Page:Weird Tales Volume 2 Number 2 (1923-09).djvu/51
"You know," he observed quietly, "they took my shell-rims, and everything nearer than three yards is just a blur. Only hope I shan't tread on Fido!"
"Stand still!" Waring advised between his teeth. "The damn thing is all over the place. What's she after now? Oh, I see. Sig, your divinity calls you!"
"I believe she intends releasing us all," opined the explorer, still resolutely cheerful. "In that ease, we'll surely get a chance among the five of us."
"Oh, sure! Stiff upper lip and carry on."
To appreciate, however, the real deadliness of their peril was just then far easier than to foresee in what form that hoped-for chance was likely to come.
For one thing, "Fido's" mentality was proving to be as abnormal as its physical proportions. They had at first supposed that the monster merely answered the music as snakes writhe to the charmer's pipes. But its behavior before the cell-rank augured both training and intelligence. It was not dancing now. It was waiting—and what it waited upon was the will of its mistress. As for the thing's destructive capacity, that was obviously terrific. In one lightning sweep it might have involved not five but a dozen men amid taloned coils beside which those of a python would have been easily escapable. The huge poison-fangs with which the first segment of its body was equipped, seemed really superfluous. John B. was the last captive to be released. The number of her victims complete, the girl gestured toward one of the open lanes. With their extraordinary jailors close at heel, the five moved meekly toward the outer court.
CHAPTER TEN THE DANCE
THE proceedings of the next half-hour formed a study in grotesquerie exceeding anything which even the captives' experience of pyramidal customs had led them to look for.
They had, it appeared, been haled forth to take part in the same ceremonial dance which their coming had interrupted the previous evening.
After bringing them out, indeed, the girl herself practically ignored them. As her light feet carried her about the sacred circle, she seemed wholly absorbed in an ecstasy of music and rhythmic motion. But the ghastly enforcer of her will gave the captives every attention.
The thing was clearly no novice in its part. Its age, of course, was unguessable. But one could conceive that years—decades—centuries, perhaps, had seen the slow growth and training of that monstrous votary. Nocturnal by nature, the vast, dull yellow eyes might have been blind as they appeared. If so, the sense of sight was replaced by those other, more mysterious senses which creatures of its species inherit. The whiplike antennae were continually alert. The thing's intelligence, too, seemed not confined to the brain, as in vertebrate animals, but instinct in every part of its active length.
The girl dancer need make no effort to avoid contact with the coils. They avoided her. Her foot could not move quickly enough to tread upon them. But of the unwilling male participants in the rite, the monster was less considerate.
A mere scratch from one of those myriad dagger-pointed talons would have amounted to a severe wound, quite aside from the infection they probably carried. The menace of them was used with amazing skill to force the prisoners around the appointed circle. The stairway proved to be a blessed goal unreachable. At the slightest move in that direction, up would rise a barrier of clawing segments. With bare feet and limbs, to have dared overleaping or standing before it would have been madness, even had not the worser threat of the head and poison fangs hovered ever close above them.
Of the five, Otway's troubles were the most dismaying. In the absence of glasses, his eyes were of little use to him at close range. Again and again, only the guiding hand of a fellow-initiate saved him from calamity. Had the explorer been alone he could not have survived even one round of that horrible, ludicrous, altogether abominable dance.
Yet the indomitable spirit of Otway was first to recognize the ridiculous side of the affair. He and Waring presently joined in a running fire of comment on its absurdities. Tellifer, solemn as ever, moved through the literal—and talon fringed—"mazes of the dance," with an effort at classic dignity which won their high commendation. John B.'s quiet, efficient side-stepping went not unnoted. But it remained for Sigsbee to win the jesters' really whole-hearted approval.
It had dawned on them that the expedition's youngest member was not merely avoiding trouble, like the rest of them. He was actually dancing, modeling his steps on those of their graceful leader, and doing very well indeed at it. Sigsbee was an agile, athletic youth. The "cave-man costume" emphasized a certain grace of body and regularity of feature. Very soon, having perfected the step to suit his ambition, Sigsbee coolly deserted his fellow-captives. Taking advantage of every convenient change in the monster's running coils, he joined the girl.
"There are a lot of these steps," he called back, "that my sister at home taught me. Crazy about this—nature-dancing stuff. Oh, fine! That's a regular—fox-trot—step. Say, you fellows! I've seen this girl—before, somewhere! Been trying—to remember where—ever since last night. Or else she—reminds me of some one."
"She reminded me" — Tellifer avoided a section of talons by one second's time and an undignified bound—"she reminded me," he repeated more forcibly, "of a girl in a poem. But not any more. Blessed Damozel!" Another leap and increased bitterness. "Where are her three lilies? Where is her gold bar of heaven? Where—her sense of fitness? I could have pardoned the —jaguar-hide—if she hadn't forced one on me. I could have forgiven the —undignified dancing—if she hadn't made me join in it. Now I disown the comparison. All she has is—the stars in her hair and the—eyes—and they are basely deceptive. She is not a Blessed Damozel! She's a—"
He hesitated for a fresh comparison. When found, it would probably have been inoffensive enough. Tellifer's classic fancy rarely sought force in vulgarity. But young Sigsbee had again been indulging at close range in glimpses of the eyes Tellifer slandered. He came to an abrupt halt, fists clenched.
"Not another word, there!" he called sharply.
The girl was within a yard of him. As if in appreciation of her gallant defender, she swayed still nearer, stretched one hand and touched Sigsbee lightly on the shoulder. At the same time, she lowered the pipes from her lips. She pointed with them toward one of the five men.
There followed a swift yellow flash—a sharp, broken-off cry.
Again the pipes were set to the girl's lips. Up swayed the colossal yellow head to resume its guardianship of the victims. But there were only four of them now who required guarding!