broke in upon my musings.
“Lakla comes! Let us go down.”
It was a shy Lakla who came slowly around the end of the path and, blushing furiously, held her hands out to Larry. And the Irishman took them, placed them over his heart, kissed them with a tenderness that had been lacking in the half-mocking, half-fierce caresses he had given the priestess. She blushed deeper, holding out the tapering fingers — then pressed them to her own heart.
“I like the touch of your lips, Larry,” she whispered. “They warm me here”— she pressed her heart again —“and they send little sparkles of light through me.” Her brows tilted perplexedly, accenting the nuance of diablerie, delicate and fascinating, that they cast upon the flower face.
“Do you?” whispered the O’Keefe fervently. “Do you, Lakla?” He bent toward her. She caught the amused glance of Rador; drew herself aside half-haughtily.
“Rador,” she said, “is it not time that you and the strong one, Olaf, were setting forth?”
“Truly it is, handmaiden,” he answered respectfully enough — yet with a current of laughter under his words. “But as you know the strong one, Olaf, wished to see his friends here before we were gone — and he comes even now,” he added, glancing down the pathway, along which came striding the Norseman.
As he faced us I saw that a transformation had been wrought in him. Gone was the pitiful seeking, and gone too the just as pitiful hope. The set face softened as he looked at the Golden Girl and bowed low to her. He thrust a hand to O’Keefe and to me.
“There is to be battle,” he said. “I go with Rador to call the armies of these frog people. As for me — Lakla has spoken. There is no hope for — for mine Helma in life, but there is hope that we destroy the Shining Devil and give mine Helma peace. And with that I am well content, ja! Well content!” He gripped our hands again. “We will fight!” he muttered. “Ja! And I will have vengeance!” The sternness returned; and with a salute Rador and he were gone.
Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.
“Not even the Silent Ones can heal those the Shining One has taken,” she said. “He asked me — and it was better that I tell him. It is part of the Three’s — PUNISHMENT— but of that you will soon learn,” she went on hurriedly. “Ask me no questions now of the Silent Ones. I thought it better for Olaf to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mind other than sorrow upon which to feed.”
Up the path came five of the frog-women, bearing platters and ewers. Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were tinkling; their middles covered with short kirtles of woven cloth studded with the sparkling ornaments.
And here let me say that if I have given the impression that the Akka are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Frog-like they are, and hence my phrase for them — but as unlike the frog, as we know it, as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from the stegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batrachians followed a different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as man did his from the four-footed folk.
The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were frog-like, but the highly developed brain had set upon the head and shape of it vital differences. The forehead, for instance, was not low, flat, and retreating — its frontal arch was well defined. The head was, in a sense, shapely, and with the females the great horny carapace that stood over it like a fantastic helmet was much modified, as were the spurs that were so formidable in the male; colouration was different also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them their crouching gait — but I wander from my subject. 1
They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.
“You surely have those things well trained, Lakla,” he said.
“Things!” The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing with indignation. “You call my Akka things!”
“Well,” said Larry, a bit taken aback, “what do you call them?”
“My Akka are a PEOPLE,” she retorted. “As much a people as your race or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, and they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think them beautiful, Larry, BEAUTIFUL!” She stamped her foot. “And you call them — THINGS!”
Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque fashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they were not strange, at all. Why shouldn’t she think them beautiful? The same thought must have struck O’Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.
“I think them beautiful, too, Lakla,” he said remorsefully. “It’s my not knowing your tongue too well that traps me. TRULY, I think them beautiful — I’d tell them so, if I knew their talk.”
Lakla dimpled, laughed — spoke to the attendants in that strange speech that was unquestionably a language; they bridled, looked at O’Keefe with fantastic coquetry, cracked and boomed softly among themselves.
“They say they like YOU better than the men of Muria,” laughed Lakla.
“Did I ever think I’d be swapping compliments with lady frogs!” he murmured to me. “Buck up, Larry — keep your eyes on the captive Irish princess!” he muttered to himself.
“Rador goes to meet one of the ladala who is slipping through with news,” said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food. “Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the Akka — for there will be battle, and we must prepare. Nak,” she added, “is he who went before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry.” She stole a swift, mischievous glance at him. “He is headman of all the Akka.”
“Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin’?” said Larry.
“Darlin’?”— the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word —“what’s that?”
“It’s a little word that means Lakla,” he answered. “It does — that is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry.”
“I like that word,” mused Lakla.
“You can even say Larry darlin’!” suggested O’Keefe.
“Larry darlin’!” said Lakla. “When they come we shall have first of all my Akka —”
“Can they fight, mavourneen?” interrupted Larry.
“Can they fight! My Akka!” Again her eyes flashed. “They will fight to the last of them — with the spears that give the swift rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those Saddu there —” She pointed through a rift in the foliage across which, on the surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes — and now I know why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. “With spears and clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs — they are a strong and brave people, Larry — darlin’, and though they hurl the Keth at them, it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they are passing into the nothingness!”
“And have we none of the Keth?” he asked.
“No”— she shook her head —“none of their weapons have we here, although it was — it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them.”
“But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?” I cried. “Surely they can tell —”
“No,” she said slowly. “No — there is something you must know — and soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You, especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom.”
“Then,” said Larry, “we have the Akka; and we have the four men of us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges — an’— an’ the power of the Three — but what about the Shining One, Fireworks —”
“I do not know.” Again the indecision that had been in her eyes