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Created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska
</pre>
<h1>Out of Time’s Abyss</h1>
<h2>By Edgar Rice Burroughs</h2>
<hr />
<h3><a id="Contents" name="Contents"></a>Contents</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="#Ch_1">Chapter 1</a></li>
<li><a href="#Ch_2">Chapter 2</a></li>
<li><a href="#Ch_3">Chapter 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#Ch_4">Chapter 4</a></li>
<li><a href="#Ch_5">Chapter 5</a></li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h3><a id="Ch_1" name="Ch_1"></a>Chapter 1</h3>
<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
Contents</a></p>
<p>This is the tale of Bradley after he left Fort Dinosaur upon the
west coast of the great lake that is in the center of the
island.</p>
<p>Upon the fourth day of September, 1916, he set out with four
companions, Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet, to search along the
base of the barrier cliffs for a point at which they might be
scaled.</p>
<p>Through the heavy Caspakian air, beneath the swollen sun, the
five men marched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep in
lush, jungle grasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now
across open meadow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging
into dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous
ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above
their heads.</p>
<p>About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over
them moved and swung and soared the countless forms of
Caspak’s teeming life. Always were they menaced by some
frightful thing and seldom were their rifles cool, yet even in the
brief time they had dwelt upon Caprona they had become callous to
danger, so that they swung along laughing and chatting like
soldiers on a summer hike.</p>
<p>“This reminds me of South Clark Street,” remarked
Brady, who had once served on the traffic squad in Chicago; and as
no one asked him why, he volunteered that it was “because
it’s no place for an Irishman.”</p>
<p>“South Clark Street and heaven have something in common,
then,” suggested Sinclair. James and Tippet laughed, and then
a hideous growl broke from a dense thicket ahead and diverted their
attention to other matters.</p>
<p>“One of them behemoths of ’Oly Writ,” muttered
Tippet as they came to a halt and with guns ready awaited the
almost inevitable charge.</p>
<p>“Hungry lot o’ beggars, these,” said Bradley;
“always trying to eat everything they see.”</p>
<p>For a moment no further sound came from the thicket. “He
may be feeding now,” suggested Bradley. “We’ll
try to go around him. Can’t waste ammunition. Won’t
last forever. Follow me.” And he set off at right angles to
their former course, hoping to avert a charge. They had taken a
dozen steps, perhaps, when the thicket moved to the advance of the
thing within it, the leafy branches parted, and the hideous head of
a gigantic bear emerged.</p>
<p>“Pick your trees,” whispered Bradley.
“Can’t waste ammunition.”</p>
<p>The men looked about them. The bear took a couple of steps
forward, still growling menacingly. He was exposed to the shoulders
now. Tippet took one look at the monster and bolted for the nearest
tree; and then the bear charged. He charged straight for Tippet.
The other men scattered for the various trees they had
selected—all except Bradley. He stood watching Tippet and the
bear. The man had a good start and the tree was not far away; but
the speed of the enormous creature behind him was something to
marvel at, yet Tippet was in a fair way to make his sanctuary when
his foot caught in a tangle of roots and down he went, his rifle
flying from his hand and falling several yards away. Instantly
Bradley’s piece was at his shoulder, there was a sharp report
answered by a roar of mingled rage and pain from the carnivore.
Tippet attempted to scramble to his feet.</p>
<p>“Lie still!” shouted Bradley. “Can’t
waste ammunition.”</p>
<p>The bear halted in its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley and then
back again toward Tippet. Again the former’s rifle spit
angrily, and the bear turned again in his direction. Bradley
shouted loudly. “Come on, you behemoth of Holy Writ!”
he cried. “Come on, you duffer! Can’t waste
ammunition.” And as he saw the bear apparently upon the verge
of deciding to charge him, he encouraged the idea by backing
rapidly away, knowing that an angry beast will more often charge
one who moves than one who lies still.</p>
<p>And the bear did charge. Like a bolt of lightning he flashed
down upon the Englishman. “Now run!” Bradley called to
Tippet and himself turned in flight toward a nearby tree. The other
men, now safely ensconced upon various branches, watched the race
with breathless interest. Would Bradley make it? It seemed scarce
possible. And if he didn’t! James gasped at the thought. Six
feet at the shoulder stood the frightful mountain of blood-mad
flesh and bone and sinew that was bearing down with the speed of an
express train upon the seemingly slow-moving man.</p>
<p>It all happened in a few seconds; but they were seconds that
seemed like hours to the men who watched. They saw Tippet leap to
his feet at Bradley’s shouted warning. They saw him run,
stooping to recover his rifle as he passed the spot where it had
fallen. They saw him glance back toward Bradley, and then they saw
him stop short of the tree that might have given him safety and
turn back in the direction of the bear. Firing as he ran, Tippet
raced after the great cave bear—the monstrous thing that
should have been extinct ages before—ran for it and fired
even as the beast was almost upon Bradley. The men in the trees
scarcely breathed. It seemed to them such a futile thing for Tippet
to do, and Tippet of all men! They had never looked upon Tippet as
a coward—there seemed to be no cowards among that strangely
assorted company that Fate had gathered together from the four
corners of the earth—but Tippet was considered a cautious
man. Overcautious, some thought him. How futile he and his little
pop-gun appeared as he dashed after that living engine of
destruction! But, oh, how glorious! It was some such thought as
this that ran through Brady’s mind, though articulated it
might have been expressed otherwise, albeit more forcefully.</p>
<p>Just then it occurred to Brady to fire and he, too, opened upon
the bear, but at the same instant the animal stumbled and fell
forward, though still growling most fearsomely. Tippet never
stopped running or firing until he stood within a foot of the
brute, which lay almost touching Bradley and was already struggling
to regain its feet. Placing the muzzle of his gun against the
bear’s ear, Tippet pulled the trigger. The creature sank
limply to the ground and Bradley scrambled to his feet.</p>
<p>“Good work, Tippet,” he said. “Mightily
obliged to you—awful waste of ammunition, really.”</p>
<p>And then they resumed the march and in fifteen minutes the
encounter had ceased even to be a topic of conversation.</p>
<p>For two days they continued upon their perilous way. Already the
cliffs loomed high and forbidding close ahead without sign of break
to encourage hope that somewhere they might be scaled. Late in the
afternoon the party crossed a small stream of warm water upon the
sluggishly moving surface of which floated countless millions of
tiny green eggs surrounded by a light scum of the same color,
though of a darker shade. Their past experience of Caspak had
taught them that they might expect to come upon a stagnant pool of
warm water if they followed the stream to its source; but there
they were almost certain to find some of Caspak’s grotesque,
manlike creatures. Already since they had disembarked from the U-33
after its perilous trip through the subterranean channel beneath
the barrier cliffs had brought them into the inland sea of Caspak,
had they encountered what had appeared to be three distinct types
of these creatures. There had been the pure apes—huge,
gorillalike beasts—and those who walked, a trifle more erect
and had features with just a shade more of the human cast about
them. Then there were men like Ahm, whom they had captured and
confined at the fort—Ahm, the club-man. “Well-known
club-man,” Tyler had called him. Ahm and his people had
knowledge of a speech. They had a language, in which they were
unlike the race just inferior to them, and they walked much more
erect and were less hairy: but it was principally the fact that
they possessed a spoken language and carried a weapon that
differentiated them from the others.</p>
<p>All of these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In
common with the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of
nature as they seemed to understand it was to
kill—kill—kill. And so it was that Bradley had no
desire to follow up the little stream toward the pool near which
were sure to be the caves of some savage tribe, but fortune played
him an unkind trick, for the pool was much closer than he imagined,
its southern end reaching fully a mile south of the point at which
they crossed the stream, and so it was that after forcing their way
through a tangle of jungle vegetation they came out upon the edge
of the pool which they had wished to avoid.</p>
<p>Almost simultaneously there appeared south of them a party of
naked men armed with clubs and hatchets. Both parties halted as
they caught sight of one another. The men from the fort saw before
them a hunting party evidently returning to its caves or village
laden with meat. They were large men with features closely
resembling those of the African Negro though their skins were
white. Short hair grew upon a large portion of their limbs and
bodies, which still retained a considerable trace of apish
progenitors. They were, however, a distinctly higher type than the
Bo-lu, or club-men.</p>
<p>Bradley would have been glad to have averted a meeting; but as
he desired to lead his party south around the end of the pool, and
as it was hemmed in by the jungle on one side and the water on the
other, there seemed no escape from an encounter.</p>
<p>On the chance that he might avoid a clash, Bradley stepped
forward with upraised hand. “We are friends, ” he
called in the tongue of Ahm, the Bolu, who had been held a prisoner
at the fort; “permit us to pass in peace. We will not harm
you.”</p>
<p>At this the hatchet-men set up a great jabbering with much
laughter, loud and boisterous. “No,” shouted one,
“you will not harm us, for we shall kill you. Come! We kill!
We kill!” And with hideous shouts they charged down upon the
Europeans.</p>
<p>“Sinclair, you may fire,” said Bradley
quietly.” Pick off the leader. Can’t waste
ammunition.”</p>
<p>The Englishman raised his piece to his shoulder and took quick
aim at the breast of the yelling savage leaping toward them.
Directly behind the leader came another hatchet-man, and with the
report of Sinclair’s rifle both warriors lunged forward in
the tall grass, pierced by the same bullet. The effect upon the
rest of the band was electrical. As one man they came to a sudden
halt, wheeled to the east and dashed into the jungle, where the men
could hear them forcing their way in an effort to put as much
distance as possible between themselves and the authors of this new
and frightful noise that killed warriors at a great distance.</p>
<p>Both the savages were dead when Bradley approached to examine
them, and as the Europeans gathered around, other eyes were bent
upon them with greater curiosity than they displayed for the victim
of Sinclair’s bullet. When the party again took up the march
around the southern end of the pool the owner of the eyes followed
them—large, round eyes, almost expressionless except for a
certain cold cruelty which glinted malignly from under their pale
gray irises.</p>
<p>All unconscious of the stalker, the men came, late in the
afternoon, to a spot which seemed favorable as a campsite. A cold
spring bubbled from the base of a rocky formation which overhung
and partially encircled a small inclosure. At Bradley’s
command, the men took up the duties assigned them—gathering
wood, building a cook-fire and preparing the evening meal. It was
while they were thus engaged that Brady’s attention was
attracted by the dismal flapping of huge wings. He glanced up,
expecting to see one of the great flying reptiles of a bygone age,
his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. He had groped
his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed maniac from a
dark room without turning a hair; but now as he looked up, he went
white and staggered back.</p>
<p>“Gawd!” he almost screamed. “What is
it?”</p>
<p>Attracted by Brady’s cry the others seized their rifles as
they followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them
that was not moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady
spoke again in an almost inaudible voice. “Holy Mother
protect us—it’s a banshee!”</p>
<p>Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of
danger, felt a strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as
slowly, not a hundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself
across the sky, its huge, round eyes glaring down upon them. And
until it disappeared over the tops of the trees of a near-by wood
the five men stood as though paralyzed, their eyes never leaving
the weird shape; nor never one of them appearing to recall that he
grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.</p>
<p>With the passing of the thing, came the reaction. Tippet sank to
the ground and buried his face in his hands. “Oh,
Gord,” he moaned. “Tyke me awy from this orful
plice.” Brady, recovered from the first shock, swore loud and
luridly. He called upon all the saints to witness that he was
unafraid and that anybody with half an eye could have seen that the
creature was nothing more than “one av thim flyin’
alligators” that they all were familiar with.</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Sinclair with fine sarcasm,
“we’ve saw so many of them with white shrouds on
’em.”</p>
<p>“Shut up, you fool!” growled Brady. “If you
know so much, tell us what it was after bein’
then.”</p>
<p>Then he turned toward Bradley. “What was it, sor, do you
think?” he asked.</p>
<p>Bradley shook his head. “I don’t know,” he
said. “It looked like a winged human being clothed in a
flowing white robe. Its face was more human than otherwise. That is
the way it looked to me; but what it really was I can’t even
guess, for such a creature is as far beyond my experience or
knowledge as it is beyond yours. All that I am sure of is that
whatever else it may have been, it was quite material—it was
no ghost; rather just another of the strange forms of life which we
have met here and with which we should be accustomed by this
time.”</p>
<p>Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. “Yer
cawn’t tell me,” he cried. “Hi seen hit. Blime,
Hi seen hit. Hit was ha dead man flyin’ through the hair.
Didn’t Hi see ’is heyes? Oh, Gord! Didn’t Hi see
’em?”</p>
<p>“It didn’t look like any beast or reptile to
me,” spoke up Sinclair. “It was lookin’ right
down at me when I looked up and I saw its face plain as I see
yours. It had big round eyes that looked all cold and dead, and its
cheeks were sunken in deep, and I could see its yellow teeth behind
thin, tight-drawn lips—like a man who had been dead a long
while, sir,” he added, turning toward Bradley.</p>
<p>“Yes!” James had not spoken since the apparition had
passed over them, and now it was scarce speech which he
uttered—rather a series of articulate gasps.
“Yes—dead—a—long—while.
It—means something. It—come—for some—one.
For one—of us. One—of us is goin’— to die.
I’m goin’ to die!” he ended in a wail.</p>
<p>“Come! Come!” snapped Bradley. “Won’t
do. Won’t do at all. Get to work, all of you. Waste of time.
Can’t waste time.”</p>
<p>His authoritative tones brought them all up standing, and
presently each was occupied with his own duties; but each worked in
silence and there was no singing and no bantering such as had
marked the making of previous camps. Not until they had eaten and
to each had been issued the little ration of smoking tobacco
allowed after each evening meal did any sign of a relaxation of
taut nerves appear. It was Brady who showed the first signs of
returning good spirits. He commenced humming “It’s a
Long Way to Tipperary” and presently to voice the words, but
he was well into his third song before anyone joined him, and even
then there seemed a dismal note in even the gayest of tunes.</p>
<p>A huge fire blazed in the opening of their rocky shelter that
the prowling carnivora might be kept at bay; and always one man
stood on guard, watchfully alert against a sudden rush by some
maddened beast of the jungle. Beyond the fire, yellow-green spots
of flame appeared, moved restlessly about, disappeared and
reappeared, accompanied by a hideous chorus of screams and growls
and roars as the hungry meat-eaters hunting through the night were
attracted by the light or the scent of possible prey.</p>
<p>But to such sights and sounds as these the five men had become
callous. They sang or talked as unconcernedly as they might have
done in the bar-room of some publichouse at home.</p>
<p>Sinclair was standing guard. The others were listening to
Brady’s description of traffic congestion at the Rush Street
bridge during the rush hour at night. The fire crackled cheerily.
The owners of the yellow-green eyes raised their frightful chorus
to the heavens. Conditions seemed again to have returned to normal.
And then, as though the hand of Death had reached out and touched
them all, the five men tensed into sudden rigidity.</p>
<p>Above the nocturnal diapason of the teeming jungle sounded a
dismal flapping of wings and over head, through the thick night, a
shadowy form passed across the diffused light of the flaring
camp-fire. Sinclair raised his rifle and fired. An eerie wail
floated down from above and the apparition, whatever it might have
been, was swallowed by the darkness. For several seconds the
listening men heard the sound of those dismally flapping wings
lessening in the distance until they could no longer be heard.</p>
<p>Bradley was the first to speak. “Shouldn’t have
fired, Sinclair,” he said; “can’t waste
ammunition.” But there was no note of censure in his tone. It
was as though he understood the nervous reaction that had compelled
the other’s act.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t help it, sir,” said Sinclair.
“Lord, it would take an iron man to keep from shootin’
at that awful thing. Do you believe in ghosts, sir?”</p>
<p>“No,” replied Bradley. “No such
things.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know about that,” said Brady.
“There was a woman murdered over on the prairie near
Brighton—her throat was cut from ear to ear,
and—”</p>
<p>“Shut up,” snapped Bradley.</p>
<p>“My grandaddy used to live down Coppington wy,” said
Tippet. “They were a hold ruined castle on a ’ill near
by, hand at midnight they used to see pale blue lights through the
windows an ’ear—”</p>
<p>“Will you close your hatch!” demanded Bradley.
“You fools will have yourselves scared to death in a minute.
Now go to sleep.”</p>
<p>But there was little sleep in camp that night until utter
exhaustion overtook the harassed men toward morning; nor was there
any return of the weird creature that had set the nerves of each of
them on edge.</p>
<p>The following forenoon the party reached the base of the barrier
cliffs and for two days marched northward in an effort to discover
a break in the frowning abutment that raised its rocky face almost
perpendicularly above them, yet nowhere was there the slightest
indication that the cliffs were scalable.</p>
<p>Disheartened, Bradley determined to turn back toward the fort,
as he already had exceeded the time decided upon by Bowen Tyler and
himself for the expedition. The cliffs for many miles had been
trending in a northeasterly direction, indicating to Bradley that
they were approaching the northern extremity of the island.
According to the best of his calculations they had made sufficient
easting during the past two days to have brought them to a point
almost directly north of Fort Dinosaur and as nothing could be
gained by retracing their steps along the base of the cliffs he
decided to strike due south through the unexplored country between
them and the fort.</p>
<p>That night (September 9, 1916), they made camp a short distance
from the cliffs beside one of the numerous cool springs that are to
be found within Caspak, oftentimes close beside the still more
numerous warm and hot springs which feed the many pools. After
supper the men lay smoking and chatting among themselves. Tippet
was on guard. Fewer night prowlers threatened them, and the men
were commenting upon the fact that the farther north they had
traveled the smaller the number of all species of animals became,
though it was still present in what would have seemed appalling
plenitude in any other part of the world. The diminution in
reptilian life was the most noticeable change in the fauna of
northern Caspak. Here, however, were forms they had not met
elsewhere, several of which were of gigantic proportions.</p>
<p>According to their custom all, with the exception of the man on
guard, sought sleep early, nor, once disposed upon the ground for
slumber, were they long in finding it. It seemed to Bradley that he
had scarcely closed his eyes when he was brought to his feet, wide
awake, by a piercing scream which was punctuated by the sharp
report of a rifle from the direction of the fire where Tippet stood
guard. As he ran toward the man, Bradley heard above him the same
uncanny wail that had set every nerve on edge several nights
before, and the dismal flapping of huge wings. He did not need to
look up at the white-shrouded figure winging slowly away into the
night to know that their grim visitor had returned.</p>
<p>The muscles of his arm, reacting to the sight and sound of the
menacing form, carried his hand to the butt of his pistol; but
after he had drawn the weapon, he immediately returned it to its
holster with a shrug.</p>
<p>“What for?” he muttered. “Can’t waste
ammunition.” Then he walked quickly to where Tippet lay
sprawled upon his face. By this time James, Brady and Sinclair were
at his heels, each with his rifle in readiness.</p>
<p>“Is he dead, sir?” whispered James as Bradley
kneeled beside the prostrate form.</p>
<p>Bradley turned Tippet over on his back and pressed an ear close
to the other’s heart. In a moment he raised his head.
“Fainted,” he announced. “Get water.
Hurry!” Then he loosened Tippet’s shirt at the throat
and when the water was brought, threw a cupful in the man’s
face. Slowly Tippet regained consciousness and sat up. At first he
looked curiously into the faces of the men about him; then an
expression of terror overspread his features. He shot a startled
glance up into the black void above and then burying his face in
his arms began to sob like a child.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong, man?” demanded Bradley.
“Buck up! Can’t play cry-baby. Waste of energy. What
happened?”</p>
<p>“Wot ’appened, sir!” wailed Tippet. “Oh,
Gord, sir! Hit came back. Hit came for me, sir. Right hit did, sir;
strite hat me, sir; hand with long w’ite ’ands it
clawed for me. Oh, Gord! Hit almost caught me, sir. Hi’m has
good as dead; Hi’m a marked man; that’s wot Hi ham. Hit
was a-goin’ for to carry me horf, sir.”</p>
<p>“Stuff and nonsense,” snapped Bradley. “Did
you get a good look at it?”</p>
<p>Tippet said that he did—a much better look than he wanted.
The thing had almost clutched him, and he had looked straight into
its eyes—“dead heyes in a dead face,” he had
described them.</p>
<p>“Wot was it after bein’, do you think?”
inquired Brady.</p>
<p>“Hit was Death,” moaned Tippet, shuddering, and
again a pall of gloom fell upon the little party.</p>
<p>The following day Tippet walked as one in a trance. He never
spoke except in reply to a direct question, which more often than
not had to be repeated before it could attract his attention. He
insisted that he was already a dead man, for if the thing
didn’t come for him during the day he would never live
through another night of agonized apprehension, waiting for the
frightful end that he was positive was in store for him.
“I’ll see to that,” he said, and they all knew
that Tippet meant to take his own life before darkness set in.</p>
<p>Bradley tried to reason with him, in his short, crisp way, but
soon saw the futility of it; nor could he take the man’s
weapons from him without subjecting him to almost certain death
from any of the numberless dangers that beset their way.</p>
<p>The entire party was moody and glum. There was none of the
bantering that had marked their intercourse before, even in the
face of blighting hardships and hideous danger. This was a new
menace that threatened them, something that they couldn’t
explain; and so, naturally, it aroused within them superstitious
fear which Tippet’s attitude only tended to augment. To add
further to their gloom, their way led through a dense forest,
where, on account of the underbrush, it was difficult to make even
a mile an hour. Constant watchfulness was required to avoid the
many snakes of various degrees of repulsiveness and enormity that
infested the wood; and the only ray of hope they had to cling to
was that the forest would, like the majority of Caspakian forests,
prove to be of no considerable extent.</p>
<p>Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque
creature of Titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees, which
here commenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what appeared to
be an enormous dragon devouring the carcass of a mammoth. From
frightful jaws to the tip of its long tail it was fully forty feet
in length. Its body was covered with plates of thick skin which
bore a striking resemblance to armor-plate. The creature saw
Bradley almost at the same instant that he saw it and reared up on
its enormous hind legs until its head towered a full twenty-five
feet above the ground. From the cavernous jaws issued a hissing
sound of a volume equal to the escaping steam from the
safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, and then the creature
came for the man.</p>
<p>“Scatter!” shouted Bradley to those behind him; and
all but Tippet heeded the warning. The man stood as though dazed,
and when Bradley saw the other’s danger, he too stopped and
wheeling about sent a bullet into the massive body forcing its way
through the trees toward him. The shot struck the creature in the
belly where there was no protecting armor, eliciting a new note
which rose in a shrill whistle and ended in a wail. It was then
that Tippet appeared to come out of his trance, for with a cry of
terror he turned and fled to the left. Bradley, seeing that he had
as good an opportunity as the others to escape, now turned his
attention to extricating himself; and as the woods seemed dense on
the right, he ran in that direction, hoping that the close-set
boles would prevent pursuit on the part of the great reptile. The
dragon paid no further attention to him, however, for
Tippet’s sudden break for liberty had attracted its
attention; and after Tippet it went, bowling over small trees,
uprooting underbrush and leaving a wake behind it like that of a
small tornado.</p>
<p>Bradley, the moment he had discovered the thing was pursuing
Tippet, had followed it. He was afraid to fire for fear of hitting
the man, and so it was that he came upon them at the very moment
that the monster lunged its great weight forward upon the doomed
man. The sharp, three-toed talons of the forelimbs seized poor
Tippet, and Bradley saw the unfortunate fellow lifted high above
the ground as the creature again reared up on its hind legs,
immediately transferring Tippet’s body to its gaping jaws,
which closed with a sickening, crunching sound as Tippet’s
bones cracked beneath the great teeth.</p>
<p>Bradley half raised his rifle to fire again and then lowered it
with a shake of his head. Tippet was beyond succor—why waste
a bullet that Caspak could never replace? If he could now escape
the further notice of the monster it would be a wiser act than to
throw his life away in futile revenge. He saw that the reptile was
not looking in his direction, and so he slipped noiselessly behind
the bole of a large tree and thence quietly faded away in the
direction he believed the others to have taken. At what he
considered a safe distance he halted and looked back. Half hidden
by the intervening trees he still could see the huge head and the
massive jaws from which protrude the limp legs of the dead man.
Then, as though struck by the hammer of Thor, the creature
collapsed and crumpled to the ground. Bradley’s single
bullet, penetrating the body through the soft skin of the belly,
had slain the Titan.</p>
<p>A few minutes later, Bradley found the others of the party. The
four returned cautiously to the spot where the creature lay and
after convincing themselves that it was quite dead, came close to
it. It was an arduous and gruesome job extricating Tippet’s
mangled remains from the powerful jaws, the men working for the
most part silently.</p>
<p>“It was the work of the banshee all right,” muttered
Brady. “It warned poor Tippet, it did.”</p>
<p>“Hit killed him, that’s wot hit did, hand
hit’ll kill some more of us,” said James, his lower lip
trembling.</p>
<p>“If it was a ghost,” interjected Sinclair,
“and I don’t say as it was; but if it was, why, it
could take on any form it wanted to. It might have turned itself
into this thing, which ain’t no natural thing at all, just to
get poor Tippet. If it had of been a lion or something else
humanlike it wouldn’t look so strange; but this here thing
ain’t humanlike. There ain’t no such thing an’
never was.”</p>
<p>“Bullets don’t kill ghosts,” said Bradley,
“so this couldn’t have been a ghost. Furthermore, there
are no such things. I’ve been trying to place this creature.
Just succeeded. It’s a tyrannosaurus. Saw picture of skeleton
in magazine. There’s one in New York Natural History Museum.
Seems to me it said it was found in place called Hell Creek
somewhere in western North America. Supposed to have lived about
six million years ago.”</p>
<p>“Hell Creek’s in Montana,” said Sinclair.
“I used to punch cows in Wyoming, an’ I’ve heard
of Hell Creek. Do you s’pose that there thing’s six
million years old?” His tone was skeptical.</p>
<p>“No,” replied Bradley; “But it would indicate
that the island of Caprona has stood almost without change for more
than six million years.”</p>
<p>The conversation and Bradley’s assurance that the creature
was not of supernatural origin helped to raise a trifle the spirits
of the men; and then came another diversion in the form of ravenous
meat-eaters attracted to the spot by the uncanny sense of smell
which had apprised them of the presence of flesh, killed and ready
for the eating.</p>
<p>It was a constant battle while they dug a grave and consigned
all that was mortal of John Tippet to his last, lonely
resting-place. Nor would they leave then; but remained to fashion a
rude head- stone from a crumbling out-cropping of sandstone and to
gather a mass of the gorgeous flowers growing in such great
profusion around them and heap the new-made grave with bright
blooms. Upon the headstone Sinclair scratched in rude characters
the words:</p>
<p class="cen">HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET<br />
ENGLISHMAN<br />
KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS<br />
10 SEPT. A.D. 1916<br />
R.I.P.</p>
<p>and Bradley repeated a short prayer before they left their
comrade forever.</p>
<p>For three days the party marched due south through forests and
meadow-land and great park-like areas where countless herbivorous
animals grazed—deer and antelope and bos and the little ecca,
the smallest species of Caspakian horse, about the size of a
rabbit. There were other horses too; but all were small, the
largest being not above eight hands in height. Preying continually
upon the herbivora were the meat-eaters, large and
small—wolves, hyaenadons, panthers, lions, tigers, and bear
as well as several large and ferocious species of reptilian
life.</p>
<p>On September twelfth the party scaled a line of sandstone cliffs
which crossed their route toward the south; but they crossed them
only after an encounter with the tribe that inhabited the numerous
caves which pitted the face of the escarpment. That night they
camped upon a rocky plateau which was sparsely wooded with jarrah,
and here once again they were visited by the weird, nocturnal
apparition that had already filled them with a nameless terror.</p>
<p>As on the night of September ninth the first warning came from
the sentinel standing guard over his sleeping companions. A
terror-stricken cry punctuated by the crack of a rifle brought
Bradley, Sinclair and Brady to their feet in time to see James,
with clubbed rifle, battling with a white-robed figure that hovered
on widespread wings on a level with the Englishman’s head. As
they ran, shouting, forward, it was obvious to them that the weird
and terrible apparition was attempting to seize James; but when it
saw the others coming to his rescue, it desisted, flapping rapidly
upward and away, its long, ragged wings giving forth the peculiarly
dismal notes which always characterized the sound of its
flying.</p>
<p>Bradley fired at the vanishing menacer of their peace and
safety; but whether he scored a hit or not, none could tell,
though, following the shot, there was wafted back to them the same
piercing wail that had on other occasions frozen their marrow.</p>
<p>Then they turned toward James, who lay face downward upon the
ground, trembling as with ague. For a time he could not even speak,
but at last regained sufficient composure to tell them how the
thing must have swooped silently upon him from above and behind as
the first premonition of danger he had received was when the long,
clawlike fingers had clutched him beneath either arm. In the melee
his rifle had been discharged and he had broken away at the same
instant and turned to defend himself with the butt. The rest they
had seen.</p>
<p>From that instant James was an absolutely broken man. He
maintained with shaking lips that his doom was sealed, that the
thing had marked him for its own, and that he was as good as dead,
nor could any amount of argument or raillery convince him to the
contrary. He had seen Tippet marked and claimed and now he had been
marked. Nor were his constant reiterations of this belief without
effect upon the rest of the party. Even Bradley felt depressed,
though for the sake of the others he managed to hide it beneath a
show of confidence he was far from feeling.</p>
<p>And on the following day William James was killed by a
saber-tooth tiger—September 13, 1916. Beneath a jarrah tree
on the stony plateau on the northern edge of the Sto-lu country in
the land that Time forgot, he lies in a lonely grave marked by a
rough headstone.</p>
<p>Southward from his grave marched three grim and silent men. To
the best of Bradley’s reckoning they were some twenty-five
miles north of Fort Dinosaur, and that they might reach the fort on
the following day, they plodded on until darkness overtook them.
With comparative safety fifteen miles away, they made camp at last;
but there was no singing now and no joking. In the bottom of his
heart each prayed that they might come safely through just this
night, for they knew that during the morrow they would make the
final stretch, yet the nerves of each were taut with strained
anticipation of what gruesome thing might flap down upon them from
the black sky, marking another for its own. Who would be the
next?</p>
<p>As was their custom, they took turns at guard, each man doing
two hours and then arousing the next. Brady had gone on from eight
to ten, followed by Sinclair from ten to twelve, then Bradley had
been awakened. Brady would stand the last guard from two to four,
as they had determined to start the moment that it became light
enough to insure comparative safety upon the trail.</p>
<p>The snapping of a twig aroused Brady out of a dead sleep, and as
he opened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and that at
twenty paces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to his
feet, his rifle ready in his hand, Sinclair awoke and took in the
scene in a single swift glance. The fire was out and Bradley was
nowhere in sight. For a long moment the lion and the men eyed one
another. The latter had no mind to fire if the beast minded its own
affairs—they were only too glad to let it go its way if it
would; but the lion was of a different mind.</p>
<p>Suddenly the long tail snapped stiffly erect, and as though it
had been attached to two trigger fingers the two rifles spoke in
unison, for both men knew this signal only too well—the
immediate forerunner of a deadly charge. As the brute’s head
had been raised, his spine had not been visible; and so they did
what they had learned by long experience was best to do. Each
covered a front leg, and as the tail snapped aloft, fired. With a
hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurched forward to the ground
with both front legs broken. It was an easy accomplishment in the
instant before the beast charged—after, it would have been
well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in and finished
him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrific roarings
should attract his mate or others of their kind.</p>
<p>Then the two men turned and looked at one another. “Where
is Lieutenant Bradley?” asked Sinclair. They walked to the
fire. Only a few smoking embers remained. A few feet away lay
Bradley’s rifle. There was no evidence of a struggle. The two
men circled about the camp twice and on the last lap Brady stooped
and picked up an object which had lain about ten yards beyond the
fire—it was Bradley’s cap. Again the two looked
questioningly at one another, and then, simultaneously, both pairs
of eyes swung upward and searched the sky. A moment later Brady was
examining the ground about the spot where Bradley’s cap had
lain. It was one of those little barren, sandy stretches that they
had found only upon this stony plateau. Brady’s own footsteps
showed as plainly as black ink upon white paper; but his was the
only foot that had marred the smooth, windswept surface—there
was no sign that Bradley had crossed the spot upon the surface of
the ground, and yet his cap lay well toward the center of it.</p>
<p>Breakfastless and with shaken nerves the two survivors plunged
madly into the long day’s march. Both were strong,
courageous, resourceful men; but each had reached the limit of
human nerve endurance and each felt that he would rather die than
spend another night in the hideous open of that frightful land.
Vivid in the mind of each was a picture of Bradley’s end, for
though neither had witnessed the tragedy, both could imagine almost
precisely what had occurred. They did not discuss it—they did
not even mention it—yet all day long the thing was uppermost
in the mind of each and mingled with it a similar picture with
himself as victim should they fail to make Fort Dinosaur before
dark.</p>
<p>And so they plunged forward at reckless speed, their clothes,
their hands, their faces torn by the retarding underbrush that
reached forth to hinder them. Again and again they fell; but be it
to their credit that the one always waited and helped the other and
that into the mind of neither entered the thought or the temptation
to desert his companion—they would reach the fort together if
both survived, or neither would reach it.</p>
<p>They encountered the usual number of savage beasts and reptiles;
but they met them with a courageous recklessness born of
desperation, and by virtue of the very madness of the chances they
took, they came through unscathed and with the minimum of
delay.</p>
<p>Shortly after noon they reached the end of the plateau. Before
them was a drop of two hundred feet to the valley beneath. To the
left, in the distance, they could see the waters of the great
inland sea that covers a considerable portion of the area of the
crater island of Caprona and at a little lesser distance to the
south of the cliffs they saw a thin spiral of smoke arising above
the tree-tops.</p>
<p>The landscape was familiar—each recognized it immediately
and knew that that smoky column marked the spot where Dinosaur had
stood. Was the fort still there, or did the smoke arise from the
smoldering embers of the building they had helped to fashion for
the housing of their party? Who could say!</p>
<p>Thirty precious minutes that seemed as many hours to the
impatient men were consumed in locating a precarious way from the
summit to the base of the cliffs that bounded the plateau upon the
south, and then once again they struck off upon level ground toward
their goal. The closer they approached the fort the greater became
their apprehension that all would not be well. They pictured the
barracks deserted or the small company massacred and the buildings
in ashes. It was almost in a frenzy of fear that they broke through
the final fringe of jungle and stood at last upon the verge of the
open meadow a half-mile from Fort Dinosaur.</p>
<p>“Lord!” ejaculated Sinclair. “They are still
there!” And he fell to his knees, sobbing.</p>
<p>Brady trembled like a leaf as he crossed himself and gave silent
thanks, for there before them stood the sturdy ramparts of Dinosaur
and from inside the inclosure rose a thin spiral of smoke that
marked the location of the cook-house. All was well, then, and
their comrades were preparing the evening meal!</p>
<p>Across the clearing they raced as though they had not already
covered in a single day a trackless, primeval country that might
easily have required two days by fresh and untired men. Within
hailing distance they set up such a loud shouting that presently
heads appeared above the top of the parapet and soon answering
shouts were rising from within Fort Dinosaur. A moment later three
men issued from the inclosure and came forward to meet the
survivors and listen to the hurried story of the eleven eventful
days since they had set out upon their expedition to the barrier
cliffs. They heard of the deaths of Tippet and James and of the
disappearance of Lieutenant Bradley, and a new terror settled upon
Dinosaur.</p>
<p>Olson, the Irish engineer, with Whitely and Wilson constituted
the remnants of Dinosaur’s defenders, and to Brady and
Sinclair they narrated the salient events that had transpired since
Bradley and his party had marched away on September 4th. They told
them of the infamous act of Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and his
German crew who had stolen the U-33, breaking their parole, and
steaming away toward the subterranean opening through the barrier
cliffs that carried the waters of the inland sea into the open
Pacific beyond; and of the cowardly shelling of the fort.</p>
<p>They told of the disappearance of Miss La Rue in the night of
September 11th, and of the departure of Bowen Tyler in search of
her, accompanied only by his Airedale, Nobs. Thus of the original
party of eleven Allies and nine Germans that had constituted the
company of the U-33 when she left English waters after her capture
by the crew of the English tug there were but five now to be
accounted for at Fort Dinosaur. Benson, Tippet, James, and one of
the Germans were known to be dead. It was assumed that Bradley,
Tyler and the girl had already succumbed to some of the savage
denizens of Caspak, while the fate of the Germans was equally
unknown, though it might readily be believed that they had made
good their escape. They had had ample time to provision the ship
and the refining of the crude oil they had discovered north of the
fort could have insured them an ample supply to carry them back to
Germany.</p>
<h3><a id="Ch_2" name="Ch_2"></a>Chapter 2</h3>
<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
Contents</a></p>
<p>When bradley went on guard at midnight, September 14th, his
thoughts were largely occupied with rejoicing that the night was
almost spent without serious mishap and that the morrow would
doubtless see them all safely returned to Fort Dinosaur. The
hopefulness of his mood was tinged with sorrow by recollection of
the two members of his party who lay back there in the savage
wilderness and for whom there would never again be a
homecoming.</p>
<p>No premonition of impending ill cast gloom over his
anticipations for the coming day, for Bradley was a man who, while
taking every precaution against possible danger, permitted no
gloomy forebodings to weigh down his spirit. When danger
threatened, he was prepared; but he was not forever courting
disaster, and so it was that when about one o’clock in the
morning of the fifteenth, he heard the dismal flapping of giant
wings overhead, he was neither surprised nor frightened but idly
prepared for an attack he had known might reasonably be
expected.</p>
<p>The sound seemed to come from the south, and presently, low
above the trees in that direction, the man made out a dim, shadowy
form circling slowly about. Bradley was a brave man, yet so keen
was the feeling of revulsion engendered by the sight and sound of
that grim, uncanny shape that he distinctly felt the gooseflesh
rise over the surface of his body, and it was with difficulty that
he refrained from following an instinctive urge to fire upon the
nocturnal intruder. Better, far better would it have been had he
given in to the insistent demand of his subconscious mentor; but
his almost fanatical obsession to save ammunition proved now his
undoing, for while his attention was riveted upon the thing
circling before him and while his ears were filled with the beating
of its wings, there swooped silently out of the black night behind
him another weird and ghostly shape. With its huge wings partly
closed for the dive and its white robe fluttering in its wake, the
apparition swooped down upon the Englishman.</p>
<p>So great was the force of the impact when the thing struck
Bradley between the shoulders that the man was half stunned. His
rifle flew from his grasp; he felt clawlike talons of great
strength seize him beneath his arms and sweep him off his feet; and
then the thing rose swiftly with him, so swiftly that his cap was
blown from his head by the rush of air as he was borne rapidly
upward into the inky sky and the cry of warning to his companions
was forced back into his lungs.</p>
<p>The creature wheeled immediately toward the east and was at once
joined by its fellow, who circled them once and then fell in behind
them. Bradley now realized the strategy that the pair had used to
capture him and at once concluded that he was in the power of
reasoning beings closely related to the human race if not actually
of it.</p>
<p>Past experience suggested that the great wings were a part of
some ingenious mechanical device, for the limitations of the human
mind, which is always loath to accept aught beyond its own little
experience, would not permit him to entertain the idea that the
creatures might be naturally winged and at the same time of human
origin. From his position Bradley could not see the wings of his
captor, nor in the darkness had he been able to examine those of
the second creature closely when it circled before him. He listened
for the puff of a motor or some other telltale sound that would
prove the correctness of his theory. However, he was rewarded with
nothing more than the constant flap-flap.</p>
<p>Presently, far below and ahead, he saw the waters of the inland
sea, and a moment later he was borne over them. Then his captor did
that which proved beyond doubt to Bradley that he was in the hands
of human beings who had devised an almost perfect scheme of
duplicating, mechanically, the wings of a bird—the thing
spoke to its companion and in a language that Bradley partially
understood, since he recognized words that he had learned from the
savage races of Caspak. From this he judged that they were human,
and being human, he knew that they could have no natural
wings—for who had ever seen a human being so adorned!
Therefore their wings must be mechanical. Thus Bradley
reasoned— thus most of us reason; not by what might be
possible; but by what has fallen within the range of our
experience.</p>
<p>What he heard them say was to the effect that having covered
half the distance the burden would now be transferred from one to
the other. Bradley wondered how the exchange was to be
accomplished. He knew that those giant wings would not permit the
creatures to approach one another closely enough to effect the
transfer in this manner; but he was soon to discover that they had
other means of doing it.</p>
<p>He felt the thing that carried him rise to a greater altitude,
and below he glimpsed momentarily the second white-robed figure;
then the creature above sounded a low call, it was answered from
below, and instantly Bradley felt the clutching talons release him;
gasping for breath, he hurtled downward through space.</p>
<p>For a terrifying instant, pregnant with horror, Bradley fell;
then something swooped for him from behind, another pair of talons
clutched him beneath the arms, his downward rush was checked,
within another hundred feet, and close to the surface of the sea he
was again borne upward. As a hawk dives for a songbird on the wing,
so this great, human bird dived for Bradley. It was a harrowing
experience, but soon over, and once again the captive was being
carried swiftly toward the east and what fate he could not even
guess.</p>
<p>It was immediately following his transfer in mid-air that
Bradley made out the shadowy form of a large island far ahead, and
not long after, he realized that this must be the intended
destination of his captors. Nor was he mistaken. Three quarters of
an hour from the time of his seizure his captors dropped gently to
earth in the strangest city that human eye had ever rested upon.
Just a brief glimpse of his immediate surroundings vouchsafed
Bradley before he was whisked into the interior of one of the
buildings; but in that momentary glance he saw strange piles of
stone and wood and mud fashioned into buildings of all conceivable
sizes and shapes, sometimes piled high on top of one another,
sometimes standing alone in an open court-way, but usually crowded
and jammed together, so that there were no streets or alleys
between them other than a few which ended almost as soon as they
began. The principal doorways appeared to be in the roofs, and it
was through one of these that Bradley was inducted into the dark
interior of a low-ceiled room. Here he was pushed roughly into a
corner where he tripped over a thick mat, and there his captors
left him. He heard them moving about in the darkness for a moment,
and several times he saw their large luminous eyes glowing in the
dark. Finally, these disappeared and silence reigned, broken only
by the breathing of the creature which indicated to the Englishman
that they were sleeping somewhere in the same apartment.</p>
<p>It was now evident that the mat upon the floor was intended for
sleeping purposes and that the rough shove that had sent him to it
had been a rude invitation to repose. After taking stock of himself
and finding that he still had his pistol and ammunition, some
matches, a little tobacco, a canteen full of water and a razor,
Bradley made himself comfortable upon the mat and was soon asleep,
knowing that an attempted escape in the darkness without knowledge
of his surroundings would be predoomed to failure.</p>
<p>When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and the sight that met his
eyes made him rub them again and again to assure himself that they
were really open and that he was not dreaming. A broad shaft of
morning light poured through the open doorway in the ceiling of the
room which was about thirty feet square, or roughly square, being
irregular in shape, one side curving outward, another being
indented by what might have been the corner of another building
jutting into it, another alcoved by three sides of an octagon,
while the fourth was serpentine in contour. Two windows let in more
daylight, while two doors evidently gave ingress to other rooms.
The walls were partially ceiled with thin strips of wood, nicely
fitted and finished, partially plastered and the rest covered with
a fine, woven cloth. Figures of reptiles and beasts were painted
without regard to any uniform scheme here and there upon the walls.
A striking feature of the decorations consisted of several engaged
columns set into the walls at no regular intervals, the capitals of
each supporting a human skull the cranium of which touched the
ceiling, as though the latter was supported by these grim reminders
either of departed relatives or of some hideous tribal
rite—Bradley could not but wonder which.</p>
<p>Yet it was none of these things that filled him with greatest
wonder—no, it was the figures of the two creatures that had
captured him and brought him hither. At one end of the room a stout
pole about two inches in diameter ran horizontally from wall to
wall some six or seven feet from the floor, its ends securely set
in two of the columns. Hanging by their knees from this perch,
their heads downward and their bodies wrapped in their huge wings,
slept the creatures of the night before—like two great,
horrid bats they hung, asleep.</p>
<p>As Bradley gazed upon them in wide-eyed astonishment, he saw
plainly that all his intelligence, all his acquired knowledge
through years of observation and experience were set at naught by
the simple evidence of the fact that stood out glaringly before his
eyes—the creatures’ wings were not mechanical devices
but as natural appendages, growing from their shoulderblades, as
were their arms and legs. He saw, too, that except for their wings
the pair bore a strong resemblance to human beings, though
fashioned in a most grotesque mold.</p>
<p>As he sat gazing at them, one of the two awoke, separated his
wings to release his arms that had been folded across his breast,
placed his hands upon the floor, dropped his feet and stood erect.
For a moment he stretched his great wings slowly, solemnly blinking
his large round eyes. Then his gaze fell upon Bradley. The thin
lips drew back tightly against yellow teeth in a grimace that was
nothing but hideous. It could not have been termed a smile, and
what emotion it registered the Englishman was at a loss to guess.
No expression whatever altered the steady gaze of those large,
round eyes; there was no color upon the pasty, sunken cheeks. A
death’s head grimaced as though a man long dead raised his
parchment-covered skull from an old grave.</p>
<p>The creature stood about the height of an average man but
appeared much taller from the fact that the joints of his long
wings rose fully a foot above his hairless head. The bare arms were
long and sinewy, ending in strong, bony hands with clawlike
fingers—almost talonlike in their suggestiveness. The white
robe was separated in front, revealing skinny legs and the further
fact that the thing wore but the single garment, which was of fine,
woven cloth. From crown to sole the portions of the body exposed
were entirely hairless, and as he noted this, Bradley also noted
for the first time the cause of much of the seeming
expressionlessness of the creature’s countenance—it had
neither eye-brows or lashes. The ears were small and rested flat
against the skull, which was noticeably round, though the face was
quite flat. The creature had small feet, beautifully arched and
plump, but so out of keeping with every other physical attribute it
possessed as to appear ridiculous.</p>
<p>After eyeing Bradley for a moment the thing approached him.
“Where from?” it asked.</p>
<p>“England,” replied Bradley, as briefly.</p>
<p>“Where is England and what?” pursued the
questioner.</p>
<p>“It is a country far from here,” answered the
Englishman.</p>
<p>“Are your people cor-sva-jo or cos-ata-lu?”</p>
<p>“I do not understand you,” said Bradley; “and
now suppose you answer a few questions. Who are you? What country
is this? Why did you bring me here?”</p>
<p>Again the sepulchral grimace. “We are Wieroos—Luata
is our father. Caspak is ours. This, our country, is called Oo-oh.
We brought you here for (literally) Him Who Speaks for Luata to
gaze upon and question. He would know from whence you came and why;
but principally if you be cos-ata-lu.”</p>
<p>“And if I am not cos—whatever you call the
bloomin’ beast— what of it?”</p>
<p>The Wieroo raised his wings in a very human shrug and waved his
bony claws toward the human skulls supporting the ceiling. His
gesture was eloquent; but he embellished it by remarking,
“And possibly if you are.”</p>
<p>“I’m hungry,” snapped Bradley.</p>
<p>The Wieroo motioned him to one of the doors which he threw open,
permitting Bradley to pass out onto another roof on a level lower
than that upon which they had landed earlier in the morning. By
daylight the city appeared even more remarkable than in the
moonlight, though less weird and unreal. The houses of all shapes
and sizes were piled about as a child might pile blocks of various
forms and colors. He saw now that there were what might be called
streets or alleys, but they ran in baffling turns and twists, nor
ever reached a destination, always ending in a dead wall where some
Wieroo had built a house across them.</p>
<p>Upon each house was a slender column supporting a human skull.
Sometimes the columns were at one corner of the roof, sometimes at
another, or again they rose from the center or near the center, and
the columns were of varying heights, from that of a man to those
which rose twenty feet above their roofs. The skulls were, as a
rule, painted—blue or white, or in combinations of both
colors. The most effective were painted blue with the teeth white
and the eye-sockets rimmed with white.</p>
<p>There were other skulls—thousands of them—tens,
hundreds of thousands. They rimmed the eaves of every house, they
were set in the plaster of the outer walls and at no great distance
from where Bradley stood rose a round tower built entirely of human
skulls. And the city extended in every direction as far as the
Englishman could see.</p>
<p>All about him Wieroos were moving across the roofs or winging
through the air. The sad sound of their flapping wings rose and
fell like a solemn dirge. Most of them were appareled all in white,
like his captors; but others had markings of red or blue or yellow
slashed across the front of their robes.</p>
<p>His guide pointed toward a doorway in an alley below them.
“Go there and eat,” he commanded, “and then come
back. You cannot escape. If any question you, say that you belong
to Fosh-bal-soj. There is the way.” And this time he pointed
to the top of a ladder which protruded above the eaves of the roof
near-by. Then he turned and reentered the house.</p>
<p>Bradley looked about him. No, he could not escape—that
seemed evident. The city appeared interminable, and beyond the
city, if not a savage wilderness filled with wild beasts, there was
the broad inland sea infested with horrid monsters. No wonder his
captor felt safe in turning him loose in Oo-oh—he wondered if
that was the name of the country or the city and if there were
other cities like this upon the island.</p>
<p>Slowly he descended the ladder to the seemingly deserted alley
which was paved with what appeared to be large, round cobblestones.
He looked again at the smooth, worn pavement, and a rueful grin
crossed his features—the alley was paved with skulls.
“The City of Human Skulls,” mused Bradley. “They
must have been collectin’ ‘em since Adam,” he
thought, and then he crossed and entered the building through the
doorway that had been pointed out to him.</p>
<p>Inside he found a large room in which were many Wieroos seated
before pedestals the tops of which were hollowed out so that they
resembled the ordinary bird drinking- and bathing-fonts so commonly
seen on suburban lawns. A seat protruded from each of the four
sides of the pedestals—just a flat board with a support
running from its outer end diagonally to the base of the
pedestal.</p>
<p>As Bradley entered, some of the Wieroos espied him, and a dismal
wail arose. Whether it was a greeting or a threat, Bradley did not
know. Suddenly from a dark alcove another Wieroo rushed out toward
him. “Who are you?” he cried. “What do you
want?”</p>
<p>“Fosh-bal-soj sent me here to eat,” replied
Bradley.</p>
<p>“Do you belong to Fosh-bal-soj?” asked the
other.</p>
<p>“That appears to be what he thinks,” answered the
Englishman.</p>
<p>“Are you cos-ata-lu?” demanded the Wieroo.</p>
<p>“Give me something to eat or I’ll be all of
that,” replied Bradley.</p>
<p>The Wieroo looked puzzled. “Sit here, jaal-lu,” he
snapped, and Bradley sat down unconscious of the fact that he had
been insulted by being called a hyena-man, an appellation of
contempt in Caspak.</p>
<p>The Wieroo had seated him at a pedestal by himself, and as he
sat waiting for what was next to transpire, he looked about him at
the Wieroo in his immediate vicinity. He saw that in each font was
a quantity of food, and that each Wieroo was armed with a wooden
skewer, sharpened at one end; with which they carried solid
portions of food to their mouths. At the other end of the skewer
was fastened a small clam-shell. This was used to scoop up the
smaller and softer portions of the repast into which all four of
the occupants of each table dipped impartially. The Wieroo leaned
far over their food, scooping it up rapidly and with much noise,
and so great was their haste that a part of each mouthful always
fell back into the common dish; and when they choked, by reason of
the rapidity with which they attempted to bolt their food, they
often lost it all. Bradley was glad that he had a pedestal all to
himself.</p>
<p>Soon the keeper of the place returned with a wooden bowl filled
with food. This he dumped into Bradley’s
“trough,” as he already thought of it. The Englishman
was glad that he could not see into the dark alcove or know what
were all the ingredients that constituted the mess before him, for
he was very hungry.</p>
<p>After the first mouthful he cared even less to investigate the
antecedents of the dish, for he found it peculiarly palatable. It
seemed to consist of a combination of meat, fruits, vegetables,
small fish and other undistinguishable articles of food all
seasoned to produce a gastronomic effect that was at once baffling
and delicious.</p>
<p>When he had finished, his trough was empty, and then he
commenced to wonder who was to settle for his meal. As he waited
for the proprietor to return, he fell to examining the dish from
which he had eaten and the pedestal upon which it rested. The font
was of stone worn smooth by long-continued use, the four outer
edges hollowed and polished by the contact of the countless Wieroo
bodies that had leaned against them for how long a period of time
Bradley could not even guess. Everything about the place carried
the impression of hoary age. The carved pedestals were black with
use, the wooden seats were worn hollow, the floor of stone slabs
was polished by the contact of possibly millions of naked feet and
worn away in the aisles between the pedestals so that the latter
rested upon little mounds of stone several inches above the general
level of the floor.</p>
<p>Finally, seeing that no one came to collect, Bradley arose and
started for the doorway. He had covered half the distance when he
heard the voice of mine host calling to him: “Come back,
jaal-lu,” screamed the Wieroo; and Bradley did as he was bid.
As he approached the creature which stood now behind a large,
flat-topped pedestal beside the alcove, he saw lying upon the
smooth surface something that almost elicited a gasp of
astonishment from him—a simple, common thing it was, or would
have been almost anywhere in the world but Caspak—a square
bit of paper!</p>
<p>And on it, in a fine hand, written compactly, were many strange
hieroglyphics! These remarkable creatures, then, had a written as
well as a spoken language and besides the art of weaving cloth
possessed that of paper-making. Could it be that such grotesque
beings represented the high culture of the human race within the
boundaries of Caspak? Had natural selection produced during the
countless ages of Caspakian life a winged monstrosity that
represented the earthly pinnacle of man’s evolution?</p>
<p>Bradley had noted something of the obvious indications of a
gradual evolution from ape to spearman as exemplified by the
several overlapping races of Alalus, club-men and hatchet-men that
formed the connecting links between the two extremes with which he,
had come in contact. He had heard of the Krolus and the
Galus—reputed to be still higher in the plane of
evolution— and now he had indisputable evidence of a race
possessing refinements of civilization eons in advance of the
spear-men. The conjectures awakened by even a momentary
consideration of the possibilities involved became at once as
wildly bizarre as the insane imagings of a drug addict.</p>
<p>As these thoughts flashed through his mind, the Wieroo held out
a pen of bone fixed to a wooden holder and at the same time made a
sign that Bradley was to write upon the paper. It was difficult to
judge from the expressionless features of the Wieroo what was
passing in the creature’s mind, but Bradley could not but
feel that the thing cast a supercilious glance upon him as much as
to say, “Of course you do not know how to write, you poor,
low creature; but you can make your mark.”</p>
<p>Bradley seized the pen and in a clear, bold hand wrote:
“John Bradley, England.” The Wieroo showed evidences of
consternation as it seized the piece of paper and examined the
writing with every mark of incredulity and surprise. Of course it
could make nothing of the strange characters; but it evidently
accepted them as proof that Bradley possessed knowledge of a
written language of his own, for following the Englishman’s
entry it made a few characters of its own.</p>
<p>“You will come here again just before Lua hides his face
behind the great cliff,” announced the creature,
“unless before that you are summoned by Him Who Speaks for
Luata, in which case you will not have to eat any more.”</p>
<p>“Reassuring cuss,” thought Bradley as he turned and
left the building.</p>
<p>Outside were several Wieroos that had been eating at the
pedestals within. They immediately surrounded him, asking all sorts
of questions, plucking at his garments, his ammunition-belt and his
pistol. Their demeanor was entirely different from what it had been
within the eating-place and Bradley was to learn that a house of
food was sanctuary for him, since the stern laws of the Wieroos
forbade altercations within such walls. Now they were rough and
threatening, as with wings half spread they hovered about him in
menacing attitudes, barring his way to the ladder leading to the
roof from whence he had descended; but the Englishman was not one
to brook interference for long. He attempted at first to push his
way past them, and then when one seized his arm and jerked him
roughly back, Bradley swung upon the creature and with a heavy blow
to the jaw felled it.</p>
<p>Instantly pandemonium reigned. Loud wails arose, great wings
opened and closed with a loud, beating noise and many clawlike
hands reached forth to clutch him. Bradley struck to right and
left. He dared not use his pistol for fear that once they
discovered its power he would be overcome by weight of numbers and
relieved of possession of what he considered his trump card, to be
reserved until the last moment that it might be used to aid in his
escape, for already the Englishman was planning, though almost
hopelessly, such an attempt.</p>
<p>A few blows convinced Bradley that the Wieroos were arrant
cowards and that they bore no weapons, for after two or three had
fallen beneath his fists the others formed a circle about him, but
at a safe distance and contented themselves with threatening and
blustering, while those whom he had felled lay upon the pavement
without trying to arise, the while they moaned and wailed in
lugubrious chorus.</p>
<p>Again Bradley strode toward the ladder, and this time the circle
parted before him; but no sooner had he ascended a few rungs than
he was seized by one foot and an effort made to drag him down. With
a quick backward glance the Englishman, clinging firmly to the
ladder with both hands, drew up his free foot and with all the
strength of a powerful leg, planted a heavy shoe squarely in the
flat face of the Wieroo that held him. Shrieking horribly, the
creature clapped both hands to its face and sank to the ground
while Bradley clambered quickly the remaining distance to the roof,
though no sooner did he reach the top of the ladder than a great
flapping of wings beneath him warned him that the Wieroos were
rising after him. A moment later they swarmed about his head as he
ran for the apartment in which he had spent the early hours of the
morning after his arrival.</p>
<p>It was but a short distance from the top of the ladder to the
doorway, and Bradley had almost reached his goal when the door flew
open and Fosh-bal-soj stepped out. Immediately the pursuing Wieroos
demanded punishment of the jaal-lu who had so grievously maltreated
them. Fosh-bal-soj listened to their complaints and then with a
sudden sweep of his right hand seized Bradley by the scruff of the
neck and hurled him sprawling through the doorway upon the floor of
the chamber.</p>
<p>So sudden was the assault and so surprising the strength of the
Wieroo that the Englishman was taken completely off his guard. When
he arose, the door was closed, and Fosh-bal-soj was standing over
him, his hideous face contorted into an expression of rage and
hatred.</p>
<p>“Hyena, snake, lizard!” he screamed. “You
would dare lay your low, vile, profaning hands upon even the
lowliest of the Wieroos— the sacred chosen of
Luata!”</p>
<p>Bradley was mad, and so he spoke in a very low, calm voice while
a half-smile played across his lips but his cold, gray eyes were
unsmiling.</p>
<p>“What you did to me just now,” he said,
“—I am going to kill you for that,” and even as
he spoke, he launched himself at the throat of Fosh-bal-soj. The
other Wieroo that had been asleep when Bradley left the chamber had
departed, and the two were alone. Fosh-bal-soj displayed little of
the cowardice of those that had attacked Bradley in the alleyway,
but that may have been because he had so slight opportunity, for
Bradley had him by the throat before he could utter a cry and with
his right hand struck him heavily and repeatedly upon his face and
over his heart—ugly, smashing, short-arm jabs of the sort
that take the fight out of a man in quick time.</p>
<p>But Fosh-bal-soj was of no mind to die passively. He clawed and
struck at Bradley while with his great wings he attempted to shield
himself from the merciless rain of blows, at the same time
searching for a hold upon his antagonist’s throat. Presently
he succeeded in tripping the Englishman, and together the two fell
heavily to the floor, Bradley underneath, and at the same instant
the Wieroo fastened his long talons about the other’s
windpipe.</p>
<p>Fosh-bal-soj was possessed of enormous strength and he was
fighting for his life. The Englishman soon realized that the battle
was going against him. Already his lungs were pounding painfully
for air as he reached for his pistol. It was with difficulty that
he drew it from its holster, and even then, with death staring him
in the face, he thought of his precious ammunition.
“Can’t waste it,” he thought; and slipping his
fingers to the barrel he raised the weapon and struck Fosh-bal-soj
a terrific blow between the eyes. Instantly the clawlike fingers
released their hold, and the creature sank limply to the floor
beside Bradley, who lay for several minutes gasping painfully in an
effort to regain his breath.</p>
<p>When he was able, he rose, and leaned close over the Wieroo,
lying silent and motionless, his wings dropping limply and his
great, round eyes staring blankly toward the ceiling. A brief
examination convinced Bradley that the thing was dead, and with the
conviction came an overwhelming sense of the dangers which must now
confront him; but how was he to escape?</p>
<p>His first thought was to find some means for concealing the
evidence of his deed and then to make a bold effort to escape.
Stepping to the second door he pushed it gently open and peered in
upon what seemed to be a store room. In it was a litter of cloth
such as the Wieroos’ robes were fashioned from, a number of
chests painted blue and white, with white hieroglyphics painted in
bold strokes upon the blue and blue hieroglyphics upon the white.
In one corner was a pile of human skulls reaching almost to the
ceiling and in another a stack of dried Wieroo wings. The chamber
was as irregularly shaped as the other and had but a single window
and a second door at the further end, but was without the exit
through the roof and, most important of all, there was no creature
of any sort in it.</p>
<p>As quickly as possible Bradley dragged the dead Wieroo through
the doorway and closed the door; then he looked about for a place
to conceal the corpse. One of the chests was large enough to hold
the body if the knees were bent well up, and with this idea in view
Bradley approached the chest to open it. The lid was made in two
pieces, each being hinged at an opposite end of the chest and
joining nicely where they met in the center of the chest, making a
snug, well-fitting joint. There was no lock. Bradley raised one
half the cover and looked in. With a smothered “By
Jove!” he bent closer to examine the contents—the chest
was about half filled with an assortment of golden trinkets. There
were what appeared to be bracelets, anklets and brooches of virgin
gold.</p>
<p>Realizing that there was no room in the chest for the body of
the Wieroo, Bradley turned to seek another means of concealing the
evidence of his crime. There was a space between the chests and the
wall, and into this he forced the corpse, piling the discarded
robes upon it until it was entirely hidden from sight; but now how
was he to make good his escape in the bright glare of that early
Spring day?</p>
<p>He walked to the door at the far end of the apartment and
cautiously opened it an inch. Before him and about two feet away
was the blank wall of another building. Bradley opened the door a
little farther and looked in both directions. There was no one in
sight to the left over a considerable expanse of roof-top, and to
the right another building shut off his line of vision at about
twenty feet. Slipping out, he turned to the right and in a few
steps found a narrow passageway between two buildings. Turning into
this he passed about half its length when he saw a Wieroo appear at
the opposite end and halt. The creature was not looking down the
passageway; but at any moment it might turn its eyes toward him,
when he would be immediately discovered.</p>
<p>To Bradley’s left was a triangular niche in the wall of
one of the houses and into this he dodged, thus concealing himself
from the sight of the Wieroo. Beside him was a door painted a vivid
yellow and constructed after the same fashion as the other Wieroo
doors he had seen, being made up of countless narrow strips of wood
from four to six inches in length laid on in patches of about the
same width, the strips in adjacent patches never running in the
same direction. The result bore some resemblance to a crazy
patchwork quilt, which was heightened when, as in one of the doors
he had seen, contiguous patches were painted different colors. The
strips appeared to have been bound together and to the underlying
framework of the door with gut or fiber and also glued, after which
a thick coating of paint had been applied. One edge of the door was
formed of a straight, round pole about two inches in diameter that
protruded at top and bottom, the projections setting in round holes
in both lintel and sill forming the axis upon which the door swung.
An eccentric disk upon the inside face of the door engaged a slot
in the frame when it was desired to secure the door against
intruders.</p>
<p>As Bradley stood flattened against the wall waiting for the
Wieroo to move on, he heard the creature’s wings brushing
against the sides of the buildings as it made its way down the
narrow passage in his direction. As the yellow door offered the
only means of escape without detection, the Englishman decided to
risk whatever might lie beyond it, and so, boldly pushing it in, he
crossed the threshold and entered a small apartment.</p>
<p>As he did so, he heard a muffled ejaculation of surprise, and
turning his eyes in the direction from whence the sound had come,
he beheld a wide-eyed girl standing flattened against the opposite
wall, an expression of incredulity upon her face. At a glance he
saw that she was of no race of humans that he had come in contact
with since his arrival upon Caprona—there was no trace about
her form or features of any relationship to those low orders of
men, nor was she appareled as they—or, rather, she did not
entirely lack apparel as did most of them.</p>
<p>A soft hide fell from her left shoulder to just below her left
hip on one side and almost to her right knee on the other, a loose
girdle was about her waist, and golden ornaments such as he had
seen in the blue-and-white chest encircled her arms and legs, while
a golden fillet with a triangular diadem bound her heavy hair above
her brows. Her skin was white as from long confinement within
doors; but it was clear and fine. Her figure, but partially
concealed by the soft deerskin, was all curves of symmetry and
youthful grace, while her features might easily have been the envy
of the most feted of Continental beauties.</p>
<p>If the girl was surprised by the sudden appearance of Bradley,
the latter was absolutely astounded to discover so wondrous a
creature among the hideous inhabitants of the City of Human Skulls.
For a moment the two looked at one another in unconcealed
consternation, and then Bradley spoke, using to the best of his
poor ability, the common tongue of Caspak.</p>
<p>“Who are you,” he asked, “and from where do
you come? Do not tell me that you are a Wieroo.”</p>
<p>“No,” she replied, “I am no Wieroo.” And
she shuddered slightly as she pronounced the word. “I am a
Galu; but who and what are you? I am sure that you are no Galu,
from your garments; but you are like the Galus in other respects. I
know that you are not of this frightful city, for I have been here
for almost ten moons, and never have I seen a male Galu brought
hither before, nor are there such as you and I, other than
prisoners in the land of Oo-oh, and these are all females. Are you
a prisoner, then?”</p>
<p>He told her briefly who and what he was, though he doubted if
she understood, and from her he learned that she had been a
prisoner there for many months; but for what purpose he did not
then learn, as in the midst of their conversation the yellow door
swung open and a Wieroo with a robe slashed with yellow
entered.</p>
<p>At sight of Bradley the creature became furious. “Whence
came this reptile?” it demanded of the girl. “How long
has it been here with you?”</p>
<p>“It came through the doorway just ahead of you,”
Bradley answered for the girl.</p>
<p>The Wieroo looked relieved. “It is well for the girl that
this is so,” it said, “for now only you will have to
die.” And stepping to the door the creature raised its voice
in one of those uncanny, depressing wails.</p>
<p>The Englishman looked toward the girl. “Shall I kill
it?” he asked, half drawing his pistol. “What is best
to do?—I do not wish to endanger you.”</p>
<p>The Wieroo backed toward the door. “Defiler!” it
screamed. “You dare to threaten one of the sacred chosen of
Luata!”</p>
<p>“Do not kill him,” cried the girl, “for then
there could be no hope for you. That you are here, alive, shows
that they may not intend to kill you at all, and so there is a
chance for you if you do not anger them; but touch him in violence
and your bleached skull will top the loftiest pedestal of
Oo-oh.”</p>
<p>“And what of you?” asked Bradley.</p>
<p>“I am already doomed,” replied the girl; “I am
cos-ata-lo.”</p>
<p>“Cos-ata-lo! cos-ata-lu!” What did these phrases
mean that they were so oft repeated by the denizens of Oo-oh? Lu
and lo, Bradley knew to mean man and woman; ata; was employed
variously to indicate life, eggs, young, reproduction and kindred
subject; cos was a negative; but in combination they were
meaningless to the European.</p>
<p>“Do you mean they will kill you?” asked Bradley.</p>
<p>“I but wish that they would,” replied the girl.
“My fate is to be worse than death—in just a few nights
more, with the coming of the new moon.”</p>
<p>“Poor she-snake!” snapped the Wieroo. “You are
to become sacred above all other shes. He Who Speaks for Luata has
chosen you for himself. Today you go to his temple—“the
Wieroo used a phrase meaning literally High
Place—“where you will receive the sacred
commands.”</p>
<p>The girl shuddered and cast a sorrowful glance toward Bradley.
“Ah,” she sighed, “if I could but see my beloved
country once again!”</p>
<p>The man stepped suddenly close to her side before the Wieroo
could interpose and in a low voice asked her if there was no way by
which he might encompass her escape. She shook her head
sorrowfully. “Even if we escaped the city,” she
replied, “there is the big water between the island of Oo-oh
and the Galu shore.”</p>
<p>“And what is beyond the city, if we could leave it?”
pursued Bradley.</p>
<p>“I may only guess from what I have heard since I was
brought here,” she answered; “but by reports and chance
remarks I take it to be a beautiful land in which there are but few
wild beasts and no men, for only the Wieroos live upon this island
and they dwell always in cities of which there are three, this
being the largest. The others are at the far end of the island,
which is about three marches from end to end and at its widest
point about one march.”</p>
<p>From his own experience and from what the natives on the
mainland had told him, Bradley knew that ten miles was a good
day’s march in Caspak, owing to the fact that at most points
it was a trackless wilderness and at all times travelers were beset
by hideous beasts and reptiles that greatly impeded rapid
progress.</p>
<p>The two had spoken rapidly but were now interrupted by the
advent through the opening in the roof of several Wieroos who had
come in answer to the alarm it of the yellow slashing had
uttered.</p>
<p>“This jaal-lu,” cried the offended one, “has
threatened me. Take its hatchet from it and make it fast where it
can do no harm until He Who Speaks for Luata has said what shall be
done with it. It is one of those strange creatures that
Fosh-bal-soj discovered first above the Band-lu country and
followed back toward the beginning. He Who Speaks for Luata sent
Fosh-bal-soj to fetch him one of the creatures, and here it is. It
is hoped that it may be from another world and hold the secret of
the cos-ata-lus.”</p>
<p>The Wieroos approached boldly to take Bradley’s
“hatchet” from him, their leader having indicated the
pistol hanging in its holster at the Englishman’s hip, but
the first one went reeling backward against his fellows from the
blow to the chin which Bradley followed up with a rush and the
intention to clean up the room in record time; but he had reckoned
without the opening in the roof. Two were down and a great wailing
and moaning was arising when reinforcements appeared from above.
Bradley did not see them; but the girl did, and though she cried
out a warning, it came too late for him to avoid a large Wieroo who
dived headforemost for him, striking him between the shoulders and
bearing him to the floor. Instantly a dozen more were piling on top
of him. His pistol was wrenched from its holster and he was
securely pinioned down by the weight of numbers.</p>
<p>At a word from the Wieroo of the yellow slashing who evidently
was a person of authority, one left and presently returned with
fiber ropes with which Bradley was tightly bound.</p>
<p>“Now bear him to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,”
directed the chief Wieroo, “and one take the word of all that
has passed to Him Who Speaks for Luata.”</p>
<p>Each of the creatures raised a hand, the back against its face,
as though in salute. One seized Bradley and carried him through the
yellow doorway to the roof from whence it rose upon its wide-spread
wings and flapped off across the roof-tops of Oo-oh with its heavy
burden clutched in its long talons.</p>
<p>Below him Bradley could see the city stretching away to a
distance on every hand. It was not as large as he had imagined,
though he judged that it was at least three miles square. The
houses were piled in indescribable heaps, sometimes to a height of
a hundred feet. The streets and alleys were short and crooked and
there were many areas where buildings had been wedged in so closely
that no light could possibly reach the lowest tiers, the entire
surface of the ground being packed solidly with them.</p>
<p>The colors were varied and startling, the architecture amazing.
Many roofs were cup or saucer-shaped with a small hole in the
center of each, as though they had been constructed to catch
rain-water and conduct it to a reservoir beneath; but nearly all
the others had the large opening in the top that Bradley had seen
used by these flying men in lieu of doorways. At all levels were
the myriad poles surmounted by grinning skulls; but the two most
prominent features of the city were the round tower of human skulls
that Bradley had noted earlier in the day and another and much
larger edifice near the center of the city. As they approached it,
Bradley saw that it was a huge building rising a hundred feet in
height from the ground and that it stood alone in the center of
what might have been called a plaza in some other part of the
world. Its various parts, however, were set together with the same
strange irregularity that marked the architecture of the city as a
whole; and it was capped by an enormous saucer-shaped roof which
projected far beyond the eaves, having the appearance of a colossal
Chinese coolie hat, inverted.</p>
<p>The Wieroo bearing Bradley passed over one corner of the open
space about the large building, revealing to the Englishman grass
and trees and running water beneath. They passed the building and
about five hundred yards beyond the creature alighted on the roof
of a square, blue building surmounted by seven poles bearing seven
skulls. This then, thought Bradley, is the Blue Place of Seven
Skulls.</p>
<p>Over the opening in the roof was a grated covering, and this the
Wieroo removed. The thing then tied a piece of fiber rope to one of
Bradley’s ankles and rolled him over the edge of the opening.
All was dark below and for an instant the Englishman came as near
to experiencing real terror as he had ever come in his life before.
As he rolled off into the black abyss he felt the rope tighten
about his ankle and an instant later he was stopped with a sudden
jerk to swing pendulumlike, head downward. Then the creature
lowered away until Bradley’s head came in sudden and painful
contact with the floor below, after which the Wieroo let loose of
the rope entirely and the Englishman’s body crashed to the
wooden planking. He felt the free end of the rope dropped upon him
and heard the grating being slid into place above him.</p>
<h3><a id="Ch_3" name="Ch_3"></a>Chapter 3</h3>
<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
Contents</a></p>
<p>Half-stunned, Bradley lay for a minute as he had fallen and then
slowly and painfully wriggled into a less uncomfortable position.
He could see nothing of his surroundings in the gloom about him
until after a few minutes his eyes became accustomed to the dark
interior when he rolled them from side to side in survey of his
prison.</p>
<p>He discovered himself to be in a bare room which was windowless,
nor could he see any other opening than that through which he had
been lowered. In one corner was a huddled mass that might have been
almost anything from a bundle of rags to a dead body.</p>
<p>Almost immediately after he had taken his bearings Bradley
commenced working with his bonds. He was a man of powerful
physique, and as from the first he had been imbued with a belief
that the fiber ropes were too weak to hold him, he worked on with a
firm conviction that sooner or later they would part to his
strainings. After a matter of five minutes he was positive that the
strands about his wrists were beginning to give; but he was
compelled to rest then from exhaustion.</p>
<p>As he lay, his eyes rested upon the bundle in the corner, and
presently he could have sworn that the thing moved. With eyes
straining through the gloom the man lay watching the grim and
sinister thing in the corner. Perhaps his overwrought nerves were
playing a sorry joke upon him. He thought of this and also that his
condition of utter helplessness might still further have stimulated
his imagination. He closed his eyes and sought to relax his muscles
and his nerves; but when he looked again, he knew that he had not
been mistaken—the thing had moved; now it lay in a slightly
altered form and farther from the wall. It was nearer him.</p>
<p>With renewed strength Bradley strained at his bonds, his
fascinated gaze still glued upon the shapeless bundle. No longer
was there any doubt that it moved—he saw it rise in the
center several inches and then creep closer to him. It sank and
arose again—a headless, hideous, monstrous thing of menace.
Its very silence rendered it the more terrible.</p>
<p>Bradley was a brave man; ordinarily his nerves were of steel;
but to be at the mercy of some unknown and nameless horror, to be
unable to defend himself—it was these things that almost
unstrung him, for at best he was only human. To stand in the open,
even with the odds all against him; to be able to use his fists, to
put up some sort of defense, to inflict punishment upon his
adversary—then he could face death with a smile. It was not
death that he feared now—it was that horror of the unknown
that is part of the fiber of every son of woman.</p>
<p>Closer and closer came the shapeless mass. Bradley lay
motionless and listened. What was that he heard! Breathing? He
could not be mistaken—and then from out of the bundle of rags
issued a hollow groan. Bradley felt his hair rise upon his head. He
struggled with the slowly parting strands that held him. The thing
beside him rose up higher than before and the Englishman could have
sworn that he saw a single eye peering at him from among the
tumbled cloth. For a moment the bundle remained
motionless—only the sound of breathing issued from it, then
there broke from it a maniacal laugh.</p>
<p>Cold sweat stood upon Bradley’s brow as he tugged for
liberation. He saw the rags rise higher and higher above him until
at last they tumbled upon the floor from the body of a naked
man—a thin, a bony, a hideous caricature of man, that mouthed
and mummed and, wabbling upon its weak and shaking legs, crumpled
to the floor again, still laughing—laughing horribly.</p>
<p>It crawled toward Bradley. “Food! Food!” it
screamed. “There is a way out! There is a way out!”</p>
<p>Dragging itself to his side the creature slumped upon the
Englishman’s breast. “Food!” it shrilled as with
its bony fingers and its teeth, it sought the man’s bare
throat.</p>
<p>“Food! There is a way out!” Bradley felt teeth upon
his jugular. He turned and twisted, shaking himself free for an
instant; but once more with hideous persistence the thing fastened
itself upon him. The weak jaws were unable to send the dull teeth
through the victim’s flesh; but Bradley felt it pawing,
pawing, pawing, like a monstrous rat, seeking his life’s
blood.</p>
<p>The skinny arms now embraced his neck, holding the teeth to his
throat against all his efforts to dislodge the thing. Weak as it
was it had strength enough for this in its mad efforts to eat.
Mumbling as it worked, it repeated again and again, “Food!
Food! There is a way out!” until Bradley thought those two
expressions alone would drive him mad.</p>
<p>And all but mad he was as with a final effort backed by almost
maniacal strength he tore his wrists from the confining bonds and
grasping the repulsive thing upon his breast hurled it halfway
across the room. Panting like a spent hound Bradley worked at the
thongs about his ankles while the maniac lay quivering and mumbling
where it had fallen. Presently the Englishman leaped to his
feet—freer than he had ever before felt in all his life,
though he was still hopelessly a prisoner in the Blue Place of
Seven Skulls.</p>
<p>With his back against the wall for support, so weak the reaction
left him, Bradley stood watching the creature upon the floor. He
saw it move and slowly raise itself to its hands and knees, where
it swayed to and fro as its eyes roved about in search of him; and
when at last they found him, there broke from the drawn lips the
mumbled words: “Food! Food! There is a way out!” The
pitiful supplication in the tones touched the Englishman’s
heart. He knew that this could be no Wieroo, but possibly once a
man like himself who had been cast into this pit of solitary
confinement with this hideous result that might in time be his
fate, also.</p>
<p>And then, too, there was the suggestion of hope held out by the
constant reiteration of the phrase, “There is a way
out.” Was there a way out? What did this poor thing know?</p>
<p>“Who are you and how long have you been here?”
Bradley suddenly demanded.</p>
<p>For a moment the man upon the floor made no response, then
mumblingly came the words: “Food! Food!”</p>
<p>“Stop!” commanded the Englishman—the
injunction might have been barked from the muzzle of a pistol. It
brought the man to a sitting posture, his hands off the ground. He
stopped swaying to and fro and appeared to be startled into an
attempt to master his faculties of concentration and thought.</p>
<p>Bradley repeated his questions sharply.</p>
<p>“I am An-Tak, the Galu,” replied the man.
“Luata alone knows how long I have been here—maybe ten
moons, maybe ten moons three times”—it was the
Caspakian equivalent of thirty. “I was young and strong when
they brought me here. Now I am old and very weak. I am
cos-ata-lu—that is why they have not killed me. If I tell
them the secret of becoming cos-ata-lu they will take me out; but
how can I tell them that which Luata alone knows?</p>
<p>“What is cos-ata-lu?” demanded Bradley.</p>
<p>“Food! Food! There is a way out!” mumbled the
Galu.</p>
<p>Bradley strode across the floor, seized the man by his shoulders
and shook him.</p>
<p>“Tell me,” he cried, “what is
cos-ata-lu?”</p>
<p>“Food!” whimpered An-Tak.</p>
<p>Bradley bethought himself. His haversack had not been taken from
him. In it besides his razor and knife were odds and ends of
equipment and a small quantity of dried meat. He tossed a small
strip of the latter to the starving Galu. An-Tak seized upon it and
devoured it ravenously. It instilled new life in the man.</p>
<p>“What is cos-ata-lu?” insisted Bradley again.</p>
<p>An-Tak tried to explain. His narrative was often broken by
lapses of concentration during which he reverted to his plaintive
mumbling for food and recurrence to the statement that there was a
way out; but by firmness and patience the Englishman drew out
piece-meal a more or less lucid exposition of the remarkable scheme
of evolution that rules in Caspak. In it he found explanations of
the hitherto inexplicable. He discovered why he had seen no babes
or children among the Caspakian tribes with which he had come in
contact; why each more northerly tribe evinced a higher state of
development than those south of them; why each tribe included
individuals ranging in physical and mental characteristics from the
highest of the next lower race to the lowest of the next higher,
and why the women of each tribe immersed themselves morning for an
hour or more in the warm pools near which the habitations of their
people always were located; and, too, he discovered why those pools
were almost immune from the attacks of carnivorous animals and
reptiles.</p>
<p>He learned that all but those who were cos-ata-lu came up
cor-sva-jo, or from the beginning. The egg from which they first
developed into tadpole form was deposited, with millions of others,
in one of the warm pools and with it a poisonous serum that the
carnivora instinctively shunned. Down the warm stream from the pool
floated the countless billions of eggs and tadpoles, developing as
they drifted slowly toward the sea. Some became tadpoles in the
pool, some in the sluggish stream and some not until they reached
the great inland sea. In the next stage they became fishes or
reptiles, An-Tak was not positive which, and in this form, always
developing, they swam far to the south, where, amid the rank and
teeming jungles, some of them evolved into amphibians. Always there
were those whose development stopped at the first stage, others
whose development ceased when they became reptiles, while by far
the greater proportion formed the food supply of the ravenous
creatures of the deep.</p>
<p>Few indeed were those that eventually developed into baboons and
then apes, which was considered by Caspakians the real beginning of
evolution. From the egg, then, the individual developed slowly into
a higher form, just as the frog’s egg develops through
various stages from a fish with gills to a frog with lungs. With
that thought in mind Bradley discovered that it was not difficult
to believe in the possibility of such a scheme— there was
nothing new in it.</p>
<p>From the ape the individual, if it survived, slowly developed
into the lowest order of man—the Alu—and then by
degrees to Bo-lu, Sto-lu, Band-lu, Kro-lu and finally Galu. And in
each stage countless millions of other eggs were deposited in the
warm pools of the various races and floated down to the great sea
to go through a similar process of evolution outside the womb as
develops our own young within; but in Caspak the scheme is much
more inclusive, for it combines not only individual development but
the evolution of species and genera. If an egg survives it goes
through all the stages of development that man has passed through
during the unthinkable eons since life first moved upon the
earth’s face.</p>
<p>The final stage—that which the Galus have almost attained
and for which all hope—is cos-ata-lu, which literally, means
no-egg-man, or one who is born directly as are the young of the
outer world of mammals. Some of the Galus produce cos-ata-lu and
cos-ata-lo both; the Weiroos only cos-ata-lu—in other words
all Wieroos are born male, and so they prey upon the Galus for
their women and sometimes capture and torture the Galu men who are
cos-ata-lu in an endeavor to learn the secret which they believe
will give them unlimited power over all other denizens of
Caspak.</p>
<p>No Wieroos come up from the beginning—all are born of the
Wieroo fathers and Galu mothers who are cos-ata-lo, and there are
very few of the latter owing to the long and precarious stages of
development. Seven generations of the same ancestor must come up
from the beginning before a cos-ata-lu child may be born; and when
one considers the frightful dangers that surround the vital spark
from the moment it leaves the warm pool where it has been deposited
to float down to the sea amid the voracious creatures that swarm
the surface and the deeps and the almost equally unthinkable trials
of its effort to survive after it once becomes a land animal and
starts northward through the horrors of the Caspakian jungles and
forests, it is plainly a wonder that even a single babe has ever
been born to a Galu woman.</p>
<p>Seven cycles it requires before the seventh Galu can complete
the seventh danger-infested circle since its first Galu ancestor
achieved the state of Galu. For ages before, the ancestors of this
first Galu may have developed from a Band-lu or Bo-lu egg without
ever once completing the whole circle—that is from a Galu
egg, back to a fully developed Galu.</p>
<p>Bradley’s head was whirling before he even commenced to
grasp the complexities of Caspakian evolution; but as the truth
slowly filtered into his understanding—as gradually it became
possible for him to visualize the scheme, it appeared simpler. In
fact, it seemed even less difficult of comprehension than that with
which he was familiar.</p>
<p>For several minutes after An-Tak ceased speaking, his voice
having trailed off weakly into silence, neither spoke again. Then
the Galu recommenced his, “Food! Food! There is a way
out!” Bradley tossed him another bit of dried meat, waiting
patiently until he had eaten it, this time more slowly.</p>
<p>“What do you mean by saying there is a way out?” he
asked.</p>
<p>“He who died here just after I came, told me,”
replied An-Tak. “He said there was a way out, that he had
discovered it but was too weak to use his knowledge. He was trying
to tell me how to find it when he died. Oh, Luata, if he had lived
but a moment more!”</p>
<p>“They do not feed you here?” asked Bradley.</p>
<p>“No, they give me water once a day—that is
all.”</p>
<p>“But how have you lived, then?”</p>
<p>“The lizards and the rats,” replied An-Tak.
“The lizards are not so bad; but the rats are foul to taste.
However, I must eat them or they would eat me, and they are better
than nothing; but of late they do not come so often, and I have not
had a lizard for a long time. I shall eat though,” he
mumbled. “I shall eat now, for you cannot remain awake
forever.” He laughed, a cackling, dry laugh. “When you
sleep, An-Tak will eat.”</p>
<p>It was horrible. Bradley shuddered. For a long time each sat in
silence. The Englishman could guess why the other made no
sound—he awaited the moment that sleep should overcome his
victim. In the long silence there was born upon Bradley’s
ears a faint, monotonous sound as of running water. He listened
intently. It seemed to come from far beneath the floor.</p>
<p>“What is that noise?” he asked. “That sounds
like water running through a narrow channel.”</p>
<p>“It is the river,” replied An-Tak. “Why do you
not go to sleep? It passes directly beneath the Blue Place of Seven
Skulls. It runs through the temple grounds, beneath the temple and
under the city. When we die, they will cut off our heads and throw
our bodies into the river. At the mouth of the river await many
large reptiles. Thus do they feed. The Wieroos do likewise with
their own dead, keeping only the skulls and the wings. Come, let us
sleep.”</p>
<p>“Do the reptiles come up the river into the city?”
asked Bradley.</p>
<p>“The water is too cold—they never leave the warm
water of the great pool,” replied An-Tak.</p>
<p>“Let us search for the way out,” suggested
Bradley.</p>
<p>An-Tak shook his head. “I have searched for it all these
moons,” he said. “If I could not find it, how would
you?”</p>
<p>Bradley made no reply but commenced a diligent examination of
the walls and floor of the room, pressing over each square foot and
tapping with his knuckles. About six feet from the floor he
discovered a sleeping-perch near one end of the apartment. He asked
An-Tak about it, but the Galu said that no Weiroo had occupied the
place since he had been incarcerated there. Again and again Bradley
went over the floor and walls as high up as he could reach. Finally
he swung himself to the perch, that he might examine at least one
end of the room all the way to the ceiling.</p>
<p>In the center of the wall close to the top, an area about three
feet square gave forth a hollow sound when he rapped upon it.
Bradley felt over every square inch of that area with the tips of
his fingers. Near the top he found a small round hole a trifle
larger in diameter than his forefinger, which he immediately stuck
into it. The panel, if such it was, seemed about an inch thick, and
beyond it his finger encountered nothing. Bradley crooked his
finger upon the opposite side of the panel and pulled toward him,
steadily but with considerable force. Suddenly the panel flew
inward, nearly precipitating the man to the floor. It was hinged at
the bottom, and when lowered the outer edge rested upon the perch,
making a little platform parallel with the floor of the room.</p>
<p>Beyond the opening was an utterly dark void. The Englishman
leaned through it and reached his arm as far as possible into the
blackness but touched nothing. Then he fumbled in his haversack for
a match, a few of which remained to him. When he struck it, An-Tak
gave a cry of terror. Bradley held the light far into the opening
before him and in its flickering rays saw the top of a ladder
descending into a black abyss below. How far down it extended he
could not guess; but that he should soon know definitely he was
positive.</p>
<p>“You have found it! You have found the way out!”
screamed An-Tak. “Oh, Luata! And now I am too weak to go.
Take me with you! Take me with you!”</p>
<p>“Shut up!” admonished Bradley. “You will have
the whole flock of birds around our heads in a minute, and neither
of us will escape. Be quiet, and I’ll go ahead. If I find a
way out, I’ll come back and help you, if you’ll promise
not to try to eat me up again.”</p>
<p>“I promise,” cried An-Tak. “Oh, Luata! How
could you blame me? I am half crazed of hunger and long confinement
and the horror of the lizards and the rats and the constant waiting
for death.”</p>
<p>“I know,” said Bradley simply. “I’m
sorry for you, old top. Keep a stiff upper lip.” And he
slipped through the opening, found the ladder with his feet, closed
the panel behind him, and started downward into the darkness.</p>
<p>Below him rose more and more distinctly the sound of running
water. The air felt damp and cool. He could see nothing of his
surroundings and felt nothing but the smooth, worn sides and rungs
of the ladder down which he felt his way cautiously lest a broken
rung or a misstep should hurl him downward.</p>
<p>As he descended thus slowly, the ladder seemed interminable and
the pit bottomless, yet he realized when at last he reached the
bottom that he could not have descended more than fifty feet. The
bottom of the ladder rested on a narrow ledge paved with what felt
like large round stones, but what he knew from experience to be
human skulls. He could not but marvel as to where so many countless
thousands of the things had come from, until he paused to consider
that the infancy of Caspak dated doubtlessly back into remote ages,
far beyond what the outer world considered the beginning of earthly
time. For all these eons the Wieroos might have been collecting
human skulls from their enemies and their own dead—enough to
have built an entire city of them.</p>
<p>Feeling his way along the narrow ledge, Bradley came presently
to a blank wall that stretched out over the water swirling beneath
him, as far as he could reach. Stooping, he groped about with one
hand, reaching down toward the surface of the water, and discovered
that the bottom of the wall arched above the stream. How much space
there was between the water and the arch he could not tell, nor how
deep the former. There was only one way in which he might learn
these things, and that was to lower himself into the stream. For
only an instant he hesitated weighing his chances. Behind him lay
almost certainly the horrid fate of An-Tak; before him nothing
worse than a comparatively painless death by drowning. Holding his
haversack above his head with one hand he lowered his feet slowly
over the edge of the narrow platform. Almost immediately he felt
the swirling of cold water about his ankles, and then with a silent
prayer he let himself drop gently into the stream.</p>
<p>Great was Bradley’s relief when he found the water no more
than waist deep and beneath his feet a firm, gravel bottom. Feeling
his way cautiously he moved downward with the current, which was
not so strong as he had imagined from the noise of the running
water.</p>
<p>Beneath the first arch he made his way, following the winding
curvatures of the right-hand wall. After a few yards of progress
his hand came suddenly in contact with a slimy thing clinging to
the wall—a thing that hissed and scuttled out of reach. What
it was, the man could not know; but almost instantly there was a
splash in the water just ahead of him and then another.</p>
<p>On he went, passing beneath other arches at varying distances,
and always in utter darkness. Unseen denizens of this great sewer,
disturbed by the intruder, splashed into the water ahead of him and
wriggled away. Time and again his hand touched them and never for
an instant could he be sure that at the next step some gruesome
thing might not attack him. He had strapped his haversack about his
neck, well above the surface of the water, and in his left hand he
carried his knife. Other precautions there were none to take.</p>
<p>The monotony of the blind trail was increased by the fact that
from the moment he had started from the foot of the ladder he had
counted his every step. He had promised to return for An-Tak if it
proved humanly possible to do so, and he knew that in the blackness
of the tunnel he could locate the foot of the ladder in no other
way.</p>
<p>He had taken two hundred and sixty-nine steps—afterward he
knew that he should never forget that number—when something
bumped gently against him from behind. Instantly he wheeled about
and with knife ready to defend himself stretched forth his right
hand to push away the object that now had lodged against his body.
His fingers feeling through the darkness came in contact with
something cold and clammy—they passed to and fro over the
thing until Bradley knew that it was the face of a dead man
floating upon the surface of the stream. With an oath he pushed his
gruesome companion out into mid-stream to float on down toward the
great pool and the awaiting scavengers of the deep.</p>
<p>At his four hundred and thirteenth step another corpse bumped
against him—how many had passed him without touching he could
not guess; but suddenly he experienced the sensation of being
surrounded by dead faces floating along with him, all set in
hideous grimaces, their dead eyes glaring at this profaning alien
who dared intrude upon the waters of this river of the dead—a
horrid escort, pregnant with dire forebodings and with menace.</p>
<p>Though he advanced very slowly, he tried always to take steps of
about the same length; so that he knew that though considerable
time had elapsed, yet he had really advanced no more than four
hundred yards when ahead he saw a lessening of the pitch-darkness,
and at the next turn of the stream his surroundings became
vaguelydiscernible. Above him was an arched roof and on either hand
walls pierced at intervals by apertures covered with wooden doors.
Just ahead of him in the roof of the aqueduct was a round, black
hole about thirty inches in diameter. His eyes still rested upon
the opening when there shot downward from it to the water below the
naked body of a human being which almost immediately rose to the
surface again and floated off down the stream. In the dim light
Bradley saw that it was a dead Wieroo from which the wings and head
had been removed. A moment later another headless body floated
past, recalling what An-Tak had told him of the skull-collecting
customs of the Wieroo. Bradley wondered how it happened that the
first corpse he had encountered in the stream had not been
similarly mutilated.</p>
<p>The farther he advanced now, the lighter it became. The number
of corpses was much smaller than he had imagined, only two more
passing him before, at six hundred steps, or about five hundred
yards, from the point he had taken to the stream, he came to the
end of the tunnel and looked out upon sunlit water, running between
grassy banks.</p>
<p>One of the last corpses to pass him was still clothed in the
white robe of a Wieroo, blood-stained over the headless neck that
it concealed.</p>
<p>Drawing closer to the opening leading into the bright daylight,
Bradley surveyed what lay beyond. A short distance before him a
large building stood in the center of several acres of grass and
tree-covered ground, spanning the stream which disappeared through
an opening in its foundation wall. From the large saucer-shaped
roof and the vivid colorings of the various heterogeneous parts of
the structure he recognized it as the temple past which he had been
borne to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls.</p>
<p>To and fro flew Wieroos, going to and from the temple. Others
passed on foot across the open grounds, assisting themselves with
their great wings, so that they barely skimmed the earth. To leave
the mouth of the tunnel would have been to court instant discovery
and capture; but by what other avenue he might escape, Bradley
could not guess, unless he retraced his steps up the stream and
sought egress from the other end of the city. The thought of
traversing that dark and horror-ridden tunnel for perhaps miles he
could not entertain—there must be some other way. Perhaps
after dark he could steal through the temple grounds and continue
on downstream until he had come beyond the city; and so he stood
and waited until his limbs became almost paralyzed with cold, and
he knew that he must find some other plan for escape.</p>
<p>A half-formed decision to risk an attempt to swim under water to
the temple was crystallizing in spite of the fact that any chance
Wieroo flying above the stream might easily see him, when again a
floating object bumped against him from behind and lodged across
his back. Turning quickly he saw that the thing was what he had
immediately guessed it to be—a headless and wingless Wieroo
corpse. With a grunt of disgust he was about to push it from him
when the white garment enshrouding it suggested a bold plan to his
resourceful brain. Grasping the corpse by an arm he tore the
garment from it and then let the body float downward toward the
temple. With great care he draped the robe about him; the bloody
blotch that had covered the severed neck he arranged about his own
head. His haversack he rolled as tightly as possible and stuffed
beneath his coat over his breast. Then he fell gently to the
surface of the stream and lying upon his back floated downward with
the current and out into the open sunlight.</p>
<p>Through the weave of the cloth he could distinguish large
objects. He saw a Wieroo flap dismally above him; he saw the banks
of the stream float slowly past; he heard a sudden wail upon the
right- hand shore, and his heart stood still lest his ruse had been
discovered; but never by a move of a muscle did he betray that
aught but a cold lump of clay floated there upon the bosom of the
water, and soon, though it seemed an eternity to him, the direct
sunlight was blotted out, and he knew that he had entered beneath
the temple.</p>
<p>Quickly he felt for bottom with his feet and as quickly stood
erect, snatching the bloody, clammy cloth from his face. On both
sides were blank walls and before him the river turned a sharp
corner and disappeared. Feeling his way cautiously forward he
approached the turn and looked around the corner. To his left was a
low platform about a foot above the level of the stream, and onto
this he lost no time in climbing, for he was soaked from head to
foot, cold and almost exhausted.</p>
<p>As he lay resting on the skull-paved shelf, he saw in the center
of the vault above the river another of those sinister round holes
through which he momentarily expected to see a headless corpse
shoot downward in its last plunge to a watery grave. A few feet
along the platform a closed door broke the blankness of the wall.
As he lay looking at it and wondering what lay behind, his mind
filled with fragments of many wild schemes of escape, it opened and
a white robed Wieroo stepped out upon the platform. The creature
carried a large wooden basin filled with rubbish. Its eyes were not
upon Bradley, who drew himself to a squatting position and crouched
as far back in the corner of the niche in which the platform was
set as he could force himself. The Wieroo stepped to the edge of
the platform and dumped the rubbish into the stream. If it turned
away from him as it started to retrace its steps to the doorway,
there was a small chance that it might not see him; but if it
turned toward him there was none at all. Bradley held his
breath.</p>
<p>The Wieroo paused a moment, gazing down into the water, then it
straightened up and turned toward the Englishman. Bradley did not
move. The Wieroo stopped and stared intently at him. It approached
him questioningly. Still Bradley remained as though carved of
stone. The creature was directly in front of him. It stopped. There
was no chance on earth that it would not discover what he was.</p>
<p>With the quickness of a cat, Bradley sprang to his feet and with
all his great strength, backed by his heavy weight, struck the
Wieroo upon the point of the chin. Without a sound the thing
crumpled to the platform, while Bradley, acting almost
instinctively to the urge of the first law of nature, rolled the
inanimate body over the edge into the river.</p>
<p>Then he looked at the open doorway, crossed the platform and
peered within the apartment beyond. What he saw was a large room,
dimly lighted, and about the side rows of wooden vessels stacked
one upon another. There was no Wieroo in sight, so the Englishman
entered. At the far end of the room was another door, and as he
crossed toward it, he glanced into some of the vessels, which he
found were filled with dried fruits, vegetables and fish. Without
more ado he stuffed his pockets and his haversack full, thinking of
the poor creature awaiting his return in the gloom of the Place of
Seven Skulls.</p>
<p>When night came, he would return and fetch An-Tak this far at
least; but in the meantime it was his intention to reconnoiter in
the hope that he might discover some easier way out of the city
than that offered by the chill, black channel of the ghastly river
of corpses.</p>
<p>Beyond the farther door stretched a long passageway from which
closed doorways led into other parts of the cellars of the temple.
A few yards from the storeroom a ladder rose from the corridor
through an aperture in the ceiling. Bradley paused at the foot of
it, debating the wisdom of further investigation against a return
to the river; but strong within him was the spirit of exploration
that has scattered his race to the four corners of the earth. What
new mysteries lay hidden in the chambers above? The urge to know
was strong upon him though his better judgment warned him that the
safer course lay in retreat. For a moment he stood thus, running
his fingers through his hair; then he cast discretion to the winds
and began the ascent.</p>
<p>In conformity with such Wieroo architecture as he had already
observed, the well through which the ladder rose continually canted
at an angle from the perpendicular. At more or less regular stages
it was pierced by apertures closed by doors, none of which he could
open until he had climbed fully fifty feet from the river level.
Here he discovered a door already ajar opening into a large,
circular chamber, the walls and floors of which were covered with
the skins of wild beasts and with rugs of many colors; but what
interested him most was the occupants of the room—a Wieroo,
and a girl of human proportions. She was standing with her back
against a column which rose from the center of the apartment from
floor to ceiling—a hollow column about forty inches in
diameter in which he could see an opening some thirty inches
across. The girl’s side was toward Bradley, and her face
averted, for she was watching the Wieroo, who was now advancing
slowly toward her, talking as he came.</p>
<p>Bradley could distinctly hear the words of the creature, who was
urging the girl to accompany him to another Wieroo city.
“Come with me,” he said, “and you shall have your
life; remain here and He Who Speaks for Luata will claim you for
his own; and when he is done with you, your skull will bleach at
the top of a tall staff while your body feeds the reptiles at the
mouth of the River of Death. Even though you bring into the world a
female Wieroo, your fate will be the same if you do not escape him,
while with me you shall have life and food and none shall harm
you.”</p>
<p>He was quite close to the girl when she replied by striking him
in the face with all her strength. “Until I am slain,”
she cried, “I shall fight against you all.” From the
throat of the Wieroo issued that dismal wail that Bradley had heard
so often in the past—it was like a scream of pain smothered
to a groan—and then the thing leaped upon the girl, its face
working in hideous grimaces as it clawed and beat at her to force
her to the floor.</p>
<p>The Englishman was upon the point of entering to defend her when
a door at the opposite side of the chamber opened to admit a huge
Wieroo clothed entirely in red. At sight of the two struggling upon
the floor the newcomer raised his voice in a shriek of rage.
Instantly the Wieroo who was attacking the girl leaped to his feet
and faced the other.</p>
<p>“I heard,” screamed he who had just entered the
room. “I heard, and when He Who Speaks for Lu-ata shall have
heard—” He paused and made a suggestive movement of a
finger across his throat.</p>
<p>“He shall not hear,” returned the first Wieroo as,
with a powerful motion of his great wings, he launched himself upon
the red-robed figure. The latter dodged the first charge, drew a
wicked-looking curved blade from beneath its red robe, spread its
wings and dived for its antagonist. Beating their wings, wailing
and groaning, the two hideous things sparred for position. The
white-robed one being unarmed sought to grasp the other by the
wrist of its knife-hand and by the throat, while the latter hopped
around on its dainty white feet, seeking an opening for a mortal
blow. Once it struck and missed, and then the other rushed in and
clinched, at the same time securing both the holds it sought.
Immediately the two commenced beating at each other’s heads
with the joints of their wings, kicking with their soft, puny feet
and biting, each at the other’s face.</p>
<p>In the meantime the girl moved about the room, keeping out of
the way of the duelists, and as she did so, Bradley caught a
glimpse of her full face and immediately recognized her as the girl
of the place of the yellow door. He did not dare intervene now
until one of the Wieroo had overcome the other, lest the two should
turn upon him at once, when the chances were fair that he would be
defeated in so unequal a battle as the curved blade of the red
Wieroo would render it, and so he waited, watching the white-robed
figure slowly choking the life from him of the red robe. The
protruding tongue and the popping eyes proclaimed that the end was
near and a moment later the red robe sank to the floor of the room,
the curved blade slipping from nerveless fingers. For an instant
longer the victor clung to the throat of his defeated antagonist
and then he rose, dragging the body after him, and approached the
central column. Here he raised the body and thrust it into the
aperture where Bradley saw it drop suddenly from sight. Instantly
there flashed into his memory the circular openings in the roof of
the river vault and the corpses he had seen drop from them to the
water beneath.</p>
<p>As the body disappeared, the Wieroo turned and cast about the
room for the girl. For a moment he stood eying her. “You
saw,” he muttered, “and if you tell them, He Who Speaks
for Luata will have my wings severed while still I live and my head
will be severed and I shall be cast into the River of Death, for
thus it happens even to the highest who slay one of the red robe.
You saw, and you must die!” he ended with a scream as he
rushed upon the girl.</p>
<p>Bradley waited no longer. Leaping into the room he ran for the
Wieroo, who had already seized the girl, and as he ran, he stooped
and picked up the curved blade. The creature’s back was
toward him as, with his left hand, he seized it by the neck. Like a
flash the great wings beat backward as the creature turned, and
Bradley was swept from his feet, though he still retained his hold
upon the blade. Instantly the Wieroo was upon him. Bradley lay
slightly raised upon his left elbow, his right arm free, and as the
thing came close, he cut at the hideous face with all the strength
that lay within him. The blade struck at the junction of the neck
and torso and with such force as to completely decapitate the
Wieroo, the hideous head dropping to the floor and the body falling
forward upon the Englishman. Pushing it from him he rose to his
feet and faced the wide-eyed girl.</p>
<p>“Luata!” she exclaimed. “How came you
here?”</p>
<p>Bradley shrugged. “Here I am,” he said; “but
the thing now is to get out of here—both of us.”</p>
<p>The girl shook her head. “It cannot be,” she stated
sadly.</p>
<p>“That is what I thought when they dropped me into the Blue
Place of Seven Skulls,” replied Bradley. “Can’t
be done. I did it.— Here! You’re mussing up the floor
something awful, you.” This last to the dead Wieroo as he
stooped and dragged the corpse to the central shaft, where he
raised it to the aperture and let it slip into the tube. Then he
picked up the head and tossed it after the body. “Don’t
be so glum,” he admonished the former as he carried it toward
the well; “smile!”</p>
<p>“But how can he smile?” questioned the girl, a
half-puzzled, half-frightened look upon her face. “He is
dead.”</p>
<p>“That’s so,” admitted Bradley, “and I
suppose he does feel a bit cut up about it.”</p>
<p>The girl shook her head and edged away from the man—toward
the door.</p>
<p>“Come!” said the Englishman. “We’ve got
to get out of here. If you don’t know a better way than the
river, it’s the river then.”</p>
<p>The girl still eyed him askance. “But how could he smile
when he was dead?”</p>
<p>Bradley laughed aloud. “I thought we English were supposed
to have the least sense of humor of any people in the world,”
he cried; “but now I’ve found one human being who
hasn’t any. Of course you don’t know half I’m
saying; but don’t worry, little girl; I’m not going to
hurt you, and if I can get you out of here, I’ll do
it.”</p>
<p>Even if she did not understand all he said, she at least read
something in his smiling, countenance—something which
reassured her. “I do not fear you,” she said;
“though I do not understand all that you say even though you
speak my own tongue and use words that I know. But as for
escaping”—she sighed—“alas, how can it be
done?”</p>
<p>“I escaped from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,”
Bradley reminded her. “Come!” And he turned toward the
shaft and the ladder that he had ascended from the river. “We
cannot waste time here.”</p>
<p>The girl followed him; but at the doorway both drew back, for
from below came the sound of some one ascending.</p>
<p>Bradley tiptoed to the door and peered cautiously into the well;
then he stepped back beside the girl. “There are half a dozen
of them coming up; but possibly they will pass this
room.”</p>
<p>“No,” she said, “they will pass directly
through this room—they are on their way to Him Who Speaks for
Luata. We may be able to hide in the next room—there are
skins there beneath which we may crawl. They will not stop in that
room; but they may stop in this one for a short time—the
other room is blue.”</p>
<p>“What’s that go to do with it?” demanded the
Englishman.</p>
<p>“They fear blue,” she replied. “In every room
where murder has been done you will find blue—a certain
amount for each murder. When the room is all blue, they shun it.
This room has much blue; but evidently they kill mostly in the next
room, which is now all blue.”</p>
<p>“But there is blue on the outside of every house I have
seen,” said Bradley.</p>
<p>“Yes, ” assented the girl, “and there are blue
rooms in each of those houses—when all the rooms are blue
then the whole outside of the house will be blue as is the Blue
Place of Seven Skulls. There are many such here.”</p>
<p>“And the skulls with blue upon them?” inquired
Bradley. “Did they belong to murderers?”</p>
<p>“They were murdered—some of them; those with only a
small amount of blue were murderers—known murderers. All
Wieroos are murderers. When they have committed a certain number of
murders without being caught at it, they confess to Him Who Speaks
for Luata and are advanced, after which they wear robes with a
slash of some color— I think yellow comes first. When they
reach a point where the entire robe is of yellow, they discard it
for a white robe with a red slash; and when one wins a complete red
robe, he carries such a long, curved knife as you have in your
hand; after that comes the blue slash on a white robe, and then, I
suppose, an all blue robe. I have never seen such a one.”</p>
<p>As they talked in low tones they had moved from the room of the
death shaft into an all blue room adjoining, where they sat down
together in a corner with their backs against a wall and drew a
pile of hides over themselves. A moment later they heard a number
of Wieroos enter the chamber. They were talking together as they
crossed the floor, or the two could not have heard them. Halfway
across the chamber they halted as the door toward which they were
advancing opened and a dozen others of their kind entered the
apartment.</p>
<p>Bradley could guess all this by the increased volume of sound
and the dismal greetings; but the sudden silence that almost
immediately ensued he could not fathom, for he could not know that
from beneath one of the hides that covered him protruded one of his
heavy army shoes, or that some eighteen large Wieroos with robes
either solid red or slashed with red or blue were standing gazing
at it. Nor could he hear their stealthy approach.</p>
<p>The first intimation he had that he had been discovered was when
his foot was suddenly seized, and he was yanked violently from
beneath the hides to find himself surrounded by menacing blades.
They would have slain him on the spot had not one clothed all in
red held them back, saying that He Who Speaks for Luata desired to
see this strange creature.</p>
<p>As they led Bradley away, he caught an opportunity to glance
back toward the hides to see what had become of the girl, and, to
his gratification, he discovered that she still lay concealed
beneath the hides. He wondered if she would have the nerve to
attempt the river trip alone and regretted that now he could not
accompany her. He felt rather all in, himself, more so than he had
at any time since he had been captured by the Wieroo, for there
appeared not the slightest cause for hope in his present
predicament. He had dropped the curved blade beneath the hides when
he had been jerked so violently from their fancied security. It was
almost in a spirit of resigned hopelessness that he quietly
accompanied his captors through various chambers and corridors
toward the heart of the temple.</p>
<h3><a id="Ch_4" name="Ch_4"></a>Chapter 4</h3>
<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
Contents</a></p>
<p>The farther the group progressed, the more barbaric and the more
sumptuous became the decorations. Hides of leopard and tiger
predominated, apparently because of their more beautiful markings,
and decorative skulls became more and more numerous. Many of the
latter were mounted in precious metals and set with colored stones
and priceless gems, while thick upon the hides that covered the
walls were golden ornaments similar to those worn by the girl and
those which had filled the chests he had examined in the storeroom
of Fosh-bal-soj, leading the Englishman to the conviction that all
such were spoils of war or theft, since each piece seemed made for
personal adornment, while in so far as he had seen, no Wieroo wore
ornaments of any sort.</p>
<p>And also as they advanced the more numerous became the Wieroos
moving hither and thither within the temple. Many now were the
solid red robes and those that were slashed with blue—a
veritable hive of murderers.</p>
<p>At last the party halted in a room in which were many Wieroos
who gathered about Bradley questioning his captors and examining
him and his apparel. One of the party accompanying the Englishman
spoke to a Wieroo that stood beside a door leading from the room.
“Tell Him Who Speaks for Luata,” he said, “that
Fosh-bal-soj we could not find; but that in returning we found this
creature within the temple, hiding. It must be the same that
Fosh-bal-soj captured in the Sto-lu country during the last
darkness. Doubtless He Who Speaks for Luata would wish to see and
question this strange thing.”</p>
<p>The creature addressed turned and slipped through the doorway,
closing the door after it, but first depositing its curved blade
upon the floor without. Its post was immediately taken by another
and Bradley now saw that at least twenty such guards loitered in
the immediate vicinity. The doorkeeper was gone but for a moment,
and when he returned, he signified that Bradley’s party was
to enter the next chamber; but first each of the Wieroos removed
his curved weapon and laid it upon the floor. The door was swung
open, and the party, now reduced to Bradley and five Wieroos, was
ushered across the threshold into a large, irregularly shaped room
in which a single, giant Wieroo whose robe was solid blue sat upon
a raised dais.</p>
<p>The creature’s face was white with the whiteness of a
corpse, its dead eyes entirely expressionless, its cruel, thin lips
tight-drawn against yellow teeth in a perpetual grimace. Upon
either side of it lay an enormous, curved sword, similar to those
with which some of the other Wieroos had been armed, but larger and
heavier. Constantly its clawlike fingers played with one or the
other of these weapons.</p>
<p>The walls of the chamber as well as the floor were entirely
hidden by skins and woven fabrics. Blue predominated in all the
colorations. Fastened against the hides were many pairs of Wieroo
wings, mounted so that they resembled long, black shields. Upon the
ceiling were painted in blue characters a bewildering series of
hieroglyphics and upon pedestals set against the walls or standing
out well within the room were many human skulls.</p>
<p>As the Wieroos approached the figure upon the dais, they leaned
far forward, raising their wings above their heads and stretching
their necks as though offering them to the sharp swords of the grim
and hideous creature.</p>
<p>“O Thou Who Speakest for Luata!” exclaimed one of
the party. “We bring you the strange creature that
Fosh-bal-soj captured and brought thither at thy
command.”</p>
<p>So this then was the godlike figure that spoke for divinity!
This arch-murderer was the Caspakian representative of God on
Earth! His blue robe announced him the one and the seeming humility
of his minions the other. For a long minute he glared at Bradley.
Then he began to question him—from whence he came and how,
the name and description of his native country, and a hundred other
queries.</p>
<p>“Are you cos-ata-lu?” the creature asked.</p>
<p>Bradley replied that he was and that all his kind were, as well
as every living thing in his part of the world.</p>
<p>“Can you tell me the secret?” asked the
creature.</p>
<p>Bradley hesitated and then, thinking to gain time, replied in
the affirmative.</p>
<p>“What is it?” demanded the Wieroo, leaning far
forward and exhibiting every evidence of excited interest.</p>
<p>Bradley leaned forward and whispered: “It is for your ears
alone; I will not divulge it to others, and then only on condition
that you carry me and the girl I saw in the place of the yellow
door near to that of Fosh-bal-soj back to her own
country.”</p>
<p>The thing rose in wrath, holding one of its swords above its
head.</p>
<p>“Who are you to make terms for Him Who Speaks for
Luata?” it shrilled. “Tell me the secret or die where
you stand!”</p>
<p>“And if I die now, the secret goes with me,” Bradley
reminded him. “Never again will you get the opportunity to
question another of my kind who knows the secret.” Anything
to gain time, to get the rest of the Wieroos from the room, that he
might plan some scheme for escape and put it into effect.</p>
<p>The creature turned upon the leader of the party that had
brought Bradley.</p>
<p>“Is the thing with weapons?” it asked.</p>
<p>“No,” was the response.</p>
<p>“Then go; but tell the guard to remain close by,”
commanded the high one.</p>
<p>The Wieroos salaamed and withdrew, closing the door behind them.
He Who Speaks for Luata grasped a sword nervously in his right
hand. At his left side lay the second weapon. It was evident that
he lived in constant dread of being assassinated. The fact that he
permitted none with weapons within his presence and that he always
kept two swords at his side pointed to this.</p>
<p>Bradley was racking his brain to find some suggestion of a plan
whereby he might turn the situation to his own account. His eyes
wandered past the weird figure before him; they played about the
walls of the apartment as though hoping to draw inspiration from
the dead skulls and the hides and the wings, and then they came
back to the face of the Wieroo god, now working in anger.</p>
<p>“Quick!” screamed the thing. “The
secret!”</p>
<p>“Will you give me and the girl our freedom?”
insisted Bradley.</p>
<p>For an instant the thing hesitated, and then it grumbled
“Yes.” At the same instant Bradley saw two hides upon
the wall directly back of the dais separate and a face appear in
the opening. No change of expression upon the Englishman’s
countenance betrayed that he had seen aught to surprise him, though
surprised he was for the face in the aperture was that of the girl
he had but just left hidden beneath the hides in another chamber. A
white and shapely arm now pushed past the face into the room, and
in the hand, tightly clutched, was the curved blade, smeared with
blood, that Bradley had dropped beneath the hides at the moment he
had been discovered and drawn from his concealment.</p>
<p>“Listen, then,” said Bradley in a low voice to the
Wieroo. “You shall know the secret of cos-ata-lu as well as
do I; but none other may hear it. Lean close—I will whisper
it into your ear.”</p>
<p>He moved forward and stepped upon the dais. The creature raised
its sword ready to strike at the first indication of treachery, and
Bradley stooped beneath the blade and put his ear close to the
gruesome face. As he did so, he rested his weight upon his hands,
one upon either side of the Wieroo’s body, his right hand
upon the hilt of the spare sword lying at the left of Him Who
Speaks for Luata.</p>
<p>“This then is the secret of both life and death,” he
whispered, and at the same instant he grasped the Wieroo by the
right wrist and with his own right hand swung the extra blade in a
sudden vicious blow against the creature’s neck before the
thing could give even a single cry of alarm; then without waiting
an instant Bradley leaped past the dead god and vanished behind the
hides that had hidden the girl.</p>
<p>Wide-eyed and panting the girl seized his arm. “Oh, what
have you done?” she cried. “He Who Speaks for Luata
will be avenged by Luata. Now indeed must you die. There is no
escape, for even though we reached my own country Luata can find
you out.”</p>
<p>“Bosh!” exclaimed Bradley, and then: “But you
were going to knife him yourself.”</p>
<p>“Then I alone should have died,” she replied.</p>
<p>Bradley scratched his head. “Neither of us is going to
die,” he said; “at least not at the hands of any god.
If we don’t get out of here though, we’ll die right
enough. Can you find your way back to the room where I first came
upon you in the temple?”</p>
<p>“I know the way,” replied the girl; “but I
doubt if we can go back without being seen. I came hither because I
only met Wieroos who knew that I am supposed now to be in the
temple; but you could go elsewhere without being
discovered.”</p>
<p>Bradley’s ingenuity had come up against a stone wall.
There seemed no possibility of escape. He looked about him. They
were in a small room where lay a litter of rubbish—torn bits
of cloth, old hides, pieces of fiber rope. In the center of the
room was a cylindrical shaft with an opening in its face. Bradley
knew it for what it was. Here the arch-fiend dragged his victims
and cast their bodies into the river of death far below. The floor
about the opening in the shaft and the sides of the shaft were
clotted thick with a dried, dark brown substance that the
Englishman knew had once been blood. The place had the appearance
of having been a veritable shambles. An odor of decaying flesh
permeated the air.</p>
<p>The Englishman crossed to the shaft and peered into the opening.
All below was dark as pitch; but at the bottom he knew was the
river. Suddenly an inspiration and a bold scheme leaped to his
mind. Turning quickly he hunted about the room until he found what
he sought—a quantity of the rope that lay strewn here and
there. With rapid fingers he unsnarled the different lengths, the
girl helping him, and then he tied the ends together until he had
three ropes about seventy-five feet in length. He fastened these
together at each end and without a word secured one of the ends
about the girl’s body beneath her arms.</p>
<p>“Don’t be frightened,” he said at length, as
he led her toward the opening in the shaft. “I’m going
to lower you to the river, and then I’m coming down after
you. When you are safe below, give two quick jerks upon the rope.
If there is danger there and you want me to draw you up into the
shaft, jerk once. Don’t be afraid—it is the only
way.”</p>
<p>“I am not afraid,” replied the girl, rather
haughtily Bradley thought, and herself climbed through the aperture
and hung by her hands waiting for Bradley to lower her.</p>
<p>As rapidly as was consistent with safety, the man paid out the
rope. When it was about half out, he heard loud cries and wails
suddenly arise within the room they had just quitted. The slaying
of their god had been discovered by the Wieroos. A search for the
slayer would begin at once.</p>
<p>Lord! Would the girl never reach the river? At last, just as he
was positive that searchers were already entering the room behind
him, there came two quick tugs at the rope. Instantly Bradley made
the rest of the strands fast about the shaft, slipped into the
black tube and began a hurried descent toward the river. An instant
later he stood waist deep in water beside the girl. Impulsively she
reached toward him and grasped his arm. A strange thrill ran
through him at the contact; but he only cut the rope from about her
body and lifted her to the little shelf at the river’s
side.</p>
<p>“How can we leave here?” she asked.</p>
<p>“By the river,” he replied; “but first I must
go back to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls and get the poor devil I
left there. I’ll have to wait until after dark, though, as I
cannot pass through the open stretch of river in the temple gardens
by day.”</p>
<p>“There is another way,” said the girl. “I have
never seen it; but often I have heard them speak of it—a
corridor that runs beside the river from one end of the city to the
other. Through the gardens it is below ground. If we could find an
entrance to it, we could leave here at once. It is not safe here,
for they will search every inch of the temple and the
grounds.”</p>
<p>“Come,” said Bradley. “We’ll have a look
for it, anyway.” And so saying he approached one of the doors
that opened onto the skull-paved shelf.</p>
<p>They found the corridor easily, for it paralleled the river,
separated from it only by a single wall. It took them beneath the
gardens and the city, always through inky darkness. After they had
reached the other side of the gardens, Bradley counted his steps
until he had retraced as many as he had taken coming down the
stream; but though they had to grope their way along, it was a much
more rapid trip than the former.</p>
<p>When he thought he was about opposite the point at which he had
descended from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls, he sought and found
a doorway leading out onto the river; and then, still in the
blackest darkness, he lowered himself into the stream and felt up
and down upon the opposite side for the little shelf and the
ladder. Ten yards from where he had emerged he found them, while
the girl waited upon the opposite side.</p>
<p>To ascend to the secret panel was the work of but a minute. Here
he paused and listened lest a Wieroo might be visiting the prison
in search of him or the other inmate; but no sound came from the
gloomy interior. Bradley could not but muse upon the joy of the man
on the opposite side when he should drop down to him with food and
a new hope for escape. Then he opened the panel and looked into the
room. The faint light from the grating above revealed the pile of
rags in one corner; but the man lay beneath them, he made no
response to Bradley’s low greeting.</p>
<p>The Englishman lowered himself to the floor of the room and
approached the rags. Stooping he lifted a corner of them. Yes,
there was the man asleep. Bradley shook him—there was no
response. He stooped lower and in the dim light examined An-Tak;
then he stood up with a sigh. A rat leaped from beneath the
coverings and scurried away. “Poor devil!” muttered
Bradley.</p>
<p>He crossed the room to swing himself to the perch preparatory to
quitting the Blue Place of Seven Skulls forever. Beneath the perch
he paused. “I’ll not give them the satisfaction,”
he growled. “Let them believe that he escaped.”</p>
<p>Returning to the pile of rags he gathered the man into his arms.
It was difficult work raising him to the high perch and dragging
him through the small opening and thus down the ladder; but
presently it was done, and Bradley had lowered the body into the
river and cast it off. “Good-bye, old top!” he
whispered.</p>
<p>A moment later he had rejoined the girl and hand in hand they
were following the dark corridor upstream toward the farther end of
the city. She told him that the Wieroos seldom frequented these
lower passages, as the air here was too chill for them; but
occasionally they came, and as they could see quite as well by
night as by day, they would be sure to discover Bradley and the
girl.</p>
<p>“If they come close enough,” she said, “we can
see their eyes shining in the dark—they resemble dull
splotches of light. They glow, but do not blaze like the eyes of
the tiger or the lion.”</p>
<p>The man could not but note the very evident horror with which
she mentioned the creatures. To him they were uncanny; but she had
been used to them for a year almost, and probably all her life she
had either seen or heard of them constantly.</p>
<p>“Why do you fear them so?” he asked. “It seems
more than any ordinary fear of the harm they can do you.”</p>
<p>She tried to explain; but the nearest he could gather was that
she looked upon the Wieroo almost as supernatural beings.
“There is a legend current among my people that once the
Wieroo were unlike us only in that they possessed rudimentary
wings. They lived in villages in the Galu country, and while the
two peoples often warred, they held no hatred for one another. In
those days each race came up from the beginning and there was great
rivalry as to which was the higher in the scale of evolution. The
Wieroo developed the first cos-ata-lu but they were always
male— never could they reproduce woman. Slowly they commenced
to develop certain attributes of the mind which, they considered,
placed them upon a still higher level and which gave them many
advantages over us, seeing which they thought only of mental
development—their minds became like stars and the rivers,
moving always in the same manner, never varying. They called this
tas-ad, which means doing everything the right way, or, in other
words, the Wieroo way. If foe or friend, right or wrong, stood in
the way of tas-ad, then it must be crushed.</p>
<p>“Soon the Galus and the lesser races of men came to hate
and fear them. It was then that the Wieroos decided to carry tas-ad
into every part of the world. They were very warlike and very
numerous, although they had long since adopted the policy of
slaying all those among them whose wings did not show advanced
development.</p>
<p>“It took ages for all this to happen—very slowly
came the different changes; but at last the Wieroos had wings they
could use. But by reason of always making war upon their neighbors
they were hated by every creature of Caspak, for no one wanted
their tas-ad, and so they used their wings to fly to this island
when the other races turned against them and threatened to kill
them all. So cruel had they become and so bloodthirsty that they no
longer had hearts that beat with love or sympathy; but their very
cruelty and wickedness kept them from conquering the other races,
since they were also cruel and wicked to one another, so that no
Wieroo trusted another.</p>
<p>“Always were they slaying those above them that they might
rise in power and possessions, until at last came the more powerful
than the others with a tas-ad all his own. He gathered about him a
few of the most terrible Wieroos, and among them they made laws
which took from all but these few Wieroos every weapon they
possessed.</p>
<p>“Now their tas-ad has reached a high plane among them.
They make many wonderful things that we cannot make. They think
great thoughts, no doubt, and still dream of greatness to come, but
their thoughts and their acts are regulated by ages of
custom—they are all alike—and they are most
unhappy.”</p>
<p>As the girl talked, the two moved steadily along the dark
passageway beside the river. They had advanced a considerable
distance when there sounded faintly from far ahead the muffled roar
of falling water, which increased in volume as they moved forward
until at last it filled the corridor with a deafening sound. Then
the corridor ended in a blank wall; but in a niche to the right was
a ladder leading aloft, and to the left was a door opening onto the
river. Bradley tried the latter first and as he opened it, felt a
heavy spray against his face. The little shelf outside the doorway
was wet and slippery, the roaring of the water tremendous. There
could be but one explanation—they had reached a waterfall in
the river, and if the corridor actually terminated here, their
escape was effectually cut off, since it was quite evidently
impossible to follow the bed of the river and ascend the falls.</p>
<p>As the ladder was the only alternative, the two turned toward it
and, the man first, began the ascent, which was through a well
similar to that which had led him to the upper floors of the
temple. As he climbed, Bradley felt for openings in the sides of
the shaft; but he discovered none below fifty feet. The first he
came to was ajar, letting a faint light into the well. As he
paused, the girl climbed to his side, and together they looked
through the crack into a low-ceiled chamber in which were several
Galu women and an equal number of hideous little replicas of the
full-grown Wieroos with which Bradley was not quite familiar.</p>
<p>He could feel the body of the girl pressed close to his tremble
as her eyes rested upon the inmates of the room, and involuntarily
his arm encircled her shoulders as though to protect her from some
danger which he sensed without recognizing.</p>
<p>“Poor things,” she whispered. “This is their
horrible fate—to be imprisoned here beneath the surface of
the city with their hideous offspring whom they hate as they hate
their fathers. A Wieroo keeps his children thus hidden until they
are full-grown lest they be murdered by their fellows. The lower
rooms of the city are filled with many such as these.”</p>
<p>Several feet above was a second door beyond which they found a
small room stored with food in wooden vessels. A grated window in
one wall opened above an alley, and through it they could see that
they were just below the roof of the building. Darkness was coming,
and at Bradley’s suggestion they decided to remain hidden
here until after dark and then to ascend to the roof and
reconnoiter.</p>
<p>Shortly after they had settled themselves they heard something
descending the ladder from above. They hoped that it would continue
on down the well and fairly held their breath as the sound
approached the door to the storeroom. Their hearts sank as they
heard the door open and from between cracks in the vessels behind
which they hid saw a yellow-slashed Wieroo enter the room. Each
recognized him immediately, the girl indicating the fact of her own
recognition by a sudden pressure of her fingers on Bradley’s
arm. It was the Wieroo of the yellow slashing whose abode was the
place of the yellow door in which Bradley had first seen the
girl.</p>
<p>The creature carried a wooden bowl which it filled with dried
food from several of the vessels; then it turned and quit the room.
Bradley could see through the partially open doorway that it
descended the ladder. The girl told him that it was taking the food
to the women and the young below, and that while it might return
immediately, the chances were that it would remain for some
time.</p>
<p>“We are just below the place of the yellow door,”
she said. “It is far from the edge of the city; so far that
we may not hope to escape if we ascend to the roofs
here.”</p>
<p>“I think,” replied the man, “that of all the
places in Oo-oh this will be the easiest to escape from. Anyway, I
want to return to the place of the yellow door and get my pistol if
it is there.”</p>
<p>“It is still there,” replied, the girl. “I saw
it placed in a chest where he keeps the things he takes from his
prisoners and victims.”</p>
<p>“Good!” exclaimed Bradley. “Now come, quickly.
“And the two crossed the room to the well and ascended the
ladder a short distance to its top where they found another door
that opened into a vacant room—the same in which Bradley had
first met the girl. To find the pistol was a matter of but a
moment’s search on the part of Bradley’s companion; and
then, at the Englishman’s signal, she followed him to the
yellow door.</p>
<p>It was quite dark without as the two entered the narrow passage
between two buildings. A few steps brought them undiscovered to the
doorway of the storeroom where lay the body of Fosh-bal-soj. In the
distance, toward the temple, they could hear sounds as of a great
gathering of Wieroos—the peculiar, uncanny wailing rising
above the dismal flapping of countless wings.</p>
<p>“They have heard of the killing of Him Who Speaks for
Luata,” whispered the girl. “Soon they will spread in
all directions searching for us.”</p>
<p>“And will they find us?”</p>
<p>“As surely as Lua gives light by day,” she replied;
“and when they find us, they will tear us to pieces, for only
the Wieroos may murder—only they may practice
tas-ad.”</p>
<p>“But they will not kill you,” said Bradley.
“You did not slay him.”</p>
<p>“It will make no difference,” she insisted.
“If they find us together they will slay us both.”</p>
<p>“Then they won’t find us together,” announced
Bradley decisively. “You stay right here—you
won’t be any worse off than before I came—and
I’ll get as far as I can and account for as many of the
beggars as possible before they get me. Good-bye! You’re a
mighty decent little girl. I wish that I might have helped
you.”</p>
<p>“No,” she cried. “Do not leave me. I would
rather die. I had hoped and hoped to find some way to return to my
own country. I wanted to go back to An-Tak, who must be very lonely
without me; but I know that it can never be. It is difficult to
kill hope, though mine is nearly dead. Do not leave me.”</p>
<p>“An-Tak!” Bradley repeated. “You loved a man
called An-Tak?”</p>
<p>“Yes,” replied the girl. “An-Tak was away,
hunting, when the Wieroo caught me. How he must have grieved for
me! He also was cos-ata-lu, twelve moons older than I, and all our
lives we have been together.”</p>
<p>Bradley remained silent. So she loved An-Tak. He hadn’t
the heart to tell her that An-Tak had died, or how.</p>
<p>At the door of Fosh-bal-soj’s storeroom they halted to
listen. No sound came from within, and gently Bradley pushed open
the door. All was inky darkness as they entered; but presently
their eyes became accustomed to the gloom that was partially
relieved by the soft starlight without. The Englishman searched and
found those things for which he had come—two robes, two pairs
of dead wings and several lengths of fiber rope. One pair of the
wings he adjusted to the girl’s shoulders by means of the
rope. Then he draped the robe about her, carrying the cowl over her
head.</p>
<p>He heard her gasp of astonishment when she realized the
ingenuity and boldness of his plan; then he directed her to adjust
the other pair of wings and the robe upon him. Working with strong,
deft fingers she soon had the work completed, and the two stepped
out upon the roof, to all intent and purpose genuine Wieroos.
Besides his pistol Bradley carried the sword of the slain Wieroo
prophet, while the girl was armed with the small blade of the red
Wieroo.</p>
<p>Side by side they walked slowly across the roofs toward the
north edge of the city. Wieroos flapped above them and several
times they passed others walking or sitting upon the roofs. From
the temple still rose the sounds of commotion, now pierced by
occasional shrill screams.</p>
<p>“The murderers are abroad,” whispered the girl.
“Thus will another become the tongue of Luata. It is well for
us, since it keeps them too busy to give the time for searching for
us. They think that we cannot escape the city, and they know that
we cannot leave the island—and so do I.”</p>
<p>Bradley shook his head. “If there is any way, we will find
it,” he said.</p>
<p>“There is no way,” replied the girl.</p>
<p>Bradley made no response, and in silence they continued until
the outer edge of roofs was visible before them. “We are
almost there,” he whispered.</p>
<p>The girl felt for his fingers and pressed them. He could feel
hers trembling as he returned the pressure, nor did he relinquish
her hand; and thus they came to the edge of the last roof.</p>
<p>Here they halted and looked about them. To be seen attempting to
descend to the ground below would be to betray the fact that they
were not Wieroos. Bradley wished that their wings were attached to
their bodies by sinew and muscle rather than by ropes of fiber. A
Wieroo was flapping far overhead. Two more stood near a door a few
yards distant. Standing between these and one of the outer
pedestals that supported one of the numerous skulls Bradley made
one end of a piece of rope fast about the pedestal and dropped the
other end to the ground outside the city. Then they waited.</p>
<p>It was an hour before the coast was entirely clear and then a
moment came when no Wieroo was in sight. “Now!”
whispered Bradley; and the girl grasped the rope and slid over the
edge of the roof into the darkness below. A moment later Bradley
felt two quick pulls upon the rope and immediately followed to the
girl’s side.</p>
<p>Across a narrow clearing they made their way and into a wood
beyond. All night they walked, following the river upward toward
its source, and at dawn they took shelter in a thicket beside the
stream. At no time did they hear the cry of a carnivore, and though
many startled animals fled as they approached, they were not once
menaced by a wild beast. When Bradley expressed surprise at the
absence of the fiercest beasts that are so numerous upon the
mainland of Caprona, the girl explained the reason that is
contained in one of their ancient legends.</p>
<p>“When the Wieroos first developed wings upon which they
could fly, they found this island devoid of any life other than a
few reptiles that live either upon land or in the water and these
only close to the coast. Requiring meat for food the Wieroos
carried to the island such animals as they wished for that purpose.
They still occasionally bring them, and this with the natural
increase keeps them provided with flesh.”</p>
<p>“As it will us,” suggested Bradley.</p>
<p>The first day they remained in hiding, eating only the dried
food that Bradley had brought with him from the temple storeroom,
and the next night they set out again up the river, continuing
steadily on until almost dawn, when they came to low hills where
the river wound through a gorge—it was little more than
rivulet now, the water clear and cold and filled with fish similar
to brook trout though much larger. Not wishing to leave the stream
the two waded along its bed to a spot where the gorge widened
between perpendicular bluffs to a wooded acre of level land. Here
they stopped, for here also the stream ended. They had reached its
source—many cold springs bubbling up from the center of a
little natural amphitheater in the hills and forming a clear and
beautiful pool overshadowed by trees upon one side and bounded by a
little clearing upon the other.</p>
<p>With the coming of the sun they saw they had stumbled upon a
place where they might remain hidden from the Wieroos for a long
time and also one that they could defend against these winged
creatures, since the trees would shield them from an attack from
above and also hamper the movements of the creatures should they
attempt to follow them into the wood.</p>
<p>For three days they rested here before trying to explore the
neighboring country. On the fourth, Bradley stated that he was
going to scale the bluffs and learn what lay beyond. He told the
girl that she should remain in hiding; but she refused to be left,
saying that whatever fate was to be his, she intended to share it,
so that he was at last forced to permit her to come with him.
Through woods at the summit of the bluff they made their way toward
the north and had gone but a short distance when the wood ended and
before them they saw the waters of the inland sea and dimly in the
distance the coveted shore.</p>
<p>The beach lay some two hundred yards from the foot of the hill
on which they stood, nor was there a tree nor any other form of
shelter between them and the water as far up and down the coast as
they could see. Among other plans Bradley had thought of
constructing a covered raft upon which they might drift to the
mainland; but as such a contrivance would necessarily be of
considerable weight, it must be built in the water of the sea,
since they could not hope to move it even a short distance
overland.</p>
<p>“If this wood was only at the edge of the water,” he
sighed.</p>
<p>“But it is not,” the girl reminded him, and then:
“Let us make the best of it. We have escaped from death for a
time at least. We have food and good water and peace and each
other. What more could we have upon the mainland?”</p>
<p>“But I thought you wanted to get back to your own
country!” he exclaimed.</p>
<p>She cast her eyes upon the ground and half turned away. “I
do,” she said, “yet I am happy here. I could be little
happier there.”</p>
<p>Bradley stood in silent thought. “`We have food and good
water and peace and each other!’” he repeated to
himself. He turned then and looked at the girl, and it was as
though in the days that they had been together this was the first
time that he had really seen her. The circumstances that had thrown
them together, the dangers through which they had passed, all the
weird and horrible surroundings that had formed the background of
his knowledge of her had had their effect—she had been but
the companion of an adventure; her self-reliance, her endurance,
her loyalty, had been only what one man might expect of another,
and he saw that he had unconsciously assumed an attitude toward her
that he might have assumed toward a man. Yet there had been a
difference—he recalled now the strange sensation of elation
that had thrilled him upon the occasions when the girl had pressed
his hand in hers, and the depression that had followed her
announcement of her love for An-Tak.</p>
<p>He took a step toward her. A fierce yearning to seize her and
crush her in his arms, swept over him, and then there flashed upon
the screen of recollection the picture of a stately hall set amidst
broad gardens and ancient trees and of a proud old man with
beetling brows—an old man who held his head very
high—and Bradley shook his head and turned away again.</p>
<p>They went back then to their little acre, and the days came and
went, and the man fashioned spear and bow and arrows and hunted
with them that they might have meat, and he made hooks of fishbone
and caught fishes with wondrous flies of his own invention; and the
girl gathered fruits and cooked the flesh and the fish and made
beds of branches and soft grasses. She cured the hides of the
animals he killed and made them soft by much pounding. She made
sandals for herself and for the man and fashioned a hide after the
manner of those worn by the warriors of her tribe and made the man
wear it, for his own garments were in rags.</p>
<p>She was always the same—sweet and kind and
helpful—but always there was about her manner and her
expression just a trace of wistfulness, and often she sat and
looked at the man when he did not know it, her brows puckered in
thought as though she were trying to fathom and to understand
him.</p>
<p>In the face of the cliff, Bradley scooped a cave from the rotted
granite of which the hill was composed, making a shelter for them
against the rains. He brought wood for their cook-fire which they
used only in the middle of the day—a time when there was
little likelihood of Wieroos being in the air so far from their
city—and then he learned to bank it with earth in such a way
that the embers held until the following noon without giving off
smoke.</p>
<p>Always he was planning on reaching the mainland, and never a day
passed that he did not go to the top of the hill and look out
across the sea toward the dark, distant line that meant for him
comparative freedom and possibly reunion with his comrades. The
girl always went with him, standing at his side and watching the
stern expression on his face with just a tinge of sadness on her
own.</p>
<p>“You are not happy,” she said once.</p>
<p>“I should be over there with my men,” he replied.
“I do not know what may have happened to them.”</p>
<p>“I want you to be happy,” she said quite simply;
“but I should be very lonely if you went away and left me
here.”</p>
<p>He put his hand on her shoulder. “I would not do that,
little girl,” he said gently. “If you cannot go with
me, I shall not go. If either of us must go alone, it will be
you.”</p>
<p>Her face lighted to a wondrous smile. “Then we shall not
be separated,” she said, “for I shall never leave you
as long as we both live.”</p>
<p>He looked down into her face for a moment and then: “Who
was An-Tak? ” he asked.</p>
<p>“My brother,” she replied. “Why?”</p>
<p>And then, even less than before, could he tell her. It was then
that he did something he had never done before—he put his
arms about her and stooping, kissed her forehead. “Until you
find An-Tak,” he said, “I will be your
brother.”</p>
<p>She drew away. “I already have a brother,” she said,
“and I do not want another.”</p>
<h3><a id="Ch_5" name="Ch_5"></a>Chapter 5</h3>
<p class="returnTOC"><a href="#Contents">Return to Table of
Contents</a></p>
<p>Days became weeks, and weeks became months, and the months
followed one another in a lazy procession of hot, humid days and
warm, humid nights. The fugitives saw never a Wieroo by day though
often at night they heard the melancholy flapping of giant wings
far above them.</p>
<p>Each day was much like its predecessor. Bradley splashed about
for a few minutes in the cold pool early each morning and after a
time the girl tried it and liked it. Toward the center it was deep
enough for swimming, and so he taught her to swim—she was
probably the first human being in all Caspak’s long ages who
had done this thing. And then while she prepared breakfast, the man
shaved—this he never neglected. At first it was a source of
wonderment to the girl, for the Galu men are beardless.</p>
<p>When they needed meat, he hunted, otherwise he busied himself in
improving their shelter, making new and better weapons, perfecting
his knowledge of the girl’s language and teaching her to
speak and to write English—anything that would keep them both
occupied. He still sought new plans for escape, but with
ever-lessening enthusiasm, since each new scheme presented some
insurmountable obstacle.</p>
<p>And then one day as a bolt out of a clear sky came that which
blasted the peace and security of their sanctuary forever. Bradley
was just emerging from the water after his morning plunge when from
overhead came the sound of flapping wings. Glancing quickly up the
man saw a white-robed Wieroo circling slowly above him. That he had
been discovered he could not doubt since the creature even dropped
to a lower altitude as though to assure itself that what it saw was
a man. Then it rose rapidly and winged away toward the city.</p>
<p>For two days Bradley and the girl lived in a constant state of
apprehension, awaiting the moment when the hunters would come for
them; but nothing happened until just after dawn of the third day,
when the flapping of wings apprised them of the approach of
Wieroos. Together they went to the edge of the wood and looked up
to see five red-robed creatures dropping slowly in ever-lessening
spirals toward their little amphitheater. With no attempt at
concealment they came, sure of their ability to overwhelm these two
fugitives, and with the fullest measure of self-confidence they
landed in the clearing but a few yards from the man and the
girl.</p>
<p>Following a plan already discussed Bradley and the girl
retreated slowly into the woods. The Wieroos advanced, calling upon
them to give themselves up; but the quarry made no reply. Farther
and farther into the little wood Bradley led the hunters,
permitting them to approach ever closer; then he circled back again
toward the clearing, evidently to the great delight of the Wieroos,
who now followed more leisurely, awaiting the moment when they
should be beyond the trees and able to use their wings. They had
opened into semicircular formation now with the evident intention
of cutting the two off from returning into the wood. Each Wieroo
advanced with his curved blade ready in his hand, each hideous face
blank and expressionless.</p>
<p>It was then that Bradley opened fire with his pistol—three
shots, aimed with careful deliberation, for it had been long since
he had used the weapon, and he could not afford to chance wasting
ammunition on misses. At each shot a Wieroo dropped; and then the
remaining two sought escape by flight, screaming and wailing after
the manner of their kind. When a Wieroo runs, his wings spread
almost without any volition upon his part, since from time
immemorial he has always used them to balance himself and
accelerate his running speed so that in the open they appear to
skim the surface of the ground when in the act of running. But here
in the woods, among the close-set boles, the spreading of their
wings proved their undoing—it hindered and stopped them and
threw them to the ground, and then Bradley was upon them
threatening them with instant death if they did not
surrender— promising them their freedom if they did his
bidding.</p>
<p>“As you have seen,” he cried, “I can kill you
when I wish and at a distance. You cannot escape me. Your only hope
of life lies in obedience. Quick, or I kill!”</p>
<p>The Wieroos stopped and faced him. “What do you want of
us?” asked one.</p>
<p>“Throw aside your weapons,” Bradley commanded. After
a moment’s hesitation they obeyed.</p>
<p>“Now approach!” A great plan—the only
plan—had suddenly come to him like an inspiration.</p>
<p>The Wieroos came closer and halted at his command. Bradley
turned to the girl. “There is rope in the shelter,” he
said. “Fetch it!”</p>
<p>She did as he bid, and then he directed her to fasten one end of
a fifty-foot length to the ankle of one of the Wieroos and the
opposite end to the second. The creatures gave evidence of great
fear, but they dared not attempt to prevent the act.</p>
<p>“Now go out into the clearing,” said Bradley,
“and remember that I am walking close behind and that I will
shoot the nearer one should either attempt to escape—that
will hold the other until I can kill him as well.”</p>
<p>In the open he halted them. “The girl will get upon the
back of the one in front,” announced the Englishman. “I
will mount the other. She carries a sharp blade, and I carry this
weapon that you know kills easily at a distance. If you disobey in
the slightest, the instructions that I am about to give you, you
shall both die. That we must die with you, will not deter us. If
you obey, I promise to set you free without harming you.</p>
<p>“You will carry us due west, depositing us upon the shore
of the mainland—that is all. It is the price of your lives.
Do you agree?”</p>
<p>Sullenly the Wieroos acquiesced. Bradley examined the knots that
held the rope to their ankles, and feeling them secure directed the
girl to mount the back of the leading Wieroo, himself upon the
other. Then he gave the signal for the two to rise together. With
loud flapping of the powerful wings the creatures took to the air,
circling once before they topped the trees upon the hill and then
taking a course due west out over the waters of the sea.</p>
<p>Nowhere about them could Bradley see signs of other Wieroos, nor
of those other menaces which he had feared might bring disaster to
his plans for escape—the huge, winged reptilia that are so
numerous above the southern areas of Caspak and which are often
seen, though in lesser numbers, farther north.</p>
<p>Nearer and nearer loomed the mainland—a broad, parklike
expanse stretching inland to the foot of a low plateau spread out
before them. The little dots in the foreground became grazing herds
of deer and antelope and bos; a huge woolly rhinoceros wallowed in
a mudhole to the right, and beyond, a mighty mammoth culled the
tender shoots from a tall tree. The roars and screams and growls of
giant carnivora came faintly to their ears. Ah, this was Caspak.
With all of its dangers and its primal savagery it brought a
fullness to the throat of the Englishman as to one who sees and
hears the familiar sights and sounds of home after a long absence.
Then the Wieroos dropped swiftly downward to the flower-starred
turf that grew almost to the water’s edge, the fugitives
slipped from their backs, and Bradley told the red-robed creatures
they were free to go.</p>
<p>When he had cut the ropes from their ankles they rose with that
uncanny wailing upon their lips that always brought a shudder to
the Englishman, and upon dismal wings they flapped away toward
frightful Oo-oh.</p>
<p>When the creatures had gone, the girl turned toward Bradley.
“Why did you have them bring us here?” she asked.
“Now we are far from my country. We may never live to reach
it, as we are among enemies who, while not so horrible will kill us
just as surely as would the Wieroos should they capture us, and we
have before us many marches through lands filled with savage
beasts.”</p>
<p>“There were two reasons,” replied Bradley.
“You told me that there are two Wieroo cities at the eastern
end of the island. To have passed near either of them might have
been to have brought about our heads hundreds of the creatures from
whom we could not possibly have escaped. Again, my friends must be
near this spot— it cannot be over two marches to the fort of
which I have told you. It is my duty to return to them. If they
still live we shall find a way to return you to your
people.”</p>
<p>“And you?” asked the girl.</p>
<p>“I escaped from Oo-oh,” replied Bradley. “I
have accomplished the impossible once, and so I shall accomplish it
again—I shall escape from Caspak.”</p>
<p>He was not looking at her face as he answered her, and so he did
not see the shadow of sorrow that crossed her countenance. When he
raised his eyes again, she was smiling.</p>
<p>“What you wish, I wish,” said the girl.</p>
<p>Southward along the coast they made their way following the
beach, where the walking was best, but always keeping close enough
to trees to insure sanctuary from the beasts and reptiles that so
often menaced them. It was late in the afternoon when the girl
suddenly seized Bradley’s arm and pointed straight ahead
along the shore. “What is that?” she whispered.
“What strange reptile is it?”</p>
<p>Bradley looked in the direction her slim forefinger indicated.
He rubbed his eyes and looked again, and then he seized her wrist
and drew her quickly behind a clump of bushes.</p>
<p>“What is it?” she asked.</p>
<p>“It is the most frightful reptile that the waters of the
world have ever known,” he replied. “It is a German
U-boat!”</p>
<p>An expression of amazement and understanding lighted her
features. “It is the thing of which you told me,” she
exclaimed, “—the thing that swims under the water and
carries men in its belly!”</p>
<p>“It is,” replied Bradley.</p>
<p>“Then why do you hide from it?” asked the girl.
“You said that now it belonged to your friends.”</p>
<p>“Many months have passed since I knew what was going on
among my friends,” he replied. “I cannot know what has
befallen them. They should have been gone from here in this vessel
long since, and so I cannot understand why it is still here. I am
going to investigate first before I show myself. When I left, there
were more Germans on the U-33 than there were men of my own party
at the fort, and I have had sufficient experience of Germans to
know that they will bear watching—if they have not been
properly watched since I left.”</p>
<p>Making their way through a fringe of wood that grew a few yards
inland the two crept unseen toward the U-boat which lay moored to
the shore at a point which Bradley now recognized as being near the
oil-pool north of Dinosaur. As close as possible to the vessel they
halted, crouching low among the dense vegetation, and watched the
boat for signs of human life about it. The hatches were
closed—no one could be seen or heard. For five minutes
Bradley watched, and then he determined to board the submarine and
investigate. He had risen to carry his decision into effect when
there suddenly broke upon his ear, uttered in loud and menacing
tones, a volley of German oaths and expletives among which he heard
Englische schweinhunde repeated several times. The voice did not
come from the direction of the U-boat; but from inland. Creeping
forward Bradley reached a spot where, through the creepers hanging
from the trees, he could see a party of men coming down toward the
shore.</p>
<p>He saw Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and six of his
men—all armed—while marching in a little knot among
them were Olson, Brady, Sinclair, Wilson, and Whitely.</p>
<p>Bradley knew nothing of the disappearance of Bowen Tyler and
Miss La Rue, nor of the perfidy of the Germans in shelling the fort
and attempting to escape in the U-33; but he was in no way
surprised at what he saw before him.</p>
<p>The little party came slowly onward, the prisoners staggering
beneath heavy cans of oil, while Schwartz, one of the German
noncommissioned officers cursed and beat them with a stick of wood,
impartially. Von Schoenvorts walked in the rear of the column,
encouraging Schwartz and laughing at the discomfiture of the
Britishers. Dietz, Heinz, and Klatz also seemed to enjoy the
entertainment immensely; but two of the men—Plesser and
Hindle— marched with eyes straight to the front and with
scowling faces.</p>
<p>Bradley felt his blood boil at sight of the cowardly indignities
being heaped upon his men, and in the brief span of time occupied
by the column to come abreast of where he lay hidden he made his
plans, foolhardy though he knew them. Then he drew the girl close
to him. “Stay here,” he whispered. “I am going
out to fight those beasts; but I shall be killed. Do not let them
see you. Do not let them take you alive. They are more cruel, more
cowardly, more bestial than the Wieroos.”</p>
<p>The girl pressed close to him, her face very white. “Go,
if that is right,” she whispered; “but if you die, I
shall die, for I cannot live without you.” He looked sharply
into her eyes. “Oh!” he ejaculated. “What an
idiot I have been! Nor could I live without you, little
girl.” And he drew her very close and kissed her lips.
“Good-bye.” He disengaged himself from her arms and
looked again in time to see that the rear of the column had just
passed him. Then he rose and leaped quickly and silently from the
jungle.</p>
<p>Suddenly von Schoenvorts felt an arm thrown about his neck and
his pistol jerked from its holster. He gave a cry of fright and
warning, and his men turned to see a half-naked white man holding
their leader securely from behind and aiming a pistol at them over
his shoulder.</p>
<p>“Drop those guns!” came in short, sharp syllables
and perfect German from the lips of the newcomer. “Drop them
or I’ll put a bullet through the back of von
Schoenvorts’ head.”</p>
<p>The Germans hesitated for a moment, looking first toward von
Schoenvorts and then to Schwartz, who was evidently second in
command, for orders.</p>
<p>“It’s the English pig, Bradley,” shouted the
latter, “and he’s alone—go and get
him!”</p>
<p>“Go yourself,” growled Plesser. Hindle moved close
to the side of Plesser and whispered something to him. The latter
nodded. Suddenly von Schoenvorts wheeled about and seized
Bradley’s pistol arm with both hands, “Now!” he
shouted. “Come and take him, quick!”</p>
<p>Schwartz and three others leaped forward; but Plesser and Hindle
held back, looking questioningly toward the English prisoners. Then
Plesser spoke. “Now is your chance, Englander,” he
called in low tones. “Seize Hindle and me and take our guns
from us—we will not fight hard.”</p>
<p>Olson and Brady were not long in acting upon the suggestion.
They had seen enough of the brutal treatment von Schoenvorts
accorded his men and the especially venomous attentions he had
taken great enjoyment in according Plesser and Hindle to understand
that these two might be sincere in a desire for revenge. In another
moment the two Germans were unarmed and Olson and Brady were
running to the support of Bradley; but already it seemed too
late.</p>
<p>Von Schoenvorts had managed to drag the Englishman around so
that his back was toward Schwartz and the other advancing Germans.
Schwartz was almost upon Bradley with gun clubbed and ready to
smash down upon the Englishman’s skull. Brady and Olson were
charging the Germans in the rear with Wilson, Whitely, and Sinclair
supporting them with bare fists. It seemed that Bradley was doomed
when, apparently out of space, an arrow whizzed, striking Schwartz
in the side, passing half-way through his body to crumple him to
earth. With a shriek the man fell, and at the same time Olson and
Brady saw the slim figure of a young girl standing at the edge of
the jungle coolly fitting another arrow to her bow.</p>
<p>Bradley had now succeeded in wrestling his arm free from von
Schoenvorts’ grip and in dropping the latter with a blow from
the butt of his pistol. The rest of the English and Germans were
engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter. Plesser and Hindle standing
aside from the melee and urging their comrades to surrender and
join with the English against the tyranny of von Schoenvorts. Heinz
and Klatz, possibly influenced by their exhortation, were putting
up but a half-hearted resistance; but Dietz, a huge, bearded,
bull-necked Prussian, yelling like a maniac, sought to exterminate
the Englische schweinhunde with his bayonet, fearing to fire his
piece lest he kill some of his comrades.</p>
<p>It was Olson who engaged him, and though unused to the long
German rifle and bayonet, he met the bull-rush of the Hun with the
cold, cruel precision and science of English bayonet-fighting.
There was no feinting, no retiring and no parrying that was not
also an attack. Bayonet-fighting today is not a pretty thing to
see—it is not an artistic fencing-match in which men give and
take—it is slaughter inevitable and quickly over.</p>
<p>Dietz lunged once madly at Olson’s throat. A short point,
with just a twist of the bayonet to the left sent the sharp blade
over the Englishman’s left shoulder. Instantly he stepped
close in, dropped his rifle through his hands and grasped it with
both hands close below the muzzle and with a short, sharp jab sent
his blade up beneath Dietz’s chin to the brain. So quickly
was the thing done and so quick the withdrawal that Olson had
wheeled to take on another adversary before the German’s
corpse had toppled to the ground.</p>
<p>But there were no more adversaries to take on. Heinz and Klatz
had thrown down their rifles and with hands above their heads were
crying “Kamerad! Kamerad!” at the tops of their voices.
Von Schoenvorts still lay where he had fallen. Plesser and Hindle
were explaining to Bradley that they were glad of the outcome of
the fight, as they could no longer endure the brutality of the
U-boat commander.</p>
<p>The remainder of the men were looking at the girl who now
advanced slowly, her bow ready, when Bradley turned toward her and
held out his hand.</p>
<p>“Co-Tan,” he said, “unstring your
bow—these are my friends, and yours.” And to the
Englishmen: “This is Co-Tan. You who saw her save me from
Schwartz know a part of what I owe her.”</p>
<p>The rough men gathered about the girl, and when she spoke to
them in broken English, with a smile upon her lips enhancing the
charm of her irresistible accent, each and every one of them
promptly fell in love with her and constituted himself henceforth
her guardian and her slave.</p>
<p>A moment later the attention of each was called to Plesser by a
volley of invective. They turned in time to see the man running
toward von Schoenvorts who was just rising from the ground. Plesser
carried a rifle with bayonet fixed, that he had snatched from the
side of Dietz’s corpse. Von Schoenvorts’ face was livid
with fear, his jaws working as though he would call for help; but
no sound came from his blue lips.</p>
<p>“You struck me,” shrieked Plesser. “Once,
twice, three times, you struck me, pig. You murdered
Schwerke—you drove him insane by your cruelty until he took
his own life. You are only one of your kind—they are all like
you from the Kaiser down. I wish that you were the Kaiser. Thus
would I do!” And he lunged his bayonet through von
Schoenvorts’ chest. Then he let his rifle fall with the dying
man and wheeled toward Bradley. “Here I am,” he said.
“Do with me as you like. All my life I have been kicked and
cuffed by such as that, and yet always have I gone out when they
commanded, singing, to give up my life if need be to keep them in
power. Only lately have I come to know what a fool I have been. But
now I am no longer a fool, and besides, I am avenged and Schwerke
is avenged, so you can kill me if you wish. Here I am.”</p>
<p>“If I was after bein’ the king,” said Olson,
“I’d pin the V.C. on your noble chist; but bein’
only an Irishman with a Swede name, for which God forgive me, the
bist I can do is shake your hand.”</p>
<p>“You will not be punished,” said Bradley.
“There are four of you left—if you four want to come
along and work with us, we will take you; but you will come as
prisoners.”</p>
<p>“It suits me,” said Plesser. “Now that the
captain-lieutenant is dead you need not fear us. All our lives we
have known nothing but to obey his class. If I had not killed him,
I suppose I would be fool enough to obey him again; but he is dead.
Now we will obey you—we must obey some one.”</p>
<p>“And you?” Bradley turned to the other survivors of
the original crew of the U-33. Each promised obedience.</p>
<p>The two dead Germans were buried in a single grave, and then the
party boarded the submarine and stowed away the oil.</p>
<p>Here Bradley told the men what had befallen him since the night
of September 14th when he had disappeared so mysteriously from the
camp upon the plateau. Now he learned for the first time that Bowen
J. Tyler, Jr., and Miss La Rue had been missing even longer than he
and that no faintest trace of them had been discovered.</p>
<p>Olson told him of how the Germans had returned and waited in
ambush for them outside the fort, capturing them that they might be
used to assist in the work of refining the oil and later in manning
the U-33, and Plesser told briefly of the experiences of the German
crew under von Schoenvorts since they had escaped from Caspak
months before—of how they lost their bearings after having
been shelled by ships they had attempted to sneak farther north and
how at last with provisions gone and fuel almost exhausted they had
sought and at last found, more by accident than design, the
mysterious island they had once been so glad to leave behind.</p>
<p>“Now,” announced Bradley, “we’ll plan
for the future. The boat has fuel, provisions and water for a
month, I believe you said, Plesser; there are ten of us to man it.
We have a last sad duty here—we must search for Miss La Rue
and Mr. Tyler. I say a sad duty because we know that we shall not
find them; but it is none the less our duty to comb the shoreline,
firing signal shells at intervals, that we at least may leave at
last with full knowledge that we have done all that men might do to
locate them.”</p>
<p>None dissented from this conviction, nor was there a voice
raised in protest against the plan to at least make assurance
doubly sure before quitting Caspak forever.</p>
<p>And so they started, cruising slowly up the coast and firing an
occasional shot from the gun. Often the vessel was brought to a
stop, and always there were anxious eyes scanning the shore for an
answering signal. Late in the afternoon they caught sight of a
number of Band-lu warriors; but when the vessel approached the
shore and the natives realized that human beings stood upon the
back of the strange monster of the sea, they fled in terror before
Bradley could come within hailing distance.</p>
<p>That night they dropped anchor at the mouth of a sluggish stream
whose warm waters swarmed with millions of tiny tadpolelike
organisms—minute human spawn starting on their precarious
journey from some inland pool toward “the
beginning”—a journey which one in millions, perhaps,
might survive to complete. Already almost at the inception of life
they were being greeted by thousands of voracious mouths as fish
and reptiles of many kinds fought to devour them, the while other
and larger creatures pursued the devourers, to be, in turn, preyed
upon by some other of the countless forms that inhabit the deeps of
Caprona’s frightful sea.</p>
<p>The second day was practically a repetition of the first. They
moved very slowly with frequent stops and once they landed in the
Kro-lu country to hunt. Here they were attacked by the
bow-and-arrow men, whom they could not persuade to palaver with
them. So belligerent were the natives that it became necessary to
fire into them in order to escape their persistent and ferocious
attentions.</p>
<p>“What chance,” asked Bradley, as they were returning
to the boat with their game, “could Tyler and Miss La Rue
have had among such as these?”</p>
<p>But they continued on their fruitless quest, and the third day,
after cruising along the shore of a deep inlet, they passed a line
of lofty cliffs that formed the southern shore of the inlet and
rounded a sharp promontory about noon. Co-Tan and Bradley were on
deck alone, and as the new shoreline appeared beyond the point, the
girl gave an exclamation of joy and seized the man’s hand in
hers.</p>
<p>“Oh, look!” she cried. “The Galu country! The
Galu country! It is my country that I never thought to see
again.”</p>
<p>“You are glad to come again, Co-Tan?” asked
Bradley.</p>
<p>“Oh, so glad!” she cried. “And you will come
with me to my people? We may live here among them, and you will be
a great warrior—oh, when Jor dies you may even be chief, for
there is none so mighty as my warrior. You will come?”</p>
<p>Bradley shook his head. “I cannot, little Co-Tan,”
he answered. “My country needs me, and I must go back. Maybe
someday I shall return. You will not forget me, Co-Tan?”</p>
<p>She looked at him in wide-eyed wonder. “You are going away
from me?” she asked in a very small voice. “You are
going away from Co-Tan?”</p>
<p>Bradley looked down upon the little bowed head. He felt the soft
cheek against his bare arm; and he felt something else there
too— hot drops of moisture that ran down to his very
finger-tips and splashed, but each one wrung from a woman’s
heart.</p>
<p>He bent low and raised the tear-stained face to his own.
“No, Co-Tan,” he said, “I am not going away from
you—for you are going with me. You are going back to my own
country to be my wife. Tell me that you will, Co-Tan.” And he
bent still lower yet from his height and kissed her lips. Nor did
he need more than the wonderful new light in her eyes to tell him
that she would go to the end of the world with him if he would but
take her. And then the gun-crew came up from below again to fire a
signal shot, and the two were brought down from the high heaven of
their new happiness to the scarred and weather-beaten deck of the
U-33.</p>
<p>An hour later the vessel was running close in by a shore of
wondrous beauty beside a parklike meadow that stretched back a mile
inland to the foot of a plateau when Whitely called attention to a
score of figures clambering downward from the elevation to the
lowland below. The engines were reversed and the boat brought to a
stop while all hands gathered on deck to watch the little party
coming toward them across the meadow.</p>
<p>“They are Galus,” cried Co-Tan; “they are my
own people. Let me speak to them lest they think we come to fight
them. Put me ashore, my man, and I will go meet them.”</p>
<p>The nose of the U-boat was run close in to the steep bank; but
when Co-Tan would have run forward alone, Bradley seized her hand
and held her back. “I will go with you, Co-Tan,” he
said; and together they advanced to meet the oncoming party.</p>
<p>There were about twenty warriors moving forward in a thin line,
as our infantry advance as skirmishers. Bradley could not but
notice the marked difference between this formation and the moblike
methods of the lower tribes he had come in contact with, and he
commented upon it to Co-Tan.</p>
<p>“Galu warriors always advance into battle thus,” she
said. “The lesser people remain in a huddled group where they
can scarce use their weapons the while they present so big a mark
to us that our spears and arrows cannot miss them; but when they
hurl theirs at our warriors, if they miss the first man, there is
no chance that they will kill some one behind him.</p>
<p>“Stand still now,” she cautioned, “and fold
your arms. They will not harm us then.”</p>
<p>Bradley did as he was bid, and the two stood with arms folded as
the line of warriors approached. When they had come within some
fifty yards, they halted and one spoke. “Who are you and from
whence do you come?” he asked; and then Co-Tan gave a little,
glad cry and sprang forward with out-stretched arms.</p>
<p>“Oh, Tan!” she exclaimed. “Do you not know
your little Co-Tan?”</p>
<p>The warrior stared, incredulous, for a moment, and then he, too,
ran forward and when they met, took the girl in his arms. It was
then that Bradley experienced to the full a sensation that was new
to him—a sudden hatred for the strange warrior before him and
a desire to kill without knowing why he would kill. He moved
quickly to the girl’s side and grasped her wrist.</p>
<p>“Who is this man?” he demanded in cold tones.</p>
<p>Co-Tan turned a surprised face toward the Englishman and then of
a sudden broke forth into a merry peal of laughter. “This is
my father, Brad-lee,” she cried.</p>
<p>“And who is Brad-lee?” demanded the warrior.</p>
<p>“He is my man,” replied Co-Tan simply.</p>
<p>“By what right?” insisted Tan.</p>
<p>And then she told him briefly of all that she had passed through
since the Wieroos had stolen her and of how Bradley had rescued her
and sought to rescue An-Tak, her brother.</p>
<p>“You are satisfied with him?” asked Tan.</p>
<p>“Yes,” replied the girl proudly.</p>
<p>It was then that Bradley’s attention was attracted to the
edge of the plateau by a movement there, and looking closely he saw
a horse bearing two figures sliding down the steep declivity. Once
at the bottom, the animal came charging across the meadowland at a
rapid run. It was a magnificent animal—a great bay stallion
with a white-blazed face and white forelegs to the knees, its
barrel encircled by a broad surcingle of white; and as it came to a
sudden stop beside Tan, the Englishman saw that it bore a man and a
girl—a tall man and a girl as beautiful as Co-Tan. When the
girl espied the latter, she slid from the horse and ran toward her,
fairly screaming for joy.</p>
<p>The man dismounted and stood beside Tan. Like Bradley he was
garbed after the fashion of the surrounding warriors; but there was
a subtle difference between him and his companion. Possibly he
detected a similar difference in Bradley, for his first question
was, “From what country?” and though he spoke in Galu
Bradley thought he detected an accent.</p>
<p>“England,” replied Bradley.</p>
<p>A broad smile lighted the newcomer’s face as he held out
his hand. “I am Tom Billings of Santa Monica,
California,” he said. “I know all about you, and
I’m mighty glad to find you alive.”</p>
<p>“How did you get here?” asked Bradley. “I
thought ours was the only party of men from the outer world ever to
enter Caprona.”</p>
<p>“It was, until we came in search of Bowen J. Tyler,
Jr.,” replied Billings. “We found him and sent him home
with his bride; but I was kept a prisoner here.”</p>
<p>Bradley’s face darkened—then they were not among
friends after all. “There are ten of us down there on a
German sub with small-arms and a gun,” he said quickly in
English. “It will be no trick to get away from these
people.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know my jailer,” replied Billings,
“or you’d not be so sure. Wait, I’ll introduce
you.” And then turning to the girl who had accompanied him he
called her by name. “Ajor,” he said, “permit me
to introduce Lieutenant Bradley; Lieutenant, Mrs. Billings—my
jailer!”</p>
<p>The Englishman laughed as he shook hands with the girl.
“You are not as good a soldier as I,” he said to
Billings. “Instead of being taken prisoner myself I have
taken one—Mrs. Bradley, this is Mr. Billings.”</p>
<p>Ajor, quick to understand, turned toward Co-Tan. “You are
going back with him to his country?” she asked. Co-Tan
admitted it.</p>
<p>“You dare?” asked Ajor. “But your father will
not permit it— Jor, my father, High Chief of the Galus, will
not permit it, for like me you are cos-ata-lo. Oh, Co-Tan, if we
but could! How I would love to see all the strange and wonderful
things of which my Tom tells me!”</p>
<p>Bradley bent and whispered in her ear. “Say the word and
you may both go with us.”</p>
<p>Billings heard and speaking in English, asked Ajor if she would
go.</p>
<p>“Yes,” she answered, “If you wish it; but you
know, my Tom, that if Jor captures us, both you and Co-Tan’s
man will pay the penalty with your lives—not even his love
for me nor his admiration for you can save you.”</p>
<p>Bradley noticed that she spoke in English—broken English
like Co-Tan’s but equally appealing. “We can easily get
you aboard the ship,” he said, “on some pretext or
other, and then we can steam away. They can neither harm nor detain
us, nor will we have to fire a shot at them.”</p>
<p>And so it was done, Bradley and Co-Tan taking Ajor and Billings
aboard to “show” them the vessel, which almost
immediately raised anchor and moved slowly out into the sea.</p>
<p>“I hate to do it,” said Billings. “They have
been fine to me. Jor and Tan are splendid men and they will think
me an ingrate; but I can’t waste my life here when there is
so much to be done in the outer world.”</p>
<p>As they steamed down the inland sea past the island of Oo-oh,
the stories of their adventures were retold, and Bradley learned
that Bowen Tyler and his bride had left the Galu country but a
fortnight before and that there was every reason to believe that
the Toreador might still be lying in the Pacific not far off the
subterranean mouth of the river which emitted Caprona’s
heated waters into the ocean.</p>
<p>Late in the second day, after running through swarms of hideous
reptiles, they submerged at the point where the river entered
beneath the cliffs and shortly after rose to the sunlit surface of
the Pacific; but nowhere as far as they could see was sign of
another craft. Down the coast they steamed toward the beach where
Billings had made his crossing in the hydro-aeroplane and just at
dusk the lookout announced a light dead ahead. It proved to be
aboard the Toreador, and a half-hour later there was such a reunion
on the deck of the trig little yacht as no one there had ever
dreamed might be possible. Of the Allies there were only Tippet and
James to be mourned, and no one mourned any of the Germans dead nor
Benson, the traitor, whose ugly story was first told in Bowen
Tyler’s manuscript.</p>
<p>Tyler and the rescue party had but just reached the yacht that
afternoon. They had heard, faintly, the signal shots fired by the
U-33 but had been unable to locate their direction and so had
assumed that they had come from the guns of the Toreador.</p>
<p>It was a happy party that sailed north toward sunny, southern
California, the old U-33 trailing in the wake of the Toreador and
flying with the latter the glorious Stars and Stripes beneath which
she had been born in the shipyard at Santa Monica. Three newly
married couples, their bonds now duly solemnized by the master of
the ship, joyed in the peace and security of the untracked waters
of the south Pacific and the unique honeymoon which, had it not
been for stern duty ahead, they could have wished protracted till
the end of time.</p>
<p>And so they came one day to dock at the shipyard which Bowen
Tyler now controlled, and here the U-33 still lies while those who
passed so many eventful days within and because of her, have gone
their various ways.</p>
<hr class="full" />
<pre>
I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
10 12 of or
14 19 of animals life of animals
31 26 is arms his arms
37 14 above this above his
37 23 Bradley, Bradley
54 18 man man
57 14 and of Oo-oh of Oo-oh
62 18 spend spent
63 31 and mumbled the mumbled
64 9 things thing
80 30 east cast
104 16 proaching proached
106 30 cos-at-lu cos-ata-lu
126 17 not artistic not an artistic
126 25 close below hands close below
130 1 internals intervals
132 9 than that
132 10 splashes splashed
134 3 know know not know
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Out of Time's Abyss
by Edgar Rice Burroughs
</pre>
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