Page:Weird Tales Volume 27 Number 02 (1936-02).djvu/59

 "You have chosen wisely," Captain Grandon murmured.

He rose to his feet and lighted a lantern that hung above his head. It was an odd lantern. Pearl gray and very bright. Jan Breedon gazed upon it, fascinated.

Once more Captain Grandon seated himself in his chair. "After all," he said, "there is nothing so tragic about death, as you are perhaps discovering. Now your life is ebbing out. At longest you cannot live beyond sunset. After taking that drug no man ever has done so. You have no pain. Perhaps a suggestion of coldness. Still your face is turning slightly blue, but there is no pain in that."

Captain Grandon's voice had become so rhythmical it was almost a chant. He was singing a sort of dirge, describing the slow processes of death as they crept over Jan Breedon.

Meanwhile Jan Breedon kept gazing at the swaying pearl lantern. Its light hypnotized him. It seemed to be growing larger and larger, brighter and brighter. Then the light began to fade. He was dying. He could feel the coldness of death creeping up his body. A great peace seemed to envelop him. At least death was a means of escape. Now there would be no more ghosts. Perhaps death was but a long sleep, sleep without dreams. He imagined he could feel the poison creeping stealthily through his body, eating up his blood. But there was no pain. The light of the lantern had grown dim. At last, with one last bright shaft of life, it flickered out.

At that moment Jan Breedon's heart stopped beating. It was as though some invisible thread had bound his heart-beat to that light. His head fell forward on his breast and he slumped so grotesquely that he almost fell out of his chair.

smiled. He gazed at the pearl lantern that still blazed steadily as it swayed. Then he reached across the table, took the glass of poison in his hand. Jan Breedon had drunk half of it and he had died. Now Captain Grandon drank the other half.

"Water," he murmured, "nothing but water, the elixir of life, yet to Jan Breedon it brought death, death by suggestion."

He walked across the cabin to where there was a basin of water. Carefully he washed from the center of his forehead the spot that looked like a bullet-hole. Then from his neck he washed the red stains.

"Every man," he reflected, "that kills another, kills himself as well. For him there is no escape."

When he was through washing, he went up on deck. There were no Chinamen loitering outside the cabin door; in fact there were no Chinamen on board the Banzai except Wong, the cook, and he was busy in the galley.

Captain Grandon leaned against the railing of the ship and sighed deeply. He felt strangely content, for he had avenged the death of his two brothers.