“RAHEE THE TERRIBLE!”
“WHAT sayest thou? Wilt live or die?”
Many hours had passed since Mervyn made his decision.
The flaming barrier had sunk back into the depths whence it
sprang, and Nordhu stood once more before his captive.
The scientist faced the priest boldly.
“This is my answer,” he cried: “I utterly refuse to reveal to you
any of the things you wish to know; but hear this ere ye destroy me: I
have friends who will exact a terrible vengeance if I be harmed. Not
all your hordes of wolfish followers will save you from their
fury.”
“Think you to fright me with such talk?” returned the priest
scornfully. “What doth hinder me to take your friends captive also,
and put them to the torture? Are they such mighty warriors that ye
think they can stand against the hosts of the underworld? I know of
their movements. I know that they be approaching the haunts of my
people in hope to rescue their brother. I have warned them by a fire
message, but I fear me they will not heed. Though they force an
entrance into our caverns, they shall never return, I swear it by
Ramouni, and by Rahee, sacred beast of Ramouni! Soon will I have all
of ye safely in my power, and it may be that I can wrest the secret
from one, if ye are stubborn. But come, Rahee waits.”
Stepping over the fire-crack, Mervyn passed out of the
chamber.
On once more down the tunnel the priest and prisoner made their
way, and behind, silent and terrible, came the two wolfish guards.
Round numberless bends and curves they went, sometimes crossing a huge
vaulted chamber, to plunge into a tunnel on the farther side. And ever
around them, from the numerous galleries on either hand, came the
sounds of machinery. At length they reached a doorway, before which
hung a curtain of skins. This Nordhu pulled aside, and the four passed
through into a dazzling glare of fungi light.
So brilliant was the glow that it paled the light of the priest’s
stone, and, for a few seconds, Mervyn was compelled to veil his eyes
with his manacled hands. Presently, as they became accustomed to the
glare, he was able to take note of his surroundings.
He was standing in a vast natural amphitheatre in the heart of
the mountain range. Around him, ledge upon ledge, terrace after
terrace, rose the cliffs, and every cranny of the towering walls was
crowded with fungi. Everywhere the luminous growths flourished, the
floor of the amphitheatre alone being free from them.
But not for long was Mervyn allowed to stand gazing upon this
scene.
“Come,” snapped the priest, and moved on across the floor.
Soon before them loomed a gigantic idol, rudely carved in
stone.
It was a monstrous, misshapen, half-human figure with but one
eye, and that in the centre of its forehead. Immediately in front
stood a flat stone slab, which evidently served as an altar, and
Mervyn shuddered as he noted the dark stains upon the surface of the
stone.
Doubtless many a score of victims had been sacrificed beneath the
murderous knife of Nordhu upon that slab; many a savage had gone
screaming to his death to satisfy the lust of the devilish priest.
The two guards had instantly prostrated themselves before the
monstrosity, and now lay upon their faces, muttering some doggerel or
other in praise of the image.
Nordhu himself bowed low, then turned furiously upon his
prisoner.
“Kneel!” he screamed, “kneel to Ramouni, that ye may hear his
will.”
But the scientist stood rigid as the idol itself. He knew well
that he was face to face with death, and he was not minded that his
last few moments of life should be spent in bowing himself before the
repulsive figure which served these people as a god.
“Dost hear?” thundered the priest; “kneel, ye white dog, before
the god of my people.”
“I will not kneel,” Mervyn answered calmly, “to this misshapen
block of stone that ye call a god. Think you to deceive me with this
craven figure! If it be a god, let it speak.”
“So,” returned Nordhu mockingly, “ye would fain hear Ramouni
speak? Hearken then.”
Raising his arms above his head, he gabbled out a long formula,
punctuated with sundry bowings and scrapings that made Mervyn long to
kick the fellow. But the yearning to do violence to the priest’s
person vanished, and the scientist stood absolutely dumbfounded, as a
thin, cracked voice from the lips of the idol answered Nordhu’s
plea.
“Let the white stranger be delivered unto Rahee, the sacred
beast.”
“’Tis well, oh Ramouni,” replied the priest, “it shall be done.
Well, art satisfied?” he continued, turning to Mervyn.
“No,” cried the latter; “I am persuaded that the idol speaks but
by a trick.”
An expression of fiendish rage swept over the face of the priest,
and he raised his clenched fist threateningly above his victim. For an
instant it seemed as though he would strike Mervyn to the earth, but
he restrained his fury.
“Hound!” he hissed frenziedly, “dost dare to say Ramouni hath no
voice?”
“I go further,” pursued Mervyn firmly--to him in a flash had
come the revelation of Nordhu’s trickery--“I know the means by
which ye make the idol speak, and will expose you to your people.
Think you that you alone can give Ramouni voice? Listen!”
Once more a voice came from the image, but this time different
indeed in tone; no weak, piping voice this, but strong and of full
volume.
“Hark ye, Nordhu,” come the words--and at the sound of them
the two wolfish worshippers raised themselves, staring in astonishment
at the lips of the god--“do no harm to this white stranger, I
command ye. It is my will that he should depart in peace. See to it,
lest my anger be visited upon my people!”
It was Mervyn’s last card, his final effort in his struggle
against death.
Himself a ventriloquist of no mean ability, the scientist had
quickly perceived the method by which the crafty priest gave speech to
Ramouni. A faint hope flickered up in his mind that, by means of his
talent, he might compel Nordhu to release him.
Vain hope! One moment the priest stood as though turned to stone,
the next his clenched fist shot out, and Mervyn dropped like a
log.
Ere he could rise again the priest, tearing the hide girdle from
the loins of the nearest savage, was upon him, and, binding the filthy
strip of skin firmly across his mouth, effectually gagged the
prostrate scientist.
For an instant it seemed as though the two wolf-men were about to
interfere. Doubtless they were afraid that they would suffer for
Nordhu’s rash action if Ramouni fulfilled his threat; but the high
priest was quite ready for the emergency.
With consummate skill he flung his voice between the lips of the
image.
“Thou hast done well, O priest,” came the piping tones. “I did
but try thee, whether thou wert faithful to me or no. Let my people
make merry over the death of this white stranger, for he is mine
enemy.”
Every word of this speech Mervyn heard, as he struggled painfully
to his feet; yet he was powerless to resist the devilish schemes of
the merciless monster beside him. With a fiendish grin overspreading
his features, the priest raised his voice in a piercing cry:
“Ayoki! Ayoki!”
The word pealed twice from his lips, and, ere the echoes had
died, into the temple filed a score of dark figures. Right up to the
altar they glided, moving with scarce a sound, and formed a semicircle
about the high priest and his prisoner.
At their advent the wolf-men rose and vanished, seeming glad to
leave the presence of the image, which their ignorant superstitious
minds credited with supernatural powers.
The newcomers, each of whom was clad somewhat scantily in a
coarse skin mantle, were creatures of the same type as the high
priest, save that, if anything, their faces were more brutalised and
repulsive. They glared fiercely at the scientist as they stood waiting
for Nordhu to speak.
“Priests of Ramouni,” he began at last, “our god hath decided
that this white stranger shall be delivered unto Rahee, the sacred
beast. Let the people of the underworld be summoned.”
Instantly one of the priests raised a horn to his lips.
As the weird note trembled through the temple, the whole band
closed about Mervyn and hustled him forward towards the further end of
the amphitheatre, where stretched a line of bars. Straight towards
this barrier the scientist was thrust and driven, until he was close
enough to see that beside it stood a huge stone windlass.
Here the priests halted, and once again the blast of the horn
echoed amid the cliffs.
At that a multitude of sinister forms poured into the vast
enclosure. Rank upon rank, they thronged in and took their places
silently, until the whole floor of the temple, up to within a few
yards of the spot where stood Nordhu and the priests, was covered with
a heaving sea of bodies.
As he noted the wolfish forms of the creatures, their terrible
aspect, Mervyn, despite his terror, felt thankful that he had not
revealed to Nordhu the secret he so longed to know.
Fervently he prayed that his comrades might not fall into the
hands of the devilish priest through any mad attempt to rescue
him.
The hopelessness of any such effort, the utter impossibility of
it, was plain to him. An army would be overwhelmed in a few moments by
these countless hordes! What chance, then, had his friends? At most
they were but four in number, and, with all their daring, they would
not be able to pluck him from out the clutches of the priest.
So thinking, the scientist commended his soul to his Maker,
waiting, pale faced but undaunted in spirit, for the terrible death
which he knew would soon be his.
What form it would take he knew not; but he was aware that
somewhere behind that row of bars lurked the beast to whose murderous
appetite he was to be sacrificed. The suspense was terrible. Anything
was better than this drawn-out agony, and he was glad when, suddenly,
the high priest raised his hand.
Instantly a thunderous shout of “Nordhu! Nordhu!” pealed upward
from a myriad throats. It ceased abruptly, and a tense, brooding
silence followed, broken a few moments later by the harsh voice of the
chief priest.
With many violent gestures he harangued his people, and Mervyn
listened with fast-beating heart as Nordhu pronounced his doom.
As his voice trailed off into silence, half a dozen of the
priests sprang forward to the windlass, while the rest, opening a gate
in the barrier, thrust Mervyn into the enclosure beyond. Then the
scientist observed that there was a second row of bars within the den,
forming a barrier before the mouth of a large cave in the temple wall.
The use of the windlass without became apparent to him in a
moment.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, the huge wheel turned
beneath the united efforts of the priests, and the rails--the
only barrier between the captive and the so-called sacred beast of the
wolf-men--rose, until the mouth of the cave was uncovered.
As the great windlass ceased to move, another thunderous shout
swelled up from the ranks of the savages.
“Hail, Rahee! Rahee the terrible!”
On the instant, as though in answer to the cry, a sound came from
the depths of the cave. The beast was coming forth!
Fascinated, Mervyn stood watching for the appearance of the
redoubtable Rahee.
_“My God”_
Like the wail of a soul in torment, the despairing cry trembled
from the captive scientist’s lips as the sacred beast emerged from the
cavern.
Never in all his wildest dreams had he imagined that so hideous a
creature could exist. Long afterwards the terror of the brute haunted
him. Its glaring eyes seemed to be ever before him, and the gnashing
of its jaws dinned in his ears for days.
With a stealthy, sidelong motion the spider-like brute crept
towards its fascinated victim. Every hair on its great, brown body
bristled with fury; each of its eight, claw-armed legs seemed to
quiver with eagerness as it advanced.
The horror of the awful thing stunned Mervyn--held him
powerless, as though he were fixed to the floor. He could do naught
but stare.
Then suddenly a wave of fury swept over him, and with might and
main he strove to release his hands from the manacles. Like a madman
he fought and tore, but the chains held him like a vice, and
presently, with bleeding hands and wrists, he ceased his efforts.
Bowing his head that he might not see the grim form of his
destroyer, he stood awaiting his doom.
Yet at that moment, although he knew it not, help was at
hand.
Even while he thought himself within an ace of Eternity; when the
great spider, but a few yards from its victim, was crouching for a
spring, and the savage hordes in the temple were watching eagerly for
the final scene of the tragedy, a shout came pealing downward from
above.
Aroused, Mervyn looked up. The sight that met his eyes sent the
hope rushing back into his heart, and set every nerve in his body
tingling with a wild desire to live.