Page:Weird Tales v33n05 (1939-05).djvu/124

122 himself face to face with Dave and Lèla as they re-entered the deckhouse.

"Why—not gone yet?" he cried with an oath that seemed to indicate as much fear as anger. "Are you mad? Look at the sea

"Aye, look at it—no boat could pass the reef!"

As Dave spoke, the ship gave a sudden lurch and rolled, staggering like a stricken thing, sharply to leeward. Looking outside, I saw that the stretch of gently heaving blue was now a seething cauldron of yeasty waves, lashed into fury by the hurricane that had burst upon us.

Almost immediately a sharp crash sounded in the cabin as the iron casket slid across the polished surface of the table and fell to the floor, the impact making the lid fly open, revealing its emptiness.

"The pearls! They're gone!"

Fiercely the boy flung the words as he stared wide-eyed at the rifled casket. When he shifted his eyes it was to fix them on his partner in a long, steady look that was in itself an unspoken accusation.

The atmosphere of the cabin grew suddenly tense as the two men eyed each other in silence across the dizzily swaying floor. Then a laugh sounded above the droning wind and crashing seas, a laugh that was more like the snarl of a wild beast than the utterance of a human being. It came from the lips of the older man as he pointed toward the native girl.

"Lèla! That she-devil has stolen them!"

A quiver ran over the girl's brown body as she realized the meaning of the accusation hurled at her, and for an instant she seemed to shrink under the venomous glare of Clark's eyes. Recovering, she threw back her head with a proud, unstudied grace, and shook it fiercely.

"Lèla no thief!" she cried with flashing eyes.

"Aye, she's right there," agreed the boy. "Natives don't value pearls, and she'd just refused a heap of trinkets that were far more precious in her eyes. Why should she steal from us things she could pick out of the lagoon?"

A derisive smile curved the other's cruel mouth.

"You fool!" he spat out the words with eager haste. "O' course she took 'em, so's we'd have to stop here to gather more. Can't ye see her darned artfulness? She didn't want us to sail away, and to lose her blue-eyed boy. She wanted to enjoy another month of"

The words were clipped off short as Dave stepped forward and caught him a smashing blow on the jaw, sending him sprawling over the floor. He was up again in a flash, and the next instant the two were locked together in a fierce, struggling embrace which it seemed that death alone could break. To and fro, backward and forward they reeled over the tilting, pitching floor; the one mouthing threats and curses, the other fighting in tight-lipped silence.

Outside, the hurricane was shrieking like a thousand unleashed fiends, and the thunder of the waves on the reef had merged into one long, unbroken roar. But the two fought on unheedful of the warring elements, until a sharp, jarring crash from the bows signaled a mutual truce.

"The cable's parted!" Dave cried as he rose to his feet. "Help make sail if you want to live another hour. We can finish our argument when there's clear sea ahead." And he made for the open door.

The instant his back was turned, Mark drew a pistol from his belt, cocked it, and raised it deliberately until the long, shining barrel pointed straight between the other's shoulder-blades.

"Take that, ye scum!" he snarled as he pressed the trigger.

The crash of the discharge and the smack of the leaden bullet came simultaneously. But the shot had been fired by