Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/67

Rh matter-of-factness. The redheaded gunrunner had apparently forgotten all animosity against David.

When he had finished, O' Riley tossed the fruit-husks outside and stretched back, groaning, "What I wouldn't give now for a pipe and something to put in it. I swear if I ever get away from here I'll smoke for six months without stopping even to sleep."

David asked the German, "Why do you say it's impossible to escape from the island? It seems to me that it shouldn't be hard to make some sort of raft or dugout canoe, and launch it. Once away from the island, out where you could be seen by passing ships, you'd have a good chance of being picked up."

Von Hausman laughed mirthlessly. "A good many men on this island have thought that and have tried to get away in rafts or rude boats. And sooner or later in each case, before they could start, the Master called them. Whatever it is that dwells up in the castle, it does not want anyone to escape from this island—no!"

"That is so," rumbled the great Norwegian. "And that is why we no longer try to escape. It is hard to live here as we do—but it is more terrible to feel the will of the Master on you, to answer his call and go up into his castle never to return."

Christa, peering out through the doorway with wide eyes at the enigmatic black structure looming in the dusky sky, clung to her husband in shivering dread. "David, I'm afraid!"

He soothed her, yet felt as though a cold, alien wind of dread had blown over him, too. He asked, "But who or what is the Master? You say you don't know—but you must have some idea."

Von Hausman said thoughtfully, "We do not know because those who see the Master up there never come out again. But one thing I am sure of—the Master is immortal."

And as David and Christa stared at him incredulously, the U-boat officer continued, "I believe that this island has existed here, invisible and unsuspected by the world, for countless centuries; for along its shores I have found old, rotted wreckage and metal objects from ships of many centuries back, from Eighteenth Century frigates and Sixteenth Century slavers, and Spanish caravels like those of Columbus—even wreckage of a Greek galley that must have ventured into these western seas more than two thousand years ago."

Von Hausman added, "That shows the island has been here, invisible, for centuries. Now the only thing that can keep this island invisible to the outside world is some force or power exerted by the Master. Therefore the Master must have dwelt here during all those centuries."

David made an impatient gesture. "After all, I don't care who or what the Master is. What I want to do is to get Christa away from this unholy place. I'm going to do that somehow, Master or no Master."

"And it's me that seconds the motion," promptly declared O'Riley. "What the devil!—this isn't any place for a man of action like meself to be moldering away his life. We'll build ourselves a boat and launch it, and the back of our hands to the Master if he tries to stop us."

"We wouldn't need to build a boat," David said eagerly. "My yawl—it was tossed up onto the outer rocks down at the shore. I think the hull is stove in a little and the masts are snapped, but there are tools in it and we could patch it up enough to be seaworthy, in a few days." He added passionately, "Isn't it better to try it than to sit here and do nothing? It may be true that before we