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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Juju, by Murray Leinster

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

+

+

+

+Title: Juju

+

+Author: Murray Leinster

+

+Release Date: December 19, 2015 [EBook #50719]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUJU ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online

+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+                                 Juju

+

+                            Murray Leinster

+

+             [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced

+               from The Thrill Book, October 15, 1919.]

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER I.

+

+AN AFRICAN NIGHT.

+

+

+From the juju house the witch doctor emerged, bedaubed with colored

+earths and bright ashes. The drums renewed their frantic, resounding

+thunder. The torchbearers capered more actively, and yelled more

+excitedly. The drumming had gone on all day and its hypnotic effect

+had culminated in a species of ecstasy in which the blacks yelled and

+capered, and capered and yelled, without any clear notion of why or

+what they yelled.

+

+With great solemnity, the witch doctor led forward a young native girl,

+her face bedaubed with high juju signs. She was in the last stage of

+panic. If she did not flee, it was because she believed a worse fate

+awaited her flight than if she submitted to whatever was in store for

+her now.

+

+Two men stepped forward and threw necklaces of magic import about her

+neck. Two other men who upon occasion acted as the assistants of the

+chief witch doctor seized the girl's hands. The shouting mass of blacks

+formed themselves into a sort of column.

+

+At the front were the drums, those incredible native drums hollowed

+out of a single log, and which come from the yet unknown fastnesses

+of the darkest interior, far back of Lake Tchad. Behind them came

+the torchbearers, yelling a rhythmic chant and capering in almost

+unbelievable attitudes as they passed along. Next came the witch

+doctor, important and mysterious. Behind him came more torchbearers,

+yelling hysterically at the surrounding darkness. Then came the two

+assistants, dragging the young girl who was almost paralyzed with

+terror. And the entire population of the village followed in their

+wake, carrying flaming lights and yelling, yelling, yelling at the

+eternally unamazed African forest.

+

+The tall, dank tree trunks loomed mysteriously above the band of

+vociferous natives, with their thumping, rumbling, booming drums

+sounding hollowly from the front of the procession. The lights wound

+into the forest, deep into the unknown and unknowable bush. The yelling

+became fainter, but the drums continued to boom out monotonously

+through the throbbing silence of the African night. Boom, boom, boom,

+boom! Never a variation from the steady beat, though the sound was

+muted by the distance it had to travel before reaching us.

+

+I glanced across to where Evan Graham sat smoking. We were on the

+veranda of the casa on his plantation, four weeks' march from the city

+of Ticao, in the province of Ticao, Portuguese West Africa. From the

+veranda we could see through the cleared way to the village, a half

+mile away, and the whole scene of the juju procession had been spread

+before our eyes like a play.

+

+It puzzled me. I knew Evan made no faintest attempt to Christianize his

+slaves--and the villagers were surely his slaves--and yet, white men do

+not often allow witch doctors to flourish in their slave quarters. And

+the girl who had been led away--I had no idea what might become of her.

+Voodoo still puts out its head in strange forms in strange places. It

+might well be that some hellish ceremony would take place far back in

+the bush that night.

+

+Whatever was to happen had been planned long before, because I had

+arrived some four hours previously from a trip up beyond the Hungry

+Country, and the drums were beating then. I looked curiously at Evan to

+see what he thought of the open practice of juju by his slaves under

+their master's eyes. His expression was inscrutable. I knew better than

+to ask questions, but I could not help wondering what it all meant.

+Evan was a queer sort, at best, but to allow his natives to practice

+black magic--as was evidently the case here--before his very nose was

+queerer than anything he had done before.

+

+He was not taken by surprise, I know. I had heard the drums that

+afternoon, long before I entered the village. They were beating

+with the rhythmic monotony that is so typical of the African when

+he is disturbed in spirit and wants to be comforted, or when he is

+comfortable and wants excitement. Either way will do.

+

+My "boys," wandering along in a more or less listless fashion with the

+conventional forty-five pounds on their backs, had heard the drumming

+and became more interested. My caravan did not close up, however. It

+was spread out over anywhere from a mile to a mile and a half of the

+old slave trail that goes down to Venghela, and those in the rear

+hastened by precisely the same degree as those in front.

+

+According to instructions, the foremost pair halted while still half a

+mile away from the village and waited for the rest of us to come up.

+For three months I had been back inland, a part of the time back even

+of the Hungry Country, where the grass is bitter to the taste, and all

+the world is half mad for salt. For three months I had been moving

+quickly and constantly.

+

+Having quit the country--I fervently hope for good--it will do no

+harm to admit that my constant moving was due less to the demands of

+business than to a desire to be elsewhere when the Belgian officials

+arrived. The Belgian Kongo is just north of the province of Ticao,

+and I had been skimming its edges, buying ivory and rubber from the

+natives across the line. The colonial government does not encourage

+independent traders, and it would not have been pleasant for me had

+I been caught. In Ticao, of course, I was not molested. A small

+honorarium to the governor of the province made him my friend, and my

+conscience did not bother me. I paid ten times the prices the natives

+usually got and I imposed no fines or contributions on the villages.

+If you know anything about the Kongo, you will regard me as I regarded

+myself--as more or less of a benefactor.

+

+After three months of that, though, and two or three close shaves

+from a choice of fighting or capture, I was glad to get back to

+civilization, even such civilization as Evan Graham's casa. Away from

+Ticao, Evan Graham would have been shunned for the sort of man he was.

+In Ticao, one is not particular. There are few enough Anglo-Saxon white

+men of any sort--the two consuls, half a dozen missionaries, and about

+three men like myself, who take chances in the interior. The rest of

+the population is either Portuguese or black, preponderatingly black,

+with a blending layer of half- and quarter-breeds.

+

+Evan was a cad and several different kinds of an animal, but he was

+a white man, he talked English such as one hears at home, and he had

+a pool table and civilized drinks all of four weeks' march from the

+city of Ticao. I always stopped overnight with him on my way back from

+the interior. I knew that he had bribed the governor to overlook the

+law which prescribes that no white man shall settle more than forty

+kilometers from a fort, because he wanted to have a free hand with

+his natives. I knew, too, that he had no shred of title to the land

+he tilled, or to the services of the natives he forced to work in his

+fields. He had come out there with four or five of the dingy-brown

+half-castes that are overseers for half the rocas in Ticao, had

+frightened or coerced the inhabitants of three villages into signing

+the silly little contracts that bind them to work for a white man for

+so many years at ridiculous wage, and now had a plantation that was

+tremendously profitable.

+

+I never had understood just how he made the blacks serve him so well.

+He seemed to have them frightened nearly to death. Most plantations

+have the slave quarters--the blacks are officially "_contrahidos_," or

+contract laborers, but in practice they are slaves--most plantations

+have the slave quarters surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and let

+savage dogs loose outside the fence at night, but Graham allowed his

+natives to live in the villages they had occupied before his coming and

+seemed to take no precautions against their running away.

+

+This open practice of juju before his eyes and apparently with his

+consent was of a piece with the rest of his queerness. My own boys

+always seemed to be glad to get away from the neighborhood of his

+plantation. I had heard a word or two passed among them that seemed to

+hint at a juju house in some secret clearing near the village. I had

+thought it possible that it was by means of some mummery in that temple

+that he kept his natives in hand, but juju is a dangerous thing for a

+white man to meddle with.

+

+In any event it was none of my business. I was sitting on his porch,

+one of his drinks at my elbow, smoking one of his cigarettes especially

+imported from London, and it behooved me to display no curiosity unless

+he should choose to speak. He looked over at me and smiled quizzically.

+

+"I wonder what those poor devils think they get by all that juju

+palaver," he said ruminatively.

+

+"I don't know," I admitted. "My own boys are constantly at it, of

+course. There's a witch doctor just outside of Venghela who'll be rich

+when my caravan gets there, for his services in bringing my bearers

+back without falling into the tender hands of our neighbors."

+

+My carriers were free men, whom I hired and paid. It would have been

+cheaper to adopt the _servaçal_ system and buy contract slaves for

+carriers, but being free men they served my purpose better. For one

+thing, they gave the Kongo natives more confidence in me, and for

+another, they traveled faster when there was danger of pursuit. A slave

+would merely have changed masters if I had been caught, but these men

+had something to lose.

+

+"I'm going to stop this juju sooner or later," said Graham lazily.

+"My brother Arthur has come out and is up after a gorilla in the

+Kongo--probably around where you've been--and he's been asking me to

+hold on to a real juju doctor for him to interview. When he's through,

+I think I'll stop all that. Queer old duck of a witch doctor here."

+

+He clapped his hands and one of the house servants came out with a

+siphon and bottle of gin. The man was trembling as he stood beside his

+master's chair. Graham snapped two or three words in the local dialect

+and the man's knees threatened to give way. He fled precipitately into

+the house and came out again--trembling more violently--with limes.

+

+"Never can train blacks properly," Graham grumbled, as he sliced a lime

+in half and squeezed it into his tumbler. "Now, a Japanese servant is

+perfect."

+

+He poured his gin and the seltzer fizzed into the glass. He lifted it

+to his lips and drained it.

+

+"Japan?" I asked. "I've never been there."

+

+"I have," said Graham morosely. "Been everywhere. England, America,

+Japan, India. All rotten places."

+

+"No rottener than this," I said disgustedly. "I had three weeks of

+fever up in the Kongo, with a Belgian Kongo Company agent after me the

+whole time. I'm still shaky from it. When I can go back to white man's

+country again----"

+

+I stopped. Graham was lighting a cigarette, and I noticed that the

+flame wavered as he held the match. There are some men who are cold

+sober up to a certain point, and then what they have drunk takes hold

+of them all at once. Graham was such a person. When he spoke again his

+words were slurred and sluggish.

+

+"White man's country," he repeated uncertainly, and then made an effort

+to speak clearly. "I'm goin' back some day. Got dear old home, family

+servants, broad lawn--everything. Not mine though. Younger son. Had to

+win hearth an' saddle of m'own. Arthur's got it all, damn him. Always

+was lucky beggar. Got all family estates, all income, I got nothing.

+Then I liked girl. Second cousin. Arthur got her, or goin' to. Engaged.

+Damn lucky beggar. Always was lucky chap. Steady and dependable. Damn

+stodgy, I think. Told him so. Called him a ---- ---- an' he kicked me

+out. All because I got into trouble and signed his name to somethin',

+to get out."

+

+"Easy there, Graham," I warned. "I don't want to hear anything, you

+know."

+

+"You better not," he said suddenly, in a clear voice. He turned

+beastlike eyes on me. "If anybody tries to pry into my affairs, they

+don't get far."

+

+I blew a cloud of smoke over the railing of the veranda and said

+nothing. Through the moonlit night the throbbing of the drums came

+clearly to us sitting there. They beat on steadily, monotonously,

+hypnotically. There was something strangely menacing in the rhythmic,

+pulsing rumble. The cries of night birds and insects, and occasionally

+an animal sound, seemed natural and normal, but the muttering of those

+drums with that indescribable hollow tone they possess, seemed to

+portend a strange event.

+

+"Juju," said Graham abruptly, "is the key to the African mind. I don't

+give a damn for the natives. All I care about is what I can get out of

+this country, but I say that juju is the key to the African mind."

+

+I smoked on a moment in silence. "I'd rather not meddle with it," I

+remarked. "Sooner or later it means ground glass in your coffee of a

+morning. Just before I left Ticao, Da Cunha found some in his. He shot

+his cook and then found it was another boy entirely."

+

+"I'd have whipped him to death with a _chiboka_," said Graham viciously.

+

+"That's what Da Cunha did," I informed him mildly. "But the governor's

+made him leave Ticao for six months. He's over in Mozambique."

+

+"My boys'll never dare try to poison me," declared Graham. He leaned

+toward me in drunken confidence. "They believe that if they did----"

+

+"The procession has started again," I said, interrupting him. "I hear

+the yelling."

+

+It was so. The drums still beat monotonously and rhythmically, but

+beneath their deep bass muttering, a faint, high, continuous sound

+could be heard. The procession seemed to be making its way back to the

+village.

+

+"I'm goin' to bed," announced Graham sharply. "You go t' bed too. Don't

+sit out here an' smoke. Go to bed."

+

+He stood up and waited for me to enter the house. Puzzled, and rather

+annoyed, I went inside. I heard Graham walk heavily and uncertainly

+through to the rear and heard him speak to several of the servants. The

+contrast between his rasping, harsh tones and the frightened voices of

+his servants was complete. They were very evidently in deadly fear of

+him.

+

+The sound of the procession grew louder and louder. Something about it

+perplexed me for a moment, but then I realized that it was not making

+direct for the village. It was coming toward the house. I frowned a

+moment, and looked to make sure that my automatic was handy and in

+proper working order.

+

+The procession was very near. I looked out of the window and saw the

+twinkling lights of the torches through the bush. The drums were

+thunderous now, but the beat was not the war beat. It was purely

+ceremonial. The yelling was high-pitched and continuous.

+

+The head of the procession emerged from the bush and advanced across

+the clearing about the house. It swung and headed for the rear of the

+house, and the long line of capering, torch-bearing humanity followed

+it.

+

+The witch doctor came into view, and the girl. Her panic had reached

+its pitch now. I have never seen such ultimate fear as was expressed on

+that girl's face, outlined by the flickering light of the torches. The

+procession moved until the end had passed beyond the rear corner of the

+casa, then turned, and evidently turned again.

+

+I saw it moving back toward the village. A pregnant fact impressed

+me. The native girl was missing. She had evidently been left behind

+somewhere about the rear of the house. The yelling mass of black

+humanity capered and shrilled its way down the cleared way to the

+village and gathered in front of the juju house.

+

+Then some dance or ceremony seemed to begin. What it was, I do not

+know. I was very tired and presently I went to sleep. But the drums

+beat steadily, all night long. They entered the fabric of my dreams and

+made my rest uneasy. It could not have been long before morning when I

+awoke with a start and found myself sitting up with every nerve tense.

+There was no sound, but I had a feeling as if I had been awakened by a

+scream, somewhere about the house.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER II.

+

+THE SEEKER OF VENGEANCE.

+

+

+The consul listened gravely while I told him about it. He had asked me

+to give all the information I could about Graham. We were on the porch

+of the consulate and the whole city of Ticao was spread out before us.

+The sea pounded restlessly against the low bluffs upon which the city

+was built, and surged angrily about the peninsula on which the fort is

+situated.

+

+"I woke in the middle of the night," I concluded, "feeling that there

+had been a scream somewhere in the house, but not another sound came. I

+couldn't get to sleep again, and in the morning I noticed that the girl

+who had seemed to be the center of interest in the juju procession had

+been installed as a servant at the house. Another one of the servants

+had vanished. The new girl looked pitifully scared, perpetually

+panic-stricken, though the rest of the servants look frightened enough,

+in all conscience. That's all I know."

+

+The consul tugged thoughtfully at his mustache.

+

+"Now why----" he began, and stopped. "The mail boat dropped two

+Englishwomen here on her last trip, a Mrs. Braymore and a Miss

+Dalforth. Charming women, both of them. They are calling on the

+governor's wife this afternoon. They came to me and asked me to assist

+them in getting up to Graham's plantation. They told me he was Miss

+Dalforth's cousin."

+

+I nodded, frowning. "He said that his cousin--second cousin--would

+possibly turn up. His brother is up in the Kongo somewhere trying to

+bag gorillas and is going to come from there on through and stop at

+his place. Miss Dalforth is probably the second cousin and is engaged

+to the brother who is hunting."

+

+"Hm." The consul looked somewhat relieved. "I see. But why on earth

+should two women want to go up there? Do you think they'd be safe?"

+

+"I don't know," I said dubiously. "There's no fort anywhere near, and

+the natives are scared stiff. They might bolt, but Graham seems to have

+them thoroughly in hand. If the ladies once reached the plantation,

+they'd probably be safe enough, and Graham's brother could bring them

+down to the coast again. The plantation is a queer place, though. I

+think there's juju in the air. I'd discourage them from going, if I

+could."

+

+"I've tried," said the consul. "I've informed them what sort the

+Portuguese traders are, and told them I simply wouldn't let them go up

+alone, or with one of those chaps as escort. I didn't know anything

+about Graham. They inquired around for an escort, and one of the

+missionaries mentioned you."

+

+"As a respectable person?" I asked with a smile.

+

+The consul nodded, matching my smile. "They have quite decided that

+you are to escort them to Graham's plantation. I don't think you'll

+refuse," he added, when I shook my head. "Miss Dalforth impressed me

+as a young woman accustomed to having her way. She saw the governor

+and smiled at him, and he agreed that you would be the best possible

+person. In fact, he said he would ask you himself."

+

+"I'm not leaving for a month," I told him. "I've had enough of the back

+country for at least that long, and my carriers need a rest."

+

+"We'll see," said the consul ruefully. "I'll wager she has you setting

+out in a week."

+

+He was nearly right at that. I was introduced to the two of them, and

+Miss Dalforth was all that he had said. I had to give my bearers a

+rest, however, and it was two weeks before we set out.

+

+It was a hindrance, having women with me. They traveled in an ox

+cart, and at nearly every stream the wheels had to be taken off and a

+tarpaulin fixed about the body of the wagon to make it into a raftlike

+float, in which they were ferried across. Had Miss Dalforth--or Alicia,

+as I heard Mrs. Braymore call her--had Alicia been less charming, or

+less anxious to cause as little trouble as possible, I would have

+cursed them nearly the entire time. As it was, I bore the delays with

+equanimity.

+

+They were delighted the first day when we went up the trail to

+Venghela. I showed them the street lamp at which the great slave trail

+from the interior ended, and they looked dubious. When I showed them

+the Padre Silvestre's mission, with its three villages of redeemed

+slaves, they grew a little bit white and quiet.

+

+The padre tried to persuade them not to go on, but as luck would have

+it, a runner came in on his way to Ticao with a message from Graham.

+His brother had arrived from the interior. That strengthened their

+resolution. We continued the journey.

+

+While on the trail I could not speak to them, being busily engaged in

+the supervision of my caravan. At night, however, we conversed. It was

+good to hear cultivated white women talk again and talk about something

+besides the slave traffic, the missionary women's sole topic when they

+find a listener who can be trusted not to repeat their views to the

+governor.

+

+The natives are kidnaped or captured far in the interior, brought down

+to the coast, and frankly sold. Then they are interviewed and, after

+making a mark upon a bit of printed paper, are considered to have made

+a contract to serve a white man for four years at one milreis--about a

+dollar--a month.

+

+To call it slave traffic is highly insulting to the Portuguese, but

+to call it the _servaçal_ system is inadequate. They are _servaçaes_,

+or _contrahidos_, which means contract laborers, in theory, but in

+practice they are slaves. They never see their native villages again.

+The slave trail from the interior is littered with the manacles used to

+confine them, and there are gruesome relics all along the way, of those

+natives who were unable to bear the hardships of the journey.

+

+I told them of these things. I told them of how the Padre Silvestre

+sacrificed his very soul to keep his villagers from being sold again

+as _servaçaes_, how the blacks rose on Da Vega's plantation and sacked

+it, and all I knew of the whole disgusting system. I had no intention

+of making myself a hero--and my conscience still hurts me when I think

+of some of the things I grew absolutely accustomed to--but I did allow

+myself to show my feelings on the subject of Portuguese government.

+

+Alicia listened, and one night when I had explained to them precisely

+what it means for a black to be sent to the island of San Felipe or

+Gomé, she held out her hand to me very gravely.

+

+"I think it is very brave of you," she said, "to stay here and do what

+you can to help the poor blacks."

+

+I stared at her, tempted to laugh. "My dear young lady," I told her,

+"I am an outlaw, practically, who trades with the Kongo natives and

+attempts to elude the Belgian officials as much as possible. I'm

+tolerated here in Ticao because I bribe the Portuguese. I'm no hero. To

+the Belgians I am practically what an I. D. B. is in the Transvaal. And

+you know what an illicit diamond buyer is considered."

+

+"I don't believe it," she said firmly. "I think you stay here to help

+the poor natives."

+

+She was so beautifully sincere in attributing the noblest motives to

+me that I could not laugh at her. Her blessed incomprehension made me

+forbear to kick Mboka, who is my official gun bearer and lieutenant,

+when he lost the bolt of my best rifle and threw away the weapon to

+conceal his misdoing. I had to kick him twice over the day following

+for the lapse, when he took advantage of my lenience and stole half of

+my jam.

+

+She was a charming girl. Mrs. Braymore was suffering in the journeying

+and stoically relapsed into silence to conceal her emotion, but Alicia

+was perpetually lively and eager for new things of interest.

+

+She soon grew to adopt a tone of frank friendliness with me, and I

+had to remind myself more than once that she was engaged to Graham's

+brother, and that it would not do for me to fall in love with her. It

+was odd about her engagement, though. She spoke of her fiancé quite

+simply, but without any excess of affection. In fact, she confessed

+that she thought of him more as a brother than anything else. All three

+of them, Graham, his brother and Alicia, had been raised together and

+were very much like brothers and sister.

+

+I told myself sternly that, no matter how she felt about her fiancé,

+she was engaged to him, and I had better forget that she was delightful

+to look upon and an amazingly good companion. I could not manage it,

+however, and the last week of the trip was not easy for me. I had to be

+friendly and no more.

+

+In a way I was very glad when we saw two khaki sun helmets coming

+toward us, though I was much depressed at the thought of parting from

+Alicia. I had sent a runner on ahead, and Graham and his brother met

+us some four miles down the trail. I was pleasantly surprised at the

+sight of Graham's brother. Years before he had been at a little English

+seaside resort where I was spending the summer and we had grown very

+friendly. He kissed Alicia in a brotherly fashion and shook hands with

+me.

+

+"I perpetrate a bromide," he said quizzically. "The world is a small

+place."

+

+"Arthur Graham!" I exclaimed. "I knew you in Clovelly six years ago."

+

+"You're right," he said cheerfully. "How are you now? Then you were

+flirting mildly with a buxom Devon lassie."

+

+"And now we meet in darkest Africa," I said, smiling. "Let's move on."

+

+We went forward again, Alicia, in the ox cart, gayly retailing to the

+two brothers our adventures on the trip up. I was rather surprised

+to notice that both of them were heavily armed, and it bothered me a

+little. It looked as if there were trouble with the natives. Each of

+the two brothers carried a heavy repeating rifle besides an automatic

+pistol in his belt, and Arthur looked decidedly worn, though I saw that

+he was trying to conceal it from Alicia.

+

+My suspicion was confirmed when I observed that, though he tried not to

+let Alicia see it, he was keenly searching the way ahead of us with his

+eyes. He seemed particularly worried when we passed near a tree and his

+grasp on his rifle tightened. Even after we were well away from it, he

+looked back nervously.

+

+We passed around the village and reached the casa by another route,

+Alicia chatting cheerfully with all of us from her seat in the cart.

+Evan Graham seemed quite at ease and entered into her talk with real

+interest, but Arthur--who as her fiancé should have been overjoyed to

+see her--was nervous and preoccupied. His rifle was never far from a

+position in readiness to fling it to his shoulder, and his eyes roved

+restlessly about with a species of dread in them. I walked close to him.

+

+"Arthur," I said in a low tone that Alicia would not catch. "You're

+nervous. Natives?"

+

+"They're acting queerly, but it's worse than that," he said in the same

+low tone, glancing at Alicia to make sure her attention was elsewhere.

+"I'd give anything I possess to have Alicia somewhere else. I'll tell

+you later. Just keep your eyes open and, if you see anything, shoot

+quickly."

+

+Evan did not seem to be worried. He was strolling leisurely along,

+using his rifle as a walking stick, talking casually to Alicia. His

+manners were very good and his voice was soft, very unlike the rasping

+snarl I had heard him use to his servants. Looking closely at him, I

+could see unmistakable signs that he had been drinking heavily of late.

+He seemed quite sober to-day, though. The contrast between his careless

+attitude and Arthur's worried air was striking. We saw one or two

+natives on our way to the house, and they promptly hid themselves in

+the bush. Arthur paid no attention to them. Whatever the trouble might

+be, it was not the blacks that he feared, though he had said they were

+acting queerly.

+

+He led me aside almost as soon as we reached the casa. I told Mboka to

+pile and count the loads, and sent the carriers to the quarters they

+would find ready for them. Evan was inside the house, installing Alicia

+and Mrs. Braymore in their rooms, and showing them the servants who

+would wait on them. Arthur came over to me with a worried frown.

+

+"I say, Murray," he told me nervously. "I'd ask you to take Alicia back

+to the coast to-morrow if I dared, but she's here now, and it would be

+just as dangerous for her to go back."

+

+"What's the matter?" I demanded. "It isn't the natives. What _is_ the

+matter?"

+

+He looked about anxiously. "I shot a female gorilla up in the Kongo,"

+he said jerkily, "and her mate got away. He's followed my caravan ever

+since, up to two weeks ago. Then I hit him with a lucky shot, but he

+escaped. You know they will try to kill the slayer of their mate."

+

+"I know," I replied. "One of them followed me for three weeks once,

+until I bushwhacked and killed him."

+

+"I shot this female," said Arthur quickly. "I shot her through the hip

+and she screamed for her mate. She couldn't get away. He came crashing

+through the trees, and I fired at him. I thought he'd vanished and went

+up to the female. I finished her off, and then the male came for me. I

+shot him through the arm and he made off. All that night he moaned and

+shrieked around my camp. My boys were badly frightened. Next morning

+he dropped from a tree inside the camp, knocked the heads of two of my

+carriers together, and crushed in their skulls. I rushed out with a

+gun and he disappeared. Three days later he dropped straight out of a

+tree almost over my head and made for me. One of my boys was cleaning a

+spear, directly in the path of the gorilla. He tried to run the beast

+through, but it stopped long enough to break his neck and by that time

+I'd got a gun. The gorilla disappeared again. From that time on it

+haunted me. If one or two of my boys strayed from the camp, they didn't

+come back. The beast has killed six of my best carriers and my gun

+bearer. And I never got a fair shot at it! I fired at it two weeks ago

+and I found blood where it had been, but no sign of the beast itself.

+Since then I've been left in peace."

+

+"The animal may have dropped the trail, or it may be dead," I commented

+thoughtfully, "but I don't blame you for wanting to be careful."

+

+"The thought of that huge ape perhaps lurking outside, perhaps about to

+drop down at any moment, with Alicia here," said Arthur desperately,

+"it's enough to drive a man insane. You know they carry off native

+women sometimes. We've got to protect Alicia. If it kills me, it

+doesn't matter. Evan won't believe it's around. He's going armed to

+humor me, but the beast is near; it's somewhere about."

+

+I felt myself growing pale. A monstrous ape, lingering about the place

+with malignant intent, and Alicia laughing unconsciously inside the

+house, was enough to make me feel squeamish. I unconsciously tightened

+my grasp on my rifle. Alicia came out on the porch at that moment and

+beckoned to us.

+

+"We'll not mention this--yet," said Arthur, as we went up.

+

+I nodded. Alicia was all enthusiasm about the comforts Evan had

+managed to put into his house so far inland, and when we sat down to

+dinner, the bright silver and white tablecloth did give an effect of

+civilization. When one looked at the black faces of the servants who

+waited on us, and at the tattooing and nose rings that disfigured them,

+however, the illusion vanished at once.

+

+I was a long time getting to sleep that night. The next morning would

+see me going on my way into the interior, and I would in all likelihood

+never see Alicia again. When I at last fell asleep, I was uneasy, and

+when I woke, it was in a strangely silent house. Evan Graham's voice

+aroused me. He was calling me to get up. His ease of manner and absence

+of worry had vanished. Arthur, over his shoulder, looked even more

+apprehensive than before.

+

+"Get up," said Evan briefly. "The servants skipped out during the

+night. Your boys have gone, too. There's juju business going on. And

+the oxen that pulled Alicia's cart have been clubbed to death in their

+stalls."

+

+The servants had fled from the house. There was not another white

+man within a hundred and fifty miles. All about us were natives who

+might fear Evan Graham but certainly hated him, and somewhere in the

+woods, we had reason to believe, a monstrous ape lurked, awaiting an

+opportunity to wreak his bestial vengeance upon the slayer of his mate.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER III.

+

+EVAN'S SORTIE.

+

+

+We explored the house first and came upon a surprise. The native girl

+I had seen conducted to the house by the juju procession two months

+before crouched in one corner. She was too much frightened to give any

+coherent account of the other servants' leaving.

+

+They had simply gone, she said. No one had said anything to her, and

+she had been left behind. The oxen lay in their stalls, their heads

+beaten in with blows from a heavy iron bar that lay bent on the ground

+beside them. Even my own boys had vanished. That struck me most

+forcibly of all, because I had treated them well and had thought I

+could count on as much loyalty from them as any white man can expect

+from the average native.

+

+Mboka's defection really bothered me. I had believed well of him and

+was in a way genuinely fond of him. He had gone with the rest, though.

+The loads of the carriers lay in a huge pile. Small and precious

+possessions of my boys lay about them. That was perhaps the queerest

+part of the whole affair. In leaving secretly in the middle of the

+night, the servants had not stopped to steal, or even to take with

+them what was their own. They had apparently risen and stolen away in

+shivering fear.

+

+We went back to the house from the servants' quarters full of rather

+uneasy speculations. Juju was obviously at the bottom of whatever

+was happening, and there is no telling what may enter the head of a

+juju doctor. Passing through the rear rooms, Evan paused to order the

+solitary native girl to prepare food for us. We went on to find Alicia

+and Mrs. Braymore up and curious. They were on the front porch when

+they heard us, and Alicia came inside to smile at all of us and ask

+questions.

+

+"Where are all the servants, Evan?" she demanded. "We had not a drop of

+water this morning. And what's happened to the native village? On the

+way up here we saw lots of villages, but none of them were quite like

+yours."

+

+We looked down at the squalid huts of the village. Not a sign of

+life could be seen. Not one of the usually innumerable tiny fires of

+a native village was burning, and the single street was absolutely

+deserted.

+

+"We'll take a look at it," said Arthur grimly. "I don't like this

+business. Murray, you'll come?"

+

+I picked up my rifle and moved forward. As we walked across the

+clearing before the casa, Arthur turned to me.

+

+"Don't forget about that big ape, either. He's probably waiting for a

+chance to drop out of a tree on top of us."

+

+It was a pleasant prospect. If we went down the cleared way toward

+the village, we would be perfect targets for bowmen or spear throwers

+from the bush on either side. If we went through the bush, we ran

+an amazingly good chance of running up against the gorilla. And the

+gorilla had learned cunning, too, and would not expose himself to a

+shot if he could help it. He would wait patiently until the chance

+came for him to rush upon us and crack our skulls together without our

+having time to raise a firearm, or else, until he could reach a hairy

+arm down and seize us----

+

+I have seen iron bars bent and twisted by the hands of those big apes.

+A sudden thought came to me. The iron bar in the stables, with which

+the oxen had been clubbed to death!

+

+We made our way cautiously down to the center of the cleared space,

+searching the bush on either side with our eyes, but affecting an

+unconcerned air in case hidden watchers saw us. We came to the village

+and strolled inside. It was absolutely deserted. Not one man, woman, or

+child remained within it. Their possessions were undisturbed, save that

+all their arms were gone, but cooking pots, carved stools, skin robes,

+ornaments, minor fetishes, children's toys, everything else lay as it

+had last been used by its owners. Only a few native dogs skulked around

+the silent huts. There was not a single sign that gave a hint of the

+reason for the mysterious exodus of the natives.

+

+"I've not been out here long," said Arthur crisply, "but I've learned

+that when natives do inexplicable things, juju is at the bottom of it.

+What do you say?"

+

+"I agree with you. I wish I could see some signs, though. I can read

+some juju palaver. But there isn't a sign. No charms, no _spoor_

+whatever. We'll go back to the house and talk it over with Evan."

+

+We started slowly back toward the house. I was walking on ahead,

+puzzling over the oddities of the situation and trying to piece

+together a meaning in it all when Arthur stopped short. His voice

+reached me, little more than a whisper.

+

+"Murray," he said sharply, "that pongo is trailing us."

+

+I listened, but could hear nothing. One would hardly expect a white

+man's ears to detect a gorilla taking special pains to be quiet. Arthur

+seemed to hear something, however. He quietly raised his rifle. I

+followed the direction in which he was pointing, but could see nothing.

+He fired. A branch swayed slightly where his bullet had grazed it, but

+aside from that there was no sign.

+

+"I didn't see a thing," I remarked.

+

+Arthur shook his head. "It may be nerves," he said quietly. "That

+damned beast has haunted me, but I think I saw it."

+

+We went on up to the house slowly. Just before we reached the porch

+Arthur looked at me pitifully.

+

+"I heard it following us all the way," he told me. The perspiration was

+standing out on his forehead. "It _is_ there, and it _is_ waiting for a

+chance to revenge itself on me. And the beast has learned cunning! We

+must look out for Alicia."

+

+I nodded. Evan was waiting for us.

+

+"Find anything?" he called down. "What did you shoot at?"

+

+"The gorilla," said Arthur in a low tone. "It's there and it's

+determined. We'd better warn Alicia and Mrs. Braymore."

+

+Evan looked dubious. "Did Murray see it?"

+

+I shook my head.

+

+Evan frowned thoughtfully. "Arthur, old chap, it may be just nerves.

+The women have enough to worry them with the way the natives are

+acting, anyway. We'll keep a sharp lookout, of course. I'm going to

+hunt up those natives, though."

+

+"They're your natives," I said, "but I question whether that's a wise

+move. If it's just native foolishness, they'll come back. If not,

+they're liable to be pretty--well, reckless."

+

+"They're my natives," said Evan angrily. "I don't intend to humor them.

+I'll throw a scare into them that will last them ten years. If I know

+anything of juju----"

+

+"What?" I asked.

+

+"They'll never dare breathe without permission hereafter," Evan said

+grimly.

+

+He seemed to be in a cold fury. Remembering the abject fear in which

+his slaves seemed to be all the time, I wondered what he might have

+in store for them. I opened my mouth to protest against his trying to

+look for his natives, but stopped. That juju house at which my boys had

+hinted, concealed in some hidden clearing near the village, might hold

+a secret by which he controlled them. In any event, he knew his own

+natives best.

+

+We went into the house and sat down to breakfast. We must have made a

+queer sight, sitting there before that spotless table, our clothing

+disheveled and hastily donned, our rifles leaning against our chairs.

+Neither Arthur nor myself could eat more than a little, but Evan's

+appetite seemed undiminished. The native girl waited on us, the lurking

+panic in her eyes never very far from the surface. It seemed nearest

+when she looked at Evan.

+

+I was most worried about my own boys. It was decidedly queer that

+they had deserted me, especially Mboka. He had been with me for all

+of a year, and I had really grown to trust him. He had gone with the

+others, though, and the very mystery of his disappearance seemed to add

+somewhat to the menace of the silence that surrounded us.

+

+When I thought of it, however, it was no less odd that Evan's overseers

+had vanished. From the nature of their position, they would be hated by

+the other and full-blooded natives, and it was singular in the extreme

+that they had gone with them.

+

+Then I remembered a tale I had once heard, of a mystic voodoo worship

+that was spreading secretly over the whole of West Africa. The story

+ran that an attempt was being made to band all the natives possible

+together in this voodoo worship, and then at a given signal they were

+all to rise. The Indian Mutiny would be repeated. Every white man on

+the West Coast would be rushed by the nearest blacks, and the dominance

+of the white race made a thing of the past, in Africa any rate.

+

+I felt cold at the thought that the attempt--which I had thought dead

+these many years--might have been secretly and insidiously winning

+converts all this time, and that all the blacks between us and the

+coast might be risen and only waiting for courage to attack us. We were

+the only whites in a hundred and fifty miles anyway, and if the strange

+behavior of the natives meant mischief, we were probably doomed as it

+was. It gave me a sickish feeling to think that the other might be

+true, though, that a second mutiny was in progress.

+

+As if to confirm my belief, at just that moment, drums began to beat,

+far off in the bush. To the south of us they began their monotonous,

+rhythmic rumble. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Never a pause, never skipping

+a beat, never altering in the slightest the hypnotic muttering. We

+stopped eating and stared at each other. The drums throbbed on,

+sullenly, far, far away. Evan grew angry at the insolence of his

+slaves. I looked at Alicia and made a mental vow that my last cartridge

+should be saved for her. Arthur listened with an air of detachment, and

+then went on with his breakfast.

+

+The first drums had been beating for perhaps fifteen minutes when, to

+the northeast, more drums took up the rhythmic pounding. Evan's eyes

+narrowed. He went to a window and looked out. As he moved, he passed

+close to the native girl, and she shrank back fearfully. While he

+stared out across the clearing, a third set of drums began to beat--to

+the northwest, this time. We were ringed in.

+

+Evan came to the table with a grim expression on his face. "The black

+fools!" he said furiously. "They dared not come to me! I'll go to them

+and put a stop to this!"

+

+"Evan!" exclaimed Alicia, frightened. "You'll stay here with us!"

+

+"This is no time for caution," said Evan grimly. "If we leave them

+alone, they'll hold a juju palaver until they've gathered nerve to rush

+us. I'll walk in on their council, and we'll see what happens."

+

+"I'll go," said Arthur, quickly sensing the psychology of the move Evan

+proposed to make. "I'd better go."

+

+"It would be suicide!" Alicia exclaimed again. "One white man among all

+those blacks. They could kill you in an instant."

+

+"That is precisely why they would be afraid to," I interposed. "The

+mere fact that a white man dared walk into their palaver and order them

+about, would frighten them. No negro would dare do it, and they would

+not understand how a white man could. It's quite possible that a sheer

+bluff may win out. Of course we've got to do something. I think I'd

+better go, though. My boys are in that crowd and they're rather fond of

+me, I believe. I'll have some of them halfway with me at the start."

+

+Evan shook his head. "Your boys are in that crowd," he said curtly,

+"but the very fact that they're fond of you will make them kill you

+that much quicker. You know natives. Now _my_ natives hate me like

+poison, and there's not one of them but would kill me like a shot if he

+dared. They'll be afraid when I drop in on them. I'm the one to go and

+I'm going. Besides, I know the local dialect. You don't. You'll hear

+one set of drums stop in half an hour."

+

+He picked up his rifle and went out of the door. Alicia watched him

+leave, her face utterly pale.

+

+"He's going to his death!" she said in a whisper. "Stop him, oh, please

+stop him!"

+

+"We're all in just as much danger as he is, dear," said Arthur

+tenderly. "He's taking the one chance that may bring us out of this

+without fighting. He'll go into the middle of that bunch of natives and

+by sheer nerve frighten them into doing as he says. If all three of us

+went, we'd be rushed on sight."

+

+Alicia's lips trembled, and Arthur tried to comfort her. I went to the

+door and stood looking after Evan. It was illogical, but with all of us

+very probably facing death, and certainly a siege, I was struck with a

+pang of jealousy when I saw Arthur put his arms about Alicia's shoulder

+to comfort her. Mrs. Braymore was white to the lips, but gamely tried

+to be casual and cheerful. She came and stood by me as I looked out of

+the door.

+

+"Quite frankly," she asked me quietly, "what are our chances?"

+

+"I don't know," I told her gloomily. "We don't even know what the

+natives are up to yet. Those drums do not sound well. They may mean

+anything and they may mean nothing."

+

+Mrs. Braymore looked at me searchingly. Any one could see that she was

+frightened, but she was doing her best not to show it.

+

+"And if they mean--anything?"

+

+"There is a Portuguese fort a hundred and fifty miles away," I answered

+grimly. "They might send soldiers to lift the siege on us if they hear

+about it. I'm assuming we'll be besieged. Things look that way. Evan

+must have treated his slaves worse than usual. Usually they simply run

+away. It's not often they try anything of this kind. I don't like the

+sound of those drums. That means organization and purpose. All I can

+say is that I hope Evan succeeds with the natives."

+

+Mrs. Braymore blanched a little more, but smiled as bravely as she

+could.

+

+"Well," she said quietly, "I know Alicia well enough to promise you

+that we'll be as little of a drawback as possible. If you decide to try

+anything drastic, such as attempting to escape through the bush, we'll

+do our best to keep up. And I think both of us are fairly good shots."

+

+"I'm hoping there'll be no need for anything on that order," I said

+with more respect than before in my tone. "We'll try to stick it out

+here. My boys are loyal, I think, at least they've been loyal up to

+now, and even if we are besieged, one of them will probably take a

+message to the fort."

+

+I had little enough hope of that, Heaven knows, but I did not want Mrs.

+Braymore to worry more than was necessary. She seemed to realize that I

+was speaking more from my hopes than my beliefs, because she shrugged

+her shoulders.

+

+"There's really no need to soften things for me," she said, "Alicia and

+I won't----"

+

+She stopped and caught her breath. A shot had sounded, off in the bush

+from the direction in which Evan had vanished. A second's interval, and

+another shot. Then there was a horrid outcry, and a maniacal shrieking.

+

+"The gorilla," I snapped, and started down the steps with my rifle at

+full cock.

+

+We heard a second outburst of the same beastlike sounds and a crashing

+in the bushes. I raised my rifle. A figure showed dimly through the

+bush. I fired vindictively. _Evan_ stumbled and fell in the clearing,

+just out of the jungle!

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IV.

+

+THE FIRST VICTIM.

+

+

+In a second he was up again, and ran desperately until he reached my

+side. Blood was flowing down his cheeks from five deep scratches.

+

+"The pongo," he gasped. "Nearly did for me. Jumped me, but I got in

+two shots. Then he grabbed for me but I got away. Stumbled just as you

+fired. Damn lucky."

+

+I stood still, facing the menacing jungle, but not a sound came from it

+except the monotonous, rhythmic beating of the drums from three sides,

+where juju priests worked their followers into a frenzy of hatred

+against the white men. Evan went slowly up to the house, exhausted and

+shaken by his narrow escape from death.

+

+We held a council immediately. The drums on every side of us meant evil

+brewing. So much was certain. For a white man to attempt to stop the

+juju councils would be perilous in the extreme, but it was our only

+chance. On the other hand, for one of us to get through the jungle

+to take that desperate chance meant eluding the watchfulness of the

+hate-mad gorilla, whose cunning was increasing.

+

+"I don't know how he got to me," said Evan, still shaking from the

+unexpectedness of the whole affair. "I heard a snarl, and he was coming

+for me not ten paces away. Startled, I pulled the trigger without

+aiming, and he came on. I got my rifle halfway to my shoulder, when he

+reached me. One of his great, hairy paws grasped the muzzle as I fired

+the second time, while the other reached for my throat. When the rifle

+went off, he started back and burst out in his screaming. It must have

+burned or injured his paw. I turned and ran, but he had done this to me

+in the meantime."

+

+His coat was half torn from him, and the deep scratches on his cheek

+showed where the claws had just grazed his face.

+

+"I don't mind facing natives," Evan admitted in conclusion, "but I'll

+tell you frankly I don't care to go through that jungle again while

+that beast is in it."

+

+The eternal menace of the drums came to our ears, borne to us through

+the open windows. Arthur began to pace up and down the room, cursing

+under his breath. Alicia bit her lip and tapped nervously on the floor

+with her foot. Mrs. Braymore carefully began to fold and refold her

+handkerchief. Quite suddenly, I noticed that it was falling into shreds

+beneath her fingers. Struggle as any of us would, our nerves were badly

+worn.

+

+The strain grew worse during the day. There were two or three dogs

+about the place, and it was curious to see them puzzled over our

+abstraction. They kept alertly out of Evan's way, but they were

+obviously disconcerted by the absence of the servants who usually

+attended to them, and they looked at us with perplexity in their

+eyes. They could get no attention from the solitary native girl who

+remained. She had withdrawn into panic-stricken silence, serving us

+when necessary, but spending most of her time in the room to which she

+had been assigned. We had ordered her to leave the servants' quarters

+and stay in the house itself.

+

+All the morning the drums beat rhythmically. During lunch they

+continued their hypnotic muttering. And all afternoon they kept on,

+kept on, until it seemed as if we would be crushed by their regular,

+pulselike, ominous rumbling. Far off in the bush, where we could never

+reach them, we knew juju councils were going on. Weirdly painted and

+tattooed witch doctors whirled in their mystic dances and inflamed the

+minds of the blacks against us.

+

+Men beat upon the drums and yelled and yelled, closing their eyes

+and surrendering themselves to the ecstasy of the rhythm until they

+became all but unconscious of the words they reiterated. Slowly and

+surely the blacks were nerving themselves to lift their hands against

+their masters. Given time, a drum and a rhythmic phrase, a native can

+convince himself of anything simply by pounding on the drum and yelling

+over and over the phrase that contains the idea. He will luxuriate

+in the rhythm, he will hypnotize himself by the monotony of the drum

+beats. He will go into an ecstasy, simply yelling over and over the one

+phrase.

+

+Dinner that night was a repetition of breakfast and lunch. We sat

+down to the table, our rifles by our sides, our movements jerky and

+uncertain from the strain of waiting for we knew not what. The dogs lay

+about on the floor, watching us anxiously. The single servant waited

+on us, her face dull with apathy, though flickers of panic lighted

+her eyes from time to time. And always we heard the drums beating far

+off in the bush. I caught myself sitting with a fork full of food in

+mid-air, listening to their sullenly menacing rumble.

+

+Arthur, Evan, and myself divided the night into watches. I took the

+first, and waited tensely until after one o'clock. I heard nothing but

+the muffled drumming to the northeast, northwest, and south. The moon

+shone brightly down and made the clearing about the casa like a lake of

+molten silver. I heard the noises of insects--the loud-voiced African

+insects--and the cries of the night birds. I heard nothing else. The

+night was quiet and peaceful, save for the ceaseless throbbing of the

+drums all about.

+

+Evan relieved me. He came out on the porch and lit a cigarette.

+

+"That drumming gets monotonous." He yawned. "I wish they'd come on and

+have the suspense over with."

+

+"If they come," I remarked, "we're done for."

+

+"Not necessarily. If we hold them off for a week and kill enough of

+them, they'll get tired and go away."

+

+"That wouldn't help us much. I hardly see how we could make a hundred

+and fifty miles through the bush with two women and no carriers."

+

+"We might try, anyway. Some of us would get through. You've heard

+nothing?"

+

+"No," I replied. "Just the drums."

+

+I went indoors and lay down to sleep. When I surrendered myself to the

+rhythm of the drumming, it put me quickly into a deep slumber. I knew

+what the sound meant, that naked savages yelled and danced themselves

+into a frenzy of hatred against us, but if one allowed it to become so,

+it was very soothing.

+

+At one time I half started from my sleep. Some sound within the house

+aroused me, but a moment later I heard Evan's footstep on the veranda

+and recognized the sound of his shoe soles on the flooring. He was

+humming a little tune to himself. I was reassured and slept again.

+

+I heard when Arthur relieved Evan, too. Their voices came clearly in to

+me as they exchanged greetings.

+

+"Nothing new?" asked Arthur nervously.

+

+"No. I say, Arthur, the natives are taking a deuced long time to

+get worked up to the sticking point. I had them pretty thoroughly

+frightened. Perhaps they'll hold a big palaver for several days, yell

+and dance themselves into exhaustion, and let it go at that. I've known

+such things to happen. Our primitive ancestors used to hold hee-hee

+councils and work off their surplus emotions in the same way. If this

+juju festival lasts two days more, I think it will peter out and wind

+up in a palm-wine debauch. Then they'll come back and be good!"

+

+"It's the gorilla I'm worried most about just now," said Arthur grimly.

+"The natives are men, and you can anticipate their moves, but there's

+no telling what an animal will do, particularly a pongo."

+

+Evan laughed. "I had a start just now," he said. "I heard a queer

+sound in Biheta's room." Biheta was the native girl. "She gave a queer

+gurgle. I didn't know what was up, and I went and peered in the door.

+She was lying there quite still, evidently sound asleep. She must have

+had a nightmare, but it gave me the creeps for an instant."

+

+Arthur seemed to pick up his rifle.

+

+"Well, I'm going indoors to get some beauty sleep," said Evan with a

+yawn. "Cheer up, Arthur. There's a damn good chance that the natives

+will just yell themselves hoarse and come peaceably back to work. As

+long as the drums stay at a distance, we're all right. But wake all of

+us if they stop."

+

+He came into the house and went into his own room. I dozed off again.

+When I woke, it was well after daylight. Evan had stuck his head inside

+my door and was grinning cheerfully.

+

+"Get up," he ordered. "Breakfast will be ready in a minute or two."

+

+I rolled out of bed and heard him go to the rear of the house. He

+rasped out an order in the local dialect, but there was no reply. He

+spoke again, harshly. There was still no reply. I heard him fling open

+a door. Then he exclaimed aloud.

+

+"Arthur! Murray! Come here!"

+

+We went quickly, and into the room in which he was. It was the room

+assigned to the native girl. Evan was standing over her couch, looking

+grimly down at the figure lying there.

+

+The dull features of the girl were twisted into an expression of the

+most horrible fear. It was appalling that such ultimate terror could

+show itself upon a human face. The eyes were wide and staring, the

+mouth was drawn back in a voiceless shriek of utter, despairing

+fright. The hands were clenched so that the nails bit into the flesh of

+the palms, and the head was oddly askew. The girl was dead.

+

+Evan lifted up her shoulders and the head fell back.

+

+"Neck broken," he said laconically. "The gorilla!"

+

+"Great Heaven!" said Arthur desperately, white as a sheet. "What next?

+How did he get in here? Alicia!" He ran from the room and called

+hoarsely.

+

+Alicia's voice answered instantly. "What's the matter?"

+

+"The native girl's dead, killed by the gorilla during the night. Are

+you safe?"

+

+Alicia appeared in person and proved it. She was pale, but composed.

+

+"Where? What----?"

+

+I lost the rest of her question. Evan and myself were searching for the

+gorilla's means of ingress and exit. The flimsily screened window was

+intact. The door had been unlocked, but Evan remembered that he had

+found it closed and had closed it again after peering into the room

+during the night.

+

+Was it possible that the monstrous animal possessed the cunning to

+unlatch the door gently before entering, and then the diabolical

+forethought to latch it again on leaving? It seemed impossible, but

+what other explanation was there?

+

+"He's been in the house," said Evan grimly. "Where is he now?"

+

+I went out and got one of the dogs. We brought it into the room and

+it sniffed at the dead body. Then we led it about the house. Once we

+thought it showed some excitement. It sniffed at the door of a room

+that was used as a storeroom.

+

+With our rifles at the ready, we flung open the door. No sound

+came from within. The dog, bristling, walked slowly into the room.

+Cautiously, we followed. Boxes and bales were scattered all about, but

+there was no sign of the animal that had killed the native girl. The

+dog growled, and moved about, stiff-legged, but soon grew puzzled and

+sniffed perplexedly all over the place. He could find nothing.

+

+We explored the room thoroughly, though with our hearts in our mouths.

+Three men and a gorilla in a small store room would be unpleasant for

+the men, armed though they might be. We could find no niche in which

+the beast might have hidden, nor any evidence of his presence. After

+a time the dog gave it up, and lay down on the floor with his tongue

+lolling out.

+

+"Do you suppose it could be a black that killed her?" asked Arthur

+suddenly. "A native would have known about the latch. One of them might

+have crept into the house and killed the girl in punishment for her

+having stayed behind when the rest left."

+

+"If he did," I remarked grimly, "it's safe to say we'd better not touch

+any of the food he could have got at. Those voodoo poisons are deadly

+things, and you can bank on it he was prepared to use them."

+

+"Hardly likely," said Evan.

+

+"It must have been a native," insisted Arthur anxiously. "No animal

+would have had the cunning to creep in, kill the poor girl silently,

+and then creep out again. It must have been one of the blacks."

+

+"Gorilla," said Evan, shaking his head.

+

+Arthur suddenly looked up.

+

+"I've got it! We'll take a photo of the girl's eyes. I saw a cloudy

+form on the retina. I've got an insect camera in my luggage, and can

+make sure what it was that frightened her that last moment of her life."

+

+The expression on the girl's face had been one of terrible fear.

+Whatever it was that had killed her, she had seen it before she

+died--seen and known it for a deadly and horrible thing.

+

+"Try it," I urged. "We can't be sure otherwise. If it was a native, our

+food is poisoned for a certainty."

+

+Arthur went to his room and presently appeared with the queer camera.

+It was a long box, and evidently the lens was one of great focal

+length. It took Arthur a long time to adjust it properly. He proposed

+to take advantage of the fact that the eye of a dead person will retain

+for from twenty-four to forty-eight hours the impression of what it saw

+last while living. A great many people think that the shining image on

+the outer surface of the eye retains that picture, and wonder at it. As

+a matter of fact the picture is kept on the retina, in the inside of

+the eyeball. It is extremely difficult to photograph the retina without

+dissecting the eye, but it can be done--as Arthur proceeded to prove.

+

+I went outside and searched around the house for possible footprints.

+After a preliminary search, I got Evan to help me. We could find no

+single sign of tracks leading toward or away from the house. There had

+been a heavy dew, and the top layer of the earth was dark and damp.

+Footprints would inevitably have been shown. When we had completed our

+search, we stared at each other. Whatever or whoever had killed the

+native girl must be still in the house. There were absolutely no signs

+of his having left.

+

+We went inside. Beast or man, _something_ had been in the house, moving

+quietly and undiscovered despite our watching. It had entered the room

+occupied by the native girl and had awakened her. She had seen it, and

+it had been a thing she recognized as frightful. Her horror-stricken

+face was proof of that. It had been cunning enough to latch the door

+of the room after the killing. That meant a native. On the other hand,

+it had broken the girl's neck, a feat that would require incredible

+strength. That spoke of a monstrous animal. We heard Arthur shuffling

+about in his improvised dark room, and the clink of the dishes in which

+he had mixed his solutions.

+

+How had the creature--man or beast--reached the house? How had it made

+its way silently through the rooms at midnight, with one of us awake

+and on guard? Could it be that one of the servants had remained, hidden

+in some secret place while the others had left, and now prowled about

+at night while the rest far off in the bush yelled and howled, drummed

+and danced, and gradually became ripe to attack us?

+

+Arthur came out of his dark room with a glass plate in his hand. His

+face was pale.

+

+"Look at this," he said quietly. "If you'll hold it so the light

+strikes it diagonally, you'll see it in its proper lights and shades,

+instead of reversed."

+

+The plate was still wet, where he had just taken it from the fixing

+bath. We looked. We saw, running aimlessly here and there, curiously

+like the branches of a tree, little dark lines. Those were the blood

+vessels that nourished the eye. We gave no heed to them, however. The

+sight that made both Evan and myself gasp was the strange picture that

+we saw amid all those little blood vessels.

+

+There, distorted and hideous, menacing and terrible, we saw the cause

+of the native girl's death, and of her terror. We saw the head of a

+gorilla, with its horrible, discolored fangs protruding from blackened

+lips in a grimace of unspeakable ferocity.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER V.

+

+AS BY MAGIC.

+

+

+"And it's in the house," observed Evan grimly. "A full-grown beast

+will weigh three hundred pounds, and he'd leave plenty of sign when

+he walked. There are no tracks leading away from here. Murray and I

+looked."

+

+Arthur was ashen as he stared at us. I felt rather shaky myself. The

+thought of a creature like that in the same house, with Alicia exposed

+to its insane rage at any moment it might choose to emerge from its

+hiding place, was appalling.

+

+The two ladies were in the large front room. I went in and remained

+with them, my rifle in my hand, while Arthur and Evan went over the

+house again. They had the dogs with them, and they went into every room

+and every corner, ready at any instant to face what is possibly the

+most terrible of all wild beasts at close quarters.

+

+A full-grown gorilla has easily the strength of six or eight men, and

+in a confined space firearms would be almost useless. I heard the dogs

+pattering all through the house, sniffing eagerly everywhere they were

+taken, but finding nothing. Again they seemed excited at the door of

+the storeroom, and again they gave up the search after they had entered.

+

+Arthur rejoined me and Alicia with discouragement on every feature.

+

+"He isn't here," he said wearily, "and he is here. He was here and he

+wasn't here. I don't know where he is!"

+

+Evan slumped into a chair, though it was noticeable that he kept his

+rifle in his hands. Through the window came the menacing rumble of the

+drums from all sides.

+

+"I think," said Alicia, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "I think a

+fit of hysterics would be a relief."

+

+She looked as if she meant it. All of us looked thoroughly on edge.

+To have hostile drums beating all about you and to realize that a

+hundred and fifty miles of jungle lie between you and the nearest help

+is bad enough in itself. When you add to that the consciousness of

+having hidden in the same house with you a beast almost human in its

+cunning and fiendish in its hatred, with the face of the devil and the

+strength of seven men, hysterics seem excusable. She did not give way,

+however, though we all felt on the verge of hysteria from the strain.

+

+That day was one of the most terrible I have ever spent. It was not

+that anything happened to make it terrible. The strain came from the

+fact that nothing happened. If the beast were hidden about the house,

+it did not show itself, but we did not hear a board creak or a curtain

+swish against the window without turning with a start, prepared to face

+anything and to fire vengefully into a hideous, furry form.

+

+The bush outside the casa seemed to take on a threatening aspect. The

+house was built on a small elevation and we looked for miles over the

+tops of trees, broken here and there by gaps which meant the existence

+of clearings and open fields. The treetops were dancing from the heat.

+The sun beat down with fierce intensity. Blasts of hot, humid wind blew

+upon us and scorched us, but we paid no attention. And always, from the

+mysterious, unknown and unknowable bush all around us, drums beat and

+beat and beat tirelessly and ominously.

+

+When one of us went back to get food for the rest, he went with an

+automatic held ready in his hand, and the other two were prepared

+at any instant to hear a shot or the snarl that would mean the

+reappearance of the gorilla. We were doubly besieged, by the natives

+without and by the gorilla within. For fear of the natives in the bush,

+we kept to the house. For fear of the gorilla in the house, we kept to

+the one room.

+

+Toward evening insensibly we relaxed. No one could keep to such an

+intensity of attention as we had maintained during the day. We ate a

+sketchy meal at nightfall and dragged two cots into one of the rooms

+adjoining the large front one in which we had stayed all day. We

+explored the room thoroughly, and Alicia and Mrs. Braymore went in to

+lie down.

+

+None of us thought of taking off our clothes. We three men prepared

+for a night-long vigil. One of us would keep thoroughly awake, and the

+other two would snatch such sleep as they could.

+

+Long hours passed. We felt sure that some time during the night the

+beast would make his appearance. I sat alertly by a window, a dog at my

+feet, listening to the night sounds outside and the ceaseless drumming

+that meant the juju councils were debating whether the blacks were

+sufficiently worked up to attempt an attack.

+

+Arthur and Evan reclined in their chairs and tried to doze, but there

+was little rest for any of us. We could think of nothing but the animal

+we felt sure would make some attempt upon us during the night.

+

+At one o'clock Evan took my place by the window with the dog at his

+feet. I sat in one of the easier chairs and tried to relax, but it

+was impossible. I was suddenly conscious of the overpowering heat and

+humidity. I was bathed in perspiration.

+

+"I've got to have a drink," I said abruptly. "I need it."

+

+Arthur looked up wearily.

+

+"We all need a drink," he said. "It's in the back of the house, isn't

+it?"

+

+We looked at each other uncertainly.

+

+"I'll go," said Arthur quietly.

+

+I interposed. "We'll both go. Here, in the light, Evan can see to shoot

+if necessary. We'll use a flash lamp."

+

+It was curious that neither of us cared to walk through three rooms

+and a hallway inside a house we had been in for days. That animal had

+fretted our nerves badly.

+

+Slowly and cautiously we made our way through the dark rooms, searching

+before us with the flash light. I can't speak for Arthur, but my breath

+was coming quickly, and I heartily regretted having expressed a wish

+for a drink. I would not back out now, though.

+

+We went cautiously and slowly out to the rear of the house. I was in

+the act of reaching for the siphon of seltzer when we heard the dog

+scream in pain and a shout from Evan. We rushed madly for the front,

+our hearts in our mouths, and cursing our absence at such a critical

+time. When we burst into the room, Evan was dashing out on the veranda,

+and Alicia was in the act of emerging from the room into which she and

+Mrs. Braymore had retired. Alicia had an automatic in her hand and,

+though her face was full of dread, she was evidently prepared to face

+anything.

+

+Arthur and myself were quickly by Evan's side and found him staring

+about the darkness, his rifle half raised.

+

+"What is it?" Arthur demanded quickly.

+

+Evan's breath was coming in gasps. "I heard you two moving," he said

+sharply, as one whose nerves are strained to the breaking point. "I

+heard a noise from your direction. I turned to look at the door and

+caught a movement at the window by my side. I jerked back and the dog

+screamed. A long, hairy arm had reached in the window and seized him.

+He was drawn through the window before I could lift my rifle, and the

+arm vanished. It's the gorilla!"

+

+We listened, but the house was still. A faint moan came from the

+courtyard, and I flashed the lamp down. The dog, flung bodily from the

+porch, stirred feebly and stiffened. Its neck was broken. There on the

+shadowed veranda, with the bright African moon shining pitilessly down

+upon the hot, dank, fevered earth, the three of us swore nervously

+while we stood with our rifles pointing in as many directions, hoping,

+even praying for that monstrous ape to rush upon us.

+

+"He must have gone somewhere!" said Arthur despairingly. "Where _did_

+the beast go?"

+

+"Into the house, no," said Evan crisply. "Under the house, perhaps. The

+roof, perhaps. We'll see."

+

+My legs crawled as I descended the stairs to the ground. The house was

+raised from the ground on piles, and I could look clear underneath it.

+The moon was shining down whitely, and I saw the pillars silhouetted

+against the brightness on the other side. Half a dozen steps convinced

+me that the animal was not beneath. It would have shown as a dark

+outline. I tried to see up, over the roof, but could not. The roof

+slanted just a little and I could not see the center. The house being

+on an elevation, moreover, prevented me from backing off and getting a

+clear view of the top. I called up to the other two on the porch.

+

+"He's not under the house, but I can't see the roof. He must be there."

+

+The tree trunks of the forest all about us echoed my words strangely.

+I could see dim white blurs where the faces of the two brothers showed

+their position. One of them moved oddly, and in a moment I saw that

+Evan was swinging himself up the pillar before him. He grasped the edge

+of the roof and drew himself up. In a second he dropped down again. He

+spoke quietly enough to Arthur, but I heard his voice.

+

+"He's there, squatting on the ridge pole. Lord! What a monster he is!"

+

+"We must get the women out of the house," said Arthur sharply. "He may

+tear up the roof and come inside. Alicia!"

+

+She had heard and came quickly out, Mrs. Braymore following her. We

+built a small fire to keep insects away from them, and sat them on

+chairs while we patroled the area about the house. The drums still beat

+on all sides of us, but they had been relegated to a minor position

+now. We subconsciously counted on their remaining a potential menace

+only, until they stopped or drew nearer. The moon made the whole world

+bright and shining. We could see clearly and distinctly. Nothing the

+size of a rabbit could escape across that stretch of sward without our

+observing it.

+

+Alicia and Mrs. Braymore watched the fringe of jungle while we posted

+ourselves so that not even a cat could escape from the house without

+being seen. I leaned on my rifle near the two ladies, my eyes fixed on

+the edge of the roof, straining to catch a glimpse of the beast that

+squatted up there. When I thought of it, it seemed stupid of us not to

+have suspected that as a hiding place before. True, it was in clear

+view of the sky, but a beast cunning enough to creep about the casa at

+midnight as he had done, might possess the intelligence to reason that

+there was the ideal hiding place for him.

+

+"Do you think there is any real danger from the natives?" Alicia

+inquired hesitatingly.

+

+"When natives do inexplicable things, it is usually juju," I said

+grimly. "And where there is juju there is usually danger. There is one

+thing that can be said, though. While a native is making a noise, he is

+rarely dangerous in bulk. As Evan pointed out, they may simply exhaust

+themselves in yelling and dancing. I do not think it would be wise to

+count on that, however."

+

+"Wouldn't it be the wisest thing to do, to simply try to make our way

+secretly through the jungle to the nearest fort?"

+

+"It would be impossible," I told her frankly. "You don't know African

+undergrowth. We might make four or five miles a day, with luck. And at

+any moment in the twenty-four the natives might trail us. We'd have to

+make a new trail, or use the native ones. Making a new trail, we'd be

+followed and probably speared, besides the fact that our animal friend

+would be haunting the treetops overhead, waiting for a moment when one

+of us would be off our guard."

+

+Alicia shuddered. "But would you three try that if we weren't here?"

+she insisted.

+

+"I think we'd wade into one of those juju councils," I remarked

+vindictively. "I know I'd gladly join such a party. We'd probably

+appear as suddenly as we could and start shooting. We might stampede

+them, and a show of boldness would be our best play in any event. Of

+course, if they rushed us, we'd be out of luck."

+

+"You mean----?"

+

+"There would be four or five hundred of them, and we might get ten

+or perhaps fifteen apiece. They'd overwhelm us if they tried, but

+the psychology would probably make us win out. The fact that we were

+hunting them, instead of their hunting us, would frighten them."

+

+"Couldn't you do that now?"

+

+I shook my head. "Not with our friend the gorilla about. And we

+wouldn't expose you two to the possibility of our failing. There'd be

+nothing left for you but your own pistols."

+

+Alicia relapsed into silence. I saw her brow knitted as she tried

+desperately to work out some plan by which we might fight the

+incredible circumstances in which we found ourselves. Overhead,

+the broad moon sailed serenely across the sky, shedding its rays

+impartially down upon us, upon the shaggy, beastly ape squatting like

+some demoniacal creature upon the ridgepole of the roof, and upon

+yelling, capering blacks about the great fires they would have lit for

+their juju ceremonies.

+

+Behind us, the busy, secretive life of the bush went on--all the

+feedings and drinkings and matings and killings, all the comedies and

+all the tragedies of the jungle. Things went on, sublimely indifferent

+to our petty frights and fancies. The jungle attended to its business,

+ignoring alike our strained attitudes as we sat in the moonlight and

+waited for the sun to rise that we might slay a malignant ape, and the

+yelling of self-hypnotism of the blacks as they danced about their juju

+fires, working themselves into a frenzy of hatred against the white man.

+

+At last the moon dipped down toward the west, and the stars that had

+watched our vigil in mild, blinking surprise grew pale at the signs

+of dawn. The sky grew gray, then white. A high pallid veil hid the

+deep-blue arch of the night, and turned slowly to golden yellow as the

+sun rolled up.

+

+The mist curled aloft from the treetops as the first rays of the

+morning swept across the land. We became aware that we had been cold

+and that we now were warm. We waited eagerly until we should see the

+roof of the casa, and be able to pick off with our rifles the beast

+that lurked there.

+

+Morning had barely come when Evan clambered cautiously to the roof of

+the servants' quarters behind the house itself. We had left several of

+the dogs shut up in the house during the night. We knew that if the

+beast came down into the place, they would make an outcry before all

+were killed, at least. They had made no sound, but now one or two of

+them came out on the veranda, wagging their tails amiably.

+

+Evan clambered to the roof of the servants' quarters, and Arthur passed

+up his rifle. Evan stood erect and raised the weapon. Then he stopped.

+From the ground, we saw him looking blankly at the roof of the house.

+From where he stood, he could see it clearly. His expression was at

+once amazed and apprehensive.

+

+The beast had not left the house, or we would have seen it. It had not

+crossed the clearing. It had not entered the house, because the dogs

+were unalarmed. It had not in any discoverable fashion escaped from its

+position astride the ridge pole, but Evan told us and we immediately

+verified the fact that it was no longer on the roof. It had not escaped

+to the jungle. It had not secreted itself in the house; yet the

+monstrous ape had vanished!

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VI.

+

+THE FORM THAT CREPT.

+

+

+Again we searched the house from top to bottom. Again we led the

+dogs into every nook and cranny. Again they sniffed anxiously in the

+storeroom, but gave up the quest after a moment or so. In our search

+of the greater part of the house the dogs had seemed more bored than

+anything else. We had led them to the dog that had been killed, before

+attempting to enter the house, and they smelled at his neck cautiously

+and drew back with low growls. If the gorilla had been in the house,

+they would surely have scented him and warned us. The only time they

+gave any indication at all of interest, far less of excitement, was

+when they sniffed at the storeroom door. Once inside, they moved about

+aimlessly.

+

+We debated our next move. The gorilla simply could not be in the house.

+With his ferocity, he would surely have made a move to attack one or

+another of us during our searchings. At last Arthur found a sign that

+reassured us as to his absence without lessening in the least the

+mystery of his means of escape. Something had led him to scout around

+the edge of the clearing surrounding the house. He straightened up with

+a shout.

+

+"Look here!"

+

+We ran to him and looked where he pointed. There, on the earth, just

+beneath the overhanging limb of the first of the jungle trees, were

+the prints of strangely handlike toes.

+

+"Here's where he jumped for the lowest limb there," said Evan

+excitedly. "See?"

+

+Directly above us a heavy limb spread out from the trunk of the tree.

+Evidently the gorilla had leaped from that spot. How he had run across

+the moonlit lawn under our very eyes remained inexplicable. Thinking

+back, however, I remembered that once or twice wisps of infrequent

+cloud had temporarily obscured the moon. Could he have seized one of

+those moments of darkness? It seemed impossible, but there was no other

+explanation that could be made.

+

+Somewhat reassured, we entered the house again. One of us stayed out on

+the veranda, however, and watched to make sure the beast would attempt

+no daring daylight rush on our stronghold. We planned to tether several

+of the dogs that night to the piles which raised the house from the

+ground.

+

+Evan was on the porch. He peered in at the window suddenly.

+

+"I'm going to take a look in the servants' quarters," he said abruptly.

+"It's just occurred to me that the beast may have hidden in there and

+made his break for the jungle from there. That would shorten the run he

+would have to make."

+

+He moved away. I went back and tried to help Alicia prepare some food

+for us all. We had had nothing since the night before and all were

+ravenous. Arthur was sitting in the big front room, his head buried in

+his hands, his rifle leaning on the arm of his chair. I put my rifle

+against the wall and began to open the tins of preserved food, while

+Alicia donned an apron and with a quaintly housewifely air lighted a

+spirit lamp and heated water for our tea. Mrs. Braymore was gravely

+tasting the tinned butter and making a wry face. It is poor stuff

+until you get used to it.

+

+As I worked, I watched Alicia appreciatively, and far back in my mind

+a little germ of hope sprang up. It suddenly occurred to me that she

+had never shown that intense affection for Arthur one expects a woman

+to show for the man she is going to marry. She appeared fond enough of

+him, but she seemed nearly as fond of Evan. I remembered what I had

+been told, that the three of them had been raised together as children

+so they were little less than brothers and sister.

+

+That was Alicia's attitude. She treated Arthur as an elder brother of

+whom she was immensely fond, but she did not treat him as a lover. It

+was queer that, with drums beating rhythmically night and day in the

+bush all around us, and in momentary danger from a monstrous gorilla, I

+should stop and think of romance and the peculiarly trivial shades of

+affection Alicia might show.

+

+She turned and smiled at me just then.

+

+"You look like a sword," she said mischievously, "a sword beaten into a

+can opener."

+

+Mrs. Braymore joined in her smile. I suppose I must have looked rather

+queer. A heavy cartridge belt was slung about my waist, and two

+dull-metal automatics were stuck rakishly into it. I had not shaved for

+three days. Every moment was too full of suspense to allow for thinking

+of such minor things as shaving.

+

+"Well," I remarked amiably, "since it looks as if our friends in the

+bush are going to do as Evan has suggested and yell themselves into

+exhaustion without bothering us, and I shall soon revert to peaceable

+pursuits, that doesn't matter. A sword is only useful on occasion, but

+a can opener links us with civilization."

+

+"It would seem odd," said Alicia, "to have some one bring one's mail

+in the morning, or to use a telephone."

+

+"There's a mail once in two weeks at Ticao," I said, "but it's four

+weeks from England usually and often six."

+

+Mrs. Braymore joined in the conversation. "I should like to receive an

+invitation to tea," she said wistfully. "I should like to go somewhere

+to tea and have people talk interestedly of poetry, and the approaching

+marriage of somebody's daughter, and what the curate said about the

+possibility of repairing the parish house."

+

+We all laughed at the idea. I set down one of the tins of potted meat

+and reached for another.

+

+"For myself----" I began and stopped short, every muscle tense.

+

+On the veranda outside the house I had heard a sound, the creaking of a

+board as a heavy weight was put cautiously upon it. There was something

+infinitely furtive in the sound. I listened and heard nothing more, but

+was oppressed by a sense of danger. The sound had come from the front

+of the house. I drew an automatic from my belt and silently passed it

+to Alicia. She had heard nothing, but my expression warned her and she

+took it quickly. Mrs. Braymore took the other. I picked up my rifle

+from the side wall and tiptoed through the house toward the front. I

+heard an almost unbelievable slight sound again from the porch. The

+door into the front room was standing open. I slipped silently up to

+the threshold.

+

+Arthur had heard. He was still sitting in the chair, but he was alert

+and ready. His eyes were fixed on the window some fifteen feet from

+him, and he was slowly and carefully bringing his rifle to bear. The

+sun was shining from without and struck upon the curtains that hung

+inside. Evan had made his house ready for the visitors he expected, and

+every window was curtained.

+

+There was a moment of breath-taking suspense. Arthur, still seated lest

+the sound of his rising alarm whoever or whatever was outside, was

+bringing his rifle to his shoulder. I slipped into the room and came

+to his side, my own rifle ready. Our eyes were fixed upon the window.

+Then the slanting rays of the sun flung a shadow upon the curtain. The

+thing was not yet before the window, but its shadow moved on before

+it because of the position of the rising sun. We saw, cast in perfect

+clearness upon the flimsy cloth, the silhouette of the head of the

+gorilla! Its small ears lay back, its jaw protruded in that fearful

+ferocity of the anthropoid tribe, and we saw it peering from right to

+left in suspicious cunning. I held my breath, waiting for the moment

+when we could fire.

+

+The head turned sharply, and I thought I saw the nostrils quivering.

+Then, abruptly, it vanished, and a dog burst into frantic barking and

+hysterical yelping on the veranda. Another instant and the dog screamed

+in terror. There was a crash against the wall of the house, and the

+yelping became a moan.

+

+Arthur and I had dashed for the door and now rushed down the veranda

+with hearts thumping madly. One of the dogs was writhing in agony on

+the floor. It had been flung against the house with terrific force and

+now lay with broken ribs and backbone, dying. The gorilla had vanished.

+

+Evan appeared with his rifle ready, out of breath. "What's up?" he

+demanded. "The beast again?"

+

+Arthur swore hysterically. "The damned beast is here!" he cried. "It's

+_here_! It's hiding somewhere about!"

+

+We were all thoroughly reckless by now. We went after the huge ape with

+the temerity that would have made the blood of any of us run cold in

+a sober moment. We penetrated every corner of the house. We went over

+every bit of the grounds. We clambered upon the roof and searched

+there in foolhardy indifference to the danger we might be in if we only

+located the animal.

+

+"I think it was hiding in the servants' quarters," said Evan grimly.

+"I saw signs of its having been there. It must have grown shy when I

+explored the place and it probably slipped off toward the house to

+escape me. I don't see why it didn't make for the woods, though."

+

+None of us understood, but we went about our search as before. We found

+absolutely nothing. At last we stopped and stared at one another.

+

+"We would have killed it in another moment," said Arthur despairingly,

+"but the dog saw it and yelped. Then it ran."

+

+"Could it have made the woods before we got outside?"

+

+"Heaven only knows," said Arthur wearily. "I begin to believe the

+natives have bewitched the thing to kill us all."

+

+"How many dogs have we left?" asked Evan suddenly.

+

+There were four or five of Evan's animals, and one or two of the

+village dogs had begun to lurk about the house in hopes of food. There

+was none left for them in the deserted village.

+

+"We'll tie up the dogs," said Evan. "We'll fasten one on the veranda at

+the front, and another in the rear of the house. We'll put two on the

+ground below, tethered to the piles, and spread the others in the rooms

+here. Then the beast will have to kill them before it can get at as,

+and we'll have some warning."

+

+We began to improvise collars for the native dogs and scattered the

+others about as Evan had suggested. When we had finished, as far as

+we could see there was absolutely no way for the gorilla to emerge

+from his hiding place--if he were hiding in the house--without being

+instantly detected by a dog. Certainly, he could not reach the house

+from the bush without discovery and an alarm being given.

+

+With a dog in every room, dogs on the veranda, and others underneath

+the building, we should have felt safe, but did not. There was

+something uncanny in the appearances and disappearances of the

+monstrous ape that left us apprehensive even when we had taken every

+possible precaution to provide for its instant discovery if it made

+another attempt to reach us.

+

+The pertinacity of the beast was appalling. To think of a colossal

+anthropoid with the cunning of the devil himself, the strength of seven

+men, and all the malignant hatred that possessed this one, to think of

+such an animal lurking about seeking an opportunity to wreak vengeance

+on one of our number was horrible. And it would not stop with one of

+us if more than one were within its reach. Once in a killing rage, a

+gorilla goes mad with blood lust. It would tear and rend, would crush

+and utterly destroy.

+

+We were white and nervous from the strain long before. Now we went

+about with something akin to hysteria just beneath the surface. There

+was nothing we could _do_! We had to wait for the beast to reappear,

+knowing that when it did, its coming would be cautious and cunning, its

+patience infinite, its strength colossal and its hatred fiendish. Any

+or all of us might expect at any instant to be gripped by a hairy arm

+of incredible power, to see the bestial face of that demoniacal animal

+grimacing at us in utter malignance. And we had before us the picture

+of the vision that would confront us in such a case. The picture taken

+from the native girl's retina was warning. Little, evil eyes glittering

+fiercely, flat, horrible nose above a terrible mouth parted in insane

+rage, and discolored fangs showing above the blackened lips.

+

+Action of any sort would have been a relief. We went through the

+morning, making desperate efforts to stave off hysteria, and aware that

+at any moment one of us might crack beneath the strain.

+

+Noon came. We ate mechanically. Evan was standing up better than any of

+the rest of us. Alicia was quiet and still. Her eyes alone showed the

+tension she felt. We were all keyed up to an almost unbearable pitch.

+Queerly enough, in our absorption in the threat of the gorilla, we had

+almost forgotten the drums that resounded on every side of us from the

+bush. It was Mrs. Braymore who called our attention to them.

+

+"I wonder what's the matter with the drums?" she said wearily. "I've

+been noticing them for the last ten minutes."

+

+We listened. The monotonous rhythm was still going on, rolling through

+the hot midday air in muffled waves of sound. The drums seemed louder

+than they had been.

+

+"They're beating more rapidly," Evan remarked in a puzzled tone. "They

+were going along slowly. Now they're quite fast."

+

+Only one of the drums had quickened its beat, however. The others

+thumped on monotonously. About four o'clock in the afternoon--allowing

+the length of time necessary for a runner to get from the first village

+to another--a second began to beat more furiously, and shortly after

+dark, the third joined in the trilogy. Our dogs were moving restlessly

+about, chafing because of being tied. We all were increasingly anxious,

+but this new danger had, strangely enough, the effect of steadying us.

+

+We waited a long time, and at last the two women lay down to try

+to rest. Through the moonlight night the drums rolled and rumbled.

+Standing out on the veranda with my rifle in my hands, I listened

+intently. I saw with some disquiet that the night threatened to become

+cloudy, but hoped that the dogs would give warning of any danger that

+might impend. For an hour I stood there, looking and listening. There

+was no mistaking the new note of the drums. They meant resolution,

+renewed activity. Faintly, beneath their muttering, I caught a high,

+sustained ululation. The yelling of the natives had not been audible

+before. Evidently they were in perfect frenzy. That meant that an

+attack was imminent.

+

+Arthur came out on the veranda beside me. He listened as I was

+listening.

+

+"They'll attempt to rush us in the morning, I suppose," he remarked

+grimly. "They'll hardly try it before dawn, though. Blacks don't like

+the nighttime."

+

+One of the dogs tied to a pile below the house growled softly. The dog

+on the veranda echoed the growl. I glanced at him quickly. He had risen

+and was standing tense, looking toward the edge of the bush. He growled

+again.

+

+At just this moment, one of the little wisps of cloud overshadowed the

+moon and left the courtyard in darkness. I moved quietly over beside

+the dog and felt the hairs on his neck bristling. Finding him staring

+steadfastly in one direction, I strained my eyes trying to pierce the

+darkness. The cloud thinned a trifle and objects were dimly visible. I

+saw a shape coming slowly and cautiously toward the house, a shape that

+moved hesitatingly and furtively.

+

+Arthur exclaimed softly. "Murray, it's the gorilla!"

+

+The figure was hunched up and apelike. It moved awkwardly toward us.

+The cloud thinned still more and we could distinguish its location

+clearly, though it was still impossible for us to see distinctly.

+

+"For the body," Arthur whispered.

+

+We raised our rifles together and aimed carefully. Arthur's rifle

+flashed, and mine an instant later. We heard a choking, beastlike cry,

+and the figure toppled and fell.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VII.

+

+A STRANGE ALLY.

+

+

+Evan rushed out from the interior of the house, rifle in hand.

+

+"What's up? The natives?"

+

+"We've got the gorilla, I think," said Arthur quietly.

+

+He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash light. The three of

+us started down the steps and approached the fallen figure cautiously.

+As we drew near, we could hear it moaning. The moans were curiously

+human. I glanced up at the sky. The last wisp of the cloud was just

+passing before the face of the moon, and when I looked down again, the

+figure was outlined in the pitiless glare of the moonlight.

+

+Evan uttered an exclamation. The moaning figure was not that of the

+gorilla. It was a man, a black man, in the monkey skin of a juju

+priest, with all the amulets and charms of his calling strung about

+him. Evan started forward and shot out a string of questions in the

+local dialect. I could not catch a word, but Evan's voice was stern and

+angry. The moaning witch doctor spoke feebly, his voice growing weaker

+and weaker, and his words interrupted by gasps of pain. At last he

+choked and coughed weakly and was still.

+

+Evan turned to us in a towering passion.

+

+"Those damned natives are going to try to rush us at dawn! The witch

+doctor came to put a spell on us so they'd succeed. Oh, when I get at

+the black animals----"

+

+He burst out into a string of profanity. The slave owner in him had

+come uppermost, and the news that his blacks were going to attack us

+aroused his anger at their presumption more than his fear that they

+might succeed. He stirred the dead figure with his foot.

+

+"They dare to threaten me!" he rasped. "I'll shoot one man in every

+four of them! I'll whip the rest until they can't stand. I'll----"

+

+My old dislike of the man returned, I could not doubt his courage, but

+I had never been particularly fond of the _servaçal_ system and had

+their effort not imperiled the lives of the four of us, I would have

+had the best of wishes for the natives in their attempt to liberate

+themselves.

+

+"We'd better decide how we're going to stand them off before we decide

+how we're going to punish them," I remarked. "There are three of us.

+There are at least six hundred of them."

+

+Arthur suddenly turned with a start.

+

+"Alicia's in the casa," he said sharply, "and the beast may come back."

+

+He started for the house on a run. We heard his voice as he called

+to Alicia and heard her answer. Evan and I followed more slowly,

+discussing methods of protecting ourselves against the coming attack.

+

+"There's one thing," I observed thoughtfully, "with the bush about the

+clearing full of natives, the gorilla will either keep a safe distance

+away--as is most likely--or else will have to fight his way through to

+get to us."

+

+"Perhaps," said Evan gloomily, his voice still full of anger toward the

+blacks. "We'll worry about him when we have to. The important thing is

+the siege we'll have to stand. If we can stop the first rush, I think

+we'll be all right."

+

+"We're all right for ammunition?" I asked.

+

+He nodded. "I could outfit a small army from my gun chest and I've

+ammunition to last a year."

+

+We mounted the steps of the casa.

+

+Alicia greeted us with a white face. "I can shoot," she told us both

+bravely, "and I shan't mind shooting at these people."

+

+"You shall shoot," said Evan grimly, "if they get a foothold in the

+house. Otherwise there's no need. You know enough not to be taken

+alive."

+

+"I know," said Alicia quietly.

+

+The last I saw of her for an hour or more, she was going through Evan's

+assortment of firearms, picking out a light rifle for her own use and

+another for Mrs. Braymore. She already had a small-caliber automatic

+pistol hidden in her bosom.

+

+For an hour or more we worked, moving the bundles Evan pointed out in

+the storeroom to form a breastwork behind which the women would be

+safe from stray shots. We tore up a section or so of flooring, too,

+so we could fire down in case any of the blacks found a refuge from

+our weapons beneath the house. Bars nailed across the openings at once

+provided us with assurance that they could not climb up, and that we

+would not accidentally fall through. We brought supplies of food and

+water where they would be close at hand.

+

+For close quarters, we were depending on repeating shotguns loaded with

+buckshot. Three of us with those weapons should be able to stop almost

+any number of blacks. These lay close beside us. We had our rifles and

+our pistols in addition.

+

+The drums were beating madly now. The high-pitched ululation that was

+the blended note of all the frantic yelling came clearly to our ears.

+When we had finished our preparations I went outside to listen. I

+instantly realized that the drums were nearer, much nearer. The dogs

+were excited and restless.

+

+"We'd better get the dogs up from the ground," I suggested. "They'll

+only be killed."

+

+Evan went silently down and unleashed them. They were growling and

+bristling, particularly those near the back. They seemed to realize the

+imminence of danger.

+

+I looked at my watch. It lacked two hours of dawn. The drums were

+growing louder and louder, and the yelling more distinct and defiant.

+From three sides the drums closed in on us, and from three sides

+choruses of high-pitched yells informed us of the hatred of the blacks

+for their masters. Evan interpreted as he caught some of the words.

+

+"They say the juju has declared we are to be killed," he announced with

+a faint smile. "We are to be slaughtered and our flesh boiled down

+until the fat can be collected, when it will be used to light fires.

+Pigs will feed upon us, and our bones will be scattered among the juju

+priests of a thousand villages to tell them to rise and slay all white

+men."

+

+The drums came up to the very edge of the clearing, and their

+thunderous voices boomed with a full-throated bellow across the open

+space in a deafening volume of sound. In the moonlight, we became

+conscious of darker bodies moving among the bush. Evan sighted from an

+open window and with compressed lips fired. There was a mocking yell.

+

+"They say our guns have been bewitched so we cannot harm them," he

+informed us a second later. "Give me a shotgun."

+

+The load of buckshot gave better results. Two or three shrieks of pain

+announced its arrival. Then the drums boomed forth more loudly. Evan

+fired again and again. There was a yell of rage at the third shot, when

+the resonant voice of the huge drum became muted and a mere shadow of

+itself.

+

+"I was trying for the drum," he remarked. "They were brought from a

+thousand miles inland, and there's no way to tell what price was paid

+for that one."

+

+The two other drums hastily shifted their positions, and recommenced

+their devil's tattoo. Emboldened by the fury of sound, one or two of

+the more daring spirits ventured to advance a little way out in the

+clearing to howl maledictions upon us.

+

+Arthur's rifle cracked spitefully, and mine followed. Two bold spirits

+ceased to yell.

+

+From time to time, as we saw an opportunity and a target in the

+moonlight, we shot vengefully into the bush, and several times cries of

+different timbre from the hysterical yelling of the blacks followed our

+shots. Once or twice, too, I had that curious feeling of certitude that

+follows some shots, when one is confident he has hit his mark, though

+no cry came to assure me.

+

+Evan fired again and again with his heavy shotgun, almost every deep

+explosion being followed by a cry. The range was hardly more than a

+hundred yards, and the buckshot carried that distance easily. Spreading

+as it did, it had a daunting effect.

+

+Our object in taking the initiative was solely that of dampening the

+blacks' enthusiasm. Allowed to cheer themselves with yells, they

+would make a rush that would be formidable in the extreme, but if we

+began to inflict losses before their attack began, the edge of their

+determination would be taken off. They would no longer believe in the

+efficacy of their juju to compass our destruction, and we would have

+a fraction of that psychological superiority that the white man must

+possess in order to handle natives, the complete possession of which

+enables a single fever-ridden white man to cow and rule ten thousand

+blacks.

+

+Evan made a tour of the house, to make sure that the natives were

+equally reluctant to advance on all sides. We heard him fire twice

+back there, and painful yells followed each shot. He rejoined us.

+

+"I'm going to take the rear," he said briefly. "They're in the bush all

+around. I'll hold them off easily. They'll make their main rush from

+this side, so you two stay together."

+

+Arthur's answer was a deliberate squeeze of his trigger. A yell

+followed.

+

+"At a hundred yards," he commented, looking up, "one can make good

+practice in moonlight like this."

+

+"Dawn soon," said Evan and went once more to the rear. We heard him

+settling himself for the rush that we expected.

+

+So far, there had been nothing but yells from the natives. We knew they

+had some firearms, but ammunition is very valuable in the bush. Natives

+are never supposed to have arms of precision, and when they possess

+modern rifles, they have to keep them concealed lest they be taken away

+by the Portuguese; but now and then a black boy will make off with a

+rifle and a store of shells, and there are other sources of supply.

+

+At that, though, rifles and ammunition are immensely valuable back in

+the hill country. Up beyond the Hungry Country, I have known slaves to

+be sold for three rifle cartridges apiece. In fact, my boy Mboka--now

+run off in the bush with the rest of them--had cost me exactly six

+.30-.30 shells. I had found him the slave of a portly Kuloga chieftain

+who was about to sell him to a half-caste Arab for export to the Sudan.

+

+I had wondered why the house servants did not clean out the gun chest

+when they ran away in the middle of the night, but thanked my luck that

+they failed to do so. Half a dozen rifles in the hands of the blacks

+would have made matters awkward for us at close quarters. Off in the

+bush we could have disregarded them, as the native custom is to fill

+the barrel with slugs and fire from the hip. Anything like accuracy is

+impossible to them, of course.

+

+When the sky began to pale toward the east, however, they opened up. No

+less than six firearms began to bellow at us, from an ancient fowling

+piece of who knows what ancient lineage to a modern smokeless-powder

+magazine rifle. The slugs and bullets tore through the flimsy walls of

+the house, or else imbedded themselves with a thud in one of the posts

+that supported the roof. Arthur and myself began to concentrate upon

+those weapons. The black-powder arms showed their position at every

+fire in the now growing dawnlight, and we fired vengefully at the puffs

+of smoke.

+

+The sky was growing lighter now. The stars above us were paling and

+winking feebly in an attempt to outshine the sun. The first dim

+grayness became nearly white. The east turned from pallid luminosity to

+rich rose and then to gold. The gold, in its turn, faded to yellow, and

+the first rays of the sun struck the tips of the highest trees about

+the clearing. The drumming became fast and furious. The fires of the

+guns in the bush ceased for a moment, and wild yelling began. We heard

+Evan firing occasionally from the rear of the house. Now his shots came

+more rapidly.

+

+With a hideous yell, the fringe of bush about the casa erupted black

+figures. Ancient spears, knobbed and gnarled war clubs, fiercely

+pointed arrows, and occasional rusted and long-cherished firearms armed

+the motley throng that ran yelling toward us.

+

+Arthur dropped his rifle and took up the repeating shotgun by his side.

+I took my stand at a window and opened on the advancing mob. In such a

+mass it was impossible to miss, and the buckshot was deadly. If we had

+had sawed-off shotguns, the loads would have spread more and inflicted

+more damage, but as it was we had merely to pull the triggers to see

+one or more figures crumple or spin half around and fall. In their

+state of frenzy, that did not stop the blacks.

+

+Evan's gun was booming from the rear of the house. Arthur's spoke with

+a shattering roar. My own barked angrily. The drums in the bush were

+pounding in a mad rhythm that made the universe a place of unbearable

+sound. The yells, the shots, the cries, and the thunderous drumming

+created an uproar in which I loaded my weapon and emptied it with a

+sense of curious detachment. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore were behind the

+breastwork we had made for them. I cannot speak for Mrs. Braymore, but

+I glanced once at Alicia and saw her grimly holding her light rifle in

+readiness.

+

+The blacks came on. The losses we inflicted went unnoticed. They

+swarmed up the rise on which the house was built. We took heavy toll

+of them, but from sheer weight of numbers their casualties seemed

+insignificant. Their yells were deafening as they swept up the last

+twenty yards. I emptied my shotgun and began to use my two automatics.

+

+A mass of black humanity flowed up the steps, though a gap in the

+stream widened for a moment as Arthur poured the last shells from

+his shotgun into them. They clambered the pillars that supported the

+veranda and made for the windows.

+

+At that distance, barely ten feet, we could not miss. The veranda

+was a shambles. They could not live there. Arthur and myself with an

+automatic in each hand swept the place. I heard a shot and a yell

+behind me. One of the openings in the floor showed the barrel of an

+ancient musket that was just falling back. Alicia had fired down the

+opening and undoubtedly saved my life. The musket was aimed directly

+for my back, and would have torn my head from my body.

+

+There was a crashing, and an antique blunderbuss appeared through

+a hole smashed in the flimsy side wall of the house. Arthur fired

+quickly. Then I heard Evan cry out at the rear of the house. Before we

+could move, there was an outburst of demoniacal, bestial screamings of

+rage. To one who had once heard that sound, the noise was unmistakable.

+The gorilla had appeared in a killing fury and was going for the

+blacks, as their panic testified. In a moment the clearing was dotted

+with running natives. They dared face our weapons, but the gorilla----

+

+Evan's rifle was silent. There was an instant of almost unbearable

+quietness. Then came a triumphant, horrible outcry from the beast. It

+had slain.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER VIII.

+

+UNMASKED.

+

+

+The quiet was deadly. Where five minutes before had been the yelling

+of the natives and the roaring of the drums, the sharp cracks of our

+rifles, and the bellowing of the native firearms, now there was not a

+sound.

+

+Arthur and I, shaken by the suddenness of the transition, waited in

+cold apprehension. Would the door from the rear of the house burst open

+and the shaggy beast rage into the room, its colossal arms crushing

+whatever might come within its grasp? Would we, the four in that one

+room, fire futilely into its barrellike chest, and then be rent and

+tore in the huge ape's hairy arms, while its great discolored fangs

+sank into our flesh?

+

+The stillness was broken by a feeble sound, and we quivered, gripping

+our rifles the more tightly. The tension was terrific. Another feeble

+sound, a scraping sound. Then two or three faint jars, followed by an

+uncertain, tottering footstep, and a second. We heard Evan's voice,

+barely above a whisper, muttering pain-racked imprecations.

+

+The door opened slowly and he limped weakly into the room. His clothes

+were torn and gory. Blood dripped from a deep cut across the back of

+his hand. He stared at us uncertainly, and a look of relief came across

+his face.

+

+"Well," he said slowly. "They've gone."

+

+Alicia, for the first time, gave way. She burst into sobs, against

+which she struggled bravely.

+

+"The gorilla!" I snapped, fearful lest I too give way.

+

+Evan shook his head. "The blacks had crept up to and filled the

+servants' quarters during the night. I suppose that's why the dogs

+were restless. When they made a rush, they dashed out from there and I

+couldn't stop them. They were inside, and I was just about gone when

+the gorilla appeared from nowhere. I dare say I shouted, and then the

+beast made for the blacks. I suppose it was as frightened as they were,

+but it charged them, screaming with rage, and they ran. It got one of

+them. The poor devil is out there now. I'd been knocked down and one of

+the blacks was just about to finish me off when the brute appeared."

+

+"Where is it now?"

+

+Evan shook his head again. "I don't know where it went. It was going

+for the blacks."

+

+Alicia stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and tried desperately to

+get a grip on herself again.

+

+"We'll go and look out at the back," said Arthur grimly. "You stay

+here, Evan."

+

+We went cautiously out toward the rear. There lay one of the natives

+with his neck broken, an expression of infinite horror on his face.

+Others lay in twisted attitudes about the place, gaping wounds from

+the buckshot at close range showing how desperately Evan had fought. Of

+the gorilla there was no sign. We searched the place thoroughly, but

+found nothing.

+

+We returned to the others, a curious lethargy settling upon us. We had

+been at such high tension for so long that it was impossible to keep

+keyed up. I, for one, felt an almost-overpowering desire to sleep.

+Alicia had recovered her composure by now and was trying to bandage

+Evan's hand. He was indifferently submitting, but after she had

+finished, he looked at it and took the bandage off, substituting a mere

+strip of adhesive for the many turns of the cloth.

+

+"I can handle my rifle like this," he said dully.

+

+Mrs. Braymore made coffee and we drank it in silence. Presently Arthur

+motioned to the women to leave the room and began to tug at the bodies

+lying on the floor. It was absurd for us to think of trying to bury

+them. He dragged them to the edge of the veranda and dropped them over

+the edge to the ground below. He moved jerkily, almost like a man

+asleep.

+

+"No need to do that," said Evan suddenly, a little while later.

+

+Arthur stopped and looked at him questioningly.

+

+"We'll have to start for the coast," Evan explained uninterestedly. "We

+can't stick it out here. The natives won't bother us now. The fight's

+taken out of them."

+

+"But the gorilla?"

+

+"Have to chance it," said Evan slowly. "There's nothing else to do."

+

+"He'll get us within the first ten miles," I remarked, speaking with

+difficulty because of the peculiar lethargy that affected us all. "You

+know how he trailed Arthur."

+

+There was a moment's silence, then Arthur automatically resumed his

+task. Alicia came into the room and silently gave us something to eat.

+Arthur stopped dumbly and began to chew on his food, forgetting the

+grisly labor he had been performing but a moment before.

+

+"We can't start to-day, anyway," he said after a little. "We've got

+to rest. We're all in bad shape and we've two weeks' travel before we

+reach another white man's house."

+

+Evan made some reply, but I did not catch it. I fell asleep with food

+in my hands and slept like a dead man for hours. Alicia waked me at

+noon to eat again.

+

+All that day we were possessed by a peculiar indifference, the result

+of the reaction from the tension at which we had lived for so many

+days. I woke with a start at three o'clock, hearing the dogs bark. Evan

+came slowly into the room.

+

+"I let the dogs loose," he said, noticing my expression. "They were

+whining."

+

+"We'll need them to-night, in case the beast comes back." I rose

+stiffly and went back to douse my head with water. It roused me a

+little and, after a cup of coffee, I joined the other two. We were all

+languid and tired, but thoroughly awake now.

+

+"Of course we can't stay on here," Arthur was admitting, "but we

+wouldn't have one chance in a hundred to make it through the jungle

+with that ape following us. You've seen how it manages to reach the

+house here."

+

+"I've figured," said Evan thoughtfully, "that it was in the fringe of

+bush, and when the drums began to close in from three sides, it was

+flushed out and came on to hide here in or about the house. It had

+hidden here before."

+

+"Probably," Arthur agreed. "But that doesn't say how we're going

+to elude it during a journey of a hundred and fifty miles without

+carriers."

+

+Evan threw out his hands. "But what are we going to do?" He appealed to

+me. "What do you think, Murray?"

+

+"If we stay here," I reasoned, "either we'll get him or he'll get us.

+If we go, he'll probably get one or more of us and we may get him. But

+we can't stay here. The only thing I can think of is that we had better

+try for him to-night. With the dogs to warn us, we'll have a better

+chance than before. If he doesn't come to-night, try to-morrow night.

+Hang on here as long as we dare and then, if we must, try the trail. If

+we could strike a caravan coming down from the Hungry Country, now----"

+

+Evan shook his head. "I haven't been very hospitable to the Portuguese

+traders," he remarked. "They steal my slaves and sell them in Ticao.

+They don't turn off the main slave trail to my villages any more."

+

+We were, silent for a moment or two.

+

+"Are there any of the rest barricades any short distance away?" asked

+Arthur. "We might reach one of them and wait for a caravan to come."

+

+From time to time along the great slave trail from the interior, you

+will find big inclosures made of tree trunks and filled with grass

+huts. They were originally built for halting places for the caravans

+that go up and down from beyond the Hungry Country. Of course they

+are in ill repair because of the attacks of insects and rot upon dead

+timber in that climate, but the carriers feel safer in them after

+nightfall, and the slave traders find them convenient to avoid possible

+attempts to escape off the part of the "voluntary labor recruits" they

+are escorting to the coast.

+

+"We might try," I said doubtfully. "Frankly, I think the beast would

+have as much chance at us there as here. If we happened on a caravan

+right away, though, it would help."

+

+"Why doesn't the damned thing go away?" Arthur looked at us with

+something of dread in his eyes. "I shot its mate four hundred miles

+away, up in the Kongo. It trailed me those four hundred miles, making

+attempt after attempt on me. I wounded it once, and got a fair shot at

+it two weeks before Murray brought Alicia and Mrs. Braymore here. I

+thought I had killed it then. It went off through the trees as if it

+were badly injured. I'd made sure it was dead."

+

+He began to pace up and down the room nervously.

+

+"I've never known one so far from Kongo before," I said, in an attempt

+to encourage him. "You know what animals are. They'll stick at a thing

+for an amazing length of time and then will drop it like a shot. He may

+get a touch of homesickness any day and swing off to the north again."

+

+"If he only would!" Arthur burst out. "I'm beginning to feel that he's

+going to get me yet. Something tells me he's going to get me."

+

+"Nonsense," said Evan heartily. "Get a grip on yourself, old man."

+

+"If he killed me," Arthur muttered morosely, "he'd be satisfied. I'm

+the one he's after. If he killed me, he might go off and leave the rest

+of you in peace."

+

+"Don't be an ass, Arthur," I told him sharply. "The beast can't

+distinguish between white men. He'd be just as apt to try to wipe out

+the lot of us, and I have a strong objection to being wiped out."

+

+Arthur walked out on the veranda and stood there, leaning against the

+side of the house and staring moodily off into the bush. Evan looked at

+me significantly.

+

+"Nerves," he said quietly. "I feel the same way, but I'm trying not to

+show it. I'll go and round up the dogs. I have a feeling that something

+is due to happen to-night."

+

+I went out to the back. Alicia saw me passing her door and joined me,

+leaving Mrs. Braymore behind.

+

+"Have you decided on your course?" she asked in a low voice. "You know

+both of us are willing to do anything you think wise. You mustn't hold

+back for fear we may not be able to stand hardships."

+

+I shook my head. "The only thing we can do," I said wearily, "is hope

+the beast turns up to-night and that we kill him."

+

+Alicia put out her hand and let it rest on my shoulder in comradely

+fashion.

+

+"Please don't be discouraged," she said urgently. "We've stood so much,

+surely we can endure a little more."

+

+I tried to smile. "We'll stick it out. It must be much harder for you

+and Mrs. Braymore."

+

+"Don't worry about us." Alicia shook her head decidedly. "It's

+the waiting for the beast to come that worries you. We're growing

+accustomed to grisly sights, but you'll never be used to just waiting.

+Why, I've got so I can look at those poor natives and not even shiver."

+

+My eyes followed her glance. I smiled wryly. "It isn't pleasant for

+me to look at that particular native," I remarked. "He was one of my

+carriers. I bought and freed him when he was to be used for food--a

+tribe in the interior. All my boys joined Evan's blacks."

+

+Alicia looked at me with her large eyes. "Let's go and talk to Arthur,"

+she said suddenly. "He needs cheering as much as you do."

+

+The veranda of the casa went all the way around it. Arthur, when I had

+seen him, was leaning against the wall before the main door. Alicia and

+I walked around the outside.

+

+"I didn't thank you for shooting down the hole in the flooring----" I

+began, then quickly snapped my hand to the pistol at my belt.

+

+From inside the house had come a snarl! Before I could take another

+step, I heard a queer, gurgling gasp and a sickening crack. In a second

+I had bolted around the corner of the casa, rushing madly, my automatic

+in my hand. Arthur had been leaning against the wall near one of the

+windows. Now he was crumpling limply to the floor, while the curtains

+behind him were still fluttering where the arms that had broken his

+neck had beat jerked back. I dashed through the door, absolutely

+desperate and utterly reckless. A dark form was bounding down the hall

+that led to the rear. A frightened cry came from the room in which

+Mrs. Braymore had been left. I ran down the passageway, furious and

+desperate, I heard a door slam shut--the door of the storeroom! I made

+for it, stumbled, and fell into the room on all fours.

+

+Evan Graham was in the room, trying to stuff a furry something into an

+open box! As I sprawled on the floor he whirled and saw me. From his

+lips issued the identical snarl I had heard five seconds before, and he

+raised his automatic pistol and fired!

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER IX.

+

+THE GORILLA'S SCREAM.

+

+

+I came slowly back to consciousness, feeling weak and giddy. I essayed

+to move and found I could not. I opened my eyes. Despite the gathering

+darkness, I discovered that I was seated in a chair in the large room

+of the casa. A second attempt to move disclosed the fact that I was

+tied tightly.

+

+Alicia stared at me dumbly from an opposite chair, and Mrs. Braymore

+sat in one corner, her face white and set and her eyes full of horror.

+Evan was standing at his ease by the doorway, smoking with evident

+enjoyment.

+

+In one of his hands he held a shaggy object that for some seconds held,

+weakly, my half-focused attention. It was a baglike object, that yet

+seemed to contain a framework. Not yet awake to full consciousness,

+I saw that it was strangely animal. It was a mask in the perfect,

+horrible likeness of a gorilla.

+

+Evan turned and saw my eyes open. "Well, Murray, old top," he said

+amiably. "You caught me, didn't you?"

+

+My throat was dry and parched, and my shoulder ached abominably. "What

+the devil?" I croaked weakly.

+

+"Give him some water, Alicia," said Evan cheerfully. "He's thirsty."

+

+Alicia gave me water. "He has my pistol," she whispered despairingly as

+she bent over me.

+

+Full consciousness returned with a jerk. Evan had shot me. Evan had

+snarled at me as he fired. Evan--why Evan must have killed Arthur! He

+grinned approvingly as he saw me straighten in an instinctive effort to

+break my bonds.

+

+"Ah, feeling better," he commented. "I'm sorry you caught me. I'd have

+liked to take you back to Ticao and hear you tell the tale of this

+week's work of ours. You always were a great one for telling tales,

+Murray."

+

+He puffed luxuriously at his cigarette and looked at the gathering

+darkness outside.

+

+"You're a connoisseur of tales, Murray, so I think I'll tell you one.

+I'm going off to get in touch with my natives in a little while, as

+soon as it's dark, but I've a few minutes to spare and might as well

+be pleasant during that little while. I'm afraid I'll have to be

+unpleasant later on, you know."

+

+"I didn't know."

+

+I have never found that losing one's head is an advantage under any

+circumstances, so I prepared to make an effort to keep mine. Evan waved

+his hand airily.

+

+"Oh, I'm going to be put to the unpleasant necessity of disposing of

+you and Mrs. Braymore. No one could regret it more than I do, but the

+necessity is there. You see, I was the gorilla." He indicated the

+gorilla mask. "And it wouldn't do for you to tell that story about."

+

+"I can believe it," I admitted. My head was spinning, but I tried to

+follow what he was saying in the hope of finding something therein to

+my own advantage.

+

+"You understand, of course," said Evan cheerfully, "that I don't mean

+that I was the beast whose mate Arthur so inconsiderately shot, or the

+one who followed his caravan all the way here from the Kongo. That

+was another gorilla altogether. I simply happen to be the one that

+hung about the house here. Arthur shot the other one two weeks before

+you came. It got away, but he must have wounded it fatally. Otherwise

+it would have turned up long before. I'll admit that I was a little

+nervous about the animal at first, but I soon realized that it must be

+dead. I saw to it that Arthur was not similarly convinced, however. I

+had already made more or less of a plan. You know about my slaves?"

+

+"No," I said rather weakly. I had lost a lot of blood.

+

+"I'd knocked about the West Coast for quite a while before I came

+here." Evan stopped and drew up a chair. He sat down comfortably.

+"I had learned the secret of controlling natives. As you know, that

+secret is fear. I knew that if I could get, say, a village full of them

+thoroughly afraid of me, they would be to all practical purposes my

+slaves. Normal means of frightening them would have the disadvantage

+of not frightening them too much to invoke juju to get rid of me. And

+juju, invoked against a white man, means poison. The obvious solution

+was to frighten them by means of the very juju they would use against

+me."

+

+"Poison?" I asked. My head was spinning, but I tried not to show it.

+

+"No." Evan puffed casually upon his cigarette. "Poison would be the

+result of the juju. I went at the fountain head. Kongo natives are

+deadly afraid of gorillas, but just a little way from gorilla country,

+the natives fear them vastly more than where familiarity has had time

+to breed, if not contempt, at least some measure of accustomedness. The

+natives here would be horribly afraid of them. I made my preparations

+accordingly. Having bribed his excellency the colonial governor, and

+having had this mask made and learned how to imitate to a fair degree

+of perfection the cries of the beasts, I came out here. Have you seen

+my mask?"

+

+He held it out for me to see, even going so far as to strike a light

+so that I might examine the thing more closely. He held it before my

+eyes and turned it about. It was an amazingly perfect bit of work,

+perhaps larger than a normal skull of one of the beasts would be. For

+all their size, their skulls are comparatively small. It was lifelike

+to a surprising degree. The disgustingly human, and yet unhuman ears

+stuck out against the skull. The jaw protruded in truly simian fashion,

+and the caked, black lips were drawn back from discolored fangs in a

+grimace of almost unimaginable ferocity. The broad, flat nostrils were

+distended in rage, and the eyeholes of the mask sank deep back below

+the low and beetling forehead. If small, glittering eyes had shone

+evilly from those now blank holes, I would have been tempted to believe

+that a live beast was before me.

+

+"Good work, isn't it?" asked Evan. "I came out here with my four

+overseers, wandered into the village, and metamorphosed myself before

+the villagers' eyes into a gorilla clad as a man, which at one moment

+spoke with the voice of a man, ordering them to obey, and the next

+screamed at them in tones of one of the monstrous apes of which they

+were in such dread. I built myself this casa, demanded tribute of gums

+and produce, started a small juju house off in a small clearing, and in

+a couple of weeks had established myself as a deity, demanding to be

+worshiped and sacrificed to, exacting all sorts of tribute, and so on.

+Very profitable, I assure you.

+

+"They soon believed that I could change myself into a gorilla at will

+and respected me immensely. I took care to throw a few scares into

+them. In Japan, some years ago, I learned a small and very elemental

+jujutsu trick which requires very little strength to break a man's

+neck. A few broken necks, a few snarls, a scream or so of rage, and

+they'd no more think of crossing my will than they'd think of jumping

+into the fires of hell."

+

+"They attacked the house," I remarked, trying behind my back to wriggle

+one of my hands free from the bonds that held it fast.

+

+"They'll suffer for that." Evan was smiling, but there was something

+in his tone that made me feel slightly cold. "They'll suffer for that.

+I told my juju priests to take the people off into the woods and keep

+them busy with a juju council until I had finished my business with

+you. They forced your boys to go with them. They simply got out of

+hand, that's all. The witch doctor you and Arthur shot was coming to

+tell me that they were out of control. If I had gone and appeared among

+them, wearing my gorilla mask, and snarled at them once, they would

+have been like lambs. I simply couldn't, get away from you people

+without making you suspicious."

+

+"But what was the object of it all?" I demanded. I had found it

+impossible to free even one hand.

+

+"Arthur was my elder brother," said Evan amiably. "Consequently, being

+English, he had all the money in the family. I do not like West Africa.

+If I disposed of Arthur, I could go back to England and live with some

+comfort. I thought of shooting him and calling it an accident, but

+people would talk, you know. When he came here with his tale of being

+followed by a gorilla, I saw the possibilities. When I heard you people

+were coming up, I saw I would have witnesses. My idea was to convince

+you of the presence of a gorilla, break Arthur's neck precisely as I

+did this afternoon, and return to England. I rather thought I would be

+able to comfort Alicia, in time."

+

+Alicia shuddered. Evan grinned at her.

+

+"I shall comfort you, Alicia, but presently. My people will return,

+Murray and your estimable chaperon will be disposed of, and you and

+I will escape precariously to Ticao, telling the tale of hairbreadth

+escapes during the uprising of my natives and during the trip."

+

+"Never!" said Alicia desperately.

+

+"Oh, yes." Evan was polite, but there was evil determination in his

+tone. "You never cared much for Arthur, and I more than suspect you're

+in love with Murray. You'll do as I say for his sake."

+

+There was mute interrogation in my expression.

+

+"Not to save your life, of course, Murray," Evan hastened to assure

+me. "I really can't allow you to spread tales of what happened up

+here. She'll be pleasant to make sure that you depart this life,

+er--comfortably."

+

+Alicia looked at me in despair.

+

+Evan glanced out the window. "Not time for me to start off yet," he

+remarked. "They'll have to go down and worship me when I turn up in

+this little fixing." He indicated the gorilla-head mask in his hand.

+"Is there anything that isn't clear to you?"

+

+"I don't understand anything," I said.

+

+"I'll begin at the beginning, in your own fashion. Let's see. Biheta.

+You remember you were here the night she was installed in the casa?

+One of my servants had been insolent. I sent word to the village

+that Biheta was to be sent here to take the other's place. She was

+frightened, and the juju ceremony you saw was for the purpose of

+heartening her for the time she would spend in proximity to my godlike

+person. When the other servants left, by my orders, she was too stupid

+to go with them. She was perpetually frightened, anyway. You see,

+she saw me dispose of the servant that had been insolent. Jujutsu is

+useful. I'll show you how to break a neck." He started to rise, then

+sank back in his chair. "Come to think of it, I need you to convince

+Alicia that she had better do as I tell her. You will depart this life

+to-morrow. As I was saying, Biheta stayed behind when she should have

+cleared out with the others. So, in the middle of the night, while on

+guard, I went into her room, wearing my mask. I made a noise, she woke,

+saw me--and that was the end of that. The photograph of the retina of

+her eye showed the face of this mask. Rather clever idea, don't you

+think?"

+

+"Very," I admitted.

+

+"Thanks." Evan smiled sarcastically. "Well, Arthur just imagined he

+heard the beast following him through the trees. He shot at nothing,

+when you and he went down to explore the village. My own 'encounter'

+with the animal when I started off in the jungle alone was purely

+imaginary. I scratched my own face and jabbered like the gorilla

+myself. Like this----"

+

+He emitted a succession of incredible sounds, so beastlike and

+ferocious in their tones that I could hardly believe it was not an

+animal uttering them. There was a peculiar echo from the bush outside.

+

+"The dogs were excited in the storeroom," Evan went on easily, "because

+they could smell the fur of the mask I kept in a small box in there.

+When I told that wild tale of a hairy arm reaching in at the window

+and dragging the dog out, to fling it with a broken neck into the

+courtyard, I need not say that I had done the killing. And my 'seeing'

+the gorilla on the roof was more fiction. Of course he wasn't there at

+dawn. I was laughing in my sleeve at you people all night long, while

+we patrolled the courtyard. The silhouette of the gorilla's head you

+two saw on the window curtain was the shadow of your humble servant.

+I had decided that the play had gone far enough. The presence of the

+gorilla had been proved. The three of you, my present audience, would

+corroborate my story of the gorilla's having killed Arthur. I was on my

+way to break his neck. You nearly got me that time, and I had to kill

+the dog to get away. Then the natives got out of hand. I could have

+stopped them by a simple appearance, but you people would have missed

+me. I waited until they were near the house, then rushed out in my

+mask, snarling and raging at them, and they ran. After that I hid the

+mask quickly and pretended to you that I had been knocked down. It was

+really very simple. With the natives quieted for a few days, I simply

+carried out my plans to dispose of Arthur. I'm sorry I'll have to put

+you two out of the way, but Arthur's dead, I'm his heir, I'm going to

+marry Alicia and become a country gentleman in England, and I can't let

+you two people talk."

+

+"You'll never dare take me to England," said Alicia, desperately white.

+

+"You'll marry me, Alicia," said Evan coolly. "You won't split. When you

+see the preparations my natives will make for the entertainment of

+Murray and Mrs. Braymore, you'll swear to anything, and you'll marry me

+when we get to Ticao. You'll corroborate my tales of a slave uprising,

+too. You don't know what can be done to Murray, and will be done before

+he dies, unless you do as I say."

+

+Alicia moistened her lips. I saw her half close her eyes.

+

+Evan laughed. "It's about time for me to call on my natives. This will

+be our wedding night, Alicia. One of the local witch doctors will marry

+us, and the ceremony will be repeated when we get to Ticao. Murray and

+Mrs. Braymore will be kept alive until to-morrow lest you refuse to go

+through with the ceremony. If you hesitate, I dare say I'll be able to

+make up your mind for you. Too bad I'll have to kill the other two,

+though." He strolled over to the door. "I'll call up my natives. You'll

+hear the gorilla again."

+

+Derisively he opened his lips and from them issued a strange cry, that

+I had heard once before. It was the challenge of a bull ape to battle.

+And--good Heaven! _It was answered!_

+

+There was a snarl behind him. He turned with a gasp. There on the

+veranda, leaping toward him, he saw, not a masquerading white man,

+posing as a jungle god, but a colossal gorilla in actuality, gnashing

+its teeth in rage, and with its huge, hairy arms outstretched.

+

+I shall remember Evan's shriek when the beast seized him, to the end of

+my days. Sometimes, even now, I start up at midnight with the echo of

+it in my ears. For one instant the two figures were outlined against

+the fading light of the sky. Then the ferocious fangs buried themselves

+in Evan's throat and the beast leaped clumsily to the ground, bearing

+the still-struggling body in its immensely muscled arms.

+

+We heard the sounds from the courtyard, sounds at whose meaning I

+do not wish to guess. And then our ears rang with the horrible,

+incredible, terrifying scream of a gorilla that has made a kill.

+

+

+

+

+CHAPTER X.

+

+AT THE PADRE'S.

+

+

+We passed through the night somehow. Alicia, half dead with terror,

+managed clumsily to release me, but weak as I was from loss of blood,

+we dared attempt nothing that night.

+

+In the morning the great ape was gone. I might as well say now that I

+believe that it was the same animal that had trailed Arthur, and which

+Arthur had gravely wounded some two weeks before our arrival.

+

+For three weeks it had hidden while the wound healed, and then came

+cautiously toward the casa again. It heard Evan's first beastlike

+cries, and its response was probably the queer echo I had thought I

+heard from the bush. It crept forward, and when Evan derisively uttered

+the challenge cry of the monster anthropoids, it had leaped to the

+attack.

+

+Limited as is the intelligence of the creatures, it would never

+distinguish between white men. A white man had killed its mate. It had

+killed a white man. With the blood lust sated, by now the shaggy brute

+was doubtless swinging rapidly through the treetops toward its Kongo

+hunting grounds.

+

+That is my explanation. I know I never saw any other sign of the huge

+gorilla either then or at any later time. I have told the tale on

+different occasions to many different people, and my surmise has always

+been accepted as correct.

+

+Our predicament was not entirely done away with by the disappearance

+of the gorilla that had come to our deliverance so unexpectedly. We

+were still a hundred and fifty miles from another white man or woman,

+absolutely without carriers, and I was abominably weak from the wound

+Evan had inflicted. Our chances looked slight indeed until nearly noon

+of the next day.

+

+A very much ashamed, and a very apologetic black figure emerged from

+the bush on the side farthest from the village. It was followed

+by about forty other similarly ashamed and apologetic figures. I

+recognized Mboka, my gun-bearer in the lead and had to struggle to

+restrain an impulse to jump up and shout aloud to Alicia that we were

+all right at last.

+

+Instead, I sat impassively on the veranda until Mboka stopped humbly

+in the courtyard before me. I paid absolutely no attention, but smoked

+indifferently as if his presence or absence were a matter in which

+I had no concern. He waited and fidgeted, scraping his bare feet

+embarrassedly on the ground, until at last I looked down and inspected

+him impersonally. I looked away again. Presently, looking off through

+the bush as if he were the most insignificant atom in the universe, I

+remarked:

+

+"Pig!"

+

+Mboka beamed. It is the custom in West Africa for the lower in rank,

+the inferior, to speak first, but Mboka was too ashamed to presume. He

+stood there uneasily and tried to look apologetic while I informed him

+that he had put me to some inconvenience, that he was to go and never

+dare appear before me again. I added that I would see to it that no

+other trader ever dreamed of employing him for any purpose whatever.

+

+It does not do for a white man to admit himself in any degree dependent

+on a black. I told him that he need never come to me again and resumed

+my stare into the bush. He may have had some idea of trying to bargain

+with me, but my attitude put him back. He hesitatingly and humbly told

+me what I already knew quite well, that he and the others had been

+forced to accompany Evan's natives off into the bush.

+

+One or two of the carriers had been swept away by the fervor of the

+juju council and had joined Evan's folk in their attack on us, but the

+others had now fled to put themselves under my protection. They begged

+that I would receive them again and assured me of their undivided

+loyalty, if I would take them again into my service.

+

+I kept them waiting for an hour while I went indoors and ate a

+leisurely breakfast. When I came outside again, I seemed to have

+forgotten them. My indifference completed their subjugation. They were

+abject in their pleadings for me to take them back. When I finally

+consented, it was with the scornful statement that I was going to take

+them to Ticao and discharge them from my service forever.

+

+They burdened themselves joyfully with the loads they had brought up

+from Ticao and waited anxiously for me to announce my readiness to

+start. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore would have to walk, as their ox-cart

+was useless. I began the journey on foot, but could not keep up. I was

+too weak.

+

+The second day I had to be carried in an improvised hammock, and the

+third or fourth day I found myself in a raging fever. Alicia worked

+over me bravely, but I lapsed into semidelirious feverishness in which

+I was of no use whatever.

+

+I must credit Mboka with a great deal more faithfulness than I had

+expected of him. He kept the carriers under an iron rule, and Alicia

+told me later that the length of the journeys was stretched to the

+greatest possible distance every day. With nothing but the scantiest

+of medicines--as my own drug chest had been accidentally left behind

+at Evan's deserted casa--she fought off the fever, but when we arrived

+at the Padre Silvestre's mission, I was in very bad shape. The padre

+doctored me, however, and in two weeks I had not only ceased my

+delirium, but could move about a little. I remember the first evening I

+was allowed to sit up.

+

+The padre, Alicia, and Mrs. Braymore had celebrated my recovery at

+dinner that night, the padre making one of his graceful little speeches

+on the subject. I am not of the padre's faith, but we are great

+friends, and after dinner he announced that I might sit up. With great

+ceremony they got me into a chair and made a great to-do over me. Then

+they helped me to a chair on the little screened-in veranda of the

+padre's house, where I could look out at the perfect African night and

+see the small mission church, and farther off the village in which the

+padre's converts live.

+

+Mrs. Braymore went back indoors to discuss with him some aid she

+proposed to give the mission. She was an Episcopalian, but she had seen

+the work the padre had done, and a difference of creed had long since

+seemed unimportant. The main thing was that the natives needed aid.

+Alicia and I on the veranda talked for a long time, disjointedly.

+

+"What will happen to Evan's plantation?" she asked presently, naming

+the place with reluctance.

+

+"The natives will move away," I answered thoughtfully, "and a tradition

+will grow up, making the casa the abode of a devil-god who will destroy

+all comers. Slave caravans passing down the great slave trail will

+make offerings to appease the evil spirits in the house, and a juju

+house will appear, where the witch doctor will grow rich and fat on the

+contributions he will exact. The casa itself will stand untenanted and

+deserted, while tall grasses grow in the courtyard, and at last the

+house will fall in shapeless ruins."

+

+"It was terrible there," said Alicia with a shudder. "And Evan--it

+is almost unbelievable that he should have done what he did. He was

+always a black sheep, but that----"

+

+I was silent for a moment. "He was planning to force you to marry him,"

+I said presently. "Not thinking of how you might feel for Arthur."

+

+"Arthur was like a brother," Alicia said sadly. "I was very, very fond

+of him. We were engaged, but we had nearly agreed that we did not care

+for each other enough to marry. I was very fond of him, though. I could

+not have cared for him more if he had really been my brother."

+

+The great white African moon was silvering the whole earth with its

+pale rays. From the village came negro voices, singing the native words

+to an old, old devotional melody. From within the house came the rustle

+of papers. The padre and Mrs. Braymore were going over the details of

+the small hospital she proposed to erect for the mission. The padre

+is an old man, and more than forty years of his life have been spent

+at his little mission station, trying to help the natives despite the

+Portuguese and the _servaçal_. Now, at last, he was to have adequate

+equipment through Mrs. Braymore's generosity.

+

+She was going back to her beloved England, where she would go to her

+five-o'clock teas and discuss the neighborhood gossip and hear the

+curate talk about the possibility of repairing the parish house. I

+knew she was glad that she could again sink into the pleasant rut of

+well-to-do English country life. Alicia would go too, and I would see

+her no more. It suddenly seemed unbearable that she should leave me.

+

+"I shall be leaving Ticao soon," I said abruptly.

+

+Alicia turned. Her face was grave and sweet in the half light.

+

+"Why? I thought----"

+

+"This is an evil country. White men denigrate and black men are like

+beasts. I am sick of the place. I shall go back somewhere in the States

+and see what I can find to do there."

+

+"I'm glad you're leaving Ticao," she said slowly. "I should not like

+to think I would never see you again. We have grown to be very good

+friends."

+

+I waited a moment or so and then said quietly:

+

+"When Evan was explaining to us after he had shot me, he said that he

+would force you to do as he said by threats of my death by torture. You

+remember?"

+

+Alicia nodded silently.

+

+"He said that he believed you cared a little for me. I have been hoping

+very much that he was right. I'm more or less of a ne'er-do-well, but

+if there's any hope for me, I'll try hard to change."

+

+I waited breathlessly for her to answer. She looked out at the

+moonlight for what seemed an age-long time. At last she turned again to

+me. I had a moment of panic, and then I saw that she was smiling.

+

+"Why, Murray," she said in a flash of mischief. "I may call on you to

+change after a while, but for the present, say for the next ten or

+twenty years, I think you're perfectly all right as you are."

+

+I had not thought myself so strong, but when I saw her smiling at me

+with her face close to my own, my fever weakness left me and I reached

+out my arms. Alicia was quite considerate of me. She struggled only a

+very little.

+

+

+

+

+

+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Juju, by Murray Leinster

+

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+<pre>

+

+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Juju, by Murray Leinster

+

+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

+

+

+

+Title: Juju

+

+Author: Murray Leinster

+

+Release Date: December 19, 2015 [EBook #50719]

+

+Language: English

+

+Character set encoding: ASCII

+

+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUJU ***

+

+

+

+

+Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online

+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

+

+

+

+

+

+

+</pre>

+

+

+<div class="figcenter">

+  <img src="images/cover.jpg" width="350" height="500" alt=""/>

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="titlepage">

+<h1>Juju</h1>

+

+<p>Murray Leinster</p>

+

+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />

+The Thrill Book, October 15, 1919.]</p>

+

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<p class="ph3">Contents</p>

+

+<div class="center">

+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td><td align="left">AN AFRICAN NIGHT.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td><td align="left">THE SEEKER OF VENGEANCE.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td><td align="left">EVAN'S SORTIE.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td><td align="left">THE FIRST VICTIM.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td><td align="left">AS BY MAGIC.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td><td align="left">THE FORM THAT CREPT.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td><td align="left">A STRANGE ALLY.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td><td align="left">UNMASKED.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td><td align="left">THE GORILLA'S SCREAM.</td></tr>

+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td><td align="left">AT THE PADRE'S.</td></tr>

+</table></div>

+

+

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="figcenter">

+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" width="650" height="279" alt=""/>

+</div>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br />

+<small>AN AFRICAN NIGHT.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+

+<p>From the juju house the witch doctor emerged, bedaubed with colored

+earths and bright ashes. The drums renewed their frantic, resounding

+thunder. The torchbearers capered more actively, and yelled more

+excitedly. The drumming had gone on all day and its hypnotic effect

+had culminated in a species of ecstasy in which the blacks yelled and

+capered, and capered and yelled, without any clear notion of why or

+what they yelled.</p>

+

+<p>With great solemnity, the witch doctor led forward a young native girl,

+her face bedaubed with high juju signs. She was in the last stage of

+panic. If she did not flee, it was because she believed a worse fate

+awaited her flight than if she submitted to whatever was in store for

+her now.</p>

+

+<p>Two men stepped forward and threw necklaces of magic import about her

+neck. Two other men who upon occasion acted as the assistants of the

+chief witch doctor seized the girl's hands. The shouting mass of blacks

+formed themselves into a sort of column.</p>

+

+<p>At the front were the drums, those incredible native drums hollowed

+out of a single log, and which come from the yet unknown fastnesses

+of the darkest interior, far back of Lake Tchad. Behind them came

+the torchbearers, yelling a rhythmic chant and capering in almost

+unbelievable attitudes as they passed along. Next came the witch

+doctor, important and mysterious. Behind him came more torchbearers,

+yelling hysterically at the surrounding darkness. Then came the two

+assistants, dragging the young girl who was almost paralyzed with

+terror. And the entire population of the village followed in their

+wake, carrying flaming lights and yelling, yelling, yelling at the

+eternally unamazed African forest.</p>

+

+<p>The tall, dank tree trunks loomed mysteriously above the band of

+vociferous natives, with their thumping, rumbling, booming drums

+sounding hollowly from the front of the procession. The lights wound

+into the forest, deep into the unknown and unknowable bush. The yelling

+became fainter, but the drums continued to boom out monotonously

+through the throbbing silence of the African night. Boom, boom, boom,

+boom! Never a variation from the steady beat, though the sound was

+muted by the distance it had to travel before reaching us.</p>

+

+<p>I glanced across to where Evan Graham sat smoking. We were on the

+veranda of the casa on his plantation, four weeks' march from the city

+of Ticao, in the province of Ticao, Portuguese West Africa. From the

+veranda we could see through the cleared way to the village, a half

+mile away, and the whole scene of the juju procession had been spread

+before our eyes like a play.</p>

+

+<p>It puzzled me. I knew Evan made no faintest attempt to Christianize his

+slaves&mdash;and the villagers were surely his slaves&mdash;and yet, white men do

+not often allow witch doctors to flourish in their slave quarters. And

+the girl who had been led away&mdash;I had no idea what might become of her.

+Voodoo still puts out its head in strange forms in strange places. It

+might well be that some hellish ceremony would take place far back in

+the bush that night.</p>

+

+<p>Whatever was to happen had been planned long before, because I had

+arrived some four hours previously from a trip up beyond the Hungry

+Country, and the drums were beating then. I looked curiously at Evan to

+see what he thought of the open practice of juju by his slaves under

+their master's eyes. His expression was inscrutable. I knew better than

+to ask questions, but I could not help wondering what it all meant.

+Evan was a queer sort, at best, but to allow his natives to practice

+black magic&mdash;as was evidently the case here&mdash;before his very nose was

+queerer than anything he had done before.</p>

+

+<p>He was not taken by surprise, I know. I had heard the drums that

+afternoon, long before I entered the village. They were beating

+with the rhythmic monotony that is so typical of the African when

+he is disturbed in spirit and wants to be comforted, or when he is

+comfortable and wants excitement. Either way will do.</p>

+

+<p>My "boys," wandering along in a more or less listless fashion with the

+conventional forty-five pounds on their backs, had heard the drumming

+and became more interested. My caravan did not close up, however. It

+was spread out over anywhere from a mile to a mile and a half of the

+old slave trail that goes down to Venghela, and those in the rear

+hastened by precisely the same degree as those in front.</p>

+

+<p>According to instructions, the foremost pair halted while still half a

+mile away from the village and waited for the rest of us to come up.

+For three months I had been back inland, a part of the time back even

+of the Hungry Country, where the grass is bitter to the taste, and all

+the world is half mad for salt. For three months I had been moving

+quickly and constantly.</p>

+

+<p>Having quit the country&mdash;I fervently hope for good&mdash;it will do no

+harm to admit that my constant moving was due less to the demands of

+business than to a desire to be elsewhere when the Belgian officials

+arrived. The Belgian Kongo is just north of the province of Ticao,

+and I had been skimming its edges, buying ivory and rubber from the

+natives across the line. The colonial government does not encourage

+independent traders, and it would not have been pleasant for me had

+I been caught. In Ticao, of course, I was not molested. A small

+honorarium to the governor of the province made him my friend, and my

+conscience did not bother me. I paid ten times the prices the natives

+usually got and I imposed no fines or contributions on the villages.

+If you know anything about the Kongo, you will regard me as I regarded

+myself&mdash;as more or less of a benefactor.</p>

+

+<p>After three months of that, though, and two or three close shaves

+from a choice of fighting or capture, I was glad to get back to

+civilization, even such civilization as Evan Graham's casa. Away from

+Ticao, Evan Graham would have been shunned for the sort of man he was.

+In Ticao, one is not particular. There are few enough Anglo-Saxon white

+men of any sort&mdash;the two consuls, half a dozen missionaries, and about

+three men like myself, who take chances in the interior. The rest of

+the population is either Portuguese or black, preponderatingly black,

+with a blending layer of half- and quarter-breeds.</p>

+

+<p>Evan was a cad and several different kinds of an animal, but he was

+a white man, he talked English such as one hears at home, and he had

+a pool table and civilized drinks all of four weeks' march from the

+city of Ticao. I always stopped overnight with him on my way back from

+the interior. I knew that he had bribed the governor to overlook the

+law which prescribes that no white man shall settle more than forty

+kilometers from a fort, because he wanted to have a free hand with

+his natives. I knew, too, that he had no shred of title to the land

+he tilled, or to the services of the natives he forced to work in his

+fields. He had come out there with four or five of the dingy-brown

+half-castes that are overseers for half the rocas in Ticao, had

+frightened or coerced the inhabitants of three villages into signing

+the silly little contracts that bind them to work for a white man for

+so many years at ridiculous wage, and now had a plantation that was

+tremendously profitable.</p>

+

+<p>I never had understood just how he made the blacks serve him so well.

+He seemed to have them frightened nearly to death. Most plantations

+have the slave quarters&mdash;the blacks are officially "<i>contrahidos</i>," or

+contract laborers, but in practice they are slaves&mdash;most plantations

+have the slave quarters surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and let

+savage dogs loose outside the fence at night, but Graham allowed his

+natives to live in the villages they had occupied before his coming and

+seemed to take no precautions against their running away.</p>

+

+<p>This open practice of juju before his eyes and apparently with his

+consent was of a piece with the rest of his queerness. My own boys

+always seemed to be glad to get away from the neighborhood of his

+plantation. I had heard a word or two passed among them that seemed to

+hint at a juju house in some secret clearing near the village. I had

+thought it possible that it was by means of some mummery in that temple

+that he kept his natives in hand, but juju is a dangerous thing for a

+white man to meddle with.</p>

+

+<p>In any event it was none of my business. I was sitting on his porch,

+one of his drinks at my elbow, smoking one of his cigarettes especially

+imported from London, and it behooved me to display no curiosity unless

+he should choose to speak. He looked over at me and smiled quizzically.</p>

+

+<p>"I wonder what those poor devils think they get by all that juju

+palaver," he said ruminatively.</p>

+

+<p>"I don't know," I admitted. "My own boys are constantly at it, of

+course. There's a witch doctor just outside of Venghela who'll be rich

+when my caravan gets there, for his services in bringing my bearers

+back without falling into the tender hands of our neighbors."</p>

+

+<p>My carriers were free men, whom I hired and paid. It would have been

+cheaper to adopt the <i>serva&ccedil;al</i> system and buy contract slaves for

+carriers, but being free men they served my purpose better. For one

+thing, they gave the Kongo natives more confidence in me, and for

+another, they traveled faster when there was danger of pursuit. A slave

+would merely have changed masters if I had been caught, but these men

+had something to lose.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm going to stop this juju sooner or later," said Graham lazily.

+"My brother Arthur has come out and is up after a gorilla in the

+Kongo&mdash;probably around where you've been&mdash;and he's been asking me to

+hold on to a real juju doctor for him to interview. When he's through,

+I think I'll stop all that. Queer old duck of a witch doctor here."</p>

+

+<p>He clapped his hands and one of the house servants came out with a

+siphon and bottle of gin. The man was trembling as he stood beside his

+master's chair. Graham snapped two or three words in the local dialect

+and the man's knees threatened to give way. He fled precipitately into

+the house and came out again&mdash;trembling more violently&mdash;with limes.</p>

+

+<p>"Never can train blacks properly," Graham grumbled, as he sliced a lime

+in half and squeezed it into his tumbler. "Now, a Japanese servant is

+perfect."</p>

+

+<p>He poured his gin and the seltzer fizzed into the glass. He lifted it

+to his lips and drained it.</p>

+

+<p>"Japan?" I asked. "I've never been there."</p>

+

+<p>"I have," said Graham morosely. "Been everywhere. England, America,

+Japan, India. All rotten places."</p>

+

+<p>"No rottener than this," I said disgustedly. "I had three weeks of

+fever up in the Kongo, with a Belgian Kongo Company agent after me the

+whole time. I'm still shaky from it. When I can go back to white man's

+country again&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>I stopped. Graham was lighting a cigarette, and I noticed that the

+flame wavered as he held the match. There are some men who are cold

+sober up to a certain point, and then what they have drunk takes hold

+of them all at once. Graham was such a person. When he spoke again his

+words were slurred and sluggish.</p>

+

+<p>"White man's country," he repeated uncertainly, and then made an effort

+to speak clearly. "I'm goin' back some day. Got dear old home, family

+servants, broad lawn&mdash;everything. Not mine though. Younger son. Had to

+win hearth an' saddle of m'own. Arthur's got it all, damn him. Always

+was lucky beggar. Got all family estates, all income, I got nothing.

+Then I liked girl. Second cousin. Arthur got her, or goin' to. Engaged.

+Damn lucky beggar. Always was lucky chap. Steady and dependable. Damn

+stodgy, I think. Told him so. Called him a &mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash; an' he kicked me

+out. All because I got into trouble and signed his name to somethin',

+to get out."</p>

+

+<p>"Easy there, Graham," I warned. "I don't want to hear anything, you

+know."</p>

+

+<p>"You better not," he said suddenly, in a clear voice. He turned

+beastlike eyes on me. "If anybody tries to pry into my affairs, they

+don't get far."</p>

+

+<p>I blew a cloud of smoke over the railing of the veranda and said

+nothing. Through the moonlit night the throbbing of the drums came

+clearly to us sitting there. They beat on steadily, monotonously,

+hypnotically. There was something strangely menacing in the rhythmic,

+pulsing rumble. The cries of night birds and insects, and occasionally

+an animal sound, seemed natural and normal, but the muttering of those

+drums with that indescribable hollow tone they possess, seemed to

+portend a strange event.</p>

+

+<p>"Juju," said Graham abruptly, "is the key to the African mind. I don't

+give a damn for the natives. All I care about is what I can get out of

+this country, but I say that juju is the key to the African mind."</p>

+

+<p>I smoked on a moment in silence. "I'd rather not meddle with it," I

+remarked. "Sooner or later it means ground glass in your coffee of a

+morning. Just before I left Ticao, Da Cunha found some in his. He shot

+his cook and then found it was another boy entirely."</p>

+

+<p>"I'd have whipped him to death with a <i>chiboka</i>," said Graham viciously.</p>

+

+<p>"That's what Da Cunha did," I informed him mildly. "But the governor's

+made him leave Ticao for six months. He's over in Mozambique."</p>

+

+<p>"My boys'll never dare try to poison me," declared Graham. He leaned

+toward me in drunken confidence. "They believe that if they did&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"The procession has started again," I said, interrupting him. "I hear

+the yelling."</p>

+

+<p>It was so. The drums still beat monotonously and rhythmically, but

+beneath their deep bass muttering, a faint, high, continuous sound

+could be heard. The procession seemed to be making its way back to the

+village.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm goin' to bed," announced Graham sharply. "You go t' bed too. Don't

+sit out here an' smoke. Go to bed."</p>

+

+<p>He stood up and waited for me to enter the house. Puzzled, and rather

+annoyed, I went inside. I heard Graham walk heavily and uncertainly

+through to the rear and heard him speak to several of the servants. The

+contrast between his rasping, harsh tones and the frightened voices of

+his servants was complete. They were very evidently in deadly fear of

+him.</p>

+

+<p>The sound of the procession grew louder and louder. Something about it

+perplexed me for a moment, but then I realized that it was not making

+direct for the village. It was coming toward the house. I frowned a

+moment, and looked to make sure that my automatic was handy and in

+proper working order.</p>

+

+<p>The procession was very near. I looked out of the window and saw the

+twinkling lights of the torches through the bush. The drums were

+thunderous now, but the beat was not the war beat. It was purely

+ceremonial. The yelling was high-pitched and continuous.</p>

+

+<p>The head of the procession emerged from the bush and advanced across

+the clearing about the house. It swung and headed for the rear of the

+house, and the long line of capering, torch-bearing humanity followed

+it.</p>

+

+<p>The witch doctor came into view, and the girl. Her panic had reached

+its pitch now. I have never seen such ultimate fear as was expressed on

+that girl's face, outlined by the flickering light of the torches. The

+procession moved until the end had passed beyond the rear corner of the

+casa, then turned, and evidently turned again.</p>

+

+<p>I saw it moving back toward the village. A pregnant fact impressed

+me. The native girl was missing. She had evidently been left behind

+somewhere about the rear of the house. The yelling mass of black

+humanity capered and shrilled its way down the cleared way to the

+village and gathered in front of the juju house.</p>

+

+<p>Then some dance or ceremony seemed to begin. What it was, I do not

+know. I was very tired and presently I went to sleep. But the drums

+beat steadily, all night long. They entered the fabric of my dreams and

+made my rest uneasy. It could not have been long before morning when I

+awoke with a start and found myself sitting up with every nerve tense.

+There was no sound, but I had a feeling as if I had been awakened by a

+scream, somewhere about the house.</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br />

+<small>THE SEEKER OF VENGEANCE.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>The consul listened gravely while I told him about it. He had asked me

+to give all the information I could about Graham. We were on the porch

+of the consulate and the whole city of Ticao was spread out before us.

+The sea pounded restlessly against the low bluffs upon which the city

+was built, and surged angrily about the peninsula on which the fort is

+situated.</p>

+

+<p>"I woke in the middle of the night," I concluded, "feeling that there

+had been a scream somewhere in the house, but not another sound came. I

+couldn't get to sleep again, and in the morning I noticed that the girl

+who had seemed to be the center of interest in the juju procession had

+been installed as a servant at the house. Another one of the servants

+had vanished. The new girl looked pitifully scared, perpetually

+panic-stricken, though the rest of the servants look frightened enough,

+in all conscience. That's all I know."</p>

+

+<p>The consul tugged thoughtfully at his mustache.</p>

+

+<p>"Now why&mdash;&mdash;" he began, and stopped. "The mail boat dropped two

+Englishwomen here on her last trip, a Mrs. Braymore and a Miss

+Dalforth. Charming women, both of them. They are calling on the

+governor's wife this afternoon. They came to me and asked me to assist

+them in getting up to Graham's plantation. They told me he was Miss

+Dalforth's cousin."</p>

+

+<p>I nodded, frowning. "He said that his cousin&mdash;second cousin&mdash;would

+possibly turn up. His brother is up in the Kongo somewhere trying to

+bag gorillas and is going to come from there on through and stop at

+his place. Miss Dalforth is probably the second cousin and is engaged

+to the brother who is hunting."</p>

+

+<p>"Hm." The consul looked somewhat relieved. "I see. But why on earth

+should two women want to go up there? Do you think they'd be safe?"</p>

+

+<p>"I don't know," I said dubiously. "There's no fort anywhere near, and

+the natives are scared stiff. They might bolt, but Graham seems to have

+them thoroughly in hand. If the ladies once reached the plantation,

+they'd probably be safe enough, and Graham's brother could bring them

+down to the coast again. The plantation is a queer place, though. I

+think there's juju in the air. I'd discourage them from going, if I

+could."</p>

+

+<p>"I've tried," said the consul. "I've informed them what sort the

+Portuguese traders are, and told them I simply wouldn't let them go up

+alone, or with one of those chaps as escort. I didn't know anything

+about Graham. They inquired around for an escort, and one of the

+missionaries mentioned you."</p>

+

+<p>"As a respectable person?" I asked with a smile.</p>

+

+<p>The consul nodded, matching my smile. "They have quite decided that

+you are to escort them to Graham's plantation. I don't think you'll

+refuse," he added, when I shook my head. "Miss Dalforth impressed me

+as a young woman accustomed to having her way. She saw the governor

+and smiled at him, and he agreed that you would be the best possible

+person. In fact, he said he would ask you himself."</p>

+

+<p>"I'm not leaving for a month," I told him. "I've had enough of the back

+country for at least that long, and my carriers need a rest."</p>

+

+<p>"We'll see," said the consul ruefully. "I'll wager she has you setting

+out in a week."</p>

+

+<p>He was nearly right at that. I was introduced to the two of them, and

+Miss Dalforth was all that he had said. I had to give my bearers a

+rest, however, and it was two weeks before we set out.</p>

+

+<p>It was a hindrance, having women with me. They traveled in an ox

+cart, and at nearly every stream the wheels had to be taken off and a

+tarpaulin fixed about the body of the wagon to make it into a raftlike

+float, in which they were ferried across. Had Miss Dalforth&mdash;or Alicia,

+as I heard Mrs. Braymore call her&mdash;had Alicia been less charming, or

+less anxious to cause as little trouble as possible, I would have

+cursed them nearly the entire time. As it was, I bore the delays with

+equanimity.</p>

+

+<p>They were delighted the first day when we went up the trail to

+Venghela. I showed them the street lamp at which the great slave trail

+from the interior ended, and they looked dubious. When I showed them

+the Padre Silvestre's mission, with its three villages of redeemed

+slaves, they grew a little bit white and quiet.</p>

+

+<p>The padre tried to persuade them not to go on, but as luck would have

+it, a runner came in on his way to Ticao with a message from Graham.

+His brother had arrived from the interior. That strengthened their

+resolution. We continued the journey.</p>

+

+<p>While on the trail I could not speak to them, being busily engaged in

+the supervision of my caravan. At night, however, we conversed. It was

+good to hear cultivated white women talk again and talk about something

+besides the slave traffic, the missionary women's sole topic when they

+find a listener who can be trusted not to repeat their views to the

+governor.</p>

+

+<p>The natives are kidnaped or captured far in the interior, brought down

+to the coast, and frankly sold. Then they are interviewed and, after

+making a mark upon a bit of printed paper, are considered to have made

+a contract to serve a white man for four years at one milreis&mdash;about a

+dollar&mdash;a month.</p>

+

+<p>To call it slave traffic is highly insulting to the Portuguese, but

+to call it the <i>serva&ccedil;al</i> system is inadequate. They are <i>serva&ccedil;aes</i>,

+or <i>contrahidos</i>, which means contract laborers, in theory, but in

+practice they are slaves. They never see their native villages again.

+The slave trail from the interior is littered with the manacles used to

+confine them, and there are gruesome relics all along the way, of those

+natives who were unable to bear the hardships of the journey.</p>

+

+<p>I told them of these things. I told them of how the Padre Silvestre

+sacrificed his very soul to keep his villagers from being sold again

+as <i>serva&ccedil;aes</i>, how the blacks rose on Da Vega's plantation and sacked

+it, and all I knew of the whole disgusting system. I had no intention

+of making myself a hero&mdash;and my conscience still hurts me when I think

+of some of the things I grew absolutely accustomed to&mdash;but I did allow

+myself to show my feelings on the subject of Portuguese government.</p>

+

+<p>Alicia listened, and one night when I had explained to them precisely

+what it means for a black to be sent to the island of San Felipe or

+Gom&eacute;, she held out her hand to me very gravely.</p>

+

+<p>"I think it is very brave of you," she said, "to stay here and do what

+you can to help the poor blacks."</p>

+

+<p>I stared at her, tempted to laugh. "My dear young lady," I told her,

+"I am an outlaw, practically, who trades with the Kongo natives and

+attempts to elude the Belgian officials as much as possible. I'm

+tolerated here in Ticao because I bribe the Portuguese. I'm no hero. To

+the Belgians I am practically what an I. D. B. is in the Transvaal. And

+you know what an illicit diamond buyer is considered."</p>

+

+<p>"I don't believe it," she said firmly. "I think you stay here to help

+the poor natives."</p>

+

+<p>She was so beautifully sincere in attributing the noblest motives to

+me that I could not laugh at her. Her blessed incomprehension made me

+forbear to kick Mboka, who is my official gun bearer and lieutenant,

+when he lost the bolt of my best rifle and threw away the weapon to

+conceal his misdoing. I had to kick him twice over the day following

+for the lapse, when he took advantage of my lenience and stole half of

+my jam.</p>

+

+<p>She was a charming girl. Mrs. Braymore was suffering in the journeying

+and stoically relapsed into silence to conceal her emotion, but Alicia

+was perpetually lively and eager for new things of interest.</p>

+

+<p>She soon grew to adopt a tone of frank friendliness with me, and I

+had to remind myself more than once that she was engaged to Graham's

+brother, and that it would not do for me to fall in love with her. It

+was odd about her engagement, though. She spoke of her fianc&eacute; quite

+simply, but without any excess of affection. In fact, she confessed

+that she thought of him more as a brother than anything else. All three

+of them, Graham, his brother and Alicia, had been raised together and

+were very much like brothers and sister.</p>

+

+<p>I told myself sternly that, no matter how she felt about her fianc&eacute;,

+she was engaged to him, and I had better forget that she was delightful

+to look upon and an amazingly good companion. I could not manage it,

+however, and the last week of the trip was not easy for me. I had to be

+friendly and no more.</p>

+

+<p>In a way I was very glad when we saw two khaki sun helmets coming

+toward us, though I was much depressed at the thought of parting from

+Alicia. I had sent a runner on ahead, and Graham and his brother met

+us some four miles down the trail. I was pleasantly surprised at the

+sight of Graham's brother. Years before he had been at a little English

+seaside resort where I was spending the summer and we had grown very

+friendly. He kissed Alicia in a brotherly fashion and shook hands with

+me.</p>

+

+<p>"I perpetrate a bromide," he said quizzically. "The world is a small

+place."</p>

+

+<p>"Arthur Graham!" I exclaimed. "I knew you in Clovelly six years ago."</p>

+

+<p>"You're right," he said cheerfully. "How are you now? Then you were

+flirting mildly with a buxom Devon lassie."</p>

+

+<p>"And now we meet in darkest Africa," I said, smiling. "Let's move on."</p>

+

+<p>We went forward again, Alicia, in the ox cart, gayly retailing to the

+two brothers our adventures on the trip up. I was rather surprised

+to notice that both of them were heavily armed, and it bothered me a

+little. It looked as if there were trouble with the natives. Each of

+the two brothers carried a heavy repeating rifle besides an automatic

+pistol in his belt, and Arthur looked decidedly worn, though I saw that

+he was trying to conceal it from Alicia.</p>

+

+<p>My suspicion was confirmed when I observed that, though he tried not to

+let Alicia see it, he was keenly searching the way ahead of us with his

+eyes. He seemed particularly worried when we passed near a tree and his

+grasp on his rifle tightened. Even after we were well away from it, he

+looked back nervously.</p>

+

+<p>We passed around the village and reached the casa by another route,

+Alicia chatting cheerfully with all of us from her seat in the cart.

+Evan Graham seemed quite at ease and entered into her talk with real

+interest, but Arthur&mdash;who as her fianc&eacute; should have been overjoyed to

+see her&mdash;was nervous and preoccupied. His rifle was never far from a

+position in readiness to fling it to his shoulder, and his eyes roved

+restlessly about with a species of dread in them. I walked close to him.</p>

+

+<p>"Arthur," I said in a low tone that Alicia would not catch. "You're

+nervous. Natives?"</p>

+

+<p>"They're acting queerly, but it's worse than that," he said in the same

+low tone, glancing at Alicia to make sure her attention was elsewhere.

+"I'd give anything I possess to have Alicia somewhere else. I'll tell

+you later. Just keep your eyes open and, if you see anything, shoot

+quickly."</p>

+

+<p>Evan did not seem to be worried. He was strolling leisurely along,

+using his rifle as a walking stick, talking casually to Alicia. His

+manners were very good and his voice was soft, very unlike the rasping

+snarl I had heard him use to his servants. Looking closely at him, I

+could see unmistakable signs that he had been drinking heavily of late.

+He seemed quite sober to-day, though. The contrast between his careless

+attitude and Arthur's worried air was striking. We saw one or two

+natives on our way to the house, and they promptly hid themselves in

+the bush. Arthur paid no attention to them. Whatever the trouble might

+be, it was not the blacks that he feared, though he had said they were

+acting queerly.</p>

+

+<p>He led me aside almost as soon as we reached the casa. I told Mboka to

+pile and count the loads, and sent the carriers to the quarters they

+would find ready for them. Evan was inside the house, installing Alicia

+and Mrs. Braymore in their rooms, and showing them the servants who

+would wait on them. Arthur came over to me with a worried frown.</p>

+

+<p>"I say, Murray," he told me nervously. "I'd ask you to take Alicia back

+to the coast to-morrow if I dared, but she's here now, and it would be

+just as dangerous for her to go back."</p>

+

+<p>"What's the matter?" I demanded. "It isn't the natives. What <i>is</i> the

+matter?"</p>

+

+<p>He looked about anxiously. "I shot a female gorilla up in the Kongo,"

+he said jerkily, "and her mate got away. He's followed my caravan ever

+since, up to two weeks ago. Then I hit him with a lucky shot, but he

+escaped. You know they will try to kill the slayer of their mate."</p>

+

+<p>"I know," I replied. "One of them followed me for three weeks once,

+until I bushwhacked and killed him."</p>

+

+<p>"I shot this female," said Arthur quickly. "I shot her through the hip

+and she screamed for her mate. She couldn't get away. He came crashing

+through the trees, and I fired at him. I thought he'd vanished and went

+up to the female. I finished her off, and then the male came for me. I

+shot him through the arm and he made off. All that night he moaned and

+shrieked around my camp. My boys were badly frightened. Next morning

+he dropped from a tree inside the camp, knocked the heads of two of my

+carriers together, and crushed in their skulls. I rushed out with a

+gun and he disappeared. Three days later he dropped straight out of a

+tree almost over my head and made for me. One of my boys was cleaning a

+spear, directly in the path of the gorilla. He tried to run the beast

+through, but it stopped long enough to break his neck and by that time

+I'd got a gun. The gorilla disappeared again. From that time on it

+haunted me. If one or two of my boys strayed from the camp, they didn't

+come back. The beast has killed six of my best carriers and my gun

+bearer. And I never got a fair shot at it! I fired at it two weeks ago

+and I found blood where it had been, but no sign of the beast itself.

+Since then I've been left in peace."</p>

+

+<p>"The animal may have dropped the trail, or it may be dead," I commented

+thoughtfully, "but I don't blame you for wanting to be careful."</p>

+

+<p>"The thought of that huge ape perhaps lurking outside, perhaps about to

+drop down at any moment, with Alicia here," said Arthur desperately,

+"it's enough to drive a man insane. You know they carry off native

+women sometimes. We've got to protect Alicia. If it kills me, it

+doesn't matter. Evan won't believe it's around. He's going armed to

+humor me, but the beast is near; it's somewhere about."</p>

+

+<p>I felt myself growing pale. A monstrous ape, lingering about the place

+with malignant intent, and Alicia laughing unconsciously inside the

+house, was enough to make me feel squeamish. I unconsciously tightened

+my grasp on my rifle. Alicia came out on the porch at that moment and

+beckoned to us.</p>

+

+<p>"We'll not mention this&mdash;yet," said Arthur, as we went up.</p>

+

+<p>I nodded. Alicia was all enthusiasm about the comforts Evan had

+managed to put into his house so far inland, and when we sat down to

+dinner, the bright silver and white tablecloth did give an effect of

+civilization. When one looked at the black faces of the servants who

+waited on us, and at the tattooing and nose rings that disfigured them,

+however, the illusion vanished at once.</p>

+

+<p>I was a long time getting to sleep that night. The next morning would

+see me going on my way into the interior, and I would in all likelihood

+never see Alicia again. When I at last fell asleep, I was uneasy, and

+when I woke, it was in a strangely silent house. Evan Graham's voice

+aroused me. He was calling me to get up. His ease of manner and absence

+of worry had vanished. Arthur, over his shoulder, looked even more

+apprehensive than before.</p>

+

+<p>"Get up," said Evan briefly. "The servants skipped out during the

+night. Your boys have gone, too. There's juju business going on. And

+the oxen that pulled Alicia's cart have been clubbed to death in their

+stalls."</p>

+

+<p>The servants had fled from the house. There was not another white

+man within a hundred and fifty miles. All about us were natives who

+might fear Evan Graham but certainly hated him, and somewhere in the

+woods, we had reason to believe, a monstrous ape lurked, awaiting an

+opportunity to wreak his bestial vengeance upon the slayer of his mate.</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br />

+<small>EVAN'S SORTIE.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>We explored the house first and came upon a surprise. The native girl

+I had seen conducted to the house by the juju procession two months

+before crouched in one corner. She was too much frightened to give any

+coherent account of the other servants' leaving.</p>

+

+<p>They had simply gone, she said. No one had said anything to her, and

+she had been left behind. The oxen lay in their stalls, their heads

+beaten in with blows from a heavy iron bar that lay bent on the ground

+beside them. Even my own boys had vanished. That struck me most

+forcibly of all, because I had treated them well and had thought I

+could count on as much loyalty from them as any white man can expect

+from the average native.</p>

+

+<p>Mboka's defection really bothered me. I had believed well of him and

+was in a way genuinely fond of him. He had gone with the rest, though.

+The loads of the carriers lay in a huge pile. Small and precious

+possessions of my boys lay about them. That was perhaps the queerest

+part of the whole affair. In leaving secretly in the middle of the

+night, the servants had not stopped to steal, or even to take with

+them what was their own. They had apparently risen and stolen away in

+shivering fear.</p>

+

+<p>We went back to the house from the servants' quarters full of rather

+uneasy speculations. Juju was obviously at the bottom of whatever

+was happening, and there is no telling what may enter the head of a

+juju doctor. Passing through the rear rooms, Evan paused to order the

+solitary native girl to prepare food for us. We went on to find Alicia

+and Mrs. Braymore up and curious. They were on the front porch when

+they heard us, and Alicia came inside to smile at all of us and ask

+questions.</p>

+

+<p>"Where are all the servants, Evan?" she demanded. "We had not a drop of

+water this morning. And what's happened to the native village? On the

+way up here we saw lots of villages, but none of them were quite like

+yours."</p>

+

+<p>We looked down at the squalid huts of the village. Not a sign of

+life could be seen. Not one of the usually innumerable tiny fires of

+a native village was burning, and the single street was absolutely

+deserted.</p>

+

+<p>"We'll take a look at it," said Arthur grimly. "I don't like this

+business. Murray, you'll come?"</p>

+

+<p>I picked up my rifle and moved forward. As we walked across the

+clearing before the casa, Arthur turned to me.</p>

+

+<p>"Don't forget about that big ape, either. He's probably waiting for a

+chance to drop out of a tree on top of us."</p>

+

+<p>It was a pleasant prospect. If we went down the cleared way toward

+the village, we would be perfect targets for bowmen or spear throwers

+from the bush on either side. If we went through the bush, we ran

+an amazingly good chance of running up against the gorilla. And the

+gorilla had learned cunning, too, and would not expose himself to a

+shot if he could help it. He would wait patiently until the chance

+came for him to rush upon us and crack our skulls together without our

+having time to raise a firearm, or else, until he could reach a hairy

+arm down and seize us&mdash;&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>I have seen iron bars bent and twisted by the hands of those big apes.

+A sudden thought came to me. The iron bar in the stables, with which

+the oxen had been clubbed to death!</p>

+

+<p>We made our way cautiously down to the center of the cleared space,

+searching the bush on either side with our eyes, but affecting an

+unconcerned air in case hidden watchers saw us. We came to the village

+and strolled inside. It was absolutely deserted. Not one man, woman, or

+child remained within it. Their possessions were undisturbed, save that

+all their arms were gone, but cooking pots, carved stools, skin robes,

+ornaments, minor fetishes, children's toys, everything else lay as it

+had last been used by its owners. Only a few native dogs skulked around

+the silent huts. There was not a single sign that gave a hint of the

+reason for the mysterious exodus of the natives.</p>

+

+<p>"I've not been out here long," said Arthur crisply, "but I've learned

+that when natives do inexplicable things, juju is at the bottom of it.

+What do you say?"</p>

+

+<p>"I agree with you. I wish I could see some signs, though. I can read

+some juju palaver. But there isn't a sign. No charms, no <i>spoor</i>

+whatever. We'll go back to the house and talk it over with Evan."</p>

+

+<p>We started slowly back toward the house. I was walking on ahead,

+puzzling over the oddities of the situation and trying to piece

+together a meaning in it all when Arthur stopped short. His voice

+reached me, little more than a whisper.</p>

+

+<p>"Murray," he said sharply, "that pongo is trailing us."</p>

+

+<p>I listened, but could hear nothing. One would hardly expect a white

+man's ears to detect a gorilla taking special pains to be quiet. Arthur

+seemed to hear something, however. He quietly raised his rifle. I

+followed the direction in which he was pointing, but could see nothing.

+He fired. A branch swayed slightly where his bullet had grazed it, but

+aside from that there was no sign.</p>

+

+<p>"I didn't see a thing," I remarked.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur shook his head. "It may be nerves," he said quietly. "That

+damned beast has haunted me, but I think I saw it."</p>

+

+<p>We went on up to the house slowly. Just before we reached the porch

+Arthur looked at me pitifully.</p>

+

+<p>"I heard it following us all the way," he told me. The perspiration was

+standing out on his forehead. "It <i>is</i> there, and it <i>is</i> waiting for a

+chance to revenge itself on me. And the beast has learned cunning! We

+must look out for Alicia."</p>

+

+<p>I nodded. Evan was waiting for us.</p>

+

+<p>"Find anything?" he called down. "What did you shoot at?"</p>

+

+<p>"The gorilla," said Arthur in a low tone. "It's there and it's

+determined. We'd better warn Alicia and Mrs. Braymore."</p>

+

+<p>Evan looked dubious. "Did Murray see it?"</p>

+

+<p>I shook my head.</p>

+

+<p>Evan frowned thoughtfully. "Arthur, old chap, it may be just nerves.

+The women have enough to worry them with the way the natives are

+acting, anyway. We'll keep a sharp lookout, of course. I'm going to

+hunt up those natives, though."</p>

+

+<p>"They're your natives," I said, "but I question whether that's a wise

+move. If it's just native foolishness, they'll come back. If not,

+they're liable to be pretty&mdash;well, reckless."</p>

+

+<p>"They're my natives," said Evan angrily. "I don't intend to humor them.

+I'll throw a scare into them that will last them ten years. If I know

+anything of juju&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"What?" I asked.</p>

+

+<p>"They'll never dare breathe without permission hereafter," Evan said

+grimly.</p>

+

+<p>He seemed to be in a cold fury. Remembering the abject fear in which

+his slaves seemed to be all the time, I wondered what he might have

+in store for them. I opened my mouth to protest against his trying to

+look for his natives, but stopped. That juju house at which my boys had

+hinted, concealed in some hidden clearing near the village, might hold

+a secret by which he controlled them. In any event, he knew his own

+natives best.</p>

+

+<p>We went into the house and sat down to breakfast. We must have made a

+queer sight, sitting there before that spotless table, our clothing

+disheveled and hastily donned, our rifles leaning against our chairs.

+Neither Arthur nor myself could eat more than a little, but Evan's

+appetite seemed undiminished. The native girl waited on us, the lurking

+panic in her eyes never very far from the surface. It seemed nearest

+when she looked at Evan.</p>

+

+<p>I was most worried about my own boys. It was decidedly queer that

+they had deserted me, especially Mboka. He had been with me for all

+of a year, and I had really grown to trust him. He had gone with the

+others, though, and the very mystery of his disappearance seemed to add

+somewhat to the menace of the silence that surrounded us.</p>

+

+<p>When I thought of it, however, it was no less odd that Evan's overseers

+had vanished. From the nature of their position, they would be hated by

+the other and full-blooded natives, and it was singular in the extreme

+that they had gone with them.</p>

+

+<p>Then I remembered a tale I had once heard, of a mystic voodoo worship

+that was spreading secretly over the whole of West Africa. The story

+ran that an attempt was being made to band all the natives possible

+together in this voodoo worship, and then at a given signal they were

+all to rise. The Indian Mutiny would be repeated. Every white man on

+the West Coast would be rushed by the nearest blacks, and the dominance

+of the white race made a thing of the past, in Africa any rate.</p>

+

+<p>I felt cold at the thought that the attempt&mdash;which I had thought dead

+these many years&mdash;might have been secretly and insidiously winning

+converts all this time, and that all the blacks between us and the

+coast might be risen and only waiting for courage to attack us. We were

+the only whites in a hundred and fifty miles anyway, and if the strange

+behavior of the natives meant mischief, we were probably doomed as it

+was. It gave me a sickish feeling to think that the other might be

+true, though, that a second mutiny was in progress.</p>

+

+<p>As if to confirm my belief, at just that moment, drums began to beat,

+far off in the bush. To the south of us they began their monotonous,

+rhythmic rumble. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Never a pause, never skipping

+a beat, never altering in the slightest the hypnotic muttering. We

+stopped eating and stared at each other. The drums throbbed on,

+sullenly, far, far away. Evan grew angry at the insolence of his

+slaves. I looked at Alicia and made a mental vow that my last cartridge

+should be saved for her. Arthur listened with an air of detachment, and

+then went on with his breakfast.</p>

+

+<p>The first drums had been beating for perhaps fifteen minutes when, to

+the northeast, more drums took up the rhythmic pounding. Evan's eyes

+narrowed. He went to a window and looked out. As he moved, he passed

+close to the native girl, and she shrank back fearfully. While he

+stared out across the clearing, a third set of drums began to beat&mdash;to

+the northwest, this time. We were ringed in.</p>

+

+<p>Evan came to the table with a grim expression on his face. "The black

+fools!" he said furiously. "They dared not come to me! I'll go to them

+and put a stop to this!"</p>

+

+<p>"Evan!" exclaimed Alicia, frightened. "You'll stay here with us!"</p>

+

+<p>"This is no time for caution," said Evan grimly. "If we leave them

+alone, they'll hold a juju palaver until they've gathered nerve to rush

+us. I'll walk in on their council, and we'll see what happens."</p>

+

+<p>"I'll go," said Arthur, quickly sensing the psychology of the move Evan

+proposed to make. "I'd better go."</p>

+

+<p>"It would be suicide!" Alicia exclaimed again. "One white man among all

+those blacks. They could kill you in an instant."</p>

+

+<p>"That is precisely why they would be afraid to," I interposed. "The

+mere fact that a white man dared walk into their palaver and order them

+about, would frighten them. No negro would dare do it, and they would

+not understand how a white man could. It's quite possible that a sheer

+bluff may win out. Of course we've got to do something. I think I'd

+better go, though. My boys are in that crowd and they're rather fond of

+me, I believe. I'll have some of them halfway with me at the start."</p>

+

+<p>Evan shook his head. "Your boys are in that crowd," he said curtly,

+"but the very fact that they're fond of you will make them kill you

+that much quicker. You know natives. Now <i>my</i> natives hate me like

+poison, and there's not one of them but would kill me like a shot if he

+dared. They'll be afraid when I drop in on them. I'm the one to go and

+I'm going. Besides, I know the local dialect. You don't. You'll hear

+one set of drums stop in half an hour."</p>

+

+<p>He picked up his rifle and went out of the door. Alicia watched him

+leave, her face utterly pale.</p>

+

+<p>"He's going to his death!" she said in a whisper. "Stop him, oh, please

+stop him!"</p>

+

+<p>"We're all in just as much danger as he is, dear," said Arthur

+tenderly. "He's taking the one chance that may bring us out of this

+without fighting. He'll go into the middle of that bunch of natives and

+by sheer nerve frighten them into doing as he says. If all three of us

+went, we'd be rushed on sight."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia's lips trembled, and Arthur tried to comfort her. I went to the

+door and stood looking after Evan. It was illogical, but with all of us

+very probably facing death, and certainly a siege, I was struck with a

+pang of jealousy when I saw Arthur put his arms about Alicia's shoulder

+to comfort her. Mrs. Braymore was white to the lips, but gamely tried

+to be casual and cheerful. She came and stood by me as I looked out of

+the door.</p>

+

+<p>"Quite frankly," she asked me quietly, "what are our chances?"</p>

+

+<p>"I don't know," I told her gloomily. "We don't even know what the

+natives are up to yet. Those drums do not sound well. They may mean

+anything and they may mean nothing."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Braymore looked at me searchingly. Any one could see that she was

+frightened, but she was doing her best not to show it.</p>

+

+<p>"And if they mean&mdash;anything?"</p>

+

+<p>"There is a Portuguese fort a hundred and fifty miles away," I answered

+grimly. "They might send soldiers to lift the siege on us if they hear

+about it. I'm assuming we'll be besieged. Things look that way. Evan

+must have treated his slaves worse than usual. Usually they simply run

+away. It's not often they try anything of this kind. I don't like the

+sound of those drums. That means organization and purpose. All I can

+say is that I hope Evan succeeds with the natives."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Braymore blanched a little more, but smiled as bravely as she

+could.</p>

+

+<p>"Well," she said quietly, "I know Alicia well enough to promise you

+that we'll be as little of a drawback as possible. If you decide to try

+anything drastic, such as attempting to escape through the bush, we'll

+do our best to keep up. And I think both of us are fairly good shots."</p>

+

+<p>"I'm hoping there'll be no need for anything on that order," I said

+with more respect than before in my tone. "We'll try to stick it out

+here. My boys are loyal, I think, at least they've been loyal up to

+now, and even if we are besieged, one of them will probably take a

+message to the fort."</p>

+

+<p>I had little enough hope of that, Heaven knows, but I did not want Mrs.

+Braymore to worry more than was necessary. She seemed to realize that I

+was speaking more from my hopes than my beliefs, because she shrugged

+her shoulders.</p>

+

+<p>"There's really no need to soften things for me," she said, "Alicia and

+I won't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>She stopped and caught her breath. A shot had sounded, off in the bush

+from the direction in which Evan had vanished. A second's interval, and

+another shot. Then there was a horrid outcry, and a maniacal shrieking.</p>

+

+<p>"The gorilla," I snapped, and started down the steps with my rifle at

+full cock.</p>

+

+<p>We heard a second outburst of the same beastlike sounds and a crashing

+in the bushes. I raised my rifle. A figure showed dimly through the

+bush. I fired vindictively. <i>Evan</i> stumbled and fell in the clearing,

+just out of the jungle!</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br />

+<small>THE FIRST VICTIM.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>In a second he was up again, and ran desperately until he reached my

+side. Blood was flowing down his cheeks from five deep scratches.</p>

+

+<p>"The pongo," he gasped. "Nearly did for me. Jumped me, but I got in

+two shots. Then he grabbed for me but I got away. Stumbled just as you

+fired. Damn lucky."</p>

+

+<p>I stood still, facing the menacing jungle, but not a sound came from it

+except the monotonous, rhythmic beating of the drums from three sides,

+where juju priests worked their followers into a frenzy of hatred

+against the white men. Evan went slowly up to the house, exhausted and

+shaken by his narrow escape from death.</p>

+

+<p>We held a council immediately. The drums on every side of us meant evil

+brewing. So much was certain. For a white man to attempt to stop the

+juju councils would be perilous in the extreme, but it was our only

+chance. On the other hand, for one of us to get through the jungle

+to take that desperate chance meant eluding the watchfulness of the

+hate-mad gorilla, whose cunning was increasing.</p>

+

+<p>"I don't know how he got to me," said Evan, still shaking from the

+unexpectedness of the whole affair. "I heard a snarl, and he was coming

+for me not ten paces away. Startled, I pulled the trigger without

+aiming, and he came on. I got my rifle halfway to my shoulder, when he

+reached me. One of his great, hairy paws grasped the muzzle as I fired

+the second time, while the other reached for my throat. When the rifle

+went off, he started back and burst out in his screaming. It must have

+burned or injured his paw. I turned and ran, but he had done this to me

+in the meantime."</p>

+

+<p>His coat was half torn from him, and the deep scratches on his cheek

+showed where the claws had just grazed his face.</p>

+

+<p>"I don't mind facing natives," Evan admitted in conclusion, "but I'll

+tell you frankly I don't care to go through that jungle again while

+that beast is in it."</p>

+

+<p>The eternal menace of the drums came to our ears, borne to us through

+the open windows. Arthur began to pace up and down the room, cursing

+under his breath. Alicia bit her lip and tapped nervously on the floor

+with her foot. Mrs. Braymore carefully began to fold and refold her

+handkerchief. Quite suddenly, I noticed that it was falling into shreds

+beneath her fingers. Struggle as any of us would, our nerves were badly

+worn.</p>

+

+<p>The strain grew worse during the day. There were two or three dogs

+about the place, and it was curious to see them puzzled over our

+abstraction. They kept alertly out of Evan's way, but they were

+obviously disconcerted by the absence of the servants who usually

+attended to them, and they looked at us with perplexity in their

+eyes. They could get no attention from the solitary native girl who

+remained. She had withdrawn into panic-stricken silence, serving us

+when necessary, but spending most of her time in the room to which she

+had been assigned. We had ordered her to leave the servants' quarters

+and stay in the house itself.</p>

+

+<p>All the morning the drums beat rhythmically. During lunch they

+continued their hypnotic muttering. And all afternoon they kept on,

+kept on, until it seemed as if we would be crushed by their regular,

+pulselike, ominous rumbling. Far off in the bush, where we could never

+reach them, we knew juju councils were going on. Weirdly painted and

+tattooed witch doctors whirled in their mystic dances and inflamed the

+minds of the blacks against us.</p>

+

+<p>Men beat upon the drums and yelled and yelled, closing their eyes

+and surrendering themselves to the ecstasy of the rhythm until they

+became all but unconscious of the words they reiterated. Slowly and

+surely the blacks were nerving themselves to lift their hands against

+their masters. Given time, a drum and a rhythmic phrase, a native can

+convince himself of anything simply by pounding on the drum and yelling

+over and over the phrase that contains the idea. He will luxuriate

+in the rhythm, he will hypnotize himself by the monotony of the drum

+beats. He will go into an ecstasy, simply yelling over and over the one

+phrase.</p>

+

+<p>Dinner that night was a repetition of breakfast and lunch. We sat

+down to the table, our rifles by our sides, our movements jerky and

+uncertain from the strain of waiting for we knew not what. The dogs lay

+about on the floor, watching us anxiously. The single servant waited

+on us, her face dull with apathy, though flickers of panic lighted

+her eyes from time to time. And always we heard the drums beating far

+off in the bush. I caught myself sitting with a fork full of food in

+mid-air, listening to their sullenly menacing rumble.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur, Evan, and myself divided the night into watches. I took the

+first, and waited tensely until after one o'clock. I heard nothing but

+the muffled drumming to the northeast, northwest, and south. The moon

+shone brightly down and made the clearing about the casa like a lake of

+molten silver. I heard the noises of insects&mdash;the loud-voiced African

+insects&mdash;and the cries of the night birds. I heard nothing else. The

+night was quiet and peaceful, save for the ceaseless throbbing of the

+drums all about.</p>

+

+<p>Evan relieved me. He came out on the porch and lit a cigarette.</p>

+

+<p>"That drumming gets monotonous." He yawned. "I wish they'd come on and

+have the suspense over with."</p>

+

+<p>"If they come," I remarked, "we're done for."</p>

+

+<p>"Not necessarily. If we hold them off for a week and kill enough of

+them, they'll get tired and go away."</p>

+

+<p>"That wouldn't help us much. I hardly see how we could make a hundred

+and fifty miles through the bush with two women and no carriers."</p>

+

+<p>"We might try, anyway. Some of us would get through. You've heard

+nothing?"</p>

+

+<p>"No," I replied. "Just the drums."</p>

+

+<p>I went indoors and lay down to sleep. When I surrendered myself to the

+rhythm of the drumming, it put me quickly into a deep slumber. I knew

+what the sound meant, that naked savages yelled and danced themselves

+into a frenzy of hatred against us, but if one allowed it to become so,

+it was very soothing.</p>

+

+<p>At one time I half started from my sleep. Some sound within the house

+aroused me, but a moment later I heard Evan's footstep on the veranda

+and recognized the sound of his shoe soles on the flooring. He was

+humming a little tune to himself. I was reassured and slept again.</p>

+

+<p>I heard when Arthur relieved Evan, too. Their voices came clearly in to

+me as they exchanged greetings.</p>

+

+<p>"Nothing new?" asked Arthur nervously.</p>

+

+<p>"No. I say, Arthur, the natives are taking a deuced long time to

+get worked up to the sticking point. I had them pretty thoroughly

+frightened. Perhaps they'll hold a big palaver for several days, yell

+and dance themselves into exhaustion, and let it go at that. I've known

+such things to happen. Our primitive ancestors used to hold hee-hee

+councils and work off their surplus emotions in the same way. If this

+juju festival lasts two days more, I think it will peter out and wind

+up in a palm-wine debauch. Then they'll come back and be good!"</p>

+

+<p>"It's the gorilla I'm worried most about just now," said Arthur grimly.

+"The natives are men, and you can anticipate their moves, but there's

+no telling what an animal will do, particularly a pongo."</p>

+

+<p>Evan laughed. "I had a start just now," he said. "I heard a queer

+sound in Biheta's room." Biheta was the native girl. "She gave a queer

+gurgle. I didn't know what was up, and I went and peered in the door.

+She was lying there quite still, evidently sound asleep. She must have

+had a nightmare, but it gave me the creeps for an instant."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur seemed to pick up his rifle.</p>

+

+<p>"Well, I'm going indoors to get some beauty sleep," said Evan with a

+yawn. "Cheer up, Arthur. There's a damn good chance that the natives

+will just yell themselves hoarse and come peaceably back to work. As

+long as the drums stay at a distance, we're all right. But wake all of

+us if they stop."</p>

+

+<p>He came into the house and went into his own room. I dozed off again.

+When I woke, it was well after daylight. Evan had stuck his head inside

+my door and was grinning cheerfully.</p>

+

+<p>"Get up," he ordered. "Breakfast will be ready in a minute or two."</p>

+

+<p>I rolled out of bed and heard him go to the rear of the house. He

+rasped out an order in the local dialect, but there was no reply. He

+spoke again, harshly. There was still no reply. I heard him fling open

+a door. Then he exclaimed aloud.</p>

+

+<p>"Arthur! Murray! Come here!"</p>

+

+<p>We went quickly, and into the room in which he was. It was the room

+assigned to the native girl. Evan was standing over her couch, looking

+grimly down at the figure lying there.</p>

+

+<p>The dull features of the girl were twisted into an expression of the

+most horrible fear. It was appalling that such ultimate terror could

+show itself upon a human face. The eyes were wide and staring, the

+mouth was drawn back in a voiceless shriek of utter, despairing

+fright. The hands were clenched so that the nails bit into the flesh of

+the palms, and the head was oddly askew. The girl was dead.</p>

+

+<p>Evan lifted up her shoulders and the head fell back.</p>

+

+<p>"Neck broken," he said laconically. "The gorilla!"</p>

+

+<p>"Great Heaven!" said Arthur desperately, white as a sheet. "What next?

+How did he get in here? Alicia!" He ran from the room and called

+hoarsely.</p>

+

+<p>Alicia's voice answered instantly. "What's the matter?"</p>

+

+<p>"The native girl's dead, killed by the gorilla during the night. Are

+you safe?"</p>

+

+<p>Alicia appeared in person and proved it. She was pale, but composed.</p>

+

+<p>"Where? What&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>

+

+<p>I lost the rest of her question. Evan and myself were searching for the

+gorilla's means of ingress and exit. The flimsily screened window was

+intact. The door had been unlocked, but Evan remembered that he had

+found it closed and had closed it again after peering into the room

+during the night.</p>

+

+<p>Was it possible that the monstrous animal possessed the cunning to

+unlatch the door gently before entering, and then the diabolical

+forethought to latch it again on leaving? It seemed impossible, but

+what other explanation was there?</p>

+

+<p>"He's been in the house," said Evan grimly. "Where is he now?"</p>

+

+<p>I went out and got one of the dogs. We brought it into the room and

+it sniffed at the dead body. Then we led it about the house. Once we

+thought it showed some excitement. It sniffed at the door of a room

+that was used as a storeroom.</p>

+

+<p>With our rifles at the ready, we flung open the door. No sound

+came from within. The dog, bristling, walked slowly into the room.

+Cautiously, we followed. Boxes and bales were scattered all about, but

+there was no sign of the animal that had killed the native girl. The

+dog growled, and moved about, stiff-legged, but soon grew puzzled and

+sniffed perplexedly all over the place. He could find nothing.</p>

+

+<p>We explored the room thoroughly, though with our hearts in our mouths.

+Three men and a gorilla in a small store room would be unpleasant for

+the men, armed though they might be. We could find no niche in which

+the beast might have hidden, nor any evidence of his presence. After

+a time the dog gave it up, and lay down on the floor with his tongue

+lolling out.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you suppose it could be a black that killed her?" asked Arthur

+suddenly. "A native would have known about the latch. One of them might

+have crept into the house and killed the girl in punishment for her

+having stayed behind when the rest left."</p>

+

+<p>"If he did," I remarked grimly, "it's safe to say we'd better not touch

+any of the food he could have got at. Those voodoo poisons are deadly

+things, and you can bank on it he was prepared to use them."</p>

+

+<p>"Hardly likely," said Evan.</p>

+

+<p>"It must have been a native," insisted Arthur anxiously. "No animal

+would have had the cunning to creep in, kill the poor girl silently,

+and then creep out again. It must have been one of the blacks."</p>

+

+<p>"Gorilla," said Evan, shaking his head.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur suddenly looked up.</p>

+

+<p>"I've got it! We'll take a photo of the girl's eyes. I saw a cloudy

+form on the retina. I've got an insect camera in my luggage, and can

+make sure what it was that frightened her that last moment of her life."</p>

+

+<p>The expression on the girl's face had been one of terrible fear.

+Whatever it was that had killed her, she had seen it before she

+died&mdash;seen and known it for a deadly and horrible thing.</p>

+

+<p>"Try it," I urged. "We can't be sure otherwise. If it was a native, our

+food is poisoned for a certainty."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur went to his room and presently appeared with the queer camera.

+It was a long box, and evidently the lens was one of great focal

+length. It took Arthur a long time to adjust it properly. He proposed

+to take advantage of the fact that the eye of a dead person will retain

+for from twenty-four to forty-eight hours the impression of what it saw

+last while living. A great many people think that the shining image on

+the outer surface of the eye retains that picture, and wonder at it. As

+a matter of fact the picture is kept on the retina, in the inside of

+the eyeball. It is extremely difficult to photograph the retina without

+dissecting the eye, but it can be done&mdash;as Arthur proceeded to prove.</p>

+

+<p>I went outside and searched around the house for possible footprints.

+After a preliminary search, I got Evan to help me. We could find no

+single sign of tracks leading toward or away from the house. There had

+been a heavy dew, and the top layer of the earth was dark and damp.

+Footprints would inevitably have been shown. When we had completed our

+search, we stared at each other. Whatever or whoever had killed the

+native girl must be still in the house. There were absolutely no signs

+of his having left.</p>

+

+<p>We went inside. Beast or man, <i>something</i> had been in the house, moving

+quietly and undiscovered despite our watching. It had entered the room

+occupied by the native girl and had awakened her. She had seen it, and

+it had been a thing she recognized as frightful. Her horror-stricken

+face was proof of that. It had been cunning enough to latch the door

+of the room after the killing. That meant a native. On the other hand,

+it had broken the girl's neck, a feat that would require incredible

+strength. That spoke of a monstrous animal. We heard Arthur shuffling

+about in his improvised dark room, and the clink of the dishes in which

+he had mixed his solutions.</p>

+

+<p>How had the creature&mdash;man or beast&mdash;reached the house? How had it made

+its way silently through the rooms at midnight, with one of us awake

+and on guard? Could it be that one of the servants had remained, hidden

+in some secret place while the others had left, and now prowled about

+at night while the rest far off in the bush yelled and howled, drummed

+and danced, and gradually became ripe to attack us?</p>

+

+<p>Arthur came out of his dark room with a glass plate in his hand. His

+face was pale.</p>

+

+<p>"Look at this," he said quietly. "If you'll hold it so the light

+strikes it diagonally, you'll see it in its proper lights and shades,

+instead of reversed."</p>

+

+<p>The plate was still wet, where he had just taken it from the fixing

+bath. We looked. We saw, running aimlessly here and there, curiously

+like the branches of a tree, little dark lines. Those were the blood

+vessels that nourished the eye. We gave no heed to them, however. The

+sight that made both Evan and myself gasp was the strange picture that

+we saw amid all those little blood vessels.</p>

+

+<p>There, distorted and hideous, menacing and terrible, we saw the cause

+of the native girl's death, and of her terror. We saw the head of a

+gorilla, with its horrible, discolored fangs protruding from blackened

+lips in a grimace of unspeakable ferocity.</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br />

+<small>AS BY MAGIC.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>"And it's in the house," observed Evan grimly. "A full-grown beast

+will weigh three hundred pounds, and he'd leave plenty of sign when

+he walked. There are no tracks leading away from here. Murray and I

+looked."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur was ashen as he stared at us. I felt rather shaky myself. The

+thought of a creature like that in the same house, with Alicia exposed

+to its insane rage at any moment it might choose to emerge from its

+hiding place, was appalling.</p>

+

+<p>The two ladies were in the large front room. I went in and remained

+with them, my rifle in my hand, while Arthur and Evan went over the

+house again. They had the dogs with them, and they went into every room

+and every corner, ready at any instant to face what is possibly the

+most terrible of all wild beasts at close quarters.</p>

+

+<p>A full-grown gorilla has easily the strength of six or eight men, and

+in a confined space firearms would be almost useless. I heard the dogs

+pattering all through the house, sniffing eagerly everywhere they were

+taken, but finding nothing. Again they seemed excited at the door of

+the storeroom, and again they gave up the search after they had entered.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur rejoined me and Alicia with discouragement on every feature.</p>

+

+<p>"He isn't here," he said wearily, "and he is here. He was here and he

+wasn't here. I don't know where he is!"</p>

+

+<p>Evan slumped into a chair, though it was noticeable that he kept his

+rifle in his hands. Through the window came the menacing rumble of the

+drums from all sides.</p>

+

+<p>"I think," said Alicia, with a ghastly attempt at a smile, "I think a

+fit of hysterics would be a relief."</p>

+

+<p>She looked as if she meant it. All of us looked thoroughly on edge.

+To have hostile drums beating all about you and to realize that a

+hundred and fifty miles of jungle lie between you and the nearest help

+is bad enough in itself. When you add to that the consciousness of

+having hidden in the same house with you a beast almost human in its

+cunning and fiendish in its hatred, with the face of the devil and the

+strength of seven men, hysterics seem excusable. She did not give way,

+however, though we all felt on the verge of hysteria from the strain.</p>

+

+<p>That day was one of the most terrible I have ever spent. It was not

+that anything happened to make it terrible. The strain came from the

+fact that nothing happened. If the beast were hidden about the house,

+it did not show itself, but we did not hear a board creak or a curtain

+swish against the window without turning with a start, prepared to face

+anything and to fire vengefully into a hideous, furry form.</p>

+

+<p>The bush outside the casa seemed to take on a threatening aspect. The

+house was built on a small elevation and we looked for miles over the

+tops of trees, broken here and there by gaps which meant the existence

+of clearings and open fields. The treetops were dancing from the heat.

+The sun beat down with fierce intensity. Blasts of hot, humid wind blew

+upon us and scorched us, but we paid no attention. And always, from the

+mysterious, unknown and unknowable bush all around us, drums beat and

+beat and beat tirelessly and ominously.</p>

+

+<p>When one of us went back to get food for the rest, he went with an

+automatic held ready in his hand, and the other two were prepared

+at any instant to hear a shot or the snarl that would mean the

+reappearance of the gorilla. We were doubly besieged, by the natives

+without and by the gorilla within. For fear of the natives in the bush,

+we kept to the house. For fear of the gorilla in the house, we kept to

+the one room.</p>

+

+<p>Toward evening insensibly we relaxed. No one could keep to such an

+intensity of attention as we had maintained during the day. We ate a

+sketchy meal at nightfall and dragged two cots into one of the rooms

+adjoining the large front one in which we had stayed all day. We

+explored the room thoroughly, and Alicia and Mrs. Braymore went in to

+lie down.</p>

+

+<p>None of us thought of taking off our clothes. We three men prepared

+for a night-long vigil. One of us would keep thoroughly awake, and the

+other two would snatch such sleep as they could.</p>

+

+<p>Long hours passed. We felt sure that some time during the night the

+beast would make his appearance. I sat alertly by a window, a dog at my

+feet, listening to the night sounds outside and the ceaseless drumming

+that meant the juju councils were debating whether the blacks were

+sufficiently worked up to attempt an attack.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur and Evan reclined in their chairs and tried to doze, but there

+was little rest for any of us. We could think of nothing but the animal

+we felt sure would make some attempt upon us during the night.</p>

+

+<p>At one o'clock Evan took my place by the window with the dog at his

+feet. I sat in one of the easier chairs and tried to relax, but it

+was impossible. I was suddenly conscious of the overpowering heat and

+humidity. I was bathed in perspiration.</p>

+

+<p>"I've got to have a drink," I said abruptly. "I need it."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur looked up wearily.</p>

+

+<p>"We all need a drink," he said. "It's in the back of the house, isn't

+it?"</p>

+

+<p>We looked at each other uncertainly.</p>

+

+<p>"I'll go," said Arthur quietly.</p>

+

+<p>I interposed. "We'll both go. Here, in the light, Evan can see to shoot

+if necessary. We'll use a flash lamp."</p>

+

+<p>It was curious that neither of us cared to walk through three rooms

+and a hallway inside a house we had been in for days. That animal had

+fretted our nerves badly.</p>

+

+<p>Slowly and cautiously we made our way through the dark rooms, searching

+before us with the flash light. I can't speak for Arthur, but my breath

+was coming quickly, and I heartily regretted having expressed a wish

+for a drink. I would not back out now, though.</p>

+

+<p>We went cautiously and slowly out to the rear of the house. I was in

+the act of reaching for the siphon of seltzer when we heard the dog

+scream in pain and a shout from Evan. We rushed madly for the front,

+our hearts in our mouths, and cursing our absence at such a critical

+time. When we burst into the room, Evan was dashing out on the veranda,

+and Alicia was in the act of emerging from the room into which she and

+Mrs. Braymore had retired. Alicia had an automatic in her hand and,

+though her face was full of dread, she was evidently prepared to face

+anything.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur and myself were quickly by Evan's side and found him staring

+about the darkness, his rifle half raised.</p>

+

+<p>"What is it?" Arthur demanded quickly.</p>

+

+<p>Evan's breath was coming in gasps. "I heard you two moving," he said

+sharply, as one whose nerves are strained to the breaking point. "I

+heard a noise from your direction. I turned to look at the door and

+caught a movement at the window by my side. I jerked back and the dog

+screamed. A long, hairy arm had reached in the window and seized him.

+He was drawn through the window before I could lift my rifle, and the

+arm vanished. It's the gorilla!"</p>

+

+<p>We listened, but the house was still. A faint moan came from the

+courtyard, and I flashed the lamp down. The dog, flung bodily from the

+porch, stirred feebly and stiffened. Its neck was broken. There on the

+shadowed veranda, with the bright African moon shining pitilessly down

+upon the hot, dank, fevered earth, the three of us swore nervously

+while we stood with our rifles pointing in as many directions, hoping,

+even praying for that monstrous ape to rush upon us.</p>

+

+<p>"He must have gone somewhere!" said Arthur despairingly. "Where <i>did</i>

+the beast go?"</p>

+

+<p>"Into the house, no," said Evan crisply. "Under the house, perhaps. The

+roof, perhaps. We'll see."</p>

+

+<p>My legs crawled as I descended the stairs to the ground. The house was

+raised from the ground on piles, and I could look clear underneath it.

+The moon was shining down whitely, and I saw the pillars silhouetted

+against the brightness on the other side. Half a dozen steps convinced

+me that the animal was not beneath. It would have shown as a dark

+outline. I tried to see up, over the roof, but could not. The roof

+slanted just a little and I could not see the center. The house being

+on an elevation, moreover, prevented me from backing off and getting a

+clear view of the top. I called up to the other two on the porch.</p>

+

+<p>"He's not under the house, but I can't see the roof. He must be there."</p>

+

+<p>The tree trunks of the forest all about us echoed my words strangely.

+I could see dim white blurs where the faces of the two brothers showed

+their position. One of them moved oddly, and in a moment I saw that

+Evan was swinging himself up the pillar before him. He grasped the edge

+of the roof and drew himself up. In a second he dropped down again. He

+spoke quietly enough to Arthur, but I heard his voice.</p>

+

+<p>"He's there, squatting on the ridge pole. Lord! What a monster he is!"</p>

+

+<p>"We must get the women out of the house," said Arthur sharply. "He may

+tear up the roof and come inside. Alicia!"</p>

+

+<p>She had heard and came quickly out, Mrs. Braymore following her. We

+built a small fire to keep insects away from them, and sat them on

+chairs while we patroled the area about the house. The drums still beat

+on all sides of us, but they had been relegated to a minor position

+now. We subconsciously counted on their remaining a potential menace

+only, until they stopped or drew nearer. The moon made the whole world

+bright and shining. We could see clearly and distinctly. Nothing the

+size of a rabbit could escape across that stretch of sward without our

+observing it.</p>

+

+<p>Alicia and Mrs. Braymore watched the fringe of jungle while we posted

+ourselves so that not even a cat could escape from the house without

+being seen. I leaned on my rifle near the two ladies, my eyes fixed on

+the edge of the roof, straining to catch a glimpse of the beast that

+squatted up there. When I thought of it, it seemed stupid of us not to

+have suspected that as a hiding place before. True, it was in clear

+view of the sky, but a beast cunning enough to creep about the casa at

+midnight as he had done, might possess the intelligence to reason that

+there was the ideal hiding place for him.</p>

+

+<p>"Do you think there is any real danger from the natives?" Alicia

+inquired hesitatingly.</p>

+

+<p>"When natives do inexplicable things, it is usually juju," I said

+grimly. "And where there is juju there is usually danger. There is one

+thing that can be said, though. While a native is making a noise, he is

+rarely dangerous in bulk. As Evan pointed out, they may simply exhaust

+themselves in yelling and dancing. I do not think it would be wise to

+count on that, however."</p>

+

+<p>"Wouldn't it be the wisest thing to do, to simply try to make our way

+secretly through the jungle to the nearest fort?"</p>

+

+<p>"It would be impossible," I told her frankly. "You don't know African

+undergrowth. We might make four or five miles a day, with luck. And at

+any moment in the twenty-four the natives might trail us. We'd have to

+make a new trail, or use the native ones. Making a new trail, we'd be

+followed and probably speared, besides the fact that our animal friend

+would be haunting the treetops overhead, waiting for a moment when one

+of us would be off our guard."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia shuddered. "But would you three try that if we weren't here?"

+she insisted.</p>

+

+<p>"I think we'd wade into one of those juju councils," I remarked

+vindictively. "I know I'd gladly join such a party. We'd probably

+appear as suddenly as we could and start shooting. We might stampede

+them, and a show of boldness would be our best play in any event. Of

+course, if they rushed us, we'd be out of luck."</p>

+

+<p>"You mean&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>

+

+<p>"There would be four or five hundred of them, and we might get ten

+or perhaps fifteen apiece. They'd overwhelm us if they tried, but

+the psychology would probably make us win out. The fact that we were

+hunting them, instead of their hunting us, would frighten them."</p>

+

+<p>"Couldn't you do that now?"</p>

+

+<p>I shook my head. "Not with our friend the gorilla about. And we

+wouldn't expose you two to the possibility of our failing. There'd be

+nothing left for you but your own pistols."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia relapsed into silence. I saw her brow knitted as she tried

+desperately to work out some plan by which we might fight the

+incredible circumstances in which we found ourselves. Overhead,

+the broad moon sailed serenely across the sky, shedding its rays

+impartially down upon us, upon the shaggy, beastly ape squatting like

+some demoniacal creature upon the ridgepole of the roof, and upon

+yelling, capering blacks about the great fires they would have lit for

+their juju ceremonies.</p>

+

+<p>Behind us, the busy, secretive life of the bush went on&mdash;all the

+feedings and drinkings and matings and killings, all the comedies and

+all the tragedies of the jungle. Things went on, sublimely indifferent

+to our petty frights and fancies. The jungle attended to its business,

+ignoring alike our strained attitudes as we sat in the moonlight and

+waited for the sun to rise that we might slay a malignant ape, and the

+yelling of self-hypnotism of the blacks as they danced about their juju

+fires, working themselves into a frenzy of hatred against the white man.</p>

+

+<p>At last the moon dipped down toward the west, and the stars that had

+watched our vigil in mild, blinking surprise grew pale at the signs

+of dawn. The sky grew gray, then white. A high pallid veil hid the

+deep-blue arch of the night, and turned slowly to golden yellow as the

+sun rolled up.</p>

+

+<p>The mist curled aloft from the treetops as the first rays of the

+morning swept across the land. We became aware that we had been cold

+and that we now were warm. We waited eagerly until we should see the

+roof of the casa, and be able to pick off with our rifles the beast

+that lurked there.</p>

+

+<p>Morning had barely come when Evan clambered cautiously to the roof of

+the servants' quarters behind the house itself. We had left several of

+the dogs shut up in the house during the night. We knew that if the

+beast came down into the place, they would make an outcry before all

+were killed, at least. They had made no sound, but now one or two of

+them came out on the veranda, wagging their tails amiably.</p>

+

+<p>Evan clambered to the roof of the servants' quarters, and Arthur passed

+up his rifle. Evan stood erect and raised the weapon. Then he stopped.

+From the ground, we saw him looking blankly at the roof of the house.

+From where he stood, he could see it clearly. His expression was at

+once amazed and apprehensive.</p>

+

+<p>The beast had not left the house, or we would have seen it. It had not

+crossed the clearing. It had not entered the house, because the dogs

+were unalarmed. It had not in any discoverable fashion escaped from its

+position astride the ridge pole, but Evan told us and we immediately

+verified the fact that it was no longer on the roof. It had not escaped

+to the jungle. It had not secreted itself in the house; yet the

+monstrous ape had vanished!</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br />

+<small>THE FORM THAT CREPT.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>Again we searched the house from top to bottom. Again we led the

+dogs into every nook and cranny. Again they sniffed anxiously in the

+storeroom, but gave up the quest after a moment or so. In our search

+of the greater part of the house the dogs had seemed more bored than

+anything else. We had led them to the dog that had been killed, before

+attempting to enter the house, and they smelled at his neck cautiously

+and drew back with low growls. If the gorilla had been in the house,

+they would surely have scented him and warned us. The only time they

+gave any indication at all of interest, far less of excitement, was

+when they sniffed at the storeroom door. Once inside, they moved about

+aimlessly.</p>

+

+<p>We debated our next move. The gorilla simply could not be in the house.

+With his ferocity, he would surely have made a move to attack one or

+another of us during our searchings. At last Arthur found a sign that

+reassured us as to his absence without lessening in the least the

+mystery of his means of escape. Something had led him to scout around

+the edge of the clearing surrounding the house. He straightened up with

+a shout.</p>

+

+<p>"Look here!"</p>

+

+<p>We ran to him and looked where he pointed. There, on the earth, just

+beneath the overhanging limb of the first of the jungle trees, were

+the prints of strangely handlike toes.</p>

+

+<p>"Here's where he jumped for the lowest limb there," said Evan

+excitedly. "See?"</p>

+

+<p>Directly above us a heavy limb spread out from the trunk of the tree.

+Evidently the gorilla had leaped from that spot. How he had run across

+the moonlit lawn under our very eyes remained inexplicable. Thinking

+back, however, I remembered that once or twice wisps of infrequent

+cloud had temporarily obscured the moon. Could he have seized one of

+those moments of darkness? It seemed impossible, but there was no other

+explanation that could be made.</p>

+

+<p>Somewhat reassured, we entered the house again. One of us stayed out on

+the veranda, however, and watched to make sure the beast would attempt

+no daring daylight rush on our stronghold. We planned to tether several

+of the dogs that night to the piles which raised the house from the

+ground.</p>

+

+<p>Evan was on the porch. He peered in at the window suddenly.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm going to take a look in the servants' quarters," he said abruptly.

+"It's just occurred to me that the beast may have hidden in there and

+made his break for the jungle from there. That would shorten the run he

+would have to make."</p>

+

+<p>He moved away. I went back and tried to help Alicia prepare some food

+for us all. We had had nothing since the night before and all were

+ravenous. Arthur was sitting in the big front room, his head buried in

+his hands, his rifle leaning on the arm of his chair. I put my rifle

+against the wall and began to open the tins of preserved food, while

+Alicia donned an apron and with a quaintly housewifely air lighted a

+spirit lamp and heated water for our tea. Mrs. Braymore was gravely

+tasting the tinned butter and making a wry face. It is poor stuff

+until you get used to it.</p>

+

+<p>As I worked, I watched Alicia appreciatively, and far back in my mind

+a little germ of hope sprang up. It suddenly occurred to me that she

+had never shown that intense affection for Arthur one expects a woman

+to show for the man she is going to marry. She appeared fond enough of

+him, but she seemed nearly as fond of Evan. I remembered what I had

+been told, that the three of them had been raised together as children

+so they were little less than brothers and sister.</p>

+

+<p>That was Alicia's attitude. She treated Arthur as an elder brother of

+whom she was immensely fond, but she did not treat him as a lover. It

+was queer that, with drums beating rhythmically night and day in the

+bush all around us, and in momentary danger from a monstrous gorilla, I

+should stop and think of romance and the peculiarly trivial shades of

+affection Alicia might show.</p>

+

+<p>She turned and smiled at me just then.</p>

+

+<p>"You look like a sword," she said mischievously, "a sword beaten into a

+can opener."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Braymore joined in her smile. I suppose I must have looked rather

+queer. A heavy cartridge belt was slung about my waist, and two

+dull-metal automatics were stuck rakishly into it. I had not shaved for

+three days. Every moment was too full of suspense to allow for thinking

+of such minor things as shaving.</p>

+

+<p>"Well," I remarked amiably, "since it looks as if our friends in the

+bush are going to do as Evan has suggested and yell themselves into

+exhaustion without bothering us, and I shall soon revert to peaceable

+pursuits, that doesn't matter. A sword is only useful on occasion, but

+a can opener links us with civilization."</p>

+

+<p>"It would seem odd," said Alicia, "to have some one bring one's mail

+in the morning, or to use a telephone."</p>

+

+<p>"There's a mail once in two weeks at Ticao," I said, "but it's four

+weeks from England usually and often six."</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Braymore joined in the conversation. "I should like to receive an

+invitation to tea," she said wistfully. "I should like to go somewhere

+to tea and have people talk interestedly of poetry, and the approaching

+marriage of somebody's daughter, and what the curate said about the

+possibility of repairing the parish house."</p>

+

+<p>We all laughed at the idea. I set down one of the tins of potted meat

+and reached for another.</p>

+

+<p>"For myself&mdash;&mdash;" I began and stopped short, every muscle tense.</p>

+

+<p>On the veranda outside the house I had heard a sound, the creaking of a

+board as a heavy weight was put cautiously upon it. There was something

+infinitely furtive in the sound. I listened and heard nothing more, but

+was oppressed by a sense of danger. The sound had come from the front

+of the house. I drew an automatic from my belt and silently passed it

+to Alicia. She had heard nothing, but my expression warned her and she

+took it quickly. Mrs. Braymore took the other. I picked up my rifle

+from the side wall and tiptoed through the house toward the front. I

+heard an almost unbelievable slight sound again from the porch. The

+door into the front room was standing open. I slipped silently up to

+the threshold.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur had heard. He was still sitting in the chair, but he was alert

+and ready. His eyes were fixed on the window some fifteen feet from

+him, and he was slowly and carefully bringing his rifle to bear. The

+sun was shining from without and struck upon the curtains that hung

+inside. Evan had made his house ready for the visitors he expected, and

+every window was curtained.</p>

+

+<p>There was a moment of breath-taking suspense. Arthur, still seated lest

+the sound of his rising alarm whoever or whatever was outside, was

+bringing his rifle to his shoulder. I slipped into the room and came

+to his side, my own rifle ready. Our eyes were fixed upon the window.

+Then the slanting rays of the sun flung a shadow upon the curtain. The

+thing was not yet before the window, but its shadow moved on before

+it because of the position of the rising sun. We saw, cast in perfect

+clearness upon the flimsy cloth, the silhouette of the head of the

+gorilla! Its small ears lay back, its jaw protruded in that fearful

+ferocity of the anthropoid tribe, and we saw it peering from right to

+left in suspicious cunning. I held my breath, waiting for the moment

+when we could fire.</p>

+

+<p>The head turned sharply, and I thought I saw the nostrils quivering.

+Then, abruptly, it vanished, and a dog burst into frantic barking and

+hysterical yelping on the veranda. Another instant and the dog screamed

+in terror. There was a crash against the wall of the house, and the

+yelping became a moan.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur and I had dashed for the door and now rushed down the veranda

+with hearts thumping madly. One of the dogs was writhing in agony on

+the floor. It had been flung against the house with terrific force and

+now lay with broken ribs and backbone, dying. The gorilla had vanished.</p>

+

+<p>Evan appeared with his rifle ready, out of breath. "What's up?" he

+demanded. "The beast again?"</p>

+

+<p>Arthur swore hysterically. "The damned beast is here!" he cried. "It's

+<i>here</i>! It's hiding somewhere about!"</p>

+

+<p>We were all thoroughly reckless by now. We went after the huge ape with

+the temerity that would have made the blood of any of us run cold in

+a sober moment. We penetrated every corner of the house. We went over

+every bit of the grounds. We clambered upon the roof and searched

+there in foolhardy indifference to the danger we might be in if we only

+located the animal.</p>

+

+<p>"I think it was hiding in the servants' quarters," said Evan grimly.

+"I saw signs of its having been there. It must have grown shy when I

+explored the place and it probably slipped off toward the house to

+escape me. I don't see why it didn't make for the woods, though."</p>

+

+<p>None of us understood, but we went about our search as before. We found

+absolutely nothing. At last we stopped and stared at one another.</p>

+

+<p>"We would have killed it in another moment," said Arthur despairingly,

+"but the dog saw it and yelped. Then it ran."</p>

+

+<p>"Could it have made the woods before we got outside?"</p>

+

+<p>"Heaven only knows," said Arthur wearily. "I begin to believe the

+natives have bewitched the thing to kill us all."</p>

+

+<p>"How many dogs have we left?" asked Evan suddenly.</p>

+

+<p>There were four or five of Evan's animals, and one or two of the

+village dogs had begun to lurk about the house in hopes of food. There

+was none left for them in the deserted village.</p>

+

+<p>"We'll tie up the dogs," said Evan. "We'll fasten one on the veranda at

+the front, and another in the rear of the house. We'll put two on the

+ground below, tethered to the piles, and spread the others in the rooms

+here. Then the beast will have to kill them before it can get at as,

+and we'll have some warning."</p>

+

+<p>We began to improvise collars for the native dogs and scattered the

+others about as Evan had suggested. When we had finished, as far as

+we could see there was absolutely no way for the gorilla to emerge

+from his hiding place&mdash;if he were hiding in the house&mdash;without being

+instantly detected by a dog. Certainly, he could not reach the house

+from the bush without discovery and an alarm being given.</p>

+

+<p>With a dog in every room, dogs on the veranda, and others underneath

+the building, we should have felt safe, but did not. There was

+something uncanny in the appearances and disappearances of the

+monstrous ape that left us apprehensive even when we had taken every

+possible precaution to provide for its instant discovery if it made

+another attempt to reach us.</p>

+

+<p>The pertinacity of the beast was appalling. To think of a colossal

+anthropoid with the cunning of the devil himself, the strength of seven

+men, and all the malignant hatred that possessed this one, to think of

+such an animal lurking about seeking an opportunity to wreak vengeance

+on one of our number was horrible. And it would not stop with one of

+us if more than one were within its reach. Once in a killing rage, a

+gorilla goes mad with blood lust. It would tear and rend, would crush

+and utterly destroy.</p>

+

+<p>We were white and nervous from the strain long before. Now we went

+about with something akin to hysteria just beneath the surface. There

+was nothing we could <i>do</i>! We had to wait for the beast to reappear,

+knowing that when it did, its coming would be cautious and cunning, its

+patience infinite, its strength colossal and its hatred fiendish. Any

+or all of us might expect at any instant to be gripped by a hairy arm

+of incredible power, to see the bestial face of that demoniacal animal

+grimacing at us in utter malignance. And we had before us the picture

+of the vision that would confront us in such a case. The picture taken

+from the native girl's retina was warning. Little, evil eyes glittering

+fiercely, flat, horrible nose above a terrible mouth parted in insane

+rage, and discolored fangs showing above the blackened lips.</p>

+

+<p>Action of any sort would have been a relief. We went through the

+morning, making desperate efforts to stave off hysteria, and aware that

+at any moment one of us might crack beneath the strain.</p>

+

+<p>Noon came. We ate mechanically. Evan was standing up better than any of

+the rest of us. Alicia was quiet and still. Her eyes alone showed the

+tension she felt. We were all keyed up to an almost unbearable pitch.

+Queerly enough, in our absorption in the threat of the gorilla, we had

+almost forgotten the drums that resounded on every side of us from the

+bush. It was Mrs. Braymore who called our attention to them.</p>

+

+<p>"I wonder what's the matter with the drums?" she said wearily. "I've

+been noticing them for the last ten minutes."</p>

+

+<p>We listened. The monotonous rhythm was still going on, rolling through

+the hot midday air in muffled waves of sound. The drums seemed louder

+than they had been.</p>

+

+<p>"They're beating more rapidly," Evan remarked in a puzzled tone. "They

+were going along slowly. Now they're quite fast."</p>

+

+<p>Only one of the drums had quickened its beat, however. The others

+thumped on monotonously. About four o'clock in the afternoon&mdash;allowing

+the length of time necessary for a runner to get from the first village

+to another&mdash;a second began to beat more furiously, and shortly after

+dark, the third joined in the trilogy. Our dogs were moving restlessly

+about, chafing because of being tied. We all were increasingly anxious,

+but this new danger had, strangely enough, the effect of steadying us.</p>

+

+<p>We waited a long time, and at last the two women lay down to try

+to rest. Through the moonlight night the drums rolled and rumbled.

+Standing out on the veranda with my rifle in my hands, I listened

+intently. I saw with some disquiet that the night threatened to become

+cloudy, but hoped that the dogs would give warning of any danger that

+might impend. For an hour I stood there, looking and listening. There

+was no mistaking the new note of the drums. They meant resolution,

+renewed activity. Faintly, beneath their muttering, I caught a high,

+sustained ululation. The yelling of the natives had not been audible

+before. Evidently they were in perfect frenzy. That meant that an

+attack was imminent.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur came out on the veranda beside me. He listened as I was

+listening.</p>

+

+<p>"They'll attempt to rush us in the morning, I suppose," he remarked

+grimly. "They'll hardly try it before dawn, though. Blacks don't like

+the nighttime."</p>

+

+<p>One of the dogs tied to a pile below the house growled softly. The dog

+on the veranda echoed the growl. I glanced at him quickly. He had risen

+and was standing tense, looking toward the edge of the bush. He growled

+again.</p>

+

+<p>At just this moment, one of the little wisps of cloud overshadowed the

+moon and left the courtyard in darkness. I moved quietly over beside

+the dog and felt the hairs on his neck bristling. Finding him staring

+steadfastly in one direction, I strained my eyes trying to pierce the

+darkness. The cloud thinned a trifle and objects were dimly visible. I

+saw a shape coming slowly and cautiously toward the house, a shape that

+moved hesitatingly and furtively.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur exclaimed softly. "Murray, it's the gorilla!"</p>

+

+<p>The figure was hunched up and apelike. It moved awkwardly toward us.

+The cloud thinned still more and we could distinguish its location

+clearly, though it was still impossible for us to see distinctly.</p>

+

+<p>"For the body," Arthur whispered.</p>

+

+<p>We raised our rifles together and aimed carefully. Arthur's rifle

+flashed, and mine an instant later. We heard a choking, beastlike cry,

+and the figure toppled and fell.</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br />

+<small>A STRANGE ALLY.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>Evan rushed out from the interior of the house, rifle in hand.</p>

+

+<p>"What's up? The natives?"</p>

+

+<p>"We've got the gorilla, I think," said Arthur quietly.</p>

+

+<p>He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash light. The three of

+us started down the steps and approached the fallen figure cautiously.

+As we drew near, we could hear it moaning. The moans were curiously

+human. I glanced up at the sky. The last wisp of the cloud was just

+passing before the face of the moon, and when I looked down again, the

+figure was outlined in the pitiless glare of the moonlight.</p>

+

+<p>Evan uttered an exclamation. The moaning figure was not that of the

+gorilla. It was a man, a black man, in the monkey skin of a juju

+priest, with all the amulets and charms of his calling strung about

+him. Evan started forward and shot out a string of questions in the

+local dialect. I could not catch a word, but Evan's voice was stern and

+angry. The moaning witch doctor spoke feebly, his voice growing weaker

+and weaker, and his words interrupted by gasps of pain. At last he

+choked and coughed weakly and was still.</p>

+

+<p>Evan turned to us in a towering passion.</p>

+

+<p>"Those damned natives are going to try to rush us at dawn! The witch

+doctor came to put a spell on us so they'd succeed. Oh, when I get at

+the black animals&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>He burst out into a string of profanity. The slave owner in him had

+come uppermost, and the news that his blacks were going to attack us

+aroused his anger at their presumption more than his fear that they

+might succeed. He stirred the dead figure with his foot.</p>

+

+<p>"They dare to threaten me!" he rasped. "I'll shoot one man in every

+four of them! I'll whip the rest until they can't stand. I'll&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>My old dislike of the man returned, I could not doubt his courage, but

+I had never been particularly fond of the <i>serva&ccedil;al</i> system and had

+their effort not imperiled the lives of the four of us, I would have

+had the best of wishes for the natives in their attempt to liberate

+themselves.</p>

+

+<p>"We'd better decide how we're going to stand them off before we decide

+how we're going to punish them," I remarked. "There are three of us.

+There are at least six hundred of them."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur suddenly turned with a start.</p>

+

+<p>"Alicia's in the casa," he said sharply, "and the beast may come back."</p>

+

+<p>He started for the house on a run. We heard his voice as he called

+to Alicia and heard her answer. Evan and I followed more slowly,

+discussing methods of protecting ourselves against the coming attack.</p>

+

+<p>"There's one thing," I observed thoughtfully, "with the bush about the

+clearing full of natives, the gorilla will either keep a safe distance

+away&mdash;as is most likely&mdash;or else will have to fight his way through to

+get to us."</p>

+

+<p>"Perhaps," said Evan gloomily, his voice still full of anger toward the

+blacks. "We'll worry about him when we have to. The important thing is

+the siege we'll have to stand. If we can stop the first rush, I think

+we'll be all right."</p>

+

+<p>"We're all right for ammunition?" I asked.</p>

+

+<p>He nodded. "I could outfit a small army from my gun chest and I've

+ammunition to last a year."</p>

+

+<p>We mounted the steps of the casa.</p>

+

+<p>Alicia greeted us with a white face. "I can shoot," she told us both

+bravely, "and I shan't mind shooting at these people."</p>

+

+<p>"You shall shoot," said Evan grimly, "if they get a foothold in the

+house. Otherwise there's no need. You know enough not to be taken

+alive."</p>

+

+<p>"I know," said Alicia quietly.</p>

+

+<p>The last I saw of her for an hour or more, she was going through Evan's

+assortment of firearms, picking out a light rifle for her own use and

+another for Mrs. Braymore. She already had a small-caliber automatic

+pistol hidden in her bosom.</p>

+

+<p>For an hour or more we worked, moving the bundles Evan pointed out in

+the storeroom to form a breastwork behind which the women would be

+safe from stray shots. We tore up a section or so of flooring, too,

+so we could fire down in case any of the blacks found a refuge from

+our weapons beneath the house. Bars nailed across the openings at once

+provided us with assurance that they could not climb up, and that we

+would not accidentally fall through. We brought supplies of food and

+water where they would be close at hand.</p>

+

+<p>For close quarters, we were depending on repeating shotguns loaded with

+buckshot. Three of us with those weapons should be able to stop almost

+any number of blacks. These lay close beside us. We had our rifles and

+our pistols in addition.</p>

+

+<p>The drums were beating madly now. The high-pitched ululation that was

+the blended note of all the frantic yelling came clearly to our ears.

+When we had finished our preparations I went outside to listen. I

+instantly realized that the drums were nearer, much nearer. The dogs

+were excited and restless.</p>

+

+<p>"We'd better get the dogs up from the ground," I suggested. "They'll

+only be killed."</p>

+

+<p>Evan went silently down and unleashed them. They were growling and

+bristling, particularly those near the back. They seemed to realize the

+imminence of danger.</p>

+

+<p>I looked at my watch. It lacked two hours of dawn. The drums were

+growing louder and louder, and the yelling more distinct and defiant.

+From three sides the drums closed in on us, and from three sides

+choruses of high-pitched yells informed us of the hatred of the blacks

+for their masters. Evan interpreted as he caught some of the words.</p>

+

+<p>"They say the juju has declared we are to be killed," he announced with

+a faint smile. "We are to be slaughtered and our flesh boiled down

+until the fat can be collected, when it will be used to light fires.

+Pigs will feed upon us, and our bones will be scattered among the juju

+priests of a thousand villages to tell them to rise and slay all white

+men."</p>

+

+<p>The drums came up to the very edge of the clearing, and their

+thunderous voices boomed with a full-throated bellow across the open

+space in a deafening volume of sound. In the moonlight, we became

+conscious of darker bodies moving among the bush. Evan sighted from an

+open window and with compressed lips fired. There was a mocking yell.</p>

+

+<p>"They say our guns have been bewitched so we cannot harm them," he

+informed us a second later. "Give me a shotgun."</p>

+

+<p>The load of buckshot gave better results. Two or three shrieks of pain

+announced its arrival. Then the drums boomed forth more loudly. Evan

+fired again and again. There was a yell of rage at the third shot, when

+the resonant voice of the huge drum became muted and a mere shadow of

+itself.</p>

+

+<p>"I was trying for the drum," he remarked. "They were brought from a

+thousand miles inland, and there's no way to tell what price was paid

+for that one."</p>

+

+<p>The two other drums hastily shifted their positions, and recommenced

+their devil's tattoo. Emboldened by the fury of sound, one or two of

+the more daring spirits ventured to advance a little way out in the

+clearing to howl maledictions upon us.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur's rifle cracked spitefully, and mine followed. Two bold spirits

+ceased to yell.</p>

+

+<p>From time to time, as we saw an opportunity and a target in the

+moonlight, we shot vengefully into the bush, and several times cries of

+different timbre from the hysterical yelling of the blacks followed our

+shots. Once or twice, too, I had that curious feeling of certitude that

+follows some shots, when one is confident he has hit his mark, though

+no cry came to assure me.</p>

+

+<p>Evan fired again and again with his heavy shotgun, almost every deep

+explosion being followed by a cry. The range was hardly more than a

+hundred yards, and the buckshot carried that distance easily. Spreading

+as it did, it had a daunting effect.</p>

+

+<p>Our object in taking the initiative was solely that of dampening the

+blacks' enthusiasm. Allowed to cheer themselves with yells, they

+would make a rush that would be formidable in the extreme, but if we

+began to inflict losses before their attack began, the edge of their

+determination would be taken off. They would no longer believe in the

+efficacy of their juju to compass our destruction, and we would have

+a fraction of that psychological superiority that the white man must

+possess in order to handle natives, the complete possession of which

+enables a single fever-ridden white man to cow and rule ten thousand

+blacks.</p>

+

+<p>Evan made a tour of the house, to make sure that the natives were

+equally reluctant to advance on all sides. We heard him fire twice

+back there, and painful yells followed each shot. He rejoined us.</p>

+

+<p>"I'm going to take the rear," he said briefly. "They're in the bush all

+around. I'll hold them off easily. They'll make their main rush from

+this side, so you two stay together."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur's answer was a deliberate squeeze of his trigger. A yell

+followed.</p>

+

+<p>"At a hundred yards," he commented, looking up, "one can make good

+practice in moonlight like this."</p>

+

+<p>"Dawn soon," said Evan and went once more to the rear. We heard him

+settling himself for the rush that we expected.</p>

+

+<p>So far, there had been nothing but yells from the natives. We knew they

+had some firearms, but ammunition is very valuable in the bush. Natives

+are never supposed to have arms of precision, and when they possess

+modern rifles, they have to keep them concealed lest they be taken away

+by the Portuguese; but now and then a black boy will make off with a

+rifle and a store of shells, and there are other sources of supply.</p>

+

+<p>At that, though, rifles and ammunition are immensely valuable back in

+the hill country. Up beyond the Hungry Country, I have known slaves to

+be sold for three rifle cartridges apiece. In fact, my boy Mboka&mdash;now

+run off in the bush with the rest of them&mdash;had cost me exactly six

+.30-.30 shells. I had found him the slave of a portly Kuloga chieftain

+who was about to sell him to a half-caste Arab for export to the Sudan.</p>

+

+<p>I had wondered why the house servants did not clean out the gun chest

+when they ran away in the middle of the night, but thanked my luck that

+they failed to do so. Half a dozen rifles in the hands of the blacks

+would have made matters awkward for us at close quarters. Off in the

+bush we could have disregarded them, as the native custom is to fill

+the barrel with slugs and fire from the hip. Anything like accuracy is

+impossible to them, of course.</p>

+

+<p>When the sky began to pale toward the east, however, they opened up. No

+less than six firearms began to bellow at us, from an ancient fowling

+piece of who knows what ancient lineage to a modern smokeless-powder

+magazine rifle. The slugs and bullets tore through the flimsy walls of

+the house, or else imbedded themselves with a thud in one of the posts

+that supported the roof. Arthur and myself began to concentrate upon

+those weapons. The black-powder arms showed their position at every

+fire in the now growing dawnlight, and we fired vengefully at the puffs

+of smoke.</p>

+

+<p>The sky was growing lighter now. The stars above us were paling and

+winking feebly in an attempt to outshine the sun. The first dim

+grayness became nearly white. The east turned from pallid luminosity to

+rich rose and then to gold. The gold, in its turn, faded to yellow, and

+the first rays of the sun struck the tips of the highest trees about

+the clearing. The drumming became fast and furious. The fires of the

+guns in the bush ceased for a moment, and wild yelling began. We heard

+Evan firing occasionally from the rear of the house. Now his shots came

+more rapidly.</p>

+

+<p>With a hideous yell, the fringe of bush about the casa erupted black

+figures. Ancient spears, knobbed and gnarled war clubs, fiercely

+pointed arrows, and occasional rusted and long-cherished firearms armed

+the motley throng that ran yelling toward us.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur dropped his rifle and took up the repeating shotgun by his side.

+I took my stand at a window and opened on the advancing mob. In such a

+mass it was impossible to miss, and the buckshot was deadly. If we had

+had sawed-off shotguns, the loads would have spread more and inflicted

+more damage, but as it was we had merely to pull the triggers to see

+one or more figures crumple or spin half around and fall. In their

+state of frenzy, that did not stop the blacks.</p>

+

+<p>Evan's gun was booming from the rear of the house. Arthur's spoke with

+a shattering roar. My own barked angrily. The drums in the bush were

+pounding in a mad rhythm that made the universe a place of unbearable

+sound. The yells, the shots, the cries, and the thunderous drumming

+created an uproar in which I loaded my weapon and emptied it with a

+sense of curious detachment. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore were behind the

+breastwork we had made for them. I cannot speak for Mrs. Braymore, but

+I glanced once at Alicia and saw her grimly holding her light rifle in

+readiness.</p>

+

+<p>The blacks came on. The losses we inflicted went unnoticed. They

+swarmed up the rise on which the house was built. We took heavy toll

+of them, but from sheer weight of numbers their casualties seemed

+insignificant. Their yells were deafening as they swept up the last

+twenty yards. I emptied my shotgun and began to use my two automatics.</p>

+

+<p>A mass of black humanity flowed up the steps, though a gap in the

+stream widened for a moment as Arthur poured the last shells from

+his shotgun into them. They clambered the pillars that supported the

+veranda and made for the windows.</p>

+

+<p>At that distance, barely ten feet, we could not miss. The veranda

+was a shambles. They could not live there. Arthur and myself with an

+automatic in each hand swept the place. I heard a shot and a yell

+behind me. One of the openings in the floor showed the barrel of an

+ancient musket that was just falling back. Alicia had fired down the

+opening and undoubtedly saved my life. The musket was aimed directly

+for my back, and would have torn my head from my body.</p>

+

+<p>There was a crashing, and an antique blunderbuss appeared through

+a hole smashed in the flimsy side wall of the house. Arthur fired

+quickly. Then I heard Evan cry out at the rear of the house. Before we

+could move, there was an outburst of demoniacal, bestial screamings of

+rage. To one who had once heard that sound, the noise was unmistakable.

+The gorilla had appeared in a killing fury and was going for the

+blacks, as their panic testified. In a moment the clearing was dotted

+with running natives. They dared face our weapons, but the gorilla&mdash;&mdash;</p>

+

+<p>Evan's rifle was silent. There was an instant of almost unbearable

+quietness. Then came a triumphant, horrible outcry from the beast. It

+had slain.</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br />

+<small>UNMASKED.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>The quiet was deadly. Where five minutes before had been the yelling

+of the natives and the roaring of the drums, the sharp cracks of our

+rifles, and the bellowing of the native firearms, now there was not a

+sound.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur and I, shaken by the suddenness of the transition, waited in

+cold apprehension. Would the door from the rear of the house burst open

+and the shaggy beast rage into the room, its colossal arms crushing

+whatever might come within its grasp? Would we, the four in that one

+room, fire futilely into its barrellike chest, and then be rent and

+tore in the huge ape's hairy arms, while its great discolored fangs

+sank into our flesh?</p>

+

+<p>The stillness was broken by a feeble sound, and we quivered, gripping

+our rifles the more tightly. The tension was terrific. Another feeble

+sound, a scraping sound. Then two or three faint jars, followed by an

+uncertain, tottering footstep, and a second. We heard Evan's voice,

+barely above a whisper, muttering pain-racked imprecations.</p>

+

+<p>The door opened slowly and he limped weakly into the room. His clothes

+were torn and gory. Blood dripped from a deep cut across the back of

+his hand. He stared at us uncertainly, and a look of relief came across

+his face.</p>

+

+<p>"Well," he said slowly. "They've gone."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia, for the first time, gave way. She burst into sobs, against

+which she struggled bravely.</p>

+

+<p>"The gorilla!" I snapped, fearful lest I too give way.</p>

+

+<p>Evan shook his head. "The blacks had crept up to and filled the

+servants' quarters during the night. I suppose that's why the dogs

+were restless. When they made a rush, they dashed out from there and I

+couldn't stop them. They were inside, and I was just about gone when

+the gorilla appeared from nowhere. I dare say I shouted, and then the

+beast made for the blacks. I suppose it was as frightened as they were,

+but it charged them, screaming with rage, and they ran. It got one of

+them. The poor devil is out there now. I'd been knocked down and one of

+the blacks was just about to finish me off when the brute appeared."</p>

+

+<p>"Where is it now?"</p>

+

+<p>Evan shook his head again. "I don't know where it went. It was going

+for the blacks."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and tried desperately to

+get a grip on herself again.</p>

+

+<p>"We'll go and look out at the back," said Arthur grimly. "You stay

+here, Evan."</p>

+

+<p>We went cautiously out toward the rear. There lay one of the natives

+with his neck broken, an expression of infinite horror on his face.

+Others lay in twisted attitudes about the place, gaping wounds from

+the buckshot at close range showing how desperately Evan had fought. Of

+the gorilla there was no sign. We searched the place thoroughly, but

+found nothing.</p>

+

+<p>We returned to the others, a curious lethargy settling upon us. We had

+been at such high tension for so long that it was impossible to keep

+keyed up. I, for one, felt an almost-overpowering desire to sleep.

+Alicia had recovered her composure by now and was trying to bandage

+Evan's hand. He was indifferently submitting, but after she had

+finished, he looked at it and took the bandage off, substituting a mere

+strip of adhesive for the many turns of the cloth.</p>

+

+<p>"I can handle my rifle like this," he said dully.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Braymore made coffee and we drank it in silence. Presently Arthur

+motioned to the women to leave the room and began to tug at the bodies

+lying on the floor. It was absurd for us to think of trying to bury

+them. He dragged them to the edge of the veranda and dropped them over

+the edge to the ground below. He moved jerkily, almost like a man

+asleep.</p>

+

+<p>"No need to do that," said Evan suddenly, a little while later.</p>

+

+<p>Arthur stopped and looked at him questioningly.</p>

+

+<p>"We'll have to start for the coast," Evan explained uninterestedly. "We

+can't stick it out here. The natives won't bother us now. The fight's

+taken out of them."</p>

+

+<p>"But the gorilla?"</p>

+

+<p>"Have to chance it," said Evan slowly. "There's nothing else to do."</p>

+

+<p>"He'll get us within the first ten miles," I remarked, speaking with

+difficulty because of the peculiar lethargy that affected us all. "You

+know how he trailed Arthur."</p>

+

+<p>There was a moment's silence, then Arthur automatically resumed his

+task. Alicia came into the room and silently gave us something to eat.

+Arthur stopped dumbly and began to chew on his food, forgetting the

+grisly labor he had been performing but a moment before.</p>

+

+<p>"We can't start to-day, anyway," he said after a little. "We've got

+to rest. We're all in bad shape and we've two weeks' travel before we

+reach another white man's house."</p>

+

+<p>Evan made some reply, but I did not catch it. I fell asleep with food

+in my hands and slept like a dead man for hours. Alicia waked me at

+noon to eat again.</p>

+

+<p>All that day we were possessed by a peculiar indifference, the result

+of the reaction from the tension at which we had lived for so many

+days. I woke with a start at three o'clock, hearing the dogs bark. Evan

+came slowly into the room.</p>

+

+<p>"I let the dogs loose," he said, noticing my expression. "They were

+whining."</p>

+

+<p>"We'll need them to-night, in case the beast comes back." I rose

+stiffly and went back to douse my head with water. It roused me a

+little and, after a cup of coffee, I joined the other two. We were all

+languid and tired, but thoroughly awake now.</p>

+

+<p>"Of course we can't stay on here," Arthur was admitting, "but we

+wouldn't have one chance in a hundred to make it through the jungle

+with that ape following us. You've seen how it manages to reach the

+house here."</p>

+

+<p>"I've figured," said Evan thoughtfully, "that it was in the fringe of

+bush, and when the drums began to close in from three sides, it was

+flushed out and came on to hide here in or about the house. It had

+hidden here before."</p>

+

+<p>"Probably," Arthur agreed. "But that doesn't say how we're going

+to elude it during a journey of a hundred and fifty miles without

+carriers."</p>

+

+<p>Evan threw out his hands. "But what are we going to do?" He appealed to

+me. "What do you think, Murray?"</p>

+

+<p>"If we stay here," I reasoned, "either we'll get him or he'll get us.

+If we go, he'll probably get one or more of us and we may get him. But

+we can't stay here. The only thing I can think of is that we had better

+try for him to-night. With the dogs to warn us, we'll have a better

+chance than before. If he doesn't come to-night, try to-morrow night.

+Hang on here as long as we dare and then, if we must, try the trail. If

+we could strike a caravan coming down from the Hungry Country, now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>Evan shook his head. "I haven't been very hospitable to the Portuguese

+traders," he remarked. "They steal my slaves and sell them in Ticao.

+They don't turn off the main slave trail to my villages any more."</p>

+

+<p>We were, silent for a moment or two.</p>

+

+<p>"Are there any of the rest barricades any short distance away?" asked

+Arthur. "We might reach one of them and wait for a caravan to come."</p>

+

+<p>From time to time along the great slave trail from the interior, you

+will find big inclosures made of tree trunks and filled with grass

+huts. They were originally built for halting places for the caravans

+that go up and down from beyond the Hungry Country. Of course they

+are in ill repair because of the attacks of insects and rot upon dead

+timber in that climate, but the carriers feel safer in them after

+nightfall, and the slave traders find them convenient to avoid possible

+attempts to escape off the part of the "voluntary labor recruits" they

+are escorting to the coast.</p>

+

+<p>"We might try," I said doubtfully. "Frankly, I think the beast would

+have as much chance at us there as here. If we happened on a caravan

+right away, though, it would help."</p>

+

+<p>"Why doesn't the damned thing go away?" Arthur looked at us with

+something of dread in his eyes. "I shot its mate four hundred miles

+away, up in the Kongo. It trailed me those four hundred miles, making

+attempt after attempt on me. I wounded it once, and got a fair shot at

+it two weeks before Murray brought Alicia and Mrs. Braymore here. I

+thought I had killed it then. It went off through the trees as if it

+were badly injured. I'd made sure it was dead."</p>

+

+<p>He began to pace up and down the room nervously.</p>

+

+<p>"I've never known one so far from Kongo before," I said, in an attempt

+to encourage him. "You know what animals are. They'll stick at a thing

+for an amazing length of time and then will drop it like a shot. He may

+get a touch of homesickness any day and swing off to the north again."</p>

+

+<p>"If he only would!" Arthur burst out. "I'm beginning to feel that he's

+going to get me yet. Something tells me he's going to get me."</p>

+

+<p>"Nonsense," said Evan heartily. "Get a grip on yourself, old man."</p>

+

+<p>"If he killed me," Arthur muttered morosely, "he'd be satisfied. I'm

+the one he's after. If he killed me, he might go off and leave the rest

+of you in peace."</p>

+

+<p>"Don't be an ass, Arthur," I told him sharply. "The beast can't

+distinguish between white men. He'd be just as apt to try to wipe out

+the lot of us, and I have a strong objection to being wiped out."</p>

+

+<p>Arthur walked out on the veranda and stood there, leaning against the

+side of the house and staring moodily off into the bush. Evan looked at

+me significantly.</p>

+

+<p>"Nerves," he said quietly. "I feel the same way, but I'm trying not to

+show it. I'll go and round up the dogs. I have a feeling that something

+is due to happen to-night."</p>

+

+<p>I went out to the back. Alicia saw me passing her door and joined me,

+leaving Mrs. Braymore behind.</p>

+

+<p>"Have you decided on your course?" she asked in a low voice. "You know

+both of us are willing to do anything you think wise. You mustn't hold

+back for fear we may not be able to stand hardships."</p>

+

+<p>I shook my head. "The only thing we can do," I said wearily, "is hope

+the beast turns up to-night and that we kill him."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia put out her hand and let it rest on my shoulder in comradely

+fashion.</p>

+

+<p>"Please don't be discouraged," she said urgently. "We've stood so much,

+surely we can endure a little more."</p>

+

+<p>I tried to smile. "We'll stick it out. It must be much harder for you

+and Mrs. Braymore."</p>

+

+<p>"Don't worry about us." Alicia shook her head decidedly. "It's

+the waiting for the beast to come that worries you. We're growing

+accustomed to grisly sights, but you'll never be used to just waiting.

+Why, I've got so I can look at those poor natives and not even shiver."</p>

+

+<p>My eyes followed her glance. I smiled wryly. "It isn't pleasant for

+me to look at that particular native," I remarked. "He was one of my

+carriers. I bought and freed him when he was to be used for food&mdash;a

+tribe in the interior. All my boys joined Evan's blacks."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia looked at me with her large eyes. "Let's go and talk to Arthur,"

+she said suddenly. "He needs cheering as much as you do."</p>

+

+<p>The veranda of the casa went all the way around it. Arthur, when I had

+seen him, was leaning against the wall before the main door. Alicia and

+I walked around the outside.</p>

+

+<p>"I didn't thank you for shooting down the hole in the flooring&mdash;&mdash;" I

+began, then quickly snapped my hand to the pistol at my belt.</p>

+

+<p>From inside the house had come a snarl! Before I could take another

+step, I heard a queer, gurgling gasp and a sickening crack. In a second

+I had bolted around the corner of the casa, rushing madly, my automatic

+in my hand. Arthur had been leaning against the wall near one of the

+windows. Now he was crumpling limply to the floor, while the curtains

+behind him were still fluttering where the arms that had broken his

+neck had beat jerked back. I dashed through the door, absolutely

+desperate and utterly reckless. A dark form was bounding down the hall

+that led to the rear. A frightened cry came from the room in which

+Mrs. Braymore had been left. I ran down the passageway, furious and

+desperate, I heard a door slam shut&mdash;the door of the storeroom! I made

+for it, stumbled, and fell into the room on all fours.</p>

+

+<p>Evan Graham was in the room, trying to stuff a furry something into an

+open box! As I sprawled on the floor he whirled and saw me. From his

+lips issued the identical snarl I had heard five seconds before, and he

+raised his automatic pistol and fired!</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br />

+<small>THE GORILLA'S SCREAM.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>I came slowly back to consciousness, feeling weak and giddy. I essayed

+to move and found I could not. I opened my eyes. Despite the gathering

+darkness, I discovered that I was seated in a chair in the large room

+of the casa. A second attempt to move disclosed the fact that I was

+tied tightly.</p>

+

+<p>Alicia stared at me dumbly from an opposite chair, and Mrs. Braymore

+sat in one corner, her face white and set and her eyes full of horror.

+Evan was standing at his ease by the doorway, smoking with evident

+enjoyment.</p>

+

+<p>In one of his hands he held a shaggy object that for some seconds held,

+weakly, my half-focused attention. It was a baglike object, that yet

+seemed to contain a framework. Not yet awake to full consciousness,

+I saw that it was strangely animal. It was a mask in the perfect,

+horrible likeness of a gorilla.</p>

+

+<p>Evan turned and saw my eyes open. "Well, Murray, old top," he said

+amiably. "You caught me, didn't you?"</p>

+

+<p>My throat was dry and parched, and my shoulder ached abominably. "What

+the devil?" I croaked weakly.</p>

+

+<p>"Give him some water, Alicia," said Evan cheerfully. "He's thirsty."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia gave me water. "He has my pistol," she whispered despairingly as

+she bent over me.</p>

+

+<p>Full consciousness returned with a jerk. Evan had shot me. Evan had

+snarled at me as he fired. Evan&mdash;why Evan must have killed Arthur! He

+grinned approvingly as he saw me straighten in an instinctive effort to

+break my bonds.</p>

+

+<p>"Ah, feeling better," he commented. "I'm sorry you caught me. I'd have

+liked to take you back to Ticao and hear you tell the tale of this

+week's work of ours. You always were a great one for telling tales,

+Murray."</p>

+

+<p>He puffed luxuriously at his cigarette and looked at the gathering

+darkness outside.</p>

+

+<p>"You're a connoisseur of tales, Murray, so I think I'll tell you one.

+I'm going off to get in touch with my natives in a little while, as

+soon as it's dark, but I've a few minutes to spare and might as well

+be pleasant during that little while. I'm afraid I'll have to be

+unpleasant later on, you know."</p>

+

+<p>"I didn't know."</p>

+

+<p>I have never found that losing one's head is an advantage under any

+circumstances, so I prepared to make an effort to keep mine. Evan waved

+his hand airily.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, I'm going to be put to the unpleasant necessity of disposing of

+you and Mrs. Braymore. No one could regret it more than I do, but the

+necessity is there. You see, I was the gorilla." He indicated the

+gorilla mask. "And it wouldn't do for you to tell that story about."</p>

+

+<p>"I can believe it," I admitted. My head was spinning, but I tried to

+follow what he was saying in the hope of finding something therein to

+my own advantage.</p>

+

+<p>"You understand, of course," said Evan cheerfully, "that I don't mean

+that I was the beast whose mate Arthur so inconsiderately shot, or the

+one who followed his caravan all the way here from the Kongo. That

+was another gorilla altogether. I simply happen to be the one that

+hung about the house here. Arthur shot the other one two weeks before

+you came. It got away, but he must have wounded it fatally. Otherwise

+it would have turned up long before. I'll admit that I was a little

+nervous about the animal at first, but I soon realized that it must be

+dead. I saw to it that Arthur was not similarly convinced, however. I

+had already made more or less of a plan. You know about my slaves?"</p>

+

+<p>"No," I said rather weakly. I had lost a lot of blood.</p>

+

+<p>"I'd knocked about the West Coast for quite a while before I came

+here." Evan stopped and drew up a chair. He sat down comfortably.

+"I had learned the secret of controlling natives. As you know, that

+secret is fear. I knew that if I could get, say, a village full of them

+thoroughly afraid of me, they would be to all practical purposes my

+slaves. Normal means of frightening them would have the disadvantage

+of not frightening them too much to invoke juju to get rid of me. And

+juju, invoked against a white man, means poison. The obvious solution

+was to frighten them by means of the very juju they would use against

+me."</p>

+

+<p>"Poison?" I asked. My head was spinning, but I tried not to show it.</p>

+

+<p>"No." Evan puffed casually upon his cigarette. "Poison would be the

+result of the juju. I went at the fountain head. Kongo natives are

+deadly afraid of gorillas, but just a little way from gorilla country,

+the natives fear them vastly more than where familiarity has had time

+to breed, if not contempt, at least some measure of accustomedness. The

+natives here would be horribly afraid of them. I made my preparations

+accordingly. Having bribed his excellency the colonial governor, and

+having had this mask made and learned how to imitate to a fair degree

+of perfection the cries of the beasts, I came out here. Have you seen

+my mask?"</p>

+

+<p>He held it out for me to see, even going so far as to strike a light

+so that I might examine the thing more closely. He held it before my

+eyes and turned it about. It was an amazingly perfect bit of work,

+perhaps larger than a normal skull of one of the beasts would be. For

+all their size, their skulls are comparatively small. It was lifelike

+to a surprising degree. The disgustingly human, and yet unhuman ears

+stuck out against the skull. The jaw protruded in truly simian fashion,

+and the caked, black lips were drawn back from discolored fangs in a

+grimace of almost unimaginable ferocity. The broad, flat nostrils were

+distended in rage, and the eyeholes of the mask sank deep back below

+the low and beetling forehead. If small, glittering eyes had shone

+evilly from those now blank holes, I would have been tempted to believe

+that a live beast was before me.</p>

+

+<p>"Good work, isn't it?" asked Evan. "I came out here with my four

+overseers, wandered into the village, and metamorphosed myself before

+the villagers' eyes into a gorilla clad as a man, which at one moment

+spoke with the voice of a man, ordering them to obey, and the next

+screamed at them in tones of one of the monstrous apes of which they

+were in such dread. I built myself this casa, demanded tribute of gums

+and produce, started a small juju house off in a small clearing, and in

+a couple of weeks had established myself as a deity, demanding to be

+worshiped and sacrificed to, exacting all sorts of tribute, and so on.

+Very profitable, I assure you.</p>

+

+<p>"They soon believed that I could change myself into a gorilla at will

+and respected me immensely. I took care to throw a few scares into

+them. In Japan, some years ago, I learned a small and very elemental

+jujutsu trick which requires very little strength to break a man's

+neck. A few broken necks, a few snarls, a scream or so of rage, and

+they'd no more think of crossing my will than they'd think of jumping

+into the fires of hell."</p>

+

+<p>"They attacked the house," I remarked, trying behind my back to wriggle

+one of my hands free from the bonds that held it fast.</p>

+

+<p>"They'll suffer for that." Evan was smiling, but there was something

+in his tone that made me feel slightly cold. "They'll suffer for that.

+I told my juju priests to take the people off into the woods and keep

+them busy with a juju council until I had finished my business with

+you. They forced your boys to go with them. They simply got out of

+hand, that's all. The witch doctor you and Arthur shot was coming to

+tell me that they were out of control. If I had gone and appeared among

+them, wearing my gorilla mask, and snarled at them once, they would

+have been like lambs. I simply couldn't, get away from you people

+without making you suspicious."</p>

+

+<p>"But what was the object of it all?" I demanded. I had found it

+impossible to free even one hand.</p>

+

+<p>"Arthur was my elder brother," said Evan amiably. "Consequently, being

+English, he had all the money in the family. I do not like West Africa.

+If I disposed of Arthur, I could go back to England and live with some

+comfort. I thought of shooting him and calling it an accident, but

+people would talk, you know. When he came here with his tale of being

+followed by a gorilla, I saw the possibilities. When I heard you people

+were coming up, I saw I would have witnesses. My idea was to convince

+you of the presence of a gorilla, break Arthur's neck precisely as I

+did this afternoon, and return to England. I rather thought I would be

+able to comfort Alicia, in time."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia shuddered. Evan grinned at her.</p>

+

+<p>"I shall comfort you, Alicia, but presently. My people will return,

+Murray and your estimable chaperon will be disposed of, and you and

+I will escape precariously to Ticao, telling the tale of hairbreadth

+escapes during the uprising of my natives and during the trip."</p>

+

+<p>"Never!" said Alicia desperately.</p>

+

+<p>"Oh, yes." Evan was polite, but there was evil determination in his

+tone. "You never cared much for Arthur, and I more than suspect you're

+in love with Murray. You'll do as I say for his sake."</p>

+

+<p>There was mute interrogation in my expression.</p>

+

+<p>"Not to save your life, of course, Murray," Evan hastened to assure

+me. "I really can't allow you to spread tales of what happened up

+here. She'll be pleasant to make sure that you depart this life,

+er&mdash;comfortably."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia looked at me in despair.</p>

+

+<p>Evan glanced out the window. "Not time for me to start off yet," he

+remarked. "They'll have to go down and worship me when I turn up in

+this little fixing." He indicated the gorilla-head mask in his hand.

+"Is there anything that isn't clear to you?"</p>

+

+<p>"I don't understand anything," I said.</p>

+

+<p>"I'll begin at the beginning, in your own fashion. Let's see. Biheta.

+You remember you were here the night she was installed in the casa?

+One of my servants had been insolent. I sent word to the village

+that Biheta was to be sent here to take the other's place. She was

+frightened, and the juju ceremony you saw was for the purpose of

+heartening her for the time she would spend in proximity to my godlike

+person. When the other servants left, by my orders, she was too stupid

+to go with them. She was perpetually frightened, anyway. You see,

+she saw me dispose of the servant that had been insolent. Jujutsu is

+useful. I'll show you how to break a neck." He started to rise, then

+sank back in his chair. "Come to think of it, I need you to convince

+Alicia that she had better do as I tell her. You will depart this life

+to-morrow. As I was saying, Biheta stayed behind when she should have

+cleared out with the others. So, in the middle of the night, while on

+guard, I went into her room, wearing my mask. I made a noise, she woke,

+saw me&mdash;and that was the end of that. The photograph of the retina of

+her eye showed the face of this mask. Rather clever idea, don't you

+think?"</p>

+

+<p>"Very," I admitted.</p>

+

+<p>"Thanks." Evan smiled sarcastically. "Well, Arthur just imagined he

+heard the beast following him through the trees. He shot at nothing,

+when you and he went down to explore the village. My own 'encounter'

+with the animal when I started off in the jungle alone was purely

+imaginary. I scratched my own face and jabbered like the gorilla

+myself. Like this&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>He emitted a succession of incredible sounds, so beastlike and

+ferocious in their tones that I could hardly believe it was not an

+animal uttering them. There was a peculiar echo from the bush outside.</p>

+

+<p>"The dogs were excited in the storeroom," Evan went on easily, "because

+they could smell the fur of the mask I kept in a small box in there.

+When I told that wild tale of a hairy arm reaching in at the window

+and dragging the dog out, to fling it with a broken neck into the

+courtyard, I need not say that I had done the killing. And my 'seeing'

+the gorilla on the roof was more fiction. Of course he wasn't there at

+dawn. I was laughing in my sleeve at you people all night long, while

+we patrolled the courtyard. The silhouette of the gorilla's head you

+two saw on the window curtain was the shadow of your humble servant.

+I had decided that the play had gone far enough. The presence of the

+gorilla had been proved. The three of you, my present audience, would

+corroborate my story of the gorilla's having killed Arthur. I was on my

+way to break his neck. You nearly got me that time, and I had to kill

+the dog to get away. Then the natives got out of hand. I could have

+stopped them by a simple appearance, but you people would have missed

+me. I waited until they were near the house, then rushed out in my

+mask, snarling and raging at them, and they ran. After that I hid the

+mask quickly and pretended to you that I had been knocked down. It was

+really very simple. With the natives quieted for a few days, I simply

+carried out my plans to dispose of Arthur. I'm sorry I'll have to put

+you two out of the way, but Arthur's dead, I'm his heir, I'm going to

+marry Alicia and become a country gentleman in England, and I can't let

+you two people talk."</p>

+

+<p>"You'll never dare take me to England," said Alicia, desperately white.</p>

+

+<p>"You'll marry me, Alicia," said Evan coolly. "You won't split. When you

+see the preparations my natives will make for the entertainment of

+Murray and Mrs. Braymore, you'll swear to anything, and you'll marry me

+when we get to Ticao. You'll corroborate my tales of a slave uprising,

+too. You don't know what can be done to Murray, and will be done before

+he dies, unless you do as I say."</p>

+

+<p>Alicia moistened her lips. I saw her half close her eyes.</p>

+

+<p>Evan laughed. "It's about time for me to call on my natives. This will

+be our wedding night, Alicia. One of the local witch doctors will marry

+us, and the ceremony will be repeated when we get to Ticao. Murray and

+Mrs. Braymore will be kept alive until to-morrow lest you refuse to go

+through with the ceremony. If you hesitate, I dare say I'll be able to

+make up your mind for you. Too bad I'll have to kill the other two,

+though." He strolled over to the door. "I'll call up my natives. You'll

+hear the gorilla again."</p>

+

+<p>Derisively he opened his lips and from them issued a strange cry, that

+I had heard once before. It was the challenge of a bull ape to battle.

+And&mdash;good Heaven! <i>It was answered!</i></p>

+

+<p>There was a snarl behind him. He turned with a gasp. There on the

+veranda, leaping toward him, he saw, not a masquerading white man,

+posing as a jungle god, but a colossal gorilla in actuality, gnashing

+its teeth in rage, and with its huge, hairy arms outstretched.</p>

+

+<p>I shall remember Evan's shriek when the beast seized him, to the end of

+my days. Sometimes, even now, I start up at midnight with the echo of

+it in my ears. For one instant the two figures were outlined against

+the fading light of the sky. Then the ferocious fangs buried themselves

+in Evan's throat and the beast leaped clumsily to the ground, bearing

+the still-struggling body in its immensely muscled arms.</p>

+

+<p>We heard the sounds from the courtyard, sounds at whose meaning I

+do not wish to guess. And then our ears rang with the horrible,

+incredible, terrifying scream of a gorilla that has made a kill.</p>

+

+<hr class="chap" />

+

+<div class="chapter">

+<h2 class="nobreak"><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br />

+<small>AT THE PADRE'S.</small></h2>

+</div>

+

+<p>We passed through the night somehow. Alicia, half dead with terror,

+managed clumsily to release me, but weak as I was from loss of blood,

+we dared attempt nothing that night.</p>

+

+<p>In the morning the great ape was gone. I might as well say now that I

+believe that it was the same animal that had trailed Arthur, and which

+Arthur had gravely wounded some two weeks before our arrival.</p>

+

+<p>For three weeks it had hidden while the wound healed, and then came

+cautiously toward the casa again. It heard Evan's first beastlike

+cries, and its response was probably the queer echo I had thought I

+heard from the bush. It crept forward, and when Evan derisively uttered

+the challenge cry of the monster anthropoids, it had leaped to the

+attack.</p>

+

+<p>Limited as is the intelligence of the creatures, it would never

+distinguish between white men. A white man had killed its mate. It had

+killed a white man. With the blood lust sated, by now the shaggy brute

+was doubtless swinging rapidly through the treetops toward its Kongo

+hunting grounds.</p>

+

+<p>That is my explanation. I know I never saw any other sign of the huge

+gorilla either then or at any later time. I have told the tale on

+different occasions to many different people, and my surmise has always

+been accepted as correct.</p>

+

+<p>Our predicament was not entirely done away with by the disappearance

+of the gorilla that had come to our deliverance so unexpectedly. We

+were still a hundred and fifty miles from another white man or woman,

+absolutely without carriers, and I was abominably weak from the wound

+Evan had inflicted. Our chances looked slight indeed until nearly noon

+of the next day.</p>

+

+<p>A very much ashamed, and a very apologetic black figure emerged from

+the bush on the side farthest from the village. It was followed

+by about forty other similarly ashamed and apologetic figures. I

+recognized Mboka, my gun-bearer in the lead and had to struggle to

+restrain an impulse to jump up and shout aloud to Alicia that we were

+all right at last.</p>

+

+<p>Instead, I sat impassively on the veranda until Mboka stopped humbly

+in the courtyard before me. I paid absolutely no attention, but smoked

+indifferently as if his presence or absence were a matter in which

+I had no concern. He waited and fidgeted, scraping his bare feet

+embarrassedly on the ground, until at last I looked down and inspected

+him impersonally. I looked away again. Presently, looking off through

+the bush as if he were the most insignificant atom in the universe, I

+remarked:</p>

+

+<p>"Pig!"</p>

+

+<p>Mboka beamed. It is the custom in West Africa for the lower in rank,

+the inferior, to speak first, but Mboka was too ashamed to presume. He

+stood there uneasily and tried to look apologetic while I informed him

+that he had put me to some inconvenience, that he was to go and never

+dare appear before me again. I added that I would see to it that no

+other trader ever dreamed of employing him for any purpose whatever.</p>

+

+<p>It does not do for a white man to admit himself in any degree dependent

+on a black. I told him that he need never come to me again and resumed

+my stare into the bush. He may have had some idea of trying to bargain

+with me, but my attitude put him back. He hesitatingly and humbly told

+me what I already knew quite well, that he and the others had been

+forced to accompany Evan's natives off into the bush.</p>

+

+<p>One or two of the carriers had been swept away by the fervor of the

+juju council and had joined Evan's folk in their attack on us, but the

+others had now fled to put themselves under my protection. They begged

+that I would receive them again and assured me of their undivided

+loyalty, if I would take them again into my service.</p>

+

+<p>I kept them waiting for an hour while I went indoors and ate a

+leisurely breakfast. When I came outside again, I seemed to have

+forgotten them. My indifference completed their subjugation. They were

+abject in their pleadings for me to take them back. When I finally

+consented, it was with the scornful statement that I was going to take

+them to Ticao and discharge them from my service forever.</p>

+

+<p>They burdened themselves joyfully with the loads they had brought up

+from Ticao and waited anxiously for me to announce my readiness to

+start. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore would have to walk, as their ox-cart

+was useless. I began the journey on foot, but could not keep up. I was

+too weak.</p>

+

+<p>The second day I had to be carried in an improvised hammock, and the

+third or fourth day I found myself in a raging fever. Alicia worked

+over me bravely, but I lapsed into semidelirious feverishness in which

+I was of no use whatever.</p>

+

+<p>I must credit Mboka with a great deal more faithfulness than I had

+expected of him. He kept the carriers under an iron rule, and Alicia

+told me later that the length of the journeys was stretched to the

+greatest possible distance every day. With nothing but the scantiest

+of medicines&mdash;as my own drug chest had been accidentally left behind

+at Evan's deserted casa&mdash;she fought off the fever, but when we arrived

+at the Padre Silvestre's mission, I was in very bad shape. The padre

+doctored me, however, and in two weeks I had not only ceased my

+delirium, but could move about a little. I remember the first evening I

+was allowed to sit up.</p>

+

+<p>The padre, Alicia, and Mrs. Braymore had celebrated my recovery at

+dinner that night, the padre making one of his graceful little speeches

+on the subject. I am not of the padre's faith, but we are great

+friends, and after dinner he announced that I might sit up. With great

+ceremony they got me into a chair and made a great to-do over me. Then

+they helped me to a chair on the little screened-in veranda of the

+padre's house, where I could look out at the perfect African night and

+see the small mission church, and farther off the village in which the

+padre's converts live.</p>

+

+<p>Mrs. Braymore went back indoors to discuss with him some aid she

+proposed to give the mission. She was an Episcopalian, but she had seen

+the work the padre had done, and a difference of creed had long since

+seemed unimportant. The main thing was that the natives needed aid.

+Alicia and I on the veranda talked for a long time, disjointedly.</p>

+

+<p>"What will happen to Evan's plantation?" she asked presently, naming

+the place with reluctance.</p>

+

+<p>"The natives will move away," I answered thoughtfully, "and a tradition

+will grow up, making the casa the abode of a devil-god who will destroy

+all comers. Slave caravans passing down the great slave trail will

+make offerings to appease the evil spirits in the house, and a juju

+house will appear, where the witch doctor will grow rich and fat on the

+contributions he will exact. The casa itself will stand untenanted and

+deserted, while tall grasses grow in the courtyard, and at last the

+house will fall in shapeless ruins."</p>

+

+<p>"It was terrible there," said Alicia with a shudder. "And Evan&mdash;it

+is almost unbelievable that he should have done what he did. He was

+always a black sheep, but that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>I was silent for a moment. "He was planning to force you to marry him,"

+I said presently. "Not thinking of how you might feel for Arthur."</p>

+

+<p>"Arthur was like a brother," Alicia said sadly. "I was very, very fond

+of him. We were engaged, but we had nearly agreed that we did not care

+for each other enough to marry. I was very fond of him, though. I could

+not have cared for him more if he had really been my brother."</p>

+

+<p>The great white African moon was silvering the whole earth with its

+pale rays. From the village came negro voices, singing the native words

+to an old, old devotional melody. From within the house came the rustle

+of papers. The padre and Mrs. Braymore were going over the details of

+the small hospital she proposed to erect for the mission. The padre

+is an old man, and more than forty years of his life have been spent

+at his little mission station, trying to help the natives despite the

+Portuguese and the <i>serva&ccedil;al</i>. Now, at last, he was to have adequate

+equipment through Mrs. Braymore's generosity.</p>

+

+<p>She was going back to her beloved England, where she would go to her

+five-o'clock teas and discuss the neighborhood gossip and hear the

+curate talk about the possibility of repairing the parish house. I

+knew she was glad that she could again sink into the pleasant rut of

+well-to-do English country life. Alicia would go too, and I would see

+her no more. It suddenly seemed unbearable that she should leave me.</p>

+

+<p>"I shall be leaving Ticao soon," I said abruptly.</p>

+

+<p>Alicia turned. Her face was grave and sweet in the half light.</p>

+

+<p>"Why? I thought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

+

+<p>"This is an evil country. White men denigrate and black men are like

+beasts. I am sick of the place. I shall go back somewhere in the States

+and see what I can find to do there."</p>

+

+<p>"I'm glad you're leaving Ticao," she said slowly. "I should not like

+to think I would never see you again. We have grown to be very good

+friends."</p>

+

+<p>I waited a moment or so and then said quietly:</p>

+

+<p>"When Evan was explaining to us after he had shot me, he said that he

+would force you to do as he said by threats of my death by torture. You

+remember?"</p>

+

+<p>Alicia nodded silently.</p>

+

+<p>"He said that he believed you cared a little for me. I have been hoping

+very much that he was right. I'm more or less of a ne'er-do-well, but

+if there's any hope for me, I'll try hard to change."</p>

+

+<p>I waited breathlessly for her to answer. She looked out at the

+moonlight for what seemed an age-long time. At last she turned again to

+me. I had a moment of panic, and then I saw that she was smiling.</p>

+

+<p>"Why, Murray," she said in a flash of mischief. "I may call on you to

+change after a while, but for the present, say for the next ten or

+twenty years, I think you're perfectly all right as you are."</p>

+

+<p>I had not thought myself so strong, but when I saw her smiling at me

+with her face close to my own, my fever weakness left me and I reached

+out my arms. Alicia was quite considerate of me. She struggled only a

+very little.</p>

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+

+<pre>

+

+

+

+

+

+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Juju, by Murray Leinster

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+</pre>

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+</body>

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