Page:Weird Tales volume 11 number 02.pdf/95

238 8.30, to attain at midday an altitude of only a dozen degrees, and at half-past 3 he disappears. A strange place, forsooth, for any fairy to choose for a place of habitation — this dark and savage, this storm-beaten isle in the midst of the dark and tempestuous subarctic sea. A fairy's, though, it was, this Island of Flang. That, however, the lone watcher there on the summit was doomed never to know. But Cuthbert Griswold was to know it, know it soon and to his sorrow—that this was the Isle of the Fairy Morgana.

The little Gorgon, a twenty-five foot sloop, was actually passing Flang when Griswold saw him. The sloop was sailing on a northeast course before a very gentle breeze from the south. At the time Cuthbert Griswold (the only soul on board, except a half-grown wolf-dog) made the discovery, the eastern extremity of the island was on his port beam, distant perhaps a little less than a half-mile. This part of the island rises sheer to a height of fifty feet or so, and there, on the very edge of that rock wall, was the figure of a man, clear-cut against the blue of the sky and signaling frantically. Even as Griswold saw him, the voice of the castaway came across the water, the sound faint as that soft wash of the sea against the sides of the Gorgon. On the instant the wolf-dog raised himself up from his warm bed and thrust his savage visage above the cockpit coaming, his look fixed upon Flang.

"A man, Pluto," said Griswold. "See him there? But what on earth is a man doing in this accursed place? Well, I have been on that island myself a couple of times, and perhaps people, had any seen me there, would have wondered the same thing. And look at that, Pluto: he is signaling to us like a man gone mad. If he's a castaway, little wonder, for a dozen years might pass, and never a sail lift above the horizon of this bit of ocean. We'll run down into the bay and see what it means."

put his helm over, and the little vessel glided off in a direction at right angles to the course on which she had been standing, slowly drawing in, as she advanced, toward the rocks, along which the surf broke with a sound like the low growl, so Griswold thought, of some savage beast.

A little space—the Gorgon was then about midway the isle—the sails were lowered and the gasoline engine was started. Slowly the little craft moved in toward the broken wall, passed in behind three rocks which thrust up out of the sea like monstrous black tusks and was heading into a passage, two hundred feet or so in width, that some convulsion of nature had riven into the island.

For a little distance the great fissure (which comes very near making of Flang two islets) ran slantingly. Then came a sharp turn to port, a gentle one to starboard, and the Gorgon was gliding out into a little oval-shaped basin, rock-walled and as placid as a mill-pond. On the left the rocks rose up sheer from the water's edge and to a height of one hundred feet. The other side was broken and smashed; in one place there was a bit of beach. Off went the engine, and, when he was abreast of this spot, Griswold let his anchor go in three fathoms water, it being low tide at the time.

"Hello!" he sang out to the figure, haggard and wobegone, that had just appeared on the ribbon of beach. "How the devil did you get here?"

"Mother Goose," was the answer.

Griswold stared.

"Mother Goose? Do you mean that the old girl brought you here on her broomstick?"

A wan smile flitted across the face of the castaway.

"Trading schooner," he explained.