CHAPTER XXXII

THE BAMBOO BOMBS

In my haste to reach the clearing before that electrifying tom-tom melody should cease, I took no account of the distance between the edge of the wood and the place where I had halted. It was not so far as I had feared, however, though it was further than I had any business to have been away from home.

Upon coming to the slope, I got upon my hands and knees to crawl, for my ankle required rest. The fires were burning brightly in our village, but the mist was still weaving thickly about the summit.

When I turned up again among my fellows, like the penny which cannot be lost, they were nearly knocked dumb with astonishment. Hungry, disgusted and weary, I limped off to bed as soon as I had indicated the need of sentries throughout the night. Such a war as this made me snort with contempt.

Sometime during the night the fog disappeared, as mysteriously as it had come. I had rested badly, having been kept awake by the pain in my foot, so that I arose before morning and sat by the fire. There, after bathing the ankle in water from the spring of brine, I bound it up with strips of squirrel skin, fastened on with cord made of divided creepers. This treatment gave me much relief. The only luck I had in the accident was that the sprain was not so serious as my facial contortions (when alone) might have indicated to a keen observer.

The morning broke clear as glass; one could feel that the day meant to be hot before it finished. In our settlement we were all somewhat cross, from lack of food, myself in particular, because this game of starving us out seemed so nonsensical, and also because my relief expedition had fizzled out to such a miserable end. I began to be anxious to try results with our cunning besiegers. If they delayed the fight for the day again, I meant to carry the issue into their own headquarters, for we had to eat!

Thinking I might enrage them to the point of starting the battle, I carried the gold-nugget club from my shelter and planted it, nugget end uppermost, on our ramparts, directly in line with their camp and the mine of bombs below. Then I induced old Fatty to beat the drum, while I got up on top of the wall and paraded, somewhat after the top-loftical style of the American Indians, beating my breast with my fist, shouting derisively and pointing with maniacal glee to the gleaming club which we had taken, as a token of victory worthily won.

This bit of vanity produced an immediate effect, for a score of the fellows down in the trees appeared from the cover, sufficiently furious to suit the most exacting mind. They screamed shrilly to express their wrath, they beat the unoffending earth with their clubs, and they danced about as if the soil were hot. Nevertheless they advanced hardly as much as a stone-toss up the slope, being evidently under some powerful restraint. I executed the most aggravating evolutions, limping about on the wall, but to no apparent purpose. What was the game which the creatures played with such assurance that they could wait with this remarkable patience? I was angry to think they would not attack; I was annoyed to be obliged to admit that their warfare threatened to be subtle and effective. I hated to be starved into retreat, which would certainly be disastrous, or into a charge, down hill, against an ambush, which charge would doubtless prove to be an insupportable calamity.

“Come up, you cowards!” I bawled in a sneering tone of voice. “Lay on, you black McDuffers—we can wipe you off the map!”

My only answer was an echo of the cries I had heard the morning before, away in the jungle. This puzzled me again; it made me impatient. My Links had surged about me, wrought to a fine frenzy of excitement, eager to eat up the whole nation of Blacks—as splendid a pack of starving wolves as one could find. They also heard the cries, where the enemy appeared to be scouring through the forest, and I noted that many grew silent and worried. They reminded me of animals which have an instinct that warns them against the dangers which a human being cannot see nor feel.

The chief stood a little away, aloof from the others, leaning as ever on his club. What a brilliant, coruscating spot was made by the great, deadly crystal which he wielded so terribly in the fight! His mate, the indignant albino, stood beside him, eyeing myself with scorn and hatred. Her round, pink eyes were as nervous as quicksilver; her whole demeanour expressed the jealousy she nourished against me for pushing aside the chief, and the undisguised desire she felt to avenge herself for my former repudiation of her serene regard.

I gave her only a glance, and to the chief a nod of recognition. Below me little Tike was looking up in my face; near him old Fatty was standing, his quick, bright eyes upon me, his arms akimbo and the battered old skull on his head pushed aside, revealing hairless spots where, by rubbing, it had worn the growth off his leather-covered pate.

“Animals or primitive men—what are you all?” I muttered, and I shook my head and gave it up.

Again came the concerted cries from the jungle. They were nearer; there seemed to be a great commotion, not far from the edge of the trees, and this appeared to increase with every second. I saw several of my fellows begin to edge away, as if to make a run to a place of safety from a foe most dread. All the Links were making uneasy sounds, comparable only to the whimpering of a frightened dog.

“Here—come back here. Brace up, you fellows!” I cried to stop the incipient panic. “Pigs coming—pigs to shoot—pigs to kill!”

I raised my bow and notched an arrow on the string. I jumped down and stirred up the fire which must furnish me a brand for the fuses. Then again I got on the wall and shouted our defiance to all the jungle-world about us. Old Fatty began to beat the drum like a fury.

My warriors were inflamed; they crowded forward to see what was happening below. By this the cries of the enemy had become shrieks as of madness. We saw fifty of the Blacks burst quickly from cover, run to right and left and dash back in the woods, as if to flank an approaching cavalcade. To my amazement I saw among the fellows the traitor Grin—miserable coward! The Links observed him, too, and they chattered their rage and their Link maledictions on his head.

Once more I got down, this time to arm myself with a glowing brand from the flames. With this I shook out our only banner—a banner of smoke.

Suddenly the screen of trees, vines and creepers, seemed to bulge toward us, then to break. Two massive dark chunks of the jungle appeared to be bursting through. Then I saw what they were and realised what the cries had meant, what the plan of the Blacks had been from the first—and what a diabolical and clever scheme it was.

Two trumpeting elephants, goaded and maddened, smashed ponderously out of the jungle and headed up the hill—surrounded and driven toward us by hundreds of the yelling, dancing devils, with Grin in their midst, all of them incredibly nimble, daring and wrought up to force their irresistible allies over and through us.

The Links behind me, terrified beyond all control, were too stricken with panic to know what to do. They fell headlong over and upon each other; they ran in every direction. Females and children cried out in fear; chief, fighters, all were seized in the maelstrom of fright, and all went dashing away. Already we were as good as routed. Flight to the jungle would mean separation, death of all who were lost and murder of all who were overtaken by the terrible Blacks.

Confused for a moment, I attempted to call them back, to restore the order. This was worse than useless.

The elephants came unwillingly up the hill; the din of voices and trumpeting was appalling to hear. I jumped from my place, unconscious of my wounded foot and dashed down the hill as if to meet this oncoming tumult of death alone—racing toward my fuses. I had dropped my bow. My only weapon was the smoking brand of fire.

Shrieks from the Reds, who could not but see me, and screams of delight from the enemy, greeted the sight of a single crazy man, running down to the jaws of this living Juggernaut from the wilds.

I reached my goal, I fell to my knees and fumbled the matches. The monstrous battalion was nearly half way up to the trench of bombs. My fuses failed to ignite. In desperation I broke off the ends and bore them down upon my living coal. My thumb was burned, but I felt nothing. A fierce hiss from the powder electrified my every fibre. I leaped to my feet and darted part way back to the wall.

“Man,” came the cry of a sweet small voice.

Turning, I saw that my little Tike had followed me down the slope to the fuses. There he sat beside them—and the serpents of igniting powder were racing down to the mines, and the thundering horde of foes was racing upward, toward the little chap and me. Insanely I ran with all my might to rescue my only loyal Link—the baby who sat in the sunlight.

How far away he was! What a time it seemed to take me to reach him! The elephants—how near and awful they looked! I could see their white-showing eyes. The monsters began to gallop upward, mad to wreak vengeance on something, for that goading behind their backs. The yells became a din. Already the brutes must be past my trench. It would fail—it would kill little Tike and myself—anything but the terrible creatures pounding the earth as they came upon us!

I snatched the little fellow up and ran desperately away. Would nothing ever happen? I fell—the ankle had gone at the critical moment. I rolled and saw the dread spectacle crowding up and up the sun-lit hill.

Then the earth was rent wide open—great castles of earth and elephants rose toppling in the air, along with a glare of red-and-yellow flames and a mighty volcano of smoke. The world belched forth a detonation like the crack of doom.

Another and yet another fearful fan of fire leaped exultantly upward, hurling Blacks and fragments of Blacks, and soil and rock that blew through the bellies of the elephants and shot away in every direction toward the tranquil sky.

I was deaf with the mighty roar and concussion. From the air the debris came raining down. The smoke seemed a fountain of enveloping fog. Shrieks—now of terror and dreadful pain—stabbed through the confusion. Then a rock whirred down so close to my head that it puffed me with its cushion of air. I heard a sound and looked for little Tike, whom I had permitted to slip to the ground as I fell.

He was there beside me, his steady, wistful eyes looking up in my face, his poor little legs fairly crushed into the earth, beneath that fragment of adamant, torn from its bed and hurled upon him.

I was over him instantly heaving away the hunk of stone. But I did not attempt to lift the little mangled body. I saw he was numbed by the shock; I knew he was dying. He lay there and smiled, as I bent above his tiny form. He made no motion with hand or head, but when I placed my finger in his wee palm, he closed his baby-like grip upon it and gave me the fondest look I have ever beheld.

The Blacks could have swooped upon me, the earth could have quivered with agony and death, but I should have known nothing of it all, nor have cared. All the pangs of wrenched affection darted through my breast. I was smitten dumb to see that human look of love, gratitude and hope. The homely little face became transfigured with a look of inward beauty; the promise of a dawning, evolving human being was there, glowing like the life in a spark. The wistful eyes burned with that singular light which makes us hope for things supernal.

On my finger the tiny grip fluttered. I felt myself breaking down like a woman.

The little chap’s lip quivered a second; his fleeting breath came forth lightly.

“Man,” he whispered in the stillness, and smiling, closed his tired little eyes—forever.