Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/402

390 the wicked Swede—one, two, three, four"—he slowly counted. "Yes, that's the devil's toll of that cursed gold already."

Up and down in his hands, he shook the cubes of iron and steel until they clanked like chain-links of the Evil One's own forging.

On the grey heave of the sullen sea, they rounded the Twin Horns, and swung north eastward on the starboard tack.

Through the glass they saw three figures walk from the trees by the hut, wade into the snapping breakers, arch for the long dive, go under, emerge, then inch slowly towards the pitching yacht.

Now, the drifting fog hid them from sight, and all they could see in the harbour was the ghostly tracery of her spars.

"They are lost," the girl shrieked in a voice that sounded like the cry of a doomed soul.

"What would you have," the captain answered. "It is the judgment of God."

Then, as if all Nature corroborated him, suddenly the jagged crater was brightly outlined by flames that spurted like jets of blood, followed by gorgeous streamers of yellow, and blue, and rose, that wove fantastic patterns on the sky.

Then woke the long drawn subterranean thunder again, and swell after swell drove the ship northward, while through the spars little lights threaded in and out like ropes of flame, and on the deck fell showers of mud coated with a weird phosphorescence.

And all the while, over the mountain to the south, the great balls of fire described their arcs against the pitch-black