Behind a Copper Wall
The sun was sending its rays obliquely into the hole of Taunan when
the four disguised crickets, still guided by the pigmy soldier, passed
through a sleeping camp of crickets composing an army that was
besieging the mountain pass into the Land of the Selinites.
Notwithstanding the fact that the crickets had out guards well
trained, their disguises enabled them to reach the beginning of a deep
ravine that led up to a stretch of copper wire spread across the
mountain to keep the crickets from getting into the Land of Selinites.
This wire was an inch thick and meshed in six inches. It extended up
into the sky as far as the eye could reach, and behind it they could
see dimly a vast army of small men armed with copper axes, bows and
arrows, spears and sharp lances. They were also enclosed in copper
armor.
In the past, Moawha informed them, this armor had proved a great
protection in battle but she was now afraid of the new methods of
warfare that Toplinsky would introduce.
“And well may you be afraid,” Joan said. “But fortunately there has
not yet been a serious attack on the wall, and if you leave things to
Julian I am sure he will save your people.”
“G’wan,” Billy snorted indignantly. “I haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m
something of a fighter myself.”
Again they discovered that they were talking too loud. Their guide,
when he pointed to the wall, disappeared, and now, when they heard a
chirping sound behind them, they turned apprehensively. Their fears
were warranted. A band of crickets was entering the ravine behind
them, and hailing them. As they did not understand the cricket
chirpings they decided to ignore them.
They hopped quickly toward the wall. Their movements were clumsy, the
shells which covered their backs were heavy, and the sharp eyes of the
crickets discovered that they were not what they represented
themselves to be. A sharp, shrill, terrifying chirp went out, and the
crickets rushed at them in a body, brandishing their sharp pronged
spears.
Putting forth all their efforts they rushed toward the wall. The
crickets pursued, chirping angrily, and gradually drawing nearer. That
they would be overtaken was obvious.
“Throw off the shells, and run for it,” Epworth urged. “Hurry.”
He was obeyed, and soon the four were fast-footing over the uneven
ground. They gained some but in discarding their disguises they lost
much of their original position, and the crickets began to hop
dangerously near.
At this moment curious faces were thrust against the copper wall on
the other side. Moawha shouted at them in her language. At first they
did not answer, and several crickets hopped in front of her.
Epworth and Billy acted in concert, firing their pistols. This brought
them to a stop.
Shoving Moawha and Joan to the front the two men defended the rear.
“Call to your friends to open the wall,” Epworth shouted. “Let them
know in as few words as possible who you are.”
The Selinites heard Moawha’s cries, recognized her, and with loud
shouts of joy, threw open a gate, and rushed out in a body and drove
the crickets back. Moawha jumped through the wall opening and pulled
Joan with her; Billy and Epworth followed, and the wall door was
slammed and fastened.
With a deep sigh of joy Moawha fell on her knees and extended her
hands, palms open upward. That she was offering a prayer to God for
her deliverance was obvious, and Billy uncovered his head and stood
reverently by her side.
While Epworth was just as thankful he was a man of action. His first
observation told him that under the leadership of Toplinsky the
crickets and Taunans would walk through the copper mesh with wire
cutters very easily. The wire, while strong enough to hurl back the
bodies of the crickets, could be readily cut.
“Come,” he urged. “We have little time to lose. We must put your
borderland in a condition to stand a siege.”
The Selinites were crowding around Moawha, and singing songs of joy,
quite plainly establishing her claims to being their lost princess.
With an impatient gesture Epworth caught her hand, and started down
the incline toward the city he saw not five miles distant. The
Selinites objected.
“Inform them that they must obey me implicitly,” Epworth instructed.
“Tell them that there is grave danger from a new and mysterious
source, and that action cannot be delayed. If they wish to hold a
reception for you it should come later.”
Moawha obeyed, and the American, lifting her in his strong arms, ran
hurriedly down the incline to the city. Going five miles on the moon,
it must be remembered, is easier than going half a mile on the earth,
and soon they were inside of the city, where they were met by a large
concourse of people who wanted to take Moawha out of Epworth’s hands.
But still holding her he pushed his way through the assemblage, and
went to a building that looked like a power house.
His guess was correct, and he deposited Moawha on the floor and ran to
a large coil of copper wire.
“Get busy, Billy,” he insisted anxiously. “This is an electric plant,
and we must use the juice to charge that copper wire wall, and lay a
mine for Toplinsky’s cricket army. If we can hold them outside for a
time—until we can get our breath—perhaps we will find a means of
pushing them back permanently.”
Billy, who was a splendid electrician, picked up another coil,
attached the wire to a generator, and began to unroll the wire toward
the top of the pass. The pigmies, crowding into the building, watched
them with annoyance. Who were these white giants with their queen?
What did they mean by short circuiting the industries of the city? Why
were they meddling with the central electric plant?
A dozen little men came up to Moawha and protested. Epworth paused in
his work to look at them. They were smaller in size than the Taunans
but were more perfectly built. On their bodies, about the size of an
eight year old boy, were handsomely formed heads, and pleasant,
friendly faces.
“Explain to them that we are going to stop all their machinery until
we can run electric juice into the wall that protects them from the
cricket army.”
The moment the Selinite scientists understood what the white giants
were doing they joined in the work with enthusiasm, and sent out a
call for help. Soon there were ten thousand small men rolling coils of
wire toward the copper fence between the two countries. Never before
had it entered their minds that they could make the wall deal death to
their enemies. All they had hoped for was to see them fly against the
mesh and rebound back.
In six hours the copper wall was electrically charged until its touch
meant a shock of death, and Epworth stopped to sleep. While he was
sleeping the Selinites recrowned Moawha queen. This was necessary
because there was a law in the land that if a ruler was absent a
certain length of time the crown was forfeited. Moawha had been a
prisoner months over the time but they had loved her so dearly that
hoping against hope they had not elected her successor.
Epworth was awakened by Joan and Moawha, both of whom were greatly
frightened.
“Come,” Moawha pleaded, “they are assaulting our wall—or rather
getting ready to.”
When the young man, accompanied by Billy, reached the scene, a great
army of crickets was rolling up the mountainside in military
formation. Epworth pushed into the Selinites at a critical moment. The
crickets came within twenty feet of the wall and stopped. The pigmies,
thinking that they were afraid of their spears and bows and arrows,
began to gibe them.
The answer came before Epworth could give instructions. It was in the
shape of a storm of lead from the front ranks of the crickets. It was
a terrifying volley. The bullets whistled through the six inch mesh of
copper and the Selinites were badly demoralized and fled in wild
disorder.
Epworth saw the blast of gun fire with passionate anger. It looked to
him like firing cannons at little children. Nevertheless he shouted
and made a desperate effort to rally the Selinites. But they would not
stop. Never before had they heard the report of a gun and although the
guns being used were small and of rifle character they had no
inclination to stay long to hear another discharge.
Urged on by their pigmy generals the crickets charged the wall. In
their long feelers, extending from their mouths were strong wire
cutters, and in their front arms they carried rifles and spears. For
the safety of the Selinites Epworth had turned on the electric current
only to see that it was in working condition and had turned it off
again. Now he gave the signal to charge the wall.
The signal was answered from the city just as the first ranks of
crickets slammed against the copper wire. The charge caught them and
hurled tons of them backward against their fellows, who crowded
against them with their wire cutters.
Again Epworth signaled to the city, and the juice was cut off.
Not understanding this mysterious power flashed against them a number
of Taunan officers approached the wire wall, and placed their hands on
it. Nothing happened, and with puzzled faces they commanded another
charge. Again Epworth signaled for the juice; again tons of crickets
butted against the wall only to be hurled back by the invisible force
of electricity.
For the second time the pigmy officers investigated the wall. It still
seemed perfectly harmless, and they mustered up their courage to the
point of ordering another attack. This time they threw an army of
crickets against the wall, pushing the nearest crickets forward to the
danger point with regiment after regiment.
The force of the movement was so severe that it bent the wall inward
but the electric current still held them back.
The pigmy leaders now became genuinely alarmed at the fall of so many
crickets, and drew the belligerent army back sullenly several hundred
yards. For a time they stood in battle array just beyond the reach of
the arrows from the wall, and waited until a messenger could be sent
back inland to Toplinsky.
“Ah, ha,” Toplinsky muttered to himself when he heard the news, “these
Selinites have recently received some scientific advice on war. I
wonder if it is possible that those two Americans escaped from the
caves, and landed here? If so——”
He clenched his right hand and put his left arm around Queen Carza’s
waist.
“It will not do, my great lord and master,” Carza whispered to him in
an undertone, “to permit the killing of so many crickets. See they are
piled up in heaps in front of that copper wall. I have led my people
to think that you can defeat the Selinites easily, and give them the
new green world with few fatalities. They are already mumbling to
themselves. There have been killed——”
“Twenty thousand, I should roughly estimate,” Toplinsky interrupted
abruptly. “They should have been more careful but I, the great Herman
Toplinsky, will teach these people much. Draw back the army for a
week, and at the end of that time I promise that there will be
something doing. We will go through that wall as if it were not
there.”