Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’m serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

Nurri Kala’s beautiful face broke into a tender smile which she directed upon me. I was the chosen one! A strangled animal cry broke from Morgo’s lips, and he grasped her wrist.

“You cannot choose him!” he roared. “You belong to me, Nurri Kala! He cannot have you!”

Taking his fingers, she removed them from her hand and smiled at him. “I love you both – Derro – Morgo. And I know that sooner or later I must choose one of you. It is the law of the caves. But give me a little time. I cannot choose now.”

Morgo sighed with relief and avoided my angry glare. By what right did he presume possession of her? She was not a cave or a knife or a spring of drinking water to be claimed forthwith. She was a woman – a human being – with her own inalienable right to choose her man. To hell with the law of the caves! I meant to have her – to have her choose me.

“Put your knives away, my friends,” she said firmly. “You must not fight over me. I shall make a choice in a little while.” Her voice broke. She realized what her choice would mean to the unlucky one, and the woman’s heart in her took pity. She wanted to delay that blow for as long as possible.

We obeyed her, and eyed each other sheepishly. Morgo extended his hand to me, and I took it, clasping it sincerely. I was ashamed of myself, that my emotions and desires had run away with my reason. In my own way, I had been claiming the girl and presuming possession of her, just as Morgo had done.

“We will wait for Nurri Kala’s word,” he said simply, and went over to the fire to rekindle it. Nurri Kala listened to my apologies for my behavior – the drawing of my knife – and I saw that she was impressed. Morgo was right. I was strange to her, and therefore attracted to her, though she was not of my world or my ways.

The Bakketes had seen us – had heard my futile shouts – and Baku dropped into our midst, followed by a legion of five thousand batmen. Morgo paid them little attention, but he told me their story.

Blinded, they had fled from the cave of The Shaft after letting us fall from their arms. That action was purely impulsive. With both hands they had tried to shield their sensitive eye nerves, and we had suffered. There was not blaming them. Morgo and I were agreed.

Beating their way back into the tunnel, they had returned by another route to Kahli, and with their sight sufficiently restored, they recruited a large search party and returned to Zaan. Entering these caves by another and safer door, they skirted the cave of the great white light and hunted for us. They wanted the assurance of our deaths in the jungle or the sight of us alive. I marveled at the human impulses they displayed.

This Land of Canaan they discovered by coming through a tunnel higher in the face of the cliff over the haunts of the Hoatzins. My cries attracted their attention, and they soon located us.

They had seen Shamman bats in the other caves, but put this down to the general exodus from Shamman, where the black and red ants devastated the land. Kahli, they said, was inundated, but as yet the Husshas and the Rortas had not climbed to the stalactites in great numbers, and many of the Bakkete nests were still intact. We were all glad to hear that.

“Well,” I said to Morgo, “I still want to go back to Shamman – to try to reach the Door of Surrilana.”

“Will you go alone,” he smiled, “or will you wait for the girl to decide?”

I was surprised by his shrewdness. He had me checkmated. Of course, I had no intention of going without her – but I had hoped he would come with us.

“I’ll wait,” I murmured.

“And when Nurri Kala chooses me?” he asked confidently, looking up at her. I caught the glance they exchanged and saw it baffled the man. She was noncommittal in her smile.

“In that event, I’ll go alone,” I said.

The girl started. “You must not leave us, ever, Derro.”

I took hope from that remark, and Morgo placidly went out his business of cooking the meat over the fire he had started. He suggested that I look for more honey, and he set the Bakketes to scouring the jungles for the leaves and herbs that we could eat.

I went into the forest and soon found a huge bee hive dangling from a vine encrusted tree. The bees were buzzing about it, crawling in and out. Not being much of a person to tackle such jobs, I filled my pockets with heavy stones and climbed a neighboring tree. From that point of vantage, I heaved away and dislodged the hive from its moorings, sending it tumbling to the ground. The bees fled in surprise, and, dropping to the floor, I grabbed the blackish mass and ran.

When I reached the clearing, Morgo sprang at me and took the hive from my hands. Jabbing a spit through it, he held it over the fire until it was enveloped with smoke. Turning, I saw a trail of bees behind me. They were rushing to the defense of their home out of sheer instinct.

The smoke did the trick. The bees turned back and did not attack us. Morgo explained that he had been attacked before in other caves where he stole honey, and that he found fire or water the best ways to foil the industrious bees.

We sat down to a hearty meal and ate our fill of meat, honey and herbs. My stomach swelled, and when I was through I rolled over and closed my eyes to welcome sleep. I dreamed of the wealth I’d sweep from the floor of Canaan into my pockets, and devised sacks of Mannizan skins in which to carry more. I saw myself strolling with Nurri Kala down the Rue de la Paix in Paris – I saw her the sensation of New York. And I saw myself the most envied man in the world – the possessor of great wealth, and the husband of its most beautiful woman.

Then Morgo came into the picture. He, too, had escaped the caves, and he wanted Nurri Kala. We met in Times Square – myself dressed in a suit I’ve longed for – Morgo in his skins. He demanded my wife as his lawful mate by virtue of cave law. I refused him, and he sprang at me. Never before did I realize the man’s fierce strength. Taking me in his two hands, he lifted me from the sidewalk while a terrified crowd of New Yorkers fled from him, and he shook me in his effort to tear me asunder. My senses reeled in the terrible impulses of those shakings to which he subjected my body.

I saw Morgo’s face close to mine. “Wake up, Derro. Hurry!”

He was shaking me out of my slumbers in the Land of Canaan. We were alone in the clearing, but beyond, in the forests, I saw the girl and the Bakketes hiding.

My eyes strayed to the ceiling of the cave. It was darkening with many small shapes. Shamman bats! And they carried Silurians!

“Our hiding place has been found out,” Morgo said. “They are ready to attack us in the air or on the ground.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Hide in the jungles. We have not been seen down here yet.”

We joined the others and watched the Shamman bats descend and drop their purple scale-skinned freight in the forests. The voices of the Silurians beating the underbrush reached us as the light began to fail. Nearer and nearer they came.

I saw the first Silurian glistening like a purple wraith, and when I turned to point him out to Morgo, my friend was gone. Crouching, I watched the creature plow knee-deep in the grass, looking to the right and left, scouring every inch of that portion of the forest for us. A neighbor called to him from some distance, and he replied, I gathered, that he still saw nothing.

He swung toward the high clearing and ran for it. He passed between Nurri Kala and me – within five feet of us, with our bodies pressed into the diamond dust. As he climbed to the high ground, his eyes fell upon the signs of the fire, the Mannizan meat, and our footprints.

Before he could call out his find, Morgo shot out of the screening foliage like a white bullet and, striking the Silurian between the shoulders, knocked him flat on his face. Then, kneeling on the creature’s back, Morgo whispered to him to keep silent. He did not want to kill his enemy in cold blood.

The Silurian was obstinate. He struggled and, breaking away from Morgo’s hold, sent a crushing blow into the white man’s face. Morgo staggered, recovered himself, and again threw his body and weight upon the Silurian. They fell into the shining dust, legs and arms.

The Silurian’s slimy body afforded no hold for Morgo’s hands, and with the lugubrious grace of an eel, he started to squirm free of my friend’s grasp. The man’s eyes were afire with hatred and fear for Morgo’s might. I crept forward, my knife in my hand, ready to spring.

A Silurian called from the forest close by. The man, one of the searchers, was invisible in the sea of verdure.

Morgo’s enemy tried to reply, but each time he opened his mouth to shout he was struck full in the face by a lunge of Morgo’s black-maned head, which effectively silenced the cry for help – the warning that would betray our refuge. The Silurian, unable to bear the cruel punishment on his lips, tore himself from Morgo’s grasp with one supreme effort. Undaunted, Morgo flung himself on the man’s back, muffling his mouth with one hand while with the other he caught the Silurian’s windpipe.

The two again thudded to the diamond-pebble floor, and the Silurian, rolling on his back, brought his ten fingers to play on Morgo’s unguarded throat. I saw my friend’s eye bulge under the terrific pressure suddenly exerted on his own windpipe.

There was but one thing for Morgo to do, and he did it. Our lives were at stake – menaced by some fifty Silurians – and his humanitarian impulses were wasted on the creature who would crush the life from him. His knife cut through the failing light and found the mark in the man’s vulnerable eye.

As the dead Silurian fell from Morgo’s hands, the other searcher called from the forest. His voice was only thirty or so feet away.

Morgo’s cunning in that moment was superb. Realizing that the hidden man must be answered, Morgo imitated the dead Silurian’s voice and shouted that the white people were not in that part of the jungle. Satisfied, the other searcher moved on. I could hear his footsteps diminishing in the distance, and while we waited with bated breath, silence returned to the cave.

Morgo dragged the corpse into the brush and returned to our hiding place in the glade. We did not speak, but watched the light fade away into the darkness of night.

“He knows that we are here!” Nurri Kala whispered. “He know everything!”

“Zorimi?” Morgo grunted with contempt. “The Shamman bats followed the Bakketes. Perhaps Derro’s cries to them were heard.”

“It isn’t safe in here any longer,” I pointed out.

“No,” the girl added. “Let us go far from here. I am afraid, Morgo. Zorimi will never give up seeking us – as long as he knows we live.”

“I am not afraid of him – or his creatures!” Morgo laughed.

“But you cannot find an army, Morgo. You and Derro are but two men.” The girl was patently upset. Some instinctive dread of the magician possessed her. “What would I do without you two? You must not let me fall into Zorimi’s hands!”

This argument impressed Morgo, and it was then that he gave in to my entreaties for a retreat to a safer cave. I pointed out that we could always return to the Land of Canaan, though in my heart I didn’t want to. My mind was set on reaching Surrilana – or forcing Zorimi’s knowledge of another exit from the caves from him with the point of my bowie caressing his throat.

When the shadow light of the twilight that was Canaan’s period of darkness was full in the cave, Morgo summoned the silent batmen. He told them to carry us to the higher tunnel and to a place of safety.

We went aloft, and as we swung high, close to the white roof, I saw below the fires of the Silurians. They meant to give another day’s search for us in Canaan.

On reaching the tunnel, we plunged into its darkness and flew hard toward the opposite end. Midway, the Bakketes hesitated. They were confronted with two roads, and they could not remember by which they had come. MOrgo insisted that they bear to the north, and we flew for another half an hour in cool gloom.

We emerged from the passage at the side of a glowing ruby wall miles wide and miles high. Our bat wings spread, we soared parallel to this warm face that was The Shaft itself, silhouetted sharply for any enemy below to see. But there was no turning to be made now – no retreat.

How right poor Jim Craig had been. This was the mountain of diamond he spoke of. It was colossal, and now, in the darkness, it glowed blood red form the heat poured into it by passing sun of the outer day.

Looking up, I saw a great hole in the ceiling of the cave. It was miles above our flying position.

My heart sang. Beyond the rim of the fissure were dotted, in a velvet sea of blue, the diamonds that men call stars. For the first time in may a day I beheld the world from whence I came.

I sent Baku close to Morgo in my delirium of joy.

“Let us climb to that hole above,” I shouted. “Let us leave the caves that way!”

“We cannot – dare not,” Morgo replied tersely. “The Bakketes cannot make it. And the outer world up there is cold. We would freeze to death.”

There was no time for further parley. From the camp fires below came a hubbub of voices that grew. We had been spotted by our enemies – Zorimi’s forces. The snowy surface of the white jungle – a jungle with a diamond floor – was quickly overcast with the shadows of black wings. The Shamman bats were rising en masse.

We continued across the ruby light of The Shaft in full view of our enemy, headed for another tunnel the Bakketes knew. It was a race of the fastest wings, and our five thousand Bakketes were proverbially the swiftest winged creatures in the caverns. Our handicap was to our advantage, and with the horde of Shamman bats, twenty thousand strong, trailing after us, we swept through the red strata of light for a distant wall that I could not even see.

Slowly the Shamman bats gained – lessening the distance between us. Soon I heard their frantic warlike screeches, deafeningly. They did not mean to have us escape them this once, when we were literally bottled up in caves we knew little about.

The Bakketes, frightened by the proximity of their traditional foes, weakened in their rush. The Shammans gained. Now I could hear the beating of their leathery wings, striking one another’s in their mad dash for us.

I cried out in astonishment. The Bakketes had stopped flying and were hanging in the air as though waiting for their inevitable destruction.

The Shamman bats darted for us headlong. I could see the glint of red in their eyes reflected from the ruby of The Shaft. In another moment, we would be beaten to the ground – prisoners or dead.

The higher Bakketes screamed an odd signal. As one man they shot upward, and I was almost jerked out of Baku’s arms by the effort.

The Shamman bats, thousands quickly massed, passed under us in stampede. They could not stop their headlong rush in time to catch us. We veered to the right – a veritable Immelmann – and I saw ourselves being dashed full against a huge wall of white.

The Bakketes hesitated again, climbed the wall, and should into a tunnel hidden when viewed head on. This passage was a winding one, and not very long. We passed over a cave diffused with a pale light and quickly entered another passage.

We had not left it when I heard the volume of Shamman bats screeching behind us. They had found the hidden door, and were in the cavern we had just left. The chase was too close for comfort. And I was devoid of a gun.

Passing through two other caves, I suddenly realized where we were. The Bakketes, in their blind flight for safety, had blundered into the connecting caverns that led back to the amphitheater, where we emerged from the secret river – the amphitheater of the sacred hanging rock.

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I spied the huge rock below, surrounded by a semicircle of dotted fires – the camps of the guardians of the rock. This cave was a veritable cul-de-sac. There was no other escape from it save through the door by which we entered – or the course up the river to the Land of the Cicernas, which was an impossible one.

Morgo signaled for our descent, and we landed on the rim of the amphitheater. The river, a black ribbon far below, thundered and roared as it passed this open space on its mysterious way from a source of plenty to an unknown end.

The Shamman bats filled the cave, while the three of us climbed over the ledge of rocks and burrowed into hiding places behind projecting boulders. The Bakketes were ordered to deploy to the far side of the cave, as though we were with them, trying to escape through a door. This was ruse to throw the Shammans off our track – and if successful, the survivors among the Bakketes were to return for us.

But the Shammans were too numerous. The twenty thousand spread through the cave and met the retreating Bakketes. The clash of battle reached our ears, and from my niche over the river in the face of the amphitheater, I saw the old tactics repeated – the Bakketes using their hands and taloned feet – the Shammans their wings and teeth, beating their prey to the ground.

Hundreds of bats became knotted in an aerial death struggle over the sacred rock. They lurched upward and then downward, first one side giving way, then the other. Closer and closer, the Bakketes were pressed to the balancing rock. They fought doggedly, for more than life itself was at stake. They feared the sacred rock.

My blood ran cold. In that moment I knew what was inevitable if the rock ever fell.

The shouts of the guardians of the stone rang out, mingled with the furious screeching of the fighting bat hordes. They, too, saw the danger.

What happened was quicker than the eye could see. The rush of Shammans hurled the Bakketes into the stone and beat against them. A thousand leather wings smothered a few hundred – the Bakketes.

Small stones thudded down the face of the cliff over the tunnel into which the secret black river flowed. There was a rending crash, and I saw the sacred rock topple over, tearing a wide path down the face of the precipice. It plopped into the river in the very mouth of the gorge so essential to the course of the rushing waters.

This was not all. The disturbed cliff crumbled, and a landslide started. Boulders, shale and rocks of all sizes showered themselves upon the sacred stone that uprooted them. The walls of the amphitheatre trembled with the blast and launched deafening echoes.

When the clouds of dust subsided a little, I saw that the feared damage had been done. No wonder the peoples of the caves said that all life in them would cease when the sacred rock fell!

The river, choked off from its natural outlet, was rising with the speed of mercury in a thermometer to which a match had been applied. In a few minutes it would be bubbling over the very rim on which we were perched.

The caves were doomed by a flood!

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’m serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

The movement of many heavy bodies plowing through the underbrush aroused me from my reveries. Animals? Men? Morgo and the girl? I had heard the incessant tramp of marching men going up to the front in France. I was hearing it again.

Cautiously, I raised my head, and scrutinized the fanciful jade screens of leaves and vines, and rainbow flowers behind which the marching feet were hidden. I could see nothing.

A voice thundered in commanding tones. It was guttural and deeply throaty.

And I had heard it before – that day when I fell into Shamman. It was Zorimi’s. He still lived – and the body at my feet no longer solved the mysteries of the magician.

Slinking forms, bobbing heads and shining purple bodies glided into view and I dropped flat on my stomach, crawling into the tall green grass. I had seen Silurians. I had seen the atavistic men of Shamman in gray hordes. All were tramping from this Canaan into the tunnel of the Hoatzins.

When I turned from that column of prehistoric men, to retreat to the high ground where Morgo must be warned, I was forced to burrow into deeper grass. There were scale-skinned creatures on that side, too. There could be no retreat now – yet Morgo and the girl must be warned.

I crouched between two streams of enemies which converged into the tunnel. Zorimi came into view, carried in a litter suspended from a pole that rested on the shoulders of two giant Silurians. As ever, he was swathed in his furs, his head and face invisible. Behind him filed twenty-four more litters, laden with bulging sacks. I counted them. And I knew that the magician had been filling his bags with the shining treasures of this Canaan.

Unconsciously, my hand stole over the butt of an automatic stuck in my belt. I thought quickly. Zorimi could be destroyed with a fusillade. A rush to his side would place Her of the Three Heads – that talisman worshiped in Shamman – in my possession. With it, I would be supreme, the commander of the primitive peoples. Morgo would be my linguistic ally, and together we would establish a peace with the animal kingdom. Behind all this was my secret plot, to flee from the caves with Nurri Kala.

I raised myself, lifted the gun and calculated the range. I would empty the clip into the magician’s body – thereby ending all that was evil in the caverns. My act was a justifiable one, my conscience assured me, for had I not seen Zorimi murder men in cold blood? I was but the instrument of his ultimate punishment – his executioner. An eye for an eye – a tooth for a tooth!

My finger pressed the trigger.

There was a click, but no spurt of flame, no report. The gun was jammed, useless. Throwing it away, well aware that the waters of the river had done their rusting work, I reached for my other gun – my last.

With bated breath, I aimed again. Zorimi was farther away now, close by the tunnel’s mouth. The Hoatzins flew our and circled over him but did not molest his army of men.

The trigger snapped back. There was a click. This weapon, too, was impotent. I had been counting on the weapons of civilization and now I was utterly reduced to those of Morgo’s primitive life – a knife and my bare hands. Helplessness ebbed within me, and I drew myself into the veiling grass, somehow glad that fate had not permitted me to take Zorimi’s life despite the justification. WHat were those spinners weaving for me – Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos? What was my end to be? I glanced at Lacrosse’s staring eyes and shuddered.

After some time had passed, the last of Zorimi’s army disappeared into the tunnel. There were no other sounds of prowlers. I got to my feet and raced to high clearing only to find it deserted. To call to Morgo would be foolhardy. Silurians and Shammans, stragglers or a rear guard, might still be in the cave.

A low whistle drew my eyes to the top of a tree. Morgo was barely discernible from the emerald foliage. Another call gave me Nurri Kala’s hiding place.

They climbed down and listen to my tale. Morgo was amazed that Zorimi would essay an entry of the cave in which The Shaft blazed white during the daytime hours. He was puzzled as to how they protected their eyes against the blinding glare of the diamond mountain, upon which my sun beat its golden rays.

“It is too bad you did not shoot him,” he said finally. “As long as he lives, we must look forward to killing him.”

“Do not say that, Morgo,” the girl cried. “And I am glad Derro could not shoot him. It is better to avoid him – and keep your hands clean of the stain of blood.”

“He would take you for his mate!” Morgo replied, his eyes meeting hers angrily. “Besides, Nurri Kala, you do not understand the business of life – nor man’s rights in protecting himself and what he treasures. You are only a woman.”

“A woman – to serve her lord and master?” she laughed. “Is that all that life offers me, Morgo?”

“It is the way of life in the caves – to which you belong,” he said seriously.

“It is not a woman’s lot in the outer world,” I spoke up. “There, Nurri Kala, you could be a queen. All women would envy your beauty and all men would worship you.”

Morgo glared at me from lowered eyes. “The outer world of which you speak, Derro, is only a word now – a dream to us in here. You must forget, nor think of ever returning. Content yourself with ending your days in these caverns.”

“I mean to leave the caves, Morgo,” I said. “I’m not cut out for this life. And I think escape can be managed.”

Morgo’s manner changed noticeably to secret elation. He was my friend but he wanted to be rid of me. But when his eyes fell upon the ecstatic smile on Nurri Kala’s lips, he frowned with annoyance.

“Could you escape, Derro?” she asked. “Could you take us with you?”

“I think so,” I told her. “If we can reach the Bakketes again – we can fly out through the Door of Surrilana.”

“We shall never see the Bakketes, Derro,” Morgo said firmly. “We are caught in this cave you call Canaan. It is best that we stay here, where food is plenty. With only our feet, we cannot get back to Kahli or Shamman.”

“There must be a way,” I said. “How will Zorimi get back – or out of the cave? He must know of another exit besides Surrilana. Let’s follow him.”

Morgo tossed his black mane as he shook his head. “No, we are of the caves now. We will stay here.”

I was on the verge of protesting sharply because I knew that Morgo was speaking for himself and the girl whom he wanted for his mate, when we heard a crash in the underbrush. This was followed by the squeals of the Mannizan.

Morgo turned away from us, saying that it was time to seek a safe dwelling and find meat to eat. He watched herd of small Mannizans coursing through the jungle below us, and finally, telling Nurri Kala to return to her treetop, he bade me to follow him.

We were off to attack the Mannizans – with only our knives.

“I’ve thrown my guns away,” I told Morgo. “They were rusted from the dousing in the river.”

“We have our knives and our hands and our heads, Derro,” he laughed. “We will not starve.”

By a devious course, we crept upon the Mannizans whose thrashings in the brush we could hear. Morgo selected the side where the soft breeze would not betray our scent to the creatures. And presently, pushing forward through walls of pale-green vines and riotous orchids in purple and yellow, we spied our quarry. These Mannizans were like those in Kahli, smaller than the Shammans of the same family, and more wholly edible.

The little black shoe-button eyes darted along the floor of the diamond dust cave as the sharp teeth bit into leaves and strange black roots. The gray creatures were totally unaware of our imminence and, from time to time, they paused in their forage to exchange words. I wondered why they never raised their eyes from the ground, even when they talked.

“They are not as strong as the Shamman mice,” Morgo whispered, “but they are quicker and their teeth are sharp. Follow me. Then move this way.”

Morgo scaled a low-limbed tree, pulling himself upward on the gnarled vines, hand over hand in sailor fashion. I shinnied up after him.

The leaves blotted out the ten small mice, but from time to time I could see their grayish hulks, the size of a St. Bernard dog, or snapping long teeth close to the ground, white in the reflection from the diamond flooring.

“Watch me,” Morgo said, “and you will learn the best way to hunt these Mannizans. The trick is to avoid their pretended fear and attack them suddenly, scattering them. When I say the word, jump from the tree and make a loud noise. Shout.”

The Mannizans burrowed through the brush until they were directly under our tree. I saw Morgo crawl out on a far-reaching limb and lie on his side. He seemed to be waiting for the fattest Mannizan to come into range. His knife was out and I waited for him to throw it. Then I remembered that I had never seen him use such a tactic, and I wondered if he was adept at knife throwing, too.

Without a cry, Morgo dropped from the tree and straddled the Mannizan. The creature did not move. The others, startled, were immobile, and as they stared at him they bared their fierce lean fangs.

Morgo’s knife plunged into his victim’s body between the shoulders and, as the Mannizan limply fell on its side, the man ran at another. The Mannizan sprang at the same moment, surprising Morgo midway in his rush, and the two collided with a thud, Morgo throwing his arms about the rodent’s body, ducking his head from the raking teeth.

The other Mannizans bristled, their white whiskers flattened against their heads, their teeth bared. As if in a concerted effort, they started for the man was now beneath the Mannizan, pinned to the ground.

“Jump, Derro!” Morgo called out calmly. “Jump and shout!”

I yelled like a Comanche and dropped feet foremost from my branch. The Mannizans bridled, and on hearing more bloodcurdling whoops from me, turned tail and scampered off into the forest in panic, squealing and jabbering.

“Shall I help you, Morgo?” I asked fearfully

He laughed at me and I saw a twinkle in his eyes. “No, Derro. I have done this before – many times. It is play to me.”

His arm encircled the Mannizan’s neck, and despite the tugging and lashing about of the creature, Morgo took his time about delivering the death blow. I saw that he was trying to trip the creature from its footing.

His knife slipped from his hand and I cried out fearfully. He continued to smile. His legs shot out and, catching the Mannizan off balance, he threw it on its side and sank his fingers in the furry throat. Unarmed, he was pitting his might against the great rat’s. The whitish belly near the palpitating heart of the Mannizan ceased to heave in the rodent’s gasps for breath. Morgo had strangled the beast.

When he got up, he showed me how to cut a suitable branch and lash the two Mannizans to it with vines. We were to sling this pole between us and carry the meat back to the high clearing. I tried to lift one mouse and found it mighty heavy. I staggered under the load of two which Morgo shared with me on the return march.

My admiration for the way in which he leaped into the midst of the ferocious Mannizans, selecting the fattest, slaying it and then attacking a second single-handed. He did not know the meaning of fear. Supposed his knife hand had slipped? But these emergencies, that only a civilized mind would consider, were foreign to the primitive notion of battle for survival.

On rejoining Nurri Kala, Morgo told us to fetch firewood, while he skinned and butchered the Mannizans. Unquestioningly, I turned from him to seek dead wood, calling to Nurri Kala to remain where she was. It was not a woman’s job to gather wood.

“Nurri Kala will go with you, Derro,” Morgo said firmly. I resented his tone.

“I can do the job,” I said. “Besides, she’s a woman.”

“We all must work,” Morgo retorted quietly. “Women share men’s work in the caves.”

Nurri Kala said she would like to gather wood and thereby averted a situation that was growing tense between my friend and me. The girl knew the proper wood for burning and pointed it out to me. We returned to the clearing with our arms filled, and I wondered how Morgo was going to make a fire.

The dark-haired youth had skinned one Mannizan and was busy searching among the diamond chips for fire stones. How silly of me not to have thought of the flints sooner? What a poor Boy Scout I’d make!

Morgo found the proper stones, set to work putting a spark to a kindling pile of leaves, and soon I saw the bluish smoke of burning wood climbing out of the pyre he had made. He put Nurri Kala to work holding spits laden with chunks of meat over the blaze. I was sent off for more wood.

Happening to look up at a gorgeous bird of paradise darting its crimson tail of streaming feathers through the tree tops, I saw a familiar black speck high up near the white roof of this Canaan. It was a Bakkete. And I made out several others. They were searching for us. They had not been destroyed in the debacle of the blinding light.

I ran back to the clearing. It was deserted. Morgo called to me from a covered glade of sprouting giant leaves.

“Bakketes!” I cried to him. “They’re in this cave!”

He beckoned to me and I ran toward the glade.

“They’ll see the fire,” I said. “But call to them, Morgo. Let them know where we are!”

He shook his head, and out of the corner of my eye I was surprised to see that the fire had been put out. Nurri Kala’s face was tense with anxiety.

“Call to them, Morgo!” I repeated. “The fire is out!”

I put it out,” he said in a low voice. “I do not want the Bakketes to find us.”

I was amazed. “Why not? They mean escape to Kahli – the outer world, perhaps!”

His eyes were smoldering but his voice remained even. “I do not want to leave Canaan, Derro. We are all staying here. It is the best cave. Come in here before the Bakketes see you.”

I understood. He did not want to risk the chance of losing Nurri Kala to me – and the possible success of my plan to leave the caves entirely. He knew I wanted the girl – wanted to take her with me to my own world.

“I don’t mean to stay here,” I said hotly. “If you won’t call the Bakketes, then I’ll do it.”

I ran back to the clearing and to the best of my ability, tried to imitated Morgo’s schoolboy cry. It was a dismal failure, but I made plenty of racket. The forests echoed with it.

Morgo darted from his cover, leaving Nurri Kala crouching behind the giant leaves. He came up to me and let a hand fall on my shoulder.

“Derro,” he said, “we have been friends. You have saved my life. I owe much to you. But now we must decide something.”

“I want the Bakketes!” I snapped. “You can stay here if you want to!” My temper was mounting.

“Will you go alone – with them – if I call them down?” His eyes were transfixing mine. There was pleading and determination in them.

For the first time he betrayed himself to me with words. I shook my head. “If Nurri Kala will come with me, I mean to make her my wife.”

“You cannot have her, Derro. I love her.” He spoke simply, with anger, like a child. And he spoke as a man who meant what he said, too.

“And I love her, Morgo!” I said firmly, adding, “but let her choose between us.”

Again he shook his head. “She is a woman, Derro, and she likes strange things. You are strange to her. You have told her of greater worlds – places she would like to see. I cannot let her go – because I need her. I belong to these caves – and so does she. We have gone too far in life to change our ways of living. We would be unhappy in your world, Derro. It is so different – so strange to us of the caves.”

I turned my back on him and, seeing a Bakkete wheeling lower in the air above us, I shouted to it. Morgo promptly clapped his hand over my mouth and pinned me to him with his other arm. He started to drag me backward to the hidden glade.

Struggling, I flung myself from him and met his blazing eyes. My hand went for my knife. I did not mean to die like Lacrosse in the midst of the wealth I’d found. I wanted to enjoy it – and to live the life I knew best – the life of the outer world. And I wanted Nurri Kala.

Morgo saw the knife flash in my hand, and he drew his own.

“I do not wish to kill you, Derro,” he whispered huskily, “but I will not let you have Nurri Kala. She belongs to me.”

“By what right?” I blazed at him.

“It is the law of the caves. Man selects his mate and takes her. Nurri Kala is to be my woman. I love her. She is my kind – not yours. Consider that, Derro, my friend, and do not let us fight.”

Nurri Kala was standing between us, gently pushing us apart. Her eyes were wet with tears and to each of us she shook her head, pleadingly.

“Do not fight! Do not fight!” she sobbed. “You, who are great friends!”

“Then choose one of us!” I commanded her.

Morgo watched her apprehensively. I could see his heart pummeling his breast with mighty, excited blows. My own was going like a trip hammer. The girl met our inquisitive gazes, shuddered at the sight of our bared knives and closed her eyes.

Which one of us would she choose?

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’m serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

My friend’s behavior amazed me. He was hardly the lost man suddenly come upon by his friends. His body trembled and his nostrils were dilated in answer.

Nurri Kala and I greeted him. We told him how glad were to find him whole and alive. Separately, we told him what befell us when the great light blinded us and we dropped into the white treetops.

Morgo, silent and morose, nodded and slipped his knife back into his belt.

“What is wrong, Morgo?” I asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost!”

“I have,” he replied tersely. Then, relaxing his tensed body, he dropped down beside the girl and tried to smile. “I came upon you in the dark – and took you for enemies. There are Silurians in the forests. I heard them when I was hiding in the jungle during the day.”

His words were not convincing. Nurri Kala and I hardly looked like the scale-skinned creatures in any light. And Morgo possessed sharp, shrewd eyes, trained in the hunt for food. He must have recognized us. Had he seen me kissing Nurri Kala? Was that what troubled him?

It dawned upon me in that moment. I had not given the fact any thought earlier, but as I recalled little scenes in which the three of us participated back in Kahli, I suddenly understood.

Morgo was in love with Nurri Kala, too.

And so was I!

Here in a strange, cruel jungle, we three were faced with the eternal triangle. I, alone, knew of the great harm that it could do. I came from the outer world where such relationships were common knowledge. My friendship with Morgo was at stake. And my love for the golden beauty of Nurri Kala, too.

I did not mean to lose the girl.

In that moment, the primitive being inside me cried down the civilized man. I was ready to fight Morgo for the love of Nurri Kala.

Possible sensing the electric charges of our emotions – mine and Morgo’s – the girl stepped into the breach.

“What shall we do, Morgo?” she asked him. “We are lost. The Bakketes have disappeared. We must find some safe shelter on foot.”

The problem she presented appealed to Morgo. He seemed to forget the common thought we two shared.

“I know,” he said. “The great light will soon return. We cannot face it. While it is still dark, we must find another cave – one where The Shaft does not give its full light.”

I subscribed to this, and Morgo, leaving us, went to a tall tree and nimbly scaled its leafy height. From his high perch, he gazed over the snowy forest, seeking a path that would lead us to a haven of some security.

Presently he descended from the tree. He inquired if we were strong enough to walk several miles and we told him that we were.

“I think I have seen a darker spot,” he explained. “It may mean a tunnel to another cave. Let us try to reach it before the great light shines upon us – trying to blind us again.”

We were enthusiastic, and set off behind Morgo, on whose instinctive sense of direction I faithfully relied. Coursing through the underbrush, penetrating the thickest jungle glades, we plunged through the glowing white night in Morgo’s wake. Before us, trudging with a steady, even pace, he loomed like a Greek god delivering us from inevitable doom.

How long it took us to reach the spot selected by Morgo, I cannot guess. It was probably three or four hours. The girl and I were weary and footsore, spoiled by the flying Bakketes for such close grips with nature and our own physical endurance. Morgo was not a bit tired.

The dark spot in the wall of the cave, which threw up sheer white cliffs beyond our range of vision, proved to be a tunnel. We climbed to its door and started in.

I was surprised to find the narrow corridor filled with thin, fragile trees that cracked and fell over as soon as we pushed them aside. Leaves, soft and cool, showered down upon us like a gentle rain.

We had walked for about a mile without coming out the other end of the tunnel. I said it might be wiser for us to stop for the remainder of the night and get a bit of sleep. But Morgo pointed out the danger of bivouacking in a connecting corridor. Animals often preyed in one cave and slept in another. If we slept in the tunnel, we might be set upon in the morning when the day’s migration began, and that would be fatal.

So we pressed on, beating the trees away from our faces, and shielding our eyes with cupped hands from the snapping, whipping twigs and branches.

There was a flutter of wings and the brushing of wings on the leaves overhead.

Morgo grunted painfully.

I could hear his arms thrashing about over his head, beating against the tree limbs, cracking them and increasing the deluge of thin leaves upon us.

Nurri Kala screamed that something had scratched her.

And I felt sharp little claws digging into the back of my neck. I caught at the creature and my hand fell over a feathery bird, flinging it roughly to the ground. It chirped loudly and scurried into the underbrush.

In another moment, we were in a maelstrom of flying, clawing birds. We ran forward, and the flock seem to grow thicker. Eight, ten, twelve little birds clung to my body with hundreds of claws that bit into my flesh and I could only run, protecting my eyes and face with my hands. The sharp little bills pecked and dug into my flesh. The pain was excruciating.

“Roll on the ground!” Morgo bellowed back at us. “Crush them from you and then run!”

This expedient was temporarily effective. I flung myself on my sides and rolled as far the narrow tunnel would permit. The frightened birds jumped from me and winged their way to higher perches. But as we ran, they attacked us again.

It was the clearing of the cave into which we ran that saved us from a slow, tortured death. The birds did not pursue us into the open.

“What were they?” I asked Morgo as I regained my breath. My  flesh was horribly lacerated with a thousand tiny scratches and wounds from the which the blood flowed freely.

“I do not know,” Morgo said. “but look upon your coat. One is caught there.”

I reached down and found a feathered bird, dead, caught by its claws in the leather of my windbreaker. It was the size of a small eagle, and the edges of its wings were lined with long cutting claws. What strange creature was this? Then I recalled pictures I had seen in the study of bird life at the flying school years before. This denizen of the tunnel was not unlike the Hoatzin of South America. That claw-winged bird was a descendant of the reptilian Archaeopteryx of the Jurassic Period – one of the first reptiles to rise above the ground in the quest for food.

Forthwith, I named the tunnel birds Hoatzins because of their resemblance to their prehistoric ancestors; because, like them, they were meat eaters.

Morgo and Nurri Kala, wearing scanter clothing than myself, were more badly injured. Their backs, legs and arms were a welter of crisscrossing lacerations. The girls moaned in her pain and Morgo offered to carry her. She wanted to refuse but she was forced by her wounds to give in.

As we penetrated the forests of this new cave, climbing to an eminence that Morgo had spied, I smelled sweeter air. There were fragrant flowers in this cave, and I longed to behold its beauty in the morning light. I could even see that the tree leaves were deep greens and yellows and that the trunks were browns and blues.

We reached a clearing on high ground as the dawn light spread over the cave. But we were too sleepy to wait for the full light.

When we woke up a few hours later, Morgo was cutting open a bees’ nest with his bowie. He had gone into the forest for food and found it. The hive was thick with sweet-smelling, yellow honey and we consumed it ravenously with our fingers.

The cave was the most beautiful in all the world I had seen beneath the Himalayas. Its jungle was a flaming mass of red and orange flowers, cascading over the tops of majestic green-leaved trees, mingled with blue and purple flowers, none of which I could possibly describe or name. They were weirdly gorgeous, something that one might see in pagan ritual – but never in the outer world.

Bees and other insects buzzed from flower to flower, drinking deeply of the nectar hidden in them. We were assured of honey as long as we stayed in this cave and fought free of the bees’ lancets.

“If we could only find a cow in here,” I said, “this would be the land of milk and honey – the promised land of Canaan.”

Morgo and Nurri Kala glanced up sharply at me.

“The Land of Canaan?” they whispered as one person and then stared at each other.

Morgo rubbed his brow in pensive reflection. “I have heard of that land before. My mother used to read to me about it from a big black book.”

“Yes,” the girl cried, “I remember the book, too. All our names were written in it.”

“Yes,” Morgo added, “my name was in it, too. My mother showed it to me. The names of all my people were written in it.”

I knew that the veils of amnesia were lifting slowly in the minds of these cave children. My chance reference to the Land of Canaan of Biblical origin had proved a key to unlock new memories in them. It is customary in many families to keep a history of relationships – of births and deaths – in the family Bible. Morgo and Nurri Kala had seen just such books in the hands of their parents.

And then I remembered Zorimi’s boast. He said he held the secret of their identities. Had he come upon the Bibles of these cave children? Did he find them in the possession of their parents? It was not an impossibility.

Whatever the fate of the parents was, I had a hunch that the Bibles had been among their effects. And Zorimi had found the books when he found the children. I explained my suspicions to the man and girl, and they were elated.

Nurri Kala caught my wrist. A flash of remembrance illuminated her eyes. “Derro, I remember something. Zorimi has books in his cave. I did not see them for so long, I forgot them. But when I was younger, I remember being in a room where there were books – and a black book like my mother and father used to read from. I wanted to open it to look at the pictures, but Zorimi put it on a high shelf and forbade me to enter the room again.”

“Where is this room?” Morgo demanded excitedly.

“In the plateau of The Flame,” she said.

Morgo shook his head sadly. The plateau in Shamman was far away – hundreds of miles. We could never reach it without the Bakketes. And they were lost.

Morgo went into the jungle again soon to return with an armful of juicy leaves. He explained that he had recognized them – for the same leaves were in Kahli. They had healing properties. Squeezing the juice from them onto Nurri Kala and his wounds, he allayed the smarting pain cause by the Hoatzin’s claw wings.

I sensed that two was company and three a crowd. Willing to bide my time in speaking again for Nurri Kala’s love, I left the pair alone. My footsteps carried me toward the tunnel by which we entered this veritable Land of Canaan. Somehow, I felt secure. I could not imagine the red-tongued chameleons living in so heavenly a world. They belonged to the great white places where the heat was more tropical.

My eyes, seeking a path free of entangling jade vines, fell upon the pebbles beneath. These little stones winked at me and blazed as the light caressed them.

I scooped up a handful and held my breath.

The floor of the Land of Canaan was paved with diamonds.

I trod upon wealth that would ransom all the world’s wealth. My feet crushed diamonds that would buy my heart’s desire – with the possible exception of Nurri Kala. For her, I must fight and hurt my friend to whom I owed so much. Diamonds meant nothing to a girl who flowered to womanhood amid the savagery of the caverns. They could neither buy nor offer her anything.

I suspected then that poor Jim Craig knew what he was talking about that night he was murdered by the dacoit in Darjeeling.  She of the Three Heads – Zorimi’s Shining Stone – was the key to this cave of diamonds. And The Shaft – the source of light – was the mountain of diamond about which Craig had spoken in his cups!

No wonder we had been blinded when we suddenly darted out of the gloom of the other tunnel in the heart of Zaan. We had flown full into the light reflected by the wall of diamond.

But what source fed that great stone with light? Internal fires – or the sun of my world through a cleft in the skin of the Himalayas? I inclined to the latter view as I reasoned out this strange light phenomenon of the caves.

The peculiar properties of the great diamond mountain – which I meant to see one day – fed by the light of the sun itself, diffused its rays throughout all the caves. And the farther away a cave was, the poorer and weaker was its light. I remembered that inside the Door of Surrilana which we penetrated in the Junkers G-38, there was darkness. Next was the grayness of Shamman. In Kahli, nearer the source, the glow was yellow by day. The Land of the Cicernas had a bright white light and, in the Caves of Zaan, the light was truly diamond-bright.

Unconsciously, I began to plot and plan. With this wealth underfoot, and willing fates, I might get back to civilization. If I could persuade Nurri Kala to accept my love, I would make her a queen of women. Lord knows, she was already that in her perfection of beauty – but in the outer world, other values needs must contribute to queenliness. With her beauty, and the diamond wealth of Zaan, I could be the happiest and proudest of men.

Morgo I refused to admit into my thoughts. Him I must fight. My hunches, which were usually pretty good, told me that such was inevitable. And I did not shrink from the thought.

Nurri Kala said that it was to Zaan that Zorimi came to gather the shining stones. And I suspected Jesperson, the jeweler, who eloped with my De Haviland, or Lacrosse, the naturalist, of being the man who masqueraded as Zorimi and took the wealth of Zaan into the outer world, transmuting it into the power of money.

I was no longer interested in Zorimi, not in his identity. I wanted to know the path to freedom from the caves. I had every reason to seek it, and the life of my own world. Zaan had shown me riches greater than Monte Cristo ever dreamed of. Once more, my mind, easily adaptable to cave life, switched back to the dictates of the civilization in which I was bred.

I had to escape from the caves to enjoy this wealth – to give Nurri Kala her due in a world that would appreciate her.

A low mound of diamond pebbles attracted my eye and I ran toward it, feasting my ambitions on its flashing, dazzling majesty. Kneeling beside it, I scooped up the stones and let them pour through my fingers. I had no thought of filling my pockets. The plentifulness of the rare white stones in Zaan gave me the bounty of the spendthrift.

My fingers touched upon something soft – beneath the surface of hard, bright pebbles. I brushed the diamonds away.

A face with staring eyes challenged my curiosity. Instead of recoiling in horror, I peered closer.

I knew that face. It was a familiar one. The stubble of beard did not deceive me.

It was the death mask of Lacrosse that I beheld.

Lacrosse beneath a mantle of a kingly treasure! How ironical of Death! To take his life in the midst of splendor and wealth!

Uncovering the body, I sought the manner of his death. The pallid skin bore the clawings of the Hoatzins, the bruising and lacerations of excessive hardships, the tusk marks of a Mannizan on a leg. The body was wasted and emaciated, yet I could find no sign of a mortal wound. My companion in the Junkers had apparently died of natural causes and the soft breezes had buried him in diamond chips.

Yet how had he reached Zaan from the Cavern of Shamman? He was still wearing his flying togs, now ragged and moldy. Had he come under the wings of a bat man? I considered this: there was but one other white man that I knew of who used the bats for aerial transport.

His name was Zorimi.

Was this decaying corpse that of the magician?

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’m serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

Morgo, blinded, dropped from the arms of his startled carrier into the jutting white treetops. As he went through space, he extended his arms straight out at his sides, and bent his legs. His arms kept his body from turning over and his legs were braced for impact with hard tree limbs, or the ground farther below.

He felt the puffs of foliage close about him and his hands clawed for something durable for support. A branch closed under his fingers and clung to it as would a sailor to a drifting spar in an inky sea.

The shock of the fall from the air subsided quickly and his breathing returned to normalcy. He was in full possession of his faculties – but he could not see.

Two swords of fiery, white-hot light had been flung into them as his Bakkete soared out of the tunnel. He understood what had happened. The party, entering the heart of Zaan from an unknown corner, had run full into the rays of The Shaft. Their mortal eyes were not made to stand such light. It was as great, if not greater, than the sun of the other world.

He pinched his eyelids and rubbed the fevered eyeballs behind the flesh. The pain persisted. Whenever he opened the lids, all he saw was darkness. Blindness was thrust upon him in the same moment that he had been flung by fate into a strange wilderness.

There were those darting red tongues to be feared – for he could not see them. There was Derro, who had saved his life a few hours before – what of his fate? There was Nurri Kala, whom he loved – what had become of her?

Giant that he was, he held on helplessly to his treetop, with hot tears of pain coursing from his eyes, and cried aloud for his friends. He wanted, not their help, but assurance that they were safe.

“Derro! Nurri Kala! Derro! Nurri Kala!”

From a distant wall, his echoes answered him. Then came a heavy, oppressive silence, broken only by the occasional call of a bird, by the humming of insect wings, by the stirring of the leaves in the trees. He realized that he was lost and alone, utterly alone and without the use of his most valuable possession – his eyes.

He recalled his previous visit to the Cave of the Shaft, years ago. t that time, he entered the great chamber of white rock from the usual door, and at time when the light was gone from the caverns. To enter at such a time had been the warning of the Zaans he met in another place. He had not understood why the journey should be made at night.

Now he did understand. The Shaft hurled daggers of flaming white light into those who would look upon it while it lived. Only when it slept was it to be seen.

And when day came in the course of that first visit, he was provided with pieces of dark glass to hold over his eyes while he moved through the brilliant jungle, the floor of which sparked with millions of specks of shining light. He had not stayed long before the source of the light, and have retired to a cave where the light did not destroy the eyes. He had marveled, too, at the immunity of the Zaans. They could look straight into The Shaft – and not be blinded.

Morgo moistened his parched lips, and called again to Derro and Nurri Kala. But there was no reply.

Were they dead? Had they been killed in falling from the arms of the stricken Bakketes who released their human cargoes to shield their own eyes from the dazzling light? Or had the man and girl run afoul of the creatures with the steely red tongues?

For the first time since he came to the caves, Morgo realized what the bonds of friendship and love meant to him. Derro was his friend. Nurri Kala was the girl he loved – the woman he wanted for his mate.

He was sorry to lose Derro. The red-headed one had save his life. nd he had brought a lore to him of a world he vaguely remembered. Had Derro lived, Morgo’s secret, known only to Zorimi, might still be learned. But now only darkness – and the decay of death – was his lot.

But of Nurri Kala! He could bear to lose Derro, who had but recently come into his life. For years he had lived without another white man’s companionship. With Nurri Kala it was different. She was a woman and he felt a love for her that he could never have felt for Derro.

Now she, too, was gone from his existence. Had he never met her, he could have gone on living his tranquil life in the caverns. Love would have remained a stranger to him until Death gathered him to its cold bosom. But now that he had seen her golden beauty, now that he had beheld her smiling blue eyes peering into his, now that he had heard her words of encouragement and praise, he could not live without her.

Nurri Kala was of the caves, a lost child like himself. She was his natural mate – a mate of the world in which he lived. She was to have been his woman!

The veil of memory parted in the mists of his fevered brain. He remembered how the girl had preferred the man with the red hair to him. She hung on Derro’s words, and laughed more readily at Derro’s sallies. She had said that Derro was the greater man, since he came from a world where men were not brave and that he had acquired a fearlessness that was but natural to him, Morgo. He groaned in his blindness the treetop, and wondered if Nurri Kala were in love with Derro.

Derro, he recalled, was partial to Nurri Kala’s company. He sought her out and sat by her, telling her stories of men and women Morgo knew of but hazily. Had Derro been in love with Nurri Kala? Had they fallen safely to earth and, being unable to find him, gone off – to be together forever after – mates?

“Nurri Kala! Nurri Kala!” Morgo cried out woefully. And then loyal to his other friend, he added: “Derro! Derro! Where are you?”

The mocking echoes were his only reply. His own voice murmured back at him. He was lost, and blind and alone, in a wilderness of black silence. He was a man bereaved of a dear friend and the girl who would have been his mate!

Somehow, he told himself, he would climb down to the floor of the cave. He still had his hands and feet. He still had the cunning of the huntsman. He would brave the red tongues of death and set about seeking Nurri Kala. He must find her!

He swung lower in the tree. His fingers found quick holds and his strength, which was still left to him, sent a surge of encouragement through him. He would live and learn the truth.

They had all been struck by the knives of The Shaft’s light in about the same position. He was certain of that. If Derro and the girl were dead, he would find their bodies.

He paused in his descent of the tree, thinking of Nurri Kala’s white body in the stillness of death. His hand went to his hip and closed over the haft of his knife. When he learned the truth, he, too, would die beside her. Life in the caverns would be unbearable without beautiful Nurri Kala to share it with him.

A happy thought occurred to him, and he called himself a fool for not having thought of it sooner. He gave his signal cry for Baku and the Bakketes. Perhaps they had survived the debacle of the light with the aid of their soaring wings.

But the mockery of the echo came back to him.

He waited. There was no sound from the bat men. He understood and his head fell upon his check dejectedly. They, too, had perished.

He was about to continue to climb to the ground when he heard the murmur of far-off voices. Humans were in the neighborhood. He opened his mouth to cry out to them.

Yet he did not. Some sixth sense warned him.

He strained his ears to listen.

There were voices. And Morgo recognized them.

Silurians roaming on the floor of the white forest. By some means, their eyes were protected from the great white light. And they were his enemies. He move upward again, listening. The foliage would shield him.

The voices came nearer. The Silurians were passing under the very tree that sheltered him. Perhaps they heard his cries and were searching for him.

And he thought of the girl and Derro. What if they still lived? Were they the prisoners of Zorimi’s creatures? Had these eye-destroying blades of light been the instruments of the magician to bring the three people he feared most back in his power? Morgo was worried and, for the first time in his life, frightened. He feared not for himself but for his friends.

For hours, the Silurians moved in the underbrush below, talking and calling to each other. Morgo understood their words. They had heard the voice of a white man and they were searching for him. But their quest had been fruitless. And they said nothing that would suggest whether or not Derro or Nurri Kala were their prisoners.

Evil pervaded Morgo’s blindness. He knew that Zorimi was close by.

He waited patiently in the protecting garb of leaves, perched high on the tree, not daring to move, and breathing guardedly. Often the prowling scale-skinned men stopped beneath the tree. Each time he thought he had been discovered. Then the men below moved on.

Once he heard awful screams.

The Silurians shouted about a red tongue. Morgo knew that a chameleon had devoured one of their number.

The air became decidedly cooler. Cloudy visions danced before Morgo’s eyes, and he wondered if the darkness of his blindness was unseating his reason. When he opened his eyes, the visions persisted – blurred, indistinct forms – and when he brought the lids together, a comforting darkness engulfed him.

The Silurians finally moved off, taking a direction which Morgo ascertained by the murmur of their voices. After a while, he could hear nothing but the buzzing of insects and low calls of small birds. He knew by these primeval sounds that night was entering the Cave of the Shaft.

He started.

His eyes had show him an object – a hazily defined leaf.

He saw!

His eyes could tell him where a white leaf fluttered in the breeze. They revealed to him the trunk of the tree to which he had hung for hours on end. He saw his hands. Moving his fingers, he saw them curl and grip the branch again.

Laughter, soft and happy, came from him. He could see. His blindness had gone.

Once more he had eyes with which to seek the woman he loved. Once more he had all his powers, all of the strength he needed to fight for her – if she still lived.

Swiftly, he clambered down the trunk and planted his feet on the rocky floor of the cave. The light had gone from the cave, but there was a dull red glow in the direction taken by the Silurians. He decided to seek his mate in opposite way, for the Silurians had scoured the underbrush in the vicinity of his hiding place and had found no one – no crushed bodies dropped from the air.

He stumbled along, pausing whenever he heard the undergrowth in motion. A lizard crossed his path and glanced lazily at him. Another time, as he pressed forward as cautiously as possible, he saw the hulk of a chameleon, its back heaving in the deep regular movements of sleep. He gave it a wide berth.

Hunger forced him to rest a while and eat of the leaves. They were warm and tasteless, but they satisfied him. His ears strained for the sound of voices he desired so much to hear. The silence that would have unnerved another lover in such a plight meant nothing to Morgo. He had lived in it and with it for years.

After long hours of ceaseless, vigilant marching, he grew weary. The voices he wanted to hear did not whisper to him. Yet he moved on, undaunted. He had been hurtled from a Bakkete’s arms, he had been blinded, he had experienced the tortures of a man who had lost his loved one, he had hidden for hours from enemies, and he had plunged into a strange white jungle along a path on every side of which death was hidden. He gave it no thought.

Where another man would have gone under, Morgo carried on. He lived for but one object – knowledge of Nurri Kala – her life or her death. If she lived, he meant to have her, to tell her of the love pent up inside him. If she was dead – then he, too, would die.

His mind was made us as to what was going to be.

His consciousness was stirred. Was that a human voice? Or the call of an animal in the night?

He listened intently.

Vague words – English-sounding – broke the silence ahead of him.

His heart leaped with joyous abandon. He clasped the tiny cross beneath his pelt and murmured a word of thanks to the deity he knew from childhood.

He had made out Nurri Kala’s laughing, silvery tones!

Instead of calling to his friends, he thought of surprising them. Derro always loved a joke. He would stalk them, and appear out of the white jungle at their side. They would jump and then there would be the gay laughter of reunited friends. The idea pleased Morgo and he walked forward stealthily.

Yes, there was Derro’s Irish voice! He knew it of old. It was like meeting an old friend, that sound. Nurri Kala was laughing. He thrilled at the sound that was her – that was the woman he loved.

Now the voices were lowered. He could not here them so distinctly, but he had their direction.

Presently he saw them. They were in a clearing, two whitish forms, whispering.

Morgo felt a chill creep down his spine.

Was he still blind? Were his eyes telling him the truth? Was all this – hearing and seeing his Nurri Kala – but a trick of a fevered brain?

He gripped the handle of his knife and slipped the blade from his belt as he advanced.

—

Nurri Kala revived me. It was into her eyes that I looked. They were the twin shining-blue stars that I saw when my temporary blindness left me.

Perhaps I was dreaming, I though. So I spoke her name.

She smiled and I knew that my eyes were telling me no lies. My imagination was not capable of painting the rare beauty of that smile.

“Are you badly hurt, Derro?” she asked softly.

I ached in places but no bones were broken and I told her that I was all right. My fall into this cave had been broken by the branches of the white trees through which Baku had dropped me.

The light was gone and, though there was a dull red glow to the south and sweet coolness in the night air, I thought we were lost in a snow covered forest. The whiteness of the forests was gleaming and it reminded me of the snowfields over which I had piloted my planes in the moonlight. Save for the hush-hush of leaf rubbing against leaf in the trees, there were no other earthly signs of life.

“I fell into a tree,” Nurri Kala said. “I hung there and when my eyes could see again after the darkness that smote them, I climbed down. It was already dark. Oh, I called so many times to you and Morgo. I even tried to imitate Morgo’s call for the Bakketes. But there were no answers.”

“So you took a stroll?” I laughed.

“No, I saw you not very far away. You were lying here and very still. I thought at first that you were dead, and I was afraid to come closer. But when you groaned and moved a little, I knew that you lived and that I must help you.”

“I’m glad I groaned. But where is Morgo? He can’t have fallen much farther away.”

Nurri Kala turned her head away and I caught her thought. Had our friend been devoured by one of the long-tongued chameleons? Surely his fall would have been as easily broken as ours.

There was sufficient light in which to see so I told Nurri Kala to remain where she was while I circled about. I beat my way through the undergrowth widening the circle of my search each time I passed a certain tree. The chameleons did not enter into my fears. I was thinking only of Morgo. If he still lived, we might help him, save his life.

I searched for nearly an hour, establishing my location by frequently calling to the girl when I lost sight of her. Morgo was not to be found.

We did not speak of my failure but moved into an open space, where the Bakketes might see us if they had survived the burst of white light into which the tunnel had ejected us. I remembered that Morgo had eaten of the forest leaves so I brought some to Nurri Kala and we chewed on them. I cannot recommend their taste, but their juice and bulk did allay our hungers.

Sitting down side by side, we stared at the glow of red, which slowly faded. I marveled that even when it had gone I still pictured myself in a snowy forest. The trees resembled something off a Christmas post card.

“I should hate to spend the rest of my life in this cave,” I said, thinking of our lost friend.

“So would I,” Nurri Kala answered. “It would make me think too much of Morgo. It was here that he – that he – ” There was a catch in her voice when I looked at her, and I saw that her cheeks were wet with tears.

“You loved Morgo?” I ventured after a tremendous pause.

“I think so – I do not know, Derro. I have not thought of love. Until you taught me the word, it meant nothing to me.”

“Think, Nurri Kala,” I said, “we are lost – without means of escape – in a strange cave. We cannot just lie down and die. We cannot but help fight for our lives.”

“I know.”

“I am not as strong as Morgo – nor can I fight as he did. But, Nurri Kala, I can fight for you – I have my weapons – and while they last, I will make a home for you.”

The girl filled the night with merry peals of laughter.

“You are – making love to me?” she said. “Is it true, Derro?”

“I do love you, Nurri Kala. I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes upon you.”

“I remember. You thought I was pretty.”

“And I’ve said you’re beautiful, Nurri Kala. You are the most beautiful woman in all of God’s worlds!”

She was pleased, but a pensiveness claimed her. We did not speak again for some time. I knew she was thinking of Morgo.

“Nurri Kala,” I said, breaking the tedious silence, “if Morgo had lived – if he still lives – he or I would take you for a wife.”

“That was what my father called my mother. And he loved her.”

“Yes, that’s so. Which one of us would you choose?”

“The one I love, of course.” I marveled at this daughter of the caverns. She was fencing with me coquettishly – like a flapper back in the States. She was the eternal woman.

“And which one of us is that?”

“I am afraid, Derro -” she looked deeply into my eyes – “that I love you both equally.”

“That’s impossible!” I laughed. “You must like one of us more than the other.”

“You are both strong, you are both brave,” she mused. “You both fought for me against Zorimi. How can I really answer your riddles – I think you call such hard things to figure out?”

“But I love you, Nurri Kala. I want you for my wife.”

“So does Zormi. You remember, he told me that, too.”

“But Zorimi will never have you.” I was suddenly beside myself with the desire for her promise. She was the woman that all men dream about. And here she was at my side in the flesh – more lovely, more beautiful than any dream. “Did Morgo tell you of his love for you, Nurri Kala?”

“No,” she said quietly, “he does not know of love as you do. But I have read his thoughts in his dark eyes.”

“Then you must consider me first,” I said eagerly. “I love you, Nurri Kala! I am the first to speak for you!”

“But if Morgo lives -”

She was filled with sudden apprehension.

“Beloved, consider him alive – and choose!”

Tenderly, her eyes met mine and she let fall her hands upon my clenched fists, I saw her face as a dream image floating in a mist. I forgot her flesh and blood at my side.

She smiled languidly and sighed.

I took her in my arms and kissed her. She did not shrink away from me. Her lips were responsive.

“Morgo!” she murmured and my heart went leaden. She should have spoken my name in that moment.

Springing to my feet, I turned my back upon her and walked a little distance from her. I had offered her love – such as I knew it – and some secret spring within her had betrayed her while she accepted my lips. She loved Morgo. With effort, I mastered my emotions and returned to where she was sitting.

A man was standing over her, great and mighty in the white glow of the darkened jungle. A knife blade was silvery in his hand.

It was Morgo.

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’m serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

We were well rested by the time Baku returned with his bat men. He reported to Morgo that our party could be carried easily over the cliffs, into the glaring white deserts that lay beyond. Preparations for our trip were made, and much to my chagrin, when I examined the three guns I carried, I found them water-soaked. But there was still some ammunition in my pockets that had escaped the moisture. I wished I had had the sense enough to bring along cleansing oils, for now, without my weapons of civilization, I was reduced to the fighting power that was Morgo’s – a knife and my hands.

We three committed ourselves to the arms of the Bakketes and shot upward toward the top of the towering black cliffs, into the warmer strata of air. I ordered Baku to fly over the balanced stone which so captivated my attention.

Morgo called to us to desist, but I was insistent. As we neared the giant boulder, I estimated that it was at least fifteen or eighteen feet in diameter, and that the shelf on which it rested was not of the strongest rock. Part of this balancing stone actually projected over the brink of the cliff, and far below I could see the black, snaky thread of the thunderous river.

There were no signs of human life near the stone, but Baku cried out sharply, and banking, veered to one side and flew higher. Four small stones flashed up at us, describing long parabolas in the bright light.

From behind miniature crags stepped whitish men, hairless, and quite like Morgo and myself in stature. They fitted new stones into their slingshots and let fly at us. They were the protectors of the balancing stone, a rock sacred to them – and they drove me away as a likely menace to its security. I could see that they were of the same primitive type as the Shammans and the people of Kahli, with smallish heads set on thick necks fastened to strong, heavy bodies. They wore no skins and their reason was obvious: this new cave into which we ventured was hot. It became torrid as the day wore on.

Rejoining Morgo and Nurri Kala, we flew over broad wastes of desert floor – hot flat rocks. The air between them and my eyes quivered as it does when one looks at a radiator or a fire on a warm day. The cavern was low ceilinged, and as vast as its great desolation. A whiteness was discernible everywhere. There was not the slightest trace of vegetation or animal life.

But one fact I noticed. I could not see a possible source of light. It came from the far end of the cave toward which were moving.

The Bakketes breathed with effort and I felt Baku’s body grow moist. This was the first time I ever noticed that. His tongue hung out of his mouth and he reminded me of me sweltering in Wall Street in mid-August, helpless victims of a city’s infernal heat.

Without a word, the Bakketes dropped to the floor of the cave, and I felt the heat rising up in swirling streams. When we alighted, Morgo and Nurri Kala cried out in pain, hopping about, first on one foot and then on another. The hot rocks were scorching the soles of their feet. I could feel the heat through my golf shoes.

Quickly I tore off my windbreaker and flung it to the ground. The man and girl jumped on it and stood there brushing the moisture from their foreheads with florid arms.

“The heat is great, Derro,” Morgo said, “but we will get used to it. I have been here before. I know.”

“I think these rocks are hot enough to dry my guns,” I said, and I fished the automatics from my pockets. Laying them on a hot rock, I saw the beads of moisture rapidly disappear from the gun-metal sides.

Our landing had been forced. The Bakketes were exhausted by the sudden heat to which they were not accustomed. But they could not land and subject their feet to the heat of the stone floor, so they floated over our heads in circles trying to regain their breaths.

“Is it wise to go into Zaan?” Nurri Kala asked me.

“Why not?” I said. “We want to see The Shaft – the source of light in the caves.”

“It is to Zaan that Zorimi goes,” she said. “We are crossing his path, perhaps. He is evil.”

“If Zorimi has escaped from Shamman, he will not bother us, I think. He has had enough of us – or he should have by this time. He must know that he cannot defeat us, Nurri Kala.” These were Morgo’s words and he spoke them proudly.

“It is to Zaan that Zorimi goes to gather the Shining Stones,” the girl went on. “I seem to feel his presence again. It is an unclean feeling, like that I had when I looked at the balancing rock. There is evil in Zaan.”

“We cannot get out of Zaan,” Morgo explained to her, “except by going back up the river to the Land of the Cicernas – or taking the one other door I know of. Surely you do not want to risk the river again?”

She shook her golden head. “But I am still afraid. There are things that I feel now – that I cannot describe. But they are of evil, Morgo. Let us be careful.”

“There is no great danger in Zaan,” Morgo said kindly, soothingly. “I know of a friendly tribe. We will be safe with them until we start back. And now our main need is food. We are all hungry – after our bath in the cold water.”

I was preoccupied with the guns. They were baked dry, and I had little fear of rust now. Gingerly picking them up with the air of my coat, I waited for them to cool and then I reloaded them with the dry rounds. I fired each gun and the staccato report echoed from a thousand directions – a thousand walls from which nature sent them rebounding. Once more I was equipped with the weapons of civilization, and I felt more secure.

Morgo talked with the Bakketes and announced that they were ready to resume the journey to the more fruitful caves of Zaan. He promised us food and water and respite from the heat there – though he confessed, too, that he did not know into what part of Zaan our present course would take us.

We took to wings again, and flew steadily toward the brightness, where there seemed to be an exit from the low roofed cavern in which we were. I found myself becoming acclimated to the heat. Baku seemed to feel less strained.

A hole in the wall soon met our searching gaze, and the Bakketes swooped toward it. We entered this natural door of burning white rook, and traversing a short, dim tunnel, we found ourselves in a still smaller cave, lower than the other and studded with clumps of trees and bushes – all snowy white – bleached by the intense white light which was still greater.

The rocks between the clusters of vegetation seemed to move. At first I thought it was an obstacle illusion created by the heat. I was wrong.

Long, sinuous lizards were basking in the warmth of the light, crawling from tree to tree, feeding on the pure white leaves. My eyes blurred in focusing until they were more used to the absolute lack of color in this long, flat-floored, flat-roofed, flat-walled cavern.

The lizards paid no attention to us when we flew low. They were beautiful creatures, and every ripple of muscle in their graceful backs was a poem in rhythm. They fascinated me, until I was almost hypnotized by their whiteness, and when I closed my eyes to rest them, I still saw the flowing creatures, crawling as though in slow motion pictures.

We left this cave and entered a third through a low door. The Bakketes could not accomplish is on the wing, and we had to walk over the torrid stone. We all cried out in pain when our feet were burned, and quickly went aloft at the very first opportunity.

This new cavern was broad and long, and oddly cooler, though it was still lower than the others. A warm breeze fanned us from the end toward which we flew. It was more profuse with white trees and underbrush which were clustered like tiny islands on a sea of white stone. The ceiling over head was flat and colorless. Lizards were in greater number and larger. I estimated their length at five and seven feet.

The Bakketes descended again, tired and overheated. This time we found that we could stand on the stone floor without having our feet scorched. There was no accounting for these phenomena in my mind.

Morgo strode over to an island of vegetation where some of the white crawling-creatures were eating the leaves and grass. The lizards turned their heads slowly and gracefully, and looked at him, then drew away and continued to munch their food.

Morgo went into the clump of growing matter and pulling some leaves from a tree, tasted them. He signed for us to approach and eat. The leaves were edible, almost like wafers.

Nurri Kala and I started for the trees. I was watching a huge lizard backing away from the grass onto the rocks. Its actions became tense. Frightened, it recoiled sharply.

But not rapidly enough.

A long tongue shot out – a tongue of good ten feet in length – and whipping itself around the lizard, snapped it into the undergrowth. I screamed to Morgo.

The tongue was red and forked like a viper’s. It was the first bit of color I had seen since we entered Zaan. It was a hideous, sinewy whip.

From what mouth had it come? What kind of creature lurked in the undergrowth and fed on the peaceful lizards?

Morgo continued to tear leaves and grass from their roots, gathering them in his arms for us. I called to him again and ran forward to drag him out of the underbrush. A Bakkete, sensing the danger, too, flew low to aid my friend.

The bat man was a few feet from the grassy spot when a tongue licked upward and caught him around the middle. He screeched and I saw a titanic chameleon rear on its hind legs. Its tongue lashed inward into a cavernous mouth and the Bakkete disappeared. As the chameleon’s body slowly sank back to earth, I saw its bulging sides slowly contract, crushing the life out of the bat man that had been devoured.

Nurri Kala, who had witnessed this horror, was screaming.

Morgo, startled, turned and started from the white underbrush.

I saw the flash of red.

My cry was paralyzed on my lips.

The red whip coiled about Morgo’s waist and whipped him around so that he faced the chameleon that attacked him.

He planted his feet firmly on the floor and leaned backward, throwing his weight away from the monster. The white chameleon tugged and sought to flick the man from the floor into its mouth.

Morgo drew his knife and slashed at the red tongue, the thin thread that bound him to death. There was a shriek in the trees and the chameleon, never loosing its hold on Morgo, struggled to its hind legs to spring.

And Morgo’s knife hacked at the steel band of red. He could not cut it and I was amazed.

My gun was out. I threw an arm around Morgo to brace him, adding my weight to that which the chameleon was tugging towards its maw. The creature had a diabolical strength and its greenish eyes flashed furiously.

I fired. I emptied the automatic’s clip of lead into the huge, white body. Morgo sliced at the red tongue.

The chameleon, a moment before a mass of thews, suddenly became flabby. It crumpled and lashed about in the brush, tearing Morgo from his foot purchase. We both fell heavily.

But the creature was dead. And Morgo was still a prisoner in the steel loop of its red tongue.

My fear was of another attack. There were other white chameleons in that cluster of trees. Our only hope was immediate flight.

I ripped my bowie from my belt and went to work with Morgo on the red tongue. It was like cutting through a tough wood fiber. The band of steel was made up of a thousand course sinews. But the two of us hacked off the length of red and ran into the open space, the loop of tongue still tight around Morgo’s waist.

Without a word, I went to work cutting this horrible reminder from my friend. My eyes avoided the thankfulness in his. He wanted to talk, but I told him to save his breath.

When the red loop sloughed to the ground around Morgo’s feet, I insisted that we continue to a safer place. Nurri Kala said that her hunger could wait. And we went into the air with the Bakketes. I remembered, as the scene of the chameleon attack was behind us, that I had dropped a gun in that glade of lurking death. Now I was armed with but two – and questionable ammunition saved from a dousing in the river.

We entered a fourth cave, higher up and cooler. Here the same white vegetation abounded. The floor of the cave was a jungle of it, and weird, colorless birds and bees sang and hummed in the air. What was hidden under the screening leaves I could not see – but I did guess correctly. Again I saw a beautiful, graceful lizard caught by a crimson tongue and whipped out of sight.

Coursing over this bleached world, we hurried to the far end in quest of a door. Bakketes would not attempt a landing where the red tongues lurked. Nor would I, for that matter.

There was a tunnel. It was navigable on the wing.

After entering it in single file, we found it uncommonly long. But in the caves we knew that tunnels always ended, especially when they were faint with light as this one was.

We flew for some time, covering many miles. I began to wonder if the corridor of warm white rock would never end. It twisted, veered upward, sloped downward to the right, and came a passage of zigzagging turns. After rounding each corner we were faced with another bend.

I grew impatient. Baku was uneasy. That was not hard to sense, for in my many hours of flying with him, I became used to the many moods manifested by the action of his body, his muscular contractions, the beat of his stout heart against my back.

Where did this tunnel end? Why was it so long?

I felt a blast of hot air in my face.

The heat swept over us in waves. Baku gasped.

The Bakketes wanted to descend. Morgo exhorted them to fly clear of the corridor first.

Still we zigzagged. First one sharp turn – a short flight, and then another sharp turn. I grew tired of counting these twistings of a corridor linking two caves together in the heart of the Himalayas.

The air grew fresher. The heat diminished. I wondered if we had passed over a furnace in the rock. The monotony of the white stone grew tedious. I longed for a sight of color and took to looking at my dirty hands. The blue veins beneath the skin color – a little relief for eyes tired by bleached whiteness.

We turned a sharp corner and shot out into clear space.

I screamed. Blades of fire dug into my eyes.

The others shrieked. The Bakketes screeching ended as abruptly as it had started.

I couldn’t see a thing.

Darkness laid its fierce grip upon my brain.

I was stone blind. I knew that.

And then Baku’s arms slipped from under mine.

I fell through space – in the darkness that only a blind man can know.

Leaves and branches scratched at my face. Strange bird voices filled the air. My body turned, hurtling in space.

In my darkened brain, I felt the ground smite me a mighty blow. My senses left me as a cry of pain tried to escape my terrified lips.

To Be Continued!

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’m serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’m reproducing the text as printed in the original publication.

Morgo threw himself at the long neck of the creature as I looked up into the descending mouth, seeing the red curled tongue and the saw edge of the beak that would tear me asunder. My eyes closed.

The death blow of the Cicerna was never struck. When I lifted my eyelids again, I saw Morgo struggling with the Cicerna, his bulging arms wrapped tightly about the thin neck. He held his head under the snapping jaws and swung his body away from the ponderous wings that tried to flick him off as though he were dust.

He pulled his knife from his belt and slashed beneath the mass of feathered neck to which he clung. The Cicerna’s head toppled off the very thin neck. Morgo jumped from the dead body as it staggered to the water’s edge and fell into the rushing water.

Again Morgo’s might had saved my life. It was his strength and his daring rather than his weapon to which I was indebted.

My other gun was out now, and as the Cicernas once more charged over their fallen members by the tunnel, I riddled their ranks with hot lead, each shot sending a biting report bouncing from wall to wall in the amphitheater in which we were trapped.

Advancing, at Morgo’s suggestion, I fired into the tunnel itself until seven of the chicken fiends clogged it up with their writhing bodies. The others in the tunnel were, for a time, imprisoned. The wall were not wide enough for them to turn about. Soon the barriers would break. And I hadn’t sufficient rounds to slay all the Cicernas in the cavern.

“We must fly,” Morgo said. “It is our only chance.”

I stared at him incredulously. “Fly? Where?”

He pointed to the dark hole into which the river raced.

“Send a Bakkete first!” I suggested wildly. “We cannot fly into that black doom. The ceiling may drop – and we’ll all pitch into the water.”

“We have no time to waste.” He pointed to the barrier of Cicerna bodies. It was giving way with the pressure of the cackling chickens fighting to escape from the tunnel.

“They will be upon us in another minute!”

Morgo shouted instructions to the Bakketes. I saw Nurri Kala gathered up in one man’s arms and borne toward the tunnel. Baku took me. Morgo was the last to leave the rocky shore, just as the Cicernas burst into the amphitheatre, screaming for our blood. They hopped down to the very edge of the bank, and hurled their imprecations aloft to us.

Nurri Kala’s Bakkete approached the dark culvert, but he demurred at entering. He was afraid. The cackling of the Cicernas and the imminence of death had unnerved him. He screeched, and I saw by the glare in his eyes that he was verging on fear-insanity. What if he wheeled about and dropped the girl into the chicken fiends midst?

Morgo took the situation in at a glance and flew over to the Bakkete. He cried out to another bat man and , catching Nurri Kala by the wrists, he swung her from the coward’s arms into the arms of another Bakkete. Then, reassured that the girl was safe, he turned away from the craven bat man and plunged into the Cimmerian night of the tunnel. I held Baku back until Nurri Kala was ahead of me. My thoughts were only for her safety now. The other Bakketes followed us, the frightened man coming last.

The eternally roaring waters beneath us filled our path with a fierce, monotonous boom. It was faster than pulsebeat and sent our hearts racing. I could hear the river hissing as it swept over rocky protrusions. I could hear Bakketes cry out when their wings were nicked on the rocky walls, I heard myself shout involuntarily when my feet slipped into the icy flow. The force of the water was so great that, though we were following the course of the river, my whipped feet were flicked out of the water ahead of me.

The roof of the tunnel lowered, and we all went into the water up to our waists. Only the Bakketes managed to keep pretty well out of it. The river had a life and majestic fierceness of its own, and when it felt our bodies, it whipped them from side to side, trying to eject us from its sacred depth. I took that for a good omen.

The roof went higher and so did we. I thought the tunnel would never end. On and on we flew – until I began to imagine I saw an end to the darkness. But whenever I expected it to be around the next turn, I faced only deeper night.

Baku screeched. I heard him above the torrent’s roar. We fell bodily into the river.

I went under, and turning, grabbed at the bat man. He never released his hold on me and fought to free himself of the water with beating wings. The icy douche gave me a heart shock, and I gasped to force the water from my mouth and nose.

We could not rise as we were whirled forward, spinning like a top on the surface of the river.

I was about to give up the ghost, when Baku ripped me from the river. The water smarted in my eyes, but as I tried to open them, I was conscious of light.

We found ourselves on the opposite bank of the river from the point where we took off. We were in another amphitheater, a replica of the first, but smaller. However, the roof was higher, and light streamed over the craggy crests of the precipitous walls which I saw could scale with the aid of the Bakketes.

All of us had been submerged in the thunderous waters of the secret river and we dripped rivulets on rocks where we lay panting, once more inhaling the ozone of the caves. The Bakketes suffered more from the cold bath than Morgo, the girl, or myself. Our showers back in Kahli, I told myself, had put us in training for that dark icy ordeal in the river’s bosom.

“The roof of the tunnel dropped into the river,” Morgo explained, “just before we reached this open space. That is why we all got wet. I was afraid the Bakketes would not be able to fight their way clear of the water. They are not used to it.”

“I’m about ready to testify,” I swore, “that a Bakkete can do anything! I bet they can make out income tax reports!”

That was a joke I had to explain to Morgo, that enviable son of the caves where there were no income taxes!

We rested by the side of the river while the Bakketes soared aloft on a reconnoitering expedition over the walls of the subterranean amphitheater. I watched them lazily, and my eyes soon fastened upon a huge rock balanced on the very brink of a cliff, directly over the culvert into which the rushing waters roared. The rock was balanced – perilously perched, I should say – on a small mound. It seemed to me that any sudden blow – such as a man’s impelled weight – would send it hurling through space into the river, ripping like an avalanche where it cut into the face of the sloping cliff.

I questioned Morgo about the source of the river, but he could tell me little. He knew that its course was long and that it never rose or fell but flowed evenly at its high speed. He imagined it rose in hidden springs fed by the glaciers on the mountains, a source eternal and abundant.

“And I see,” he added, “that you gaze upon the balancing rock. I know of it.”

Nurri Kala curled herself closer to me, and I felt her tremble as she looked at the rock. “I am afraid,” she murmured. “I have been in this state of mind before – and something always happens. That rock is evil.”

I laughed and chidingly told her that inanimate objects cannot be evil, for that is only man’s privilege. She persisted in saying that the rock was a dreadful force.

“Nurri Kala is right, Derro,” Morgo said with profound earnestness. “The rock is an evil thing. I have heard of it from Bakketes who have flown past this place. And a native of Zaan once told me that if that balancing rock ever fell into the river, all life in the caves would come to an end.”

“Why? What would happen?” I was curious.

Morgo shook his head doubtfully. “I do not know. But that is what I was told. No one in Zaan, which lies over the top of the cliffs, is allowed to go near that rock.”

“Well, if they are so afraid of it,” I said, “why don’t they bolster it up? It could be made secure by heaping smaller stones around its base.”

“No one is allowed to touch it,” Morgo insisted. “There are men up there – near the rock – who protect it. It is their sworn duty. We will see them soon, when we fly past the rock. They say the stone is sacred and that strange, destructive gods dwell within it, waiting to be released to feast upon all life in the caves. Even these guardians do not venture near the rock – and they will kill any one who attempts to do so.”

I reflected on these words. The stone, I figured, was delicately balanced, and had been so for ages. It was not likely that it would fall – if it hadn’t fallen by this day and age. Yet why was it feared and protected? Could only man dislodge it? I knew that while there were breezes – really strong currents of air without much directional force – there was no such thing as a wind or a rain storm in the caverns. No force of nature operated that could topple the stone into the river.

But why should a stone and its falling evoke so great a fear and belief? The end to all life in the caverns! It was beyond me. I put it down as one of those inexplicable superstitions that flowered in the dim days and that was still nursed by primitive minds.

What a noddy I was not to have understood, then and there, as I looked up at the great rock!

What havoc that stone could play was as obvious as the nose on my face – and I didn’t see it – until it was too late. That solitary, mysterious river, fed by a source of abundance, coursing its thunderous way through the dark tunnels! That river that apparently had but one outlet! That river that already knew the secrets of my future!

Instead of turning pagan and revering it, I knelt on its bank and drank from it, quenching my thirst.

To Be Continued!