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 Shamman bats understood. As though an orchestra conductor had brought his baton down for complete silence, their screechings ceased. They avoided the Bakketes and flew over the rising river. Their eyes convinced them of the holocaust to come. Legend had prepared them. “When the rock falls, all life in the caves must end!” It was a phrase known to all forms of life in this inner world.

Then with cries of fright and utter terror, their thousands turned taild and fled from the cave which grew lighter when the clouds of wings retreated. The startled Bakketes clustered over us and we climbed from our niches to the top of the amphitheater. The waters had risen twenty feet, and I could see it welling up foot by foot, blotting out long perpendicular stretches of stone markings.

“It is done,” Morgo said philosophically. “The caves are doomed. All of them will be filled with the river. It will flow from here and at points farther to the north.”

“We must hurry to the higher caverns,” I said, “before it is too late. If they fill, too, the tunnels will be waterfalls that we cannot pass through.”

He nodded. “I think that our path will be safe – for a little time. The Shammans that fled to Zaan from the ants will return to their own cave to escape these rising waters. They will be too busy to bother us, Derro.”

Nurri Kala stood apart watching the oncoming flood with horrified eyes. “It is his work – Zorimi’s evil! I was afraid before. I am more terrified now. We are faced with worse things than death – that is dying by torture. I saw a man drown, and it awful – awful, Derro!”

Her voice died in her throat as the picture of that terrible experience became fixed in her mind.

Morgo told us to wait while he flew over to the Zaans who were guardians of the rock that was. They were hastily preparing for flight and he meant to assist them by having the batmen carry them to safety. On his return, he had some fifty Zaans, odd blond creatures, with their primitive knives and slingshots, in the arms of the carrier Bakketes. They were frightened and remarkably submissive.

We all took off and retraced our way through the caves that had brought us to the scene of destruction. There were no lurking Shamman bats in sight.

Before penetrating the last passage that lead into the Cave of the Shaft, we rested. Morgo drew Nurri Kala and me to one side.

“How great the damage will be, I do not know,” he said. “If I am right, the river had but one outlet and that is dammed up. It may be good that we leave the caves entirely.” His eyes met mine and I knew he was waiting for Nurri Kala to make up her mind.

She was to choose between us for a mate. She had begged for time, but now we were faced with flight into my world. There I would have the advantage over Morgo. He meant for her to decide while we were still equals in her eyes.

“Nurri Kala,” he said, “you must speak now – decide. With which of us will you cast your lot in life?”

For several minutes, the girl bowed her head and did not utter a word. Then she said: “If I choose Morgo, Derro will go away. I shall lose him. If I choose Derro, what then?”

“You must try to leave the caves with Derro,” he said in a voice he fought to control, so great was his emotion. “It is his desire. I shall remain behind.”

“Then I shall lose you, Morgo,” Nurri Kala said sadly and moved away from us.

I had not anticipated this magnanimity on Morgo’s part. Taking him for a primitive child, I thought that in the event of my being the lucky man, he would fight me for the girl. But there was a spark of his early civilized training in him. He was a good sport – and would be a good loser.

“Nurri Kala,” he cried alound, “you must decide.”

She shook her golden head. “Not yet, Morgo. Give me more time. Let us go to the upper caves first.”

“No, now!” he commanded.

“Give me a day, Morgo!” she pleaded.

He hesitated and then bowed out of deference to her wish. “Very well. It shall be a day. No longer, Nurri Kala.”

I could not help trembling, knowing that my fate in love was to be decided so soon. Each hour was to bring me closer to happiness or despair.

Again Morgo gave the orders to the Bakketes and we went aloft, penetrated the long corridor and flew into the Cave of the Shaft. The red glow was turning white. The new day was entering Zaan, and its sunny beams were seeking out the colossal diamond wall that in a few hours, to light the world with the Himalayas, would throw off a light so great it blinded.

Yet if the waters rose and covered that diamond reflector, would darkness fill the caverns? I could not tell. I had no idea how great would be the flood.

Flying low, away from the others, I saw the columns of the Silurians and Shammans moving through the forest. There were no bats defending them.

Zorimi’s procession of litters containing himself and his sacks of diamonds was easily spotted. They moved like a speckled python over the floor of the jungle, not in the direction our Bakketes were taking but toward a depression in the floor.

Was Zorimi headed for his secret exit? I suspected as much. The bats had warned him of the flood and he was in full flight, using his creatures as long as was possible to get him and his treasure caravan out of the caves into Nepal or Tibet.

I directed Baku to Morgo and shouted my news to him. He was interested, and, going higher, we hung over the magician’s train. It moved swiftly afoot and presently I saw the mouth of a cave partially overgrown with brush and giant leaves. Was this the secret door? I could not resist dropping down to be certain.

The Shammans kept me at my distance by hurling stones at me from their slingshots. Zorimi was in a panic. He climbed out of his litter and holding the Shining Stone aloft – She of the Three Heads – that the inner world world worshiped – he exhorted them to move faster. He counted each litter of diamond sacks as they passed by, descending into the cave I had seen.

The line disappeared steadily. I watched it, comparing it to the tail of a rat scurrying to cover.

The line halted. Zorimi screamed imprecations. The last litter carriers, hearing the cries from the cave, dropped their cargoes and retreated despite Zorimi’s guttural commands. If he had a whip or a gun he would have killed the men on the spot so tremendous was his wrath.

Now I saw the cause of the panic in the cave. Little rivulets of water seeped from its mouth. They grew larger and formed a pool out of which terrified Shammans scrambled and splashed.

The flood was doing its work beneath this Cave of Zaan. The water was seeking the level of its source. Shortly, the entire cave would be submerged. And Zorimi’s secret exit to the outer world was cut off.

I was tempted to drop down and take the man prisoner when his army deserted him in panic, leaving him a gesticulating mass of pelts beside his treasure sacks. But Morgo cried a warning to me. Shamman bats were in the air.

Zorimi saw them and set up a shrill call. They wheeled and swooped down upon him.

I rejoined Morgo and flew to the tunnel by which he first entered Zaan years before. It was the route that he knew and it led through the Land of the Cicernas, Verrizon and into Kahli and higher Shamman.

We flew hard and made the tunnel as the light fell full upon the diamond, lighting it up so that we could not look back upon it without shielding our eyes. Out of curiosity, I dared to peer over my shoulder to behold its glory. The whiteness of the diamond was not full yet, but it was of a glorious purity and bespoke the wonders to come when the outer sun, hurling its ray through the hole in the back of the Himalayas, set it afire, giving day to the caves.

In entering the tunnel which had a peculiar hollow ring, I was deafened by flapping of the Bakketes’ wings. The monotony of the sound almost lulled me to sleep , as often did an airplane motor. Many a lucky dive I came out of, wakened just in time to avert disaster, over a German trench, or on the crest of a high ridge in the Argonne.

An affinity with the sound of the Bakketes’ wings made me sensitive to other wing beats. I opened my eyes, startled. The reverberations that were lulling me into a doze had come from behind me. Now I could hear wing ahead in the passage. Was it merely an echo or –

We rounded a wide bend and and found ourselves face to face with a horde of Shamman bats. Fright and panic seized the Bakketes. They could not turn about. The Shammans came at us, hundreds of them.

In a flash, we were a mass of colliding bodies, screeches and tangled wings and legs. The Bakketes tried to force a passage over or under the steady stream of Shammans. Morgo and I hacked away at the enemy with our knives, trying to keep close to Nurri Kala’s carrier. We were clouted with wing, kicked with flying feet.

The melee broke as suddenly as it had started. The Shammans did not want to engage us for some reason. They were bent on reaching Zaan with every possible haste.

A little battered and breathless, we debouched into the luxurious Land of the Cicernas. The air was a pandemonium of shrill cacklings and shrieks from the chicken fiends.

I saw that the floor was partially inundated with water that poured through the tunnel through which we made our original entrance into Zaan – the tunnel that led to the river. From that culvert, the water gushed in a steady cascade as from a huge fire hydrant, hurling trees and rocks out of its path as it sought elbow room in the broad cave.

And I screamed to Morgo when I counted the Bakketes that came through the collision with the Shamman bats.

Nurri Kala was missing.

Her carrier was not in the depleted ranks of the batmen. Several of the Zaans which we were carrying were likewise gone.

Instinctively, Morgo and I ordered our bats to turn us about and return to the tunnel. We meant to give chase – to learn what fate befell the girl – to rescue her from Zorimi’s power if there was still time. We were ready to do combat with a hundred Shamman bats – for the girl we loved was in danger.

Before we reached the opening, we saw its ceiling sag and crumble. A shower of rocks was followed by a deluging stream of water. The rising river had found some outlet in a higher level and its weight was bearing down upon the ceiling of the Land of the Cicernas.

In a moment, the tunnel walls collapsed before our eyes and we knew that access to Zaan was completely cut off. The pain on Morgos face was intense, and I saw his eyes moisten with tears. He was frustrated rather than frightened – fearful for Nurri Kala rather than worried about the fate of this cavern.

The Bakketes added their warning screeches to the terrified cackles of the Cicernas, those huge beasts that hopped about in the waters below, seeking dry land. The roof of the cave was giving way. Three or four dribbles of water started high up and holes quickly widened to give the waters above their forced right of way.

We went back to the Bakketes and continued on to the door to Kahli. Below, the mottled feathers of the Cicernas mingled with those of the cockatoos and the birds of paradise. The latter sought refuge on the chickens’ backs when their trees were swept down in the rush of the rising water.

As we neared the entrance to Kahli, we saw the Cicernas moving toward the same point. The air was thick with the insects and the winged creatures, their beautiful plumage bedraggled and wet from contact with the sudden flood.

The tunnel was not high enough to permit the bats and the tall Cicernas to share it. We had to reach it first. But the huge chickens were suddenly endowed with a supernatural speed and they raced for that goal of safety as speedily as we did.

Cicernas were in the tunnel when we reached it. They turned on us and tore at the Bakketes with their hideous cackling beaks, their beady eyes alight with fear. Morgo took the advance and flying low with his knife outstretched, he cut at heads and throats. Falling on on Cicerna’s back, he severed the thin neck and flew to the chicken immediately ahead, decapitating that one, too. I followed suit, striking out blindly, my knife becoming a mass of blood-coated feathers.

The surprise of our attacked momentarily stayed the Cicernas and we got into the tunnel while the huge creatures had to climb over the bodies of their fallen brothers. The air was a whirl of darting birds but they gave us no trouble.

My last glimpse of the Land of the Cicernas was a burst of water from the ceiling. It roared down in a steady torrent as if some pagan god had turned on a giant spigot to water his garden, heedless of the destruction of living creatures. With the caving in of the roof, light was blotted out of the land that had been so beautiful.

We entered Kahli, a desecrated land, torn up by the marauding black and red ants with a symphony of splashing water and cackles ringing out pitifully behind us. The Kahli in which I had learned the ways of the caves from Morgo was gone. In its place was a drab desolation of nude trees and barren brush. The Husshas and the Rortas had fed well.

The usual yellow light was dim, and I knew that the day was well advanced. Was darkness inevitable as a result of the flood? Were the rising waters touching The Shaft that reflected the sun’s light upon this hidden world?

I began to feel like the primitive men who wondered at the miracles of the heavens, and I understood in that hour how they came to worship the sun and the forces of nature that were fickle, now kindly and fertile and fruitful, now cruel and sterile and relentless in their toll of lives. This was what man experienced when the great glaciers moved down upon his home millions of years ago – inexplicable horror and futility. All his efforts went for naught in the face of merciless nature.

We flew to Morgo’s former dwelling, and I was happy to see that the rocks I piled over the entrance were still in place. The ants had not broken in. But the decay of the Mannizan flesh we left there made the cave unlivable until the Bakketes cleaned it out. I saw a wealth of ammunition and a rifle I took from the Junkers. Again I was endowed with a weapon of my civilization and I felt stronger.

Morgo gave no though to food though he was as hungry as the rest of us. We had many mouths to feed, too, counting the Zaans, who shivered in the cooler warmth of Kahli and the legion of Bakketes. He stood on the ledge watching the cave he had loved with sorrowful eyes.

His hand caressed the little cross of twigs that he always carried. Here in the midst of nature’s impending destruction, this son of the caves was turning to the deity his parents had taught him in the days when he was a little boy of my world.

“Derro,” he said at length, “I believe that we shall meet Nurri Kala again. She is not dead. I have faith in that belief. We had better go into Shamman and wait near the plateau of The Flame. She will return there – with Zorimi.”

“But how do you know that she will, Morgo?”

He smiled at me. “I have what you call a hunch.” He held the little cross of twigs up to my eyes and then tucked it away.

“Good,” I said, “and while we’re there, we can search for that room where Nurri Kala said the black books were kept. One of them my contain your name – a clue to your true identity.”

“I am no longer interested in learning that secret,” he said listlessly. “I want only Nurri Kala.”

And so did I, but what could I say in the face of his simple desire? Now was not the time to pit my will – my desire – against his. I, too, meant to make the girl my wife, if I ever laid eyes on her again.

The Bakketes flying over their ruined land came to us reporting that there was a leak in their field of stalactites. We had no reason to suspect that the river could send its flood over Kahli, but we remembered what had happened to the Land of the Cicernas.

Immediate flight was urgent. Other bat men reported the appearance of herds of Cicernas and Mannizans moving across the lower end of the cave where water trickled from the tunnels. Ants and snakes had been seen near Verrizon, entering Kahli in retreat of the welling waters.

I marveled at the catastrophe. A single rock falling into the mouth of a river’s solitary outlet was accomplishing the end of a world. The caves were doomed. All animal life and men were fleeing to higher ground for their lives.

The identities of individual cave life would be lost and creature would fight creature for the morsels of food that the ants had left behind them after they plagued Shamman – the ultimate destination of the refugees of the flood.

I remembered my readings on the end of the Carboniferous Age three hundred million years ago when the glaciers appeared and rising waters wiped out the ancient ancestry of man. Here beneath the Himalayas – with a few hundred miles of the outposts of twentieth century civilization – nature was repeating herself.

A cave world was being wiped out by water.

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!

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

I had but one course to take; to use the Bakketes in locating Morgo and Nurri Kala. My army training came to the fore, and I used Baku as intermediary.

He was instructed to organize scouting parties of six and as many as there were caves neighboring Kahli. These Bakketes were to go to the white man’s aid, if it was possible, and one of them was to return immediately and notify me. Under no circumstances were they to engage the Shamman bats in a fight, I said, unless such combat was unavoidable. I did not want to endanger the lives of my friends in any way. My guns, I told myself, would cope with the situation when I reached the scene.

Seven parties took off from the ravished cave while Baku flew among them, exhorting and commanding the designated leaders to do nothing that would imperil those they sought – if they lived.

When the Bakkete flights were out of sight, I busied myself with loading four automatics and stuffing into my pockets all the ammunition I could carry. I was likewise determined to prevail upon Morgo to use a gun hereafter. His primitive weapons were too inadequate to cope with the forces of evil in the caverns, that were apparently mustered against us.

Hours passed. Three of the search parties returned from short flights. Baku informed me that they had nothing to report. The caves they visited were destitute of all life, including the Shammans fleeing from their own homes.

Through those hours of vigil, I scoured the cave for any sign of Morgo’s death. I could find none, and I was certain he still lived. Even when my eyes fell upon his bowie knife – and I knew he was among his enemies, unarmed – I persisted in optimism. The knife was lying behind a stone near the mouth of the dwelling. He had fought, I reasoned, even when he was dragged out upon the ledge.

At last, a lone Bakkete winged its way toward me.

I sent Baku to meet him, to hurry him along, to ascertain his information. Baku reported. Morgo and Nurri Kala had been sighted in the Land of the Cicernas. The name meant nothing to me at the time, for I was elated on hearing that the Bakketes had effected a rescue and were bringing my friends back to Kahli.

Another hour went by and the yellow light grew dim. Soon it would be dark. The rescuers were nowhere in sight.

Had something happened? I became uneasy.

Baku strained his sharper eyes but could not locate my friends in the air.

It was high time I made up my mind. In my hands existed the most effective death-dealing weapons made by man. In my hands rested the fate of the white youth and the girl.

“Baku,” I cried to him, “take me into the Land of the Cicernas. Something has delayed Morgo and the Bakketes carrying him.”

He nodded quickly and I caught an anxious light in his little eyes. “Cicerna – kills. Cicerna – bad.”

We went to the ledge and as I was scanning the darkening horizon of pinkish stalactites, now dimmed to terra-cotta red, there was a gret hue and cry in the air from the direction of Shamman. Bakketes flew out of the deepening gloom and screeched panicky words to Baku. I sensed impending danger – and again though at once of Zorimi. What new horror had he unloosed upon us?

But I was wrong. The horror that approached was of our own unleashing.

The Bakketes reported that the Husshas and Rortas had penetrated Kahli. They were swarming through the cave, clogging the tunnel linking the two caves. The Raba was no longer respecting the truce he made with Morgo, for Shamman was devoid of bountiful food and his hordes were hungry. Kahli represented the finest aspects of a meal – and the black ants were bring the venomous reds with them.

My first thought was for instant flight. But I bethought myself of the supplies and ammunition in the cave. They must be preserved. The ants would climb the cliffs, scenting the Mannizan meat in our larder. They would wreck the cave more completely than even the depredations of Zorimi’s henchmen.

Single-handed, for I could not explain myself clearly to Baku, I tumbled rocks into the mouth of the dwelling and piled it high, trusting to luck that the voracious ants would not break through this impromptu door of stone and chalk. My fingers bled but my conscience assured me I was doing a wise act.

Then I committed myself to Baku. By this time the air was filling with terrified Bakketes. They knew, as did the Shamman bats, that their aeries in the lofty stalactites were no longer safe from the insects that clambered everywhere in quest of edible flesh.

“To the Land of the Cicernas!” I cried to my Bakkete.

My feet left the stone ledge as we vaulted into the air, flying high over the panic-stricken denizens of the roof. I had the four guns with me and two knives – and I was ready for a squad of Uhlans or all the Silurians harbored in the Himalayas.

—

Nurri Kala saw the dust of the flashing leaves subside. The trunk of the fallen tree was sprawled on the grassy floor of the cave and a Cicerna was cackling piteously, its cries coming from the dense foliage. She could not see Morgo.

Was he, too, caught in the foliage? Was he at grips with the giant chicken? Her eyes told her nothing.

The other Cicernas flapped their wings and stared up at her, toward the top of another tree. She wondered why they looked into the other tree and presently, she brought her eyes up and saw.

Morgo was struggling to gain his balance on a limb of the tree, dangling with one foot and hand caught about the slender branch. Then she understood what had happened. The whipping apart of the interlocked branches had catapulted the white man from his perch into the other tree where eager hands took hold. And the falling tree imprisoned one of the slow footed Cicernas in its mass of foliage.

Morgo was breathless. His body, hurled through the air, struck the limb to which he clung, and the wind was knocked out of him. He took deep gulps of air and quickly recovered himself with ease, and pulled himself into a sitting position on the branch.

“I am all right,” he shouted across the intervening gulf to the girl. “I still hold my luck.”

His eyes cast about for a passage in the branches to the girl’s tree. He wanted to be at her side in the face of this ugly danger. Yet there seemed to be no means of approach. A small avenue of trees separated them, and there were now no interlacing branches to help him.

The Cicernas, momentarily frustrated in the destruction of these strange white creatures, set to work once more, gnawing at the bases of the trees that held the man and girl. Their elemental minds told them that this was the one way to bring their prey to earth. The cries of the imprisoned Cicerna beneath the foliage had stopped, and Morgo sensed that death had visited it.

The vast cave was as still as a graveyard save for the sound of beak tearing wood – the gnawing at the trees. Morgo could not estimate the time nor could he think of a way to escape this new attack. Nor could he and the girl go on indefinitely, jumping from tree to tree, while the Cicernas gnawed down the forest.

His blood ran cold when his eyes told him that there were no branches strong enough to carry him across to a neighbor. He studied Nurri Kala’s plight and wondered.

The girl was aware of her own predicament. She, too, child of the caverns and used to emergencies, had sought a way out, to save her life. There were no branches that could bear her weight in escaping to another tree.

“I am trapped, Morgo,” she called to him. “What shall we do?”

He made no reply. If only the Shamman bats would return, he would gladly surrender to them with the girl, rather than face the death that waited for them in the beaks of the Cicernas. He cursed the fate that had deprived him of his knife. With only that, he would have dropped to the ground to take on the Cicernas.

Nurri Kala called again to him. She was looking up at the darkening roof, pointing. He glanced up.

Were they Bakketes or Shamman bats that were on the wing?

He gave his cry – the schoolboy’s signal. The bats were far to his right. They continued, a group of six, moving away from him. He gave the call again, straining his lungs and throat.

The Cicernas ceased their gnawing and looked up at Morgo, startled.

The bats wheeled indecisively. Morgo gave his cry.

The creatures in the air flew toward the captives in the trees. They were Bakketes.

Morgo watched them with a happy pounding heart. He and Nurri Kala would escape the Cicernas. The chicken fiends, suspecting the aerial rescue, renewed their efforts. The trees trembled. The foliage shielding Nurri Kala fell to one side and the trunk slide from its roots.

Morgo’s hand fell upon his hidden cross. He murmured a supplication to the deity of his childhood and his eyes watched the approaching Bakketes. He was surprised to see one of them turn away from the group and fly back toward Kahli.

The Cicernas tore at Nurri Kala’s tree, beat it with their wings and shoved it with their heavy bodies to bring the foliage closer to earth. Gently, like a foundering ship, the tree sank down.

Nurri Kala climbed higher and her movements only served to send the tree lower. She could see the monstrous heads of the chickens, the beady eyes and the gory red growth on the head of one cackling bird. Snapping beaks ripped at the leaves, trying to pull her body within their grasp.

A Bakkete, heeding Morgo’s commands, swooped over the girl and swept her out of the foliage. The Cicernas, baffled and raging, set up a hideous cry. For a second time, the white creatures had frustrated them.

Another Bakkete released Morgo from his perch and the party of five winged creatures started back towards Kahli. The cackling of the Cicernas ceased with a heavy suddenness. Morgo wondered at the silence. He could not see well in the dim light that was settling over the cave.

An odd call – he did not know it for the crowing of a rooster – rent the quiet. It was not a pleasant sound and it seemed to be a commanding call. Morgo could hear the Cicernas running over the floor of the cave below, their ponderous bodies crashing over the undergrowths.

He was startled by the sight of the leaves and flowers springing up at them. The air was instantly filled with hundreds of bits of streaming color and they hurled themselves upon the Bakketes, clawing at their faces and pecking at their faces and eyes.

More felt his carrier release one arm to shield its face and eyes while he dangled in the other. His own body was beset by these fluttering pieces of gorgeous color which he now knew were the small birds they had first seen – the cockatoos and birds of paradise. They would not be beaten off. They were taking the offensive again the invaders to the Land of the Cicernas on command of the chicken fiend that crowed lustily.

The little birds caught themselves to the wings of the Bakketes and by their very weight, slowly bore the bat men downward. The cackling of the Cicernas was louder, closer at hand and directly below. Morgo and the girl were being dropped into their beaks again.

The feel of foliage was against Morgo’s skin. He called to Nurri Kala to take refuge in the treetops again and he ordered the Bakketes to do likewise and fight the birds with their hands. He set them an example by catching at the cockatoos and birds of paradise, clutching at their feathery brilliance and wringing their necks. The lifeless bodies were tossed to the Cicernas below and this turn in the tide of fighting caused the little birds to become wary – to draw off from the white and black creatures who had entrenched themselves in the trees.

It was into this scene that I dropped with Baku. From afar, I had seen the snowy flurry of little wings and heard the pained screeches of the assaulted Bakketes. Without them, I should have had no guidance in the twilight gloom.

Our advent routed the little birds and they vanished into the leaves where their colors blended with the orchids and strange flowers and vine leaves. We had no desire to pursue or punish.

“Derro,” Morgo cried to me, slipping an arm in mine as I sat beside him on the limb of his tree, “I was afraid you would never come. You have saved me again – and Nurri Kala.”

I paid no attention to this display of gratitude and promptly embarked on an account of what was happening in Shamman – overrun by the ants – and of their appearance in Kahli. His face grew pained as he thought of the pillage of his beautiful country. To return there was futile and would only mean courting death with the Husshas and the Rortas.

“We cannot go back,” Nurri Kala whispered to me. “Let us find a new home, Derro.”

Morgo bridled at her manner toward me.

“Do you and Derro wish to leave me, Nurri Kala?”

Laughingly, I made the least of his interference. “Of course not, Morgo! We’re like the ‘Three Musketeers’ – ever read it?” He shook his head. “All for one and one for all!”

“All for one and one for all!” Morgo murmured after me. His face brightened. “That is a good saying. I like it.”

The girl repeated the old battle cry of Dumas’ “Musketeers” and nodded pointedly to Morgo. He took her hand in his and stroked it gently and she did not withdraw it. I prided myself on having poured oil on waters that might have grown troubled.

“We’re in your hands, Morgo,” I said. “You know these caves. You’ve hunted in them – fought in them – heard tales about them. Where can we go and live peacefully? Where can we duplicate the beauty and bounty of Kahli?”

Morgo thought of several possibilities and, when he was about to speak, Nurri Kala interrupted him. “I want to see The Shaft,” she said. “Let us go there. We can find a home later on.”

The Shaft! That was the source of light for all the caverns buried beneath the Himalayan snowy peaks. Its mystery had always fascinated me – for my father was the most inquisitive man in Kilarney – and since Morgo could never give me an adequate description of The Shaft, I always wanted to see it. In more peaceful hours, we planned an expedition to this unusual phenomenon of nature.

“Not a bad idea,” I ventured, speaking up after the girl. “We may see a likely dwelling on the way – and then we could return to it. Furthermore, I think it a good idea to roam through the caves a bit and locate Zorimi’s forces. You never can tell where they’ll strike next.”

Morgo nodded. “Very good. We will go into the Caves of Zaan. They are lower down and beyond them lies The Shaft – the source of all light.”

The thick and obscuring darkness was now temporary ruler of the Land of the Cicernas. The chicken fiends cackled below us, gathering in great numbers, I judged, and in the trees we could hear the small birds moving quietly.

The Bakketes were summoned from their monotonous wheeling over our heads in the darkness. Baku hung in the air before us.

Morgo asked him if he knew of an entrance to the Caves of Zaan from the one we were in. The bat man reflected and then agreed to pilot us to a crag where we could spend the night while he and his mates sound the entry he remembered vaguely. The Bakketes, Morgo added, knew little of this chicken world because they feared to enter it, but Baku was an intrepid fellow and had done much exploring on his own.

We flew away from the hubbub of Cicerna voices across a damp belt of coolness, to a lofty spire of rock quite unlike the stalagmite formations in the upper caverns. When I recalled the dampness to Morgo he said that it largely accounted for the luxurious verdure in this cave and that it was carried on the breezes from the river. But of the river he could tell me little, saying that he was tired and not certain of his bearings. His knowledge of the river appertained to another section of caves.

We slept until the bright white light of the new day awakened us with its blinding rays. I sought the point from which it came but could find none. As in the other caverns, the light was diffused, and spread over a tropical wealth of greens and colors, flowers and rare palpitating vines. The birds of paradise and cockatoos, that flitted in the trees, paid no attention to the Bakketes mounting guard over our crag.

I was stunned by the exquisite beauty of this Land of the Cicernas. The cave was not as large as the others, for I could dimly see its walls that sloped gently up to the high ceiling, which was studded with thousands of little knobs – embryonic stalactites. Deep in the heart of the mountains, nature had not completed her chalk-and-lime formations.

Yet, I deduced, we were appreciably nearer The Shaft. While the light of distant Shamman was gray, Kahli’s was yellow and now this vast chamber’s was white. And for the first time I saw all the colors of the rainbow in multitudinous combination. My only explanation for the existence of the flourishing flora – for there was no dripping water from roof to floor here, as in the higher caves – was the strength of the dampness in the air.

I wished we could live in this cave. Nurri Kala seemed to divine my desires and we spoke of the beauty surrounding us until Baku flew to the crag. His parley with Morgo was unintelligible, but when it was over, Morgo turned to us.

“Baku,” he said, “has found a tunnel which he believes will take us into the Caves of Zaan. He did not explore very far because of the darkness and the high damp winds but he believes that we must cross the river to reach the place we seek.”

I asked about the inhabitants of Zaan, what sort of place it was.

“I was there when I was younger,” Morgo said. “But I flew in by another door and crossed the river nearer Kahli. Some of the tribes are friendly and some are not. The people are much like the Shammans but instead of being gray and hairy, they are fair and smooth-skinned, like us, Derro. The trees and growth on the ground are white and the caverns are filled with a light brighter than this we now see. The Shaft is in the center of Zaan. It is dazzling, blinding. We cannot look at it by day. By night it glows like a red ember and to touch it will burn the skin.

I was mystified but Morgo could give me no better explanation or description.

He dropped into the jungle with Baku and returned with odd fruits and grasses. These we ate for breakfast, and I’ll say they helped tremendously to stanch a pronounced hunger.

Then the Bakketes carried us to the northern wall of the cave and deposited us in front of a high corridor. Morgo said the bat men could not fly through with us but would follow us through on foot. I was thankful to have them near by – afoot or aloft – for they were our most invaluable allies.

Taking the lead, Morgo entered the tunnel. My old sixth sense cautioned me to draw a handy gun. Nurri Kala walked between us and the Bakketes brought up the rear.

We breasted the darkness of the corridor fearlessly. It was damp and a chill wind stirred through it from the river. The walls were beady with moisture and a fine drizzle fell upon us from the roof. It was cold and each drop sent shivers through us who were accustomed to the warmer air of the lower caves.

A dimness loomed ahead of us. It was the end of the tunnel we were traversing. We ran on and came out upon a rocky shore in a dimly lighted amphitheater of towering precipitous rocks which no man could scale. Near the vault, the light seeped in, but the openings were jagged, and hardly large enough for man or Bakkete to navigate.

In front of us was the river, a gray, cold, watered millrace that gushed from one black tunnel, across our vision, into another huge black tunnel. Faintly, I could make out the opposite side, a good half a mile away.

“There’s – there’s no shore on the other side!” I cried to Morgo, my heart sinking. ” I see nothing but cliff falling right into the waters.”

Morgo nodded. “You are right, Derro. We have seen the river we must cross – but we cannot cross it here. We must turn back and seek another door to Zaan.”

The little party started back to the tunnel through which we had come while I feasted my eyes on this secret river – this torrent unknown to the men of my world. It was an evil stream, the Druid in my blood whispered, and I nodded solemnly to myself. We were in a cul-de-sac with but one means of retreat. The way we had come.

My ears were strained. I had heard something above the rush of the roaring waters.

It was the cackling cry of the Cicernas. It came from the tunnel.

Morgo looked at me anxiously. The Bakketes huddled together, their blood turned colder by the sound of the chicken fiends than by the damp of the rocky amphitheater.

“They are in the tunnel. They have our spore,” Morgo said.

He need not have spoken. I could hear them clattering on the pebbles, cackling shrilly.

We retreated to the river’s edge, our eyes scouring the rocky walls for a niche in which to hide. There was none. And we could not take to the river.

It dawned on me that it was here that the Cicernas came to drink. We were trespassing on their oasis. We were trapped in it.

The first chicken hopped into view from the maw of the tunnel. Five more piled out after it. The Cicernas saw us and were startled. They were as Morgo had described them to me earlier, huge brutish-looking creatures, half chicken, half ostrich, carnivorous monsters of the fowl kingdom.

These, I figured, I could easily shoot. But to what end? Already, the tunnel was reverberating with more cackling. It was filled with Cicernas. They were going to the river to drink.

Three of the birds spread their wings – wings that reminded me of a titanic Fokker – and charged us with widely opened beaks from which belched hideous screams. I took careful aim and shot the leader.

The big Cicerna toppled sidewise and rolled down the back into the river. I saw, out the corner of my eye, its brownish body swept by the racing waters into the black tunnel. I shot the other two beastish birds and killed them. They fell.

Terror seized me. I strode forward and pumped lead into the other Cicernas – those standing at the tunnel mouth – those pouring out of it. Cackled shrieks of horrible agony echoed from wall to wall in the vast rock amphitheater, and deafened us.

A gigantic rooster, its crimson crest bristling, hopped over the dead Cicernas and rushed me. My gun jammed. I threw it aside.

The creature struck at me with its coarsely feathered breast, and I bounded backward and fell heavily on my back, almost stunned. I saw its legs planted astride me. I could not get another gun from my pocket in time to aim at the breast.

The Cicerna drew back its beady-eyed head to dart a deadly peck at me. Its ghastly thin tongue was a white tendril of death. I heard myself scream like a man in the clutch of an excruciatingly awful nightmare.

To Be Continued!

This is the conclusion of the second part of the serial. The next episode of Morgo the Mighty will post on May 26th. Morgo was serialized in four parts when it was published in The Popular magazine but I’m going to present the series in three. The complete serial is twenty-six chapters. Sixteen down. Ten to go.

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

When I took leave of Morgo to spy on conditions in Shamman, he sat talking on the ledge with Nurri Kala. Both of them watched my party become a speck in the distance.

“Would you stay here with me forever, Nurri Kala?” Morgo asked the girl at his side, looking at her shyly.

“Certainly. With you and Derro.”

“With me – alone?”

“But you do not like Derro then?”

She was amazed at Morgo’s suggestion.

“I like him as a brother. He saved my life when Zorimi meant to take it. Now I talk of something else.” He could not go on, could not clarify his train of thought concerning her.

“I do not want to see Derro go away, Morgo. He is a brave man.”

“I am brave, too, Nurri Kala.”

“I know that. You are of the caves, Morgo. You must be brave. It is your life here. But Derro comes from the outer world. There, I remember, men were not like him. He fights as you do and is as clever with his wits.”

“He uses different weapons.”

“Yes, and they save him time – when time means life. Why do you not use his weapons, Morgo? He would let you – and you could hunt and fight more easily. His guns are terrible things.”

The girl spoke with a fascination for the tools of civilization – which she had forgotten in her years under Zorimi’s domination.

“I fight as best I know how,” Morgo replied to her. “I have no feeling for Derro’s weapons. At best, my hands and my arms are my finest weapons.” He hesitated, and catching her eyes, he asked boldly, “Nurri Kala, do you like me?”

“Of course, Morgo – very much.”

“Do you like Derro more?” he added quickly.

She did not reply at once, lowering her eyes to think. “I cannot say, Morgo. I have only known the two of you a few days. But he tells me things that you never tell me.”

“What is that, Nurri Kala?”

“That I am beautiful.”

“That is unnecessary to say. You and I both know you are truly beautiful.”

“Oh,” she pouted, “is that all? You do not think I like to be told I am pretty?”

“I did not know you wanted to be told. In the future, I will remember it.”

“That is not the same as telling me – because you think so, and tell me because you want to.”

Morgo shook his head, bewildered. The art of love was a strange art to him. He had not learned it and instinct does not give it to man. There was much that he could tell Nurri Kala – but he was too shy.

“Derro knows many things that I do not know,” he added sadly. “And there are things that I cannot ask him.”

The white girl smiled, understanding him, and he got up and went into the cave. Letting her hair fall over her shoulders, Nurri Kala combed it with her fingers and longed for the reflecting glass in Zorimi’s caves. It would reveal her beauty to her. She longed to behold it again, to know its pleasure. A primitive child of the caves, she was likewise the woman eternal.

Morgo called out to her that there was food to be prepared. She shook her head and frowned. Derro would not do that. He would have prepared the food and brought it to her. He was like that, she thought. But it was woman’s place in the caves to serve man. She got up to do her duties while Morgo lounged in a corner, making new arrow shafts.

She was conscious that his eyes strayed often from his work to her. This pleased her immensely though she could not say why it did. Whenever their eyes met, he quickly turned away and pretended to be absorbed in his task.

Mannizan flesh was cut and she went about cooking it. The servants helped her clumsily and she ordered them about, chiding them for their stupidity and slovenly methods. Neatness and cleanliness were slogans she introduced into Morgo’s dwelling.

Soon the meal was ready and Nurri Kala heaped Morgo’s dish and set it in front of him. He began to eat, plucking the chunks of food with his fingers and tearing it to smaller bits with his teeth. The girl remembered how Derro used his knife to cut the meats in his dish, how he chewed with his teeth with his mouth shut – not smacking like Morgo’s. She tried to imitate Derro but found that as in Morgo, habit was stronger than intention and that her lips automatically parted and she could hear herself smacking her own lips.

“Come, sit by me, Nurri Kala,” Morgo called to her. “Talk to me.”

The girl brought her dish over to his side and seated herself at his feet. She could think of nothing to say, and abashed by her silence, Morgo ventured not a word. These primitive children did not think in terms of conversation. Speech with them was ever a practical thing, to be used in emergencies rather than for diversion.

Wings beat against the outer wall of the cave.

Morgo looked up. Were Bakketes bringing him news?

Ten Silurians, sinewed giants, dashed into the room, followed by as many Shamman bat men.

Morgo sprang to his feet, spilling his dish on the floor, and drew his knife.

The Silurians kept their distance. Morgo called to his servants to arm themselves and saw them take up knives, too. Then he demanded that the Silurians leave. They informed him they had come to take him and the girl to their master, Zorimi.

Morgo shook his head slowly at them. He felt Nurri Kala draw behind him, accepting his protection. Her touch on his back made him feel he had the courage to take on ten times as many Silurians in combat.

The purple-scale-skinned creatures rushed at him. The bat men beleaguered the servants. The cave was thrown into pandemonium, the bats screeching as knives found their way into their black flesh, the Silurians grunting whenever Morgo’s knife reached its mark through a vulnerable eye. The latter sought but one goal – the black bulging eye.

The fighting mass broke for an instant and Morgo was flung against the wall. His eyes flashed defiantly, fiercely. He was not fighting so much for himself as for Nurri Kala. She caught a glance from him and understood. He signed for her to keep well behind him.

Two Silurians lay dead upon the floor. Morgo’s bowie knife had touched their brains.

They came at him a second time, more wary. Instead of fighting at close quarters, they sought to surround him, to pin his thewed arms to his sides. The first man to touch him received a crashing blow in the face, and went reeling backward, sprawled into the fire, scattering the embers. His screams of pain rang out piercingly in the confines of the room.

Another Silurian leaped upon Morgo. The white man’s knife slid from the scaly body. Morgo felt himself encircled with arms of steel and lifted bodily from the floor. He kicked the man’s knees and legs from under him and they fell hard upon the stones.

Morgo squirmed free of the moist purple body in time to be on his feet and meet the hurled body and grappling fingers of another Silurian. The knife flashed in the air and struck the man’s forearm at the elbow – and Morgo’s might severed the limb while the Silurian, gasping with pain, and inarticulate, collapsed to the floor, reddening the stone with his gore.

The others were puzzled. This mere man defied their strength, their invulnerable bodies. They had but one fear in the past – the ants. Now they feared this white man who fought like ten men – who could hold ten men at bay, armed only with a sharp piece of metal.

They shouted to the bat men. The latter demurred. A Silurian grabbed one of them and wrung its neck, flinging the limp body at Morgo, who staggered under the impact and narrowly averted being knocked from his feet. Again he commanded the Silurians to leave his cave.

They dared not. They were obeying Zorimi’s mandates and their tiny brains were incapable of thinking up excuses with which to deceive the magician – to tell him how Morgo had fled or died. They were capable of doing only two things – getting their quarry or dying.

The five still in the fight exhorted the bat men to aid them, and the latter, fearing the fate of the strangled creature, hurled themselves upon Morgo. They proved a factor with which he could not contend. He found himself in a mass of screeching faces and beating wings – wings that gave blows harder than any man’s. He drove his knife into the heart of one and flung it from him as though it were a stick of wood, but the bat tactics overpowered him. He could not withstand the hammer blows of the heavy, leathery wings.

They beat him unmercifully upon his head and shoulders and flattened him to the floor. He struggled to regain his footing, but they weighed down upon him, flattening him, until a Silurian stepped into their midst and threw his arms around Morgo’s, embracing him from the back, rendering him helpless.

Then the others, elated at their success, broke the dishes, threw down the supplies and tossed their less fortunate mates over the ledge into the forest below, where a herd of marauding Mannizans were passing. They laughed while the rats consumed the dead.

Morgo was held in the arms of his captor while another scale-skinned creature took the girl. The bats prepared to take off, carrying the remaining Silurians between their legs.

Morgo struggled, and though he could not free his arms, he brought the Silurian to the floor, perilously near the edge of the ledge. Still he was helpless. He could not free himself from the arms of iron but he did retrieve his knife and slipped it into his belt.

He offer to compromise. He told his captor that if he could carry Nurri Kala in his arms, he would not put up further resistance. The Silurians debated a moment and, fearing a dangerous struggle with Morgo in the air, they consented to permit this flying arrangement.

The Silurian slipped his arms under Morgo’s and locked his hands over the white man’s chest. Nurri Kala then stepped in front of Morgo and he placed his arms about her waist, holding her fast to him. He told his captor that he was ready and the huge bat assigned them caught the latter between his legs. They swept from the ledge into space and the bat staggered in mid-air under his heavy load.

They flew swiftly toward the south and Morgo whispered into Nurri Kala’s ear: “Be brave. This bat will tire and we will land. If the others fly ahead I can deal with the scaly beast and the bat. Save your breath – we may have to run for it if we can reach the ground.

The girl nodded. “You are very clever, Morgo. And you are as brave as a hundred men!”

She could not see the smile of pleasure that lighted his face. Nor the pain that was written there when she added: “But you might have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you had used Derro’s gun. It could have killed all of them – without harm to you.”

He did not speak after that. They went through the mouth of a cave into a tunnel, and, at length, were sailing over a warmer terrain more gorgeous than Kahli, a forest between whose leaves they saw rainbow colors in flowers and weird vines – colors that were dazzling in light that was white rather than yellow, and very warm. Bird, the first Nurri Kala remembered seeing in the caves, flew through the trees and cried out in terror of the bats. Their colors were gorgeous, crimsons, jade-greens and sea-blues – and the girl confused them with the orchids in the treetops, orchids that waved their long petals in the hot breeze. She had never heard of a bird of paradise. These birds were of that family.

“Where are we, Morgo?” she asked. “This cave is more beautiful than Kahli, and I loved Kahli.”

“This is the land of the Cicernas,” Morgo said. “It is beautiful to look at, but deadly to live in. The Cicernas are fiends. Not even the Mannizan will enter here.”

The bat that carried the three of them sank lower and lower in his flight. Morgo knew that it was weakening, that it could not hold out much longer. Their landing was inevitable. Ahead, he could see the end of the cave and a door to another, their probable destination. He hoped the bat would have the strength to carry them beyond the reach of the avaricious Cicernas.

Nurri Kala cried out and pointed down at large birdlike creatures who peered up a the bats and cackled viciously. The beasts were twice the size of a man. She saw long necks and sharp beaks, and mouths beneath beady eyes. They stood their bulky bodies on two yellow legs ending in claws. When they spread and flapped their short, stubbly wings, which could not lift them from the ground, she saw that they were feathered in browns, corn-yellows and speckled whites. Some of these strange animals had bright-red growths on their heads and under their jaws.

“They are Cicernas,” Morgo told her. “They fight with their beaks and claw feet and a blow from their wings will kill a man.”

Neither Morgo nor Nurri Kala remembered seeing chickens, and the Cicernas which were giants of the chicken and ostrich families, thriving in this warm, fruitful land, evoked no memories in their stricken brains.

The other bats were now far ahead. The door for which they were aiming was still distant. And their carrier bat was growing weaker with every beat of its wings.

Without warning, it dropped like a plummet. Morgo and the girl fell through the air, a treetop breaking their fall. They clung there while the Silurian and the bat crashed with resounding thuds upon the mossy, grassy floor below. They lay there stunned.

Morgo watched the Cicernas approach. Their ill luck in the air had been witnessed by seven of the chicken fiends. The Cicernas ran to where the two stunned bodies lay and attacked them with their beaks. Nurri Kala closed her eyes and shuddered. The Silurian screamed and put up a fight before he died, but his purple, scaly armor was worthless under the rain of beak blows.

When she dared look down again from their safe hold on the uppermost branches of the tree, the bodies had disappeared. The Cicernas were looking up at them, stringy white tongues drooping from their mouths.

“They cannot fly,” Morgo said with a sight of relief. “Their bodies are too fat and heavy. But they may be able to cut this tree down.”

The Cicernas cackled loudly, savagely and flapped their wings impotently, trying to fly up at the two white creatures who had fallen into their land. Their failure to shake the man and the girl from the tree only increased their rage and three of them set about gnawing at the thick base of the tree trunk.

Morgo surveyed his situation coolly. They were in a sea of tangled, interlocking branches of tall trees – trees high enough to preserve them from the chickens twice as big as men. He tested the branch of another tree that protruded beneath his feet, and traced its course to the upper reaches of the next mass of foliage, from which birds of paradise screamed and fled.

The gnawing at the base of the tree went on. Morgo, peering down, saw that the Cicernas were making short work of their job. He felt the tree sway and lean far to one side, fortunately toward the tree that extended a helping branch.

When the tree swayed perilously far to one side and the tearing of its fibers resounded above the gnawing beaks, Morgo led the girl down to the other tree limb on which he had his eye.

“We must jump to the next tree, Nurri Kala,” he said. “Hold fast to the branches and use this lime for your feet. The trees meet. You can cross to the other tree.”

“And you, Morgo?”

“I will follow you, Nurri Kala. But I cannot go with you. The limb is not strong enough for two. Go!”

The girl’s finely wrought hands went out to the supporting branches, revealing hidden sinews that in no way marred her beauty. She tested the limb under her foot and gauged the distance to the other trunk with shrewd eyes.

In another moment, she was making the crossing. Midway, she turned, and, testing the resiliency of the limb with her weight, called to Morgo: “It is strong enough. Hurry now!”

She clambered quickly into a mass of twigs and leaves and threw her arms about the central trunk, safe and secure for the moment. It suddenly occurred to her that when the other tree fell, it might pull this haven of refuge to earth, too. The branches seem inextricably intertwined.

She saw Morgo cautiously moving his weight across the limb. He was midway between the two trees.

Crash! There was a roar of flying, flipping, tearing leaves. Branches flew helter-skelter, whipping the foliage of Nurri Kala’s tree until its firmness trembled and it careened over its stricken mate. The air was filled with dust and falling leaves, great green petals and highly scented orchids, torn from resting places by the suddenly unlaced branches.

“Morgo! Morgo! Are you safe?”

She could not see the white man in the maelstrom of dust and greenery. Her fluttering hear stood still. The cackling of the Cicernas below was awful. She quickly covered her ears.

To Be Continued!

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

When another day came, we three – Morgo, Nurri Kala and myself – sat on the ledge in front of our dwelling watching the cavern spread below us like a fanciful counterpane of green satin with yellow iridescent overtones. We were fascinated by all that we beheld – and our brows were creased in disturbed frowns.

The Mannizans were but forerunners of other things.

All of Shamman’s living creatures seemed to be pouring across the floor of Kahli toward Verrizon and other caves the names of which I forget. This emigration from Zorimi’s world was gargantuan in its proportions. The people of Shamman traveled as speedily as possible in something like military formation. Their fear was the Mannizan. But few of the latter were in sight and I figured that they had pressed ahead to some unknown destination.

There were Silurians, too, men, women and children. In groups of their own, or peaceably mingled with the primitive men, they, too, were on trek. Toward the middle of the day, we saw the Shamman bats. These made no attempt to engage the Bakketes, who clung among their pinkish stalactites, in warfare. Straight as the crow, they passed over Kahli, spreading a black cloud over its luxuriant verdure.

Smaller Mannizans, more like mice, put in an appearance. The Shammans and Silurians fell upon these lesser rodents and slaughtered them for food. The small Mannizans put up no fight and fled from the hail of the Shammans’ sling shots.

Insects, drab and grayish and foreign to Kahli, were next to be seen. They zoomed through the forests and over the treetops, hurrying, scarcely pausing to feed.

I saw unfamiliar snakes, long, sinuous pythons, and fat, yellow, speckled gray monsters. With surprising agility, they sped along with the other creatures, avoiding them, or attacking them when necessary.

All of Shamman was in flight. Its living life was engaged in the old battle of the survival of the fittest. And its creatures fought for life by running away from those forces that would destroy it – the Husshas and the Rortas.

The flood of ant life Morgo had released from Verrizon to effect Nurri Kala’s rescue from Zorimi now plagued all of Shamman. The black ants drove from cover their hereditary enemies, the red ants, and that vast cavern was turned over to them. It was as in Africa, I remembered. There, when the Driver ants swept through the jungles in a village, the inhabitants fled. The ants swarmed over the houses, devouring the refuse and filth and when they had passed on, the owners returned to their homes – their cleaner homes. Such is sanitation in the heart of Africa.

But the Shammans knew only fear. They were putting as great a distance as possible between them and the Husshas, which moved faster than horses.

Of course, we three on the ledge were seen. No attempt was made to molest us. Our fortified coign of vantage – as far as menace from the four-footed beasts was concerned – was envied by the passing examples of Pithecanthropus Erectus – the two-footed primitives.

“Morgo,” I said with a new fear, “if the Shammans were running away from the black ants, isn’t it likely that they’re being pursued?”

He nodded. “I have been thinking of that, Derro. Tomorrow, when I am certain the Shamman bats are all out of their nests, I will send Bakketes into that cavern to see what is happening.”

“And if the Husshas are headed for Kahli?”

“We must move on – like the others – to a safer cave. This has never happened before in the caves, to my remembering,” Morgo explained. “The Rortas usually feed on the unclean growth under Shamman and do not bother the people on the surface. The black ants stay in Verrizon and other caves farther away.”

Nurri Kala sighed. “I hope they do not come into Kahli. It is too beautiful to be destroyed. Never have I seen such color – those glorious greens and yellows and pink teeth hanging over us. I should love” – she looked at me, remembering the word I introduced to her – “to stay here forever.”

“Would you really?” Morgo and I asked as one man. We looked at each other foolishly. He did not respond to my grin and the crease in his brow deepened. He was profoundly disturbed by the girl’s friendliness toward me.

“Forever and ever,” the girl said, softly, happily.

“We may have to move,” Morgo said practically. “Tomorrow, we will know.

We passed the evening light, watching the camp fires of the Shammans and the Silurians. They twinkled over the floor of Kahli like cheery villages. In the early yellow light of the next day, they would be gone – probably forever – with the people in flight for their lives. I wondered if we had done a wise thing in unleashing the Husshas on our single enemy, Zorimi and his few Silurians. The ants were beyond control – the Raba impossible to locate – and the likelihood of their deluging us was imminent.

In the morning, I insisted on going with Baku into Shamman as the head of a scouting party. Morgo objected a little and then accepted my desire with a shrug.

“Take care, Derro, my brother,” he said to me. “The ways of Shamman are different now, with the ants in possession of that cave.”

“I’m curious,” was my reply and I bid him and the girl au revoir and flew off in Baku’s arms.

We negotiated the tunnel easily. There were no Shamman bats in it, nor any when we reached the higher, larger cavern. The light was full and Shamman was clearly visible in all its grayness. Silence pervaded everything and, though five other Bakketes flew behind me, when I looked back at them, I could hear nothing – not even the movement of a wing. I felt like a man in a neutral colored dream.

The thin spire of The Flame’s cloudy smoke guided me for a goal. My Bakketes were alert, their eyes on the distant stalactites for trouble – and an instant retreat to Kahli.

Nearing the plateau that was Zorimi’s, I saw six streams of jet black bodies moving toward it. The Husshas were still mobilizing in Verrizon and pouring into the Cavern of Shamman. Their legions were millions and for three days and nights they had been flooding this gray home of evil.

Over the plateau, I beheld desolation below – desolation and carnage. The red Rortas still held the mound where ant of one color was destroying ant of another. I could see the black mandibles crunching red bodies – and black bodies curling up at the lethal bite of the red ant. I wondered if the Husshas would continue to rush to their own destruction – or would ultimately outnumber the Rortas and eradicate them. There were plenty of both colors still hungry and still keen for combat.

Then I understood, in a glance, the cause of the great migration of the living creatures of Shamman – including its human-headed bats.

Some instinct told the Husshas that they could not vanquish the red ants. The latter were wily and more potently armed. Nature whispered to the ant mind and it understood.

Four streams of Husshas ran up the sides of the cave and looking overhead, when Baku took me higher, I saw them wending their way through the stalactites. In their flight from the Rortas, they had gone to Shamman’s ceiling and routed the Shamman bats from their aeries.

I started. The direction the ants on the ceiling were taking was toward the tunnel to Kahli.

Descending closer to the mound where ant ate ant, I saw still another river of black, coursing far to one side, avoiding the territory held by the Rortas. This stream, the same black belt I first saw in Verrizon – a quarter of a mile wide – was moving toward Kahli – slowly to be sure – but inevitably. The moan of munching came to my ears. The Husshas were on the trail of the Shammans, Silurians, Mannizans and other beasts.

How like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow! The Husshas attacked the plateau, Moscow. Finding it destitute of food, and only a red death awaiting them there, they scattered and fled as did the Grand Armee – rushing pellmell toward the ceiling and safer terrain.

I followed the course of the black river of ants – since alighting on the plateau to seek Zorimi was impossible – and presently came to the head, where the workers were less numerous – where the soldiers surrounded the Raba. The great ant pressed on, and I thought of the Little Corporal, his hand tucked in his greatcoat, his head bowed, plowing through the snows that lead from Moscow, alone and dejected. You know the famous painting.

However, I could attribute no human sentiments to the Raba. He was an ant. He was after the spore of humans who were the denizens of these caverns. Kahli was his objective. Defeat was of no moment in his life. Food was his only concern – food for himself and his millions of followers.

I shouted to Baku to hurry back to Morgo’s cave. Kahli was doomed. Its fairness would be ravaged. The black ants would swarm the floor and the walls of the cave. Even Morgo’s dwelling would not be safe.

Baku got back to the cave dwelling without my seeing any sign of our common enemy. He dropped me on the ledge and instead of flying off to his nest higher up the face of the cliff, I noticed that he hesitated apprehensively.

“Morgo!” I called. “Nurri Kala.”

There was no answer.

I went into the cave. It was deserted. Our precious fire was out.

I am still ashamed of my first thought. Morgo, I knew, had a liking for the white girl of the caves. He had a human jealousy for my attentions to her. Now I thought he had carried her off. So great was my surprise at finding the place empty, I jumped at the conclusion that he took her and was leaving me to shift for myself.

But I was wrong. I wronged my friend.

I found the three Shamman servants. Their bodies, badly mutilated, were heaped in dark corner. The dishes were broken and Morgo’s crude decorations were desecrated. I could see that bats had torn the servants limb from limb, leaving their talon marks on the gory flesh. And the forearm of a scaly arm lay upon the ground. My supplies were tumbled about, cartridge cases opened and the rounds strewn, but nothing had been stolen. My guns and knives were there, even my cigarettes and matches.

Immediately I reconstructed what had happened. Morgo had been surprised by an attach of Shamman bats carrying Silurians between their feet. He put up a good fight, slashed an arm from one of the scale-skinned creatures and was subsequently overpowered when his servants were destroyed. He and Nurri Kala were made prisoners and carried off to Zorimi wherever he was hiding.

Perhaps it was clairvoyance, perhaps instinct – but I saw the hand of Zorimi in the fight that had taken place in Morgo’s home.

To Be Continued!