CHAPTER XI
THE DEVIL DANCERS
Perhaps the two terrified boys swooned, perhaps they were literallyfrightened out of their wits. Neither could ever be sure, butwhichever it was, everything was a blank from the moment when theyfelt the hands of the savage figures grasp them until they foundthemselves surrounded on every side by a ring of half-naked men andwomen in the full glare of a huge fire under immense trees.
But they were unharmed, not even bound, and as they realized thistheir courage in a measure returned and they glanced about, stillterribly frightened, shaking as if with ague, and marveling that theywere still alive.
Then for the first time they realized that their captors were notIndians. They were hideously daubed with paint to be sure, they werenearly nude, but they were not bedecked with feathers and their blackskins and wooly heads left no doubt as to their identity. They werenegroes, mostly coal black, but a few were brown or even yellow andthe dazed, scared boys looked upon them with uncomprehendingamazement. To them, negroes were civilized, harmless, good-naturedpeople and why these blacks should be acting in this savage manner waspast all understanding.
And still more puzzling was the fact that they were talking togetherin a strange, unintelligible jargon. To the boys' minds, all coloredpeople spoke English--either with the broad soft accent of theAmerican negro or the slurring, drawling dialect of the West Indians,and yet here were blacks chattering shrilly in some totally differenttongue.
The boys felt as if they had been bereft of their senses, as if, bysome magic, they had been transported to the middle of darkest Africaand they wondered vaguely if their fears and worries had driven themmad and the whole thing was a hallucination.
But at this moment four more blacks arrived and to the boys' furtheramazement deposited their radio sets upon the smooth, hard-beatenearth beside them. These were real; they seemed somehow to link theboys with the outside world, with civilization, and at sight of themthe boys knew they were not dreaming, were not mad.
And the little cases with their black fiber panels and shiningnickel-plated knobs and connections had a strange effect upon thecircle of negroes also. With low murmurs and sharp ejaculations theydrew a step farther from the boys and looked furtively at theinstruments, while the men who had brought them from the boat leapednimbly away the instant they had set them down as if afraid theharmless things might bite them.
"Gosh!" murmured Tom, finding his voice at last. "They're afraid ofus!"
"I believe they are," responded Frank, who, finding that thesavage-looking crowd seemed of no mind to harm them, had regainedconfidence.
Scarcely knowing why he did so, Tom reached forward, connected thebatteries and turned the rheostat. The result was astounding. As thetiny filament in the bulb glowed at his touch an awed "Wahii!" arosefrom the negroes, and with one accord they retreated several yards.
"Say, we've got 'em going!" exclaimed Tom jubilantly. "They're as muchafraid of us as we are of them. It all gets me, Frank. I wonder----"
What Tom wondered Frank never knew, for at this moment the surroundingblacks uttered a weird wailing cry and flung themselves upon theground.
"Gee!" ejaculated Frank, "look there."
Over the prostrated blacks, approaching through a lane between theirbodies, came an amazing, fantastic, awful figure. Naked, save for aloin cloth, painted to resemble a skeleton, with great horns bound tohis head and with a cow's tail dragging behind him, he came prancingand leaping towards the fire and the boys, shaking a rattle in onehand and waving a horse-tail in the other.
Speechless with wonder, the boys gazed at him. They realized that hewas the leader of the crowd, a chief probably, and in his fantasticgarb they recognized a faint resemblance to pictures they had seen ofwild African tribesmen, but that such a being should be here--here inan island in the West Indies and only a few miles from railways,cities, great sugar mills, wireless stations and even their ownsubmarine, seemed incredible, monstrous, absolutely unbelievable--asdream-like and amazing as the savage-looking figures who had capturedthem.
But they had little time to think. Suddenly the tom-tom burst forth inthunderous sounds, deep, sonorous, blood-curdling, savage, wild, andto the deafening "turn--turn, turn, turn--turn--turn, turn, turn," thehuge horned figure pranced and danced about the two boys, chanting awailing song, keeping time to his steps with his gourd-rattle andshaking and waving his horse-tail.
Nearer and nearer he circled, stooping low, leaping high, workinghimself into a frenzy; twisting, swaying, contorting, while,fascinated, almost hypnotized, the two boys watched speechless androoted to the spot. Then, so abruptly that the boys jumped, the drumceased, the dancing figure halted as if arrested in mid-air, with onefoot still raised, and then, with a wild yell, he darted towards theboys.
With a startled cry they cowered away. Surely, they thought, he wasabout to seize them, to kill them. But the next instant the manstooped, and grasping the shining copper resonance coil whirled itabout, facing the ring of negroes and waving the coil about his head,while, upon the copper wire, the firelight gleamed and scintillated asthough living flames were darting from it.
And then a marvelous, a miraculous thing happened. As the giganticnegro slowly swung the coil, a great hush fell upon the others andclear and distinct in the silence a voice seemed to issue from theblack box upon the ground.
"Tom! Frank!" came the words.
At the sounds, pandemonium broke loose. With a wild, terrified screamthe horned man flung down the coil and with a tremendous bound burstthrough the circle of onlookers who, screaming and yelling, turned andfled in every direction. In a breath, the boys were alone. Alone bythe fire and their instruments while, crouching behind trees, flat onthe ground, wailing like lost souls, the negroes watched from adistance with wildly rolling eyes and terror-stricken faces.
But the boys at the time gave little heed to this. At the sound oftheir names from the receiver they had been galvanized to life andaction. Their friends were near, they were calling them! They weresaved! Leaping to the coil, Frank grabbed it up and moved it slowly,until again to Tom's anxious ears came the sound of a human voice."It's Bancroft!" came the words. "We're near! We can hear a drum andare making for a fire. Where are you? Can you see the fire or hear thenoise?"
"Can we?" muttered Tom, his sense of humor coming to him even in hisexcitement. "I'll say we can, as Rawlins says."
Then, scarcely daring to hope that he could send his voice throughspace by the coil, he adjusted the sending instruments and called intothe transmitter.
"We hear!" he cried. "Come quick! We don't know where we are, butwe're here by the fire--we're prisoners--a lot of savages have us!"
Breathlessly Tom listened. Had they heard? Would the resonancecoil--that marvelous instrument which had worked the miracle--act as asending antenna? Tom wondered why they had never tried it, why theyhad been so stupid, why it had never occurred to them. Had Bancroftheard? Would they come? All this flashed through his mind with thespeed of light. And then came another thought. Of course they'd come.Even if they had not heard they would come. Bancroft had said theywere making for the fire. They would be there anyway and as Tomrealized this a tremendous load lifted from his mind. Whether or nottheir coil had served to send the waves speeding through the ether,they were sure of being rescued. But the next instant a still greaterjoy thrilled him. Again from the receiver came Bancroft's voice. "Holdfast!" it said, "we're coming! We hear you!" Even Frank had heard.
The boys' tensed strained nerves gave way. The coil dropped fromFrank's hand, he staggered to Tom's side and, throwing their armsaround each other, the two burst into wild hysterical laughter.Suddenly they were aware of some one speaking near them. In their wilddelight, the terrific reaction, they had forgotten their captors, hadforgotten the weird dancer whose act had saved them. But at the lowmoaning voice close to them they came back to earth with a start andwheeled about. Within a few paces, his head bobbing up and downagainst the ground, flat on his stomach, was th
e giant negro, and fromhis lips, muffled by their contact with the earth, came the pleadingwail which had roused the boys.
"What on earth does he want?" asked Tom, who could make nothing of thewords.
"I don't know, but he's scared to death like all the others," repliedFrank, "and I don't wonder. That voice from the phones was enough toscare any savage. I think he's begging forgiveness or something."
"Gosh! I wish he understood English," said Tom, and then, in a loudervoice, "Here, get up!" he ordered. "Can you speak English?"
Slowly and hesitatingly the man raised his wooly head and with wildlyrolling eyes gazed fearfully at the boys. His lips moved, his tonguestrove to form words, but no sound came from him. So abject, sothoroughly terror-stricken was his appearance that the boys reallypitied him, but now, at last, he had found his voice again.
"Messieu's!" he pleaded. "Messieu's! Moi pas save. Moi ami, Beke. Ah!Ai! Beke no un'stan'. Moi spik Eenglees liddle. Moi mo' sorry! Moifren' yes! Moi no mek harm Messieu's! Ai, Ai! Moi mek dance, moipeople mek fo' Voodoo! No mek fo' harm Beke! Pa'donez Moi, Messieu's!"
"Gosh, I can't get it!" exclaimed Tom. "He's asking us to forgive himand wants to be friends, but what he means by 'Beke' and 'Voodoo' andthose other words I don't know. But I'm willing to be friends." Then,addressing the still groveling negro, "All right!" he said. "Get up.You're forgiven. We'll be friends. But stop bumping your head on theground and take off those horns. You give me the shivers."
Whether the devil-dancer understood more than half of Tom's words isdoubtful, but he grasped the meaning and with unutterable relief uponhis black face he grinned and tearing off his fantastic headdress castit into the flames and rose slowly to his feet.
As he did so, his watching companions also rose and edged cautiouslyfrom their hiding places, but still keeping a respectful distance andeyeing the black radio sets with furtive, frightened glances. Veryevidently, to their minds, these white boys were powerful Obeah men,they possessed magic of a sort not to be despised or molested, andwith the primitive man's simple reasoning they felt that to propitiatesuch powerful witch doctors was the only way to insure their ownsafety. Although, to the boys, they had appeared savages yet, had Tomand Frank happened upon them at any other time, they would have foundnothing at all savage about them. Indeed, they would never have hadreason to think them other than happy-go-lucky, good-natured coloredfolk, harmless and as civilized as any of the West Indian peasantry,for they were merely French West Indian negroes, and aside from thefact that they spoke only their native Creole patois wereindistinguishable from others of their race. But like the majority ofthe French negroes they were at heart firm believers in Voodoo andObeah and when worked into a fanatical frenzy at one of these Africanserpent-worshiping orgies they became temporarily transformed tofiendish savages, reverting to all the wild customs and ways of theirancestors and drawing the line only at actual cannibalism.
But of all this the boys knew nothing. They did not dream that suchpeople or such customs existed, and they could not fathom the reasonsor understand what to them were the mysterious and almost incrediblesights they had witnessed.
And of a far more important matter the boys were equally ignorant. Hadthey but known, they would have thanked their lucky stars that theyhad stumbled upon the Voodoo dancers and, had they been able tounderstand and speak Creole and thus been able to converse with thenegroes, they would have made a discovery which, would have amazedthem even more than the savage dance and the remarkable resultsbrought about by their radio instruments.
But being unable to carry on any but the most limited conversation,the boys sat there by the fire waiting for the sound of the expectedboat and surrounded by the colored folk who now had discarded theirpaint and fantastic garb and were clothed in calico and dungaree. Eventhe chief, or rather the Obeah man, was now so altered in appearancethat the boys could scarcely believe he was the same being who hadpranced and danced with waving horse-tail and rattlebox before themand when, timidly and half apologetically, he brought them a trayloaded with fruit and crisp fried fish with tiny rolls of breadwrapped in banana leaves, they decided that it must all have been somesort of a masquerade and that their imaginations had filled them withunwarranted and ridiculous fears.
They were terribly hungry and never had food been more welcome; bothboys ate ravenously.
"He's a good old skate after all!" declared Tom, nodding towards thebig negro who sat near. "I guess they were just trying to scare us."
"Well, they succeeded all right," replied Frank. "Say, I thought wewere going to be roasted and eaten when they grabbed us."
"Yes, but our radio scared them a lot worse," said Tom. "Gosh! that_was_ wonderful, the way the old boy grabbed up the coil andthose words came in just right. I'll bet Dad's worried though. Weought to call them and tell them we're all right."
"Golly, that's so!" agreed Frank. "I'd forgotten we hadn't."
Still munching a mouthful of food, Frank rose to pick up the coil, butat that instant several of the negroes jumped up, their voices rose inexcited tones and they turned wondering faces toward the waterside. Atthe same instant the boys distinctly heard the splash of oars.
"They're here!" yelled Tom, and with one accord the two rushed towardsthe landing place.
Before they had reached it a boat shot from the shadows, its keelgrated on the beach and Mr. Pauling and Rawlins leaped out, each witha rifle in his hands, while behind them, armed and ready for battle,came Sam, Bancroft, the quartermaster and Smernoff.
But as the shouting, laughing boys dashed toward them, free andunharmed, the gun dropped from Mr. Pauling's hand and clattered on thepebbles and the next instant he was clasping the boys in an embracelike a bear's.
Behind the boys, gathered in little knots and chattering excitedlylike a flock of parrots, the surprised negroes had gathered at theedge of the forest and as Rawlins stared at them and then at the boysa puzzled expression was on his face.
"Say, what's the big idea?" he demanded, as the boys capered anddanced about, talking and laughing. "You said you were the prisonersof savages and here you are free as birds and no sign of a savage.Just a bunch of ordinary niggers. It gets me!"
"But we thought they were savages," Tom tried to explain. "And we_were_ prisoners."
Then in hurried, disjointed sentences the two boys related the gist oftheir story while the others listened in amazement.
"Hello!" cried Rawlins. "Is this the old Bally-hoo coming?"
As Rawlins spoke, the big negro was approaching and with a rathersickly grin on his face he spoke to the new arrivals in his odd jargonof Creole and broken English.
"Yep, I guess so!" grinned Rawlins. "Here you, Sam. You've lived inthe French Islands. Can you understand this bird?"
Sam, still suspicious and with the memory of Voodoo and devil dancers'tom-toms in his mind, stepped forward.
"Yas, sir, Chief," he replied, "Ah can talk Creole, Chief."
"Well, get busy and spiel then," Rawlins ordered him. "Ask him what hesays first and then we'll give him the third degree for a time."
Rapidly Sam spoke to the other in Martinique patois and at the soundsof his native tongue the other's face brightened.
"He says he's sorry," Sam informed the waiting men and boys. "He sayshe's a mos' good friend an' tha' young gentlemen were safe frommolestation, Chief. He says he an' his people were makin' to have aspree, Chief, an' thought as how the young gentlemen were enemies, atthe first, Sir. He mos' humbly arsks yo' pardon an' forgiveness,Chief."
"All right," said Rawlins. "He's forgiven. Ask him if we can stop herefor the night and if he has anything to eat. I'm famished and I'll betthe others are. It's nearly morning."
In reply to Sam's queries the negro, who Sam now informed them wasnamed Jules, assured them that everything was at their disposal andwith quick orders in patois he sent a number of the women scurryingoff to prepare food. Leading the way, he guided the party to a clusterof neat, wattled huts in a small clearing and told them to maket
hemselves at home.
Then, the first excitement of their meeting over, the boys began togive an intelligible and sane account of their adventures.
As they told of the submarine and their spying on the men Mr. Paulinguttered a sharp exclamation and Rawlins made his characteristiccomment.
"I'll say you had nerve!" he cried. "Too bad they saw you though. Nowthey know we're here."
"Not necessarily," declared Mr. Pauling. "They may have seen that theboat contained merely two boys and they may have thought them nativesor from some vessel. They probably know where the destroyer is andthey imagine our submarine is lying at the bottom of the Caribbean. Inthat case they would hardly connect Tom and Frank with members of theService. Unless they have heard our calls tonight I doubt if the boys'presence alarmed them."
"That may be so," admitted Rawlins, "and by the same token if theyheard us to-night it wouldn't scare 'em. They'd think 'twas some ofthe boys' friends searching for 'em, same as 'twas. We didn't sayanything that would give them a hint and radio's too common nowadaysto mean much--as long as it's not under-sea stuff. By glory! Perhapswe can get 'em yet. Can you find that place again, boys?"
"I don't see how we can," replied Tom. "We were too scared to noticewhere we went and we haven't any idea where we drifted with the tidewhile we slept."
"That's dead rotten luck," commented Rawlins. "But by the Great HornSpoon we can find 'em if they're here! This swamp's not soeverlastingly big and a sub can't hide in a mud puddle. I'll bet myhat to a hole in a doughnut we find 'em!"
"But who do you suppose that man on the bank was?" asked Tom. "Hedidn't look like a 'red' or a Russian or a crook. He looked like areal gentleman."
Mr. Pauling hesitated a moment. "Boys," he said, lowering his voice,"that was the man that of all men we want. That was the head, thebrains, the power of the whole vast organization. The man who hasschemed to overturn nations and carry a rave of fire and blood aroundthe world! He is the arch fiend, the greatest criminal, the mostcoldly cruel and unscrupulous being alive! He is the incarnation ofSatan himself!"
The boys' eyes were round with wonder. "Gosh!" exclaimed Tom. "Gosh!"
"Jehoshaphat!" cried Frank.