CHAPTER XVIII
_Besieged!_
"I've felt it for some time," Chet confessed. "I've wakened and known Ihad been dreaming about that damnable thing. And, although it soundslike the wildest sort of insanity, I have felt that there wassomething--some mental force--that was reaching out for our minds;searching for us. Well, if there is anything like that--"
He was about to say that the trail made by Kreiss and the apes whotracked him would have given this other enemy a direction to follow, butKreiss himself dropped down beside Chet where he and Walt sat before thefront of Diane's shelter. The pilot did not finish the sentence. Kreisshad meant it for the best; there was no use of rubbing it in. But thatthing in the pyramid would never be fooled as Schwartzmann and the apeshad been.
Chet had told Kreiss of the attack and had shown him the body of theape-man. "Council of war," he explained as Kreiss rejoined them, but hecorrected himself at once. "No--not war! We don't want to go up againstthat bunch. Our job is to plan a retreat."
Harkness turned to look inside the hut. "Diane, old girl," he asked,"how about it? Are you going to be able to make a long trip?"
Within the shelter Chet could see Diane's hands drawn into two hardlittle fists. She would force those tight hands to relax while she layquietly in the dark; then again they would tremble, and, unconsciously,the nervous tension would be manifested in those white-knuckled littlefists. For all of them the shock had been severe; it was hardest onDiane.
* * * * *
She answered now in a voice whose very quietness belied her brave words.
"Any time--any place!" she told Walt. "And--and the farther we go thebetter!"
"Quite right," Harkness agreed. "I am satisfied that there is somethingthere we can never combat. We don't know what it is, and God help anyonewho ever finds out. How about it, Chet? And you, too, Kreiss? Do youagree that there is no use in staying here and trying to fight it out?"
"I do not agree," the scientist objected. "My work, my experiments Ihave collected! Would you have me abandon them? Must we run in fearbecause an anthropoid ape has come into this clearing? And, if there aremore, we have our barricade; our weapons are crude, but effective, and Imight add to them with some ideas of my own should occasion demand."
"Listen!" Chet commanded. "That anthropoid ape is nothing to be afraidof: you're right on that. But he came from the pyramid, Kreiss, andthere's something there that knows every foot of ground that messengerwent over. There's something in that pyramid that can send more ape-men,that can come itself, for all that I know, and that can knock us cold inhalf a second.
"It's found us. One arrow went straight, thank God! It has given us astay of execution. But is that damnable thing in the pyramid going tolet it go at that? You know the answer as well as I do. It has probablysent twenty more of those messengers who are on their way this minute, Iam telling you; and we've got two days at the most before they gethere."
Kreiss still protested. "But my work--"
"Is ended!" snapped Chet. "Stay if you want to; you'll never finish yourwork. The rest of us will leave in the morning. Towahg will be back hereto-night.
"Nothing much to get together," he told Harkness. "I'll see to it; youstay with Diane."
* * * * *
Their bows, a store of extra bone-tipped arrows, and food: as Chet hadsaid there was not much to prepare for their flight. They had spent manyhours in arrow making: there were bundles of them stored away inreadiness for an attack, and Chet looked at them with regret, but knewthey must travel fast and light.
Out of his rocky "laboratory" Kreiss came at dusk to tramp slowly andmoodily down to the shelters.
"I shall leave when you do," he told Chet. "Perhaps we can find someplace, some corner of this world, where we can live in peace. But I hadhoped, I had thought--"
"Yes?" Chet queried. "What did you have on your mind?"
"The gas," the scientist replied. "I was working with a rubber latex. Ihad thought to make a mask, improvise an air-pump and send one of usthrough the green gas to reach the ship. And there was more that I hopedto do; but, as you say, my work is ended."
"Bully for you," said Chet admiringly; "the old bean keeps right onworking all the time. Well, you may do it yet; we may come back to theship. Who can tell? But just now I am more anxious about Towahg. Rightnow, when we need him the most, he fails to show up."
The ape-man was seldom seen by day, but always he came back beforenightfall; his chunky figure was a familiar sight as he slippedsoundlessly from the jungle where the shadows of approaching night layfirst. But now Chet watched in vain at the arched entrance to the leafytangle. He even ventured, after dark, within the jungle's edge andcalled and hallooed without response. And this night the hours draggedby where Chet lay awake, watching and listening for some sign of theirguide.
* * * * *
Then dawn, and golden arrows of light that drove the morning mist inlazy whirls above the surface of the lake. But no silent shadow-formcame from among the distant trees. And without Towahg--!
"Might as well stay here and take it standing," was Chet's verdict, andHarkness nodded assent.
"Not a chance," he agreed. "We might make our way through the forestafter a fashion, but we would be slow doing it, and the brutes would beafter us, of course."
They made all possible preparations to withstand a siege. Chet, after acareful, listening reconnaissance, went into the jungle with bow andarrows, and he came back with three of the beasts he had calledMoon-pigs. Other trips, with Kreiss as an assistant, resulted in a greatheap of fruit that they placed carefully in the shade of a hut. Waterthey had in unlimited supply.
How they would stand off an enemy who fought only with the terriblegleam of their eyes no one of them could have said. But they all worked,and Diane helped, too, to place extra bows at points where they might beneeded and to put handfuls of arrows at the firing platforms spaced atregular intervals along the barricade.
Chet smiled sardonically as he saw Herr Kreiss laboring mightily andalone to rig a catapult that could be turned to face in all directions.But he helped to bring in a supply of round stones from a distance downthe shore, though the picture of this medieval weapon being effectiveagainst those broadsides of mental force was not one his mind couldeasily paint.
* * * * *
And then Towahg came! Not the silent, swiftly-leaping figure that movedon muscles like coiled steel springs! This was another Towahg whodragged a bruised body through the grass until Harkness and Chet reachedhim and helped him to the barricade.
"Gr-r-ranga!" he growled. It was the sound he had made before when hehad seen or had tried to tell them of the ape-men. "Gr-r-ranga!Gr-r-ranga!" He pointed about him as if to say: "There!--and there!--andthere!"
"Yes, yes!" Chet assured him. "We understand: you met up with a pack ofthem."
Whereupon Towahg, with his monkey mimicry, gave a convincingdemonstration of himself being seized and beaten: and the tooth-marks onnearly every inch of his body gave proof of the rough reception he hadencountered.
Then he showed himself escaping, running, swinging through trees, tillhe came to the camp. And now he raised his bruised body to a standingposition and motioned them toward the forest.
"Gr-r-ranga come!" he warned them, and repeated it over again, while hisface wrinkled in fear that told plainly of the danger he had seen.
Chet glanced at Harkness and knew his own gaze was as disconsolate ashis companion's. "He's met up with them," he admitted, "though, for thelife of me, I can't see how he ever got away if it was a crowd ofmessenger-apes who could petrify him with one look. There's somethingstrange about that, but whatever it is, here's our guide in no shape totravel."
* * * * *
Towahg was growling and grimacing in an earnest effort to communicatesome idea. His few words and the full power of his mimicry had been used
to urge them on, to warn them that they must flee for their lives, butit seemed he had something else to tell. Suddenly he leaped into hisgrotesque dance, though his wounds must have made it an agonizingeffort, but his joy in the thought that had come to him was too great totake quietly. He knew how to tell Chet!
And with a protruded stomach he marched before them as a well-fed Germanmight walk, and he stroked at an imaginary beard in reproduction of anact that was habitual with one they had known.
"Schwartzmann?" asked Chet. He had used the name before when he andTowahg had led their enemy's "army" off the trail. "You have seenSchwartzmann?"
And Towahg leaped and capered with delight. "Szhwarr!" he growled in aneffort to pronounce the name; "Szhwarr come!"
Chet made a wild leap for their bows and supplies.
"Come on!" he shouted. "That's the answer. It isn't the ones from thepyramid; they're coming later. It's Schwartzmann and his bunch of apes.They've followed the messenger, they're on their way, and, in spite ofhis being all chewed up, Towahg can travel faster than that crowd. He'llguide us out of this yet!"
* * * * *
He was thrusting bundles of supplies--food, arrows, bows--into the eagerhands of the others, while Towahg alternately licked his wounds anddanced about with excitement. Diane's voice broke in upon the tensehaste and bustle of the moment. She spoke quietly--her tone was flat,almost emotionless--yet there was a quality that made Chet drop what hewas holding and reach for a bow.
"We can't go," Diane was saying; "we can't go. Poor Towahg! He couldn'ttell us how close they were on his trail; he hurried us all he could."
Chet saw her hand raised; he followed with his eyes the finger thatpointed toward the jungle, and he saw as had Diane the flick of movingleaves where black faces showed silently for an instant and thenvanished. They were up in the trees--lower--down on the ground. Therewere scores upon scores of the ape-men spying upon them, watching everymove that they made.
And suddenly, across the open ground, where the high-flung branches madethe great arch that they called the entrance, a ragged figure appeared.The figure of a man whose torn clothes fluttered in the breeze, whoseface was black with an unkempt beard, whose thick hand waved to motionother scarecrow figures to him, and who laughed, loudly and derisivelythat the three quiet men and the girl on the knoll might hear.
"_Guten tag, meine Herrschaften_," Schwartzmann called loudly, "_meinesehr geehrten Herrschaften!_ You must not be so exclusive. Many _guten_friends haff I here with me. I haff been looking forward to this timewhen they would meet you."