The gray god

THE SHADOW OF THE GOD.

There was no time for delay. They had to do something. To take the offensive was the best plan. Tiki pointed out the opening of an almost closed jungle trail. They went into it, going as fast as they dared, working toward the far side of the promontory, making for the image.

They came out beneath it at last, at the foot of the towering sculpture. It stood facing a paved terrace, set with flat stones. Great stones had been piled in two walls that left a passageway to the feet of the god. There was a space between his knees. Tiki led the way in.

It was a high chamber into which light filtered down from some opening above where growth masked it. The sides were roughly hewn here and there into dim shapes. There was a flat rock near the entrance on which was set another one from which protruded long timbers, capstan fashion. Tiki pointed to these.

"He say can fixee tlap so no one come in," said the skipper.

Tiki nodded, gesturing. Stanton thought he grasped his meaning.

"All right," he said. "Better send out your men to try and flank that outfit. I'll stay here with Miss Haines and her father. We'll keep Tiki."

They went out, going along the terrace, disappearing in the trees, yellow men intent on battle. The litter was set down on the cavern floor.

Tiki caught hold of one of the timbers set in the stone, motioning to Stanton who set his chest against one opposite. The girl did the same thing with a third. They heaved, without result, put out all their strength in straining effort. The stone began to turn, more readily after the first movement. There was a grating sound beneath their feet.

Tiki stepped back, grinning. Sweat covered him. Stanton and the girl were panting with their efforts, their clothing wet with perspiration. Tiki beckoned Stanton to come to the mouth of the cave and he followed him. There was nothing to see but the empty terrace, the waving woods. But Tiki was satisfied. He pointed at the great slabs before them, gesturing.

Doves cooed. The girl was ministering to her father who was saying something. Then there came the sound of shots, close at hand. Report after report, singly and scattering volleys. They were quite a distance off, but they came nearer. Then died away. Again they broke out, down by the beach, it seemed.

Then the two Chinese who had come ashore bolted out of the bush, carrying their rifles, glancing back. They looked toward the image and sped on without seeing Stanton or Tiki. Tiki grasped him by the arm and drew him in the shadows. He did not want the Chinese to enter the cavern. The girl came and stood beside Stanton.

"Father is sleeping," she said. "I heard the shots."

"We're safe, so far," he said. "Tiki and the god have set some sort of a trap. The trouble is, it may work both ways." Whatever the device was he could see that they might be besieged, held there, without provisions, without water, unless the yellow men conquered.

The Chinese were willing enough, capable enough, he fancied, though he had never seen them shoot. On the other hand, the crew of the Lehua were Solomon Islanders, used to brush warfare, trained fighters, a savage and blood-thirsty outfit, though the Chinese might match them there. When they took to piracy or banditry they were ruthless enough. He imagined the forces might be about evenly matched, but the nature of the ground would break the fighting up more or less into individual skirmishes.

There was silence again. Haines was resting. With care there would be no question of his recovery, but if Loo Fong got the best of it their fates would all be sealed. What would happen to Lucy he dared not consider. They could put up a desperate fight at the last, if they got a chance. There was no exit to the cave, no possible way to climb to the rift.

Doves cooed. The shadows shifted. Once in awhile they heard a distant shot. The forces were split up now, it seemed. Stanton thought of the captain's fear their schooner might be sunk, as Haines's had been. It was a very real peril. He wanted to be out in the vessel, but he could not leave the girl or Haines alone.

Tiki was complacent. He seemed assured that the god in whose belly they were hidden, would properly protect them. He had gone inside, to squat in front of one of the carved figures, passing from that to another. They could hear him chanting monotonously. He had come back to his old home again and he was renewing fealty. This had been the fetish of his father, the wizard, and Tiki was a born tahunga, in his veins the blood of generations of sorcerers who had served a weird priesthood to this ancient statue which far antedated their own original migration to this island.

It was cool inside. Without, the sun blazed down fiercely. The shadows retreated as the fiery orb mounted toward the zenith. It wheeled out of their sight and the shadow of the cliff, the shadow of the image, began to stretch out over the paving between the walls of stone that shut out much of their view.

Tiki came back to the entrance, hunkering down. From some place known to him he had taken weird paraphernalia. He had daubed himself with white and yellow and black, there was an apron about his middle that was made of human hair. He wore a necklace of knuckle-bones, a skullpan hung upon his chest and his arms and legs were decked with circlets of shell and bone and fiber. He had been in his father's make-up repository, Stanton thought.

With him he had brought something that looked like a queer-shaped basket of plaited strips of pliable cane, like matting. He took no notice of them apart, remote, droning out some incantations, watching the creeping shadow.

Stanton remembered something Cheung had said about the shadow of the god. The shadows of all sacred things, even of chiefs, were tabu. To walk in them was death. Yet the shadow of the god fell only at certain hours. Tiki could not have timed any attack that might take place. The combatants seemed to have lost sight of each other, hunting along the trails, hiding in the bush. But Tiki seemed waiting for something with a curious certainty. To him the god was infallible.

Stanton told himself that it was only a barbaric, colossal carving, but even as he held the thought, another came, suggesting that he should have faith. Civilization seemed now to be an unreal thing. They were back in the stone age, to which the island and its departed inhabitants belonged. A superstitious feeling possessed him, not one of fear. The shadow lengthened and still the island was wrapped in silence.

Suddenly he thought he saw the solid forest waver to and fro. The legs of the god, portals to the cave, appeared to move. A tremor ran through the ground and there was a low muttering as of thunder, a hollow rumbling from inside the cave. The girl started up and would have gone inside to her father, but he restrained her. The place might fall in.

Motutabu had once flamed, been thrust up with its riven crags in smoke and steam. Lava had flowed. Now those fires were clogged, the craters choked, but, far below, the interior wrath still raged. This was a temblor, one of the earthquakes that intermittently shook the peaks that had been lifted from the sea. This was a slight shock. No other followed and he let her enter. Haines was still sleeping.

Tiki had risen. To him it was a manifestation that the god was pleased that a faithful believer had returned. He stood erect with the dignity of an oracle. As Stanton watched him he took the strange basketry and placed it over his head. It was a hood that fell below his shoulders. It had trunklike appendages, two holes for eyes that were glazed by fish bladders. It turned him to a grotesque and terrible figure, like a great squid. As he moved, the wicker tentacles writhed.

Something was going to happen. Stanton felt it in his bones. Not another quake. He saw the shadow vanish, melt away, as if the sun had been veiled. Then it appeared again, sharp and distinct. Tiki's chant grew louder, ceased as there came the sound of a brisk fusillade.

Men were coming from the woods, firing back at enemies still hidden. They came into view between the walls. The Chinese captain and his men—fewer now—retreating, kneeling to take aim, then running to kneel again. They passed and, with savage yells, the black men from the Lehua burst into view, charging, Johnson and Loo Fong at their head.

Tiki sent out a yell of defiance, ululating, weird and shrill as it issued from a reeded mouthpiece in the mask. Loo Fong halted and turned, Johnson with him. They stared for a moment and then they saw the girl, who had come, unnoticed by Stanton, to the entrance. Stanton swept her aside, flattening her against the curve of the image's colossal leg, taking place himself on the opposite side as bullets came whining toward them. Tiki had seemingly betrayed them.

He had not moved. He was untouched and again he sent out that piercing challenge as Loo Fong cried out an order and the savage outfit came racing up between the walls, firing their pistols. Now Tiki stepped inside, unhit.

Stanton fired back to stem the stampede. They came leaping on. Lucy Haines fired with him and a black staggered and fell. Johnson was struck, but it did not check him. Their bullets were entering the cave, splaying gray streaks on the rock. Stanton pulled trigger on his last cartridge, missing Loo Fong whose evil face was lit with triumph. They were on the last great slab when Tiki reappeared, sounding his whistling howl.

Stanton saw the rear half of the big slab tilt upward. The whole stone was balanced and it rose smoothly, inexorably. A gulf opened and out of it came a moaning sound like the wash of the sea, far below.

Johnson and Loo Fong were pitched forward, their faces twisted with sudden terror. The angle became acute, and they slid down, dropping their weapons, crouching, clawing uselessly. The mate pitched forward, plunged into the gap. Loo Fong made a desperate spring as he squatted there like a toad. His fingers clutched the nigh edge, the sill of the cave entrance, clung there.

The stone swung on, up and over in a complete revolution. Its edge smashed the fingers of the half-caste and the slab closed him in, leaving bloody smears and remnants on the threshold. There were only the black men left and they stood in a huddled mob before they broke and ran, some trying to climb the walls, appalled at this manifestation of the god.

It was the slab of sacrifice, used on ceremonial occasions where victims were demanded; set as a trap for the unwary, for meddlers.

Tiki had lured them on. He had provided sacrifice. He had appeased the long, unsated appetite of his god, and thus established his priesthood. He had saved Haines, his daughter and Stanton, but they had been bait for the victims.

He had won the day.

The yellow men were coming back, firing at the terrified blacks. The fight had gone out of the islanders. They could not battle with gods. Man after man went down, and then the slaughter swept past and out of view.

Tiki touched Stanton on the shoulder. He had taken off the mask and he went back to the moving capstan stone that had triggered the trap. They took hold of the pole and revolved it.

The grating sound died away and Tiki walked through the entrance, out on the slab, now firm again, turning to crouch and lower his head to the rock in salutation and obeisance.

A hail came from the end of the causeway. It was the Chinese skipper with two of his men. Stanton advanced to meet them.

"They all dead!" he said complacently. There was blood on his clothes and his hands, but his face was clear of all emotion. "Tiki, he fixee. All samee stone give way, I think."

It was over. Two of the Chinese were wounded, one seriously. A third was dead. The captain mentioned it casually. It was all in the day's work.

"Now we catch pearl and go," he said. "Mo' good we sink Lehua. No can take. Too muchee talk, too muchee bobbely that make."

Stanton had forgotten all about the pearls. It had probably been the prime issue in the mind of the skipper. Haines was an incident. He possessed a share if he lived, but that was Cheung's private business. Bringing back the pearls was the captain's affair, whether he found Haines or not. Stanton and the girl, Haines and Tiki, were pawns to the captain.

Cheung, Stanton fancied, was not so cold-blooded, but Cheung was an exceptional Chinaman.

They took up the litter as the rest arrived and marched back, past the out-sprawled corpses of the black men, more sacrifices to the great, gray god. Haines awakened from his semi-stupor, seemingly refreshed. He would recover, though he would probably be lame. Stanton ordered him sent off immediately to the ship with Lucy, to occupy Stanton's own cabin.

"Catch pearl first," said the captain.

Haines smiled for the first time.

"I think they're safe," he said. "There in that pool over there. It is only half-filled at high tide. Moisture wouldn't hurt them, anyway. But there's a crevice near the top, on this side. They're in there, in an oilskin sack. The hole is plugged with seaweed."

They were safe, a bag half-filled with softly shimmering gems of the sea, slightly iridescent, oval, round, pear-shaped, symmetrical, a few of them pink in luster. Stanton could not estimate them, but he knew they represented a fortune. Haines fingered them.

"You can keep some of them, my dear," he said to Lucy. "A third of them are mine. We'll sell what you don't want."

"Sell all of them," she said. "They have cost too much. I couldn't wear them."

The skipper talked with Tiki, who stood apart. Then he came to Stanton.

"Tiki speak he stay along this place," he said. "He like we set up those dlum and those image topside along sing-sing glound."

Stanton looked at Tiki who walked toward him and once more took Stanton's hand and placed it over his heart. Then he pointed to the mountain, toward the god, now hidden by the cape.

The gesture, the desire, were unmistakable. He had come home. Solitude did not bother him. Later he might adventure, bring back a woman, or a dusky harem, but this was his land, his god.

He did not belong in Suva, nor on the other island from which he had fled. Motutabu was his abidingplace, as priest to the graven image.

They left him later, his wishes carried out, standing on the beach, motionless. Stanton felt that they owed him much, but he had owed a debt to Stanton for his rescue. He would have died in Suva. And he had paid his debt. He and the god.

The sunset was flaming back of the island when they made out to sea, two sunken schooners in the bay. Tiki had been presented with the stores of the Lehua, all that he selected.

The face of the image was no longer flaming as they had first seen it. It was gray now, somber but serene. From the mountain came the deep sound of a reverberating drum.

"What you going to do now?" Cheung asked Stanton as they sat in the chamber over the restaurant. Haines was under medical care, a rich man, content to limp, since he could well afford to ride.

"I don't know," Stanton answered. "I'm at a loose end." Cheung smiled, nodded toward the inside rooms where Lucy Haines was talking with Cheung's wife.

"Suppose you ask missy?" he said. "These belong along you. If you like I buy them flom you. Give good plice."

He took a leather sack from his capacious sleeve and poured out pearls into a lacquered bowl. They filled a third of it with milky radiance.

"You, me, Haines, all same divide," said Cheung. "These velly fine pearl. Fifty-sixty thousan' dollah. Why you not ask missy?"

"I think I'll take your advice," said Stanton. The trip back had been a happy one. He was not without foundation for the hope that Lucy might be interested in what he did and where he went.

He was no longer a derelict, no longer in danger of being a beach bum. He was a man of substance.

"You ask now," said Cheung. "I call my wife. I wish you plenty luckee."

THE END.