CHAPTER X
Kirby, already falling back toward the other girls, caught Naida up in
his arms, and ran.
"Nini!" he bellowed. "Ivana! Get the rifles!"
While the two whom he had ordered sprang to a corridor, and four others
followed, Kirby fell in with the others and dropped Naida on her feet.
Sick as he was, there was still a ray of hope, because the hard-headed
precaution he had taken against treachery this morning was to have Nini
and Ivana bring the rifles here and hide them.
The first of the ape-men, snarling, laughing, had hopped beyond the
altar, and the yellow foam of madness was slavering from his jaws. Over
his shoulder he howled some jargon which made his hairy legion struggle
to catch up with him.
"Have you got any puff balls?" Kirby snapped at Naida.
She shook her head numbly, just as Nini and Ivana swung forward with the
Mannlichers.
"No. But you had sense enough to bring the rifles! Oh, what does it
mean?"
"The Duca has sold himself out to the ape-man! He was helpless against
us, and has brought them to destroy us for him. Here, Ivana, give me a
rifle! Everyone for herself!"
The next moment he had a Mannlicher at his shoulder.
* * * * *
As the thing kicked, an ape who would have reached him in two more jumps
crashed over with his heart torn out, the temple echoed with sound which
threatened to rip its solid walls apart, and bright flashes at Kirby's
right and left told him that other rifles were getting under way.
He fired again, twice more, slaughtering an ape with each shot. The five
other rifles were creating havoc.
Blocked by a dozen torn and bleeding bodies on the floor, the
reenforcements which still poured from the corridor, began to mill
around amongst themselves, and the forward charge slowed down. All the
panic which had sent the ape-men scuttling from the beach at their first
experience of gunfire, seemed ready to break loose again now.
Kirby felt it was good enough for the work of a minute.
"Get into line as I showed you how!" he shouted. "Rifles in the front
rank, the others behind them. We're all right now! Keep firing!"
"Keep behind me!" he ordered Naida, still unarmed.
Then he placed a shell in the chest of one brute who was broader and
heavier than the others--a leader--and saw that he had increased the
demoralization; and from the hastily-formed front rank a volley leaped
hot and jagged.
Then the rout which had threatened broke loose. As eight ape-men slumped
into blubbering, bleeding heaps, the milling remainder of the horde
turned, and in a fighting, scrambling frenzy attempted to get back to
the corridor.
Kirby let his triumph take the form of thoughts about what he would do
to the Duca when that personage could be rounded up.
"Follow after them!" he ordered. "Don't stop until we have located the
Duca. He is the one we must settle--"
* * * * *
But he never finished.
As he himself, holding fire for a second, prepared to follow up the
retreat, he found himself confronted by the utterly unexpected.
A voice unquestionably the Duca's began to shout orders at the ape-men
from somewhere down the corridor! And, riot or no riot, the tones of
that voice seemed to inspire the creatures with more fear than the rifle
fire.
So suddenly the change came, that by the time Kirby flung his rifle
again to his shoulder, the crazy retreat had been halted, and as he
fired again, the ape-men swung in their tracks and began to charge!
There was no time to guess by what power the Duca had turned the tables.
There was not even time for orders. Kirby fired twice, knowing that the
ape-men had been infused with some spirit which would bring them on in
spite of rifle fire.
Naida, unarmed, cried out behind him, and he shoved his gun at her.
"Take it!"
He had just inserted a new clip. He handed her others.
"Fire for your lives!" he shouted to the girls.
"But you!" Naida gasped. "You are unarmed!"
"I'll be all right."
On the floor lay a jagged, hand-chipped knife of obsidion which had
fallen as some ape died. Kirby grabbed it.
* * * * *
In another second the flood of ape-men had burst in all its fury over
him. Crashing, thundering shots were dinning in his ears, animal death
screams and the Valkyrie battle cries of the girls filled the temple. He
could not tell how many of the apes were fighting him. As a cave-man's
club whizzed past his head, he drove his knife once, and yanked it
dripping from hairy, yielding flesh to plunge it again. A sudden
side-step carried him away from another assailant. He dropped the knife
to snatch the gigantic club of one of the creatures he had killed.
Quicker in every movement than the ape-men, he laid on, right and left,
with such power that blood spurted in a dozen places, and heads were
split open on every side. And because of his speed, the frantic, clumsy
blows and knife thrusts which were directed at him proved harmless.
A terrific drive which smashed a snarling face into pulp, left Kirby
free for a second, and he emerged from the first round of battle ready
to cut in and help the girls. But then he saw that he had gotten
separated from the main body.
"Naida!" he called. "Naida!"
A series of shots answered him, and as several apes fell, a gap was
opened through which he saw her conducting a well ordered retreat of all
the girls toward the dark corridors surrounding the temple. Again Kirby
fell to with his club, swinging, hacking, fighting with his whole
strength to catch up. He made headway, and hope began to come again. The
ape-men would not kill, or even harm, the girls. What they wanted was to
carry them off. If he and Naida together could get their party rounded
up in the corridors, the chances were good.
"Naida!" he shouted again. "Coming!"
Battering down an ape in front of him, he jumped up on the corpse, and
saw that already the vanguard of girls had reached the first sheltering
corridor. Naida had been cut off from the others by eight or ten apes.
But even so her fire made her mistress of the situation, and she seemed
all right.
It was just as Kirby started to jump down from the corpse that he saw
something which put another complexion on the matter, and left him
frozen where he was.
* * * * *
Behind Naida, directly in the path in which her slavering aggressors
were slowly forcing her, a huge stone slab in the temple floor had begun
to tilt up as if it were a trapdoor raised by an invisible hand. Within
the yawning opening, Kirby caught a glimpse of stone steps winding down
into blackness.
In a flash he saw that it was Naida, and her alone, that the ape-men
were after. The Duca's determination was to capture her, and it was the
presence of this trapdoor, making capture possible, which had brought on
the second charge of the apes.
A scream, high and wild, from Naida released Kirby from his trance of
horror. He leaped off the corpse, and smashed a suddenly presented skull
like an egg shell. Momentarily he saw Naida, too terrified to fire,
staring at the open trapdoor. Kirby felled two apes and felt their blood
on his arms.
"Ivana!" he yelled. "Help Naida, for God's sake!"
An answering shout, not from Ivana alone but from many girls, encouraged
him, and he swung his club with a speed and force which would let
nothing stand before him. But then another scream from Naida rang in his
ears.
"Naida!" he shouted. "It's all right! We're coming!"
He knew, though, that it _wasn't_ all right. Fighting like a maniac, he
opened another lane down which he glimpsed her. Fighting still, in a
last terrific effort to force his way down the lane to her side, he saw
the black opening gape at her feet; and, as Naida screamed again, a
dozen hairy arms reached it at once, twisted the empty rifle out of her
hands, and lifted her shining body as if it had been a feather.
Shouts and murderous fire were coming from the other girls, and Kirby
swung his club as never before. But even as he fell upon the last two or
three apes which kept him away from Naida, those who had snatched her,
bolted down the steps.
Kirby was left with the memory of Naida's great eyes fixed upon his,
fear-filled, beseeching his protection. In a second, the ponderous
trapdoor crashed into place, and she was gone.