The Sign of the Spider Part 33

With sinking heart he pursued his search; yet somehow his attention now was given but languidly to potential means of exit which the faces of the cliffs might afford. Something seemed irresistibly to draw it to the ground. Ha! that was it. Again that horrid gleam of whitened bones.

Another skeleton lay before him--and look, another, and another, at short distances apart. All these, like the first, were unshattered, uninjured; but--the whole area here was strewn with skulls, yellow and brown with age,--was strewn with bones also, mossy, mahogany-hued, and which crackled under his tread.

No one could be more ruthless, more callous; no man could view scenes of cruelty and bloodshed more unmoved than Laurence Stanninghame,--as we have shown,--or bear his part more coolly and effectively in the fiercest conflict; yet there was something in these silent human relics lying there bloodless; in the unnatural, haunted silence of this dreadful death-valley that caused his flesh to creep. Then he noticed that all were lying along the slope of a ridge which ran right across the hollow, dividing the floor of the same into two sections. He must needs go over that ridge to complete his explorations, yet now he shrank from it with awe and repugnance which in any other man he would have defined as little short of terror. What would await him on the other side?

Well, he must go through with it. Probably he would find more of such ghastly relics--that was all. But as he stood upon the apex of the ridge, with pulses somewhat quickened, no whitening bones met his gaze--fixed, dilated as that gaze was. The cliff in front--he thought to descry some faint chance of escape there, for its face was terraced and sloping backward somewhat. Moreover, it was rent by crannies and crevices, which, to a desperate and determined man, might afford hand and foothold.

And now for the first time it flashed upon Laurence that the mystery of "The Spider" stood explained. This horrible hole whence there was no escape--where men were thrust to die by inches as all of these had died before him--the repulsive and blood-sucking insect was in truth a fitting name allegorically for such a place, which swallowed up the lives of men. Besides, for all he knew, the configuration of the crater might, from above, resemble the tutelary insect of the Ba-gcatya. Yes; he had solved the mystery, as to that he was confident--the next thing to do was to find some way out, to break through the fatality of the place.

For the first time now his shoulder began to feel stiff and sore, where the stick hurled by Lindela had struck him. That was a bad preparation for the most perilous kind of cliff-climbing. Then the incident recalled to mind Lindela herself. Her sudden change of front was just such an oddity as any of the half-ironical incidents which go to make up the sum of life's experiences. Well, savage or civilized, human nature was singularly alike. A touch of superst.i.tion and the G.o.d of yesterday became the demon of to-day.

Thus musing, he came, suddenly and unexpectedly, upon another skeleton.

But the effect of the discovery of this was even more disconcerting than that of the first. For, around, lay rotting rags of clothing, and a gold ornament or two. These remains he recognized at a glance. They were those of Lutali.

Yes, here was a broad bracelet of gold, curiously worked with the text of the Koran, which he had seen last on the Arab's sinewy wrist. Now that wrist was but a grisly bone. There, too, were parchment strips, also inscribed with Koran pa.s.sages, and worn in a pouch as amulets. The ident.i.ty of these remains was established beyond a doubt.

But the discovery inspired within him a renewed chill of despair. If Lutali had been unable to find means of escape, how should he? The Arab was a man of great readiness of resource, of indomitable courage, and powerfully built. If such a one had succ.u.mbed, why should he, Laurence, fare any better? He sat down once more, and, gazing upon the sorry remnant of his late confederate, began to think.

What a strange, vast, practical joke was that thing called life. Here was he at the end of it, and the very means of ending it for him had, at the same time, put him into possession of that which rendered it worth having at all. He felt the stones lying hard and angular in his pockets, he even took out one of them and turned it over sadly in his hands. He would gladly give a portion of these to be standing on the summit of yonder cliff instead of at the base; not yet had he come to feel he would gladly give them all. It was only of a continuance with what life had brought him that he should be there at all. He had sacrificed himself for another. The sublimity of the act even yet did not strike him. He regarded it as half-humorous, half-idiotic,--the first because his cynical creed was bolstered up by the consciousness that Holmes would never more than half appreciate it; the last, because--well--all unselfishness, all consideration, was idiotic.

Then it occurred to him that it would be time enough to sit down and dream when he had exhausted all expedients, and he had not explored that side of the hollow at all yet. To this end he moved forward. A very brief scrutiny, however, of the face of the cliff sufficed to show that for climbing purposes the cracks and crannies were useless.

Ha! What was this? A cave or a rift? Right in front of him the cliff yawned in just such a rift as the one in which he had awakened to find himself, only not on anything like such a large scale. Eagerly Laurence plunged into this. Here might be a way to the outer world--to safety.

He pressed onward in the semi-gloom. The rocks darkened overhead, forming, in effect, a cave. And now it seemed that he could hear a strange, soft, sc.r.a.ping, a kind of sighing noise. A puff-adder was his first thought, looking around for the reptile. But no such reptile lay in his path, and he had no means of striking a light. With a dull shrinking, his flesh creeping with a strange foreboding, as with the consciousness of some fearful prescience, he decided to push on, being careful, however, to tread warily. This was no time for sticking at trifles.

But as he advanced the air became foetid with a strange, pungent, nauseous odour. There were lateral clefts branching off the main gallery, but of no depth, and to these he had given but small notice.

Now, however, something occurred of so appalling a nature that he stood as one turned to stone.

There shot out from one of these lateral recesses two enormous tentacles--black, wavy as serpents, covered with hair, armed at the extremity with a strong double claw. They reached forth noiselessly to within a couple of yards of where he stood, then two more followed with a quick, wavy jerk. And now behind these, a head, as large as that of a man, black, hairy, bearing a strange resemblance to the most awful and cruel human face ever stamped with the devil's image--whose dull, goggle eyes, fixed on the appalled ones of its discoverer, seemed to glow and burn with a truly diabolical glare.

Laurence stood--staring into the countenance of this awful thing--his blood curdled to ice within him, his hair literally standing up. Was it the Fiend himself who had taken such unknown and fearful shape to appear before him here in the gloom of this foul and loathsome cavern? Then, as his eyes grew more and more used to the dim shades, he made out a huge body crouched back in the recess, half hidden by a quivering ma.s.s of black, hairy tentacles.

For a few moments thus he stood--then with a cry of horror he threw out his hand as though instinctively to ward off an attack. The four tentacles already protruded were quickly withdrawn, and the fearful creature, whatever it was, seemed to shrink back into the cranny. One last look upon the hairy heap of moving, writhing horror--upon those dreadful demon eyes, and this man, who had faced death again and again without shrinking, now felt it all he could do to resist an impulse to turn and flee like a hunted hare. He did, however, resist it--yet it was with flesh shuddering and knees trembling beneath him that he withdrew, step by step, backwards, until he stood once more in the full light of day.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HORROR.

Vampire--insect--devil--what _was_ the thing? From the length and thickness of those frightful tentacle-like legs, stretching forth from the cranny--Laurence--who had not halted until he had gained the ridge dividing the hollow--estimated that the creature when spread out must be eight or ten feet in diameter.

He looked back. It had not followed him from the cave. Why had it not?

Was it waiting for night--to steal upon him in the darkness, to wreath around him those terrible tentacles, and to drain his life-blood?

Now, indeed, all stood clear. "The Spider" was no allegorical term, but literal fact. That frightful monster with which he had just come face to face was indeed the demon-G.o.d of the Ba-gcatya! It was actually fed with living men, in accordance with some dark and mysterious superst.i.tion held by that otherwise fine race. Now the fate of those whose skeletons lay around stood accounted for. They had been devoured by this unimaginable horror. Alive? It was almost certain--possibly when weakened by starvation. Yet a gruesome thought entered his mind. Why had an abundance of food been lowered with him into this h.e.l.l-pit? Did not the circ.u.mstance make as though it was in their full vigour that the monster was designed to seize its victims--and in that event, with what an extent of strength and fell ferocity must it not be endowed?

But what _was_ this thing? Laurence had seen spiders of every variety, huge and venomous, and of grisly size, yet nothing like this. Why, the creature was as large as a bear nearly! It must be some beast hitherto unknown to natural history; yet those awful tentacles--joints, hair, everything--could not but belong to an insect--were, in fact, precisely as the legs of a huge tarantula, magnified five hundred-fold. What ghastly and blood-curdling freak of nature could have produced such a monstrosity as this? Why, the very sight of the awful thing huddled up, black, within the gloom of the cranny, the horrid tentacles--a hundred-fold more repulsive, more blood-curdling than though they actually were so many serpents--moving and writhing in a great quivering, hairy, intertwined ma.s.s--was in itself a sight to haunt his dreams until his dying day, did he live another fifty years. What must it mean, then, to realize that he was actually shut in--escape impossible--with the deliberate purpose of being devoured by this vampire, this demon, even as all these others had been devoured before him?

At this juncture of his meditations his mind became alive to two discoveries--one, that he had gained the farther end of the ridge than that by which he had crossed; the other, that immediately before and beneath him, just over the slope of the ridge, lay the body of a man.

Yes--the body of a man, not the skeleton of one. That it was that of a dead man he could see at a glance--also that it was one of the Ba-gcatya. With a shudder he remembered the luckless wretch he had seen dragged away but a day or two before his own seizure--whether for evil-doing or as a customary sacrifice he had been condemned to this, Laurence had not inquired at the time. Casting one more look at the cave, and satisfying himself that the monster had not emerged, Laurence went down to examine the body.

It was that of a man in the prime of life--and wearing the head-ring. It was lying on its back, the throat upturned and protruding. And then Laurence shudderingly noticed two round gaping orifices at the base of the throat, clearly where the great nippers of the monster had punctured. The limbs, too, were scratched and scored as though with claws; and upon the dead face was such an awful expression of the very extremity of horror and dread as the spectator, accustomed as he was to such sights, had never beheld stamped on the human countenance before.

And beholding it now, Laurence Stanninghame felt that the perspiration was oozing upon him at every pore, for he realized that he was looking upon a foresight of his own fate; for was he not that most perfectly and completely helpless of all G.o.d's creatures--an unarmed man!

He had not so much as a stick or a pocket-knife to resist the onslaught of this blood-drinking monster--no, not even a boot, for it flashed across his mind at that moment that a good iron-shod heel might be better than nothing. He was wearing only a low-soled pair of ordinary _velschoenen_--hide shoes, to wit. There were not even stones lying about the ground, save very small ones, and he had no means of loosening rock slabs large enough to serve as weapons. There was no place of refuge to climb into afforded by ledges or pinnacles of rock, and even were there, why, the thing could surely come up after him as easily as the common tarantula could run up a wall. Nothing is more completely demoralizing than the helplessness of an unarmed man. With his Express--or his six-shooter--this one would have regarded the situation in the light of a wholly new and adventurous excitement--with even a large strong-bladed knife he would have been willing to take his chances. But he was totally unarmed. It seemed to Laurence that in that brief while he had lived a lifetime of mortal fear.

Then with a mighty effort he pulled himself together. He would return to where he had left his stores ere commencing the exploration. n.o.body ever yet improved a situation of peril by starving himself. Yet as he wended his way up the long chasm wherein he had first awakened to life, it was with a feeling of shuddering repulsion. The place bore such a close resemblance now to that other cave; yet here, at any rate, he knew there was nothing.

He opened the corn baskets and the calabash of _amasi_, and made a fairly good meal. Then, by the glooming shades of the overhanging rock, he judged that daylight was waning. Out into the open once more--the open air might render such a life-and-death struggle with the monster a trifle less horrible than here, shut in by these tomb-like rock walls.

The gray of the brief twilight was upon the faces of the surrounding cliffs, which soon faded into misty gloom. Only the stars, leaping into the misty gloom--only the stars, leaping forth into the inky sky, shed an indistinct light into this vault of horror and of death. He was shut in here--and shut in with this awful thing which should find him out during the hours of darkness. And, marvellous to tell, a sudden drowsiness came upon him--and whether the effects of the drug still lingered about him, or was it the reaction from an overstrained mind? he actually slept--slept hard and dreamlessly.

Suddenly he awoke--awoke with the weight of an indefinable terror upon him. A broad moon in its third quarter was sailing aloft in the heavens, flooding the hollow with its ghostly light. Instinctively he sprang to his feet. As he did so there came upon him a resistless and shuddering fear akin to that which had paralyzed him in the cave. What was it? The magnetic proximity of the awful thing stealthily stalking him? No. The reason now lay clear.

In the moonlight he could make out, shadowy and indistinct, the corpse he had found during the afternoon. But, as he gazed, a change seemed to have come over it. It had increased in size--had more than doubled its bulk. Heavens! the dark ma.s.s began to move--to heave--and then he thought the very acme of horror was reached. Not one body was there, but two. Spread out over the human body was that of the monster. Now he could make out almost every detail of its hideous shape, the convulsive working of the frightful tentacles as it devoured its lifeless prey. He could stand it no longer. His brain was bursting; he must do something.

Raising his voice he shouted--shouted as a.s.suredly he had never shouted in his life. There was a maniacal ring in his voice. He felt as though he must rush right at this thing of fear. Was he really going mad? Well, it began to look like it.

But the effect was prompt. The awful vampire, gathering its horrible legs under it, sprang clear of the carca.s.s. It stood for a moment in rigid immobility, then ere the maniacal echoes of that shout had quavered into silence among the cliffs, it shoggled over the ridge and was lost to view.

The night wore through somehow, and if ever mortal eyes were rejoiced by the light of dawn, a.s.suredly they were those of Laurence Stanninghame, as once more he found himself the sole living tenant of that ghastly place of death. Yet, to what end? One more dreary day in his rock prison, another night of horror--and--the same brooding fate awaiting!

He could not remain awake forever. Even though the sound of his voice thus unexpectedly lifted up had alarmed the vampire, it would not always do so. Still, with the light of the new-born day after the night of terror came some medium of relief.

Once more he drew upon his provision stores. While repacking them his gaze rested on the native blanket with the wild idea of manufacturing therefrom a cord. But to do this he needed a knife. The stuff was of material too stout for tearing.

A knife! Ha! With the thought came another. It was not worth much, but it was something,--and with that came a hard, fierce, desperate hope.

The broad gold bracelet which still encircled Lutali's skeleton wrist--could not that be banged and flattened into something sharp and serviceable? It was hard metal, anyway.

Still the grim horror lurked within its cave--still it came not forth.

It was waiting until another night should embolden it to seize its defenceless human prey. He glanced upwards. There were still from two to three hours of daylight. In a very few moments he had reached the skeleton of the Arab, and, snapping off the bony wrist without hesitation, the bracelet was within his grasp.

But as he looked around for some means of flattening it, there flashed in upon him another idea--a perfectly heaven-sent idea, grisly under ordinary circ.u.mstances, as it might be. The bracelet was large and ma.s.sive, and for it a new use suggested itself. Critically examining the skeletons, he selected two with the largest and strongest leg-bones.

These he soon wrenched off, and, running one through the gold bracelet, he jammed the latter fast against the thicker end--binding it as tightly as he could to the bulging joint with a strip torn from his clothing.

With a thrill of unutterable joy he realized that he was no longer unarmed. He had manufactured a tolerably effective mace. He swung it through the air two or three times with all his force. Such a blow would strike a human enemy dead;--was this thing so heavily armour-plated as to be proof against a similar stroke?

With one idea came another. These bones might be further utilized, they might be splintered and sharpened into daggers. No sooner thought of than carried out. And now the skeletons underwent the most ruthless desecration. Several were wrenched asunder ere he had selected half a dozen of the most serviceable--and these he hammered to the required size with his newly constructed mace--sharpening them on the rough face of the rock. And then, as with a glow of satisfaction he sat down to rest and contemplate his handiwork--he almost laughed over the grim whimsicality of it. Did ever mortal man go into close conflict armed in such fashion--he wondered--with club and dagger manufactured out of the bones of men?

Should he take the bull by the horns, and advance boldly to attack the monster in its own den? He shrank from this. The gloom of the cavern invested the thing with an additional element of terror, besides the more practical consideration that a confined s.p.a.ce might hinder him in the use of his _bizarre_ and impromptu weapons. He would need all the freedom of hand and eye. Once more he took out the metal box, and fed his eyes long and earnestly upon its contents. The Sign of the Spider!

Was there indeed an influence about this trinket--or rather, the love which had hallowed it--which was potent to stand between him and peril in the direst extremity, even as it had stepped between him and certain death at the spears of the victorious Ba-gcatya? Slightly improved as was his helpless condition, yet he could not hope. Even if he succeeded in slaying the monster, how should he escape from this death-trap, this rock-prison? The second day closed.

How many hours of darkness should precede moonrise he could but feebly guess. Grasping his strangely fashioned club in his right hand, and the strongest and sharpest of his bone daggers in the left--he stood, his back to the rock wall, so as not to be taken in the rear; never relaxing for a moment in vigilance, his ears strained to their utmost tension, his eyeb.a.l.l.s striving to pierce the black gloom. More than once a sound as of stealthy, ghostly sc.r.a.pings caused his heart to beat like a hammer; and he seemed to see the horrible eyes of the monster flaming luridly out of the darkness; but still the silent hours went by, unbroken by any disturbance.

Ha! The gloom of the hollow was lightening--and soon the rim of the great moon peeped over the cliff behind him. But his attention was rivetted now upon something before him--a something, huge and black and shadowy--which moved. The horror was coming over the ridge.

It came,--running stealthily a few yards,--then halting,--then running again. It pa.s.sed the body of its last victim, and came running on.