Authors: George England
"For us?"
"That depends. Maybe we'll be able to lie hidden, here, till this
thing blows over, whatever it may be. If not, and if they cut off our
water-supply, well—"
He ended with a kind of growl. The sound gave Beatrice a strange
sensation. She kept a moment's silence, then remarked:
"They're up around Central Park now, the drums are, don't you think
so? How far do you make that?"
"Close on to two miles. Come, let's be moving."
In silence they climbed the shaky ladder, reached the tower stairs and
descended the many stories to their dwelling.
Here, the first thing Stern did was to strike a light, which he masked
in a corner, behind a skin stretched like a screen from one wall to
the other. By this illumination, very dim yet adequate, he minutely
examined all their firearms.
He loaded every one to capacity and made sure all were in working
order. Then he satisfied himself that the supply of cartridges was
ample. These he laid carefully along by the windows overlooking
Madison Forest, by the door leading into the suite of offices, and by
the stair-head that gave access to the fifth floor.
Then he blew out the light again.
"Two revolvers, one shotgun, and one rifle, all told," said he. "All
magazine arms. I guess that'll hold them for a while, if it comes down
to brass tacks! How's your nerve, Beatrice?"
"Never better!" she whispered, from the dark. He saw the dim white
blur that indicated her face, and it was very dear to him, all of a
sudden—dearer, far, than he had ever realized.
"Good little girl!" he exclaimed, giving her the rifle. A moment his
hand pressed hers. Then with a quick intake of the breath, he strode
over to the window and once more listened. She followed.
"Much nearer, now!" judged he. "Hear
that
, will you?"
Again they listened.
Louder now the drums sounded, dull, ominous, pulsating like the
hammering of a fever-pulse inside a sick man's skull. A dull, confused
hum, a noise as of a swarming mass of bees, drifted down-wind.
"Maybe they'll pass by?" whispered Beatrice.
"It's Madison Forest they're aiming at!" returned the engineer. "See
there!"
He pointed to westward.
There, far off along the forest-lane of Fourteenth Street, a sudden
gleam of light flashed out among the trees, vanished, reappeared, was
joined by two, ten, a hundred others. And now the whole approach to
Madison Forest, by several streets, began to sparkle with these
feux-follets, weaving and flickering unsteadily toward the square.
Here, there, everywhere through the dense masses of foliage, the
watchers could already see a dim and moving mass, fitfully illuminated
by torches that now burned steady, now flared into red and smoky
tourbillons of flame in the night-wind.
"Like monster glow-worms, crawling among the trees!" the girl
exclaimed. "We
could
mow them down, from here, already! God grant we
sha'n't have to fight!"
"S-h-h-h! Wait and see what's up!"
Now, from the other horde, coming from the north, sounds of warlike
preparation were growing ever louder.
With quicker beats the insistent tom-toms throbbed their rhythmic
melancholy rune, hollow and dissonant. Then all at once the drums
ceased; and through the night air drifted a minor chant; a wail, that
rose, fell, died, and came again, lagging as many strange voices
joined it.
And from the square, below, a shrill, high-pitched, half-animal cry
responded. Creeping shudders chilled the flesh along the engineer's
backbone.
"What I need, now," thought he, "is about a hundred pounds of
high-grade dynamite, or a gallon of nitroglycerin. Better still, a
dozen capsules of my own invention, my 'Pulverite!'
"I guess
that
would settle things mighty quick. It would be the
joker in this game, all right! Well, why not make some? With what
chemicals I've got left, couldn't I work up a half-pint? Bottled in
glass flasks, I guess it would turn the trick on 'em!"
"Why, they look black!" suddenly interrupted the girl. "See there—and
there?"
She pointed toward the spring. Stern saw moving shadows in the dark.
Then, through an opening, he got a blurred impression of a hand,
holding a torch. He saw a body, half-human.
The glimpse vanished, but he had seen enough.
"Black—yes, blue-black! They seem so, anyhow. And—why, did you see
the
size
of them? No bigger than apes! Good Heaven!"
Involuntarily he shuddered. For now, like a dream-horde of hideous
creatures seen in a nightmare, the torch-bearers had spread all
through the forest at the base of the Metropolitan.
Away from the building out across by the spring and even to Fifth
Avenue the mob extended, here thick, there thin, without order or
coherence—a shifting, murmuring, formless, seemingly planless
congeries of dull brutality.
Here or there, where the swaying of the trees parted the branches a
little, the wavering lights brought some fragment of the mass to view.
No white thing showed anywhere. All was dark and vague. Indistinctly,
waveringly as in a vision, dusky heads could be made out. There showed
a naked arm, greasily shining for a second in the ruddy glow which now
diffused itself through the whole wood. Here the watchers saw a
glistening back; again, an out-thrust leg, small and crooked, apelike
and repulsive.
And once again the engineer got a glimpse of a misshapen hand, a long,
lean, hideous hand that clutched a spear. But, hardly seen, it
vanished into obscurity once more.
"Seems as though malformed human members, black and bestial, had been
flung at random into a ghastly kaleidoscope, turned by a madman!"
whispered Stern. The girl answering nothing, peered out in fascinated
horror.
Up, up to the watchers rose a steady droning hum; and from the
northward, ever louder, ever clearer, came now the war-song of the
attacking party. The drums began again, suddenly. A high-pitched,
screaming laugh echoed and died among the woods beyond the ruins of
Twenty-eighth street.
Still in through the western approaches of the square, more and more
lights kept straggling. Thicker and still more thick grew the press
below. Now the torch-glow was strong enough to cast its lurid
reflections on the vacant-staring wrecks of windows and of walls,
gaping like the shattered skulls of a civilization which was no more.
To the nostrils of the man and woman up floated an acrid, pitchy
smell. And birds, dislodged from sleep, began to zigzag about,
aimlessly, with frightened cries. One even dashed against the
building, close at hand; and fell, a fluttering, broken thing, to
earth.
Stern, with a word of hot anger, fingered his revolver. But Beatrice
laid her hand upon his arm.
"Not yet!" begged she.
He glanced down at her, where she stood beside him at the empty
embrasure of the window. The dim light from the vast and empty
overarch of sky, powdered with a wonder of stars, showed him the vague
outline of her face. Wistful and pale she was, yet very brave. Through
Stern welled a sudden tenderness.
He put his arm around her, and for a moment her head lay on his
breast.
But only a moment.
For, all at once, a snarling cry rang through the wood; and, with a
northward surge of the torch-bearers, a confused tumult of shrieks,
howls, simian chatterings and dull blows, the battle joined between
those two vague, strange forces down below in the black forest.
How long it lasted, what its meaning, its details, the watchers
could not tell. Impossible, from that height and in that gloom, broken
only by an occasional pale gleam of moonlight through the drifting
cloud-rack, to judge the fortunes of this primitive war.
They knew not the point at issue nor yet the tide of victory or loss.
Only they knew that back and forth the torches flared, the war-drums
boomed and rattled, the yelling, slaughtering, demoniac hordes surged
in a swirl of bestial murder-lust.
And so time passed, and fewer grew the drums, yet the torches flared
on; and, as the first gray dawn went fingering up the sky there came a
break, a flight, a merciless pursuit.
Dimly the man and woman, up aloft, saw things that ran and shrieked
and were cut down—saw things, there in the forest, that died even as
they killed, and mingled the howl of triumph with the bubbling gasp of
dissolution.
"Ugh! A beast war!" shuddered the engineer, at length, drawing
Beatrice away from the window. "Come, it's getting light, again. It's
too clear, now—come away!"
She yielded, waking as it were from the horrid fascination that had
held her spell-bound. Down she sat on her bed of furs, covered her
eyes with her hands, and for a while remained quite motionless. Stern
watched her. And again his hand sought the revolver-butt.
"I ought to have waded into that bunch, long ago," thought he. "We
both ought to have. What it's all about, who could tell? But it's an
outrage against the night itself, against the world, even dead though
it be. If it hadn't been for wasting good ammunition for nothing—!"
A curious, guttural whine, down there in the forest, attracted his
attention. Over to the window he strode, and once again peered down.
A change had come upon the scene, a sudden, radical change. No more
the sounds of combat rose; but now a dull, conclamant murmur as of
victory and preparation for some ghastly rite.
Already in the center of the wood, hard by the spring, a little fire
had been lighted. Even as Stern looked, dim, moving figures heaped on
wood. The engineer saw whirling droves of sparks spiral upward; he saw
dense smoke, followed by a larger flame.
And, grouped around this, already some hundreds of the now paling
torches cast their livid glare.
Off to one side he could just distinguish what seemed to be a group
engaged in some activity—but what this might be, he could not
determine. Yet, all at once a scream of pain burst out, therefrom; and
then a gasping cry that ended quickly and did not come again.
Another shriek, and still a third; and now into the leaping flames
some dark, misshapen things were flung, and a great shout arose.
Then rose, also, a shrill, singsong whine; and suddenly drams roared,
now with a different cadence.
"Hark!" said the engineer. "The torchmen must have exterminated the
other bunch, and got possession of the drums. They're using 'em,
themselves—and badly!"
By the firelight vague shapes came and went, their shadows grotesquely
flung against the leafy screens. The figures quickened their paces and
their gestures; then suddenly, with cries, flung themselves into wild
activity. And all about the fire, Stern saw a wheeling, circling,
eddying mob of black and frightful shapes.
"The swine!" he breathed. "Wait—wait till I make a pint or two of
Pulverite!"
Even as he spoke, the concourse grew quiet with expectancy. A silence
fell upon the forest. Something was being led forward toward the
fire—something, for which the others all made way.
The wind freshened. With it, increased the volume of smoke. Another
frightened bird, cheeping forlornly, fluttered above the tree-tops.
Then rose a cry, a shriek long-drawn and ghastly, that climbed till it
broke in a bubbling, choking gasp.
Came a sharp clicking sound, a quick scuffle, a grunt; then silence
once more.
And all at once the drums crashed; and the dance began again, madder,
more obscenely hideous than ever.
"Voodoo!" gulped Stern. "Obeah-work! And—and the quicker I get my
Pulverite to working, the better!"
Undecided no longer, determined now on a course of definite action
without further delay, the engineer turned back into the room. Upon
his forehead stood a cold and prickling sweat, of horror and disgust.
But to his lips he forced a smile, as, in the half light of the red
and windy dawn, he drew close to Beatrice.
Then all at once, to his unspeakable relief, he saw the girl was
sleeping.
Utterly worn out, exhausted and spent with the long strain, the
terrible fatigues of the past thirty-six hours, she had lain down and
had dropped off to sleep. There she lay at full length. Very beautiful
she looked, half seen in the morning gloom. One arm crossed her full
bosom; the other pillowed her cheek. And, bending close, Stern watched
her a long minute.
With strange emotion he heard her even breathing; he caught the
perfume of her warm, ripe womanhood. Never had she seemed to him so
perfect, so infinitely to be loved, to be desired.
And at thought of that beast-horde in the wood below, at realization
of what
might
be, if they two should chance to be discovered and
made captive, his face went hard as iron. An ugly, savage look
possessed him, and he clenched both fists.
For a brief second he stooped still closer; he laid his lips
soundlessly, gently upon her hair. And when again he stood up, the
look in his eyes boded scant good to anything that might threaten the
sleeping girl.
"So, now to work!" said he.
Into his own room he stepped quietly, his room where he had collected
his various implements and chemicals. First of all he set out, on the
floor, a two-quart copper tea-kettle; and beside this, choosing
carefully, he ranged the necessary ingredients for a "making" of his
secret explosive.
"Now, the wash-out water," said he, taking another larger dish.
Over to the water-pail he walked. Then he stopped, suddenly, frowning
a black and puzzled frown.
"What?" he exclaimed. "But—there isn't a pint left, all together!
Hem! Now then, here
is
a situation."
Hastily he recalled how the great labors of the previous day, the
wireless experiments and all, had prevented him from going out to the
spring to replenish his supply. Now, though he bitterly cursed himself
for his neglect, that did no good. The fact remained, there was no
water.