CHAPTER XVI
THE STONE TABLE
Our feelings can hardly be described as we crept closer to the spot from which the scientist's angry protest had gone up through the silence like a thin wire. The loneliness of that day had been appalling. I know that Edith Herndon's quiet face was continually before my mental vision, while Holman's actions convinced me that he was suffering acutely. If we were certain that Leith intended to do no wrong to the party, the fact that he was within speaking distance of the two girls was particularly distressing after the knowledge we had gained in the night. With extreme caution we wormed our way forward, the Professor's piping voice acting as a verbal signpost in helping us to locate the spot where he was engaged in holding the argument. We were close enough to hear his words, and our nerves were on the highest tension as he shrieked a defiance against some person near. We had only one thought as to who that person could be. The Professor was piling charges of treachery upon the head of a listener, and there was only one head on the Isle of Tears that contained enough villainy to make the charges possible!
"I will not sign the papers!" cried the scientist. "I want my liberty, sir! You are a scoundrel! Where are my daughters?"
Holman, creeping a few inches in front, had drawn his revolver. The blood pounded madly; through my brain. We were within a few yards of Leith, and even as we moved snakily forward, the heavy bass voice of the scoundrel came to our ears.
"You stupid old fool!" he growled. "You can demand all day and all night if it does you any good. Do you know who I am?"
"I know you are a ruffian!" snapped the Professor. "I know you are a rogue who has no respect for his word and honour. I know you are a coward who insults women!"
"Go on," mocked Leith.
"I've been a fool!" cried the old man. "I was blinded to everything through my love of science. Now I know that you lied. I know you brought me here to rob me and insult my daughters."
The sun had set, and the twilight made it difficult for us to locate the two men. But we were close. When Leith spoke again, his voice sounded so near that I started involuntarily, while Holman, resting upon one hand, parted the branches with the barrel of the revolver which he gripped in the other.
"But you will admit when all is over that I have shown you some wonderful things," sneered Leith.
The Professor was silent a moment, as if endeavouring to fathom the meaning of the words, and we moved a few inches closer in the little interval.
"How?" asked the scientist.
Holman's hand that gripped the revolver remained motionless. Through a rift in the leafy curtain I caught a glimpse of a bulk that was within a yard of our hiding place, and I knew that the youngster was waiting for the brute to speak to make certain that he was covering the right man. The silence was nerve-destroying.
"Why," said Leith, speaking slowly and distinctly, "you are in the hands of the Wizards of the Centipede. I am their head, and if you are not extremely lucky you will make a sacrifice to—"
Something fell upon my head with tremendous force at that moment, but as the blow descended Holman fired, and even as I fought to escape the grip of the strong fingers that twined themselves around my neck, I realized with a great wave of happiness that the bulk in front of me had pitched forward when the shot had shattered the silence.
In a wild bedlam of oaths and shouts we fought and struggled. The "tivo" dancers had followed upon our track through the long afternoon, and the time that we had lost in locating Leith had given them an opportunity to come up with us. In the gloom we threshed backward and forward, but our efforts to escape were vain. The one-eyed white man appeared mysteriously out of the shadows to help the huge natives, and in three minutes Holman and I were tied hand and foot and stretched out near the unfortunate Professor, who, with bound limbs, was sitting up in the centre of the grassy clearing where Leith and he had been exchanging personalities. There were no signs of the girls, and I wondered, as my brain recovered from the effects of the blow, what had happened to them.
Holman's voice put a question that roused me from my half stupor.
"Did I kill him?" cried the young fellow. "Tell me!"
The question was answered by a stream of blasphemy that came from Leith himself. The big ruffian had fallen into a bunch of ribbon-grass, but now, with the assistance of One Eye, he got to his feet and staggered toward us. From the actions of his white partner, I surmised that Holman's bullet had struck him in the left shoulder, and the surmise proved true. The attack of the dancers had jerked the youngster's arm, and the wound was twelve inches above the point that Holman had aimed at.
With One Eye and the three dancers holding him upon his feet, and the blood dripping from the wound, he kicked us furiously, howling unspeakable imprecations as he drove his heavy boots against our ribs. We had met the real Leith at last. The devilishness that we had sensed behind the lustreless eyes blazed forth in full fury, and to me, familiar as I was with all the weird and wonderful curse phraseology used by the skippers and mates of the island boats, his anathemas impressed me as being the most blood curdling oaths that had ever come to my ears. The man was a devil at that minute. His tremendous strength made the restraining efforts of the other four useless, and we were in danger of being kicked to death if a merciful interruption had not stopped him. The horrified Professor, who was sitting upright during the exhibition of brutality, lifted up his voice in protest, and his shrill denunciations brought a cry out of the surrounding gloom.
"Father! father! Where are you, father?"
It was Edith Herndon's voice, and the note of agony in the words maddened me. I drove my teeth into Leith's left leg as he stood quiet for a second near my head, and the brute used the sole of his right boot to loosen my grip. There were no gentle ways about the devil. As Edith's cry was repeated, he had administered a farewell kick to Holman and me, and shouted an order in the same strange dialect which the dancer had used in addressing me in the Cavern of the Skulls when the robe of parrot feathers had saved my life. The three natives immediately gripped us by the heels and we were dragged off into the bushes.
It seemed to me that Edith Herndon's cry was repeated again and again as the natives dragged me at a jog trot through the undergrowth. There was untold anguish in the cry. It was plain that Leith had taken the unfortunate old Professor some distance from his daughters so that they could not listen to the conversation, and the scientist's high-pitched protests against our maltreatment had caused the terror-stricken girls to think that Leith was ill-using their father. I imagined that the big ruffian had rushed us away from the spot lest the two women would escape from Soma and run to the assistance of their father, but I know that we were thankful that the interruption put an end to the football tactics in which the infuriated devil was indulging.
But we had escaped from the frying pan to find ourselves in the flames. The three dancers felt that the Fates had given them a chance to avenge their friend, and they took full advantage of the opportunity. So that each would have a proper share in the burden, they placed us side by side, strapped our ankles together, and then, passing a rope through the straps, the three laid hold of it and set off through the night, towing us behind with an absolute disregard for our feelings. They entered into the fun of the thing. No Norwegian peasant ever towed home a Yule log with a greater exhibition of joy than those savages displayed as they hauled us through the thickets. They had a contempt for open places. They chose the most intricate paths they could find, and if a tough liana gripped Holman or me around the throat, the fiends found great fun in straining upon the rope till the wire-like creepers gave way.
We suffered unbearable torture. Hour after hour we were jerked over the ground. Our clothes were stripped from our backs, our faces were torn and bloody from the thorns, and our tormented flesh protested through every nerve against the treatment. Once Holman put a question in a hoarse whisper.
"Where are they taking us?" he asked.
"God knows," I gasped.
"It's my fault, Verslun."
"Why?" I groaned.
"I missed him! I missed him! I——"
His voice died away in a choking sob, and I imagine he swooned away. As we were being towed by the legs, I guessed that Holman was suffering excruciating pain from the limb that he had injured by the fall from the maupei tree, and the lapse into unconsciousness came as a blessed relief. To me the rush through the jungle seemed a superlative nightmare. My mind played tricks with me. I thought that the three black forms, leaping along in front, were a trinity of devils who were ordered to torture me for my stupidity in allowing Edith Herndon and her sister to leave the yacht. Every creeper became a whip wielded by a mocking phantom, and I am forced to confess that I have a vivid recollection of crying to heaven for pardon for my criminal negligence. Every horror that the happenings of the previous forty-eight hours had germinated within my brain sprang into lusty being as my mind trembled upon the abyss of insanity, and Edith Herndon was the person that the legion of horrors threatened.
I came to my proper senses to find that our towing trinity had called a halt. Holman was repeating a question over and over again, and I endeavoured to moisten my dry throat so that I could answer.
"Where are we?" he groaned. "Where are we? Are you dead, Verslun? Open your eyes and take a look around; my peepers are bunged up."
I managed to open my eyes, but I could see nothing but the encompassing jungle. For a few minutes I thought that we were alone. Then I made out the three figures crouched in front of us upon the grass. Their heads were turned away from us, and they were facing the east, where the faint luminous glow of the rising moon was just beginning to appear in the sky.
The three were motionless. They were squatting upon their hams, and their attitude seemed uncanny when I compared it with the mad film of action which my mental machinery had recorded during the preceding hours. They had stopped for some purpose, but that purpose I could not determine.
"Are they there?" asked Holman.
"Yes," I murmured.
"What are they doing?"
"Sitting in a line staring at the hills."
The youngster gave a grunt, turned his head till he managed to wipe the mud and blood from his eyes upon my shoulder, then he peered at the silent three. Their motionless forms fascinated him. It was hard to connect them with the three bounding devils who had brought us on a gallop that was more painful than the bareback ride which the Polish nobleman gave to the intriguing Mazeppa.
"What do you make of it?" he whispered.
"They're resting perhaps."
"Not them! They look as if they're hatching some new villainy."
Minute after minute crept by, but the three remained inactive. They took no notice of our whispered conversation. No Hindu Yogis ever sat meditating with the absolute immovability of the three, and as our wounds stiffened under the cold night air, we became foolishly angry at the wait. If we had to meet death, it would please us to get it over as soon as possible.
"If I could have one more fling at them." groaned Holman. "By all that's holy, Verslun, I feel that I could fight a million if these ropes were off me."
He endeavoured to get his face down to the bandages on my wrists, but we had been strapped in such a manner that it was impossible to reach any of the ropes with our teeth, so we lay quiet and reviewed the legion of tormenting thoughts that marched through our minds. The jungle, like the three natives, seemed to be waiting for a happening. The silence was more horrible than the thunder of an earthquake. It seemed to well out from the silent three, till we longed with a great longing for some terrific and prolonged noise to shiver it and send battalions of echoes to chase it into the hills.
The moon peered above the black cliffs, and the surroundings became more distinct. We were on the edge of a clearing, and there was something vaguely familiar about the trees that our cramped position allowed us to see. We felt certain that we had passed this place on our journey from the yacht, and each minute that passed strengthened the conviction.
"Seems to me that I've seen that tree before," muttered Holman.
"I hold the same impression," I said.
"And those rocks," remarked the youngster. "Why, we're going back to The Waif!"
The three natives rose together at that moment and gripped the rope. We gave a joint groan of agony as our stiffened limbs were jerked forward, and as we were pulled from the fringe of reed-like grass our exact whereabouts were made known to us. Standing up against the moon, the rim of the orb showing just above the massive top, was the great stone table that Holman and I had climbed two nights before!
