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Title: The Old Ones Hear
Date of first publication: 1942
Author: Malcolm Jameson (1891-1945)
Date first posted: Dec. 14, 2021
Date last updated: Dec. 14, 2021
Faded Page eBook #20211227

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines




[Source: Unknown Worlds, June 1, 1942]



THE OLD ONES HEAR

By Malcolm Jameson



The Old Ones may hear--and act, too--in somewhat different manner, in
ways we do not expect.  And in ways that military tactics do not take
into account--



  Yesterday our forces occupied the island of Aea.
                             _Axis War Communique._


The promontory loomed ahead, vague and shadowy.  Behind it, dark
against the starry western sky, lay the remainder of the small
island.  The commander who sat in the stern sheets leaned forward and
spoke quietly to the men on the aftermost thwart.

"Land ahead," he said.  "Pass the word forward to make no noise."

Under the dim starlight the men sent the whispered message on its
way.  The scantily dressed lieutenant and midshipman who sat on
either side of the boat officer shivered and pulled their blankets
tighter about their shoulders.  Their blouses had been ripped apart
and blown off by the terrific blasts of the bombs that had sunk their
ship.

The boat went on.  All was silent except for the faint ripple under
its bows and the swish of quickwater along the sides.  Even the
wounded were quiet, though the faithful mast groaned once or twice as
the hastily rigged sail slightly shifted its position.

It was a strangely assorted boat load, those men huddled together on
the thwarts and in the spaces between.  Thirty-odd of them were
various ratings of his majesty's ship _Peeblesshire_; nine were
Anzacs, all wounded; four were what was left of the crew of a cargo
ship sunk four days before.  The oddest was a queer old Greek, clad
in his quaint skirted uniform.  He had been the Anzacs' mountain
guide and had fought with them from Mount Olympus, down through the
desperate stand at Thermopylæ, across the flanks of lofty Parnassus,
past Delphi to the water's edge.  A little touched, they thought him,
for when they had rigged the mast he produced a leather bag as if
from nowhere and hung it on the mast by the nock of the sail.  "For
good luck," he had grunted, by way of explanation.  Ever since, he
had sat doggedly on the third thwart and never taken his eyes off it.

The commander peered anxiously ahead.  It had been a hard trip, even
though luck had been with them, just as the old Greek had foretold.
They had driven more than sixty miles through the winding waterways
of the Gulf of Corinth and that of Patras, and always with a
miraculously favorable breeze.  Not once had a roving Stuka found
them, nor the prowling coastal motorboats.  But they had had to leave
their ship in a hurry and there was room only for men, not for spare
stores of provisions and water.  The wounded were very miserable, and
some were near death.  The commander wondered what the island was,
and whether it held capture for them, or haven.

There was not a glimmer of a light to be seen.  Nor could his keen,
night-piercing eye detect that there had ever been a light on the end
of the jagged cape which he passed close aboard.  He gave the tiller
a touch and headed up into the cove that lay inside.  Suddenly he
started.  For dead ahead, square across his bows, he could distinctly
see the masts and upperworks of a cruiser.  It was an enemy cruiser.
He knew that at a glance from its fat, single stack with a deal of
rake to it.  He had laid his sights on a sister of it, not two weeks
before, and watched her disappear in a gush of flame, smoke and
splinters.

"Douse the sail," he ordered huskily, and put his tiller up.

The sail came down with a rush and with remarkably little noise, but
the nails of the commander's disengaged hand were biting hard into
the palm.  He expected momentarily to hear a staccato challenge or be
fixed in the prying beam of a searchlight.  There were such things as
picket boats, too, which might be lurking anywhere.  But there was no
challenge.  The ship was as dead, apparently, as a hulk left to rot
in some back channel.

The boat had way enough upon it to neatly round the stern of the
alien warship.  He eased it off a little and studied his unexpected
adversary more closely.  There was not a man on deck, so far as he
could see, and, astonishingly enough--for it lacked only an hour or
so to the dawn--her colors flapped at both bow and stern, for all the
world like noontime on a gala day.

"Out oars," he whispered, and waited patiently while the extra men
slid off the thwarts and lay down out of the way in the soggy bilges.
Of a sudden a daring idea had come to him.  Perhaps the bulk of that
cruiser's complement were on shore, and the remainder, certain of
their safety, had been celebrating an easy victory over an undefended
island.  It might be that they were all drunk.  He had heard that
discipline on some of those ships was not of the best.

"Give way together," he ordered, and pointed the nose of his
overladen craft toward the unguarded gangway.

For several minutes there was only the rhythmic stroke of the oars
and the sound of water dripping from their uplifted blades as they
swept forward for the next impulse.  The commander steered her
deftly, and after a few more low-spoken orders, felt the bow graze
the platform of the accommodation ladder.  Ready hands grasped at
stanchions, and the rowers boated their oars without a sound.  The
moment they were alongside, the commander leaped like a panther to
the landing stage and swiftly mounted the ladder.

There was no one at the top of it.  A quick turn around the deck
revealed nobody.  He listened at a hatchway and at a ventilator.  The
ship was silent as the tomb, except for the faint throbbing of
machinery far below decks.  He went back to the gangway and beckoned
his men to come up.

They swarmed up the ladder, all of them that could walk, gripping
what pistols and rifles they had contrived to keep with them in their
hurried evacuation.  There was a low conference and the group split
up into several smaller squads.  They parted, some going forward,
some aft, the remainder below.  Fifteen minutes later they
reassembled, as had been agreed upon.

"A rum thing, sir," said a petty officer.  "Not a living soul in the
ruddy ship.  But there's lights below and some auxiliaries running.
They left a few burners going, so there's some steam in the boilers,
though their water's low."

"How long will it take to get steam enough up to move her?" asked the
commander sharply.

"Two hours, sir.  Maybe less."

"Get at it.  Mr. Torkingham!"

The lieutenant acknowledged.

"Have the wounded men brought up out of the boat and put 'em to bed.
When you have found yourself some warm clothes, go up on the bridge
and get acquainted with all the gadgets there.  When there is steam
enough to work the anchor engine, heave short.  We're getting under
way in two hours."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"I notice there's not a boat on the ship.  Every set of skids and
davits and all the booms are empty.  I'm curious about that.  While
you are making ready, I am going to take a pull ashore and find out
what has happened.  I'll be back shortly."


The commander waited stolidly at the top of the gangway while the
injured men were being carried up.  He was concealing his impatience
as best he could, for he felt he could not leave this unknown island
without some explanation of his bizarre landfall.  Never in all the
histories of the navies of the world had there been a precedent for
it.  To leave a modern warship all standing with not even an anchor
watch or a water tender on board!  It was incredible.  Not even
during the darkest, undisciplined days of the Menshevik revolution at
Kronstadt had it a counterpart.

He thought back over the escape and the marvels of the previous day
and night.  When he had left the shattered _Peeblesshire_ she was an
inferno of raging flames.  There had been no opportunity to salvage a
chart.  Yet the boat had found her way through the winding channels
to this place he did not recognize, and always with a good, stiff
following breeze that veered and hauled as if to order.  He wondered
quizzically about the queer old Greek and his "windbag" and his talk
of good luck.  Well, they had had fair winds.  And as for good luck!
Just now he stood on the quarterdeck of a ship quite as good in some
respects as the one he had had blown from beneath him.  And he had
taken it without a vestige of a struggle.  He was short-handed, of
course, but he could manage.

It occurred to him to ask the men about the Greek.  He wanted to
question him as to what island this was, how it lay as regards
Cephalonia, and how far from Cape Matapan.  But none of the men knew
where he had gone.  No one had seen him since they made the gangway.
He had not come on board.  He was not now in the boat.  Maybe,
feeling himself safe among his own people and his duty done, he had
swum ashore.

The commander shrugged.  It did not matter greatly.  He had never
been able to get anything out of the old fellow, anyway, but scarcely
intelligible mumbles.  He picked out a few men for a boat's crew,
then slid down the ladder and into the boat.  By that time it was
full light, though still gray, and he could see that the pull would
not be a long one.

He stood up in the boat on the way in, examining the shore.  Ahead of
him was a quay of antique masonry, hung over with green moss.
Alongside it lay the abandoned cruiser's boats--power boats, pulling
boats, even life rafts ripped from the bases of the masts--but in
none of them was a boatkeeper.  The desertion of his prize's crew had
been absolute and complete.

To the right and left stretched sandy beaches, studded with the
protruding ribs of vessels left to go to wrack many years before.
They marred the beach as the straggly, yellow teeth in the gums of a
hag mar her smile, transforming it into something sinister and
ominous.  As he drew closer he saw one peculiar relic and he knew it
from its unique shape.  It was covered with green patina of many
centuries, but it could have been but one thing--the bronze ram of an
ancient trireme.

He mounted the worn treads of the ancient steps of the quay with
misgivings that grew with every foot of progress he made.  This
unknown islet--and he thought he knew them all, for he had cruised
this coast many times since his midshipman days--appeared to be the
graveyard of ships.  Was it subject to a strange and swift
pestilence?  If so, why had it not been mentioned in the "Sailing
Directions"?  A sense of disquiet, unease, descended upon him, far
more disturbing than had been the roar of the plunging Stukas or the
screaming of their deadly bombs.  He wondered whether he should go on
or turn tail and fly.  But curiosity drove him forward.

"Wait here," he said tersely to the boat crew, and strode off up the
gentle slope, doing his best to quell the thrills of expectancy,
amounting almost to fear, of imminent disaster.

There was no town to be seen, nor houses of any sort.  Nor were there
tilled fields.  The place was more of a park, lovely in its grassy
stretches, and spotted with clumps of trees and hedges.  He found a
path which ran between two winding rows of bushes and followed it for
some distance.  At a turn farther on he caught a glimpse through the
copses of an establishment of some sort on the top of the hill.

"Ah," he thought, "the villa of a rich playboy, perhaps a retired
munitions millionaire, or an exiled grand duke."

He stopped to survey it, though he could see little except the red
tiles of its roof and the olive grove surrounding it.  But his
viewing of the place was cut short in an unexpected way.  Before he
knew what was happening, a horde of snapping wolves descended upon
him.  There were hundreds in the pack and they swarmed about him,
leaping and snarling.

He drew his pistol, but hesitated to use it.  He did not want to
advertise his presence on the islet.  He pivoted on one leg and kept
himself in an incessant swinging, kicking at the fangs of those
animals that threatened him most.  Once or twice he succeeded in
landing a vicious kick squarely in the jaws of the plunging brutes,
and after that the others kept at a more respectful distance.  He
noticed then that they were not truly wolves, but near-wolves--a
noisy pack of blustering jackals, willing and eager to pull down a
lamb, but not overbold when it came to man.  Yet they surrounded him,
and their ceaseless yapping and snapping annoyed him.  He could
defend himself, but hardly progress.


Again a miracle happened.  In his turning and twisting he had put his
back to the villa on the hill, but now he heard a vibrant, contralto
voice berating the creatures in tones of withering scorn.  He did not
recognize the odd dialect she used, but he did know the biting end of
a black-snake whip when he saw one.  The end of a long lash flashed
by him, nicked a patch of yellow hair from the rump of one of the
howling doglike creatures, which promptly slunk away, yelping and
whining miserably.  He heard the whistle and snap of the lash again
and the distressed cries of another victim.  He wheeled to see who
his rescuer might be.

His senses reeled, and he could only gasp.  The wielder of the lash
was a woman; he had already surmised that from the voice.  But
nothing in his previous life had prepared him for what he saw.  He
was gazing at a woman, but such a woman as exists ordinarily only in
visions and dreams.  She was the incarnation of ideal voluptuous
beauty, but at the same moment she was also the incarnation of cold,
vindictive fury as she laid mercilessly about her with her whip.  Her
hair, under the touch of the first ray of the morning sun, was as a
mass of flame, and there was an uncanny, quality to her flashing
green eyes which had the curious property of seeming to repel yet
attract irresistibly at the same moment.  There was hardly a detail
of her exquisite figure he did not take in at that first startled
glance, for she wore only a filmy veil of a garment that revealed
more than it hid.

She seemed suddenly to become aware of him, as if she had not
observed him before.  Raging scorn melted from her face and she took
on an expression of utter tenderness and longing that was more than
he could bear.  In that instant she cast her whip away from her and
stretched out her arms to him in passionate welcome.  He staggered
forward blindly, all thought of ship or duty vanishing from his mind.
He only knew that unless he reached her and embraced her, the
drum-like roll of his throbbing pulses would drive him mad.

Yet he had taken not more than one or two strides before her manner
altered again, and he froze where he stood under the compulsion of
her calm, imperious gaze.  She was cold and haughty now, and
queenlike, and regarded him with a cool, appraising look that was
almost as terrifying as had been her fury and her ardor.

"You are a Briton, our ally?" she asked, a trifle hesitantly.  "The
man Hermes brought?"

"Hermes?"

"Oh, you wouldn't know, of course.  He assumes many forms."  She
relaxed her forbidding attitude and permitted herself a little smile.
"But you were not to come upon my island.  You were brought to take
that hideous, smoking iron galley away--"

"But its crew--what became of them?"

She stooped and picked up her whip, flicking it tentatively as she
did.  The wolfish animals which had been cowering and whimpering
about her feet slunk a little farther away.

"Have no fear of them.  They will not return to interfere with you.
Later, when I have disciplined them properly, I shall take them to
the other side of the island and turn them into the pasture with my
swine.  Those are they who came to me from the sky."  She seemed to
be laughing inwardly, as if at a pleasant reminiscence.

The softening of her mood brought back his earlier yearning with all
its imperativeness.  He sprang forward to snatch her into his arms,
but she recoiled and looked at him with something like horror.

"No, no!" she cried.  "Not you!  You are our friend, our ally.  It
cannot be.  Take what the gods have provided and go.  It is a
privilege few have had who have stepped upon this island and dealt
with me, but it is so ordered.  Go!"

The kaleidoscope of emotions to which he had been subjected in this
last strange hour showed a new phase.  A chilling sense of awe began
to grow upon him as the monstrous truth of what he had seen and heard
began to dawn upon him.  He looked at her now with something akin to
fear, yet there was a degree of grudging respect in it, too.  That
these long dormant ones should stir themselves now to help, if only a
little, was something to be honored.  He felt impelled to bow.

"I will go," he said quietly, "at once.  But tell me--I must know,
for my sanity's sake--who are you?"

Her eyes widened, as if she were deeply hurt.

"I?  In the old days I had a name, but that does not matter now.  I
am everywhere, anywhere, and my work is always the same--I turn men
into beasts."

She shuddered, and her look changed.  It was a horrible mixture of
passion and power--and agony.  "Go!" she said.



THE END.


[The end of _The Old Ones Hear_ by Malcolm Jameson]