# The mound of darkness

Extracted from Windsor magazine, v. 45 1916-17, pp. 277-285. Accompanying illustration by Dudley Tennant may be omitted.
THE MOUND OF DARKNESS
By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
THE Pelorus was a five-hundred-ton ocean-going steam yacht, built at Southampton, for Mediterranean work, to the order of the Earl of Crowborough. Her engines were being set up when Lord Crowborough died, and she came into the market right from her trial trip, and was snapped up by Cyrus Mulliner, junior partner in the firm of Mulliner, Mulliner and Oppenshaw, the great bankers of New York and Pittsburg.
Young Mulliner—he was thirty-five years of age at the date of this story—was more than a banker—he was a bug hunter. His collection of beetles and butterflies was the finest in the States, he was a correspondent of foreign learned societies, known favourably to spectacled circles in Berlin, Vienna, and Amsterdam, to say nothing of that English circle of enthusiasts of whom the Natural History Museum is the centre and hub.
New York looked upon him as a crank. Oppenshaw and old Mulliner were quite content to let the middle partner work his works undisturbed as long as he did not meddle with the banking business, of which he knew as little as they knew of the coleoptera. So it came about that, after the purchase, the Pelorus found herself voyaging in all sorts of strange waters and palm-shadowed estuaries, scraping her keel on sand bars and uncharted coral reefs, tied up by river banks, with crocodiles nosing her plates and monkeys pelting her with nuts and more undesirable missiles, and all for a handful of beetles.
But crazy men are often the happiest, and the amount of fresh air, health, excitement, and general satisfaction that came to Mulliner in the course of his seemingly insane peregrinations about the world formed a total of riches far beyond the wealth of Wall Street.
Oppenshaw, who had amassed a liver along with his wealth, and Mulliner Senior, for ever hunting for his lost digestion in drug stores, would have recognised the fact could they have looked this afternoon through the bank windows and seen their missing partner standing on the bridge of the Pelorus, the R.M.S. pilot beside him, and all the broad Amazon River before him.
The yacht was a thousand miles up the river, the vast river that seemed here almost as wide as at its mouth, where the waters flood out right into the blaze of the Equator. They were hugging the left bank and the fringe of a wonderland of forest growth, vast, unknown, where the vigour of the early days of the world seemed still rising in the sap of trees monstrous in splendour and size, and burgeoning in flowers that mimicked birds, and birds more beautiful than flowers.
Mulliner had only to pull the siren rope to set Nature off in a display finer than fireworks, rouse the echoing woods, and lift rocket stars of painted and screaming birds—blazing parrots, scarlet, green, and blue, paroquets, toucans circling and yelping like dogs far above the tall matamata trees, and egrets like puffs of snow against the burning sapphire of the sky.
Occasionally the vast verdurous wall would break, giving view of dim glades that were glades before Pan was dreamed of by the Greeks, or Babylon built, or the Israelites a people. Older than mythology, youthful in spring, and mysterious as life itself, these breaks in the forest showed in stereoscopic stillness the misty blue of ponds, trees fantastically bearded with hanging moss, the vague vapour over marshes deadly with malaria, and twilit spaces where the cables of the liantasse hung from tree to tree, fathom upon fathom, festooned with orchids.
The right bank far across the river showed in humps and billows of foliage, above which, here and there, appeared the faint tracery of palm fronds.
Mulliner, walking to the after-bridge rail, looked over. He could just see in the shadow of the awning that covered the quarter-deck the left foot of a girl, a bit of white skirt, and the legs of the canvas-back deck-chair in which she was sitting. It was Miss Kearney, and beside her was seated George Pinckney.
The Pelorus had for passengers Mrs. Mulliner, her brother, George Pinckney, and Mabel Kearney of San Francisco, a friend of Mrs. Mulliner's. Mabel Kearney was reckoned the prettiest girl in San Francisco, and Pinckney was in love with her. He had known her for a very short time, but a sea voyage quickens acquaintanceship, and nothing grows faster than love on the Amazon.
He had nearly worn his deck-shoes out running to fetch cushions for her; they had photographed alligators, and harpooned sting-rays, and, seated side by side on deck of nights, had listened to the howling monkeys under a sky that was one solid crust of stars.
Just now, under the awning and alone for the moment, silence had suddenly come between them—a silence broken only by the pounding of the propeller and an occasional clank of the rudder- chains as the wheel shifted in the hands of the steersman on the bridge.
Then Pinckney leaned forward in his chair.
"Do you know how long this river is?" he asked.
"Three thousand five hundred and fifty miles," replied Miss Kearney, looking up from the lion medallion she was crocheting. "I looked it up in the atlas before starting."
"Only three thousand miles!" said he. "I wish it were ten!"
"Why?" she asked.
"Because I don't want this voyage ever to stop—I want it to go on for ever. I don't want to lose you. Can't you see?"
As if in reply to this last query, she raised her deep-blue eyes to his. Yes, she could see, and she told him so without a word—told him all sorts of things that paralysed his heart for a moment with happiness. It seemed far too good to be true, yet it was true, and real as the hand that was letting itself be held by him now, the warm palm that he was covering with kisses.
Then, quite unconscious of the charm he was breaking, Mulliner came down the bridge ladder. He might have thought that they had been quarrelling, they looked so stiff and speechless; but he was an unobservant man as regards human beings, and his mind was engaged on the report the chief engineer had just sent up to him.
"We'll have to tie up somewhere quiet for a day or two," said he. "One of the cylinders is giving trouble, and wants repairing. There's a big bayou up higher, and the pilot has fixed to run in there. It'll give us a chance with the guns, Pinckney."
"I don't mind if you tie up for a year," replied the young fellow, with a side glance at Miss Kearney. "I was just saying I wished this voyage would last for ever."
"So was I," said she.
Mulliner sank into a deck-chair and lit a cigar. "That's what I like," said he. "Guests in one's own house can go and walk down the street if they are tired of their surroundings, but on board ship people are like birds in a cage. I'm real pleased you two are enjoying this trip. Last time I took a party with me I felt most of the way they weren't making a pleasure business of it. Some were grumbling about the mosquitoes, some about the heat, and we ran out of ice, and the cook went dotty and quarrelled with one of the hands, and tried to jump overboard. That was off the Fly River, where we blew a cylinder cover off, to put a cap on everything. No, they weren't happy—I could feel that—and it spoilt the trip. Now, this time everything works smooth as oil. You two people are young, and that's the great thing—you're not above enjoying life."
Pinckney laughed and looked at the girl, who laughed in reply. Then Mrs. Mulliner appeared on deck, and almost immediately the gong sounded for afternoon tea.
Down below in the saloon, with Mrs. Mulliner pouring out the tea, home fashion, and Pinckney handing the scones, you never would have imagined yourself a thousand miles up the Amazon. It is one of the delights and wonders of a voyage like this that you take your home with you, that the commonplace and everyday is always with you as a contrast to the strange or the marvellous. You never properly appreciate the gobbling, choking night-cry of an alligator till you hear it, so to speak, outside your bedroom window, or the strangeness of a flying-fish till it lands on your breakfast table through an open port, and exhibits itself beside the eggs and bacon.
As they were finishing tea, word came down from the pilot that they were reaching their destination. Mulliner led the way on deck, and the whole party followed him on to the bridge.
Captain Sampson was on the bridge, and the Pelorus was out in mid-stream, thrashing her way against the current, and the mouth of the bayou showed on the left bank, gradually widening as they opened it, till now, with helm hard over, it lay straight ahead.
Now, as they passed the mouth, the bayou itself spread before them, it seemed a vast lake—so vast that the trees on the far banks were dwarfed to the size of shrubs—yet it was only the river opening to greater waters beyond.
It seemed to Pinckney that he had never seen anything more lone and melancholy than this great sheet of water, breeze-ruffled and by the westering sun, voiceless, expressionless, and forlorn of life.
"It's a big dug-out all here at the mouth," said the pilot, "and it's ten-fathom water right up to that bank. We'll moor her there same as to a quay."
"Right," said Captain Sampson.
He moved the lever of the engine-room telegraph, and the faint sound of the bells ringing the engines off came from below. Then they were put full astern for a few revolutions. The great rope fenders were now out, and the Pelorus came drifting gradually up to the bank and touched it with a little shudder that ran right through her. One might have said that she shivered.
The bank here was high and steep, so that the fellows with the mooring ropes could jump right on to it with scarcely a drop from the bulwarks. Two hawsers, fore and aft, were brought ashore and fastened to tree holes, and the business was complete.
"No harbour dues, either," said the captain.
"And no pubs ashore," replied the pilot.
Miss Kearney, who was standing with the others on deck abaft the port alleyway, looked across the bayou. The sun was just setting, and the mournful light of sunset filled the world and lit the water, across which a flock of birds was stringing, the only visible sign of life in all that wide expanse.
"How long do we stay here?" she asked Mulliner.
"Oh, a day or two," he replied, "till we get the cylinder defect put right. Lonely sort of place, isn't it?"
"It is," she replied.
A little shudder suddenly ran through her, and she turned sharply round facing the bank.
"Funny," said she, "I felt just as if someone were behind me, looking at me and wanting me to turn round."
Mulliner laughed.
"I don't blame them if they did," said he. "But you won't find many admirers here, Mabel, unless it's the howling monkeys. This isn't exactly the place for Paris frocks, is it, Jane?"
"It's a melancholy place," said Mrs. Mulliner, "but I dare say it will look better in the morning. I hate the sunset when I have to face it; the only proper way of seeing the sunset is to turn your back upon it."
She meant that the eastern evening sky is full of depth and beauty, the western full of melancholy and without true depth. They did not laugh at her, for they understood her meaning.
Pinckney felt nothing of the lonesomeness of the place. He was in love. Standing beside the girl, he managed to secure her hand, unseen by the others. That was enough for him, even though the hand let itself be held in captivity only for a moment.
Dinner on board the Pelorus was always a cheerful function, yet somehow to-night conversation flagged a bit, and even Captain Sampson's good spirits seemed ever so slightly damped. Perhaps it was the heat of the night, or the fact that the Pelorus was no longer under way, or some tincture of the mournfulness of the place outside, or a combination of all these, but the party had lost something of its old cheerfulness, and a vague depression, scarcely perceived, yet still perceptible, mixed itself in the atmosphere, shadowing the minds and dulling the conversation of the diners.
Pinckney, without feeling it in himself, felt it through Miss Kearney. She seemed put out about something, joining in the talk, yet without initiative or spirit, as though some mournful or unpleasant recollection were holding her mind and making her sometimes forget her surroundings.
"It's hot to-night," said Captain Sampson, "and lying up here tied to the bank makes it seem hotter. Besides, there's no draught. The old Pelorus is a sea-boat, and it must seem strange to her, being tied up here to trees, a matter of nearly eleven hundred miles from the sea, and I expect she's out of temper, and making it hotter for us. Boats have their likes and dislikes, just the same as humans. Some can't stand a beam sea, and they let you know it, and some can't stand a head sea, and they drown you out in consequence. Some come to their berths as if you were trying to insult them—restive as horses they are—and some do loathe an anchorage, and drag their moorings no matter where you stick your anchor."
"That's true," said Mulliner, who had some knowledge of the way of ships. "Everything made by man has a touch in it of man's character, or, anyhow, a character of its own. Why, no two guns are alike! And that reminds me, you may have a chance of trying that new Winchester of yours to-morrow, Pinckney, on something better than crocs."
"You propose going into the woods?"
"Why, yes," said Mulliner. "You must remember this expedition is out for business as well as pleasure, and its business is——"
"Beetles," said Sampson, with a laugh. Sampson was an Englishman. If he had been an American, he would have said "bugs." But even the more dignified word seemed to jar on Mulliner, or perhaps it was the laugh that accompanied it. At all events, he looked, for the first time on the voyage, put out; but he said nothing, and, coffee having been served, the ladies went off to their cabin, leaving the men to smoke and talk.
When Pinckney switched off his light that night and lay down in his bunk, it was not to sleep.
The little blue silk curtain covering the port-hole showed a vague azure disc in the darkness, telling of the moonlight outside, and there were sounds unconducive to slumber.
Sometimes along by the plates something would come rubbing and bumping, either a drift log, moving on the current of the bayou, or an alligator, and now the hobgoblin chorus of the frogs, that had been steadily tuning up, broke into full song, the full Southern chorus, as different from the Aristophanic orchestra as the moon of the South from the moon of the North.
"Going home, going home, going home! Paddy got drunk, Paddy got drunk, Paddy got drunk! Bottle of rum, bottle of rum—bottle of rum!" and so on Da Capo.
After a while, despite these serenaders, Pinckney fell into a doze, from which he suddenly sprang wide awake. For a moment he experienced that horrible sensation which comes to a person who wakes from sleep without being able to remember where he is. Then full recollection came to him, and he lay down again, but not to sleep. A vague uneasiness filled his mind, like the uneasiness that comes as a prelude to sea-sickness—an uneasiness that seemed to come from the very foundations of his being. It increased by waves, till he found himself sitting up and clutching the bunk edge, filled with terror such as he had not experienced since childhood.
Some evil influence seemed around him and in the very air he breathed. Every nerve thrilled to it, and his stomach crawled. It was the night terror of childhood affecting the brain of a man. He sprang from the bunk and switched on the electric light. The terror passed, and, catching a glimpse of his white face in the mirror by the door, he felt ashamed of himself. Yet he could not dismiss the feeling that some thing had been with him in the dark, some spirit or influence, evil and deadly, that the light had dispelled.
Pinckney was a level-headed man; he did not believe in ghosts, and he was not more superstitious than his fellows, and he told himself now that he had been suffering from nightmare, and believed the tale. Then, putting on some clothes, he came on deck for a breath of air. He spoke to the watch, and then climbed to the bridge, where he lit a cigarette and stood for a moment looking at the view.
The great moon, nearly full, had risen over the forest, and the bayou lay like a sheet of silver to the tree line of the distant banks. Bats were flitting above the trees, a night moth came fluttering along on the windless air, and away out on the water a dark streak marked the course of some swimming animal or reptile.
Nothing could be more ghostly, more beautiful, more mysterious than the great bayou seen like this by moonlight. The signs and sounds of secretive life were everywhere, traces and echoes across a stillness that seemed to have located from the very beginning of time.
{{c|[Illustration: "She was walking with hands outspread, and he recognised at once that she was walking in her sleep."]
II.
Next morning Miss Kearney did not appear at breakfast, and Mrs. Mulliner had a tired look; she said the heat had kept her awake. But Mulliner seemed in the highest spirits. The beetle hunt which he had promised himself that day banished everything else from his mind, even his wife's tired look.
"Those awful frogs!" said Mrs. Mulliner. "There does seem a stupidity in Nature sometimes. Why and for what earthly reason she allows creatures like that to make such nuisances of themselves is beyond me. And they seem to take such a satisfaction in it—that's the irritating part. I heard poor Mabel tossing awake for hours, and this morning she's a wreck."
"They are pesky brutes," said Mulliner lightly. "But I guess Nature knows what she's about, and we mustn't grumble at her works. I thought Mabel and you were coming with us on this expedition. She said she'd like to come next time I made a landing, and I'd counted on letting her see what the forests are really like."
"Well, she doesn't want to go," replied Mrs. Mulliner. "She says she doesn't like this place, and doesn't want to land here. And she's got a headache from want of sleep, so you'll just have to go alone. I'll stay and look after her. I'll go and see the cook now about your luncheon basket. How many of you are going?"
"Pinckney and myself, and one of the crew to carry the basket, and Joe Slick to do the axe work. I'm going to blaze a trail. I'm taking a compass, of course, but it's better to be on the doubly safe side."
It was nine o'clock when they started, Pinckney carrying his Winchester, Mulliner the tin box for his beetles, a collapsible butterj9y net, and a collector's gun, single-barrelled and light, swinging by its strap from his shoulder. A quartermaster carried the basket, and Joe Slick, an old trapper who had accompanied Mulliner on most of his expeditions, the axe.
Going into the forest was like walking into a glass house; the atmosphere, damp, hot, and heavy with the faint fragrance of a thousand growing things, literally fell on the shoulders like a cloak. Pinckney breathed with difficulty, and after the first hundred yards the sweat ran from his face as though he were in a Turkish bath.
After a little, and as they got further away from the water, things became better, and he could breathe more freely; and then slowly began to dawn upon his brain the reality of this place where he was, the fantasy of this home of eternal twilight, this green eternal gloom, broken only by shrill stars of light in the roof of leaves.
The most striking features in the Amazonian forests are the trees whose roots are partly exposed above ground, the pachiuba palm that seems standing on stilts, and the huge matamata trees, whose roots form veritable buttresses. The ferns form a wonderland of their own, filling the glades with a delicate tracery, hauntingly beautiful. Seen through the veils of the barrier lianas, the air is a garden.
Looking up, Pinckney was fascinated by the tangle above, the soaring air shoots and water shoots, the sagging lianas, cable-thick and tufted with orchids, orchids that imitated birds and butterflies, dun-coloured orchids, variegated orchids, orchids coloured like parrots, orchids festooned like the lyre bird.
All that, however, was lost on Mulliner, whose game was beetles.
How he found them, Pinckney was at a loss to discover, but find them he did.
Pinckney might have wandered in these forests for miles without sighting a single member of the tribe of coleoptera; for Mulliner the place was swarming and alive with them. He knew their haunts. Rotten trees, certain leaves, and all sorts of slight indications unperceivable to his companion, led him straight to his quarry. Yet his bag was very small—he did not take more than one out of every twenty that he found—and the result of the day's hunt, as they drew back towards the bayou in the late afternoon, seemed infinitesimal as compared with the labours of the chase. Yet the hunter was more than satisfied—he was triumphant. He had discovered a beetle absolutely new and unknown to science, a chocolate-coloured specimen marked with white circles on the wing cases, and he proclaimed his find to his wife as they came alongside the Pelorus, shouting the news like a school-boy, and just as elated as a school-boy who had gone out fishing for minnows, and who returns with a five-pound trout.
Mrs. Mulliner was on the bridge with Miss Kearney, and deck-chairs had been brought there for them, so that they might catch the breeze which had risen up and was blowing straight across the water.
Pinckney followed his companion up the ladder, and whilst the latter was showing his find to the women, went into the chart-house and placed his still loaded Winchester on the table. In the ordinary course of things he would have taken it to his cabin and drawn the cartridges. He would have drawn the cartridges now in the chart-house, true to his training as a sportsman, but the sight of Miss Kearney and his eagerness to get beside her made him forget everything else.
The girl was seated close to Mrs. Mulliner. She looked pale and depressed, and as she glanced up at Pinckney there was a hunted look in her eyes that went to his heart like a knife. Deeply disturbed in his mind, he drew a deck-chair towards her and sat down without a word, and, without either of the others perceiving it, he took her hand. The little hand clung to his for a moment as if for protection, then its hold relaxed, and he released it. The beetle was held out for her to admire. She glanced at it without touching it, and then Mrs. Mulliner, rising and picking up her work, went below, followed by her husband.
Pinckney turned to the girl.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "It is something here in this horrible place. Oh, I don't know what it is! There is something evil here, something that keeps urging and pulling me and dragging me to itself—something in those woods!"
Pinckney sprang to his feet.
"We must leave at once," said he. "It's wicked to keep you here, feeling like that. We must get out of here at once. I will tell Mulliner." He made a step to the bridge ladder.
"Don't," she said. "Come here. Sit down. We can't leave till to-morrow Mrs. Mulliner was talking to the captain about it. She, too, wants to go, and he said he would not be able to put off till to-morrow at noon, but he would get the work done as quickly as possible; he doesn't like the place, either."
Pinckney came back and sat down.
"I don't like it myself," he said. "What is there about it that makes one feel like that? Last night——" He checked himself.
"Did you feel it last night?" she asked, in a low voice.
"I did—at least, I woke up, feeling nervous, then I went on deck."
"Did you see anything?"
"Nothing—only the bayou with the moon upon it."
"Did you hear anything?"
"Nothing—only the frogs. I put my nervousness down to indigestion or the heat."
"It was not that," she replied, as if speaking from sure knowledge. Then, after a moment's silence: "Do you believe in evil spirits?"
"I—I don't know," he replied. "The Bible speaks of them as if they existed, but I do not believe, if they do exist, that they can harm innocent people—like you."
"Or you?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Well, yes, perhaps. I'm not a saint, but I'm—not the other thing. What makes you talk like that?"
"Because," said she, "I seem to have been working out a philosophy of my own ever since we came here. I have never been afraid in my life, till we came here, or only once, and that was when I was staying in Harlem, two years ago. A murder was committed, and I saw them taking the murderer away. He was a poisoner. I saw his face, and it frightened me because it was so evil. It seems to me that evil is the only thing in the world one has to fear—at least, it is the only thing in the world that frightens me. That is why I asked you about evil spirits. There's one here."
He felt shocked by the conviction in her tone. He remembered his own sensations of the night before, and for the first time in his life he found himself face to face with the raw consideration of those things and influences in this world that are not good. He had come across many forms of wickedness, from the man-killing horse to the soul-killing man, but wickedness itself he had never considered as an entity. He was considering it now.
"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that it is on board the ship?"
"I don't know," she replied.
"Well," said he, tearing himself away from the thought that was in his mind, "you need not be afraid. I'm here, and it will have to come across me to touch you. I'll keep watch all to-night. I won't go to bed. Mabel, darling, if you only knew—if you only guessed—how I love you, you would not have one bit of fear. It's not I—it's just my love for you that is powerful. What is love? It is everything—it is strength itself, against which no evil can fight!"
A step on the bridge ladder made them turn; it was Captain Sampson. He stood talking to them for a moment, his cheery voice and commonplace remarks coming strangely enough after their late conversation.
Miss Kearney did not come in to dinner that night, and Pinckney did not help the conversation much in her absence. A dull anger burned in his mind—an anger born of the whole situation. Why could they not have tied up on the river, out there amidst the healthy moving water, instead of here in this ghostly bayou? He did not know all the reasons that had urged Captain Sampson to his choice of a berth. He did not know that it was near flood-time, when the upper river and the Marañon and Javary and Hecoahy would be pouring their waters to the sea, waters freighted with logs and all the débris of the forest. He put it down to Mulliner and his crave for fresh beetle-hunting grounds, and he was rather silent during the meal, which was scarcely a cheerful one, despite the fact that Mulliner talked enough for two, and insisted on toasting the newly discovered beetle in champagne, mineral water being the usual tipple on board the Pelorus, which was, in the words of Captain Sampson, an exceedingly dry ship.
When all the others had gone to bed, Pinckney, true to his promise to keep guard, went up on the bridge, where Captain Sampson was smoking a cigar. The moon, full to-night, was just rising over the forest, and the chorus of the frogs had struck up like the hubble-bubbling of a witch's pot.
"Hum-hum-hum! Paddy got drunk! Paddy got drunk! Bottle of rum-rum-rum!"
"Listen to the beasts!" said Sampson. "Don't wonder Mrs. Mulliner was so down on them last night. And there's another beauty! Hark at it!"
The cry of the little owl called by the natives "The Mother of the Moon" came from far away in the forest, the most lamentable sound in all the wide earth.
"Say, this isn't exactly the place one would choose to have delirium tremens in," said the captain. He walked to the port side of the bridge, flung his cigar end into the water, and then, bidding the other good-night, slipped down the ladder to his cabin.
The anchor watch was forward, hidden from the bridge by the forward awning, and most probably asleep. Not a soul was in sight fore and aft, and Pinckney had the night to himself.
The trees of the far banks were half hidden to-night by a veil of mist, and mist spirals showed on the water here and there like the ghosts of water spirits, whilst the great moon, slowly lifting above the forest, lit the world with a light strong almost as the light of day.
Pinckney sat for a while smoking, and then rose up and paced the bridge. He looked at his watch; it pointed to quarter-past eleven. He calculated the hours till sunrise.
Never in his life had he felt so cut off, so lonely. Never had he felt such a craving for close contact with his fellow-men. It was the object of his vigil that oppressed his soul, the unknown danger, the unguessed evil, the brooding antagonism of this place felt by the girl and more vaguely by himself.
As he paced up and down, he tried to distract his thoughts from his surroundings by calling up distant scenes and places. Failing in this, he fell to arguing with himself on the absurdity of allowing the purely imaginary to dominate his mind. He told himself that he was in an absurd position, standing guard against nothing, that he had allowed himself to be dominated by the fancies of a girl, that he would be laughed at by Mulliner if the truth were known, and he told himself all this in vain.
The spirit of the place admitted no sophistry, and as time wore on, the dread that he had been fighting made such way with him that, failing other support, he went into the chart-house and fetched out the Winchester that he had left on the table.
There is company in a gun. Then, with the rifle under his arm, he resumed his watch.
Ten minutes later, resting for a moment at the starboard or shore end of the bridge, his eye was caught by something white just below. A girl's form had appeared from beneath the awning. It was Miss Kearney, fully dressed. She was walking with hands outspread, and he recognised at once that she was walking in her sleep.
As she reached the bulwarks, he saw that the outstretched hands were nearly palm to palm, as though the wrists were tied together by some invisible rope by which she was being led.
Then, before he could reach the deck, she had stepped from a life-belt locker on to the bulwarks and had reached the bank.
In a moment he was on the bank and following her amongst the trees. Twice be tried to call to her, but the Something that led her was clutching at his throat, his mouth was parched, and his lips like sandstone, and his tongue dry as the tongue of a parrot.
She led to the left. He tried to increase his pace to a run, that he might reach her and seize her, but he was walking as a man walks in a nightmare, or as a Martian might walk on Earth, pushed against and held down by a weight that was not his. There was light in the forest. The place glowed green to the moonlight, and the glade where the girl was standing when he reached her was brilliant with the rays of the moon.
In the centre of the glade lay a vast dark mound, ten feet in height, spreading broad at the base and spilled all over with points of silver.
For a moment he fancied that what lay before him was some monstrous mountain of ship's cable, coiled and forgotten and covered with dew. He could see the coils, here vague in shadow, here moonlit and distinct. Then suddenly the whole mass of abomination heaved gently as the breast of a sleeper, and he knew.
At the same moment he recognised the head, flat on the ground, heavy, huge, with eyes like points of burning tinder, that glowed and dimmed as though breathed upon by a demon.
It was the great anaconda of the Amazon, the sucuruju of the Indians, the one thing of all animated things that can spread terror around it like an atmosphere, like an odour, like a charm, fascinate unseen, and call the Indian canoe-man from half the river's breadth away to his undoing.
Above it an orchid, like a flying bird, swung from a tendril in the moonlight. The eyes of the anaconda were fixed upon the girl. She had come to it in her sleep, drawn like the iron to the magnet, and now in the last and inmost circle of attraction she stood lost, bound like a fly in the toils of a spider.
The great head of the anaconda, motionless up to this, moved gently and began to glide forward. Then the rings began to move like flowing shadows, and Pinckney, with the rifle at his shoulder, took aim and fired.
Struck fairly between the eyes, the head flung back and rose in air thirty feet, with a hiss like the hiss of steam from a burst pipe. Another shot rang out, and then, flinging the rifle away, he seized the girl in his arms and, turning, ran with her, bursting from the trees as the Pelorus blazed alight at the sound of the alarm, and the anchor watch came tumbling ashore to meet him.
Mulliner, Mrs. Mulliner, every soul was on deck, as they brought the girl on board and carried her below, struggling and crying out, terrified, and not knowing in the least what had happened.
Then, when Pinckney told, Mulliner, the captain, and the crew stood listening to what was still going on in the forest.
A giant seemed fighting for his life amongst the trees, and over the pounding and slashing and banging in the darkness came the screaming of birds above the tree-tops. It lasted half an hour. Then it ceased, and the birds sank to rest.
Next day the Pelorus continued her voyage, with the girl who had been saved and the man who had saved her companions for life.
And will you believe it, in the log of Mulliner you will find a page and a half describing the charms of a certain chocolate-coloured beetle, its hunting and its habitat, followed by two lines and a half: "Pinckney shot anaconda at night in woods close by, after incident with Miss Kearney. Snake measured fifty-four feet six inches. Head spoiled, skin worthless—chewed by wild animals before morning."
Copyright, 1916, by H. de Vere Stacpoole, in the United States of America.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1950, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 73 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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