Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/68

Rh of their cows wandered down to eat the sea-grass and was sucked under before they could save her."

"On, my friend!" de Grandin answered through clenched teeth, for the strain was beginning to tell on him. "Better to perish in the quicksands than fall prey to those assassins."

We dashed along the waterline, heading for the beach beyond the wall, and a chorus of triumphant shouts followed us. Our pursuers had noted our course and made certain we rushed to our doom.

"Parbleu, what a chase!" de Grandin laughed pantingly, suddenly dropping to the sands and unfastening the lacings of his shoes.

"Yes, and it's not over yet," I reminded him. "They'll be on us in a moment. What's the idea—going paddling?"

"Observe me, my friend," he replied as he drew off his pale mauve socks and took shoes and stockings in hand, running barefoot ahead of us across the sands. "Follow where I lead." He advanced along the beach with long, swinging strides like those of a Canadian voyageur sweeping over a winter drift on his snow-shoes. "Jules de Grandin has been in many places," he flung back over his shoulder, "and one of them was the coast of Japan, where quicksands are thick as pickpockets at a fair. There it was I learned the ways of quicksand from the peasant fishermen. Like all other sand it looks, nor does it quake or tremble until it has its victim fast in its hold, but always it is colder than the sands about it, and the knowing one walking barefoot on the beach can feel its death-chilled borders before it is too late to draw back.

"Careful—to the right, my friends!" Gracefully, sliding one foot behind the other, like a dancer crossing a stage, he swerved inward from the water's edge, finally pausing a moment to feel the ground before him with a tentative toe. "Très bon—proceed. The quicksands reach no farther here," he announced, stepping forward with a confident stride.

Following his careful lead we proceeded the better part of a hundred yards when a sudden outcry behind us made me look round apprehensively. Infuriated by the sight of our escape, and assuming that because we had not perished the beach was safe for them, four of our enemies were rushing pellmell after us, the starlight glinting evilly on the weapons brandished over their heads.

"Hurry, de Grandin!" I urged. "They'll be up with us in a moment!"

"Will they, indeed?" he replied with cool indifference, seating himself on the soft sand and beginning to don his socks and shoes in a leisurely manner. "When they reach us, my friend, I shall be ready for them, I assure you."

"But," I remonstrated, "but—good Lord, man!—here they come!"

"Yes?" he answered, lighting a cigarette. "If you will trouble to look round, I think you will say 'there they go'."

Looking down the beach I saw the four pursuers hurrying forward, running four abreast, like a squad of soldiers going into action.

Suddenly the man to the left stumbled awkwardly, like a person descending a flight of stairs and coming to the end before he was aware of it. He faltered, raised his forward foot, as though feeling for support where there was none, and grasped the man next him.

The second man staggered drunkenly in the frenzied hold of his companion, floundered bewilderedly a moment—all four of them were doing a clumsy, grotesque dance, reeling from side to side, swaying back and forth, raising their arms spasmodically as though grasping at