CHAPTER XIX
THE UNKNOWN RACE
An almost irresistible repugnance, a compelling aversion, moreof the spirit than of the flesh, instantly seized the man at sight ofeven the few members of the Horde which lay within his view.
Though he had been expecting to see something disgusting, somethinggrotesque and horrible, his mind was wholly unprepared for the realhideousness of these creatures, now seen by the ever-strengtheninglight of day.
And slowly, as he stared, the knowledge dawned on him that here was amonstrous problem to face, far greater and more urgent than he hadforeseen; here were factors not yet understood; here, the product offorces till then not even dreamed of by his scientific mind.
"I--I certainly did expect to find a small race," thought he. "Small,and possibly misshapen, the descendants, maybe, of a few survivors ofthe cataclysm. But _this--!_"
And again, fascinated by the ghastly spectacle, he laid his eye to thechink in the wall, and looked.
A tenuous fog still drifted slowly among the forest trees, veiling thedeeper recesses. Yet, near at hand, within the limited segment ofvision which the engineer commanded, everything could be made out withreasonable distinctness.
Some of the Things (for so he mentally named them, knowing no betterterm) were squatting, lying or moving about, quite close at hand. Thefire by the spring had now almost died down. It was evident that therevel had ceased, and that the Horde was settling down torest--glutted, no doubt, with the raw and bleeding flesh of theconquered foe.
Stern could easily have poked his pistol muzzle through the crack inthe wall and shot down many of them. For an instant the temptation laystrong upon him to get rid of at least a dozen or a score; butprudence restrained his hand.
"No use!" he told himself. "Nothing to be gained by that. But, once Iget my proper chance at them--!"
And again, striving to observe them with the cool and calculating eyeof science, he studied the shifting, confused picture out there beforehim.
Then he realized that the feature which, above all else, struck him asghastly and unnatural, was the _color_ of the Things.
"Not black, not even brown," said he. "I thought so, last night, butdaylight corrects the impression. Not red, either, or copper-colored._What_ color, then? For Heaven's sake, what?"
He could hardly name it. Through the fog, it struck him as a dullslate-gray, almost a blue. He recalled that once he had seen a child'smodeling-clay, much-used and very dirty, of the same shade, whichcertainly had no designation in the chromatic scale. Some of theThings were darker, some a trifle lighter--these, no doubt, theyounger ones--but they all partook of this same characteristic tint.And the skin, moreover, looked dull and sickly, rather mottled andwholly repulsive, very like that of a Mexican dog.
Like that dog's hide, too, it was sparsely overgrown with whitishbristles. Here or there, on the bodies of some of the larger Things,bulbous warts had formed, somewhat like those on a toad's back; and onthese warts the bristles clustered thickly. Stern saw the hair, on theneck of one of these creatures, crawl and rise like a jackal's, as aneighbor jostled him; and from the Thing's throat issued a clickinggrunt of purely animal resentment.
"Merciful Heavens! What _are_ they?" wondered Stern, again, utterlybaffled for any explanation. "What _can_ they be?"
Another, in the group close by, attracted his attention. It was lyingon its side, asleep maybe, its back directly toward the engineer.Stern clearly saw the narrow shoulders and the thin, long arms,covered with that white bristling hair.
One sprawling, spatulate, clawlike hand lay on the forest moss. Thetwisted little apelike legs, disproportionately short, were curled up;the feet, prehensile and with a well-marked thumb on each, twitched alittle now and then. The head, enormously too big for the body, towhich it was joined by a thin neck, seemed to be scantily covered witha fine, curling down, of a dirty yellowish drab color.
"What a target!" thought the engineer. "At this distance, with my .38,I could drill it without half trying!"
All at once, another of the group sat up, shoved away a burned-outtorch, and yawned with a noisy, doglike whine Stern got a quick yetdefinite glimpse of the sharp canine teeth; he saw that the Thing'sfleshless lips and retreating chin were caked with dried blood. Thetongue he saw was long and lithe and apparently rasped.
Then the creature stood up, balancing on its absurd bandy legs, aspear in its hand--a flint-pointed spear of crude workmanship.
At full sight of the face, Stern shrank for a moment.
"I've known savages, as such," thought he. "I understand them. I knowanimals. They're animals, that's all. But _this_ creature--mercifulHeaven!"
And at the realization that it was neither beast nor man, theengineer's blood chilled within his veins.
Yet he forced himself still to look and to observe, unseen. There waspractically no forehead at all. The nose was but a formless lump ofcartilage, the ears large and pendulous and hairy. Under heavybrow-ridges, the dull, lackluster eyes blinked stupidly, bloodshot andcruel. As the mouth closed, Stern noted how the under incisors closedup over the upper lip, showing a gleam of dull yellowish ivory; aslaver dripped from the doglike corner of the mouth.
Stern shivered, and drew back.
He realized now that he was in the presence of an unknown semi-humantype, different in all probability from any that had ever yet existed.It was less their bestiality that disgusted him, than their utter,hopeless, age-long degeneration from the man-standard.
What race had they descended from? He could not tell. He thought hecould detect a trace of the Mongol in the region of the eye, in thecheek-bones and the general contour of what, by courtesy, might becalled the face. There were indications, also, of the negroid type,still stronger. But the color--whence could _that_ have come? And thegeneral characteristics, were not these distinctly simian?
Again he looked. And now one of the pot-bellied little horrors,shambling and bulbous-kneed, was scratching its warty, blue hide withits black claws as it trailed along through the forest. It looked up,grinning and jabbering; Stern saw the teeth that should have beenmolars. With repulsion he noted that they were not flat-crowned, butsharp like a dog's. Through the blue lips they clearly showed.
"Nothing herbivorous here," thought the scientist. "All flesh--foodof--who knows what sort!"
Quickly his mind ran over the outlines of the problem. He knew at oncethat these Things were lower than any human race ever recorded, farlower even than the famed Australian bushmen, who could not even countas high as five. Yet, strange and more than strange, they had the useof fire, of the tom-tom, of some sort of voodooism, of flint, ofspears, and of a rude sort of tanning--witness the loin-clouts of hidewhich they all wore.
"Worse than any troglodyte!" he told himself. "Far lower than DeQuatrefage's Neanderthal man, to judge from the cephalic index--worsethan that Java skull, the pithecanthropus erectus, itself! And I amwith my living eyes beholding them!"
A slight sound, there behind him in the room, set his heart flailingmadly.
His hand froze to the butt of the automatic as he drew back from thecleft in the wall, and, staring, whirled about, ready to shoot on thesecond.
Then he started back. His jaw dropped, his eyes widened and limplyfell his arm. The pistol swung loosely at his side.
"_You?_--" he soundlessly breathed, "You--_here?_"
There at the door of the great empty room, magnificent m hertiger-skin, the Krag gripped in her supple hand, stood Beatrice.