In the Morning of Time

On the morrow, however, as they were pursuing their aërial path along the borders of a narrow, sluggish bayou, they were suddenly made to realize that the tree-tops held perils more deadly than that of the lurking leopards. They were all staring down into the water, which swarmed with gigantic crocodiles and boiled immediately beneath them with the turmoil of a life-and-death struggle between two of the brutes, when harsh jabbering in the branches just across the water made them look up.

The tree-tops opposite were full of great apes, mowing and gibbering at them with every sign of hate. The beasts were as big and massive as Hobbo himself, and covered thickly with long, blackish fur. Their faces, half human, half dog-like, were hairless and of a bright but bilious blue, with great livid red circles about the small, furious eyes. With derisive gestures they swung themselves out upon the overhanging branches, till it almost seemed as if they would hurl themselves into the water in their rage against the little knot of human beings.

The girl A-ya, overcome with loathing horror because the beasts were so hideous a caricature of man, covered her eyes with one hand. Young Mô, his fiery temper stung by their challenge, clapped an arrow to his string and raised his bow to shoot. But Grôm checked him sternly, dreading to fix any thirst of vengeance in the minds of the terrible troop.

“They can’t come at us here. Let them forget about us,” said he. “Don’t take any more notice of them at all.”

As he led the way once more through the branches along the edge of the bayou, the apes kept pace with them on the other side. But presently the bayou widened, and then swept sharply off to the west. Grôm kept on straight to the north, by the route which he had planned. And the mad gibbering died away into the hot, green silence of the tree-tops.

The adventurers now pushed on with redoubled speed, unwilling to pass another night in the tree-tops when such dangerous antagonists were in the neighborhood. The hills, however, were still far off when evening came again. Not knowing that the great apes always slept at night, Grôm decided to continue the journey in order to lessen the risk of a surprise. When the moon rose, round and huge and honey-colored, over the sea of foliage, traveling through the tree-tops was almost as easy as by day, while the earth below them, with its prowling and battling monsters, was buried in inky gloom. When day broke, there were the rounded hills startlingly close ahead, as if they had crept forward to meet them in the night.

And now the hills looked different. Between the nearest–a long, rolling, treeless ridge of downland–and the edge of the jungle lay an expanse of open, grassy savannah, dotted with ponds, and here and there a curious, solitary, naked tree-trunk, with what looked like a bunch of grass on its top. They were like gigantic green paint-brushes, with yellow-gray handles, stuck up at random. Far off they saw a herd of curious beasts at pasture, and away to the left a giant bird, as tall as the tree by which it stood, seemed to keep watch. A little to the right, where the treeless ridge came abruptly to an end, gleamed a considerable stretch of water. It was toward this point, where the water washed the steep-shouldered promontory, that Grôm decided to shape his course across the plain.

By the time the sun was some three hours high they had arrived within a couple of hundred yards of the open. Sick of the oppressive jungle, and eager for the change to a type of country with which they were more familiar, they were swinging on through the tree-tops at a great pace, when that savage, snarling jabber which they so dreaded was heard in the branches behind them. Grôm instantly put A-ya in the lead, while he himself dropped to the rear to meet this deadliest of perils. There was no need to urge his party to haste; but it seemed to them all as if they were standing still, so swiftly did the clamor of the apes come upon them.

“Down to earth,” ordered Grôm sharply, seeing that they must be overtaken before they could reach the open, and realizing that in the tree-tops they could not hope to match these four-handed dwellers of the trees.

As they dropped nimbly from branch to branch, the foremost of the apes arrived in sight, set up a screech of triumph, and came swooping down after them in vast, swinging leaps. In the hurry Hobbo dropped his fire-basket, which broke as it fell and scattered the precious coals. Grôm, guarding the rear of the flight, made the mistake of keeping his eye too much on the enemy, too little on where he was going. In a moment or two, he found himself cut off, upon a branch from which there was no escape without a drop of twenty feet to a most uncertain foothold. Rather than risk it, he ran in upon his nearest assailant at the base of the branch, thrusting at the blue-faced beast with his spear. But his position being so insecure, his thrust lacked force and precision. The great ape caught it deftly; and Grôm, to preserve his balance, had to let the spear be wrenched from his hand. At the same moment another ape dropped on the branch behind him.

For just one second Grôm thought his hour had come. He crouched to steady himself, then darted forward and hurled his club straight at his foe’s protruding and shaggy paunch. Again the beast caught the missile in its lightning clutch; but in the next instant it threw up its long arms, without a sound, and fell backwards out of the tree. A-ya, who had been the first to reach the ground, had drawn her bow and shot upwards with sure aim. The shaft had caught the great ape under the center of the jaw, far back at the throat, and pierced straight up to the brain.

Surprised at seeing their leader fall with so little apparent reason, the other apes halted for a moment in their onset, chattering noisily. In that moment Grôm swung himself to the ground. As he reached it both Mô and Loob discharged their arrows. Another ape fell from his perch, but caught himself on a lower branch and hung there writhing; while a third, with a shaft half buried in his paunch, fled back yelling into the tree-top. Then the adventurers snatched up their fallen weapons from the ground and made for the open as fast as they could run. And the apes, with a hellish uproar of barks and screams, came swarming after them through the lower branches.

At this point, fortunately for the travelers, the jungle was already thinning, and they had a chance to show their speed. The raging blue-faces were speedily distanced, and the fugitives ran out breathless upon the sunny savannah. Here, feeling themselves safe, they halted to look back. The lower branches all along the edge of the grass were thronged with leaping brown forms, and gnashing blue masks, and red-rimmed, devilish eyes. But not one of the great beasts, for all their rage, seemed willing to venture forth into the open.

“There must be something out here that they fear greatly,” commented Grôm, peering warily about him. But there was nothing in sight to suggest any danger, and he led the way onward through the rank grass at a long, leisurely trot.

II

For the most part the grass grew hardly waist high; but here and there were patches, perhaps an acre or so in extent, where it was more cane than grass and rose to a height of twelve or fifteen feet. To such patches, which might serve as lurking-places to unknown monsters, Grôm gave a wide berth. He had a vivid remembrance of that colossal head, with the awful dead eyes, which had reared itself through the leafage to stare up at him.

In spite of the strange and enormous trails which crossed their path at times; in spite of occasional massive swayings and crashings in the deep beds of cane, the adventurous party accomplished the journey across the savannah without encountering a single foe. The mid-noon blaze of the sun upon the windless grass, which was almost more than they could endure, was probably keeping the monsters to their lairs; and the only living things to be seen, besides the insects and a high-wheeling vulture or two, were a few shy troops of a kind of small antelope, incredibly swift of foot.

Grôm drew a breath of relief as they reached the foot of the hills. But just here it was impossible to climb them. A range of high limestone downs, they were fringed at this point by an unbroken line of cliff, perpendicular and at times overhanging, from forty or fifty to perhaps a couple of hundred feet in height, and so smooth that even these goat-footed cave-folk could not scale them. The rich plain-land at their feet had once been a shallow, inland sea, and now its grasses washed along their base in a gold-green, scented foam.

Turning to the right, Grôm led the way close along the cliff-foot toward the water, which glowed like brass about a mile ahead. Along the right of their path the ground sloped off gently to a belt of that high cane-like growth which Grôm regarded with such suspicion. Before they had gone many hundred yards his suspicion was more than justified.

From a little way behind them there arose all at once a chorus of explosive gruntings, mixed with a huge crashing of the canes. Glancing over their shoulders, they saw a great rust-red animal, about the size of a rhinoceros, which burst forth from the canes and stood staring after them. Its hideous head was larger than that of any rhinoceros they had ever seen, and armed with a pair of enormous conical horns, each more than a foot in diameter at the base and tapering to a keen point. Set side by side, at a moderate angle, upon the bridge of the snout, they were far more terrible than the horns of any rhinoceros. Their bearer lowered them menacingly, and charged down upon Grôm’s party with a sound that was something between the grunting of a hog and the braying of an ass. Immediately upon his massive heels a whole herd of the red monsters surged forth from the canes, and came charging after their leader at a ponderous gallop which seemed literally to shake the earth.

For a moment or two Grôm’s party had paused, confident in their own fleetness of foot, and wondering at that pair of amazing horns on the monster’s snout. But when the rest of the terrific herd came thundering down upon them, they fled in all haste. To their amazement, they found that their speed was none too great for their need. The red monsters, in spite of their bulk, were disconcertingly swift.

As he neared the swift promontory which terminated with the range of downs, Grôm began to fear that he and his followers would have to take refuge in the water. This water, as it chanced, was the brackish estuary of a river which, sweeping down from the east, here made its way to the sea through a long, slanting break in the limestone hills. It was now near low tide, and there opened before the hard-pressed fugitives, as they approached the shore, a strip of damp beach running around the base of the bluff. As they left the grass and ran out upon the beach they were astonished to find that the thundering pursuit had stopped short. Just at the turn of the cliff they halted and stared back wonderingly. Their pursuers, though swinging their great horns and braying with rage, were evidently unwilling to venture so near the waterside. They drew back, indeed, as if they feared it, and at last went crashing away into the canes. The fugitives, glad of an opportunity to rest their laboring lungs, squatted down with their backs against the cliff and congratulated themselves on having got rid of such perilous attentions. But Grôm’s sagacious eyes searched the cliff face anxiously, without neglecting to watch the unruffled water. If that water was so dreaded that even the mighty herd of their pursuers durst not approach it, surely its smiling surface must hide some peril of surpassing horror.

For the next few hundred yards, till it vanished around the curve, the strip of naked beach was not more than twenty or thirty feet in width. Not without some apprehensions, Grôm decided to push forward. There seemed nothing else to do, indeed, seeing that the cane-beds behind them were occupied by that irresistible red herd. Somewhere ahead, he argued, there must be a break in the cliff which would give access to the rolling downs above, where they might travel in safety.

Disguising his growing uneasiness that he might not discourage his followers–who were now full of elation at having reached the foot of the hills–he led on again in haste, though there seemed to be no need of haste. Both Hobbo and young Mô, indeed, were for staying a while and sleeping in the shade of an overhanging rock. But A-ya, who sensed through sympathy her lord’s disquietude, and the little scout Loob, who was always, on principle, ill at ease in any spot where there was no tree to climb, were as eager as their chief to push ahead; and the others would never have dared, in any case, to question Grôm’s decision.

As they rounded the next bend of the cliff, however, a clamor of excited satisfaction arose from all the party. Straight ahead, and not fifty paces distant, there opened before them a spacious cave-mouth, with a somewhat wider strip of beach before it. Immediately beyond the cave the strip of beach came sharply to an end, and the tide lapped softly against the foot of the cliff.

But just then, in the moment of their elation, a terrifying thing happened. As if aroused by their voices, the still surface a few yards from shore boiled up, and was lashed to foam by the strokes of a gigantic tail.

“Run!” yelled Grôm; and they all dashed forward, there being no chance to go back. In the same instant, an appalling head–like that of a thrice magnified and distorted crocodile, with vast, round, painted eyes–was upthrust from the water and came rushing after them at a pace which sent up a curving wave before it.

Quick as thought, Grôm drew his bow and shot at the appalling head. The arrow drove straight into the gaping throat, eliciting a thunderous bellow of rage, but producing no other effect. Then Grôm sprang after his fleeing companions, and raced for his life toward the cave mouth. The cave might be nothing more than a death-trap for them all; but it seemed to offer the one possibility of escape.

As they dashed into the cave the awful, gaping head was close behind them. They had a flashing glimpse, through the gloom, of high-arched distance melting into blackness, of a strip of black water along the right, and to the left a gentle ascent of smooth white sand, whose end was out of sight.

Up this slope they raced, with the clashing of monstrous fangs close behind them. But they had not gone a dozen strides when the slope quivered, and heaved upwards shudderingly beneath them; and they all fell forward flat upon their faces. From all but Grôm there went up a shriek so piercing that in their own ears it disguised the stupendous rending roar which at that moment seemed to stun the air. The mighty arch of the cave mouth had slipped and crashed down, completely jamming the entrance, and opening up a gash of blue heaven above their heads.

To Grôm’s unshaken wits, it was clear on the instant what had happened. He staggered to his feet and looked back through a rain of falling rock-splinters. He had a vision of their colossal pursuer, its jaws stretched to their utmost width, the vast globes of its eyes protruding from their armored sockets, its ponderous, bowed fore-legs pawing the air aimlessly in the final convulsion. The falling rock-mass had caught it on the middle of the back, crushing its mighty frame like an eggshell.

For a second or two, Grôm stood there rigid, staring, his gnarled fingers clenched upon his weapons. Then a second earthquake tremor beneath his feet warned him. With an unerring instinct, he sprang on up the slope after his companions, who had fled as soon as they could pick themselves up. And in the next moment the rock above his head, fissured deep by the rains, slipped again. With a growling screech, as if torn from the bowels of the mountain, it settled slowly down, and sealed the mouth of the cave to utter blackness.

Grôm stopped short, having no mind to dash out his brains against the rock. There was stillness at last, and silence save for the faint, humming moan of the earthquake which seemed to come from vast depths beneath his feet. Profoundly awed, but master of his spirit, he stood leaning upon his spear in the thick dark till the last of that strange humming note had died away. Then, through a silence so thick it seemed to choke him, he called aloud:

“A-ya! where are you?”

“Grôm!” came the girl’s answer, a sobbing cry of relief and joy, from almost, as it seemed, beneath his outstretched hand.

“We are all here,” came the voices of the three men.

They had fallen headlong at the second shock, as at the first; and in the darkness they had not dared to rise again, but lay waiting for their leader to tell them what to do. In half a dozen cautious, groping steps he was among them, and sank down by A-ya’s side, clutching her to him to stop her trembling.

“What are we to do now?” asked the girl, after a long silence. Without Grôm, they would probably have died where they were, not daring to stir in the darkness. But their faith in their chief kept them cheerful even in this desperate plight.

“We must find a way out,” answered Grôm, with resolute confidence.

“If Hobbo had not dropped the fire!” said young Mô bitterly.

The giant groaned in self-abasement, and beat his chest with his great fists. But Grôm, who would allow no dissensions in his following, answered sternly:

“Be silent. You might have done no better yourself.”

Then for a time there was no more said, while Grôm, sitting there in the dark with the girl’s face buried in his great shaggy chest, thought out his plans. It was plain to him, from what he had seen in that last instant of daylight, that the entrance was blocked impregnably. Moreover, he judged that any attempt to work an opening in that direction would be likely, for the present, to bring more rocks down upon them. It would be better, first, to feel their way on into the cave in the hope of finding another exit. He was not afraid of getting lost, no matter how absolute the dark, because he possessed that sixth sense, so long ago vanished from modern man’s equipment–the sense of direction. He knew that, as a matter of course, he could find his way back to this starting-point whenever he would.

“Come on!” he ordered at last, lifting A-ya and holding her hand in his grasp. Reaching out with his spear, he kept tapping the ground before him as he went, and occasionally the wall upon his left. Sometimes, too, he would reach upwards to assure himself that there was no lowering of the rocky ceiling. A spear’s length to the right, more or less, he got always a splash of water.

With their fine senses intensely alert, they were able to make fair progress, even though unaided by their eyes. But Grôm checked his advance abruptly. He had a perception of some obstacle before him. He reached out his spear as far as he could. It touched a soft object. The object, whatever it was, surged violently beneath the touch. His flesh crept, and the shaggy hair uplifted on his neck. “Back!” he hissed, thrusting A-ya off to arm’s length and bracing his spear point before him to receive the expected attack. A pair of faintly phosphorescent eyes, small, but so wide apart as to show that their owner’s head must have been enormous, flashed round upon them. There was a hoarse squeal of alarm, and a heavy body went floundering off into the water. They could hear it swimming away in hot haste.

Every one drew a long breath. Then, after a few moments, A-ya laughed softly:

“It’s good to find something at last that runs away from us instead of after us!” said she.

A little further on the cave wall turned to the left. A few steps, and their path came to an end. There was water ahead of them, and on both sides. Grôm’s exploring spear assured them that it was deep water.

“We must swim,” said he. “Leave your clubs behind.” And leading the way down into the unknown tide, he struck out straight ahead.

It was nerve-testing work swimming thus through that unseen water to an unguessed goal; but Grôm was unhesitating, and his companions rested upon his steady will. The water was of a summer warmth, and slightly salt, which convinced him that it had free communication with the sunlit tides outside. Several times he came within touch of the rocky walls of the cavern, and found that they went straight down to a depth he could not guess. But he kept on with hope and confidence at a leisurely pace, which, in that bland and windless flood, he knew that every member of his party could have maintained for half a day.

Suddenly there appeared ahead of them a faint, bluish gleam upon the water’s surface. It was something elusive and unreal, and vaguely menacing.

“Daylight!” exclaimed young Mô eagerly. But Grôm said nothing. He did not think it was daylight, and he was apprehensive of some new peril.

The strange light grew and spread. It was evident now that it rose from the water, and also that it was advancing rapidly to meet the astonished swimmers. After a few moments it was bright enough in its blue pallor to show the swimmers that they were traversing a vast hall of waters, whose roof was lost in darkness. Some fifty yards ahead of them, and a little to the right, a low spit of rock, half awash for the greater part of its length, ran out slantingly from the wall of the stupendous chamber.

Toward this ledge Grôm now led the way, hurling himself through the water on his side at top speed. He could not fathom this mysterious phosphorescence, and he wished to get his people out upon dry land before it reached them. But fast as the adventurers swam, the ghostly radiance spread faster. Before they got to the ledge, the light was all about them; but it seemed to be coming from a great depth.

Nervously they all glanced down, and a low cry of horror broke from their lips. The depths were swarming with monstrous, luminous forms, a moon-bright, crawling, sliding field of claws and feelers, and broad, flat backs, and dreadful, protruding eyes.

The eyes all stared straight up at them with a fixed malignancy that froze even Grôm’s blood. They seemed innumerable, and all together they came suddenly floating upwards.

Already the fugitives were dragging themselves out upon the ledge, in frantic haste, when the diabolical swarm reached the surface. But Hobbo, who was the slowest swimmer, was merely clutching at the rock when the water boiled all about him in a froth of light. A pair of huge, pincer-like claws seized him by the neck, and another pair by one arm, plucking him back. His convulsed face stared upward for an instant, and then, with a choked scream, he was dragged under. He disappeared in a swirl of pale blue, frantically waving claws, and eyes, and feelers, and black-fringed, chopping mouths.

Beside himself with rage and horror, Grôm stabbed down wildly into the whirling struggle, and his example was followed at once by Loob and young Mô. Some of their random blows went home, and as one or another of the gigantic crabs turned over in its death-throes, its nearest fellows seized it, tore it to pieces, and devoured it.

But A-ya, who had taken no part in this vengeance, now snatched Grôm by the arm, shrieking wildly:

“Look! They are coming out!”

Recovering their senses, the three half-maddened men stared about them. On every side the gigantic crabs–some with claws eight or ten feet long, and eyes upon the ends of long waving stalks–were crawling up upon the ledge.

The ledge, fortunately, was of some width. At its landward end it rose into a mass of tumbled rocks perhaps twenty or thirty feet above the water. Toward this post of vantage the adventurers fought their way, striking and thrusting desperately with their spears as the monsters, crowding up from the water on either side, snatched at them with their terrible mailed claws. Over and over again one or another of the party was seized by the foot or the leg; but his companions would beat the long, jointed limb to fragments, or drive their spear-points deep into the awful, drooling mouth, and set him free.

At last, bleeding from many wounds, they reached the end of the ledge and clambered to the top. Here but three or four of the giant crustaceans tried to follow them. These were easily speared from above, and hurled back disabled among their ravening kin. And the whole swarm, apparently forgetting their intended victims as soon as they were out of reach, fell to fighting hideously among themselves over the convulsed bodies of these wounded. The lower portion of the ledge, and the water all about it, was a crawling mass of horror that seemed to froth with blue light. And a confused noise of crackling, snapping and hissing arose from it.