Doc Savage - 047 - Land Of Long Ju Ju, page 15
"Ho-hee! Howlin' calamities! Ho-hee! Make ready!"
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Monk's powerful muscles rapped the stick across the skin drum. He was hitting twenty tremendous slow beats to the minute. It was like the tolling of a great muffled bell.
At the same time, Monk's lips were moving. He was looking at Ham and Johnny. They began to understand. All of Doc's men were expert lip readers. Monk was talking to his companions silently.
Logo and old Selan did not get it. Perhaps the wise Logo understood partly.
"King Udu is dead," Monk was saying with his lips. "We must cover up! Call the tribes to attack!"
His measured beating of the tom-tom was the tribal call to battle. Twenty slow beats to the minute. But they filled the pass. Some of the nearer tribesmen immediately took up the drumming.
Ham and Johnny acted. From the Wing had been brought boxes of supplies. Now hundreds of queer goggles were being passed through the chiefs to their warriors. Many viewed these with distrust.
"These will make your people see where there is no sight," was the advice from the smart Logo. "The coming devils will march in darkness, but they will appear in your eyes."
ONE of the assembled chiefs cast his goggles down. He showed every evidence of superstitious fear.
"Voodoo devils," he mumbled. "I hear a distant message."
Monk confronted the tall warrior. It was time for a demonstration. He fastened a gorillalike hold on the tall chiefs wrist. The savage leader squirmed, but he was powerless. Monk was using one of the paralyzing grips taught by Doc Savage.
Below the cavern, the pass was a bowl of darkness. It was as thick as smoke. Monk pointed one hand at this.
"Johnny, the magic!" he rapped out.
Johnny understood. He picked up one of the infra-red beam projectors. The invisible light shot across the pass. Monk clapped the goggles on the helpless chief's eyes. He turned the savage around.
"Now you see where there is no sight!" announced Monk in the chiefs own language. "All of your people will be greater than the Long Juju! We prepare to resist the invading devils!"
The chief saw clearly where there was no light. All of the pass showed in black and white. And he could pick out his own warriors crouching among the rocks.
"Ho-hee! Ho-hee!" cried the chief.
The other chiefs donned the goggles. They joined in the cry of battle. The banging of the battle drums still submerged the slower telegraph of the drums in the hills.
"See that all of the blowpipes are placed!" commanded Monk.
Ham seldom admitted Monk amounted to anything. Now the lean face of the lawyer held some admiration.
"Sometimes, you confounded insect, I think you've got brains," he said grudgingly.
Then he spoke quickly, in the language of the ancient Mayans.
"But if these heathen get wise the old king has passed out, we are sunk. With Doc gone and King Udu dead, these natives would quit on us cold."
Old Selan, the wrinkled medicine man, bored his black eyes into Ham. All this time, he had been sitting in dejected silence. Ham had made a great mistake.
The Mayan language was little known. Doc and his men employed it to confuse their enemies. But one man in the kingdom of Kokoland knew the Mayan language.
Old Selan understood what Ham had just said.
"Ai-ee! Ai-ee! Ai-ee!" the wrinkled medicine man suddenly screamed. "The white chief lies! King Udu is dead! The Long Juju will rule!"
Before he could be seized, the old medicine man had dashed from the cavern. Almost at once, a near-by drum changed its war beat.
The warrior chiefs in the cavern cast themselves on their faces. They joined in the wailing chant which old Selan had started.
"Now the devil and all's to pay!" rapped out Johnny, forgetting his long words. "That's what Doc was trying to keep under cover when he brought old Selan up here!"
"There's nothing we can do," said Logo. "All of the tribesmen and our own loyal Kokonese will quit cold. We are defeated by our own people before the battle begins."
AS wailing panic spread among the hundreds of tribesmen in the mountain pass, the chanters mourned in the palace of King Udu. The death torches of nut oil were lighted. Before the great throne room, a dozen tom-toms tunked out the grief and despair of the stricken people.
In strange contrast, the loud strains of a jazzy band march broke in on the drums. The music was military. It sounded like some naval band. For a few moments it drowned out the dirge.
This weirdly unexpected music was coming from the old king's powerful, modern radio. It was indeed a naval band. And the band was playing a war march.
The radio stood across the royal throne from the hundreds of skulls of beheaded enemies. Before the doorway where King Udu lay, was piled an assortment of objects.
Those were the lifetime adornments and weapons of King Udu's family for generations. Vessels contained meats. A white goat was alive. He bleated shrilly. The Kokonese had prepared their stricken monarch for his journey into another land.
Oil torches gave dim light in the royal death chamber. The great bulk of King Udu lay on the couch of skins. In the same room still reposed the casket containing Prince Zaban.
Tom-toms beat. A radio gave forth the strains of a modern military march.
Skulls of the beheaded grinned down on the painted chanters. A dozen guards with long spears stood before the death chamber door.
All the tribal fetishes were represented in preparation for King Udu's death journey.
Old men ground their wrinkled foreheads in the dust of the streets and mumbled. Women wailed in the long hut.
The guards with the spears were standing as impassive as statues of carved mahogany. Their giant bodies were dyed vividly red.
At the edge of King Udu's village, the earth trembled. There arose a thunderous trumpeting that drowned both the radio band and the tom-toms. The Kokonese were bringing up the elephants.
The passing of the elephant herd was a funeral custom. Sometimes the mourners failed to move from before the elephants. Some would be trampled. But mostly the wise beasts stepped over them.
THE radio band crashed to a finish. From inside the palace came wild cries. First, the chanters came rushing into the street. They were followed closely by the guards. The guards flung away their spears and fled.
The six wrinkled medicine men, the advisors, were the last to emerge. They tried to conceal their terror. With upraised hands, they were invoking the gods in mumbling voices.
The immense figure of old King Udu came walking behind the advisors. On his tremendously fat body hung death ornaments. From his neck and arms and hands gleamed countless jewels. The tribal death mark was on King Udu's forehead.
The fat old body of the ruler of Kokoland quivered as he walked. But his eyes were black and keen beside the high-arched nose. His voice spoke clearly above his rolling chins.
"A great mistake has been made," he stated calmly. "I have only been sleeping. I have defeated the attempt of my enemies to put me to death. Bring the elephants, even the funeral herd. I shall go to lead my army."
The wrinkled advisors fell on their faces. Fat King Udu, very much alive, walked down the incline from his palace into the street.
ONLY an increased chirping of the stonechat birds, and a subdued chattering of hyrax, indicated the tropical dawn was not far away. Thick mists crowned Mount Kibo and all of the Kilimanjaro.
"Don't seem any use," groaned the voice of Monk. "Some of the chiefs are ordering their men to throw away the infra-red goggles."
"Yes," stated Logo. "They now believe they have been tricked. They are saying you are yourselves of this devil army and you have brought them into this pass to be killed. They are preparing to leave."
"I haven't heard the war tanks moving for some time," advised Johnny, who had been outside scouting along the wall of the gorge. "It doesn't look good. The invaders will wait until just before daylight to strike. A great many of the tribesmen are sneaking down the mountain."
"Dag-gonit!" groaned Monk. "I oughta choked that old medicine guy to death while I had him here! We've got to put up some kind of a fight! I'll go out and try and talk to them!"
Monk emerged on the rocks outside the cavern. He played a flashlight over his gorillalike figure, so he could be plainly seen. That was a mistake.
Excited tribesmen shouted. Bow strings twanged. A shower of arrows slapped about the mouth of the cavern.
"Ouch!" howled Monk. "The ornery heathen!"
An arrow stuck bloodily in his shoulder. Ham pulled him back into the cave. From the upper end of the pass came the explosion of war tanks' motors.
The invading army was starting its drive through the pass.
Chapter XVIII. THE ARMY STRIKES
THE horde of Monk's Kokonese and the allied tribesmen had begun their retreat. At the sound of the attacking movement the terrorized natives scrambled back to the walls. The beat of the drums mourning the death of King Udu was suddenly stilled.
"If we only had some way to get them fighting mad," declared Ham. "The trouble is that old voodoo man, Selan, is hooked up with the Long Juju stuff. I wouldn't be surprised but what he has been playing in with The Shimba all the time."
"Thunderation!" exploded Monk. "That ain't the worst of it! I know now this Señorita Moncarid is running part of this unholy show! I wouldn't be surprised if she is The Shimba!"
Logo shook his head.
"I think you are mistaken," he asserted. "She is a prisoner along with your Miss Savage."
"That may be true," stated Ham, "but with Doc gone, it looks bad for all of us. If this army drives through, whoever The Shimba might be, Pat and Renny are done for."
In the pass below came the rustling of many bare feet. From the upper end of the pass a few guns crackled sharply.
Apparently, the army leaders believed a few tribal guards had been placed at the pass.
The clanking of the war tanks and the movement of light artillery told plainly the invaders were moving in massed force. A few howls of death agony floated up to the cavern.
The retreat of the tribesmen had begun. It had become a rout.
"Howlin' calamities!" snapped out Monk. "This may be the finish, but I'm goin' to fight!"
Blood dripped from his shoulder where Johnny had extracted the arrow. The apelike chemist started to spring again into the open.
"Kafee! Kafee!"
This meant, "Kill! Kill!"
This wild cry broke from the back of the cavern. Led by two hideously painted tribal chiefs, a dozen warriors burst into the rock room. They held long spears poised. These ringed in Monk and the others.
"Kafee! Kafee!" again cried one of these chiefs.
He shook his feathered head ornaments. From under one side, a great loop of flesh fell down onto his shoulder.
"Masai!" shouted Logo. "Selan and The Shimba have betrayed us even among our own people!"
Monk and Johnny had whipped out their superfiring pistols. The tribesmen had never seen these in action. They could not use their spears quickly enough. The pistols moaned. The two chiefs fell down. Some of the spearmen dropped their weapons.
But others were pouring into the cavern.
"Our only salvation is to surrender!" advised Logo. "We cannot overcome all of them!"
SUDDENLY the whole pass seemed to be split by a trumpet-like blast. More guns of the army were cracking. It was too dark to pick out targets. An occasional howl told of a hit.
With the trumpeting came a thunderous tramping below the cavern. A brilliant flare burst between the mountain walls. Into this almost blinding light appeared a single mass.
"Well, I'll be superamalgamated!" exclaimed Johnny. "It's an elephant, the biggest I ever saw!"
The beast was as big as a small house. His trunk stuck out rigidly. His trumpet blast was like the scream of a locomotive. His vast red mouth was a cavern of furious sound. Long tusks gleamed in the strange glare.
This white light was coming from the ground. It seemed to have burst from a dozen points. Hundreds of fleeing tribesmen fell upon their faces, groveling in the rocks.
"Great Julius Caesar!" rapped out Ham. "If it ain't old King Udu himself, in person!"
The immense, fat figure of King Udu sat upright on the head of the monster elephant. Rolls of copper and brass wires hung from his neck and arms. Weirdly cut jewels played from his hands and ears.
"Great Scott!" cried Logo, with a peculiarly American phrase. "He's wearing the funeral headdress! King Udu was dead, and he has come to life with all of his death ornaments!"
The strangely burning, chemical light played for perhaps less than half a minute. In these thirty seconds, King Udu raised one tremendous arm. His old voice rolled clear and strong.
"Turn back, my people!" he commanded. "My enemies have said I was dead! You see for yourselves, I live! I have come to command you! We will not yield our kingdom! You see what I bear!"
"Howlin' calamities!" yelled Monk. "The war's on again! Logo, can you make them dumb chiefs understand to do, as we planned?"
Logo was staring at the figure of King Udu.
"It's the Blood Idol!" he shouted. "The Blood Idol has come back to the kingdom! Look!"
Monk, Ham and Johnny could see only a great splash of scarlet in the middle of the fat King Udu's breast. This caught the white light and threw it back with flashes of blinding red. An enormous jewel of some sort hung by a chain around the ruler's neck.
PEHAPS the advance guard of the army was too surprised to act quickly. The white glare revealing King Udu and the mammoth elephant was dying before the first guns flamed. A machine gun chattered then from one of the clanking war tanks.
A trumpeting scream of death agony burst from the elephant. The huge pachyderm settled over on one side like a great house falling on the rocks. The fat King Udu rolled off.
At this instant, the flare of light from the ground winked out. The mountain pass was plunged into Stygian darkness.
But now the tribesmen of Kokoland were shouting the cries of war. King Udu lived.
Monk gave the word and Logo passed it along. The drums beat as had been ordered previously.
"I will try and get King Udu up here!" shouted Ham. "Perhaps the bullets did not hit him!"
As if in reply, came King Udu's clear, old voice in the darkness.
"I am unharmed, my people! I am with you as you fight! Stop these invaders of the kingdom! I am your king! The Blood Idol speaks!"
It was well for the hundreds of loyal tribesmen they could not then see what was happening in the darkness.
The hundreds in the higher rocks were equipped with the infra-red goggles. Searchlights leaped out on the war tanks. Foot soldiers were marching in long files. But the lights did not find the hidden natives.
From the cavern, Monk and Johnny were operating two huge boxes which had been brought from the Wing. Generators hummed. Invisible to all but those with the goggles, fanlike beams played over the white army with its modern weapons.
Machine guns rattled from the tanks. Some of the soldiers were shooting with repeating rifles. Lead spattered aimlessly along the walls. The searchlights were of little value in picking out the hidden tribesmen.
"LET 'em have it!" yelled Monk. "Feed 'em the darts!"
Logo translated the command with a shout of his own.
King Udu had returned from the dead. Or, he never had been dead. Wild tribesmen, firm believers in witchcraft, found themselves looking through the glasses that could see in the darkness.
"Kafee! Kafee!" shouted many chiefs.
The war drums rolled in sudden clamor. Hemmed in the pass below, unable to pick out more than a few figures on the honeycombed walls, the foot soldiers of the invading army set themselves for a burst of gunfire.
None came. The soldiers themselves were in opaque darkness. It lacked only a few minutes to the tropical dawn. But these few minutes were sufficient.
The bony, scholarly Johnny was dancing up and down. He was looking through a pair of the huge goggles.
"Never but once in a lifetime could a man ever have opportunity to observe such a manifestation of psychological suggestion," stated the geologist.
Modern weapons were rattling their bullets into the air. The black warriors had laid aside their spears, their bows and arrows, their great oxhide shields and even the few antique guns they possessed. Those with the goggles, held blowpipes to their lips.
