Bell was falling head-first when the 'chute opened, and the jerk was
terrific, the more so as he had counted not the customary ten, but
fifteen before pulling out the ring. But very suddenly he seemed to be
floating down with an amazing gentleness, with the ruddy blossom of a
parachute swaying against a background of lustrous stars very far indeed
over his head. Below him were masses of smoke and at least one huge
dancing mass of flame, where the storage tank for airplane gas had
exploded. It was unlikely in the extreme, he saw now, that anyone under
that canopy of smoke could look up to see plane or parachute against the
sky.
Clumsily enough, dangling as he was, Bell twisted about to look for
Paula. Sheer panic came to him before he saw her a little above him but
a long distance off. She looked horribly alone with the glare of the
fires upon her parachute, and smoke that trailed away into darkness
below her. She was farther from the flames than Bell, too. The light
upon her was dimmer. And Bell cursed that he had stayed in the plane to
make sure it would dive clear of her before he stepped off himself.
* * * * *
The glow on the blossom of silk above her faded out. The sky still
glared behind, but a thick and acrid fog enveloped Bell as he descended.
Still straining his eyes hopelessly, he crossed his feet and waited.
Branches reached up and lashed at him. Vines scraped against his sides.
He was hurled against a tree trunk with stunning force, and rebounded,
and swung clear, and then dangled halfway between earth and the jungle
roof. It was minutes before his head cleared, and then he felt at once
despairing and a fool. Dangling in his parachute harness when Paula
needed him.
The light in the sky behind him penetrated even the jungle growth as a
faint luminosity. Presently he writhed to a position in which he could
strike a match. A thick, matted mass of climbing vines swung from the
upper branches not a yard from his fingertips. Bell cursed again,
frantically, and clutched at it wildly. Presently his absurd kickings
set him to swaying. He redoubled his efforts and increased the arc in
which he swung. But it was a long time before his fingers closed upon
leaves which came away in his grasp, and longer still before he caught
hold of a wrist-thick liana which oozed sticky sap upon his hands.
But he clung desperately, and presently got his whole weight on it. He
unsnapped the parachute and partly let himself down, partly slid, and
partly tumbled to the solid earth below.
He had barely reached it when, muffled and many times reechoed among the
tree trunks, he heard two shots. He cursed, and sprang toward the sound,
plunging headlong into underbrush that strove to tear the flesh from his
bones. He fought madly, savagely, fiercely.
* * * * *
He heard two more shots. He fought the jungle in the darkness like a
madman, ploughing insanely through masses of creepers that should have
been parted by a machete, and which would have been much more easily
slipped through by separating them, but which he strove to penetrate by
sheer strength.
And then he heard two shots again.
Bell stopped short and swore disgustedly.
"What a fool I am!" he growled. "She's telling me where she is, and
I--"
He drew one of the weapons that seemed to bulge in every pocket of his
flying suit and fired two shots in the air in reply. A single one
answered him.
From that time Bell moved more sanely. The jungle is not designed,
apparently, for men to travel in. It is assuredly not intended for them
to travel in by night, and especially it is not planned, by whoever
planned it, for a man to penetrate without either machete or lights.
As nearly as he could estimate it afterward, it took Bell over an hour
to cover one mile in the blackness under the jungle roof. Once he
blundered into fire-ants. They were somnolent in the darkness, but one
hand stung as if in white-hot metal as he went on. And thorns tore at
him. The heavy flying suit protected him somewhat, but after the first
hundred yards he blundered on almost blindly, with his arms across his
face, stopping now and then to try to orient himself. Three times he
fired in the air, and three times an answering shot came instantly, to
guide him.
* * * * *
And then a voice called in the blackness, and he ploughed toward it, and
it called again, and again, and at last he struck a match with trembling
fingers and saw her, dangling as he had dangled, some fifteen feet from
the ground. She smiled waveringly, with a little gasp of relief, and he
heard something go slithering away, very furtively.
She clung to him desperately when he had gotten her down to solid earth.
But he was savage.
"Those shots--though I'm glad you fired them--may have been a tip-off to
the town. We've got to keep moving, Paula."
Her breath was coming quickly.
"They could trail us, Charles. By daylight we might not leave signs, but
forcing our way through the night...."
"Right, as usual," admitted Bell. "How about shells? Did you use all
you had?"
"Nearly. But I was afraid, Charles."
Bell felt in his pockets. Half a box. Perhaps twenty-five shells. With
the town nearby and almost certainly having heard their signals to each
other. Black rage invaded Bell. They would be hunted for, of course.
Dogs, perhaps, would trail them. And the thing would end when they were
at bay, ringed about by The Master's slaves, with twenty-five shells
only to expend.
The dim little glow in the sky between the jungle leaves kept up. It was
bright, and slowly growing brighter. There was a sudden flickering and
even the jungle grew light for an instant. A few seconds later there was
a heavy concussion.
"Something else went up then," growled Bell. "It's some satisfaction,
anyway, to know I did a lot of damage."
* * * * *
And then, quite abruptly, there was an obscure murmuring sound. It grew
stronger, and stronger still. If Bell had been aloft, he would have seen
the planes from The Master's hangars being rushed out of their shelters.
One of the long row of buildings had caught. And the plateau of Cuyaba
is very, very far from civilization. Tools, and even dynamos and
engines, could be brought toilsomely to it, but the task would be
terrific. Buildings would be made from materials on the spot, even the
shelters for the planes. It would be much more practical to carry the
parts for a saw mill and saw out the lumber on the spot than to attempt
to freight roofing materials and the like to Cuyaba. So that the
structures Bell had seen in the wing lights' glow were of wood, and
inflammable. The powerhouse that lighted the landing field was already
ablaze. The smaller shacks of the laborers perhaps would not be burnt
down, but the elaborate depot for communication by plane and wireless
was rapidly being destroyed. The reserve of gasoline had gone up in
smoke almost at the beginning, and in spreading out had extended the
disaster to nearly all the compact nerve-center of the whole conspiracy.
Presently the droning noise was tumultuous. Every plane in a condition
to fly was out on the landing field, now brightly lighted by the burning
buildings all about. There was frantic, hectic activity everywhere. The
secretaries of The Master were rescuing what records they could, and
growing cold with terror. In the confusion of spreading flames and the
noise of roaring conflagrations the stopping of the motor up aloft had
passed unnoticed. In the headquarters of The Master there was panic. An
attack had been made upon The Master. A person who could not be one of
his slaves had found his stronghold and attacked it terribly. And if one
man knew that location and dared attack it, then....
* * * * *
The hold of The Master upon all his slaves was based on one fact and its
corollary. The fact was, that those who had been given his poison would
go murder mad without its antidote. The corollary was that those who
obeyed him would be given that antidote and be safe. True, the antidote
was but a temporary one, and mixed with it for administration was a
further dosage of the poison itself. But the whole power of The Master
was based on his slaves' belief that as long as they obeyed him abjectly
there would be no failure of the antidote's supply. And Bell had given
that belief a sudden and horrible shock.
Orders came from one frightened man, who cursed much more from terror
than from rage. Ribiera had advised him. To do him justice, Ribiera felt
less fear than most. Nephew to The Master, and destined successor to The
Master's power, Ribiera dared not revolt, but at least he had little
fear of punishment for incompetence. It was his advice that set the many
aircraft motors warming up. It was his direction that assorted out the
brainwork staff. And Ribiera himself curtly took control, indifferently
abandoned the enslaved workers to the madness that would come upon them,
and took wing in the last of a stream of roaring things that swept
upward above the smoke and flame and vanished in the sky.
* * * * *
Bell and Paula were huddled in between the buttress roots of a jungle
giant, protected on three sides by the monster uprearings of solid wood,
and Bell was absorbedly feeding a tiny smudge fire. The smoke was thick
and choking, but it did keep off the plague of insects which make jungle
travel much less than the romantic adventure it is pictured. Bell heard
the heavy, thunderous buzzing from the town change timbre suddenly. A
single note of it grew loud and soared overhead.
He stared up instinctively, but saw nothing but leaves and branches and
many climbing things above him, dimly lighted by the smoky little blaze.
The roaring overhead went on, and dimmed. A second roaring came from the
town and rose to a monstrous growling and diminished. A third did
likewise, and a fourth.
At stated, even intervals the planes at headquarters of The Master took
off from the landing field, ringed about with blazing buildings, and
plunged through the darkness in a straight line. The steadier droning
from the town grew lighter as the jungles echoed for many miles with the
sounds of aircraft motors overhead.
* * * * *
At last a single plane rose upward and thundered over the jungle roof.
It went away, and away.... The town was silent, then, and only a faint
and dwindling murmur came from the line of aircraft headed south.
"They've deserted the town, by God!" said Bell, his eyes gleaming.
"Scared off!"
"And--and we--" said Paula, gazing at him.
"You can bet that every man who could crowd into a plane did so," said
Bell grimly. "Those that couldn't, if they have any brains, will be
trying to make it some other way to where they can subject themselves to
one of The Master's deputies and have a little longer time of sanity.
The poor devils that are left--well--they'll be _camaradas_, _peons_,
laborers, without the intelligence to know what they can do. They'll
wait patiently for their masters to come back. And presently their hands
will writhe.... And the town will be a hell."
"Then they won't be looking for us?"
Bell considered. And suddenly he laughed.
"If the fire has burned out before dawn," he said coldly, "I'll go
looking for them. It's going to be cold-blooded, and it's going to be
rather pitiful, I think, but there's nothing else to do. You try to get
some rest. You'll need it."
And for all the rest of the dark hours he crouched in the little angle
formed by the roots of the forest giant, and kept a thickly smoking
little fire going, and listened to the noises of the jungle all about
him.
* * * * *
It was more than a mile back to the town. It was nearer two. But it was
vastly less difficult to force a way through the thick growths by
daylight, even though then it was not easy. With machetes, of course,
Bell and Paula would have had no trouble, but theirs had been left in
the plane. Bell made a huge club and battered openings by sheer strength
where it was necessary. Sweat streamed down his face before he had
covered five hundred yards, but then something occurred to him and he
went more easily. If there were any of the intelligent class of The
Master's subjects left in the little settlement, he wanted to allow time
enough for them to start their flight. He wanted to find the place empty
of all but laborers, who would be accustomed to obey any man who spoke
arrogantly and in the manner of a deputy of The Master. Yet he did not
want to wait too long. Panic spreads among the _camarada_ class as
swiftly as among more intelligent folk, and it is even more blind and
hysterical.
It was nearly eleven o'clock before they emerged upon a cleared field
where brightly blooming plants grew hugely. Bell regarded these grimly.
"These," he observed, "will be The Master's stock."
Paula touched his arm.
"I have heard," she said, and shuddered, "that the men who gather the
plants that go to make the poisons of the _Indios_ do not--do not dare
to sleep near the fresh-picked plants. They say that the odor is
dangerous, even the perfume of the blossoms."
"Very probably," said Bell. "I wish I could destroy the damned things.
But since we can't, why, we'll go around the edge of the field."
* * * * *
He went upwind, skirting the edge of the planted things. A path showed,
winding over half-heartedly cleared ground. He followed it, with Paula
close behind him. Smoke still curled heavily upward from the heaps of
ashes which he reached first of all. He looked upon them with an
unpleasant satisfaction. He had to pick his way between still smoking
heaps of embers to reach the huts about which laborers stood listlessly,
not working because not ordered to work, not yet frightened because not
yet realizing fully the catastrophe that had come upon them.
He was moving toward them, deliberately adopting an air of suppressed
rage, when a voice called whiningly.
"Senhor! Senhor!" And then pleadingly, in Portuguese, "I have news for
The Master! I have news for The Master!"
Bell jerked his head about. Bars of thick wood, cemented into heavy
timbers at top and bottom. A building that was solid wall on three
sides, and the fourth was bars. A white man in it, unshaven, haggard,
ragged, filthy. And on the floor of the cage....
There had been another such cage on a _fazenda_ back toward Rio. Bell
had looked into it, and had shot the gibbering Thing that had been its
occupant, as an act of pure mercy. But this man had been through horrors
and yet was sane.
"Don't look," said Bell sharply to Paula. He went close.
The figure pressed against the bars, whining. And suddenly it stopped
its fawning.
"The devil!" said the white man in the cage. "What in hell are you doing
here, Bell? Has that fiend caught you too?"
* * * * *
"Oh, my God!" gasped Bell. He went white with a cold rage. He'd known
this man before. A Secret Service man--one of the seven who had
vanished. "How's this place opened? I'll let you out."
"It may be dangerous," said the white man with a ghastly grin. "I'm one
of The Master's little victims. I've been trying to work a little game
in hopes of getting within arm's reach of him. How'd you get here? Has
he got you too?"
"I burned the damned town last night," snarled Bell, "and crashed up
after it. Where's that door?"
He found it, a solid mass of planks with a log bar fitted in such a way
that it could not possibly be opened from within. He dragged it wide.
The white man came out, holding to his self-control with an obvious
effort.
"I want to dance and sing because I'm out of there," he told Bell
queerly, "but I know you've done me no good. I've been fed The Master's
little medicine. I've been in that cage for weeks."
Bell, quivering with rage, handed him a revolver.
"I'm going to get some supplies and stuff and try to make it to
civilization," he said shortly. "If you want to help...."
"Hell, yes," said the white man drearily. "I might as well. Number
One-Fourteen was here.... He's The Master's little pet, now. Turned
traitor. Report it, if you ever get out."
"No," said Bell briefly. "He didn't turn." He told in a very few words
of the finding of the body of a man who had fallen or been thrown from a
plane into the jungle.
* * * * *
They were moving toward the rows of still standing shacks, then, and
faces were beginning to turn toward them, and there was a little stir of
apathetic puzzlement at sight of the white man who had been set free.
That white man looked suddenly at Paula, and then at Bell.
"I've been turned into a beast," he said wryly. "Look here, Bell. There
were as many as ten and fifteen of us in that cage at one time--men the
deputies sent up for the purpose. We were allowed to go mad, one and two
at a time, for the edification of the populace, to keep the _camaradas_
scared. And those of us who weren't going mad just then used to have to
band together and kill them. That cage has been the most awful hell on
earth that any devil ever contrived. They put three women in there once,
with their hands already writhing.... Ugh!..."
Bell's face was cold and hard is if carved from marble.
"I haven't lived through it," said the white man harshly, "by being
soft. And I've got less than no time to live--sane, anyhow. I was
thinking of shooting you in the back, because the young lady--"
He laughed as Bell's revolver muzzle stirred.
"I'm telling you," said the white man in ghastly merriment, "because I
thought--I thought One-Fourteen had set me the example of ditching the
Service for his own life. But now it's different."
* * * * *
He pointed.
"There's a launch in that house, with one of these outboard motors. It
was used to keep up communication with the boat gangs that sweat the
heavy supplies up the river. It'll float in three inches of water, and
you can pole it where the water's too shallow to let the propeller turn.
This rabble will mob you if you try to take it, because it'll have taken
them just about this long to realize that they're deserted. They'll
think you are a deputy, at least, to have dared release me. I'm going to
convince them of it, and use this gun to give you a start. I give you
two hours. It ought to be enough. And then...."
Bell nodded.
"I'm not Service," he said curtly, "but I'll see it's known."
The white man laughed again.
"'Some sigh for the glories of this world, and some for a prophet's
paradise to come,'" he quoted derisively. "I thought I was hard, Bell,
but I find I prefer to have my record clean in the Service--where nobody
will ever see it--than to take what pleasure I might snatch before I
die. Queer, isn't it? Old Omar was wrong. Now watch me bluff, flinging
away the cash for credit of doubtful value, and all for the rumble of a
distant drum--which will be muted!"
* * * * *
They were surrounded by swarming, fawning, frightened _camaradas_ who
implored the Senhor to tell them if he were a deputy of The Master, and
if he were here to make sure nothing evil befell them. They worked for
The Master, and they desired nothing save to labor all their lives for
The Master, only--only--The Master would allow no evil to befall them?
The white man waved his arms grandiloquently.
"The Senhor you behold," he proclaimed in the barbarous Portugese of the
hinterland of Brazil, "has released me from the cage in which you saw
me. He is the deputy of The Master himself, and is enraged because the
landing lights on the field were not burning, so that his airplane fell
down into the jungle. He bears news of great value from me to The
Master, which will make me finally a sub-deputy of The Master. And I
have a revolver, as you see, with which I could kill him, but he dares
not permit me to die, since I have given him news for The Master. I
shall wait here and he will go and send back an airplane with the grace
of The Master for me and for all of you."
Bell snarled an assent, in the arrogant fashion of the deputies of The
Master. He waited furiously while the Service man argued eloquently and
fluently. He fingered his revolver suggestively when a wave of panic
swept over the swarming mob for no especial reason. And then he watched
grimly while the light little metal-bottomed boat was carried to the
water's edge and loaded with food, and fuel, and arms, and ammunition,
and even mosquito bars.
The white man grinned queerly at Bell as he extended his hand in a last
handshake.
"'I, who am about to die, salute you!'" he said mockingly. "Isn't this a
hell of a world, Bell? I'm sure we could design a better one in some
ways."
* * * * *
Bell felt a horrible, a ghastly shock. The hand that gripped his was
writhing in his grasp.
"Quite so," said the white man. "It started about five minutes ago. In
theory, I've about forty-eight hours. Actually, I don't dare wait that
long, if I'm to die like a white man. And a lingering vanity insists on
that. I hope you get out, Bell.... And if you want to do me a
favor,"--he grinned again, mirthlessly--"you might see that The Master
and as many of his deputies as you can manage join me in hell at the
earliest possible moment. I shan't mind so much if I can watch them."
He put his hands quickly in his pockets as the little outboard motor
caught and the launch went on down-river. He did not even look after
them. The last Bell saw of him he was swaggering back up the little
hillside above the river edge, surrounded by scared inhabitants of the
workmen's shacks, and scoffing in a superior fashion at their fears.