CHAPTER XXIX
THE BATTLE ON THE STAIRS
Almost like the echo of his shout, a faint snarling cry rosefrom the corridor, outside. They heard a clicking, sliding, ominoussound; and, with instant comprehension, knew the truth.
"They've got up, some of them--somehow!" Stern cried. "They'll be atour throats, here, in a moment! Load! _Load!_ You shoot--_I'll_ give'em Pulverite!"
No time, now, for caution. While the girl hastily threw in morecartridges, Stern gathered up all the remaining vials of theexplosive.
These, garnered along his wounded arm which clasped them to his body,made a little bristling row of death. His left hand remained free, tofling the little glass bombs.
"Come! Come, meet 'em--they mustn't trap us, here!"
And together they crept noiselessly into the other room and thence tothe corridor-door.
Out they peered.
"Look! Torches!" whispered he.
There at the far end of the hallway, a red glare already flickered onthe wall around the turn by the elevator-shaft. Already the confusedsounds of the attackers were drawing near.
"They've managed to dig away the barricade, somehow," said Stern. "Andnow they're out for business--clubs, poisoned darts and all--andfangs, and claws! How many of 'em? God knows! A swarm, that's all!"
His mouth felt hot and dry, with fever, and the mad excitement of theimpending battle. His skin seemed tense and drawn, especially upon theforehead. As he stood there, waiting, he heard the girl's quickbreathing. Though he could hardly see her in the gloom, he felt herpresence and he loved it.
"Beatrice," said he, and for a moment his hand sought hers, "Beatrice,little girl o' mine, if this is the big finish, if we both go downtogether and there's no to-morrow, I want to tell you now--"
A yapping outcry interrupted him. The girl seized his arm. Brighterthe torchlight grew.
"Allan!" she whispered. "Come back, back, away from here. We've got toget up those stairs, there, at the other end of the hall. _This_ is nokind of place to meet them--we're exposed, here. There's noprotection!"
"You're right." he answered. "Come!"
Like ghosts they slid away, noiselessly, through the enshroudinggloom.
Even as they gained the shelter of the winding stairway, the scouts ofthe Horde, flaring their torches into each room they passed, came intoview around the corner at the distant end.
Shuffling, hideous beyond all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened,blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, aruck of horror.
The defenders, peering from behind the broken balustrade, could hearthe guttural jabber of their beast-talk, the clicking play of theirfangs; could see the craning necks, the talons that held spears,bludgeons, blow-guns, even jagged rocks.
Over all, the smoky gleams wavered in a ghastly interplay of light anddarkness. Uncanny shadows leaped along the walls. From every cornerand recess and black, empty door, ghoulish shapes seemed creeping.
Tense, now, the moment hung.
Suddenly the engineer bent forward, staring.
"The chief!" he whispered. And as he spoke, Beatrice aimed.
There, shambling among the drove of things, they saw him clearly for amoment: Uglier, more incredibly brutal than ever he looked, now, bythat uncanny light.
Stern saw--and rejoiced in the sight--that the obeah's jaw hung surelybroken, all awry. The quick-blinking, narrow-ridded eyes shuttledhere, there, as the creature sought to spy out his enemies. Thenostrils dilated, to catch the spoor of man. Man, no longer god, butmortal.
One hand held a crackling pine-knot. The other gripped the heft of astone ax, one blow of which would dash to pulp the stoutest skull.
This much Stern noted, as in a flash; when at his side the girl'srevolver spat.
The report roared heavily in that constricted space. For a moment theobeah stopped short. A look of brute pain, of wonder, then ofquintupled rage passed over his face. A twitching grin of passiondistorted the huge, wounded gash of the mouth. He screamed. Up camethe stone ax.
"Again!" shouted Stern. "Give it to him again!"
She fired on the instant. But already, with a chattering howl, theobeah was running forward. And after him, screaming, snarling, foamingtill their lips were all a slaver, the pack swept toward them.
Stern dragged the girl away, back to the landing.
"Up! _Up!_" he yelled.
Then, turning, he hurled the second bomb.
A blinding glare dazzled him. A shock, as of a suddenly unleashedvolcano, all but flung him headlong.
Dazed, choked by the gush of fumes that burst in a billowing cloud outalong the hall and up the stairs, he staggered forward. Tightly to hisbody he clutched the remaining vials. Where was Beatrice? He knew not.Everything boomed and echoed in his stunned ears. Below there, heheard thunderous crashes as wrecked walls and floors went reelingdown. And ever, all about him, eddied the strangling smoke.
Then, how long after he knew not, he found himself gasping for airbeside a window.
"Beatrice!" he shouted with his first breath. Everything seemedstrangely still. No sound of pursuit, no howling now. Dead calm. Noteven the drum-beat in the forest, far below.
"_Beatrice!_ Where are you? _Beatrice!_"
His heart leaped gladly as he heard her answer.
"Oh! Are you safe? Thank God! I--I was afraid--I didn't know--"
To him she ran along the dark passageway.
"No more!" she panted. "No more Pulverite here in the building!"pleaded she. "Or the whole tower will fall--and bury us! No more!"
Stern laughed. Beatrice was unharmed; he had found her.
"I'll sow it broadcast outside," he answered, in a kind of exaltation,almost a madness from the strain and horror of that night, theweakness of his fever and his loss of blood. "Maybe the others, downthere still, may need it. Here goes!"
And, one by one, all seven of the bombs he hurled far out and away, toright, to left, straight ahead, slinging them in vast parabolas fromthe height.
And as they struck one by one, night blazed like noonday; and even tothe Palisades the crashing echoes roared.
The forest, swept as by a giant broom, became a jackstraw tangle ofdestruction.
Thus it perished.
When the last vial of wrath had been out-poured, when silence had oncemore dropped its soothing mantle and the great brooding dark had comeagain, "girdled with gracious watchings of the stars," Stern spoke.
"Gods!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Gods we are now to them--to such ofthem as may still live. Gods we are--gods we shall be forever!
"Whatever happens now, _they_ know us. The Great White Gods of Terror!They'll flee before our very look! Unarmed, if we meet a thousand,we'll be safe. _Gods!_"
Another silence.
Then suddenly he knew that Beatrice was weeping.
And forgetful of all save that, forgetful of his weakness and hiswounds, he comforted her--as only a man can comfort the woman heloves, the woman who, in turn, loves him.