Page:Weird Tales Volume 3 Number 4 (1923-04).djvu/33

32 As I listened someone touched me on the arm. It was Guy.

"You hear it, too," he said. "What the devil is it?"

"It's two o'clock in the morning," I told him. "I understood you were tired. Why don't you go to bed instead of wandering round this place in the dead of night?"

He went away again. I heard him go through the rooms, up a few steps here, down a few steps there, and on to his room and shut the door. His footsteps sounded heavy and drear through the weird house at that stilly hour.

I dozed by the window. Suddenly I was wide awake, I looked out and saw a light at the landing pier. I watched it.

"Whoever is causing all this is getting away," I thought. "I'll follow and see what I can."

I went to Guy's room. Not a sound. At last he was asleep. So I hurried out of the house and through the dark woods and down the lane to the sandy patch of marsh and along the path to the boathouse.

As I came near the launch started. The "put-put" of its motor snapped out on the night. It moved off to the north and went out of sight around the curved shore.

I ran up the shore, and as I ran the low moaning rose and fell, and grewnearer and nearer.

Then I discovered it.

ELL to the back of the island the sea had worked in under the rocks, and as the tide rose it ran in and whirled round in a little rocky cavern with a moaning sound. When the wind was northwest, as it was that night, I figured this sound could be heard at the house.

I felt relieved to make this discovery and turned back to the house. I went to Guy's room and listened again. I opened the door, I went in. He was not there.

I hunted him through the house. He was not to be found. Out into the night I went to find a track of him. Another light attracted my attention. I ran back to the landing pier. The light came on and on. Nearer and nearer it grew. It was a dory rowed by the gardener and my old friend the boatman.

"He is gone!" I cried. "He is not here. It was he, no doubt, who left in the launch about two-thirty. He went off to the north."

"He went off this afternoon," said the gardener. "Off in the head. Master's gone plum crazy."

"Crazy?" I repeated. "Crazy?"

"He ran us off the place just afore supper. I got this man to come back and see what had happened. He was the only one would come."

It was dawn now.

"It's bad business," said the boatman. "There's always such things as this when something’s about to happen here. What's that?"

"A shot," I said.

"And listen," said the gardener. "The launch, our launch. I know that engine. There! There it comes!"

We ran out on the pier and looked north.

It came fast. Straight for the pier it headed. It grew nearer and nearer, the spray dashing up over its prow. By not so much as a foot it missed the pier and went racing off to the open sea.

As it went by I saw the figure at the wheel. It was a limp, lifeless figure, lying over the wheel and holding the launch true to its course. It was Guy Hagenhaufuer with a bullet hole in his pale forehead just where he had been passing his hand in the night.

HE Women of Antioch lined the ramparts; they were vociferous in their exhortations to their husbands to fight; and the Christians pretended to distinguish the sincere shouts of the Turkish wives from the artificial cries of the female Greeks and Armenians. But Baghasian had ill measured the strength and valour of the combatants; and he re-opened the gates for the preservation of the fugitives. The historians of the battle command us to believe, that if all the Christian soldiers had fought with the heroic valour of the Dukes of Lorraine and Normandy, (of whom stupendous feats are related), few of the Turks would have escaped the edge of their faulchions. Godfrey cut one of his foes through the middle, The upper part of the body fell to the ground but so firmly did the miscreant sit, that the lower members remained on the saddle, and the affrighted horse galloped into the town. Another wretched Moslem he clave asunder from the neck to the groin, by taking aim at his head with a sword; and the weapon not only performed its prescribed duty, but cut entirely through the saddle and the backbone of the horse. The sword of Robert of Normandy cleft the skull of a Saracen from the crown to the shoulders; and seeing one of the parts rolling over the ground, he charitably dismissed it to the powers of hell. Tancred enjoined his squire not to publish his deeds; but we must not let the modesty of the hero diminish our admiration of his courage. A son of Baghasian, twelve emirs, and two thousand men of common rank fell in this dreadful battle; and if night had not suspended the victorious heroes' ferocity, Antioch would have fallen. The spoil reconciled the Christians to the disasters which they had experienced. On the earliest dawn of the ensuing day, the Turks quitted the city, collected the dead bodies of their friends, and buried them in the common place of interment without the walls. Familiarity with scenes of horror had extinguished every feeling of humanity; the Christians pulled the corpses from the sepulchre, and despoiled them of their dresses and ornaments. They severed the heads from the trunks; and fifteen hundred of them were exposed on pikes to the weeping Turks; and some were sent to the caliph of Egypt in proof of victory.