Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/171

 would cut him down with as little compunction as I had the seaweed before the portals. But I must be crafty! I had no intention of giving him a chance in fair fight! I would walk up behind him and strike with my knife through the rubber joints at his throat, rip the blade downward to his breast, and leave him there either to drown or bleed to death. How I would laugh as he died there at the feet of his beauty! What an outcome for his secret tryst!

And then a very strange thing happened. There was no way under heaven that he could have known of my approach, for he was kneeling with his back toward me. There was nothing to warn him, no sound from me that could have penetrated that watery space to the ears within his helmet. Yet, while I was still twenty feet away, I saw him get slowly to his feet and turn about, his hand going to the knife at his belt even before he could have realized my purpose.

Thus confronted, I brandished my weapon and bade him in our sign language to be prepared, since I intended to kill him or die in the attempt. Scarcely had I finished, when to my utter astonishment he slowly replaced the knife in its sheath and quietly awaited my coming.

Taken back though I was, I had no intention of losing my purpose. His very sureness enraged me the more. I strode forward, bending all my weight against the intervening water, holding my blade in readiness.

Now I stood before him, and saw his white, sneering face behind the glass. Shrieking aloud with a strange exultation, I raised my weapon to strike. But I never made that stroke. Even as my arm descended in its murderous errand, I felt myself suddenly and helplessly snatched away.

It was that accursed seaweed! The damnable stuff had twined about my body as I strode across the hall; and now, as I drew near enough to plunge my weapon home, it had snatched me away. In vain I foamed and fought it, slashing to the right and to the left. In vain I ripped and tore and cut, using my gloved hands where the blade seemed too slow. Where I slashed off yards of the stuff, new tendrils seemed to grow, enveloping my body.

Frothing and screaming, kicking and squirming, I was dragged across the hall and out on the steps before the temple. There, despite my weights, the weed seemed to gather under me, forcing me upward. In but a few minutes the slowly receding spires of Atlantis told me that I was on my way to the surface.

on the bosom of the sea, kicking and screaming, but that diabolical stuff was determined that I should not sink again. Finally, as all strength seemed to be leaving me, I felt myself hauled slowly out of the water. They on board the Nautilus, seeing me struggling there in the water, had slipped a boathook under the ring at my belt and were pulling me to her decks.

But I was crafty. Once on board I revealed nothing of what had happened, merely pretending that I had been taken with cramps on coming to the surface. Then, very carefully, I laid my plans to kill Dr. Tyrrel as soon as he should return. Secretly I got out my pistol and a knife, and watched for the ascending bubbles that would tell of his coming.

But he never came. I waited there until dusk—waited until the captain came to me in alarm and begged me to go below in search of his missing employer. I should have been glad to go—for another purpose than he thought—but I knew that devilish seaweed would stop me at the outset. Looking over the side I could see it lurking there, waiting. Once I was