cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter from the
windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on the floor of
one room he came upon stains unmistakable where the wounded had been
laid down.
Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and invaded
the orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe apples. He filled
his pockets, eating while he picked. Then a thought came to him, and
he glanced at the sun, calculating the time of his return to camp.
He pulled off his shirt, tying the sleeves and making a bag. This he
proceeded to fill with apples.
As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked up
its ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the thud of
hoofs on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn and peered
out. A dozen mounted men, strung out loosely, approaching from the
opposite side of the clearing, were only a matter of a hundred yards
or so away. They rode on to the house. Some dismounted, while others
remained in the saddle as an earnest that their stay would be short.
They seemed to be holding a council, for he could hear them talking
excitedly in the detested tongue of the alien invader. The time
passed, but they seemed unable to reach a decision. He put the
carbine away in its boot, mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing
the shirt of apples on the pommel.
He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely into
the roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as it leaped
forward. At the corner of the barn he saw the intruder, a mere boy
of nineteen or twenty for all of his uniform, jump back to escape
being run down. At the same moment the roan swerved, and its rider
caught a glimpse of the aroused men by the house. Some were
springing from their horses, and he could see the rifles going to
their shoulders. He passed the kitchen door and the dried corpses
swinging in the shade, compelling his foes to run around the front
of the house. A rifle cracked, and a second, but he was going fast,
leaning forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching the shirt of
apples, the other guiding the horse.
The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his roan
and leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of several
scattered shots. Eight hundred yards straight away were the woods,
and the roan was covering the distance with mighty strides. Every
man was now firing. They were pumping their guns so rapidly that he
no longer heard individual shots. A bullet went through his hat, but
he was unaware, though he did know when another tore through the
apples on the pommel. And he winced and ducked even lower when a
third bullet, fired low, struck a stone between his horse’s legs and
ricochetted off through the air, buzzing and humming like some
incredible insect.
The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until, quickly,
there was no more shooting. The young man was elated. Through that
astonishing fusillade he had come unscathed. He glanced back. Yes,
they had emptied their magazines. He could see several reloading.
Others were running back behind the house for their horses. As he
looked, two already mounted, came back into view around the corner,
riding hard. And at the same moment, he saw the man with the
unmistakable ginger beard kneel down on the ground, level his gun,
and coolly take his time for the long shot.
The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very low, and
swerved in his flight in order to distract the other’s aim. And
still the shot did not come. With each jump of the horse, the woods
sprang nearer. They were only two hundred yards away, and still the
shot was delayed.
And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was dead
ere he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the saddle. And
they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his body bounce when
it struck the earth, and saw the burst of red-cheeked apples that
rolled about him. They laughed at the unexpected eruption of apples,
and clapped their hands in applause of the long shot by the man with
the ginger beard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BATTLE OF THE MONSTERS
By Morgan Robertson
EXTRACT from hospital record of the case of John Anderson, patient
of Dr. Brown, Ward 3, Room 6:
August 3. Arrived at hospital in extreme mental distress,
having been bitten on the wrist three hours previously by
dog known to have been rabid. Large, strong man,
full-blooded and well nourished. Sanguine temperament. Pulse
and temperature higher than normal, due to excitement.
Cauterized wound at once (2 P.M.) and inoculated with
antitoxin.
As patient admits having recently escaped, by swimming
ashore, from lately arrived cholera ship, now at quarantine,
he has been isolated and clothing disinfected. Watch for
symptoms of cholera.
August 3, 6 P.M. Microscopic examination of blood
corroborative of Metschnikoff’s theory of fighting
leucocytes. White corpuscles gorged with bacteria.
---
He was an amphibian, and, as such, undeniably beautiful; for the
sunlight, refracted and diffused in the water, gave his translucent,
pearl-blue body all the shifting colors of the spectrum. Vigorous
and graceful of movement, in shape he resembled a comma of three
dimensions, twisted, when at rest, to a slight spiral curve; but in
traveling he straightened out with quick successive jerks, each one
sending him ahead a couple of lengths. Supplemented by the
undulatory movement of a long continuation of his tail, it was his
way of swimming, good enough to enable him to escape his enemies;
this, and riding at anchor in a current by his cable-like appendage,
constituting his main occupation in life. The pleasure of eating was
denied him; nature had given him a mouth, but he used it only for
purposes of offense and defense, absorbing his food in a most
unheard-of manner—through the soft walls of his body.
Yet he enjoyed a few social pleasures. Though the organs of the five
senses were missing in his economy, he possessed an inner sixth
sense which answered for all and also gave him power of speech. He
would converse, swap news and views, with creatures of his own and
other species, provided that they were of equal size and prowess;
but he wasted no time on any but his social peers. Smaller creatures
he pursued when they annoyed him; larger ones pursued him.
The sunlight, which made him so beautiful to look at, was
distasteful to him; it also made him too visible. He preferred a
half-darkness and less fervor to life’s battle—time to judge of
chances, to figure on an enemy’s speed and turning-circle, before
beginning flight or pursuit. But his dislike of it really came of a
stronger animus—a shuddering recollection of three hours once passed
on dry land in a comatose condition, which had followed a
particularly long and intense period of bright sunlight. He had
never been able to explain the connection, but the awful memory
still saddened his life.
And now it seemed, as he swam about, that this experience might be
repeated. The light was strong and long-continued, the water
uncomfortably warm, and the crowd about him denser—so much so as to
prevent him from attending properly to a social inferior who had
crossed his bow. But just as his mind grasped the full imminence of
the danger, there came a sudden darkness, a crash and vibration of
the water, then a terrible, rattling roar of sound. The social
inferior slipped from his mouth, and with his crowding neighbors was
washed far away, while he felt himself slipping along, bounding and
rebounding against the projections of a corrugated wall which showed
white in the gloom. There was an unpleasant taste to the water, and
he became aware of creatures in his vicinity unlike any he had
known,—quickly darting little monsters about a tenth as large as
himself,—thousands of them, black and horrid to see, each with
short, fish-like body and square head like that of a dog; with
wicked mouth that opened and shut nervously; with hooked flippers on
the middle part, and a bunch of tentacles on the fore that spread
out ahead and around. A dozen of them surrounded him menacingly; but
he was young and strong, much larger than they, and a little
frightened. A blow of his tail killed two, and the rest drew off.
The current bore them on until the white wall rounded off and was
lost to sight beyond the mass of darting creatures. Here was slack
water, and with desperate effort he swam back, pushing the small
enemies out of his path, meeting some resistance and receiving a few
bites, until, in a hollow in the wall, he found temporary refuge and
time to think. But he could not solve the problem. He had not the
slightest idea where he was or what had happened—who and what were
the strange black creatures, or why they had threatened him.
His thoughts were interrupted. Another vibrant roar sounded, and
there was pitch-black darkness; then he was pushed and washed away
from his shelter, jostled, bumped, and squeezed, until he found
himself in a dimly lighted tunnel, which, crowded as it was with
swimmers, was narrow enough to enable him to see both sides at once.
The walls were dark brown and blue, broken up everywhere into
depressions or caves, some of them so deep as to be almost like
blind tunnels. The dog-faced creatures were there—as far as he could
see; but besides them, now, were others, of stranger shape—of
species unknown to him.
A slow current carried them on, and soon they entered a larger
tunnel. He swam to the opposite wall, gripped a projection, and
watched in wonder and awe the procession gliding by. He soon noticed
the source of the dim light. A small creature with barrel-like body
and innumerable legs or tentacles, wavering and reaching, floated
past. Its body swelled and shrank alternately, with every swelling
giving out a phosphorescent glow, with every contraction darkening
to a faint red color. Then came a group of others; then a second
living lamp; later another and another: they were evenly
distributed, and illumined the tunnel.
There were monstrous shapes, living but inert, barely pulsing with
dormant life, as much larger than himself as the dog-headed kind
were smaller—huge, unwieldy, disk-shaped masses of tissue, light
gray at the margins, dark red in the middle. They were in the
majority, and blocked the view. Darting and wriggling between and
about them were horrible forms, some larger than himself, others
smaller. There were serpents, who swam with a serpent’s motion. Some
were serpents in form, but were curled rigidly into living
cork-screws, and by sculling with their tails screwed their way
through the water with surprising rapidity. Others were barrel-or
globe-shaped, with swarming tentacles. With these they pulled
themselves along, in and out through the crowd, or, bringing their
squirming appendages rearward,—each an individual snake,—used them
as propellers, and swam. There were creatures in the form of long
cylinders, some with tentacles by which they rolled along like a log
in a tide-way; others, without appendages, were as inert and
helpless as the huge red-and-gray disks. He saw four ball-shaped
creatures float by, clinging together; then a group of eight, then
one of twelve. All these, to the extent of their volition, seemed to
be in a state of extreme agitation and excitement.
The cause was apparent. The tunnel from which he had come was still
discharging the dog-faced animals by the thousand, and he knew now
the business they were on. It was war—war to the death. They flung
themselves with furious energy into the parade, fighting and biting
all they could reach. A hundred at a time would pounce on one of the
large red-and-gray creatures, almost hiding it from view; then, and
before they had passed out of sight, they would fall off and
disperse, and the once living victim would come with them, in parts.
The smaller, active swimmers fled, but if one was caught, he
suffered; a quick dart, a tangle of tentacles, an embrace of the
wicked flippers, a bite—and a dead body floated on.
And now into the battle came a ponderous engine of vengeance and
defense. A gigantic, lumbering, pulsating creature, white and
translucent but for the dark, active brain showing through its
walls, horrible in the slow, implacable deliberation of its
movements, floated down with the current. It was larger than the
huge red-and-gray creatures. It was formless, in the full irony of
the definition—for it assumed all forms. It was long—barrel-shaped;
it shrank to a sphere, then broadened laterally, and again extended
above and below. In turn it was a sphere, a disk, a pyramid, a
pentahedron, a polyhedron. It possessed neither legs, flippers, nor
tentacles; but out from its heaving, shrinking body it would send,
now from one spot, now from another, an active arm, or feeler, with
which it swam, pulled, or pushed. An unlucky invader which one of
them touched made few more voluntary movements; for instantly the
whole side of the whitish mass bristled with arms. They seized,
crushed, killed it, and then pushed it bodily through the living
walls to the animal’s interior to serve for food. And the gaping
fissure healed at once, like the wounds of Milton’s warring angels.
The first white monster floated down, killing as he went; then came
another, pushing eagerly into the fray; then came two, then three,
then dozens. It seemed that the word had been passed, and the army
of defense was mustering.
Sick with horror, he watched the grim spectacle from the shelter of
the projection, until roused to an active sense of danger to
himself—but not from the fighters. He was anchored by his tail,
swinging easily in the eddy, and now felt himself touched from
beneath, again from above. A projection down-stream was extending
outward and toward him. The cave in which he had taken refuge was
closing on him like a great mouth—as though directed by an
intelligence behind the wall. With a terrified flirt of his tail he
flung himself out, and as he drifted down with the combat the walls
of the cave crunched together. It was well for him that he was not
there.
The current was clogged with fragments of once living creatures, and
everywhere, darting, dodging, and biting, were the fierce black
invaders. But they paid no present attention to him or to the small
tentacled animals. They killed the large, helpless red-and-gray
kind, and were killed by the larger white monsters, each moment
marking the death and rending to fragments of a victim, and the
horrid interment of fully half his slayers. The tunnel grew larger,
as mouth after mouth of tributary tunnels was passed; but as each
one discharged its quota of swimming and drifting creatures, there
was no thinning of the crowd.
As he drifted on with the inharmonious throng, he noticed what
seemed the objective of the war. This was the caves which lined the
tunnel. Some were apparently rigid, others were mobile. A large
red-and-gray animal was pushed into the mouth of one of the latter,
and the walls instantly closed; then they opened, and the creature
drifted out, limp and colorless, but alive; and with him came
fragments of the wall, broken off by the pressure. This happened
again and again, but the large creature was never quite
killed—merely squeezed. The tentacled non-combatants and the large
white fighters seemed to know the danger of these tunnel mouths,
possibly from bitter experiences, for they avoided the walls; but
the dog-faced invaders sought this death, and only fought on their
way to the caves. Sometimes two, often four or more, would launch
themselves together into a hollow, but to no avail; their united
strength could not prevent the closing in of the mechanical maw, and
they were crushed and flung out, to drift on with other debris.
Soon the walls could not be seen for the pushing, jostling crowd,
but everywhere the terrible, silent war went on until there came a
time when fighting ceased; for each must look out for himself. They
seemed to be in an immense cave, and the tide was broken into
cross-currents rushing violently to the accompaniment of rhythmical
thunder. They were shaken, jostled, pushed about and pushed
together, hundreds of the smaller creatures dying from the pressure.
Then there was a moment of comparative quiet, during which fighting
was resumed, and there could be seen the swiftly flying walls of a
large tunnel. Next they were rushed through a labyrinth of small
caves with walls of curious, branching formation, sponge-like and
intricate. It required energetic effort to prevent being caught in
the meshes, and the large red-and-gray creatures were sadly torn and
crushed, while the white ones fought their way through by main
strength. Again the flying walls of a tunnel, again a mighty cave,
and the cross-currents, and the rhythmical thunder, and now a wild
charge down an immense tunnel, the wall of which surged outward and
inward, in unison with the roaring of the thunder.
The thunder died away in the distance, though the walls still
surged—even those of a smaller tunnel which divided the current and
received them. Down-stream the tunnel branched again and again, and
with the lessening of the diameter was a lessening of the current’s
velocity, until, in a maze of small, short passages, the invaders,
content to fight and kill in the swifter tide, again attacked the
caves.
But to the never-changing result: they were crushed, mangled, and
cast out, the number of suicides, in this neighborhood, largely
exceeding those killed by the white warriors. And yet, in spite of
the large mortality among them, the attacking force was increasing.
Where one died two took his place; and the reason was soon made
plain—they were reproducing. A black fighter, longer than his
fellows, a little sluggish of movement, as though from the
restrictive pressure of a large, round protuberance in his middle,
which made him resemble a snake which had swallowed an egg, was
caught by a white monster and instantly embraced by a multitude of
feelers. He struggled, bit, and broke in two; then the two parts
escaped the grip of the astonished captor, and wriggled away, the
protuberance becoming the head of the rear portion, which
immediately joined the fight, snapping and biting with unmistakable
jaws. This phenomenon was repeated.
And on went the battle. Illumined by the living lamps, and watched
by terrified noncombatants, the horrid carnival continued with
never-slacking fury and ever-changing background—past the mouths of
tributary tunnels which increased the volume and velocity of the
current and added to the fighting strength, on through widening
archways to a repetition of the cross-currents, the thunder, and the
sponge-like maze, down past the heaving walls of larger tunnels to
branched passages, where, in comparative slack water, the siege of
the caves was resumed. For hour after hour this went on, the
invaders dying by hundreds, but increasing by thousands and ten
thousands, as the geometrical progression advanced, until, with
swimming-spaces nearly choked by their bodies, living and dead,
there came the inevitable turn in the tide of battle. A white
monster was killed.
Glutted with victims, exhausted and sluggish, he was pounced upon by
hundreds, hidden from view by a living envelop of black, which
pulsed and throbbed with his death-throes. A feeler reached out, to
be bitten off; then another, to no avail. His strength was gone, and
the assailants bit and burrowed until they reached a vital part,
when the great mass assumed a spherical form and throbbed no more.
They dropped off, and, as the mangled ball floated on, charged on
the next enemy with renewed fury and courage born of their victory.
This one died as quickly.
And as though it had been foreseen, and a policy arranged to meet
it, the white army no longer fought in the open, but lined up along
the walls to defend the immovable caves. They avoided the working
jaws of the other kind, which certainly needed no garrison, and
drifting slowly in the eddies, fought as they could, with decreasing
strength and increasing death-rate. And thus it happened that our
conservative noncombatant, out in midstream, found himself
surrounded by a horde of black enemies who had nothing better to do
than attack him.
And they did. As many as could crowd about him closed their wicked
jaws in his flesh. Squirming with pain, rendered trebly strong by
his terror, he killed them by twos and threes as he could reach them
with his tail. He shook them off with nervous contortions, only to
make room for more. He plunged, rolled, launched himself forward and
back, up and down, out and in, bending himself nearly double, then
with lightning rapidity throwing himself far into the reverse curve.
He was fighting for his life, and knew it. When he could, he used
his jaws, only once to an enemy. He saw dimly at intervals that the
white monsters were watching him; but none offered to help, and he
had not time to call.
He thought that he must have become the object of the war; for from
all sides they swarmed, crowding about him, seeking a place on which
to fasten their jaws. Little by little the large red-and-gray
creatures, the noncombatants, and the phosphorescent animals were
pushed aside, and he, the center of an almost solid black mass,
fought, in utter darkness, with the fury of extreme fright. He had
no appreciation of the passing of time, no knowledge of his distance
from the wall, or the destination of this never-pausing current. But
finally, after an apparently interminable period, he heard dimly,
with failing consciousness, the reverberations of the thunder, and
knew momentary respite as the violent cross-currents tore his
assailants away. Then, still in darkness, he felt the crashing and
tearing of flesh against obstructing walls and sharp corners, the
repetition of thunder and the roar of the current which told him he
was once more in a large tunnel. An instant of light from a
venturesome torch showed him to his enemies, and again he fought,
like a whale in his last flurry, slowly dying from exhaustion and
pain, but still potential to kill—terrible in his agony. There was
no counting of scalps in that day’s work; but perhaps no devouring
white monster in all the defensive army could have shown a
death-list equal to this. From the surging black cloud there was a
steady outflow of the dead, pushed back by the living.
Weaker and weaker, while they mangled his flesh, and still in
darkness, he fought them down through branching passages to another
network of small tunnels, where he caught a momentary view of the
walls and the stolid white guard, thence on to what he knew was open
space. And here he felt that he could fight no more. They had
covered him completely, and, try as he might with his failing
strength, he could not dislodge them. So he ceased his struggles;
and numb with pain, dazed with despair, he awaited the end.
But it did not come. He was too exhausted to feel surprise or joy
when they suddenly dropped away from him; but the instinct of
self-preservation was still in force, and he swam toward the wall.
The small creatures paid him no attention; they scurried this way
and that, busy with troubles of their own, while he crept stupidly
and painfully between two white sentries floating in the eddies,—one
of whom considerately made room for him,—and anchored to a
projection, luckily choosing a harbor that was not hostile.
“Any port in a storm, eh, neighbor?” said the one who had given him
room, and who seemed to notice his dazed condition. “You’ll feel
better soon. My, but you put up a good fight, that’s what you did!”
He could not answer, and the friendly guard resumed his vigil. In a
few moments, however, he could take cognizance of what was going on
in the stream. There was a new army in the fight, and reinforcements
were still coming. A short distance above him was a huge rent in the
wall, and the caves around it, crushed and distorted, were grinding
fiercely. Protruding through the rent and extending half-way across
the tunnel was a huge mass of some strange substance, roughly shaped
to a cylindrical form. It was hollow, and out of it, by thousands
and hundred thousands, was pouring the auxiliary army, from which
the black fighters were now fleeing for dear life.