But its prehensile fingers were armed with talons like those of a
tiger--not the heavy blunt nails of the natural anthropoid, but the
cruel scimitar-curved claws of the great carnivora. Its face was like
that of a gorilla, low-browed, flaring-nostriled, chinless; but when
it snarled, its wide flat nose wrinkled like that of a great cat, and
the cavernous mouth disclosed saber-like fangs, the fangs of a beast of
prey. This was Zemba, the creature sacred to the people of the land of
Zambebwei--a monstrosity, a violation of an accepted law of nature--a
carnivorous ape. Men had laughed at the story, hunters and zoologists
and traders. But now McGrath knew that such creatures dwelt in black Zambebwei and
were worshipped, as primitive man is prone to worship an obscenity or
perversion of nature. Or a survival of past eons: that was what the
flesh-eating apes of Zambebwei were--survivors of a forgotten epoch,
remnants of a vanished prehistoric age, when nature was experimenting
with matter, and life took many monstrous forms. The sight of the monstrosity filled McGrath with revulsion; it was
abysmal, a reminder of that brutish and horror-shadowed past out of
which mankind crawled so painfully, eons ago. This thing was an affront
to sanity; it belonged in the dust of oblivion with the dinosaur, the
mastodon, and the saber-toothed tiger. It looked massive beyond the stature of modern beasts--shaped on the
plan of another age, when all things were cast in a mightier mold. He wondered if the revolver at his hip would have any effect on it;
wondered by what dark and subtle means John De Albor had brought the
monster from Zambebwei to the pinelands. But something was happening in the glade, heralded by the shaking of
the brute's chain as it thrust forward its nightmare-head. *       *       *       *       *

From the shadows of the trees came a file of black men and women,
young, naked except for a mantle of monkey-skins and parrot-feathers
thrown over the shoulders of each. More regalia brought by John De
Albor, undoubtedly. They formed a semicircle at a safe distance from
the chained brute, and sank to their knees, bending their heads to
the ground before him. Thrice this motion was repeated. Then, rising,
they formed two lines, men and women facing one another, and began to
dance; at least it might by courtesy be called a dance. They hardly
moved their feet at all, but all other parts of their bodies were in
constant motion, twisting, rotating, writhing. The measured, rhythmical
movements had no connection at all with the voodoo dances McGrath had
witnessed. This dance was disquietingly archaic in its suggestion,
though even more depraved and bestial--naked primitive passions framed
in a cynical debauchery of motion. No sound came from the dancers, or from the votaries squatting about
the ring of trees. But the ape, apparently infuriated by the continued
movements, lifted his head and sent into the night the frightful shriek
McGrath had heard once before that day--he had heard it in the hills
that border black Zambebwei. The brute plunged to the end of his heavy
chain, foaming and gnashing his fangs, and the dancers fled like spume
blown before a gust of wind. They scattered in all directions--and then
McGrath started up in his covert, barely stifling a cry. From the deep shadows had come a figure, gleaming tawnily in contrast
to the black forms about it. It was John De Albor, naked except for
a mantle of bright feathers, and on his head a circlet of gold that
might have been forged in Atlantis. In his hand he bore a gold wand
that was the scepter of the high priests of Zambebwei. Behind him came a pitiful figure, at the sight of which the moon-lit
forest reeled to McGrath's sight. Constance had been drugged. Her face was that of a sleep-walker; she
seemed not aware of her peril, or the fact that she was naked. She
walked like a robot, mechanically responding to the urge of the cord
tied about her white neck. The other end of that cord was in John De
Albor's hand, and he half led, half dragged her toward the horror that
squatted in the center of the glade. De Albor's face was ashy in the
moonlight that now flooded the glade with molten silver. Sweat beaded
his skin. His eyes gleamed with fear and ruthless determination. And in
a staggering instant McGrath knew that the man had failed, that he had
been unable to save Constance, and that now, to save his own life from
his suspicious followers, he himself was dragging the girl to the gory
sacrifice. No vocal sound came from the votaries, but hissing intake of breath
sucked through thick lips, and the rows of black bodies swayed like
reeds in the wind. The great ape leaped up, his face a slavering
devil's mask; he howled with frightful eagerness, gnashing his
great fangs, that yearned to sink into that soft white flesh, and
the hot blood beneath. He surged against his chain, and the stout
post quivered. McGrath, in the bushes, stood frozen, paralyzed by
the imminence of horror. And then John De Albor stepped behind the
unresisting girl and gave her a powerful push that sent her reeling
forward to pitch headlong on the ground under the monster's talons. And simultaneously McGrath moved. His move was instinctive rather than
conscious. His .44 jumped into his hand and spoke, and the great ape
screamed like a man death-stricken and reeled, clapping misshapen hands
to its head. An instant the throng crouched frozen, white eyes bulging, jaws hanging
slack. Then before any could move, the ape, blood gushing from his
head, wheeled, seized the chain in both hands and snapped it with a
wrench that twisted the heavy links apart as if they had been paper. John De Albor stood directly before the mad brute, paralyzed in his
tracks. Zemba roared and leaped, and the African went down under him,
disemboweled by the razor-like talons, his head crushed to a crimson
pulp by a sweep of the great paw. Ravening, the monster charged among the votaries, clawing and ripping
and smiting, screaming intolerably. Zambebwei spoke, and death was in
his bellowing. Screaming, howling, fighting, the black people scrambled
over one another in their mad flight. Men and women went down under
those shearing talons, were dismembered by those gnashing fangs. It
was a red drama of the primitive--destruction amuck and ariot, the
primordial embodied in fangs and talons, gone mad and plunging in
slaughter. Blood and brains deluged the earth, black bodies and limbs
and fragments of bodies littered the moonlighted glade in ghastly heaps
before the last of the howling wretches found refuge among the trees. The sounds of their blundering, panic-stricken flight drifted back. *       *       *       *       *

McGrath had leaped from his covert almost as soon as he had fired. Unnoticed by the terrified negroes, and himself scarcely cognizant of
the slaughter raging around him, he raced across the glade toward the
pitiful white figure that lay limply beside the iron-bound stake.