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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Terror Tales, May 1936 with "A Feast For Hell's Angels"
Like flying demons out of hell's black pit they came—those winged furies whose reddened eyes seemed to gloat on the white flesh of Mel's young bride. But even the slashing horror of their bloody beaks and talons was as nothing to the fiery fate which overtook the terror-maddened girl above the bleak, black cliffs of Malventure Island!
WE came upon it unexpectedly. We had pushed north as far along the coast as the rough road could take us; then we had bumped over oxcart trails where no automobile had ever gone before. North, ever northward, skirting the Gulf of St. Lawrence, until the frowning cliffs of Labrador seemed to block all further passage.
Theo clung to my arm with a little shiver as I paused in dismay, wondering what to do next. Land's End, it seemed, and the last fifty miles, had grown steadily wilder and wilder. Not a single human being had we met all the way, not a sign of human occupancy on that entire stretch of iron-bound coast. Only beetling rocks and slate-grey, sullen sea, and the hoarse screaming of invisible gulls. We had remarked on that—the clamor of the sea-birds that somehow were never in sight. We had even had an argument over it. Theo, ordinarily vivacious and merry, with the glint of sunlight in her warm brown eyes, had huddled to me at the first sound.
"Let us go back, Mel," she had whispered, as if afraid the cloud-hidden birds might overhear.
"Why?" I said in surprise. Theo, I knew, had never been given to feminine fears.
"Because," and she actually was trembling, "I hear a warning in those horrible cries. Go back! Go back before it is too late! Over and over again."
In my masculine conceit I had mocked her—tenderly, it is true—but filled with a new feeling of protective superiority to this lovely girl who, it was still hard to believe, had become my wife.
Theo said nothing further. She was of that particularly rare type of girl. But I had noted how her breath came faster and faster as we lurched on and on, and her cheeks paler and paler. Our conversation had dwindled to monosyllables. The screams of those ever-receding sea-fowl seemed to grow more and more urgent, more eerie in their ceaseless din. It began to do things to my insides. A vague unease filled me. Where were those invisible creatures whose cries filled the uninhabited wastes? Ordinarily, sea-birds wheel with white grace over the wide waters, or lunge in long, swooping dives at the sight of frantic, darting fish, but the turbulent northern ocean was barren of forms even as the land. Forms! Strange how even in my thoughts I had hesitated to call the unseen sources of that frightful clamor birds!
MY unease grew. Yet with foolish masculine pride I gritted my teeth and pushed on. The stony path became a trail, the trail a series of ruts, and the ruts a pebbly beach fronted by huge granite cliffs.
Theo said again, tonelessly, eyes large in the gathering dusk. "Please, Mel, let us turn back. I have a feeling something terrible will happen if we don't."
I shook my head. "It's impossible, dear. Night would overtake us before we'd even get started. We'd never find our way. Perhaps—"
I broke off and stared. The jutting headland that had barred our path showed a glimmer of pale grey sand around its base. As if a narrow, shelving beach ran all the way around to some cove or harbor on the other side. I rubbed my eyes in bewilderment. I had looked there carefully, hopelessly, a moment before. And I could have sworn that the dark, granite rocks had been smothered in a swirl of angry surf, that the spume had leaped high in slavering eagerness against their fearsome sides.
"Look, Theo," I said hoarsely, pointing with shaking finger. "There is a way around. Perhaps there is a village, perhaps there are people—"
The words stuck in my throat. A moment before there had been a welter of waves, and now there was a path, inviting us, luring us on... I shook myself angrily. It was absurd, these silly thoughts. The wildness of the country, the eeriness of the raucous cries of the birds, Theo's baseless fears, had infected me too. I simply had not looked...
Then it was that the stillness smote me like a physical thing. True, the long, surging billows still leaped with hollow, booming noise against the desolate coast; but the strange, penetrating din of sea-fowl, that hung somewhere between blind heaven and a blinder earth, had cut off abruptly, as if at some invisible command. The sudden silence, punctured periodically by the crashing waves, carried with it a weird feeling, of something crouching beyond that vanishing strip of sand, of unseen forms and lurking presences, waiting for us to come...
I stiffened in the driver's seat; I jammed my foot savagely on the accelerator. The car lurched forward, slithering over loose shale and water-smoothed pebbles, toward the frowning headland.
Theo clutched my arm desperately. "Please, Mel," she implored. "Don't go! I'm afraid, afraid!"
But I shook off her restraining fingers. I was angry with myself, with her, too, just because I knew I had permitted myself to become a bit scared even as she. The fast-dimming light had played tricks with that dull-grey strip of beach, that was all. As for the sharp cessation of bird-cries, that was easily explainable. It was almost dark, and the wild sea-scavengers had returned to their eyries to roost. Perfectly normal, perfectly understandable. Yet somehow, deep within me, I did not believe my own rational explanations, and being stubborn, and a blind fool, I pushed on.
A last instinct of caution saved us from battering destruction. My foot mechanically clamped on the foot brake, my wrists swelled with straining muscles as I swung hard and desperately on the wheel. Theo screamed once as the car heaved and groaned in every tortured part, slithered sickeningly in wet sand, and made the precipitous, hairpin turn with inches to spare...
The abrupt headland had masked a huge rock, its knife-like edge smothered in burying foam, its nearest tip not six feet from the craggy up thrust of the cliff. I had snaked between them, miraculously escaping steel-shattering impalement.
I SHUDDERED as the car ground to a halt. The waves smashed against the black rock with a baffled, gurgling sound, as if furious at our unscathed passage. I was slightly wet, but Theo was drenched clear through. Strange that! It must have been the spray, yet it had not touched the tonneau of the car. I had a distinct feeling as if someone overhead, high up on the towering cliff, had emptied a bucket of water upon us as we had passed. There was a peculiar smell upon Theo, rank, penetrating. Fumbling, my senses tried to grasp its half-familiar tang, then forgot about it. I had other and weightier things to think about.
I shook the spray from my eyes and looked. We were within a long, elliptical cove that stretched inland for half a mile. The beach broadened out gradually, a thing of sand and crusted rocks and bleached driftwood that looked in the fading light like the skeletal bones of prehistoric monsters. The northern sea came in on long, smooth billows, leaping in futile eagerness at the dingy fishing boats drawn high on the pebbly shore. Behind them were battered nets, hung vertically on spaced poles. To the farther left were flakes, long rude tables on which split and gutted giant cod were stretched in interminable rows to dry in the keen northern sun. The overpowering stench of fish was like raw, tangy salt in my nostrils. But I was more interested in the scattered huts that lay beyond, squatting like sullen beasts in the very shadow of the frowning, precipitous cliffs that ringed the cove, and over which there seemed no ingress or egress other than the dangerous way we had come.
There we could find shelter for the night. Tomorrow, early, we would retrace our steps, to seek with avid relief the civilization we had come this far to avoid. But a slow dread burned in my veins. What was the matter with this fishing village? Why did it lie at the base of the threatening cliffs, darkling, blank of life or movement?
The sun's last rays, slanting over the high rocks, reflected eerie light within the cove. This was the time for normal, bustling activity in a fishing community. The day's work was done, the boats in, the nets strung up to dry, the fish sliced and spread out. The men, weather-beaten and strong-smelling, should have lolled on the beach, smoking rank pipes, swapping news of the Banks; the children should have tumbled and shouted in a last spurt of little bodies; mangy curs should have yapped excitedly at their heels; while the smoke should have poured from bake ovens in which the rude, stolid womenfolk were hurrying the evening meals.
Yet nothing stirred. The faint shadows crept over the somber, dilapidated houses and shrouded them in a blurring pall. A deathly silence held them taut, breathless. My eyes narrowed. I felt an ominous threat emanating from those eyeless walls, involved somehow with an effluvia of terror and dread. Dread of whom? I ground down again on the starter, kicking the motor into roaring life. I'd damn soon find out what was wrong. Those boats, those nets, and the drying cod, meant one thing only. That there were people hiding in the cliff-hunched huts, people who watched from their eyries with stealthy eyes the approach of weary strangers. I'd—
Theo caught at my arm so abruptly that the car slewed half way around. I fought the wheel to a stop, twisted about angrily. My nerves were on edge. "What the—" I began, pettishly.
But Theo did not hear me. Her face was turned seaward, and in her eyes fear leaped like a wounded animal. "Mel!" she whispered. "Look out there! For God's sake, what is it?"
I STARED stupidly, blinked, and stared again. Less than a quarter mile out, almost blocking the entrance to the cove, was an island. But an island such as I had never seen before. It rose out of the grey waste of waters with perpendicular, smooth sides to a height of some three hundred feet. Nowhere on its slippery, lava-black walls did there seem the slightest foothold, the slightest cranny, by which human being or animal could clamber to the top. Some three miles long it seemed, and a mile and a half wide at its broadest part, and everywhere the precipices knifed down into a smother of foam.
"Well," I grunted finally. "It's a queer enough island, Theo, but I don't see—"
My wife's manicured nails gouged into my flesh with the fierceness of her grip. "There he is again," she panted. "He's watching us. He—Oh God!" She broke off, and cowered against me with a little moan. I could feel her heart pounding against my bosom like a trapped bird against the meshes of the net.
This time I saw him. I must confess that I too felt a shiver of dread creeping over me at the sight of that strange apparition; and my blood thickened with queer premonitions.
He was standing at the very edge of the island, facing us. The westering sun flamed redly over him until he seemed a hideous devil immersed in a bath of scarlet blood. His arms were wide outspread, as if in benediction, or in dreadful curse. A long, dirty-white beard, ominously dabbled with rusty hues, fell like a garment to his waist. The muscles of my face twitched involuntarily. "Good Lord!" I muttered, "It's impossible!"
Impossible for human being, if human being the apparition were, to scale the glass-smooth sides of the island. Only birds could...
Words came with hideous clamor over the wide waters. Words that were an indistinguishable gabble of sound, meaningless to my straining ears, yet somehow instinct with shuddering evil. The cupping cliffs of the cove caught the shoutings, sent them rebounding with distorted echoes. The whole recess filled with the mouthings of that strange, bearded creature. His distance-blurred head was flung back and his long arms were extended toward us.
Somehow I knew that maledictions were issuing from that bearded mouth, fierce and obscene and hate-filled. The skin prickled on my neck, the palms of my hands were suddenly dry and hot. Maledictions against whom? Against ourselves, intruders into this place of ill-omen, or against the stealthy hiders in those silent huts huddled against the cliffs?
Theo said through stiff, pale lips. "Mel, darling, I'm so afraid. That horrible old man up there, that island, this place of shadows and loneliness. If you love me, turn back as fast as you can."
I made no pretense at manly scoffings this time. I was scared myself. I am not ashamed to confess it. That chap out there on the island where no human being had a right to be... I tooled the car half way around, stopped with a groan. The thin stretch of beach between the rock and the towering headland was gone, obliterated as if it had never been. The tide had crept in while we had been in the cove, and it sluiced like a battering millrace within the narrow space. It was impossible to get out. We were trapped, helplessly, without hope of succor, within this eerie cove.
I essayed a laugh, and hoped it did not sound as hollow to Theo as it did to me. "We'll have to wait until morning, honey," I said. "The tide will be out again then. In the meantime we can find shelter in one of the houses."
As if in answer a wail wavered out of the huts, a long, quavering sound instinct with fear and approaching death. I twisted suddenly in my seat. Then there were inhabitants in the deserted-seeming fishing village...
THE hermit's distant voice rose to a piercing, ear-shattering scream. It knifed through my raw nerves like slashing blades. Then it was gone, abruptly, and only the booming surf was to be heard.
Theo cried out in terror. "My God, Mel! What is that?"
I slewed my body around again. The figure of the island had vanished. But, rising from its flat-topped surface, swiftly, purposefully, was a cloud of mingled white and dirty-grey and deep, jet black. Birds in countless thousands. Scavengers of the sea, huge, strong of wing, blotting the still flaming sky with the beat of their wings. Great gulls, white as ghosts, sea-pigeons, black-tipped and low-flying, gannets with mottled feathers and ungainly bodies, mews with webbed feet and alternate black and white feathers. And high above the others, massed in a stygian vanguard, were great cormorants, dark as the deepest pit of hell, long, scaly necks outstretched in fierce eagerness, hooked, razor-sharp bills gaping wide in horrid anticipation.
I patted Theo's quivering shoulder with one hand while the other tightened with a vise-like grip on the wheel. "It's just—birds," I said inanely. "The island must be a sanctuary." But a terrible fear was clogging my veins with icy particles. It was incredible, yet...
"They're coming for us," Theo gasped.
The spearhead of the squadron had swerved. The rush of their wings was like the flurry of dead leaves before the blasts of winter. Not a sound issued from their parted beaks. Deathly silence was their flight.
I awoke from my stupor. Theo was right. They were heading straight for us. I clawed at Theo, pushing her with insane haste.
"Get out of the car," I yelled. "Run for the nearest house."
She turned a fear-pallid, yet somehow determinedly set face toward me. "And you?"
I essayed a weak grin. I knew there wouldn't be time to run the hundred yards or so before the birds would be upon us. It was insane, of course. Who ever heard of sea birds attacking human beings? Yet there was that in their swift, silent oncoming that made everything seem possible. My only hope was to remain in the car, to distract their attention from Theo. If she got through all right, then...
She must have seen my purpose in my face, for she stiffened. "I'll stay with you, Mel," she said very low.
"But," I started to remonstrate, and stopped. For the sky was suddenly masked. We stared upward in dumb amazement. The thousands on thousands of sea birds had formed a thick disk over our heads, not three hundred feet above. Almost stationary they were, with quick-thumming wings beating down at us in weird menace. The sky, the expiring sun, was gone, blotted out completely. Only a cloud of birds, ominous, threatening, acting as birds had never acted before. As if—and the thought lanced through my skull with searing fires—they were obedient to some malevolent will outside themselves, hearkening to voiceless orders we could not hear.
Theo cowered suddenly with a choked cry that strangled in her throat. I threw up my right arm involuntarily, and crouched heavily over her with some dim thought of protecting her.
A huge cormorant, larger than any bird I had ever seen, detached himself from the vibrating mass. Great black wings stretched wide as he dropped, like a plummet, directly for us. I had a blurred vision of obscene, leathery neck, of red-rimmed demoniac eyes, of curved beak wide with hellish eagerness, when the thunderbolt struck.
THEO shrieked wildly. Desperately I twisted and flung my arm forward. There was a ripping, tearing sound, and a white-hot flame seared along my shoulder. Great beating wings smashed into my face, blinded me with coarse pin feathers, stifled me with the stench of rotting fish—and something else.
Then the black sky-demon was gone, whirring past the automobile. I stared stupidly after him, then my eyes clung to my right arm. The fabric of my khaki shirt had slashed clean through, as with a razor blade, and a long gash in the fleshy part of my upper arm dripped bright red blood. A wild thought clamored in my skull, filled it with coruscating horror.
The monstrous sea-bird had not struck at me. It had aimed with deliberate, deadly purpose at the soft, shrinking body of my wife! Only my sudden lunge had saved her, had caught the slashing beak with my shoulder.
But I had no time for reflection. Theo screamed: "Look out!" barely in time. The cormorant had wheeled, was hurling itself directly for Theo like a bullet from a gun. I was jammed behind the wheel, unable to move fast. Theo thrust up a soft, feeble arm. A roaring vision of her dear flesh gouged and slashed lit hell-fires in my brain. I cursed insanely, but the oncoming bird paid no attention to me. Its fierce, red-rimmed eyes devoured the feminine curves of my wife, as if—as if—
With a sweep of my disengaged left arm I sent Theo crashing from the leather seat to the floor of the car. Just in time! The huge black devil catapulted into the automobile, wings wide, horrid beak slashing, directly for the spot where Theo's lovely head had been only a moment before. A rough-rasped wing ripped across my face. Then, with a screech of eerie, baffled rage, the hideous monster swerved. For a breathless second I stared directly into the red-orbed eyes of hell. Unutterable hate glared at me from those beady eyes. Then I was enfolded, overwhelmed. Feathers blinded my eyes, webbed feet clawed at my body, foul, hot stench, compounded of horrible ingredients, gagged my throat, turned my stomach to retching nausea. I fought wildly, threshing, twisting, trying to keep my head averted from the savage, lightning-like darts of that terrible bill. My eyes, I thought in horror! It's trying to jab out my eyes!
As from a great distance I heard Theo's muffled shrieks, felt the squirmings of her body underneath me as if she were trying to rise. Then, suddenly, I found myself eye to eye with the bird of prey. Red saucers they seemed, like pools of fire in hell. For the moment I could not move, while the saucers grew to overwhelming seas in which my being sank, will-lessly, sucked in by some hypnotic sway. The snapping bill, keen as a razor, sharp as a needle, lunged for me. I tried to tear myself loose, but the clogging nightmare held my head as in a vise.
Straight for my eyes it came, while the red pits flamed with unwinking triumph. In another instant...
I fell against the door of the car with a crash. The earth seemed to upend beneath me. The lunging beak ripped open my cheek, snapped with futile rage inches beyond. The fierce pain, the feel of gushing blood, broke the lethargic trance that seemed to have overcome me. Red rage seethed in my skull, rage commingled with shuddering horror. I struck out with balled fist in a wide, swinging arc. It caught the loathsome body a glancing blow, lifted it clear out of the car.
For half a dozen yards it fluttered and struggled before it could turn. A shrill scream, eerie, deafening, almost human in its fearsome rage, burst from its scaly throat. Then it swung around, low, hunched forward, and smashed toward us again. This time, I knew with a sickening feeling of despair, I could not stop it. My tired muscles would not react quickly enough. Yet with a last effort I pawed over Theo, to shield her with my helpless body if I could.
Something cold and hard thrust into my nerveless hand. A muffled, breathless voice spoke seemingly out of great depths. "Quick, Mel, shoot!"
Incredulously I listened, stupidly losing precious split seconds. Then I knew, in a blaze of comprehension, as fingers tightened. The gun! I had completely forgotten about it. I always carried it in the side pocket of the car, where it would be handy in case of a hold-up. Theo had remembered, had squirmed under my lumbering form until she found it.
The black devil was barely three feet away, hurtling through the air with implacable fury, when my leaden hand finally lifted. There was a spurt of sound, a flash, and the cormorant jerked as though it had hit an invisible wall. Its momentum carried it sidewise, screeching and flapping, until it dropped with a sickening thud to the pebbly beach not six feet away.
The daylight was dimming fast now. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, perhaps it was my shuddering, overheated imagination, but I could have sworn that the reddish eyes which turned to me were suddenly human with pain; that the last death cry of the bird was a moan of human anguish.
I was bleeding, but I did not care. Theo had scrambled out of the car. I followed her, determined to take a closer look at the cormorant, to make certain once and for all that—
Theo whirled in horror, crying: "Mel! The rest of them! They are coming for us!"
I JERKED around, backed quickly toward the line of surf. The sky was blackening now. Only a faint tinge of red, like the reflected glare from an open furnace, limned the edge of the mystery-haunted island. I could barely see them, but the air was filled with the rush of wings. Thousands of birds, hurtling down with ominously silent speed to avenge the death of their mate. I made a hopeless gesture with the gun, while my wounded arm tightened fiercely around the quivering body of my wife. What could five puny bullets do against the plummeting hordes?
"Good by, darling," I said hoarsely, and kissed her. Then I raised the gun. As I did, I stumbled, flailed wildly, and fell, dragging Theo down with me. A wave, higher than the rest, smothered us with swirling foam, rolled us over and over, choking and gasping and gulping salt water. Blind and dizzy, I managed to pull Theo upright, clawed feebly at the trigger of the revolver in my hand.
A shrill whistle keened through the cove, high above the implacable booming of the surf, loud above the swish of innumerable wings. My finger jerked involuntarily. The gun crashed, slammed in reverberating thunder around the precipitous crags.
I stared through the gathering murk in dull wonder. Not a bird had dropped with the shot. Faint stars pricked out overhead, where sky had just been obscured with a myriad feathered forms. My eyes switched seaward. The swarm had wheeled, as if on a pivot, was flying with furious speed straight for the black, silhouetted island with the unscalable sides. Even as I stared, they dropped swiftly, silently, upon the remote, unseen surface, and vanished. Not a sound, not a single raucous cry, such as are normal with sea-fowl returning to their roost. Deathly silence, motionless darkness, punctured only by the surge of the pale-glimmering white-caps.
I shook my head in shuddering dread. The blood had congealed on my cheek, on my aching shoulder, but the blood around my heart was moveless ice. "That whistle!" I muttered fearfully. "They heard it—and obeyed!"
Theo's arms were tight about me. Her eyes were wide on my injured cheek, yet their gaze was blank with terror. Her face was paper-white.
"Mel! Mel!" she chattered as with cold. "We've got to get out. They'll be back, I know it! There's something dreadful on that island, and it—it hates us. I feel it—here." She pressed long, slender fingers against her bosom. She was trembling uncontrollably.
I agreed with her with every shrieking fiber of my being. Into what lurking horrors had we unwittingly wandered? Were those in truth birds who had attacked us, or were they...? I caught myself short. What crazy superstitions were floating through my mind? Yet I carefully averted my eyes from the moveless body of the cormorant I had killed. Cormorant? I remembered that strange last look in its eyes I thought I had seen, that last moan as it died.
I shook myself angrily to get rid of these nightmare fancies. It was quite dark now. The cove was a bottomless hole of weird shadows and huddled silences. Not a light illuminated the sullen huts against the cliff. Yet creatures were inside, creatures who peered out at us from behind barred windows, but who made no move. I was sure of that. The fishing boats, the nets, the cod that stank with honest fish smells, all pointed to their presence.
Who were these people? Why did they not come out? What was wrong with them? Anger suddenly surged through me. I clenched my fists. I still held the gun. I moved forward stiffly. My wounds burned.
"Where are you going?" Theo asked with sharp anxiety.
"To find out why the good fisher-folk of this cove leave us to the mercy of those hellish birds," I said harshly.
SHE scrambled to my side, clung restrainingly to my arm. "For God's sake, Mel, don't do it!" she whispered desperately. "They cried out just before those dreadful birds rose from the island. Perhaps it was a signal." Her face was a pallid blur in the darkness. "I'm afraid of them—afraid of everything. We can take a boat, row to the other side of the headland. Anything, anything, to get out of this horrible place."
My skin prickled along my spine at her hurried words. I hated to acknowledge it, but I too was frightened of whoever it was that crouched behind those faceless walls. Yet I shook my head.
"No go, Theo!" I pointed out grimly. "A boat couldn't live a minute in that surf around the headland. We'd be dashed right on the rocks. And we daren't pull out far, in strange waters, at night. We'd never get through."
Theo stiffened suddenly at my side. "What is that?"
I listened. In the intervals between the crash of the waves I heard it. Something was moving out on the face of the waters. Muffled, creaking noises, instinct with stealth.
"It's a boat," Theo cried suddenly, hysterically. "They'll save us, take us away from here."
The scalp tightened on my head. The whitecaps glimmered with a ghostly light, but strain as I would, I saw nothing. Then all sounds ceased. Once again silence, ghastly, horrible!
Fear welled slowly in my breast, like a rising tide. I clutched at Theo, to shield her from the crawling perils of the night. "No fisherman returns at such an hour," I whispered. "I do not know—"
Then I heard that other sound. Or rather, it was the lack of a sound. It is hard to describe. The feeling that some one is close by, withholding his breath, lest you hear the snuffle of air. Yet somehow you hear the strain of his muscles, the corded knots at his throat.
I whirled, thrusting Theo behind me. My gun snouted forward. My ears keyed for the slightest rustle. Nothing! Nothing but the ever-recurring thud of waves on rock. Yet I was certain that something crouched on the beach, stalking us, watching us as we silhouetted against the grey of the sea, waiting—for what?
It is a particularly helpless sensation. I could see nothing. Vague shapes of boats, all around me, fantastic shadows that moved and leered horribly and shifted their shapes. Then—a pebble rattled, loud, startling, close at hand. Theo screamed. I pivoted on my heel, too late. Something huge and formless descended, crashed on my head. I fell in a shower of exploding stars.
"Got him," I heard someone cry in hoarse triumph. Then all went black...
I FLOATED in a welter of mumbled, indistinguishable noises. My head throbbed, my cheek was swollen and fiery, my shoulder ached intensely. It was with a frightful effort that I opened my leaden-weighted lids. The hum died down. I was lying on a litter of straw, within a one-roomed cabin. The board ceiling was sooted over with the smoke of many fires, the walls were covered with tattered pictures from ancient magazines. In the farther corner, near the open hearth, was a long, rude box of unpainted pine.
Then my eyes came to rest on the creatures who sat on three-legged stools, in a hunched circle around me. Fishermen they seemed, in long hip boots and tucked-in, faded trousers, and grimy shirts open at the necks. Hate was in their gnarled and twisted countenances, seamed and scored by burning sun and lashing, salt-encrusted waves. Their huge, powerful hands, like knotted driftwood, slid along their knees as if to throttle me.
I lifted my head. "W-what happened?" I gasped weakly.
A snarl ran around the lowering circle. A man lurched forward. He was old and skinny and bald as an egg. His rheumy eyes blinked at me with the diffused glitter of madness, his senile, toothless mouth dribbled saliva at tobacco-stained corners, his long, skeleton hands clawed for me.
"I'll kill you!" he screeched in a cracked voice, "I'll tear your heart out. My daughter, my poor daughter!"
His dirt-encrusted nails raked for my face. I rolled feebly to one side, trying to avoid those clawing fingers that looked horribly like talons.
"For God's sake, take him away from me," I cried desperately to the others. "He's crazy. I don't know what he's talking about."
But the grim circle only hunched closer, eyes staring hotly at me. Hoarse growls rumbled in their throats, the growl of human beings who have reverted to the beast. Nowhere did I see a spark of human sympathy, of human kindliness. Blood-lust was in their eyes, and hatred, and avid desire to kill.
"My daughter, Renee," the old man shouted instantly. "Murderer, robber of souls! Give her back to me!"
Cold perspiration bathed my limbs; fear seeped through my veins and froze the marrow of my bones. I was in a place of homicidal madmen, intent on my destruction, mouthing madmen's chatter. I twisted vainly as the clawing nails raked down my cheek, laying open the gash again. Then the old man was upon me, fingers ripping, beating with feeble fists, smothering me with the rank smell of his unwashed body.
I struggled feebly, crying aloud protestations of ignorance, calling for help. But no one moved, no one stirred. An unholy glitter inflamed all eyes.
As I rolled and squirmed under the maniac's belaboring I saw in the shadows next to the long pine box a gigantic figure arise. An unbelievably fat man, a mountain of flesh. Small, sunken eyes surveyed me with cold keenness out of billowing puffs of flesh. He took a step forward, into the light.
Dread filled me with superhuman strength. In that moment I had recognized him as the formless, massive thing that had struck me down on the beach. I heaved suddenly, and the ancient madman went over on the floor in a sprawling heap. A snarl of anger ripped from the tightening circle. They rose to their feet like cats, started for me. The fat man moved forward with surprising lightness.
WRENCHING agony filled my being as I pushed myself upright. The walls, the rushing, grinning faces, blurred before my fevered eyes. I swayed unsteadily. I did not have a chance and I knew it, but I knotted my fists to await their fierce attack. A name formed itself on my stiffened lips. "Theo! Good bye!"
Theo! Something crashed within my consciousness, swept away all cobwebs. Where was she? What had happened to her? A great fear formed in my bosom, hurled itself like molten metal through pumping heart and arteries. What had these ravening madmen done to her? I felt my lips retract in an answering snarl; I felt the corded muscles stiffen along my thighs, my arms. I lashed out at the first bestial face. There was a howl of pain, and the face disappeared.
The next instant I was fighting for my life, overwhelmed under kicking, gouging, biting figures. I heard the fat man's voice rise in indistinguishable words; the pack, eager for my blood, split suddenly asunder as his great hulk, powerful under its folds of fat, crashed through to me. I flung up a weary hand for protection, but I was faint from loss of blood and buffetings. He reached for me. I tried to duck, but I knew it would be too late.
His hand poised immobile in midair. There was a commotion at the door. The panting fishermen withdrew from me. Booted feet clumped heavily inside. A voice, strong, assured, vibrated through the dim lit room.
"In the name of God, what is this racket, Pierre? A body can't sleep with all this going on."
I stood there, fists still clenched, the blood oozing from my cheek, bewildered by this reprieve, not daring to hope. The newcomer was of medium height, but with long, sloping shoulders that betokened enormous strength. His face was hard and craggy, and his eyes cold as ice under thick, bushy eyebrows. He was clad as the others, but the boots were shiny and new and the clothes of better quality. A faint odor of salt dampness enveloped him. At his heels trotted another, in tattered, nondescript apparel like the rest. There was dread in the depths of his pale eyes, and he looked back over his shoulder into the outer darkness as if he had seen a ghost.
The old man, addressed as Pierre, whined eagerly, yet with a tinge of respect. "My daughter, Monsieur Huot—Renee, you know her."
"Of course," Huot answered impatiently. "What about her?"
"She was found, this morning, even as the others."
The man's eyes flicked to the oblong pine box, came back again to the father, cold and impenetrable as ice. "That is too bad," he said coolly. He did not seem surprised. "I've warned your young maidens time and again to be careful on the beach. The tides are treacherous."
"But no," Pierre whined. "It is not the tide. Look!"
He tottered over to what I now knew with horror to be a coffin. The others crowded after. Only the fat man who had knocked me down remained to one side, aloof, his deep-set eyes probing the fishermen with keen, swift glances. I noticed now that he was not dressed as the others. His clothes were of town cut and make, and more fit for the streets of a great city than this outlandish place.
For the moment no one watched me. This was my chance to escape from this den of madmen, I thought. I edged softly toward the door. No one seemed to notice, though I imagine the fat man was watching me carefully out of the corner of his eye. Then I stopped, stiffened. Out there was darkness and the hideous horror of the island. I'd be enclosed by towering cliffs and the circumscribing sea. I could not escape. Besides, there was Theo. She was not on the beach, I was positive of that. She had been seized; she was somewhere in the huddle of the village. I must find her first, even if death were the final result.
The senile, slobbering old man wrenched away with the white, shrouding garment. My eyes caught on what was underneath, remained fixed in wide horror.
The figure of a young girl lay there, wholly nude. Her slight features were rigid in a tortured mingling of hideous fear and mortal anguish. Never had I seen such a dreadful look on any dead face. Then my gaze, fascinated, yet shuddering with repulsion, travelled down to the naked, disclosed bosom. The flesh had been gouged out, ripped away, down to the very breast bone. A groan went up from the crowding fishermen, a groan half sob and half whimper of terror. The man who had come in with Huot spun on his heels. A wail burst from him.
"The demons of Malventure Island!" he cried, face ashen, lips twitching. His voice rose to a singsong. "They got Renee, just like they got the others. They took her poor soul from her body. Out there she must be now, in the black feathers of a cormorant, with twisting neck and tearing beak. Poor Renee! A bird of prey, with all the others."
A SHUDDER ran over the fishermen. They licked their dry, cracked lips; they crossed themselves surreptitiously. I stared aghast. What dreadful nonsense was this? Then I remembered, and the room rocked and swayed before me. I remembered! Dear God! The dying cormorant, the strange look in what should have been beady, unwinking eyes; the faint moan I thought I had heard. Hallucinations? Shattered nerves? So I thought, but now—now...
The crazed old man pointed suddenly at me. His extended finger was a macabre skeleton. "There he is! The man who came out of the sea, with his attendant devil in the shape of a woman, in a car where no car could come."
He sprang for me as he finished. But Huot was too quick. He caught him by the shoulder, thrust him rudely back into the sullen, muttering group.
"You're all a driveling, superstitious lot," he snarled. "Take better care of your women next time. They wade in the water and the undertow sucks them out. The rocks mangle them up a bit, and you make up crazy stories of demons on Malventure Island. Hah! Not even a demon could climb those steeps. I come a long way to buy your fish. Take care lest I do not come again."
I sprang forward. The man Huot had saved my life, but I distrusted him. There was something underneath that I did not understand, something hard and ruthless and cruel. Where had he been, out there in the night?
"Listen to me," I shouted, and they swerved to me with superstitious, hate-filled eyes. Even the gross, mountainous man, who had said nothing, but watched unobtrusively from the farther, shadowed corner, where the flicker of the dim oil lamp did not penetrate. "We are tourists, Americans, my wife and I. We were attacked by monstrous birds. I had to shoot in defense of my wife. That cormorant attacked her, do you understand, even as—that girl who is your daughter."
The old man fell away from me with trembling limbs. He was palsied, terribly shrunken. "Like—like my daughter," he mumbled toothlessly.
Huot looked at me strangely. "A wife and a car, eh? I saw neither one nor the other when I came across the beach."
I stared helplessly, then caught eagerly at a shred of hope. "It was dark. That is why—"
He shook his head, maliciously, it seemed to me. "The moon is out—full. Look, it is bright as day almost."
I rushed to the door. Sure enough, the moon had risen over the headlands, and its pale white glow made eerie illumination on the beach. I rubbed my eyes. There was no sign of the car, no sign that it had ever been. And Theo—!
I lifted my eyes with a terrible fear clutching my heart. Malventure Island lay like a black bat on the darkling waters. The beetling rim was touched with a slender cord of ghostly luminescence, but nothing stirred, nothing moved. On its inaccessible top were hideous secrets, forever to be withheld from me. I started out with a strangled cry. Huot caught me, jerked me back with a grip of steel.
"No, you don't," he grated. "There are explanations we want from you before—"
Debreau's pale eyes flamed. "Let him explain this, besides the demon he professes to be his wife, and the car that vanishes. How did they come to Anse du Diable? The tide has been in this past four hours. No automobile run by mortals could have rounded Cap Chat."
A breathless hush fell on the room. Fear lurked in their eyes. The fisher-folk moved surreptitiously back from me, as if perchance I were the Devil himself. Even Huot's grip on my wounded shoulder seemed to waver.
"That is true," he muttered. "Unless he came down the cliff trail, as I do. But then, a car!"
Icy fingers closed on my spine. I remembered my momentary illusion of the swirling breakers piled up against the headland. Had it been an illusion? These natives, hardy fishermen, surely must know the tides. For an instant it got me—the thick miasma of superstition that enveloped this Devil's Cove. Then Theo's lovely, pallid face rose to haunt me, and I became reckless—and cunning.
"Yes," I cried boldly. "I came around Cap Chat. The tide was there, but it parted for my passage, even as it will when I wish to return."
A GROWL rumbled through the room. My life hung in the balance. Would they turn and rend me in credulous fury, or would they—?
Huot himself was the first to break. His hand left my shoulder as if it had been hot iron. With a howl he dashed out of the room, almost overturning me in his mad flight. Behind him, running like a scared rabbit, lips chattering, raced Debreau. Then, pell-mell, in wild terror, tumbled the fishermen. Over the rubbly beach they pelted, stumbling, picking themselves up again. With a clatter of rough-shod feet, headlong for the darkened huts in the shadow of the cliffs.
In seconds I was alone. Even Pierre had left his dead, torn daughter to my tender mercies. I was the Devil himself, the Demon of Malventure Island. Had I not avowed it openly?
I threw back my head and laughed mirthlessly. My stratagem had worked. Then I squared my weary shoulders. I must find Theo. I was afraid to think in what condition I would find her. My thoughts slid always away from that. Otherwise I would have gone mad. My eyes burned on that looming, bird-haunted island. Birds and something else. My lips tightened. I took a sudden resolution. I started to leave this house of death.
"That was a very pretty trick. It does credit to your intelligence." I jumped, whirled around. The bland, smooth voice had been directly behind me. Like a great grey slug the monstrous fat man oozed out of the chair beside the coffin, moved toward me in the wavering light of the sputtering lamp. A smile spread itself blandly over the vast expanse of his countenance, lost itself in the crinkly folds of his skin. But his half-hidden eyes were not smiling; they were sharp, alert.
"You!" I choked.
He bowed ironically. "Pelletier is the name. Armand Pelletier."
Anger and despair went through me like sharp knives. "Damn you!" I said furiously. "You're responsible for this ghastly business. You hit me on the head out there. You've taken my wife," I poised on my toes for a low, fast leap.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he said conversationally. His right hand glided easily from behind his back. A gun flickered bluely in the huge palm of his hand. My gun!
I rocked back on my heels. "Very well," I ground out. "What do you intend doing?"
He looked me over carefully, and again that mirthless chuckle dripped from the folds of his throat. "We are going," he observed, "to Malventure Island."
The suspicion in the back of my mind flared into certainty. Over there then was the secret of Theo's disappearance, of the mangled bodies of the native maidens, of the demoniac sea-birds. And I was face to face with the Arch-Devil himself!
Twisted thoughts crawled in my half-mad brain. My hands clenched and unclenched. They were hot with sticky perspiration. I fought to keep my voice steady. "All right. When do we start?"
Pelletier watched me with hawk's eyes for a single false move. I did not make any. I must bide my time. "You are not afraid?" he demanded.
"No!" I lied.
"Hmmm! So! We shall see. Go down to the beach, in front of me. Make no noise as you walk. And do not try any tricks. I shall not hesitate to use this little toy you were so kind to give me."
Because there was nothing else I could do, I marched. Despair overwhelmed me. Theo was dead, or worse, and I—I was being taken to an unknown, horrible doom.
I was tempted to shout, to bring aid from the darkened houses. But they thought I was the Devil, and would cower under their beds at my voice. Nor would Pelletier hesitate to use my gun. So I went on, barely hearing the whisper of his monstrous progress behind me.
"Get into that boat." There was no blandness to his voice now.
A dory swung idly in shallow water. The tide had been steadily coming in. A single pair of oars rested in their holes. I got in.
"Take the oars," he whispered harshly. I did so.
Gun firm in his right hand, he picked up the heavy anchor with his left, as if it were so much painted cardboard, and deposited it noiselessly in the stern of the boat. Then he sprang in with surprising agility. "Row," he commanded.
I TOILED at the oars. The surf caught us and bobbed us about as if we were corks. I had to fight to keep her steady. Then the long swells heaved underneath, and the shore receded. I could not see the island—my back was to it—but I felt a chill wind whistle down my spine—a wind that seemed to come directly from its vast, mysterious bulk.
With clammy moisture on my brow and gnawing despair in my heart I pulled on and on. The thunder of crested breakers lashed at my ears. We were near the island!
The boat caught on a huge surge, drove perilously near the towering rocks. My eyes clung fascinated to the high, overshadowing edge even as I heaved desperately on my right to swing away. Smooth as glass, gruesomely black, quenching the shafts of the moon with impenetrable darkness, there was not a foothold anywhere even for a mountain goat on the sheer wall.
Closer and closer broke the surf, thrust-foam and lather high against the rock, while I struggled with the oars. Pelletier shouted frantically to me now. I sensed the sudden fear in his voice. It filled me with savage exultation. I dropped the oars. I did not care any more. Let us both be dashed to pieces on the flinty walls. Theo was dead, and life had lost its savor for me. At least that monstrous devil in the stern would share my fate.
Pelletier's eyes had been away from me for a second. They strained with fearful intensity along the curving height of the island, seeking... what did it matter now? He swung around, startled, just as I was almost upon him. Fear leaped into his deep-set eyes, fear and something else. His gun thrust at me menacingly.
"Get back to those oars, you fool!" he screamed. "We'll both be killed." I laughed, high above the pounding waves. That was what I wanted. I leaped, fingers clawing for his throat.
The gun went off with a deafening roar, but the dory had descended sickening into a swirl of waters. I reached for him with an instant chuckle, unhurt. Now...
But he did not seem to see me any more. His fat face was a grotesque mask of terror and mouthing eagerness. He lifted a trembling finger. "Over there—there!"
The screech twisted my head around. We were racing with express speed toward a darker patch in the pitchy heave of the island. A stygian opening, filled almost to the brim with furious, rushing waters. Then we crashed.
I was thrown clear of the boat. For a shattering instant I saw Pelletier's agonized countenance, then the flood closed over him. The next moment I was overwhelmed. My body battered into jagged, steel-hard rocks, water gushed into my mouth and nostrils. I gagged and choked as a great wave carried me, tumbling and turning, into a maelstrom of sound and fury. Then I felt shelving rock and grasped at a sharp edge with dying frenzy. Heavily I pulled myself to safety.
MY lungs were bursting. For a while I did nothing but gulp in stale, damp air. The light-quenching blackness of the nether pit surrounded me. Slowly I arched my battered body to an upright position. All around me was smooth, wet rock. The surf, as though furious at my escape, sucked at my feet. The thunder of the waves in the circumscribed space was deafening.
Where was I? In a cave, obviously, masked at the water's edge by the piling breakers. Pelletier and the boat had cracked up outside. But curiously, the thought left me limp. I, too, was doomed. The tide was still rising. In another hour it would cover the mouth of the cave completely, and I would be drowned inside like a rat in a trap.
I felt cautiously around. A single misstep would plunge me back into the maelstrom. Miracles do not happen twice.
Then my questing foot firmed on wet rocks further along. I moved carefully, guiding myself by outthrust arms against the slimy walls. About ten feet in I bumped into an obstructing wall of rock. I could go no further. The trap had closed. In a short time now the waters would rise, higher, higher, until...
What was that? I had thrust my head back in futile despair. Almost directly overhead the blackness seemed a shade lighter. I flailed around frantically with my foot. My toes caught in a niche. I heaved upward, felt with my left foot. Another niche. It was a steep, ladder-like tunnel, leading—where?
Slowly I made my way up. The vague darkness became a pale shadow, then it changed to a sallow glimmer, and I pushed my aching body out into frozen moonlight. I was on the top of Malventure Island, in the very heart of the mystery which had cast its horrible spell over the fishing village of Anse du Diable!
I barely had strength remaining to drag myself away from the mouth of the tunnel. Then I collapsed. I heard pantings and stumbling movements somewhere, but though my life depended on it, I could not move. I was tired, so tired... I floated off into oblivion...
I DO not know how long I was unconscious, but I know I awoke with a start. I lifted myself with painful effort, wobbled to my feet. What was it that had awakened me? Had I dreamt it, or had I actually heard... Again the shriek of mortal terror slashed through the night air.
"Theo!" I cried in anguish. I would have recognized those accents even from the nethermost reaches of hell. Theo, my wife, who had been dead, and was alive again, somewhere on this dreadful island of the damned, screaming hopelessly, screaming because she must. What fiends held her in their frightful clutches. What were they doing to her?
As if in answer the stillness was shattered once more. A sound that rocked me with its horrible implications, that sent me staggering crazily over the rocky surface. It started as a single demoniac screech. Then it swelled to a hellish chorus of hoarse, shrill cries until all heaven and earth and sea was a mad cacophony of ear-shattering noise.
It was dark as the bottom of a well. The moon had gone down, or been obscured by thick, black clouds. No moon, no stars, nothing by which to see or guide my course. The welter of sound had increased to unbearable volume.
I tried to orient myself by the racket. It was impossible! It filled the air, it pervaded every nook and cranny of the firmament. I ran desperately, not knowing where I was, slipping, scrambling to my feet again.
My fumbling feet skidded on bare rock. I clawed myself upright. Where in this devil's murk could I ever find my wife?
Then I saw it. For a breathless moment I stared in bewilderment. There was a dim patch of red in the distance. Dark shadows flitted over it in rapid succession, obscuring the glow, releasing it again.
With a hoarse cry I started running. Those shadows were the swift circlings of birds around an artificial light. The breath whistled in my throat. Theo was there, within that bloody circle, being tortured...
I reached the jagged rim of rocks. I hurled myself forward through a narrow opening. My eyes widened in an agony of horror; a frightful cry tore from my throat. Then something smashed heavily against the back of my head, and I went down into a welter of black stars...
SOMETHING flabby and stinking slapped into my face, blundered away with ungainly motion. I jerked into hideous awareness. My pain-blurred eyes traveled stupidly down.
I was bound with thick lashings to a pointed pinnacle of rock. A hooded lantern stood on the bare ground, not five feet away from my prisoned form. A scarlet glow emanated from its painted interior.
It was deathly silent. The dreadful cachinnations had ceased. Only the depth-less ocean boomed far below. I tried feebly to collect my shattered thoughts. What had happened to Theo...?
"Mel!"
The shriek of anguish flung me against the ropes, drove the clogging mist from my brain. It was Theo!
I saw her then, even as I had seen her in that soul-shattering instant before I had crashed unconscious to the ground. She hung suspended on a gigantic cross, arms wide outspread and shackled to the wooden cross-piece, slim, shapely legs fastened with heavy gyves to the solid upright.
She was stripped stark naked. Every last detail of her lovely body, the smooth, satin texture of her skin, the graceful curve of her thighs, the sweet roundness of her breasts, lay exposed to the avid lechery of the light. Her dark, shapely head drooped with weariness and suffering. Her eyes were wide on me with frantic appeal.
"Wait, Theo, I'm coming!" I mouthed futilely, and tore with mighty jerks at my bonds. But they were strong and devilishly knotted, and I crashed back against the jagged rock with bone-snapping thuds.
"That is better. I was afraid for the moment I had hit you too hard. Now we can begin. Too long have the good folks of Anse du Diable been without their beacon light on Malventure Island!"
My heart went moveless and cold in its casing of flesh. My brain seethed with horror. I twisted vainly to see who it was that had spoken.
"What do you mean?" I cried, knowing only too well. For at the base of the cross, ringing the naked feet of my wife, were heaped faggots, bleached jetsam of the wreckage of many a stout ship on this dangerous coast.
A muffled chuckle was my only answer. Then I saw him; dim, indistinct, partly revealed by the crimson luster as he lurked within the rocks. Huge and formless he seemed, irradiated with eerie, shifting shadows. Only his long, dirty white beard was plainly visible, flowing with serpentine writhings down to his waist. It was the apparition I had seen from the cove, the hermit of Malventure Island who had mouthed indistinguishable maledictions at us.
"Damn you!" I exploded with fear and rage. "Who are you? What have we done to you?"
The dim, formless face lifted. The beard waggled in horrible similitude of life. "I am the guardian spirit of the island," he snarled. "And you are interlopers, even as the others. For that you must die." He moved slightly, thrusting his head forward. The light glowed on his eyes, and reflected the lust that flared in their depths. They fixed lecherously on the nudity of the crucified girl.
"It is a pity," he mumbled, "to do what must be done to your wife. She is pretty, and her body..." He crept along the shadowed rocks until his groping hands slid with trembling eagerness over the pulsing, rose-tinted limbs, edged upward...
Theo shrank desperately against the prisoning wood, moaning: "No! No! Don't..."
I hurled myself against the ropes in a red swirl of madness. Theo's body to be defiled by the unspeakable vileness of that monster! I screamed and cursed until the echoes awakened to my cries. High overhead, the birds of hell screeched discordantly, resentful of our presence, of the glimmering lantern that had driven them from their sanctuary.
Reluctantly the hermit withdrew his pawing hands. His voice was thick with regret. "I must not delay any longer," he mumbled. "The beacon must be lit. It is getting late!"
He whipped a taper from under his muffling robe, struck it against a rock. It spurted into sooty flame. He tossed it into the waiting pile of heaped tinder. It was dry. Little fingers of fire ran along the ground, met and twined in smoky embrace. Sparks crackled and light blazed suddenly. It leaped high into the night, raced around the circle in a blazing wall.
Theo shrieked. The gloating tongues licked out at her, illumined her writhing, twisting nudity in its dreadful glare. The darkness retreated from the human beacon; the sky blazed with a new and terrible dawn.
At sea, a dark-painted ship swung stealthily down the iron-bound coast. Not a light gleamed on its shadowed hull. The helmsman stared at the distant flare on Malventure. A cruel grin distended his brutal features. He turned to his muffled companion. "Okay," he said. "Let's go!" The ship swung round to the flick of his wrist, breasted the long rollers toward the shore.
The hovering gulls saw and screamed their rage at this dispossession from their immemorial haunts. With shrill cries they wheeled and flew in countless thousands out to sea.
THEO shrieked again. "Help, Mel! Help!" The smoke fumed up and choked her. The mounting flames wrapped round her in a sheath of fiery agony.
I tore at my ropes in a frenzied delirium. The solid rock shivered with the fury of my plunges; my throat was raw and bleeding from my shouts.
"Oh God!" Theo moaned. "I can't stand it any more!" Her body shuddered and went limp. The fire, with a triumphant roar, spurted on its prey. I closed my eyes to the coming horror. Madness mounted in my brain, swept my senses away.
Was it delirium that made me hear a slow, slithering sound behind me? As though someone were crawling painfully along the hard, bare rock on his belly. I opened my eyes, jerked them downward. God! A knife, long and sharp and bloody in the scarlet luminance, twisted on my leg. It slashed.
The cry died unborn in my throat. Miraculously there had been no pain. I looked again, in a fumbling daze. A neatly severed rope lay at my feet. The knife vanished into darkness, reappeared on the left. The second rope dropped away. My legs were free.
Wild hope surged through me. Already the flames reached greedily over Theo's ankles. The agony must have been unendurable. She was screaming again; dreadful, toneless cries.
"Hurry!" I whispered madly to my unknown, unseen liberator. The fiendish hermit had not seen. All his gloating gaze was on Theo's twitching form. Someone stifled a groan behind me, fumbled painfully. I hung suspended in dreadful fear. Had he fainted? Then, a slow, slithering sound, and keen steel pricked my side.
I was free— free!
Animal snarls ripped from my throat. I leaped from my niche, straight for the dim-seen figure of the hermit. He whirled with a yell of fear. Then I was upon him, filled with the lust to kill, to send his damned soul catapulting down into the trough of hell.
He struggled. He was amazingly strong as he fought for his life, but I was insane, a thunderbolt of destruction. My squeezing fingers never loosed their grip, no matter how he writhed and squirmed and gouged. Then he went suddenly limp under my crunching hands. I flung him crashing to the rock with a snarl of triumph, whirled and catapulted for the fire.
I scattered the burning brands with wild, savage kicks, crushed out the avid fires as they seared along my wife's dear tender flesh with my bare hands. I did not even feel the singeing of my hair, the sizzling of frying skin.
Theo had fainted, but thank God she was still alive! I untied her with trembling fingers, I bound her hurts with torn strips of my shirt. Time and nursing would heal them to faint scar tissue.
Then I remembered my unknown savior. I ran in back of the rock to which I had been prisoned. There I found him sprawled, limp and sodden. I started back with a cry of surprise. It was Armand Pelletier, he whom I had thought ground to pieces at the foot of the island! He opened his eyes at my outcry. His face was battered and shapeless, his enormous body a single livid bruise.
"Sorry," he whispered, "I thought at first it was you who—"
Then he fainted.
IT was dawn before my repeated calls brought help. Huot, the fish buyer, and Pierre manned the boat, maneuvered it at our shouted directions to the secret entrance of the tunnel. It was low tide. I helped the others down, and we rowed hastily back to Anse du Diable, certain now that the unspeakable horror had been lifted forever.
Before they had come, however, we had arrived at certain explanations. The sight of a strange black vessel piled up on the treacherous headland helped us in our conclusions. Pelletier told us the story, in the guttering light of the red lantern. "I'm a government agent—Customs," he said. "There'd been a deal of smuggling along the coast, and we couldn't seem to get anywhere in tracing it. The markets were being flooded with precious gems from Europe, valuable silks and tapestries on which no duty had been paid. Then a tip came about strange doings here in Anse du Diable. I was sent to investigate."
Somehow his tremendous bulk was now merely that of a very fat man. "I found myself at once in the midst of horrible things," he went on. "I watched carefully, but I couldn't figure any of the fishermen as responsible. They seemed such a stupid, superstitious lot. Then you came, and the birds swarmed down upon you. The others were scared to death, but to me it looked like a grandstand play of sorts. I crept out into the night to check up on you." He grinned sheepishly. "I'm afraid I used a bit of force. Your wife ran away before I could catch her."
Theo nodded wanly. "I was scared. But down near the beach someone pounced upon me. I didn't have a chance to yell for help. He threw a sack over my head."
Shakily we found our feet. The hermit was where I had left him, a sprawled, unmoving form. His long, blooded-dabbled beard swept like a shroud over his face. Pelletier bent over, ripped savagely. The beard came away in his hand. I sucked my breath in sharply. Underneath, a sallow, hate-distorted countenance leered up at us. The face of the fisherman, Joseph Debreau!
I began to see it all now. "He had joined up with a gang of smugglers who were looking for a safe, secluded base of operations. This place was ideal, but unfortunately, there was a fishing village here, with consequent risk of detection. Debreau had discovered the natural tunnel that led up to the top of the island. That gave him his idea."
I took a deep breath. "There had been age-old superstitions about Malventure Island. He determined to play on them, and scare his neighbors so thoroughly they'd flee the place as they would the plague. The island would be a marvelous cache for the smuggled goods until they could safely be disposed of. His sudden appearances as the weird figure of the hermit was part of the plan. The slashed, floating corpses of the women was another. He must have thought us agents of the government, and sent his bird cohorts over to attack. When that failed, he slipped across in the dusk with his boat just in time to capture Theo. It was then that he heard Huot descending the cliff trail. He left Theo gagged and bound in the boat, and joined him, pretending to have been coming from his hut. Later, when I scared the others with my stupid stratagem, he was able to sneak back to the boat, and row hurriedly to the island."
"And your car?" asked the fat man.
"I'm sure," I answered, "we'll find it submerged not far from land. He must have started the motor and let it dive into the sea. But I can't explain how the waters came to recede from the headland long enough for us to pass through?"
"That," said Pelletier, "is simple. I noticed the same phenomenon the day before. The tide as it comes in sometimes creates a whirlpool between the two rocks. The water sucks away, leaving the beach exposed. It lasts only a few minutes though."
Theo shivered under the assortment of garments in which we had wrapped her. "How about the birds?" Pelletier and I looked at each other, faces suddenly grey. We had been carefully avoiding that topic. I essayed some weak explanation that satisfied no one, much less myself...
NOR did we find the answer until the following day when help arrived in the shape of a swarm of government men. The smuggler's ship had piled on the rocks when the devilish beacon that was to have been my wife no longer pointed the way. They found its precious cargo intact; they also discovered an almost fabulous cache of gems on the island. The smuggling gang had been wiped out in the shipwreck; all except one, whom they caught hiding on the top of the cliffs. He broke down and confessed.
Debreau had found a plant growing on Malventure, akin in its character to catnip. The sea-fowl gorged greedily on its aromatic leaves, fought each other with beak and talon to get at the pungent stimulant.
Debreau quickly sensed its hideous possibilities. He distilled the plants into a potent essence. A drop was sufficient to excite the birds to a frenzy of screaming desire. A bottleful...!
The captured smuggler had a bottle of it. He was the lookout, perched on the cliff to guard against suspicious strangers. As we rounded the rock he emptied the contents over us. Theo got most of it, I very little. The sea-fowl, abnormally keen of smell, hurled from the island in a mad race to sate their craving for the hellish brew...
My wife has a magnificent brooch, a huge diamond surrounded by emeralds and rubies in intricate design. At the insistence of Pelletier, the Government presented it to her out of the smuggler's-cache, in grateful token of our aid in breaking up the horror. But she never wears it, and I can't really blame her. For only too often do we awaken now in the depths of the night, reliving once more that dreadful scene on Malventure, without any such adventitious jog to our memories.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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