Lukundoo | Page 6

and saw it all, Etcham stared and said not one

word.
"You saw him slice off two swellings?" Van Rieten asked.
Etcham nodded, chokingly.
"Did he bleed much?" Van Rieten demanded.
"Ve'y little," Etcham replied.
"You hold his arms," said Van Rieten to Etcham.
He took up Stone's razor and handed me the light. Stone showed no
sign of seeing the light or of knowing we were there. But the little head
mewled and screeched at us.
Van Rieten's hand was steady, and the sweep of the razor even and true.
Stone bled amazingly little and Van Rieten dressed the wound as if it
had been a bruise or scrape.
Stone had stopped talking the instant the excrescent head was severed.
Van Rieten did all that could be done for Stone and then fairly grabbed
the light from me. Snatching up a gun he scanned the ground by the cot
and brought the butt down once and twice, viciously.
We went back to our hut, but I doubt if I slept.
Chapter VI
Next day, near noon, in broad daylight, we heard the two voices from
Stone's hut. We found Etcham dropped asleep by his charge. The
swelling on the left had broken, and just such another head was there
miauling and spluttering. Etcham woke up and the three of us stood
there and glared. Stone interjected hoarse vocables into the tinkling
gurgle of the portent's utterance.
Van Rieten stepped forward, took up Stone's razor and knelt down by
the cot. The atomy of a head squealed a wheezy snarl at him.

Then suddenly Stone spoke English.
"Who are you with my razor?"
Van Rieten started back and stood up.
Stone's eyes were clear now and bright, they roved about the hut.
"The end," he said; "I recognize the end. I seem to see Etcham, as if in
life. But Singleton! Ah, Singleton! Ghosts of my boyhood come to
watch me pass! And you, strange specter with the black beard and my
razor! Aroint ye all!"
"I'm no ghost, Stone," I managed to say. "I'm alive. So are Etcham and
Van Rieten. We are here to help you."
"Van Rieten!" he exclaimed. "My work passes on to a better man. Luck
go with you, Van Rieten."
Van Rieten went nearer to him.
"Just hold still a moment, old man," he said soothingly. "It will be only
one twinge."
"I've held still for many such twinges," Stone answered quite distinctly.
"Let me be. Let me die in my own way. The hydra was nothing to this.
You can cut off ten, a hundred, a thousand heads, but the curse you can
not cut off, or take off. What's soaked into the bone won't come out of
the flesh, any more than what's bred there. Don't hack me any more.
Promise!"
His voice had all the old commanding tone of his boyhood and it
swayed Van Rieten as it always had swayed everybody.
"I promise," said Van Rieten.
Almost as he said the word Stone's eyes filmed again.
Then we three sat about Stone and watched that hideous, gibbering

prodigy grow up out of Stone's flesh, till two horrid, spindling little
black arms disengaged themselves. The infinitesimal nails were perfect
to the barely perceptible moon at the quick, the pink spot on the palm
was horridly natural. These arms gesticulated and the right plucked
toward Stone's blond beard.
"I can't stand this," Van Rieten exclaimed and took up the razor again.
Instantly Stone's eyes opened, hard and glittering.
"Van Rieten break his word?" he enunciated slowly. "Never!"
"But we must help you," Van Rieten gasped.
"I am past all help and all hurting," said Stone. "This is my hour. This
curse is not put on me; it grew out of me, like this horror here. Even
now I go."
His eyes closed and we stood helpless, the adherent figure spouting
shrill sentences.
In a moment Stone spoke again.
"You speak all tongues?" he asked quickly.
And the mergent minikin replied in sudden English:
"Yea, verily, all that you speak," putting out its microscopic tongue,
writhing its lips and wagging its head from side to side. We could see
the thready ribs on its exiguous flanks heave as if the thing breathed.
"Has she forgiven me?" Stone asked in a muffled strangle.
"Not while the moss hangs from the cypresses," the head squeaked.
"Not while the stars shine on Lake Pontchartrain will she forgive."
And then Stone, all with one motion, wrenched himself over on his side.
The next instant he was dead.

When Singleton's voice ceased the room was hushed for a space. We
could hear each other breathing. Twombly, the tactless, broke the
silence.
"I presume," he said, "you cut off the little minikin and brought it home
in alcohol."
Singleton turned on him a