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!

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.

A wailing cry came through the hole widened by Morgo’s hands. It was the signal of a Bakkete.

Morgo shouted to them. I heard the flurry of wings against the cliffs, though my eyes saw nothing. Was this really delivery? Or would the ants reach us first – pick off the last man?

“I am here!” Baku’s welcome voice cried to us.

“Nurri Kala goes first,” Morgo said. She was given into the arms of a Bakkete. “To Kahli. We will join you there.”

“Zorimi goes next,” Morgo cried. “Hold him, Derro!”

I had no idea where the magician was, so I struck a match, my last. Zorimi had scurried to the far side of the cave. He did not mean to be made prisoner by Morgo.

“Zorimi!” Morgo commanded. “This is your only hope of life! Come!”

“No – no!” Zorimi said huskily. He started to climb the wall, moving upward, his hands and feet jabbing into little niches I hadn’t noticed. There was a hole near the ceiling toward which he moved.

Morgo sprang at him.

The ant-engorged door broke and Rortas and Husshas swarmed into the room. My light went out.

“Morgo!” I shouted. “They’re in the room!”

Morgo’s arms guided me to the hole. I felt a Bakkete’s arms take hold of me and I swung off the floor, crying to Morgo to follow me.

I caught my breath and felt easier when I saw the flash of his white body in the air beside me.

“I said we would come through, Derro,” Morgo laughed across the gulf of stillness that separated our flying Bakketes. “And we have the white girl.”

Little did I realize in that moment what the white girl would mean to us – do to us.

The flight into Kahli was made without signs of our enemies. The night of Shamman was empty of the huge bats. But from below came the incessant munch-munch of the Husshas still pouring out of Verizon, marching on the plateau, the goal set by the Raba at Morgo’s request. Shamman would be ravaged by these insects. I decided I wouldn’t give two cents for Zorimi’s chances of escaping the plateau alive. His world was infested with certain death.

On returning to Morgo’s cave, we received the reports of the aerial battle from Morgo. The ranks of the Bakketes were sadly depleted. The suddenness of the Shamman bats’ attach threw hundred of them into the mandibles of the black ants. And the Shammans perished, too, in those tongs.

When the tide of the battle turned against them, the Bakketes scattered in groups to hide in territory free of the ants, beneath stalagmites and the stunted trees and vegetable growths. Yet they were routed by the approach of the red ants which seemed to come out of the earth and move directly toward the plateau of The Flame.

Baku feared for his master’s and my life when he saw the Olympian mound inundated by the black and red creatures. The other bats urged a retreat to the Cave of Kahli but he insisted on waiting until the light came. He still hoped for a sign.

There was a growing restlessness, verging on mutiny in the Bakketes ranks, when the signal call came from Morgo. Then Baku had a hard time locating the source of the call. It was only when Morgo gave his schoolboy’s whistle a second time that the Bakketes spotted the hole in the wall of the cliff.

While this conference was in order, Nurri Kala took over the Shamman servants and directed them in the preparation of a meal I’ll never forget. She personally supervised the cooking of leg of mannizan – which to me was plain mouse – but what mouse, when I ate it with the trimmings she concocted. Also, she had the fat of these huge rodents torn from the meat and gristle and this she applied to the burns on our three bodies, which had been scorched and seared by The Flame. It held some ingredient that soothed like an unguent.

We ate like – like Husshas, I’d say. We devoured and munched til we could eat no more. Never have I needed a meal so badly and never was one so well served up to me.

During this repast, Nurri Kala told us as much as she knew about Zorimi, which was very little. I have recounted that in an earlier chapter for the sake of chronological order. Morgo and I were aghast at the magician’s proposal to make her his mate. The white youth was fiercely moved and left us hunched over our dishes to walk out on the ledge over which the yellow light was just spreading its early morning color.

I was keenly interested in all the girl could tell me about Zorimi’s excursions to the Cavern of Zaan where he amassed the diamonds. After these trips, he periodically disappeared from the caves – sometimes months on end. Where he went, Nurri Kala had no idea. But of one thing she was certain: he always took the Shining Stone – She of the Three Heads – with him, as well as packs of diamonds.

“Jesperson, the jeweler! Jesperson, the jeweler!” the words kept whispering themselves to me. The logic fitted nicely – too nicely, I concluded. If Zorimi was Jesperson in the outer world, why did he so greatly fear my knowing his identity? He alone knew there as a way out of these Himalayan caverns other than the Door of Surrilana. I was a prisoner here until my dying day. He could come and go as he pleased. Or did he fear that I might discover this other exit? Was it so easy to find? That set me to thinking.

But thoughts of Jesperson and Lacrosse and of Zorimi’s true identity were dispelled by the lovely sight of Nurri Kala’s golden beauty. Enigmatically, she studied me with those soft blue and mysterious eyes of hers. Those childlike eyes that I adored – and in a flash, realized that I was adoring.

“Why do you stare at me, Nurri Kala?” I asked. “Are you trying to read my thoughts?”

“I am thinking of what a brave man you are, Derro with the red head. And I have never seen such fiery hair before.” She smiled and dropped her eyes to steal shy glances at me.

“We owe our lives to Morgo,” I said impulsively. “It was his courage and his strength that brought us through all our troubles.”

“He is very brave, too – but he is of the caves. You come from beyond the caverns. I did not think men from that world were so daring.”

“What makes you think that?”

“From what little I remember of it – and that not too clearly. The men did not do the things you and Morgo do. But I expect fine deeds of Morgo. He makes his life here. You have made yourself learn our ways. You have done more than he, Derro.”

“You’re giving me the blarney,” I laughed. “But I always love to hear it from the lips of a pretty woman.”

She drew herself up and tossed her head proudly. “Pretty? Do you think I am pretty, Derro?”

“I think you are beautiful, Nurri Kala.”

“Beautiful? I have heard that word before.”

“And you’ll hear it again, whenever I’m around. Why, I’ll fall in love with you if I’m not careful.”

“Love?” Her eyes kindled with glorious light. The word seemed to awaken some deeply hidden response within her. “I have heard that word. My father used to say it to my mother.”

“I’ll bet he did – if she was anything like you.”

“She was more beautiful, Derro.”

“I don’t believe it!” My Irish gallantry wouldn’t stand for that! Nurri Kala was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen or, I suppose, will ever see again.

Morgo returned to the fireside. “Let us sleep, Derro. We are all weary.” His eyes watched Nurri Kala as she got up. I frowned. The thought crossed my mind and was lost: was he falling in love with her?

I gave up my pallet to the girl and made myself comfortable on a pile of skins near the fire beside Morgo. The embers winked and glowed and a coolness stole into the cave. Sleep did not come to me, though I was exhausted and sore inside from the Hussha’s terrible grip; and I tossed restlessly.

My eyes fell upon Nurri Kala’s white shoulders peeping out from beneath her blanketing pelts. She would catch her death of cold, my civilized mind told me. So I got up and going to her side, drew the covers up over her, pressing them to her throat. Her alabaster skin was soft and warm to my touch.

“Thank you, Derro,” she murmured sleepily.

A little later, back on my pelts, I noticed that Nurri Kala had moved and thrown off the covers. I was about to get up when Morgo stirred and got to his feet. He crossed to the girl’s bed and did as I had done – drew the covers tighter about her throat. She did not speak to him. And as I dozed off, I wondered if he had been watching me.

It was late the next day when I opened my eyes. I had slept the sleep of the dead and awoke refreshed though my insides still hurt. My fears that I was injured internally were soon forgotten in the business afoot.

Nurri Kala was laughingly fixing the cave up, cleaning it cleaner than was the wont of the captive Shammans. She was fastidious, and Morgo obeyed her every wish, arranging dishes here and piling the sleeping skins there, sweeping the dust and ashes over the ledge instead of back into the fireplace. She was demonstrating that feminine touch in a bachelor’s diggings.

“Get up, lazy Derro!” Morgo boomed at me. “Take your shower bath!”

I demurred. Nurri Kala was insistent.

Morgo ordered the bowls filled with water and when I retreated to the ledge he followed me, pounced upon me and started to disrobe me.

“You must take your shower,” Nurri Kala said. “Morgo has been telling me all about it. I must have one, too.”

Breathlessly, with Morgo sitting astride my recumbent form, I explained that where I came from, men and women did not participate in the same bathing facilities. Though I tried to couch my thoughts as delicately as possible, the girl was suddenly seized with an understanding that caused her to blush.

“Oh?” was all she said. When Morgo dragged me back into the cave and stripped me, she refused to come in and witness the ceremony. He doused me with the icy water and I returned the compliment while he choked and sputtered and roared with mirth, calling all the while to Nurri Kala to watch “Derro’s funny custom.” Later when we went off on the hunt, I learned, Nurri Kala had one of the Shammans duplicate the shower for her. She was still shivering from the chill bath when we returned.

Morgo explained that our larder was low and that we needed flesh and greens to eat. A hunt in the forests of Kahli was necessary.

Baku and a Bakkete were summoned and Morgo and I took off, armed with bows and arrows. It was to be my first experience at archery.

We dropped into a thickly wooded spot where Morgo bent close to the ground, studying the earth and looking at the leaves. He pointed out large footprints, oddly fingered, and leaves that had been nibbled.

“Mannizans have been here,” he said. “We shall have Mannizan for food.”

I followed him through the brush and jungle growths while, overhead, the two Bakketes traced our path in the air. Morgo walked with a noiseless, springy step, shoulders thrown back and head cocked to one side. His eyes darted along the ground where the Mannizans had passed.

He stopped and held up a warning finger for me.

“Be careful, Derro,” he said. “They are very dangerous.”

We moved forward noiselessly. I could hear sounds of animals moving behind the forest screen ahead of me. They were gentle sounds and I could not connect them with a ferocious rodent.

Through a rift in the wall of green, we saw them.

Five Mannizans were browsing on the leaves, their noses close to the earth. I was excited. These gray, furry creatures were rats the size of Fords. I had expected to see unusually large mice – not these beasts out of delirium tremens.

Morgo frowned. “This is bad. They are not the Mannizans from Kahli. They are of Shamman.”

“Could Zorimi have sent them here?”

“It is possible. Or perhaps they fled from the Husshas. When one predatory beast raids a cave in large numbers, the less strong flee to another cave – a safer place. But these Mannizans are destructive. They kill the herbs and green we eat.”

“Well, let’s kill a few of them,” I said.

Morgo fitted his arrow to the bow string and took aim. Twang! The arrow, a curve of silver in the yellow light, sang through the air. It went into the beast’s soft skin between the head and shoulders.

The Mannizan reared and squeaked lustily, exposing a red, deep mouth lined with fine sharp teeth. Its white whiskers bristled and then it sank on its side and its breathing diminished into death.

The other Mannizans were startled and they looked at their dead mate with curious eyes – eyes curiously human, too. They regarded one another and scrutinized the surrounding trees.

Morgo gripped my wrist lest I speak. He even held his breath. The four huge Mannizans took to staring in our direction. Then they spread out and began to advance upon us.

“Shoot now,” Morgo whispered fiercely. “Shoot between the head and shoulder. It is a vital spot.”

Morgo sent three arrows at the Mannizans. Only one took effect.

I shot at three. None of mine found their mark.

With a loud squealing, a horrible, bloodcurdling cry of rage, they charged us, burrowing through the green undergrowths straight for our feet. I could see their bristling whiskers flat against their heads, their parted lips with the gleaming white teeth ready to rip.

Bow and arrow were not meant for me! I drew my gun and shot two of the rat creatures. They screamed with the pain of the bullet and dropped in their tracks. Another took fright and turned tail.

The third was upon Morgo, its legs pummeling him as it tried to stand erect. Morgo slipped and fell heavily and, as I went to help him, firing at the beastial rodent, its ponderous body struck at me, hurling me aside.

Morgo was beneath the Mannizan, pinned to the earth by its weight – but beyond the reach of its mouth. I got up and took aim and then could not fire as Morgo and the rodent became as one, a whirling, thrashing mass. He kept his head well away from the gnashing jaws. He was fumbling for his knife. If I fired, I might hit him.

Morgo’s fingers clenched the creature’s furry sides, holding himself close. It was his most advantageous position – for if he jumped clear, the beast could rush him – with set jaws. Then with a mighty effort, the Mannizan shook Morgo from it and my friend sprawled on his back, his arms outstretched, the knife glittering in one hand.

I shot at the beast, but it had pounced, avoiding my bullet. Morgo looked up at the descending rodent, at the red tongue hanging from the foamy mouth – calmly, I thought. The Mannizan fell full upon Morgo and drew its jaw back to sink its teeth into the man’s white flesh. The knife cut through the air, touched the furry coat and disappeared. The jaws quivered and the teeth not touching my friend, locked like a bear trap, severing the extended tongue at once.

Again I fired, directly into the Mannizan’s body and, as it rolled over, Morgo leaped to his feet and drove the knife into the vital spot below the throat.

“Now,” he said with a grin for me, “we have plenty of food. Four Mannizans. But I do not like their presence in Kahli. These creatures from Shamman will drive out all the other good meat and plague us. It will make the hunt unsafe. Besides, only a small portion of their meat is good to eat. We must kill many Mannizans of Shamman to kill our hunger.”

He called to Baku who went off in search of other Bakketes. They would carry our kill back to the cave dwelling. Morgo did not permit all the necessary carriers to follow his progress in the jungle, for the bat men frightened the creatures and sent them to cover.

When the four Mannizans were taken aloft and we were in the arms of our carriers, I had Baku skim the treetops. Birds were routed and in their fright a few flew in my face. Yet I was curious about this invasion of Kahli by the Shamman rats.

I learned what I sought. The jungles were virtually filled with these beastial rodents. The men of Kahli, usually peaceful, were fleeing toward the higher ground from the forests in which they lived. I saw whole families on the march. And, too, I saw men and small parties devoured by herds of Mannizans.

One party – men, women and children, their weapons and dishes and skins on their backs – were walking hurriedly from the path of the Mannizans. From above, I saw them moving directly into a herd of the beasts. My cries and shouts to them meant nothing. They feared even me.

The Mannizans got their scent. They rush into the group of primitive humans was awful. The shrieks and moans of the stricken floated up to me. Men went down before they could put an arrow to bowstring. Mothers and babes in arms were crushed beneath the gray herd. My peppering shots availed little save to draw the baleful eyes of the Mannizan upward for a moment while they gorged themselves.

The laws of nature in these caves were cruel and relentless.

The Husshas drove the Mannizans out of Shamman and the rats were driving the people and creatures of Kahli out of their homes to other caves where they undoubtedly would have to put up a stiff struggle for their very existence.

I was thankful the security afforded by the Bakketes placed me above this struggle for life on the floors of the great caves.

Yet I was to know just such a struggle one day. Those laws of nature were to operate against me – and rob me of all that was dear to me.

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.

My automatic dropped from my numb fingers and clattered on the floor. The pain from the big mandibles forced open my eyes.

Morgo had slipped – in eel fashion – from the pressure of his enemy’s mandibles, freeing one arm. His knife ripped and hacked at the black tong until he was free of it. The Hussha rose to its legs to hurl its weight upon him, to crush the life out of him before devouring him.

Nimbly, he leaped back and the black ant, missing its quarry in its rush, toppled to the floor. Morgo’s bowie knife was driven far into its back as he leaned over the Hussha. A thick, suety stream of gore burst from the creature’s side and Morgo jumped aside to avoid the torrent. He slit the back of the Rorta that menaced Nurri Kala and his mighty arms swept her from the reach of the fire. She regained her strength, pushed Morgo from her and pointed to me.

In another moment, he had driven his knife into the body of the black ant that held me relentlessly. I felt the grip of the Hussha’s tongs slacken, but they still hung to me while the insect writhed in its dying agonies. Morgo quickly cut the mandibles that bound me to the Hussha and I sank to the floor.

A glance at Nurri Kala assured him that she was all right. Then he picked me up in his arms as if I were a two year old and ran toward the jagged frame of The Flame’s orifice.

“Can you climb that wall, Nurri Kala?” he cried breathlessly to her. She nodded. “Then go ahead of me. I will carry Derro.”

The girl sprang at the wall. Her hands and feet found holds that the sharp eyes of Morgo had spied. She moved with startling agility and was soon high above the frieze of skulls with the pyre of flames roaring at her side, scorching and blistering her fair skin.

Morgo slung me over his shoulder like a sack of meal and began his ascent. My weight slowed his progress but his might carried the two of us upward with ease.

With my head hanging down and the pain within me numbing my senses, I was aware only that my eyes gazed into a sea of struggling black and red ants. The Husshas that would have followed us – we were good fleshy prey – were forced to turn their attention to the venomous Rortas. The chamber of skulls was a shambles, its floor smeared with gore and the dotted bodies of the reds and the blacks fighting for supremacy.

Nurri Kala had reached a ledge. Morgo told her to follow it and we were presently in a dark gallery. This was one of the many corridors that honeycombed the plateau of The Flame that Morgo told me about – the one into which he had fallen the first day we met Zorimi.

For a time we watched the Husshas pore into the chamber below from Shamman through the far opening. And the red Rortas piled down the steps on the opposite side in a steady, cascading stream. The advance of the black ants was so formidable, there was no turning back or aside for them. Those that were not killed by the poison of the Rortas, marched straight into the hissing flames.

The Rortas, feeding this chamber without control, could not stem their own advance and mingling with the black ants, were swept in the procession of death into the pyre. At last, I thought, the strange forces of nature that sent the blind ants to destruction were in our favor.

But I hoped too soon.

Some sixth sense warned those insect that they were parading to their doom. They sought other means of escape. They moved toward the walls and presently, were climbing the sides like flies, reds and blacks alike, titanic monsters of the insect world.

“We must risk getting away from them by taking this tunnel,” Morgo said. “It is our only hope.”

I insisted on being set on my feet. A few steps convinced me that I could still walk. And I did not want to be a burden to Morgo in this flight for our lives. The pain subsided a little and I was able to stagger and stumble along with the support of Morgo’s supporting arms.

We plunged into the darkness of the tunnel, Nurri Kala just ahead of us.

“If we can find a path that goes higher,” the girl said, “I think that we can cross over the ceiling of the chamber and get into tunnels in which I know my way.”

“Then use your own judgement, Nurri Kala,” Morgo said to her. “Be our leader in this darkness.”

We moved forward as quickly as possible, despite my weakness. The ants were behind us. I could hear their scraping and scratching in the tunnel.

Nurri Kala got us to an ascending tunnel, and I felt the walls grow damp and the odor of decay assailed my nostrils. We were leaving the vicinity of The Flame. I was numb but my sense of direction told me that we were easily above the chamber, turning into a corridor over its roof. Still the sounds of the ants escaping death in the chamber and pursuing us, were audible.

“It is here,” Nurri Kala cried. “I know this path now.”

Morgo sighed and my energies seemed renewed as we pressed closer after her.

We wound to the right and to the left, we descended a sharp decline, passing many darker mouths of corridors from which foul breaths were exhaled in the chilled air. I prayed that the girl was taking us to the top or to an opening in the wall of the cliff that defined the mound. She seemed to know her way, turning into corridors that were only black holes to me.

“I know these walls by the feel of them,” Nurri Kala said. “Many times I have walked through them – playing at exploration. Zorimi forbade it – but I had no other diversion.”

I hoped her former diversions would profit us a little now.

“There is a room with a door, if I can find it,” she called back to us. “Zorimi used it to store his Shining Stones when he returned with them from Zaan.”

Ahead of us I heard a sudden scraping noise. The ants. Rortas or Husshas? Had we circled in our wanderings? Were we about to cross their paths? I listened, pausing for breath.

The scraping sound was still behind us.

And ahead of us now, too.

We were running into another horde of ants. Morgo pressed my hand, signifying that he, too, had heard, and he put a finger to my lips. He didn’t want me to startle the girl with our discovery.

The ants moving ahead of us were now more audible. My body turned cold and a sweat broke out. I was afraid.

We passed a tunnel, sensing it only by the air wafted at us. The ants were in that corridor. The path ahead was once more silent. We hurried on. Two streams of ants were flowing behind us, a molten river of venomous or crushing death.

“I have found it,” Nurri Kala shouted to us. Her voice was distant. “It is the door to the room.”

We ran in the direction of her voice.

She called again, more distantly. Morgo caught my wrist and turned me about and we retraced our steps. When every second counted, the darkness lead us astray. We had entered the wrong tunnel.

Morgo shouted our location. The girl replied and in a few minutes we were touching her hands. I felt the panels of a huge thick door made of a wood unknown to me. It swung on heavy iron hinges.

I gasped with a new fright. Had we reached this supposed haven of safety, only to find the door locked?

“It opens,” Morgo said softly, happily. My relief was so great it weakened me and Morgo carried me into the room, the size of which was denied us by the gloom.

“There is a bar in here,” Nurri Kala said. “Zorimi used to lock himself in when he was counting his Shining Stones.”

She and Morgo searched for it with outstretched fingers. They ran along the walls and then crawled over the floor on their hands and knees.

Morgo muttered in pain several times. “These stones are sharp. They cut my flesh.”

The Shining Stones of Zorimi! I knew them for diamonds! No wonder Morgo’s skin was pierced if it scratched the hard brilliants. I imagined the room covered with a diamond dust that would shame a king’s ransom.

“I have it,” Morgo cried. “The bar. And it is heavy.”

I listened to him closing the door. The sound of the bolt dropping into the iron hafts was music to my terrified ears. For a time, the Rortas and the Husshas were barred from our flesh and blood.

“Derro,” Morgo said to me, “can you strike a fire with one of your — what do you call them – matches?”

Fool that I was, I hadn’t thought of my matches earlier. They might have helped us in our mad plunge through the dark corridors. I took out a pack and lighted a match.

We were in a small chamber about fifteen feet square. The door was at one end and in the wall opposite it there was a tiny hole. When the light went out, Morgo went to the hole and, gripping it, lifted himself until his chin was level with the bottom of it. I saw him thus when I struck a second match.

“I think this hole leads to the outer cave, and not another tunnel,” Morgo said. “The air is fresh and pure.”

But I was paying no head to his words. My eyes were feasting on the sight of the floor. My guess was right. It was strewn with diamond dust, small particles that sang a glittering song in the light. So this was Zorimi’s treasure room. And Zaan was a cave of diamonds. My thoughts harked back to poor Jim Craig’s words – “a mountain of diamonds.” I wanted to visit Zaan.

Morgo was tearing at the hole with his bare hands. I made more light to aid him. Nurri Kala went to his side and began to work with him. The chalk, moist and soft, crumbled under their digging and pulling. The hole widened a little.

Silently, Morgo went about his task of tearing a hole in the side of the room. I saw the diameter grow. The chalk was like putty in the hands of those two children of these primitive caves.

When the hole was wide enough for a body to climb through and waist-high to the floor, Morgo leaned through it. He jumped back elated and rubbed his bloody hands on his sides.

“It is Shamman.” He said. “We are high up in the face of the cliff.”

“But we can’t climb up or down unless we make footholds,” I pointed out. “What good is your opening?”

In the light of a match I saw Morgo grin at me. “Listen to me, Derro.”

He leaned through the hole again and uttered a loud, shrill wail. It was the old schoolboy’s signal call I heard him use when he summoned Baku and the Bakketes.

Morgo’s ruse was a clever one. The Bakketes brought us to the plateau and they would effect our release from its bowels via the hole, if they still lived. Again Morgo called, and paused to strain his ears for an answering cry.

There was none.

The Bakketes were undoubtedly routed or vanquished by the Shamman bats. Zorimi had set a trap for us. He had waited until our forces were concentrated over the mound and then he released his hordes of human-headed bats upon us and had beat our army into the sea of monstrous black ants. And Morgo, with his bare hands, had prepared for us a door to freedom – which we might never use.

Something struck the barred door. Someone was pounding upon it.

“Open! Let me in!” a muffled voice cried. “Let me in!”

It was Zorimi.

He had fled from the Husshas swarming over the plateau to the safety of the secret tunnels. Now these very hiding places were filled with the creatures he sought to escape.

“The Rortas! The Husshas!” Zorimi wailed. “They are coming. The ants will destroy me!”

That voice, though it was Zorimi’s, was more familiar to me with its pitch of terror. Lacrosse? Jesperson? I had heard Lacrosse cry out in fear when Kenvon commanded us to enter the Door of Surrilana. I did not recognize this frightened voice as Lacrosse’s.

“Let me in, Morgo!” Zorimi cried. “I know you are in there.”

“Be careful, Morgo,” I said in a low voice. “It might be a trick – to overpower us.”

“Zorimi has a power over the Rortas,” Nurri Kala said. “He is a magician and does not fear them.” Yet I detected in her words a trace of doubt for the magician’s powers.

We drew close to the door and listened. The man on the other side was breathing with labored efforts. And I could hear the approaching ants – scratching and scraping on the walls of the corridors beyond, moving upon us in their blindness.

“Morgo! Have pity on me!” Zorimi shrieked. “They are near. I can hear them.”

Morgo’s hands fell upon the bar and moved as if to lift it. I scrambled to my feet and laid a resisting hand on his.

“He’s a trickster,” I said.

Zorimi evidently heard me. “This is no trick, Morgo! I swear it! Let me in! Let me in!”

Morgo brushed my hand from his. “I cannot let even him die such a death, Derro. Draw your gun and be ready for trouble. Strike a light, too. I must let him in.”

“No! No!” Nurri Kala cried. “I am afraid. He is evil. It is a trick, as Derro says!”

My gun was in my hand. I knew I could not argue with Morgo. His voice forbade it. A match was lighted.

The bar slid out of place. The door swung inward.

Zorimi, hidden in his cowl of skins, tumbled into the room.

“I mean to learn my secret now,” Morgo said to me as he went to replace the bar, “if it is the last thing I do!”

The bar was whipped from his hand.

The door burst open. In the flickering of my match, I saw Husshas and Rortas coming in upon us – their bulks red and black in the momentary light. I fired into their midst.

Nurri Kala screamed. I felt Morgo dragging me backward to the opening in the cliff.

“We can hurl ourselves out,” he said. “That is a better death than this. I had no idea the ants were so close to Zorimi.”

The magician shrieked out in the darkness. I felt his mass of pelts brush against me as he staggered.

I struck another match to get our bearings.

The door was choked with the ant bodies, soldiers and workers trying to gain an entry. In their eagerness for our flesh – having undoubtedly followed our spore through the labyrinth – they made for us a temporary blockade against the thousands behind them.

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.

Morgo listened to my story about Jesperson, who for some unknown reason, eloped with the De Haviland and for whom parties were searching the Nepalese jungles when I took off from Darjeeling for a day’s trip to Kenchenjunga. What a day! I had no reason to suspect that Jesperson intended to assail the Door of Surrilana. There had been no talk, in our trip from Bombay to Darjeeling, of his even being in the mountain.

If Harvey Jesperson were Zorimi, what I could not understand was how he came by Her of the Three Heads – the Shining Stone. That was in Jim Craig’s possession in Darjeeling on a night when Jesperson was supposedly lost in the jungles. Had Jesperson gotten the dacoit to steal it? Somehow, I doubted that. I couldn’t believe it.

But if this message – this warning – was to be believed, Lacrosse was or had been alive somewhere. Probably in Shamman. He might have seen us in the arms of the Bakketes and enticed one of those bat men to bring us this message. Yet it was my hunch that Lacrosse was Zorimi himself. Was this a trick on Zorimi’s part to confuse us? And did he know that we still lived after our descent into the cave of the green fungus?

Morgo listened to my spoken thoughts. At length he said:

“Derro, Zorimi knows all things. If we died in the unclean growth, he would have known. If we escaped, that, too, he would know. He has creatures in Kahli that tell him.”

I laughed. The thought of spies in these caverns filled with primitive beings was amusing. But that was what Morgo meant to convey to me.

“Still. if Zorimi knows we live, I cannot see the point of this message,” I said.

“Zorimi’s ways are strange – mysterious I think you say. If life is spared to us, we may learn more.”

Again we took off to seek the Raba of the Husshas. In the air, I could not shake off the idea that Jesperson might have entered the caves in the De Haviland. In view of what I had come to see and learn in the past fortnight, I believed anything was possible. Jesperson was presumably a prosperous jeweler from New York. I first laid eyes on him in Bombay and undertook the commission to pilot him into Nepal.

Harvey Jesperson, a jeweler! Diamonds in the Himalayas! Was that the tie-up? Did Jesperson get his diamonds from one of these caves and sell them in the outer world? As I’ve written, I’d come to believe that anything was possible now.

It was a clever trick of his, stealing the De Haviland after pretending to know nothing of aviation. His desire was to vanish from the face of the earth, penetrate the Door of Surrilana and make his way to his cache. Then he would leave the caves by some other and safer route. But I found all this hard to entertain. Jesperson with his round rosy cheeks and blue eyes and stubby figure was hardly the adventurous type for such an exploit. I refused to consider him in the role of Zorimi.

I noticed now that the Husshas, felling trees and gorging on the leaves and bark, revealed an open space in their ranks. In this traveled a larger ant than the others with fierce mandibles that tore tree fiber and bark apart and swallowed it, his sides heaving with the great gulps.

Morgo circled over this Hussha and I sensed that this was the Raba – or king of these ants. A mutter – a sibilant clicking sound – came from Morgo’s mouth as he hovered directly above the Raba. The big ant reared up on its hind legs and waved its mandibles slowly, a gesture of peace, I thought. The moan of munching in his vicinity ceased and soldiers and workers alike stopped eating and rested.

Baku brought me down to Morgo’s side. The parleying went on – a clicking language that reminded me of Hottentots I once heard talking the side show of a circus. The Hussha tongue was like the Hottentot. That the ant could talk I accepted as fact, though I only had Morgo’s word for it. Probably it was not speech as we know it but an exchange of word pictures in sound signs.

The Raba’s head was twice as large as a man’s and it glistened like a beady ball of malachite, punctuated near the throat by a wide blue slit, the mouth. It was the most monstrous insect head I had ever seen.

And there were no eyes in the Raba.

I looked at the other Husshas. Like the driver ants of Africa, this black, sinister horde, myriad in number, was blind – stone blind. How curious are the quirks and machinations of nature! They lived lustily and moved with military precision – nevertheless they could not see!

Morgo signaled to Baku and we rose high over the jet river of ant life and flew swiftly toward the door to Kahli. My friend had news for me and I was eager to hear it. We reached Morgo’s cave without mishap and, on landing, I went hungrily for my cigarettes to quiet nerves somewhat disturbed by the sight of the ugly ants. What if we had fallen in their midst? I remembered the messenger Bakkete’s fate!

“The Raba is our friend,” Morgo told me. “He will turn the army of Husshas into Shamman tonight. ”

“They will not pass through Kahli?” I cried aghast, thinking of what might happen in this pleasant land if the black ants marched through it.

“No, they do not come in here, Derro. It is an understanding I have with the Raba. Once I saved him from the river in a lower cavern, and in his strange way, he is my friend. No, the Husshas will enter Shamman through another opening that leads from Verizon.”

“How long will it take them?”

“A day and a night to reach the plateau, I think.” Morgo was fascinated with the idea of mustering such an army for the attach on Zorimi. “The Husshas can hide during the period of light. They will remain in the chalk and under the plant growth in Shaman, moving secretly.”

Again I thought of the Driver ants. They hide from the tropical sun of Africa during the daytime under leaves – often building tunnels across sunny patches – with leaves or the bodies of soldier who were destroyed by the sun. There was no heat to fear in Shamma; only the eyes of Zorimi’s people.

“By tomorrow night,” Morgo went on, “they will be able to swarm over the plateau. But there is another danger, Derro.”

“Surely not Zorimi’s magic?” I laughed.

“Worse than that. The red ants of Shamman. The Rortas. We never saw them. They live deep in the soft chalk, yet they are not unlike the Husshas in the way they live. They have an army life and while they are smaller and less strong, their bite is full of poison.”

“Poisonous to man?”

Morgo nodded. “To all creatures that breathe. Their bite stops the breathing.”

So these Rortas were capable of injecting a poison that, once in the blood, caused asphyxiations. I began to ply my friend with question. Were they enemies of the Husshas? Could Zorimi command them? Were they controllable?

“Yes, they are enemies of the Husshas – and Zorimi can speak to them as I spoke to the Raba. I think that if he knows the Husshas are in Shamman, he will turn loose the Rortas to combat them.”

“Then the Husshas will be destroyed!” I said, feeling that our plan was threatened with failure.

“Unless they kill the Rortas first. Their long killing teeth are not hurt by the Rorta poison – only their bodies. And the Husshas are clever fighters.”

I considered this doubtfully. Were we turning loose forces that might ultimately defeat our ends? Morgo said that the Husshas were treacherous. And now he spoke of venomous Rortas. I feared the more for Nurri Kala’s safety.

“If the Husshas take a day and a night to reach the plateau,” I said, “when will we have to be on hand?”

“Tomorrow night when the light begins to fail in Shamman. The Husshas will travel tonight and all tomorrow. I will send Bakketes to learn of the girl’s safety when it is dark. If she is dead, then I want Zorimi for a prisoner. I mean to learn from him the secret about me.”

This was my first inkling that Morgo was thinking about his identity too strongly. Zorimi’s betrayal of such knowledge had whetted my friend’s curiosity. Yet I wondered if Zorimi still lived. Hadn’t I seen him drop with my parting shot?

We spent the day resting and plotting. And when night came, Morgo went out on the ledge and summoned the Bakketes – four of them – to act as our scouts. I noted that Baku was one of them.

A little later, I missed Morgo and searched for him. He was not in or about the cave. The Shamman servants could tell me nothing when I made incomprehensible signs to them. But I understood. Baku’s presence among the scouting Bakketes was the key. Morgo had gone with him – to make certain that the information we wanted was correct.

But why had he refused to take me along, or tell me of his intention? I worried and tried to keep away and could not.

It was Morgo who aroused me from a heavy slumber the next morning. He had the shower baths ready and made me bathe with him before he would tell me a word of the previous night’s adventure. He parried my questions with laughter and splashed under the cold water the servants poured on us. I shivered and began to regret the introduction of such a custom into Kahli.

At breakfast he broke his silence. “I thought you needed rest, Derro. After what happened to you in the cave of the unclean growths, you were tired. You are not used to our life here – and tonight we will need your strength with mine – for Nurri Kala.”

“Then you did see her – alive?”

He nodded. “Yes, I had Baku carry me to Shamman. I knew if I told you I was going, you would have gone with me. But you needed sleep more than adventure – we were lucky – and went unobserved. None of the Shamman bats smelled us out.”

“But you did see her – Nurri Kala?”

“I did. At the opening to the room with the skulls. She was inside talking with Zorimi, her beauty glowing with the light of The Flame. I am sure she is not a priestess of Zorimi’s evil worship.”

“I  know she isn’t.”

“Zorimi is said to know all things – all that happens in living creatures’ heads.” Morgo gave a little laugh. “He did not know that Baku held me at his window that I might spy upon him. When I saw that the white girl lived, I was happy. We flew back to Kahli immediately. Tonight we shall have her with us.”

“I hope so.”

“You fear the ants? But we have the Bakketes, Derro. They will carry us over the fighting.”

I shook my head, worried.

“If the Shamman bats attack us, we will be beaten to the ground. The ants – red or black – will have us then. And there will be little we can do. What are a few arrows or bullets against millions of onrushing ants bent on making a meal of you?”

“Have courage, Derro. And I have another plan. We must try to take Zorimi, too. I want to talk to him. Make him tell me the secrets he knows – and then remove his evil from this life.”

Morgo’s voice rang with a fierce intensity as he uttered these last few words. He was an avenger now – the scourge of evil things in cave life that had been good to him!

I spent the day cleaning two .38s, mending the torn-out sleeve in my wind-breaker and trying to prevail upon Morgo to use a gun. He would have none of that, however. His arrows, he said, were his weapons and he preferred a knife to all the guns in the world, for fighting in caves was at close grips. He was more accustomed to man-to-man combat and overpowering an enemy than quickly killing him. Decidedly, he was not a killer.

The yellow afternoon light began to wane. Morgo hurriedly gave instructions to Baku. And presently the legions of Bakketes were in the air before our dwelling. The prospect of meeting the Shamman bats held no fears for them. They, too, were fighters, when Morgo called upon them for aid.

I cautioned Morgo not to take off before darkness was well upon the caverns. We must run no risk of being seen. We must avoid the Shamman bats. But Morgo pointed out that the Husshas were undoubtedly close to the plateau – that there was little time to lose. We had, perforce, to be at Zorimi’s mound when the Husshas began their attack.

I committed myself to Baku. The feelings of a man about to go over the top surged through me. I wanted to take Morgo’s hand and thank him for saving my life in the cave of the green fungus.

“Do not let us grasp hands, Derro,” he said to me, his eyes apparently reading my thoughts. “We are not parting. We will meet again.”

“You’re an optomist.”

“Our cause is right. We will come through and see each other again.”

I thought of the ants, and the bludgeoning winged Shamman bats. “I hope so.”

I was filled with dire forebodings. Our luck could not hold out forever. We had tried it deeply, too, in escaping those fingers of decay that coiled about us in the jungle of fungus. My Irish pessimism put me in good spirits.

We went aloft and straight for the tunnel into Shamman. The light began to vanish quickly – the eternal wick being lowered in the rooms of those eternal caverns beneath the Himalayas.

I wondered how the Husshas could travel so rapidly. A day and night to cover at least two hundred miles. Their bodies were great in size, I remembered, and I speculated on their moving with the speed of a fast horse. Little did I know that they could move even faster.

The stalactites of gray Shamman were devoid of the bat men of that cave. Steadily, wary of attack from above, we moved on the plateau. I could barely make out the thread of smoke from The Flame.

The spiked floor was a sea of veiled grayness below us. It moved like a leaden, molten sea beneath us. All was still. There were no signs of a living creature in all Shamman.

Morgo cried out to me and I heard him urging his carrier Bakkete on the faster. Looking ahead, I saw a black line emerging from the gray sea of stalagmites.

The Husshas were leaving their cover. They were attacking. They were ready to swarm upon the plateau of The Flame!

Baku flew lower than the legions behind us. I drew my gun.

I knew that if the Shamman bats fell upon us and we were beaten down into the river of black ants, Shamman and Bakkete alike would perish.

Now the top of the mound was alive with men and women – the Silurians. They had seen the Husshas. They understood. They knew what death in the mandibles of the big warlike ants meant.

Nearer and nearer we moved in narrowing circles. Still not Shamman bats were in sight.

I saw Zorimi now, a puny figure, running hither and yon, exhorting the Silurians. But they move steadily away from him, clambering down the other side of the mound, fleeing into the darkening grayness of Shamman’s ugly floor. They did not mean to fight if they could help it.

A scream burst from my lips.

The Husshas were at the base of the plateau. Their hordes flooded around it. In a few minutes, all retreat from the mound would be cut off by a circle of mandible blades.

Where was Nurri Kala? That was my only thought. Probably within the mound.

The Husshas began to climb the sides of the plateau – their bodies wagging from side to side. They were like flies strolling up a high wall. The precipitous sides were no obstacle to them.

Shrill, pitiable shrieks came from the far side of the plateau to which the Silurians had retreated. The last to leave the mound had fallen into the black crushing tongs of the Husshas. Death was already loose in the home of The Flame.

Zorimi was now a lone figure, standing on high crag, looking up at us.

What was he waiting for? Where were his bats?

I wondered too easily.

The whir of wings sounded overhead. The Bakketes screeched. The Shamman bats screeched more savagely. I could see their onslaught in the thickness of the descending gloom. Thousands met thousands fiercely. Bakkete and Shamman bat, bodies locking mortal combat, dropped into the pools of Husshas. The moan of munching began. The scores of fallen bats were like manna to the marching insects.

Above was the blackness of fighting wings. Below was the jet mass of ants in attacking phalanxes. Morgo and I hung between two brands of death. And Nurri Kala was still invisible.

Following Morgo’s move, I dropped to the plateau.

Heedless of my friend’s shouted warnings, the nature of which I couldn’t make out because of the aerial melee, I ran to the steps I knew of. They led down to the chamber of skulls.

“Nurri Kala!” I shouted. “Nurri Kala!”

A moment later I heard Morgo’s voice behind me, taking up the cry. We reached the smoky blue room of The Flame together. It was deserted on first sight.

Then I saw six Silurians standing guard over the white girl. She pressed her body against the chalk walls, crouching behind them, her eyes freighted with apprehension. She seemed to have some feeling of the danger that beset her. All of us now.

Morgo spoke gutturally to the scale-skinned men. They sprang at him.

I shot two of them. That stemmed their attack and they backed toward the opening that gave on Shamman.

Nurri Kala ran to me and threw herself into my arms.

“To the stairs!” Morgo cried. “We must get back to the Bakketes!”

Holding tightly to the girl, her sturdy grace beneath her silken tunic responding to my guidance, I piloted her toward the stairs we had descended.

The Silurians shrieked, terrified. They ran from the opening, but I saw one of them held fast there. The black ring of a Hussha’s mandibles were about him. He was flicked over backward into the mass of ants below.

The Husshas – blind and hungry and bent on destruction – were about to enter the chamber of skulls. I could see the glint of The Flame’s rays on their massive jet heads. We were all one to them – Silurian and white man – prey!

I stopped halfway up the step that I thought led to freedom.

Coming down, tumbling down, lighted by the fire of the ritual pyre, were the red ants – smaller than the Husshas but more loathsome. These Rortas with their crimson bodies glowed like bulbous balls of illuminated blood.

I drew Nurri Kala back to the floor of the chamber. The top of the plateau was alive with the Rortas. Zorimi had summoned them. Or they had been drawn from their underground borings by the scent of the Husshas, their eternal enemies?

Morgo was close to The Flame, his white body scarlet in its light. He had come to grips with a Hussha, his thews swelling and struggling like fiery snakes in that evil light. I saw him slash the ant’s right mandible from its shoulder with his knife.

My legs were suddenly enclosed in a vise. A Hussha’s mandibles held me fast. I poured lead from my .38 into its great body. Nurri Kala backed against the wall, watching the Rortas who continued slowly to move toward us. Her eyes were glazed with horror.

There were forty Husshas in the chamber of the skulls. Oddly enough, in that moment of peril, my eyes counted them. The Rortas still tumbled down the stairs.

The two tribes of ants met. I saw Husshas recoil. I saw their mandibles peck at the tails of the red bodies. I saw the black ants, bitten by the red, stop abruptly and curl up. Death was upon us all. I could hear the crunch of those huge black insect tongs upon the hard surface of the Rorta’s bodies.

Still the Husshas approached us.

Morgo, Nurri Kala and I back toward The Flame. The heat of that pillar of blazing inferno scorched our white skins. The blistering pain was intense.

A Hussha, rearing awkwardly on its hind legs, threw itself upon Morgo, pinioning his arms to his sides helplessly against its mighty mandibles. He staggered and went down under the heavy black body. I ran to his assistance as his knife slithered impotently over the creature’s sides, glancing off for lack of space in which to strike a blow that would bury the blade.

Nurri Kala screamed a warning to me.

I turned too late. The pressure of another black ant’s tongs caught me at the sides above the hips. The wind was being squeezed out of me in spasmodic tightenings of the Hussha’s grip. I could not turn around to send a bullet crashing into the ant’s vital spots.

The girl, sensing my desire, reached out for the gun.

But instead of taking it, she recoiled with a mute shriek and tottered close to the brink of the fiery pit. I saw a Rorta crawling toward her. Unable to bear the fierce heat, Nurri Kala fought a faintness, induced by horror and physical pain, and then succumbed to it, sinking limply to the floor at the edge of The Flame, its awful heat searing her white flesh.

Morgo’s white muscles quieted in their struggles. Hadn’t he seen Nurri Kala? The Rorta was ready to inject its venom into her beauty, destroying it forever! I saw that his eyes were closed as if in sleep. Was he dead?

I clenched my teeth to fight the pain that flashed through me like liquid fire. My vision faded. The life was being crushed out of me.

To Be Continued!

This ends Part One of Morgo the Mighty. The first chapter of Part Two will post in one month, on April 22.

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.

In my delirium, evoked by the gases from the red lips on which I lay, I dreamed that Morgo was caught in the coils of fungus, fighting mightily to tear them asunder, to overcome their insidious strength and save me. I could see him, in Baku’s arms, enmeshed in the drooping, swaying threads that held sinews of steel.

Vaguely he moved toward me. Baku’s pterodactyl wings beat sturdily, cutting the threads, sending them in wafting spirals to the floor below. Nearer and nearer Morgo approached.

A lucid moment came over me and I cursed the tricks a dying man’s brain play on him. I was doomed. I knew it. And all of Morgo’s might could not avail me anything in this life.

Again my senses departed and I saw my friend through a haze. He cried out to me to take courage – I dreamed the words – and I could only see his lip moving without sound coming from them. Now he was caught tightly, the thread coiled many times around his body. His bowie knife flashed in the green glow and the thread was severed, the coils still hanging from him. He was urging Baku closer to the lip that were now sinking backward. At any moment I would slide into the heart of the giant red-mouth fungus, to perish, slowly suffocating in the odor of inner putrescence.

My fingers bit into the reddish crust for a hold. The stuff flaked off at each grasp. I was slipping. Only my feet had a small purchase. The lips tilted sharply inward. Another degree and I could hold on no longer.

Why did I fight for life? It was so foolish! I was doomed. The thought of my gun occurred to me. There was salvation. A death that held no qualms for me. It was quick and neat and my consciousness would not then be fodder for this relentless fungus. A bullet would send me sliding into the red maw, unaware of what would happen to my flesh.

I held fast to the flaking lip with one hand while the other struggled for the automatic in my belt. My fingers reached the holster. I got it out. It slipped into my hand and the trigger finger felt its mark.

Quickly, I brought the gun up to my temple. Just one shot! I would remember nothing else!

“Derro! Derro!” A hand touched my wrist, grasped it. “Are you alive?”

I guess I just groaned.

The automatic was knocked from my grasp. Two strong hands caught my wrists. I felt myself being drawn off the reddish lip, the flaky stuff sucking at my clothing.

The rest I don’t remember – and don’t want to.

When I came to my senses again, cool sweet air was being pumped in and out of my hungry lungs. Morgo was pressing my stomach to make me breathe harder. Without his aid, my respiration was dangerously close to stopping.

“Sleep, Derro, sleep,” Morgo whispered. “We are safe now, away from unclean growths.”

I sighed and knew that he and Baku had successfully made the fight from the jungle of fungus to upper Shamman. It was still dark and I feared sleep.  Whenever I closed my eyes I saw those green threads whipping themselves around me, drawing me up to the red lips. I felt those lips turn inward to suck me into the bowels of the fungus itself. I was afraid of sleep now, but my body was sorely tired and its energy spent.

“Baku has gone for another Bakkete to carry us,” Morgo said. He spoke of other things but I dropped into a deep, exhausted coma so deep that even nightmares could not reach me there.

It was morning when I woke up. We were back in Morgo’s cave in warm Kahli. The Bakketes had brought us there during the darkness, through I was sound asleep throughout the trip.

I ate ravenously, as did Morgo. Conversation was imminent but we had to feed our strength first. My flying clothes needed cleaning, being covered with the mold from the green world, and one of the Shamman servants saw to that. And I had to bathe my body to rid my mind of the thought that any part of the fungus still adhered to it.

Morgo was highly amused by my ablutions. He bathed in a river he spoke about but never in his cave. His laughter was merry and boyish while he watched the Shamman servants douche me with cold spring water that made me gasp. Bowl after bowl of the clear liquid was thrown over my head and body, and I scraped myself clean.

Presently Morgo slid out of his skin and submitted his massive proportions to a similar ceremony. He thought it swell and promised more such showers every day. His thews rippled like pythons under his white, gleaming skin as he squirmed under the cold splashes. I noted his strength and was thankful for it – for that, as well as his courage, had saved my life the night before. Then we went out out on the rocks overlooking Kahli, to bask in the warm, yellow light and dry ourselves.

I broke open a carton of cigarettes and smoked. Morgo declined the invitation to join me in this luxury. He had tried a cigarette the week before – with dire results. Tobacco was not for this primitive son of the gods.

“I have been thinking,” I said, “about the girl, Nurri Kala.”

Morgo’s eyes brightened and he looked at me. “She was very beautiful, Derro.”

“I do not believe her dead. The Shamman bats took her. And I’m positive Zorimi has her again.

“Zorimi must want her badly to have a bat take her prisoner instead of killing her.”

“He knows something about her – and you – that neither of us know. But she is white like we are, Morgo – and we cannot let her remain in his hands. I can’t fathom whether he’s a white man who knows the caves or a Shamman who has been in the outer world.”

“I only know that he is evil and must be destroyed. But the girl – we must save her, Derro. We must bring her back to live with us.”

That was in my mind all the while. And I wondered whether I wanted to rescue her from Zorimi because she was a white girl or because she was a woman for whom I felt love. She was beautiful. She was sweet and innocent. She was all a man could ask for. And I refused to admit to myself that I wanted her for a mate. Man are slow to recognizing their love for woman. For they can’t quite understand just how or when or where the process began. Yet I had seen Nurri Kala and had talked to her. I felt that I knew her a little – and wanted to know her better.

“In Nurri Kala,” I said, “we have cause for another expedition to Zorimi’s plateau. But this time we must be more cautious. As for my friends, Harker and Lacrosse, I guess they’re dead.”

But the word “Lacrosse” stuck in my throat a little. Hadn’t I seen Zorimi start when, on impulse, I called him by Lacrosse’s name? Could it be that Lacrosse escaped death in the Junkers crash and was now cast in the role of the magician?

I turned the thought over in my mind. Back in Darjeeling, Jim Craig had muttered about diamonds. He spoke of a mountain-high cache in the Himalayas. And he intimated that the pectoral was the key to the treasure. Now I knew that this key – She of the Three Heads – was called the Shining Stone and that Zorimi used it in his deadly rituals.

The pectoral was stolen from Jim Craig’s body by a dacoit. Was the dacoit in Lacrosse’s pay? Was Lacrosse a man who knew the secrets of these caverns and who went abroad in the outer world with some of the wealth supposedly hidden here? I had only his and Kenvon’s word for it that he was a naturalist from Princeton.

Kenvon was a little mad. It would have been easy for Lacrosse to arrange for the Door of Surrilana map to fall into the millionaire’s hands; for him to finance the flight over Kanchenjunga. Kenvon was gullible, I thought. And it was prearranged that he was to insist on the entrance to the Door. For some reason, Lacrosse might have wanted to hide his hand – even from Harker and me – knowing full well that death was always ahead for us.

The attack of the Shamman bats on the Junkers was unforseen. But after the crash – from which I escaped with my usual Irish luck – Lacrosse produced the Shining Stone and returned to his cave identity of Zorimi. He put Kenvon to death. Hadn’t I seen the decapitated body? And then Harker was carried off to The Flame. Hadn’t I seen his head in frieze of skulls?

Of Lacrosse, there was no trace. And Zorimi betrayed fear when addressed as Lacrosse. My conclusion was not wholly lacking in logic.

Zorimi! In him, I was dealing with a man of flesh and blood like myself, I was confident. He was not a Silurian or a Shamman. His English was too good. And he knew the identities and stories of Morgo and Nurri Kala who came from my world. All this I related to Morgo as we dried and grew warm. He was impressed by the logic of it.

“But, man or magician,” Morgo said, “I am not afraid of Zorimi. And I feel we must do something to save the girl from him. He is evil. I feel that.”

“Since the Bakketes cannot withstand the strength of the Shamman bats,” I pointed out, “we must adopt other measures for her rescue – for ascertaining that she is Zorimi’s prisoner again.”

“I will send three Bakketes into Shamman when the darkness comes. They will be cautious and will seek news of her.”

“Good! But then how can we effect a rescue? Have you no people or beasts with which we can combat Zorimi?”

“There are the ants,” Morgo said thoughtfully, “but they cannot be trusted. Once I saved their leader, the Raba of the Hussha tribe who lives in a cave nearby. They are fearless but very destructive. They might turn on us – or if they kill Zorimi, they might devour Nurri Kala as well as those who try to hold her. Once they are started on warfare and forage, there is no stopping them.”

“We can hover over their advance with the Bakketes and take the girl into the air.”

“To do that we must also fight the Shamman bats. Our Bakketes are not strong enough, Derro. But the Shammans and the Silurians fear the ants. Zorimi’s magic is supposed to keep the Husshas out of Shamman. It is really the dearth of food there which sends them to other caverns.”

“Can you talk to this Raba?” I asked incredulously.

“Of course. These ants have life and manners like our own. They have a language and live in tribes. But they are treacherous.”

I decided without hesitation.

“Then let’s visit this Raba and try to enlist his aid. I’m sure if we can take enough Bakketes into Shamman we can win our point – even against the mightier Shamman bats.”

We went inside and dressed. My clothes no longer reeked with the stench of the fungus and I quickly forgot the experience, helped by events that rapidly piled themselves upon us.

“There is a great cave next to Kahli,” Morgo said, “that is called Verizon. It is much like Kahli but warmer, and there are more beasts and reptiles living in it – beasts such as the small mannizan, the snake you call the python, the dog-headed lizards and catbirds. They prey upon the men and women who live there much like the Shammans. But all flee the ants.”

“We shall see. Let us be off.”

Baku and another Bakkete were summoned from their aeries high above the cliff in which we dwelt by a shrill whistle Morgo gave. It was a weird call, not batlike but rather like a small boy giving a secret code call for a pal. I could not imitate it.

We flew over the luxurious greenery of Kahli, peopled with the Kahlis, foraging mice and insects whose wings hummed like a Sikorsky motor, steadily and monotonously. The saffron light fell on all things, the trees and the shrubs and the wilderness of vines that grew beneath the pink, titillating stalactites in which the Bakketes flitted, hordes descending suddenly upon the swarming dragon flies, gnats and needle insects feeding in the green leaves. Life in these caves was much as life outside – the stronger preyed on the weaker and thereby survived. I could not think but how futile civilization was – for it merely replaced on method of preying for sustenance with another.

Instead of flying lower or higher to another cave, the Bakketes turn to the south and approached a door hemmed with chalk formations – the inevitable teeth with which nature endowed this inner world through the age-long processes of moisture dripping from the Himalayas’ skin into their viscera.

We passed through the great stony gate and entered Verizon which greatly resembled Kahli in its flora. It was a replica of that Cainozoic world of forty million years ago when grass ad land forests came into existence and the mammal began its life.

My eyes feasted on what was spread below and above – greener forests than in Kahli – stalactites that were glowing red embers in the bright yellow light. The source of that light was something I hoped to live to see. When our problem of Nurri Kala was solved, Morgo promised to reveal it to me. He called it The Shaft.

A cry escaped me. Morgo drew closer and pointed downward.

A black belt about thirty feet wide and apparently endless wound its way over the floor of the cave, uniformly covering what was beneath it. At no place in the belt could I see greenery on the cave’s sandy floor.

And this belt moved ever so slowly. On command, Baku went lower.

Now I could the life of this belt – black ants, ugly headed and at least five feet long with yard-long mandibles. These mandibles, projecting from the creatures shoulders, worked like tongs, reaching out, ripping apart the desired food, crushing it and stuffing it into the head’s mouth. A faint moan ascended to my ears. It was that of some one munching food, the sound of this army, several million strong, existing – eating its way through life.

I thought of stories I had heard of the Driver ants of Africa. They could destroy an elephant that fouled their path by swarming over it and picking its bones clean in three days. Men and smaller beasts met with the elephants’ fate, too. My heart echoed in my breast. This sight of the Husshas was terrifying.

And like the Drivers, the Husshas were organized – one of nature’s phenomena. Blacker ants, in columns of ten, formed two lines between which slightly smaller ants moved. These were the “soldier ants” and those in the middle column were the “workers”. The latter pushed leaves and mannizan flesh to the “soldiers”, the latter pushed them back or devoured them.

What awful allies! These were to be our “friends” in attacking Zorimi in Shamman. God help us if we failed to get Nurri Kala out of their path!

Baku swung me around abruptly and I saw another Bakkete flying towards us slowly, weakly. Some sixth sense had told Baku of this other’s approach. Morgo had sighted him, too.

The Bakkete tried to fly up to us. Now I saw that he was wounded. One arm was missing and a leg badly mangled.

But in his sound hand he carried something whitish – a piece of cloth.

The Bakkete tried to reach us, holding out the white cloth. His wings, flapping in exhaustion, failed him and he dropped – straight into the black belt of voracious Husshas. He was lost as the living jet river slid over his body. But the white cloth fluttered in the upheld hand, a hand that quivered in death’s agony.

Morgo shouted to his carrier. They swooped down upon the black line of ants. They were close enough for the Hussha soldiers to strike out at Morgo’s white skin with their pointed black tongs.

Morgo reached the still visible hand, caught the wrist and flew upward. The hand came off the arm, eaten away by the worker ants. He tore the white cloth from it and dropped the lifeless paw.

We flew, at a signal from Morgo, to a mound a safe distance from the crawling black belt and alighted there. Morgo opened the cloth.

“Why, it’s a piece of wing cloth!” I cried. “It might be from the Junkers. From my black bird!”

“There is writing on it,” Morgo said.

I peered over his shoulder and read: “Jesperson is Zorimi.” Below these cryptic words was the name “Lacrosse”.

So Harvey Jesperson was in the cave. And this was a message from Lacrosse – who wanted to inter that Jesperson – the man who took my De Haviland on a solo from Darjeeling, was Zorimi the magician.

I refused to believe it.

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 I lost Nurri Kala in the windmill of beating, fighting wings, I think I more sincerely hoped for her death than for her capture and return to Zorimi. Yet she was made prisoner. A Shamman bat had caught her with his taloned feet and, holding her tightly, ripped her away from the Bakkete’s grasp. She was well on her way back to the plateau before the combat ended.

Zorimi, the magician, was waiting for her on the lip of the rock outside the chamber of skulls. She was deposited at his feet.

“My magic is still good,” he laughed down at her. “White skin does not believe, but there is magic in Shamman. And I am its master!”

Nurri Kala opened her eyes.

“The white man can spit death from his finger – but he cannot kill Zorimi,” the skin-clad figure said, the sound of his voice apparently coming from the top of the headless mass of pelts. “I have sent the Silurians to destroy them or to return them to me for the death I designed for them.”

“You are very cruel,” Nurri Kala whispered. “I did not believe this of you until I saw with my own eyes. I thought you were a god.”

“I am that, Nurri Kala. But even gods can be moved to anger, when their domain is desecrated.”

“Their coming to this mound was innocent enough,” she replied. “They came to seek friends lost from a bird that brought the red one to Shamman.”

“You must not believe that, Nurri Kala. They came here to conquer The Flame – to which you are a consecrated vestal. They are my enemies.”

Nurri Kala shook her head doubtfully. “But what is this secret about me – and him who calls himself Morgo?”

“The day will come when I can tell you,” Zorimi said in a cunning tone. “And the day is nigh when I will take you from Shamman to the outer world.”

“The outer world? But why? My life is dedicated to these caverns. You told me that.”

Her eyes were incredulous, suspicious.

“I am a magician. I will change all that when the day comes. In the meantime, I must go to Zaan. But not until I am certain that the white men are dead.”

“Why do you so desire their deaths, Zorimi? You once called yourself the All Merciful.”

“They know of affairs of which they should have no knowledge.” Zorimi rubbed his shoulder and groaned. “The red one put a bullet through my flesh.”

“You attacked him – threatened his life,” Nurri Kala said. “Here in the caverns men must fight for their lives and kill to save themselves. You said that was as things should be.”

“They are my enemies. But my magic is greater than theirs.” His voice cackled. “My magic deflected the bullet from my heart and from the Shining Stone I held.”

“Yet you could not deflect it from your shoulder, Zorimi.” Nurri Kala was interested in this thought. The magician’s powers were not as great as he claimed – or Derro’s was stronger.

“I did not act in time!” Zorimi snapped. “I was taken unawares!”

That, Nurri Kala thought, was odd. Zorimi told her once that he knew all things, all that went on in other people’s minds. Yet he did not know Derro’s finger was going to spit at him. And in that instant, her first great doubt of Zorimi’s infallibility was born.

“You will go to your chamber now, Nurri,” the magician said. “I must wait for word from the expedition that set out to find my enemies.”

Nurri Kala rose wearily to her feet. Her body ached from the struggle to which it had been subjected – a Shamman bat tearing it from the hold of a lesser Bakkete. Zorimi’s voice halted her at the steps.

“There is more that I must tell you, Nurri Kala,” he said. “It is best that you know a little of my plans, my slave.”

The girl’s eyes flashed defiantly at the mass of skins. She was no longer his slave. And though he might hold great power over the Shammans and their world, she knew then that he was as much flesh and blood as other living creatures.

She considered this bent, huddled figure, tinted crimson by the rays of The Flame – that horrible pyre stoked with human flesh and bone. His face was a mystery to her since she had always been denied the privilege of seeing it. Only the voice she knew – and until now had obeyed. This man had been her mentor. He gave her life after that accident had robbed her of those other white people she knew as mother and father and who were so good to her. Of them and the accident that robbed her memory, she remembered nothing. Her life in the caves began with the ministrations of Zorimi who found her near the Door of Surrilana.

Through her growing years, the magician had been good to her. He taught her the ways of the Shammans and Silurians and made them her slaves. He gave her pretty bright stones and the reflecting glass in her chamber and indulged all her minor needs. The Flame, she was instructed, was the source of all life in Shamman, a holy thing, and to its burning eternally she must devote all her thought and prayers. This she had done faithfully.

Zorimi was amusing at times. He told her stories about the strange people and beasts in the other caverns. He delighted her with speculations about an outer world. And while she never felt any love for him such as the white man she once called her father, she liked Zorimi. He was her only friend, a man who spoke a language she knew without learning as she had had to learn the speech of the Shammans. She was dependent on him – and believed him when he told her she was an immortal and a sacred person, a vestal of The Flame.

Her slavery was a subtle relationship between them. It was her bowing to his will, her belief in all he told her, her captivity to the power of his awful eyes. And it hinged on his ability to prove himself greater than the people of Shamman. But now Derro had struck at Zorimi and his blow had been a telling one.

Moreover, Zorimi, a kindly man, had proven himself a destroyer of human life. Till that night, she had no knowledge of what went on at the rituals in the chamber of skulls. She had not been permitted to attend the other ceremonies. Yet now she knew, and Zorimi had commanded her to participate in it – to draw a man’s blood and take his life with the obsidian dagger, all for some incomprehensible reason. She suspected, though, that these pagan rituals were Zorimi’s method of demonstrating his power – a power built on the taking of human life.

She reflected. She might have killed a Shamman in the act of ritual. They were not really men but beasts. Zorimi might have induced her to believe in her godhood to that extent. But he erred in asking her to kill in the presence of a man with white skin, Derro, who was so brave.

Yes, she knew Zorimi better that night. He was a man of evil. He was not to be trusted. He planned her destruction in some way still obscure to her limited knowledge.

Zorimi was talking in high sounding words, many of which she did not understand. He was discoursing on her future, a glowing career in a world of great cities and vast seas of water that was salty to taste, of men and women who dressed strangely in suits and dresses of colors and who drove in things called motors and trains and airplanes, who went under water in boats. He was telling her incredible things and she smiled placidly to disarm him though she did not believe a word he uttered.

“And when I return from Zaan, the Cave of Diamonds -” Zorimi was saying.

“Diamonds? What are they?” Nurri Kala asked. “My mother had a diamond – I remember.”

“You shall have thousands, Nurri Kala. I promise it. You will look more beautiful than all the queens in the world.”

“Queens?”

“Rulers of men, women with great power in the outer world.” Zorimi grew ecstatic. “You shall be the greatest and richest woman in all the world. I promise it. And I shall be the richest man. Diamonds can buy anything?”

“But I do not want that,” Nurri Kala said seriously.

“No?” Zorimi was amused. “What do you want then? You shall have it.”

“I want to have Morgo and Derro for my friends – for they have a skin like mine. And Derro is very brave – and so is Morgo.” She spoke with the simplicity of a child.

Zorimi thundered. “That is something you cannot have! The friendship of those two! They must be destroyed – or they will destroy us! Morgo is a savage and the other seeks my life! Surely you would not be the friend of a savage and a murderer?”

Nurri Kala did not believe him, but she silenced her tongue. Instinct warned her not to betray to Zorimi her new attitude toward him.

“Nurri Kala,” Zorimi declaimed, taking her little hand in his grimy fist, “you are to be the Bride of the Shining Stone!”

She smiled at the sound of the words. They were pleasant. “Bride of the Shining Stone! My mother was a bride – I remember her saying it. And I shall be like her.”

“You shall be what I promise!”

“But who shall be like father to me? Like he was to mother?”

“I shall be that, Nurri Kala. I shall marry you!”

The girl did not understand this but an indefinable fear welled up inside her. She wanted to hurry to her chamber.

“I shall make you my bride before The Flame, Nurri Kala, and then again in a ceremony in the outer world. I promise you that.

She ran up the steps without further comment. She wanted to be alone.

Her chamber, a room off one of the higher corridors in the mound, was spacious though plainly furnished. There was a flambeau for light, stuck in a chalk hole, a pallet heaped with skins, a few dishes from which she ate her meals, a tiny window that fed her the air of Shamman and the reflecting glass – a tall mirror of polished silver.

She beheld her image in the silver and was pleased with it. What a relief from looking at the ugly, scale-skinned Silurians! And only she was permitted to look into it. The Silurian women were forbidden its secrets and she kept it covered when they cleaned her room.

Her hands ran languidly over her whiteness. The silver mirror showed her a pretty picture – the most beautiful she had ever seen. The girdle of shining stones winked and danced in the light of the flambeau. She removed it and the strange flower of diamonds in her hair and, combing her golden locks when they sprawled over her broad shoulders with skillful fingers, she thrilled to her splendor.

And later, lying on her couch in the darkness, stretching luxuriously with the grace of a sybarite, she hoped, in the moment before she fell asleep, that Derro, the red one, though she was good to look at.

The tramping of many feet in the corridor outside her door awakened her. The Silurians who went in search of Derro and Morgo, were returning to report to Zorimi. Perhaps the two men were prisoners again. She leaped to her feet with fast-beating hear and when the last man had passed her door, she crept out and made her way stealthily to the stairs leading to the chamber of skulls.

The leader of the Silurians addressed Zorimi. His voice sounded angry. A man had been killed by Derro, but the two white men were not captives. Her heart bounded with joy. They were free and she might see them again.

The Silurian’s next words left her frozen with terror. Derro and Morgo had dropped into the cave of the unclean growths to be devoured by plants that thrived on human life. They were utterly lost. Zorimi clapped his hands gleefully and chuckled with fiendish laughter. She hated the magician more than ever in that hour for she knew what death in the jungle of fungus meant. It had been described to her by the Silurian women who lost their men in it while they were on the hunts.

Yet Nurri Kala refused to despair. One man, she had heard, came out of that livid green cave alive and told his companions about it. She was not so much concerned with his tale as with the fact that he did live to escaped the creeping threads of growth that devoured flesh and blood.

And while Nurri Kala knew nothing of the God of the outer world, she raised her eyes and whispered: “If one man can escape, let the two – Derro and Morgo – free themselves from that death!”

To Be Continued!