Page:Weird Tales Volume 14 Issue 2 (1929-08).djvu/58

200 wakened to find Tai Hoong in his stateroom for the first time since his hand healed.

"Something strange has happened, Captain McTeague. We are prisoners."

McTeague raced on deck in his pajamas. Then he cursed. The lagoon mouth, a narrow entrance between out-jutting coral reefs, was impassable. Jungle trees and brush, weighted by tinted coral newly brought from the sea-floor, effectively formed a barrier that would have to be cleared before the schooner could sail.

Long and earnest talk went back and forth between McTeague and Tai Hoong, and the Chinese at last prevailed.

"The weather is changing; the monsoons are just begun. A big storm would clear that barrier and we could sail away. Meanwhile I greatly desire to visit this shrine, and you would make it possible."

"How?" demanded McTeague. "How do I figure?"

"Your hand!"

McTeague looked at that shapely brown hand, slender beside his own, marked with the curiously carved blue jade in a ring of red and yellow gold.

"Sort of 'hand of fate,' eh?"

"A hand of destiny. Perhaps judgment. Or doom. One might invent many titles, Captain McTeague. I prefer to believe its power will rid the world of evil—a sort of demon's doom."

"Nice hand that," commented McTeague, flexing the fingers. "Why do you suppose those natives worked like sluggers all night to hold us in this lagoon?"

They were not to wonder long. Arrangements went forward to take jungle river trail to the shrine of N'Yeng Sen, and McTeague went ashore to obtain canoes and guides. The matted mangrove roots embedded in shoreless river banks prevented the use of the schooner's small power-boat. And they needed guides. Brigham and his cronies were still drinking, but they followed McTeague ashore and were invited to soak further in palm wine. The drums again pulsed forth their primal martial call to valorous impulse, but Tawauyo would not consent to lend guides or canoes to disturb the presiding demon of N'Yeng Sen. In fact, like an animal sensing storm long before a barometer begins its fall, Tawauyo was uneasy.

He kept on his feet, constantly peering into the jungle gloom, listening for sounds which the drums might deaden. And toward sunset, when the hills were smoldering in thunderous gory crimson, the avalanche swooped—rustling in the blackness beyond fire-flare and leaping dancers—a crashing that rushed at the circle.

McTeague's guns were knocked from his hands as they cracked. He was lifted bodily and swept through lacerating palm fronds and twisting lianas and thudded breathless over the crook of a tall tree branch to twist and recoil in horror from his captor.

A gray man of the woods, an orang-outang, clutched claws through his belt, lifted his two hundred pounds with little effort, grinned, then mouthed guttural semblance of human speech.

"Saw me afore, didn't ye? Tricky Turner's me name. An' I'm sick of bein' a monk."

McTeague's brain reeled. He was sick with fear and horror. Blackness floated him to semi-consciousness, but a vigorous shake of those powerful simian arms roused him to the fetid breath near his face, the great jaw fangs that could rend and tear his flesh, the paws that could split his body as a banana is peeled.

Then he was again lifted and swung through the air, turning, fighting, twisting vainly to free himself, and at last plumped down in a stinking stretch of river mud that reeked of the sickening odor of mugger walk-about grounds and putrid remains of