Uncharted Seas (26 page)

De Brissac leapt aside, escaping the snap of the pincer by inches.

Yonita screamed and fell right under the beast’s body. Basil clubbed his rifle, and leaping forward gave a mighty sideways sweep, bashing in both of the brute’s eyes with one swift stroke.

Blinded now, it struck out right and left at them in terrible, silent fury. Basil stooped to drag Yonita from beneath it, but one of the claws caught him on the shoulder with such violence that it sent him spinning half a dozen feet away. De Brissac thrust the barrel of his Winchester right into the brute’s slit-like, slavering mouth and pulled the trigger. It jerked back violently, clutched frantically at the air with its claws and collapsed, falling across Yonita’s legs.

She screamed again as the two men flung themselves upon the beast and tried to lever it upwards, but the weight was so great that they could not shift it.

Next second they had to abandon their attempt as the two other brutes came slipping and sliding rapidly towards them. Yonita’s piercing cries sank to a terrified whimper. Both the men
were grey-faced, ashen with fear; either would rather have faced a legion of savages then these silent, ferocious giants of the weed sea. An awful, reeking stench of dead fish came from the huge crabs and the flash of the rifles showed the sea-lice crawling in swarms upon them.

They fired again at the nearest of the creatures, Basil emptying the remaining contents of his magazine into the great brute’s chest. It halted and sank down by the one which pinioned Yonita, tapping feebly with its great claws and long, sharp-pointed legs upon the rocks. The other came scrambling over it and made straight at Basil.

He pressed the trigger of his rifle but it was empty now and gave only a faint click. He tried to grab the barrel to use it again as a club, but the evil-smelling horror was right upon him, a huge pincer reached out to nip off his head. In a frenzy of fear he ducked below it and came up inside the giant pincer. Almost before he realised what had happened he received a terrific blow across his back and felt himself forced up against the front of the brute, caught by the pressure of its claw as in a great spring-trap. Next moment, seized as in a vice against the dank, slimy chest of the the foul monster, he was lifted from his feet and it began to scuttle away with him towards the weed.

Another bank of mist had drifted up, dimming the moonlight so that De Brissac was no longer able to see with any clearness. A breathless silence descended upon the frightful scene. It was broken only by Yonita’s faint moaning and the slithering of the monster that was carrying Basil away until there came his sudden scream for help. The giant crab had covered fifteen yards before De Brissac realised what was happening. At Basil’s scream he sprang forward towards the sound.

Plunging across the rocks he stumbled and fell, picked himself up again and raced on. The slithering sound was only just ahead of him and next minute he could make out the rough outline of the crab as it scuttled rapidly towards the beach.

Basil was fast in its grip, his spine near breaking-point at the pressure the great claw exerted on him. His chin was just above the huge crab’s shell and the fetid stench of decayed fish came up from the creature’s mouth to him, nauseating him to such an extent that he vomited violently in the midst of his terrified cries for succour.

De Brissac ran on down the uneven slope, his fastest speed only just enabling him to outdistance the crab. It had covered
seventy yards and was within twenty of the waterline by the time he caught up with it.

His Winchester was useless. To fire at the monster’s back, covered by the solid armour of its shell, would have had no more effect than using a pea-shooter, and, even if he could have got in front of it, all its vulnerable part was protected as it was hugging Basil to its chest.

Without a second’s hesitation De Brissac dropped his rifle, flung himself headlong upon the brute’s back and grabbing its protruding eyeballs, one in each hand, gouged them out with his fingers. The beast instantly dropped Basil, and waving its great pincers high in the air, tried frantically to nip the man upon its back.

Still clinging to its shell with one hand De Brissac wrenched his big silver cigarette-case out of his pocket with the other and thrust it with all the force he could into the creature’s mouth and right down its gullet.

The effort nearly cost him his arm as the huge claw descended with a snap and he was only just able to get his hand away in time. The crab reared up and De Brissac slid off its back, stumbling away, before it could turn, to try to find his rifle.

Basil had slipped from underneath it and was now a dozen feet distant. The mist parted again and showed him wild-eyed and panting as he lifted a great rock above his head. With the super-strength of a madman he hurled it at the brute’s chest.

The blinded crab began to gyrate wildly round and round upon its needle-sharp, hairy, pointed legs, nipping the air again and again with incredible swiftness.

De Brissac caught sight of his Winchester in the moonlight, grabbed it up and knelt, taking careful aim. As the brute came face to face with him he emptied the contents of the magazine into its front and finished it.

Basil had collapsed upon the rocks. De Brissac stumbled over and sank down beside him. For a few moments they lay there panting; shaken by their terrible experience.

‘You hurt?’ De Brissac asked at last.

‘No, thank God,’ Basil gasped, ‘only bruised. The brute had the grip of a polar bear. I thought it ’ud crush my ribs in. How about Yonita?’

‘She’s all right. Her legs are pinned under the second one we killed. We’ll free her directly we’ve got our breath back.’

Basil groaned. ‘God, that was a near thing. If you hadn’t
turned up when you did that devilish brute would be making a meal off me by now—somewhere down there in the weed. What a nightmare!’

De Brissac got slowly to his feet. ‘Let’s hope there are no more of them about. We must get back to Yonita and reload our rifles.’

‘I hope to goodness she’s all right,’ Basil muttered.

‘We’d have heard her screaming if she had been attacked by another of them,’ De Brissac reassured him.

Back in the shallow cave they found her lying full length on the ground, sobbing quietly; her feet were still pinned under the soft body of the huge brute that had attacked her.

The dead crab was so heavy that at first they could not move it, but after an hour’s hard work with their clasp-knives they managed to cut through the rubbery tendons where the two great claws were jointed to hinge on to the body. Dragging these aside they got a shoulder each under the enormous shell and heaved it up the few inches necessary for Yonita to wriggle free.

Her legs were badly bruised from the feet to below the knees but she could stand without assistance and none of the bones in her feet seemed to have been broken. She told them then what she had been about to say when De Brissac checked her, just before the attack.

‘I have never set eyes on any of the odious creatures, but our islanders speak of occasional encounters with them; it only occurred to me the moment they came at us that was what they must be. I vow I was near out of my wits with fright.’

De Brissac tried to comfort her by saying the night would soon be over, but looking at his wrist-watch he saw that it was only a quarter past two; they still had over two hours to wait for daylight. The mist had cleared entirely now, which was some comfort to them, as, by keeping a careful watch, they could overlook both beaches and have ample warning if any more of the great crustaceans came up out of the weed to attack them and the moon, now high in the heavens and free of cloud, gave a bright, cold light which would enable them to shoot with some accuracy at a fair distance.

Nevertheless it was a grim and agonising period of waiting. Had there been more of the brutes they would certainly have been overwhelmed and torn to pieces and they had every reason to suppose that the weed held hundreds of such monsters who might easily be attracted by the stench of their dead comrades
or by whatever sense it is which guides crustaceans to the carrion of the beaches.

Time passed on with leaden feet. At half past three the uncanny, but friendly moonlight failed them. Shadows crept up about their refuge once again and only the faint radiance of the stars showed the rough outline of the bulkier rocks in the near distance.

The following hour was the tensest and most anxious of the whole terrible night. They constantly expected to hear again that loathsome scuffling sound down by the water’s edge, but at last, after what seemed an interminable time, a faint greyness lit the eastern horizon, and ten minutes later it was light enough for them to see the shore.

Once daylight had fully come De Brissac found the automatic Corncob had thrown away, and they determined not to lose a moment but to leave the island where they had experienced such inexpressible terror with the utmost dispatch.

Yonita’s legs and feet were so badly bruised that they feared she might not be able to manipulate her stilts, but she declared that she would rather risk falling into the weed than stay a moment longer. To give her additional support they lashed Corncob’s gas balloon to hers and, adjusting their own, they began to hop gently down towards the beach.

The last crab that De Brissac had killed was still there, and a swarm of smaller ones, from tiny things the size of a thumbnail to ugly-looking brutes a foot across, were gorging themselves on its carcass. De Brissac drove them off with a couple of shots, aimed at the two largest, which scared the rest and sent them scuttling some twenty yards away where they remained, waving their claws and staring at the humans. Holding his nose with one hand because of the sickening stink, he ripped up the great crab’s gullet and retrieved his cigarette-case.

In the meantime Basil had come upon a grim souvenir of the night’s terror. It was ten inches of black-skinned human leg and a complete foot, sliced off as cleanly, halfway up the shin, as though it had been severed by the single stroke of a woodman’s axe. One of the crabs must have nipped it from poor Corncob’s body as he was flying in panic across the rocks.

Twenty yards farther on they came upon all that remained of his body; a hideous bloody mess with little flesh remaining about the bones. The head had disappeared, having evidently been carried off by one of the monsters.

In that island of barren rock there was no place to give his
remains burial, so they had to leave them where they were and set about the by no means easy task of launching themselves on to the weed.

De Brissac insisted that the other two should wait until he had made the first attempt. The difficulty lay in getting himself high enough into the air to operate his stilts as he could not jump because his legs were attached to them.

Retreating up the slope some fifty yards from the water’s edge he lay down on a flat rock with the stilts dangling behind him. Holding his ski-sticks short he jumped awkwardly from his knees. His stilts dragged as he took off, but using his ski-sticks gripped short to force himself up into the air he managed to gain just enough height to come upright by the time he reached the weed. While he bobbed about there the others followed his example in turn and when they were all launched the two men took Yonita’s arms so as to support her between them on account of the pain she was suffering in her feet.

For a little De Brissac chanted ‘One, two—three!’ as they hopped along in unison, but soon that was no longer necessary; by six o’clock they had landed safely on Yonita’s island.

The shore had the same barren, deserted look as the island on which they had passed the night. Yonita said that her people rarely came down to the beaches. She had heard tell that each time a new batch of castaways reached the island they always attempted to vary their diet by catching fish, but soon abandoned the attempt. No boat could be poled more than fifty feet out into the weed without danger from the devil-fish, swarms of small but fierce sea-leaches infested the shallows, making bathing impossible, and occasionally giant crabs had been seen slithering from rock to rock at sundown.

They freed themselves of their stilts, and, partially supported by their balloons, clambered up a long, shelving cliff which rose to about sixty feet above sea-level. From its top Yonita was able to point out the nearest farmhouse almost concealed by a low coppice of trees some mile and a half away. Tethering the balloons securely in a sheltered pocket on the cliff top they set out for the farm.

Yonita protested that she could manage all right, but she was limping over the rough ground so painfully that De Brissac insisted on carrying her. In spite of her adorable little figure he found her no light weight, and after a time he had to pass her over to Basil. Carrying her in turns they covered the mile and a
half, and, passing along the edge of a field of maize, came to an orchard of apple, pear and cherry trees amidst which the farm was set.

Its owner was just setting off to his fields for the day’s work. Immediately he caught sight of them he dropped his farm implements and came towards them at a run; the look of amazement on his lean face giving place to one of excited pleasure as he recognised Yonita.

De Brissac set her down and she introduced her rescuers to the farmer, Silas Randel, who was the son of one of the American whaler crew that had reached the island in ’79. He was a tall, gaunt man of fifty.

‘Well, well well!’ he exclaimed again and again as he slapped the two strangers affectionately on their backs. ‘If this isn’t the best news ever. Come right along to the home now. We’ve scarce finished breakfast, but my little Elsa will cook you another and welcome. Well, well, well, just to think of you tricking them sons of Satan and getting back to your own folk like this.’

His
little
Elsa proved to be a buxom woman of forty-odd, the granddaughter of one of the Norwegian sailors and three of the earlier colonists. She fussed over Yonita like a distracted hen, endeavouring to bathe her guest’s feet with some soothing lotion and cook a fresh meal at the same time. To help and hinder her she had her only son, a wildly excited, red-haired boy of twelve.