He turned his light on the grass beneath. All at once a blade moved.
“Oh, thank God!” he wheezed. “They passed here only a few minutes ago. They can't be far now!”
Something drew his attention. He snatched at a sapling.
“Hair!”
Caught in a roughness of the bark a few short, stiff, wiry hairs, reddish-brown, were twisted.
“One of the Horde?” he stammered.
A lightning-flash of memory carried him back to Madison Forest, more than a year ago. He seemed to see again the obeah, as that monster advanced upon the girl, clutching, supremely hideous.
“The hair! The same kind of hair! In the power of the Horde!” he gasped.
A mental picture of extermination flashed before his mind's eye. Whether the girl lived or died, he knew now that his life work was to include a total slaughter of the Anthropoids. The destruction he had already wrought among them was but child's play to what would be.
And in his soul flamed the foreknowledge of a hunt à l'outrance, to the bitter end. So long as one, a single one of that foul breed should live, he would not rest from killing.
“Master! This way! Here, master!”
The voice of Zangamon sent him once more crashing through the jungle, after his questing guides. Again he fired the signal-shot, and now with the full power of his lungs he yelled.
His voice rang, echoing, through the black and tangled growths, startling the night-life of the depths. Something chippered overhead. Near-by a serpent slid away, hissing venomously. Death lurked on every hand.
Stern took no thought of it, but pressed forward, shouting the girl's name, hallooing, beating down the undergrowth with mad fury. And here, there, all about he flung the light-beam.
Perhaps she might yet hear his hails; perhaps she might even catch some distant glimmer of his light, and know that help was coming, that rescuers were fighting onward to her.
Silent, lithe, confident even among these new and terribly strange conditions, the two men of the Folk slid through the jungle.
No hounds ever trailed fugitive more surely and with greater skill than these strange, white barbarians from the underworld. Through all his fear and agony, Stern blessed their courage and their skill.
“Men, by God! They're men!” he muttered, as he thrashed his painful way behind them in the night.
Of a sudden, there somewhere ahead, far ahead in the wilderness--a cry?
Allan stopped short, his heart leaping.
Again he fired, and his voice set all the echoes ringing.
A cry! He knew it now. There could be no mistake--a cry!
“Beatrice!” he shouted in a terrible voice, leaping forward. The guides broke into a crouching run. All three crashed through the thickets, split the fern-masses, struggled through the tall saber-grass that here and there rose higher than their heads.
Allan cursed himself for a fool. That other cry he had heard while on his way from the Pauillac to Settlement Cliffs--that had been her cry for help--and he had neither known nor heeded.
“Fool that I was! Oh, damnable idiot that I was!” he panted as he ran.
From moment to moment he fired. He paused a few seconds to jack a fresh cartridge-clip into the automatic.
“Thank God I've got a belt full of ammunition!” thought he, and again smashed along with the two Merucaans.
All at once a formidable roar gave them pause.
Hollow, booming, deep, yet rising to a wild shriek of rage and horrid brutality, the beast-cry flung itself through the jungle.
And, following it, they heard again that muffled drumming, as though gigantic fists were flailing a tremendous tambour in the darkness.
“Master!” whispered Zangamon, recoiling a step. “Oh, Kromno, what is that?”
“Never have we heard such in our place!” added Bremilu, gripping his ax the tighter. “Is that a man-cry, or the cry of a beast--one of the beasts you told us of, that we have never seen?”
“Both! A man-beast! Kill! Kill!”
Now, Allan, sure of his direction, took the lead. No longer he flashed the light, and only once more he called:
“Beatrice! O Beatrice! We're coming!”
Again he heard her cry, but suddenly it died as though swiftly choked in her very throat. Allan spat a blasphemy and surged on.
The two white barbarians followed, peering with those strange, pinkish eyes of theirs, courageous still, yet utterly at a loss to know what manner of thing they were now drawing near.
They burst through a thicket, waded a marshy swale and went splashing, staggering and slipping among tufts of coarse and knife-edged grasses, the haunt of unknown venomous reptiles.
Up a slope they won; and now, all at once the roar burst forth again close at hand, a rending tumult, wild, earthshaking, inexpressibly terrible.
All three stopped.
“Beatrice! Are you there? Answer!” shouted Stern.
Silence, save for a peculiar mumbling snuffle off ahead, among the deeper shadows of a fern-tree thicket.
“Beatrice!”
No answer. With a groan Allan shot his light toward the thicket. He seemed to distinguish something moving. To his ears now came a sound of twigs and brushwood snapping.
Absolutely void of fear he pressed forward, and the two colonists with him, their weapons ready. Stern held his revolver poised for instant action. His heart was hammering, and his breath surged pantingly; but within him his consciousness and soul lay calm.
For he knew one of two things were now to happen. Either that beast ahead there in the gloom, or he, must die.
CHAPTER XV. IN THE GRIP OF TERROR
As the three pursuers steadily advanced, the thing roared once more, and again they heard the hammering, drumming boom. Zangamon whispered some unintelligible phrase.
Allan projected the light forward again, and at sight of a moving mass, vague and intangible, among the gigantic fronds, leveled his automatic.
But on the instant Bremilu seized his arm.
“O master! Do not throw the fire of death!” he warned. “You cannot see, but we can! Do not throw the fire!”
“Why not? What is that thing?”
“It seems a man, yet it is different, master. It is all hair, and very thick and strong, and hideous! Do not shoot, O Kromno!”
“Why not?”
“Behold! That strange man-thing holds the woman, Beatrice, in his left arm. Of a truth, you may kill her, and not the enemy.”
Allan steadied himself against a palm. His brain seemed whirling, and for a moment all grew vague and like a dream.
She was there--Beatrice was there, and they could see her. There, in the clutches of some monster, horrible and foul! Living yet? Dead?
“Tell me! Does she live?”
“We cannot say, O Kromno. But do not shoot. We will creep close--we, ourselves, will slay, and never touch the woman.”
“No, no! If you do he'll strangle her--provided she still lives! Don't go! Wait! Let me think a second.”
With a tremendous effort Allan mastered himself. The situation far surpassed, in horror, any he had ever known.
There not a hundred yards distant in the dense blackness was Beatrice, in the grip of some unknown and hideous creature. Advance, Allan dared not, lest the creature rend her to tatters. Shoot, he dared not.
Yet something must be done, and quickly, for every second, every fraction of a second, was golden. The merest accident might now mean death or life--life, if the girl still lived!
“Zangamon!”
“Yea, master?”
“Be very bold! Do my bidding!”