King Kong Read online

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hot, native hands thrust Ann down to the bottom of the silently racing dugout. One was pressed over her mouth, and though she twisted wildly she could send no cry back through the darkness to the Wanderer.

  No single cry had been permitted her from the first instant of capture. Hot, pressing hands had bound and gagged her always. Her mouth had felt them first, as she stepped into the narrow, black aisle beside the deckhouse; and mouth, arms and legs had been clamped as she was passed from hands to other hands down the ship’s side.

  Ann was afraid in a way that she had never imagined. No book she had ever read, no story she had ever been told could equal the terror which swept her in increasing waves. It was a terror which made her feel that every inch of her insulted body was alive with unmentionable things. It went beyond the midnight horrors of childhood. It went beyond the horrors of dreams. Her single conscious thought was to cry out for help, but she told herself despairingly that even if the hand lifted from her mouth it would do no good. Her throat, she knew, would refuse to give forth utterance.

  Her legs, released at last, did indeed refuse to act. When the dugout grated ashore and her captors jerked her to her feet on the beach, she could not stand.

  Wasting no time, two bulking shadows swung her to their shoulders and raced off through the darkness toward the village. Several times in the course of the flight the bearers were changed. This always followed a high-pitched command. And the third time she heard it Ann’s heart leaped to a realization that the speaker was the witch doctor.

  The ceremonial court before the wall’s great gate was bright with torches. The tribe was massed there, just as it had been massed in the afternoon. The same ordered rows lined either side of the skin-covered bridal dais. The same black gorilla men occupied the two front ranks. The king had taken his same aloof stand, clad in the same magnificence of feathers, grass and fur. And the witch doctor, leaving Ann’s bearers to stand guard where she had been put down, promptly took his own proper position.

  The dais, halfway up the broad stone stairs, was empty. Ann’s fear-numbed mind, however, failed to see the significance of that. Close by her, a pitying face stood out from the crowd, and Ann vaguely recognized the flower-garlanded girl of the afternoon, dressed now as all the other women were dressed. That meant nothing, either. And when, at the witch doctor’s signal, she was picked up and borne to the dais she sat there in an uncomprehending stupor.

  Nervous haste had pulsed behind the command which put Ann into her place. The witch doctor had belabored his paddlers all the way back from the Wanderer. He had forced Ann’s bearers to their highest speed on the race to the village. Now he was even more swift to set the ceremony going. Ann realized dimly that so much haste was due to a conviction that rescuers would be quick in pursuit. But the realization aroused no hope. She had been totally without hope from the moment her first cry had been stifled. She had had her own inescapable conviction that the mystery of this ancient island had trapped her and that no rescue was possible.

  At a signal, the massed natives began a familiar chant. Their serried ranks swayed in the torchlight in an hypnotic rhythm. The witch doctor advanced to the dais and once more performed his oddly supplicating dance. Once more the gorilla men leaped out from the chanting host.

  And now, as in the afternoon, another signal brought the king into the ceremony. He stepped forward, and at his commanding arm ten warriors rushed at the two smoothly trimmed half logs which held the great gate shut.

  “Ndeze!”

  Ann needed no knowledge of the language to know the king had shouted, “Open!” Five men to each bar, the gate-tenders strained and slowly drew the wooden bolts back through massive, time-pitted iron sockets. With still greater straining each group began to pull its half of the great gate open.

  “Ndundo!” the king shouted.

  Instantly a warrior who had been standing on the gate’s high portal struck a mighty blow against the metal drum suspended above. Briefly aroused by the rolling sound, Ann realized that the signal forecast by Driscoll had been given.

  It was a signal to others besides whatever bridegroom waited in the wilderness outside the wall. At the blow upon the drum the chanting ceased. The massed ranks on either side of the dais broke. With cries of mingled excitement and apprehension the tribesmen, and the women and children as well, fled to the wall. By frail ladders, they scrambled to the top.

  Once on the lofty rampart the tribe resumed its chant, to the accompaniment of swaying torches held so as to cast most of their smoky light beyond the wall.

  “Tasko!” the king shouted.

  Now the guards picked Ann up, dais and all, and rushed her through the opening gate.

  “Watu!” the king shouted.

  Instantly the gate-tenders all but joined the doors of the gate. Only the narrowest gap was left, and then ten men braced themselves to close even this on the instant of the return of the dais bearers. Indeed, from their grim expressions, it was plain they meant to close the gap, if necessary, before the bearers got back.

  “Ndundo!” the king shouted, and once again the drummer rolled thunder out to the black wilderness.

  High on the walls the tribespeople tipped their torch for a better view.

  Beyond the wall a brief plain ran off and lost itself in the darkly shadowed base of the precipice. In this plain, a few rods out, stood a stone altar as ancient as the wall it faced. Its steeply ascending steps were spotted with hoary lichens. Its platform, some dozen feet above the ground, lay under inches of furry green moss which soaked up the torches’ light. Two worn pillars, splendidly carved, rose out of the platform a short arm’s width apart.

  “Tasko! Tasko!” the king shouted.

  As his voice leaped through the crack of the gate Ann’s bearers raced her at a redoubled speed up the slippery steps of the altar and swung her into position between the pillars. Two spread her arms while two more tied grass ropes to her wrists, cast loops around the pillars and drew them tight. Ann hung, barely conscious, her eyes closed.

  “Ndundo!” the king shouted, this time to the drummer on the wall.

  The man swung his blunt stick again. The thunder rolled deafeningly. The crowded rampart swayed in an insane chant. Ann’s bearers leaped to the ground and, with fearful glances backward, fled. The gate closed upon the heels of the last one, and Ann was alone, without the wall.

  From the shadowed base of the precipice came a deep, unreal roar which met the roll of the drum and threw it back against the wall.

  “Kong!” The watching, torch-illumined mob on the rampart burst into a great cry. “Kong! Kong! Kong!”

  A sense of impending fate lifted Ann’s eyelids. She stared about in bewilderment uncertain where she was. She looked at her wrists, and realizing now what hurt her she struggled erect to lessen the ropes’ bite.

  Before her, she became conscious of the crowded wall. Behind her she was aware of a closer, deeper shout, and of a Shadow. She turned her head. Then, while her eyes widened, the Shadow split the black cloak of the precipice and became solidly real. Blinking up at the packed wall, its vast mouth roared defiance, its black, furred hands drummed a black, furred breast in challenge. In the full glare of the torches it hesitated, stopped and as though reading the meaning of the thousand hands which gestured from the rampart, turned and looked down at the altar, and at Ann.

  It did not look up at Ann upon her pedestal. It looked down. Moving closer it stared down between the two pillars. High up on the wall the tribespeople caught their breath. Their pointing arms grew motionless. Even the torch flames seemed to cease their wavering. And Ann’s scream sped piercingly into a dead silence.

  Kong jerked back a half step and rumbled angrily. His great hand, which had been about to touch the curious, golden crest revealed by the torches, withdrew. He turned and stared suspiciously up at the wall, but when no further
sound came from the crowded natives there, and no sound or further movement from the figure now drooping between the pillars, he renewed his investigation.

  Immediately he found that he could not pick Ann up, and shortly he found the reason. The ropes, however, offered no difficulty. The loops about the pillars broke in his hands and he was free to explore the amazing being who drooped across his arm. Shining hair, petalled cheek, tissue garments, puzzling footgear…his fingers discovered endless mystery. In an intensity of preoccupation he began to rumble to himself as he turned the figure over, this way and that, much in the manner that a half-adult human being might turn and inspect a limp unconscious bird.

  When the crowd shouted again, he did not even look up. When new voices joined the clamor he paid no more attention. With a last, intent look at the white countenance beneath his hand, he shifted Ann’s form to the crook of one arm and started slowly back into the shadow of the precipice. The heavy creak of the opening gate drew no sign from his receding back. And when a challenging figure plunged through, and cried loudly, and shot a whistling something past his ear, he only leaped more quickly over the last few yards which separated him from the black concealing wilderness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It had been Denham who raced the rescue boats away from the Wanderer; and Denham who had deployed the sailors for the breathless run to the village. But from the moment the great gate swung open Driscoll took charge. It was Driscoll who organized the pursuit after Kong.

  He alone had got a fair look at the beast god lumbering into the darkness with Ann’s bright head cradled in one arm. The shot which accelerated Kong’s last step had been his.

  “This is my job,” he had said to Denham, and the director nodded. “O.K. Jack. We’ll do it together.”

  “I’ll need a dozen of you,” Driscoll cried, turning back to the crew. “Who’s coming with me?”

  “I’ll go,” Lumpy volunteered, and back of him the others called out with raised hands.

  “You keep watch here, Lumpy,” Driscoll said. “I’ll take you!” he pointed. “And you! And you!…”

  “Who’s got the bombs?” Denham asked. “We’ll need them.”

  “Here they are,” Jimmy cried, and when a bigger man offered to take them, he drew back jealously. “Not much, guy! I lugged them before. I can lug ’em now.”

  “We’ll leave the Skipper in charge here. Right?” Driscoll said to Denham.

  The director nodded. Together, the two inspected guns, ammunition and flashlights.

  “Single file,” Driscoll ordered. “Never lose sight of the man ahead of you. And follow me.”

  He set off at a trot, Denham beside him. At the altar he paused and measured the height of the pillars with his eyes. When he had done, he looked at Denham incredulously.

  “You got a glimpse of it too, didn’t you?”

  Denham nodded.

  “I can’t believe it,” Driscoll said. “I got a fair look. I saw that Thing’s head squarely in line with the top of those pillars and they stand twenty feet above the ground if they stand an inch.” He shivered. “Come on,” he ended. “This is wasting time.”

  On the left, as they came to the base of the precipice, they heard water flowing in the darkness. Denham suggested that this might be a guide to some crevice which would lead them up to the plateau; so they stumbled toward it.

  They found a stream. In one direction the water flowed off toward the wall. In the other, the bed of the stream ran steeply up through a narrow split in the precipice. The natural crevice inclined just steeply enough to send the water down in a swift deep slide, but no more.

  “As good a swimmer as you are, Jack,” said Denham, “could come down that chute.”

  Driscoll nodded and went about the difficult business of finding a trail up. He had just found what looked like a possible path along the water’s edge when one of the party called out.

  “Here’s a track!”

  Driscoll turned his flashlights upon the mark of a foot so large that the men stared in unbelief; but it pointed up along the very trail Driscoll had picked out.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  In the darkness it was cruel going. A cracked shin, a bruising stumble marked nearly every yard of the way. Once a man slipped into the swift water and shot down a hundred feet before he found a ledge to cling to.

  “I kept my gun,” he gasped cheerfully, as he was pulled out.

  Up on top of the precipice they encountered jungle at the very outset. Enormous trees, and at their bases a lush tangle of undergrowth. The stream, widening somewhat, extended back into the country which seemed to rise higher and higher.

  “We’ll find that this plateau slopes gradually back to Skull Mountain,” Denham surmised.

  Nowhere was there any sign of a trail, and for a moment all were nonplussed.

  “Look for a track again,” Driscoll ordered.

  “Here is broken down brush,” a sailor said. “Something big has gone through.”

  The breaks were fresh, too.

  “And here’s that track again,” cried another.

  The track was in a clear space beyond the broken brush, and once more it pointed upstream. It was clue enough, and Driscoll led the way as fast as he could in the darkness.

  “There’s a bird call,” Denham said after a little. “Hear it? A lot of them.”

  The silence did, indeed, suddenly pulse with bird cries and the reviving whirr and flick of insects.

  “It’s dawn,” Denham exulted. “Now we’ll get a break, Jack.”

  “Now we’ll put on speed,” Driscoll promised.

  For a space, no change was apparent. They still moved through what seemed an utter blackness. Then, slowly, they could catch shadows at a distance. Next, whenever they paused to puzzle out the way, they marched ahead upon a trail grown a little plainer. And finally, unmistakably, light began to filter down.

  It was a shaft of this which gave them their next encouragement. It pointed to another of the great footprints.

  “Look at the size of the thing!” Jimmy exploded, shifting his bombs. “He must be as big as a house.”

  “He came this way, all right,” Denham said to Driscoll.

  “And he was headed the way we’re going. Come on.”

  “Keep those guns ready,” Denham reminded the men.

  “He’s telling us,” grunted Jimmy.

  A wide glade opened to their weary feet. Bruised by the trees they had not been able to avoid in the darkness, stung by branches which had whipped them at every step, they stumbled into it thankfully. It was now full daylight. Except for a thin drifting mist every tree, every bush, every strand of knee deep grass was clearly visible.

  Once again they came upon a footprint and once again it led on in the direction they had been going.

  Driscoll had started off at a trot when Denham called out in alarm. Halting, Driscoll looked to a flank along the line of the director’s extended arm. Behind him the sailors burst into panic-stricken cries.

  “Kong!” someone cried. But it was not Kong.

  An immense beast was emerging from the jungle, a beast with a thick, scaly hide, a huge spiked tail and a small reptilian head upon a long swaying neck. It walked in an awkward squatting posture upon tremendous hind legs. Its forelegs were carried elevated far up toward the base of the long neck and were more like paws.

  The sailors stared in confused unbelief, but Denham and Driscoll grew cold from their first full realization of the true scope of the island’s mystery.

  “Jimmy,” Denham cried. “Where are the bombs?”

  He seized one as the beast turned in their direction.

  “When I throw,” he called loudly, “everybody must drop in his tracks, and keep his face pressed close to the earth.”

  Still at the edge of the jungle, the beast widened i
ts nostrils and drew in the puzzling scent of the strange creatures in the glade. Full of this, it started upon a clumsy, open-mouthed attack.

  The sailors scattered, Jimmy a slow last because of his burden now become doubly precious. Only Denham and Driscoll stood fast. The latter pumped two rifle shots into the swaying head with no effect. Denham waited patiently for the target to come closer.

  “When you drop,” he said unhurriedly, “keep close to me and don’t get up until I do.”

  Then he threw.

  The missile struck squarely in front of the beast’s feet. Its instant explosion enveloped feet, scaly body and small head in a thick blue vapor.

  “Down!” Denham shouted, and flung himself to the ground.

  As Driscoll dropped alongside, the director put a hand on his mate’s face to make sure it pressed close to the ground.

  Driscoll breathed in the damp rich smell of earth, and the sap of growing roots grew bitter upon his lips. Just forward the ground shook from the fall of a great weight. He would have got up, but Denham’s hand pressed warningly. Finally the hand lifted and then tapped his shoulder.

  Driscoll stood up. Scarcely the length of his own body away lay the outstretched, twitching head of the beast. Back of the head the body rose like an enormous mound. The mate was amazed at the beast’s proximity.

  “Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “It came a good fifty feet after it got the gas.”

  “But I stopped it,” Denham said triumphantly. “Didn’t I tell you one of those bombs would stop anything?”

  “Is it dead?”

  “No,” Denham said. “But that’s just a detail.” He picked up his gun, walked forward, felt for the beast’s heart and shot twice. The great body started convulsively and then grew rigid. Denham hesitated, then for good measure sent a bullet through the reptilian head.

  Backing off to Driscoll, he stared with something of the unbelief of the sailors who now came slowly back.

  “Prehistoric life!” he ejaculated, and turning to Driscoll he cried out: “Jack! She was right last night on the ship. Ann, I mean. But she only had the start of it. She guessed the beast-god was some primitive survival. But if this thing we’ve killed means anything, the plateau is alive with all sorts of creatures that have survived along with Kong.”