Uncharted Seas (25 page)

From time to time De Brissac glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist-watch. The hands crept on with deadly slowness; it was past midnight when he spoke in a low voice to Basil, and receiving no reply, guessed that his friend had, after all, dropped into a doze, but Yonita answered him in a soft whisper.

‘You were so quiet I thought you too had fallen asleep, and that I was watching for you instead.’

‘No,’ he smiled in the darkness, ‘I’m used to long spells of duty, so I don’t find it very irksome to watch all night; but you, I had hoped you were asleep. Try counting sheep jumping over a hedge. If you could sleep a little it would shorten this time of waiting so much for you.’

‘I cannot,’ she muttered; ‘in our present pass I do not think I could sleep if we were here for a week. I’m frightened, and I’m cold. Oh, so cold.’

He stretched out his hand, and, putting it round her shoulders drew her towards him. ‘
Ma pauvre petite
, cuddle up to me; that will make you a little warmer. If he could know how we’re having to pass the night I don’t think your
fiancé
would mind, do you?’

She crept gratefully into his embrace and snuggled her head down just below his chin so that he could feel her dark, silky hair against the lower side of his right cheek. ‘My
fiancé
?’ she asked, in a surprised tone, ‘why should he mind?’

De Brissac was silent for a moment. He knew quite well that if he were engaged to a young woman he would mind her snuggling up to another man as quickly and warmly as Yonita had
done to him, very much indeed, unless it were in equally exceptional circumstances; but her innocence seemed so transparent that he was loath to put his thoughts into words. After all, she was little more than a child, although an exceptionally well-developed one. ‘
Je ne sais pas
,’ he replied vaguely, ‘but
fiancés
are sometimes apt to be jealous without reason.’

She gave a funny little laugh and said: ‘We are aware in some degree of the customs of the outside world through the American whaling men and the two German sailors, who are the most recently come amongst us. I had forgotten that your ways are somewhat different from ours where love-making is concerned.’

‘
Vraiment
!’ De Brissac slowly moved his chin, lightly caressing her dark head that lay beneath it. ‘Do tell me in what way your customs differ from ours. Like many Frenchmen, I think that love is one of the most important things in life, and I am tremendously interested in all the forms it takes. Apart from—shall we say—just a little practice on my own account, I’ve studied the native customs in all the countries where I’ve been stationed as a soldier.’

Yonita chuckled again. ‘Just a little practice! Methinks you are being too modest,
Monsieur le Capitaine
. ’Twould not be the first time, I vow, that a woman has told you how very good-looking you are, with your nice, bronzed face and merry eyes. You are brave, too. I have had proof of that—in fact you are altogether a very nice person indeed. I do not believe this story that women have been so cruel to you that you have only had just a
little
practice in making love.’

De Brissac grinned to himself in the darkness and pressed Yonita more closely to him. ‘If you will, then, I confess, Mademoiselle, that I have had my fair share of the joy of life; in fact, I have never lost an opportunity of making love to any girl who pleased me, providing my honour was not concerned. I would be making love to you at this very moment, uncomfortable as we are, if it were not that you had spoken of your engagement.’

‘I have a particular regard for Deveril,’ said Yonita solemnly. ‘I am more devoted to him than I am or could be to anyone else in the world, but, all the same, as I was about to tell you, our ideas about these things in my island are quite different from yours.’

‘You excite my curiosity, Mademoiselle. Also, I will freely confess my hopes, since I thought you utterly adorable from the very first moment I set eyes upon you.’

‘I do not wish to forfeit your good opinion of me,
Monsieur le Capitaine
, but in our island.… Hush! What is that?’

For a moment they sat silent, listening intently. From somewhere out upon the rocky foreshore there came a stealthy tap—tap—tap.

Yonita let out a muffled cry and drew herself sharply free of De Brissac’s embrace. He kept a firm hold on her with one hand, but leaned forward peering into the darkness.

‘What is it?’ murmured Basil starting up from his uneasy doze.

‘Silence,’ snapped De Brissac. ‘Listen!’

This time all three of them heard it—a sudden slither of stones and then again the horrid tap—tap—tap.

In an instant they were on their feet, and De Brissac was roughly shaking Corncob out of his slumber.

The two white men gripped their Winchesters and Corncob the automatic that De Brissac had lent him. De Brissac thrust Yonita behind them into the deepest recess of the shallow cave, and stepped out into the darkness, his rifle poised ready.

‘Stay, I beg you,’ she pleaded, and a moment later he saw that there was no point in advancing farther. He could see nothing in the utter blackness that blanketed them in and it was sheer stupidity to risk being caught out in the open. The cave was hardly a cave in the true sense, since its greatest depth in the low wall of rock was no more than six feet, but at least the rock provided protection for their backs if some vile monster was coming up out of the weed at them.

Tap—tap—tap—the noise came again—and another slither of stones. Silence fell; for several moments they strained their ears, until they could hear the blood drumming in them from their quickened heart-beats.

‘It’s nothing,’ muttered Basil, ‘or whatever it was has gone.’ He had hardly spoken when there came the sound of a loud splash, and further sharp, clear tapping so that it sounded now as though half a dozen small hammers were being beaten at the same time upon the ringing rock.

Corncob’s knees began to knock together. The misty air about them was still damp and cold, but he was in a bath of perspiration; his teeth chattered, and his eyes bulged from his head. ‘I’se scared, Bass, I’se scared,’ he gibbered suddenly. ‘Dem’s unholy things—coming to get us—out o’ de night.’

‘Quiet!’ said De Brissac sharply. Silence fell again; moments that seemed ages drifted by while they stood with muscles
tensed, gripped by the stark fear of the unknown. The murk had lightened slightly; a faint, misty shimmer from the hidden moon low on the horizon gave just sufficient light for them to see each other’s outlines indistinctly at close quarters.

The sounds came once more, nearer now, a loud, horrid tapping and clicking upon the rocks. Corncob was moaning softly in an extremity of terror. Suddenly, before the others could stop him, he threw down the revolver and dashed out of the cave, stumbling over the jagged rocks that he could not see, away from the creatures that were approaching.

‘Come back!’ yelled Basil. ‘Come back, you fool!’

De Brissac plunged forward in pursuit; Yonita, sensing rather than seeing the Frenchman’s intention, flung both arms round his waist and clung to him with all her might.

‘Let go!’ cried De Brissac furiously, ‘let go! Anything may happen to that fool unless I can get him back.’

‘No, no, stay here, stay here. It’s your only chance. You will be killed yourself,’ she cried, fighting to maintain her hold on him like a small tiger-cat.

Even as they were struggling the tapping noise ceased and a great rushing slither took its place. The unseen horror passed some yards in front of them, no more than a long, irregular outline about twenty feet in length and nearly shoulder high. In a second it was gone again, swiftly following on the heels of the flying Negro.

De Brissac had given in to Yonita’s pleadings, and for grim seconds they stood there huddled together, listening breathlessly as the slithering sound died away in the distance.

Suddenly a hoarse scream came muffled through the murk. Again and again it pierced the gloom, chilling their hearts by its sheer, unadulterated terror. The screams were followed by one long, whimpering wail—then there was again deadly silence.

The palms of Basil’s hands were wet. De Brissac passed his handkerchief over his perspiring face. Yonita was sobbing softly as she clung to him. For a quarter of an hour they remained standing there, transfixed with an utter fear of the incredibly beastly thing which had come up out of the weed and slain Corncob. There are few brave soldiers who have not known fear, and De Brissac’s colonial experience had provided him with a fair share of tight corners, but never in his life had he been faced with any experience so frightful.

It was the awful fear of some nameless evil which held them
spellbound. If they could have seen the things that threatened them they would have at least been able to take some steps for their protection, but such creatures as might possibly live in this loathsome weed sea were utterly beyond all ordinary imagination. They could only wait, clinging to the scant shelter of their shallow cave, peering out into the darkness.

The moon had risen and its light filtered greyly through the mist which seemed to have lightened a little. At a distance of a couple of feet they could now make out each other’s forms, and, vaguely, even each other’s faces, but outside the radius of a couple of yards everything was hidden from them.

With unsteady fingers Basil fumbled for his cigarettes, got one out, and, forgetting the balloons, lit it.

‘Put that out, you fool,’ De Brissac snapped, as the match burst into flame. ‘The thing is probably still on the island and you’re giving our position away.’

‘Sorry,’ Basil murmured shakily, stubbing out the cigarette against the low cliff on his right. ‘I don’t think I’ve given anything away though. The thing that came out of the weed knows where we are. It came straight at us and would have attacked us by now if it hadn’t been for that poor devil, Corncob, dashing out into the open.’

‘That’s true,’ De Brissac muttered. ‘I’m afraid I’m a bit jumpy.’

Basil gave a rueful laugh. ‘Aren’t we all. I’m in a bath of perspiration. What sort of brute d’you think it was?’

‘God knows! It couldn’t have been an octopus. Octopuses live among the rocks and caves under water but they never come up on land.’

Yonita ceased her sobbing. ‘Methinks—methinks I know,’ she stammered, but De Brissac checked her.

‘Wait—there it is again.’

Once more the stealthy tap—tap—tap reached their straining ears; coming this time from the direction in which Corncob had fled. In an agony of apprehension they awaited the beast’s approach. The tapping became a rapid, irregular tattoo. Pebbles and rocks tinkled and tumbled as the creature advanced and the awful scrambling noise came closer and closer.

Then it stopped—ten paces away. Suddenly it started again. Next moment a thing that seemed to have five great humps loomed up sideways-on out of the murk and came charging at them.

The rifles cracked. The roar of their explosion echoed and reverberated against the rocky wall of the shallow cave. The flames from their barrels stabbed the black night and lit it for a second with the blinding glare of a photographer’s flashlight.

An instant later the darkness, blacker than ever by contrast, blinded them utterly so that they could not see a single thing, but, in the moment of the flash, a clear and terrifying picture of their enemy had been indelibly imprinted upon the minds of them all. They were faced by five giant crabs.

The creatures were enormous beyond anything ever seen in any natural history museum. Reared up on their curved, hairy, back legs they stood shoulder high; their dead-black eyes, protruding on thick, six-inch stalks over their flat backs, were as large as tennis balls. Their oval shells were from five to six feet wide across the back and above them in the air they waved huge pincers, of gigantic strength, as thick as a man’s thigh.

Basil and De Brissac fired again, both aiming blind but firing low in the hope of hitting the creature’s exposed bodies.

No sound came from the dumb brutes to show if any of them were hit, but a loud click suggested that a bullet had ricocheted off one of the creatures’ backs or claws. Both men knew that even armour-piercing bullets could not penetrate the solid shells of beasts of such a size. Their only hope of saving themselves from being torn to pieces by those terrific pincers, which could have clipped away a human limb as easily as one cuts the stem of a rose with a pair of garden scissors, lay in hitting them in their under parts, where softer shell covered their lungs and intestines.

At the blast of the rifles the creatures had drawn back a little, but now they came on again, scrambling sideways over the rocks with fierce determination, each waving one great claw high in the air. For a moment a rift in the mist enabled the gentle light
of the rising moon to penetrate and outline these macabre monsters of the weed.

De Brissac fired at the upraised middle of the nearest brute. Its pincer flapped violently and it toppled forward. Immediately the others flung themselves upon it with cannibal lust. In its death agony it clipped off the pointed leg of one of the others but they threw it over on its back, nipped off its eyes and dug their claws deep into its body; tearing at it till it was completely disembowelled.

Basil was trembling violently, but, with a supreme effort, he steadied himself, took careful aim, and fired again. Both he and De Brissac had forgotten the danger of an explosion from the balloons which were only a few feet behind then. His bullet ripped away the soft shell under the throat of another of the huge crustaceans.

Two of the others, seeing it wounded, attacked it instantly. Pincer seized pincer, and a silent, gruesome fight began, but the third unwounded brute now came swiftly sideways at the human prey.

De Brissac and Basil fired at it simultaneously, but, in the bad light, their aim was uncertain and their bullets apparently had no effect. Next second the monster was right upon them, stretching out with one great claw for De Brissac’s neck and with the other at Yonita.