Red Shadows, Robert E. Howard [best ebook reader for chromebook TXT] 📗

at the gorilla-slayer.

 

The black man had apparently forgotten him; he stood, half-crouching, spear lifted, eyes fixed upon that clump of blackness. Kane

looked again. Now there was motion in the shadows; they merged

fantastically and moved out into the glade, much as Gulka had done.

Kane blinked: was this the illusion that precedes death? The shape he

looked upon was such as he had visioned dimly in wild nightmares, when

the wings of sleep bore him back through lost ages.

 

He thought at first it was some blasphemous mockery of a man, for

it went erect and was tall as a tall man. But it was inhumanly broad

and thick, and its gigantic arms hung nearly to its misshapen feet.

Then the moonlight smote full upon its bestial face, and Kane’s mazed

mind thought that the thing was the Black God coming out of the

shadows, animated and blood-lusting. Then he saw that it was covered

with hair, and he remembered the manlike thing dangling from the roof-pole in the native village. He looked at Gulka.

 

The Negro was facing the gorilla, spear at the charge. He was not

afraid, but his sluggish mind was wondering over the miracle that

brought this beast so far from his native jungles.

 

The mighty ape came out into the moonlight and there was a

terrible majesty about his movements. He was nearer Kane than Gulka

but he did not seem to be aware of the white man. His small, blazing

eyes were fixed on the black man with terrible intensity. He advanced

with a curious swaying stride.

 

Far away the drums whispered through the night, like an

accompaniment to this grim Stone Age drama. The savage crouched in the

middle of the glade, but the primordial came out of the jungle with

eyes bloodshot and blood-lusting. The Negro was face to face with a

thing more primitive than he. Again ghosts of memories whispered to

Kane: you have seen such sights before (they murmured), back in the

dim days, the dawn days, when beast and beast-man battled for

supremacy.

 

Gulka moved away from the ape in a half-circle, crouching, spear

ready. With all his craft he was seeking to trick the gorilla, to make

a swift kill, for he had never before met such a monster as this, and

though he did not fear, he had begun to doubt. The ape made no attempt

to stalk or circle; he strode straight forward toward Gulka.

 

The black man who faced him and the white man who watched could

not know the brutish love, the brutish hate that had driven the

monster down from the low, forest-covered hills of the north to follow

for leagues the trail of him who was the scourge of his kind—the

slayer of his mate, whose body now hung from the roof-pole of the

Negro village.

 

The end came swiftly, almost like a sudden gesture. They were

close, now, beast and beast-man; and suddenly, with an earth-shaking

roar, the gorilla charged. A great hairy arm smote aside the thrusting

spear, and the ape closed with the Negro. There was a shattering sound

as of many branches breaking simultaneously, and Gulka slumped

silently to the earth, to lie with arms, legs and body flung in

strange, unnatural positions. The ape towered an instant above him,

like a statue of the primordial triumphant.

 

Far away Kane heard the drums murmur. The soul of the jungle, the

soul of the jungle: this phrase surged through his mind with

monotonous reiteration.

 

The three who had stood in power before the Black God that night,

where were they? Back in the village where the drums rustled lay

Songa—King Songa, once lord of life and death, now a shriveled corpse

with a face set in a mask of horror. Stretched on his back in the

middle of the glade lay he whom Kane had followed many a league by

land and sea. And Gulka the gorilla-slayer lay at the feet of his

killer, broken at last by the savagery which had made him a true son

of this grim land which had at last overwhelmed him.

 

Yet the Black God still reigned, thought Kane dizzily, brooding

back in the shadows of this dark country, bestial, blood-lusting,

caring naught who lived or died, so that he drank.

 

Kane watched the mighty ape, wondering how long it would be before

the huge simian spied and charged him. But the gorilla gave no

evidence of having even seen him. Some dim impulse of vengeance yet

unglutted prompting him, he bent and raised the Negro. Then he

slouched toward the jungle, Gulka’s limbs trailing limply and

grotesquely. As he reached the trees, the ape halted, whirling the

giant form high in the air with seemingly no effort, and dashed the

dead man up among the branches. There was a rending sound as a broken

projecting limb tore through the body hurled so powerfully against it,

and the dead gorilla-slayer dangled there hideously.

 

A moment the clear moon limned the great ape in its glimmer, as he

stood silently gazing up at his victim; then like a dark shadow he

melted noiselessly into the jungle.

 

Kane walked slowly to the middle of the glade and took up his

rapier. The blood had ceased to flow from his wounds, and some of his

strength was returning, enough, at least, for him to reach the coast

where his ship awaited him. He halted at the edge of the glade for a

backward glance at Le Loup’s upturned face and still form, white in

the moonlight, and at the dark shadow among the trees that was Gulka,

left by some bestial whim, hanging as the she-gorilla hung in the

village.

 

Afar the drums muttered: “The wisdom of our land is ancient; the

wisdom of our land is dark; whom we serve, we destroy. Flee if you

would live, but you will never forget our chant. Never, never,” sang

the drums.

 

Kane turned to the trail which led to the beach and the ship

waiting there.

THE END