Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/103

758 chattering and Willoughby's breathing, came the sound of water crashing on rocks, threshed under flails of no wind that ever was.

stalked down the pergola, gripping his courage in his hand, assuring himself the typing was the fantasy of a madman, and that the worst he would find would be Denham in the violence of insanity brought on by loneliness and the eery mystery of the island. The heelless slippers of Wi Wo shuffled reluctantly as they came near an iron door, with light from beyond shining through the space between heavy bars. Willoughby saw the lantern on the stone floor. Steps led down. There was the crash of waves subsiding gradually, and a low moaning audible.

Willoughby opened the iron door, snatched up the lantern and began to descend the steps. A cool wind swept upward, a smell of sea-wrack and cavern chill. He saw the oily luminance of water where the sea filled a natural cove. It was stirred as by violent upheaval from beneath. The rock ledge below glistened with minute sea life. He saw something resembling a huge horse-collar slung to iron rings in the cavern roof, and a steel net dependent from ropes, the apparatus of that operation performed on the sea-dragon. Along one side was a litter of things scarcely discernible by the faint lanternlight.

With his scalp prickling, Willoughby held the lantern at arm's length, to learn what manner of gigantic bird it was that ran to and fro on the ledge, uttering squawks of fear which the cavern echoed. He saw a heap of dead chickens on the ledge; then a movement of Wi Wo caught his eye. The Chinese was retreating up the steps, backward, his eyes staring at the pool, his hands groping along the rock wall. Willoughby looked again at the pool, straining his vision to see what had thralled Wi Wo and turned his yellow skin green with terror.

It came like gushing light in the depths, stirring the black water, a radiance of glittering unrest, undulating flitter and shadow, faintly phosphorescent; then coils broke a moving swirl in the gloom.

Willoughby turned to run up the steps. The breath of Wi Wo hissed between his teeth. There was the silken slur of water washing the rode, and in another moment Willoughby was crowding the Chinese on the steps, for the water parted and a crested head was upreared, water dripping from fanged jaws, red tongue quivering, large glassy eyes regarding the two men on the steps with malevolent glaring. Coils of a serpent body upreared. Willoughby saw the great scales like iridescent metal plates. There was that threshing hiss of water, tremendous in the cavern walls. Willoughby's heart was pounding in his throat and wrist. Fear paralyzed him.

Then he screamed. From that great throat came a roar that swelled and boomed, and in that sound Willoughby heard unmistakably the name of "Denham" howled in wrath.

His own scream seemed to be echoed by the flapping white thing on the ledge. For the first time he realized that he had lost the chance for what he came to do: to save Denham. That was Denham—that mad disheveled thing clad in white ducks which was bent nearly double, waving its coat-tail over its head. It stood erect, laughing horribly.

"Chueng Ching," it called, "did you bring your sea-dragon? See, Willoughby is here, Willoughby who will make me invulnerable so we can rove the deeps together"

The rest was drowned in that howl of