Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930. Various
wielded his long pole cautiously now, and drew closer and ever closer to the stream bank. Paula pointed again. There was even a small dock – luxury unthinkable in these wilds.
The raft touched bottom. And suddenly from somewhere out of sight there came a horrible and a bestial sound. It was a scream of blood-lust, of madness, of overpowering and unspeakable rage. Following it came cackling laughter.
Paula went white.
"The fazenda," said Bell softly, "of the sub-deputy who was listening in on Ribiera last night. And it sounds as if someone were very much amused. Some poor devil…"
Paula shuddered.
"I'm going ashore," said Bell, smiling frostily. "There's nothing else to do."
CHAPTER VIII
Crouched at the edge of the jungle, where the clearing began, Paula heard four shots. Two in quick succession, and a wait of minutes. Then a third, and another long wait, and then the last. Then silence. Paula began to shiver. Bell had helped her ashore from the raft and insisted on her waiting at the edge of the jungle.
"Not that you'll be any safer," he had told her grimly, "but that I may be. One person can move more quickly than two. And if I'm chased I'll plunge for the place you're hidden, and you can open fire. Then the two of us might hold them off."
"Why?" Paula said slowly.
And Bell caught at her wrist.
"Don't let me hear you talk like that!" he said sharply. "We're going to beat this thing! We've got to! And being desperate helps, but being in despair doesn't help a bit. Buck up!"
He frowned at her until she smiled.
"I will not despair again without your permission," she told him. "Really. I will not."
He found her a hiding-place and went cautiously out into the clearing, still frowning.
He had been gone five minutes before the first shot sounded, and quite ten before the last rang out dully, and was echoed and re-echoed hollowly by the jungle trees. And Paula lay waiting by the edge of the clearing, Ribiera's pearl-handled automatic in her hand – Bell had carried the rifle from the plane. Small insects moved all about her, and she heard soft rustlings as the life of the jungle went on over her head and under her feet, and terror welled up in her throat.
She was trembling almost uncontrollably when Bell came back. He walked openly toward her hiding-place.
"Paula."
She came out, trying to steady her quivering lips.
"We're all right," said Bell grimly. "This is the fazenda of a sub-deputy. I suspect, also, it's an emergency landing field for Ribiera on the way to that place he talked to last night. There's a two-place plane here with both wheels and floats, in a filthy little shed. It seems to be all right. We're going to take off in it and try to make Moradores, where your people are. What's the matter?"
Her face was deathly pale.
"I thought," she said with some difficulty, "when I heard the shots – I thought you were killed."
Bell shook his head.
"I wasn't," he said grimly. "It was four other men who were killed."
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