"By the front entrance? Yes? I might have known you were too stupid to
find the secret door. Hoofs of the Devil, had you thrust against the
chest with the golden lock, which stood against the wall, the door had
opened to you and revealed the secret passageway through which I went."
"I traced you to the nearest port and there took ship and followed you
to Italy, where I found you had gone."
"Aye, by the saints, you nearly cornered me in Florence. Ho! ho! ho! I
was climbing through a back window while Monsieur Galahad was battering
down the front door of the tavern. And had your horse not gone lame,
you would have caught up with me on the road to Rome. Again, the ship
on which I left Spain had barely put out to sea when Monsieur Galahad
rides up to the wharfs. Why have you followed me like this? I do not
understand."
"Because you are a rogue whom it is my destiny to kill," answered Kane
coldly. He did not understand. All his life he had roamed about the
world aiding the weak and fighting oppression, he neither knew nor
questioned why. That was his obsession, his driving force of life.
Cruelty and tyranny to the weak sent a red blaze of fury, fierce and
lasting, through his soul. When the full flame of his hatred was
wakened and loosed, there was no rest for him until his vengeance
had been fulfilled to the uttermost. If he thought of it at all, he
considered himself a fulfiller of God's judgment, a vessel of wrath to
be emptied upon the souls of the unrighteous. Yet in the full sense of
the word Solomon Kane was not wholly a Puritan, though he thought of
himself as such.
Le Loup shrugged his shoulders. "I could understand had I wronged you
personally. _Mon Dieu!_ I, too, would follow an enemy across the
world, but, though I would have joyfully slain and robbed you, I never
heard of you until you declared war on me."
* * * * *
Kane was silent, his still fury overcoming him. Though he did not
realize it, the Wolf was more than merely an enemy to him; the bandit
symbolized, to Kane, all the things against which the Puritan had
fought all his life: cruelty, outrage, oppression and tyranny.
Le Loup broke in on his vengeful meditations. "What did you do with the
treasure, which--gods of Hades!--took me years to accumulate? Devil
take it, I had time only to snatch a handful of coins and trinkets as I
ran."
"I took such as I needed to hunt you down. The rest I gave to the
villages which you had looted."
"Saints and the devil!" swore Le Loup. "_Monsieur_, you are the
greatest fool I have yet met. To throw that vast treasure--by Satan, I
rage to think of it in the hands of base peasants, vile villagers! Yet,
ho! ho! ho! ho! they will steal, and kill each other for it! That is
human nature."
"Yes, damn you!" flamed Kane suddenly, showing that his conscience had
not been at rest. "Doubtless they will, being fools. Yet what could I
do? Had I left it there, people might have starved and gone naked for
lack of it. More, it would have been found, and theft and slaughter
would have followed anyway. You are to blame, for had this treasure
been left with its rightful owners, no such trouble would have ensued."
The Wolf grinned without reply. Kane not being a profane man, his rare
curses had double effect and always startled his hearers, no matter how
vicious or hardened they might be.
It was Kane who spoke next. "Why have you fled from me across the
world? You do not really fear me."
"No, you are right. Really I do not know; perhaps flight is a habit
which is difficult to break. I made my mistake when I did not kill
you that night in the mountains. I am sure I could kill you in a fair
fight, yet I have never even, ere now, sought to ambush you. Somehow I
have not had a liking to meet you, _Monsieur_--a whim of mine, a mere
whim. Then--_mon Dieu!_--mayhap I have enjoyed a new sensation--and I
had thought that I had exhausted the thrills of life. And then, a man
must either be the hunter or the hunted. Until now, _Monsieur_, I was
the hunted, but I grew weary of the rôle--I thought I had thrown you
off the trail."
"A negro slave, brought from this vicinity, told a Portugal ship
captain of a white man who landed from a Spanish ship and went into the
jungle. I heard of it and hired the ship, paying the captain to bring
me here."
"_Monsieur_, I admire you for your attempt, but you must admire me,
too! Alone I came into this village, and alone among savages and
cannibals I--with some slight knowledge of the language learned from a
slave aboard ship--I gained the confidence of King Songa and supplanted
that mummer, N'Longa. I am a braver man than you, _Monsieur_, for I had
no ship to retreat to, and a ship is waiting for you."
"I admire your courage," said Kane, "but you are content to rule
amongst cannibals--you the blackest soul of them all. I intend to
return to my own people when I have slain you."
"Your confidence would be admirable were it not amusing. Ho, Gulka!"
A giant negro stalked into the space between them. He was the hugest
man that Kane had ever seen, though he moved with catlike ease and
suppleness. His arms and legs were like trees, and the great, sinuous
muscles rippled with each motion. His apelike head was set squarely
between gigantic shoulders. His great, dusky hands were like the
talons of an ape, and his brow slanted back from above bestial
eyes. Flat nose and great, thick red lips completed this picture of
primitive, lustful savagery.
"That is Gulka, the gorilla-slayer," said Le Loup. "He it was who lay
in wait beside the trail and smote you down. You are like a wolf,
yourself, Monsieur Kane, but since your ship hove in sight you have
been watched by many eyes, and had you had all the powers of a leopard,
you had not seen Gulka nor heard him. He hunts the most terrible and
crafty of all beasts, in their native forests, far to the north, the
beasts-who-walk-like-men--as that one, whom he slew some days since."
Kane, following Le Loup's fingers, made out a curious, manlike thing,
dangling from a roof-pole of a hut. A jagged end thrust through the
thing's body held it there. Kane could scarcely distinguish its
characteristics by the firelight, but there was a weird, humanlike
semblance about the hideous, hairy thing.
"A female gorilla that Gulka slew and brought to the village," said Le
Loup.
The giant black slouched close to Kane and stared into the white man's
eyes. Kane returned his gaze somberly, and presently the negro's
eyes dropped sullenly and he slouched back a few paces. The look
in the Puritan's grim eyes had pierced the primitive hazes of the
gorilla-slayer's soul, and for the first time in his life he felt fear.
To throw this off, he tossed a challenging look about; then, with
unexpected animalness, he struck his huge chest resoundingly, grinned
cavernously and flexed his mighty arms. No one spoke. Primordial
bestiality had the stage, and the more highly developed types looked on
with various feelings of amusement, tolerance or contempt.
Gulka glanced furtively at Kane to see if the white man was watching
him, then with a sudden beastly roar, plunged forward and dragged a man
from the semicircle. While the trembling victim screeched for mercy,
the giant hurled him upon the crude altar before the shadowy idol. A
spear rose and flashed, and the screeching ceased. The Black God looked
on, his monstrous features seeming to leer in the flickering firelight.
He had drunk; was the Black God pleased with the draft--with the
sacrifice?
Gulka stalked back, and stopping before Kane, flourished the bloody
spear before the white man's face.
Le Loup laughed. Then suddenly N'Longa appeared. He came from nowhere
in particular; suddenly he was standing there, beside the post to
which Kane was bound. A lifetime of study of the art of illusion had
given the ju-ju man a highly technical knowledge of appearing and
disappearing--which after all, consisted only in timing the audience's
attention.
He waved Gulka aside with a grand gesture, and the gorilla-man slunk
back, apparently to get out of N'Longa's gaze--then with incredible
swiftness he turned and struck the ju-ju man a terrific blow upon the
side of the head with his open hand. N'Longa went down like a felled
ox, and in an instant he had been seized and bound to a post close to
Kane. An uncertain murmuring rose from the negroes, which died out as
King Songa stared angrily toward them.
Le Loup leaned back upon his throne and laughed uproariously.
"The trail ends here, Monsieur Galahad. That ancient fool thought I
did not know of his plotting! I was hiding outside the hut and heard
the interesting conversation you two had. Ha! ha! ha! ha! The Black
God must drink, _Monsieur_, but I have persuaded Songa to have you two
burnt; that will be much more enjoyable, though we shall have to forego
the usual feast, I fear. For after the fires are lit about your feet
the devil himself could not keep your carcasses from becoming charred
frames of bone."
Songa shouted something imperiously, and blacks came bearing wood,
which they piled about the feet of N'Longa and Kane. The ju-ju man had
recovered consciousness, and he now shouted something in his native
language. Again the murmuring arose among the shadowy throng. Songa
snarled something in reply.
* * * * *
Kane gazed at the scene almost impersonally. Again, somewhere in his
soul, dim primal deeps were stirring, age-old thought memories, veiled
in the fogs of lost eons. He had been here before, thought Kane; he
knew all this of old--the lurid flames beating back the sullen night,
the bestial faces leering expectantly, and the god, the Black God,
there in the shadows! Always the Black God, brooding back in the
shadows. He had known the shouts, the frenzied chant of the worshipers,
back there in the gray dawn of the world, the speech of the bellowing
drums, the singing priests, the repellent, inflaming, all-pervading
scent of freshly spilt blood. All this have I known, somewhere,
sometime, thought Kane; now I am the main actor----
He became aware that someone was speaking to him through the roar of
the drums; he had not realized that the drums had begun to boom again.
The speaker was N'Longa:
"Me pow'rful ju-ju man! Watch now: I work mighty magic. Songa!" His
voice rose in a screech that drowned out the wildly clamoring drums.
Songa grinned at the words N'Longa screamed at him. The chant of the
drums now had dropped to a low, sinister monotone and Kane plainly
heard Le Loup when he spoke:
"N'Longa says that he will now work that magic which it is death to
speak, even. Never before has it been worked in the sight of living
men; it is the nameless ju-ju magic. Watch closely, _Monsieur_;
possibly we shall be further amused." The Wolf laughed lightly and
sardonically.
A black man stooped, applying a torch to the wood about Kane's feet.
Tiny jets of flame began to leap up and catch. Another bent to do the
same with N'Longa, then hesitated. The ju-ju man sagged in his bonds;
his head drooped upon his chest. He seemed dying.
Le Loup leaned forward, cursing, "Feet of the Devil! is the scoundrel
about to cheat us of our pleasure of seeing him writhe in the flames?"
The warrior gingerly touched the wizard and said something in his own
language.