_A weird-scientific thrill-tale of adventure, mystery and romance--of
the waters of immortality, the strange Red and Black cities, and the
dread Guardians that watched eternally over that terribly glowing lake._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales September, October and November 1937.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
_1. The Legion of the Damned_
The heaving blue plain of the ocean stretched far away under the brassy
sun. The wind was blowing strongly toward the west coast of equatorial
Africa, somewhere beyond the skyline. Under the hard hammering of the
gale, the schooner _Venture_ scudded eastward with ivory sails arched
taut, its forefoot chuckling steadily through the foaming water.
Clark Stannard stood by the little schooner's foremast, his dark,
virile face peering frowningly ahead, his dynamic black eyes narrowed
against the glare. The hard wind tore at his white shirt and ducks,
thrummed in the rigging, whined savagely in his ears. He was feeling
again that sick, fatal certainty that the schooner was rushing with him
and his five followers toward disaster and death.
For Clark seemed to see beyond the watery skyline the low, green,
menacing coast of the French Congo, and beyond that the steaming,
mighty jungle of hot rivers and mangrove swamps and hostile tribes
through which he must lead the way to forbidden, unknown regions. Why
had he ever accepted the leadership of this crazy expedition, this mad,
fantastic quest for the legended Lake of Life? Could that fabled Lake
of Life and its shining waters of immortality and its dreaded, unhuman
guardians have any real existence?
"Ship off the port bow!"
Clark Stannard swung sharply. Ephraim Quell, the dour, taciturn, bony
Yankee seaman who stood at the wheel of the _Venture_, was gazing
northward across the uneasy sea.
Clark strode rapidly back along the slanting white deck. Ephraim Quell
pointed a bony finger north and said in his nasal twang, "Looks like a
French gunboat to me."
"A gunboat?" Clark exclaimed, stiffening.
His keen eyes searched the northern horizon. Then he saw the ship--a
low, squat gray craft, wallowing southward toward them, the screaming
wind tearing a plume of gray smoke from its funnels.
"It _is_ a French gunboat!" Clark exclaimed. His fist clenched
unconsciously, and there was a savage twist to his hard mouth as he
cried, "We'll have to break out more sail, Quell! We've got to reach
the mouth of the Bembu River before that gunboat catches us, or this
expedition will end right here and now."
Captain Quell warned grimly, "We're carryin' more sail now than we
ought to, in this blow."
"Do you want to spend the next few years in a French prison?" Clark
demanded roughly. "That upriver country we're headed for is forbidden
to all explorers, and the French will jail us for trying to penetrate
it. Our only chance is to get into the river before they cut us off,
and get upriver on our auxiliary power."
Captain Quell made no further protest, but his bony face was an
ominous mask as he bawled the order. The four other men on the little
schooner's deck leaped to the halyards, quickly breaking out reefed
topsails.
The _Venture_, as the additional canvas took the wind, plunged
alarmingly, almost burying its bowsprit in the foaming waves. Then it
drove on at increased speed, seeming to fly across the choppy swells.
The thin plume of smoke northward drew nearer. Simultaneously, a low
green line appeared on the horizon ahead.
"There's the coast," Clark bit out, peering tautly forward. "And
there's the point north of the Bembu's mouth--steer a little more
southward, Quell."
"We may just make it," he muttered, looking again at the ominous
smoke-plume northward. "We've _got_ to make it!"
* * * * *
The four other men of the expedition were now hastening back to the
helm, stumbling precariously on the slanting deck. Mike Shinn was the
first of them to reach Clark's side.
Mike Shinn was an ex-prizefighter, a squat, gorilla-chested redhead
with a battered, merry face. He exclaimed, "Holy mother, the old tub's
nearly flyin' now! What's all the hurry about?"
"Trouble?" asked Lieutenant John Morrow in his curt fashion.
Morrow was a former U. S. army officer, a lean, habitually silent young
man with shadowed, haunted dark eyes.
Clark Stannard pointed grimly north. "Plenty of trouble, and coming
down on us fast. That's a French gunboat chasing us to challenge and
inspect us. If they learn we're trying to get up the Bembu to the
forbidden Kiridu country, they'll throw us in prison."
Link Wilson, a tall, lanky Texan cowboy with a quizzical, tanned face
and cool eyes, drawled, "Sure, I didn't join up with this outfit and
come all this way to rot in a foreign _calabozo_."
"Nor me either!" rasped the last member of the expedition as he too
joined the group.
This last was Blacky Cain, a former notorious American gangster and
bandit. He stared north with hate in his pale eyes and dark, unshaven,
predatory face.
The criminal continued harshly, "I've done enough stretches in
stir--they're not going to capture me. If they get close enough, I'll
turn loose on 'em with one of those typewriters we're packing."
Link Wilson, the Texan, patted his hip and drawled, "I'll take my old
forty-fives ahead of your submachine guns."
Clark Stannard's black eyes narrowed and he snapped forcefully, "You
men can stop this talk of firing back at the gunboat. We'll do our
damnedest to escape them, but no shooting, understand?"
Blacky Cain stared at him in sullen silence. The gangster, like the
rest of them, had found during the voyage across the Atlantic that
Clark Stannard was their leader not only in name but in fact, and that
he meant his orders to be obeyed.
Clark himself had felt since the very start of this crazy expedition
that he was leading as desperate an aggregation as had ever been
gathered together. These five men whom old Asa Brand had brought
together for the expedition were the only kind of men who would have
joined such a wild, hazardous venture. They were all men beyond the
pale of civilized society, each with a black shadow on his past.
Blacky Cain, the bandit and gangster, had eclipsed the fame of
Dillinger and Floyd, leaving a red trail of robbery across America.
Link Wilson, the tall, drawling Texan cowboy, had killed two men
in a gunfight in a border saloon. Mike Shinn, the red-headed
ex-prizefighter, had been barred from the ring for throwing a fight.
Lieutenant John Morrow had been drummed out of the army for knocking
down his superior officer in a quarrel over a woman. And Captain
Ephraim Quell, the bony, taciturn Yankee seaman, had once been master
of a large coastal passenger liner; but when a fire that should not
have happened had destroyed his ship with great loss of life, the
middle-aged Yankee skipper's certificate had been cancelled permanently.
Truly, Clark Stannard thought somberly, his five followers were a
legion of the damned, a band of ruined, hunted men; men who had nothing
more to lose, the only kind who would have joined this fantastic
expedition in search of the Lake of Life. None of them had any belief
in the existence of the lake, but for the pay old Asa Brand had
offered, they had joined the mad quest for it without qualms. And
Clark knew bitterly that he himself belonged with such a desperate
band; for he too was desperate, staking his life on the chance that he
might be able to find the fabled lake.
Captain Quell's nasal voice declared suddenly, "There's the mouth of
the Bembu, isn't it--beyond that point?"
The _Venture_ was now a mile from the low green shore. Beyond a humped
point of land could be descried the sandy flats and white breakers that
marked the mouth of the equatorial river.
Clark Stannard swung his gaze tautly back to the oncoming gunboat. It
was racing down from the north, overtaking them with alarming speed,
yet still almost two miles behind them.
"We'll make the river," Clark declared. "But it's going to be close."
_Bang!_ A puff of white smoke had issued from the gunboat's deck, and
a shot crashed into the choppy sea some distance ahead of the speeding
schooner.
"They're firing across our bows to halt us," Clark grated. "Keep right
on, captain."
A few moments later another shot came from the gunboat. It hit close
to the _Venture's_ side, fountaining spray that tore away in the gale.
Gray gulls flying low over the wild waves screamed.
"Some shootin'!" jeered Blacky Cain.
The schooner raced like a winged thing past the projecting point
into the broad, shallow bay of the river-mouth. In a few minutes,
Clark thought tensely, they would be safe inside the river where the
deeper-draft gunboat couldn't follow.
Ephraim Quell suddenly pointed and shouted, "Look at that bar! It's low
tide--we can't enter the river!"
Clark's hopes plummeted sickeningly. Plain now ahead was the mouth
of the broad, yellow Bembu, issuing from low green mangrove swamps.
And in a straight barrier across the river-mouth lay a line of wild,
bursting white breakers. The raging waters of the sea were breaking
furiously against the bar there, exploding into mad foam that hung in
the air like drifting white smoke.
Captain Quell was shouting over the ominous roar of those breakers, "We
can't get over that bar till the tide rises."
[Illustration: "Captain Quell was shouting over the ominous roar of the
breakers."]
_Bang!_ The racing gunboat was a half-mile from them, now, and its
third shot crashed through the rigging of the schooner.
"They got us, damn them!" cried Blacky Cain.
Clark exclaimed to the Yankee skipper, "No, we're going to try to go in
over the bar! There's a spot there at the south end of it that looks
deeper--steer there."
Ephraim Quell shrugged his bony shoulders, gripped the wheel and
headed the _Venture_ toward the slight gap in the breakers which Clark
had pointed out. The schooner, borne forward by a sea running with
mill-race speed, leaped eagerly toward the raving white water.
* * * * *
The roar of wind and scream of the dipping gulls and crash of breakers
ahead was deafening. The gray French gunboat, coming up after them
under forced draft, sent another shot after them that missed by yards.
Now the mad foam of the breakers was just in front.
Mike Shinn shouted gleefully, "This is more fun than riding the
water-chute at Coney."