Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/76

Rh longer. All was fantasy and wraiths. Ghosts are only the dreams that men have had.

Lee Goona glanced up quickly as there came a soft step on the deck beside him. He rose to his feet and stared in rapture at the lovely golden girl. At last she had come to him. Nothing must ever separate them now. To him she was the sun and the stars. She was the light of his life, the dream-girl that destiny had sent into his arms.

As he drew her to him, her fragrant hair brushed his cheek. There was music in the touch. In that moment he found the answer to the reason for existence over which he had pondered all his life. He kissed her warm lips, and the very breeze paused as he did so. It was the divine moment when their souls reached out to grasp each other. It was more than physical desire. There was something deeply spiritual about it.

Suddenly as they stood thus the girl uttered a frightened cry. She sprang away from him as Jimber Jawn reached their side. His face was working convulsively. The muscles stood out in knots on his bared arms. Lee Goona had no time to defend himself. He was caught unmercifully in those crushing arms and lifted high in the air as though his weight had been infinitesimal. For one brief instant Jimber Jawn paused, undecided whether to crash him to the deck and crush him beneath his heel as he might a viper. Lee Goona's fate hung by a thread. Then came the decision. Jimber Jawn flung him far over the rail into the purple sea. The waters closed above his head, delightfully cool. It was the sensation for which he had yearned. It was calm, restful. He felt like closing his eyes in immortal sleep.

Meanwhile the golden girl had climbed to the ship's rail. Even as Jimber Jawn reached for her she leaped into the sea, uttering a cry of grim delight, of deliverance. Lee Goona beheld her slim body strike the water. It aroused him from his lethargy. It brought him to a realization of their dire predicament. He was awake at last. He started to swim toward the golden girl.

But she was in no danger. She was swimming with the sure strokes of one used to the water from infancy. In the distance a fringe of palm-trees could be faintly discerned in the moonlight. Together they set off for the distant shore. Whatever the future might hold for them, they would not return to the black ship of the golden sails. Better to risk death in the purple sea than to face death at the hands of Jimber Jawn. Lee Goona knew that his life would be the penalty if he ever encountered the irate captain again.

the next half-hour they cut through the water like fish. The moon had dipped from view and the stars seemed doubly bright, like lovely lanterns of the approaching dawn. Despite all that he could do, Lee Goona felt unconsciousness creeping over him. Whether it was sleep or the result of shocked nerves he neither knew nor cared. Either spelled death. Unless he could keep his eyes from closing, all hope was gone. Yet his eyes continued to close. He bit his lips till the blood came, so that the pain might keep him awake. But it was useless. Slowly, persistently, sleep crept over him. Finally he lost consciousness. The waters of the purple sea closed softly over his head. And all was blackness, as black as the putrid hold of the ship of the golden sails.

When Lee Goona opened his eyes he lay on a coral beach. Beyond him stretched a fringe of palm-trees whose fronds stood out in strong silhouette against the yellow, golden haze of the sky. Before him lay the