Again, using both hands for steadiness, she did his bidding.
And one by one as she filled the little flasks of chained death, the engineer stoppered them with his left hand.
When the last was done, Stern drew a tremendous sigh, and dashed the sweat from his forehead with a gesture of victory.
Into the residue in the dish he poured a little nitric acid.
"_That"s_ got no kick left in it, now, anyhow," said he relieved. "The HNO3 tames it, quick enough. But the bottles--take care--don"t tip one over, as you love your life!"
He stood up, slowly, and for a moment remained there, his face in the shadow of the lamp-shade, holding to the table-edge for support, with his left hand.
At him the girl looked.
"And now," she began, "now--?"
The question had no time for completion. For even as she spoke, a swift little something flicked through the window, behind them.
It struck the opposite wall with a sharp _crack!_ then fell slithering to the floor.
Outside, against the building, they heard another and another little shock; and all at once a second missile darted through the air.
This. .h.i.t the lamp. Stern grabbed the shade and steadied it. Beatrice stooped and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the thing from where it lay beside the table.
Only one glance Stern gave at it, as she held it up. A long reed stem he saw wrapped at its base with cotton fibers--a fish-bone point, firm-lashed--and on that point a dull red stain, a blotch of something dry and shiny.
"Blow-gun darts!" cried he. "Poisoned! They"ve seen the light--got our range! They"re up there in the tree-tops--shooting at us!"
With one puff, the light was gone. By the wrist he seized Beatrice. He dragged her toward the front wall, off to one side, out of range.
"The flasks of Pulverite! Suppose a dart should hit one?" exclaimed the girl.
"That"s so! Wait here--I"ll get them!"
But she was there beside him as, in the thick dark, he cautiously felt for the deadly things and found them with a hand that _dared not_ tremble. And though here, there, the little venom-stings whis-s-shed over them and past them, to shatter on the rear wall, she helped him bear the vials, all nine of them, to a place of safety in the left-hand front corner where by no possibility could they be struck.
Together then, quietly as wraiths, they stole into the next room; and there, from a window not as yet attacked, they spied out at the dark tree-tops that lay in dense ma.s.ses almost brushing the walls.
"See? See there?" whispered Stern in the girl"s ear. He pointed where, not ten yards away and below, a blacker shadow seemed to move along a hemlock branch. Forgotten now, his wounds. Forgotten his loss of blood, his fever and his weakness. The sight of that creeping stealthy attack nerved him with new vigor. And, even as the girl looked, Stern drew his revolver.
Speaking no further word, he laid the ugly barrel firm across the sill.
Carefully he sighted, as best he could in that gloom lit only by the stars. Coldly as though at a target-shot, he brought the muzzle-sight to bear on that deep, crawling shadow.
Then suddenly a spurt of fire split the night. The crackling report echoed away. And with a bubbling scream, the shadow loosened from the limb, as a ripe fruit loosens.
Vaguely they saw it fall, whirl, strike a branch, slide off, and disappear.
All at once a pattering rain of darts flickered around them. Stern felt one strike his fur jacket and bounce off. Another grazed the girl"s head. But to their work they stood, and flinched not.
Now her revolver was speaking, in antiphony with his; and from the branches, two, three, five, eight, ten of the ape-things fell.
"Give it to "em!" shouted the engineer, as though he had a regiment behind him. "_Give_ it to "em!" And again he pulled the trigger.
The revolver was empty.
With a cry he threw it down, and, running to where the shotgun stood, s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. He scooped into his pocket a handful of sh.e.l.ls from the box where they were stored; and as he darted back to the window, he c.o.c.ked both hammers.
"Poom! _Poom!_"
The deep baying of the revolver roared out in twin jets of flame.
Stern broke the gun and jacked in two more sh.e.l.ls.
Again he fired.
"Good Heaven! How many of "em _are_ there in the trees?" shouted he.
"Try the Pulverite!" cried Beatrice. "Maybe you might hit a branch!"
Stern flung down the gun. To the corner where the vials were standing he ran.
Up he caught one--he dared not take two lest they should by some accident strike together.
"Here--here, now, take _this!_" he bellowed.
And from the window, aiming at a pine that stood seventy-five feet away--a pine whose branches seemed to hang thick with the Horde"s blowgun-men--he slung it with all the strength of his uninjured arm.
Into the gloom it vanished, the little meteorite of latent death, of potential horror and destruction.
"If it hits "em, they"ll think we _are_ G.o.ds, after all, what?" cried the engineer, peering eagerly. But for a moment, nothing happened.
"Missed it!" he groaned. "If I only had my right arm to use now, I might--"
Far below, down there a hundred feet beneath them and out a long way from the tower base, night yawned wide in a burst of h.e.l.lish glare.
A vast conical hole of flame was gouged in the dark. For a fraction of a second every tree, limb, twig stood out in vivid detail, as that blue-white glory shot aloft.
All up through the forest the girl and Stern got a momentary glimpse of little, clinging Things, crouching misshapen, hideous.
Then, as a riven and distorted whirl burst upward in a huge geyser of annihilation, came a detonation that ripped, stunned, shattered; that sent both the defenders staggering backward from the window.
Darkness closed again, like a gaping mouth that shuts. And all about the building, through the trees, and down again in a t.i.tanic, slashing rain fell the wreckage of things that had been stone, and earth, and root, and tree, and living creatures--that had been--that now were but one indistinguishable ma.s.s of ruin and of death.
After that, here and there, small dark objects came dropping, thudding, crashing down. You might have thought some cosmic gardener had shaken his orchard, his orchard where the plums and pears were rotten-ripe.
"_One!_" cried the engineer, in a strange, wild, exultant voice.