Part 8

"But these creatures are as venomous as centipedes!" murmured Meigs, suffering himself to be lifted erect by the professor. "Horrors! There they come now. Oh, this is too much, too much!"

Meigs got behind the professor. Turning our eyes toward the bend, we saw a detachment of the Baigadd army just hurling itself into sight.

We had made some acquaintance with military affairs in Baigol.

Soldiers, as may be surmised, were armed with zetbais, but word-boxes were kept out of the ranks. Only officers carried talking machines, matters being ordered on the principle that privates were to hear and obey. Each soldier wielded two zetbais--one with each pair of hands--thereby enormously increasing his capacity for destruction.

The fighting force of Baigol, we had been informed, although organized on a smaller scale, was equipped and maneuvred exactly as was the military arm of Baigadd.

The detachment approaching at a double-quick in pursuit of Meigs was, as we afterward found, a company of Gaddbaizets, or royal guards. They numbered fifty, wore yellow kirtles, had the torso gilded, and were commanded by a single officer carrying nothing but a word-box.

The sight of the professor and myself caused the Gaddbaizets to come to an abrupt halt. They had undoubtedly heard of us, but they were far from expecting to encounter us there at that time.

The officer was the first to recover his wits, and approached the place where we were standing, holding his talking machine over his head and punching its keys vigorously. His first words were a command to the soldiers: "Hold your zetbais and make no move against these fierce colossi until you get further orders from me!"

Then, to us:

"Behemoths! Whence come you and why are you protecting the monster in the red kirtle?"

Meigs, it could easily be seen, was not on familiar terms with the word-boxes. So far as he was concerned, the captain's words fell on deaf ears.

"We are from Baigol," said the professor, giving an amiable twist to his words by a deft use of Key 7, "and come on an errand from the king of that country. This gentleman is a friend of ours----"

"A friend!" screeched the captain's machine. "He is a thief and has stolen a hundred djins of kaka from our sovereign storehouse."

I thrilled an amused laugh on the seventh key of my own machine.

"How do you know he is a thief?" I asked. "Did you try the indexograph on him?"

"I'll do the talking, Mr. Munn," said the professor in our own tongue; then added to the officer: "There must be some mistake, captain. This gentleman has a very good reputation and would not commit a theft, such as you describe."

"He bears the proof of it upon his person," answered the captain. "It is the kirtle."

Now, a djin is a unit of measurement and corresponds to the inch of our system; from which it follows that Meigs stood convicted of stealing about eight feet of red kaka--enough to make kirtles for a score of the Baigadds.

"What are you harping about?" asked Meigs.

"They say you are a thief, Mr. Meigs," said I.

"Thief!" he blustered, glaring at the captain over the professor's shoulder. "I deny it, sir, I deny it!"

"He says you stole that kirtle you have on," I continued.

"A man has a right to clothe himself as well as he may," answered Meigs, aggrieved. "I do not count that theft. The country should see that a man is provided with a respectable covering."

This was too good an opportunity for the professor to let slip.

"Suffer your mind to drift back to your own planet, sir," said he. "It is your opinion that our government owes every poor man a suit of clothes?"

J. Archibald Meigs cringed under the blow. It was a thrust at his clothing trust, and it found the weak point in his armor.

"Circumstances are different here," he mumbled.

"In some ways, yes; in other ways, no. King Gaddbai is the monopolist of this planet. He controls the kaka output and charges for it accordingly."

The captain of the royal guard was growing impatient.

"If you are here on an errand from the king of Baigol," said he, "we shall be glad to escort you to the capital--but not until you have surrendered the giant who stole the king's property."

"Take us to his majesty," returned the professor, "and we will explain everything in a satisfactory manner."

But this the captain would not do, and he became so threatening that we retreated behind a barrier of bowlders.

"Display the banner, Mr. Munn," said the professor, and I held up the royal standard so that the captain could not help but see it. His one eye gleamed insolently, and he came as near swearing as the seventh key of his word-box would allow.

"Deliver up the thief," he ordered, "or I will command my men to annihilate you with their zetbais."

It was certainly a critical situation. I had already had a slight experience with the overpowering properties of zet and didn't care for further acquaintance with it. Meigs was nothing to me. He would have stripped the coat from a poor man's back, if he could have had his way on Earth, and it afforded me secret pleasure to see him hoisted by his own petard.

The trust magnate did not fail to take note of the war-like movements of the soldiers.

"Can't you do anything to save me, professor?" he pleaded.

"We shall not give you up," answered Quinn firmly. "Can you think of any way, Mr. Munn, whereby we can extricate ourselves from this difficulty?"

I have a quick mind, if I do say it, and a happy thought presented itself on the spur of the instant. Stooping, I picked up a stone; then, raising myself, I let the missile fly straight at the captain.

His shoulder-arms still held the word-box above his head, and the stone smashed against it and carried it away. It was rather neatly done, for the captain himself was left untouched.

"Bravo!" cried the professor. "You drew the fangs of the enemy by that trick, Mr. Munn. You have rendered the captain mute, and his men cannot act without orders."

I had already figured this out in my mind, and it was presently proved that I had not gone far from the mark. The captain recovered the word-box and attempted to use it, but its mechanism was so disarranged that the order to attack became a confused jumble that seemed to sound a retreat.

The whole company whirled and fled, their leader following and gesticulating wildly and helplessly with his arms. Meigs was saved for the present, and he should have thanked me for it--but he did not.

Seating himself on a bowlder, he gazed pensively down at the red kirtle.

"This is what I call the irony of fate," said he in a morose tone. "And then, on top of it all, to be called a thief!"

He leaned his bare elbows on his knees and dropped his face in his hands.

"How did this happen, Mr. Meigs?" asked the professor gently.

"Happen!" cried Meigs, lifting his head with a jerk and glaring at Quinn. "It would never have happened but for you!"

"Have you seen Gilhooly?" went on the professor, ignoring the reproach.

"Poor Gilhooly!" sighed Meigs. "He has become a power in the traction interests of the country. The last I saw of him he was hauling trains throughout the kingdom."

"We know that much already. How about Popham and Markham?"

"Alas!" groaned Meigs. "Popham is working like a galley-slave in a coal mine; and Markham--well, these little fiends are slowly starving him to death. All Markham does is to wander about the kingdom with a plate and a paddle begging food enough to keep body and soul together. Think of it! And the great Augustus Popham, owner of a controlling interest in all the great anthracite and bituminous fields of Earth, delving in the mines of this planet--no better than a two-dollar-a-day miner!"

"Coal fields!" I exclaimed. "What do they need of coal in these underground kingdoms?"

"They use the coal in the kingdoms of Baijinkz and Baigossh, which are situated at the poles," explained the professor. "During the long nights in those countries a certain degree of cold must prevail. But"--and here Quinn turned again to Meigs--"tell us what happened to you and the other two gentlemen during the storm which separated us."

"We managed to regain the car," replied Meigs. "We could not get in, of course, because you had the key, but we hung to the latticework at the windows. I am a little hazy as to what happened after that, but I think the car must have been picked up by a terrific gust and thrown to the bottom of that crater in the volcano."

"Ah!" murmured the professor, looking at me. "You remember, Mr. Munn, I told you I feared something of the kind would happen."

I nodded.

"Proceed, Mr. Meigs," added the professor. "This is all intensely interesting. Was the car seriously damaged?"

"I haven't seen the car," resumed Meigs. "A hiatus followed the blowing away of the castle, and when I opened my eyes again I was a prisoner in the hands of a legion of those one-eyed creatures. For two weeks I was kept confined--an object of curiosity for the whole kingdom, if I could judge from the way the little imps flocked to stare at me.

"After a time I was led off to a place where I joined Popham and Markham. Need I tell you how affecting that meeting was? Popham shed tears, and both Markham and myself were nearly unmanned.

"Our captors had some sort of a contrivance consisting of a small shaft and cord. One end of the cord was put to Markham's head and a slide flew up on the end of the shaft. Then Markham was led off, given a plate and paddle and cast adrift.

"Popham was the next one to have the queer machine tried on him. When he was removed my turn came."

Meigs wrung his hands despairingly.

"After the storm," he continued with an effort, "my costume was not as complete as I would have had it, but those impudent creatures denuded me still further. In self-defense I was forced to steal this red cloth and run for my life. Oh, it was terrible! Woe is me that I should ever have lived to see this day!"

"Some good may come out of this unfortunate experience, Mr. Meigs," said the professor.

"Good!" almost shouted Meigs. "Sir, you express yourself strangely. Is it good to have a man used to such luxury as I have been fleeing through these rocky underground hills merely because he committed theft in order to retain his self-respect? Have a care, sir! Do not think for a moment that I am under any misapprehension as to the real cause of my sorry situation."

"The king of this country is evidently a man of a humorous and practical turn," observed Professor Quinn after a little thought. "The indexograph made him familiar with the natural bent of you three gentlemen and he is seeking to show you the error of your ways. On Earth you were at one end of a trust; here you are placed at the other end. Really, I think the experience will prove most wholesome."

J. Archibald Meigs stared at the speaker with distended eyes.

"Is it possible," said he, "that your brain has been turned, like Gilhooly's?"

"Nonsense!" I struck in. "The professor's head is as clear as a bell. He's got the right of this thing, Meigs. The king of Baigadd is making you take a little of the medicine you measured out in such large doses on the other planet."

"You are both crazy," snarled Meigs. "I never stripped a man to his hide and threw him out in the cold world--as the king of this country has done to me, in a figurative sense."

"You don't know how much evil you have done," said Quinn, an expression on his face similar to the one I had seen when he jerked the lever and shot us into the unknown. "You have taken your pound of flesh, Mr. Meigs, but are now under the heel of a monopoly yourself."

"Stuff!" cried Meigs. "We will talk no longer about a matter in which you display such poor judgment. Although I have told you my story, I have heard little of yours. Am I to conclude that you and Munn purposely cut loose from myself and my friends? After bringing us to this miserable planet did you have the heart willfully to abandon us?"

"Not at all, Meigs," said the professor hastily.

I wondered if Meigs had forgotten all about the attempt he and his friends had made to abandon the professor and me? He was one of the most inconsistent men I have ever encountered.

"Like yourself and the others, Mr. Meigs," continued the professor, "Mr. Munn and I were taken prisoners----"

"But you were not treated with the same barbarity as the rest of us," burst out Meigs, his small mind finding even that a cause for temper. "You, who engineered the plot, and plunged us all into these terrific difficulties, escape the consequences. What is that banner?"

"We are under the protection of the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Baigol. That is the royal standard."

"Ah," said Meigs bitterly, "you are even received at court--you and a professed thief--while Markham, Popham, Gilhooly, and I are no more than outcasts! Is there no such thing as justice, even on this disgusting planet? Look at me! _Look at me!_"

His final request for us to look at him was a frantic wail. He yanked savagely at his kirtle, and twisted his bare feet around in fearsome dejection.

"We are looking at you, Mr. Meigs," observed the professor quietly.

"Do you find any pleasure in the spectacle? Does not my situation arouse even a spark of pity? I do not ask Munn for his sympathy, but you, Professor Quinn, although criminally careless in evolving plans and carrying them out, are a scientist, and you must have a heart."

"My heart is wrung with your misfortunes," replied the professor gently, "but I realize that desperate diseases require desperate remedies."

"What disease are you referring to," snapped Meigs, suddenly changing his tack, "and what remedy?"

"The disease that afflicts our common country, and which you would deny and ridicule were I even to name it. The remedy, too, you would consider no remedy at all, but a useless infliction of discomfort and mental anguish. What you are undergoing, Mr. Meigs, is not accidental, but providential. The workings of fate are as marvelous as they are effective. Patience a little, and we shall see what we shall see."

"This is no time for oracular remarks!" scowled Meigs. "These four-handed, one-eyed demons are forcing Gilhooly, Markham, Popham, and me steadily toward destruction. Gilhooly, daft as he is, is pulling his heart out on their ugly little transportation system; Markham is galloping from place to place pounding his paddle against his dish and begging a few morsels of food; Popham is working like a galley-slave, and his wages, already insufficient to give him the necessary food he requires for his heart-breaking labor, are being systematically cut down; as for me, the army of Baigadd is at my heels. Baigadd!" and, in his extreme discouragement, Meigs gave vent to a wild, mirthless laugh. "Baigadd and Baigol! They sound like expletives from our own good planet, but altogether too mild to express the state of my feelings."

"Be calm," adjured the professor, with an apprehensive look at me.

"Calm!" echoed Meigs brokenly. "I shall be as mad as Gilhooly if this keeps up much longer." He started forward with a truculent air. "What are you going to do for me, Quinn?" he cried. "How are you going to get me out of this fix? Those infernal little soldiers went away, but they'll come back again. Then what?"

"We are here in the role of ambassadors," answered the professor, "and----"

"Munn an ambassador!" sneered Meigs, drawing away from me.

"And, as such, we are entitled to some courtesy at the hands of King Baigadd. I feel quite sure that, when the higher authorities understand you are my friend, they will be lenient in their treatment of you."

"That is rather a vague supposition on which to ground a man's hopes of life or death," muttered Meigs.

"It is all we can fall back on, Mr. Meigs. There are but six of us on this small planet, and we must make the inhabitants our friends. If we do not, annihilation will overtake the lot of us."

"We were fools ever to land on Mercury in the first place," pursued Meigs, still wild and unreasoning.

He stamped with his bare foot to emphasize his anger, and a sharp stone unexpectedly gave point to it. With a howl of pain he caught his foot in his hands.

I have never been called particularly hard-hearted, but somehow I took a measure of enjoyment out of all this. However, I had the grace to turn my head and conceal the smile.

"You must be careful, Mr. Meigs," warned the professor. "Sit down and rest yourself."

"Rest!" fumed Meigs, "just as though such a thing were possible! I am one of the miserable victims of your duplicity, and if I could have recourse to the law of our planet for about an hour, I would soon put you where you belong."

"Be sensible," I struck in, perhaps ill-advisedly. "You act like a whipped schoolboy, Meigs."

"I'll hear nothing from you," he cried, glaring at me.

"As I was saying, Mr. Meigs," proceeded the professor, "Mr. Munn and I, although we appear to be free, are, nevertheless, virtual prisoners of the king of Baigol. We are being sent to Baigadd upon an important mission, and on our success or failure depends, very largely----"

"That will do," interrupted the broker irritably; "I don't care to hear an account of your experiences, Quinn. It is evident, I think, that you and Munn have not been crossed by the same adversity which has overtaken myself and the others. I have a demand to make."

Meigs arose from the bowlder and struck an attitude which he intended to be both dignified and compelling. With his unshaven face and red kirtle he succeeded only in making himself ludicrous.

"What is the demand?" inquired Quinn.

"You and Munn are fairly well-clothed," replied Meigs, "and I demand that you share my distress to the extent of donating enough of your own clothing to make me presentable."

On the impulse of the moment the professor began removing his coat. When the garment was half off he changed his mind and slipped back into it again.

"No," he returned. "You have made your own bed, Mr. Meigs, and I think you should lie in it until you experience a change of heart. When you can truly say to Mr. Munn and me that you realize how sadly mistaken you were on the other planet, we will share your distress--but not till then."

"Out on you for a pair of heartless wretches!" exclaimed the broker angrily. "Your reasoning is false, and I will never yield assent to it. I wash my hands of both of you"--and he went through the motions--"and if our paths should cross in the future, it is my desire that we pass as strangers."

He glared at us, turned on his bare heel and made his way to the road. Then he strode off in the direction of the bend.

We watched him silently, the professor with apprehension and I with unrestrained enjoyment. As he was about to vanish from our sight we saw him come to a startled halt, gaze off along the road that lay beyond the bend, then throw up his arms, whirl and race back to us.

"They're coming!" he shouted frantically; "the whole army is coming! Is there no way you can save me, gentlemen? Think, for mercy's sake, _think_!"

Meigs was continually building barriers between himself and the professor and me, only to knock them down again whenever the slightest danger threatened him. Had I been the one to decide, he should then and there have been left to shift for himself.

*CHAPTER XII.*

*CONDEMNED TO DEATH.*

"Have courage, Mr. Meigs," said Professor Quinn. "It is my hope that some high personage may be with the approaching army, in which event the royal banner given us by the king of Baigol will be respected and prove the salvation of all three of us."

This great and good man was utterly incapable of harboring resentment against any one. He beguiled the plutocrats into his castle, I grant you, and shuffled them from the scene of their grievous labors, yet this was not because he loved the rich man less but the poor man more.

As I write these words, piecing my narrative together out of my commonplace book, a wave of affection and reverence rolls over me.

And often I steal forth o' nights when skies are propitious, gaze at Mercury through my telescope, and can almost fancy myself in communion with the gentle soul forever lost to its native planet. But I anticipate.

The retreating Gaddbaizets had reached headquarters and acquainted the high chief in command with the fact that two more colossi had appeared; so the major part of the king's forces had been ordered out. By tactful maneuvres, they were approaching from all sides.

A cordon was drawn around us--a cordon of soldiers with their flashing zetbais presented. One hostile move would have placed the seal on our death warrant.

The high chief, perhaps fearing his word-box might be wrecked as his captain's had been, had evidently laid plans and given all orders in advance of his attack on our position. The assault was noiseless, swift, and sure.

When completely surrounded by the troops, a number of the soldiers disengaged themselves from various points of the circle. These soldiers carried lances at least ten feet long.

The lances were held high, and to the point of each the upper edge of a net was made fast, the lower edge of the net trailing along the ground.

As the lancemen advanced the net took the form of a rapidly contracting circle, the professor, Meigs, and myself in the centre.

In less than five minutes we three colossi were stoutly encompassed by the net, hurled together and thrown in a helpless jumble. The web was finely woven and of a material that defied our efforts to break through it.

Professor Quinn made a fierce attempt to use his word-box, but he was held so rigidly that he could not do so. One by one we were disentangled, the upper parts of our bodies were wrapped about in sections of the net so that only our legs were free, and we were forced to proceed with our captors, the army marching on every side of us.

Meigs was loudly bewailing his evil fortune.

"Take heart, man!" cried Quinn. "If I can see the king or get word to him I am sure that all will yet be well."

"It's all day with us," returned Meigs with a groan, "and you cannot make me believe otherwise."

There was no twilight in the nether kingdoms. Day leaped into night as swiftly as a curtain falls on a stage play.

Long before we reached our destination we were in Stygian blackness. There were no artificial illuminants known to the creatures of the under-world, and they had no need of them. Their single eyes were gifted with power to see at night almost as keenly as in the daytime.

When we had traveled several hours we were made to halt and a circle of zet, similar to the one that had imprisoned Quinn and myself in Baigol, was reared around us. Thereupon we were freed of the nets and left to ourselves.

The instant he was able to make use of his hands the professor grabbed his word-box and began shooting questions into the opaque gloom that hemmed us in.

"Why have you taken us prisoners? What harm have we ever done you? We are under the protection of King Golbai. Did not the captain of the other detachment so inform you?"

Answer came back:

"You have been taken prisoners because you resisted the royal authority and tried to protect a man who stole goods from our regal master. Theft of goods from his majesty's storehouse is punishable with death. Even ambassadors from King Golbai are not above the laws of our realm."

"What is to be our fate?"

"Zet," was the laconic answer. "You will all three be slain by the executioner-general as soon as may be after the great reflector sends its first gleam of day through the kingdom."