A gentleman with even longer and whiter whiskers than the speaker said in a loud and decided voice, “Fiddlesticks! Stuff and nonsense!”
The speaker paused. He glared. “Sir! Do you refer ....”
“I do!” said the gentleman with the longer and whiter whiskers. “It is stuff and nonsense! Next you’d be saying that in this hyper-space of yours the closed spaces would be subject to hyper-laws, revolve about each other in hyper-orbits regulated by hypergravitation, and undoubtedly, at times there would be hyper-earth tides or hyper-collisions, producing decidedly hyper-catastrophes.”
“Such is,” said the whiskered gentleman on the rostrum, quivering with indignation, “such is the fact, sir!”
“Then the fact,” rejoined the scientist with the longer and whiter whiskers, “sir, makes me sick!”
And as if to prove it, he reeled. But he was not alone in reeling. The entire venerable assembly shuddered in abrupt, nauseating vertigo. And then the British Academy of Sciences adjourned without formality and in a panic. It ran away. Because abruptly there was no longer a rostrum nor an end to its assembly hail. Where their speaker had been was open air. In the open air was a fire. About the fire were certain brutish figures incredibly resembling the whiskered scientists who fled from them. They roared at the fleeing, venerable men. Snarling, wielding crude clubs, they plunged into the hail of the British Academy of Sciences. It is known that they caught one person—a biologist of highly eccentric views. It is believed that they ate him.
But it has long been surmised that some, at least, of the extinct species of humanity, such as the Piltdown and Neanderthal men, were cannibals. If in some pathway of time they happened to exterminate their more intelligent rivals—if somewhere pithecanthropus erectus survives and homo sapiens does not—well, in that pathway of time cannibalism is the custom of society.
VIII
With a gasp, Maida Haynes flung herself before Blake. But Harris was even quicker. Apologetic and shy, he had just finished cutting a smoking piece of meat from the venison haunch. He threw it swiftly, and the searing mass of stuff flung Minott’s hand aside at the same instant that it burned it horribly.
Blake was on his feet, his gun out. “If you pick up that gun, sir,” he said rather breathlessly but with unquestionable sincerity, “I’ll put a bullet through your arm!”
Minott swore. He retrieved the weapon with his left hand and thrust it in his pocket. “You young fool!” he snapped. “I’d no intention of shooting you. I did intend to scare you thoroughly. Harris, you’re an ass! Maida, I shall discuss your action later. The worst punishment I could give the lot of you would be to leave you to yourselves.”
He stalked out of the firelight and off into the darkness. Something like consternation came upon the group. The glow of fire where the plane had crashed flickered fitfully. The base of the dull red light seemed to widen a little.
“That’s the devil!” said Hunter uneasily. “He does know more about this stuff than we do. If he leaves us we’re messed up!”
“We are,” agreed Blake grimly. “And perhaps if he doesn’t.”
Lucy Blair said: “I—I’ll go and talk to him. He—he used to be nice to me in class. And—and his hand must hurt terribly. It’s burned.”
She moved away from the fire, a long and angular shadow going on before her.
Minott’s voice came sharply: “Go back! There’s something moving out here!”
Instantly after, his revolver flashed. A howl arose, and the weapon flashed again and again. Then there were many crashings. Figures fled.
Minott came back to the firelight, scornfully. “Your leadership is at fault, Blake,” he commented sardonically. “You forgot about a guard. And you were the man who thought he heard voices! They've run away now, though. Indians, of course.”
Lucy, Blair said hesitantly: “Could I—could I do something for your hand? It’s burned ....”
“What can you do?” he asked angrily.
“There’s some fat,” she told him. “Indians used to dress wounds with bear fat. I suppose deer fat would do as well.”
He permitted her to dress the burn, though it was far from a serious one. She begged handkerchiefs from, the others to complete the job. There was distinct uneasiness all about the camp fire. This was no party of adventurers, prepared for anything. It had started as an outing of undergraduates.
Minott scowled as Lucy Blair worked on his hand. Harris looked as apologetic as possible, because he had made the injury. Bertha Ketterling blubbered less noisily, now, because nobody paid her any attention. Blake frowned meditatively at the fire. Maida Haynes tried uneasily not to seem conscious of the fact that she was in some sense—though no mention had been made of it—a bone of contention.
The horses moved uneasily. Bertha Ketterling sneezed. Maida felt her eyes smarting. She was the first one to see the spread of the blaze started by the gas tanks of the airplane. Her cry of alarm roused the others.
The plane had crashed a good mile from the camp fire. The blazing of its tanks had been fierce but brief. The burning of the wings and chassis fabric had been short, as well. The fire had died down to seeming dull embers. But there were more than embers ablaze out there now.
The fire had died down, to be sure, but only that it might spread among thick and tangled underbrush. It had spread widely on the ground before some climbing vine, blazing, carried flames up to resinous pine branches overhead. A small but steady wind was blowing. And as Maida looked off to see the source of the smoke which stung her eyes, one tall tree was blazing, a long line of angry red flames crept along the ground, and then at two more, three more, then at a dozen points bright fire roared upward toward the sky. The horses snorted and reared.
Minott snapped: “Harris! Get the horses! Hunter, see that the girls get mounted, and quickly!”
He pointedly gave Blake no orders. He pored intently over his map as more trees and still more caught fire and blazed upward. He stuffed it in his pocket.
Blake calmly rescued the haunch of venison, and when Minott sprang into the saddle among the snorting, scared horses, Blake was already by Maida Haynes side, ready to go.
“We ride in pairs,” said Minott curtly. “A man and a girl. You men, look after them. I’ve a flashlight. I’ll go ahead. We’ll hit the Rappahannock River sooner or later, if we don’t get around the fire first—and if we can keep ahead of it.”
They topped a little hillock and saw more of the extent of their danger. In a half mile of spreading, the fire had gained three times as much breath. And to their right the fire even then roared in among the trees of a forest so thick as to be jungle. The blaze fairly raced through it as if the fire made its own wind; which in fact it did. To their left it crackled fiercely in underbrush which, as they fled, blazed higher.
And then, as if to add mockery to their very real danger, a genuinely brisk breeze sprang up suddenly. Sparks and blazing bits of leaves, fragments of ash and small, unsubstantial coals began to fall among them. Bertha Ketterling yelped suddenly as a tiny live coal touched the flesh of her cheek. Harris’ horse squealed and kicked as something singed it. They, galloped madly ahead. Trees rose about them. The white beam of Minott’s flashlight seemed almost ludicrous in the fierce red glare from behind, but at least it showed the way.