"Then reach your good arm on the other side--soft as you can. There's a
knife lying there--your own knife--they knocked out of my hand. They'll
jump at the first gleam. You know what to do--first me, in the
throat--then yourself."
His face showed no horror at her words. They were down to the most
terrible realities; and as she had said, this was the way out! The great
kindness still dwelt in his eyes--and she knew he would do as she asked.
One gleam of steal, one swift touch at the throat--and they would never
know the unspeakable fate that their depraved captors planned for them.
_It was no less than victory in the last instant of despair!_ It was
freedom: although they did not know into what Mystery and what Fear the
act would dispatch them, it was freedom from Ray and Chan, none the
less. And Ben welcomed the plan as might a prisoner, waiting in the
death-cell, welcome a reprieve.
He turned, groping with his hand. There was no use of waiting longer.
The knife lay just beyond his reach; and softly he moved his body
through the grass.
But this gate to mercy was closed before they reached it. A sudden
flaring of the fire revealed them--the gleam of the blade and Ben's
stretching hand--and Ray left his log in a swift, catlike leap.
If Ben had possessed full use of both hands there still might have been
time to send home the two crucial blows, or at least to dispatch
Beatrice out of Ray's power to harm. But his injured arm impeded him,
and his hand fumbled as he tried to seize the hilt. With a sharp oath
Ray crushed the blade into the ground with his heel; then kicked
viciously at the prone body of his enemy.
And at that first base blow his rage and blood-lust that had been
gathering was swiftly freed. It was all that was needed to set him at
the work of torture. For an instant he stood almost motionless except
for the spasmodic twitching--now almost continuous--at his lips and for
the slow turning of his head as he looked about for a weapon with which
he could more quickly satiate the murder-madness in his veins. The knife
appealed to him not at all; but his eye fell on a long, heavy club of
spruce that had been cut for fuel. He bent and his strong hands seized
it.
As he swung it high the girl leaped between--with a last, frantic
effort, wholly instinctive--to shield Ben's body with her own. But it
was only an instant's reprieve. Chan had followed Ben, and sharing Ray's
fiendish mood, jerked her aside. Ben raised himself up as far as he
could at a final impulse to thrust the girl out of harm's way.
Yet it was to be that Ray's murderous blow was never to go home. A
mighty and terrible ally had come to Ben's aid. He came pouncing from
the darkness, a gaunt and dreadful avenger whose code of death was as
remorseless as Ray's own.
It was Fenris the wolf, and he had found his master at last. Missing him
at the accustomed place in the cave, he had trailed him to the lake
margin: a smell on the wind had led him the rest of the way. He was not
one to announce his coming by an audible footfall in the thicket. Like a
ghost he had glided almost to the edge of the firelight, lingering
there--with a caution learned in these last wild weeks of running with
his brethren--until he had made up his brute mind in regard to the
strangers in the camp. But he had waited only until he saw Ray kick the
helpless form before him,--that of the god that Fenris, for all the wild
had claimed him, still worshipped in his inmost heart. With fiendish,
maniacal fury he had sprung to avenge the blow.
And his three followers, trained by the pack laws to follow where he
led, and keyed to the highest pitch by their leader's fury, leaped like
gray demons of the Pit in his wake.