Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 188: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

eS -Poal’’ I shouted. 186 right hand, furiously, I forced a way. Though I could not see her now, in the blind blackness of the clump, I felt I must be near her. I held out my hand. I shouted to make myself heard in all that whispering of bamboo and uproar of stones. “Give me your hand, Belun-Mea, Poa- “Put back your hand to e!”? My outreaching hand came in contact with a hand. I felt slim long fingers, a palm femininely smooth and soft. Tightly and securely I grasped that hand. And thereupon I realized. I could not see that hand in the blackness, but there is nothing so acutely susceptible as the sense of touch. And my sense of touch told me now that though the fingers of that hand were long and slim as a woman’s, that hand was a huge hand, inches longer than my own big hand. And there was hair on the back of that hand. Though the palm was soft as a woman’s, there was hair on the back of that hand just like mine, only denser. It was not Belun-Mea Poa-Poa’s hand, no woman’s hand at all. It was the hand of a man, a man bigger than I, a huge man. It was the hand of the Monster Man! He was with us in the bamboo, with us in the whispering blackness, walking be- tween my bride and me, spying upon us amid the swishing stalks, and yet I could not see him in the blackness—the unspeak- able thing! I dropped his hand. I almost dropped the basket under my arm. I reeled back, near to fainting, nearer to vomiting. And then—then some one rushed through the bamboo, was in my arms, was clinging to my neck. It was Belun-Mea Poa-Poa, and she was whimpering: “He brushed past mein the dark. He was close behind me—the Monster Man! Oh, take me back, take me back!” With her nearness, her dire need of me, strength came back to me in a flood. I lifted her in my arms and, she clutching the rattan basket now, I crashed head down, furiously, straight through the bamboo, and out into the Avenue of Palms. There I turned, and, terror at my heels, I ran, blindly ran, directly up the center of that Avenue of Palms. I know that along the whole length of that avenue, I encountered no living soul. I know no more. For when I came to a knowledge of my self, I was staggering up Adventure the nine stone stairs of the Elephant Stone with that double burden in my arms—my bride and the god. I stumbled over old Mokong in the dark » bend of the corridor. Upon the couch in the cave gently I placed Golden Feather of Flame. I straightened quickly then to look about me. But the Elephant Cave was ex- actly as it had been, save only the stone walls were thrumming with that overtone of sound, and the torches in those walls were burned down to mere stumps. CHAPTER XXVI AFTER WHAT MANNER HYDE AND HIS BRIDE AWAITED THE DARK HEN the singing of the stones died away later that morning, and simul- taneous with the light of dawn I grew calm enough to question my wife as to who was that Monster Man. “T do not know who he is,’” she answered hastily. “But I do know he is no Poonan; for he is bigger than any Poonan, bigger ~ even than you, my Raj.” “Has he been here long?” *“‘Ever since I can remember. He is the vassal now of Flower of the Silver Star, but he was the vassal of her mother, who was High Priestess before her.’”» “But where did he come from? Who is “That I do not know at all, my Raj. I know little of him. Indeed, in the bamboo brake this night I came closer to him than ever I came before in all my life. It was terrifying. Let us not talk more of him.” But I persuaded her to conquer her recol- lections of that night and to tell me what she knew of the Monster Man. Trwy, as she had said, she knew but little; and yet as little as she knew, none of the Poonan, save only Lip-Plak-Tengga, knew more. It appeared that the Monster Man was a familiar of the High Priestess. He dwelt in the caves beneath the cyclopean cave- temple of the Dobo; and just as Lip-Plak- Tengga herself had told me, he attended upon her slightest call like some bad antuy or evil spirit. Never had he been seen in the sunlight. Of course, he had appeared in the daytime, during great' ceremonies in the Stone Dodo, just as he had on the occasion when I first saw him; but just as on that occasion he had ch comichbooks