THE BLONDE GODDESS OF BAL-SAGOTH by Robert E. Howard

During his unfortunately too brief lifetime, Robert E. Howard was as prolific a writer as anyone might hope for. He was that sort of natural writer to whom the speed of narrating a tale did not interfere with the quality. He liked to write—and that is The secret of most good fiction. And he loved nothing better than a lusty, gusty tale of uninhibited men battling fiercely against a primitive environment. Add to that the fulsome color of the mystery and magic of the past: the horizons clouded with mist and fearsome legendry, the heavens a conspiracy of supernatural powers, and fellow man nearly as dangerous and unpredictable as the beasts of the field, and a Robert E. Howard story is bound to be an epic of weird and exciting peril. Here we have such a saga—a story of a Celtic barbarian's challenge to the age-old and fast-sinking evil of an Atlantean remnant.

1. Steel in the Storm

LIGHTNING dazzled the eyes of Turlogh O'Brien and his foot slipped in a smear of blood as he staggered on the reeling deck. The clashing of steel rivaled the bellowing of the thunder, and screams of death cut through the roar of waves and wind. The incessant lightning flicker gleamed on the corpses sprawling redly, the gigantic horned figures that roared and smote like huge demons of The midnight storm, the great beaked prow looming above.

The play was quick and desperate; in the momentary illumination a ferocious bearded face shone before Turlogh, and his swift ax licked out. splitting it to the chin. In the brief, utter blackness that followed the flash, an unseen stroke swept Turlogh's helmet from his head and he struck back blindly, feeling his ax sink into flesh, and hearing a man howl. Again the fires of the raging skies sprang, showing the Gael the ring of savage faces, the hedge of gleaming steel that hemmed him in.

Back against the mainmast Turlogh parried and smote; then through the madness of the fray a great voice thundered, and in a flashing instant the Gael caught a glimpse of a giant form—a strangely familiar face. Then the world crashed into fire-shot blackness.

Consciousness returned slowly. Turlogh was first aware of a swaying, rocking motion of his whole body which he could not check. Then a dull throbbing in his head racked him and he sought to raise his

3 ' i
hands to it. Then it was lie realized he was bound hand and foot—not an altogether new experience. Clearing sight showed him that he was tied to the mast of the dragon ship whose warriors had struck him down. Why they had spared him, he could not understand, because if they knew him at all, they knew him to be an outlaw—an outcast from his clan, who would nay no ransom to save him from the very pits of Hell.

The wind had fallen greatly but a heavy sea was flowing, which tossed the long ship like a chip from gulf-like trough to foaming crest. A round silver moon, peering through broken clouds, lighted the tossing billows. The Gael, raised on the wild west coast of Ireland, knew thai the serpent ship was crippled. He could tell it by the way she labored, plowing deep into the spume, heeling to the lilt of the surge. Well, the tempest which had been raging on these southern waters had been enough to damage even such staunch craft as these Vikings built.

The same gale had caught the French vessel on which Turlogh had
been a passenger, driving her off her course and far southward. Days
and nights had been a blind, howling chaos in which the ship had
been hurled flying like a wounded bird before the storm. And in the
very rack of the tempest a beaked prow had loomed in the scud above
the lower, broader craft, and the grappling irons had sunk in. Surely
these Norsemen were wolves and the blood-lust that burned in their
hearts was not human. In the terror and roar of the storm they leaped
howling to the onslaught, and while the raging heavens hurled their
full wrath upon them, and each shock of the frenzied waves threat-
ened to engulf both vessels, these sea-wolves glutted their fury to the
utmost—true sons of the sea, whose wildest rages found echo in their
own bosoms. It had been a slaughter rather than a fight—the Celt had
been the only fighting man aboard the doomed ship—and now he
remembered the strange familiarity of the face he had glimpsed just
before he was struck down. Who--------- ?

"Good hail, my bold Dalcassian, it's long since we met!"

Turlogh stared at the man who stood before him, feet braced to the lifting of the deck. He was of huge stature, a good half head taller than Turlogh who stood well above six feet. His legs were like columns, his arms like oak and iron. His beard was of crisp gold, matching the massive armlets he wore. A shirt of scale-mail added to his war-like appearance as the horned helmet seemed to increase his height. But there was no wrath in the calm gray eyes which gazed tranquilly into the smoldering blue eyes of the Gael.

"Athelstane, the Saxon!"

"Aye—it's been a long day since you gave me this," the giant indicated a thin white scar on his temple. "We seem fated to meet on nights of fury—we first crossed steel the night you burned ThorfcTs

2. Gods from the Abyss

Turlogh did not sleep long. When he awoke the sun was just risen above the sea-rim. The Gael rose, feeling as refreshed as if he had slept the whole night through, and looked about him. The broad white beach sloped gently from the water to a waving expanse of gigantic trees. There seemed no underbrush, but so close together were the huge boles, his sight could not pierce into the jungle. Athelstane was standing some distance away on a spit of sand that ran out into the sea. The huge Saxon leaned on his great sword and gazed out toward the reefs.

Here and there on the beach lay the stiff figures that had been washed ashore. A sudden snarl of satisfaction broke from Turlogh's lips. Here at his very feet was a gift from the gods; a dead Viking lay there, fully armed in the helmet and mail shirt he had not had time to doff when the ship foundered, and Turlogh saw they were his own. Even the round light buckler strapped to the Norseman's back was his. Turlogh did pause to wonder how all his accouterments had come iuto the possession of one man, but stripped the dead and donned the plain round helmet and the shirt of black chain mail. Thus armed he went up the beach toward Athelstane, his eyes gleaming unpleasantly.

The Saxon turned as he approached. "Hail to you, Gael," he greeted, "We be all of Lodbrog's ship-people left alive. The hungry green sea drank them all. By Thor, I owe my life to you! What with the weight of my mail, and the crack my skull got on the rail, I had most certainly been food for the sharks but for you. It all seems like a dream now."

"You saved my life," snarled Turlogh, "I saved yours. Now the debt is paid, the accounts are squared, so up with your sword and let us make an end."

Athelstane stared. "You wish to fight me? Why—what--------- ?"

"I hate your breed as I hate Satan!" roared the Gael, a tinge of madness in his blazing eyes, "Your wolves have ravaged my people for five hundred years! The smoking ruins of the Southland, the seas of spilled blood call for vengeance! The screams of a thousand ravished girls are ringing in my ears, night and day! Would that the North had but a single oreast for my ax to cleave!"

"But I am no Norseman," rumbled the giant in worrimont.

"The more shame to you, renegade," raved the maddened Gael, "Defend yourself lest I cut you down in cold blood!"

"This is not to my liking," protested Athelstane, lifting his mighty blade, his gray eyes serious but unafraid, "Men speak truly who say there is madness in you."

Words ceased as the men prepared to go into deadly action. The Gael approached his foe, crouching panther-like, eyes ablaze. The

Saxon waited the onslaught, feet braced wide apart, sword held high
in both hands. It was Turlogh's ax and shield against Athelstane's
two-handed sword; in a contest one stroke might end either way. Like
two great jungle beasts they played their deadly, wary game, then---------

Even as Turlogh's muscles tensed for the death-leap, a fearful sound split the silence! both men started and recoiled. From the depths of the forest behind them rose a ghastly and inhuman scream. Shrill, yet of great volume, it rose higher and higher until it ceased at the highest pitch, like the triumph of a demon, like the cry of some grisly ogre gloating over its human prey.

"Thor's blood!" gasped the Saxon, letting his sword-point fall, "What was that?"

Turlogh shook his head. Even his iron nerve was slightly shaken. "Some fiend of the forest. This is a strange land in a strange sea. Mayhap Satan himself reigns here and it is the gate to Hell."

Athelstane looked uncertain. He was more pagan than Christian and his devils were heathen devils. But they were none the less grim for that.

"Well," said he, "let us drop our quarrel until we see what it may be.
Two blades are better than one, whether for man or devil------------

A wild shriek cut him short. This time it was a human voice, blood-cliilling in its horror and despair. Simultaneously came the swift patter of feet and the lumbering rush of some heavy body among the trees. The warriors wheeled toward the sound, and out of the deep shadows a half-naked woman came flying like a white leaf blown on the wind. Her loose hair streamed like a ilame of gold behind her, her white limbs flashed in the morning sun, her eyes blazed with frenzied terror. And behind her —

Even Turlogh's hair stood up. The thing that pursued the fleeing girl was neither man nor beast. In form it was like a bird, but such a bird as the rest of the world had not seen for many an age. Some twelve feet high it towered, and its evil head with the wicked red eyes and cruel curved beak was as big as a horse's head. The long arched neck was thicker than a man's thigh and the huge taloned feet could have gripped the fleeing woman as an eagle grips a sparrow.

This much Turlogh saw in one glance as he sprang between the monster and its prey who sank down with a cry on the beach, It loomed above him like a mountain of death and the evil beak darted down, denting the shield he raised and staggering him with the impact. At the same instant he struck, but the keen ax sank harmlessly into a cushioning mass of spiky feathers. Again the beak flashed at him and his sidelong leap saved his life by a hair's breadth. And then Athelstane ran in, and bracing his feet wide, swung his great sword with both hands and all his strength. The mighty blade sheared through one of the tree-like legs below the knee, and with an abhorrent screech, the monster sank on its side, flapping its short heavy wings wildly. Turlogh drove the hack-spike of his ax between the glaring red eyes and the gigantic bird kicked convulsively and lay still.

"Thor's blood I" Athelstanc's gray eyes were blazing with battle lust,
"Truly we've come to the rim of the world-------- "

"Watch the forest lest another come forth," snapped Turlogh, turning to the woman who had scrambled to her feet and stood panting, eyes wide with wonder. She was a splendid young animal, tall, cleanlimbed, slim and shapely. Her only garment was a sheer bit of silk hung carelessly about her hips. But though the scantiness of her dress suggested the savage, her skin was snowy while, her loose hair of purest gold and her eyes gray. Now she spoke hastily, stammeringly, in the tongue of the Norse, as if she had not so spoken in years.

"You - who arc you men? Whence come you? What do you on the Isle of the Gods?"

"Thor's bloodl" rumbled the Saxon. "She's of our own kind!"

"Not mine!" snapped Turlogh, unable even in that moment to forget his hate for the people of the North.

The giil looked curiously at the two. "The world must have changed greatly since I left it," said she, evidently in full control of herself once more, "else how is it that wolf and wild bull hunt together? By your black hair, you are a Gael, and you, big man, have a slur in your speech that can be naught but Saxon."

"We are two outcasts," answered Turlogh, "You see these dead men lining the strand? They were the crew of the dragon ship which bore us here, storm-driven. This man, Athelstane, once of Wessex, was a swordsman on that ship and I was a captive. I am Turlogh Dubh, once a chief of Clan na O'Brien. Who are yon and what land is this?"

"This is the oldest land in the world," answered the girl, "Rome, Egypt, Cathay are as but infants beside it. I am Brunhild, daughter of Bane Thorfin's son, of the Orkneys, and until a lew days ago, queen of this ancient kingdom."

Turlogh looked uncertainly at Athelstane. This sounded like sorcery.

"After what we have just seen," rumbled the giant, "1 am ready to believe anything. But are you in truth Rane Thorfin's son's stolen child?"

"Aye!" cried the girl, "I am that one! I was stolen when Tostig the
Mad raided the Orkneys and burned Bane's steading in the absence
of its master------ "

"And then Tostig vanished from the face of the earth—or the seal" interrupted Athelstane, "He was in truth a madman. I sailed with him for a ship-harrying many years ago when I was but a youth."

"And his madness cast me on this island," answered Brunhild; "for after he had harried die shores of England, the fire in his brain drove him out into unknown seas—south and south and ever south until even

9 the fierce wolves he led murmured. Then a storm drove us on yonder reef, though at another part, rending the dragon ship even as yours was rended last night. Tostig and all his strong men perished in the waves, but I clung to pieces of wreckage and a whim of the gods cast me ashore, half dead. 1 was fifteen years old. That was ten years ago.

"I found a strange terrible people dwelling here, a brown-skinned folk who knew many dark secrets of magic. They found me lying senseless on the beach and because I was the first white human they had ever seen, their priests divined that I was a goddess given them by the sea, whom they worship. So they put me in the temple with the rest of their curious gods and did reverence to me. And their high-priest, old Cothan— cursed be his name!—taught me many strange and fearful things. Soon I learned their language and much of their priests* inner mysteries. And as I grew into womanhood the desire for power stirred in me; for the people of the North are made to rule the folk of the world, and it is not for the daughter of a sea-king to sit meekly in a temple and accept the offerings of fruit and flowers and human sacrifices!''

She stopped for a moment, eyes blazing. Truly, she looked a worthy daughter of the fierce race she claimed.

"Well," she continued, "there was one who loved me—Kotar, a young chief. With him 1 plotted and at last I rose and flung olf the yoke of old Cothan. That was a wild season of plot and counter-plot, intrigue, rebellion and red carnage! Men and women died like Hies and the streets of Bal-Sagoth ran red—but in the end we triumphed, Kotar and !! Tin- dynasty of Angar came to an end on a night of blood and fury and I reigned supreme on the Isle of the Gods, queen and goddess!"

She had drawn herself up to her full height, her beautiful face alight with fierce pride, her bosom heaving. Turlogh was at once fascinated and repelled. He had seen rulers rise and fall, and between the lines of her brief narrative he read the bloodshed and carnage, the cruelty and the treachery sensing the basic ruthlessness of this girl-woman.

"but if you were queen," he asked, "how is it that we find you hunted through the forests of your domain by this monster, like a runaway serving wench?"

Brunhild bit her lip and an angry flush mounted to her cheeks. "What is it that brings down every woman, whatever her station? I trusted a man—Kotar, my lover, with whom I shared my rule. He betrayed mc; after I had raised him to the highest power in the kingdom, next to my own, I found he secretly made love to another girl. I killed them both!"

Turlogh smiled coldly: "You are a true Brunhild! And then what?"

"Kotar was loved by the people. Old Gothan stirred them up. I made my greatest mistake when I let that old one live. Yet I dared not slay him. Well, Gothan rose against me, as I had risen against him, and the warriors rebelled, slaying those who stood faidiful to me. Me they took captive but dared not kill; for after all, I was a goddess, they believed. So before dawn, fearing die people woidd change their minds again and restore me to power, Gothan had me taken to the lagoon which separates tins part of the island from the other. The priests rowed me across the lagoon and left me, naked and helpless, to my fate."

"And that fate was- this?" Athelstane touched the huge carcass with his foot.

Brunhild shuddered. "Many ages ago there were many of these monsters on the isle, the legends say. They warred on the people of Bal-Sagoth and devoured them by hundreds. But at last all were exterminated on the main part of the isle and on this side of the lagoon all died but this one, who lias abided here for centuries. In the old times hosts of men came against him, but he was greatest of all the devil-birds and he slew all who fought him. So the priests made a god of him and left this part of the island to him. None comes here except those brought as sacrifices—as I was. lie could not cross to the main island, because the lagoon swarms with great sharks which would rend even him to pieces.

"For a while I eluded him, stealing among the trees, but at last he spied me out—and you know the rest. I owe my life to you. Now what will you do with me?"

Athelstane looked at Turlogh and Turlogh shrugged. "What can we do, save starve in this forest?'

"I will tell you!" the girl cried in a ringing voice, her eyes blazing anew to the swift working of her keen brain.Thcre is an old legend among this people—that men of iron will come out of the sea and the city of Bal-Sagoth will fall! You, with your mail and helmets, will seem as iron men to these folk who know nothing of armor! You have slain Grolh-golka the bird-god you have come out of the sea as did I—the people will look on you as gods. Come with me and aid me to win back my kingdom! You shall be my right-hand men and I will heap honors on you! Fine garments, gorgeous palaces, fairest girls shall be yours!"

Her promises slid from Turlogh's mind without leaving an imprint, but the mad splendor of the proposal intrigued him. Strongly he desired to look on this strange city of which Brunhild spoke, and the thought of two warriors and one girl pitted against a whole nation for a crown stirred the utmost depths of his knight-errant Celtic soul.

"It is well," said he. "And what of you, Athelstane?"

"My belly is empty," growled the giant. "Lead me to where there is food and I'll hew my way to it, through a horde of priests and warriors."

"Lead us lo this city!" said Turlogh to Brunhild.

"Hail!" she cried Hinging her white arms high in wild exultation. "Now let Cothan and Ska and Gelka tremble! With ye at my side I'll win back the crown they tore from me, and this time I'll not spare my enemy! I'll hurl old Cothan from the highest battlement, though the bellowing of his demons shake the very bowels of the earth! And we shall sec if the god Gol-goroth shall stand against the sword that cut Groth golka's leg from under him. Now hew the head from this carcass that the people may know you have overcome the bird-god. Now follow me, for the sun mounts the sky and 1 would sleep in my own palace tonight!"

The three passed into the shadows of the mighty forest. The interlocking branches, hundreds of feet above their heads, made dim and strange such sunlight as filtered through. No life was seen except for an occasional gayly-hued bird or a huge ape. These beasts, Brunhild said, were survivors of another age, harmless except when attacked. Presently the growth changed somewhat, the trees thinned and became smaller and fruit of many kinds was seen among the branches. Brunhild told the warriors which to pluck and eat as they walked along. Turlogh was quite satisfied with the fruit, but Athelstane, though he ate enormously, did so with scant relish. Fruit was light sustenance to a man used to such solid stuff as formed his regular diet. Even among the gluttonous Danes the Saxon's capacity for beef and ale was admired.

"Look!" cried Brunhild sharply, halting and pointing. "The spires of Bal-Sagoth!"

Through the trees the warriors caught a glimmer, white and shim-mery, and apparently far away. There was an illusory impression of towering battlements, high in the air, with lleeey clouds hovering about them. The sight woke strange dreams in the mystic deeps of the Gael's soul, and even Athelstane was silent as il he too were struck by the pagan beauty and mystery of the scene.

So they progressed through the forest, now losing sight of the distant city as tree tops obstructed the view, now seeing it again. And at last they came out on the low shelving banks of a broad blue lagoon and the full beauty of the landscape burst upon their eyes. From the opposite shores the country sloped upward in long gentle undulations which broke like great slow waves at the foot of a range of blue hills a few miles away. These wide swells were covered with deep grass and many groves of trees, while miles away on either hand there was seen curving away into the distance the strip of thick forest which Brunhild said belted the whole island. And among those blue dreaming hills brooded the age-old city of Bal-Sagoth, its white walls and sapphire towers clean-cut against the morning sky. The suggestion of great distance had been an illusion.

"Is that not a kingdom worth fighting for?" cried Brunhild, her voice vibrant. "Swift now—let us bind this dry wood together for a raft. We coidd not live an instant swimming in that shark-haunted water."

At that instant a figure leaped up from the tall grass on the other shore—a naked, brown-skinned man who stared for a moment, agape. Then as Athelstane shouted and held up the grim head of Groth-golka, the fellow gave a startled cry and raced away like an antelope.

"A slave Gothan left to see if I tried to swim die lagoon," said Brunhild with angry satisfaction. "Let him run to the city and tell them—but let us make haste and cross the lagoon before Gothan can arrive and dispute our passage."

Turlogh and Athelstane were already busy. A number of dead trees lay about and these they stripped of their branches and bound together with long vines. In a short time diey had built a raft, crude and clumsy, but capable of bearing them across the lagoon. Brunhild gave a frank sigh of relief when they stepped on the other shore.

"Let us go straight to the city," said she. "The slave has reached it ere now and they will be watching us from the walls. A bold course is our only one. Thor's hammer, but I'd like to see Gothan's face when die slave tells him Brunhild is returning with two strange warriors and die head of him to whom she was given as sacrificel"

"Why did you not kill Gothan when you had the power?" asked Athelstane.

She shook her head, her eyes clouding with something akin to fear: "Easier said than done. Half the people hate Gothan, half love him, and all fear him. The most ancient men of the city say that he was old when they were babes. The people believe him to be more god than priest, and 1 myself have seen him do terrible and mysterious things, beyond the power of a common man.

"Nay, when I was but a puppet in his hands, I came only to the outer fringe of his mysteries, yet I have looked on sights that froze my blood. 1 have seen strange shadows flit along the midnight walls, and groping along black subterranean corridors in the dead of night I have heard unhallowed sounds and have felt the presence of hideous beings. And once J heard the grisly slavering bellowings of the nameless Thing Gothan has chained deep in die bowels of the hills on which vests die city of Bal-Sagoth."

Brunhild shuddered.

"There are many gods in Bal-Sagodi, but the greatest of all is Col-goroth, the god of darkness who sits forever in the Temple of Shadows. When I overthrew the power of Gothan, I forbade men to worship Col-goroth, and made the priests hail, as the one true diety, A-ala, the daughter of the sea—myself. I had strong men take heavy hammers and smite the image of Gol-goroth, but their blows only shattered the hammers and gave strange hurts to the men who wielded diem. Colli goroth was indestructible and showed no mar. So I desisted and shut the doors of the Temple of Shadows which were opened only when I was overthrown and Cothan, who had been skulking in the secret places of the city, came again into his own. Then Gol-goroth reigned again in his full terror and the idols of A-ala were overthrown in the Temple of the Sea, and the priests of A-ala died howling on the red-stained altar before the black god. But now we shall see!"

"Surely you are a very Valkyrie," muttered Athelstane. "But three against a nation is great odds—especially such a people as this, who must assuredly be all witches and sorcerers."

"Bah!" cried Brunhild contemptuously, "there are many sorcerers, it is true, but though the people are strange to us, they are mere fools in their own way, as arc all nations. When Cothan led me captive down the streets they spat on me. Now watch them turn on Ska, the new king Cothan has given them, when it seems my star rises again! But now we approach the city gates—be bold but wary!"

They had ascended the long swelling slopes and were not far from the walls which rose immensely upward. Surely, thought Turlogh, heathen gods built tin's city. The walls seemed of marble and with their fretted battlements and slim watch-towers, dwarfed the memory of such cities as Rome, Damascus and Byzantium. A broad white winding road led op from the lower levels to the plateau before the gates and as they came up this road, the three adventurers felt hundreds of hidden eyes fixed on them with fierce intensity. The walls seemed deserted; it might have been a dead city. But the impact of those staring eyes was felt.

Now they stood before the massive gates, which to the amazed eyes of the warriors seemed to be of chased silver.

"Here is an emperor's ransom!" muttered Athelstane, eyes ablaze. "Thor's blood, if we had but a stout band of reavers and a ship to carry away the plunder!"

"Smite on the gate and then step back, lest something fall upon you," said Brunhild, and the thunder of Turlogh's ax on the portals woke the echoes in the sleeping hills.

The three then fell back a few paces and suddenly the mighty gates swung inward and a strange concourse of people stood revealed. The two white warriors looked on a pageant of barbaric grandeur. A throng of tall, slim, brown-skinned men stood in the gates. Their only garments were loin-cloths of silk, the fine work of which contrasted strangely with the near-nudity of the wearers. Tall waving plumes of many colors decked their heads, and armlets and Ieglets of gold and silver, crusted with gleaming gems, completed their ornamentation. Armor they wore none, but each carried a light shield on his left arm, made of hard wood, highly polished, and braced with silver. Their weapons were slim-bladed spears, fight hatchets and slender daggers, all bladcd with fine steel. Evidently these warriors depended more on speed and skill than on brute force.

At the front of this band stood three men who instantly commanded attention. One was a lean hawk-faced warrior, almost as tall as Atiielstane, who wore about his neck a great golden chain from which was suspended a curious symbol in jade. One of the other men was young, evil-eyed; an impressive riot of colors in the mantle of parrot-feathers which swung from his shoulders. The third man had nothing to set him apart from the rest save his own strange personality, fie wore no mantle, bore no weapons. His only garment was a plain loincloth. He was very old; he alone of all the throng was bearded, and his beard was as white as the long hair which fell about his shoulders. He was very tall and very lean, and his great dark eyes blazed as from a hidden fire. Turlogh knew without being told that this man was Cothan, priest of the Black God. The ancient exuded a very aura of age and mystery. His great eyes were like windows of some forgotten temple, behind which passed like ghosts his dark and terrible thoughts. Turlogh sensed that Cothan had delved too deep in forbidden secrets to remain altogether human. He had passed through doors that had cut him off from the dreams, desires and emotions of ordinary mortals. Looking into those unwinking orbs Turlogh loll his skin crawl, as if he had looked into the eyes of a great serpent.

Now a glance upward showed that the walls were thronged with silent dark-eyed folk. The stage was set; all was in readiness for the swift, red drama. Turlogh felt his pulse quicken with fierce exhilaration and Athelstane's eyes began to glow with ferocious light.

Brunhild stepped forward boldly, head high, her splendid figure vibrant- The white warriors naturally could not understand what passed between her ami the others, except as they read from gestures and expressions, but later Brunhild narrated the conversation almost word for word.

"Well, people of Bal-Sagoth," said she, spacing her words slowly, "what words have you for your goddess whom you mocked and reviled?"

"What will you have, false one?" exclaimed the tall man, Ska, the
king set up by Cothan; "you who mocked at the customs of our an-
cestors, defied the laws of Bal-Sagoth, which are older than the world,
murdered your lover and defiled the shrine of Col-goroth? You were
doomed by law, king and god and placed in the grim forest beyond
the lagoon------ "

"And I, who am likewise a goddess and greater than any god," answered Brunhild mockingly, "am returned from the realm of horror with the head of Groth-golka!"

At a word from her, Atiielstane held up the great beaked head, and a low whispering ran about the battlements, tense with fear and bewilderment.

"Who are diese men?" Ska bent a worried frown on the two warriors.

"They are iron men who have come out of the sear answered Brunhild in a clear voice that carried far; "the beings who have come in response to the old prophecy, to overthrow the city of Bal-Sagoth, whose people arc traitors and whose priests are false!"

At these words the fearful murmur broke out afresh all up and down the line of die walls, till Gothan lifted his vulture-head and the people fell silent and shrank before the icy stare of his terrible eyes.

Ska glared bewilderedly, his ambition struggling with his superstitious fears.

Turlogh, looking closely at Gothan, believed that he read beneath the inscrutable mask of the old priest's face. For all his inhuman wisdom, Gothan had his limitations. This sudden return of one he thought well disposed of, and the appearance of the white-skinned giants accompanying her, had caught Gothan off his guard, Turlogh believed, rightly. There had been no time to properly prepare for their reception. The people had already begun to murmur in the streets against the severity of Ska's brief rule. They had always believed in Brunhild's divinity; now that she returned with two tall men of her own hue, bearing the grim trophy that marked the conquest of another of their gods, die people were wavering. Any small thing might turn the title either way.

"People of Bal-Sagoth!" shouted Brunhild suddenly, springing back and flinging her arms high, gazing full into the faces that looked down at her, "I bid you avert your doom before it is too late! You cast me out and spat on me; you turned to darker gods than 1! Yet all this will I forgive if you return and do obeisance to me! Once you reviled me— you called mc bloody and cruel! True, I was a hard mistress—but has Ska been an easy master? You said I lashed the people with whips of rawhide - has Ska stroked you with parrot feathers?

"A virgin died on my altar at the full title of each moon—but youths and maidens die at the waxing and the waning, the rising and the setting of each moon, before Gol-goroth, on whose altar a fresh human heart forever throbs! Ska is but a shadow! Your real lord is Gothan, who sits above the city like a vulture! Once you were a mighty people; your galleys filled the seas. Now you are a remnant and that is dwindling fasti Fools! You will all die on the altar of Gol-goroth ere Gothan is done and he will stalk alone among the silent ruins of Bal-Sagothl

"Look at him!" her voice rose to a scream as she lashed herself to an inspired frenzy, and even Turlogh, to whom die words were meaningless, shivered. "Look at him where he stands there like an evil spirit

out of the past! He is not even human! I tell you, he is a foul ghost, whose beard is dabbled with the blood of a million butcheries—an incarnate fiend out of the mist of the ages come to destroy the people of Bal-Sagoth!

"Choose now! Rise up against that ancient devil and his blasphemous gods, receive your rightful queen and deity again and you shall regain some of your former greatness. Refuse, and the ancient prophesy shall be fulfilled and the sun will set on the silent and crumbled ruins of Bal-Sagoth!"

Fired by her dynamic words, a young warrior with the insignia of a chief sprang to the parapet and shouted: "Hail to A-ala! Down with the bloody gods!"

Among the multitude many took up the shout and steel clashed as a score of fights started. The crowd on the battlements and in the streets surged and eddied, while Ska glared, bewildered. Brunhild, forcing back her companions who quivered with eagerness for action of some kind, shouted: "Hold! Let no man strike a blow yet! People of Bal-Sagoth, it has been a tradition since the beginning of time that a king must fight for his crown! Let Ska cross steel with one of these warriors! If Ska wins, I will kneel before him and let him strike oil my head! If Ska loses, then you shall accept me as your rightful queen and goddess!"

A great roar of approval went up from the walls as the people ceased their brawls, glad enough to shift the responsibility to their rulers.

"Will you fight, Ska?" asked Brunhild, turning to the king mockingly. "Or will you give me your head without further arguments?"

"Slut!" howled Ska, driven to madness, "I will take the skulls of these fools for drinking-cups, and then I will rend you between two bent trees!"

Gothan laid a hand on his arm and whispered in his ear, but Ska had reached the point where he was deaf to all but his fury. His achieved ambition, he had found, had faded to the mere part of a puppet dancing on Cothan's string; now even the hollow bauble of his kingship was slipping from him and this weneh mocked him to his face before his people. Ska went, to all practical effects, stark mad.

Brunhild turned to her two allies. "One of you must fight Ska."

"Let me be the one!" urged Turlogh, eyes dancing with eager
battle-lust. "He has the look of a man quick as a wildcat, and Athcl-
stanc, while a very bull for strength, is a thought slow for such
work----- "

"Slow!" broke in Athelstane reproachfully. "Why, Turlogh, lor a

man my weight------- "

"Enough," Brunhild interrupted. "He must choose lor himself. She spoke to Ska, who glared red-eyed for an instant, then indicated

Athelstane, who grinned joyfully, cast aside the bird's head and wishing his sword. Turlogh swore and stepped back. The king had decided that he would have a better chance against this huge buffalo of a man who looked slow, than against the black-haired tigerish warrior, whose eat-like quickness was evident.

"This Ska is without armor," rumbled the Saxon. "Let me likewise
dofl my mail and helmet so that we fight on equal terms--------------------- "

"No!" cried Brunhild. "Your armor is your only chancel I tell you, this false king fights like the play of summer lightning! You will be hard put to hold your own as it is. Keep on your armor, I sayl"

"Well, well," grumbled Athelstane, "1 will—I will. Though I say it is scarcely fair. But let him come on and make an end of it."

The huge Saxon strode ponderously toward his foe, who warily crouched and circled away. Atiielstane held his great sword in both hands before him, pointed upward, the hilt somewhat below the level of his chin, in position to strike a blow to right or left, or parry a sudden attack.

Ska had flung away his light shield, his fighting-sense telling him that it would be useless before the stroke of that heavy blade. In his right hand he held his slim spear as a man holds a throwing-dart, in his left a light, keen-edged hatchet, lie meant to make a fast, shifty fight of it, and his tactics were good. But Ska, having never encountered armor before, made his fatal mistake in supposing it to be apparel or ornament through which his weapons would pierce.

Now he sprang in, tin listing at Athclslaoe's face with his spear. The Saxon parried with ease and instantly cut tremendously at Ska's legs. The king Ixnmded high, clearing the whistling blade, and in midair he hacked down at Athelslane's bent head. The light hatchet shivered to bits on the Viking's helmet and Ska sprang back out of reach with a blood-lusting howl.

And now it was Athelstane who rushed with unexpected quickness, like a charging bull, and before that terrible onslaught Ska. bewildered by the breaking of his hatchet, was caught oil his guard flat-footed. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the giant looming over him like an overwhelming wave and he sprang in, instead of out, stabbing ferociously. That mistake was his last. The thrusting spear glanced harmlessly from the Saxon's mail, and in that instant the great sword sang down in a stroke the king could not evade. The force of that stroke tossed him as a man is tossed by a plunging bull. A dozen feet away fell Ska, king of Bal-Sagoth, to -lie shattered and dead in a ghastly welter of blood and entrails. The throng gaped, struck silent by the prowess of that deed.

"Hew off his head!'' cried Brunhild, her eyes flaming as she clenched li.i hind, mi thai the nails bit into the palms. "Impale that carrion'..

head on your sword-point so that we may carry it through the city gates with us as a token of victory I"

But Athclstane shook his head, cleansing his blade: "Nay, he was a brave man and I will not mutilate his corpse. It is no great feat I have done, for he was naked and I full-armed. Else it is in my mind, the brawl had gone differently."

Turlogh glanced at the people on the walls. They had recovered
from their astonishment and now a vast roar went up: "A-ala! Hail to
the true goddess!" And the warriors in the gateway dropped to their
knees and bowed their foreheads in the dust before Brunhild, who
stood proudly erect, bosorn heaving with fierce triumph. Truly,
thought Turlogh, she is more than a queen—she is a shield woman, a
Valkyrie, as Athclstane said. I

Now she stepped aside and, tearing the golden chain with its jade symbol from the dead neck of Ska. held it on high and shouted: "People of Bal-Sagoth, you have seen how your false king died before this golden-bearded giant who, being ol iron, shows no single cut! Choose now—do you receive me of your own free will?"

"Aye, we do!" the multitude answered in a great shout. "Return to your people, oh mighty and all-powerful queen!"

Brunhild smiled sardonically. "Come," said she to the warriors; "they are lashing themselves into a very frenzy of love and loyalty, having already forgotten their treachery. The memory of the mob is short!"

Aye, thought Turlogh, as at Brunhild's side he and the Saxon passed through the mighty gates between Gles of prostrate chieftains; aye, the memory of the mob is very short. But a few days have passed since thev were yelling as wildly for Ska the liberator scant hours had passed since Ska sat enthroned, master of life and death, and the people bowed before Iris feet. Now- Turlogh glanced at the mangled corpse which lay deserted and forgotten before the silver gates. The shadow of a circling vulture fell across it. The clamor of the multitude filled Turlogh's ears and he smiled a bitter smile.

lire great gates closed behind the three adventurers and Turlogh saw a broad white street stretching away in front of him. Other lesser streets radiated from this one. The two warriors caught a jumbled and chaotic impression of great white stone buildings shouldering each other; of sky-lifting towers and broad stair-fronted palaces. Turlogh knew there must be an ordered svstem by which the city was laid out, but to him all seemed a waste or stone and metal and polished wood, without rime or reason. IIis baffled eyes sought the street again.

Far up the street extended a mass of humanity, from which rose a rhythmic thunder of sound. Thousands of naked, gayly plumed men and women knelt there, bending forward to touch the marble flags with their foreheads, then swaying back with an upward Hinging of

their arms, all moving in perfect unison like the bending and rising of tall grass before the wind. And in time to their bowing they lifted a monotoned chant that sunk and swelled in a frenzy of ecstasy. So kcr wayward people welcomed back the goddess A-ala.

Just within the gates Brunhild stopped and there came to her the young chief who had first raised the shout of revolt upon the walk, lie knelt and kissed her bare feet, saying: "Oh great queen and goddess, thou knowest Zomar was ever faithful to thee! Thou knowest how I fought for thee and barely escaped the altar of Gol-goroth for thy sake!"

"Thou hast indeed been faithful, Zomai," answered Brunhild in the stilted language required for such occasions, "nor shall thy fidelity go unrewarded. Henceforth thou are commander of my own bodyguard." Then in a lower voice she added: "Gather a band from your own retainers and from those who have espoused my cause all along, and bring them to the palace. I do not trust the people any more than I have to!"

Suddenly Athelstane, not understanding this conversation, broke in: "Where is the old one with the beardr'

Turlogh started and glanced around, lie had almost forgotten the wizard. He had not seen him go—yet he was gone! Brunhild laughed ruefully.

"He's stolen away to breed more trouble in the shadows, lie and Gelka vanished when Ska tell. He has secret ways of coming and going and none may stay him. Forget him lor the time being; heed ye well—wc shall have plenty of him anon!"

Now the chiefs brought a finely carved and highly ornamented palanquin carried by two strong slaves, and Brunhild stepped into this, saying to her companions: "They are fearful of touching you, but ask if you would be carried. I think it better that you walk, one on each side; of me."

"Thor's blood!" rumbled Athelstane. shouldering the huge sword he had never sheathed, 'Tin no infant! I'll split the skull of the man who seeks to carry me!"

And so up the long white street went Brunhild, daughter of Bane Thorfin's son in the Orkneys, goddess ol the sea, queen of age-old IJal-Sagoth. Borne by two great slaves she went, with a while giant striding on each side with bared steel, and a concourse of chiefs following, while the multitude gave way to right and left, leaving a wide lane down which she passed. Golden trumpets sounded a fanfare of triumph, chums thundered, chants of worship echoed to the ringing skies. Surely in this riot ol glory, this barbaric pageant of splendor, the proud soul of the North-born girl drank deep and grew drunken with imperial pride.

Athelstaue's eyes glowed with simple delight at this flame of pagan

20 magnificence, but to the black-haired fighting man of die West, it seemed that even in the loudest clamor of triumph, the trumpet, the drum and the shouting faded away into the forgotten dust and silence of eternity. Kingdoms and empires pass away like mist from the sea, thought Turlogh; the people shout and triumph and even in the revelry of Belshazzar's feast, the Medes break the gates of Babylon. Even now the shadow of doom is over this city and the slow tides of oblivion lap the feet of this unheeding race. So in a strange mood Turlogh O'Brien strode beside the palanquin, and it seemed to him that he and Athclstane walked in a dead city, through throngs of dim ghosts, cheering a ghost queen.

3. The Fall of the Cods

Night had fallen on the ancient city of Bal-Sagoth. Turlogh, Athclstane and Brunhild sat alone in a room of the inner palace. The queen half reclined on a silken couch, while the men sat on mahogany eliairs, engaged in the viands that slave-girls had served them on golden dishes. The walls of this room, as of all the palace, were of marble, with golden scrollwork. The ceiling was of lapis-lazuli and the floor of silver-inlaid marble tiles. Heavy velvet hangings decorated the walls and silken cushions; richly made divans and mahogany chairs and tables littered the room in careless profusion.

"1 would give much for a horn of ale, but this wine is riot sour to the palate," said Athclstane, emptying a golden flagon with relish. "Brunhild, you have deceived us. You let us understand it would take hard fighting to win back your crown—yet 1 have struck but one blow and my sword is thirsty as Turlogh's ax which has not drunk at all. We hammered on the gates and the people fell down and worshipped with no more ado. And until a little while ago. we but stood by your throne in the great palace room, while you spoke to the throngs that came and knocked their heads on the floor before you—by Thor, never have I heard such chattering and jabbering! My ears ring till now— what were they saying? And where is that old conjurer Gothan?"

"Your steel will drink deep yet, Saxon," answered the girl grimly, resting her chin on her hands and eyeing the warriors with deep moody eyes. "Had you gambled with cities and crowns as I have done, you would know that seizing a throne may be easier than keeping it. Our sudden appearance with the bird-god's head, your killing of Ska, swept the people off their feet. As for the rest—I held audience in the palace as you saw, even if you did not understand, and the people who came in bowing droves were assuring me of their unswerving loyalty —ha! 1 graciously pardoned them all, but I am no fool. When they have time to think, they will begin to grumble again. Gothan is linking in the shadows somewhere, plotting evil to us all, you may be sure.

This city is honeycombed witli secret corridors and subterranean passages of which only the priests know. Even I, who have traversed some of them when I was Cothan's puppet, know not where to look for the secret doors, since Cothan always led me through them blindfolded.

"just now, I think [ hold the upper hand. The people look on you with more awe than (hey regard me. They think your armor and helmets are part of your bodies and that you are invulnerable. Did you not note them timidly touching your mail as wc passed through the crowd, and the amazement on their faces as they felt the iron of it?"

"For a people so wise in some ways they are very foolish in others," said Turlogh. "Who are they ancl whence came they?"

"They are so old," answered "Brunhild, "that their most ancient legends give no hint of their origin. Ages ago they were a part of a great empire which spread out over the many isles of this sea. But some of the islands sank and vanished with their cities and people. Then the red-skinned savages assailed them and isle after isle fell before them. At last only this island was left unconquered, and the people have become weaker and forgotten many ancient arts. For lack of ports to sail to, the galleys rotted by the wharves which themselves crumbled into decay. Not in the memory of man has any son of Bal-Sagoth sailed the seas. At irregular intervals the red people descend upon the Isle of the Gods, traversing the seas in their long war-canoes which bear grinning skulls on the prows. Not far away as a Viking would reckon a sea-voyage, but out of sight over the sea rim lie the islands inhabited by these red men who centuries ago slaughtered the folk who dwelt there. We have alwavs beaten them off; they cannot scale the walls, but still they come and the fear of their raid is always hovering over the isle.

"But it is not them 1 fear; it is Cothan, who is at this moment either slipping like a loathly serpent through his black tunnels or else brewing abominations in one of his hidden chambers. In the caves deep in the hills to which his tunnels lead, he works fearful and unholy magic. His subjects are beasts—serpents, spiders, and great apes; and men— red captives and wretches of his own race. Deep in his grisly caverns he makes beasts of men and hall -men of beasts, mingling bestial with human in ghastly creation. No man dares guess at the horrors that have spawned in the darkness, or what shapes of terror and blasphemy have come into being during the ages Cothan has wrought his abominations; for he is not as other men, and has discovered the secret of life everlasting. He has at least brought into foul life one creature that even he fears, the gibbering, mowing, nameless Thing he keeps chained in the furtherest cavern that no human foot save his lias trod, j He would loose it against me if he dared. ...

"But it grows late and I would sleep. I will sleep in the room next to this, which has no other opening than this door. Not even a slave-girl will I keep with me, for I trust none of these people fully. You shall keep this room, and though the outer door is bolted, one had better watch while the other sleeps. Zomar and his guardsmen patrol the corridors outside, but I shall feel safer with two men of my own blood between me and the rest of the city."

She rose, and with a strangely lingering glance at Turlogh, entered her chamber and closed the door behind her.

Athclstane stretched and yawned. "Well, Turlogh," said he lazily, "men's fortunes are unstable as the sea. Last night I was the picked swordsman of a band of reavers and you a captive. This dawn we were lost outcasts springing at each other's throats. Now we are sword brothers and right-hand men to a queen. And you, I think, are destined to become a king."

"How so?"

"Why, have you not noticed the Orkney girl's eyes on you? Faith,
there's more than friendship in her glances that rest on those black
locks and that brown face of yours. 1 tell you---------- "

"Enough," Turlogh's voice was harsh as an old wound stung him.
"Women in power are white-fanged wolves. It was the spite of a
woman that------- " He stopped.

"Well, well," returned Athclstane tolerantly, "there are more good women than bad ones. I know—it was the intrigues of a woman that made you an outcast. Well, we should be good comrades. I am an outlaw, too. If I should show my face in Wcssex I would soon be looking down on the countryside from a stout oak limb."

"What drove you out on the Viking path? So far have the Saxons forgotten the ocean-ways that King Alfred was obliged to hire Frisian rovers to build and man his lleet when he fought the Danes."

Athclstane shrugged his mighty shoulders and began whetting his dirk.

"I had a yearning for the sea even when I was a shock-headed child in Wessex. I was still a youth when I killed a young eorl and fled the vengeance of his people. I found refuge in the Orkneys and the ways of the Vikings were more to my liking than the ways of my own blood. But f came back to fight against Canute, and when England submitted to his rule, he gave me command of his house-carles. That made the Danes jealous because of the honor given a Saxon who had fought against them, and the Saxons remembered I had left Wcssex under a cloud once, and murmured that I was overly-well favored by the conquerors. Well, there was a Saxon thane and a Danish jarl who one night at feast assailed me with fiery words and I forgot myself and slew them both.

"So England—was—again—barred—to—me. I—took—the—Viking
- -path—again-------- "

Athclstane's words trailed oil. His hands slid limply from his lap and the whetstone and dirk dropped to the floor. His head fell forward on his broad chest and his eyes closed.

"To much wine," muttered Turlogh. "But let him slumber; I'll keep watch."

Yet even as he spoke, the Gael was aware of a strange lassitude stealing over him. lie lay back in the broad chair. His eyes felt heavy and sleep veiled his brain despite himself. And as he lay there, a strange nightmare vision came to him. One of the heavy hangings on the wall opposite the door swayed violently and from behind it slunk a fearful shape that crept slavering across the room. Turlogh watched it apathetically, aware that he was dreaming and at the same time wondering at the strangeness of the dream. The thing was grotesquely like a crooked gnarled man in shape, but its face was bestial. It bared yellow fangs as it lurched silently toward him, and from under penthouse brows small reddened eyes gleamed demoniacally. Yet there was something of the human in its countenance; it was neither ape nor man, but an unnatural creature horribly compounded of both.

Now the foul apparition halted before him, and as the gnarled fingers clutched his throat, Turlogh was suddenly and fearfully aware that this was no dream but a fiendish reality. With a burst of desperate effort he broke the unseen chains that held him and hurled himself from the chair. The grasping fingers missed his throat, but quick as he was, he could not elude the swift lunge of those hairy arms, and the next moment he was tumbling about the floor in a death grip with the monster, whose sinews felt like pliant steel.

That fearful battle was fought in silence save for the hissing of hard-drawn breath. Turlogh's left forearm was thrust under the apish chin, holding back the grisly fangs from his throat, about which the monster's fingers had locked. Athelstane still slept in his chair, head fallen forward. Turlogh tried to call to him, but those throttling hands had shut oil his voice were last choking out his life. The room swam in a red haze before his distended eyes. His right hand, clenched into an iron mallet, haltered desperately at the fearful face bent toward his. tin* beast like teeth shattered under his blows and blood splaUciod, but still the red eyes gloated and the taloned lingers sank deeper and deeper until a ringing in Turlogh's ears knelled his soul's departure.

Even as he sank into semi-unconsciousness, his falling hand struck something his numbed fighting-brain recognized as the dirk Athelstane had dropped on the floor. Blindly, with a dying gesture. Turlogh struck ana felt the fingers loosen suddenly. Feeling the return of life and power, he heaved up and over, with his assailant beneath him. Through red mists that slowly lightened, Turlogh Dubh saw the ape-man, now encrimsoned, writhing beneath him, and he drove the dirk home until the dumb horror lay still with wide staring eyes.

The Gael staggered to his feet, dizzy and panting, trembling in every limb. He drew in great gulps of air and his giddiness slowly cleared. Blood trickled plentifully from the wounds in his throat. He noted with amazement that the Saxon still slumbered. And suddenly he began to feci again the tides of unnatural weariness and lassitude that had rendered him helpless before. Picking up his ax, he shook off the feeling with difficulty and stepped toward the curtain from behind which the ape-man had come. Like an invisible wave a subtle

tower emanating from those hangings struck him, and with weighted iinbs he forced his way across the room. Now he stood before the curtain and fell the power of a terrific evil will beating upon his own, menacing his very soul, threatening to enslave him, brain and body. Twice he raised his hand and twice it dropped limply to his side. Now for the third time he made a mighty effort and tore the hangings bodily from the wall. For a Hashing instant he caught a glimpse of a bizarre, half-naked figure in a mantle of parrot-feathers and a headgear of waving plumes. Then as he felt the full hypnotic blast of those blazing eyes, he closed his own eyes and struck blind. He felt his ax sink deep; then he opened his eyes and gazed at the silent figure which lay at his feet, cleft head in a widening crimson pool.

And now Athelstane suddenly heaved erect, eyes flaring bewil-
dercdly, sword out. "What------- ?" he stammered, glaring wildly, 'Tur-
logh, what in Thor's name's happened? Thor's blood! That is a priest
there, but what is this dead thing?"

"One of the devils of this foul city," answered Turlogh, wrenching
his ax free, "1 think Cothan has failed again. This one stood behind
the hangings and bewitched us unawares. He put the spell of sleep
on us------ "

"Aye, I slept," the Saxon nodded dazedly. "But how came they
here----- "

"There must be a secret door behind these hangings, though 1 can-
not find it------ "

"Hark!" From the room where the queen slept there came a vague scuffling sound, that in its very faintness seemed fraught with grisly potentialities.

"Brunhild!" Turlogh shouted. A strangled gurgle answered him. He thrust against the door. It was locked. As he heaved up his ax to hew it open, Athelstane brushed him aside and hurled his full weight against it. The panels crashed and through their ruins Athelstane plunged into the room. A roar burst from his lips. Over the Saxon's shoulder Turlogh saw a vision of delirium. Brunhild, queen of Bal-Sagoth, writhed helpless in midair, gripped by the black shadow of

a nightmare. Then as the great black shape turned cold flaming eyes on them Turlogh saw it was a living creature. It stood, man-like, upon two tree-like legs, but its outline and face were not of a man, beast or devil. This, Turlogh felt, was the horror that even Cothan had hesitated to loose upon his foes; the arch-fiend that the demoniac priest had brought into life in his hidden caves of horror. What ghastly knowledge had been necessary, what hideous blending of human and bestial things with nameless shapes from outer voids of darkness?

Held like a bat le in arms Brunhild writhed, eyes flaring with horror, and as the Thing took a misshapen hand from her white throat to defend itself, a scream of heart-shaking fright burst from her pale lips. Athelstane, first in the room, was ahead of the Gael. The black shape loomed over the giant Saxon, dwarfing and overshadowing him, but Athelstane, gripping the hilt with both hands, lunged upward. The great sword sank over half its length into the black body and came out crimson as the monster reeled back. A hellish pandemonium of sound burst forth, and the echoes of that hideous yell thundered through the palace and deafened the hearers. Turlogh was springing in, ax high, when the fiend dropped the girl and lied reeling across the room, vanishing in a dark opening that now gaped in the wall. Athelstane, clean berserk, plunged after it.

Turlogh made to follow, but Brunhild, reeling up, threw her white arms around him in a grip even he could hardly break. "No!" she screamed, eyes ablaze with terror, "do not follow them into that fearful corridor! It must lead to Hell itself! The Saxon will never return! Let you not share his fate!"

"Loose me, woman!" roared Turlogh in a frenzy, striving to disengage himself without hurting her. "My comrade may be fighting for his* life!"

"Wait till I summon the guard!" she cried, but Turlogh flung her from him, and as he sprang through the secret doorway, Brunhild smote on the jade gong until the palace re-echoed. A loud pounding began in the corridor and Zomar's voice shouted: "Oh queen, are you in peril? Shall we burst the door?"

Hasten!" she screamed, as she rushed to the outer door and flung it open.

Turlogh, leaping recklessly into the corridor, raced along in darkness for a few moments, hearing ahead of him the agonized bellowing of the wounded monster and the deep fierce shouts of the Viking. Then these noises faded away in the distance as he came into a narrow passageway faintly lighted with torches stuck into niches. Face down on the floor lay a brown man, clad in gay feathers, his skull crushed like an egg-shell.

How long Turlogh O'Brien followed the dizzy windings of the shadowy corridor he never knew. Other smaller passages led off to

26 each side but he kept to the main corridor. At last he passed under an arched doorway and came out into a strange vasty room.

Somber massive columns upheld a shadowy ceiling so high it seemed like a brooding cloud arched against a midnight sky. Turlogh saw that he was in a temple. Behind a black red-stained stone altar loomed a mighty form, sinister and abhorrent. The god Gol-gorothl Surely it must be he. But Turlogh spared only a single glance for die colossal figure that brooded diere in the shadows. Before him was a strange tableau. Athclstane leaned on his great sword and gazed at the two shapes which sprawled in a red welter at his feet. Whatever foul magic had brought the Black Thing into life, it had taken but a thrust of English steel to hurl it back into the limbo whence it came. The monster lay half across its last victim—a gaunt white-bearded man whose eyes were starkly evil, even in death.

"Gothanl" ejaculated the startled Gael.

"Aye, the priest—I was close behind this troll or whatever it is, all the way along the corridor, but for all its size it fled like a deer. Once one in a feather mantle tried to halt it, and it smashed his skull and paused not an instant. At last we burst into this temple, I close upon die monster's heels with my sword raised for die death-cut. But Thor's blood! When it saw the old one standing by that altar, it gave one fearful howl and tore him to pieces and died itself, all in an instant, before I could reach it and strike."

Turlogh gazed at the huge formless thing. Looking directly at it, he could form no estimate of its nature. He got only a chaotic impression of great size and inhuman evil. Now it lay like a vast shadow blotchcct out on the marble floor. Surely black wings beating from moonless gulfs had hovered over its birth, and d>e grisly souls of nameless demons had gone into its being.

And now Brunhild rushed from the dark corridor with Zomar and the guardsmen. And from outer doors and secret nooks came others silently—warriors, and priests in feathered mantles, until a great throng stood in the Temple of Darkness.

A fierce cry broke from the queen as she saw what had happened. Her eyes blazed terribly and she was gripped by a strange madness.

"At last!" she screamed, spurning the corpse of her arch-foe with her heel, "at last I am true mistress of Bal-Sagoth! The secrets of the hidden ways are mine now, and old Gothan's beard is dabbled in his own bloodl"

She flung her arms high In fearful triumph, and ran toward the grim idol, screaming exultant insults like a mad-woman. And at that instant the temple rocked! The colossal image swayed outward, and then

(

lilched suddenly forward as a tall tower falls. Turlogh shouted and eaped forward, but even as he did. with a thunder like the bursting of a world, the god Gol-goroth crashed down upon the doomed

woman, who stood frozen. The mighty image splintered into a thousand great fragments, blotting from the sight of men for ever Brunhild, <laughter of Bane ThorfiVs son, queen of Bal-Sagoth. From under the ruins there oozed a wide crimson stream.

Warriors and priests stood frozen, deafened by the crash of that fall, stunned by the weird catastrophe. An icy hand touched Turlogh's spine. Had that vast bulk been thrust over by the hand of a dead man? As it had rushed downward it had seemed to the Cael that the inhuman features had for an instant taken on the likeness of the dead Cothan!

Now as all stood speechless, the acolyte Gelka saw and seized his opportunity.

"Col-goroth has spoken!" he screamed. "He has crushed the false goddess! She was but a wicked mortal! And these strangers, too, are mortal! See—he bleeds!"

The priest's finger stabbed at the dried blood on Turlogh's throat and a wild roar went up from the throng. Dazed and bewildered by the swiftness and magnitude of the late events, they were like crazed wolves, ready to wipe out doubts and fear in a burst of bloodshed. Gelka bounded at Turlogh, hatchet Hashing, and a knife in the hand of a satellite licked into Zomar's back. Turlogh had not understood the shout, but he realized the air was tense with danger for Athelstane and himself. He met the leaping Gelka with a stroke that sheared through the waving plumes and the skull beneath, then hall a dozen lances broke on his buckler and a rush of bodies swept him back against a great pillar. Then Athelstane, slow of thought, who had stood gaping for the Hashing second it had taken this to transpire, awoke in a blast of awesome fury. With a deafening roar he swung his heavy sword in a mighty arc. The whistling blade whipped off a head, sheared through a torso and sank deep into a spinal column. The three corpses fell across each other and even in the madness of the strife, men cried out at the marvel of that single stroke.

But like a brown, blind tide of fury the maddened people of Bal-Sagoth rolled on their foes. The guardsmen of the dead queen, trapped in the press, died to a man without a chance to strike a blow. But the overthrow of the two white warriors was no such easy task. Back to back they smashed and smote; Athelstane's sword was a thunderbolt of death; Turlogh's ax was lightning. Hedged close by a sea of snarling brown laces and (lashing steel, they hacked their way slowly toward a doorway. The very mass of the attackers hindered the warriors of Bal-Sagoth, for they had no space to guide their strokes, while the weapons of the seafarers kept a bloody ring clear in front of them.

Heaping a ghastly row of corpses as they went, the comrades slowly cut their way through the snarling press. The Temple of

Shadows, witness of many a bloody deed, was flooded with gore spilled like a red sacrifice to her broken gods. The heavy weapons of the white fighters wrought fearful havoc among their naked, lighter-limbed foes, while their armor guarded their own lives. But their arms, legs and faces were cut and gashed by the frantically flying steel and it seemed the sheer number of their foes woidd overwhelm them ere they could reach the door.

Then they had reached it, and made desperate play until the brown warriors, no longer able to come upon them from all sides, drew back for a breathing-space, leaving a torn red heap before the threshold. And in that instant the two sprang back into the corridor and seizing the great brazen door, slammed it in the very faces of the warriors who leaped howling to prevent it. Athelslanc, bracing his mighty legs, held it against their combined efforts until Turlogh had time to find and slip the bolt.

"Thor!" gasped the Saxon, shaking the blood in a red shower from his face. 'This is close play! What now, Turlogh?"

"Down the corridor, quick!" snapped the Gael, "before they come on us from this way and trap us like rats against this door. By Satan, die whole city must be roused! Hark to that roaring!"

In truth, as they raced down the shadowed corridor, it seemed to them that all Bal-Sagoth had burst into rebellion and civil war. From all sides came the clashing of steel, the shouts of men, and the screams of women, overshadowed by a hideous howling. A lurid glow became apparent down the corridor and then even as Turlogh, in the lead, rounded a corner and came out into an open courtyard, a vague figure leaped at him and a heavy weapon fell with unexpected force on his shield, almost felling him. But even as he staggered he struck back and the upper-spike on his ax sank under the heart of his attacker, who fell at his feet. In the glare that illumined all, Turlogh saw his victim diflered from the brown warriors he had been fighting. This man was naked, powerfully muscled and of a copperish red rather than brown. The heavy animal-like jaw, the slanting low forehead showed none of the intelligence and refinement of the brown people, but only a brute ferocity. A heavy war-club, rudely carved, lay beside him.

"By Thor!" exclaimed Athelstane, "the city burns!"

Turlogh looked up. They were standing on a sort of raised courtyard from which broad steps led down into the streets and from this vantage-point they had a plain view of the terrific end of Bal-Sagoth, Flames leaped madly higher and higher, paling the moon, and in the red glare pigmy figures ran to and fro, falling and dying like puppets dancing to the tune of the Black Gods. Through the roar of the flames and the crashing of falling walls cut screams of death and shrieks <>( ghastly triumph. The city was swarming with naked, copper-skinned

29 devils who burned and ravished and butchered in one red carnival

of madness.

The red men of the isles! By the thousands they had descended on the Isle of the Gods in the night, and whether stealth or treachery let them through the walls, the comrades never knew, but now they ravened through the corpse-strewn streets, glutting their blood-lust in holocaust and massacre wholesale. Not all the gashed forms that lay in the crimson-running streets were brown; the people of the doomed city fought with desperate courage but, outnumbered and caught off guard, their courage was futile. The red men were like blood-hungry tigers.

"What ho, Turlogh!" shouted Athelstane, beard abristle, eyes ablaze as the madness of the scene fired a like passion in his own fierce soul. "The world ends! Let us into the thick of it and glut our steel before we diel Who shall we strike for—the red or the brown?"

"Steady!" snapped the Gael. "Either people woidd cut our throats. We must hack our way through to the gates, and the Devil take them all. We have no friends here. This way—down these stairs. Across the roofs in yonder direction I see the arch of a gate."

The comrades sprang down the stairs, gained the narrow street below and ran swiftly in the way Turlogh indicated. About them washed a red inundation of slaughter. A thick smoke veiled all now, and in the murk chaotic groups merged, writhed and scattered, littering the shattered flags with gory shapes. It was like a nightmare in which demoniac figures leaped and capered, looming suddenly in the fire-shot mist, vanishing as suddenly. The Haines from each side of the streets shouldered each other, singeing the hair of the warriors as they ran. Boofs fell in with an awesome thunder and walls crashing into ruin filled the air with flying death. Men struck blindly from the smoke and the seafarers cut them down and never knew whether their skins were brown or red.

Now a new note rose in the cataclysmic horror. Blinded by the smoke, confused by the winding streets, the red men were trapped in the snare of their own making. Fire is impartial; it can burn the lighter, as well as the intended victim; and a tailing wall is blind, The red men abandoned their prey and ran howling to and fro like beasts, seeking escape; many, finding this futile, turned back in a last unreasoning storm of madness as a blinded tiger turns, and made their last moments of life a crimson hurst of slaughter.

Turlogh, with the unerring sense of direction that comes to men who live the life of the wolf, ran toward the point where he knew an outer gate to be; yet in the windings of the streets and the screen of smoke, doubt assailed him. From the flame-shot murk in front of him a fearful scream rang out. A naked girl reeled blindly into view and fell at Turlogh's feet, blood gushing from her mutilated breast. A howling, red-stained devil, close on her heels, jerked back her head and cut her throat a fraction of a second before Turloghs ax ripped the head from its shoulders and spun it grinning into the street. And at that second a sudden wind shifted the writhing smoke and the comrades saw die open gateway ahead of them, aswarm with red warriors. A fierce shout, a blasting rush, a mad instant of volcanic ferocity that littered the gateway with corpses, and they were through and racing down the slopes toward the distant forest and the beach beyond. Before them the sky was reddening for dawn; behind them rose the soul-shaking tumult of the doomed city.

Like hunted things they fled, seeking brief shelter among the many groves from time to time, to avoid groups of savages who ran toward the city. The whole island seemed to be swarming with them; the chiefs must have drawn on all the isles within hundreds of miles for a raid of such magnitude. And at last the comrades reached the strip of forest, and breathed deeply as they came to the beach and found it abandoned save for a number of long skull-decorated war canoes.

Athclstane sat down and gasped for breath. "Thor's blood! What now? What may we do but hide in these woods until those red devils hunt us out?"

"Help me launch this boat," snapped Turlogh. "We'll take our
chance on the open main........ -"

"Ho!" Athclstane leaped creel, pointing, "Thor's blood, a ship!"

The sun was just up, gleaming like a great golden coin on the sea-rim. And limned in the sun swam a tall, high-pooped craft. The comrades leaped into the nearest canoe, shoved off and rowed like mad, shouting and waving their oars to attract the attention of the crew. Powerful muscles drove the long shin craft along at an incredible chp, and it was not long before the ship stood about and allowed diem to come alongside. Darkfaced men, clad in mail, looked over the rail.

"Spaniards," muttered Athclstane. "If they recognize me, I had better stayed on the island!"

But he clambered up the chain without hesitation, and the two wanderers fronted the lean somber-faced man whose armor was that of a knight of Asturias. He spoke to them in Spanish and Turlogh answered him, for the Gael, like many of his race, was a natural linguist and had wandered far and spoken many tongues. In a few words the Dalcasstan told their story and explained trie great pillar of smoke which now rolled upward in the morning air from the isle.

"Tell him there is a king's ransom for the taking," put in Athelslane. "tell him of the silver gates, Turlogh."

But when the Gael spoke of the vast loot in the doomed city, the commander shook his head.

"Good sir, we have no time to secure it, nor men to waste in the

31 taking. Those red fiends yon describe would hardly give up anything - though useless to them—without a fierce battle and neither my time nor my force is mine. 1 am Don Boderigo del Cortcz of Castile and this ship, the Gray Friar, is one of a fleet that sailed to harry the Moorish Corsairs. Some clays agone we were separated from the rest of the fleet in a sea skirmish and the tempest blew us far off our course. We are even now beating back to rejoin the fleet if we can find it; if not, to harry the inlidel as well as we may. We serve Cod and the king and we cannot halt for mere dross as you suggest. But you are welcome aboard this ship and we have need of such fighting men as you appear to be. You will not regret it, should you wish to join us and strike a blow for Christendom against the Moslems."

In the narrow-bridged nose and deep dark eyes, as in the lean ascetic face, Turlogh read the fanatic, the stainless cavalier, the knight errant. He spoke to Athelstane: "This man is mad, but there arc good blows to be struck and strange lands to see; anyway, we have no other choice."

"One place is as good as another to masterless men and wanderers," quoth the huge Saxon. "Tell him we will follow him to Hell and singe the tail of the Devil if there be any chance of loot.'

4. Empire

Turlogh and Athelstane leaned on the rail, gazing back at the swiftly receding Island of the Gods, from which rose a pillar of smoke, laden with the ghosts of a thousand centuries and the shadows and mysteries of forgotten empire, and Athelstane cursed as only a Saxon can.

"A king's ransom—and after all that blood-letting—no loot!"

Turlogh shook his head. "We have seen an ancient kingdom fall— we have seen the last remnant of the world's oldest empire sink into flames and the abyss of oblivion, and barbarism rear its brute head above the ruins. So pass the glory and the splendor and the imperial purple—in red flames and yellow smoke."

"But not one bit of plunder-------- " persisted the Viking.

Again Turlogh shook his head. "I brought away with me the rarest gem upon the island—something for which men and women have died and the gutters run with blood."

He drew from his girdle a small object—a curiously carved symbol of jade.

"The emblem of kingship!" exclaimed Athelstane.

"Aye—as Brunhild struggled with me to keep me from following you into the corridor, this thing caught in my mail and was torn from the golden chain that held it."

of death. Gazing darkly upon the altar, I muttered blasphemy against Aforgomon who, in his inexorable course, had taken away my beloved and had sent no solace for my grief. .Separately I cursed the signs upon the altar: the stars, the worlds, the suns, the moons, that meted and fulfilled the processes of time. Bclthoris, my betrothed, had died at the curl of the previous autumn: and so, with double maledictions. I cursed the stars and planets presiding over that season.

f became aware that a shadow had fallen beside my own on the altar, and knew that the dark sage and sorcerer Attnox had obeyed my summons. Fearfully but not without hope 1 turned toward him, noting first of all that he bore under his arm a heavy, sinister-looking volume with covers of black steel ami hasps of adamant. Only when I had made sure of this did 1 lift my eyes to his face, which was little less somber and forbidding than the tome he carried.

"Creeling, O Calaspa," he said harshly. "I have eoine against my own will and judgment. The lore that you request is in this volume; and since you saved me in former years from the inquisitorial wrath of the time-god's priests, I cannot refuse to share it with you. lint understand well that even 1, who have called upon names that are dreadful to utter, and have evoked forbidden presences, shall never dare to assist you in this conjuration. Gladly would I help you to hold converse with the shadow of Bclthoris, or to animate her still unwith-ered body and draw it forth from the tomb. But that which you purpose is another mailer. You alone must perform the ordained rites, must speak the necessary words: for the consequences of this thing will be direr than you deem."

"1 care not for the consequences," 1 replied eagerly, "if it be possible to bring back the lost hours which I shared with Bclthoris. Think you that I could content myself with her shadow, wandering thinly back from the Borderland? Or that I could take pleasure in the fair clay that the breath of necromancy has troubled and lias made to arise and walk without mind or soul? Nay, the Bclthoris I would summon is she on whom the shadow of death has never yet fallen!"

It seemed that Atinox, the master of doubtful arts, the vassal of umbrageous powers,recoiled and blenched before my vehement declaration.

"Bethink you," he said with minatory sternness, "that this thing will constitute a breach of the sacred logic of time and a blasphemy against Aforgomon, god of the minutes and the cycles. Moreover, there is little to be gained: lor not in its entirety may you bring back the season of your love, but only one single hour, torn with in Unite violence from its rightful period in time. . . . Refrain, I adjure yovi, and content yourself with a lesser sorcery."

"Give me the book," I demanded. "My service to Aforgomon is forfeit. With due reverence and devotion 1 have worshipped tin- time-

39 god, and have done in his honor the rites ordained from eternity; and for all this the god has betrayed me."

Then, in that high-climbing, luxuriant garden beneath the four suns, Atmox opened the adamantine clasps of the steel-hound volume; and, turning to a certain page, he laidthe book reluctantly in my hands. The page, like its fellows, was of some unholy parchment streaked with musty diseolorations and blackening at the margin with sheer antiquity; but upon it shone unquenchably the dread characters a primal archimage had written with an ink bright as the new-shod ichor of demons. Above this page I bent in my madness, conning it over and over till f was dazzled by the fiery runes; and, shutting my eyes, I saw them burn on a red darkness, still legible, and writhing like hellish worms.

"Hollowly, like the sound of a far bell, I heard the voice of Atmox: "You have learned, () Calaspa, the unutterable name of that One whose assistance can alone restore the fled hours. And you have learned the incantation that will rouse that hidden power, and the sacrifice needed for its propitiation. Knowing these things, is your heart still strong and your purpose firm?"

The name 1 had read in the wizard volume was that of the chief cosmic power antagonistic to Aforgomon; the incantation and the required offering were those of a foul demonolatry. Nevertheless, I did not hesitate, but gave resolute affirmative answer to the somber query of Atmox.

Perceiving thai 1 was inflexible, he bowed his head, trying no more to dissuade me. Then, as the llaine-runed volume had bade me do, 1 defiled the altar of Aforgomon, blotting certain ol its prime symbols with dust and spittle. While Atmox looked on in silence, 1 wounded my right arm to its deepest vein on the sharp-tip peel gnomon of the dial: and, letting the blood drip Iron) zone to zone, from orb to orb of the graven agate, I made unlawful sacrifice, and intoned aloud, in the name of the Lurking Chaos. Xexanoth, an abominable ritual composed by a backward repetition and jumbling of litanies sacred to the time- god.

Even as 1 chanted the incantation, it seemed that webs of shadow were woven foully athwart the suns; and the ground shook a little, as if colossal demons trod the world's rim. striding stupendously from abysses beyond. The garden walls and trees wavered like a windblown reflection in a pool; and 1 grew faint with the loss of that life-blood I had |>oured out in dcinuuolatrous offering. Then, in my (lesh and in my brain, I felt the intolerable racking of a vibration like the long-drawn shock of cities riven by earthquake, and coasts crumbling before some chaotic sea; and my flesh was torn and harrowed, and my brain shuddered with the toneless discords sweeping through me from deep to deep.

I faltered, and confusion gnawed at my inmost being. Dimly I heard the prompting of Atmox, and dimmer still was the sound of my own voice that made answer to Xexanoth, naming die impious necromancy which was to be effected only through its power. Madly 1 implored from Xexanoth, in despite of time and its ordered seasons, one hour of that bygone autumn which I had shared with Belthoris; and imploring tins, I named no special hour: for all, in memory, had seemed of an equal joy and gladness.

As the words ceased upon my lips, I thought that darkness fluttered in the air like a great wing; and the four suns went out, and my heart was stilled as if in death. Then the light returned, falling obliquely from suns mellow with full-tided autumn; and nowhere beside ine was there any shadow of Atmox; and the altar of zoned agate was bloodless and undefiled. I, the lover of Belthoris, witting not of the doom and sorrow to come, stood happily widi my beloved before the altar, and saw her young hands crown its ancient dial with the flowers we had plucked from the garden.

Dreadful beyond all fathoming are the mysteries of time. Even I, the priest and initiate, though wise in the secret doctrines of Aforgo-mon, know little enough of that elusive, ineluctable process whereby the present becomes the past and the future resolves itself into the present. All men have pondered the riddles of duration and transience; have wondered, vainly, to what bourn the lost days and the sped cycles arc consigned. Some have dreamt that the past abides unchanged, becoming eternity as it slips from our mortal ken; and others have deemed that time is a stairway whose steps crumble one by one behind the climber, falling into a gulf of nothing.

Howsoever this may be, I know that she who stood beside me was the Belthoris on whom no shadow of mortality had yet descended. The hour was one new-born in a golden season; and the minutes to come were pregnant with all wonder and surprise belonging to the untried future.

Taller was my beloved than the frail, unbowed lilies of the garden. In her eyes was the sapphire of moonless evenings sown with small golden stars. Her lips were strangely curved, but only blitheness and joy had gone to their shaping. She and I had been betrothed from our childhood, and the time of the marriage-rites was now approaching. Our intercourse was wholly free, according to the custom of that world. Often she came to walk with me in my garden and to decorate the altar of that god whose revolving moons and suns would soon bring the season of our felicity.

The moths that flew about us, winged with aerial cloth of gold, were no lighter than our hearts. Making blithe holiday, we fanned om frolic mood to a high flame of rapture. We were akin to the lull hued, climbing flowers, die swift-darting insects, and our spmis Minded

41 and soared with the perfumes that were drawn skyward in the warm air. Unheard by us was the loud murmuring of the mighty city of Kalood lying beyond my garden walls; for us the many-peopled planet known as Hestan no longer existed; and we dwelt alone in a universe of ligbt, in a blossomed heaven. Exalted by love in the high harmony of those moments, we seemed to touch eternity; and even 1, the priest of Aforgomon, forgot the blossom-fretting days, the system-devouring cycles.

In the sublime folly of passion, I swore then that death or discord could never mar the perfect communion of our hearts. After we had wreathed the altar, I sought the rarest, the most delectable flowers: frail-curving cups of winc-washod pearl, of moony azure and white with scrolled purple lips; and these I twined, between kisses and laughter, in the black maze of Belthoris' hair, saying that another shrine than that of time should receive its due offering.

Tenderly, with a lover's delay, 1 lingered over the wreathing; and, ere I had finished, there fluttered to the ground beside us a great, crimson-spotted moth whose wing had somehow been broken in its airy voyaging through the garden. And Belthoris, ever tender of heart and pitiful, turned from me and took up the moth in her hands; and some of the bright blossoms dropped from her hair unheeded. Tears welled from her deep blue eyes; and seeing that the moth was sorely hurt and would never fly again, she refused to be comlorted; and no longer would she respond to my passionate wooing. I, who grieved less for the moth than she, was somewhat vexed; and between her sadness and my vexation, there grew between us some tiny, temporary rift. . . .

Then, ere love had mended the misunderstanding; then, while we stood before the dread altar of time with sundered hands, with eyes averted from each other, it seemed that a shroud of darkness descended upon the garden. T heard the crash and crumbling of shattered worlds, and a black flowing of ruinous tilings that went past me through the darkness. The dead leaves of winter were blown about me, and there was a falling of tears or rain. . . . Then the vernal suns came back, high-stationed in cruel splendor; and with them came the knowledge of all that had been, of Belthoris' death and my sorrow, and the madness that had led to forbidden sorcery. Vain now, like all other hours, was the resummoned hour; and doubly irredeemable was my loss. My blood dripped heavily on the dishallowed altar, my faintness grew deathly, and I saw through murky mist the face of Atmox beside me; and the face was like that of some comminatory demon. . , ,

March 13th. I, John Milwarp, write this date and my name with an odd dubiety, My visionary experience imder the drug souvara ended

with that rilling of my blood on the symboled dial, that glimpse of the terror-distorted face of Atmox. All this was in another world, in a life removed from the present by births and deaths without numl>er; and yet, it seems, not wholly have 1 returned from the twice-ancient past. Memories, broken but strangely vivid and living, press upon me from the existence of which my vision was a fragment; and portions of die lore of Ilestan, and scraps of its history, and words from its lost language, arise unbidden in my mind.

Above all, my heart is still shadowed by the sorrow of Calaspa. His desperate necromancy, which would seem to odiers no more than a dream within a dream, is stamped as with fire on the black page of recollection. I know the awfulness of the god he had blasphemed; and the foulness of the demonolatry he had done, and the sense of guilt and despair under which he swooned. It is this that I have striven all my life to remember, this which 1 have been doomed to re-experi-encc. And I fear with a great fear the further knowledge which a second experiment with the drug will reveal to me.

The next entry of Milwarp's diary begins with a strange dating in English script: "The second day of the moon Occalat, in the thousand-and-iu'nth year of die lied Eon." This dating, perhaps, is repeated in the language of Ilestan: for, directly beneath it, a line of unknown ciphers is set apart. Several lines of the subsequent text are in the alien tongue; and then, as if by an unconscious reversion, Milwarp continues the diary in English. There is no reference to another experiment with souvarii: But apparently such had been made, with a continued revival of his lost memories.

. . . What genius of the nadir gulf had tempted me to this thing and had caused me to overlook the consequences? Verily, when I called up for myself and Belthoris an hour of former autumn, with all that was attendant upon the hour, tlud bygone interim was likewise evoked and repeated for the whole world Hestan, and the four suns of Ilestan. From the full midst of spring, all men had stepped backward into autumn, keeping only the memory of things prior to the hour thus resurrected, and knowing not the events future to the hour. But, returning to the present, they recalled widi amazement the unnatural necromancy; and fear and bewilderment were upon them; and none could interpret the meaning.

For a brief period, the dead had lived again; the fallen leaves had returned to the bough; the heavenly bodies had stood at a long-abandoned station; the (lower had gone back into the seed, the plant into the root. Then, with eternal disorder set among all its cycles, time had resumed its delayed course.

No movement of any cosmic body, no year or instant of the future,

would be precisely as it should have been. The error and discrepancy I had wrought would bear fruit in ways innumerable. The suns would find themselves at fault; the worlds and atoms would go always a little astray from their appointed bourn.

It was of these matters that Atmox spoke, warning me, after he had stanched my bleeding wound. For he too, in that rein mined hour, had gone back and had lived again through a past happening. For him the hour was one in which he had descended into the nether vaults of his house. There, standing in a many-pentacled circle, with burning of unholy incense and uttering of accurst formulae, he had called upon a malign spirit from the bowels of Hestan and had questioned it concerning the future. But the spirit, black and voluminous as the fumes of pitch, refused to answer him directly and pressed furiously with its clawed members against the confines of the circle. It said only: "Thou hast summoned me at thy peril. Potent are the spells thou hast used, and strong is the circle to withstand me, and I am restrained by lime and space from the wreaking of my anger upon thee. But haply thou shall summon me again, albeit in the same hour of the same autumn; and in that summoning the laws of time shall be broken, and a rill shall be made in space; and through the rift, though with some delay and divagation, I will yet win to thee."

Saying no more, it prowled restlessly about the circle; and its eyes burned down upon Atmox like embers in a high-lifted sooty brazier; and ever and anon its fanged mouth was flattened on the spell-defended air. And in the end he could dismiss it only after a double repetition of the form of exorcism.

As he told me this tale in the garden. Atmox trembled; and his eyes searched the narrow shadows wrought by the high sons; and he seemed to listen for the noise of some evil thing that burrowed toward him beneath the earth.

Fourth day of the moon Occalat. Stricken with terrors beyond those of Atmox, I kept apart in my mansion amid the city of Kalood. 1 was still weak with the loss of blood I had yielded to Xexanoth; my senses were full of strange shadows; my servitors, coming and going after me, were as phantoms, and scarcely I heeded the pale fear in their eyes or heard the dreadful things they whispered. . . . Madness and chaos, they told me, were abroad in Kalood; the divinity of Aforgomon was angered. All men thought that some baleful doom impended because of that unnatural confusion which had been wrought among the hours of time.

This afternoon they brought me the story of Atmox's death. In bated tones they told me how his neophytes had heard a roaring as of a loosed tempest in the chamber where he sat alone with his wizard volumes and paraphernalia. Above the roaring, for a little, human

screams had sounded, together with a clashing as of hurled censers and braziers, a crashing as of overthrown tables and tomes. Blood rilled from under the shut door of the chamber and, rilling, it took from instant to instant the form of dire ciphers that spelled an unspeakable name. After the noises had ceased, the neophytes wailed a long while ere they dared to open the door. Entering at last, they saw the floor and the walls heavily bespattered with blood, and rags of the sorcerers raiment mingled everywhere with the sheets of his torn volumes of magic, and the shreds and manglings of his flesh strewn amid broken furniture, and his brains daubed in a horrible paste on the high ceiling.

Hearing this tale, 1 knew that the earthly demon feared by AtmoK had found him somehow and had wreaked its wrath upon him. In ways unguessable, it had reached him through the chasm made in ordered lime and space by one hour repeated through necromancy. And because of that lawless chasm, the magician's power and lore had utterly failed to defend him from the demon. . , .

Filth day of the moon Oecalat. Atmox, 1 am sure, had not betrayed me: lor in so doing, he must have betrayed his own implicit share in my crime. . . . Howbeit, this evening the priests came to my house ere the setting of the westernmost sun: silent, grim, with eyes averted as if from a foulness innouiinable. Me, their fellow, they enjoined with loth gestures to accompany them. . . .

Thus they took me from my house and along the thoroughfares of Kalood toward the lowering suns. The streets were empty of all other passers, and it seemed (hat no man desired to meet or behold the blasphemer. . . .

Down the avenue of gnomon-shaped pillars, I was led to the portals of Aforgomon's fane: those awfully gaping portals arched in the likeness of some devouring chimera's mouth. . . .

Sixth day of the moon Oecalat. They had thrust me into an oubliette beneath the temple, dark, noisome and soundless except for the maddening, measured drip of water beside me. There 1 lay and knew not when the night passed and the morning came. Light was admitted only when my captors opened the iron door, coming to lead me before the tribunal. . . .

. . . Thus the priests condemned me, speaking with one voice in whose dreadful volume the tones of all were indistinguishably blended. Then the aged high-priest Ilelpcnor called aloud upon Aforgomon, offering himself as a mouthpiece to the god, and asking the god to pronounce through him the doom that was adequate for such enormities as those of which 1 had been judged guilty by my fellows.

lieved, in the case of those who penetrate too far into the realms of the Borderland.

For this reason- the practice of black magic—her statues were dishonored, and her name erased from the monuments. Now, I do not propose to enter into any discussion respecting the reality of such practices; in my monograph I have merely endeavored to show that, according to contemporary belief, the queen was a sorceress. Condor was seeking to prove the same thing; and when I took up the inquiry, it was in the hope of completing his interrupted work.

He wrote to me early in the winter of 1908, from his camp by the Rock Temple. Davis's tomb, at Bibau el-Muhik, with its long, narrow

assage, apparently had little interest for him; he was at work on the igh ground behind the temple, at a point one hundred yards or so due west of the upper platform. He had an idea that he should find there the mummies of Ilatasu -and another; the latter, a certain Sen-Mut, who appears in the inscriptions of the reign as an architect high in the queen s favor. The archaeological points of the letter do not concern us in the least, but there was one odd little paragraph which I had cause to remember afterwards.

"A girl belonging to some Arab tribe," wrote Condor, "came racing to the camp two nights ago to claim my protection. What crime she had committed, and what punishment she feared, were far from clear; but she clung to me, trembling like a leaf, and positively refused to depart. It was a difficult situation, for a camp of fifty native excavators, and one highly respectable European enthusiast, affords no suitable quarters for an Arab girl—and a very personable Arab girl. At any rate, she is still here; I have had a sort of lean-to rigged up in a little valley east of my own tent, but it is very embarrassing."

Nearly a month passed before I heard from Condor again; then came a second letter, with the news that on the eve of a great discovery—as he believed—his entire native staff- the whole fifty—had deserted one night in a body! "Two days' work," he wrote, 'would have seen the tomb opened- for I am more than ever certain that my plans are accurate. Then I woke up one morning to find every man jack of my fellows missing! I went down into the village where a lot of them live, in a towering rage, but not one of the brutes was to be foimd, and their relations professed entire ignorance respecting their whereabouts. What caused me almost as much anxiety as the check in my work was the fact that Mahara- the Arab girl—had vanished also. I am wondering if the thing has any sinister significance."

Condor finished with the statement that he was making tremendous efforts to secure a new gang. "But," said he, "I shall finish the excavation, if I have to do it with my own hands."

His third and last letter contained even stranger matters than the two preceding it. He had succeeded in borrowing a few men from the

British Archaeological Camp in the Fayum. Then, just as the work was

restarting, the Arab girl, Mahara, turned up again, and entreated him to bring her down the Nile, "at least as far as Dendera. For the vengeance of her tribesmen," stated Condor, "otherwise; would result not only in her own death, but in mine! At the moment of writing I am in two minds what to do. If Mahara is to go upon this journey, 1 do not feel justified in sending her alone, and there is no one here who could perform the duty," etc.

I began to wonder, of course; and I had it in mind to take the train to Luxor merely in order to see this Arab maiden, who seemed to occupy so prominent a place in Condor's mind. However, Fate would have it otherwise; and the next thing 1 heard was that Condor had been brought into Cairo, and was at the English hospital.

He had been bitten by a cat—presumably from the neighboring village; and although the doctor at Luxor dealt with the bite at once, traveled down with him, and placed him in the hand of the Pasteur man at the hospital, he died, as you remember, in the night of his arrival, raving mad; the Pasteur treatment failed entirely.

I never saw him before the end, but they told me that his howls were horribly like those of a cat. His eyes changed in some way, too, I understand; and, with his fingers all contracted, he tried to scratch everyone and everything within reach.

They had to strap the poor beggar down, and even then he tore the sheets into ribbons.

Well, as soon as possible, I made the necessary arrangements to finish Condor's inquiry. 1 had access to his papers, plans, etc., and in the spring of the same year I took up my quarters near Deir-el-Bahari, roped oil (lie approaches to the cam]), stuck up the usual notices, and prepared to finish the excavation, which, I gathered, was in a fairly advanced state.

My first surprise came very soon after my arrival, for when, with the plan before me, I started out to find the shaft, I found it, certainly, but only with great difficulty.

It had been filled in again with sand and loose rock right to the very top!

All my inquiries availed me nothing. With what object the excavation had been thus closed 1 was unable to conjecture. That Condor had not reclosed it I was quite certain, for at the time of his mishap he had actually been at work at the bottom of the shaft, as inquiries from a native of Sucfee, in the Fayum, who was his only companion at the time, had revealed.

In bis eagerness to complete the inquiry. Condor, by lantern light,

had been engaged upon a solitary night-shift below, and the rabid cat had apparently fallen into the pit; probably in a frenzy of fear, it had attacked Condor, after which it had escaped.

Only this one man was with him, and he, for some reason that I could not make out, had apparently been sleeping in the temple — quite a considerable distance from Condor's camp. The poor fellow's cries had aroused him, and he had met Condor running down the path and away from the shaft.

This, however, was good evidence of the existence of the shaft at the time, and as 1 stood contemplating the tightly packed rubble which alone marked its site, Í grew more and more mystified, lor this task of reclosing the cutting represented much hard labor.

Beyond perfecting my plans in one or two particulars, I did little on the day of my arrival. I had only a handful of men with me, all of whom 1 knew, having worked with them before, and beyond clearing Condor's shaft 1 did not intend to excavate further.

Ifatasu's Temple presents a lively enough scene in the daytime during the winter and early spring months, with the streams of tourists constantly passing from the white causeway to Cook's Best House on the edge of the desert. There had been a goodly number of visitors that day to the temple below, and one or two of the more curious and venturesome had scrambled up the steep path to the little plateau which was the scene of my operations. None had penetrated beyond the notice boards, however, and now, with the evening sky passing through those innumerable shades which defy palette and brush, which can only be distinguished by the trained eye, but which, from

talest blue melt into exquisite pink, and by some magical combination orm that deep violet which does not exist to perfection elsewhere than in the skies of Egypt, I found myself in the silence and the solitude of "the 1 loly Valley."

I stood at the edge of the plateau, looking out at the rosy belt which marked the course of the distant Nile, with the Arabian hills vaguely sketched beyond. The rocks stood up against that prospect as great black smudges, and what I could see of the causeway looked like a gray smear upon a drab canvas. Beneath me were the chambers of the Rock Temple, with those wall paintings depicting events in the reign of Hatasu which rank among the wonders of Egypt.

Not a sound disturbed my reverie, save a faint clatter of cooking utensils from the camp behind me a descration of that sacred solitude. Then a dog began to howl in the neighboring village. The dog ceased, and faintly to my ears came the note of a reed pipe. The breeze died away, and with it the piping.

I turned back to the camp and, having partaken of a frugal supper, turned in upon my campaigner's bed, thoroughly enjoying my free

The light of the dawn was growing stronger momentarily, so that I could see my visitor quite clearly. She rose to her feet, and stood before me, a straight, slim figure, sweeping me from head to foot with such a glance of passionate contempt as I had never known or suffered.

She threw back her head magnificently, dashed the money on the ground at my feet and, turning, leaped out of the tent.

For a moment f hesitated, doubting, questioning my humanity, testing my fears; then I took a step forward, and peered out across the plateau. Not a soul was in sight. The rocks stood up gray and eerie, and beneath lay the carpet of the desert stretching unbroken to the shadows of die Nile Valley.

Ill

We commenced the work of clearing the shaft at an early hour that morning. The strangest ideas were now playing in my mind, and in some way I felt myself to be in opposition to definite enmity. My excavators labored with a will and, once we had penetrated below the first-three feet or so of tightly packed stone, it became a mere matter of shoveling, for apparently the lower part of the shaft had been filled up principally with sand.

I calculated that four days' work at the outside would see the shaft clear to the base of Condor's excavation. There remained, according to his own notes, only another six feet or so; but it was solid limestone —the roof of the passage, if his plans were correct, communicating with the tomb of Hatasu.

With the approach of night, tired as I was, I felt little inclination for sleep. I lay down on my bed with a small Browning pistol under the pillow, but after an hour or so of nervous listening drifted off into slumber. As on the night before, I awoke shortly before the coming of dawn.

Again the village dogs were raising a hideous outcry, and again I was keenly conscious of some ever-nearing menace. This consciousness grew stronger as the howling of the dogs grow fainter, and the sense of approach assailed me as ou the previous occasion.

I sat up immediately with the pistol in my hand and, gently raising the tent flap, looked out over the darksome plateau. For a long time I could perceive nothing; then, vaguely outlined against the sky, I detected something that moved above the rocky edge.

It was so indefinite in form that for a time f was unable to identily it, but as it slowly rose higher and higher, two luminous eyes obviously feline eyes, since they glittered greenly in the darkness—came into view. In character and in shape they were the eyes of a cat, but in point of size they were larger than the eyes of any cat I had ever seen.

Nor were they jackal eyes. It occurred to me tltat some predatory beast from the Sudan might conceivably have strayed thus far north.

The presence of such a creature would account for the nightly disturbance amongst the village dogs; ami, dismissing the superstitious notions which had led me to associate the mysterious Arab girl with the phenomenon of the howling dogs, 1 seized upon this new idea with a sort of gladness.

Stepping boldly out of the tent, I strode in the direction of the gleaming eyes. Although my only weapon was the Browning pistol, it was a weapon of considerable power and, moreover, I counted upon the well-known cowardice of nocturnal animals. 1 was not disappointed in the result.

The eyes dropped out of sight, and as 1 leaped to the edge of rock overhanging the Temple a lithe shape went streaking oil in the gray-ness beneath me. Its coloring appeared to be black, but this appearance may have been due to the had light. Certainly it was no cat, was no jackal; and once, twice, thrice my Browning spat into the darkness.

Apparently I had not scored a hit, but the loud reports of the weapon aroused the men sleeping in the camp, and soon I was surrounded by a ring of inquiring faces.

But there I stood on the rock-edge, looking out across the deseit in silence. Something in the long, luminous eyes, something in the sinuous, flying shape had spoken to me intimately, horribly.

Hassan es-Sugra, the headman, touched my arm, and 1 knew that I must ofler some explanation.

"Jackals," 1 said shortly. And with no other word I walked back to my tent.

The night passed without further event, and in the morning we addressed ourselves to the work with such a will that I saw. to my satisfaction, that by noon of the following day the labor of clearing the loose sand would he completed.

During the preparation of the evening meal I became aware of a certain disquiet in the camp, and I noted a disinclination on the part of the native lalnirers to stray far from the tents. They hung together in a group, and whilst individually they seemed to avoid meeting my eye, collectively they watched me in a furtive fashion.

A gang of Moslem workmen calls for delicate handling, and I wondered if, inadvertently, I had transgressed in some way their iron-bound code of conduct. I called Hassan es-Sugra aside.

"What ails the men?" I asked him. "Have diey some grievance?"

Hassan spread his palms eloquently.

"If they have," he replied, "they are secret about it, and I am not in their confidence. Shall I thrash three or four of them in order to learn the nature of this grievance?"

"No, thanks all the same," I said, laughing at this characteristic pro-

posal. "If they refuse to work to-morrow, there will be time enough for you to adopt those measures."

On this, the third night of my sojourn in the Holy Valley by the Temple of Hatasu, I slept soundly and uninterruptedly. I had been looking forward with the keenest zest to the morrow's work, which promised to bring me within sight of my goal, and when Hassan came to awaken me, I leaped out of bed immediately.

Hassan es-Sugra, having performed his duty, did not, as was his custom, retire; he stood there, a tall, angular figure looking at me strangely,

"Well?" I said.

"There is trouble," was his simple reply. "Follow me, Neville Effendi."

Wondering greatly, I followed him across the plateau and down the slip to the excavation. There I pulled up short with a cry of amazement.

Condor's shaft was filled in to the very top, and presented, to my astonished gaze, much the same aspect that had greeted me upon my first arrival!

"The men----- " I began.

Hassan es-Sugra spread wide his palms.

"Gone!" he replied. "Those Coptic dogs, those eaters of carrion, have fled in the night."

"And this"—1 pointed to the little mound of broken granite and sand—"is their work?"

"So it would seem," was the reply; and Hassan sniffed his sublime contempt.

I stood looking bitterly at this destruction of my toils. The strangeness of the thing at the moment did not strike me, in my anger; I was only concerned with the outrageous impudence of the missing workmen, and if 1 could have laid hands upon one of them it had surely gone hard with him.

As for Hassan es-Sugra, 1 believe he would cheerfully have broken the necks of the entire gang. But he was a man of resource.

"It is so newly filled in," lie said, "that you and I, in three days, or in four, can restore it to the state it had reached when those nameless dogs, who regularly prayed with their shoes on, those devourers of pork, began their dirty work."

His example was stimulating. I was not going to be beaten, either.

After a hasty breakfast, the pair of us set to work with pick and shovel and basket. We worked as those slaves must have worked whose toil was directed by the lash of the Pharaoh's overseer. My back acquired an almost permanent crook, and every muscle in my body seemed to he on fire. Not even in the midday heat did we slacken or stay our toils; and when dusk fell that night a great mound had arisen

beside Condor's shaft, and we had excavated to a depth it had taken our gang double the time to reach.

When at last we threw down our tools in utter exhaustion, I held out my band to Hassan, and wrung his brown fist enthusiastically. His eyes sparkled as he met my glance.

"Neville Effcndi," he said, "you are a true Moslem!"

And only the initiated can know how high was the compliment conveyed.

That night I slept the sleep of utter weariness, yet it was not a dreamless sleep, or perhaps it was not so deep as I supposed, for blazing cat-eyes encircled me in my dreams, and a constant feline howling seemed to fill the night.

When I awoke the sun was blazing down upon the rock outside my tent and, springing out of bed, I perceived, with amazement, that the morning was far advanced. Indeed, I could hear the distant voices of the donkey-boys and other harbingers of the coming tourists.

Why had Hassan es-Sugra not awakened me?

I stepped out of the tent and called him in a loud voice. There was no reply. 1 ran across the plateau to the edge of the hollow.

Condor's shaft had been recloscd to the top!

Language fails me to convey the wave of anger, amazement, incredulity, which swept over me. I looked across to the deserted camp and back to my own tent; I looked down at the mound, where but a few hours before had been a pit, and seriously I began to question whether I was mad or whether madness had seized upon all who had been with me. Then, pegged dowu upon the heap of Woken stones, I perceived, fluttering, a small piece of paper.

Dully I walked across and picked it up. Hassan, a man of some education, clearly was the writer. It was a pencil scrawl in doubtful Arabic and, not without difficulty, I deciphered it as follows:

"Fly, Neville Eliendi! This is a haunted place!"

Standing there by the mound, I tore the scrap of paper into minute fragments, bitterly casting them from me upon the ground. It was incredible; it was insane.

The man who had written that absurd message, the man who had undone his own work, had the reputation of being fearless and honorable. He had been with me before a score of times, and had quelled petty mutinies in the camp in a manner which marked him a born overseer. I could not understand; I could scarcely believe the evidence of my own senses.

What did I do?

I suppose there are some who would have abandoned the thing at once and for always, but I take it that the national traits are strong within me. I went over to the camp and prepared my own breakfast; then, shouldering pick and shovel, I went down into the valley and set

58 to work. What ten men could not do, what two men had failed to do, one man was determined to do.

It was about half an hour after commencing my toils, and when, I suppose, the surprise and rage occasioned by the discovery had begun to wear off, that I found myself making comparisons between my own case and that of Condor. It became more and more evident to me that events—mysterious events—were repeating themselves.

The frightful happenings attendant upon Condor's death were marshaling in my mind. The sun was blazing down upon me, and distant voices could be heard in the desert stillness. I knew that the plain below was dotted with pleasure-seeking tourists, yet nervous tremors shook me. Frankly, I dreaded the coining of the night.

Well, tenacity or pugnacity conquered, and 1 worked on until dusk. My supper despatched, 1 sat down on my bed and toyed with the Browning.

I realized already that sleep, under existing conditions, was impossible. I perceived that on the morrow I must abandon my one-man enterprise, pocket my pride, in a sense, and seek new assistants, new companions.

The fact was coming home to me conclusively that a menace, real and not mythical, hung over that valley. Although, in the morning sunlight and filled with indignation, I had thought contemptuously of Hassan es-Sugra, now, in the mysterious violet dusk so conducive to calm consideration, 1 was forced to admit that he was at least as brave a man as I. And he had fled! What did that night hold in keeping for me?

• •••••

I will tell yon what occurred, and it is the only explanation I have to give of why Condor's shaft, said to communicate with the real tomb of Hatasu, to this day remains unopened.

There, on the edge of my bed, I sat far into the night, not daring to closed my eyes. But physical weariness conquered in the end and, although I have no recollection of its coming, I must have succumbed to sleep, since I remember—can never forget—a repetition of the dream, or what I had assumed to be a dream, of the night before.

A ring of blazing green eyes surrounded me. At oik; point this ring was broken, and in a kind of nightmare panic 1 leaped at that promise ol safety, and found myself outside the tent.

Lithe, slinking shapes hemmed me in—cat shapes, ghoul shapes, veritable figures of the pit. And the eyes, the shapes, although they were the eyes and shapes of cats, sometimes changed clusivcly, and became the wicked eyes and the sinuous, writhing shapes of women. Always the ring was incomplete, and always I retreated in the

"That something is watching-and not liking what it sees." lie glanced quickly over his shoulder, then continued, as if seeking to reassure them both. "Nothing in that corner, of course, except the aquarium."

"What's the latest tenantry there?" Lu asked, glad to change the disquieting subject.

"Some Scotch water plants—new laboratory project." Cannon was at ease the moment his hobby came into the conversation. "They arrived this afternoon in a sealed tin box. Doctor MacKenzie's letter says they were gathered from the Pool Kelp, wherever that is in his highland wildernesses. I'm letting them soak and wash overnight. In the morning I'll begin experimenting."

Lu sipped more brandy, her eyes interested. "Pool Kelp," she repeated. "It sounds seaweedy."

"But these arc fresh-water growths. As I say, I never heard of the
pool before." Cannon broke off. "Here, though, why talk botany when
we can------ "

His lips abruptly smothered hers, his arms gathered her so close as to bruise her. but even as she yielded happily to his embrace the telephone rang loudly in the front entry. Cannon released her with a muttered curse of impatience, rose and hurried out to answer. He closed the door behind him, and his voice, muffled and indistinct, sounded aggrieved as he spoke into the transmitter.

Lu, finishing her brandy alone, picked up the drink Cannon had set down. As she lifted it to her lips she glanced idly over the rim of the glass at the moist tangle in the aquarium. In the dim light it seemed to fall into all manner of rich greens—darkest emerald, beryl, malachite, olive, grass, lettuce. Something moved, too, filliped and swerved in the heart of the little submerged grove.

Cannon was still talking. Lu rose, drink in hand, to stroll curiously toward the big glass box. As she did so the moving trifle seemed to glide upward toward the surface. Coming closer yet, Lu paused to peer in the half-light.

A fish? If so, a very green fish and a very small one—perhaps a tadpole. A bubble broke audibly on top of the water. Lu, genuinely interested, bent closer, just as something rose through the little ripples and hooked its tip on the rim of the aquarium.

It was a tiny, spinach-colored hand.

Half a second later another fringe of tiny fingers appeared, clutching the rim in turn. Lu, woodenly motionless, stared in her effort to rationalize. She could see the tiny digits, each tapering and flexible, each armed with a jet-colored claw. Through the glass, under and behind the fingers, she made out thumbs— deft, opposable thumbs—and smooth, wet palms of a dead, oystery gray. Her breath caught in mute, helpless astonishment. A blunt head rose slowly into view behind and

between the fists, something with flat brow, broad lump of nose and wide month, like a grotesque Mayan mask—and it was growing.

Lu told herself, a little stupidly, that she must not have seen clearly at first. She had thought the creature a little green minnow, but it was as big as a squirrel. No, as big as a baby! Its bright eyes, white-ringed, fixed hers, projecting a wave of malignant challenge that staggered her like a blow. The full, lead-hucd lips parted loosely and the forked tip of a purple tongue quivered out for a moment. A snaky odor steamed up to Lu's nostrils, making her dizzy and weak. Wet, scabby-green shoulders had heaved into view by now, and after them the twin mounds of a grotesquely feminine bosom. The thing was climbing out at her, and as it did so it swelled and grew, grew. . . .

The brandy-glass fell from her hand and loudly exploded into splinters upon the floor. The sound of the breaking gave Lu back her voice, and she screamed tremulously, then managed to move back and away, half stumbling and half staggering. The monster, all damp and green and stinking, was writhing a leg into view. Lu noted that, and then everything went into a whirling white blur and she began to collapse.

Faintly she heard the rush of Cannon's feet, felt the clutch of his strong aims as though many thicknesses of fabric separated them from her. lie almost shouted her name in panic. After a moment her sight and mind cleared, and she looked up into his concerned face. With all her shaken strength she clung to him.

"That thing," she chattered, "that horrid female thing in the
aquarium--

Cannon managed a comforting tone. "But there's nothing, dearest, nothing at all. Those two brandies—you took mine, too, you shameless glutton —went to your head."

"Look at ill" She pointed an unsteady finger. "Deep down there in the weeds."

He looked. "Oh, that?" he laughed. "I noticed it, too, just before you came. It's a little frog or toad—must have been gathered with the weeds and shipped all the way from Scotland."

Lu caressed her throbbing forehead with her slender white hand and mumbled something about "seeing things." Already she believed that she had somehow dreamed of the green water-monster. Still, it was a distinct effort to walk with Cannon to the aquarium and look in.

Through the thick tangle of stems and fronds that made a dank stew in the water she could make out a tiny something that wriggled and glided. It was only minnow-size after all, and seemed smooth and innocuous. Funny what notions two quick drinks will give you. . . . She lowered a cupped palm toward the surface, as if to scoop down and seize the little creature, but the chilly touch of the topmost weed-tips repelled her, and she drew back her arm.

"You'd never catch it," Cannon told her. "It won't wait for you to grab. I had a try when 1 first saw it, and got a wet sleeve— and this."

He held out his left hand. For the first time that evening Lu saw the gold band that he wore on his third finger.

"A ring," her lover explainer!. "I was lying on the bottom. Apparently it came with the weeds, too."

"You put it on your wedding finger!" Lu wailed.

"That was the only one it would fit," Cannon defended as she caught his hand and tugged with all her might at the ring. It did not budge.

"Please," she begged, "get rid of it."

"Why, Lu, whats the trouble? Are you being jealous because a present was given me by that mess of weed—or maybe by the little lady frog?"

The tiny swimmer in the tank splashed water, as if in punctuation of his joke, and Cannon, falling abruptly silent, suddenly began wrenching at the gold circlet. But not even his strength, twice that of Lu. could bring it over the joint.

"Here I don't like this," he announced, his voice steady but a little tight. "I'm going to put soap on my finger. That will make the thing slip off."

Lu made no reply, but her eyes encouraged him. Cannon kissed her pale forehead, strode across the room and into a little corridor beyond. After a moment Lu could hear the spurt of a water-jet in a bowl, then the sound of industrious scrubbing with lather.

In command of herself once again but still a trifle faint and shaky, Lu leaned her hand lightly upon the thick, smooth edge of the aquarium glass. A fond little smile came to her lips as she pondered on Cannon s eagerness to please her whim. Not even in a silly little matter like this one did he cross her will or offer argument that might embarrass or hurt her. The shedding of that ring would be a symbol between them, of understanding and faith.

Her eyes dropped to the table that stood against the aquarium, with its litter of papers and notebooks. At the edge nearest Lu lay a thick volume bound in gray—a dictionary. What was the term she had puzzled over? Oh, yes. . . . Still lounging with one hand on the glass, she flipped the book open with the other and turned the pages to the K's:

Kelp: Any one of various large brown seaweeds of the families Laminariaceae and Fucaceae.

Her hazy memory had been right, then, about the word. But why should a body of fresh water be called Pool Kelp? Glancing back at the page, her eyes caught die next definition.

It answered her question.

Kelpie: (Gael, Myth.) A malicious water spirit or demon believed

to haunt streams or marshes. Sometimes it falls in love with human beings, striving jealously against mortal rivals. . . .

The words swam before her vision, for the snake-smell had risen siekeningly around her. And something was gripping the hand that rested on the rim of the tank.

Lii's mouth opened but, as before, terror throttled her. Take a sleeper in the throes of nightmare, she struggled half-heartedly. She dared not look, yet some power forced her head around.

The grip had shifted to her wrist. Long, elaw-tipped fingers were clamped there fingers as large as her own, scrofulous green and of a swampy chill. Lu's eyes slid in fascinated horror along the scale-ridged, corded arm to the moldy-looking body, stuck and festooned over with weed-fronds, that was rising from the water. Another foul baud stole swiftly out, fastened on Lu's shoulder, and jerked her close. The (lat, grotesque face, grown to human size, was level with hers, its eyes triumphant within their dead white rings, its dark tongue quivering between gaping lips.

Yet again Lu tried to find her voice. All she could achieve was a wordless moan, no louder than a sigh.

"Dili you call, sweetheart?" came Cannon's cheery response from his washing. "FU be with you in a minute now; this thing is still hanging on like a poor relation!"

The reptilian jaw dropped suddenly, like the lid of a box turned upside down. Lu stared into the slate-gray cave that was the yawning mouth. Teeth, sharp teeth, gleamed there—not one row, but many.

Lu's hands lifted feebly in an effort at defense, then dropped wearily to her sides. The monster crinkled its humid features in something like a triumphant grin. Then its blunt head shot forward with incredible swiftness, nuzzling Lu at the juncture of neck and shoulder.

For a moment she felt exquisite pain, as of many piercing needles. After that she neither felt, heard nor saw anything.

The medical examiner was drawing a sheet over the still, agony-distorted body of the dead girl. The police sergeant, scribbling his final notes, addressed Cannon with official sternness.

"Sorry," he said, "but you haven't explained this business at all satisfactorily. You come down to headquarters with me."

Cannon glanced wanly up from his senseless wrestling with the ring that would not quit his wedding finger. "I didn't do it, he reiterated dully.

The medical examiner was also speaking, more to himself than anyone: "An autopsy might clear up some points. Those inflamed, suppurated wounds on the neck might have been made by a big water-snake. Or," he added, with a canny glance at the sergeant, "by a poisoned weapon constructed to simulate such a creature's bite.

"You think it might injure the furniture or damage the building? For the preliminary trial I shall rotate it only for an instant and turn it back instantly."

She clung to his arm nervously while he grasped the black handle of the switch and threw it down, waited a few seconds, and pulled it out again.

They saw nothing. There was a crash, instantaneously loud, and fading almost instantly to a distant, muffled rumble, and ceasing suddenly. There was a heavy thud and a pounding on the floor. Sheila gave a little scream.

There in front of them was a rapidly moving object; it bounced up and down off the floor to a height of three feet about once a second. It did not have the harmonic motion of a bouncing body, however; it stopped abruptly up in the air and shot downward at high speed, hit the floor, stopped a moment and shot back upward. Then it stopped suddenly and hung in the air. It was about the size of a large watermelon, and looked for all the world like human skin: smooth, uniform, unbroken all around.

The two stared at it amazed. Ileagey walked up and touched it with the tip of a finger. It grew smaller. And suddenly it decreased to about one-half its former size, retaining its surface smoothness and uniformity unchanged.

It had felt soft and warm, like human flesh.

Now it was increasing in size again, while they stared gasping, speechless, at it. When it stopped growing suddenly, it was the size of a big barrel, with rounded ends. There was a bulging ridge around the middle, on each side of which was a dark brown strap of something like leather. The rest of it was just naked skin.

Sheila and Ileagey stood rooted to the spot, staring at it and at each other. What was the thing? Where had it come from?

The Thing began thumping up and down off the door again, with great, thudding shocks. After a while it desisted and lay still. It was a most uncouth, hideous looking thing: a great lump of naked flesh with two straps around it. It looked for all the world like some huge tumor in a medical museum, or like some monstrosity of birth. Could it be alive?

Both of them approached it cautiously. Ileagey pricked it with a pin. The skin was tough and he jabbed hard. A drop of blood appeared.

Then there was a terrible commotion. The object decreased in size to a small sphere like a baseball. In fact, there were several baseball-sized lumps of flesh all around; just naked flesh. They moved rapidly, and two of them were between him and Sheila. Two or three were on the far side of her. He counted ten of them altogether. Five of thera closed swiftly around her. Then she was gone!

Her scream, cut suddenly short, still rang in his ears. And she was gone! Suddenly vanished from in front of him! He groped about, feeling for her in the empty air, but there was nothing anywhere. There lay the watermelon-like lump of flesh that he had first seen. It was on the floor and lay quite still. And she was gone! He held his head distractedly.

The door opened and Professor Mathers, Sheila's father, came in.

"What's going on here?" he demanded, blinking his eyes.

Hcagey stared blankly, trying to think.

"This thumping and screaming?" the professor continued.

"I think I begin to understand,' Hcagey began.

"Think you understand!" the professor shouted. "What have you done to my daughter? She doesn't scream for nothing."

He caught sight of the ovoid lump of flesh. He turned pale and stopped as if frozen. Some terrible thought crossed his mind, connecting it with his daughter; had some nefarious experiment turned her into that tiling?

"What's that?" he snapped savagely.

"Something's got to be done," Heagey said, chiefly to himself. "We've got to bring her back here. I'm afraid to manipulate the thing too many times; the Lord only knows what else it may dip up."

The professor glared.

"You sound like a first-rate manic-depressive crazy man-------- "

"Wait till I shut that thing up," Hcagey said, getting a hold on himself; "and I'll explain all I know about this. I was getting ready to try to rotate a clog out of space, and so I have a new, strong dog-cage here."

He set the dog-cage down beside the lump of flesh; very gently, very slowly, he pushed it in. His touch recoiled at the warm, soft feel of it; but he got it into the cage and locked the door. Then lie set out a chair for the professor, but his hand shook, for his mind was on Sheila.

He sat down facing the professor, his back to the cage. Suddenly the professor's face fell, and his eyes stared ahead with a look of utter blankness. Hcagey whirled around and looked at his "specimen." It was out of the cage!

There hadn't been a sound. 11 is eyes had not been off it for ten seconds. The cage was still lucked. There it lay, three feet away from the cage, only it wasn't the same. There were two pieces of it now, long, cylindrical, rounded at the ends. Like a couple of legs without knees or feet. Heagey got up and unlocked the cage, noting that it required fifteen seconds. Jle felt around inside the cage with his hands, but found nothing.

"Alter all." he sighed, "it is very simple."

The professor stared at him. now thoroughly convinced that he was

He got the lump of flesh fastened up tight in a canvas sack and lashed the other end of the stout rope with which he tied it around a concrete pillar. Then the door opened and two policemen walked in, followed by the professor. He was urging them on. "There he is! Grab him!" he seemed to say in attitude and gesture, though not in words.

A pang of alarm shot through I lea gey. He was needed right here to rescue Sheila. What would become of her if they locked him up? His mind as usual worked quickly and logically, in contradistinction to the professor's, who seemed to have been thrown into an unreasoning rage by bis daughter's disappearance, lie sprang to his switchboard and shouted:

"Stop!"

Something in his determined attitude alarmed the policemen; his hand on the ominous-looking apparatus might mean something. They stopped.

"What's this? What do you want?" Ileagey demanded. The professor's torrents broke loose.

"He murdered my daughter. Made away with her. I've got a warrant for his arrest. Nonsensical twaddle about the fourth dimension. Prosecute him to the limit; that's what 111 do. Been hanging around her too much. He's crazy. Throw him in jail. Make him bring her backl"

Ileagey laughed a desperate laugh, which made the other three more certain that he was a dangerous maniac.

"Like throwing debtors into jail," Hcagey derided acidly. "Fat chance of paying the debt then! Move another step and I'll throw the three of you into unknown hvporspace."

They were all afraid, of they knew not what. Ileagey outlined to them that he wanted to go out into hypcrspace and search for Sheila. But he would tie himself on a rope fastened at this end. And he wanted someone here at this end, who was friendly to him, to manage things. He telephoned out for a rope and for two of his students. The policemen watched, too puzzled to know what to do. The professor acquiesced, more from fear, like a man at the point of a gun, dian because he saw the reason of it.

The rope was delivered and the two students, Adkins and Becnier, arrived. They helped him fix a firm sling around his shoulders, waist, and thighs. The loose rope was coiled up on die floor, several hundred feet of it, and the other end tied to a concrete pillar. There was some amazed staring by the students at the writhing thing in the canvas sack.

"I'll tell you about that later," Hcagey said. "All the pointers and dials are set. All you need to do is to throw this switch and jerk it back at once. Adkins, you do that; and, Beeiner, you watch the rope.

When I signal by jerking it six times, Adkins. you throw the switch again the same way."

That was all. Without another word Adkins threw the switch. There was the same crash, instantaneously muffled and almost suddenly fading away as at a distance. There was a momentary sensation of agitation, though nothing really moved.

Hcagey was gone. The loose end of the rope that had tied him lay on the floor. It was certainly a breathless thing. The professor stared with a sort of vacant expression on his face, as though the solid ground had suddenly dropped from beneath his feet. It dawned upon him that perhaps Sheila had really disappeared that way.

Beeiner picked up the end of the rope. It was not an end; it merely looked that way. There was a strong tension on it; in fact it soon began to slip through his hands, and coil after coil was drawn oil the pile on the floor, and simply vanished. For a while it stopped and then went on unwinding.

The policemen gazed blankly. They were unable to understand what had happened. The man they were to arrest had suddenly melted from sight. They mumbled astonished monosyllables to each other, but they were not as astonished as was Professor Mathers. They did not grasp the enormity of what was going on, as he did. It upset his whole mental universe. He sat a while and then paced nervously up and down the vast room. He came and looked at the rope. Then he looked at the canvas sack. The sack lay loose as though the contents had escaped. He felt of it and found that it contained three soft baseball-sized objects. He jumped back and shrauk away from it. The time seemed interminable, fie waited and waited.

Besides an occasional mumble between the policemen or a short exclamation from Adkins or Bccmcr, there was no conversation. Becmer watched die rope closely. There was a tense nervous strain created largely by the professor's distracted movements. Then, after what seemed hours, though in reality less than one hour, there were six short tugs on the rope. Adkins threw his switch, and out of the crash and tremor Ilea gey tumbled out on the floor, all tangled up in coils of rope.

He was breathless, haggard, wild-eyed. He lay for a moment on the floor, panting. Then he sprang up and gazed fiercely, wildly about. He seemed suddenly to perceive where he was. An expression of relief came over his face; he sighed deeply and sank down to a sitting position. He looked exhausted; his clothes were disarranged and ripped in some places, and were covered with dust.

The five people looked at him in silent amazement. He looked from one to the other of them; it was a long time before he spoke.

"Good to be back here. I can hardly believe I'm really back. Never again for me."

"I was beginning to understand the stuff now. Merely some inhabitant or creature of hypcrspace going by. As he passed through my particular spatial plane, I saw successive cross-sections of him. Just as though my body were passing through a plane, say feet first: first there would be two irregular circles; then a larger oval, the trunk, with two circles, the arms, at the sides and separate from it; and so on until the top of the head vanished as a small spot.

"I followed down the line of buildings, looking around. Bizarre shapes appeared around me, changing size and shape in the wildest, dizziest, most uncouth ways, splitting into a dozen pieces and coming together into large, irregular chunks. Some seemed to be metal or concrete, some human flesh, naked or clothed. In a few minutes my mind became accustomed to interpreting this passage of fourth-dimensional things through my 'plane' and 1 studied them with interest. Then I slipped and fell down. Down 1 whizzed for a while, and everything about me disappeared.

"I found myself rolling; and sitting up, 1 looked around again. There was nothing. 1 still seemed to be on cement or stone; and in all directions it stretched away endlessly into the distance. It was the most disconcerting thing I had ever seen in my life. I was just a speck in a universe of cement pavement. 1 began to get panicky, but controlled myself and started to walk, feeling the reassuring pull of the rope behind me. I walked nervously and saw nothing anywhere. Evidently I had slipped off my former 'plane' and gotten into a new one. The rope tightened suddenly; perhaps I had reached the end of it. It jerked me backwards and I swung dizzily, my fect hanging loose.

"1 swung among millions of small spherical bodies disposed irregu-
larly in all directions about me, even below. They moved gently back
and forth in small arcs; and there were large brown bodies----------

"Why go through it all? I stumbled from one spatial plane into another. Each seemed a totally different universe. I couldn't get them correlated in my mind into any kind of a consistent whole at all. For a long time I climbed over some huge metal framework; I ran into moving things that grew larger and disappeared; I struggled through a jungle of some soft, green, vegetable stuff. Just all of a sudden I made up my mind that I'd never find Sheila.

"She might be within a foot of me all the time, yet 1 couldn't get to her, because I couldn't see out of three dimensions. I yelled her name until I was hoarse and my head throbbed, but nothing happened. 1 grew panicky and decided I wanted to go back. I pulled on the rope and dragged myself toward the direction from which it came; sometimes I slid rapidly toward it; at others 1 could feel myself dragging my entire weight with my arms. Then I could go no further, pull as I might. It seemed like trying to reach an inch higher

than you really can; I couldn't quite stretch that far. So I gave it six short tugs. Very quietly I tumbled out here. I haven't seen Sheila."

The professor was calm. His face was set hard.

"Either you're telling the truth or you're insane as a loon," he said, and his voice was puzzled and sincere. "Perhaps I'm crazy, too. I'm broad-minded enough to admit that is possible. I've got you charged with murder. But I'll give you a chance. What are you going to do about Sheila?"

Heagey's eyes blazed.

"You can go to hell with your chance," he roared. "I want Sheila back worse than you do. If anyone can get her back, it is myself. If you interfere, you simply guarantee that she's lost, that's all. If you want to see her again, keep your hands oil! See!"

The professor was a better man than his blustering actions might lead one to think.

"Well, I'm worried," he said shortly. "Can 1 help you any?"

Heagey never changed expression.

"Perbaps you can. 1 may need more money than I've got. Just now you can help mc most by getting out of herí¹ and taking everybody with you and letting me think. I ve got an idea. I'll phone you when I want something."

"Well, remember you're charged with murder, and there will be a police guard around this place."

How great and yet how small men will be under trying conditions!

Heagey, left alone, sat and thought. He jumped up and ran his hands through his hair.

"God! Think of it!" he gasped. "Sheila out there alone! In that mad place! Not even a rope!"

He paced rapidly around the room. Then he seized paper and pencil and began to draw. lie drew circles and ellipsoids of different sizes and laid the drawings in a row. The professor came in an hour later and found him at it.

"How do you ever expect to find her that way?" he growled peevishly.

"Shut up!" Heagey snapped, his nerves tautened into disrespect. He swept up the papers with his hand and crumpled them into the waste-basket. "No use. Can't study four-dimensional stuff on a two-dimensional plane Say!" he shouted roughly at the professor; "get me a hundred pounds of modeling clay up here. Quick as you can!"

The professor trotted out after it without a word, much less with any understanding of what it was about.

'Do you think you'll do it?" was his eager attitude one moment, and, "If you don't, you go on trial for murder," he raved a moment later.

Far into the night Heagey worked with modeling clay, moulding the forms that had appeared in the laboratory and some of those he

76 had seen in hypcrspace. He tried to recollect the order in which the various shapes nau appeared to him, and laid them in rows in that order. Late into the night he modeled and arranged and stared and studied. Near midnight the professor poked his head in the door,

"She's really gone,' he moaned. "She hasn't come home. She's nowhere!" lie turned on the haggard Heagey. "The policemen are on the job, so don't try to get away, but I'm offering five thousand dollars to anyone who brings Sheila back."

Heagey snatched a few hours' sleep on the floor. In the morning when the professor opened the door, he was arranging clay balls and clubs into rows and staring at them. As soon as the professor's head appeared, he shouted:

"I've got itl The biggest photographs you can get of Sheila. Head and full-length both. And hist! I lurry!"

He now turned his attention to the object in the canvas sack. He untied the rope from the fourteen-ounce duck, tied the corners of the canvas together, inserted a stout stick (obtained by breaking the leg off a chair), and twisted it, scpiee/.ing the small ball of llcsh unmercifully. At fust sight it was a cruel looking procedure, but there was method in it. The thing began to jump back and forth excitedly. He loosened the hulk of his pressure, but kept up a steady, firm tension. His strength was sufficient to hold it fairly steady. Suddenly he loosened all pressure. The mass of flesh suddenly grew larger and the satisfied expression in Heagey's face showed that was what he was working for. Just as when you push hard against someone and then suddenly let go: he falls toward you.

He persisted steadily along (his line. When the cross-section increased in size he held it loosely, patted it gently, and even talked soothingly. As soon as it started to decrease, he screwed up his stick and bore down on it remorselessly. For an hour be wrestled. Then the professor entered with two 16 by 20 photographs taken out of frames.

"Wail!" shouted Heagey peremptorily. "Stand there and hold "em." He twisted up his stick again, held it. and loosened it; and was rewarded by seeing the barrel-shaped mass appear; then two long, cylindrical bodies beside it, covered with metal-mesh.

"What's your idea?" the professor asked.

"Don't bother me!" Heagey panted irritatcdly. "And don't move. I might need you any minute.

Finally the thing decreased in size again; but this time Heagey seemed satisfied with it. He removed the canvas sack. There was an irregular sphere the size of a bucket. Over its surface were queer patches, glassy places, and iridescent, rainbow-like spots that changed color and looked deep.

"Quick now, the pictures!"

Heagey set up the pictures in front of the thing, as if to show them

Dineen came from that interview with a chill in spite of the tropic heat. Undoubtedly Rourke's wife was fey. Her passion for Rourke was apparent, her loyalty intense. She talked «|oeerly. cautiously, but she said evil had befallen her man. She had heard him calling in agony yet warning her not to try to reach him. He was not dead, yet devils tormented him. lie loved her, vet their life together was ended, lie commanded her not to avenge him as love might prompt. Dineen realized that she accepted her loss with native philosophy but she was waiting to learn the mystery regarding Hourke and brooding vengeance in spite of his warning.

Dineen decided to search for his chief trapper, and Rourke's wife sent him a relative of her family named Inbain who knew Hourke and was loyal to his wile. Inbam gathered native carriers and supplies for the trip, one item of which surprised Dineen. a supply of thick long candles. Dineen reminded Inbam that they had flashlights, but the natives said Hourke always carried "corpse-candles," which in case of his death were to be lighted around his body. Rourke's wife added her gift for good luck, a treasured crncifiv of Rourke's, finely carved of ebony and ivory wrapped in a length of silk, which Dineen placed in the box containing the "corpse-candles" and some canned and bottled delicacies for his own personal use.

Native canoes took them up shoreless rivers where mangrove pods ripen on branches and drop roots in tenuous webs bedded in the coze. Crocodiles rested their opened jaws on the roots and small siesac: birds flew in and out taking food particles from their fangs. The country swarmed with small monkeys that scattered when a big orang-outang would come along and peer curiously .it the canoes. Dineen noticed his natives were uneasy from the start, and their fears affected him. But there were compensations for the discomforts of insects and leeches and guarding against the swinging tails of crocodiles. The mountain peaks were mist-wreathed, the wooded jungles held orchids like tinted flames. Birds of Paradise; danced on upper tree branches at sunrise. There were (lashes of gaudy parrots and butterflies like windblown bits of gay silks.

They found a blazed trail where Rourke had cut his way inland. But the irritating thing to Dineen was the constant torturing roll and stuttering of native drums talking back and forth.

Inbam, who understood the drum gossip, was worried. The other natives wanted to turn back, but there is a penalty for deserting a white man in the jungle; also, Inbam held over them the fear of vengeance from Rourke's wife, who had a definite reputation as a sorceress.

Leaving the canoes, they went through saw-edged jungle grass, plagued by leeches and stinging insects. Around the evening camp-fire the men picked off leeches and polished their jinmts, which are

charms against evil. The villagers met willi were friendly and they remembered Rourke goiiig through, hut refused to furnish guides. "There are dcbbil-debbils,' they said.

Inbam translated, but Dineen did not scoff. There was a tangible apprehension in his own mind, a feeling of weird things going lor-ward in the jungle, fie decided that a rest from the laborious travelling and a little hunting might cheer the men. Birds were plentiful. So at the foot of a hill range standing like the vertebra: of a monster that had fossilized as it crawled seaward, they made camp.

Dineen's personal supplies were kept in a hut they built on high stilt legs. He was sitting in the doorway one sundown when he saw a huge orang-outang standing in the crotch of a near-by tree holding the blanches apart and peering down. Inbam also saw it and silently handed up a gun to Dineen's hand. Instantly the branches crashed together, the ape fled, and the swish of other branches springing back as it leaped from one to another told of its size and weight.

That night the native drums were livelier. Inbam went to the nearest village and returned late with a tale that kept Dineen awake longer than usual. lie said a native girl had been carried into the jungle by one of the orang-outangs. The villagers were mourning her loss and talking about terrible magic in the hills. In barn's own tale was interrupted as he ceased shaking and pointed toward the tree, and in the moonlight Dineen saw again an orang-outang with its fangs bared as if it grinned. There came a bellow from that hairy throat which sent the men lying around the small campfire scuttling toward the hut, their curved knives ready for defense.

The big ape stood on a branch balanced by its hand-grip on a higher limb and from its black lips came sounds so uncouth that Dineen felt the hair prickling on the nape of his neck. Me could have sworn he heard the creature mouth words:

"Hy. Tuan, by . . ." which means "It is true, Tuan."

A silence bred of fear held Dineen mute. Slowly and laboriously the great ape mouthed sounds like Malay words. The natives huddled together, whispering in terror. At Dineen's ear Inbam breathed:

"He says 'orang put eh ubal,' Tuan. He wants white man medicine. What devil is it that gives speech to a man of the woods, Tuan?"

"That is foolish talk," said Dineen stubbornly- "Your wits wander. Gel the express rifle." But at sight of Dineen with the elephant gun in his hand, the ape disappeared.

Below the hut the natives were chattering in frenzied outbursts and Dineen knew they were ready to bolt.

"It is an ape that somebody has trained and taught to speak," he said, knowing it was folly to contradict their belief that the creature had used their own speech. He did not yet believe it, and his men needed to be handled carefully lest they desert him now.

That night the drums spoke in purring spurts and tattoo roils, bursting sometimes into violent throbbing, and his men lav awake whispering. At dawn they pleaded to leave this evil place- Dineen was one white man among a crowd of savages almost uncontrollable from superstitious fear, lie started them placing bird-lime on sticks to lodge in the trees and building cages on tall poles beyond the reach of snakes; then he led them into the jungle to hunt.

That night in camp, while supper was cooking, hi- sat cleaning oil leeches that had penetrated his puttees and laced boots, and decided to open canned peaches for a treat. He pulled the box with his clothing from under the camp bed and groped for the other case. Then Dineen cursed. The ease ol precious canned food was gone, and with it the candles and crucifix packed among the liottlcs. lie did not suspect a thief among his own men; yet around the hut lay his shaving tackle, weapons and ammunition, far more appealing to a native from the village, left undisturbed. He searched further, then called Inbam, who had discovered that a sack of rice was missing also. The sack had been punctured ami rice had trickled from the hole as it was carried away.

At dawn they saw birds alighting to feed on the rice. Dineen marked their swooping flight toward a shadowy crevasse in the hills.

"We'll follow the thief," he announced.

With a few picked men and Inbam he started across the valley and camped near tin; hills that night. He was wakened from sleep beside the campfire by a sound that lilted his hair. The light of dying embers showed his men crouching or Creeping toward him. From the caves of gloom beyond the dim fire-glow came a booming voice like a minor tune played on the bass notes ol an ancient Organ. No human throat could have emitted its rumbling sonorousness. Inbam touched Dinecn's arm and his teeth chattered as Ik; whispered:

"Titan, the man of the woods sings a mating-song that I have sung to women. It is a devil!"

"I've heard that damned ditty." agreed Dineen. Yet fear clawed at his brain. Cold sweat broke Irom his pores. "It's that talking ape," he added.

"Yes, Tutm. He is singing to the native girl he stole from the village," said Inbam.

There was a restless rustling of tree branches that told of more than one great ape in the vicinity. To Dineeifs increasing horror there came a gusty burst of profanity in a voice as mighty as that of the singer:

"Shut up. ye damned brute. Quit yer singin' love songs to what the Chinks"II make o' that poor little native girl that ye stole an' dropped in their kampong. Godl I could kill ye for doing that if it wouldn't be so hellish lonesome without yer bad company in my own misery."

The speech ended with a volley of oaths that should have blasted their victim; then came the reply in port Pidgin from the voice that had sung the pan tun:

"Be not angry with thy servant, Tuan. Long have I followed you into the perils of trapping beasts and birds. Now 1 am trapped with you. Yet perhaps it was so written. Strange magic I have seen, yet never did I think to lie caught by it. The spirit of my first woman entered into the body of a tigress. Now my spirit has entered into the body of a man of the woods."

A snarl ended the stentorian musings. Dineen pinched his own forearm until it hurt convincing himself that he was not dreaming. The crashing of tree branches ended the jungle parley.

There was no more sleep for Dineen. At daybreak he led his men toward the purple gap in the lulls and again camped at the edge of flat country bordering another crocodile-infested river. Leaving the men and supplies, Dineen and Inbam went forward, picking then-way through masses of creepers and rotting deadwood to the gloom of mangroves bordering the water. From one twisted root to another they stepped cautiously. The muggers slipped into the water and sank slowly, their unblinking eyes staring upward, bubbles breaking where they sank. The stench of rotting vegetation and nauseating crocodile odor was thick and heavy. Then as Dineen peered up and down the dark stream he caught sight of a neat modern powerboat on the opposite side, moored to a tree. From where it lay, a trail had been hacked into the farther jungle.

Small monkeys chattered and lied with sudden cries, a sign that orang-outangs were coming. At the sound of distant branches swish ing, Dineen turned to retrace his way to solid ground. Inbam was younger and more agile and lie left Dineen behind. Creepers cut off Dineen's sight of the native, when suddenly a great ape dropped and confronted the white man.

It stood erect, horribly huge and menacing. Dineen tried to shoot, but as he swung the gun to his shoulder it was wrenched from his grasp by a second orang-outang which hung by its paws from an overhead tree branch. His blood seemed to congeal in his flesh-as the big ape came nearer, mouthing uncouth sounds that even in his terror Dineen could not refuse to understand.

"Dineen, ye don't know me," it said mournfully. "Ye don't know Rourke, an' I don't blame ye. Ye couldn't believe it's me in this awful shape. But it's true, Dineen. It's Bourke's brain in the head of an ape. That's what the Chinks did to me. Oinar Sung Loo's Chink surgeons played their hellish tricks on me an' my trapper, jist because I stole that tiger dust o' his. Cod! what a price fcr a man to pay."

Dineen felt his senses whirling, his legs wobbling. The stench of the crocodile swamp filled his throat and nostrils and vertigo clamped

its claws in his vitals. He tried to leap to the next tree-root and his legs were paralyzed like a man in a nightmare trying to escape from demons. He stumbled and fell across a mangrove root widi nis legs in tlic stinking ooze.

The giant ape came nearer, a paw reached for him. He was lifted close to that terrible face. Then he knew nothing more until his eyes opened on a leafy canopy of cool shade and cleaner wind. It was some minutes before he saw the great apes crouching near him and realized that he lay on a platform of bamltoo crudely lashed to branches high in the trees, which swayed gently as the apes moved and shifted their weight.

"Dineen," came die rasping and thick sounds from a tongue that was slowly accustoming itself to human speech, "It's liourke talkin'. Cod! I don't blame yc for doubtin' what I say. But listen to what I'm sayin' an' try to understand. Here, take a swig o' this coconut milk." He whanged a nut on tlx: tree branch and broke the shell.

Dineen s throat was parched and he drank eagerly; then as his head lifted he dropped it again on his arm, hoping to God he dreamed the sight before him. Yet the voice went on relentlessly:

"Dineen, I'm a sight to scare a man, I know, but listen. Omar Sung Loo's Chink surgeons have a kampong near here an' a nice little surgery. Tabak that's my trapper as was, though he's an ape now same as 1 am - well, we walked into it innocent as babes. The Chinks was polite and give us food an' drinks. They was both doped, Dineen. An' them devils butchered us an' put our brains into the heads of orang-outangs. They meant to ship us to Omar an' sell us as freaks, but we broke away. Omar owed me a grudge, an' you remember how he cursed inc. He said he'd pay back, an' he did."

It took time for the slow and labored utterance to be voiced. Dineen listened helplessly, and something in that sorrowful wail penetrated past fear, which was his only sensation.

"Ye can't believe," mourned the ape, "but I'll show ye presently how true it is. My wife knows. I went there an' told her I was in a devil land an' could never come home to her again. I told her not to search for me. But I said if Omar Sung Loo came tiger-trapping in die jungles she might slip the word to the natives to let a tiger maul him to death. Tis a poor revenge but 'twill keep him from further hellishness. An' Dineen, I want your help now. My man, Tabak- the unbaptized son of a slut!—stole a native girl an' handed her down to the kampong fer this Chink surgeon to make him a sweetheart orang-outang. We stoic her before the head wound healed, an' she's here on our tree-nest dyin' by inches. You've some skill with wounds, Dineen. Look at her an' see can ye do anything. I'd end it for her, only it's so damned lonesome, an' Tabak an' me would fight.

Somehow I want to live to know Omar is dead first ... if I can stand it that long."

Dineen lay shuddering, hearing hut not heeding. The great ape lifted him with his back against the tree bole and pointed toward a female ape that sat slumped in a heap as native women sit. its body leaning forward between its opthrust knees. Around its head was a pink puckered scar like the edge of a cap. One look at the scar revealed to Dineen the badly infected state. His dread-filled eyes gazed at the other apes and saw the healed sears around their heads. A burst of insane laughter came from his lips.

"It's tough on ye, Dineen, but you're safe with us, if that's any comfort. Tell me about the ape-girl."

"That wound needs surgical attention and disinfectants," he muttered hoarsely.

"We got none, but there's plenty in the Chinks" kampong. Yon know drugs better'n J do. I'll take ye along."

"Í wont go!" Dineen protested, but his resistance was feeble. The big ape was ruthless. Dineen saw that the ape body and instincts were not wholly controlled by the human brain, and Hourke had been a bold hunter, cruel enough when his work demanded. Dineen was slung over his shoulder like a sack, carried in swinging flight that .swooped from branch to tree. To save the lashing of branches on his face he ducked his head against the hairy breast and shut his eyes. Presently he must awaken from tisis devil dream. . . .

There was a glimpse of dark water as the apes leaped and caught branches on the opposite shore; then he saw sun gleams on a bamboo palisade and thatched buildings like large huts. I'rom high in the tree Dineen looked down and saw humans. His first thought was of escape.

Gathering all his strength in a desperate effort he heaved suddenly against the ape's grasp. Then he was falling, slithering through thick-foliaged branches, dropping to the ground inside the stockade. He heard the bellow of the apes and gun-shots crashing. Opening his eyes later he saw a Chinese walking beside him as coolies carried him to the hut. He also saw three orang-outangs chained to trees in the kampong, leaping the length of their fetters, yelling horridly. The Chinese lashed at them with a whip in his hand, and they cowered whimpering. A fourth ape slumped between its knees like the she-ape in the tree eyrie. Their heads were swathed in bandages, their four paws manacled.

Dineen was glad to lie on a cot on the hut porch behind mosquito netting and drink what was handed him. Tin; Chinese spoke excellent English, but as Dineen cursed the nightmare through which he was enduring so dreadfully, there came further horror.

"It is neither fever nor a dream," said the Chinese. "Those apes have human brains. We experimented long ago in that branch of surgery. My countrymen were adepts at grafting when your Western colleges were being built. Recently we have studied your wink and gone ahead tremendously. Animals furnish our greatest field ol experimentation. You have seen some poor specimens in (he cages of Omar Sung Loo's kampong. lie has a market for side-show freaks. We hope he will be able to sell (he talking apes which we have successfully produced. It has been possible for us to transplant human bruins into the skulls of orang-outangs and ha\c them survive. Hut unfortunately our greatest prize, a man of your race, escaped with a Malay ape-man. They brought me a native girl who was operated upon, but stole her before her wound healed. She may not survive, lor such operations need care in treatment. Those men-a pes you see in the kampong speak no English and will not be so valuable; for side-show purposes in European countries. So you see¹ heiw grateful 1 am that Rourke, the man-ape who captured you, dropped you here, f hope you will enjoy our hospitality until we can trap another orang-outang."

The- sinister menace erf the Chinese's weirds was some time penetrating Dineen*s mind. He' was given highly spiced curry and cool chinks, which he ate and drank gratefully. Then lie- slept and wakened behind the- mosquito-netting of the cot in a contented lethargy only disturbed by the clanking chains and hoarse cries of the ape prisoners.

A coolie led him to a bath house and handed him fresh pajamas, comlorliug and cr<»<»I to his Mesh. lie was enjoying the- rest, the well-scasoned food and eh inks. His body and brain were still too exhausted tei anticipate danger en delenel himse-ll against it. Except for the chained a*x*s, the- place* was quirt and deserted, yet the jungle seemed noisier than iimi.iI bv day, bc-yeind the- bamboo fence.

He- rose and strolled toward the fence*, but two natives appeared armed with ugly-looking krisses and herded him ignominioiislv back to the porch, where one stood guard while- the other summoned the Chinese surgeon.

Courteous of speech vet blandly cruel, the surge-em informed Dineen more fully ol the horror awaiting him.

"You must not leave (he* house."

Anger of the white man toward the Oriental stoicism roused Dineen's rage.

"I'll go where I damn please," he cried. "And you'll stop me at your peril. My men are* not lar away, remember."

"They cannot enter he-re," said the Chinese. "Nor are you free to leave, Dineen. I could not part with so fortunate a guest for the experiment I have- in view, your own intelligent, trained and educated brain. I lost Hourke, but I shall not risk losing yon. Better have another drink. Mr. Dineen, to epiiet your nerves."

"Neit another drop," shouted Dineen. "I believe you doped my drinks."

"Of course, both your food and drink were doped, as you call it, But is it not better to meet fate which even the bravest man puts off as long as he can, the translation from one existence to another form of life? Think it over. I must attend to diat suffering ape in the kampong."

Slowly, frightfully, the ghastly truth dawned in his mind. He sat in a hell of chaotic ami frenzied rear, and when the drink was brought he struck it from the man's hand, fie was unarmed, helpless; even his clothes were gone, except the cotton pajamas in which he sat. His body shuddered as he realized the fiendish surgeon fully intended to make an ape of him! Chattering fear took him down the steps to where the Chinese bent over the chained ape, but two Malays dogged his steps and stood beside him as he began to plead against the fate in store for him.

The end came suddenly. From the trees dropped a cyclonic fury of fighting apes, bellowing their rage, knocking the Malays aside, seizing them by the feet and swinging their heads against the palms, breaking their skulls like egg-shells. Dineen turned from the sight of the surgeon being torn to shreds. Then he was caught over the shoulder of an ape and swung to the trees, the guttural Malay of Tabak in his-ears. The ape-man Rourke was gathering up the surgical instruments, bottles of medicine and rolls of gauze.

A hell of noise, shrieking, roaring, screeching, rang in Dineen's ears until he was carried to the tree platform. The height above ground made him crouch low beside the she-ape which lay limp on its side. When the case of instruments and drugs was thumped down beside him Dineen touched the she-ape's body. lie sat back on his heels and shook his head.

"She is dead," he said.

In the swaying aerial perch he felt numbed after the fright in his mind and din of the light, lie watched dully as the ape-men picked up the dead orang-outang and lowered her body to the thicket of lianas below, where they vanished. He was alone in the tree as night fell and the prowlers ol darkness began their mysterious rustlings, the insect clack and clamor arose. He slept and wakened as the Scorpion crawled down the sky and the Southern Cross was dimmed by dawnlight,

He shrank from an attempt to descend, but thirst tortured so badly that summoning his courage he swung from the platform to the nearest branch, and working his way by the tree crotches he reached the protruding root-knees and got to solid ground. He drank from moisture of night dew cupped in leaves, and followed a well-defined trail to higher ground. His men had lied, leaving the cold ashes of a campfirc to mark the place where they had been. All day he traveled, following their trail, and at dark he saw small lights flickering against

a hill. With a fresh burst of speed he hurried on, then halted. Against (Jie little flames he saw the grotesque figures of the two ape-men.

He would not risk being their prisoner again, and he circled cautiously along a hill slope to a rock from which he could look down. And the fear and repulsion of the unnatural beasts left him as he gazed upon their work. There was a hole scooped from the earth, and in it lay the body of the she-ape with the ivory and ebony crucifix stolen from his camp hut, on her breast. Around the grave stood his stolen candles, their flames wavering in the soft night breeze. Beside the grave the ape-man Tabak sat crooning that Malay pantun, the love song roared in the night. Dineen remembered that it was the same song he had heard Rourke's native wife singing to the accompaniment of bell-gongs as he went up the path to her bungalow. The voice of Rourke, mournfully unaware of its volume, came to him sorrowfully:

"Corpse-candles don't mean much to her, Tabak, but maybe it'll help her soid Gnd its way home. Cod help me! f wonder if this purgatory I'm goin" through will be enough fer me to find heaven."

The cool night breeze was clearing Dinecu's head of the drugs he had imbibed in the kanijioiig food, lie remembered all that had happened, and even believed il now! Yet exhaustion forced him to lie and sleep on the rocky hill. The leeches which had bled him fieely by day dropped lioin his Mesh at night. A feeling of fatalism dulled further fear. lie was roused from sleep by a touch on his arm, and the sight of the ape squalling nc-ai him was no longer frightening.

"Dineen, I'll be takiii' ye to yer camp. Co out with your men. There's nothing yon can do fur mc except !;ill me, unless maybe you'd see my wife an tell hi to go back to her people an" lorget me. There's nothing for her to forgive. We v. as happv while it lasted."

Dineen was carried swiltly, not caring where, and dropped on the opening ol the lull crevasse into the valley, high enough to look down on his own camp.

'Tut him there. Taluk," said the other ape. who carried the gun that had been nil' I '■> >ln Dineen when he met them at the i ivei "Dineen, when ye get out say a prayei lei the soul o' Tom Rourke. He's had hell enough alive. There can't be worse hell where he's goin'." The rumbling voice held tragic sorrow and despair.

Dineen plunged down the trail. The sound of a shot startled him and he looked back. On the rock ledge one ape writhed in death agony a moment, then limply its body fell Irom the ledge. Diecon heard it crash in the bushes.

Then the other ape squatted and braced the gun between its feet and placed the muzzle between its open jaws Its hand reached down the gun-barrel to find the trigger. There was a second report. An ineit mass of hair-covered body slumped from sight. Dineen ran on

was drawn across her lips and came away stained darkly. Then she

saw Dineen in the porch chair.

Rage leaped furiously to life in her tired flesh.

"Tumi, how dare yon sleep here? Long have we nursed you through fever. The night chill will bring it on again."

"I'm not afraid of night chill or ghost tigers!" he said gently.

He heard a gasping sob as she vanished in the house, heard her cot creak as she dropped on it to sleep.

That day Dineen sent for Iiibam, who was plainly reluctant to speak of the fate of Maurice or the ruse to fetch Omar Sung Loo tiger-trapping, until Dineen forced him to talk by mentioning that Inbam had deserted him in the jungle, a crime for which the punishment was severe if complaint was made.

"I shall not interfere with your affairs, Inbam, but I want some

questions answered. Otherwise------------- " his tone held a threat. "Now tell

me what became of the helpers of that Chinese surgeon in the jungle kampong."

"Titan, they were killed by a tigress and the ants have picked their bones."

"And your kinswoman in this house, had she a hand in that vengeance, Inbam?" he asked.

"Of a truth, Ttian, is she not the widow of a white Titan the Chinese devils killed? More I cannot answer, except that what is written, is written."

"Where does Rourke's widow go by night, Inbam?"

"Titan, I dare not follow her to know."

"Rut you know where she goes, Inbam."

"Titan, I know only that what is written, is written!"

"Where is Omar Sung l,oo, Inbam?"

"Word comes that he is on his way to trap tigers and should he here soon."

The widow slept all that day. Intrigued and curious about her, Dineen came to her couch and stood looking down through Hie mosquito netting. An impulse prompted him to hum the love pantun softly. Hearing it in her sleep, she stirred and sighed and began to murmur words. Dineen listened shamelessly.

"Beloved . . . five have I killed. ... I leaped from the gloom. My fangs gripped and shook them. A golden death all too merciful for such dogs. They were his men. Beloved. . . . And I have his scent. Your murderer shall not escajic long."

Dineen went quietly away and sat brooding on the mysterious and uncanny problem until tiffin, but the widow did not appear. He finally went to bed but lay awake, and as the moon sailed high he was aware of her soundless gliding to the door and into the flower hedge. He followed and found the black sarong she had left there.

He hat! slept that afternoon and had no difficulty staying awake until the hour she returned. From inside the house he watched again until he heard the soft fluid ol bounding paws and distinctly saw by a moon late enough to leave ils frail ghost by dawnlight, the striped body of the tigress transformed as it glided over the porch, into the body of Bounce's widow. He saw the startling green glow of her eyes as she went to her room. That morning lie stood beside her again and saw the change in her appearance. She had been a dainty, perfumed creature. Now her face was haggard, her amber-colored flesh was scratched, her nails were broken and grimed, and about her was the fetid odor of the great carnivore's breath, faint yet distinct.

As he watched, her body moved, stretched and curled again like a cat, and her fingers flexed and spread like claws. Dinecn touched her wrist. Without a movement her eyes opened their glowing green fire; yet in the light the iris narrowed to a thin slit of emerald flame. Her head rubbed against his arm, and like a kitten her tongue licked at his hand.

He jerked back and spoke sharply. Blood oozed to the surface of the skin her tongue had rasped. Then he regretted speaking, for she wakened fully, and he saw she was bewildered, and shuddered convulsively, moaning a little.

"I dreamed, Tuan! I dreamed I was caught in a trap!"

"Then take warning," he said gently. "Leave vengeance to the gods." Then, ashamed of a speech that betrayed his own weak slipping into a belief in this dreadful metempsychosis, he left her abruptly, thinking it was high time he cleared out and went back to the haunts of his own logical-minded race;.

"Tomorrow 1 leave," he announced to her late that afternoon.

She did not demur, and as usual disappeared as the moon rose. As before, he waited until dawn, but this time his vigil was fruitless. She did not return. Remembering that she sometimes stayed away for a few days, he was not alarmed until Inbain came running in the noonday neat when no native willingly stirs abroad. He was greatly upset and excited and almost incoherent as he blurted out the news that Omar Sung Loo had trapped a splendid tigress and was shipping her back to his kampong.

"Tuan, you must buy this tigress and set it free," wailed Inbam. "I tried to buy it. I offered all I possessed and all my kinsfolk possessed, but he will not sell. Tuan, he trapped the tigress with bags of white dust he scattered, a magic powder that made her forget her cunning and roll in it like a cub at play. But she must be freed, Tuan. Buy her. By your hone of Paradise, you must free this tigress."

Dinecn leaned forward in his chair, staring at the agonized Inbam.

"Why should I set this tigress free?" he demanded.

"By the spirit of Tuan Bourkc who was your friend, you must. Tuan,

it is past the belief of a white Tuan. But the tigress is my kinswoman, the wife of Tuan Kourkc!"

"Nonsense," shouted Dineen. "You lie to me!"

"Tuan, I speak truth. She is a tigress berhantu. A ghost tigress."

"Then why should cage bars hold her, lnbam?"

"Tuan. it is that magic tiger dust of Omar Sung Loo drugging her senses. She lies contented licking it, rolling in the dirty straw, she who loved perfumes and silks and jewels. Tuan, see her and know if I lie to you. She wears the pearls you gave her on her neck!"

Dineen laughed harshly. These nightmares were sending him mad. Reason was tottering. He would get out at once, lnham agreed to go with him, but when they started from the village they learned that Omar Sung Loo had gone, the tigress was on her way to his kam-pong. Driven now by a desire to see the finish of the affair, Dineen followed. The lumbering cage on cart-wheels, drawn by carabaos, was somewhere on the river road, but Dineen took a boat and some time in the night he passed it.

He wailed in the village until word came that Omar Sting Loo had returned. Then with a loaded gun in his pocket he went to the kaniponi'.

Omar Sung lx>o stood at the gate and barred his way belligerently. Smirking and defiant, he said he had nothing For sale.

"You captured a tigress. I will buy her," said Dineen.

"She is not for sale, Tuan. Down her black throat has gone more of my magic powder than she is worth. Yet I have an affection for the beast and will not sell her."

"Let me sec her!" Dineen s gun poked the belly of Omar Sung Loo and his finger curved on the trigger. The dealer snarled and backed toward the kampong where the tigress lay in her cage on dirty jungle grass, her tongue lolling thirstily, her eyes glowing green with hate and fear. She crouched and snarled as Omar Sung Loo came near, and her lithe paw reached through the bars.

Dineen held Omar Sung 1.00 in a corner by the cage, with his gun still indenting the brown skin. The cries of Omar fell on heedless ears. Dineen began to whistle, then to sing the tune of the love pantun he had heard Rourkes wife sing, and again heard roared from the throat of a bull ape in the jungle.

The effect on the tigress was startling. She lifted her head and roared. She worked herself into a fury and her long claws tore splinters from the cage bars. Then she went into a Hurry that made the wooden crate creak and strain. Omar screeched in fear, his defiance was gone.

"Tuan, she was kept without food or water, but the cage bars cannot hold her now. They are breaking!"

It was true. Two of the bars were gone. The head of the tigress and

100

One evening, about nine o'clock, Mr. Worby knocked at bis lodger's door. "I've occasion," he said, "to go across In the Cathedral. Mr. Lake, and I think I made you a promise when I did so next I would give you the opportunity to see what it looks like at night time. It's quite fine and dry outside, if you care to come."

"To be sure 1 will; very much obliged to you, Mr. Worby. for thinking of it, but let me get my coal.'

"Here it is, sir, and I've another lantern here that you'll find advisable for the steps, as there's no moon.'"

"Anyone might think we were Jasper and Durdles, over again, mightn't they?" said Lake, as they crossed the close, for he had ascertained that the Verger had read Edivin Drood.

"Well, so they might," said Mr. Worby, with a short laugh, "though 1 don't know whether we ought to take it as a compliment. Odd ways, 1 often think, they had al that Cathedral, don't it seem so to you, sir? Full choral matins at seven o'clock in the morning all the year round. Wouldn't suit our boys' voices nowadays, and I think there's one or two of the men would be applying for a rise if the Chapter was to bring it iu- particular the altos."

They were now at the south-west door. As Mr. Worby was unlocking it. Lake said, "Did you ever find anybody locked in here by accident?"

"Twice I did. One was a drunk sailor; however he got in I don't know. I s'pose he went to sleep in the service, but by the time I got to him he was praying lit to bring the roof in. Lor! what a noise that man did make! said it was the first time he'd been inside a church for ten years, and blest if ever he'd try it again. The other was an old sheep: them boys it was, up to their games. That was the last time they tried it on, though. There, sir, now you see what we look like; our late Dean used now and again to bring parties in, but he preferred a moonlight night, and there was a piece of verse he'd coat to 'em, relating to a Scotch cathedral, I understand; but I don't know; I almost think the effect's better when it's all dark-like. Seems to add to the size and heighth. Now if you won't mind stopping somewhere in the nave while I go up into the choir where my business lays, you'll see what I mean.'

Accordingly Lake waited, leaning against a pillar, and watched the light wavering along the length of the church, and up the steps into the choir, until it was intercepted by some screen or other furniture, which only allowed the reflection to be seen on the piers and roof. Not many minutes had passed before Worby reappeared at the door of the choir and by waving his lantern signalled to Lake to rejoin him.

"1 suppose it is Worby. and not a substitute," thought Lake to himself, as he walked up the nave. There was, in fact, nothing untoward.

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Worby showed him tltc papers which he had come to fetch out of the Dean's stall, and asked him what he thought of the spectacle: Lake agreed that it was well worth seeing. "1 suppose," he said, as they walked towards the altar-steps together, "that you're too much used to going about here at night to feel nervous— but you must get a start every now and then, don't you, when a book falls down or a door swings to?"

"No, Mr. Lake, I can't say I think much about noises, not nowadays: I'm much more afraid of finding an escape of gas or a burst in the stove pipes than anything else. Still there nave been times, years ago. Did you notice that plain altar-tomb there fifteenth century we say it is. 1 don't know if you agree to that? Well, if you didn't look at it, just come back and give it a glance, if you'd be so good." ft was on the north side of the choir, and rather awkwardly placed: oidy about three feet from the enclosing stone screen. Quite plain, as the Verger had said, but for some, ordinary stone panelling. A metal cross of some size on the northern side (that next to the screen) was the solitary feature of any interest.

Lake agreed that it was not earlier than the Perpendicular period: "but," he said, "unless it's the tomb of some remarkable person, you'll forgive me for saying that I don't think it's particularly noteworthy."

"Well. I can't say as it is the tomb of anybody noted in "istory," said Worby, who had a dry smile on his face, "for we don't own any record whatsoever of who it was put up to. For all that, if you've half an hour to spare, sir, when we get back to the house. Mr. Lake, 1 could tell you a tale about that tomb. 1 won't begin on it now; it strikes cold here, and we don't want to be dawdling about all night."

"Of course I should like to hear it immensely."

"Very well, sir, you shall. Now if I might put a question to you." he went on, as they passed down the choir aisle, "in our little local guide

and not only there, but in tin- little book on our Cathedral in the series you'll find it stated that this portion of the building was erected previous to the twelfth century. Now of course I should be glad enough to take that view, but -mind the step, sir- but, 1 put it to you — does the lay of the stone 'ere in this poition of the wall (which he tapped with his key), does it to your eye carry the flavour of what you might call Saxon masonry? No, I thought not; no more it does to ine: now, if you'll believe me. I've said as much to those men one's the librarian of our Free Libry here, and the other came down from London on purpose- fifty limes, if I have once, but I might just as well have talked to that bit of stonework. Bui there il is, I sup|>ose every ones got their opinions."

The discussion of this peculiar trait of human nature occupied Mr. Worby almost up to the moment when he and Lake re-entered the former's house. The condition ol the fire in Lake's sitting-room led

104

to a suggestion from Mr. Worby that they should finish the evening in his own parlour. We find them accordingly settled there sonic short time afterwards.

Mr. Worby made his story a long one, and I will not undertake to tell it wholly in his own words, or in his own order. Lake committed the substance of it to paper immediately after hearing it. together with some few passages of the narrative which bad fixed themselves verbatim in his mind; 1 shall probably find it expedient to condense Lake's record to some extent.

Mr. Worby was born, it appeared, about the year 182S. His father before him bad been connected with the Cathedral, and likewise his grandfather. One or both had been choristers, and in later life both had done work as mason and carpenter respectively about the fabric. Worby himself, though possessed, as he frankly acknowledged, of an indifferent voice, had been drafted into the choir at about ten years of age.

It was in 1840 that the wave of the Gothic revival smote the Cathedral of Southminsler. "There was a lot of lovely stufi went then, sir," said Worbv, with a sigh. "My father couldn't hardly believe it when he got his orders to clear out the choir. There was a new dean just come in Dean Hurseougli it was—and my father had been prcnticed to a good firm of joiners in the city, and knew what good work was when he saw it. Crool it was, he used to say: all that beautiful wainscot oak. as good as the day it was put up, ami garlands-like of foliage and fruit, and lovely old gilding work on the coats of arms and the oigan pipes. All went to the timber yard every bit except some little pieces worked up in the Lady Chapel, and 'ere in this overmantel. Well I may be mistook, but I say our choir never looked as well since. Still there was a lot lound out about the history of the church, and no doubt but what it did stand in need of repair. There was very few winters passed but what we'd lose a pinnacle." Mr, Lake expressed his com uirenee with Worby"s views of restoration, but owns to a fear about ibis point lest the story proper should never be reached. Possibly this was perceptible in his manner.

Worby hastened to reassure him, "Not but what I could carry on about thai topic lot hours at a time, and do do when I see my opportunity, liul I )ean Biirseoiigli he w;is very set on the Gothic period, and nothing would serve him bul everything must be made agreeable to that. And one looming alter service he appointed for my lather to meet him in the t lion, .ind he came back after he'd taken oil his robes in the vestry, and he'd got a roll of paper with him, and the verger that was then brought in a table, and they begun spreading it out on the table with prayei books to keep it down, and my father helped em. and he saw il was a picture of the inside of a choir In a Cathedral; and the Dean he was a quick -spoken gentleman—he says, 'Well. Worby.

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what do you think of that?" Why,' says my father, 'I don't think I 'ave The pleasure of knowing that view. Would that be Hereford Cathedral, Mr. Dean?' 'No. Worby,' says the Dean, 'that's Southminster Cathedral as we hope to sec it before many years.' Mn-deed, sir,' says my father, and that was all he did say — leastways to the Dean—but he used to ti II me he felt reelly faint in himself when he looked round our choir as I can remember it, all comfortable and furnished-like, and then see this nasty little dry pieter, as he called it, drawn out by some London architect. Well, there 1 am again. But you'll see what 1 mean if you look at this old view."

Worby reached down a framed print from the wall. "Well, the long and the short of it was that the Dean he handed over to my father a copy of an order of the Chapter that he was to clear out every bit of

the choir....... make a clean sweep—ready for the new work that was

being designed up in town, and he was to put it in hand as soon as ever lie could get the breakers together. Now then, sir, if you look at that view, you'll sec where the pulpit used to stand: that's what f want you to notice, if you please." It was, indeed, easily seen; an unusually large structure of timber with a domed soundingboard, standing at the east cud of the stalls on the north side of the choir, facing the bishop's throne. Worby proceeded to explain that (luring the alterations, services were held in the nave, the members of the choir being thereby disappointed of an anticipated holiday, and the organist in particular incurring the suspicion of having wilfully damaged the mechanism of the temporary organ that was hired at considerable expense from Loudon.

The work of demolition began with the choir screen and organ loft, and proceeded gradually eastwards, disclosing, as Worby said, many interesting features of older work. While this was going on, the members of the Chapter were, naturally, in and about the choir a great deal, and it soon became apparent to the elder Worby—who could not help overhearing some of their talk—that, on the part of the senior Canons especially, there must have been a good deal of disagreement before the policy now being carried out had been adopted. Some were of opinion that they should catch their deaths of cold in the return-stalls, unprotected by a screen from the draughts in the nave: others objected to being exposed to the views of persons in tfie choir aisles, especially, they said, during the sermons, when they found it helpful to listen in a posture which was liable to misconstruction. The strongest opposition, however, came from the oldest of the body, who up to the last moment objected to the removal of the pulpit. "You ought not to touch it, Mr. Dean," he said with great emphasis one morning, when the two were standing before it: "you don't know what mischief you may do." "Mischief? it's not a work of any particular merit, Canon." "Don't call me Canon," said the old man with great

106

asperity, "that is, for thirty years I've been known as Dr. Ayloff, and I shall he obliged, Mr. Dean, if you would kindly humour me in that matter. And as to the pulpit (which I've preached from for thirty years, though I don't insist on that), all I'll say is, 1 know you're doing wrong in moving it.'* "But what sense could there be, my dear Doctor, in leaving it where it is, when we're fitting up the rest of the choir in a totally different style? What reason could be given—apart from the look of the thing?" "Reason! reason!" said old Dr. Ayloff; "if you young men—if I may say so without any disrespect, Mr. Dean - if you'd only listen to reason a little, and not be always asking for it, we should get on better. But there, I've said my say." The old gentleman hobbled off, and as it proved, never entered the Cathedral again. The season—it was a hot summer—turned sickly on a sudden. Dr. Ayloff was one of the first to go, with some affection of the muscles of the thorax, which took him painfully at night. And at many services the number of choirmcn and boys was very thin.

Meanwhile the pulpit had been done away with. In fact, the sounding-board (part of which still exists as a table in a summer-house in the palace garden) was taken down within an hour or two of Dr. Ayloff's protest. The removal of the base- not effected without considerable trouble disclosed to view, greatly to the exultation of the restoring party, an altar-tomb- the tomb, of course, to which Worby had attracted Lake's attention that same evening. Much fruitless research was expended in attempts to identify the occupant; from that day to this he has never had a name put to him. The structure had been most carefully boxed in under the pulpit-base, so that such slight ornament as it possessed was not defaced; only on the north side of it there was what looked like an injury; a gap between two of the slabs composing the side. It might be two or three inches across. Palmer, the mason, was directed to fill it up in a week's time, when he came to do some other small jobs near that part of the choir.

The season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Whether the church was built on a site that had once been a marsh, as was suggested, or for whatever reason, the residents in its immediate neighborhood had, many of them, but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older people—Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen - the summer proved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Gradually there formulated itself a suspicion—which grew into a conviction—that the alterations in the Cathedral had something to say in the matter. The widow of a former old verger, a pensioner of the Chapter of Soutlmiinster, was visited by dreams, which she retailed to her friends, of a shape that slipped out of the little door of the south

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transept as the dark fell in, and flitted—taking a fresh direction every night—about the Close, disappearing for a while in house after house, and finally emerging again when the night sky was paling. She could sec nothing of it, she said, but that it was a moving form: only she had an impression that when it returned to the church, as it seemed to do in the end of the dream, it turned its head: and then, she could not tell why. but she thought it had red eyes. Worby remembered hearing the old lady tell this dream at a tea-party in the house of the chapter clerk. Its recurrence might, perhaps, hi- said, be taken as a symptom of approaching illness; at any rale before the end of September the old lady was in her grave.

The interest excited by the restoration of this great church was not confined to its own county. One day that summer an F.S.A., of some celebrity, visited the place. His business was to write an account of the discoveries that had been made, for the Society of Antiquaries, and his wife, who accompanied him, was to make a series of illustrative drawings for his report. In the morning she employed herself in making a general sketch of the choir; in the afternoon she devoted herself to details. She first drew the newly-exposed altar-tomb, and when that was finished, she called her husband's attention to a beautiful piece of diaper-ornament on the screen just behind it, which had, like the tomb itself, been completely concealed by the pulpit. Of course, he said, an illustration of that must be made; so she seated herself on the tomb and began a careful drawing which occupied her till dusk.

Her husband had by this time finished his work of measuring and description, and they agreed that it was time to bo getting back to their hotel. "You may as well brush my skirt, Frank," said the lady, "it must have got covered with dust, I'm sure." He obeyed dutifully; but, after a moment, ho said, "I don't know whether you value this dress particularly, my dear, but I'm inclined to think it's seen its best days. There's a great bit of it gone." "Gone? Where?" said she. "I don't know where it's gone, but it's off at the bottom edge behind here." She pulled it hastily into sight, and was horrified to find a jagged tear extending some way into the substance of the stuff; very much, she said, as if a dog had rent it away. The dress was, in any ease", hopelessly spoilt, to her great vexation, and though they looked everywhere, the missing piece could not be found. There were many ways, they concluded, in which the injury might have come about, for the choir was full of old bits of woodwork with nails slicking out of them. Finally, they could only suppose that one of these had caused the mischief, and that the workmen, who had been about all day. had carried off the particular piece with the fragment ol dress still attached to it.

It was about this time, Worby thought, that his little dog began to wear an anxious expression when the hour for it to be put into the shed in the back yard approached. (For his mother had ordained that

think in thai old tomb. Well, there was this man keeping on saying he'd done it the best he could, and there was Palmer carrying on like all possessed about it. 'Call that making a job of it?' he says. 'If you had your rights you'd get the sack for this. What do you suppose I pay you your wages for? What do you suppose I'm going to say to the Dean and Chapter when they come round, as come they may do any time, and see where you've been bungling about covering the 'ole place with mess and plaster and Lord knows what?' 'Well, master, I done the best I could, says the man; '1 don't know no more than what you do ow it come to fall out this way. I tamped it right in the 'ole,' he says, 'and now it's fell out," he says, 'I never see.'

" 'Fell out?' says old Palmer, why it's nowhere near the place. Blowed out, you mean'; and he picked Up a bit of plaster, and so did I, that was laying up against the screen, three or four feet off, and not dry yet; and old Palmer he looked at it curious-like, ami then he turned round on me and he says, 'Now then, you boys, have you been up to some of your games here?" 'No.' I says, 'I haven't, Mr. Palmer; there's none of us been about here till just this minute'; and while I was talking the other boy, Evans, he got looking in through the chink, and I heard him draw in his breath, and he came away sharp and up to us, and says he, 'I believe there's something in there. 1 saw something shiny.' 'What! I dare say!' says old Palmer; 'well, I ain't got time to stop about there. You, William, you go off and get some more stuff and make a job of it this time; if not, there'll be trouble in my yard,' he says.

"So the man he went off, and Palmer too, and us boys stopped behind, and I says to Evans, 'Did you really see anything in there?' 'Yes,' he says, 'I did indeed.' So then 1 says, "Let's shove something in and stir it up.' And we tried several of the bits of wood that was laying about, but they were all too big. Then Evans he had a sheet of music he'd brought with him, an anthem or a service, I forget which it was now, and he rolled it up small and shoved it in the chink; two or three times he did it, and nothing happened, 'Give it me, boy,' 1 said, and I had a try. No, nothing happened. Then, I don't know why 1 thought of it, I'm sun;, but 1 stooped down just opposite the chink and put my two fingers in my mouth and whistled-you know the way -and at that I seemed to think I heard something stirring, and I says to Evans, 'Come away,' I says; '1 don't like this." 'Oh, rot,' he says, 'give me that roll,' and he took it and shoved it in. And 1 don't think ever I see anyone go so pale as he did. 'I say, Worby,' he says, 'it's caught, or else someone's got hold of it.' Toll it out or leave it,' 1 says. 'Come and let's get off.' So lie gave a good pull, and it came away. Leastways most of it did, but the end was gone. Tom off it was, and Evans looked at it for a second and then he gave a sort of a croak and let it drop, and we both made off out of there as quick as ever we could. When we got outside Evans says to me, 'Did yon see the end of that paper?' 'No,' I says, only it was torn.' 'Yes, it was,' he says, 'but it was wet too, and black!' Well, partly because of the fright we had, and partly because that music was wanted in a day or two. and we knew there'd be a set-out about it with the organist, we didn't say nothing to anyone else, and I suppose the workmen they swept up the bit that was lelt along with the rest of the rubbish. Hut Evans, if you were to ask him this very day about it. he'd stick to it he saw that paper wet and black at the end where it was torn."

After that the boys gave the choir a wide berth, so that Worby was not sure what was the result of the mason's renewed mending of the tomb. Only he made out from fragments of conversation dropped by the workmen passing through the choir that some dilliculty bad been met with, and that the governor Mr. Palmer to wit had tried his own hand at the job. A little later, he happened to see Mr. Palmer himself knocking at the door of the Deanery and being admitted by the butler. A day or so alter tli.it, he gathered from a remark his father let fall at breakfast that something a little out of the common was to be done in the Cathedral alter morning service on the morrow. "And I'd just as soon it was to-day," his father added; "I don't see the use of running risks.lather.' I says, "what are you going to do in the Cathedral to-morrow?' And he turned on me as savage as I ever see him—he was a wonderful good tempered man as a general thing, my poor father was. 'My lad.' he says. I'll tumble you not to go picking up your elders' anil belters' talk: it's not manners and it's not straight. What I'm going to do or not going to do in the Cathedral to-morrow is none of your business: and if I catch sight of you banging about the place to-morrow after your woik's done, I'll send you home with a flea in your ear. Now you mind that.' Ol course I said 1 was very sorry and that, and equally ol course I went oil and laid my plans with bvans. We knew there was a stair up in the corner of the transept which you can get up to the trilorium, and in them days the door to it was pretty well always open, and even if it wasn't we knew the key usually laid under a bit of malting hud by. So we made up our minds we'd Ik* putting away music and that, next morning while the rest of (he boys was clearing oil. and then slip tin the stairs and watch from the tri-forium if (heir was any signs of work going on.

"Well, that same night I dropped of I asleep as sound as a boy does, and all of a sudden the dog woke me up, coming into the bed, and thought 1, now we're going to get it sharp, for he seemed more frightened than usual. After about live minutes sure enough came this cry. I can't give you no idea what it was like; and so near too—nearer than I'd heard it yet and a funny thing, Mr. hake, you know what a place this Close is for an echo, and particular if you stand this side of it. Well, this crying never made- no sign of an echo at all. but. as I said, it was dreadful near this night: and on the top of the start 1 got with hearing it, I got another fright; for I heard something rustling outside in the passage. Now to be sure I thought I was done; but 1 noticed the dog seemed to perk up a bit, and next there was someone whispered outside the door, and I very near laughed out loud, for I knew it was my father and mother that had got out of bed with the noise. "Whatever is it?" says my mother. 'Hush! I don't know,' says my father, excited-like, 'don't disturb the boy, I hope he didn't hear nothing.'

"So, me knowing they were just outside, it made me bolder, and I slipped out nl bed across to my little window—giving on the Close-but the dog he bored right down to the bottom of the bed—and 1 looked out. First go oil I couldn't see anything. Then right down in the shadow under a buttress I made out what I shall always say was two spots of red —a dull red it was- nothing like a lamp or a fire, but just so as you could pick 'em out of the black shadow. F hadn't but just sighted 'em when it seemed we wasn't the only people that had been disturbed, because I see a window in a house on the left-hand side become lighted up, and the light moving. 1 just tinned my head to make sure of it, and then looked back into the shadow lor those two red things, anil they were gone, and for all I peered about and stared, there was not a sign more of them. Then come my last fright that night -something come against my bare leg but that was all right: that was my little dog had come out of bed, and prancing about making a great to-do, only holding his tongue, and me seeing he was quite in spirits again, 1 took him back to bed and we slept the night out!

"Next morning 1 made out to till my mother I'd had the dog in my room, and I.was surprised, after all she'd said about it before, how quiet she took it. 'Did your" she says. 'Well, by good rights you ought to go without your breakfast for doing such a thing behind my back: but 1 don't know as there's any great harm done, only another time you ask my permission, do you hear?" A bit after that I said something to my father about having heard the cats again. 'Cats?' he says; and he looked over at my poor mother, and she coughed and he says, 'Oh! ah! yes, cats. I believe 1 heard 'cm myself.'

"That was a funny morning altogether: nothing seemed to go right. The organist he stopped in bed, and the minor Canon he forgot it was the 19th day and waited lor the Venite; and after a bit the deputy he set oil playing the chant for evensong, which was a minor; and then the Decani boys were laughing so much they couldn't sing, and when it came to the anthem the solo boy he got took with the giggles, and made out his nose was bleeding, and shoved the book at me what hadn't practised the verse and wasn't much of a singer if I hail known it. Weil, things was rougher, you see, fifty years ago. and I got a nip from the counter-tenor behind me that I remembered.

"So we got through somehow, and neither the men nor the hoys

112

TJlie ^&ay. ^J4aA dome

VUatler JCuLitini

_<3

'hei

We've all read about unexpected disasters that follow tn the wake of war souvenirs. A sltcll or grenade, supposedly a dud, kept on a shelf as a memento of a past war, will suddenly explode. Europe, for instance, will continue to luioe new casualties from the unexploded mines and sltells of both world wars -and tltese wars, both past, will mark new victims for many years to come. Walter Kubilius projects this factor against the modern technology of warfare. His unforgettable story of a certain day two hundred years hence is one that might well come true.

'HERE WAS a whirling flash of bees past the window. One wing struck a crag and with a mighty crash the plane erased itself against the mountainside.

Some hours passed before Weaver awoke with a throbbing pain in his arm. A cut shoulder was caked with frozen blood and the first tiling he heard was die icy whistle of the cold wind. He staggered to his feet hut fell back, fainting, upon a drift of snow and would have been lost were it not for Millet's strong arm.

"Weavcrl" Millet shouted above the roaring wind. "Are you all right?"

"I'm okay," Weaver said feebly. "Go to the others."

Millet bent to pick up Weavers prostrate body and carried it clumsily over die soft snow to the meagre protection of a nearby cave. Here Johnson was waiting by a small fire that was made from parts ol the wreckage. Millet placed the wounded man next to the fire and quickly bandaged the bleeding arm.

"This will have to do," he said as he placed the final knot upon a make-shift sling.

"The others! What aliout the odiers?" Weaver asked.

There are no others," Millet said. "Just the three of us. The rest are dead."

"Well! Well!" the little man, Johnson, said impatiently. "Why stand there like that gaping? Do something! We have to get back to civilization! I have an important appointment in Norman next week. The air company will pay for this!'

"We're nowhere near Norman," Millet said, as if taking delight in

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uncturing the little man's business-like air. "I talked with the pilot

efore we crashed, big boy." "Well? Well?" demanded Johnson.

"There's nothing here. Nothing!" Millet said. "No villages. No cities. No railroads. No radios. Nothing! This part of Canada has been lifeless since way back in 2036."

The three were silent, and for that moment the air was colder and the wind blew with added sharpness. The men shivered and moved together for more warmdi.

"Eskimos?" Johnson asked, "there must be Eskimos around here. We'd get food, blubber, fat and all that sort of thing."

Millet slapped his hands together to keep the blood circulating and laughed loudly.

"Point one for civilization!" he said. "Three citizens of New Democracy looking for primitive Eskimos to save them! Ha!"

He suddenly sobered and looked about him, and listened to the howling wind.

"There are no Eskimos here," he said, "When the War Disease came we survived. But the Eskimo is extinct."

"Have we got food?" Johnson asked.

"None," Millet said curtly, to dispel all false hopes.

"I am not sure," Weaver said slowly, "but five minutes before we ciashcd I—I'm sure I saw a thin line of smoke coming up from a valley. That valley there." He pointed toward a mountain range.

"Nonsense!" Millet muttered, looking at the inhospitable icy peaks.

"Nonsense?" Johnson shouted, "What do you mean nonsense? Who are you to say it's nonsense! Maybe there are explorers here, an expedition of some sort. We've nodiing to lose. If there's a village we're saved. If not—"

"If not?" Millet asked, smiling.

Johnson ignored him. He drew his meagre overcoat more tightly about him and went out into the whirling snow. The three took one final look at the wreckage of the plane and the bodies that were already covered by a white mantle. Johnson led the way and Weaver followed, his arm rapidly becoming numb. Millet, face down to avoid the bite of the wind, brought up the rear.

The sun was already overhead when they reached the mountain and saw before them in the valley the strange city. It was a city, the midst of the snow and the wind of arctic winter, and long spirals grey smoke from snow-covered factories rose up into the heavens. Dumbfounded, Millet stared at the city in the valley. "There!" Johnson said triumphantly, "and you said this part of Can-*a was uninhabited. That's an industrial city of more dian twenty ousand people!"

"In the arctic?" Millet asked, almost talking to himself, "So far

117

'I he ollirr rooms were bare but for necessary furniture ami elothrs. The three searched the closets until they found warm coats that would fit them.

"'Ibis might seem like stealing," Millet said, "but we'll return them when we find out just what position we're in."

With stomachs full and warm clothes. Millet, Weaver anil Johnson stepped out of the house into the street. It was bitterly cold, but there was no wind. The high mountains that surrounded the valhy seemi'd to protect it from toe) much snow. Not knowing where to go, they walked aimlessly about the streets. Nowhere' coiud they find a single soul.

"They must all be at the factories," Johnson said.

"And the children?"

"In schools and nurseries."

"But they can't all be in factories anel schools," protested Weaver. "There's nobe-dy home or in the- streets. Nobody!"

"Let's look into a factory," Millet suggested.

In the center of the city they found two factories. Both we're of tremendous size, stretching for many times the size of a city block. From their mighty stacks stretcheel black fingers of smoke. A strange fe-eling of age hung about the factory. The windows were unwashed. Here and there great cracks were in the walls and through them one could See the working men within. The dull roar of the two factories was almost deafening.

"How old it see'ins!" Weaver gasped.

"Centuries!" Millet whispered.

"Come! Come!" Johnson said briskly, "We won't get anywhere gaping like that. Let's go in this one here."

They walked through the aged gate, into the' courtyard, and up the wide steps te> the; door. They opened it, walked in and almost at once were drowned by the clanging and banging of machines in operation. But above the roar of the machines there was yet another sound

the sound e)f a man's voice', amplified se) that it was a booming monotone, overcoming even the; shrill screeches of drills and presses.

". . . be careful. Always be careful," the booming voice in the factory rang out. "Do not make- mistakes. Efficiency counts above all else. Efficiency! Work carefully. Work carefully. Work carefully. Work carefully anel enjoy your work. Enjoy your work. Enjoy your work because it is your work. You are working for yourselves. You arc working for yourselves. You are working for yourselves . . ."

And on it went, repeating over and over again inane advice te> workmen, urging them to greater efforts and constantly giving them, an added impetus for faster and faster work.

"Speed-up deluxe!" Millet said, "What a system!"

Inside the factory they saw the working men and women and chil-

119

dren. There were thousands of them. Like automatons each leaned forward at his task. Dynamos and power engines, placed in floors beneath the level, pulsed into life and the conveyor belts moved on. The place was a roaring factory in full blast. Giant cranes screeched along, carrying in their iron hands heavy machines which were placed in position by the waiting workmen. Long lines of coarsely clad men and women stood by the conveyors, each with his or her task. Some of the men handled the delicate tools. Others, the women and the children, did nothing but watch and sometimes help when a moving mass of machines on the belt rumbled and shook as it rolled on a bumpy part of the conveyor. Immediately they would run to it, push it back upon the belt and then go back to their position, their eyes intent again upon the older men and the older women who handled the drills and who placed the parts in position.

The three walked along the conveyor Deles, surprised that no one stopped them to ask who they were and what they were doing here. They ignored the monotonously droning voice that roared above them, seeming to come from microphones hidden in the roof.

Slowly Millet, Weaver and Johnson began to get the complete picture of the strange factory. Huge boxes were brought in from the outside, obviously from the second factory, and were unpacked. The machinery and parts were assorted and distributed. Motors were sent to one place, girders, wires, steel plates and glass to other places.

The trio followed the distribution from one end to another. By the time they reached the center of the plant they realized what was being made. At the end of the factory, ready to be rolled out, they saw it.

In the center of the huge, open, unrolled door, final finishing touches being placed upon its wings, stood a giant bomber.

"Warplanes!" Millet shouted to Weaver, trying to make himself heard above the din of the factory, "Giant warplanesl"

"Why hasn't anyone stopped us?" Weaver asked as they strolled under the wings of the bomber and out into the open air, "Nobody even looked at us while we walked through the whole plant!"

"Suppose they're too busy," Johnson grunted.

"Did you see the children?" Weaver asked again. "Even children! What a factory! It's like a tomb!"

"Efficient though, isn't it?" Millet smiled, "They're getting the bombers out fast enough. Let's sec where they take them."

They watched a crew of men roll the bomber out of the hangar-like opening. They pushed it half-way to the open field and then left it there. Another crew, coming from the second factory, marched to it and then rolled it on—to the second plant. The three men followed.

Once they were inside the second plant with the bomber they saw a strange sight. The finished bomber was rolled on to the center of a scaffold-like structure and the careful work of disassembling and tak-

120

ing apart the giant plane began. Tbe wings were carefully taken off, eacli individual plate tagged and marked. Not one screw was wasted. Nothing was lost.

"I'll be damned!" Johnson said, astonished.

The three men gathered around and watched, There could be no doubt as to what was being done. The bomber, just finished, was now being taken apart. Its component parts would be packed and sent to the first factory where it would be rebuilt.

"An insane vicious circle!" Weaver said.

"They must be crazy!" Johnson said, "There's no sense in that!" He stepped forward and seized one of the workmen by the shoulders.

"Ilev vou!" he shouted, "I want to talk to you! What's going on here?"'

The man resisted and tried to get back to his position. When Johnson would not let go he turned quickly and struck at Johnson with his wrench. Johnson yelped a cry ol surprised pain and let go. Tbe man immediately went back to his spot by the plane as if nothing had happened.

Dammit!" Johnson shouted to Millet and Weaver. "He struck me! He's crazy! They're all crazy!"

"in a way," Millet said soberly. "Yes. But let's get out of here first."

They Ifft the factory and entered one ol the nearby homes where the glowing warmth of the fireplace soothed them.

"All right. Millet," Johnson said. "You seem to know the answers. What's wrong with the city? Everybody seems to be mad. They won't do anything. They just work work work! That's enough to drive anybody mad!"

"And the rhythm!"' Weaver said. "That mechanical voice in each factory roaring over and over again—work—work--work! Be careful! Be careful! Be careful! What is it all?"

"It's our heritage," Millet said cryptically.

"Heritage? What heritage?"

"Do you remember your history? The story of the Second World War and e\en the Third?"

"Of course'. Of course." Weaver said, "But this mad city—what has that to do with the wars that took place two centuries ago?"

"Two centuries!" Millet said, "'That's it exactly! For more than two hundred years that factory has been building bombing planes for a war that ended two hundred years ago!"

"You're crazy yourself!"

"Crazy, eh? Not as crazy as the facts of history!" Millet said, "Do you remember the bombings of the Third World War? Wave after wave of enemy planes came, blowing up the factories and industrial centers of the enemy. Coventry. Hamburg, Detroit! All of them

121 smashed to bits! When industrial centers were smashed by air-raids, what is the logical answer? Build factories and plants in out-of-die-way places, far from the arm of the airplane!"

"1 suppose you'll say that's how this factory was built?"

"Yes! And perhaps there are still more throughout the arctic!. Cities of living dead, still making bombs and bombers after all these centuries. They started something that they could not finish. They'll keep on building those bombers till the machines are worn out and become dust!"

"But the people—the people!" Weaver protested.

"The people!" Millet snorted, "Did you hear the phonograph droning over and over again: you must work- you must work—you must work! Over and over again for two hundred years! It enters into the blood; The child is born and hears those; words; you must work—you must work—you must work! lie spends his days in the factory—watching and watching until the day that his father dies. Then he too goes up to bis position—working—working—working. Not knowing why, nor caring to know!"

"But the same planes arc taken apart!"

"One factory was built for producing planes. Another for dismantling the wreckage of planes that were shot down or brought in from the outside This went on for generation and generation until it became mechanical. And when contact with the outside world finally tii<<!, what was more, natural than that the process should continue? Anel it go»;s on and on—and on!"

"But what of the food, what of their supplies and clothes and pow<:r?"

Millet shruggeel and gestured vaguely. "There are some smaller factories on the other side; of the city. They must be bakeries and auxiliary plants. Grain, supplies . . . supplies were laid in from the surpluses to last for hundreds of years. These cities expected isolation. They we're places of perpetual seige."

A shiver went down Weaver's spine.

"Horrible!" he said.

"Something must be done about it!" Johnson said, indignant. "What?"

"Stop the factory! Find their source of power—shut it off!"

Millet laughed, "The men would die! They'd go raving mad! You can't stop a thing that's been in the blood for two hundred years! Touch the power plant and they'd rip you to pieces like a wild animal whose; food you try to steal!"

"There must be somebody in the city who is intelligent and who lias not become a machine," Weaver said. "From the beginning there was some master, some commander who guided things, His descendant might be here. Find him."

"Yes." Millet said, "there might be one someplace.

"Well! Well!" Johnson shouted, "what are we waiting for?"

It was evening and a shrill whistle broke the darkness. The rumble from the factory died down. The conveyors slowed and stopped and the smoke no longer ascended from the chimney.

Long streams of tired men and women walked dully from the factory. Their thin, gaunt bodies moved slowly over the cobbled snowy streets. Their eyes were misty and each one was stooped as if upon his shoulder the weight of the factory was set.

The three men entered one of the homes. Wordlessly, the woman of the house set three more chairs by the table and placed three more dishes upon it. They ate with the family in silence, and when night came they went to sleep by the fireplace.

In the morning they awoke and followed the family as they dressed and had breakfast. When the whistle of the factory blew the family slowly filed out into the street where hundreds of other families joined them in the procession towards the factory. Wordlessly, Millet, Weaver and Johnson mingled with the people, constantly alert for an eye that was not dull, for a face that had more than a blank stare, but it was the same with everyone. Dull-blank -mechanical - living dead —living machines.

They gathered in long lines outside the factory, and when the second whistle blew they marched slowly in.

The three men watched them go ami when all had entered they followed. But instead ol entering the plant itself, they walked into all the smaller rooms, hoping to find some clue to the mystery.

On the third floor of the factory, quite by surprise, they found her.

The door of a room was slightly ajar.

'There's some rooms here," Millet said, "let's take a look."

Someone inside must have heard them. The door suddenly closed. Millet walked up to it and tried to open it, but it was locked.

"Strange," he said, "the door was open a moment ago."

With his shoulder he pushed tentatively. The wood was old and worn. He stepped back and crashed into the door. It splintered and fell. Millet and the two men entered the room.

Amazed, they stared at the young girl who stood alone, back to the wall, facing them. Her eyes and face did not bear that dull look which characterized every single person in the city. Each movement of hers was cat-like and nervous as she moved along the wall further away from them.

"Hello," Millet said softly.

"A voice!" she said, "You speak!"

"Yes, of course we speak," Millet said, walking a bit towards her. "Don't be afraid. We won't hurt you." "You—you're from the Outside!" she said, fearfully.

12-3

"We're friends," Millet said, "We won't hurt you." "How did you get here?" she asked suddenly. "By airplane. We crashed . . ."

"Airplane! Bomber!" she said, her voice becoming high pitched till it was almost a scream. "Then it's true what the books said! You've come here to kill all of us! You came here to destroy the factory! You came here to stop the machines! It's you who wanted the war!"

"No. No." Millet insisted, "We are not going to do anything. Nothing, you understand, nothing. There's no war going on. No war."

'No war!" she cried, "there's always war! Always! The Day will come, my father told me and his lather told him. There's always war! ALWAYS! THE DAY HAS COME!"

She pressed herself against the wall, shrinking in terror, her knees weakening until she knelt in the corner. Two tears rolled down her cheeks and then sobs shook her body.

"Crazy as a loon," Johnson whispered. Millet bent down and tried to soothe her.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said softly. "We're not going to do anything. Everything's all right. Just stop crying."

She kept on sobbing and then, her confidence won, Millet put his arms around her until her sobs died down.

"This beats everything," Weaver said, scratching his head.

A few minutes later the three men and the girl sat around the desk. Her face was still wet with tears, but her fear was now gone.

"What's your name?" Millet asked.

"I have none," she said.

"You were born here?"

"Of course!"

"What do you do here?"

"Nothing. I'm the governor of the factory."

Millet repressed a smile and continued. "Why does the factory run?"

"Everybody knows that—to make airplanes."

"But all the airplanes are taken to the other factory where they arc-simply taken apart! What's the sense to that?"

She looked at him as if not understanding the question. He repeated it.

"Because," site said, "because we've always done so. That's all! Everybody knows that!" "But why? Why?"

"1 don't know," she said sharply and irritated, "I don't know!" "Did it ever," he said quietly, "occur to you to stop the machines?" She stood up, pale with fright and anger.

"Stop the machines?" she asked, trembling. "No! Nobody can do that! Nobody! The factory must go on! It must! It always went on even when the bombers came. Always! Always!"

She was almost hysterical. Millet soothed her and turned to his friends.

"Now try stopping the machines and see what happens!" he said. 'This girl is almost normal; think of the others to whom the factory is their heart and soul by birth."

"You're not going to stop the factory! No! No!" she said, "you can't!"

"No," Millet said, "we're not going to stop the factory."

"I always knew," she said softly, "that The Day would come. And it has come! It has come!"

"What Day has come?" Millet asked her, "What Day?"

"The Day when our bombers fly!" she said exultantly. "That Dayl I knew it was here when I saw you enter the city!"

"You saw us enter yesterday?" they asked, in great surprise.

"Yes!" she said. "I knew. Today is the Day! I told them, the work-ingmen. that they should let the bombers lly!"

"Fly?" Millet asked. "Holy Sun! But where? Those bombers fly blind. Their destination was set into the controls over two hundred year ago! Even the moment that they drop their bombs is all set!"

"To the enemy!" she said, "They'll bomb his cities! Smash his factories! Destroy his roads and communications! Destroy him!"

Leaving her alone the three men rushed to one of the windows and looked out upon the open field. The day before it was empty. Now, upon its white level, were three large black bombing planes.

"They mustn't lly!' Weaver said. "Heaven only knows upon what cities they'll drop their bombs! What a ghastly tiling! Ghosts from the past destroying the cities of today!"

Weaver and Johnson rushed to the door but Millet soon called after them.

"It's too late!" he said, "they're leaving!"

It was true. From the window they could see the whirling blades of the propellers as each bomber slowly moved along the runway and up into the air.

The three bombers, like three strange birds, rose high and flew away over the mountain-tops.

In Millet's mind there was a strange thought. Three black bombing planes, relics of the past, were bombing a glorious new city founded upon peace. What a mockery!

But perhaps the planes would never reach the city. Two hundred years had passed. Perhaps the controls were worn. A wearing of a Hundredth of an inch and the three bombers would miss their mark.

Perhaps—but the three planes were already lost in the mists of the clouds. Even the roar of their motors had died away.

After two hundred years the Day had come.

The Eno

125

^Jor Ifnl^iit treading entertainment, We J}n vile ^our ^Attention to ^lieie

¹ FANTASY BOOKS

Selected from AVON'S J4unJr.rU of föctler-selling ^Jitfes

OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET.......................................................... C. S. Lewis

One of the finest interplanetary novels ever written.

AVON GHOST READER...................................................................... Anthology

An original collection featuring Lovecraft, Merritt, Heard and many more.

CREEP SHADOW CREEP.................................................................... A. Merritt

An eerie novel by die author of "The Moon Pool."

THE LURKING FEAR................................................................ H. P. Lovecraft

Eleven great horror stories by a modern Poe.

THE STONE OF CHASTITY....................................................... Margery Sharp

A gay adventure about a rural legend and a modern experiment.

THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES............................................. Anthology

New fantasy stories by Leiber, Long, Wellman, Tcnn, Miller and Grendon.

THE DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU.............................................. Sax Rohmer

The mystery of the East makes an unholy pact with die science of the West!

TERROR AT NIGHT............................................................................. Anthology

Great fantasy stories by Dunsany, Wakefield, Lovecraft, Bierce, etc.

GLADIATOR .................................................................................. Philip Wylk

A powerful talc of a superman's struggle for world mastery.

25c per i "/"J

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^{Back Numbers of the}

AVON FANTASY READERS

are Still Available

If you've iimhhimI juiy of llu* previous uumherH, you will be pleancd l<> know lli.il llicrc are n limited number of copies slill available. Tlicy may not be obtainable long, ami yon me uracil i.. lake advantage of this opporlunily In acipiiie ihene lancinating numbers:

No.. I. (Featuring Merrill, Leinster, Hodgson, C. A. Smith, «to.»

No. 2. (Includes Keller, Wright, Endore, How.ird, Flthar, tic.)

No. 3. (Merritt, Loveeraft, Moore, Bradbury, Grcndon, etc.)

No. G. (Merritt, Williamson, Loveeraft, Hami'ion, McClu.ky, ele »

No. T. (Rohmer, Howard, Merritt, Maore, Long, etc.)

No. 8. (Flsgg, Howard, Bradbury, Blackwood, Counsclman, etc.)

No. 9. (Kline, Hodgson, Wand.-el, Miller, Leiber, etc.)

No. tO. (Jaoteson, Breuer, Howard, Loveeraft, Morgan, etc.)

No. II. (Quinn, SSribiing, Bond, Bradbury, Flagg, etc)

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Four Action-Packed AVON MYSTERIES

You'll want to read these outstanding crime novels. Selected for their fast action and unusual dramatic, mystery quality—they are especially recommended for your reading pleasure.

THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE

by Robert C. Du See

A ruthless killer takes the wheel on a joy ride to Hell.

ALL DAMES ARE DYNAMITE

by Timothy Trent

A tough guy, a dance-hall cutie, and a murder plot that went haywire.

LOUIS BERETTI

by Donald Henderson Clarke

The famous realistic novel of the rise and bloody career of a two-fisted racketeer.

BLONDIE ISCARIOT

by Edgar Lustgarten

A drama of a fascinating temptress who made herself queen of the underworld—though her kiss was death!

Available at your local newsdealer at 25c per copy, or from the. address given below ar 5c extra per copy to cover the cost of wrapping and forwarding.

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PARTIAL LIST OF BEST-SELLING TITLES

^AVON^BOOKS

139 W. Somerset Maugham....................................................................................................... Lisa of Lambeth

151 Eiskine Caldwell ................................................................................. Where the Girls Were DiHerent

167 Emile Zola.............................................................................................................................................. Piping Hot

168 Maxwell Bodenheim.......................................................................................................................... Virtuous Girl

169 Irving Shulman..................................................................................................................... The Amboy Dukes

174 James M. Cain................................................................................................................................. Sinlul Woman

177 Erskine Caldwell.......................................................................................................... Midsummer Passion

179 Edgar Lustgarten....................................................................................................................... Blondie Iscariot

180 Guy Gilpaltick............................................................................................................................ French Summer

182 Anthology New Avon Bedside Companion

183 David Dortott............... ................... .............. Burial ot the Fruit

185 Nelson Algren.................................................................................................................. Never Come Morning

187 Vina Dslmar................................................................... .......................................................... Love Trap

188 W. Somerset Maugham Fools and Their Folly

190 Ward Greene...................................................... The Life and Loves of a Modern Mr. Bluebeard

191 Maxwell Bodenheim......................................................................................................... /replenishing lessica

192 Katharine Brush Voung Man ol Manhattan

193 Donald Henderson Clarke Impatient Virgin

194 Anthology....................................................................................................... Avon Book ol Western Stories

197 Charles Peltit................................................ ....................................................... Son ol the Grand Eunuch

200 Lawrence Gould your Most Intimate Problems

202 loey Adams.............................................. ............................... ■............................... From Gags to Riches

203 W. Somersrt Maugham............................. ............................................................................................ Quartet

204 Hugh Walpole............................................................. Portrait ol a Man with Bed Hair

205 Howard Fasl......................................... The Last Frontier

206 lacques-Rochette De La Morlier? The Palace ot Pleasure

207 Nalhan Rolhman........................................................................................................................ Virgie Goodbye

208 Robert Du So*.................................................... ............................... .. The Devil Thumbs a Bide

209 Vina Delmar ..................... ■ • • New Orleans Lady

210 Holon Topping M.ller............................................................. ...................... ....................... Wicked Sister

211 Robert Bloch................................................................................................................................ Scarf ol Passion

212 W. R. Burnell ................................ Iron Man

213 Donald Henderson Clarke.............................................................................................................................. Nina

214 A. Merrill ........................................... ......... The Fox Woman and Other Stories

215 Ben Ames Williams .............................................................................. Ail the Brothers Were Valiant

216 Philip Wylle ................................................................................................................................... The Gladiator

217 Emily Hahn Miss /ill Irom Shanghai

218 Allred Drake Anyone Can Win at Gin flummy and Canasta

219 Raymond Chandler............................................................................................................................... Finger Man

220 William Irish ..................................... ' Married a Dead Man

221 Ludwig Lewlsohn ..................... ................................................. Don /uan

222 Nolson Algron ....................................... ................ The Neon Wilderness

223 James Hlllon Three Loves Had Margaret

225 J. L. Stephenson Anyone Can Have a Great Vocabulary

226 Jerome Weldman.................................................................. ' Can Get It lor You Wholesale!

227 Dr. Anthony Bassltl.............................. ........................................ lust What the Doctor Ordered

228 Gilbert 4 Sullivan ................................ Book ol Gilbert <S Sullivan Operas

229 Anthology All About Girls

230 Anthology .... . . - ■ The Big Fights

232 Donald Henderson Clarke ..................................... Aiabam'

233 Robin Maugham ................ The Servant

234 Tittany Thayei ........................................................................... ................................... The Old Goal

MANY MORE IN PREPARATION

On sale at your newsdealer or direct from Avon Book Sales Corp., 119 W. 57th St.. New York 19, N. Y. Enclose 25c per title plus 5c

each for wrapping and forwarding. /

WITCHERY AND THRILLS

The use of siren spells and love charms to win endearment and riches continues to attract the mind and heart of modern men and women. For beneath the surface of our workaday world, there flows deeply every man's desire for romantic mastery and future fruitfulhess. The storied enchantment of witchcraft—of beautiful princesses to be won by valiant deeds—is Instilled in each of us by the mankind-old lore of the past. And no matter what the nature of our everyday occupations, the longing for mystic thrills remains in full reign. It is no wonder therefore that fantasy, stories dealing with the witchery of the past and the romantic mystery of the future, continues to dominate and fascinate the public.

WATCH FOR AVON FANTASY READER NO. 13

The next number, now in preparation, featuring:

THE LOVE-SLAVE AND THE SCIENTISTS by Frank Belknap Long—Love potions and secret kisses ceased to be problems for the men and women of the year 5678—for the scientists thought they had found the solution in—the Love-Slaves. But they failed to reckon with the new passions of wives and the unstable emotions of lovers . . .

THE CURIOUS CASE OF NORTON HOORNE by Ray Cum-mings: Wherein the love of a talented man breaks the veil of the supernatural to reach a heart-shaking climax. A powerfully emotional masterpiece.

THE SHIP OF SILENCE by Albert Richard Wetjen: In which a modern "Marie Celeste" is boarded at sea by modern sailors determined to settle an ancient mystery.

Also other excellent fantasy "finds" by Donald Wandrei, Beatrice Grimshaw, Sewell Peaslee Wright, and many others.

OUT SOON

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