A Strange Discovery

by Charles Romyn Dake

"The mental strain on poor Pym was almost enough to make him a madman. There strode the maniac, to and from the edge of the abyss, rhythmically, rarely varying the distance by a yard—twenty yards off, then back again, then away. On every third or fourth approach he stepped literally to the edge of the chasm, and glanced down, ten thousand feet to where the stream below looked like the finest silver thread, lighted by the dazzling light from the giant crater, reflected into every smallest fissure. Now and again the madman would lash himself into a fury, and stop for a moment to gaze at Lilama, who never moved from her crouching position some ten feet from the canyon's brink. Even Peters, the stoic, was moved—but moved to anger rather than to grief or fear. He inwardly chafed, and madly raved, by turns, at the impotency of his position; whilst Pym seemed frozen into statuesque despair. How much longer would this scene of terror last? Oh, the thought of that awful leap into space! The maniac might any moment end the scene—each time as he approached in that wild rush backward and forward might be the last. The slightest move, the slightest sound, might precipitate the dire calamity—and Lilama as well as Pym and Peters seemed to feel this truth. The madman, like the wild beast, appears to need an extraneous stimulus, be it ever so slight, to suggest an initiative: the crooking of a finger, the whispering of a word, may be sufficient, but it must be something.—Ah! Has the moment come? Has the insane man caught some sound inaudible to the others? He pauses. Yes, he is going to act.

"'Oh! friend,' wailed Pym to Peters, in a low voice, 'save her, save her, or where she goes, there go I.'

"Then Peters looks across the chasm, down upon the scene beyond. The opposite brink at this point is ten or twelve feet lower than the spot where Pym and Peters stand, which gives them an excellent view of Lilama and Ahpilus. It is impossible to say just why, but it is obvious that the time which they dread has come. Ahpilus stands looking at the beautiful maiden who crouches in front of him; and as he gazes his powerful form seems to swell, as does that of a wild animal that has determined to spring upon its prey. His arms move forward to grasp her. He has no fear of interruption—he has for the moment forgotten the strangers. He slightly alters his position—his back is toward the chasm—his hands touch the person of his prey. Lilama partly raises her head. She glances past the maniac for a last look at her lover. She does not scream, even as those vise-like hands close upon her, and slowly, oh, so slowly, but steadily, draw her within that iron embrace—slowly, slowly, as might a maniac devotee move in the desecration of his idol.

"But why does she not scream? Why are her eyes fastened—not on her lover—not on the madman, but upon another object? What is that object? Is it a man? Can any man move as that thing moves? Surely that cannot be a man, that streak of drab color—yonder thing that casts to the ground a garment, then shoots backward twenty feet from the abyss—swifter than a panther, as silent as death, with two balls of living fire glaring from—from a face? Surely not a human face! Yes, it is a human face. She does not see the pallid face, the wild eyes of her lover, looking, too, at that thing—that human embodiment of animal agility. No: she has not time to look, for though the human eye is quick, that thing is quicker; and if she take her eye from it for half a second, her gaze will lose it. She cannot take from it her gaze—she is fascinated. Within the past second of time an heroic resolve has been formed, and a drama has begun; in the next two seconds an act in the drama will be completed; in sixty seconds more, a whole tragedy will be added to the list of human sorrows.

"No tongue can tell what cannot quite be seen. A rush of color toward that awful gap; it reaches the edge; it rises in the air and shoots out over that gulf that might indeed have been the portal of Tartarus. Fifty feet as flies the bird. It is in the air—it is half-way over—and yet the maniac has seen it not. But the maniac is turning with his victim in his arms. The streak of drab has passed forty feet—ten feet further if it is to reach the other brink—ten thousand if it fails to reach it; and it has already sunk ten feet in space—with ten feet more of horizontal distance to cover, it is already on a level with the edge of the abyss which it must safely reach, or—The maniac has turned; and the streak of drab has reached the brink—but, ah! below the surface. The form is that of Peters—the only man who could be in such a situation yet live on. One of those invincible arms is thrown upon the surface above the chasm, and those long fingers fasten upon the immovable lava. And now the madman sees the danger that menaces his design—but too late, for Peters the unconquerable stands erect between him and the chasm. Then Ahpilus quickly sets on the ground his living burden; and Peters, the human bird of passage, risks again his life.

"But, for a man like Peters, such a contest was scarcely a risk. Had Ahpilus been less savage in his baffled rage, Peters would have spared the madman; but it was not to be. There was scarcely a man in all Hili-li that could physically cope with Ahpilus; but he was no match for Peters. For a few moments the sailor protected himself without any act of aggression; but it soon became apparent that he would be obliged to destroy his adversary, or himself be destroyed. Ahpilus had pushed Peters, or Peters had carelessly allowed himself to shift his own position, to within dangerously close proximity to the chasm, and at the moment when Peters noticed this circumstance, he also saw that he was between Ahpilus and the abyss: and Ahpilus, in all his furious madness, also observed his advantage. Peters had in his possession a very long and keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talking over this incident, he had never yet seen the time when he was compelled to use an artificial weapon in an encounter with a single combatant; and particularly would he never have used a knife, even though his adversary were a maniac, if a maniac without an artificial weapon. Peters saw that Diregus had found Pym, and, as was also the boatman, he and Pym were, of course, viewing the struggle. I should not, however, have included Pym in the party of observers; for he knew too well how the combat would end to be much absorbed in it. He had no eyes for anything but Lilama.—But to return: As Ahpilus saw his advantage, by a supreme effort he summoned all his great muscular strength, and aided by that invincible motor, the will of a madman, he endeavored to force Peters over the brink. At that precise moment the sailor had his right hand closed on the top of Ahpilus's left shoulder, and his left hand just beneath Ahpilus's right arm on the side of the exile's chest. He quickly shifted his left hand to the side of the hip; and then those great gorilla arms raised from the ground the body of the madman, swung it overhead as another man might swing the body of a three-year-old child, as he did so bringing the back of his adversary downward; and then came a movement of Herculean power in which the long arms approximated with a twisting, bending effect; two vertebras in Ahpilus's back at the point of least resistance separated, the spine was dislocated, and a mass of helpless, vibrating human flesh fell at the feet of the victor. Peters, whilst his brute instinct was in full possession of him, might, instead of dropping Ahpilus to the ground, have thrown the body into the abyss; but Diregus had anticipated such an action, and called to Peters not to injure the poor insane fellow more than was necessary to prevent him from injuring others. Ahpilus was not dead—that is, he was not dead over his entire body: the hips and all below were as nerveless as the body of a corpse; but above the hips, the same old vigor remained—and so it would be though he lived for yet a hundred years."

Here Doctor Bainbridge ceased to speak. Doctor Castleton had entered the room two or three minutes before, and, keeping silent, had heard the last three or four hundred words, which described the close of that brief but terrible combat.

The FIFTEENTH Chapter

"Well," said Doctor Castleton, as Bainbridge closed. "Peters could, when he was fifty years younger, have done that very thing to any living man weighing not more than a hundred and eighty or a hundred and ninety pounds. I myself have seen him throw to the ground a powerful horse, and the little giant must have been older than sixty at the time. Then again, he possesses that wonderful instinct of certainty in action which belongs to purely animal life. It is said that the tiger when it strikes never misses its aim; and that our American panther makes the most unusual leaps without ever making an attempt beyond its powers. I have many times observed that even our comparatively degenerate domestic cat very rarely indeed, if ever, fails to accomplish the purpose of a stroke. Peters possesses, or did possess, that instinct."

"Yes," said Bainbridge, "you are right. Peters says that on almost every vessel he ever shipped on he was called 'the baboon'—because of his great physical power and agility, he says; but as we know, rather because of his extremely short stature, his large mouth—in fact, his resemblance in many striking ways to the gorilla, or the orang-outang; and perhaps, also, in part, to his habit, mentioned in Pym's description of him, of feigning mental aberration—assuming to be 'simple.'"