Title: The Footfalls Within

Author: Robert E. Howard

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Title: The Footfalls Within

Author: Robert E. Howard







Solomon Kane gazed sombrely at the native woman who lay dead at his

feet. Little more than a girl she was, but her wasted limbs and

staring eyes showed that she had suffered much before death brought

her merciful relief. Kane noted the chain galls on her limbs, the deep

crisscrossed sears on her back, the mark of the yoke on her neck. His

cold eyes deepened strangely, showing chill glints and lights like

clouds passing across depths of ice.



"Even into this lonesome land they come," he muttered. "I had not

thought--"



He raised his head and gazed eastward. Black dots against the blue

wheeled and circled.



"The kites mark their trail," muttered the tall Englishman.

"Destruction goeth before them and death followeth after. Wo unto ye,

sons of iniquity, for the wrath of God is upon ye. The cords be loosed

on the iron necks of the hounds of hate and the bow of vengeance is

strung. , Ye are proud-stomached and strong, and the people cry out

beneath your feet, but retribution cometh in the blackness of midnight

and the redness of dawn."  He shifted the belt that held his heavy

pistols and the keen dirk, instinctively touched the long rapier at

his hip, and went stealthily but swiftly eastward. A cruel anger

burned in his deep eyes like blue volcanic fires burning beneath

leagues of ice, and the hand that gripped his long, cat-headed stave

hardened into iron.



After some hours of steady striding, he came within hearing of the

slave train that wound its laborious way through the jungle. The

piteous. cries of the slaves, the shouts and curses of the drivers,

and the cracking of the whips came plainly to his ears. Another hour

brought him even with them, and gliding along through the jungle

parallel to the trail taken by the slavers, he spied upon them safely.

Kane had fought Indians in Darien and had learned much of their

woodcraft.



More than a hundred natives, young men and women, staggered along the

trail, stark naked and made fast together by cruel yoke-like affairs

of wood. These yokes, rough and heavy, fitted over their necks and

linked them together, two by two. The yokes were in turn fettered

together, making one long chain. Of the drivers there were fifteen

Arabs and some seventy negro warriors, whose weapons and fantastic

apparel showed them to be of some eastern tribe--one of those tribes

subjugated and made Moslems and allies by the conquering Arabs.



Five Arabs walked ahead of the train with some thirty of their

warriors, and five brought up the rear with the rest of the negro

warriors. The rest marched beside the staggering slaves, urging them

along with shouts and curses and with long, cruel whips which brought

spurts of blood at almost every blow. These slaves were fools as well

as rogues, reflected Kane--not more than half of them would survive

the hardships of the trek to the coast.



He wondered at the presence of these raiders, for this country lay far

to the south of the districts which they usually frequented. But

avarice can drive men far, as the Englishman knew. He had dealt with

these gentry of old. Even as he watched, old scars burned in his

back-- scars made by Moslem whips in a Turkish galley. And deeper

still burned Kane's unquenchable hate.



The Puritan followed, shadowing his foes like a ghost, and as he stole

through the jungle, he racked his brain for a plan. How might he

prevail against that horde? All of the Arabs and many of their allies

were armed with guns--long, clumsy firelock affairs, it is true, but

guns just the same, enough to awe any tribe of natives who might

oppose them. Some carried in their wide girdles long, silver-chased

pistols of more effective pattern--flintlocks of Moorish and Turkish

make.



Kane followed like a brooding ghost and his rage and hatred ate into

his soul like a canker. Each crack of the whips was like a blow on his

own shoulders. The heat and cruelty of the tropics play queer tricks.

Ordinary passions become monstrous things; irritation runs to a

berserker rage; anger flames into unexpected madness and men kill in a

red mist of passion, and wonder, aghast, afterward. The fury Solomon

Kane felt would have been enough at any time and in any place to shake

a man to his foundation. Now it assumed monstrous proportions, so that

Kane shivered as if with a chill; iron claws scratched at his brain

and he saw the slaves and the slavers through a crimson mist. Yet he

might not have put his hate-born insanity into action had it not been

for a mishap.



One of the slaves, a slim young girl, suddenly faltered and slipped to

the earth, dragging her yoke-mate with her. A tall, hook-nosed Arab

yelled savagely and lashed her viciously. Her yoke-mate staggered

partly up, but the girl remained prone, writhing weakly beneath the

lash but evidently unable to rise. She whimpered pitifully between her

parched lips, and other slavers came about her, their whips descending

on her quivering flesh in slashes of red agony.



A half hour of rest and a little water would have revived her, but the

Arabs had no time to spare. Solomon, biting his arm until his teeth

met in the flesh as he fought for control, thanked God that the

lashing had ceased and steeled himself for the swift flash of the

dagger that would put the child beyond torment. But the Arabs were in

a mood for sport. Since the girl would fetch them no profit on the

market block, they would utilize her for their pleasure--and their

humour was such as to turn men's blood to icy water.



A shout from the first whipper brought the rest crowding around, their

bearded faces split in grins of delighted anticipation, while their

savage allies edged nearer, their eyes gleaming. The wretched slaves

realized their masters' intentions and a chorus of pitiful cries rose

from them.



Kane, sick with horror, realized, too, that the girl's was to be no

easy death. He knew what the tall Moslem intended to do, as he stooped

over her with a keen dagger such as the Arabs used for skinning game.

Madness overcame the Englishman. He valued his own life little; he had

risked it without thought for the sake of a pagan child or a small

animal. Yet he would not have premeditatedly thrown away his one hope

of succouring the wretches in the train. But he acted without

conscious thought. A pistol was smoking in his hand and the tall

butcher was down in the dust of the trail with his brains oozing out,

before Kane realized what he had done.



He was almost as astonished as the Arabs, who stood frozen for a

moment and then burst into a medley of yells. Several threw up their

clumsy firelocks and sent their heavy balls crashing through the

trees, and the rest, thinking no doubt that they were ambushed, led a

reckless charge into the jungle. The bold suddenness of that move was

Kane's undoing. Had they hesitated a moment longer he might have faded

away unobserved, but as it was he saw no choice but to meet them

openly and sell his life as highly as he could.



And indeed it was with a certain ferocious fascination that he faced

his howling attackers. They halted in sudden amazement as the tall,

grim Englishman stepped from behind his tree, and in that instant one

of them died with a bullet from Kane's remaining pistol in his heart.

Then with yells of savage rage they flung themselves on their lone

defier.



Solomon Kane placed his back against a huge tree and his long rapier

played a shining wheel about him. An Arab and three of his equally

fiercer allies were hacking at him with their heavy curved blades

while the rest milled about, snarling like wolves, as they sought to

drive in blade or ball without maiming one of their own number.



The flickering rapier parried the whistling scimitars and the Arab

died on its point, which seemed to hesitate in his heart only an

instant before it pierced the brain of a sword-wielding warrior.

Another attacker dropped his sword and leaped in to grapple at close

quarters. He was disembowelled by the dirk in Kane's left hand, and

the others gave back in sudden fear. A heavy ball smashed against the

tree close to Kane's head and he tensed himself to spring and die in

the thick of them. Then their sheikh lashed them on with his long

whip, and Kane heard him shouting fiercely for his warriors to take

the infidel alive. Kane answered the command with a sudden cast of his

dirk, which hummed so close to the sheikh's head that it slit his

turban and sank deep in the shoulder of one behind him.



The sheikh drew his silver-chased pistols, threatening his own men

with death if they did not take this fierce opponent, and they charged

in again desperately. One of the warriors ran full upon Kane's sword

and an Arab behind the fellow, with ruthless craft, thrust the

screaming wretch suddenly forward on the weapon, driving it hilt-deep

in his writhing body, fouling the blade. Before Kane could wrench it

clear, with a yell of triumph the pack rushed in on him and bore him

down by sheer weight of numbers. As they grappled him from all sides,

the Puritan wished in vain for the dirk he had thrown away. But even

so, his taking was none too easy.



Blood spattered and faces caved in beneath his iron-hard fists that

splintered teeth and shattered bone. A warrior reeled away disabled

from a vicious drive of knee to groin. Even when they had him

stretched out and piled man-weight on him, until he could no longer

strike with fists or foot, his long lean fingers sank fiercely through

a matted beard to lock about a corded throat in a grip that took the

power of three strong men to break and left the victim grasping and

green-faced.



At last, panting from the terrific struggle, they had him bound hand

and foot and the sheikh, thrusting his pistols back into his silken

sash, came striding to stand and look down at his captive. Kane glared

up at the tall, lean frame, at the hawk-like face with its black-

curled beard and arrogant brown eyes.



"I am the sheikh Hassim ben Said," said the Arab. "Who are you?"



"My name is Solomon Kane," growled the puritan in the sheikh's own

language. "I am an Englishman, you heathen jackal."



The dark eyes of the Arab flickered with interest.



"Suleiman Kahani," said he, giving the Arabesque equivalent of the

English name. "I have heard of you--you have fought the Turks betimes

and the Barbary corsairs have licked their wounds because of you."

Kane deigned no reply. Hassim shrugged his shoulders.



"You will bring a fine price," said he. "Mayhap I will take you to

Stamboul, where there are Shas who would desire such a man among their

slaves. And I mind me now of one Kemal Bey, a man of ships, who wears

a deep scar across his face of your making and who curses the name of

Englishman. He will pay me a high price for you. And behold, oh Frank,

I do you the honour of appointing you a separate guard. You shall not

walk in the yoke-chain but free save for your hands."



Kane made no answer, and at a sign from the sheikh, he was hauled to

his feet and his bonds loosened except for his hands, which they left

bound firmly behind him. A stout cord was looped about his neck and

the other end of this was given into the hand of a huge warrior who

bore in his free hand a great curved scimitar.



"And now what think ye of my favour to you, Frank?" queried the

sheikh.



"I am thinking," answered Kane in a slow, deep voice of menace, "that

I would trade my soul's salvation to face you and your sword, alone

and unarmed, and to tear the heart from your breast with my naked

fingers."



Such was the concentrated hate in his deep resounding voice, and such

primal, unconquerable fury blazed from his terrible eyes, that the

hardened and fearless chieftain blanched an involuntarily recoiled as

if from a maddened beast.



Then Hassim recovered his poise and with a short word to his

followers, strode to the head of the cavalcade. Kane noted with

thankfulness that the respite occasioned by his capture had given the

girl who had fallen a chance to rest and revive. The skinning knife

had not had time to more than touch her; she was able to reel along.

Night was not far away. Soon the slavers would be forced to halt and

camp.



The Englishman perforce took up the trek, his guard remaining a few

paces behind with a huge blade ever ready. Kane also noted with a

touch of grim vanity, that three more warriors marched close behind,

muskets ready and matches burning. They had tasted his prowess and

they were taking no chances. His weapons had been recovered and Hassim

had promptly appropriated all except the cat-headed ju-ju staff. This

had been contemptuously cast aside by him and taken up by one of the

savage warriors.



The Englishman was presently aware that a lean, grey-bearded Arab was

walking along at his side. This Arab seemed desirous of speaking but

strangely timid, and the source of his timidity seemed, curiously

enough, the ju-ju stave which he had taken from the man who had picked

it up, and which he now turned uncertainly in his hands.



"I am Yussef the Hadji," said this Arab suddenly. "I have naught

against you. I had no hand in attacking you and would be your friend

if you would let me. Tell me, Frank, whence comes this staff and how

comes it into your hands&#160;?"



Kane's first inclination was to consign his questioner to the infernal

regions, but a certain! sincerity of manner in the old man made him

change his mind and he answered: "It was given me by my blood-

brother--a magician of the Slave Coast, named N'Longa."



The old Arab nodded and muttered in his beard and presently sent a

warrior running forward to bid Hassim return. The tall sheikh

presently came striding back along the slow-moving column, with a

clank and jingle of daggers and sabres, with Kane's dirk and pistols

thrust into his wide sash.



"Look, Hassim."  the old Arab thrust forward the stave, "you cast it

away without knowing what you did!"



"And what of it?" growled the sheikh. "I see naught but a staff--

sharp-pointed and with the head of a cat on the other end -a staff

with strange infidel carvings upon it."



The older man shook it at him in excitement: "This staff is older than

the world! It holds mighty magic! I have read of it in the old iron-

bound books and Mohammed--on whom peace!--himself hath spoken of it by

allegory and parable! See the cat-head upon it? It is the head of a

goddess of ancient Egypt! Ages ago, before Mohammed taught, before

Jerusalem was, the priests of Bast bore this rod before the bowing,

chanting worshippers! With it Musa did wonders before Pharaoh and when

the Yahudi fled from Egypt they bore it with them. And for centuries

it was the sceptre of Israel and Judah and with it Sulieman ben Daoud

drove forth the conjurers and magicians and prisoned the efreets and

the evil genii! Look! Again in the hands of a Sulieman we find the

ancient rod!"



Old Yussef had worked himself into a pitch of almost fanatic fervour

but Hassim merely shrugged his shoulders.



"It did not save the Jews from bondage nor this Sulieman from our

captivity," said he. "I value it not as much as I esteem the long thin

blade with which he loosed the souls of three of my best swordsmen."



Yussef shook his head. "Your mockery will bring you to no good end,

Hassim. Some day you will meet a power that will not divide before

your sword or fall to your bullets. I will keep the staff, and I warn

you--abuse not the Frank. He has borne the holy and terrible staff of

Sulieman and Musa and the Pharaohs, and who knows what magic he has

drawn there from? For it is older than the world and has known the

terrible hands of strange pre-Adamite priests in the silent cities

beneath the seas, and has drawn from an Elder World mystery and magic

unguessed by humankind. There were strange kings and stranger priests

when the dawns were young, and evil was, even in their day. And with

this staff they fought the evil which was ancient when their strange

world was young, so many millions of years ago that a man would

shudder to count them."  Hassim answered impatiently and strode away

with old Yussef following him persistently and chattering away in a

querulous tone. Kane shrugged his mighty shoulders. With what he knew

of the strange powers of that strange staff, he was not one to

question the old man's assertions, fantastic as they seemed.



This much he knew--that it was made of a wood that existed nowhere on

earth today. It needed but the proof of sight and touch to realize

that its material had grown in some world apart. The exquisite

workmanship of the head, of a pre-pyramidal age, and the

hieroglyphics, symbols of a language that was forgotten when Rome was

young--these, Kane sensed, were additions as modern to the antiquity

of the staff itself as would be English words carved on the stone

monoliths of Stonehenge.



As for the cat-head --looking at it sometimes Kane had a peculiar

feeling of alteration; a faint sensing that once the pommel of the

staff was carved with a different design. The dust-ancient Egyptian

who had carved the head of Bast had merely altered the original

figure, and what that figure had been, Kane had never tried to guess.

A close scrutiny of the staff always aroused a disquieting and almost

dizzy suggestion of abysses of eons, unprovocative to further

speculation.



The day wore on. The sun beat down mercilessly, then screened itself

in the great trees as it slanted toward the horizon. The slaves

suffered fiercely for water and a continual whimpering rose from their

ranks as they staggered blindly on. Some fell and half-crawled, and

were half-dragged by their reeling yoke-mates. When all were buckling

from exhaustion, the sun Nipped, night rushed on, and a halt was

called. Camp was pitched, guards thrown out. The slaves were fed

scantily and given enough water to keep life in them --but only just

enough. Their fetters were not loosened, but they were allowed to

sprawl about as they might. Their fearful thirst and hunger having

been somewhat eased, they bore the discomforts of their shackles with

characteristic stoicism.



Kane was fed without his hands being untied, and he was given all the

water he wished. The patient eyes of the slaves watched him drink,

silently, and he was sorely ashamed to guzzle what others suffered

for; he ceased before his thirst was fully quenched. A wide clearing

had been selected, on all sides of which rose gigantic trees. After

the Arabs had eaten and while the black Moslems were still cooking

their food, old Yussef came to Kane and began to talk about the staff

again. Kane answered his questions with admirable patience,

considering the hatred he bore the whole race to which the Hadji

belonged, and during the conversation, Hassim came striding up and

looked down in contempt. Hassim, Kane ruminated, was the very symbol

of militant Islam -bold, reckless, materialistic, sparing nothing,

fearing nothing, as sure of his own destiny and as contemptuous of the

rights of others as the most powerful Western king. "Are you

maundering about that stick again?" he gibed. "Hadji, you grow

childish in your old age."  Yussef's beard quivered in anger. He shook

the staff at his sheikh like a threat of evil.



"Your mockery little befits your rank, Hassim," he snapped. "We are in

the heart of a dark and demon-haunted land, to which long ago were

banished the devils from Arabia, if this staff, which any but a fool

can tell is no rod of any world we know, has existed down to our day,

who knows what other things, tangible or intangible, may have existed

through the ages? This very trail we follow --know you how old it is?

Men followed it before the Seljuk came out of the East or the Roman

came out of the West. Over this very trail, legends say, the great

Sulieman came when he drove the demons westward out of Asia and

prisoned them in strange prisons. And will you say--"



A wild shout interrupted him. Out of the shadows of the jungle a

warrior came flying as if from the hounds of Doom. With arms flinging

wildly, eyes rolling to display the whites, and mouth wide open so

that all his gleaming teeth were visible, he made an image of stark

terror not soon forgotten. The Moslem horde leaped up, snatching their

weapons, and Hassim swore:



"That's Ali, whom I sent to scout for meat--perchance a lion--"



But no lion followed the man who fell at Hassim's feet, mouthing

gibberish and pointing wildly back at the black jungle whence the

nerve-strung watchers expected some brain-shattering horror to burst.

"He says he found a strange mausoleum back in the jungle," said Hassim

with a scowl, "but he cannot tell what frightened him. He only knows a

great horror overwhelmed him and sent him flying. Ali, you are a fool

and a rogue."



He kicked the grovelling savage viciously, but the other Arabs drew

about him in some uncertainty. The panic was spreading among the

native warriors.



"They will bolt in spite of us," muttered a bearded Arab, uneasily

watching the native allies who, milled together, jabbered excitedly

and flung fearsome glances over the shoulders. "Hassim, 'twere better

to march on a few miles. This is an evil place after all, and though

'tis likely the fool, Ali, was frighted by his own shadow--still--"



"Still," jeered the sheikh, "you will all feel better when we have

left it behind. Good enough; to still your fears I will move camp--but

first I will have a look at this thing. Lash up the slaves we'll swing

into the jungle and pass by this mausoleum; perhaps some great king

lies there. No one will be afraid if we all go in a body with guns."



So the weary slaves were whipped into wakefulness and stumbled along

beneath the whips again. The native allies went silently and

nervously, reluctantly obeying Hassim's implacable will but huddling

close to the Arabs. The moon had risen, huge, red and sullen, and the

jungle was bathed in a sinister silver glow that etched the brooding

trees in black shadow. The trembling Ali pointed out the way, somewhat

reassured by his savage master's presence. And so they passed through

the jungle until they came to a strange clearing among the giant trees

--strange because nothing grew there. The trees ringed it in a

disquieting symmetrical manner, and no lichen or moss grew on the

earth, which seemed to have been blasted and blighted in a strange

fashion. And in the midst of the glade stood the mausoleum.



A great brooding mass of stone it was, pregnant with ancient evil.

Dead with the dead of a hundred centuries it seemed, yet Kane was

aware that the air pulsed about it, as with the slow, unhuman

breathing of some gigantic, invisible monster.



The Arab's native allies drew back muttering, assailed by the evil

atmosphere of the place; the slaves stood in a patient, silent group

beneath the trees. The Arabs went forward to the frowning black mass,

and Yussef, taking Kane's cord from his guard, led the Englishman with

him like a surly mastiff, as if for protection against the unknown.



"Some mighty sultan doubtless lies here," said Hassim, tapping the

stone with his scabbard.



"Whence come these stones?" muttered Yussef uneasily. "They are of

dark and forbidding aspect. Why should a great sultan lie in state so

far from any habitation of man? If there were ruins of an old city

hereabouts it would be different--"



He bent to examine the heavy metal door with its huge lock, curiously

sealed and fused. He shook his head forebodingly as he made out the

ancient Hebraic characters carved on the door.



"I can not read them," he quavered, "and belike it is well for me I

can not. What ancient kings sealed up is not good for men to disturb.

Hassim, let us hence. This place is pregnant with evil for the sons of

men."



But Hassim gave him no heed. "He who lies within is no son of Islam,"

said he, " and why should we not despoil him of the gems and riches

that undoubtedly were laid to rest with him? Let us break open this

door."



Some of the Arabs shook their heads doubtfully but Hassim's word was

law. Calling to him a huge warrior who bore a heavy hammer, he ordered

him to break open the door.



As the man swung up his sledge, Kane gave a sharp exclamation. Was he

mad? The apparent antiquity of this brooding mass of stone was proof

that it had stood undisturbed for thousands of years. Yet he could

have sworn that he heard the sounds of footfalls within! Back and

forth they padded, as if something paced the narrow confines of that

grisly prison in a never-ending monotony of movement.



A cold hand touched the spine of Solomon Kane. Whether the sounds

registered on his conscious ear or on some un-sounded deep of soul or

sub-feeling, he could not tell, but he knew that somewhere within his

consciousness there reechoed the tramp of monstrous feet from within

that ghastly mausoleum.



"Stop!" he exclaimed. "Hassim, I may be mad, but I hear the tread of

some fiend within that pile of stone."  Hassim raised his hand and

checked the hovering hammer. He listened intently, and the others

strained their ears in a silence that had suddenly become tense.



"I hear nothing," grunted a bearded giant, "Nor I," came a quick

chorus. "The Frank is mad!"



"Hear ye anything, Yussef?" asked Hassim sardonically.



The old Hadji shifted nervously. His face was uneasy.



"No. Hassim, no, yet--"



Kane decided he must be mad. Yet in his heart he knew he was never

saner, and he knew somehow that this occult keenness of the deeper

senses that set him apart from the Arabs came from long association

with the ju-ju staff that old Yussef now held in his shaking hands.



Hassim laughed harshly and made a gesture to the warrior. The hammer

fell with a crash that re-echoed deafeningly and shivered off through

the black jungle in a strangely altered cachinnation. Again--again--

and again the hammer fell, driven with all the power of rippling

muscles and mighty body. And between the blows Kane still heard that

lumbering tread, and he who had never known fear as men know it, felt

the cold hand of terror clutching at his heart. This fear was apart

from earthly or mortal fear, as the sound of the footfalls was apart

from mortal tread. Kane's fright was like a cold wind blowing on him

from outer realms of unguessed Darkness, bearing him the evil and

decay of an outlived epoch and an unutterably ancient period. Kane was

not sure whether he heard those footfalls or by some dim instinct

sensed them. But he was sure of their reality. They were not the tramp

of man or beast; but inside that black, hideously ancient mausoleum

some nameless thing moved with sour-shaking and elephantine tread.



The powerful warrior seated and panted with the difficulty of his

task. But at last, beneath the heavy blows the ancient lock shattered;

the hinges snapped; the door burst inward. And Yussef screamed.



From that black gaping entrance no tiger-fanged beast or demon, of

solid flesh and blood leaped forth. But a fearful stench flowed out in

billowing, almost tangible waves and in one brain-shattering, ravening

rush, whereby the gaping door seemed to gush blood, the Horror was

upon them. It enveloped Hassim, and the fearless chieftain, hewing

vainly at the almost intangible terror, screamed with sudden,

unaccustomed fright as his lashing simitar whistled only through stuff

as yielding and unharmable as air, and he felt himself lapped by coils

of death and destruction.



Yussef shrieked like a lost soul, dropped the ju-ju stave and joined

his fellows who streamed out into the jungle in mad flight, preceded

by their howling allies. Only the slaves fled not, but stood shackled

to their doom, wailing their terror. As in a nightmare of delirium

Kane saw Hassim swaying like a reed in the wind, lapped about by a

gigantic pulsing red Thing that had neither shape nor earthly

substance. Then, as the crack of splintering bones came to him, and

the sheikh's body buckled like a straw beneath a stamping hoof, the

Englishman burst his bonds with one volcanic effort and caught up the

ju-ju stave.



Hassim was down, crushed and dead, sprawled like a broken toy with

shattered limbs awry, and the red pulsing Thing was lurching toward

Kane like a thick cloud of blood in the air, that continually changed

its shape and form, and yet somehow trod lumberingly as if on

monstrous legs!



Kane felt the cold fingers of fear claw at his brain, but he braced

himself, and lifting the ancient staff, struck with all his power into

the centre of the Horror. And he felt an unnameable, immaterial

substance meet and give way before the falling staff. Then he was

almost strangled by the nauseous burst of unholy stench that flooded

the air, and somewhere down the dim vistas of his soul's consciousness

re-echoed unbearably a hideous formless cataclysm that he knew was the

death-screaming of the monster. For it was down and dying at his feet,

its crimson paling in slow surges like the rise and receding of red

waves on some foul coast. And as it paled, the soundless screaming

dwindled away into cosmic distances as though it faded into some

sphere apart and aloof beyond human ken.



Kane, dazed and incredulous, looked down on a shapeless, colourless,

all but invisible mass at his feet which he knew was the corpse of the

Horror, dashed back into the black realms from whence it had come, by

a single blow of the staff of Solomon. Aye, the same staff, Kane knew,

that in the hands of a mighty King and magician had ages ago driven

the monster into that strange prison, to bide until ignorant hands

loosed it again upon the world.



The old tales were true then, and King Solomon had in truth driven the

demons westward and sealed them in strange places. Why had he let them

live? Was human magic too weak in those dim days to more than subdue

the devils? Kane shrugged his shoulders in wonderment. He knew nothing

of magic, yet he had slain where that other Solomon had but

imprisoned.



And Solomon Kane shuddered, for he had looked on Life that was not

Life as he knew it, and had dealt and witnessed Death that was not

Death as he knew it. Again the realization swept over him. as it had

in the dust-haunted halls of Atlantean Negari, as it had in the

abhorrent Hills of the Dead, as it had in Akaana--that human life was

but one of a myriad forms of existence, that worlds existed within

worlds, and that there was more than one plane of existence. The

planet men call the earth spun on through the untold ages, Kane

realized, and as it spun it spawned Life, and living things which

wriggled about it as maggots are spawned in not and corruption. Man

was the dominant maggot now; why should he in his pride suppose that

he and his adjuncts were the first maggots--or the last to rule a

planet quick with unguessed life. He shook his head, gazing in new

wonder at the ancient gift of N'Longa, seeing in it at last not merely

a tool of black magic, but a sword of good and light against the

powers of inhuman evil forever. And he was shaken with a strange

reverence for it that was almost fear. Then he bent to the Thing at

his feet, shuddering to feel its strange mass slip through his fingers

like wisps of heavy fog. He thrust the staff beneath it and somehow

lifted and levered the mass back into the mausoleum and shut the door.



Then he stood gazing down at the strangely mutilated body of Hassim,

noting how it was smeared with foul slime and how it had already begun

to decompose. He shuddered again, and suddenly a low timid voice

aroused him from his sombre cogitations. The captives knelt beneath

the trees and watched with great patient eyes. With a start he shook

off his strange mood. He took from the mouldering corpse his own

pistols, dirk and rapier, making shift to wipe off the clinging

foulness that was already flecking the steel with rust. He also took

up a quantity of powder and shot dropped by the Arabs in their frantic

flight. He knew they would return no more. They might die in their

flight, or they might gain through the interminable leagues of jungle

to the coast; but they would not turn back to dare the terror of that

grisly glade.



Kane came to the wretched slaves and after some difficulty released

them. "Take up these weapons which the warriors dropped in their

haste," said he, "and get you home. This is an evil place. Get ye back

to your villages and when the next Arabs come, die in the ruins of

your huts rather than be slaves."



Then they would have knelt and kissed his feet. but he, in much

confusion, forbade them roughly. Then as they made preparations to go,

one said to him: "Master, what of thee? Wilt thou not return with us?

Thou shalt be our king!"



But Kane shook his head.



"I go eastward," said he. And so the tribespeople bowed to him and

turned back on the long trail to their own homeland. And Kane

shouldered the staff that had been the rod of the Pharaohs and of

Moses and of Solomon and of nameless Atlantean kings behind them, and

turned his face eastward, halting only for a single backward glance at

the great mausoleum that other Solomon had built with strange arts so

long ago, and which now loomed dark and forever silent against the

stars.







THE END

