Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 2 (1927-08).djvu/70

 wire-cutters, set in the flat, indigo-hued head and flanked by a pair of yellow, tigerish eyes reflecting rays from multitudinous facets; these things alone were sufficient to cast a chill of fear on the hardiest.

Abruptly there came a mad rush to the wall of bush they had just left as a wave of panic swept upon the two men, yet curiously mingled ran a thread of almost wrathful contempt: after all, these' things were no more than mere insects, unique and colossal though they were—but that pigeon! instantly slain! Something incredibly deadly had been at work there.

Savagely thrashing around with their battered wide-brimmed hats, the men tore for the jungle. It was not more than fifty paces distant, and with the insects held at bay by the vigorous flailing, it is quite possible that they would have reached sanctuary unharmed. That is, had two been the only foes to reckon with, but such was not the case, and only blind chance succored the fugitives from catastrophe. For they had covered barely a dozen paces when, probably aroused by the commotion, from a point close to the edge of the jungle there arose some half a dozen of like gigantic insects. For a second they hung stationary and facing the pursuit, as though intelligently surveying the situation, then with the astounding foresight of a coursing greyhound they darted off at a tangent to the course of the racing men, obviously bent on intercepting them.

Their flight was almost like the flight of an arrow, and the fate of the fugitives was apparently sealed, a mere matter of seconds, for there could be no least prospect of combatting such an array of assailants when already a couple of these malignant brutes were only just held at bay.

Of this fresh menace the panic-stricken men were unwitting; they had neither ears, eyes, nor thought for other than the loud buzzing fiends that incessantly circled in flashing shafts of metallic iridescence as the vicious brutes swept around and over and crisscrossed their elliptoid path at lightning speed as they sought to penetrate the desperate defense of their quarry.

Fortunate it was they were ignorant of this new accession to their foes, for the knowledge must assuredly have completed their demoralization, and a single second's slackening of their defensive would have afforded the savage brutes their opportunity. What that would entail there was no saying, there was no precedent to work upon with surety; only their colossal size, the instantaneous slaying of the pigeon and the analogy of the comparatively insignificant hornet with its painful virulence, its directness of attack and its total indifference to the mere bulk of the object of its wrath, and a like intense savagery and carnivorous voracity; only by these points of marked resemblance could any conception be formulated of the possible, and very probable, magnification of such malignant potentialities in these unique and monstrous things. The one chance in a million that intervened, fate proffered in a humble guise.

There came a rustling and movement amid the coarse herbage as the great droning swept by, a sudden halt of the covey, and then like the strike of a hawk they shot downward and with unerring aim lit squarely upon a large island rat; there came the horrible rat shriek of pain, silenced abruptly as the huge insects tore their victim into shreds, gouging the hot flesh from the quivering body with their terrible jaws with incredible rapidity and savagery. In a few moments naught but gleaming pink bones remained, and of these many of the more fragile had been cut clean in two by some eager pair of