KA-ZAR OF THE BEASTS

CHAPTER VI
The Storm

T

HE rains had decreased now, from a steady, twenty-four hour drumming to two heavy downpours--one in the early morning, the other at eventide. Rand's spirits picked up at the early prospect of taking the trail. The impenetrable jungle wail that surrounded the little clearing was a challenge to him--to his strength, courage and fortitude--and eagerly he accepted it.

Not that he minimized the dangers that would confront him and his son, but he had faith in himself, confidence in his ability to win through. Somehow he had the feeling that the spirit of his dead wife would watch over them, guide their faltering steps back to safety.

His heart was heavy at the thought of abandoning Constance's grave to the jungle, but he was fortified by the knowledge that she would have had it so. Mentally he made the resolution that once he returned his son to civilization, he would immediately form an expedition and head once more back for the clearing that had been his home for the past six months. He would disinter Constance's body then and bring it back with him for proper burial in the neat, trim cemeteries of her homeland.

The day came at last when Rand spoke of his hopes and plans to his son. It was towards sunset and the day had been marked by but one brief shower in the early morning.

"Well, son," he began in a cheery voice, "tomorrow we start for home."

"Home?" echoed David with a puzzled frown.

"Yes. Back to civilization. Back to the land of people--white people. Street cars, electric lights, trains," elaborated Rand enthusiastically.

"What's that?" asked David, still puzzled.

Rand smiled wryly to himself. In six short months--though they were comparatively a long span in the youngster's life--his son had completely forgotten everything he had once known of civilization. The most common words of civilized society conjured up no corresponding association in his mind. Such was the blessing of boyhood. An experience that might have blighted a more mature mind had left him untouched. He had taken the hardships and dangers of their enforced sojourn in the wilds as the natural manner of life. More, he had enjoyed it. And if his sturdy brown body was any evidence, he had thrived on it.

The terror and tragedy that had attended their exile had left him untouched. He was a little animal, as quick and animated as the monkeys that sported in the trees; as natural and untrammeled by the restricting influences of civilization as ever man had been before.

Rand envied him his simple acceptance of his mother's death; his easy forgetfulness of sorrow and grief.

"Yes, son," he began again, "tomorrow we start for home. Don't you remember? The house we lived in before we came here?"

David shook his head. His face was serious and frowning. "Where's that?" he demanded.

Rand flung his arm to the south. "Way, way off in there, beyond the lake," he answered. "A long way--a hard way. You'll get tired--we'll both get tired," he corrected. "And maybe we'll be hungry. But you'll take it like a man, eh, son?"

Y

oung David felt no elation at the prospect of leaving his beloved clearing. But at this last appeal of his father--man to man--he responded. "I'll take it like a man, dad," he repeated.

Rand clapped him fondly on the shoulder. "I knew you would."

David's brows screwed up in concentration and he thought for a moment. "We leave mummy here?" he asked at last.

A momentary shadow passed over Rand's face. "Yes, son, for a little while. But we'll come back for her." He cupped his boy's palm in his right hand, picked up the rifle in his left. "Come, we'll say good-bye to mummy for a little while. We'll leave some flowers on her grave."

They left the lean-to and slowly, hand in hand, walked across the clearing towards the little mound at the far side. They had tended it faithfully every day and it was covered with a blanket of hibiscus.

The grave held little significance for David's immature mind and the placing of flowers upon it was but a pleasant ritual that had to do with the gathering of wild, sweet smelling blooms.

Rand placed his offering on the grave, then bowed his head in prayer. For a long time he communed with his wife--so long that he failed to note the bank of ominous black clouds that were massing in the west. He wasn't aware that the sun had taken on a peculiarly brassy glare--that the myriad tongues of the jungle were stilled. Not a breath stirred, not a leaf rippled. The birds and monkeys had fallen strangely silent and all life seemed suspended as if waiting with bated breath for the stroke of doom.

The first intimation of danger that Rand had was a sudden soughing high in the tree tops above him. He looked up quickly in alarm. Not a tree stirred as yet and as he watched, the bank of black clouds in the west rolled across the sky as if poured from an inkpot, blotting out the sun.

Then, with a sudden blast, the storm broke. The wind screamed on a high, off-key wail. In perfect unison the towering trees of the jungle groaned and keeled far over. Jagged bolts of vivid purple rent the heaven and flashed luridly from sky to earth. With the first flash of lightning the rain came. It descended in a blinding, driving sheet as solid as a wall.

In the first second of the storm's fury Rand and his son were drenched. The screaming wind snatched their breath away and the air was filled with hurtling limbs and branches torn from the trees. All about them the mammoth baobab trees plunged and fell, smitten by the jagged bolts from above.

Rand swept young David to his arm and plunged for the shelter of the tall trees that bordered the clearing.

"It's all right, son," he shouted in David's ear, above the fury of the storm. "This will be over in a few minutes. It's the last twister of the rainy season--and the worst."

David did not answer. He was too fascinated by the storm.

They crouched there together on the edge of the clearing, lashed by the wind and the rain. The intermittent flashes of light lit up their faces with brilliant purple. Then, a second later, a sizzling bolt directly above them blinded them completely. The roaring clap of thunder that followed it immediately was equally as effective in deafening them.

If it had not been for these two factors, Rand would have known that the giant baobab tree, under which they had sought shelter, had been smitten--would have known that even with the lightning's flare it was crashing down on them.

Too late he realized their peril. It was the crash of the smaller trees about them, splintered like match wood by the fall of the towering baobab, that first told him of imminent peril. He glanced up once hastily and his heart constricted in his throat. The mammoth trunk of the tree was plunging straight down for them.

H

e acted instinctively in the emergency. With a mighty thrust he flung David from him, clear of the path of the crashing destruction, then leaped far to one side. He succeeded in escaping the solid bole of the tree, which would have crushed the life from his body. But an outflung branch of the toppling giant crashed into the back of his head and sent him spinning drunkenly forward.

A bomb exploded inside his skull. He staggered wildly, dropped his rifle, flung out his arms to regain his balance, failed and plunged face down to the jungle floor.

How long he lay there, John Rand never knew. Slowly, painfully he crawled back to consciousness. He was first aware of an angry rumbling in his ears which he confused with the fury of the storm that had been raging. A moment before? It seemed so to him. In reality it was a matter of hours.

And the rumble was not thunder. It was Zar's voice, venting his hate, as he lashed his tail in the brush twenty yards from the clearing.

Rand was next conscious of something tugging at his shirt and an insistent small voice drilling into his ears.

"Get up, daddy. Get up! I'm hungry."

He opened his eyes and stared blinking up into the small, tired face of his son. The storm had long since died out. From the vast dome of heaven a million winking stars looked down on the small jungle clearing.

"Daddy sleep?" asked David.

Rand brushed a hand across his eyes, staggered up to his feet. "Why, yes, I must have been, son." Zar's roar, so close at hand that he could almost feel the hot breath of it, brought him back to the reality of the moment. He stooped down swiftly, snatched up his rifle from the ground, then clasped David's hand firmly in his own. "Come on, son," he urged. "We got to get out of this."

Swiftly he made his way back to the lean-to. And a few minutes later, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day--as if he had never planned to start the long trek back to civilization on the morrow--he stirred up the camp fire and went casually about the routine business of preparing the night's meal.

"We're going home tomorrow?" asked David when the meal was over.

Rand looked at him with puzzled eyes. "Home, son?" he echoed. Then he threw out his arm in a wide gesture that took in the rude lean-to, the clearing and the encroaching jungle beyond. "Why this is home, son," he said patiently. "This clearing, here, in the jungle. Where your mother is."

David smiled up at him. "I'm glad," he said simply.

Rand threw a protecting arm around his sturdy shoulder, returned the smile. "Of course you are, son."

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