Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/82

 "No!" he cried sharply.

Then, as if ashamed of his rudeness, "I thank you," he said, "but a priest fasts more often than feasts. I cannot eat your food."

With this enigmatic remark he turned and plunged into the jungle.

That afternoon the body of Arnold was laid beside the other victims of the purple death.

A hopeless despondency settled over the camp. The laborers, sullen and brutish, went about their work in a spirit of insubordination. Nanah, their friend, was under the white men's displeasure. Therefore, they, in a body, resented it.

The temper of the whites, too, was on edge. The least overt act of the natives evoked a curse or a blow. Mutiny was in the air.

The night following Arnold's death the men sat hunched about the smudge fire. Sometimes they talked rapidly, disjointedly, about the tragedy. Again, for long periods, no one spoke.

The peculiar attitude of the priest gripped them. His assertion that fear, the poltroon's plea—had caused the deaths, angered them. His conversation lacked stability. After declaring fright had killed Arnold he, too readily, it seemed to the men, switched to the theory that Nanah had been instrumental in the crime.

"Allowing Nanah did kill them," suddenly voiced Hunt, "what in God's name did he do to scare them to death?"

No one answered. Each man was too busy conning the question: "Who will be next?"

Far into the night they sat. When, sick, body and soul, they retired, a double guard was patroling the camp.

For a month after the last death nothing occurred to mar the humdrum quiet of the camp. The guard, working in six hour tricks, neither heard nor saw anything suspicious. Therefore the whites, lulled by the treacherous security, dropped back into their former peaceful existence. There was, however, one exception. Dean never felt at ease. In moments of abstraction his finger always hovered about his mouth, always circled his lips.

One day a guard came hurriedly to Payne.

"Sirdar Payne," he began warily, "at sunrise today, as thy servant was watching the jungle to the east, thy servant thought he saw a face. It might be, Sirdar, that Nanah lurks about."

Payne knew, in his own mind, that the guard had not only seen Nanah but that he had held converse with him.

For a time the American smoked in silence. Then, removing the stem from between his teeth he said succinctly, "It might be. And it might be that Nanah is going to get his hide full of lead. We are desperate men, Augwa. And we are vigilant. We sleep on our arms. It might be that should Nanah learn this he will find other parts of India more to his liking."

Augwa bowed to the earth.

"It might be," he said.

Dean, upon learning of the Hindoo's return, became, in a measure, insane. For months he had been haunted by the overweening fears of the nameless horror. Six times he had viewed the grotesquely rigid bodies, the wide-open, staring eyes, the clenched hands of the men with whom he had slept, eaten, worked and played. Most hideous of all, six times his soul had been flayed by the livid, purple ring about the frozen mouth.

Captain Worthington, listening to Dean's ravings, cursed in his heart the venture that had led him and his comrades into the land of mystery. Out there in the lurid sunshine were six rock-heaped mounds, covered softly by the snowy blossoms of the monkey-bread trees. At a distance Payne, Hunt, Brown and Carson were standing, dejectedly looking at the row of graves. Inside the tent Dean, chained like a dog, cursed and fought imaginary Nanahs.

It was terrible.

Worthington's heart ached for the living man more acutely than for the dead. They could not feel, while Dean, racked by fear, suffered the tortures of the damned.

No one expected to sleep in camp that night. Nanah was near. As they valued their lives they meant to stay awake.

Wearily the hours dragged. Eventually the rosy pink of dawn crepcrept [sic] across the sky. Cicades hushed their strident clamor, vampire bats winged their zig-zag homeward way. Birds awoke twittering and singing. Day dawned and Nanah, the terrible, had not struck.

A week passed and, as nothing had occurred to disturb the every-day routine of the camp, vigilance relaxed.

Nanah had taken Payne's hint and decamped.

Wearily the men sought their cots. The day had been exacting, sultry, filled with accidents and mishaps.

As the night settled down a holy calm seemed to envelop the camp. Far, far away, stars twinkled brightly in the velvety blackness of the great dome overhead. From the tents came the regular breathing of sleeping, work-wearied men.

The guard changed. The moon, now at the fag end of the last quarter, slipped up out of the vastness and hung, a tiny red-gold thread, in the sky.

The men on guard were tired. They, too, had done their bit in the sand beds. A turbaned head dropped, jerked back, sank again until the chin lay upon the black, full-muscled chest. Morpheus, with silent fingers, pressed down the weary lids. The camp slept.

Payne awoke suddenly. A weight, warm, palpitant, was on his breast. A rhythmic murmer flowed and eddied about him. A peculiar sensation, as though something was compressing his chest, oppressed him. A hot flame seemed scorching his face, a searing circle burned about his lips, his breath was leaving him. He tried to move, to shake off the crushing weight. But, above him gleamed two phosphorescent flames chaining his will, subjugating him to the Thing until he could not stir.

He tried, then, to scream. To shout. To cast the hideous incubus from him. But by some hypnotic power the Thing overruled his soul, clung tenaciously.

The myalgia in his muscles was excruciating. In his agony Payne began drawing up his knees, gripping his fists. And his eyes, mesmerized and held by the glowing green flame above him, opened wider, wider, until the balls seemed bursting from the sockets.

His lungs, like a top balloon from which the air is squeezed, collapsed. His breath became the merest flicker. He, like the six, was doomed. His last conscious thought was of the seventh grave beneath the monkey-bread tree.

Then came a roar and a blaze of light. A scream neither human nor animal but a blending of both.

Some time later Payne awoke. His body was a mass of aches; his lungs were a rack of pain; but he was alive. He knew he was because, as he moved, a turbaned head came into his line of vision. He could see the sun shining, could hear a low hum of voices. Yes, beyond a doubt, he was alive.

"Nanah," said Payne, with effort.

The boy came forward. His handsome face was aglow, his white teeth gleaming between his scarlet lips. "Beloved master," he cried ardently, "it is as though thou art returned from Swarga! As though thou wert given back from the grave."

He fell to kissing and weeping over Payne's hands.

Payne smiled weakly at what he