Page:Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 CAN.djvu/9

 the roar of tempest, Brian Cullan fought fiercely to keep the yawl against the storm. Despair closed icy fingers around his heart, for now that the full power of the gale was unleashed, the little craft could not long survive.

Each time it dropped dizzyingly into the trough of the great waves, he managed miraculously to keep it from swinging broadside and foundering. But miracles could not go on forever. Cullan's hair bristled as he saw huger waves piling blackly and leaning forward to crush him.

Colossal hands seemed to snatch the yawl skyward, and as it hung for a moment on the crest with screw racing wildly, he knew this was the end. The whole heavens flared in that moment with dazzling lightning—

"The sign!" yelled Brian Cullan wildly. "The sign of the Gateway!"

The lightnings had whirled into a flaming, blinding circle in the sky over his head. A circle that seemed whirling down upon him.

And the crystal of the Unlocker on his finger was suddenly flaming! Scintillating with blazing rays of force that spun in a circle which was miniature match to the descending hoop of lightning above him.

Storm-lightning had momentarily opened the Gateway between the worlds of varying vibration, and the Unlocker's subtle aura of force would take him and his craft through if—

Crash! The yawl had dropped from the towering wave-crest to the surface of the sea, with a smashing shock that wrenched its beams to shrieking protest, and that flung Brian Cullan hard against the rail.

He was half stunned, but he struggled to his knees. Then he froze, looking around him with wild surmise on his haggard face.

Golden, glowing mists were about him, a strange, sprawling haze. The yawl floated placidly on a smooth yellow sea, amid that unearthly radiance. Black sky, howling storm, raving waves, had all vanished.

Wild joy, exultation in hope long-deferred but now at last fulfilled, hammered in Brian Cullan's heart.

"Tir Sorcha! The Shining Land!"

OLDEN, dreamy stretched the mists around him, stirred by the soft, warm wind into little twists of shining vapor that slowly swirled above the yellow sea. Forever hidden above the aureate haze was whatever sun lit this world. But through the sparkling, shrouding vapors there dimly bulked the outline of a distant island.

Brian Cullan felt a singing joy that thrilled his every nerve. He had fought fate and death and storm to return to this world, and his wild attempt had succeeded.

"Fand! Fand!" he whispered, and the name was like a jubilant prayer upon his lips.

He steered the yawl, its motor throbbing, toward the dim shape of the distant island.

This was a world of islands, he remembered. A strange, ocean world whose golden mists shrouded countless scattered isles that held wonders of beauty and terror unknown to Earth save in legend.

Cullan soon perceived that over the island ahead vast-winged shadows