Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/171

159 last of all must be when it comes, almost simultaneously with so mighty a roar that it strangely sounded not at all like artillery however gigantic, but rather the chorused hissing of legions of lost souls, raised into the most terrible of fortissimos. When it finally rolled away, in an almost equally inspiring diminuendo, they were unscathed, but the giant elm in the garden below, under which Carlotta had stood, was split as cleanly as a piece of cordwood halved by a sharp axe. The scream from the closet had passed unheard—one little note in the whole pandemonium.

The electric reading lamp had gone out, and Philip stumbled over something on the floor. The bulb brightened again. It was the picture. The worn moulding giving way, it had fallen unnoticed in the din of the tempest.

Now it lay back uppermost, and the boy saw the irregular lines of a crude chart, swiftly outlined in faded blues and yellows by a painter's brush. He held it to the lamp.

"What does it mean, this spooky ship, and the crazy chart?"

His father, apparently not hearing him at all, was abstractedly musing. But the boy, anxious for distraction, and scenting a mystery, perhaps even a hint of hidden, other-world treasure, demanded—wilfully as always:

"What is it? Shoot, guv nor."

"Oh, it's just a fool yarn, not worth repeating—the sort you can hear in any place where there are ships and drunken old sailors—and fools to listen to 'em."

"But you swallowed it yourself once, didn't you?"

"I'm not so sure about that. Anyway, the sooner one for-