I nodded. The wild yells of the natives rose above the crackle of the arquebus fire. They were massed thick about the great warehouse across the river.
"They plan a great rush," said Dom Vincente. "They will swarm clear over the palisade, methinks. Ha!"
A crash that seemed to rip the skies apart! A burst of flame that mounted to the stars! The castle rocked with the explosion. Then silence, as the smoke, drifting away, showed only a great crater where the warehouse had stood.
I could tell of how Dom Vincente led a charge, crippled as he was, out of the castle gate and, down the slope, to fall upon the terrified blacks who had escaped the explosion. I could tell of the slaughter, of the victory and the pursuit of the fleeing natives.
I could tell, too, Messieurs, of how I became separated from the band and of how I wandered far into the jungle, unable to find my way back to the coast.
I could tell how I was captured by a wandering band of slave raiders, and of how I escaped. But such is not my intention. In itself it would make a long tale; and it is of de Montour that I am speaking.
I thought much of the things that had passed and wondered if indeed de Montour reached the storehouse to blow it to the skies or whether it was but the deed of chance.
That a man could swim that reptile-swarming river, fiend-driven though he was, seemed impossible. And if he blew up the storehouse, he must have gone up with it.
So one night I pushed my way wearily through the jungle and sighted the coast, and close to the shore a small, tumbledown but of thatch. To it I went, thinking to sleep therein if insects and reptiles would allow.
I entered the doorway and then stopped short. Upon a makeshift stool sat a man. He looked up as I entered and the rays of the moon fell across his face.
I started back with a ghastly thrill of horror. It was de Montour, and the moon was full!
Then as I stood, unable to flee, he rose and came toward me. And his face, though haggard as of a man who has looked into hell, was the face of a sane man.
"Come in, my friend," he said, and there was a great peace in his voice. "Come in and fear me not. The fiend has left me forever."
"But tell me, how conquered you?" I exclaimed as I grasped his hand.
"I fought a frightful battle, as I ran to the river," he answered, "for the fiend had me in its grasp and drove me to fall upon the natives. But for the first, time my soul and mind gained ascendency for an instant, an instant just long enough to hold me to my purpose. And I believe the good saints came to my aid, for I was giving my life to save life.
"I leaped into the river and swam, and in an instant the crocodiles were swarming about me.
"Again in the clutch of the fiend I fought them, there in the river. Then suddenly the thing left me.
"I climbed from the river and fired the warehouse."
"The explosion hurled me hundreds of feet, and for days I wandered witless through the jungle."
"But the full moon came, and came again, and I felt not the influence of the fiend.
"I am free, free!" And a wondrous note of exultation, nay, exaltation, thrilled his words:
"My soul is free. Incredible as it seems, the demon lies drowned upon the bed of, the river, or else inhabits the body of one of the savage reptiles that swim the ways of the Niger."
THE END
The Weird West Stories:
Table of Contents
The Horror From The Mound
Table of Contents
STEVE BRILL did not believe in ghosts or demons. Juan Lopez did. But neither the caution of the one nor the sturdy skepticism of the other was shield against the horror that fell upon them—the horror forgotten by men for more than three hundred years—a screaming fear monstrously resurrected from the black lost ages.
Yet as Steve Brill sat on his sagging stoop that last evening, his thoughts were as far from uncanny menaces as the thoughts of man can be. His ruminations were bitter but materialistic. He surveyed his farmland and he swore. Brill was tall, rangy and tough as boot-leather—true son of the iron-bodied pioneers who wrenched West Texas from the wilderness. He was browned by the sun and strong as a longhorned steer. His lean legs and the boots on them showed his cowboy instincts, and now he cursed himself that he had ever climbed off the hurricane deck of his crankeyed mustang and turned to farming. He was no farmer, the young puncher admitted profanely.
Yet his failure had not all been his fault. Plentiful rain in the winter —so rare in West Texas—had given promise of good crops. But as usual, things had happened. A late blizzard had destroyed all the budding fruit. The grain which had looked so promising was ripped to shreds and battered into the ground by terrific hailstorms just as it was turning yellow. A period of intense dryness, followed by another hailstorm, finished the corn.
