Page:Weird Tales v01n02 (1923-04).djvu/114

Rh of the storage chamber. He seized it, finding it heavy in his hands, and leaped down.

Bowen clawed off the cover, reached in, and came forth with three greenish, soft masses clutched in his skinny fingers.

"The eggs!" he cried. "Seven hundred years old! Make make each of them eat one right away! We'll have a hard time" He choked, flinging a thin, trembling arm in the direction of Christensen and Porterfield, who were having their hands full at the doorway.

Roberts seized his own weapons, ran up, and in terse sentences explained the situation.

"A a cure?" cried Porterfield, incredulously.

"Bowen says so. Try them, anyway. Eat one apiece. I'll hold the door. Hm!"

The last was an exclamation of pain. A thrown knife had sliced a six-inch cut just above his knee. He fired, conserving bullets now, for down the corridor as far as he could see the Yengi had banked themselves. Already a breastwork of Chinese bodies was growing in front of the chamber entrance.

Behind him, Porterfield sputtered over swallowing his portion.

"Awful taste!" he cried, grimacing.

"They're treated with something," answered Christensen, wiping his lips and leaping to Roberts' side with one of the ancient eggs.

Roberts stuffed half of the greenish mass into his mouth, swallowing it whole. The taste was not altogether unpleasant, yet acrid. As he fired on and on, emptying one after another of the revolvers, he caught himself wondering how long it had taken for the shells of those eggs to become resorbed He ate the rest.

The fight was hopeless from the first. Though few bullets missed a human target—the narrow corridor was jammed with yammering, horrid humanity—and little damage could be accomplished by any of the Yengi at first, the inexorable pressure began to tell. Christensen, cursing in Scandanavian, plucked a lance from his shoulder. Later he dropped like a stone. The thin hilt of a knife quivered in the socket of his right eye.

Bowen, dragging himself to the entrance, diagnosed the reason.

"We're desecrating their shrine!" he yelled. "In a way, I don't blame them They're They're " Coughs ended his sentence.

And then, catching up the eight-paneled jar, and begging from Roberts the silk colophon, he threw his mangled body out before the breastwork of dead Chinese. High and shrill rose his voice, a fast, excited jabber which Roberts could not decipher. It continued

"Stop shooting!" Bowen flung back over his shoulder. The white men were glad to obey. Their ammunition almost was spent. Strangely enough, the Yengi of the front rank lowered their weapons. They turned, jabbering excitedly to others. Bowen flung out to them the square of ideographed silk.

"It—it's your only hope, my brothers!" gasped Bowen. "Take one jar—if you will "

At this he pitched forward, clawing with his hands at the body of one of the Yengi. Roberts saw that the dead Chinese had leather pads in place of hands at the end of his wrists

ITH the melting away of the horde of Yengi, Roberts—bearing Bowen, who was unconscious part of the time—and Porterfield found a way out. At the surface they saw fall two hundred of the lepers, yet none of the latter moved to attack. The instant the white men left the opening, the Yengi fought in swarms to return.