Forbes reached the plane, slammed open the door, bundled in the girl, jumped for the starter. There sounded the mechanism of whirring springs. The motor throbbed into life.
It was then that Phil Nickers noticed the ropes running from wing tips to stakes, saw the blocks under the landing wheels. There was no time to communicate his discovery, no time to waste in first getting the drugged girl into the cabin.
He laid her along a wing, dived underneath, pulling blocks out, ripping rope from driven stakes. Their only chance was that Forbes could send the plane in a ground run to the other end of the field, leaving the pursuers behind, then turn and take off. As for Phil, he felt that he could only fight as long as possible, delay matters for a few seconds.
Phil emerged from under the far wing tip, pointed to the unconscious figure on the wing, waved his hands to urge the plane on, knowing that Forbes could stop at the other end of the field to get the sleeping girl in the cabin.
And then he turned toward his pursuers.
He expected to hear the song of the motor gather in volume. Forbes could taxi the plane sufficiently to finish warming up the motor. And with the engine he could dodge the pursuers. But there was no increase in the steady roar of the motor. Forbes was waiting. That would be the girl’s order.
Phil dashed for the door of the cabin.
The great ape-man was before him. A mighty arm plucked him from the step as a man might pluck an orange from a tree. Phil was hurled back, spinning. Before him loomed the solid front of advancing foe. The ape reached out great arms, scooped from the wing the figure that was rolled in golden tapestries.
And Phil, recovering his balance, unarmed, charged in a low tackle, straight for the ape. Forbes flung open the door of the cabin, thrust out the barrel of the automatic, pulled the trigger.
There was no report. The firing pin clicked with a metallic noise of hollow futility.
The ape staggered at Phil’s impact, then regained his balance. One arm encircled the golden tapestry. The other dropped, caught Phil’s neck in a crushing embrace. And then the ape turned toward those who were almost upon them.
His face twisted up in the agony of that superhuman grip which was literally crushing the muscles of his neck to jelly, ripping apart the vertebrae, Phil saw the white face of the ape-man. It was illuminated from the open doorway. Each change of facial expression was indelibly stamped upon Phil’s memory.
The ape looked at the old man, the natives, then at the slumbering features of the drugged girl, at the white, horror-frozen features of those in the plane, so near and yet so far from liberty.
Of a sudden the eyes lost their brute ferocity. The face was flooded with an expression such as comes to a human being in a moment of great renunciation. The ape-man shot out a hairy paw, literally flung Nickers into the plane. Then he extended the drugged figure, gently thrust her within.
And then they were upon him, a frenzied throng of shouting madmen. But the ape-man held them back, his great chest flung outward. The motor roared into increased speed, and the plane moved slowly and majestically out upon the field, out of the ribbon of light that came from the open door, out into the darkness of the calm night.
The ape-man turned, and Phil was able to see that there were tears in his eyes. But the expression of self-sacrifice still stamped his features with a something that was not only human, but more than human.
Then the throng swept past him, clutching hands tried for the tail assembly. One man, more swift than the others, reached for one of the wing tips. But the prop had swirled up a vortex of seething air, thick with dust. The dust-cloud swept into the eyes of the pursuers. The current of wind held them back even as the plane gathered speed.
And, just before the dust-cloud swirled about the lone form of the giant ape, he swung up one arm, in a gesture of farewell.
The plane swept down the field. Phil had grasped the throttles, his strained neck muscles aching with pain, his eyes seeming to protrude from their sockets. But his trained fingers guided the plane with a great sweep, into a huge circle.
He had no time to get the direction of what wind there might be. He needed to warm up the motor a few more degrees. And he must guard against crashing into the trees which lined the field. How far did he dare go? Would the foe chase after him on the inside of a circle and head him off? He could only take a chance.
He cut the plane in a series of ground antics like the zigzag of a huge bumblebee with one wing gone. Droning, snarling, ripping through the night, the plane skidded and twisted. The engine temperature rose. Phil pulled back on the stick. The wheels left the ground. Directly below appeared a light, a sea of upturned faces, clutching hands. Somehow the field had been flooded with light, disclosing the plane, the enemy. And the plane had got off just in time, for the clutching fingers barely missed the tips of the wings. One or two caught the bar of the landing wheels, but the terrific speed tore it from their grasp. Had those fingers caught a wing tip, however, the story might have been different.
The plane wobbled as it was, then zoomed upward. A row of black tree tops appeared ahead, swept toward them. But the plane leaped upward like a bird, the tree tops were below, and the motor sang a song of roaring power.
Phil took his direction from the stars, headed back upon a blind course. He was flying through the night as a fish might swim in a dark sea. Overhead were the glittering points of stars. Below was a great blotch of darkness, broken only by a fast-disappearing square of golden light. That light was filled with dancing shadows, bounded by the sides of great buildings, gold letters wrought in the solid stone, forming some Sanskrit sentence.
And in the center of that lighted pandemonium stood a solemn figure, apart from the rest, head bowed upon mighty chest in sorrow. It was the ape who was not a man, nor yet an ape. The animal that had surrendered victory for something that was higher and better.
The blob of light became a small circle, no larger than a dime, then slipped behind, faded, reappeared, and vanished forever. The plane roared on. The lights illuminated the instrument board, showed the various gauges and speed indicators. By reflection it showed the ovals of blurred, strained faces, peering into the night.
Phil caught Forbes’s eye, gave a forced, strained smile, and received a wan smile in return.
“I wish we could have taken that ape!” shouted Forbes.
Phil nodded. His mind was filled with the events of the past twenty-four hours. And he knew that the sudden flood of lights on that landing field omened danger. Murasingh had another plane, a lighter, faster plane, armed. Perhaps he had several planes there.
But the darkness gave them their hope of salvation. If it would only mist up with a fog he could sit back relieved. From time to time he glanced toward the east, anxiously.
The motor roared on. The east glowed with a soft light. The horn of the old moon slipped up over the horizon. Ahead showed fleecy clouds, seemingly like balls of soft cotton, drifting slowly between the plane and the ground. The glare of the moon tinged them with gold and black shadows.
And then it came. The other plane had evidently been following a compass course, watching, waiting. The rising moon had betrayed its quarry. A sudden snapping sound marked the indication of a hole in the cabin. The glass rippled into a series of radiating cracks. Another snapping sound marked another hole.
Phil snapped the plane over on one wing, sideslipped, twisted, rolled, and zoomed. The other plane was in sight now, a huge shadow of the night, swooping as an owl might swoop upon a mouse. From its bow came a spitting series of ruddy flashes.