Part 59 (1/2)

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE SERPENT VINE.

With his hands bound behind his back, unable to help himself, Frank reeled forward into the embrace of the deadly vine, each branch of which was twisting, curling, squirming like the arms of an octopus.

He nearly plunged forward upon his face, but managed to recover and keep on his feet.

He felt the vine whip about his legs and fasten there tenaciously, felt it twist and twine and crawl like a ma.s.s of serpents, and he knew he was in the grasp of the frightful plant which till that hour he had ever believed a creation of some romancer's feverish fancy.

Frank did not cry out. A great horror seemed to come upon him and benumb his body and his senses.

He could feel the horrid vines climbing and coiling about him, and he was helpless to struggle and tear them away. He knew they were mounting to his neck, where they would curl about his throat and choke the breath of life from his body.

It was a fearful fate--a terrible death. And there seemed no possible way of escaping.

Higher and higher climbed the vine, swaying and squirming, the blood-red flowers opening and closing like lips of a vampire that thirsted for his blood.

A look of horror was frozen on Frank's face. His eyes bulged from his head, and his lips were drawn back from his teeth. He did not cry out, he did not seem to breathe, but he appeared to be turned to stone in the grasp of the deadly plant.

It was a dreadful sight, and the two sailors, rough and wicked men though they were, were overcome by the spectacle. Shuddering and gasping, they turned away.

For the first time, Gage seemed to fully realize what he had done. He covered his eyes with his hand and staggered backward, uttering a low, groaning sound.

Merriwell's staring eyes seemed fastened straight upon him with that fearful stare, and the thought flashed through the mind of the wretched boy that he should never forget those eyes.

”They will haunt me as long as I live!” he panted. ”Why did I do it? Why did I do it?”

Already he was seized by the pangs of remorse.

Once more he looked at Frank, and once more those staring eyes turned his blood to ice water.

Then, uttering shriek after shriek, Gage turned and fled through the swamp, plunging through marshy places and jungles, falling, scrambling up, leaping, staggering, gasping for breath, feeling those staring eyes at his back, feeling that they would pursue him to his doom.

Scarcely less agitated and overcome, Bowsprit and the negro followed, and Frank Merriwell was abandoned to his fate.

Frank longed for the use of his hands to tear away those fiendish vines.

It was a horrible thing to stand and let them creep up, up, up, till they encircled his throat and strangled him to death.

Through his mind flashed a picture of himself as he would stand there with the vines drawing tighter and tighter about his throat and his face growing blacker and blacker, his tongue hanging out, his eyes starting from their sockets.

He came near shrieking for help, but the thought that the cry must reach the ears of Leslie Gage kept it back, enabled him to choke it down.

He had declared that Gage should not hear him beg for mercy or aid. Not even the serpent vine and all its horrors could make him forget that vow.

The little red flowers were getting nearer and nearer to his face, and they were fluttering with eagerness. He felt a sucking, drawing, stinging sensation on one of his wrists, and he believed one of those fiendish vampire mouths had fastened there.