Page:Weird Tales volume 30 number 06.djvu/74

724 For that single moment of wild excitement, the Master's mind relaxed its remorseless hypnotic grip upon David and Christa.

That one instant was enough. In it, David's muscles exploded in mad action and sent the ax in his hand flying straight toward the robot's head.

The heavy ax-head crashed squarely into the bulbous metal brain-case, between the lens-like eyes. The steel blade drove deep through the outer casing into the interior of the head, deep into the metal brain that had been created ages ago in the laboratories of dead Atlantis.

The Master staggered. His metallic voice uttered an awful, broken scream.

"Tricked! Tricked by a barbarian creature of flesh! But I will destroy you all"

Even as he uttered that dying scream, the Master was whirling, was falling. But he fell with outstretched metal arms crashing purposefully down against the giant crystal of blue fire behind him, the crystal whose radiated force alone held the island from sinking beneath the waves.

The crystal shivered beneath the cracking impact of the dead robot's falling body. The blue fire inside it dulled and died instantly. David heard Christa cry out, run into his arms.

Then they were thrown from their feet by a terrific earth shock. They heard a thunderous roar from the earth beneath the castle, and the crash of the castle's black walls as they were riven by the awful shock.

grabbed his wife and plunged desperately across the huge halls and corridors whose walls were collapsing and crashing around him. He glimpsed daylight through a great gap in the outer wall, and he leaped with Christa through the gap out into the day. They stopped on the shelf of the cliff, for a moment appalled.

The whole island was heaving and rocking like a ship on a stormy sea. The thunderous earth-shocks were following each other at intervals of seconds, and there was a long, grinding roar from deep beneath that told of shifting, settling masses. The sun had appeared in the sky since the light-refracting force had died, but the heavens were instantly overcast with an ominous crimson pall.

The two fled down the path into the valley, David feeling nausea from the roll and buck of the earth beneath him. In the valley, the huts were in ruins and their ragged occupants were running about in mad panic. Von Hausman and O' Riley and the great Norwegian came running wildly up to David and the girl. "Gott in Himmel!" yelled the German. "What is"

"The island is sinking into the sea!" screamed David over the roaring crashes. "I killed the Master, and in dying he acted to make the island sink. Our only chance is to get to the yawl!"

"To the yawl, then!" shouted Husper, his face crimson with excitement.

They sprinted forward, into the forest, the earth still rolling and heaving wildly under their feet.

"Saints in heaven, look!" cried O'Riley, glancing back horrified.

With terrible, reverberating roll of thunder, the cliff and ruined castle of the Master were collapsing in masses of rock onto the valley they had just quitted.

"On!" yelled Von Hausman.

Fissures opened on either side of them as they plunged through the wild-waving woods. Terrific tremors crashed down trees and twice knocked them from their feet.

They burst out onto the beach. The sea