Juju by Murray Leinster (fantasy novels to read .TXT) 📗

The last I saw of her for an hour or more, she was going through Evan's assortment of firearms, picking out a light rifle for her own use and another for Mrs. Braymore. She already had a small-caliber automatic pistol hidden in her bosom.

For an hour or more we worked, moving the bundles Evan pointed out in the storeroom to form a breastwork behind which the women would be safe from stray shots. We tore up a section or so of flooring, too, so we could fire down in case any of the blacks found a refuge from our weapons beneath the house. Bars nailed across the openings at once provided us with assurance that they could not climb up, and that we would not accidentally fall through. We brought supplies of food and water where they would be close at hand.

For close quarters, we were depending on repeating shotguns loaded with buckshot. Three of us with those weapons should be able to stop almost any number of blacks. These lay close beside us. We had our rifles and our pistols in addition.

The drums were beating madly now. The high-pitched ululation that was the blended note of all the frantic yelling came clearly to our ears. When we had finished our preparations I went outside to listen. I instantly realized that the drums were nearer, much nearer. The dogs were excited and restless.

"We'd better get the dogs up from the ground," I suggested. "They'll only be killed."

Evan went silently down and unleashed them. They were growling and bristling, particularly those near the back. They seemed to realize the imminence of danger.

I looked at my watch. It lacked two hours of dawn. The drums were growing louder and louder, and the yelling more distinct and defiant. From three sides the drums closed in on us, and from three sides choruses of high-pitched yells informed us of the hatred of the blacks for their masters. Evan interpreted as he caught some of the words.

"They say the juju has declared we are to be killed," he announced with a faint smile. "We are to be slaughtered and our flesh boiled down until the fat can be collected, when it will be used to light fires. Pigs will feed upon us, and our bones will be scattered among the juju priests of a thousand villages to tell them to rise and slay all white men."

The drums came up to the very edge of the clearing, and their thunderous voices boomed with a full-throated bellow across the open space in a deafening volume of sound. In the moonlight, we became conscious of darker bodies moving among the bush. Evan sighted from an open window and with compressed lips fired. There was a mocking yell.

"They say our guns have been bewitched so we cannot harm them," he informed us a second later. "Give me a shotgun."

The load of buckshot gave better results. Two or three shrieks of pain announced its arrival. Then the drums boomed forth more loudly. Evan fired again and again. There was a yell of rage at the third shot, when the resonant voice of the huge drum became muted and a mere shadow of itself.

"I was trying for the drum," he remarked. "They were brought from a thousand miles inland, and there's no way to tell what price was paid for that one."

The two other drums hastily shifted their positions, and recommenced their devil's tattoo. Emboldened by the fury of sound, one or two of the more daring spirits ventured to advance a little way out in the clearing to howl maledictions upon us.

Arthur's rifle cracked spitefully, and mine followed. Two bold spirits ceased to yell.

From time to time, as we saw an opportunity and a target in the moonlight, we shot vengefully into the bush, and several times cries of different timbre from the hysterical yelling of the blacks followed our shots. Once or twice, too, I had that curious feeling of certitude that follows some shots, when one is confident he has hit his mark, though no cry came to assure me.

Evan fired again and again with his heavy shotgun, almost every deep explosion being followed by a cry. The range was hardly more than a hundred yards, and the buckshot carried that distance easily. Spreading as it did, it had a daunting effect.

Our object in taking the initiative was solely that of dampening the blacks' enthusiasm. Allowed to cheer themselves with yells, they would make a rush that would be formidable in the extreme, but if we began to inflict losses before their attack began, the edge of their determination would be taken off. They would no longer believe in the efficacy of their juju to compass our destruction, and we would have a fraction of that psychological superiority that the white man must possess in order to handle natives, the complete possession of which enables a single fever-ridden white man to cow and rule ten thousand blacks.

Evan made a tour of the house, to make sure that the natives were equally reluctant to advance on all sides. We heard him fire twice back there, and painful yells followed each shot. He rejoined us.

"I'm going to take the rear," he said briefly. "They're in the bush all around. I'll hold them off easily. They'll make their main rush from this side, so you two stay together."

Arthur's answer was a deliberate squeeze of his trigger. A yell followed.

"At a hundred yards," he commented, looking up, "one can make good practice in moonlight like this."

"Dawn soon," said Evan and went once more to the rear. We heard him settling himself for the rush that we expected.

So far, there had been nothing but yells from the natives. We knew they had some firearms, but ammunition is very valuable in the bush. Natives are never supposed to have arms of precision, and when they possess modern rifles, they have to keep them concealed lest they be taken away by the Portuguese; but now and then a black boy will make off with a rifle and a store of shells, and there are other sources of supply.

At that, though, rifles and ammunition are immensely valuable back in the hill country. Up beyond the Hungry Country, I have known slaves to be sold for three rifle cartridges apiece. In fact, my boy Mboka—now run off in the bush with the rest of them—had cost me exactly six .30-.30 shells. I had found him the slave of a portly Kuloga chieftain who was about to sell him to a half-caste Arab for export to the Sudan.

I had wondered why the house servants did not clean out the gun chest when they ran away in the middle of the night, but thanked my luck that they failed to do so. Half a dozen rifles in the hands of the blacks would have made matters awkward for us at close quarters. Off in the bush we could have disregarded them, as the native custom is to fill the barrel with slugs and fire from the hip. Anything like accuracy is impossible to them, of course.

When the sky began to pale toward the east, however, they opened up. No less than six firearms began to bellow at us, from an ancient fowling piece of who knows what ancient lineage to a modern smokeless-powder magazine rifle. The slugs and bullets tore through the flimsy walls of the house, or else imbedded themselves with a thud in one of the posts that supported the roof. Arthur and myself began to concentrate upon those weapons. The black-powder arms showed their position at every fire in the now growing dawnlight, and we fired vengefully at the puffs of smoke.

The sky was growing lighter now. The stars above us were paling and winking feebly in an attempt to outshine the sun. The first dim grayness became nearly white. The east turned from pallid luminosity to rich rose and then to gold. The gold, in its turn, faded to yellow, and the first rays of the sun struck the tips of the highest trees about the clearing. The drumming became fast and furious. The fires of the guns in the bush ceased for a moment, and wild yelling began. We heard Evan firing occasionally from the rear of the house. Now his shots came more rapidly.

With a hideous yell, the fringe of bush about the casa erupted black figures. Ancient spears, knobbed and gnarled war clubs, fiercely pointed arrows, and occasional rusted and long-cherished firearms armed the motley throng that ran yelling toward us.

Arthur dropped his rifle and took up the repeating shotgun by his side. I took my stand at a window and opened on the advancing mob. In such a mass it was impossible to miss, and the buckshot was deadly. If we had had sawed-off shotguns, the loads would have spread more and inflicted more damage, but as it was we had merely to pull the triggers to see one or more figures crumple or spin half around and fall. In their state of frenzy, that did not stop the blacks.

Evan's gun was booming from the rear of the house. Arthur's spoke with a shattering roar. My own barked angrily. The drums in the bush were pounding in a mad rhythm that made the universe a place of unbearable sound. The yells, the shots, the cries, and the thunderous drumming created an uproar in which I loaded my weapon and emptied it with a sense of curious detachment. Alicia and Mrs. Braymore were behind the breastwork we had made for them. I cannot speak for Mrs. Braymore, but I glanced once at Alicia and saw her grimly holding her light rifle in readiness.

The blacks came on. The losses we inflicted went unnoticed. They swarmed up the rise on which the house was built. We took heavy toll of them, but from sheer weight of numbers their casualties seemed insignificant. Their yells were deafening as they swept up the last twenty yards. I emptied my shotgun and began to use my two automatics.

A mass of black humanity flowed up the steps, though a gap in the stream widened for a moment as Arthur poured the last shells from his shotgun into them. They clambered the pillars that supported the veranda and made for the windows.

At that distance, barely ten feet, we could not miss. The veranda was a shambles. They could not live there. Arthur and myself with an automatic in each hand swept the place. I heard a shot and a yell behind me. One of the openings in the floor showed the barrel of an ancient musket that was just falling back. Alicia had fired down the opening and undoubtedly saved my life. The musket was aimed directly for my back, and would have torn my head from my body.

There was a crashing, and an antique blunderbuss appeared through a hole smashed in the flimsy side wall of the house. Arthur fired quickly. Then I heard Evan cry out at the rear of the house. Before we could move, there was an outburst of demoniacal, bestial screamings of rage. To one who had once heard that sound, the noise was unmistakable. The gorilla had appeared in a killing fury and was going for the blacks, as their panic testified. In a moment the clearing was dotted with running natives. They dared face our weapons, but the gorilla——

Evan's rifle was silent. There was an instant of almost unbearable quietness. Then came a triumphant, horrible outcry from the beast. It had slain.