The Crystal Sceptre: A Story of Adventure

by Philip Verrill Mighels

Behind me now I could almost feel my infuriated foes. I dared to dart a glance across my shoulder. What a snap-shot picture it was, of awful forms—half erect and fearfully active,—a picture of monsters, suggestive of most inhuman humans, with fiery eyes, with hideous muzzles, massive, prognathous jaws,—with terrible open mouths which were filled with drooling fangs, and with black, leather-and-iron hands, now on the ground, now up and reaching, as if to clutch and drag me down!

I knew they would certainly overtake me unless I could do something desperate at once. I jerked out my knife—recently whetted on a stone. By the continuously fluttering lightning-shimmer, I chose a spot, ahead, which was comparatively clear. Then while my flesh fairly crept for my dread of being reached, I slacked off my speed a trifle and let the nearest ourang gain a yard.

Suddenly leaping aside, when I bounded to the selected clearing, I swung around with my arm extended, the knife gripped hard, and quickly aiming at the monster’s throat, stabbed him with all my might. So great was the impact of the blow, increased by the brute’s momentum, that his head was nearly slashed from his body. I saw it lop limberly over on his shoulder. Then the larger brute behind struck the falling body and both were toppled together in a heap.

Again like a madman I darted away. In a few seconds on came the now doubly raging creature, behind. My breathing had become so painful that it seemed as if I could taste my own blood in my mouth. I dared not stop and I dared not attempt my trick a second time. A fearful note of wrath was in the sound which the gaining monster now began to utter. I knew he was sure he should catch me soon. Before me, abruptly, the growth was as thick as a hedge. I saw that I must change my course. Baffled, not knowing what else I could do, I pulled an arrow from my quiver and notched it on my bow-string as I ran. Then stopping I turned, drew it quickly and let it drive point blank at my on-rushing foe. It flew too low, for the string was wet and in no fit condition, and struck the beast in the fleshy part of the thigh.

Emitting a scream of agony, the brute snapped the shaft short off in the wound, with his hand. I took advantage of the opportunity, nearly winded as I was, and plunged desperately through a maze of vines. It caught me, but I tore away a long wire-like creeper that dragged behind for twenty feet. And the gnashing ourang, limping on an almost useless leg, came after me, relentlessly. It seemed like a nightmare—endless, although, like a terrible dream, it had not been of more than a few minutes duration from the start.

My bow-string had apparently stretched, and this effect I had increased when I shot; the weapon was therefore temporarily useless. Had I now been fresh, I believe I could have beaten the wounded brute in the race, but I was ready to sink from exhaustion. He got nearer and nearer. What to do next was more than I could tell.

Panting and fetching my breath by the most painful of efforts, I blundered heavily through a net-work of branches—and got my second sudden fall over a bank. This time I struck sitting down—in a stream of water which, swollen by the rain, was a roaring torrent. It swept me downward, gasping and battling to keep my head above the surface.

Then with a splash the ourang-outang landed headlong in the flood. He also came rolling and tumbling along with the turbulent volume of water. But he clutched an overhanging limb and hauled himself out and up on the bank, as if he found the plunge exceedingly hateful. Whether he lost the scent, or whether he was convinced that I also had scrambled out of the stream, would be hard to determine. Busy as I was to keep from being drowned, or dashed to death on the rocks, I yet had a flash of relief and thankfulness to find myself freed of the terrible pursuer.

My bow, to which I had clung with such a desperation, was lost from my hand when I fell into the torrent. As I righted myself, a trifle, on my downward sweep, and tried to mark out a branch or a creeper to clutch, a terrific bolt of lightning struck a tree not a hundred feet below. As if a thousand cannon had burst, the din and crash of thunder fairly stunned me for a second where I was. I got a mental photograph of the tree flying apart in monster splinters, as if a charge of dynamite had rended it asunder; and then followed a total annihilation of all light and a downpour of rain which was simply overwhelming.

I was bowled downward helplessly, tossed through a drag of vines that were growing over the bed of the stream, and then, before I had half collected my senses—scattered as they were by the stroke of lightning,—I was shot through an agitated run-way and plunged below my depth in what I thought to be a large pool of water.