The Crystal Sceptre: A Story of Adventure

by Philip Verrill Mighels

A feeling as if an old comrade had rejoined me made me joyous, as I held the weapon up to let it drip. Its return to my hand made me think of and feel for the arrows. Five were still in my quiver, and having been protected as they hung on my back, they were as good as ever, except for the wetness of the feathers. The string of the bow was flabby and useless. I held this friend in my hand for more than an hour, rubbing the wood with my palm till it felt as dry as an idol in a temple.

The night advanced. I sat down, lay down and then got up on my feet a dozen times. Once I fancied the log was drifting in toward the shore. With my hands I paddled it slowly away. The stars shone brilliantly at last, for the final cloud had disappeared from the sky. From the jungle issued sounds in plenty, repetitions of what I had heard before, but I thought myself secure and tried to catch a bit of sleep.

A night more long than that one on the lake I have never passed. It was made more interminable by the five-minute slumbers which came to my senses after midnight. I grew uncomfortably chilly. Two things happened before the morning finally dawned. The first was that weary nature asserted herself and I became lost in dreams of that horrible pair of ourang-outangs; the second was that a breeze sprang up and drifted my log where it listed.

I awoke with a start, for something struck the log such a blow that it lurched heavily and all but pitched me end-ways in the water. I sprang up, on my tossing craft, beholding myself less than quarter of a mile from the nearest shore and surrounded by the rings of a great ripple which something had evidently caused on the lake’s surface.

It was morning and already warm. My bow string was not only dry, but it had shrunk to nearly its old condition. The stream of water down which I had tumbled was neither in sight nor hearing. I began slowly to realise the truth; I had drifted almost entirely across the lake. I scanned the scenery on every side. There were jungle-covered hills in front, the same, but more distant, behind me, and again the same toward the North, where the shore was two miles away. To the South I saw familiar slopes and features of the mountains. This meant that I was looking on the lake as I had when at work on the boat. Plainly my boat and “home” then, were northward a goodly distance.

Suddenly, while I was looking about, the maker of all the recent disturbance appeared—an alligator. He was not very large, but black, hideous and actively concerned about the log. He must have overlooked me entirely to have struck such a blow, and then doubtless he had dived for safety. Now as he jutted up darkly, dividing the waters which rolled off his revolting head, his two little eyes gleamed with a look which made me think of my weapons in a hurry.

He came toward me cautiously, circling slowly about. There was nothing to do but to get an arrow in readiness, and then to wait, but I shuddered to think of a fight with such a powerful monster. The creature, I am convinced, thought me a larger one of the monkeys on which his kind were fond of dining. He presently headed straight for the log. Knowing he would dive in a moment I shot at him quickly. The arrow struck him just beneath the eye. It broke and glanced from the tough wet skin, but a splinter actually struck in his eye-ball and ruined his sight on that side of his head. He sank like a thing of iron. A second later the end of the log went heaving up and I was thrown violently off into the lake.

The log came down with a force that beat up a fountain of spray. I was struck on the foot by the half-blinded reptile as I struggled to get back to my place and out of his way. He began furiously to lash the water as he rammed about in a circle. Rising to the surface like a small living island, he turned upon me again and came ahead with all his speed, making me think of a deadly torpedo.

There was no time for arrow or bow, and the latter was gone again in the bargain, but it took me only half a second to rip out that ever-needed knife. Over we went, more abruptly than before, the water churning and boiling up in foam about my ears. He had calculated poorly and now he closed his awful jaws upon the jagged end of the log, not a foot from my shoulder. I jabbed at him frantically—stabbing at his other eye which suddenly popped fairly out of its socket as I pried and gouged with the end of the blade.

The beast raised a snorting noise at this, which made me ill with fear. With the power of a whale and the ferocity of a shark he whipped the water into froth and snapped his jaws in every direction. He was head on, side on and tail on, alternately, feeling for me and grinding pieces out of the log whenever he found it. He clawed me once and knocked me clean over the log with his tail a moment later. I stabbed at him wildly, but with no effect, a dozen times. I was nearly drowned and the creature seemed to be everywhere at once.