Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
"Go with Ruth, you and Drake, and look at them. And bring them back with the pony. Then we'll make a start. A few minutes more probably won't make much difference but hurry." He turned back to his watch. Ordering Chiu-Ming to stay with him I followed Ruth and Drake down the ruined stairway. At the bottom she came to me, laid little hands on my shoulders. "Walter," she breathed, "I'm frightened.
And then I saw whence the light which had streamed from her great eyes came. For the little azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out like galaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns. From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrighted. "No no," she gasped. "I weep for HIM." She pointed where Chiu-Ming lay, a brown blotch at the edge of the shattered men. "For him?"
It was almost with awe that he listened to me instruct Chiu-Ming as to just how I wanted supper prepared, and his gaze dwelt fondly upon the Chinese busy among his pots and pans. We talked a little, desultorily, as the meal was prepared fragments of traveler's news and gossip, as is the habit of journeyers who come upon each other in the silent places.
But I never saw anything like it before," I ended, most inadequately. "It was PURPOSEFUL," he whispered. "It was DELIBERATE. As though something reached up, juggled with the rays, broke them, and drew them down like willow withes." "The devils that dwell here!" quavered Chiu-Ming. "Some magnetic phenomenon." I was half angry at myself for my own touch of panic.
In Teheran I had picked up a most unusual servant; yes, more than this, a companion and counselor and interpreter as well. He was a Chinese; his name Chiu-Ming. His first thirty years had been spent at the great Lamasery of Palkhor-Choinde at Gyantse, west of Lhasa. Why he had gone from there, how he had come to Teheran, I never asked.
They moved swiftly down upon us in silence swords and pikes gleaming. The Smiting Thing rocked toward us, the metal tentacle straining out like a rigid, racing serpent, flying to cut between its weird mistress and those who menaced her. I heard Chiu-Ming scream; saw him throw up his hands, cover his eyes run straight upon the pikes! "Chiu-Ming!" I shouted. "Chiu-Ming! This way!" I ran toward him.
I saw the two walk toward her, Chiu-Ming hang back. The great eyes fell upon Ventnor and myself. She raised a hand, motioned us to approach. I turned. There stood the host that had poured down the mountain road, horsemen, spearsmen, pikemen a full thousand of them. At my right were the scattered company that had come from the tunnel entrance, threescore or more. There seemed a spell upon them.
"Now," she broke the silence, "now something stirs within me that it seems has long been sleeping. It bids me take you with me. Come!" Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at each other, seeking council, decision. "Chiu-Ming," Drake spoke. "We can't leave him like that. At least let's cover him from the vultures." "Come." The woman had reached the mouth of the fissure.
There was puzzlement in the faint voice. "For that? But why?" She looked at Chiu-Ming and I knew that to her the sight of the crumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin to her. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, when at last she turned back to us. Long she considered us.
Drake heard, for he changed his course to the crevice at whose mouth Ruth had said the Little Things had lain. After him streaked Chiu-Ming, urging on the pony. Shouting out of the tunnel, down over the lip of the bowl, leaped the soldiers. We dropped upon our knees, sent shot after shot into them. They fell back, hesitated. We sprang up, sped on.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking