Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 01.djvu/87

 the sandy wastes of the African coast, admiring the stately trees, the elaborate carvings on the benches and spraying fountains, as well as the brilliantly plumed birds that graced the well-kept sward. Soft music from the radio in the rustic summer house at the cliff's edge but lent an added enchantment to the surroundings. The gardens of Karamour combined the luxuries of the new world with the splendor and beauty of the old.

night, under the rays of the tropical moon and a million blazing stars, I was guided by Zena to the winding steps that led from the gardens of Karamour to the sandy beach below. There, standing in the shadows of a graceful palm, with the lighted castle on the cliffs above, I awaited the lovely Atma.

For a long hour I had kept my lonely watch, expecting momentarily the appearance of the Princess on the steps above, when my attention was drawn to a pearl-white figure that swam through the waters far to the left. With steady, superb strokes, the swimmer cut through the silvery surf, to emerge, wet and dripping, a tall, shapely girl, whose nude body shone like ivory in the moonlight.

"Atma!"

Standing on the wet sands, the cool winds caressing her, the lovely face turned dreamily toward the stars, stood the glamorous daughter of the ages, a dark-eyed Princess from the mists of time, whose tiny feet had trod the great halls of the Pharaohs.

Ah, the weird beauty of that moment! Even now its memory comes to haunt me — a picture from the past; a vision that might well have been the lonely Eve by some desolate sea at the earliest dawn of history. High overhead from the summer house near the cliff's edge, came strains of soft music; dreamy, melodious airs, artistry of today. But the glorious figure that swayed in the starlight had danced and strained her lithe body to the crashing of mighty timbrels, thirty-four hundred years ago!

Slowly the royal Egyptian made her way up the beach, stopping only to don the waiting garments that lay on a sand dune near the surf. Then in the scanty attire of long ago—golden breast-plates, filmy four-slit skirt and cobra-ensigned head-band—the girl came unhesitatingly toward me, her features wreathed in a bewitching smile.

"I swam far out to sea," came the musical voice. "Oh, it was such a long, long way! No sound could reach me from the distant shore, the low sand dunes had disappeared. Even the lighted castle seemed small and distant. I was alone in a vast world of silence. Ah, it was wonderful, lying out there in the dark waters, to be rocked by the rolling waves. For an hour I drifted and dreamed in the starlight. Once a great ocean liner, a sparkling mass of golden lights, passed far to the east, but they did not hear the lonely cry of Atma. Perhaps I might have forgotten the world and swum on thus for ever, had I not known the young American would be waiting for me."

Together we sat on the dark cloak the Princess had left in the sand.

"And now you are tired after that long swim."

Atma had sat in a posture of ease beside me, so close that I could feel the warmth of her half-naked body. At my question she drew back where she could better see my face.

"Tired?" she repeated, and then she laughed. "You think a little swim would tire me?"

I smiled at her apparent surprize.

"Then am I to believe it has not?"

"It could never tire me—physical exertion seldom does. Why, once when I