Chapter 15: Terrors of the Jungle

Towahg had learned the names of these white-skinned ones who came down from whatever heaven was pictured in his rudimentary mind. His pronunciation of them was peculiar: it had not been helped any by reason of Diane’s having been his teacher. Her French accent was delightful to hear, but not helpful to a Dark Moon ape-man who was grappling with English.

But he knew them by name, using always the French “Monsieur,” and when Chet repeated: “Monsieur Kreiss--he go,” pointing through the jungle, and followed this with the command: “Towahg go! Me go!” the ape-man’s unlovely face drew into its hideous grin and he nodded his head violently to show that he understood.

Chet gripped a hand each if Harkness and Diane and clung to them for a moment. Below their knoll the white morning mist drifted eerily toward the lake; the knoll was an island and they three the only living creatures in a living world. It was the first division of their little force, the first parting where any such farewell might be the last. The silence hung heavily about them.

“Au ‘voir,” Diane said softly; “and take no chances. Come back here and we’ll win or lose together.”

“Blue skies,” was Walt Harkness’ good-by in the language of the flyer; “blue skies and happy landings!”

And Chet, before the shrouding mist swallowed him up, replied in kind.

“Lifting off!” he announced as if his ship were rising beneath him, “and the air is cleared. I’ll drop back in four days if I’m lucky.”

Towahg was waiting, curled up for warmth in the hollow of a great tree’s roots. Like all the ape-men he was sullen and taciturn in the chill of the morning. Not until the sun warmed him would he become his customary self. But he grunted when Chet repeated his instructions, “Monsieur Kreiss, he go! Now Towahg go too--go where Monsieur Kreiss go!” and he led the way into the jungle where the scientist had emerged.

Chet followed close through wraith-like, drifting mist. They were ascending a gentle slope; among the trees and tangled giant vines the mist grew thin. Then they were above it, and occasional shafts of golden light shot flatly in to mark the ascending sun.

They were climbing toward the big divide, that much Chet knew. White, ghostly trees gave place to the darker, gloomier growth of the uplands. Strange monstrosities, they had been to Chet when first he had seen them, but he was accustomed to them now and passed unnoticing among their rubbery trunks, so black and shining with morning dew.

Far above a wind moved among the pliant branches that whipped and whirled their elastic lengths into strange, curled forms. Then the miracle of the daily growth of leaves took place, and the rubbery limbs were clothed in green, where golden flowers budded prodigiously before they flashed open and filled the wet air with their fragrance.

They were following the path that Chet had traveled on his morning trips to the divide for a view of the ship. Kreiss would have gone this way, of course, although to Chet, there was no sign of his having passed. Then came the divide, and still Chet followed where Towahg led sullenly across the expanse of barren rocks. Towahg’s head was sunk between his black shoulders; his long arms hung limply; and he moved on with a steady motion of his short, heavily muscled legs, with apparently no thought of where he went or why.

Chet stopped for a moment’s look at the distant sparkle that meant the shining ship, which shone green as on every other day, and he wondered as he had a score of times if it might be possible for them to make a suit--a bag to enclose his head, or a gas-mask--anything that could be made gas-tight: and could be supplied with air. Then he thought of the bow that was slung on his shoulder and the stone ax at his belt. These were their implements: these were all they had ... Suddenly he began to walk rapidly down the slope after Towahg who was almost to the trees.

Again they were among the black rubbery growth. It rose from a tangle of mammoth leafed vines and creepers that wove themselves into an impassable wall--impassable until Towahg lifted a huge leaf here, swung a hanging vine there, and laid open a passage through the living labyrinth.

“How did Kreiss ever find his way?” Chet asked himself. And then he questioned: “Did he come this way? Is Towahg on the trail?”

Again he repeated his instructions to the ape-man, and he showed his own wonder as to which way they should go.

The sun must have done its work effectively, for now Towahg’s wide grin was in evidence. He nodded vigorously, then dropped to one knee and motioned for Chet to see for himself, as he pointed to his proof.

Chet stared at the unbroken ground. Was a tiny leaf crushed? It might have been, but so were a thousand others that had fallen from above. He shook his head, and Towahg could only show his elation by hopping ludicrously from one foot to the other in a dance of joy.