Jackals of the Clouds

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 181, 1 August 1936, Page 8 (Supplement)

Jackals of the Clouds

CHAPTER XXIII,

Stopping forward, Lauvignac lifted the wooden bar from its "socket.

"Enter, brother!" lie said', sonor ously, and stood quickly aside.

The door was opened and an armed monk stepped across the threshold. lie halted, abruptly, starjus; in astonishment at the sight which met his gaze. But it was only for the fractional part of a second that his amazed eyes were allowed to dwell on the black-robed and hooded iigure of Eric bent over the prostrate monk.

Lauvignac, leaping from behind the opened door, sent it thudding shut with a kick of sandalled foot. The armed monk wheeled, hand groping for his sword. And in that instant Lauvignac's clenched list took him full on the point of the jaw. The monk reeled, the bottom of his sword scabbard jangling mctallicly on the stone floor.

"Curse you —" lie screamed, but the words were bitten off as the pirate leader's fist smashed against his jaw in a savage upper-cut, sending him crashing to the floor.

"The door, lad —the door!" panted Lauvignac, and Eric leapt to drop the heavy wooden bar back into its socket.

"Now gag*that fool there and we'll attend to this one!" rapped Lauvignac. "I only hope that yell of his has not brought the whole cursed monastery about our ears!"

Eric rammed the makeshift gag back into the mouth of the bound monk. Had that individual but had a few moments longer in which to regain his courage he might have given vent to a shout of alarm. He might have done so, but it is doubtful, for he had learned from Lauvignac what would be the reward of such temerity.

Be that as it may, lie suffered the gag to lie replaced, then turned his head to glare with malignant eyes at Lauvignac, who was attending to the new-comer." The latter's head had struck the floor heavily as he fell, and from dazed stupidity he was coming to slow understanding that he, also, was gagged and bound. He writhed impotently in his bonds, hie face convulsed. Ignoring him, Lauvignac straightened up. "Listen, lad!" he said, tensely. To Eric's straining ears nothing seemed to break the stillness which brooded over that grim and sinister monastery. Then faint and far away there impinged on his hearing that dread, soul-stirring sound —the roll of muffled drums.

By GEORGE E. ROCHESTER.

The noise grew in volume, till, in a very crescendo of sound it reverberated through corridors and cells, then slowly, slowly, died away.

"'Tis the call to service!" said Lauvignac, grimly. "Come, Howard, we have tarried hero too long!" "And what of these?" demanded Eric, and indicated the bound and gagged monks. Lauvignac shrugged his shoulders. "We must leave them here," he replied. "I doubt if the latest coiner was due to be relieved before the dawn. We can reasonably stake on that. And by the dawn we shall have either raided the treasure chests —or failed!"

He bent down and took a bunch of keys from the girdle of their first prisoner. Finding the one which fitted the lock of the cell door, he lifted the heavy wooden bar from out its socket.

"ICow into the passageway, Howard," he said, grimly, "and your hand near your gun!"

With that lie slowly opened the door of the cell.

The narrow passageway outside was deserted, but Erie stood tensed for instant action as Lauvignac paused a moment to close and lock the door on the two prisoners. "Slmfllc with bent head —like a snivelling priest—and keep close to me!" said the pirate leader in a low voice.

, Eric nodded, and, side by side with Lauvignac paccd slowly along the passageway. There was nothing to distinguish cither of them from any other priest of Buddha. But the risk' was fearful. Eric's heart was beating faster than its wont. He knew that both lie and Lauvignac would die a terrible death should their identities be discovered.

He found himself marvelling anew at the amazing courage, the iron

nerve of the pirate leader. There was a price of £5.0,000 in good red gold set on the head of Lauvignac. Yet deliberately had he ventured into this grim stronghold of his enemies —a stronghold which he knew full well might prove to be his tomb. And his mission—the rilling of the treasure chests hidden in some iron cell behind the many-lianded Buddha in the Great Temple. A sudden turn in the passageway brought Eric and the pirate leader into a wide corridor along which were pacing scores of black-robed and hooded monks, silent and bowed of head. They were moving towards where, at the end of the corridor, a wide staircase of black stone led upwards.

losing itself in the shadows. Unaccosted, obviously unsuspected, Eric and Lauvignac mingled with the slow-moving throng and joined in the trend towards the staircase.

The walls and floor of the corridor along which they were pacing were of deep and sombre black. On the walls were stag-horns, chain armour, bows and arrows, scrolls, stuffed animals, masks and skulls, and all the, paraphernalia of devil worship. In a deep recess in the wall at the foot of the wide staircase stood a hooded monk.- A chalice was in his uplifted hands. He stood before the grotesque form of a malignant female fiend, illumined by dim, flickering candles. His lips were moving in strange and muttered words.

.Motionless he stood there, heedless of the black-robed throng moving slowly past liini up the staircase. Only his moving lips gave token that he lived and was not of wood and metal as was the evil tiling to which he held the chalice.

At the head of the stairway was a huge, dimly-illumined stretch of hall. So wide was it, and high, that walls and vaulted roof were lost amidst the shadows. Across its entire width were drawn heavy black curtains through which the monks were passing into the Great Temple beyond. Eric was conscious of Lauvignac's elbow pressing in his side, gently urging him outwards towards the shadowy wall. "This alcove —here!" Eric scarce heard the murmured words, but now Lauvignac's fingers were on his arm, and next instant lie and the pirate leader had merged with and were lost in, the gloom of a deep-set alcove in the wall.

So casually and yet so stealthily had they withdrawn from the slowlymoving throng that none had noticed their passing.

"There should be a stairway here!" whispered Lauvignac, and, with tentative, outstretched foot, Eric felt the bottom step of a flight which seemingly led upwards through the 'wall itself.

"Up with you, lad, and I will follow!" breathed Lauvignac, and as Eric commenced a cautious ascent of the narrow twisting steps, the pirate leader, paused a moment to make sure that 110 priest of Buddha followed. But, like strange phantoms from the land of shadows, the silent monks were passing on to vanish beyond the heavy curtains. Satisfied, Lauvignac turned away and followed Eric silently up the stone steps which gave sudden access to a long stone gallery overlooking the Great Temple below. \

The gallery was in darkness save for the faint glimmer from the oil lamps with which the temple was illumined. Lanvignac and Eric crouched down in a corner well away from the head of the steps. "How were you aware of the existence of the stairway which leads up here?" whispered the boy. "Every monastery has some such stairway leading to the gallery above its temple," replied the pirate leader. "I looked for what I knew must, without doubt, exist!"

Eric nodded and, with a murmured word of understanding, turned to survey the strange scene below him. At one end of the temple towered a huge Buddha of burnished metal. On an altar in front of it, six flat oil lamps burned fliekeringly, and before the altar was a long, low, oblong slab of black stone.

"Yon is the many-handed Buddha —Avalokitesvara," whispered Lauvignac. "Behind it, if that priest spoke true, lies the treasure chamber. The black slab in" front of the altar is the sacrificial stone on which the victims of these cursed priests are slaughtered, to the glory of Buddha whom they serve!"

Separated from each other by massive pillars were the three hideous figures of the Buddhist trinity—the Buddha of' the past, of the present, and of the future. In front of each was the illumined altar and the black sacrificial slab.

Little side-cliapels opened off the main temple, but entrance to these was barred by great hanging nets of heavy cliainwork, and, set in the wall above each entrance, was a death mask, weird, grotesque, utterly horrible.

In front of eaeli god of the Buddhist trinity, hard by the sacrificial slab, stood an abbot in gorgeous vestments of black, silver and vivid scarlet. They might have been carved out of stone, so motionless did they stand, whilst the black-robed inonks wound silently into the temple and formed themselves into two long lines some distance from, but facing, the three Buddhas.

Then as though from far, far away, faint and elusive, came the droning chant of many voices. In wailing, measured cadence the sound grew in volume, died sobbingly away, then rose again. Slowly now it gained in power till in a perfect wave of harmony it thundered through the temple, and mingling with it were the notes of a mighty organ. Silence! Silence, deathly and unearthly. With such suddenness had the voices of that great ghostly choir been stilled that tiie silence which followed seemed a live, pulsating thing.

Then suddenly Eric's hand clutched convulsively on Lauvignac's arm. For from out of the shadows behind the pillars of the temple came a bent and aged figure clad in robes of shimmering gold. And behind him, bowed of head and walking slowly in double iile, came twelve men. Six of them were clad in abbot's robes of black, silver and scarlet —and six in the grey uniform of Schaumvorge's squadron. "Schaumvorge!" The word rose unbidden to Eric's lips. For already he had recognised the bearded figure of the pirate. "The cur has sold his soul!" And there was a quiver of fury in Lauvignac's whispered words—of fury and of horror. His hands were clenched in the darkness, his eyes blazing, as he muttered: "No crime—no crime so great as this!"

(To bo continued.)