CHAPTER XV
A FRIEND FROM THE STARS
AFTER Jack and Zarga had disappeared into the butte, Jim wheeled and hobbled back to the place where he had parted from them. It had been his intention, in spite of orders to the contrary, to slip in after them, and take a hand in whatever might be going to take place. His boss, though the first of mankind in Jim’s estimation, was not qualified to take proper care of himself.
But he was confronted by the impenetrable face of the rock, with not a crack in it large enough to admit the point of his crutch. Miracles did not perplex Jim, but they sometimes annoyed him. After eying the rock disgustedly for a few moments, he hit the great cliff a reproving tap, and retired to a small boulder hard by and sat down upon it. If the persons in whom he was interested came out by the same way that they had gone in, he would be on hand to receive them. Meanwhile, as his dessert had been interrupted by Zarga’s arrival, he took one of the apples from his pocket and began to munch it appreciatively and philosophically. “Dat kid ain’t straight, but she puts up a good feed,” was his judgement.
Before the apple had been half consumed, a plashing noise from the direction of the lake caused him to look around. Had he been Achilles or Alexander the Great, instead of a one-legged New York newsboy, the sight that met his eyes might have alarmed him. As it was, he was merely filled with a wary but delighted curiosity.
Jim had once upon a time visited the Museum of Natural History in New York, and had there, in a large saloon, beheld a plaster model of an amphibious animal which had lived, wallowed, and devoured eight million years ago. It was seventy-five feet long, twenty-five feet at the shoulder, and displayed the scaly terrors of a tail which was only less fearsome than its neck and head. Jim wished at that time that he had been born soon enough to have pursued the original of this model with a repeating-rifle and a snickersnee.
Here, now, was the animated and active grandfather of the comparatively trivial and pygmy reptile which had been revealed to him in New York. It was so big that it might have entered the category of geologic phenomena, and held its own against a range of hills. The girth of its forelegs was as that of a giant sycamore in a Southern swamp; the row of ridges down its back might have served as a fence against a Hun invasion; its jaws yawned as wide as the portals of the church of Saint John the Divine in New York; each one of its double row of several hundred teeth was as tall as a drum-major and as sharp as the blade of a Louisiana colonel’s bowie; its tail was for the most part veiled by the lake, but the end of it was stirring up whirlpools as far out in the water as a second basemen could fling a ball. The whole creature was advancing upon Jim with the gladness of a familiar friend; and though its gait was leisurely, it was able to cover an acre of ground at a stride.
It did not occur to the boy at first that the apparition was meant especially for him; any more than he would have regarded the annual procession of the New York police-force up Fifth Avenue as having been organized with an eye to his capture. The disproportion was too preposterous. Of what consequence could he be to it? A mosquito might as reasonably have looked upon itself as an adequate meal for a crocodile. But it did not take him long to modify this view. There was no viand other than himself in sight, and he had seen a lizard engulf an ant with apparent pleasure. He must stand upon his defense!
The most feasible plan that occurred to him on the spur of the moment—a spur, in this case, of exceptional urgency—was to take a sprint along the animal’s tongue and reach the comparative safety of its gullet before it could bring its teeth to bear upon him. But he was handicapped by his one-leggedness; nor, should he win to the interior, had he so much as a pen-knife to chop his way out again. Running away would be equally vain; and to side-step the charge of a creature with such a tail was to invite disaster. The two or three seconds which he devoted to these reflections had sufficed to bring his antagonist so near that the next waddle would be the final one, so far as Jim was concerned.
Jim stood up, supporting himself against the boulder, and holding his crutch at arm’s-length vertically before him. The crutch was a stout bit of blackthorn, and sharp at one end. If he could contrive to thrust the crutch between the animal’s jaws at the moment they closed upon him, it might happen to pierce the roof of its mouth, and the prick thus administered might give him a chance to slip out before being crushed to a pulp. The stratagem did not promise very well, but it was the best he could do.
“It’s a good job the boss ain’t here!” was Jim’s last thought. He looked down a glutinous abyss which seemed to extend to the bottomless pit itself. “Come on, old sockdolager!” he shouted.
A slender shaft, arrowlike, and bright as lightening, flashed before his sight and struck the stupendous snake-lizard fair in the eyeball. There it stood, buried to half its depth, quivering. With such a missile did Olympian Jove quell the revolt of the Titans.
The effect was not to be compassed by mortal senses. Jim was blown backward by the foul expulsion of the creature’s breath, executing involuntary catherine-wheels over a space of a dozen yards. He picked himself up to witness a convulsion in which earthquake, tornado, and waterspout seemed to outdo their utmost. It was accompanied by a scream which made the roar of a volcano seem to Jim’s ears like the whistle of a boy’s pipe. As the creature flounced and flung its hideous length, the waters of the lake fled away, the solid earth groaned and was riven into crevasses, and a boulder as big as a bungalow, caught in the coil of its tail, was flung upward till it looked no larger than a pebble, and when it fell again it was splintered into gravel.
What followed was, if possible, more surprising. The contortions ceased as suddenly as they had begun, and the animal lay flaccid and inert, a flood of blackness, like liquid pitch, oozing out between its jaws. As this went on, the bulk of the enormity shrunk rapidly, and the poisonous darkness of its coloring faded to a pallid, brownish hue, like a crushed tarantula. It shriveled, diminished, and disintegrated; and in a few moments all that remained of it was a heap of brittle fragments dwindling into formlessness. The lake flowed back over its bed and resumed its limpid serenity; the trees stretched their boughs over the turf, and the birds twittered and sang their tranquil music. It was difficult to believe that the late terrific uproar had been more than an evil dream.
Jim recovered his crutch, and then became aware of a personage standing a few rods away on the right, leaning upon a spear, and thoughtfully contemplating the scene of the late cataclysm. He was stately, strong, and clean-limbed, and in the prime of his youth. There was such a brightness in his aspect that it seemed to Jim that he cast a radiance around him. He recognized him at once as Solarion, who had shown his prowess in the battle with the Jovians. He hobbled toward him with an appreciative grin.
“You is sure Johnnie-on-de-Spot, mister, an’ you fetches de goods!” he exclaimed earnestly. “Dat big critter t’ought he had us locoed; an’ along you comes, quietlike, and pastes him one in de eye, an’ where is he?”
“You did the hardest part of the work yourself, Jim,” replied the other, smiling. “A stout heart is the best help in any battle. But I happened to have a dart in my hand, and I couldn’t resist letting it fly. What are you doing here—and where is Jack?”
Jim gave a terse account of their recent adventures. “So de boss is jugged wid de skirt inside dat mountain,” he concluded; “an’ me, I’s waitin’ till dey comes out to take a han’ in de game. I ain’t got no use for de yaller-haired kid; all de same, dis strangle-hold she’s got on de boss is mebbe a good t’ing. He ain’t got no prudence; an’ her keepin’ him in dere keeps him out o’ trouble, wedder or not she means it. He’s al’ays set for a scrap, my boss is; ef he’d been here, he’d ’a’ gone fer dat beast, sure, and got hurted. Now he’s huntin’ Torpy, ter git Miss Mir’am away from him; but what I wants is dis—an’ mebbe you kin give me a lift! While he’s safe in de mountain, you puts me over on de red moon, ef dat’s where she is; an’ I figgers I’d come near getting’ her free. But ef I slips up, an’ Torpy gits me—all right! De boss comes right along an’ makes his spiel; an’ at a straight show-down he kin knock Torpy over de ropes. But Torpy, he has funny stunts ter burn, an’ he might git a fake decision ef de boss ain’t put wise fust. An’ den, I arsks yer, where ’d Miss Mir’am git off?”
“Your idea is, then,” said Solarion, “to take the risk of getting killed first, in order that Jack, profiting by your experience, may have a better chance of rescuing Miriam? But why should you run your head into danger that brings you no reward, even if you win?”
Jim bent upon his interlocutor a serious and reproving glance.
”Say mister, youse ain’t playin’ up ter yer form! Lis’n here! My boss is some man, ain’t he? I guess yes! An’ he’s mushy on Miss Mir’am, an’ she on him; an’ dey’s goin’ ter do de orange-blossom an’ rice act fust t’ing dey hits N’York. On de udder han’, what am I good fer? Do I know anyt’ing? Am I a collidge guy, an’ play full-back on de team? Is dere any skirt campin’ on my trail? G’wan! I’m tellin’ yer dis worl’ is goin’ ahead right smart widout me! So what I says is, keep de boss here till me an’ Torpy has it out togedder; an’ while he’s busy lammin’ me fer keeps, snake Miss Mir’am out o’ dere and han’ her over to de boss. Dat’s all! Dat’s me! Dat’s right, ain’t it? Are yer on?”
Thus Jim spoke, with snapping eyes and graphic gestures; and as Solarion listened he became brighter and brighter, until Jim’s small person cast a long shadow behind him.
“Your plan is good,” he said, “and I’d rather be in your shoes than in Torpeon’s. We get what we are willing to pay for. May I have a look at that crutch of yours?”
“She ain’t so nifty to look at,” Jim remarked, handing it over; “but she does me all right. My dad, he brings her from de ould sod!”
Solarion examined the crutch with great attention.
“I don’t think you know what a valuable stick this is,” he said at length, returning it to the owner. “There are fairies in Ireland, you know; and when they gave this blackthorn to your father, they endowed it with a power to do wonderful things. It’s a fairy wand, and it will make itself into anything you want—a sword, a horse, a pair of wings, or an air-ship, for instance. All you have to do is rub one or another of these little knobs, and make your wish. If you want to go to Tor, it can carry you there easily; and then, if you find it necessary to fight Torpeon, I dare say you could surprise him as much as I surprised that beast just now. That’s what comes, you see, of having only one leg!”
Jim looked at his old familiar staff with new respect. It appeared the same as ever; but great gifts often go humbly clad.
“Say, mister, dat’s goin’ some! Yer ain’t stringin’ me, is yer?”
“We receive only what belongs to us,” returned Solarion, laying a hand on the boy’s head. “You are among friends, and you’ve earned their friendship. Good-by for the present, and good fortune!”
The light grew brighter than ever; but when Jim looked up, he was alone.