CHAPTER XXIV Behind a Copper Wall

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The sun was sending its rays obliquely into the hole of Taunan when the four disguised crickets, still guided by the pigmy soldier, passed through a sleeping camp of crickets composing an army that was besieging the mountain pass into the Land of the Selinites. Notwithstanding the fact that the crickets had out guards well trained, their disguises enabled them to reach the beginning of a deep ravine that led up to a stretch of copper wire spread across the mountain to keep the crickets from getting into the Land of Selinites. This wire was an inch thick and meshed in six inches. It extended up into the sky as far as the eye could reach, and behind it they could see dimly a vast army of small men armed with copper axes, bows and arrows, spears and sharp lances. They were also enclosed in copper armor.

In the past, Moawha informed them, this armor had proved a great protection in battle but she was now afraid of the new methods of warfare that Toplinsky would introduce.

“And well may you be afraid,” Joan said. “But fortunately there has not yet been a serious attack on the wall, and if you leave things to Julian I am sure he will save your people.”

“G’wan,” Billy snorted indignantly. “I haven’t gone anywhere, and I’m something of a fighter myself.”

Again they discovered that they were talking too loud. Their guide, when he pointed to the wall, disappeared, and now, when they heard a chirping sound behind them, they turned apprehensively. Their fears were warranted. A band of crickets was entering the ravine behind them, and hailing them. As they did not understand the cricket chirpings they decided to ignore them.

They hopped quickly toward the wall. Their movements were clumsy, the shells which covered their backs were heavy, and the sharp eyes of the crickets discovered that they were not what they represented themselves to be. A sharp, shrill, terrifying chirp went out, and the crickets rushed at them in a body, brandishing their sharp pronged spears.

Putting forth all their efforts they rushed toward the wall. The crickets pursued, chirping angrily, and gradually drawing nearer. That they would be overtaken was obvious.

“Throw off the shells, and run for it,” Epworth urged. “Hurry.”

He was obeyed, and soon the four were fast-footing over the uneven ground. They gained some but in discarding their disguises they lost much of their original position, and the crickets began to hop dangerously near.

At this moment curious faces were thrust against the copper wall on the other side. Moawha shouted at them in her language. At first they did not answer, and several crickets hopped in front of her.

Epworth and Billy acted in concert, firing their pistols. This brought them to a stop.

Shoving Moawha and Joan to the front the two men defended the rear.

“Call to your friends to open the wall,” Epworth shouted. “Let them know in as few words as possible who you are.”

The Selinites heard Moawha’s cries, recognized her, and with loud shouts of joy, threw open a gate, and rushed out in a body and drove the crickets back. Moawha jumped through the wall opening and pulled Joan with her; Billy and Epworth followed, and the wall door was slammed and fastened.

With a deep sigh of joy Moawha fell on her knees and extended her hands, palms open upward. That she was offering a prayer to God for her deliverance was obvious, and Billy uncovered his head and stood reverently by her side.

While Epworth was just as thankful he was a man of action. His first observation told him that under the leadership of Toplinsky the crickets and Taunans would walk through the copper mesh with wire cutters very easily. The wire, while strong enough to hurl back the bodies of the crickets, could be readily cut.

“Come,” he urged. “We have little time to lose. We must put your borderland in a condition to stand a siege.”

The Selinites were crowding around Moawha, and singing songs of joy, quite plainly establishing her claims to being their lost princess. With an impatient gesture Epworth caught her hand, and started down the incline toward the city he saw not five miles distant. The Selinites objected.

“Inform them that they must obey me implicitly,” Epworth instructed. “Tell them that there is grave danger from a new and mysterious source, and that action cannot be delayed. If they wish to hold a reception for you it should come later.”

Moawha obeyed, and the American, lifting her in his strong arms, ran hurriedly down the incline to the city. Going five miles on the moon, it must be remembered, is easier than going half a mile on the earth, and soon they were inside of the city, where they were met by a large concourse of people who wanted to take Moawha out of Epworth’s hands. But still holding her he pushed his way through the assemblage, and went to a building that looked like a power house.

His guess was correct, and he deposited Moawha on the floor and ran to a large coil of copper wire.

“Get busy, Billy,” he insisted anxiously. “This is an electric plant, and we must use the juice to charge that copper wire wall, and lay a mine for Toplinsky’s cricket army. If we can hold them outside for a time—until we can get our breath—perhaps we will find a means of pushing them back permanently.”

Billy, who was a splendid electrician, picked up another coil, attached the wire to a generator, and began to unroll the wire toward the top of the pass. The pigmies, crowding into the building, watched them with annoyance. Who were these white giants with their queen? What did they mean by short circuiting the industries of the city? Why were they meddling with the central electric plant?

A dozen little men came up to Moawha and protested. Epworth paused in his work to look at them. They were smaller in size than the Taunans but were more perfectly built. On their bodies, about the size of an eight year old boy, were handsomely formed heads, and pleasant, friendly faces.

“Explain to them that we are going to stop all their machinery until we can run electric juice into the wall that protects them from the cricket army.”

The moment the Selinite scientists understood what the white giants were doing they joined in the work with enthusiasm, and sent out a call for help. Soon there were ten thousand small men rolling coils of wire toward the copper fence between the two countries. Never before had it entered their minds that they could make the wall deal death to their enemies. All they had hoped for was to see them fly against the mesh and rebound back.

In six hours the copper wall was electrically charged until its touch meant a shock of death, and Epworth stopped to sleep. While he was sleeping the Selinites recrowned Moawha queen. This was necessary because there was a law in the land that if a ruler was absent a certain length of time the crown was forfeited. Moawha had been a prisoner months over the time but they had loved her so dearly that hoping against hope they had not elected her successor.

Epworth was awakened by Joan and Moawha, both of whom were greatly frightened.

“Come,” Moawha pleaded, “they are assaulting our wall—or rather getting ready to.”

When the young man, accompanied by Billy, reached the scene, a great army of crickets was rolling up the mountainside in military formation. Epworth pushed into the Selinites at a critical moment. The crickets came within twenty feet of the wall and stopped. The pigmies, thinking that they were afraid of their spears and bows and arrows, began to gibe them.

The answer came before Epworth could give instructions. It was in the shape of a storm of lead from the front ranks of the crickets. It was a terrifying volley. The bullets whistled through the six inch mesh of copper and the Selinites were badly demoralized and fled in wild disorder.

Epworth saw the blast of gun fire with passionate anger. It looked to him like firing cannons at little children. Nevertheless he shouted and made a desperate effort to rally the Selinites. But they would not stop. Never before had they heard the report of a gun and although the guns being used were small and of rifle character they had no inclination to stay long to hear another discharge.

Urged on by their pigmy generals the crickets charged the wall. In their long feelers, extending from their mouths were strong wire cutters, and in their front arms they carried rifles and spears. For the safety of the Selinites Epworth had turned on the electric current only to see that it was in working condition and had turned it off again. Now he gave the signal to charge the wall.

The signal was answered from the city just as the first ranks of crickets slammed against the copper wire. The charge caught them and hurled tons of them backward against their fellows, who crowded against them with their wire cutters.

Again Epworth signaled to the city, and the juice was cut off.

Not understanding this mysterious power flashed against them a number of Taunan officers approached the wire wall, and placed their hands on it. Nothing happened, and with puzzled faces they commanded another charge. Again Epworth signaled for the juice; again tons of crickets butted against the wall only to be hurled back by the invisible force of electricity.

For the second time the pigmy officers investigated the wall. It still seemed perfectly harmless, and they mustered up their courage to the point of ordering another attack. This time they threw an army of crickets against the wall, pushing the nearest crickets forward to the danger point with regiment after regiment.

The force of the movement was so severe that it bent the wall inward but the electric current still held them back.

The pigmy leaders now became genuinely alarmed at the fall of so many crickets, and drew the belligerent army back sullenly several hundred yards. For a time they stood in battle array just beyond the reach of the arrows from the wall, and waited until a messenger could be sent back inland to Toplinsky.

“Ah, ha,” Toplinsky muttered to himself when he heard the news, “these Selinites have recently received some scientific advice on war. I wonder if it is possible that those two Americans escaped from the caves, and landed here? If so——”

He clenched his right hand and put his left arm around Queen Carza’s waist.

“It will not do, my great lord and master,” Carza whispered to him in an undertone, “to permit the killing of so many crickets. See they are piled up in heaps in front of that copper wall. I have led my people to think that you can defeat the Selinites easily, and give them the new green world with few fatalities. They are already mumbling to themselves. There have been killed——”

“Twenty thousand, I should roughly estimate,” Toplinsky interrupted abruptly. “They should have been more careful but I, the great Herman Toplinsky, will teach these people much. Draw back the army for a week, and at the end of that time I promise that there will be something doing. We will go through that wall as if it were not there.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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