay; and always one man stood on
guard, watchfully alert against a sudden rush by some maddened beast of
the jungle. Beyond the fire, yellow-green spots of flame appeared,
moved restlessly about, disappeared and reappeared, accompanied by a
hideous chorus of screams and growls and roars as the hungry
meat-eaters hunting through the night were attracted by the light or
the scent of possible prey.
But to such sights and sounds as these the five men had become callous.
They sang or talked as unconcernedly as they might have done in the
bar-room of some publichouse at home.
Sinclair was standing guard. The others were listening to Brady's
description of traffic congestion at the Rush Street bridge during the
rush hour at night. The fire crackled cheerily. The owners of the
yellow-green eyes raised their frightful chorus to the heavens.
Conditions seemed again to have returned to normal. And then, as
though the hand of Death had reached out and touched them all, the five
men tensed into sudden rigidity.
Above the nocturnal diapason of the teeming jungle sounded a dismal
flapping of wings and over head, through the thick night, a shadowy
form passed across the diffused light of the flaring camp-fire.
Sinclair raised his rifle and fired. An eerie wail floated down from
above and the apparition, whatever it might have been, was swallowed by
the darkness. For several seconds the listening men heard the sound of
those dismally flapping wings lessening in the distance until they
could no longer be heard.
Bradley was the first to speak. "Shouldn't have fired, Sinclair," he
said; "can't waste ammunition." But there was no note of censure in
his tone. It was as though he understood the nervous reaction that had
compelled the other's act.
"I couldn't help it, sir," said Sinclair. "Lord, it would take an iron
man to keep from shootin' at that awful thing. Do you believe in
ghosts, sir?"
"No," replied Bradley. "No such things."
"I don't know about that," said Brady. "There was a woman murdered
over on the prairie near Brighton--her throat was cut from ear to ear,
and--"
"Shut up," snapped Bradley.
"My grandaddy used to live down Coppington wy," said Tippet. "They
were a hold ruined castle on a 'ill near by, hand at midnight they used
to see pale blue lights through the windows an 'ear--"
"Will you close your hatch!" demanded Bradley. "You fools will have
yourselves scared to death in a minute. Now go to sleep."
But there was little sleep in camp that night until utter exhaustion
overtook the harassed men toward morning; nor was there any return of
the weird creature that had set the nerves of each of them on edge.
The following forenoon the party reached the base of the barrier cliffs
and for two days marched northward in an effort to discover a break in
the frowning abutment that raised its rocky face almost perpendicularly
above them, yet nowhere was there the slightest indication that the
cliffs were scalable.
Disheartened, Bradley determined to turn back toward the fort, as he
already had exceeded the time decided upon by Bowen Tyler and himself
for the expedition. The cliffs for many miles had been trending in a
northeasterly direction, indicating to Bradley that they were
approaching the northern extremity of the island. According to the
best of his calculations they had made sufficient easting during the
past two days to have brought them to a point almost directly north of
Fort Dinosaur and as nothing could be gained by retracing their steps
along the base of the cliffs he decided to strike due south through the
unexplored country between them and the fort.
That night (September 9, 1916), they made camp a short distance from
the cliffs beside one of the numerous cool springs that are to be found
within Caspak, oftentimes close beside the still more numerous warm and
hot springs which feed the many pools. After supper the men lay
smoking and chatting among themselves. Tippet was on guard. Fewer
night prowlers threatened them, and the men were commenting upon the
fact that the farther north they had traveled the smaller the number of
all species of animals became, though it was still present in what
would have seemed appalling plenitude in any other part of the world.
The diminution in reptilian life was the most noticeable change in the
fauna of northern Caspak. Here, however, were forms they had not met
elsewhere, several of which were of gigantic proportions.
According to their custom all, with the exception of the man on guard,
sought sleep early, nor, once disposed upon the ground for slumber,
were they long in finding it. It seemed to Bradley that he had
scarcely closed his eyes when he was brought to his feet, wide awake,
by a piercing scream which was punctuated by the sharp report of a
rifle from the direction of the fire where Tippet stood guard. As he
ran toward the man, Bradley heard above him the same uncanny wail that
had set every nerve on edge several nights before, and the dismal
flapping of huge wings. He did not need to look up at the
white-shrouded figure winging slowly away into the night to know that
their grim visitor had returned.
The muscles of his arm, reacting to the sight and sound of the menacing
form, carried his hand to the butt of his pistol; but after he had
drawn the weapon, he immediately returned it to its holster with a
shrug.
"What for?" he muttered. "Can't waste ammunition." Then he walked
quickly to where Tippet lay sprawled upon his face. By this time
James, Brady and Sinclair were at his heels, each with his rifle in
readiness.
"Is he dead, sir?" whispered James as Bradley kneeled beside the
prostrate form.
Bradley turned Tippet over on his back and pressed an ear close to the
other's heart. In a moment he raised his head. "Fainted," he
announced. "Get water. Hurry!" Then he loosened Tippet's shirt at
the throat and when the water was brought, threw a cupful in the man's
face. Slowly Tippet regained consciousness and sat up. At first he
looked curiously into the faces of the men about him; then an
expression of terror overspread his features. He shot a startled
glance up into the black void above and then burying his face in his
arms began to sob like a child.
"What's wrong, man?" demanded Bradley. "Buck up! Can't play cry-baby.
Waste of energy. What happened?"
"Wot 'appened, sir!" wailed Tippet. "Oh, Gord, sir! Hit came back.
Hit came for me, sir. Right hit did, sir; strite hat me, sir; hand
with long w'ite 'ands it clawed for me. Oh, Gord! Hit almost caught
me, sir. Hi'm has good as dead; Hi'm a marked man; that's wot Hi ham.
Hit was a-goin' for to carry me horf, sir."
"Stuff and nonsense," snapped Bradley. "Did you get a good look at it?"
Tippet said that he did--a much better look than he wanted. The thing
had almost clutched him, and he had looked straight into its
eyes--"dead heyes in a dead face," he had described them.
"Wot was it after bein', do you think?" inquired Brady.
"Hit was Death," moaned Tippet, shuddering, and again a pall of gloom
fell upon the little party.
The following day Tippet walked as one in a trance. He never spoke
except in reply to a direct question, which more often than not had to
be repeated before it could attract his attention. He insisted that he
was already a dead man, for if the thing didn't come for him during the
day he would never live through another night of agonized apprehension,
waiting for the frightful end that he was positive was in store for
him. "I'll see to that," he said, and they all knew that Tippet meant