Page:Weird Tales Volume 10 Number 2 (1927-08).djvu/75

 this immobility a sudden doubt struck home to him.

"Haynes! What's the matter? Why don't you come in? I can't go no farther," he hailed anxiously.

Then the seated man awoke to volcanic life, every muscle and sinew in„ his spare hard flesh tensed with the rigidity of a tightly wound steel spring, as he snatched at the sculls and drove the blades deep into the heavy black water, and at gathering speed urged the boat seaward! For terror, unreasoning frantic terror had taken possession of him; escape, at any price, was the sole instinct surging madly in his chaotic consciousness, and every other thought or emotion had been swept away by the terror of that awful thrumming. The cry of amazement and wrath that came from Manton went entirely unheeded, as it was, save unconsciously, unheard.

"You ain't leavin' me! are you?" boomed the great voice of Manton.

Then in a few seconds, it being obvious that such was indeed the case, his wrath flared to a white heat.

"You white-livered dog! if I had a gun I'd get you—a thing like you ain't fit to live. You"

And then his voice was drowned in the shrill screaming that suddenly broke out from the seaward. High-pitched, frantic screams of insane terror, intermingled with the crashing of wood against wood, as though someone were flailing around him with a heavy object desperately, recklessly, and unheeding where his blows might land.

Which is exactly what was happening, for Haynes, upright in the boat, was aiming viciously at a something in the darkness; a something that swooped with great wings vibrating, and filling the air with a frightful, menacing resonance.

And all the while came that ceaseless, horrible animal screaming, as of some huge rodent in the extremity of fear and anguish.

The end came as suddenly as the commencement, the frightful sound suddenly ceased, as though cut by a knife, and Manton, crouching to his chin in the still water, heard instantly the crash of a falling body, a heavy lifeless crash as of one collapsing without effort, or thought to ease the impact.

"My God! they've got him!" he exclaimed in a whisper hoarse with emotion; and as the words escaped his lips there came from the darkness an intermittent moaning and whimpering. Once, twice, thrice, it came through the stifling void, and then there was silence, not even a murmur of the hateful droning that had been fitfully audible as a diabolical accompaniment.

And as this, too, ceased, then despair gripped at the listener, and very quietly and coolly he arose and plodded deliberately shoreward muttering audibly as he went.

"Well, that's the finish, I reckon—boat gone, grub gone, stranded on this blasted rock with sure death waiting. May as well get me now as later—there's no wedding bells in this yam for me."

And so he reached again the beach, and greatly to his surprize slid into the inky shelter of the jungle unmolested.

And as he gained the shelter, nature awoke from her drugged somnolence.

A vast stirring and sighing shuddered through the heavy air, as there passed the first warning of the coming upheaval.

that night the hurricane endured, and dawn disclosed its terrific violence; the jungle lay in swaths of indescribable and splintered wreckage, an encircling barrier impassable to man or beast, yet from