The Adventure MEGAPACK ®. Уильям Хоуп Ходжсон

his gaze from those points of flame, he might fool them both. But his momentary return to awareness was gone. Impelled by a power he could not resist, he was forced to watch the pin-pricks. Sound faded from his consciousness. The world vanished. He was alone in space with beacons of light, which he must reach. But his legs would not hasten, nor stop moving. He could deviate neither to the left, nor the right.

      * * * *

      On the deck, one or two of the crew tore their gaze from the significant silhouettes on the mast, and buried their faces in trembling hands. Their strength was gone. They could no longer watch. The face of the little Englishman was wooden in expression. His fingers played nervously over the barrel of his gun. Drops of perspiration rolled unheeded down his cheeks.

      Mazpa, scales shining, calmly proceeded on his journey. Once more he was happy—seeking his prey on a smooth, tall tree.

      The song of the flute rose in the air, sure, unwavering, gaining strength with every precious moment. It soared above the deck, clear, confident, wheedling. It wailed, sighed, cajoled. Never had Sally so played before. Never, probably, would he so play again, for now he was playing for the tremendous stake of a human life. Through the black reed he begged and called. The song was seductive—a beautiful woman begging a favor, a lover wooing, persuasive, tender. Mazpa’s flat ugly head swayed in time to the music, but his beady eyes remained fixed on the Chinaman, so near him now. The fangs darted against the sky in a fine forked thread of black. The flute sobbed and pleaded. Mazpa’s head swayed slowly, lazily. The flute never ceased to beg. Mighty, ceaseless undulations—a shrill soft voice, wheedling, caressing—coils gleaming, flashing as they moved along the shining mast in the light of the sun, deliberately, inch by inch, scaly arch by scaly arch, giant coil by giant coil—still the seductive voice, the wheedling cajolery.

      * * * *

      A moment pregnant with suspense, teeming with hope, with fear—cessation of motion, climax of sound—awful silence—a moment brief, yet measured by aeons. Again the undulations; the shrill, sweet summons.

      Yen Sing, two tiny points light suddenly flashing from his consciousness, pitched into the blankness they had left. The sailors, swiftly galvanized into action by sharp, almost hysterical orders from the fat Englishman, who threw his gun clattering onto the deck to help them, caught the yellow man in a blanket and rolled him onto the deck.

      A shudder convulsed the thin frame—and then another. His hands were icy, inert. One of the sailors chafed them roughly, his own none too warm. Yen Sing thought himself dead, the thin sweet voice of Flute piercing loud in his ears. With a shriek he rolled over, his eyes starting from his head. The two devils were conducting his soul to its allotted hell!

      * * * *

      San Francisco spread a dust-colored haze over the horizon. White-faced sailors were clustered about him. This was the deck of the jungle-ship. And, amazing spectacle! His mouth dropped widely open; perspiration stood in droplets on his forehead.

      Red-headed Sally, his face like paste sprinkled with the cinnamon of his freckles, backed slowly out of sight behind the cabin. Between his lips was a long, black reed, from which issued compelling music, and after him, his eyes half-closed, his head swaying in time to the motion of his coils, while the sailors stood rigid with fascinated repulsion, glided Mazpa, a dazed captive.

      A glass was pressed against the Chinaman’s bloodless lips. He opened them, and swallowed automatically. His throat burned, but the reality of the world begun to return.

      Sally appeared on the deck, walking unsteadily.

      “You’d orter see him, fellers,” he said, swaying up to the still transfixed group. “All curled up for a nice nap, quiet as a lamb.” Then, more jerkily, “Give me a drink, quick!”

      He would have fallen, had not the little Englishman, who had followed him across the deck, caught his arm.

      Yen Sing, kneeling there, his bright, almond-slanted eyes turning from one to the other of the crowd, slowly comprehended. The Flute, then, was a conqueror of devils, and Mazpa’s evil struggle for one more soul had failed just as it was ended, because of Flute, who lived in a black reed and spoke with a shrill voice. Here was a god more powerful than those he had foresworn, a white man’s God, and it had saved him—him!

      He clasped Sally’s wide-trousered leg.

      “Let me worship thy strange god, oh, Sally,” he murmured in his native tongue.