Chapter 3
Half-stunned, Bradley lay for a minute as he had fallen and then
slowly and painfully wriggled into a less uncomfortable position.
He could see nothing of his surroundings in the gloom about him
until after a few minutes his eyes became accustomed to the dark
interior when he rolled them from side to side in survey of his prison.
He discovered himself to be in a bare room which was windowless,
nor could he see any other opening than that through which he had
been lowered. In one corner was a huddled mass that might have
been almost anything from a bundle of rags to a dead body.
Almost immediately after he had taken his bearings Bradley
commenced working with his bonds. He was a man of powerful
physique, and as from the first he had been imbued with a belief
that the fiber ropes were too weak to hold him, he worked on
with a firm conviction that sooner or later they would part to
his strainings. After a matter of five minutes he was positive
that the strands about his wrists were beginning to give; but he
was compelled to rest then from exhaustion.
As he lay, his eyes rested upon the bundle in the corner, and
presently he could have sworn that the thing moved. With eyes
straining through the gloom the man lay watching the grim and
sinister thing in the corner. Perhaps his overwrought nerves
were playing a sorry joke upon him. He thought of this and also
that his condition of utter helplessness might still further have
stimulated his imagination. He closed his eyes and sought to
relax his muscles and his nerves; but when he looked again, he
knew that he had not been mistaken--the thing had moved; now it
lay in a slightly altered form and farther from the wall. It was
nearer him.
With renewed strength Bradley strained at his bonds, his
fascinated gaze still glued upon the shapeless bundle. No longer
was there any doubt that it moved--he saw it rise in the center
several inches and then creep closer to him. It sank and arose
again--a headless, hideous, monstrous thing of menace. Its very
silence rendered it the more terrible.
Bradley was a brave man; ordinarily his nerves were of steel; but
to be at the mercy of some unknown and nameless horror, to be
unable to defend himself--it was these things that almost
unstrung him, for at best he was only human. To stand in the
open, even with the odds all against him; to be able to use his
fists, to put up some sort of defense, to inflict punishment upon
his adversary--then he could face death with a smile. It was not
death that he feared now--it was that horror of the unknown that
is part of the fiber of every son of woman.
Closer and closer came the shapeless mass. Bradley lay
motionless and listened. What was that he heard! Breathing?
He could not be mistaken--and then from out of the bundle of rags
issued a hollow groan. Bradley felt his hair rise upon his head.
He struggled with the slowly parting strands that held him.
The thing beside him rose up higher than before and the Englishman
could have sworn that he saw a single eye peering at him from
among the tumbled cloth. For a moment the bundle remained
motionless--only the sound of breathing issued from it, then
there broke from it a maniacal laugh.
Cold sweat stood upon Bradley's brow as he tugged for liberation.
He saw the rags rise higher and higher above him until at last
they tumbled upon the floor from the body of a naked man--a thin,
a bony, a hideous caricature of man, that mouthed and mummed and,
wabbling upon its weak and shaking legs, crumpled to the floor
again, still laughing--laughing horribly.
It crawled toward Bradley. "Food! Food!" it screamed.
"There is a way out! There is a way out!"
Dragging itself to his side the creature slumped upon the
Englishman's breast. "Food!" it shrilled as with its bony
fingers and its teeth, it sought the man's bare throat.
"Food! There is a way out!" Bradley felt teeth upon his jugular.
He turned and twisted, shaking himself free for an instant; but
once more with hideous persistence the thing fastened itself
upon him. The weak jaws were unable to send the dull teeth through
the victim's flesh; but Bradley felt it pawing, pawing, pawing,
like a monstrous rat, seeking his life's blood.
The skinny arms now embraced his neck, holding the teeth to his
throat against all his efforts to dislodge the thing. Weak as it
was it had strength enough for this in its mad efforts to eat.
Mumbling as it worked, it repeated again and again, "Food! Food!
There is a way out!" until Bradley thought those two expressions
alone would drive him mad.
And all but mad he was as with a final effort backed by almost
maniacal strength he tore his wrists from the confining bonds and
grasping the repulsive thing upon his breast hurled it halfway
across the room. Panting like a spent hound Bradley worked at
the thongs about his ankles while the maniac lay quivering and
mumbling where it had fallen. Presently the Englishman leaped to
his feet--freer than he had ever before felt in all his life,
though he was still hopelessly a prisoner in the Blue Place of
Seven Skulls.
With his back against the wall for support, so weak the reaction
left him, Bradley stood watching the creature upon the floor.
He saw it move and slowly raise itself to its hands and knees,
where it swayed to and fro as its eyes roved about in search of
him; and when at last they found him, there broke from the drawn
lips the mumbled words: "Food! Food! There is a way out!"
The pitiful supplication in the tones touched the Englishman's heart.
He knew that this could be no Wieroo, but possibly once a man like
himself who had been cast into this pit of solitary confinement
with this hideous result that might in time be his fate, also.
And then, too, there was the suggestion of hope held out by the
constant reiteration of the phrase, "There is a way out."
Was there a way out? What did this poor thing know?
"Who are you and how long have you been here?" Bradley
suddenly demanded.
For a moment the man upon the floor made no response, then
mumblingly came the words: "Food! Food!"
"Stop!" commanded the Englishman--the injunction might have been
barked from the muzzle of a pistol. It brought the man to a
sitting posture, his hands off the ground. He stopped swaying to
and fro and appeared to be startled into an attempt to master his
faculties of concentration and thought.
Bradley repeated his questions sharply.
"I am An-Tak, the Galu," replied the man. "Luata alone knows how
long I have been here--maybe ten moons, maybe ten moons three
times"--it was the Caspakian equivalent of thirty. "I was young
and strong when they brought me here. Now I am old and very weak.
I am cos-ata-lu--that is why they have not killed me.
If I tell them the secret of becoming cos-ata-lu they will
take me out; but how can I tell them that which Luata alone knows?
"What is cos-ata-lu?" demanded Bradley.
"Food! Food! There is a way out!" mumbled the Galu.
Bradley strode across the floor, seized the man by his shoulders
and shook him.
"Tell me," he cried, "what is cos-ata-lu?"
"Food!" whimpered An-Tak.
Bradley bethought himself. His haversack had not been taken
from him. In it besides his razor and knife were odds and ends
of equipment and a small quantity of dried meat. He tossed a small
strip of the latter to the starving Galu. An-Tak seized upon it
and devoured it ravenously. It instilled new life in the man.
"What is cos-ata-lu?" insisted Bradley again.
An-Tak tried to explain. His narrative was often broken by
lapses of concentration during which he reverted to his plaintive
mumbling for food and recurrence to the statement that there was
a way out; but by firmness and patience the Englishman drew out
piece-meal a more or less lucid exposition of the remarkable
scheme of evolution that rules in Caspak. In it he found
explanations of the hitherto inexplicable. He discovered why he
had seen no babes or children among the Caspakian tribes with
which he had come in contact; why each more northerly tribe
evinced a higher state of development than those south of them;
why each tribe included individuals ranging in physical and
mental characteristics from the highest of the next lower race to
the lowest of the next higher, and why the women of each tribe
immersed themselves morning for an hour or more in the warm pools
near which the habitations of their people always were located;
and, too, he discovered why those pools were almost immune from
the attacks of carnivorous animals and reptiles.
He learned that all but those who were cos-ata-lu came up
cor-sva-jo, or from the beginning. The egg from which
they first developed into tadpole form was deposited, with
millions of others, in one of the warm pools and with it a
poisonous serum that the carnivora instinctively shunned.
Down the warm stream from the pool floated the countless billions
of eggs and tadpoles, developing as they drifted slowly toward
the sea. Some became tadpoles in the pool, some in the sluggish
stream and some not until they reached the great inland sea.
In the next stage they became fishes or reptiles, An-Tak was not
positive which, and in this form, always developing, they swam
far to the south, where, amid the rank and teeming jungles, some
of them evolved into amphibians. Always there were those whose
development stopped at the first stage, others whose development
ceased when they became reptiles, while by far the greater
proportion formed the food supply of the ravenous creatures of
the deep.
Few indeed were those that eventually developed into baboons and
then apes, which was considered by Caspakians the real beginning
of evolution. From the egg, then, the individual developed
slowly into a higher form, just as the frog's egg develops through
various stages from a fish with gills to a frog with lungs.
With that thought in mind Bradley discovered that it was not
difficult to believe in the possibility of such a scheme--
there was nothing new in it.
From the ape the individual, if it survived, slowly developed
into the lowest order of man--the Alu--and then by degrees to
Bo-lu, Sto-lu, Band-lu, Kro-lu and finally Galu. And in each
stage countless millions of other eggs were deposited in the warm
pools of the various races and floated down to the great sea to
go through a similar process of evolution outside the womb as
develops our own young within; but in Caspak the scheme is much
more inclusive, for it combines not only individual development
but the evolution of species and genera. If an egg survives it
goes through all the stages of development that man has passed
through during the unthinkable eons since life first moved upon
the earth's face.
The final stage--that which the Galus have almost attained and
for which all hope--is cos-ata-lu, which literally, means
no-egg-man, or one who is born directly as are the young of the
outer world of mammals. Some of the Galus produce cos-ata-lu
and cos-ata-lo both; the Weiroos only cos-ata-lu--in
other words all Wieroos are born male, and so they prey upon the
Galus for their women and sometimes capture and torture the Galu
men who are cos-ata-lu in an endeavor to learn the secret
which they believe will give them unlimited power over all other
denizens of Caspak.
No Wieroos come up from the beginning--all are born of the Wieroo
fathers and Galu mothers who are cos-ata-lo, and there are
very few of the latter owing to the long and precarious stages
of development. Seven generations of the same ancestor must come
up from the beginning before a cos-ata-lu child may be born;
and when one considers the frightful dangers that surround the
vital spark from the moment it leaves the warm pool where it has
been deposited to float down to the sea amid the voracious creatures
that swarm the surface and the deeps and the almost equally
unthinkable trials of its effort to survive after it once becomes
a land animal and starts northward through the horrors of the
Caspakian jungles and forests, it is plainly a wonder that even
a single babe has ever been born to a Galu woman.
Seven cycles it requires before the seventh Galu can complete the
seventh danger-infested circle since its first Galu ancestor
achieved the state of Galu. For ages before, the ancestors of
this first Galu may have developed from a Band-lu or Bo-lu egg
without ever once completing the whole circle--that is from a
Galu egg, back to a fully developed Galu.
Bradley's head was whirling before he even commenced to grasp the
complexities of Caspakian evolution; but as the truth slowly
filtered into his understanding--as gradually it became possible
for him to visualize the scheme, it appeared simpler. In fact,
it seemed even less difficult of comprehension than that with
which he was familiar.
For several minutes after An-Tak ceased speaking, his voice
having trailed off weakly into silence, neither spoke again.
Then the Galu recommenced his, "Food! Food! There is a way out!"
Bradley tossed him another bit of dried meat, waiting patiently
until he had eaten it, this time more slowly.
"What do you mean by saying there is a way out?" he asked.
"He who died here just after I came, told me," replied An-Tak.
"He said there was a way out, that he had discovered it but was
too weak to use his knowledge. He was trying to tell me how to
find it when he died. Oh, Luata, if he had lived but a moment more!"
"They do not feed you here?" asked Bradley.
"No, they give me water once a day--that is all."
"But how have you lived, then?"
"The lizards and the rats," replied An-Tak. "The lizards are not
so bad; but the rats are foul to taste. However, I must eat them
or they would eat me, and they are better than nothing; but of
late they do not come so often, and I have not had a lizard for
a long time. I shall eat though," he mumbled. "I shall eat now,
for you cannot remain awake forever." He laughed, a cackling, dry
laugh. "When you sleep, An-Tak will eat."
It was horrible. Bradley shuddered. For a long time each sat
in silence. The Englishman could guess why the other made no
sound--he awaited the moment that sleep should overcome his victim.
In the long silence there was born upon Bradley's ears a faint,
monotonous sound as of running water. He listened intently.
It seemed to come from far beneath the floor.
"What is that noise?" he asked. "That sounds like water running
through a narrow channel."
"It is the river," replied An-Tak. "Why do you not go to sleep?
It passes directly beneath the Blue Place of Seven Skulls. It runs
through the temple grounds, beneath the temple and under the city.
When we die, they will cut off our heads and throw our bodies into
the river. At the mouth of the river await many large reptiles.
Thus do they feed. The Wieroos do likewise with their own dead,
keeping only the skulls and the wings. Come, let us sleep."
"Do the reptiles come up the river into the city?" asked Bradley.
"The water is too cold--they never leave the warm water of the
great pool," replied An-Tak.
"Let us search for the way out," suggested Bradley.
An-Tak shook his head. "I have searched for it all these moons,"
he said. "If I could not find it, how would you?"
Bradley made no reply but commenced a diligent examination of the
walls and floor of the room, pressing over each square foot
and tapping with his knuckles. About six feet from the floor
he discovered a sleeping-perch near one end of the apartment.
He asked An-Tak about it, but the Galu said that no Weiroo
had occupied the place since he had been incarcerated there.
Again and again Bradley went over the floor and walls as high
up as he could reach. Finally he swung himself to the perch,
that he might examine at least one end of the room all the way
to the ceiling.
In the center of the wall close to the top, an area about three
feet square gave forth a hollow sound when he rapped upon it.
Bradley felt over every square inch of that area with the tips of
his fingers. Near the top he found a small round hole a trifle
larger in diameter than his forefinger, which he immediately
stuck into it. The panel, if such it was, seemed about an
inch thick, and beyond it his finger encountered nothing.
Bradley crooked his finger upon the opposite side of the panel
and pulled toward him, steadily but with considerable force.
Suddenly the panel flew inward, nearly precipitating the man to
the floor. It was hinged at the bottom, and when lowered the
outer edge rested upon the perch, making a little platform
parallel with the floor of the room.
Beyond the opening was an utterly dark void. The Englishman
leaned through it and reached his arm as far as possible into the
blackness but touched nothing. Then he fumbled in his haversack
for a match, a few of which remained to him. When he struck it,
An-Tak gave a cry of terror. Bradley held the light far into the
opening before him and in its flickering rays saw the top of a
ladder descending into a black abyss below. How far down it
extended he could not guess; but that he should soon know
definitely he was positive.
"You have found it! You have found the way out!" screamed An-Tak.
"Oh, Luata! And now I am too weak to go. Take me with you!
Take me with you!"
"Shut up!" admonished Bradley. "You will have the whole flock of
birds around our heads in a minute, and neither of us will escape.
Be quiet, and I'll go ahead. If I find a way out, I'll come back
and help you, if you'll promise not to try to eat me up again."
"I promise," cried An-Tak. "Oh, Luata! How could you blame me?
I am half crazed of hunger and long confinement and the horror of
the lizards and the rats and the constant waiting for death."
"I know," said Bradley simply. "I'm sorry for you, old top.
Keep a stiff upper lip." And he slipped through the opening,
found the ladder with his feet, closed the panel behind him, and
started downward into the darkness.
Below him rose more and more distinctly the sound of running water.
The air felt damp and cool. He could see nothing of his
surroundings and felt nothing but the smooth, worn sides and
rungs of the ladder down which he felt his way cautiously lest a
broken rung or a misstep should hurl him downward.
As he descended thus slowly, the ladder seemed interminable and
the pit bottomless, yet he realized when at last he reached the
bottom that he could not have descended more than fifty feet.
The bottom of the ladder rested on a narrow ledge paved with what
felt like large round stones, but what he knew from experience to
be human skulls. He could not but marvel as to where so many
countless thousands of the things had come from, until he paused
to consider that the infancy of Caspak dated doubtlessly back
into remote ages, far beyond what the outer world considered the
beginning of earthly time. For all these eons the Wieroos might
have been collecting human skulls from their enemies and their
own dead--enough to have built an entire city of them.
Feeling his way along the narrow ledge, Bradley came presently to
a blank wall that stretched out over the water swirling beneath
him, as far as he could reach. Stooping, he groped about with
one hand, reaching down toward the surface of the water, and
discovered that the bottom of the wall arched above the stream.
How much space there was between the water and the arch he could
not tell, nor how deep the former. There was only one way in
which he might learn these things, and that was to lower himself
into the stream. For only an instant he hesitated weighing
his chances. Behind him lay almost certainly the horrid fate of
An-Tak; before him nothing worse than a comparatively painless
death by drowning. Holding his haversack above his head with one
hand he lowered his feet slowly over the edge of the narrow platform.
Almost immediately he felt the swirling of cold water about his
ankles, and then with a silent prayer he let himself drop gently
into the stream.
Great was Bradley's relief when he found the water no more
than waist deep and beneath his feet a firm, gravel bottom.
Feeling his way cautiously he moved downward with the current,
which was not so strong as he had imagined from the noise of
the running water.
Beneath the first arch he made his way, following the winding
curvatures of the right-hand wall. After a few yards of progress
his hand came suddenly in contact with a slimy thing clinging to
the wall--a thing that hissed and scuttled out of reach. What it
was, the man could not know; but almost instantly there was a
splash in the water just ahead of him and then another.
On he went, passing beneath other arches at varying distances,
and always in utter darkness. Unseen denizens of this great
sewer, disturbed by the intruder, splashed into the water ahead
of him and wriggled away. Time and again his hand touched them
and never for an instant could he be sure that at the next step
some gruesome thing might not attack him. He had strapped his
haversack about his neck, well above the surface of the water,
and in his left hand he carried his knife. Other precautions
there were none to take.
The monotony of the blind trail was increased by the fact that
from the moment he had started from the foot of the ladder he had
counted his every step. He had promised to return for An-Tak if
it proved humanly possible to do so, and he knew that in the
blackness of the tunnel he could locate the foot of the ladder in
no other way.
He had taken two hundred and sixty-nine steps--afterward he knew
that he should never forget that number--when something bumped
gently against him from behind. Instantly he wheeled about and
with knife ready to defend himself stretched forth his right hand
to push away the object that now had lodged against his body.
His fingers feeling through the darkness came in contact with
something cold and clammy--they passed to and fro over the thing
until Bradley knew that it was the face of a dead man floating
upon the surface of the stream. With an oath he pushed his
gruesome companion out into mid-stream to float on down toward
the great pool and the awaiting scavengers of the deep.
At his four hundred and thirteenth step another corpse bumped
against him--how many had passed him without touching he could
not guess; but suddenly he experienced the sensation of being
surrounded by dead faces floating along with him, all set in
hideous grimaces, their dead eyes glaring at this profaning alien
who dared intrude upon the waters of this river of the dead--a
horrid escort, pregnant with dire forebodings and with menace.
Though he advanced very slowly, he tried always to take steps of
about the same length; so that he knew that though considerable
time had elapsed, yet he had really advanced no more than four
hundred yards when ahead he saw a lessening of the pitch-darkness,
and at the next turn of the stream his surroundings became
vaguelydiscernible. Above him was an arched roof and on either
hand walls pierced at intervals by apertures covered with
wooden doors. Just ahead of him in the roof of the aqueduct
was a round, black hole about thirty inches in diameter.
His eyes still rested upon the opening when there shot downward
from it to the water below the naked body of a human being which
almost immediately rose to the surface again and floated off down
the stream. In the dim light Bradley saw that it was a dead
Wieroo from which the wings and head had been removed. A moment
later another headless body floated past, recalling what An-Tak
had told him of the skull-collecting customs of the Wieroo.
Bradley wondered how it happened that the first corpse he had
encountered in the stream had not been similarly mutilated.
The farther he advanced now, the lighter it became. The number
of corpses was much smaller than he had imagined, only two more
passing him before, at six hundred steps, or about five hundred
yards, from the point he had taken to the stream, he came to the
end of the tunnel and looked out upon sunlit water, running
between grassy banks.
One of the last corpses to pass him was still clothed in the
white robe of a Wieroo, blood-stained over the headless neck that
it concealed.
Drawing closer to the opening leading into the bright daylight,
Bradley surveyed what lay beyond. A short distance before him a
large building stood in the center of several acres of grass and
tree-covered ground, spanning the stream which disappeared
through an opening in its foundation wall. From the large
saucer-shaped roof and the vivid colorings of the various
heterogeneous parts of the structure he recognized it as the
temple past which he had been borne to the Blue Place of
Seven Skulls.
To and fro flew Wieroos, going to and from the temple.
Others passed on foot across the open grounds, assisting
themselves with their great wings, so that they barely skimmed
the earth. To leave the mouth of the tunnel would have been
to court instant discovery and capture; but by what other
avenue he might escape, Bradley could not guess, unless he
retraced his steps up the stream and sought egress from the
other end of the city. The thought of traversing that dark
and horror-ridden tunnel for perhaps miles he could not
entertain--there must be some other way. Perhaps after dark
he could steal through the temple grounds and continue on
downstream until he had come beyond the city; and so he stood
and waited until his limbs became almost paralyzed with cold,
and he knew that he must find some other plan for escape.
A half-formed decision to risk an attempt to swim under water to
the temple was crystallizing in spite of the fact that any chance
Wieroo flying above the stream might easily see him, when again
a floating object bumped against him from behind and lodged
across his back. Turning quickly he saw that the thing was what
he had immediately guessed it to be--a headless and wingless
Wieroo corpse. With a grunt of disgust he was about to push it
from him when the white garment enshrouding it suggested a bold
plan to his resourceful brain. Grasping the corpse by an arm he
tore the garment from it and then let the body float downward
toward the temple. With great care he draped the robe about him;
the bloody blotch that had covered the severed neck he arranged
about his own head. His haversack he rolled as tightly as
possible and stuffed beneath his coat over his breast. Then he
fell gently to the surface of the stream and lying upon his back
floated downward with the current and out into the open sunlight.
Through the weave of the cloth he could distinguish large objects.
He saw a Wieroo flap dismally above him; he saw the banks of the
stream float slowly past; he heard a sudden wail upon the right-
hand shore, and his heart stood still lest his ruse had been
discovered; but never by a move of a muscle did he betray that
aught but a cold lump of clay floated there upon the bosom of the
water, and soon, though it seemed an eternity to him, the direct
sunlight was blotted out, and he knew that he had entered beneath
the temple.
Quickly he felt for bottom with his feet and as quickly stood
erect, snatching the bloody, clammy cloth from his face. On both
sides were blank walls and before him the river turned a sharp
corner and disappeared. Feeling his way cautiously forward he
approached the turn and looked around the corner. To his left
was a low platform about a foot above the level of the stream,
and onto this he lost no time in climbing, for he was soaked from
head to foot, cold and almost exhausted.
As he lay resting on the skull-paved shelf, he saw in the center
of the vault above the river another of those sinister round
holes through which he momentarily expected to see a headless
corpse shoot downward in its last plunge to a watery grave.
A few feet along the platform a closed door broke the blankness of
the wall. As he lay looking at it and wondering what lay behind,
his mind filled with fragments of many wild schemes of escape, it
opened and a white robed Wieroo stepped out upon the platform.
The creature carried a large wooden basin filled with rubbish.
Its eyes were not upon Bradley, who drew himself to a squatting
position and crouched as far back in the corner of the niche in
which the platform was set as he could force himself. The Wieroo
stepped to the edge of the platform and dumped the rubbish into
the stream. If it turned away from him as it started to retrace
its steps to the doorway, there was a small chance that it might
not see him; but if it turned toward him there was none at all.
Bradley held his breath.
The Wieroo paused a moment, gazing down into the water, then it
straightened up and turned toward the Englishman. Bradley did
not move. The Wieroo stopped and stared intently at him.
It approached him questioningly. Still Bradley remained as
though carved of stone. The creature was directly in front
of him. It stopped. There was no chance on earth that it would
not discover what he was.
With the quickness of a cat, Bradley sprang to his feet and with
all his great strength, backed by his heavy weight, struck the
Wieroo upon the point of the chin. Without a sound the thing
crumpled to the platform, while Bradley, acting almost
instinctively to the urge of the first law of nature, rolled the
inanimate body over the edge into the river.
Then he looked at the open doorway, crossed the platform and
peered within the apartment beyond. What he saw was a large
room, dimly lighted, and about the side rows of wooden vessels
stacked one upon another. There was no Wieroo in sight, so the
Englishman entered. At the far end of the room was another door,
and as he crossed toward it, he glanced into some of the vessels,
which he found were filled with dried fruits, vegetables and fish.
Without more ado he stuffed his pockets and his haversack full,
thinking of the poor creature awaiting his return in the gloom
of the Place of Seven Skulls.
When night came, he would return and fetch An-Tak this far at
least; but in the meantime it was his intention to reconnoiter in
the hope that he might discover some easier way out of the city
than that offered by the chill, black channel of the ghastly
river of corpses.
Beyond the farther door stretched a long passageway from
which closed doorways led into other parts of the cellars of
the temple. A few yards from the storeroom a ladder rose from
the corridor through an aperture in the ceiling. Bradley paused
at the foot of it, debating the wisdom of further investigation
against a return to the river; but strong within him was the
spirit of exploration that has scattered his race to the four
corners of the earth. What new mysteries lay hidden in the
chambers above? The urge to know was strong upon him though his
better judgment warned him that the safer course lay in retreat.
For a moment he stood thus, running his fingers through his hair;
then he cast discretion to the winds and began the ascent.
In conformity with such Wieroo architecture as he had already
observed, the well through which the ladder rose continually
canted at an angle from the perpendicular. At more or less
regular stages it was pierced by apertures closed by doors, none
of which he could open until he had climbed fully fifty feet from
the river level. Here he discovered a door already ajar opening
into a large, circular chamber, the walls and floors of which
were covered with the skins of wild beasts and with rugs of many
colors; but what interested him most was the occupants of the
room--a Wieroo, and a girl of human proportions. She was
standing with her back against a column which rose from the
center of the apartment from floor to ceiling--a hollow column
about forty inches in diameter in which he could see an opening
some thirty inches across. The girl's side was toward Bradley,
and her face averted, for she was watching the Wieroo, who was
now advancing slowly toward her, talking as he came.
Bradley could distinctly hear the words of the creature, who was
urging the girl to accompany him to another Wieroo city. "Come with
me," he said, "and you shall have your life; remain here and He Who
Speaks for Luata will claim you for his own; and when he is done
with you, your skull will bleach at the top of a tall staff while
your body feeds the reptiles at the mouth of the River of Death.
Even though you bring into the world a female Wieroo, your fate
will be the same if you do not escape him, while with me you shall
have life and food and none shall harm you."
He was quite close to the girl when she replied by striking him
in the face with all her strength. "Until I am slain," she cried,
"I shall fight against you all." From the throat of the Wieroo
issued that dismal wail that Bradley had heard so often in the
past--it was like a scream of pain smothered to a groan--and then
the thing leaped upon the girl, its face working in hideous
grimaces as it clawed and beat at her to force her to the floor.
The Englishman was upon the point of entering to defend her when
a door at the opposite side of the chamber opened to admit a huge
Wieroo clothed entirely in red. At sight of the two struggling
upon the floor the newcomer raised his voice in a shriek of rage.
Instantly the Wieroo who was attacking the girl leaped to his
feet and faced the other.
"I heard," screamed he who had just entered the room. "I heard,
and when He Who Speaks for Lu-ata shall have heard--" He paused
and made a suggestive movement of a finger across his throat.
"He shall not hear," returned the first Wieroo as, with a
powerful motion of his great wings, he launched himself upon the
red-robed figure. The latter dodged the first charge, drew a
wicked-looking curved blade from beneath its red robe, spread its
wings and dived for its antagonist. Beating their wings, wailing
and groaning, the two hideous things sparred for position.
The white-robed one being unarmed sought to grasp the other by
the wrist of its knife-hand and by the throat, while the latter
hopped around on its dainty white feet, seeking an opening for a
mortal blow. Once it struck and missed, and then the other
rushed in and clinched, at the same time securing both the holds
it sought. Immediately the two commenced beating at each other's
heads with the joints of their wings, kicking with their soft,
puny feet and biting, each at the other's face.
In the meantime the girl moved about the room, keeping out of the
way of the duelists, and as she did so, Bradley caught a glimpse
of her full face and immediately recognized her as the girl of
the place of the yellow door. He did not dare intervene now
until one of the Wieroo had overcome the other, lest the two
should turn upon him at once, when the chances were fair that he
would be defeated in so unequal a battle as the curved blade of
the red Wieroo would render it, and so he waited, watching the
white-robed figure slowly choking the life from him of the red robe.
The protruding tongue and the popping eyes proclaimed that the
end was near and a moment later the red robe sank to the floor
of the room, the curved blade slipping from nerveless fingers.
For an instant longer the victor clung to the throat of his
defeated antagonist and then he rose, dragging the body after
him, and approached the central column. Here he raised the body
and thrust it into the aperture where Bradley saw it drop
suddenly from sight. Instantly there flashed into his memory the
circular openings in the roof of the river vault and the corpses
he had seen drop from them to the water beneath.
As the body disappeared, the Wieroo turned and cast about the
room for the girl. For a moment he stood eying her. "You saw,"
he muttered, "and if you tell them, He Who Speaks for Luata will
have my wings severed while still I live and my head will be
severed and I shall be cast into the River of Death, for thus it
happens even to the highest who slay one of the red robe. You saw,
and you must die!" he ended with a scream as he rushed upon the girl.
Bradley waited no longer. Leaping into the room he ran for the
Wieroo, who had already seized the girl, and as he ran, he
stooped and picked up the curved blade. The creature's back was
toward him as, with his left hand, he seized it by the neck.
Like a flash the great wings beat backward as the creature
turned, and Bradley was swept from his feet, though he still
retained his hold upon the blade. Instantly the Wieroo was
upon him. Bradley lay slightly raised upon his left elbow, his
right arm free, and as the thing came close, he cut at the hideous
face with all the strength that lay within him. The blade struck
at the junction of the neck and torso and with such force as to
completely decapitate the Wieroo, the hideous head dropping to
the floor and the body falling forward upon the Englishman.
Pushing it from him he rose to his feet and faced the wide-eyed girl.
"Luata!" she exclaimed. "How came you here?"
Bradley shrugged. "Here I am," he said; "but the thing now is to
get out of here--both of us."
The girl shook her head. "It cannot be," she stated sadly.
"That is what I thought when they dropped me into the Blue Place
of Seven Skulls," replied Bradley. "Can't be done. I did it.--
Here! You're mussing up the floor something awful, you." This last
to the dead Wieroo as he stooped and dragged the corpse to the
central shaft, where he raised it to the aperture and let it
slip into the tube. Then he picked up the head and tossed it
after the body. "Don't be so glum," he admonished the former as
he carried it toward the well; "smile!"
"But how can he smile?" questioned the girl, a half-puzzled,
half-frightened look upon her face. "He is dead."
"That's so," admitted Bradley, "and I suppose he does feel a bit
cut up about it."
The girl shook her head and edged away from the man--toward the door.
"Come!" said the Englishman. "We've got to get out of here.
If you don't know a better way than the river, it's the river then."
The girl still eyed him askance. "But how could he smile when he
was dead?"
Bradley laughed aloud. "I thought we English were supposed to
have the least sense of humor of any people in the world," he
cried; "but now I've found one human being who hasn't any.
Of course you don't know half I'm saying; but don't worry, little
girl; I'm not going to hurt you, and if I can get you out of
here, I'll do it."
Even if she did not understand all he said, she at least read
something in his smiling, countenance--something which reassured her.
"I do not fear you," she said; "though I do not understand all
that you say even though you speak my own tongue and use words
that I know. But as for escaping"--she sighed--"alas, how can
it be done?"
"I escaped from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls," Bradley
reminded her. "Come!" And he turned toward the shaft and
the ladder that he had ascended from the river. "We cannot
waste time here."
The girl followed him; but at the doorway both drew back, for
from below came the sound of some one ascending.
Bradley tiptoed to the door and peered cautiously into the well;
then he stepped back beside the girl. "There are half a dozen of
them coming up; but possibly they will pass this room."
"No," she said, "they will pass directly through this room--they
are on their way to Him Who Speaks for Luata. We may be able to
hide in the next room--there are skins there beneath which we
may crawl. They will not stop in that room; but they may stop in
this one for a short time--the other room is blue."
"What's that go to do with it?" demanded the Englishman.
"They fear blue," she replied. "In every room where murder has
been done you will find blue--a certain amount for each murder.
When the room is all blue, they shun it. This room has much
blue; but evidently they kill mostly in the next room, which is
now all blue."
"But there is blue on the outside of every house I have seen,"
said Bradley.
"Yes, " assented the girl, "and there are blue rooms in each of
those houses--when all the rooms are blue then the whole outside
of the house will be blue as is the Blue Place of Seven Skulls.
There are many such here."
"And the skulls with blue upon them?" inquired Bradley.
"Did they belong to murderers?"
"They were murdered--some of them; those with only a small amount
of blue were murderers--known murderers. All Wieroos are murderers.
When they have committed a certain number of murders without being
caught at it, they confess to Him Who Speaks for Luata and are
advanced, after which they wear robes with a slash of some color--
I think yellow comes first. When they reach a point where the
entire robe is of yellow, they discard it for a white robe with a
red slash; and when one wins a complete red robe, he carries such
a long, curved knife as you have in your hand; after that comes
the blue slash on a white robe, and then, I suppose, an all blue robe.
I have never seen such a one."
As they talked in low tones they had moved from the room of the
death shaft into an all blue room adjoining, where they sat down
together in a corner with their backs against a wall and drew a
pile of hides over themselves. A moment later they heard a
number of Wieroos enter the chamber. They were talking together
as they crossed the floor, or the two could not have heard them.
Halfway across the chamber they halted as the door toward which
they were advancing opened and a dozen others of their kind
entered the apartment.
Bradley could guess all this by the increased volume of sound and
the dismal greetings; but the sudden silence that almost
immediately ensued he could not fathom, for he could not know
that from beneath one of the hides that covered him protruded one
of his heavy army shoes, or that some eighteen large Wieroos with
robes either solid red or slashed with red or blue were standing
gazing at it. Nor could he hear their stealthy approach.
The first intimation he had that he had been discovered was when
his foot was suddenly seized, and he was yanked violently from
beneath the hides to find himself surrounded by menacing blades.
They would have slain him on the spot had not one clothed all in
red held them back, saying that He Who Speaks for Luata desired
to see this strange creature.
As they led Bradley away, he caught an opportunity to glance back
toward the hides to see what had become of the girl, and, to his
gratification, he discovered that she still lay concealed beneath
the hides. He wondered if she would have the nerve to attempt
the river trip alone and regretted that now he could not
accompany her. He felt rather all in, himself, more so than
he had at any time since he had been captured by the Wieroo,
for there appeared not the slightest cause for hope in his
present predicament. He had dropped the curved blade beneath the
hides when he had been jerked so violently from their fancied security.
It was almost in a spirit of resigned hopelessness that he quietly
accompanied his captors through various chambers and corridors
toward the heart of the temple.
