THE DUEL IN THE NIGHT
I think we do less than justice to the alchemists of the dark ages of
Europe, and to their opponents also. We are accustomed to regard them as
charlatans, and to brand those as superstitious fools who burnt them.
There is a folly of credulity, but there is a folly of incredulity,
which is far greater.
If they asked their patrons for money which would enable them to turn
lead into gold, the scientist of to-day is approaching the same point of
research which they must have reached when the possibility dawned upon
them. Perhaps his own progress would have been more rapid had he been
readier to assume that their theories were deserving of as much respect
as his own. It is not many years since it was announced as a momentous
discovery that bubonic plague is distributed by rats. This was known to
the Egyptian priesthood, and the information was available in one of the
oldest books in the world for any one who cared to read it. But that was
a superstition only! No doubt there are other “superstitions” in the
same book which we shall believe when we have rediscovered them.
On the other hand, it was realised by those among whom the alchemists
practised that they were the repositories of an esoteric knowledge, the
extent and power of which could be only dimly imagined, and of which
there was no guarantee that it would be used beneficently. Even now, a
scientist will present his fellow-men with a more nutritious infants’
food, or a deadlier poison-gas, than has been previously invented, with
the same fatuous complacency. The evil eye may have been fact or
imagination. I do not know. It is no more inherently improbable than
wireless telegraphy.
But it is the unknown that terrifies. I do not suppose that the Killers
were exceptionally intelligent. All the evidence is against it. Yet this
episode of the closing door, because it was beyond my understanding, was
more daunting than would have been a far more urgent danger of a
familiar kind. I stood there in a panic fear which it shames me to
remember, feeling that I was surrounded by those who watched and mocked
in the darkness.
I think, also, that the increasing cold of the night, and the loss of my
companion’s vitality, may have assisted to depress me. Anyway, I stood
there for some time, afraid to move, in a terror more abject than
anything I had felt since I waited for the first dawn, on the mystery of
the opal pavement.
Nothing happened. The noises ceased in the roof. The moon clouded, and
the narrow windows darkened.
At last, I stepped up to one of them, and saw that a fine sleet was
falling without. For the first time, with a start of shame, I recalled
my companion. I had promised to keep my mind in touch with hers, and had
forgotten her entirely while I shrank from shadows.
The next moment we were in communication. She had been waiting to
report, and to hear from me, in a natural doubt as to the meaning of my
silence, but her thought showed no agitation, and learning that she was
in apparent security, and that her own report had no urgency, I first
explained what had happened. What she thought I cannot say, for her mind
closed for a moment. Then it answered quietly: “Shall I come back and
push it open again? Perhaps I had better tell you first what I have seen
and heard.
“First, there is the open tank, which was boiling, as when you saw it.
There are few bodies in it. I suppose it is kept boiling continually.
Beyond this are the killing-sheds. There are two of these. Each consists
of ten apartments. One is empty. The other is filled. Each compartment
consists of four walls of metal bars, and a roof of a very hard
material. Probably it is the same as the door that has shut you in. The
floors are of bars only. The boiling water extends beneath. Three days
before the feast the bars will be withdrawn, and the victims will fall
into the vat. I have spoken to my Leader, and this she told me. The
feast is four days from now. She will say nothing, as the Leaders have
decided it, but I think she has no desire to be rescued. The other nine
cells are filled by victims that the Dwellers have given them. She says
that these are creatures that have offended the Dwellers. They are like
my description of you, but with wings.
“There is one entrance only, from which the two sheds branch. It is at
the further end: an open archway. One of the archers guards it, with six
of the smaller Killers. They were all sleeping when I first approached,
but the noise you made woke one of them, and he roused the others. Four
of them have scattered now to search round the buildings. If one should
come to the arsenal it will be well that he find the door closed. If it
be pushed open, you will know that it is he, not I, and you can strike
quickly, if you wish to do so. The smaller Killers carry a
strangling-cord, and a short javelin. It is two feet long, and for a
third of its length it is sharpened on both sides. It is balanced for
throwing. The smaller Killers are without intellect. They have only
greed, and cunning, and ferocity. The archers are in every way more
dangerous. The smaller Killers obey them. They cannot communicate by
thought, but signal to each other by whistling noises, which they make
through their suckers.
“I am in no danger. I can move more quickly and silently than they can
search in the shadows. I am lying now in the steam of the vat, which is
dense on the side to which the wind moves it. They have searched here
already and will not....”
My mind broke in: “The door is opening. Wait.”
I stood with the axe lifted to strike, as the door moved softly.
The drift of sleet was over, and the moon shone again on the entrance.
Cautiously, as the door opened, a head came round it, about three feet
from the ground. I brought the axe down with all my force, but the
Killer dodged very swiftly, and avoided it, slipping past me into the
dark interior.
Losing its mark, the axe glanced off the edge of the door, barely
missing my foot, the side of the axe-head striking the ankle-bone so
sharply that I lost my footing and was on my knee for a moment. As I
slipped, I heard the whizz of the javelin that passed above me. The
Killer had turned and thrown it so quickly that it passed out over my
head, through the gap of the closing door.
As the door clicked, I sank lower, listening for a sound of my opponent
in the darkness, and thinking with a moment’s satisfaction that he had
now lost his weapon beyond recovery. Then, with fear, that he must be
surrounded by other weapons, of which he would know the positions, and
that any moment a javelin might transfix me.
I think it partly redeemed the dishonour of my previous cowardice, from
which all the trouble came, that I thought at this extremity to warn my
companion not to come into the same danger. I could not have imagined
that I should be saving my own life as I did so. Quick as a thought came
the answer: “I will wait as you wish. I have told my Leader. She says,
‘Do not move. Put your hand on your neck with the palm outward. He will
not think of other weapons until he has tried the strangling-cord. It is
forbidden to use the weapons of others, and his sense is small.’”
Deadly peril and quick thought are comrades ever. At the instant,
something soft and slimy flicked my face, and drew backward. It was
round my neck the next moment, but my hand was there already.
Soft and slimy, and very cold, it tightened, not with a steady pressure,
but by a succession of contractile spasms, through which I realised with
a new horror that the cord itself was as living as the arm that threw
it.
But for my hand, I should have been strangled instantly. As it was, my
utmost straining hardly sufficed for breathing, and I knew that I must
act quickly. The Killer, supposing that I must already be reduced to
impotence, was endeavouring to drag me toward him by the living rope he
held.
An idea came to me. I loosed the axe, and drawing out the clasp-knife, I
opened it with my teeth. Then, with a sudden wrench of the left hand, I
got space for a moment to thrust it up within the ring, so that as the
pressure came again it closed on the sharp blade and helped to cut
itself as it did so. I pressed the knife outward with all my strength
and the next instant the deadly noose had parted.
I snatched at the loathsome cord as it writhed backward, let the knife
drop, caught at the axe with my free hand, and allowed myself to be
dragged forward.
Simple in conception, I realised now that my idea was more difficult in
execution. My opponent no doubt considered me to be strangled and
insensible. My intention was to take him by surprise, and to strike him
down with a sudden blow. But where he stood was in absolute darkness,
and I did not know the length of the cord. If I rose too soon, in the
half-light of the central chamber, I should defeat my purpose, even if I
were not an easy mark for any weapon he had available. If I waited too
long it might be equally disastrous.
Fortune helped me. He moved his foot as the cord shortened. He was
within three feet of where I lay as he did so. I loosed the cord, so
that he staggered back as the weight left it. Then I leapt, and struck.
The blow must have caught him fairly on the side, but (as I knew
afterward) it did not break the skin. The body gave way before it, and
was flung against the wall, with a great rattling of the arms upon it. I
struck again, missing him, I think, but with a blow that swept the wall
and scattered the javelins.
Pandemonium followed. With a high whistling squeal he fled down the dark
hall and, knowing it to be my one chance to give him no time for
recovery, I followed blindly, with sweeping blows that got him more than
once, and raked the walls of their weapons. It drowned the rustling in
the roof, which had gone unheeded through the more urgent dangers, and
which had been accompanied at times by a plaintive chattering noise, by
no means formidable.
It is curious that it was while I chased him thus, in the height of the
uproar and physical exertion, that my mind found leisure to recall my
companion, and to tell her what was happening. She answered me with the
unhurried speed which was her characteristic in moments of crisis. “The
whole settlement is awake. I think they hear you. They are running
across the enclosure. The five here, which are armed, are also coming. I
cannot join you, even now, unless I run very swiftly. Shall I come?”
I answered, “If you will,” and knew that she was already running across
the open, at a pace no Killer could match for a moment.
It was just then that I really got him. My earlier blows had only thrown
him from side to side, buffeted but not broken, while he retaliated more
than once with a thrown javelin, not without result, as was shown by a
foot that limped, even in the midst of this urgency. But this time the
stroke caught his left leg with the wall behind it, and cut it cleanly
through. He fell on the floor, in a place where the moon still lighted
it. As he did so, I struck again, and the soft toughness of the elastic
body, which gave way so easily in a free space, burst when the blow came
with the hard floor beneath it. The contents ran out over the floor like
an over-ripe tomato, or so it seemed in the moonlight. It was an uglier
sight when the day found it.
The door was moved swiftly, and my companion was beside me.