So what did I learn from retyping Morgo the Mighty?

Number one: I wouldn’t have written the same sentences that Mr. O’Larkin did. I had to keep myself from changing the syntax of his writing. His sentences were just differently constructed than felt comfortable to me.

Number two: The synopses I’d read about this serial were mostly wrong. I didn’t have a problem with that. There are plenty of underground worlds populated by prehistoric animals. Another one wasn’t needed.

I’ve got plans for Derro, Morgo and Nurri Kala but I’ve got to clear my decks of other projects before I can devote any real attention to them. Hopefully sooner, rather than later, you’ll see them again.

I tried finding information about this serial’s author but came up light. The internet is filled with information but only the stuff that’s important to people who are alive and online now. Any further research I do will probably have to be done the old fashioned way, at a library or a records office. “Sean O’Larkin” was a pseudonym for John F. Larkin Jr. He seems to have written fiction for the pulps and scripts for plays. I don’t know when he was born or when (if) he died.

Sean O’Larkin Bibliography

* The Arson Mob, (na) The Popular Magazine Jun #2 1930
* The Devil’s Widow, (sl) The Popular Magazine Aug #1, Aug #2, Sep
#1, Sep #2 1929
* Exit Laughing, (ss) Cosmopolitan Jan 1931
* Flaming Ice, (na) The Popular Magazine Dec #2 1930
* A Hollywood Murder Mystery, (ss) The Popular Magazine Mar 1931
* The Jade Blade, (na) The Popular Magazine Oct #2 1929
* Morgo the Mighty, (n.) The Popular Magazine Aug #2, Sep #1, Sep #2 1930
* Morgo the Mighty, (sl) The Popular Magazine Oct #1 1930
* On the Spot, (ss) The Popular Magazine Feb #2 1930

God Save the Queen!  a farce in 3 acts
Sean O’Larkin pseudonym of John F. Larkin Jr.
copyright Aug 21, 1930

Society Girl [SG].  Film.
Dirs. George King and Sidney Lanfield.  Adapt. Charles Beahan.
Dialogue Elmer Harris.  Featuring Spencer Tracy, Peggy Shannon and
James Dunn.
Production History:  Fox Film.  Released June 1932.
Source: Based on the play Society Girl by John F. Larkin, Jr., (aka
Sean O’Larkin) and Charles Beahan.

Morgo the Mighty by Sean O’Larkin was originally serialized in The Popular Magazine in 1930. I’ve been serializing it again here. Except for correcting the odd typo, I’ve reproduced the text as printed in the original publication. This is the final chapter. 

“All right, I’ll stay, Morgo, to try to save your proud hide.”

He laughed, and we moved toward the fire, when a cold wind blustered through the cave. A Bakkete came down to us to report that he had been in Shamman and that is was practically empty of life. The floor was rippling with the waters of the dammed river. Other scouts informed Morgo that the mound on which we were hiding was well surrounded.

His words were unnecessary.

A guttural order rang out to our right. It was taken up on the left. In a moment we were in a ring of signal calls. Zorimi’s forces had us hemmed in – in a death trap of our own making. Morgo’s pride and refusal to flee from the man he said he was fated to kill had placed the lives of the three white people in the cave in jeopardy.

The tramp of advancing feet sounded on every side. I could make out men and animals, but I could see nothing. A Very light was made read and I set it off. The rocket soared up to the vault of stalactites and burst, dousing the immediate vicinity with a pale yellow glare.

The Shammans, the Silurians, the Zaans, even our friends of Kahli – primitive beast men all – were moving toward the mound between flanks of massed Cicernas, Mannizans of the rat and mouse breeds, salamanders and the black and red ants. Zorimi’s peculiar magic had effected this seemingly impossible organization. In some way he had convinced them that our deaths might propitiate the gods that released the river upon their lands. With us out of the way, the river would recede. Morgo heard that from the lips of men who began to chant.

The incantations of the primitive men resounded in the cave, wave upon wave of chanting voices. It was weird, ungodly, pagan. The effect upon us was tremendous. We stared at each other and there was horror in our eyes.

Zorimi was hurling an army upon us in a holy war. He had in some manner convinced the peoples and animals of the caves that with our destruction, their world would be freed of the waters of the flood. Our death meant food and life for all of them. That was the substance of their incessant chant – paean of hate that was hurled at us from the darkness.

The Very light fell to the ground and died.

I waited until the advancing columns seemed nearer. Morgo then urged me to send up another light. We had but five left out of the seven originally in the box.

Another Very light was sent up and it shed its rays upon hordes wending their way through avenues of chalky monoliths, coming at us like the rising tide of the ocean. The volume of the chant was deafening, nerve-wracking. Behind it was the psychology of the Indian war whoop, the battle screams of the Chinese – to instill fear in the hearts of the enemy – to beg the gods for victory.

I could hold my fire no longer. The primitive men and cave creatures were well within range and ready to surge over the mound. They were thickly massed and desperate, and their bloodshot eyes gleamed up at us.

Rat-tat-tat-brrr-rup!

The machine gun sang its first song. The staccato of biting tongues of steel jackets was answered by the screams of the dying and a louder chanting.

“When the white man dies, the river goes to rest! When the white man is gone, the river will sleep! Death for the white man – for we must live! Death for the white man – for we must live!”

That was the marching song of the cave creatures. Morgo whispered it to me. I sent another burst into the hordes of bloodthirsty singers and sprayed the full sweep of the gun.

We sent up another Very light and I saw the havoc I’d done. The approaches to the mound were heaped with the dead – men, rodent, fowl and lizards. Bodies writhed in their last agonies.

But as the Germans climbed over their own dead and pushed through the cut wires into Frances, a gray molten stream of mechanical men eating machine gun lead, the armies of Zorimi, in one last desperate organization, pressed toward us.

Before the light died, I dragged the gun to the other side of the mound and fed the enemy burst after burst of hot lead. They were close to the plateau’s base there and the lead washed them away in piles. I could locate the Silurians by the faint glow of their phosphorescent scales. The butchery to which Zorimi subjected his defenseless unarmed men was brutal. Yet there was but one way to take us and that was with their hands and teeth and beaks – and by drowning us under their milling feet.

Zorimi’s strategy was simple. We were to be inundated with living creatures whipped up to the point of desiring our deaths despite their own. He would defeat us with solid numbers, not weapons. And he knew that our lead could not last forever – while his men and beasts cost him nothing.

Rat-tat-tat-brrr-rup!

Screams! Death cries! Trampling, advancing feet!

And the chanting! The incessant chanting!

“When the white man is gone, the river will sleep! Death for the white man – for we must live!”

Rat-tat-tat-brrr-rup!

The machine gun replied in all directions! The toll of the shambles mounted. Zorimi had unleashed two brands of death!

We conserved the lights. I fired my bursts into the darkness, having a pretty good idea of the range. Little lead was wasted.

Nurri Kala screamed.

A python sidled over the edge of the mound. In the black we had not seen or heard its approach.

Morgo was caught in its coils. Its red and white scales threw off a dull glint in the light of our dying fire embers. Three times it lashed itself around my friend. I saw its muscles constrict as it exerted its lethal pressure to crush Morgo.

“Look to your gun, Derro!” he cried to me. “I can take care of this!”

Nurri Kala beat upon the sides of the reptile whose shining eyes were fixed on Morgo’s. The white man’s face was tense with pain until his knife slashed at the coils that bound his legs and waist. Snake and man toppled over. The python lashed Morgo against the stones to crush him better – for the python does not devour until the prey is dead.

Morgo grew still and I called to Nurri Kala to take the gun. She sent a burst into the darkness and I heard the gun jam. Morgo was deathly still in the reptile’s embrace. The creature, though badly hacked, still lived and breathed with convulsive effort. I sank my knife into its thick skin and it remained wedged there as I was flipped off my feet by the lashing of the long tail.

As I lay to one side, stunned, with Nurri Kala’s strange diamond flower tumbled from my blouse at my feet, I saw Morgo with one mighty effort rip off the monster’s head. The python’s muscles in reaction of death, continued to contract in their steely grasp. Another slash and Morgo cut through one coil and he breathed more easily.

He was safe and I ran back to the gun. The jam was caused by a defect in the cartridge belt which I quickly adjusted. I was about to pump away again when I noticed that the advance had ceased as suddenly as it had started.

We sent up a Very light and I saw that the enemy had taken to hiding behind the monoliths of chalk. Some salamanders and Mannizans and ants were feeding among the dead. And as the light descended in a graceful arc over the ring of slaughter, my eyes caught sight of bat wings in the air. They did not belong to the Bakketes hidden higher in the stalactites.

“Shamman bats!” Baku cried. “Now they come!”

The Very light went out and it was followed by a hailstorm – a hailstorm of stones as big as a Shamman bat could carry between its feet. Zorimi was cunning! But the bats missed their range and the stones fell upon the hordes beyond the mound. Again there was a woeful cry and the sound of retreating creatures.

I pleaded with Morgo for the last time. “They’ll come at us again. Don’t be foolish. Let’s get out while there’s a living chance!”

Morgo shook his head and leaned against the parapet. He was exhausted from his fight with the python.

“But you can’t ask Nurri Kala to do that too!” I blazed hotly. “You can’t – if you love her!”

She had picked up the diamond flower I dropped and was holding it in her hand. Morgo, his eyes blood red, looked at her, pleading mutely. I stood as though ready for a blow.

“I love you both,” she whispered. Her eyes were filled with tears. “And I must choose one of you – life or death!”

She kissed the little flower that I had first seen in her golden hair that night of the human sacrifices and handed it to me. Morgo gasped and a sob broke from his lips. I took Nurri Kala’s hand. She had decided.

“I love you, Derro,” she aid, “but Morgo is right. I belong to the caves – not to your world. I should be strange to it and its ways. And I love Morgo, too. I will stay with him!”

From the depths of despair, Morgo was raised to the heights of ecstasy by a single word. “Him!” How he must have loved her! He knelt before her and she rumpled his tangled hair like a playful child.

“You have my flower, Derro,” she smiled sadly. “Remember me by it – and kindly.”

The tide of battle surged back upon us. Morgo shouted orders to Baku and setting off a Very light, I sprang to the gun. The ants alone were being unleashed upon us.

Blacks and reds – Husshas and Rortas – they ambled toward the mound. Zorimi was hurling his invincible shock troops upon us.

A gleam of pure white light shot from the top of a distant crag. Zorimi stood upon it displaying the Shining Stone – She of the Three Heads – to his army. It was a gesture of ultimate victory and one of benediction for the ants. They seemed to understand and those who had paused at the dead to dig their mandibles into the warm flesh turned toward us once more.

I seized the rifle and as the Very light floated over Zorimi, I took aim. There was a bark and finger of flame.

The Shining Stone was shattered and the magician staggered backward.

A cry of surprise went up from the primitive men who had seen the destruction of the magic symbol. The ants hesitated in their march.

The light was full upon Zorimi who was trying to clamber down the protected side of the monolith. I fired again and then emptied the clip at him. The bark of the gun banged back from the echoing walls.

Zorimi tottered and fell upon his back.

Morgo seized me. “You must go, Derro. You must save yourself. Baku will take you away before it is too late.”

“The fight isn’t over,” the Irish in me laughed. “Not by a damn sight!”

“Please, Derro!” Nurri Kala begged.

“I’ve got to spray the ants!” I cried, and I turned the Vickers’ mouth into the nearest group of blacks and reds. The waving, snapping colors of the long mandibles swam before my eyes like a sea of pikes and pitchforks as my finger crooked tightly on the trigger.

Rat-tat-tat-brrr-rup!

“Remember your promise!” Morgo shouted between bursts of fire. “Save yourself, Derro!”

I wasn’t interested in escape now. The ants fascinated me, challenged me to battling an entire army corps. My senses were reeling with strain and excitement. The leaden hail, spat from the gun, mowed the Husshas and the Rortas down.

Two arms were dexterously slipped under mine. I was shot from the mound into the upper darkness.

“Goodbye, Derro! Godspeed, my friend!” Morgo’s voice floated up to me. Nurri Kala was sobbing.

I cursed Baku and commanded him to return me to the mound. He resisted my kicks by catching my legs in his and I could not struggle. It was Morgo’s greatest gesture – the willingness to sacrifice himself and the woman he would call his mate in order that my desire to return to my own people would be realized. He could not bear to have me share the awful fate which awaited the defenders of the little plateau.

Shouting voices from the primitives! Beating bat wings overhead! Rat-tat-tat-brrr-rup! The leaden tongues spat upward.

The Shamman bats were trying to cut off Baku’s flight. Morgo was ripping them down in large numbers from the air.

A Very light – the last one – burst over me.

The cave was filled with bats and Hoatzins. Morgo was manning the machine gun, Nurri Kala the weapon. The children of the caves were using the weapons of civilization in their last stand.

The aerial enemy could not withstand the slaughter. Their attack was repelled and they fled. But the ants were thrusting their mandibles over the edge of the little fort.

Now Morgo was using his knife against black mandibles. The girl was swinging the rifle butt as a club.

The Bakketes rained from the stalactites where they were hidden.

The falling light was full upon Zorimi’s body directly below me – the cowl thrown off the face.

The condor nose!

Zorimi was Kenvon – Edgar B. Kenvon who I piloted over Kanchenjunga’s icy breasts – who forced me at the point of a gun to penetrate the Door of Surrilana. Beside his body was the shattered Shining Stone – the evil symbol, She of the Three Heads.

—–

How I reached Darjeeling I do not remember. They found me in the street in front of the Nepal Bar, a fever-wracked shell. When my mind cleared I told my story and pleaded for a party that would fly into Kanchenjunga to seek Morgo and Nurri Kala. The doctors spoke of the sun and how it had addled my brain. Not a soul believed a world I uttered. Nor was any stock placed on the Bibles I had in my pockets.

It was Baku who undoubtedly brought me as far as he could and dropped me in the jungle of the Sikkim. My feet did the rest. Whatever his fate was, I don’t know – but I owe the remnants of my life to him.

Back in New York, I found Kenvon’s deposit of ten thousand dollars to my credit in the bank I designated. I turned it over to charity. My hands are poor ones, but they’ll not touch blood money.

Little was known of Kenvon, as I had suspected. He was regarded as a mysterious man of wealth who had frequently appeared in fashionable circles only to vanish again for months and years on end. I was told that he had died in an airplane accident in India.

His plot is obvious to me now. He organized the expedition that took us into Kanchenjunga to satisfy his vanity. He wanted men of science to see his world – to envy him – before he killed them – offering them up in sacrifice to the gods of his distorted mind. The crash spoiled his plans, for I had escaped him. So he killed Harker, put his flying togs on the body which I found, to deceive me should I chance upon it, and he took the geologist’s head to grace his grim collection in the chamber of skulls.

Somehow, Jim Craig learned the secret of the sacred diamond talisman – and Kenvon’s secret of the diamond caves. And he paid with his life for his knowledge – precipitating me into the great adventure of love and death.

As I sit here at my table concluding this take, I cannot believe that Morgo is dead. He was a mighty man and such men are immortal. He was too magnificent to die. But my heart is heavy and fearful.

Nurri Kala’s little diamond flower lies before me. It has been the source of my inspiration. I want the world to know of her beauty and courage. And as I pen these last words, I am pressing those brilliant petals to my lips – petals that have tasted Nurri Kala’s lips and their sweetness.

Nurri Kala, the Beautiful – Morgo, the Mighty – I pray that God is kind to you.

THE END

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.

That night seemed eternal. It was arctic long, and blacker than the sins of man. We huddled close to the fire while the tireless Bakketes mounted guard in wide circles over our head. Hours went by and there was no sign of the return of light.

I knew that The Shaft had failed. It was in the grip of the flood. Beneath the waters of the river that spread until it was a lake and vast inner seas, there was a world of diamonds. I knew that I would never see it again – nor possess the wealth I dreamed of.

“You heard what Zorimi said,” Morgo ventured. “He was right. The caves will fill with men and beasts fighting for their lives. Man will go down. They will flee up here – and we will be driven through the Door of Surrilana into the freezing outer world that is encased in ice. I have been told about it.”

“But beyond the ice, Morgo,” I said, “there are warm jungles – and civilization. You are an American and so is Nurri Kala. You can return to your own land – to friends and relatives.”

“We are savages, Derro,” he laughed. “Who would ever believe I am the person you say?” I showed him the Bibles. “They are nothing. I cannot even remember my life before the caves. It is here that I belong – it is here that I must fight – or die!”

I looked across the flames at Nurri Kala. “It is time for you to decide. I am ready to try to escape with the Bakketes – to fly into the outer world.”

“No, Derro. Give me a little more time. I am very frightened.” She was suppliant, and neither Morgo nor I would insist on an answer to the question of our fate.

My thoughts were presently directed toward the imminence of a battle in the caves. Man would fight man. Animal would destroy animal. And then man and animal would seek supremacy for the little food these barren wastes in the high cold caves provided. I was determined not to leave before Nurri Kala’s decision, for she might elect to go with me, and I did not want to go without her.

Weapons for the defense of our lives were essential. I asked Morgo about arming the Bakketes, who had arms and hands, but he said they had never profited by his lessons in the past with slingshot or knife. Their intelligence was limited. And I had only the rifle and ammunition that would be nothing in the face of a mass attack.

The machine gun in the plane! It flashed across my mind. That was just the thing to hold an army at bay! It was well oiled, and might have withstood the mild weather in Shamman, where it fell with the Junkers.

I told this to Morgo and he was skeptical of its value. But Nurri Kala respected the use of my weapons and insisted that we try to find it. Baku was summoned and he seemed to remember the location of the crashed plane.

I showed Nurri Kala how to use the rifle and when she demonstrated the ability to handle its simple mechanism, I took off with Baku, Morgo and a large number of Bakketes. The girl was left by the hidden fire, heavily guarded by bat men who were instructed to hide her in the stalactites above, at the slightest sign of trouble.

We entered Shamman, where there was no gray light of day. In seeking the location of the Junkers, we course far over the land dotted with the many fires of the primitive men who stayed close to them, wondering what blight had come upon them. I heard the snarls of foraging animals, attacking each other in the darkness, the cries of men and women caught unawares by the sudden appearance of a herd of squealing Mannizans, the peculiar cries of the Hoatzins in search of prey, and the fearful cacklings of the bewildered and vicious Cicernas. All, with their backs to the proverbial wall, were now more dangerous than in less troublous times.

My heart fell when we flew low, trying to find the monolith that marked the resting place of the plane. I had heard the hush-hush of the black ants – those carnivorous Husshas who now needs must feed on human flesh, for the vegetation was eaten away from Shamman. Below was a floor of horrible death – a floor the most primitive of men never had to tread in fighting for existence.

Morgo called to me. He should that something was happening in the end of Shamman near Kahli’s tunnel. I looked toward the groups of fires there and saw them extinguished, one by one, as though some unseen hand was drawing a cover over the ground.

Curious, we flew toward that end to ascertain the trouble. Shrieks and cries of fear and pain rent the darkness. Shamman bats crossed our path and paid no attention to us.

Then I heard the gurgling sound of flowing water. The flood had reached Shamman. The nearer we flew toward it, the louder it became until it was the song of a tyrannical, hungry torrent gushing up from Kahli throug the tunnel.

Shamman was doomed.

The flood was claiming its territory.

The exodus into the cave where Nurri Kala stayed was under way. We could hear the tramp of feet moving in its direction, the calls and screams of animals clashing with the men invisible to us. The air was again a flutter of birds’ wings.

We despaired of finding the machine gun, and returned to the defense of the girl. I suddenly realized that it had been sheer folly to leave her while we went on this wild goose chase.

A flock of Hoatzins struck at us in the dark. They were flying blindly. Ravenously they fastened themselves upon our flesh to satisfy their hunger. I felt the bite of a hundred wing claws about my face and head and the Bakketes screeched while Morgo bellowed with the horrible little pains. Our knives were impotent against the hundreds of frightened flesh eaters, and only the wit of the Bakketes saved us from being pecked to death in the air.

They dropped to the ground and there beat off the Hoatzins with their wings while Morgo and I used our hands, wringing feathered necks and tearing claws from our shins. No sooner had the claw-winged creatures fled than we found ourselves hemmed in by Cicernas. The startled Bakketes rose without us.

I cursed the fate that sent me to die so far from Nurri Kala. God knows what would happen to her now! Morgo met the rush of the first chicken, catching it about the neck with his arm. This once he did not use his knife. Instead his hands twisted the long neck til it broke. He signaled loudly for Baku and, when I felt something touch my shoulders, I wheeled about with my knife and plunged it blindly into the breast of a Bakkete, thinking it a Cicerna.

Baku caught me and whirled me away from the reach of the beaks with Morgo. The chickens, cheated of human flesh, quickly turned to their own plentiful dead for a meal.

The pandemonium on the floor of Shaman increased as the word spread that the flood had reached that high level. We could hardly hear ourselves think in the uproar of voices, human and animal.

Baku, by some uncanny instinct, finally found the plane. It had been overrun and devoured by the ants, but the machine gun, a Vickers, was gone. And so were the cartridge cases and boxes that held the Very lights. Who had beaten us to the gun? There were fresh footprints in the chalky ground. Silurians! And undoubtedly under Zorimi’s orders.

“Zorimi has the gun!” I cried to Morgo. “That means annihilation for all who oppose him now. He knows how to use it.”

“So be it,” he said philosophically. “Let us hurry back to Nurri Kala.”

We had hardly gotten into the air when a burst of yellow light shattered the darkness. It hung in midair and then gently floated earthward, lighting the floor below. Someone had set off a Very light – one from the Junkers!

The shambles portrayed in the rays of the yellow light was awful. Men were at death’s grip with men. The old fight for the right of way between the lofty stalagmites set up a new problem here in Shamman. And Mannizans and Husshas struggled with one another to satisfy hunger.

A python lashed itself about a Cicerna and was preparing to eat while the chicken pecked its coils to pieces.

The salamanders ran riot, their bodies moving through the shadows like slow tracer bullets from a Spandau. Silurians and Shammans and the blond men from Zaan looked up at the Very light in holy awe and then fell upon each other again, some fighting for a knife, a cut of meat, a bundle of herbs carried from the greener caves.

But was interested me most was a party of Shammans carrying the machine gun and its cartridge cases on their shoulders. Zorimi was with them and it was he who had set off the Very light to impress the primitive peoples of his power to bring light out of darkness. His guttural harange came up to us as the light struck the ground and sputtered out, leaving a heavier darkness behind.

I ordered Baku to drop upon the machine gun carriers. Morgo heard me and pleaded with me to stay with him but when he saw our headlong flight, he joined it.

We landed beside the man who had the gun on his shoulder. Our appearance out of the air, like evil spirits suddenly materialized, startled him. I caught the gun as it slid from his back and passed it to a Bakkete. I seized the cartridge cases and Morgo, understanding, told the other bat men to pick them up. Then I dashed in Zorimi’s direction. I wanted very badly those Very lights.

I did not find the magician – but the box of lights were on the ground. These were consigned to another carrier. The Shammans, weary and hungry, put up no fight, but accepted our materialization with resignation. They stood dumbly aside while we robbed them of the most valuable weapon of the hour, a machine that could fire a hundred pieces of hot lead a minute – that could wipe out an army when one man pressed the trigger.

Zorimi, far off in the darkness, was calling for his bats and salamanders. Again we had outwitted him. But it for the last time.

With our loot in safe hands we returned to the fire where we found Nurri Kala waiting for us. She had killed a small Mannizan with the rifle, had skinned it and was roasting some meat over the blaze.

What I deemed was the day wore on. All was night for us. Bakketes reported the arrival of people in the far end of the cave, and we put out our fire. I busied myself with the machine gun, fitting the cartridge belts into place. The gun was thick with oil, and I cleaned it as best I knew how.

Morgo watched me use it on the shadowy spire of a monolith a hundred yards away. I pressed the trigger, the belt raced through the chamber and the mouth of the gun was a spitting torch of orange light. The spire crumbled and vanished. Morgo was astonished. I was happy, for the gun was still working.

Baku reported a miniature plateau, the top of a broken-off stalagmite. It could hold fifty men, he said, and Morgo decided that we would be safer up there than down on the floor. We repaired to the crag with our arsenal, the Very lights, meat and wood for a long fire. The Bakketes were kept hard at it replenishing the supply for the fire that meant warmth for us all.

The crag commanded on all sides of the cave and we had only Shamman bats to fear. The fire was built in a hollow where we could huddle when night came, and the Vickers gun was mounted on a natural rampart from which it could sweep and spray the three possible approaches from the mound.

Hours went by and we heard nothing. Bakketes reported that large numbers of men and beasts were in the cave but they were strangely silent. Shamman bats soared over us, betraying themselves by their wing beats, but nothing happened. The silence surprised me. Was this more of Zorimi’s magic? I suspected as much.

Once in the flying forces, I had been sent up to the front line trenches for observation purposes. The stillness then was much like it was in this black hole in Kanchenjunga’s bowels. The Germans were getting ready for a barrage. We had not been told, but the very idea of a mass attack was in the air then, as it was now.

Zorimi had lost his diamond treasure. His domain was underwater. The two white men he hated most were at large – and a menace to the secrets he labored to hold – the secret of the mountain and its wealth. Time and again they had tricked him, defied his magic. And now they held the girl he wanted, the girl whom he had called his slave.

I told Morgo that Zorimi was responsible for the peculiar quiet and he would not believe me. He had no explanation to offer, and he was worred, though unafraid. He eyed my machine gun hopefully while I showed the girl how it operated. He refused to take a quick lesson.

Nurri Kala agreed with me that Zorimi was concentrating his efforts on us. By the power of Her of the Three Heads, he had in some way organized the fugitives from the flood. In one last assault, they would try to accomplish his ends so that he might enjoy his triumph of evil and take the girl into my world under the wings of the Shamman bats.

“There is still time to escape through Surrilana,” I said to Morgo, hoping to convince him that his days in the caves were numbered. “It is futile to entrench ourselves here and attempt to fight.”

“Go – if you want to, Derro. No one will stop you. But here I must stay. I shall not run away from Zorimi. With his death, I am sure peace can be restored among the peoples and beasts of this world.

To Be Concluded!

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 flood had laid its heavy fingers well across the once fair face of the Cave of Kahli by the time we left Morgo’s dwelling. The waters were not deep, and long lines of Shammans, Zaans, Silurians and animals, neither molesting the other save when their paths crossed, were wading their way toward the upper reaches of Shamman. As yet, no Shamman bats had put in an appearance.

I wondered if the bats we saw rushing pell-mell into Zaan were bottled up there with Zorimi and Nurri Kala. Yet I tried to assure myself that there were other exits – other means of escape than through the destroyed Land of the Cicernas.

As we made our way to the tunnel, reinforced by the Bakketes who had stayed on in their stalactites after the raids of the red and black ants, I saw the floor of Kahli streaked with veins of water holding living creatures. It looked as the seams of the cave leaked, that we were within a container the sides of which threatened to cave in upon us.

I saw a column of Silurians marching upon one of Cicernas. When the two met, there was a clash for the right of way. The scale-skinned men fought hard with their impregnable bodies, but the might of the powerful chicken wings hurled them heavily to the ground. The wings were a force the men could not overcome and they had to give way, the water gurgling about their ankles while the chickens marched by in great numbers.

At another point, we saw the Shammans beat off the small Mannizans, killing several in their efforts to reach the tunnel first. Later, they ran afoul of the large Mannizans, the rat breed, and met with rebuff. The rats were fierce in their insistence of the right of way and they swarmed over the column of Shammans, trampling men, women and children – terrified primitives whose one thought was for their lives.

The tunnel up to Shamman was dry and we took hope. On entering the great gray cavern, we found the light weak and waning. Either The Shaft was failing because of the rising waters in Zaan or the means of reflecting the sun’s rays through other caves and corridors was being cut off by the crumbling of those chambers.

As yet there wasn’t a living creature in all Shamman. We made our way over miles of bleak gray wastes and stunted trees on which the ants had found lean pickings, toward the plateau of The Flame. There was no thread of smoke to guide us. The pagan fire had died out, untended by its keepers, who fled from the plague of red and black ants.

Morgo proved himself an able general of his Bakkete army. He decided not to take possession of the Shamman stalactites but to press on into the higher and darker cave close to the Door of Surrilans. We flew over the plateau and continued on toward the distant opening, beyond which was a hazy darkness.

In that vast cavern that once was compared to the plains of Kansas, I saw Shammans and small Mannizans running in the gloom below. Some of Shamman’s creatures had gone in this direction when the Husshas and the Rortas invaded their cave while the others went to warmer reaches of Zaan.

It was cold and I saw Morgo shivering when we landed. The Bakketes who went aloft to inspect the dripping chalk stalactites fed by the ice of Kanchenjunga kept in motion for the scant warmth activity gave them. The floods were driving us into a state comparable to the Ice Age of old. Wood was gathered from the weird trees that thrived in this cavern darkness, and Morgo made a fire in a depression – a veritable corral of towering stalagmites. He was anxious for secrecy even in this wilderness of chalky monoliths.

“Now let us return to the plateau,” Morgo said. “When the Shammans and Silurians return, they will not be eager for fight. They are badly frightened by the flood. And it is to the plateau that Zorimi will come -”

“If he still lives,” I put in pessimistically.

“He will. And he brings Nurri Kala, too. I know it, Derro.”

Baku and four other Bakketes took us from our fire, tended by the remaining Bakketes, into Shamman. Morgo and I were landed on the mound of the dead flame while the other bat men were sent off to watch for the Silurians and Shammans.

I led the way down the roughly hewn chalk steps to the chamber of skulls. A chill draft swept through it and whistled up the shaft that was the former chimney of the sacred pagan fire that Zorimi kept burning. We climbed over Hussha and Rorta remains, most of which were nearly wholly devoured by the ants. An odor of death and decay pervaded the place.

Morgo was content to wait calmly for word of Zorimi’s return. He meant to kill the magician and take Nurri Kala from him. And I think he hoped by that deed to wind favor in her eyes. But I insisted that we search fro the room which Nurri Kala had described – the room where the Bibles were said to be hidden.

Reluctantly, Morgo accompanied me. We went back up the steps to a landing that gave upon a long corridor. In the dim light I saw several wooden doors, heavy and closed. We tried the first, and it swung open. The chamber was small with a little window. A pallet was in one corner and upon it I found a flying helmet. It was Harker’s – that of the man whose drying skull graced the horrible bony frieze in the chamber below, the hall of human sacrifice.

“This is Zorimi’s room,” I said. “Somehow, I smell his evil in it.”

Morgo agreed. He pointed to a little book in a niche in the wall. It had been flung there hastily. I ran for it and opened it eagerly for the secrets it could tell me. It had been a diary but the pages were ripped out.

Still, on one page a fragment remained. It was in a curious, scrawling penmanship, barely legible. Somehow it was familiar to me. I tried to recall if I had ever seen the handwriting of Jesperson, whom I now suspected of being Zorimi. No luck.

But I read: ” – who is the prisoner Lacrosse. I shall take him to Zaan. He can evaluate the stones and – ” The fragment was brief, but it revealed to me that Zorimi had held Lacrosse a prisoner in the plateau, even while we faced him in the chamber of skulls.

It was the magician who brought the naturalist to the Caves of Zaan and for the stated purpose of putting a value on the treasure Zorimi was collecting there before his escape to the outer world. Harker, the geologist,  the better judge of stones, was sacrificed by Zorimi, perhaps because he refused to deal with the evil one. And Lacrosse lived only to reach the torrid Zaan and die there with diamond dust heaped upon him, possibly as an ironic gesture, by Zorimi.

We went into another room, more attractive than Zorimi’s and I recognized in it Nurri Kala’s reflecting glass – a tall mirror of polished silver. On a ledge was the odd flower of diamonds that I saw in her yellow hair the night she was called to participate in human sacrifice. Before Morgo spotted it, I picked it up and stuck it into my blouse.

“Nurri Kala lived in this room,” Morgo said slowly. “I can feel her presence.”

He did not want to leave it. We stood long before the mirror looking at ourselves. Our faces were shaggy with ancient beards and our eyes were lighted with fierce determination. They met in challenge and then Morgo smiled at me. His arm slipped into mine and he patted my clenched hand. I feared his friendship in that instant, for on the morrow he might be my enemy because of the girl we both loved.

“We are friends, Derro,” he said. “I am black-haired and you are red-haired. There is fire in you. But we are friends. Do not let us quarrel over Nurri Kala – when she chooses me?” He laughed as he spoke this last sentence.

“Or when she chooses me?” I smiled at him. His face hardened, but I felt the sincerity in the pressure of his hand.

“I shall try to be brave – if she is that foolish,” he replied. We laughed again and went on to the next room. The door was tied with a cord of hard vines which we cut with our knives.

Within was a spacious well-lighted chamber. On a crude table before which a rock was set for a chair, there was a pile of diamonds. From this Zorimi had evidently been sorting our the different sized stones which were neatly arranged in four smaller heaps. On the floor I saw small bags in which they could be carried.

Morgo exclaimed in surprise. “There they are.”

Following the direction of his finger, I peered into a dim corner and saw a stack of black books. Quickly I drew them to the light of the window, a poor light at that, for the source seemed to be dying slowly, and I rummaged through them.

There were tomes on anthropology, the history of gems, studies of cave life in other parts of the world, textbooks on botany and zoology, and an account book from which the pages had been torn. There were no names of a possible owner on the fly leaves. And there were two small pocket Bibles, grimy, pages yellowed with age and wear.

I studied the larger Bible and found on the front and back covers the genealogy of the Graham family. It dated from 1832 and on the back cover was the entry of  the wedding of Martin Graham, of New York City, to Helen Ferguson on May 10, 1902. It designated Martin Graham as a scientist and his bride as the daughter of the Fergusons of Chicago. Added to this entry was another: “Born to us on July 4, 1904, a son, who we named George, New York City.”

I read on: “Helen died of pneumonia in the Door of Surrilana on August 9, 1914, where my ill-fated expedition seems doomed to failure. I buried her beneath a pile of stones and read the burial service. I pray that I can take George back to Darjeeling.”

1914! That was sixteen years ago when Morgo said he came to the caves after knowing the outer world.

The last entry was blurred. “George and Nesta were hurt in the landslide. I pray that both live. Blake is strong enough to try with me to get down to the warmer climate.”

That was the secret of Morgo’s identity. He was George Graham, the son of an American scientist and explorer. The landslide explained the loss of his memory in his childhood. He had to told me of being struck on the head with a stone, and I had attributed his amnesia to that.

Nesta must be Nurri Kala!

I opened the other Bible. There were family tree entries in it beginning in 1866. Mention was made of an ancestor who was a major in the Civil War and of another who was a historian. The last read: “Jeremiah Blake, of New Orleans, married Lois Montgomery, of Atlanta, on October 22, 1905. A daughter, Nesta, blessed their union on November 6, 1906.

Beneath this was scrawled in a shaky hand: “May God preserve my daughter Nesta and little George Graham. Conners will try to take them down to the warmer air. They have been terribly shocked by the landslide and their injuries and seem to be dazed. Graham is dead.”

What fate befell Connors, or who he was, I cannot guess. But it was certain that Zorimi found the children or at least the girl. Morgo – George Graham – somehow managed to enter the caves and establish a life of his own. The girl was brought up by Zorimi.

I explained all this to Morgo, but it revived no recollections in his veiled brain. That he was an American meant nothing to him. He remembered nothing of his father’s expedition to the heights of Kanchenjunga, of the landslide, of how he came to live in Kahli.

Taking the Bibles with us, we returned to the chamber of the skulls, where Baku and another bat man were awaiting us. It had grown quite dark. I feared that light was forever lost to the cave world. The waters would blot out everything.

The other Bakketes presently winged their way in through the opening and informed Morgo that Shammans and Silurians and animals, including armies of Husshas and Rortas, were streaming into the far end of Shamman. They believed that the waters were welling up fast, covering most of Kahli, judging from the panic they witnessed among the refugees.

“Soon they will be here,” Morgo said. “I know that Zorimi is not dead. I am fated to punish him.”

He sat on the ledge and watched the air over Shamman – the gray gloom that was melting into early night. The Bakketes grew uneasy both at this diminution of their day and seeming to sense presences that we could not see with human eyes.

Morgo sprang to his feet and drew back from the ledge into the protecting shadows of the eerie chamber. I saw what prompted this move. Shamman bats, but shadows in the twilight, were gathering over the mound. And the air was filled with smaller birds, darting hither and yon, strangers in an empty world whence the flood drove them.

Two bats swooped from the roof and approached the opening. Morgo commanded absolute silence and we pressed ourselves flat against the shadowy walls, man and Bakkete.

Zormi and Nurri Kala were deposited on the ledge. The magician turned and addressed the hovering bats, revealing to them Her of the Three Heads – that ugly symbol of his power, concentrated in a bloodstained slab of carved diamond. The three awful heads seemed alive – the lizard’s, the woman’s and the bat’s.

The bats murmured contentedly and flew up to their haunts in the stalactites. They paid no attention to the panicky birds whose numbers grew steadily, pouring the darkness a dirge of terror.

Zorimi vanished into the darkness of the cavern and lighted a flambeau. We saw him pear into the yawning maw wherein The Flame once burned.

“Be patient, my children,” he crooned down into the pit. “You will never die. And I shall feed you soon. Be patient.”

“What do you talk to?” Nurri Kala asked listlessly, moving close to him. “There is no one here – nothing that lives.”

“In the pit! In the pit!” Zorimi laughed. “There are living things in the pit – creatures that live on water and fire. My Silurians are far away but I have my other army – in case an enemy shows a head.”

“You still fear Morgo and Derro?” the girl asked. “You could make peace with them.”

“Never! They would not have it – nor would I. There can be but one lord of Shamman and all the caverns – and his name must be Zorimi.”

I knew now that the man was mad. His voice was shrill and high-pitched. “But we go away – tonight, Nurri Kala. There is no time to be lost. This cave will fill with all living life from the other caverns. They will destroy each other in quest for food. The strong will devour the weak. And man must perish – for he is weak.”

“And what of you, Zorimi?” the girl asked. “You are a man, too.”

“I am not of this world, Nurri Kala. Zorimi is immortal. He commands all creatures, human or bestial. We are leaving the caves, my child. I will show you strange great cities and take you across vast seas. The world will adore you – as my wife!”

In his madness, Zorimi sounded like the villain in a badly made talking picture. He was exceedingly melodramatic and he meant to impress the girl, who no longer feared him. He seemed to sense her defiance of his powers.

“I am not going with you, Zorimi,” the girl said decisively. “I will stay here and seek my friends, Morgo and Derro.”

“They are dead, my child. They perished when the walls of the Cicernas country caved in. Now do not resist me, Nurri Kala – or I shall have to put you to sleep.”

“You mean – you mean make me look into your eyes again?” Her tone was one of revulsion.

“Ah, you have not forgotten. You saw these eyes once. And you did forget to obey me. You slept for many days.”

I wanted to spring at the man. It was obvious what he meant. He had the power of hynosis, and it was with that he threatened the girl, hoping to bend her to his will.

“I will never look into your eyes again, Zorimi. And I am not going away with you.”

Zorimi caught her wrists and drew her face close to his. With a jerk of his head, he threw back the cowl that masked his face, but I could not identify him because his back was to me. Then the girl’s face was contorted with horror and she closed her eyes.

“I see that I must make you sleep. I have no time for argument, my child.” His voice then thundered: “Look into my eyes, Nurri Kala!”

Swiftly, silently, Morgo ran across the floor. He was with in reach of the magician when his pattering footsteps reached the man’s sensitive ears. Zorimi shrouded his face and leaped from Morgo’s path to the edge of the pit where he uttered a loud wailing call.

Morgo took the girl in his arms and advanced toward Zorimi. I joined them with the intention of ripping off the magician’s cowl.

A slithering, scratching noise echoed in the pit. Morgo instinctively hesitated, aware of danger. Zorimi laughed and drew the magic stone from his pelts, holding it high over his head.

A moment later, the rim of the pit was lined with faces, long lizard faces, in which luminous green eyes bulged and stared at us. These creatures leaped over the edge and flattened themselves to the stone floor, crawling slowly, with horrible motions, toward us. Zorimi spoke to them in a wailing voice, and they ran thick red tongues over their bluish lips.

They were salamanders – blue-skinned and huge, with spotted backs of the venomous breed. Their bodies were alive with a bluish light that phosphorescent as they entered the shadows into which we backed warily. These relations of the lizard, amphibians, thrived on the heat of high fires. They were denizens of the pit of The Flame. And they heeded Zorimi’s commands.

“Give up the girl!” Zorimi called to us, at the same time speaking to the salamanders, “and I will call off my creatures!”

The slithering bodies halted and the bulging green eyes were so many points of hypnotizing fire in the gloom.

“Not to you, Zorimi!” Morgo cried. “If we die – we all die together.”

“But I want the girl!” Zorimi insisted. He urged the bluish salamanders closer to us, still holding them in check with his orders.

We were beside the stairs. Morgo pushed the girl onto them and shouted to her to run. Zorimi unleashed his uncouth creatures and a score of phosphorescent slugs of blue light were launched at us. The Bakketes screeched and flew out the opening.

Morgo sidestepped the first creature to rush him, and it could not turn quick enough to set its jagged teeth in his flesh. He plunged his knife into its back above the heart and a fountain of luminous blood shot into the air. A weird cry came from the lips of the other salamanders. While several of them fell upon the dead, tearing the phosphorescent skin apart to reach the meat, the others continued to come at us.

We reached the stairs and started up after Nurri Kala. Morgo was behind me and cried out as I slipped, lost my balance and dropped feet foremost into the chamber again. A salamander marked me and slither across the floor in my direction.

Morgo turned to the creature trying to climb the stair under Zorimi’s exhortations. He waited until the salamander was close enough, and then, leaning far over the inclined body, he fell upon it, burying his knife in its entrails. It writhed and nearly threw him into the jaws of the others below before his blade could find the heart.

I imitated Morgo in side stepping the lizard that rushed me but my knife missed its goal. It cut through a shoulder, and the tail of the creature lashed itself around my legs while it doubled to reach me with its fangs.

Morgo knelt on the steps and shouted for me to give him my hands. Unconsciously, so great was my terror, I reached upward and felt the grasp of his powerful hands over my wrists. I was jerked clear of the floor and then Morgo’s mighty thews slowly lifted me and the salamander to the edge of the steps where I sat. Morgo then dropped on his stomach and, leaning over the edge, hacked the salamander’s tail from my body.

We took to our heels, shooting up the steps, just as another speckled lizard, glowing like a pagan dragon, set its jaws for us. Nurri Kala was on the plateau with the Bakketes. They took us aloft and off to the fire we had prepared in the higher, colder cave.

To Be Continued!