BENEATH THE CENTIPEDE
The natives moved at a slow walk across the clearing, and for this
little indulgence we were exceedingly thankful. There was no grass
covering upon the bed of coral rock in the middle of which the singular
structure stood, and our bleeding bodies could have hardly stood a swift
gallop across the prickly surface. As it was we were immensely glad when
the trinity halted in front of the edifice.
"Say," murmured Holman, "do you remember what the Professor said about
this place the other night when he was speaking about sacrificial
altars?"
I groaned as an intimation that the subject was not a pleasant one, but
Holman wanted to make public admission that he had exhibited gross
ignorance in ridiculing the Professor's assertions.
"I thought he was handing it out too strong, Verslun," he murmured, "but
it strikes me now that he had the right dope about this infernal thing.
I believe they're going to settle us."
I groaned again. Holman's airy manner of discussing our predicament
annoyed me. I hated the Professor for making the remarks about
sacrificial stones when he drew comparisons between the table and Aztec
altars, because I now thought that the very fear planted within my brain
would carry a thought suggestion to the three devils who had us
prisoners. Under ordinary circumstances I am not deficient in physical
courage, but our position in front of the strange monument on the Isle
of Tears left me with the valour of a jack-rabbit. The terror generated
by the surroundings bit into my system like an acid.
"What I'm wondering at," continued Holman, "is about that guy that we
saw on the top of the place. How he got away was a mystery."
"It was," I replied. I didn't feel disposed to trust myself to make a
longer comment at that moment.
"Well, they're going to start operations," said the youngster. "We're
going to the top, Verslun."
It was plain that we were. Two of the natives had shinned up one of the
pillars by means of small notches in one corner, and now the other cut
the bands that tied us together, promptly attached Holman's feet to the
rope his comrades lowered, and signalled that all was ready by clapping
his hands. The youngster was quickly jerked upward, and in a few minutes
I was beside him on the moss-grown sloping surface of the immense stone.
The three dancers were evidently impressed with the importance of the
work they had in hand. Their movements on the stone became more
dignified and solemn. They moved around us in a manner that would have
provoked laughter at any other time, and we watched eagerly for
developments.
With much care they placed us side by side on the upper part of the
stone, but Holman's feet were turned to my head, and as we were placed
crosswise upon the inclined surface, my body was a few inches lower than
his. That we were to be sacrificed appeared to be a certainty at that
moment, but the method by which we were to be sent into eternity puzzled
us. Not one of the three had a weapon. The surface of the stone was as
bare as it was upon the night that we had investigated it, and we began
to think that death by starvation and thirst would probably be our fate.
But thoughts of such an ending were soon put aside. Two of the savages
slipped from the stone while the other dropped upon his stomach and hid
his face. That something was going to happen we felt certain, but we
could not discover the slightest clue that would guide our puzzled wits
to a solution. We expected death, but we could not guess in what manner
the job was to be performed.
"Looks as if something is coming, Verslun," cried Holman. "I was a fool
to miss him, old man, but I guess--oh, Gee!"
The final exclamation was caused by a happening immediately beside us. A
section of the moss-grown stone, about eight feet long and eighteen
inches in width, started to rise slowly, and when our astonished eyes
fell upon it we knew that we had the solution of the strange appearance
of the figure upon the table on the night we camped in its shadow.
Holman had seen this movable slab rise above the top of the table, but
it had returned to its groove before we had climbed the tree, and it had
fitted so closely into its moss-grown bed that we had been unable to
detect a crevice in the moonlight. We had been on the verge of a
discovery, but as we recalled the incident, lying there helpless, we
were doubtful if it would have saved us from the fate we expected. The
note which Soma had dropped gave full confirmation to all our suspicions
concerning Leith, yet we had been unable to hold our own against him.
One end of the slab remained stationary after it had risen a few inches
from its bed, but the other end, which was nearest us, went up and up,
pushed by some screwjack arrangement that lifted it with slow, jerky
movements till it was nearly upright. The moonlight fell upon the under
surface that was turned toward us, and we understood the manner in which
Leith's friends had arranged for us to make our exit from this world.
The bottom of the stone slab had been carved into a perfect
representation of a centipede, and as the slab remained stationary just
before it reached the perpendicular, I began to dive into my mental
reticule for the scraps of prayers that had been caught and held through
a rather checkered career in places where the efficacy of prayer was
looked upon with a cold eye.
The prostrate savage rose slowly when the movements of the slab had
ceased, and very tenderly he rolled Holman and me over the bed from
which the stone had been lifted. He pushed our bodies against the wooden
post that, fitting into a sliding groove on the body of the stone
centipede, had lifted the thing upright, and to make certain that we
would be in the exact centre of the depression when the stone came back
to its proper resting place, he strapped us carefully to the support
with pieces of ramie fibre, so that we could not move an inch. With
faces turned upward we stared at the carved figure above us, and the
insecure tenure we had upon life at that moment was impressed upon our
minds by the extreme caution which the officiating wizard exercised in
keeping his own body clear of the slab lest his brethren, who were
evidently operating the clumsy mechanism from some place nearby, should
let the stone centipede return to his home without giving him proper
warning.
At last he finished the business to his satisfaction and stepped
backward. My imagination made the thing above me tremble as I looked at
it with eyes of fear. The part of my body that spanned the depression
became numb, and I breathed with difficulty.
Holman broke the silence. "Good-bye, Verslun," he said cheerfully. "It's
mighty tough to go out like this, but it's the fortune of war."
I endeavoured to answer him, but the words, as if afraid of the horror
that loomed above me, refused to come out of my throat. The fiendish
manner in which we were to be killed unmanned me. The slab paralyzed
thought, and it seemed to me that only the inmost kernel of my being, a
very pin-point of the refined essence of life, was throbbing within my
body.
The officiating wizard stepped around us for a final survey. He glanced
keenly at the position of our bodies, and, evidently satisfied that the
centipede had every opportunity to make a good job, he flung himself
down upon his face and started to murmur softly in the strange dialect
which Leith had spoken when addressing the three earlier in the night,
and which the dancer had used in the Cavern of Skulls. I remember that I
tried during those few minutes to catch a word or two of the queer
tongue, and curiously enough, in that moment of extreme peril, I
endeavoured to connect it with some of the dialects I had heard during
my long stay in the islands. The soft muttering seemed to be a thread
connecting us with life itself, and I dreaded the moment it would cease.
I do not know how long the chant continued. It rose and fell, a soft
rhythmic murmur, and I prayed that it would never end. My ears sucked it
in as if it was a life line to which my soul was clinging, and I dimly
understood my eagerness to catch the sounds. My ability to do so seemed
to be wanted as proof to convince my half-paralyzed body that I was
still alive.
The low chant ended with a little throaty cry, and I shut my eyes tight
to save myself the final moment of agony which the falling of the stone
would bring. For an instant there was absolute silence, then some one
gripped me by the legs and pulled madly. The ramie fibre held my body to
the supporting post of the centipede, and I heard Holman give a muttered
order. A knife sawed the cords, a pair of hands gripped my heels and
flung me forward, and as I fell clear of the groove the stone horror
crashed back into its bed with a jolt that shook the huge table! I
opened my eyes to see Kaipi looking at the face of the dancer he had
stabbed in the back as the brute was muttering his prayer!
"Oh hell!" said the Fijian. "Me thought him Soma. Me made mistake! Me
going kill Soma, he kill Toni, Toni all same my brother, work long time
with me at Suva!"
"Hurry up and cut these ropes," cried Holman. "There are two more of
those devils and they'll be back before we get the cramp out of our
muscles."
Kaipi sprang to obey, but when our bonds were cut away, we found that we
could not get to our feet. Legs and arms were completely numbed, and the
many abrasions that we had come by during the towing process to which we
had been subjected made Kaipi's efforts to restore circulation by
rubbing a species of torture that would surely have earned the
commendation of Torquemada if it had been brought under his notice.
"Narrow squeak, Verslun," remarked Holman, as he endeavoured to get to
his knees. "I wonder where those two other devils went to work the
machinery."
"They must be close," I whispered. "Drag us over to the edge, Kaipi.
They'll surely come up to see how the job was done or to see what is
delaying their pal."
Kaipi helped us over to the edge of the table, and while he was doing so
he related briefly how he came to be on hand at the opportune moment.
Our little expedition to the stone table had passed the Fijian soon
after the trinity had taken us in tow, and Kaipi's eyes had mistaken the
biggest of the three natives for Soma. Revenge for Toni's death being
the one motive that inspired him, he had followed the procession,
watched from the bushes till the other two dancers had left Soma's
double with us on the top of the table, and had then climbed quietly up
and knifed the officiating wizard while that person was exhorting the
stone centipede to make a good job of Holman and me. The matter of our
rescue had been an afterthought. Strictly speaking, he deserved no great
amount of praise for dragging us out of danger, as he frankly admitted
that he was waiting for a good chance to attack the person who resembled
Soma, without having any particular worry whether the stone slab would
descend before the opportunity arrived.
"Never mind, Kaipi," said Holman, peering cautiously over the edge of
the table, "I'm satisfied that you were handy at the moment without
considering whether you came to help us or for some other purpose."
"Toni all the same brother to me," muttered the Fijian, dimly
understanding the meaning of the remark; "me kill Soma pretty damn
soon."
"Quite so," murmured Holman. "We'll give our consent to that operation,
but keep quiet for the present till our two friends come back to see how
neatly the old centipede fixed us."
We remained silent, but not inactive. As we waited for the missing pair
we rubbed our limbs carefully, and at the end of ten minutes we began to
feel alive. Our revolvers had been lost from our pockets during the mad
rush through the night--Leith had been too intent on kicking us to order
his guard to search us for arms--and now we had nothing but our bare
hands with which to do combat with a pair of dancers. But we thought we
could do a lot with bare hands when we glanced at the spot where the
stone centipede had crashed back to its bed, A vision of that devilish
carving standing above one in the moonlight was enough to stimulate a
person to herculean tasks when he understood that failure would bring
him again under its ghastly shadow.
For about twenty minutes we waited patiently. Kaipi had asserted that
the two savages had slipped into the jungle growth after they had left
the table, and it was evident that they had gone to some underground
passage that connected with one of the pillars of the altar, through
which the crude mechanism for lifting the stone slab had been operated.
With one eye always to the dramatic, the wizards of the long ago had
built the altar so that the common worshippers surrounding the place on
days when the centipede was called upon to mash some unfortunate victim
could not see how the slab was lifted, and would thus put the uplifting
of the thing down to supernatural agency. It was the tribal Houdin who
laid the foundation of many a strange belief amongst savage races.
"Must be waiting for him to come to them," said Holman. "We'll give them
a few minutes longer."
It was Kaipi's sharp eyes that made the discovery. The pair came
cautiously out of the bushes immediately underneath the tree which
Holman and I had climbed to obtain a view of the surface of the table
two nights before, and they crossed the clearing with hesitating steps.
They evidently expected the officiating wizard to announce in sporting
phraseology that the centipede had won the engagement with one swift
blow to the body, and when no news was forthcoming they were puzzled.
They confabbed in the centre of the clearing, and then hailed the table
in the strange tongue. Receiving no answer, they again debated with
much vigour, and, finally taking their courage in their hands, they came
forward with quickened steps.
We crept close to the edge, careful not to peer over while the pair were
climbing up. As far as I was aware we had no plans made for their
reception. Holman and I had no weapons, neither had the two dancers;
Kaipi had the ugly short-bladed knife with which he had dispatched
Soma's double.
The puffing of the climbing pair came to us. They came near and nearer.
A black arm came up over the edge of the table and clawed at the
moss-grown stone, but while Holman and I reached forward with the
intention of gripping the climber by the throat, Kaipi upset our plans
by driving the blade of the knife into the back of the huge paw that was
endeavouring to get a grip!
A tremendous howl of pain came from the owner of the hand, the pinioned
member was torn from beneath the blade, and as we pushed our heads over
the edge, the top climber fell backward, swept his companion from the
pillar, and the pair struck the coral rock beneath the table with a thud
that was suggestive of broken bones. The native with the skewered hand
picked himself up and dashed toward the trees, but the other remained at
the foot of the pillar, and his position led us to believe that his neck
had been broken by the fall.
"My knife!" cried Kaipi. "He knocked my knife down!"
The Fijian swung himself over the edge, and with monkey-like agility
slipped down the pillar. He shouted up to us that he thought that the
man on the ground was dead, but having found his precious knife, he
proceeded to set all doubts upon the matter at rest.
"Soma better dodge that little fire eater," muttered Holman. "I thought
him a coward last night, but it looks as if he's a fighter when once he
gets started."
As we were unable to slip down the stone pillar in the same manner as
the natives, we found the piece of rope by which the three dancers had
hauled us up to the top, and making it secure upon a stone projection we
lowered ourselves to the ground.
"Now," said Holman, "we must make a new start, and if we get beat in
this round we deserve all that the big fiend who has brought all this
trouble about can do to us. Kaipi, you're a friend of mine for all time.
Shake hands."
The grinning Fijian shook hands with both of us, and we moved toward the
trees, heading in the direction of the spot where Leith had kicked us so
vigorously a few hours before.
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