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INTRODUCTION

	The first of Robert E. Howard's great heroes,
Solomon Kane saw print for the first time in the
August 1928 issue of Weird Tales magazine. At
that time, Howard was twenty-two years old. and
had been contributing to the magazine for three
years; It was not until five years later that the
first Conan story appeared, and still another year
before the advent of the gent from Bear Creek,
Breckinridge Elkins.

	It is hard to believe that the man to create
Conan the Cimmerian was the author that painted
the humorous, blundering superman of the mountain 
country, Breckinridge Elkins. Equally incredulous 
and different is this character of
Solomon Kane to whom Robert E. Howard gave a
full life of sword and sorcery adventure in the
Sixteenth Century. Kane's exploits take him from
England to the continent, and to the unexplored
African Interior where he encounters some of his
most awesome adventures. There are stories of
winged men, of vampires, of Atlantean remains.

	Kane is a tall man, wiry but not heavy in-the
extreme; a born swordsman with great strength
and tenacity. A Puritan, he has a penchant for
righting of wrongs done to others. His super-
human efforts and energies and successes are
related directly to his fanaticism. Howard paints
him as a sombre, black-clad swordsman, searching 
for something that he may never find.

	In his lifetime, Howard wrote twelve stories
and three poems about the character of Solomon
Kane. At least this is the number that have come
down to us. (They are to be found in a deluxe.
cloth bound book. RED SHADOWS, with four illustrations 
in colour by Jeff Jones. Donald M. Grant.
Publisher, West Kingston, Rhode Island 02882. )

	A second volume of Solomon Kane — THE
HAND OF KANE — is now in preparation as a
"Time-Lost" book from Centaur Press.

CONTENTS

The Moon of Skulls

Skulls in the Stars

The Footfalls Within

THE MOON OF SKULLS

CHAPTER I

A MAN COMES SEEKING

A great black shadow lay across the land,
cleaving the red flame of the red sunset. To the man
who toiled up the jungle trail it loomed like a
symbol of death and horror, a menace brooding
and terrible, like the shadow of a stealthy assassin 
flung upon some candle-lit wall.

	Yet It was only the shadow of the great crag
which reared up in front of him, the first outpost
of the grim foothills which were his goal. He
halted a moment at its foot, staring upward where
it rose blackly limned against me dying sun. He
could have sworn that he caught the hint of a
movement at the top, as he stared, hand shielding
his eyes, but the fading glare dazzled him and he
could not be sure. Was it a man who darted to
cover? A man, or — ?

	He shrugged his shoulders and fell to examining 
the rough trail which led up and over me
brow of the crag. At first glance it seemed that
only a mountain goat could scale it, but closer
investigation showed numbers of finger holds
drilled into the solid rock. It would be a task to
try his powers to the utmost but he had not come
a thousand miles to turn back now.

	He dropped the large pouch He wore at his
shoulder, and laid down the clumsy musket, retaining 
only his long rapier, dagger, and one of
his pistols, these he strapped behind him, and
without a backward glance over the darkening
trail he had come, he started the long ascent.

	He was a tall man, long-armed and iron-
muscled, yet again and again he was forced to
halt in his upward climb and rest for a moment.
clinging like an ant to the precipitous face of the
cliff. Night fell swiftly and the crag above him
was a shadowy blur in which he was forced to feel
wife his fingers, blindly, for the holes which
served him as a precarious ladder.

	Below him, me night noises of the tropical
jungle broke forth, yet it appeared to him that
even these sounds were subdued and hushed as
though the great black hills looming above threw a
spell of silence and fear even over me Jungle-
creatures.

	On up he struggled, and now to make his way
harder, the cliff bulged outward near its summit,
and the strain on nerve and muscle became heart-
breaking. Time and again a hold slipped and he
escaped falling by a hair's breadth. But every
fibre in his lean hard body was perfectly co-ordinated, 
and his fingers were like steel talons
with the grip of a vice. His progress grew slower
and slower but on he went until at last he saw the
cliffy brow splitting the stars a scant twenty feet
above him.

	And even as he looked, a vague bulk heaved
into view, toppled on the edge and hurtled down
toward him with a great rush of air about it. Flesh
crawling, he flattened himself against the cliff's
face and felt a heavy blow against his shoulder.
only a glancing blow. but even so it nearly tore
him from his hold. and as he fought desperately to
right himself, he heard a reverberating crash
among the rocks far below. Cold sweat beading
his brow. he looked up. Who — or what — had
shoved that boulder over the cliff edge? He was
brave, as the bones on many a battlefield could
testify, but the thought of dying like a sheep,
helpless and with no chance of resistance, turned
his blood cold,

	Then a wave of fury supplanted his fear and
he renewed his climb with reckless speed. The
expected second boulder did not come, however,
and no living thing met his sight as he clambered
up over the edge and leaped erect, sword flashing
from its scabbard.

	He stood upon a sort of plateau which debouched 
into a very broken hilly country some
half mile to the west, The? crag he had just
mounted jutted out from the rest of the heights
like a sullen promontory, looming above the sea
of waving foliage below, now dark and mysterious
in the tropic night.

	Silence ruled here in absolute Sovereignty.
No breeze stirred the sombre depths below, and
no footfall rustled amid the stunted bushes which
cloaked the plateau, yet that boulder which had
almost hurled the climber to his death had not
fallen by chance. What beings moved among these
grim hills? The tropical darkness fell about the
lone wanderer like a heavy veil through which the
yellow stars blinked evilly. The steams of the
rotting jungle vegetation floated up to him as
tangible as a thick fog, and making a wry face he
strode away from the cliff, heading boldly across
the plateau, sword in one hand and pistol in the
other.

	There was an uncomfortable feeling of being
watched in the very air. The silence remained
unbroken save for the soft swishing that marked
the stranger's cat-like tread through the tall up-
land grass, yet the man sensed that living things
glided before and behind him and on each side.
Whether man or beast trailed him he knew not,
nor did he care over-much, for he was prepared
to fight human or devil who barred his way. Occasionally 
he halted and glanced challengingly
about him, but nothing met his eye except the
shrubs which crouched like short dark ghosts
about his trail, blended and blurred in the thick,
hot darkness through which the very stars seemed
to struggle, redly.

At last he came to the place where the plateau
broke into me higher slopes and there-he saw a
clump of trees blocked out solidly in me lesser
shadows. He approached warily, men halted as
his gaze, growing somewhat accustomed to the
darkness, made out a vague form among me
sombre trunks which was not a part of them. He
hesitated. The figure neither advanced nor fled. A
dim form of silent menace, it lurked as if in wait.
A brooding horror hung over that still cluster of
trees.

	The stranger advanced warily, blade extended.
Closer. Straining his eyes for some hint of threatening 
motion. He decided that the figure was
human but he was puzzled at its lack of movement.
Then the reason became apparent — it was the
corpse of a black man that stood among those
trees, held erect by spears through his body,
nailing him to the boles. One arm was extended in
front of him, held in place along a great branch by
a dagger through the wrist, the index finger
straight as if the corpse pointed stiffly — back
along the way the stranger had come,

The meaning was obvious; that mute grim
signpost could have but one significance — death
lay beyond. The man who stood gazing upon that
grisly warning rarely laughed, but now he allowed
himself the luxury of a sardonic smile. A thousand
miles of land and sea — ocean travel and jungle
travel — and now they expected to turn him back
with such mummery — whoever they were.

He resisted the temptation to salute the
corpse, as an action wanting in decorum, and
pushed on boldly through the grove, half expecting
an attack from the rear or an ambush.

Nothing of the sort occurred, however, and
emerging from the trees, he found himself at the
foot of a rugged incline, the first of a series of
slopes. He strode stolidly upward in the night, nor
did he even pause to reflect how unusual his
actions must have appeared to a sensible man.
The average man would have camped at the foot of
the crag and waited for morning before even at-
tempting to scale the cliffs. But this was no
ordinary man. Once his objective was in sight, he
followed the straightest line to it, without a thought
of obstacles, whether day or night. What was to be
done, must be done. He had reached the outposts
of file kingdom of fear at dusk, and invading its
inmost recesses by night seemed to follow as a
matter of course.

	As he went up the boulder-strewn slopes the
moon rose, lending its air of illusion, and in its
light the broken bills ahead loomed up like the
black spires of wizards' castles. He kept his eyes
fixed on the dim trail he was following, for he
knew not when another boulder might come hurt~
ling down the inclines. He expected an attack of
any sort and, naturally, it was the unexpected
which really happened.

	Suddenly from behind a great rock stepped a
man, an ebony giant in the pale moonlight, a
long spear blade gleaming silver in his hand, his
headpiece of ostrich plumes floating above him
like a white cloud. He lifted the spear in a ponderous 
salute, and spoke in the dialect of the river-tribes:

"This is not the white man's land. Who is my
white brother In his own kraal and why does he
come into the Land of Skulls?"

	"My name is Solomon Kane." the white man
answered in the same language. "I seek the vampire queen 
of Negari."

	"Few seek. Fewer find. None return," answered 
the' other cryptically.

	"Will you lead me to her ? " '

	"You bear a long dagger in your right hand.
	There are no lions-here."
	"A serpent dislodged a boulder. I thought to
find snakes in the bushes."

	The giant acknowledged this interchange of
subtleties with a grim smile and a brief silence
fell.    -

	"Your life," said the black man presently,
"is in my hand."

Kane smiled thinly. "I carry the lives of
many warriors in my hand."

	The negro's gaze travelled uncertainly up and
down the shimmery length of the Englishman's
sword. Then he shrugged his mighty shoulders and
let his spear point sink to the earth.

	"You bear no gifts," said he; "but follow me
and I will lead you to the Terrible One, the Mis-
tress of Doom, The Red Woman, Nakari, who
rules the land of Negari."

	He stepped aside ,and motioned Kane to pre-
cede him, but the Englishman, his mind on a
spear-thrust in the back, shook his head.
	“Who am I that I should walk in front of my
brother? We be two chiefs — let us walk side
by side."

In his heart Kane railed feat he should be
forced to use such unsavoury diplomacy with a
savage warrior, but he showed no sign. The
giant bowed with a certain barbaric majesty and
together they went up the hill trail, unspeaking.
	Kane was aware that men were stepping from
hiding places and falling in behind them, and a
surreptitious glance over his shoulder showed him
some two score warriors trailing out behind them
in two wedge-shaped lines. "The moonlight glittered
on sleek bodies, on waving headgears and long,
cruel spear blades.

	"My brothers are like leopards," said Kane
courteously; "they lie in the low bushes and no
eyes see them; they steal through the high grass
and no man hears their coming."

	The black chief acknowledged the compliment
with a courtly inclination of his lion-like head,
that set the plumes whispering.

	"The mountain leopard is our brother, oh
chieftain. Our feet are like drifting smoke but our
arms are like iron. When they strike, blood drips
red and men die."

	Kane sensed an undercurrent of menace in the
tone. There was no actual hint of threat on which
he might base his suspicions, but the sinister
minor note was there. He said no more for a
space and the strange band moved silently upward
in the moonlight like a cavalcade of spectres.

	The trail grew steeper and more rocky, winding
in and out among crags and gigantic boulders.
Suddenly a great chasm opened before them,
spanned by a natural bridge of rock, at the foot of
which the leader halted.

	Kane stared at the abyss curiously. It was
some forty feet wide, and looking down, his gaze
"was swallowed by impenetrable blackness, hundreds 
of feet deep, he knew. On the other side
rose crags dark and forbidding.

	"Here," said the chief, "begin the true borders
 of Nakari's realm."

	Kane was aware that the warriors were
casually closing in on him. His fingers instinctively
tightened about the hilt of the rapier which
he had not sheathed. The air was suddenly super-
charged with tension.

	"Here, too," The warrior chief said, "they
who bring no gifts to Nakari — die!"

	The last word was a shriek, as if the thought
had transformed the speaker into a maniac, and
as he screamed it, the great arm went back and
then forward with a ripple of mighty muscles, and
the long spear leaped at Kane's breast.

	Only a born fighter could have avoided that
thrust. Kane's instinctive action saved his life —
the great blade grazed his ribs as he swayed
aside and returned the blow with a flashing thrust
that killed a warrior who jostled between him and
the chief at that instant.

	Spears flashed in the moonlight and Kane,
parrying one and bending under the thrust of an-
other, sprang out upon the narrow bridge where
only one could come at him at a time.

	None cared to be first. They stood upon the
brink and thrust at him, crowding forward when
he retreated, giving hack when he pressed them.
Their spears were longer than his rapier but he
more than made up for the difference and the
great odds by his scintillant skill and the cold
ferocity of his attack:                            
	They wavered back and forth and then suddenly 
a giant leaped from among his fellows and charged 
out upon the bridge like a wild buffalo, shoulders 
hunched, spear held low. eyes gleaming with a 
look not wholly sane. Kane leaped back before the
onslaught, leaped back again, striving to avoid
that stabbing spear and to find an opening for his
point. He sprang to one side and found himself
reeling on the edge of the bridge with eternity
gaping beneath him. The warriors yelled in savage
exultation as he swayed and fought for his balance,
and the giant on the bridge roared and plunged at
his rocking foe.

	Kane parried with all his strength — a feat
few swordsman could have accomplished, off
balance as he was — saw the cruel spear blade
flash by his cheek — felt himself falling backward
into the abyss. A desperate effort, and he gripped
the spear shaft, righted himself and ran the spear-
man through the body. The giant's great red
cavern of a mouth spouted blood and with a dying
effort he hurled himself blindly against his foe.
Kane, with his heels over the bridge's edge, was
unable to avoid him and they toppled over together 
, to disappear silently into the depths
below.                                     
	So swiftly had it all happened that the warriors 
stood stunned. The giant's roar of triumph had
scarcely died on his lips before the two were falling 
into the darkness. Now the rest of the natives 
came out on the bridge to peer down curiously.
but no sound came up from the dark void.

CHAPTER II

THE PEOPLE OF THE STALKING DEATH

	As Kane fell he followed his fighting instinct,
twisting in midair so that when he struck, were it
ten or a thousand feet below, he would land on top
of the man who fell with him.

	The end came suddenly -- much more suddenly 
than the Englishman had thought for. He lay half
stunned for an instant, then looking up, saw dimly
the narrow bridge banding the sky above him, and
the forms of the warriors, limned in the moonlight
and grotesquely foreshortened as they leaned over
the edge. He lay still, knowing that the beams of
the moon did not pierce the deeps in which he was
hidden, and that to those watchers he was invisible. 
Then when they vanished from view he began
to review his present plight. His opponent was
dead, and only for the fact that his corpse had
cushioned the fall, Kane would have been dead
likewise, for they had fallen a considerable distance. 
As it was, the Englishman was stiff and
bruised.

	He drew his sword from the native's body,
thankful that it had not been broken, and began to
grope about in the darkness. His hand encountered
the edge of what seemed a cliff. He had thought
that he was on the bottom of the chasm and that
its impression of great depth had been a delusion,
but now he decided that he had fallen on a ledge,
part of the way down. He dropped a small stone
over the side, and after what seemed a very long
time he heard the faint sound of its striking far   
below.

	Somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed, he
drew flint and steel from his belt and struck them
to some tinder, warily shielding the light with his
hands. The faint illumination showed a large
ledge jutting out from the side of the cliff, that is,
the side next the hills, to which he had been attempting 
to cross. He had fallen close to the edge
and it was only by the narrowest margin that he
had escaped sliding off it, not knowing his position.

	Crouching there, his eyes seeking to accustom 
themselves to the abysmal gloom, he made
out what seemed to be a darker shadow in the
shadows of the wall. On closer examination he
found it to be an opening large enough to admit his
body standing erect. A cavern, he assumed, and
though its appearance was dark and forbidding in
the extreme, he entered, groping his way when the
tinder burned out.

	Where it led to, he naturally had no idea, but
any action was preferable to sitting still until the
mountain vultures plucked his bones. For a long
way the cave floor tilted upward -- solid rock
, beneath his feet — and Kane made his way with
some difficulty up the rather steep slant, slipping
and sliding now and then. The cavern seemed a
large one, for at no time after entering it could he
touch the roof, nor could he, with a hand on one
wall, reach the other.

	At last the floor became level and Kane
sensed that the cave was much larger there. The
air seemed better, though the darkness was just
as impenetrable. Suddenly he stopped dead in his
tracks. From somewhere in front of him there
came a strange indescribable rustling. Without
warning something smote him in the face and
slashed wildly. All about him sounded the eerie
murmurings of many small wings and suddenly
Kane smiled crookedly, amused, relieved and
chagrined. Bats, of course. The cave was swarming 
with them. Still, it was a shaky experience,
and as he went on and the wings whispered through
the vast emptiness of the great cavern, Kane's
 mind found space to dally with a bizarre
thought — had he wandered into Hell by some
strange means, and were these in truth bats, or
were they lost souls winging through everlasting
night?

Then, thought Solomon Kane, I will soon con-
front Satan himself — and even as he thought this,
his nostrils were assailed by a horrid scent,
fetid and repellent. The scent grew as he went
slowly on, and Kane swore softly, though he was
not a profane man. He sensed that the smell betokened 
some hidden threat, some unseen malevolence,
inhuman and deathly, and his sombre mind
sprang at supernatural conclusions. However, he
felt perfect confidence in his ability to cope with
any fiend or demon, armoured as he was in unshakable 
faith of creed and the knowledge of the
rightness of his cause.

What followed happened suddenly. He was
groping his way along when in front of him two
narrow yellow eyes leaped up in the darkness —
eyes that were cold and expressionless, too
hideously close-set for human eyes and too high
for any four-legged beast. What horror had thus
reared itself up in front of him ?

	This is Satan, thought Kane as the eyes
swayed above him, and the next instant he was
battling for his life with the darkness that seemed
to have taken tangible form and thrown itself
about his body and limbs in great slimy coils.
Those coils lapped his sword arm and rendered it
useless; with the other hand he groped for dagger
or pistol, flesh crawling as his fingers slipped
from Slick scales, while the hissing of the monster 
filled the cavern with a cold paean of terror.

	There in the black dark to the accompaniment
of the bats' leathery rustlings, Kane fought like a
rat in the grip of a mouse-snake, and he could feel
his ribs giving and his breath going before his
frantic left hand closed on his dagger hilt.

	Then with a volcanic twist and wrench of his
steel-thewed body he tore his left arm partly free
and plunged the keen blade again and again to the
hilt in the sinuous writhing terror which enveloped
him, feeling at last the quivering coils loosen and
slide from his limbs to lie about his feet like huge
cables.

	The mighty serpent Lashed wildly in its death
struggles, and Kane, avoiding its bone-shattering
blows, reeled away in the darkness, labouring for
breath, If his antagonist had not been Satan him-
self, it had been Satan's nearest earthly satellite,
thought Solomon, hoping devoutly that he would not
be called upon to battle another in the darkness
there.

	It seemed to him that he had been walking
through the blackness for ages and he began to
wonder if there were any end to me cave when a
glimmer of light pierced the darkness. He thought
it to be an outer entrance a great way off, and
started forward swiftly, but to his astonishment,
he brought up short against a blank wall after
taking a few strides.

	Then he perceived that me light came through
a narrow crack in the wall, and feeling over this
wall he found it to be of different material from
the rest of the cave, consisting, apparently, of
regular blocks of stone joined together with mortar 
of some sort -- an indubitably man-built wall.
     The light streamed between two of these
 stones where the mortar had crumbled away. Kane
ran his hands over the surface with an interest
! beyond his present needs. The work seemed very
old and very much superior to what might be expected 
of a tribe of ignorant savages.

He felt the thrill of the explorer and discoverer. 
Certainly no white man had ever seen
this place and lived to tell of it, for when he had
landed on the dank West Coast some months be-
before, preparing to plunge into the interior, he had
had no hint of such a country as this. The few
white men who knew anything at all of Africa with
Whom he had talked, had never even mentioned the
"Land of Skulls, or the she-fiend who ruled it.

	    Kane thrust against the wall cautiously. The
structure seemed weakened from age — a vigorous
shove and it gave perceptibly. He hurled himself
against it with all his weight -and a whole section
of wall gave way with a crash, precipitating him
into a dimly lighted corridor amid a heap of stone,
dust and mortar.

	He sprang up and looked about, expecting the
noise to bring a horde of wild spearmen. Utter
silence reigned. The corridor in which he now
stood was much like a long narrow cave itself,
save that it was the work of man. It was several
feet wide and the roof was many feet above his
head. Dust lay ankle-deep on the floor as if no
foot had trod there for countless centuries, and
the dim light, Kane decided, filtered in somehow
through the roof or ceiling, for nowhere did he
see any doors or windows. At last he decided the
source was the ceiling itself, which was of a
peculiar phosphorescent quality.

	He set off down the corridor, feeling un-
comfortably like a grey ghost moving along the
grey halls of death and decay.  The evident
antiquity of his surroundings depressed him, 
making him sense vaguely the fleeting and futile
existence of mankind. That he was now on top of
the earth he believed, since light of a sort came
in, but where, he could not even offer a conjecture. 
This was a land of enchantment — a land of
horror and fearful mysteries, the jungle and river
natives had said, and he had gotten whispered
hints of, its terrors ever since he had set his back
to the Slave Coast and ventured into the hinterlands
alone.

Now and then he caught a low indistinct murmur 
which seemed to come through one of the 
walls, and he at last came to the conclusion that 
he had stumbled onto a secret passage in some
castle or house. The natives who had dared speak
to him of Negari, had whispered of a ju-ju city
built of stone, set high amid the grim black crags
of the fetish hills.

	Then, thought Kane. it may be that I have
blundered upon the very thing I sought and am in
the midst of that city of terror. He halted, and
choosing a place at random, began to loosen the
mortar with his dagger. As he worked he again
heard that low murmur, increasing in volume as
he bored through the wall, and presently the point
pierced through, and looking through the aperture
it had made, he saw a strange and fantastic scene.

	He was looking into a great chamber, whose
walls and floors were of stone, and whose mighty
roof was upheld by gigantic stone columns,
strangely carved. Ranks of feathered black warriors 
lined the walls and a double column of them
stood like statues before a throne set between two
stone dragons which were larger than elephants.
These men he recognized, by their bearing and
general appearance, to be tribesmen of the warriors
he had fought at the chasm. But his gaze was
drawn irresistibly to the great, grotesquely ornamented 
throne. There, dwarfed by the ponderous
splendour about her, a woman reclined. A tawny
woman she was, young and of a tigerish comeliness. 
She was naked except for a be plumed helmet,
armbands, anklets and a girdle of coloured ostrich
feathers, and she sprawled upon the silken
cushions with her limbs thrown about in voluptuous
abandon.

Even at that distance Kane could make out that
her features were regal yet barbaric, haughty and
Imperious, yet sensual, and with a touch of ruthless 
cruelty about the curl of full red lips. Kane
felt his pulse quicken. This could be no other than
she whose crimes had become almost mythical "-
Nakari of Negari, demon queen of a demon city,
whose monstrous lust for blood had set half a
continent shivering.

At least she seemed human enough; the tales
of the fearful river tribes had lent her a super-
natural aspect. Kane had half expected to see a
loathsome semi-human monster out of some past
and demoniacal age.

	The Englishman gazed, fascinated though repelled. 
Not even in the courts of Europe had he
seen such grandeur. The chamber and all its accoutrements, 
from the carven serpents twined
about the bases of the pillars to the dimly seen
dragons on the shadowy ceiling, were fashioned on
a gigantic scale. The splendour was awesome —
elephantine — inhumanly oversized, and almost
numbing to the mind which sought to measure and
conceive the magnitude thereof. To Kane it seemed
that these things must have been the work of gods
rather than men, for this chamber alone would
dwarf most of the castles be had known in Europe. .

	The fighting men who thronged that mighty
room seemed grotesquely incongruous. They were -
not the architects of that ancient place.

As Kane realized this the sinister importance
of Queen Nakari dwindled. Sprawled on that
august throne in the midst of the terrific glory of
another age, she seemed to assume her true proportions,
a spoiled, petulant child engaged in a
game of make-believe and using tor her sport a
toy discarded by her elders. And at the same time
a thought entered Kane's mind — who were these
elders ?

    Still, the child could become deadly in her
game, as the Englishman soon saw.
A tall and massive warrior came through the
ranks fronting the throne, and after prostrating
himself four times before it, remained on his
knees, evidently waiting permission to speak. The
queen's air of lazy indifference fell from her and
he straightened with a quick lithe motion that reminded 
Kane of a leopardess springing erect. She
spoke, and the words came faintly to him as he
strained his faculties to hear. She spoke in a
language very similar to that of the river tribes.
“Speak!"

"Great and Terrible One," said the kneeling
warrior, and Kane recognized him as the chief
who had first accosted him on the plateau -- the
chief of the guards on the cliffs, "let not the fire
of your fury consume your slave."

The young woman's eyes narrowed viciously.
"You know why you were summoned, son of a
vulture?"

"Fire of Beauty, the stranger called Kane
brought no gifts."

"No gifts?" she spat out the words. "What
have I to do with gifts?"

The chief hesitated, knowing now that there
was some special importance in this stranger.

"Gazelle of Negari, he came climbing the
crags in the night like an assassin, with a dagger 
as long as a man's arm in his hand. The boulder 
we hurled down missed him, and we met him upon
the plateau and took him to the Bridge-Across-the- 
Sky, where, as is the custom, we thought to slay
him; for it was your word that you were weary of
men who came wooing you."

	"Fool," she snarled. "Fool!"
	"Your slave did not know, Queen of Beauty.
The strange man fought like a mountain leopard.
Two men he slew and fell with the last one into the
chasm, and so he perished, Star of Negari."

	"Aye," the queen's tone was venomous. "The
first great man who ever came "to Negari! One
who might have — rise, fool"*

	The man got to his feet.
	"Mighty Lioness, might not this one have
come seeking — "

	The sentence was never completed. Even as
he straightened, Nakari made a swift gesture with
her hand. Two warriors plunged from the silent
ranks and two spears crossed in the chief's body
before he could turn. A gurgling scream burst
from his lips, blood spurted high in the air and the
corpse fell flatly at the foot of the great throne.

	The ranks never wavered, but Kane caught the
sidelong flash of strangely red eyes and the involuntary 
wetting of thick lips. Nakari had half risen
as the spears flashed, and now she sank back, an
expression of cruel satisfaction on her beautiful
face and a strange brooding gleam in her scintillant eyes.

	An indifferent wave of her hand and the corpse
was dragged away by the heels, the dead arms
trailing limply in the wide smear of blood left by
the passage of the body. Kane could see other
wide stains crossing the stone floor, some almost
indistinct, others less dim.  How many wild
scenes of blood and cruel frenzy had the great
stone throne-dragons looked upon with their
carven eyes ?

	He did not doubt, now, the tales told him by
the river tribes. These people were bred in
rapine and horror. Their prowess had burst their
brains. They lived, like some terrible beast, only
to destroy. There were strange gleams behind
their eyes which at times lit those eyes with up-
leading flames and shadows of Hell. What had the
river tribes said of these mountain people who had
ravaged them for countless centuries?

	"That they were henchmen of death, who
stalked among them, and whom they worshipped."

Still the thought hovered in Kane's mind as he
watched -- who built this place, and why were
these people evidently in possession? Fighting
men such as they were could not have reached the
culture evidenced by these carvings. Yet the river
tribes had spoken of no other men than those upon
which he now looked.

       The Englishman tore himself away from the
fascination of the barbaric scene with an effort.
He had no time to waste; as long as they thought
him dead, he had more chance of eluding possible
guards and seeking what he had come to find. He
3turned and set off down file dim corridor. No plan
of action offered itself to his mind and one direction 
was as good as another. The passage did
not run straight; it turned and twisted, following
the line of the walls, Kane' supposed, and found
time to wonder at the evident enormous thickness
of those walls. He expected at any moment to meet
some guard or slave, but as the corridors continued 
to stretch empty before him, with the dusty
floors unmarked by any footprint, he decided that
either the passages were unknown to the people of
Negari or else for some reason were never used.

	He kept a close lookout for secret doors, and
at last found one, made fast on the inner side with
a rusty bolt set in a groove of the wall. This he
manipulated cautiously, and presently with a
creaking which seemed terrifically loud in the
stillness the door swung inward. Looking out he
saw no one, and stepping warily through the 
opening, he drew the door to behind him, noting 
that it assumed the part of a fantastic picture 
painted on the wall. He scraped a mark with his 
dagger at the point where he believed the hidden 
spring to be on the outer side, for he knew not
when he might need to use the passage again.

	He was in a great hall, through which ran a 
maze of giant pillars much like those of the throne 
chamber. Among them he felt like a child in some 
great forest, yet they gave him some slight sense
of security since he believed that, gliding among
them like a ghost through a jungle, he could elude
the warriors in spite of their craft.

	He set off, choosing his direction at random
and going carefully. Once he heard a mutter of
voices, and leaping upon the base of a column,
clung there while two women passed directly beneath 
him. but besides these he encountered no
one. It was an uncanny sensation, passing through
this vast hall which seemed empty of human life,
but in some other part of which Kane knew there
might be throngs of people, hidden from sight by
I the pillars.

	At last, after what seemed an eternity of
following these monstrous mazes, he came upon a
huge wall which seemed to be either a side of the
hall, or a partition, and continuing along this, he
saw in front of him a doorway before which two
spearmen stood like black statues.

	Kane, peering about the corner of a column
base, made out two windows high in the wall, one
on each side of me door, and noting the ornate
carvings which covered the walls, determined on
a desperate plan.

	He felt it imperative that he should see what
lay within that room. The fact that it was guarded
suggested that the room beyond the door was
either a treasure chamber or a dungeon, and he
felt s ure that his ultimate goal would prove to be a
dungeon.

	Kane retreated to a point out of sight of the
guards and began to scale the wall, using the deep
carvings for hand and foot holds. It proved even
easier than he had hoped, and having climbed to a
point level with the windows, he crawled cautiously
along a horizontal line, feeling like an ant on a
wall.

The guards far below him never looked up,
and finally he reached the nearer window and
drew himself up over the sill. He looked down
into a large room, empty of life, but equipped in
a manner sensuous and barbaric. Silken couches
and velvet cushions dotted the floor in profusion,
and tapestries heavy with gold work hung upon tile
walls. The ceiling too was worked in gold.

	Strangely incongruous, crude trinkets of
ivory and ironwood, unmistakably savage in workmanship, 
littered the place, symbolic enough of
this strange kingdom where signs of barbarism
vied with a strange culture. The outer door was
shut and in the wall opposite was another door,
also closed.

	Kane descended from the window, sliding
down the edge of a tapestry as a sailor slides down
a sail-rope, and crossed the room. His feet sank
noiselessly into the deep fabric of the rug which
covered the floor, and which, like all the other
furnishings, seemed ancient to the point of decay.

	At the door he hesitated. To step into the next
room might be a desperately hazardous thing to
do; should it prove to be filled with warriors, his
escape was cut off by the spearman outside the
other door. Still, he was used to taking all sorts
of wild chances, and now, sword in hand, he flung
the door open with a suddenness intended to numb
with surprise for an instant any foe who might be
on the other side.

Kane took a swift step within, ready for any-
thing — then halted suddenly, struck speechless
and motionless for a second.  He had come
thousands of miles in search of something, and
there before him lay the object of his search.

CHAPTER III

LILITH

A couch stood in the middle of the room, and
its silken surface lay a woman — a woman
whose skin was fair and whose reddish gold hair
fell about her bare shoulders. She now sprang
erect, fright flooding her fine grey eyes, lips
parted to utter a cry which she as suddenly
checked.

	"You!" she exclaimed. "How did you — ?"
	Solomon Kane closed the door behind him and
came toward her, a rare smile on his dark face.

	"You remember me, do you not. Marylin?"
	The fear had already faded from her eyes
even before he spoke, to be replaced by a look of
incredible wonder and dazed bewilderment.
	"Captain Kane! I can not understand — it
seemed no one would ever come — "
	She drew a small hand wearily across her
brow, swaying suddenly.

	Kane caught her in his arms — she was only
a child — and laid her gently on the couch. There,
chafing her wrists gently, he talked in a low
hurried monotone, keeping an eye on the door all
the time — which door, by the way, seemed to be
the only entrance or egress from the room. While
he talked he mechanically took in the chamber,
noting that it was almost a duplicate of the outer
room as regards hangings and "general furnishings.

"First," said he, "before, we go into any
other matters, tell me, are you closely guarded?"
"Very closely, sir," she murmured hopelessly, 
"I know not how you came here, but we
can never escape."

"Let me tell you swiftly how I came to be
here, and mayhap you will be more hopeful when I
tell you of the difficulties already overcome. Lie
still now, Marylin. and I will tell you how I came
to seek an English heiress in the devil city of
Negari.

"I killed Sir John Taferel in a duel. As to the
reason, 'tis neither here nor there, but slander
and a black lie lay behind it. Ere he died he confessed 
that he had committed a foul crime some
years agone. You remember, of course, the affection 
cherished for you by your cousin, old Lord
Hildred Taferal, Sir John's uncle? Sir John feared
that the old lord, dying without issue, might leave
the great Taferal estates to you.

"Years ago you disappeared and Sir John,
spread the rumour that you had drowned. Yet when
he lay dying with my rapier through his body, he
gasped out that he had kidnapped you and sold you
to a Barbary rover, whom he named — a bloody
pirate whose name has not been unknown on
England's coasts aforetime. So I came seeking
you, and a long weary trail it has been, stretching
into long leagues and bitter years.

"First I sailed the seas searching for El Gar,
the Barbary corsair named by Sir John. I found
him in the crash and roar of an ocean battle; he
died, but even as he lay dying he told me that he
had sold you in turn to a merchant out of Stamboul.
So to the Levant I went and there by chance came
upon a Greek sailor whom the Moors had crucified 
on the shore for piracy. I cut him down and
asked him the question I asked all men — if he had
in his wanderings seen a captive English girl-child
with yellow curls. I learned that he had been one
of the crew of the Stamboul merchants, and that
she had, on her homeward voyage, been set upon
by a Portuguese slaver and sunk — this renegade
Greek and the child being among the few who were
taken aboard the slaver.

"This slaver then, cruising south for black
ivory, had been ambushed in a small bay on the
African West Coast, and of your further fate the
Greek knew nothing, for he had escaped the
general massacre, and taking to sea in an open
boat, had been taken up by a ship of Genoese
freebooters.

"To the West Coast, then, I came, on the
slim chance that you still lived, and there heard
among the natives that some years ago a white
child had been taken from a ship whose crew had
been slain, and sent inland as a part of the tribute
the shore tribes paid to the upper river chiefs.

"Then all traces ceased. For months I wandered 
without a clue as to your whereabouts, nay,
without a hint that you even lived. Then I chanced
to hear among the river tribes of the demon city
Negari and the evil queen who kept a foreign
woman for a slave. I came here."

	Kane's matter-of-fact tone, his unfurbished
narration, gave no hint of the full meaning of that
tale — of what lay behind those calm and measured
words — the sea-fights and the land fights — the
years of privation and heart-breaking toil, the
ceaseless danger, the everlasting wandering
through hostile and unknown lands, the tedious and
deadening labour of ferreting out the information he
wished from ignorant, sullen and unfriendly sav-
ages.

	"I came here," said Kane simply, but what a
world of courage and effort was symbolized by that
phrase! A long red trail, black shadows and
crimson shadows weaving a devils dance —
marked by flashing swords and the smoke of
battle — by faltering words falling like drops of
blood from the lips of dying men.

	Not a consciously dramatic man, certainly,
was Solomon Kane. He told his tale in the same
manner in which he had overcome terrific obstacles 
— coldly, briefly and without heroics.

	"You see, Marylin," he concluded gently, "I
have not come this far and done this much, to now
meet with defeat. Take heart, child. We will find
a way out of this fearful place."

	"Sir John took me on his. saddlebow." the girl
said dazedly, and speaking slowly as if her native
language came strangely to her from years of un-
use, as she framed in halting words an English
evening of long ago: "He carried me to the sea-
shore where a galley's boat waited, filled with
fierce men, dark and moustached and having
scimitars, and great rings to the fingers. The
captain, a Moslem with a face like a hawk, took
me, I a-weeping with fear, and bore me to his
galley. Yet he was kind to me in his way. I being
little more than a baby, and at last sold me to a
Turkish merchant, as he told you. This merchant
he met off the southern coast of France, after
many days of sea travel.

"This man did not use me badly, yet I feared
him, for he was a man of cruel countenance and
made me understand that I was to be sold to a
black sultan of me Moors. However, in the Gates
of Hercules his ship was set upon by a Cadiz
slaver and things came about as you have said.

"The captain of the slaver believed me to be
the child of some wealthy English family and in-
tended holding me for ransom, but in a grim
darksome bay on the African coast he perished
with all his men except the Greek you have
mentioned, and I was taken captive by a savage
chieftain.

"I was terribly afraid and thought he would
slay me, but he did me no harm and sent me up-
country with an escort, who also bore much loot
taken from the ship. This loot, together with myself, 
was, as you know, intended for a powerful
king of the river peoples. But it never reached
him, for a roving band of Negari fell upon the
beach warriors and slew them all. Then I was
taken to this city, and have since remained, slave
to Queen Nakari.

"How I have lived through all those terrible
scenes of battle and cruelty and murder, I
know not.'

	"A providence has watched over you, child,'
said Kane, "the power which doth care for weak
women and helpless children; which led me to you
in spite of all hindrances, and which shall yet lead
us forth from this place, God willing."

	"My people!" she exclaimed suddenly like one
awaking from a dream; "what of them ?"

	"All in good health and fortune, child, save
that they have sorrowed for you through the long
years. Nay, old Sir Mildred hath the gout and doth
so swear thereat that I fear for his soul at times.
Yet methinks that the sight of you, little Marylin,
would mend-him."

	"Still, Captain Kane," said the girl, "I can
not understand why you came alone."
"Your brothers would have come with me,
child, but it was not sure that you lived, and I was
loth that any other Taferal should die in a land far
from good English soil. I rid the country of an
evil Taferal — 'twas but just I should restore in
his place a good Taferal, if so be she still lived —
I, and I alone."

	This explanation Kane himself believed. He
never sought to analyse his motives and he never
wavered once his mind was made up. Though he
always acted on impulse, he firmly believed that
all his actions were governed by cold and logical
reasonings. He was a man born out of his time —
a strange blending of Puritan and Cavalier, with a
touch of the ancient philosopher, and more man s
touch of the pagan, though the last assertion would
have shocked him unspeakably. An atavist of the
days of blind chivalry he was, a knight errant in
the sombre domes of a fanatic. A hunger in his
soul drove him on and on, an urge to right all
wrongs, protect all weaker things, avenge all
crimes against right and justice. Wayward and
restless as the wind, he was consistent in only
one respect — he was true to his ideals of justice
and right. Such was Solomon Kane.

	"Marylin," he now said kindly, taking her
small hands In his sword-calloused fingers, "me-
thinks you have changed greatly in the years. You
were a rosy and chubby little maid when I used to
dandle you on my, knee in old England. Now you
seem drawn and pale of face, though you are
beautiful as the nymphs of the heathen books.
There are haunting ghosts in your eyes. child —
do they misuse you here?"

	She lay back on the couch and the blood
drained slowly from her already pallid features
until she was deathly white. Kane bent over her,
startled. Her voice came in a whisper.

	"Ask me not. There are deeds better hidden
in the darkness of night and forgetfulness. There
are sights which blast the eyes and leave their
burning mark forever on the brain. The walls of
ancient cities, recked not of by men, have looked
upon scenes not to be spoken of, even in whispers."

	Her eyes closed wearily and Kane's troubled.
sombre eyes unconsciously' traced the thin blue
lines of her veins, prominent against the unnatural
whiteness of her skin.

	"Here Is some demoniacal thing." he muttered. 
"A mystery — "
"Aye," murmured the girl, "a mystery that
was old when Egypt was young! And nameless evil
more ancient than dark Babylon — that spawned in
terrible black cities when the world was young and
strange."

	Kane frowned, troubled. At the girl's strange
words he felt an eery crawling fear at the back of
his brain, as if dim racial memories stirred in
the eon-deep gulfs, conjuring up grim chaotic
visions, illusive and nightmarish.

	Suddenly Marylin sat erect, her eyes flaring
wide with fright. Kane heard a door open some-
where.
	"Nakari!" whispered the girl urgently.
"Swift! She must not find you here' Hide quickly,
and" — as Kane turned — "keep silent, whatever
may chance!"

	She lay back on the couch, feigning slumber
as Kane crossed the room and concealed himself
behind some tapestries which, hanging upon the
wall, hid a niche that might have once held a
statue of some sort.

	He had scarcely done so when the single door
of the room opened and a strange barbaric figure
stood framed in it. Nakari, queen of Negari, had
come to her slave.

	The woman was clad as she had been when he
had seen her on the throne, and the coloured armlets 
and anklets clanked as she closed the door
behind her and came into the room. She moved
with the easy sinuousness of a she-leopard and in
spite of himself the watcher was struck with
admiration for her lithe beauty. Yet at the same
time a shudder of repulsion shook him, for her
eyes gleamed with vibrant and magnetic evil,
older than the world.

	"Lilith!" thought Kane. "She is beautiful and
•terrible as Purgatory. She is Lilith — that foul,
lovely woman of ancient legend."

	Nakari halted by the couch, stood looking
down upon her captive for a moment, then with an
enigmatic smile, bent and shook her. Marylin
opened her eyes, sat up, then slipped from her
couch and knelt before her savage mistress — an
act which caused Kane to curse beneath his breath.
The queen laughed and seating herself upon the
couch, motioned the girl to rise, and then put an
arm about her waist and drew her upon her lap.
Kane watched, puzzled, while Nakari caressed the
girl in a lazy, amused manner. This might be affection, 
but to Kane it seemed more like a sated
leopard teasing its victim. There was an air of
mockery and studied cruelty about the whole
affair.

	"You are very soft and pretty, Mara," Nakari
murmured lazily, "much prettier man the other
girls who serve me. The time approaches, little
one, for your nuptial. And a fairer bride has never
been borne up the Black Stairs."

	Marylin began to tremble and Kane thought
she was going to faint. Nakari's eyes gleamed
strangely beneath her long-lashed drooping lids,
and her full red lips curved in a faint tantalizing
smile. Her every, action seemed fraught with
some sinister meaning. Kane began to sweat
profusely.

	"Mara," said the queen, "you are honoured
above all other girls, and yet you are not content.
Think how the girls of Negari will envy you, Mara,
when the priests sing the nuptial song and the
Moon of Skulls looks over the black crest of the
Tower of Death. Think, little bride-of -the-Master,
how many girls have given their lives to be his
bride!"

	And Nakari laughed in her hateful, musical
way as at a rare jest. And then suddenly she
stopped short. Her eyes narrowed to slits as they
swept the room, and her whole body tensed. Her
hand went to her girdle and came away with a long
thin dagger. Kane sighted along the barrel of his
pistol, finger against the trigger. Only a natural
hesitancy against shooting a woman kept him
from sending death into the savage heart of
Nakari, for he believed that she was about to
murder the girl.

	Then, with a lithe, cat-like motion, she thrust
the girl from her knees and bounded back across
the room, her eyes fixed with blazing intensity on
the tapestry behind which Kane stood. Had those
keen eyes discovered him? He quickly learned.

	"Who is there?" she rapped out fiercely.
"Who hides behind those hangings? I do not see
you nor hear you, but I know someone is there I"
Kane remained silent. Nakari's wild beast
instinct had betrayed him, and he was uncertain as
to what course to follow. His next actions de-
pended on the queen.

"Mara!" Nakari's voice slashed like a whip,
"who is behind those hangings ? Answer me! Shall
I give you a taste of the whip again?"

The girl seemed incapable of speech. She
cowered where she had fallen, her beautiful eyes
full of terror. Nakari, her blazing gaze never
wavering, reached behind her with her free hand
and gripped a cord hanging from the wall. She
jerked viciously. Kane felt the tapestries whip
back on either side of him and he stood revealed.

For a moment the strange tableau held — the
gaunt adventurer in hie blood-stained, tattered
garments, the long pistol gripped in his right hand
— across the room the savage queen in her bar-
baric finery, one arm still lifted to the cord,
the other hand holding the dagger in front of her
— the imprisoned girl cowering on the floor.

Then Kane spoke: "Keep silent, Nakari. or
you die!"

The queen seemed numbed and struck speech-
less by the sudden apparition. Kane stepped from
among the tapestries and slowly approached her.

"You!" she found her voice at last. "You must
be he of whom the guardsmen spake! There are
not two other white men in Negari! They said you
fell to your death! How then — "

"Silence!" Kane's voice cut in harshly on her
amazed babblings; he knew that the pistol meant
nothing to her, but she sensed the threat of the
long blade in his left hand. "Marylin," still un-
consciously speaking in the river tribes' language,
"take cords from the hangings and bind her — "

He was about the middle of the chamber now.
Nakari's face had lost much of its helpless
bewilderment and into her blazing eyes stole a
crafty gleam. She deliberately let her dagger fall
as in token of surrender, then suddenly her hands
shot high above her head and gripped another
thick cord. Kane heard Marylin scream, but be-
fore he could pull the trigger or even think, the
floor fell beneath his feet and he shot down into
abysmal blackness. He did not fall far and he
landed on his feet; but the force of the fall sent
him to his knees and even as he went down, sensing 
a presence in the darkness beside him, some-
thing crashed against his skull and he dropped into
a yet blacker abyss of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER IV

DREAMS OF EMPIRE

	Slowly Kane drifted back from the dim realms
where the unseen assailant's bludgeon had hurled
him. Something hindered me motion of his hands,
and there was a metallic clanking when he sought
to raise them to his aching, throbbing head.

He lay in utter darkness, but he could not
determine whether this was absence of light, or
whether he was still blinded by the blow. He
dazedly collected his scattered faculties and
realized that he was lying on a damp stone floor,
shackled by wrist and ankle with heavy iron
chains which were rough and rusty to the touch.

	How long he lay there, he never knew. The
silence was broken only by the drumming pulse in
his own aching head and the scamper and chattering 
of rats. At last a red glow sprang up in the
darkness and grew before his eyes. Framed in the
grisly radiance rose the sinister and sardonic
face of Nakari. Kane shook his head, striving to
rid himself of the illusion. But the light grew and
as his eyes accustomed themselves to it, he saw
that it emanated from a torch borne in the hand of
the queen.

	In the illumination he now saw that he lay in a
•small dank cell whose walls, ceiling and floor were
of stone. The heavy chains which held him captive
were made fast to metal rings set deep in the wall.
There was but one door, which was apparently of
bronze.

	Nakari set the torch in a niche near the door,
and coming forward, stood over her captive,
gazing down at him in a manner rather speculating
than mocking.

"You are he who fought the men on the cliff."
The remark was an assertion rather than a question. 
"They said you fell into the abyss — did they
lie? Did you bribe them to lie? Or how did you
escape ? Are you a magician and did you fly to the
bottom of the chasm and then fly to my palace?
Speak!"

	Kane remained silent. Nakari cursed.
	"Speak or I will have your eyes torn out! I
will cut your fingers off and burn your feet!"

She kicked him viciously, but Kane lay silent,
his deep sombre eyes boring up into her face,
until the feral gleam faded from her eyes to be
replaced by an avid interest and wonder.

	She seated herself on a stone bench, resting
her elbows on her knees and her chin on her
hands.

	"I never saw a white man before," she said.
"Are all white men like you? Bah! That cannot
be! Most men are fools* black or white. I know
that white men are not gods as the river tribes
say — they are only men. I, who know all the
ancient mysteries, say they are only men.

	"But white men have strange mysteries too,
they tell me — the wanderers of the river tribes
and Mara. They have war clubs that make a noise
like thunder and kill afar off — that thing which
you held in your right hand, was that one of those
clubs?"

	Kane permitted himself a grim smile.

	"Nakari, if you know all mysteries, how can
I tell you aught that you know not already?"

	"How deep and cold and strange your eyes
are!" the queen said as if he had not spoken.
"How strange your whole appearance is — and you
have the bearing of a king! You do not fear me —
I never met a man who neither loved nor feared
me. You would never fear me, but you could
learn to love me. Look at me, bold one -- am I
not beautiful?"

	"You are beautiful," answered Kane
	Nakari smiled and then frowned. "The way
you say that. it is no compliment. You hate me,
do you not?"

	"As a man hates a serpent," Kane replied
bluntly.

	Nakari's eyes blazed with almost insane fury.
Her hands clenched until the long nails sank into
the palms; then as quickly as her anger bad
arisen, it ebbed away.

	"You have me heart of a king." she said
calmly, "else you would fear me. Are you a king
your land?"

"I am only a landless wanderer."
"You might be a king here," Nakari said
slowly.
Kane laughed grimly. "Do you offer me my
life?"
"I offer you more than that!"

Kane's eyes narrowed as the queen leaned
toward him, vibrant with suppressed excitement.
"Kane, what is it that you want more than anything 
else in the world ? "

"To take me white girl you call Mara, and go."
Nakari sank back with an impatient exclamation.

"You can not have her; she is he promised
bride of the Master. Even I could not save her.
I even if I wished. Forget her. I will help you forget
her. Listen, listen to the words of Nakari, queen
of Negari! You say you are a landless man — I
will make you a king! I will give you the world
for a toy!

"No, no keep silent until I have finished."
she rushed on, her words tumbling over each
other in her eagerness. Her eyes blazed, her
whole body quivered with dynamic intensity. "I
have talked to travellers, to captives and slaves,
men from far countries. I know that this land of
mountains and rivers and jungle is not all the
world. There are far-off nations and cities, and
kings and queens to be crushed and broken.

	"Negari is fading, her might is crumbling,
but a strong man beside her queen might build it
up again — might restore all her vanishing glory.
Listen, Kane! Sit by me on the throne of Negari!
Send afar to your people for the thunder-clubs to
arm my warriors! My nation is still lord of
central Africa. Together we will band the conquered 
tribes — call back the days when the
realm of ancient Negari spanned the land from sea
to sea! We will subjugate all the tribes of the
river, the plain and the sea-shore, and instead of
slaying them all, we will make one mighty army
of them! And then, when all Africa is under our
heel, we will sweep forth upon the world like a
hungry lion to rend and tear and destroy!"

	Solomon's brain reeled. Perhaps it was the
woman's fierce magnetic personality, the dynamic
power she instilled in her fiery words, but at the
moment her wild plan seemed not at all wild and
impossible. Lurid and chaotic visions flamed
through the Puritan's brain — Europe torn by
civil and religious strife, divided against herself,
betrayed by her rulers, tottering — aye, Europe
was in desperate straits now, and might prove an
easy victim for some strong savage race of conquerors. 
What man can say truthfully that in his
heart there lurks not a yearning for power and
conquest?

	For a moment the Devil sorely tempted Solomon 
Kane. Then before his mind's eye rose the
wistful, sad face of Marylin Taferal, and Solomon
cursed.

	"Out on ye, daughter of Satan! Avaunt! Am I
a beast of the forest to lead your savage devils
against mine own people? Nay, no beast ever did
so. Begone! If you wish my friendship, set me
free and let me go with the girl."

	Nakari leaped like a tiger-cat to her feet, her
eyes flaming now with passionate fury. A dagger
gleamed in her hand and she raised it high above
Kane's breast with a feline scream of hate. A
moment she hovered like a shadow of death above
him; then her arm sank and she laughed.

'Freedom? She will find her freedom when
the Moon of Skulls leers down on the black altar.
As for you, you shall rot in this dungeon. You are
a fool; Africa's greatest queen has offered you her
love and the empire of the world — and you revile
her! You love the slave girl, perhaps? Until the
Moon of Skulls she is mine and I leave you to
think about this: that she shall be punished as I
have punished her before — hung up by her wrists,
naked, and whipped until she swoons!"

	Nakari Laughed as Kane tore savagely at his
shackles. She crossed to the door, opened it, then
hesitated and turned back for another word.

	"This is a foul place, bold one. and maybe
you hate me the more for chaining you here. May-
be in Nakari's beautiful throne room, with wealth
and luxury spread before you, you will look upon
her with more favour. Very soon I shall send for
you, but first I will leave you here awhile to reflect. 
Remember — love Nakari and the kingdom
of the world is yours; hate her — this cell is your
realm."

	The bronze door clanged sullenly, but more
hateful to the imprisoned Englishman was
venomous, silvery laugh of Nakari.

	Time passed slowly in the darkness. After
what seemed a long time the door opened again,
this time to admit a huge warrior who brought
food and a sort of thin wine. Kane ate and drank
ravenously and afterward slept. The strain of the
last few days had worn him greatly, mentally and
physically, but when he awoke he felt fresh and
strong,

	Again the door opened and two great savage
warriors entered. In the light of the torches they
bore, Kane saw that they were giants, clad in
loin-cloths and ostrich plume headgear, and bearing 
long spears in their hands.

	"Nakari wishes you to come to her, white
man," was all they said, as they took off his
shackles. He arose, exultant in even brief freedom, 
his keen brain working fiercely for a way
of escape.

	Evidently the fame of his prowess had spread,
tor the two warriors showed great respect for
him. They motioned him to precede them, and
walked carefully behind him, the points of their
spears boring into his back. Though they were two
to one, and he was unarmed, they were taking no
chances. The gazes they directed at him were full
of awe and suspicion.

	Down a long. dark corridor they went, his

captors guiding him with light prods of their
spears, up a narrow winding stair, down another
passageway, up another stair, and then they
emerged into the vast maze of gigantic pillars
into which Kane had first come. As they started
down this huge hall, Kane's eyes suddenly fell on
a strange and fantastic picture painted on the wall
ahead of him. His heart gave s sudden leap as he
recognized it. It was some distance in front of
him and he edged imperceptibly toward the wall
until he and his guards were walking along very
close to it. Now he was almost abreast of the
picture and could even make out the mark his
dagger had made upon it.

	The warriors following Kane were amazed to
I hear him gasp suddenly like a man struck by a
spear. He wavered in his stride and began
clutching at the air for support.
	They eyed each other doubtfully and prodded
him, but he cried out like a dying man and slowly
crumpled to the floor, where he lay in a strange,
unnatural position, one leg doubled back under
him and one arm half supporting his lolling body.

	The guards looked at him fearfully. To all
appearances he was dying, but mere was no wound
upon him. They threatened him with their spears,
but he paid no heed. Then they lowered their
weapons uncertainly and one of them bent over
him.

	Then it happened. The instant the guard
stooped forward. Kane came up like a steel spring
released. His right fist following his motion
curved up from the hip in a whistling half-circle
and crashed against the warrior's jaw. Delivered
with all the power of arm and shoulder, propelled
by the upthrust of the powerful legs as Kane
straightened, the blow was like that of a sling--
shot. The guard slumped to the floor, unconscious
before his knees gave way.                      

	The other warrior plunged forward with a
bellow, but even as his victim fell, Kane twisted,
aside and his frantic hand found the secret spring;
in the painting and pressed.

	All happened in the breath of a second. Quick,
as the warrior was, Kane was quicker, for he.
moved with the dynamic speed of a famished wolf.
For an instant the falling body of the senseless,
guard hindered the other warrior's thrust, and in
that instant Kane felt the hidden door give way.
From the corner of his eye he saw a long gleam of
steel shooting for his heart. He twisted about and
hurled himself against the door, vanishing through
it even as the stabbing spear slit the skin on his
shoulder.

	To the dazed and bewildered warrior, standing
there with weapon upraised for another thrust, it
seemed as if his prisoner had simply vanished
through a solid wall, for only a fantastic picture
met his gaze and this did not give to his efforts.

CHAPTER V

“FOR A THOUSAND YEARS —— "

	Kane slammed the hidden door shut behind
him, jammed down the spring and for a moment
leaned against it, every muscle tensed, expecting
to hold it against the efforts of a horde of spearmen. 
But nothing of the sort materialized. He
heard his guard fumbling outside for a time; then
that sound, too, ceased. It seemed impossible that
these people should have lived in this palace as
long as they had without discovering the secret
doors and passages, but it was a conclusion which
forced itself upon Kane's mind.

At last he decided that he was safe from
pursuit for the time being, and turning, started
down the long, narrow corridor with its eon-old
dust and its dim grey light. He felt baffled and
furious, though he was free from Nakari's shackles. 
He had no idea how long he had been in the
palace; it seemed ages. It must be day now, for it
was light in the outer halls, 'and he had seen no
torches after they had left the subterranean
dungeons.

He wondered if Nakari had carried out her
threat of vengeance on the helpless girl, and
swore passionately. Free for the time being, yes;
but unarmed and hunted through this infernal
palace like a rat. How could he aid either himself
or Marylin? But his confidence never faltered. He
was in the right and some way would present
itself.

Suddenly a narrow stairway branched off the
main passageway, and up this he went, the light
growing stronger and stronger until he stood in
the full glare of the African sunlight. The stair
terminated in a sort of small landing directly in
front of which was a tiny window, heavily barred.
Through this he saw the blue sky tinted gold with
the blazing sunlight, the sight was like wine to
him and he drew in deep breaths of fresh, untainted 
air, breathing deep as if to rid his lungs of
the aura of dust and decayed grandeur through
which he had been passing.

	He was looking out over a weird and bizarre
landscape. Far to the right and the left loomed up
great black crags and beneath them there reared
castles and towers of stone, of strange architecture 
— it was as if giants from some other planet
had thrown them up in a wild and chaotic debauch
of creation. These buildings were backed solidly
against the cliffs, and Kane knew that Nakari's
palace also must be built into the wall of the crag
behind it. He seemed to be in the front of that
palace in a sort of minaret built on the outer wall.
But there was only one window in it and his view
was limited.

	Far below him through the winding and narrow 
streets of that strange city, swarms of people
went to and fro, seeming like black ants to the
watcher above. East, north and south, the cliffs
formed a natural bulwark; only to the west was a
built wall.

	The sun was sinking west. Kane turned reluctantly 
from the barred window and went down
the stairs again.. Again he paced down the narrow
grey corridor, aimlessly and planlessly, for what
Seemed miles and miles. He descended lower and
lower into passages that lay below passages. The
light grew dimmer, and a dank slime appeared on
the walls. Then Kane halted, a faint sound from
beyond the wall arresting him. What was that? A
faint rattle -- the rattle of chains.

	Kane leaned close to the wall, and in the semi-
darkness his hand encountered a rusty spring. He
worked at it cautiously and presently felt the
hidden door it betokened swing inward. He gazed
out warily.

	He was looking into a cell, the counterpart of
the one in which he had been confined. A smouldering 
torch was thrust into a niche on the wall, and
by its lurid and flickering light he made out a form
on the floor, shackled wrist and ankle as he had
been shackled.

	A man; at first Kane thought him to be a
native, but a second glance made him doubt. His
skin was dark, but his features were finely
chiselled, and he possessed a high, magnificent
forehead, hard vibrant eyes, and straight dark
hair.

	The man spoke in an-unfamiliar dialect, one
which was strangely distinct and clear-cut in contrast 
to the guttural jargon of the natives with
whom Kane was familiar. The Englishman spoke
in English, and then in the language of the river
tribes.

"You who come through the ancient door,"
said the other in the latter dialect, "who are you?
You are no savage -- at first I thought you one of
the Old Race, but now I see you are not as they.
Whence come you?"

	"I am Solomon Kane," said the Puritan, "a
prisoner in this devil-city. I come from far
across the blue salt sea."

	The man's eyes lighted at the word.
"The sea' The ancient and everlasting! The
sea which I have never seen, but which cradled
the glory of my ancestors! Tell me, stranger,
have you, like they, sailed across the breast of
the great blue monster, and have your eyes
looked on the golden spires of Atlantis and the
crimson walls of Mu?"

	"Truly," answered Solomon uncertainly. "I
have sailed the seas, even to Hindostan and
Cathay, but of the countries you mention I know
nothing."

	"Nay," the other sighed. "I dream -- I
dream. Already the shadow of the great night
falls across my brain and my words wander.
Stranger, there have been times when these cold
walls and floor have seemed to melt into green,
surging deeps and my soul was filled with the deep
booming of the everlasting sea. I who have never
seen the sea!"

	Kane shuddered involuntarily. Surely this
man was insane. Suddenly the other shot out a
withered, claw-like hand and gripped his arm,
despite the hampering chain,

	"You whose skin is so strangely fair' Have
you seen Nakari, the she-fiend who rules this
crumbling city?"

	"I have seen her," said Kane grimly, "and
now I flee like a hunted rat from her murderers."
	"You hate her !" the other cried. "Ha, I know!
You seek Mara, the white girl who is her slave?"
	"Aye."
	"Listen," the shackled one spoke with strange
solemnity; "I am dying. Nakari's rack has done
its work. I die and with me dies the shadow of the
glory that was my nation's. For I am the last of
my race. In all the world there is none like me.
Hark now, to the voice of a dying race."

	And Kane leaning there in the flickering semi-
darkness of the cell heard the strangest tale to
which man has ever listened, brought out of the
mist of the dim dawn ages by the lips of delirium.
Clear and distinct the words fell from the dying
man and Kane alternately burned and froze as
vista after gigantic vista of time and space swept
up before him.

	"Long eons ago — ages, ages ago — the
empire of my race rose proudly above the waves.
So long ago was it that no man remembers an
ancestor who remembered it. In a great land to
the west our cities rose. Our golden spires split
the stars; our purple-prowed galleys broke the
waves around the world, looting the sunset for its
treasure and the sunrise for its wealth.

	"Our legions swept forth to the north and to
the south, to the west and the east, and none
could stand before them. Our cities banded the
world; we sent our colonies to all lands to subdue
all savages, men of all colours, and enslave them.
They toiled for us in the mines and at the
galley's oars. All over the world the people of
Atlantis reigned supreme. We were a sea-people,
and we delved the deeps of all the oceans. The
mysteries were known to us, and the secret
things of land and sea and sky. We read the stars
and were wise. Sons of the sea, we exalted him
above all others.

"We worshipped Valka and Hotah, Honen and
Golgor. Many virgins, many strong youths, died
on their altars and the smoke of the shrines
blotted out the sun. Then the sea rose and shook
himself. He thundered from his abyss and the
thrones of the world fell before him! New lands
rose from the deep and Atlantis and Mu were
swallowed up by the gulf. The green sea roared
through the fanes and the castles, and the sea-
weed encrusted the golden spires and the topaz
towers. The empire of Atlantis vanished and was
forgotten, passing into the everlasting gulf of
time and oblivion. Likewise the colony cities in
barbaric lands, cut off from their mother kingdom, 
perished. The savage barbarians rose and
burned and destroyed until in all the world only
the colony city of Negari remained as a symbol of
the lost empire.

"Here my ancestors ruled as kings, and the
ancestors of Nakari — the she-cat I — bent the
knee of slavery to them. Years passed, stretching
into centuries. The empire of Negari dwindled.
Tribe after tribe rose and flung off the chains.
pressing the lines back from the sea, until at last
the sons of Atlantis gave way entirely and
retreated into the city itself — the last stronghold
of the race. Conquerors no longer, hemmed in by
ferocious tribes, yet they held those tribes at bay
for a thousand years. Negari was invincible from
without; her walls held firm; but within evil influences 
were at work.'

"The sons of Atlantis had brought their slaves
into the city with them. The rulers were warriors,
scholars, priests, artisans; they did no menial
work. For that they depended upon the slaves.
There were more of these slaves than there were
masters. And they increased while the sons of
Atlantis dwindled.

"They mixed with each other more and more
as the race degenerated until at last only the
priestcraft was free of the taint of savage blood.
Rulers sat on the throne of Negari who possessed
little of the blood of Atlantis, and these allowed
more and more wild tribesmen to enter the city
in the guise of servants, mercenaries and friends.

"Then came a day when these fierce slaves
revolted and slew all who bore a trace of the blood
of Atlantis, except the priests and their families.
These they imprisoned as 'fetish people'. For a
thousand years savages have ruled in Negari,
their kings guided by the captive priests, who
though prisoners, were yet the masters of kings."

Kane listened enthralled. To his imaginative
mind, the tale burned and lived with strange fire
from cosmic time and space.
"After all the sons of Atlantis, save the
priests, were dead, there rose a great king to the
defiled throne of ancient Negari. He was a tiger
and his warriors were like leopards. They called
themselves Negari, ravishing even the name of
their former masters, and none could stand before
them. They swept the land from sea to sea, and
the smoke of destruction put out the stars. The
great river ran red and the new lords of Negari
strode above the corpses of their tribal foes. Then
the great king died and the empire crumbled, even
as the Atlantean kingdom of Negari had crumbled.

	"They were skilled in war. The dead sons of
Atlantis, their former masters, had trained them
well in the ways of battle, and against the wild
tribesmen they were invincible. But only the ways
of war had they learned, and the empire was torn
with civil strife. Murder and intrigue stalked red-
handed through the palaces and the streets, and
the boundaries of the empire dwindled and dwindled. 
All the while, savage kings with red, frenzied
brains sat on the throne, and behind the curtains,
unseen but greatly feared, the Atlantean priests
guided the nation, holding it together, keeping it
from absolute destruction.

	"Prisoners in the city were we, for there was
nowhere else in the world to go. We moved like
ghosts through the secret passages in the walls
and under the earth, spying on intrigue and doing
secret magic. We upheld the cause of the royal
family — the descendants of that tiger-like king of
long ago — against all plotting chiefs, and grim
are the tales which these silent walls could tell.

	"These savages are not like the other natives
of the region. A latent insanity lurks in the brains
of every one. They have tasted so deeply and so
long of slaughter and victory that they are as
human leopards, forever thirsting for blood. On
their myriad wretched slaves they have sated all
lusts and desires until they have become foul and
terrible beasts, forever seeking some new sensation, 
forever quenching their fearful thirsts in
blood.

	"Like a lion have they lurked in these crags
for a thousand years, to rush forth and ravage the
jungle and river people, enslaving and destroying.
They are still invincible from without, though
their possessions have dwindled to the very walls
of this city, and their former great conquests and
invasions have dwindled to raids for slaves.

	"But as they faded, so too faded their secret
masters, the Atlantean priests. One by one they
died, until only I remained. In the last century
they too have mixed with their rulers and slaves,
and now — oh, the shame upon me! — I, the last
son of Atlantis, bear in my veins the taint of
barbarian blood. They died; I remained, doing
magic and guiding the savage kings, I the last
priest of Negari. Then the she-fiend, Nakari,
arose."

	Kane leaned forward with quickened interest.
New life surged into the tale as it touched upon his
own time.
	"Nakari!" the name was spat as a snake
hisses; "slave and the daughter of a slave! Yet
she prevailed when her hour came and all the
royal family died.
	"And me, the last son of Atlantis, me she
prisoned and chained. She feared not the silent
Atlantean priests, for she was the daughter of
a Satellite -- one of the lesser, native priests.
They were men who did the menial work of the
masters — performing the lesser sacrifices,
divining from the livers of fowls and serpents and
keeping the holy fires for ever burning. Much she
knew of us and our ways, and evil ambition burned
in her.

	"As a child she danced in the March of the
New Moon, and as a young girl she was one of the
Starmaidens. Much of the lesser mysteries was
known to her, and more she learned, spying upon
the secret rites of the priests who enacted hidden
rituals that were old when the earth was young.

	"For the remnants of Atlantis secretly kept
alive the old worships of Valka and Hotah, Honen
and Golgor, long forgotten and not to be understood 
by these savage people whose ancestors died
screaming on their altars. Alone of all the savage
Negari, she feared us not. Nakari not only overthrew 
the king and set herself on the throne, but
she dominated the priests — the Satellites and the
few Atlantean masters who were left. All these
last, save me, died beneath the daggers of her
assassins or on her racks. She alone of all the
myriad savage thousands who have lived and died
between these walls guessed at the hidden pass-
ages and subterranean corridors, secrets which
we of the priestcraft had guarded jealously from
the people for a thousand years.

	"Ha! Ha! Blind, savage fools! To pass an
ageless age in this city, yet never to learn of the
secrets thereof! Apes — fools! Not even the
lesser priests know of the long grey corridors, lit
by phosphorescent ceilings, through which in by-
gone ages strange forms have glided silently. For
our ancestors built Negari as they built Atlantis
on a mighty scale and with an unknown art. Not
for men alone did we build, but for the gods who
moved unseen among us. And deep the secrets
these ancient walls hold!

	"Torture could not wring these secrets from
our lips, but shackled in her dungeons, we trod
our hidden corridors no more. For years the dust
has gathered there, untouched by human foot,
while we, and finally I alone, lay chained in these
foul cells. And among the temples and the dark,
mysterious shrines of old, move vile Satellites,
elevated by Nakari to glories that were once mine
— for I am the last Atlantean high priest.

"Their doom is ascertained, and red will be
their ruin' Valka and Golgor, gods lost and for-
gotten, whose memory shall die with me, strike
down their walls and humble them unto the dust!
Break the altars of their blind pagan gods — "

	Kane realized that the man was wandering in
his mind. The keen brain had begun to crumble
at last.

	"Tell me," said he; "you mentioned the fair
girl. Mara. What do you know of her?"

	"She was brought to Negari years ago by
raiders," the other answered, "only a few years
after the rise of the savage queen, whose slave
she is. Little of her I know, for shortly after her
arrival. Nakari turned on me — and the years
that lie between have been grim dark years, shot
red with torture and agony. Here I have lain.
hampered by my chains from escape which lay in
that door through which you entered — and for me
knowledge of which Nakari has torn me on racks
and suspended me over slow fires."        

	Kane shuddered. "You know not if they have
so misused the white girl? Her eyes are haunted.
and she has wasted away."

	"She has danced with the Starmaidens at
Nakari's command, and has looked on the bloody
and terrible rites of me Black Temple. She has
lived for years among a people with whom blood is
cheaper than water, who delight in slaughter and
foul torture, and such sights as she has looked
upon would blast the eyes and wither the flesh of
strong men. She has seen the victims of Nakura
die amid horrid torments, and the sight is burned
forever in the brain of the beholder. The rites of
the Atlanteans the savages took whereby to honour
their own crude gods, and though the essence of
those rites is lost in the wasting years, yet even
Nakari's minions perform them, they are not such
as men can look on, unshaken."

	Kane was thinking: "A fair day for the world
when this Atlantis sank, for most certainly it bred
a race of strange and unknown evil." Aloud he
said; "Who Is this Master of whom Nakari spake,
and what meant she by calling Mara his bride?"

"Nakura — Nakura. The skull of evil, the
symbol of Death that they worship. What know
these savages of the gods of sea-girt Atlantis?
What know they of the dread and unseen gods
whom their masters worshipped with majestic and
mysterious rites ? They understand not of the un-
seen essence, the invisible deity that reigns in the
air and the elements; they must worship a material 
object, endowed with human shape. Nakura was
the last great wizard of Atlantean Negari. A renegade 
he was, who conspired against his own people
and aided the revolt of the savages. In life they
followed him and in death they deified him. High
in the Tower of Death his fleshless skull is set,
and on that skull hinge the brains of all the people
of Negari.

	"Nay, we of Atlantis worshipped Death, but
we likewise worshipped Life. These people worship 
only Death and call themselves Sons of
Death. And the skull of Nakura has been to them
for a thousand years the symbol of their power,
the evidence of their greatness.

	"Do you mean," Kane broke in impatiently
on these ramblings, "that they will sacrifice the
girl to their god?"

'"In the Moon of Skulls she will die on the
Black Altar."
	"What in God's name is this Moon of Skulls?"
Kane cried passionately.

	"The full moon. At the full of each moon,
which we name the Moon of Skulls, a virgin dies
on the Black Altar before the Tower of Death,
where centuries ago, virgins died in honour of
Golgor, the god of Atlantis. Now from the face of
the tower that once housed the glory of Golgor,
leers down the skull of the renegade wizard, and
the people believe that his brain still lives therein
to guide the star of the city. For look ye, stranger,
when the full moon gleams over the rim of the
tower and the chant of the priests falls silent, then
from the skull of Nakura thunders a great voice,
raised in an ancient Atlantean chant, and the people 
fall on their faces before it.

	"But hark, there is a secret way, a stair
leading up to a hidden niche behind the skull, and
there a priest lurks and chants. In days gone by
one of the sons of Atlantis had this office, and by
all rights of men and gods it should be mine this
day. For though we sons of Atlantis worshipped
our ancient gods in secret, these savages would
have none of them. To hold our power we were
devotees to their foul gods and we sang and sacrificed 
to him whose memory we cursed.

	"But Nakari discovered the secret, known
before only to the Atlantean priests, and now one
of her Satellites mounts the hidden stair and
yammers forth the strange and terrible chant
which is but meaningless gibberish to him, as to
those who hear it. I, and only I, know it’s grim
and fearful meaning."

	Kane's brain whirled in his efforts to formulate 
some plan of action. For the first time during
the whole search for the girl, he felt himself
against a blank wall. The palace was a labyrinth.
a maze in which he could decide no direction. The
corridors seemed to run without plan or purpose,
and how could he find Marylin, prisoned as she
doubtless was in one of the myriad chambers or
cells? Or had she already passed over the border-
line of life, or succumbed to the brutal torture-
lust of Nakari ?

	He scarcely heard me ravings and mutterings
of the dying man.

	"Stranger, do you indeed live or are you but
one of the ghosts which have haunted me of late,
stealing through the darkness of my cell? Nay,
you are flesh and blood — but you are a savage,
even as Nakari's race are savages. Eons ago when
your ancestors were defending their caves against
the tiger and the mammoth, with crude spears of
flint, the gold spires of my people split the stars I
They are gone and forgotten, and the world is a
waste of barbarians. Let me, too, pass as a
dream that is forgotten in She mists of the ages —"

Kane rose and paced the cell. His fingers
closed like steel talons as on a sword hilt and a
blind red wave of fury surged through his brain.
Oh God! to get his foes before the keen blade that
had been taken from him — to face the whole city,
one man against them all ~-

	Kane pressed his hands against his temples.
	"The moon was nearly full when last I saw it.
But I know not how long ago' that was. I know not
how long I have been in this accursed palace, or
how long I lay in that dungeon where Nakari threw
me. The time of full moon may be past, and --
oh merciful God! — Marylin may be dead already."

	"Tonight is the Moon of Skulls," muttered the
other; "I heard one of my jailers speak of it."

	Kane gripped the dying man's shoulder with
unconscious force.
	"If you hate Nakari or love mankind, in God's
name tell me how to save the child."
	"Love mankind?" the priest laughed insanely.
"What has a son of Atlantis and a priest of for-
gotten Golgor to do with love ? What are mortals
but food for the jaws of the gods ? Softer girls than
your Mara have died screaming beneath these
hands and my heart was as iron to their cries .
Yet hate" — the strange eyes flamed with fearful
light -- "for hate I will tell you what you wish to
know!

	"Go to the Tower of Death when the moon is
risen. Slay the false priest who lurks behind the
skull of Nakura, and then when the chanting of the
worshippers below ceases, and the masked slayer
beside the Black Altar raises the sacrificial
dagger, speak in a loud voice that the people can
understand, bidding them set free the victim and
offer up instead, Nakari, queen of Negari!

	"As for the rest, afterward you must rely on
your own craft and prowess if you come free."

	Kane shook him.
	"Swift! Tell me how I am to reach this
tower!"

	"Go back through the door whence you came."
The man was sinking fast, his words dropped to
whispers. "Turn to the left and go a hundred
paces. Mount the stair you come to, as high as it
goes. In the corridor where it ceases go straight
for another hundred paces, and when you come to
what seems a blank wall, feel over it until you
find a projecting spring. Press this and enter the
door which will open. You will then be out of the
palace and in the cliffs against which it is built,
and in the only one of the secret corridors known
to the people of Negari. Turn to your right and go
straight down the passage for five hundred paces.
There you will come to a stair, which leads up to
the niche behind the skull. The Tower of Death is
built into the cliff and projects above it. There
are two stairs -— "

	Suddenly the voice trailed out. Kane leaned
forward and shook the man, and the priest suddenly 
rose up with a great effort. His eyes blazed
with a wild and unearthly light and he flung his
shackled arms wide.

"The sea!" he cried in a great voice. "The
golden spires of Atlantis and the sun on the deep
blue waters! I come!"

And as Kane reached to lay him down again,
he slumped back, dead.

CHAPTER VI

THE SHATTERING OF THE SKULL

Kane wiped the cold sweat from his pale brow
as he hurried down the shadowy passage. Outside
this horrible palace it must be night. Even now
the full moon — the grim Moon of Skulls -- might
be rising above the horizon. He paced off a
hundred paces and came upon the stair the dying
priest had mentioned.

This he mounted, and coming into the corridor 
above, he measured off another hundred paces
and brought up short against what appeared to be a
door-less wall. It seemed an age before his frantic
fingers found a piece of projecting metal. There
was a creak of rusty hinges as the hidden door
swung open and Kane looked into a passageway
darker than the one in which he stood.

	He entered, and when the door shut behind
him he turned to his right and groped his way
along for five hundred paces. There the corridor
was lighter; light sifted in from without, and Kane
discerned a stairway. Up this he went for several
steps, then halted, baffled. At a sort of landing
the stairway became two, one leading away to the
left, the other to the right. Kane cursed. He felt
that he could not afford to make a mistake -- time
was too precious — but how was he to know which
would lead him to the niche where the priest hid?

	The Atlantean had been about to tell him of
these stairs when struck by the delirium which
precedes death, and Kane wished fervently that he
had lived only a few moments longer.

	At any rate, he had no time to waste; right or
wrong, he must chance it. He chose the right hand
stair and ran swiftly up it. No time for caution
now.

	He felt instinctively that the time of sacrifice
was close at hand. He came into another passage
and discerned by the change in masonry that he
was out of the cliffs again and in some building --
presumably the Tower of Death. He expected any
moment to come upon another stair, and suddenly
his expectations were realized -- but instead of
up,- it led down. From somewhere in front of him
Kane heard a vague, rhythmic murmur and a cold
hand gripped his heart. The chanting of the
worshippers before -the Black Altar!

	He raced forward recklessly, rounded a turn
in the corridor, brought up short against a door
and looked through a tiny aperture. His heart
sank. He had chosen the wrong stair and had
wandered into some other building adjoining the
Tower of Death.

	He looked upon a grim and terrible scene. In
a wide open space before a great black tower
whose spire rose above the crags behind it, two
long lines of savage dancers swayed and writhed.
Their voices rose in a strange meaningless chant,
and they did not move from their tracks.

	From their knees upward their bodies swayed
in fantastic rhythmical motions, and in their
hands torches tossed and whirled, shedding a
lurid shifting red light over the scene. Behind
them were ranged a vast concourse of people who
stood silent.

	The dancing torchlight gleamed on a sea of
glittering eyes and eager faces, In front of the
dancers rose the Tower of Death, gigantically tall,
black and horrific. No door or window opened in
its face, but high on the wall in a sort of ornamented 
frame there leered a grim symbol of
death and decay. The skull of Nakura! A faint,
eery glow surrounded it, lit somehow from
within the tower, Kane knew, and wondered by
what strange art the priests had kept the skull
from decay and dissolution so long. 

	But it was neither the skull nor the tower
which gripped the Puritan's horrified gaze and
held it. Between the converging lines of yelling,
swaying worshippers there rose a great black
altar. On this-altar lay a slim, white shape.
"Marylin!" the word burst from Kane's lips
in a great sob.

	For a moment he stood frozen, helpless,
struck blind. No time now to retrace his steps and
find the niche where the skull priest lurked.

	Even now a faint glow was apparent behind the
spire of the tower, etching that spire blackly
against me sky. The moon had risen. The chant of
the dancers soared up to a frenzy of sound, and
from the silent watchers behind them began a
sinister low rumble of drums. To Kane's dazed
mind it seemed that he looked on some red
debauch of a lower Hell.

	What ghastly worship of past eons did these
perverted and degenerate rites symbolize? Kane
knew that these people aped the rituals of their
former masters in their crude way, and even in
his despair he found time to shudder at the thought
of what those original rites must have been.

	Now a fearful shape rose up beside the altar
where lay the silent girl. A tall figure, entirely
naked save for a hideous painted mask on his face
and a great" head-dress of waving plumes. The
drone of the chant sank low for an instant, then
rose up again to wilder heights. Was it the vibrations 
of their song that made the floor quiver
beneath Kane's feet?

	Kane with shaking fingers began to unbar the
door. Naught to do now but to rush out barehanded
and die beside the girl he could not save. Then his
gaze was blocked by a giant form which shouldered
in front of the door. A huge man, a chief by his
bearing and apparel, leaned idly against the wall
as he watched the proceedings. Kane's heart gave
a great leap. This was too good to be true' Thrust
in the chief's girdle was the pistol that he himself
had carried! He knew that his weapons must have
been divided among his captors. This pistol meant
nothing to the chief, but he must have been taken
by its strange shape and was carrying it as
savages will wear useless trinkets. Or perhaps he
thought it a sort of war-club. At any rate, there it
was. And again' floor and building seemed to
tremble.

	Kane pulled the door silently inward and
crouched in the shadows behind his victim like a
great brooding tiger.

	His brain worked swiftly and formulated his
plan of action. There was a dagger in the girdle
beside the pistol; the chief's back was turned
squarely to him and he must strike from the left
to reach the heart and silence him quickly. All
this passed through Solomon's brain in a flash as
he crouched.

	The chief was not aware of his foe's presence
until Kane's lean right hand shot across his
shoulder and clamped on his mouth, jerking him
backward. At the same instant the Puritan's left
hand tore the dagger from the girdle and with one
desperate plunge sank the keen blade home.

	The warrior crumpled without a sound and in
an instant Kane's pistol was in its owner's hand.
A second's investigation showed that it was still
loaded and the flint still in place.

No one had seen the swift murder. Those few
who stood near the doorway were all facing the
Black Altar, enwrapped in the drama, which was
there unfolding. As Kane stepped across the
corpse, the chanting of the dancers ceased abruptly. 
In the instant of silence which followed,
Kane heard, above the pounding-of his own pulse,
the night wind rustle the death-like plumes of the
masked horror beside the altar. A rim of the
moon glowed above the spire-
Then, from high up on the face of the Tower
of Death, a deep voice boomed out in a strange
chant Mayhap the priest who spoke behind the
skull knew not what his words meant, but Kane
believed that he at least mimicked the very intonation 
of those long-dead Atlantean acolytes.
Deep, mystic, resonant the voice sounded out,
like the endless flowing of long tides on the broad
white beaches.

	The masked one beside the altar drew himself
up to his great height and raised a long, glimmering 
blade. Kane recognized his own sword, even-
as he levelled his pistol and fired -- not at the
masked priest but full at the skull which gleamed
in the face of the tower. For in one blinding flash
of intuition he remembered the dying Atlantean's
words: "Their brains hinge on the skull of
Nakura!"

	Simultaneously with the crack of the pistol
came a shattering crash; the dry skull flew into a
thousand pieces and vanished, and behind it the
chant broke off short in a death shriek. The rapier
fell from the hand of the masked priest and many
of the dancers crumpled to the earth, the others
halting short, spellbound. Through the deathly
silence which reigned for an instant, Kane rushed
toward the altar; then all Hell broke loose.

	A babel of bestial screams rose to the
shuddering stars. For centuries only their faith
in the dead Nakura had held together the blood-
drenched brains of the savage Negari. Now their
symbol had vanished, had been blasted into
nothing before their eyes. It was to them as if the
skies had split, the moon fallen and the world
ended. All the red visions which lurked at the
backs of their corroded brains leaped into fearful
life, all the latent insanity which was their heritage 
rose to claim its own, and Kane looked upon
a whole nation turned to bellowing maniacs.

	Screaming and roaring they turned on each
other, men and women, tearing with frenzied
fingernails, stabbing with spears with daggers,
beating each other with the flaming torchies, while
over all rose the roar of frantic human beasts.

	With clubbed pistol Kane battered his way
through the surging, writhing ocean of flesh, to
the foot of the altar stairs. Nails raked him,
knives slashed at him, torches scorched his garments, 
but he paid no heed.

	Then as he reached the altar, a terrible
figure broke from the struggling mass and charged
him. Nakari, queen of Negari, crazed as any of
her subjects, rushed upon the Englishman with
dagger bared and eyes horribly aflame.

"You shall not escape this time!" she was
screaming, but before she reached him a great
warrior, dripping blood and blind from a gash
across his eyes, reeled across her path and 
lurched into her.                               

She screamed like a wounded cat and struck
her dagger into him, and then groping hands
closed on her. The blind giant whirled her on
high with one dying effort, and her last scream
knifed the din of battle as Nakari, last queen of
Negari, crashed against the stones of the altar
and fell shattered and dead at Kane's feet.

Kane sprang up the black steps, worn deep by
the feet of myriad priests and victims, and as he
came, the masked figure, who had stood like one
turned to stone, came suddenly to life. He bent
swiftly, caught up the sword he had dropped and
thrust savagely at the charging Englishman. But
the dynamic quickness of Solomon Kane was such
as few men could match. A twist and sway of his
steely body and he was inside the thrust, and as
the blade slid harmlessly between arm and chest,
he brought down the heavy pistol barrel among the
waving plumes, crushing headdress, mask and
skull with one blow.

Then ere he turned to the fainting girl who
lay bound on the altar, he flung aside the shattered
pistol and snatched his stolen sword from the
nerveless hand which still grasped it, feeling a
fierce thrill of renewed confidence at the familiar
feel of the hilt.

Marylin lay white and silent, her death-like
face turned blindly to the light of the moon which
shone calmly down on the frenzied scene. At first

Kane thought her to be dead, but his searching
fingers detected a faint flutter of pulse.
He cut her bonds and lifted her tenderly —
only to drop her again and whirl as a hideous,
blood-stained figure of insanity came leaping and
gibbering up the steps. Full upon Kane's out-
thrust blade the creature ran, and toppled back
into the red swirl below, clawing beast-like at its
mortal wound.

Then beneath Kane's feet the altar rocked; a
sudden tremor hurled him to his knees and his
horrified eyes beheld the Tower of Death sway to
and fro.

Some horror of Nature was taking place, and
this fact pierced the crumbling brains of the
fiends who fought and screamed below. A new
element entered into their shrieking, and then the
Tower of Death swayed far out with a terrible and
awesome majesty — broke from the rocking crags
and -gave way with a thunder of crashing worlds.
Great stones and shards of masonry came raining
down, bringing death and destruction to hundreds
of screaming humans below.

One of these stones crashed to pieces on the
altar beside Kane, showering him with dust.

"Earthquake!" he gasped, and smitten by this
new terror he caught up the senseless girl and
plunged recklessly down the cracking steps, hacking 
and stabbing a way through the crimson
whirlpools of bestial humanity that still tore and
ravened.

The rest was a red nightmare in which Kane's
dazed brain refused to record all its horrors. It
seemed that for screaming crimson centuries he
reeled through narrow winding streets where
bellowing, screeching demons battled and died,
among titanic walls and black columns that rocked
against the sky and crashed to ruin about him,
while the earth heaved and trembled beneath his
staggering feet and the thunder of crashing towers
filled the world.                                

	Gibbering fiends in human shape clutched and
clawed at him, to fade before his flailing sword,
and falling stones bruised and battered him. He
crouched as he reeled along, covering the girl
with his body as best he could, sheltering her
alike from blind stone and blinder human.

	At last, when it seemed mortal endurance had
reached its limit, he saw the great black outer
wall of the city loom before him, rent from earth;
to parapet and tottering for its fall. He dashed
through a crevice, and gathering his efforts, made
one last sprint. And scarce was he out of reach
than the wall crashed, falling inward like a great
black wave.

	The night wind was in his face and behind him
rose the clamour of the doomed city as Kane
staggered down the hill path that trembled beneath
his feet.

CHAPTER VII

THE FAITH OF SOLOMON

	Dawn lay like a cool white hand on the brow of
Solomon Kane. The nightmares faded from his soul
as he breathed deep of the morning wind which
blew up from the jungle far below his feet — a
wind laden with the musk of decaying vegetation.
Yet it was like the breath of life to him, for the
scents were those of the clean natural disintegration 
of outdoor Slings, not the loathsome aura of
decadent antiquity that lurks in the walls of eon-
old cities — Kane shuddered involuntarily.

	He bent over the sleeping girl who lay at his
feet, arranged as comfortably as possible with the
few soft tree branches he had been able to find for
her bed. Now she opened her eyes and stared
about wildly for an instant; then as her gaze met
the face of Solomon, lighted by one of his rare
smiles, she gave a little sob of thankfulness and
clung to him.

	"Oh. Captain Kane! Have we in truth escaped
from yon fearful city? Now it seems all like a
dream — after you fell through the secret door in
my chamber Nakari later went to your dungeon 
as she told me — and returned in vile humour.
She said you were a fool, for she had offered you
the kingdom of the world and you had but insulted
her. She screamed and raved and cursed like one
insane and swore that she would yet, alone, build
a great empire of Negari.

	Then she turned on me and reviled me, saying
that you held me -- a slave -- in more esteem
than a queen and all her glory. And in spite of my
pleas she took me across her knees and whipped
me until I swooned.

	"Afterward I lay half senseless for a long
time, and was only dimly aware that men came to
Nakari and said that you had escaped. They said
you were a sorcerer, for you faded through a solid
wall like a ghost. But Nakari killed the men who
had brought you from the cell, and for hours she
was like a wild beast.

	"How long I lay thus I know not. In those
terrible rooms and corridors where no natural
sunlight ever entered, one lost all track of time.
But from the time you were captured by Nakari
and the time that I was placed on the altar, at
least a day and a night and another day must have
passed. It was only a few hours before the sacrifice 
that word came you had escaped.

	"Nakari and her Star-maidens came to pre-
pare me for the rite." At the bare memory of that
fearful ordeal she whimpered and hid her face in
her hands. "I must have been drugged " I only
know that they clothed me in the white robe of the
sacrifice and carried me into a great black
chamber filled with horrid statues.

	"There I lay for a space like one in a trance,
while the women performed various strange and
shameful rites according to their grim religion.
Then I fell into a swoon, and when I emerged I was
lying bound on the Black Altar — the torches were
tossing and the devotees chanting — behind the
Tower of Death the rising moon was beginning to
glow — all this I knew faintly, as in a deep
dream. And as in a dream I saw the glowing
skull high on the tower — and the gaunt, naked
priest holding a sword above my heart, then I
knew no more. What happened? "

	"At about that moment," Kane answered, "I
emerged from a building wherein I had wandered
by mistake, and blasted their hellish skull to
atoms with a pistol ball. Whereupon, all these
people, being cursed from birth by demons, and
being likewise possessed of devils, fell to slaying
one another, in the midst of the tumult an earth-
quake cometh to pass which shakes the walls
down. Then I snatch you up, and running at random, 
come upon a rent in the outer wall and
thereby escape, carrying you, who seem in a
swoon.                

	"Once only you awoke, after I had crossed the
Bridge-Across-the-Sky, as the people of Negari
called it, which was crumbling beneath our feet by
reason of the earthquake. After I had come to
these cliffs, but dared not descend them in the
darkness, the moon being nigh to setting by that
-time, you awoke and screamed and clung to me,
whereupon I soothed you as best I might, and after
a time you fell into a natural sleep."
	"And now what?" asked the girl.
"England!" Kane's deep eyes lighted at the
word. "I find it hard to remain in the land of my
birth for more than a month at a time; yet though I
am cursed with the wanderlust, 'tis a name which
ever rouses a glow in my bosom. And how of you,
child?"

"Oh heaven!" she cried, clasping her small
hands. "Home! Something of which to be dreamed
— never attained, I fear. Oh Captain Kane, how
shall we gain through all the vast leagues of
jungle which lie between this place and the coast?"

	"Marylin," said Kane gently, stroking her'
curly hair, "methinks you lack somewhat in faith,
both in Providence and in me. Nay, alone I am a
weak creature, having no strength or might In me;
yet in times past hath God made me a great vessel
of wrath and a sword of deliverance. And, I trust,
shall do so again.

	"Look you, little Marylin: in the last few
hours as it were, we have seen the passing of an
evil race and the fall of a foul empire. Men died
by thousands about us, and the earth rose beneath
our feet. hurling down towers that broke the
heavens; yea, death fell about us in a red rain,
yet we escaped unscathed.

	"Therein is-more than the hand of man! Nay,
a Power — the mightiest Power! That which
guided me across the world, straight to that
demon city -- which led me to your chamber --
which aided me to escape again and led me to the
one man in all the city who would give the information 
I must have, the strange, evil priest of
an elder race who lay dying in a subterranean-
cell — and which guided me to the outer wall, as I
ran blindly and at random — for should I have
come under the cliffs which formed the rest of the
wall, we had surely perished. That same Power
brought us safely out of the dying city, and safe
across the rocking bridge — which shattered and
sundered down into the chasm just as my feet
touched solid earth!

	"Think you that having led me this far, and
accomplished such wonders, the Power will strike
us down now? Nay! Evil flourishes and rules in
the cities of men and the waste places of the
world, but anon the great giant that is God rises
and smites for the righteous, and they lay faith
him.

	"I say this: this cliff shall we descend in
safety, and yon dank jungle traverse in safety, and
lit is as sure that in old Devon your people shall
clasp you again to their bosom, as that you
stand here."

And now for the first time Marylin smiled,
with the quick eagerness of a normal young girl,
and Kane sighed in relief. Already the ghosts
were fading from her haunted eyes, and Kane
looked to the day when her horrible experiences
should be as a dimming dream. One glance he
flung behind him, where beyond the scowling hills
the lost city of Negari lay shattered and silent,
amid the ruins of her own walls and the fallen
crags which had kept her invincible so long, but
which had at last betrayed her to her doom.

	A momentary pang smote him as he thought of
the myriad of crushed, still forms lying amid
those ruins; then the blasting memory of their evil
crimes surged over him and his eyes hardened.

	"And it shall come to pass, that he who fleeth
from the noise of the fear shall fall into the pit;
and he that cometh up out of the midst of the pit
shall be taken in the snare; for the windows from
on high are open, and the foundations of the earth
do shake.
	"For Thou hast made of a city an heap; of a
defended city a ruin; a palace of strangers to be
no city; it shall never be built.

	"Moreover, the multitude of Thy stranger
shall be like small dust and the multitude of the
terrible ones shall be as chaff that passeth
suddenly away; yea, it shall be at an instant
suddenly.

	"Stay yourselves and wonder; cry ye out and
cry; they are drunken but not with wine; they
stagger but not with strong drink.                

	"Verily, Marylin," said Kane with a sigh,
"with mine own eyes have I seen the prophecies of
Isaiah come to pass. They were drunken but not
with wine' Nay, blood was their drink and in that
red flood they dipped deep and terribly."

	Then taking the girl by the hand he started
toward the edge of the cliff. At this very point had
he ascended in the night--how long ago it seemed.

	Kane's clothing hung in tatters about him. He
was torn, scratched and bruised. But in his eyes
shone the clear calm light of serenity as the sun
came up, flooding cliffs and jungle with a golden
light that was like a promise of joy and happiness.

SKULLS IN THE STARS

He told how murders walk the earth
	Beneath the curse of Cain,
With crimson clouds before their eyes
	And flames about their brain:
For blood has left upon their souls
	Its everlasting stain.
					--Hood

	There are two roads to Torkertown. One, the
shorter and more direct route, leads across a
barren upland moor, and the other, which is much
longer, winds its tortuous way in and out among the
hummocks and quagmires of the swamps, skirting
the low hills to the east. It was a dangerous and
tedious trail; so Solomon Kane halted in amazement 
when a breathless youth from the village he
had just left, overtook him and implored him for
God's sake to take the swamp road.

	"The swamp road!" Kane stared at the boy.
He was a tall, gaunt man, was Solomon Kane,

his darkly pallid face and deep brooding eyes,
made more sombre by the drab Puritanical garb
he affected.

	"Yes, sir, 'tis far safer," the youngster answered 
to his surprised exclamation.

	"Then the moor road must be haunted by
Satan himself, for your townsmen warned me
against traversing the other."

	"Because of the quagmires, sir, that you
might not see in the dark. You had better return
to the village and continue your journey in the
morning, sir."

	"Taking the swamp road?"
	"Yes, sir."

	Kane shrugged his shoulders and shook his
head.

	"The moon rises almost as soon as twilight
dies. By its light I can reach Torkertown in a few
hours, across the moor."

	"Sir, you had better not. No one ever goes
that way. There are no houses at all upon the
moor, while in the swamp there is the house of
old Ezra who lives there all alone since his
maniac cousin, Gideon, wandered off and died in
the swamp and was never found — and old Ezra
though a miser would not refuse you lodging
should you decide to stop until morning. Since you
must go, you had better go the swamp road."

	Kane eyed the boy piercingly.  The lad
squirmed and shuffled his feet.

	"Since this moor road is so dour to wayfarers," 
said the Puritan, "why did not the villagers 
tell me the whole tale, instead of vague
mouthings?"
	"Men like not to talk of it, sir. We hoped that
you would take the swamp road after the men advised 
you to, but when we watched and saw that
you turned not at the forks, they sent me to run
after you and beg you to reconsider."
	"Name of the Devil!" exclaimed Kane sharply,
the unaccustomed oath showing his irritation; "the
swamp road and the moor road — what is it that
threatens me and why should I go miles out of my
way and risk the bogs and mires?"
	Sir," said the boy, dropping his voice and
drawing closer, "we be simple villagers who like
not to talk of such things lest foul fortune befall
us, but the moor road is a way accurst and hath not
been traversed by any of the countryside for a
year or more. It is death to walk those moors by
night, as hath been found by some score of unfortunates. 
Some foul horror haunts the way and
claims men for his victims."

	"So? And what is this thing like?"
"No man knows. None has ever seen, it and
lived, but late-farers have heard terrible laughter
far out on the fen and men have heard the horrid
shrieks of its victims. Sir, in God's name return
to the village, there pass the night, and tomorrow
take the swamp trail to Torkertown."

	Far back in Kane's gloomy eyes a scintillant
light had begun to glimmer, like a witch's torch
glinting under fathoms of cold grey ice. His blood
quickened. Adventure! The lure of life-risk and
drama! Not that Kane recognized his sensations
as such. He sincerely considered that he voiced
his real feelings when he said:     
	"These things be deeds of some power of evil.
The lords of darkness have laid a curse upon the
country. A strong man is needed to combat Satan
and his might. Therefore I go, who have defied
him many a time."                              

	"Sir," the boy began, then closed his mouth
as he saw the futility of argument. He only added
	"The corpses of the victims are bruised and torn,
sir."                                         

	He stood there at the crossroads, sighing;
regretfully as he watched the tall, rangy figure
swinging up the road that led toward the moors.   

	The sun was setting as Kane came over the 
brow of the low hill which debouched into the up-
land fen. Huge and blood-red it sank down behind
the sullen horizon of the moors, seeming to touch
the rank grass with fire; so for a moment the
watcher seemed to be gazing out across a sea of
blood. Then the dark shadows came gliding from
the east, the western blaze faded, and Solomon
Kane struck out, boldly in the gathering darkness.

	The road was dim from disuse but was clearly
defined. Kane went swiftly but warily, sword and
pistols at hand. Stars blinked out and night winds
whispered among the grass like weeping spectres.
The moon began to rise, lean and haggard, like a
skull among the stars.

	Then suddenly Kane stopped short. From
somewhere in front of him sounded a strange and
eery echo — or something like an echo. Again,
this time louder. Kane started forward again.
Were his senses deceiving him? No!

	Far out, there pealed a whisper of frightful
slaughter. And again, closer this time. No human
being ever laughed like that — there was no mirth
in it, only hatred and horror and soul-destroying
terror. Kane halted. He was not afraid, but for
the second he was almost unnerved. Then, stabbing
through that awesome laughter, came the sound of
a scream that was undoubtedly human. Kane
started forward, increasing his gait. He cursed
the illusive lights and flickering shadows which
veiled the moor in the rising moon and made
accurate sight impossible. The laughter continued,
growing louder, as did the screams. Then sounded
faintly the drum of frantic human feet. Kane broke
into a run.

Some human was being hunted to death out
there on the fen, and by what manner of horror
God only knew. The sound of the flying feet halted
abruptly and the screaming rose unbearably,
mingled with other sounds unnameable and hideous.
Evidently the man had been overtaken, and Kane,
his flesh crawling, visualized some ghastly fiend
of the darkness crouching on the back of its victim
crouching and tearing.

Then the noise of a terrible and short struggle
came clearly through the abysmal silence of the
night and the footfalls began again, but stumbling
and uneven. The screaming continued, but with a
gasping gurgle. The sweat stood cold on Kane's
forehead and body. This was heaping horror on
horror in an intolerable manner.

God, for a moment's clear light! The frightful
drama was being enacted within a very short
distance of him, to judge by the ease with which
the sounds reached him. But this hellish half-
light veiled all in shifting, shadows, so that the
moors appeared a haze of blurred illusions, and
stunted trees, and bushes seemed like giants.

	Kane shouted, striving to increase the speed
of his advance. The shrieks of the unknown broke
into a hideous shrill squealing; again there was
the sound of a struggle, and then from the shadows
of the tall grass a thing came reeling -- a thing
that had once been a man — a gore-covered,
frightful thing that fell at Kane's feet and writhed
and grovelled and raised its terrible face to the
rising moon, and gibbered and yammered, and
fell down again and died in its own blood.

	The moon was up now and the light was
better. Kane bent above the body, which lay
stark in its unnameable mutilation, and he shuddered 
a rare thing for him, who had seen the
deeds of the Spanish Inquisition and the witch-
finders.

	Some wayfarer, he supposed. Then like a
hand of ice on his spine he was aware that he was
not alone. He looked up, his cold eyes piercing the
shadows whence the dead man had staggered. He
saw nothing, but he knew -- he felt — that other
eyes gave back his stare, terrible eyes not of this
earth. He straightened and drew a pistol, waiting.
The moonlight spread like a lake of pale blood
over the moor, and trees and grasses took on
their proper sizes.

The shadows melted, and Kane saw! At first
he thought it only a shadow of mist, a wisp of
moor fog that swayed in the tall grass before him.
He gazed. More illusion, he thought. Then the
thing began to take on shape, vague and indistinct.
Two hideous eyes flamed at him — eyes which
held all the stark horror which has been the
heritage of man since the fearful dawn ages —
eyes frightful and insane, with an insanity transcending 
earthly insanity. The form of the thing
was misty and vague, a brain-shattering travesty
on the human form, like, yet horribly unlike. The
grass and bushes beyond showed clearly through it.

	Kane felt the blood pound in his temples, yet
he was as cold as ice. How such an unstable being
as that which wavered before him could harm a
man in a physical way was more than he could
understand, yet the red horror at his feet gave
mute testimony that the fiend could act with terrible 
material effect.

	Of one thing Kane was sure; there would be no
hunting of him across the dreary moors, no
screaming and fleeing to be dragged down again
and again. If he must die he would die in his
tracks, his wounds in front.

	Now a vague and grisly mouth gaped wide and
the demoniac laughter again shrieked but, soul-
shaking in its nearness. And in the midst of feat
threat of doom, Kane deliberately levelled his long
pistol and fired. A maniacal yell of rage and
mockery answered the report, and the thing came
at him like a flying sheet of smoke, long shadowy
arms stretched to drag him down.

	Kane, moving with the dynamic speed of a
famished wolf, fired the second pistol with as
little effect, snatched his long rapier from its
sheath and thrust into the centre of the misty attacker. 
The blade sang as it passed clear through, 
encountering no solid resistance, and Kane felt 
icy fingers grip his limbs, bestial talons tear his
garments and the skin beneath,

	He dropped the useless sword and sought to
grapple with his foe. It was like fighting a floating
mist, a flying shadow armed with dagger like 
claws. His savage blows met empty air, his leanly 
mighty arms, in whose grasp strong men had 
died, swept nothingness and clutched emptiness.
Naught was solid or real save the flaying, apelike 
fingers with their crooked talons, and the crazy
eyes which burned into the shuddering depths of
his soul.

	Kane realized that he was in a desperate
plight indeed. Already his garments hung in
tatters and he bled from a score of deep wounds.
But he never flinched, and the thought of flight-
never entered his mind. He had never fled from a
single foe, and had the thought occurred to him he
would have flushed with shame.

	He saw no help for it now, but that his form
should lie there beside the fragments of the other '
victim, but the thought held no terrors for him.
His only wish was to give as good an account of
himself as possible before the end came, and if he
could, to inflict some damage on his unearthly foe.

There above the dead man's torn body, man
fought with demon under the pale light of the rising
moon, with all the advantages with the demon,
save one. And that one was enough to overcome
the others. For if abstract hate may bring into
material substance a ghostly thing, may not courage, 
equally abstract, form a concrete weapon to
combat that ghost?

Kane fought with his arms and his feet and his
hands, and he was aware at last that the ghost
began to give back before him, and the fearful
slaughter changed to screams of baffled fury. For
man's only weapon is courage that flinches not
from the gates of Hell itself, and against such not
even the legions of Hell can stand.

Of this Kane knew nothing; he only knew that
the talons which tore and rended him seemed to
grow weaker and wavering, that a wild light grew
and grew in the horrible eyes. And reeling and
gasping, he rushed in, grappled the thing at last
and threw it, and as they tumbled about on the
moor and it writhed and lapped his limbs like a
serpent of smoke, his flesh crawled and his hair
stood on end, for he began to understand its
gibbering.
He did not hear and comprehend as a man
hears and comprehends the speech of a man, but
the frightful secrets it imparted in whisperings
and yammerings and screaming silences sank
fingers of ice into his soul, and he knew.

II

The hut of old Ezra the miser stood by the
road in the midst of the swamp, half screened by
the sullen trees which grew about it. The wall;
were rotting, the roof crumbling, and great
pallid and green fungus-monsters clung to it and
writhed about the doors and windows, as if seeking
to peer within. The trees leaned above it and their
grey branches intertwined so that it crouched in
semi-darkness like a monstrous dwarf over"
whose shoulder ogres leer.

	The road which wound down into the swamp
among rotting stumps and rank hummocks and
scummy, snake-haunted pools and bogs, crawled
past the hut. Many people passed that way these
days, but few saw old Ezra, save a glimpse of a
yellow face, peering through the fungus-screened
windows, itself like an ugly fungus.

	Old Ezra the miser partook much of the
quality of the swamp, for he was gnarled and bent
and sullen; his fingers were like clutching parasitic 
plants and his locks hung like drab moss
above eyes trained to the murk of the swamp-
lands. His eyes were like a dead man's, yet hinted
of depths abysmal and loathsome as the dead lakes
of the swamplands.

	These eyes gleamed now at the man who stood
in front of his hut. This man was tall and gaunt
and dark, his face was haggard and claw-marked,
and he was bandaged of arm and leg. Somewhat
behind this man stood a number of villagers.

	"You are Ezra of the swamp road?"
	"Aye, and what want ye of me?"

	"Where is your cousin Gideon, the maniac
youth who abode with you?"
	"Gideon?"
	'Aye."

He wandered away into the swamp and never
came back. No doubt he lost his way and was set
upon by wolves or died in a quagmire or was
struck by an adder."	
	"How long ago?"
	"Over a year."
	
	"Aye. Hark ye, Ezra the miser. Soon after
your cousin's disappearance, a countryman, coming 
home across the moors, was set upon by some
unknown fiend and torn to pieces, and thereafter it
became death to cross those moors. First men of
the countryside, then strangers who wandered
over the fen, fell to the clutches of the thing.
Many men have died, since the first one.

	"Last night I crossed the moors, and heard
the flight and pursuing of another victim, a
stranger who knew not the evil of the moors.
Ezra the miser, it was a fearful thing, for the
wretch twice broke from the fiend, terribly
wounded, and each time the demon caught and
dragged him down again. And at last he fell dead
at my very, feet, done to death in a manner that
would freeze the statue of a saint."

	The villagers moved restlessly and murmured
fearfully to each other, and old Ezra's eyes
shifted furtively. Yet the sombre expression of
Solomon Kane never altered, and his condor-like
stare seemed to transfix the miser.

	"Aye, aye!" muttered old Ezra hurriedly; "a
bad thing, a bad thing! Yet why do you tell this
thing to me?"

"Aye, a sad thing. Harken further, Ezra. The
fiend came out of the shadows and I fought with it
over the body of its victim. Aye, how I overcame
it, I know not, for the battle was hard and long
but the powers of good and light were on my side,
which are mightier than the powers of Hell.      

	"At the last I was stronger, and it broke from
me and fled, and I followed to no avail. Yet before
it fled it whispered to me a monstrous truth."    

	Old Ezra started, stared wildly, seemed to
shrink into himself.
	"Nay, why tell me this?" he muttered.
	"I returned to the village and told my tale,
said Kane, "for I knew that now I had the power to 
rid the moors of its curse forever'. Ezra, come
with us!"                                      

	"Where?" gasped the miser.               
	"To the rotting oak on the moors."          
Ezra reeled as though struck; he screamed
incoherently and turned to flee.

	On the instant, at Kane's sharp order, two
brawny villagers sprang forward and seized the
miser. They twisted the dagger from his withered
hand, and pinioned his arms, shuddering as their
fingers encountered his clammy flesh.

	Kane motioned them to follow, and turning
strode up the trail, followed by the villagers, who
found their strength taxed to the utmost in their
task of bearing their prisoner along. Through the
swamp they went and out, taking a little-used trail
which led up over the low hills and out on the
moors.

	The sun was sliding down the horizon and old
Ezra stared at it with bulging eyes — stared as if
he could not gaze enough. Far out on the moors
geared up the great oak tree, like a gibbet, now
only a decaying shell. There Solomon Kane halted.
	Old Ezra writhed in his captor's grasp and
made inarticulate noises.
	"Over a year ago," said Solomon Kane, "you,

fearing that your insane cousin Gideon would tell
men of your cruelties to him, brought him away
from the swamp by the very trail by which we
came, and murdered him here in the night."
	Ezra cringed and snarled.
	"You can not prove this lie !"
	Kane spoke a few words to an agile villager.
The youth clambered up the rotting bole of the
tree and from a crevice, high up, dragged something 
that fell with a clatter at the feet of the
miser. Ezra went limp with a terrible shriek.
	
	The object was a man's skeleton, the skull
cleft.

	"You — how knew you this? You are Satan!"
gibbered old Ezra.
	Kane folded his arms.

	"The thing I, fought last night told me this
thing as we reeled in battle, and I followed it to
this tree. For the fiend is Gideon's ghost."

	Ezra shrieked again and fought savagely.
	"You knew," said Kane sombrely, "you knew
what things did these deeds. You feared the ghost
the maniac, and that is why you chose to leave
his body on the fen instead of concealing it in the
swamp. For you knew the ghost would haunt the
place of his death. He was insane in life, and in
death he did not know where to find his slayer;
else he had come to you in your hut. He hates
man but you, but his mazed spirit can not tell one
man from another, and he slays all, lest he let his
killer escape. Yet he will know you and rest in
peace, forever after. Hate hath made of his ghost,
solid thing that can rend and slay, and though he
feared you terribly in life, in death he fears you
not at all."

	Kane halted. He glanced at the sun.         
	"All this I had from Gideon's ghost, in his
yammerings and his whisperings and his shrieking
silences. Naught but your death will lay that
ghost."                                          

	Ezra listened in breathless silence and Kane
pronounced the words of his doom.
	"A hard thing it is," said Kane sombrely, "to
sentence a man to death in cold blood and in such
a manner as I have in mind, but you must die that
others may live — and God knoweth you deserve
death.

	"You shall not die by noose, bullet or sword, 
but at the talons of him you slew — for naught
else will satiate him."                            

	At these words Ezra's brain shattered, his
knees gave way and he fell grovelling and screaming 
for death, begging them to burn him at the 
stake, to flay him alive. Kane's face was set like
death, and the villagers, the fear rousing their 
cruelty, bound the screeching wretch to the oak 
tree, and one of them bade him make his peace 
with God. But Ezra made no answer, shrieking in 
a high shrill voice with unbearable monotony. Then 
the villager would have struck the miser across
across the face, but Kane stayed him.

	"Let him make his peace with Satan, whom he
is more like to meet, " said the Puritan grimly.
"The sun is about to set. Loose his cords-so that
he may work loose by dark, since it is better to
meet death free and unshackled than bound like a
sacrifice."

As they turned to leave him, old Ezra yammered 
and gibbered unhuman sounds and then fell
silent, staring at the sun with terrible intensity.
	They walked away across the fen, and Kane
flung a last look at the grotesque form bound to
the tree, seeming in the uncertain light like a
great fungus growing to the bole. And suddenly the
miser screamed hideously:

	"Death! Death! There are skulls in the
Stars!"

	"Life was good to him, though he was gnarled
and churlish and evil," Kane sighed. "Mayhap God
has a place for such souls where fire and sacrifice
may cleanse them of their dross as fire cleans the
forest or fungus things. Yet my heart is heavy
within me."

"Nay, sir," one of the villagers spoke, "you
have done but the will of God, and good alone shall
come of this night's deed."

"Nay," answered Kane heavily. "I know not --
I know not."

The sun had gone down and night spread with
amazing swiftness, as if great shadows came
rushing down from unknown voids to cloak the
world with hurrying darkness. Through the thick
night came a weird echo, and the men halted and
looked back the way they had come.

	Nothing could be seen. The moor was an ocean
of shadows and the tall grass about them bent in
long waves before the, faint wind, breaking the
deathly stillness with breathless murmurings. 

	Then far away the red disk of the moon rose
over the fen, and for an instant a grim silhouette
was etched blackly against it. A shape came flying
across the face of the moon -- a bent, grotesque
thing whose feet seemed scarcely to touch the
earth; and close behind came a thing like a flying
shadow — a nameless, shapeless horror.

	A moment the racing twain stood out boldly
against the moon; then they merged into one un-
nameable, formless mass, and vanished in the
shadows.

	Far across the fen sounded a single shriek of
terrible laughter.

THE FOOTFALLS WITHIN

	Solomon Kane gazed sombrely at the native
woman who lay dead at his feet. Little more than
a girl she was, but her wasted limbs and staring
eyes showed that she had suffered much before
death brought her merciful relief. Kane noted the
chain galls on her limbs, the deep crisscrossed
sears on her back, the mark of the yoke on her
neck. His cold eyes deepened strangely, showing
chill glints and lights like clouds passing across
depths of ice.

	"Even into this lonesome land they come," he
muttered. "I had not thought — "

	He raised his head and gazed eastward. Black
dots against the blue wheeled and circled.

	"The kites mark their trail," muttered the tall
Englishman. "Destruction goeth before them and
death followeth after. Wo unto ye, sons of iniquity,
for the wrath of God is upon ye. The cords be
loosed on the iron necks of the hounds of hate and
the bow of vengeance is strung. , Ye are
proud-stomached and strong, and the people cry
out beneath your feet, but retribution cometh in
the blackness of midnight and the redness of dawn."
He shifted the belt that held his heavy pistols
and the keen dirk, instinctively touched the long
rapier at his hip, and went stealthily but swiftly
eastward. A cruel anger burned in his deep eyes
like blue volcanic fires burning beneath leagues of
ice, and the hand that gripped his long, cat-headed
stave hardened into iron.                        

	After some hours of steady striding, he came
within hearing of the slave train that wound its
laborious way through the jungle. The piteous.
cries of the slaves, the shouts and curses of the
drivers, and the cracking of the whips came plainly 
to his ears. Another hour brought him even with 
them, and gliding along through the jungle parallel 
to the trail taken by the slavers, he spied upon
them safely. Kane had fought Indians in Darien
and had learned much of their woodcraft.

	More than a hundred natives, young men and
women, staggered along the trail, stark naked and
made fast together by cruel yoke-like affairs of 
wood. These yokes, rough and heavy, fitted over
their necks and linked them together, two by two.
The yokes were in turn fettered together, making
one long chain. Of the drivers there were fifteen
Arabs and some seventy negro warriors, whose
weapons and fantastic apparel showed them to be
of some eastern tribe — one of those tribes subjugated 
and made Moslems and allies by the conquering Arabs.

	Five Arabs walked ahead of the train with
some thirty of their warriors, and five brought up
the rear with the rest of the negro warriors. The
rest marched beside the staggering slaves, urging
them along with shouts and curses and with long,
cruel whips which brought spurts of blood at almost 
every blow. These slaves were fools as well
as rogues, reflected Kane — not more than half of
them would survive the hardships of the trek to
the coast.

	He wondered at the presence of these raiders,
for this country lay far to the south of the districts
which they usually frequented. But avarice can
drive men far, as the Englishman knew. He had
dealt with these gentry of old. Even as he
watched, old scars burned in his back — scars
made by Moslem whips in a Turkish galley. And
deeper still burned Kane's unquenchable hate.

	The Puritan followed, shadowing his foes like
a ghost, and as he stole through the jungle, he
racked his brain for a plan. How might he prevail
against that horde? All of the Arabs and many of
their allies were armed with guns — long, clumsy
firelock affairs, it is true, but guns just the same,
enough to awe any tribe of natives who might op-
pose Ahem. Some carried in their wide girdles
long, silver-chased pistols of more effective
pattern— flintlocks of Moorish and Turkish make.

	Kane followed like a brooding ghost and his
rage and hatred ate into his soul like a canker.
Each crack of the whips was like a blow on his
own shoulders. The heat and cruelty of the tropics
play queer tricks. Ordinary passions become
monstrous things; irritation runs to a berserker
rage; anger flames into unexpected madness and
men kill in a red mist of passion, and wonder,
aghast, afterward.

The fury Solomon Kane felt would have been
enough at any time and in any placebo shake a
man to his foundation. Now it assumed monstrous
proportions, so that Kane shivered as if with a
chill; iron claws scratched at his brain and he saw,
the slaves and the slavers through a crimson mist. 
Yet he might not have put his hate-born insanity;
into action had it not been for a mishap.

	One of the slaves, a slim young girl, suddenly
faltered and slipped to the earth, dragging her
yoke-mate with her. A tall, hook-nosed Arab 
yelled savagely and lashed her viciously. Her
yoke-mate staggered partly up, but the girl remained 
prone, writhing weakly beneath the lash
but evidently unable to rise. She whimpered pitifully 
between her parched lips, and other slavers
came about her, their whips descending on her
quivering flesh in slashes of red agony.

	A half hour of rest and a little water would
have revived her, but the Arabs had no time to
spare. Solomon, biting his arm until his teeth met
in the flesh as he fought for control, thanked God
that the lashing had ceased and steeled himself for
the swift flash of the dagger that would put the
child beyond torment. But the Arabs were in a
mood for sport. Since the girl would fetch them no
profit on the market block, they would utilize her
for their pleasure — and their humour was such as
to turn men's blood to icy water.

	A shout from the first whipper brought the
rest crowding around, their bearded faces split in
grins of delighted anticipation, while their savage
allies edged nearer, their eyes gleaming. The
wretched slaves realized their masters' intentions
and a chorus of pitiful cries rose from them.
	Kane, sick with horror, realized, too, that
the girl's was to be no easy death. He knew what
the tall Moslem intended to do, as he stooped over
her with a keen dagger such as the Arabs used for
skinning game. Madness overcame the Englishman. 
He valued his own life little; he had risked it
without thought for the sake of a pagan child or a
small animal. Yet he would not have premeditatedly 
thrown away his one hope of succouring the
wretches in the train. But he acted without conscious 
thought. A pistol was smoking in his hand
and the tall butcher was down in the dust of the
trail with his brains oozing out, before Kane
realized what he had done.

	He was almost as astonished as the Arabs,
who stood frozen for a moment and then burst into
a medley of yells. Several threw up their clumsy
firelocks and sent their heavy balls crashing
through the trees, and the rest, thinking no doubt
that they were ambushed, led a reckless charge
into the jungle. The bold suddenness of that move
was Kane's undoing. Had they hesitated a moment
longer he might have faded away unobserved, but
as it was he saw no choice but to meet them
openly and sell his life as highly as he could.

	And indeed it was with a certain ferocious
fascination that he faced his howling attackers.
They halted in sudden amazement as the tall, grim
Englishman stepped from behind his tree, and in
that instant one of them died with a bullet from
Kane's remaining pistol in his heart. Then with
yells of savage rage they flung themselves on
their lone defier.

	Solomon Kane placed his back against a huge
tree and his long rapier played a shining wheel
about him. An Arab and three of his equally fiercer
allies were hacking at him with their heavy curved 
blades while the rest milled about, snarling like-
wolves, as they sought to drive in blade or ball
without maiming one of their own number.        

	The flickering rapier parried the whistling
scimitars and the Arab died on its point, which
seemed to hesitate in his heart only an instant.'
before it pierced the brain of a sword-wielding^
warrior. Another attacker dropped his sword and
leaped in to grapple at close quarters. He was
disembowelled by the dirk in Kane's left hand, and
the others gave back in sudden fear. A heavy ball
smashed against the tree close to Kane's head and
he tensed himself to spring and die in the thick of
them. Then their sheikh lashed them on with his
long whip, and Kane heard him shouting fiercely
for his warriors to take the infidel alive. Kane
answered the command with a sudden cast of his'
dirk, which hummed so close to the sheikh's head
that it slit his turban and sank deep in the shoulder
of one behind him.

	The sheikh drew his silver-chased pistols,
threatening his own men with death if they did not
take this fierce opponent, and they charged in
again desperately. One of the warriors ran full
upon Kane's sword and an Arab behind the fellow,
with ruthless craft, thrust the screaming wretch
suddenly forward on the weapon, driving it hilt-
deep in his writhing body, fouling the blade.
Before Kane could wrench it clear, with-a yell of
triumph the pack rushed in on him and bore him
down by sheer weight of numbers. As they grappled 
him from all sides, the Puritan wished in
vain for the dirk he had thrown away. But even so,

his taking was none too easy.

	Blood spattered and faces caved in beneath
his iron-hard fists that splintered teeth and
shattered bone. A warrior reeled away disabled
from a vicious drive of knee to groin. Even when
they had him stretched out and piled man-weight
on him, until he could no longer strike with fists
or foot, his long lean fingers sank fiercely through
a matted beard to lock about a corded throat in a
grip that took the power of three strong men to
break and left the victim grasping and green-
faced.

	At last, panting from the terrific struggle,
they had him bound hand and foot and the sheikh,
thrusting his pistols back into his silken sash,
came striding to stand and look down at his captive. 
Kane glared up at the tall, lean frame, at
the hawk-like face with its black-curled beard and
arrogant brown eyes.

	"I am the sheikh Hassim ben Said," said the
Arab. "Who are you?'*
	"My name is Solomon Kane," growled the
puritan In the sheikh's own language. "I am an
Englishman, you heathen jackal."

	The dark eyes of the Arab flickered with
interest.

	"Suleiman Kahani," said he, giving the Arabesque 
equivalent of the English name. "I have
heard of you — you have fought the Turks betimes
and the Barbary corsairs have licked their wounds
because of you"                               

Kane deigned no reply. Hassim shrugged his
shoulders.                                     

	"You will bring a fine price," said he. "May-
hap I will take you to Stamboul, where there are
Shas who would desire such a man among their
slaves. And I mind me now of one Kemal Bey, a
man of ships, who wears a deep scar across his
face of your making and who curses the name of
Englishman. He will pay me a high price for you.
And behold, oh Frank, I do you the honour of
appointing you a separate guard. You shall not
walk in the yoke-chain but free save for your
hands,"

	Kane made no answer, and at a sign from the
sheikh, he was hauled to his feet and his bonds
loosened except for his hands, which they left
bound firmly behind him. A stout cord was
looped about his neck and the other end of this was
given into the hand of a huge warrior who bore in
his free hand a great curved scimitar.

	"And now what think ye of my favour to you,
Frank?" queried the sheikh.
	"I am thinking," answered Kane in a slow,
deep voice of menace, "that I would trade my
soul's salvation to face you and your sword, alone
and unarmed, and to tear the heart from your
breast with my naked fingers."

	Such was the concentrated hate in his deep
resounding voice, and such primal, unconquerable
fury blazed from his terrible eyes, that the
hardened and fearless chieftain blanched an involuntarily 
recoiled as if from a maddened beast.

	Then Hassim recovered his poise and with a
short word to his followers, strode to the head of
the cavalcade. Kane noted with thankfulness that
the respite occasioned by his capture had given
the girl who had fallen a chance to rest and revive.
The skinning knife had not had time to more than
touch her; she was able to reel along. Night was
not far away. Soon the slavers would be forced to
halt and camp.

	The Englishman perforce took up the trek, his
guard remaining a few paces behind with a huge
blade ever ready. Kane also noted with a touch of
grim vanity, that three more warriors marched
close behind, muskets ready and matches burning.
They had tasted his prowess and they were taking
no chances. His weapons had been recovered and
Hassim had promptly appropriated all except the
cat-headed ju-ju staff. This had been contemptuously 
cast aside by him and taken up by one of the
savage warriors.
	The Englishman was presently aware that a
lean, grey-bearded Arab was walking along at his
side. This Arab seemed desirous of speaking but
strangely timid, and the source of his timidity
seemed, curiously enough, the ju-ju stave which
he had taken from the man who had picked it up,
and which he now turned uncertainly in his hands.

	"I am Yussef the Hadji," said this Arab
suddenly. "I have naught against you. I had no
hand in attacking you and would be your friend if
you would let me. Tell me, Frank, whence comes
this staff and how comes it into your hands ?"

	Kane's first inclination was to consign his
questioner to the infernal regions, but a certain!
sincerity of manner in the old man made him
change his mind and he answered: "It was given
me by my blood-brother — a magician of the
Slave Coast, named N'Longa."

	The old Arab nodded and muttered in his
beard and presently sent a warrior running forward 
to bid Hassim return. The tall sheikh
presently came striding back along the slow-
moving column, with a clank and jingle of
daggers and sabres, with Kane's dirk and pistols
thrust into his wide sash.

	"Look, Hassim." the old Arab thrust forward
the stave, "you cast it away without knowing what
you did!"

	"And what of it?" growled the sheikh. "I see
naught but a staff — sharp-pointed and with the
head of a cat on the other end " a staff with
strange infidel carvings upon it."

	The older man shook it at him in excitement:
"This staff is older than the world! It holds mighty
magic! I have read of it in the old iron-bound
books and Mohammed — on whom peace! —
himself hath spoken of it by allegory and parable!
See the cat-head upon it? It is the head of a
goddess of ancient Egypt! Ages ago, before
Mohammed taught, before Jerusalem was, the
priests of Bast bore this rod before the bowing,
chanting worshippers' With it Musa did wonders
before Pharaoh and when the Yahudi fled from
Egypt they bore it with them. And for centuries
it was the sceptre of Israel and Judah and with it
Sulieman ben Daoud drove forth the conjurers and
magicians and prisoned the efreets and the evil
genii! Look! Again in the hands of a Sulieman we
find the ancient rod!"

	Old Yussef had worked himself into a pitch of
almost fanatic fervour but Hassim merely shrugged
his shoulders.
	"It did not save the Jews from bondage nor
this Sulieman from our captivity," said he. "I
value it not as much as I esteem the long thin
blade with which he loosed the souls of three of
my best swordsmen."

	Yussef shook his head. "Your mockery will
bring you to no good end, Hassim. Some day you
will meet a power that will not divide before your
sword or fall to your bullets. I will keep the staff,
and I warn you -- abuse not the Frank. He has
borne the holy and terrible staff of Sulieman and
, Musa and the Pharaohs, and who knows what magic
he has drawn there from? For it is older than the
world and has known the terrible hands of strange
pre-Adamite priests in the silent cities beneath
the seas, and has drawn from an Elder World
mystery and magic unguessed by humankind.
There were strange kings and stranger priests
when the dawns were young, and evil was, even in
their day. And with this staff they fought the evil
which was ancient when their strange world was
young, so many millions of years ago that a man
would shudder to count them."

Hassim answered impatiently and strode away
with old Yussef following him persistently and
chattering away in a querulous tone. Kane shrugged 
his mighty shoulders. With what he knew of
the strange powers of that strange staff, he was
not one to question the old man's assertions,
fantastic as they seemed.

	This much he knew — that it was made of a
wood that existed nowhere on earth today. It
needed but the proof of sight and touch to realize,
that its material had grown in some world apart.
The exquisite workmanship of the head, of a pre-
pyramidal age, and the hieroglyphics, symbols of
a language that was forgotten when Rome was
young — these, Kane sensed, were additions as
modern to the antiquity of the staff itself as would
be English words carved on the stone monoliths of
Stonehenge.

	As for the cat-head — looking at it some-
times Kane had a peculiar feeling of alteration; a
faint sensing that once the pommel of the staff was
carved with a different design. The dust-ancient
Egyptian who had carved the head of Bast had
merely altered the original figure, and what that
figure had been, Kane had never tried to guess. A
close scrutiny of the staff always aroused a disquieting 
and almost dizzy suggestion of abysses of
eons, unprovocative to further speculation.

	The day wore on. The sun beat down mercilessly, 
then screened itself in the great trees as
it slanted toward the horizon. The slaves suffered
fiercely for water and a continual whimpering
rose from their ranks as they staggered blindly
on. Some fell and half-crawled, and were
half-dragged by their reeling yoke-mates. When
all were buckling from exhaustion,  the sun
Nipped, night rushed on, and a halt was called.
Camp was pitched, guards thrown out. The slaves
were fed scantily and given enough water to keep
life in them — but only just enough. Their fetters
were not loosened, but they were allowed to sprawl
about as they might. Their fearful thirst and
hunger having been somewhat eased, they bore the
discomforts of their shackles with characteristic
stoicism.

	Kane was fed without his hands being untied,
and he was given all the water he wished. The
patient eyes of the slaves watched him drink,
silently, and he was sorely ashamed to guzzle
what others suffered for; he ceased before his
thirst was fully quenched. A wide clearing had
been selected, on all sides of which rose gigantic
trees. After the Arabs had eaten and while the
black Moslems were still cooking their food, old
Yussef came to Kane and began to talk about the
staff again. Kane answered his questions with
admirable patience, considering the hatred he
bore the whole race to which the Hadji belonged,
and during the conversation, Hassim came striding 
up and looked down in contempt. Hassim, Kane
ruminated, was the very symbol of militant. Islam
— bold, reckless, materialistic, sparing nothing,
fearing nothing, as sure of his own destiny and as
contemptuous of the rights of others as the most
powerful Western king.

"Are you maundering about that stick again?"
he gibed. "Hadji, you grow childish in your old
age."
Yussef's beard quivered in anger. He shook
the staff at his sheikh like a threat of evil.

	"Your mockery little befits your rank, 
Hassim," he snapped. "We are in the heart of a
dark and demon-haunted land, to which long ago
were banished the devils from Arabia, if this
staff, which any but a fool can tell is no rod of
any world we know, has existed down to our day,
who knows what other things, tangible or intangible, 
may have existed through the ages? This
very trail we follow — know you how old it is?
Men followed it before the Seljuk came out of the
East or the Roman came out of the West. Over 
this very trail, legends say, the great Sulieman
came when he drove the demons westward out of
Asia and prisoned them in strange prisons. And
will you say -- " 

	A wild shout interrupted him. Out of the
shadows of the jungle a warrior came flying' as if
from the hounds of Doom. With arms flinging
wildly, eyes rolling to display the whites, and
mouth wide open so that all his gleaming teeth
were visible, he made an image of stark terror
not soon forgotten. The Moslem horde leaped up,
snatching their weapons, and Hassim swore:

	"That's Ali, whom I sent to scout for meat --
perchance a lion — "

	But no lion followed the man who fell at Has-
sim's feet, mouthing gibberish and pointing wildly
back at the black jungle whence the nerve-strung
watchers expected some brain-shattering horror
to burst.

"He says he found a strange mausoleum back
in the jungle," said Hassim with a scowl, "but he
cannot tell what frightened him. He only knows a
great horror overwhelmed him and sent him flying. 
Ali, you are a fool and a rogue."

	He kicked the grovelling savage viciously, but
the other Arabs drew about him in some
uncertainty. The panic was spreading among the
native warriors.

	"They will bolt in spite of us," muttered a
bearded Arab, uneasily watching the native allies
who, milled together, jabbered excitedly and flung
fearsome glances over the shoulders. "Hassim,
'twere better to march on a few miles. This is an
evil place after all, and though 'tis likely the fool,
Ali, was frighted by his own shadow — still — "

	"Still," jeered the sheikh, "you will all feel
better when we have left it behind. Good enough;
to still your fears I will move camp — but first I
will have a look at this thing. Lash up the slaves
we'll swing into the jungle and pass by this mausoleum; 
perhaps some great king lies there. No one
will be afraid if we all go in a body with guns."

	So the weary slaves were whipped into wakefulness 
and stumbled along beneath the whips
again. The native allies went silently and nervously, 
reluctantly obeying Hassim's implacable will
but huddling close to the Arabs. The moon had
risen, huge, red and sullen, and the jungle was
bathed in a sinister silver glow that etched the
brooding trees in black shadow. The trembling
AM pointed out the way, somewhat reassured by
his savage master's presence.

And so they passed through the jungle until
they came to a strange clearing among the giant
trees — strange because nothing grew there. The
trees ringed it in a disquieting symmetrical
manner, and no lichen or moss grew on the earth,
which seemed to have been blasted and blighted in
a strange fashion. And in the midst of the glade
stood the mausoleum.

	A great brooding mass of stone it was, pregnant 
with ancient evil. Dead with the dead of a
hundred centuries it seemed, yet Kane was aware
that the air pulsed about it, as with the slow, un-
human breathing of some gigantic, invisible
monster.

	The Arab's native allies drew back muttering,
assailed by the evil atmosphere of the place, the
slaves stood in a patient, silent group beneath the
trees. The Arabs went forward to the frowning
black mass, and Yussef, taking Kane's cord from
his guard, led the Englishman with him like a
surly mastiff, as if for protection against the
unknown.

	"Some mighty sultan doubtless lies here,"
said Hassim, tapping the stone with his scabbard.

	"Whence come these stones?" muttered
Yussef uneasily. "They are of dark and forbidding
aspect. Why should a great sultan lie in state so
far from any habitation of man? If there were
ruins of an old city hereabouts it would be
different — "

	He bent to examine the heavy metal door with
its huge lock, curiously sealed and fused. He
shook his head forebodingly as he made out the
ancient Hebraic characters carved on the door.

	"I can not read them," he quavered, "and
belike it is well for me I can not. What ancient
kings sealed up is not good for men to disturb.
Hassim, let us hence. This place is pregnant with
evil for the sons of men."

	But Hassim gave him no heed. "He who lies
within is no son of Islam," said he, " and why
should we not despoil him of the gems and riches
that undoubtedly were laid to rest with him? Let
us break open this door."

	Some of the Arabs shook their heads doubt-
fully but Hassim's word was law. Calling to him a
huge warrior who bore a heavy hammer, he
ordered him to break open the door.

	As the man swung up his sledge, Kane gave a
sharp exclamation. Was he mad? The apparent
antiquity of this brooding mass of stone was proof
that it had stood undisturbed for thousands of
years. Yet he could have sworn that he heard the
sounds of footfalls within! Back and forth they
padded, as if something paced the narrow confines
of that grisly prison in a never-ending monotony
of movement.

	A cold hand touched the spine of Solomon
Kane. Whether the sounds registered on his conscious 
ear or on some un-sounded deep of soul or
sub-feeling, he could not tell, but he knew that
somewhere within his consciousness there re-
echoed the tramp of monstrous feet from within
that ghastly mausoleum.

	"Stop!" he exclaimed. "Hassim, I may be
mad, but I hear the tread of some fiend within that
pile of stone."
Hassim raised his hand and checked the
hovering hammer. He listened intently, and the
others strained their ears in a silence that had
suddenly become tense.                         

	"I hear nothing," grunted a bearded giant,    
"Nor I," came a quick chorus. "The Frank
is mad!"

	"Hear ye anything, Yussef?" asked Hassim
sardonically.
	The old Hadji shifted nervously. His face was
uneasy.

	"No. Hassim, no, yet — "
	Kane decided he must be mad. Yet in his
heart he knew he was never saner, and he knew
somehow that this occult keenness of the deeper
senses that set him apart from the Arabs came
from long association with the ju-ju staff that old
Yussef now held in his shaking hands.

	Hassim laughed harshly and made a gesture
to the warrior. The hammer fell with a crash that
re-echoed deafeningly and shivered off through the
black jungle in a strangely altered cachinnation.
Again — again — and again the hammer fell,
driven with all the power of rippling muscles and
mighty body. And between the blows Kane still
heard that lumbering tread, and he who had never  
known fear as men know it, felt the cold hand of   
terror clutching at his heart.

This fear was apart from earthly or mortal
fear, as the sound of the footfalls was apart from
mortal tread. Kane's fright was like a cold wind
blowing on him from outer realms of unguessed
Darkness, bearing him the evil and decay of an
outlived epoch and an unutterably ancient period.
Kane was not sure whether he heard those footfalls
or by some dim instinct sensed them. But he was
sure of their reality. They were not the tramp of
man or beast; but inside that black, hideously
ancient mausoleum some nameless thing moved
with sour-shaking and elephantine tread.

	The powerful warrior seated and panted with
the difficulty of his task. But at last, beneath the
heavy blows the ancient lock shattered; the hinges
snapped; the door burst inward. And Yussef
screamed.

	From that black gaping entrance no tiger-
fanged beast or demon, of solid flesh and blood
leaped forth. But a fearful stench flowed out in
billowing, almost tangible waves and in one
brain-shattering, ravening rush, whereby the
gaping door seemed to gush blood, the Horror was
upon them. It enveloped Hassim, and the fearless
chieftain, hewing vainly at the almost intangible
terror,  screamed with sudden, unaccustomed
fright as his lashing simitar whistled only through
stuff as yielding and unharmable as air, and he
felt himself lapped by coils of death and destruction.

	Yussef shrieked like a lost soul, dropped the
ju-ju stave and joined his fellows who streamed
out into the jungle in mad flight, preceded by their
howling allies. Only the slaves fled not, but stood
shackled to their doom, wailing their terror. As
in a nightmare of delirium Kane saw Hassim
swaying like a reed in the wind, lapped about by a
gigantic pulsing red Thing that had neither shape
nor earthly substance. Then, as the crack of
splintering bones came to him, and the sheikh's
body buckled like a straw beneath a stamping hoof,
the Englishman burst his bonds with one volcanic
effort and caught up the ju-ju stave.

	Hassim was down, crushed and dead, sprawl-
ed like a broken toy with shattered limbs awry,
and the red pulsing Thing was lurching toward
Kane like a thick cloud of blood in the air, that
continually changed its shape and form, and yet
somehow trod lumberingly as if on monstrous
legs!

	Kane felt the cold fingers of fear claw at his
brain, but he braced himself, and lifting the
ancient staff, struck with all his power into the
centre of the Horror. And he felt an unnameable,
immaterial substance meet and give way before
the falling staff. Then he was almost strangled by
the nauseous burst of unholy stench that flooded
the air, and somewhere down the dim vistas of his
soul's consciousness re-echoed unbearably a
hideous formless cataclysm that he knew was the
death-screaming of the monster. For it was down
and dying at his feet, its crimson paling in slow
surges like the rise and receding of red waves on
some foul coast. And as it paled, the soundless
screaming dwindled away into cosmic distances as
though it faded into some sphere apart and aloof
beyond human ken.

	Kane, dazed and incredulous, looked down on
a shapeless, colourless, all but invisible mass at
his feet which he knew was the corpse of the
Horror, dashed back into the black realms from
whence it had come, by a single blow of the staff
of Solomon. Aye, the same staff, Kane knew, that
in the hands of a mighty King and magician had
ages ago driven the monster into that strange
prison, to bide until ignorant hands loosed it
again upon the world.

	The old tales were true then, and King Solomon 
had in truth driven the demons westward and
sealed them in strange places. Why had he let
them live? Was human magic too weak in those
dim days to more than subdue the devils? Kane
shrugged his shoulders in wonderment. He knew
nothing of magic, yet he had slain where that
other Solomon had but imprisoned.

	And Solomon Kane shuddered, for he had
looked on Life that was not Life as he knew it, and
had dealt and witnessed Death that was not Death
as he knew it. Again the realization swept over
him. as it had in the dust-haunted halls of Atlantean 
Negari, as it had in the abhorrent Hills of the
Dead, as it had in Akaana — that human life was
but one of a myriad forms of existence, that
worlds existed within worlds, and that there was
more than one plane of existence. The planet men
call the earth spun on through the untold ages,
Kane realized, and as it spun it spawned Life, and
living things which wriggled about it as maggots
are spawned in not and corruption. Man was the
dominant maggot now " why should he in his
pride suppose that he and his adjuncts were the
first maggots — or the last to rule a planet quick

with unguessed life.

He shook his head, gazing in new wonder at
the ancient gift of N'Longa, seeing in it at last not
merely a tool of black magic, but a sword of good
and light against the powers of inhuman evil for-
ever. And he was shaken with a strange reverence
for it that was almost fear.

Then he bent to the Thing at his feet, shuddering 
to feel its strange mass slip through his
fingers like wisps of heavy fog. He thrust the staff
beneath it and somehow lifted and levered the
mass back into the mausoleum and shut the door.

	Then he stood gazing down at the strangely
mutilated body of Hassim, noting how it was
smeared with foul slime and how it had already
begun to decompose. He shuddered again, and
suddenly a low timid voice aroused him from his
sombre cogitations. The captives knelt beneath the
trees and watched with great patient eyes. With a
start he shook off his strange mood. He took from
the mouldering corpse his own pistols, dirk and
rapier, making shift to wipe off the clinging
foulness that was already flecking the steel with
rust. He also took up a quantity of powder and
shot dropped by the Arabs in their frantic flight.
He knew they would return no more. They might
die in their flight, or they might gain through the
interminable leagues of jungle to the coast; but
they would not turn back to dare the terror of that
grisly glade.

	Kane came to the wretched slaves and after
some difficulty released them.
"Take up these weapons which the warriors
dropped in their haste," said he, "and get you
home. This is an evil place. Get ye back to your
villages and when the next Arabs come, die in the
ruins of your huts rather than be slaves."

	Then they would have knelt and kissed his
feet. but he, in much confusion, forbade them
roughly. Then as they made preparations to go,
one said to him: "Master, what of thee? Wilt thou
not return with us? Thou shalt be our king!"

	But Kane shook his head.
	"I go eastward," said he. And so the tribes-
people bowed to him and turned back on the long
trail to their own homeland. And Kane shouldered
the staff that had been the rod of the Pharaohs and
of Moses and of Solomon and of nameless Atlantean 
kings behind them, and turned his face eastward, 
halting only for a single backward glance at
the great mausoleum that other Solomon had built
with strange arts so long ago, and which now
loomed dark and forever silent against the stars.