Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S4 Ep168: Episode 168: Classic Horror Stories

Episode Date: May 9, 2024

Today’s opening tale of terror is ‘Across the Moors’, a classic work by William F. Harvey, a story in the public domain but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Across_the_Moors Today’s second tale of the macabre is ‘Old Garfield's Heart’, a classic work by Robert E. Howard, a story in the public domain but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks08/0801211h.html Today’s next offering is ‘The Abominations of Yondo’, a classic work by Clark Ashton Smith; a story in the public domain, but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Abominations_of_Yondo Today’s fourth tale of terror is ‘Derelict’, a classic work by William Hope Hodgson, a story in the public domain but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Derelict  Today’s next phenomenal offering is ‘The Hunters from Beyond’, a classic work by Clark Ashton Smith; a story in the public domain, but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hunters_from_Beyond  Today’s next tale of terror is ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’, a classic work by Washington Irving, a story in the public domain but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license:  https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Devil_and_Tom_Walker Today’s next old school classic is ‘The Isle of the Torturers’, a classic work by Clark Ashton Smith; a story in the public domain, but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hunters_from_Beyond Today’s penultimate tale of terror is ‘The Well’, a classic work by W.W. Jacobs, a story in the public domain but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: W.W. Jacobs https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Well Today’s final fantastic offering is ‘The Voice in the Night’, a classic work by William Hope Hodgson , another story in the public domain but also recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Voice_in_the_Night

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Welcome to Dr. Creepin's Dungeon. Old horror stories possess an enduring allure that transcends generations. They beckon us with their timeless themes of fear, mystery and the unknown, tapping into primal instincts buried deep within our psyche. These tales often rooted in folklore, superstition or the supernatural captivate us with their chilling atmosphere and eerie settings. They offer a glimpse into a bygone era, where imagination

reigns supreme and the boundaries between reality and fiction blurred. In their simplicity lies their power, weaving narratives that linger long after the final page is turned, as we shall see in tonight's collection of old-school classics. Now as ever before we begin, a word of caution. Now as ever before we begin a word of caution. Tonight's tales may contain strong language as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. That sounds like your kind of thing. Then let's begin.

Across the Moors. It really was most unfortunate. Peggy had a temperature of nearly 100, and a pain in her side, and Mrs. Workington Bankroft knew that it was appendicitis. But there was no one whom she could send for the doctor. James had gone with the jaunting car to meet her husband, who had at last managed to get away for a week's shooting.

Adolf, she'd sent to the Eversham's only half an hour before, with a note for Lady Eva. The cook could not manage to walk, even if dinner could be served without her. Kate, as usual, was not to be trusted. And there remained Miss Cray. Of course, you must see that Peggy is really ill, said she, as the governess came into the room

in answer to her summons. The difficulty is that there is absolutely no one whom I can send for the doctor. Mrs. Workington Bankroft paused. She was always willing that those beneath her should have the privilege of offering the services which it was her right to command. So perhaps Miss Craig, she went on. You wouldn't mind walking over to Tebitt's farm. I hear there's a Liverpool doctor staying there.

Of course I know nothing about him, but we must take the risk, and I expect he'll be only too glad to be earning something during his holiday. It's nearly four miles away, I know, and I'd never dream of asking you, if it was not, that I'd dream. dread appendicit as so. Very well, said Miss Gray. I suppose I must go, but I don't know the way. Oh, you can't miss it, said Mrs. Working to Bancroft, in her anxiety temporarily forgiving the obvious unwillingness of her governesses' consent.

You follow the road across the moor for two miles, until you come to Red Man's Cross. You turn to the left there and follow a rough path that leads through a large plantation, and Tebitt's farm lies just below you in the valley. Oh, and take Pontiff with you, she added, as the girl left the room. There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of, but I expect you'll feel happier with the dog. Well, miss, said the cook, when Miss Craig went into the kitchen to get her boots, which had been drying by the fire. Of course she knows best, but I don't think it's right that, after all it's happened,

for the mistress to send you across the morse on the night like this. It's not as if the doctor could do anything for Miss Marble, if you do bring it. Every child is like that once in a while. He'll only say, put her to bed, and she's there already. Oh, I don't see what there is to be afraid of, cook, said Miss Craig, as she lays her boots, unless you believe in ghosts. I'm not so sure about that, and now I don't like sleeping in a bed where the sheets are too short for you to pull them over your head, but don't you be frightened, miss? It's my belief that their bark is worse than their bite. But though Miss Craig amused herself for some minutes by trying to imagine the bark of a ghost,

a thing altogether different from the classical ghostly bark, she didn't feel entirely at ease. She was naturally nervous, and living as she did in the hinterland of the servants' hall, she'd heard vague details of true stories that were only myths in the drawing room. The very name of Redman's Cross sent a shiver through her. It must have been the place where that horrid murder was committed. She'd forgotten the tale, though. She remembered the name. Her first disaster came soon enough.

The pontiff, who was naturally slow-witted, took more than five minutes to find out that it was only the governess he was escorting. But once the discovery had been made, he promptly turned tail, paying not the slightest heed to Miss Craig's feeble whittle. And then, to add to her discomfort, the rain came,

not in heavy drops, but driving in sheets. of thin spray that blotted out what few landmarks there were upon the moor. They were very kind at Tebitt's farm. The doctor had gone back to Liverpool the day before, but Mrs. Tebitt gave her hot milk and turf cakes, and it ordered her reluctant son to show Miss Craig a shorter path onto the moor, one that avoided the large wood. He was a monosyllabic youth, but his presence was cheering, and she felt the night doubly black when he left her at the last gate.

She trudged on wearily. her thoughts had already gone back to the almost exhausted theme of the bark of ghosts when she had steps on the road behind her that were at least material next minute the figure of a man appeared miss craig was relieved to see that the stranger was a clergyman he raised his hat oh i believe we're both going in the same direction he said perhaps i may have the pleasure of escorting you she thanked him it is a rather weird at night She went on, and what with all the tales of ghosts and bogies that one hears from the country people, I offended by being half afraid myself.

Oh, I can understand your nervousness, he said, especially on a night like this. I used to at one time feel the same, for my work often meant lonely walks across the moor to farms which are only reached by rough tracks difficult enough to find even in the daytime. And you never saw anything to fright me, nothing immaterial, I mean. I can't really say that I did, but I hadn't experienced eleven years ago which served as a turning point in my life. Since you seem to be now in much the same state of mind I was then, I'll tell you. The time of year was late September. I'd been over to Westendale to see an old woman who was dying, and then, just as I was about to start on my way home,

what came to me of another of my parishioners who'd been suddenly taken ill only that morning. It was after seven when at last I started. A farmer saw me on the way, turning back when I reached the moor road. The sunset the previous evening had been one of the most lovely I ever remember seeing. The whole vault of heaven had been scattered with flakes of white cloud, tipped with rosy pink like the strewn petals of a full-blown rose. But that night, all was changed. The sky was an absolutely dull slate colour, except in one corner of the west where a thin rift showed the last saffron tint of the sullen sunset.

As I walked, stiff and footsore, my spirit sank. It must have been the marked contrast between the two evenings, the one so lovely, so full of promise. The corn was still out in the field spoiling for fine weather, and the other, so gloomy, so sad with all the dead weight of autumn and winter days. to come. And then added to this sense of heavy depression came another different feeling, which I surprised myself by recognizing as fear. I do not know why I was afraid. The moors lay on either side of me, unbroken except for a straggling line of turf shooting butts, that stood within a stone's throw of the road. The only sound I heard for the last half was the cry of the startled grouse,

go back, go back, go back. But yet the feeling of fear was there, affecting a low centre of my brain through some little use physical channel. I buttoned my coat closer and tried to divert my thoughts by thinking of next Sunday's sermon. I had chosen to preach on Job,

as much in the old-fashioned notion of the book, apart from all the subtleties of the higher criticism that appeals to country people, the loss of herds and crops, the breakup of the family. I would not have dared to speak, had not I too been a farmer. My own Glebe land had been flooded three weeks before, and I suppose I stood to lose as much as any man in the parish. As I walked along the road, repeating to myself the first chapter of the book,

I stopped at the 12th verse. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power. Now the thought of the bad harvest, and that is an awful thought in these valleys, vanished. I seemed to gaze into an ocean of infinite darkness. Now I'd often used, with the Sunday glibness of the tired priest, whose duty it is to preach three sermons in one day, the old simile of the chess-balls, God and the devil were the players, and we were helping one side or the other.

But until that night I had not thought of the possibility of my being only a pawn in the game, that God might throw away, that the game might be won, to reach the place where we are now. I remember it by that rough stone water trough, when a man suddenly jumped out from the roadside. He'd been seated on a heap of broken roadmettling. Oh, which way are you going, Governor, he said. I knew from the way he spoke that the man was a stranger.

There are many at this time of the year who come from the south, trampling northwards with the ripening corn. I told him my destination. We all go along together, he replied. It was too dark to see much of the man's face, but what little I made out was coarse and brutal. Then he began the half-menacing wine I know so well. He'd trampled miles that day. He'd had no food since breakfast, and that was only a crumb. "'Give us a copper,' he said.

"'It's only for a night's lodging.' "'Well, he was whittling away with a big glass knife "'at an ash stake he'd taken from some hedge.' "'The clergyman broke off. "'Oh, are those the lights of your house?' he said. "'We're nearer than I expected, "'but I shall have time to finish my story. "'I think I will, for you can run home in a couple of minutes,

"'and I don't want you to be frightened "'when you're out on the month. more's again. So, as the man talked, he seemed to have stepped out of the very background of my thoughts. His sordid tale with the sad lies that hid a far, sadder truth. He asked me the time. It was five minutes to nine. As I replaced my watch, I glanced at his face. His teeth were clenched, and there was something in the gleam of his eyes that told me at once his purpose. Have you ever known how long a second is? For a third of a second I stood there facing him, filled with an overwhelming pity for myself

and him, and then, without a word of warning, he was upon me. I felt nothing. A flash of lightning ran down my spine. I heard the dull crash of the ash stake, and then a very gentle patter like the sound of a far distant stream. For a minute I lay in perfect happiness, watching the lights of the house as they increased in number until the whole heaven shone with twinkling lamps. I could not have had a more painless death.

Miss Gregg looked up. The man was gone. She was alone on the mall. She ran to the house, her teeth chattering, ran to the solid shadow that crossed and recrossed the kitchen blind. She entered the hall. The clock on the stairs struck the hour. It was nine o'clock.

old Garfield's heart. I was sitting on the porch when my grandfather hobbled out and sank down on his favorite chair with the cushion seat, and began to stuff tobacco in his old corn-cob pipe. I thought you'd been going to the dance, he said. I'm waiting for Doc Blaine, I answered. I'm going over to Old Man Garfield's with him. My grandfather sucked at his pipe a while, before he spoke again. Old Jim Purdy bad-all.

Doc says he has a chance. He was taking care of him. Joe Braxton, against Garfield's wishes, but somebody had to stay with him. My grandfather sucked his pipe noisily, how much the heat lightning playing away off up in the hills. And he said? You think old Jim's the biggest liar in this county, don't you?

He tells some pretty tall tales, I admitted. Some of the things he claimed he took part in It must have happened before he was born. I came from Tennessee to Texas in 1870. My grandfather said abruptly. I saw this town of Lost Knob, grew up with nothing. It wasn't even a long hut store here when I came. But old Jim Garfield was here, living in the same place he lives now.

Only that, it was a large cabin. He don't look a day older now, he did with the first time I saw him. He never mentioned that before. I said in some surprise. I knew you put it down to an old man's morn. He answered. Old Jim was the first white man to settle in this country. He built his cabin a good 50 miles west of the frontier.

God knows how he'd done it. At these hills swarmed with Comanches back then. I remember the first time I ever saw him. Even then, everyone called him Old Jim. Remember him telling me the same tales he told you. He was at the Battle of San Jacinto when he was a youngster, and how he'd rode with you and Cameron and Jack Hades. Only, I believe him and you don't.

That was so long ago, I protested. The last Indian raid through this country was in 1874, said my grandfather, engrossed in his own reminiscences. I was in on that fight, so was old Jim. I saw him knock old yellowtail off his Mustang at 700 yards, with a buffalo rifle. But before that, I was with him in a fight up near the head of Locust Creek.

Band of Comanches came down, Mesquitok, looting and burning. Road through the hills and started back up Locus Creek, and the scout of us were hot on their heels. We ran onto them just at sundown in Mesquite flat. Killed seven of them, and the rest

skinned out through the brush on foot. The three of our boys were killed. And Jim Garfield got a thrust in the breast with a lance. Oh, it was an awful wound. He lay like a dead man, and he seemed sure nobody could live after a wound like that. But an old Indian came out of the bush. When we aimed our guns at him, he made the peace sign and spoke to us in Spanish.

I don't know why the boys didn't shoot him in his tracks, because our blood was heated with the fighting and killing, but something about him made us hold our fight. He said he wasn't a Comanche, but was an old friend of God. I wanted to help it. He asked just to carry Jim into a clump of Mesquite, and leave him alone with him, and to this day, I don't know why we did, but... Ah, we did. Oh, it was an awful time.

Wounded moaning and calling for water. The staring corpse is strewn about the camp, night coming on, and nowhere knowing that the Indians wouldn't return when Doc fell. We make camp right there, because the horses were facted out, We watched all night, but the Comanche's didn't come back. I don't know what went on out in the mesquite where Jim Garfield's body lay, because I never saw that strange Indian again. But during the night I kept hearing a weird moaning that wasn't made by a dying man, and an owl hooted from midnight till dawn. When at sunrise, Jim Garfield came walking out of the mesquite, pale and haggard but alive.

And already the wound in his breast had closed and begun to hear. Since then he's never mentioned that wound, nor that fight, a strange engine who came and went so mysteriously. He hasn't aged a bit. He looks now just like he did then, man of about fifty. In the silence that followed, a car began to purr down the road, and twin shafts of light cut through the dust. That's Doc Blaine, I said. When I'll come back, I'll tell you how Garfield is. Gaffield is.

Doc Blaine was prompt with his predictions as we drove the three miles of post-oak-covered hills that lay between Lost Knob and the Garfield farm. I'll be surprised to see him alive, he said. Oh, smashed up like he is. A man of his age ought to have more sense than to try and break a young horse. He doesn't look so old, I remarked. I'll be fifty, my next birthday, answered Doc Blaine. I've known him all more.

more my life and he must have been at least fifty the first time I ever saw him. His looks are deceiving. Old Garfield's dwelling place was reminiscent of the past. The boards of the low squat house had never known paint. Orchard fence and corrals were built of rails. Old Jim lay on his rude bed, tended crudely but efficiently by the man Doc Blaine had hired over the old man's protests. As I looked at him, I was impressed anew by his evident vice. vitality. His frame was stooped but unwithered. His limbs rounded up with springy muscles. In his corded neck and in his face, drawn though it was with suffering, was apparent and innate virility. His eyes, though, partly glazed with pain, burned with the same unquenchable element.

He's been raving, said Joe Broubaston stolidly. First, why about it in this country? muttered old Jim, becoming intelligible. He was no white man ever set foot him before. I getting too old, I have to settle down. Can't move on like I used to. Settle down here. Good country before it filled up with cowmen and squatters. I wish you and Cameron could see this country. Where the Mexicans shot him, damn him.

Bob Blaine shook his head. He's all smashed up inside. He won't live till daylight. And Garfield unexpectedly lifted his head. expectedly lifted his head and looked at us with clear eyes. Wrong, Doc, he weased, his breath whistling with pain. I'll live. What's broken bones and twisted guts?

Nothing. It's the heart that counts. Long as the heart keeps pumping, a man can't die. My heart sound. Listen to it. Feel it. He grop painfully for Doc Blaine's wrist. Drag his hand to his bosom and held it.

staring up into the doctor's face with avid intensity. Regular dynamo, ain't it? He gasped. Stronger than a gasoline engine. Blaine beckoned me. Lay your hand here, he said, placing my hand on the old man's bare breast. He does have a remarkable hard action.

I noted in the light of the coal oil lamp, a great livid scar in the gorn arching breast. Such a scar as might be made by a flint-headed spear. I laid my hand directly on this scar and an exclamation escaped my lips. Under my old hand, Jim Garfield's heart pulsed. But its throb was like no other heart action I've ever observed. Its power was astounding. His ribs vibrated to its very throb.

It felt more like the vibrating of a dynamo than the action of a human organ. I could feel its amazing vitality radiating from his breast, stealing up into my hand and up my arm until my own heart seemed to speed up in response Oh, I can die Old Jim gasped Not as long as my heart's in my breast Only a bullet through the brain can kill me

Even then I wouldn't be rightly dead As long as my heart keeps beating in my breast Yet it ain't rightly mine either It belongs to Ghostmen The Lepan chief It was the heart of a god The Lippon's worship before the command she's drove him out of their native hands.

I knew ghost man down on the Rio Grande. When I was with you and Cameron, I saved his life from the Mexicans once. He tied the string of ghost Wampum between him and me. The Wampum no man but me and him can see a feel. He came when he know what I needed him, and I fired up on the headwaters of Locus Creek when I got this scar.

Why I was as dead as a man can be. Why I was slashed in two, Like the heart of a butchered beastie. A night Ghostman did magic, calling my ghost bag from Spiritland. I remember that fighter, little. It was dark and gray-like, and I drifted through gray mists

and heard the dead wailing past me in the mist. But Ghostman brought me back. He took out what was left of my mortal heart and put the heart of the god in my bosom. But it's his, and when I'm through with it, he'll come for it. kept me alive and strong for the lifetime of a man. Age can't touch me. What do I care if these fools around here call me an old liar?

What I know, I know. But, archie, and his fingers became claws, clamping fiercely on Doc Blaine's wrist. His old eyes, old yet strangely young, burned fierce as those of an eagle under his bushy browns. If by some mischance I should die, an hour later, I promise me this. Go into my bosom and take out the hot ghostman led me so long ago.

It's his. As long as it beats in my body, my spirit will be tied to that body. When my head be crushed like an egg underfoot. A living thing in a rotten body. Promise? All right, I promise, replied Doc Blaine to humor him. And old Jim Garfield sat back with a whistling sigh of relief. Well, he did not die that night, nor the next, nor the next.

I well remember the next day because that was the day I had the fight with Jack Kirby. People will take a good deal from a bully rather than to spill blood. Because nobody had gone to the trouble of killing him, Kirby thought the whole countryside was afraid of him. He bought a steer from my father, and when my father went to collect for it, Kirby told him that he paid the money to me, which was a lie. I went looking for Kirby and came upon him in a bootleg joint boasting of his toughness and telling the crowd that he was going to beat me up

and make me say that he paid me the money and I had to stick it into my own pocket. When I heard him say that, I saw red and ran in on him with a stockman's knife and cut him across the face and in the neck, side breast and belly. The only thing that saved his life

was the fact that the crowd pulled me off. Well, there was a preliminary hearing, and I was indicted on a charge of assault. My trial was set for the following term of court. Now, Kirby was as tough-fibered as a post-oak country bully ought to be, and he recovered, swearing vengeance, for he was vain of his looks, though God knows why, and I had permanently impaired them. While Jack Kirby was recovering, old man Garfield recovered, too, to the amazement of everybody,

especially Dodd Blaine. I well remember the night Doc Blaine took me again out to old Jim Garfield's farm. I was in Shifty Collin's joint, trying to drink enough of the slop he called beer to get a kick out of it. When Doc Blaine came in and persuaded me to go with him. As we drove along the winding old road in Doc's car,

I asked, why are you so insistent I go with you on this particular night? This isn't a professional call, is it? No, he said. You couldn't kill old Jim with a post-oak mall. He's completely recovered from injuries that ought to have killed an ox. To tell you the truth, Jack Kirby is in Lasnob, swearing he'll shoot you on sight.

Well, for God's sake, I exclaimed angrily. Now everybody will think I left town because I was afraid of him. Turn around and take me back, damn it. Be reasonable, said Dodd. Everybody knows you're not afraid of Kirby. Nobody's afraid of him now. His bluff's broken. That's why he's so wild against you.

But you can't afford to have any more trouble with him now. The trial's only a short time off. I laughed and said, Well, if he's looking for me hard enough, you can find me as easily at old Garfields as in town, because Shifty call and heard you say where you were going. Shifty's hated me ever since I skinned him in that horse. swap last four. He'll tell Kirby where I went.

Never thought of that, said Doc Plain, worried. Forget it, I advised. Kirby hasn't got guts enough to do anything but blow. But I was mistaken. Punctuary bully's vanity and you touch his one vital spot. Our old Jim had not gone to bed when we got there. You sitting in the room opening on to his sagging porch, the room which was at once living room and bedroom, smoking his old cob pipe and trying to read a newspaper by the light of his coal oil lamp. All the windows and doors were wide open for the cornice, and the insects which swarmed in and fluttered around the lamp didn't seem to bother him. We sat down and discussed the weather, which isn't so insane as one

might suppose, in a country where men's livelihood depends on sun and rain, and is at the mercy of wind and drown. The talk drifted into other kindred channels, and after some time, Doc Blame bluntly spoke of something that hung in his mind. Jim, he said, at night I thought you were dying. You bowed a lot of stuff about your heart, and an Indian who lent you his. How much of that was delirium? Nandah, said Garfield, putting at his point. It was gospel truth. Ghostman, the Leibon priest of the gods of night, replaced my dead, torn heart with one from something he worshipped. I ain't sure myself just what something is. Well, something from way back, a long way off,

he said, but being a god, he can do without his heart for a while. But when I die, if I ever get my head smashed so my consciousness is destroyed, the heart must be given back to Ghost Man. You mean you were in earnest about cutting out your heart? Demanded Doct. claim. Oh, it has to be, answered Old Gaffield. A living thing and a dead thing is opposed to nature. That's what Ghostman says. Who the devil was Ghostman?

I told you, I wish doctor of the Leibons who dwelt in this country before the Comanches came down from the state plains and drove him south across the Rio Grande. I was a friend to him, I reckon a ghostman is the only one left alive. Al? Now? I don't know, confessed old Jim. I don't know whether he's alive or dead. I don't know whether he was alive when he came to me after the fight on Locus Creek, or even if he was alive when I knowed him in the southern country. Alas, we understand life, I mean. What balderdash is this? demanded Doc Blaine uneasily, and I felt a slight stirring in my hair. Outside was stillness in the stars. The black shone. The black sheds. The black sheds. The black sheds.

shadows at the post-oak woods. The lamp cast old Garfield's shadow grotesquely on the wall, so it didn't at all resemble that of a human, and his words were strange as words heard in a nightmare. I know what you wouldn't understand, said old Jim. I don't understand myself, and I ain't got the worst to explain them things I feel and know without understanding. The Lapins were kin to the Apaches, and the Apaches learned curious things from the Pueblos. Ghostman was, that's all I can't say. Alive or dead, I don't know, but he was. What's more, he is.

Is it you or me that's crazy? Asked Dopplaine. Well, said old Jim, I'll tell you this much. Ghostman, you Coronado. Crazy as a loom, murmured Dot Blaine. Then he lifted his head. What's that? "'Horse turning in from the road,' I said.

"'Sounds like it stopped.' I stepped to the door like a fool and stood etched in the light behind me. I got a glimpse of a shadowy bulk I knew to be a man on a horse. Then Doc Blaine yelled. "'Look out!' "'I threw himself against me, knocking us both sprawling. At the same instant I heard the smashing report of a rifle,

and old Garfield grunted and fell heaven. Jack Kirby, screamed Dog Blaine. He's killed him. I scrambled up, hearing the clatter of retreating hooves. Snatched old Jim's shotgun from the wall, rushed recklessly out onto the sagging porch, and let go both barrels at the fleeing shape, dim in the star.

The charge was too light to kill at that range, but the birdshot stung the horse and maddened him. He swerved, crashed headlong through a rail fence, and charged across the orchard, and a peach-tree limb knocked his rider out of the saddle. He never moved after he hit the ground. I ran up there and looked down at him. It was Jack Kirby right enough,

and his neck was broken like a rotten branch. I let him lie and ran back to the house. Doc Blaine had stretched old Garfield out on a bench he dragged in from the porch. The dog's face was whiter than I'd ever seen it. old Jim was a ghastly sight he'd been shot with an old-fashioned 4570

and at that range the heavy ball had literally torn off the top of his head his features were masked with blood and brains he'd been directly behind me poor old devil and he'd stopped the slug meant for me don't blang was trembling although he was anything but a stranger to such signs

would you pronounce him dead he asked. That's for you to say, I answered. But even a fool could tell that he is dead. He is dead, said Doc Blaine in a strained unnatural voice. Rigamoris is already setting in, but I feel his heart. I did and I cried out. The flesh was already cold and clammy, but beneath it, that mysterious heart still hammered away steadily. Animo in a deserted house. No blood coursed through those veins, and yet the heart pounded, pounded and pounded, like the pulse of eternity.

A living thing, in a dead thing, whispered Dock Blaine, cold sweat on his face. This is opposed to nature. I'm going to keep the promise I made him. I'll assume full responsibility. This is too monstrous to ignore. implements were a butcher knife and a hacksaw. Outside only the still stars looked down on the black post-oak shadows and the dead man that lay in the orchard. Inside, the old lamp flickered, making strange shadows move and shiver and cringe in the corners and glistened on the blood

on the floor, and the red dabbled figure on the bench. The only sound inside was the crunch of the sore edge on bone. Outside an owl began to hoot, weirdly. Doc Blaine thrust a red-stained hand into the aperture he made and drew out a red, pulsing object that caught the lamelines. With a choke cry he recoiled, and the thing slipped from his fingers and fell on the table, and I too cried out involuntarily. For it did not fall with a soft, meaty thud as a piece of flesh should fall. It thumped hard on the table. Impaled by an irresistible urge, I bent and bent. gingerly picked up old Garfield's heart. The feel of it was brittle, unyielding, like steel or stone,

but smoother than either. In size and shape it was a duplicate of a human heart, but it was slick and smooth, and its crimson surface reflected the lamplight like a jewel more lambent than any ruby, and in my hand it still throbbed mightily, sending vibratory radations of energy at my arm until my own heart seemed swelling and bursting in response. It was cosmic power, beyond my comprehension, concentrated into the likeness of a human heart. The thought came to me that here was a dynamo of life, the nearest approach to immortality that's possible for the destructible human body,

the materialization of the cosmic secret, more wonderful than the fabulous fountain sought for by Ponce de Leon. My soul was drawn into that, untorrestrial gleam, and I suddenly wished passionately that it hammered and thunded in my own bosom in place of my paltry heart of tissue and muscle. Doc Blaine ejaculated incohering. I wheeled. The noise of his coming had been no greater than the whispering of a night wind through the core. There in the doorway he stood, tall, dark, inscrutable. An Indian warrior in the paint, war bonnet, breach clout and moccasins of an elder age.

His dark eyes burn like fires are gleaming deep under fathomless black lakes. Silently he extended his hand, and I dropped Jim Garfield's heart into it. And then, without a word, he turned and stalked into the night. But when Dot Blaine and I rushed out into the yard an instant later, there was no sign of any human being. He'd vanished like a phantom of the night. and only something that looked like an owl was flying, dwindling from sight into the rising moon.

The abominations of Yondo. The sand of the desert of Yondo is not as the sand of other deserts, where Yondo lies nearest of all to the world's rim. And strange winds, blowing from a pit and no astronomer, may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the grey dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns. the dark all-black mountains which rise from its wrinkled and pitted plain are not all its own for some of fallen asteroids half buried in that abysmal sand

things have crept in from nether space whose incursion is forbid by the gods of all proper and well-ordered lands but there are no such gods in yonder where live the hoary genii of stars abolished and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells it was noon of a vernal day when i came forth from that interminable cactus forest in which the inquisitors of ong had left me and saw at my feet the grey beginnings of yondo i repeat it was a noon on a vernal day but in that fantastic wood i had found no token or memory of a spring and the swollen fulvus dying and half-rotten growths through which i had pushed my way were like no other cacti but rather bore shapes of abomination scarcely to be described The very air was heavy with stagnant odors of decay, and leprous lichens mottled the black soil and russet vegetation with increasing frequency. Pale green vipers lifted their heads from prostrate cactus bowls, and watched me with eyes of bright ochre that had no lids or pupils. These things had disquieted me for hours past, and I did not like the monstrous fungi with hewless stems and nodding heads of poisonous mowls, which driest. from the sudden lips of fetid tongues, and the sinister ripples spreading and fading on the yellow water at my approach were not reassuring to one whose nerves were still taught from unmentionable

tortures. Then, when even the blotched and sickly cacti became more sparse and stunted, and reels of ash and sand crept in among them, I began to suspect how great was the hatred my heresy had aroused in the priests of Ong, and to guess the ultimate malignancy of their vengeance. I will not detail the indiscretions which had led me, a careless stranger from far-off lands, into the power of those dreadful magicians and mysterious arcs who serve the lion-headed on. These indiscretions and the particulars of my arrest are painful to remember. And least of all do I like to remember the racks of dragon guts strewn with pound and adamant,

on which men are stretched naked, more that unlit room with six-inch windows near the sill, their bloated corpseworms crawled in by the hundreds from a neighbouring catacomb. Sufficient to say that, after expending the resources of their frightful fantasy, my inquisitors had borne me blindfolded on Camelback for incommutable hours to leave me at morning twilight in that sinister forest. I was free, they told me, to go whither I would, and in token of the clemency of Ong, they gave me a loaf of coarse bread and leavened bottom of rank water by way of provision. It was of noon that same day that

I came to the desert of Yondo. So far I had not thought of turning back, for all the horror of those rotting cacteil, the evil things that dwelt among them. But now I paused, knowing the abominable legend of the land to which I come, for Yondo is a place where few have ventured wittingly and of their own accord. Viewer still have returned, babbling of unknown horrors and strange treasure, and the lifelong palsy which shakes their withered limbs, together with the mag gleam in their startling eyes, beneath widened brows and lashes is not an incentive for others to follow. So it was that I hesitated on the verge of those ashen sands, and felt the tremor of a

new fear in my wrenched vitals. It was dreadful to go on, and dreadful to go back, for I felt sure that the priests had made provision against the latter contingency. So after a little while, I went forward, singing at each step in loathly softness, and followed by certain long-legged insects that I had met among the cacti. These insects were the colour of a weak-old corpse,

and was large as tarantulas. But when I turned and trod upon the foremost, a moffit extent arose that was more nauseous, even than their colour. So, for the non-sai ignored them. as much as possible. Indeed, such things were minor horrors in my predicament. Before me, under a huge sun of sickly scarlet, yonder reached interminable as the land of a hashy stream against the black heavens. Far off on the utmost rim were those orb-like mountains of which I'd been told. But in between

were awful blanks of grey desolation and low treeless hills like the backs of half-buried monsters. Struggling on, I saw great pits where meteors had sunk from sight, and diverse-coloured jewels that I could not name glared or glistened from the dust. There were fallen cypresses that rotted by crumbling mausoleums, on whose like and blooded marble fat chameleons crept with royal pearls in their mouths. Hidden by the low ridges were cities of which no stellar remained unbroken, immense and the memorial cities lapsing shard by shard atom by atom to feed infinities of desolation. I dragged my torture weakened limbs over vast rubbish-heaps that had once been mighty temples,

and fallen gods frowned in rotting passamite, or leered in riven porphyry at my feet. Over all was an evil silence, broken only by the satanic laughter of hyenas and the rustling of adders in thickets of dead thorn. thickets of dead thorn or antique gardens given to the perishing nettle and fumatory. Topping one of the many mound-like ridges, I saw the waters of a weird lake, unfathomably dark and green as malchite, and set with bars of profligent salt. These waters lay far beneath me in a cup-like hollow, but almost at my feet on the wave-worn slopes were heaps of that ancient salt, and I knew that the lake was only the bitter and ebbing dregs of some former sea. Climbing down, I came to the dark waters, and began to lave my hands, but there was a sharp

and corrosive sting in that immemorial brine, and I desisted quickly, preferring the desert dust that had wrapped me about like a slow shroud. Here I decided to rest for a while, and hunger forced me to consume part of the meagre and mocking fare with which I had been provided by the priests. It was my intention to push on if my strength would allow and reach the lands that lie to the north of yonder. These lands are desolate indeed, but their desolation is of a more usual than that of yonder. And certain tribes of nomads have been known to visit them occasionally. If fortune favoured me, I might fall in with one of these tribes. The scant fair revived me, and for the first time in weeks of which I'd lost awe reckoning I heard the whisper of a faint hope.

A corpse-coloured insects had long since ceased to follow me, and so far, despite the eerieness of the sepulchral silence and the mounded dust of timeless ruin, I'd meant nothing half so horrible as those insects. I began to think that the terrors of yonder were somewhat exaggerated. It was then that I heard a diapolic chuckle on the hillside above me. The sound began with a sharp abruptness that startled me beyond all reason, and continued endlessly, never varying its single note, like the mirth of an idiotic demon. I turned and saw the mouth of a dark cave, fanged with green stalactites, which I had not perceived

before. The sound appeared to come from within this cave. With a fearful intentness, I stared at the black opening. The juggle grew louder, but for a while I could see nothing. At last I caught a whitish glimmer in the darkness. Then with all the rapidity of nightmare, a monstrous thing emerged. It had a pale, hairless, egg-shaped body, large as that of a gravid she-gut. And this body was mounted on nine, long, wavering legs with many flanges, like the legs of some enormous spider. The creature ran past me to the water's edge, and I saw that there were no eyes in its oddly sloping face. But two knife-like ears rose high above its head, and a thin, wrinkled snout hung down across its mouth, whose flabby lips, parted in that eternal chuckle,

revealed rows of bats' teeth. It drank acidly of the bitter lake. Then, with thirst satisfied, it turned and seemed to sense my presence, for the wrinkled snout rose and pointed toward me, sniffing audibly. Whether the creature would have fled or whether it meant to attack me, I do not know, for I could bear the sight no longer, but ran with trembling limbs amid the massive boulders

and great bars of salt along the lake shore. Utterly breathless, I stopped at last, and saw that I was not pursued. I sat down, still trembling, in the shadow of a boulder. But I was to find little respite for now began the second of those bizarre adventures which forced me to believe all the mad legends I'd heard. While startling even that diabolic chuckle, it was a scream that rose at my very elbow

from the salt compounded sand, the scream of a woman possessed by some atrocious agony, all helpless in the grip of devil. Turning, I beheld a veritable Venus, naked in a white perfection that could fear no scrutiny, but immersed to her navel in the sand. Her terror-widened eyes implored me, and her lotus hands reached out with beseeching gesture. I sprang to her side and touched a marble statue, whose carved lips were drooped in some enigmatic dream of dead cycles, and whose hands were buried with the lost loveliness of hips and thighs. Again I fled, shaken with a new fear, and again I heard the scream of the woman's agony. But this time I did not turn to see the imploring.

eyes and hands. Of the long slope to the north of that accursed lake, stumbling over boulders of basinite and ledges that were sharp with verdigris covered metals, floundering in pits of salt, on terraces wrought by the receding tide in ancient eons. I fled as a man flies from dream to baleful dream of some cocker-demonical night. But whilst there was a cold whisper in my ear which did not come from the wind of my flight. Looking back, as I reached one of the upper terrors, I perceived a singular shadow that ran pace by pace with my own. The shadow was not the shadow of man or ape, nor any beast.

The head was too grotesquely elongated, the squat body too gibbous, and I wasn't able to determine whether the shadow possessed five legs or what appeared to be the fifth was merely a tail. Terror led me new strength, and I'd reached the hilltop when I dared to look back again. But still the fantastic shadow kept pace by pace with mine, and now I caught a curious and utterly sickening odour, and was found as the odor of bats who've hung in a Charnel house amid the mould of corruption. I ran for leagues, while the red sun slanted above the asteroidial mountains to the west,

and the weird shadow lengthened with mine, but always kept at the same distance behind me. An hour before sunset I came to a small circle of pillars that were. rose miraculously unbroken amid ruins that were like a vast pile of pod shirts. As I passed among these pillars, I heard a whimper, like the whimper of some fierce animal, between rage and fear, and saw that the shadow had not followed me within the circle. I stopped and waited, conjecturing at once that I'd found a sanctuary my unwelcome familiar would not dare to enter, and in this the action of the shadow confirmed me. The thing hesitated, then ran about the circle of columns, pausing often between them,

and whimpering all the while, at last went away and disappeared in the desert toward the setting sun. For a full half-hour, I did not dare to move. Then the imminence of night, with all its probabilities of fresh terror, urged me to push on as far as I could to the north, for I was now in the very heart of yonder where demons or phantoms might dwell, who would not respect the sanctuary of the unbroken, golems. Now, as I toiled on, the sunlight altered strangely. For the red orb nearing the moundage horizon sank and smoulded in a belt of myosmal haze, where floating dust from all the

shattered fains and necropolis of yonder was mixed with evil vapors coiling skyward from the black enormous gulfs lying beyond the utmost rim at the world. In that light, the entire waste, the rounded mountains, the serpentine hills, the lost cities were all great. with phantasmal and darkening scarlet. Then, out of the north, where shadows mustered, became a curious figure, a tall man, fully caparisoned in chain mail, or rather what I assumed to be a man. As the figure approached me, clanking dismally at each step on the shrouded ground, I saw that his armour was of brass mottled with verdigris, and a cus of the same metal furnished with

coiling horns and a serrate cone rose high above its head. Now I say its head, for the sunset was darkening and I could not clearly see at any distance. But when the apparition came abreast, I perceived that there was no face beneath the brows of the bizarre helmet whose empty edges were outlined for a moment against the smouldering light. Then the figure passed on, still clanking dismally and vanish. But on its heels the sunset face. There came a second apparition, striding with incredible strides and halting when it loomed almost upon me in the red twilight. The monstrous mummy of some ancient king still crowned with untarnished gold, but turned into my gaze the visage that more than time or the worm had wasted. Broken swathings flat about the skeleton legs, and above the crown that was set with sapphires and orange rubies, a black something swayed and not

But for an instant I did not dream what it was. Then, in its middle, two oblique and scarlet eyes opened and glowed like hellish coals, and two affidian fangs glittered in an ape-like mouth. A squat, furless, shapeless head on a neck of disproportionate extent leaned unspeakably down and whispered in the mummy's ear. With one stride, the Titanic Lake took off the distance between us, and from out the folds of the tattered seacroft a gone arm-rose, and fleshless, tallened fingers laden with glowing gems, reached out and fumbled for my throat.

Back, back through eons of madness and dread, in a prone, precipitate flight, I ran from those fumbling fingers that hung always on the dust behind me. Back, back forever, unthinking, to all the abominations I had left. Back in the thickening twilight toward the nameless and sharded ruins, the haunted lake, the forest of evil cacti, and the cruel, the cynical inquisitors of Ong, who waited my return.

It's the material, said the old ship's doctor. The material plus the conditions end. Maybe. He added slowly, "'A, third factor. Yes, a third factor, but there—there—' He broke off his half-meditative sentence and began to charge his pipe. "'Go on, doctor,' we said encouragingly,

and with more than a little expectancy. We were in the smoke-room of the Sandalais, running across the North Atlantic, and the doctor was a character. He concluded the charging of his pipe, and lit it, and then settled himself, and began to express himself more fully. "'The material,' he said with conviction, "'is inevitably the medium of expression of the life-force, the fulcrum, as it were,

lacking which it is unable to exert itself, or indeed to express itself in any form or fashion that would be intelligible or evident to us. So potent is the share of the material in the production of that thing, which we name life, and so eager the life force to express itself that I'm convinced it would, if given the right conditions, make itself manifest even through so hopeless seeming a medium as a simple block of so on wood. For I tell you, gentlemen, the life force is both as fiercely urgent and as indiscriminate as fire, the destructor, yet which some are now growing to consider the very essence of life rampant. There's a quaint-seeming,

paradox there he concluded nodding his old grey head yes doctor i said in brief your argument is that life is a thing state fact or element call it what you like which requires the material through which to manifest itself and that given the material plus the conditions the result is life in other words life is an involved product manifested through matter and bread of condition say As we understand the word, said the old doctor, though, mind you, there may be a third factor. But, in my heart, I believe that it's a matter of chemistry. Conditions are a suitable medium. But given the conditions, a brute is so almighty that it will seize upon anything through which to manifest itself.

It is a force generated by conditions, but nevertheless it does not bring us one iota nearer to its explanation any more than to the explanation of electricity or fire. They are all three of the outer forces, monsters of the void. Nothing we can do will create any one of them. Our power is merely to be able by providing the conditions to make each one of them manifest our physical senses. Am I clear? Yes, Doctor, in a way you are, I said, but I don't agree with you, though I think I understand you. Electricity and fire are both what I call natural things, but life is an abstract something, kind of all-permeating wakefulness. Oh, I can't explain it. Who could? But it is spiritual, not just a thing bred out of a condition like fire, as you say, or electricity. It is a horrible

thought of yours. Life's a kind of spiritual mystery. Easy, my boy, said the old doctor, laughing generally. to himself, or else I may be asking you to demonstrate the spiritual mystery of life, of the limpid or the crab, shall we say. He grinned at me with ineffable perverseness. Anyway, he continued, as I suppose you've all guessed, I have a yarn to tell you in support of my impression that life is no more a mystery or a miracle than fire or electricity, but please to remember, gentlemen, that because we succeeded in naming and making good use of these two forces. They are just as much mysteries fundamentally now as ever. And anyway,

the thing I'm going to tell you won't explain the mystery of life, but I only give you one of my pegs on which I hang my feeling that life is, as I've said, a force made manifest through conditions. That is to say, natural chemistry, and that it can take for its purpose and need, the most incredible and unlikely matter. without matter, it cannot come into existence. It cannot become manifest. Oh, I don't agree with you, doctor, I interrupted. Your theory would destroy all belief in life after death. It would, hush, sonny, said the old man with a quiet little smile of comprehension. Hark to what I have to say first, and anyway, what objection of you to material life after death? And if you object to a

material framework, I would still have you remember that I'm speaking of life, as we understand the word in this, our life, now do be quiet, that, or I'll never be done. It was when I was a young man, and that's a good many years ago, gentlemen. I passed my examinations, but was so run down with overwork that it was decided that I'd better take a trip to sea. I was by no means well off and very glad in the end to secure a nominal post as doctor in the sailing passenger clipper running out to China. The name of the ship was the opposite, and soon after I got all my gear aboard, she cast off, and we dropped down the Thames, and next day we were well out in the channel. The captain's name was Gannington, a very decent man, though quite illiterate.

The first mate, Mr. Berlis, was a quiet, sternish reserve man, very well read. The second mate, Mr. Selvan was, perhaps by birth and upbringing, the most socially cultured of the three, but he lacked the stamina and indomitable pluck of the other two. He was more of a sensitive, and emotionally and even mentally, well, the most alert man of the three. On our way out, we called at Madagascar, where we landed some of our passengers. Then we ran eastward, meaning to call it north-west Cape, but about a hundred degrees east we encountered very dreadful weather. which carried away all our sails and sprung the gibham and the foric glanmast well the storm carried us northward for several hundred miles and when it dropped us finally we found ourselves in a very bad state the ship had been strained and had taken some three feet of water through her seams the main topmast had been sprung in addition to the gibbum and the foric gullum must must well two of our boats had gone as also one of the pigstites with three fine pigs

These ladders haven't been washed overboard, but some half-hour before the wind began to ease, which it did very quickly, though a very ugly sea ran for some hours after. The wind left us just before dark, and when morning came it brought weather, splendid weather, a calm, mildly undulating sea, and a brilliant sun with no wind. It showed us also that we were not alone. For about two miles away to the westward was another vessel, which Mr. Selvin, the second-man, pointed out to me that's a pretty rum-looking packet doctor he said and handed me his glass i looked through it at the other vessel and saw what he meant at least i thought i did yes mr selvin i

said she's got a pretty old-fashioned look about her and he laughed at me in his pleasant way it's easy to see you or not a sailor doctor he remarked there's a dozen rum things about her She's a derelict It's been floating around by the look of her For many a score of years Look at the shape of her counter And the bows and cut water She's as old as the hills

As you might say And ought to have gone down to Davy Jones A good while ago Oh look at the growths on her And the thickness of her standing rigging That's all salt in crustaceans I fancy If you notice the white colour

Well she's been a small bark But don't you see she's not a yard left aloft they've all dropped out of the slings everything rotted away wonder the standing rigging hasn't gone too oh i wish the old man had let us take the boat and have a look at her or she'd be well worth it they seem little chance however of this for all hands were turned to and kept hard at all day repairing the damage to the masks and gear and this took a long while as you may think part of the time i gave a hand heaving on one of the day neck capstan's, for the exercise was good for my liver. Oh, Captain Gannington approved,

and I persuaded him to come along and try some of the same medicine, which he did, and we got very chummy over the job. We got talking about the derelict, and he remarked how lucky we were not to have run full tilt onto her in the darkness, for she lay right away to the leeward of us, according to the way we'd been drifting in the storm. It was also of the opinion that she had a strange look about her. She was pretty old, but on this latter point he plainly had far less knowledge than the second mate, for he was, as I've said, an illiterate man, and knew nothing of Seacraft beyond what experience had taught him. He lacked the book knowledge which the second mate had of vessels previous to his day, which it appeared the derelict was.

Ah, she's an olden, doctor, was the extent of his observations in this direction. Yet, when I mentioned to him that it would be interesting to go aboard and give her a bit of an overhaul. He nodded his head as if the idea had already been in his mind and accorded with his own inclinations. Ah, when the work's over, Doctor, he said, Can't spare the men now, you know. Gotta keep all ship-shipped-shitting ready as smart as we can, but we'll take my jig and go off in the second dog-watch. The glass is steady, and it'll be a bit of a gam for us.

Well, that evening after tea, the captain gave orders to clear the jig and get her overboard. The second mate was to come with us, and the skipper gave him word to see that two or three lamps were put into the boat, as it would soon fall dark. A little later we were pulling across the calmness of the sea with a crew of six at the oars, and making very good speed of it. Now, gentlemen, I have detailed to you with great exactness all the facts, both big and little, so that you can follow step by step each incident in this extraordinary affair. I want you now to pay the closest attention.

I was sitting in the stern sheets with the second mate and the captain, who was steering, and as we drew nearer and nearer to the stranger, as indeed did Captain Gannington and the second mate. She was, as you know, to the westward of us, and the sunset was making a great flame of red light to the back of her, so that she showed a little blurred and indistinct by reason of the halation of the night, which almost defeated the eye in any attempt to see her rotting spurs and standing rigging, submerged as they were in the fiery glory of the sunset.

It was because of this effect of the sunset that we had come quite close, comparatively to the derelict before we saw that she was all surrounded by a sort of curious scum, the colour of which was difficult to decide upon by reason of the red light that was in the end. atmosphere, but which afterwards we discovered to be brown. This scum spread all about the old vessel for many hundreds of yards in a huge irregular patch, a great stretch of which reached out to the eastward, upon the starboard, upon the starboard side of the boat some score or so faverns away. Ah, queer stuff, said Captain Gannington, leaning to the side and looking over.

Suddenly the cargo was gone rotten and worked out through her seams. "'Look at her bows and stern,' said the second mate. "'Just look at the growth on her.' There were, as he said, great clumpings of strange-looking sea-fungi under the boughs and the short counter astern. From the stump of her giboon and the cut-water great beards of rime and marine growths hung downward into the scum that held her in. Her blank starboard side was presented to us, all a dead, dirty-ish-white, streaked and mottled

vaguely with dull masses of heavier colour. There's a steam or haze rising off her, said the second mate, speaking again. You can see it against the light. It keeps coming and going, look. I saw then what he meant. A faint haze or steam, either suspended above the old vessel or rising from her. And Captain Gallington saw it also. Spontaneous combustion, he exclaimed.

We'll have to watch when he lift the hatches, unless it's some poor devil that's got the board of her, but oh, that ain't likely. We were now within a couple of hundred yards of the old derelict, and had entered into the brown scum. As it poured off the lifted oars, I heard one of the men mutter unto himself. Oh, damn, treacle! And indeed it was not something unlike it. As the boat continued to forge nearer and nearer to the old ship, the scum grew thicker and thicker, so that at last it perceptibly slowed us down give way lads put some beef into it sang out captain gallington

and thereafter there was no sound except the panting of men and the faint reiterated suck of the sullen brown scum upon the oars as the boat was forced ahead as we went i was conscious of a a peculiar smell in the evening air. Whilst I had no doubt that the pudding of the scum by the oars made it rise, I could give no name to it. Yet in a way it was vaguely familiar. We were now very close to the old vessel, and presently she was high about us against the dying light.

The captain called out then to, In with the boat oars, and stand by the boat-hook, which was done. Abboard there. O'hoi! aboard there, ahoy! shouted Captain Gannington, but there came no answer.

Only the dull sound of his voice going lost into the open sea, each time he sung out. Ahoy, aboard there. Ahoy! He shouted time after time, but there was only the weary silence of the old Hulk that answered us,

and somehow as he shouted, the while that I stared up of expectantly at her, a queer little sense of a oppression that amounted almost to nervousness came upon me. It passed, but I remember how I was suddenly aware that it was growing dark. Now, darkness comes fairly rapidly in the tropics, though not so quickly as many fiction writers seem to think. But it was not that the coming dusk had perceptibly deepened in that brief time of only a few moments, but rather that my nerves

had made me suddenly a little hypersensitive. Now, I mentioned my state particularly. for I'm not a nervy man normally, and my abrupt touch of nerves is significant in light of what happened. There's no one on board there, said Captain Gannington. Give way, men. For the boat's crew had instinctively rested on their oars, as the captain hailed the old crowd. The men gave way again, and then the second mate called out excitedly. Boy, look there. There's our pigsty. See, it's got Bopsy painted on the end.

"'Oh, he's drifted down here, and the scum's caught it. "'What a blessed wonder!' "'It was, as he said, our pig-sty that had been washed overboard in the storm, "'and most extraordinary to come across it there.' "'We'll tow it off with us when we go,' said the captain, "'and shouted to the crew to get down to their oars, "'for they were hardly moving the boat, "'because the scum was so thick, close in around the old ship,

"'that it literally clogged the boat from moving.' I remember that it struck me in a half-conscious sort of way, as curious that the pig-sty, containing our three dead pigs, had managed to drift in so far unaided, whilst we could scarcely manage to force the boat in, now that we come right into the scum. But the thought passed from my mind for so many things happened within the next few minutes. The man managed to bring the boat in alongside, within a couple of feet of the derelict, and the man was with the boat hook hooked on. Have you got all there for a?

asked Captain Gannington. Yes, sir, said the bowman. And as he spoke, there came a queer noise of tearing. What's that? said the captain. It's Tor, sir. Tor clean away, said the man, and his tone showed that he had received something of a shock.

Get a hold again, then, said Captain Gannington, irritably. Don't suppose his brother. Pagget was built yesterday. Gosh, shove the hook into the main chains. The man did so gingerly, as you might say, for it seemed to me in the growing dust that he put no strain onto the hook, though of course there was no need. You could see the boat could not go very far of herself in the stuff in which she was embedded.

I remember thinking this, also as I looked up at the bulging side of the old vessel, and then I heard Captain Gannington's voice. Lord, but she's old, and what a colour, doctor. She don't want half a paint, do she? Now then, somebody, one of them, oros! An awl was passed to him, and he leant it up against the ancient bulging sight. Then he paused, and called to the second mate to light a couple of the lamps, and stand by to pass them up, for darkness had settled down now upon the sea.

The second mate lit two of the lamps and told one of the men to light a third and keep it handy in the boat. And then he stepped across with a lamp in each hand to where Captain Gannington stood by the oar against the side of the ship. No way, lad, said the captain to the man who had poured the stroke. Up with you, and I'll pass you up the lamps. Well, the man jumped to obey, caught the oar and put his weight upon it, and as he did, so, something seemed to give way a little. Look, cried out the second mate, and pointed, lamp in hand. It sunk in.

This was true. The oar had made quite an indentation into the bulging, somewhat slimy side of the old vessel. A mould, I reckon, said Captain Gannington, bending towards the derelict to look, and then to the man. Ah, up you go, my lad, and be smart. Don't stand there waiting. At that, the man, who had paused a moment as he felt the awe gave beneath his weight, began to shin up, and in a few seconds he was aboard, and leant out over the rail for the lamps. These were passed up to him, and the captain called to him to steady the awe. Then Captain Gannington went, calling for me to follow, and after me the second mate. As the captain put his face over the rail, he gave a cry of astonishment.

Mould by gum, mould, tons of it. Oh, good Lord! As I heard him shout that, I scrambled the more eagerly after him, and in a moment or two I was able to see what he meant. Everywhere that the light from the two lamps struck, there was nothing but smooth, great masses and surfaces of a dirty white-coloured mould. I climbed over the rail with a second mate close behind, and stood upon the mould-covered decks. Well, there might have been no planking beneath the mould For that our feet could feel It gave way under our tread with a spongy puddingy feel

It covered the deck furniture of the old ship So that the shape of each article and fitment Was often no more than suggested through it Captain Gallington snatched a lamp from the man And the second mate reached for the other They held the lamps high and we all stared It was most extraordinary And somehow most abominable

I can think of no other word, gentlemen, that so much describes the predominant feeling that affected me at the moment. Good Lord, said Captain Gallington several times. Good Lord. But neither the second mate nor the man said anything, and, for my part, I just stared, and at the same time began to smell a little at the air, for there was a vague odour of something half familiar that somehow brought to me, a sense of half-known fright. I turned this way and that, staring, as I've said. Here and there the mould was so heavy as to entirely disguise what lay beneath,

converting the deck fittings into indistinguishable mounds of mould, all dirty white and blotched and veined with irregular, dull, purplish markings. It was a strange thing about the mould, which Captain Gallington drew attention to. It was that our feet did not crush into it and break the surface, as might have been expected, but merely indented it. I never seen nothing like it before. Never, said the captain after having stooped with his lamp to examine the mould under our feet. He stamped with his heel, and the mould gave out a dull pudding he sound.

He stooped again, and with a quick movement, stared, holding the lamp close to the deck. Oh, blessed if it ain't a regular skin to it! The second mate and the man and I all stooped and looked at it. The second mate prodded it with his forefinger, and I remember I wrapped it several times with my knuckles, listening to the dead sound he gave out, and noticing the close, firm texture of the mould. Oh, the second mate said. Oh, it's just like blessed dough. Oof!

He stood up with a quick movement. Oh, I could fancy it stinks of but. bit, he said. As he said this, I knew, suddenly, what the familiar thing was in the vague odour that hung about us. It was that the smell had something animal-like in it, something of the same smell, only heavier that you would smell in any place that's infested with mice. I began to look about with a sudden, very real uneasiness. There might be vast numbers of hungry rats aboard. They might prove exceedingly dangerous if in a starving condition. Yet, as you will understand, somehow I hesitated to put forward my idea as a reason for caution.

It was too fanciful. Captain Gannington had begun to go aft along the mole-covered main deck with the second mate, each of them holding their lamps high up so as to cast a good light about the vessel. I turned quickly and followed them, the man with me keeping close to my hill. and plainly uneasy. As we went, I became aware that there was a feeling of moisture in the air, and I remembered the slight mist or smoke above the halt,

which had made Captain Gallington suggest spontaneous combustion in an explanation. And, always, as we went, there was that vague animal smell. Suddenly I found myself wishing we were well away from this old vessel. Abruptly, after a few paces, the captain stopped and pointed, pointed at a row of mold hidden shapes on each side of the main deck. Guns, he said. Been a privateer in the old days, I guess. Maybe worse.

Well, we'll have a look below, daughter. There may be something worth touching. She's older than I thought. Mr. Selvin thinks she's about two hundred years old, but I scarce think it. Well, we continued our way aft. I remember that I found myself walking as lightly and gingerly as possible, as if I were subconsciously afraid of treading through the rotten,

mould-hid decks. I think the others had a touch of the same feeling from the way they were walking. Occasionally the soft stuff would grip on our heels, releasing them with a little sullen suck. The captain falls somewhat ahead of the second mate, and I know that the suggestion he'd made himself that perhaps there might be something below worth carrying away had stimulated his imagination. The second mate was, however, beginning to feel somewhat the same way I did. At least I have that impression. I think if it had not been for what I might truly describe as Captain Gallington's sturdy courage,

we should all of us have just gone back over the side very soon, for there was most certainly an unwholesome feeling abroad that made one feel queerly lacking in pluck, and you'll soon see that this feeling was justified. Just as the captain reached the few mold-covered steps leading up onto the short half-poop, I was suddenly aware that the feeling of moisture in the air had grown very much more definite. It was perceptible now, intermittently as a sort of thin, moist, fog-like vapour that came and went oddly, and seemed to make the decks a little indistinct to the view this time and that.

Once an odd puff of it beat up suddenly from somewhere, and caught me in the face, carrying a queer, sickly heavy odour with it that somehow frightened me strangely with a suggestion of waiting and half-comprehended danger. We'd follow Captain Gallington up the three mould-covered steps, and now went slowly along the raised after-deck. By the mizzen-mast, Captain Gallington paused, and held his lantern near to it. "'My word, mister,' he said to the second mate. "'It's fair thing. thickened up with mould why I'll guarantee it's close on four-foot thick he shone the light down to where it met the deck oh good lord he said look at the sea-lice on it

they stepped up and it was as he'd said the sea-lights were thick upon it some of them huge not less than the size of large beetles and all are clear colorless shade like water except There were little spots of grey on them. I've never seen the like of them, except on a live cot, said Captain Gannington in an extremely puzzled voice. My word, but they're whoppers. Then he passed on, but a few paces farther aft, he stopped again, and held his lamp near to the mould hidden deck.

Oh, Lord bless me, doctor, he called out in a low voice. Did you ever see the like of that? that? Why, it's a foot long if it's an inch. I stooped over his shoulder and saw what he meant. It was a clear, colourless creature about a foot long, and about eight inches high, with a curved back that was extraordinarily narrow. As we stared, all in a group, he gave a queer little flick and was gone. Jumped, said the captain. Well, if that ain't a giant of all the seat-lice that I have ever seen oh i guess it's jumped twenty-foot clear he straightened his back and scratched his head a moment swinging the lantern this way and that with the other hand and staring about us what are they doing aboard you he said

oh you'll see him little things on fat cotton such like i'm blow doctor if i understand he held his lamp towards a big mound of the mold that occupied part of the after portion of the lower poop deck A little foresight of where there came a two-foot-high break to a kind of second and loftier poop that ran aft to the taffrail. The mound was pretty big, several feet across, and more than a yard high. Captain Gallington walked up to it. I reckon this is the skull, he remarked, and gave it a heavy kick. The only result was a deep indentation to the huge whitish lump of mould,

as if he'd driven his foot into a mass of some doughy substance. Yet I'm not altogether correct in saying that this was the only result, for a certain other thing happened. From the place made by the captain's foot there came a sudden gush of a purplish fluid, accompanied by a peculiar smell that was, and was not half familiar. Some of the mould-like somsons had stuck to the toe of the captain's boot, and from this likewise there issued a sweat, as it were, of the same colour. "'Well,' said Captain Gannington in surprise,

"'and drew back his foot to make another kick at the hump of mould. "'But he paused at an exclamation from the second mate. "'Oh, don't, sir,' said the second mate. "'I glanced at him, and the light from Captain Gannington's lamp "'showed me that his face had a bewildered, half-frightened look, "'as if he was suddenly and unexpectedly half afraid of something, "'and as if his tongue had given away his... sudden fright, without any intention on his part to speak. The captain also turned and stared at him.

"'Why, mister?' he asked in a somewhat puzzled voice, through which there sounded just the vaguest hint of annoyance. "'We've got to shift this mug if we're to get below.' I looked at the second mate, and it seemed to me that, curiously enough, he was listening less to the captain than to some other sound. Suddenly, he said, in a queer voice, Listen, everybody. Yet, we heard nothing, beyond the faint murmur of the men talking together in the boat alongside. I don't hear nothing, said Captain Gannington after a short pause. Do you, doctor? No, I said. What was it you thought you heard? The captain, turning again to the second mate. But the second mate shook his head in a curious,

almost irritable way, as if the captain's question interrupted his listening. Captain Gallington stared a moment at him, then held his lantern up and glanced about him almost uneasily. Oh, I know I felt a queer sense of strain, but the light showed nothing beyond the grayish, dirty white of the mould in all directions. Mr. Selverin, said the captain at last, looking at him, don't get fancy in things. Get all de you bloom himself. You, you're You know, you heard nothing. I'm quite sure I heard something, sir, said the second mate. I seemed to hear...

He broke off sharply and appeared to listen with an almost painful intensity. What did it sound like? I asked. It's all right, Doctor, said Captain Gannington, laughing gently. You can give him a tonic when we get back. I'm going to shift this stuff. He drew back and kicked for a second time at the ugly mass which he'd taken to hide the companion way the result of his kick was startling for the whole thing wobbled sloppily like a mound of unhealthy looking jelly he drew his foot out of it quickly took a step backward

staring and holding his lamp towards it by gum he said and it was plain that he was generally startled the blessed thing's gone soft well the man had run back several steps from the suddenly flaccid and looking horribly frightened though of what I'm sure you have not the least idea the second mate stood where he was instead for my part I know I had a most hideous uneasiness upon me the captain continued to hold his light towards the wobbling mound instead it's gone all squashy through he said there's no scuttle there there's no bally woodwork inside that lot oh what a rum smell He walked round to the after side of the strange mound to see whether there might be some signs of an opening, into the hull at the back of the great heap of mould stuff.

And then, listen, said the second mate again, in the strangest sort of voice. Captain Gallington straightened himself upright, and there succeeded a pause with the most intense quietness, in which there was not even the hum of talk from the men alongside in the boat. we all heard it a kind of dull soft thud the third somewhere in the hull under us yet so vague as to make me half a doubtful i'd heard it only that the others did so too captain gallington turned suddenly to where the man stood tell them he began but the fellow cried out something and There had come a strange intensity into his somewhat unemotional face, so the captain's glance followed his action instantly. I stared also, as you may think. It was a great mound at which the man was pointing, and I saw what he meant. From the two gables made in the mould-like stuff by Captain Gannington's boot, the purple fluid

was jetting out in a queerly regular fashion, almost as if it were being forced out by a pump. "'My word, but I stared, and even as I stared a larger jet squirted out "'and splashed as far as the man, spattering his boots and trouser legs. "'The fellow had been pretty nervous before, in a stolid, ignorant sort of way, "'and his funk had been growing steadily, but at this he simply led out a yell and turned about to run. "'He paused an instant, as if a sudden fear of the darkness that held the decks between him and the boat had taken him. He snatched at the second mate's lantern, tore it out of his hand, and plunged heavily away over the vile stretch of mould. Mr. Selvin, the second mate, said not a word. He was just

staring, staring at the strange-smelling twin streams of dull purple that were jetting out from the wobbling mound. Captain Gallington, however, roared an order to the man to come back, but the man plunged on and on across the mud. old, his feet seeming to be clogged by the stuff, as if it had suddenly grown soft. He zigzagged as he ran, the lantern swaying in wild circles as he wrenched his feet free with a constant plop, plop. And I could hear his frightened gasps even from where I stood. "'Come back with that lamp!' roared the captain again, but the man still took no notice. And Captain Gallington was silent an instant, his lips working in a quick,

in articulate fashion, as if he was stunned momentarily by the very violence of his anger at the man's insubordination. And in the silence I heard the sounds again. Thund, hunt, thought, thud, thud. Quite distinctly now, beating, it seemed suddenly to me, right down under my feet, but deep. I stared down at the mould on which I was standing, with a quick, disgusting sense of the terrible all about me. Then I looked at the captain and tried to say something without appearing frightened. I saw that he had turned again to the mould and all the anger had gone out of his face. He held out his lamp towards the mound and was listening. There was another moment of absolute silence. At least I knew that I was not conscious of any sound at all in the world, except for that

extraordinary thud, thud, thud, thud, down somewhere in the huge bulk under us. The captain shifted his feet with a sudden nervous movement, and as he lifted them, the mould went plop, plop. He looked quickly at me, trying to smile as if he were not thinking anything very much about it. What do you make of it, doctor? he said. I think, I began, but the second mate interrupted with a single word. His voice pitched a little high in a tone that made us both stare instantly at him. Look, he said and pointed at the mound. The thing was all of a slow quiver.

A strange ripple ran outward from it, along the deck, like you'd see a ripple run inshore out of a calm sea. It reached a mound a little foreside of us, which I'd supposed to be the cabin skylight, and in a moment the second mound sank nearly level with the surrounding decks, quivering flopperly in a most extraordinary fashion. The sudden quick tremor took the mould right under the second mate, and he gave out a hoarse little cry and held his arms out on each side of him to keep his balance. The tremor in the mould spread, and Captain Gannington swayed.

and spread out his feet with a sudden curse of fright the second mate jumped across to him and caught him by the wrist the boat sir he said saying the very thing that i'd lack the pluck to say for god's sake but he never finished for a tremendous hoarse scream cut off his words they hove themselves round and looked i could see without turning The man who'd run from us was standing in the waist of the ship, about a fathom from the starboard bulwarks. He was swaying from side to side and screaming in a dreadful fashion. He appeared to be trying to lift his feet, and the light from his swaying lantern showed an almost incredible sight. All about him, the mould was in active movement.

His feet had sunk out of sight. The stuff appeared to be lapping at his side. legs and abruptly his bare flesh showed the hideous stuff had rent his trouser leg away as if it were paper he gave out a simply sickening scream and with a vast effort wrenched one leg free it was partly destroyed the next instant he pitched face downward and the stuff heaped itself upon him as if it were actually alive with a dreadful surveillance severe life. It was simply infernal. The man had gone from sight. Where he had fallen was now a writhing, elongated mound, in constant and horrible increase, as the mold appeared to move towards it in strange ripples from all sides. Captain Gallington and the second mate were stone silent, in amazed and incredulous horror, but I had begun to reach towards a grotesque and terrific conclusion, both helped and hindered by my professional training. From the men in the boat alongside,

there was loud shouting, and I saw two of their faces appear suddenly above the rail. They showed clearly a moment in the light from the lamp which the man had snatched from Mr. Salvin, for, strangely enough, this lamp was standing upright and unharmed on the deck, a little way foresight of that dreadful, elongated, growing mound that still swayed and writhed, with the air, an incredible horror. The lamp rose and fell on the passing ripples of the mould, just for all the world as you will see a boat rise and fall on little swells. It's of some interest to me now, psychologically, to remember how that rising and falling lantern brought home to me more than anything the incomprehensible or dreadful strangeness of it all. The men's faces

disappeared with sudden yells, as if they'd slipped or been suddenly hurt. and there was a fresh uproar of shouting from the boat the men were calling to us to come away to come away in the same instant i felt my left boot drawn suddenly and forcibly downward with a horrible painful grip i wrenched it free with a yell of angry fear forward of us i saw the vile surface was all a move and abruptly i found myself shouting in a queer frightened voice the boat captain "'The boat! Captain!' Captain! Captain Gallington stared round at me, over his right shoulder, in a peculiar dull way, that told me he was utterly dazed with bewilderment and the incomprehensableness of it all. I took a quick, clogged, nervous step towards him, and gripped his arm, and shook it fiercely. "'The boat!' I shouted at him. "'The boat, for God's sake, tell the men to bring the boat aft.'

Then the mound must have drawn his feet down, for abruptly he bellowed fiercely with terror, his momentary apathy giving place to furious energy. His thick set, a vastly muscular body doubled and writhed with his enormous effort, and he struck out madly dropping the lantern. He tore his feet free, something ripping as he did so. The reality and necessity of the situation that come upon him brutishly real, and he was roaring to the men in the boat. Bring the boat aft.

Bring her aft! Bring her aft! The second mate and I were shouting the same thing, madly. For God's sake, be smart, lads, roared the captain, and stoop quickly for his lamp, which still burned. His feet were gripped again, and he hoveed them out, blaspheming breathlessly and leaping a yard high with his effort. Then he made a run for the side. wrenching his feet free at each step.

In the same instant, the second mate cried out something, and grabbed at the captain. "'It's got a hold of my feet! He's got a hold of my feet!' he screamed. His feet had disappeared up to his boot-tops, and Captain Gannington called him round the waist with his powerful left arm, gave a mighty heave, and the next instant had him free. But both his boot-soles had gone.

For my part, I jumped madly from foot to foot, foot to avoid the plucking of the mould and suddenly i made a run for the ship's side but before i could get there a queer gape came in the mold between us and the side at least a couple of feet wide and how deep i don't know closed up in an instant and all the mold where the cape had been vent into a sort of flurry of horrible ripplings so that i ran back from it for i did not dare to put my foot upon it When the captain was shouting at me, "'Aft, doctor, after, doctor, this way, doctor, run!' I saw then that he'd pass me

and was up on the after-raised portion of the poop. He'd had the second mate thrown like a sack, all loose and quiet over his left shoulder, for Mr. Selvan had fainted, and his long legs flopped limp and helpless against the captain's massive knees as he ran. I saw with a queer, unconscious noting of minor detail, details, how the torn soles of the second mate's boots flapped and jigged as the captain staggered

aft. Boat o'oy! Boat o'oy! shouted the captain, and then I was beside him, shouting also. The men were answering with a loud yells of encouragement, and it was plain they were working desperately to force the boat off through the thick scum about the ship. We reached the ancient, mold hid tough rail and slewed about breathlessly in the half-darkness to see what was happening. Captain Gannington had left his lantern by the big mound when he picked up the second mate, and as we stood, gasping, we discovered suddenly that all the mould between us and the light was full of movement. Yet the part on which we stood, for about six or eight feet forward of us, was still firm. Every couple of seconds we shouted to the men to hasten, and they kept on calling to us that

they would be with us in an instant. And all the time we watched the deck of that dreadful hulk, feeling, for my part, literally sick with mad suspense, and ready to jump overboard into that filthy scum all about us. Down somewhere in the huge bulk of the ship there was all the time that extraordinary dull, ponderous thud, third. Thud, thud, thud, growing ever louder. I seemed to feel the whole hull of the derelict, beginning to quiver and thrill with each dull beat.

And to me, with the grotesque and hideous suspicion of what made that noise, it was at once the most dreadful and incredible sound I'd ever heard. As we waited desperately for the boat, I scanned incessantly so much of the grey white bolt as the lamp showed. The whole of the decks seemed to be in strange movement. Forward of the lamp, I could see indistinctly the moundings of the mould, swaying and nodding hideously beyond the circle of the brightest rays. Nearer, and in full glow of the lamp,

the mound which should have indicated the skylight, was swelling steadily. There were ugly, purple vanings on it. As it swelled, it seemed to me that the vanings and motlings on it were becoming plainer, rising as though embossed upon it like you'll see the veins stand out on the body of a powerful full-blooded horse it was most extraordinary the mound that we'd supposed to cover the companionway had sunk flat with the surrounding mould i could not see that it jetted out any more of the purplish fluid a quaking movement of the mound began a way forward of the lamp and came flurrying away off towards us and at the sight of that i climbed up upon the spongy-feeling taffrail and yearled afresh for the boat. The men answered with a shout, which told me they were nearer,

but the beastly scum was so thick that it was evidently a fight to move the boat at all. Beside me, Captain Gannington was shaking the second mate furiously, and the man stirred and began to moan. The captain shook him again. We got, we got mister, he shouted. The second mate staggered out of the captain's arms and clapped suddenly, shrieking, my feet oh god my feet the captain and i lugged him off the mound and got him into a sitting position upon the taffrail where he kept up a continual moaning old him doctor said the captain and whilst i did so he ran forward a few yards and peered down over the starboard quarter-rail oh for god's say be smart lads be smart he shouted down to the men and they answered him breathless

from close at hand, yet still too far away for the boat to be any used to us on the instant. I was holding the moaning, half-unconscious officer, and staring forward along the poop-ax. The flurrying of the mould was coming aft, slowly and noiselessly, and then, suddenly, I saw something closer. Look out, Captain, I shouted, and even as I shouted, the mould near to him gave a sudden, peculiar slobber. I'd seen a ripple stealing towards him through the mould. He gave an enormous, clumsy leap and landed near to us on the sound part of the mould, but the movement followed him. He turned and faced it, swearing fiercely. All about his feet there came abruptly little gapings, which made horrid sucking moises.

"'Come back, Captain!' I yelled. "'Come back, quick!' as I shouted a ripple. As I shouted a ripple, came at his feet, lipping at them, and he stamped insanely at it, and leaped back, his boot torn half off his foot. He swore madly with pain and anger, and jumped swiftly for the taffron. Come on, doctor, over we go, he called. Then he remembered the filthy scum and hesitated, and roared out desperately to the men to hurry. I stared down also. "'The second mate,' I said. "'I'll take charge, doctor,' said Captain Gannington, "'and caught hold of Mr. Selver.

"'As he spoke, I thought I saw something between us, "'outlined against the scum. "'I leaned out over the stern and peered. "'There was something under the port-water. "'There's something down there, Caton,' I called, "'and pointed in the darkness. "'He stooped far over and stared. "'A boat, by gum, a boat!' he yelled, and began to wriggle swiftly along the taffrail,

dragging the second mate after him. I followed. "'A boat it is, sure,' he exclaimed a few moments later, and picking up the second mate clear of the rail, he hove him down into the boat, where he fell with a crash into the bottom. "'Over you go, doctor,' he yelled at me, and poured me bodily off the rail and dropped me after the officer. As he did so, I felt the whole of the ancient, spongy rail give a peculiar, sickening quiver, and begin to wobble. I fell on to the second mate, and the captain came after, almost in the same instant,

but, unfortunately, he landed clear of us onto the forethwart, which broke under his weight with a loud crack and splintering of wood. Thank God! I heard him mutter. Thank God. I guess that was a mighty near thing. to go into Hades. They struck a mash just as I got to my feet, and between us we got the second mate straightened out on one of the after-four and aft-thwart.

We shouted to the men in the boat, telling them where we were, and saw the light of their lantern shining round the starboard counter of the derelict. They called back to us to tell us they were doing their best, and then, whilst we waited, Captain Gannington struck another match, began to overhaul the boat we dropped into. She was a modern, two-bowed boat, and on the stern there was printed Cyclone Glasgow. She was in pretty fair condition, and had evidently drifted into the scum and been held by it. Captain Gallington struck several matches and went forward towards the derelict. Suddenly he called to me, I jumped over the thwarts to him.

Oh, doctor, he said, and I saw what he meant, a mass of bones up in the bows of the boat. I stooped over them and looked. There were the bones of at least three people, all mixed together in an extraordinary fashion, and quite clean and dry. I had a sudden thought concerning the bones, but I said nothing, for my thought was vague in some ways and concerned the grotesque and incredible suggestion that had come to me as to the cause of that ponderous dull, thud, thud, thud, thud, that beat on so infernally within the hull.

It was plain to hear even now that we got off the vessel herself. And all the while, you know, I had a sick, horrible mental picture of that frightful, wriggling mound aboard the Hulk. As Captain Gannington struck a final match, I saw something that sickened me, and the captain saw it in the same instant. The match went out, and he fumbled clumsily for another and struck it. We saw the thing again. we had not been mistaken.

A great lip of grey-white was protruding in over the edge of the boat. A great lapid of the mould was coming stealthily towards us, a live mass of the very hull itself. Suddenly Captain Gannington yelled out in so many words the grotesque and incredible thing I was thinking. She's alive! I had never heard such a sound of course. comprehension and terror in a man's voice the very horrified assurance of it made actual to me the

thing that before had only lurked in my subconscious mind i knew he was right i knew that the explanation my reason and my training both repelled and reached towards was the true one i wonder whether anyone can possibly understand our feelings in that moment the unmitigated horror of it and the incredibleness as the light of the match burned up fully i saw that the massive living matter coming towards us was streaked and veined with purple the vein standing out enormously distended the whole thing quivered continuously to each ponderous thud thud thud hud thud of that gargantuan organ that pulsed within the huge great white bunk the flame of the match reached the captain's fingers and there came to me to me me a little sickly whiff of burned flesh, but he seemed unconscious of any pain.

Then the flame went out in a brief sizzle, yet at the last moment I had seen an extraordinary raw look become visible upon the end of that monstrous protruding lapids. It had become dude with a hideous, purplish sweat, and with the darkness there came a sudden charnel-like stench. I heard the matchbox split in Captain Gannington's hands as he wrenched it open. Then he swore in a queer, frightened voice, for he had come to the end of his matches. He turned clumsily in the darkness, and tumbled over the nearest thwart in his eagerness to get to the stern of the boat, and I after him, for we knew that thing was coming towards us through the darkness, reaching over that piteous mingled heap of human bones all jumbled together in the boughs. We shouted madly to the men, and for answer sort of.

the bows of the boat merged dimly into view around the starboard counter of the derelict. Oh, thank God, I gasp out, but Captain Gannington roared to them to show a light. Yet this they could not do, for the lamp had just been stepped on in their desperate efforts to force the boat round to us. Quick, quick, I shouted. For God's sake, be smart, men, roared the captain. and both of us faced the darkness under the port counter, out of which we knew but could not see. The thing was coming for us.

An awe! Smart! Now! Pass me in awe! shouted the captain, and reached out his hands through the gloom towards the oncoming boat. I saw a figure stand up in the boughs and hold something out to us across the intervening yards of scum. Captain Gallington swept his hands through the darkness, and in case. encountered it. I've got it. Let go there, he said in a quick, tense voice. In the same instant the boat we were in was pressed over suddenly to starboard by some tremendous weight. Then I heard the captain shout, duck your head, doctor. Directly afterwards he swung a heavy 14-foot oar around his head and struck into the darkness. It came a sudden squelch, and he struck again with a savage grunt of fierce energy.

At the second blow the boat righted with the slow movement, and directly afterwards the other boat bumped gently into ours. Captain Gallington dropped the oar, and, springing across to the second mate, hove him up off the thwart, and pitched him with knee and arms clear in over the bows among the men. They shouted to me to follow, which I did, and he came after me, bringing the awl with him. We carried the second mate aft, and the captain shouted to him. the men to back the boat a little. Then he got her bows clear of the boat

he just left, and so headed out through the scum for the open sea. Where's Tom Harrison? Gass one of the men in the midst of his exertions. He happened to be Tom Harrison's particular chum, and Captain Gallington answered him briefly enough. Dead. Paul, don't talk.

Now, difficult as it had been to force the boat through the scum to arrest him. rescue, the difficulty to clear seemed tenfold. After some five minutes pulling, the boat seemed hardly to have moved a fathom, if so much, and quite dreadful fear took me afresh, which one of the panting men put suddenly into words. "'He's got us,' he gasped out. "'Same as poor Tom!' It was the man who'd inquired where Harrison was.

"'Shut your mouth and pull,' roared the captain. and so another few minutes passed. Abruptly, it seemed to me, that the dull, ponderous thought, thought, thought, came more plainly through the dark, and I stared intently over the stern. I sickened a little, for I could almost swear that the dark mass of the monster

was actually nearer, that it was coming nearer to us through the darkness. Captain Gallington must have had the same thought, after a brief look into the darkness, he jumped forward and began to double bank the stroke-haul. Get forward under the oars, daughter, he said to me, rather breathlessly. Get in the bows and see if you can't free to stuff a bit around the bows.

I did as he told me, and a minute later, I was in the bows of the boat, puddling the scum from side to side and trying to break out the viscid, clinging muck. A heavy, almost animal-like, smell rose off of it, and all the air seemed full of the deadening heavy smell. I shall never find worse to tell anyone on earth the whole horror of it all, the threat that seemed to hang in the very air around us, and but a little astern that incredible thing,

coming as I firmly believed nearer, and scum holding us like half-melted glue, and when it's passed in a deadly eternal fashion, and I kept staring at it. back astern into the darkness but never ceasing to puddle that filthy scum striking at it and switching it from side to side until i sweat it abruptly captain gannington sang out we're going in lads pool and i felt the boat forge your head perceptibly as they gave way with a renewed hope and energy there was soon no doubt of it for presently that hideous thud thud thud thud thud thud had grown quite dim and vague somewhere astern, and I could no longer see the derelict, for the night had come down tremendously dark, and all the sky was thick,

overset with heavy clouds. As we drew nearer and nearer to the edge of the scum, the boat moved more and more perceptibly, until suddenly we emerged with a clean, sweet, fresh sound and into the open sea. Thank God! I said aloud, and drew in the boat-hook, and made my way aft again to where Captain Gannington now sat once more at the tiller. I saw him looking anxiously up at the sky,

and across to where the lights of our vessel burned, and again he would seem to listen intently, so that I found myself listening also. What's that, Counten? I said sharply, for it seemed to me that I heard a sound far astern, something between a queer wine and a low whistling. What is that? It's wind, doctor, he said in a low voice.

I wish to God we were aboard. Then to the men. Pull, put your wraps into it, or you'll never put your teeth through good bread again. The men obeyed nobly, and we reached the vessel safely, and had the boat safely stowed before the storm came, which it did in a furious white smother out of the west. I could see it for some minutes beforehand,

tearing the sea in the gloom into a wall of phosphorescent foam, and as it came nearer, that peculiar whining, piping sound grew louder and louder, till it was like a vast steam-wistle rushing towards us. And when it did come, we got it very heavy indeed, so that the morning showed us nothing but a welter of wine, white seas with that grim derelict many a score of miles away in the smother lost as utterly as our hearts could wish to lose her when i came to examine the second mate's feet i found them in a very extraordinary

condition the souls of them had the appearance of having been partly digested i know of no other word that so exactly describes their condition and the agony the man suffered must have been dreadful. Now, concluded the doctor, that is what I call a case in point. If we could know exactly what the old vessel had originally been loaded with, and the juxtaposition of the various articles of her cargo, plus the heat in the time she'd endured,

plus one or two other only guessable quantities, we should have solved the chemistry of the life-fuss, gentlemen. Not necessarily the origin, mind you, but at least we should have taken a big step on the way. I've often regretted that gale, you know. In a way, that is, in a way. It was the most amazing discovery, but at the same time I had nothing but thankfulness to be rid of it.

The most amazing chance. I often think of the way the monster woke out of its torpor. Oh, and that scum. The dead pigs caught in it. Oh, I fancy that was a grim kind of. of a net gentleman and it caught many things it's the old doctor sighed and nodded if i could have had a bill of lading he said his eyes full of regret if it might have told me something to help but anyway he began to fill his pipe again i suppose he ended looking round at us gravely i suppose

We humans are an ungrateful lot of beggars at the best, but... Oh, what a chance! What a chance, I... I've seldom been able to resist the allurement of a bookstore, particularly one that's well supplied with rare and exotic items. Therefore, I turned in at Tormans to browse around for a few minutes. I'd come to San Francisco for one of my brief biannual visits, and had started early that idle forenoon, to an appointment with Cyprian Cinco, the sculptor.

a second or third cousin of mine, who might not seem for several years. The studio was only a block from Tolmans, and there seemed to be no especial object in reaching it ahead of time. Cyprian had offered to show me his collection of recent sculptures, but remembering the smooth mediocrity of his former work, amid which there were a few banal efforts to achieve horror and grotesquery, I did not anticipate anything more than an hour or two of dismal boredom. The little shop was empty of customers. Knowing my proclivities, the owner and his one assistant became tacitly non-attentive after a word of recognition, and left me to rummage at will among the curiously laden shells. Waged in between other but less alluring titles, I found a luxury

edition of Goya's proverbs, and began to turn the heavy pages and was soon engrossed in the diabolic art of these nightmare nurtured drawings. It had always been incomprehensible to me that I did not shriek aloud with mindless, overmastering terror when I happened to look up from the volume, and saw the thing that was crouching in a corner of the bookshelves before me. I could not have been more hideously startled if some hellish conception of Goya who'd suddenly come to life and emerge from one of the pictures in the folio. What I saw was a forward-slouching, vermin grey figure, wholly devoid of hair or down or bristles, but marked with faint, ittoleated rings like those of a serpent that has lived in darkness.

It possessed the head and brow of an anthropoid ape, a semi-canine mouth and jaw and arms ending in twisted hands whose black hyena talons nearly scraped the floor. The thing was infinitely bestial, and at the same time macabra, for its parchment skin had shriveled, corpse-like, moanified, in a manner impossible to convey, and from eye sockets well-nined deep as those of a skull, they glimmered evil slits of yellowish phosphorescence,

like burning sulphur, fangs that were stained as if with poison or gangrene, issued from the slavering half-open mouth, and the whole attitude of the creature was that of some maleficent monster in readiness to spring. Though I had been for years a professional writer of stories that often dealt with the cult phenomena, with the weird and the spectral,

I was not at this time possessed of any clear and settled belief regarding such phenomena. I'd never before seen anything that I could identify as a phantom, nor even an hallucination. And I should hardly have said offhand that a bookstore on a busy street in full summer daylight was the lightliest places to see one. But the thing before me was assuredly nothing that could ever exist among the permissible forms of a sane world. It was too horrific, too atrocious to be anything but a creation of unreality. Even as I stared across the goya, sick with half-incredulous fear, the apparition moved toward me.

I say that it moved, but its change of position was so instantaneous, so utterly without effort or visible transition, that the verb is hopelessly inadequate. The foul spectre had seemed five or six feet away, but now it was stooping directly above the volume that I held in my hands, with its loathsomely lambent eyes. peering upward at my face and a gray green slime drooling from its mouth on the broad pages at the same time I breathed an insupportable fetter like a mingling of rancid serpent stench with the moldiness of antique charnels and the fearsome reek of newly decaying carrion in a frozen timelessness that was perhaps no more than a second or two my heart appeared to suspend its beating

while I beheld the ghastly face. Gasping, I let the goyer drop with a resonant bang on the floor, and even as it fell, I saw that the vision had vanished. Tolman, a tonsured gnome with shell-rimmed goggles, rushed forward to retrieve the fallen volume, exclaiming, What is wrong, Mr. Hestain? Are you ill?

From the meticulousness with which he examined the binding in search of possible damage, I knew that his chief's solicitude was, concerning the goya. It was plain that neither he nor his clerk had seen the phantom, nor could I detect aught in their manner to indicate that they had noticed the mephitic odour that still lingered in the air like an exhalation from broken graves. And, as far as I could tell, they did not even perceive the greyish slime that still polluted the open folio. I do not remember how I managed to make my exit from the shop. My mind had become a seething blur of muddled horror, of crawling, sick revulsion from the supernatural vileness I'd beheld,

together with the direst apprehension for my own sanity and safety. I recall only that I found myself on the street above Tolman's, walking with feverish rapidity toward my cousin's studio, with a neat parcel containing the goya volume under my arm. Evidently in my effort to atone for my clumsiness, I must have bought and paid for the book by a sort of automatic impulse, without any real awareness of what I was doing. I came to the building in which was my destination, but went on around the block several times before entering. All the while I fought desperately to regain my self-control and equipoise. I remember how difficult it was to moderate the pace at which I was walking,

or refrain from breaking into a run, for it seemed to me that I was fleeing all the time from an invisible pursuer. I tried to argue with myself. to convince the rational part of my mind that the apparition had been the product of some evanescent trick of light and shade, for a temporary dimming of eyesight. But such sophistries were useless, for I'd seen the gargoylish terror all too distinctly in an unforgettable fullness of grisly detail. What could the thing mean? I'd never used narcotic drugs or abused alcohol.

My nerves, as far as I knew, were in sound condition. But either I'd suffered a visual hallucination that might mark the beginning of some obscure cerebral disorder, or had been visited by a spectral phenomenon, by something from the realms and dimensions that are past the normal scope of human perception. It was a problem either for the alienist or the occultist. Though I was still damnably upset, I contrived to regain a nominal composure of my faculties. Also, it occurred to me that the unimaginative portrait busts and tale,

namely symbolic figure groups of Cyprian and Sincall might serve admirably to soothe my shaken nerves. Even his grotesques would seem sane and ordinary by comparison with the blasphemous gargall that had drool before me in the bookshop. I entered the studio building and climbed a worn stairway to the second floor, where Cyprian had established himself in a somewhat capacious suite of rooms. As I went up the stairs, I had the peculiar feeling that somebody was climbing them just ahead of me. but I could neither see nor hear anyone, and the hall above was no less silent and empty than the stairs. Cyprian was in his atelier when I knocked. After an interval which seemed unduly long, I heard him call out, telling me to enter.

I found him wiping his hands on an old cloth and surmise that he'd been modelling. A sheet of light burlap had been thrown over what was plainly and ambitious but unfinished group of figures, which occupied the centre of the long room. All around were other sculptures in clay, bronze, marble, and even the terracotta and stetite, which he sometimes employed for his less conventional conceptions. At one end of the room there stood a heavy Chinese scream. At a single glance I realised that a great change had occurred, both in Cyprian Sincol and his work. I remembered him as an amiable, somewhat flabby-looking youth, always dappily dressed with no trace of the dreamer or visionary.

It was hard to recognise him now, for he had become lean, harsh vehement, with an air of pride and penetration that was almost luciferian. His unkempt mane of hair was already shot with white, and his eyes were electrically brilliant with a strange knowledge, and yet somehow they were vaguely furtive, as if they dwelt behind them a morbid and macabre of fear. The change in his sculptures was no less striking. The respectable tameness and polished mediocrity would be. gone and in their place, incredibly, was something little short of genius. More unbelievable still,

in view of the laboriously ordinary grotesques of his earlier phase, was the trend that his art had now taken. All around me were frenetic, murderous demons, satire's mad with nymphilepsy, ghouls that seemed to sniff the odors of the charnel, lamias voluptuously coiled about their victims, and less nameable things that belong to the outland realms of evil myth and malign superstition. Sin, horror, blasphemy, diablery, the lust and malish of pandemonium, all had been caught with impeccable art. The potent nightmarishness of these creations was not calculated to reassure my trembling nerves, and all at once I felt an imperative desire to escape from the studio to flee from the baleful throng of frozen caco-demons and chiseled

chimeras. My expression must have betrayed my feelings to some extent. Pretty strong work, can't they? said Cyprian in a loud, vibrant voice with a note of harsh pride and triumph. I can see that you're surprised. You didn't look for anything of the sword, I dare say. No, candidly I didn't, I admitted. Good Lord, man. You will become the Michelangelo of Diabolism if you go on at this rate. Where on earth do you get it? You get it. such stuff. Yes, I've gone pretty far, said Cyprian, seeming to disregard my question. Further even the new thing, probably.

If you could know what I know, could see what I have seen, you might make something really worthwhile out of your weird fiction, Philip. You were very clever and imaginative, of course, but you've never had any experience. Well, I was startled and puzzled. Experience. And what do you mean? Precisely that. You try to depict the occult and the supernatural

without even the most rudimentary first-hand knowledge of them. I tried to do something of the same sort in sculpture years ago, without knowledge, and doubtless you recall the mediocre mess that I made of it, but I've learned a thing or two since then. Sounds as if you made the traditional bond with the devil, or something of the sort, I observed with a feeble and perfunctory levity. Cyprian's eyes narrowed slightly with a strange, secret look. I know what I know, never mind how or what.

The world in which we live isn't the only world, and some of the others lie closer at hand than you think. The boundaries of the scene and the unseen are sometimes interchangeable. Recalling the malevolent phantom, I felt a peculiar disquietude as I listened to his words. An hour before his statement would have impressed me as mere theorizing, but now it assumed an ominous and terrifying significance. What makes you think I have no experience of the occult? I asked. Your stories hardly show anything of the kind, anything factual or personal. They are all palpably made up. When you've argued with a ghost or watched the ghouls of mealtime or fought with an incubus or suckled a vampire, you may achieve some genuine characterization. and colour along such lines.

For reasons that should be fairly obvious, I had not intended to tell anyone of the unbelievable thing at Tolman's, now with a singular mixture of emotions, of compulsive, eerie terrors, and desire to refute the animadversions of Cyprian, I found myself describing the phantom. He listened with an inexpressive look, as if his thoughts were occupied with other matters than my story.

then when I'd finished well you're becoming more psychic than I imagine was your apparition anything like one of these with the last words he lifted the sheet of burlap from the muffled group of figures beside which he'd been standing I cried out involuntarily with the shock of that appalling revelation and almost tottered as I stepped back before me in a monstrous semicircle were seven creatures who might all have been modeled from the gar-girl that had confirmed fronted me across the folio of Goya drawings. Even in several it was still amorphasing incomplete. Cyprian had conveyed with a damnable art the peculiar mingling of primal bestiality and notary putrescence that had signalled the phantom. The seven monsters had closed in on a cowering, naked girl, and were all clutching foully toward her with their hyena claws. The stark, frantic, insane terror on the face of the girl,

and the slavering hunger of her assailants were alike unbearable. The group was a masterpiece, in its consummate power of technique, but a masterpiece that inspired loathing rather than admiration. And following my recent experience, the sight of it affected me with indescribable alarm. It seemed to me that I'd gone astray from the normal, familiar world into a land of detestable mystery, of prodigious and unnatural menace.

Helped by an abhorrent fascination, it was hard for me to wrench my eyes away from the figurepiece. At last, I turned from it to Cyprian himself. He was regarding me with a cryptic air, beneath which I suspected a covert gloating. How do you like my little pets? He inquires. I'm going to call the composition of the Hunters from Beyond.

Before I could answer, a woman suddenly appeared from behind the Chinese screen. I saw that she was the model for the girl in the unfinished group. Evidently, she'd been dressing, and she was now ready to leave, for she wore a tailored suit and a smart talk. She was beautiful, in a dark, semi-Latin fashion, but her mouth was sullen and reluctant, and her wide liquid eyes were wells of strange terror, as she gazed at Cyprian, myself and the uncovered statue piece. Cyprian did not introduce me.

He and the girl talked together in low tones for a minute or two, and I was unable to overhear more than half of what they said. I gathered, however, that an appointment was being made for the next sitting. There was a pleading, frightened tone in the girl's voice, together with an almost maternal concern, and Cyprian seemed to be arguing with her or trying to reassure her about something. At last she went out, with a clear, supplicative glance at me. A glance who was meaning I could only surmise and could not wholly fathom.

That was martyr, said Cyprian. She's half Irish, half Italian. Good model, but my new sculpture seemed to be making her a little nervous. He laughed abruptly with a mirthless, jarring note that was like the casination of a sorcerer. Oh, in God's name! What are you trying to do? Here, my burst downs. What does it all mean?

Do such abominations really exist on earth or in any hell? He laughed once again, with an evil subtlety and became evasive all at once. Anything may exist in a boundless universe with multiple dimensions. Anything may be real or unreal. Who knows? It's not for me to say. Figure it out for yourself, if you can. There's a vast field for speculation, and perhaps.

more than speculation. With this he began immediately to talk of other topics. Baffled, mystified with a solely troubled mind and nerves that were more unstrung than ever by the black enigma of it all, I ceased to question him. Simultaneously, my desire to leave the studio became almost overwhelming, a mindless whirlwind panic that prompted me to run pell-mell from the room and down the stairs into the wholesome normality of the common 20th century streets. It seemed to me that the rays which fell through the skylight

were not those of the sun, but of some darker orb, that the room was touched with unclean webs of shadow where shadow should not have been, that the stone satans, the bronze lamies, the terracocctor setters, and the clay gargoles had somehow increased in number, and might spring to malignant life at any instant. hardly knowing what I said, I continued to converse for a while with Cyprian, then excusing myself on the score of a non-existent luncheon appointment, and promising vaguely to return for another visit before my departure to the city, I took my leave. I was surprised to find my cousin's model in the lower hall at the foot of the stairway. From her manner and her first words,

it was plain that she had been waiting. You're Mr. Philip Hastine, aren't you? She said, an eager, agitated voice. I'm Marta Fitzgerald. Cyprian's often mentioned you, and I believe he admires you a lot. Maybe I think I'm crazy, she went on, but I had to speak to you. I can't stand the way that things are going here, and I had refused to come to the place anymore if it wasn't that I like Cyprian so much. I don't know what he's done, but he's altogether different from what he used to be.

His new work is so horrible. You can't imagine how it friends me. The sculptures he does are more hideous, more hellish all the time. Those drooling dead-gray monsters in that new group of his. I can hardly bear to be in the studio with them. It isn't right for anyone to depict such things. Don't you think they're awful, Mr. Hastane? They look as if they broke loose from hell,

make you think that hell can't be very far away. It is wrong and wicked for anyone to even imagine them. And I wish that Cyprian would stop. I'm afraid that something will happen to him, something terrible, to his mind if he goes on, and I'll go mad too if I have to see those monsters many more times. My God, no one could keep saying in that studio. She paused and appeared to hesitate. Then, can't you do something, Mr. Hastane?

Can't you talk with him and tell him how to be. wrong it is and how dangerous to his mental health. You must have a lot of influence with Cyprian. I mean, you are his cousin, aren't you? Oh, and he thinks you are very clever, too. I wouldn't ask you if I hadn't been forced to notice so many things that aren't as they should be. I wouldn't bother you either if I knew anyone else to ask. He shut himself up in that awful studio for the past year, and he hardly ever sees anybody. You're the first person he's invited to see his new sculptures. He wants them to be a complete surprise, for the critics in the public when he holds his next exhibition.

You'll speak to Cyprian, won't you, Mr. Stain? I can't do anything to stop him. He seems to exult in the mad horrors he creates, and he merely laughs at me when I try to tell him the danger. However, if, well, I think that those things are making him a little nervous sometimes, that he's grown afraid of his own morbid imagination. Perhaps he'll listen to you. Well, if I'd needed anything more to one nurse,

me the desperate pleading of the girl and her dark obscurely baffled hintings would have been enough i could see that she loved cyprian that she was frantically anxious concerning him and hysterically afraid otherwise she would not have approached an utter stranger in this fashion but i haven't any influence with cyprian i protested feeling a queer embarrassment and what am i to say to mine his new sculptures are magnificent I've never seen anything more powerful of the kind. And how could I advise him to stop doing them? There would be no legitimate reason. He would simply laugh me out of the studio.

An artist has the right to choose his own subject matter, even if he takes it from the nether pits of limbo and erebys. Well, the girl must have pleaded and argued with me for many minutes in that deserted hall. Listening to her and trying to convince her of my inability to fulfill her request was like a dialogue in some futile and tea. tedious nightmare. During the course of it, she told me a few details that I am unwilling to record in this narrative, details that were too morbid and too shocking for relief, regarding

the mental alteration of Cyprian and his new subject matter and method of work. They were direct and oblique hints of a growing perversion, but somehow it seemed that much more was being held back that even in her most horrifying disclosure she was not wholly frank with me. At last, with some sort of hazy promise that I would speak to Cyprian, that I'd remonstrate with him, I succeeded in getting away from her and returned to my hotel. The afternoon and evening that followed were tinged as by the tyrannous adumbration of an ill dream. I felt that I'd stepped from the solid earth into a gulf of seething, menacing, madness, haunted

shadow, and was lost henceforward to all rightful sense of location or direction. It was all too hideous and too doubtful and unreal. The change in Cyprian himself was no less bewildering and hardly less horrifying than the vile phantom of the bookshop and the demon sculptures that displayed a magisterial art. It was as if the man had become possessed by some satanic energy or entity. Everywhere that I went I was powerless to shake off the feeling of an intangible pursuit of a frightful, unseen vigilance.

It seemed to me that the worm-gray face and sulphurous eyes would reappear at any moment, that the semi-canine mouth with its gangrene dripping fangs might come to slavre above the restaurant table at which I ate, or upon the pillow of my bed. I did not dare reopen the purchase goyer volume, for fear of finding that certain pages were still defiled with a spectral slime. I went out and spent the evening cafes, theatres, wherever people thronged and the lights were bright. It was after midnight when I finally ventured to brave with the solitude of my hotel bedroom. Then there were the endless hours of nerve-run insomnia, of shivering, sweating apprehension beneath the electric bulb that I had left burning.

Finally, a little before dawn, by no conscious transition and with no premonitory drowsiness, I fell asleep. I remember no dreams, only the vast, incubus-like oppression that persisted even in the depth of slumber. as if to drag me down with its formless, ever-clinging weight into gulfs beyond the reach of created flight, or the fathoming of organized entity. It was almost noon when I awoke, and found myself staring into the verminous, apish, mummy-dead face and hell-illumined eyes of the gar-girl that had crouched before me in the corner of Tollments. The thing was standing at the foot of my bed, and behind it, as I stared,

the wall over the room which was covered with a floral paper dissolved in an infinite vista of greyness, teeming with ghoulish forms that emerge like monstrous misshapen bubbles from plains of algalant ooze and skies of serpenting vapour. It was another world, and my very sense of equilibrium was disturbed by an evil vertigo as I gazed. It seemed to me that my bed was heaving dizzily, was turning slowly, deliriously, toward the gazed. golf, that the feculent vista and the vile apparition were swimming beneath me, that I would fall toward them in another moment and be precipitated forever into that world of abysmal monstrosity and obscenity. In a start of profound alarm, I fought my vertigo, fought the sense that

another will than mine was drawing me, that the unclean gargoy was luring me by some unspeakable mesmeric spell, as a serpent is said to lure its prey. I seemed to turn to. I seemed to to read a nameless purpose in its yellow-slitted eyes, in the soundless moving of its oozy lips. And my very soul recoiled with nausea and revulsion as I breathed its pestilential fetal. Apparently, the mere effort of mental resistance was enough. The vista and the face receded. They went out in a swirl of daylight. I saw the design of tea-roses on the wallpaper beyond,

and the bed beneath me was sanely hot. horizontal once more. I lay sweating with my terror, all adrift on a nightmare surmise of unearthly threat and whirlpool madness, till the ringing of the telephone bell record me automatically to the known world. I sprang to answer the call. It was Cyprian, though. I should hardly have recognised the dead, hopeless tones of his voice, from which the mad pride and self-assurance of the previous day had wholly vanished. I must see you at once, he said. He said. said, can you come to the studio? I was about to refuse, to tell him that I'd been called home suddenly,

that there was no time that I must catch the noon train, anything to avert the ordeal of another visit to that place of Methodic hell, when I heard his voice again. You simply must come, Philip. I can tell you about it over the phone. The dreadful thing has happened. Martyr has disappeared. I consented, telling him.

him that I would start for the studio as soon as I had dressed. The whole nightmare had closed in, had deepened immeasurably with his last words. But remembering the haunted face of the girl, her hysteric fears, her frantic plea, and my vague promise I could not very well decline to go. I dressed and went out with my mind in a turmoil of abominable conjection, of ghastly doubt and apprehension all the more hideous because I was unsure of its subject. I tried to imagine what had happened, tried to piece together the frightful, evasive, half-admitted hints of an unmoan terror into a tangible, coherent fabric, but found myself involved in a chaos of shadowy menace. I couldn't have eaten any breakfast, even if I'd taken the necessary time.

I went at once to the studio and found Cyprian standing aimlessly amid his baleful statuary. His look was that of a man who'd been stunned by the blow of some crushing weapon, or was gazed on the very face of Medusa. He greeted me in a vacant manner with dull, toneless words. Then, like a charge machine, as if his body, rather than his mind, were speaking, he began at once to pour forth the atrocious narrative. They took her, he said, simply. Maybe you didn't know it or weren't sure of it,

but I've been doing all my new sculptures from life, even that last group. Marder was posing for me this forenoon, only an hour ago or less. I'd hoped to finish her part of the model in today, and she wouldn't have had to come again for this particular piece. I hadn't called the things this time, since I knew she was beginning to fear them more or more. Oh, I think she feared them on my account more than her own. They were making me a little uneasy, too, by the boldness with which they sometimes lingered when I'd ordered them to leave. and the way they would sometimes appear when I didn't want them to.

I was busy with some final touches on the girl figure, and wasn't even looking at Marta, when suddenly I knew the things were there. The smell told me. If nothing else, I guess, you know what that smell is like. I looked up and found the studio was for them. They'd never before appeared in such numbers. While they were surrounding, Marta,

they were crowding and jostling each other, were all reaching toward her with their filthy talents. But even then, I do think they could harm her. Well, they are material beings in the sense that we are, and they really have no physical power outside their own plane. All that they do have is, well, a sort of snaky mesmerism. They'll always try to drag you down to their own dimension by means of it. God help anyone who yields to him, but you don't have to go unless you're weak or willing.

I've never had any doubt of my power to resist them, and I didn't really dream they could do anything to martyr. It startled me, though, when I saw the whole crowd in Halpack, and I ordered them to go pretty sharply. I was angry, somewhat alarmed, too, but they merely grimaced and slavoured with that slow, twisting movement of their lips that's like a voiceless gibbering,

and then they closed in on martyr. Oh, just as I represented them doing in that accursive group of sculpture. Only there were scores of them now, instead of merely seven. I can't describe how it happened, but all at once their foul talons had reached the girl. They were pouring her, but pulling her hands or arms, her body. She screamed, and I hope I'll never hear another scream so full of black agony and soul unhinged in fright.

Then I knew that she'd yielded to them, either by choice or from excessive terror. and I knew that they were taking her away. For a moment the studio wasn't there at all, only a long, grey ooze in plain, beneath skies that were the fumes of hell, writhing like a million ghostly and distorted dragons. Mada was sinking into that ooze, and the things were all about her,

gathering in fresh hundreds from every side, fighting each other for place, sinking with her like bloated, misshaped fang creatures into their native slime. And then, Everything vanished, and I was standing here in the studio all alone with these damn sculptures. He paused for a little, and then stared with dreary, desolate eyes at the floor. And then?

It was awful, Philip, and I'll never forgive myself for having anything to do with those monsters. I must have been a little mad, but I've always had a strong ambition to create some real stuff in the field of the grotesque and visionary and macabre. I don't suppose you ever suspected back in my stodgy face that I had a veritable appotence for such things. I wanted to do in sculpture what Poland Lovecraft and Baudelaire done in literature, what Robson Goya did in pictorial art. And this was what led me into the occult. When I realized my limitations, I knew that I had to see the dwellers of the invisible worlds before I could depict them.

I wanted to do it. I long for this power of vision and representation more than anything else. And then, all at once, I found that I had the power of summoning the unseen. There was no magic involved, in the usual sense of the word, spells and circles, no pentacles, and burning gums from old sorcery books. The bottom was just willpower, I guess, a will to divine the satanic, to summon the innumerable malignites and grotesqueries of people

from other planes and ours or mingled unperceived with humanity. You have no idea what I have beheld, Philip. These statues of mine, these devils, vampires, lamias, the satirs, were all done from life, or at least from recent memory. The originals are what the occultists would call elementals, I suppose. There are endless worlds, contiguous to our own, or coexisting with it, that such beings inhabit. All the creations of myth and fantasy,

all the familiar spirits that sorcerers have evoked, are resident in these worlds. I made myself their master. I levied upon them at will. Then, from a dimension that must be a little lower than all others, a little nearer the ultimate nadir of hell, I called the ennominate beings who pose for this new figure piece. I don't know who they are,

but I have surmised a good deal. They are hateful as the worms of the pit. They are malevolent as harpies. They drew with a poisonous hunger, not to be named or imagined. But I believe they were powerless to do anything outside their own sphere, and I've always laughed at them when they try to entice me, even though that snakeish metal pull-of-thairs was rather creepier times. It was as if soft, invisible, gelatinous arms were trying to drag you down from the

firm shore into a bottomless bark. Oh, they are hunters, I am sure of that, hunters from beyond. God knows what they'll do to Mata, now they have her with their mercy. Oh, that vast, viscid, myasma haunted place to which they took her is awful beyond the imagining of Satan. Perhaps even there, they couldn't harm her body, but bodies aren't what they want. It isn't for human flesh that they grope with those ghoulish claws and gape and sliver with those gangrenous mouths. The brain itself and the soul too is their food. They are the creatures who prey on the minds of madmen and madwomen, who devour the disembodied spirits that have fallen from the cycles of incarnation, have gone down beyond the possibility of rebirth. Oh, to think of martyr in their

power. It is worse than hell or madness. Martyr love me. I loved her to too, though I didn't have the sense to realize it, wrapped as I was in my dark, baleful ambition and impious egotism. She was afraid for me, and I believe she surrendered voluntarily to the things. She must have thought they'd leave me alone if they secured another victim in my place. He ceased, and began to pace idly and feverishly about. I saw that his hollow eyes were alight with torment, as if the mechanical telling of this horrible story had in some manner served to re-quicken his crush might. Utterly and starkly appalled by his hideous

revelations, I could say nothing, but could only stand and watch his torture-twisted face. Incredibly, his expression changed, with a wild startled look that was instantly transfigured into joy. Turning to follow his gaze, I saw that Marta was standing in the center of the room. She was nude, apart from a Spanish shore that she must have warned. while posing. Her face was bloodless as the marble of a tomb, and her eyes were wide and blank as if she'd been drained of all life, of all thought or emotional memory,

as if even the knowledge of horror had been taken away from her. It was the face of the living dead, and the soulless mask of ultimate idiocy, and the joy faded from Cyprian's eyes as he stepped toward her. He took her in his arms, He spoke to her with a desperate loving tenderness, with cajoling and caressing words. She made no answer, however, no movement of recognition or awareness, but stare beyond him with a blank eyes, to which the daylight and the darkness,

the void air and her lover's face would henceforward be the same. He and I both knew in that instant that she would never again respond to any human voice or to human love or terror, that she was like an empty ceremony, retaining the outward form of that which the worms have eaten in their mausolean darkness, of the noisome pits, wherein she'd been of that bornless realm and its pollulating phantoms. She could tell us nothing. Her agony had ended with the terrible mercy of complete forgetfulness.

Like one who confronts the gorgon, I was frozen by her wine. and sightless gaze. Then, behind her, where stood an array of carved satans and lamias, the room seemed to recede. The walls and floors dissolved into a seething, unfathomable gulf, amid whose pestilential vapors the statues were mingled in momentary and loathsome ambiguity with the ravening faces, the hunger-contorted forms that swirled toward us from their ultra-dimensional limbo, like a devil-laden hurricane from the malibulch.

Outlined against that boiling, measurer's cauldron of a malignant storm, Martyr stood like an image of glacial death and silence in the arms of Cyprian. Then, once more, after a little, the abhorrent vision faded, leaving only the diabolic statuary. I like to think that I alone beheld it, that Cyprian had seen nothing. but the dead face of martyr. He drew her close. He repeated his hopeless words of tenderness and cajolery, and then, suddenly, he released her with a vehement sob of despair. Turning away, while she stood and still looked on with unseeing eyes, he snatched a heavy sculptor's

mallet from the table on which it was lying, and proceeded to smash with furious blows the newly model group of gargoyles, till nothing was left but the figure of the Terra Madden Girl, crouching above a mass of cloddish fragments of formless, half-dried clay. A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove. On the opposite side, the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories,

there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kid the Pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be kept, that no one was at hand while the remarkable trees form good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship, but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill-gotten. Be that as it may, a kid never returned to recover his wealth, being shortly after seized

at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate. About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself. They were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay her hands on, she hid away. A hen could not cackle before she was on the alert. secure the new laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hordes, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that still alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savantries, emblems of sterility grew near it. No smoke ever curled from its chimney. No traveller

stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding stone, tantalized and balked its hunger.

And sometimes he would lean his face over the fence, look piteously at the passerby, and seemed to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name, Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue and strong of arm.

Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband, and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper cloyed. I'd the den of discord of scouts, and hurried on his way, rejoicing if a bachelor in his celibacy one day that tom walker had been to a distant part of the neighborhood he took what he considered a shortcut homewards through the swamp like most shortcuts it was an ill-chosen route the swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks

some of them 90 feet high which made it dark at noon day and a retreat for all the hours of the the neighborhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud. There were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bullfrog and the water snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned. Half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire. Tom had been picking his way, cautiously through the treacherous forest, stepping from tough to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholes among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the

prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bitter or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground which ran out like a peninsula, into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they'd thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which

formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp. It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Anyone but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholic place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian Wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of that kind.

He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toed, and delving with his walking staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould and, lo, a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk-buried deep in it lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold

of the Indian warriors. "'Humph!' said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it. "'Let that skull alone,' said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man. seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard anyone approach, and he was still more perplexed on observing as well as the gathering gloom would permit that the stranger was neither Negro nor Indian.

It is true he was dressed in a rude half-Indian garb and had a red belt or sash swathed around his body, but his face was neither black nor copper-colour, but rather swarthy and dinty. and begrime with soot as if he'd been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair that stood out from his head in all directions and bore an axe on his shoulder. He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes. "'What are you doing on my grounds?' said the black man with a hoarse, growling voice. "'Your grounds,' said Tom, with a tall, with his ground. said Tom with his. near. No more your grounds than mine. They belong to Deacon Peabody. Deacon Peabody. Be dead,

said the stranger. As I flatter myself he will be if he does not look more to his own sins unless to his neighbours. Look yonder and see how Deacon Peabody is fairing. Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without but rotten at the core, and saw that he had been nearly hewned through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe.

The one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of crowning shields, and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he'd acquired by buccaneering. He's just ready for burning, said the black man with a growl of triumph. You see, I'm likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter. But what right have you, said Tom, to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber. the right of prior claim said the other this woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon this soil and pray who are you if i may be so bold said to him oh i go by various names i'm the wild huntsman in some countries the black miner in others in this neighborhood i am known by the name of the black woodsman

I am he to whom the Red Men devoted this pardon, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet smell and sacrifice. Since the Red Men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists. I am the great patron, prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches. The upshadow of all which is that, if I mistake not, said Tom sturdily, you are he commonly called Old Scratch. The same at your service, replied the black man, with a half-civil nod. Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited.

one would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild lonely place would have shaken any man's nerves but tom was a hard-minded fellow not easily daunted and he lived so long with a termagant wife that he did not even fear the devil it is said that after this commencement they had a long and earnest conversation together as tom returned homewards the black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by kill the pirate, under the oak trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them, but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived in his special kindness

for him, but they were only to be had on certain conditions. What these conditions were may easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them published them publicly. It must have been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they'd reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger paused. What proof have I that all you've been telling me is true? asked Tom. There is my signature, said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and so on,

until he totally disappeared. When Tom reached home, he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate. The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of Absalom, crowning shield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the usual flourish that a great man had fallen in Israel. Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just tuned down and which was ready for burning. Let the free Buddha roast, said Tom. Who cares? He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion. He was not prone to let his wife into

his confidence, but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife, so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction. many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject but the more she talked the more resolute was tom not to be damned to please her at length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account and if she succeeded to keep all the gain to herself being of the same fearless temper as her husband she set off the old indian fort towards the close of a summer's day she was many hours absent But when she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her replies.

She spoke something of a black man whom she'd met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms. She was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was she forbore to say. The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain.

Midnight came, but she did not make her appearance. Morning, noon, night returned, but she still did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety, especially as he found she carried off in her apron silver teapot and spoons and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came. but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more. What was her real fate? Nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It's one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled

mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or sloth. Others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty and made off to some other province, while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it was said a great black man with an axe on his shoulder was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron with an air of surly triumph. The most current and probable story, however, observed that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon

he searched about the gloomy place but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly but she was nowhere to be heard. The Bittern alone responded to his voice as he flew screaming by while the bullfrog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. Well, he leaped with joy for he recognized his wife's apron and supposed it to contain the household valuables.

Let us get hold of the property, said he, consolingly to himself, and we will endeavor to do without the woman. As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings and sailed off, screaming into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check apron butt, woeful sight, found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it. Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She'd probably attempted to deal with a black man as she'd been accustomed to dealing with her husband, but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game, however, for it is said Tom noticed many people.

the prince of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handfuls of hair, that looked as if it had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wise prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper gloring. "'Eagre!' he said to himself. "'Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it.' Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude towards the black woodsman who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought therefore to cultivate

a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success. The old black legs played shy for whatever people may think he's not always to be had for calling for. He knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game. At length, it is said, when Delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advance with great indifference,

made brief replies, and went on humming his tune. By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours, but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service.

He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black. traffic, that is to say that he would fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused. He was bad enough in all conscience, but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave dealer. Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn Huzura, the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of Huzurus, looking upon them as his peculiar.

peculiar people. To this, no objections were made, for it was just a Tom's taste. You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month, said the black man. I'll do it tomorrow, if you wish, said Tom Walker. You shall lend money at two percent a month. You can get, I'll charge four, replied Tom Walker. You shall extort bonds, for a closed mortgage, drive the merchant to bankruptcy. I'll drive him to the... cried Tom Walker eagerly. You are the azure for my money,

said the blacklegs with delight. So when will you want the rile? This very night. Duh, said the devil. Duh, said Tom Walker. So they shook hands. and struck a bargain. A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting house in Boston.

His reputation for a ready-moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been delus with government bills. The famous land bank had been established. established, there had been a rage for speculating. The people had run mad with schemes for new settlements, for building cities in the wilderness. Land-jobbers went about with maps of grants,

townships and El Doradoes, lying nobody knew where but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever, which breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes nothing as usual the fever had subsided the dream had gone off and the imaginary fortunes with it the patients were left in doleful plight and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of hard times at this propitious time of public distress did tom walker set up as an usura in boston his door was soon thronged by customers the needy and the adventurous the gambling speculator, the dreaming land jobber, the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with crack credit.

In short, everyone driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker. Thus, Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a friend in need. That is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length dry as a sponge from his door. In this way he made money hand over hand, became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony.

He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it. And as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle-trees, he would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing. As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought, with regret, on the bargain he'd made with his black friend,

and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church-goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously, as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he'd sinned most during the week, by the glamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians, who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters.

He was a stern supervisor and censor of his neighbours, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account, became a credit on his own side of the painting. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom Zeal became as notorious as his riches. Still, in spite of all his strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat-pocket.

It had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk that would frequently be found reading it when people called on business. On such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book to mark the place while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain. Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching he had his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost, because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down, in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting,

and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old-wife's fable. If he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous, At least so says the authentic old legend which closes his story in the following manner. On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thunder gust was coming up, Tom Sadden his counting house in his white linen cap and India's silk morning gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land job had begged him to grudge.

a few months indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated and refused another day. My family will be ruined and brought upon the parish, said the Lange-over. Charity begins at home, replied Tom. I must take care of myself in these hard times. You've made so much money out of me, said the speculator. Tom lost his patience and his piety. "'Let the devil take me,' said he, "'if I have made a farthing.' Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there.

A black man was holding a black horse which neighed and stamped with impatience. "'Tom, you're a calm for,' said the black fellow gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late, he had left, his little Bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big Bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose. Never was a sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse, and away he galloped in the midst of a thunderstorm. The clerk stuck their pens behind their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets. His white cap was. His white cap was. He was a little bit of

bobbing up and down, his morning gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerk's turn to look for the black man, he had disappeared. Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp reported that, in the height of the thunder-gust, he'd heard a great clattering of hooves and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window, he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp towards

the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction which seemed to have set the whole forest in a blaze. The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's events. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of golden silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings. Two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was

burnt to the ground. Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-god and wealth. Let all griping money brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees from whence he dug kids' money is to be seen to this day, and the neighbouring swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in store. story nights by a figure on horseback in a morning gown and white cap which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the azure in fact the story has resolved itself into a proverb and is the origin of that popular saying prevalent throughout new england of the devil and tom walker between the sun's departure and return the silver death had fallen upon yoros its advent however

have been told in many prophecies, both immemorial and recent. Astrologers had said that this mysterious malady, heretofore unknown on earth, would descend from the great star, Akhenar, which presided balefully over all the lands of the southern continent of Zothiq, and having sealed the flesh of a myriad men with its bright metallic pallor, the plague would still go onward in time and space, born by the dim currents of ether to other words. worlds. Dyer was the silver death, and no one knew the secret of its contagion or the cure.

Swift is the desert wind. It came into Yoros from the devastated realm of Tarsoon, overtaking the very messengers who ran by night to give warning of its nearness. Those who were smitten felt an icy, freezing cold, an instant rigor as if the outermost golf had breathed upon them. Their faces and bodies whitened strangely, gleaming with a wan luster, and became stiff as long-dead corpses, all in the interim of minutes. In the streets of Silpon and Siloah, and in Farad, the capital of Yoros, the plague passed like an eerie, glittering light from countenance to countenance under the golden lamps, and the victims fell where they were stricken, and the deathly brightness remained upon them. The loud, tumultuous public, and the loud, tumultuous public,

The public carnivores were stifled by its passing, and the merry-makers were frozen in frolic attitudes. In proud mansions, the wine-flushed revellers grew pale amid their garish feasts, and reclined in their opulent chairs, still holding the half-empty cups with rigid fingers. Merchants lay in their counting-houses on the heaped coins they'd begun to reckon, and thieves, entering later, were unable to depart with their booty. Diggers died in the half-completed graves they dug for others, but no one came to dispute their possession.

There was no time to flee from the strange inevitable scourge. Dreadfully and quickly, beneath the clear stars, it breathed upon Yoros, and few were they who awakened from slumber at dawn. Fulbara, the young king of Yoros, who had but newly succeeded to the throne, was virtually a ruler without a people. Fulborough had spent the night of the plague's advent on a high tower of his palace above Farad, an observatory tower equipped with astronomical appliances.

A great heaviness had lain on his heart, and his thoughts were dulled with an opiate despair, but sleep was remote from his eyelids. He knew the many predictions that foretold the silver death, and moreover he'd read its imminent coming in the stars, with the aid of the old astrologer and sorcerer of M.D. His latter knowledge he and Vemdes had not cared to promulgate, knowing full well that the doom of Yoros was a thing decreed from all time by infinite destiny, and that no man could evade the doom, unless it were written that he should die in another way than this. Now Vemdes had cast the horoscope of Fulberra, and though he found therein certain ambiguities that his science could not resolve, it was nevertheless written plainly that the king would not do. die in Yoros. Where he would die and in what manner were alike doubtful. But Vemdes, who had served

Altaf, the father of Fulbrah, and was no less devoted to the new ruler, had wrought by means of his magical art, an enchanted ring that would protect Fulbara from the silver death in all times and places. The ring was made of a strange red metal, darker than ruddy gold or copper, and was set with a black and oblong gem, not known to terrestrial. own lepidaries, that gave forth eternally strong aromatic perfume. The sorcerer told Fulbra never to remove the ring from the middle finger on which he wore it, not even in lands afar from Yoros, and in days after the passing of the silver death. For if once the plague had breathed upon Fulbara, he would bear its subtle contagion always in his flesh, and the contagion would

assume its wanted virulence with the ring's removal. But Vemdes did not. not tell the origin of the red metal and the dark gem, nor the price at which the protective magic had been purchased. With a sad heart, Fulborough had accepted the ring and had worn it, and so it was that the silver death blew over him in the night and harmed him not. But waiting anxiously on the High Tower, and watching the golden lights of Farad rather than the white, implacable stars, he felt a light passing chillness that belonged not to the summer air. and even as it passed the gay noises of the city ceased and the moaning lutes faltered strangely and expired the stillness crept on the carnival and some of the lamps went out and were not re-lit in the palace beneath him there was also silence and he heard no more the laughter of his courtiers and chamberlains and vemdes came not as was his custom to join fulgher on the tower at midnight

So Fulber knew himself for a realmless king, and the grief that he still felt for the noble altar was swollen by a great sorrow for his perished people. Hour by hour he sat motionless, too sorrowful for tears. The stars changed above him, and Akhna glared down perpetually like the bright, cruel eye of a mocking demon, and the heavy balsam of the black jeweled ring arose to his nostrils and seemed to stifle him. And once the thought occurred to Fulbrough, to cast the ring away and die as his people had died,

but his despair was too heavy upon him for even this. And so, at length, the dawn came slowly in heavens as pale as the silver death, and found him still on the tower. In the dawn King Fulbara rose and descended the coiled stairs of the Poffery into his palace, and midway on the stairs, who saw the fallen corpse of the old sorcerer of Vemdes, who had died even as he climbed to join his master. The wrinkled face of Vemdes was like polished metal

and was whiter than his beard and hair. His open eyes, which had been dark as sapphires, were frosted with the play. Then, grieving greatly for the death of Vemdes, whom he had loved, as a foster-father, the king went slowly on. and in the suites and hares below he found the bodies of his courtiers and servants and guardsmen and none remained alive excepting three slaves who warded the green brazen portals of the lower vaults far beneath the palace now fulborough bethought him of the council of vemdes who had urged him to flee from yoros and to seek shelter in the southern isle of cintram which paid tribute to the kings of yoros and though he had no heart for this nor for

any course of action, Fulber obeyed the three remaining slave to gather food and such other supplies as were necessary for a voyage of some length, and to carry them aboard a royal barge of ebony that was moored at the palace porticoes on the river Vum. Then, embarking with the slaves, he took the helm of the barge and directed the slaves to unfurl the broad amber sail, and passed the stately city of Farah, whose streets were thronged with the silvery dead. They sailed on the widening Jasper estuary of the Valmer and into the amorant-coloured gulf of the Induscian Sea. A favourable wind was behind them, blowing from the north over the desolate Tassoon and Yoros, even as the silver death had blown in the night.

And idly beside them, on the voom, there floated seaward many vessels whose crews and captains had all died of the plague, and Farad was still as a necropolis of old time. and nothing stirred on the estuary shores, excepting the plummy, fan-shaped and palms that swayed southward in the freshening wind. And soon the green strand of Yoros receded, gathering to itself the blueness and the dreams of distance. Creaming with a whiny foam, full of strange murmurous voices and vague tales of exotic things, the halcyon sea was about the voyages now, beneath the high-lifting summer sun. But the sea's enchanted voices, and its long, languorous, immeasurable crailing could not soothe the sorrow of Fulbara,

and in his heart a despair abided, black as the gem that was set in the ring of Vam-D's. Albeit he held the great helm of the Ebon barge, and steered as straightly as he could by the sun towards Cintram. The amber sail was taught with the favouring wind, and the barge sped onward all that day, cleaving the Amaranth waters with its dark prow, that reared in the carved form of an ebony goddess. And when the night came, with a familiar austral stars, Fulborough was able to correct such errors as he'd made in reckoning the course.

For many days they flew southward, and the sun lowered a little in its circling behind them, and new stars climbed and clustered at evening about the black goddess of the prow. And Fulbara, who had once sailed to the Isle of Simper, in his boyhood days with his father Alta, thought to see here along the lifting of its shores of camphor and sandalwood from the whiny deep. But in his heart there was no gladness, and often now he was blinded by wild tears, remembering that other voyage with Alta. Then, suddenly,

and at high noon there fell an airless cabin and the waters became as purple glass about the barge. The sky changed to a dome of beaten copper, arc in close and low, and as if by some evil wizardry, the dome darkened with untimely night, and a tempest rose like the gathered breath of mighty devils, and shaped the sea into vast ridges and abysmal valleys. The mast of ebony snapped like a reed in the wind, and the sail was torn asunder, and the helpless vessel pitched headlong into the dark troughs, and was hurled upward through veils of blinding foam to the giddy summits of the billows. Fulbara clung to the useless helm,

and the slaves, at his command, took shelter in the forward cabin. For countless hours they were borne onward at the will of the mad hurricane, and Fulber could see naught in the lowering gloom, except the pale crests of the beetling waves, and he could no longer tell the direction of their course. then in that lurid dusk he beheld at intervals another vessel that rode the storm-driven sea not far from the barge he thought that the vessel was a galley such as might be used by merchants that voyaged among the southern isles trading for incense and plumes and vermilion but its oars were

mostly broken and the topple mast and sail hung forward on the prow for a time the ships drove on together till Fulber saw, in a rifting of the gloom, the sharp and sombre crags of an unknown shore, with sharper towers that lifted palely above them. He could not turn the helm, and the barge and its companion vessel were carried toward the looming rocks, till Fulbera thought that they would crash thereon. But, as if by some enchantment, even as it had risen, the sea fell abruptly in a windless calm, and quiet sunlight poured from a clearing sky, and the barge was left on a broad crescent of ochre yellow sand

between the crags and the lulling waters, with the galley beside it. Dazed and marvelling, Fulber leaned on the helm, while his slaves crept timidly forth from the cabin, and men began to appear on the decks of the galley. And the king was about to hail these men, some of whom were dressed as humble sailors

and others in the fashion of rich merchants, but he heard a laughter of strange voices, high and shrill and somehow evil, that seemed to fall from above. And looking up he saw that many people were descending a sort of stairway in the cliffs that enclosed the beach. The people drew near, thronging about the barge in the galley. They wore fantastic turbans of blood red and were clad in closely fitting robes of vulturing black. Their faces and hands were yellow as saffron. Their small and slaty eyes were set obliquely beneath lashless lids, and their thin lips, which smiled eternally, were crooked, crooked as the blades of scimiters.

They bore sinister and wicked-looking weapons, in the form of sore-toothed swords and double-headed spears. Some of them bowed low before Fulbara, and addressed him obsequiously, staring upon him all the while with an unblinking gaze that he could not fathom. their speech was no less alien than their aspect it was full of sharp and hissing sounds and neither the king nor his slaves could comprehend it but forborough bespoke the court cautiously in the mild and mellow flowing tongue of yoros and inspired the name of his land whereon the barge had been cast by the tempers certain of the people seemed to understand him for a light came in their slaty eyes at his question and one of them answered bro brokenly in the language of yours, saying that the land was the Isle of Ucostrog. Then, with something of a covert evil in his smile, this person added that all shipwreck mariners and seafarers would receive a goodly welcome from Ildrack, the king of the Isle. But this, the heart of Fulbara sank within him, for he had heard numerous tales of Ucostroch

in bygone years, and the tales were not such as would reassure a stranded traveller. Rookostroch, which lay far to the east of Sintram, was known commonly as the Isle of the Torturers. The men said that all who landed upon it unaware, all were cast tither by the seas, were imprisoned by the inhabitants and were subjected later to unending curious tortures, whose infliction formed the chief delight of these cruel beings. No man, it was rumoured, had ever escaped from Rukestrog. but many had lingered for years in its dungeons and hellish torture chambers kept alive for the pleasure of King Ildrach and his followers. Also it was believed that the torturers were great magicians who could raise mighty storms with their enchantments

and could cause vessels to be carried far from the maritime routes and then fling them ashore upon Ucestr. Seeing that the yellow people were all about the barge and that no escape was possible, fullborough asked them to take him at once before king ildrach so ildrach he would announce his name and royal rank and it seemed to him in his simplicity that one king even though cruel-hearted would scarcely torture another or keep him captive also it might be that the inhabitants of ucostrog had been somewhat maligned by the tales of travellers so fulber and his slaves were surrounded by certain of the throng and were led toward the palace of ilrach whose high sharp sharpnesses were towers crowned the crags beyond the beach rising above those clustered abodes in which the island people dwelt and while they were climbing the hewn steps in the cliff fulber heard a loud outcry below and a clashing of steel against steel and looking back he saw that the crew of the stranded galley had drawn their swords and were fighting the islanders but they were outnumbered greatly and their resistance was borne down by the swarming tortuers and most of them were

taken alive and Fulber's heart misgave him sorely at this sight and more and more did he mistrust the yellow people soon he came into the presence of Ildrach who sat on a lofty brazen chair in a vast hall of the palace il Drac was taller by half ahead than any of his followers and his features were like a mask of evil route from some pale gilded metal and he was clad in vestments of a strange hue like sea-purple brightened with fresh flowing blood. About him were many guardsmen, armed with terrible scythe-like weapons, and the sullen, slant-eyed gals of the palace, in skirts of vermilion and breast-cups of lazuli,

went to and fro among huge basaltic columns. About the hall stood numerous ingeniries of wood and stone and metal, such as Fulbera had never beheld, and having a formidable aspect with their heavy chains, their beds of iron teeth and their cords and their pulleys of fish skin the young king of yoros went forward with a royal and fearless bearing and addressed ilrack who sat motionless and eyed him with a level unwinking gaze and fulberr told ildrak his name and station and the calamity that had caused him to flee from yoros and he mentioned also his urgent desire to reach the isle of cintram it is a long voyage to cintram said Ildrach with a subtle smile. Also, it is not our custom to permit guests to depart without fully having tasted the hospitality of the Isle of Ucustrog.

Therefore, King Fulber, I must beg you to curb your impatience. We have much to show you here and many diversions to offer. My chamberlains will now conduct you to a room befitting your royal rank. But first I must ask you to leave with me the sword, you carry it to your side for swords are often sharp and i do not wish my guest to suffer injury by their own hands so fulberus sword was taken from him by one of the palace guards and a small ruby-hilted dagger that he carried was also removed then several of the guards hemming him in with their scyth weapons led him from the hall and by many corridors and downward flights of stairs

into the soft rock beneath the palace. And he knew not whether his three slaves were taken or what disposition was made of the captured crew of the galley. And soon he passed from the daylight into cavernous halls illumined by sulphur-coloured flames in copper crescents. And all around him, in hidden chambers, he heard the sound of dismal moans and loud maniacal howlings

that seemed to beat and die upon adamantine dolls. In one of these halls, Fulborough and his guardsman met a young girl, fairer and less southern of aspect than the others. And Fulber thought that the girl smiled upon him compassionately as he went by, and it seemed that she murmured faintly in the language of Yoros. Take heart, King Fulbrough, for there is one who would help you. And the words were, apparently, not heeded or understood by the guards, who knew only the harsh and hissing tongue of Uchastrol.

After descending many stairs, they came to a ponderous door of bronze, and the door was unlocked by one of the guards, and Fulber was compelled to enter, and the door clanged dolorously behind him. The chamber into which he had been thrust was walled on three sides with the dark stone of the island, and was walled on the fourth with heavy, unbreakable glass. Beyond the glass he saw the blue-green, glimmering waters of the undersea, lit by the hanging crescents of the the chamber, and in the waters were great devil-fish whose tentacles writhed along the wall, and huge pythonomorphs with fabulous golden coils receding in the gloom, and the floating corpses of men that stared in upon him with eyeballs from which the lids had been

excised. There was a couch in one corner of the dungeon, close to the wall of glass, and food and drink had been supplied for full-boring vessels of wood. The king laid himself down, weary and hopeless, without tasting the food, and then, lying with close-shut eyes, while the dead men and sea-monsters peered in upon him by the glare of the cressids, he strove to forget his griefs, and the dolorous doom that impended. Through his clouding terror and sorrow, he seemed to see the comely face of the girl who'd smiled upon him with compassion, and who, alone of all he'd met in Ucostrog, had spoken to him with words of kindness. the face returned ever and anon with a soft haunting a gentle sorcery and fulber felt for the first time in many suns the dim stirring of his buried youth and the vague obscure desire of life

so after a while he slept and the face of the girl came still before him in his dreams the cressets burned above him with undiminished flames when he awakened and the sea beyond the wall of glass was thronged and the sea beyond the wall of glass was thronged and the crescent and the crescent was thronged and the crescent, with the same monsters as before, or with others of like kind. But amid the floating corpses he now beheld the flayed bodies of his own slaves, who, after being tortured by the island people, had been cast forth into the submarine cavern that adjoined his dungeon, so that he might see them on awakening. He sickened with new horror at the sight, but even as he stared at the dead faces,

the door of bronze swung open with a sullen grinding, and his guards entered. Seeing that he'd not consumed the food and water provided for him, they forced him to eat and drink a little, menacing him with their broad crooked blades till he complied. And then they led him from the dungeon and took him before King Ildrach in the great hall of torches.

Fulbrass saw by the level golden light through the palace windows and the long shadows of the columns and machines of torment, that the time was early dawn. The hall was crowded with the torturers and their women, and many seemed to look on while others, of both sexes, busied themselves with ominous preparations. And Fulber saw that a tall, brazen statue, with crawl and demonian visage, like some implacable god of the underworld, was now standing at the right hand of Ildrack where he sat aloft on his

brazen chair. Fulber was thrust forward by his guards, and Ildrack greeted him briefly with a wily smile that preceded the words and lingered after them and when Ildrek had spoken the brazen image also began to speak addressing Fulbray in the language of Yoros with strident and metallic tones and telling him with full and minute circumstance the various infernal tortures to which he was to be subjected on that day when the statue had done speaking Fulbrough heard a soft whisper in his ear and saw beside him the fair girl whom he'd previously met in nether corridors, in netherc, it, and saw beside him the fair girl whom he had previously

met in the nether corridors, and the girl, seemingly unheeded by the torturers, said to him, Be courageous, and endure bravely all that is inflicted, for I shall affect your release before another day, if this be possible. Fulber was cheered by the girl's assurance, and it seemed to him that she was fairer to look upon them before. and he thought that her eyes regarded him tenderly, and the twin desires of love and life were strangely resurrected in his heart to fortify him against the torches of Ildra.

Of that which was done to Fulbara, for the wicked pleasure of King Ildrack and his people, it were not well to speak fully. For the islanders of Ucostrog had designed innumerable torments, curious and subtle, wherewith to harry and extricate the five-sense and they would harry the brain itself, driving it to extremes more terrible than madness,

and could take away the dearest treasures of memory and leave unutterable foulness in their planks. On that day, however, they did not torture Fulgher to the uttermost, but they racked his ears with cacophonous sounds, with evil flutes that chilled the blood and curdled it upon his heart, with deep drums that seemed to ache in all of his tissues, and thin taboas that wrenched his own. very bones. They then compelled him to breathe the mounting fumes of braziers wherein the dry gall of dragons and the adipigree of dead cannibals were burned together with feted wood.

Then when the fire had died down, they freshened it with the oil of vampire bats and fulbrous swooned, unable to bear the fetter any longer. Later they stripped away his kingly vestments and fastened about his body a silken girdle that had been freshly dipped in acid corrosive only to human flesh, and the acid ate slowly, fretting his skin with infinite pangs. Then, after removing the girdle lest it slay him, the torch was brought in certain creatures that had the shape of e-long serpents, but were covered from head to table with sable hairs like those of a caterpillar. And these creatures twined themselves tightly about the arms and legs of Fulbara, and though he fought wild,

loudly in his revulsion he could not loosen them with his hands and the hairs that covered their constringent coils began to pierce his limbs like a million tiny needles till he screamed with agony and when his breath failed him and he could no longer scream the baby serpents were induced to relinquish their hold by a languorous piping of which the islanders knew the secret they dropped away and left him but the mark of their coils was imprinted readily about his limbs and around his body they burned the raw branding of the girdle. King Ildrack and his people looked on with a dreadful gloating, for in such things they took their joy,

and strove to pacify an implacable obscure desire. But seeing now that Fulborough could endure no more, and wishing to wreak their will upon him for many future days, they took him back to his dungeon. lying sick with remembered horror feverish with pain he longed not for the clemency of death but hoped for the coming of the girl to release him as she had promised the long hours passed with a half delirious tedium and the crescents whose flames had been changed to crimson appeared to fill his eyes with flowing blood and the dead man and the seamansters swam as if in blood beyond the wall of glass and the girl came not, and Fulbera had begun to despair. Then, at last, he heard the door open gently, and not with the harsh clangor that had proclaimed the entrance of his guards. Turning, he saw

the girl who stole swiftly to his couch with a lifted fingertip, in joining silence. She told him with soft whispers that her plan had failed, but surely on the following night she would be able to drug the guards and obtain the keys to the outer gates, and Fulbera could escape from the palace to a hidden cove in which a boat with water and provisions lay ready for his use. She prayed him to endure for another day the torments of Ildrach, and to this, perforce, he consented, and he thought that the girl loved him for. Tenderly she caressed his feverish, and rubbed his torturous burning limbs with a soothing ointment. He deemed that her eyes, was soft with a compassion that was more than pity.

And so Fulber believed the girl entrusted her and took heart against the horror of the coming day. Her name, it seemed, was Ilvar, and her mother was a woman of Yoros who had married one of the evil islanders, choosing this repugnant union as an alternative to the flaying knives of Ildrack. Too soon the girl went away,

pleading the great danger of discovery and closed the door softly upon full. and after a while the king slept and Ilvar returned to him amid the delirious abominations of his dreams and sustained him against the terror of strange helms at dawn the guards came with their hooked weapons and led him again before Ildrach and again the brazen demonic statue in a strident voice announced the fearful ordeals that he was to undergo and this time he saw the other captives including the crew and merchants of the galley, were also awaiting the malefic ministrations of the torturers in the vast hall.

Once more in the throng of watchers, the girl Ilvar pressed close to him, unreprimounded by his guards and murmured words of comfort, so that Fulber was inheartened against the enormities foretold by the brazen oracular image, and indeed a bold and hopeful heart was required to endure the ordeals of that day. Among other things less goodly to be mentioned, the torturers held before Fulbara a mirror of strange wizardry, wherein his own face was reflected as if seen after death. The rigid features, as he gazed upon them, became marked with the green and bluish marbling

of corruption, and the withering flesh fell in on the sharp bones and displayed the visible fretting of the world. Hearing meanwhile the Dolores groans and agonizing cries of his fellow captives all about the hall. He beheld other faces, dead, swollen, lidless, and flayed, that seemed to reproach him from behind and to throng about his own face in the mirror. Their looks were dank and dripping, like the hair of corpses recovered from the sea, and seaweed was mingled within the locks. Then, turning at a cold and clammy touch, he found that these faces were no illusion by the actual reflection of cadavers drawn from under sea by a maligned sorcery that had entered the hall of Ildrack like living men and were peering over his shoulder.

His own slaves, with flesh that the seethings had gnawn even to the bone, were among them, and the slaves came toward him with glaring eyes that saw only the voidness of death. And beneath the sorceress control of Ildrach, their evilly animated corpses began to assail full, clawing at his face and raiment with half-eaten fingers. And Fulbra faint with loathing, struggled against his dead slaves, who knew not the voice of their master, and were as deaf as the wheels and racks of torment used by Ildrach. Anon the drowned and dripping corpses went away, and Fulber was stripped by the tortures and was laid supine on the palace floor, with iron rings that bound him closely to the flags at knee and wrist,

at elbow and ankle. Then they brought in the disinterred body of a woman, nearly eaten, in which a myriad maggots swarmed on the uncovered bones and tatters of dark corruption, and this body they placed on the right hand of Fulbrough, and also they fetched the carrion of a black goat that was nearly touched with beginning decay, and they laid it beside him on the left hand.

Then, across Fulber, from right to left, the hungry maggots crawled in a long and undulent wave. After the consummation of this torture, there came many others that were equally ingenious and atrocious, and were well designed for the delectation of King Ildrach and his people, and Fulber endured the tortures valiantly, upheld by the thought of Ilver. Vainly, however, on the night that followed this day, he waited in his dungeon for the girl.

The Cresets burned with a bloodier crimson, a new corpses were among the flayed and floating debt in the sea cavern, and strange double-bodied serpents on the nether deep arose with an endless squirming, and their horned heads appeared to bloat immeasurably against the crystal wall. And yet the girl Ilva came not to free him as she promised, and the night passed. But though despair resumed its old dominion in the heart of Fulbara, and terror came with Tallon steeped in fresh venom, he refused to doubt Ilvar, telling himself that she had been delayed or prevented by some unforeseen mishard. At the dawn of the third day, he was again

taken before Ilra. The brazen image, announcing the ordeals of the day, told him that he was to be bound on a wheel of adamant, and, lying on the wheel was to drink a drugged wine that would steal away his royal memories forever, and would conduct his naked soul in a long pilgrimage through monstrous and infamous hells, before bringing it back to the hall of Ildrack and the broken body on the wheel. Then certain women of the torturers, laughing obscenely, came forward and bound King Fulber to the adamantine wheel with thongs of dragon-guards, and after they'd done this, the girl Ilva, smiling with the shameless exultation of open cruelty, appeared before Fulbara and stood close beside him,

holding a golden cup that contained the drugged wife. She mocked him for his folly and credulity in trusting her promises, and the other women and the male torturers, even to Ildrack on his brazen seats, laughed loudly and evilly at Fulbara, and praised Ilva for the perfidy she'd practised upon him. So Fulbrah's heart grew sick with a darker despair than any, he had yet known. The brief, piteous love that had been born amid sorrow and agony perished within him,

leaving but ashes steeped in gall. And yet gazing at Ilver with sad eyes, he uttered no word of reproach. He wished to live no longer, and yearning for a swift death, he bethought him of the wizard ring of Vemdes, and of that which Vemdes had said would follow its removal from his finger. he still wore the ring, which the torturers had deemed a bauble of small value, but his hands were bound tightly to the wheel, and he could not remove it. So, with a bitter cunning, knowing full well that the islanders would not take away the ring if he should offer it to them, he feigned a sudden madness and cried wildly. Steal my memories, if you will, with your accursed wine, and send me through a thousand

hells and bring me back again to Uckostrog. But take not the ring which I wear on my middle finger, for it is more precious to me than many kingdoms or the pale breasts of love. Well, hearing this, King Ildrack rose from his brazen seats, and bidding Ilvar to delay the administration of the wine. He came forward and inspected curiously the ring of Vemdes, which gleamed darkly, set with its rayless gem on Fulbrus finger. and all the while Fulbera cried out against him in a frenzy as if fearing that he would take the ring.

So Ildrack, deeming that he could plague the prisoner thereby and could heighten his suffering a little, did the very thing for which Fulbara had planned. And the ring came easily from the shrunken finger, and Ildrach, wishing to mock the royal captive, placed it on his own middle digit. it. Then, while Ildrack regarded the captive with a more deeply graven smile of evil on the pale, gilded mask of his face, there came to King Fulbera of Euras, the dreadful and long forething.

The silver death. That had slept so long in his body beneath the magical abeyance of the ring of Vemdes, was made manifest even as he hung on the Adamantine wheel. His limbs stiffened with another rigor than that of agony, and his face shone brightly with the coming of the death, and so he died. Then, to Ilvar and to many of the torturers who stood wondering about the wheel, the chill and instant contagion of the silver death was communicated. They fell even where they'd stood, and the pestilence remained like a glittering light on the faces and the hands of the men, and shone forth from the nude bodies of the women.

and the plague passed along the immense hall. And the other captives of King Ildrach were released thereby from their various torments, and the torturous found to cease from the dire longing that they could assuage only through the pain of their fellow men. And through all the palace, and throughout the isle of Ucustra, the death fell swiftly, visible in those upon whom it had breathed,

but otherwise unseen and impalpable. But Illra, wearing the ring of Vemdes was immune and guessing not the reason for his immunity he beheld with consternation the doom that had overtaken his followers and watched in stupefaction the freeing of his victims then fearful of some inimic sorcery he rushed from the hall and standing in the early sun on the palace terrace above the sea he tore the ring of Vemdes from his finger and hurled it to the foamy billows far below dimming in his terrace that the ring was perhaps the source or agent of the unknown hostile magic and so il drach in his turn when all the others had fallen was smitten by the silver death and its peace descended upon him where he lay in his robes of blood bright and purple with features shining pale to the unclouded sun and oblivion claimed the isle of a castron and the torturers were one with the torture it was a dark

starless night. We were be calmed in the northern Pacific. Our exact position, I did not know, for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mast-heads, at whilst descending and shrouding the surrounding sea. With there being no wind, we'd steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, was sleeping forward in their den, while Will, my friend, and the master of our little craft, was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin. Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail.

Scooner, ahoy! The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer because, of my surprise. It came again, a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our poor broadside. Schooner, ahoy! Hello? I sung out, having gathered my wits somewhat. What are you? What do you want? Oh, you need not be afraid, answered the queer voice,

having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. I am only an old man. The poor sounded odd, but it was only afterward that the... came back to me with any significance. Why don't you come alongside, then? I queried somewhat snappishly, for I like not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken. I can't.

It wouldn't be safe. The voice broke off, and then there was silence. What do you mean? I asked, growing more and more astonished. What's not safe? Where are you? I listened for a moment, but there came no answer, and then a sudden indefinite suspicion of I knew not what coming to me I stepped swiftly to the binnacle and took out the lighted lamp at the same time I knocked on the deck with my heel to waken well then I was back at the side throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail as I did so I heard a slight muffled cry and then the sound of a splash as though someone had dipped oars abrupt

yet I cannot say with certainty that I saw anything well say if it seemed to me that with the first flash of the light there had been something upon the waters where now there was nothing hello there I called what foolery is this but there came only the indistinct sounds of a boat being pulled away into the night then I heard Will's voice from the direction of the after scuttle what's up George "'Come here, Will,' I said. "'What is it?' he asked, coming across the deck. I told him the queer thing that had happened. He put several questions. And then, after a moment's silence, he raised his hands to his lips and hailed. "'Boat, ahoy!'

From a long distance away they came back to us a faint reply, and my companion repeated his call. Presently, after a short period of silence, there grew on our hearing. hearing the muffled sound of oars, at which Will hailed again. This time there was a reply. Put away the light. Damned if I will, I muttered, but Will told me to do as the voice bade, and I shoved it down under the bulwarks.

Come nearer, he said, and the oar strokes continued. Then, when apparently some half-dozen fathoms distance, they again ceased. "'Come alongside,' exclaimed Will. "'There's nothing to be frightened of a board here.' "'Promise that you will not show the light.' "'What's to do with you?' I burst out. "'That you're so infernally afraid of the light.' "'Because?' began the voice, and stopped short.

"'Because what?' I asked quickly. "'Will put his hand on my shoulder. "'Shut up a minute, old man,' he said in a low voice. "'Let me tackle it. him. He leaned more over the rail. See here, mister, he said. This is a pretty queer business and you coming upon us like this, right out in the middle of the Blessed Pacific. How are we to know what sort of a hanky-panky trick you're up to? You say there's only one of you. How are we to know unless we get a squint of

you, eh? What's your objection to the light, anyway? As he finished, I heard the noise of the oars again, and then the voice came, but now from a great... to distance and sounding extremely hopeless and pathetic. I'm sorry, sorry, I would not have troubled you, only I'm hungry, so is she. The voice died away, and the sound of the oars, dipping irregularly, was born to us. Stop! sang out, Will. I don't want to drive you away.

Come back. We'll keep the light hidden if you don't like it. You turn to me. It's a damn queer rig this. But I think there's nothing to be afraid of. There was a question in his tone, and I replied. No, I think the poor devil's been wrecked around here and gone crazy. The sound of the oars drew nearer.

Shove that lamp back in the binnacle, said well. Then he leaned over the rail and listened. I replaced the lamp and came back to his side. The dipping of the oars ceased some dozen yards distant. "'Won't you come alongside now?' asked Will in an even voice. "'I've had the lamp put back in the binnacle.' "'I—I cannot,' replied the voice. "'I dare not come nearer. I dare not even pay you the—well, for the provisions.'

"'That's all right,' said Will, and hesitated. "'You're welcome to as much grub as you can take.' Again, he hesitated. "'Oh, you are very good,' exclaimed the voice. "'May God who understands everything reward you.' It broke off huskily. "'The, um, the lady,' said Will abruptly. "'Is she here?'

"'Oh, I have left her behind upon the island,' came the voice. "'What island?' I cut in. "'Oh, I know not its name,' returned the voice. "'I would to God it.' It began and then checked itself just as suddenly. Could we not send a boat for her? asked Will at this point. No, said the voice with extraordinary emphasis.

My God, no. There was a moment's pause. Then it added in a tone which seemed a merited reproach. It was because of how want I ventured, because her agony tortured me. I am a forgetful brute, explained Will. Just wait a me. minute, whoever you are, and I will bring you up something at once.

In a couple of minutes he was back again, and his arms were full of various edibles. He paused at the rail. Can't you come alongside for them? he asked. No, I dare not, replied the voice, and it seemed to me that in its tones I detected a note of stifled craving, as though the owner hushed a mortal desire. It came to me then in a flash that the poor old creature. out there in the darkness was suffering for actual need for that which Will held in his arms, and yet because of some unintelligible dread, refraining from dashing to the side of our schooner

and receiving it. And with the lightning-like conviction, there came the knowledge that the invisible was not mad, but samely facing some intolerable horror. "'Damn it, Will,' I said, full of many feelings over which predominated of vast sympathy, "'Get a box. "'Look, we must float off some stuff to him in it.' "'This we did, "'propelling it away from the vessel "'out into the darkness by means of a boat-hook.

"'In a minute a slight cry from the invisible came to us, "'and we knew that he'd secured the box. "'A little later he called out a farewell to us, "'and so heartful a blessing that I'm sure we were the better for it. "'And then, without more ado, We heard the ply of oars across the darkness. Pretty soon off, remarked Will, with perhaps just a little sense of injury. Wait, I replied. I think somehow he'll come back.

He must have been badly needing that food. And the lady? said Will, for a moment he was silent, and then he continued. It's the queerest thing I have tumbled across since I'd been fishing. Yes, I said. and fell to pondering. So the time slipped away. An hour, another, and still Will stayed with me, for the queer adventure had knocked all desire of asleep out of him.

The third hour was three parts through when we heard again the sound of oars across the silent ocean. Listen, said Will, a low note of excitement in his voice. He's coming, just as I thought, I muttered. dipping of the oars drew nearer, and I noticed that the strokes were firmer and longer. The food had been needed. They came to a stop a little distance off the broadside, and the queer voice came again to us through the darkness.

"'Skooner! Ahoy! Is that you?' asked Will. "'Yes,' replied the voice. "'I left you suddenly, but—' "'Oh, there was a great need.' "'The lady?' question will the lady is grateful now on earth she'll be more grateful soon in heaven will began to make

some reply in a puzzled voice but became confused and broke off short i said nothing i was wondering at the curious pauses and apart from my wonder i was full of a great sympathy the voice continued we she and i have talked as we shared the result of God's tenderness and yours, willing to pose but without great coherence. I beg of you not to to belittle your deed of Christian charity this night, said the voice. Be sure that it has not escaped his notice. It stopped and there was a full minute's silence. Then it came again. We have spoken together about this, which has befallen us. we had thought to go out without telling anyone of the terror which has come into our lives she's with me in believing that tonight's happenings are under a special ruling and that it's god's wish that we should tell you all that we have suffered since oh since yes said will softly oh since the sink and of the albatross oh i exclaimed involuntarily she left new kind of for Frisco some six months ago and hasn't been heard of since yes said the voice but some

few degrees to the north of the line she was caught in a terrible storm and dismasted when the day came it was found she was leaking badly and presently it fall into a calm the sailors took to the boats leaving leaving a young lady my fiance and myself upon the rank we were below gathering together a few of our belongings when they left. They were entirely callous, through fear, and when we came upon the decks, we saw them only as small shapes so far off upon the horizon. Yet we did not despair, but set to work and constructed a small raft.

Upon this we put such few matters as it would hold, including a quantity of water in some ship's biscuit. Then the vessel, being very deep in the water, we got ourselves onto the raft. and pushed on. It was later when I observed that we seemed to be in the way of some tide or current which bore us from the ship

at an angle, so that in the course of three hours, by my watch, her hull became invisible to our sight, her broken mass remaining in view for a somewhat longer period. Then towards evening it grew misty, and so through the night. The next day we were still encompassed by the mist,

the weather remaining quiet. for four days we drifted through this strange haze until on the evening of the fourth day there grew upon our ears the murmur of breakers at a distance now gradually it became plainer and somewhat after midnight it appeared to sound upon either hand at no very great space the raft was raised upon a swell several times then we were in smooth water and the noise of the breakers was behind When the morning came we found that we were in a sort of great lagoon, but of this we noticed little at the time, for close before us, through the enshrouding mist loomed the hull of a large sailing vessel. With one accord we fell upon our knees, and thank God, for we thought that it was an end to our perils. For much we had to learn. The raft drew near to the ship, and we shouted on them to take us aboard, none answered. presently the raft touched against the side of the vessel and seeing a rope hanging downward i seized it and began to climb yet i'd much ado to make my way up because of a kind of gray lichenous fungus that seized upon the rope which blotched the side of the ship lividly reached the rail and clambered over it onto the deck here i saw that the decks were covered in great patches with gray masses some of them rising into notchal several feet in height

but at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship I shouted but none answered and I went to the door below the poop deck I opened it and peered in there was a great smell of staleness so I knew in one moment that nothing living was within and with that knowledge shut the door quickly for I felt suddenly lonely I went back to the side where it scrowled up my sweetheart was still sitting quietly upon the raft well seeing me look down she caught up to know whether there were any aboard the ship i replied that the vessel had the appearance of having been long since deserted but that if she would wait a little i'd see whether there was anything in the shape of a ladder by which she could ascend to the deck then we'd make a search through the vessel together a little later on the opposite side of the decks i found a rope-side ladder well this I carried across and a minute afterwards she was beside me together we explored the cabins and apartments in the after part of the ship but nowhere was there any sign of life here and there within the cabins themselves we came across odd patches of that queer fungus but this as my sweet art said could be cleansed away in the evening having assured ourselves that the after portion of the vessel was empty we picked our ways to the bowels between the ugly grey nodules of that strange growth, and here we made a further search, which told us that there was indeed none aboard but ourselves.

This being now beyond any doubt, we returned to the stern of the ship, and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Together we cleared out and cleaned two of the cabins, and after that I made examination whether there was anything hateable in the ship. This I soon found was so. I thank God in my heart for his goodness. In addition to this, I discovered the whereabouts of the fresh water pump, and having fixed it, I found the water drinkable,

though somewhat unpleasant to the taste. For several days we stayed aboard the ship, without attempting to get to the shore. We were busily engaged in making the place habitable. Yet even thus early we became aware that our lot was even less to be desired than might have been imagined, for though, as a first step we scraped away the odd patches of growth that studded the floors and walls of the cabins and saloon, they returned almost to their original size within the space of 24 hours,

which not only discouraged us, but gave us a feeling of vague unease. Still we would not admit ourselves beaten, so we set to work afresh and not only scraped away the fungus, but soaked the places where it had been with carbolic, a canful of which I'd found in the pantry. Yet, by the end of the week the growth had returned in full strength, and in addition, it had spread to other places, as though our touching it had allowed germs from it to travel elsewhere.

Ah, on the seventh morning, my sweet heart woke to find a small patch of it growing on her pillow, close to her face. At that, she came to me, as soon as she could get her garments upon her. I was in the galley at the time, lighting the fire for breakfast. "'Come here, John,' she said, and led me aft. When I saw the thing upon her pillow, I shuddered, and then and there we agreed to go right off the ship and see if we could not fare to make ourselves more comfortable ashore. Well, hurriedly we gathered together our few belongings, and even among those I found the fungus had been at work,

for one of her shores at a little lump of it growing near one edge. I threw the whole thing over the side without saying anything to her. The raft was still alongside, but it was too clumsy to guide and lowered down a small boat that hung across the stern, and in this we made our way to the shore. Yet, as we drew near to it, I became gradually aware that here the vile fungus which had driven us from the ship was growing riot. In places it rose into the horrible, fantastic mounds, which seemed almost a quiver, as with a quiet life when the wind blew across the sea.

Here and there it took on the forms of vast fingers, and in others it just spread out flat and smooth and treacherous. Odd places, it appeared as grotesque, stunted trees, seeming extraordinarily kinked and gnarled, the whole quaking vilely at times. At first it seemed to us that there was no single portion of the serranish shore which was not hidden beneath the masses of the hideous laken. Yet in this I found we were mistaken. For somewhat later, coasting along the shore at a little distance, we described a smooth white patch of what appeared to be fine sand, and there we landed. It wasn't sand. What it was, I do not know.

All that I have observed is that upon it the fungus will not grow. While everywhere else, save where the sand-like earth wanders oddly, pathwise amid the grey desolation of the lichen, there is nothing but loathsome greyness. it is difficult to make you understand how cheered we were to find one place that was absolutely free from the growth and here we deposited our belongings they went back to the ship for such things as it seemed to us we should need among other matters i managed to bring ashore with me one of the ship's sails which i constructed two small tents from which though exceedingly rough-shaped serve the purposes for which they were intended in these we lived and stored our various necessities, thus for a matter of some four weeks, all went smoothly and without particular unhappiness. Indeed, may I say with much happiness for, ah, for we were together. It was on the thumb of her right hand that the growth first showed. It was only a small circular spot, much like a little grey mole, but my God, how the fear

leaped to my heart when she showed me the place. We cleansed it between us, washing it with carbolibol. and water. In the morning of the following day she showed her hand to me again. The grey, watery thing had returned. For a little while we looked at one another in silence. Then, still wordless, she started to remove it. In the midst of the operation she spoke suddenly. What's that on the side of your face, dear? Her voice was sharp with anxiety. I put my hand up to feel. there under the hair by your ear a little bit to the front my finger rested upon the place and then i knew let's get your thumb-thum first i said and she submitted only because she was afraid to touch me until it was glanced i finished washing and disinfecting her thumb

and then she turned to my face after it was finished we sat together and talked a while of many things for there had come into our lives sudden very terrible thoughts we were all at once afraid of something worse than death we spoke of loading the boat with provisions and water and making our way out onto the sea yet we were helpless for many causes and and the growth that attacked us already we decided to stay god would do with us what was his will and we would wait a month two months three months passed and the places grew somewhat and there had come others yet we fought so strenuously with the fear that its headway was but slow comparatively speaking occasionally we ventured off to the ship for such stores as we needed there we found that the fungus grew persistently one of the nodules on the main deck soon became as high as my head we'd now given up all thought or hope of leaving the island we'd realize that it would be unallowable to go among healthy humans with the things from which we were suffering anyway with this determination and knowledge in our minds we knew that we should have to husband our food

and water for we did not know at that time but that we should possibly live for many years this reminds me that I've told you that I'm an old man judged by years this is not so but but he broke off then continued somewhat abruptly as I was saying we knew that we should have to use care in the matter of food but we had no idea then how little food there was left of which to take care it was a week later that I made the discovery that all the other bread tanks which I'd suppose full were empty and that beyond odd tins of vegetables and and meat and some other matters we had nothing on which to depend but the bread and the tank which I'd already opened after learning this I bestirred myself to do what I could

and set to work at fishing in the lagoon but with no success at this I was somewhat inclined to feel desperate until the thought came to me to try outside the lagoon in the open sea. Well, here at times I caught odd fish, but so infrequently that they proved to be a little help in keeping us from the hunger which are threatened. It seemed to me that our deaths were more likely to come by hunger and not by the growth of the thing that had seized upon our bodies. We were in this state of mind when the fourth month wore out. Then I made a very horrible discovery. One morning, a little before midday, I came from the ship with a portion of the biscuits which were left and in the mouth of her tent I saw my sweetheart sitting eating something what is it my dear

I called out as I leapt ashore yet on hearing my voice she seemed confused and turning slightly through something toward the edge of the little clearing it fell short and a vague suspicion having arisen within me I walked across and picked it up it was a piece of the grey fungus As I went to her with it in my hand, she turned deadly pale, then a rose wrecked. I felt strangely dazed and frightened. Oh, my dear, my dear, I said, I could say no more. Yet at my word she broke down and cried bitterly. Gradually, as she calmed, I got from her the news that she tried it the day before,

and, well, and liked it. I got her promise on her knees not to touch it again. however great our hunger. After she promised, she told me that the desire for it had come suddenly and that, until the moment of that desire, she'd experienced nothing toward it but most extreme repulsion. Later in the day, feeling strangely restless and much shaken with the thing which I'd discovered, and made my way along one of the twisted paths, formed by the white, sand-like substance which led among the fungoy growth. I had once before ventured along there, but not to any great distance. This time, being involved in perplexing thought, I went much farther than hitherto.

Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer, or sound on my left. Turning quickly, I saw that there was a movement among the extraordinary-shaped mass of fungus, close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily as though it possessed a life of its own. Abruptly, as I stared, the thought came to me that the thing had a grotesque resemblance to the figure of a distorted human creature. future. Even as the fancy flashed into my brain, there was a slight, sickening noise of tearing, and I saw that one of the branch-like arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses

and coming toward me. The head of the thing, a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction. I stood stupidly, and the vile arm brushed against my face. I gave out a frightened cry and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my mouth where the thing had touched me. I licked them and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire. I turned and seized a mass of the fungus, and then more and more. I was insatiable. In the midst of devouring the remembrance of the morning's discovery swept into my mazed brain. It was sent by God. I dashed the fragment I held to the ground then utterly wretched and feeling a dreadful guiltiness i made my way back to the little encampment i think she knew by some marvellous intuition which love must have given so soon as she set her eyes on me her

quiet sympathy made it easier for me i told her of my sudden weakness yet omitted to mention the extraordinary thing which had gone before i desired to spare her all unnecessary terror But for myself, I added an intolerable knowledge to breed an incessant terror in my brain, for I doubted not, but that I had seen the end of one of those men who had come to the island in the ship in the lagoon. And in that monstrous ending, I'd seen our own. Thereafter we kept from the abominable food, though, the desire for it had entered into our blood. Yet our drear punishment was on us, for day by day, with me. monstrous rapidity the fungoy growth took hold of our poor bodies nothing we could do would

check it materially and so and so we who'd been human became well well it matters less each day only only we had been man and made and day by day the fight is more dreadful to withstand the hunger lust for the terrible lichen a week ago we ate the last of the biscuit and since that time i've caught three fish i was out air fishing tonight when your schooner drifted upon me out of the mist god i hailed you and you know the rest and may god out of his great heart bless you for your goodness to a couple of poor outcast souls there was a dip of an awe and another. Then the voice came again, and for the last time, sounding through the slight surrounding mist, ghostly and mournful.

God bless you. Goodbye, we shouted together hoarsely, our hearts full of many emotions. I glanced about me. I became aware that the dawn was now upon us. The sun flung a stray beam across the hidden sea, pierced the mist dully and lit up the receding boat with a gloomy fire indistinctly i saw something nodding between the oars i thought of a sponge a great grey nodding sponge the oars continued to ply they were grey as was the boat and my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and awe my gaze flashed back to the head It nodded forward As the oars went backward for the stroke

Then the oars were dipped The boat shot out the patch of light And the thing Went nodding into the mist And so once again We reached the end of tonight's podcast My thanks as always to the authors Of those wonderful stories

And to you for taking the time to listen Now I'd ask one small favour of you wherever you get your podcast wrong, please write a few nice words and leave a five-star review as it really helps the podcast. That's it for this week, but I'll be back again, same time, same place,

and I do so hope you'll join me once more. Until next time, sweet dreams and bye-bye.