Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/65

715 "Get up! Get up before I beat you to death lying there."

"David!" That heartbroken sob was in Christa's voice. He recognized it through the mistiness that had seized his brain.

He staggered to his feet, lunged forward with fists balled. Crash! The crunching blows seemed to explode out of nothing against his face, and he knew he had gone to his knees this time. His brain was rocking—he felt he was done for. There wasn't an ounce of strength left in his nerveless body.

"David!" That agonized cry again pierced his numbness of mind and body, making him somehow struggle up again.

As though through crimson fog, he saw O'Riley's snarling face. David hitched drunkenly to one side, drove his right with clumsy aimlessness. The blow connected with something—there was a grunt of pain from O'Riley, and the big redhead staggered, clutching his solar plexus.

"Finish him!" Von Hausman was yelling somewhere in the shouting mob.

David summoned his last spark of strength, swayed forward and jabbed both clenched fists at a staggering, dimly-seen O'Riley. His fists crashed onto hard bone with stinging pain—and there was a wilder shout as O'Riley slumped from his feet, collapsed to a sitting position and looked up with stunned, half-conscious gaze of utter bewilderment.

stumbled over to where Von Hausman held Christa. He was reeling, almost unable to stand, but he tried to quiet her sobbing. Suddenly a great hand tore him around, and he faced one of the brutal mob, a black-bearded, wolf-faced Russian.

"You fight me now for the girl," the Russian grinned evilly. "I want her, too."

Von Hausman's face flamed with rage and he cried, "No, Bardoff! Gott in Himmel, this man is dead on his feet! You can't"

Bardoff swept him aside with a growl, and the ragged mob cheered. "You fight, or I take her!" the Russian growled at David.

Halfdon Husper, the huge Norwegian, shouldered forward with pale eyes blazing. "You'll fight me first if you try that," he warned Bardoff.

"And me also!" snapped Von Hausman.

"Yes, and me too!" roared a third, unsteady voice. It was Red O'Riley. He had staggered to his feet, his battered, bruised face still bleeding, but his eyes were raging at the Russian. The redhead bellowed, "By heaven, this lad whipped me fairly and it's me that's with him."

Bardoff yelled furiously to the motley mob, "Do you allow them to do this? Why shouldn't we take the woman from them?"

"Yes, let's take her!" howled a score of brutal voices.

David Russell, swaying, hardly able to stand, saw Von Hausman and Husper and the bruised O'Riley bunch together and raise their fists and rude spears.

The ragged mob surged toward them, with Bardoff in the lead. Christa hid her face on David's shoulder. Then suddenly a strange, an awful thing, happened.

Bardoff, the Russian, suddenly stopped short, his whole body stiffening as though turned to stone. Then slowly, mechanically, he turned and began to walk away with strange, stiff strides—to walk toward the frowning black cliffs. And as he walked, he shrieked wildly to the suddenly transfixed mob, "The Master! His will is on me—he is calling me!"

The mob shrank back in dread. David saw that the Russian's face was now that of a soul in hell as he marched stiffly on like a human automaton toward the cliffs.

"Gott!" breathed Von Hausman,