Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/63

Rh about my wife? I must find her—at once."

The big Norwegian, Halfdon Husper, spoke for the first time in rumbling, heavily accented English. He said to the German, "Some other of the men may have found the girl and taken her to the village."

Von Hausman nodded rapidly, his keen eyes narrowing. He told David, "It's possible some of the others took your wife to the village, as Halfdon says. I think you'd better come with us, at once."

mad with torturing worry, David Russell started with the two ragged men at a trot through the forest. There was a faintly marked trail which the others appeared to know, that wound inward between the great trees and around huge fallen logs.

Even in the tense stress of his anxiety, he could not help noticing that the trees and vegetation around him were totally unfamiliar. He had never seen such trees, such huge flowers, such grotesque orange-podded fruits. It all seemed like a strange dream into which he had suddenly been plunged.

Von Hausman was telling him, "The village is not far ahead. It's a miserable little place, where we eke out life by gathering fruits and hunting the small animals, until the time comes when we die or the Master calls us."

He added somberly, "Almost I wish sometimes that the Master would call me and put an end to this wretched existence from which there is no escape."

They emerged soon into a shallow, unwooded valley at the center of the island. At the farther side of the valley rose the black, frowning cliffs, upon whose highest point squatted the brooding ebon castle.

David saw that in the valley lay a rude village of two or three score huts, built of logs and bark. The little village seemed to huddle there like a thing crouching in fear, beneath the black battlements of the cliffs and the Master's mysterious castle.

At the center of the village milled an excited crowd of men. The din of their shouting voices reached David and his two companions as they hurried forward. The lips of the German U-Boat officer tightened.

"It's as I feared—they've got your wife here," he rasped. "You're probably going to have to fight."

"Fight?" cried David.

Von Hausman nodded tightly. "Very few women ever get ashore alive on the island from the wrecks—only at long intervals. And the women go to those who can fight for them and keep them. Quick!"

They raced forward, between the rows of rude huts. Now David saw that there were perhaps two hundred men in the throng milling in shouting excitement ahead. He could see only a dozen or so women—ragged, frightened women— peering out of huts here and there.

But the mob of men! A ragged, hard-bitten throng that had been cast ashore here by the ships of every nation that had wrecked on this mysterious island. Red-faced British sailors, brown, snake-eyed Lascars, stalwart Scandinavians like Husper, swarthy Spanish and Italian and Portuguese seamen, bearded Russians and guttural-voiced Teutons, a score of other races, all milling excitedly around one central point.

David Russell and his two companions crashed through the shouting throng, David unnoticed by the ragged mob in its excitement. He burst into a small clear space at the center of the crowd. There he stopped, and shouted aloud.

"Christa!"