And then, because he could not shout and because he could not loosen
himself, there came a rift in his madness. He remembered who he was, and
all the old hatreds and bitterness welled up in him.
He remembered, too, what had happened in the compound, and wondered why
the Venusian natives had not killed him. Why, instead, they had tied him
here alone in the darkness of the jungle.
Afar, he heard the throbbing of the drums, and they were like the
beating of the heart of night, and there was a louder, nearer sound that
was the pulse of blood in his ears as the fear came to him.
The fear that he knew why they had tied him here. The horrible,
gibbering fear that, for the last time, an army marched against him.
He had time to savor that fear to the uttermost, to have it become a
creeping certainty that crawled into the black corners of his soul as
would the soldiers of the coming army crawl into his ears and nostrils
while others would eat away his eyelids to get at the eyes behind them.
And then, and only then, did he hear the sound that was like the rustle
of dry leaves, in a dank, black jungle where there were no dry leaves to
rustle nor breeze to rustle them.
Horribly, Number One, the last of the dictators, did not go mad again;
not exactly, but he laughed, and laughed and laughed....
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ September 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.