“I realized that Eta must have been using her eyes closely during the last months. She knew how to operate Markley’s radio and this whole affair was a plot to take it from us.
“ ‘Kill the white men,’ Eta screamed in a frenzy. ‘Kill, kill——’ But Markley had at last caught the meaning of her harangue, and with a roar, shook himself free from his captor and leaped at the girl. But his coordinations were shaky from his whisky swilling and he fell an easy victim to the dozen or so warriors who sprang forward. He went down, senseless from the blow of a club, lying where he fell, while Eta, tearing his green robe from him, clothed herself in it and took up her position behind the dials. I suppose I should have gone to his rescue, but how could I, with a black devil gripping my neck with one hand and holding a knife as long as my arm in the other.
“The orator in the loudspeaker continued his talk uninterruptedly, telling of the great things which might occur in the world due to radio’s magic—but, suddenly, his voice was broken by a frightful squawk! My heart jumped. The set was going out of balance without Markley’s expert hand on the dials. Confidently Eta bent over the cabinet, but it seemed she had forgotten something essential, for the machine let out a louder shriek, this time a sound like the scraping of a titanic file across glass.
“Suddenly pandemonium broke loose. Somewhere between Africa and New York there must have started a thunderstorm. Such frightful noises I had never believed possible. The cave fairly rocked with them. The loudspeaker seemed to dance about the platform.
“The black holding me let loose his grip and sprinted for the cave mouth. So did all the natives in fact, but unluckily, perhaps, because the vibration had set up a miniature earthquake inside the cavern, great stones and quantities of earth began falling from the roof. I saw more than one negro brained or broken as I crouched close to the wall. I had dragged Markley’s body out of the greatest danger and leaned over him, with my hands over my ears.
“Only Eta stuck to her post, twisting the dials back and forth, but only succeeding in making the vibration greater. It sounded as if all the devils in hell were shrieking, and would yell forever. The cave filled with dust. Through it I could see the girl, quiet and tense, working doggedly—hopelessly. But all things have an end. As I watched in the dim red light, a giant boulder, detached after a repose of centuries, tumbled from the ceiling, crushing both Eta and the radio. A last despairing scream and then all the noise ceased. Do you know, Mac, in spite of the fact that I had hated her, I felt damned sorry.
“That’s about all,” MacAllister concluded softly. “Markley was merely stunned and came round after a while. The natives had fled the village, so that it was an easy matter to return to the boat and start downriver.
“Markley acted like another man. Whether he had realized that he could now go home to a chance of success with his inventions or whether the shock had cleared his half-insane mind, I don’t know, but he confessed to me shamefacedly that he had been acting like a damned fool. Said he had wanted to quit the whole game long ago—that he hated the taste of whisky, but his pride wouldn’t let him stop halfway on the road to the infernal regions.
“We buried what was left of Eta in the river and Mark was rather cut up about it. That, with the whisky he had been drinking so steadily brought a reaction. He almost winked out with a case of acute alcoholism, but we managed to pull him through at Maraban. I took him downriver a few weeks later, bound for home, looking like a ghost, but on the road to recovery.
“That ends the story, Todd. While it doesn’t point a moral exactly, being the exception which maybe proves the rule, let’s go down anyway and take a drink to all of us who fight this rotten, fascinating river—and fail.”