Merian C. Cooper's King Kong (13 page)

“Lumpy, have you seen Miss Darrow?” Driscoll asked.

“A few minutes ago she was here. Ignatz went runnin' off and I had to chase him down. I thought she'd still be here when I got back, but she's gone.”

“How long ago?”

“Dunno, Mr. Driscoll. Fifteen, thirty minutes. I got no timepiece.”

Driscoll felt the creeping touch of doubt. “She's probably gone to her cabin.” He turned and headed astern. He passed the deckhouse, and in the dark stretch beyond it he stepped on something that crunched underfoot. Curious and a little irritated, he stooped, felt on the deck, and picked it up. He stepped back into the light to see what had been dropped. An instant later, he bellowed, “On deck! All hands on deck!”

Nerves were taut aboard the
Wanderer
. The guard and the hands on the foredeck took up the cry, and feet pounded up the companionway. Old Lumpy, his bald head gleaming in the light from the deckhouse, came running back. “What's wrong, Mr. Driscoll?”

Driscoll held up his find as Englehorn and Denham half climbed and half dropped down from the bridge. “I found this on deck.”

“A native bracelet!” Lumpy said. “Them heathens must've come aboard!”

“Who's seen Ann Darrow? Where is she?” Driscoll yelled as most of the crew spilled onto the deck.

Englehorn and Denham looked at one another. Denham took a half step forward. “She has to be in her cabin.”

“No, sir!” young Jimmy said from aft. “I heard the call to all hands and went and pounded on her door. She's not there.”

Driscoll clenched his hand on the bracelet. “Search the ship! Turn to, you men! Find Miss Darrow!”

The crew scattered as Driscoll made his way to the island side of the ship, Englehorn and Denham in his wake. Driscoll demanded of the guard amidships, “Have you seen anything? Any natives?”

“No, sir!” the man shot back. “Everything's been quiet, except for them drums!”

Denham melted into the shadows as Driscoll questioned the other two guards on this side of the ship, only to learn that neither of them had heard anything. Driscoll felt close to snarling in frustration when Denham returned. “She's not belowdecks, not anywhere.”

Driscoll shook the bracelet in his face. “They got her! They came aboard quiet as devils, and they got her!”

Englehorn put a hand on Driscoll's shoulder, and in a command sharp as the crack of a gun, he ordered, “Bo'sun, man the boats. A rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition to every man.”

Sound filled the darkness: the boatswain's whistle, shrill and insistent, the creak and thump of davits, the rattle of arms. Voices, too, not frantic, not frightened, but level and purposeful.

Denham was shaking his head. “They must have come in dugouts. How could they have crossed the bay? Our lookouts would have spotted them!”

“Surface is covered with mist,” Englehorn said. “And what moon there is comes and goes. Mostly goes. Anyway, we don't have time to find out how they got here. I warned you not to underestimate them.” To Jack, Englehorn added, “Mr. Driscoll, before you get into your boat, make sure the ship has been thoroughly searched. Leave fourteen men on watch, and be sure they're well armed!”

Driscoll was already on his way.

10

SKULL ISLAND
MARCH 13, 1933

Powerful hands thrust Ann down to the bottom of the dugout. One of her captors had inserted a gag into her mouth, filling her throat and nose with some pungent, numbing compound, bringing tears to her eyes. She couldn't see a thing, but she felt the dugout leap into motion as paddles bit into the sea. She thrashed wildly, but could send no cry back through the darkness to the
Wanderer
.

Lying pinioned there, Ann thought back to the moment of her capture, when suffocating, pressing hands had seized her. Her first instinct had been to shout for help, but the gag had been ready and had silenced her as the soundless figures had dropped her over the rail, into other waiting arms in the canoe alongside the ship.

Now Ann felt a greater fear than she had ever even imagined. No book she had ever read, no story she had ever heard, could summon the kind of terror which seized her. She writhed with the feeling that her insulted body was alive with crawling, unmentionable things. The gag kept her from shrieking her fear, but she gasped for breath with grim desperation.

She could hear the swoosh of the paddles and feel the flow of the water through the wooden bottom of the dugout. Her nostrils burned with the hot, musky smell of her kidnappers' bodies as they feverishly paddled back to shore. When the dugout grated on the sand and her captors jerked her to her feet on the beach, she could not even stand. Her legs, released at last, refused to hold her weight. She felt dizzy, dimly aware that the sharp-tasting mixture that soaked the gag was drugging her.

Wasting no time, two bulking shadows swung her body to their shoulders and raced off through the shadows toward the village, where ruddy torchlight gleamed through the brush. Several times during the course of the flight someone gave a high-pitched command, and Ann felt herself handed over to a new pair of bearers. The third time she heard the voice give the order, Ann's heart lurched. It was the witch doctor, beyond any doubt. His voice rattled off the incomprehensible island language. Ann could catch only random syllables:
Bar-Atu. Kong
.

Torches spilled bright light across the ceremonial court before the Wall's great gate. The tribe stood massed here, just as it had been in the afternoon. The same ordered rows swayed on either side of the skin-covered bridal dais. The same black-furred gorilla men occupied the two front ranks. The king sat on his same tall stand, clad in the same magnificent feathers, grass, and fur. And the witch doctor, leaving Ann's bearers to stand guard where she had been set down in front of the king, promptly took his own proper position.

The old native woman hovered in the background, supporting herself by leaning on her long staff of curved white bone. With her eyes flashing, she attempted to step forward. Six or eight younger women moved to block her. The old woman's voice rose as she argued with the witch doctor, gesturing at Ann. Anger writhed on the man's features, and he drew his hand back as if to strike the woman, but her helpers, or her watchers, immediately intervened to pull her away, all the while making supplicating motions to the king. More than one man discreetly assisted their exit, and they quickly became lost in the throng of worshipers.

Completely ignoring the distraction, the king spread his arms wide, smiling his approval. He barked orders, and two men seized Ann. Though wild with fear, she felt strength slowly returning to her legs. Still, she would have fallen had the men not held her up as they brought her to the privacy of a torchlit hut. Ann looked desperately behind her, seeing the huge figure of the king making his way after her. The crowd quickly parted for him. He stood at the door and summoned the witch doctor. The witch doctor, in his high, querulous voice, shouted orders, and four native women came into the hut. The two male guards left, closing the door behind them.

“Please,” Ann begged. “Please let me go.”

The women closed in, smiling reassuringly. All of them stretched out their hands, seeming eager to touch, to stroke, her golden hair. They murmured to her, soft, encouraging sounds, as they crowned her with flowers, as they tied a floral sash around her waist. One of them knelt before her, lowered her head, and spoke what sounded to Ann like an invocation. She understood nothing but “Kong.”

Two of the women threw the door open, and the others urged Ann forward. The instant she stepped out, the two male guards seized her arms. Ann knew her eyes were wide, and she felt as though she were bordering on shock. Something, the compound on her gag or the cloying scent of the flowers, made her feel strange, distant, floating on the far edge of consciousness. The king held up his staff, and the people fell silent. The guards dragged Ann forward and forced her to kneel where the day before the native girl had knelt, and she heard the king's voice boom out, “Malem ma pakeno! Kong wa bisa! Koh bisa para Kong!”

As one, the crowd went wild. The guards hauled Ann to her feet, and the throng parted to clear a way for her. Halfway up the broad stone stairs, she saw the bridal dais empty, waiting. She heard a soft voice hiss at her and turned her head to see the old woman. Beside her stood the flower-covered girl of the day before, dressed now as all the other women were dressed. Ann barely recognized her.

The old woman seemed to be trying to tell her something, but what? Hands raised a kind of wooden chalice to her lips, and other hands forced her to tilt her head back. An astringent liquid flowed into her mouth, nearly choking her. She felt herself lifted up onto the dais, but her disorientation grew, blurring everything. Had the old woman tried to signal her not to drink? Ann couldn't think straight. Her senses seemed sharp enough, but she was aware only of sensation, not of coherent thought. When the drums began, she swayed to their hypnotic beat.

*   *   *

Ubar-Atu, eldest son of the island's most revered shaman, shouted his orders with nervous haste. Bar-Atu's doctrine had been the way of the island for as long as anyone remembered, and the ancient Bar-Atu, though feeble now, brooked no delay in the ceremonies. The moon hid its face tonight, not a good omen. Still, surely such a fine bride, such an unusual woman, would placate the island god.

As the shaman led the ritual, his speed was not due at all to any fear that the
Wanderer
's crew would move to rescue the evening's sacrifice. What filled him was the fear of Kong. Kong demanded sacrifice four times a year, when the moon and tides were just so, and that time was almost up. The times of the great sacrifice always brought peril. The opening of the doors left them all vulnerable. During the last sacrifice, the followers of that old woman had caused enough of a disturbance to lead to the brink of disaster.

Ubar-Atu did not have time to consider the old woman's insolence, and he knew that powerful traditions and taboos protected her. Still, he found himself more and more convinced that he would have to stop her, permanently. He finished the final chant, and turned to Bar-Atu. Sweat poured into the old man's eyes as he waited for the king to give the signal for the sounding of the great drum.

The king stood and raised his staff, and the massed natives began a familiar chant. Their serried ranks swayed the torchlight in a hypnotic rhythm. Trying not to appear rushed, the priest performed his supplicating dance. Once more the gorilla men leaped out from the chanting host. The priest's eyes kept straying to the servant atop the wall, his club ready. Hurry, hurry. When Kong saw this magnificent sacrifice, the god would show favor to his people, surely.

The king gave the signal, and the great drum sent its deep, echoing
boom
rolling like thunder over the village, over the forest beyond. Ubar-Atu stepped forward and commanded ten warriors to rush to the two smoothly trimmed beams which held the great gate shut. They laid hands on it and poised expectantly.

Boom!

The crowd moaned. Ann knelt, head thrown back, mouth slightly open, as if only semiconscious.

Boom!

The priest raised his hand, and the men took hold of the beams.

Boom!

The hand swept down, and in a voice that rasped his throat, the priest shouted,
“Ndeze!”

*   *   *

Ann needed no knowledge of the island language to know that the witch doctor had shouted “Open!” The gate tenders, five warriors at each bar, strained and slowly drew the massive wooden bolts back, one from either side. Each bolt gradually slid through massive, time-pitted black sockets in the form of horned saurian skulls, one at the center of each door. Torchlight gleamed on the bars, showing they had been greased. The men drew the heavy wooden beams onto broad support platforms on each side of the gate.

Below them each of two groups of men began to pull the gate open, thirty men hauling on each half. Each door swung with surprising smoothness for something so large. Chattering came from far above, and Ann became aware that other warriors had swarmed up onto the broad top of the Wall. Torches blazed there. The Wall was thick, much thicker than she had thought at first. As the gates opened, she became aware that one of the larger native houses could easily have been built in the space where the great doors hung. The men hauled with desperate speed, as if everything depended on getting the gate open fast.

Ann dimly wondered if the natives feared that rescuers from the
Wanderer
were on the way. But the thought aroused no hope. Hope had died in her from the moment her first cry had been stifled. Her capture and all that came after was so far removed from anything she had ever experienced or even imagined that she struggled to comprehend. Everyone and everything on the mysterious ancient island had trapped her in some sort of waking nightmare. Suddenly, she heard the king shout,
“Ndundo!”
Overhead, the great drum thundered again and again, shocking Ann's tortured attention into focus for a moment. The signal, Driscoll had said. The signal that Kong's bride was to be offered to the island god. The sacrifice. The sacrifice.
She
was the sacrifice!