Isle of the Undead, Page 2

thedistended veins of his neck, he sought to move. And like a cordsnapping, his invisible bonds fell from him.

  He was crouching over Vilma, rubbing her wrists, calling to her, whenagain he heard the silver horn of Corio. A low droning utterly unlikethe note that had awakened the galley's crew, it drifted languidlyalong a channel of endless sleep. It seeped through the ear-drums,touching every nerve-tip with resistless lassitude. Doggedly Clifffought against the sound, pressing his hands over his ears, grittinghis teeth, holding his eyelids wide. Yet he felt his muscles weaken,began to relax, knew dimly that his mind, sodden with drowsiness, wascreeping toward the pits of slumber--and the vibrant drone ended!

  * * * * *

  His head cleared rapidly, and he bent over Vilma. As he touched a limparm, he knew she had passed from paralysis into a deep, quiet sleep.He shook her. It was useless. He listened, heard her steady breathing;and at that instant realized that the noises from the yacht hadceased.

  Rising, he strode toward the square of chalky moonlight. A foot awayhe halted, fell back. He had heard a faint footfall, had seen anarmor-clad figure climbing over the rail! With silent haste he flunghimself down beside Vilma.

  And there he lay while the crew of the galley carried his friends fromthe _Ariel_, all slumped in that unnatural sleep, and stretched themout on the floor of the black cabin. Unmoving, he watched throughnarrow lids till all save Corio had been carried aboard, and thedrowned things had gone back to their places in the rowers' pits.Again the hollow voice of the drum began throbbing through thesilence, and the oars creaked a faint accompaniment. He could feel thegalley cleaving the oily sea.

  On his feet, he peered through the doorway. The backs of the rowersrose and fell with stiff, mechanical rhythm. Beyond the galley's sterncame the yacht, slinking along like a thief, only one dim lightshowing, her Diesel engines purring almost soundlessly.

  He turned and bent over Vilma, still in thrall to that strange deepslumber. As he traced the delicate outlines of her lovely face, now solifeless and pale, bitter wrath flared within him, wrath and hatredfor Leon Corio. But as he thought of the ghastly _undead_ things outthere in the galley pit, thought of this water-soaked anachronismwhich had no right to be afloat, his skin crisped with a sense offoreboding, a fear of what was yet to come. He must do something!

  Stepping over the still forms of his friends, he moved to the forwardwall where a beam of radiance crept fearfully through a gap betweentwo boards. His hands touched the hull--and he jerked them away.Rotten, clammy, like a decayed corpse, partly frozen. Crouching, hepeered through.

  Far ahead, a blotch of evil blackness squatted on the horizon, anisland crouching low like a black beast ready to spring. Around it themoonlight seemed to dim, as though it were striving to hide somenameless horror. Interminably Cliff watched while the shadowed massdrew closer ... closer....

  They were headed for a towering wall of black basalt; and as thegalley neared it, Cliff saw that it bore striking resemblance to agigantic human skull, its rounded surface broken by caves that thesea had carved into hollow eye-sockets and an empty nasal cavity. Therock wall ended high above the water; beneath it lay a gaping chasm ofpitchy darkness. And the galley, drum silenced, oars at rest, slidunder the ledge, into the mouth of the skull!

  Just before total blackness fell, Cliff sprang to Vilma's side andraised her in his arms. If he hoped to do anything, he must do it now!He groped his way to the starboard bow and moved one hand along thedank timbers, searching. He found what he sought, a wide gap at theedge of a board. Gently lowering Vilma to the floor, he gripped theslimy wood with both hands and thrust outward mightily. A wide stripof decayed timber burst free. He dropped it into the sea and attackedthe next board. In moments a wide irregular opening yawned in thegalley's hull.

  Leaning out, Cliff looked down. He could see nothing. Then suddenly afaint light appeared, and he heard the hum of the _Ariel's_ motors asshe entered the cave. The humming ceased instantly, but the faintlight persisted.

  Now he could see the blackness of waters, a rock wall beyond. He drewback--and a he did so, he heard movements on deck! At any moment therowers might enter! He'd have to risk a drop into the water withVilma--there was nothing else to do. If only she were conscious!

  He stooped and raised her, holding her firmly with one arm. Grippingthe hull with the other, he climbed through the opening, inhaleddeeply, and dropped! A heart-stopping plunge--and cold water closedover them. Down, down--then they shot upward, reached the surface; andeven as Cliff gulped a single gasping breath, something struck hisskull a blinding, stunning blow! The oars!

  With rapidly numbing arms and legs Cliff kicked and flailed the water,striving for land. Dimly he knew he no longer held Vilma; dimly hevisioned her as were those ghastly undead; then his body scraped onsomething hard, and a blackness that was not physical blotted outconsciousness.

  _2. The Dreadful Isle_

  Red-hot hammers pounding against his temples wakened Cliff Darrell. Heopened his eyes to stare into total darkness crawling with mentalmonsters spawned by his pain-stabbed brain. He lay half immersed inshallow brine, his head resting on a jagged stone just above thesurface. Struggling to his hands and knees, he shook his head fromside to side, dumbly, like an animal in pain. Something had hithim--and now he was in water--and there was no light. What hadhappened? Where was Vilma?

  Vilma! He groaned. He remembered now. They had dropped--and his headhad struck something--and--and--maybe she was floating out there evennow, dead eyes staring upward.

  "Vilma!" he cried, his voice pleading. "Vilma!"

  Only a mocking echo answered him. There was no other sound, not eventhe whisper of waves swishing among the rocks.

  Cliff pressed his hands fiercely against his throbbing head. The painhad become a madness, matched only by the agony of his ownhelplessness. He felt his reason reeling; he fought an insane desireto fling himself shrieking into that silent expanse of water to searchfor Vilma; then with a tremendous physical effort he jarred himselfback to sanity.

  He staggered to his feet, groped stumblingly over the rocks away fromthe water. His hand touched a rock wall broken and pitted by theaction of the sea; and he crept slowly inland, feeling his way like ablind man. As he plodded on his thoughts blended into one fixed idea:he must get to light, must get light to search for Vilma.

  Gradually the insensate pounding in his head abated, and strengthreturned to his body. When at last he saw light beyond a narrowfissure around an angle in the cavern, he had almost recovered. Inmoments he was gazing out over a plain bathed in the glow of a leprousmoon. As he stared, he shivered; and it was not because of the colddraft drawing through the fissure, fanning his brine-drenched body.

  Grim and starkly forbidding the plain lay before him, dead as thefrozen landscape of the moon. Once there had been life there, but nowonly the skeletons of trees remained, lifting their wasted limbs inrigid pleading to an unresponsive sky. Some, there were, that hadfallen, uprooted by the fury of passing hurricanes; these lay like thescattered bones of a dismembered giant, age-blackened, and paintedwith hoarfrost by the brushes of moonlight. Feebly the dead foreststirred under the touch of a moaning wind, and the gaunt shadows castby the trees seemed to be multi-armed monsters slithering over therocky earth.

  He looked beyond the trees, and he saw light. Little squares of paleradiance cut high in the walls of an ancient black castle. Castle?Cliff frowned. He could liken it to nothing else, though he could notrecall ever having seen a castle which thrust curving, needle-thinspires into the sky like a devil's horns.

  Impatiently Cliff stepped from the wall of rock and glanced along apath that writhed through the forest; glanced--and crouched swiftly, alow cry escaping him. A single spot of water on a smooth, flat stone!A spot shaped like a woman's shoe! Vilma had passed this way!

  But--might it not have been some other woman from the _Ariel_? No!They had been carried--and even if they had walked, their feet weredry!

  Like a hound o
n the scent, Cliff Darrell sped along the serpentinepath. The wind moaned above him, and the soughing branches seemed towhisper croaking warnings, but he ran on, his eyes constantly seekingsigns of Vilma's course. Here a drop of water shaken from her drenchedskirt, there another; and Cliff blessed the full moon whose light madepossible his trailing of the almost invisible spoor.

  Now he had passed beyond the dead forest and was moving toward thecastle. The trail had been growing steadily fainter, but he managed tofollow it. It led him toward a narrow stone stairway climbingcrookedly to a misshapen opening in the wall. Light glowed faintlylurid somewhere deep within; and now Cliff heard a blasphemous soundbelch from the depths of the castle--a wheezing, sardonic croakinglike the moan of a demoniac organ, rumbling an obscene dirge. His hairbristled, and he stopped short.

  He looked at the steps, searching for the fading trail--and hestiffened. There on the second step was an irregular blotch ofmoisture! What did it mean? Had Vilma crouched there? Had she